veiled4allah

thank you, Colin Powell

No, not for endorsing Obama for president. For this:

And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

responding to the Pope's comments on Islam

As usual, Juan Cole is a voice of reason:

But let me just signal that what is most troubling of all is that the Pope gets several things about Islam wrong, just as a matter of fact. He notes that the text he discusses, a polemic against Islam by a Byzantine emperor, cites Qur'an 2:256: "There is no compulsion in religion." Benedict maintains that this is an early verse, when Muhammad was without power. His allegation is incorrect. Surah 2 is a Medinan surah revealed when Muhammad was already established as the leader of the city of Yathrib (later known as Medina or "the city" of the Prophet). The pope imagines that a young Muhammad in Mecca before 622 (lacking power) permitted freedom of conscience, but later in life ordered that his religion be spread by the sword. But since Surah 2 is in fact from the Medina period when Muhammad was in power, that theory does not hold water. In fact, the Qur'an at no point urges that religious faith be imposed on anyone by force. This is what it says about the religions: ' [2:62] Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians-- any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. ' See my comments On the Quran and peace.

And he has more to say as well, which is well worth your attention. Elsewhere, CAIR calls for dialogue:

The proper response to the Pope's inaccurate and divisive remarks is for Muslims and Catholics worldwide to increase dialogue and outreach efforts aimed at building better relations between Christianity and Islam. This unfortunate episode also offers an opportunity for Christians to learn more about Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic concept of jihad.

The CAIR statement also provides a good deal of information about Islam's actual teachings. Again, this is well worth your attention.

terrorism, fascism, Islamophobia... a strange mix indeed

A few points to ponder First: CAIR (video):

American Muslims have consistently condemned all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by individuals, groups or states. We repudiate anyone or any group that plans or carries out a terrorist act. We welcome early actions by law enforcement authorities against credible threats to the safety of the traveling public. The American Muslim community has always been dedicated to the protection of our national security. It is also important that our fellow Americans understand that Muslims are law-abiding citizens who should not be targeted or singled out because of their faith or national origin.

Hesham Hassaballa:

All Praise and Thanks is due to the Lord God Almighty that these alleged terrorists were caught. In a raid conducted yesterday, British authorities arrested 24 suspects who allegedly planned on boarding planes bound to the United States and explode them in mid-air. I am extremely happy this attack was thwarted. All Praise is due to God... ...If what is alleged against them is true, all I can say is "God is enough for me, and He is the best of those who handle affairs." These agents of Satan thought they could commit mass murder in a twisted effort to "defend Islam." Yet, the Hand of the Lord is longer and more powerful. If what is alleged against them is true, these partisans of Satan thought they were performing "jihad." They were doing nothing of the sort. They were planning to commit murder, and I am thankful to the Precious Lord that they were caught. There are, however, some important points regarding this story that must be pointed out. This whole investigation started with an anonymous tip, and that tip came from a concerned member of the Muslim community in Britain. Would you look at that! A Muslim, helping to fight terror! In fact, we Muslims have been fighting the good fight for a long time.

Second: Al-Muhajabah:

Some of the visions of Muslim extremists like Bin Laden are, if not technically fascist, fundamentally totalitarian... ...The term "Islamofascism" is thrown around quite freely in some quarters. There is such a thing, just as there are extremist interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism that call for the fight against anything "other". What's wrong with the term "Islamofascist" is when some people apply it to any Muslim who seeks to an integration of Islam and politics, even if that Muslim condemns Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Such a distortion inhibits debate. There are certain policies and certain beliefs that are fascist and rightly deserve to be called so, policies and beliefs that dehumamize those who are of a different religion or ethnic group and that promote violence against the other religion or ethnic group. But Islam is not itself a fascist ideology. In fact, Islam condemns all such hatred and violence.

Third: Gallup: Many Americans Harbor Strong Bias Against U.S. Muslims

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor. While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half -- 49% -- believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States. Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D.

SusanG at Daily Kos pulls all these strands together:

What happens when you yoke an entire religion to the word, "fascist?"... ...While there undeniably are pro-violent, extremist Muslims - as there are Christians and Jews and atheists - using language that encourages 40 percent of Americans to consider an entire religion's adherents as requiring special ID's seems a tad ... well, let's avoid a Godwin's law violation, shall we?... ...Got that, Mr. Bush? While the terror cells were comprised of Islamic extremists, other Muslims were the ones who saved the world from a terrorist strike that could have been the worst since 9/11.

P.S. Doesn't requiring a certain class of citizens to have "special IDs" sound like the real fascism around here?

Islamophobia on the rise

Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing:

As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll found that nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence... ...The survey also found that one in three Americans have heard prejudiced comments about Muslims lately. In a separate question, slightly more (43 percent) reported having heard negative remarks about Arabs. One in four Americans admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims, the same proportion that expressed some personal bias against Arabs.

