Separateness of the Mask

                         

                       Separateness of the Mask

As I understand it, hijab is "modest dress" and a niqāb, or ruband, is the veil that can be a part of it. The constraints of The Virus has made me think of this in a new way.

In talking to people with a mask on, some nuance is lost. Conversation seems to devolve to the direct, like a train robber. It is reminiscent of the behavior of the lovers in The Magic Mountain who used a foreign language between them because it made subtly--and insincerity--difficult. In less intense social interactions, it seems enhancement suffers.

Actually it is hard to believe that expression could be so important to interchange; while facial expression is probably older than language, it is certainly more limited. And there must be studies about it, although what is not learned might create inaccuracies. 
Maybe the obvious barrier introduces a psychological--and non-language--complication of distance and isolation.
Whatever it is, it is different. I wonder if, like Mann's lovers, it is clarifying--or coarsening and stunting.

Iran, The Virus and a Rumor

                     Iran, The Virus and a Rumor

These are difficult times that require thoughtful analysis and reflection using only the most accurate information. That said, here's a great rumor.

The high rate of The Virus in Iran has been attributed to the Western blockade of goods and services. The Iranians are said to have subverted these restrictions by going through Russia and China, hence their increased exposure to The Virus. BUT...

It is said by some that the hierarchy of Iran's Shiʿa community saw an opportunity in China's western provinces to proselytize among the sizable Muslim population there and brought a lot of local religious leaders from China to Iran, particularly to Qom, a holy city and the site of the of the shrine of Fatimah bint Musa, sister of Imam Ali ibn Musa Rida (Persian Imam Reza, 789–816 CE). Qom is the largest center for Shiʿa scholarship in the world, and is a significant destination of pilgrimage, with around twenty million pilgrims visiting the city every year, the majority being Iranians but also other Shi'a Muslims from outside Iran. The Chinese New Year stirred the populations, and the pot. The pilgrimages stirred the populations, and the pot.

Voilà!

Otherwordly

A study by academics at the International Islamic University Malaysia showed that  Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries have 8.5 scientists, engineers, and technicians per 1000 population, compared with a world average of 40.7, and 139.3 for countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
 

Forty-six Muslim countries contributed 1.17% of the world's science literature, whereas 1.66% came from India alone and 1.48% from Spain. Twenty Arab countries contributed 0.55%, compared with 0.89% by Israel alone. The US NSF [National Science Foundation] records that of the 28 lowest producers of scientific articles in 2003, half belong to the OIC.
 

The situation regarding patents is also discouraging, if you believe that these kinds of behaviors correlate with success: The OIC countries produce negligibly few. According to official statistics, Pakistan has produced only eight patents in the past 43 years.

Islam and America

The academic world can be a procrustean one.

Loyola Marymount University theology professor Amir Hussain in his new book, Muslims and the Making of America, argues that Islam was an inherent part of America's founding.

Hussain writes that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson’s “owning a copy of the Qur’an and reading it is crucial to my argument that Islam is part of the history of America.” Jefferson “began learning Arabic in the 1770s, after he purchased a translation of the Qur’an in 1765,” namely the 1734 English translation of the Quranic Arabic by English Orientalist George Sale. “It was this Qur’an that Keith Ellison used when he was sworn in as the first Muslim member of Congress in 2007,” Hussain enthuses. 

 

“To be clear, Jefferson was no fan of Islam,” Hussain writes, and Sale’s Quran offers reasons why. Sale’s introductory essay describes Islam as “so manifest a forgery” that has motivated “calamities brought on so many nations by the conquests of the Arabians.”

Hussain also notes President Jefferson’s campaigns against North Africa’s Muslim Barbary pirates; thus the “founding of the modern American Navy is connected to the Muslim world.”

Any connection is a good connection, I suppose.

Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni

Was Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the former mufti of Jerusalem, a factor in the German decision to exterminate the Jews? It is said he influenced the movement from exile to murder of all Jews within the grasp of the Nazis. But did he?
Here are some points made by Michael Sells in his article "Fabricating Palestinian Responsibility for the Nazi Genocide."


