Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald scans the Bestseller List and discovers some trends:
While I am pleased to see Robert Spencer’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) on the New York Times Bestseller List, I couldn’t help but notice a few notches above it, and in its 91st week on the list, Aziz Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran.This is illustrative.
It should be obvious that the entire Western world is avoiding the Big Question. The continuing use of the phrase "war on terror" -- a stupid phrase, a maddening phrase, a dangerous phrase – indicates this. In France the hit of last year’s television season was a series about a schoolroom -- all cartable and cahier and tablier -- in France in the 1950s, when there was still a zero-de-conduite atmosphere, and that supreme contribution of France to world civilization, the dictee, was inflicted on submissive students. The nostalgia for that schoolroom and the significance of the schoolroom -- consider the opening of Madame Bovary, or the various famous novels about odd schoolboys, or even the comic Petit Nicolas series – would require a Richard Cobb to limn them properly.
But what the popularity of that series shows is not nostalgia for the tablier but for a world in which it could be assumed that schoolroom discipline would not be a problem, for a certain atmosphere in which learning could take place, that is no longer possible. For now, the indiscipline brought by Muslim students -- who have been known to threaten and beat up both Jewish and, when the spirit moves them, Christian classmates, who do not merely question authority (though never the authority of Islam) but exhibit behavior that forces non-Muslim parents to remove their children from the public and place them in private schools (so much for Jules Ferry), who inhibit or shout down teachers who attempt to discuss such subjects as World War II (and the persecution and murder of Jews), or anything to do with Israel or the United States. Try mentioning the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, or NATO to a roomful of children of Muslim immigrants, whose knowledge of the world comes from the mosque and Al-Jazeera, and the new Hezbollah station allowed to beam its brainwashing into France.
Similarly, the extraordinary success of Reading Lolita in Tehran (was it one of Oprah Winfrey's picks?) is owed not to literary merit, but to the usual message-of-hope it provides. Those who will not take their Islam -- or their anti-Islam -- straight up, find it can be taken in small doses, and only if something oblique is treated. So the Islamic Republic of Iran is caught as a persecutor of women; Islam itself, its teachings and attitudes, is tangential. And the message is one of spiritual uplift: don't worry, girls, you can read great books, or Great Books, and see that what they offer is a Lesson in Freedom.
Well, yes, but the main lesson that Lolita offers is a lesson in how to use words. And the same with Jane Austen. Freedom is a sine qua non, but it is, in a way, the moral homily that the book provides that is so much in a spirit that Nabokov, at least, would decry.But its popularity has to do with an attempt to come to grips with, obliquely and in an unstated fashion, the problem of Islam. No one wants to really face up to the truth, just as few have taken it upon themselves, even among the Iranian exiles, to study the history of the treatment of non-Muslims in Shi'a Iran. It was the Pahlavis, and not Ayatollah Khomeini, who would have agreed with the forced conversions under Shah Abbas in the 1660s of Armenians and Jews (see Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam).
