Akram's Razor - Reflections on Islam, Muslims & America

Leave no arms merchant behind

Johann Hari has sharp piece on the OBL assassination and US foreign policy. Here's a choice excerpt:

Flawed US policy keeps Osama's message alive - Analysis, Opinion - Independent.ie

Osama Bin Laden is dead, but US foreign policy is still giving him what he wanted. The US is bleeding cash. The angry, fighting people in Afghanistan today are -- according to leaked CIA reports -- overwhelmingly "a tribal, localised insurgency" who "see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power". They have "no goals" beyond Afghanistan's borders.

Even General Petraeus, the new head of the CIA, says there are only 100 al-Qa'ida fighters in the whole of Afghanistan. One senior military official compared their intelligence on them to "Bigfoot sightings". Crunch the numbers, and you find the US is spending $1.5bn (€1.03bn) a year on each al-Qa'ida fighter in Afghanistan. Is there anyone alive, except the private defence contractors making a fortune, who thinks that is a sensible use of cash?

Emphasis added. And Republicans shrilly denounce "Obamacare" as spendthrift profligacy.  Yet when it comes to the Pentagon, the cat seems to have the tongue of the folks who insist we're too broke for even the most minimal trappings of a modern society (i.e., basic social spending), to the extent of blocking spending that undeniably saves us money.

To say this is a "guns vs. butter" quandary doesn't really capture the Kafkaesque reasoning, because we've basically abandoned any pretense that there even is a quandary, a need to invest in both objectives.  It's all guns.

Forget about the war's dubious morality, the huge human cost on both sides, its relentlessly counterproductive geopolitical consequences, the seeming impossibility of winning it, or the conspicuous absence of an exit strategy or success criteria on the part of its boosters. Let's just boil it down to the bottom line: How can we even afford this endless welfare program for arms merchants, defense contractors and corrupt warlords?

I want my tax dollars back.

The Arab Street is owed an apology!

Most of the time I post stuff about Denmark, it tends to be bad news--of course, if you're a Muslim observer of Danish politics there's often been, sadly, pretty good reason for that--so I thought I'd try to atone a bit by translating this very thoughtful and topical piece by a Danish pundit on the lessons of the Arab Spring.

One could quibble about a few small things (e.g., identifying Saudi-funded establishments as "ultra-orthodox"; their claim to orthodoxy is rather debatable), but I think his thesis is dead-on. For years, it's been customary to dismiss the Arab masses with this offensive shorthand that casts them as a mindless  herd of animals, and Western media need to eat some crow now that their lazy, dehumanizing cliches have been so spectacularly disproven.

[Moved it over to the Tikkun Daily blog.]

No doubt I've translated some things poorly, so Danes lurking out there are encouraged to chime in and correct any mistakes.

You'll note that this isn't in Jyllands-Posten (the newspaper that became an international household name by publishing the infamous political cartoons that launched a thousand protests, demonstrations and ugly stereotypes).  Denmark has a number of national newspapers. Unlike Jyllands-Posten, Politiken is on the Left--the Danish equivalent of The New York Times, not that I find the Gray Lady  particularly leftist most of the time--and when it comes to the cartoons and Danish Muslims it has almost been "The Anti-Jyllands-Posten."

Its then editor in chief, the recently deceased Tøger Seidenfaden, was very critical of the decision of his counterpart at Jyllands-Posten (Fleming Rose) to publish the cartoons--as was I at the time--and one of its most prominent columnists, Rune Engelbreth Larsen, has long been a one-man Danish answer to the Southern Poverty Law Center, exhaustively documenting the rising tide of xenophobia and Islamophobia within Danish society and giving the desperately-needed straight dope on the significance of the cartoons and the factors in their bizarre transformation from mole hills to mountains.

