Tintin and the Muslims

I was asked to comment about a blog post from June 2008 entitled "Europe" vs. "Western Civilization". The post is primarily a commentary about the Adam Tooze book, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (with which I am not familiar), that has the unusual linkage of comparing Tooze's book to Hergé's comic book, Tintin in America (originally published in 1931). I will also admit to ignorance about Hergé's work, although I've tried to do a quick review about Hergé and the comic book in question.

The author of the blog post, "CPA," makes his primary argument in the following two paragraphs:

After reading Tooze's book, the answer I think is pretty plain: Nazism wasn't just about racism, it was also about Europeanism. In other words it was not just about making "Aryans" triumph over Jews, Roma, and other inferior races in Europe, it was also about making Europe as a continent triumph over rival continents. And by rival continents, the only one really in question was North America. One could even go so far as to say that the racism was instrumental to the "continentism"; that grinding inferior races in Europe into the dust was only a means to the end of keeping Europe the world's leading continent. What is so striking about this is how geography trumped race even in the strategy of the most justly notorious racists in history. How could this be?

Here is where Tintin in America comes in. To understand European fear of North America, one needs to understand the European image of America. Tintin's America is a gangster paradise, a land of skyscrapers and anarchy, of grotesque slaughterhouses and industrialized food, drunken sheriffs enforcing Prohibition while citizens have fun at a lynching parties, a land where oil companies routinely dispossess Indians, where you can go to sleep in a prairie one day and wake up in a traffic-jammed metropolis the next. Now, this is Tintin, and it is all fairly light-hearted. ... As Tintin leaves on a steamer back for Europe, he sighs, "Funny, and I was just starting to like the place." But make no mistake, America is not part of some "Western civilization" -- it is just as alien to Herge's European readers as Africa, the Soviet Union, or the Arab world and India, scenes for his immediately preceding and following Tintin volumes.

Now I bring up the stereotypes presented in the Tintin comic book because the specific request made of me was, "Do you have any thoughts regarding it [the blog post], perhaps on what it means on Muslim relations with America versus Muslim relations with mainland Europe?" Hergé's work seems somewhat similar in its "production values" (for want of a better term) to the current situation between Muslims in the United States and Europe.

In Wikipedia's article on the Tintin series (The Adventures of Tintin), it notes that Hergé did research on the people and countries to which Tintin traveled. However, one of the specific criticisms regarding Tintin in America is that "much of the sequence in the American West is less realistic, as it depicts the West as it was in the days of the Wild West, complete with cowboys and Indians", as opposed to the American west of the 1930s. (Much of the story takes place in Prohibition-era Chicago, with Al Capone being a character in the book.) So my thought is, what media was available to Hergé for his research at that time? Books, photographs and news accounts, certainly, but not much else. One wonders if the "cowboys and Indians" portion of the comic was influenced by Hollywood Westerns that had crossed the Atlantic into Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s. My point here is that with limited research materials, for Hergé and the rest of Europe at that time, was this a reason why there are the various European stereotypes of the United States as depicted in Tintin in America?

I would like to say that Muslim relations in America and Europe (indeed the rest of the world) follows along a similar vein, that the relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims depends upon how well non-Muslims know Muslims, not just Muslim society in general but individual Muslims personally. (For North America and Southeast Asia, I think this theory works pretty well, but I'm not as convinced for Europe. More on that later.) If a non-Muslim knows a Muslim personally, he or she should (in theory) be less likely to demonize Islam and Muslim society. One would hope that a non-Muslim who personally knows a Muslim or Muslims won't think of Muslims in general as a dangerous "other," but that they are like Muhammad who works in the office or Yasmin who presents the news on TV.

In North America (and the U.S. in particular), I think that most non-Muslims are terribly ignorant about Islam and Muslim society, and that this ignorance has driven most of the fear and myth-making. (Myths about Islam including, "Muslims want to dominate the world," "Muslims want to impose Shari'ah on non-Muslims," and so on. That sort of nonsense.) Some of the problems facing the American Muslim community include the fact that Muslims make up a small (but growing) percentage of the total population, and that Muslims have been largely invisible to the American public for most of the country's history. I think Muslims only started coming into the American public's consciousness around 1973, when OPEC punished the U.S. for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Of course, since then, most reactions among Americans toward current events involving Muslims and Muslim countries have been negative (e.g., the Iranian Revolution and the Iran Hostage Crisis, hostages in Lebanon and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Israel/Palestine, Iraq before, during and after the two Gulf Wars, 9/11 and other terrorist attacks around the world, Afghanistan, etc.). Never mind the fact that the vast majority of Muslims in Western countries are peaceful, law-abiding citizens; never mind the fact that most non-Muslims don't recognize their own countries' actions as contributing to the Muslim world's problems. We're all innocent of any wrong-doing; don't you know? ("The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do." (p. 51 of Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations))

Another problem in America is simply that this type of behavior has a long history in the country. White Protestant culture has a difficult time accepting other people. The same problems Muslims face today have happened to the Blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, Jews, Gays, Catholics, and other groups, cultural, ethnic, religious, and so on. Racism and bigotry in America may have been tamped down in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but it never died out completely. It simmered on the back stove for several decades, and began to become unleashed once more in the 90s. Add to the fact that some Islamophobes have found fearmongering to be lucrative financially, and the lies began to be promoted much more strongly than in the past. The good news is that, in both the U.S. and Europe, people of good conscious have begun to fight back with the Muslims and other discriminated groups. Muslim projects such as the building of mosques in America have found supporters from non-Muslims.

In Southeast Asia, Islam has been a significant religion for centuries (roughly 900 years for Malaysia and 1,000 years for Indonesia). With majority populations in Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia, plus significant minority populations in the southern Philippines, Singapore and southern Thailand, most non-Muslims in this region are much better acquainted with Islam and Muslim culture than non-Muslims are in America and Europe. The problems that exist in the U.S. and Europe between Muslims and non-Muslims don't really exist in Southeast Asia. (Of course, there are other problems here between the two communities, but these issues don't seem to be as severe as in the West.) I think one of the key differences between America and Southeast Asia is that Asians are much more conducive toward tolerance between different groups. There are so many different ethnic and religious groups here that people are more willing to make a multicultural society work. (This is one of my complaints with Europeans who proclaim that multiculturalism doesn't work. Not true; it has and does in Asian cultures. Europeans just aren't trying hard enough.)

The question, then is, "Why aren't European non-Muslims more like Asians in their relations with Muslims? Why are they more like Americans?" On the one hand, you have a continent that is neighbors with the Muslim world and, in fact, has several distinct European Muslim communities within Europe itself (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia). Likewise, the absolute numbers and percentages of Muslims throughout Europe are much greater than they are in North America. For example, the Pew Foundation estimated that there are 38.1 million Muslims in Europe, comprising 5.2% of the total population, whereas the total number of Muslims in the Americas (North, Central and South America) totals 4.5 million, or 0.5% of the total population. (Pew estimates that there were 2.454 million Muslims in the U.S., or 0.8% of the population.) So, theoretically, there should be more interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims throughout Europe, even in countries with smaller Muslim populations, which should lead to less ignorance on the part of non-Muslims. But, based on my observations from afar, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Which makes me wonder, could any or all of the following be part of the problem: 1) Economic insecurity - Are worries over Muslim populations in Europe due to the same sort of worries regarding "Polish Plumbers?" In other words, that the cheaper labor coming from Muslim countries will take jobs away from Europeans of a lower socioeconomic level? 2) Racism - Are Europeans worried that Muslims represent a "browning" of the European gene pool similar to the miscegenation fears of Germans intermixing with Jews through World War 2 (or between blacks and whites in the U.S.)? 3) Socioeconomic status of Muslims (and non-Muslim Islamophobes) – One of the known differences between the American and European Muslim communities is that the American Muslims tend to be richer and perhaps more educated than European Muslims. This is due in part to American immigration policy, which, like many countries, encourages people with wealth, high levels of education (normally a minimum of a graduate degree), and/or vital-skill jobs (e.g., IT, medical, education, etc.) to move there. The immigrant Muslim community in the U.S. was able to move to America because they had these qualifications. European Muslims, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily as rich or well-educated; many families, of course, immigrated to European countries due to either post-WW2 labor shortages and/or relaxed immigration rules for countries that were once European colonies. This issue might tie in with the first issue mentioned above, economic insecurity. Perhaps the lower socioeconomic levels of Muslim immigrants in Europe are too similar to that of the native population, leading to the economic and/or xenophobic insecurities? (This issue is less of a problem in the U.S., where Islamophobia tends to be driven either by xenophobia or ideology (hatred of Islam as an ideology/religion).) 4) Tribalism in European society – I’ve read enough European history to know that, deep down, Europe is just as tribal as many other “tribal cultures.” (In today’s vernacular, most tribal conflicts are described as ethnic disputes between two or more groups, or international conflicts in which nations composed of different ethnicities clash over various issues.) I wonder if conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe might be considered a form of tribal conflict; for example, between the Germans and Turks living in Germany or the French and Muslims who come from the various North African countries?

(I claim no expertise regarding the European relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims; this is based solely upon what I've read on the Internet. If Muslim bloggers from or living in Europe wish to correct me on this section, I'd be happy for their input.)



* * *
John Espinoza brought up several good points in a recent essay at Huffington Post. On the one hand, he writes,

…those that think the root cause of Muslim-West tensions is political are more likely to see it as avoidable. Those who see it as religious are more likely to believe it as unavoidable. Therefore, if the conflict is framed as "political," people are more likely to work to find a solution.

I agree with this, and perhaps this is a factor that should be considered for relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in America and Europe. (I don’t think a political/religious dichotomy is as apparent in Southeast Asia. Most people in this region, I think, recognize that tensions here are mostly political rather than religious in nature, even when the personalities involved are deeply religious.) I’m not able to judge how well the European non-Muslim population views their conflicts with Muslims between politics and religion; however, I do think that most Americans view conflicts with Muslims as being religious in nature instead of political. (This is ironic considering that the far right in the U.S. has begun to argue, fallaciously, that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology.) In fact, I would even go so far as to say that many Americans find it difficult to distinguish the political context for many conflicts. If a conflict involves groups with different religions, Americans will tend to define the conflict in terms of the religions involved instead of the political factions. This happens often with "Muslims vs. ..." whomever (Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc.), but also with conflicts that don't involve any Muslims (Northern Ireland in particular). The problem, of course, is that while religious beliefs may play a part in the conflict, other factors are often involved that have nothing to do with religion (e.g., conflicts between ethnic groups, calls for self-determination, control of natural resources, economic inequalities, etc.).

Esposito provides potential solutions that Muslims offer to help improve relations with non-Muslims:

Majorities of Muslims expressed their deep concerns about this lack of respect but they also offered positive solutions: stop desecrating the Quran and religious symbols, treat Muslims fairly in the politics that affect them and portray Muslim characters accurately in popular media.

The problem is, I doubt that even these simple solutions can be performed by non-Muslim society. There is just too much profit (figuratively and literally, as I mentioned above) to be gained from not improving relations between non-Muslims and Muslims.

Update: Quarkstomper wrote a very good comment over at Street Prophets, where I had cross-posted this diary, regarding Hergé and his research:

Hergé did a great deal of research for his later Tintin stories, but not at the beginning. His first one, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, was based on material from a book about the Soviet Union that his editor gave him. (The paper Tintin originally appeared in was a Catholic one with a strong conservative and anti-communist slant). His second one, Tintin in the Congo, was likewise written at his editor's request and was an embarrassing pro-colonial apology. After that, Hergé was permitted to write pretty much what he wanted, which was to take Tintin to exotic places that captured his imagination. Like America.

After Tintin in America and The Cigars of the Pharaohs (taking place in Egypt and India), Hergé announced that he would next take Tintin to China. He received a letter from a Roman Catholic priest asking him to please take care to portray the country accurately. The priest introduced him to a young Chinese student from his school named Chang. The young man became Hergé's assistant for the next story, The Blue Lotus, and provided him not only with factual information and calligraphy, but also a bit of cultural understanding. The Blue Lotus gave a much more sympathetic view of China and the Chinese people than was common in western media at the time.

After The Blue Lotus, Hergé took the lesson about research to heart, and his later adventures were all meticulously researched.

Update #2: Quarkstomper has expanded upon his comment, and has written the diary Hergé and Tintin, which gives a brief biography of the cartoonist and the cartoon strip. I've also cross-posted this essay over at Daily Kos (glutton for punishment that I am ;) ).

On Camels

I am currently reading T.E. Lawrence's (Lawrence of Arabia) book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The book itself is fascinating, being both a war memoir of the Arab Revolt and a travelogue describing the geography and peoples of northern Arabia and Jordan.

I've come across two paragraphs about camels that I found of interest; the first paragraph answers a question for us non-Arab Muslims who are unfamiliar with camels: Why is the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) always mentioned in the various biographies as riding on a female camel?

We grew short-answered to one another; but relief came toward six o'clock, when we halted for supper, and baked ourselves fresh bread. I gave my camel what was left of my share, for the poor animal went tired and hungry in these bad marches. She was the pedigree camel given by Ibn Saud of Nejd to King Hussein and by him to Feisal; a splendid beast; rough, but sure-footed on hills, and great-hearted. Arabs of means rode none but she-camels, since they went smoother under the saddle than males, and were better tempered and less noisy: also, they were patient and would endure to march long after they were worn out, indeed until they tottered with exhaustion and fell in their tracks and died: whereas the coarser males grew angry, flung themselves down when tired, and from sheer rage would die there unnecessarily. (p. 258)

Two paragraphs later, Lawrence relates how camels from one part of Arabia might not do as well in other parts of the country:

Camels brought up on the sandy plains of the Arabian coast had delicate pads to their feet; and if such animals were taken suddenly inland for long marches over flints or other heat-retaining ground, their soles would burn, and at last crack in a blister; leaving quick flesh, two inches or more across, in the centre of the pad. In this state they could march as ever over sand; but if, by chance, the foot came down on a pebble, they would stumble, or flinch as though they had stepped on fire, and in a long march break down altogether unless they were very brave. So we rode carefully, picking the softest way, Auda and myself in front. (pp. 258-59)

Photo credit: Wikipedia: Lawrence at Aqaba, 1917

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

I'm reading a book on the Civil War right now, and read yesterday the chapter on the Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing). I noticed on the map of the battle field that an Owl Creek borders the field to the west. Was that the same Owl Creek that features in the Ambrose Bierce short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? Apparently not. The Shiloh Owl Creek is located in Tennessee, whereas the short story's Owl Creek is supposed to be located in Alabama.

Of course, the whole thing reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode (original airdate, February 28, 1964) that we all watched in high school.

Pericles

"The brilliance of the present is the glory of the future stored up for ever in the memory of man."

-- Pericles, Final Speech to the Athenians (430 BCE) as recorded by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2:64 (Rex Warner translation)

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything

I was amused at his reference to the movie 300; too bad he didn't do the same for 2001: A Space Odyssey. ;)

The Only Video of Anne Frank

The Anne Frank House, the museum which was the hiding place for Anne Frank, her family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer during World War 2, has uploaded the only known film footage of Anne onto Youtube. The film was taken on July 22, 1941, and shows a newly-wed couple walking out of the building (No. 37 Merwedeplein, Amsterdam) adjacent to the home Anne was living in at the time (No. 39 Merwedeplein). (This was about one year prior to the Frank family going into hiding.) Anne, who was 13-years-old at the time, appears at the nine-second mark of the video, and can be seen leaning out of the window to take a look at the couple.

The Anne Frank Channel on Youtube can be subscribed to here.



HT: Mashable

Muhammad Asad: The Story of a Story

The following is an excerpt from Muhammad Asad's book, The Road to Mecca. Despite the fact that this book was published back in 1954, I believe Asad's theory regarding the West's hatred for Islam (that it poses a significant challenge to Western concepts of spiritual and social life) rings very true, even today, 55 years later.

Conceptually, Islam is too close for comfort for a lot of Westerners. We believe in the same God, the same prophets (pbut) and angels and message. But, compared to most (but certainly not all) Westerners, we take religion more seriously (actually, a lot more seriously) than they do, and we may be a little more disciplined in applying religious principles to our daily lives. (One of the benefits of fasting during Ramadan, in my opinion.) And that, I think, scares Westerners the most, the thought that if they became Muslim, these Westerners would lose their party world: no more booze, no more pork, a lot less ogling of naked or nearly naked women in public, and a refocusing of their lives on prayer and spirituality. Westerners (especially whites) may not feel as threatened when darker-skinned Westerners become Muslim, but many are threatened at the thought of white Muslims (such as myself) because we don't fit into their notions of racial behavior. In the Westerners' racist view, Islam isn't and can't become acceptable for white people to join. Because once they see the tide beginning to turn against them, then all is lost from their narrow perspective.

“And this appeared very strange to most of my Western friends. They could not quite picture to themselves how a man of Western birth and upbringing could have so fully, and apparently with no mental reservations whatever, identified himself with the Muslim world; how it had been possible for him to exchange his Western cultural heritage for that of Islam; and what it was that had made him accept a religious and social ideology which – they seemed to take for granted – was vastly inferior to all European concepts.

“Now why, I asked myself, should my Western friends take this so readily for granted? Had any of them ever really bothered to gain a direct insight into Islam – or were their opinions based merely on the handful of clichés and distorted notions that had been handed down to them from previous generations? Could it perhaps be that the old Graeco-Roman mode of thought which divided the world into Greeks and Romans on one side and ‘barbarians’ on the other was still so thoroughly ingrained in the Western mind that it was unable to concede, even theoretically, positive value to anything that lay outside its own cultural orbit?

“Ever since Greek and Roman times, European thinkers and historians have been prone to contemplate the history of the world from the standpoint and in terms of European history and Western cultural experiences alone. Non-Western civilizations enter the picture only in so far as their existence, or particular movements within them, have or had a direct influence on the destinies of Western man; and thus, in Western eyes, the history of the world and its various cultures amounts in the last resort to little more than an expanded history of the West.

“Naturally, such a narrowed angle of vision is bound to produce a distorted perspective. Accustomed as he is to writings which depict the culture or discuss the problems of his own civilization in great detail and in vivid colors, with little more than side glances here and there at the rest of the world, the average European or American easily succumbs to the illusion that the cultural experiences of the West are not merely superior but out of all proportion to those of the rest of the world; and thus, that the Western way of life is the only valid norm by which other ways of life could be adjudged – implying, of course, that every intellectual concept, social institution or ethical valuation that disagrees with the Western ‘norm’ belongs eo ipso to a lower grade of existence. Following in the footsteps of the Greeks and Romans, the Occidental likes to think that all those ‘other’ civilizations are or were only so many stumbling experiments on the path of progress so unerringly pursued by the West; or, at best (as in the case of the ‘ancestor’ civilizations which preceded that of the modern West in a direct line), no more than consecutive chapters in one and the same book, of which Western civilization is, of course, the final chapter.

“When I expounded this view to an American friend of mine – a man of considerable intellectual attainments and a scholarly bent of mind – he was somewhat skeptical at first.

“‘Granted,’ he said, ‘the ancient Greeks and Romans were limited in their approach to foreign civilizations: but was not this limitation the inevitable result of difficulties of communication between them and the rest of the world? And has not this difficulty been largely overcome in modern times? After all, we Westerners do concern ourselves nowadays with what is going on outside our cultural orbit. Aren’t you forgetting the many books about Oriental art and philosophy that have been published in Europe and America during the last quarter-century…about the political ideas that preoccupy the minds of Eastern peoples? Surely one could not with justice overlook this desire on the part of Westerners to understand what other cultures might have to offer?’

“‘To some extent you may be right,’ I replied. ‘There is little doubt that the primitive Graeco-Roman outlook is no longer fully operative these days. Its harshness has been considerably blunted – if for no other reason, because the more mature among Western thinkers have grown disillusioned and skeptical about many aspects of their own civilization and now begin to look to other parts of the world for cultural inspiration. Upon some of them it is dawning that there may be not only one book and one story of human progress, but many: simply because mankind, in the historical sense, is not a homogeneous entity, but rather a variety of groups with widely divergent ideas as to the meaning and purpose of human life. Still, I do not feel that the West has really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not toward Islam – only toward certain other Eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are, at the same time, too distant from the Western world-view to constitute any real challenge to its values.’

“‘What do you mean by that?’

“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘when a Westerner discusses, say, Hinduism or Buddhism, he is always conscious of the fundamental differences between these ideologies and his own. He may admire this or that of their ideas, but would naturally never consider the possibility of substituting them for his own. Because he a priori admits this impossibility, he is able to contemplate such really alien cultures with equanimity and often with sympathetic appreciation. But when it comes to Islam – which is by no means as alien to Western values as Hindu or Buddhist philosophy – this Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. It is perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life?’

“And I went on to tell him of a theory which I had conceived some years ago – a theory that might perhaps help one to understand better the deep-seated prejudice against Islam so often to be found in Western literature and contemporary thought.

“‘To find a truly convincing explanation of this prejudice,’ I said, ‘one has to look far backward into history and try to comprehend the psychological background of the earliest relations between the Western and the Muslim worlds. What Occidentals think and feel about Islam today is rooted in impressions that were born during the Crusades.’

“‘The Crusades!’ exclaimed my friend. ‘You don’t mean to say that what happened nearly a thousand years ago could still have an effect on people of the twentieth century?’

“‘But it does! I know it sounds incredible; but don’t you remember the incredulity which greeted the early discoveries of the psychoanalysts when they tried to show that much of the emotional life of a mature person – and most of those seemingly unaccountable leanings, tastes and prejudices comprised in the term “idiosyncrasies” – can be traced back to the experiences of his most formative age, his early childhood? Well, are nations and civilizations anything but collective individuals? Their development also is bound up with the experiences of their early childhood. As with children, those experiences may have been pleasant or unpleasant; they may have been perfectly rational or, alternatively, due to the child’s naïve misinterpretation of an event: the moulding effect of every such experience depends primarily on its original intensity. The century immediately preceding the Crusades, that is, the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, might well be described as the early childhood of Western civilization…’

“I proceeded to remind my friend – himself an historian – that this had been the age when, for the first time since the dark centuries that followed the breakup of Imperial Rome, Europe was beginning to see its own cultural way. Independently of the almost forgotten Roman heritage, new literatures were just then coming into existence in the European vernaculars; inspired by the religious experience of Western Christianity, fine arts were slowly awakening from the lethargy caused by the warlike migrations of the Goths, Huns and Avars; out of the crude conditions of the early Middle Ages, a new cultural world was emerging. It was at that critical, extremely sensitive stage of its development that Europe received its most formidable shock – in modern parlance, a ‘trauma’ – in the shape of the Crusades.

“The Crusades were the strongest collective impression on a civilization that had just begun to be conscious of itself. Historically speaking, they represented Europe’s earliest – and entirely successful – attempt to view itself under the aspect of cultural unity. Nothing that Europe has experienced before or after could compare with the enthusiasm which the First Crusade brought into being. A wave of intoxication swept over the Continent, an elation which for the first time overstepped the barriers between states and tribes and classes. Before then, there had been Franks and Saxons and Germans, Burgundians and Sicilians, Normans and Lombards – a medley of tribes and races with scarcely anything in common but the fact that most of their feudal kingdoms and principalities were remnants of the Roman Empire and that all of them professed the Christian faith: but in the Crusades, and through them, the religious bond was elevated to a new plane, a cause common to all Europeans alike – the politico-religious concept of ‘Christendom,’ which in its turn gave birth to the cultural concept of ‘Europe.’ When, in his famous speech at Clermont, in November, 1095, Pope Urban II exhorted the Christians to make war upon the ‘wicked race’ that held the Holy Land, he enunciated – probably without knowing it himself – the charter of Western civilization.

“The traumatic experience of the Crusades gave Europe its cultural awareness and its unity; but this same experience was destined henceforth also to provide the false color in which Islam was to appear to Western eyes. Not simply because the Crusades meant war and bloodshed. So many wars have been waged between nations and subsequently forgotten, and so many animosities which in their time seemed ineradicable have later turned into friendships. The damage caused by the Crusades was not restricted to a clash of weapons: it was, first and foremost, an intellectual damage – the poisoning of the Western mind against the Muslim world through a deliberate misrepresentation of the teachings and ideals of Islam. For, if the call for a crusade was to maintain its validity, the Prophet of the Muslims had, of necessity, to be stamped as the Anti-Christ and his religion depicted in the most lurid terms as a fount of immorality and perversion. It was at the time of the Crusades that the ludicrous notion that Islam was a religion of crude sensualism and brutal violence, of an observance of ritual instead of a purification of the heart, entered the Western mind and remained there; and it was then that the name of the Prophet Muhammad – the same Muhammad who had insisted that his own followers respect the prophets of other religions – was contemptuously transformed by Europeans into ‘Mahound.’ The age when the spirit of independent inquiry could raise its head was as yet far distant in Europe; it was easy for the powers-that-were to sow the dark seeds of hatred for a religion and civilization that was so different from the religion and civilization of the West. Thus it was no accident that the fiery Chanson de Roland, which describes the legendary victory of Christendom over the Muslim ‘heathen’ in southern France, was composed not at the time of those battles but three centuries later – to wit, shortly before the First Crusade – immediately to become a kind of ‘national anthem’ of Europe; and it is no accident, either, that this warlike epic marks the beginning of a European literature, as distinct from the earlier, localized literatures: for hostility toward Islam stood over the cradle of European civilization.

“It would seem an irony of history that the age-old Western resentment against Islam, which was religious in origin, should still persist subconsciously at a time when religion has lost most of its hold on the imagination of Western man. This, however, is not really surprising. We know that a person may completely lose the religious beliefs imparted to him in his childhood while, nevertheless, some particular emotion connected with those beliefs remains, irrationally, in force throughout his later life –

“‘ – and this,’ I concluded, ‘is precisely what happened to that collective personality, Western civilization. The shadow of the Crusades hovers over the West to this day; and all its reactions toward Islam and the Muslim world bear distinct traces of that die-hard ghost…’”

pp. 2-7

Bedtime Music: Gordon Lightfoot - The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald

In my opinion, one of the most important songs from the 70s is that of Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, released on his 1976 album, Summertime Dream. For those of you not familiar with the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the Fitzgerald was a bulk carrier freighter that sailed the Great Lakes. Launched in 1958, she was, for a time, the largest ship on those waters. On November 10, 1975, the Fitzgerald sank in 530 feet (162 m) of water near Whitefish Bay, Ontario, Canada, without having given any distress calls. All 29 men aboard died. The exact cause of the sinking is unknown. An excellent documentary by the Discovery Channel on the sinking of the Fitzgerald (which I have watched) suggests that three rogue waves in succession may have caused the Fitzgerald to take on water into the cargo holds before snapping the ship in half.

What's interesting about this song is the speed with which it was written and recorded. The Fitzgerald, as mentioned above, sank on November 10, 1975. The sinking was reported in a Newsweek article entitled "Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month," which was published on November 24th. Lightfoot used the article as his inspiration to write the song, which was then recorded in December, 1975.

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.

44 Presidents in 4 Minutes

A short, interesting video where the 44 Presidents in American history are morphed one after the other. Check it out!



HT: Crooks & Liars

Bedtime Music: Bach - Third Brandenberg Concerto, First and Third Movements

I was first introduced to Johann Sebastian Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto as a teenager while listening to Walter (Wendy) Carlos's album, Switched On Bach. I could now write about how wonderful I find this music and how it's associated in my mind with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit... but I won't. ;)

What I will write about is how the six Brandenburg Concertos were originally ignored and then lost for many years. In 1719, Bach visited Berlin as an agent of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, who was buying a harpsichord. While there, he met with and impressed the local military governor, Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt. In the hope of securing patronage from the Margrave, Bach dedicated the six concertos to him. However, the Margrave lacked the musicians to play the concertos, and the King, Frederick William I of Prussia and the Margrave's nephew, preferred George Handel's music instead. The scores remained in the Margrave's library until his death in 1734, having never been played, and were sold for the equivalent of US$22 (in 2008 money). The scores eventually found their way into the Brandenburg archives, where they weren't discovered until sometime in the nineteenth century, which is how the "Brandenburg" Concertos got their name.

The first video is of the First Movement; the second video is of the Third Movement. Both movements are Allegro. The Second Movement (Adagio) was apparently supposed to be an improvisation on a theme, and is only occasionally performed. In this case, I can't find a video of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra playing the Second Movement.

Brandenburg Concerto #3, First Movement:



Brandenburg Concerto #3, Third Movement:

The Great Arab Conquests: Why People Reverted to Islam

This is the ninth post in my series about Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests. Here, Kennedy examines, at the very end of the book (pages 374-76), why people in the conquered lands chose to revert to Islam. His answer is that it was to their material benefit, that this was a way for people to become part of the new, dominant culture of the day. What's interesting is what Kennedy doesn't say, that the mass reversion of the native populations to Islam was not "by the sword," as Islamophobes mistakenly believe. Instead, the reversion to Islam was a very slow, gradual process that took centuries to complete.

Note: While this topic was originally set to be the last post in this series on Kennedy's book, I've decided to continue on, insha'allah, with a related series, focusing on some of the leaders and other people mentioned in The Great Arab Conquests, and descriptions about places, geographical and architectural, in Muslim lands. While I plan on using Kennedy's book in the future, I hope to use other research materials for these new posts.

As we have repeatedly seen, the Muslim conquerors put little or no pressure on the recently subjected populations to convert to Islam. Any attempt at compulsory conversion would probably have provoked widespread outrage and open hostility. As it was, the Muslim authorities established working relationships with the heads of the churches and other religious institutions that were now in their power. Conversion when it came was partly the result of fiscal pressures, the desire to escape the hated poll tax, but also because conversion provided an opportunity to escape from existing social constraints and to become a part of the new ruling class. Being a Muslim had always been essential for anyone who wanted a career in the military. By the tenth century, and before in some areas, it had become very difficult to have a successful career in the civil bureaucracy without becoming a Muslim. Attraction, not coercion, was the key to the appeal of the new faith.

During the first century, the Muslim Empire was a fairly open society. The elite of the new empire were the Muslims and Islam claimed to be a religion for all mankind. No would-be convert could be denied membership of this new elite. In contrast, Roman citizenship or membership of Persian aristocratic families was an exclusive, privileged position to be defended by those who enjoyed it. By converting to the new religion of Islam, conquered people could move to being conquerors, members of the new ruling class and, at least theoretically, equal to all other Muslims. Of course, problems soon arose and there were prolonged and violent clashes between old Muslims and new Arab and non-Arab Muslims, but this could not undermine the fact that Islam was open to all.

This is the other side of the collapse of the old social order and class boundaries lamented in aristocratic Persian sources of the period. There were some spectacular examples of this mobility. Nusayr was a prisoner of war, probably of humble Aramaean origin, captured in one of the early Arab campaigns in Iraq. He converted to Islam and his son Mūsā went on to become governor of North Africa and supreme commander of the Muslim forces in the conquest of Spain. At a humbler level, the peasants who refused to obey the orders of the Persian landowner in Iraq, the Copts who chose to stay in North Africa rather than being forced to return to their native Egypt, or the local men who served with the Arab armies in Transoxania may all have seen the coming of the Muslims as an opportunity to better themselves, taking advantage of the freedom and opportunities offered by the new order.

The early Muslims brought with them a great cultural self-confidence. God had spoken to them through His Prophet, in Arabic, and they were the bearers of true religion and God's own language. It is interesting to compare this with the Germanic invaders of western Europe in the fifth century. When they occupied the lands of the Roman Empire, they abandoned their old gods and converted to Christianity, the religion of the empire they had just conquered, and, as far as we know, no one claimed that God spoke German. This cultural self-confidence meant that Arabic became the language of administration and the language of the new high culture. Anyone who wished to participate fully in government or intellectual activity had to be literate in Arabic and preferably a Muslim. Again the contrast with the Germanic west is revealing. Here Latin remained the language of administration and high culture until at least the twelfth century, the new ruling class adopted Latin titles like duke (dux) and count (comes), and the Germanic languages survived only as vernaculars. The Muslim titles, caliph (khalīfa), amīr and wālī (governor) were all Arabic in origin.

Nonetheless, conquest was the prelude to conversion. It established the political and social framework within which the much slower, incremental processes of changing to Islam could take place. By the year 1000, it is likely that the majority of the population in all the different areas that had been conquered by 750 were Muslim. The conquest did not cause conversion but it was a major prerequisite: without it Islam would not have become the dominant faith in these areas.

The success of the Muslim conquests was the product of a unique set of circumstances and the preaching of a simple new monotheistic faith. There were many features of Islam that would have made it approachable to Christians and Jews. It had a Prophet, a Holy Book, established forms of prayer, dietary and family laws. Abraham and Jesus were both great prophets in the Muslim tradition. From the very beginning Islam established itself as a new faith, but it was one that claimed to perfect rather than destroy the older monotheistic ones. It had none of the strangeness of, say, Buddhism. These similarities, this common tradition, must have aided and encouraged conversion.

In many ways acceptance of Muslim rule was the result of Muslim policy toward the enemy: it was almost always preferable to surrender to the invaders and to make terms and pay the taxes rather than to resist to the last. The Islamization and Arabization that followed conquest over the next two or three centuries would not have occurred if political conquest had not already succeeded, but they were not a direct and inevitable consequence of that conquest. Instead, it was a gradual, almost entirely peaceful result of the fact that more and more people wanted to identify with and participate in the dominant culture of their time.

Photo credit: Wikipedia/Tawelsensei. La Mezquita, the former masjid of Cordoba, Spain. The architecture is notable for its giant arches, with over 1,000 columns of jasper, onyx, marble, and granite.

Ayat 30:1-6 and the Wars Between Byzantium and Persia (II)

Alif Lam Mim

The Roman Empire has been defeated-

In a land close by; but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious-

Within a few years. With God is the Decision, in the past and in the Future: on that Day shall the Believers rejoice-

With the help of God. He helps whom He will, and He is exalted in might, most merciful.

(It is) the promise of God. Never does God depart from His promise: but most men understand not.
-- The Romans (30): 1-6

For many of us Muslims, the first six verses of the surah called The Romans are familiar, but we probably don't know much about the wars between Byzantium and the Persians that described the Byzantine defeat in the mid- to late-610s and the prophecy regarding the Byzantine victory over the Sasanian Empire in 627. This is the second half of a post (the first half is located here), the eighth in my series about Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests.

Previously, we looked at a basic overview of the conflict between Persia and Byzantine Rome, and the problems Byzantium faced after the war had ended. In this section, from pages 101-03, we look at the aftermath to the Sasanian Empire after their defeat by Heraclius.

The great war between the Byzantines and the Persians which had so damaged the Roman Empire in the first three decades of the seventh century had also been a disaster for the Sasanians. At first Persian arms had been almost entirely successful. In 615 the Persian army had reached the Bosporus opposite Constantinople, and in 619 Persian troops entered Alexandria and completed the conquest of Egypt. The tide began to turn in March 624 when the emperor Heraclius took his fleet to the Black Sea and began the invasion of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Persians were now outflanked and were forced to withdraw their army from Anatolia to face the emperor, who was now attacking from the north. In 627 he swept through north-western Iran, before descending to the plains of northern Iraq and defeating the Persian army at Nineveh (12 December 627). It was the greatest military disaster that the Sasanian Empire had ever suffered. Chosroes retired to the capital at Ctesiphon, leaving his palace at Dastgard to be sacked by the Romans. Here he began the search for scapegoats to blame for the spectacular reversal of fortunes that had occurred. He seems to have decided on the execution of his most important military commander, Shahrbarāz, but before he could act there was a coup. Chosroes was assassinated early in 628 and his son, who had agreed to his father's murder, ascended the throne as Kavād II.

Kavād immediately set about negotiating a peace with Heraclius in which all prisoners were to be released and the pre-war frontiers restored. And all might yet have been well had the new king not died within the year, probably of the plague. He was succeeded by his infant son, Ardashīr III, but the general, Shāhrbarāz, refused to accept this and in June 629 siezed the throne. This was the first time in four centuries that a man who was not a member of the Sasanian family had tried to take the throne, and there was considerable resistance. After just two months, he, too, was murdered and, since Chosroes II had left no other sons, the throne passed to his daughter, Būrān, who, although apparently an effective ruler, died, of natural causes, after a year. There then followed a bewildering succession of short-lived rulers until finally Yazdgard III, a grandson of the great Chosroes, was elevated to the throne in 632.

The details of these intrigues are not in themselves important. The overall effect was decisive, however. The Sasanian Empire had been ravaged by an invading army and any idea of its invincibility had been destroyed. Archaeological evidence suggests that many settlements in the richest part of Iraq were abandoned as a result of the war. Furthermore the house of Sasan, the mainstay and raison d'être of the state, had been torn apart by feud and murder. It is more than likely that Yazdgard, if he had been given time, would have restored royal control and prestige. But the year of his accession was the year of the death of the Prophet Muhammad: Arab tribes were already taking advantage of the chaos to make inroads on the settled lands of Iraq, and Khālid b. Al-Walīd, the Muslim general, was on his way. In these circumstances, it is surprising not that the Persians were defeated by the Arabs but that they fought with such determination.

This last section, from pages 367-68, looks at the damage the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires inflicted upon each other and how neither were prepared for the oncoming Arab conquests.

Along with these long-term factors, there were the short-term effects of war and the dislocation it caused. There had been many conflicts between the Roman and Iranian empires since Crassus and his forces were defeated by the Parthians in 53 BC, but the war that broke out after the assassination of Emperor Maurice in 602 was the most far reaching and destructive. The effects of the Persian sweep through the lands of the Byzantine Empire affected society at many levels. It destroyed Byzantine imperial control over the lands of the Near East, it severed the links with Constantinople; governors were no longer appointed, armies were no longer dispatched and taxes were no longer paid. The Chalcedonian Orthodox Church lost its imperial patronage and became one Christian sect among many others. Many churchmen and other members of the elite fled to the comparative safety of North Africa or Italy. Archaeological work has suggested that, in Anatolia at least, the advance of the Persian armies did enormous damage to urban life and that people abandoned the spacious cities of the plains to take refuge in mountain-top fortresses. The restoration of Byzantine imperial control came only a year or two before the Arab armies marched from Medina, and in many areas there may have been no Byzantine military and political structures in place at all.

A distinguishing feature of this "last great war of antiquity" was that it devestated both of the great empires with even-handed brutality. Heraclius's invasion of the Persian Empire was as destructive as the Persian invasions of the Byzantine Empire had been; the great fire-temple at Shiz, where the Sasanian shahs had been inaugurated, was destroyed and the royal palace at Dastgard sacked. More crucially, the great king Chosroes II (591-628) was killed by his own generals. The Sasanian Empire, unlike the Byzantine, was formally a dynastic state; Heraclius's assault undermined the prestige of the dynasty and the confidence of the Persian ruling elite. Infighting among the members of the royal family caused a period of great instability. By the time that Yazdgard III (632-51) was wide accepted as shāh, the Arab armies were already attacking the Iraqi frontier.

The success of the conquest was also aided by the succession disputes that paralyzed the Byzantine state after the death of Heraclius in February 641. The power struggle at the Byzantine court seems to have been directly responsible for the otherwise inexplicable failure to mount an effective operation to defend Egypt. If Heraclius had been succeeded by a strong and energetic new emperor, the Byzantines might well have been able to mount a counter-attack in Syria or along the Mediterranean coasts, especially during the very disturbed period that followed the assassination of the caliph Uthmān in 656. The Muslims had a generation in which to consolidate their power and their hold over the lands won from the Byzantines.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Taq-i Kisra, the Great Arch of Ctesiphon; this is the only remaining visible structure of the Sasanian palace complex at Ctesiphon, in what is now Iraq. This photo was taken in 2007.

Ayat 30:1-6 and the Wars Between Byzantium and Persia (I)

Alif Lam Mim

The Roman Empire has been defeated-

In a land close by; but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious-

Within a few years. With God is the Decision, in the past and in the Future: on that Day shall the Believers rejoice-

With the help of God. He helps whom He will, and He is exalted in might, most merciful.

(It is) the promise of God. Never does God depart from His promise: but most men understand not.
-- The Romans (30): 1-6

For many of us Muslims, the first six verses of the surah called The Romans are familiar, but we probably don't know much about the wars between Byzantium and the Persians that described the Byzantine defeat in the mid- to late-610s and the prophecy regarding the Byzantine victory over the Sasanian Empire in 627. This post, the eighth in my series about Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests, looks at three passages that describe what happened between these two empires.

This first passage, taken from pages 68-70, gives a basic overview of the conflict between Persia and Byzantine Rome, and briefly discusses the problems Byzantium had after the warfare had ended.

Relations between the Byzantine and Sasanian Persian empires were largely peaceful during the fifth and early sixth centuries. Both powers respected each other's borders and their zones of influence in the Syrian desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north. In the mid sixth century, however, large-scale and very damaging warfare erupted between the two great powers. The Sasanian monarchs invaded Byzantine territory on a number of occasions. In 540 they sacked the great capital of the east at Antioch and in 573 they conquered the important provincial capital at Apamea. On both occasions they returned with a large amount of booty and transported large numbers of the population to new cities in the Persian Empire.

If relations had deteriorated in the sixth century, they became much worse in the seventh. In the year 602, the emperor Maurice and his entire family were assassinated by mutinous soldiers. Some years before, the emperor had given refuge to the young and energetic Sasanian monarch Chosroes II when he had been temporarily driven from his throne. Chosroes now used the death of his benefactor as an excuse for launching a devastating attack on the Byzantine Empire. His armies won a series of spectacular victories. In 611 Persian armies invaded Syria, Jerusalem fell to them in 614 and in 615 the Persians reached the shores of the Bosporus opposite Constantinople itself. In 619 they took Alexandria and all of Egypt was in their hands.

The Byzantine recovery was the achievement of the emperor Heraclius (610-41). He had been governor of Byzantine North Africa but in 610 sailed to Constantinople with his provincial army to seize the throne from the brutal usurper Phocas. His reign had been dominated by the struggle with the Persians. After many years, when Persian armies had seemed unstoppable, Heraclius had turned the tables dramatically when he launched an attack behind the enemy lines in 624. In a move of great daring and brilliant strategic vision, he had led an army from the Black Sea coast of Turkey, through western Iran and northern Iraq, sacking the famous fire temple at Shiz and the palace of Chosroes at Dastgard. With the death of his arch-rival Chosroes II in 628 and the subsequent divisions among the Persians as they struggled to find a new ruler, Heraclius was able to make a peace that re-established the old frontier between the two empires along the Khābūr river. In 629 he negotiated the withdrawal of Persian soldiers from Syria and Egypt and set about restoring Byzantine rule in the newly recovered provinces. On 21 March 630 he enjoyed his greatest moment of triumph when he returned the relics of the True Cross, taken by the Persians, to Jerusalem.

Although the Persians had been decisively defeated, the conquest of Syria and Palestine had a very damaging effect on Byzantine power in the Levant. Apart from the bloodshed caused by the warfare, it seems that many of the Greek-speaking elite emigrated to the security of North Africa or Rome. The fighting had been very destructive, especially in the towns, but perhaps more important was the loss of the tradition of imperial rule and administration. For most of the period of Muhammad's mission, Syria and Palestine were ruled by the Persians, not the Byzantines, and it was not until 630, a couple of years before the Prophet's death, that Byzantine control was re-established. Nonetheless, this control must have been very patchy, and there were probably many areas where Byzantine government hardly existed. Most younger-generation Syrians would have had no experience or memory of imperial rule, and no cause to be loyal to Constantinople. Even as Byzantine government was being slowly re-established, the religious differences that had divided Syria in the sixth century came to the fore again. The emperor Heraclius was determined to enforce religious conformity on a Christian population that in large measure rejected his doctrinal position.

Byzantine control over Syria had been established for more than half a millennium. If Islam had been born fifty years earlier, and the early Muslims had attempted to raid Syria and Palestine in the 580s not the 630s, there can be little doubt that they would have been seen off very quickly, as the provinces were firmly controlled by the government and the defenses well organized. The coincidence that the first Muslim armies appeared in the area immediately after the traumatic events of the great war between Byzantium and Iran was the essential prerequisite for the success of Muslim arms.

To be continued, insha'allah...

Photo Credit: Cardo Maximus, a street in the ruins of Apamea (Syria), sacked in 573 CE by Chosroes I, from Wikipedia/Bo-Deh

Daisy

George Carty wrote as a comment on another post: "I almost wonder if Obama could do good by nicking LBJ's "Daisy Girl" attack ad. :)" My response: Excellent idea! Seriously, in this presidential election, is there any real difference between Goldwater in 1964 vs. McCain today? I think not!

Kevin James, Moron

This guy, Kevin James, appears to be one of the dimmest of the dimbulbs that support the Bush administration. Truly amazing stupidity. And they asked him to be on TV??? This guy's a lawyer? Yeah, right! The following was taken from Wikipedia:

"You don't know anything. You don't know what you are talking about.”
— Chris Matthews to Kevin James

On May 15, 2008, James appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, debating with Mark Green of Air America Radio to discuss remarks made by George W. Bush's speech to the Israeli Knesset in which the president drew a comparison between Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in World War II with Barack Obama's expressed willingness to meet with leaders of U.S. adversaries.

After James vigorously supported Bush's comparison, Chris Matthews asked James for a "history check", asking James "What exactly did Chamberlain do wrong?" Frustrated by what Matthews perceived as James' inability to demonstrate any knowledge of the period, Matthews went on to repeat the question a total of 28 times. Finally with James' admittance of "I don't know," Matthews accused James of being a "blank slate" who didn't know anything about history. Matthews ended by telling James "When you are going to make a direct historical reference, get it straight," and then likened James to White House spokesman Dana Perino, who in an appearance on NPR's radio program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me admitted she had had no idea what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.

HT: TBogg

Update: Crooks & Liars has a rough, partial transcript of the video:

Chris: I want to do a little history check on you—what did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in 1939? What did he do wrong?

Kevin: It all goes back to appeasement. It’s the key term.

Chris: No, what did he do, tell me what he did?

Kevin: It’s the key term.

Chris: You have to answer this question. What did he do?

Kevin: It’s the same thing, it puts it all…

Chris: Well tell me what he did?

Kevin: It’s appeasement.

Chris: What did Chamberlain do wrong..

Kevin: His actions, his actions enabled, energized, legitimized

Chris: What did Chamberlain do?

Kevin: It’s the exact same thing.

Chris: No stop, Kevin. I’m not going to continue with this interview unless you answer what that thing is. What did Chamberlain do in ‘39, tell me? ‘38?

Kevin: Chris, it’s the exact same thing alright?

Chris: What did he do? What did he do!

Kevin: '38, '39 Chris what year do you want?

Chris: What did he do? I want you to answer, what did Chamberlain?

Kevin: He’s talking, He’s talking about appeasement.

Chris: What did Chamberlain do, just tell me what he did, Kevin? What did Chamberlain do that you didn’t like?

Kevin: What, what Chamberlain did? What, what, the President was talking about, you just said the President was talking about Barack. Look…

Chris: You’re making a reference to the days before our involvement in WWII. When the war in Europe began. I want you to tell me as an expert, what did Chamberlain do wrong.

Kevin: You’re not going to box me in here, Chris. President Bush was making that. I’m glad, I’m glad.

Chris: You don’t know, do you? You don’t know what Neville Chamberlain did

Kevin: Yeah, he was an appeaser, Chris….

Chris: You are BS’ing me… You don’t know what you’re talking about.

The History of the Humble Olive

There's an interesting diary on "the history of the humble olive" over at Daily Kos, of all places, that was rather interesting. Be sure to check it out. Personally, I love olives and olive oil, and I can easily go through a bottle of olives while eating cottage cheese (another favorite food), using the olives as a garnish. Tasty! Here's a brief quotation from the diary:

The Olive was a native to Asia Minor and spread from Iran, Syria and Palestine to the rest of the Mediterranean basin around 6,000 years ago. It is among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world (being grown before the written language was invented). It was being grown on Crete by 3,000 BC and may have been the source of the wealth of the Minoan kingdom. The Phoenicians spread the olive to the Mediterranean shores of Africa and Southern Europe. Olives have been found in Egyptian tombs from 2000 years BC. The olive culture was spread to the early Greeks then Romans. As the Romans extended their domain they brought the olive with them (but not the olive branch! They were fond of conquering). A little known fact is this: 1400 years ago the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, advised his followers to apply olive oil to their bodies, and himself used oil on his head.

"Monsters to Destroy" - How America Creates Its Own Blowback

An interesting interview with Dr. Thomas Woods on a website I've never visited before (for the obvious reason ;) ). The interview, entitled "Monsters to Destroy: Foreign Policy, Then and Now," looks at how American modern foreign policy (say, from WW1 onwards) has created severe problems (i.e., blowback) for itself by intervening in the affairs of others. What makes matters worse for Americans is that, as one blogger put it, "It’s sad when Osama Bin Laden makes more sense than Americans do." A couple of quotes:

One insight that conservatives have long had is that when you intervene in the domestic market, you always have unintended consequences. Put a price control on milk and make milk less expensive and pretty soon, you'll have shortages, because no one is producing milk anymore and the discounted milk was bought up. That's what happens.

Foreign affairs are even more likely to have unintended consequences. Woodrow Wilson did not intend to exacerbate every existing problem in Europe by intervening in World War I. But that's what he did, and he helped create the fertile soil for the rise of a hyper nationalistic party like the Nazis.

...

In the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeini called for a jihad against America, on the grounds that we were degenerate, had filthy movies, our women didn't know their place -- all the reasons that we've been told are the causes of the current attacks. The result was absolutely nothing. No one blew himself up. No one did anything. Khomeini issued the call and there was no interest. It was a total flop -- no one wanted to sacrifice himself on those grounds.

Then the 1990s come along, and we have Osama bin Laden. He does not make that fundamental cultural critique -- obviously, he doesn't like those aspects of American culture, but that wasn't his main critique.

His criticism is actually very specific. He says the U.S. is responsible for propping up police states around the Arab world; exercising undue influence over oil markets; showing undue favoritism toward Israel; supporting countries that oppress their Muslim minorities; basing American troops on the Arabian peninsula, and on and on.

This is the sort of thing he offers as a rationale. So while there may certainly be the potential for Islam to be violent, what sparks that fire? It's the combination of practical grievances and the Islamist ideology. Some people will do battle on behalf of an abstract philosophy, but most people will only fight and die for a specific grievance. For example, when you look at the Al Qaida recruitment tapes, they don't simply quote from the Koran. They actually show images of people killed by U.S. weapons.

Why are they making those tapes if there's no connection between U.S. foreign policy and what the terrorists are doing? It just doesn't make sense.

Some of the comments were also interesting. One man asked, "What about Beirut?" (Meaning, the 1983 bombing of the American and French barracks in Beirut.) One very good response was:

Heeding the advice of then-national security adviser Robert McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan authorized the USS New Jersey to fire long-distance shells into Muslim villages in the Bekaa Valley, killing civilians and convincing Shiite militants that the United States had joined the conflict.

On Oct. 23, 1983, Shiite militants struck back, sending a suicide truck bomber through U.S. security positions and demolishing the high-rise Marine barracks. “When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American ‘referee’ had taken sides,” Gen. Colin Powell wrote about the incident in his memoirs, My American Journey.

Should All US Muslims Carry a Special ID?

Tariq Nelson has a satirical video where various Americans are interviewed about their attitudes toward American Muslims.



The thing that strikes me about the responses is how much the people sound like Germans during the Nazi era. In 1996, Daniel Goldhagen argued in his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, that "...ordinary Germans not only knew about, but also supported, the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist" antisemitism in the German identity, which had developed in the preceding centuries." These people interviewed and their answers differ from their Nazi predecessors only in the details: substitute the word "Jews" with "Muslims," and the responses are identical. Some of the questions asked:

Do you support the proposal for all US Muslims to carry a special ID card?


ID card issued in Mainz by the Nazis in 1939. The bearer of the card is identified as a Jew by the large Gothic letter "J" and by the addition of the middle name "Sarah" to her original name. (Records of the Institut der NSDAP zur Erforschung der Judenfrage—Frankfurt am Main) YIVO Archives

Do you think US Muslims should also wear a badge with the word "Muslim" on it?


Two little boys marked by the Star of David, 1941 (Photo Credits: USHMM and The History Place) (Source)

Which Muslims should have a special security number tattooed on their arm? Only the evil Muslims, only Arab Muslims, or all Muslims?


John Steiner of Novato, California, displays tattooed numbers on his arm from his internment in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Steiner was later transferred to Dachau. (Source)

Would you support the proposal for Muslims to be converted to Christianity, converted to Judaism, or incarcerated until the war is over?


"Selection" on the Judenrampe, Auschwitz, May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers. This image shows the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of them from the Berehov ghetto. It was taken by Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter of the SS. Courtesy of Yad Vashem. (Source)

And I'll bet not a single person interviewed realized what they were saying. Jews rightfully tell us that we must never forget what happened during the Holocaust, but these Americans have.