Op-ed attempt

Exams are upon me, and thus the paucity of posts of late. I am posting an attempt at an op-ed, which I have circulated to a few papers, but without success so far:

Pakistan, a Pluralist Democracy?

Pakistan's descent into civil chaos and yet another crisis of leadership has forced many American officials to reconsider their unwavering support of a country that has allowed Islamist violence to flourish even as it reassures its Western allies that it remains a central bulwark in the fight against terrorism. It is easy to forget, however, that once upon a time Pakistan was a secular democracy that sought to protect minority rights, even as it maintained a Muslim majority – a reality at odds with the repression of judges, lawyers, and opposition parties that defines the nation today.

What's more, it wasn't the presence of Christians or Jews that encouraged Pakistan's eventual slide into sectarian strife and intolerance. It was a campaign of legalized exclusion directed against a pacifist strain of Islam. That conflict formed part of these religious extremists' ultimate goal of controlling Pakistan and, from there, launching a global Islamic revolution. It is crucial to understand the history of Pakistan over the past several decades, for it illustrates how intolerance toward a single Muslim community eventually formed the ideological underpinnings of a worldwide jihadist movement that threatens the livelihood and stability of people of all religions.

While Pakistan is often regarded as having been founded as an "Islamic state," the nation's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, articulated a strikingly different vision: "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State." This secular credo reflected a vision of Pakistan as a Muslim democracy, a country where Muslims would form a majority but all citizens would have equal rights and the laws would reflect the sovereign will of the people, not the dictates of any particular faith. This was anathema to the radical Islamists, whose most prominent leader, Maulana Mawdudi, formed the Jamat-e-Islami, an organization with the stated aim of establishing the "sovereignty of Allah" in Pakistan by imposing sharia law and subordinating non-Muslims to Muslims. The ultimate goal was to take over not only Pakistan, but to destroy all non-Islamic states by means of a violent revolution.

The successful implementation of an Islamic state requires the silencing of dissenting voices. By this reasoning, anyone who disagrees with the use of political violence to establish an Islamic state does not belong in the fold of Islam. Thus, the Jamat-e-Islami launched a bloody campaign of violence against Ahmadi Muslims, a group that renounces all forms of religious violence and espouses a secular form of government. Never before had a group been legally excluded from the Muslim community. My father, an Ahmadi who was a medical student in Pakistan at the time, vividly recalls the climate of fear whipped up by the Jamat-e-Islami's activists. Fleeing for his life, he narrowly escaped the fates of thousands of others who have been brutally murdered by the radical Islamists. The ultimate result of this campaign was a constitutional amendment that declares Ahmadis non-Muslims. This new development had an effect far beyond the Ahmadi community, as it legitimated intra-Muslim strife, leading directly to the vicious sectarian carnage that is still ongoing. Today, Pakistan is not so much a country of Muslims but a hodgepodge of up to 72 sects, each convinced of their exclusive claim to Muslim identity. Confessional affiliation has become the centerpiece of personal identity, leading to the balkinization of Pakistani politics and society along religious lines.

The zenith of the Jamat-e-Islami's influence came during the years of Zia-ul-Haq, a military dictator who brought about the Islamization of Pakistan. Under his rule, the Jamat-e-Islami was able to impose a medieval form of sharia law that is still in effect today. As a result, women's and minority rights were severely curtailed. Rape became almost impossible to prove, and Christians and others faced capital punishment for suspicions of insulting the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Those who stood up for minority rights were killed or imprisoned, a practice that continues today under the rule of General Musharraf.

Having enjoyed such success in implementing its domestic agenda, the Jamat-e-Islami was emboldened to infiltrate the army and the intelligence services in order to achieve its larger global goals. It was instrumental in creating the Mujahideen, a group of fighters originally formed to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan but who later evolved as the precursors to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Indeed, Mawdudi's message of a global Islamic revolution forms much of the ideological bedrock of al-Qaeda today.

Even in the midst of such a grave crisis, there is opportunity for Pakistan's politicians to roll back the Islamization of their society. If they fail to do so, however, the poison of sectarianism will consume the country, and it will almost certainly slide into the abyss of radical Islamic revolution. To avoid that fate, the state must extricate itself from the business of defining religious identity, sharia law must be repealed, and Pakistan's civil and military services must serve a secular political order, not the Jamat-e-Islami's vision of a global Islamic state. These reforms are not only desirable, but frankly necessary if freedom is to prevail in Pakistan.

Man bites (actually kills) dog, then atones by wedding one

The holy grail, the Man [blank] dog story in the Times.

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Pakistan, the abyss of American fear

The past few days in Pakistan have brought a mix of hope and sadness to all who have been following closely. I realized, however, as I was watching the online stream of GEO, the UAE-based private news network which has been taken off the air in Pakistan (along with most other private news outlets), that the courage of the news media stands in such stark contrast with the response from the White House these past few days. Why are we not taking a stand against the choking of the free press, the arbitrary arrest and detention of opposition activists and lawyers, the dismantling of an independent judiciary? The answer: Fear. Our government is paralyzed with fear as to what would happen if Pakistan's dictatorship ended, terrified that less pro-American forces would take over. Is this really the best we can do? Hold on to an oppressive tin-pot dictator who is clearly unpopular among his population? Lest there be any doubt, the only reason the Pakistani population is not on the streets is because they are afraid of losing their life and liberty. Thus, by supporting Musharraf both politically and financially, we are preventing Pakistan from reaching that tipping point where the people rise up and take back their rights, their liberties. This is what the war on terror has become. Shame on us! Never before has history seen such cowardice on the part of those who ought to be leading the world!

Pakistan, the birthplace of radical Islamic terrorism

The events of the past few days in Pakistan have generated an enormous amount of commentary, most of it deeply critical of General Musharraf's decision to impose what amounts to martial law. Not enough attention has been brought, however, to what is surely the most significant underlying problem, the influence of an extremist brand of Islam on the country's legal, political and social order. In particular, Pakistan's current woes can be traced to a long tradition of repressing minority rights. I happen to belong to one of the groups whose rights have been trampled upon in the name of Islam, and therefore probably enjoy a fairly unique perspective on the situation.