Speaking of how different Politiken's political role has been, the newspaper under Seidenfaden's leadership even went so far as to issue an apology last year to Muslims for the cartoons. They were reacting to an international class action suit by Sayyids (i.e., descendants of the Prophet, peace be on him). Ironically, here we part company, as I think this move was a big mistake, not to mention a pointless gesture given how Seidenfaden and Politiken had nothing to do with the cartoons in the first place.

Now, I respect the good intentions at work and think the desire to turn a new page in Danish-Muslim relations was quite understandable, but the lawsuit was a farce. Its premise (that a group a Muslims who happen to be allegedly descended from the Prophet were especially harmed by the cartoons and somehow had legal standing to seek damages on his and/or the Ummah's behalf) was absurd, geopolitically counterproductive and self-evidently contrary to the precepts of international law.

That lawsuit reminds me of these short-sighted and ultimately dangerous campaigns by Middle Eastern countries to get the UN to outlaw blasphemy. It's rather embarrassing to see representatives of Muslim countries displaying such appalling ignorance of the fundamentals of law and Western political values  (though this is obviously intended more for domestic political consumption, not unlike the immoral, theocratic blackmail over family planning and abortion that Washington regularly engages in when Republicans are in charge). International law should only (and, indeed, ultimately can only) concern itself with the welfare of human beings, so the advocacy of pet religious dogmas or even religious faith itself simply has no place in such matters.

To go down any other road calls the entire legal edifice into question. And, besides, if these leaders had any understanding of law, they'd realize there already was a legal framework for taking action against Islamophobic demagoguery. To the extent real harm is being caused by such cases of "blasphemy," there  undoubtedly already is legal precedent under international law by virtue of their incitement of hatred between communities (not unlike how anti-Holocaust denial laws work).

But I digress, as usual.

Update: I've moved the translation over to Tikkun Daily blog.

 

Stop what you're doing and listen to Obama's Cairo speech

For those wondering where to find it, I just listened to the audio for President Obama's historic speech in Cairo on NPR's website (from which you can download it, as well, if you don't have a connection fast enough for streaming audio). NPR also has the transcript, too, but their version isn't print-friendly. WaPo's transcript is much better for that purpose. And HuffPo has the video.

So much to parse and ponder.

Aside from the from-a-sitting-President-shockingly evenhanded tone, the biggest news is probably its unequivocal rejection of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Don't have time to react in any detail now and I realize that you can only cover so much ground in an address of this nature (even one weighing in at nearly 6,000 words), but I will say that as happy (and proud) as I am with it overall, I would've liked for it to touch on non-Muslim rights in Muslim societies. Given all the respect he showed to Islam and Muslims, when he discussed the largely successful integration of Muslims in American life it would've been entirely fair and rhetorically balanced to note in passing that work needs to be done to fully enfranchise non-Muslim minorities in many Islamic societies. In a day when Islamic media hold forth loudly about the rights and dignity of Muslim minorities around the globe, it's high time they started discussing the lack thereof for Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim communities in too many parts of the Muslims societies and the barrier this presents to Western-Islamic rapprochment. This needs to be on the agenda.

But that's a fairly minor quibble in the scheme of things, as the address was inspiring, constructive and courageous on so many levels.

The knives are really going to come out from the Israel-firsters and "dhimmi"-chanting Islamophobodunces at this drawing of a line in the sand before Bibi on settlements, but they're going to have to tread lightly, as all but the certifably insane instinctively understand that new, more pragmatic approaches are desperately called for in the Middle East peace process than this endless carte blanche to hardliners in Tel Aviv to do as they will. Some good old fashioned tough love is called for from Washington--to both sides--for everybody's sake.

Interesting times these. Could the virtues of common sense and long term planning are slowing making headway inside Beltway Mideast policy circles?

Update (2009-06-08): Silly me, I see that Obama did address the question of religious freedom, if a bit more obliquely than I hoped. 

Past thoughts on nonviolence

Am still mulling over Gorenberg's piece, but while those wheels make their glacial turns in my head, here's a snippet I wrote last year on this subject in reaction to one of Mark Steyn's trademark artful-but-intellectually-wanting rants against Muslims.

