Fouad Ajami was my middle Eastern Studies at University of Texas.Brilliant Professor, he, if anyone, understands the multiple facets of the Middle East conondrum, yet I have never heard him realistically explain the concept of Jihad, perhaps the subject terrifies him too because he does not have an answer for that, yet he seems to have an answer for everything else Middle Eastern.

I do remember him saying one day that in order to understand the Middle Eastern Mind we would first need to understand that in the Middle East, they place no value on Truth, the most revered leaders, are the ones who can pull the wool over the eyes of the infidels and get away with it. So the greatest "leaders" are the greatest liars, ie. Arafat, Ghadafi, Hussein. Fouad Ajami is a very smart man, I learned a lot in his courses.

Posted by: tsweeney at October 29, 2005 8:47 AM

From Ajami to S.Schwartz to Cat Stevens - all tarred with the same brush - the tar is Islam, which chains and distorts the human spirit.

As for the sweet talkers, their few successes(listeners and targets) in the West are these Lefty Democrats who are prepared to be romanced by these snakes -including Hollywood mental giants like Fonda,Sutherland or Angelina Jolie.

Posted by: dgene at October 29, 2005 9:34 AM

I have been reading Fouad Ajami's articles and books for years. I have never viewed him as "representative" of all Moslems in the Middle East. On the contrary, I have admired his courage as one of the few Middle Eastern writers accessible to the general American public who does not write as an apologist, and who is very informative. Today there are others, but not many. He is unrepresentative, and that is why he is interesting. Readers will accept his comments on the basis of what they already know about truth and virtue in American departments of Middle Eastern Studies..... His "charm" and reason should not be held against him.

Posted by: Sylvie1 at October 29, 2005 9:47 AM

Lying and deception are their trademarks. There is an enormous group of people whose speech can not be trusted. One must always assume that the purpose of their speech is deception. This is a hard lesson to learn for non-Christians schooled in the belief that one must look for the good in every human being.

Posted by: epg at October 29, 2005 10:09 AM

Hugh said:

What could be better than to have the black-balaclaved bezonians of Hezbollah fight with, and kill or be killed by, the black-balaclaved bezonians of Al-Zarqawi and company?

Great to have Hugh to learn so much from here. Not sure I can go with the phrase, "What could be 'better"? though. I would think it truer to say, "nothing (or very little) could be less bad," not "what could be better," when we are talking about human beings slaughtering each other, even if the human beings in question are demon-possessed murderers. Unless using the less bloodthirsty form of expression somehow gets in the way of making the necessary evil happen. But it is a necessary evil, not something delectable.

On the other hand, if the necessary evil of having mutually opposed terrorists kill each other is what will allow the innocent to survive and live, then treating internecine terrorist slaughter as delectable makes a certain sense. So maybe I am being too fastidious.

Yet it seems to me the ideal should perhaps be to be capable of being fierce warriors against the totalitarian Muslim project without actually savoring our adversary's tragedies. Make those tragedies happen, yes, but lick one's lips about those tragedies? If nothing human is foreign to us, then we can fight waxing fascist theocracy with lethal force where needed, yet with hope and compassion for those whose aggressions compel us to kill them in our own self-defense.

Maybe Ali Sina of faithfreedom.org would correct me here, but my impression is that that is his attitude -- be ready to go lethal in our own self-defense whenever necessary, yet at the same time recognize that Muslim human beings are the biggest victims of Islam, they are the ones possessed by the dictatorial cult. So perhaps we can put opposites together in ourselves -- to be fierce, yet compassionate. Perhaps that is part of what makes the West the West -- that it puts into dialog opposites that elsewhere often break apart into isolated parochialisms, and permits those opposites to balance and transform each other. If we can find a way to integrate compassion more thoroughly into the justified rhetoric of pugnacious vigilance, without weakening the pugnacity and vigilance, I think we will get more allies. For many, a perceived lack of compassion is the red flag that flashes warning: "unwise! askew! malfunctioning!" (On the other hand, the more than 400,000 hits a day on this website might be sufficient demonstration that whatever you guys are doing, you should do more of it!!!)

Posted by: Eduardo Odraude at October 29, 2005 11:17 AM

It's not just the world of Islam that is now filled with "nonsense and lies and denial and deception". According to opinions aired on the BBC's 'Any Answers'today it's a known fact that Israel wiped Palestine from the map when they invaded it in 1948. The BBC read out an email stating this (so knew the content in advance) and despite their usual custom of correcting and intervening, read it out straight without comment. How many people in the Western world believe this is true?

If you want to see some exposure of the Palestinian myth in the making take a look at www.seconddraft.org. They've done a good short video on 'Pallywood' - a booming industry in faked atrocities that the Western press laps up.

Posted by: Jinnee at October 29, 2005 11:17 AM

It has ALWAYS been a cult founded upon lies. The purloined rituals, the megalomaniacal "revelations" that continually changed to serve the needs of the day. It has never stood any serious test of truth. What has changed is that a century ago, serious scholars could study the origins and history islam and write truthfully, and in accordance with accepted academic standards. In today's pc environment, they would be tarred and feathered, so there aren't any more serious islamic scholars. Like parents of a child who still believes in Santa Clause, we all agree to indulge the muslims' little fantasies. In fact, we like to dress up as little elves to complete his imaginary world.

Posted by: Infidel33 at October 29, 2005 11:46 AM

The problem of fictive reality -- the subject that Hugh's essay addresses -- was first hinted at over 30 years ago by mass communications guru Marshall McLuhan with his definition of hot and cool media in his bestseller "The Medium is the Message."

According to McLuhan, a book would be a hot medium because of its high friction, and therefore be non-interactive. The Web would be a cool medium (freezing, actually) because of its low friction, and therefore be very interactive.

McLuhan's theoretical construct should be extended to comprise hot and cool subjects (and not just media).

An example cool subject would be sports, a subject on which it is ok to say anything you want.

Example hot subjects are religion and race, hot because it is considered awkward, indelicate, and even impolite to say anything negative in discourses on these subjects.

Being able to say only something positive about a race, but never a negative, comprises what I call the One-Way Discourse Rule.

Under the Rule, you tend to see positive statements focused on a particular side of the issue. For example, repeated compliments to African-Americans in deference to the discrimination they had recently endured.

Yet, the vagaries of history often grant exemptions to the restriction of the One-Way Discourse Rule. For example, it is ok for African-Americans to severely criticize Caucasians, but it is verboten for whites to criticize the black race. zJust look at what happened to the Nobel Prize winner authors of "The Bell Curve."

Right or wrong, the important thing to take from that episode is that the facts never got considered. Nor did the relevant FBI crime statistics get considered during the flap surrounding Bill Bennett's recent faux pas.

To visualilze the calulus that operates under the Rule's regime, imagine counterposed beams suspended from cables. If the beams meet in the middle, you have a balanced discourse.

Apply the One-Way Discourse Rule to the discourse, as with race in America, and the Caucasian Beam is tied in place, not allowed to hammer the African Beam, tit-for-tat. So, the African Beam goes on to hammer and hammer and hammer its points home, unopposed, influencing emotions and opinion with every stroke, gradually pounding the Caucasian beam far to one side, unwelcome and out of sight, except to be held up from time-to-time as a bad example.

