Stating the Obvious

Headline from the Washington Post: Study of teen cellphone use reinforces impression that they're always using them.

Well, duh! :)

A few quotes (and observations) from the article:

The connection between American teen and thumb-tapping keypad is so strong that more than four of five adolescents say they have slept with their cellphone in or near their bed, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Some keep it under the pillow, to awaken for late-night texts. Others use the built-in alarm to wake up.

Actually, Milady does that, using the phone for an alarm clock.

Indeed, the most vivid change surrounding cellphone use was the rapid increase in text messaging, researchers said. In an 18-month period, the number of teens who text every day rose from 38 percent to 54 percent.

In real numbers: The median daily total that teens send and receive was 50 -- or 1,500 a month. Girls typically send and receive 80 texts a day, and boys come in at 30.

The average adult racks up 10 text messages in a day.

Heh. I'm lucky if I do two SMS's a day.

"Surprise Us."

No kidding. From Tom Toles at The Washington Post.

Economics Links (9 June 2009)

Angry Bear:
Untitled post on the Unemployment Report

Current Recession vs the 1980-82 Recession


Econbrowser:
DeGlobalization: Transitory or Persistent?

Not a Robust Recovery

James Pethokoukis: "An Improving Job Market"

Output, Employment and Industrial Production in the "1980-82 Recession"

More on Bank Lending Data

High Anxiety (about Interest and Inflation Rates)


Economist's View:
Too Big to be Restructured (The theme of this essay ties in very well with my post on Mikhail Gorbachev's essay from the other day, "We Had Our Perestroika. It's High Time for Yours.".)

Contributions to the Change in Nonfarm Payroll Employment

Shiller: Home Prices May Keep Falling

Uneven Unemployment Rates

"VAT Time?"

Bank Mergers

"Reducing Inequality: Put the Brakes on Globalization?"


Financial Times:
The ‘part-timezation’ of America


Reuters:
China influence to grow faster than most expect: Soros


Real Property Alpha:
California Home Prices in Ounces of Gold


True/Slant:
NASCAR helped GM down its path of self-destruction ("Better equipped to compete? How ironic, given NASCAR’s role in helping the auto industry race down its path of self-destruction. Major auto companies used NASCAR for years to push cars and trucks with poor fuel economy numbers. The sport, in some ways, came to symbolize America’s embrace of consumption.")


VoxEU:
Why is Japan so heavily affected by the global economic crisis? An analysis based on the Asian international input-output tables

Does climate change affect economic growth?


Washington Post:
Book Review: The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street

Mikhail Gorbachev: "We Had Our Perestroika. It's High Time for Yours."

There's a good essay by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the USSR, in The Washington Post. He argues, correctly, IMO, that America's political and economic systems are broken and in need of reform, although he offers no solutions.

I would offer several suggestions in all seriousness: look to Islam for guidance on economic and financial reform, and look to science fiction (and particularly Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy) for guidance on political and cultural reform. People might think I'm offering pie-in-the-sky suggestions, but many people have thought long and hard on all of these issues. For example, Robinson's work highlights some of the negatives and positives of both the current and future political and cultural systems. When Gorbachev writes, "But I am convinced that a new model will emerge...", everything that follows in Gorbachev's sentence has already been discussed in the Mars Trilogy.

I would not offer these suggestions as solutions ready made to be implemented directly, but I do believe that both can be used as the starting points for discussion on how to solve some of the world's problems.

Here are some of the highlights from the essay:

In the West, the breakup of the Soviet Union was viewed as a total victory that proved that the West did not need to change. Western leaders were convinced that they were at the helm of the right system and of a well-functioning, almost perfect economic model. Scholars opined that history had ended. The "Washington Consensus," the dogma of free markets, deregulation and balanced budgets at any cost, was force-fed to the rest of the world.

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades.

The current global crisis demonstrates that the leaders of major powers, particularly the United States, had missed the signals that called for a perestroika. The result is a crisis that is not just financial and economic. It is political, too.

The model that emerged during the final decades of the 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable. It was based on a drive for super-profits and hyper-consumption for a few, on unrestrained exploitation of resources and on social and environmental irresponsibility.

But if all the proposed solutions and action now come down to a mere rebranding of the old system, we are bound to see another, perhaps even greater upheaval down the road. The current model does not need adjusting; it needs replacing. I have no ready-made prescriptions. But I am convinced that a new model will emerge, one that will emphasize public needs and public goods, such as a cleaner environment, well-functioning infrastructure and public transportation, sound education and health systems and affordable housing.

Elements of such a model already exist in some countries. Having rejected the tutorials of the International Monetary Fund, countries such as Malaysia and Brazil have achieved impressive rates of economic growth. China and India have pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. By mobilizing state resources, France has built a system of high-speed railways, while Canada provides free health care. Among the new democracies, Slovenia and Slovakia have been able to mitigate the social consequences of market reforms.