Khomeini was not a sport. It was the Pahlavis who, with their reasonable treatment of non-Muslims, and their attept to direct Iranian attention to Iran's pre-Islamic past, were the real sports. As late as the 1950s, in rural Iran, Jews were still being beaten to death for having dared to go out in the rain. The rain, you see, might drip from a Jew onto a Muslim, and infect him with the former's "najis" or "unclean" status. Robert Spencer has noted that Iranian Jews have reported to him on the daily humiliations they suffered in Tehran just as soon as the Khomeini regime came to power. The noted historian of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce, who lived in Iran in the 1970s, described the treatment meted out to the remaining Zoroastrians, the fiendish ways in which, for example, Muslim children would torture the dogs (so important to Zoroastrians) as away of tormenting their owners. What she lived through in modern Iran was little different from what she had learned from her historical studies. Infidels naturally want to believe that Khomeini, and the Islamic Republic, can be overcome. They do not want, nor do the best Iranian Muslims, those who are "Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims (but not yet that serenely and supremely brave group, the ex-Muslims) want to believe that perhaps it is Islam itself, not a perversion of Islam, not a subset (those "Wahhabis" or "Salafists") of Islam, but orthodox Islam, that inculcates the hatred displayed toward those Zoroastrians, the "uncleanness" attributed to those Jews forbidden to go out in the rain, the enmity toward Christians which caused Abbas II to convert, overnight, and by force, the Armenians of Tabriz in 1660 (see the chronicles of Arakel of Tabriz). Filial piety keeps many Muslims, even the most advanced and sophisticated, from confronting head-on what Islam is all about. So they offer ways to avoid the subject, to pretend that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not represent or embody the real Islam, but simply another totalitarian state, a state that can be overcome, here and there, by establishing private preserves of mental freedom. But how small those preserves, how few people can have access to them, what a poor substitute they are for analyzing the real problem, and possibly working to de-Islamize, as much as possible, first the Iranian elite, and then others who may be willing, by painting Islam as an unwanted imposition on the superior Iranian civilization by primitive Arabs, to use whatever national pride can be fostered to work against Isalm.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is a substitute for analysis of Islam: Man, or rather Woman, Will Triumph. Literature, or a certain kind of literature, can be Uplift. Just get 7 students together, read a few books, and keep the home fires burning. No, what the author might have done that would really have gone beyond the Oprah-Book-Club stage of celebration of The Human Spirit or The Triumph of Art would have been to ask herself and her loyal readers: Could any one of these books ever have been produced, much less been made widely available, in any Islamic society, ever? The answer is No. In a country, such as this one, where the teaching of literature has been handed over to professional, too-professional, students of that literature who are not always paying attention to the words, it is pleasing to be reminded about Elizabeth Bennet, and we can recall how her father tells her to stop playing the piano because, he tells her, "you have delighted us long enough." It is pleasing to be reminded of Humbert Humbert, with his aurochs and angels and secret of durable pigments. But there is a message in tow: the message that literature endures, and that offers an entirely specious, though crowd-consoling, message of hope. And that message is exactly the kind of "moral in tow" that Nabokov himself would have deplored, even in a good cause (he was perfectly ready to mock Pasternak for an expresson of poshlost', and did not refrain simply because Pasternak was an enemy, and victim, of the Soviet state).
There is something that "Reading Lolita in Teheran" does not ask or answer. And that is what even "Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims, born into Islam and yet not allowing themselves to see right through the whole thing, out of filial piety, civilizational pride, embarrassment, or another motive. And that something is this: : what accounts for a 1000 years of little science and little art (outside of mosques and some calligraphy, and miniatures of Layla and Majnoun and various heroes on horses whose depiction was permitted under the "mythological creature" exception to Islamic strictures on painting), save for the verses of a handful of poets who were writing not with Islam but against it? Firdowsi, Sa'adi, Hafiz, Khayyam -- can these in any sense be claimed for Islam, as poets of Islam, as Islamic in spirit? How would they fare in the Islamic Republic of Iran, or in today's Saudi Arabia? Or anywhere that Islam is taken completely to heart? No, the book's popularity, for American readers, comes from a number of things. It comes from from the all-woman cast. It comes from the initial appearances of the attractive and charming author, a "good Muslim," the best and most soothing kind (good god, she wrote her thesis on Mike Gold -- what else does one want?). It comes from the seductive title that juxtaposes naughty "Lolita" the adorable suntanned girl who with Kenny at Camp Climax, or on Route 66 with her Humber Humbert, her tautonymous father-lover ("I am your father, and I am speaking to you in English, and I love you") with the chadorable girls of the straitlaced Islamic Republic of Iran. But most of all, the reason for the book's popularity is that it American readers think they are getting a book that will help them understand What's Going On, and in a small way, they do. But there is, despite the outward and obvious grimness, a Hollywood ending to this book. The 5 or 6 or 7 girls were saved, rescued by books, and the lesson of human freedom they taught. That leaves only 50 or 60 million other people in Iran, and more than a billion elsewhere in the Muslim lands, to go. The book may not have been written as offering some way out, but there is a pollyannish message in this bottle: we can each of us Find Freedom In Art. But how few people are capable of this at any time or in any place. It won't do as a guide to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or to Islam, or to the Big Problem of which that Islamic Republc is a single hideous instantiation.