My thinking has evolved somewhat since then, but it raises some concerns that I think remain valid.

Akram's Razor - "The resurrection of Willie Horton in the age of Islamophobia ":

Then there's how baldly hypocritical Steyn's Gandhi-invoking rhetoric is given his conflict-stoking ways. You have to admire the cheek of hawks who loudly call for no-holds-barred confrontation and who mock peace activists as clueless idealists that can turn around and chide Muslims for not being pacifists like them.

You can be a great admirer, as I am, of Muslim pacifists like Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Jawdat Said while conceding that there are cases today where Muslim peoples are caught between Scylla and Charybdis that makes pacifism--which is never an easy path to walk--ineffective as a means of resistance to oppression.

Were people in most key conflicts involving Muslims today to embrace the noblest ideals of Gandhian non-violence in their struggles it is doubtful that their tactics would work as they have in the past.

The power of non-violent resistance lies in the shame and aversion it inspires in mainstream observers who feel implicated in the conflict. This reaction is only possible in the context of media that attempt to accurately report on the human suffering of a conflict. A partisan or indifferent media shortcircuits the system. (As does one that disseminates bloodless, "Nintendo wars"; or one that eagerly enlists in a wartime government's disinformation campaigns.)

When the media systematically ignore or play down violence against one side of a conflict, folks back home in Peoria never have the chance to get revolted/shamed/irritated/outraged enough for non-violent resistance to have a chance at succeeding. Nonviolence requires vocal public support, which in turn requires public awareness. Yet like the old Zen koan about the tree in the forest, the sicing of dogs on Black civil rights worker by white policemen would never have "happened" were it not for the presence of TV cameras that forced mainstream viewers to confront the evil of the Jim Crow system in which they all played a part as citizens.

As much as one wants to advocate nonviolence, what good would adopting Gandhian tactics do in, say, Chechnya, where the Western media pays little attention to the ongoing slaughter and violation of human rights. Were Chechens to march, holding hands, on the Russian tanks singing Negro Spirituals, their foremost accomplishment would probably be to reduce wasted bullets. By the same token, in the Occupied Territories, unless a camera crews happen to be about the only folks granted the luxury of nonviolent protest are Western tourists. Palestinians who stick flowers into IDF gun muzzles are likely to catch a gun butt or rubber bullet in the face. So their options are a lot more limited than those of protesters in Western societies, where law enforcement and officialdom fear bad press.

More links on Gaza

For those looking to get up to speed on Israel's inhumane attacks on Gaza, Islamicate has an excellent roundup (one which kindly refers to moi).

Thought I'd add a few additional useful links:

• Stephen M. Walt: Israel's military power hasn't improved its strategic position and friends of the Jewish state must point out its mistakes--beginning with Gaza
  The co-author of  "The Israel Lobby" questions the wide spread assumption of near-Solomonic wisdom, competence and foresight on the part of Israeli leaders at all times. He shows how, far from an aberration, this conflict is just the latest bloody blunder by brash, short-term-thinking in Tel Aviv.  (This is not a mere academic point given how so many in American politics automatically follow Israel's lead in whatever policies it pursues, assuming it to always "know what it's doing".)

• Sabrina Tavernise: Line blurs between targeting Hamas and destroying civilian institutions  

• Uri Avnery: How Many Divisions? - Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Bloc
  The famous Israel peace activist utterly demolishes the Israeli government's justifications and spin. This conflict was instigated by Israel and could have been avoided completely had Tel Aviv condescended to deal with Gaza's democratically elected government. He highlights how the IDF has been caught lying about its endlessly invoked "Hamas was firing at us" justification.  A stirring j'accuse that people need to read.
  
• Scale of Gaza destruction emerges
  
  
• Neve Gordon: How Israel is selling the idea of 'ethical warfare'
  A journalist analyses how Israel's PR machine has turned reality on its head and spun its unbridled disregard for Palestinian life in this attack and packaged it as humane surgical strikes.
  

