avari | haroon moghul

Jihad Alerts: 28 Million Ways to Make America Less Safe

They tell us, in one breath, that Islam is backwards, medieval and barbaric, incapable of creating anything sophisticated, and yet is at the very same time somehow a threat to the free world capable of destroying all Western civilization has achieved over the course of some 2,500 years.  More powerful than the Black Death, than the fall of Rome, than World Wars I and II, a bunch of nutjobs either frothing away in some caves or running around with guns in tinpot failed states which would, frankly speaking, have trouble organizing financing and bids for a wind farm, to say nothing of the inability of the vast majority of third world countries to manufacture the equipment necessary for such a wind farm.  The Muslim world, as well as many other parts of the world, is economically and organizationally far behind.  But they are not, therefore, a threat to the West; quite the opposite.  Sorry, right-wing hacks, you cannot eat your cake and throw it in our faces, too. 

Not to mention: Islam is not backwards.  That's like saying, because a poor person lives in America and believes in the Constitution, he is poor because he is American and believes in the Constitution.  Otherwise we'd have to conclude that Turkey is getting wealthier because it's Muslim, Saudi Arabia has oil because it's Muslim, and Kazakhstan has an eagle on its flag because of this "Islam" thing.  Islam is a belief system, and cannot be singled out as cause or effect of all things in all places.  Islam is not an actor in the world, like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Howard Dean.  Islam is a term that embraces something very hard to pin down; the more specific we get, the mushier its boundaries become.  Likewise it's even ridiculous to claim that there is a single "radical Islam"; there are radical Muslims, but the problem with presupposing their threat level is their incoherence.  The idea that all Muslim extremist groups worldwide have a common agenda, and are not more likely to simply turn their guns on each other, is ridiculous beyond belief; the recent history of Iraq proves the absence of a larger narrative.

My point:

Now, 28 million copies of a terrible DVD titled "Obsession" are being mailed out with newspapers across the country, apparently in the hopes that readers will be convinced Obama is a secret sympathizer for extremist Islam (despite somehow climbing to the top of the field of numerous presidential candidates) and his funny name must indicate his evilness, just as Joseph Stalin's calm-inducing first name promises to us he was probably a nice neighbor.  I don't think the majority of Americans even care.  Sure, some people think Obama's a closet Muslim.  They weren't going to vote for Obama anyway.  So I could go on and on about how stupid this is; I will not stoop to that level. 

Instead I will point residents of Seattle and New York to much happier news, that alongside the vanguard of yesterday's news (and four more years, if it happens, doesn't mean their stewardship will suddenly become competent), many more Americans are fed up and speaking out and acting to preserve the tremendous gains in rights, in strengths, in state and society, individuality and community, that are the product of the last several decades especially (not, of course, exclusively.)

WhyIslam's You Deserve To Know campaign has reached Seattle bus lines and New York City subways.  Shows what the armchair hyperventilators know: 28 million DVDs via newspaper?  Who still reads newspapers?  But public transportation: a lot more of us use that these days, in part because our energy infrastructure is embarrassing and our dependence on foreign oil (and imports) incredible.  That, by the way, is a product of the same leadership these giants of intellect support.  Use your money, skills, smarts, time and energies to support smarter candidates, smarter policies and smarter outcomes.

Watch Keith Olbermann on the RNC, 9/11, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain

The man's got guts.  But we need that.  We Democrats are too easily cowed and too defensive; we are in the right and yet we accommodate radioactive rhetoric far too often.  A summary followed by his "special comment," clocking in at 8 minutes and 15 seconds of beautiful devastation.

Also, on the topic, consider how so many people, worldwide, do not find al-Qaeda a credible culprit.  For whatever reasons, it is worth considering why more Mexicans blame the U.S. government than do al Qaeda, for what stake has Mexico, really, in all this?  Not to enter the factual debate, but to look at this from the p.o.v. of American foreign policy interests: Why do so many people not want to believe the mainstream American narrative?  And how does this hurt us?

