How to Talk About Ahmed "Clock Boy" Mohamed Without Sounding Like a Fool

When we're talking about people writing for an outfit like Breitbart, coming across as an idiot on this type of matter may be part of the job description, but for the rest of us....

Credit where it’s due to comedian Bill Maher and HBO show Real Time, which has become one of the few mass media outlets telling the truth about “Clock Boy” Ahmed Mohamed, who was removed from his Irving, Texas school when he brought a device to the school unannounced that resembled a bomb.

If Maher is correct, let's skip ahead to his conclusion:

Maher has repeatedly said that he believes Mohamed should not have been arrested.

That's the gist of the controversy -- that Mohamed was arrested. Had he merely been sent to the principal's office, we would never have heard of him.

So is that the story? A young teenager was needlessly arrested for having a clock, with Breitbart's right-wingers joining with Maher to deplore the stupidity of his arrest? Of course not. What the author actually approves is Maher's claim that the teenager was not as bright as the initial stories suggested, and Maher's anti-Muslim rhetoric. So let's take those issues in order:

Maher used a zinger to shut down the notion that the boy removing the back of a piece consumer electronics and showing it to people makes Mohamed any kind of inventor, saying “This is like pouring milk on a bowl of Cheerios and claiming you invented cereal.”...

It’s the second time that Maher has featured the Clock Kid as a topic of discussion. On a previous episode of Real Time, billionaire Marc Cuban revealed that when he spoke on the phone with Muhamed and asked him questions, he could hear his sister whispering answers to him.

Tee, hee, hee, Maher really put that fourteen-year-old boy in his place. But here's the problem: the boy wasn't arrested for plagiarism, for cheating on his homework, for patent infringement.... Even if we presuppose that he can't even tie his shoes by himself or speak in coherent sentences, that in no way stands as an excuse for his treatment by the school or by the police. It's irrelevant.

When liberal Ron Reagan, Jr. attempted to claim that the device that Mohamed brought to school didn’t resemble a bomb, Maher quickly defused his argument, urging him, “Try taking that through airport security.”

And, as Reagan correctly pointed out, it would not have been a problem -- because you're actually allowed to take clocks, and electronic components, onto airplanes. The boy would have placed his pencil case on the scanner belt, the person operating the scanner might have flagged the item for further review, and upon further review it would have been determined to be a clock. They might also have swabbed the case to test for any residue of explosives, only to again confirm... clock.

While clocks can be used as timing devices for explosives, clocks are present in many things that people routinely take onto airplanes. Cell phones, computers, tablets, ebook readers, wristwatches, travel alarm clocks.... It's really not alarming -- even if it's an alarm clock -- unless there's some indication that it's actually going to be used in association with an explosive device. And no, looking like your memory of the excessively complicated explosive device created by the prop department of a James Bond movie does not translate into it's being anything more than a clock.

On that episode Maher also noted that so many young Muslim men have “blown a lot of shit up around the world.”

The boy's religion has obviously factored into discussion of the case, and appears to be the leading factor in Maher's knee-jerk reaction to the case. It's a factor that is emphasized and amplified in the right-wing media, where you can read conspiratorial tales of how the boy's older siblings or father are activists of one sort or another, and how the whole thing was a deviously clever set-up of the school.

Okay.... so we have a kid who's actually stupid, and does nothing more than disassemble off-the-shelf clocks and put them into his pencil case, but at the same time who is so clever that he tricked the police into arresting him, and tricked the right-wing media machine into engaging in anti-Muslim demagoguery? I think there's a bit of tension between those two positions, but leaving that aside for the moment, proponents of the Muslim angle have a bigger problem:

The school does not report that it suspected that the boy's device was a bomb, real or fake, because of his religion. The school does not suggest that their knowledge of the boy's family played any role in its decision to treat the possession of the clock as a criminal matter, and to call in the police. The police don't claim that they knew the boy's religion, or that they suspected that the clock was something other than a clock because of his religion.

The commonality seems to be that the teacher, school officials and police officers who made the stupid decision to treat this as a criminal matter believed that anything that looks like the time from a bomb in a James Bond movie has to be a bomb -- be it an actual bomb or a fake bomb. That's not a matter of the boy's being the most brilliant inventor on the planet or dumb as a rock; it's not a matter of the boy being Muslim, Christian, Hindu or atheist. It's a matter of the school administration and police acting foolishly and needlessly arresting a boy for his possession of a clock.

The actual story is this: A boy brought a clock to school, whether disassembled or home-made, a teacher was concerned by its appearance, the school overreacted and brought in the police, and the police overreacted by making an arrest. Once you subtract the anti-Muslim rhetoric, you can move straight forward into what seems to be obvious even to a Breitbart writer, "Mohamed should not have been arrested". Your choice to inject more into the story may tell us something about you, but it's otherwise irrelevant.

"If Only Muslims Would Speak Out Against ISIS...."

A common refrain about Islamic extremists is that not enough ordinary Muslims speak out against it. To me, this raises three essential questions:

1. Do ordinary Muslims have any responsibility to speak out against extremists?

2. If so, what form should that responsibility take?

3. If so, what impact would their statements have?

I find myself sympathetic to the idea that Muslims should separate themselves from extremists for two basic reasons, while at the same time recognizing that my reasons are not particularly fair to ordinary Muslims -- that it's a form of emotional reasoning, not logic. First, by a large measure, at present Muslim extremism is a more significant problem in the world than any other form of religious extremism. Second, there's a popular perception that not speaking out means that you're on the side of the extremists. The unfairness of the expectation comes from the fact that we really don't expect similar denunciations from any other group, and that ordinary people should not be burdened with the requirement that they periodically search out a public platform to denounce extremism lest they be conflated with the extremists.

Even if we assume that such a platform were readily available, it's fair to ask, who would listen? The extremists and their supporters don't care if they're being denounced. Those suffering under their oppression aren't helped or empowered by a denunciation. Those calling for the denunciations are likely to either ignore the expression, assuming it even comes to their attention, or regard it as inadequate because it doesn't actually change anything.

Ordinary people are not ordinarily tasked with separating their own beliefs from those of extremists. Even in high profile contexts, we don't expect people to distinguish their mainstream religious beliefs from those of extremists within their faith. For example, Mitt Romney was not asked to denounce the FLDS based upon its claim that it represents the true face of Mormonism. But what if he had been asked to do so, or had voluntarily condemned the FLDS? For those in FLDS communities, not one thing would have changed. For any who might to point to the FLDS as representing the truth about Mormonism, the statement would mean nothing.

At the end of the day, the calls for denunciation seem to come primarily from two corners. First, from people who are using the absence of public condemnations, real or imagined, as a basis to perpetuate their own prejudices, and second, from commentators and demagogues who benefit -- who seek fame, attention, and profit -- from engaging in anti-Islamic rhetoric.

Why Bill Maher is the Wrong Target for a Commencement Speaker Protest

As part of the fallout from Bill Maher's comments about Islam, comments from which he finds no room for retreat, some individuals and groups are arguing that Berkeley should withdraw its invitation for Maher to speak at its fall commencement. On the issue of Islam, Maher relies almost exclusively on the spotlight fallacy and hasty generalization, plucking examples of horror from around the Islamic world and arguing that they prove that Islam is somehow worse than other religions. He stubbornly refuses to consider challenges to his position -- people pointing out that he conflates regional, cultural practices that arose and exist independently of Islam with the teachings of Islam, people pointing out that he draws his primary examples from Islamic nations without regard to whether those nations reflect what is typical in other Islamic nations or populations, or the practices of the majority of Muslims. He'll present Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwah against Salman Rushdie as if it reflected -- and reflects -- the views and wishes of every Muslim in the world.

On the most recent episode of Real Time, Bill Maher quoted his friend Reza Aslan, on the issue of whether or not he's a bigot, emphasizing that Alsan is Muslim and says he's not a bigot. Here's the larger quote:

I've done [Real Time] every season for four or five years. I love being on the show. And listen, I've said repeatedly that Bill Maher is not a bigot. I know him. We are friends. We hang out with each other, backstage. He loves having me on the show despite the fact that he disagrees with me on a lot of things and that shows the kind of person that he is.

What I have said, however, is that if people are constantly saying that the way you are talking about something is coming across as bigoted, you might want to stop and think about how you’re saying these things. Bill Maher says he's not a bigot, I absolutely believe him. So maybe he needs to reexamine why people keep talking about him as a bigot.

Aslan has also pointed out that Maher is not very sophisticated in his views of Islam. What I think Aslan is trying to say, in a somewhat gentle way, is that Maher is not advancing his position out of animus or intolerance, and thus is not guilty of that form of bigotry, but is instead advancing his position because he does not have a sufficient body of information, and has not applied a sufficient amount of thought to the subject. I believe Aslan is suggesting that if Maher were to do so he would likely reconsider his position. [Insert maxim about leading horses to water.]

