Dhimmi Watch: Harvard Edition

Via Instapundit, this article about an effort to make Muslim Harvard students more "comfortable" in the gym. By instituting women-only gym hours. They're being instituted at the insistence of -- you guessed it -- the Harvard Islamic Society:

Harvard Islamic Society's Islamic Knowledge Committee officer Ola Aljawhary, a junior, said the women-only hours are being tested on a trial basis. The special gym hours will be analyzed over Spring Break to determine if they will continue, she said.

Aljawhary said that she does not believe that the women-only gym hours discriminate against men.

"These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms not because they don't want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way," she said.

Will we never stop giving in to Muslim demands? Gender integration in places like the gym is a part of Western Civilization's acceptence of gender equality. It's a good thing, damnit, something that makes us better than the Muslim world where they keep women wrapped up in "modest" attire, lest men be driven into a sexual frenzy at the sight of an exposed ankle. Our culture is better than theirs -- that's why we make the airplanes that they have to hijack. And it's worth fighting for, inch by inch if we must.

Maybe working out in a co-ed gym is "uncomfortable, awkward, or problematic" for some Harvard students. But that can be a useful part of getting an education, or adopting a new culture. If these women are so "modest" that they can't don a pair of sweatpants (no rules says that have to wear leotards) and work out, well maybe they ought to move to Saudi Arabia.

Where they will be more "comfortable."

Competitive Grovelling

I have remarked before that one aspect of religion that I find most puzzling is the apparent need that God has to be worshiped. This is part of the reason I find it difficult to believe: the notion that an entity capable of creating this entire universe gives a rat's ass about being worshiped strikes me as being inherently implausible. Think about it: what kind of entity creates sentient beings and then demands ritual grovelling at periodic intervals? In my experience with people, those who demand the most obsequious displays from others are the least worthy of them. If God really cares whether people worship a golden calf, he's a megalomaniac. As I said before, if I were God, I'd think it was funny. (Or I would take the golden calf to be a crude representation of Me, made by primitives incapable of understanding My true glory. It's the thought that counts, right?)

I realize that religious people seem to be happy, but honestly, it makes me wonder about people. Why, outside of a kinky sex scenario, would anybody find this sort of ritual self-abasement to be fulfilling? Kneeling, bowing, singing songs that say "I suck and you, invisible being, are great." What's the fun in that? I certainly can't prove this, but it strikes me that religious denominations that require less grovelling have to psychologically more healthy than those which tend to require more. So churches that don't do the whole kneeling thing are better than those that do. At least from this perspective.

Anyhow, as religions go, Islam is certainly very high on the we-require-grovelling scale. As Christopher Hitchens observed, Islam "invokes prostrate submission or 'surrender' as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain." Like Hitch, I want to push back, hard, against the deference and respect that Muslims demand -- which is why I support recreational Koran desecration.

In any case, those looking to explain how screwed-up and backward most of the Islamic world is might consider that the abnormally-high level of abject surrender demanded by Islam might be a part of the picture. P.Z. Myers recently linked to a story illustrating just how screwy Islam is. You know what a "zebibah" is? Well, I didn't, before reading this story. It's Arabic for "raisin," but it refers to a mark on the head caused by bashing one's head on the ground five times a day in prayer, as Muslims are wont to do. Having such a mark is now a status symbol among Egyptian Muslims -- "I'm more pious than you, because I bash my head harder."

Seriously, is it any wonder that Muslims blow themselves up for Allah and whip women for showing some ankle? They think God wants them to bash their heads on the ground five times a day. If you live in a universe run by such a sick deity, it is hardly surprising that you do sick things.

Tough Talkin' Tancredo

Andrew Sullivan doesn't like this Tom Tancredo advertisement:



He compares Tancredo to Rudy, characterizing this tactic as one favored by "small men in search of a balcony," his favorite tag for Rudy. Sorry, but this ad actually has a couple of things going for it. The first is honesty: it uses the phrase "Islamic terrorists," identifying the likely source and motivation for a major terrorist attack. Give Tancredo credit for that, at least.

The second is that Tancredo's proposed security measure -- better border security -- actually has some likelihood of achieving beneficial results. Unlike, say, harassing innocent photographers, or the idiotic security theater at airports, it is actually possible that potential terrorists might seep through our lax border security and commit terrorists acts.

