The Shooting Starts Again In Nigeria

The good news is that the most recent spate of killing is not the work of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The oil platform and service ship workers can rest easily for the moment. And, the oil speculators won't have to hit the keyboards and up the prices.

The Islamist jihadist monster is once more running amuck on the north of the never particularly stable and peaceful most populous country in Africa. The local Islamist jihadist group the name of which translates as "western education is sinful (or unlawful)" went after the police. The police shot back. Faster. Straighter.

Violence was experienced in three of the twelve provinces which voted a decade back to impose Shariah. The Islamists, who describe themselves as "Nigeria's Taliban," do not approve of the way in which the government interprets and applies Shariah. As a result they went on the offensive over the weekend.

Northeast Nigeria is the place where Islam drifting south from North African ran into the indigenous religions and later, Christianity. Today Nigeria is roughly split fifty-fifty between the two faiths. The record of violence over the past eight years indicates the Islamists within the Muslim community have started slightly over half of the violent encounters.

The Nigerian sectarian conflict takes place in the context of maldistributed wealth, an inefficient and corrupt distant government, and long standing tribal and sectional rivalries. Nigeria may have a lot of people, but it has no single Nigerian nation. The population is deeply fissured along numerous fault lines--tribal, class, sectional, religious.

The political process is not open. It is not transparent. It is not honest. It lacks both existential and functional legitimacy in the eyes of many of its citizens. The government is not trusted. It is not seen as honest. Or effective. Or representative of anyone or anything that does not reek of bought influence and paid for conduct.

As a result of its own tergiversations, its own corruption, its own systemic and personal inefficiencies and inadequacies, the central government has been faced by the ever-growing threat of MEND which has nibbled away the oil export base of both national prosperity and governmental malfeasance. While capable of killing MEND insurgents, the government and the Nigerian military have been completely unable to suppress the insurgency.

The measures taken by the government and army to defeat MEND have been so disasterously inept that they have grown more insurgents than they have killed or captured. Given the vulnerability of the oil industry, anything other than suppressing the insurgency through meeting its demands, which are neither excessive nor fantastic, is the best option open to the government.

This the government has refused to do--except rhetorically.

Now the central government is faced with the early stage of another insurgency. Lagos must have believed it had bought its peace with the referendum providing for Shariah in the twelve predominantly Muslim provinces. They reckoned without the Islamists for whom the new policy was one illustrative of government weakness.

Bolstered by the endemic poverty as well as the highly evident maldistribution of wealth in the region and the general disenchantment with the central government as well as the several provincial governments, the membership in and affiliations with the Islamist jihadist groups grew as the jihadists became increasingly active and ambitious in demands. Far from having bought its peace, the central government purchased many miles of increasingly bad road.

The election violence late last year gave fair warning of what was to come. Now the second warning shot(s) came over the weekend. The police won in terms of bodies counted and perps arrested. The Lagos regime will take pride in that.

The lesson which should be taken by the government is vastly different. Insurgencies and insurgents are like the Terminator--they will be back. Back stronger, better, wider spread, with more support, more skills, more weapons, more willingness to be (in this case) "martyrs."

Nigeria barely avoided energetically disassembling forty-two or so years ago. The Biafrian separatist movement was narrowly defeated. Nigeria almost died in a welter of tribal and sectional disputes.

Whatever may have been learned in those not-so-long-ago days by the Nigerian political and economic elite has been forgotten. MEND is proof of that. So also is the growing Islamist jihadist driven insurgency in the north and northeast of the country.

The bloody fighters of both MEND and "Western Education is Sinful" have written in letters too large and sanguine to be ignored that the government and its affiliated elites must work--fast--to both repair the economic inequities and the disparity in political power between elite and hoi polloi. The alternative is to fiddle while the country melts around them.

And, that will not be a pretty sight.

A Pretend Action For A Pretend Country

Here we go again. In an action for which no real justification was given, the Obama administration has decided to send weapons and ammunition to the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. The swag will be dispatched indirectly through African intermediaries so as to avoid offending regional "sensitivities."

The State Department took great pains to point out that this indirect assistance is being provided in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and does not represent any escalation of American involvement in the blood soaked sands of Somalia. Well, don't we all feel better knowing that the panjandrums of the "international community" will look kindly at this tid-bit of too-little-too-late assistance to a completely artificial government which does not fully control even a small enclave, a kind of "Green Zone" on the microscopic scale.