In 1974, the Jamat-e-Islami, which is now a prominent opposition group and has figured in the protests against Musharraf since March, began a systematic campaign of violence against the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Because Ahmadis (as the adherents of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community are called) believed in the coming of a latter-day Messiah, the Jamat-e-Islami felt that they had violated a basic tenet of Islamic theology, the doctrine of the "finality of prophethood," under which no prophets can come after the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Without entering into an extensive theological discussion, the Jamat-e-Islami's ultimate conclusion can be summarized as holding that because Ahmadis believed in a prophet after the Holy Prophet, they should not call themselves Muslims. Having formed this belief, they began what was perhaps the first successful campaign of violent political Islam, precisely the phenomenon that culminated in the attacks on September 11th. The basic idea was precisely the same- if an "Islamic belief" cannot be implemented using peaceful means, then political violence will be undertaken until the objective is achieved. In this particular instance, the Jamat-e-Islami's intimidation and murder of Ahmadi Muslims led to a debate in the legislature on the issue, and ended in the most remarkable and bizarre constitutional reform the world may ever have seen.

Thus, the Second Amendment to the Pakistani Constitution of 1973 states, in pertinent part: "A person who does not believe in the absolute and unqualified finality of The Prophethood of MUHAMMAD (Peace be upon him), the last of the Prophets or claims to be a Prophet, in any sense of the word or of any description whatsoever, after MUHAMMAD (Peace be upon him), or recognizes such a claimant as a Prophet or religious reformer, is not a Muslim for the purposes of the Constitution or law." This use of the Constitution to prescribe who is and who is not legally considered a member of the Muslim community not only defies notions of religious freedom widely accepted by the international community and codified in various international law documents to which Pakistan is a signatory, but is also simply logically absurd and extremely dangerous.

It is noteworthy that Pakistan had not been this way from the beginning. Indeed, the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, referred to as "Quaid-e-Azam" (the Great Leader), told the Pakistani legislative body that ""You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State." (Aug. 11, 1948). That one day Pakistan would use the constitutional apparatus to specifically prohibit a group of people from belonging to the religion of their choice would have been preposterous to Jinnah. In any event, Pakistan's downward spiral continued in 1977, when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was prime minister in 1974 at the time of the declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims, was deposed by Zia-ul-Haq, an army general. Having hung Bhutto, Zia ruled for 11 repressive years, his tenure ending only after a fatal airplane crash. During Zia's regime, the noose was further tightened on the Ahmadis by means of Ordinance XX, passed in 1984. Under this ordinance, any Ahmadi who used Islamic terminology in a mannner deemed inappropriate by law could face three years in prison - this included calling Ahmadi houses of worship by the name "masjid" (mosque in Urdu) and referring to the call of prayer as the Azan. Furthermore, the ordinance provided that " [u]se of derogatory remarks, etc. in respect of the Holy Prophet. Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine." Notice that this blasphemy provision, later the subject of much criticism in the Western media after Christians were prosecuted under it, was inserted as part of the Anti-Ahmadiyya Ordinance.

Now, one may wonder what the attitude of the United States and its western allies was towards the Zia regime. As it turns out, we were supplying him with both aid and arms, allowing him to build up a cadre of fighters in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invasion of that country. Those fighters became known as the Mujahideen, and later on formed the breeding ground out of which both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were formed. Thus, the very same forces that had a decade earlier begun the transformation of Pakistan from a country where all creeds could co-exist without rancor into a sectarian republic, were now fomenting the seeds of the great terrorist force that ultimate reshaped the world in a definitive sense.

Why does this matter today, one might wonder? To begin with, for all the hoopla about democracy and human rights, you will never hear any of the potential electable political leaders in Pakistan talk about repealing the Second Amendment to the Constitution, nor Ordinance XX, even both are clearly inconsistent with any notion of a Pakistan that respect human rights. Truth be told, these political leaders consider it to be political suicide to take that position, because the Mullahs have successfully convinced the vast majority of the population (which, by the way, is also illiterate) that Ahmadis constitute a grave danger to other Muslims. Thus, this giant travesty continues, and will likely do so regardless of which set of political leaders rule Pakistan.

If Pakistan is to truly extricate itself from the precipitous decline in moral integrity it has suffered in the past few decades, it must begin by affirming a strong commitment to respecting human rights. To do so, it must repeal both the Second Amendment to the Constitution and Ordinance XX, and restore Ahmadis to full and equal citizenship rights with all other Pakistanis. If Pakistan refuses to do this, no secure foundation can be laid for a free society.

Finally, if Americans and other Westerners really want to understand where all this insanity comes from, where its origins lie, I would suggest taking a very close look at the way that political Islam has successfully been mobilized against the Ahmadi community over the past three decades in Pakistan. These people, the Jamat-e-Islami and its cohorts, are the ones who first began the project that ultimately led to the Twin Towers tragedy, and if we don't stop them today, they will carry on toward ever greater michief and evil.

Dividing Iraq

Galbraith's latest attempt at justifying Iraq's partition. He may very well be right, and if so, it is quite breathtaking to think about what this really means. We invaded a country based on lies, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, and the displacement of millions of others. Now, we are going to destroy it by carving it up into three separate countries. Just think about it....and then realize why the rest of the world hates us so much.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Make Walls, Not War But over the long term, the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union are better analogies to Iraq than Bosnia. Democracy destroyed those states because, as in Iraq, there was never a shared national identity, and a substantial part of the population did not want to be part of the country. So we should stop arguing over whether we want “partition” or “federalism” and start thinking about how we can mitigate the consequences of Iraq’s unavoidable breakup. Referendums will need to be held, as required by Iraq’s Constitution, to determine the final borders of the three regions. There has to be a deal on sharing oil money that satisfies Shiites and Kurds but also guarantees the Sunnis a revenue stream, at least until the untapped oil resources of Sunni areas are developed. And of course a formula must be found to share or divide Baghdad. By PETER W. GALBRAITH Op-Ed Contributor

The case against victimless crimes

The Florida Supreme Court just upheld the child pornography convictions of a 16-year old and a 17-year old for having taken nude pictures of themselves and e-mailed them to their own e-mail accounts. The rationale appears to be that the pictures could have been sold to a third-party. Let's run with that idea- so, if you are 16 or 17, and you decide to snap photos of yourself nude and then sell them on the internet, you should be criminally liable??? What possible societal good could come of that? If our instincts about criminal responsibility are right, we don't think that people under 18 are as able to make correct choices as adults. If so, how does it make any sense to specifically impose criminal liability on under-age persons, and only under-age persons, for committing an offense that allegedly only harms themselves? This case shows the absurdity of victimless crime, and the unintended consequences of criminalizing such conduct.

