You miss my point a little bit. I wasn't in any sense saying that being oppressed justifies violence (though it might, Nelson Mandela for one felt that it did), just that it is asking a lot for an oppressed minority to condemn violence motivated by that oppression, which is what this whole story on BroadSheet is about.

And no, in many parts of the world, Muslims are not a minority, but they sure do feel, and much of the time are, oppressed. And Muslim issues in India go far beyond Kashmir; like I said, there have been pogroms, mosque destructions, and government sanctioned discrimination and hate propaganda (at the state government level, not nationally, at least so far). While they indeed do do very well in some industries (including Bollywood), using that to claim everything is fine is like saying in the 30s that everything was fine for Jews in the US because they were doing so well in Hollywood, or great in Europe because they did so well in banking.

Somalia is actually a good example, its excuse is that when the business classes set up the Islamic Courts and started to bring some stability and security to the country, the US promptly requested and directly supported (with bombs) the Ethiopian invasion which threw the country back into mad max land. Egypt is the second biggest receiver of US military support after Israel, and Saudi isn't far behind. Algeria's military overthrew the results of an open and fair election, with full and public US and EU support and complicity. And I haven't gotten anywhere near Israeli Palestinian issues. Yes, the US is directly complicit in a great deal of the oppression Muslims experience.

And here in North America, Muslims are very definitely a minority, and do feel under pressure and threat, with, I think, some justification. Which leads to the point I was making: it is actually somewhat remarkable how forceful and forthright they have been in publicly (and within their community) condemning violence against women, terrorism, and intolerance.

In theory, jihad in a military sense is supposed to apply to the defence of the umma. But yes you are right, memories of the Conquest do linger, and there is a dark tradition that views jihad as revolution and conquest. But it isn't theologically supported really.

And no, fatwa's are not inherently clerical. The term clerical is problematic to begin with, since Islam isn't supposed to have a priesthood. Iran's Ayatollahs do indeed get close to that, but in theory they are only theologians/judges, not really clerics. But Osama bin Laden is no theologian or scholar, let alone cleric, and he feels just fine about issuing fatwas. Pretty much anybody can issue a fatwa actually, there really isn't any Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to validate dogma or exorcise heresy. "Fatwa" means "legally based ruling" (admittedly there is no distinction between law and scripture), nothing more or less.

But please, things are not hunky dory for Muslims in India. Just because only one mosque destruction made it into the American media does not mean it was the only one. This first link has, at the end, a list of over 200 Muslim mosques, shrines, and tombs that were damaged and destroyed in Gujarat in 2002.

http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2002/marapril/rdestruction.htm

The aftermath of the 2002 train incident:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE5D7123AF931A25751C1A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

A current report on inter-village anti-Muslim violence:

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=13334

But I'll just say this:

Turkey.

Who said anything about a successful theocracy? Tina was making the claim that Islam and modernity are incompatible. Turkey is pretty Muslim (the current government is the Justice and Development Party, which is pretty openly Islamic, perhaps could be seen as a Muslim version of a European Christian Democratic party), and pretty successfully modern. An interesting take on the state of Turkish politics can be found here:

http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Turkish%20Election.txt

Turkey is by no means a perfect country (what country is?), but it is making progress. The "Insulting Turkishness" (ie mentioning the Armenian genocide) law is getting repealed, and violence over proselytization is isolated and authorities are moving on that one too.

As the cited article above points out, "secularization" may not mean quite what outsiders think it does.

Why on earth did poor Ms. Miller waste time and braincells that she will never get back on this drivel, did Salon force her to (sounds like grounds for an unsafe workplace lawsuit to me)? And why on earth is Salon subjecting us to it?

It only brings out the loonies anyway (how are those Martian orchards holding up BS65?)

Tina et al, are hearing the authentic voice of an authentic fairly fundamentalist Muslim woman who also claims to take a feministic view, and all you can do is dismiss her out of hand? Can't listen even a teeny tiny bit? Can't see a ray of light in her beliefs and approaches? Nothing to build on there, nothing positive. Just flatly tell her that she is wrong, her ideas are wrong, her beliefs are wrong, her experiences are wrong, and write her off?

How accepting. How to build a bridge. How to have a dialog.

If this is how the dialog is going to go, I despair for the future.