Pastor Pyro And The Afghans--A Story That Refuses To Die

Perhaps it is the sheer disproportion between stimulus and response.  Perhaps it is the wanton barbarity of the Afghan slaughter of UN personnel.  Perhaps it is due to the utter inability of Americans and Westerners generally to wrap their minds around a mentality which urges murder in response to a perceived insult.  And, perhaps it is caused by a general inability to recognize how irrelevant the concept of free will is when discussing the willingness of Muslims in Afghanistan or anywhere to resort to violence when confronted with a word, a deed, a policy that somehow in someway offends some sensibility or another.

In any event the story of Pastor Jones, the cremated Koran, and the Afghans refuses to die.  Even today, several news cycles after the all-but-ignored provocation and the widely reported Afghan response, the story lives on.  Throughout most of the coverage--from Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch to the MSM both here and in Europe--the question of free will has played a leading role.  Typically the observer/commentator has taken the position that the Afghans who stormed the UN compound and killed seven were not automatons, not agents remotely controlled, but rather actors possessed of free will who determined their own actions and could be held "accountable" for the murders they committed.

This American/Western perspective is fully expectable.  Free will is so deeply embedded in Western thought, so much the warp and woof of Western history, that is quite literally inconceivable that others in other cultures, coming from other religious and ethical traditions, might see life differently.  Similarly, it is difficult if not totally impossible for Westerners today to conceive of life in which rights do not predominate or where rights do not bring specific duties in their wake.  The notion that life consists of duties alone without rights serving as the predicate is foreign to Western understandings.

We have to all get a grip on a simple and quite basic truth: The Islam of the Koran and the other sacred writings as well as the classic works of Islamic law prescribe a life of duties, a life in which rights and free will are both notable in their absence.

In principle, the Islam of the sacred and traditional writings of the religion as well as in more recent, even contemporary interpretations, describes a belief system comprised of duties in which the highest aspiration of the individual believer is a perfect submission to the will of the deity.  Of course, the will of the deity is interpreted by clerics, men specifically trained in the fine art of teasing specific duties in specific situations from the writings of the past.  Islamic law in essence is a description of all the myriad duties imposed upon the believer by the will of the deity to whom is owed perfect obedience and total submission.

The entire panoply of rights which is central to Western law, Western government, Western norms, values, traditions, history, and aspirations is absent.  Free will is extant only as a faded, residual memory of earlier prophetic traditions which came long before the revelations given to the Prophet.

In practice, the interpretations offered by many clerics, particularly those of the Salifist and Wahhibist streams, limits free will and rights to the sole choice of accepting or rejecting submission to the will of the deity.  Once the decision to submit has been made, nothing remains except duty.

The clerics of the Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif argued that the actions of the incendiary pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center were blasphemous.  The penalty for blasphemy is death.  The death of any infidel would be sufficient or at least such was the collective impression of the mob.

The actions in that remote Afghan town were not unique.  Rather they were commonplace.  Time after literally bloody time, one cleric or another has defined the words or deeds of some person somewhere as blasphemy. The mob has understood this as a call to duty, a command to do the will of the deity.  When duty calls, the believer must respond accordingly--or risk the displeasure of the deity.

Given this dynamic there is no place for free will.  To turn one's back on duty is to turn one's back on the deity--and everyone knows what that means, right?

Well, not exactly.  As is the case in all belief systems there exists a gulf between principle and practice.

There is room for free will even in a religion which prohibits it in favor of duty.  The individual Muslim can choose which cleric he listens to.  He chooses which cleric will define the will of the deity and thus duty.  As there is no central authority establishing orthodoxy, this gives clerics a broad swath of acceptable interpretations, of acceptable forms of duty.

In the real world this freedom to choose has given rise to severe competition between differing schools of interpretation.  In short, not all Islam is the same in either the interpretation of the will of the deity or the prescription of duties.

In areas such as Pakistan or Afghanistan where a particularly severe understanding of Islam has taken firm root, the latitude for differing interpretations is narrow.  It is this fact which has made the rise of Salifist and Wahhabist schools so disturbing to the good order of so much of the world.  Insofar as these severe, austere versions of Islam have displaced older, milder, more humane modes such as Sufism, the choices available to believers have shrunk.

As choices have become more and more limited, the demands of duty have become both more raucous and extreme.  Duty, in the estimate of adherents of the severe interpretations, all too often involves killing someone.  Other schools see duty in less lethal if no less demanding ways.  It is, for example, no easier to be a follower of Sufism than Wahhibism, but it is a lot less likely to lead to violence.

When the realities of the environment preclude authentic choices between differing voices of different schools of interpretation, it is fair to characterize the believer as lacking free will.  When a specific, severe understanding of the purported will of the deity and concomitant duty exists unchallenged, the believer has no "right" of dissent, he is caught in a reality of to-hear-is-to-obey.  The believer in this situation is a sort of spiritual automaton.

To the person raised in the totalistic environment offered by the severe interpretations of Islam to shirk the call to duty issued by the cleric is to invite one's immortal soul to enjoy the torments of hell for all eternity.  If that is not sufficient inducement, the believer who turns away from the clerical call invites his own persecution as an apostate, or, equally evil, an apostle of division (fitna) within the community.

In this situation it is ludicrous to impute free will to the person who takes the course of joining the mob, of rioting, of burning, of killing.  The man who responds to duty's call by joining the mob is but one small step removed from the martyrdom seeker.  The difference between the two can be seen in motivation: The man who joins the mob is moved by a fear of persecution and eternity in hell; the martyrdom seeker is after the pleasures of paradise.

The takeaway is simple.  Islam is far less monolithic than often feared.  It has numerous divisions and fractures of interpretation and notions of duty.  While it is fruitless to call for free will, it would be profitable to do whatever can be done from the outside to promote the growth of those understandings of Islam which eschew violence, mob action, martyrdom seeking, and murder.

There is a second, equally simple takeaway.  It is not worthwhile to hector Muslims about the priority of "rights."  It is worthwhile, however, to urge upon the Muslim community the desirability of one specific right--the right to choose, to choose between more or less severe and violent forms of understanding the faith and its requirements.

Not to put too fine a point on matters, in so much as kinder, gentler, more mystical understandings of Islam, such as that of the Sufis, prospers, the harsher, more severe, violent forms such as Wahhibism must lose.  And, that, bucko, is in the collective interests of all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Murder, Murder Most Foul

It continues to appear that the government of Afghanistan, a creation of the United States and its associates in the ISAF, is committed to perpetrating judicial homicide on a man named Said Musa.  The crime which will lead Mr Musa to meeting the public hangman is that of having converted to Christianity.

Said Musa is an amputee having lost a leg to a landmine while serving in the Afghan army some years ago.  More recently he has married, sired several children, worked with the Red Cross as an advisor to and facilitator of Afghans who had lost limbs--and become a Christian.  His conversion became a matter of record last May when  his image appeared on television as part of a program featuring private religious services conducted by and for Afghans only.  He was arrested on 31 May as he sought asylum in the German embassy in Kabul.

Since his arrest he has been confined in the most rigorous and debased conditions.  He has been threatened, assaulted, sexually abused, tormented, and tortured.  That was by the other prisoners.  The court operating under the provisions of a constitution which was approved by the US and in part written by American and other foreign experts, convicted Musa of the capital offense of conversion from Islam to Christianity.  It may be noted that Mr Musa received no defense as the lawyers both refused his case and spit in his face--literally.

The government of Hamid Karzai--our guy in Kabul--has justified its action by pointing to the constitution and laws of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.  They have, in essence, hoisted us by our own petard.  They have mocked our notion of the rule of law.

As Paul Marshall commented yesterday, Mr Musa's plight has received little attention in the Western media.  He also noted that Mr Musa has written to President Obama addressing him as "brother."  The salutation was undoubtedly meant in the same way the Apostle Paul wrote to his "brothers and sisters in Christ."  In his letter Said Musa begged for help.  None has been forthcoming beyond a mild chiding from Secretary Clinton.

It is not so much that Mr Musa begs for his life although it is clear that he in a manner akin to that of Jesus hopes very much that the bitter cup will be passed elsewhere.  Indeed, his major plea is for transfer to a less oppressive, less torment ridden prison.  He is willing to die for his faith and according to the dictate of his conscience.

Mr Musa is a martyr in the making.  He is not a martyr of the Muslim sort eager to die provided that in the process of dying he can kill.  Rather he is a most reluctant martyr, prodded to his death not by thoughts of paradise and waiting soulless virgins but by acceptance of the gift of redemption provided by the sacrifice of Jesus, defined in Christian doctrine as simultaneously the son of man and the Son of God, pure in nature in both aspects.  In this way Said Musa is identical to legions of earlier Christian martyrs from the time of the Roman arenas down to modern times in the former Soviet Bloc.

The looming judicial murder of Said Musa underscores in a particularly tragic way the underlying reasons why the effort to build a modern nation-state in Afghanistan has been doomed to fail but also why the US and other civilized states must abandon any notions of peaceful coexistence with states dominated by advocates of political Islam.  It points to the most fundamental reason that relations with Muslim majority states will be asymmetrical at best.

