A protester who politely complains about war in Iraq is outflanked and evicted from Parliament Square by 78 policemen, yet Gratuitous George Galloway can say terrorists would be morally justified to kill the prime minister and he gets away with it. MPs mutter he might be docked a few Luncheon Vouchers and banned from the Commons crimper or some such, but the response is surprisingly muted.
Galloway argued it would be logical and explicable to kill Tony Blair in revenge for ordering the deaths of thousands in Iraq. He said he was not calling for it, but the Respect MPs words sound too close for comfort.
There is a grave charge against Blair: he took us to war with no plans for the aftermath and no true prospectus; he flew in on a wing and a prayer.
But Galloways logic takes us to dangerous places. Would it also be justifiable to kill the majority of MPs who voted for war? And from there it is not too big a leap to adopt the position of the July 7 bombers: that all Britons are somehow fair game for daring to re-elect Blair afterwards except, of course, of the voters of Bethnal Green, who elected Galloway.
Even many of us who opposed the war find it infuriating how Galloway ignores how close the calculation was: the horror of what might unfold versus the horror of leaving in place such a dictator who had slaughtered and tortured so many.
Sure, we need MPs to keep up the pressure on Iraq. And we need sometimes tough, even outrageous, questions to upset the cosy consensus. That is why, on occasion, some of us have even felt tempted to salute old Galloways indefatigability.
You might even argue, with Gratuitous George, that Blair should be indicted for war crimes: just because we won and we are Brits doesnt give Blair immunity from the legal salvos now being lobbed at Saddam.
It has been argued that by todays standards someone would have faced a jolly tricky war crimes trial for ordering the fire-bombing of Hamburg, if not Dresden.
But Galloway, despite being elected as a lawmaker, seeks to justify illegal action, all for violent revenge. Surely, by this act, his position in the legislature loses legitimacy. What if, God forbid, the prime minister were to be murdered? George would love to be arrested for glorifying terrorism; he would prance about as a martyr. So maybe MPs are right, there is no sanction. Except one: he has forfeited our respect.
#1
If somebody felt "morally justified" and took out a "hit order" on George... he would have no moral grounds to whine about the order. Its no different than what he just did.
#3
SO now, besides Dubya & Admin & GOP, Blair etal? also now has to watch his six from the Spetzlamists. Communism in the West will be achieved once evryone in Britain-Euro-Western Demo needs an Advocate and sworn = stamped legal documents to buy fish-n-chips. Fascism is for the World Island of Eurasia = Russia-China, Communism is for the mere peons.
Our capital is now 'Londonistan', the hub of Islamist extremism, argues Melanie Phillips in her provocative new book. In this explosive extract she traces the impact of one disturbing episode
In 1988, the novelist and British citizen Salman Rushdie published his novel, The Satanic Verses. A bitter satire on Islam which understandably gave serious offence, its publication provoked uproar in the Islamic world with protests in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, that led to the deaths of five Muslims. Shortly afterwards, in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, sentencing Rushdie to death for writing the book, along with 'all involved in its publication who were aware of its content'. As a result, Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for many years and to live the life of a highly guarded fugitive, with a bounty on his head for anyone who succeeded in killing him.
This incitement to murder a British subject and his associates in the publishing world set the Muslim community in Britain alight. Literally so - they burned the book in the street, in scenes uncomfortably reminiscent of Nazi Germany. There was a positive feeding frenzy of incitement. Sayed Abdul Quddus, the secretary of the Bradford Council of Mosques, claimed that Rushdie had 'tortured Islam' and deserved to pay the penalty by 'hanging'.
Speaking in Bradford, where the first demonstrations against the book took place, he said: 'Muslims here would kill him and I would willingly sacrifice my own life and that of my children to carry out the ayatollah's wishes should the opportunity arise.' Dr Kalim Siddiqui, director of the Iranian-backed Muslim Institute, shouted at a meeting: 'I would like every Muslim to raise his hand in agreement with the death sentence on Salman Rushdie. Let the world see that every Muslim agrees that this man should be put away.'