Now you have an unbalanced discourse, skewed popular opinion, and a reality based on a fictive information base.

All this resulted from the application of the One-Way Discourse Rule to the subject, but the reason the rule got applied was because it had become, upon the end of Jim Crow, awkward, indelicate, and even impolite to say anything negative on the subject of the African race in America.

I call this phenomenon Reality Drift, a name for the media- and emotion-based process by which fictive realities are created and maintained.

A Reality Drift can get started for any number of reasons, and tends to become permanent as successive generations are brought up with the completed Reality Drift-based discourse already in place.

Supposition and contention become undeniable facts; actual facts become forgotten or at best irrelevant; a narrowed intellectual frame of reference is taken for granted, received wisdom.

Mass media, driven by the need for popular approval and made averse to intellect risk by the need for profit, in particular tends to reinforce this phenomenon.

Other institutions, academia in particular, naturally seek to protect its fictive reality portfolio by inculcation and stern enforcement against free thinking and open discourse.

Reality Drift is the dynamic historical process that underlies what is popularly known as Political Correctness.

Once a Reality Drift is realized, it is institutionalized as something I call a Reality Drift Zone.

We have any number of Reality Drift Zones now in place within our overall public discourse. In economics, we have the Socialist Reality Drift Zone. In race, we have the Bad Caucasian Reality Drift Zone. In climatology, we have the Global Warming Reality Drift Zone.

And, of course, in religion, we have the Innocent Islam Reality Drift Zone. This zone is not yet fully formed, but with a complex of associated Zones also brought into play in the form of third world poverty (economics) and orientalism (race), the Innocent Islam Reality Drift Zone should emplace nicely over the next twenty years.

It must be noted here that the strictures of the Innocent Islam Reality Drift Zone is augmented by the ever present personal security threat. If you doubt this, why does Robert Spencer reside in Undisclosed Locationville? An obsessive thirst for privacy, perhaps?

We'll see if the Innocent Islam Reality Drift Zone can survive the Big One.

I suggest that a concerted deconstruction project to counter the work of constructive Islamists such as Punch Sulzberger, George W. Bush, Bill Maher, Tim Russert, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Hillary Clinton, and Bill O'Reilly would grease the skids for an opinion jailbreak to esscape the Zone in the immediate aftermath of the Big One.

Posted by: Chaz MarteL 732 at October 29, 2005 1:21 PM

"His [Fouad Ajami's] "charm" and reason should not be held against him."
-- from a posting above

The point of the brief observations above was not to say that one should hold charm, reason, and so on against any of these people. I don't. I think they are absolutely the best people possible to come out of that world -- that is, the best people who will not publicly deal with the matter of Islam, and how Islam itself is a very great problem.

Like any sane person, I enjoy hearing the soft-spoken Kanan Makiya, or the world-weary voice of Fouad Ajami, as they dismember the Juan Coles, as they did, so well, the Edward Saids, or for that matter the Ian Lusticks (as Ajami did the other day as Lustick spouted some nonsense about Iraq). Azar Nafisi is even more charming in every respect.

So why did I go out of my way to express misgivings or raise doubts? Well, the misgivings and doubts are these. It is precisely those intelligent and charming and very-close-to-being-right-but-refusing-to-deal-with-Islam Muslims, the kind who if asked will tell you that "well, I'm a cultural Muslim" or "culturally, I come from a Muslim backround" or "there is much I find of great interest and which I am sympathetic to in Islam" (without more) and who, of course, are then part of the problem.

Why? Because Westerners, Americans in particular, are innoocent. They do not wish to investigate the tenets of Islam. They would prefer to believe that those tenets are ignored by most Muslims, and that they can go on ignoring them. They would prefer to believe that the history of Islam is not what it is. When on television Kanan Makiya begins to express his affection for his pious Muslim grandmother, who wouldn't hurt a fly, we are sympathetic. We understand. We are perfectly aware that there have always been pious Muslims intent only on the rituals of worship. Ibn Warraq never fails to remind people of his own family, and of his own gentle, pious brother. But when that leads people to shift their attention away from Islam, to substitute the unrepresentative from the representative, to substitute wish for reality, it is a menace to us.

When Kanan Makiya is handed one of Bat Ye'or's scholarly works in the Dhimmi, and refuses to read it, handing it back to the person who lent it to him with an expression of distaste -- as if he simply cannot allow himself to study the real history of the treatment of non-Muslims, enshrined in the Shari'a (again, see Antoine Fattal), by Muslims, then one knows that something is wrong.

When the best-selling Azar Nafisi, who is about as representative of Iran, one would say, as Ivy Litvinov, the worldly, novel-writing Englishwoman who was the wife of Maxim Litvinov, at one time the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union and the Ambassador to the United States -- and no doubt le tout Georgetown in those days found Ivy Litvinov a charmer. And she was. And her job, and that of her husband, was to shore up support for the Soviet Union. But the kind of people one would like to meet, like to talk with, and who would not prefer the comapny of Ajami, Nafisi, and Makiya to 99% of those Americans, less soft-spoken, less interesting, less -- well, less of everything? Sure you would. And the same goes for Orhan Pamuk. And even for Ahmad Chalabi.

But to make high policy, decisions about whether to spend $3500-$500 billion to not only get rid of Saddam Hussein but to stick around in order to build a Light-Unto-the-Muslim Nations under Shi'a rule (Makiya, Ajami, and the others are Shi'a in bakcground and sympathies), because among those influencing policy and attitudes are these very presentable unrepresentative representatives of some part of the Arab and Muslim world, is wrong.

Again, after dinner parties with secularists in Turkey, the food delicious, the wine served unselfconsciously, the talk of American private schools for the children, and so on, and then of course as well the talk of how important it is for "secularism" and of course for the speakers, that Turkey be "admitted to the E.U." -- well, one has to take that in, and understand that Pamuk and company , for their own reasons, would like Turkey in the E.U., where they think, or hope, that somehow the Infidels in the other countries will somehow dilute Islam, and help support, or at least protect, the Turkish "secularists" who have not been nearly cunning or ruthless enough (though not as naive as all those reformers and leftist Iranians who joined the full-fledged Muslims in opposing the Shah) in dealing with Erdogan or Erbakan, or with their supporters. The desire to do those "secularists" a favor should be resisted.

And one more little note. Listen closely to how Fouad Ajami talks. He will discuss the fantasies of the Sunnis in Iraq, and of the mistreatment of the Shi'a, who are literally stunted, shorter in stature, because of their long mistreatment, their poverty, under Sunni rule. But Ajami will not discuss Islam. He refers to Iraq, as in the past he has referred to other Arab countries, with a series of adjectives: Iraq, "that tragic land," Iraq, "that tormented land," and so on -- more or less ditto for Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, and so on.

