Caroline Glick's "Caution: Storm Approaching" looks at the economic convulsions that underpin the Arab world's current political convulsions. Her conclusion is that those convulsions are about the get worse before they get better. It doesn't help that the same hate-spawning, dysfunctional political systems are big contributors to the Arabs' lack of economic progress as well. Nor does it help that key economies around the world cannot pretend away problems forever, but appear to be trying. The reckoning always comes, and the fallout from each side is about to affect the other.
Of course, replacing current governance in Arab/Islamic countries with an even more hate-filled and more dysfunctional system of Islamic theocracy - all that does is double down on human disaster and misery. It remains to be seen which way things tip. Revolution =/= progress; they are linked but ultimately separate variables.
On which topic, Brett Stephens had a useful reminder the other day, about courage...
At the moment, it certainly is not - and this example of same should be a source of shame.
Sadly, the video may be a parody, but the underlying truth of Islamic religious cleansing that it illustrates is no parody at all in many parts of the world. This Christmas, how about a thought for the Christians facing it in the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.
Next, our counterterror adviser evokes the perverse logic behind the administration's recent decision to censor words offensive to Muslims (which I closely explored in this PJM article):Nor do we describe our enemy as "jihadists" or "Islamists" because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.Inasmuch as he is correct in the first clause of that sentence -- "jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community" -- he greatly errs in the latter clause, by projecting his own notions of what constitutes "holy," "legitimate," and "innocent" onto Islam. In Islam, such terms are often antithetical to the Judeo-Christian/Western understanding. Indeed, the institution of jihad, according to every authoritative Muslim book on Islamic jurisprudence, is nothing less than offensive warfare to spread Sharia law, a cause seen as both "legitimate" and "holy" in Islam. As for "innocence," by simply being a non-Muslim infidel, one is already guilty in Islam. Brennan understands the definition of jihad; he just has no clue of its application. So he is left fumbling about with a square peg that simply refuses to pass through a round hole.
I had lunch with journalist and author Christopher Hitchens in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, this week and interviewed him over glasses of Johnny Walker Black Label downtown.
The man should need no introduction, but I'll give him one anyway. He's the author or editor of more than twenty books, a journalist, a literary critic, a world traveler, a teacher, and a polemicist who migrated rightward from the radical left and no longer fits in anyone's convenient box. Last year Forbes magazine cited him as one of the 25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media, but at the same time he's a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford. In 2005, Foreign Policy magazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential intellectuals in the world.
He's a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate, and the Atlantic, and his most recent book, God Is Not Great, made him more famous (or, if you prefer, infamous) than ever. His best book, or perhaps I should say my favorite, is Love, Poverty, and War, a rich collection of travel pieces and essays on those three most important of topics.
Hitchens is certainly famous, and is recognized on the street a lot more often than I am. A tall and slightly disheveled man in his fifties rudely interrupted our conversation outside the bar at one point and said "I can't remember your name, but I recognize you from YouTube."
"You should read more," Hitchens said. He didn't remind the man of his name.
Not two minutes later, an attractive young woman walked up to him, squeezed his arm gently, and said "I love you."
"How often does this happen?" I said.
"This," he said and smiled at the pretty young woman, "doesn't happen nearly enough. But that," he said and gestured to the man who recognized him from YouTube and would not go away, "happens too often."
Read the rest at MichaelTotten.com
Co. Patrick Lang, who blogs over at Sic Semper Tyrannis, has done a lot of work on the Middle East and Islam, over many years. An online video captures a wide-ranging lecture on Islam at St. Mary's University in March, 2007.
It explains some of the links between the religion's history, structure, and the current behavior of its adherents, in a 1 1/2 hour presentation that's generally worth your time.
As Winds readers almost certainly know, the Swiss voted in a referendum to ban the construction of new minarets in Switzerland. At present, only 4 of Switzerland's 150 mosques have minarets, and none are used for the call to prayer because of strict noise-pollution rules. Those minarets would be allowed to stay.
Rise of the Fjordmen? A little, yeah. The Minarets aren't required parts of a mosque, are seen as big "eff you!" raised finger of Islamic supremacism, and people reasonably don't want even the potential of some idiot yelling a public call to prayer of any sort at whatever hour of morning or day. Local noise regulations can be repealed, after all, by a local majority vote. Referenda cannot. Auto-dialers and opt-in cell phones, please!
Imam Hargey of Oxford has some sensible suggestions...
While searching for something totally different online, I came across a Commentary blog post by Peter Wehner, which touts a New Yorker article by Lawrence Wright, author of the recommended book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." I own that book, so dropping that name definitely sent me hurrying over to read a June 2009 New Yorker article titled "The Rebellion Within."
It's a worthy read. Sems that one of al-Qaeda's most influential jihad theorists and Islamic jurists has been rethinking his positions, and is publishing a book called "Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World." Uncharacteristically, that title is meant as a criticism, not a mission statement.
Al-Qaeda's #2 (or #1, depending on who you talk to) Zawahiri had to devote a 200 page work ("The Exoneration"; formally "Treatise Exonerating the Nation of the Pen and the Sword from the Blemish of Weakness and Fatigue") to directly opposing and refuting "Dr. Fadl," which is interesting and noteworthy in and of itself.
Ultimately, in a post-proliferation world, Belmont Club's "3 conjectures" assertion that "If Islam desires the secret of the stars it must embrace the kuffar as its brother -- or die" remains fundamentally true. Is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, aka. Dr. Fadl, someone I can ever call my friend? I'm not sure. To the extent that he represents a shift in the tectonic plates of Islamic thought, however, as the war comes home to them instead of just killing infidels of of other faiths, his writings are an important and positive development.
