Statements made last week by two high officials in the government, one civilian and one military, each give cause for concern. Their statements not only are alarming in themselves, but if we connect the dots, that is, the dots that connect those two statements, natural concern should become anxiety, and anxiety become alarm, about the strategy this Administration has adopted in dealing with the threat posed by those who subscribe to the ideology of Islam. That alarm is prompted by a most provincial and ill-prepared citizen of the world (who, however, possesses the kind of degrees that in present-day America apparently impress so much, and mean so little), who offers in the money-and-men-and-time-consuming "war on terrorism," which has now been expanded to include nation-building, or at least nation-improving, for such places as Iraq and Afghanistan, a theory that is unproven and that, on its face, is absurd.
In this piece I am only going to deal with the first statement, and in a subsequent piece I will discuss the second statement. Then, though those who made these statements have both provided enough rope to hang themselves, it's not rope but string we need, and I need enough - or at least that's my string theory -- to make a double knot, so that by the time we are done neither one will get loose from the box, or escape hanging.
The first remark in question was made by Charles Bolden, a former general who for reasons that are still unclear was appointed by the Obama Administration to be the head of NASA, though his knowledge of or interest in space exploration and the relevant science is unclear. Bolden was being interviewed by Al-Jazeera, and he was forthright about his mission. He said that once he became the NASA administrator, Obama gave him three main tasks:
"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering."
No one paid attention to this statement when it was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. No one thought to register or relay astonishment - it was, after all, on Al Jazeera, and Al Jazeera has such a tiny audience in the U.S. Who cares what its Arab and Muslim audience hears? That may explain the silence. Or was it perhaps that those who noticed didn't want others to notice, for fear of what political damage it might do to Obama?
Bolden's remark is astonishing. His own complacent cluelessness is bad, but what he fails to understand about those three tasks, and especially about the last of them, is hardly as bad as the fact that those from on high told him that these were tasks fitting and proper for the head administrator of NASA. Are they? Is it really the task of the head of NASA to encourage children? "Re-inspire" implies that they once were inspired, but somehow lost that inspiration. Might it be because once those who naively think that there is nothing to it find out that there is a great deal they will have to learn, and cease to be "inspired" to continue in math and science because of its rigor, a rigor that does not deter students who are not coddled or suffering from all kinds of social engineering and affirmative action and Leaving No Child Behind that taken together constitute a war on excellence? This mistake is not made in societies more intelligently ruthless and yes, "elitist." (That word is not to be shunned but embraced, for without a properly-educated intellectual elite implacably maintaining educational standards, if you take away degree, untune that string, just hark what discord follows, and cultural desarroi). Students of mathematics and science in an older and wiser America, or in Russia, China, India today, are not confused in their classrooms by the dumbing-down and dilution of offerings, nor do their official scientific bodies find themselves spending time on "inspiring" or "re-inspiring" students. The students, through reading, through parents, through their own talents that somehow emerge, are noticed, and then nurtured not by feelgood self-esteem crapola, but by an examination system that implacably winnows wheat from chaff, and does not tell the chaff it really is the wheat, or perhaps even better.
"Re-inspiring" students - the word presumably means that we are all born trailing clouds of glory, and then somehow fall away, lose that native enthusiasm that we once all possessed for studying Minkowski space and fractals and aeronautical engineering and tensor calculus and -- you name it. Every Man Is, If Not A Dirac, At Least A Von Karman, if only, only, properly "re-inspired." And who better to "re-inspire," who with more time on his hands to do the "re-inspiring," than Charles Bolden, the head administrator of NASA? Nor need we stop to hold up for examination and mild ridicule the business about Bolden's second task, the one about having him "expand our international relationships," as if the American government were not Laocoon-like tied in the coils of those entangling foreign ("international" as we now say, as for example those who were once "foreign students" have become "international students") alliances and more often misalliances. Take, for example, that respect for the non-existent, but nonetheless quite dangerous construct - precisely because it does not exist - the "international community.") We can hardly miss these coils, everywhere we slip and slide along the corridors of power in the self-hobbling West.
No, it's the third of these tasks, these un-labors of Hercules, that has raised eyebrows and hackles zeugmatically all over the Western world. Here it is again:
"third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering."
Let's stop and take that in. Yes, I know, you've already done that. You've been indignant already. You don't have to do it again. Oh yes you do. You have to look again. You have to keep your indignation, your fury, and your fear, and you have to keep having the reasons for this reaction brought to your attention, and you then must bring it to the attention of others, lest you and they allow yourselves to forget what a mess this country and above all its educational system is in, and what tremendous misallocation of resources is involved in that mess.
We live in the Age of Ekwilism in this country, in an Age of Levelling that in matters of intellect, and the transmission of knowledge, rivals - though prompted by different reasons - what the Soviet or Chinese Communists at their most malevolent sometimes managed to implement.
And part of the Ekwilism of the Age is the growth of Self-Esteem studies. The Self-Esteem in question does not come from any effort or perceived merit on the part of those who are encouraged simply to believe in their natural wonderfulness. They are discouraged from believing that they will have to work like dogs, as do the Chinese and Indian students in their best schools of math and science, or as French students do since France has remained sure of itself, in its system of competitive examinations, and as yet unwilling to dilute that system, as some have urged. They are not told that they have to work hard in order to achieve anything. No, Everyman A King, said Huey Long, and the fashionable version today is Everyman A Professor, or at least Every Student A Keen Intellect, and anyone who would touch a hair on the head of a fellow man's Self-Esteem deserves...well, if not death, at least let's make sure he doesn't find a teaching job, lest he upset some of the students in suggesting that both native ability and industry matter, and will out.
But if the Self-Esteem business always means trouble - the same kind of trouble you sense is coming from someone capable of using the word "wholistic" in an article or a speech - still worse is the encouragement of Self-Esteem on the part of a particular group. And worst of all, given the mighty ideological contest, one that has gigantic consequences for the survival and well-being of the art, science, and political freedoms achieved in the Western world, is the administrative head of NASA encouraging Self-Esteem not by all peoples, but especially by Muslims.
But what is the likely effect of this new NASA mission, and what does its existence tell us about the Obama Administration's grasp of the meaning, and menace, of Islam?
And even before we attempt to answer that, what should others, that is, non-Muslims living around the world, start to think when they find out that the mighty and all-powerful President of the fabled United States, Barack Obama, has told the administrative head of NASA that perhaps his most important task will be "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering"?
Imagine you are a Hindu, living in India, or perhaps in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Will this news fill you with delight, or anguish? What if you are a Christian black African, living in, say, the southern Sudan, and you are aware that over the past 40 years Muslim Arabs have killed, or created the conditions (mass starvation, diseases untreated and unchecked in refugee camps) for the mass deaths of black Africans because they were not Arabs or Muslims? Or suppose you were a Buddhist living in southern Thailand, subject to the murderous Jihad that, almost entirely unreported in the West, steadily goes on? Would you be heartened by this news? Would it fill you with hope that someone - the President of the United States, no less - was going to modify Muslim violence and aggression by making sure that Muslims felt good about themselves, not least by being reminded of all the wonderful contributions of Muslims to math, science, and so on?
And still worse, what if you were a Hindu in Pakistan, or Bangladesh, wondering whether you should continue to hold onto your own Hinduism or give in, succumb to the blandishments and the threats, cease to hold out, and - like many before you--convert to Islam? You might consider this even though you did not believe in Islam, even though you disliked or even detested what it did to the minds of men, even though you were convinced it would in the end stunt the mental and moral growth of your children. You might convert or consider conversion despairingly, because if even if the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, thinks this way, perhaps there is no use resisting. And now you read his name and endow it with new and worrisome meaning, joining the ranks of others who have made too much of it as they accuse Obama of being a "secret Muslim." This accusation, though false, begins to acquire credence given the many acts by Obama that, in my view, are not those of a "secret Muslim" but of an arrogant provincial who thinks he "knows" about Islam and who, as a provincial ill-prepared to deal with foreign and military policy, is unduly deferential to foolish advisers who, themselves ignorant of Islam, continue to pursue policies, dressed up as "reaching out to the Muslim world," that are in fact simply appeasement, as the clear-minded can see.
And if you are a black African living in sub-Saharan Africa, a Christian in southern Nigeria, say, and you have endured persecution and murder at the hands of Muslims, before, during, and after the Biafra War of 1967-69, would you be heartened or disheartened by the glad tidings brought to you by Charles Bolden? Might you not wonder where, oh where, you will be able to find in the Western world, which abandoned Biafra once, those who understand what Islam means for all non-Muslims, what it has meant for so many black African Christians, from Nigeria in the West to Sudan in the East? Might you too be tempted to give up, to convert to Islam yourself, if only because at this point, you suspect that the way to attract American aid is to be a Muslim country, or a Muslim tribe, or a Muslim individual, and then you will be taken care of, while those who are Christians cannot count on aid, or on protection against Muslims?
Isn't this the likely effect of the policy of Reaching Out To Muslims, in the manner described by Charles Bolden?
Note, by the way, that Muslims do not appear anywhere in the world to suffer from a great lack of self-esteem. Read the Muslim and Arab press. Watch the Muslim and Arab television. Again and again they speak of Muslim greatness and Infidel weakness. Again and again they keep telling us about the wonders of the Arabs and Muslims. How many times, in Iraq, did American soldiers hear that "all of civilization began here"? How often, all over the Muslim and especially the Muslim Arab world, do we hear exaggerated claims made, such as "we Arab Muslims are responsible for the Renaissance" (Tariq Ramadan' likes to make this claim) and "we Muslims invented science" or "we Muslims made modern medicine possible" and on and on und so weiter.
Muslims are inculcated with the belief - does Barack Obama not know this? - that the real division of humanity, the only division that counts, is that between Muslim and non-Muslim, Muslim and Infidel. The "ungrateful" Kuffar is ungrateful because he refused to accept Islam, even though born as a Muslim, just like everyone since time began (even before Muhammad). He did not receive, refused to receive, received incorrectly, the message of Islam. And for that he deserves permanent ill-treatment, that is, the regime, or status, of dhimmi - which is the only alternative to death or immediate conversion, and is a status available, in strict terms, only to Christians and Jews as People of the Book (ahl al-kitab), though in order to preserve the Jizyah-base, the Muslim masters found ways to treat as dhimmis both Zoroastrians in Persia, and - after tens of millions of murders of Hindus - Hindus in India. After all, you don't want to kill or convert everyone. Who would be left to pay the Jizyah, on which the Muslim rulers and state depended?
Muslim newspapers, radio, television, Internet sites, are not full of stories that demonstrate that a lack of self-esteem is worrying Muslims. It is true that they are keenly aware of their deficiencies in one area, and would like to receive instruction from the West in that area: that is, in the area of military technology. It is about that that Mahathir Mohamed spoke to a rapt crowd, delegates at a meting of the O.I.C., some years ago. Zakir Naik, the Muslim proselytizer based in India, has also said that "we Muslims are willing to learn about military technology" from the West. No interest in, and certainly no worry about, the failures or absence of Muslim contributions to basic science. No, what Muslims want are the planes and the missiles and the weapons of mass destruction to be delivered with those planes and those missiles; they don't want to know the reasons for the failure of the Muslim world, for more than a millennium, to contribute to science.
But should we participate in this farce? Should we make Muslims feel good about themselves when so many of the 1.2 billion Muslims are constantly told - in the Qur'an, hadith, and Sira - that they are the "best of peoples," and that as the "best of peoples" they have a right and even a sacred duty to engage in the struggle, or Jihad, to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam? Is not Obama, in telling Bolden "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering" not sending coals to Newcastle, something like trying to add to the Self-Esteem of some World Conqueror like Jeffrey Sachs or others - Tom Friedman comes to mind -- of that comical ilk? Isn't trying to further encourage Muslims in their misreading of their own history and their exaggerated narrative about supposed "Muslim" contributions to this and to that, exactly what we do not need, what we need less of? Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Ibn Warraq do not think we should pull our punches in talking about, or to, the world's Muslims. They think they are entirely too confident, too triumphalist, and tell us that such Muslim arrogance and triumphalism is dangerous for us.
