The Republic of Dissent

Throwing away the bible

I wish this were true:

Though it may be painful, though it may be costly at the polls in the short run, Republicans don't have a future unless they break up with the religious right and the gay-bashing, Bible-thumping fringe that gives the party such a bad rap with every young voter. By fighting to legally ban abortion, the party undercuts the potential to paint itself as a rebel against the governmental-control machine.

It is impossible for the Republicans to break up with the religious right, the best thing to hope for is an open relationship. 

 

Europe and inherited religious values

One of the dumbest things I have heard this fall from Fergus Downie:

Europe does not have enough of the inherited religious value fat required to sustain an ideological front against Islamism in the way that America occasionally looks like it might – and a scrupulous Weberian legalism is probably the best option available for a continent allergic to the cultivation of strong passions and the fanaticism of principle.

The prohibition of insults

A dumb, inaffective and dangerous suggestion from SA Hoseini:

It’s high time a law was passed around the world prohibiting any kind of defamation or insult to religion — otherwise we are going to witness a repeat of this kind of grim news — again and again and again.

The personal is the geopolitical

Sugary excerpt from Pankaj Mishra's review of Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie's memoir:

Rushdie's neat oppositions between the secular and the religious, the light and the dark, and rational literary elites and irrational masses do not clarify the great disorder of the contemporary world. They belong to an intellectually simpler time, when non-western societies, politically insignificant and little-known, could be judged solely by their success or failure in following the great example of the secular-humanist west; and writing literary fiction could seem enough to make one feel, as Tim Parks wrote in a review of Rushdie's novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, "engaged on the right side of some global moral and political battle".

Indeed, such complacencies of imperial intellectual cultures were what Rushdie had bravely attacked in his brilliant early phase. "Works of art, even works of entertainment," he had pointed out in 1984, "do not come into being in a social and political vacuum; and … the way they operate in a society cannot be separated from politics, from history. For every text, a context." No text in our time has had contexts more various and illuminating than The Satanic Verses, or mixed politics and literature more inextricably, and with deeper consequences for so many. In Joseph Anton, however, Rushdie continues to reveal an unwillingness or inability to grasp them, or to abandon the conceit, useful in fiction but misleading outside it, that the personal is the geopolitical.

I am left wondering how much the personal even when it is geopolitical should matter in literature even when it is not fiction. Another way to phrase my discomfort would be to wonder how much who Rushdie is or isn't should affect not only how he is read, the value of his writings.

In short, I am butting heads with Mishra because although I am conceding to him that the personal is the geopolitical, I question the essential nature and even the meaning  of that assertion...

Grand religious reasons

I agree with Glen Newy on this:

The assumption surfaces, predictably made by persons of faith, but surprisingly shared by many liberal secularists, that religious reasons are grander than others. (...) Practices that might count as grievous bodily harm if inflicted by secularists get legal protection if carried out by bearded hierophants.

One of the reasons why excision never really got 'the legitimacy' of its masculine circumcision is t that it doesn't have the backing of  a Über religion (some religions are grander than others).  People would have no problems killing the vagina of  circumcising their daughters if there were a story in the bible about girls needing it to have a closer relationship with a deity.

Misogynistic Vatican

Sugary excerpt from Garry Wills on the Vatican's slap of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious:

Last week, following an assessment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican stripped the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing most American nuns, of its powers of self-government, maintaining that its members have made statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle has taken control of the Conference, writing new laws for it, supplanting its leadership, and banning “political” activity (which is what Rome calls social work). Women are not capable, in the Vatican’s mind, of governing others or even themselves. Is it any wonder so many nuns have left the orders or avoided joining them? Who wants to be bullied?

It is typical of the pope’s sense of priorities that, at the very time when he is quashing an independent spirit in the church’s women, he is negotiating a welcome back to priests who left the church in protest at the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. These men, with their own dissident bishop, Marcel Lefebvre, formed the Society of Saint Pius X—the Pius whose Secretariat of State had a monsignor (Umberto Benigni) who promoted the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. Pope Benedict has already lifted the excommunication of four bishops in the Society of Saint Pius X, including that of Richard Williamson, who is a holocaust denier. Now a return of the whole body is being negotiated.

Just another proof that Sarah Silverman is right when she proposes to sell the Vatican to sell the world.

When god is king...

Because I'm  so thankful that it's Friday, just a sentence from Michael Walzer to make a potent point:

[...] when God is king, what need is there for human politics?

God is omnipresent in American politics and that it explains in part why it is so inhumane.

Racist France

Sugary excerpt from Adrian Hamilton with whom I disagree obviously and strongly (h/t Gilles Klein):

For all the public statements over the past few days on the need for national unity, France remains a deeply racist country. The threat of Muslim terror has allowed the French to transfer their resentments away from the Jewish population to the Arab one, and to feel the better for it. But the sentiments are exactly the same and made only the worse by rising unemployment and slowing growth.

I disagree with Hamilton because his assertion is as easy as it is stupid. It is always dumb to characterize a country as racist based on the traits of some of its citizens because that would make it possible to argue that Britain is anti-French and that America is an ignorant country. The point is that Hamilton makes critical mistakes because he doesn't know the context and  is emboldened to make grand, empty, and mistaken statements by his complex of superiority undoubtedly created by his certainty to be right ad to come from a better/purer country; that might just be called racism for people who are Hamilton is eager to condemn with knowledge and too much self-sastisfying zeal.

How cute!

The sentences of the week and possibly of the year are from Anita Diamant:

The basic insight of feminism is that women are human beings. I don’t think you can be a serious Jew and not be a feminist.

Ow, I'm all verklempt! I just wish someone would explain to me what it means to be a feminsit!