Now what should we make of this? Why is Iraq, or Lebanon, or Algeria, or any of the others, "tragic" or "tormented"? What made them so? Did it just happen? In Iraq, that "tormented land," what was it, for example, that in the history of modern Iraq caused the Jews of Baghdad, who in 1920 constituted 1/3 of the population, to leave a land, "tormented" or not, that they had lived in for several thousand years before Islam arrived? Did the Farhud of June 1-2, 1941 have anything to do with it, or the behavior of the government of Rashid Ali, or the pro-Nazi sympathies of many in Iraq (including that famous "Sunni elite" we hear so much about, and that amounts, by Western standards, to a kind of small-town orchestra-cum-book-club-cum-local-art-museum)? What about the 1933 massacre of the Assyrians, or the other mistreatment, all along the way, of the Christians? Why was it that Michel Aflag in Damacus helped to concoct Ba'athism, in order to find a way out for Christians in the areas where they remained important enough even to dream of a future in Muslim-haunted, Muslim-tormented, lands? Why was it, for that matter, that the Christian Tariq Aziz proved so useful to Saddam Hussein, if not because the Christians, as with the islamochristians among the "Palestinians," have had to throw in their lot, for their own safety (and even to internalize), with the local agenda, and the less obviously "Islamic" that agenda, the better (so Ba'athism as a pan-Arabi variant on pan-Islamism, and support for the "legitimate rights of the 'Palestinian people'" rather than support for the relentlesss Arab Muslim Jihad against Israel).

It is easy enough to see what is wrong with the smiling Saudi envoys, even the humidor-and-wine-cellared "we're-all-quasi-corrupt-men-of-this-world-and-we-understand-each-other" Prince Bandar, now up to his old tricks, no doubt, in Saudi Arabia. It should be obvious, or will be once Ibn Warraq finishes with them, that Edward Said was absurd, and so was, so is, the Saidism that, as a jobs-program for the untalented, lives on after him.

But the point is that the very best of those who come out of the world of Islam, but cannot out of filial piety or some kind of inability to see what Islam is all about, and so cannot allow themselves either to make a complete break with Islam, or to help Americans understand that their most intelligent course of action is not to misallocate resources according to the siren-song of all these nice "reformers" from Egypt, Syria, and god-knows-where running around, but to deprive the Islmaic world of weapons, to cut off all Muslim immigaration, and to no longer put one's faith in the agendas of this or that "reformer" or "nice" Muslim who remains a Muslim, and cannot deal truthfully with the touchiest but most essential of all matters -- the matter of Islam.

The interests of Infidels, and those of the most secular of those who remain Muslims, diverge. It is foolish, it was foolish, for the Administration to lobby for Turkey (Bush's call to Karamanlis, Rice working the phones and roping in whomever she could -- Richard Perle et al. -- to help out). It is foolish to try to recreate the Western world in the Middle East. There isn't time, there isn't space. If the year were 1800, and there were not tens of millions of Muslims already in Europe, and trillions of dollars flowing into the coffers that feed the Jihad, then we might take, as our century's project, Reforming Islam -- though it is still entirely unclear just how this could or would be done.

Some say throw out the Hadith, all of them. Others say throw out the Hadith and the Sira, so that the example of Muhammad is no longer. And then they talk, for all the world like little Luthers and Calvins and Zwinglis, about Islam based on "sola scriptura" (for an example of this, see the Turk Mustafa Akyol). But for god's sake, the Qur'an itself has everything in it to make an Infidel's blood run cold -- and where do the Mustafa Akyols of this world think the Hadith and the Sira come from, if not teasted out of, weaved out of, the whole cloth of the Qur'an?

The article above is merely a warning. Have dinner with Fouad Ajami. Go to Azar Nafisi's lecture on "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight." Be delighted that such people exist. Let them mock Said or Ahmadinejad. Listen to Ajami as he takes apart someone like Ian Lustick or Juan Cole or all the absurd members of MESA Nostra.

But keep that reservatio mentalis, that mental reservation, and remember that the interests of Infidels are the same as those of apostates, the ex-Muslims who have made the break over the north wall while the warden wasn't looking, but not the same as those who want us, for their own good and sufficient reasons (look at Chalabi, look at Said Eddin Ibrahim) to remake the Muslim regimes and states so that people like them can get somewhere. No -- that isn't where the effort should now be put. Islam cannot be reformed, but only constrained.

The effort must, bleakly, be to constrain it. And those who cannot because of various considerations, including that filial or even civilizational piety that I refer to so often, must not be taken as a trustworthy guide in the formulation of policy designed to protect the civilization, and lives, of Infidels from the menace of Islam.

They have their fish to fry. We have ours. The dishes, and the recipes, are not the same.

Posted by: Hugh at October 29, 2005 1:41 PM

British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who warned over a century ago that “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world” than Islam:
(How true his words are in todays context).

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

Posted by: faqi at October 29, 2005 1:42 PM

"... and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
-- Winston Churchill

Churchill could never imagine that Marxism would, at taxpayer expense, set the Moslems up to bring down modern Europe via demographics, and bring down Western Civilization along with it.

Posted by: Chaz MarteL 732 at October 29, 2005 1:55 PM

I think Hugh is simply suggesting in his florid way that it is far more economical for we non-Muslims to have the Islamic factions slaughter and deplete each other's ranks before they turn their bedizened in black beady basilisk eyes in our general non-Islamitudinous direction...

That's my florid interpretation...of his florid remarks!

Also, for what it's worth -- I AGREE!

Posted by: jsla at October 29, 2005 2:05 PM

This matter gnaws. Yes, Ajami, Nafisi, Makiya, Pamuk -- all people who have had to fight their way through to the truth of things, and who therefore are far superior to Infidels who have arrived at the same general view. But the problem is that, unlike Ibn Warraq or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Ali Sina or Azam Kamguian or Irfan Khawaja or Walid Shoebat, they cannot go farther, they cannot publicly, or perhaps in the privacy of their own minds, renounce Islam, to see what is so deeply wrong with it. Those childhood memories of that kindly grandmother, or that uncle, or those parents -- and then they see every day the vulgarity and idiocy of our so-called civilization, and they just don't feel saying bad things about Islam to the likes of us, to the place where Paris Hilton and Michael Jackson are the cynosure of all eyes, or many of them. God, I know the feeling, and the temptation. Sometimes one wonders -- what is being defended? And then you remember what happens in Muslim countries, what Islam is all about. What person, born into Islam, and having arrived at the soothing steady-state of being a "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim, wishes to endanger his career, his fmaily ties, perhaps even his own safety, not to mention his emotional well-being, by openly and thoroughly breaking with Islam. How few can do that. And how few can see that we, the Infidels, can no longer afford to do the bidding of "nice" Muslims, or to chant that mantra about "moderate Muslims are the solution" which satisfy some.

Among those born into Islam, it is those who have made the break who can be trusted to have the interests not of Islam, not of a dream-vision of a mythical Islam (in that mythical Islam, for example, everything was largely alright until, in Iran, that Khomeini came along with his crazy ideas that "have nothing to do with Islam" and for the Arabs it all started with the shock of Israel's creation). I trust anyone who will read, study, and understand the work of Bat Ye'or on the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam (she, however, leaves out all of India), or for that matter the work of Ibn Warraq on early Islam, or of K. S. Lal on Muslim rule in India (a different take than the William-Dalrymple barbaracartlandesque Tales of Star-Crossed, or Transracial Transgressive Love at a Mughal Court, or something).

One wants people who aree willing to opnely discuss, and not avoid discussing, the intellectual stagnation and artistic impoverishment of Muslim lands, nor their mistreatment of women and non-Muslims, nor their economic failures despite, in the last 30 years, their receiving the greatest transfer of wealth in human history without the slightest effort on their part, nor the clear tendency toward despotism which both the tenets of Islam, and the example of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, so clearly favor.

