by Charles
Last Friday, Tom Friedman outlined the challenges awaiting western countries, and more so their resident Muslim populations:
So this is a critical moment. We must do all we can to limit the civilizational fallout from this bombing. But this is not going to be easy. Why? Because unlike after 9/11, there is no obvious, easy target to retaliate against for bombings like those in London. There are no obvious terrorist headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan that we can hit with cruise missiles. The Al Qaeda threat has metastasized and become franchised. It is no longer vertical, something that we can punch in the face. It is now horizontal, flat and widely distributed, operating through the Internet and tiny cells.
Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.
And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.
What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough.
The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.
Emphases mine. The United Kingdom is afflicted with this Islamist cancer, and the transit terrorist bombings are but the latest manifestation. Last year, I wrote about reports which asserted that ancestral Britons have a case of Islamophobia, but it's also apparent that large numbers of Muslims have a case of Anglophobia. In a joint poll of 500 Muslims by the Guardian and ICM:
- 82% do not believe the US when it says it wants an independent sovereign democratic Iraq.
- 68% disagree with Bush and Blair when they say that this is war against terrorism and not Islam.
- 61% wanted British and American troops out of Iraq now.
- 47% agreed with a Liberal Democrat MP when she said that if she had to live in the same situation as a Palestinian that she consider becoming a suicide bomber herself.
- 13% believed that further al Qaeda attacks on the US are justified.
- 26% believe that the Muslim community is too integrated into British mainstream culture.
- 46% oppose of new citizenship ceremonies with a modern oath of allegiance to Britain.
The survey reveals serious resistance to assimilation into British culture and tepid support at best for the war efforts. More serious are the strains of radicalism that course through the Muslim community. The British were slow in responding, but they have taken steps against the worst offenders, such as shutting down the Muhajiroun website, where this picture
was once on the front page, and cracking down on the Finsbury Park mosque. These are but small advances, but this disturbing report from the Times of London, detailing the extent of the al Qaeda infiltration in Britain, tells us that the problem is severe:
Al-Qaeda is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in this country, leaked Whitehall documents reveal.
A network of “extremist recruiters” is circulating on campuses targeting people with “technical and professional qualifications”, particularly engineering and IT degrees.
Yesterday it emerged that last week’s London bombings were a sophisticated attack with all the devices detonating on the Underground within 50 seconds of each other. The police believe those behind the outrage may be home-grown British terrorists with no criminal backgrounds and possessing technical expertise.
A joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier — Young Muslims and Extremism — prepared for the prime minister last year, said Britain might now be harbouring thousands of Al-Qaeda sympathisers.
Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police chief, revealed separately last night that up to 3,000 British-born or British-based people had passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.
The Whitehall dossier, ordered by Tony Blair following last year’s train bombings in Madrid, says: “Extremists are known to target schools and colleges where young people may be very inquisitive but less challenging and more susceptible to extremist reasoning/ arguments.”
The confidential assessment, covering more than 100 pages of letters, papers and other documents, forms the basis of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, codenamed Operation Contest.
It paints a chilling picture of the scale of the task in tackling terrorism. Drawing on information from MI5, it concludes: “Intelligence indicates that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad or supporting such activity, is extremely small and estimated at less than 1%.”
This equates to fewer than 16,000 potential terrorists and supporters out of a Muslim population of almost 1.6m.
The dossier also estimates that 10,000 have attended extremist conferences. The security services believe that the number who are prepared to commit terrorist attacks may run into hundreds.
Emphases mine. If true, these figures are stunning and they spell trouble for both the Muslim Village and the country itself. The Christian Science Monitor has also written about the defiant Muslim underclass in Britain. While Merryl Wyn Davies is convinced that Islam is a religion of peace, and I'm sure there are many like her, there are also too many in her own Village who do not share her views and too many willing to accept the militant radicals into their community and too often deflecting responsibility by blaming others such as the US and Britain. Irshad Manji:
The trouble with this line of reasoning is that terrorists have never needed an Iraq debacle to justify their violent jihads. What exactly was the Iraq of 1993, when Islamic radicals tried to blow up the World Trade Center? Or of 2000, when the USS Cole was attacked? Hell, that assault took place after U.S. military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia.
If staying out of Iraq protected anyone from terrorism, then why did "insurgents" last year kidnap two journalists from France -- the most anti-war, anti-Bush nation in the West? Even overt solidarity with the people of Iraq, demonstrated by CARE's top relief worker in the area, Margaret Hassan, didn't shield her from assassination.
These are the facts that ordinary Muslims must take to their preachers at Friday's sermons. A clear repudiation of the London bombings will not bring back the dead. What it can do is help the rest of the world differentiate between the moderates and the apologists.
The British Muslim Village needs to do exactly that. What's more, they need to take active steps to root out the militant radical Islamists that have infected their culture. While Charles Moore is hoping for an Islamic Gandhi to step up and lead, I'm not that optimistic. It needs a group effort.
okay, I think this is now on topic, or at least close to topic and bears on places this discussion is likely to go. And everyone at RedState politely ignored me, so I'm reposting it...this is in response to a post of Tac's about a man interviewed in Leeds who seemed to be giggling about the bombings. It's largely unchanged, I'm fixing typos and factual errors though.
