My sons graduated from there, and Middle Guy graduated in 2005.

He wasn't friends with Joseph Anzak, Jr. who was captured two weeks ago and was then killed in Iraq. He played football at South while Middle Guy debated. But Anzak's parents were at PTA meetings with us, went to the same Starbucks, shopped at Ralphs with us.

Please never doubt for a second that I see the the real costs of our policies; I can only ask that people who disagree with our policies be as aware of the costs of the alternatives.

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First, let's go to the left side of the board.

Glenn Greenwald (writing as himself) trumpets this on Salon: Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert. Well, great - except that it's prosecutor Fitzgerald's filing that makes the claim. Now there's an obvious joke about leftists, Stalin, and show trials, but personally, I'm unhappy with the thought that Greenwald might grant someone - say, Patterico - the right to make claims like these and suddenly enshrine them as fact. When the legal process concludes that she was covert, I'll happily accept that determination - and even apologize to whichever of Greenwald's personae he deems appropriate.

Now, the right.

In the Washington Times, Audrey Hudson comments on the release of a federal report on how the Flight 327 incident was handled and leaps directly to the Isle of Conclusion:

The inspector general for Homeland Security late Friday released new details of what federal air marshals say was a terrorist dry run aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29, 2004.

Several portions of the report remain redacted. The release stems from a Freedom of Information request by The Washington Times in April 2006. The Times first reported on July 22 that this and other probes and dry runs were occurring on commercial flights since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Let's be clear. Nothing in the report (pdf available here) makes that conclusion. I'll repeat. Nowhere that I could find it in the real report was it so concluded.

Hudson cites current and former air marshals:

"This report is evidence of Homeland Security executives attempting to downplay and cover up an unmistakable dry run that forced flight attendants to reveal the air marshals and compel the pilots to open the flight deck door," said Robert MacLean, a former air marshal who was fired last year for revealing that the service planned to cut back on protection for long-distance flights to save money.

Look, I think our air marshall program is inadequate. I know that the agencies running them are bureaucracies full of careerist trolls.

But none of this is remotely dispositive. Patterico thinks that the marshalls onsite - the ones who said "We Don't Freak Out In Situations Like This." - are in CYA mode. C'mon Patrick - that's silly. They made contemporaneous comments to that effect. They controlled the situation. And to bring up what they said at the time:

LOS ANGELES | July 22, 2004 - Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, "overreacted," to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.

The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service. (hat tip Patterico)

I've written a bunch about this, and nothing here (in the current blog posts, news articles, or in the report itself) changes my view of what probably happened or of the relatively useless morass airport security has become.

XLRQ cites the report:

Other Comments TSA noted in comments that it disagreed with our report language that there was a lack of coordinated action between the FAMS and FBI. Our audit identified examples where the Department’s investigators were interviewing individuals and taking other investigative actions without the direction or knowledge of the FBI. Because we also found activities where the FBI and the Department were clearly coordinated, we revised the report language to say the investigations were "sometimes" uncoordinated.

TSA also commented that it believed a referral of the suspicious activity that occurred on Flight 327 did not merit referral to the HSOC. TSA’s comments note, "The decision not to contact the HSOC was decided only after the FAMS and FBI leadership jointly determined that the subjects could be cleared. The reported suspicious activity was determined to be unfounded, and not a terrorist threat and therefore did not merit an HSOC referral." We believe the HSOC clearly signaled a referral was merited by logging the Flight 327 matter into its database on July 26, 2004, following a July 22, 2005 Washington Times article, and an inquiry from the White House Homeland Security Council.

So the air marshals onsite are in CYA mode - but the bureaucrats in Washington aren't?

