JayB

Ten to one says that says that you are about to have someone demand to know exactly what it is that *you* know about being a woman....

Wow! You *heard* that? Holy shit - that's impressive 2nd-hand info! "The Trouble With Islam By TAWFIK HAMID April 3, 2007; Page A15 Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world’s decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis’s implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right. But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists’ defense. These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name -- Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion. It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong. The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace. Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals -- who unceasingly claim to support human rights -- have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah’s inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror. Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria -- which happened in the last few decades -- or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please. The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods. Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine’s formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession. Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners.It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America’s enemies. Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience inAmerica, and indeed, the West, today. Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand -- but so far haven’t -- that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media.Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not beconsidered "moderates." All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices. Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us." *"Dr. Tawfik Hamid, is an Islamic thinker and reformer, and one time Islamic extremist from Egypt. He was a member of a terrorist Islamic organization JI with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawaherri who became later on the second in command of Al-Qaeda. Some twenty-five years ago, he recognized the threat of Radical Islam and the need for a reformation based upon modern peaceful interpretations of classical Islamic core texts."

It's clearly quite possible to look at all of the sociohistorical complexities you cite and conclude that there's a causal link between the rise of Islamism and...Islam. If all we were talking about was what the Marin County Unitarian League's male-quilting collective did after reading ancient religious texts then there'd be little or nothing to worry about. When you change the context to a society in which all of the most fundamental beliefs, norms, customs, laws, etc have been fundamentally shaped by persistent interpretations of those ancient texts, then what's actually in those books matters a great deal more. I personally hope that all of the revolutions in the Middle East succeed, and we're well on our way to a Muslim civilization where criticizing the fundamental aspects of Islam and renouncing your faith via a megaphone in a public is no more likely to entail adverse consequences than a Christian doing so in Copenhagen, but that's a long way off. It's also not at all clear how holding our collective tongues while witnessing every bit of depravity, repression, and barbarism conducted in the name of Islam is going to benefit the moderate Muslims, secularists, etc who are the most likely to suffer directly from them.

Yeah, low income folks who can't live within walking distance of mass transit get zero benefit from it, right? Pretty much on par with the rest of your...ehm...logic. I'd actually argue that the benefits of public expenditures on mass transit are overwhelmingly captured by and/or transferred into the hands of people who are a long way from being poor. The poor certainly do benefit, but they are a long, long way away from being the primary beneficiaries of such expenditures. "The poor" are to mass transit subsidies what "Green Energy" or "Energy Independence" are to corn ethanol subsidies.

He addresses it elsewhere - from what I call he touches on that subject in "The End of Faith" but it's been 3-4 years since I read it so my recollection may not be correct. He addresses that point in the essay I've linked below, and I'd suspect there are many other bits of writing where he does the same since it's a common objection level at him, and one that was reprised multiple times by Scheer and Hedges in their debate. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html

1979 NYT Op-Ed

Also liked this rant from Bill Maher, particularly from 3:47 onwards: [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhvhNZC51gY

your post above makes me thirsty for a sea of beer. Hercules IPA, to be specific, if i have a say in the matter. but it does catalyze a thought: how far back does our thirst for self-determination go? is it inherent in the liberation of the big bang (would you call the big bang "liberation"? or would you call it being cast away from singularity (aka the garden of eden))? yeah we should probably talk about something interesting sometime, but in the meantime, you are one wacky guy! Interesting ruminations - particularly the bit about the IPA, which has become my default beer of choice, which hopefully doesn't entirely ruin the beverage for you. In the meantime - I have a hard time differentiating between my own positions and Sam Harris's when it comes to Islam in particular or religion in general, so I'll toss in a couple more offerings from him on these issues. [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0RdUsvnqys [video:youtube]

This is great news for all of the poor people who can afford to buy property in the expensive neighborhoods that sit adjacent to rail-based transit lines!

