aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem

Loretta Young (1913–2000)

2012-01-22T18:11:00.003-08:00

Loretta Young (1913–2000), a photo by M.LaFlaur on Flickr.

Loretta Young

2012-01-22T18:11:00.001-08:00

Loretta Young, a photo by Vintage-Stars on Flickr.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an Amer... by Erik Larson

2012-01-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

Very interesting part of the book is when New York Jews, joined by American League of Labor, have a mock trial, and condemn Hitler. Hitler and the Nazis do everything they can to stop the trial, and think FDR can order people not to do things.

Later in the same chapter, everyone wants FDR to openly, instead of the heavy diplomatic efforts, condemn Germany's treatment of Jews. They are too worried though, how it will look when Hitler points out that in America we were lynching blacks and treating them very poorly. Some Jewish groups also worry that to anger Hitler, would only increase his attacks on Jews, ( this was in 1934). America was also worried about Germany reneging on big debts they owed us.

Arab Spring Failure or Success

2012-01-22T10:32:00.000-08:00

Fareed

Netanyahu seems to endorse the Syrian regime's approach to political protest. During the uprising in Egypt, he wanted the U.S. to stubbornly cling to Hosni Mubarak--who had cooperated with Israel on mutual security issues--as millions of Egyptians gathered in public squares across the country to demand democracy. But leaving that aside, the evidence for Netanyahu's pessimism now is that parties advocating an Islamic approach to politics have won pluralities in Egypt's first post-Mubarak elections. None of these parties have abrogated civil liberties or persecuted minorities or limited women's rights. Each party has promised to abide by constitutional processes. This may all be a ruse, and they may prove less liberal over time--some surely will--but there is little current evidence from which to draw the sweeping conclusions that Netanyahu did.

In fact, the growth of democracy in the Middle East is under substantial threat, but not from Islamic democrats. The threat arises from the lingering authoritarian impulse of those in power--from ruling political parties and from the military. Obsessed with political Islam, we are ignoring the real danger on the ground.

Consider Egypt. While Netanyahu is fretting about Islamic parliamentarians, the Egyptian military has been busily consolidating its control. A few weeks ago, the government raided the offices of 10 civic organizations whose only mission is to promote democracy, the rule of law and civil rights. It accused a few of these groups, such as Freedom House and the International Republican Institute, of receiving funds from the U.S.

Egypt's military has used the traditional tools of authoritarian regimes to retain power--arrests, torture, military trials and scaremongering. In Iraq, six years after the country's first free elections, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is using more unusual methods to cement his grip on the country. He has ordered the arrests of leading politicians--including his own Vice President (who comes from another sect and political party)--centralized the army and intelligence services and inserted his own party, the Dawa, into most of the major organs of government. Many Iraqis believe that Maliki refused to cut a deal with Washington so that American troops would have to leave Iraq and leave him unconstrained.

The most complex case is Turkey, where the former head of the military, General Ilker Basbug--one of 60 officers accused of a conspiracy to topple the democratically elected government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan--was arrested last week. These arrests are cited as one more piece of evidence that Turkey is turning away from its secular roots and toward Islamic fundamentalism.

Prime Minister Erdogan speaks in blunt ways and is a populist. But he has done nothing--no changes in laws or practices--to warrant the charge that he is dismantling secularism. In fact, Erdogan's government has passed more economic and political reforms than any other Turkish government in history. It has made unprecedented concessions to Turkey's Kurdish minority. In its quest to secure European Union membership for Turkey, Erdogan's AK Party has passed hundreds of pieces of legislation over the past several decades to make Turkey's political system conform to the guidelines set out by the Brussels bureaucrats. And by the way, the Turkish military has, over the years, planned and executed four coups against elected governments, so it is not inconceivable that it had been planning a fifth.

If there is a worry regarding Turkey, it is not about political Islam but about the autocratic tendencies of a wildly popular politician. Turkey has a highly authoritarian legal system, a legacy of its military era. (A human rights group notes that about half the nation's prisoners have never been charged with crimes.) And Erdogan, having won his third thumping electoral victory, has used this system to harass opponents, including politicians, journalists and generals.

In other words, the danger in the Middle East is not that Islam corrupts but that power corrupts. A more open and democratic system is no panacea, but it will begin to create a more normal, modern politics for the region, one that will allow for populism and demagoguery but also provide greater accountability, transfers of power and media oversight. And that will move the Middle East forward, not back.

Christian Work in Iraq

2012-01-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

One of this book's many revelations is that "Abu Ghraib" is a misnomer because it suggests an isolated institution, when in fact a much larger network of prisons, run by poorly trained soldiers who frequently committed appalling abuses, deeply antagonized Iraqi society and drove men en masse into the insurgency.

Fiasco Thomas Ricks

What Does the NDAA really do?