Why So Many Buildings are So Ugly And Reduce Your Iman

Do you find modernist buildings to be ugly, soulless, cold and conformist?  Do you find new designs to generally be stale, uninspired, shiny and unlivable?  I do, and appreciate the rhetorical ability to convey the failure of trendy, theoretical and silly design-as-philosophy:

These days the architecture establishment (editors, academics, high-end architects, certain developers) is pushing post-modernism, cyber-architecture, deconstruction -- flashy, fashion-driven things that look dazzling (as "design") when photographed yet are often nightmares to work or live in and around. (It's one of those open secrets: the buildings that get a lot of press and discussion aren't buildings that people love, or feel good about, or like using. They're the buildings that photograph well -- ie., that lend themselves to publicity. These buildings are the equivalent of people who are famous for being famous.)

    ...

Streetscapes often suffer when a modernist building is inserted into them -- so much so that some critics have argued that modernist architects in fact simply don't like cities. (Le Corbusier especially seemed to have it in for cities.) Even the way some modernist architects talk can make you suspicious. They sometimes talk not about building a new building, or enhancing a block, but about "making an intervention in the urban fabric."

It's widely acknowledged that modernist architects played a huge role in the 1950s-through-early-'70s scandal known as "urban renewal." In this country, this is the shame they can't live down, the guilt that haunts them. They were in love with huge buildings, huge plazas, huge "interventions," huge housing schemes. They imagined they were making the world better, and gosh what an opportunity to make some money too! They were eager collaborators in the worst period in the history of the American city. Given one of the biggest chances architects have ever been given to strut their stuff, what did the Modernists do? They drove people out of cities in droves. Experiment run, experiment failed, as far as I'm concerned.

Read the whole at 2Blowhards.com.

Can You Understand the Words That Are Coming Out of Your Mouth?

“This is not 1968, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can invade its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it,” [Sec of State Rice] said. “Things have changed.” [link]

1968 or 2003?

Worst Amendment: The New York Post, and Peter King, on American Freedoms

Replace accusation with investigation; hence, the Post, and its sister "media" -- forms of printed nonsense.  Why Islam's extensive ad campaign, scheduled for this Ramadan, has drawn predictable but also positive responses.  Here's a round-up I received through an ICNA spokesperson.

Islam Subway ads cause stir in New York [read this for an interview with Chaplain Latif, the NYU Imam.)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/22/islam.ads/index.html

Promoting Islam To Appear In Subways Soon
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/Islam.In.Subway.2.776131.html

Promotional Islam Subway Ads Stir Controversy
http://www.wnbc.com/news/16950893/detail.html?rss=ny&psp=news

Radical Imam Promotes Pro-Islamic Ad Campaign to Run on New York Subways
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,387701,00.html

Mmm…(In)tolerance! The Post's "Jihad Train"
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/07/mmmintolerance.php

Pro-Muslim Subway Ads Linked to Controversial Imam
http://gothamist.com/2008/07/21/promuslim_subway_ads_linked_to_cont.php

MTA'S ISLAM AD FUROR
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07222008/news/regionalnews/winner_takes_allah_120938.htm

TRAIN-ING DAY FOR JIHADISTS
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07212008/news/regionalnews/train_ing_day_for_jihadists_120839.htm

The New York Times, not Daniel Pipes, is the Problem

Attacking CAIR? Based on what, a rumor? (Scream)

Making the rounds, around the Muslim web, comes forward after forward of a New York Times expose of how Debbie Al-Montaser's career was derailed, wrecked and ruined - but she, like a good American, is fighting back and will by the strength of a still-proud justice system win - and she is vilified and wrecked by whom but a small (and, I should add, scared and marginalized) set of activists who saw an Islamist plot in a New York City public school. Such activists are near-sighted and far-sighted; they couldn't see a problem in the mirror. (Hint: That's where the problem is.)

