If it is it doesn't matter

HAVA Problem?

2006-07-15T12:22:00.000-05:00

HAVA -- the Help America Vote Act -- was a good idea, in theory. And I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest that the people who wrote it or voted for it had any bad intentions. Florida 2000 was a black-eye for America. NOBODY wanted to hear the words 'hanging chads' or 'butterfly ballot' anywhere but in history classes. It made perfect sense to encourage states to get rid of the sort of voting systems that made them possible. (And while, as a New Yorker, I disagree with the idea of replacing the clunky old mechanical systems that I have voted on all my life, which are messy and 'old-fashioned' but which are also safe and checkable, the company that made them is out of business, and when they break down it is hard to fix them or get replacement parts.)

And these days the first thought is always towards doing something electronically. Touch screens, computer counts, these were the obvious way to go, if done right.

Unfortunately, short-sightedness, stupidity, haste, and the idea to 'get it done fast, and we'll fix it in the implimentation,' as usual, created as much chaos as pure malevolence could have.

The important thing was not just that the systems created should BE efficient, honest, and secure, but that they would APPEAR so as well. After the Florida Follies, nobody wanted a system that was vulnerable, where the only guarantee of integrity was to trust election officials.

There would seem to be some simple basics here that should be musts in any electronic voting system.

There has to be a REAL paper trail -- an honest one that would include a copy for the voter and a copy of each individual vote for a possible recount. (To ensure voter confidentiality, each vote should be numbered, but the numbers should be assigned randomly and secretly, so only the voter would know the number he was assigned.)

The machine operating code should be open to a non-partisan group of computer experts before the machine was accepted, and the machine needs some form of device to that would set off bells, whistles, and alarms at any tampering with the code, rendering the machine unusable.

Some sort of barrier should be in place when individual machines link up to a central counting device -- is one is absolutely needed, so that if, despite precautions, some tampering is done with an individual machine, it can't affect the whole system.

Any operation of the machine has to be done on a hands on basis, with no wireless ports, no internal wireless modem, etc.

States and cities should be provided with money not just to purchase such machines, but to store them securely, so they would be locked away until the night before the election, brought out, a final test would be run, and then they would be distributed to the polling places. If this cosy extra money, again it should be provided.

Finally, despite the expense, I think that each precint should have four voting machines that could be rotated, for example, primary, general, primary, general, with perhaps a fifth for special elections. That way, the machines could be inspected at any time up to two years after a given election if there are allegations of fraud.

(I would have to ask someone more familiar with technology and costs to answer this, but since the danger seems to me to be the greatest when a machine is reprogrammed for a new election, it might actually be possible to create a 'one-time use' machine that could be used for a given election, be unreprogrammable, be unopenable without rendering it useless, and which could then be stored indefinitely for the use of historians and social scientists.)

None of these seem to be brilliant ideas, merely obvious ones, They must be the sort of ideas that are implimented in current electronic voting machines, the ones that are being used in more and more states. Right?

Unfortunately...

It Oughta Be Simple

2006-07-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

In a democracy, if you vote for somebody, your vote is counted for that person, right. Oh, sure, there has been a lot of election trickery throughout the years. A lot of cemetery residents have voted more regularly in death than they ever did in life. And a lot of people have been discouraged from voting with long lines, threats, and even legal prohibitions if they were expected to vote the 'wrong way.' And twice a Supreme Court justice has been the decider in a Presidential election -- not just Bush v Gore but in the Hayes-Tilden election where the deciding vote in the Electoral Commission was Justice Davis -- and in both cases most people who have studied it viewed the result as wrong.

But the votes we actually cast have been sacrosanct, if they ever reached the counting table -- ballot boxes have been 'lost'. So, when the DEAD ZONE had its main villain discussing electronic voting machines in June, 2004 as follows:

STILLSON
Let me ask a stupid question.
Does it even matter which one I
pick?
RESUME SCENE
The men laugh.
MAN ONE/TRUAX
Of course it matters. Every vote
counts...
STILLSON
...some just count more than
others.
MAN ONE/TRUAX
In a close election like yours,
it all comes down to margin of
error. The digital equivalent of
a hanging Chad.
STILLSON
And there's no paper trail?
MAN ONE/TRUAX
Only one we generate...
Stillson touches the screen next to his name, registering
a vote for himself. He stares at the screen, transfixed.
MAN TWO
Better than sex isn't it?
Stillson throws a look to Man Two.
STILLSON
You, my friend, need to get out
more.
The men all laugh.

(It's from Finding Rachel, Pt.1. You can find the script here)

I thought they were 'going over the top' again. (I keep on underestimating the show. For example, when Stillson is involved in a corrupt deal with a lobbyist, it involves Indian casinos -- Hello, Jack Abramoff -- and this one was shown long before any of the scandals broke.) There are security measures obvious even to me -- and I've declared myself 'technologically declined' and my lack of a 'blogroll' keeps proving it -- that could be taken to prevent something like this from happening.

Unfortunately...

Here we go again, better (I hope)

2006-07-14T23:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm getting started again. After that last long post on the 'gay gene' -- and my apologies to Kewenay and Mumbo Jumbo for not getting back to them -- I realized I couldn't get through my own posts without falling asleep. Now I'm not the one to judge my own writing, but I KNOW I can write better than that. (I couldn't even write a good cat post.)

So I decided to take a bit of time away from blogging, and see if I wanted to try again -- meanwhile, I've been scattering coments around different blogs.

But I realized that there were a lot of important topics that needed discussion, and maybe if I worked hard and didn't find that my writing skills had left on my 60th Birthday, I might be able to say some things worth saying on them in a way that anyone could listen to.

Most of these are political, as my next few posts will be showing. I think that America is in the greatest danger I've ever seen in my lifetime and my reading of history. The actions of the Bush administration, the reworking of political dialogue by Republican commentators such as Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh, and others -- combined with the Rovicization of politics -- the recurrence of the truly fascist end of the radical right -- and I use the term 'fascist' VERY sparingly -- all need to be watched. But these aren't new dangers, though they are perhaps more prominent than i can remember.

The really scary one though is the growth of electronic voting devices that are hackable and manipulable. The basis of democracy STARTS with 'the vote you cast gets counted for the person you choose.' But, unless action is taken, legal, political, and in the press, that may no longer be true. And that is why i rank the present time as dangerous for democracy and the ideals that America at its best stands for -- and that George W. Bush has no concept of -- as the Civil War, the Depression, the McCarthy Era, and Vietnam.

I'll be posting on all of these things over the next week or so. And yes, I WILL get back to the 'gay gene' controversy, and even talk about baseball, tv, mystery stories and CATS -- one of mine is looking over my shoulder, hence the capitals.

And I'll always be long-winded -- I have been since the third grade -- but if I get too stuffy, pompous, or boring, yell at me, willya?

My apologies, particularly to Katie

2006-05-27T08:38:00.000-05:00

In my post on the 'gay gene' I made a rather flip remark about
"do you turn aside, hope nobody else notices, and write another article on mercury not causing autism..."

I have been somewhat overwhelmed by the number of stories on this, and had been convinced that this was just another altie absurdity that was perhaps being talked to death in the skeptical and medical blogs.

Then I read this on Orac's site, and checking the story, I came across this on Autism Diva's site. I had been unaware of this type of story, and I apologize for the unfeeling tone of my comment.

The 35th Edition of the Skeptical Circle

2006-05-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

Is now up at Skeptico's blog. It's one of the biggest episodes so far, and I am honored that my contribution "Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes" is included.

For those of you who have never come across this bi-weekly collection of the best of the Skeptical Bloggers, you should check this out, and follow the links to previous editions as well. The discussions range from debunking junk science -- like the supposed link between mercury and autism -- to displaying the latest idiocy of the Creationists (in that guise or in the 'modern clothes' of the Intelligent Design movement) to exposes of some delightful weirdness on the fringes -- you have to check out Mark Chu-Carrol's post on one of the weirder sites dealing with gematria on his "Good Math, Bad Math" site

Other subjects touched on include one of the best demolitions of the "9/11 Conspiracy" Myth on the Daylight Atheism site Holocaust denial is another frequent topic that gets exploded. And writers such as Orac of Respectful Insolence
-- an academic and practicing surgeon -- can always be counted on to blast some passing medical quackery.

(I should explain an in-joke for newcomers in this edition. Recently someone, an Intelligent Designer named Kenesaw Williams, has been using Skeptico's name for posts and as the title of his own blog. This has outraged any number of the Skeptical Community, so Skeptico's framing of the edition -- supposedly as being 'guest-hosted' by Williams -- is his own way of getting his own back.)

Anyway, enjoy, and come back here soon, getting included has resparked my blogging engine and I will actually get part 2 up for the next edition.

Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes

2006-05-16T23:01:00.000-05:00

Skepticism can be very satisfying. The targets are usually so deserving, and there's a special pleasure in displaying the stupidity, illogic, and con games of the preachers, creationists, psychics, quacks, and charlatans. (And there can't be many greater intellectual/emotional pleasures than demolishing the arguments of the bigoted scum that are holocaust deniers.)

But sometimes you recognize logical fallacies, bad science, and wishful thinking disguised as reasoning, and realize it is coming from one of the 'good guys,' a group you agree with, support, are even a member of. What do you do then? Do you use the familiar tools on them, even though you know some of your hearers will think you're attacking the position rather than the arguments? What if you give a potential weapon to the ‘other side,’ when the other side are frequently bigots? Do you go ahead, or do you turn aside, hope nobody else notices, and write another article on mercury not causing autism, or that exposes John Edward and James Van Pragh yet again?

Well, if we believe in anything, it is that truth matters. (See my post below on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Truth MATTERS.) So...

I am bisexual, and have been open about this all my adult life. (At one job, when a company VP stopped by and I was being unusually quiet, my boss said "Jim, don't you know everybody in the company knows you’re a pot-smoking bisexual?" I've been a believer in, and in my own small way, a fighter for gay rights since I first heard WBAI reporting on Stonewall. (I haven't been to many marches, but that's mostly been a matter of bad legs, lack of cash, or other commitments.)

And I have another reason for supporting gay rights, and gay pride, and gay love and marriage -- even though I've been in a heterosexual marriage for 15 years now. I was raised in a lesbian household. Yes, they existed even in the 50’s of Ozzie and Harriet, even in suburban New Jersey; and no, this didn't influence my own sexuality. I had realized I was bisexual and had experienced sex with both sexes before I realized what Claire and Billie's actual relationship was. (Precocious and naive, that was me.) Claire died before the marches started and Billie a few years after that. They never had the chance to walk down 5th Avenue, holding hands and celebrating their 30+ years together, never had a chance to consider making their relationship into a marriage. I don't want other couples to be deprived of that chance.

But truth matters, and bad science is bad science even in a good cause. I don't remember the first time I heard talk about 'gay genes' and other 'biological determinants of homosexuality,' when I first heard people saying that being gay is 'something you are born with.' When I heard it, though, I had two immediate responses.

The first was political. "Are they NUTS? We've been marching for years under the banner of Gay PRIDE, and here we have people arguing, no, whining, 'Don't hate us, we CAN'T HELP it.' The argument stinks. It plays right into the bigots' hands. It implies that we are somehow unnatural freaks, genetic abnormalities against the ‘norm’ of heterosexuality. And it plays into all the meek, week, ‘girlish’ -- in the bad and bigoted sense -- stereotypes of gay men." (It was mostly gay men saying it, not lesbians.) I even heard, with disgust, the argument 'With all the persecution we have to suffer, would anybody choose to be gay if he could help it?' (As a bisexual, my answer to that was, “Well, yes.”)