It has long been the Geek's view that the totality of the geographic expression called "Somalia" is not worth whatever might be today's American equivalent of Bismarck's famed "Pomeranian Grenadier." Somalia does not and never has had any organic reason to exist as a nation-state.

The entire concept of "Somalia" is a legacy of decisions made by long dead politicians in Europe. During the rush to de-colonization forty and more years ago, "Somalia" was cobbled together by the assorted artificers of Europe and the United Nations.

With flourishes of pens on pieces of parchment simulating paper, the rude assemblage of tribes and warlords was transformed to the dignity of nation-state status regardless of any structural or cultural realities. Without the slightest genuflection in the direction of the real world, the high minded of two generations ago crafted yet one more imitation country and stood back, quaffing champagne in commemoration of their broadminded nature and total disregard for the inevitable invocation of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The concatenation of distant, high minded "statesmen" and local men of great ambition lurched along for a couple of decades before disintegrating in the aftermath of the US sanctioned removal of an obnoxious dictator, Said Barre, in 1991. Two years later in a remarkably poorly conceived and pathetically executed "humanitarian relief" operation, the US provided an object lesson in how quickly it could be defeated.

Al-Qaeda, which was already represented in Somalia, took quick notice of how the US could be forced to retreat by the high visibility deaths of a couple of dozen Special Forces personnel. The rapidity of the US bugout was, shall we say, an emboldening sight for Osama bin Laden, et al.

Over the next fifteen or so years the road in Somalia was all down hill. An increasingly bloody hill at that. For a brief while the slide to total chaos was arrested by the Ethiopian army, which undertook a "stability oriented operation" with US support. But, even the Ethiopians could be worn out by the willingness of the Islamist jihadists to both die and kill.

The "international community" stuck its well-meaning fingers back into the Somalian grinder with the Djibouti Agreement between the fiction they had created called the Transitional Federal Government and an anti-government entity, The Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia. At the end of the talk-shake-and-grin session, the assembled Deep Thinkers carpentered an agreement which placed a one time head of the Islamist jihadist group, Al-Shabab, one Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, as the Chief of State and Head of Government.

It was hoped that this one time "extremist" turned present day "moderate" would cut the political ground out from under Al-Shabab or, failing that, some of the other proliferating Islamist jihadist groups. Of course, as with all the other efforts to fabricate something from nothing, the Djibouti Agreement didn't work out as planned.

Al-Shabab has gone from victory to victory. As the refugees flee, the nauseating thugs of Islamism have gained control of most of the rump of Somalia. (The rump is that part of the initial Somalia less the purportedly semi-autonomous regions of Puntland and Somaliland.)

Al-Shabab is given to the most extreme and barbaric interpretations of Sharia as evidenced most recently by the lopping off of the right hands and left feet of four young men convicted according to the Islamist understanding of due process for the crime of theft. (The reports of the public maimings are silent as to whether an anesthetic was used or if the surgical instrument--a machete--wielded by the hooded executioners was sterilised. Oh, well, it is all in the hands and will of Allah.)

When not lopping off limbs or stoning girls who have the bad judgement as to be raped, the Warriors of the Prophet's Will extend hospitality to Al-Qaeda and others of that ilk. As life has become more exciting and shorter in Afghanistan and the FATA of Pakistan, there has been an increasing flow of Al-Qaeda trigger-pullers and wannabe suicide bombers into Somalia.

It is that last fact and that alone which gives any justification for any American involvement no matter how indirect and minimal in the Somalian blood stew. Arguably, the aid announced today is too late by months, if not years, and too little by orders of magnitude to have any positive impact on the situation in Somalia.

As the pirates of the Somalian coast have demonstrated with a clarity which cannot be denied by anyone, Somalia has strategic importance for the national interests of the United States and many other countries. The cruciality of Somalia is enhanced by the deterioration of stability in Yemen.

The control of Somalia and Yemen by Al-Qaeda or similar Islamist jihadist groups brings with it the realistic possibility that the turbaned thugs would be well sited to interdict entrance to the Red Sea. To state that free transit of the Gulf of Aden is critical to the economic stability of the West as well as large portions of the Mideast is to belabor the obvious.

If the Obama administration is serious about protecting the national and strategic interests of the US, it is necessary to prevent the Islamists from gaining uncontested control of Somalia--and Yemen. The same may be said of Her Majesty's Governments and the other governments within the European Union. Tentative measures such as that announced today by the State Department are of little, if any, utility if the policy goal is assuring al-Qaeda and other Islamist entities are not to be given an immense advantage.