Posted by: Hugh at October 29, 2005 2:06 PM

HUgh
I would like to hear more on the concept of the "uber arab" or perhaps one could say, the muslims of muslims.

Posted by: chevalier de st george at October 29, 2005 2:19 PM

Here is a fairly recent article of Ajami on Iraq in the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007326

And there is a contradiction in the article, that is never confronted. Ajami has a way of eloquently dancing around the issue. Ajami admits that Zarqawi has, at the very least, symapthy, and perhaps support, from Arabs throughout the so-called Arab World, and that Sunni mentality will not accept inferiority in any Iraqi political scheme. And yet he argues that the American efforts to establish a 'social contract', a democracy in Iraq, must be carried through to completion, and that the project will succeed. (although one senses a little trepidation in the way he express this)

He also argues that the Shiites will not seek to impose an Iranian theocracy; and this insight comes from impressions during a trip to Najaf. The intelligent, careful thinker resorts to anecdote.

Islam as an ideology and its influence over Arab thinking, and its role in the support for Zaraqawi, is not stressed and never directly discussed. Why not?

Hugh's point seems on the money.

Posted by: JTF at October 29, 2005 3:26 PM

I assume you mean by "uber-Arab" the fact that within Islam, a supposedly universalist religion where all Muslims in the ummah are equal, there is a special place for the Arabs. But how could it be otherwise? Islam itself, a mishmash of pagan Arab lore, Judaism and Christianity, has its origins in the attempt to take what was available and construct out of it something, a belief-system, that would both promote, and justify, Arab attacks on, Arab conquest of, far more advanced, settled, and wealthy populations of Christians, Jews, pagans, and with the attack on Sassanid Persia, Zoroastrians.

Within Islam, the supremacist ideology is expreseed first, and perhaps most importantly, in linguistic and cultural imperialism. The Qur'an is written in Arabic, and was delivered to, given to, revealed to, the Arabs, that best of people. That best of men, Muhammad, was an Arab, and so were the Companions. The Qur'an itself should ideally not be read in any languge other than Arabic (the Arabic in which it was written, not in any simplified or updated version). Qur'anic recitation is in Arabic. The students in Pakistan or Indonesia or elsewhere who pass their young lives memorizing Qur'anic passages are essentially memorizing Arabic, a languge that they do not know at all, or undertand most imperfectly. Yet it is 7th century Arabs, real or imaginary, who must serve as a guide to existence. Was Muhammad against sculptures? Against music? Against painting of living creatures? Very well then. For all time, and in all place, good Muslims will emulate Muhammad. For he is central to Islam, far more significant than Jesus is in Christianity. Yes, it is true that "Allah knows best" but so to does Muhammad. They both know best.

Think of all the Pakistanis, clearly the descendants of persecuted or terrified Hindus, who have taken Arab names, or appropriated the honorific Sayeed to indicate their connection to the Prophet. Think of how the Berbers and other non-Arab Muslims have had to struggle to save their own language. The Iranians supposedly managed to prevent linguistic arabization through the superior quality of their own poets -- for after all, "Islamic literature" is mostly a product not of Arabs but of Persians, and high Islamic civilization very much a product both of non-Muslims and Musliims, and in the latter category, the Arabs played a much smaller role than the Persians.

The riots in Tizi-Ouzo a few years ago -- unreported in the Western world except in France -- reflect the unhappiness of the Berbers with this cultural and linguistic imperialism. So do does the greater participation of Berbers in such organizations as "Maghrembins laiques" in France. The Kurds, the black Africans with their marabouts and syncretism (in the same way that in Brazil it is not always orthodox Christianity but some blend with pagan African beliefs and traditions, that gives rise to Candomble), even those described as Malaysian "intellectuals" and Indonesian "intellectuals" have realized that the Arab supremacist view, which encourages all Muslims to ignore their own pre-Islamic or non-Islamic history and heritage, leaves a lot to be desired.

And then there are so many examples of Arabs riding roughshod, and worse, over non-Arab Muslims. Think of the treatment of the Berbers, especially but not only in Algeria. Or of the black African Muslims in Darfur, or in Chad, or elsewhere where Arabs and blacks, even if all of them are Muslims, collide. There is also a religious dimension. Though there are non-Arab Sunnis (Turks, Kurds) and Arab Shi'a (see southern Lebanon, Yemen, Hasa province of Saudi Arabia, the Hazaras in Afghanistan, Bahrain, even Kuwait, especially among Fouad Ajami's worldly Behbehanish friends and hosts), and both Sunni and Shi'a in Pakistan, Sunni Islam is identified with the Arabs, Shi'a Islam with Iran. No getting around this.

In Saudi Arabia there is apartheid: the signs "Muslim" and "Non-Muslim" are everywhere, physically, and in the minds of men. But "Muslims" are further divided into Arab (first class) and non-Arab (second class). This has not escaped the attention of the many Muslim non-Arabs who live in Saudi Arabia -- or at least not the attention of all of them.

As Infidels seek out ways to divide and weaken Islam, surely the exploitation of this linguistic, cultural, and political imperialism (remember how the "Arabs" were hated even by some of their "Afghan" allies whom they treated with such cannon-fodder contempt --at least according to all the reports that have come out of Afghnaistan) of the Arabs should be high on the list. The resentment of non-Arabs, of Kurds, Berbers, blacks, Persians, Malays, and so on , is perfectly understandable. It is not a Western invention. It has not in any way been fanned by the West. It need not be. It need only be pointed out, and even then, the Arabs themselves are so good at showing their contempt for noon-Arabs, their indifference to them, though they wish those non-Arabs to adopt whatever causes they, the Arabs, deem important.

Part of weakening Islam is to show many Muslims that Islam was simply an Arab invention and export, a poisoned chalice that has lain low higher, and superior civilizations. This is likely to resonate especially in Iran among those who have had their fill of the Islamic Republic of Iran -- that is, every thinking and morally aware person in Iran.

The treatment by the Arabs of non-Arabs has been at least high-handed, and as the glinting daggers of Arab aggression tell us, often of a more horrid hent.

Posted by: Hugh at October 29, 2005 3:38 PM

I want to add one more thing. And that is the role of pride in Uruba, Arabness, Arabdom, that affects so many Arabs, or rather people who speak Arabic and many of whom have been convinced, or allowed themselves to be convinced, that they too are or must be or should be "Arabs." The scholar Franck Salameh has written a brilliant analysis of linguistic imperialism, of how the Arabic-user (even the Maronites) comes to believe that he therefore must be an "Arab" even if his ancestors clearly were living in, say, the Lebanon long before the Arabs arrived on the scene. It is quite a trick.

Those who think of themselves as "Arabs" (and almost all of those who left Lebanon and Syria between 1880 and even as late as about 1930, even if their passports identified them in some cases as "Turks" (they were still in the Ottoman Empire) knew that they were something else, and the best way to describe themselves was as "Lebanese" or often "Syrians" (a word that begins so many church denomination names) as "Christians." Only later did some of them begin to think, and the Muslims in the United States have tried to create a false sense of an identity of interest, using that meretricious term "Arab-American" which is meant to enroll, in the Muslim Arab campaign for acceptance, the descendants of people who not only were not part of the Muslim Arab world, but were the main victims of that very world, who left the Middle East precisely because of the growing insecurity (from 1860 on there were massacres of Maronites and Assyrians and other Middle-eastern Christians in present-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq).

