NYT: Uncle Sam is No Imam

The following comes from the New York Times article, Uncle Sam is No Imam:

From a national security point of view, challenging ideas that underpin radical Islam makes sense. Counterterrorism is ultimately about ideas; why shouldn’t officials try to marginalize the theological teachings cited by violent terrorists?

The problem is that when American officials intervene in Islamic teachings — interpreting them to believers in a national-security context and saying which are or are not acceptable — they create tensions, both legal and strategic.

The strategic problem is easier to see: Is the government a credible authority on Islamic interpretation? Based on the results of comparable efforts in Britain, the answer is a resounding no. Simply put, young Muslim men in the thrall of radical teachings will not embrace a more pacific theology because the F.B.I. tells them to, any more than Catholic bishops would have yielded to Mr. Obama’s plan to mandate coverage of contraceptives at Catholic hospitals if he had invoked canon law to defend his position.

...

If I am right that the government is increasingly in danger of establishing an “official Islam,” a project that is at best ill-fated if not illegal...

For the most part I am in agreement with this article, but these two sections really stood out for me. Any attempt to create an "official Islam" as defined by a government is bound for failure. It's not just the idea of trying to soften the more radical teachings of Islam for young Muslims, Muslims of all ages will resist any attempt by non-Muslims, whether they are individuals or organizations, to reinterpret any aspect of Islam that is solely for the benefit of non-Muslim society.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of non-Muslims have little understanding about Islam and the Muslim world to begin with. Orthodox Muslims would look at these "interpretations" then ignore them. There are several key factors at play here. One, of course, is the interpretation itself; the interpretation must be grounded by the Qur'an and Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh). The more an interpretation diverges from the general understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah, the less likely that interpretation will be accepted. Extremes in interpretation, both "liberal" and "conservative," are ignored by the mainstream Muslim community (although fringe individuals or groups may accept these interpretations at the risk of being considered outside of pale of Islam; for example, the Nation of Islam and the Ahmadiyyah). As a result, minority interpretations in Islam count for very little within the Muslim world.

Another key factor is the credibility of the person or group issuing the interpretation. As the author pointed out, young Muslims will not accept the FBI's interpretation of Islam; the FBI has no credibility in Islam. Muslims, by and large, never accept a non-Muslim's interpretation of Islam; non-Muslims have no credibility.* Muslims, by and large, will also not accept the interpretations of other Muslims who present minority positions and have no evidence of being a Muslim scholar (this also applies to scholars in academia who happen to be Muslim). In essence, the only interpretations Muslims as a whole will accept are those made by Muslim scholars whose work is more-or-less orthodox in interpretation. This system may not be to the liking of non-Muslims and those Muslims who wish for rapid change, but the system works well for mainstream orthodox Muslims. As the Prophet (pbuh) said, My ummah will not agree upon an error." (Sunan At-Tirmidhi, #2320; see also Sunan Abu Dawud, #4255 and Sunan Ibn Majah, #4085)

So, what is to be done? The author had some good ideas:

Countering radical religious ideology is on much more solid constitutional — and strategic — footing if the heavy lifting is done not by the government but by grass-roots organizations that are grounded in civil society or in religious communities. The government must not be heavily and directly involved.

The relationship between the national security imperative and a great religious civilization is inevitably fraught. Reconciling the two won’t be achieved by allowing officials to become more active in espousing theological alternatives to radical Islam — or in training law-enforcement and intelligence professionals with hateful caricatures of Islam. The government’s efforts ought to be guided instead by the wisdom of the First Amendment and the values that it enshrines.

The real key, in my opinion, is that non-Muslim society must listen to orthodox Muslims. Really, it's gotten to the point where, if authorities want the help of the Muslim community, they must be willing to listen and respect what the orthodox Muslim community has to say. A good first step would be to reject what non-Muslims think about Islam and Muslim society. There are far too many shysters who prey upon the gullible non-Muslim public (including leaders) for information and advice about Islam and Muslims. If you want the backing of orthodox Muslims, you must listen to credible orthodox Muslims, even if this means not liking what those people have to say. That may be a bitter pill for some non-Muslims to take, but it's the best way to understand Islam and the Muslim community and to reduce tensions between the two sides.

-----------------
* Having said that, I have come across the works of a few non-Muslims whose understanding of Islam is very good; they do have some credibility among Muslims, although not enough to be able to present divergent interpretations that would be acceptable to Muslim society.

The Daily Show on the Financial Crisis

"If I had only followed CNBC's advice, I'd have a million dollars today, provided I'd started with $100 million."
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

All of Wednesday's show was devoted to the current financial crisis. The first segment is the best (and several of the political blogs I read have put up this video as well). Idiot Rick Santelli of CNBC recently ranted about the possibility of "loser homeowners" getting financial relief on their "underwater" mortgages while conveniently forgetting that the financial industry has received over $2 trillion in bailout money. Stewart rips CNBC a huge one when Santelli "bailed out" of appearing on the show.

