Haroon has a brilliant post answering the fallacy that Al Qaeda is a western conspiracy. By such logic, it is more likely to be a Chinese one, anyway.
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aziz
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aziz
Muslim Americans, The Next Generation: a guest post at City of Brass by Willow which is pretty much the perfect example of muslims “reflecting about their faith” that non-muslims are always insisting we do in response to violence and whatnot.
an excerpt:
Ironically I think Muslims are at a disadvantage because Islamic law is comparatively easy to practice and apply in isolation. The result is a community with a sustainable level of conservatism (ie, it’s not like orthodox Jewish or Catholic doctrine, which are almost impossible to keep up en toto outside a Jewish or a Catholic community with established kashrut/regular access to communion etc). Other communities were forced to give up a great deal of religious life simply because the bells-n-smells necessary to sustain it weren’t there. Muslims in America haven’t been forced to make compromises. So any compromises they do make come with an almost hilarious level of groaning and moaning, like they are doing everyone a ginormous favor by budging an inch.
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aziz
Malaysia and Turkey make for an interesting case study comparison, in terms of how they approach the West.
This piece on Turkey’s approach to religious tolerance is also relevant; would be interested in a similar assessment for Malaysia. Any suggestions?
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thabet
Below are some examples of why a policy of ‘killing lots of people we call Taliban’ is pointless.
Conor Foley, humanitarian aid worker:
Rory Stewart, former aid worker in Afghanistan:
Ralph Lopez, reporter for The Boston Globe:
But a die-hard, dedicated army of fighters who pledge allegiance to the Taliban ideology and cause? It’s not there. Even Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged last March, “Roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money.’’ And General Karl Eikenberry, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said to Congress in 2007: “Much of the enemy force is drawn from the ranks of unemployed men looking for wages to support their families.’’
The dirty little secret is that the renewed insurgency could have been avoided. The vast majority of Afghans still hate the Taliban. They remember the days of heads and hands getting lopped off in the National Stadium, and men flogged because their beards were not long enough. No one is eager to see them return. But in a nation with 40 percent unemployment, working for the Taliban is the only job in town. As the saying goes, you might not like the work, but that’s who’s hiring.
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buzz
I viewed some of the Hizb ut Tahrir America teleconference and videos yesterday. And I had a few reactions I wanted to share.
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thabet
The UK will need a 40 year commitment in Afghanistan says Britain’s highest ranking soldier:
General Sir David Richards, who becomes Chief of the General Staff later this month, said in a newspaper interview: “I believe that the UK will be committed to Afghanistan in some manner – development, governance, security sector reform – for the next 30 to 40 years.”
He is already being criticised by politicians, but his argument is right if seen within the framework laid out by the UK and other Western powers for their involvement in Afghanistan beyond countering a terrorist threat (nation-building, democracy, human rights). It will take decades for this to ever become a reality.
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johnpi
Zionist Hasbara activists are marketing the production of the first all Israeli/all Jewish porno film. Why?
Richard Silverstein tells all:
Make no mistake, this is not a one-off promotion by an odd-ball Jewish gay pornographer. This is part of an orchestrated hasbara campaign spearheaded by groups like Stand With Us, who promoted Israel during the latter’s Gay Pride Festival as a natural ally of gays around the world. The angle for SWU (and there always IS an angle with groups like this) is to trumpet the alleged homophobia of Palestinian/Arab society compared to the alleged freedom and tolerance of “western” Israel towards a gay lifestyle. Never mind that Israel is less tolerant of gays than the average western country. That matters little for the hasbaraniks of SWU.
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thabet
Rory Stewart, a man who should know something about Afghanistan and who I don’t think can be described as a pacifist, writes about our role in Afghanistan in the latest edition of the London Review of Books:
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johnpi
An Iranian in Iran looks over the fence and tackles some of the disturbing counter-narratives that are developing in the US and the West about the Iranian election (I call out a few others here).
Their descriptions of where the protests are taking place, and why, also draw on pernicious myths of an iron correlation between religion and class, between location and voting tendency, in Iran.
This false geography imagines South Tehran and the countryside as home only to the poor, those natural allies of political Islam, while North Tehran embodies unbridled gharbzadegi (translated as “Weststruckness” or “Westernitis”) and is populated by people addicted to the Internet and vacations in Paris. It is as if political Islam withers north of Vanak Square and the only residents to be found are “liberals” who voted for the opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi.
We must not assume that the engagement of members of society with their religion is uniform or that religious devotion equals automatic loyalty to a particular brand of politics. To do so is certainly to deny Iran’s poor the capacity to think for themselves…
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thabet
“What is the deal with Western men’s erotic obsession with the East?”
A book review of The East, the West and Sex.
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thabet
As’ad Abu Khalil has a couple of posts on the Western response to Iranian protests.