Besides, there is one other thing that needs to be considered. And that one thing is the truth. I don't suppose that Obama, during his twenty years as a political organizer, or in his busy life as a Senator for two years, and then as candidate and then as President, has read widely in the history of science, mathematics, and technology, but had he done so, and had he also read such historians of science as Toby Huff, he would have had a better sense of the very tiny contribution of Muslims to these fields. He would have discovered that a great many of those who used Arabic were not Muslims at all, but Jews and Christians; he would have discovered that among the few dozen names - always the same few dozen - that are listed (Avicenna, Averroes, Rhazes, etc.) - by those claiming great things for High Islamic Civilization, some were dangerously freethinking, practically non-Muslims (as the greatest man of science, Rhazes), while others had been raised within a milieu that was only a generation or two removed from non-Muslim culture. (Though not a scientist, the celebrated Ottoman architect Sinan, it turns out, was an Armenian who converted to Islam, which gave him the chance to exercise his art.) Is not aiding their own inability to see things truthfully doing exactly what Muslims do not need?
Obama, one has the suspicion, may be applying to Muslims views on Self-Esteem that have grown out of domestic views that have been applied closer to home. But does Obama think that the whole Jesse-Jackson "I AM SOMEBODY" mantra, and all that goes with it, or what he has observed of the followers of Farrakhan, have been a success? Does he think such things are a valid substitute for, or even a useful supplement to, achievement that is based on ability rightly directed, and hard work? Isn't Obama capable of casting a beady eye on such things, and seeing them correctly, as merely one more derisory, meretricious, and even cruel scheme that, in the end, tends only to line the pockets of those mountebanks who batten on the government and foundation aid, or on the forced tithing of followers, of these new incarnations of Marcus Garvey and Father Divine?
Wouldn't it make more sense to work to make Muslims more aware of the real reasons for the brief flourishing, and then the sudden disappearance, of their "contributions" to mathematics and science? This would take into account the rapid diminishment in the presence, and influence, and power, of the non-Muslim communities that continued to exist for the first few centuries after the Arab conquest. And wouldn't it make more sense to point out -- not to Muslims, but to "talk amongst ourselves" so that Muslims will overhear us, and have to come to mental terms with what they overhear - that Islam is based purely on authority, that it does not admit of questioning of doctrine, but encourages the habit of mental submission and discourages, and punishes severely, the practice of free and skeptical inquiry, and it is exactly that practice of free and skeptical inquiry that makes the enterprise of science possible?
That's the way to proceed.
This is not merely different from what Obama, according to Charles Bolden, asked Charles Bolden to do. It goes completely in the other direction. 180 degrees. That's a bit of math. That's a bit of science. That business of 180 degrees is useful, I'm told, in engineering. Well then, the use of such a phrase has helped me with my shaky self-esteem.
So now, if you'll briefly excuse me, as I'm plumb tuckered out, I'm going to set a spell. Oh where? Right here, in my bedsitter space. Or my De Sitter space. Or my Minkowski space. And then, after a short break, and an hour spent with Courant's "What Is Mathematics," I'll be back shortly with Part II of this essay. After all, the Obama policy on Islam isn't, alas, going anywhere. It's still right there.
Obama a Muslim? Lots of intelligent people believe so, including the Russians...According to an article in 'Pravda' he is a Sunni...Their reasoning was reasonable for Pravda...
Is he really a Mahoundian? I don't know, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck...Unless it's a 'stealth duck' in which case it will hide its feathers, and pretend to be something else...
hugh, i love your stuff; but please make the second essay shorter and more focused.
When you call Barack Obama a Muslim you do not strengthen your case against him. And what is even worse, you do not begin to win over those whom you would like to convince, that the policy of this administration in dealing with Islam is one of appeasement. Instead, those who might have listened recoil at what they regard as a crazed or conspiratorial charge. If the object is to get a wider audience to understand what Islam inculcates, and why policies must be based not on a game of “Let’s Pretend” or “What Else Can We Do?” or, still worse, “There’s Nothing We Can do,” then anything that makes it harder to reach or appeal to a wider audience, and then to offer that wider audience the evidence, presented logically and perhaps winningly too, is unwise. Besides, the charge that Obama is a Muslim happens to be false.
His policy, so far, is partly a result of widespread ignorance of Islam, in some apparently a wilful ignorance, in others a kind of laziness and reliance on “experts” on something called “terrorism” who, to protect their turf and their fat contracts, act as if a knowledge of Islam is hardly necessary. And then there are the bright young energetic staffers, or some no longer quite so young, who provide those Exectuve Summaries that are no substitute for reading, and in Official Washington, it’s hard to find the time and the quiet – though apparently it’s not as hard for people to find time to watch televised sports than it is to find the time to read, say, Majid Khadduri on “War and Peace in Islam” and Bat Ye’or’s “The Dhimmi” and“Islam and Dhimmitude.”
Obama's wrong=headed policy of appeasement is based not only on the usual ignorance, but on a more dangerous kind – the kind possessed by someone who assumes he "knows" about Islam becaue of a few years as a child in Indonesia. Furthermore, Obama’s worldview is tiersmondisant, had for many decades he accepted, uncritically, a narrative of the Arab Muslim war on Israel , taking tutorial from such sweetly-sinister people as Rashid Khalidi, himself not a Muslim but an islamochristian, and not himself having read widely or deeply about the demographic and cadastral history of the area, not knowing about the 400 years of the Ottoman rule, and coming of age after the local Arabs had carefully metamorphosed into the “Palestinian people” (see Elfan Rees, see Zuhair Mohsen) he was puttyi in Khalidi’s hands. In this narrative, Islam does not exist, and the story of the war on Israel is all about “two tiny peoples” and one of them are those called “Palestinians” and they have a claim to a place called – tiens! – “Palestine” _- and if that doesn’t settle Israel’s hash, I don’t know what will. Obama did not spend the last twenty years of his life as a Community Organizer devoting some of his time to learning about Islam – and Farrakhan’s operation, though unpleasant in its own right, has little to do with Islam world-wide, and the varieties of threat it poses to non-Muslims.
And you may recall the unwitting condescension displayed by Obama in an interview last week with an Israeli paper, in which, attempting to explain the unhappiness of some of his Jewish critics, , in a version of “some of my best friends are black” (or, still more comical, “happen to be black”), he noted, more or less, that “some of my best friends are Jewish political backers who have helped me get to, and stay, where I am today.” I don’t think Obama understood how that sounded, which is exactly like a variant on the suspect declaration by some whites that “some of my best friends are black” (or, still worse, in that comical-casual-nonsensical locution, “happen to be black”). In any case, most of those Jewish political backers who promoted and supported his political ambitions early on turn out to be – see the Pritzker lady in question – those who claim to “support Israel" but really know little or nothing about Islam, and hence about the unending nature of the war being made on Israel, and furthermore, they often think that writing a check to “suppor t Israel” is a substitute for learning about the demographic and cadastral history of the area, of learning not only about what happened last week, but what the history of the Jewish return to Israel has involved, and many of those who claim to “support Israel” among Obama’s supporters show that they know nothing of the relevant history– of, for example, the Treaty of San Remo, the Mandate for Palestine, population and land ownership in those Ottoman vilayets and the single sanjak of Jerusalem, that became the territory assigned to the Mandate for Palestine. Nor are they apparently aware of how recent,and how factitious, has been the sudden appearance of the “Palestinian people” or why that matters in the war for Israel’s attempt not to be de-legitimized by Arab propaganda. They know little about Israel’s military needs, its historic and legal and moral claims to the land it currently possesses, including of course “the West Bank” (as the Jordanians deliberately renamed parts of Judea and Samaria), and still less do they understand the nature of the war being made, and always to be made, on Israel. They prate of the “peace process” and then about “peace” and what “risks Israel must take for peace,” with no understanding of the history of the previous agreements made by Muslim states and groups with Israel, and they do not know about the basis – see Majid Khadduri, see any number of scholars of Islamic law – for Muslim jurisprudence concerning agreements made with Infidels. They have no idea what Islamic texts contain, what the tenets of Islam are, but these people who claim to “support Israel” are as complacent in their assumptions about what what they “know” about Israel and its enemies, and the “solution” to the “problem” (a Jihad is not a “problem” to be “solved” but a situation to be permanently managed and checked) as is as Barack Obama with his assumptions about his supposed familiarity with Islam because of three years he spent as a child in a most unrepresentative school (Muslims sent their children to school with Christians), in a most unrepresentative Muslim city (Jakarta), in a most unrepresentative Muslim country (Indonesia), at a time when secularism, and Islam at its most easygoing (because diluted by custom and nuance and fleeting fashion) form, was at its historic height, in that country, in that city, in that school
You will agree that Obama's policy is not one whit different from what John Brennan wants or advises, or a host of others, inside the government, and outside too. Is Jimmy Carter a Muslim, he who made possible the Islamic Republic of Iran? What about Zbigniew Brzezinski, is he a secret Muslim?
Does Obama have a dog, which no real Muslim would? Does he drink alcohol, which no Muslim would?? Does his wife Michele dress as a Muslim woman would? Or is this all part of some deliberate scheme, part of the camouflage that shouldn't fool us? Must those who offer, at great length, legitimate, telling, and unanswerable criticisms of Obama have their statements ignored, or at least not paid attention to, by those who might otherwise stop to listen, because some insist on repeatedly making such charges as "Obama is a Muslim" or "Obama is a secret Muslim"?" Why alienate those who might come to this site and might read, and might be open to discovering what is so wrong with not only Obama's policy toward Islam, but that of all those others - are they Muslims too -- such as John Brennan and Brzezinski, as mentioned above, and many others, too, who out of gullibility, or ignorant arrogance, or a false machiavellianism, or sometimes out of antisemitism, which leads some to deny that Islam is a threat for it if were, then understanding of Israel's plight would increase and calls for it to "take risks for peace" (how perfectly idiotic to ask Israel to do the "risk-taking") be hooted down. Well, is Pat Buchanan a Muslim or a secret Muslim?
All of these people endorse or promote policies of disastrous appeasement, many of them even convinced of their own cleverness and wisdom. Take, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, still smarting after all these years at his perceived rival Kissinger's undeserved reputation as a geopolitical thinker. Brzezinski is not very intelligent, though of course he impressed Jimmy Carter (as Brennan impresses Obama), and nd makes pronouncements about Islam without giving any sign, in his voluble dotage, of understanding why such study is necessary. Is Brzezinski a Muslim?
These charges do not help make the case, or take the case, to a broader public.
Hugh, brilliant - again!
It's mind boggling that Obama could have made such a horrible blunder. I would have hoped that, as an underdog he would have leaned what it took to change his status, but maybe such lessons were available only in the old days, while his is another illustration of the failures of affirmative action.
As for part two (re. Camery's comment), for me the length is irrelevant; as with part one, it's the depth that's critical. But as you mentioned, please do take a (well-deserved) rest - to regain your strength.
i agree now: the length is irrelevant. however, writing with focus and thrust --- as is hugh's usual pattern --- is relevant.
i'll bet hugh will take this to heart. in any case, the critic -- oh, how little is HIS effort -- will say no more.
Both Jeff Camery and duh_swami seem to want short, simple answers to the world's problems. Hugh is correct in warning that this is dangerous because it fails to address the general and profound ignorance of Islamic ideology -- among Muslims, among ordinary citizens, and worst of all, among government decision-makers. When Islam spread throughout the world beginning in the 7th Century, their numbers were small relative to the populated areas they invaded. Bat Ye'or pointed out in "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam" they would have never pulled it off without the cooperation and assistance of Christian clergy and landed gentry who actually helped collect the jizyah taxes for the Islamic invaders. (pg. 123) We are seeing the same phenomenon today with nominal Christians and Jews carrying water for the "religion of peace" without reflecting on the big disconnect between the taqiyya words of their apologists and the realities on the ground. No, Obama is not a closet Muslim; he's a very "useful idiot" to those sinister stealth jihadists who know how to manipulate the social idealists of the world to help advance Islam. Read the Quran and the original biographies of Muhammad!