2012-01-16T16:14:00.000-08:00

=
BEN WITTES

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/ndaa-faq-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/

some highlights

Section 1022 purports not merely to authorize but to require military custody for a subset of those who are subject to detention under Section 1021. In particular, it requires that the military hold “a covered person” pending disposition under the law of war if that person is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda” and is participating in an attack against the United States or its coalition partners. The president is allowed to waive this requirement for national security reasons. The provision exempts U.S. citizens entirely, and it applies to lawful permanent resident aliens for conduct within the United States to whatever extent the Constitution permits. It requires the administration to promulgate procedures to make sure its requirements do not interfere with basic law enforcement functions in counterterrorism cases. And it insists that “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other domestic law enforcement agency with regard to a covered person, regardless whether such covered person is held in military custody.”

Does the NDAA expand the government’s detention authority?

Nope. Under current law, the Obama administration claims the authority to detain:

persons that the President determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks. The President also has the authority to detain persons who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in aid of such enemy armed forces.

They are almost verbatim the same. The NDAA is really a codification in statute of the existing authority the administration claims. It puts Congress’s stamp of approval behind that claim for the first time, and that’s no small thing. But it does not–notwithstanding the widespread belief to the contrary–expand it. Nobody who is not subject to detention today will become so when the NDAA goes into effect.

Does the NDAA authorize the indefinite detention of citizens?

No, though it does not foreclose the possibility either. Congress ultimately included language in the NDAA expressly designed to leave this question untouched–that is, governed by pre-existing law, which as we explain below is unsettled on this question.

Does it mandate military detention of terrorist suspects?

Not really, though both supporters and critics seem quite sure that it does.

Is there anything in the NDAA about which human rights groups and civil libertarians ought to be pleased?

Yes, actually, there is. Section 1024 of the bill, as we’ve noted, requires that people subject to long-term military detention in circumstances not already subject to habeas corpus review–think the Detention Facility in Parwan, Afghanistan–henceforth shall have the right to a military lawyer and a proceeding before a military judge in order to contest the government’s factual basis for believing them to be subject to detention. This is an extraordinary and novel development. Detainees in Afghanistan currently have access to the Detainee Review Board process, which as described in this article already provide a relatively robust screening mechanism, particularly compared to years past. The DRB process does not include lawyers and judges, however, and human rights advocacy groups have criticized them on this ground. Requiring lawyers and judges to staff out the screening process is a pretty remarkable shift in the direction of accomodating those concerns.

What’s more, while human rights groups have decried the codification of detention authority, the codification does preclude certain interpretations of the AUMF that human rights groups hated. For example, while the difference between the D.C. Circuit’s embrace of the “purposefully and materially support” standard and the administration’s language seems pretty slight, the D.C. Circuit language did–which the NDAA now jettisons–keep critics up at night. And the D.C. Circuit famously flirted in one case with the notion that international law does not inform or limit detention authority under the AUMF–a position that the explicit references to the “law of war” in the NDAA seems to reject.

In short, the bill is a mixed bag–almost no matter what vantage point one examines it from.

Quote of the Day

2012-01-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem

"Remember to keep a clear head in difficult times."

Failure of Radical Islam

2012-01-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

The Return of the Old Middle East

How to Win at Balance-of-Power Politics
F. Gregory Gause III
March 12, 2009

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64844/f-gregory-gause-iii/the-return-of-the-old-middle-east

After the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini hoped that the Islamic Revolution would spread beyond Iran's borders. He had some luck in Lebanon -- where Iran created Hezbollah after the Israeli invasion of 1982 -- and elsewhere. But Khomeini's revolution had limited appeal, and ultimately, no Arab government fell to a sister revolution. Saddam, who played an important role in checking Iran's power, learned a similar lesson during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. He combined Arab nationalism with Islamism to try to create instability in Arab states that had joined the coalition against him. He failed.

Gitmo and Nuremberg

2012-01-12T16:34:00.000-08:00

Talk of the Nation [ Excerpts]

In Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, William Shawcross

http://www.wbur.org/npr/145046986/nuremberg-tribunals-and-justice-and-the-enemy

"Nonetheless, there were restrictions on ... those defendants' rights. And in all the debate about Guantanamo and military justice in the United States today, I think it's worth making the point that any Nazi in the dark at Nuremberg who was suddenly transported by time machine to Guantanamo would be astonished at the privileges and the access to human rights lawyers and the amazing efforts that were made on his behalf by ... the defense lawyers in Guantanamo. None of that existed in Nuremberg.

"It was a fair trial, but the defense lawyers were all Nazi lawyers who were seconded by the occupying authorities, the British and the Americans and the Russians and the French. But the law has gone a long ways since then. And the Guantanamo defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others, will have much, much more chance of their day in court than the Nazis did."