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For the past twenty centuries, the tribes living in the eastern regions of the Arabian peninsula have been leading a pastoral life as opposed to a settled life, roaming in search of pasturage and water. As a result of this lifestyle, the attitude of the Arab tribesman living in those regions to such notions as loyalty, objectivity and neutrality cannot be understood in isolation from the sociology of nomadism, the culture pattern of Bedouin tribes forced by their environment to move constantly in search of sustenance. Their unconditional loyalty is reserved for the sheikh of the tribe; objectivity is an alien concept and neutrality akin to treason.
As the eminent Egyptian critic Galal el-Ashry noted in his treatise on Arab creativity, the only creative area in which the Arabs excelled was poetry. That is the only form of artistic expression they produced for reasons we shall not go into here. They did not produce theatre, novels, epics, music or other creative forms like the Greeks and, before them, the Egyptians and the Sumerians.
The poetry composed by the poets hailing from the eastern regions of the Arabian peninsula is a mirror reflecting the value system of the tribes of the region, their mores, concerns, behaviour and thinking. The image reflected by their poetry has remained unchanged for centuries. An ode written in classical Arabic over ten centuries ago by a poet from Najd reflects the same values and world view as one written in the vernacular by a poet living in Najd today. Most of the poetry of the region, old and new, resounds with the cadence of stirring imagery, its main themes pride and the superiority of the Bedouin, who is always victorious, never defeated, who bows to no one and stands high above all others. In fact, the word for ‘lofty’ in Arabic is nouf, from whence the proper names Nayef, Nouf and Nawaf. This then is the message that thousands of odes by poets from Najd, Hasa, al-Qassim and al-Hofouf have tried to convey ever since the Arabic language in its present form came into being and up to the present day. This view of life as reflected by the poetry of the region encapsulates the sociology of its nomadic tribes.
The reason we are focusing on the eastern inland areas of the Arabian peninsula rather than on the eastern coastal areas and the region of Hejaz is that the inland areas were the crucible in which the brand of Islamist thinking known as Wahabism was forged. During the second half of the twentieth century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia spent hundreds of billions of dollars to spread this doctrine, which had by then become influenced by three external factors: the ideas of Abul Ala’ el-Mawdoody, Sayed Qutb and the Soroureya school of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Syrian chapter. But these factors did not dilute the essence of the Wahabi understanding of Islam. On the contrary, because of the simplistic thinking of Mohamed ibn Abdul Wahab in comparison with the schools of el-Mawdoody, Qutb and the Soroureya, they helped to reinforce it and swell the ranks of its adherents.
The tribal Arab mindset formed in the inland deserts of the eastern Arabian peninsula took over leadership of intellectual life in Arab and Muslim societies after the failure of the stage of liberalism and the blend of socialism and Arab nationalism that had at one time held sway. However, the degree to which Arab and Muslim societies have come to be influenced by the tribal mentality born in the harsh eastern wasteland of the Arabian peninsula differs from one society to another in proportion to each society’s historical and cultural legacy and according to its political and socio-economic conditions. Thus while its influence was most strongly felt in the inland regions of the Arabian peninsula, it was weaker in the coastal cities of the peninsula and weaker still in societies like Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Iraq and India that enjoy a richer legacy of history, civilization and culture than the Arabian peninsula. Still, the Bedouin world view forged in the barren deserts of the eastern Arabian peninsula and expressed in the poetry produced by poets from the region is the most important key to understanding the ways of thinking prevailing in many Arab and Muslim societies.
The culture pattern that formed the Bedouin world view is in total contradiction with the concept of statehood. Loyalty to the sheikh of the tribe is personal by its very nature while loyalty to the state is a more abstract notion. In the tribe, obedience to the wishes and instructions of the sheikh is the counterpart to the modern citizen’s adherence to the constitutional and legal rules of the state. According to the sociology of the tribal mindset, the specificity of which has been described in some detail in this article, the Other is perceived as an enemy or, at best, as a potential enemy to be neutralized. In the modern state system, on the other hand, the Other is regarded as a natural expression of the diversity of life, inspiring neither rejection nor enmity. In a tribal environment there can be no discussion of such issues as diversity, acceptance of the Other, engaging in self-criticism and accepting criticism, the universal nature of knowledge or the recognition that it is the collective legacy of humanity as a whole, all fruits of the modern, progressive, civilized state. Indeed the very notion of humanity is alien to the tribal society.
If we borrow from the great philosopher Ibn Khaldoun his theory on the distinction between urban and Bedouin societies, we can say that the contemporary Islamic mindset (not Islam itself) is conditioned by a brand of Islam as understood, presented and propagated over the last half century by the Bedouin tribes living in the inland deserts of the eastern Arabian peninsula. Given that most of the Islamic centres and schools established in North America, Europe, Australia and in non-Muslim regions of Asia and Africa were set up at the initiative and with the funding of representatives of this insular tribal mindset it is not hard to understand why the world today sees itself locked in a major confrontation between humanity and Islam. In truth, however, the confrontation is between humanity and a model of Islam presented, financed and propagated by the Bedouin, or Najdi, mindset.
One of the most alarming developments of the last five decades is that the Najdi mindset did not stop at monopolizing Islamic centres and schools throughout the world but expanded its sphere of influence to include the mass media both within and outside Arab and Islamic societies. Its tentacles also spread to venerable Islamic institutions in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Syria, eroding their original features and replacing them with its own. Thus while in the past we knew when listening to the Friday sermon in Egypt that the speaker was either a Shafite or a Hannafite and in Morocco or Tunisia that he was a Maliki, we now hear an altogether different tune, a single Hanbalite note set to the music of ibn-Taymiyah and ibn-Abdul Wahab.
Although of all the Islamic jurists ibn-Hanbal was the most zealous proponent of orthodoxy and tradition, allowing little if any room for deductive reasoning [he accepted tens of thousands of the Prophet’s Hadiths as apostolic precept contrary to the great jurist Abu Hanifa, who accepted just over one hundred), he was a natural product of his time. It was a time the Islamic Empire was reeling from the onslaught of the Moguls and the Tatars, and he cannot be blamed for ideas that were appropriate to the age in which he lived. The blame lies with those who, living in a different time and place, base their ideas on those of ibn-Hanbal. Finally, Mohamed ibn-Abdul Wahab is by no means a jurist but merely a proselytizer seeking converts to the Najdi model of Islam which needs to be understood in the context of its tribal, Bedouin, insular, desert origins. Had it not been for the fact that oil was discovered in these regions, this model would have remained a prisoner of geography, locked behind the sand dunes of Najd which produced no art, music or literature but only poetry devoted to a single theme: the glorification of the tribal values of Najd.

