Girls go to school to show the world their heads
From the risible to the disgusting – Islam Online phones the Taliban in Swat to discuss their policy on ordering girls not to go to school.
Muslim Khan, a former seaman who has spent two years in the United States in late 1990s, contends that girls are bound to get religious education only. “Yes, education is a must for every man and woman (in Islam), but women are bound to acquire religious education only,” he said. “They go to school without observing Pardah (veil), which is against Islamic norms.”
So…education is a must for every man and woman (in Islam) but women are allowed to get only ‘religious’ education which of course is not education at all. Why are women allowed to get religious education only? Well, because if they got the real thing they might be able to escape, and that is not allowed (in Islam). But anyway – that’s beside the point because the sluts go to school without wearing bags, which is against Islamic norms, and therefore the sluts simply have to be locked up at home for life – real purdah as opposed to portable purdah. Who says? Silly question. See this gun? That’s who says.
Asked what if girls observe pardah, would they be allowed to attend schools, the spokesman said that the issue has been discussed by the TTS. “But the problem is that despite our warnings, only a few girls observed pardah. Therefore, we have decided to stop them from attending the schools.”
You see how it is. Our hands are tied. We tried – we gave it our best shot – we gave them every opportunity – but the filthy whores simply would not observe pardah. Therefore, we have decided to imprison them.
Security analysts do not give much importance to TTS’s warning. “No doubt it will create panic among the girls and their parents, but it will not last for a long time,” said Hamid Mir, an Islamabad-based security analyst.
Oh yes, quite, no doubt a lot of silly people will panic at being told they will be killed by people who have a reliable history of living up to their own threats, but hey, it will not last for a long time, because…because the Taliban will change its mind? No. Because the girls and their parents will no longer mind the prospect of the girls being killed? No. Because the Taliban will be disbanded and defeated? Not any time soon. Why then? Who knows.
Mir said the TTS threat will be used by the Western media to further tarnish the image of Islam. “And unfortunately, people like Maulvi Fazlullah often provide them the opportunities for that,” he said.
Yeah. God damn Western media. Without people like Fazlullah no one would have a word to say against Islam, because it’s so fair and even-handed and justice-loving. Did I mention the Western media?
Come, come! Is it possible for the image of Islam to be further tarnished?! Religions in general, and Islam in particular, are looking very tarnished just now. But when it comes down to threatening girls who go to school, I think it’s time for Muslims worldwide to get in on either shining the image or resigning themselves to the fact that there is nothing there to shine.
This kind of thing is getting so persistent and tiresome, one wonders why we think it is appropriate to be gentle with Islam. I know, I know, there are all sorts of moderates around, people who really think that they are better off living in democratic countries, where their daughters get to go to school. Well, if there are, I’d like to hear from them, because, more and more, I think Oriana Fallaci was right, and Muslims in our midst are a real and present danger. I’m all for tarnishing the image. This kind of thing really has got to stop. And if Muslims in the West are not willing to go public and express their sense of outrage at what is taking place in their name elsewhere in the world, then there is something seriously amiss.
I know, I know – we’re not allowed to generalise. That’s Islamophobia. Well, I’m getting more phobic all the time, reading this sort of thing. Any rememdies on offer?
Why shouldn’t Ophelia Benson bash Islam and Muslims as Palestinians are massacred by the hundred?
After all isn’t it better for the IDF kill Muslim girls in their schools for Western values before those nasty Muslims do it in the name of religion?
I wonder how long it will take for Ophelia to get angry with Israel – or will her anger turn out to be rather selective?
So many questions and I’d guess, not a single answer.
resistor,
Why bring the Palestinians into this? It’s got nothing to do with them. What about girls going to school being threatened with death? Why shouldn’t we do a bit of Islam bashing about them? The Palestinian-Israeli problem is another thing altogether. Get your bloody priorities straight. We’re talking about little girls going to school. And if this is the way Islam deals with the question, I’d be scared as shit to give them a majority anywhere. Where were you when sense was handed out? Or are you a lurking Islamist?
Ah, ‘resistor’ is ‘monitoring’ B&W, as he promised he would. He’s keeping ‘Islam and Muslims’ safe from my terrible ‘bashing.’
But ‘resitor’ you sap – does it not occur to you that those girls are Muslims? What the fuck makes you think I’m ‘bashing’ them? I’m not bashing them, I’m pointing out the way the Taliban persecutes them.
