“I am one of those who gave Morsi my vote and I supported him. I even celebrated for him in the streets of Alexandria upon the announcement of his appointment as the President. Indeed, it was a historic moment to witness the first elected President in the history of modern Egypt.”
“… There are some who advocate for democracy only when they’re out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. So no matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.”
Abu al-Khair said that the judge sentenced Badawi to five years in prison for insulting Islam and violating provisions of Saudi Arabia’s 2007 anti-cybercrime law through his liberal website, affirming that liberalism is akin to unbelief.
I have to wonder what Raif Badawi wrote or otherwise said that may have been so egregious in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as to have the kingdom throw him in jail and the court sentence him to seven years in prison plus 600 lashes.
While the kingdom modernizes — “Related Stories” dredged up on the New York Daily News page include such titles as “Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah grants women seats on the nation’s top advisory council” and “King Abdullah: Saudi Arabia women can vote, hold elected office” — the persistent throttling of expression, the disproportionate sentencing, and the medieval cruelty of lashing to boot (imagine having that to look forward to each week for, say, 30 weeks) tell of a willful egomania thundering atop a fragile surface of faith.
Every tyrants first concern in power has to do with making a convincing case for authority and maintaining it.
Perhaps with that in mind, we say in the United States with regard to the famous Freedom of Speech principle, “Without the First Amendment, all of the others are worthless.”
The Mellow Jihadi reports, “Raif’s site discussed the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, and he has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his father – a crime in the conservative kingdom.“
About eight months ago, Reuters reporting on the Raif Badawi case noted, “Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of religious law rather than on a written legal code or on precedent.” That is, if I may interpret, responsibility for this ethical and moral confusion may not rest so much with King Abdullah as with an archaic clerical class, but also, alas, that which doubtlessly supports his authority.
Following Reuter’s latest on the case (published two hours ago) back to Human Rights Watch, this wrap may sum the Saudi state of mind:
Abu al-Khair said that the judge sentenced Badawi to five years in prison for insulting Islam and violating provisions of Saudi Arabia’s 2007 anti-cybercrime law through his liberal website, affirming that liberalism is akin to unbelief. The judge ordered the closure of the website and added two years to Badawi’s sentence for insulting both Islam and Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police, in comments during television interviews.
Even while King Abdullah presses for reforms and aspects of modernity course through or make their way into the cultures of the Arabian Peninsula, the Anachronisms cling to a power today deeply mocked and reviled among the educated worldwide, and whether by way of “listening posts” or the perhaps guilty indulgence of going solo online, one by one, logged on and searching the world’s largest information mirror, that is how they will see themselves.
By way of the design in human nature, for which one might credit God, God being God, what Saudi Arabia’s most dogmatic clerics and judges had wished to avoid for want of pride has become precisely that which they must encounter in the feedback supplied by the World Wide Web.
I have altered the provocative voice to maintain only the line of thought pursued.
The answering voice, and more at length here, enough so to justify my noting that I have Martin Pembroke Harries’ permission to reprint his views here, takes an atheist’s stance in the formulation of ethics. We’ve had some back-and-forth about circumcision, Abraham, obedience, and conscience, but here the topic around which the notes weave is grrrrrl power, which he defends well.
Other editing: I’ve added line breaks for readability and italicized the “point” voice to Pembroke’s counterpoint.
* * *
Women are shy in the Koran and won’t perceive the crime the way a male would.
Is this a wind-up? I can’t decide whether you’re serious or a master of sarcasm.
If you are being serious, when you suggest to, say, Sheikh Hasina the prime Minister of Bangladesh, or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the prime Minister of Argentina, or Hilary Clinton, the former US Secretary of State, that their testimony would be worth half that of yours simply because you are a man, you would be well to stand well beyond their swinging fist distance!
While the Koran authorizes beating a wife after other steps have been tried, it tells us not to maim them. In the west, it seems there are no rules.about how to beat one’s wife.