[I have to say that, so far, I seem to have been wrong about this. A lot of people have said publicly that they opposed anti-gay discrimination on the grounds that people who are gay are ‘born that way.’ And it has done wonders in fighting the ‘NARTH-types’ (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, who think of homosexuality as something that can and should be ‘cured.’ -- As I’ll discuss later, I think that this is simply nonsense on both forks of the statement.) But while most of the homophobes are simply arguing -- sadly, correctly -- that the science is weak, some are arguing that if gayness is genetic, then it can be ‘cured’ through some form of genetic ‘therapy.’ Some -- not all homophobes are radically religious -- have even brought up the idea of eliminating it by prenatal ‘gene testing’ and not having a baby that might turn out to be *shudder* gay. And one prime all-purpose bigot who will appear later in an interesting context, Steve Sailer, has suggested that instead of a ‘gay gene’ there might be a ’gay germ.’]

But I had a bigger problem with the argument. It just didn't make sense to me. I'd see the articles about the studies, glance through them, and shake my head. They went against common sense, my own experience, and the lives of the people I knew. Could these possibly be good science?

So far, the answer is no. Admittedly there have been new studies that I don’t have access to including a couple by the Dean Hamer group -- the guy keeps on trying -- as well as a book BORN GAY? which my library didn‘t have yet. My budget doesn’t let me purchase many new books or pay $10 or more for article reprints. So anyone who can email me copies of the studies will be thanked and I’ll do a follow-up on them.

But the studies I have seen are some of the most astoundingly bad science I have seen this side of the worst alties and woo-woos. Too small samples, self-selected participants, no controls, no use of blind testing, and so far, no replications of results. (And an even more important flaw that I will discuss in considerable detail later. No definition or discussion of what the researchers mean by ‘homosexual.’)

Let's look at the famous study by Simon LeVay, showing a 'difference' in the brains of homosexual men. To quote from his report:
"Specifically, I hypothesized that INAH 2 or INAH 3 is large in individuals sexually oriented toward women (heterosexual men and homosexual women) and small in individuals sexually oriented toward men (heterosexual women and homosexual men)."

(You really should read the whole paper, available here)

Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain brain tissue from homosexual women, so he couldn't test that part of the theory. Or that's how he describes it. You see, he got his tissue from routine autopsies, all 41 different samples. And you can't ask a corpse its sexual orientation. So he followed a simple rule. If he knew a man was gay (19 examples), he classified him as gay. (If the man was known to be bisexual, as one man was, what the hell, call him gay too.) But there were 16 men and six women whose sexual orientation he didn't know. (I have no idea what investigation he did on these people, or if he simply took hospital records. All the gay men died of AIDS -- this was 1993. But so did 6 of the other men and one of the women.)

I can only quote him.
"Two of these subjects (both AIDS patients) had denied homosexual activity. The records of the remaining 14 patients contained no information about their sexual orientation; they are assumed to be heterosexual."

So, given the small size of the sample, and the assumptions, the evidence must be pretty strong to get the amount of publicity. He obviously ruled out the possibility that AIDS could affect the brain, right? Well...

"there is the possibility that the small size of INAH 3 in the homosexual men is the result of AIDS or its complications and is not related to the men's sexual orientation. This does not seem to be the case because (i) the size difference in INAH 3 was apparent even when comparing the homosexual men with heterosexual AIDS patients..." Except that the six 'heterosexual' AIDS patients were only 'presumed' heterosexual -- two of them denied being gay, and of course a homosexual will always admit he is gay when he enters a hospital, right, and there was no information on the other four.

But at least the results were all consistent with the theory. Uh-oh! "The existence of "exceptions" in the present sample (that is, presumed heterosexual men with small INAH 3 nuclei, and homosexual men with large ones) hints at the possibility that sexual orientation, although an important variable, may not be the sole determinant of INAH 3 size. It is also possible, however, that these exceptions are due to technical shortcomings or to misassignment of subjects to their subject groups."

But despite these minor shortcomings, his next sentence reads: "The discovery that the nucleus differs in size between heterosexual and homosexual men illustrates that sexual orientation in humans is amenable to study at the biological level, and this discovery opens the door to studies of neurotransmitters or receptors that might be involved in regulating this aspect of personality."

Okay, now that we have some spare scrap paper, let's look at another study. This is the famous "Gay Gene Study" by Dean Hamer. The study that Carl Zimmer described, in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN as follows: "In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in a region of the X chromosome. The report brought a huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer." (This was in a discussion of Hamer's newest 'sensation,' The "God Gene.")

First, let’s look at Dean Hamer. While he’s done other work on several topics, the studies that have brought him into public notice have been his studies on Behavioral Genetics. The ‘Gay Gene’ was the first to make him well-known, later to be followed by the ‘God Gene’ but he has investigated the possible genetic ‘cause’ of such things as optimism, anxiety, and cigarette smoking. (In fact it was while he was studying cigarette smoking that he ‘discovered’ the ‘God Gene.’)

Hamer seems to be someone who, if there is evidence for a genetic cause for a behavior, By God, he’ll find it. And if there isn’t any evidence, By God, he’ll find it anyway. (The “By God’s” are interjections, not a reference to his religious faith, if any.) Unfortunately, no one else seems to be able to find what he finds.

(I have to mention, in that context, that he was the subject of an investigation by the federal Office of Research Integrity for possible scientific misconduct, because one of the study collaborators alleges that Hamer suppressed data that would have reduced the statistical significance of the reported results. I have been unable to find any final resolution of this investigation, and it seems to have been dropped without a finding either way.)

I am expecting any day now that he will release a study showing genetic causes for the differences between Yankee fans and Mets fans. And that’s not that far-fetched. If anxiety, risk-taking, and optimism, not to mention ‘self-transcendence’ are studiable, then why shouldn’t the ‘dimorphism’ between ‘front-runners’ and ‘underdog-supporters’ be? And anyone who follows baseball could match these with Yankee and Mets fans. All he has to do is to find families with more than one fan of a given team, analyze the relatives of these people to see if they skew more to the paternal or maternal side, and then run an analysis on the relevant Y or X gene. Find one gene marker that is ‘over-represented’ in the group he’s studying -- making sure NOT to study the other group for the marker, and bingo! (Ignoring the fact that, especially if the sample is small enough, pure chance will almost guarantee that one or another marker will be over-represented. If you start by looking at a particular gene marker and find it over-represented, then the argument that this is not attributable to chance is valid, but that‘s different from saying that there is one marker that is skewed of the whole universe of possibilities.)

Sound ridiculous? That is the way he ‘discovered’ the gay gene. And he keeps insisting he did discover it, and redoing his studies every time someone finds flaws in his research.

And flaws there are. To quote the Council for Responsible Genetics -- I have asked for information about the organization but have yet to receive any, so I can only judge them by seeing how the article I am quoting “DO GENES DETERMINE WHETHER WE ARE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, OR STRAIGHT?” matches other knowledge I have, and so far I have no reason to question them -- “But even more significant for Hamer’s studies is the definition of who is gay. Hamer uses the extremely conservative estimate of two percent for the prevalence of homosexuality among American men. Increasing this value to the usually accepted values of five to ten percent reduces or even eliminates the statistical significance of his results. The reason Hamer gives for his unusually low estimate is that he wants to work only with "real" gay men, that is, men who have essentially never veered from their preference for men in their sexual fantasies or activities.”

However, in his study, he does not seem to have limited his subjects to those who meet this criterion -- particularly in the relatives he studies. That isn’t that surprising. Many of us might know a relative is ‘gay’ without knowing the details of his sexual -- or fantasy -- life. However, the statistical problems become real if this factor is ignored.

In fact, the entire basis of his insistence on the gene being maternally transmitted seems to have come from the following fact. In his study, he found that 2 of 119 paternal uncles were ‘gay’ (I am not sure how he defined the term) and 7 of 96 maternal uncles. THAT -- and that alone, since there were 6 of 103 maternal cousins and 6 of 140 paternal cousins that were gay -- was what convinced him that the gay gene HAD to be maternally transmitted. (If you are wondering about lesbians, he ignored them. To quote a paper from Eric Wethy that discusses the study: “Hamer mailed out letters to members of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), but ended up with too many families that didn't fit into what was considered the "normal" gay family. For example, one family had both gay brothers and lesbian sisters. From what Hamer knew of homosexuality running in families, he knew that it wasn't common for both males and females to be gay. Any family that wasn't typical wouldn't provide valid information to his research. “) (http://www.msu.edu/user/wethyeri/gaygene.htm)

Hamer and researchers associated with him have produced further research on this. So far I am unaware of any study that confirms any of his work.

And one final comment about Hamer. The following is a quote from the abstract of an article produced by his group on the relationship between sexual orientation and ‘handedness:
“As expected from population-based studies, heterosexual men were, on average, more left-handed than heterosexual women. By contrast, gay men were more right-handed than lesbians or heterosexual men, and lesbians were more left-handed than gay men or heterosexual women. This crossover interaction suggests that a common variable influences sex, sexual orientation, and hand preference.”
(A crossover interaction between sex, sexual orientation, and handedness.Pattatucci AM, Patterson C, Benjamin J, Hamer DH. Laterality. 1998 Oct;3(4):331-42.)

On the other hand (sorry about that) RA Lippa reports:
For men and women combined, homosexual participants had 50% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual participants, a statistically significant difference. Homosexual men had 82% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual men, a statistically significant difference, whereas homosexual women had 22% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual women, a nonsignificant difference. … Rates of non-right-handedness were virtually identical for heterosexual men and women, suggesting that sex differences in handedness may result from higher rates of homosexuality in men.
(Handedness, sexual orientation, and gender-related personality traits in men and women. Arch Sex Behav. 2003 Apr;32(2):103-14.)

I won’t quote the abstract here, but a study of the ‘non-delinquent’ subjects of the Kinsey report showed (with over 6500 subjects) NO significant difference between heterosexual and homosexual men as far as ‘non-right-handedness’ went.

I will discuss the third study, the ‘twin studies’ -- and the unexpected return of Steve Sailer -- my reason for claiming that these studies are all useless because they neither describe, define, nor take a realistic view of homosexuality, and finally give my own ideas -- hopefully testable -- about the whole subject in the second part of this article. I’ll end this already lengthy piece with a suggested -- admittedly expensive and still imperfect -- experiment that might answer some of the questions. At least it would be something that seems like ‘real science’ to me, unlike the LeVay and Hamer ‘discoveries.’

There should be somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 subjects, evenly divided between men and women, and selected in such a way that sexual orientation is irrelevant, or reasonably so. (Not at a Church convention or a gay march, for example.) The subjects should be told they will need to discuss their sex lives, which will skew the sample slightly, but probably increase the honesty of the responses.

Each subject should be given a 16 digit number, in four groups of four digits. Each subject would be given four examinations by four independent groups of examiners. Each group would know only one of the four number groups corresponding to the examination.

I: a complete sexual history would be taken. Probably the subject would be encouraged to narrate it, guided to certain aspects by the examiner rather than answering a series of questions. It would include fantasies, early sexual experiences, early ‘crushes,’ time of learning sexual matters, early masturbation, but would go up to the present. The examiners would have to be specially trained at making the subjects comfortable discussing anything and guarantee confidentiality, even in relation to technically illegal events.