From my perspective, Maher's position on Islam and the Arab world, notably including his positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, reflect a cognitive insularity on those subjects, epistemic closure. At times he ridicules conservatives as living in the bubble -- these subjects are his bubble. He appears to have held consistent views on Arabs and Islam for much of his life, he's quite comfortable with those beliefs, and he sees no need to let facts get in the way. That doesn't mean that he completely avoids the facts -- to the contrary, as his mode of argument suggests, he is inclined to search for, interpret, and prioritize information in a way that confirms his existing beliefs -- confirmation bias. Maher is clearly more than smart enough to take a step back, review the evidence, and see what people like Aslan are trying to explain to him -- but, as occasionally happens to all of us, he isn't ready to let go of his preconceptions.

The funny thing is, all of Maher's leading critics, including those who were or are Muslim, share his perspective that there is something wrong with the practice of Islam in the Middle East and in some other parts of the world. They see Islam as being abused in the same manner that other religions have been historically abused, and in which they continue to be abused in some nations and cultures. It's an argument that Maher, an avowed atheist and critic of all religions, should find quite consistent with his other views -- it's not that there's something special about Islam that makes it particularly vulnerable to fundamentalism and extremism, but that there's something wrong with the political, cultural and economic contexts from which the fundamentalism and extremism emerge. Islam is a problem not because it's special, but because it's the dominant religion in those regions, and thus the one most easily exploited by fundamentalists and extremists. You speak the language of your audience.

Like Maher, his critics also rely heavily on the spotlight fallacy, plucking quotes out of Maher's past performances, speeches and monologs, where he has made some pretty outrageous statements. But what else would you expect? The man is a comedian who loves to jokingly scold his audience for groaning at the less outrageous of his jokes. He has made a career out of being politically incorrect, a term that you may recall was the name of the T.V. show that made him famous. I recently read one of his monologs in which, his sarcastic tone of voice being invisible on the printed page, he appeared to be endorsing birtherism. You will have absolutely no trouble finding quotes with which to condemn him, even if his presentation of the quoted material might suggest that he held a different opinion than the one he was ostensibly voicing. He's not Sarah Silverman, but he does sometimes go for the punch line that's going to shock, rattle, or even offend his audience -- and it's all too easy to inadvertently or deliberately misinterpret that sort of punch line.

If Maher were invited by Berkeley to participate in a panel discussion on Islam, where a variety of voices could be heard, I would hope that the students that are offended by the prospect of his giving a commencement address would welcome his participation. (Or perhaps criticize it from the standpoint of, "Can't we find a scholar instead of a comedian" -- although back when Bill Maher frequently had comedians participate in his Real Time panels, sometimes the comedians provided more interesting and thoughtful commentary than the experts.)

A compelling argument made about commencement addresses is that they're not like other forms of on-campus speech. If you want to participate in commencement, you are a captive audience for the commencement speaker and are expected to act with appropriate decorum. Also, commencement speakers are often paid very large sums of money for their presentations, money that is drawn from the students. It is fair to say that students should have a larger voice when it comes to objecting to the participation of certain controversial figures in their commencement ceremonies than in other campus activities, where in my opinion the focus should be on debate, not exclusion.

If Bill Maher were going to address graduating students with an exposition of his views of religion and Islam, the students would be justified in objecting to his speech. He's not an expert in those areas, his commentary on Islam is deeply flawed, and it would be an abuse of his platform to speak about his views of religion. However, it is more than safe to say that Maher has no intention of using his commencement presentation to speak about religion, gender relations, or any of the other issues that occasionally land him in warm to hot water. He's already said as much:

But let me say this to those students worried about that: I promise this will be your day. This is a commencement speech. The issue is you. My speech was, is, I hope, going to be about you and whatever tips I thought that could actually help you in life because I already lived through it. That and my funk about how Jewish women hate to have sex.

That last sentence, of course, is an example of the sort of punch line I previously mentioned. I'm not arguing that Maher's punch lines and groaners don't reflect his political views -- but I am pointing out that some of them quite obviously do not, and many others fall on a spectrum between what he believes and what he believes will generate the loudest laugh or groan -- with his being one of the nation's wealthiest comedians -- one of the nation's wealthiest people -- by virtue of his knowing how to go for the laughs and groans.

I am not sure that the students opposed to Maher's appearance ever thought that he was going to address religion in his speech. I think that their primary concern is that he is hostile to Islam, and that students should not be compelled to sit through a speech by somebody whose views they find troubling, or even odious. Ibraham Hooper of Cair pointed out that nobody is going to suggest that the Grand Wizard of the KKK is an appropriate commencement speaker -- that is, we can reach a point where there will be near-universal agreement that an individual should not speak at a college commencement even if he promises not to touch on subjects that his audience might deem offensive -- but there's an enormous distance between Maher and a KKK Grand Wizard. Inviting Maher to speak doesn't open the floodgates.

The exchange with Cooper illustrates how opportunists and demagogues can take a quote out of context to use it to bash the speaker. During the exchange, Cooper's debate opponent jumped on the reference to a KKK Grand Wizard, chortling, "So Bill Maher is the Grand Dragon of the KKK? I can’t until Bill Maher hears that. I think Bill will have a heyday with that." The host immediately pointed out the obvious -- that no such comparison had been made -- but that didn't stop hacks like Eric Bolling of Fox News or Alex Griswold at the Daily Caller from plucking the statement out-of-context and lying about what Hooper meant. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that after making his false characterization, Griswold quotes the exchange and thereby makes plain that his characterization is false.

Why let Maher speak?

• Protesting Maher reinforces his position - When Maher argues that Muslims don't do enough to object to the actions of extremists who claim to be acting in the name of their religion, he's not really being fair -- people have the right to live their ordinary lives without having to comment to anybody willing to listen, "That wackaloon you read about on the news doesn't represent my views." But when Muslims loudly protest Maher, they risk perpetuating the stereotype that Muslims want to shut down any criticism of their religion, while fueling the argument that "Those people find the time to protest Maher, but have nothing to say about the wackaloon I heard about on the news." I'm not arguing that Muslim students should never try to have an anti-Muslim speaker excluded from giving a commencement address, and it is appropriate to object to those who for example argue for the forcible conversion of Muslims to other religions, advocate bombing Muslim holy sites, advocate suppressing the speech and religious rights of Muslims. But when you target somebody like Maher, the more effective way to get your point across is not to try to shut him up, but to avoid playing to his stereotype.

• If You Look Hard Enough, You'll Find Something Offensive About Your Commencement Speaker - In the YouTube era, with news archives at students' fingertips, and with the long memory of the Internet, we're in an era in which it will be difficult for any celebrity to give a commencement speech, as if you look hard enough at any person you're likely to find a quote that can be presented (or misrepresented) as offensive to somebody. Finding offensive quotes is easy with somebody like Maher, as they're literally his bread and butter, but pretty much every famous person is going to have a gaffe or misstatement, or a political position they've long abandoned, preserved somewhere.

• You lay a foundation for exclusion of other speakers - Once you create a context in which a person can be excluded from giving a commencement speech based upon views that some students find offensive, even though those views will not be shared in the commencement address, you open the floodgates. It is far better to set a high standard for exclusion than to create what amounts to a heckler's veto. Sure, a great many commencement speakers may end up falling into the gray area between the tiny number who have immaculate public records and those virtually all would agree to be villanous, but free speech will fare better if we keep the line for exclusion as close to pure black as comfortably possible.

Maher's appearance presents the students of Berkeley with a tremendous opportunity to very publicly challenge Maher's positions on Islam. Rather than pressing forward with an effort to exclude Maher from giving a commencement address, I suggest taking advantage of the fact that the eyes of the world are now on Maher and Berkeley. Organize a symposium on Islam and fundamentalist violence, bring in some knowledgeable scholars, invite Maher to participate in a panel. You can't buy publicity like this -- if you want to take advantage of an opportunity to educate the public about Islam, run with it.

Bill Maher vs. Islam

A couple of weeks ago, Bill Maher closed his show with a monologue that was primarily a critique of those on the political left who don't join him in an unequivocal condemnation of Islam.

The concept that appears to be at the root of Maher's rant is cultural relativism, not in the sense of trying to interpret actions and behaviors in light of a person's culture, but in the sense that you should not view one culture as better or superior to another, and that there is no objective measure of right and wrong that can be applied between cultures. It's a belief that few hold in theory and that is unworkable in practice, but it is associated with parts of the political left. If in fact somebody is arguing that it's awful that Mel Gibson made a sexist statement, but that Saudi Arabia's treatment of women is acceptable because we should not judge their culture, it's reasonable for Maher to argue that they're objectively wrong and that Saudi Arabia's misogynistic systems are a far greater problem than something Mel Gibson says while drunk. He could also point out that in condemning Mel Gibson they're not giving fair weight to his cultural background, and by their own unworkable standard they should refrain from judging him.