There are only two possibilities: Either our President and his team are deliberately suppressing the truth about Islamic ideology and refusing to address it, or they are incompetent. Take your pick. Either way, our culture, freedoms, and society are at greater risk because of their failures.
When you call Barack Obama a Muslim...
I didn't say Obama was an Mahoundian...I said I didn't know...
But I am suspicious none the less...I would like to ask him if he believes Allah is God and Mohahmmad his messenger...The answer to that, no matter what he said, would reveal something...After all, this is a man with a long future but practically no past...Everybody and their brother are researching his past and only getting the superficial...
In my view everything about him being, or not being, a Muslim is as obscured as the rest of his history...This guy has lots of shadows...Nothing about him is trustworthy...No one can say anything of certainty about him, except in terms of his words and deeds...The ones we know about...And we can say that many of them definitely lean in favor of Islam...
Hugh,
You definitely have an analytical mind. I had never thought about the pet dog or alcohol angles before. However, are there not examples of pious muslims drinking alcohol so as to fit in better with the infidels? Are muslims allowed to partake in infidel activities so as to blend in?
I agree with what you said about not calling Obama a muslim so others don't discount the message being relayed. I admit I have myself called Obama a muslim on my own blog, even though I don't necessarily believe he is a true muslim. The reasoning I have is simple and I will provide an analogy. If 3 people sit around a table and form a plan to commit murder, two of those people carry it out, is not the third a murderer in the eyes of the law, the third would at least be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. I see Obama the same way. He may not be a muslim, but his actions give aid and comfort to the enemy who are muslim. He (and I admit he isn't the first) willingly pays jizya (or maybe its zakat) to the enemy giving them financial means to continue fighting.
I would say that he may not be a full blown muslim he might as well be.
As far as dogs and alcohol...A really good stealth jihadist would be a drunkard and own a kennel...'A wolf in sheep's clothing will come and fool many'...Some of them will be drunk dog owners...Many would give Geo Bush credit for that also... :)
Both Jeff Camery and duh_swami seem to want short, simple answers to the world's problems.
I can't speak about 'Jeff', but would you clarify what you are talking about?
The length may be irrelevant to us, but i think the vast majority of JW's visitors (not commenters) will skip these articles due to their length. And thats a problem. The purpose of this place is tp spread information about islam. I too would prefer shorter articles, more focused and perhaps with some form of presentation, such as images, much like Robert or Marisol post their articles. But Hugh's articles stand out in their own way, im just worried not enough ppl are catching on to them.
The contributions to science made by Muslims appear to be microscopic compared to the contributions made by Christians, the contributions made by Jews, the contributions made by Hindus, and even the contributions made by that minority called atheists. (Many of the contributions claimed by Muslims were in fact made by Christians, Jews, and Hindus who were under the yoke of Islam.) And to top it off, such contributions as they have made almost all go back to medieval times. Why should anyone be proud about a culture which has contributed practically nothing since medieval times?
Great piece Hugh! The next part should be interesting.
I know how it can be when there is just too much revolving around an issue to keep it tight.
I also know that it can be hard to understand the writings and pronouncements of religious fanatics if you do not share the faith. You are, unfortunately in this case, a dedicated Westerner who assumes a person is saying what they mean.
Perhaps this unfortunate perspective has made you mis-translate Bolden's [revelation]charge from Obama; try reading it this way (on your knees facing Chicago):
"...foremost, [H]e wanted me to find a way to reach out to [Americans on behalf of] the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly [on the behalf of] Muslim nations to help them [Amercians]feel good about their[Muslim] historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering.[and so know their place in the order of things]"
http://hereticscrusade.com
So what is really the root cause behind the Left’s passionate embrace of Islam? There must be something in it for them in their own mind, right? What is it?
While certainly some of them are power-hungry militants who simply want to control the rest (hard-core agitators of every shape and creed), some may be plain anti-Semites (e.g., Helen Thomas style), while still others may actually be the misguided lost souls who, out of sheer ignorance, may honestly believe they are in it for the good of humanity: Does that really entirely explain the situation?
And how come we see the vast majority of feminists actually siding with Hamas-led Gaza against Israel, with its strict dress code rules for women? Where is Chomsky regarding the oppression of women in Arab countries, as he travels to Lebanon to sip a cup of coffee with Hezbollah leaders and praise Ahmadinejad? Hasn’t he read about Sharia law and its implications to him personally? Why don’t we see the human-rights activists’ superb organizational skills as regarding the Palestinian Cause, when it comes to Darfur, Congo, Kurds, and the myriad other wrongs around the world, some of which are order-of-magnitudes more acute?
I mean, conspiracy theories aside, these are mostly well-learned, well-informed, well-to-do, liberal-minded free-thinking individuals, are they not? Shouldn’t there be a perfectly logical explanation for their siding with Islam? What is it, then?
Good article. Enjoyed reading it. But if every single person in The West read this article, would anything change? A raised awareness of the West's wrong-headed approach to Islam might set off alarms here and there, but would millions take to the streets to demonstrate because Shari'a does not get along with the American Constitution?
I don't believe so.
The only thing to shake our political rulers would be a gigantic crisis. Something so big, the West would be startled out of its sleep and forced to confront its delusions about Islam.
Maybe Hezbollah firing a shower of rockets at Tel Aviv would provoke something as close to Armageddon as is possible. That might do the trick. It's a horrific scenario, but I believe that educating Joe Public through JW, for example, will only go so far - and not nearly far enough.
However, there are signs that there is mischief in the air - Ahmadinejihad is going to visit Beirut in a couple of weeks 'for talks' - but I don't believe anything other than an almighty shock will bring western populations to the psychological tipping point where they understand clearly that the 'religion of peace' has been at war with the non-Muslim world for around 1,400 years and that the fight must continue to the bitter end.
I'm looking forward to part two.
The first remark in question was made by Charles Bolden, a former general who for reasons that are still unclear was appointed by the Obama Administration.
Bolden got the job because he's black. Same goes for Eric Holder, an acknowledged crook. But Bolden's appointment was not as bad cuz he almost certainly is not a crook.
*** Bukhari Vol 9 Bk 89 Nbr 256 ***
This mistake is not made in societies more intelligently ruthless and yes, "elitist." (That word is not to be shunned but embraced, for without a properly-educated intellectual elite implacably maintaining educational standards...)
The operable words being "properly-educated."
The idea that the most important positions go to grads of a small set of schools has proved disastrous, and has contributed greatly to the dismantling of our traditions, our freedoms, our laws, our wealth and now even our sciences.
*** Bukhari Vol 4 Bk 54 Nbr 52 ***
As evidence I present you the United States Supreme Court. Operating as a lair of dazed but obrtusive Ivy League Morons, the illegal rulings made by this group of elites has materially harmed the nation. All justified by incoherent and incomprehensible rulings that, by implication, only a grad of Harvard Law or Yale Law could possibly understand, so the rest of you quit complaining and shaddap.
*** Tabari 267 ***
The phenomenon of selecting elites, so identified by the school name on their diplomas, into fast-track positions in the top brokerages and banks, the State Dept, the Justice Dept, the CIA, the EPA, the DOE and so on has concentrated enormous power into the hands of just a few hundred professors.
*** Tabari 299 ***
And the professors --- operating under the cover of tenure, Affirmative Action and la belle racisme, multiculturalism, self-esteem, anti-Americanism, lowered academic standards and other nonsensical regimes, but most of all under the cover of prestige --- have been able to wreak enormous damage. Much to their satisfaction.
*** Bukhari Vol 1 Bk 4 Nbr 163 ***
If you can't have a good and excellent elite, then have none at all. There should be declared a 50 year moratorium on gubmint hiring out of the Ivy League and a short list of other "elite" universities.
After the nation had recovered over those 50 years, we could bring the Ivy League Morons back in to take another run in the name of Karl, Friedrich, Mao, Vlad, Mohammed and all the rest in this pantheon they so revere.
Of course another great piece Hugh!
I think it would pay to remember that maybe not all JW readers are scholars and some simply do not have the time to read a lengthy article.It would be a shame for people to bypass what you have to say.
“Muslim newspapers, radio, television, Internet sites, are not full of stories that demonstrate that a lack of self-esteem is worrying Muslims. It is true that they are keenly aware of their deficiencies in one area, and would like to receive instruction from the West in that area: that is, in the area of military technology. It is about that that Mahathir Mohamed spoke to a rapt crowd, delegates at a meting of the O.I.C., some years ago.”
I think that deep down many Muslims are keenly aware of the inferiority of Islam in all rational fields of human inquiry and endeavor. Many of them must suspect that the backwardness of Islamic societies is due to Islam itself, that the problem is not too little Islam but too much.
Dr. Mahathir Muhammed knows only too well that dogmatic Islam is the problem but there is just so much he can do without going outside the Islamic paradigm and be totally rejected or worse. The ultimate and divine goal of Islam can not be questioned by any Muslim so that leaves only the means to be discussed.
In his famous 2003-speech Mahathir first call for the unity of all Muslims:
“From being a single ummah we have allowed ourselves to be divided into numerous sects, mazhabs and tarikats, each more concerned with claiming to be the true Islam than our oneness as the Islamic ummah. We fail to notice that our detractors and enemies do not care whether we are true Muslims or not. To them we are all Muslims, followers of a religion and a Prophet whom they declare promotes terrorism, and we are all their sworn enemies. They will attack and kill us, invade our lands, bring down our governments whether we are Sunnis or Syiahs, Alawait or Druse or whatever. And we aid and abet them by attacking and weakening each other, and sometimes by doing their bidding, acting as their proxies to attack fellow Muslims. We try to bring down our governments through violence, succeeding to weaken and impoverish our countries.
We ignore entirely and we continue to ignore the Islamic injunction to unite and to be brothers to each other, we the governments of the Islamic countries and the ummah.”
And the brave scholar and statesman continues and put his finger on the weak spot of Islam:
“But this is not all that we ignore about the teachings of Islam. We are enjoined to Read, Iqraq, i.e. to acquire knowledge. The early Muslims took this to mean translating and studying the works of the Greeks and other scholars before Islam. And these Muslim scholars added to the body of knowledge through their own studies.
The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practicing their own religion of Islam. As a result the Muslims were able to develop and extract wealth from their lands and through their world trade, able to strengthen their defenses, protect their people and give them the Islamic way of life, Addin, as prescribed by Islam. At the time the Europeans of the Middle Ages were still superstitious and backward, the enlightened Muslims had already built a great Muslim civilization, respected and powerful, more than able to compete with the rest of the world and able to protect the ummah from foreign aggression. The Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage.”
He goes on to identify what went wrong in Islam:
“But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilization came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged.
Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilization began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilization would have disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492.
The early successes of the Ottomans were not accompanied by an intellectual renaissance. Instead they became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims. And the regression continued until the British and French instigated rebellion against Turkish rule brought about the downfall of the Ottomans, the last Muslim world power and replaced it with European colonies and not independent states as promised. It was only after World War II that these colonies became independent.
Apart from the new nation-states we also accepted the western democratic system. This also divided us because of the political parties and groups that we form, some of which claim Islam for themselves, reject the Islam of other parties and refuse to accept the results of the practice of democracy if they fail to gain power for themselves. They resort to violence, thus destabilizing and weakening Muslim countries.
With all these developments over the centuries the ummah and the Muslim civilization became so weak that at one time there was not a single Muslim country which was not colonized or hegemonised by the Europeans. But regaining independence did not help to strengthen the Muslims. Their states were weak and badly administered, constantly in a state of turmoil. The Europeans could do what they liked with Muslim territories. It is not surprising that they should excise Muslim land to create the state of Israel to solve their Jewish problem. Divided, the Muslims could do nothing effective to stop the Balfour and Zionist transgression.”