The second segment is on the stupid right wing meme that President Obama is somehow responsible for the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been plummeting over the past few months, once again conveniently forgetting how much the stock market had plunged in the last year (especially in the months of September and October) of the Bush misadministration. I did have a good laugh at the idea of a stock ticker running over Obama's eyes. ;)

The last segment is an interview Stewart has with Joe Nocera, financial columnist for The New York Times. Overall, I must say that I'm surprised that The Daily Show took as long as they did to cover the nonsense spewed at CNBC; a number of blogs on economics and politics that I read have been criticizing CNBC for a couple months now.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

The Dow Knows All

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Joe Nocera

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Update: As Think Progress reports, CNBC and Rick Santelli are clamming up, trying to wait out the storm created by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show by declining comment. In the meantime, Stewart appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and discussed the situation a little more:

The Unemployed: Lazy or Productive?

A short, interesting Freakonomics blog post over at The New York Times: what do people do when they're unemployed? Are they lazy with an excess amount of free time on their hands? Or do they try to be busy and find ways to raise money while working at home?

How do unemployed people spend their time? How does unemployment affect time use in the entire economy? What is the lost output from unemployment, and what is the utility loss?

...

The unemployed use the time freed up from work for pay almost entirely in leisure and personal maintenance; they do no more household work than employed people. Similarly, in areas where unemployment is perennially high, there is less work for pay, more leisure, but no more household production.

But when unemployment suddenly rises, as in a recession, people shift from work for pay to household production; people don’t take more leisure time than before.

So if we would measure output to include production at home, we would infer that a recession doesn’t reduce total output by as much as we thought; and perhaps the utility burden of a short recession is not as severe as one might imagine.

New York Times Interview with James Galbraith

The New York Times Magazine has a very short interview with James Galbraith, whom I've done several posts about in recent weeks. The interview is interesting for Galbraith's comments on the subject of economics and on several prominent people in the Bush administration, Dick Cheney in particular. BTW, one might be tempted to brand Galbraith's answers as "pithy" as well after reading this interview, but the notes at the bottom of the page mention that Galbraith's answers were "condensed." (And, if you read his recent interview with Bill Moyers, you'd know that this isn't the case.) The entire interview can be read here.

Do you find it odd that so few economists foresaw the current credit disaster? Some did. The person with the most serious claim for seeing it coming is Dean Baker, the Washington economist. I saw it coming in general terms.

But there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis? Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three.

What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science? It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

You’re referring to the Washington-based conservative philosophy that rejects government regulation in favor of free-market worship? Reagan’s economists worshiped the market, but Bush didn’t worship the market. Bush simply turned over regulatory authority to his friends. It enabled all the shady operators and card sharks in the system to come to dominate how we finance.

...

What do you think the future holds for Vice President Cheney? I suspect that Cheney will spend much of his life fending off legal challenges, but that is a different area. I’m quite sure that the human rights issues will follow him for the rest of his life.

Any thoughts on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who engineered the bailout? He is clearly not a superman. This is the guy who had the financial crisis on his plate for a year, and when it finally became so pervasive that he couldn’t handle it on a case-by-case basis, the best he could do was send Congress a bill that was three pages long.

What’s wrong with that? Maybe he’s pithy. It shows he wasn’t adequately prepared. The bill did not contain protections for the public that Congress had to put in.

Regulation is the new mantra, and even Alan Greenspan in his mea culpa before Congress seemed to regret he hadn’t used more of it. I would say a day late and a dollar short. Greenspan blotted his copybook disastrously with his support of deregulated finance. This is a follower of Ayn Rand, an old Objectivist. His belief was you can’t really regulate and discipline the market and you shouldn’t try. I think Greenspan bears a high, high degree of responsibility for what has happened.

The Economic Version of "Final Destination 3"

There is someone, walking behind you
Turn around, look at me
There is someone, watching your footsteps
Turn around, look at me
One more post on economics (for now), this time an unusual look at housing prices. The New York Times produced a graph of Robert Shiller's American housing price index, which shows what prices have been like from 1890 through 2006. For example, if a standard house cost $100,000 in 1890 (in 2006 dollars), a similar home would have sold for $199,000 in 2006. What's interesting, though, is that someone has taken Shiller's data and transformed it into a roller-coaster ride using Atari's RollerCoaster Tycoon (R)3 software. (Be sure to look at the bottom right corner to view the year.)



