There is a dangerous dualism that has haunted Islamic societies since the very start of the faith. I am speaking about the haram that results from individuals and groups that seek to enforce a distinction between haram and halal through violence. The recent waves of sectarian killings are a chilling reminder of the harm that can be caused in the name of stamping out haram. In the north of Nigeria, as reported by al Jazeera, as many as 150 people may have been killed in a single day by Boko Haram, a militant group whose name means “Western education is sacrilege.” The irony of this name is tragic. When I think of the hadith “Seek Knowledge even unto China,” I do not think that the Prophet only meant to look eastward for knowledge. When I think of the extraordinary contributions Muslim scientists and philosophers made to the earlier classical heritage of knowledge, I do not think the Prophet would have disapproved. When I think of sacrilege, I remember that the Prophet forbade his followers to violate the truce of the sacred month and prohibited those who fought for him from mutilating the bodies of those who fought against him. There is much that is haram in this world, but it appears that the value of human life is not as sacred for some Muslims as it is for Allah as the Merciful One or for Muhammad as a Prophet for peace. Continue reading The haram that is not sacred
Category Archives: Arab-Israeli Conflict
Tabsir Redux: Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat
Most people find it hard to take cartoons seriously, apart from political satire and that can become a deadly issue, depending on the target. Given the recent Danish cartoon controversy it would seem that comics and religion do not mix well or at least settle well for the believers who see themselves as the target. But what about comic relief for the political struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? Fundamentalist tract artist Jack Chick, whose comic empire is dedicated to winning souls for Christ by drawing on God’s hate, has been using his pen to spread a rather sinister version of the fundamentally reduced Gospel for over 40 years. One of his more recent offerings is called “The Squatters†and it provides a virtual roadmap to apocalypse. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat
Lively action at the Dead Sea
Palestine and Israel are back in the news. As Abbas prepares to request recognition for Palestine from the U.N. and Israelis themselves stage protests following the “Arab Spring,” the installation (sans clothing) photographer Spencer Tunick has returned to the legendary site of Sodom and Gomorrah to unclothe the political tensions in the area. I think he is on to something by having his subjects take everything off. Forget about turning swords into plowshares, just strip and dive in. And here is one part of the region where you are guaranteed not to sink.
By their books, ye shall know them
For 10 years, we’ve lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question
by Robert Fisk, The Independent, Saturday, 3 September 2011
By their books, ye shall know them.
I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.
Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?
American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords… Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack’s The Threatening Storm – and didn’t we all remember Churchill’s The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.
There were two themes to this work by Pollack – “one of the world’s leading experts on Iraq,” the blurb told readers, among whom was Fareed Zakaria (“one of the most important books on American foreign policy in years,” he drivelled) – the first of which was a detailed account of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction; none of which, as we know, actually existed. The second theme was the opportunity to sever the “linkage” between “the Iraq issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict”.
The Palestinians, deprived of the support of powerful Iraq, went the narrative, would be further weakened in their struggle against Israeli occupation. Pollack referred to the Palestinians’ “vicious terrorist campaign” – but without any criticism of Israel. He wrote of “weekly terrorist attacks followed by Israeli responses (sic)”, the standard Israeli version of events. America’s bias towards Israel was no more than an Arab “belief”. Well, at least the egregious Pollack had worked out, in however slovenly a fashion, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had something to do with 9/11, even if Saddam had not. Continue reading By their books, ye shall know them
Muslims of Color
press release says it all:
To the American people and all others who may read this child’s coloring book, We Shall Never Forget is designed to be a tool that parents can use to help teach children about the facts surrounding 9/11. This book also describes basic freedoms in America. We suggest parental guidance. As the 9/11 events are shown countless times on national media, this book will help children understand the meaning of these events. The book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth. In this book you will see what happens to a terrorist who orders others to bomb our peace loving wonderful nation.
Here is propaganda so blatant and smiley gross that it deserves a place alongside the insidious emulation of Lenin by the Soviets and idolization of dictators the world over. The cover image is an interesting spin on the separation of church and state in our land of the free: here we see the tattered American flag flying above a cross illuminated by a beam of light from above, at the feet of which lie a firefighter’s helmet and police hat. To label the libel in this colorfully designed “Kid’s Book of Freedom” a “Graphic Coloring Novel” strikes me as a misspelling; is it not more aptly named a “Pornographic Coloring Novel,” to be rated so for the sensational violence mongering rather than any out-of-place showing of body parts?
Continue reading Muslims of Color
Why are the Gods absent?
There are times when I think that the most compelling reason for atheism, or perhaps belief only in a malevolent deity, is the action of those who claim to do outrageous acts in the name of some God. Last Friday a suicide bomber walled amidst some 300 Pakistani Muslims in the town of Khyber and set off a bomb laden with ball bearings that ripped through the bodies of perhaps as many as 80 Muslims who had just finished Friday prayers in the holy month of Ramadan. In the report today by al Jazeera, one local man was quoted as saying, “Whoever did it in the holy month of Ramadan cannot be a Muslim,” he said from a hospital bed in the main northwest city of Peshawar. “It is the cruelest thing any Muslim would do.” Sadly, history shows that acts of Muslims killing Muslims, Christians killing Christians and indeed members of any one religion killing those of their own faith are rampant in our species. Religion may not be the cause of the violence, but it is often the justification on the surface. There are perhaps no more odious words than “my God told me to do this” for acts of violence and hatred directed towards others indiscriminately.