Santorum as the future messiah for 'Africa'

This bit from Jack C. Chow arguing that a President Rick Santorum  would be good for 'Africa' is as offensive as it is narrow-minded:

Alone among his rivals, Santorum has staked out global health as one of his preferred instruments of asserting American power abroad. He is the only Republican candidate to declare he wants to "keep and expand" Bush's humanitarian aid push in Africa. In contrast, Mitt Romney is "very reluctant to borrow lots more money to be able to do wonderful things" if other countries and groups do not contribute more; Newt Gingrich has called for government-run foreign aid to be replaced with private incentives; and Ron Paul, a physician, has asserted that "all the foreign aid in the world will not transform Africa into a thriving, healthy continent." [...]His record so far is promising. [...]He has couched aid programs as "one of our best international investments" and credited humanitarian aid and fighting AIDS as critical to winning "hearts and minds" in competing against the influence of "China and Islam" in Africa. "We have done more good for America in Africa and in the Third World by the things that we've done," he said at the Nov. 22 debate. "And we have saved money and saved military deployments by wisely spending that money not on our enemies but on folks who can and will be our friends." His reasoning echoes the arguments asserted by the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke about saving Africa from a demographic cataclysm caused by HIV/AIDS.

Chow's argument is offensive for two reasons. The first is that he makes the ignorant  presumption that African countries are all the same and therefore that their sole priority is to battle Aids. The second reason is that Chow obviously believes that charity is what African countries need most from America is aid or rather charity.

Thus, arguing that President Rick Santorum would be good for "Africa" is as condescending as it is paternalist because it reduces very different countries to a single aspect Aids while asserting ideologically that they need to be saved by an American president who will believe that it is his religious duty to do so.

Stupidity is bliss!

Quote of the day from Saint and culture warrior Rick Santorum (hat tip: Alex Massie):

I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely … The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.

I'm speechless! Even Newt Gingrich wouldn't say this, no correction, he would say, but he wouldn't mean it, the trouble with Santorum is that he means what he says.

Tolerance and securalists

Sugary except of the day from Norm Geras:

There are believers who, in the name of religion, act to silence, harm and sometimes indeed kill others, and there is, unfortunately, a lot of this sort of thing about. No secularist is obliged to adopt a relaxed attitude towards it. On the contrary, in defence of freedom of belief, they should be intolerant of it. Secularism, just like genuine liberalism, does not entail tolerance of the appeal to religion to justify intolerant, cruel or murderous ends.

Being afraid of 'the Mormon'

Sentences from David Kopel to munch on this Sunday:

I find it disgusting that a Gallup Poll found 22% of Americans (18% of Republicans, 19% of Independents, and 27% of Democrats) say that they would not vote for a well-qualified candidate of their party who happened to be a Mormon. That’s actually an increase compared to 17% who gave the same answer in 1967.

Another argument for politicians making their religious faith private instead of showing it off as they do their wives.

Attacking Islam and racism

Sugary excerpt from Hanif Kureishi:

I come from a Muslim family; I come from a Muslim country: Pakistan. I’m well aware of how dangerous religions like Islam can be. It’s ridiculous to think it’s racist to attack a religion. In fact, it’s racist not to attack a religion. These are systems of power, huge political forces of the world—you have to speak back against it, otherwise you exist in an authoritarian system. Look at the way these societies have attacked and tortured intellectuals in the past, in places like Iran, Egypt and Libya. The West has continued to patronise them and refuse to attack them. A very robust exchange is extremely important.

Obsessing about making history

The sugary excerpt of the day comes from the great Stephen Smith from his must-read article on Laurent Gbagbo:

‘Gbagbo was born before shame,’ ordinary people in Abidjan used to say. It didn’t necessarily mean they disapproved of him. It was more a case of stating the obvious. The way he looked at it, history was the victors’ account of a merciless fight. ‘It’s difficult for us to make history,’ he once explained to me. ‘We have to carry out our own French Revolution with Amnesty International peering over our shoulder.’ Murder, intrigue, corruption, bare-faced lies, betrayal, ethnic cleansing: all means would be justifiable provided the end was attained. In Gbagbo’s home region, where Ivory Coast’s main cash crops are grown, the sons of the soil, the Bété, turned against migrant workers from poor Sahel states and against fellow Ivorians from other parts of the country.

It is alarming, to say the least, that so many political leaders are worried about making history rather than governing and improving the lives of their 'people.' Obsession with history is one of the reasons why there have been so many Mugabe, Gbagbo, Amin, Doe, Taylor, Gaddafi on the African continent for after all if one's only concern is history, the people become means to achieve greatness not much else, politics is religionized and political violence becomes acceptal and even normal.

Zombies at the Vatican

Another proof from R.W. Johnson that faith in politics is about the bling and should remain in the private sphere:

The news that Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace were among the million people (including 22 ‘world leaders’) who thronged St Peter’s Square for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II lends a piquant note to what was already a gothic occasion. Their presence was not, in itself, surprising: Mugabe tends to remember he is a Catholic whenever it is convenient – as in the case of his marriage to Grace, celebrated in a Catholic high mass in Harare, although they had by then already had two children. More recently, however, the main point has been to evade the EU’s targeted sanctions and thus provide Grace (widely known as ‘Dis-Grace’) with opportunities for her extravagant shopping trips. The Mugabes were in Rome in 2005 for John Paul II’s funeral, and again in 2008 and 2009 for UN food conferences – they get a free pass from the Vatican and from the UN, of which Zimbabwe is still a member.

Women as human shields

Sugary excerpt of the day or rather of the night from Juan Cole:

Note to Muslim-hater Bill Maher, who should know better: It is not true that women cannot vote in 20 Muslim countries, and please stop generalizing about 1.5 billion Muslims based on the 22 million people in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the only place where women cannot drive and where men can vote (in municipal elections) but women cannot. It would be like generalizing from the Amish in Pennsylvania to all people of Christian heritage and wondering what is with Christianity and its fascination with horses and buggies.