• Randall Kuhn:  When Israel expelled Palestinians 
  A Jewish American activist translates this conflict and its injustice into terms an American terms, showing how asinine and immoral the "America would do the same" arguments are that we've heard ad nauseam in the American media.
  
• Leading British Jews call on Israel to halt 'horror' of Gaza

• Ralph Nader's Letter to Bush on Gaza Crisis
  
  
• Khalid Mish'al - This brutality will never break our will to be free
  It will come as news to many who rely exclusively on the MSM for their news, but there are two (if not many more) sides to this debate. Here, Hamas leader Khalid Mishal makes some very serious points that are not easily dismissed and which deserve a response. Whatever one thinks of Hamas' methods, Mishal's quip that the international community acts as if it wants Palestinians to just die quietly at Israel's hands is painfully true.

• John Pilger: Holocaust Denied: The lying silence of those who know
   Pilger calls this attack and the longstanding pattern of behavior by Israel towards Gaza what they are: genocidal.
  
• BBC FAQ on Gaza. What a contrast to the pro-Israeli slant of most American MSM backgrounders.

A more accurate analogy for Americans observing the Israeli onslaught in Gaza

Thanks to Al-Hewar's email bulletin, I've belatedly discovered this refreshingly level-headed and honest op-ed from a week ago by Jewish American professor and activist Randall Kuhn, which points out the inanity and moral repugnance of the "America would do the same" analogies trotted out by so many spineless American politicians to justify Israel's carnage in Gaza.

 Washington Times - KUHN: When Israel expelled Palestinians: (emphasis added)

In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."

[...]

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.

What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.

What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.

And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.

Note the final sentence of my excerpt. Where is this crucial insight from the war-mongering coverage in the MSM?

I'm not exactly a Washington Times fan, but I must give the Devil his due: The Times may often be rabidly jingoistic and Islamophobic, but it  occasionally allows dissent within its op-ed pages from the Beltway's Middle East madness that is unthinkable in America's newspaper of record (and allegedly liberal) New York Times.

As usual, I'm disgusted by how instinctively so many American "leaders" rationalize any violence, no matter how disproportionate or indiscriminate, against Palestinians. The Palestinians' dehumanization in the American psyche truly is complete. Goebbels would be proud.

The Bard said it well in "The Merchant of Venice":

He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

Seems particularly apropos (and prophetic), doesn't it?

When Israel kills so wantonly and lawlessly, how can it profess outrage when the Palestinians "better the instruction" and continue the bloody cycle?

Or are only Israelis permitted to seek revenge when wronged?

Israeli econ. blockade devastates 52% of Gazan households

Israel's curious pursuit of "peace" with Palestinians. Consider it a reverse Marshall Plan.

MIDEAST: Poverty in Gaza Hits "Unprecedented" Level (IPS)

In both the West Bank and Gaza, young people aged 15 to 24 are the most likely of any group to be unemployed, while the number of households in Gaza below the poverty line has reached an historic high of nearly 52 percent, according to a new report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) issued Thursday.

There's more.

More like "Rest in peace."

Aren't Obama's critics the ones who keep getting "duped"?

The ever insightful Jim Lobe injects some perspective into the vacuous Beltway debate about Obama's alleged naivete in being committed to talking rather than shooting first in the Middle East.

LobeLog.com » Blog Archive » The Chalabsey Twins*

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman have been traveling around the country together repeatedly charging that Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign-policy ideas are “naive” and even “reckless.” But what they hope their audiences will forget is that both of them were taken in by the most-successful foreign-policy con man — and apparently a close friend of Iranian intelligence — of his generation, Ahmad Chalabi.

