veiled4allah

when 'democracy' isn't

What is democracy if not a system that allows the people to express their free choice in who will represent or rule them? Democracy is a process rather than an outcome. A democratic process may produce what we consider an undesirable result, if that is what the people want. The problem for the U.S. is that in the Middle East, Islamist parties are very popular and would be likely to do well if not win a free election. Since that's an undesirable result, the U.S. has tended to not support democracy in the Middle East after all. This may be by supporting undemocratic regimes that keep Islamists in check and looking the other way from the fact that these countries are not democratic. Or it may be by supporting elections that are not truly free because major (Islamist) parties are not allowed to run. That's what looks to be happening in Egypt as it prepares to move towards more democracy.

When Egypt's strongman President Hosni Mubarak announced Feb. 26 that Egypt would, for the first time in its history, hold multi-candidate presidential elections, some in the international community hailed the move as courageous. Others, particularly in the United States, called it a resounding victory for the Bush administration's "forward strategy for freedom." It was neither... ...Nour's arrest was not unique. An estimated 15,000 Islamists languish in Egypt's jails, political prisoners who have no recourse to due process or a fair trial thanks to the now 24-year-old Emergency Laws governing the country. While the Bush administration has rightly expressed outrage over the imprisonment of Nour, a secularist, America has for decades remained silent about the Egyptian regime's consistent suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest and most influential opposition group. This despite the fact that the mainstream Islamist opposition long ago unequivocally committed itself to non-violent, peaceful participation in the country's political life. Those of us who work for political reform in the Arab world were heartened by President Bush's bold inaugural speech, in which he pledged to make the spread of democracy the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy. No longer, Bush assured us, would the United States excuse or tolerate dictatorship. He neglected to mention why it always had. Democratization in the Middle East has always presented a unique and confounding dilemma. While U.S. policymakers have the stated desire of promoting democracy, they have also aimed to curb the growing power of the Islamists -- the group that stands to gain most from the democratic atmosphere the United States is trying to foster in the region. The fear of the Islamists coming to power through democratic elections makes spreading democracy in the Arab world a less desirable objective. This dilemma is especially relevant in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood continues to be banned from electoral participation. Details of who will be able to run for president remain unclear, but it is unlikely that the Muslim Brotherhood will be allowed to contest the elections. Candidates will most likely need the endorsement of a legal political party and clearance by parliament, where Mubarak's ruling party commands more than 90 percent of the seats. If President Bush is serious about democracy -- and it appears that he is -- his administration must develop a more coherent stance toward the phenomenon of political Islam. Simply by virtue of their street legitimacy and mass support at the grass-roots level, the Islamists cannot be wished away. Moreover, it is impossible to imagine how Egypt could ever join the ranks of the world's true democracies if it fails to incorporate the political group that commands the largest electoral constituency in the country. Islamists, for their part, have proven their commitment to peaceful democratic participation in Morocco, Yemen, Kuwait and Jordan, where they are powerful forces in parliament. Islamists in Turkey, for example, have demonstrated their impressive ability to adapt to social and political realities, in the process becoming poster-boys for Islamic moderation. Turkey's Islamist politicians were once fiery advocates of disengagement with the West. Today, the ruling Islamic-leaning Justice and Development party is, in an ironic twist, the most pro-European Union, pro-American and pro-democratic political party in Turkish history. Jordan's experience is also worth noting -- a rare example of more than five decades of peaceful coexistence, and often close cooperation, between Islamists and the ostensibly secular Hashemite monarchy. The lesson here is clear. Free elections, the expansion of political space and other institutional mechanisms that encourage conflict resolution through peaceful means push Islamic parties to become more moderate in their goals and aims.