Maher also makes a valid point when he suggests that celebrities can become the victims of what amounts to a feeding frenzy, with a poorly thought-out comment, an unfortunate resort to a childish insult, or even the expression of reprehensible beliefs, resulting in opprobrium and consequence that may be disproportionate to the offense. Maher no doubt takes that type of reaction personally, given how quickly he lost his job after he made an impolitic comment on the relative courage of the U.S. in bombing foreign nations to the 9/11 bombers. However, such is the price of celebrity -- if you want to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars as a celebrity, at least if your target demographic is not the same as Duck Dynasty's, you had best learn to guard your tongue or be prepared to apologize when you make a racist, sexist or homophobic comment.

From that foundation, Maher goes wrong: He attributes a fringe belief to liberals in general. He denies the obvious fact that it is possible to simultaneously oppose wrongs that occur both at home and abroad. He ignores that it is reasonable for people to focus on domestic issues and issues that they've actually heard about as opposed to foreign issues or problems that occur at the periphery of, or outside of, their awareness. And, in relation to his targeting of Islam, he paints with far too broad a brush, conflating offensive minority practices that have their origins in tribal society and pre-Islamic culture with Islam.

Maher opened his monologue with a criticism (and joke) about the President:

President Obama keeps insisting that's ISIS is not Islamic. Well, maybe they don't practice the Muslim faith the same way he does. But if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.

Maher is going for a laugh, and his is a comedy show, so even if it weren't Maher it would be too much to expect that the Obama Administration's position would be framed in a fair context. The Administration is going through great pains to avoid any suggestion that its attacks on ISIS are based upon its religious beliefs, and to disclaim the notion that it is waging a war on Islam or intends to defeat the Islamic faith as opposed to an extremist group that it believes distorts the faith for its own ends. The comment about Obama's practice of Islam is a decent laugh line, and Maher's intended audience understands that Maher doesn't buy into the conspiracy theories that suggest that the President is secretly Muslim, but it is important to note in a non-comedic context that the Obama Administration's positions on ISIS have a basis in global politics that has nothing to do with being politically correct.

Maher's comparison of the Muslim world at large to ISIS is an example of the spotlight fallacy crossed with the hasty generalization. The principal actions of ISIS, along with the groups history of violence against Muslims, is ignored in favor of spotlighting some positions associated more generally with radical Islam, in order to conflate the general practice of Islam with the beliefs and actions of an organization that was once deemed too extreme for al Qaeda. That type of generalization is consistent with Maher's historic commentary on Islam, and his history of (at best) indifference to the rights of even secular Arab groups in relation to non-Arab actors.

There are vast numbers of Muslims in the world, many of whom live in despotic nations with extremist religious leadership, so it's no surprise that Maher can recite that there are "vast numbers" of Muslims who hold views that are offensive to a progressive western democracy. Maher is critical of religion across-the-board, and would no doubt acknowledge that people believe odious things in the names of other religions. To the extent that he is arguing that, due to the extraordinary levels of extremist belief within parts of the Muslim world, Maher is correct that a danger exists as a result of that extremism that does not presently exist in relation to extremism in other religions. It's not that you can't find people of any faith that hold odious views or commit hideous acts in the name of their faith, or that you cannot find pockets of extremism in which most members of the community hold those odious views, it's that the ratio of extremists to non-extremists is vastly lower.

With Maher, it seems that the analysis ends right there. He may acknowledge that extremism was higher in the past, and that much of what we see in the Muslim world is not dissimilar to medieval Christianity, but he shows little interest in examining why religious extremism has faded in the other major religions, even as it has expanded in parts of the Muslim world. That is, he refuses to address the historic, military, sociological and economic factors that contribute to extremism. Is there a problem inherent to Islam, or would similar levels and forms of extremism arise in others of the world's major religions in similar contexts -- such as occurred with the Tamil Tigers, a faction that grew out of a population that is largely Hindu.

Maher's next statement is simply an endorsement of progressive democracy,

There's so much talk -- you can applaud -- there's so much talk about wiping out ISIS. You can't, not with bombs. You can only expose that something is a bad idea like extended warranties. Cultures are different. It's okay to judge that rule of law isn't just different than theocracy, it's better. If you don't see that, you're either a religious fanatic or a masochist, but one thing you certainly are not is a liberal.

There seems to be some hollow manning going on in that argument -- the fabrication of a rhetorical opponent who does not actually exist, then swatting down an argument that nobody is actually making. I think it's more than fair to say that liberals should not be endorsing theocracy -- I'm simply not aware of any liberals who are endorsing theocracy. If in fact such a liberal exists, they deserve the rap across the knuckles that Maher delivers to them. But I'm not sure that any exist, and to the extent that they do they are so insignificant in number that they're unworthy of mention.

Maher is correct that ISIS won't be defeated with bombs. I've personally analogized ISIS to the liquid metal terminator from Terminator 2, and the scene in which the terminator is frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered into millions of pieces. As soon as the pieces start to melt, they aggregate back into the terminator. The people who aggregate to form groups like ISIS are no different -- bomb them and degrade them, and you may well make ISIS less significant, but its adherents will immediately start aggregating into new groups that may turn out to be as bad or worse. That said, telling them that they're backward misogynists who have no place in a modern world, although correct, is going to be completely ineffectual.

Maher continued,

To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. Free speech, separation of church and state, freedom to practice any religion or no religion without the threat of violence. Respect for minorities including homosexuals, equality for women. It amazes me how here in America we go nuts over the tiniest violations of these values while gross atrocities are ignored across the world.

The first response to that statement seems obvious: When you live in the United States, when you can participate in the U.S. political process, when it's your friends, neighbors and countrymen who are the targets of a wrong, when voicing your concerns could actually make a difference, you will likely be more inclined to act or speak out. Moreover, you have a greater duty to speak out when a wrong is occurring in your name. The second response to that is, seriously? This is Bill Maher, the guy whose weekly "New Rules" ridicule issues that are often among the most trivial facing society? This is Bill Maher, whose choice of a Congressman to target for defeat is based upon issues that are largely domestic, and was largely due to the Congressman's support for private colleges:

The comedian recited a litany of items that he said [Congressman John] Kline was wrong about, including voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his vote during the partial government shutdown, denying funding for climate change research, and failing to adequately address the rising student debt. Maher charged that Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, is ”the champion of for-profit colleges”

I'm not accusing Maher of hypocrisy, just of a bit of myopia, in that as a matter of routine he personally takes very strong stances on trivial issues. If you were to rank Maher's criticisms of Kline against his specified criticisms of Islam, it would be more than fair to ask, "Why are you obsessing about student debt when people are getting killed in other parts of the world for holding the wrong ideas?" Similarly, why does Maher spend so much time talking about how ridiculous U.S. marijuana laws are, when people are facing long prison terms and even being executed for possession of drugs in other nations, including decidedly non-Muslim nations like Singapore and Thailand? The quite obvious answer is that it is possible to oppose a domestic law or political agenda while also opposing worse practices overseas.

Why does Maher's show focus primarily on U.S. news and culture? Because he's speaking to his audience. Why did he make his $1 million dollar donation to the Democratic Party? Because he hopes to effect domestic political change. Nothing is wrong with any of that. It's okay for Maher to make jokes about Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin, to advocate marijuana legalization, and to close his show with a rant that in the greater scheme of things is trivial, while at the same time deploring the absence of democracy and human rights in parts of the Muslim world. It's okay for him to focus his time, attention, and political contributions on things he may be able to influence or change, rather than focusing on more serious issues upon which he can have no impact.

Maher complained,

Jonah Hill yells "suck my dick faggot" at the paparazzi and an entire nation goes into Twitter outrage until he is forced to perform that most debasing of acts -- the talk show apology tour. Meanwhile, in 10 countries actually sucking a dick can get you stoned, and not a good way.

This statement reflects one of the prices of celebrity -- if you say or do something stupid, you are apt to attract a lot of negative attention and you may have to apologize in order to protect your career. The reaction may well be disproportionate, but such is the life of a celebrity. Given the option of apologizing or retiring from an extraordinarily lucrative public life, celebrites tend to apologize. Further, as the Duck Dynasty clan has established, if you want to make anti-gay statements there is an audience that will be receptive both to your beliefs and that will applaud your refusal to apologize. Is that the audience that Maher prefers? Is that an audience he believes would be more apt to stand up for the values he hopes become established across the world?