Again, is this for real?
If so, this is what religion can do to a nominally decent man, it forces him to justify the indefensible.
Do you think that because Sharia states that you can’t break her face when you beat your wife, that is some how a reflection of the nobility of Islam?
That is so sad first of all, but monstrously embarrassing soon afterward.
And let’s be honest, there is nothing in the Quran that states you can’t break your wife’s face when you’re beating her – If you actually read the Quran 4:34, you’ll find that there is no restriction at all.
Please don’t tell me I can find on the book shelves of my local mosque library “101 Halal ways to beat your wife!”, or “How to lovingly protect your wife from the shame of her disobedience through the use of a good timely thrashing” or “Sharia Wife-beating made simple and with a Smile – avoid the face, and Carry On!”
A woman in Islam may be a wife, mother, sister, or daughter. There is no disrespect in that.
I’ve read numerous Muslims state that there is this nominal respect for one’s OWN mother and one’s OWN sister, but once your average MENA Muslim male leaves the house, that’s where respect for women, in general, ends.
Women lead in the percentage of Muslim reverts in the United States. If the religion was so bad for them, why would they revert?
Yes, This is the case because non-Muslim females are marrying Muslim males – for love no less!
It’s probably to please the groom’s parents more than actually believing Mohamed’s story; whereas Muslim females are forbidden to marry non-Muslim men – often at the threat of her life. Again, this a shameful example of not giving equal rights to women. If Muslim men were forbidden to marry non-Muslim women the number of ‘converts’ would plummet.
Lastly, have you got the statistic of how many ‘converts’ have subsequently unconverted? Or how many have converted only nominally in order to facilitate the marriage? Those numbers would be far less flattering wouldn’t they?
Islam disallows Muslim daughters from marrying non-Muslims. If you have a problem with that, it’s your problem.
Well, first of all it’s the daughters’ problem.
I respect your atheism. I want you tor respect my belief in Allah.
No. I respect *your right to believe* what you want, but there is no way you should expect me to automatically respect *what you believe*. Nor should you expect me to automatically respect your right to practice your religion if the tenets of the religion are anathema to rational social harmony – and on those grounds masking the face would be contrary to those ideals. I’ll respect what you believe with respect to Mohamed’s story and social mores only if it reflects justice, morality and rationality – and there is your problem. But it shouldn’t be a big problem, it’s only unsubstantiated religion – folklore – after all.
There are probably a number of non-religious issues upon which we might agree. For instance, I reckon chicken biryani is a food of the gods!
* * *
Harries is entitled to his opinion, but I myself never regard folklore as trivial: language is always (always) a cultural tool and what is invented in it, whether out of necessity and the need for useful signals or out of desire or play or the want of excitement and greatness (even if only in our own heads), each language and its lore and literature becomes a suspension for cultural self-concept.
With that, I’ll take this post a little further.
* * *
Surat 4:34:
“Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.” (Pickthall’s version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)
Dr. Shafaat gets into the matter of entangled loyalty well with this statement on the violence involved:
“Beat them”. If even separation fails to work, then it is suggested that men use beating. To this suggestion of the Holy Qur’an there have been two extreme reactions on the part of some Muslims. The first reaction is being apologetic or ashamed of the suggestion. The second is to use it as a justification for indulging in habitual wife battering. Needless to say that both these reactions are wrong. The Quran as we believe is the word of God and is thus every word in it is full of wisdom and love. To be apologetic about any part of the Quran is to lack both knowledge and faith.
For every word to be “full of wisdom and love”, some additional exegesis seems necessary, for Dr. Shafaat continues:
In regard to the suggestion about beating, the following further points should also be noted:
a) According to some traditions the Prophet said in his famous and well-attended speech on the occasion of his farewell pilgrimage that the beating done according to the present verse should be ghayr mubarrih, i.e. in such a way that it should not cause injury, bruise or serious hurt. On this basis some scholars like Tabari and Razi say even that it should be largely symbolic and should be administered “with a folded scarf” or “with a miswak or some such thing”. However, to be effective in its purpose of shaking the wife out of her nasty mood it is important that it should provide an energetic demonstration of the anger, frustration and love of the husband. In other words, it should neither seriously hurt the wife nor reduce it to a set of meaningless motions devoid of emotions.
