I am becoming a defender of Islam.

One of my Facebook buddies wrote in relation to the Hamas missile battery pictured to the left, “I love to hear the muslim’s [STET] cry about how offended they are! They can start a war by launching rockets at Israel and then they cry about it when they get retaliation for their acts.”

By now it should dawn on the infidel (and “The People of the Book” AKA “The People of the Five Books” AKA “the people who have written thousands of books” AKA “the people who write books, grow up to be doctors, and win Nobel Prizes out of all proportion to their small number” AKA etc.) that whatever Islam is or will be, it’s most conservative expression goes hardest on Muslims, and they’re not unaware of this.

So I responded:

All legacies in culture, language, philosophy, and religion evolve, and it’s good that they do. While we Jews have been a leading part of that — a light among the nations — ours may be not the only nation or only light, and it may be part of our character-in-eternal-myth to find that light in others as well.

Some, like Hamas and Hezbollah, make finding that light difficult for us, but it would be a mistake to think for a minute that others do not suffer before the strident and violent expressions in speech and in reality of such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban, not to completely equate the two but to suggest than an INCLUSIVE universalism is greater in latency within our species than so many attempts by fascist entrepreneurs to leverage exclusive and deeply narcissistic programs, whether by way of nationalist or religious ambitions, into their own power or wealth. Some get away with what they do on the backs of others: Robert Mugabe foremost to my turn of mind. 🙂

I’ll tell you a not-so-secret secret: it’s not the dictator who destroys his people; it’s the dictator’s people who allow themselves to be destroyed, either in their humanity or in fact.

So it is with Hamas and others: they’re gettin’ rich (or they’re getting weapons, at least) while “their people” are allowing themselves to “get owned” in the worst ways imaginable. The day will dawn when they know they can fight back and will.

Contributing to that thought this morning was this reported this morning in the Los Angeles Times:  “I’m demanding that Morsi sit down with the opposition and listen to the different people of Egypt. He must also retract his decree and reform the police system,” said Arafat Moawad, a protester in Tahrir. “He needs to do these things in order to become a president for all Egyptians. Now, he is just a president for [his] Muslim Brotherhood movement.”  (“Egyptian stock exchange falls, protesters converge on Tahrir Square”).

To be clear: there is the voice (supported on the “Arab Street” by the presence of the body) protesting both the latest power grab by dictator wannabe (President-for-Life) Morsi and, associated with him, the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

It’s not the dictator, is it?

Dictators, generally speaking, are but common assholes who have managed to elevate themselves above all others — not for nothing do we call them “malignant narcissists” — by way of intimidation, theft, and murder.

It’s The People, Los Pueblos, the Every Man and Woman, who allow them their outrageous license, which I believe they do in relation to their own cultural or social disorganization and lack of comprehension and prescience.  No one alone and innately possessed of a decent ethics and humanity can stand up to a thug; anyone alone, however, may band with others to shut down the same, and then, when that happens, the movement, the True Revolution, may be called an expression of righteous political will, this provided the same is itself possessed of a broad scope and related insight.

From the Haggadah with which I grew up: “With every generation, a little more freedom is won.”

Moses left Egypt with not only the Jews but a “mixed multitude” — i.e., all who wished to abandon the world constructed around and for Pharaoh, as malignant a narcissist as any who has ever existed.  That story, intact, transmitted faithfully across generations for now thousands of years, remains eternal, true, and adaptable.