"The case at issue concerns the widespread claim—which was most recently aired and then retracted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—that Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the former mufti of Jerusalem, was an instigator, promoter, or “driving spirit” of the Nazi genocide against Jews and the associated suggestions of wider Arab and Muslim complicity. Some basic facts about al-Husayni’s life and his Nazi sympathies are not in any significant dispute among scholars."

"The Holocaust is the most investigated crime in history, as has often been pointed out in response to deniers. Eichmann may be that crime’s most investigated criminal. Yet neither the intense effort of Eichmann-hunters to track down and gather every possible clue regarding Eichmann’s life, nor Eichmann’s multiple accounts of his role in the Holocaust, nor the interrogations of Eichmann between his capture and his arrival in Israel, nor the investigations by Bureau 06 established in Israel to prepare the Eichmann case for the prosecution, nor the testimony at the trial, nor the investigative journalism and historical studies that followed, have uncovered evidence that Husayni was a close collaborator of Eichmann, influenced his decisions, or inspected death camps with him."

"The new Perish-Judea literature presents Husayni, an Arab fugitive with no state, army, or organized constituency, as intervening in high Nazi circles, persuading or helping persuade Hitler to commit to the policy of extermination; receiving Himmler’s promise for a special adviser from Eichmann’s staff; receiving and approving lectures from Eichmann on the details of the final solution; actually instructing Eichmann on how to carry out the policy; and with or without his green turban and with or without his coterie, not only visiting Nazi camps, but entering into their most sensitive and highly guarded areas or even singling out the best crematoria workers for praise. In regard to “ethical standards in taking testimony from witnesses and survivors,” no significant testimony from survivors or from witnesses other than Wisliceny has been cited in support of the core Perish-Judea narrative. Overall, the post-1993 Perish-Judea literature published in the United States has been marked by a progressive increase in the certitude with which the narrative is presented, the academic prominence of the presses that publish it, and obfuscation in regard to the sources of the story, even as that story has been tied to claims or insinuations about the beliefs and actions of Arabs and Muslims before, during, or after the Holocaust."

The New France

Marie Brenner has written an article in Vanity Fair on France and anti-Semitism. It is very sad. Here are some sections.

Amedy Coulibaly, who had grown up in a Paris suburb with his Malian parents, attacked people in a Jewish delicatessen, the Hyper Cacher, in a quiet area in Porte de Vincennes. The day before, Coulibaly had killed a policewoman who was investigating a traffic accident in the suburb of Montrouge. He had at least one Kalashnikov rifle, a Scorpion submachine gun, two Tokarev pistols, knives, ammunition, and a silver laptop, with instructions on how to upload his footage and what to say to the news media. What he did not bring, however, was any equipment to make it work without Wi-Fi. The Hyper Cacher had no Wi-Fi. He held 19 people hostage, eventually massacred four people. He wore a GoPro video camera strapped to his torso to record the slaughter. He reportedly announced to his hostages: “I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State.” He admitted that he had killed the policewoman in Montrouge and that he was working with Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He said, ‘There are many people like me who are now preparing in Arab countries.’ He told others, ‘I am not crazy. We understand the Koran. We understand the good and the right way.’ He said, “Do you understand why I am doing what I am doing? Do you understand what I am doing here? I am here because the Prophet has given me an order. I am here to stop the war in the Arab countries.”
By the time the siege was over, four French Jews were dead, including one young man who grabbed a gun that Coulibaly had left on a counter because it had jammed. 

France has the largest population of Jews in Europe (and the third largest in the world, after Israel and the United States) and has always been seen as the laboratory to understand what is happening on the Continent. But Jews make up less than 1 percent of the French population. Even so, according to the S.P.C.J., they are the target of 51 percent of all racist acts in France. The country has become Israel’s biggest source of immigrants.