Contrary to popular belief, Muslims are not silent. Look at all the outreach efforts just in the last month or so after the Danish cartoons issue. I've also traced a year of general outreach (inspired by a previous depressing poll), condemnations of terrorism, and even charitable giving (tsunami, Katrina, South Asia earthquake). But somehow, it doesn't seem to be making a dent. What do we need to do next? How can we be more effective? Right now I admit to feeling kind of hopeless about this. Added: Juan Cole comments and Arthur Silber looks at the larger context of propaganda.

reality check on UAE ports issue

I've nearly been despairing at the way even many liberals have responded to the scandal over Dubai Ports World. While there are serious issues worth discussing here, very little of the commentary I've seen is actually attempting to address those serious issues. Instead, much of the commentary seems to be little better than xenophobia and anti-Arab prejudice. It's especially painful to see the glee with which some liberals are piling on - even some that have more nuanced views think it's a good way to attack Bush. I've been collecting links to as many good articles and posts as I can find. Ones that actually take a look at the facts and address the real issues. Courtesy of del.icio.us's linkroll tool, here is a list of some things to read, updated in realtime:

at what stage has this indeed become a war on Islam?

There are two excellent posts on the story that American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of dead Taliban so as to desecrate them. Hesham Hassaballa:

That being said, it always gives me pause when I learn about incidents such as this one, or what happened at Abu Ghraib, or what is currently happening at Guantanamo Bay. Our actions speak louder than our words, and incidents such as these send the message to the rest of the Muslim World, however inaccurate, that America hates Islam, that America is fighting against Islam itself. What an unnerving message to send, indeed. So, what should be done about this? First, we must all wait for the facts to borne out of the investigations currently ongoing. But, more importantly, the Pentagon needs to examine itself and take a hard look at whether or not there is a deep-seated anti-Muslim sentiment that is pervasive among the troops. If there is, however disturbing that may be, the Pentagon has to work to eradicate it. We Americans pride ourselves at having open minds, at living in a society where people of all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds are able to live together in peace. This noble aspect of our culture and people must also be present among our troops - all of our troops - abroad. Our soldiers are the face of America to the rest of the world, and most especially the Muslim World. If they present an ugly face, no amount of diplomatic dispatches will be able to reverse the damage done to our reputation. And we will all be the worse off because of it.

Daniel Martin Varisco at Tabsir:

These reports are in the American media not because of a fuzzy tape sent to al-Jazeera, but due to video coverage by an Australian news crew. If true, no matter that there may have been stinking corpses that needed to be buried or at least wrapped in a body bag created for safe disposal of such things, here is yet another reminder that war brings out the stupid in people. Along with humiliating male prisoners by forcing them to pile naked on one another in sexual poses, these kinds of acts reinforce the overwhelming public opinion among Muslims worldwide that the American military is, at least now, part of the problem rather than the solution... ...There is an obvious difference between setting yourself on fire for a cause, foolish as that might seem to most people, and deliberately burning the body of someone whose religion teaches resurrection and demands a proper burial in the ground. If American soldiers set on fire the bodies of two dead Muslims as an example for other Muslims to stop resisting, there is no difference with Nazi tactics or the brutal retaliations of Saddam Hussein. The end, even if it is demanding an end to violence, does not justify such means. If anything, this act is the most effective recruitment for "terrorist" volunteers I can imagine.

Varisco's post in particular gets at some questions about what is really at issue here. Unfortunately, this story fits with too much we've heard of before. There is something very disturbingly wrong going on here.

yet another moderate Muslim leader banned from U.S.

Having already banned Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf Islam, the U.S. has now banned senior British Muslim cleric Zaki Badawi. Maybe the government was afraid he would do things like this:

Dr Badawi appeared with fellow British faith leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, on Sunday to deliver a joint statement condemning last week's "evil terrorist" attacks on London.

Update 7/19: The U.S government has apologized to Badawi and promised a visa, but has no explanation for what happened.

is it a war against Islam?