The Christian Arabs, or those who have considered themselves Arabs, needed to find a place in the sun. They knew they had to appeal to something, anything, other than Islam straight up. What was Ba'athism, which the Christian from Damacus, Michel Aflaq (he made a deathbed conversion to Islam) but an attempt to find a way for the Christians of the area to be enrolled in something that, in its philosophy, would be aggressive, totalitarian, but more pan-Arab than pan-Islamic -- and so it was that Ba''athism was born, and found its greatest appeal in the two countries where, for various and complex reasons, the ruling elites (Alawite in one case, Sunni the other) found it useful to have an alternative to pure Islam (for the Alawites were not orthodox Muslims, and had Islam been the only game in town, in Iraq the sectarian majority was Shi'a, not Sunni).

Note that the phenomenon of "islamochristians" is particularly pronounced among the "Palestinian" Arabs. Despite the obvious and steady pressure on Christians and Christianity wherever the "Palestinians" have extended their sway, the Naim Ateeks and Hanan Ashrawis, both perfect examples of the cunning propogandistic use to which islamochristians can be put -- why, Naim Ateek is the go-to guy for the Christian churches' Middle-Eastern policy, judging by all the divestment measures he has skillfully, sabeellly, managed to push, and we all know of the requited affection between the late Peter Jennings and Hanan Ashrawi, whom he had as a special guest on September 13, 2001, to discuss you-know-what).

Compare, among those who live in, or came from , the predominantly Muslim lands and who are Christians, the non-Arab and the Arab Chrsitians. It is fascinating to see the difference. Christian Pakistanis have nothing to do with Islam. They do not defend it in the slightest. Look at Christian Iranians. They do not defend Islam. They have nothing to do with it. Look at Christian blacks in Nigeria or the Sudan. They have nothing to do with Islam. Look at Christians in Indonesia. They feel no need to defend Islam.

But many Christian Arabs do -- and the reason is that goddam ehtnic pride in being, or thinking one is because everyone tells you if you speak Arabic you must be (not true, of course) an "Arab" - and Islam is the great gift of "the Arabs," and Islam and the Arabs go way back, and well -- it's hard for some, perhaps many, Arab Christians not to end up as Defenders not so much of the Faith -- that Faith being Islam -- but of the political attitudes and atmospherics and defensiveness that all arise so naturally from Islam. .

Posted by: Hugh at October 29, 2005 3:56 PM

If you've got around 18 minutes to spare,you might find this video interesting when it comes to the kind of efforts the Palestinians will go to when trying to create facade about something that never really happened.

http://seconddraft.org/streaming/pallywood.wmv

Posted by: Mackie at October 29, 2005 6:53 PM

Readers here are invited to submit book titles and book reviews to The Truth Project. For at least two centuries, Westerners have been drawn to the exoticism of Arabia--many musical pieces have been composed on this theme. The truth about Islam goes well beyond just "a different culture," as Islamists seek to make dhimmis of all infidels.

In Hugh's words: The world of Islam is a world of nonsense and lies and denial and deception and filial piety that refuses to face up to facts.

We infidels and the apostates must combat the whitewash of Islam!

Posted by: WatchfulEye at October 29, 2005 7:42 PM

Hugh:

The world of Islam is a world of nonsense and lies and denial and deception and filial piety that refuses to face up to facts. It could be called, too sweetly in my view, the "Dream Palace of the Arabs."

True, so true, so true, unlike Jihad Watchers I spend (waste) a great deal of my time and energy debating with Muslims, their ability to rationalize would make anyone jealous, their ability for self deceit is a wondrous thing to behold.

And in that regard you and others might want to take a look at this example of rationalization, obfuscation and self deceit, the Author is a convert, (since 9-11 so he claims), but if so he has done a lot of quick study in the three years since I first met him on another forum. His wife, so he says, is still Catholic.The following is not his essay but that of another convert Jeremiah McAulliffe PhD on Ibn Warraq which can be easily dissected and refuted, I'm sure.

You can see the other nonsense of this fool, since the Dar Al Islam forum belongs to him, the forum owner is a Croatian Catholic, who for some reason plays butt boy to the Muslims.

Also Hugh:The Psychology of the Musulman, alas is not available, Thanks for the recommendation, but it does no good unless I can find a copy.

Posted by: Nariz at October 29, 2005 9:28 PM

From an email I received New movie coming out, Obsession.
'Obsession' Captures Islam's War Against the West

With the passing of time, it has become obvious that one of the 20th century's most consequential legacies has been that of European nihilism. How else does one describe the terrible legacy of both the German Nazi movement, and that of Soviet Communism?

Nihilism has sometimes been described as the absence of values. A better definition is that nihilism represents the elevation of one value above all: that of force, or of power - especially the eminent power of the state.

It was the fateful calling of the United States to defeat the nihilistic movements of Nazism and Communism over the course of World War II and the Cold War. Yet only a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a third threat has emerged to challenge the freedoms enjoyed by the advanced civilizations of the Western world.

This new threat styles itself as a religious revival, as a fundamentalist return to the original tenets of Islam. Yet, as depicted in filmmakers Wayne Kopping, Raphael Shore and Peter Mier's marvelous new documentary, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," this explanation does not tell the entire story.

"Obsession" uses unique footage from Arab television to create an insiders' view of the hatred Islamic radicals are teaching in the Middle East, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. The film features interviews with Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Alan Dershowitz and even a former PLO terrorist and a former Hitler Youth commander.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of "Obsession" is the link the film draws between radicalized Islam, or what is sometimes called 'Islamo-fascism,' and Nazism proper. Director Wayne Kopping investigates a fateful and unusual meeting in early 1941 between Adolph Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was one of the fathers of modern Arab nationalism and a virulent anti-Semite (besides being an important mentor to Yasser Arafat). Haj Amin al-Husseini was a fervent admirer of Hitler.

Hitler apparently confided to the Mufti in this meeting the deeper motivation behind the Nazis' political mission in Europe: eradication of the Jews (a secret he requested the Mufti "lock away in his heart"). Hitler and the Grand Mufti would subsequently form a political alliance, and the Mufti would even assist in the raising of Bosnian-Muslim units of the Wehrmacht.

This alliance reveals a great deal about the supposed secular absolutism of Nazism, and also the willingness of Islamic radicals to form strategic alliances with 'Infidels.' Kopping goes on to show the striking parallels between the rhetoric of modern Islamic anti-Semitism and that of the Nazis.

What is it, exactly, that these two seemingly disparate movements share in common? What is it that unites the Nazi concentration camps with the suicide bomber and his belt of explosives?

Surely virulent anti-Semitism is part of the equation. Yet anti-Semitism alone cannot explain the complex phenomenon of Islamic terrorism - which has spread to all corners of the globe, from Southeast Asia to the streets of New York.

Ultimately one returns to the nihilism that informs both of these movements. As documented so ably in "Obsession," today's Islamo-fascists seek to dominate, to impose a legalistic religious order on both the Middle East and the wider world - and that includes India, Southeast Asia, and the West.