I have to admit that I have stopped watching Bill Maher years ago because I couldn't take him seriously. He is exactly like the people he criticized, arrogant and fanatically persuaded to be on the right side except that his views are  seen more fashionable and more 'cultured' (some forms of inculture in America and elsewhere are tolerable/fashionable than others when they lead to more palatable conclusions).

Bill Maher doesn't care about the status of women in the "Muslin world," to use an expression that I hate. He is using it to make a cheap point to win an argument that isn't about women, but about a group of people he considers as savages.  My own point here isn't that there is no there there, but to make the assertion that consistency matters when being self-righteous.

I will not foolishly assert that women in America are not privileged compared to others or that foreign countries especially those in certain parts of the world have a 'woman problem.' I will just argue that saying that isn't saying much for the question remains what is the ideal, what are absolute and universal values, and to stop using women as human shield, as props to win ideological wars.

It isn't that complicated

Interesting stuff from Charlemagne:

The West is guilty of two errors, in my view.

Firstly, in the contest between the police state and the mosque, it too easily fell into the trap of backing the police state. It therefore became associated with oppression and hypocrisy in the minds of many Arabs. It never sought to help foster other democratic opposition forces, or to criticise rulers for their oppressive ways. President Barack Obama’s brilliant speech in Cairo in 2009 criticised the Bush-era’s (short-lived) notion that democracy could be brought at the point of a gun, but did not shy away from making a powerful case for freedom. The trouble is, Mr Obama’s America then did little to support the cause of democracy in the Arab world. The same was true of Europe.

Any promotion of democracy in the Arab world cannot avoid the encounter with some form of Islamism. And this is Europe’s second error: its failure to distinguish between different currents of political groups inspired by Islam. Not all groups bearing the name of “Islamic” are puppets of Iran’s mullahs, or comrades of Osama bin Laden. Hamas may be the violent Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt. But the Egyptian branch declares itself to be non-violent and democratic, and is hated by al-Qaeda. At the very least, its democratic credentials should have been tested through greater dialogue.

I disagree with Charlemagne's implied affirmation that there is such a thing as the Western world. Nevertheless, he isn't wrong. The trouble is that he doesn't assert explicitly that the problem comes precisely from the too-easily made assertion that some foreigners are different, not mature, brutal, have an exotic or homogeneous or simply an essentialist culture, which makes it impossible for them to have self-determination and other good things in life. In short, the issue is always going to come to Sameness, commonness, that is to how much Charlemagne's West believes that the people from the rest of the world have in common with them.

The racism of lower expectation

Sugary excerpt of the day from Anjad Khan:

Essentially, Islamists have been successful in the UK where they have failed elsewhere. They have duped the establishment into thinking that they represent Muslims and Islam, all the while using that as a guise to promote divisive and potentially explosive identity politics. Their job has, of course, been made easier by soft deluded “liberal” multiculturalists who are in fact guilty of  the racism of lower expectation and who don’t apply universal norms to the ‘exotic’ others who we can’t expect to behave like us.

Religion and unkindness

Sugary excerpt from Christopher Hitchens in his debate against Blair on Religion

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things. Handed a small baby for the first time, is it your first reaction to think, beautiful, almost perfect, now please hand me the sharp stone for its genitalia that I may do the work of the Lord. No, it is -- as the great physicist Stephen Weinberg has aptly put it, in the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you'll need religion.

Legitimacy and emotional reactions

Over at the OUPblog, Elvin Lim has the best article(and the last one I will quote) on the whole NPR and Juan Williams episode. Sugary excerpt:

But NPR, in firing Williams, wasted an opportunity to make such a pedagogical statement. It wrapped up its reasons in faux reasons of journalistic standards and objectivity, and ironically, ended up implicitly endorsing the legitimacy of Williams’ first, emotional, reaction. Indeed, I suspect that Juan Williams was fired because his bosses at NPR were, in turn, uncomfortable that he had articulated his own discomfort. And that is the problem. One reflex knee jerk begot another, but no reasonable explanation followed.

One thing we do know is that emotions cannot be bottled up. We either feel them or we don’t, and Juan Williams apparently feels them when he sees someone dressed up in Muslim garb. What NPR did, in firing him, was send the emotional message that his emotions were illegitimate. But – and here was their mistake – NPR said nothing about either the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the reasons which provoked Williams’ particular emotional reaction.

Emotions indicate the salience and intensity of issues, and they should be addressed even – and,  in fact, especially – when they are based on bad reasons. NPR pushed a discussion of the legitimacy of these emotions under the carpet by firing Juan Williams under the faux reasons of journalistic objectivity and this is why in one fell swoop they lost both a journalist and a teaching moment. If NPR wanted to be politically correct, it might as well have gone all the way.

What has been alarming about the whole episode is the realization that America is under a strong emotional dictatorship, one where feelings ,especially when at their center is outrage or pain giving one the perception that s/he is victimized, are seldom questioned as the basis for political and other important decisions. I still remember George W. Bush responding to Al Gore's legitimate criticisms of his record as Texas's governor by saying that he was hurt that his heart was being questioned. Just take the one of Obama telling Democrats to either get over their disappointment or not to feel discouraged because it is only the first quarter of the game. In short, emotions are the center of every debate because they make it so difficult to think or rather so easy to shoot from the hip and to indulge on junk without even considering the need to exercise or to eat healthy.

Betraying the tradition of the Enlightenment

I agree with Brendan O'Neill on this:

(...)The great irony of the French government’s restrictions on the burqa in public places, and to a certain extent the Belgian government’s restrictions, is that they have been presented as being in the tradition of the Enlightenment. This is about liberating women from oppression, they say, and therefore it is a good, Enlightened, Voltairish thing to do.

In fact, banning a religious garment is counter to the spirit of the Enlightenment. What these authoritarians forget is that the Enlightenment sprang from a defence of religious liberty. The Enlightenment has its origins, not in any attempt to censor certain minority religious symbols, but in a belief that minority religions, even ones we consider ‘heretical’, should be protected from state intervention, censorship and oppression.