Of course, there's no particular reason for likely Islamic terrorists to go to the trouble of swimming the Rio Grande, or risk heat stroke in the Arizona desert, when they can just get a student visa, like the 9/11 terrorists did. The Bush administration has done all sorts of really stupid things in response to the 9/11 attacks -- undermining the liberty of millions of Americans. Denying student visas to Saudi and Egyptian nationals would have been both simple and effective, and it would neither have expanded government power nor invaded the rights of Americans. So of course the Bush Administration didn't even consider it.

Islam's Woman Problem

Andrew Sullivan links to this article about statements by Nik Abdul Azia Nik Mat, described as "the spiritual leader of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party." It seems that Nik is worried about the emotional abuse of men:

“We always [hear about] the abuse of children and wives in households, which is easily perceived by the eye, but the emotional abuse of men cannot be seen,” Nik Abdul Aziz said. “Our prayers become unfocused and our sleep is often disturbed.”

So what is it that gets Malaysian men so riled up? Women who wear sexy clothes in public.

Just another fruitcake, you say? Well, maybe -- it is important to remember that he is a leader of the opposition party, and that it is therefore safe to assume that most Malaysians don't agree with him. It is certainly a mistake to view all Muslims as one undifferentiated mass. Still, in a country of about 25 million people, his Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party claims 800,000 members. That is an appreciable portion of the population. And Malaysia is a non-Arab Muslim country -- it's not Saudi Arabia.

It's not unusual for left-leaning secularists to warn against christian reconstructionists and dominion theology -- which is fair enough, since those people are nuts. But you know, the chances that the country which brought Jessica Alba to the world is going to devolve into a theocracy where sassing one's parents is punishable by death is pretty low.

Which is why, while American secularists ought to oppose what Andrew Sullivan calls "Christianists," we ought to recognize that views which are relegated to the lunatic fringe among western Christians are, in fact, quite mainstream in the Muslim world. So, for example, while every majority-Christian country has a legal code undoubtedly influenced by Christianity, none have adopted any form of "Biblical Law" which purports to apply Biblical commands directly. Yet a number of countries have, in form or another, adopted some form of Sharia law.

Islam is a real problem, and you don't have to take a "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim" view to recognize that fact. Not all Muslims are Islamists, but it is not clear, as of now, that Islam is compatible with a secular state that is tolerant of religious differences. And it might be a good idea for my atheist friends to stop obsessing about ultimately trivial stuff like moment of silence laws and worry more about a religion many of whose members actually do want theocracy.

Suck It, Jesus. You too, Mohammad

Ann Althouse links to this story and this CNN Video of Kathy Griffin saying "suck it Jesus" after winning the Emmy. Of course, professional offendee Bill Donahue is on TV being offended. I for one thought her comment was hilarious, and the reactions of the people being offended even more so. Anybody who isn't in the business of being offended understands the point of her joke: that it's absurd to think that God cares about who wins an Emmy. My favorite variation of this is the athletes who think God intervenes to change the outcome of sporting events. He couldn't be be bothered to save millions of people in the Holocaust and tens of millions in Communist Holocausts, but he sure cares about that Auburn/Alabama game!

As Professor Althouse observed, quite a few bloggers made the point that if Griffin had said "suck it Mohammad," a lot more would have taken umbrage. As Cassy Fiano over at Wizbang noted:

Let's just pretend for a second. Let's pretend we removed the name "Jesus" from her lovely little speech and let's insert the name "Mohammad".

Now let's imagine what the response would be. Griffin would be chastised as a bigot. CAIR would be calling for public apologies and tolerance seminars, and I'm sure we'd see Muslims rioting and calling for much more than a public apology.

Well, sure. And it's also true that many -- not all, but many -- of the liberal-minded folks who line up with Kathy Griffin now would be less tolerant of her comments if she had gone after Mohammed. This is partly because it's more physically dangerous to insult Muslims. Bill Donahue is an insufferable twit, but he is highly unlikely to actually kill anybody. But it is also also because much of the liberal self-image is about sticking up for victims, and many of our friends on the left stupidly people view Muslims as a victim group.

I am already on record as being in favor of Koran desecration. The freedom to criticize, ridicule, or even insult religion is absolutely central to both free speech and freedom of religion. We shouldn't give in to Christian Censorship Envy and start censoring anti-Christian speech more. Rather, we should all make a concerted effort to insult Mohammad on a regular basis and make Muslims accept it. The way to attack this disparity is by demanding tolerance for "suck it Mohammed" in addition to "suck it, Jesus."

