Author: Ophelia Benson

I’ve never understood, or accepted, this idea that Clinton is the feminist candidate, or even that her election would be much of a victory for women or feminism. I’ve always thought it would be radically, drastically compromised by the huge boost she got from whose wife she was. I’ve always thought such an election would be a victory for women or feminism only if the woman in question did it on her own merits, not partly those of her husband.

Indeed, Clinton has never been just a victim of her gender. When it came to the deeper narratives of the campaign, Clinton benefited, as do many women in politics, from her good fortune of having married a successful political man. Hillary Clinton has spent only four more years than Obama in the Senate, but she was consistently assumed to be a more plausible commander-in-chief than her rival based on her time as First Lady.

Being married to a president does not make anyone a more plausible c-in-c, any more than being the offspring of a president does. And I think this kind of sloppy thinking does feminism in general no favours, in the same sort of way that invented history does feminism in general no favours.

At the same time, it’s been widely assumed that she’s been entirely vetted, leaving many parts of her life–her disastrous leadership style on health care reform, her role in trying to silence and discredit Bill’s mistresses, her husband’s post-White House financial dealings–unexamined.

Which, again, I’ve never understood. She keeps being credited with having ‘experience’ with health care reform. But her only experience was in completely fucking it up! Why is that supposed to be a plus?

And above all why are so many women loyal to her on the grounds that she is a woman? She’s not the only woman in the world! Thatcher’s a woman, too, but I don’t feel any need to be loyal to her. And to be quite frank, I despise some of the tactics Clinton used in the campaign; I despise that ‘elitism’ nonsense: it’s fraudulent, it’s cheap, it’s anti-intellectual, it’s ridiculous, and it’s just plain low. Feminism doesn’t mean admiring all women unconditionally no matter what.

What exactly does Blair have in mind with this ‘Faith Foundation’ thing?

We want people of one faith to be comfortable with those of another because they know what they truly believe, not what they thought they might believe.

But what if ‘people of one faith’ believe things that in fact make ‘those of another’ uncomfortable? And vice versa? And why on earth does Blair assume (as he apparently does) that that can’t and won’t be the outcome? Why does he assume that once people know what people of another ‘faith’ believe, then they will necessarily be ‘comfortable’ with them? Has he never in his whole life met or heard of someone who believed loathsome sinister vindictive murderous things? We know that’s not true – we know he’s heard of lots of people who believed such things. We know he heard of some of them on the morning of July 7 2005, for just one example. So what does he mean? What is he thinking? Is he seriously thinking that if ‘people of faith’ just hash things out for long enough, in the end everyone will be ‘comfortable’ and we’ll all get along? He can’t be – he’s not stupid. But then what is he thinking?

We cannot afford religious illiteracy. No modern company would today be ignorant of race or gender issues. The same should be true of faith.

No it shouldn’t. This is the same pie-eyed thinking that tried to treat ‘religious hatred’ as the same kind of thing as racism and sexism, but it’s not the same, it’s different, because religion is propositional while race and sex are not. Race and sex are genetic and physical while religions are sets of ideas.

We have agreed to partner the proposal initiated by the Co-Exist Foundation to establish Abraham House in London. Though expressly about the Abrahamic faiths, it will be open to those from the wider faith community. It will be a standing exhibition, library and convention centre for the inter-faith world.

Ecch. That’s as substantive as he gets in the whole speech. You keep looking for something specific about what he is actually going to teach at Yale, about what ‘faith’ is actually supposed to have to do with globalization, but all in vain. It’s a big blob of warm fuzzy well-meaning wool. Maybe his friendship with Bush isn’t so surprising after all.

One the one hand what do you expect from a conference of the OIC, but on the other hand, what sinister bullying crap.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, warned there seemed to be a growing “campaign of hate and discrimination” against Muslims by a small number of individuals and organizations. In a speech to a conference in Kuala Lumpur on improving ties between Muslims and the West, Ihsanoglu praised Western nations for criticizing acts such as the recent release of an anti-Quran film by a Dutch lawmaker, but said more should have been done. “Mere condemnation or distancing from the acts of the perpetrators of Islamophobia will not resolve the issue, as long as they remain free to carry on with their campaign of incitement and provocation on the plea of freedom of expression,” Ihsanoglu said.

Well that’s blunt enough. Mere criticism and condemnation and distancing are not enough, as long as people remain free to criticize Islam. Mere condemnation is not enough: they have to be stopped, they have to be prevented, they have to be made not free to carry on. Criticism of Islam must be made globally universally illegal; only that will ‘resolve the issue.’