Is it a war against Islam? James Carroll looks back in history to shed light on the present:

To make sense of this dangerous condition, it can help to recall some of the forgotten or misremembered history that prepared for it, from the remote origins of the conflict to its manifestations in the not so distant past. As the story is usually told in Europe and America, the problem began when a jihad-driven army of ''infidel" Saracens, having brutalized Christians in the ''Holy Land," threatened ''Christendom" itself with conquests right into the heart of present-day France. Charles Martel is the hero of primal European romances because he defeated the Muslim army near Tours in 733. But for Martel, Edward Gibbon wrote, ''the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford." Across subsequent centuries, in the European memory, Islam posed the great threat to the emerging Christian order. But was that so? Lombards, Normans, Vikings, forces from the Slavic east, and violent contests among Christians themselves all wreaked havoc in Europe, even in Martel's time. As I learned from the historian Tomaz Mastnak, the threat from the Saracens was one among many. It was defined as transcendent only with the later Crusades, when Latin Christian armies set out to rescue that ''Holy Land" and roll back Islamic conquests. The crusading impulse presumed a demonizing of Saracens that was justified neither by the threat they actually posed nor by their treatment of Christians in Palestine. Indeed, chronicles of the earlier period take little or no notice of the religion of Saracens. Religious co-existence, famous in Iberia, was a mark of other lands conquered by Arabs. Europe's initiating ''holy war" with Islam, that is, was based on flawed intelligence, propaganda, and threat exaggeration. The poison flower of the Crusades, with their denigrations of distant cultures, was colonialism. The dark result of European imperial adventuring in the Muslim world was twofold: first, the usual exploitation of native peoples and resources, with attendant destruction of culture, and, second, the powerful reaction among Muslims and Arab populations against colonialism, a reaction that included an internal corrupting of Islamic traditions. The accidental wealth of oil in the Middle East made both external exploitation and internal corruption absolutely ruinous. The political fanaticism that has lately seized the Arab Islamic religious imagination (exemplified in Osama bin Laden) is rooted more in a defensive fending off of assault from ''the West" than in anything intrinsic to Islam. The American war on terror, striking the worst notes of the old imperial insult, only exacerbates this reactionary fanaticism (generating, for example, legions of suicide bombers). Having forgotten the deeper history, nervous Europeans seem also to have forgotten how large numbers of Muslims settled in the continent's cities in the first place. In the 1960s and 1970s, Turks, Arabs, and North Africans were welcomed as ''guest workers," taking up menial labor with the implicit understanding that they could never hope to be received as citizens of the nations that exploited them. The rank injustice of a system depending on a permanent underclass was bound to issue in political resistance, and now it has, but with a religious edge. The point is that this conflict has its origins more in ''the West" than in the House of Islam. The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking to bolster their own purposes, a habit of politicized paranoia that is masterfully continued by freaked-out leaders of post-9/11 America. They, too, like prelates, crusaders, conquistadors, and colonizers, have turned fear of Islam into a source of power. This history teaches that such self-serving projection can indeed result in the creation of an enemy ready and willing to make the nightmare real.

The last paragraph is really to the point, I think.

taking a stand against hate

It's heartening to read comments like the following. Juan Cole:

Too right, that Robertson should be a political pariah after this performance. I say we hold accountable every politician that shares a stage with him. I say we target the advertisers for his insidious television show for a nationwide boycott. I say we draw the line right here. In Robertson's warped little world, all Muslims are dangerous and all liberal Jews are proto-Communists. And if we don't speak out, his world is about to become our world. Robertson knows nothing about the Koran or Islam. He can cite some extremist medieval jurist such as Ibn Taymiyyah, but who couldn't come up with extreme statements by medieval Christian leaders? The Christians did give us the Inquisition, after all, not to mention the Crusades. As for Islam, here is what Koran 5:82 says about Christian-Muslim relations, after it describes tensions with pagans and Jews: "You will certainly find that the nearest in love to those who believe [the Muslims] are those who say: 'We are Christians.' This is because there are priests and monks among them and because they do not behave proudly." Somehow that one never gets quoted. "Nearest in love" is something we need to get back to. American Muslims are Americans. They have all the same rights and duties as all other Americans. Period. Likewise Jewish Americans. Robertson's religious bigotry flies directly in the face of Thomas Jefferson's thinking on religious liberty, which he dares sully by passing it through his bilious venomous lips.

John Aravosis:

Again, this is Nazi Germany territory. I called it several years ago. Said that first it was the gays, but other groups would next become the targets of the religious right. We yet again have a perfect opportunity for our liberal non-profits to jump in. Robertson and Sheldon just made themselves instant pariahs - no politician should ever meet, talk to, or do anything with any organization that has anything to do with either of these two ever again. Will the lefty organizations take advantage of this golden opportunity to finally destroy Robertson and Sheldon? Don't hold your breath. This is about more than just press releases, this is an action campaign now. Demanding an apology. Demanding Bush and any politician who's dealt with these men publicly distance themselves from them. Demand that Bush and all politicians reiterate their support for Muslim-Americans. Hell, I'd create a tolerance pledge that politicians are asked to sign that they will not discriminate in hiring and firing of Muslim-Americans. There are tons of things the civil rights groups and fight-the-right groups could do. But will they? Ha.

There is some seriously scary rhetoric coming out of the right wing these days. I think we're coming to a time when good people should no longer keep silent. Update: Other commentary at Beliefnet and the Christian Science Monitor.

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.