The importance of this episode and the no less significant reaction to it by the British establishment can hardly be overestimated. Such scenes were unprecedented in Britain. The home of freedom of speech was playing host to the burning of books and an openly homicidal witch-hunt. Yet not one person who called for Rushdie to be killed was prosecuted for incitement to murder. The most the government could bring itself to say was that such comments were 'totally unacceptable'.
On the contrary, they seemed to be not only accepted but even endorsed by certain members of the British establishment. Far from universal condemnation of this murderous expression of religious fanaticism, various people used their public position to jump prematurely upon Rushdie's grave. Eminent historian Lord Dacre said he 'would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring Mr Rushdie's manners, were to waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them'. In Leicester, Labour MP Keith Vaz led a 3,000-strong demonstration intent on burning an effigy of Rushdie and carried a banner showing Rushdie's head, complete with horns and fangs, superimposed on a dog.
Here in microcosm were the key features of what would only much later be recognised as a major and systematic threat to the state and its values. There was the murderous incitement; the flagrant defiance of both the rule of law and free speech; the religious fanaticism; the emergence of British Muslims as a distinct and hostile political entity; and the supine response by the British establishment. What was also on conspicuous display was the mind-twisting, back-to-front reasoning that is routinely used by many Muslims to turn their own violent aggression into victimhood. Muslim leaders claimed that the refusal by the British government to ban The Satanic Verses showed that Muslims in Britain were under attack, with the political and literary establishment trying to destroy their most cherished values. 'They are rapidly coming to the conclusion that they will have to fight to defend Islam in Britain,' said Dr Kalim Siddiqui of his community.
Of course, it was Britain that was under attack from an Islamism that required the British state to dump its most cherished values in order to placate the Muslim minority. Yet this was promptly inverted to claim that it was Islam that was under attack. Thus, Islamist violence was justified and its victim blamed instead for aggression, the pattern that has come to characterise the Muslim attitude to conflict worldwide.
The Rushdie affair became a rallying cause for Muslim consciousness. It was the point at which British Muslims became politicised and hitched their faith to a violent star. According to writer Kenan Malik, Muslim radicals had until then been on the left, not religious and against the mosque. Now, fired by resentment at the apparent insult by the Rushdie book, they became transformed into religious radicals and formed the pool of discontents for militant Islamic groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, which began organising in Britain, particularly on campus, in the late Eighties and early Nineties.
When Khomeini died in 1989, British Muslims reiterated that the death sentence on Rushdie still stood. A spokesman for the Council of Mosques said: 'We are talking about the Islamic revival.' It was at that point, therefore, that the promotion of Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder.
Hard on the heels of this seismic episode came two further key developments. The Bosnian war was another major radicalising factor for British Muslims. They watched the appalling scenes of Bosnian Muslims being massacred by their Christian neighbours. What made this carnage so much worse was that it was taking place in the middle of secular, multicultural Europe. The Muslims being wiped out were pale skinned and clothed in jeans and track shoes. They looked and behaved like any other Europeans.
And yet Britain and Europe were dragging their heels about doing anything to stop the slaughter. So British Muslims believed that it was Islam that was under attack and that they, too, were unsafe and threatened in a country which had so conspicuously failed to view the massacre of Muslims with any concern. With their sense of victimisation thus accelerating by the day, they started volunteering to fight for the jihad in Bosnia and organising the 'defence' of their own communities in Britain.
At around the same time, Arab Islamist exiles from Libya, Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere started turning up in London in large numbers. Many had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They had returned to their home countries from where, after instigating violent agitation, they were promptly thrown out. So these trained 'Afghan Arab' warriors made their way instead to Britain, attracted, they said, by its 'traditions of democracy and justice'. But they had now been trained to be killers. They had discovered jihad. And the radical ideology they brought with them found many echoes in the Islamism and seething resentments that, by now, were entrenched in British Muslim institutions.
You may find the debate in the comments section (at the bottom of the article), ahem, interesting.