The time has come for "creative construction," for striking the right balance between the government and the market, for integrating social and environmental factors and demilitarizing the economy.

George Will, Snob

George Will shows how much of a snob he is today in a column devoted to demonizing (of all things) denim jeans. More comments below.

Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy's catechism of leveling -- thou shalt not dress better than society's most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism -- of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

Do not blame Levi Strauss for the misuse of Levi's. When the Gold Rush began, Strauss moved to San Francisco planning to sell strong fabric for the 49ers' tents and wagon covers. Eventually, however, he made tough pants, reinforced by copper rivets, for the tough men who knelt on the muddy, stony banks of Northern California creeks, panning for gold. Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene.

This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

I came across this article through the blog Moon of Alabama, where I made the following comment:

On the one hand, Will has a point about how badly most Americans dress. This point was driven home to me when I lived in South Korea; Koreans dress extremely well, even on occasions when one might not expect them to. In short, Koreans make most Americans look like slobs.

On the other hand, Will only shows himself to be out of touch with the public by writing such a column. Most people will give a rat's @$$ about why people like Will think they shouldn't wear jeans or what clothing Astaire and Kelly wore.

(And, for the record, I gave up jeans long ago, when I lived in Arizona, but that was because it's too hot there to wear denim; I prefer khakis, myself. ;) )

One other comment at M of A was very interesting, where anna missed wrote:

This is one of my favorite and insightful passages by Guy Debord:

The root of the spectacle is that oldest of all social specializations, the specialization of power. The spectacle plays the specialized role of speaking in the name of all the other activities. It is hierarchical society’s ambassador to itself, delivering its official messages at a court where no one else is allowed to speak. The most modern aspect of the spectacle is thus also the most archaic.

Of course what Will is ranting about is the "absurdity" of the elites masquerading as commoners wearing blue jeans as a signifier of our wonderful egalitarian society, when nobody, especially himself, really believes it. And, as the veneers of the great society of spectacle continue to delaminate like cheap plywood in the rain, people like Will gaze wistfully back to a 19th century Dickens world where instead, the poor imitated the rich, wearing filthy collars and threadbare top hats, and not the reverse - thus broadcasting their class. Nonetheless though, like Debord says the grand illusion of modernity is in fact archaic at its root - some of which we are now beginning to witness. And it ain't very pretty.

Update: BTW, did you notice this little gem in the first paragraph I quoted above?

Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.

Apparently, in Will's Bizarro World, if you play video games, you're much too immature to be allowed to vote. I guess it's not only "George Will, Snob," but "George Will, Closet Aristocrat" as well.

George, why do you hate democracy?

Harold Meyerson: "The Civil War Isn't Really Over"

Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post had an interesting article today; however, it was the second half that I want to highlight:

Lesson Two: In matters economic, the Civil War isn't really over.

If Abraham Lincoln were still among the living as he prepared to turn 200 six weeks from now, he might detect in the congressional war over the automaker bailouts a strong echo of the war that defined his presidency. Now as then, the conflict centered on the rival labor systems of North and South. Now as then, the Southerners championed a low-wage, low-benefits system while the North favored a more generous one. And now as then, what sparked the conflict was the North's fear of the Southern system becoming the national norm. Or, as Lincoln put it, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Over the past century, of course, the conflict between North and South has been between union and non-union labor. The states of the industrial Midwest and the South had common demographics (Appalachian whites and African Americans, though the Northern states also were home to Catholics of Eastern European origin) but developed two distinct economies.

Residents of the unionized north enjoyed higher living standards, both from their paychecks and the higher public outlays on health and education, than did their counterparts in the union-resistant South.

But, just as Lincoln predicted, the United States was bound to have one labor system prevail, and the debate over the General Motors and Chrysler bailout was really a debate over which system -- the United Auto Workers' or the foreign transplant factories' -- that would be. Where the parallel between periods breaks down, of course, is in partisan alignment. Today's congressional Republicans are hardly Lincoln's heirs. If anything, they are descendants of Jefferson Davis's Confederates.

This argument is not completely novel; for example, Kevin Phillips spent a significant chunk of his book American Theology on the influence of the South over American politics (which Richard Nixon exploited in his Southern strategy). This is where it's a necessity to revitalize the Frostbelt's economy and, in particular, to rebuild the infrastructure - not only of the entire United States - but especially of the country's northern tier. The north needs to rally around unionization in order to increase personal income levels and to improve the region's education and health care, as Meyerson points out.

From a political perspective this means that the Democrats must cut through the Republicans' BS and pass the legislation necessary to help stimulate the economy. Monetary policy at this point is nearly useless. Fiscal policy, in the form of government spending, is the only significant tool available to the government in order to speed up the recovery of the American economy and to improve the country's future business competitiveness.