Fox's Darjeeling stupidity

What the hell does it mean for a short to be "too challenging" to audiences? They thought that people who see Wes Anderson movies aren't smart enough to handle a short film?

clipped from www.nytimes.com ‘Darjeeling’ to Be Paired With a Short “The Darjeeling Limited,” Wes Anderson’s fifth feature film, opened to mixed reviews in about 200 theaters on Sept. 29, but for its wider release to almost 800 theaters, next Friday, moviegoers will first see a short film — one that got rave reviews — and, the hope is, “The Darjeeling Limited” will get a bump in ticket sales. Nancy Utley, a chief operating officer of Fox Searchlight, said that her company did not even know about the short until “The Darjeeling Limited” was completed. Even though Fox was aware of the critical acclaim, the company decided not to release it along with the feature. She said Fox decided to remain “flexible” on what to do. “We thought it would be too challenging to moviegoers to be exposed to the short in theaters right at the beginning of the run,” she said. “We wanted to make sure ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ got established first as a movie.”

Colbert

Fascinating analysis of Colbert's appearance on Meet the Press.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The Gospel According to Mr. Colbert “I’m doing it, Tim, because I think that our country is facing unprecedented challenges in the future,” Mr. Colbert said. “I think the junctures that we face are both critical and unforeseen, and the real challenge is how we will respond to these junctures, be they critical, or God help us, unforeseen.” ut the message I draw from Mr. Colbert is not that members of the media-political complex need to laugh at themselves, but that they need to take a hard look. The incipient generation of news consumers has made it clear that it does not want to see a bunch of guys with really nice neckware standing on the White House lawn talking about what they did not learn in the press room behind them and then flick at “sources” who suggest that “one thing is clear.” One thing is, in fact, clear, from the plummeting numbers for network news: the jig is up.

Religion in China

Two recent articles, and op-ed (NYT) and a feature piece (WP) explore the complicated attitude toward religion in China. In the op-ed, Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian-born political philosopher, argues that the Chinese approach to religion may in fact be very much in tune with contemporary Western instincts. China treats religion as culture, and is perfectly content to tolerate it so long as it doesn't pose a political threat to the regime. Zizek accurately points out that the Dalai Lama is a threat to the Chinese because he combines secular and religious authority in the same person. Then Zizek challenges us to think about out own attitudes towards religion. We dismiss Fundies as crazies precisely because they take their own religion's dictates and attempt to follow them literally, and shove it down the rest of our throats for good measure. In fact, precisely the same thing is going on in the Muslim world- their Fundies are doing the very thing that Dobson et al. want to do here, except they are doing it in politically unstable societies where violent social change is no longer a thing of the past. If that diagnosis is accurate, then the Chinese model seems alot more appealing. The WP story talks about an increasing trend of immigration to China to "chase the Chinese dream." The Chinese, it turns out, have taken a quite permissive attitude toward Islam, and allow Muslims to practice fairly freely, but under the state's watchful eyes. Most Muslims seem to be ok with this, and are immigrating in ever larger numbers. It is noteworthy that Turkey, the only real success story in teh Islamic world, has taken a very similar approach toward religion, outlawing sectarian mosques and appointing state-salaried imams to lead prayers.

Is the Chinese model the way to contain religious extremism in politically immature societies? My libertarian instincts very much tell me otherwise, and I would never want to live in China for the simple reason that freedom is too precious to me. But it is certainly food for thought.

O Jerusalem!

I just got an email through Haaretz asking me to preserve Jerusalem as "Jewish for ourselves." I was also asked, however, to "develop [Jerusalem] as a...pluralistic city." I am confused- how does that work? How do you do both of these things at the same time?

Priceless

The picture of Jindal with the fine voters of Louisiana is a fantastic testament to the greatness of America.

clipped from www.nytimes.com An Improbable Favorite Emerges in Cajun Country FRANKLINTON, La., Oct. 17 — An Oxford-educated son of immigrants from India is virtually certain to become the leading candidate for Louisiana’s next governor in Saturday’s primary election. It would be an unlikely choice for a state that usually picks its leaders from deep in the rural hinterlands and has not had a nonwhite chief executive since Reconstruction.

Selective Genocide

Oh, Abe Foxman, your moral credibility increases by the moment.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.” Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.

Schools give the pill to 11-year olds

If there were ever a slippery slope....

clipped from www.cnn.com Maine middle school to offer birth control PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11. "This isn't encouraging kids to have sex. This is about the kids who are engaging in sexually activity," Richard Veilleux said.

Pakistan, Failed Democracy? (Part I)

I have been thinking alot lately about the problems of democratically elected governments that don't turn out to be particularly "good" governments. Today, as the media is profiling Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan after a decade-long exile, I find myself quite torn about this situation. There are undeniable facts: Musharraf has improved Pakistan overall during his regime- the economy has grown, the stockmarket has skyrocketed, and it seems like even ordinary Pakistanis are doing somewhat better than previously (not that that is saying much given the extraordinary poverty in the country). Indeed, even freedom of speech has flourished during his years in power, which is in part why he has found himself on the defensive in the past year or so, with media outlets getting quite aggressive and holding his feet to the fire on issues such as judicial independence and his own seemingly endless hold on power. The opposition parties have capitalized on this, becoming increasingly vocal and wrapping themselves in the mantle of democracy.

And yet, if anyone can remember back to the 1990's, when Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif more or less took turns ruling Pakistan, it was an absolute disaster.

• Human rights were a disaster. People were arrested on the whim of the government, frequently under the guise of “corruption” charges. Religious minorities’ rights were trampled on to appease the clerics. Rape was rampant, and seldom prosecuted.
• The economy was an absolute mess, public services deteriorated to the point where people simply gave up on having basic things like power.
• Above all, the so-called “democracy” was in fact nothing more than a façade; in reality, landlords, clerics and other powerbrokers effectively controlled the votes of the largely illiterate masses through a variety of means, some of them quite underhanded, even outright illegal.