Mahathir Mohamed confirms here that secular liberal democracy is incompatible with the tenets of Islam and any attempt to democratize Islamic societies will lead to more sectarian violence and a weakening and destabilization of the nation. And is that not exactly what we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan in our blind and naive attempt to achieve better governance and stability?
His warnings about the destructive and dangerous forces of democracy sounds like an echo of Al Qaeda:
“Is there any greater mockery than withholding sharia, or superimposing another [law] over it, or putting together a piece of paper and presenting it to the so-called ‘people’s council’—whoever agrees agrees, whoever disagrees disagrees—deeming this the only way to govern?”
“You [Americans] elect the wicked from among you, the greatest liars and most depraved, and you are enslaved to the wealthiest and most influential [among you], especially the Jews—who direct you through the lie of ‘democracy,”
“Know that democracy, that is, ‘rule of the people,’ is a new religion that deifies the masses by giving them the right to legislate without being shackled down to any other authority…. [D]emocracy is a man-made infidel religion, devised to give the right to legislate to the masses—as opposed to Islam, where all legislative rights belong to Allah Most High: He has no partners,”
(Quoted from The Al Qaeda Reader).
Then a fair warning against to much irrational thinking:
“If we use the faculty to think that Allah has given us then we should know that we are acting irrationally. We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because they hurt us. Naively we expect them to surrender. We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation and humiliation.
It is surely time that we pause to think. But will this be wasting time? For well over half a century we have fought over Palestine. What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before. If we had paused to think then we could have devised a plan, a strategy that can win us final victory. Pausing and thinking calmly is not a waste of time. We have a need to make a strategic retreat and to calmly assess our situation.
We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.
We may not be able to do that. We may not be able to unite all the 1.3 billion Muslims. We may not be able to get all the Muslim Governments to act in concert. But even if we can get a third of the ummah and a third of the Muslim states to act together, we can already do something. Remember that the Prophet did not have many followers when he went to Madinah. But he united the Ansars and the Muhajirins and eventually he became strong enough to defend Islam.
Apart from the partial unity that we need, we must take stock of our assets. I have already mentioned our numbers and our oil wealth. In today’s world we wield a lot of political, economic and financial clout, enough to make up for our weakness in military terms.
We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are well disposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing.
We must not antagonize everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win them to our side not by begging for help from them but by the honorable way that we struggle to help ourselves. We must not strengthen the enemy by pushing everyone into their camps through irresponsible and unIslamic acts. Remember Salah El Din and the way he fought against the so-called Crusaders, King Richard of England in particular. Remember the considerateness of the Prophet to the enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the struggle that is important, not angry retaliation, not revenge.”
And of course as Hugh points out, a focus on strengthening military capacity: “to make up for our weakness in military terms.”
But now comes the interesting point, in relation to good governance, science and technology in general:
“We must build up our strength in every field, not just in armed might. Our countries must be stable and well administered, must be economically and financially strong, industrially competent and technologically advanced. This will take time, but it can be done and it will be time well spent. We are enjoined by our religion to be patient. Innallahamaasabirin. Obviously there is virtue in being patient.
But the defense of the ummah, the counter-attack, need not start only after we have put our houses in order. Even today we have sufficient assets to deploy against our detractors. It remains for us to identify them and to work out how to make use of them to stop the carnage caused by the enemy. This is entirely possible if we stop to think, to plan, to strategise and to take the first few critical steps. Even these few steps can yield positive results.”
Actually Mahathir is advocating technology transfer and the stealth slow Jihad at the expense of violent Jihad and he knows that this not a popular position among the true believers:
“The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for peace we must react positively. True the treaty offered is not favorable to us. But we can negotiate. The Prophet did, at Hudaibiyah. And in the end he triumphed.
I am aware that all these ideas will not be popular. Those who are angry would want to reject it out of hand. They would even want to silence anyone who makes or supports this line of action. They would want to send more young men and women to make the supreme sacrifice. But where will all these lead to? Certainly not victory. Over the past 50 years of fighting in Palestine we have not achieved any result. We have in fact worsened our situation.
The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and we will conclude that the promoters are working for the enemy. But think. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.”
I would say that envy and phobia of the smart and creative Jews and the powerful and prosperous West is showing here disguised in a traditional Jewish conspiracy theory that predates The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi Judeophobia by a millennium.
The same irrationality that has permeated Islam throughout its history and prevented it from progressing beyond very limited achievements. And those achievements always came from other cultures. In mathematics from the Indians and in philosophy and astronomy from the ancient Greek thinkers and Assyrians. Even at the height of its culture - the much admired "Golden Age" in Spain - Islam demonstrates that it has already reached its limits.
“Contrary to the prevailing myth Al-Andalus represented the land of Jihad par excellence … Although the conquest had been planned and conducted in conjunction with a powerful Iberian Christian dissident royal faction, including a bishop, it proceded along the lines of classical Jihad – with massive pillaging, slavery, deportations, and killings”, writes Bat Ye´or and quote the distinguished French scholar on Andalusia Evariste Lévy-Provencal:
“The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation.”
Mahathir does not realize, that any progress made by Islam is made in spite of the doctrine, not because of it. He thinks that it is possible to modernize Islam, to make it more rational, powerful and competitive in the fields of governance and science without going outside the Islamic paradigm itself.
But he also demonstrates an awareness of the inferiority of Islam, a very unpleasant feeling that his call for rationality can not take away. Maybe Obama and his lackeys can help him by singing the praise of the grand achievements of Islam all day long, but the Jews are much better as eternal and traditional scapegoats to explain the failures and inferiority of Islam. So says the Qur´an, the Hadith and Sira and this barrier to reason Mahathir can not or dare not cross.
So his grand project can not be realized. It is doomed because it is undermined by the dogmatic irrationality and rigidity of Islam itself. Islam can never compete with the free and open societies of the West on equal terms in any field unless it transcends itself and becomes something else.
The dangers to the West comes not primarily from Islam but from ourselves. Somewhere in the last century, Western man suffered a catastrophic loss of faith - in himself, in his civilization, and in the faith that gave it birth. The character of every Western nation is being irremediably altered as each undergoes an unresisted invasion from the Muslim world. Having lost the will to reproduce and rule we are slowly disappearing from the Earth.
The appeasement policy of Obama towards Islam and the ridiculous objectives he imposed on NASA is only symptoms of the malady and rot that has paralyzed us.
We know why and how Islam want wrong, or we should know it. Now it is time to start analyzing what went wrong with our grand civilization and find ways to fix it. We don´t have much time I am afraid.
Isn’t that something? Look how evil the Jews are in the eye of this moderate(!) Muslim, for what they've managed to accomplish…
“But think. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.”
(Mahathir on Jews in his speech above)
Excellent article, Hugh. I fully concur with everything you say.
A bit OT, but following up a bit on your reference to Courant, and perhaps of interest to you and others: Courant's book is excellent, albeit not a particularly easy read, and deals primarily with pre-Twentieth Century mathematics used in classical, i.e., pre-quantum, physics. The conceptual leap to modern mathematics and physics is found in Group Theory, invented by Everiste Galois and hurriedly jotted down the night before a duel where he was killed, at age twenty, by a friend over the affections of a coquette.
There aren't many books that provide an easy introduction to the subject, which is usually taught in its most distilled and abstract, and somewhat impenetrable, form. But Group theory is the foundation for virtually all of modern physics. An outstanding, and highly readable, account of its invention, as well as the life and tragic death of Everiste Galois, is Mario Livio's "The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry". The concepts are not difficult, but require the same kind "Aha" moment to grasp as does seeing that "x" can be an abstract representation of anything in algebra, or that words are abstract representations of things. I assign homework based on material from Livio's book to illustrate how group concepts can be applied in some surprising ways, such as in organizing the complex marriage rules of certain Pacific Islander cultures. Being able to do this is an illustration of the process of abstraction, which is the heart and soul of mathematics. From there it is a relatively small step to String Theory.
And, of course, there is also E.T. Bell's incomparable "Men of Mathematics" that describes the lives and circumstances of mathematicians from Archimedes to Poincare.
Relevance to Islam? Understand these men, the way they think and perceive the world, and you will understand one of the very profound differences between the West and the world Islam would have us live in.
Iddo, I have wondered the same thing. And add the MSM to your list of the willfully blind. Perhaps there is a psychologist here who has a name for this syndrome?
I should have written "Courant and Robbins" for there were two authors of that wonderful book that should be reprinted. And get rid of all those goddam fill-in-the-blank "workbooks" in something called "Language Arts." And then make sure that Shepherd's Historical Atlas is reprinted, in a paperback, subsidized, mass-market edition, and distribute it to students as part of their study of history.
And make the Secretary of Education read, and re-read, and be asked to discuss intelligently, Jacques Barzun's "The House of Intellect" and "Teacher in America."
Then our students, and schools, will be cooking with gas.
This comment is also posted on my blog.
Sometimes an issue is so nuanced that it is possible to violently agree and disagree at the same time.
Hugh, much of what you say I agree with completely, but on one or two points I have to speak up.
I spend much of my time and energy focusing on the partisanship that taints and spoils so much of our political discourse. I dislike it when those I am against use it; I like it even less when putative "allies" stoop to mudslinging and tarnishing the innocent to win a point.
In your piece you say the following...
"The first remark in question was made by Charles Bolden, a former general who for reasons that are still unclear was appointed by the Obama Administration to be the head of NASA, though his knowledge of or interest in space exploration and the relevant science is unclear."
Sir, do you have any respect at all for the notion of not bearing false witness whatsoever? I find none in this blatantly slanderous "hyperbole" you present as an argument from authority against Gen. Bolden.
Let us shine a little reality on the subject Sir:
Bolden is a 1968 graduate of the United States Naval Academy (you know the school that is so easy to get into and graduate from, a real smooth sail), he was a Marine attack pilot. Those are the guys who get down low and try to hit things with bombs and guns while every mother’s son is trying to shoot them down with everything from handguns to high-tech anti-air emplacements; this takes more balls than dog fighting some poorly trained Viet Cong in a Mig. (Just a thought Hugh, what is your technical or military background, hmm?)
Bolden is 1968 graduate of the United States Naval Academy (you know that school that is so easy to get into, and graduate from; a real slackers dream), he was a Marine attack pilot: those are the guys who get down low and try to hit things with bombs and guns while every mother’s son on the ground (and some in the air) are trying to shoot them down with everything from handguns to high-tech anti-air emplacements and missiles; this takes more balls than dog fighting some poorly trained Viet Cong in a Mig. He flew more than 100 sorties (planning, prep, flight, attack, survive, return, do it again) and has a total of over 6,000 hours flying time logged. Now I understand that poly-sci and English majors don’t always take the time to do the math but, that is the equivalent of over 3 YEARS of 8 hours a day five day fulltime work - more than a month total time. Three years of full time work, all in the cockpit, off the ground added to all the training, prep and debriefing a pilot, especially a test pilot, endures to be able to fly!
He then became a test pilot which takes a cool head and good nerves combined with intelligence and lots of common sense. Oh, and it has a lot to do with understanding ALL the factors in creating, deploying and using ultra-high tech aviation and astronautical stuff; it also include having the sense to survive other idiots brilliant ideas. This is not relevant to the job of head of NASA?
Next Bolden becomes an astronaut, (No relevance to NASA there):
“Selected by NASA in May 1980, Bolden became an astronaut in August 1981. His technical assignments included: Astronaut Office Safety Officer; Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations; Special Assistant to the Director of the Johnson Space Center; Astronaut Office Liaison to the Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance Directorates of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Kennedy Space Center; Chief of the Safety Division at JSC; Lead Astronaut for Vehicle Test and Checkout at the Kennedy Space Center; and Assistant Deputy Administrator, NASA Headquarters.”