#1
'After the Rushdie affair, Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder'
Absolutely wrong. It's just that we noticed it thanks to Rushdie.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/28/2006 9:46 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Exactly so, Mr Crawford. Rushdie's death fatwa was the first glimpse most in the West had of the true face of Islam. It should have been enough. I am extremely gratified that he's still breathing.
After the Rushdie affair, Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder
Whaddaya mean "after"?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/28/2006 15:51 Comments ||
Top||
#4
To continue a vague theme.
Rushdie's masterpeice "the Satanic Verses" would make a great and funny movie and really insult Islam bigtime.
Too bad Kubrick is dead.
#5
Who would publish such a novel today? Nobody. There are many more muslims in the West now than there were 18 years ago; the real war isn't in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's at home, and we're losing.
HT Atlas Shrugs
The way I see it is this. European societies face a problem in that the Muslim populations in their midst are growing at a faster rate than the native population. Over time, the proportion of those societies made up of Muslims is going to increase. It's often said that one consequence of this is that Europeans adopt a spineless attitude towards Islamic terrorism, attempting to appease it rather than address it, for fear of provoking civil unrest in their own countries. This invertebrate attitude on the part of Europeans is cited as something that will lead to the inevitable downfall of their civilisation and, maybe within our lifetimes, their eventual partial or total submission to an Islamic way of life with all the horrors that brings. It's seen as a suicidal strategy, born of weakness.
I think that analysis is correct, but it omits some important matters.
Europeans don't have any affection for Muslims. To take one of the countries at most risk of this Islamic timebomb, the French are pretty intolerant of Muslims. They're pretty intolerant of everyone who isn't French. I know quite a number of people who have lived and worked in France for at least a decade and they're still seen as outsiders, still treated differently, still not fully accepted even by their French 'friends' (despite being bilingual, having French husbands or wives, etc.). This is as true (more true in fact) of the English than the Americans working in France. Among the French people I know well enough to discuss these things openly with, the general attitude towards Muslims is usually somewhere along a spectrum between complete incomprehension to contempt. There are some who think they, collectively, should make more of an effort to integrate Muslims into the mainstream of French life, but there's no equivalent of that perverse self-flagellation you see among American and British politicians on the left. You can see the effects of this attitude everywhere in France. Muslims generally live in the worst parts of town, in which any French person who could afford it wouldn't dream of living. I've never met a Muslim (or a black, or an Asian) French lawyer. So far as I'm aware none work in our office out there or in our competitors'. I have never seen an Arab in any professional role in France and I must have visited Paris at least twenty times. If they work in the centre of town, they're in pretty menial jobs. That isn't the case in London, and in my experience it's not the case in New York either.
I think the reason for this is that French culture, and European culture generally, is radically different from American and, to a lesser extent, British culture. What I adore about the United States is that anyone can be an American. In my eyes the values that define the United States are such that they're open to anyone. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are universal values and aspirations from which everyone, everywhere, at any point in time, can derive inspiration and can use to build a better life. Europe's nothing like that, France in particular. French culture isn't one based on ideals of freedom and personal achievement but on birth, class, status, refinement in matters of taste, humour, attitude, getting ahead, and protecting your own ass. Importantly, it's also based on geography. Nobody born in Italy could, or would consider, or would ever be described as, living like Frenchman. In contrast, an American or a potential American you can spot a mile off. American culture is potentially universal; French culture is confined to a time and a place.