Sorry, OB,
You are bashing them! The Taliban, of course. In what way do girls count? If you are bashing the Taliban, then you are bashing Islam and Muslims!
You must understand (as I know you do – but resistor pretends) the logic of Islam. And now I am bashing Islam, and I will go on doing so so long as breath endures. Islam is a patriarchal ideology. It’s a man-besotted, woman hating creed. Women do not count in Islam. That, surely, is evident. Women don’t count in orthodox Christianity either, as the pope has made abundantly clear, so I intend to bash Christianity too. We’re well shrift of both of them.
Ah, I didn’t say I wasn’t bashing Islam, I said I wasn’t bashing Muslims.
On the other hand in all fairness the Taliban is far out on the wing of badness. The Taliban is worse than Islam in general.
resistor bearing in mind that without fail you always take the side of the enemy wouldnt collaborator be a more suitable handle for you rather than resistor?
I’m not sure I get Resistor’s point. Is he suggesting that the IDF’s actions against Hamas in Gaza mean that criticism of the Taliban in Afghanistan is in, what, poor taste? Because they share the same religion?
Does this only apply during Israeli strikes on Gaza, or is it part of a wider theory that any criticism of Islam/attrocities justified by reference to Islam is invalidated by the mere existence of Israel?
‘…isn’t it better for the IDF kill Muslim girls in their schools…’
How is ‘muslim’ relevant here? I/P is a squalid little turf-war in which religion is (as so often) a toxic complication.
If there were a moderate alternative to the kinds of excess we see in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and, increasingly, Iraq, then I could buy the idea that you (OB) are not bashing Muslims. But is there a moderate alternative? Are the Taliban as far out there as you suggest?
I’m simply not convinced. I’m not convinced that this moderate alternative really exists. Sure, in some places,like the US, Britain or Canada, for example, there are Muslims who sit pretty lightly to Islam, but those who take Islam seriously are way out there on ‘the wing of badness’. And every so often the utterances of their leaders betray this with a kind of puzzling innocence, as though they did not see the lack of fit between their words and the context in which they are speaking.
It’s hard for me to see how they can be anything but. Christians can be extreme and fundamentalist, but nothing in their holy book suggests that they must be, but every page of the Koran (the Hadith and the Sira) is indelibly imprinted with extremism. That’s why it demands the extra protection of the law of rights which the Islamic Conference has repeatedly tried to get written into the UN Human Rights Charter.
When the OIC gives up this attempt, and acknowledges that rights do not pertain to religions or ethnic groups, but to individuals, then I will stop worrying about the extremism of the Taliban, assuming, what I think is true, that this is no extremism, and Islam itself demands the idiocies the Taliban seek to enforce by the murder of little girls.
Christians have tried (without success, in my view) to find female-positive aspects of Christianity. Muslims can’t even try. Christianity has never bought the idea that Christians are slaves of Christ (as St. Paul taught), but every Muslim is, by definition, a slave of Allah, and can be no other, and, in the Koran, women are slaves of slaves. You can’t get much lower than that.
From the general tone of his jargon, it sounds like resistor is a maoist third-worldist or some other wacky idiosyncratic brand of Marxist.
Which means that anyone willing to stick a fork in the eye of the great satan of imperialism must be supported, even if they force their women to live in bags or stone them to death or whatever.
Eric, formally, that might be true (or it might be true as a matter of definition), but in practice it’s not necessarily true and isn’t always true. Like any religion, Islam can simply be basically ignored, or so diluted that almost no substance is left. Muslims can, in short, be nominal Muslims, and some are.
Futhermore…more than half of Muslims are women and so are victims as well as (potentially) perps. Some Muslims are gay; some Muslims are secular; some Muslims are reformists; and so on.
I disagree that no moderate Islam exists; there are people actively trying to instantiate such an Islam – Gina Khan, Irshad Manji, Ed Husain, Tariq Fateh, to name just a few.
I also maintain and insist on principle that it is and has to be possible to ‘bash’ ideologies without bashing their adherents. That’s because I think that ‘bashing’ people as groups is highly dangerous. I loathe the OIC but the OIC is an institution, it’s not ‘Muslims.’
You say you see no way Muslims can be anything but extreme. Actually it’s quite easy – most Muslims don’t even know the Koran – because most Muslims don’t know Arabic and they know the Koran only in Arabic. For some Muslims reading the Koran in translation is a horrifying experience and the prelude to ‘apostasy.’
