The Edinburgh Festival – and how!

The Edinbugh Festival begins in Scotland’s capital city tomorrow and despite the fireworks of creativity that it always delivers, I think this year is going to be hostage to “Jihad! The Musical!” – “A madcap romp through the wacky world of international terrorism”.

It was written by an Old Etonian and a 25 year old female compatriot.

The Edinburgh Festival opens on tomorrow (Monday), and I await the reviews with interest. In the meantime, here is one of the songs, “I Wanna Be Like Osama” for your evening viewing pleasure.

The chap who plays Osmana is stardom bound, that’s for sure. I’ll let you know when the reviews come out.

‘The multicultural issue’

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s very vocal dissidence from Islam has served to polarize public opinion, to say the least, especially in Europe. While most people have a hard time arguing with her views when confronted with them, committed multiculturalists cannot help attacking her, or at least trying to put her credibility into doubt among audiences who might be receptive to her views.

signandsight has compiled the contributions to an especially heated debate on multiculturalism in general and Ayaan Hirsi Ali in particular. It started when French philosopher Pascal Bruckner defended Ali against attacks by Ian Burama, author of Murder in Amsterdam, as well as Timothy Garton Ash in his review of the book (only available to subscribers). Beyond addressing their specific points on Ali, he went on to attack misguided claims of moral equivalence between ‘Islamist fundamentalism and Enlightenment fundamentalism’ and he also compared multiculturalism with South African apartheid policies. While Ash, Burama and some others couldn’t leave that unanswered, and were in turn criticized by other participants.

You can find the whole debate here: The Multicultural Issue.

It should also be noted that the people at signandsight have their own biases, for their introduction to the debate begins with the sentence “Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali?” Some people who know what they are talking about aren’t agreeing that Tariq Ramadan can indeed be called a moderate (of course, the really bad news here might be that Ramadan really *is* a moderate, as Islamists go). They also let Ash and Burama have the last word, with “Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Buruma set[ting] Pascal Bruckner straight on a few last points.”

Then again, this kind of skewed stance might be necessary for there being any debate at all, for a strictly rational and impartial consideration of the issue would quickly lead to the conclusion that there really is nothing that could possibly justify Islamism as well as multiculturalism (you could argue that this is a kind of bias in itself, but I happen to hold the axiomatic view that our values are simply superior to theirs, and better them than us, should it ever come to that).

Fighting the War of Ideas Like a Real War

No one is doing this in any serious way, so far as I can tell, almost six years after 9/11. Future historians will be scathing.

A book length publication that looks very interesting, after a skim. The authors say the main, under-utilized weapon in the US arsenal against terrorism is ridicule.

See also: Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images and Ideas.

The report shows that media outlets and products created by Sunni insurgents, who are responsible for the majority of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq, and their supporters are undermining the authority of the Iraqi government, demonizing coalition forces, fomenting sectarian strife, glorifying terrorism, and perpetrating falsehoods that obscure the accounts of responsible journalists. Insurgent media seek to create an alternate reality to win hearts and minds, and they are having a considerable degree of success. … [However] insurgent media have not yet faced a serious challenge to their message on the Internet.

The insurgent media book was cited in Winning the Narrative by Bing West at the Small Wars Journal blog.

In in this article we learn many valuable Arab words. Our military, and government, and media should adopt these more accurate terms for terrorism. Perhaps in the blogosphere we can lead the way:

irhab (eer-HAB) — Arabic for terrorism, thus enabling us to call the al Qaeda-style killers irhabis, irhabists and irhabiyoun rather than the so-called “jihadis” and “jihadists” and “mujahideen” and “shahids” (martyrs) they badly want to be called. (Author’s lament: Here we are, almost six years into a life-and-death War on Terrorism, and most of us do not even know this basic Arabic for terrorism.)

I wish our soldiers well in their struggle against the irhabis in Anbar province.

“Is London’s future Islamic?”

Via Rand Simberg comes this essay by Michael Hodges.

I can’t tell if the Hodges piece is parody. If not, he reminds me of a leftist anti-Semitic high-school history teacher I had. He too used that “people of the book” line, to knock Christendom for being more hostile to Jews than Islam is and to explain away Muslim mistreatment of Jews.

In fact the Muslim record, particularly the recent Arab-Muslim record, only looks good in isolated cases or by comparison with the worst abuses of old Christendom. The modern Christian world is astonishingly tolerant by historical standards. Christian institutions have shrunk away from national government while radical Islam seeks to perpetuate Islam’s historical political totalism.

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Speaking to One Another and Speaking Out

A couple of days ago, I quoted Bruce Bawer on engagement. Since then, his words have rolled about in my head. This long spring, I started reconnecting with old gay friends; I’ve been struck by how many of them have become politicized, beset by BDS. In the sixties and seventies they were apolitical – as, most of the time, I was. Occasionally, I’d have a boyfriend who’d talk about politics, but then I’d retreat to my friends whose arguments were over the fictional and aesthetic.

Bush’s stance on gay marriage may irritate, but, frankly, this is the first White House in which a gay couple stood on the nominating platform with the presidential candidate, when the First Lady when asked if she would allow a gay couple in the White House answered, quite calmly, said she was sure many such couples had stayed there. But I must acknowledge my friends have a point. They feel something they know should be acknowledged: partnership, affection, duty. Besides, marriage has been tattered and torn. Some confuse weddings with marriage, rights with duties, conjugal responsibilities with conjugal visits, buying houses with raising children, keeping the core institution of society strong with being a social “couple.” But, then, so do a lot of heterosexuals.

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