The problem with this video, though, is that it stops short of what's happened in the past two years. Back in late May, The Economist, which I do read (apparently this is a political joke now), produced a graph that shows this past year's plunge. To give an idea of what the end of the roller-coaster ride should look like, one wit at Angry Bear suggested the following video:



HT: Angry Bear

How to Write a Song: The Three H's

The New York Times has a new blog called "Measure for Measure," which is about the creative process of writing songs. I love music and have been involved with a number of groups since I was a child (primarily drum corps), but I've also found that the art of song writing is both interesting and difficult. (I've created one song so far, Pterosaurocity1, which I didn't think came out very well.) The following quotation comes from songwriter Darrell Brown, who explains that a good song must have three "H's": honesty, humanity, and hooks.

We then proceed to vent and hash out our thoughts and feelings, our anger and frustrations, our longings and hopes and try to gently coax them into the shape of a song. And that song must have the three H’s in it: Honesty. Humanity. And hooks.

First, honesty, because I believe that people will only put up with a lie for so long and I want my songs to last forever. For me, finding out if a song is honest or not is a gut thing. An honest song will show innocence, vulnerability and strength all at the same time: “I Can’t Make You Love Me” sung by Bonnie Raitt and written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” or “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper or Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Songs that rise above the songwriter and performer and have a life of their own.

Then, it has to be full of humanity, and by that I mean the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual sides of humanity. The big themes — the brokenness and the triumph of it all. So people can relate to what I am writing and singing about.

Then, finally — and this is extremely important to a song — it has to be filled with hooks, basically because I don’t want to bore people to death with all the honesty and humanity I am parading about. Hooks, as most of you know, are an absolute staple of pop music, bits and pieces of rhyming syllables or words, rhythmic chords and melodies chiming in and out and strung together in some fresh way so they never leave your brain, so you can’t stop thinking about or humming that song wherever you go. No hooks? Then it is not a great song and never will be.

Examples of great hooks? There are so many, but here are a few that come to mind. The chorus of Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears (“Take a good look at my face….”). The refrain of The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” (“I can’t get no…”). The very first line of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” or of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” sung by (but not written by) Roberta Flack.

I also know this from experience: Not all of the songs I write will be good ones. Actually, a lot of them will be ridiculously bad (experience has also taught me not to show those songs to anyone for obvious reasons). But when an honest, four-dimensional, hook-filled piece of humanity is finally born, there is a clue to recognizing it’s timelessness.

Teh Islamics are Bad

Yeah, I know, an old, tired subject (FGM). However, Bitch, Ph.D. has an interesting take on the bad reporting and treatment of Islam and Muslims by the New York Times (a lot of the comments on that site are good as well). Some excerpts:

I was instantly annoyed by this article in the NYT magazine over the weekend (actually, I was annoyed by it this morning, which is when I read it). The article, about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), had the following blurb on the front page: "Inside a female-circumcision ceremony for young Muslim girls."

Before even clicking on the link, I knew something was off. Why, after all, say that it's for young Muslim girls? Huh, that makes it sound like FGM is associated with Islam. Which, being educated in this shit, I know that it isn't.

Clicking through, I saw that the article focused on girls getting FGM in Indonesia. Which, fine, is a majority Muslim country. But maybe they mention in the article that FGM isn't part of Islam, and that there are plenty of non-Muslim populations where it is very prevalent, and Muslim populations where they don't do it at all?

Nope, that was nowhere in there. In fact, throughout the article it was made to appear as though it was the Islamic religious establishment which was responsible for the prevalence of the horrifying practice. It may be, in Indonesia. But it also helps to note that there are many rather conservative Muslim countries, like, say, Saudi Arabia, where FGM is basically unheard of. And non-Muslim populations where FGM is the norm, like many sub-Saharan African countries. Or places like my home country, Egypt, where everyone gets FGM, Muslim, Christian, or otherwise (although the practice is losing favor in urban areas).

I Didn't Vote for Bush Either

I'd been meaning to write about this since last week, but hadn't had the chance. Last Wednesday, the New York Times published an article about the American representatives at the World Bridge Championships who held up a small sign at the awards dinner that read, "We did not vote for Bush." The photograph of the woman holding up the sign, along with her teammates, all smiling broadly, brought out the typical hysterical overreaction from the right, with accusations of "treason" and "sedition." And while that overreaction might be worth a blog post in and of itself (which I don't expect to write), what I wanted to focus on was the issue of public diplomacy among citizens overseas.

As an expatriate who's lived in Asia for a long time now (six years and counting), this is an issue that I'm rather familiar with. Now, these women at the Bridge tournament were not expatriates, but they were overseas, representing our country. Regardless of whether we think of ourselves as "ambassadors" for our country when we travel abroad, we in fact are.

Now, as an unofficial "ambassador" for their country, holding up that sign was in poor taste, even though the team's captain, Gail Greenberg, said in the NYT article that the sign was "...a spontaneous gesture, 'a moment of levity...'” I've no doubt that it was. I can also sympathize with the women. In situations like this, when you're overseas and your government isn't behaving normally, it's quite common for others to ask for your opinion. "What's going on over there?" Been there, done that...lots of times. And in private, I'll be very blunt with my criticisms about the U.S. (Ask Milady. ;) ) Those of us who lived in Arizona during the turmoil of the Evan Mecham administration (January 1987 - April 1988) know all too well what it's like to have a daft, unpopular government embarrassing the rest of the populace. Stories abounded in the newspapers at the time of Arizonans going out of state and having people ask them, "Just what the f*** is going on in Arizona?" It's the same situation now with the Bush administration. As the NYT wrote,

Ms. Greenberg said she decided to put up the sign in response to questions from players from other countries about American interrogation techniques, the war in Iraq and other foreign policy issues.

“There was a lot of anti-Bush feeling, questioning of our Iraq policy and about torture,” Ms. Greenberg said. “I can’t tell you it was an overwhelming amount, but there were several specific comments, and there wasn’t the same warmth you usually feel at these events.”

...

“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical...”

I've no problem with that; as far as I'm concerned, let people around the world know that you're unhappy with the way the United States is being governed at this time. In a country that prides itself on free speech, that's neither treason nor sedition. As an "ambassador" for your country, people will trust you and your opinions more for being truly "fair and balanced," instead of toeing the line like some party apparatchik. People around the world can see through the BS just as well as anyone else. But do everyone a favor and leave the signs at home.

By the way, I didn't vote for Bush (or Mecham) either.

Greenland Melting

Another very good article on how global warming is affecting the earth. This New York Times article is about the melting ice sheet in Greenland. The photo to the right shows a recent image of "Warming Island." Further below is a photo from 1986 that shows "Warming Island" when it was thought to be a peninsula of mainland Greenland.

Be sure to let all your wingnut friends that they'll be having beachfront property much sooner than they thought. Some quotes:

Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life.

...

Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with glaciers. The island’s distinct shape — like a hand with three bony fingers pointing north — looks like the end of the peninsula.

Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble.

All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks — “lonely mountains” in Inuit — that were encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.

“We are already in a new era of geography,” said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. “This phenomenon — of an island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice melting around it — is a real common phenomenon now.”

In August, Mr. Steger discovered his own new island off the coast of the Norwegian island of Svalbard, high in the polar basin. Glaciers that had surrounded it when his ship passed through only two years earlier were gone this year, leaving only a small island alone in the open ocean.

...

The sudden appearance of the islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going into retreat, scientists say. Greenland is covered by 630,000 cubic miles of ice, enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet.

Carl Egede Boggild, a professor of snow - and - ice physics at the University Center of Svalbard, said Greenland could be losing more than 80 cubic miles of ice per year. “That corresponds to three times the volume of all the glaciers in the Alps,” Dr. Boggild said. “If you lose that much volume you’d definitely see new islands appear.”

He discovered an island himself a year ago while flying over northwestern Greenland. “Suddenly I saw an island with glacial ice on it,” he said. “I looked at the map and it should have been a nunatak, but the present ice margin was about 10 kilometers away. So I can say that within the last five years the ice margin had retreated at least 10 kilometers.”

The abrupt acceleration of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientists by surprise. Tidewater glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as they break up in the process called calving, have doubled and tripled in speed all over Greenland. Ice shelves are breaking up, and summertime “glacial earthquakes” have been detected within the ice sheet.

“The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don’t react very quickly to climate,” said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “But that thinking is changing right now, because we’re seeing things that people have thought are impossible.”

...

There is no consensus on how much Greenland’s ice will melt in the near future, Dr. Alley said, and no computer model that can accurately predict the future of the ice sheet. Yet given the acceleration of tidewater-glacier melting, a sea-level rise of a foot or two in the coming decades is entirely possible, he said. That bodes ill for island nations and those who live near the coast.

“Even a foot rise is a pretty horrible scenario,” said Stephen P. Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University in Miami.

On low-lying and gently sloping land like coastal river deltas, a sea-level rise of just one foot would send water thousands of feet inland. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide make their homes in such deltas; virtually all of coastal Bangladesh lies in the delta of the Ganges River. Over the long term, much larger sea-level rises would render the world’s coastlines unrecognizable, creating a whole new series of islands.

“Here in Miami,” Dr. Leatherman said, “we’re going to have an ocean on both sides of us.”

...