So in calling for the state to restrict a certain form of religious expression, these pseudo-Enlightened censors are doing something that the original men of the Enlightenment would have considered pretty outrageous.

The dangers of subjective analysis

Jay Rosen on the Juan Williams's firing from NPR:

Here is what I, Jay Rosen, New York Jew, liberal Democrat, and professional student of the press think... Given its existing codes NPR was in an untenable position from the moment Juan Williams started working for Fox, where his job is to be a liberal foil for the conservative alternative in news. There was no way he could abide by NPR’s rules–which insist on viewlessness as a guarantor of trust–and appear on Fox, where the clash of views is basic to what the network does to generate audience, and where Williams relished the give and take with outsized personalities like Bill O’Reilly.

NPR recognized the problem but tried to finesse it by re-classifying Williams as an “analyst.” Big mistake. The job of analyst, as NPR defines it, is so tightly constrained that it excludes almost everything Williams was doing for Fox. So why didn’t NPR simply get rid of Williams years ago when he began to generate view-from-somewhere controversies with his appearances on Fox? The likely reason was identified by Farai Chideya, who used to work at NPR: a diversity problem. NPR had almost no black men on the air.

Jay Rosen is right, but I'm also convinced that the focus on the 'whys' of the Juan Williams episode is convenient because it puts the essential question on the back-burner and that question is what does it mean to be a journalist in America. There are a lot of bad and discomforting answers to that question, but no sustainable attempts to provide thoughtful answers.

Acceptable biases and fears

Quote of the day from Glenn Greenwald about the firing of Juan Williams from NPR for expressing his fears over 'Muslims' 'who look Muslims' in certain situations:

The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies:  that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans.

I have to say that the whole thing makes me more than uncomfortable. America has entered an age where free speech is about content precisely because it is no longer possible for Americans to have a dialogue about issues. The goal of political or social discussions is to shut up the opposition and to make the argument that it is either simply or solely bigoted or dumb. Where there is a prevalent notion in a society that people have to be careful about what they say, it is in general because there also exists the prevalent and uncomfortable one that people can't change, that people are their vilest thought, and that education and dialogue don't matter.

Christian America and the red scare

Fascinating stuff from the Economist's Democracy in America's blog:

In 1942, before Americans came to see the Soviets as their mortal enemy, the ideas of "Strong, immediate limitations on national sovereignty" and "International control of all armies and navies" could seem an enlightened path to the abolition of war. But by the war's end, it quickly became apparent that this sort of thing would amount to an impracticable power-sharing agreement with communist regimes. And as Americans became more and more likely to believe that only a more thoroughly Christian nation could save the world from godless communist tyranny, the principled, cosmopolitan globalism of the Federal Council of Churches swiftly came to seem a dangerous absurdity and practically communist itself. Anyway, that's what I think happened to the Federal Council of Churches' 1942 platform. Of course, it's now been a good while since we were haunted by the spectre of communism. Yet America's oddly religion-soaked politics remains in many ways the creature of its mid-century anti-communist reaction. Isn't it a bit depressing to think that American national political and religious life has yet to recover from the red scare?

I'm wondering whether we aren't in a similar period in American history where the Islamist scare this time is increasing the religionization of American politics with potentially more dire consequences.

Aggressiveness and extremism

I don't agree totally agree with Mehdi Hasan on this, but the fact that I can't say he is just wrong, shows that he has a point:

On Thursday the US president said Pastor Jones's plans to burn the Qur'an would be a "recruiting bonanza" for al-Qaida. Yet he fails to recognise how the west's war in Afghanistan provides a similar boost to extremists – on both sides. The "enemy" in Afghanistan, concluded the IISS report released on Tuesday, is "incentivised by the presence of foreign forces". And inside the US the likes of Jones and rightwing Republican bigots, frothing at the mouth over the "Ground Zero mosque" take their cue from aggressive leaders like Blair, Bush and Obama – who send more and more troops to fight and die abroad, in faraway Muslim countries, while denying any link between Islamic militancy and western foreign policies.

Unjustified offense and the “Ground Zero Mosque”

Brilliant stuff from Ilya Somin on the "Ground Zero" mosque:

I lost half a dozen relatives in the Holocaust. But I don’t see any inherent problem with having a German cultural center near the site of a former Nazi death camp. So long as the center does not interfere with the operations of the memorial established at the camp, does not promote anti-Semitism, and doesn’t advocate the sort of virulent nationalism that helped cause the Holocaust, it should be unobjectionable. As Krauthammer notes, Germans as a group are not to blame for the Holocaust. And German culture is not reducible to Nazism and anti-Semitism. A center promoting elements of German culture that are not implicated in those phenomena does not somehow offend against the memory of Holocaust victims. A German cultural center that actually condemns Nazism and extreme nationalism while celebrating positive elements of German culture could actually make a useful contribution to reducing prejudice and honoring the victims. 
I recognize, of course, that some Jews might still be offended, and avoiding such offense might be a pragmatic justification for not building the center. But the issue is whether the offense-taking would be justified. No one has a moral obligation to change their plans merely because others take unjustified offense. 
The same points apply to the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. Islam is not reducible to terrorism and oppression. A Muslim center near Ground Zero that promotes positive aspects of the Muslim tradition is unobjectionable. One that also denounces terrorism and radical Islamism would be a positive good.

It is difficult to say, but this controversy is just another proof that in America, it is increasingly becoming difficult to have serious conversations because too many are persuaded to have either "god" or "the truth" on their side and those who oppose them are just stupid or simply evil. The alarming thing is that the POTUS, the decider chose to avoid the debate even though he has always described himself as a man who isn't afraid of doing the right thing even if it means losing. Bush used to talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations, in Obama's case, I think we should talk about the flashy arrogance of great expectations.