It is this last point that deserves a great deal of emphasis. Pakistan is a feudal, yes, feudal society. I don’t mean that in some metaphorical, “oh they are so backward” kind of way, I mean it literally. The majority of the country’s land is owned by a small number of families, who then treat the people who farm their land as serfs. This system has both benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, it means that the serfs are able to count on the landlord helping them out in times of need, e.g. helping with a daughter’s dowry or settling a dispute with a neighbor. The flipside, however, is that the serf has to vow complete loyalty to his landlord, and must do as he says on a number of fronts, including voting in elections. For a lot of poor people, this is not a bad deal: they get a modicum of security in an otherwise very uncertain existence, and in exchange they give up something that is hardly worth anything to someone who does not already enjoy the basic comforts of life.

This, then, is one important aspect of Pakistan’s political life. It is worth mentioning that Benazir Bhutto belongs to the landowning class, and while Nawaz Sharif was an industrialist, he did not do anything to alter this feudal system either.

With all this background, I want to move on to asking a basic question. In this sort of society, one that I would call a failed democracy, what should be done?

Next, I will try to explore this question in more detail.

Sarko is single...

I recall the NYT exclaiming the virtues of the more low-key French way of treating first spouses.....considering that Sego split with her other half, and now this, might a re-thinking be in order?

clipped from www.nytimes.com Shortly after a presidential spokesman, David Martinon, told a hastily called news conference that he had absolutely no comment about his boss’s marriage, the Élysée palace dropped the bombshell that Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cécilia, “announce their separation by mutual consent.” The palace later clarified that the duo had divorced. That makes Mr. Sarkozy not only the first divorcé to have been elected as France’s president, but also the first to separate from his spouse while in office. On Thursday Mr. Sarkozy, the 52-year-old French leader, faced setbacks on two different domestic fronts: a wave of strikes that swept through France and an official announcement that his 11-year marriage had come to an end.

Insane!

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Black people 'less intelligent' scientist claims One of the world’s most respected scientists is embroiled in an extraordinary row after claiming that black people are less intelligent than white people. James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has provoked outrage with his comments, made ahead of his arrival in Britain today. More fierce criticism of the eminent scientist is expected as he embarks on a number of engagements to promote a new book ‘Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science’. Among his first commitments is a speech to a London audience at the Science Museum on Friday. The event is sold out. Dr Watson, who runs one of America’s leading scientific research institutions, made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times.

TLS article on torture

clipped from entertainment.timesonline.co.uk Texts for torturers From Stanford to Abu Ghraib – what turns ordinary people into oppressors? Martha Nussbaum Philip Zimbardo THE LUCIFER EFFECT How good people turn evil 288pp. Rider and Co. £18.99. 9781844135776 In August 1971, the Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his team of investigators selected twenty-four young men to participate in their study of the psychology of imprisonment. The men, only a few of whom were students, had answered an ad placed in both the student newspaper and the local town daily that offered subjects fifteen dollars per day for two weeks to participate in a study of “prison life”. The successful applicants were randomly assigned to the roles of prisoner and guard, fifty-fifty. Prisoners were to stay in the prison for the entire two weeks; guards served in eight-hour shifts, three groups per day. Thus began the now famous Stanford Prison Experiment.

Re-starting the blog...

Here is an interesting series of articles from Ali Eteraz, a Muslim-American lawyer, about Islamic Reform . I will try to blog about this later today, but I think this is some of the most significant and fresh stuff I have seen lately with respect to the Islam and Democracy debate.

Anti-Immigrant? Or Just Fucking Nuts?

I got a little flak today in the comments to the first story I wrote for my new job. I described the Minuteman Project as a "radical anti-immigrant group" -- actually, my editor changed the original wording, but I think it's still fair/accurate. I think I initially said something like "armed anti-immigration vigilante network," also perfectly true. They call themselves "a citizens' Vigilance Operation monitoring immigration, business, and government," with an emphasis on the illegal nature of most immigrants coming through the southern border.

Why the pushback? Because I didn't say "anti-illegal immigration." Technically, this would be most in line with the Minutemen's stated objectives. But let's be honest. If they were truly only interested in enforcing existing law, they'd be overjoyed if Congress suddenly made all immigration legal. They could pack up their guns and go home.

That wouldn't happen, though: that's "amnesty." I'm betting they'd love to see immigration laws made stricter, because that would mean less immigrants. They just don't like them, especially those whose names end in "o" or "a."

Incidentally, I also got flak from the left, saying I did not characterize FIRE as the conservative hacks that they supposedly are. For shame! It's always the controversial lightning rods that attract both extremes. Another one coming up tomorrow!

300 Update

A while back, I blogged about friends of 300 in academia. Here is one of them, Victor Davis Hanson, defending the movie in a recent Washington Times article.

Where were the sailors detained?

In a story in the NYT today, the headline reads "Iran Detains British Sailors in Iraq." When you read further into the story, however, you find:

The sailors were from the H.M.S. Cornwall, a British Type 22 frigate. Commodore Nick Lambert, the Cornwall’s commanding officer, told the B.B.C. that he hoped the incident was the result of a “simple misunderstanding at the tactical level.” The waters separating Iran and Iraq have long been the subject of bitter territorial disputes between the two countries.

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters,” Commodore Lambert said of the British sailors. “Equally, the Iranians may claim they were in Iranian waters.”

So, there are three alternative possibilities:

1) The vessel was in Iran's territorial waters.
2) The vessel was in Iraq's territorial waters.
3) The vessel was in disputed territorial waters.

Given that the NYT seemingly has no evidence (if they do, they didn't reveal it) as to which of these three stories is true, it is remarkable that the headline assumes that the sailors were in fact detained in Iraqi waters. What were they thinking?

UPDATE: The Washington Post makes the same error. Bizarre.

US Attorneys

For some time now, a controversy has raged in Washington now about the firing of seven United States Attorneys. I have been puzzling over the issue of what it means to be a political appointee in this context. I think most reasonable people would agree that "serving at the pleasure of the president" is a legal term of art rather than a natural language phrase. What do I mean by that? Well, to serve at the pleasure of the president basically means that the President is not legally obliged to give you any specific justification if he/she wants to fire you. On the other hand, there has typically been an understanding that while virtually all political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president, not all of them serve literally at the pleasure of the president. So, for instance, if the President wants to replace his chief of staff or his press secretary, he can do so for really any arbitrary reason he wishes. These aren't what we would typically think of as "public servant" positions. Really, these people just happen to be on the public payroll, but they really are just serving the president in a personal capacity, and their loyalties ultimately lie exclusively with the president. They do not take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. On the other hand, some political appointees serve important public functions, and the US Attorneys are perhaps one of the best examples. They are the top law enforcement officers in their various districts. It is their job to make sure that federal crimes are prosecuted in their district. As such, they have an obligation to the public at large to vindicate the public interest. This is an extremely important position, as you can imagine, and one of the reasons it is so important is that one of the features of our justice system is that private parties are unable to enforce the law in circumstances where they don't have a particularized, concrete injury (standing doctrine). Thus, most of us are looking to federal law enforcement officials to ensure that law-breakers are punished.