"still a zero-de-conduite atmosphere,"
Indeed Hugh, indeed. Very fine as always
Hugh,
Once again I see strong evidence that you've been to French schools and know French culture. Me too! It was nostalgic to see words like 'cartable and cahier and tablier'. What about Asterix and Tintin?
Oh well ... I guess that's off topic. Well, here's an elementary observation that's no doubt been made before: On the one hand, the internet is bringing terrorists together, but on the other hand, it is helping people like you and Robert get your ideas out, so that PC doesn't kill us (hopefully). Ironic, isn't it?
Benjamin
Hugh, excellent piece as always.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that very few men actually read anything like an entire book after they leave our creaky educational system. Women buy something like 75% of all books sold, Oprah or no Oprah.
Sales of "Reading Lolita in Tehran," must mean many women are thinking about this little matter of women's rights under Islam and are rightly concerned about it. Consciousness raising is now an almost old fashioned phrase, but it is nonetheless a truly necessary process. And hope springs eternal. There's no telling what a little band of determined women can do.
Articles in women's magazines on these issues are out there. American women are beginning to realize what we're up against, even as many of our male counterparts scurry into the politically correct Republican Bushes - to their eternal shame.
Burning bras was one thing. Burning burkas is quite another. Who will have the courage, I wonder?
I read 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' when it first came out. I admit to interpreting it as a triumph of the human spirit over the external imposition of orthodoxy.
What hope I derived from the book, you have single-handedly crushed with this erudite and penetrating essay. There's no getting around it Hugh, we don't have the luxury of taking on a virulent, violent religious fascism with obliqueness and subtlety.
Great job!
Rebecca, great saying:
"Burn your burkhas".
Bumper sticker, anyone?
Prophet Geoff
the "triumph of the human spirit" stuff is exactly what one cannot stand. What does it mean? Faulkner, in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, said that "Man will prevail." What the hell does that mean? He uttered this idiotic phrase, worthy of Commencement Speech gush-and-nonsense, five years after the end of World War II, when at least 60 million men hadn't prevailed, but were dead, many of them entirely innocent and undeserving of being murdered. The Korean War was already more than a glint in a Communist despot's eye.
I don't think Ms. Nafisi is nearly as silly as her many admirers, but the book is, let's face it, made for Oprah. When she notes such visible signs of Muslim intolerance as the Armenian-owned restaurant that has to display a sign referring to that fact, adn therefore the taint of uncleanliness (Infidels being "najis") that would-be customers should know about, she does not stop to comment -- but commenting is exactly what might, for the uninformed Infidel, who doesn't know much about "najis" as a concept in Shi'a Islam (see the website of the Great Sistani, www.sistani.com, for a list of what is najis).
One wonders what she actually thinks of Islam, what she thinks of the contents of the Qur'an, the Hadith, what she makes of Muhammad as a model for all mankind, uswa hasana. She won't tell us, and perhaps she is still unable to cut assorted filial knots, or ancestral pieties, which one assumes is what keeps such otherwise intelligent people as Fouad Ajami from recognizing the essence of Islam, or daring to discuss it (so he remains still in those Beirut cafes, "where Arabs were still consumed with the old demons, that had followed them from ancient tribulations in the Arabian sands to the glitter of Hamza Street and which even now they could not escape" -- well, you can finish the parody yourself) or Kanan Makiya, who gets distinctly antsy when the subject of Bat Ye'or, or the real behavior of Muslims toward non-Muslims in time and space, comes up.
After all, for someone born into Islam to throw it off requires a real bravery, intellectual, emotional, and physical, that few exhibit at any time. It requires seeing clearly what all about you will not see, or will see but refuse to articulate, or will absolutely positively not see and will refuse to believe the texts themnselves, and the history of Jihad-conquest and subjguation of non-Muslims, preferring always the worst Western apologists, or even the least-apologetic of apologists, who yet perform their secret ministry on the minds of influential makers of Infidel policy (I am thinking of Bernard Lewis).
What does Nafisi say to Fouad Ajami about Islam when they cannot be overheard by others? She, as a non-Arab, doesn't quite have the burden of Islam as the "chief gift of the Arabs to world civilization," and she can always fall back on Darius, Cyrus, Sassanian rhytons, Achaemenian monuments, and Persian poets who lived in the time of Islam, but largely ignoring it. Ajami, as an Arab, can't. What does she say to him? Or he to her? Anything? Nothing?