Global warming has profoundly altered the nature of polar exploration, said Mr. Schmitt, who in 40 years has logged more than 100 Arctic expeditions. Routes once pioneered on a dogsled are routinely paddled in a kayak now; many features, like the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in Greenland’s northwest, have disappeared for good.

What will they call Glacier National Park...

...when there are no glaciers left?



This is an interesting set of photos from Time Magazine's article on global warming. As you can see, the Upsala Glacier, located in Argentina, has retreated dramatically over the decades. The top photo was taken in 1928, the bottom photo in 2004. All that is left now are a few stubs of glaciers off in the distance and a lake.

One of my sisters (who is intelligent enough to know better) is in complete denial over global warming. She, the red state conservative, blithely dismisses global warming as "a liberal conspiracy." One wonders what would convince her? When the Maldives disappear beneath the waves? Tuvalu? Kiribati? Tokelau? The Marshall Islands? Bangladesh? (One suspects Washington D.C.)

In the late '70s, the National Park Service had a series of t-shirts available that started with the word "Go." "Go hike the canyon" was the t-shirt I owned, after visiting the Grand Canyon. A colleague, who had visited Glacier National Park, would wear a t-shirt that read, "Go climb a glacier." If you have any desire to climb (or even see) a glacier, now would be the time. Or, to modify a New York Times headline slightly, "Race to Alaska Before It Melts."

Differences between the Shia and Sunni in Iraq

There's an interesting article in the New York Times about the differences between the Shia and Sunnis in Iraq. Following is an excerpt of Ancient Rift Brings Fear on Streets of Baghdad:

Shiites split off from Sunnis after the Prophet Muhammad died in the seventh century. That created a crisis over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. One group of Muslims chose Muhammad's friend, Abu Bakr. They would become the Sunnis, a vast majority of the world's Muslims.

A smaller group believed the rightful successor was Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and cousin. They would become the Shiites, who today are concentrated in India, Pakistan and Persian Gulf countries. Abu Bakr won out, though after he died Ali eventually became caliph. He was assassinated, and the Muslim community began to splinter. Ali's son Hussein led a rebellion but he, too, was cut down, in a battle in Karbala, Iraq. Hussein's death was the beginning of Shiism and it started a culture of martyrdom, evident each year during a festival in Karbala when Shiites whip and cut themselves to symbolize Hussein's pain.

Over the years, the rivalry between the partisans of Ali and those who supported Abu Bakr evolved into two schools of theology. For example, when it comes time to pray, Shiites believe a person's arms should be straight; most Sunnis say they should be bent. Shiites allow temporary marriage; Sunnis say it is forbidden. In some cases, Shiite inheritance law is more generous to women than is Sunni inheritance law.

Shiites follow ayatollahs, or supreme jurists, who some believe have divine powers. Sunni Islam is more decentralized among local imams.

Southern Iraq is essentially the center of Shiite Islam, with holy shrines in Karbala, Kufa and Najaf. The Sunni Arabs are concentrated in the west, especially in Anbar Province, the heartland of Iraqi tribal culture. In Baghdad and eastern cities like Baquba, the populations are mixed, while in the north, Sunni Kurds predominate.

In Iraq, tribal identity is also important, and many people use tribal names as last names. Because certain tribes are rooted in certain areas, a last name like Saidi, Maliki or Kinani may be typically Shiite, while names like Zobi, Tikriti and Hamdani are typically Sunni.

Certain first names may also reveal sect: Omar and Othman are Sunni names; Haidar and Karrar are Shiite ones.

Dress, too, can be a sign, but again not because it has religious significance. In western Iraq, the favored headdress is white and red; in the south it is white and black.

Note: The part on "last names" is a bit misleading. Muslims don't use "last names" or surnames as Westerners do. We use a type of patronymic, similar to that used by Hindus and Russians. The word "bin" means "son of" and "bint" or "binte" means "daughter of." So, with the American expat blogger Bin Gregory, his name is not "Bin" or "Greg." He's saying that he is the son of his father, Gregory. (I do know his Muslim name, but I'm not revealing it here.)

Some of the "last names" mentioned in the article indicate the city or area where the person is from. For example, "Tikriti" is mentioned above. Saddam Hussein's formal name is "Saddam bin Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti." He is Saddam, son of (his father) Hussein Abd Al-Majid, the Tikriti (or person from the Iraqi town of Tikrit). It is a similar practice to that mentioned in the Bible; e.g., Joseph of Arimathea.

Bush: Arabic TV gives false impression of US

There's a news article out of Reuters which says that President Bush feels Arabic TV gives a false impression of the U.S., and that Americans need to do a better job of communicating their ideals. Bush's remarks were given at the State Department, where the National Security Language Initiative was being launched. The Initiative will try to boost the learning of Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Farsi, Arabic and other languages, in part to "protect the United States and spread democracy," according to Bush.