70% of French Jews are Sephardic Jews, the Jews of Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East and their descendants. The adjective "Sephardic" and corresponding nouns Sephardi (singular) and Sephardim (plural) are derived from the Hebrew word "Sepharad," which refers to Spain.

 “This is not the Paris of Woody Allen. That Paris no longer exists.”
 =======       

The base of the Statue de la République is defaced with a swastika as a protest in support of Palestinians turns anti-Semitic, Paris, July 26, 2014. By Etienne Laurent/EPA/Corbis.

Anti-State

At the center of jihadist politics is a rejection of the nation-state, or so says a recent article in The New Yorker. It makes sense as religion, as truth, crosses borders and ethnicity. One is reminded of the conflict between the two modern state goliaths: Germany and Russia. Germany was exclusive, a nation of Aryans with an adopted and probably fictional ancient history, Russia was all embracing--or so they insisted--as a nation of workers, crossing borders. Nazis wanted to cross borders only to kill the locals, the communist wanted to absorb the neighbor.
The West is undergoing a decline in its national identification. One wonders what will work best against a sworn enemy who has the same disregard for the State.

Heisenberg and Government

This is an article from a new internet beast, INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project. It is hard to be sure about it. The sources are broad and sometimes self-serving. Ellsberg is a little nuts, but Rowley, who was selected as TIME ‘Person of the Year’ in 2002 after revealing how pre-9/11 intelligence was ignored by superiors at the FBI, is not. Alastair Crooke is a legitimate guy.
There is serious conspiracy suggested here, mostly government efforts to create problems only the loss of domestic liberties could solve. For what it's worth, this is what I culled out of it:

"According to leading American and British intelligence experts, a declassified Pentagon report confirms that the West accelerated support to extremist rebels in Syria, despite knowing full well the strategy would pave the way for the emergence of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS). ...

The experts who have spoken out include renowned government whistleblowers such as the Pentagon’s Daniel Ellsberg, the NSA’s Thomas Drake, and the FBI’s Coleen Rowley, among others....

Their remarks demonstrate the fraudulent nature of claims by two other former officials, the CIA’s Michael Morell and the NSA’s John Schindler, both of whom attempt to absolve the Obama administration of responsibility for the policy failures exposed by the DIA documents. The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document obtained by Judicial Watch under Freedom of Information confirms that the US intelligence community foresaw the rise of ISIS three years ago, as a direct consequence of the support to extremist rebels in Syria.....

The August 2012 ‘Information Intelligence Report’ (IIR) reveals that the overwhelming core of the Syrian insurgency at that time was dominated by a range of Islamist militant groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It warned that the “supporting powers” to the insurgency — identified in the document as the West, Gulf states, and Turkey — wanted to see the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria to “isolate” the Assad regime.....

Alastair Crooke, a former senior MI6 officer who spent three decades at the agency, said yesterday that the DIA document provides clear corroboration that the US was covertly pursuing a strategy to drive an extremist Salafi “wedge” between Iran and its Arab allies."

As usual, a culture that believes that butterflies in China can cause hurricanes in the Caribbean thinks that a massive intervention upon a people can give a specific and predictable result. 

The Poetry of War

'All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.'--Oscar Wilde

 

Among the most successful television programs in the Middle East is “Sha‘ir al-Milyoon” (“Millionaire Poet,” but also “Poet of the People”), which is modelled on “American Idol.” Every season, amateurs from across the Arab world recite their own verse in front of a large and appreciative studio audience in Abu Dhabi. Winners of the competition receive up to 1.3 million dollars—more than the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the show’s boosters are fond of pointing out. Last year, the program had seventy million viewers worldwide.

While Mohammed had little use for the poetic tradition it eventually began to adore him so he put up with it. It is now a quality of Arab life and is a banner of jihadist life.
Of all jihadi poets, bin Laden was the most celebrated. In one letter, written on August 6, 2010, bin Laden asks a key lieutenant to recommend someone to lead “a big operation inside America.” In the very next sentence, he requests that “if there are any brothers with you who know about poetic metres, please inform me, and if you have any books on the science of classical prosody, please send them to me.”