They are, however, out to get people like you and me; intelligent, open-minded, forward-looking, moderate citizens and immigrants, Americans and otherwise, whether Muslim or not, whether brown, black, yellow or white, their cause is to keep hyperventilating, long after anyone with any hemisphere of her brain left has realized the Iraq War was a sham and we were betrayed, as a nation. So that their hyperventilation might anxiety attack us into some kind of action. (Namely, shooting down one of the smartest ideas in the post-9/11 environment. We are being harrassed by people who believe that knowing your enemy is becoming your enemy.)

Because they want to keep us scared. They want us to think that the Arabic language education initiative championed by Ms. Al-Montaser will demolish American society, and make way for a Eurabia on "this side of the pond," which is a miraculous tension that demands comment. Such concerns as theirs are firstly dangerous, because they are predicated on deception, fear-mongering, ahistoricality, racism, xenophobia and secondly, they are amusing, or at least would be if not for concern the first: their dangerousness. Does anyone actually believe that American Islam is a covert fifth column trying to establish shari'a law? My God, in a nation of 300 million, whose fastest-growing population is Hispanic Catholic, several million Muslims scattered over one of the world's physically largest and culturally strongest countries are ... a threat? What drug are you on, and from what dealer are you purchasing it, and is its price affected by the declining dollar? (Kind of like the Eurabia panic: As Muslims are more assimilated, birth rates slow and integration takes place. Europe will have a significant Muslim minority. A minority.)

But the real danger isn't the stink from sewer pipes, it's the so-called mainstream media, supposedly objective journalism that, in the words of Robert Fisk:

"Partly because of this awful trend of American journalism where you have to give 50% of your time to each side, you end up producing a sort of matrix, a mathematical formula which is bland, lacking in any kind of passion or realism, and is a bit like reading a mathematics problem. Much of the Middle East is reported like a football match: this side did this, they kicked a goal, they replied back, the ball went through the goal post, etc. Giving equal space in your report to two antagonists is ridiculous! I mean if you were reporting the slave trade in the 18^th century you wouldn’t give equal time to the slave ship captain, you’d give time to the slaves." [Read the full interview at Goatmilk]

This is what the New York Times is doing. What's so dangerous in the hyped rhetoric of the Fascist-fascists, who see fascism in anything to which an 'o' can be appended (except, of course, fascism), is that their rumor and fear-mongering create an assumption among the average citizen, generally who does not know any Muslims, that there is something fundamentally wrong with Islam as a religion. Any claim for equal treatment is in fact a claim for terrorism, a secret strike into the heart of our good democracy, as opposed to what it is: citizens claiming democratic and civil rights. This atmosphere creates the immediate suspicion that Islam is somehow itself evil, suspicious and slitherous; it is so strange and deceptive it causes Muslims to make up words. In this respect, the puny right-wing conspiracy has been successful - and no surprise. Generating fear is easier than generating fact; scaring people is easier to do and harder to undo than communicating actual knowledge and ideas.

They have drummed up enough fear that politicians shiver at any association with Islam, Muslims or the appearance of Islam or Muslims (remember Obama's "native dress"?) And here's where the problem is: In its expose, the Times commits such vulgar, distasteful acts, fear-mongering and rumor-milling, making accusations so absurd they demand retraction.

"Ms. Almontaser had accepted an award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim organization that critics claim has ties to terrorist groups (an assertion the group adamantly denies)."