Touche. Lobe continues:

it seems frankly unseemly for the two of them to now charge Obama with being dangerously naive about foreign policy and what it takes to deal with crafty and malevolent Middle Eastern leaders, like Iran and its friends and allies. Not only were they completely taken in by Chalabi and the INC, but they were also, as Paul Wolfowitz now admits, completely “clueless” about what U.S. troops would face once they got to Iraq. And they obviously either failed to consult or disbelieved the Iraq experts in the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community, not to mention former Centcom commander Gen. Anthony Zinni, who had long before concluded that Chalabi was a con artist who could not be trusted.

With sophistication like that — in contrast to Obama’s naivete — a McCain administration would seem ripe for the picking by would-be Chalabis, if not by the master himself.

Johann Hari: The loathsome smearing of Israel's critics

Examples like this is why I get such a kick out of the complaints about the supposedly inordinate influence of CAIR and Muslims in general in American politics. As if Muslims can generate a fraction of the heat constantly unleashed by all these pro-Israeli pressure groups.

But frank discussions of the predations against open debate by the imaginary yet curiously powerful and visible Israeli Lobby is to traffic in conspiracy theories, so I'll shut up. Conspiracy theories about pro Israeli pressure groups whose influence is legendary in Washington and who've even been demonstrated to be extremely conspiratorial (Does plotting to infiltrate Wikipedia count?) are offensive, you see. The only conspiracy theories permitted today are those concerning American Muslims and organizations like CAIR.

HT: Omer Subhani

Johann Hari: The loathsome smearing of Israel's critics - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.

My own case isn't especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me "a Jew-lover", "a Zionist-homo pig" and more.

Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn't controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes.

The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile "pro-Israel" writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.

IPS: "Iraq Invasion - 5 Years On"

Rather than summarize its latest reports myself, I'll just share the latest newsletter (which you should be getting if you're looking for sober, honest analysis of US foreign policy) from the Inter Press Service News Agency in Washington, DC.

IPS has a fraction of a fraction of the resources of MSM outlets, but runs rings around them in terms of insight and topicalness.

5th Anniversary of the War in Iraq
===================================
Why Did the U.S. Invade Iraq?
     Analysis by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - So why, exactly, did the U.S. invade Iraq five years ago this week? The official reasons -- the threat posed to the U.S. and its allies by Saddam Hussein's alleged WMD programmes and the possibility that he would pass along those arms to al Qaeda -- have long since been discarded by the overwhelming weight of the evidence, or, more precisely, the lack of evidence that such a threat ever existed.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41643

*****
IRAQ: Five Years, And Counting
     Analysis by Dahr Jamail
WASHINGTON - Devastation on the ground and largely held Iraqi opinion contradicts claims by U.S. officials that the situation in Iraq has improved towards the fifth anniversary of the invasion Mar. 20. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41630

*****
"I Saw the Interrogator Waterboarding Him"
     Aaron Glantz
SILVER SPRING, Maryland - "I would like to share with you how one goes about becoming a concentration camp guard without having made many decisions," 24-year-old former Guantanamo prison guard Christopher Arent told a crowd of hundreds at the Winter Soldier gathering outside Washington, DC.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41633

*****
"We Reacted Out of Fear, and With Total Destruction"
     Dahr Jamail
SILVER SPRING, Maryland - Hart Viges joined the U.S. Army the day after Sep. 11, 2001, in the belief that he could help make the world a safer place. He ended up stationed in Fallujah, and then Baghdad. "We were the only authority and took full advantage of that."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41596

Rules of Engagement "Thrown Out the Window"
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41605

*****
Anti-War Grannies Arrested Trying to Enlist
     Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA - As part of actions across the United States to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, 10 "Grandmothers for Peace", ranging in age from 57 to 80, were arrested Monday while trying to enlist in the United States Army. Acts of civil disobedience are planned this week in at least 17 other U.S. cities.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41625

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Iraq: Beyond the Green Zone -
http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/iraq/index.asp

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IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.

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Visit Inter Press Service at http://www.ipsnews.net