In the case of these trials in Guantanamo, I think the important thing to stress, again, is that anyone convicted in Guantanamo in a military tribunal, where, you're absolutely right, the defense lawyers and the judges are military men, anyone convicted there will still have the right of appeal through the federal criminal civil process. So I think that is a great safeguard.
Also, I think one should point out that in all the military trials that have taken place so far since 9/11, the defense lawyers assigned to the terrorists on trial, or the alleged terrorists on trial, have all been extremely diligent on behalf of their clients. They have not been craven. They have not been saying, I won't get promoted if I do my job properly.
On the contrary, the Supreme Court judgments that were reached against the government in the middle part of the last decade after 9/11, were all forced - taken all the way to the court, if you like, by military defense lawyers.

"The important thing about the military courts now is that anyone convicted in a military court in Guantanamo will have the right of appeal right up to the Supreme Court. So he has basically the same rights of appeal as anyone convicted in a federal court. So that, I think, is a vastly important safeguard. In Nuremberg, there were no rights of appeal whatsoever. The judgment of the tribunal was final.

"One should point out that in Nuremberg, of the 22 people who were on trial, I think it was 14 were sentenced to death, six or seven were given long imprisonments, and two or three were released. So justice, I think, was done fairly in Nuremberg, and I'm sure it'll be done here the same.

And in all the debate about Guantanamo and military justice in the United States today, I think it's worth making the point that any Nazi in the dark at Nuremberg who was suddenly transported by time machine to Guantanamo would be astonished at the privileges and the access to human rights lawyers and the amazing efforts that were made on his behalf by the military defendants – the defense lawyers in Guantanamo. None of that existed in Nuremberg.

And the chief American prosecutor - Robert Jackson's successor, if you like - is a remarkable American officer, General Mark Martins, who until recently has been administering the law of - the rule of law campaign in Afghanistan, trying to bring law through Afghan judges and prosecutors and defenders to Afghanistan – to villages in Afghanistan throughout the area controlled by the United States.
And he's a very fine man. And he's now been appointed chief prosecutor, as I say, direct successor to Justice Robert Jackson. It's a remarkable position to be in.
And I heard, actually, a lecture he gave in New York last week - last night - in which he spoke very eloquently to the New York Bar Association about the way in which justice will be done and be seen to be done in Guantanamo. And I think that he's a very fine prosecutor and that one can have confidence that in his hands the prosecutions will be carried out both robustly and judiciously and fairly.

"Justice delayed is often said to be justice denied. And it has been a very long time, too long a time ... And part of it is because of the way in which the first military courts set up by the Bush administration were overturned by the Supreme Court in the famous case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ...

"And then when Obama came into office, he originally said we will have no military commissions, no military trials whatsoever. And ... throughout his time as senator and ... campaigning for the presidency, he had condemned much of the Bush administration's policies during the war on terror, including the use of military tribunals.

"Now, however, [Obama] has come to the same position as President Bush on most of these issues and [has been] forced to accept the reality of military commissions in some cases — not in all. Most of the terrorist cases will probably still be carried out in federal courts, but there will be some cases, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which the administration has decided — rightly, I think — should be conducted in military commissions."

SHAWCROSS: Well, that's not quite correct. What happened, there was a trial of a man called Ghailani who was implicated in the terrible bombings - the al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998. And his trial took place last year in Manhattan. And he had been harshly interrogated.
And the judge - Judge Kaplan - in the case, said all the fruits of the poisonous tree - by which he meant the information that had come out as a result of his harsh interrogation - will not allowed in this case. And it was not allowed.
And nonetheless, he was, even in a federal court, convicted. In the case of - he wasn't convicted of mass murder, as he should've been, I believe, but he was convicted of destroying government buildings, which wasn't very satisfactory, has to be said, to the families of the victims.
Nonetheless, it was a conviction and the judge gave him the maximum sentence, quite rightly, as a result of it. in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, General Martins has made clear that he was, as we all know, he was subjected to enhanced interrogation...

SHAWCROSS: I think that the civilian courts have shown themselves to be able to deal with most of these cases now. And it has been difficult. There's - one of the cases that I quoted just now, Gailani, it was nearly lost. That government's case was nearly lost because one recalcitrant juror held out. He was called, you know, the famous phrase from movies and everything else, of a rogue juror. And one juror on that - in that jury wanted to find him, Gailani, not guilty on every charge.
And in the end, the compromise was that he was not - he was found not guilty of murdering several hundred people - mostly Africans it has to be said, not American citizens - who were killed in the bomb blasts in Kenya and Tanzania, but found guilty only of blowing up government - damaging government buildings, which is a bit of an absurd situation. And I think in the military court, he probably - though one doesn't know this - had been found guilty of the real crime that he was involved in, which was mass murder.