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This is not exactly a new phenomenon. Liberals and progressives have long been split between their totalitarian-minded leftist wing that loves to enforce political correctness through "hate speech" laws and campus speech codes -- and those who recognize the social and political dangers inherent in banning speech that someone dislikes, and believe the answer to objectionable speech is more speech.

I've talked about this in the context of speech as discourse vs. speech as a manifestation of power, and cite Stephen Hicks:

What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.

If we adopt the first statement, then the solution is going to be some form of enforced altruism, under which we redistribute speech in order to protect the harmed, weaker groups. If the stronger, white males have speech tools they can use to the detriment of the other groups, then don't let them use those speech tools. Generate a list of denigrating words that harm members of the other groups and prohibit members of the powerful groups from using them. Don't let them use the words that reinforce their own racism and sexism, and don't let them use words that make members of other groups feel threatened. Eliminating those speech advantages will reconstruct our social reality - which is the same goal as affirmative action.

This is the position McCullagh and Kaminer suggest the ACLU is trending toward, and I think it's a bad one if true.

Suggested reading: "Repressive Tolerance" by Marcuse.

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I have concerns about immigration policy, but they are broader and far less apocalyptic, and I strongly believe that the concerns above are wrong, overblown, and in some cases dangerous.

Let's go through them.

The biggest impact on wages hasn't been at the bottom of the food chain, but on the high-wage industrial jobs which have been automated, exported, and deskilled. Border and immigration policy hasn't materially changed that. The impact on low-skill low-wage service, agriculture, and distribution jobs has doubtless been real - but when we look at the hollowing out of the middle class in the US, we look more closely at the layoffs from Flint than we do at the wage pressures at Hormel or WalMart.

It's fundamentally dishonest to conflate the real impact of globalization - in which high-wage US workers are now directly competing against lower-wage workers abroad - with the impact of porous borders in driving down US wages.

I refuse to believe that Trent really believes that it would be meaningfully difficult - in any non-Stalinist US regime - for 20 or 30 committed terrorists to get across the US borders. Locking down the borders tightly enough - and requiring a level of internal document control that would crank down illegal immigration to a level where we'd be safe from those 30 committed jihadis means we're all living Winston Smith's life. I'll take a pass, thank you.

Yes, increasing immigration is changing the cultural and political complexion of communities around the country. That can be a good thing - if we embrace and incorporate those communities and make them a part of the US civic religion. We in the US have not had the kinds of closed, insular ethnic communities that we've seen in Europe - and the key element of our immigration policy needs to be ensuring that the cost of living in the US is embracing the civic religion enshrined in our politics, and working hard to dissolve the tribal bonds into individual and family connection to our polity.

In general, I do believe that we need to look at macro-level policies like this and embrace a certain level of mess. That's called 'flexibility.'

People who actually build things in the real word know that things flex and that we need to design systems to flex - in sometimes unpredictable ways.

The picture above is of a Grand Prix motorcycle (a Suzuki, bring ridden by John Hopkins), and one of the keys in designing fast racing motorcycles is designing in the correct amount of flex. If you don't have it, the bike is unridable.

In designing policies around immigration and border security, maintaining awareness of flexibility and mess is critical. And no policy that doesn't acknowledge that those exist isn't a policy proposal and more than an inflexible motorcycle is a race winner. It's a paperweight.

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It is vital that the United States recognize this as a legitimate and broad-based secular democracy movement in Pakistan — isn’t this what America wants for the Muslim world? ...And Washington would at last be able to expand its friendship, currently restricted to just one Pakistani — Musharraf — to the 160 million other Pakistanis who want to lead a life of dignity in their own country and on the international stage.[CFR/IHT]

America's handling of the popular movement against Gen Musharraf's dictatorship fits a pattern. If it's not our "son of a bitch" facing a protesting crowds, then you have a "colour revolution", televised for international audiences. Spokesmen from various US government departments express sympathy for the struggle for democracy. But if it's "our son of a bitch", then Washington maintains silence in public, and hopes for a palace coup in private. Better that a dictator is replaced by another, than allow the mob on the streets to cause a new regime to be installed. There is some merit in this approach, especially if it can achieved along with a democratic veneer, but it is also one which America will be unable to take credit for. You won't, for instance, find too many Pakistanis thankful to America for the elections in 1988 that brought Benazir Bhutto to power, would you?

America must show greater sympathy and support for the mass movement against Musharraf. But not merely to become popular with the Pakistani people. Rather because, as Rohit Pradhan argues, the stable, moderate Pakistan that is crucial for international security is impossible unless it is also democratic.

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If your average person or blogger wants to do something really effective about this bill, let's face facts. You only have the power to name this bill and define it to the American people. That takes a "Cultural Cruise Missile" slogan that can be repeated over and over again on the web and talk radio to destroy the credibility of those supporting the bill.

Here is another example of what bloggers can do with the "Cultural Cruise Missile” approach to the "Family unification" provisions of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act."

Lets suppose that the Ft. Dix plotters had delayed. With this bill enacted, the Duka brothers then brought in more like minded Islamist relatives into the nation to aide them.