"Spare Me the Sermon on Muslim Women"

Nice essay at the Washington Post on the benefits of being a Muslim woman, written by Mohja Kahf, author of the novel "The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf." Below are a couple of brief excerpts; the entire essay can be read at the above link.

It irks me that I even have to say this: Being a Muslim woman is a joyful thing.

...

Blessings abound for me as a Muslim woman: The freshness of ablution is mine, and the daily meditation zone of five prayers that involve graceful, yoga-like movements, performed in prayer attire. Prayer scarves are a chapter in themselves, cool and comforting as bedsheets. They lie folded in the velveteen prayer rug when not in use: two lightweight muslin pieces, the long drapey headcover and the roomy gathered skirt. I fling open the top piece, and it billows like summer laundry, a lace-edged meadow. I slip into the bottom piece to cover my legs for prayer time because I am wearing shorts around the house today.

These create a tent of tranquility. The serene spirit sent from God is called by a feminine name, "sakinah," in the Quran, and I understand why some Muslim women like to wear their prayer clothes for more than prayer, to take that sakinah into the world with them. I, too, wear a (smaller) version of the veil when I go out. What a loss it would be for me not to have in my life this alternating structure, of covering outdoors and uncovering indoors. I take pleasure in preparing a clean, folded set for a houseguest, the way home-decor mavens lay elegant plump towels around a bathroom to give it a relaxing feel.

...

As beautiful as veils are, they are not the best part of being a Muslim woman -- and many Muslim women in Islamic countries don't veil. The central blessing of Islam to women is that it affirms their spiritual equality with men, a principle stated over and over in the Quran, on a plane believers hold to be untouched by the social or legalistic "women in Islam" concerns raised by other parts of the Scripture, in verses parsed endlessly by patriarchal interpreters as well as Muslim feminists and used by Islamophobes to "prove" Islam's sexism. This is how most believing Muslim women experience God: as the Friend who is beyond gender, not as the Father, not as the Son, not inhabiting a male form, or any form.

HT: Alajnabiya's Climbing Walls

Chinese Pity

This is one of two quotations at the beginning of Tom Friedman's book, The World is Flat (Chapter 8) that I thought is an excellent commentary on the state of American politics today:

"Chinese pity comes from their belief that we are a country in decline. More than a few Chinese friends have quoted to me the proverb fu bu guo san dai (wealth doesn't make it past three generations) as they wonder how we became so ill-disciplined, distracted and dissolute. The fury surrounding Monica-gate seemed an incomprehensible waste of time to a nation whose emperors were supplied with thousands of concubines. Chinese are equally astonished that Americans are allowing themselves to drown in debt and under-fund public schools while the media focus on fights over feeding tubes, displays of the Ten Commandments and how to eat as much as we can without getting fat."
-- James McGregor, a journalist-turned-businessman based in China, and a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, writing in The Washington Post, July 31, 2005

Arab Heroes of the Holocaust

There was an interesting article in WaPo's "Lost History Department" Sunday regarding the Arab heroes of the Jewish Holocaust during WW2. The article starts off with a review of how some Arab countries and leaders currently deny the Holocaust, but the bulk of the article states that, while there were large numbers of Arabs who did nothing while the Germans rounded up the Jews of North Africa or, worse, collaborated with the Germans in rounding up and guarding the Jews in various labor camps, there are a number of noteworthy stories about Arabs in North Africa and Europe who helped to save some Jews from the Germans. What follows are some excerpts from the article that I think deserves greater exposure:

Neither Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to Holocaust victims, nor any other Holocaust memorial has ever recognized an Arab rescuer. It is time for that to change. It is also time for Arabs to recall and embrace these episodes in their history. That may not change the minds of the most radical Arab leaders or populations, but for some it could make the Holocaust a source of pride, worthy of remembrance -- rather than avoidance or denial.

The Holocaust was an Arab story, too. From the beginning of World War II, Nazi plans to persecute and eventually exterminate Jews extended throughout the area that Germany and its allies hoped to conquer. That included a great Arab expanse, from Casablanca to Tripoli and on to Cairo, home to more than half a million Jews.

Though Germany and its allies controlled this region only briefly, they made substantial headway toward their goal. From June 1940 to May 1943, the Nazis, their Vichy French collaborators and their Italian fascist allies applied in Arab lands many of the precursors to the Final Solution. These included not only laws depriving Jews of property, education, livelihood, residence and free movement, but also torture, slave labor, deportation and execution.