II: a life history, stressing the earliest period, would be taken, including as many influences, personal, educational, familial, including early books, tv, movies, etc, neighbors, religious education, etc. Again, probably in narrative form.

III: a complete physical description would be taken, stressing anatomical features. Possibly full-body MRIs could be included. (I am not sure if a full medical history would be needed or desirable, but certainly there should be a listing of STDs and any other even tangential matters -- for example, to mention a personal experience, I once contracted severe poison ivy on my genitals.)

IV: a full DNA work-up should be done.

Once the information was collected, then it could be collated and statistical correlations could be done. (To insure the elimination of bias, the program to create the correlation should be prepared in advance and -- if this wasn’t over-caution -- the inputting could be by a fifth group. Certainly the people inputting any specific data should know only the four digit number corresponding to that examination, and not have any way of putting the groups together to isolate any specific individual.)

That -- am I naïve -- strikes me as being the scientific way of doing such an investigation.

And one final note. I’ll explain more fully in the next part of this, but my argument here should not be taken to imply any belief in the possibility of changing someone from gay to straight, or vice versa. I have a somewhat different way of seeing the situation, but I’ll lay that out, along with -- as I said -- a discussion of the ‘twin study’ and the inherent problem with all these studies. Hopefully that part will be finished very shortly, certainly within the next few weeks.

And if anyone has any further studies or data I am unaware of, please e-mail it to me. It is at least conceivable that some recent work is less absurd than the ‘classic’ studies.

No Longer a Hero

2006-05-15T19:00:00.000-05:00

Early in my blogging a I wrote a post entitled "A new hero" about a woman named Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose story, and her heroism touched me. She is the woman who wrote the movie that Theo Van Gogh directed that got him killed -- and that achievement remains untarnished. She also had fled to the Netherlands from Somalia, getting off the plane in Germany and seeking asylum as she escaped from her family and an arranged marriage. Except, it now turns out, she didn't. She'd left Somalia years before, had lived in Kenya and then in Germany, and finally chose to move to the Netherlands. And, as she states blithely on her website
"Hirsi Ali repeated on the TV documentary that when she arrived in 1992 she changed her name from Hirsi Magan and her birth date on her asylum application and did not tell the authorities that she had lived in three different countries since leaving Somalia.

"I invented a story that would be consistent with the conditions for asylum," she told The Associated Press."

Apparently she had admitted the change of name and age a long time previously, when she first ran for Parliament. But on the same website she is still being referred to as 'a refugee from an arranged marraige,' also now brought into question.

I condemned, rightfully so, George Deutsch for lying on his White House application -- and he merely claimed he had graduated from college when apparently he had done the course work but got so caught up in political work he never returned to graduate.

I can not forgive her for these lies, not merely because of her casual comments quoted above, but because her dishonesty in this casts a shadow on all her important work for human rights, women's rights, and against the worst problems in Islam. Her continuing to post mentions of the arranged marraige, plus a poll, supposedly of her readership that says that 98% of them 'do not think less of her because of these lies' (I have rarely seen an honest poll of anything that gets a 98% vote on one side) give her enemies ready made ammunition to dismiss anything else she says, and even worse to link other female critics of Islam to her and discount their statements as well.

(It is particularly ironic that she should post a story admitting her lies directly above one that awarded her a 'moral courage award.")

She is no longer a 'hero of mine.' She will be, however, a fellow countryman, since she is coming here, apparently to work at the American Enterprise Institute, an extremely conservative think tank that was willing to accept her. (That she simultaneously attempted to apply to the Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University may be merely an act of desperation, and not hypocrisy, though I wonder how many other people in history have applied to both Brookings and AEI at once.)

I have spoken in her favor on several blogs. I wish to apologize to any reader who read my comments. Truth matters. If it doesn't, what are we fighting for?

UPDATE on the poll:
Apparently it was the readers of LGF that slanted the poll so strongly. Originally the division was about 3 to 1 AGAINST her, 122 saying they thought less of her, only 27 in her favor. LGF published these results and said (do I hear echoes of Limbaugh) 'you know what to do.' The poll wound up 8276 in her favor, 133 against, a fact she doesn't mention when she quotes the results.

Another distraction - like I needed one

2006-04-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I will be trying to get back to this blog as well as "100 Camels" but there's a lot going on. The examination of the Qur'an IS important, doctor trips and the Mets are intervening, and there are a lot of tv shows to watch. (I STILL haven't discussed DR. WHO. I'll get to it, but the difference in the improvement in this and that in the reworked BATTLESTAR is that the original BATTLESTAR was a LOUSY show. DR. WHO was, despite the chessiness of the effects, a very good one. But both are so much better in the new versions that they are major shows on the 'must watch' category.) Then there are all the blogs with discussions so interesting that I have to put my 3 1/2 cents worth in. (Not conceit, inflation.)

So the last thing I needed to do was visit the branch of the Brooklyn Public Library over by my doctor's office on my way to visit him. The BPL has a book sale in every branch, and the prices are usually great, $1.00 for hardbacks, $.50 for paperbacks -- even large sized ones. Every so often, especially at that branch, they have a super-sale, with hardcovers at $.25 and pbs at $.10. And when I stop by the pile has been picked through enough that I frequently leave with nothing but thanks from my wife for not adding to the clutter and chaos that already fills the house. (3,000 books take up a lot of space, and no, I'm not the best at getting things reshelved.)

This time I was early enough. I only spent $2.55, but that meant 5 hardbacks and 13 pbs. Well, it does mean I'll finally be adding mystery reviews to this.

Sleep, what's sleep?

Baseball: No Soda in April

2006-04-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

But the Mets are "7 UP" over both the Braves and the Phillies as of April 30th. Some of my other predictions are, well, needing of revision -- I didn't think the Pirates were still this bad, and it looks like the Reds finally got pitching and may be a factor in the race (but I still think the Giants will collapse of old age and too much investment in crooked Bonds). The real race seems to be in the American League East. All five teams are good ones, none are outstanding, and we'll have to see what happens when they start playing more out of division.

BUT THE METS FINALLY HAVE THE MAGIC AGAIN. AMAZIN' AND I DO BELIEVE. (They may even be better than 86, the only year when their pennant was not more or less a fluke.)

Reprint of Meet the Family 1 -- Poo

2006-04-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

Leilouta, rather than sending you into the archives (or figuring out how to index this -- HAAAALLLPPPP anyone) I'll reprint the bio of my oldest cat, then if I get a chance, complete the series soon.

Meet The Family: 1 (Poo)
The family includes five cats, one wife, and me -- and I assure you Em would want the cats listed first too. Rather than introduce them all at once, -- they can be a bit overwhelming in a group -- I figure I'll let you meet one at a time, hopefully every other day or so.The first one -- I'm going in order of seniority here -- is Poo, our feisty old lady, who actually has been here longer than I have. We aren't sure whether she is 19 or 20. She was an adult cat 18 years ago when Em's then roommate, Roz, found her chained up outside a store on Chambers Street and rescued her, and she's been with Em ever since.She doesn't show her age much. Occasionally she'll have a 'senior moment' when she stands around looking confused, wondering what she was doing, but I've been having those sorts of moments myself for about 50 years. She looks frail and delicate, but she's got the best appetite of any of the group, and when her plate is finished she'll pick the nearest plate and start finishing that.Oh, she loves to eat. She's always been bossy, but she's refined it through the years. Now, if I'm a little late with a meal, she lets the whole house know it. If I'm more than a little late, she lets all of Midwood -- my section of Brooklyn -- know it. I try and tell her that I know she's lying when she insists that she hasn't been fed for three whole days -- it's usually closer to six hours since the five cats get fed three cans a day plus dry food -- but she gets even more insistent.And her 'frailty' doesn't stop her from being part of the 'sparring matches' that our cats have made part of their pre-meal ritual. But it does win her a few special privileges. Our house -- actually we have the bottom floor of the house Em grew up in, we got it when her folks moved permanently to Florida -- can get chilly, so Poo is taken out to the living room couch at night and tucked in with blankets surrounding her. And there are certain 'people foods' that she automatically gets a share of, tuna, other fish, or chicken.She's not as mobile as when we first moved in here four years ago. The move was a very good thing for her. In our old apartment she was a little too crowded and had some trouble with the younger cats -- she's always been a problem in one way. Somehow, even as a young cat, she never got the page in the cat manual about covering up after bathroom trips, and some of our cats are very formal and would get annoyed at her. To the point where she was spending almost all her time on the kitchen table. (Surprisingly enough, the cat that caused the most trouble for her when she was on the floor was the one who would sleep there with her, you'll meet Kittenz in due time.)But here she had more room, eight rooms rather than three, and she was freer to wander around without getting into trouble, and the cat room -- we have turned one room completely over to the cats, for their dining room with a closet for their bathroom -- meant she had less trouble. But she still now limits her excursions to the living room, the radiator in the parlor and her own chair in the hall outside the cat room -- even if Em is stiing on it, when she wants it, she gets it.She no longer comes and sleeps on my ankles, though she's sleep on Em's chest when she's lying on the living room couch, and her purr is a lot weaker. But she's still a loving and much loved member of the family.

(I was going to post pix, but that is another thing I'm still trying to figure out, and hopefully will have newer ones soon.)

My new blog

2006-04-15T15:28:00.000-05:00

People have, rightly, complained that this blog has been too focused on Islam, to the point where too many of the other posts I have made have gotten buried, and to the point where I simply wasn't talking about the things I started blogging to talk about, American politics, baseball, mystery stories, tv, and, most of all, cats. So I have opened a new blog: "100 Camels Times X" http://jrbentn.blogspot.com/ where I will be discussing Islam and its various ramifications, and keeping this blog for general conversations.
(I'm even going to make it more of my business to actually post here on close to a daily basis -- I hope.)

I'll be moving some of the posts I have already made to the new blog, working on blogrolls, and the like. So if you want to argue Islam with me, go there, if you want to talk cats or Dr. WHO or the Mets -- or the idiocies of the current Administration -- come here.

Enough is enough and THIS is too much

2006-04-05T20:06:00.000-05:00

Now it's a Press Secretary for Homeland Security trying (allegedly) to seduce a minor on the Internet.

Let's face it. It was Monica Lewinsky that elected George Bush. Oh, there was Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court, and Al Gore's underwhelming performance that helped to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But none of these would have had a chance if it wasn't for Monica. It gave the Republicans the glorious issue. "Let's bring morality back to the White House." And didn't they play it? Didn't Bush use every opportunity to remind people of his Christianity, of his 'family values,' of his firm opposition anything that his radical Christian support thought of as immoral. And it worked, at least enough to bring him close enough for the rest of the factors to come into play.

And isn't Washington just swimming in morality? Both Republican Majority Leaders under investigation, and one forced to resign. Bush denying he knew Jack Abramoff, and hoping that Abramoff doesn't prove he was lying. Duke Cunningham going from a fairly obscure Congressman to the Guiness Record holder for bribes received by an American. The Vice President's old firm bribing various countries, overcharging the Pentagon, etc. Homeland Security money going to states far removed from threats, while New York is still wondering where all the help Bush promised is coming from. The management of American ports being turned over to a company -- forget the question of the country involved -- whose former executive, David Sanborn, was named to the Maritime Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, directly before the deal was announced. (And when there was bipartisan opposition, our Moral Leader threatened to veto any bill that would block it.)