This provision makes very real the possibility that we could have suicide vest bombers here in the USA.

Imagine a Palestinian style suicide bomber team set up in an Islamic country that has a forward element in the USA like the Duka brothers. Instead of getting guns and training, this element scouts targets and gathers field expedient explosives for a carefully prepared relative -- say a female relative whose "honor" has been stained and thus is in imminent danger of being murdered -- and fly’s her to the USA for the attack.

Thus the "Family Unification" provisions of for the” Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act" are now "The Suicide Bomber Importation Provision" of the act!

I invite Winds of Change posters and other bloggers to submit their "Cultural Cruise Missile" slogan entries in the following categories:

1) Terrorism

2) Money versus the American people

3) National Party Politics -- Republican

4) National Party Politics -- Democrat.

Let’s see just how creative you all are...and make sure you share the best entries with your friends!

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"If I were a Copt, I would familiarize the world with the injustices caused to many Copts in Egypt since [the Free Officers Revolution in] 1952. They don't get the high-level political posts and executive positions that they deserve, not to mention their sparse [representation] in parliament.

"If I were a Copt, I would create a ruckus in Egypt, and in the world, over the fact that I pay taxes with which the state funds Al-Azhar University, while [Al-Azhar] does not permit Copts to attend any of its institutes.

"If I were a Copt, I would make a huge commotion in the world, because my taxes fund the construction of dozens of mosques, but, since 1952, the Egyptian state has not participated in the building of a single church, except for president Gamal Abd Al-Nasser's participation in funding the construction of the St. Marc Cathedral in Al-'Abasiyya, 40 years ago…

"If I were a Copt, I would publish articles, one after another, about how the [Egyptian] media ignores matters [concerning me] and my religious holidays – as it I and the Copts did not exist in Egypt.

"If I were a Copt, I would tell the entire world [how] the Coptic history of Egypt [is handled] in the Egyptian curriculum, and how the study material for the Arabic language no longer [includes] literary texts, qasidahs, poetry, stories, plays, and legends, but [only] Islamic texts which [belong] with the study material for religion [class] for Muslim pupils.

"If I were a Copt, I would flood the world with complaints about the suffering Copts go through [merely] in order to obtain a license to build a church – with their own funds, not with the public taxes that [they] participate in paying.

"If I were a Copt, I would bring the world to its feet because of the terrible things that some Muslim writers write and disseminate – about how a Copt should not be permitted to be the head of state, on [how a Copt should pay] the jizya [poll tax paid by protected non-Muslims under Islam], and how Copts should not be drafted into the military... [such as] the idiotic statements by Dr. Muhammad 'Imara [from Al-Azhar] – whose budget comes from the taxpayers, including the Copts…(2)

"If I were a Copt, I would conduct a campaign within [Egypt], and outside it, to abolish the 'religion' entry on the Egyptian identity card. Why should someone who conducts a relationship with me on the general and public level want to know what my religion is?...

"If I were a Copt, I would make the world understand that the issue of the Copts in Egypt is one of the symptoms of a [certain] mentality, whose influence has spread through this region of the world, and that all humanity must force [those] with this mentality to reconsider this discriminatory path."

Endnotes:

(1) Al-Masri Al-Yawm (Egypt), May 12, 2007.

(2) Dr. Muhammad 'Imara's book, Fitnat Al-Takfir Bayna Al-Shi'a Wal-Wahhabiyya Wal-Sufiyya ("The Civil Strife of Takfir Between Shi'ism, Wahhabism, and Sufism"), published in December 2006 by the Supreme Council for Muslim Affairs of the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments, accused the Christians of heresy and permitted the killing of non-Muslims. Following the subsequent uproar, 'Imara apologized and explained that he had only been quoting ancient sources permitting the killing of non-Muslims. Al-Qahira, (Egypt), February 6, 2007.

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Those who are pushing withdrawal and the cutting of funds are concerned with a variety of matters, first and foremost politics. But I would guess that some of them do indeed have a sincere concern for the safety of the troops. Unfortunately, that concern is all too often embedded in a combination of patronizing condescension ("those poor, benighted, undereducated, oppressed troops") and disapproval ("those babykillers, brutes, torturers").

I've searched for polls that might offer some information to answer the question of what the troops themselves think or want, but I've found nothing especially relevant. Petitions, either pro-withdrawal or anti (see this and this) tell us virtually nothing except that there are two thousand active military personnel ready to sign the former, and three thousand ready to sign the latter.

There are some older polls that questioned the military on Iraq-related issues, here, but no data on the current withdrawal or fund-cutting proposals. There's some interesting information available, though; in the most recent poll, which was taken at the end of 2006 among active military personnel (50% of whom had served in Iraq and 12% in Afghanistan). Morale was very high, support for the Iraq War was higher than lack of support, and more people thought success was likely than thought it unlikely.

But to me the most interesting responses were the answers to the following questions: how soon do you think the Iraqi military will be ready to replace large numbers of American troops, and how long do you think the U.S. will need to stay in Iraq to reach its goals?

Only 2% of the troops thought the answer to the first question would be "less than a year," and only 2% thought the answer to the second would be "1-2 years." The overwhelming bulk of the responses were in the "3 to 5 years" or even "5 to 10 years" categories, with a substantial minority thinking it might even take more than 10 years to accomplish either goal.

Contrast this with the impatience of Congress and much of the American public, who want it done by September or sooner or it will be "pull the plug" time. The members of the military who bear the brunt of it all understand the difficulty of the task, probably because they have studied the history of fighting insurgencies, guerilla wars, and terrorism far more than most of us have.

And yet, morale is high among them. They don't have the benefit of easy optimism, but they don't allow themselves the luxury of easy pessimism, either. I think what they are engaged in is actually realism, and that implies not only an awareness of the length of time this might take, but the extreme importance of the mission.

W. Thomas Smith Jr., a former US Marine infantry leader and now journalist on military matters, has written this piece about Iraq for the National Review. Smith dispenses with some misconceptions the general public, fed on a steady diet of MSM misinformation, have about the Iraqi people themselves. (Also see this article for a list of the accomplishments of the so-called "surge"; they are far from negligible.)

Smith mentions that most of the troops are stunned that anyone takes seriously Reid's contentions that we've already "lost" in Iraq. And he reiterates what so many have said before: premature withdrawal from Iraq (and withdrawal any time soon would, by definition, be premature) would jeopardize the trust our allies (and enemies) have that we will keep our word.

Smith also thinks a premature withdrawal would have a more direct effect on the troops:

Success in Iraq is also about the morale and well-being of the U.S. military. Our forces would suffer in ways most D.C. politicians cannot begin to imagine if we were to retreat from Iraq.

That sort of suffering---the deep frustration of working hard for a vitally important goal and having all possibility of reaching it taken out of your hands just when things are beginning to improve---that sort of suffering is not the concern of those crying that their actions are only to "protect" the troops.

Congress, of course, knows better than those stupid, exploited, brutal (choose your own adjective) troops themselves know about what is good for them.

[This entry is cross-posted at neo-neocon.]

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During the first five hijrī centuries, Muslims witnessed enormous intellectual breakthroughs across a broad range of subjects in Islamic thinking. These successes included topics such as the fundamentals of jurisprudence, linguistics, interpretation and historiography. These intellectual advances resulted in a revolution of opinions and interpretations that varied from the extreme conservative right, such as the Hanbalī school [in reference to the Ahmad Ibn Hanbal], to the utmost level of reason-based interpretation proposed by the great thinker Ibn Rushd [Averroes], and between those two extremes there were a multitude of other schools of thought. For example, at the time when Abū Hanīfah al-Nuamān accepted less than 100 hadīths [sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad], Ahmad Ibn Hanbal recognized more than 10,000 hadīths.

Nevertheless, Muslims committed a grave mistake against themselves and their religion when they closed the door to ijtihād [interpretation] and stopped searching for new concepts and solutions. They became satisfied with simply taking from what their ancestors had produced, although those concepts and solutions were the outcome of an ancient era and the fruits of the conditions of a past time. Therefore, Muslims are living in a status quo environment where they ruminate on the thoughts of other men who exerted efforts to set concepts that suited their time eight centuries ago. In comparison to ancient Muslim men of religion such as Averroes, who is as important intellectually as Aristotle, current Muslim scholars read only in Arabic, they are not aware of modern sciences, and they find themselves in social environments that do not allow them to be intellectually open to the innovations of humanity in the different fields of social and human sciences.

We are in dire need of a new generation of scholars who can comprehend the sciences, cultures and knowledge of the current age as well as understand the heritage of ancient Muslims. Seventy years ago, the grand imām of the Azhar, Dr. Mustafá Abd al-Rāziq, was a former professor of philosophy in a university. Which university you may ask? Not the University al-Riyadh or the University of Sana'a, but he was a professor at the University of Sorbonne.

I have been engaged in meetings with a number of scholars from the Vatican. I always bemoan and wonder why the Vatican abounds with men of religion with such splendid educational, intellectual and encyclopedic cognitive backgrounds in their various areas of knowledge, while our scholars know nothing about the great fruits of human creativity in many of the different branches of social and human sciences.

At a conference held seven years ago, I saw a scholar who is considered by some as the greatest Muslim jurist and preacher of his time. He was an Egyptian with Qatari nationality who fled from Egypt during the clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamāl Abd al-Nāsir in 1954. At the conference, he used more than one interpreter, and never got involved in discussions about modern streams of thought. On the other hand, the Vatican scholars were using four or five languages in their discussions that covered vast fields of knowledge. I will not hide the fact that I felt ashamed of him that day. He seemed so primitive in his thoughts and approaches. It appeared as if he was a primeval human from the forests of ' Borneo Island.'

We need a generation of Muslim religious scholars who have studied other religions, human history, world literature, philosophy, sociology and psychology and can speak a number of languages; the languages of civilization. Until this happens, our Muslim scholars will remain primitive and stay at their level of naivety, shallowness and isolation from the path of civilization and humanity.