Ahlam al-Nasr is the current poet laureate of militant Islam. Her first book, “The Blaze of Truth,” consists of a hundred and seven poems in Arabic—elegies to mujahideen, laments for prisoners, victory odes, and short poems that were originally tweets. Almost all the poems are written in monorhyme—one rhyme for what is sometimes many dozens of lines of verse—and classical Arabic metres. Ancient styles with ancient topics, they describe a world as fanciful and romantic as Sir Walter Scott with heroic knights, arrows, sacrifice and suffering for a cause.

Allusions, recondite terms,  baroque devices, acrostics (in which the first letters of successive lines spell out names or phrases) are especially popular. The poetry often contains the rejection of the nation-state. Shiites, Jews, Western powers, and rival factions are, of course, relentlessly vilified and threatened with destruction. Jihadi poems often use the conceit of a child speaker; it provides them with a figure of innocence and truthfulness. (One of bin Laden's famous poems has two-parts, forty-four lines long: the first half is in the voice of bin Laden’s young son Hamza; the second half is the father’s reply.) The Hadith states “Islam began as a stranger, and it shall return as it began, as a stranger. Blessed are the strangers” and, expectedly, the idea of stranger and isolation are common jihadi themes. 

Muhammad al-Zuhayri, a Jordanian engineer whose Web alias is “the Poet of Al Qaeda,” illustrates some of these whimsical themes in a poem dedicated to Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, the first head of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The lines are addressed to an unnamed woman:

Wake us to the song of swords,

and when the cavalcade sets off, say

farewell.

The horses’ neighing fills the desert,

arousing our souls and spurring them

onward.

The knights’ pride stirs at the sound,

while humiliation lashes our foes.

(from The New Yorker)

Iran and the Press

Nazila Fathi covered events in her native Iran for years as The New York Times correspondent. She has a new book, The Lonely War: One Woman's Account Of The Struggle For Modern Iran. The criteria for approved news and information in Iran is retrospective, that is you can publish whatever you want but, if it crosses some unknown line, the government will come after you. She covered the 2009 demonstrations for the Times despite warnings from the authorities. One day, a government source told her that the authorities had given her photo to snipers who were believed to be shooting the protesters. Soon after, intelligence officials appeared on the street outside her apartment.
Fearing arrest, she remained in her apartment until she and her husband, along with their two small children, left for the Tehran airport in the middle of the night and took a flight out of the country.

Iran Non-binding Negotiations

The administration is negotiating a deal with Iran which will hopefully decrease Iran's nuclear capacity and result in a lifting of American--and Western--sanctions. The Rube--publicans have sent a letter to the Iranians from the Senate suggesting that the agreement, if culminated, may not stand because they--the Senate--have the final approval of treaties. The administration says this agreement is nothing more than an agreement and is not a treaty, hence not subject to Senate advice and consent. But it is important; a nuclear Iran would be important.

Biden argued that the practice of negotiating non-Senate approved deals is as old as the United States itself.  "Under presidents of both parties, such major shifts in American foreign policy as diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China, the resolution of the Iran hostage crisis, and the conclusion of the Vietnam War were all conducted without congressional approval," he said in his statement opposing the GOP letter.

And history is rife with Senators interfering with international relations. Ted Kennedy actually approached the Russians in an effort to defeat Reagan. Pelosi showed up in the Middle East one weekend like a singing telegram.

At the core of this obnoxious struggle are actual principles. The Senate wants things done by the book--and the Constitution, the President wants to get this important arrangement done without political interference. The problem is that the Rube-publicans are almost comically inept and obnoxious and the President has clearly begun to ramp up his assumption of power by legislating out of the legislative bodies.

Non-binding Rage

Secretary of State John Kerry has announced, in response to the Rub-publican letter to Iran, that the "deal" the administration is negotiating with Iran is not legally binding.
"We've been clear from the beginning: We're not negotiating a, quote, legally binding plan," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We're negotiating a plan that will have in it the capacity for enforcement. We don't even have diplomatic relations with Iran right now."
"Not legally binding." If that is true, what exactly are they doing? Why even bother? Or is it simple posturing--posturing over a very serious question of Iranian nuclear weaponry? And, if so, what was the meaning of the Senate Rub-publican letter and was it such a big deal?

The ISIS Atlantic Article By Graeme Wood: A Quick and Dirty Summary

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior.  It is like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

We have made some errors. One, we have seen jihadists as a monolith, a single breed. But there are many iterations. Second, we have a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. Bin Laden corporatized terror and franchised it out. He looked like a modern guy with a foreign and distant philosophy. There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse. Third, if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul.

The reality is that the Islamic State is very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

The Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The largest available group is the Shiite Muslim whose religion has "innovation," implying the Koran was imperfect. Exempted from automatic execution, it appears, are Christians who do not resist their new government. Baghdadi permits them to live, as long as they pay a special tax, known as the jizya, and acknowledge their subjugation. The Koranic authority for this practice is not in dispute. And there is takfir” or “proclaim people to be apostates because of their sins.” The punishment for apostasy is death.

According to Bernard Haykel--Princeton scholar and expert on the ISIS, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.” The Koran specifies crucifixion as one of the only punishments permitted for enemies of Islam. The tax on Christians finds clear endorsement in the Surah Al-Tawba, the Koran’s ninth chapter, which instructs Muslims to fight Christians and Jews “until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” The Prophet, whom all Muslims consider exemplary, imposed these rules and owned slaves.

They are following the jihadist wing of a branch of Sunnism called Salafism, after the Arabic al salaf al salih, the “pious forefathers.” These forefathers are the Prophet himself and his earliest adherents, whom Salafis honor and emulate as the models for all behavior, including warfare, couture, family life, even dentistry. Nonetheless, the caliphate has continued to embrace slavery and crucifixion without apology. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,” Adnani, the spokesman, promised in one of his periodic valentines to the West. “If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

Another aspect is the creating of the Caliphate. The last caliphate was the Ottoman empire, which reached its peak in the 16th century and then experienced a long decline, until the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, euthanized it in 1924. But many supporters of the Islamic State, doesn’t acknowledge that caliphate as legitimate because it didn’t fully enforce Islamic law, which requires stonings and slavery and amputations, and because its caliphs were not descended from the tribe of the Prophet, the Quraysh.

The caliphate is not just a political entity but also a vehicle for salvation. Islamic State propaganda regularly reports the pledges of baya’a (allegiance) rolling in from jihadist groups across the Muslim world. There is a Prophetic saying, that to die without pledging allegiance is to die jahil (ignorant) and therefore die a “death of disbelief.”

To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. Without a caliphate, for example, individual vigilantes are not obliged to amputate the hands of thieves they catch in the act. But create a caliphate, and this law, along with a huge body of other jurisprudence, suddenly awakens. In theory, all Muslims are obliged to immigrate to the territory where the caliph is applying these laws. The caliph is required to implement Sharia.