COLIN: Good morning. My concern with the commissions, no matter who the judges are, is that they are still judges, particularly military judges, who are career officers, whose incentives probably are not going to be inclined towards a finding of innocence or not guilty.
This is a problem with legitimacy that seems to be the same problem that the British government had with prosecuting IRA terrorists in the 1980s, that the suspects did not have the right to a jury trial. Are we really going to have a perception of legitimacy to the whole proceedings if detainees do not have the same right to a jury trial that U.S. citizens enjoy?
CONAN: In Northern Ireland, Williams Shawcross, the concern was that juries would be intimidated by the Irish Republican Army, among others, and thus the special courts that were set up there. But they did, indeed, come in for considerable criticism.
=

SHAWCROSS: You're absolutely right to bring it up, because these eight Nazi saboteurs, all of whom who'd lived in the United States in the 1930s and then gone back to Germany. And two of them were American citizens. They were landed by submarine on the coast of Long Island and Florida in 1942, and they were rounded up pretty quickly. Two of them actually surrendered and gave information on the others. But Roosevelt was absolutely furious and demanded a military commission and basically demanded execution.
He said to his attorney general, Francis Biddle, he said I want one thing clearly understood, Francis. I won't give them up. I won't hand them over to any U.S. marshal aimed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?
=

SHAWCROSS: Well, that's a difficult question. I'm not a great admirer of Noam Chomsky. I think his anti-Americanism is frankly grotesque. I have a very different view. I think the United States, despite as you say the support that we give you and we, the British, and all of Western Europe and all of the whole democratic world give to regimes like the Saudi regime because we are dependent upon oil, I, nonetheless, I think the United States has done immense good in the world in the last century.
Indeed, in 1945, you could say that the U.S. Army was the greatest human rights organization that the world had ever seen. It did release millions of people from tyranny and slavery. And I think that the U.S. Army continues to do that, and millions of people all over the world since 1945 have been freed by the U.S. Army and the blood and treasure spilt by Americans. And I think it's a tribute, which is not adequately and often enough pay to the United States.
It's very fashionable in the rest of the world to criticize America for its mistakes, which, of course, have been made and there were mistakes made following 9/11. But - there's no question about that. But there is no greater guarantee of peace and progress in the world than the United States, in my view.

NDAA Obama and Anthony Romero

2012-01-02T08:02:00.000-08:00

President Obama's action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Needless to say, Romero is a fool.

====
The following are some notes I highlighted from an article at opinionjuris

The Bad

Funds for Gitmo to close are gone.

Even so, enactment of section 1022, ambiguous and potentially toothless though it may be, is not without costs.

The Good

It is also worth emphasizing, however, that the Obama Administration, civil liberties and human rights organizations, and some members of Congress worked tirelessly and quite effectively to improve the final bill dramatically from the versions the Senate and (especially) the House had earlier passed. Because of those efforts, Subtitle D of the NDAA is not nearly as problematic as many critics have suggested. Indeed, the final bill actually contains a handful of provisions that improve upon current law, and one—which will be our focus here—that helps to resolve an important interpretive debate about whether the Executive’s detention authority under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) should be informed and limited by the laws of war.

What is more, those robust efforts to improve the legislation resulted in several provisions that will be distinct improvements vis-a-vis the status quo.
- being able to send Gitmo people home

Iranian Nuclear Power

2012-01-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

"The question of rights is fundamental to Shia Islam, the very founding of which was a struggle for rightfulness."

Homman Majd

The king of the mountains

2011-12-24T09:58:00.001-08:00

The king of the mountains, a photo by Ellinas_n* on Flickr.

Keystone XL

2011-12-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

"Rerouting the pipeline "represents a very substantial step forward," said Nebraska Farmers Union president John Hansen. "[But] from our standpoint, where we represent all landowners, we've sort of traded one set of landowners for another."

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20111121/nebraska-legislature-keystone-xl-pipeline-bills-sandhills-transcanada-speaker-flood

KHS CroMoList 2010 PearlWhite Frame

2011-11-11T10:02:00.001-08:00

KHS CroMoList 2010 PearlWhite Frame, a photo by KHS CroMolist on Flickr.

I'm getting one like this, only a 1994.

Le Soleil m'a fait de l'oeil...

2011-10-17T17:17:00.001-07:00

~~Le Soleil m'a fait de l'oeil...~~, a photo by Joélisa on Flickr.

french-swiss bourder

One day, I'll ride my bike through here.

July Belle - Εκατηχρώμ Colorization Process

2011-09-21T15:58:00.001-07:00

July Belle - Εκατηχρώμ Colorization Process, a photo by Euro Kouros on Flickr.

Clyde and Guns - Εκατηχρώμ Colorization Process

2011-09-21T15:57:00.001-07:00

Clyde and Guns - Εκατηχρώμ Colorization Process, a photo by Euro Kouros on Flickr.

M. Le Blanc (LOC)

2011-07-25T16:58:00.001-07:00

M. Le Blanc (LOC), a photo by The Library of Congress on Flickr.

There is a tide in the affairs of men.