Islamo-fascism's methods, however - whether in the form of state-sponsored tyranny, or terrorism - are totally non-religious. At issue in Islamo-fascism's war against the world is always political power - power at the expense of even the most basic respect for life.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at October 29, 2005 9:38 PM

"unless I can find a copy."
-- from a posting above

Servier is in most academic libraries. There is inter-library loan. There are xeroxes. If some Maecenas comes along and notices this site, perhaps the book, now out of copyright, can be republished as a samaritan service by JW. Why not?

Posted by: Hugh at October 29, 2005 9:40 PM

Carolyn,

There is no film titled "Obsession" (or even with the word "Obsession" figuring dominantly in the title) newer than 2003 on the IMDB (Internet Movie Database). The IMDB always lists movies that have not yet come out but are soon coming out, and even goes so far as to list movies that are in pre-production (for 2006). I also searched all three filmmakers -- Wayne Kopping, Raphael Shore and Peter Mier -- and none came up at all for anything, even previous films.

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at October 29, 2005 11:40 PM

Now that Prince Charles is going to explain to Bush the Koranic palace dreams , it is worth looking at his future church once again:

This article identifies Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as head of the Anglican Church. Actually that's the Queen of England. But Rowan is right up there. No doubt about the fact that he will deserve the title of the world's Chief Dhimmi after this. From AFP, with thanks to Susan, Sparta, and Jonathan:

THE head of the worldwide Anglican Church, the archbishop of Canterbury, will reportedly mark the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks by praising Islam in an address from the pulpit of an Egyptian mosque.
Rowan Williams had accepted an invitation to speak at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, considered by many to be the Muslim world's most important centre of learning, Britain's Sunday Times said today.

He would speak of the common ground between Christianity and Islam with their shared inheritance as "children of Abraham", the report said.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/002642.php

Posted by: leavingtheleft at October 30, 2005 12:03 AM

Nariz

re: the revert's essay

This is a classic Schwartzian "rebuttal". In the first quarter of the essay, the author speaks in generalities, resorts to ad hominems, and doesn't even engage with any of evidence Ibn Warraq presents. Later, we are treated to howlers like these:

"We often see this in Muslims who are possessed of an inordinate hatred for our Jewish cousins, or an inordinate hatred of non-Muslims, or who are harshly judgmental towards their Muslim brothers and sisters who may understand the Qur'an and sunnah a bit differently than they do. Such people will cite verses related to times of war, take them out of context, and disconnect them from the ethos presented by the Qur'an and sunnah as a whole. This same error is then used by those hostile to Islam in order to portray the Qur'an as advocating things such as aggressive violence and abuse of women."

You see, following Islam as a whole, warts and all, is an "error" by Muslims. Yet, the author insists: "We must always remember, and confront anti-Muslims with the idea that the Qur'an and sunnah present to us a whole, a gestalt, a total world-view, and an élan." So, which is it? Can the Qu'ran be approached contextually and in a non-literalist manner or is Muhammad the perfect example for all time? If the Qu'ran can be read in a non-literalist manner, then the case for the Islam becomes weaker because the Qu'ran as the actual Word of God comes into question. And if Muhammad's example is not perfect (e.g. slavery, killing the poets who mocked him, jihad, polygamy, etc) then the Qu'ran and Sunnah have no foundation at all. You can actually scrap the entire ahadith and sira, and also much of the Qu'ran. Islam without a "perfect" Muhammad isn't Islam so all his actions, no matter how heinous, must be viewed as perfect and valid for all time.

But that's not all! We are treated to some candor:

"For instance, he writes on page 149 that "Blind dogmatism has shut Muslims off from the intellectually challenging and exhilarating research, debate, and discussion of the last century and a half." This appears to me to be true and at the heart of the issue. It is my opinion that Muslims are, in general, stuck within a Medieval theological mindset."

In one of the most idiotic paragraphs in the entire essay, the author highlights the biggest problem with this Muslim mindset:

"These books, though ostensibly about Islam per se, are in actuality about the poor state of contemporary Muslim practice and religious education. At the same time, this lack of theological sophistication that helps fuel anti-Muslim polemic also leaves the vast majority of Muslims without the intellectual tools needed to respond appropriately to anti-Muslim polemic such as Warraq's."

It's really a shame that he is simply unable to identify the source of this stunted mental growth. He doesn't see it as originating from the foundational texts, but from poor practice of Islam. He fails to realize that this "poor practice" has been occurring for over 1000 years where no literary nor any scientific progress has taken place due to the fact that most of the heretics and dhimmis who contributed to the Islamic "civilization" had been wiped out by that time.

Part two obstensibly focuses on the problems with Ibn Warraq's work, but instead delves into armchair psychology. The author cannot fathom why a person born into Islam would ever want to leave it. Islam is just that beautiful and splendid. So he figures that Ibn Warraq is just venting over his abuse and that most of his arguments have no merit. His Western sources on Islam are also racist because they were written before Orientalism was published, and Our Edward would definitely not approve. Ibn Warraq also fails to provide balance by not citing Karen Armstrong according to the author. And for some bizarre reason, the author thinks it's a good idea to reference Qaradawi in order to provide more "balance" (he thinks this will make Islam look GOOD). Since Ibn Warraq does not use these sources, the author labels him a revisionist which is kind of ironic since the authors he wished he cited (Said and Armstrong) are perhaps the biggest revisionists of all. Oh, and since Ibn Warraq doesn't know Arabic (the author assumes this), then he can't possibly know the real Islam.

The author discusses Ibn Warraq's "ignorance" of Western intellectual history by cherry picking some OBSERVATIONS that he just doesn't agree with. He is not criticizing his lack of knowledge or muddled knowledge of historical events, but rather some observations Ibn Warraq has regarding Western history, which aren't completely off the wall, but are certainly debatable. This is supposed to "prove" that he doesn't understand Western history.

Lastly, the author takes umbrage at Ibn Warraq criticizing the human rights academic Dr. Mayer for insisting in her book, "Islam and Human Rights", that the human rights abuses in Muslim countries have nothing to do with Islam but rather the "political use of Islam in particular state systems that are oppressive" are to blame. The author, dimissed Ibn Warraq's criticism as "paranoid". You see, Mayer is a specialist in law and human rights, and according to the author, Ibn Warraq isn't a specialist in Islam (because he doesn't know Arabic!), so Mayer's claims trumps those of Ibn Warraq. Ok, fair enough but Ibn Warraq is not criticizing her academic ability in law or human rights (they both agree that there are human rights abuses in Muslim countries), he's criticizing her academic ability in Islam. Has Mayer read the Qu'ran, Hadith, and Sira? Has she read the Reliance of the Traveller? Yes, we all know that Islam is not monolithic, but has she bothered to find out what makes Muslim countries from various cultures and ethnicities similar? Has she studied the essence of Islam and how that relates to women and non-Muslims? Well, if she had she would have atleast known that Islam isn't separated from the political sphere (only in the most extreme circumstances such as Communism and Kemalism can it be temporarily restrained). Ibn Warraq has done all of these things and he can see the connection.

And that brings us to the end of the article. Not once, not once, did the revert, Jeremiah D. McAuliffe, Jr., Ph.D, even engage in any of the criticisms of the foundational texts or the Muslim theology that Ibn Warraq presented. It was all either ignorant or out of context. Ah, if it was only that easy. This essay and "rebuttal" of "Why I Am Not a Muslim", is worse than a joke, it's a jewel to be affixed on the Dream Palace of the Arabs.

