Author: Mick Hartley

More on the Ayaan Hirsi Ali controversy, and accusations of “enlightenment fundamentalism” (via b&w):

Ayaan Hirsi Ali positioned herself explicitly in the tradition of eastern European dissidents who turned away from communism in favour of Western freedom. “The dissidents of Islamism, like those of communism, possess neither atomic bombs nor other weapons. We don’t set embassies and flags on fire. We are too few and too dispersed to become anything significant as a collective. The only thing we have are our thoughts and the only thing we demand is the chance to express ourselves freely. Our opponents want to use violence to silence us. They claim that we are spiritually and mentally unreliable and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Communism’s defenders used the same methods.”

The sympathetic reading of Islam recalls that of communism before 1989. At the time, the West’s self-hatred and invalidation of the accomplishments of free democracy were expressed in a generous interpretation of communism. A similar phenomenon is to be seen in attitudes towards Islam today, in large part thanks to its anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism. Many Western intellectuals had reservations about eastern European dissidents because they were only fighting for the so-called “bourgeois liberties.” Many dreamed at the time of a “third way” between capitalism and communism. The analogy is evident in the terminology: Stalinism could be criticised but communism was handled with kid gloves. Today, criticism of Islamism is common sense, but criticism of Islam has to be conducted with care.

Anne Applebaum on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “the infidel Europeans love to hate”:

Curiously, what seems to rankle Europeans most is the enthusiasm with which Hirsi Ali has adopted their own secularism, and the fervor with which she has embraced their own Western values. Though this is a continent whose intellectuals routinely disparage the pope as an irrelevant dinosaur, Hirsi Ali’s rejection of religion in favor of reason, intellect, and emancipation seems to make everyone nervous. Typical is the British feminist who complained that not only does Hirsi Ali paint “the whole of the Islamic world with one black brush,” she also “paints the whole of the western world with rosy tints,” which is of course far more objectionable. […]

In America, the phenomenon of the flag-waving first-generation immigrant is a familiar one. In Europe, such a thing is unknown. Maybe once Europe gets used to the idea—a Muslim immigrant who embraces Western culture with the excitement of the convert—they’ll like Hirsi Ali better. And, if they’re lucky, others will follow in her footsteps.

Update: It’s not only Europeans who have a problem with Hirsi Ali, it seems. From Newsweek:

If her coming-of-age story—and the saga of her nomadic family, who moved from prewar Somalia to Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia and finally Kenya—were allowed to breathe on its own, “Infidel” would prove an eye-opening look into the plight of African Muslim women. But throughout the book, you can’t help but feel manipulated, rather than moved. In describing the 9/11 hijackers, she comes up with an inflammatory conclusion tailor-made for her right-wing constituency: “It was not a lunatic fringe who felt this way about America and the West. I knew that a vast majority of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam.” […]

Hirsi Ali is more a hero among Islamophobes than Islamic women. That’s problematic considering she describes herself in “Infidel” as a woman who “fights for the rights of Muslim women, the enlightenment of Islam and the security of the West.” How can you change the lives of your former sisters, and work toward reform, when you’ve forged a career upon renouncing the religion and insulting its followers? Hirsi Ali says overhauling Islam is not her responsibility: she just lays out “the facts” and leaves it to others to go about fixing this supposedly broken faith. But her facts are often subjective: at one point she characterizes “every devout Muslim who aspires to practice genuine Islam” as a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood. That may have been true in Hirsi Ali’s experience, but it hardly speaks for the globe’s 1.3 billion other followers. It’s ironic that this would-be “infidel” often sounds as single-minded and reactionary as the zealots she’s worked so hard to oppose.

The idea (in the circumstances perhaps I should call it a meme) that people who criticise religion are as bad as religious fundamentalists seems to be catching on.