The root cause of failure in Afghanistan is the nature and character of Islam itself.  The same applies to our attempts to modify Iranian behavior or to broker a peace in the Mideast.  Islam in and of itself can provide an absolute barrier.

In ways which are terrifyingly evident, Islam is a religion of insecurity, fear, and hatred.  The theology of Islam is based on fear, fear of hell, fear of somehow, in some way, failing to do what the deity wills.  Islam's endemic insecurity is obvious in its intolerance, its refusal to compete in the marketplace of ideas, theological or otherwise.  Its insecurity is blindingly evident in the sentence of death imposed on Mr Musa for the crime of following his own conscience.

The antidote to both insecurity and fear prescribed by Islam is hatred.  Not only the Iranian government with its "Day of Hate" demonstrations yesterday in Tehran and elsewhere, but Muslim clerics beyond counting have demanded hate, hate of Christians, hate of Jews, hate of idolaters, hate of infidels, hate of apostates, hate of whomsoever we point our bony fingers of blame at.

No religion other than Islam demands its adherents hate.  No Christian pastor, no Jewish rabbi, no Buddhist bonze, no Hindu guru would urge hatred upon his fellows, would demand hate be directed at all who were beyond the pale of narrowly defined community.  Only Islam prescribes death as the necessary punishment for conversion.

That, bucko, is insecurity, fear, and hatred in one small package.  And, the label on the package is "Islam."

Looking at the case of Said Musa and the context surrounding it, one can only wonder at what sort of drugs the Bush/Cheney decision makers were taking when they shifted the American mission in Afghanistan from a purely punitive one to one of "nation-building."  One must also wonder at the good sense of the Obama administration in having failed to understand that while we are arguably winning the military engagements in Afghanistan, we are losing the overall war.

Had we stopped with a purely punitive objective in Afghanistan, we would have seen the last of that benighted place years ago.  Also we would have fired a cautionary shot across the bows of the Pakistanis who favor political Islam.  And, we would not have the blood of Mr Musa on our hands.

The lessons for the future are clear.

If we ever must consider an armed intervention in a Muslim majority venue, the intervention must be sharply focused on punishing the bad guys.  There must be no thought of nation-building or otherwise uplifting the great unwashed.

The other lesson is broader.  Islam is the problem.  The US and other civilized states must not only understand this bitter truth, they must start firm and ongoing programs with the goal of undercutting the ideological appeal of Islam, particularly those forms most given to political expression.  The US and other civilized states as an urgent matter of self-interest and self-defense must put an increasing emphasis on the values and norms of the West most directly responsible for the overall success of the West over the past centuries.  In short, we must blow our horn--loudly.

Full disclosure:  The Geek is not a member or adherent of any faith community.

Change Leads To Fear--And Fear Leads To Jihad

Any number of scholarly commentators have noted that religious fundamentalists be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim are united in motivation.  The consensus is all fundamentalists, particularly those willing to employ violence in pursuit of their political or social goals, are driven by a pervasive fear of change.  The unifying desire is to reclaim the stability of the past.

There is much value in this understanding, providing it is used with caution.  It may well be that many, perhaps even most, adherents of the hazy world called "fundamentalism" are uncomfortable with both the pace and degree of change in their lives.  This does not mean that most of these people are irrational or so unhinged by fear of inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary change in the political, social, and cultural environment where they live.  Indeed, the fundamentalist response is rational in its origins even when the ultimate expression is violent.

It is critical to understand that most humans for most of their history have lived in static environments.  Change in the basic characteristics of political organization, social structures, economic institutions, cultural norms, and ethical values typically has been very slow or even nonexistent.  We forget today in the US where rapid change is not only normative but widely celebrated that the defining American experience for most of our ancestors right down to World War II has been the changeless rhythm of the seasons, the cycle of days in which every one was nearly identical to its predecessor and its successor.

Change of rapid and pervasive nature is of recent vintage in the US.  Changes in the basic fabric of society, politics, economics, culture have been normative only for the past fifty years.  True, the rapidity of change in American society and culture over the past half century has been remarkable--and quite dislocative.  As recently as the Seventies, the words of a Springsteen tune were totally applicable not only in our rural areas but in the largest of our cities, "They bring you up to do just what your daddy did."  In a major way life was cyclical, an endless wheel of generations with only marginal changes like the height of tail fins on the new model car.

Few, if any, Americans in 1970 would have accepted the proposition that before the end of the century the vast industrial infrastructure of this country would have become an endless belt of abandoned, rusting mills and factories.  Few, if any, Americans in 1985 would have believed you if you said, "In five years the Cold War will be over and the Soviet Union will be no more--without a war."

The rapidity and universality of basic change in the US has made more than a few very uncomfortable.  The pace and extent of change has resulted in a sense of rootlessness, a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger in a strange land.  It is rational for a person under assault by change to seek stability, to need points of unchanging certainty, to demand that change be slowed.

Members of the American hoi ollogoi may be quite unconcerned by systemic change as they are insulated from ill effects or even the anxiety about the unknowable consequences of change by wealth, status, position or power, but not all Americans are so protected.  Thus it is possible for a member of the "elite" such as Barack Obama to characterize Americans from the second, unprotected category as "clingers," holding on to symbols of the past such as Bibles, guns, and Republicans.  It is possible for the elite to see the unprotected and apprehensive majority as irrationally fear ridden regardless of how divorced from reality this smug view might be.

American religious fundamentalists, be they Protestant or Catholic, may be apprehensive regarding the pace and extent of change.  They may find some of the changes totally unacceptable and impossible to justify.  They may "cling" to facets of the past both religious and secular which they believe to be desirable, beneficial, or down right necessary.  None of this makes their motives irrational.  None make their goal of conserving the best of the past while adapting and adopting desirable aspects of the new somehow unworthy of respect or meriting condemnation as fear driven clinging.

Chew over this a bit.  If, here in the US where buildings may be torn down almost before the cement on the cornerstone has dried, change can be disturbing to well educated, established citizens of a mature democracy with a well ordered economic base and a long tradition of embracing the new, what is the effect of change on a traditional society with a unresponsive government and a history of stasis?

Changes of many sorts and degrees have assaulted traditional societies, inflexible polities, and rudimentary economic structures with a series of megaton blows over the past fifty years.   The awesome footprint of the West has hit the very static Arab and Muslim world repeatedly.  It is no shock that many resident where the great Western boot has landed have reacted with fear and loathing.

The West, and the US, by their very existence in effect have demanded that traditional societies and polities throughout the Arab and Muslim world toss out each and every feature which have defined and conditioned life for centuries and replace these instantly with virtually incomprehensible foreign implants.  In essence the Western challenge has been, "You must not only do as we do, you must be as we are if you are to survive let alone prosper in the world we Westerners have created."

Consider just a couple of consequences of this Western challenge.

It has been necessary,  we Westerners believe, that the traditional patterns of social and political relations which have provided a very satisfactory life for most Arabs and Muslims for centuries be discarded.  This has meant that the old reliance on family, tribe, locality, relations which were personal and up close must be replaced by impersonal mechanisms of the market and the bureaucracy.  This has meant the replacement of customary laws and traditions of the responsibility of local or tribal leaders with remotely imposed and enforced written codes of law.  It has, in short, ripped out the face to face features of traditional societies and polities with the faceless one-size-fits-all approach of the West.  (A faceless way of governing which has fried off any number of us who have lived under it all of our lives.)

The Western creature, the "Market," has no resemblance to the up close and personal bazaar.  The Market has no human face, no human sensibility beyond getting the highest possible bottom line.  It rips the human heart out of commercial intercourse offering presumed efficiency in place of person-to-person search for advantage, even mutual advantage.

We in the West have fought long, hard, and bloody wars over the basic questions of the relation of state and community of faith.  We have done the same with respect to the establishment and expansion of "human rights."  It has taken us centuries to get answers in these areas which are even rough approximations of "right."  The same is true regarding democracy,  The same applies to transparency of government and business.  It is applicable as well to matters of social, political, and economic equity and justice.  And, even after centuries of effort, no one can honestly say that the job has been finished.

Yet the Western challenge has demanded that the Muslim majority societies do the same instantly and without the bloodshed which has marked Western changes over the past thousand years and more.  Even if a plausible case can be made for the superiority of the Western paradigm (which the Geek thinks can be made) the demand that the Muslim majority societies do the same in a matter of mere years is both unreasonable and quite contrary to the inertia filled nature of humans and their social or political constructs.

Faced with the Western challenge and its collateral imperatives, it is small wonder that a percentage of Muslims have reacted with fear and loathing which now expresses itself as violent political Islam rooted in an austere interpretation of the religion based on the foundations of the faith.  Any other response would be nearly impossible.

The Muslim, particularly the Muslim man, has been faced repeatedly with a severe challenge to all aspects of his identity as well as his world view.  Quite literally, he has been cut off from his roots by the impact of the changes demanded by the Western challenge.  With this degree of internal alienation in play, the appeal of political Islam, including that of the armed sort, has grown high and fast.