2011-07-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

Brutus:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224

Larry P. Goodson on Afghan History

2011-07-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

The war deepened some powerful centrifugal forces within Afghan society and destroyed the government institution

deepened ethnic tensions , the rising of islamist ideology. and

1997 taliban ominous and fear around women. For first time author was approached by women on the street who were forced into begging or worse by harsh taliban policies that took away their livelihoods.

Afghanistan had become a place of petty, narrow minded intolerance.

Intolerance to degenerated into increasingly virulent ethnic hatred and cleansing.

soviets planted 30 million mines

2 million killed
50% casualties

15,000 Soviets died

soviets pumped out gas from shiberghan

education system completely disrupted

Afghanistan, a despeately underdevelped country attempting to modernize throughout the twentieth centurey, jinnally caught up to the modern world-in high-technoloty warfare. The result has ben the ruin of the country and society and very nearly the destruction of the people and their culture." page 5

money and its effect on afghnistan

2011-04-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/14/135412691/how-the-fall-troop-surge-changed-afghanistan

Mr. EXUM: You know, Rajiv is a hundred percent correct that you have to establish security. You have to establish a degree of control over the environment. And with all due respect to the caller, the idea that we can do good works, that we can build roads, that we can build schools, and that - this is going to somehow address drivers of conflict, that's unfortunately proven to be incorrect.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the money that we're putting into Afghanistan is distorting the conflict in Afghanistan and creating perverse incentives to where none of the actors - the insurgents, the government - has an interest in the United States leaving. What we have to do is establish some degree of security which then allows us to build up local Afghan forces, and that then sets the conditions for some sort of political settlement

Mr. EXUM: Look, the Pakistanis have been pursuing a pretty logical hygiene strategy since about 2005. As soon as we started to divert resources away from Afghanistan, the Pakistanis began to quite logically plan for a post-American, post-Western Afghanistan, and that meant reconstituting a lot of the proxy groups that would represent Pakistan's interests in a post-Western Afghanistan.

MUM

2010-12-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

"THE QUETTA SPHINX" LOCALLY MORE WELL KNOWN AS THE "MUM" (QUETTA BALOCHISTAN)
Originally uploaded by quettabalochistan

The sphinx was a war memorial for the fallen British soldiers of the Anglo/Afghan Wars of the late 19th century.

It was much feard locally as a sort of demon who devoured anyone passing there alone at night.

Kipling

"I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India and two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and the men consulted them.

"See here!" said Dravot, his thumb on the map. "Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know the road. We was there with Robert's Army. We'll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get among the hills--fourteen thousand feet--fifteen thousand --it will be cold work there, but it don't look very far on the map."

I handed him Wood on the "Sources of the Oxus." Carnehan was deep in the "Encyclopaedia."

"They're a mixed lot," said Dravot, reflectively; "and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they'll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H'mm!"

"But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's the file of the 'United Services' Institute.' Read what Bellew says."

"Blow Bellew!" said Carnehan. "Dan, they're a stinkin' lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they're related to us English."

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai proved that they were complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without detection.

But, beyond, they would find death-- certain and awful death.

Becket

2010-12-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

King Henry II: Am I the strongest or am I not?
Thomas a Becket: You are today, but one must never drive one's enemy to despair; it makes him strong. Gentleness is better politics, it saps virility. A good occupational force must never crush. It must corrupt.

King Henry II: He's read books, you know, it's amazing. He's drunk and wenched his way through London but he's thinking all the time

Thomas a Becket: Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it!

Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

2010-11-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

I am a Muslim American woman born and raised in Toledo, Ohio by two very loving

Indian Muslim parents. My sister, brother, and I were raised in a middle-class American

home. We went to Mosque on Sundays, attended Sunday school classes, and prayed the

community prayer with our community of Pakistanis, Lebanese, and Syrian Muslims.

When I was in high school, our Mosque president was a woman, who did not wear a

headscarf. And it may come as a surprise to some of you, but for the entirety of my life

men and women have prayed side by side at our Mosque, and both can enter the prayer

hall using the same door.

My parents are both very religious people, but they express their faith in different ways.

My father emphasizes the devotional, and he tends to spend his time praying and reciting

the Koran, whereas my mother emphasized the more constructive approach.

(parents) They lived out the Koranic

commandments that there is no compulsion in religion, and also that God said, in the

Koran, “I made you into many tribes so that you might know one another.” And as such,

they enrolled me and my siblings in a Hebrew day school for nine years, where we

learned Hebrew, read the Torah, and prayed in a synagogue almost every morning. They

always wanted us to learn about other faiths, and they always made sure that we knew the

difference, though, between Islam and Judaism. But they also made sure we also

respected our Jewish sisters and brothers in faith.

My story is just one of 1.5 billion stories in some 57 countries. The Muslim population is

one of the most diverse and eclectic in the world. We are Sunnis, we are Shias, and even

in the Shia tradition there are Zaidis, Ismailis, Ismasheries [spelled phonetically]. There

are numerous madhhabs, or schools of thought, and Sufi mystic orders. Like Christians

and Jews, Muslims can be observant, nonobservant, performist, humanist, secularist,

extremist, mainstream, and there are even some Muslims who consider themselves

culturally Muslims but are actually atheists.