Spots of brilliance

I'm probably late to the game, but I was impressed by Obama's speech on Friday on the controversy over the construction of a Mosque near Ground Zero. I heard about it in the Cab that was taking me from JFK to Manhattan for I spent Friday in two airports and in a plane. My first thought was to say "at last, the Potus does something impressive that isn't solely self-serving." I thought the speech was on point and unlike the other flashy speeches Obama gives, I believed that it had meaning.

So was I disappointed by the fact that Obama "retreated" from his comment the next day? No and I wasn't even surprised. I expected him to do it for two reasons. The first is that Obama is a great politician and that as all great politicians of our era, he knows that it is difficult to educate the electorate or to lead on a issue when  the real issues are fear and resentment. Obama said what was in his heart on Friday, but then had to clarify it because he did the math and realized that once again, being himself, saying what he meant wasn't going to be good for him politically in the short term.

The second reason why I expected Obama to kill the greatness of his Friday's speech with clarifications is that he isn't an ideologue in the good sense of the word. There are few things Obama is willing to die, politically, for, I would write that there is nothing, but I have decided to be nice because I'm still infected by the Parisian atmosphere.

Obama knows that he has to get reelected for his presidency to become meaningful and to be something more than a symbol of what America wanted to be when it elected him without of course having to work for it. I always thought to Obama was an attempt by a symbolically out of shape America to put itself back in shape by having surgery instead of course of exercising and deciding to have better eating habits.

I have never thought that Obama was too good for America, to the contrary, I have always thought that America didn't have enough faith in itself, in its ability to repair the wounds of its early and recent history (Bush's eight years) for it to choose Obama blindly knowing full well the odds of a rookie quarterback doing well without years of training are slim. But again, America loves believing in the improbable and it is also one of the reasons why it is a country to I love passionately.

The absurdity of deathbed conversions

The sugary excerpt for this Sunday is from Roger Ebert's excellent entry in his journal about  Christopher Hitchens, life,religion and what happens when even though you couldn't wait for death, she stops for you, even though she doesn't do it kindly as she did for Emily Dickinson:

Deathbed conversions have always seemed to me like a Hail Mary Pass, proving nothing about religion and much about desperation.

Sick of seeing grown men cry

 Gideon Rachman who was in South Africa for the World Cup on how pathetic it is to seen grown men cry over a game:

I am sick of seeing grown men cry. Asamoah Gyan of Ghana was in floods, after missing that crucial penalty against Uruguay. Last night, it was Cardozo of Paraguay who missed a vital spot-kick and then left the field, blubbing. Really chaps - it’s only a game.

My take on the whole thing is that football has stopped being a game long ago to become the last 'hope' or rather the new opiate of the masses especially in countries where politics seem to lead to a dead end and economics is about everything but merit and effort.

Religious Hitchens

Sugary excerpt from a Guardian article on Christopher Hitchens:

To say that Hitchens is stirred – even obsessed – by the question of courage would be to state the obvious. It seems therefore highly likely that his longing for the great Orwellian test – the momentous moral challenge to match the 1930s – might tempt him to overstate the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. "Do I ask myself," he replies, "do I think our civilisation is superior to theirs? Yes, I do. Do I think it's worth fighting for? Most certainly."
That wasn't really the question.
"Well, I know how to correct atavism in myself, yes, I do," he retorts. As evidence, he offers the fact that after 9/11 he voted against his Washington apartment block flying the American flag. "So I was pleased to find out I wasn't in the mob majority in that way." But then he adds, bizarrely, "The other thing is, what happens when this ebbs, and the flag gets tatty? And you start seeing cabs with flags worn to rags, making the flag look crappy."

I 'm convinced that Christopher Hitchens is going to end up becoming one of the type of people that he hates the most, that is a man who is so religious about everything that he likes that he stops thinking to descent to believe in his own grandeur just as any evangelical preacher who is convinced that he is a prophet who is always right.

Dangerous thoughtlessness and free speech

The statement of the day is from Juan Cole about the draw Muhammad Day:

I think when you know people have died in violence over some piece of thoughtlessness, it is the height of irresponsibility to repeat it for no good reason.

I agree with Cole's sentiment, but disagrees with his conclusion. It's always better to live i a society where thoughtlessness, even when it is bigoted and can produce violence, can be expressed because it reminds us that the civility and the education necessary to maintain a liberal and open society are never a given

Contraception and fanaticism in Congo

Once in a while Nick Kristof gets things right:

In rural parts of Congo Republic, the other Congo to the north, we found that even when people had heard of contraception, they often regarded it as unaffordable.
Most appalling, all the clinics and hospitals we visited in Congo Republic said that they would sell contraceptives only to women who brought their husbands in with them to prove that the husband accepted birth control.
Condoms are somewhat easier to obtain, but many men resist them. More broadly, many men seem to feel that more children are a proud sign of more virility.
So the pill, 50 years old this month in the United States, has yet to reach parts of Africa. And condoms and other forms of birth control and AIDS prevention are still far too difficult to obtain in some areas.

One of the most appalling facts about the  limited use of contraception isn't used in Congo and other African countries is the role that American evangelism plays in strengthening old beliefs that women are breeders and not contraception isn't just bad, but evil. The point isn't here that the problem has been imported or is being created by American evangelists, thus making the issue one of identity or one of eternal victimization but rather that that imported fanaticism is making an already catastrophic situation  worst by convincing well intentioned, but limited people that ignorance, poverty, and anti-intellectualism  are not just bliss, but also close to Godliness.

Salafism and American Protestant Fundamentalism

Oliver Roy on the similarities between Salafism and American Protestant Fundamentalism :

It is a mistake to think that the phenomena of religious radicalism (Salafism) and political radicalism (Al Qaeda) are mere imports of the cultures and conflicts of the Middle East. It is above all a consequence of the globalization and Westernization of Islam. Today's religious revival is first and foremost marked by the uncoupling of culture and religion, whatever the religion may be. This explains the affinities between American Protestant fundamentalism and Islamic Salafism: both reject culture, philosophy, and even theology in favour of a scriptural reading of the sacred texts and an immediate understanding of truth through individual faith, to the detriment of educational and religious institutions.