That power continues to reside in the man (this is a locus-of-control issue) and not in the woman (how should one of the fair sex respond to or treat a “rebellious man”?) seems less an issue than the management of the degree of violence expressed, either physically or symbolically.
* * *
In working with thought as language behavior subject to modification by context in time plus the relative insularity of minds and the language-inventing cultures that create content and self-concept as well as a righteous sense of both license and prohibition, there’s much conversation needed about what I’ve started calling the “humanity of humanity”, i.e., mankind’s better potential in character, and in relation to that, a reconciled psychological outlook.
It’s worth a look, especially to men who may have doubts about how tough may be the “rebellious” woman they have been otherwise so licensed to beat, they themselves having been so pandered to as to have been granted by power on high exclusive control over what many other humans might as fervently and justifiably believe ideal as an equally empowered and inclusive love and partnership.
* * *
One more note on the laying on of hands by either partner in a marriage: when it has come to that, somebody, one or the other, please, leave the home, call a lawyer, and arrange for a separation.
The roots of this hatred and devouring of its own children lies in the deadly schism of Islam. The rupture that takes the toll every day in the broad expanse of Islamic countries from Bahrain to Saudi. I will refer to the history; the roots of all these killings lie in the ‘pardons of Fateh-e- Mecca’ and death of Prophet. It all started the day Prophet of Islam died. Alas, little did Imam knew that he is cursed and haunted by the historical schism of ‘devouring its own.’ A curse set as the destiny of children of Islam! Devouring suicide bombing killing of its own kin is a continuation of a bitter war of blood and venom between Banu Hashim and Banu Umayyads; that curse has continually taken its toll on children of Islam for 1470 years.
I’m following but haven’t sent a Facebook friend request to the writer, for my exuberant friend-making behavior has been flagged — only once, not blocked — and it has made me more conservative as well as more appreciative of having the ability to read another writer’s work without right away invoking greater Facebook buddiehood.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group opposed to the Syrian regime, says Mohammad Qataa was shot in the mouth and neck a day after being seized.
The Taliban have denied involvement in the beheading cited in the above report, but there seems no question that the crime took place. False flag or true deed, one would be hard pressed to find a more deliberately monstrous crime.
Contempt for an enemy’s life should have limits.
Muhammad Hassan Sultan, a slender brown-haired 12-year-old, became a postwar casualty when the shrapnel from a cluster bomb cut into his head and neck.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 58 children (23 girls and 35 boys between 2 and 17 years of age) were abducted by LRA in 2012. In contrast to previous years, they were used mainly as porters to carry looted goods, rather than to participate in attacks. Children continued to be victims of LRA attacks, however. In two separate LRA attacks, a girl and a boy were killed and a girl and three boys injured in Haut Uélé prefecture between January and May 2012. A case in which a girl was raped by LRA was documented in May 2012, while two other girls who escaped from the group in 2012 reported having been raped while in captivity. In total, 41 children (19 girls and 22 boys) escaped or were released from LRA during the reporting period. Between January and October 2012, LRA also attacked two health centres and three schools.
Meanwhile, New York-based Human Rights Watch said that evidence has emerged that an airstrike using cluster bombs on the village of Deir al-Asafir near Damascus killed at least 11 children and wounded others on Sunday. Cluster bombs have been banned by most nations.
Yesterday’s news or today’s, the picture is more than grim, for the image of war in this dimension reflects most directly on the adults whose decisions failed to protect innocents, whether their own or others.
Carol M. Highsmith’s photograph shows not only those towers but a sense of the site’s proximity to the Beltway, which is about 1,000-ft. The mosque complex under construction today will be about twice that distance (judging from the Google map).