In general, I think that the Middle East tends to see America's message as "You can have elections - as long as you choose the candidates we want". That isn't really a free election, or democracy, and it makes us look hypocritical. If we want to develop better relations with the Middle East, we need to get past this hypocrisy and genuinely engage with Islamist groups. If people feel that they have a voice in the system and an opportunity to bring about change, they are less likely to turn to violence to achieve their aims.

threat of madrasas overblown

The World Bank Research Group has released a study (download link) saying that the fearmongering about the threat of madrasas (also spelled madrassahs; Islamic schools) is overblown. As a Reuters report says:

A World Bank-sponsored study has said enrolment in Pakistani madrassahs, or Islamic schools, that critics believe are misused by militants, has been exaggerated by the media and a U.S. 9/11 report. The working paper published this month on the World Bank Research Web site and reported by daily The News on Sunday criticises local and foreign media for exaggerated accounts of number of Islamic schools and their students in Pakistan... ...The study also expressed concern at the U.S. 9/11 Commission report into the attacks on U.S. cities in 2001, which said millions of families send their children to religious schools in Pakistan. "Striking, yet unsubstantiated claims such as 'millions of families ... send their children to religious schools' are of particular concern given the emphasis on identifying and curbing potential sources of extremism," it said. The report (www.econ.worldbank.org/working_papers/41363/) dispelled general perceptions that enrolment was on the rise saying: "We find no evidence of a dramatic increase in madrassah enrolment in recent years."... ...It said figures reported by international newspapers such as the Washington Post, saying there were 10 percent enrolment in madrassahs, and an estimate by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group of 33 percent were not correct. "It is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies," it said. The research, conducted by Jishu Das of the World Bank, Asim Ijaz Khawaja and Tristan Zajonc of the Harvard University and Tahir Andrabil of Pomona College, said "madrassahs account for less than 1 percent of all enrolment in the country"

What are these other "studies" doing, making up numbers out of thin air? If we're going to have a debate about an issue, it really helps to get the facts. Added: For a criticism of this study, see Juggling Figures, Ignoring Facts.

presented without further comment

James Wolcott:

Wearing surgical gloves, DCMediagirl extracts this latest choice morsel from Ann Coulter: "Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president." I wonder what would happen if a writer, say me, were to refer in a Vanity Fair column to "that old Jew Norman Podhoretz" or, naughtier still, "that old Jewess Lucianne Goldberg." Through the magic of exaggeration, I can just imagine the commotion. Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz would blow their respective lids, Michael Medved would wince with feigned pain, rightwing bloggers would demand that liberal bloggers disavow me and delink, I'd be lumped in with Justin Raimondo and Kurt Nimmo as prime examples of the New Antisemites, petitions would file in to Vanity Fair demanding that I be fired, or, for penance, be forced to tour Auschwitz with Prince Harry. Arabs of course are fair game on talk radio and the trash punditry, of which Ann Coulter is stringbean queen. Presumably Helen Thomas's very ancestry, about which I know nothing, makes her an incipient terrorist threat... ...Coulter's typically crass wisecrack is the cartoonish version of the hostile profiling of Arabs and Muslims being conducted all over the neoconservative right, as typified by Michelle Malkin's pioneer work to excuse the Japanese internment in order to justify the preemptive incarceration of Muslims and other suspicious elements. I'm sure this sort of thing doesn't fluster them in the slightest. Conservatism and sadism have become indivisible.

speaking the right language

Steve Gilliard points to an article in the New Republic with an interesting point to make about America's attempts to win hearts and minds in the Arab world: we're not speaking the right language:

But there's a problem with these initiatives. Just as you won't win over a crowd of Mexican villagers by speaking Latin, the United States can't sell democracy and reform to Arab populations by speaking to them in modern standard Arabic--and ignoring the Middle East's more widely understood vernacular languages. The challenge of winning hearts and minds among populations with high illiteracy rates is doubly complex in the case of the Arab world. Not only are 70 million Arabs unable to read or write; a much larger number of the region's 280 million people do not fully speak or understand the standardized Arabic language (known as "Fus'ha") that is used in broadcast news as well as official discourse and the academy. Fus'ha was introduced in schools across the region beginning about 90 years ago as a component of pan-Arab nationalism. It is a formal construct, gleaned from classical Arabic grammar and wholly consistent with Koranic syntax, designed to unite the 20-odd Arab countries culturally and politically. But nine decades later it unites, in effect, only the region's elites. Most everybody else prefers to speak a version of their country's vernacular. Ninety percent of Moroccans, for example, can only understand their unique brand of Arabic, which is heavily infused with Berber phonics and French vocabulary--testimony to the country's multiethnic and colonial history. The Moroccan language, in turn, is barely comprehensible to, say, Iraqis, whose unique idioms and usages reflect more ancient Mesopotamian tongues as well as the country's proximity to Turkey, Iran, and the Kurdish mountains. These vernaculars, derided by pan-Arab ideologues as "dialects," are in fact the region's major living languages. They are the contemporary Middle Eastern equivalent of Romance languages, which, of course, were all derived from Latin and were also once known as dialects--but now are known as Spanish, Italian, and French.

