Sorry I have been MIA for a bit. A couple or three things jump out from the New York Times, NPR and the ‘Net this morning.

Firstly, there’s an op-ed in the NYT this morning by the country director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting providing his personal perspective about the bombing of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, a watering hole (and just a place to hole up) for expats, particularly. And there have been other stories about Afghanistan in The Times, on NPR, other places in the last few days. It seemed to hit me; is it a coincidence that the Western Media and Zeitgeist is sitting up and noticing—or should I say acknowledging, since some information has always been around—that Afghanistan is down the tubes because the Taliban, as Mr. McKenzie tells us, have now started a policy of targeting westerners?
The other thing that jumped out at me was from a series that NPR is doing on Muslim Women in Britain.

In conversations about Islamism which I define as a state system which also enforces moral laws derived from Islamic texts, its supporters bring up a common point about public drunkeness or what some consider public lewdness. Indeed, at least in the US there are laws against them, but not at the level that they say the Quran demands. However, I would say that the Quran seeks for people to want not to sin and it does not directly call for a state to enforce such laws. I would further argue that enforcing such laws on outward behavoir are 1) useless and 2) require a anti-Quranic dictatorship to enforce.

Baybars at Austrolabe wrote about why Islamism is a failed ideology and Tariq Nelson wrote more about it.

Its fascinating that some people say that this violent phenomenon results from not following a school, some say it is because of following a school, others say its from modernity. The Prophet said, "ad-deen yusr" and we have verses in the Quran about Allah not burdedning souls. However, almost every example we have of conptemporary Islamist governments are bad examples: sin is only pushed underground and sometimes even increases; people rebel outwardly and inwardly; the governments achieve very little other than enforcing the most superficial aspects of being Muslim such as clothing and other public and even in-home behaviors. In short, contemporary Islamist governments do not seem to be good for either the people or for the worship of Allah (I would say "Islam" but people have a tendency these days for saying such things as "Islam says…" as if Islam were the object of worship). In short, they have not achieved "adl" and "ihsan".

Allow me to propose that there is something quite wrong here. Perhaps the problem is that religion has become coercion. The state now enforces prayer, fasting and other things that the worshipper must do voluntarily. The state invades homes and controls almost every aspect of behavior, something both Islamist governments and the nationalist regimes do.

People beleive that Islamic government is the norm, but it has not been. Exactly how were the Umayyads Islamic? The Abbasids? The Seljuks, the Ottomans, the Jawi sultanates, the Sokoto Empire? These were ruled by secular sultans who were not Islamic scholars and the mode of government largely followed the people’s cultural models. The scholars were largely critics and confirmers of the sultans’ and peoples’ actions, not the originators of those actions! So, this whole idea that the state should strictly enforce shariah is something that does not seem to have ever been successfully accomplished by people other than the Prophet.

One comment on my post of yesterday titled "Canadian Progressive Muslims on 9/11" was in the vein of "Why say that Progressive Muslims condemn this and that; why not condemn it as Muslims?" (Paraphrasing here.) And it is something that comes up often. And a question worth addressing. So here goes:

Believe me, I understand where that question is coming from. I have been there.

But I find it much more intellectually honest for a group to say "Look, we're not saying we speak for all Muslims; but here's what we think." Too often very conservative people say things that only 5% of Muslims would completely agree with; and, on the other side, very liberal/progressive people say things that only 5% of Muslims would completely agree with--and claim the mantle of moderate or mainstream Muslims. Take the policies of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for example. Or the regime in Iran. Or take Irshad Manji. If Irshad Manji said, forthrightly, "Look, I am not saying things that most Muslims might agree with, but I have something to bring to the table" instead of her holier-than-thou-more-human-than-thou spiel, she might be a good addition to the conversation. That's the difference I see between her and El Farouq Khaki, one of the co-authors of the piece I forwarded.

There was a report being circulated via email in some circles titled "Reports from Muslim Women attacked by Hindu Terrorists".

The phrases "Hindu Terrorists" and "Hindu Terrorism" should not be any more acceptable to us than "Islamic Terrorist" or "Islamic Terrorism". These people are, very like our own right wing extremists, the product of a neo-conservative movement within Hinduism that, also like our own, has been formed and has grown in the last century or more. This is not all Hindus. One of the most interesting statistics, if you want to talk about Gujarat--and I have worked in and with organizations active on the issue of the Gujarat massacares, and that's what they were: massacares, not riots--is how many districts (counties we call them in this country) in Gujarat had genocide happen in them, and how many did not.

I was reading the Wahsington Post's article on Salafism which quoted a Salafi imam in Washington DC. Khan believes that Islamic schools are imperative because…he says, "a big mixture happens between mainstream America and mainstream Islam, and . . . in most cases . . . Islam loses." Khan is wrong, because he's mistaken his Islamism for Islam itself.

Islam and Islamism are distinct becuase Islam is monotheistic, while Islamism is mono-discursive. Thus, while Islam the religion has survived, Islamism is doomed to loose just as Khan says. The reasons go to the core of the differences between two approaches to life: Islamism and Americanism.

The Guardian has a huge story today about the planned bombing of 12 passenger aircraft. So far 24 suspects have been apprehended;

the majority British Muslims of Pakistani descent, were going to disguise liquid explosive as bottles of soft drink and carry them in their hand luggage on to US-bound planes leaving British airports.

This is the second time British Pakistanis have been implicated in terrorism; the first was the 7/7 London subway bombings. Of course, people are now going to be asking why British Pakistanis are resorting to terrorism; while this is often expressed in the context of a xenophobic and anti-immigrant argument, it is a legitimate question which deserves an answer. Unfortunately the answer is not a short or quick one. It has to do with the alienation felt by the UK's Muslim community as the most economically deprived ethnic group, as well as with the frustration at Tony Blair's transformation into George W. Bush's poodle in the realm of foreign policy. However, it would be denying reality to say it had nothing to do with the UK's Muslim population, in particular with British Pakistanis.

I was watching video clips of evacuees being flown out on a Marine Helicopter. My wife used to wear hijab. Here's how these things are related…

So, in the clip there are some women and men of Lebanese origin sitting in the back of a Marine helicopter. Its the same type of squadron which was my first assignment back in 1996. Thus, I felt a pinge of "being there" since I, too, participated in a evacuation operation in Africa, 1998. Then I noticed a few of them had hijabs and beards. I am going to be brutally honest here, so read this only after the kids are in bed. My first reation was that if I was the crew chief of that bird, there wouldn't be a snowball's chance in hell that any hijabi or beardie would get on board my helicopter! Now, I know this is politically incorrect and simply not nice, even for me. But, I just couldn't help myself not to see the hijabi and beardie as Hezbollah sympathizers.

Quote:
The middle east is moving towards Islamism in one form or another.

This is true, yet I think it will wither away slowly after taking power the same way Arab Nationalism and then Socialism both did. Islamism is the invention of Western educated Muslims under Western influence as were the two above mentioned ideologies, so its not a question of one being a native ideology and will thus succeed where others failed. The Arabs will eventually realize that even "Islam is the Solution" will not erase poverty. If Islamists do manage to address the quite severe social and economic problems in thier countries, and I hope that someone can, then I predict it will be because they will end up tending towards Western methods of social and economic development and thus Westernize faster and deeper than they thought. Westernization is a global steamroller and everyone, from Indian dhotis to Chinese factory workers are all Westernizing to some extent.