IN addition he has been on four (STS-61C, STS-31, STS-45, STS-60) missions for a total of 680 in space; this includes being mission commander for STS-45.
“Bolden was the first person to ride the Launch Complex 39 slidewire baskets which enable rapid escape from a space shuttle on the launch pad. The need for a human test was determined following a launch abort on STS-41-D where controllers were afraid to order the crew to use the untested escape system.[4]”
If he is not qualified to have an opinion on how NASA could be improved and run better, WHO THE HELL DOES; someone with similar experience not appointed by a president you hate? The ghost of Tomas Jefferson today peers over your shoulder squinting at your words in disappointment.
I do not know about you, but with his background and after watching that WHOLE interview Bolden sounds to me like an absolutely head administrator for NASA. Can you explain (in real, non-emotional) terms why you do not agree?
Or, did you just figure your loyal followers would take your word for Bolden’s background, watch a minute of the video, and then play ”she tells two friends” spreading your dislike for an Obama appointee all over the net; needless to say jeopardizing the career of someone that you have no real reason to attack and harm?
Now, go and watch the entire interview and tell me, using actual full quotes taken in context, just what he said that was so bad, other than the one sop to Obama’s perception of Muslims needing help to be seen as a source of Western enlightenment?
Iddo,
...conspiracy theories aside, these are mostly well-learned, well-informed, well-to-do, liberal-minded free-thinking individuals, are they not? Shouldn’t there be a perfectly logical explanation for their siding with Islam? What is it, then?
In this (and in perhaps most other situations), we should follow the lucid advice of Sherlock Holmes:
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
The trick is in recognizing the impossible, so you can then eliminate it. To the extent a mind is deformed, or compromised by degrees of ignorance, it may not be so capable.
Here are the impossible explanations:
1) The West is not really free, but is a crypto-tyranny ruled by a secret elite cabal who are really pulling all the major strings (and by logical extension, the vast majority of Western ordinary people are stupid sheep allowing themselves to be duped by this secret cabal).
2) This secret cabal, furthermore, is not only tyrannical, but either
a) evil in its knowing collusion with evil Muslims
or
b) labors under the delusion that it can play with fire -- using evil Muslims in order to aggrandize its own power
or
c) is cleverly and successfully exploiting evil Muslims in order to aggrandize its own power.
Or:
3) All (or most) "liberals" are evil -- knowingly collaborating in one way or another with Muslims they know are evil.
Or:
4) All (or most) "liberals" are colossally stupid.
We can eliminate these four explanations as, if not impossible, virtually impossible. The elimination of #1 and #2 need no further discussion -- for if anyone seriously tries to defend them, their sanity and rationality is in question; and besides, the claims contained therein follow the primary rule of conspiracy theory: not only are they unable to be disproved, and not only are they unable to be proved -- their very imperviousness to proof or disproof, in the disordered mind of the conspiracy theorist, positively constitutes their proof! In disputing #1 and #2, then, one would become hopelessly mired in tangling with a madman and his airtight axiom. In addition, #1 and #2 reflect a view of the West so profoundly pessimistic as to be gnostic.
#3, meanwhile, not only boggles the mind but also shares with #1 and #2 a profoundly pessimistic alienation from the goodness of the West, coupled with a deranged sense of a gnostic split in society portending civil war. Of course, civil wars have wracked various parts of the West before: but this civil war would logically afflict the entire Western civilization, and even World War Two did not rise (or sink) to that level. #3 also shares with #1 and #2 a strangely condescending view of the multitudes of non-"liberals" throughout the West who are apparently stupid sheep in allowing the "liberals" to run their lives.
While of course quite a few liberals are genuinely stupid, #4 in its blanket generalization is not only exceedingly unlikely, it ignores facts which undermine it:
a) most intelligent liberals, including those who are scholars whose fields of study pertain to matter relevant to, and sometimes even directly relating to, Islam, also defend Islam and Muslims
b) most conservatives and centrists also persist in defending Islam and Muslims.
Conclusion:
So once we have eliminated the virtually impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.
The structure of the problem:
1) Sincere. The truth of that matter to which we are logically led is that the majority in the West sincerely believes Islam and Muslims ought to be defended from Western "bigotry".
2) Intelligent. Furthermore, this sincere belief is not always stupid or ignorant, but often subsists in a complex intellectual structure of axioms.
3) Good. And finally, this complex intellectual structure that enables the persistent defense of Islam and of Muslims is intricately convolved with the progress of good ideals in the West -- which is precisely why so many people throughout the West persist in being this way: they sincerely, and (often) intelligently feel that a defense of Islam and of Muslims is the right thing to do. They feel that their inclination, or their stand, is on the side of the angels. And it's not merely a feeling, it's also the product of an intellectual process.
It is quite an elaborate Box the West has got itself into. Disentangling the good virtues of Western progress from the axioms of Islamo-friendly Apologetics is the greatest challenge in our war of ideas.
This essay is a disgrace in its assumption that poor little Barry is as naive to the teachings of Islam as the hapless GWB. If only he knew the truth. Just like if only he knew about Eric Holder and those Black Panthers. Cut me a break.
Hugh states - "Muslims are inculcated with the belief - does Barack Obama not know this? - that the real division of humanity, the only division that counts, is that between Muslim and non-Muslim, Muslim and Infidel".
He not only knows it but was raised on it and had it further embellished in his brain by the likes of Farrakhan and other American Muslim leaders. He also found it to be very attractive. He's a full blown racist an enemy of not just United States but Western Civilization.
Obama wrote in Audacity of Hope: ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’
Pamela Geller has exposed his admission to the Egyptian foreign minister that he is still a Muslim. He never denied so I'll take him at his word.
Either he is an absolute idiot since he spent his whole life with those who follow the commands of Muhammad or he is one of them.
With respect, no one questions Bolden's credentials or experience in technical matters, but that is not the issue here. Indeed, Bolden's resume is as close to ideal as one could hope to construct (military academy, Vietnam fighter pilot, Marine general, astronaut, minority). In an administration that places high value on credentials, one suspects that his stellar resume was one of the factors that led to his appointment.
The issue here is not his resume, but whether he understood the policy implications of what he was tasked to do by Obama. I would assert that, judging by his naive surprise at the ruckus he caused, he manifestly did not. Credentials in one area of expertise, in particular if it is in the technical world, do not automatically give one standing in the political world where different judgments apply. It is here where Bolden misstepped, and it is in this context that critics are completely justified in raking him over the coals.
Thanks for this.
Statements like "democracy is a religion" are further developed by Feisal Abdul Rauf is his book "What's Right with Islam."
False equivalencies like the Bill of Rights equals Islam are very self serving, and also very Feisal Abdul Rauf.
A key to understanding Feisal Abdul Rauf is understanding Mahathir.
Good find!
Thanks, Hesperado. I certainly agree we can safely rule out conspiracies of universal collusion−the multitude of diverse interests involved would certainly prohibit any way to hold such a scheme intact on such a vast scale or duration. Granted, too, that most of those liberals, so gracious about Islam, do not really come across as evil people with any sinister plans for the world. They do appear to be mostly mild-mannered soft-spoken sincere individuals. Chomsky’s a chief example. They’re basically a well-intentioned misguided lot, you say. Perhaps. But then again, where does all this hypocrisy coming from? How can they turn a blind eye to the humanitarian misery in the world where it doesn’t serve their own selective agenda?
Here’s a specific example. An Israeli professor (Linguistics, of all things…) that writes in favor of BDS:
http://www.boycottisrael.info/content/israel-must-change-or-collapse-impact-bds
OK, she’s entitled to her ideas, but take a look at her self-posted picture:
http://www.tau.ac.il/%7Egiorar/
along with links from her website to western feminist issues, and tell me how does that fit with identifying with a society where honor-killing of women is rampant? And where does she stand on forced burkas for little girls in Gaza school system? See: “Female hypocrisy on Gaza”
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3912144,00.html
Here’s another example: We’re all familiar with the deafening silence of Muslim leaders and scholars following a major suicide-bombing targeting innocent civilians (oftentimes, Muslims) anywhere in the world, except, perhaps, to explain it away in terms of the sins of the West. But where's the western Liberals discussion of this silence? Do they not question it in their own soul, being such kind and well-intentioned folks?
No, I suspect there must be another “secret ingredient” involved here, however I’m not quite able to to figure it out. I mean, were there two equal-sized groups of Liberal Lefts debating each other in the best tradition of Western skepticism on the rights and wrongs of Islam, then ok, I can understand it even if I’d personally disagree with one of the group or the other. But a situation in US campuses (let alone Europe’s) with an almost unanimous consensus of bon ton in favor of Islamist “freedom fight” against the “oppressive West”? No arguments, no dissent, no examining of hard facts? That's spooky indeed…
“Isn’t that something? Look how evil the Jews are in the eye of this moderate(!) Muslim, for what they've managed to accomplish…”
Even a “moderate”, intelligent and well educated Muslim leader as Dr. Mahathir Muhammed is unable to comprehend how it was possible that Judaism during the European diaspora adapted the ideas of the enlightenment and developed new forms of Judaism compatible with democracy and modernity.
“The Industrial Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims”, says Mahathir. More important the Muslims took no notice of the enlightenment, the scientific and technological revolution, the very foundation of the Industrial Revolution that created a new type culture more dynamic that any other in the history of mankind.
When you are thinking within the boundaries of the Islamic paradigm there can only be one explanation for Jewish success. Here expressed by Osama bin Laden in strict accordance with the Qur’an and the Islamic tradition:
“Come let me tell you who the Jews are. The Jews have lied about the Creator, and even more so about His creations. The Jews are the murderers of the prophets, the violators of agreements …. These are the Jews: usurers and whore-mongers. They will leave you nothing, neither this world nor religion .... Such are the Jews who, in accordance with their religion, believe that human beings are their slaves and that those who refuse [to recognize this] should be put to death,”
(Quoted from The Al Qaeda Reader).
Sounds to me like a pretty accurate description of Islam and how the Muslims have treated the non-Muslims since the days of the prophet. The intrinsic moral failures of Islam are obviously projected on the Jews. The Muslims could not live in a world cleansed for Jews. They would have nobody to blame for their own viciousness and barbarism.
In classical psychology, projection is always seen as a defense mechanism that occurs when a person's own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.
An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and redirect their libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another.
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.
The whole Islamic culture is based upon projection making it impossible for the Muslims to admit their own mistakes and correct them. Instead of asking: what did we do wrong and how do we correct it? - the Muslims ask who did this to us and how do we get revenge. And that leads to a mental fog of conspiracy theories and always seeking scapegoats.
The Jews have always been telling the unpleasant truth about Islam and called Muhammad a liar and false prophet. That created such a deep irrational fear in the Muslims that large parts of the Qur’an is nothing but a discussion of the Jews marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment and conviction process.
A general guiding principle of the hadith for Muslims is ”khalifuhum”, which means, “do not do like them” – the Jews. As Georges Vajda demonstrated, however, this seemingly banal principle which covers matters ranging from daily customs and practices (such as basic grooming and dress practices to avoid), is laden with anti-Jewish animus which only intensifies when the hadith deal with more profound subjects such as eschatology.
Because of this projection mechanism the Muslims are prevented from understanding what made the Jewish societies progressive and successful when the Islamic culture was on the brink of collapse.
Judaism had something Islam never had and never can have: The Golden rule and a sense of justice based upon reciprocity. As a non missionary and exclusive religion the wight is upon quality and not quantity in Judaism. That makes a big difference in intellectual endeavor and adaptability to the surrounding culture.
What happened to Judaism in the wake of the enlightenment could never have happened to Islam:
The Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement in Europe that lasted from approximately the 1770s to the 1880s. The Haskalah was inspired by the European Enlightenment but had a Jewish character. Literally, Haskalah comes from the Hebrew word sekhel, meaning "reason" or intellect" and the movement was based on rationality. It encouraged Jews to study secular subjects, to learn both the European and Hebrew languages, and to enter fields such as agriculture, crafts, the arts and science.
The maskilim (followers of the Haskalah) tried to assimilate into European society in dress, language, manners and loyalty to the ruling power. The Haskalah eventually influenced the creation of both the Reform and Zionist movements.
As early as the 1740s, many German Jews and some individual Polish and Lithuanian Jews had a desire for secular education. Some of the elite members of Jewish society knew European languages. Absolutist governments in Germany, Austria and Russia deprived the Jewish community’s leadership of its authority and many Jews became "Court Jews." They gave economic assistance to the local rulers, using their connections with Jewish businessmen to serve as military contractors, managers of mints, founders of new industries and providers to the court of precious stones and clothing. Court Jews were protected by the rulers and acted as did everyone else in society in their speech, manners, and awareness of European literature and ideas.
The lower class was also exposed to the outside world. Jewish peddlers interacted frequently with non-Jews.
During the general Enlightenment (1600s to late 1700s), many Jewish women began to frequent non-Jewish salons and to campaign for emancipation (the granting of equality to Jews). In Western Europe and the German states, observance of halakhah (Jewish law) started to be neglected.
In the first half of the 18th century, even some traditional German scholars and leaders, such as the doctor and author of Ma’aseh Tuviyyah, Tobias b. Moses Cohn, appreciated secular culture. In Italy, there were some rabbis who had studied philosophy and Christian theological literature. Jewish Italian physicians held particular prestige.
The Haskalah began in Galicia (Germany, Poland and Central Europe) and later spread to Eastern Europe (Lithuania and other provinces of the Pale of Jewish Settlement1). The Haskalah was characterized by a scientific approach to religion in which secular culture and philosophy became a central value. It was influenced by a Maimonidean approach that valued secular studies and used reason as the measure of all things.
Moses Mendelssohn (1726-1789) is considered the father of the Haskalah. Mendelssohn was a philosopher with ideas from the general Enlightenment. Frederick the Great declared him a "Jew under extraordinary protection" and he won a prize from the Prussian Academy of Sciences on his "treatise on evidence in the metaphysical sciences." He wrote in German, the language of the scholars. He represented Judaism as a non-dogmatic, rational faith that is open to modernity and change. He called for secular education and a revival of Hebrew language and literature. He initiated a translation of the Torah into German with Hebrew letters, tried to improve the legal situation of the Jews and the relationship between Jews and Christians, and argued for Jewish tolerance and humanity.
One of the biggest changes of the Haskalah was in education. The maskilim tried to remove Talmud from its central position in Jewish education. They included Jewish studies in their curricula but emphasized secular knowledge, modern languages and practical training in labor, in order to help the Jews become integrated into society. They advocated the study of Jewish history and ancient Hebrew as a way to revive a national Jewish consciousness. They wanted to train Jewish children in common sense, tolerance and reasonableness.
The goals of the maskilim were affected by the absolutist rulers of the time. Joseph II issued one typical edict for the Jews of Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary and Galicia in the 1780s. He decreed that Jews must establish "normal" schools or send their children to state schools, Jews were allowed to attend general secondary schools and universities, marriage was prohibited without a certificate of school attendance and anyone who studied Talmud before completing the school curriculum could be imprisoned. As a result of this decree, many new, modern Jewish schools were created. In 1820, Francis I of Austria required rabbis to study sciences and use the language of the country in prayers and sermons. As a result, a rabbinical seminary opened in Padua in 1829.
The first Haskalah school was founded in Berlin in 1778 and called both the Freischule ("Free School") and Hinnukh Ne’arim ("Youth Education"). It was a free education designed for poor children and the curriculum included German, French, arithmetic, geography, history, art, some Bible studies and Hebrew. The school was successful and began with 70 students. Other Haskalah style schools developed in Dessau and Frankfort on the Main, among other places. In all of these schools, Talmud was almost completely abandoned and both Hebrew and general studies were taught. Educators began to write textbooks to guide the new curricula.
The Haskalah also brought about change in the education of girls. Daughters of wealthy families generally studied with private teachers. In the 1790s, the maskilim established schools for poorer girls in Breslau, Dessau, Koenigsberg and Hamburg. The curriculum generally included some Hebrew, German, the fundamentals of religion and ethics, prayers and arithmetic. Some schools also taught Yiddish writing, handiwork, art and singing.
The Haskalah also affected education in other European countries besides Germany. In 1813, a school was started in Tarnopol (Galicia) that had classes in Bible, Mishnah, Gemara, Hebrew grammar, Polish, French, arithmetic, history and geography. Classes were taught in German and there were classes given for both boys and girls. In 1819, three boys’ schools opened in Warsaw in which instruction was given in Polish. Two girls schools also opened there. In 1845, a school similar to that in Tarnopol opened in Lvov. In the 1820s and 1830s, schools opened in Russia that were modeled after those in Germany. During the 1840s and 1850s, the Russian government created a network of governmental Jewish schools in which the language of instruction was either German or Russian.
Education was needed to instruct teachers on how to teach in these new schools. The first teachers’ training seminary was opened in Kassel in 1810, and others followed in Amsterdam, Budapest and other cities. In Vilna and Zhitomir (Russia), government rabbinical seminaries were established and funded by a tax imposed on the masses. The maskilim educated there were taught in Russian and their ties with the Hebrew language and Jewish tradition were weak.
As an angry poster above -- Guy De Whitney -- requested, I listened to the interview with Charles Bolden. I found him miable, well-spoken, a clubbable man with a winning manner. But so what? That does not mean, nor does his background as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, nor as an astronaut, even one who went on four voyages and headed the scientific mission for two of them, necessarily vitiate my uncertainty -- "unclear" was the word I used, and I meant it. I am sorry that I did no re-read what I wrote and thus left un-excised the appearance of that word "unclear" twice in the same sentence. My insistence that one can be "unclear" about Bolden's appointment is based on a knowledge of how many of these appointments are made not on the basis of clear and unequivocal merit, but on the basis of other considerations. Guy De Whitney may suspect that a specter is haunting my comment -- the specter of Affirmative Action, and all that that immoral policy has done to make it difficult to prevent some who are not its beneficiaries from being regarded as if they were, but in this case he is quite wrong.
I would not find any astronaut, qua astronaut, unequivocally qualified for this post. And even though this post is not to head NASA's scientific administration, I still prefer to be certain that those who are most knowledgeable about the science, not only of manned space flight, but of unmanned space flight, and of space exploration in general, rule the roost. Of course the appointment is "unclear"; I haven't talked to, and even then there would be a variety of opinions, of those who may be in the know. When I have occasionally known some inside-dope about some appointment, whether to a university presidency, or to a tenured chair, or even known, for example, the former law partners of someoene who then entered politics successfully, I have been amazed at what one can learn, and what the public hardly has an inkling of, and how what you see is not always what you get -- to the sorrow of many.
As to the variation on the argument of authority -- Bolden attended the Naval Academy, and therefore he must have leapt some pretty high hurdles, and that must be a guarantee of quality -- no, I don't agree. I am not impressed, not now, not any longer, with any degrees from anywhere, now that I know so many people, from all kinds of what others think of as the very best places, who do not impress. Should I have held back from criticizing assorted sammy glicks of academe, because this one when to Harvard Law School, or that one to Yale? Don't be silly.
As I said, Bolden is amiable and eminently presentable. He was a brave and, I assume, skilled fighter pilot (he denies,, in the video interview, having been a "test pilot" though later on in the interview he confusingly says "I was then a test pilot" -- I'm going to go with his initial denial). He was an experienced astronaut. I want everyone who is running NASA to be in up to their necks in the relevant science, and if they are lacking in outreach charm, so be it. Washington is full of people -- oh, Bill Clinton for example -- who are professional charmers. We've got quite enough of them.
One more thing. The poster, Guy De Whitney, claims that I "hate Obama." This is flabbergasting. Not only do I not hate him, I don't even really dislike him. I recognize him as an interesting type, one that I am familiar with from a certain environment. It is not David Remnick, but rather Herman Melville, who should have limned him. He is talented in in many ways. But he's certainly no Lincoln, not even close. He had the benefit of private tutorial, and a great deal of attention, and attention to his use of words, from his grandparents, and that shows. He is fluent and has the gift of the gab, and it's often a relief to hear his use of words after what one had to endure with his predecessor. He has been both the beneficiary and also the victim of late 20th century credentialism, and the cult of degrees, and baselessly "prestiigous" schools. I still don't know what he actually studied and what he actually read. In a recent interview with Paolo Valentino in the Corriere della Sera his attempt to ingratiate himself by listing what he liked about Italy -- his "passion" for Dante, and for the movies of "Fellini, Anotonioni, De Sica" and for the Tuscan light -- well, that's all perfectly banal and predictable, as comical in its way as the Playboy bunny of yore who admitted that what she really liked to do of an evening was stay home and read Camus or Dostoyevsky. But even though I know exactly which movies by Fellini and Antonioni and De Sica he had in mind -- campus film society movies -- I'll post a list if you'd like -- in other words, the Higher Banality. You'd be surprised how many celebrated professors, some of whom have gone to Washington, have on their shelves, and in their minds, Book-of-the-Month-Club selections, and that's about it.
Does Barack Obama have a mind that is well stocked? I don't know. He gives no sign of it, certainly no sign either of his "passion" for Dante. He has shown an undue respect for authority. In economics, he was far too solicitous of the views of Geithner and Summers, and much more timid, much more afraid of those whom he thought he had to listen to, than many -- Elizabaeth Warren and Simon Johnson and many others - thought he should be. And in dealing with Islam, he's been far too impressed with people who are from the military, but who were early supporters of his -- his fear of alienating the military, or not winning it over, seems to be reflected in his choosing some people, such as Scott Gration (who has blotted his copybook) and John Brennan and others I need not name. who we are told deeply impress him. Well, he's being impressed by the wrong people, because he does not feel himself prepared in these areas -- but he should be able to figure out who makes sense, for god's sake, and Elizabeth Warren and Simon Johnson both make sense, and on Islam, it is the critics of Brennan and company who make sense.
Many false and absurd charges are made against Obama, and these false and absurd charges have the effect of making the real charges less visible, or less noticed. Such attacks only prevent the most deadly, because the truest, criticism from getting through, from being adequately heard.
One of the charges made during the campaign was that he had spent tenty years as a Community Organizer, and that was not enough to run the country. It seemed silly, but as time goes by, the gravamen of that charge becomes more convincing. He did spend twenty years busily forging his career, finding supporters, enduring -- at least I hope he was only enduring, and secretly could not stand --the likes of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But did he ever acquire the habit of reading, the habit of thought, or has his thought gone into, in the main, the story of his own life, that he finds more interesting, I think, than that life in fact is, for there are plenty of people with equally unusual backgrounds, and hypertrophied attention to matters of race and ethnicity and all that stuff tends to make any Jack -- or Jill for that matter -- a dull boy. There's a lot more to think about than Origins, and Where I Come From, and My Search To Understand My Father. We've got that stuff comigng out of our ears in modern America.
You know, I was struck by his quiet, intelligent, piano-playing half-brother. I found him more intriguing, possibly because he was more remote and laconic, and haughtier, more genuinely indifferent to the Great World, than is Barack Obama. But what do I know? I live in the back.
I too would prefer shorter articles, more focused and perhaps with some form of presentation, such as images, much like Robert or Marisol post their articles. But Hugh's articles stand out in their own way, im just worried not enough ppl are catching on to them.
I wouldn't worry about enough people catching on to Hugh's articles. Some say they are too long, too complicated, and too difficult to read and maybe they are---for some. But I'm sure most find them fascinating and informative. I enjoy reading them because I know I will always learn something, either an obscure fact or a new word. Hugh wouldn't want anyone to be intimidated by his extensive knowledge and writing talent. He writes these articles to educate and inform and the beautiful prose is a bonus. Hugh's articles are like surprise presents, manna from above.