Now, in the ideal world, US Attorneys would bring all criminals to justice. Of course, we live in the real world, where prosecutorial discretion is a very important consideration. The most important reason for that is scarcity of resources. If the federal government didn't have some sense of prioritization in criminal prosecutions, things would fall apart. As one may imagine, each new president may have a different understanding of what deserves the most attention. Suppose for instance that a particular president believes in the "broken windows" theory, and wants all kinds of petty criminals prosecuted. Suppose another president believes that the federal government needs to focus less on victimless crimes, and focus more energy on white-collar crime. Suppose yet another president believes that prosecuting illegal immigration cases is paramount to improve US security and deter people from coming across. Notice that I am only talking about priorities here. Whether a President can actively stop prosecutions of a certain type of crime because he believes that it ought not in fact be a crime is a different question, not treated here. Now, if the President has a certain set of priorities, she is likely to want someone in charge who shares the President's view of those priorities, such that the President's agenda can be carried out most effectively. It would make sense in that situation for an incoming President to replace the law enforcement officers of a previous President if that President had a different set of priorities. Typically, Presidents have done this on some significant scale, and it doesn't seem to have raised any red flags.

Now, the tougher question is what happens if a President finds that his/her US attorneys are not following through on his priorities. Is he justified in replacing them? As a theoretical matter, the answer would appear to be yes. But there are practical complications. Even assuming that the President is genuinely concerned about the priorities being fulfilled, replacing a US Attorney in this context is likely to be seen by others as an attempt to influence specific prosecutions against specific individuals, either by stopping existing prosecutions/investigaions of the President's friends, of friends of his friends, or initiating new prosecutions/investigations of the President's enemies. What appears to have happened in the current crisis is that those fears are well-founded, and that the President's cronies were genuinely trying to influence specific investigations/prosecutions. Now, one might say, if federal prosecutors are the ones with the discretion and they also serve at the pleasure of the president, what's wrong with the President replacing them because of specific prosecutions? It appears that we have some shared intuitions about what is right/wrong for a president to do, and using the power of the presidency to micro-manage the criminal justice system in a way that rewards one friends and punishes one's enemies appears to fall into the unacceptable category- and good riddance for that intuition.

But I am not sure matters are that simple. Can we draw such a clean distinction between specific prosecutions and abstract priorities? In some of the current firings, the DOJ alleged that the problem was that the prosecutors weren't bringing enough voter fraud indictments. If you have set out a priority, in this case voter fraud, but the US Attorney doesn't press charges, and says that he just doesn't have the goods on the targets of the investigations, is that a good enough reason to let the US Attorney go and replace him/her with one who is more likely to be more aggressive? That seems problematic, and I think we want the President to rely on the qualified judgment of a career prosecutor. On the other hand, if the President asked a US Attorney to focus on drug crimes, and he wasn't bringing enough drug prosecutions, can the President fire him then without impunity? If so, is that because the element of partisan taint is absent from that class of cases, given that drug dealers are no more likely to be Democrats than Republicans? There are tough questions here about to what extent the President should be able to set his own agenda with respect to what kinds of criminal violations should receive the most attention, and then how much supervision he can exercise over a US attorney after the initial determination. Do we want US Attorneys to be like Supreme Court justices, in the sense that once you have made an initial determination, the appointee exercises her own independent judgment, and regardless of what the President may have expected from that US attorney at the outset, now he is stuck with whatever happens? What to do with the Souters?

I am not entirely sure of the answers to these questions, but I think they are quite important, and that we need to start thinking about them. It is an often neglected fact that prosecutorial discretion is one of the greatest powers of the prosecutor. There is an initial stage at which he/she can essentially cherrypick which criminals are worthy of punishment, and which are not. Who should decide, and at what stage, and at what level of abstraction, how those determinations are made? That is the question.

Small-town Amerrica and Iraq

Driving to school today, I heard a segment on the BBC radio (can't find a link, unfortunately) about the impact of the war in Iraq on small towns in the United States. As it turns out, a significant number of casualties in this war were residents of towns with less than 25,000 inhabitants. The segment featured an interview with residents of one such small town, and one particular interview with the parents of a decased American Marine in Iraq. There were a number of interesting points made during this interview which I found thought-provoking. The interviewees adopted the following propositions:

1) There is the East Coast, the West Coast, and then there is small town America.
2) Kids in small town America not only go to school, they also go to church.
3) People in "that region" started this war, and if we leave the job unfinished, we will be conceding defeat to "those people in that region."

Why are we at war in Iraq? Even taking the administration's most broad justification for the war, it looks something like this: The terrorists attacked us on 9/11, Saddam was a bad guy who we thought had WMD, and there was some possibility that the terrorists and Saddam might co-operate in the future, and that was simply not a risk we were willing to take, since our freedom was at issue. Even on that now thoroughly discredited view, there is no implicit notion that what is at issue in this war is the "way of life of church-going Americans." Here, we see a naked admission of just that, and it is not terribly difficult to infer that many of these people also think this is an essentially religious conflict, between Christianity and Islam.

To the extent that the motivations of the soldiers and their families, their narrative about why they are fighting this war, is incosistent with the purported narrative offered by the Bush administration, what does that mean for this war, and for our nation? Has this happened before in our history?

'Supporting the Troops' Redux

Following up on Mahmood's alternate-reality scenario....

Most of the Iraq war debate is dishonest, but the arguments over who's "supporting the troops" is the most fundamentally mendacious feature of our public discourse. Let's break this down.

In 2002, most of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- vote for the war resolution that gives the president the power to invade Iraq if he sees fit. This essentially makes going to war in Iraq legal. The instrument with which Congress's and President Bush's new policy -- invading Iraq -- is to be implemented is the U.S. military, a volunteer organization under the Department of Defense.

Today, Republicans routinely demonize Democrats who advocate for any sort of pullout (timed or otherwise) as not "supporting the troops." Democrats, on the other hand -- and probably as a result of this knee-jerk reaction by pandering neoconservatives -- declare their support for America's troops as often as possible. But the idea of supporting the troops is meaningless. The armed forces consist of people who are there voluntarily, and they take orders from those who might send them to war -- the commander-in-chief and his enablers in Congress who make his actions legal.