The US may be involved in two distant and frustrating wars. Even if we can say with a straight face that we have done all we can do in Iraq, the same cannot be averred concerning Afghanistan. Afghanistan is at the tipping point. The next twelve to eighteen months will determine whether or not the US and its coalition partners achieve the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not-losing." Next door in Pakistan the government may have achieved the initiative but it is a very long way from having bested Taliban in the struggle for authority.

It seems that the last thing the US needs is one more war. Certainly Somalia in and of itself is not worth a war. It is not worth a single American death. The idea of creating a functioning nation-state in Somalia is even more loonie tunes than the notion of Afghanistan as a liberal, pluralistic democracy.

The alternative to direct involvement by US and other Western forces in Somalia is the acceptance of an Islamist jihadist sanctuary on one of the most important sea lines of communication. The domination of Somalia by al-Shabab and its al-Qaeda "guests" will bring in its train an Islamist jihadist success in Yemen. Not only would the Gulf of Aden be held in jihadist jaws, the combination of Yemen and Somalia would give the Islamist jihadists a well positioned base for efforts directed against the totality of the Horn of Africa as well as the House of Sand (AKA Saudi Arabia.)

It may be that the Obama administration has awakened at long last to the threat presented by Islamist jihadists in the geographic expression called "Somalia." If that is the case, the response would be risable were it not so tragic in its potential consequences.

Mr Obama likes to see himself, present himself, as a conciliator, a (to use a cliche the Geek has seen too often in the past year or so) "builder of bridges." All of that is very nice, very comforting, very laudable. It is, unfortunately, quite out-to-lunch.

It is long past time for the Obama administration to do what the seemingly hyper-muscular Bush-Cheney administration never had the geopolitical good sense to do. It is time to take the war against Islamist jihadism back to the place where it started. Somalia.

Do it now. Or do it later. The brutal truth is that the Islamist jihadists must be confronted and killed wherever and whenever they appear. The longer the reality is ignored and the requirements of reality denied, the harder the task will be. The longer the US and the rest of the West wait, the higher the final butcher's bill will be.

It ain't pretty. But, the real world of passionate hates and fears never has been.

Somalis Feed Al-Shabab Some Raw Meat

File this one under the When Will They Ever Learn heading. Or, better, perhaps, put it under the category Do They Really, Really Want To Learn?

The "They" in this case is the pretend parliament of the pretend state, Somalia. In a move totally lacking in either surprise or rationality, the parliament of the Somalian Transitional National something or another unanimously passed the imposition of Sharia on the "country." The move was explained as was the earlier approval of the measure by the cabinet as a being a way of appeasing the Islamist jihadists of al-Shabab.

As has been said many times before, appeasement is like tossing raw meat to a wolf in the expectation that by so doing the wolf will become a vegetarian.

The Transitional National Something or Another (TNSoA) will have to do a powerful lot of appeasing. It effectively controls a few blocks in what was once downtown Mogadishu. The Islamist jihadists of al-Shabab have nearly all of southern and central Somalia under their gun--and version of Sharia.

Failing this, the fall-back position has been the assertion that by embracing Sharia as the basis of Somali law, moderate Islamists and Sufis will be mobilized to support the TNSoA.

Right. Fer sure, dudes.

These two positions were also invoked to justify the selection of Sheik Sharaf Sheik Ahmed as the capo d'tutti capi of the TNSoA. Sheik Ahmed is a "moderate" Islamist who was once the Grand Panjandrum of al-Shabab. His selection was presumed to be an appeasement of his one-time followers.

The current al-Shabab heavies made a collective rude gesture and kept on shooting, bombing and stoning women. A motley crew of Sufi and "moderate" Islamists gave rhetorical support to the Sheik. At least they used his selection as Maximum Leader to excuse self-interested shooting back at the al-Shabab gun thugs.

There is just one little problem with the expectations expressed by the TNSoA.

The appeasement won't work. That reality is inherent.

Sharia is susceptible to human interpretation as is any and every system of jurisprudance. The Sharia of the TNSoA may be indistinguishable in application from that of al-Shabab. The difference between Brand A and Brand B versions of Sharia will be nonexistent. In that case why not just let al-Shabab take over? At the least lives will be saved--for now.