Thanks for the post and the minilecture about The Haskala, which I knew nothing about. It would appear that The Haskala and its program to integrate Jews into European society provides a successful model (notwithstanding the Nazis) the Muslims could emulate. But, of course, they won't.
Hugh, you think Obama may be pulling the "self-esteem" shtick on the Muslim world. Perhaps you're right.
But I think most of us here would agree that Muslims have a little too much self-esteem, especially when it comes to the rights of non-Muslims!
Thanks for your positive comment Eastview.
“It would appear that The Haskala and its program to integrate Jews into European society provides a successful model (notwithstanding the Nazis) the Muslims could emulate. But, of course, they won't.”
You could also say that for the first time in history large Muslim European settlements (diasporas) have been established outside the House of Islam by peaceful means as part of agreements between the EEC/EU and the Arab League since 1973.
In order to implement this new immigration policy the Union enforced a kind of “affirmative action” legislation in its member states in order to create a multi-ethnical super state. The number of Muslims now living in Western Europe and the UK are in excess of 30 millions and growing fast, making the Muslim diaspora about three times larger than the Jewish diaspora in all of Europe in the pre-Nazi era.
At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, when the "Final solution to the Jewish question" – the Holocaust - was decided, the Nazis estimated a total of 11 million Jews lived in continental Europe, about half of them in the USSR.
So far we have not seen anything similar to the Jewish Haskala movement being established in the Muslim diasporas. Instead they have formed ghettos, parallel societies and "no-go-zones", resisted integration and many insist on implementing the Sharia law or parts of it on their host countries.
We are still waiting to see if a new form of Islam fully compatible with secular liberal democracy will emerge from this meeting of cultures. I discount of course the so called “Euro-Islam” being promoted by Tariq Ramadan - the grandson of the founder of The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, Hassan al-Banna – as nothing more than a slow non-violent form of Jihad. A clever attempt to make the Europeans close their eyes for the deadly dangers of Islam.
So you are right when you say that the Muslims won´t emulate the Haskala model even if they have much better conditions than the Jews ever had. Since the days of Martin Luthers extreme judeophobia, Jew-hatred and fear of Jews have been widespread in Continental Europe culminating in the Holocaust, exactly 400 years after Luther wrote the notorious "On the Jews and Their Lies" in 1543.
"However, in the Anglo-Saxon world this Jew-hatred and discrimination of Jews - officially established as doctrine in early Christendom in the third century - was counterbalanced by a movement called “Christian Zionism” which can be traced back to Britain in the sixth century:
“The British have had a long-term fascination with the idea of Israel and its central role in biblical prophecy that dates back to their earliest recorded literature. The Epistle of Gildas (circa 6th century AD) and the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (735 AD) both saw the British as “the new Israel,” God’s chosen people, who were destined to play a strategic role despite repeated invasions by their Nordic neighbors. In the British perception of being an elect, these battles were understood in the context of Israel’s battles against the Philistines, Babylonians and others.
A clear resurgence of such themes was evident in the 16th century, perhaps influenced by the Protestant Reformation and its emphasis on the Bible and varied interpretations of its texts, now that Rome had lost its control over the new clergy and theologians. One of the early expressions of fascination with the idea of Israel was the monograph Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, written by Anglican clergyman Thomas Brightman in 1585. Brightman urged the British people to support the return of the Jews to Palestine in order to hasten a series of prophetic events that would culminate in the return of Jesus.
In 1621, a prominent member of the British Parliament, attorney Henry Finch, advanced a similar perspective when he wrote: “The (Jews) shall repair to their own country, shall inherit all of the land as before, shall live in safety, and shall continue in it forever.” Finch argued that based on his interpretation of Genesis 12:3, God would bless those nations that supported the Jews’ return. However, his idea did not find support from fellow legislators.
While these writers cannot be classified as Christian Zionists, they might be viewed as proto-Christian Zionists, as they prepared the way for those who would follow. Gradually their views receded, but the turbulence following the American and French revolutions provoked significant feelings of insecurity across Europe. As the anxiety rose in the run-up to the centennial year at the beginning of the 19th century, prophetic speculation concerning Jesus’ return and related events was in the air.
During the decade that followed the year 1800, several Christian writers and preachers began to reflect on the events leading to Jesus’ would-be imminent return, among them Louis Way, an Anglican clergyman. Way taught that it was necessary for the Jews to return to Palestine as the first stage prior to the Messianic Age, and he offered speculation as to the timing of Jesus’ second coming. Within a short period of time, Way gained a wide readership through his journal The Jewish Expositor, and counted many clergymen, academics and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as subscribers.
A number of influential proto-Christian Zionists emerged in the generation that followed Way. John Nelson Darby (1800-81), a renegade Irish Anglican priest, added several unique features to Way’s teachings, including the doctrine of “the Rapture,” whereby “born again Christians” would be literally removed from history and transferred to heaven prior to Jesus’ return. Darby also placed a restored Israel at the center of his theology, claiming that an actual Jewish state called Israel would become the central instrument for God to fulfill His plans during the last days of history. Only true (“born again”) Christians would be removed from history prior to the final battle of Armageddon through the Rapture based on his literal interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:16.
Darby’s extensive writings and 60-year career as a missionary consolidated a form of fundamentalism called “premillennialism” (Jesus would return prior to the Battle of Armageddon and his millennial rule on earth). Darby made six missionary journeys to North America, where he became a popular teacher and preacher. The premillennial theology and its influence on Christian fundamentalism and the emerging evangelical movement in the United States can be directly traced to Darby’s influence.
Christian Zionism is the direct product of this unusual and recent Western form of Protestant theology. Found primarily in North America and England, it is now exported around the globe via satellite television, the internet, best-selling novels such as the Left Behind series, films and a new breed of missionaries. These unique doctrines were found among fringe movements in Christianity throughout the ages, which most Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches regarded as extreme and marginal, if not heretical.
One of the influential British social reformers to be influenced by premillennial theology was Lord Shaftesbury, a conservative evangelical Christian who was intimately linked to leading members of the British Parliament. In 1839, Shaftesbury published an essay in the distinguished literary journal the Quarterly Review, titled “The State and Restoration of the Jews,” where he argued: “(T)he Jews must be encouraged to return (to Palestine) in yet greater numbers and become once more the husbandman of Judea and Galilee.” Writing 57 years before Zionist thinkers Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill and Theodor Herzl popularized the phrase, Shaftesbury called the Jews “a people with no country for a country with no people.” The saying was curiously similar to that of the early Zionists, who described Palestine as “a land of no people for a people with no land.” Gradually, Shaftesbury’s views gained acceptance among British journalists, clergy and politicians.
One of the most important figures in the development of Christian Zionism was the Anglican chaplain in Vienna during the 1880s, William Hechler, who became an acquaintance of Herzl. Hechler saw Herzl and the Zionist project as ordained by God in order to fulfill the prophetic scriptures. He used his extensive political connections to assist the Zionist leader in his quest for an international sponsor of the Zionist project. Hechler arranged meetings with the Ottoman sultan and the German kaiser, but it was his indirect contacts with the British elite that led to a meeting with the politician Arthur Balfour. That meeting in 1905 would eventually lead to Balfour’s November 1917 declaration on a Jewish homeland, which brought the Zionists their initial international legitimacy. Balfour’s keen interest in Zionism was prepared at least in part by his Sunday school faith, a case put forth by Balfour’s biographer and niece, Blanch Dugdale.
Then-British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George was perhaps even more predisposed to the Zionist ideology than Balfour. Journalist Christopher Sykes (son of Mark Sykes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916), noted in his volume Two Studies in Virtue that Lloyd-George’s political advisers were unable to train his mind on the map of Palestine during negotiations prior to the Treaty of Versailles, due to his training by fundamentalist Christian parents and churches on the geography of ancient Israel. Lloyd-George admitted that he was far more familiar with the cities and regions of Biblical Israel than with the geography of his native Wales or of England itself.
British imperial designs were undoubtedly the primary political motivation in drawing influential British politicians to support the Zionist project. However, it is clear that the latter were predisposed to Zionism and to enthusiastically supporting the proposals of Herzl and leading Zionist officials such as Chaim Weizmann due to their Christian Zionist backgrounds. Balfour’s famous speech of 1919 makes the point: “For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
The phrases “rooted in age-long traditions” and “future hopes” were perhaps grounded in Balfour’s British imperial vision, but they were also buttressed by his understanding of Bible prophecy, which undergirded his bias toward the Zionist project as well as his grand designs for Britain’s colonialist policy. ...”
Quoted just to give you and other readers who may not be familiar with the fascinating history of Christian Zionism an appetizer for further study.
The article I quoted from is written by Donald Wagner, professor of religion and Middle Eastern studies at North Park University in Chicago and executive director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Link to full text:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4959.htm
After I chided Jeff Camery and duh_swami for seeming to prefer short, simple answers, both of them revised their positions. duh_swami backed off his "looks like a duck" statement, which I considered an overly simplified assessment about Obama. Actually, duh_swami usually makes rather well-thought-out responses to articles, and so I have no issue with him. By now, Hugh's essay has generated quite a bit of intelligent debate, aside from the first two comments (and a few others).
Hi Iddo, shalom :) -
here are some more reasons:
as far as Europe is concerned, the support for Muslims and allowing them ther same rights as EU citizens is a result of the EuroArab Dialogue conferences in which Arab markets (for the EU) and Arab oil (for the Eu) were and still are being traded for EU technology, antiIsraelism and the political attitude of the Arabs toward Israel and other non-Muslim territories.They also ,thus unitied, form a power bloc to challenge the US - this was intitiated by Charles de Gaulle and is expounded upon in Bat YeOr's Eurabia.
All the rhetoric expansively praising Arab/Muslims etc is also part of this bargain. Mideastweb.org has a number of documents pertaining to this set of compacts, and it was designed and ordered to encompass all the cultural, media, economic and political arms of governemtn, legislative too.
i can't say more than this right now because I have not finished the Eurabia Book but it's all there.
The World Council of Churches churches signed up to this as well.
2) a lot of leftist types, otherwise in favour of women's rights etc, find Muslims sexy - they're savage, forbidden, arrogant. Come on - everyone loves that violent type, who if you only love him enough, will change JUST FOR YOU!!!
(Although we have to accept them as they are, otherwise we're rude). Women always write to serial killers and murderers in prison, and a lot of people love to play with violence on various forms.
Besides, it's easy to harass your own polite, lawful society for these things - but campaigning in the outside savage world whose customs are so different? Way too scary and unfamiliar. i mean - someone might behead you, although they wouldn't do that, cos they're peaceful Islamic bunnies, but gee, you could get killed, you know!
Certainly this love 'em til they convert thing is pushed by various Christian groups, one of whom is in my neighbourhood, the pastor of which - Mark Durie as a matter of fact - said in one of his emails that he was "grieving" for the families of the Turkish jihadis who died on the Gaza Flotilla.
Note - he did not and does not grieve for those the jihadis targeted, or for the victims of the flotilla jihadists, or for those who are threatened by the breaking of the Gaza blockade.
And yes, I know he wrote The Third Choice, a good, informative book. But he is through and through, a soul-collector for Jesus.
I can't remember where I read it, but my penultimate "reason" involves something I read in a book about cults. The most intelligent, articulate people were targeted and manipulated into cults (still are) simply because they were so intelligent and well-read.
It had a great deal to do with their idealism and readiness to contemplate a better world. Apparently intelligent people are actually easy to manipulate emotionally. Apologies for lack of sources, read it long time ago.
Finally, i imagine that a lot of lefties are in this to prove how simply fabulous THEY are at negotiating with killers. The reasoning goes - look at those savage Jews, killing those poor Muslims, who are so pathetic - I can handle them better with my superior skills in dialogue and sympathy. i'll show how sympathetic I am to them and they'll love me! All you need to do is TALK to them!
I've heard a lot of people say/write variations of this, and they do this because they are in mad denial about all this, and so far it has not touched them personally.
These people think that talking to someone will cure them of their hostility towards them. In some cases they are correct, but their sheer wilful ignorance of the jihad problem is really awesome. At another level, though, they're pacifying the crocodile.