Now, I certainly don't have a problem with the language inititiative; I've written about this topic several times, as recently as Wednesday (see Mandarin Making Inroads in US Schools). Nor do I have a problem with the ideas that we Americans should communicate our ideals to the rest of the world (just as everyone else in the rest of the world should feel free to do the same), or that the language initiative should be started for national defense purposes and/or to spread democracy.

What I do have a problem with is some of Bush's other comments:

"You can't figure out America when you're looking on some of these TV stations -- you just can't -- particularly given the message that they spread."

"Arabic TV does not do our country justice."

"They ... sometimes put out propaganda that just isn't right, it isn't fair, and it doesn't give people the impression of what we're about."

The pot calling the kettle black! The New York Times has written a number of articles since (at least) December that the Pentagon has been paying the Lincoln Group to disseminate propaganda in Iraq.

"A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees."
-- Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda

Please, Mr. President, let's not hear talk about "fairness" when you're just as guilty of the same crime you accuse the Arab media of. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If you really want to be taken seriously on this issue, then either take the moral high road and quit spreading your own propaganda or quit griping about how the U.S. is presented in the media of other countries and work toward real improvement in American foreign relations.

Tom Friedman and "Deaf" Americans

This post is a culmination of several articles I've read over the past few days. The impetus for this post was the article, "Muslim leaders condemning terror to deaf?" In the article, Mark Woods asked the question, "Why don't we hear Muslim leaders condemning terrorism?" His answer was, they do condemn terrorism. "Maybe we're not listening." Ameen!

Woods also referred to a recent article by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman wrote, "To this day, no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden." Now, I like Tom Friedman as a writer. I've read tons of his columns and all of his books with the exception of his most recent effort (I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback, insha'allah). Anyone who's familiar with Friedman knows that he's knowledgeable about Islam. But this was a really stupid statement on Tom's part, and I'm rather surprised that he wrote it. He's not the kind of right-wing idiot (like "fill in your favorite neo-con redneck blowhard here") who normally writes or speaks first and considers the facts later (if at all). So it was with great pleasure to see that Woods had rebutted Friedman's statement with the work of University of Michigan History Professor, Dr. Juan Cole. Cole's blog, Informed Comment, has a somewhat lengthy post in which he cites numerous "major Muslim clerics and religious bodies" that have all issued fatawa against OBL. And (hoping that Dr. Cole doesn't mind), I'm republishing that post below because, in part, I know that my Muslim brothers and sisters can use this information against those "deaf" Americans (like Friedman) who are (and remain) ill-informed about our resistance against the likes of OBL.


Friedman Wrong About Muslims Again
And the Amman Statement on Ecumenism

Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot about Islam. Why, then, does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his latest column, "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden."

A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim jurisconsult. Such opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say that is easy, since Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are the leaders of 120 million Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that is one. Tracking these things down is time-consuming, but this should do:
Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden.

So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden?

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. And:

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden.

What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics who are fans of Bin Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But the allegation Friedman is making is that no major cleric has condemned him. Try this: Prominent Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda! See also:
Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda.

There are also substantial Muslim communities in Europe with leaderships that have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.:

Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden. There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain.

High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden. The Russian Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15 percent of Russia's 143 million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in a century Russia may be 50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing here.

A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up by al-Muhajabah.

See also Charles Kurzman's page.

Friedman also does refer to a major conference of Muslim clerics, thinkers and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a powerful statement about religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin Laden stands for. But he seems oddly unaware of the significance of having Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and many other great Muslim authorities sign off on this epochal statement of Muslim ecumenism.

The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another "not a Muslim" if the believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites of Sunnism and Shiism. The whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims." The statement also demands that engineers should please stop pretending to issue fatwas, which should be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para. is also a slam at Bin Laden.

PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong that this is only a Muslim problem. In the global age all problems are everybody's. That's part of flat world, too, Tom.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I finally understand now how to understand what President Bush (fils) is saying. Whenever he says "X," the truth really is "anti-X." It's so simple! (Of course, I've been coming to this conclusion for a long time. ;) )

For example: "Kyoto would have wrecked our economy." Right? Wrong!

"Newly released data show that Portland, America's environmental laboratory, has achieved stunning reductions in carbon emissions. It has reduced emissions below the levels of 1990, the benchmark for the Kyoto accord, while booming economically.

"What's more, officials in Portland insist that the campaign to cut carbon emissions has entailed no significant economic price, and on the contrary has brought the city huge benefits: less tax money spent on energy, more convenient transportation, a greener city, and expertise in energy efficiency that is helping local businesses win contracts worldwide.