"As far as what's going on:
1. I am really quite skeptical that this man is typical of the Muslim community. If all or even a significant minority of them were plotting to kill us, there simply would have been more attacks by now. Look at Iraq, look at Israel. Whatever the gaps in our immigration laws, whatever the manifold failings of the BICE (formerly the INS)--part of the reason there have not been many attacks on the U.S. is that there haven't been people willing to carry them out living here, and it's difficult enough to get those who are willing to do it into the country to deter many of them. It isn't that hard to get a suicide bomb onto a subway.
2. I also think the problem is probably worse in Europe than here. There have been more attacks there since 9/11, more of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were living in Europe rather than here, and there have been many more high level arrests and serious cells in Europe than the U.S. The poll numbers also look different.
I'm not quite sure why this is, but I'm growing pretty confident of it.
3. A lot of the stuff about how moderate Muslims have not denounced bin Laden, no one has issued a fatwa, etc. is simply false. And for whatever reason--perhaps because a higher % of the victims and their families were Muslim, perhaps because there is less irrational hatred of England than the U.S. and Israel, perhaps a simple loss of patience, perhaps because of some of the positive political changes in some parts of the Arab world since 9/11 (e.g. Abbas replacing Arafat)--there have been more condemnation from Muslim groups, including extremist and even violent groups, than after previous attacks.
4. This is not to say that the response has been adequate. It is not adequate, as a collective matter, either in the West or outside of it. It really isn't.
5. For instance, outside the West, even among those who condemn attacks like this and condemn Al Qaida, there is an exception made for murdering Jews and Israelis. As someone who is married into a Jewish family and who will converting soon, believe me when I say I am REALLY not okay with this, and I am really not okay with the willingness of some people in the left--a small % in the U.S., a larger % in Europe--to put up with this bullsh*t and look the other way. Livingstone's speech last week moved me more than any speech I have read in my life, but I haven't forgotten Qarqawi.
6. In the West, I tend think that for a very, very large % of Muslims, to the extent that they are not responding adequately, the inadequacy is NOT explained by them secretly planning to kill us, but by things like:
--the near-universal human tendency to focus more on wrongs done to people who belong to your group, and wrongs done by people who do not belong to your group, than to wrongs committed by people who belong to your group, and against those who do not belong.
--sheer denial that something awful is happening. The parents who let their kids go to Pakistan for six months, and then are absolutely shocked and report their child to the police as missing? You want them to scream at them for being so clueless, and yet--I've seen a family miss signs of a crisis that was happening in a way that would seem equally inexplicable to some. Denial is a powerful thing.
--the feeling of powerlessness that people have to change something this big and this horrible. I have felt this at times with the U.S. government, and that is a democracy of which I am a citizen.
--the corresponding feeling in much of the West that politics is something politicians do; the feeling among secular and religious moderates that religion something that clerics and their more traditional followers do; the lack of any sense of either power or duty to do anything to prevent your religion or your country from going off the rails.
--Simple fear of being labelled as a traitor to your people or your faith.
Those are just incredibly common human tendencies. Quite frankly, I have seen all of them at work in the utter non-response to the torture scandals in the U.S.
7) I continue to believe that one of the problems with some of the U.S. abuses of prisoners is that it is likely to make their neighbors reluctant to report things to the authorities when they should. Of course, if you know someone is planning to slaughter people on the subway, or you have a more general knowledge that they are planning to kill people, you have an overwhelming duty to report it that overrides all this. But Al Qaida doesn't work like that, they conceal their activities, and so you will generally have much vaguer suspicions than that.
Would you be noticeably less likely turn your neighbor in for a crime if you were not sure he was guilty, and you were afraid it was going to get him beaten, deported, imprisoned without trial, tortured, etc. even if they were not guilty? Those fears are probably exaggerated in Muslim communities, but they are not exactly ridiculous.
8. One thing this bombing makes clear: this is not just immigrants, this is citizens of Western countries as well. I suppose some of you would say that the answer is not to grant immigrants' children citizenship. I think that is EXACTLY the wrong response. I am certain that one of the reasons things are better in the U.S. than in Germany and France is that we don't share their stupid and frankly racist immigration policies, that the melting pot, "nation of immigrants" stuff has some truth to it--not the sachharine stuff of elementary school history, but some truth.
9. I also think that forbidding Muslim immigration, A) is guaranteed to get innocent people killed--I worked in an asylum clinic on some gender cases with African Muslim women as both my clients and my translators, so I take this rather personally; B) is going to an alienate a community whose support we need, unless we really are going to just say screw the equal protection clause and do a re-run of the WW2 internments; C) is not necessarily going to do all that much to stop terrorists, since the perpetrators in the US are much less likely to be naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents or asylum seekers, than they are to be (I accidentally deleted this, it should say): on a student or tourist visa, which they may or may not overstay, or simply to come here illegally.
10) you have a tendency to dismiss ANY discussion of the effects of what we do on Muslims' opinion of us and willingness to cooperate with us with a blanket "they hate us already", as if we're talking about an inchoate mass of people rather than a group of individuals with a whole spectrum of opinions and who act on those opinions to varying and lesser degrees. It's stupid and simplistic; occasionally even juvenile. It's also completely and utterly contradictory to the "Democratic Domino" theory and all your beliefs how about appeasement emboldens the terrorists. Either hearts and minds matter, or they don't; either they are within our power to influence, or they aren't. Pick an answer and stick with it.