It is quite easy for the Muslim man to conclude that only by seizing power, by bringing Islam to power, can he regain control of his environment, of his life.  Even if he does not personally pull a trigger or push the clicker on a bomb, it is to be expected that many Muslim men will support and agree with those who do wage the good war against not simply infidels or apostates but on change itself.  Better to die on ones own terms than to survive on the terms dictated by another.

As the global Muslim insurgency grows, the new task for Western decision makers, well, really for all of us in the West, is to create ways in which the Muslim guy in a traditional society can effectively accept and assimilate necessary change.  This implies that we in the West have to lighten up on our demands that the Muslim in Afghanistan or Yemen or North Africa become just like us in his views and attitudes.  This is necessary but not sufficient in and of itself to counter the Muslim insurgency effectively.

We cannot do even this minimal task unless and until we understand the relation between the changes demanded by the Western challenge and the fear it produces.  Ultimately, the enemy facing both us and the Muslims we are fighting is the same--the fierce engine of change.  Change may be both desirable and necessary, but it can also be our worse enemy.

Well, no one ever said life was easy.

The Natives Are Restless And The Benefits Of Going It Alone

One of President Obama's reported goals in the current Great Asia Tour is forming a solid base of support against China with South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia.  As usual The Nice Young Man From Chicago is seeking the fig leaf of collective, multi-lateral action as cover for American policy genitalia.

The intent of the new solid front is that of forcing China to undertake a long overdue currency reevaluation.  The effect of this would be increasing the costs to Americans and other importers of Chinese made goods while decreasing the cost of dollar denominated goods such as those occasionally marked Made In USA.  The goal is not only laudable, it is necessary, critical even, particularly given the relative economic conditions in the US and China.

There is an easier way.  It is called going it alone.  The president could deliver an ultimatum to the Trolls of Beijing: Revalue or the US market will be closed to Chinese goods.

Horrors!  Say that can't be.  After all the Trolls could retaliate.  I mean, Geek, they hold billions of our IOUs.  If they were to dump all that paper on the market it would be a disaster of Biblical proportions.  Real dogs and cats sleeping together type stuff.

Yeah, Bucko, they could huff and puff in that direction.  Heck they might even bring back the ban on rare earth shipments.  And, without Chinese goods what would Walmart do?  How could the Sons of Sam continue to pile away the billions without the Chinese?

The Trolls may be ineptly arrogant in their recent approaches to foreign relations, but that is not to imply that they have lost rationality in the realm of profit and loss.  Dumping securities would rebound to their disadvantage, think of the opportunity costs involved.  And, as Beijing found out in its short trial balloon stoppage of rare earth exports, the consumer countries instantly started searching for alternatives ranging from recycling junked electronics to reexamining old mines thought to have been played out in their rare earth ores.

The Chinese have become rather addicted to the money flow from American consumers.  Much of their current prosperity rests solely on the backs of US shoppers.  Halting the cash tide would result in nearly instantaneous industrial dislocation with attendant mass layoffs and inevitably, social and political unrest.  If there is anything that is more anathema to the Trolls than internal unrest, it eludes the Geek completely.

The hoary analogy of two scorpions in a bottle coined for the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction applies to the current economic relation between the US and China with one critical difference.  The US is the larger scorpion with the more fatal sting.  The Trolls know this; they know how much the internal stability of China depends upon constant American purchase of massive amounts of made in China goods.  There is no way the Asian and European markets could make up the shortfall which would result from even a short hiccup in trade with the US.

Thus a threat by one Democratic president to take away what a previous Democrat provided--an open door policy benefiting China--is credible.  A purely American ultimatum has all the power needed.  There is no requirement for a united front other than the ideological preferences of Mr Obama and others of the "progressive" ilk.  In any event, other countries would follow an American lead in this area for their own individual national interest imperatives.

The takeaway is simple: Man up!  Let the Trolls know just what will happen if they do not have a sudden attack of rationality on the reevaluation matter.  And, then, stick to it.  The howls will fade.  Reason and self-interest will prevail.

Golly, the natives are sure getting restless.  All because of the Obama 2010 Asian Tour.  The upsetness centers on--hang on for huge surprise--Pakistan!

The Pakistanis generally and former strongman Pervez Musharraf in particular are bent out of shape because the American president has had the temerity to jaunt about India while totally ignoring Pakistan.  The Pakistani political heavyweights are also torqued beyond belief with the Obama view that India is a global power and Pakistan is not.

That seems fair to the Geek as Pakistan is simply a minor regional player with annoying propensities and idiosyncratic as well as remarkably parochial concerns.  Pakistan is only a regional power because of its unlimited and rather juvenile capacity to make mischief in either or both Afghanistan and Kashmir.  It is important to the US only because many, many years ago when Ike was in the Oval, the Left-leaning Indian government hacked off the stiff necked Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to the extent that the president was convinced to "tilt" our policy in favor of Pakistan.

While the mistaken need to behave as if Pakistan really matters might have started more than fifty years ago with a profound fit of pique on the part of one SecState, it has continued to American misfortune ever since.  When George W. Bush made a major move to move closer to India five years ago it was seen to be necessary to bribe the Pakistanis with yet more big ticket military items all of which were such as to be useful in a hypothetical war against India.

The US would be best served in both its regional and global interests by openly continuing the trend started by the much maligned W. Bush.  The US and India have much to share.  Other than the Menace From the FATA, the US and Pakistan have no common norms or values and very few coinciding national interests.  The relation with Pakistan will not mature unless and until the Pakistani army can get the focus on India out of its institutional DNA.  Which is to say, two days past never.

The Transcendent Zaniness of Muslims Department has a good entry today.  The dateline is Mumbai--the city in India, you will recall which was hit hard by Pakistani trained and supported suicide commandos a year back.  The American president is spending the night in Mumbai, in one of the hotels targeted by the Mighty Men of the Koran.  Not surprisingly, security is of the utmost concern.

Enter Khan the bomb sniffing dog.  Khan is a German Shepard military working dog with a great nose.  He and his handler flew in from Germany before the president arrived and, presumably, went to work.  An alert Muslim saw the dog's name on its tag and posted the story.

Faster than a muezzin can call the faithful to prayer, a protest movement bloomed across Mumbai.  The Muslims, it seems, were deeply and desperately offended by naming a dog with a presumptively "Muslim" name.  Threats have been made and apologies demanded.  Muslim hyperventilating spread hard and fast.

Wait one, Abdul!  You guys have a lot of nerve.  What chutzpah thinking the dog was named Khan in honor of a Muslim.  You all have too much ego.

First of all the term "Khan" is one which applies to certain oriental figures of high rank and great historical note such as Genghis Khan.  It may  be that Muslim education even in an advanced country such as India fails to note personalities of high profile who are not Muslim.  The Geek cannot state but rather suspects that the madrassas are poor institutes of historical study.

Have none of you heard of the classic TV series Star Trek?  If you had you would know that one of the best of the bad guys on that long running show was a gentleman named Khan.  There is no doubt but the dog was named by his handler who has shown by the name that he is a "Trekkie" of good and long standing.

So, Muslims of Mumbai, get a grip!

When Will Obama Admit, "It Is The Religion, Stupid!"

With the savagely lethal attack on the Chaldean Catholic church in Baghdad, the war being waged against Christians in Muslim majority states from Nigeria to Indonesia has exploded out of the media shadows where it has been concealed for several years now.  The statement issued by the Muslim entity behind the attack specifically called the worshipers and their church a "foul den of idolaters."  A pathetic lie was proffered in justification of the slaughter when the Mighty Warriors Of Allah alleged the Christians used the church as a place from which to wage war against Muslims.

The accusation was not only pathetic in its poverty, it was a lie of a magnitude which would have made even Joe Stalin or Dr Goebbels blush.

The totally expectable and quite pro forma denunciation issued by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani in no way mitigates the ground truth that the attack was simply the latest in a long series of outrages committed against the once vibrant Christian community in Iraq.  The extent of the butchery and resultant fear suffered by Christians merely because of their faith is shown in one cold number: There are only 500,000 left from a total of nearly 1,500,000 when the Americans invaded seven years ago.  The rest, at least those who were not killed, left for distant and hopefully safer places.

Nor is the situation in Iraq unique.  In Egypt, the Coptic Christians, a faith community which dates back to the very beginnings of Christianity, has been under daily attack.  Copts have been killed.  They have been kidnapped.  Assaulted.  Raped.  Their churches have been vandalized.  Burned.  Blown up.  As in Iraq, there have been numerous reports of police and other security forces standing by, hands in their pockets, quite indifferent to the brutalization of their fellow citizens.

The brutality of Muslims against Christians has continued these past few years throughout the Muslim majority world.  Palestinian Christians have become an endangered species.  So have those in Syria.  Life is not better for people of the Cross in Jordan or across North Africa, just a tad less lethal.

In Pakistan violence against Christians--again often with security forces inactively present--is rampant.  The assaults, even the killings, barely merit notice in the public press.  Those who attack are rarely arrested, let alone prosecuted.

At the antipodes of the Muslim world, Nigeria and Indonesia, pogroms directed at Christians are commonplace.  In both countries as well as many in between these two pillars, churches are pillaged, burned, destroyed.  The authorities always seem baffled, at least to the extent that arrests are as infrequent as hot weather at the South Pole.