The Griffin thing does serve a useful purpose in this project: it helps to educate Muslims that, while you can remonstrate with somebody who insults your religion, or express disagreement or condemnation, at the end of the day you don't get to kill them. So I applaud Griffin, and I encourage her to invite Mohammed to suck it after Jesus is done sucking.

Of course, not everybody feels the way I do. Some folks are just outraged by the whole thing. Here is my absolutely favorite outraged reaction, by blogger Aurvant. I don't think it's a parody, though of course I could be taken in:

I’m not sure but if it was possible for a person to carve out their own personal niche in Hell I’m pretty certain that Kathy Griffin just build herself a mansion of torment in that Dark Place where the Worn Never Dies and the Fire is Never Quenched.

Seriously, I couldn’t stand to hear it due to the skin crawling effect it sent down my spine. I’m hoping for some kind of divine retribution but her getting her spotlight stolen at the Emmy’s is a start.

Let me get this straight. This guy believes that God has his own personal torture chamber. Which is bad enough. In his torture chamber, God doesn't just torture the folks who really, really, really deserve it: the really evil people who killed millions like Hitler and Marx and Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot. Serial killers. Child molesters, Rapists. He also tortures people like Kathy Griffin, who do nothing other than tell Jesus to suck it. This blogger says he is "pretty certain" he is going to torture Griffin for all eternity for this. Not only that, he's actively "hoping" she gets this "divine retribution." He wants her to be tortured.

I previously blogged about Mother Teresa's fetish for suffering, but at least Mother T presumably thought that the people who were brought cloeser to God by dying wracked with pain would be free of the suffering in the afterlife. Sure, she wanted to increase human pain and misery here on Earth, but I see no reason she was the sort of sadist who relishes other people being tortured for all eternity. But this dude actually relishes the thought.

It is pretty hard to square the whole "God With a Torture Chamber" idea with the notion that this deity is kind and benevolent and loves us. Particularly if he casts people into the torture chamber for such trivial slights. I can imagine a deity who tortures people who insult him for all eternity, and I can see it might behoove one to worship such a powerful and sadistic entity. But such a being isn't an all-loving deity -- it's a supremely powerful deranged psychopath. You would worship such a God for the same reason you might obey an armed bank robber who just killed a guard: terror.

I will say this: any being who tortures Kathy Griffin for all eternity because she made an arguably-offensive comment isn't worthy of my worship. Or yours.

Let the Koran Desecration Begin!

P.Z. Myers links to this story about a 23-year-old guy arrested on "hate-crime" charges for throwing a Quran (aka "Koran") down the toilet at Pace University. He's been charged with "criminal mischief" and "aggravated harassment," both of which (according to the article) count as hate crimes.

Of course, Muslim students are in a tizzy, and Pace has caved to them:

Muslim activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.

The school was accused by Muslim students of not taking the incident seriously enough at first. Pace classified the first desecration of the holy book as an act of vandalism, but university officials later reversed themselves and referred the incident to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit.

Pace got it right the first time: tossing a book in the toilet is simple vandalism, because it can clog the toilet and cause a flood. If nothing else, some poor janitor has to remove the book from the tiolet. Vandals don't think about the person who has to clean up after them, and so deserve our animus.

However, the nature of the book being tossed in the toilet is immaterial. So long as it is his copy of the Q'ran, and not, say, one he stole from the library, the owner has the right to wipe his ass with the pages and flush them down the toilet, if he so chooses. Charging somebody with a "hate crime" because he desecrated the Quran is an example of punishing him for evil thoughts, pure and simple. This is America: we're allowed to hate Islam, or Christianity, or Muslims or Christian people in general, and we are allowed to express that hatred.

Pace University missed out on a real "teachable moment" here. Oh, not the doofus who flushed the books down the toilet -- he is surely not worthy of our attention. No, Pace missed out on an opportunity to teach its Muslim students. Rather than force its students to undergo "sensitity training," where they will undoubtedly be exposed to all sorts of multiculturalist blather and lies about the benevolence of the Religion of Peace, Pace should have offered a course in "First Amendment Sensitivity Training" to its Muslim students.

Hitchens on Saddam

Sully links to this article which characterized Saddam Husein as “perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser.”

Well, he had a vision, all right.