11)I think we have to recognize: it may be impossible to completely prevent atrocities like last weeks from repeating. This is not to say that we should not fight against it as hard as we can. It may be that we could prevent all of them only by dismantling our Constitution and betraying our ideals. It is also possible that if we attempt to prevent these things by dismantling our Constitution and betraying our country's ideals, we will still not prevent all them. It is also possible that we will do these things, and it will only make the problem worse.
I tend to believe that things like torture, internment, mass deportations, are actually often counterproductive. I won't deny that it's what I want to believe, but I have also read about these things seriously; I have a fair bit of history backing me on this. But I don't know. I could be wrong.
Here's the thing: I am willing to risk being wrong. And it's just NOT because I don't understand that I could be wrong, or that I don't understand the potential costs of being wrong. That's just false. I, and almost all of my family and closest friends, live in the big densely populated cities where you get the biggest pile of corpses per pound of explosives. New York City, Washington D.C., Boston and Chicago, in that order--sometimes the suburbs, but usually the cities, not far from downtown. That's where we all live. We have thought seriously about this. We're willing to accept a slightly higher degree of risk to stay in the cities we love, to keep our country we love, the places they are.
There's a quotation from a not-so-great novel: "This is exactly the problem I was talking about downstairs...If you don't base your actions on what is right, then you have nothing left to fail back on when the practicalities fail."
Thousands of soldiers have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands of soldiers died in Vietnam. You have said: worth it, clearly. Not evidence that the strategy is failing. You have said that the only real problem with Vietnam was the anti-war movement, you have called for a draft in Iraq.
I'm not playing the stupid chickenhawk game: I know that the problem is not that you are willing to risk others' lives and not your own. It's that--you seem to think that a greatly increased risk of death is acceptable only if we get to kill some other people too. About 60,000 dead in Vietnam, approaching 2000 in Iraq, these are not signs of a serious problem with our strategy. Staying the course is the only brave, honorable, courageous thing to do. But 53 (or more) deaths in London, in an attack that may simply not have been preventable--that is proof that we are failing, that we have to change our policies completely, that people like me are cowards or naive idiots who are surrendering to the terrorists.
I don't accept that. I just don't.
12) None of this is to say that we shouldn't change our current approach, or that there might not be more restrictive means that are totally justified and past due. None of it is to say that I don't think moderate Muslims are obligated to do more. I am spending a lot of time and effort to get my government to stop sending people to torturers. I have done this even though it probably, frankly, won't end the policy, and even though some of the suspects targetted by this policy have tried to kill people like me, my family, my friends; have been partly responsible for a massacre and a giant crater in the heart of the city where I was born. Well, if I can make that effort, I think it is MORE than freaking reasonable to ask that moderate Muslims make some effort to do something about this cult of murderers that have somehow convinced themselves and millions of other people that they do this in the service of Islam. I tend to agree with them that Al Qaeda and terrorism are a parastitical cult rather than a representative of Islam, but it is a cult that has been allowed to take over whole countries and kill thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I realize that someone living on Atlantic Avenue or in London has little power to influence fanatics in the caves along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but now some of the members of this cult are citizens of Britain, and they're murdering other citizens of Britain, including other Muslims, on the subways.
So the denial has to stop, and I understand the sense of powerlessness but that isn't a reason not to do what you can. I see signs that it is changing--read the Guardian coverage, you'll be pleasantly surprised; I hope they continue.
I am sick and tired of "whatabouttery", of the use of atrocity to justify atrocity. I am just f**king sick of it, whether it comes from one side or the other."
okay, I'll save further thoughts for a second post.
Posted by: Katherine | July 14, 2005 at 12:28 PM
Katherine got here first. But: it's just false that no Muslims have condemned this. Katherine cited Juan Cole, and his page is worth looking at even if you normally disagree with his analysis, because it contains links to some of those very condemnations. See also this list of links.
If we are ever going to work this out, we have to begin by getting the facts right, especially when we draw conclusions on their basis.
Posted by: hilzoy | July 14, 2005 at 12:36 PM
further thoughts:
--citing a lack of support for the Iraq war as a sign of "tepid support for the war effort" and general disloyalty is pretty weak.
You are going to just have to accept, and I mean fully accept, that people who distrust and even despise Bush's policies and oppose the war, may be on the same side as you in regards to terrorism.
--One of my all time favorite writers in Albert Camus. Camus was born in Algeria, much of his family lived there, and he felt pretty much torn in two by the French-Algerian war there. His writings on the subject have influenced my thinking on this stuff more than almost anything else, and I hope people will indulge me in quoting him. These are from a speech he made in Algiers in 1956:
This is from his 1958 "Preface to Algerian Reports":
This is from a letter to an Algerian friend of his who favored independence, by military means if possible, but refused to accept terrorism:
Now. I always get concerned, when I quote things like this, that I will be accused of drawing moral equivalencies which I am not drawing; blaming us for the terrorists' responses rather than the terrorists themselves; kidding myself about their true motivations; talking about a "cycle of violencce" in a way that denies that murder is murder.
I am doing none of those things. I don't think the situation is directly parallel to Algeria for instance; there was a strong argument for Algerian independence. Whereas the various limited goals Al Qaida has adopted have always seemed to me to be quite secondary to a desire to commit genocide against all who will not bow to them. I am not saying that the evils committed by both sides are comparable. I am not making any argument about any causal link or lack of it to Iraq.