YES, THOSE ARE THE ONES WE"RE WAITING FOR YOU TO PRODUCE! Aren't you one of them? Chris Hedges, Ward "Little Eichmann's" Churchill, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. The non-existence of people who attribute all Islamist violence to exogenous forces that have no connection whatsoever to Islam isn't really an interesting claim to parse sense such people do, in fact, exist. Much more interesting to speculate upon what motivates people to engage in a passionate defense of actors who are inspired by a ideas that's completely at odds with all of the liberal values that supposedly inspire them. Nope! Concrete policy proposals...you get an 'F'. And Islam, per se, is no more against liberal values than Christianity. Both books are kind of kooky, and both religions have liberals and rabid fundamentalist wack jobs who support the use of violence. What IS against liberal values is attempting to restrain the freedom of thought and religion, particularly when one religion is singled out, en masse. What is also against liberal values is to create a silver bullet model, as you have, that blames what a) only one side and b) the least relevant aspect of what has been and continues to be a tit for tat political, economic, and social conflict. If you're argument is that the world would be better off without God, I'd be inclined to agree with you, although that would be highly speculative, but we have a world where humans are evolutionarily predisposed to believe in God, so let's all pretend that we actually live in that world, shall we? But your problem isn't with God in general, although you're apparently not a believer either. You have an oft stated problem with Islam per se. You believe that Islam is uniquely and inherently violent in nature. I believe this stems from your gross ignorance on the topic, but whatev. OK. What's your call to action? Per se is quite an equivocation. The problem is that we're not dealing with a set of ideas "per se," we're dealing with them as they are actually practiced and understood in reality. As in the present that we actually inhabit. While Christianity and Islam might present equally formidable obstacles to the emergence of liberal democracy in theory, that's clearly not the way things worked out in practice since modern liberal democracy actually emerged in Christian countries, and has yet to find an equally firm foundation in predominantly Muslim countries. That may well be largely due to a bum roll of the historical dice, or it may not. You can't exactly run a set of controlled experiments to settle that question, so we'll never know the answer. I'm really not a friend of Christianity or any other organized belief system that's based on parsing the wishes of supernatural beings but you simply can't claim that Christianity writ large, as actually understood and practiced by contemporary Christians, is anywhere near as inimical to the progress or maintenance liberal western values as Islam as it's currently understood and practiced.

a contemporary Wall of Hadrian could be made of concrete, right JayB? It's the only solution I've heard him mention. Or perhaps sitting on a throne of indignation, hammering away at the Koran might be a better solution? And yes, yes, before you start again, the Koran has passages that support violence, OMG. For the sake of argument, let's consider the possibility that there is literally nothing that we can do to affect the beliefs or practices in question anywhere outside of our own borders, and any discussion of such is inherently futile with regards to actually changing anything. Would evaluating sharia, jihad, etc from a liberal western framework be an enterprise worth engaging in? Would it even be permissible to discuss? How about applying the opposite boundary condition. Assume that simply by discussing and critiquing the practice of stoning adulteress' etc we could end the said practices. You - the enigmatic 'kimmo' could eliminate the death penalty for apostates forever just by articulating a critique of the practice. Or for simplicities sake - by pressing a button. Would you press it? I think reality lies somewhere between those two poles, with a general distribution that's very close to the "there's nothing we can do about it" end of the spectrum, but it depends upon who you are dealing with. If we are talking about determined Islamists who are out to slaughter as many civilians as possible - then killing or capturing as many of them as possible while making the maximum possible effort to minimize killing innocent civilians in the process is a good, concrete policy. At the other end of the spectrum - simply having the courage of our convictions and articulating liberal Western critiques of barbarous practices, beliefs, etc that are perpetuated or inspired by any of the gradations of Islamism that are associated with things like putting apostates to death seems like something that has no moral or practical downsides. There's a broad spectrum of other actions that probably fit somewhere in between these two.

YES, THOSE ARE THE ONES WE"RE WAITING FOR YOU TO PRODUCE! Aren't you one of them? Chris Hedges, Ward "Little Eichmann's" Churchill, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. The non-existence of people who attribute all Islamist violence to exogenous forces that have no connection whatsoever to Islam isn't really an interesting claim to parse sense such people do, in fact, exist. Much more interesting to speculate upon what motivates people to engage in a passionate defense of actors who are inspired by a ideas that's completely at odds with all of the liberal values that supposedly inspire them.

How do you account for Duranty, btw?

Thought that the issue was leftist apologists for communism. If we're talking Islamism pretty much anyone who refuses to acknowledge that there's anything tethering Islamists to the gajillion acts of transnational terrorism they've been engaged in over the course of the past 30 years other than a reflexive and justifiable response to western misdeeds....that hasn't been shaped or informed one iota by endogenous islamic concepts like jihad, etc - fits the bill pretty well. Scheer/Hedges are the tip of an iceberg that encompasses quite a significant fraction of the contemporary left.

Bullshit. If time was the limiting factor you would address the salient points formulated by the opposite side instead of rehashing ad inifinitum the same debunked ideas in long-winded monologues. What was your argument again - there have never been left wing apologists for communist regimes, both before and after the major purges, famines, etc? Duranty, Hobsbawm, etc x 10^X. Since the factual record is clear on this point - speculating about what motivated them to do so right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond would be more interesting.