Linguists call this diglossia:

No discussion of Arabic is complete without at least a cursory discussion of diglossia. Charles Ferguson is credited with first using the term diglossia in an article which he wrote in 1959 called Diglossia. He identified four languages, Arabic, Greek, Haitian Creole and Swiss German as being prime examples of languages which fit into his definition of diglossia. Very simply stated, he said that diglossic speech communities have a High variety that is very prestigious and a Low variety with no official status which are in complementary distribution with each other, for instance the High variety might be used for literary discourse and the Low variety for ordinary conversation. His original definition of diglossia was that the two varieties which are in a diglossic relationship with each other are closely related, and therefore diglossia is not bilingualism. In his defining examples he points out that the High variety is always an acquired form, and that some educated native speakers might even deny that they ever use the Low variety. An important component of diglossia is that the speakers have the personal perception that the High variety is the "real" language and that the Low variety is "incorrect" usage. In Arabic people talk about the High variety as being "pure" Arabic and the dialects as being corrupt forms... ...From the 15th century on, most of the Arabic speaking world was under foreign domination, either Ottoman or European. The Ottomans produced all of their official documents in Turkish and their religious documents in Arabic. The French in Algeria, between 1830 and 1962, tried to actively suppress Arabic. The British in Egypt at one point tried to make the Egyptian dialect the official language. Literary Arabic stagnated during the Ottoman and colonial period. There are roughly four major dialect groups, a) Maghrebi (Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and western Libya), b) Egyptian (eastern Libya, Egypt and the Sudan), c) Levantine (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) and d) the Arabic of the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait). These categories tend to ignore the split that has always existed throughout the history of Arabic between Bedouin, Rural and Urban varieties For instance the speech of a Cairene is closer to the speech of a Damascene than it is to the speech of a Bedouin dweller of Egypt, even though I have placed Damascus and Cairo into different dialect categories. There are also some dialect isolates and relic dialects in Central Asia and in the Sahara desert. All of the dialects share features which do not exist in Classical Arabic. For Arabs they are mostly mutually intelligible with the exception that the Maghrebi dialects are generally unintelligible outside of the Maghreb. For non-Arabs who have limited exposure to the dialects the difference between dialects can be startling... ...The academic community in the US calls the modern form of Literary/Classical Arabic "Modern Standard Arabic" or MSA for short. An American who has only studied Modern Standard Arabic will be well received but will not understand much of the spoken discourse going on around him in an Arabic speaking country.

The New Republic article concludes:

Meanwhile the natural evolution of new media in Arab countries is bolstering the use of local vernacular all by itself. The proliferation of Arabic-language blogs means thousands of webpages are updated daily in the versions of Arabic spoken in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Tunis, and so on. Rather than fall behind this curve, the United States should adjust and adapt its strategy for reaching Arab audiences. We stand to gain considerably from speaking to the Middle East in languages that Arab majorities, not just elites, can understand.

I wonder how many people involved in the Bush Administration's efforts are even aware of this issue.

lessons of 1942 still relevant today

Remembering:

Feb. 19, 1942, was a day that changed the lives of Japanese Americans forever. I was a teenager growing up in Hawaii when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set into motion the removal and incarceration of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry in inland concentration camps. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, a tense atmosphere of suspicion and hysteria engulfed the West Coast and Hawaii. Decades of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian legislation and racism had already laid the foundation for the events that soon took place. We were rounded up without due process even though we had nothing to do with the attack. Our family was shipped to California, then to Arkansas and finally to Wyoming, where we spent the duration of the war. Upon our release from the camps, Japanese Americans began to pick up the pieces of wrecked lives, in the face of continuing racism and hostility. For years, we suppressed our anger, bitterness and shame about the unfair treatment we got. Today, many in the Japanese American community will attend the annual Day of Remembrance events in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, with the goal of teaching new generations the lessons from that painful time. Some of my fellow Americans are now being targeted because they are Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern. When the attacks of Sept. 11 happened, I mourned for the innocent lives that were lost. But I also began to identify and sympathize with the innocent Muslim Americans who immediately became victims of the same kind of stereotyping and scapegoating we faced 63 years ago. They too have become targets of suspicion, hate crimes, vandalism and violence, all in the name of patriotism and national security. Feb. 19 is a day I do not wish upon anyone else. Now, the lessons are not just about events in a distant past, but events as they are occurring on a daily basis.