What I am saying is: for all people of good will, Muslim and non-Muslim, who oppose both torture and terrorism--to be sitting around fighting about who started it; which crimes are worse; how MUCH worse; about what atrocity or mistake caused, excused or mitigated what other atrocity--this is a waste of time, which we can ill afford to waste.
To the extent that people feel I focus too much on the torture scandals and immigrants' rights and all the rest, here is the reason, the ONLY reason, why: it is my own country doing this, and I have more power to influence my own government and my own fellow citizens than I do over the terrorists or anyone connected with them. I somehow do not think I would be an influential voice in the Muslim community, about the meaning of Islam and the unnacceptability of terrorism.
The people who have a power to influence that--to lesser and greater degrees, but certainly all to a greater degree than me--are Muslims themselves.
So me and a Muslim immigrant who opposes terrorism--we could stare at each other all day long, and say, "The U.S. has killed more people than the terrorists have." "The U.S. does not murder innocent civilians on purpose." "The U.S. has tortured prisoners" "Not nearly as many as Zarqawi, Hussein, the Taliban, or basically every government in the Arab world." "You started it!" "No, you started it!" "I oppose terrorism, but your country must stop invading Muslim countries and torturing Muslim prisoners if you want it to stop." "I oppose torture and opposed the Iraq war, but I will never convince my country that they're wrong unless you must get members of your religion to understand that terrorism is never acceptable" "You're not doing enough to stop this." "You're not doing enough to stop this." "You go first!" "No, YOU go first!"
I think that these arguments are a waste of time. I think that the decent people of the world who realize that mass murder is mass murder, innocent civilians are innocent civilians, torture is torture....we should not be wasting time arguing about who started it, who's worse or better, how much worse or how much better they are. It is human nature to be more upset about crimes committed against people like you, to be readier to deny crimes committed by people like you. But you have more power to stop the crimes of those you have more in common with.
We should not by distracted by these arguments. NOn-Muslims who are not willing to sacrifice human rights and the rule of law, Muslims who abhor terrorism--we should not be glaring at each other suspiciously, each waiting for the other to make the first move. We should be refusing to let go of each others hands. We should act where we have the most chance of doing some good, and in doing so we earn the right to ask others to do the same.
Posted by: Katherine | July 14, 2005 at 01:46 PM
I hate coming to defend Mr. Flat World, but he's partially correct.
He should have said, " no Muslim cleric of consequence ( or credibility)." While I would rightly expect the Shia and Sufi clerics to condemn these incidents, Cole should provide a longer list of Sunnis in the Mideast, as the Sunni are the target audience.
The link that Cole ( and Hilzoy) provides is rather sparse in that regard. As for Tantawi, this gives some background on the man chosen by Mubarak.
I believe Friedman is looking for a statement by al-Azhar's scholars as a whole, not just the voice of the hand-picked head.
Posted by: Happy Jack | July 14, 2005 at 01:50 PM
"I oppose terrorism, but your country must stop invading Muslim countries and torturing Muslim prisoners if you want it to stop."
Hmm.. Is the above something a moderate muslim would say?
Posted by: Stan LS | July 14, 2005 at 02:05 PM
A lot of the stuff about how moderate Muslims have not denounced bin Laden, no one has issued a fatwa, etc. is simply false.
Cole is either being dishonest or he's misreading Friedman, Katherine. He redefines fatwa so that any opinion by a cleric can be considered a fatwa. That is not so. A fatwa is a "legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar", and the only fatwa that I found in Cole's links is this one. So to that extent, Friedman is mistaken.
As to the rest, I find myself agreeing with you more than not.
Posted by: Charles Bird | July 14, 2005 at 02:09 PM
Yeah, I could have said it more clearly: "I oppose terrorism unconditionally, but voices like mine will be drowned out for as long as your country does X".
And this is exactly the sort of nitpicking and refusal to assume good faith that makes so many of these arguments such a waste of time.
Posted by: Katherine | July 14, 2005 at 02:10 PM
katherine,
"I oppose terrorism, but your country must stop invading Muslim countries and torturing Muslim prisoners if you want it to stop."
Replace "Muslim" with "Christian" and imagine it's being said by a person of the Christian faith. That person would be labeled a fundamentalist and that statement would be laughed and sneered at.
Posted by: Stan LS | July 14, 2005 at 02:13 PM
Stan, that statement could have been clearer, I have clarified it to reflect what I meant, that is the end of it as far as I'm concerned. And maybe I should have said "Muslims who oppose all killing of civilians" instead of "Muslim moderates". I bet I made some typos, too. I can't even go back and edit the post, though.
I think what makes weblog discussions so frustrating, or at least what I find most frustrating, is the sense that people would rather score points by picking on the worst comments, the worst writers and worst arguments that their political opponents make, rather than really engaging with what they are saying. The more effort I put into a comment, the less interested people seem in responding to it. Or if they respond at all, it's to pick out one sentence that could have been phrased more clearly or some minor semantic dispute that is completely beside the point.
Charles--are you sure that Cole is wrong about the common usage of "fatwa"? You often hear about bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, which certainly fails to meet the official definition; Bin Laden's not a cleric at all, he has no authority whatsoever to issue a fatwa.
