Author: Ophelia Benson

Oh come on. You have to be kidding. This has to be from the Onion, or the Daily Show – this can’t be for real. Can it? Can it? Karl Rove calling Obama ‘arrogant’? And then expanding on the point?

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” he said at a Capitol Hill breakfast, according to ABC. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone.”

Is that more funny than it is enraging? Or the other way around? I can’t tell, I just can’t tell. Okay, so let’s get this straight – a white powerful privileged guy who helped to get a white unqualified incompetent ignorant incurious lazy disengaged wildly overprivileged guy who would be nothing if his father had not been president, elected president, is calling a black guy with no presidents or senators in his family who made his own success by using his own brains and effort – the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone?

What country club? What fucking country club you miserable crawling contemptible stop-at-nothing hack? And as for making snide remarks – your talentless vacuous privilege-using arrogant boss is famous for them, and Obama isn’t. So what are you talking about?

Oh look, I figured it out: it’s more enraging than funny.

Okay, we know what he’s doing, and we know it works, so it’s not surprising that he’s still doing it. It’s not surprising, it’s just shameless. Hillary Clinton tried the same thing. He’s complaining that Obama is too god damn smart; he’s equating intelligence with arrogance; and then he’s insulting the intelligence of everyone present by pretending to think that Obama is country club guy while Bush is a Texas farmhand who got to the White House by being salt of the earth reg’lar folks despite having quite school in the 8th grade.

Country club. Country club. I can’t get over that. Country club. The Bushes are the country club. The country club is built with plaster made from Bush ancestors. The Bushes are the country club and the legacy at Andover and Yale. Humble salt of the earth George Bush went to Andover and Yale because he was a legacy; if he’d had Obama’s family and his own (as opposed to Obama’s) grades, he really would have gone to East Jesus High School.

Okay, so there is nothing those cynical bastards won’t say, no stupidity too stupid to try out. I knew that. But sometimes the actual examples…make little red spots jump up and down in front of my eyes.

Daphne Patai’s What Price Utopia? Essays on Ideological Policing, Feminism, and Academic Affairs arrived in the mail today, and it looks like a big old feast of just the kind of thing I like. That means you’d probably like it too (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, would you).

The Economist takes a slightly skeptical look at inter-faith conferences. Then it gets to a real issue.

As well as repeating certain familiar commonplaces and negotiating certain familiar taboos, participants in inter-faith gatherings do sometimes run into real questions, that make a difference to the world at large. One such is how, if at all, freedom of speech can be reconciled with the Muslim demand for a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities. At this week’s meeting in Malaysia, that question was addressed in a way that frightened the relatively few participants whose understanding of civil rights was rooted in a Western, liberal world-view.

Don’t tell me, let me guess. The question was addressed by saying that a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities is desperately needed and freedom of speech is, quite frankly, a colonialist orientalist misbeliever piece of crap. Just a wild guess.

Speaker after speaker called for some formal, internationally agreed restriction on the defamation of religion. “I can never accept that freedom of speech is morally right when it offends my faith,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi official.

Oh gee, will you look at that, I guessed right. What do you know.

Adding further to the tension—and an element of this week’s debates in Kuala Lumpur—is the increasingly well-co-ordinated campaign by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to redefine human rights in a way that explicitly outlaws the defamation of religion.

Why yes, that does rather add to the tension. I know it makes me quite tense. I would really rather not see the OIC succeed in requiring the entire world to shut up about its particular religion.

Dominic Lawson quotes the Department of Health replying to an MP complaining on behalf of a constituent about ‘psychic surgery.’ (Yes, psychic.)

“We are currently working towards extending the scope of statutory regulation by introducing regulation of herbal medicine, acupuncture practitioners and Chinese medicine. However, there are no plans to extend statutory regulation to other professions such as psychic surgery. We expect these professions to develop their own unified systems of voluntary self-regulation.”

Other professions? Other professions? Psychic surgery is a profession? In what sense? If psychic surgery and acupuncture are professions, are divination and palmistry and astrology also professions? If so, what distinguishes a profession from just messing around?

Last week, in fact, the Department of Health published the report which outlines the regulation hinted at by Lord Hunt. It is called the Report to Ministers from the Department of Health Steering Group on the Statutory Regulation of Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and other Traditional Medicine Systems Practiced in the United Kingdom…Acupuncture is at the most respectable end of the alternative health spectrum – its practitioners would be affronted to be lumped in with psychic surgeons. Yet what, really, is the difference?…Pittilo and his band of “stakeholders” have come up with their own way of “regulating” the alternative health industry – which the Government has welcomed. It is to suggest that practitioners gain university degrees in complementary or alternative medicine…

Ah, right – so if you get a degree in Magical Dentistry, then you have a profession, and your profession is regulated, and hey presto, Magical Dentistry fixes your teeth.

David Colquhoun read the report.

The report is written by people all of whom have vested interests in spreading quackery. It shows an execrable ability to assess evidence, and it advocates degrees in antiscience…This steering group is, as so often, a nest of vested interests. It does not seem to have on it any regular medical or clinical scientist whatsoever…You can read on page 55 of the report

“3a: Registrant acupuncturists must:

understand the following aspects and concepts for traditional East-Asian acupuncture:

– yin/yang, /5 elements/phases, eight principles, cyclical rhythms, qi ,blood and body fluids, different levels of qi, pathogenic factors, 12 zang fu and 6 extraordinary fu, jing luo/ meridians, the major acupuncture points, East-Asian medicine disease categorisation, the three burners, the 4 stages/levels and 6 divisions

– causes of disharmony/disease causation

– the four traditional diagnostic methods: questioning, palpation, listening and observing”

That’s embarrassing. Or as Colquhoun puts it, “Anyone who advocates giving honours degrees in such nonsense deserves to be fired for bringing his university into disrepute (and, in the process, bringing all universities and science itself into disrepute).”