@ Resistor: Your name sucks, mate.
louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/butterflies-and-wheels/
Haha – that is funny. Persistor gets a thread all its very own.
Not going to happen here though. I’m not about to clutter up the place.
>>You say you see no way Muslims can be anything but extreme. Actually it’s quite easy – most Muslims don’t even know the Koran – because most Muslims don’t know Arabic and they know the Koran only in Arabic. For some Muslims reading the Koran in translation is a horrifying experience and the prelude to ‘apostasy.’<<
This bears repeating. You would simply not believe the level of ignorance of their own religious precepts and history amongst muslims. The vast majority may not even understand the 5 daily prayers. Odd as it may seem to you, there ARE religious teachers who do not encourage their congregation to read translations to aid understanding. One, a female ustad, told me that she feared her teenage charges would be terrified by koranic verses (hellfire and brimstone passages which required difficult ‘contextualising’ which the kids were not considered sufficiently mature for) and strictly forbade them from accessing net websites for clarification for example. She fed them sugary tales about Mo’s good deeds and stressed mindless memorisation and recitation of the koran instead. Seriously, I know people who have recited the book over a couple of dozen times from first to last verse and that’s it- they really understand little enough of it.
Actually it’s quite easy – most Muslims don’t even know the Koran – because most Muslims don’t know Arabic and they know the Koran only in Arabic. For some Muslims reading the Koran in translation is a horrifying experience and the prelude to ‘apostasy.’ O.B isnt learning the koran also a prelude to events like 7/7 and other outrages? one of the things moslem terrorists seem to have in common is that they have learned from radical imans what the koran actualy says prior to their bad acts.
Going out on a limb here – it was not until relatively recently that Bibles were accessible to believers in their own language. Since that point we saw some of the worst & some of the best: bible belters and secularists & quite a lot in between (e.g. a church-going gay marriage supporting bunch).
At the very least this shows it isn’t impossible to start from a ludicrous, obnoxious ideology and wind up in the type of West that allows us to do the things we do.
That’s why the Taliban thing is quite beyond any weighing of scales: refuse education and you refuse the slimmest of chances for these people to take a grip on their own future.
That’s why the resistor stuff is about as low as you can go: pretending to be caring for the people involved, it’s a matter merely of caring for: one’s own petty opinion.
The Taliban crime is at the same level as inquisition, holocaust & so forth – it denies humanity to some humans. The debate on tactics should be there, but the debate on the goal of annihilation of this type of government doesn’t add any value anymore.
Richard, of course, and what I said is not inconsistent with that. I didn’t say no Muslims know what’s in the Koran, I said most don’t.
In a way it’s not even surprising, mirax – that used to be exactly the approach of the Catholic church. The bible was for the clergy and no one else – that’s why translation into the vernacular was not just not encouraged, it was a capital crime.
“The bible was for the clergy and no one else”
Aye, OB, precisely.
All congregations belonging to the Catholic church are given by the clergy (laid out at all Church entrance doors for Sunday Mass attendees, of which they pay nominal fees) A4 pamphlets with readings and gospels of the respective days, according to the Catholic church’s teaching.
There are no bibles in sight.
The Catholic church, for its own motives, since time immemoriālis has never encouraged its congregants to use bibles.
There is, however, an important difference, between the Catholic idea that the Bible should not be translated into the vernacular, and should be reserved for the clergy, and the tradition that the Koran cannot be translated.
As you know, of course, every translation is an interpretation. Fundamentalist Americans tried for a long time to overcome this problem by counting only one English translation as the genuine Word of God, namely, the KJV. This, in itself, was held to be inspired, just as inspired as the original text.
In the case of Islam, however, it is held that the Koran cannot be translated. There is some basis for this in Muslim belief. Since Arabic (of unparalleled grace and beauty) is the language in which the Koran was dictated to Mohammed, the words of the Koran are the very words of God himself. A translation is not, therefore, the Koran (‘Qur’an’ – literally, the recitation) at all, but a product of the human mind. The Koran itself can only exist in its original language. If someone is led to renounce Islam after having read a translation, this is no surprise, since the translation is not the word of God, but the words of men. In translation it may be ugly and horrendous, but in Arabic it contains the very words of the God himself.