As for the Shi'ite v. Sunni thing--maybe it is more critical that Sunnis condemn bin Laden, but Friedman talked about "Muslim cleric[s]", not "Sunni Muslim clerics." Shi'ite grand ayatollahs are unquestionably major Muslim clerics. I suppose this could be seen as inconsistent when I complain about minor nitpicking, but:
--Friedman's comment is a statement of fact, not one statement made in a fictional argument meant meant to illustrate that such arguments are to a large extent distractions from the crucial things we agree on and need to act on.
--It was made on the New York Times op-ed page, not a comments thread
--It is likely to be repeated a thousand times
--It makes the all-too-common mistake of treating Islam as a monolith
Posted by: Katherine | July 14, 2005 at 02:54 PM
Charles,you have good reason not to be optimistic,nothing is going to happen based on significant #'s of Muslim's stepping forward,nothing. We are in this up to and past our eyeballs and some of us will not live long enough to see an end,if not all of us. I'm of the opinion that as the demographics change,in Islam's favor,thigs will worsen,assimilation me arse. We've let them in by the millions and lo and goddamed behold we're suprised that a religion based in large part on the sword and fueled by contempt is not leaping to the banner,not holding ecumenical services,and not streaming to the police stations to offer help. We are in for some very rough and brutal years. "Oderint dum metuant","let them hate us as long as they fear us". It may yet turn out to be true.
Posted by: johnt | July 14, 2005 at 03:03 PM
katherine,
"I oppose terrorism, but your country must stop invading Muslim countries and torturing Muslim prisoners if you want it to stop."
Replace "Muslim" with "Christian" and imagine it's being said by a person of the Christian faith. That person would be labeled a fundamentalist and that statement would be laughed and sneered at."
They'd be labelled a loony, because Muslim countries aren't invading Christian countries, and haven't since East Timor in 1975, I think. What a stupid argument.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | July 14, 2005 at 03:03 PM
Charles--are you sure that Cole is wrong about the common usage of "fatwa"? You often hear about bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, which certainly fails to meet the official definition; Bin Laden's not a cleric at all, he has no authority whatsoever to issue a fatwa.
Bin Laden expressly called it a fatwa, but he did not have the authority as a cleric or a mufti to make such a pronouncement. Many Muslim scholars and clerics have chimed in, stating that bin Laden's fatwa is not legitimate. An interesting piece here on the issuance of fatwas and who is qualified to make them.
Posted by: Charles Bird | July 14, 2005 at 03:18 PM
Katherine,
...the sense that people would rather score points by picking on the worst comments, the worst writers and worst arguments that their political opponents make, rather than really engaging with what they are saying. The more effort I put into a comment, the less interested people seem in responding to it. Or if they respond at all, it's to pick out one sentence that could have been phrased more clearly or some minor semantic dispute that is completely beside the point.
Not at all. I think we have to be careful about which arguments we are legitimizing. Just because a Muslim chooses to defend all other Muslims no matter what the facts maybe, doesn't meant that we have to nod and approve of such rationale. I wasn't scoring points.
And maybe I should have said "Muslims who oppose all killing of civilians"
That would be fine, but unfortunately Abu Ghraib and Gitmo seem to preoccupy some more then the suicide bombers in Iraq who *are* killing civilians. Or take Israel. Moderate Muslims had over a decade to speak up against the suicide bombers there, but the voices have been few and far between.
ginger,
They'd be labelled a loony, because Muslim countries aren't invading Christian countries, and haven't since East Timor in 1975, I think. What a stupid argument.
You are missing the point. The point is that displaying solidarity with others merely on faith should not be viewed as a valid/rational position. We did bomb Serbia, remember? Would the "bombing of the Christians" be a valid argument then?
Posted by: Stan LS | July 14, 2005 at 03:20 PM
Again, to the extent that Abu Ghraib preoccupies me, it is because I have both higher expectations of and more power to influence my own government than members of Islamic Jihad, Zarqawi and his band of thugs, etc. I also believe that focusing on this undercuts the predictable "what about Abu Ghraib" excuse, and gives me a credibility that the "outraged by the outraged" crowd lacks. And, I also think it is contrary to our interests as well as wrong.
By the way, this piece by Marty Lederman is the last nail in the coffin of the "Few bad apples" argument.
Displaying solidarity with others based on faith or other shared characteristics may not be valid or rational, but it is just about universal. The response to civilian deaths and Iraq and London seems to prove that. I could give you many other examples besides. It's human nature to protect your own or people like you, and to be more inclined to assign collective guilt to people unlike you, and we had better recognize that everyone, ourselves included, does it to some degree. This is why the Arar case was front page news in Canada for a year and barely registered in the United States. This is why I lost much more sleep, literally, over the deaths of thousands in New York than hundreds of thousands in Darfur. This is why we build memorials inscribing the names of each one of the dead on our soldiers into granite, and do not even attempt accurate estimates of the number of dead civilians in a country we occupy. This is why too many Irish people in the United States stupidly contributed to the IRA. It is universal. People do it to greater and lesser degrees; they do it for bad and good purposes and with bad and good effects; but just about all of them do it.
Using such deaths to justify atrocities against people less like you is of course a different matter. But not everyone who does the first does the second.
"They have had over a decade to speak against the suicide bombers there"
Are you more interested in assigning collective guilt or collective failure for that, or proving they're worse people than us, or convincing them to do so now?