Koran and the Hadith have verses in them that point to peace and justice and love. But

there are other verses that are violent, are about violence and about violence against

specific people. So how then do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory verses?

How then do we decide whether Islam is a religion of peace? The only way to answer

that question is to take an honest look at the people who practice the faith and how they

interpret it. According to Gallup's ground breaking study on what a billion Muslims

think, 93 percent of Muslims around the world are peaceful, mainstream Muslims. Seven

percent are what Gallup determines as politically radicalized. And within that seven

percent, there's a smaller percent that has succumbed to the use of violence. Any percent

is too much. But we must remember that the violent minority of a minority are motivated

by politics, not religion. As Gallup concluded, what distinguishes the politically

radicalized Muslims from the mainstream Muslims is their politics, not their piety.

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, further confirmed this in his

book, Dying to Win, in which he came to the same conclusion, that the actions of

terrorists are politically motivated, not through religion. The Tamil Tigers, for example,

which are predominantly a Hindu group, used and pioneered the use of suicide bombing,

did so far secessionist reasons, not for religious goals.

Our opponents would have you believe that there is a take all, no winner clash between

Islam and the West, and that Muslims who try to balance their Western values and Islam

arrive at a state of cognitive dissonance and are left either mute or crazy by this internal

struggle.

There are some horrifically violent criminals out there who twist our

faith to justify their hate and their violence. But I am here to tell you they don't speak for

Islam. Mohammad Hamdani [spelled phonetically], a first responder who died on 9/11,

speaks for Islam. Hassan Askari, a Brooklyn Muslim who stepped in on the subway and

saved a complete stranger who was being physically attacked because he was Jewish, he

speaks for Islam. Zainab Salbi, through her organization Women for Women

International, has assisted forever a quarter of a million women across the world. She

speaks for Islam. And the entire Muslim community of India, who, when the authorities

asked them to take the militants who attacked Mumbai in 2008, said resoundingly and

collectively no. We will not let the terrorists be buried with us.

The media and those who profit from the narrative of Islam versus the West are never

going to tell you my story or the stories of these Muslims who constitute the vast majority

of Muslims around the world. But just because you may not hear us, it doesn't mean

we're not speaking out. And just because you may not see us on TV, it doesn't mean we

don't exist. If you vote against the motion, I would argue you're voting against the

moderate voices of mainstream Islam and telling the terrorists that you agree with their

version. I urge to you vote for the motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Zeba Khan.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a very, very well-known dissident, born in Somalia, fled to the

Netherlands, where she was a member of the parliament, the Dutch parliament. Now she

is in the United States, once again on a case of asylum because -- Ayaan?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Well, because I had to live with -- basically, I was afraid for my life.

And I find it a pity that Zeba Khan did not mention that concept, which is central to

Islam's conquests and Islam's success. The founder of Islam, Mohammad, in his lifetime,

conducted 65 campaigns of war that were all successful. And that militaristic history of

Islam is well documented. Just go Google it. And if you don't find it on Google, go to all

those former empires that were conquered.

The combination of a history of empire, of conquest, also leaves a legacy behind. And

that legacy is the thrusting together of people of different ethnicities, languages, et cetera.

So even if that empire declines, the likelihood, the likelihood of conflict, of war, is

probable. It's high, especially where there is a fault line. That's where Samuel

Huntington had a point. That history of militarism, combined with the legacy of empire,

those two points alone belie the motion tonight, that Islam is a religion of peace, but that's

not all. When empires decline, those who are defeated, and the Muslim Empire declined,

those who are defeated sometimes themselves in a state of victimhood. That state of

victimhood is exploited by the leadership or the self-appointed leaders of Islam. And

what do you see? You see a number of people, and I concede it's a minority, who believe

that Islam is under siege.

A mentality of victimhood tells those who are conquered, who are vanquished, that the

problem was caused by external powers, not by us, and that systematic denial within

Islam after the 19th Century to blame only outsiders exempts Islam from blame, from the

explanation what went wrong. Yes, it was external, yes, Muslims were humiliated, yes,

they were conquered, yes, they were colonized, but how much was also because of the

flaws of Islam?

When the West went into its scientific revolution, why wasn't it Muslims? Muslims were the first scientists, arithmetic, logic, et

cetera.

Why were they left behind?

That combination of a status of victimhood and the absolutism -- the demand that you

can never revise or reflect on the Koran, that you can never, never ever refute what

Mohammad said, you can only follow his example -- that absolutism combined with that

status of victimhood also enlarges the likelihood of conflict, and those two combined like

the other two factors like --

Maajid Nawaz

he's born in the U.K., was in Egypt and tortured for being a radical, and something

happened to you in prison, 180-degree turn--in one sentence, what was it?