Throughout the lands dominated by Muslims, the ancient choice of convert or die echoes on the lips of the mob and the clerics behind them.  In a twist on this old theme, one of the gunmen in the Baghdad church told one of his priestly victims that he could convert but he was going to die nonetheless.

While it is self-evident that not each and every Muslim among the reputed one and a half billion is directly involved.  Still, those who do not personally hold the gun, wield the knife, hurl the bomb, or pound Christian flesh do not rally publicly and loudly against those of their brethren who do the dirty work.  In this case of Muslim excess as in so many others, silence equals agreement, equals support, equals empowerment.

Where is the presumed Muslim majority?  Why is this purported enormous percentage of Muslims not demanding that their governments take swift and decisive action against those who slaughter and terrorize in the name of the Prophet?

Is the deafening silence of the Muslim majority due to basic sympathy with the objectives of the perpetrators of violence?  This is not out of the realm of probability.  The history of Muslim dominated Spain is replete with examples of persecution onto death directed against both Christians and Jews.  Nor is the history of the Ottoman Empire devoid of similar examples.

Pogroms, persecutions, mass murders, all on the basis of faith.  And, it must be pointed out, regardless of the fact that the victims were protected peoples of the Book, members of Abrahamic faiths who paid their protection taxes, wore distinguishing clothing, and were otherwise living according to the humiliating requirements of Muslim law as provided in the Koran and Shariah.

History has powerful inertia.  As a result, the examination of the past, the real past and not the artifacts of apologists and other makers of myth, gives an excellent indication of present and future behavior by members of the same culture, society, or religion.  In the case of the contemporary persecution of Christians as in the DNA predicated hatred of Jews, the past is prologue.  That is the ground truth.

Then there is the problem of those in the US and the larger West who steadfastly and quite without a basis in reality refuse to connect the dot marked "Islam" with those unpleasant blotches of blood red marking acts of terror and murder.  The event at the Baghdad church due to the blunt honesty of the killers demands that we in the West without exception recognize the identity of those who seek to prevail, those who seek to cleanse not just Iraq but the world generally of people who do not share their unique dedication to the strictures and imperatives of Islam.

The bloody gauntlet has once more been slapped in our collective face.  Turning the other cheek may be an admirable goal expressed by those of the Christian faith but there is no requirement in that faith or any other to submit to terrorists and murderers.  There is no requirement that we refuse to both know and name the truth.

Quite the opposite.  There is a positive obligation that we not give in to the fear of offending those who tacitly wish us harm.  We have no choice on this world, in this life, other than calling out the killers for what and who they are--Muslims who take their faith too seriously, who invest too much of their human identity in it, who cover and conceal a base quest for power in the garb of belief.

Truth in blogging statement.  The Geek is not a member of any denomination of any faith tradition.

We must make no mistake about the dynamic expressed by the Prophet's Butchers.  They will not stop and we will know no peace until those who desire to shed innocent blood in the greater glory of Allah are themselves stopped.  Period.

Co-opting To The Extreme

Crane Brinton in his classic study of offensive insurgencies Anatomy of Revolution focused on a critical dynamic found in most insurgencies which he called "co-option to the left."  By this he meant the process by which all offensive insurgencies (those which seek a total reconstruction of the political, social, and economic order of a state) move continuously to the Left, a trajectory to the ever more extreme.  The dynamic is reversed with the inevitable reaction.  The reaction sees a continuous move to an ever more extreme Rightest position.

It has been interesting to see a akin process at work in several Muslim venues.  The only difference between that which is seen currently in Muslim locations as diverse as the Gaza Strip and Chechnya and the one described by Brinton is the ideological basis.  In Muslim societies the predicate is religious while the examples employed by Brinton were secular in nature.

Let's take a quick dekko at Gaza.  Hamas shot its way to power as a nationalistic entity with the larger goal of ending Israel as a sovereign state.  The lads of Hamas had far more familiarity with crude rockets, AK-47s, and suicide vests than the Koran or Haddith.  In addition to their long standing and now defeated rival, the Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority, Hamas faced other rivals most notably Islamic Jihad.

Islamic Jihad and other, smaller groups were every bit as dedicated to the dubious proposition of wiping Israel off the map.  Beyond this the rival groups expounded an austere version of Islam based as was that of Taliban on the Wahhibist interpretation favored by Saudi Arabia.  Hamas found itself under challenge not for a deficiency of zeal in seeking to kill Israelis but in its dedication to the One True Faith.

To meet this threat Hamas has moved speedily to the extreme.  It has called and raised its rivals in religious enthusiasm and commitment to the strictures of Islam.  In quick order Hamas moved to force the citizens of Gaza to act like Muslims--or else.  In ways completely devoid of surprise, the weight of the new Hamas Live Up To Mohammad campaign fell on women.

Hamas shoved women back into garbage sacks from which they had long been liberated.

It moved on to suppress women so boldly un-Islamic as to puff water pipes in public.

Then coed beaches were banned.  As was swimming apparel more revealing than the landlocked garbage bags.

A man on a motorbike with a woman riding behind him?  No way!  Mixed sex groups at a cafe?  Forget it!  A public display of the mildest affection?  Call the cops!

If necessary Hamas will emulate Taliban in all respects.  School for girls?  Yer outta your mind.  Women working?  Against the will of Allah.

Badda-bing!  We, the Fearless Warriors of Hamas have proven ourselves far more truly Muslim than the wannabes of Islamic Jihad and the rest.  We can oppress women better!

Lest one think that only thuggish groups comprising pretend governments can enter the Live Pure Or Die! contest, Chechnya is a case study.  In that insurgency wracked backwater of Russia, the insurgency oriented adherents of violent political Islam are in the process of being religiously outpointed by the handpicked local chieftain put in place by Vladimir Putin with the demand that the situation "be clarified and put to order."

While there is a strong odor of violent political Islam in the air of Chechnya, the insurgents are primarily oriented toward gaining independence from Moscow.  The agenda is: Independence first, Shariah later.  For most Chechans, most of the time, the fashion statements and etiquette requirements of Islam are not of great moment.  The insurgent leadership has not wasted time, energy, or legitimacy on insisting that women show no more of themselves than one or two eyes or putting chastity barriers between the sexes.

The Moscow subservient government of Chechnya has taken up the cause of Islamic morality.  Thugs in the employ of the government both uniformed and not have been set out in pursuit of un-garbage bagged women, as well as women in the company of men other than their brothers, fathers, or husbands.  Condign and salutary beatings have been freely and publicly administered to women found not in compliance with the new government standards of appropriate Islamic apparel and conduct.

The government is saying to all Muslim Chechens, "See, we oppress women best.  We are the True Embodiment of the True Faith, you must rally to us--or be branded apostate."

There is a problem here, Moscow.  You see, your local heavyweights have misread the situation.  Chechnya is not Afghanistan of fifteen years ago.  It isn't even Gaza today.  It is not the right place for an imitation Taliban.

In Chechnya, a very traditional society, custom dictates that it is the father, or the husband, who has the sole responsibility and authority to determine what constitutes proper Islamic clothing or behavior for his daughters or wife.  Not the government.  Not even the nationalistic insurgents.  Islam in practice, Islam as it has an effect on daily life, is not even the province of the local cleric.  It is the sole prerogative of the man of the house, archaic as that term may be to Westerners.

Pakistan is balancing precariously on a tipping point between continuing as it has--an Islamic republic with notable secular features--or becoming a quasi-theocracy of the Taliban variety.  In the contest with the Taliban of Pakistan and related groups, the pressure on the government to get out in front of the anti-government forces in applying severe strictures is intense and may prove irresistible.

Much of the population of Pakistan is already far to the religious "right" of the government.  To keep its slim hold on power, the government may see the least-worst option is that of adopting a more-Muslim-than-thou approach.  Proving it can oppress women better may be the course of action most attractive to the men of the current elite and the government it controls.

A lurch to the religious extreme would have severe and immediate repercussions in the already tenuous relation between the US and Pakistan.  A government crackdown on immodest dress or "immoral" behavior on the part of women particularly if combined with a Taliban or al-Shabaab campaign against music, movies, dancing, or anything smacking of fun would not sit well with many in the US government to say nothing of many of We the People.

But, desperate governments undertake desperate actions.  Faced with an imminent loss of power, a seismic shift to Wahhibism on steroids is not only thinkable but the only thinkable proposition.  The potential of American opposition, of a weakening of US support, will be discounted on two predicates: The US needs Pakistan too much and, what the hey, the US can accept the Saudi oppression of women.

Both rationalizations may prove true.  But, before the government of Pakistan considers adopting the out-Taliban-Taliban approach it might recall the joy with which those Pakistanis who had at first welcomed Taliban came to despise and fear the Men of Turban and Koran.  Despise them so much that the incoming Pakistani forces were welcomed literally as liberators.

Having no fun in life wears thin.  Just ask an Iranian.

ADMIN NOTE: Press on through the frustrating anti-spam comment defenses since the Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments.