Literary Leftists

Via Normblog, this article by Terry Eagleton lamenting the decline of the British socialist writer. Eagleton makes a bit of an exception for the execrable Harold Pinter, but even he isn't totally safe from Eagleton's scorn: he characterizes Pinter as a "champagne socialist" and he admits that Pinter's political work is "artistically dreary." So he's a hypocrite and a boring writer, but his heart is in the right place. All is forgiven!

But at least according to Eagleton, British socialist writers are an endangered species, at least compared with prior epochs:

The uniqueness of the situation is worth underlining. When Britain emerged as an industrial capitalist state, it had Shelley to urge the cause of the poor, Blake to dream of a communist utopia, and Byron to scourge the corruptions of the ruling class. The great Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough was known as Comrade Clough for his unabashed support of the revolutionaries of 1848. One of the most revered voices of Victorian England, Thomas Carlyle, denounced a social order in which the cash nexus was all that held individuals together.

Carlyle was also an enthusiastic supporter of slavery, but I suppose Eagleton doesn't much care about something like that. In the 20th Century, the Eagleton pantheon includes literary leftists like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. And he gives a nod to Brecht and Sartre, despite the fact that, like many leftist intellectuals of their era, they looked the other way at Stalin's atrocities. (Some leftist literary figures will still apologize for Stalin, if they get riled up enough.) So supporters of slavery and mass murder are fine by Eagleton, so long as they are sufficiently anti-capitalist.

But now, well, while most literary types still lean left, they just don't stack up to the old guys.
Eagleton is particularly peeved at Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie, because both of have been outspoken enemies of political Islam. (In Rushdie's case, I suppose it might have something to do with the fatwah. Serious death threats tend to concentrate the mind.) Rushdie's knighthood really sticks in Eagleton's craw.

Fat Man on Keyboard makes an incisive comparison, from the perspective of the democratic left:

So what have these writers done to upset the eminent critic? Exactly what Orwell did; take a morally consistent line against totalitarianism. This is from Orwell’s essay, Why I Write; ‘Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as 1 understand it’. Note that these terms are not mutually exclusive but complementary. For Eagleton, opposition to the totalitarianism of our day automatically excludes anyone as being considered as a partisan of the democratic left.

Fair enough, from Fat Man's perspective. I suspect that, despite their current renegade status, both Hitchens and Rushdie would consider themselves to be men of the left, despite their current apostasy. (Unlike, say, David Horowtiz, who has made his break with the left explicit.)

And yet, while I admire Orwell immensely, he was wrong about the whole democratic socialism thing. During the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, the literary figures like Blake and Byron and even Carlyle can be excused for their error. Clearly, the political economists like John Stuart Mill who fought for things like free trade and private property, and, oh, incidentally for the abolution of slavery were the good guys in that debate. But the Industrial Revolution was indeed a new thing and the gains from it were not initially distributed as widely as one might have preferred. So yeah, you can see how people could be skeptical of the whole capitalism thing.

Likewise, in the immediate post-depression postwar era, a guy like George Orwell can be excused for thinking that some form of socialism was both inevitable and desirable. Don't get me wrong -- he was wrong and people like Hayek and Ayn Rand were right. But one can criticize Orwell's commitment to socialism while recognizing his other virtues. And, unlike people like Brecht and Sartre, he was never an apologist for Stalin.

But today it is simply not possible for a humane, intelligent, informed, compassionate individual to be an advocate of mass full-bore socialism. One can legitimately argue as to whether a mixed economy with significant market elements would be preferable to Laissez-faire free market capitalism. But the central lesson of the 20th century is that markets work. Both the empirical and theoretical evidence is now in, and the radical critics of capitalism were just plain wrong about nearly everything. To the extent that Orwell shared the widely-accepted critique of capitalism, he was wrong.

Perhaps Eagleton is right: perhaps the radical literary critic of the free market is indeed a dying breed. Let us hope so.

Root Causes of Terrorism

Ramesh Ponnuru over at The Corner points to this article by David Wessel on economist Alan Krueger's research which shows that poverty really and truly isn't a "root cause" of terrorism. Hey, these guys were doctors, and even under British socialized medicine, doctors ain't poor.

It turns out that the "poverty causes terrorism" meme is quite widespread, and also quite wrong:

"Each time we have one of these attacks and the backgrounds of the attackers are revealed, this should put to rest the myth that terrorists are attacking us because they are desperately poor," he says. "But this misconception doesn't die."