As to the idea of the Quilliam foundation that there was a Western (an Andalusian) Islam that now needs to be recaptured, there is simply no historical basis for the claim. Islamic imperialism led to attempts to overrun Europe, from both West and East. But Spanish or Andalusian Islam was not distinct from the Islam of North Africa or the Arabian peninsula. It is true that for a relatively short period (about 300 years, from around 750) Muslim Spain enjoyed an unparalleled period of political, economic and cultural success, as a separate Muslim power, but it was a success enjoyed at the expense of Christians most of whom did not convert, as had happened throughout North Africa, Egypt and along the littoral of the Levant. There is no sign that it adapted its understanding of Islam to anything resembling the classical Western tradition, much of which was preserved, but never integrated, by Muslim culture.
So, while I understand that there are ‘liberal’ and ‘reform’ Muslims in the West, it is clear that, even here, they are only willing to adapt to Western pluralism to the extent that Islam can be made consistent with it. A resurgent Roman Catholicism gives some indication of what the limits of this kind of reform might be. In fact, it is largely the influx of large numbers of Muslims into Europe that has led to an increased statement of claim by the Vatican to cultural (and political) dominance.
I suspect that, encourage them as we will, reform Islam is an example of something that is too little and too late. The only attitude towards religion, for societies that value their pluralism and freedom, is negative. Religions are a continuing danger to freedom. It’s true that Islam, like any other religion, can be ignored, and diluted to nothing. But there is far more behind the present intrusion of Islam into Western democracies, than stable populations being slowly absorbed by the surrounding sea of unbelief. It is being constantly renewed not only by birth and immigration, but by the money of oil states that fan the fires of religion as vigorously as they can. The pope is not responding to nothing, you know. He has reason to be concerned. But so do we all, I think.
You would simply not believe the level of ignorance of their own religious precepts and history amongst muslims. The vast majority may not even understand the 5 daily prayers.
mirax:
Prior to Vatican 11 Irish people reeled off everything pertaining to the Sacrifice of the Mass in Latin, without ever understanding its lingual meaning.
Now in the wake of V11 they are reeling off everything in the venacular – without ever really and truly understanding its literal meaning.
All that is asked of worshippers by the church is blind faith.
Their understanding of the Islamic faith is indeed not so dissimilar from our own Roman Catholic one.
“So, while I understand that there are ‘liberal’ and ‘reform’ Muslims in the West, it is clear that, even here, they are only willing to adapt to Western pluralism to the extent that Islam can be made consistent with it.”
I’m not sure about that ‘so’ – I don’t see how that follows. I don’t think it is clear that [all] liberal and reform Muslims put consistency with Islam before other considerations. I think they’re often a bit delusional on that score; I think Irshad Manji’s insistence that her faith in Allah is unshakeable is rather foolish, but I’m also quite sure that she has no intention of compromising her views on feminism and gay rights. It is possible to be a nominal Muslim…and that fact could be the only hope.
Ew – a creepy coincidence. Seconds after I type the thing about Irshad Manji’s unshakeable faith in Allah I dig up the archived April 2007 N&C because I want to find what I said about Chris Hedges – and the first item on the page reads “In this tv documentary Irshad Manji says – before going on to say in what ways she is critical of contemporary Islam – ‘My faith in God is unshakeable.'”
Ew! Creepy! Somebody is watching me!
The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.
The New Testament ‘Good News’ pocket-sized version is also very popular with Roman Catholics.
RC’c would not be seen dead with the Gideon version of the bible.
No, I didn’t think anyone would have a bad word to say about the massacre of muslims in Gaza by the Israelis. Today the BBC reported that five sisters were killed in their home which was next to a mosque bombed by the IAF. Did their lives count for nothing.
Interesting that a Harry’s Place spambot decided to make a contribution. That particular hate site had a piece by B&W regular, Edmund Standing, which praised Israel for allowing medical supplies into Gaza.
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/12/26/israel-targets-palestinians-with-humanitarian-aid/
In his ignorance he seems to think that this humanitarian aid is provided by Israel when in fact it is bought and paid for by the UN on behalf of the Palestinians and was withheld in contravention of international law.
Just now we saw Mark Regev an Israeli propagandist claiming Hamas had set up a Taliban type regime – an absolute lie, but just what this site loves to hear.
B&W/Harry’s Place has helped to demonise Islam and its adherents of all kinds. Demonisation and dehumanisation is a prequel to war and mass murder, you have played your own small part in this.