About that visual impression off what is called the “outer loop of the beltway”, we shall see, literally.
* * *
Here is my question at the moment: how do Americans who are not Muslim feel about Islam today?
* * *
While the news gets around the terrorism-inspired “anti-Jihad” and “Islamophobe” communities, it also provides a moment for very loose social science measurement.
“It will be a place that will help counter an epidemic of “Islamophobia” in the United States, according to Turkish government officials who recently visited the construction site. The delegation was led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose goals include increasing Islamist influence in America.”
“The leaders of two U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities in attendance included Naeem Baig, is the president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo lists ICNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The memo says its “work in America is “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” The memo even refers to meetings with ICNA where there was talk about a merger.”
From YouTube poster “Joseph Rudyard Kipling” whose attitude (with what sounds like the music from Platoon) needs no interpretation of the fine points:
“This monument will be a symbol of our understanding of culture and civilization,” Erdogan said.
The center will be a good way to show how wrong Islamophobia is by giving messages of Islam’s brotherhood and tolerance, Erdogan noted.
With the completion of the center, the state of Maryland will have a different richness, Erdogan said.
“With its multi functional character, the center would be a source of pride for the Turkish nation,” Erdogan indicated.
The Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center would be an expression of co-existence based on love and tolerance, Erdogan also said.
On the other hand, a blog titled “Stop Turkey” has a page devoted to remarks made by the state sponsor of the Turkish Culture and Civilization Center, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — “Favourite Erdogan Quotes” — and those are not so friendly.
Ramp it up, as may The Thinking Mom — “Imagine a $100 million facility devoted to Nazi-ism on American soil with the complicity of the American government. The Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center is every bit as dangerous as that” — or wind it down as so many of decent and good conscience — and without reference to race, creed, color, or religion — may try, that mosque is under construction in my backyard.
If it were a synagogue of similar scale with some houses planted around it, no one would bat an eyelash.
* * *
“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.”
I repeatedly drag in Quran 9:29 for its being unambiguous and sticky, at least, and may be representative of the conversation that it will take great courage to have as regards the goodness and validity of an Islamic civilization clinging to the above and other off-putting and seemingly explicit instructions.
Here’s David Wood marching up to and through the talking points in relation to the recent beheading in Woolwich, UK:
When are we going to have this conversation?
My Muslim friends all over the world may approach this line in a different way, all of them well noting the persecuting character of the Taliban, Al-Nusra (an Al-Qaeda group in Syria today) and others around the fringes of their own lives and, tragically, sometimes in close and direct.
In the more central areas of the Islamic Small Wars, events like the “Boston Marathon Bombing” — an insult to all civilized hearts globally — hit the newspapers on a daily to weekly basis, and the same are similarly repudiated en masse, and yet . . . the text remains embraced, even if passively.
“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”
Ali preferred the term “subdued” to merely “humbled”.
May one of the “People of the Book” or other “kafir” ask why not “conquered”, “enslaved”, or “subjugated”?
May an insider, a believer, ask, “Why attack the autonomy and dignity of another on the basis of faith at all?”
* * *
Maryland has a reputation as a deeply liberal and moderate state, one in which Catholics and Protestants learned to get along right quick, and so I have no doubt the citizenry will welcome the new mosque and regard it as a good sign of the power of development and investment in keeping life around the Capitol Beltway ever affluent, hopeful, and pleasant.
Obama’s underlying rule may be “least war possible”, and with a long war involving a modern state with both its amenities and technologies and contracting methods riding right along with the Navy, such guidance would have practical as well as political ramifications. As America’s 21st Century Roman arrogance declined precipitously with the Vietnam War, and it may be suggested at least that adventure into every subsequent engagement has been beneath its shadow.
In essence, from financial, strategic, and tactical perspectives, the United States may be fighting the war it can.