Military officers own a lot of businesses in Egypt, particularly in the tourism industry, so they have a deep, vested interest in restoring stability and thus, the economy. In my view that's probably a very good thing for the secular democratic movement - it shows in their restrained behavior so far. Maybe. Should be interesting to see what happens when and if the people on the street realize that Mubarak was just the face of a corrupt military oligarchy that bears significant responsibility for the country's dismal economic performance. Not sure if the military will be down with changing the rules for a game they've rigged to enrich themselves. We'll see. Greece on the Nile IMO.

i'd like jayb to actually, for once, state his position clearly, without the headache inducing madness that masquerades as principled ideology. to accomplish this end, i thought i would give him the benefit of the doubt, but evidently this didn't interest him. not that i necessarily blame him.... Position on what? Time is generally the limiting reagent, not interest.

Neat. I have a problem with things like the death penalty for apostates, etc that you can neither account for by recourse to Western misdeeds, nor seemingly find it within you to unconditionally condemn. I propose a game where I point out a practice like killing apostates and you strain your faculties to use it as a justifiable response to western cultural hegemony/imperialism, point out that it's no worse than a christian practice that was widespread a few centuries ago and thus exempt from a principled criticism, etc... And I have a problem with bullshit artists, such as yourself, who rooted for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq - and the unfathomable human misery those events caused. The message seems to be: our Big Idea projects were (as predicted by half of this country) abject failures...who can we blame? Now you're telling us that you're against "the death penalty for apostates"...as if anyone is FOR such a policy? Kind of like saying you're pro-puppy. Your mantra seems to be that the Left, whoever that is, has stood calmly by while Islam wreaks havoc. Taking Left and Right out of this and getting down reality, tell me, what have you done personally to forward the cause of civil rights either here or abroad? And no, voting Republican (or Democrat), the very minimum of civic duties for any citizen, doesn't count. Don't worry, I don't expect anything but a dodge or personal attack as a response here. I'd love to discover that I'm wrong, but I suspect you haven't done one tangible thing to advance the cause of human rights either here or elsewhere. I haven't done anything to personally check any of the bits of retrograde barbarism practiced in the name of any particular religion here or abroad other than not engaging in it myself and perhaps sending a check every now and then. I didn't do anything to stop the slaughter in Rwanda either, but that doesn't render it impossible for me to form moral judgments against either genocide via machete or stoning adulteress' to death. There are many noble and worthy efforts that attempt to mitigate various atrocities, disasters, around the world that I also haven't played a direct role in, but that doesn't undermine any argument that I may put forward on their behalf. I'm not sure if you were seriously attempting to pass off the "If you haven't personally engaged in direct action for or against X you can't articulate a moral objection for or against X" into a logical argument, or you were once again subtly using this discussion as a pretext for drawing attention to your own heroic and seldom referenced contributions to the betterment of humanity, so I'll just leave that there unless you want to keep it going. My critique of what passes for the left these days is that it seems to expend vastly more energy attempting to transmute every violent and retrograde belief and practice that persists in association with Islam off as a legitimate response to western misdeeds or some other equally specious bit of excuse mongering on behalf of a profoundly illiberal set of convictions that's fundamentally at odds with virtually every principle at the heart of liberal western values. I'm well aware of the left's passionate hatred of many of the economic outgrowths of the liberal social order, which has given us everyone from Marx to Walter Duranty to modern apologists for whatever species of exogenous fanaticism directs its wrath against some of the same targets in the present, but that doesn't stop me from being dismayed by each new manifestation of it. "Sure the Taliban is bad, don't get me wrong, but they're nothing compared to the depredations of Walmart and as much as I object to Islamism are we *really* in a position to critique it when our rampant consumerism is inflicting far worse violence on the earth....?"

Neat. I have a problem with things like the death penalty for apostates, etc that you can neither account for by recourse to Western misdeeds, nor seemingly find it within you to unconditionally condemn. I propose a game where I point out a practice like killing apostates and you strain your faculties to use it as a justifiable response to western cultural hegemony/imperialism, point out that it's no worse than a christian practice that was widespread a few centuries ago and thus exempt from a principled criticism, etc...

That's certainly true - but that's not exactly what I've been driving at here. It's interesting to attempt to account for the manner in which religious convictions, morals, mores, and laws co-evolved in one fashion in society A, and another in society B. Neither focusing exclusively on the ideals embedded within whatever religious doctrine has prevailed in each society nor neglecting them will provide for a complete analysis of why primitive barbarism practiced in the name of a given religion is more prevalent in one than the other. It's just not clear to me why noting the torturous path away from depraved religious barbarism that started in the reformation requires that western liberals should collectively hold their tongues when witnessing depraved acts of religiously inspired barbarism in the present. Witch burnings in 17th century Salem mean that we are in no position to condemn female genital mutilation, the burqua, stoning adulteresses to death, needing four male witnesses to exhonerate rape victims, punishing apostates with death, tossing acid on schoolgirls, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc? Should we be prepared to grant indulgences to abortion clinic bombers based on the unique sociohistorical trajectory of southern Baptism?