On the one hand, criticism is too weak, more must be done; on the other hand, criticism is much too powerful and must be forcibly stopped. Criticism of Islamocritics must be enforced with forcible silencing of Islamocritics, while criticism of Islam must be eliminated altogether. Yeah, that’s fair, also a really good idea, being as how Islam is so perfect and all.

“It requires a strong and determined collective political will to address the challenge,” Ihsanoglu said. “It is now high time for concrete actions to stem the rot before it aggravates (the situation) any further.”

Bully bully bully bully; threaten threaten.

Imam Feisal Rauf sets us all straight.

What we have today is much less a “Clash of Civilizations” than a clash of perceptions. Little about our cultures, religions or ways of life—though these are certainly different—suggests coexistence to be impossible; rather, it is our perception of this impossibility that drives discord…Incorrect perceptions in the West about Muslims need fixing too, including the oft-heard charge that Muslims categorically practice violence and abuse women. As we know, however, Muslim-majority countries are more tolerant and diverse than many in the West suppose.

That’s nice – and probably true, because it’s so vague. Exactly how tolerant and diverse is that? More so than many in the West suppose. Ah! That clears that up. But it’s perhaps just as tolerant and diverse as many others in the West suppose, and a great deal less tolerant and diverse than many still others in the West suppose. There are lots of people in ‘the West’ and they suppose lots of things. But how tolerant and diverse Muslim-majority countries actually are is another question – and the sad truth is that we know damn well a lot of them are not very, and are getting steadily less so. The sad truth is that we are hard-pressed to think of a majority Muslim country that is overall anything we would call really tolerant. Indonesia? Jordan? Morocco? Better than some, but not exactly starry.

The impressive plurality of ethnicities, languages, beliefs and opinions among today’s population of more than 1.2 billion Muslims does more than validate the Prophet’s tradition that “Differences of opinion in my community are a blessing”—it puts to rest the notion that Muslims are a homogenous and insidious group, naturally opposed to dissent from within or without.

Oh that tradition! The one that fits so nicely with dire punishment for apostasy, and the division of the world into Muslims and unbelievers – that tradition. And the issue isn’t whether Muslims are ‘naturally opposed to dissent’; of course they’re not; that’s a red herring; the issue is whether they are trained (by Islam) to be that way. There is considerable evidence that they are, and that it takes a lot of effort and courage to resist.

Issues of perception are key in debunking the sense that cultures are clashing. Lately, it has become clear just how carefully religious scholars, politicians and commentators must choose their language to avoid making the problem worse. To illustrate, the current US Presidential election has seen both John McCain and Barack Obama distance themselves from former spiritual guides—Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who famously blamed the US for the September 11th terrorist attacks and Reverend Rod Parsley, the notorious defamer of Islam. Though both candidates have rightly disavowed such comments, they recognize that more work still needs to be done, and have sent representatives to Kuala Lumpur to help repair the damage to the public’s perception of the Muslim-West divide.

Hmmmm. Okay, but is it only Christian ‘spiritual guides’ who say stupid or vicious things? Do they have a monopoly on hate-mongering? Are there no imams who get a little heated sometimes? Is it really all a matter of ‘the West’ trotting obligingly along to KL to grovel and apologize and promise to do better, while the Organization of the Islamic Conference presents it with a list of ways to crack down harder on ‘Western’ people who fail to admire Islam? Hmm?

Gourevitch on Mugabe.

Mbeki has been utterly unwilling to show any spine in dealing with Mugabe. On the contrary, he has exhibited a sinister solidarity with his fellow onetime liberation fighter…In April, South African stevedores refused to unload a shipment of seventy-seven tons of rockets, mortars, and other munitions from China destined for Zimbabwe—a cargo reminiscent of the deliveries to Rwanda before the genocide of 1994. And, in deliberate contrast to Mbeki’s obliging absence, the American Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, has been making his presence felt, leading his colleagues in the diplomatic community into the rural areas to investigate and report on the extent of the torture. On a recent excursion, he collected testimonies, notebooks, and photographs that document how Mugabe’s goons flay their victims and break their bones. McGee offered this evidence to Mbeki’s representatives; they declined to meet with him, and Mugabe threatened him with expulsion.

Meanwhile, in Burma, people go on dying miserable deaths while the USS Essex and four support ships steam away with all their relief supplies still on board. Mugabe tells international aid agencies to stop distributing food and Burma’s generals turn away relief – callous thugs are perfectly content to sacrifice thousands or millions of people for their own trivial self-interest. It gets you down. Hundreds of thousands of people suffering starvation, thirst, exposure, disease on the one hand, and a few people protecting themselves on the other. There’s a lack of proportionality there. Contemplating this doesn’t make one think well of human beings.