Less than a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush said, "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." A couple of months later, his wife, Laura, said, "Educated children are much more likely to embrace the values that defeat terror." Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn has argued, "The war on terrorism will not be won until we have come to grips with the problem of poverty, and thus the sources of discontent."

Sounds good, but turns out to be wrong. Krueger's research shows that terrorists are better-educated and wealthier than non-terrorists. Krueger's research shows that Palestinian suicide bombers are less likely to be from poor familes and more likely to have finished high school. And it also shows that terrorism rates aren't linked to worsening economic conditions.

So Krueger has exploded one theory. Does he have an alternative? He does, but I'm not sure it fits the facts, either:

Suppression of civil liberties and political rights, Mr. Krueger hypothesizes. "When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed," he says, "malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics."

It strikes me that Krueger is just replacing on pious hope with another. His theory makes sense when we're talking about guys from Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- you know, like the people who attacked the US on September 11. But how does it explain British Muslim terrorists? Britain is a political democracy, with free speech, open elections, and a full panoply of civil rights. British Muslims are no more rights-impoverished than they are economically impoverished. His new theory doesn't explain why British Muslims in particular seem willing to go out and kill random civilians. Or at least some of them do. (This point is made in some of the comments here.)

Let me propose one possible explanation. I don't have any actual evidence for these explanations, but hey, I'm a blogger in my PJs, so I don't need no stinkin' evidence.

I would call it the envy theory. These guys have a religion which tells them "you ought to be top dog." And what happens when they went to medical school? They studied advances made by people with names like Pasteur, Lister, Fleming and Salk. A quick glance at the list of Nobel Laureates in Medicine does not reveal even a single winner named Muhammad. Every single day these guys went to work, they were applying a set of techniques and principles developed by another culture. Every single day at work was a reminder of their own civilizational incompetence. Being technically-trained and well-educated just rubs in the message of how far behind West the Muslim World is.

Lady Jane's Run-In With the TSA

Megan McArdle, aka, Jane Galt had a bit of a run-in with airport security which she was nice enough to blog about. It seems that she wanted to bring home a few travel-sized containers of shampoo and such, but she had a bit of a snag: she hadn't acquired the requisite Ziploc bag, and the screeners made it clear: no baggie, no carry. As Megan noted, shampoo doesn't represent an independent security if it's not in a baggie -- the sole purpose of the Ziploc bag is to make it easier to inspect. Megan offered to put the offending soaps in some other sort of bag, but the screener apparently lacked the discretion or judgment to accept this offer, and so, her shampoo had to be abandoned.

Megan is offended by this rigid application of rules in a context in which they make no sense:

It's not that I particularly mind the loss of a travel size sleek 'n shine shampoo set. But I resent being treated to rule applications so blind that they zip past moronic and straight into The Kafka Zone. And I suspect that they are so moronically applied because we treat the TSA people like morons. How low does one's IQ have to be to indicate that one cannot comprehend the security purpose, and limits, of a Ziploc baggy? Whatever the cutoff, I am sure that this woman was above it. But hey, terrorism! So we create a bunch of silly rules, and then demand that our silly TSA people follow them blindly . . . and we all go merrily down the road to airport hell together.

Megan, we treat TSA screeners like morons because some of them are morons. Oh, not all of them, or even most. But, predictably, some of the people we hire for this (let's face it) really tedious job are going to be morons. Lest any screeners read this and offended, note the word "some." Some will be of ordinary intelligence; some may even be of above-average intelligence. But, predictably, some will be morons. I will say I know one airport screener, and, well, he's a pretty dull fellow. But the rest are probably smarter.

And so, rather than rely upon their discretion, intelligence, and judgment -- which, predictably, will be lacking in some cases -- we give them clear, rigid orders. Some of which, inevitably, will be stupid. But if you start letting them apply the rules in accordance with their understanding of the reason for each particular rule, well, somebody might make a stupid decision and some contraband might get through. Which could, theoretically, lead to trouble. (How much damage somebody could actually do with a pair of scissors in the post-9/11 world is a different issue.)