Before I reached 20 years of age Father George Qanawātī, a monk who headed the Dominican Monastery in al-Abbāsīyah, Cairo, had taught me about Greek drama and ancient Greek philosophy. Another monk taught me some simple things that have made many people nowadays think that I am an academic expert in Judaism. However, never in my life have I seen a Muslim man of religion who had encyclopedic knowledge in a number of fields of interest.

In conclusion, just as we are underdeveloped in all of the fields of science, we are in the same respect, underdeveloped in the sciences of our Islamic religion. Our backwardness in Islam is the same as it is in medicine, engineering, information technology and space research. We are nothing but a 'parasite' of humanity. Even the weapons used by the militias of the groups calling themselves jihādīs [related to Islamic jihād] are made by others who work hard at a time when we are insipid.

We need to see the emergence of a generation of this type of men of religion, which I have just described in the article, who combine the zenith of Islamic sciences and modern sciences at the same time. Without them, Muslims' isolation from the progress of humanity will increase. Campaigns of criticism will be escalated against them. I can also imagine that a huge number of them will be driven out of the European communities and from North America. In addition to that, Islam-West clashes, such as the war against the Tālibān in Afghanistan, may reoccur. Muslims (or to be more precise, large sectors of the Muslim population) will become the primary enemy of Western civilization or may become the first enemy of all of humanity.

Despite the need, such long-pursued development within Islamic religious institutions is very unlikely to occur. The biggest Islamic institutions in the modern world, especially in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are expelling any element that calls for the slightest renovations and changes. If so, what should we expect about demands for comprehensive change?

One of the Islamic universities has dismissed Dr. Ahmad Subhī Mansūr when all he has done is rejected the recognition of prophetic hadīths as a source of jurisprudential principles. The university should have discussed the differences in viewpoints using a scientific method that would be performed within the framework of a dialogue, and organized arguments where the differing scholars can exchange opinions. Strangely enough, Abū Hanīfah al-Nuamān, one of the great-four Muslim jurists, was in the same situation as Dr. Ahmad Subhī Mansūr when he decided to recognize only a few of the hadīths at a time when other jurists accepted all prophetic hadīths. To be more precise, if Abū Hanīfah had seen a book like 'Sahīh al-Bukhārī' [al-Bukhārī's Authentic], he would have rejected more than 90% of its contents. In this situation some modern Islamic university would have deemed Abū Hanīfah kāfir [apostate] although he was the first of the great four Islamic jurists and was entitled 'The Great Imām.'

As a matter of fact, conditions in today's Islamic religious institutions do not allow those institutions to produce men of the quality of Abū Hanīfah and Averroes. They are more and more isolated and occupied with 'yellow' religious references. For centuries, their role in the interpretation of Islam has been restricted to the texts of books and not their contexts. It became rare to find one scholar at these institutions who read even one book in a language other than Arabic.

Therefore, the long-sought for change among the Islamic establishment is now contingent upon a political leadership that is willing to lean toward a rational interpretation of history and a vision for the future. Unfortunately, these qualifications are not easily found within Islamic communities. Nevertheless, we need to demand a political leadership that works towards achieving radical procedural change within the structure of the Islamic scholarly community and that is willing to herd this community into harmony with the age of science and the progress of humanity. Without this driving force, Muslims will be heading for a massive confrontation with humanity which will be as disastrous as a collision between two celestial bodies.

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Fifteen people have died and scores injured over the last several hours. And Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has not even made it out of the airport yet---thanks to the thug-police joint blockade of the streets.

Since justifying an emergency on account of the real crises is not feasible, the Musharraf regime will need engineered ones...The public rallies in support of the Chief Justice could be made to turn violent, providing the government a pretext to ban them in the interest of public order. [Emergency case/The Acorn]

Related Link: Cable TV networks started going off the air. But Karachi bloggers are using Twitter to provide live updates of events. Metroblogging Karachi is another site with several first person accounts of the battle.

Update: The Chief Justice has decided to return to Islamabad.

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The growing resistance to several proposed reforms now threatens passage of a bill that once seemed on track to fulfill Democrats' campaign promise of cleaner fundraising and lobbying practices.

"The longer we wait, the weaker the bill seems to get," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which has pushed for the changes. "The sense of urgency is fading," he said, in part because scandals such as those involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., have given way to other news.

The situation concerns some Democrats, who note their party campaigned against a "culture of corruption" in 2006, when voters ended a long run of Republican control of Congress. Several high-profile issues remained in doubt Friday, five days before the House Judiciary Committee is to take up the legislation.

There is a genuine opportunity for the Democratic Party to kick ass on the issue of reform. I've long pointed out that this generation of Democratic leaders - with the full complicity of the would-be reformist Netroots - is unlikely to seize that opportunity.

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It's because of what Geraldine Brooks wrote in Salon in 1998:

Until the Gulf War, I had always been on the pacifist side of the argument in all the conflicts of my lifetime. Vietnam, Panama, the Falklands -- I protested them all. And then in 1988, on a searing summer day, I stepped off a plane in Baghdad and began my acquaintance with a regime of such unfathomable cruelty that it changed my views on the use of force.