The caliphs have a history and a future. These include the belief that there will be only 12 legitimate caliphs, and Baghdadi is the eighth; that the armies of Rome will mass to meet the armies of Islam in northern Syria; and that Islam’s final showdown with an anti-Messiah will occur in Jerusalem after a period of renewed Islamic conquest.The Islamic State has attached great importance to the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo. It named its propaganda magazine after the town, and celebrated madly when (at great cost) it conquered Dabiq’s strategically unimportant plains. It is here, the Prophet reportedly said, that the armies of Rome will set up their camp. The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo. Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse.
The Prophetic narration that foretells the Dabiq battle refers to the enemy as Rome. Who “Rome” is, now that the pope has no army, remains a matter of debate. But most make a case that Rome meant the Eastern Roman empire, which had its capital in what is now Istanbul. We should think of Rome as the Republic of Turkey—the same republic that ended the last self-identified caliphate, 90 years ago. After its battle in Dabiq the caliphate will expand and sack Istanbul. Some believe it will then cover the entire Earth, but its tide may never reach beyond the Bosporus. An anti-Messiah, known in Muslim apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come from the Khorasan region of eastern Iran and kill a vast number of the caliphate’s fighters, until just 5,000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus—the second-most-revered prophet in Islam—will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.
Islamic law permits only temporary peace treaties, lasting no longer than a decade. Similarly, accepting any border is anathema, as stated by the Prophet and echoed in the Islamic State’s propaganda videos. If the caliph consents to a longer-term peace or permanent border, he will be in error. Temporary peace treaties are renewable, but may not be applied to all enemies at once: the caliph must wage jihad at least once a year. He may not rest, or he will fall into a state of sin.
The Islamic State cannot go underground. If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate. Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding.
While its leadership wishes ill on the United States, the application of Sharia in the caliphate and the expansion to contiguous lands are paramount. Baghdadi has said as much directly: in November he told his Saudi agents to “deal with the rafida [Shia] first … then al-Sulul [Sunni supporters of the Saudi monarchy] … before the crusaders and their bases.” The notion of "contiguous lands" is crucial here.
Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy.
Western officials would probably do best to refrain from weighing in on matters of Islamic theological debate altogether. Barack Obama himself drifted into takfiri (apostate/excommunication) waters when he claimed that the Islamic State was “not Islamic”—the irony being that he, as the non-Muslim son of a Muslim, may himself be classified as an apostate, and yet is now practicing takfir against Muslims.
Orwell said that fascism was "psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life … Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal."

Diversity and it Discontents

I deeply support the right of anyone to speak freely. I supported, for example, the Nazis' right to march in Skokie (home to numerous holocaust survivors at the time). But I certainly didn't announce, at the time, "I am a Nazi."--Jim Leff


"Ugly American" is a term used pejoratively to describe arrogant or insensitive behavior of Americans in foreign countries. (Of course, such behavior was exclusively American. Curiously, in the book of the same name, he was a hero.) The Americans were always fretting about showing the sole of the shoe to someone who is offended by it, mentioning Hitler to Germans, disparaging local royalty. But times have changed. We are eager to show how stupid local traditions and beliefs are and are outraged when the locals react badly. The entire foreign policy of the American government last decade was to encourage undeveloped countries to recreate themselves in the American economic and governmental mode. We crave diversity and are amazed when that diversity is not shared back in return.

There is an arrogant quality about this. We know better. A lot better. And everyone can benefit from our insight. We are no longer People of the Book, we are People of the Enlightenment. We have freed ourselves from others' foolishness and are eager to share our knowledge. And we expect to be shielded by the victim's good taste, their sense of propriety, that somehow does not apply to us. We are proudly baiting the bear, tethered by his social restraint and expect him to tolerate the cruelty in our truth. That is the key to satire: It must be clever, humorous or insightful enough to earn a nod from the subject. The satirist and his object must have some agreement on terms; contempt, opprobrium must never peek through. And being non-selective is no excuse; skinhead groups are non-selective. 
So now we step on to a bus, see an elderly lady proudly wearing a ridiculous hat, and tell her so.

The editors of Charlie Hebdo feel it their right to offend Islam, feel it their duty. They attack the very heart of the religious and social belief of an astonishingly unsophisticated and defensive culture and expect to be treated like Jonathan Swift.
I believe in the Right of Free Speech, the Right to Assemble. But we are losing our moorings. (Pun intended.) I also believe in an unspoken social compact, something that might best be translated as respect. I have great sympathy for these people and their families. And I would defend their rights of free speech, assembly and the rest of the social and political freedoms that the West has, at long last, begun to assume. Nonetheless, Je ne suis pas Charlie.

Principles in the Middle East

The 700-year-old tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, is in a Turkish enclave in northern Syria  guarded by several dozen Turkish soldiers and perched on a manicured lawn under a Turkish flag on the banks of the Euphrates. The tomb was made Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when France ruled Syria. Islamic State and other Islamist groups, whose strict Salafi interpretation of Islam deems the veneration of tombs to be idolatrous, have destroyed several tombs and mosques in Syria. Ankara regards the tomb as sovereign territory and has repeatedly made clear that it will defend the mausoleum if it is attacked. So Turkey's position with the homicidal maniacs might hinge on their ancient tomb, the maniacs' disregard for the dead apparently being more important than their disregard for the living.

What the Battle of Tours Really Means

The Battle of Tours in 732, also called the Battle of Poitiers, pit the Franks against The Umayyad Caliphate. Islam was invading France. Charles Martel (The Hammer) defeated ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, who was killed. The significance and the facts are always debated. It is assumed that the two armies met where the rivers Clain and Vienne join between Tours and Poitiers. The Franks (and Burgundians) numbered about 30,000, the Muslims about 80,000. (But there is significant disagreement over these numbers.) Europe has always claimed it a great victory, Islam less so.

What is without doubt is that 109 years after the death of the Prophet, when communication was very limited, a most powerful army developed from nowhere and, under the inspiration of this dead man,  threatened to conquer the entire known world.

The Rube Goldberg Path to Action

A new program has appeared in American schools whose purpose seems to be to teach objectivity. While this may be a noble goal, it is focused on a peculiar event: 911. The gist of the course episode seems to be to show some understanding of the terrorists and their mindset. One of the sections raises the question of how the Americans are perceived internationally and how American policies might engender antagonism in other nations. This is an effort to make the 911 atrocity understandable.

This is very dangerous ground.

Open-mindedness. Parallax. Seeing things in context. It all sounds commendable. But seeing the better side of atrocity is no virtue. Strangely, seeing an action as the product of many fused factors, usually social and economic, never seems to include elements of immorality, savagery or evil.

Should we really argue that the strain of World War 1, an unfair Treaty of Versailles and inflation led to the Holocaust?

Redheads and Empire

The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman in 1299 and it was ruled for ten successive generations by capable and often brilliant leaders, culminating in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), who led the Empire to its cultural and geographic zenith. He built Topkapi, captured Belgrade and Budapest and completed the conquest of the Balkans. He besieged Vienna, the keystone of central Europe, and except for a quirk in the weather would have taken it.  He was well on his way to solidifying the Ottomans as the rising historic star in Europe.

All that changed when he met the redhead.

He was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana, as part of his share of a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland. She must have really been something. He was so taken by her he rejected his hundreds of other harem girls and spent his time with her exclusively. Then he did the unheard of. He married her.

She was soon known as "The Witch." She had a son, Selim II, and she poisoned Suleiman against his favorite, the brilliant and able Mustafa, to the advancement of her son. Mustafa was clearly the man to succeed the throne but she had Suleiman kill him. Suleiman actually watched as it was done. Selim became the new leader of the Empire and its new genetic father. A drunk and a coward, he brought dissolution to the Empire, personally and genetically. He started the tradition of killing every male in reach that looked to be a competent rival. This negative selective pattern reaped incompetent rewards. The behavior continued into the 20th Century when the Ottoman Empire fell apart in World War One, leaving the rest of the world with the aimless Middle East.

There is a great difference between phenotype and genotype.

Hold Your Peace

America needs a debate over its very nature, that is--does it have characteristics distinctive from the animal qualities of other countries? Does it have a unique direction or is this just another nation trying to find its economic footing within a workable political framework? The New York mosque flap provides just such an opportunity.

Hurt feelings, bigotry, xenophobia and religious enthusiasm aside, this mosque debate should stimulate reasonable discussion about the boundaries of personal freedom policed by individual responsibility. The question is not whether it is legal to build it--it is--but rather whether such a building is appropriate, whether well meaning citizens should enforce their personal rights in the teeth of the overwhelming condemnation and discomfort of virtually everyone else simply because it is legal to do so. Some see this question as akin to desegregating a grade school, an African American personal right in the face of white condemnation and discomfort; this is more akin to the behavior of the "flying imams", gratuitous and malicious--albeit allowed by existing laws--done solely for the purpose of tormenting a social opponent. It is an area where good will is required, a willingness to put aside your personal right for the greater good. It is that crucial element in society that recognizes the individual's importance to the whole--and the whole's vulnerability to the individual: Self restraint. It is that quality in an individual that recognizes that on some level in this country he is participating in something large and important, something he shares in common with all others as opposed to the smaller and individual family, racial, blood type, skin color, cultural and religious variables that distinguish him from that large group.

Every marriage has that moment where the minister turns to the congregation and intones, "If any here gathered has reason why these two should not be joined together in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace." It is sometimes a signal in fiction for the picaresque hero to leap to the fore and abscond with an unwilling bride. In truth, it is a brilliant moment evolved from the Book of Common Prayer: The modern minister is not serious. The announcement is designed to give the individuals in the congregation the opportunity to put their objections aside, to allow the couple to proceed with their ritual and move on with their lives. To start anew. The people are being asked to withhold their right--even their presumed responsibility--to be destructive. It is saying to the congregation, "You are given the freedom and the opportunity to speak, to damage these people and this event; don't take it."


Yet someone will sometimes take it. The society is always plagued by the self-righteous, the bluenose, the puritan and the literal, often someone with a vindictive streak. Someone willing to destroy the whole to make a point. This mosque controversy is an opportunity to confront that person, to smoke him out and reveal him, to raise the important argument of social unity--the argument that must be resolved if this country is to solve the economic and security threats it will soon face.




All that being said, this is funny:

A grass-roots movement among construction workers and unions asks Cordoba mosque supporters: Who do you expect to build it? The same people who built the World Trade Center perhaps? (IBD)

The Black Hole of Bad Manners

This New York mosque controversy is not a circus, it is just another distracting and misleading tempest looking for an accommodating teapot. Anyone can build a building anywhere as long as it conforms to local regulations, is not in an area of eminent domain and conforms with the financial interests of politicians of import. If the mosque doesn't violate any of these restrictions, no one will have a logical objection.

And that is the point: The objections are not logical--but they are heartfelt and, somewhat, understandable. The Islamic movement in the U.S. has willingly joined what has up until now been the underclass' monopoly: Taking advantage of America's strange eagerness to reward bad social behavior. In 1999 two Muslim students on an American West flight were thrown off after wandering the plane cabin, refusing to respond to flight attendants, talking to passengers in ominous ways and trying twice to get into the cockpit. On Nov. 20, 2006 the six "flying imams" on a US Air flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix terrorized a passenger cabin by wandering the cabin, refusing to sit in assigned seats, speaking loudly in Arabic and voicing loud support for bin Laden and hatred for President Bush. They, too, were sent off the plane. Both these groups sued in court and got money.

I doubt any of these acts qualify as felonies or even misdemeanors but they are certainly obnoxious, antisocial and malevolent. Mutual concessions are mandatory in the civilized social world and pointed disdain for the comfort of others living responsibly under the social contract is a bit hard to take sometimes. While these people are only annoying and the problems minor, there is a larger point at stake. Societies--especially democracies--need a feeling of commonality of purpose. Diversity brings spice to the table but substance is always individual. People and groups with their black hole self importance will always ignore the common good. This mosque mosquito is just another such square religious/ethnic peg in the social round hole. And the opposition to it is little more than incoherent anger at sadistic jerks.

This mosque foolishness is a real opportunity. The social contract demands a concern for the common good. Purposeful defiance of the common good must be publicly discouraged, even when that defiance is legal. This country has a long history of confusing narrow personal political goals with how the country should be. Malicious social disruption might be legal but it does not have to be tolerated. This discussion should move away from debate over political and legislative tolerance to the social responsibility debate. It is time to draw some lines.