In the event the TNSoA version of Sharia is less repressive in application, less oppressive in effect, then there is no reason to believe that the True Believers of al-Shabab will toss in the Koran and go back to whatever peaceful pursuits they followed before going on Allah's War. Right now al-Shabab has power. It is feared. Further, it is winning. Without a strong, strong inducement extending far beyond the mere adoption of Sharia, even all-the-way-and-then-some Sharia, there is no reason to give up the pleasures of killing, raping, stealing and generally raising merry hell in the finest traditions of Somali history.

As has been seen dramatically in Pakistan, appeasement comes a cropper from the very moment it is attempted. The government of Pakistan effectively surrendered to the Islamist jihadists of Swat. They have their much desired Sharia. No woman is safe. Neither is any man who doesn't want to grow a beard. Neither is any video store, Internet cafe or other business which is not fully Sharia approved.

Did that satisfy the Islamists?

Don't be silly. Of course not. Islamists are total in their goals. Swat was not and never could be enough to satisfy them. Now they want the entire country to go Sharia Heavy. Even were that to come to pass, the Islamists would have more demands. They would go from demand to demand until the last slice of the Pakistani salami disappeared down Islamist throats.

It is this reality which puts the lie to those who aver that the ending of Somali piracy can only happen when Somalia has a fully functioning and effective government capable of enforcing the law (of course, only that which is fully compliant with Sharia) and providing meaningful employment to the young men of Somalia. Not even the endorsement of this position by SecDef Gates makes it right.

Sharia allows piracy. The limitation is that the piracy must be directed against the ships of infidels and apostates. The ever-so-Muslim Ottoman Empire had no problems with such of its outlying territories as Tunis engaging in systematic, government sponsored and run piracy as long as the ships and crews seized and enslaved were not Islamic (and Istanbul got its share of the vigorish.)

Historically there have been few ways of making money in Somalia beyond subsistance agriculture and herding. One has been conducting trade in exotic African commodities such as ivory. A second has been dealing in slaves, particularly the transport of Africans to the Arabian states. The third was piracy.

While the trade in body parts from African animals has been reduced in recent years, it still exists. The same can be said regarding human trafficking. But, both of these avenues of enterprise can employ only a few.

Piracy is the big employer. The big money maker. This will not change when Somalia gets a government--if it ever does. Too much must not be made of the few months during which the Union of Islamic Courts functioned as a central government. While, as is to be expected, apologists for the UIC insist that it eradicated piracy and would do so again under the name of al-Shabab, the reality is that conditions in the transitory regime of the UIC were too chaotic for piracy to emerge on an industrial level as has been the case more recently.

The way piracy is stopped is to make it unprofitable compared to the risks involved. This means interdicting pirate boats before they can seize a target. It means killing pirates to either prevent seizures or to recapture ships from them. It means pursuing pirates wherever and whenever they are located. Killing them if they resist. Trying, convicting and jailing them if they don't. Above all, it means preventing ship owners or insurance firms from paying ransoms.

The French and the Americans have shown how it can be done. So also have the Dutch--to a limited extent. A Dutch commando unit (probably Dutch Marines, a completely professional and tough bunch as the Geek knows from personal experience) captured a pirate "mothership." They liberated the captive Yemeni crew. Then, after disarming the pirates, the Dutch cut them loose.

Dutch law gave no alternative. But, the Dutch may have another bite at the apple. Pirates have captured a dredger with a Dutch citizen as a member of the crew. The hijack took place over three hundred miles from Somalia. The dredger is under surveillance by US and other nations' assets.

Dutch law allows the arrest of pirates if one of the victims has Dutch citizenship. One can only hope that the Dutch warship, The Seven Provinces, is underway at flank speed to the present location of the captive dredge. And, that the commandos on board are good-for-go one more time.

The new breed of pirates must be taught the lesson finally learned by pirates of past centuries. Every man's hand is against them. The only sure reward for piracy is berth space in Davy Jones' Locker.

North Korea Ain't The Problem Not Europe Either

It's not even Iran. The real problem isn't even Afghanistan, not completely.

The real deal challenge is Pakistan. The Obama administration's Afpak strategy puts an onus on the Pakistani government and military to operate effectively as a partner in the mutual campaign against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces located in the FATA. Afpak envisions Pakistan as agreeing with the US contention that Taliban and akin Islamist jihadist groups constitute an existential threat to its existence.