Roy's comparison is appropriate in my view because it emphasizes the fact that globalization has a lot to do with the rise of religious extremism. It is striking to realize that the less people feel in control, the more they are likely to turn to a vengeful God requiring them to be pure and to purify their world to make it more to their liking.

Papal satire

No comment necessary (via)

Fanaticism, ridicule, and the steps forward

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the whole South Park and Muhammad affair:

Islamists seek to replace the rule of law with that of commanding right and forbidding wrong. With over a billion and a half people calling Muhammad their moral guide, it is imperative that we examine the consequences of his guidance, starting with the notion that those who depict his image or criticize his teachings should be punished.
In "South Park," this tyrannical rule is cleverly needled when Tom Cruise asks the question: How come Muhammad is the only celebrity protected from ridicule? Now we know why. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is right. I'm only wondering whether the whole cycle of shock, awe, screams of cultural insensitivity, apologies or a refusal to back down lead anywhere, but down the ground. It is true that backing down is dangerous when an essential value such as free speech, which includes the right to make fun of gods and prophets is challenged there must never be a surrender to fear and to threats. The most difficult question to me isn't about fighting extremism and refusing to accept that in the name of  religion or whatever else some forms of speech are forbidden, the capital question is what happens afterward standing the confrontation.

As impotent as the pope

Quote of the afternoon from Andrew Brown :

The pope, as is well known, can't even stop Catholics from using birth control, let alone the rest of the world; and while I understand he is not keen on sex of any sort, I have never been turned down by anyone on the grounds that the pope would disapprove. Somehow, they have all managed to find even more compelling reasons. Perhaps more fanatical atheists have had a different experience.

There are no Western values

I agree with Kenan Malik on this:

what we now regard as "Western values" – individual rights, secularism, freedom of speech – are modern values, distinct from those that animated European societies in the past. And it's not just medieval Europeans who would reject contemporary European values. Many contemporary Europeans do too. The British writer Melanie Phillips is militantly hostile to what she sees as the "Islamic takeover of the West" and what she calls "the drift towards social suicide" that comes with accepting Muslim immigration. Yet she is deeply sympathetic to the Islamist rejection of secular humanism, which she thinks has created "a debauched and disorderly culture of instant gratification, with disintegrating families, feral children and violence, squalor and vulgarity on the streets." Muslims "have concluded that the society that expects them to identify with it is a moral cesspit", Phillips argues. "Is it any wonder, therefore, that they reject it?" Caldwell, too, thinks that while the West's current encounter with Islam may be "painful and violent", it has also been, "an infusion of oxygen into the drab, nitpicking, materialist intellectual life of the West", for which we need to express our "gratitude".
There is, in other words, no single set of European values that transcends history in opposition to Islamic values. Nor indeed is there a single set of western values today. The very values against which radical Islamists rail – the values of secular humanism – are the very values that so disgust some of Islam's greatest critics.

Paul Berman, Tariq Ramadan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Josh Gohlke reviews Paul Berman's latest The Flight of the Intellectuals and highlights his views on 'Western Journalists' and their preference for Tariq Ramadan over Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Ramadan is attractive to Western journalists partly because he is moderate in manner, always seeking consensus and middle ground. But Berman encourages us to ask: A middle ground between which poles? Between stoning adulteresses and maybe not stoning them if we can come to an accord?
Berman figures Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali refugee-turned-activist who has unequivocally condemned mistreatment of women in the Muslim world, as Ramadan’s foil. Hirsi Ali is infallibly immoderate in tone. For that she has earned the backhanded admiration (at best) and disdain (at worst) of Buruma and other journalists. But at least some of her principles—a woman’s right to keep her genitals intact, for example—aren’t the sort on which democratic societies can afford to compromise.
How did Western journalists come to be more respectful of decorous fundamentalists than they are of brash secularists? For one thing, they fear that Hirsi Ali’s criticisms of her own tradition will embolden anti-Muslim bigots and xenophobes in America and Europe. Berman adds another answer that’s startlingly simple: rejections of Islamism have become life-threatening. 

I agree with Berman's main point about the attractiveness of Tariq Ramadan and the fact that he has acquired a legitimacy because he is moderate in tone while Ayaan Hirsi Ali isn't. I think that such a disparity in treatment shows that the notion of difference is so ingrained in certain elites that they are willing to apply different moral values to unacceptable situations as long as one is able to agree on them one some issues and thus to reassure that they are on their side, which means being on the left politically. Tariq Ramadan is perceived as being a lslamic leftist while Ayaan Hirsi Ali as radical conservative, which isn't as attractive. To use a telling comparison, I would say that in the mind of most journalists, Ramadan is close to Barack Obama while Ayaan Hirsi Ali is closer to Sarah Palin. That explains the difference in their treatment by the media. However, these realities don't lead me to the same conclusions as Berman.  I think that the mistake is always to draw a line in the sand and to chastise those such as Ian Buruma who are uncomfortable with absolutism. In short, Paul Berman is unable to accept the idea that there isn't just one way to fight extremism and that confrontation can be about something other than a brutal clash and the castigation of the wolves in sheep clothing. That inflexibility may be a sign of moral rectitude, but is problematic because it strengthens one's intellectual status without providing  solutions that change reality. But again, Berman's problem might be that he isn't interested in changing reality, but simply in condemning abnormalities and atrocities while scolding those who don' t do i with the same vigor as him.