"'People have looked at it the wrong way, as a drain,' said Mayor Tom Potter, who himself drives a Prius hybrid. 'Actually it's something that attracts people. ... It's economical; it makes sense in dollars.'

...

"'Portland's efforts refute the thesis that you can't make progress without huge economic harm,' says Erik Sten, a city commissioner. 'It actually goes all the other way - to the extent Portland has been successful, the things that we were doing that happened to reduce emissions were the things that made our city livable and hence desirable.'"

Source: Nicholas Kristof's A Livable Shade of Green


Another example:

"The president pledged to 'prevent Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban' a full week after Newsweek and The New York Times reported on a new C.I.A. assessment that the war may be turning Iraq into an even more effective magnet and training ground for Islamic militants than Afghanistan was for Al Qaeda in the 1980's and 90's.

...

"The president has no one to blame but himself. The color-coded terror alerts, the repeated John Ashcroft press conferences announcing imminent Armageddon during election season, the endless exploitation of 9/11 have all taken their numbing toll. Fear itself is the emotional card Mr. Bush chose to overplay, and when he plays it now, he is the boy who cried wolf. That's why a film director engaging in utter fantasy can arouse more anxiety about a possible attack on America than our actual commander in chief hitting us with the supposed truth."

Source: Frank Rich's The Two Wars of the Worlds

Awaken or die!

As my wife has discovered, I love reading about ancient history (Troy and Rome, in particular). (Although I've been reading more "modern" history as of late, notably John Man's Attila and Thomas Asbridge's The First Crusade. But I digress...)

In today's NY Times, there is a review of ABC's miniseries, "Empire." (Not that I'll get the chance to watch it, unless one of our cable channel stations, like Hallmark, picks it up or it gets sold via VCD.) But I did like the reviewer's writing, who was amusing at times. Some of the better quotations:

"At times, the story seems more influenced by George Lucas's empire than Caesar's. Octavius is a Latin-speaking Luke Skywalker who is taught by a Han Solo-like gladiator, Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake), to fight with swords to gain his throne." [Actually, this sounds more like Orlando Bloom's "Balian" learning how to fight from Liam Neeson's Godfrey in Kingdom of Heaven.]

"Cicero (Michael Byrne) serves as his Obi-Wan Kenobi, weighing in wisely behind the scenes. (Let the forum be with you. ...)"

"The assassination scene is beautifully choreographed, and there are lots of bath scenes and amusingly cheesy dialogue. (Reveille at gladiator boot camp is 'Awaken or die!')"

"Yet there are still plenty of gory scenes, including gruesome torture in a dank gladiator prison, where inmates' screams and groans sound almost as blood-curdling as the match set of a women's tennis final at Wimbledon."

Carol

This was amusing in a perverse sort of way...when the Islam-hating, liberal-hating, xenophobic, ethnocentric redneck conservative spews forth her vitriol like a mad dog needing to be put down. :) From Nicholas Kristof's blog (post 839):

"Carol complains about my comment to Pakistanis, 'I understand your defensiveness, for we Americans feel the same about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.' She adds:

'You are just another NYT insane liberal who equates panties-on-the-head and detainment of enemy combatants as brutality. You should be ashamed, but you and your newspaper are beyond shame.

'Don't you dare talk about "We Americans" - because if your ideology ever rules, Americans will all disappear from the face of the earth. Those animals detained at Guantanamo are as crazed with their islamic ideology as you are with your liberal ideology. But don't you dare use the word "We" Americans. Tell the truth. Say "We Communists" or "We politically correct Socialists". They will still behead you, along with me, as you and I are "We Infidels" to the Muslim world.'

"It’s striking how parallel Carol’s views are to the emails I get from Pakistanis who defend the gang-rape and abuse of Mukhtaran. In each case, it’s not really brutality but needs to be put into context, and any acknowledgment that one’s country can do wrong amounts to treachery. But if Pakistanis can be bold enough to acknowledge brutality and shortcomings, we should to [sic]."

While we're talking about video games...

Last night, I had come across the article (posted below) from the NY Times about the teenager who plays video games 6 hours a day. This morning, I came across the following:

"After downing bottles of water and eating all the granola bars carried by a group of volunteer searchers, the boy asked to play a video game on one rescuer's cell phone, the sheriff said." (Source: Missing Scout Found Alive in Utah)

Now, let me first say that I'm really glad they found this boy alive and well. It just strikes me as odd that after satisfying his physiological needs (food and water), the kid needs to numb his mind with a video game afterwards. One wonders what drove this kid to survive for four days out in the wild. His video game addiction?

Are video games the new cigarettes?

In the NY Times today...