There were no death camps, but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many solely for Jews. Recall Maj. Strasser's warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film "Casablanca": "It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here." Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

About 1 percent of Jews in North Africa (4,000 to 5,000) perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half of European Jews. These Jews were lucky to be on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the fighting ended relatively early and where boats -- not just cattle cars -- would have been needed to take them to the ovens in Europe. But if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews; and a brave few even helped save Jews.

...

Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews' valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, "The Arabs watched over the Jews."

I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. In the rolling hills west of Tunis, 60 Jewish internees escaped from an Axis labor camp and banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.

And there is strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe -- Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris -- saved as many as 100 Jews by having the mosque's administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. These men, and others, were true heroes.

According to the Koran: "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world." This passage echoes the Talmud's injunction, "If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world."

Arabs need to hear these stories -- both of heroes and of villains. They especially need to hear them from their own teachers, preachers and leaders. If they do, they may respond as did that one Arab prince who visited the Holocaust museum. "What we saw today," he commented after his tour, "must help us change evil into good and hate into love and war into peace."

On Jihadis and Iran

Another interesting article (an op/ed piece, actually) out of WaPo today, by David Ignatius on the makeup of Jihadis and Iran (all emphases are mine):

[Marc] Sageman [a former CIA case officer stationed in Pakistan who later became a psychiatrist] argues in his book, "Understanding Terror Networks," that we are facing something closer to a cult network than an organized global adversary. Like many cults through history, the Muslim terrorists thrive by channeling and perverting the idealism of young people. As a forensic psychiatrist, he analyzed data on about 400 jihadists. He found that they weren't poor, desperate sociopaths but restless young men who found identity by joining the terrorist underground. Ninety percent came from intact families; 63 percent had gone to college; 75 percent were professionals or semi-professionals; 73 percent were married.

What transformed these young Sunni Muslim men was the fellowship of the jihad and the militant role models they found in people such as Osama bin Laden. The terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were a kind of elite finishing school --

Sageman likened it to getting into Harvard. The Sept. 11 hijackers weren't psychotic killers; none of the 19 had criminal records. In terms of their psychological profiles, says Sageman, they were as healthy as the general population.

The implication of Sageman's analysis is that the Sunni jihadism of al-Qaeda and its spinoff groups is a generational phenomenon. Unless new grievances spawn new recruits, it will gradually ebb over time. In other words, this is a fire that will gradually burn itself out unless we keep pumping in more oxygen. Nothing in Sageman's analysis implies that America should be any less aggressive in defending itself against terrorism. But he does argue that we should choose our offensive battles wisely and avoid glamorizing the jihadist network further through our rhetoric or actions.

Sageman's focus on the generational arc of violence got me thinking about my recent trip to Iran. The revolutionary intensity hasn't disappeared there, but it is certainly further down the curve than is the Sunni world. When I attended Friday prayers at Tehran University, I was struck by how old the people shouting "death to America" were. I would guess the average age was well over 40. The generation of the Iranian revolution is getting long in the tooth. The only sure way to ignite revolutionary zealotry in the younger generation would be for America to go to war with Iran -- something I dearly hope we can avoid.

... As I explained in an earlier column, Tehran is a city of crazy drivers who nearly collide at every intersection. But the police are quite strict about requiring seat belts -- something I don't often see in the Muslim world. Even fatalistic taxi drivers buckle up. ...

Now I submit to you: A nation that is wearing seat belts is probably not a mortal enemy of the United States.

... unless we make big mistakes, we should not find ourselves condemned to a permanent war, much less a clash of civilizations.

Assalamu 'alaikum, Teach!

From the teacher every boy wishes was his to the teacher every Muslim student prays won't be theirs. From the Washington Post:

A substitute teacher was charged with disorderly conduct Monday after she allegedly lashed out at a group of Gaithersburg high school students for using words in Arabic while practicing a commemorative speech to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Montgomery County police say Carol J. McVey, 49, began screaming at the group of Gaithersburg High School students and one of their teachers for saying "assalamu alaikum" -- a greeting that means "peace be with you" -- while they rehearsed the speech in a classroom. The students were working on a speech that they intended to deliver at a memorial service at Kingsview Middle School that day.

Police said McVey, of Olney, began yelling at the students and their teacher. "Islam doesn't mean peace, it means killing everyone for peace," she told them, according to a charging document.

The students and one of their teachers left the classroom in fear after the outburst, police said, and McVey followed them down the hall, where her alleged tirade intensified. "Because of you our families died in New York!" she allegedly yelled, threatening to go to the principal's office to ask that Kulsum Malik, the teacher who was with the students, be told to leave, the charging document said. Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said she didn't know whether Malik or any of the students working on the speech are Muslim.

When McVey reached the office of Assistant Principal Laurie Bricker and began yelling again, Bricker asked her to leave. As the administrator was telling McVey to go, McVey began to argue that it was Malik who should be asked to leave, police said. As an officer assigned to the high school began escorting McVey out, she allegedly resisted, saying she wanted to get Malik's information in order "to report her," according to the charging document.