And that brings us to something Maher fails to mention: The nation that has received the most attention in recent years for its anti-gay laws and policies is Uganda. Uganda is not a Muslim country. Uganda's ugly anti-gay laws are driven by a Christian movement that in turn is driven by U.S.-based anti-gay ministries. Russian hostility to homosexuality has also worsened in recent years. I suspect that Maher's list of "ten countries" is the same list offered here, which includes nations that make no distinction between forms of extramarital sex (all qualifying the participants for the death penalty) and nations that could theoretically execute somebody for engaging in homosexual acts even if they aren't in fact doing so. Should a U.S. citizen be more concerned about the U.S. activists who are agitating anti-homosexual sentiments in Africa, to the point that for a time homosexuality was a capital offense in Uganda and remains punishable by life in prison, or by puzzling over whether the UAE imposes the death penalty only for homosexual rape as opposed to all homosexual acts in the absence of any actual executions?

All of that is to point out the obvious: anti-gay bigotry exists across the world, is anything but unique to Islam, and some of the worst anti-gay actions are occurring in non-Islamic nations at the behest of U.S. Christians. There is absolutely nothing wrong with condemning anti-homosexual bigotry among any particular religious or cultural group, and there is also absolutely no reason you need to rank the acts from least to most offensive, or sort them by religion, before you condemn a bigoted law, act or statement. It may not seem fair to Maher that some who grew up in an era where "gay" was a common schoolyard taunt to learn, the hard way, that it's no longer an acceptable epithet, but that's the way our nation has evolved -- and surely Maher would concede that evolution toward full acceptance of gay Americans into society is a good thing.

Maher continued his complaint,

We hear a lot about the Republican war on women. It's not cool. Rush Limbaugh called somebody a slut. Okay. But Saudi women can't vote or drive or hold a job or leave the house without a man. Overwhelming majorities in every Muslim country say a wife is always obliged to obey her husband. That all seems like a bigger issue than an evangelical Christian bakery refusing to make gay wedding cakes.

That, of course, is more of the same. Contrary to what Maher suggests, it is possible to hold that Republican efforts to roll back reproductive rights and freedoms is "not cool", and that a prominent radio host should not be calling a woman a "slut" merely because she argues that health insurance should cover prescription contraceptives, while also believing that Saudi Arabia's treatment of women is abhorrent. On a global scale, certainly the oppression of women in many other societies around the world is a "bigger issue" than whether a local business discriminates against gay people, women, ethnic minorities, Jews, or any other citizen. But as I've already pointed out, that doesn't mean it's wrong to speak out against a small or local injustice -- and in fact, that's often the place where your voice is most likely to have an impact. Frankly, the entire issue is a red herring -- Maher offers no reason to believe that those who believe that businesses should not discriminate against their customers are accepting of Saudi Arabia's oppressive laws, let alone that, if asked, they would say that discrimination by a small business against a wedding cake customer is worse.

Maher next inadvertently highlighted one of the weaknesses of his criticisms of Islam:

Ninety-one percent of Egyptian women have had their clitorises removed; 98% of Somalian women have.

That's horrible, and it shouldn't happen, but here's the thing: Female genital mutilation is a practice that exists principally in parts of Africa, and is not a mainstream Islamic teaching. It is not surprising that the practice continued with the introduction of Islam or that some proponents of FGM believe it is a religious teaching, and we do need to address the reality that the practice has even spread to the west for the most part within Muslim communities. It is certainly no surprise that FGM, a fundamentally misogynist practice, exists largely within nations that hold misogynist views. But a billion Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, where FGM is not part of the culture or religion.

Experts say the practice stems from social pressure to conform to traditions passed down for centuries -- one that predates not just Islam but also Judaism and Christianity. (The origins of the practice are subject to some dispute, but some scholars say it may correspond to areas of ancient civilizations, in which the cutting of females "signalled controlled fidelity and the certainty of paternity," the UNICEF report states.)

In areas of high prevalence today, "this is perceived to be the normal and correct way of bringing up a girl," Moneti said. "If a girl is not cut, she may be considered impure and not marriageable, and she and her entire family may be ostracized."

While it stems from neither Christianity nor Islam, some women in Chad, Guinea and Mauritania report a "religious requirement" as a benefit of cutting. Some communities consider a clitoridectomy -- one type of female genital mutilation -- as "sunna," which is Arabic for "tradition" or "duty," according to the UNICEF report. However, it is not a requirement of the Koran and has been specifically rejected by some Muslim leaders in Egypt.

We can certainly criticize FGM, and should do so, but we can do that without insulting the majority of the world's Muslims for whom FGM plays no role in their lives or religion.

Maher continued,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia and was one of them. She was scheduled to speak at Yale last week but the school's atheist organization, my people, complained that she "did no represent a totality of the ex-Muslim experience." Meaning what? That women like mutilation? You're atheists. You should be attacking religion, not siding with people who hold women down and violate them which apparently you will defend in the name of multiculturalism and then lose your shit when someone refers to Chaz Bono by the wrong pronoun.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali lost a considerable amount of support when she switched her target from FGM to Islam at large. While I can appreciate her anger, given her life story, her message was more effective when it was focused on actions that virtually all Americans agree are outrageous. The Atheists at Yale clearly don't agree with Maher's position that the role of an Atheist is to attack religion -- they appear to view religion as something that people should be free to exercise, or not exercise, consistent with their own beliefs. The Yale group penned a relatively innocuous statement,

As a diverse group of undergraduates with a membership that includes ex-Muslims and atheists from Islamic cultures, we do not believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents the totality of the ex-Muslim experience. Although we acknowledge the value of her story, we do not endorse her blanket statements on all Muslims and Islam. We believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents a sadly common voice in the atheist community that attacks and provokes, rather than contributes to constructive criticism or dialogue. We remind our fellow atheists, Humanists, and agnostics of the rich history of dissent within our community, and do not believe belonging to this community necessitates an endorsement of all community members and their beliefs.

Maher may prefer the type of atheist who "attacks and provokes", but there's room in this world for atheist who are tolerant of religious belief. Maher's appeal to ridicule being duly noted, nothing in the organization's statement suggests tolerance of FGM, or that they would not have welcomed Ali to speak to her personal experiences including her strong condemnation of FGM if she had not shifted her focus to condemning Islam in general.

Donald Sterling isn't allowed to own a team because he told his mistress not to post pictures with black guys. Okay.

With that statement, Maher took us back to the world of entertainment. The problem that caused Sterling to have to sell his team was not that he was a racist, a philanderer, or a crass individual. The problem was that with his personality and beliefs having come to light, he threatened the income stream of a multi-billion dollar sports entertainment enterprise. While it's fun to play rhetorical games about whether we should be more tolerant of intolerance, in that type of situation it comes down to money. It's not really any different that losing an endorsement deal or movie contract because your all-American image becomes tarnished by the discovery of a series of affairs, because it turns out you run dog fighting rings in your spare time, because you go on a drunken anti-Semitic rant, or anything else you should know better than to do if you want to maintain your public image and popularity.

But if we're giving no quarter to intolerance, shouldn't we be starting the mutilators and the honor killers or will that divert us from the real problem that when Mel Gibson drinks he calls women sugar tits?

It's not a question of where we start, nor is it the false dichotomy that Maher presents -- as I previously pointed out, it is possible to condemn somebody in this nation for making a racist, sexist or anti-gay comment while opposing and condemning greater evils in other nations. And here, again, Maher confuses culture and religion. Honor killings should be deplored wherever they occur, and they do occur in some Muslim nations and communities, but they're also a huge problem in India. Again we are speaking of a cultural practice that arose independently of Islam, and is not in fact part of Islamic (or Hindu) faith, even if its adherents believe there is a religious mandate. Would it not make more sense to argue that a practice should be ended not only because it is not required by religious belief, but is in fact an act that contravenes the actual teachings of a religion, than to attribute that act to a religion in defiance of the fact that most adherents to the faith already reject the practice?

As I've previously suggested, I support the condemnation of oppression, bigotry and misogyny -- but I have no illusion that my statements on one issue or another are going to change the world. My criticism of Saudi Arabia would be read by a handful of people, none of whom have any influence on the Saudi government. Even Maher's criticism, which reach millions, have no impact on Saudi Arabia. As a nation, we prioritize a cooperative relationship with the Saudi regime, one that allows us to have military bases in Saudi Arabia, one that helps to keep the world's oil flowing, over pressuring that nation to improve its treatment of women, step back from Wahhabism and the export of radical Islam, or even to step back from its support of groups that act against U.S. interests. When it comes to slowing the expansion of radical Islam, or rolling it back, I see the importance of addressing cultural, political and economic issues that provide a fertile breeding and recruitment ground for radicalism. The thirty-year transition through which Iran went from being at the extreme of Islamic radicalism to being the nation now viewed as a potential reasonable partner for the stabilization of Iraq and Syria is not a reflection of how much Iran has changed -- it's a reflection of how much worse things have become throughout much of the Middle East -- and that's certainly not a result of the recent arrival of Islam. A better approach than Maher's is to take a look at Islamic nations that are more politically inclusive and democratic, or periods of time in which the nations presently falling into civil war and increased radicalism were more secular and inclusive, and ask, "What is different? What has changed?"