Another point is that, to adapt the term, France is a RINO country - a republic in name only. Under the veneer of democracy and rights and freedoms, it behaves like a monarchy. To get into the government you need the right background, need to have gone to the right school, look right, say the right things. Moreover, like all monarchies, it is a characteristic of public administration in France that it is monopolised by a particular caste, is plagued with infighting among the 'courtier' class, and features a more or less total lack of financial or legal accountability on the part of those in charge. To varying extents this is true of all European countries, which explains why most Europeans aren't overly concerned about the lack of democratic or financial accountability in the institutions of the European Union. It's because they're not even concerned about it in their own countries. Above all, as in all old European countries, what's important if you're French is being French, not being free. It thus makes sense for Europeans to say "X is very French" / "very English" / "very German" in a way that it doesn't make a lot of sense to say that "X is very American". It does make sense to say "she's such a New Yorker" but that's a comment about ways of thinking, speaking, working, dressing, tastes, etc. It's not an observation about core values. In Europe, ways of thinking, speaking, working, dressing, and taste, is all the values there are. What I think distinguishes European culture from American is that it's more concerned with things that are, ultimately, trivialities. It lacks any concern with what we think of as the big issues in life - how free am I, how much money has the government taken from me this fiscal year (and for what freakin purpose?) am I able to live my life as I please, am I better off than I was last year, what are the threats to my security, what are the threats to the security of my country, and so on. It's perverse that Europeans characterise Americans as introverted; it's the Europeans who are the most introspective of all. Europeans generally see these issues as questions for someone else (the government). In their political thinking probably what distinguishes Europeans from Americans above all else is that Europeans are totally unwilling to accept any personal responsibility for making decisions which affect the future of their countries so long as the problems their countries face are not currently affecting them personally. Government, in Europe, is seen as something that just happens to you.
In the context of this Islamic problem, I think the apparent spinelessness of Europeans and their governments is probably best understood as a manifestation of the general sentiment that if these problems are not affecting most people personally, (a) they don't feel any motivation for doing anything about them and (b) largely they don't even see them. Clearly this is an idiotic attitude to adopt, but unlike freedom, which we see as a universal value and we can see as threatened by and in Muslim societies, core French values are particular to France. Likewise with almost every other European society. The lack of any serious emotional commitment to freedom among Europeans means that Europeans simply don't notice or care about future threats to their freedom that are looming on the horizon. What they would care about, however, is actual disruption to their own (myopic and self-indulgent) way of life.
Take an absurd character like De Villepin. If all the little De Villepins in France, who are now growing up and looking forward to attending L'Ecole Nationale d'Administration, found their paths somehow blocked by Muslims they'd be seriously angry. If all the characteristics of the French way of life which one can't avoid noticing when visiting France were to be displaced by Muslim habits and attitudes, the French would be angry. But, because they lack the commitment to the universal outward-looking value of freedom, I bet you your bottom dollar that, unlike us, they wouldn't notice the threat to their own way of life until the threat started manifesting itself in actual disruption to it.
What happens at that point is the issue I was drawing attention to in my post. I think that, were European societies to get to the point where the native population's sense of its own identity was actually being damaged by Muslim influences, there would be a very visceral and violent reaction to those Muslim influences. This is because it's only at that point that we can expect Europeans to react to Muslims at all. You or I can look at the Taleban (and not just Muslims but also, say, the Chinese) and even from thousands of miles away see them as antipathetic to our whole way of life, and a genuine menace. So long as communists and Islamic fanatics exist, our core value - freedom - is under threat, in a way that Frenchness is not threatened by the existence of those regimes.
I think two consequences flow from this.
1. The likelihood that European societies won't do anything about their Muslim problems until such problems begin to actually disrupt the 'native' European culture means that any attempts to address these problems will take place at a time when there are far more Muslims in Europe than there are today. This is likely to make the eventual 'reckoning' more serious and may lead to some sort of civil conflict.
2. The lack of any real commitment to freedom means that the European reaction to the Muslim problem, when it finally does emerge, will be less restrained than the reaction in the United States. We can characterise these issues as a fight between freedom and tyranny; the French will only be able to characterise it between Frenchness and an Islamic identity. That would make it more personal and specific to them, and more nation- and racially-based, than looking at it in terms of freedom-tyranny makes it to us. Same goes for all the European countries, and we know from bitter experience that people fighting to preserve their national or racial identity fight dirty.
Summarising:
1. European culture is more specific to national and racial characteristics, and geography, than is American culture.
2. In any area of European life you care to look at, Europeans tend not to concern themselves with the wider world.
3. As a result, Europeans will only deal with problems when they present a real upclose serious problem to their lives.
4. Re. the Muslims, this is only going to happen when the number of Muslims in Europe is much larger than it is today.
5. Any conflict at that point is going to be tougher than it would be were it to occur today, on the numbers alone.
6. Europeans, if there were to be such a conflict, will see it in national and racial terms because those are mainly the terms in which they see themselves. 7. Conflicts motivated by national or racial issues tend to be bloody and unrestrained.