But that's just part of the new influx of morality. After all, we have the pictures of Abu Gharaib to look at and admire. We have the President and Vice president explaining how, in the war on terror, these noble ends justify the means of torture and wiretapping. But after all, we already know that the end of removing Saddam Hussein was a justification for leaving Colin Powell hanging as the lies he was fed were exposed. And if the memo of the Bush-Blair meeting is accurate, it would have justified assassination of Saddam Hussein, or painting a US plane to look like a UN plane so it could be shot down. (Even I have a problem believing that one.) Of course, I keep on having these vague memories of Republican speakers insisting on the evil of moral relativism -- and misusing the phrase to apply to an idea that 'the end justifies the means.'

And yet, somehow, the little things are even more annoying. I was around during Watergate, and remember how, during the early days of the exposure of Richard Nixon, suddenly it came out that the Vice President too was crooked and a liar -- and he had made quite a good use of 'moral rhetoric' as well. But it was somehow more shameful that his crimes were simple, cheap 'slip a couple of hundred dollars in an envelope and pass it to me' bribery, made worse because of the pitifully small amounts involved. It was as if he didn't even have a sense enough of his position to at least 'sin big.'

And so we have the little things that add to the overwhelming stench of Bush morality. George Deutsch, the 24 year old put in charge of censoring government scientists, striking a blow for that Old Time Religion by demanding that they declare the Big Bang 'just a theory,' like evolution, and then resigning when it was found that he had been so busy working for the Bush-Cheney campaign that he hadn't bothered to go back to college and go through the formality of graduating, despite his claim on his employment forms.

Then we have Claude Allen, Domestic Policy Advisor in the White House. Claude Allen, who first came to notice in the Jesse Helms campaign for his homophobic remarks, who led the fight for 'abstinence only,' who was the liason to the Religious Right. Such a fine, upstanding, Christian shoplifter. (And not the type that sticks something in his pocket and walks out the door. There are good grounds for believing that type is suffering from some sort of disease. But the deliberate use of the 'return con,' buying something, taking it to the car, then picking up another of the same item from the shelf and taking it to the return desk. That's a LITTLE different.) Of course, even though the White House knew of the investigation, they didn't throw him out the door. The New Morality of George Bush's White House seems to mandate lying, so they insisted that he was 'resigning to spend time with his family,' and, I guess, hoped that no one would check the police blotter.

And now we have Brian J. Doyle, Deputy Press Secretary to Michael Chertoff, apparently and allegedly soliciting someone he thought was a 14-year old girl on line, using as 'chick bait' his status as an employee of DHS. (What is it about that office that gets guys horny? According to the Washington Post:
Another Homeland Security official -- Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa -- faces trial this week on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl last year at a mall. Figueroa, who has been suspended, pleaded not guilty.
I don't know anything about this one, just came across it now when I was writing this.)

(I'll admit, this is one that has no suspicious tracks back to our Moral Leader. Unlike with a major figure like Allen, I'm sure that if the White House had the slightest hint this was going on, they would have thrown Doyle to the wolves or the fishes. It just happened on the watch of the man who was bringing a new sense of morality to the government.)

The White House is awfully big on praying in public buildings, and displaying the 10 Comandments. As a believer in the separation of church and state, I always opposed this. But maybe I was wrong in one or two cases. Maybe the commandements should have been posted in the White House and the Executive Office Building, the Senate and the House. And maybe those of us who do believe in prayer better start praying hard for the country. We've still got two years and 9 months of the moral leadership of George Bush to get through.

Why Feingold?

2006-04-04T20:03:00.000-05:00

As I said way back here
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22177206&postID=113969114783486825
I am a proud liberal who feels the only chance the Democratic Party has to regain its soul and to conquer the cascading falsehoods about what it is and who liberals are is to nominate and elect someone who isn't afraid of his own principles, and who will stand up for them. (And I don't mean people like Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich.) Feingold's willingness to attempt to bring Bush to account, and to force the Senate to take a stand on the unconstitutional and ilegal invasions of privacy was one thing in his favor, as was his fighting for serious campaign reform, even though his bill was far from perfect. And today i have learned he is willing to take a stand in FAVOR of Same-Sex marriage.

I have grown bloody sick and tired of Democrats who run screaming from the idea of being called liberals, who hedge and duck and Clintonize every issue. (The idiots don't seem to realize that the Republican lie machine will still try and accuse them of the very positions they are ducking away from, but because they are so busy ducking, they never have a chance to actually DEFEND these positions. I think I would require every candidate running on the democratic ticket for state or national office to take plenty of anti-nausea pills and spend a couple of hours reading Debbie Schussell. Then they might get the idea that if they are going to be condemned and lied about whatever they do, they might as well take strong stands on what they believe in, because it can't hurt them.)

Meanwhile, the Republicans get the reputation for being 'people who say what they believe' and who take strong positions whether they are popular or not.' (Yeah, RIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT.) And they get votes, plenty of them, from people who disagree with them on important matters. The American people support abortion, support gay rights, oppose the war, oppose theocratic experiments, but they still give lots of votes to Republicans, because Democrats so hedge their positions that they aren't trusted. They don't win support from the uncommitted by hedging, because everybody sees they are, and they lose support from the committed because they imply that they will back off under pressure.

I don't think that Russ Feingold needs to be told any of this. I think he's a popular, charismatic, and honest candidate, one who has been elected repeatedly in a borderline 'Red State" (despite its history of Progressiveism). And so, I say again

RUSS FEINGOLD IN 2008

As usual

2006-04-04T19:48:00.000-05:00

I'm ridiculously behind on this blog. I'm giving up promising to get to various things. Hopefully tomorrow will be easier, but we'll see -- the trouble is still that i get lost in comenting elsewhere then get called away to domestic duties.

But I have one comment to make, that I will discuss in the next post.

RUSS FEINGOLD IN 2008.

I have become convinced he has both the courage and the sense to handle the job, and is head and shoulders above the other people in the race. (I could easily support Wesley Clark, though I'd love a Feingold-Clark ticket, and probably could go for Bayh or even Edwards without holding my nose.) Hilary would be a disaster as a candidate, even if I saw her as a potentially good President -- she's the only candidate who would surrender all the benefits of the Republicans' unpopularity. Gore is almost as bad, people still see him as a clown. And Lieberman is simply unthinkable. (If I wanted to voite for a Republican, I'd vote for Hegel or Giuliani, someone who'd call himself what he was.)

That Other League

2006-04-02T18:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've been a National League fan since I was a kid, and Claire, my 'other mother,' had St. Jude backing up the infield for the Brooklyn Dodgers. (I wasn't a Dodger fan. Loving underdogs, I was a Pirates fan, which was fine until the original Mets came along. People who weren't born then 'remember' the 62 Mets. I remember the 63 as well, when Tim Harkness and Larry Burrright were supposed to anchor the right side of the infield and wound up hitting about .415 combined, and couldn't field either, despite their reps.)

And I STILL hate the Designated Hitter!

But there should be some good races in that league too.

AL East: I've been expecting the Yanks to get old all at once the way they did in the late 60s, but something tells me it won't happen this year. their pitching is fragile, Sheffield is vulnerable to the steroid investigation, and Damon is no Bernie (in his prime) in center. But the Red Sox have also dropped off, and i think it will be a battle between the Yankees and Blue Jays. I'll go Blue Jays, BUT, if it comes down to the last series of the year, with them playing each other, you have to pick the Yanks. That's the type of game they can always win. Boston should be a solid third, though both other teams are likely to be competitive, Tampa Bay on the strength of some very good young talent -- watch out for them next year if they spend money for pitching -- and Baltimore on the strength of Mazzone as pitching coach. I wouldn't be surprised to see either of them slip into 3rd, sorry Boston.

AL Central: The division winner and the Wild Card should come from the White Sox and the Indians. I think Indian hitting will nudge out White Sox pitching, but two great managers will be jockeys spurring their horses on to a close finish. Minnesota is falling off, and unless Mauer and Morneau are even beter than their reviews, they shouldn't be a factor -despite Johan Santana, who may be the best pitcher in baseball, certainly the one I'd want in one important game. Detroit is slowly improving, but shouldn't challenge Minnesota for third. And, at the end of the season, Kansas City should have played close to 162 games (if you can't say anthing nice...).

AL West: Always the hardest division to call. Every year there is one team out of it (the Mariners this year) and the other three are standing around to see which one lighting will strike this year. And it never seems to be a matter of judgement, just pure luck. I think this might be the Rangers year. They don't have enough pitching -- but they never do. Their outfield will shuttle back and forth to the disabled list -- it always does. But with Ian Kinsler (maybe Rookie of the Year) replacing Soriano, this might be one of the greatest infields ever, hitting and fielding. The Athletics have pitching -- they always do, not enough hitting -- as usual, and could explode or implode. Mike Scioscia should keep the Angels from imploding (have you notice I think managers are important?) but might not win this years spin of the roulete wheel.

I'll make some predictions on individual awards sometime during the week, but the game is starting -- or a tornado is, the weather is VERY iffy.

Life Begins on Opening Day

2006-04-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

And since it does, and today is it, I figured I should start spending some time on this discussing a topic I have been following longer than I have Islam, religion, politics, or even sex. I'll try and get at least one post a week here on baseball, and shouold really start with my own predictions. Given me, I could probably fill a long post on each team, even though I haven't paid as much attention as I usually do to the off season. But I'll give you a break and just discuss the divisions.

National League East: After last year, everybody says don't bet against Atlanta winning it's 15th straight division championship. But I think the loss of Rafael Furcal, Julio Franco and most of all, Leo Mazzone as pitching coach means that my Mets have a good chance of taking the division at last. They are a little thin in starting pitching, and I could stand an upgrade at 2nd Base if Anderson Hernandez hits as badly as he has in the minors. The Phillies might move ahead of the Braves as well, but I can't see them challenging the Mets for the division. The Nationals will play better than their talent makes you expect, as usual with Frank Robinson, but the problems of not having an owner and the loss of Ayala and Lawrence will keep them out of the running. Don't be surprised if the Marlins look competitive over the first fifty games, but don't be fooled. They'll have a long way to look up to see the Nationals in 4th by the time the season ends. This time they didn't get much for their fire sale.

NL Central: The Cardinals could run away with the division again, but if Carpenter's Cy Young season proves to be a fluke they could some back to the pack. Then it will be a real dog fight. The Astros have talent, but probably not quite enough. The Pirates have great kid pitching and could sneak away with it. But my pick is the Brewers. Ned Yost is a great manager in the mold of his teacher, Bobby Cox, and gets the best out of his players. Only the most fanatical Cub fan can see them as a factor, and they might not succeed in holding off the Reds.

NL West: Another dog fight, but with real dogs. The Padres almost became the first division winner to have a losing record, and they've gotten worse this year. The Dodgers should have enough talent to take it all, but they might get a strong challenge from the Rockies. The Padres free fall might drop them below the DBacks who aren't really a challenger but might be slowly rebuilding into a good team. And while the Bonds mess might make enough noise to keep the members of baseball's Old Age Home awake -- those guys are so ancient that if I went to the clubhouse half of them would be calling me 'kid' -- but they'll need a different medicine. Lots of aspirin. Cellars are damp and not good for arthritic joints.

Let's put the American league in a separate post so I can get away and feed some very demanding cats. Yes, Poo, Sprout, I'm coming.

Response to Ali and LouLou

2006-04-02T02:44:00.000-05:00

I got several important responses to my questions from both of you. Particularly here http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22177206&postID=114314175910216253

I'd like to look a little closer at what each of you said here, and then maybe take another post to respond to your other comments.

Ali, your comments are interesting and important, but not fully responsive. While I did mention the problem with civil authorities moving against 'barbarous practices' my complaint was far more that Islam has not succeeded, or attempted, to extirpate them in the process of Islamizing a society. Here, i will use a comparison to Christianity. Christianity has shown itself remarkably flexible and able to absorb certain types of local customs and to "Christianize them." (Christmas, for example, local pagan heroes turned into Christian saints, and many other examples.) But I can think of very few places where they would permit a newly Christianized pagan society to retain 'local customs' that were, in Christian eyes, immoral and against the basic principles of Christianity. To take an extreme example, certainly no society would have been permitted to maintain human -- or even animal -- sacrifices. Some people would argue that Christianity was too strict in abolishing pagan customs of dress, of sexuality, the classic picture of the tribe dressing in muumuus instead of, as previous, having little shame about their bodies. Yet Islam, despite a tendency in many places to extirpate a culture's preIslamic history, has never attempted to proclaim such practices as haram. Pork is haram, alcohol is eliminated (supposedly), but honor killings are not, and in fact, as I pointed out, actions like these, like female genital mutilation, like slavery, like forced marriages, like the idea that being raped is shameful, are in fact, protected by the clerics. (Some civil authorities HAVE attempted to wipe them out, but over the stong and usually successful opposition of Islam as expressed by the local clerics.)

Why has Islam, in this and so many ways, simply failed to 'make men better'? Christianity, with all its faults HAS done this in many ways. Few of us would enjoy living in a true pagan or barbarian society -- despite the occasional romantic fictions about such places.

Loulou, you make much the same case, with a number of interesting additions. (Btw, I was under the impression that the 'millet' system referred to groups of 'people of the book' such as Christians and Jews who were allowed to exist as separate societies within Islam -- provided they paid the requisite tax -- and not to tribal or ethnic groupings.)

You make a number of othe rimportant comments, but those will have to wait until (hopefully) tomorrow to discuss, since it is getting late, I lose an hour to daylight savings, and i'm losing coherence as well.

Where are my fellow liberals?

2006-03-25T20:25:00.000-05:00

I have been a liberal my entire life, for good reason. I am an atheist, bisexual, a believer in free speech, a believer in civil rights, a believer in the right to dissent, a believer in due process, etc. I grew up during the McCarthy era, and the later era of the John Birch Society. I was 8 when Brown v. Board of Ed. came down. I opposed the Vietnam War -- and if that was, in a way, the 'liberal's war' it was also the liberals who turned against it. I have watched Conservatives lead the anti-evolution forces, the forces of censorship, the lies from McCarthy to Agnew to Coulter. As a historian, I have seen the actions of Conservatives against progress, against freedom, and have seen the actions of Roosevelt, of the Progressives of the 20s and Thirties, of the great Supreme Court Justices from the first Harlan through Brennan.

I am still proud to call myself a liberal. no a LIBERAL, and I still believe in the same principles. But I am getting worried. There have been two stories recently that have touched my LIBERAL (yes, sometimes bleeding) heart the strongest. The cartoon controversy, and most of all the Abdul Rahman horror. I would have expected it would be my fellow liberals that would be screaming at these violations of the freedoms we love.

Instead it is Michelle Malkin.

MICHELLE MALKIN!

I just went down a list of liberal blogs, certainly not all of them, but a good group of at least twenty. I saw many pieces on Bush -- but none mentioning that it took him five days to respond to the Rahman horror. I saw tons of commentary on a Conservative writer for the Washington POST who has proven to be a plagiarist.

I saw two mentions of Rahman, one in passing, and one by a blogger who was, while admitting that the Rahman story was horrible, debating another blogger who was screaming about the vileness of the Afghani clergymen.

Yes, I am not surprised that the Christians and Conservatives are yelling at the case. Rahman is being punished for becoming a Christian. (I wonder how many would have spoken as loudly if he had announced he was an atheist. After all, several of the sites I saw had ads for a book denouncing the Dover decision.)

But, my fellow liberals, if you do not protest this, if you do not see this as an attack on freedoms you have spent your lives fighting for, if you do not -- while avoiding bigotry, avoiding screams of 'islamofascism' that lump all Muslims together -- demand the release of this man, if you are so entrapped in the misunderstanding of multi-culturalism that would accept any actuion by a group, no matter how vile, as a reflection of their culture to be protected -- would you have accepted anti-Semitism in Germany as a part of the culture, as it was -- if you are so lost as to think that this is not as much an assault on your freedom as it is on one poor man in Afghanistan...

Then I am sorry I cannot believe in a hell, so I can't picture you there, sharing the fiery lake of the "Illustrious Dunderheads" -- in Rex Stout's words -- of the 30s.

But then...

2006-03-25T18:31:00.000-05:00

I keep reading comments like the ones by LouLou and Ali, and I am impressed -- and yes, I will go back to those comments and more questions later. But then, I read something like this (from the AP on the CNN website)

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/23/afghan.christian.ap/index.html

But three Sunni preachers and a Shiite one interviewed by The Associated Press in four of Kabul's most popular mosques said they do not believe Rahman is insane.
"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque. "The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."
Raoulf, who is a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, concurred. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."
"Cut off his head!" he exclaimed, sitting in a courtyard outside Herati Mosque. "We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left."
He said the only way for Rahman to survive would be for him to go into exile.
But Said Mirhossain Nasri, the top cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite places of worship in Kabul, said Rahman must not be allowed to leave the country.
"If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can, too," he said. "We must set an example. ... He must be hanged."
The clerics said they were angry with the United States and other countries for pushing for Rahman's freedom.
"We are a small country and we welcome the help the outside world is giving us. But please don't interfere in this issue," Nasri said. "We are Muslims and these are our beliefs. This is much more important to us than all the aid the world has given us."
Afghanistan's constitution is based on Sharia law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death.
Hamidullah warned that the government would lose the support of the people if it frees Rahman, and "there will be an uprising" like the one against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s.

---

"Cut off his head. Pull him to pieces. We must set an example. He must be hanged. There will be an uprising if it frees Rahman." These are not laymen, giving their impression of Islam. They are clerics, Islamic authorities. (True, from a very conservative part of the world.) And it isn't just the claim that he deserves death, but the barbarity of their words.

Words, for once, fail me.

Haditha

2006-03-25T09:57:00.000-05:00

I read it first on Treasure of Iraq's blog:
http://baghdadtreasure.blogspot.com/2006/03/accident-or-cold-blooded-revenge.html#comments
He is a good reporter, but he has -- as he should -- a point of view, and it is not favorable to America. But it isn't a story, i believe, that he covered, He cites TIME Magazine, and i went there.

TIME Magazine may no longer be the automatically pro-American mag it was during the Luce days, but it is still hardly a far-left -- or left at all -- magazine, except in the paranoid eyes of the Ann Coulters. It ran this story, and I hope anyone who can reads it:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174682,00.html

This is the Iraqi My Lai, if it proves to be true. Yes, it was a mistake, yes it was a company of Marines enraged and crazed by the death of one of their own, and yes, Haditha was a 'stronghold of the resistance.' These are not excuses. What we did there was a true atrocity -- and there is evidence it is not an isolated incident.

Yes, I believe that Iraq would be better as a democracy, and the more secular the better.
Yes, I believe that America, despite its blunders, is still the 'light of the world,' pointing the way to the sort of world that we need to have.
Yes, I believe that George W. Bush is a self-deluding, religion-drunk fool rather than an evil man, and that his motives were not either homicidal mania, greed for oil, or a religious crusade.
Yes, I believe that the others involved in this policy were mostly acting out of high motives. (And even those who were acting from mixed ones, from petty greed and corruption, were not basically evil, merely selfishly trying to 'get a cut' of available monies.)
Yes, I believe that if George Bush could truly grasp Haditha, Abu Gharaib and the rest through his blinders and his inability to admit a mistake, he would spend days racked with tears.
Yes, I feel sorry for what will happen in Iraq after we leave, until they settle down into some form of government or governments.

IT DOESN'T MATTER ANY MORE.

The pictures of Haditha are spreading through the blogosphere. It is those, and the Abu Gharaib ones, and Falluja that will define what we were doing there -- never mind that it is our freedom of the press, our ability to self-criticize that brought them to light. Yes, it is true that, as our apologists say -- read the comments on TREASURE OF BAGHDAD -- that the religious fanatics and 'insurgents' have killed more Iraqis than we have, and more innocents. This has been the last straw. We can no longer accomplish our aims. Every day we are there, we are hurting ourselves, and hurting the chances of Iraq ever becoming a democracy instead of a new Iran, or a tortured Lebanon.

We have to do it wisely. We have to take a short time to protect those who we have already helped. But we no longer have a choice.

WE MUST END THE OCCUPATION AND BRING THE TROOPS HOME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Question - transition between 3 and 4

2006-03-23T14:15:00.000-05:00

Many times when certain barbaric practises that occur only or principally in Muslim societies are brought up (honor killing, forced marriage, etc.) the response is that these are 'cultural survivals' in primitive societies. Yet these societies have been Muslim for centuries. Why has Islam not been able to extirpate this type of primitivism? And why, when civil authorities attempt to move against them, are they so frequently criticized by religious authorities? If Islam is an example of higher values, why does it not fight fiercely to change the ideas of believers in societies which accept such things? Instead, it appears to me too often that, if the society is Muslim, any 'local custom' is accepted.

(Does this have anything to do with the Qur'anic insistence on belief rather than on conduct? Both are mentioned -- as they are by other religions -- but it is the statement that 'Unbelievers go to hell' which is repeated hundreds of time in the Qur'an. Some Christians accept this as well, but the stress there is on 'sinners going to hell.')

Even though I have mentioned other religions in these questions, I am specifically asking about Islam, and hope that the responses will be restricted to that, and that i don't get a chorus of 'well, Christians -- or Jews, or Hindus -- do bad things too.' I am an atheist myself, and could criticize other religions strongly, but it is Islam I am trying to understand, not trying to prosecute.

Question 3

2006-03-23T14:12:00.000-05:00

This is a reposting of a series of questions addressed to 'Moderate Muslims and Muslim Reformers." This one question is perhaps the one I am most interested in getting an answer to.

3: What values, ethical or moral principles, philosophical ideas or other concepts in Islam cause you to remain a Muslim, rather than to either join another religion or to become 'a secular good person'?

Question 3a

2006-03-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

3a: In which cases do you consider Islamic values superior to Western ones on similar topics?

Questions 3b

2006-03-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

3b: In which cases do you consider Western values superior?

Question 3c

2006-03-23T14:09:00.001-05:00

3c: How can those Western values you prefer be joined onto an Islam many of whose believers consider is unchangeable.

Questions 3d

2006-03-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

3d: Is Islam compatible with democracy and democratic values?

Questions 3e

2006-03-23T14:06:00.000-05:00

3e: If you feel it is, how do you answer an ultraconservative who argues as follows (referring to our ultraconservative "Islam Q&A")

"Question :Is the one who fails to rule by that which Allaah has revealed and bases the entire legal system on man-made laws a kaafir? Should we differentiate between him and one who judges according to sharee’ah, but may rule in a manner contrary to sharee’ah on some issues, because of his own whims and desires or because of a bribe, etc.?