A couple of comments regarding two articles in the NY Times today. First, from the article, "They Got (Video) Game; N.B.A. Finals Can Wait":

"To Joshua Alvarado, 16, who said he usually spent at least six hours a day playing video games..."

F***! Somebody pull the plug on this kid! What are this kid's grades like? Do his parents care? Obviously, he doesn't! Yo, Josh, you can't make a living playing video games, and the girls won't love ya when you've become as fat as a toad from no exercise. LOSER!


"Mr. [Brian] Billick [coach of the NFL Baltimore Ravens] said that when he was looking for a new assistant coach recently, an applicant said he was qualified because he had mastered all of the N.F.L. defenses through intense study of the Madden games. "He was totally serious," Mr. Billick said. He did not, for the record, get the job."

Another LOSER! (Not the coach, the applicant.) Get out the game film, guy, and learn defences the real way! The NFL is played with people, not electrons!


The other article is on Condoleeza Rice's visit to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, "Rice Urges Egyptians and Saudis to Democratize":

"'For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither,' Ms. Rice declared at the American University in Cairo. 'Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.'"

Yeah, right. What Ms. Rice has to say sounds nice on the surface, but will the US (and other Western) government really accept election results in Middle Eastern countries that don't go their way? Algeria comes to mind...


"Some of the 600 listeners at the university complained that her call for freedom was undercut by American indifference to Israeli "war crimes," mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib and the continuing violence in Iraq."

These are important issues and I agree with these people that these issues need to be resolved... But, you're mixing apples and oranges when you bring these up, and you're undermining your own credibility as a result.


"The reaction illustrated the quandary that the Bush administration faced in navigating the demands for sweeping changes and a desire not to offend close allies or to apply separate benchmarks to different countries, depending on their status as friends."

Exactly. This is classic "yes, but..." thinking. The US government needs to parse their thinking down only to the "yes" stage, where they will accept the consequences, both good and bad, of their desires.


"Her criticism of Egypt, by contrast, came in a conciliatory tone, accompanied by reminders that the United States has its own history of slavery and racism. 'The United States has no cause for false pride, and we have every reason for humility,' she added."

This was a good comment by her; it's a shame that more Americans don't show this face more often.


"In another awkward exchange, Mr. Gheit reminded Ms. Rice that he had told her earlier that without 'a settlement for the Palestinian problem,' little could be done. 'That is crucial!' he added. Ms. Rice, who traveled to Egypt from Jordan and Israel, where she had sought to coax the Israelis and Palestinians toward a solution, retorted with a smile, 'That's what we're working on.'"

Insha'allah.

The Madrassa Myth

A good op-ed piece from the NY Times, confirming earlier reports that terrorism doesn't spring from poverty or from being educated in madrassas; rather, most terrorists who have struck Western targets in recent years are quite well educated, many in Western universities. Some highlights:

"While madrassas may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Koran in Arabic by rote, such schools do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist. Indeed, there is little or no evidence that madrassas produce terrorists capable of attacking the West. And as a matter of national security, the United States doesn't need to worry about Muslim fundamentalists with whom we may disagree, but about terrorists who want to attack us.

"We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators' educational levels is available - the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52 percent of Americans have been to college. The terrorists in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans.

"The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.

"Of the 75 terrorists we investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated 'masterminds' - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.

"Like the view that poverty drives terrorism - a notion that countless studies have debunked - the idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. In fact, two of the terrorists in our study had doctorates from Western universities, and two others were working toward their Ph.D."

...

"While madrassas are an important issue in education and development in the Muslim world, they are not and should not be considered a threat to the United States."

Fencers at the Athens Olympics

I like this photo. It's from a NY Times article (linked above) on photography, "Which Camera Does This Pro Use? It Depends on the Shot." This picture appeals to me for a couple reasons: the blur of the fencers (I learned the sport while in college, although I haven't fenced in ages), and the silhouettes of the background crowd with the solitary light shining in the corner.

The wife and I finally bought a new digital camera this past weekend (one of those semi-cheapy things that are small enough to slip into a pocket). I haven't really had the chance to play with it yet, although I'm curious to see how well it works. When I lived in Korea, the owner of a portrait studio where I got my film developed had suggested that perhaps I should buy a digital camera at the time; instead, I bought a Nikon 35mm SLR. I rather enjoy working with a film camera because I think they provide a superior resolution to most digitals (one of the reasons why I want to experiment with the digital, to test this theory), and I also enjoy shooting a film SLR manually (none of this autofocus crap for me). Of course, there are a lot of plusses for using a digital camera as well (most of which are stated on the second page of the linked article). But whether I can get "postcard-quality photos" out of the digital like I can with the film SLR is another question. Insha'allah, we'll find out soon enough.