Read the whole thing

Arabs: 'it's the foreign policy, stupid'

This has been said many times before, but it bears repeating. Arabs and Muslims don't "hate our freedoms". They hate our foreign policy:

A new regional study identifies Arab reactions to Western, and most specifically US, foreign policy in the region as being the single most important factor influencing Arab attitudes about ties with the West. The study also shows that contrary to what some observers, particularly in the US, have suggested, Arabs do not see "the West" in entirely negative terms. Conducted by the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan in collaboration with research centres in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, the survey shows that respondents do not perceive "the West" as a unified whole. Rather, they differentiate substantially between countries, particularly on politics. The Arab public views France much more positively than it does the United States and United Kingdom, primarily because there is a more positive perception of French political policies in the Middle East, the study shows. Entitled "Revisiting the Arab Street: Research From Within," the study also reveals that the Arabs value many of the attitudes of Western states and societies. "Significantly, and again in contrast to some popularly held Western views, Arab public opinion does not perceive the tension between the Arab world and the West in either religious or cultural terms. Despite views often expressed on Western talk shows or in popular books... there is little evidence that Arabs perceive the West as a Crusader force, intent on destroying the Islamic world in a battle over religious beliefs. Indeed, the Arab world sees the vast majority of Westerners, and those in the US in particular, as not strongly influenced by religious motives," an executive summary of the research states... ...According to the researchers, the evidence consistently emphasises that the Arab public disagrees with the foreign policies of the US and UK, and that it is these policies which are at the root of anti-American, and subsequently anti-Western, sentiments. The survey targeted attitudes regarding the US, UK and France, as well as attitudes regarding the place of Islam in politics, the definition of terrorism, and the importance of Arab satellite TV in the formation of regional opinions. "Findings indicate that viewing the Arab world as uniformly hostile towards the West, locked into an inevitable cultural clash, will lead policy makers in both East and West to miss important opportunities for improving relations. At the same time, such a simplification may also lead to underestimating the magnitude of the problem," according to the summary. The study warns that positive attitudes towards the US and UK will continue to plummet unless major changes in their foreign policies are implemented. It points specifically to attitudinal data from youth, university students and national sample populations that suggests that a process of radicalisation is taking place in those sectors, fuelled by widespread economic and political frustration, both domestically and regionally.

using Islam to help preserve the environment

Following up on previous posts Islamic environmentalism and Islam and the environment, here's an interesting story from the BBC: Eco-Islam hits Zanzibar fishermen.

The Koran is not widely known as a source of guidance on environmental and conservation issues, but that has not stopped one development organisation in Tanzania from using it to help conserve an island marine park. Fishing methods were destroying marine wildlife on the coral reef Religious leaders have been asked to promote conservation messages using the texts of the Koran - an approach which has proved a great deal more successful than government regulations... ...Once they realised that catches were falling dramatically, the non-governmental organisation Care International stepped in to persuade them to take better care of their environment - through a scheme based on Islamic principles. "People didn't experience environmental destruction in their areas until very recently," says Ali Thani, Care's project director. "And after what they are experiencing, they feel that Islamic environmental ethics might be better to create awareness in the community to protect their environment." These fishermen have learned the benefits of fishing in a sustainable manner without harming the island's bio-diversity... ...It is thought this is the first time the teachings of the Koran have been used in Tanzania to promote conservation. Local religious leaders like Shehe Mlekwa Lissani Bambi are now highlighting Islamic teachings about conservation in their sermons, though a certain amount of interpretation has been necessary, he says. "Everything we see in the world is in the Koran," he says. "We have not changed what is in it as this cannot be changed, but we are reading it with more knowledge. "We are the guardians of God's creation. He asks us to protect what he created and we can do this by looking after the environment."