One of them is a response from an Iranian reader, which I think highlights the stupidity of becoming involved in political conflicts you do not understand:
…I am glad that you are defending neither [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad nor [Mir Hossein] Mousavi. It is frustrating that everyone I talk to from Pakistan to Egypt loves Ahmadinejad and is shocked to hear that many Iranians think he is ineffective and embarrassing. Meanwhile every Westerner seems to think that Mousavi is a great reformist or revolutionary, and some kind of saintly figure beloved by all. He’s an opportunist crook.
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johnpi
Westoxification: Boy chosen by Dalai Lama turns back on Buddhist order.
The boy chosen by the Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of a spiritual leader has caused consternation – and some embarrassment – for Tibetan Buddhists by turning his back on the order that had such high hopes for him.
Instead of leading a monastic life, Osel Hita Torres now sports baggy trousers and long hair, and is more likely to quote Jimi Hendrix than Buddha. Yesterday he bemoaned the misery of a youth deprived of television, football and girls. …
He is now studying film in Madrid and has denounced the Buddhist order that elevated him to guru status. “They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal,” said Torres, 24, describing how he was whisked from obscurity in Granada to a monastery in southern India.
By 18, he had never seen couples kiss. His first disco experience was a shock. “I was amazed to watch everyone dance. What were all those people doing, bouncing, stuck to one another, enclosed in a box full of smoke?”
Sounds like a Muslim guy I know…
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johnpi
OIC statement on internal and external challenges to Islam lacks clarity and deliberately obscures.
He said the internal challenges against Islam include the spread of evil ideas under the guise of Islam with the aim of corrupting pure Islamic principles with un-Islamic ideologies.
A classic example of worthless political verbiage. This isn’t a political statement, it’s a Rorschach test. Which ideas is he talking about? Is he decrying ‘Westoxification’ or is he referring to ‘Taliban paganism’ or something else? I know there are sets of ideas out there that different groups of Muslims claim are a corruption, but where does the OIC stand in that debate?
He further warned against frequent media attempts to attribute extraneous ideas to Islam as though they are part of Islamic creed.
Same problem. Insert your own angry thought here. Perhaps he is resisting the dreaded ‘hegemony of human rights discourse’ we’ve all come to know and love. Who knows?
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thabet
David Gardner has a good article on the West’s damaging involvement in the Middle East, although I disagree with his description of ‘bin Ladenists’ as ‘fascists’* largely due to the lack of an ethnic and economic component in the ‘vision’ (if we can call it that) of such people.
Of course, one may choose are other words to accurately describe these groups: authoritarian, imperialist, dictatorial, tyrannical, violent nihilists, totalitarian, etc.
*Kemalism is the only ideology I can think of that is close to Muslim-based fascism (though it clearly it isn’t ‘Islamofascism’).
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thabet
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thabet
The recent Doha Debate on political Islam and the West is available on Tinternet.
(See more from Wajahat Ali.)
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thabet
A reader sent me a link to the The Muslim West Facts Project by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation.
So I am sharing it with you.
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thabet
I have just heard a BBC World news presenter described the South African killed in Kabul recently as a ‘Westerner’.
Is South Africa included in the narrative of ‘the West’?
Or only South Africans with European ancestors?
(I have no information about the individual killed, and am guessing.)
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aziz
thursday thread: What are the minimal set of values for a Western nation-state?
(old topic, at GNXP. But a fresh discussion might be more instructive amongst us, because of our unique position astride the Gash of Civilizations).
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thabet
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thabet
Russia wants “regime change” in Georgia, says US.
Steve LeVine puts this conflict into context — it is all part of the ongoing ‘pipeline wars’.
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thabet
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aziz
Manas is on a blog hiatus, but don’t miss this older post about why he feels the “West vs Islam” is a false dichotomy.
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thabet
The West in Bollywood: When a female character is to be portrayed as ‘Western’ or ‘Westernised’ in a Bollywood, her hemline receds drastically.
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thabet
Moral issues divide Westerners from Muslims in the West.
(Does this mean Muslims in the West are not Westerners?)
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thabet
The years 1950 to 2000 will go down in history as the Golden Age of The West.
(Of course, people in in the far future may not be as fascinated with history and historiography as we are today.)
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thabet
“Western civ”: an American war baby
In both its remote and immediate origins, “Western civ” was a war baby. The first such course was instituted at Columbia immediately after World War I, as a continuation of the “war issues” course offered during hostilities. It defined the traditions of the West as those for which the Allies had fought against the Hun. The course had few imitators between the wars, but after World War II it became the most widely taught history course on American campuses. Courses of this type were strongly urged by the influential report of Havard’s General Education Committee in 1945, whose principal concerns, according to a sympathetic commentator, were “‘why we fight’, the principles of a free society, the need to provide a consistent image of the American experience, the definition of democracy in a world of totalitarianism, the efforts to fortify the heritage of Western civilization, and the need to provide a ‘common learning’ for all Americans as a foundation of national unity.
- Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession
