Monthly Archives: November 2009

In general, I think that Juan Cole’s article today on the new Swiss law banning the building of minarets is oversimplified, but I do think he makes a few good points always overlooked in our they’re evil we’re good discourse:

Others will allege that Muslims do not grant freedom of religion to Christians in their midst. First of all, this allegation is not true if we look at the full range of the countries where the 1.5 billion Muslims live. Among the nearly 60 Muslim-majority states in the world, only one, Saudi Arabia, forbids the building of churches. Does Switzerland really want to be like Saudi Arabia?

Here is a Western Christian description of the situation of Christians in Syria:

In Syria, as in all other Arab countries of the Middle East except Saudi Arabia, freedom of religion is guaranteed in law . . . We should like to point out too that in Syria and in several other countries of the region, Christian churches benefit from free water and electricity supplies, are exempt from several types of tax and can seek building permission for new churches (in Syria, land for these buildings are granted by the State) or repair existing ones.

It should be noted too that there are Christian members of Parliament and of government in Syria and other countries, sometimes in a fixed number (as in Lebanon and Jordan.)

Finally, we note that a new personal statute was promulgated on 18 June 2006 for the various Christian Churches found in Syria, which purposely and verbatim repeats most of the rules of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches promulgated by Pope John Paul II.

That is, in Muslim-majority Syria, the government actually grants land to Christians for the building of churches, along with free water and electricity. Christians have their own personal status legal code, straight from the Vatican. (It is because Christians have their own law in the Middle East, backed by the state, that Muslims in the West are puzzled as to why they cannot practice their personal status code.) Christians have freedom of religion, though there are sensitivities about attempts to convert others (as there are everywhere in the Middle East, including Israel). And Christians are represented in the legislature. With Switzerland’s 5 percent Muslim population, how many Muslim members of parliament does it have?

It will also be alleged that in Egypt some clergymen gave fatwas or legal opinions that building churches is a sin, and it will be argued that Christians have been attacked by Muslims in Upper Egypt.

These arguments are fallacies. You cannot compare the behavior of some Muslim fanatics in rural Egypt to the laws and ideals of the Swiss Republic. We have to look at Egyptian law and policy.

The Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Seminary, the foremost center of Sunni Muslim learning, “added in statements carried by Egyptian newspaper Youm al-Saba’a that Muslims can make voluntary contributions to build churches, pointing out that the church is a house for ‘worshipping and tolerance.'” He condemned the fundamentalist Muslims for saying church-building is sinful. And Egypt has lots of churches, including new Presbyterian ones, following John Calvin, who I believe lived in … Geneva. About six percent of the population is Christian.

Personally, I would prefer less mosques and churches and more schools. I’m just a secular kind of guy, although I should probably disclose that I am writing this while listening to Ella Fitzgerald dreaming of a White Christmas, Frank Sinatra wishing me a Merry Little Christmas, and Sammy Davis Jr. reminding me that it is Christmas all over the world. And it’s not even December, yet.

This morning I woke up to one of the most shockingly delusional Friedman op-eds to date. Self-righteous Thomas Friedman astonishingly writes,

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving. [Emphasis added]

I would agree that there are in fact voices in the Muslim world that misinterpret U.S. attacks on Arab and Muslim countries resulting in countless civilian collateral damage as being a willful attempt to keep “Muslims down”. But to go from there and argue with a straight face that the opposite – that U.S. foreign policy has as its principal goal to rescue Muslims by bombing them – is a narrative that is credible only to a select few in the U.S. with their heads in the sand. Meanwhile the entire rest of the world sees U.S. foreign policy — like the foreign policy of any other nation — as was it is: based purely on self-interest and never on an honest desire towards altruism or rescuing others. Only the politicians with the help of their “front-men pundits” sell altruism to the naïve as a ruse to do as one pleases. Who you trying to fool, Mr. Friedman?

But once again, I will have to defer to Mr. Greenwald who beat me to the punch on Friedman’s grotesque hypocrisy, Continue reading →

In an op-ed yesterday on why he has grown so pessimistic about the prospect for Israeli-Palestinian peace, Roger Cohen quotes Israeli author David Grossman,

We have dozens of atomic bombs, tanks and planes. We confront people possessing none of these arms. And yet, in our minds, we remain victims. This inability to perceive ourselves in relation to others is our principal weakness.

Does that sound familiar? Our endless war in Afghanistan? The entire War on Terror? And although I don’t like Iran either, as pointed out by Juan Cole,

Iran’s military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.

Yet we continue to threaten them with bombing and obliteration, and a media that is salivating for more war – oh so reminiscent of Iraq.

George Will is at it again. After remarking about the obvious absurdity of conservative claims about closing Guantanamo to making the cases for leaving both Iraq and Afghanistan, he has now disagreed with his fellow pundits on the right — including the ever blood thirsty David Brooks — siding with the Department of Justice in favor of trying 911 suspects in New York courts and in favor of the American Justice System.

All of this officially makes George Will one of the only conservative pundits (or any pundit for that matter) who consistently advocates in favor of his core beliefs over simply pushing the party line.