Eric, are you brought up catholic? The orthodox catholic view protected since years by the present pope is harsher & more obscurantist than Islam: only the church can interpret the Bible, laymen can study 1000 languages and still not read what it reveals. You are, not for the first time, dead wrong and in ways that will only damage the victims of a topic as the one in this thread.
resistor, you’re like somebody helping some deer hunters by wearing a duck on your head, it’s simply ridiculous – as if anybody’s compelled to say anything of A when we are discussing B.
JoB, I don’t think that’s true. No, I wasn’t brought up a catholic, and, while it is true that the Bible is interpreted within the tradition, it is not true that it is harsher and more obscurantist than Islam. Any church that could accomodate Raymond Brown, for example (and many other well known biblical scholars), conservative as he may have been, cannot be called obscurantist. There is, despite its backwardness, a place for reason in a catholic understanding of things that cannot be matched by a parallel commitment in Islam. And, as for the victims of this topic, I’m not sure who you mean. The thread began with the Taliban warning to little girls going to school. Which victims did you have in mind?
It was people like Irshad Manji that I had in mind when I spoke of accommodation. Her position, so far as I can tell, is untenable. She may have an unshakeable faith in God. It is not clear that Islam can accomodate her commitment to feminism and gay rights. There is no basis whatever for either in the Koran, the Hadith or the Sira. Is there anything else?
No, quite, that’s what I’m saying – it is not clear that Islam can embrace Manji’s commitments, and that’s why I think her unshakeable faith is foolish. But she can always simply have an Islam of her own. Of course that’s not really Islam, but so what? Liberal Christianity isn’t really Christianity, either, but it’s still preferable to the real kind. Jimmy Carter’s views are preferable to Paige Patterson’s, and so on.
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/orthodox.html
Sure, OB, Manji can have an Islam all her own. I thought, and now I think I was wrong, that I could have a Christianity all my own. But the power structure of Christianity came along and exploded that dream to smithereens. I’m still on the mailing list, so I receive the (Canadian) Anglican Journal, and the headline today announced that the (Canadian) House of Bishops had declared a moratorium on all future same-sex “blessings” (they didn’t even use the word ‘marriage’). And Anglicanism is moderate, and liberal in parts, like the curate’s egg was good in parts.
But the power structure of the Ummah. Now, that’s an entirely different thing, and it’s firmly under the control of people who will have no truck with the Great Satan of the West, and so Muslims who move into the West, to the extent that they are influenced by Islam, are influenced by a form of religion which is a continuous danger to the freedoms that we have fought to protect. It won’t be long in religious terms before the threat to kill little girls going to school will be heard in Britain and elsewhere where larger settlements of Muslims are found.
Where are the outcries from Muslims about the Taliban’s inhuman declaration? Where are the voices from Iran or Saudi Arabia at the death threats hurled at little girls who want to learn? Where is the outrage? I don’t see it. But when the pope foolishly included a condemnation of gay and lesbian folk in his Christmas address to the curia, there were literally oceans of print in resposne.
I do not think there are liberal possibilities in Islam. The liberal possibilities in Christianity are disappearing fast. That’s why Dawkins wrote his book, and Christians haven’t even tried to understand the reasons for which he wrote it. They are blind, and think that Islam can be domesticated, as they have been. It’s a dangerous dream.
“It won’t be long in religious terms before the threat to kill little girls going to school will be heard in Britain”
Yeah, Eric it has already occurred with respect of “honour killings” so what is to stop the same thing happening to little girls who dare to go to school!
Eric…I know the Ummah is an entirely different thing. But that still doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to treat ‘Muslims’ as a unitary group with one mind, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s desirable.
And there are protests from Muslims about the Taliban, in Pakistan and Afghanistan; there are also, it’s safe to assume, lots of people who would like to make such protests but are afraid of being killed themselves. The fact that you ‘don’t see’ protests from Iran or Saudi Arabia does not mean that they don’t exist.
And by the way there weren’t ‘literally oceans of print’ – such a thing is impossible.
Eric,
Yes, that helps, now I understand why you are at times so apologetic of the Christian stupidities. You’ve been in too deep in the surrogate catholicism called Anglicanism and you’re still a bit taken in by the myths of jesuitic reason (but while you contemplate the liberal fashionable Christianism it’s good to bear in mind it is at best PR and at worst a stepping stone towards the more extreme sects).
Anyway, what OB said but also there’s no identifiable power structure, like the church, in Islam; The Ummah which you refer to is not a ‘thing’ and can therefore not be under control of the people who & so on & so forth.