Eden Prarie is a wealthy suburb on the southwest side of the Mpls-St. Paul metro. Eden Prarie High School has 5,000 students, all of whom got on well until...
... about 15 years ago when the feds and the liberal-socialists who run the state blackmailed Eden Prarie.
The suburb's main access to the inner suburbs is State Road 5, which had become terribly clogged with population growth. After years of begging the state replace it with a freeway, the feds and state made them an offer: take thousands of Somali refugees and you get the highway; don't take them, choke on your traffic.
Stupidly, Eden Prarie took the highway funds and the Somalis.
The Somalis filled their new Section 8 apartment complexes (free housing) and signed up for MinnesotaCare health insurance (free healthcare). Crime shot up in the suburb.
Nowadays, certain stairwells in the big beautiful high school are filled with dour, sulking Somali students (white kids are not welcome near their gathering places).
The school is now divided. There is violence and racial tension, albeit mostly between the Somalis and Afro-Americans also who also moved to Eden Prarie to go on the dole. Occassionally, a big football player (E.P. wins state most every year) wanders into the dark stairwells and kicks a Moslem's ass just to make sure nobody gets confused or anything.
Worst, classrooms have lost discipline, with outrageous behavior from aggrieved Moslem students. Moslems wander in and out of classrooms without explanation or apology. The socialists have responded by assigning teachers to attend classes with troubled Moslems, assist them in understanding lectures and labs, and help them do their homework.
Private schools in the southwest metro are booming. Nordic kids with Eden Prarie addresses are pulling out.
Quality of life is still marginally available, and we'll take what we can get.
Privately, parents (myself included) rue the day we acceded to the blackmail to be able get our tax dollars back to fix the road. It would've been a lot better to have levied a city tax to bulid the freeway and pass on the Moslems and all the joy they've brought (not to mention all the additional costs).
But, of course, that view is NEVER mentioned in City Council or the local newspaper. There, everything's fine and we're fist-pumping and singing, "Celebrate, CELEBRATE, THE CULTURAL DIVERSITEEEEE!!!"
Like alot of folks who criticize Islam amongst liberal friends and family and then have to suffer the usual cries of "racist" and "bigot" and "nazi", I feel demoralized at times and inclined to just shut my mouth, despite what is so obviously advancing over the horizon.
But then, Hugh writes something offhand and almost buried in his post today and I find myself utterly galvanized and saying to myself, "That's it. No more apologies to my liberal friends and family for my gut feelings". That galvanizing, seemingly offhand line?
"The noted historian of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce, who lived in Iran in the 1970s, described the treatment meted out to the remaining Zoroastrians, the fiendish ways in which, for example, Muslim children would torture the dogs (so important to Zoroastrians) as a way of tormenting their owners."
TORTURE THE DOGS?? Hey liberal westerners. If you can't stand up for your own damned selves can you at least stand up for your dogs? You know - man's best friend? And frankly, I think there is something seriously wrong with people who hate dogs. And an entire culture that despises dogs? That's practically morally sick! Funny how it can be harder to defend your own damn self than it can be to defend someone else that you really care about. No...next time one of my liberal friends calls me a bigot or a racist I'm gonna say, "Sorry bud, but if you won't stand up for the Dogs, then you're no friend of mine!".
Ha. Just before hitting post it struck me that today is St. Francis of Assissi day - my patron Saint. I didn't think girls were allowed to take male patron saints at confirmation but I snuck the name Francis in. There must be a female St Francis cause no one questioned me about it (this was 1972). But I knew who I was choosing. So on this day, in honor of Saint Francis of Assissi, it is fitting to stand up for the dogs. Also, while I don't eat pigs because they are rumored to be as smart as dogs, I am personally offended at those who find these creatures of God "unclean" and who demand that this noble creature's visage be banned from the public square. Today the pig...tomorrow the dog?? Think about it...
Caroline, how sad that it has come to this...but no question your approach might just resonate. Reminds me of comedian Dennis Miller's comment that human beings should respect one another at least as much as we do the caribou.
