Islam

Dr. Sanity quotes Dr. Muhammad Wahdan: “Reality is a mistake, we must rectify it.” Especially the reality of, well, the fertile woman.

Update: Further discussion of cliterectomies on Dean’s World and Neo-neocon.

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Jim Bennett makes points that should be made more often:

. . . [it’s] important to distinguish between Islam in general, radical Islamism, and even within Islam, the more extreme fundamentalist varieties such as Saudi Salafism from the interpretations to which the great majority of Muslims pertain. “Islam”, as a civilization and a phenomenon, is hardly about to collapse, as did the Soviet Union. Soviet “civilization”, as they used to pretentiously call it, was always a fraud, a thin veneer of idological nonsense laid over Russian civilization, which for all its problems is also one of the distinct civilizations of this planet. Once the fraud collapsed, Russian civilization re-emerged and is now trying to undo the damages done to it. Radical Islamism is another fraud, a mishmash of continental European fascism, scraps of anti-American ideologies picked up from the garbage heap of marxist and fascist propagandists, and an Islamism that is more flavoring and protective coloring than anything like a valid religion. It inspires young people to die for it; well, so did the mishmash of Odin-worship, absurd racial theorizing, and anti-Semitic resentment inspire some unfortunate German teenagers to go out and immolate themselves in the process of assaulting American tanks in 1945.

Jim’s post deserves to be read in full. There is too much broad-brushing Internet commentary about “Islam” that by failing to recognize the scope and complexity of intra-Islamic differences makes any policy prescriptions worthless. The non-Islamic West, if it is to understand how the Islamic world reached its present state of turbulence, must take account of such differences. If we are to defeat the Islamic fascists and imperialists it will also be crucial for us to have the support of other Muslims, and this will be difficult to gain if we won’t even bother to acknowledge the important divisions among them.

UPDATE: Commenters are taking me to task because they think that moderate Muslims aren’t really on our side or that excessive concern on our part about differences among Muslims is a drag on the war effort. I think, to the contrary, that our resources are at least as well spent on enlisting Muslim allies as they are on war fighting. The Islamists are in the minority in most of the Muslim world, which is why they generally rely on undemocratic means to gain and keep power. Any measure we can take to convince pro-western Muslims that we will support them against the Islamists makes it less likely that we will have to use direct military force.

I don’t believe the Koran has the same Ten Commandments as we see in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but I am given to believe that there are equivalent strictures in it. With that in mind, I would like to point out that the radical Islamofascists, in their supposed zeal and rage over one commandment, are violating at least two others. Let us suppose for the moment that the pictures of Mohammed violate the commandment against making and worshipping graven images. How are they protesting this?

By bearing false witness against their neighbors.

By inciting murder.

These protesters and their imams represent themselves as speaking authoritatively for Islam. If I were a Muslim, I could not think of a clearer case of blasphemy, and I would be far more furious with these murderous thugs than with any newspaper.

A point I have not seen mentioned in the discussion of the cartoon riots: the virulent ideology of Islamist extremism is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for violence.
As this discussion of meme propagation illustrates, the hearers must be inclined to act in certain ways. The message is the same in all cases, but its dissemination is not guaranteed.
There are at least 5 million Muslims in the US. Out of that number, there must be thousands who privately applaud the destruction and intimidation we have seen in the news. But none have attacked consulates or embassies. As far as I know, none have even staged public protests, certainly not with placards threatening our extermination.
Nor can this be attributed to isolation; communications technologies easily permit minorities of one in a thousand to link up and undertake coordinated efforts. Of the one million Muslims in California, a thousand could have taken to the streets of Sacramento with bloodcurdling slogans. But they didn’t.
And they won’t. Because they’ve got real jobs and real lives; because they can reasonably hope for attainment and enjoyment of the things that human beings find fulfilling: family, challenging and meaningful work, religion, prosperity … in coming to America, the evil seeds of extremism “fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.” Thank God.

UPDATE: There was a small, peaceful protest in Philadelphia yesterday morning.