On her way out, McVey "yelled at a Hispanic teacher about the inappropriateness of speaking to students in languages other than English," police said.

McVey was also charged with resisting arrest, disrupting school activities and trespassing, which are all misdemeanors. She was released on her own recognizance.

My, my, what are they teaching the children in schools today? I think McVey (hmmm, a relative?) needs a little counselling on Islam before she's allowed back in a classroom.

It's the End of the World as We Know It...

And I feel fine.

Milady and I had a good laugh over the following Daily Show clip on the apocalypse (run time: 5:15):



This clip made me wonder, the American news industry has been stupid for a long time, sure, but just how completely retarded has it gotten since I left home? Then again, when I read about what's going on at the White House...

Asked what "types of people" have offered the White House advice on the Middle East, [White House Press Secretary Tony] Snow said, "Again, at this point, I really don't want to do it." Asked if "religious leaders" have been part of these meetings, Snow said, "Again, I'm just not going to go any further."

Why all the secrecy? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that White House recently invited a Christian apocalyptic fiction writer to chat about biblical prophecy.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin spoke with Joel C. Rosenberg — who recently told CNN that the rapture may be near and it'd be a good idea for people to start taking care of unfinished business — who explained that he was invited last year to "speak to a 'couple dozen' White House aides in the Old Executive Office Building — and has stayed in touch with several of them since."

And who is Joel Rosenberg?

Rosenberg — like Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the authors of the phenomenally popular "Left Behind" series — writes fiction inspired by biblical prophecy about the apocalypse. The consistent theme is that certain current events presage the end times, the Rapture, and the return of Jesus Christ. Rosenberg's particular pitch to journalists is that his books come true. ...

Rosenberg told Froomkin that a White House staffer contacted him and said, "A lot of people over here [in the White House] are reading your novels, and they're intrigued that these things keep on happening…. Your novels keep foreshadowing actual coming events…. And so we're curious, how are you doing it? What's the secret? Why don't you come over and walk us through the story behind these novels?"

So, why should I be surprised that this particular administration has an interest in the apocalypse? After all, there's little understanding at the very top about certain critical distinctions. You know, like the evil "Moozlems" are all the same, right?

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq...

Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith reported that he and an (unnamed) Iraqi American "...spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam — to which the President allegedly responded, 'I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!'"

Now I know where the news industry's getting their cue from.

Extremism Isn't Islamic Law

One of the very few topics I strongly disagree with my ustaz (religious teacher) about is the issue of what should be done with apostates. I am of the opinion that apostates should be left alone (for the most part) in this world because, as Allah (swt) says in the Qur'an, leave the punishment of the unbelievers to Him (73:11 and 74:11) as, insha'allah, any punishment of His will be far worse than anything we could do ourselves.

Today, the Washington Post has an article by Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, the former President of Indonesia on this topic that I thought is worth sharing.


For a few days this year the world's media focused an intense spotlight on the drama of a modern-day inquisition. Abdul Rahman, a Muslim convert to Christianity, narrowly escaped the death penalty for apostasy when the Afghan government -- acting under enormous international pressure -- sidestepped the issue by ruling that he was insane and unfit to stand trial. This unsatisfactory ruling left unanswered a question of enormous significance: Does Islam truly require the death penalty for apostasy, and, if not, why is there so little freedom of religion in the so-called Muslim world?

The Koran and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad do not definitively address this issue. In fact, during the early history of Islam, the Agreement of Hudaibiyah between Muhammad and his rivals stipulated that any Muslim who converted out of Islam would be allowed to depart freely to join the non-Muslim community. Nevertheless, throughout much of Islamic history, Muslim governments have embraced an interpretation of Islamic law that imposes the death penalty for apostasy.

It is vital that we differentiate between the Koran, from which much of the raw material for producing Islamic law is derived, and the law itself. While its revelatory inspiration is divine, Islamic law is man-made and thus subject to human interpretation and revision. For example, in the course of Islamic history, non-Muslims have been allowed to enter Mecca and Medina. Since the time of the caliphs, however, Islamic law has been interpreted to forbid non-Muslims from entering these holy cities. The prohibition against non-Muslims entering Mecca and Medina is thus politically motivated and has no basis in the Koran or Islamic law.

In the case of Rahman, two key principles of Islamic jurisprudence come into play. First, al-umuru bi maqashidiha ("Every problem [should be addressed] in accordance with its purpose"). If a legal ordinance truly protects citizens, then it is valid and may become law. From this perspective, Rahman did not violate any law, Islamic or otherwise. Indeed, he should be protected under Islamic law, rather than threatened with death or imprisonment. The second key principle is al-hukm-u yadullu ma'a illatihi wujudan wa adaman ("The law is formulated in accordance with circumstances"). Not only can Islamic law be changed -- it must be changed due to the ever-shifting circumstances of human life. Rather than take at face value assertions by extremists that their interpretation of Islamic law is eternal and unchanging, Muslims and Westerners must reject these false claims and join in the struggle to support a pluralistic and tolerant understanding of Islam.