Troops are needed for war, regardless of whether the mission is noble or selfish, inevitable or by choice. We now have liberal politicians who are using their "support of the troops" as a rationale for pulling them out of Iraq. The logic is hilariously circular: I want to give the president the authority to send our troops to war, so I vote for the resolution. Now I believe (or say I always believed) that this war is wrong, therefore I will point to the instrument of the policy I voted for and use that as a reason for reversing that policy.

I find this "supporting the troops" rhetoric to be hypocritical not only because it's meaningless (some troops will have to die in some wars, whether justified or not; even opponents of the war wouldn't deny troops armor, and in fact that's never in history been a point of contention until this war), but because in civilian life, most Democrats don't like the kind of people who voluntarily join the army anyway.

They're disproportionately conservative, patriotic, and strongly support aggressive defense measures. They're disproportionately white and rural ("hicks," a city person might put it). They're relatively uneducated.

Pro-war Republicans are just as illogical, but their fallacy is the sunk cost: I voted for this war, and since I support the troops that are carrying out this war I advocated for (whatever that means), and since we've put so much effort and sacrificed so many lives so far, I believe they should finish the job.

So how should principled opponents of the war advance the debate? They should go back to the original antiwar arguments before the invasion -- none of which invoked "our troops," because any serious, necessary war must be waged regardless of casualties. The best arguments against the war in the first place revolved around Iraqi casualties, destabilizing the region, and inadvertently boosting terror networks around the world. All three fears have been borne out, with some estimates of Iraqi casualties topping 600,000 (which makes the 3,000+ American deaths seem paltry by comparison).

True opponents of the war would be more concerned with the death and destruction being wrought in our name, rather than the damage being done to our armed forces. I have two friends who are either in Iraq or on the way there, and I'm not diminishing their contributions or the casualties of American soldiers. I am saying that an honest debate would center on the effects of the war on Iraq and the war on terror and not the troops who were sent to implement the war strategy. Anything else is posturing.

Of course I "support the troops" -- I can go to the supermarket and buy a yellow ribbon! Give me a break.

De-funding the war and supporting the troops

Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee voted out of committe a record $124 billion supplemental funding bill for the war in Iraq. It is widely expected that the full House, and following that, the United States Senate, are likely to pass the bill, sending it to the President for his signature. One might wonder why the Democrats, who have a majority in both houses, are affirmatively authorizing more than a hundred BILLION dollars, while they are also calling for the troops to come home as soon as possible. The common wisdom is fairly straightforward: If Democrats voted against this bill, that would be seen as undercutting the troops, and leaving them defenseless in harm's way. But what does this mean?

A reasoned explanation for this argument would probably go something like this: If you withold funding for the war, then there would be no money for the troops. But money for what? Congres has previously authorized billions of dollars, and no reasonable person can believe that if Congress didn't authorize this supplemental, the government would be unable to pay its bills tommorrow, next week, or even in six months. But, critics counter, the Bush administration would divert money appropriated for other purposes, and redirect it to the military. Thus, if Congress doesn't appropriate the extra money, the troops will suffer in some other respect. The bottom-line is that the troops would suffer the consequences, rather than the Bush administration.

Now, let me set up an alternative scenario. Suppose that a President decides to go to war with Canada to finish the job we left off in the mid-19th century. Suppose further that he sends a large number of troops to Canada to occupy it, and that the Canadians put up fierce resistance. In response, the President decides that he is going to intern all Canadian men aged 18-45, and shoot any resisters. Suppose that as a result of this policy, several massacres of young Canadian men have taken place. Now, suppose that such a war becomes very unpopular with the public, and that the opposition party which controls Congress wishes to do something to end the occupation of Canada. Now suppose that the President comes and asks Congress for a supplemental to support the further occupation of Canada. If Congress were to refuse such a supplemental, one of two things would happen:

1) The President would come to his senses, and decide that the collective voice of the American people expressed through their Congress were against a continued war effort in Canada, and would end the occupation of Canada
2) The President would decide to disregard the will of the American people, and continue the war effort by using other funds, thus depriving other programs of their funding. Alternatively, the President could start cutting corners for the troops, depriving them of certain equipment, supplies etc. but still keep them in Canada.

Now, let's assess the effect of each approach:

1) The Canadians would be happy, Congress would be happy, and the American people would be happy.
2) Everyone except the President would be unhappy, but whom would the American people blame? They would rightly see that Congress tried to stop the President from pursuing this mad policy of war by the means it had available to itself, but that the President was determined to carry on by any means necessary. Would they see this as Congress undercutting the troops? No, rather, quite rightly, they would understand the following: The members of the United States Armed Forces serve at the pleasure of the United States Government, and have to follow the orders given to them by the President. If the President orders them into Canada to wage an illegal war, they do not have the right to protest that the war is illegal. That is a determination for the political branches to make. If one political branch (Congress) decides that the other political branch (President) is waging an illegal war, it has certain tools to stop that war, and one of those tools is to decline to authorize funds to wage that illegal war. If Congress believes that the internment and killing of young Canadian men is intolerable, it can attempt to put a stop to it by de-funding the war. If we assume that most troops are basically decent people who would rather not be interning and killing innocent people, is it likely that they will perceive such an action by Congress as undercutting their position on the battlefield? Isn't it more likely that they will thank Congress for trying to end a situation where they are forced to do things that are despicable and contrary to basic human moral norms? Aren't the American people likely to agree with the troops in this assesment? Consequently, aren't they likely to blame the President if he persists in his madness, and continues the war, rather than Congress?

I realize that we are not in Canada, and that the American troops aren't engaging in internment and massacres in Iraq. But the fact remains that most of the American people, and Congress, oppose the continuation of the occupation of Iraq by US forces. My hypotehtical is meant to illustrate that a decision to de-fund a war because of its undesirability is not equivalent to undercutting the troops. Rather, it is an instrument which Congress is constituionally authorized to use to compel the President to end a war which Congress believes is not in the interest of the United States. So long as such de-funding provides enough money for an orderly redeployment, it in no way undercuts the troops, any argument to the contrary is simply wrong.