When you look at the region in that light, you can see how oil wealth, the echoes of colonialism and the Cold War, the historic tolerance of oppressive dictatorship, and the ill-conceived plan to try to replace Iraq's oppressive government with a progressive democracy through the application of force, have all contributed to the present mess. Maher himself occasionally pulls out archival pictures of bin Laden's family, dressed in western garb. The question is not so much whether Islamic nations can become more western in nature, or more accepting of democracy and western values. The question is not whether Islamic nations can reject honor killing or the mistreatment of women. The question is, having seen considerable progress toward that goal, why we have since seen such profound backsliding toward fundamentalism.

NATO May Be a Relic, But....

Anne Applebaum argues that the President could create a foreign policy "legacy" by reinventing NATO. Were he to try to follow her suggestion, what an interesting legacy that would be....

Applebaum is upset about a number of aspects of NATO. She doesn't think that all of the member states pay their fair share:

Some Europeans don’t want to pay for their defense? Maybe those who want to be covered by Article 5, the alliance’s security guarantee, should now be obligated to pay. Perhaps those who contribute less than 1 percent of their national budget should be told that the guarantee no longer applies to them. Certainly there don’t need to be any NATO bases in countries that refuse to contribute. And a much higher percentage of their military spending should go toward funding the NATO budget, so that NATO, as an alliance, can afford to pay for important operations.

Applebaum's suggestion that a member nation's total defense budget constitutes a contribution to NATO seems a bit misleading. A NATO member's military is reasonably called a NATO military, but that doesn't mean that the nation's military spending and activities invariably benefit NATO, or even involve NATO. The usual target number that one hears suggested as an appropriate level of defense spending for a NATO member is 2%. Drop the number to 1% and we're talking about... Spain? Also, when Applebaum says "national budget" she presumably means to refer to a nation's GDP.

Applebaum suggests later, that "the United States contributes three-quarters of NATO’s budget". If you're talking about NATO's actual budget, that's not even close to accurate. Perhaps Applebaum is taking the entire U.S. military budget, and comparing it to the combined military budgets of all NATO states, and rounding up.

Only four of the NATO partners met their agreed target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense in 2013 - Estonia, Greece, Britain and the United States. France and Turkey fell just shy of the 2 percent goal.

If we start ratcheting up Applebaum's 1% to a number that might actually exclude nations other than Spain, whose spending has historically been a bit higher but has suffered from years of economic distress, we have to look at Germany. In that context you can see both the importance of GDP, as despite not meeting the 2% target Germany has the third largest military defense budget in NATO, spending more than 100 times as much on defense as Estonia. Raise Applebaum's number to the point that a major military power would reconsider its NATO membership, and you risk turning NATO into "The U.S., maybe the U.K., and the weakest nations in Europe".

As for threatening to relocate bases, surely Applebaum knows about the amount of money and politics involved in the shuttering or relocation of a military base, even when only domestic politics are involved. To put it mildly, international politics within a voluntary defense organization won't make things easier. Suggest moving the NATO AWACS base out of Germany and to Estonia, and Germany is going to remind you of the relative size of its budget and contribution. Also, Applebaum presents no reason to believe that NATO cannot serve its mission from its present locations, assuming it remains willing to defend its member states. Finally, as is evidenced by Spain, when circumstances change military spending can fall. Some of the nations of Eastern Europe, with shiny new NATO bases and facilities built on their soil, may suddenly lose interest in keeping their defense spending at roughly 2% of GDP... might that possibility be why Applebaum uses the 1% figure?

But Applebaum appears to have a different agenda....

NATO also needs to become a lot clearer about its goals. Europe has two immediate security issues: the threat from Russia in the east and the threat from Islamic fundamentalism to the south. NATO therefore needs two command centers, each of which would take care of planning and intelligence for defense against those threats. The basing of troops and equipment needs to be rethought completely: If we were starting from scratch, nobody would put them where they are now. NATO needs to shut down unnecessary commands and legacy bases, and move on.

What Applebaum appears to be suggesting is that NATO facilities be relocated or duplicated in Eastern Europe, where they would serve as a tripwire against any Russian military aggression. Such a move into former Warsaw Pact nations would be viewed by Russia as an abrogation of its understanding (denied by NATO) that foreign NATO forces would not be stationed in those nations, and would be an obvious provocation of what Applebaum deems one of the two most significant threats to the rest of Europe. Such a tripwire would provide additional assurance to a nation on Russia's border that at least some NATO members would be likely to intervene in the event of a Russian invasion, and might deter Russia from attempting such a move... if it's in fact considering such a move.

I have to wonder, though, if that's even what Applebaum wants. Perhaps I'm focusing too much on history: It's extremely difficult for me to believe, for example, that the Polish government is eager to have a major deployment of German soldiers to a NATO base on Polish soil. Would the new NATO bases Applebaum envisions in fact be U.S. bases, nominally positioned under the auspices of NATO?

At the same time, NATO members should understand that any further enlargement is not charity work: Every time the NATO membership is extended to another state, current members have to be prepared to defend that state — and if they aren’t, then the enlargement should be stopped. Either Article 5 is an absolute guarantee or it is worthless.

That should go without saying, but it seems to again tie into Applebaum's unstated agenda -- which seems not so much to be to secure Eastern European nations from Russia, but to increase the obligation of other NATO powers to come to the defense of a member nation that might not seem all that important to the rest of Europe, particularly if that nation engaged in the sort of foolishness that precipitated Russia's incursion into Georgia. As much as Mikheil Saakashvili believed that the west would provide Georgia with a defense against Russian military action, odds are he would have been even more brash had his nation been prematurely made a member of NATO, and again more so had foreign NATO soldiers been stationed in Georgia.

Applebaum continues,

Once NATO has become clearer about its real security interests, its forces can again start carrying out annual exercises, annually, as they did during the Cold War. It’s time to rehearse our reaction to a Crimean-style Russian invasion of Latvia, led not by regular troops but by “little green men” pretending to be local Russians. It’s time to anticipate, say, a civil war in Libya or the fall of Baghdad.

What benefit does Applebaum see from a military exercise that anticipates a Russian invasion of Latvia? Does she believe that NATO forces will be unprepared to defend Latvia unless they carry out that specific exercise? Does she want NATO to thump its chest and try to intimidate Russia? As for NATO planning for a civil war in Libya, although nominally a NATO exercise the operation in Libya had little support in NATO -- it was primarily a project of the U.S., U.K. and France. Why does Applebaum believe that a re-imagined NATO would have more interest in intervening in the Middle East and Africa, as opposed to even less?

What Applebaum seems to be picturing outside of Eastern Europe is a NATO that is more easily directed and controlled by the United States and, perhaps, Britain to carry out missions that Canada and most nations of continental Europe might not deem to be particularly important. As much as Applebaum sees the present structure of NATO as a cold war relic, there is no reason to believe that a revised NATO would prove to share her zeal to provide long-term occupation forces to stop and stabilize civil wars in the developing world and Middle East.

If Applebaum's sales pitch would truly be, "We're going to reinvent NATO by reallocating resources to Eastern Europe, where we will build bases and command centers, while practicing to be able to deploy forces to stabilize failed states and civil wars in Africa and the Middle East", how many nations do you think would actually sign up? NATO is meant to mobilize following an attack on a member nation, something that justified action in Afghanistan but not in Libya. Where would Applebaum take the new organization, and why would its members want to follow?

It’s time that NATO had a better-coordinated cyberdefense and began to think more deeply about information warfare.

Perhaps, but (as with Applebaum's proposal to reduce the number of speeches at NATO summits) that's not something that cannot be done within the existing framework.

It’s also time to face the fact that Russia may have already abandoned several post-Cold War arms treaties, including those covering medium-range missiles: If that’s the case, we need to abandon them, too. Deterrence worked in the past, and it can work in the future.

I guess that makes it pretty clear, that Applebaum hopes to station foreign NATO forces and nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe, in the name of "deterrence". Note also, Applebaum's reference to intermediate-range missiles is to an arms treaty, not a treaty with NATO or with all of its key member states. The U.S. has a treaty with Russia that limits its development of intermediate range missiles, something that's not a huge concern to a nation unreachable by short-range missiles. Russia, on the other hand, sits in close proximity to several nuclear powers, including China, and those nations are developing intermediate range missiles that can reach Russia. The constraint on the U.S. is not as significant as Applebaum suggests, as France and the U.K. have not signed the INF treaty, and thus are unconstrained in the development of intermediate range ballistic missiles. Russia argues that its missiles are technically compliant with the the treaty.