The prospect of the government of Pakistan collapsing like a wall of sand before the Taliban tsunami shivers the timbers of the Obama ship of state. It should. But, that is not what is important.

What is important is the view from inside Pakistan. From the perspective of governmental officials, senior military commanders, Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence personnel, even from the worm level view of Pakistani troopies, townsmen and peasants in the hills. How do all these folk of varied potency and prominence see life? To what extent do they see an Islamist (as opposed to merely Islamic) Pakistan as a terminal condition, a threat to be avoided at all costs?

To put the matter slightly differently: Which is the greater existential threat in the eyes of Pakistanis great and small, Taliban and Sharia or India?

If, like a person well oriented as to time and place, you answered, "India," you are bang on.

The roots of the fear and loathing which are the emotional context of relations between India and Pakistan extend back centuries. Back to the time of the Mogul takeover of the Sub-continent. Back to the centuries of slow motion genocide committed by the Muslim overlords against the subjugated Hindu majority.

Regardless of the best efforts of that Saint of the High Minded, Gandhi, as the end of the Raj loomed near, the worm turned and Muslims died en masse. At the time of Partition the railroad tracks were (in some places quite literally and in others only figuratively) slick with Muslim blood.

Since then the struggle over Kashmir has assured that animosity has not lessened. Acting to exacerbate the loathing and hatred on the Pakistani side of the line is the fact that India has won the open wars which have been fought and seems little more than slightly inconvenienced or annoyed by the guerrilla and terror attacks in the disputed region.

India has the much larger population, economy and industrial base. It possesses strategic depth in comparison to Pakistan. Despite the various fissures which criss-cross the Indian human terrain, it has the necessary political and social cohesion to mount a successful war against Pakistan.

Such a war whether waged with or without nuclear weapons would be a major disaster for India.

For Pakistan a war if fought under current conditions would mean simply the end. Fini. El Finito. That is an existential matter to say the least.

In comparison the collapse of the current government would mean simply that Islam would reign supreme. Considering we Paks are all good Muslims, what's the problem? Sure, it would be an Islam of a particularly severe and totalistic nature, but what's wrong with that? Or so the typical Pakistani-on-the-street would ask.

It is true that Sharia Taliban style would prove onerous to some Pakistanis, particularly those of the educated, Western oriented elite. A Taliban controlled Pakistan would be repugnant to the West, to the US even if the Obama Disarmament Fairy whisked away the Pakistani nuclear weapons with a wave of a magic wand.

But (and here is the the humongous "but") this external view and reactions would not matter to the vast majority of the Pakistani population. Nor would it matter to the army and intelligence service of Pakistan.

Indeed, a Taliban/Sharia run Pakistan would constitute a strategic plus vis a vis India. It would provide for a more unified population acting under the strongest of imperatives--a linked national and religious identity. Beyond that, as mentioned in previous posts, a Taliban/Sharia based Pakistan would allow for the expansion of strategic depth into Afghanistan and perhaps beyond into at least some of the Central Asian Muslim majority republics. A Sharia base would provide a greater basis for full rapprochement with Iran.

Even this (necessarily) brief adumbration provides a sufficient architecture to hold a conclusion. The possibility, no, the strong probability of Pakistan "collapsing" in the next six to twelve months is not viewed with general alarm in Islamabad--or elsewhere in the country. Regardless of hectoring (or pleading) from Washington, the Pakistani majority whether civilian or military does not and will not see Taliban as an existential threat.

India alone holds that claim.

Yes, a nuclear weapons equipped, potential trans-national terrorist protecting, Taliban governed Pakistan is an unpleasant potential to contemplate from the perspective of Inside The Beltway. A Taliban dominated Pakistan with powerful tentacles extending into and possibly beyond Afghanistan may, but not necessarily will, present a threat to the US and its allies extending into the fog of the future.

However, there may not or is not much we can do about it.

Even if the government of Pakistan and its senior military commanders wake up tomorrow with a complete and absolute commitment to working in close partnership with the US in an effective counterinsurgency program directed against Taliban, there is no high (or perhaps even realistic) probability that such would prove effective in the short time available. Taliban has a firm hold on much of the FATA. By agreement with the government it runs Swat and Malakand. It has strong and growing support in the general population.

In short, the political/military struggle between Taliban and the government is Taliban's to lose.