Iranian political analyst Majid Goudarzi speaking on IRINN, the Iranian news channel:

I don’t believe that a regime like the Zionist regime is legitimate, let alone that it will ever accept peace. Its very existence involves aggression, war, terrorism, and killing. It cannot stop these methods. This is even repeated in their Torah several times. In the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers, it is said several times that Moses called this people corrupt. They are genetically bloodthirsty and criminal, and therefore, they cannot give up their criminal character.

d Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a key leader of the Arab Janjaweed militia who is accused over some of the worst Darfur atrocities.

In a written statement, Mr Moreno-Ocampo said there was reason to believe that the pair held “criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed in 2003 and 2004, including murder, torture and rape. […]

Today’s announcement follows a two-year investigation by Mr Moreno-Ocampo and his team looking into accusations of persecution, torture, rape and murder in Darfur.

Focusing on events said to have occurred between 2003 and 2004 – the most violent period of conflict – investigators have visited 17 countries and conducted more than 100 interviews.

Today will see Mr Moreno-Ocampo presenting evidence against those named to judges at The Hague who will decide whether to open a formal inquiry and issue arrest warrants. Sudan has rejected the ICC’s authority, arguing that the country’s judiciary is perfectly capable of trying its own criminals.

“This court has no jurisdiction when it comes to trying Sudanese,” Mohammed Ali al-Mardhi, the Minister of Justice, was quoted as saying on Monday.

Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England. Most of them would regard each other as destined to fry in hell.

comes this article by Larry Siedentop:

Europe is in the midst of an undeclared “civil war” – a struggle that has been boiling away since the 18th century. It is a war between religious believers and secularists.

The French Revolution was the decisive moment in this clash between Church and anticlericalists. It created two hostile camps across the whole of Europe – pitting the followers of Voltaire, who sought to ecraser l’infame, as they described the Church, against those who saw the separating of Church and State as an insurrection against God.

Over the past hundred years the religious camp has come, by and large, to accept civil liberty and religious pluralism. The anticlericals have – with the exception of hardline Marxists and writers such as Richard Dawkins – given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief.

The main thrust of his argument, that secularism isn’t the same as atheism but is “that belief in an underlying moral equality of humans” which “implies that there is a sphere in which individuals should be free to make their own decisions”, is unexceptionable. Similarly his point that this belief has its roots in Christianity: that it’s “also the central, egalitarian moral insight of Christianity”, seems plausible to me – or at least I wouldn’t feel confident in trying to argue against it:

Enforced belief was, for Paul, a contradiction in terms. Strikingly, in its first centuries Christianity spread by persuasion, not by force of arms — a contrast to the early spread of Islam.

I’d dispute his point that this is still relevant, though. However much the concept of individual rights owes historically to Christianity, it’s now become independent, up there as a principle which can survive perfectly well on its own, even among us atheists.

That’s not my main point though. It’s that ridiculous swipe at Dawkins which is annoying – and dishonest. Where has Dawkins ever advocated that religion be extirpated? The poor man’s just written a book arguing, basically, that religion is so much nonsense, and suddenly he’s a fundamentalist, a totalitarian, up there with Stalin and Mao. The difference between reasoned argument, as practiced by Dawkins, and force, as practiced historically by all religions, including Christianity, is central to the very concept of secularism and individual rights which Seidentop is trying to defend.

If anything the reaction to Dawkins’ arguments show how much such arguments are needed. As I’ve quoted before, “the wonderful thing about offending the religious is the self-calibrating nature of the activity: the degree of offence taken is directly proportional to how much the offended person deserves it”.

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Warning: foul language. And not much else.

The six defendants in the Benghazi Aids trial, sentenced to death last year for supposedly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV despite incontrovertible evidence that they couldn’t be guilty, are now being sued for slander by their torturers:

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor in Libya accused of making false claims of torture have pleaded not guilty to charges of slander.
The six were sentenced to death in a separate trial last year for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

They say they made false confessions, admitting to infecting the children, because investigators tortured them.

A Libyan police officer and a doctor claim nearly $4m (£2m) each in compensation in damages.