All of humanity, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, is threatened by the forces of Islamist extremism. It is these extremists, masquerading as traditional Muslims, who angrily call for the death of Abdul Rahman or the beheading of Danish cartoonists. Their objective is raw political power and the eventual radicalization of all 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. Western involvement in this "struggle for the soul of Islam" is a matter of self-preservation for the West and is critical given the violent tactics and strength of radical elements in Muslim societies worldwide.

Muslim theologians must revise their understanding of Islamic law, and recognize that punishment for apostasy is merely the legacy of historical circumstances and political calculations stretching back to the early days of Islam. Such punishments run counter to the clear Koranic injunction "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256).

People of goodwill of every faith and nation must unite to ensure the triumph of religious freedom and of the "right" understanding of Islam, to avert global catastrophe and spare millions of others the fate of Sudan's great religious and political leader, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, who was executed on a false charge of apostasy. The millions of victims of "jihadist" violence in Sudan -- whose numbers continue to rise every day -- would have been spared if Taha's vision of Islam had triumphed instead of that of the extremists.

The greatest challenge facing the contemporary Muslim world is to bring our limited, human understanding of Islamic law into harmony with its divine spirit -- in order to reflect God's mercy and compassion, and to bring the blessings of peace, justice and tolerance to a suffering world.

The writer is a former president of Indonesia. From 1984 to 1999 he directed the Nadhlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization. He serves as senior adviser and board member to LibForAll Foundation, an Indonesian- and U.S.-based nonprofit that works to reduce religious extremism and terrorism.

Mandarin Making Inroads in US Schools

If you are one of my regular readers, you know that I written several times about the importance of children (and adults) learning more than one language. I've also tried to stress that children (and adults) should learn an Asian language (such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic) in addition to the more popular European languages that many Americans learn.

Well, today, there is some good news on this topic. In the article, Mandarin Makes Inroads in U.S. Schools, the Washington Post reported that a number of school districts around the United States have launched Mandarin programs, including districts in the cities of Boston, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Portland (OR). Some excerpts from the article:

High schools across the country were asked by the College Board's World Language Initiative whether they would consider adding Advanced Placement courses in Italian, Russian, Japanese and Chinese -- and the organization was amazed at the results, said Tom Matts, the initiative's director.

Fifty schools in the 2003 survey said they would offer the Russian option, about 175 said Japanese, and 240 said Italian.

"And for Chinese, it was 2,400, 10 times the number of any of the other three," Matts said. "We had no idea there was such an incredible interest out there. Of all the new AP courses, certainly Chinese shows the most promise for growth."

In the Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee is considering a proposal to allocate $1.3 billion to boost classes on Chinese language and culture in public schools, and China, too, is doing its part, said Michael Levine, education director at the Asia Society in New York City. China's education ministry has formed partnerships with states including Kentucky and Kansas, as well as Brazil, Australia and Britain, to boost teacher exchanges and training.

The Oregon program, though, is the first in the country to track students from kindergarten to college. The school district and the University of Oregon won a $700,000 grant from the Defense Department for the program this fall.

The idea is for students to move from the Portland school system to the university, where scholarships will be offered to students who will take a standard college curriculum taught largely in Chinese. Students can also opt to spend their junior year abroad, studying at Nanjing University in China.

...

It has long been accepted that the younger children are, the easier it is to introduce them to a second language, Patterson said.

In September, most of Yen's 24 students could not speak a word of Mandarin, one of the most difficult languages to learn. But three months later, the students were singing songs in Mandarin, laboriously printing Chinese characters and following Yen's instructions, delivered in Mandarin, with no need for any English translation.

...

By the time they get to fourth grade, students are relatively fluent. Lily Rappaport, 9, said she sometimes dreams in Mandarin, after five years in the program.

...

In the higher grade levels, students at Woodstock take not just language-learning classes but also math and science courses that are taught in Mandarin.

...

"There are great big multiples of kids who are studying the European languages, but when we think about our economy, and the new markets we are expanding into, it is time to recalibrate some of our attention," Levine said.

[Special thanks to Keith Welch at ShuFa West for the use of the Chinese calligraphy example above.]


Update: In looking at a few other blogs that have commented on this same Washington Post article, I came across an interesting comment over at dogmas of the quiet past. He wrote: "Mandarin is finally making in-roads in America’s educational system. In some places, they are teaching entire standard courses (i.e. reading, math, etc.) in Mandarin. Note that all of the hoopla surrounding the gall some school districts have to teach courses in Spanish is not surrounding doing so in Mandarin. Gee, I wonder why."