Answer :Praise be to Allaah.Yes, we must make this distinction. The one who rejects the law of Allaah and casts it aside, and replaces it with man-made laws and the opinions of individuals has committed an act of kufr which puts him beyond the pale of Islam. Whereas the one who adheres to the religion of Islam, but is a sinner and wrongdoer by virtue of his following his whims and desires in some cases, or pursuing some worldly interest, but admits that he is a wrongdoer by doing so, is not guilty of kufr which would put him beyond the pale of Islam.Whoever thinks that ruling by man-made laws is equal to ruling by sharee’ah, and thinks that it is OK to do that, is also guilty of kufr that puts him beyond the pale of Islam, even if it is only in one instance. Shaykh ‘Abd-Allaah al-Ghunaymaan (www.islam-qa.com)

Question 3f

2006-03-23T14:03:00.000-05:00

3f: There are many tenets of Islam that I can wholeheartedly agree with, such as giving to the poor, the equality of all, taking care of relatives, etc. But in Islam, these commands seem to be limited to believers, thus 'all Muslims are equal before God. Other religions are less strict in such dinstinctions. For example, Jewish and Christian charities, in most cases -- not all -- give benefits to those not of their faiths. Can Islam extend those ideas to non-believers as well?

Questions 3g

2006-03-23T13:59:00.001-05:00

3g: Several places in the Qur'an assume the existence of slavery, particularly the enslavement of prisoners of war. (Thus the first punishment for killing a believer accidentally is to free a believing slave. And there are several verses permitting a -- male -- Muslim to have sex with a slave.) Yet, today, slavery is viewed as barbaric, inhuman, and something that humanity has 'put behind itself." How do you reconcile or accept this?

Questions 3g

2006-03-23T13:59:00.000-05:00

Questions 1 &2 -- comments

2006-03-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

I received only one comment on the first two questions. Krava, a Portugese blogger
http://aconjuntura.blogspot.com/
said
"Question:If you realy wanted answers, why did you asked such biased questions? "

My response is that I feel the questions are pointed and challenging, but not biased.

Question 2

2006-03-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

These posts are part of a series of questions directed at 'moderate Muslims' and 'Muslim reformers.' They were originally published below in large posts, I have broken them up to aid discussion. This section is on legal matters and Sharia. (There will be a final miscellaneous section to cover areas I did not cover)

2: Do you believe that Muslims should be under Shariah law -- not obey it but be governed by it -- either in Muslim countries or in Muslim communities existing in non-Muslim countries?

Question 2a

2006-03-23T13:00:00.000-05:00

2a: In what ways do you see Sharia law as superior to secular law as promulgated in countries such as the US, Canada, and England -- or in other Western countries if you know them better and would prefer to discuss them. In what ways, if any, do you see these secular legal systems preferably to Sharia?

Question 2b

2006-03-23T12:57:00.000-05:00

2b: Should apostates be punished criminally if they merely leave Islam? What if they attempt to convince others of their position, with the possibility that they would leave as well?

Should there be a difference if
i) the apostate converts to another 'religion of the book
ii) converts to a different religion entirely
iii) becomes an agnostic
iv) converts to an 'Islamic heresy'
v) converts from Sunni to Shia or vice versa

Question 2c

2006-03-23T12:56:00.000-05:00

2c: Should blasphemy be punishable by law?

Question 2d

2006-03-23T12:54:00.001-05:00

2d: As far as I know, neither the Qur'an nor the Hadiths specifically condemn rape, distinctly from other -- consensual -- sexual sins. If I am wrong, can you quote me a hadith or verse of a Sura where such a condemnation occurs?

Questions 2e

2006-03-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

2e: What rights should homosexuals have? Homosexual Muslims?

Question 2f

2006-03-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

2f: Many of the punishments that are supposedly based on sharia and on specific verses of the Qur'an or on Hadiths are seen as excessively harsh, and when countries have attempted to impliment them, there have been outcries against them, both from within and without the countries. Do you accept such punishments, and if not, how do you get around the Qur'anic verses that seem to call for them?

Question 1

2006-03-23T12:28:00.000-05:00

1: Do you accept that the Qur'an is the final revelation of God, dictated, through Gabriel, to Mohammed?

Question 1a

2006-03-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

("It" is the Qur'an, of course)

1a: If you do not, what do you consider it is, and what authority do you believe it holds?

Question 1b

2006-03-23T12:25:00.000-05:00

(References are to ther earlier parts of the question as originally posted.)

1b: If you do, how do you explain the inconsistencies, contradictions, and specifically the scientific and historical errors, for example (all quotes are from Pickthal)

18:86 Till, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring

18:90 Till, when he reached the rising-place of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had appointed no shelter therefrom.
And the many other places where the Qur'an supports a geocentric Universe

(not as wrong, just silly is 67:5 And verily We have beautified the world's heaven with lamps, and We have made them missiles for the devils, and for them We have prepared the doom of flame. And if you think this is merely an obsolete quirk, the following was quoted in "Islam Q&A" "Al-Bukhaari said in his Saheeh: Qutaadah said: “Allaah created these stars for three purposes: to adorn the heavens, to stone the devils and as signs by which to navigate. Whoever seeks anything else in them is mistaken and does not benefit from them, and he is wasting his time and effort in seeking something of which he has no knowledge.” (Saheeh al-Bukhaari, Baab fi’l-Nujoom, 2/240) by Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid )

For history, see 5:116 "And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah ?" implying Mary is part of the Christian Trinity

or 7:124 "Surely I shall have your hands and feet cut off upon alternate sides. Then I shall crucify you every one." supposedly spoken by the Pharaoh of the Exodus when crucifixion was invented by the Romans centuries later.

Trying again with the questions

2006-03-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

I always do things on the net first-draft -- if I didn't, I'd keep redrafting and redrafting and would never get anything posted. But this means my posts are usually very long with too many points to comment on. The 'questions for moderate Muslims' posts, though, are too important for me to let get buried, this is something that is worrying me very much. So I am going to reprint the three posts I already posted, broken into more manageable sections, and then break the other three posts I have planned into equivalent sections. (I may do a little editing on them, but not change the points.) I'll reprint each of the already posted ones in reverse order so they appear from 'top to bottom.'

Hopefully there will be someone out there who can answer my points.

Questions for Moderate Muslims #3

2006-03-21T02:10:00.000-05:00

In a comment to my first post in this series, I was accused of asking biased questions. I don't believe I did, in that or the other post in the series. Hard questions, certainly. Challenging questions, yes. But 'biased' ones, no.

This group, however, does come from a personal bias. I have always been a feminist, that is, I have never accepted that men should have any rights women should not, have never even accepted the concept of 'gender roles,' other than the strictly physiological. Growing up in a lesbian household can do that for you, one of the reasons I consider it lucky I did. (Yes, in the 1950s, in suburban New Jersey no less. This may be one of the things that Jami referred to in his post. And the other reasons I consider myself lucky have far more to do with the people Billie (my 'birth mother') and Claire (her partner of over 30 years until her death) were, and the quality of parenting they gave me than their genitalia. But I'll discuss this another time, it is really irrelevant here.

One thing that is also irrelevant is the permanent cliche that keeps on coming up in discussions of Islam and women's rights and treatment. "But, Mohammed treated women better than Christianity and Judaism did at the time." It is not just a cliche, it is not just irrelevant -- we aren't living in the 7th Century, at least most of us aren't -- I am not sure it is true, except possibly as far as the question of inheritance goes.

So, if anyone insists on bringing this up, I will insist they include quotes from the Talmud, the Torah, the New Testament, or the "Church Fathers" to show that they accepted what Mohammed did. Now, on with the questions. I think there are enough issue that this may lap over into two posts, even ones as long as readers of this blog are getting used to.

Of course, the first question is obvious:
4: Do you believe that women and men should be treated equally as far as rights go, and if not, how do you feel they should differ, and why.

4a: Do you accept the Qur'anic rules as far as the proper division of inheritance goes, or the rules that in certain cases it takes the testimony of two women to match that of one man.

4b: How do you feel about the fact that the Qur'an never addresses women directly, that they are always 'they' not 'you.'

4c: Do you accept the idea that men need to be protected from 'uncontrollable sexual urges?' and Shaitanic temptation?

4d: If you do, do you accept that this should be done by encouraging or requiring women to restrict their freedoms in various areas?

4e: For each of the following, please state both what restrictions you believe women should accept, and if such restrictions should be voluntary, enforced by society, or enforced by legislation: (each of these has in fact been a matter of controversy)

i: 'modesty of dress'

ii: engaging in sporting events where the audience may include men and uniforms may not be able to meet the requirements of (i.)

iii: coeducation, and do you distinguish between primary school, high school, and college

iv: contact with 'non-mahram' men in day to day to life

That's enough for one post. Let's take up matters specifically relating to sex, marriage, and similar matters in the next.

Questions for Moderate Muslims #2

2006-03-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

I probably should have broken the previous into two posts. I'll probably have about three more areas to ask about here, and I'll make them into distinct posts -- and possibly intersperse some other topics (I finally saw the new DR. WHO and baseball season is starting very soon).

But this one will be on values.

3: What values, ethical or moral principles, philosophical ideas or other cause you to remain Muslims, rather than to either join another religion or to become 'secular good people'?

3a: In which cases do you consider Islamic values superior to Western ones on similar topics?

3b: In which cases do you consider Western values superior?

3c: How can those Western values you prefer be joined onto an Islam many of whose believers consider is unchangeable.

3d: Is Islam compatible with democracy and democratic values.

3e: If you feel it is, how do you answer an ultraconservative who argues as follows (referring to our ultraconservative "Islam Q&A")

"Question :
Is the one who fails to rule by that which Allaah has revealed and bases the entire legal system on man-made laws a kaafir? Should we differentiate between him and one who judges according to sharee’ah, but may rule in a manner contrary to sharee’ah on some issues, because of his own whims and desires or because of a bribe, etc.? Answer :
Praise be to Allaah.
Yes, we must make this distinction. The one who rejects the law of Allaah and casts it aside, and replaces it with man-made laws and the opinions of individuals has committed an act of kufr which puts him beyond the pale of Islam. Whereas the one who adheres to the religion of Islam, but is a sinner and wrongdoer by virtue of his following his whims and desires in some cases, or pursuing some worldly interest, but admits that he is a wrongdoer by doing so, is not guilty of kufr which would put him beyond the pale of Islam.
Whoever thinks that ruling by man-made laws is equal to ruling by sharee’ah, and thinks that it is OK to do that, is also guilty of kufr that puts him beyond the pale of Islam, even if it is only in one instance.
Shaykh ‘Abd-Allaah al-Ghunaymaan (www.islam-qa.com)

3f: Many of the tenets of Islam that I can wholeheartedly agree with, such as giving to the poor, the equality of all, etc. seem, in Islam, to be limited to believers. Can Islam extend those ideas to non-believers as well?

3g: Several places in the Qur'an assume the existence of slavery, particularly the enslavement of prisoners of war. (Thus the punishment for killing a believer accidentally is first to free a believing slave.) How do you reconcile or accept this?

And, as a bridge between this section and the next, many times when certain barbaric practises that occur only or principally in Muslim societies are brought up (honor killing, forced marraige, etc.) the response is that these are 'cultural survivals' in primitive societies. Yet these societies have been Muslim for centuries. Why has Islam not been able to extirpate this type of primitivism? And why, when civil authorities attempt to move against them, are they so frequently criticized by religious authorities? If Islam is an example of higher values, why does it not fight fiercely against believers whose societies accept such things?