I don't disagree with some of what you're saying, but this sort of "who's worse", "who started it", 'who's more to blame" is EXACTLY what I was arguing is a pointless distraction from the crucial questions. I mean, you're arguing with a fake argument that not only have I already corrected the phrasing of, but which I gave as an example of the sort of argument that goes on indefinitely and accomplishes absolutely nothing.
I don't even necessarily disagree with the substance of what you're saying. Nevertheless, I think this is precisely the trap that Camus was pleading with people not to fall into.
Posted by: Katherine | July 14, 2005 at 03:56 PM
Charles: reading through some of the links, I think it's often not clear in the English translations whether they are fatwas or not. However:
Here is a fatwa by Qaradawi; here is something by the Saudi Grand Mufti that certainly sounds like a fatwa; here (pdf) is one referring to fatwas by Tantawi rector of al-Azhar University in Cairo (described here as "the premier body of Sunni legal scholarship). Here's an article from the Economist referring to the fatwa by Fadlallah:
I could go on, but I only have these twenty minutes for Googling between meetings. I think Friedman was just wrong, though.
Posted by: hilzoy | July 14, 2005 at 04:02 PM
They have had over a decade to speak against the suicide bombers there"
Are you more interested in assigning collective guilt or collective failure for that, or proving they're worse people than us, or convincing them to do so now?
Am I assigning guilt or am I stating a fact?
I mean, you're arguing with a fake argument that not only have I already corrected the phrasing of, but which I gave as an example of the sort of argument that goes on indefinitely and accomplishes absolutely nothing.
How do you expect to get to the bottom of anything if you choose not to recognize facts? If we are going to pretend that there's no trend, how can we effectively change it?
I'll make an argument that if the rest of the world took the suicide bombings in Israel seriously (ie, not propping up Arafat) then we wouldn't be here today. We have witnessed over a decade of suicide bombings with the ummah not speaking out against them, and in many cases supporting or even glorifying them. Is it really a surprise that the Muslims who blew themselves up in London are British?
Posted by: Stan LS | July 14, 2005 at 04:47 PM
Per Stan's comment--
Cancer in Britain's Catholic Village--
I think Paisley qualifies as a good example of a bad example to follow.
Posted by: nous_athanatos | July 14, 2005 at 04:50 PM
"The more effort I put into a comment, the less interested people seem in responding to it."
Katherine, your lengthy comments are so thorough that your fellow liberals (ok, me) don't have much left to add. I think that your comments here definitively demonstrate why, for example, Max Boot's op-ed in today's LA Times is not just wrong but dangerous.
Too many people, conservative, liberal and moderate, are so locked into a win-at-all-cost mentality that the very thought of blinking first is abhorrent. Yet any attempt to understand the motives of the jihadists or to address their legitimate concerns is seen immediately as craven appeasement.
look at StanLS's comment on this thread. He'd rather be feared. Notably, he's not willing to discuss the body count on both sides that he's willing to tolerate in order to be feared.
On the other hand, as Poor Man put so pungently, it may be the case that we cannot unsh*t the bed. In which case StanLS is right; we have done so much harm to the concept of the rule of law that western terror is the only possible response.
personally, i'd like to think that there is still room to divide and conquer. Iraq may be a lost cause, but muslim extremism here in the west may not be. If i'm right, blinking first and opening a dialog with people whom we hold in profound contempt may be the only path to lasting peace.
Posted by: Francis / Brother Rail Gun of Reasoned Discourse | July 14, 2005 at 04:53 PM
Francis, I have no idea as to what you're talking about.
StanLS is right; we have done so much harm to the concept of the rule of law that western terror is the only possible response.
Can you provide a quote that you're referring to in your post?
Posted by: Stan LS | July 14, 2005 at 05:01 PM
Katherine cited Juan Cole, and his page is worth looking at even if you normally disagree with his analysis....
The fact that Hilzoy feels the need to coax CB into reading Juan Cole pretty well says it all. If people want to understand the Middle East they are going to have to pay some attention to people who know. Eat your spinach, Charles! If you are allergic to Juan Cole, try Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark). He has posted on the topic of this thread.
Posted by: Kevin Donoghue | July 14, 2005 at 05:22 PM
stanls, i apologize. i meant to refer to johnt's post of 3:03.
Posted by: Francis / Brother Rail Gun of Reasoned Discourse | July 14, 2005 at 05:34 PM
Yes, Cole is the soul of decorum. Fortunately some can maintain a sense of humor in the face of dissent-stifling.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 14, 2005 at 06:05 PM
So Cole makes a misstatement, and fails to 'fess up to it on his webpage. Therefore, we, the humble blogreader, should cease paying attention to Cole?
I just want to get this straight: this is the standard being proposed?
Posted by: 2shoes | July 14, 2005 at 06:19 PM
Too bad you had to quote that boob Friedman, and highlight his factual errors (so what else is new from him).
But your main point -- the ideological fight at the heart of the struggle against Islamic terrorism -- is what this is about. Too bad our policies don't match this wisdom.
Posted by: dmbeaster | July 14, 2005 at 06:21 PM
Slarti: Cole, like Abu A., is worth reading for the links alone, and also for the accounts of what's happening in the Arabic press. If I could get the Arabic language just downloaded into my head, I would be a very happy person; until then, I read other people who know it. (Not limited to those 2, of course.)
Posted by: hilzoy | July 14, 2005 at 06:23 PM
Katherine,
I agree with Francis in that you have laid it all out admirably, there is not much to say, especially when Chas only responds to snippets of the argument.