All Actions Have Consequences

Pastor Terry Jones, the capo of the fifty or so member--and grandiosely named--Dove World Outreach Center has copped himself the propaganda prize of the year, perhaps the decade, with his planned "Burn a Koran Day." For a middle aged businessman whose theological credentials are, to put it kindly, sparse, he has garnered for himself and his minuscule flock several oil tankers worth of notoriety, public attention of a magnitude that even Paris Hilton can only dream of.

While it is commonplace to blame the internet, the twenty-four hour news cycle, or the electronic global village of today's globe, the pastor would never have been heard of beyond the limits of Gainesville, Florida were it not for another, very simple and highly inconvenient fact.

And that fact is, Geeko?

Here it is. Get a grip on it. We are all scared to the point of blithering idiocy by fear of Muslims. To sharpen the focus a bit, we are frightened out of our wits by the probability that some individuals, using this insult to Islam as an excuse, will turn violent, start blowing themselves to Paradise while taking those in unfortunate propinquity along for the ride.

There is beyond doubt sound reason for the fear which has come as a necessary consequence of pastor Jones' intended bonfire of Korans. As the world found out a few years back, the capacity of Muslims for violent response to what most in the West see as picayune acts is profound. Whether the rumor of Korans being flushed down latrines in Gitmo or the cartoons of a Dane himself outraged by suicide bombings carried out by men shouting, "Allahu akbar," the result was mob violence around the world.

The sensibilities of Muslims to presumed offenses against their premier prophet or their sacred writings boggles most Western minds as it does the less emotionally invested within the Muslim world. The Muslim reaction to any perceived slight on the Koran is justified by the recurrent animadversion that it constitutes the literal word of the deity and must not be splotched by the stain of human action. The possibility that once the presumed words of the deity have passed through the mind and hands of man they have lost the proximate provenance of the divine and are simply one more artifact of humanity is beyond the pale of consideration for many, (most?) in the Muslim community.

Thus the burning of a Koran is an act of profound sacrilege. As such the True Believer has the duty of responding with violence, with destruction, with murder.

That simple progression well expressed in recent years throughout the world gives rise to and justification for our fear of what will happen before the flames of burning Korans have faded in the Florida sky. And, it is this which has given pastor Jones the unprecedented capacity to rivet the attention of the American president as well as his counterparts in Europe and Asia, to capture the media as if at gunpoint.

Under all the calls for Mr Jones to refrain from carrying through his threat of Koranic combustion is the unspoken, pervasive fear of the hours, days, and months to come. How many will die because some Muslim somewhere has seized upon the Jones Conflagration to maim, to kill, to destroy? For how long will the toxic smoke from the Gainesville event circle the world, inflaming how many Muslims to how many acts of murder? How many Americans will finally pay the price for Mr Jones' quest for fame?

There is no doubt but leaders of Muslim states as well as the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been in a race to outdo one another in both the vitriol of denunciation (as if the US government can intervene, but these dudes don't get that fine point being unused to any sort of restrictions on the capacity of government to suppress) and the insinuations of horrid things yet to come should the Korans be rendered into smoke and ash. Along with the leaders the mob has already gotten up and running, spewing the usual "Death to America" slogan along with promises to join the jihad.

There is a high probability that should pastor Jones proceed, there will be Muslim mobs in the streets, Muslims with suicide vests will detonate themselves, Muslims will join the jihad, the relations between Muslim majority states and the US will worsen. That is to be expected. For these negative results not to occur will require divine intervention--an unlikely proposition at best.

But, then what? The question Muslims both high and low in position never ask: What will be the consequences of our venting our legitimate rage at this blasphemy?

As recent polls have shown, the American public has been demonstrating an increasingly negative appreciation of Islam and Muslims. The argument has been advanced that this decline in positive perceptions has resulted from a combination of ignorance and the blandishments of vocal opponents of all things Muslim.

There is no denying the fact that most Americans are not well versed in Muslim history, Islamic theology and jurisprudence. There is no reason to believe that most of We the People see any need to remedy these presumed lacks. Nor is there any reason to assert that even a great increase in knowledge of the history, theology, or jurisprudence of Islam would alter the negative perception in the slightest.

The poor view of Islam and Muslims held by most Americans is the direct result of actions performed by Muslims. The suicide bombings, the violent misogyny, the waves of Muslim men chanting, "Death to...," the spewing of hatred for the values and imperatives held dear by Americans on the part of assorted Muslim clerics have combined to lower the esteem in which Americans hold the religion and its adherents. At the same time, these factors, all of which are directly and easily observed in all their full and blood toned color in all the media, have vastly increased both the fear and the loathing with which many Americans view Islam and Muslims generally.

Another factor is at work. The concept of deference has long been eroding in the West generally and the US in particular. The pace of erosion has increased with the growth of horizontal means of communication including but not limited to the internet. This means the power once held by the opinion molding elites both in the US and Western Europe no longer exists to the degree it did even twenty years ago.

It no longer matters what presidents, or high officials, or church leaders, or pundits might contend. The old elite no longer can pronounce and expect the hoi polloi to tug their forelocks in obedience. The elites have been chorusing the need for "tolerance" and "interfaith respect" while the Legions of the Great Unwashed have observed that when it comes to Islam and Muslims the avenues marked "tolerance" or "respect" are one-way streets.

There is a profound and evident dissonance between what can be directly observed about Islam and Muslims on the one hand, their demands for special treatment as well as their reflexive resort to violence in response to irritants, and the bland statements from the "Betters," the "Older and Wiser," the self-appointed custodians of what is right and wrong, permitted and impermissible on the other.

The takeaway for Muslims is simple. Insofar as there are violent, murderous reactions to the admittedly very ill-advised Koran burning, the American public will show a further downward trend in its collective view of Islam and Muslims. This will have an impact on the policies of the US in both foreign and domestic affairs.

The US Marines have a motto of recent vintage, "No better friend; no worse enemy." The same motto can apply with utter accuracy to We the People. It would behoove any Muslim, here or abroad, to consider that his actions can have consequences.

Muslims do not have any patent on the right to be insulted.

Hey! "Experts," It's Called Democracy In Action

The Geek has taken the position that any legal or narrowly defined political effort to stop the Cordoba House community center, swimming pool, and mosque would only benefit the advocates of political Islam, which group includes the imam behind the "Ground Zero" project.

Simultaneously, the Geek has argued that politics in the largest sense, the coherent expression of a mass view that the proposed bit of triumphalism is unacceptable so near a place of American grief, American humiliation, and recovery would be a most excellent way to derail a horribly ill-advised project.

Not surprisingly, a portion of the monstrous regiment of "terrorism experts" have come out four square in favor of the proposition that opposition to the Great Community Center and Mosque will offer advantages beyond count to the proponents of political Islam, particularly those such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who favor violence in the name of Allah. These academic type analysts demonstrate the common occupational disease of the professorate and others of that ilk--a congenital lack of backbone. They are unwilling or constitutionally unable to see that there are limits to the old don't-offend-them-or-they-will-get-more-extreme.

Only academics and others like them--including members of the current administration--can really, really believe that appeasement works, that tossing t-bone steak to a wolf will make it a vegetarian. Such cringing hand-wringing, such giving in to the worst advice of naked fear may be appropriate in a faculty commons or around the smoothly polished table of a conference room, but it has no applicability in the real world.

Construction workers, the "hard hats" who had such a negative press during the Vietnam War given their habit of beating up on anti-war protesters and "hippies" in general, are contradicting the "experts" in an expression of coherent opinion, a form of democracy in action. The emergence of a grass roots effort based in large measure on the internet has been reported recently. The movement, if it grows, will prove the most effective way of abating the looming nuisance of the Cordoba House community/athletic/inter-faith center and mosque.

The movement is quite simply a boycott. The idea is that no construction workers will engage in building the Cordoba House project. Further, no supplier of necessary materials from steel and concrete to all the specialized widgets needed to make a building a reality will sell to the project.

Given the extraordinary hard times which currently afflict the construction industry with the concomitant high unemployment among construction workers, the very idea that the boycott would be proposed, let alone agreed to by an ever larger number of individuals and firms boggles the imagination. The concept taken together with the positive acceptance to date demonstrates that, despite the best efforts of the American hoi olligoi including the Smiley Guy In The Oval, patriotism is alive and well among the elite despised hoi polloi.

Refusing work in advance during a recession of the magnitude and duration of the current meltdown is not particularly rational. It is not an action taken in self-interest. Patriotism, the belief that the US and We the People are united not only in common values but a sense of common decency, demands that rational self-interest take a back seat compared to acting upon the outraged sense of decency and insulted values.

Patriotism like nationalism may be seen as reactionary hangovers from a past, more primitive time by academics, pundits, and many politicians. However, that view is quite obviously not shared by many within the faceless, nameless bunch collectively referred to as "We the People."

Some hard hats in the Big Apple have pointed in the right direction. It is not enough to oppose the insulting project with words. Effective action must be taken to convince imam Rauf and the others behind the project that they must relocate.

It is critical that the pundits, the academics, the politicians both understand and support the reality of the hard hat movement. It is not anti-Muslim. It is not "Islamophobic." It is not directed against the freedom that all who live in the US have to worship in the manner and place of their individual choice. It is not an artificial movement created for partisan political purpose.