Friedman falls flat

In his NYT column today, Thomas Friedman celebrates the fact that investment banks have added yet another group to their client base: environmental activists. In an otherwise moderately interesting, if overly exuberant, piece about the power of environmental groups to use market forces to their advantage (an idea I unqualifiedly endorse), Friedman writes:

First, Mr. Krupp said, “what is the message when the largest buyout in history is made contingent [by the buyers] on winning praise for its greenhouse gas plan? ... The markets are ahead of the politicians. The world has changed, and these guys see it.”

TXU not only didn’t understand that the world was getting green; it didn’t understand that the world was getting flat. “Going online,” Mr. Krupp said, “we shifted this from a local debate over generating electricity to a national debate over capping and reducing carbon emissions.” So, what TXU had hoped would be just a local skirmish was instead watched on computer screens in every global market.

According to Mr. Krupp, the group's remarkable achievement was to take a local issue and nationalize, even globalize, its scope. Friedman's parsing of this is "the world is not only getting green, but also getting flat." What do either of those statements mean? First, my understanding is that the environmentalists' real problem is that the world is getting greener (that is in fact what happens when ice melts). But joking aside, the "greening" of the world plugs into a shared metaphor about increased awareness of the impact of human actions on the environment. But what does it mean for the world to "get flat?" Some readers will no doubt be protesting that this is eloquently explained in Mr. Friedman's recent tome about the flattening of the world (insert joke about the Flat Earth Society. But why should the reader of a column have to go and read an explanation of this mysterious usage? Shouldn't Mr. Friedman cabin his idiosyncratic usage to a place where the average reader will actually have some idea of what he is talking about? I admit that part of my animus is driven by my dislike for the term, even when fully explained, but I think I can put that aside sufficiently to make a reasonable argument that a columnist should speak in plain language, instead of using unexplained self-invented terminology in his columns.

African-Americans and Immigrants in Muslim America - Part II

Did the treatment of immigrant Muslims in post-9/11 America finally "equalize" all Muslims in America, exposing the indelibly racist ways of the caucasian elite? Some version of that statement is lurking between the lines in the NYT piece. Imam Talib emerges as the wiser figure at the end of the story. It is the immigrant Muslims who have "seen the light," so to speak. I think that this view reflects an overly simplified understanding of reality.

To begin with, the grievances of Muslim immigrants are fairly simple. They insist that Islam is a peaceful religion, and that Al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers are simplying committing murder in the name of Allah, using religion for illicit purposes. They also seek to safeguard their ability to exercise their faith freely. Unlike in Europe, however, free exericse issues have played a fairly marginal part in our national debate, since few serious commentators question Muslim women's right to wear headscarves etc. It is noteworthy that immigrant Muslims are not calling for some grand reformation of American society- they are not assailing the capitalist system, gross inequalities of wealth along racial/ethnic lines. Rather, they are focusing on rehabilitating their status as ordinary citizens, free of the cloud of doubt that has been cast over their loyalty as Americans since 9/11. While it is understandable that such analytical separation of grievances doesn't prevent the development of empathy among immigrant Muslims who certainly know what is like to be the "underdog," I think that it is unwarranted to assume that immigrant Muslims will adopt the political narrative which is traditionally attributed to African-American congregations.

In fact, such a development would be cause for a great deal of alarm. In my view, Muslim immigrants have nothing to gain from adopting a political narrative which demonizes white Americans. Let me be very clear about something: Muslim immigrants have a serious problem with disregarding their indigenous brethren, and the NYT article points this out excellently, with examples like the unconscionable fact that all the money collected for zakat (tax to benefit the poor) goes to other countries instead of being spent here in the US. It is also true that there is plenty of racism among Muslim immigrants, who are often obsessed with being as fair as possible, and think of dark skin color as a social impediment. However, resolving these difficulties, and bridging the gap between Muslim immigrants and African-American Muslims, does not translate into the transformation of Muslim American society as a radical movement for equality among all Americans. Most Americans begin with the premise that this is a country where all individuals are equal, and that we must work together to end any discrimination. They also operate on an equally strong premise that this is a country where merit is the most important factor in determining how much one can advance, how much wealth one can accumulate etc. Muslim immigrants have embraced this credo with great enthusiasm, and if one examines the bulk of Muslim response to post-9/11 Islamophobia, that is evident. Muslims petition government agencies, organize inter-faith events to promote a better understanding of Islam, write letters to the editor; in other words, they engage the civic and political communities that surround them in a bid to convince them of their opposition to acts of terrorism.

Sometimes such tactics work; on other occasions, it is clear that there are some forces which have made up their mind about Muslims, and they pursue an agenda of ignorance and hate with devastating consequences. Nevertheless, this is the avenue that Muslims have employed, and it is the only one likely to bring them success. When our neighbors see that we are peaceful citizens, when they see that we are making important contributions to the advancement of science, technology, and good governance, then surely they will understand. This is the approach urged upon Muslims by the Holy Prophet (pbuh), who always led by his own good example. By contrast, conjuring up vast political conspiracies where Muslims are inevitably the victims of evil forces, is not only the work of fantasy; but moreover, even if such ideas sometimes seem to be supported by events in the real world, fighting hatred with hatred will do no good.

In summary, I am fuly supportive of the notion that Muslims in the US are being brought together, even if it is only in the wake of the horrible events of 9/11 and its fallout. Every Muslim who inhabits a place has an obligation toward other Muslims in that same place, and Muslims are never permitted to discriminate on the basis of race. As the Holy Prophet (pbuh) stated:

All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no
superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-
Arab has any superiority over an Arab;
also a white has no superiority over a
black nor a black has any superiority
over a white - except by piety and good
action.”

But such unity must not come at the expense of the destruction of the identity of Muslims in the US as Americans, who believe in, and care deeply about their country, whether they are born or naturalized into it.

African-Americans and Immigrants in Muslim America

Tommorrow's NYT has this fascinating piece about the relationship between African-American and immigrant Muslims in the United States, focusing on two particular communities in Harlem and Long Island, respectively. As the story points out, there has traditionally been a fairly large rift between the two segments of American Islamic society, and there is a stark contrast between run-down inner-city mosques populated by African-Americans and well-to-do suburban South Asian/Arab mosque complexes, mirroring a similar divide between Christian churches in those respective areas. But the socio-economic disparity is exarcerbated by a difference in outlook that can be said to go deeper, which are explored in the article. I want to make a couple of quick points in this regard, but I am barely scratching the surface here, given that this is a topic that can be mined for a great deal more.