(I’m going to hit “enter” here but continue thoughts the “least war possible”).
With nuclear weapons in the wings and an enemy loaded with self-serving grandiose presumptions of a civilizational nature, working around “the least war possible”, travels sideways to the belligerent’s want of a “clash of civilizations”: Russia may not be so subtle about facing challenges from Islam (as illustrated in Chechnya), but NATO would seem to be working hard to preserve Islam, to validate Muslim identity, but also to allow or actually enable it to evolve.
This, of course, is where the west mires itself in strident anti-Jihad, apologist, Islamic defense, and reformist arguments.
In my blog, I use 9:29 as signal to the kind of passage the surrounding world will not tolerate and signal to the behavior, the intolerance, that the greater Muslim society, the Ummah, itself cannot tolerate having been twisted into the first target of the intolerant and venal.
So “the least war possible” may not only extend military and related political and social capital (post-Vietnam), it also buys time to let nature — our lovely gregarious human nature — weather away the sharp edges of Muhammad’s expression culminating both in a greater monotheist allegiance but also his own singular glorification.
(More to come).
For “realpolitik”, the Arab center of the Islamic universe gets a “follow-on” by way of “the least war possible”.
Instead of the discomfort and tragedy of an incalculable nature considering the cross-cultural integument built on the backbone of the energy trade and related reinvestment, “the English”, also everyone else, and “the Arab” come out of this with many good things near term — this references the Shiite vs. Sunni variable in displacing the Iranian Ayatollah’s power, defending Israel (and the west), and preserving for greater development an informed global experience that has become the open society experience by way of immense investments in education and research across an entire universe of interests, much including philology and religion (in which regard, I’m a pretty good starving example of an average, maybe a little bit better, not-yet-successful western artist and intellectual: I have the formal empirical and literary experiences through graduate work, and some 30 years later a 2,000-volume in-apartment library . . . and a home on the web (no contracts, no paychecks — a shame, for sure, if it weren’t for the intellectual freedom experienced).
Forgive me the digression.
The “least war possible” would seem to advance Sunni Islam by way of the leverage available from the Saudi sphere of influence.
As the Saudis must see themselves in mirrored in the World Wide Web AND as the west urges reforms AND as internal pressures develop (God has praised the daughters of generals), “the least war possible” also obtains time for a slow rate of inevitable transformation. This the Jihad vs. anti-Jihad forces may not understand, and so here on Facebook they are at each other’s throats in “Islamists vs. Zionists” (open group), but even that is part of bringing a closed kettle — yes, a pressure cooker — to a simmer, such that everyone in it stews a bit but nothing explodes in the way that it could.
(more to come).
For either Afghanistan and Pakistan — or all involved in the South Asian sphere of “Islamist” operations — “the least war possible” may be experienced as a brutal drag.
Perhaps a hardened old salt would call it “a learning experience”, which it may be — it takes time to filter and train up an anti-Jihadist military and police from within the bastions of Islam, even if the same understand both their own self-preserving interests in the matter as well as the necessity of developing a greater environment — “improved qualities in living” may be a term I’ll use — for themselves and their generations.
Still, compared to peace (now), the process plainly sucks.
Here I will add one more thing but from my web-based education and inspiration this year: the problems of the Islamic Small Wars and those posed by every conflict, development, and employment challenge have a “geo-spatial” aspect to them: even the best and most ethical of educators, engineers, planners, and policy makers cannot address every problem everywhere all at once!
What I have heard from friends in South America and seen in Pakistan is that “writ of state” blurs wherever police and troops cannot be delivered to a firefight inside of something like 30 minutes.
(more to come; I’m on a roll)
In the imagination, the United States and NATO maintain awesome martial ability and firepower, and Islamic state partners in the “War on Terror” have ample potential themselves as regards material and troop assets; however, “the enemy” has not been for a long time a a large conventional force emerging at the edge of to-be-contested territory as infantry and tank columns. As with the FARC in Colombia or the dueling cartel in Mexico, th
(I goofed!)!