Because there are people like me who spent 13 years of our lives working to create

hatred. I used to believe that Islam is not a religion of peace. In fact, I used to believe

that Islam mandates war. I used to believe and propagate across the world in more than

three countries that Islam mandates war and mandates the creation of a state that will

have at its heart of its foreign policy a policy to create conquest. I called it jihad. I

believed that Islam was not a religion of peace because I adopted an ideology at 16 years

old and stuck with that until my imprisonment and after I was released from prison when

I was 28 years old.

By that time I had established this ideology in Pakistan and in Denmark and contributed

to its growth in Egypt.

But I learned in prison two things. One was what I’m appealing to you today and that

was when people hold out an olive branch, it does work. People I’d considered my

enemy, people I’d considered the enemy of my people, Amnesty International with their

advocation of human rights that I believed was a tool to colonize the minds of Muslims,

adopted me as a prisoner of conscience. And by handing me that olive branch, I recognized that there was goodness in the world and there were people who, regardless of

the provocation they find in the world today, are still willing to fight for peace and are

still willing to redefine the debate.

And that’s what I’m asking you to do here tonight. Because by redefining the debate, and

by insisting that they would not allow my hatred to define for them the way in which they

viewed me, they changed my heart. I went on and took that message forward and helped

establish the world’s first counter-extremism think tank in the West, then went into

Pakistan to establish the first nationwide counter-extremism movement in Pakistan. And

as I said, we had 10,000 supporters before we’d even launched, of Muslims in Pakistan

who are helping us to redefine the debate, who are not allowing the minority of

extremists to hijack Islam, to monopolize its definition, and then define for us all that this

should be a world of war, not just Islam as a religion of war, but as you heard from our

co-panelists on the other side, all religions should be religions of war in their minds.

And the second thing that happened to me in prison that helped me change my mind was

that I had the opportunity -- I won’t say good fortune because it wasn’t really that -- but

the opportunity to mix with some of the leading founding jihadists of the world inside an

Egyptian prison, ironically built by the British. And what I learned was that I had been

extremely arrogant. I had suffered from the failure that I saw here tonight in my

respected colleagues’ presentation. I had failed to contextualize history, and when I was

this young and angry 24-year-old who, yes, had grievances, who’d been stabbed at

multiple times growing up on the streets of Essex, who had been falsely arrested on a

number of occasions because of racial profiling -- I was a very angry young man. But I

went to men in prison, who had been in prison since I was three years old, and then I met

them at 24, and they had abandoned their previous terrorist ideologies and I had the

arrogance to try and convince them that they had sold out, that they didn’t understand that

true Islam was a religion of war. And they said to me, “Young lad, come and sit down.

We’ll tell you a story or two.”

And over the course of the four years, after having learned Arabic, after having

memorized half of the Koran, after having studied the theology, though myself not being

too much of a religious man, I came to the conclusion that Islam had been hijacked and

abused and politicized by something that I now refer to as Islamism, the modern ideology

that owes more to post World War I European fascism than it does to the traditions of

Islam. And these former jihadists, among them the assassins of Egypt's former president,

Anwar Sadat, who was killed in 1981, they had come to the same conclusions.

Douglas Murray:

But I was coming earlier from my own fallen empire, going back to my friend and

colleague Ayaan's comments earlier. And I was reading the paper, as I'm sure all of you

were doing all yesterday. Maajid finished his comments by talking about the importance

of changing paradigms. I'm not sure it is about paradigms. I think it's about facts. Here

are some facts. In my newspaper earlier, the Times Square Bomber, of course, a man just

up the road from here, who tried to kill thousands of people, only, by the way, didn't

manage it because he set the 24-hour timing device at 7:00 a.m. instead of 7:00 p.m.,

1900 hours was what it was meant to be.

If he had to have got that bit right, thousands of New Yorkers would have died earlier this

year, again. I see further in the paper 12 suspects arrested in France in a network trying

to recruit people to go in to fight American and other troops in Afghanistan. I turn to

another page of the newspaper, in the city I had just flown off from this morning, a

Muslim London Underground worker who was -- had written to his wife who was off to -

- tried to become a martyr for Allah, as he said. He said, “More than anything I wish

Allah to grant me martyrdom."

And the best way I can do this in the very short time I have, is

say you have three Islams, Islam one, two, and three. Islam one, the Koran and the life of

Mohammad and the Hadith. Islam two, the tradition of the Sharia. Islam three, what

Muslims do now. The first of those things, Islam, the Koran and so on, is bad. It is bad.

There is a lot of violence in it. And what's worse, the peaceful verses are superseded by

the violent verses. The violent verses also sadly are more numerous in number. Then

you've got the life of Mohammad. Again, a bad man, a very bad man. It happens to be

that not a great role model if you look at it. Takes child brides, abuses a small girl,

multiple wives, himself a warrior, himself a war criminal, himself beheads Jews. This, I

would have thought, would be a signal of not great peacefulness.