And, they still have the potential to lose it. Or at least make conditions such that the government and senior military decide to join with the US developed program. Taliban may yet alienate enough of the not-yet-committed population so the government and military will refocus from combat on the plains of Punjab against India to the slog in the hills against the Islamist jihadists of Taliban.

Enough suicide bombings, enough armed assaults with fatalities among unarmed civilian or semi-civilian targets will do the job of shifting public opinion and support to the government. Enough beheadings of captured soldiers or paramilitary personnel will do the same among the snuffies in the ranks of the Pakistani security forces who are currently leaning toward Taliban. Enough floggings on video followed by telephone interviews with Taliban spokesmen saying "if we were in full control she would have been shot," will assure that the Western-leaning elite becomes monolithic in its support of the government against the Islamists.

The last best hope for the Obama Afpak strategy lies not with exhortations or with foreign aid directed to "counterinsurgency infrastructure support." It lies rather with the possibility, no, the probability that Taliban will act in ways which mobilize support to the government.

There is recent precedent for this hope. The Islamist jihadists of Iraq behaved in such barbaric ways as to push people to form and support the Awakening Councils and Concerned Local Citizens. In Afghanistan way back before 9/11 Taliban excesses were undermining their support in the country and strengthening the potency of the Northern Alliance. In Swat in just a few weeks Taliban has started to erode the original gratitude for peace, for a decrease in hanging corpses and midnight gunfire, which was initially felt by the residents.

There is a lesson in this. A lesson less for the Deep Thinkers of the Obama administration than for the government, military, intelligence personnel of Pakistan, even for the observant Muslims of the country. Here it is. Simple to say and easy to understand.

Sharia in the abstract has much to recommend it. In practice, particularly as implemented by Islamic jihadists such as Taliban, Sharia is the writ of the gun-thug, the rule of the zealot with sword and whip, the law of the psychopathic True Believe before whom all must cringe in absolute submission--or die.

Pathetically or not, the "Pak" portion of Afpak depends upon the Pakistanis awakening to the reality that Sharia in the hands of Taliban and those of similar Islamist jihadist belief may bring peace. The peace of silent fear. Or the graveyard.

International Women's Day--A Personal View

Three eighths of the Geek's genome is Apache. Following the death of the Geek's father during World War II, the Geek was raised by two women, one of whom, his grandmother, was more Apache than Anglo.

This piece of information is important because it describes the context which formed the Geek's view of women and gender relations. This, in turn, does much to make explicable the Geek's highly negative view of Islamists and some who may be observant Muslims but not Islamists who, nonetheless, distort and pervert the relation of man and woman under the color of religous belief.

The Apache, in common with many groups hard pressed by environment and enemies, pursued a life which demanded equality between the sexes. Life itself required the full effort and complete cooperation which breeds respect and equality of roles. Apache women were tough. They carried their end of the log without more than routine complaint. Apache men were tough. They killed enemies and nurtured their children with equal enthusiasm.

Core to the Apache definition of manhood was the stricture that one did not count coup against women. Women, even Anglo and Hispano women, were not to be killed. There was no glory in it. There was no credit in rape. There was no status to be found in violence against a woman.

Men protected. Men guarded. Men nurtured. They did not harm women. Not those of the enemy, even the Navajo. And, certainly not the women of their own group. Not their wives. Not their girlfriends. Not their daughters.

Apache women fought alongside their men. They were willing to die in place if that was what life demanded. But the willingness to fight and die if necessary meant they talked. They participated in what passed for political discourse in the constantly fluid anarchy which constituted Apache affairs. They were respected. They had mouths--and brains--to power those orifices.

This background which the Geek absorbed at a very early age is the reason that he finds the oft expressed contempt for women within Islam so incomprehensible. And, so reprehensible.

Even more than the Arab Muslim origin love affair with autocracy. Even more than the never-ending expressions of hatred which color so much of the rhetoric emanating from Muslim countries. Even more than the willingness, even eagerness, of jihadists to count coup, to kill, to maim, to harm non-combatants. More than each and every one of these the Geek finds the constant religiously justified denigration, oppression, harming and murdering of women an alien behavior which rouses not hatred but loathing within him.

There is no way the Geek can make an internal peace with an ideology which either encourages or, at the least does not firmly condemn, such anti-human actions as "honor killings." The Geek cannot but wonder at the warped mentality which would allow a man to kill the daughter created by his own sperm.

The Geek cannot but condemn a belief system as well as those who participate in it which allows, or at the least does not condemn in clear terms, the subjugation of women. The confining of women within the home. The denial of a woman's inherent right to develop her own abilities, her own personality, her own life.