Moreover, if you allow screeners to apply their independent judgment, you will necessarily have a certain degree of disparity in how passengers are treated. Maybe one screener is smarter than another, more able to discern the purpose behind the Ziploc-bag rule. Maybe one is a jackbooted thug too dumb to land a job as a potbellied small-town Sheriff who applies every rule as rigidly as possible out of sheer sadistic glee. Maybe the guy next to him lacks the energy and just waves everybody by. But whatever the source of the differences, if you allow screeners latitude to exercise judgment, you will get differences.

In differences lie lawsuits. If it so happens that a tall, elfin, good-looking white female blogger is allowed to pass through security unhindered without the proper Ziploc bag, the Muslim fellow who got a different screener will inevitably complain when the screener insists on a proper baggie. Which will lead to a nasty discrimination lawsuit. Remember the flying Imams?

Also, in a purely practical sense, I don't want to be waiting in line behind the person who is rules-lawyering the TSA screener. For that matter, I don't want to be in the line when twenty people ahead of me are doing the rules-lawyering, many of them in a less sensible manner than Ms. McArdle.

Now, those who complain that our current regime is nothing more than "security theater" have a point. I think that the TSA should try to keep bombs, guns, and swords off of airplanes. If, in the post-9/11 world, somebody can hijack an airplane with box cutters or a pair of scissors, then we deserve to lose. But argue that with the idiots making the rules, not the idiots behind the x-ray machine. After all, as Megan observed, they don't have a choice.

Blasphemy!

Cathy Young has an interesting article in Reason about the College Republicans at San Francisco State University who were brought up on charges because they trampled upon paper "flags" of Hamas and Hezbollah. These flags contain Arabic script (which I think it ugly on a flag), and does it shock anybody to learn that the script includes the word "Allah." This didn't go over too well with some Muslim students, who objected to the trampling upon the name of Allah. Apparently believing this objection to be reasonable, some of the college Republicans invited an offended Muslim to scratch out the name of Allah with magic marker. I guess his theory was that scratching out the name with magic marker and then trampling wouldn't be offensive. Predictably, this did not satisfy other offended Muslims, the demonstration broke up without violence, and a disciplinary complaint was filed. San Francisco State has now cleared the College Republicans of all charges. Hooray!

But Cathy Young objects to one supposed defense of the students over at National Review Online. Brendon Conway conceded that "The objection to the trampling of the name of Allah is reasonable. Done willfully, it would be an act of religious intolerance."

Sure, trampling on the name of Allah demonstrates disdain for Islam. So?

This is America. People have the right to be disdainful, of Islam or any religion for that matter. They have the right to trample upon the name of Allah, to print the Koran on toilet paper and wipe their ass with it if they want. Now certain forms of religious intolerance are verboten -- for example, one is not allowed to kill Muslims, or beat them up, or even discriminate against them in employment.

But blasphemy? Hey, that's what freedom is about, man.

What Hath Woo Wrought?

Well, I have to say that, despite whatever humiliation that Britain and the United States may have suffered, I, for one, am happy that the caputred British sailors and Marines are home, safe and relatively uharmed. I'm certainly glad it didn't drag on forever like the Iranian Hostage Crisis I remember from my youth.

It now turns out, predictably, that the British sailors were "blindfolded, isolated in cold stone cells and tricked into fearing execution . . . ." Well, color me outraged -- and I am outraged that the Iranian government chose to parade them people on TV to further their propaganda.

And yet my degree of justifiable outrage is somewhat limited. You see, it appears that these people weren't subject to waterboarding, or forced to stand in stress positions for hours on end, or attacked with dogs, or subjected to sleep deprivation, or forced to form naked human pyramids.

People have always been abused -- undoubtedly prisoners have been mistreated by American troops in every war our country has ever fought. But the Bush Administration has made mistreatment of prisoners a matter of policy. Which makes it far more difficult for us to muster world opinion if our guys (or, in this case, our allies' guys) are mistreated. The damage that the Bush administration has done to our moral authority is simply incalculable.

Why Blame Bush?

Frequent commenter Society Girl wanted to know why I ended this post saying that I blamed George Bush.

Well, partly it was a joke. Some bloggers have made a sport out of blaming George W. Bush for things about which he has no possible degree of control or culpability.

At the same time, however, consider Bush's reaction in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 -- less than a week after the attack, he visits a mosque, kicks of his shoes, and enters the theological debate within Islam, proclaiming that "Islam is peace" and that "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam." And his administration followed through on these politically-correct bromides, making it a matter of policy to not take ethnicity or religion into account in airline security.