These days the Middle East is a killing field in which dictatorial regimes propped up by outside powers even after the thawing of the Cold War turn arsenals of weapons against their own people. Muslims are killing Muslims in Libya, Syria and Yemen as they have been at times in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain. The numbers are chilling, especially in Libya and Syria, and in some cases the overt rationale is so political that religion is merely the background. In other cases Muslims are killing non-Muslims, such as the recent bus bombing in Israel, and non-Muslims killing Muslims, such as yesterday’s bombing raids by Israel in Gaza.
One of the most challenging questions for religion is why bad things should happen to good or at least innocent people if indeed there is a loving and merciful God out there who cares about the creation he (be it Yahweh, Jehovah or Allah) or she (Kali is hardly Mother Teresa) oversees. Continue reading Why are the Gods absent?
The Future of Jerusalem: Sacred Space or Open City?
Bonfils, ca. 1870. Negative inscribed: “278. Jerusalem. Mosquee d’Omar.”
by Salim Tamari, Al-Shabaka Policy Brief, July 11, 2011
Overview
Even before the crusades, Jerusalem has had an enchanting hold on people’s imagination. Visitors imposed their aspirations, inner anguish, and dreams on what they saw as an eternal sacred city, whereas the worldly city was at great variance and often in contradiction with these imageries. Indeed, this vision of the city of God has always been in contrast with the living physicality of the city. As revealed in the leaked “Palestine Papers,†this view of the metaphoric Jerusalem has been adopted in the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
In this policy brief, Al-Shabaka policy advisor Salim Tamari examines the historical origins of the sacrilization of Jerusalem and how it has obscured changes on the ground affecting the city’s current state and its future. He argues that proposals for the future of Jerusalem ignore the fact that at its core the conflict over the city is a case of colonial subjugation which must be addressed and resolved equitably.
Jerusalem and the “Palestine Papersâ€
The “Palestine Papers†revealed that Jerusalem occupied a central position in the implicit agreements between President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.1 They demonstrate that the PA has moved considerably from positions held at and since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. Previous Palestinian and Arab positions on Jerusalem were based on UN Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 242, passed after the June 1967 War. The resolution considers East Jerusalem occupied territory and its status no different from that of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or the Syrian Golan Heights. Moreover, the “land for peace†arrangement that is at the heart of UNSC 242 also applies to occupied East Jerusalem.
From the official Palestinian perspective, the PLO’s approval of the two-state formula in 1988 “resolved†the status of Jerusalem as the capital of two states — Israel and the prospective Palestinian state. Jerusalem at this stage became the subject of a seemingly symmetrical formula of reciprocal political arrangements. West Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel, and East Jerusalem would be the capital of the Palestinian state.
However, with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Jerusalem was deferred to final status negotiations, along with borders, settlements, and refugees. During the second stage of negotiations, in the late 1990s, the focus shifted to Jerusalem’s “special status.†This status emanated from its sacred character, the presence of the holy basin, and the interests of other parties, including Jordan, the broader Islamic world, the Europeans, and the Vatican. This removed negotiations over Jerusalem from an issue that could be addressed simply within the rubric of UNSC 242, that is, restoring the territories to their status before the war. Continue reading The Future of Jerusalem: Sacred Space or Open City?
Tabsir Redux: The Cynical Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the New Middle East
BY Karim Sadjapour, Foreign Policy, June 15, 2011
How a couple of cows explain a changing region: equal opportunity offender edition.
In the early years of the Cold War, in an effort to simplify — and parody — various political ideologies and philosophies, irreverent wits, in the spirit of George Orwell, went back to the farm. No one really knows how the two-cow joke known as “Parable of the Isms” came about, but most students of Political Science 101 have likely come across some variation of the following definitions:
Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one of them and gives it to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes the cows.
Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Over the years, the parables gradually expanded, using the two-cow joke to explain everything from French unions (You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.) to the Republican Party (You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?). While in its original iteration the cows were a metaphor for currency, capital, and property, they later began to take on different meanings.
Today, the Middle East has replaced the Cold War as America’s primary foreign-policy preoccupation. As opposed to the seemingly ideologically homogenous communist bloc, however, the 22 diverse countries that compose the modern Middle East are still confusing to most Americans. Why can’t the Israeli and Palestinians stop fighting already? What’s the difference between Libya and Lebanon again?
Herewith then is a satirical effort to simplify the essence of Middle Eastern governments so that, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, “the boys in Lubbock” can read it. And, rather than symbolizing property, the cows here symbolize people, which — funny enough — is how most Middle Eastern regimes have traditionally viewed their populations.
Saudi Arabia
You have two cows with endless reserves of milk. Gorge them with grass, prevent them from interacting with bulls, and import South Asians to milk them.
Iran
You have two cows. You interrogate them until they concede they are Zionist agents. You send their milk to southern Lebanon and Gaza, or render it into highly enriched cream. International sanctions prevent your milk from being bought on the open market.
Syria
You have five cows, one of whom is an Alawite. Feed the Alawite cow well; beat the non-Alawite cows. Use the milk to finance your wife’s shopping sprees in London.
Lebanon
You have two cows. Syria claims ownership over them. You take them abroad and start successful cattle farms in Africa, Australia, and Latin America. You send the proceeds back home so your relatives can afford cosmetic surgery and Mercedes-Benzes.
Hezbollah
You have no cows. During breaks from milking on the teat of the Iranian cow you call for Israel’s annihilation. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: The Cynical Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the New Middle East