It's interesting that instead of negotiating new treaties that might be more meaningful and better enforced in the 21st century, Applebaum would prefer to start a new arms race. It's also interesting that she sees treaties -- whether the NATO treaty or arms treaties with Russia -- as something a signatory can easily and lightly discard:

If the Western alliance, as currently constituted, no longer wants to defend itself, America can always leave.

Sometimes it's difficult to believe that Applebaum is married to the former defense minister of a NATO member state. Abrogation of a treaty is a big deal and, whatever issues may be involved in breaking treaties with Russia, when it comes to leaving NATO she's talking about potentially doing that to our allies.

All We Have to Do Is Change Their Minds....

I was listening to the radio yesterday and discovered, of all things, that the Israeli defense establishment employs taxi drivers:

Well, Neal, I by accident was in Israel on September 11. I was there covering the latest Israeli-Palestinian fighting. And I actually learned the most important lesson on the morning of September 12, that has really guided my thinking ever since.

That morning, I called friends of mine in the Israeli defense establishment and said you guys have dealt with suicide bombing a lot. I really want to know everything you've learned from that experience.

And they brought a group together, and we had a conversation very early on the morning of September 12, and what they said was - this is not verbatim, but the basic message was this. They said: Tom, we're really good. Our intel is really good. We can get Khalid(ph) before he blows up a pizza parlor. We can get, you know, Marwan(ph) before he blows up a disco. But you know what? Mohammed will get through.

Mohammed will get through unless the village says no. It takes a village. And that has guided my thinking ever since. Until and unless the Arab Muslim community fundamentally delegitimizes these kinds of attacks, they're not going to go away.

Okay, so the "group" assembled by Friedman's "friends ... in the Israeli defense establishment" probably wasn't comprised of taxi drivers but, as with Friedman's very long series of columns that relied upon statements attributed to taxi driver's as a source of common sense street wisdom, it's no surprise that the lesson Friedman claims to have gleaned from the group happens to be the exact argument Friedman was hoping to make. Although he dresses up his anecdote, it boils down to a truism: Intelligence is imperfect so the only way you can be sure that you'll stop terrorist acts is to convince all terrorists to refrain from committing such acts. Which is also to say, it's not gonna happen. With the best education, economic opportunity and individual freedom you'll still have people who are radicalized along the lines of Tim McVeigh, Baruch Goldstein and (with the complicating factor of mental illness) Ted Kaczynski. Those examples should highlight something else: It's not just that you can never completely educate or convince a population not to engage in terrorist acts, you should not pretend that terrorism is unique to a particular religion or culture.

If memory serves, Friedman absorbed that lesson and responded to the group with the suggestion, "Brilliant. So if you guys end your occupation of the West Bank and withdraw most of your settlements, end your collective punishments in Gaza, come to a fair solution on Jerusalem, and allow the Palestinian people a state and some semblance of human dignity, you will not only gain the international moral high ground but you'll take an important step toward educating the Muslim world that the west is fair, reasonable, and that there's far more to gain through peaceful economic development than through acts of terror." No, wait, my memory is a bit off. Having embraced the idea that the West needed to educate the Muslim world to delegitimize terrorist attacks, Friedman gave the following explanation of how that should be accomplished:

What they [the Muslim world] needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?” You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

We are fortunate to have such wise men shaping our debate on Middle East policy.

"They'll Stone You When You're Riding In Your Car"

We've been warned since the 60's of what's coming. Why are people so blind to the Sharia law takeover?

"And All We Have To Do Is... Nothing!"

Shahed Amanulla has an editorial in The Guardian complaining that the Obama Administration, specifically Hillary Clinton, has disappointed the Muslim world.

In his April 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama pledged to create a new relationship between America and the Muslim world through shared values, cooperation, and a renewed effort to alleviate specific policy concerns commonly felt among Muslims.

Nearly a year later, however, Secretary Clinton faced a tough crowd at the sixth annual US-Islamic World Forum, where she pleaded for patience in the face of unrealised goals. "I understand why people might be impatient," explained Clinton. "But building a stronger relationship cannot happen overnight or even in a year." That may be so, but it was little solace for many Muslim observers who momentarily put aside their skepticism in the hope that the US would use its newly-found moral high ground to press for change.

Now, no doubt, there are many things that the U.S. could do on its own that could benefit the Middle East, and it can act unilaterally on any number of issues. But... why should it? There are entrenched political interests that favor the status quo, and many citizens of the U.S. are very disappointed in how difficult it is to achieve change, domestic or international, even to the point of questioning if the Obama Administration wants change. Even when there aren't entrenched interests that favor a particular policy, the government is slow - if it only takes months to change a policy position, by any comparative measure that's government moving at the speed of light.

There are entrenched interests in the U.S. that want to continue the status quo in the Middle East. There are entrenched interests that believe the U.S. is not sufficiently confrontational with the Middle East. There are factions that would like the U.S. to invade Yemen, and would love it if the U.S. invaded Iran. There are huge numbers of U.S. voters who are terrified of the Muslim world, and are easily stirred up over trivialities arising in the so-called "war on terror".

In that context, what has the Muslim world offered to Obama, that he can hold up as evidence that a softened approach will bring about results beneficial to the United States?

It is disappointing to have hopes dashed, but maybe a bit of cold water is a good thing. While it has been great to see a real shift of attitude in Washington towards the Muslim world – and, unrealised goals aside, there is no reason to believe this has changed – perhaps it is more realistic for those involved in conflicts in the region to not depend on others to lead the charge in solving their problems.

Or perhaps it's more realistic to recognize that if the nations of the Arab world don't change their approach to their internal problems, to regional problems, and to extremism, they make it difficult for any U.S. administration, no matter how sympathetic to the need for change, to effect change. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The author's focus is in no small part on the situation in Israel, the occupied territories and the situation in Gaza. Understandable. But for decades the Arab states of the Middle East have shamelessly exploited the Israel-Palestine conflict in order to divert the public's attention from internal problems, and some states have actively perpetuated or worsened the plight of Palestinian refugees who live outside of Israel and the occupied territories. When can we expect the Muslim world to insist upon relief and equality under the law for the Palestinian refugees who live, for example, in Lebanon? Or to pressure Hamas to reform its charter - a big psychological hurdle, certainly, but one that could have tremendous symbolic importance? Arab states need no help from the United States to resolve problems that are entirely under their own control, and they have no room to blame Israel for what happens outside of its borders. For their own policies.

Having a U.S. Administration that wants to change its approach to the Muslim world is in no way a justification for failure to work for change from within. If you think about it, it's a time when reformists should be working harder than ever.

Such Ingratitude

Tom Friedman's latest reminds me of the days when the Times Ombudsman defended the paper's coverage of Middle East issues by claiming that they received roughly equal amounts of criticism from both sides. No, being criticized by both sides doesn't automatically mean you're fair, balanced or accurate. Sometimes it means that everybody but you can see serious fault in your argument.

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.

What say you, Glenn Greenwald?

Six months into the war, Friedman proudly proclaimed that "the real truth" was that we invaded Iraq to take out our "big stick" and tell them to "Suck On This," to take a 2-by-4 across their heads, and that we attacked them "because we could." In his 2003 explanation with Charlie Rose, did he even mention what he now claims was the war's "primary" purpose: "to destroy two tyrannical regimes ... and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics"? No. In a very rare moment of candor for this rank war-loving propagandist, he announced very clearly the real purpose of the war, only for him to now turn around and accuse Muslims of being blind and hateful because they heard his message loud and clear, and because they don't express enough gratitude for all the gracious Freedom Bombs we've dropped - and continue to drop - on their homes, their villages, their families, their children and their society. Apparently, they heard deranged, chest-beating bellowing like this from America's Top Foreign Policy Expert and took it seriously....

Well, let's hear a balancing comment from the other side of the political spectrum. Dan Larison?

One of the most irritating things I have noticed during the last decade has been the whining from American pundits about how ungrateful the world’s Muslims have been in response to our alleged beneficence on their behalf. The grimly amusing part of this is that the whining pundits accept the assumptions of pan-Islamists, but put them to different, limited use: Muslims everywhere must feel gratitude for any assistance we have ever rendered to a Muslim population. Of course, if our policies have ever adversely affected a Muslim population, Muslims everywhere should not think that they have any particular interest in this, but should instead resist the siren song of pan-Islamism.