Close on the heels of the astonished Indy reporters, we get a piece on Hizb ut-Tahrir in Germany.

An internationalist Islamist organisation is submitting an application to the European court tomorrow in an effort to overturn a ban on its activities in Germany. Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation, believes that the five-year-old ban is unlawful…Germany has accused the party of breaching the “concept of international understanding” enshrined in the country’s constitution, a charge more usually levelled against parties of the far right.

More usually…meaning that Hizb is not a party of the far right. The Guardian thinks that Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a party of the far right!!! Even though it has Hizb’s own self-description immediately after that staggering remark.

The party denies it is antisemitic and, says it is against violence and that its aim is to unite Muslim countries into a single state ruled by Islamic law.

The Guardian thinks that Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a party of the far right – so what does it think Hizb is then? A party of the center? A party of the left? Does the Guardian really seriously think that a party which wants to see Muslims and unfortunates who live in majority Muslim countries ruled by Islamic law is a party of the center or the left? Does it? Does it? Really? Seriously? No jokes?

I would really love to know. I would love to understand the thinking of people – from Rowan Williams to Ian Cobain – who think Islamic law is not far right. I would love to know what it is about sharia that Williams Cobain thinks is not right-wing. Meanwhile I shall remain yours sincerely, Baffled.

The New York Times spots ‘tolerance’ where a more jaundiced observer might spot giggling incoherence mixed with wide-eyed gullibility.

[N]early three-quarters of [Americans] say they believe that many faiths besides their own can lead to salvation, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The report…reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths. For example, 70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life.”

Yee-ha! The report reveals an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict each other; the report reveals an ability among many Americans to believe anything and everything; the report reveals that Americans are adept at believing things and complete crap at thinking about them. Hooray, hooray, hooray! We’re a generous people. We know there are lots of religions around, so we’ll just go ahead and believe all of them. No problem. It’s just as easy to believe all of them as it is to believe one, so why be stingy about it? Hah? What the hell! Many religions can lead to eternal life. Yuh huh. You got your Hinduism, and your Total Immersion, and your Church of the Talking Snake, and your Freshwater Baptist Twice Removed, and every dang one of them can lead to eternal life. You just follow them down Spang Road until you get to the fork, and there’s your eternal life on your left – you can’t miss it.

“It’s not that Americans don’t believe in anything,” said Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University. “It’s that we believe in everything. We aren’t religious purists or dogmatists.”

No, and we aren’t clear thinkers, either.

Ziauddin Sardar likes a new translation of the Koran by Tarif Khalidi.

The best way to demonstrate its newness, and how close it is to the original text, is to compare it with an old translation. The translation I have in mind is Khalidi’s predecessor in the Penguin Classics: The Koran, translated with notes by NJ Dawood…It has been a great source of discomfort for Muslims, who see in it deliberate distortions that give the Qur’an violent and sexist overtones. It is the one most non-Muslims cite when they tell me with great conviction what the Qur’an says.

Hmm. That’s interesting – because one has to wonder what Muslims Sardar has in mind. Most Muslims, certainly including most Muslims in the UK, after all, don’t know Arabic – so when these Muslims that Sardar mentions ‘see’ in Dawood’s translation ‘deliberate distortions that give the Qur’an violent and sexist overtones’ – how do they know about the distortions? Unless Sardar means only Muslims who do know Arabic – but in a UK context (which this is, being the Guardian) that would be a pretty small and rarified bunch, so you would think he would specify that was what he meant. But perhaps he didn’t mean only Muslims who know Arabic – but then what did he mean? How do Muslims in general know what is or isn’t a distortion of a translation of the Koran when they can’t read the Koran in Arabic themselves? It’s interesting that Sardar chose the word ‘see’ there. That’s consistent with just seeing violent and sexist overtones and then concluding that they are the fault of the translation. It’s not a tremendously straightforward way to say things though. And then there are those wicked non-Muslims who cite Dawood’s translation. Well granted that is very naughty of them, but then what about the Muslims Sardar knows? Don’t any of them cite translations when discussing what the Koran says? Does he not know any Muslims who don’t know Arabic? In short, is he trying to bamboozle the reader? I kind of think he is.

Dawood translates Az-Zumar (chapter 39) as “The Hordes”, suggesting bands of barbarian mobs; Khalidi renders it as “The Groups”…The old Penguin translation uses rather obscurantist images throughout to give the impression that the Qur’an is full of demons and witches. For example, in 31:1, Dawood has God swearing “by those who cast out demons”. Khalidi translates the same verse as: “Behold the revelations of the Wise Book.”

Okay. But which is more accurate? Sardar doesn’t say. Maybe Khalidi’s is; but Sardar doesn’t say.

So this translation is a quantum leap ahead of the old Penguin version.

Not quantum; wrong word; ten points off. But more to the point: is it? There’s only one place where Sardar actually says Khalidi translates something correctly; all the rest of it has to do with whether he translates it flatteringly. That’s a different issue. It’s not clear that a more flattering translation is a leap ahead. It may be a more accurate translation, but one can’t tell whether it is or not from Sardar’s review. That’s either careless or…not.