My three cents. :)
Iddo,
"Chomsky’s a chief example. They’re basically a well-intentioned misguided lot, you say."
I was speaking of "liberals" in general. Chomsky is the exception that would prove the rule -- i.e., it is reasonable to suppose that he is genuinely evil.
"But then again, where does all this hypocrisy coming from? How can they turn a blind eye to the humanitarian misery in the world where it doesn’t serve their own selective agenda?"
As I said (cf. my #2), they think in terms of a complex paradigm. In this paradigm, Muslims because perceived to be "ethnic", fit into the slot of potential victims of Western "bigotry", and once you have an entire People who are perceived to be in that slot, it is very difficult to dislodge them as such in the minds of sincerely (cf. #1) well-intentioned (cf. #3) Westerners. There is a complex intellectual mechanism composed of interlocking gears in the mind of the PC MC person by which the anti-liberal (not to mention positively evil) words and deeds of Muslims are able to be deflected or obfuscated. This is the answer to your "How".
In your example of the feminist anti-Israel professor, you ask: "...how does that fit with identifying with a society where honor-killing of women is rampant? And where does she stand on forced burkas for little girls in Gaza school system?"
If this Greta Berlin fits my #1 (sincere) and #3 (good at heart) -- one assumes she fits #2, intelligent -- one of the mechanisms that serve to cloud judgement in this regard is a "respect" for the "culture" of this perceived ethnic group, Muslims. There is a long and rich tradition in Western liberalism of cultivating an irrational respect for non-Western cultures and of contorting oneself into gymnastic knots in order to justify (if not positively admire) practices among non-Western "natives" that ordinarily would shock and repulse the liberal. This trend has blossomed in the past century under the rubric of Anthropology, but of course spills over into many other disciplines and more generally into the worldview of PC MC. Focusing on its nature in Anthropology, the study by Robert B. Edgerton, Sick societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony, is quite helpful in understanding the workings of the liberal mind as it goes into contortions to defend the indefensibly anti-liberal (up to and including even cannibalism!). Other mechanisms in addition might explain Greta Berlin's state of mind in this regard -- including an irrationally excessive self-hatred of the West (and of Israel as Western).
"Here’s another example: We’re all familiar with the deafening silence of Muslim leaders and scholars following a major suicide-bombing targeting innocent civilians (oftentimes, Muslims) anywhere in the world, except, perhaps, to explain it away in terms of the sins of the West."
Actually, the PC MC crowd can point to several official "condemnations of terrorism" put out by Muslim leaders over the years. So it's more complex, and one has to apply more intelligence in order to detect the loopholes in those "condemnations". Once subtlety and a knowledge of complex interlocking facts is required, then the PC MC's instinctive tendency to exploit fudge factors morphs astronomically. Excepting the tiny minority of actually evil Leftists, this tendency to "exploit" is not duplicitous: it is sincere and well-intentioned, for they feel themselves fighting on the side of the angels -- taking the side of these threatened Brown People against evil White Western Bigots, and so extraordinary measures are required.
1) The West is not really free, but is a crypto-tyranny ruled by a secret elite cabal who are really pulling all the major strings (and by logical extension, the vast majority of Western ordinary people are stupid sheep allowing themselves to be duped by this secret cabal).
Replace "secret elite cabal" with an aristocracy of "experts" with elite technical education but a superficial interest in the humanities and who tend to view human problems as technical problems. (Think of the worship of science and the hostility to religion.) Hence, Muslims will behave rationally if we only show that we are not bigoted against them, and give them financial aid and better schools (including having NASA teach the Arabs to make their own missiles, of course).
"Focusing on its nature in Anthropology, the study by Robert B. Edgerton, Sick societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony, is quite helpful in understanding the workings of the liberal mind as it goes into contortions to defend the indefensibly anti-liberal (up to and including even cannibalism!). Other mechanisms in addition might explain Greta Berlin's state of mind in this regard -- including an irrationally excessive self-hatred of the West (and of Israel as Western)".
How very appropriate of you to bring Edgerton´s ”Sick Societies”, from 1992, into focus here.
I knew about Edgertons theories from a contribution he made to “Culture Matters”, 2000, edited by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, entitled “Traditional Beliefs and Practices – Are Some better than Others?”
“Sick Societies” was brought back from oblivion one year ago by The Brussels Journal in a review written by Thomas F. Bertonneau. Here some relevant quotes related to the prevailing cultural self-hatred among socialists:
“One can hardly read ”Sick Societies”, nearly twenty years after its publication, without speculating how Edgerton’s arguments and observations might apply to the existing condition of the West, governed as it is by dogmatic elites who would implement the antitheses of the market and repeal longstanding norms – I refer to redistribution of wealth, penalization of productivity, and the infliction, via immigration, of pre-modern and non-Western cultural forms on Western societies, under a doctrine that goes by the misleadingly abstract name of “Multiculturalism.”
For one thing, the maladaptation theory implies a consistent human nature that bad arrangements can violate. This notion of a consistent human nature is rejected by the reigning cultural relativism, but affirmed by the continuity of the Western tradition from Greek philosophy through the Gospels to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the American Constitution.
Self-criticism is central to the Western tradition, from Plato and Aristotle to Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. The currently prevalent self-hatred, urged on the commonality by the elites (who certainly never show any similar hatred of themselves or their own beliefs), differs radically from genuine introspection. One might trace the history of this self-hatred, while cataloguing its destructive results, from Rousseau, who directly influenced the French Revolution and provided theoretical justification for its enormities, through Karl Marx’s inspiration of the Bolsheviks, with their homicidal record, to the deliquescence of civic society consequent on the socialist-and-multicultural policies of existing Western governments.
Not least of these inimical governments would be the increasingly radical and dictatorial Democrat-Party regime in the USA, whose idea of economics resembles the magical thinking of primitives and whose social policies, administered by “Czars,” mimic the most non-productive notions of Soviet-era Third-World governments.
We have seen earlier how Edgerton identifies the semantic slipperiness in the standard ethnographic claim that intuitively maladaptive practices operate by concealed rationality, which the professionally uninitiated cannot perceive or understand. It is striking that the advocates and defenders of many-times-tried-and-failed public and national policies, invariably leftwing, make similar counterintuitive claims.
High taxation and deficit spending first cause and then deepen economic recessions, but the authors of such programmatic devastation invariably assert that their tax-and-spend schemes “are working” to revive prosperity, even despite the non-appearance of the promised results and the worsening of the general picture. The architects and defenders of borderless-ness claim that the massive unrestricted influx of foreign nationals, many of them linguistically and educationally handicapped, serves a goal of utopian (call it “neo-primitive”) harmony, even despite the visibly demoralizing, because culturally divisive, effects that large-scale demographic intrusions inflict on the host-society.
One cannot blame the current sickness of the West on governments solely, which after all acquire their mandates through majority endorsement at the ballot box. To turn slightly an old observation: everyone in a democratic polity, no matter how wisely he votes, gets the government that the gullible majority deserves. Many widespread traits of Westerners qualify as “sick,” from the willingness of the underclass to live on welfare, letting producers subsidize their destructive habits, to the willingness of elites to defend anti-social behavior, to the unwillingness of the middle class to assert morality, crippled as the bourgeoisie is, spiritually, by a metastatic “White Guilt.” The elites have carefully inculcated same “White Guilt” through the educational system for decades. That again is “sick.”
“Culture Matters” is a very important book that I recommend for deeper reflections and essential reading for all JW readers. Here a taste of the rational “medicine”:
“... Thomas Gilovich has described the cognitive processes that allow even highly educated Americans to hold fervently to demonstrably false beliefs. Noting surveys of American college students that indicate that as many as 58 percent believe that astrological predictions are valid while 50 percent think that the Egyptian pyramids were build with extraterrestrial assistance, Gilovich describes the many ways in which contemporary Americans distort reality by their tendency to impute meaning and order to random phenomena, remembering only those instances that confirm their established beliefs while forgetting those that are at variance with them (Gilovich, 1991).
If modern Americans are less than rational calculators – and these examples hardly exhaust the catalog of folly contributed to by those among us who are thought to be most rational, such as our engineers, physicians, scientists, and educators - then it is unreasonable to expect people whose cultures are even less secular than ours to be more efficient problem solvers than we are. I am not arguing that people in folk societies make less than rational decisions or hold maladaptive beliefs because they are cognitively less competent than people in literate, industrialized societies.
C. R. Hallpike, among others, has concluded that the thought process of people in small scale societies are incapable of comprehending causality, time, realism, space, introspection, and abstraction as utilized in Western science (Hallpike, 1972). Whether so-called primitive thought is less abstract, more magical, or less able to assess marginal probabilities is an issue that continues to be debated, but its resolution is largely irrelevant to the point I am attempting to make. I am asserting that most people in ALL societies , including those most familiar with Western science, sometimes make potentially harmful mistakes and tend to maintain them. It is possible that people in small-scale societies make more mistakes of this kind, but maladaptive decisions are made in all societies.”
(Quoted from the chapter “Rationality And Irrationality” by Robert B. Edgerton, professor of anthropology in the department of Anthropology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the university of California in Los Angeles).
Thank you for your several excellent posts, Ipso Facto. You have sent me off on several new historical quests.
Thanks to all above who have weighed in on this! I think I’m really getting somewhere here. Probably this is it then: Not really any single “secret ingredient” to explain the Left’s willful ignorance of the dangers of Islam, but in fact a collection of separate complex processes that all happen to work to this effect. I believe I can buy that.
The most immediate process involved appears to be the ‘cult effect’. This may explain the typical “Liberal”-minded reaction to an attempt at a sincere, serious debate that they fear may question their basic assumptions: The minute they sense you’re not an 100% ‘one of them’, they’ll either shut their ears with their hands and switch into an extremely-agitated high-pitch panic mode accusing you of everything with all kind of offensive language, or else ignore you altogether with utter intellectual distain. A typical cult member attitude to the outside world.
However, in contrast to a specific cult centered around an identifiable guru personality, we may be dealing here with a loose ‘federation of cults’, each with its own hard-core activists surrounded by their own cloud of ‘useful idiots’, that despite constantly bickering among themselves (splintering off into various factions as soon as the hard-core leadership reaches a critical-mass of about 7 members…) are all basically committed to and united around a certain ‘package deal’ Socialist platform, that includes “US oppression” and “Israeli atrocities” as the binding duct tape. It is here that Islam may have identified an opening (or was it perhaps the other way around? I’m not sure), as Mahathir himself notes: “We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are well disposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing.”
The situation in Academia, like in organized unions and career government bureaucracy, also involves the rise to the top of activists, who seek power not only for personal gain but as a means to achieve broader political agenda. Pretty soon it becomes practically impossible to advance up the ladder if you’re not a subscriber to the indoctrinated ideology, so most people in the organization will either enthusiastically embrace it or else silently put up with it. The cancer spreads from within until the entire system collapses (cf. the Soviet Union) but only after so many years of slow death and devastation.
Others, such as Chomsky and Naomi Klein, may have also realized they can turn anti-Capitalism into a prosperous financial career, and have gone ahead to erect a complete industry of their own brand-name merchandize around it. I can find no other way to explain their cynicism and hypocrisy in personally enjoying the benefits of the Capitalist system which they work so hard to annihilate. Greta Berlin, on the other hand, is long-time married-with-children to a Palestinian, so she can be excused in this case:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=264&x_article=1861
The next question, of course, is how to effectively deal with it. While the prospect of a militant coup in Western societies is quite remote, the danger of a democratically-elected “savior” like a Hitler, Chavez, Erdogan, or even the Hamas in Gaza, is probably not that far-fetched. It appears to be legal, acceptable, and after all isn’t it “what the majority wished”? The only problem, there is no going back afterwards, except by a protracted war with horrible consequences.
One thing for certain, as the old Chinese curse goes, we are indeed living in fascinating times…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times