And perhaps that illustrates my original point - sometimes when you're criticized from both ends of the political spectrum, and perhaps particularly where your critics are making the same point, it could be that you're wrong.

Friedman's conclusion seems narcissistic, a wish to place his words into President Obama's mouth:

"Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, 'This is not Islam.' I believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn't. You need to tell us what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves."

Did you get that? Friedman doesn't believe that Islam is the source of all evil, but the problem is that everybody else needs to be told that it's not - including Muslims. And he wants to put that attitude into President Obama's mouth.

Please refresh my memory. When has Thomas Friedman ever complained when a Western-backed military has crushed a largely secular Arabic government or movement, even when it was obviously going to be replaced by an Islamic alternative? Where does he remind us of the benighted, enlightened regimes of Saddam Hussein and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before they were toppled? (Wait, you say they were despots? But they weren't religious, so how can that be?) When has he ever taken notice of peaceful protest by Arabs in his columns, and if you can find an example how much impact did it have on his proposed "solution" to the issue they were protesting? Where can I find a single column in which he refuted the calumny that the secular Palestinian Authority and fudamentalist Islamist Hamas were "the same thing"?

How many times has he ignored exactly the type of statement he demands, likely rationalizing it away as insincere, not representative, or whatever else it takes to avoid changing his mind about Islam (even as he pretends that only others need persuasion)? Outside of the context of Islam, has he ever conflated the acts of any other people, individual or collective, secular or religious, with the dominant religious beliefs of their society - or would he reject such a conflation as bigoted?

I'm also curious - what was the last march Thomas Friedman attended, to demonstrate the supposedly peaceful, progressive nature of whatever opinions or positions he holds? (My bet is that he's never marched for anything, unless it was in college as part of an effort to impress a girl.)

Friedman seems to be offended that the Islamic world doesn't share his positive view of Western interventions and invasions in their nations. Perhaps he should reflect on that, as he seemed to be in the "candy and flowers" crowd at the start of the war: If you believe you are doing something because it's right, do it because it's right. But if you're going it because you expect or need gratitude, you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

Update: Another take on Friedman:

It's curious that while accusing Muslims of buying into an imaginary narrative, Friedman himself buys into an imaginary alternative one: the romantic idea that US foreign policy is altruistic – "dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny". That is nonsense. US foreign policy, like that of other countries, is based primarily on its perceptions of its own interests.

The kind of self-righteousness seen in Friedman's column – puzzling over Muslims' apparent ungratefulness towards the US – is not only simplistic but actively harmful, Walt says. It "makes it harder for Americans to figure out why their country is so unpopular and makes us less likely to consider different (and more effective) approaches".

Agonising about "why they hate us" – as Friedman and many others in the US do – is never going to be productive so long as it is framed within the notion of an altruistic foreign policy, but once self-interest is recognised, the picture becomes clearer.

Such Bravery....

The Washington Post's editorial page criticizes Yale University Press for declining to include illustrations in a forthcoming book:

The scholarly work in question is Jytte Klausen's "Cartoons that Shook the World," a book about the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad whose 2005 appearance in a Danish paper ignited a worldwide controversy. Yale University Press is publishing it in the fall -- or some of it. Not just the picture of the newspaper's controversial page of cartoons but all of the book's illustrations, which include a historical range of artistic depictions of the prophet, will be omitted. Why? Because what the Press described as a group of "counterterrorism officials . . . U.S. diplomats . . . foreign ambassadors from Muslim countries . . . and senior scholars in Islamic studies" -- without so much as reading the book -- deemed them too inflammatory to publish.

The Post asks, rhetorically,

If one of the world's most respected scholarly publishers cannot print these images in context in an academic work, who can?

Sometimes, though, a rhetorical question deserves an answer. Who could publish those images? The Washington Post could. So let's travel back in time:

Hundreds of readers have asked why The Post hasn't reprinted the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that inflamed Muslims around the world, leading to deadly protests and the burning of embassies. Some readers questioned the Post's journalistic courage....

Executive Editor Len Downie made the decision, consulting with other top editors. The issue, he said, is one of journalistic judgment, not courage.

Downie said, "This newspaper vigorously exercises its freedom of expression every day. In doing so, we have standards for accuracy, fairness and taste that our readers have come to expect from The Post. We decided that publishing these cartoons would violate our standards. This has not prevented us from reporting about them and the controversy in great detail in many stories over several days."

Then-Ombudsman Deborah Howell provided further explanation,

The Post's news standards include a prohibition on gratuitous nudity, obscenity and violence. "Defamatory or prejudicial words and phrases that perpetuate racial, religious or ethnic stereotypes are impermissible," the paper's stylebook says. This also applies to photos and drawings.

But that only explains why they weren't run on the news pages. What about the editorial page?

Hiatt also could have chosen to run the cartoons depicting Muhammad. Downie oversees the news pages. And the wall of separation between editorial and news is high, very high.

But Hiatt said he would have made the same decision. "I would not have chosen to publish them, given that they were designed to provoke and did not, in my opinion, add much to any important debate. Should our calculation change once the story becomes big, because the cartoons are suddenly 'newsworthy'? If it was essential to see them in order to understand the story, then maybe. But in this case, the dispute isn't really about what the cartoons look like . . . it's about the fact that he was depicted at all. The cartoons were easily explainable in words. Why reprint something you know will offend many of your readers?"

What was that? Let's back up for a minute. So we have John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, explaining that

the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.

We have Fred Hiatt, back in 2006, justifying his parallel decision not to run the cartoons because they did not "add much to any important debate" and "were easily explainable in words"... you know, essentially what Donatich is saying. And now he's running an unsigned editorial accusing Yale of "self-censorship" that "establishes a dangerous precedent" and allows "violent extremists to set the terms of free speech". Pot, kettle, and all that.

With all due respect to Fred Hiatt, the issue here in no small part results from decisions like his own, justified on pretty much the same grounds as those offered by Yale University Press, to not run the cartoons. Had he and others in similar positions of editorial discretion run the cartoons, the issue would likely be over. The cartoons would be everywhere, and nobody reproducing them would have to feel like they were painting a target on their own (or their author's) forehead.¹ There would be nothing special or newsworthy about their decision. Yale's decision may well be self-censorship that empowers extremists but, if so, the Post's decision not to run the cartoons when the issue was white hot was at least as culpable.
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1. I have seen some comments that suggest Donatich was worried about his own safety, but I very much doubt that. We have a historic parallel in The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah was directed at Rushdie, not his editor, publishing house, or anybody associated with his publishing house.

Citing Scripture

In terms of the invidious citing, distorting, and fabricating scripture to justify the unjustifiable, this remains "right up there":

In Gaza a few years ago, I conducted an on-camera interview with the political leader of Islamic Jihad, Mohammed al-Hindi. With his finely trimmed beard and gracious manners, he symbolized the modern - and moderate - Muslim man.

But his interpretation of the Koran suggested something else. "Where," I asked, "does it say that you can kill yourself for a higher cause? As far as I know, the Koran tells us that suicide is wrong."

Through his translator, the physician assured me that the verses endorsing suicide operations could be found "everywhere" in Islam's holy book. I challenged Dr. al-Hindi to show me just one passage.

After several minutes of reviewing the Koran, then calling for help on his mobile, then looking through companion booklets, he told me he was too busy and must go. "Are you sure you're not pulling a fast one on me?" I asked. He smiled, clearly understanding popular American lingo. "I want to know that you're telling me the truth," I repeated.

The essay continues exactly as you should expect, but not from reading the popular media, listening to western political leaders, or listening to most religious leaders.

Of course, most people - not just Muslims - could use more independent thinking. This point grabbed me at the Gaza office of Mohammed al-Hindi. As we left, I asked his translator why Dr. al-Hindi would give me an on-camera interview, knowing that he could not find a single verse to prove his claim that the Koran justifies suicide operations.

The translator replied: "He assumed you were just another dumb Western journalist." Reporters from the West had never asked this veteran terrorist the most basic of questions: Where is the evidence for what you do in God's name?

It's widespread, abject, unforgivable ignorance that leads dolts like George W. Bush to glorify suicide bomers as "homicide bombers", "jihadists" or "Islamofascists", rather than emphasizing their suicides and the distance between their actions and Islam.

A Reminder from Thomas Friedman...

Of what the Israel-Palestine conflict is ultimately about:

If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

It would be refreshing, though, if he would spend a column or two explaining why he reached that conclusion and how such a two state solution might be implemented, rather than treating it as a throw-away line. I recognize that it's easier to write a column that preaches of the threat of Iran, Hamas rejectionism and radical Islam. But how many people aren't already in that choir?