An example of how Islamic teachings can help make the world a better place.

lame filler post

For lack of anything better to post :-/ check out the new redesigned Six Apart website. There's an entire section of the site devoted to my department. The nice ladies pictured there are some of my colleagues; however, it's not a picture of the entire Support team. There are four of us who are not pictured. The team is now seven strong and I think we'll be bringing another member on board in the coming months. When I started last fall I was the fourth employee in the Support department. As you can see, we're growing rapidly. I've been swamped with work since I posted here last, hence the lack of new content. I usually manage to post some articles to my clip blog so people can always go read those. I've actually been considering interspersing links to those entries with the entries here just so that people will go look at that blog. That's especially true when there's a lack of content here. If I were you, I would go there just to have something new to read. However, if people would rather look at the same old entries on this blog, I guess that's up to you. I understand it may not be to everybody's taste, but I get more hits on a daily basis to another blog that I haven't even updated in months than I do to a nice blog that's updated pretty much every day with new articles about current events. What's not to like? :p OK, enough whining from me. I'll try to be better about posting to this blog, inshallah. But if not you know what to do.

on the personal front

My sister is getting married this spring. :D My parents and I have suspected for awhile that this day would come ;) Congratulations, sis! :blob: In other news, and a bit late, it's been just over six months since I first started doing some work for Six Apart (the actual anniversary was in late January; I started in late July). At that time I was an independent contractor doing "piecework" for them, getting paid by each job that I completed. On September 1, I started working full time in another area for them, and on November 1, I was converted to be a regular employee. This is one of the best jobs I've ever had and I love the convenience of working from home, al-hamdulillah. Thank you, Six Apart. Plus, you make the great software that powers this and all my other blogs ;)

0.1% is not the same as 'widespread'

alt.muslim posts an analysis and response to a right-wing think tank's study arguing that hate material provided by the Saudi government "fills" American mosques. alt.muslim contributor Junaid M. Afeef says:

A new study entitled "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques" ... was recently released by the conservative watchdog organization Freedom House. Whether the study is accurate or not, it will certainly invite greater governmental scrutiny on the American-Muslim community. The stated purpose of the study is to "probe in detail the content of the Wahhabi ideology that the Saudi government has worked to propagate through books and other publications within [U.S.] borders." Its conclusions and recommendations are of vital concern to the American Muslim community. The American-Muslim leadership in particular needs to analyze the study and to respond quickly and effectively. If this study's conclusions are accurate, then the American-Muslim community needs to undertake a monumental overhaul of its institutions and the management of its resources and infrastructure. On the other hand, if there are errors, inaccuracies, methodological problems or additional relevant facts not considered in the study, then it behooves the American-Muslim leadership to correct the record. In either case, the failure to act by American-Muslims will be extremely deleterious to the community's safety and well-being... ...The study was done by Freedom House and its Center for Religious Freedom. Freedom House describes itself as a non-partisan, non-profit organization working to advance worldwide economic and political freedom. It is headquartered in New York City... ...The "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques" study was funded by two foundations. The first is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is a private grant-making organization founded in 1985... ...However, Mark O'Keefe of Newhouse News Service reported about the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation as follows: "Name a conservative idea - whether it's school vouchers, faith-based initiatives or the premise that there's a worldwide clash of civilizations - and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is apt to have its fingerprints on it." Furthermore, In June 2003 Salim Muwakkil of In These Times wrote that the "Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has been the economic fount for the neoconservative notions of global affairs now ascendant in the Bush administration" and that "[a]ccording to a report by Media Transparency, from 1995 to 2001 the Milwaukee-based foundation provided about $14.5 million to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the think tank most responsible for incubating and nourishing the ideas of the neocon movement." The JM Foundation is reported as the other source of funding. JM Foundation is headquartered in New York City. Its stated objective is to "encourage market-oriented public policy solutions; to enhance America's unique system of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, private property ownership, and voluntarism; and to strengthen American families." Many of JM Foundation's other grant recipients can also be found in People for the American Way's "Right Wing Watch" list... ...By its own admission the study is not a general survey of American mosques. In fact, it actually looked at only 15 mosques throughout the United States. No explanation has been proffered as to how these particular mosques were targeted... ...Some 200 books and publications were collected. However, only 57 of these books and publications were used in the study. All of the 57 books and publications used in this study were written in Arabic or English. In the case of the Arabic literature, the texts were translated into English. Interestingly, the translators identities are withheld. This is reportedly for safety considerations. The study includes a bibliography of the books and publications used... ...The study clearly shows that these 15 American mosques included some very hateful books in its libraries. However, to suggest that all American mosques are filled with such publications is a stretch. While the title does not technically use the phrase "All American Mosques", the implication is evident. The concern is that these "hate ideology" tracts are influencing American-Muslims. However, this is probably not likely since, as the study found, 90 percent of the books and publications found were written in Arabic. The majority of American-Muslims are not of Arab descent and certainly a majority of American-Muslims do not read and understand Arabic. So, even as these books sat on bookshelves in the 15 mosque libraries, very few people could actually read them. The study did not assess or evaluate the other books in the mosque libraries it investigated. Were there other books and publications that espoused views different from those spotlighted in the study? Afterall, in the "marketplace of ideas" the best way to counter hateful ideas is to inject speech that counters and challenges such ideas. Another issue is the frequency with which these mosque libraries were actually used. These issues should have been addressed. They were not, and that certainly has an impact on the credibility of the study's conclusions and recommendations. Another problem with this study is its uncritical inclusion of Hisham Kabbani and Stephen Schwartz's claims that 80 to 85 percent of American mosques are controlled by Wahabbis. This claim is unsubstantiated. As a matter of fact, there is good reason to believe that radical, salafist/wahabbi views represent a very small segment of the American-Muslim community. In the summer of 2004, several months prior to the release of the Freedom House study, the "Detroit Mosque Study" by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that only 6 percent of Detroit's mosque-attending population espoused salafist/wahabbi views. In fact, the study concluded that the vast majority of Ameican-Muslims eschew extremist views. ISPU's "Detroit Mosque Study" received significant media attention. It has even been favorably cited by the U.S. State Department. The "Detroit Mosque Study" certainly should have been considered by Freedom House in the interest of producing fair and balanced research. The last concern is one that should resonate with critics who find nefarious undercurrents in the alleged presence of Saudi money in American-Muslim institutions. This study was funded by foundations that have clear right wing agendas. The cited experts have a history of being inimical to Islam in general and American-Muslims in particular. The lack of balance puts significant portions of the study under a dubious light.

The thing that jumped out at me the most was that the survey only studied 15 mosques. According to this survey (PDF) there are 1,209 identified mosques in the United States. By my calcuation, 15 out of 1,209 is a little over 0.1%. In other words, 99.9% of American mosques either were not studied or did not contain such materials. How this study jumps from 0.1% of American mosques containing hate materials to its claim that American mosques are "filled" with such materials or that these materials are "widespread" is beyond me. Added: alt.muslim posts another article along the same lines as my own blog entry, again criticizing the sloppy methodology of the Freedom House study, which I frankly think is dishonest. Added 2: Ben Daniel, pastor of Foothill Presbyterian Church in San Jose, California, says that the Freedom House study misunderstands the role of libraries:

As the spiritual leader of a religious institution I am troubled by the report. I doubt that anything good can come of removing materials of any kind from libraries of any kind, and I am especially troubled when libraries in houses of worship and religious institutions are targeted for censorship. It simply cannot be assumed that a mosque the library of which has objectionable reading materials will become a cauldron of terror. That's not how libraries work. The presence of evangelical publications in the library of my church does not make me an evangelical. In fact, I would hate for my Christianity to be judged by the contents of my church's library. We have books that call homosexuality an abomination and abortion murder. We have a series of popular novels that forecast Jesus' return as a day when the Temple will be reestablished in Jerusalem and there will be a mass conversion of Jews. One book even claims that the drip paintings of Jackson Pollack and the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg are evidence of our society's perverse godlessness. I don't believe any of those things, nor do most of the people in my congregation, but the books remain on the shelves because even in houses of worship, libraries are meant to expand knowledge, not limit it.