Then you've got the tradition of the Sharia, again, not great peacefulness, still no schools

of Sharia that people in this hall would want to submit to.

And thirdly, what Muslims do now. Thankfully, there is some hope in that one, because

most Muslims, thank goodness -- I almost said thank God, but -- old habits die-hard.

Most Muslims don't do what those texts say because they exercise their judgment as

moral beings without having to refer to defunct holy books.

Anyhow, I wish they spoke for Islam. It would be great. But

the fact is that tonight, the organizers of this debate asked a number of clerics, none of

them which showed, specifically they wouldn't show and debate against Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Myself, I don't think they cared. But no, it's very interesting. They will not debate. Time

and again, Muslims -- the actual leaders of your religion will not debate this. And you

are left with people -- now here, the reasons why of course is the leaders of the religion

show such terrible -- terrible lessons. It is not a small thing. It's not as if it were a detail.

It's not like a wacky Florida pastor. But you've got the largest Sunni state of Saudi

Arabia, the most important Sunni state in the world, the most extraordinary closed prison

of a society. It's not a detail. It's not a one-off nut job. The Shiite republic of Iran is

what it is, led by the people it's led by. That is not an accident. It's not a detail.

The thing that worries me is that although tonight we hear from the panelists here about

how Islam is a religion of peace, the fact is that the people who are making the decisions

in the religion, the people who are preaching the religion, the heads of that religion,

people like Sheikh Qaradawi who broadcasts anti-Semitic -- the most appalling filth

every week on the main network, that is the faith that is speaking for you guys. I wish

that Zeba, you were on every week on Al Jazeera, but you are not. Qaradawi is. The

problem is that Islam is an unstable component, as a religion, an unstable component. A

thousand years ago, the Mustabalites [spelled phonetically] tried to reform the religion.

They were wiped out. The fact is that Islam is many things, many, many things. But to

say it's a religion of peace is nonsense. It's to ignore

AHA

When Mohammad, the founder of the religion, called out to all Muslims -- and that's how

he won most of his wars, by saying, "I have been ordered and all believing men have

been ordered to attack and kill and maim anyone unless they testify, unless all men testify

to the fact that Allah is the one and only, Mohammad is his messenger, my father

disobeys that. Well, Maajid Nawaz tried to obey that first and then stopped obeying it.

But the fact that that scripture is there and that history of militarism is there belies the

motion that Islam is a religion of peace.

The point I want to make is Islam is a religion, when you take the scripture, that can be

employed to wage war, and Islam as a civilization has known periods of peace, but you

cannot -- if you pay attention to that history, pay attention to the evidence -- continue to

say that Islam is a religion of peace. No monotheistic religion is a religion of peace. No

monotheistic religion is only a religion of war. It is both. But in Islam, and that's why

we are debating it in the 21st Century, there are more occurrences of violence and war

and strife and subjection of women then there are in other religions.

Maajid Nawaz:

So, forgive me for the assumption, Ayaan, it's a pleasure to be on the panel with you, by

the way, but forgive me for the assumption, but do you speak Arabic? Have you studied

Arabic grammar? And I'm asking for a purpose, which if you do give me the chance to

explain I will, but that first of all just let me ask you that question.

19:32:58

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

I don't speak it as well as you do. And I want to know where the question is going before

I give a full answer to that.

[laughter]

If you want me to quote the Koran I will.

Maajid Nawaz:

You may be surprised, I don't know if I speak well or not, but the reason I'm asking is

that you just quoted hadith, of the prophet, and you actually really did exaggerate what he

said, and I'll quote to you the exact hadith in Arabic and then translate it. Now, what you

quoted was --

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

It’s chapter 2, 191 to 193 --

Maajid Nawaz:

[quotes hadith in Arabic] Now, what you quoted and in the translation was, "Kill and

maim," and you went on and explained. Now actually [Arabic] means "to fight." Now,

I'm not saying that that's a good Hadith. What I'm saying is when we're translating, let's

try and be accurate.

And that brings me to the point, and that is that I just thought of a word to describe this,

and it's just come to me so thank you because I want to use it forever onwards, and that is

suspended intelligence. There's a tendency when discussing Islam to suspend the tools

that we have learned and studied, and that you have studied as well, that we use to

analyze every other piece of scripture and literature in the world, and that is that we

recognize that texts do not speak for themselves. We recognize that when we interpret

scriptures and texts and books and poetry that they are contextualized, that we have

methodologies to approach them, when we're reading Shakespeare, when we're reading

anything. We recognize that there's a way to interpret text and there are schools of

thought and differences over how to approach texts.

Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd., #710

Arlington, VA 22203

It’s actually the Koran, but go on.

Maajid Nawaz:

Well, Hadith is [unintelligible] --

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

It’s chapter 2, 191 to 193 --

John Donvan:

Wait, just [unintelligible] --