Posted by: igor at October 30, 2005 12:09 AM

Terry Pratchett`s `Small Gods` is infinitely better than Scwartzian islamic gobbledygook.

Posted by: leavingtheleft at October 30, 2005 12:14 AM

many thanks, Hugh for the insightful post on hierarchy within islam.
Much to digest!
perhaps there is there an achilles heel , the conflict between arab islam and islam outside the arab's world.

Posted by: chevalier de st george at October 30, 2005 5:42 AM

"perhaps there is an achilles heel..."
-- from a posting above

No Achilles heel, no magic bullet. Just an effort without end at constraint and containment, division and demoralization, and revealing, teaching, divulgating, the theory and practice of Islam, again and again, at every forum, in every way, using whatever art or craft is available. And so far, without any visible support from the government, and hardly any from anyone else.

Posted by: Hugh at October 30, 2005 6:59 AM

Hugh,

your investment in time has not been wasted when you argue with the Islamists.It has only helped to sharpen your skills and your perceptions into the expert you have become, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your deep insights and comments and the time you obviously take to prepare them, it is time well spent.

I was at a dinner given by a friend from Lebanon earlier this year and I was shocked to learn that every single person there hated George Bush. These were all Christians from Lebanon but to a man(and woman) they were of the mind that Bush was wrong in attacking Saddam, that it only fanned the flames of Jihad, and now that the Arabs were really mad the Jihad would never end. One lady I knew told me her daughter was an attorney who lived in Ramada and had filed suit in the World Court to stop the Jews from building the Wall. I said, gee isn't that the same court that indicted Ariel Sharon for war crimes? Yes, she exclaimed I have said all all along that Sharon is a war criminal and must be arrested! I truly did not know how to respond, these are people who have been driven out of Lebanon by the conflict and yet they are stll sympathetic to the Arabs. So it seems to me that if even the people like the Lebanese who would seem to benefit from a liberated Iraq don't appreciate our efforts there, ours may well be an impossible mission if we are still investing billions and trillions of dollars 10 years from now in a futile effort to win the hearts and minds of the heartless and mindless.

Posted by: tsweeney at October 30, 2005 7:06 AM

About these Lebanese Christians: were they Maronites, or were they Greek Orthodox or some other group? I ask because the Maronites are on the whole more keenly aware that they predate, in Lebanon, the arrival of Islam and of the Arabs, and while some are content to call themselves, mistakenly, Christian Arabs or Arab Christians, they are merely Arabic-speaking or "Arabic-using" people, and they need not accept, they are free to reject, the "Arabness" that has been thrust upon them. There is a Ph.D. thesis, by Professor Franck Salameh, about the relation of islamization and arabization, particularily through the imposition of the Arabic language, that one hopes will appear in hard cover.

At the dinner party in question, one suspects that the assembled Lebanese Christians having had a lifetime of internalizing the Islamic agenda, and of having to deal with a rising Muslim tide in their own country, could not and would not speak openly about Islam. However, their worry about Iraq makes sense. For they understood, but could not say, that though Saddam Hussein was a monster, he was a monster who, from their point of view, was not the worst that could have happened to the Christians in Iraq. He was never as much of a threat as the "real" Muslims (including Shi'a) whom Saddam feared as rivals for power.

The Christians in Iraq were never a threat to anyone. Saddam's court servants -- his household staff --consisted of Christians (in the Green Zone, the American muckamucks inherited the same household staff of trusted servants). He could trust them. They would not dare to try to kill him -- Muslims could not be trusted. They were not a threat. Much the same happens in Damascus. Hafez al-Assad had various ethnic-based praetorian guards. Christians, including Armenians (there are still many Armenians in Aleppo, Haleb) and other Christians. Does this mean that the Assad family likes Christians? Not at all. It merely means that they fear the "real" Muslims who suspect the Alawites of not being "real" Muslims -- i.e., dangerously syncretistic, with that cult of Miriam, and her picture on the outside of Alawite homes.

These anti-Bush Lebanese thought that for the local Christians, the best that can happen is that nothing happen -- not in Iraq, and not elsewhere. For they fear, but cannot express the fear, that any disruption, anything that gives Muslims more power in Iraq and upsets Muslims elsewhere, is bad for Christians. But they could not admit to themselves, much less to any outsider, that the irreducible problem for Christians in Lebanon, in Iraq, and everywhere in the countries where Islam dominates, is Islam itself. And it remains a problem despite those mediagenic rallies with pretty Christian girls perched on male shoulders, or Cedars-of-Lebanon flags are raised, to get the Syrian overlords out; some may hope that some kind of encompassing Lebanese nationalism could be fanned into being in opposition to Syria, and that this would make the country more secure for the steadily-diminishing (in numbers, and in power) Christians. Hezbollah begs to differ.

One suspects that these particular Lebanese would if time permitted have mechanically repeated all the usual hostile phrases of Muslim Arabs about Israel, choosing to ignore that Israel had been a steady defender of the Christians, and would carefully choose not to recognize that both Jews and Christians are victims of Jihad, and deliberately ignoring those Maronite leaders who intelligently recognized the undiminished menace of Islam, from the late Charles Malik, to the late Bishop of Beirut, Moubarc, who back in 1947, in remarks quoted in "Islam and Dhimmitude," came out in full support of the Zionists with whom, he understood, Lebanese Christians shared the same interests. Those Christians who, from 1880-1960, arrived from present-day Lebanon or Syria (often their passports were marked "Turks" or "Syrians" not "Lebanese")left for America, Canada, Australia, were different. They had not internalized the new dhimmitude. They could be forthrightly part of a Christian America, Canada, Australia. They were not anti-Israel but, in many cases, naturally sympathetic. (see, as one example, the memoir "Syrian Yankee" published half-a-century ago).

Newer arrivals, now coming from places where Christians are definitely required to ape Muslim attitudes and sentiments, and such aping often leads to believing what one is forced to say, have spent so long mimicking the views and words of their powerful, threatening Muslim co-nationals, that they can't always break the habit. That can be seen in the felt necessity to parrot anti-Israel slogans.

But the opposition by those Lebanese Christians to the American invasion of Iraq, while mainly attributable to the same fear of not doing anything to upset the Muslims for fear of how they will react, was also based on an understanding that for the Christians, Ba'athism, and Hussein, a mass-murderer who concentrated on other Muslims, was probably the best the Christians of Iraq could hope for -- and that upsetting Muslims outside Iraq was always dangerous for the local Christians. They understand this. They do not say it -- or few of them do. How can they? That's the Middle East.

Your kind remarks, especially after a night of insomnia and worry, were welcome. "The Sweeniad" by "Myra Buttle" (a parody of Eliot) has always been a favorite. I like your shorter "Sweeniad" just as much.

Posted by: Hugh at October 30, 2005 8:27 AM

On Arab psychology, I would suggest David Bukay's book, Arab-Islamic Political Culture. He goes through a whole set of Arab cultural, psychological and sociological traits.