Both were acquitted of torture charges in 2005.

Tensions were high in the courtroom for the hearing in the slander trial, says the BBC’s Rana Jawad in Tripoli.

“You should be ashamed of your crimes,” said the Palestinian doctor Ashraf Ahmad Juma.

“You tortured us and now you are prosecuting us.”

Police officer Jomaa Mishri said the lawsuit was not about money but rather about regaining their dignity.

He and doctor Abdulmajid Alshoul want $3.9m (£1.98m) in compensation for damage to their reputation, and legal expenses.

Check out Jacques Tilly’s proposed float for the Dusseldorf carnival (via b&w).

Nice quote from Mediawatch:

The wonderful thing about offending the religious is the self-calibrating nature of the activity: the degree of offence taken is directly proportional to how much the offended person deserves it.

As far as I can work out, the actual procession of the floats – the Rosenmontag Parade – is tomorrow.

There is validity to these images.

However, alongside these tragic daily occurrences Iraq has its other face, a face of life and a degree of normalcy. This other face of Iraq is reflected in a series of pictures published by Halim Salman in his two monthly magazines published in London. The first is al-Tab’a al-Jadida [The New Publication] which, in terms of layout, is close to Life magazine or to the French “Paris Match.” The other monthly, titled al-Hilwa [The Beautiful Woman], is a pictorial magazine for women. Halim has a news website al-Rafidayn (www.alrafidayn.com) which disseminates up-to-date news from Iraq in Arabic seven days a week.

Well worth a look.

Update: especially after yet another act of mass murder from fanatics aiming to put an end to any hope of such happy scenes in the future.

evening, so Michael had to make his way down to open the door. He knew who it would be: someone from the Brixton Labour Party. He was anxious to hear the views of the immigrant community, and was looking forward to getting some fresh new ideas from a local party activist.

He opened the door. She stood there, a sultry smile playing about her full lips.

“Howyadoin?” Her voice was husky, her skin a deep burnished brown. She brushed past him into the hall and slid out of her leopardskin coat, to reveal a red slit skirt which could barely contain her dark muscular thighs. Michael followed her up the stairs, unable to keep his eyes from her large buttocks as they moved from side to side, the skirt riding high. She exuded a musky animal smell.

“Would you like a tea?” Michael said, aware that his voice sounded forced, feeble.

“No t’anks – I’ll just have a lickle smoke.” From her handbag she produced a long cigarette, twisted at the end. She lit it, and took a long drag, inhaling the smoke deep into her lungs.

“So”, Michael began,”I was hoping you’d be able to…”

“Cool!” She’d seen the record collection, and headed over, kneeling down to take a closer look. Michael was once again aware of her physical presence. Her dusky sensuality filled the room. At last she let out a little cry, pulled out a record, and proceeded to put it on the turntable. Michael thought it was from the Brahms section of the collection, and was awaiting the welcoming chords from the beginning of the Third Symphony, but instead the room filled suddenly with a loud crudely rhythmic sound which he was unable to recognise. Surely this wasn’t one of Jill’s records.

The woman started to move, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as the rhythm built up. She danced towards him, a lascivious grin on her face. Her dress was now up on her hips, her body was moving to the beat, backwards, forwards, to the left, to the right. She raised her arms, and shook her torso, her large breasts barely contained by her dress. Michael felt curiously aroused. The sweet smell of her cigarette filled the room; the beat was relentless, compelling.

“Hey honkie – relax!” She grinned at him and pulled him towards her. He was unable to resist. A primitive animal urge within him, denied for too long, was asserting itself at last.

The room dissolved. They were no longer in Hampstead. They were in a jungle clearing, back at the dawn of humanity. The tom-toms beat their relentless rhythm, their sweat-drenched bodies….

Well, that’s all I got, I’m afraid. Personally I can’t wait to read the whole thing…..especially, you know, the bits about the 1983 election campaign and his CND connection.