What's screwing Europe at the moment is apathy and a deadly unawareness of the nature of the problem at the level of the individual citizen, not any misplaced affection or tolerance for Islam. Some of the political class might see the problem but, if their people don't, there's no mileage to be had by putting their countries on a war footing. Doing so would be seen as a disruptive and expensive response to a problem that their people lack the cultural tools to even be aware of at the moment. Essentially they just don't get it.
What this guy says is basically what I've been thinking for a long time, but I'm American, and lived in only one European country for a few years over 30 years ago, so I didn't feel qualified to say this, since I didn't have the breadth of experience to really know about the people and governments of multiple countries.
Europeans blather on and on about how worldly they are, but they in fact are extremely insular, self-centered, and selfish.
But they will, in the end, fight for their "way of life," lazy and self-centered though it may be. Dunno if they'll win, since most of them aren't allowed to own guns - something that doesn't apply to the moslems ringing their cities.
We definitely live in interesting times.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/28/2006 15:49 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Or, us Yanks or our grand kids will be in Eurabia 60-70 yrs from now un-f8cking them or liberating them during WWIII or IV.
#4
Atlas Shrugged is a very good writer (and quite pretty based on her latest podcast).
However, this is only a personal opinion. And there is little to show her opinion is informed by deep knowledge of Euro society.
On the other hand, its not clear why it is important. If the Euros are going dhimmi does it really matter what component of their culture is contributing what to the disaster.
#5
they will, in the end, fight for their "way of life," lazy and self-centered though it may be
Maybe. But I'm not so sanguine, as I neither think there will be a majority of them to fight back, nor that they will resist the gradual infiltration of legal structures which Islamacists will use against them. Hell, even the UK hasn't resisted that - and has tied its own hand via its membership in the EU in ways that make resistance already difficult.
#6
Laws are only worthwhile when someone enforces them. We've seen that on illegal immigration in the US. If the people in Europe rise up enmass against Islam, there will be no one alive/around to enforce the silly EU laws.
Although I think he waxes foolish from about the midpoint to the end, I agree that the Internet will definitely change politics - revolutionize it, eventually, unpredictably. Removing the influence of certain parasitic interests is wishful thinking - they'll be replaced by new, improved, parasites. Bank it - way too much slushy money in politics. Typically, he tosses around some tech terminology without actually understanding WTF he's talking about, but that's not unusual for "journalists"... Just as Linux lets users design their own operating systems, so 'netroots' politicos may redesign our nominating system.
Newsweak - June 5, 2006 issue Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point on "The Charlie Rose Show" last week. He said that successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times. The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering. Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio. And John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.
Will 2008 bring the first Internet president? Last time, Howard Dean and later John Kerry showed that the whole idea of "early money" is now obsolete in presidential politics. The Internet lets candidates who catch fire raise millions in small donations practically overnight. That's why all the talk of Hillary Clinton's "war chest" making her the front runner for 2008 is the most hackneyed punditry around. Money from wealthy donors remains the essential ingredient in most state and local campaigns, but "free media" shapes the outcome of presidential races, and the Internet is the freest media of all.
No one knows exactly where technology is taking politics, but we're beginning to see some clues. For starters, the longtime stranglehold of media consultants may be over. In 2004, Errol Morris, the director of "The Thin Blue Line" and "The Fog of War," on his own initiative made several brilliant anti-Bush ads (they featured lifelong Republicans explaining why they were voting for Kerry). Not only did Kerry not air the ads, he told me recently he never even knew they existed. In 2008, any presidential candidate with half a brain will let a thousand ad ideas bloom (or stream) online and televise only those that are popular downloads. Deferring to "the wisdom of crowds" will be cheaper and more effective.
