Letters to the Editor
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"Another idiot poster refers to an essay by Theodore Dalrymple. Well, then, that just proves it! An essay by Dalrymple, end of discussion!"
As the "idiot poster" in question I believe a clarification is in order. First off, "isabel", I did not suggest that Mr. Dalrymple's essay was any kind of proof of anything. What I wrote, and which you evidently didn't have the wit to understand, is that his essay offers convincing evidence that Islam is the problem, not merely Islamic fundamentalism. Mr. Dalrymple is, ironically, someone with whom I rarely agree, but he has done an enormous amount of research on this topic, and knows of what he writes.
And as for that survey you mentioned? It is unnecessary, when we have the Koran itself to study. While at university I read two translations of the Koran. One was Sir Richard Burton's. The other, by two Oxford professors in comparative religion (one British, one Arab), was definitely the better of the two. It was a hard slog, but I read and understood every surah and hadith. There are many poetic and beautiful passages in the Koran, describing brotherhood and peace... within Islam, not with "infidels." The Koran divides the world into two distinct regions: Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb - basically, the House of Peace and the House of War. What is meant by this distinction is often misunderstood. When the Koran states that all that is outside the Umma (world of Islam) is a "house of war" it is not referring to the war-like proclivities of those living within said house. It is instead referring to what must be waged against the infidels so described.
Understand that ANY Muslim who practices their religion by even going to prayers on Fridays, even if they are not particularly devout, knows this meaning. They may be "moderate" in so far as they want to simply live their lives. But the nature of Islam is such that the seed of jihad, however deeply buried, is always there, and can take root and grow under the right circumstances. Those who look at the comfortable, assimilated, middle-class young men in Britain and Canada caught trying to commit acts of terrorism who ask themselves "Why?!" now have their answer. An even mildly devout Muslim will always be one fatwa, one humiliation, one clerical exhortation away from committing such acts.
After 9/11, "60 Minutes" went to Dearborn, Michigan - the largest enclave of Muslims in general and Muslim immigrants in particular - and conducted interviews with various residents. One group of immigrant women sitting together on a couch chatted amicably with Ed Bradley until he asked them this question: "Do you support the gradual transformation of the United States into an Islamic nation under sharia law?" Suddenely the smiles were gone, and the women did not say a word. If that wasn't bad enough, a group of Muslim girls - two of them white Americans, all in their teens - were asked by Bradley what they thought of jihad. One of the white, native-born American girls answered thusly: "Well I can see myself strapping on explosives and taking out a bridge if I thought my community, my faith was threatened." The other girls nodded their agreement. The following week the families of the girls sought a "clarification", which Ed Bradley duly broadcast. It seems there had been a "misunderstanding" (sound familiar) in how Bradley interpeted the girl's description of what she would do for jihad. Sure there was.
The above is all the evidence gathering I need, "isabel."
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Three Cheers For Andrew O'Hehir!
Mr. O'Hehir has successfully posed the question and dilemma facing us more concisely and accurately than anyone else I've read. Great analysis, all the moreso because it's fair, and brilliant conclusion. Kudos!
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I am not an anti-Semite.
Israel is a foreign country. Which receives an obscene share of US foreign aid, and apparently can arrange for the US to fight its wars (Set the 4th of July table for 2500 less than we expected, Ma). Israel seem to be some kind of forbidden facet or equation in US foreign policy, Israeli spying in the US is apparently kryptonite. I fold.
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Christian totalitarianism
Rakhia writes:
3 . When a couple of rednecks blew up a government building, no one talked about the rising tide of redneck Christian totalitarianism and how the West had to stand up and fight and the liberals had to fight a war even better and smarter than the Republicans. (By the way, a war against Christian rednecks might be one I could actually get behind!)
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It didn't take rednecks blowing up buildings for some of our left-most liberals to sound the alarm about Christian totalitarianism, and how we had to stand up and fight and son on and so forth .... All it took was the election of George W. Bush (actually, I'll cop to a little of that action myself). But I'm not surprised you missed it, busy as you were ferreting out the people who were "really" responsible for 9/11.
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Where Beinart goes wrong...
... is from the get-go, when he calls the enemy the "new totalitarianism rising from the Islamic world."
It is a totalitarian threat, but one posed by a bunch of extremists committed to Islamic fundamentalism. Unfortunately for his readers, if Beinart would have understood it as fundamentalism, he would have come to some far more useful conclusions. And it might also have helped him understand why "the newly invigorated liberal grass roots of the Deaniac/DailyKos/MoveOn generation" see the right as an existentialist threat.
It's simple really -- the merging of the Republican Party with Christian fundamentalism has taken the right from merely demonizing liberals to attacking small "l" liberalism itself. It does so without concern that liberalism is the organizing principle of western democracy, including modern day conservatism in at least it's libertarian disguise.
Why? Because the Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party want the same thing that Islamic fundamentalists want-- for everyone else to abide by thier belief system, whether everyone else wants to or not. In effect this is the attempted overthrow of the Enlightenment, the dismantling of modernity, and with it the eradication of individual freedom that is the foundation of liberalism.
All of the other things that flow from individual liberty--equality, rights, fairness, the free association of communities, control of your own body and property--are under threat as well. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but with the core principles of our democracy under attack by religious fundamentalists abroad and at home, you can see why many liberals see this as a very dangerous time.
That's the dividing line I think -- the biggest difference between establishment figures like Beinart and the liberal grass roots seems to be what each side percieves as the stakes. Establishment figures seem to see the current state of affairs as some sort of game -- who's in, who's out, and how do they stay part of things, whatever happens. The grass roots sees the current state of affairs as a fight for American democracy itself. In his book Beinart compares this moment in history to WWII; the grass roots see it more as an American Revolution 2.0.
To give him his due, I think Beinart is right when he says that liberals and only liberals can fight the war on terror, and that it will take a muscular liberalism to do so. But the first line of defense comes out of Enlightenment principles that formed liberalism in the first place -- reason, analysis and understanding threats for what they really are.
I can only wonder what Beinart would say were he to take a small glimpse of the current state of affairs through that lens.