Fierce unclarity

Quote of the afternoon from Anthony Grafton:

The Pope seems to have seen priestly abuse of children, for a long time, as an American problem, rather than the general one it clearly is. He still seems to regard journalistic discussions of it as part of a broad, deliberate attack on the Church, a line that his surrogates and some outside defenders have made their own. He responds to accusations defensively, in the first instance, like many long-serving officers in powerful established institutions whose members wear uniforms and live, in some ways, outside the normal social world—think of the armed forces or the police. At bay, as he is now, he has not yet acknowledged, and may never accept, the wisdom that any competent PR consultant would offer: cover-ups are always worse than the crimes they are meant to conceal. Instead, for the most part, he has turned his spikes outward, as hedgehogs do.

Benedict XVI and Roman Polanski

Dominic Lawson denounces what he believes to be a double standard in the difference of treatment that the Pope receives and the one given to Roman Polanski:

The point is, I suspect, that whereas the Pope does understand that great wickedness has been perpetrated – systematically – by individuals within the Catholic priesthood, Polanski genuinely regards his own conduct as blameless. In fact, he sees himself, and not the 13-year-old girl he sodomised, as the victim.

Lawson isn't wrong. I am of the opinion that Polanski ought at least to be made to come to California not necessary to go to jail (I don't believe he will ever spend any time in prison, but even if he does, it will be shorter than it will shorter than the time he spent in a Swiss), but to face the court even if at the end, it is decided that jail isn't a suitable punishment. The key difference between this case and the one of the Catholic Church is that Benedict XVI is given the status of a semi-God in the sense that as the Pope, the head of powerful religious organization, it is assumed that he is closer to God than anybody. Just this fact makes it impossible to justify not really imperfections, but the refusal to follow the values of his church or at least to make a good faith attempt to. 

In any case, the fact that to defend the Benedict XVI, Lawson has to compare him to Roman Polanski is indicative of the moral decay of the Catholic Church and of its Pontiff.

The freedom to be veiled and liberal society

I agree with Norman Geras on this point clarifying his position against a ban of the burqa/niqab/hijab/veil in Quebec, France and in any society, which proclaims itself as 'liberal':

In a liberal society, however, there is nothing at all reasonable about this balance. If individuals have extensive rights and freedoms, as they ought to have - up to the limit where their actions harm others - then, in one critical sense, all of us are indeed obliged to accept things which affront us, provided these do not also harm anyone, violate their rights or liberties. Of course, we don't have to like what affronts us, and if we dislike something enough we don't have to tolerate it in spaces over which we have exclusive rights. You don't want someone wearing the niqab in your house or your car? You don't want a crucifix or a yarmulke or a shirt bearing the logo of French Connection UK worn there? Then you aren't obliged to accept any of them. But in spaces over which you don't have rights of control you can't forbid them. And there's a second sense in which you needn't accept what affronts you. You don't have to pretend to be happy about it. You're free to tell the bearer of the affront what you think of it, and of her for putting the affront your way. But, once again, you do have to accept that she may go on putting it your way in shared spaces, and in that sense you are compelled to accept it - or should be in a liberal society.

Don't mess with veiled women

Via Feminist Philosophers an image, which I approve. No other comments necessary.

Pakistan as a sexually repressed country

Quote of the early morning from Shazia Mirza:

Pakistan is a sexually repressed country, and that is the root of many of its problems.
The last time I performed in Lahore I was told: "You can talk about anything you like – religion, politics, drugs, you can swear and curse, just don't mention 'The Sex'."
Any sexual words or connotations were banned – because in Pakistan there is no mention of sex on television, radio, or in public

Christianity and communism

Slavoj ZizeK's thought provoking thoughts on Christianity:

At the very core of Christianity, there is a vastly different project: that of a destructive negativity, which does not end in a chaotic void but reverts (and organises itself) into a new order, imposing it on to reality.
For this reason, Christianity is anti-wisdom: wisdom tells us that our efforts are in vain, that everything ends in chaos, while Christianity madly insists on the impossible. Love, especially a Christian one, is definitely not wise. This is why Paul said: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise" ("Sapientiam sapientum perdam," as his saying is usually known in Latin). We should take the term "wisdom" literally here: it is wisdom (in the sense of "realistic" acceptance of the way things are) that Paul is challenging, not knowledge as such.
With regard to social order, this means that the authentic Christian tradition rejects the wisdom that the hierarchic order is our fate, that all attempts to mess with it and create another egalitarian order have to end up in destructive horror. Agape as political love means that unconditional, egalitarian love for one's neighbour can serve as the foundation for a new order.
The form of appearance of this love is what we might also call the idea of communism: the urge to realise an egalitarian social order of solidarity. Love is the force of this universal link that, in an emancipatory collective, connects people directly, in their singularity, bypassing their particular positions in a social hierarchy. Indeed, Dostoevsky was right when he wrote: "The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist" -- yes, dreaded by his or her enemies.

If Zizek is to be taken seriously (there are times when it is difficult to do so), it was a mistake for Communist states to abolish religion or to view it as an enemy.

Something is rotten in Québec

Another 'veiled' woman taken away from a French class in Montreal:

One morning recently, a young Muslim woman whose face was hidden by a religious covering was pulled out of her government French class near Montreal and told to unveil or leave the course.
But, while Ms. Ahmed was portrayed in media accounts as difficult to accommodate, Aisha, as she has asked to be called to shield her identity, didn’t make waves.
According to former classmates and officials at the suburban centre she attended, the young woman was a model student who placed no demands on others and even teamed up with male students for class assignments.

I'm just wondering if the burqa/niqab/hijab/islamic veil is the biggest threat to Quebec society. It is of course a rhetorical question for history shows that it is easier to pick on women when a society has no easy answers to complex identity issues and yet feels threatened by change whether perceived or real. I'm just waiting for the Quebec to show its manliness to the end and deport these women from their province to show that they mean business instead of once again, using them as political tools.