How can one blame the "other" for not wanting to embrace such a misguided, confused, self-loathing culture as our own. Someone among our many bright contributors here once wrote we better concentrate on winning our own culture war before we try to change the world.
Making more and more sense all the time.
Caroline:
I think I made illusions to the animus Muslims have toward dogs on a thread about the pig issue in Dudley. The Brits and the French both love canines. May this fact and the flap over the Cross of St. George/British flag issue be the "lines in the dirt" that finally get people riled!
Caroline
I have my Oxford Dictionary of Saints out tonight. As well as St Francis sick animals have St Beuno. Healthy dogs have St Hubert and mad dogs St Sithney (he was from Cornwall and Brittany) There is no saint with specific responsibility for pigs or apes but St Antony of Egypt has, as his iconographical emblem, a pig. The pigs of his order had the privilege of roaming the streets of La Motte. Apparently the name tantony is given to the smallest pig of a litter, and the smallest bell of a peal.
Cornelius, waterdragon52 and Granny Weatherwax:
You're in good company:
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
-- Mohandas Gandhi
The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.
-- Emile Zola
Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
-- Albert Schweitzer
Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
--Saint Francis of Assisi (mystic and preacher)
:-)
I wonder where PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) stands on the Islamic hatred of pigs and dogs? I've been googling "PETA Islam" and haven't come up with anything direct, but I did find a couple of nuggets:
One was a news story about how suicide bombers have been using dogs, and in one case a donkey, for suicide missions in Iraq. (No indication of how officials from PETA felt about this.)
Another is the following:
PETA member Hanif Akhtar, a Muslim who grew up in India, expressed his concerns, saying, "Islam has many hadith promoting the humane treatment of animals. This treatment of cattle in India is against Islam and is not in any way halal."
...
PETA is providing the governments with video footage of the abuse of Indian cattle...
PETA’s President Ingrid Newkirk said, "We believe conscientious Muslims will reject Indian meat falsely labeled "halal" when it is really "haram" (forbidden).
That those Iranian children would torture dogs is a disturbing sign that their thinking and feeling processes were dysfunctional (putting it mildly) or horribly warped (a more accurate assessment). They are now adults -- but we don't imagine that in growing up they somehow acquired the capacity for compassion. If still alive they have survived the brutal Khomeini years and the bloody Iran-Iraq war. We can be sure that those cruel times did not soften their psyches in any way - and we can be sure that they have not learned gentler ways. That generation will soon be providing the new leaders of Iran. Their cruelty will continue, for it has neither been challenged, nor cured.
This lack of compassion is indicative of Islamic society. This is not just my conclusion. I once had a great book written by a Turkish psychologist who roundly criticized Turkish culture for just this type of thing: lack of empathy, lack of compassion. I must find that book again.
This lack of compassion for living things (animals or people) is pathological, not cultural, not religious, but a sign of a diseased mind. What processes in the Muslim's childhood, what teaching in the madrassas, what readings from the Koran could bring this about? Cruelty to animals is not normal behaviour -- the roots lie deep within a disturbed upbringing. It's more than sad that humans could be so degraded from the shining potential they are born with.
Psychologists tell us that cruelty to animals is often an early indication of later criminal behaviour.
The conclusion must be that we are dealing with a mass mental illness here -- seeded, watered, and grown by Islam.
The conclusion must be that we are dealing with a mass mental illness here -- seeded, watered, and grown by Islam.
Posted by: Jen at October 4, 2005 11:19 PM
You said it Jen! Islam poisons, pollutes, and utterly destroys the human psyche. Muslims do not experience normal human emotions like love, compassion, humility, shame. Parents who murder their own daughters to defend their "honor" are pathologically deranged. Parents who encourage their sons to murder and die in the process are demons. This aberrant behavior is not representative of civilized human beings. The social system of animals is more dignified and constrained than Islamic culture.
It is nauseating to read or hear of the "great contributions to civilization" made by Islam. What might they be, pray tell? What contributions to humanity have been made by barbarians, unless by pure accident?
For a better understanding of Iranian culture since the advent of the Islamic Republic, check out the photogallery on faithfreedom.org for the pictures of devotees mutilating their children's faces in tribute to Imam Ali, who, Ali Sina points out, massacred Persians to spread Islam.