The long and the short of the opposition to Cordoba House is simply one of location. The solution to the problem is very simple, quite easy to understand, and not at all difficult to achieve. If a hick historian in the backwoods of New Mexico can get it so also can the ever-so-sophisticated members of the American elite, so also can the imam, the imam's wife and all the others in the shadows of the Cordoba House Initiative.

Move the bloody thing a few blocks. Move it from the loom of 9/11.

Ignorance Equals Defeat

A thoughtful interlocutor who knows the Geek's secure and undisclosed location has requested he dilate upon a passing reference made in yesterday's post. Always ready to oblige, the Geek will do so below.

When the term "nation-building" first hit the rhetoric of the Bush/Cheney administration (an event which occurred even as US troops were failing in Tora Bora) the Geek shuddered, almost ran to the pottie and puked his guts out. For that term showed three critical features were at work to assure a long and eventually failed American effort in Afghanistan.

The first critical feature was simply that we had abandoned, if, indeed, we had ever considered limiting our goal to that of mounting a successful punitive expedition with the focus being upon killing or capturing al-Qaeda personnel and Taliban governmental and military leaders. The second was that no matter how long and loud we proclaimed that we were not waging war on Islam qua Islam or Muslims qua Muslims these protestations would be discounted by Muslims both in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Thirdly and most importantly, it showed that the administration did not understand that society and polity in a Muslim majority country arise totally from the religion of Islam.

Mark this well: Any attempt to alter a Muslim society or polity is simultaneously an attempt to change the religion. Unlike here in the West, there is no blue sky between faith and society, faith and polity. There is and can be no, repeat, no separation between faith and state.

The announced intention to transform Afghanistan into some sort of imitation of a Western nation-state gave free pass to any and all Muslims to see the effort as an attack upon Muslims and Islam thus invoking the obligation of defensive jihad upon all believers. This call to defensive arms requires no tortured logic, no semantic games, it is plain and simple in the Koran.

While sometimes there is ample room for interpretation over whether or not aggressive war, offensive jihad is required, this is not the case when the infidel invades Muslim land and drives Muslims from their homes. The branding of Afghanistan as a country in need of severe, extreme make-over rang the bell of jihad.

Had the US made it clear that our goal was the punishment of people, groups resident within Afghanistan, who had caused us great injury and great insult, that would have been understood by those in Afghanistan and elsewhere who were not joined with either Taliban or al-Qaeda. Such a goal would have not crossed the line into invading a Muslim land and chasing Muslims from their homes. It would not have invoked the defensive jihad.

Had the US employed the run-up period to public diplomacy focusing on the nature of the 9/11 attack, the character of the majority of the victims, and the way in which both attack and consequences both violated Islamic principles and caused Islam and Muslims to be covered with infamy, the punitive expedition would have met with a large measure of approval in the Muslim-Arab world. Revenge--which is what punishment is at root--is well understood by Muslims all over the world. An honorable person, a nation with honor and dignity, are both entitled, even expected, to avenge wrongs done to them.

Admittedly, while the notion of a purely punitive military action would not have met with approval by segments of both American and Western European opinion, it would have been eminently salable to the majority of the population both here and abroad. The Lofty Minded, the overly legally minded, the softly sentimental all would have been offended in their sensibilities by the concept of war as punishment. Too bad. The majority would have supported the notion and that is all politics both domestic and global require.

The punitive blow might have been softened by a policy of supporting international efforts to assist the Afghan population in its economic and political development provided there was no odor of external coercion involved. This add-on would have mollified the do-gooding segment of opinion and not provided ammunition for the advocates of violent political Islam.

Had the public diplomacy been accompanied by a bit of very non-public pressure on Islamabad along the lines of "cooperate with us, close the borders, pull out your ISI guys, and allow us to get on with killing or capturing the bad boys or you will never see another big ticket, high tech weapons system marked Made in America," the result would have been the death or capture of far more al-Qaeda and Taliban heavyweights than was the case. There is little doubt that the military high command of Pakistan would have seen the logic of our presentation.

The basic intelligence product regarding the relation of Islam, nation-building, and defensive jihad were all in existence in 2001. It would have taken no particular effort to connect the dots and make the right policy choice.

The rub came back then precisely where it does today. The president and his senior staff as well as the rarefied levels of the military do not know what they do not know. They were and are afflicted with ignorance as to the extent of their own ignorance. Compounding the problem back then as well as today is the simple reality that the people who do know what needs to be known topside are too far down the food chain to bring their concerns and knowledge to the appropriate level. There is no way for knowledge, no matter how mission critical, to leap from way down low to the up high where decisions are made.

Of course it is possible that the neocon ninnies of W and Company were briefed on the fact that the saber toothed tigers of defeat lived in the word, "nation-building," and decided for reasons of ideology or hubris to ignore the warning. If that was the case, the administration of W. Bush stands indicted of the worst sort of war "crime." The one of committing one's country and military to a long, costly, counterproductive war in which naught but defeat is possible.

Artifacts Of Faith

The continuing and escalating controversy over building mosques in the US from the "mega-mosque" in the immediate environs of Ground Zero to others, some much smaller, hundreds or thousands of miles away from the smoke, fire, and death of 9/11 highlights the central and all too often overlooked reality of the current struggle between the US and the rest of the West on one hand and the proponents of political Islam on the other.

That reality is that political Islam, like all Islam, like Christianity, like Judaism, like all other religions great and small, well known or obscure is, at root, a creation of the human mind. Further, all are creations which are reconfigured from time to time and place to place according to the needs of the social/political/economic context.

This statement may be unacceptable to those who for reasons of personal psychology or need find it essential to believe that religions (or at least the one to which they adhere) are the pure products of divine revelation and their sacred writings are unsullied by human intervention. Be that as it may, the weight of historical experience shows the dirty fingerprints of human interference on the core written materials: Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Koran, as well as their derivatives written, spoken, and acted out.

Context, the actualities of life in any given time and place, have dictated not only what exists in the core literature but, far more importantly, how that core has been interpreted and put into effect. The devil lives where it always has, in the details of society, polity, and economy, in the choices made by people as to what aspects of any particular religion should be invoked and acted upon in response to social, political, economic, or cultural stresses and threats--or to the converse, opportunities to advance one's social, political, economic, and cultural position.

The ambiguous or contradictory language which typifies any and all sacred writings in all religions provide rich veins to be mined for the ore of apparent truth. Which veins are mined and to what effect come not from a deity but from the understandable dynamics of a particular social, political, economic, or cultural condition in a particular location at a particular time.

Thus the Hebrew Bible alternates between bloody imperialism and demands for inter-ethnic tolerance and peace, mutual advantage and harmony. The needs of different Christians at different times and places allowed both the invocation of universality and genocidal persecution. The Koran is both a manual for cross-cultural amity and a handbook for successful wars of conquest.

Advocates and adherents of violent political Islam are good Muslims. So also are Muslims who reject the way of the suicide bomber, the Koran-waving imperialist seeking to establish a global caliphate where all bow to the dictates of sharia. Neither is a "misunderstander of Islam." Each selects the portions of his faith which best fit the requirements of the time and place where he lives in which he hopes he and his family will prosper in an atmosphere of peace and dignity.

The critical factor here is the need to understand that both perception and choice are involved here. Individuals perceive their needs, their wants, their relative power, status, dignity. On that basis they choose which vein of their religion they are going to mine, which ore of "revealed truth" they are going to smelt, and what product they are going to make from that smelted ore.

The mosque is merely a building. An structure empty of significance--until a significance is chosen for it. The mega-mosque proposed for the site inconveniently close to Ground Zero can be a center for inter-cultural, inter-faith harmony and understanding. Or it can be a symbol of the victory of political Islam over the oppressors of the "Christian" US.

The same applies to all other mosques no matter where built. They are either the expression in masonry of a faith, a home for the members of that community of faith, or a symbol of expansionist Islam.

In part, the significance, the meaning of the mosque, is determined by those who assemble there to worship. But, in part, perhaps major part, it is assigned by the perceptions and choices made by others, by those who do not share the faith, by those who wonder as to the aspirations and goals of those building and using the mosque.

Before violent political Islam leaped from its birthing place in Egypt to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond--to Kenya, to Tanzania, to Yemen, to New York, to London, to Madrid, to Bali, to hundreds of other places, the mosque was seen by those outside the community of Islam as totally unobjectionable, even a sign of cosmopolitanism, of multi-cultural acceptance. The spread of violent political Islam from the pens of Qutb and bin Laden to the bombs, the falling buildings, the violated bodies of civilians killed without either warning or compunction changed the view of many in this country and others. The context changed and with that so did the view of the mosque. Now it was possessed of an inherently sinister nature--whether deserved or not in any particular case.

The particular Muslim community proposing to use the mosque may well be one, most probably is one which rejects violent political Islam or even its non-violent kin. It is most probable that the specific community of faith is comprised of Muslims who mine the veins of Islam, of the Koran, of the Hadith which point to peace, harmony, and mutual respect between members of different faiths.