Yes, Cole is the soul of decorum. Fortunately some can maintain a sense of humor in the face of dissent-stifling.
I hate to say this, but a very wise man often suggests on this blog that one could always write him directly and take issue with him. Or one could note that the 2nd Martin Kraemer link you provide is wrong about the deletion of the paragraph about opposition research, which makes me wonder about the rest of his assertions.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | July 14, 2005 at 06:26 PM
No, more like: it's decidedly uncivil to issue a fatwa against other bloggers, simply because they point when you're being sloppy. That's the standard.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 14, 2005 at 06:42 PM
This isn't my fight; I think Kramer is doing just swell on his own.
This is just completely wrong.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 14, 2005 at 06:52 PM
Nonetheless, at this point in time the information offered on his web page provided evidence that differered markedly from a blanket statement in the OP.
There are lots of things that are "decidedly uncivil" on this here blogosphere, and I think that arguing about who has been the least uncivil blogger of them all, rather than who has the most cogent and accurate information that relates to the points at hand, is precisely the kind of tedious point-scoring argument that Katherine has decried upthread.
Posted by: McDuff | July 14, 2005 at 06:59 PM
...it's decidedly uncivil to issue a fatwa against other bloggers, simply because they point when you're being sloppy.
If that's supposed to be a history of the Cole-Kramer feud, which has been going on for ages, it is a very sloppy effort. A more objective, shorter summary might be: there's a pair of them in it. That as I recall is the view of Marc Lynch, who remarkably enough is on good terms with both.
Anyway, since when is it sound policy to refrain from reading the work of uncivil authors? Nobody is suggesting that CB should like Cole. Hilzoy merely suggested reading his blog.
BTW, is this some kind of uncontrollable reflex? I quoted something by Krugman here a while ago and, behold, Slarti provided a link to some tripe by Luskin or someone of that ilk.
It's not news to me that academics get bitchy and that the more prominent ones have enemies. Reminders of these well-known facts contribute nothing to the discussion.
Posted by: Kevin Donoghue | July 14, 2005 at 07:07 PM
This is just completely wrong.
ahh, ok, I clicked on the link provided rather than the link within the blog. Apologies.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | July 14, 2005 at 07:28 PM
Hil,
Far be it from me to nitpick, but Friedman's statement had three moving parts: fatwa, condemnation, and reference to bin Laden.
Your first link is a fatwa but it does not issue a condemnation of bin Laden. Rather, it gives permission to American Muslims to raise arms against those Muslims responsible for 9/11. Score: 1 out of 3
The second link may or may not be a fatwa. It condemns the "terrorist acts" but not bin Laden. Score: 1½ out of 3.
The third link contains references to several fatwas:
"Sheikh Tantawi, rector of Al-Azhar University, the premier body of Sunni legal scholarship, issued fatwas condemning attacks on civilians under any and all circumstances, as fundamentally ‘un-Islamic.’"
"For example, a storm of criticism followed the fatwa of the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Shaykh Abd al-Aziz bin Abdallah Aal al-Shaykh, pronouncing terrorism anathema to Islam."
Score: 2 out of 3 at best.
The Economist link references Fadlallah, who "issued a fatwa condemning the attack". Score: 2 out of 3.
By comparison, the fatwa on Rushdie by the Iranian mullahocracy--sentencing him to death--is still in full force and effect. Surely bin Laden has done orders of magnitude more harm to Islam than Rushdie, sullying the faith with haram terrorist attacks. Yet only folks who issued a fatwa condemning bin Laden by name were the group of Spanish clerics.
Gloom Cole is being dishonest and disengenuous (or he misread Friedman) by trying to broaden the definition of fatwa so that he could include his other links.
Posted by: Charles Bird | July 14, 2005 at 08:38 PM
Francis/Pistol of Peripatetic Pissy Platitudes. Well if you got the name wrong it's understandable you'd befoul the message. "He'd rather be feared","western terror is the only response"???? No Francis/Blunderbuss of Boorish Brainlessness, I only said it may yet come to that,neither supporting or encouraging it. More than that,the possibility that is,you may not infer. Good night and don't fall out of your bunk bed.
Posted by: johnt | July 14, 2005 at 08:41 PM
**cough** postingrules **cough**
Posted by: Phil | July 14, 2005 at 08:51 PM
Wow, Johnt, strong on alliteration, weak on comprehensibility.
Posted by: Jackmormon | July 14, 2005 at 09:12 PM
johnt wrote: "I'm of the opinion that ... thigs [sic] will worsen,assimilation me arse. ... We are in for some very rough and brutal years. ... let them hate us as long as they fear us"
If I was in error to draw the conclusion that you were willing to abandon the rule of law from this poorly-spelled diatribe, then I apologize for any offense I may have caused, you pusillanimous putz.
and you really shouldn't be ashamed of your bed-wetting problem. many 17-year olds have that problem when they sleep away from their mommas for the first time. I'd suggest having sex as a cure, but then there's the whole impossibility problem. try cutting back on liquids after 7 pm instead.
Posted by: Francis / Brother Rail Gun of Reasoned Discourse | July 14, 2005 at 09:26 PM
Crabby carping commenters create confusion, cutting off creative, consensus-building critiques of critical comments.