” . . . emerging in tank columns” . . . . The Assad “battle plan”, or lack thereof, in Syria provides a fair example of what happens when a state applies the conventional hammer to a host of clever fleas, and so the regime has destroyed city blocks, many neighborhoods, practically the life of entire cities, and apart from expressing its pique by way of such destruction, it hasn’t contained or neutralized its rebel opposition.
From an observation standpoint, just looking at satellite photos of the destruction, Assad’s Syria, by way of conventional military force, has been eating itself alive.
Now I’ll return to the “geo-spatial” variable as regards Pakistan’s military and police and Afghanistan and NATO forces in the region: to secure any location by way of “the least war possible” (!) involves growing human assets in each to take care of themselves, this as opposed to building an enormous structure of airstrips, forts, and roads capable of fully policing (also, alas, perhaps abusing) constituents out to the edge of the “writ of the state”.
Lo and behold: in its human and political aspect, our lovely blue marble of a planet sustains ample dark and unsettled spaces, also known as “frontier”.
In regard to “dark space” and “frontier”, the geo-spatial aspect involved in combing out Taliban readying plans from remote locations or close-by but overlooked urban backrooms, basements, and garages — anonymity is a dark space —for mayhem and murder to be visited on others help make “the least war possible” the only war approachable.
(more, but I’m running out of energy)
There may be many political answers in regard to the persistance of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other similarly motivated organizations around the world, but the pursuit of the “least war possible” may acccount for balancing military and political capital with needs over time, for encouraging political and spiritual evolution across a broad human canvass in space and time, and for meeting spatial challenges involved in grooming what most hope will be a better world.
Life is life, should be enjoyed, made better for the living.
Death and sacrificial cults exists here and there on our planet, but in the Taliban (of interest here) and potential in Islam there seems an unpalatable want of heaven (now) for which death is presented as a desirable gateway.
Even if we ourselves should turn out “Islamists” and agree on this, I’d gamble on one or the other saying, “You first” — and in actuality, that is what happens: the seduced must allow their leaders to go on with the “burden” of surviving.
It’s a bad deal.
I don’t believe all of the “B’nai Israel” along the Durand Line have bought it or mean to keep it, but the God Mob has developed means and ways, and whether such manners persist in southern Sicily (for money and fearful respect) or up in the ranges approaching the roof the earth (for money and fearful respect cloaked in religion), they’re tough in their redoubts and making war is primarily what they make.
While ordinary Britons and non-Muslims around the world are bewildered by these never-ending acts of terrorism, the response of the leaders of the Islamic community is the tired old cliche — Islam is a religion of peace, and jihad is simply an “inner struggle.”
The fact these terrorists are motivated by one powerful belief — the doctrine of armed jihad against the “kuffar” (non-Muslims) — is disingenuously denied by Islamic clerics and leaders.
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
I submit to you: a problem in the head remains a problem in language.
Not that there aren’t other combined biological and cognitive issues involved in the psychological organization of each person and then each person’s expression as a social spirit and member of our universally gregarious species.
I don’t know if we may be hurrying to discuss some things so far kept in the wings and given keen attention by “Islamists” and “anti-Jihadists” both.
Tarek Fatah founded the Muslim Canadian Congress, so here I’ve continued on to a clip featuring Salma Siddiqui, a past president and current member of the board with that organization.
Evidently the conversation has been joined for a while, but there’s a difference between taking a stance and developing an evolutionary path in language away from disaster and transforming some portion (remember: the proportions shimmer) of an enormous population in such a way that it takes responsibility for its fate and becomes reasoning and reasonable and just in its ethics and in its efforts to improve the local and regional qualities — physical, psychological, and spiritual — of living.
Islam, that “old time religion” part of it, at least, contains a trump card for play against the progressives and reformers: generations of investment in belief in the divine delivery of the Quran and in the holiness of Muhammad.
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