I learned from Iraqi dissidents about mothers, under interrogation, tortured by the cries of their own starving infants whom they weren't allowed to breast-feed; about thalium, the slow-acting rat poison Saddam Hussein used on his enemies; about Iraqi government employees whose official job description was "violator of women's honor" -- i.e., prison rapist.

One bright spring day during the Kurdish uprising, I followed Kurds into the security prison they'd just liberated in northern Iraq. It was dim in the underground cells, so my face was only inches from the wall before I was sure what I was looking at. Long, rusty nails had been driven into the plaster. Around them curled small pieces of human flesh. One withered curve of cartilage looked like part of an ear.

I'm home now in my own liberal, pacifist country, Australia. Within a couple of hours of the news of the latest Baghdad bombings, people in Sydney were in the streets, demonstrating against them. Friends were on the phone, upset: "Terrible, isn't it? And at this time of the year! Whatever happened to peace on earth, goodwill to men?" Local pundits argued on the television, decrying American bully-boy tactics against a small and defanged Arab country. I agreed with almost everything they said: Yes, the slaughter and injury of Iraqi civilians is tragic. And yes, the timing of the bombing is the worst kind of political cynicism. And yes, it is questionable what effect this new onslaught will have on Iraq's weapons capability. And yet I disagreed with their conclusion: that this bombing is therefore wrong.

...

The West's great crimes in Iraq are not the latest bombings, but the years of inaction: ignoring the use of poison gas in the theaters of the Iran-Iraq war; ignoring it again in Halabja and other rebellious Iraqi cities; ignoring the vast human and environmental devastation since the Gulf War in the mostly Shiite regions of southern Iraq, where the ancient wetlands of Mesopotamia and the unique culture of the marsh Arabs have been wiped out by a series of dams and diversions designed to starve a minority into submission.

Opponents of the bombing say that dealing with Iraq should be left with the United Nations and its gentle leader, Kofi Annan. But Annan is a peacemaker, and a peacemaker isn't necessarily what's required in Iraq, any more than it was in Bosnia. Sarajevans will tell you of the agonies caused by the U.N.'s "evenhanded diplomacy" -- the pressures to accept any kind of unjust peace the Serbs happened to offer. The history of the United Nations has shown that the organization is most useful in keeping peace between belligerents who have decided they no longer wish to fight. But recent experience has shown that the organization is both inept at, and degraded by, its insertion into conflicts where one or both parties have no wish for peace.

After I left the Middle East, I spent some time covering the United Nations at its headquarters in New York and in the field in Bosnia and Somalia. During that time, I learned that people who go to work for the United Nations often do so because they believe that war is the greatest evil and that force is never justified. In Somalia, one U.N. staffer broke into sobs in front of me because instead of keeping peace, her job had become the administration of a war.

It is impossible to imagine the bureaucrats of the United Nations accepting the kind of harsh conclusion that may be necessary in the case of Saddam Hussein: that the bombs should continue to fall until he does. Iraqis will die. But they are dying now, by the scores and the hundreds, in horrible pain, in the dark security prisons with the blood on the walls and the excrement on the floor.

I wish I still believed, as I used to, that the United Nations was always the world's best chance to avert bloodshed. I wish I could join, as I once would have, the placard-waving peace protesters outside the U.S. Consulate here in Sydney.

I wish I'd never seen the piece of ear nailed to the wall.

I have watched as the conventional wisdom has shifted - driven by a relentless cycle of media and pundit pronouncements that the war is immoral and unwinnable - unwinnable most recently of all we are told because we don't have the determination to win - because our pundit class has been busy telling us for five years that the was immoral and unwinnable, watched as politicians have moved to cover their asses with cynical proposals they know won't work but they know they can propose because they will never be implemented if the politicians proposing them are elected.

The problems surrounding the war in Iraq - or the war in which Iraq is the leading battlefield - are truly wicked problems. They are not susceptible to computer models, or policy white papers, or answers arrived at in clever debate. Words, models, ideas matter - as tools, as weapons - but they will not solve this.

So I'm lost - like so many others, I make my way with words and numbers and ideas. I don't have any in my bag of tricks today that will reverse the course our affairs must take.

Sometimes, when I can't decide on an issue, I make my decision by looking at who stands where, and who I'd like to stand beside.

There's no issue here. I can only stand beside Mohammed. I can only stand beside the troops who are in Iraq and believe more in the mission they are doing than we who have sent them.

There will be a time for policy and clever ideas and arguments and numbers. We'll need them. But given a choice about where to stand on the big issue, I really have no choice.

We must keep fighting those criminals and tyrants until they realize that the freedom-loving peoples of the region are not alone. Freedom and living in dignity are the aspirations of all mankind and that's what unites us; not death and suicide. When freedom-lovers in other countries reach out for us they are working for the future of everyone tyrants and murderers like Ahmedinejad, Nesrallah, Assad and Qaddafi must realize that we are not their possessions to pass on to their sons or henchmen. We belong to the human civilization and that was the day we gave what we gave to our land and other civilizations. They can't take out our humanity with their ugly crimes and they can't force us to back off. The world should ask them to leave our land before asking the soldiers of freedom to do so.