Had Cochise or Geronimo tried to do such a thing, the women would have dealt with the matter quickly and a lot of white eyes would have lived a lot longer. Just a thought: sometimes interpersonal, intimate violence is justifiable--even laudable.

The Muslim men who toss acid in the faces of unveiled women are not men. They are mere imitations. The Muslim men in Somalia or Iran who bury women up to their necks and toss stones with lethal intent are not men. They are poor simulacra.

The Muslims who take pre-pubescent girls as wives just because Mohammad did are not men. They are child molesting sociopaths.

The Muslims who marry second, third or forth wives without gaining the permission of the first or who casually and without notification divorce a wife are not men. They are pathetic self-centered twerps.

The Muslims who murder daughters, wives, sisters in order to defend the "honor" of their family and name are not men. They are warped, twisted perversions of manhood who do not in any way merit the genitals they were born with.

It makes the reality no less abhorrent when the perpetrators of oppression, subjugation, exploitation, maiming and murder invoke a convenient interpretation of a carefully selected text from the Quran or Hadith to justify their action. This sort of theological cherry picking makes an evil reality worse.

It assures that all Muslims including all those observant ones who do not degrade, exploit or maim and murder women are branded with the same black label. Of course, as long as observant Muslims who deplore the evils done in the name of their religion keep silent, avert their eyes, shrug with defeat, they deserve the brand that is put on them.

Real men, the Geek learned in childhood, not only know right from wrong, they fight wrong wherever and whenever they meet it. No matter what the personal cost.

Muslims Demand UN Gag Order--And Get It!

The Egyptian representative to the UN Human Rights Council demanded and received a gag order from the Council's President, Doru Romulus Costea. The Egyptian with the support of other Islamic states, most importantly Iran and Pakistan, demanded that Islamic law, the Sharia, be exempt from any discussion at the Council's meetings. Costea agreed.

The cause of this latest invocation of the sacrosanct nature of a feature of Islam?

Two human rights groups wanted to remark on the incompatibility of sharia with the human rights of women.

This was enough to outrage the Egyptian. And the Pakistani. And the Iranian.

These men of such self-evidently gentle and fragile sensibilities are not bothered by violence directed against women--provided the violence, the stonings, the "honor killings," the domestic beatings, the spousal rape are in keeping with sharia.

The donnybrook which provoked the gag order is well covered on the following sites. Check them out. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C06%5C19%5Cstory_19-6-2008_pg7_6; http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/021461.php or from the folks who started it, http://www.iheu.org/node/3192

You might recall that a Pakistani National Assembly member has called for some sort of international death penalty for the hideous offense of mocking Mohammad. The Pakistani ambassadors have made threatening statements in both Denmark and Norway. The Pakistani government has sent a high level delegation to lean on the European Union. (All of these were covered in recent previous posts.)

Pakistan has now shown its commitment to protecting Islam by actually sentencing a man to death for blasphemy. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/18/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Blasphemy.php. Gotta be careful about dissin' the Prophet in Pak Land.

The Egyptian represents a country which is so given to assuring respect for all religions that the bookstores in Cairo and elsewhere are filled with the most vile anti-Judaism the perverted mind can create. (Again as explicated in a previous post.)

Affairs are so rotten at the old Human Rights Council that the outgoing Human Rights Commissioner, Louise Arbour (a former Canadian judge), warned that the actions of the Council threaten the "right of free expression." http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/18/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Blasphemy.php While the Arbour comment didn't get much traction in the msm it got some overseas. http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINL1856437520080618?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true.

How right the lady is!

She could have gone much further though. She could have reminded the world--and the Islamists--that the term "human" applies to all of us homo sapiens, female as well as male, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. She could have reminded the overly sensitive folks in Egypt, or Iran, or Pakistan, or even at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that there are basic rights that have not only been recognised by various UN covenants but have been accepted generally by the human race--outside of Islamists and other backward looking, fearful sorts.

It is absolutely wrong and completely unjustifiable to kill, genitally mutilate or beat women.

It is absolutely wrong and completely unjustifiable to commit suicide bombings of civilian targets.

Or, to slit the throats of journalists and others with whom you take exception.

Or, to stifle full, free and open inquiry, thought and expression.

If a conflict exists between the words of sharia and the rights of all humans--humans trump sharia each and every time.