Open-source politics has its hazards, starting with the fact that most people over 35 will need some help with the concept. But just as Linux lets tech-savvy users avoid Microsoft and design their own operating systems, so "netroots" political organizers may succeed in redesigning our current nominating system. But there probably won't be much that's organized about it. By definition, the Internet strips big shots of their control of the process, which is a good thing. Politics is at its most invigorating when it's cacophonous and chaotic.
To begin busting up the dumb system we have for selecting presidents, a bipartisan group will open shop this week at Unity08.com. This Internet-based third party is spearheaded by three veterans of the antique 1976 campaign: Democrats Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon helped get Jimmy Carter elected; Republican Doug Bailey did media for Gerald Ford before launching the political TIP SHEET Hotline. They are joined by the independent former governor of Maine, Angus King, and a collection of idealistic young people who are also tired of a nominating process that pulls the major party candidates to the extremes. Their hope: to get even a fraction of the 50 million who voted for the next American Idol to nominate a third-party candidate for president online and use this new army to get him or her on the ballot in all 50 states. The idea is to go viralor die. "The worst thing that could happen would be for a bunch of old white guys like us to run this," Jordan says.
The Unity08 plan is for an online third-party convention in mid-2008, following the early primaries. Any registered voter could be a delegate; their identities would be confirmed by cross-referencing with voter registration rolls (which would also prevent people from casting more than one ballot). That would likely include a much larger number than the few thousand primary voters who all but nominate the major party candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. This virtual process will vote on a centrist platform and nominate a bipartisan ticket. The idea is that even if the third-party nominee didn't win, he would wield serious power in the '08 election, which will likely be close.
There are plenty of ways for this process to prove meaningless, starting with the major parties deciding to nominate independent-minded candidates like John McCain (OK, the old McCain) or Mark Warner. Third-party efforts have usually been candidate-driven, and the centrist names tossed around by way of example (Chuck Hagel, Sam Nunn, Tom Kean) don't have much marquee value in the blogosphere. And the organizers would have to design safeguards to keep the whole thing from being hijacked.
But funny things happen in election years. With an issue as eye-glazing as the deficit, a wacky, jug-eared Texan named Ross Perot received 19 percent of the vote in 1992 and 7 percent in 1996. He did it with "Larry King Live" and an 800 number. In a country where more than 40 percent of voters now self-identify as independents, it's no longer a question of whether the Internet will revolutionize American politics, but when.
The Punjab governor, Lieutenant-General (r) Khalid Maqbool, was addressing a psychologists conference in Lahore when he touched on the problem of entertainment in society, which is just as well because many of our psychological ills spring from our ideological stringencies banning entertainment in the name of religion. He urged more entertainment in the form of music and drama for the relaxation of society, which, he said suffered from psychological pressures. He linked optimism to it, saying, We need a message of hope, play more music and more drama to provide relaxation to the people. Thereafter he said that Islam also urges people to adopt a balanced and relaxed life and that Pakistani society needed to review itself implying that the clergy had no monopoly on interpreting Islam.
What the good governor has raised is a cultural question, and what he has challenged is the trend so far to let entire cities slide into a wasteland of culture, some 90 percent of which comprises entertainment. He must recall the phenomenon of the Talibanisation of Gujranwala and Gujrat where popular theatre has been attacked by the clergy in tandem with the police for years. It has got particularly bad following the election from Gujranwala of a Pakhtun MNA in the 2002 election we recall the assault of the Taliban-like seminarians of the same leader on a government-sponsored marathon. Thus there are many cities in the Punjab that have become a culture-less wasteland of our clerical imagination much before the outbreak of the disease in North Waziristan.
Hence the mental disease and the phenomena of Imam Mehdis emerging periodically from our benighted cities to confront the dajjal of entertainment. (That the disease is universal and essentially Muslim was proved by the fact that the last Imam Mehdi we arrested from Toba Tek Singh came from London!) The most difficult and controversial subject in Pakistan today is culture. As it is, culture is difficult to define. Is it the way people live? Is it the way people want to live? Is it something that can be equated with religion? Does it coexist with religion? Does it subvert religion? Is it entertainment? Is it something to be saved? Or is it something to be rooted out as an accretion? Can we censor culture, applying to it the Islamic principle of exclusion? Or is there a cultural norm in Islam that must be enforced? At different times we say different things about culture. There are times when we think our culture was much defaced by Hindu culture. We also give the impression that after 1947 the Hindu accretion should have been eliminated to make space for a pure culture known to us in Islam.