Those who choose to stand elsewhere today will find that they will have harder choices to make tomorrow. Sadly, I think that all of us will.

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Although I know that these writings are not necessarily the viewpoints of your company, I'm disappointed to see this one on your cup.

Don't get me wrong. I fully believe that it's an inspirational and thought-provoking comment, but I am not a Christian, and I don't appreciate having God's Plan preached to me via my coffee cup. It's one thing to read about someone's point of view, but it's quite another to read a blatantly religious statement informing me that my purpose is to serve God.

Please know that I am a die-hard Starbucks fan, and I enjoy your products several times a week, and have for over 15 years. This misstep will not change that. I just ask that you consider your "The Way I See It" contributions a little more carefully. ...

Well, fine, now Starbucks is just ticking everyone off! Is that good for business? But let's consider Ms. Paxton's objection: She's "not a Christian" but nonetheless finds the Warren quote "inspirational and thought-provoking," but she "doesn't appreciate" it being "preached" to her. Huh? I missed something. Let me admit I found the "atheist" quote thought-provoking (obviously, since I'm blogging about it) but not at all inspirational. In fact, it was self-contradictory: "After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.” Oh, yeah, we're managing real well, aren't we? It seems historically provable that the catastrophes humankind has caused (think of the last 100 years) have led mostly to other catastrophes. Just consider, say, the connection between 1918 and 1939. Anyway, back to Ms. Paxton. She seems to appreciate the Warren quote in itself, but wishes she had not encountered it on her coffee cup. I am reminded of a woman named Alexandra Roth, profiled in a religion article in The Washington Post, June 4, 1995:

When her 3-year old son Graham came to her recently and asked, “Where is God?” Alexandra Roth took a deep breath.

Like many Americans, Roth has never found a home in any church or faith. . . . She considers herself an atheist, but she wants her son to have a sense of reverence and gratitude “and the idea of God is one pathway to that,” she says.

So she told Graham that God is everywhere, but that only piqued his curiosity. “Is God in my body?” he asked. “Is God mixed with my lunch?”

“They’re hard questions to answer,” Roth said later, “especially if you don’t have a catechism to refer to.”

If Roth considers herself an atheist, it is unclear what she wants her son to have a sense of reverence for, or for what she wants him to be grateful, and why. Such an “idea of God” seems no more than an amalgam of generally desirable personal characteristics. I suspect that this is the sort of bland "inspiration" and thought provocation that Ms. Dexter has in mind.

Anyway, have you encountered a Starbucks comment cup? From their web site, it seems that all their comments raise someone's ire. What do you think about this business practice? Will it help raise or lower revenues?

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The screenplay tries but fails to keep the movie coherent. Somehow, all three villians, Mary Jane and Spiderman have to meet in a gotterdammerung at the end of the movie. But tying up the three main threads of conflict, plus Spidey's troubled relationship with MJ, just overwhelms the abilities of both screenwriters and director (who was one of the writers). The ends do finally get tied up, but the final battle is so over the top as to become a parody of itself.

Even so, the movie does entertain and keeps one's attention. All the credit goes to Tobey Maguire, whose mutlivalent talent for portraying Dark Side Spiderman is very effective and tuned just right. What would a superhero do if unrestrained by honor or duty? SM3 provides an answer. But it is not only Spiderman who does over to the Dark Side (literally, since Spidey's Dark Side suit is solid black), so does Peter. Example: after Peter makes a nuisance of himself in a jazz bar, the very large bouncer tries to show him to the door. Bad idea.

Peter finally sheds the dark suit because of MJ. Fortunately the movie then moves quickly to finale because Maguire's portrayal of Dark Side Spidey/Peter is the only real draw. Oh, yeah, Harry Osborn (James Franco), friend of both MJ and Peter, figures prominently, too. We learned at the conclusion of SM2 that he would adopt his dead dad's Green Goblin identity. He does with a true vengeance. Filled with wrath, his fights with Spiderman are knock-down, drag-out epics. Yet when Harry/Goblin meets Dark Side Peter/Spiderman, it becomes a fight to the finish as Peter is unrestrained by prior bonds of friendship and loyalty. They are both out to kill.

Let us now consider the hapless May Jane Watson, apple of the eyes of both Peter Parker and Harry Osborn. Portrayed again by Kirsten Dunst, actress MJ appears at the beginning of the film in a Broadway musical, singing the opening number. But the critics savage her and she's fired after one performance, winding up later as a waitress-singer in the jazz bar Peter visits. Sorry, Kirsten, but MJ fares no better in her faux-threatrical career than you do in this installment. Kirsten, you shone so brightly in SM2 and almost as much in SM1, but here you just showed up on the set and recited lines. Remember, you're an actress, so why so little acting?

Let me admit, though, that SM3 follows the thoroughly superior SM2, a tough act to follow. With the bar so high, SM3 was almost bound to fail to top it. There are many moments in SM3 that show a glimpse of grandeur. The problem is that they are peripheral to the main line(s) of action. I don't wish I had waited to see SM3 on DVD, though, so the movie is good enough for me to recommend you pay your hard-earned cash to see it in the theater.

I give Spiderman 3 6.5 webs out of 10.

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