The article doesn't point out that the early history of the American Muslim community is quite interesting. Islam was first introduced properly to the United States by missionaries of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, who brought a translation of the Holy Qur'an in 1920, and for the first several decades of Islam's existence in America, the vast majority of Muslim Americans were African-American. However, around the same time as the great strides in civil rights in the United States, immmigrant Muslims, from Arab nations, Iran, and in even greater numbers, from South Asia, began arriving. Significant numbers of these immmigrants were able to get ahead in the professional world, and have since made significant contributions, and reaped the rewards thereof. Today, Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians, and Arabs are extremely common in the professional world, especially in the medical and technological communities. (It is worth noting that while the first wave of immigrants were all professionals, later waves have also brought many working-class individuals, and even some professionals ended up working in the blue-collar service sector, which is why if you quiz your NYC cabdriver about his level of education, don't be surprised if he was a doctor back in Pakistan).

Here is where things get complicated. The reason so many immigrants arrived on our shores in the 1970's and onward has to do with the loosening of restrictions on immigration that had been in place for the better part of a century. Originally, those restrictions were imposed as a response to increased Chinese immigration, and in the wake of World War I, a general impulse toward isolationism. The undertones were clearly racist, and it is quite reasonable to draw a connection between the liberalization of immigration policy in the 1960's-1970's and the general background of more enlightened attitudes toward people of non-European origin. In a very real sense, then, the struggles of African Americans for equal rights paved the way for the prosperity of South Asian and Arab immmigrants. However, when one looks at the history of these groups (Muslim as well as non-Muslim), they could hardly be more divergent. South Asians/Arabs have enjoyed tremedous success over the past four decades, whereas black Americans have made progress much more slowly. As a result, the attitude of the respective consituencies toward American society, and especially towards the caucasian elite, are quite different. South Asian and Arab immigrants, accustomed to hardship from their own lands, practice and preach a creed of getting ahead, no matter the obstacles. To them, the response to discrimination is to work harder until the discriminators are left with no choice but to admit that the "brown" man cannot be dismissed. This narrative rejects any notion of victimhood emphatically, warning that considering onself to be a victim is just self-defeating. By contrast, African-Americans in the wake of the civil rights revolution have arguably moved in the opposite direction. The leadership in the African-American community has emphasized the institutional hurdles that have been put in place by centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. Affirmative action policies have been created in an attempt to overcome those institutional hurdles, to level the playing field so to speak. In recent years, prominent commentators such as John McWhorter have pointed out that a culture of anti-intellectualism and victimization pervades significant portions of the African-American community. McWhorter, and others, point out that African-Americans have in fact made tremendous advances since the 60's, and that racism no longer constitutes a significant institutional hurdle to progress for African-Americans. Of course, many books and articles have been written in response to McWhorter et al. accusing them of neglecting persisting institutional racism. Leaving the merits of this debate aside for now, let's move to 9/11, a watershed in American Muslim history, to say the least.

On one view, all Muslim Americans were finally rendered equal on 9/11. Prior to that, the immigrant Muslims had thought, erroneously, that they had fully assimilated into the caucasian elite. They had become doctors and engineers, moved to Potomac, Long Island, McLean, and Short Hills. Their children attended the same private preparator y academies, and the same elite collegiate insitutions as Johnson, O'Connell, and Goldstein. But now, reality came to haunt them. They were singled out for criticism, profiled at airports, told they were "extremists." Their neighbors were picked up in the middle of the night, their mosques were bugged, their kids were teased at school, their charities raided and shut down. Muslim Americans are still dealing with the reprecussions of 9/11. Some African-Americans, like Imam Talib in the story, think that finally immigrant Muslims have woken up to the reality that there is a caucasian elite in this country, and that no matter how much a Pakistani thinks that he has managed to assimilate, in truth he/she is an outsider. On this view, Muslims can now unite around the calls for fundamental structural reform that have been emanating from pulpits in African-American worship houses (both mosques and churches). What seems like a nightmare to Muslims, namely the erosion of hard-won progress, is seen as a long-overdue wake-up call by others.

Who is right? What does this mean for the future of Muslim Americans? Stay tuned for Part II of this post.

Separate bedrooms

The NYT explores an increasing trend of separate bedrooms among married couples. What's really interesting, but ignored in the article, is that every one of the people interviewed for the article who expresses a desire to have separate bedrooms is female. Is this a fluke in the Times story, or indicative of most cases? Do men complain that they have trouble sleeping well with their wives, or is this gripe the exclusive domain of women?

Friends of '300' in Academia?

My colleague a. guess has an excellent post regarding the more disturbing elements of the new movie about the Battle of Thermopylae. It is worth adding that some of the most avid students of Sparta could also be found among the supporters of the Iraq war. I am thinking of Donald Kagan, who is considered the world's finest scholar on the Pelopponesian wars, and Victor Davis Hanson, author of Carnage and Culture. Both of these scholars are members of the once very trendy neo-conservative movement which has been losing members at an alarming rate recently. It would be intriguing to see whether either Kagan or Hanson approve of '300.'

America Does Not Need '300' at This Time

I ask a question that was at the back of my mind when I first saw the trailer for 300, a Frank Miller adaptation that takes a highly stylized, overly CG approach to the epic battle genre. A. O. Scott's excellent review points out the obvious, that the villains are significantly darker-skinned than the Spartan heroes. But is that really the most problematic aspect of the movie?

There is already a debate going on as to whether the movie tacitly approves of present-day warfare in Iraq, or whether it subtly critiques it. In this vein, we should probably care more that supporters of current Middle East policy will, consciously or not, take the movie as a reinforcement of their existing beliefs. Because it's not the skin color of the enemies that's important; it's the fact that they're imperial, crusading brutes from the Persian Empire. And we all know what mischief the Persians are up to today!

So I think it's worth pointing out right here that, in fact, the Persian Empire during the time of the Battle of Thermopylae, "depicted" in the movie, was not a Muslim civilization but a Zoroastrian one.

That said, does America really need another MTV/videogame-styled gorefest in the vein of Resident Evil, lacking both character and plot or even originality? The visuals in 300 might be nice to look at, but surely it was done far better in the (actually artful) Frank Miller adaptation Sin City? This quote from Variety sums it up best: "Nobody wanted to do an obscure graphic novel with a commercial director and no script." A commercial with no script -- pretty accurate, from early reports.