Since the proxy war fought by Pakistan in Afghanistan and Kashmir was spearheaded by the clergy, Islamisation was also a kind of threat to the old culture of accretion. The warrior priest was not only exemplary; he could threaten too. If one applies a little bit of coercion with propaganda the indoctrination spreads more quickly. But it has also a opposite effect. People develop a passive resistance to it. That is the moment when the India factor becomes important as a source of culture. Under General Zia ul Haq, a furtive dependence on Indian TV and Indian movies became crucial to the survival of the people in Pakistan. As the Jamaat destroyed paintings of Lahores artists (remember the assault on Colin Davids house?) people watched Indian dances on the VCR. The police tried to catch people watching Indian movies on hired VCRs but was finally ineffective.
The application of Islam in Pakistan became more and more prescriptive and hard with the onset of jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir. It began to be termed Talibanisation in the late 1990s. The state was affected by it; as were the big cities. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif thought he could benefit from the new wave through the proposed 15th Amendment. But while he aspired to the purity of Islam, Pakistan went under a new wave of cable TV, most of it illegal, as young people, deprived of livelihood by the nuclear-induced economic plunge of 1998, started up their neighbourhood operations. Cable TV was nothing but Indian film and drama. It was an unspoken reliance on culture (or fahashi?) to offset the hardness of a more stringent and intrusive Islam. The cultural scene was becoming clearer in Pakistan.
The culture war was fought by Pakistanis with the help of India, but it was unspoken. Religion was on the right side and culture was on the wrong side of the state. Islam was what the state aspired to; culture was what undermined the state by accepting accretions from India. What in fact was going on was Talibanisation versus Indianisation. In this war the mainstream political parties unwittingly became antagonists of the army waging the two jihads. Out of the two parties, the Muslim League interfaced readily with the warrior-priest clergy for a compromise with Talibanisation; the PPP was less able to do this. But both parties tried to normalise relations with India to lessen the supremacy of the military in Pakistan. In both cases, efforts to normalise were thwarted by the military establishment. Had the political parties succeeded, culture would have been strengthened as a force against hard religion with the help of India. How ironic that Pakistanis have been forced to look to Indian culture as a means of entertainment because they were denied their own forms and means.
The Punjab governor has linked mental disease to lack of culture. This is what all honest psychologists will tell you unless they have grown beards like some medical doctors ready to host Al Qaeda terrorists in their clinics. He must however stand firm on the right of the people to be entertained. Where entire cities in Punjab have been lost to clerical despotism, the government must fight for their liberation. The present moment of governance under Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and Governor Lieutenant-General (r) Khalid Mehmood is the right moment to do it. *
Posted by: john ||
05/28/2006 21:13 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
By Ahmad Faruqui
Based on the generals recent statements, he is planning to stay in power through 2012 under the guise of creating sustainable democracy. And as that year approaches, expect the deadline to shift to the year 2017. Not bad for a man who was given a three-year term by the Supreme Court.
Rumour has it that General Pervez Musharraf is planning to write his memoirs and they should be coming out in a year or two. Presumably, they will describe how he saved Pakistan through enlightened moderation and will become an instant best seller.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john ||
05/28/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
you sir, are no George Washington. Just another garden variety tyrant. You won't be remembered when you are gone.
#2
He's not so bad. He's liked by many moderate and modern families in Pakistan, holding back the jihadist. India and Pak seem more peaceful. He's somewhat working with the US. I can't imagine any previous Pakistani leader doing the same. I just hope he doesn't become a Shah.
#3
What's the alternative to Musharraf? A nuclear-armed fundamentalist Islamic state, that's what. I don't like Musharraf any more than anyone else, but those are the choices.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point on "The Charlie Rose Show" last week. He said that successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times. The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering. Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio. And John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.
By Ahmad Faruqui