But more importantly and more basic – Islam is a word & not some holy thing that means something ordained by God. If – within the limits of grammar and common sense – people raised a muslim decide it means that to them: it does bloody well mean that to them because it doesn’t have a revealed unchanging meaning as you and the fundamentalist interpreters would have it.
That’s why we can have liberal & even secular Christians: because they have a disagreement with the pope or other powers that be, & they know it. Still stupid but another kinda stupid. It’s sheer nonsense to bar the same option from muslims you allow for Christians and it is borderline but, in any case, counterproductive.
O.B surely if a good Christian emulates Christ you dont realy have a problem, but what about the good moslem that emulates Mohamed? It seems to me that Islam will always have these problems because the central figure that inspires the religion was a murderous mysogenistic thug.
First off, JoB, I am not apologetic for Christian stupidities. In fact, I consider the growing insistence from the Vatican that it should play a public role in European affairs a serious present danger. For some time Christianity in the West has been marginalised, in so far as it had been, to a large degree, privatised, and it was widely understood that in secular jurisdictions religious institutions should not play a central role in policy decisions.
The rise of a Muslim public in the West has changed all that, and so we see churches beginning to renew claims to be permitted to play a vital public role, without which, we are to suppose, the values of society will sink to a kind of consumerist barbarism, and all the values on which ‘civilisation’ has been built will be submerged in a sea of filth and unchecked greed. At the same time they have been backing Muslim claims for greater recognition, and for permission for Muslims to practice their religion in full in their new countries of residence. This lends credibility to their own claims for a renewed role in ‘secular’ space.
I think this trend is a very serious danger to our freedoms. I think the Muslim threat, because to a large extent backed up by actions which have induced fear amongst Western leaders, the greater one, and the fact that Islam has a dispersed authority is not a point in its favour. It makes its threat that much more potent, because no one knows where to look for authority in Islam, and anyone can speak with apparent authority (like bin Laden or the mullahs of Teheran) and be heeded. It also disperses the threat, so that the fears that people have about expressing their outrage at the actions or words of Muslims elsewhere are quite severely self-censored, and outrage is muted.
At the moment we do not need to fear popes and archbishops, but at least we have some idea that they speak for their constituencies, and when they say silly things, no one is afraid not to say so, and they do, if not in literal oceans of print, at least in print that would consume many gallons of ink.
The church is still marginalised in the West, and can be largely ignored. But Islam cannot be ignored, because, authority being dispersed, threat is actually dispersed as well. And this makes Islam exceedingly dangerous – not, as Richard says, because following Christ is no danger – he forgets the Inquisition and the torture and the genocide in the name of Christ and the kinds of silly things that churches are doing nowadays to make life miserable for some minorities and others – but because Islam is already instantiated in theocracies, which extend their threat and influence wherever Muslims go.
If Islam had a central authority, then we could respond to that, and then it would be clear where we stand, but, lacking that, we are dealing with a hydra. You kill one bin Laden, or Zawhiri, or arrest one terrorist, and a dozen more spring up into its place. Hirsi Ali knows a thing or two, and from all accounts, she sees the threat of Islam in the West very much as I do. That doesn’t mean that we should treat Muslims as a unitary group, but it does mean that we need to be very wary of the influence of Islam on Western institutions, where they have made surprising inroads already.
Eric, fair enough but what you say now is not what you said when you said:
“But the power structure of the Ummah. Now, that’s an entirely different thing, and it’s firmly under the control of people who will have no truck with the Great Satan of the West, (..)”
Outrage, even if warranted, is not an excuse for imprecision.
Although I do agree that Islam is now a bigger worry than Christianity this doesn’t mean Islam is necessarily the bigger threat as you seem to make out in your long posts. And, in any case, it isn’t fair to blast it first for a clear power structure & subsequently, for the absence of a clear structure.
The part of Islam that is a threat is the structured part but there’s not a chance that you can simply equate that part with the whole. Not even relying on outside authorities like Hirsi Ali who is a politician not an academic.
But granted, as experts of the French secret service maintain for some time now: the creeping changes in the ways of Islamic convention in some of our institutions are … creepy.
Well, then, JoB, let’s keep this short and sweet. Never said the power structure of the Ummah was clear. What makes it devastating is that it isn’t. Why we can characterise the whole in a particular way is that it is hard to see how power works in Islam. That’s why people are afraid to speak out too, and why Hirsi Ali is afraid for her life, even though she’s not an academic. If she knew where the danger lay she wouldn’t live in a kind of nebulous fear. That’s what makes things creepy.