On Edward Said, he distorts history on a great order of magnitude. It is necessary to refute not merely his many lies and distortions on particular, narrow subjects. His identification of the Arabs and Islam with the East, the Orient, is outrageously false, since not only are there others in the Middle East besides Arabs, but the Arabs were the wreckers of the ancient East, destroying or submerging all the preexisting cultures, languages and peoples. And the identification of the Arabs with the Orient must and can be refuted.

Posted by: Eliyahu at October 30, 2005 1:22 PM

"On Edward Said, he distorts history on a great order of magnitude."
-- from a posting above

Bernard Lewis, fortiter in re, suaviter in modo, picked Said up for velvety inspection in "The Question of Orientalism." Keith Windschuttle did a bit more, less velvety, in the New Criterion. Many critics, especially from India, have had a whack. Now Ibn Warraq is engaged in his Crippen-like dismemberment, and it will be hard even for Hamid Dabashi (please google "Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said") to put Our Edward back together again. But Said himself hardly matters. "Orientalism" is self-evident junk -- or should be. It is Saidism, rather, of which Said is a symptom and a symbol, that Ibn Warraq will take apart. How could such a man, so ill-informed, so illogical, so humorless, have made such a stir, if not that so many were already waiting eagerly to be stirred, in exactly that way.

And then there is the Jobs Program of E. Said. Not the blurbs he wrote for half the professors on the planet, often for books he could not possibly have read (such as those of Maxine Rodinson) or understood. There is the whole MLA-cum-MESA-Nostra game he played. The liquid brown eyes. The former roommate of an English professor who should (and must) know better. The music-appreciator (culture!) with Barenboim, who never made a comment about how Islam regards music, or sculpture, or painting -- even though Said, the Christian from Victoria College, was a great self-assured commentator on Islam, which perhaps simply enters the pores if you have an Arab name and know some Arabic. Who knows?

But personal charm -- I never found him anything but repellent; others apparently saw that charm -- is now of no effect. No way to send it back to earth from the Great Au-Dela. We can judge Said's work by the words he left, and he left nothing that can be taken seriously, or regarded as having merit. Nothing. And that includes his pretend work as a "literary scholar." He never paid attention to words except in order to make a cheap political point. He lacked the inclination, the vigilance, the training, the interest, the subtlety. It is not just his Greater Misguide "Orientalism" or his Lesser Misguide "The Question of Palestine," but even his early works that purport to be about literature, that are awful. And that soft-voice-liquid-brown-eyes routine, his specialty, is no longer available, and in any case it was beginning to wear thin, especially from members of MESA Nostra.

It deserves a book: the phenomenon of Saidism. How did it happen, who wanted to be fooled, cui bono (who got those jobs, who got those promotions, who got that tenure, as dutiful members of the tribe if Saidites). Why, even the Said School of Business, at Oxford, is likely to do less damage -- though business schools have no business, as vocational training, being allowed to claim a connection to universities -- than Edward Said did.

Start by googling "Edward Said" and "Ibn Warraq" and it will cheer you up.

Posted by: Hugh at October 30, 2005 2:22 PM

'Also Hugh:The Psychology of the Musulman, alas is not available, Thanks for the recommendation, but it does no good unless I can find a copy.
Posted by: Nariz'

Take the following information to your library and do a ILL (interlibrary loan request)request. It is usually free and takes 1 to 2 weeks for the book to get to your library. There are 64 copies available at the following libraries:

Libraries with Item: "Islam and the psychology ..."( Record for Item | Get This Item )Location Library Code
NC UNIV OF N CAROLINA COLL ANALYSIS CANOC
NC UNIV OF N CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL NOC

AL BIRMINGHAM SOUTHERN COL ABB

CA CALIFORNIA STATE LIBR CAX
CA CALIFORNIA STATE UNIV EAST BAY CSH
CA CALIFORNIA STATE UNIV, LOS ANGELES CLA
CA CLAREMONT SCH OF THEOL LIBR CST
CA GRADUATE THEOL UNION LIBR GTX
CA HOOVER INST ON WAR, REVOLUTION & PEACE HIN
CA STANFORD UNIV LIBR STF
CA UNIV OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY CUY
CA UNIV OF SAN DIEGO, J S COPLEY LIBR CDU

DC LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LNN
DC WOODSTOCK THEOL CTR DGT

FL PENSACOLA CHRISTIAN COL LIBR FPP

ID IDAHO STATE UNIV LIBR ONB

IL ELMHURST COL ICV

IN CHRISTIAN THEOL SEMINARY IXT

MA BOSTON COLLEGE BXM
MA SMITH COL SNN

MD JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV JHE
MD JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV, WELCH MED LIBR JHW

MI UNIV OF MICHIGAN LIBR EYM

MN CARLETON COL MNN
MN UNIV OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS MNU

MO UNIV OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA MUU
MO UNIV OF MISSOURI, ST LOUIS UMS

NJ NEW BRUNSWICK THEOL SEMINARY LIBR NNG
NJ PRINCETON UNIV PUL

NY BUFFALO & ERIE CNTY PUB LIBR VHB
NY CANISIUS COL VKC
NY COLGATE ROCHESTER CROZER DIVINITY SCH VQE
NY COLUMBIA UNIV ZCU
NY CORNELL UNIV COO
NY DIGITAL LIBR FOR INTERNATIONAL RES AMODL
NY MANHATTANVILLE COL LIBR VYE
NY SUNY AT BUFFALO BUF
NY SUNY AT STONY BROOK YSM
NY SYRACUSE UNIV SYB
NY UNION THEOL SEMINARY VYN

OH CLEVELAND PUB LIBR CLE
OH MIAMI UNIV MIA

OK UNIV OF OKLAHOMA OKU

PA TEMPLE UNIV TEU
PA UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA PAU
PA WEST CHESTER UNIV QWC

RI BROWN UNIV RBN

TN EMMANUEL SCH OF RELIGION TEJ
TN UNIV OF TENNESSEE TKN

TX SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOL SEMINARY TSW

UT BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIV LIBR UBY

VA VIRGINIA THEOL SEMINARY VTS

WA UNIV OF WASHINGTON LIBR WAU

WI UNIV OF WISCONSIN, MADISON, GEN LIBR SYS GZM

WV WEST VIRGINIA UNIV LIBR WVU

QC MCGILL UNIV LGG

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Islam and the psychology of the Musulman,
André Servier; A S Moss-Blundell

1924
English Book xvi, 271 p. 23 cm.
London, Chapman & Hall,
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Title: Islam and the psychology of the Musulman,
Author(s): Servier, André. ; Moss-Blundell, A. S., ; tr.
Publication: London, Chapman & Hall,
Year: 1924
Description: xvi, 271 p. 23 cm.
Language: English
Standard No: LCCN: 24-14464
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: Islam.
Civilization, Arab.
Geographic: Islamic countries -- History.
Class Descriptors: LC: DS38
Other Titles: Psychology of the Musulman.
Responsibility: by André Servier. Translated by A.S. Moss-Blundell, with a preface by Louis Bertrand.
Document Type: Book
Entry: 19791120
Update: 20030907
Accession No: OCLC: 5716084
Database: WorldCat

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Posted by: Geoff at October 30, 2005 11:20 PM

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The memory of that performance still haunts me when i think of Daniel Barenboim's close relationship with Said.
I now find it impossible to fully appreciate Barenboim's virtuosity on the piano.
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Posted by: Eliyahu at November 1, 2005 4:47 AM