(I have bnot said this, but in all these questions, please answer in re Islam, and do not respond with "Well, look at what Christians do." I am an atheist and could criticize Christianity, Judaism and other religions strongly as well, but I am attempting to discuss Islam here, not compare it.)

More later or tomorrow. the next section will be on Islam and Women.

Questions for moderate Muslims and Muslim reformers

2006-03-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

1: Do you accept that the Qur'an is the final revelation of God, dictated, through Gabriel, to Mohammed?

1a: If you do not, what do you consider it is, and what authority do you believe it holds?

1b: If you do, how do you explain the inconsistencies, contradictions, and specifically the scientific and historical errors, for example (all quotes are from Pickthal)

18:86 Till, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring
18:90 Till, when he reached the rising-place of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had appointed no shelter therefrom.
And the many other places where the Qur'an supports a geocentric Universe
(not as wrong, just silly is 67:5 And verily We have beautified the world's heaven with lamps, and We have made them missiles for the devils, and for them We have prepared the doom of flame. And if you think this is merely an obsolete quirk, the following was quoted in "Islam Q&A" "Al-Bukhaari said in his Saheeh: Qutaadah said: “Allaah created these stars for three purposes: to adorn the heavens, to stone the devils and as signs by which to navigate. Whoever seeks anything else in them is mistaken and does not benefit from them, and he is wasting his time and effort in seeking something of which he has no knowledge.” (Saheeh al-Bukhaari, Baab fi’l-Nujoom, 2/240) by Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid )

For history, see 5:116 "And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah ?" implying Mary is part of the Christian Trinity

or 7:124 "Surely I shall have your hands and feet cut off upon alternate sides. Then I shall crucify you every one." supposedly spoken by the Pharaoh of the Exodus when crucifixion was invented by the Romans centuries later.

2: Do you believe that Muslims should be under Shariah law -- not obey it but be governed by it, either in Muslim countries or in communities existing in non-Muslim countries?

2a: In what ways do you see Sharia law as superior to secular law as promulgated in countries such as the US, Canada, and England -- or other Western countries if you prefer.

2b: Should apostates be punished criminally if they merely leave Islam? What if they attempt to convince others of their position?

2c: Should blasphemy be punishable by law?

2d: As far as I know, neither the Qur'an nor the Hadiths specifically condemn rape, distinctly from other consensual sexual sins. Can you quote me a hadith or verse of a Sura where this condemnation occurs.

2e: What rights should homosexuals have? Homosexual Muslims?

2f: Many of the punishments that are supposedly based on sharia and on specific verses of the Qur'an or on Hadiths are seen as excessively harsh, and when countries attempt to impliment them, there is an outcry against them. Do you accept such punishments, and if not, how do you get around the Qur'anic verses that seem to call for them?

That's enough for now. There will be a part B on the Islamic attitude towards women, on Islamic practices that are frequently explained away as 'cultural survivals' and on thew treatment of Unbelievers, and other things.

A point I have made is demonstrated

2006-03-20T01:37:00.000-05:00

From this Friday's USA Today:
(This is a trial in Afghanistan of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity. The speaker is Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada )

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which states that any Muslim who rejects their religion should be sentenced to death.

"We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam. ... The prosecutor is asking for the death penalty."

The reference is
USA Todayhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-03-19-convert_x.htm

No other religion demands or has demanded this.

A few minor changes

2006-03-20T01:12:00.000-05:00

I had previously marked the comments as 'no anonymous comments.' I realized after Jami's comments, and my searching back to his blog, that this meant you had to get a blog to comment -- that's how I got this in the first place, trying to comment on Deborah Lipstadt's blog. So I have no enabled anonymous posting -- though i would prefer if people signed their comments, and I included word verification just to avoid possible spamming.

The major change, getting my blogroll up, should finally be done this week, I hope.

Paging Dr. Kafka

2006-03-19T02:14:00.000-05:00

(Part 2 of my Adventures in Medicaid)

Actually the reapplication process went smoothly at first. The interviewer would only talk to one person, so Em went in. (I wonder if the reason for that os self-protection. If he turns you down, better he should have only one person mad at him.)

I begged Em to ask "What is an S87, but she apologized. She described the guy as a complete robot, only interested in the next blank on the form. Even though Em tends to be relectant to assert herself -- except when she's talking to me -- I accepted this. We had a couple of documents to bring in. We did, and this time I asked one of the visible workers, "What's an S87?"

"I don't know."

Anyway, we relaxed, caught our breath, dealt with only the ordinary chaos we and five cats can cause, and waited. The person who talked with Em when she brought in the other documents said she'd try to expedite things so we'd hear in two to four weeks, instead of the usual four to eight. But our paperwork was in order, everything up to snuff, we figured things would go smoothly.

Then WHAM!

Earlier this week we get a letter explaining that our reapplication was being denied because an RFI had shown that my wife had three bank accounts at the Dime Savings Bank, one that we recognized, another for a few hundred dollars, and a third for an amount well into five figures. Which would have been very nice, except for one problem. We knew nothing at all about the other accounts. (I wondered, and a friend suggested, that perhaps Em's parents had opened an account for her many years ago and never told her. Either that, I assumed, or it was a simple clerical error. There was one obvious error already, since while Em had had an account in the Dime for years, the bank no longer existed as such, and hadn't for at least seven years. It had been bought and was now a Washington Mutual bank.)

So Em and I went to the bank and discovered it was a third possibility. The friend who had called us had listed Em's name as the beneficiary on the account. She had been friends with Em since before I came along and had no family to leave her money to. Of course she is in reasonable health and, as long as she is alive, we have noi ability -- or desire -- to touch the money. (Of course, we now did know her account numbers, thanks to Medicaid.)

What do we do? Contact Medicaid and get it straightened out. So we call the number to 'arrange a conference.'

The result. Sound of phone being answered, sound resembling a computer or fax hook up. "To access your voice mail, press the * key. Thank your for calling Gng." Followed by a selection of fragments of e-mail messages (no, we DIDN'T press the * key) followed by "If you want to leave a message, wait for the beep."

Somehow, this was not helpful.

So we call 311. "I'll connect you to the Medicaid Complaint Department." Which would have been useful, except after 40 rings, no one picks up.

So I try another, general number for Medicaid. This results in a message from the City Commissioner of Human Rights followed by silence, no ringing, none of those delightful nests of instructions that can take five minutes to reach a human voice. Not even a pleasant bit of classical music to calm me down.

Back to 311. This time I get the Complaint Department #. Try it again. No answer. Repeat. Same result. Back to the original number. Same result, only with a different selection of voice mail fragments. Back to the general number. The Commissioner has a lovely voice, but this isn't helping.

Back to 311. Repeat the problem. "Okay, I'll connect you to the general Medicaid number." I ask if it is the number I already have. Yes. I start to explain. The phone and one of my cats are on the bed. The cat, having heard enough, steps on the disconnect button.

By this time it is too late to go to the office listed on the sheet, which is actually for the State, though it is also the mailing address for the city if you want to arrange a conference by mail -- no, I don't understand it.

We decide to leave the next day, after Em's dental appointment -- she is getting a full set of dentures and, because of the complications of insurance, it has been almost a year since she started the process.

The main reason for the delay was going to a private dentist who took Medicaid. When he found that he couldn't talk her out of having dentures and convince her to have a series of root canals and repairs on the teeth that would have cost almost as much as our mythical account, and that Medicaid wouldn't pay for, he instructed his receptionist not to give us an appointment. And when she finally went to a hospital clinic -- at the same hospital that dropped a bench on my leg which was why she was reluctant to try it -- great doctors, lousy support personnell at that hospital -- she found out the insurance WOULD pay for the extractions, but not for general anaesthesia and surgery. Which meant she had to have four teeth at a time removed each week -- they couldn't give her enough novocaine for more removals safely. Fortunately, the clinic knew we had been kicked off but decided to complete the work anyway, since all her teeth had been already removed and she'd been walking around toothless for a couple of months as they waited for her mouth to heal and final adjustments to the teeth to be made. (I should mention that Em is 18 years younger than I am, even though the only way you'd guess this in her toothless condition is that I look fifteen years older than my age, so it averages out.)

Anyway, we decide to try the Coney island office again before heading into Manhattan. We'd been having a warm snap. Guess which day it broke and went back to seasonal.

We get down there, Em shows the letter we'd gotten from the bank. It's fine except for one thing. The person who made it out forgot to date it. Fortunately there's a branch of Washington Mutual nearby. We get it stamped, turn it in, and there things rest.

I want to say that it is all smooth sailing from this point on. But I'm not THAT crazy.

Oh, and one final point. It's now obvious that S87 DID mean 'too many assets. Which means we were kicked off unjustly. While we've been off, Em had to buy asthma medication, I needed pain pills for my arthritis, and since Vicodin is unrenewable, we had to go to the doctor. All of which we had to pay for out of our own (tiny) pockets. I suppose we COULD put in a claim for these expenses.

I don't think we will. Vicodin works on headaches too, but there are limits to the number the doctor will prescribe for us.

So we

Dr. Kafka, I presume

2006-03-17T19:48:00.000-05:00

Finally I get a chance to write this, since the events it describes are, temporarily, quieted down.
And LOOK EVERYBODY, Prup can actually write a post and not mention Islam or Muslims. (Well, there was this one Muslim couple sitting in front of us at one trip to an office who overheard me discussing one of my posts and the man seemed to be annoyed, but he's only an extra in this script.)

Now I live in America, in Brooklyn. Which has a lot of very good points, but we are the only Western country I know of for which health care is not considered a right. (Which is rather dumb, since American industry loses more days to illness that could be cured than it cost to insure everybody, and large companies that are unionized wind up having to pay a major amount of cash for private insurance for their workers -- and those are just the Republican arguments for Universal Health Care.)

Due to our own situation, which i don't need to describe, both Em and I were on Medicaid -- and if you get them confused the way most people do, Medicaid is for those who are broke, Medicare is the one for those who are broken down by virtue of age, or other disability. In our case we belong to a Medicaid HMO, as al people now are required to do.

Things were going fine for two years. We had filled out our renewal form in Mid-October, knowing it would take until March before it went through and we were renewed for the next year. (We'd be technically kicked off for a day until the new list was put on, but we were used to such technological wizardry.)

In mid-February, Em was going to her therapist when she is told "You've been kicked off Medicaid." Her shock and confusion and annoyance can be consewrvatively expressed as "HUH???!!!!!?????"

We called the HMO. "Why were we kicked off?"

We were told, "You didn't get your renewal forms in on time." Interesting, since I'd gotten an extra set of forms and had called Medicaid and was told they had received them. So I called the NYC HRA.

After checking, "Yes, we have your forms. You were kicked off because of, let me see, the code is S87."

"What does S87 mean?"

"I don't know, it's a new code."

"Could you please find out what it means?" (In retrospect, I might not have been that polite, but I wasn't screaming and cursing either, might as well make myself look good.)

The person on the other end puts the reciever down, and either doesn't push the 'hold' button, or it is broken. I hear all sorts of conversation going on. "What's an S87?" "I don't know?" "Where do I look," and general confusion, with at least one person saying "Never MIND about the code."

Finally the person comes back. "You have too large assets."