Friedman's Constant Call for Muslim Protests

It's one of those days when Thomas Friedman phones in his column. Yes, again (and again, and again) it's "if only the Muslim world would take to the streets to protest Muslim terrorism" columns. It's not that in a larger sense he doesn't have a point - it would be nice if there were a greater outcry against terrorism within the Muslim world. But it's just plain silly for Friedman - a man whom I doubt has ever participated in the public protest of anything - to keep returning to this notion that the only meaningful Muslim reaction to terrorism would be their taking to the streets with torches and pitchforks.

Friedman complains that if Muslims take to the streets to protest offenses against other Muslims and their religion, they should take to the streets with the same vigor over crimes committed by other Muslims. We'll leave aside for the moment that nobody seems to actually do that - people sometimes take to the streets to protest the actions of their own government, but I can't recall a single instance, anywhere, of people of any religion taking to the streets to protest the actions of terrorists merely because they happen to share their faith or ethnicity. But let's pretend for the moment that Muslims are unique in that respect. Perhaps we should look at how somebody described protests in the Muslim world:

Where Islam is imbedded in authoritarian societies it tends to become the vehicle of angry protest, because religion and the mosque are the only places people can organize against autocratic leaders. And when those leaders are seen as being propped up by America, America also becomes the target of Muslim rage.

It's also worthy of note that those authoritarian regimes take advantage of what one might deem "fake issues" - things they don't really care about, but which stir up the people - as an opportunity to let the people take to the streets and vent rage that might otherwise be directed at the government.

But where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic, democratic society, it thrives like any other religion.

That, apparently, is why Friedman doesn't call upon the Muslims of India to protest acts of terror by other Muslims. Although it would be easier for them to do so.

What would be the goals of the protests Friedman wants to see? Somebody once suggested,

Throughout history, successful social protest movements have had one thing in common - a clear, simple message and objective. Whether it was the women's rights movement or the anti-Vietnam-War movement, the mere uttering of the name immediately conjured up who the protesters were and what their objective was.

Friedman takes note of Pakistani expressions of concern, anguish and solidarity, but that's not enough for him:

But while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, I am still hoping for more. I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.

Why? Because it takes a village. The best defense against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers - and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or “explain” their activities.

What's the simple message that Friedman expects the protest to convey? "Hey, hey, ho ho, Lashkar-e-Toiba has got to go"? How many Lashkar-e-Toiba members does Friedman believe hang out in Islamabad? How many members of that group do you think care about the opinion of anybody in Pakistan who is not on board with their cause? A protest is going to change that?

The recurrent theme to Friedman's columns is his professed belief that, "Muslim protests against terrorism by Muslims would dry up the pool of recruits." The first problem is, Lashkar-e-Toiba isn't focused on the "three rivers of rage" that somebody sees as the basis of al-Qaeda-type terrorism. Its primary goals are territorial - ejecting India from Jammu and Kashmir. So in this context it's much less like the analogy Friedman makes, to protests against cartoons about Mohammed, and is more akin to the IRA - a conflict that was nominally "Catholic versus Protestant", but was in fact grounded in a territorial dispute. (Need it be said that Friedman never called for the world's Catholics to rise up in mass protest of IRA bombings in London, let alone argued that such protests would dry up the IRA's ability to recruit members?)

The second problem is that Friedman's calls for mass protest within the Muslim world is an assignment of collective guilt. He apparently sees all Muslims, whatever their sect or nationality - and perhaps especially those who live under autocratic regimes - as having essentially the same values, beliefs, and sympathies toward terrorism. Despite arguing that the roots of Muslim terror emerge predominantly from living under autocratic governments that keep their people "voiceless and powerless and prevent them from achieving their full aspirations in a world where they know how everyone else is living" and that Islam will peacefully thrive as part of a "Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy", his taking to the streets "solution" does nothing to address what he, himself, has declared to be the cause of the problem.

This leaves the question, does Friedman truly believe that the Islamic world is monolithic, such that a terrorist act by a Muslim is attributable to all Muslims unless it is denounced by a "mass demonstration of 'ordinary'" Muslims? That we should assume in relation to Islam (and only Islam) that if there is not a mass protest then there must be mass acceptance?

But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say.

Is this a dodge, "I don't believe that to be true of Islam, but the terrorists do?" If so, it's a distinction that gets past the biggest fans of this type of column. Oh, I know, it's not Friedman's fault if people misunderstand his columns and use them to advance anti-Islamic bigotry - but it's not something he's going to, you know, protest.

In short, Friedman is correct to call on the Muslim world, and perhaps particularly Muslim communities in the free world, to be much more vocal in deploring terrorism that is committed in the name of Islam. If you oppose terrorism that is being committed in your name, quietude is not the answer. If the Muslim communities of the world can take to the streets over blasphemy against Islam from outside of their faith, there's room for demonstration (in not in the form of protests, then at least in the form of public vigils) protesting blasphemy from within - the acts and attitudes of certain Muslims that suggest that terrorism and violence against civilians and "infidels" is legitimate under Islam. When it comes to condemning terrorism, the words of the Islamic community should be loud and sincere. And Friedman is correct that actions often speak louder than words.

At the same time, I disagree with Friedman's implication all terrorist acts committed by Muslims are rooted in religion and are attributable to the collective attitudes of all Muslims. He's also far too simplistic in his suggestion that the type of mass protest movement he demands would have any appreciable impact on terrorist groups, or that even if some protests occurred there would emerge a coherent, sustainable movement.

The type of attitude shift Friedman wants will have to start with the opinion leaders and religious leaders, particularly those within the Islamic communities that are most inclined to spawn terrorists. And it must be facilitated by the political leaders of Arab states - the same autocratic, non-democratic leaders who facilitate and benefit from the status quo that Friedman deplores and describes as the principal cause of Islamic terrorism. It really wouldn't hurt if the U.S. and the regimes of the Arab world started working to dry up the "three rivers of rage" that Friedman sees as the principal causes of Islamic terrorism.

Evolving Right-Wing Smears Against Obama

I can barely keep track... One day, Obama's a secret Muslim reared in a radical Islamic madrassa, and is plotting to take over the country. The next day, he's a wild-eyed black man enthralled by a radical preacher whose teachings "aren't Biblical". Now it seems he's a Christian, which means the Muslim world wants him dead. Really, that's the argument of Edward N. Luttwack in today's New York Times, where he was granted space for an editorial despite what appears to be a complete lack of credentials on religious matters, let alone Islamic law. (Insight into the flaws in Luttwack's interpretation of Islam may be found here and here.)

One of the glories of writing an editorial, of course, is that you're not fact-checked, but that doesn't stop various right-wing hacks and haters from trying to suggest that Luttwack's position has somehow been endorsed by the Times. The smear piece relates this history:

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

Perhaps "most Americans" understand that Obama is not a Muslim because he wasn't raised as a Muslim, has never been a Muslim, and... is a Christian. The phrasing here seems intended to suggest that Obama was once Muslim and converted to Christianity - that's consistent with a right-wing smear piece, but it's completely at odds with the facts. As for the "apostasy" claim, Luttwack claims,

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

For all adults? So in Luttwack's fevered imagination, when Obama was born and his parents chose not to raise him as a Muslim, the newborn baby Obama was an adult who chose not to be a Muslim? This is the best he can do to sustain his smear?

More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House.

Because in Luttwack's mind, Muslims are really, really stupid and thus, despite international coverage of the campaign and the "Rev. Wright" pseudo-scandal, have no idea that Obama is a Christian.

This smear is bizarre. First and foremost, who cares what the Muslim world thinks of Obama? Isn't "being hated by the Muslim world" a bragging point for G.W.? Isn't the notion that Islamic extremists will "fear" him a cornerstone of John McCain's campaign? Second, if the test of who we want for President is "hope that [the President] would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims", assuming the worst of Luttwack's smear piece to be true, how does that distinguish Obama from McCain? As for the possibility that there might be Islamic radicals who would like to kill the President, again the difference between McCain and Obama would be... what?

Meanwhile, in his increasingly loathsome manner, Joe Lieberman is advancing a related smear against Obama, suggesting that Hamas will be happy if he wins. (Where was Luttwack during Lieberman's Presidential run, to "warn" us that the Islamic world may not be thrilled with the idea of a President who is also an Orthodox Jew?) Yes, this is the same Joe Lieberman who solicited Obama's endorsement against Lamont, after losing the Democratic primary for his Senate seat. Perhaps eventually these attacks will become coherent, as if you combine Lieberman's smear with Luttwack's you're left with the near-psychotic notion that Hamas is eager for an Obama victory so that they can condemn him, refuse to cooperate with him, and try to kill him.

If you took all the neurons in Luttwack's head and banged them against all the neurons in Lieberman's head, would you generate enough energy to create a spark? Meanwhile, considering the origins of this particular smear, one wonders why the Times thought it was "fit to print".