Heh. Sarcasm noted.

The Puppet Master?

Two comments in Dan Froomkin's November 8th column in the Washington Post ("Bush's Tortured Logic") that caught my eye. The first was taken from Thomas M. DeFrank's article in the New York Daily News, "Dubya-Cheney Ties Frayed by Scandal":

"Multiple sources close to Bush told the Daily News that while the vice president remains his boss' valued political partner and counselor, his clout has lessened -- primarily as a result of issues arising from the Iraq war.

"'The relationship is not what it was,' a presidential counselor said. 'There has been some distance for some time.'"

No surprise there. I read about this almost two weeks ago in Justin Raimando column, "Earth to Bush: Ditch Cheney" (31 October 2005). But what was interesting was the second comment that Froomkin quoted, from James Carroll's article, Deconstructing Cheney," in the Boston Globe:

"When the World Trade Center towers were hit in New York, it was Cheney who told a shaken President Bush to flee. The true nature of their relationship (Cheney, not Bush, having shaped the national security team; Cheney, not Bush, having appointed himself as vice president) showed itself for a moment.

"The 9/11 Commission found that, from the White House situation room, Cheney warned the president that a 'specific threat' had targeted Air Force One, prompting Bush to spend the day hiding in the bunker at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. There was no specific threat. In Bush's absence, Cheney, implying an authorizing telephone call from the president, took command of the nation's response to the crisis. There was no authorizing telephone call. The 9/11 Commission declined to make an issue of Cheney's usurpation of powers, but the record shows it."

Which makes me wonder...is the President's recent slump in the polls due to this distancing between Bush and Cheney?

Our Diplomats' Arabic Handicap

There's a joke I've told my students numerous times over the past few years. It goes:

"A person who can speak three languages is known as?

Trilingual

And a person who can speak two langugages is?

Bilingual

And a person who can only speak one language?

An American!"

I tell this joke in part because I'm always amazed (and a little bit jealous) when my students can come to my lectures in business subjects - that are all given in English - and understand the difficult, theoretical concepts I talk about. After all, about 99% of all my students are non-native English speakers. We Americans have set ourselves up very badly in terms of our ability to speak in languages other than English. In fact, some backwards-thinking Americans have made matters worse, such as the 1998 passage of Proposition 227 in California and the 2000 passage of Proposition 203 in Arizona.

And, now, the chickens are coming home to roost. The Washington Post published an interesting article on Our Diplomats' Arabic Handicap. The United States' State Department has a grand total of eight (8) people worldwide who are able to speak Arabic at the highest levels of fluency. And I suspect that, while the article focuses on fluency in Arabic, the problem goes much deeper, that there are very few individuals employed by the State Department (and other agencies of the government) who can speak other important world languages. When do American school children begin learning foreign languages? When I was a teenager, my middle school had a short-lived pilot program to help teach Spanish. Regular foreign language instruction didn't begin until my sophomore year, with classes in Spanish, French and German - and these are still the only languages taught at my high school. That's waaay too late in life to start learning another language well.

Whereas...

...When I lived in Korea, foreign language instruction began for my university-aged students when they were in middle school. Today's Korean children begin learning English in primary school. Now, granted, most of those students use up all of their English conversational skills with a foreigner like me within a minute or two; however, I once had a 45-minute conversation with a group of ten or so primary school kids I had met at the beach. How many of us could have done the same at that age?

...Here in S'pore, all students learn both English and at least one "Mother Tongue" (either Mandarin Chinese, Malay, or Tamil - a language primarily spoken in southern India). Virtually all Singaporeans who are my age and younger are bilingual.

As Tom Friedman recently pointed out, the world is flat...and getting flatter. The need for Americans to speak another person's language, whether it's for diplomatic, military, educational, commercial, or just plain ol' social purposes is an absolute necessity. And I'm stunned that people still don't get this. For example, just now, while looking at Amazon's webpage for Tom Friedman's book, "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century", I found the following comment, "If the world is so flat, then why is everyone else in the world trying to beat a path to our door?" My response: Don't flatter yourself. Even if the United States opened up its doors to unlimited immigration, 99% of the world would still stay at home. You (Americans) will still have to deal with the rest of the world. And the only way you can really get to know someone is if you understand that person's language (which is also a gateway to understanding that person's culture).

This is an important topic, and one that I've only touched the merest surface of. Insha'allah, I'll write more about this in the future. In the meantime, my advice to those of you with young children is: get them started on a second and third language now!!! And don't just focus on European languages. Yes, Spanish is very helpful if you live in the Southwest, but the future belongs to Asia (if you haven't figured that out yet). Get those kids learning Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. And it wouldn't hurt if you, mom and dad, joined in the language lessons either.