Thank you, Katherine. I always read every word of your comments. On NPR this evenng there were several quotes from Londoners-the Chief of Police, I believe, and someone from city government. I liked the things they said; they spoke of justice, not revenge, and the importance of keeping the city's international flavor. Somewhere I read a list of the dead and the names are from all over the world. We need to remember that, in this us vs. them fight, "us" is a very, very inclusive term and "them" is strictly the terrorists.
Posted by: lily | July 14, 2005 at 09:54 PM
Ah, but the discussion was about Charles' evident reluctance to visit Cole's site. Some of us have more than a little aversion to the kind of crap that Leiter has pulled in re Volokh, and what Cole is attempting to pull re Kramer.
But, standards vary. Carry on.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 14, 2005 at 10:10 PM
"not revenge,"
I liked that to. It's ashame Bush is always talking about taking revenge out on the whole Islamic world for 9/11.
Posted by: blogme | July 14, 2005 at 10:34 PM
Slarti,
Please take this as a genuine query, I am really trying to understand how someone can be able to pay attention to Kramer v. Cole or Leiter v. Volokh and not be aware of Grover Norquist, as you mentioned in an earlier thread. As I've mentioned before, I am a link driven reader, so it's generally clik thrus that drive my reading, so perhaps I'm not understanding your reading habits, but you seem to be well familiar with the Kramer-Cole feud (which I discovered by googling that phrase) as well as Leitner's ouvre, so I'm trying to understand the reason for the lacuna. Thanks.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | July 14, 2005 at 10:40 PM
Charles: from the first link:
That is a clear condemnation of the perpetrators of the attacks (which, in context, and specifically coming after a prior reference to "the suicide operations on September 11th, against civilian and military targets in New York and Washington", clearly refers to bin Laden. That he does not mention bin Laden by name seems to me a minor point, especially since he also condemns the people who incited or financed those operations.
He also condemns terrorism per se: "All Muslims ought to be united against all those who terrorize the innocents, and those who permit the killing of non-combatants without a justifiable reason." (If the reference to 'a justifiable reason' bothers you, consider that the unequivocal condemnation of the perpetrators of 9/11, and their leaders, financiers, etc., comes afterwards.) So I give this a 3.
About the second: it doesn't just condemn terrorism vaguely; it says:
Again, is the problem that it doesn't mention bin Laden by name, but simply says that anyone who participated in, or was involved in, the attacks of 9/11 is engaging in 'gross crimes and sinful acts' unacceptable to Islam? I would have thought that the broader condemnation would be better, since it plainly includes bin Laden, but also extends to others.
I should also note that I think this is one of the fatwas referred to in the third link("a storm of criticism followed the fatwa of the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Shaykh Abd al‐Aziz bin Abdallah Aal al‐Shaykh, pronouncing terrorism anathema to Islam.) At any rate, that issuer of fatwas is the person whose 'statement' is in the second post. I give it a 3.
The third and fourth I included mainly because on reading your comment, I thought that it was not clear, to non-speakers of Arabic, whether or not something described as (e.g.) a 'condemnation' was in fact a fatwa, and I wanted to provide evidence that these clerics had in fact issued fatwas that were relevant. Tantawi condemned terrorism and the killing of innocents generally; I give him a two. Fadlallah issued a fatwa condemning the attacks of 9/11, which as far as I'm concerned counts as a 3.
Like I said, I thought that it was unclear which things described (in English) as 'decisions' or 'condemnations' or something were, in fact, fatwas, so I wanted to find evidence. Three of the four condemned the attacks of 9/11 specifically; one condemned all terrorism. Personally, I don't think that the fact that bin Laden is not identified by name shows much of anything, since it is completely clear who they are talking about. (Friedman didn't say anything about 'by name' either.) So I'm not sure what the issue is.
Posted by: hilzoy | July 14, 2005 at 10:45 PM
That makes two of us. Think: brownian motion.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 14, 2005 at 11:28 PM
Slarti, you are aware that the surface of hot liquids, like something that is almost but not quite exactly unlike tea, is an excellent source for brownian motion?
Posted by: Francis / BRGORD | July 15, 2005 at 01:44 AM
You know, I hadn't made that connection. Suddenly, everything makes a bit more sense, order out of chaos and all that.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 15, 2005 at 07:57 AM
like something that is almost but not quite exactly unlike tea,
As I recall, that substance was not nearly as good a source of Brownian motion as actual tea.
Posted by: kenB | July 15, 2005 at 09:01 AM
On further reflection, it's because I tend to follow links from Instapundit, John Cole, and a few other sites. I tend to sites whose primary selling points are serial ad hom and comments cesspits (which rules out many of the more popular tourist destinations) as much as possible, which is probably the single biggest reason I'm here. And my interest in Norquist has been rather low for the same reason my interest in whatever counterparts he may have on the left is low. Why that is is a matter for speculation for both of us; I honestly couldn't tell you.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 15, 2005 at 09:57 AM
Thanks, Slarti, I appreciate the answer.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | July 15, 2005 at 10:03 AM
"tend to sites" ought to have read "tend to avoid sites". Obvious, but I like to avoid ambiguity when I'm not being snarky.
Which is hardly ever, so enjoy it while it lasts.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 15, 2005 at 10:09 AM
The fatwa arrived:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5147798,00.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/16/london.muslim.ap/
They still seem to be unsure about the universal condemnation of suicide attacks angle: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5144673,00.html
Posted by: otmar | July 18, 2005 at 09:00 AM