Now, maybe as a political matter, Bush had to say these things. But he gave every indication of actually believing them, and the administration made no concessions to reality. The reality is that, while the Bush view certainly has its adherents among Muslims, the opposing view is just as much a part of Islam. And the hard brutal reality is that youngish men who are Muslim are somewhat more likely to try to hijack an airplane than, say, Mormons.

But because he took such a relentlessly PC position, Bush made it clear that Republicans could be Mau-Maued on these issues. Hence the Flying Imams, and their apparent belief that they can provoke an incident and then play the victim.

The Clash of Civlizations

Crunchy Con Rod Dreher is re-reading Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations, and Dreher worries that perhaps the neo-cons are wrong, and Islam and the West really are incompatible after all. Part of what this is about is how people with fundamentally incompatible beliefs can live together -- or whether they can live together.

Recently, (kinda sorta) Catholic Andrew Sullivan and atheist Sam Harris have been having a series of exchanges about the grounds of religious belief. Now, my own view is that Harris has been mopping the floor with Andrew Sullivan, but at the same time, I could well be influenced by the fact that I agreed with Harris before the discussion even began. It seems pretty clear that Harris and Sullivan have views that are fundamentally irreconcilable. At the same time, however, Sullivan and Harris probably have a working agreement on the fundamental architecture of a secular liberal democratic state. They're willing to live in the same country governed by same basic rules and institutions. About religion, they may well disagree vociferously, but they are willing to agree to disagree.

And that is, at some level, the foundation of Western Civilization. People reach a point where their fundamental presuppositions are so different that persuasion and reason simply are not possible. When that happens, they can do one of two things: agree to disagree, or duke it out, using force and violence. The whole edifice of separation of church and state is an agreement to let people disagree about certain fundamental questions.

For many people, religion is about spiritual matters, or questions of how to live one's life. But others see religion as providing "the answer to everything" -- that is, they think that every legal and political institution must flow directly from a certain religious understanding. The Christian Reconstructionists have such views -- they think that literally everything flows from their Christian doctrine. Such views are, of course, fundamentally inconsistent with a secular liberal state.

Now here's the kicker, though. Christian Reconstructionists are scary sorts, but the country that gave us Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Yasmine Bleeth is not going to lapse into a Handmaid's Tale-style Christian theocracy. Really, it ain't. The Christian Reconstructionsists represent a tiny minority, even among right-wing bible-thumping Evangelical Christians.

The unfortunate fact, however, is that the Muslim equivalents of Christian Resconstructionists are pretty common. A politician in the United States who advocated "Biblical Law" would at a minimum be subjected to scorn and ridicule and would probably lose most elections, depending on how nutty he seemed. But there are whole countries governed by Sharia Law, and the view that it ought to be implemented is not considered "nutty" in the Muslim world. The view that every major social and legal institution should flow from religion is quite common among Muslims. Don't get me wrong -- there are undoubtedly Muslims out there who are happy to accept the agree-to-disagree paradigm of Western Civilization. But it's not a done deal.

And if large numbers of Muslims cannot accept the "agree to disagree" position, well, the 21st Century will be interesting indeed.

Flying Imams

I am shocked, shocked to learn that the so-called Flying Imams have filed suit against both U.S. Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission (in Minneapolis, where the incident took place). It's really quite amazing: these guys did everything they could, short of carrying signs saying "WE ARE TERRORISTS" to arouse suspicion:

The imams engaged in a variety of suspicious behaviors while boarding a US Airways flight, according to the airport police report. Some prayed loudly in the gate area, spoke angrily about the United States and Saddam, switched seats and sat in the 9/11 hijackers' configuration, and unnecessarily requested seatbelt extenders that could be used as weapons, according to witness reports and US Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader.

If these guys can't be kicked off the airplane and detained for questioning, then nobody who isn't yelling "This is a Hijacking!" can be taken in. Clearly, this whole thing was a stunt, designed to set up a lawsuit and create a group of ready-made "victims" who can then use their victim status as a bludgeon to weaken security where it comes to Muslims.

Of course, the Council of America Islamic Relations is on the case: demanding congressional hearings and legislation to "end racial profiling" against Muslims. As if we were engaged in racial profiling: if we were we wouldn't be searching small children and elderly women, even Al Gore!

So my question is this: why do The Flying Imams think that they can succeed in this stunt? And why is it even possible they will be right?

I blame George Bush.