It’s a bit like the tentacles of power that the Nazis spread throughout Germany. At first people scoffed, then they criticised, then they fell silent. Eventually, no one knew how many Germans were Nazis. Was it the whole Volk? Remind you of anything?
Eric,
How can something be ‘firmly under the control of specific people’ and at the same time be devastatingly unclear?
Even in catholicism (cardinal Romero’s death is a good example) there will be factions that kill without the central command taking ownership – Hirsi Ali’s fear is not different from theologians in Latin America of some time ago (now they’re suitably replaced with neocons of the faith).
As to your recurring bridge to Nazism: the power structure of Nazis was very, very clear, from the start and neither in this case was it ‘the whole Volk’.
No, not being apologetic. Not at all – but what you lack in precision you are taking in collateral damage. Next, but come to think of it – you probably did already, you’re going to bandy about a non-fitting example: Chamberlain.
But the point is this – if Islam needs to be erradicated (the word!), then we need to include at least Christianity, and Judeaism. If transformation is the issue: then clearly Islam is the first priority.
JoB, are you under the impression that I am holding a brief for Christianity? You must be joking! As for saying that power in Islam is under the control of specific people: where did I say that? That’s not the way dispersed power works.
Nor will I argue German history with you, but I think there is a very similar dynamic at work (and, by the way, it was hard to tell, in mid thirties Germany, who was a Nazi and who wasn’t). Nor do I know enough about Romero to say where the danger lay, so I can’t say whether Hirsi Ali’s fear or situation is similar.
Nor did I ever say that Islam needs to be eradicated. How would you go about doing that? I have said that both Christianity and Islam are a clear and present danger at the moment. I still think that’s true.
As for transformation. You’re free to try. I don’t think it can be done with Christianity. I don’t think it can be done with Islam. People thought they could tame Hitler too (just to cross over the bridge once again). As for first priorities. I don’t know. Christianity is simply a danger that the West has dealt with before. It’s a familiar problem. Islam is not.
The point of my original post – from which all the rest has developed – was simply to say that I don’t think the Taliban and more local instantiations of Islam are all that different. I think Christians are starting to adopt the same stance. I think it’s dangerous. Some people think that Islam is open to reason. I don’t think it is. I don’t think it’s reformable. I don’t think Christianity is either, although it’s language fits more easily into the Western paradigm of reason and science, and I think that Christianity’s liberal wing (which had some strength late last century) is in jeopardy. I believe this kind of thing poses a danger to liberal democracy. Come to think of it, I’m really not sure what we’re discussing.
I quoted you twice on ‘where you said that’.
The rest of it: indeed, ’nuff said.
Eric, the part of your post that I took exception to was the part that said “If there were a moderate alternative…then I could buy the idea that you (OB) are not bashing Muslims.”
Well – I’m not ‘bashing Muslims’ so I really think you should buy that idea no matter what alternative there is.
Look, it just is a fact about the world that not all people who belong to a particular institution or belief-system really fully understand what the institution or belief-system is about. That’s especially true of religions, which people are born to – though it’s probably less true of Catholicism because of the good old catechism.
And besides that – it just is not a good idea to set about ‘bashing’ whole groups of people. In that sense the people who fret about Islamophobia are onto something.
The Taliban and more local instantiations of Islam may not be all that different, but (depending on which local instantiations of Islam we’re talking about) they are different. Islam is bad enough, but the Taliban is worse. I don’t see any point in claiming otherwise. It’s not as if I claim that Islam is just fine – but the Taliban is, still, worse.
Just look at the dreck at Islam Online. The ‘moderate’ position there was to say to the Taliban ‘well if the girls all observe pardah, then can they go to school?’ while the Taliban position was to say no and back it up with threats. The Taliban position is worse – and the Islam Online position is still very disgusting (requiring girls and girls only to muffle themselves in bags in exchange for the privilege of going to school).
I mean just for one thing – you do realize that the Taliban was hated when it was fully in power in Afghanistan, right? And that it’s hated now? By – you know – Muslims? Obviously some people think it’s just ducky – but others do not.
Not all Americans are fans of George Bush and not all Muslims are fans of the Taliban.
If “religious education” is not an oxymoron, then I don’t know what is!