(In this context it is useful to remember that Islam has made compromises, accommodations with Zoroastrians, Nestorian Christians, Ebionites, even with polytheists in Africa during the comfortable, fat years of expansion following the death of Mohammad. So, there is a long record of Muslims mining the veins of peace, harmony, compromise which run through the Koran--as long as the context of their lives encouraged or allowed such.)

It is also useful to recall that the original proponents of violent political Islam whether in Egypt, Iran, or the Arabian Peninsula did so in a context of lost greatness, of current diminishment, of perceived humiliation and exploitation. The originators of modern violent political Islam saw the cause of the present sorry state of Muslims to be the result of the apostate local governments and the policies of faraway infidel states. Importantly, very importantly, these thinkers also saw that Muslims generally had "fallen away" from the pure, hard faith of the great days a thousand and more years earlier.

Qutb and others called upon their fellow Muslims to right the current wrongs by embracing not only a pure, austere form of Islam with the most restrictive form of Sharia at its core, but also to rediscover jihad as an offensive, aggressive concept. Abandon the defensive, Qutb counselled, and embrace aggression as the tool to overthrow the apostates and smite the infidels.

The invention of modern violent political Islam occurred as a response to the context of the Mideast in the post-WW II period. It was, at root, a repackaging of the perceptions underlying both Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. It was another case of a question--"we were once so great and now we are so small, why?" and providing an answer, "Because we have abandoned the pure ways of our ancestors."

The alternative ways of restoring the perceived loss of status, dignity, respect, potency were not considered by the advocates of violent political Islam. In a way not dissimilar from the willful overlooking of alternatives exhibited by the corporate statists of a few years earlier, Qutb and others rejected alternatives in favor of mining certain, select veins of their sacred literature and their faith.

Perceptions and choices.

The US and other Western countries also acted on perceptions when the choice was made not only to invade Afghanistan but to engage in the preposterous exercise of nation-building. The Taliban regime was perceived not only as evil on its face, but was cast beyond the pale. As a result of this arguable proposition, which did, whether we like it or not, facilitate the radicalization of Muslims, we are engaged in a labor guaranteed to result in an product which will never meet expectations.

Perceptions and choices.

So it is with the mosques. More than any other single consideration it will be the perceptions and choices made by Americans which will govern whether the mosques, including the one scheduled to replace the Burlington Coat Factory building, will be symbols of victory for violent political Islam or for the alternative, an Islam capable of coexisting peacefully with the larger population.

A Christian, a Jew can find in his own religion reasons and justifications for either opposing and demonizing the mosques or for accepting them as neighbors, and, perhaps, friends. A Christian certainly can find a reason to see the mosques as a test from his God as to the extent of his faith not only in Christianity but in America.

This is not easy. The Geek has wrestled with the mosque question since it first emerged. But, he understands that when all is said and done, we non-Muslims must exist on the same planet and in the same country with Muslims. That is, with Muslims who find the proper veins to mine are those of peace, harmony, and mutual accommodation.

In this way and this way alone, the only losers will be the advocates of political Islam. And, they deserve to lose. About that there can be and is no doubt, no equivocation, no hesitation.

Terminally Adrift At The Policy Level

Both the US and the UK are adrift at the policy level. Potentially, the two allies are fatally floundering in the currents of challenge. This unpleasant situation exists in both London and Washington for the same reason: Neither government is willing and able to acknowledge that they are in a conflict which is tantamount to a total war of national survival with the purveyors and practitioners of violent political Islam.

In matters both great and small the two governments--and their respective publics--have sent mixed messages regarding both the nature of the wars forced upon us and our political will to not only accept the gauntlet but press on until the opposition is crushed. Whether the burka or the Taliban, whether Afghanistan or Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen, Iran's nuclear quest or the effort by Muslims to build a gigantic mosque and monument to Allah's grandeur where once the shadow of the Twin Towers fell, the governments and peoples of both the US and the UK speak with confused voices.

The ground truth upon which the shaky and ultimately fatal drift at the policy level is based is not hard to state--or to understand. Violent political Islam as well as its non-violent kin arises from the religion of Islam. The requirements and justifications for war against the "infidels" even unto death, perhaps most certainly unto death, is written in the Koran, the collected sayings and acts of the Prophet. These requirements and justifications have been commented and elaborated upon for centuries by learned and highly esteemed Islamic theologians and experts on jurisprudence.

While these requirements and justifications are not accepted by all Muslims anymore than violent political Islam is practiced by all followers of Islam, the path of jihad is walked, the justifications and requirements accepted, by a portion of the Muslim community. This reality, unpleasant as it may be to the sincere believers of the ideals of multi-culturalism, has been accepted by no less a paragon of Islamic apology and multi-cultural correctness than the WaPo.

Americans generally and the British generally do not want to accept the idea that violence for political ends may arise organically from religious faith. We are victims of our own successes in separating the communities of faith from the secular state. As a direct consequence, we can afford the luxury of religious tolerance.

The wars of religion reside in our distant past. Never really waged in North America, the wars of faith molder in the collective archives of distant memory, of half or more forgotten lectures about European history. For us the very idea of killing in the name of faith is so bizarre, so reprehensible that it passes the boundary of rationality and enters the dark land of mental illness. Not unlike the Jews of Germany in the 1930s as the flames of antisemitism flared ever higher, we reject the notion that civilized people do that sort of thing, commit that kind of crime, perpetrate that variety of horror.

While many Muslims share the same sense of bewildered outrage which afflicts us when a bomber does his worst, there are those followers of the Prophet who approve the bombing, celebrate the killings of "infidels" and "apostates," who cheer those who inflict slaughter on the unarmed to the heavens above. It is this latter group, the Muslims who either promote and practice violent political Islam or support and approve of those who shed the blood of the innocent, which is the enemy of the US and other civilized states including Great Britain.

Caught in cognitive dissonance between what we wish to be the truth and the ugly realities presented to us by the bombers and trigger-pullers of violent political Islam, we, the Americans, the British, and our respective governments temporize, equivocate, take halfway measures, deliver mixed messages, question the rightness of our cause, find excuses for those who would kill or change us and our societies, and generally go adrift at the policy level.

The world is not the way we would wish it to be. As a result we know we have to do something, but there is nothing we can do which comports well with our beliefs in the secular state and the appeal of religious tolerance and respect.

Consider the burka. This garbage sack like garment is not required by the Koran or other sacred writings but has been imposed in much of the Islamic world by force of custom and the exaggerated fear of hell which is part and parcel of an Islamic upbringing. Because the burka is a highly visible, irrefutable cultural expression of Islamic faith, it has become a focus of attention on both sides of the vast invisible line dividing the Muslim community from that of the assorted "infidels" which comprises the majority of the globe's population.

Public opinion in the US is tolerant of the all-encompassing garbage sack burka. This is probably because so few Americans come into contact with burka caged women. It is hard to have a definite view of something seldom if ever encountered.

The situation is different in Europe. There the burka is common. In France, Spain, the UK, and other Western European countries, the average citizen is likely to encounter the burka daily particularly if living in an urban center. As a consequence, emotions are running high over banning or not banning the garment.

Belgium, France, and Spain are moving rapidly toward a ban of the most extreme versions of the dress, those which cover the face. In England the majority of the public, the hoi polloi, are reported to support a French style ban. Simultaneously, the political elite, the hoi ollogoi, at least as represented by two cabinet members, oppose any ban. One, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Minister, considers the burka to be "empowering" and "conferring dignity."

Not surprisingly, agreement with Minister Spelman's position is not universal. Not even all Muslim women agree with her. The philosophical and political responses to apologists for the burka run the spectrum from classical liberal to ancient conservatism.

Leaving aside the question as to how voluntary wearing the burka might be in a male dominated culture, (Husband, father, or brother to woman, "Wear the burka or else...") the fact remains that the commodious garment allows the ready concealment of a suicide vest. The basic question is simply how comfortable would even the most liberal, multi-culturally, sensitive person be within say twenty meters of a person who might be carrying twenty kilograms of explosive and ball bearings?

An even more fundamental consideration is that of political will. The burka, like the minaret appended to a mosque, is a political expression. Resistance to such alien manifestations within a Western society and its polity is also a political expression. The conflict is one of political will: which side has the greater political will?

In this way, the issues of garbage sacks on women or minarets mirror the larger, bloodier wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Whether one considers Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or even the Iranian "Mahdi Bomb," the crux is political will. The side with the greater will is the side destined to win in any and every one of these foci of conflict between West and political Islam.

One of the most important considerations in developing and maintaining political will is the definition of goal. As important is the defining of the enemy: Who is he and what is he after? Next in line is the necessity of defining and articulating in a compelling way just what motivates us in our fight.

If the US, the UK, and other civilized states are going to prevail, or even survive, in the struggle forced upon us by the Ever Faithful To The One True And Pure Vision Of Islam, it is utterly essential that we escape from the cognitive dissonance which has clouded our thinking, our policies since that horrible day nearly nine years ago. We must accept that not everyone in the world, not every Muslim, accepts the separation of institutions of faith from those of the state which has emerged in the West over the past two or so centuries.

We must accept that there exists a sizable number of Muslims who see the obligations of their faith to include the violent imposing of their beliefs, their law, their customs upon all of us. We must acknowledge that these good Muslims read in their sacred literature a limitless remit to seek a global caliphate in which only the writ of Allah as interpreted by Muslim clerics governs.