Be Muslim - But Only in Moderation

"Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion. Say: 'The Guidance of Allah,-that is the (only) Guidance.' Wert thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee, then wouldst thou find neither Protector nor helper against Allah." (2:120)

2:135 "They say: 'Become Jews or Christians if ye would be guided (To salvation).' Say thou: 'Nay! (I would rather) the Religion of Abraham the True, and he joined not gods with Allah.'" (2:135)


Be Muslim - But Only in Moderation
By: Yasmin Mogahed
Iviews

In his first 2004 presidential debate, Senator John Kerry began the night in the flavor-of-the-day. Answering his first question, Kerry explained that America needed to isolate the "radical Islamic Muslims."

"I have a better plan to be able to fight the war on terror by ... beginning to isolate the radical Islamic Muslims, not have them isolate the United States of America."

At first, the statement sounded redundant-even uneducated. A Muslim is, by definition, a follower of Islam, and is therefore, by definition, "Islamic." Saying "Islamic Muslims" was a lot like saying "American Americans."

So was Kerry just being repetitive? Or was his statement perhaps more telling that even he realized? Are all Muslims "Islamic"? Well, the truth is - no. Not the good ones, at least.

More and more the underlying assumption seems to be that Islam is the problem. If Islam, as a faith, is in essence radical, the less "Islamic" something is the better. And thus a 'moderate Muslim' - the much coveted title - is only moderately Muslim and therefore only moderately bad. Saying this would be like telling someone to only be 'moderately black' so as not to be too violent.

Conversely, a Muslim who is too "Islamic" is then by definition "radical" - a "radical Islamic Muslim" - and must be dealt with (isolated).

In fact, Mona Mayfield understood these rules well when she defended her husband - wrongfully accused of participating in the Spain bombing.

"We have a Bible in the house. He's not a fundamentalist - he thought it was something different and very unique," Mayfield told the associated press of her husband's conversion to Islam.

To prove his innocence, Mayfield tried to downplay her husband's commitment to Islam. She even felt the need to justify his conversion - as if that were his crime.

Mosque administrator Shahriar Ahmed took a similar approach to defend Mayfield. "He was seen as a moderate," Ahmed told reporters. "Mayfield showed up for the Friday ritual of shedding his shoes, washing his bare feet and sitting on the carpets to hear services. He did not, as some devout Muslims do, pray five times a day at the mosque."

The implication here is that Brandon Mayfield's guilt or innocence was in some way related to how many times he prayed at the mosque. Ahmed even went on to assert, "He was on the less religious side if anything."

These 'less religious' icons of what an 'acceptable' Muslim should look like can be found all over the media. Irshad Manji, media entrepreneur and author of "The Trouble with Islam," is one of the most celebrated of these icons. Manji is widely published and has appeared in all the top media outlets. She even received Oprah's Chutzpah Award for "gustiness."

Although Manji refers to herself as a "Muslim refusenik", the media refers to her as the model of a "practicing Muslim". Daniel Pipes, a board member of the United States Institute of Peace, calls her a "courageous, moderate, modern Muslim." But interestingly, Manji's ideas have less to do with Islam than Pipes' ideas have to do with peace. A Washington Post article describes Manji's epiphany about prayer-the cornerstone of the Islamic faith:

"Instead, she said, she began praying on her own. After washing her feet, arms and face, she would sit on a velvet rug and turn toward Mecca. Eventually, she stopped this as well, because she did not want to fall 'into mindless submission and habitual submissiveness.'"

Manji is welcome to her opinion about this practice of 1.5 billion people worldwide. She is also welcome to abandon any and all of these practices. But Manji is not simply depicted as an insignificant woman who decided not to pray. Her personal decision to abandon central tenants of her faith - so long as that faith is Islam - is portrayed as a fight for freedom. A fight against tyranny. She is 'courageous' and 'gutsy', a model for other not-too-Islamic Muslims to follow.

Making this the model is like asking someone not to be 'too black' or 'too Jewish' as if these were in essence bad or violent and anyone who struggled only to be 'moderately black' or 'moderately Jewish' was a freedom fighter.

For example, Manji told the Washington Post, "The violence is going to happen, then why not risk it happening for the sake of freedom?"

Yes. Freedom is good. Manji may have said it better. Kerry may have said it subtler. But a business management professor at California's Imperial Valley College said it truer: "The only way to end Islamic terrorism is to eliminate the Islamic religion."

But regardless of how you say it, one thing is for sure: when it comes to Islam these days - less is definitely more.


Yasmin Mogahed received a B.S. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She is currently a graduate student in Journalism/Mass Communications at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and working as a free lance writer.