Even for Catholics, image is capital

Ross Douthat is seldom right that when he gets part of the truth, it is necessary to say it to encourage him to let his brain out the box as he did when he wrote this:

The world didn’t always agree with Pope John Paul II, but it always seemed to love him. Handsome and charismatic, with an actor’s flair and a statesman’s confidence, he transformed the papacy from an Italian anachronism into a globe-trotting phenomenon. His authority stabilized a reeling church; his personal holiness inspired a generation of young Catholics. “Santo subito!” the Roman crowds chanted as he lay dying. Sainthood now!
The world didn’t always agree with Pope John Paul II, but it always seemed to love him. Handsome and charismatic, with an actor’s flair and a statesman’s confidence, he transformed the papacy from an Italian anachronism into a globe-trotting phenomenon. His authority stabilized a reeling church; his personal holiness inspired a generation of young Catholics. “Santo subito!” the Roman crowds chanted as he lay dying. Sainthood now!
They will not chant for Benedict XVI. The former Joseph Ratzinger was always going to be a harder pontiff for the world to love: more introverted than his predecessor, less political and peripatetic, with the crags and wrinkles of a sinister great-uncle. While the last pope held court with presidents and rock stars, Cardinal Ratzinger was minding the store in Rome, jousting with liberal theologians and being caricatured as “God’s Rottweiler.” His reward was supposed to be retirement, and a return to scholarly pursuits. Instead, he was summoned to Peter’s chair — and, it seems, to disaster.

Of course, image and style aren't the only causes for the  current Pope's problems. They are symptoms of a larger malaise and bigger flaws of the Catholic Church, which make it enable to understand to the realities of its members. If the Cardinals who chose Joseph Ratzinger as pope had known a little bit about a world that they execrate, the modern world, they would have chosen somebody able to sell Catholicism to the masses or at least to defend it vibrantly and convincingly.The point is just the sex abuse scandals are the most convincing proof that Ratzinger cannot be Pope in this century and that in any case, he is not the biggest worry for the Vatican in times where religions are popping from everywhere.

Seizing upTariq Ramadan

George Packer on his participation to a talk given by Tariq Ramadan in New York:

I asked Ramadan two questions. The first was historical: drawing from a chapter in Paul Berman’s forthcoming book “The Flight of the Intellectuals”, I described the relationship between Ramadan’s grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and a Nazi ally who made a series of genocidal broadcasts on an Arabic radio program transmitted from wartime Berlin, urging Arabs to rise up and kill Jews. I cited quotations from al-Banna expressing pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic views; I quoted Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a follower of al-Banna who is a hugely popular TV preacher on Al Jazeera, expressing similar views. And I asked Ramadan why he had never acknowledged, let alone condemned, these things.
(...) Ramadan and I went back and forth a number of times. And he couldn’t give me a direct answer. He hedged, he spoke about context, he suggested that the quotes were mistranslated, that they didn’t actually exist. But he refused to acknowledge that his grandfather and the Muslim Brotherhood in its origins were characterized by anti-Semitic or totalitarian views. It seemed clear that there was a limit to what he would allow himself to say or think, and that I had found it.
Weisberg had asked me at the outset whether I thought Ramadan said different things to different audiences, and whether I thought he evaded hard questions about the conflicts between the open society and fundamentalism. On the first, I said no—he has no hidden agenda, he’s an open book, and it’s essentially moderate. On the second, I said I wasn’t sure and hoped to find out. By the end of the evening, I knew the answer. Ramadan is building a worthy bridge on a rotten foundation.

My impression of Tariq Ramadan is almost the same as the one of Packer. I don't think that Ramadan is a Ben Laden or a Jihadi in sheep clothing. However his vision of society is as troubling as Jerry Farewell or any other religious men who cannot stay away from politics. He fails to make the difference between religion and politics and for that matter, he seems to believe that they are one and the same for religion must invade and dominate every sphere of society. It is this lack of separation between faith, society, and politics that bothers me. I believe that religion beliefs ought to remain private and never allowed to invade the public space and to dominate a society even if the goal is to give it moral foundations or to cleanse it. In short, I don't think that Ramadan's problem is extremism, but rather his politics and his inability to separate his religious faith from it. Those traits in a way make him very 'American' except of course that we are talking here about Islam, which tends to scare people; nevertheless the issue  for me is that all politicians who are defined by the faith, guided by it and use religious texts to inform all of their choices always make me uncomfortable and scare me most of the times.

When feminists ally themselves with bigots

Quote of the day from Haroon Siddiqui commenting on the recent controversies around the Niqab in Québec:

We are witnessing an unholy alliance of leftist feminists, right-wing bigots and Quebec nationalists. That's why Lucien Bouchard, former PQ premier, publicly warned his party last month against playing identity politics, something he said René Lévesque would never have approved of. Picking on Muslim women smacks of hypocrisy or, worse, the pathology of "bigots and chauvinists who, like bullies, direct their vitriol toward the weak,"

The Taliban aren't Islamists

Pertinent observations from Adam Curtis on Afghanistan and the Taliban:

There is a growing sense in the West that we no longer know what we are fighting for in Afghanistan. The question that is almost never asked is what they are fighting for? What do the Taliban want?
We are told that we are fighting to prevent terrorist attacks in Europe and America. But the reality is that the Taliban have no interest in attacking the West. In the public imagination and in much journalism the Taliban are seen as exactly the same as political Islamists such as bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. The truth is that they are the very opposite of each other.
The radical Islamists see themselves as modern revolutionaries. They want to reshape Islam and fuse it with the modern world of science, technology and mass politics to create a new kind of society. The Taliban rose up because they thought the Islamists had failed to do this. And instead the Taliban decided to go back into the past and try and reinvent an old world.

My observation is while I believe that Afghanistan is not a winnable war, I'm wondering whether the sole consideration about assessing the Taliban should be the threat that they pose to the 'west.' In any case, that's a choice for the Afghans to decide. Still while agreeing that humanitarian intervention is a thing of the past, I'm thinking/hoping that they ought to be a way for other countries to show that they disapprove of the values of the Taliban without belittling the Afghans and using well-intentioned paternalism.