Ties to terrorists? This is not a mild accusation; the Times makes it -- with no proof. Nothing to suggest that CAIR is a terrorist organization. But they just say it. I'm sorry, but this is b.s. plain and simple; where is the evidence to such a monumental accusation? "Critics say Joe X is a murderer. Joe X insists he's not." That's all we get; that's all I expect; my faith in the MSM has always been a dim light at the end of a hallway in the basement section of a misogynistic masjid, reserved for women and storage. This is, frankly speaking, shocking and unnerving, that an accusation peddled by critics who generally know nothing about anything, and flip out at the sight of a hijab, can be taken so seriously by the media, without informing readers of the substance of such a tremendous and frightening and career-ending and life-detaining allegation, if indeed any substance is there. (It's as strong as the case for WMD; remember the Times jumped all over that. Good for you, massive journalism resources and well-funded research teams; you have accomplished what a well-rounded education could not.)

Too true, Mr. Fisk.

Destroying Islam: What John McCain's Preacher Wants

The ear of the next President, maybe, whispered into by such terror.  Not just what a preacher wants.  Normally I don't give this overheated rhetoric of 'Islam in Danger' much mind; nightmares here, though. Why the media free pass for McCain, and the astonishing concern over Reverend Wright? Of course, I know, but my disappointment in American media is infinitely renewable.  There is a "global war" - supposedly - and this is okay to simply pass over? "Destroying Islam".

Here's Martin Marty's take; note however that he conflates extremist hatred for the West with hatred for Christianity; if there is an essentialist discourse of pure racism on the "Islamic" extreme, it is against Jews. Christians are singled out for "Crusader-ness," not their mere Christianity; Jews however are generally lumped into the same category of "enemy" (and how disgustingly, I should add):

"William Franklin Graham famously called Islam a wicked and evil religion, but I don't think he called for its extinction through violence, as in war. Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, a wild politician, did call for the bombing of Mecca to shatter the Muslim center. Now, Parsley—as in Rod Parsley—is the flavor of the month among the controversial clergy being spotlighted in the camps of the three presidential campaigners. Parsley, pastor of Ohio's mega-est megachurch, twelve-thousand-member World Harvest Church in Columbus, calls for "destroying" Islam." [continued]

Frank Rich does what John McCain doesn't: Understand

From TV News that insists on calling this the "War in Iraq" -- as if we were one sect among indigenous others -- it's terribly rare that American media gets it. When it comes to Iraq, most often American media has a hard time understanding that the Sadrists are not Iran's proxies, that al-Qaeda is secondary (and anyway, ex post facto) and that the war (and the surge) is going terribly. But Frank Rich gets it, and on multiple levels.

Here are some samples from his most recent Times essay:

(1) Everything else Mr. McCain has to say about Iraq is more troubling, and I don’t mean just his recent serial gaffe conflating Shiite Iran and Sunni Qaeda. The sum total of his public record suggests that he could well prolong the war for another century — not because he’s the crazed militarist portrayed by Democrats, but through sheer inertia, bad judgment and blundering.

(2) In Mr. Bush’s telling, Basra was a “defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.” He praised the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, and boasted repeatedly that the Iraqi forces were fighting “in the lead.” The Pentagon spokesman declared that this splendid engagement was “a byproduct of the success of the surge.” It was a defining moment all right. Mr. Maliki’s impulsive and ill-planned attempt to vanquish the militias in southern Iraq loyal to his Shiite rival, the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, was a failure that left Mr. Sadr more secure than before.

(3) Mr. McCain was just as wrong about Basra as he was in 2003, when he said the war would be “brief” and be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues. Or as he was in the 1990s, when he championed extravagant State Department funding for the war instigator Ahmad Chalabi, who’d already been branded untrustworthy by the C.I.A.

(4) But Mr. McCain’s bigger strategic picture, immutable no matter what happens on the ground, is foggier still. Like Mr. Bush, he keeps selling Iraq as the central front in the war on Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda was not even a participant in the Basra battle, which was an eruption of a Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war.

He goes on...

what to say when Islam is the problem

A few days ago, a problematic albeit typical editorial in the NYU student newspaper featured the rantings of a students concerned that the greatest threat to the West was a homogenous menace known as Islamic fundamentalism. 