The devotees of violent political Islam are neither madmen nor "misunderstanders" of their religion. They are True Believers in their understanding of the requirements of their faith. No apologies for their beliefs and consequent actions are needed. Also unnecessary are well meaning efforts at outreach, accommodation, or appeasement.

The imperatives of their faith preclude all attempts at outreach, accommodation, appeasement. The same imperatives render any efforts at apology or explanation mere exercises in self-delusion.

What is needed, needed far more than weapons or foreign aid, is political will. We are faced by a hydra-headed enemy possessed of a political will of the greatest sort. The only way we can oppose, or better, defeat the violent political Islamist is by having a greater political will held for a longer period.

From the outset the war has been one of political will in which corpses and ruined buildings, like burkas and minarets, are merely means of expressing, testing, and either eroding or reinforcing the political will of each belligerent.

The Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, "Purity of heart is to will one thing." Today, it must be recast as, "Success of policy is to will one thing."

White House Language Cops Deny Reality

One of the most important considerations at work in foreign relations today, arguably the most important, is that of self-identification. There are legions of ways in which an individual may identify himself and establish his relations with other humans. The most common ways in which a person so locates himself in both demographic and political space are tribe, ethnicity, region, nation, language, and religion.

Typically the identifiers merge in a reinforcing way. This is particularly true in the case of genuine, mature nation-states. Citizenship, language, geography, shared sense of history and values, all combine to provide a unitary identity by which the individual can feel a loyalty to a rather large, often remotely governed abstract--the nation--circumscribed by secure, defensible borders under the effective control of a consensually accepted polity--the state.

This can be seen quite clearly with the Americans. Not that many decades ago the emphasis was on the word, "States" in the name "United States of America." Now it is on the words "United" and "America." Our primary identity has shifted from city, state, or region to nation-state as we have become ever more mobile and ever more homogenized culturally, socially, economically, and politically. Even our once very distinguishable regional dialects have melted away in the heat of mass communications.

Americans may also have secondary identities such as ethnicity, religion, and generation, but these are most often purely secondary--unless brought forward in importance by the politics of victimization. It is only in the context of playing the game of victim-and-victimizer that any secondary identifier is given pride of place.

Unfortunately, playing the victim card has become so much a feature of our political landscape in the past forty or so years that the Law of Unintended Consequences can have great and terrible effects. This is particularly the case when the sensibilities so often invoked in the politics of victimization are invoked in the practice of foreign policy.

So, Geek, just what has this got to do with the real world, anyway?

Well, bucko, it's like this. The US and the rest of the civilized world is currently at war with--here comes the nitty-gritty--someone. Since 9/11 there has been no doubt that the US and other nation-states of similar foundational values and core institutions have been under armed attack. And, we have fought back.

But who attacked us? Against whom have we been fighting?

These key questions were not answered by the Bush/Cheney administration. The conceit held by the neocon ninnies of that time was that the US was engaged in a "war on terror." That was a logical and ontological monstrosity. It is impossible to wage war on a specific tactic of war which is what terrorism constitutes. It would have made as much sense to have declared war on air attacks without declaration of war on 8 December 1941 as to fight a war against terrorism.

The Bush/Cheney administration belatedly came to understand that it was unwise at the operational level to maintain we were waging war against Islamists or jihadists--even though we were. After the early period of boisterous enthusiasm and belief we could have a pair of quick and cheap victories in Afghanistan and Iraq in which the terms "Islamic," "Islamist," "Jihad," and similar were hurled with the rapidity of an M-4 on rock and roll, fear that overblown oratory might create ever more Muslims with a deep anti-American orientation overtook the White House and environs.

The same fear has gripped the Obama administration. Its latest excrescence is the presidential directive to eliminate "offensive" terms such as "Islamist" and "jihad" from strategic planning documents. This move is meant not only to bolster the famed Obama Outreach to the Arab and Muslim world which started in Cairo a year back but to reorient the way in which the US both approaches and is perceived in majority Muslim countries.

The goal is laudable. The means are not.

The Obama Prohibition still leaves us in the dark regarding the nature of the enemy we are fighting, the motives which propel that enemy, and the signposts marking our progress toward or regression from success in the war. The enemy needs a name. His motives and goals need to be understood. The definers of success need to be prescribed.

Admittedly, naming the enemy was much easier in the "old days." In most of our previous wars the enemy was either a nation-state or a pretender to that status. Other wars, those of an interventionary nature, the enemy could at least be identified by a specific ideology or his opposition to a polity supported by the US.

Naming names was quite easy. And, usually quite effective in mobilizing and maintaining political will here at home for the war "over there."

Outfits like the many franchises grouped together under the name al-Qaeda or even country specific entities such as the Talibans of Afghanistan and Pakistan are not so susceptible to easy and accurate identification unless one is willing to run the risk of offending someone's sensibilities somewhere. And, if those offended are Muslim in their primary identification, the consequence may be harmful to both national interest and personal health.

Whether reality imposes risks or not, whether the Obama administration likes it or not, not properly identifying the enemy, his motivations and goals makes the possibility of being successful in our efforts against him diminishingly small. The ironic elephant in the room is that by its very insistence upon extreme sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities, the Obama administration just like that of George W. Bush in its later years implicitly admits the nature and character--the identity, if you will--of the enemy.

The enemy is, of course, Islam. More accurately and specifically it is that segment of the Muslim population which accepts as a prime motivator and goal the universal, all encompassing identity of Islam. Make no mistake about it, Islam is a far more totalistic belief system than the other monotheistic religions. There is no daylight between faith and any other aspect of human life. Not only is there no daylight, there is no possibility that any will or can emerge.

Adherents of politically oriented, expansionist Islam, the Islamists, are not misunderstanders of Islam; they are good Muslims. True Believer Muslims. To think otherwise is to diminish both the power of the Belief and the sincerity of the Believer.

While some operatives of Islamism may be stooges, may be suffering from personality or character disorders, may be incomplete personalities, such is not the case with the movers, shakers, leaders, and commanders of Islamism and its armed, conjoined twin, Jihadism. The leadership cadre, even many of the trigger pullers and suicide vest wearers, are motivated by a sincere and pervasive belief that through their actions, the will of Allah to conquer the infidel and punish the apostate is being followed. They are convinced to their very marrow that their actions, including their deaths, will bring a better world, a more faithful and peaceful world into existence.

Other communities of faith have held similar, even identical views in the past, often the not too distant past. Even today there are Christians and Jews willing and able to commit murder and other crimes in the True Belief that by so doing they are following the will of the deity, and they are suffering in order to prevent sin, rectify past sins, or ushering in a better, more godly future.

The difference between the Islamists and jihadists on the one hand and True Believers in other faiths or secular ideologies is their greater number on the ground. Where the number of American "pro-life" advocates willing to commit murder on behalf of their faith is quite small or the number of ultra-orthodox Jews willing to kill archeologists who dig up inconvenient, long buried facts which contravene Biblical accounts is diminishingly small, this is not the case with respect to Islamists and jihadists.

This implies that the latest generation of language police in the White House are doing no good service to either the security and interests of the US or the best interests of Muslims by failing to properly and narrowly define the enemy. Ultimately it is up to Muslims throughout the world to decide: Is their religion is best represented by the totalistic interpretation of the Islamists or would it be better if observant Muslims rigorously rejected the blandishments and threats of those of their brethren who maintain that the way of Allah demands jihad, requires the suicide bombings, the wholesale killings, the waging of wars without end or conclusive result?

The vision of the world espoused by the Islamists is, at root, a recreation of the culture, the values, and the worldview of the Arabian Peninsula over a thousand years ago. The question for the one and a half billion Muslims today living in all countries of the world is simply what do they want for their future--life in Seventh Century Arabia or today?

This is the choice implicitly presented to the Muslims by the Obama administration's underlying strategy of engagement. It is impossible to discuss science, health care, investment opportunities, trade, education as the administration desires without challenging Muslims to choose between the Islamist worldview and agenda and one which allows for fully observant Islam lacking only the totalistic, expansionist, and death oriented features of Islamism.

This decision requires identity politics. It requires every Muslim to decide if the primary definer of faith demands acceptance of the Islamist understanding of what it takes to be a True Believer in the One True Faith. This is a decision which is not easy to make, particularly for people who have no tradition, no experience with the tortured process of evolving the sort of identity and consequent loyalty which typifies the nation-state.

Making this sort of difficult choice is not made any easier by our refusal to name our enemy in the wars today. You don't have to make a choice when you don't know there is a choice which must be made.

Mr Obama and others of the apprehensive, politically correct, multi-cultural persuasion have to understand that it is not only impossible to succeed in a war when the enemy cannot be properly, openly, and consistently named. It is also impossible to gain allies when they do not know with whom they are joining and against whom they are fighting.

Those are two very good reasons for naming names. Two good reasons for telling one and all, Muslims most of all, that our enemy, the enemy of both the present and the future, is the Islamist, the jihadist. By presenting a clear definition and thus a choice, the Muslims of the world can decide to reject the enemy in their midst.