I'm waiting for a disquisition on the gross misunderstandings implicit in western critiques of Islamist mass transit subsidy policies before I answer that one, Off.

a new wall of hadrian, i believe your prescription was. your comment was probably a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but it was the only answer you came up with when asked what you thought the "solution" to the problem was (forgive me, i have a photographic memory!). have i ever said there is "no connection" between islamist thought and "suicide" bombers? certainly there seems to be; i simply cannot fathom how one could develop a rational viewpoint that emphasizes this aspect over what i believe to be the much stronger role of economic inequality, lack of political participation, foreign bombs killing your family etc etc. if you had a foreign occupier's tanks sitting outside your house year after year, propping up a political system that protects a select few who have no accountability to you or your countrymen, all the while keeping your country's resources for their benefit only, you might consider any methods available as a way to fight back. maybe? agreed. although i suppose this might be more a reflection of the polarization of the argument. yes i did. hope you enjoyed reading scheurer. What evidence do you have that suggests that the strongest determinant of engaging in politically motivated violence that deliberately focuses on vulnerable civilian targets is primarily inspired by either material privation or political repression? There's lots of both in the world - but I don't think the simple connection between the two that you are positing actually exists. Ditto for the other factors. I've addressed this before by noting the absence of Arab/Persian/Pakistani, christians, jews, secularist, etc participation in these tactics, participation by people who either no longer live under these conditions or have never experienced either as a result of living all of their lives in prosperous western democracies, etc but have never heard you address any of those objections your own thoughts on how to account for them. What part of the repression/poverty framework explains the desire to murder people who are completely outside of the religion, both geographically and ideologically, who violate Muslim religious taboos? I think Seattle's own Molly Norris would be interested in learning more about that one? How do you explain the likes of Adam Gahan and John Walker Lindh in that framework? It may be that you can't understand the phenomenon of Islamist violence taking poverty and repression into account, but it's far from clear that these two variables represent a complete picture of the phenomenon. You certainly can't understand it at all by removing the set of doctrines, convictions, etc that constitute Islam from the picture entirely, much less pretending that you'd have the same outcome if Jainism had been the predominant religion in the region for the past ~1400 years.

I'm not convinced that the intensity of subsidization relative to revenue is going to change the picture at all, but if you've got the data that shows that state and local subsidies for the likes of Metro, the WSF, etc narrow or eliminate the subsidization gap on a passenger mile basis - that would be a welcome addition to the debate here. Happy Googling. It's your stupid argument. Own it. The only argument that I made was that it was silly to discuss the magnitude of transportation subsidies without normalizing them per passenger mile. I also presented data which you objected to because it was incomplete, and the tone of your response suggested that you were both familiar with and had ready access to a body of data that would support your own claim that the state/local data would lead to a subsidy-per-passenger mile data set that looked fundamentally different. I have to say that I am disappointed and astonished - shocked, really - to learn that you've been overtaken bit a fit of pique and will be keeping that data all to yourself.

I'm not convinced that the intensity of subsidization relative to revenue is going to change the picture at all, but if you've got the data that shows that state and local subsidies for the likes of Metro, the WSF, etc narrow or eliminate the subsidization gap on a passenger mile basis - that would be a welcome addition to the debate here. Happy Googling.

Really? Don't remember that - but I'd be interested in reading that. I do remember thinking that at the end of the day they'll have to hash out whatever endogenous conflicts persist within their own societies and there's not a whole lot that exogenous actors will be able to do to exert a decisive influence on how they get settled. With regards to Islam and suicide bombing, it's quite impossible to look at the prevalence and distribution of the tactic and conclude that there's no connection between the two. I find it quite amusing when people who get upset with right wingers who are unwilling to accept the statistical association between C02 concentration and temperature in the historical record become apoplectic when anyone looks at the association between the deliberate, targeted slaughter of civilians and the motives of those who engage in them and find a consistent empirical connection between these acts and a commitment to Islamist ideology. The word Islamist is key. Clearly this doesn't encompass the entirety of Islam, but it neatly encompasses the strain responsible for virtually all transnational terrorism for the past 30 years, and seems to be at work in just about all of the factional violence within predominately Muslim countries. Whatever Islamism is, it's impossible to claim that Islamists draw on none of the central tenets of Islam to guide and justify their actions. It's more than a bit dismaying to hear the same folks who go on and on about the importance of nuance, touting their own sophisticated grasp of all of the permutations of the faith, etc responding to every criticism of Islamism in a manner that suggests that criticizing Islamists is an indictment of Sufism, etc. Hope you enjoyed reading through the Pew survey.