These kinds of articles are a dime a dozen these days, maybe all the more so because we are in an election cycle and such topics unfortunately have a habit of saturating the media while not contributing an iota of enlightenment to our general understanding of the issues involved.  An NYU student wrote a rebuttal, but I offer some advice, which I reproduce below, in case one is ever in a situation where one has to respond to these general types of articles and arguments.

Because it seems we must always be prepared to write back to nonsense.

Islam Writes Back

Firstly, be especially chary of any argument that says, "such and such terrorist group attacked country X, but not Y."  While I think this is a valid argument and an especially illuminating one, it can be rhetorically dangerous because it invites the suggestion, however remote, that a certain population deserved what happened to it.  The tone must emphasize our absolute and total opposition to evil and to murder and to attacks upon the innocent, no matter the origins of those attacks or the rhetoric used to justify them (modern warfare is terroristic in nature, and promotes terror as a tool for "accelerating" war -- reducing losses on "our" side while indifferent to the harm caused the other's innocents).  Putting this first and foremost is especially powerful and useful: Muslims oppose all violence against innocents.

Secondly, be certain to emphasize the casual and in fact intellectually lazy if not stupid use of the word "terror".  No writer who rants and raves about how Islam is supposedly on the verge of conquering the West has ever shown himself or herself capable of defining terror, let alone Islam or the West.  This is their weakest point.  Their inability to use language coherently, and their obvious incapability for thinking consistently needs to be called out.  They throw around definitions in such a way that should embarrass any NYU faculty member. 

Thirdly, point out how many Muslims live in democracies.  The largest Muslim nation in the world by population is a democracy.  Many Muslims live in democracies or states that are failed democracies but nonetheless aspire to democratic status, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India; there are also active Muslim democracies in Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Mali and Senegal.  This is in fact part of the above point: what defines Islam?  What defines the Muslim world?  What defines the West?  Simply pointing out that half of the worlds Muslims live in democracies is sufficient to completely crush any such argument of a uniform West and a uniform Muslim world.

Fourthly, be sure to throw in some economics and some figures and facts to really shed light on the silliness of arguments that pretend the West is under siege from the Islamic world.  This is especially aggravating when smaller minds presume to tell us that we have not faced a threat so great since Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  Nazi Germany was the most powerful military and largest economy arguably of its time, at least the most sophisticated.  Nazi Germany was able to conquer most of Europe and drive deep into Russia in the span of a few years; the United States could never have defeated Nazi Germany alone.  Neither England nor France nor America could likely have defeated Germany without the help and sacrifice of the Soviet Union. 

And we are supposed to imagine that somehow countries like Iran or Pakistan represents similar types of threats to the world.  Are we using drugs?  The total annual military budget of Pakistan, which arguably has the most sophisticated military in the Muslim world -- and is the only nuclear power in the Muslim world -- is round about the same as the Harvard University's endowment ($20-30 billion).  Put another way, Harvard could spend its endowment and in one year equal the military of Pakistan.  Now, that is obviously a silly example but its silliness points to reality.  Extremist groups threaten the Muslim world far more than they do the West, because as they tactically realize their insignificance and relative backwardness, they will necessarily turn their anger and rage and violence towards their fellow citizens -- because it is technologically and strategically impossible for them to sustain any sort of attack on the West. 

In other words, they are simply too weak to cause serious or long-term harm to the West.

Mission Accomplishments

In his speech in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, [Bush] called the fight against extremism the great ideological struggle of our time, and said only freedom and justice would defeat it. [BBC]

For this reason, he has enlisted Saudi Arabia's help against Iran. Because in the fight against extremism, Saudi Arabia will of course be of invaluable assistance. What better way to improve the region than by arming, by the billions, a government composed of rulers whose right to power (for life) has its roots in genetic good fortune and is nourished by high petrol price fortune. In other words, Iran is more democratic than the Kingdom.

This whole trip is what we call nonsense, and will benefit no one in the region.