(Our situation has not changed in the time since we applied. Our bacnk account has remained at the 4-figure level, with the first number only going over 1 immediately after we receive a Christmas gift from Em's parents. And that is max, some months it hits the two-figure level. We own neither a car, a house, or much of anything, we live in Em's parents' house since they moved South. Our cats are, of course, valuable assets to us, but financially they wind up on the debit side. Five cats use a LOT of cat litter and food.)

But this is a general Medicaid number. I figure I should call a local office. So I call 311, the number for the City's non-emergency help line. These people are very nice, but they don't HAVE numbers for the local Medicaid offices. "Wait a minute, one of them is located in the nurse's residence at X Hospital. I can connect you there."

The hospital must have been used to these calls because before i could get the question finished they gave me the right number.

I get through, and the office confirms that we have been cut off -- even though we've filled presecriptions at our pharmacist that day and are able to do for the next few days. And yes, it is an "S87."

"What's an S87?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. You'll just have to go to an office and reapply."

"Wait a minute," says I, having had some experience with public assistance in the time before I was married. "If we're cut off, don't we have to be notified and given a chance to appeal?"

"Oh, yes. That's handled automatically by computer. The notice should have gone out already." (We have yet to receive it.) "But you'll still have to reapply."

The hospital office isn't convenient. The one on Coney Island -- not an island, btw, for non-NewYorkers, just a neighborhood (and there haven't been rabbits there for centuries, for the linguists among you) -- is an easy subway ride away.

So, after about a day of panic attacks -- usually Em's specialty and one reason why we are on Medicaid to begin with, but this time I am keeping up with her shudder for shudder -- we go down there.

It is February, remember. It's been very warm this winter, but not this day. And Coney island is not an island, but it is on the Ocean. And the office is right up against the Boardwalk, overlooking the Ocean. (If I'd had a pair of stilts, i could have waved to The Religious policeman in England.) But we manage to get there, and the 'Bentoncicle" phase only lasts a few minutes. The building's heat supply is working, which in retrospect was an unexpected blessing.

To Be Continued tonight if possible.

How to answer a critic of Islam

2006-03-16T21:07:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, but it looks like the chaos is settling down and I'll be able to put up a few posts over the next few days, including "Dr. Kafka, I Presume" that will explain part of the chaos. But a correspondent of mine sent me 'Aquol's "How to be a Muslim Reformer"
http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/03/how_to_be_a_mus.php
and I couldn't resist. (If you haven't come across this, check it out first.)

How to answer a critic of Islam

In the past few years many former Muslims have turned against their religion and written articles and books critical of it. This has resulted in a scarcity of people prepared to respond to them. (Perhaps not a scarcity of people willing to respond, but shouting 'Death to the enemies of Allah' is not considered to be the most effective form of criticising them, and has even been known to bring them a certain degree of sympathy, as well as police portection. And other writers, such as Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid who runs the "Islam Q&A" site
http://www.islam-qa.com/
who has conveyed the ruling that 'excessive laughter' is haram for a Muslim; that a man should not ride public transport with a woman, and should avoid sitting next to one -- even if it requires regular seat changing -- and if he feels himself tempted must leave the transport at once, even if it means being late for work; and that "if a woman has the misfortune to be studying in a mixed university, she should reduce the evil as much as she can, so she should not debate with men or allow any opportunity to speak to her or get to know her, even if that leads to her getting lower grades. Warding off evil takes precedence over seeking benefits." is not considered to portray the progressive, moderate image of Islam that is needed to confront the apostates.

Since there is such a lack, I have prepared a guide to the proper way to answer such critics. A person who follows it can write any number of articles and gain a fine reputation for brilliance, even among some non-Muslims who are impressed by the moderate reasonableness of the responses.

Of course, the responder has one main advantage if he knows the proper usage of the "SOS Device," a rhetorical trick hardly limited to Muslims. (Defenders of George Bush's and Republican domestic policies have been using it for years. Some people credit Ronald Reagan with its invention, though in fact it had been common for years.)

SOS, in this case, stands for "Same Old Stuff." If one person complains about something, the responder needs considerable agility to avoid actually answering the critic. But if there are fifteen people all making the identical complaint, the responder should realize this makes his task easier. Just use the "SOS Device." "Aren't you people ever asking the same tired questions over and over? Don't you ever come up with anything new. Hasn't that been raised by Irshad Manli, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and all the rest of you 'so-called' liberals. I'm not going to go over this yet again." Sometimes a simple "There you go again" is sufficient.

But of course you only use that in a debate or a general discussion. The most important overall rule is always to divert attention to the person, not the argument. "Ad hominen" may occasionally receive criticism from purists, but it works, especially if it is, in fact, 'ad feminem.'

Many critics of Islam are, in fact, women, who make the claim that Islam mistreats women. Now merely pointing out that the person IS a woman will win you the sympathy of a certain portion of the audience, particularly if the audience is predominantly Muslim and wonders why a woman is daring to speak in the first place, and especially to criticize. But there are still a lot of people for whom that isn't enough. Most of them, however, will be won over if you call her not just a woman, but a feminist.

That of course is just a start, a way of getting the readers on your side. The next thing is to declare the person doesn't know anything about Islam, has never studied it, is totally ignorant of it. The fact that the person may have spent most of her life in an Islamic environment, that they might have memorized the Qur'an at an early age, that they can actually speak Arabic, that they might have gone to a Muslim University, that's all irrelevant, or at least you need to make the audience think it is so.

Then you have to develop the "Sophisticated Sneer." This is difficult, but very rewarding, though it takes a certain hardening of the heart to pull off convincingly. Most critics have horrible experiences that caused them to reconsider the religion they had, until then, devoted their life to. Don't skip over those, mention them, but with the SS. If you do it properly, you can make even having your beloved professor killed in front of you seem like a mere trivial occurence that the protestor is using as an excuse for her real purpose, which is to win publicity for herself. Even if she has received death threats in e-mails, has had to go into hiding, needs police protection to appear in public, you can tell that as if she is boasting about her boldness, and even, subtly, imply that maybe she set the whole thing up herself to sell books. (Always attack the motives, always make it look like she's just trying to get publicity. Do it loudly enough and you can discredit her totally. After all, what is having to live her life behind shields, having to wonder if she will be the target of the sort of madman who drove his car through a crowd of innocent students for the love of Allah, seeing her name and picture on placards threatening her death, compared to the wondrous joys of being on the news.)

But you might have to pretend to respond to her criticisms. There are time tested replies that you can memorize. Whatever horror she claims about Islam, always claim that Christians did it too. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, and if they did it was hundreds of years ago, or was truly a minor splinter group, but your audience -- especially the Muslim and secular ones will be glad to believe it and certainly won't know any better.

Whatever she says, insist she's talking about a minor splinter group of 'crazy extremists' and not the 'great majority of Moderate Muslims." (This great majority somehow seems to have no political power in any Islamic country, or even in most communities of Muslims in Europe, and the minor splinter group is either the ruling party or main opposition in most countries, but who is going to say this aloud when if they do you can call them a racist, a bigot, or an 'Islamophobe.')

Insist that Islam means 'peace' -- even though it really means 'submission.' Insist that Mohammed (or Allah, depending on the audience) said 'there is no compulsion in religion,' even when they bring up the oppression of religious minorities, the burning of churches, the laws against blasphemy.

Claim that Mohammed was centuries ahead of his time in his treatment of women. (This probably isn't so if you compare his statements to Christian or Jewish teachings and practices in the metorpolitan areas, but the audience won't know this.) And if you say it often enough, the Christians will figure, well, our religiomn progressed over time, so probably Islam did too. (Remember, to them 'fundamentalists' are a minor group, they won't realize that all Muslims are, in theory, fundamentalists, whose book is supposedly unchangeable.

Depending on the audience, maybe you can even throw a quick jab at the Jews or the United States, pointing out how the critic's views pander to the prejudice of those groups.

But whatever you do, don't address the critic's points directly. That way gives them too much of an advantage.

Three questions

2006-03-13T17:56:00.000-05:00

I am still getting back to everything I promised, but I wanted to post this -- and e-mail it to some people -- to bring the discussion more into focus. Again, if you'd rather e-mail me (jimbentn@verizon.net) I'll copy the comments I received and post them.

Three questions -- well, two of them are statements I want your opinions on:

1: I used to believe that a 'reformed Islam' was possible. As time has gone on and I have read more, as I said in "Changing My Mind" I believe that Islam is like my old computer, that by the time you fixed or replaced what was wrong with it, you would have 'nothing left but the case and the speakers.' In other words, rather than reform it, it would have to be replaced.

2: If Islam were reformable, why bother? What specific perceptions, ideas, principles (ethical, moral, practical, or whatever) are both exclusive to Islam and worth the effort of creating a Reform Islam? (I'll admit I have yet to see any, but that is why I am sending this to a number of Muslims, hoping they do. What I have seen is either principles that are common not just to most religions but to simple secular humanistic common sense, or principles exclusive to Islam -- like their treatment of women and unbelievers -- which are the reasons why the reform would be necessary.)

3: I have stated (in my 'Exchange with Deborah Lipstadt' below, which explains WHY I think this) that, while other religious, political, and social movements -- good and bad -- attempt to 'change reality,' Islam attempts to 'define reality.' Because it does, when its 'reality' is opposed by a Western reality, or historical or scientific facts, etc., since it cannot question its own reality or challenge the opposition on its ground, it reacts violently to attempt to destroy the 'competing reality.' Do you agree?

I hope this one will get comments. Again, I will post almost any e-mail I receive in reply.

Exchange with Deborah Lipstadt

2006-03-13T01:11:00.000-05:00

(I am new enough to blogging that I am not sure if this is permissible to do. I had an exchange with Deborah Lipstadt on her blog, History on Trial
http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/

in which I discussed in some detail where my ideas had reached. (And I hope most of my readers also read her blog -- I've got to take the time to try and get a blogroll up. She wrote the two main books on Holocaust Denial, DENYING THE HOLOCAUST and HISTORY ON TRIAL -- the second was about the libel suit David Irving started against her and her triumphal demonstration of what the man was, a bigot, liar, and anti-Semite.)

I am going to post the main comment here. My initial comment was in response to what i believed were complaints she had received from Turks about her mentions of the Armenian massacres.

I commented:
"I am slowly beginning to be convinced that Muslims and Nazis share one trait -- don't be quoting the Godwin rule at me until you read to the end -- that unlike other religious and political movements, good or bad, that attempt to 'change reality' the Nazis and the Muslims are the only ones who have attempted to 'define reality.' And therefore they have to attack anyone who challenges their definition."

(In fact, the complaints she received were from Armenians, which I still don't understand. She also argued that I was 'painting with too broad a brush,' that perhaps I should be challenging 'Muslim extremists' or 'Islamists,' but not 'all Muslims.')

I responded with the following, that explains my comments above and describes about where my mind has reached by now:

"First, I DID misspeak when I said "Muslims' and "Nazis.' I should have said "Islam" and "Nazism." A belief is not the same as its believers, of course. And while I am not trying to push this comparison further than the original point I made, it is probably true that there were Nazis -- and it is certainly true that there were those who originally voted for Hitler -- who did so because they believed in German nationalism, thought Hitler would help the economy, and who were either only mildly anti-Semitic and never foresaw the Holocaust, or who weren't anti-Semitic at all, and figured that while they thought Hitler was a little nuts on the subject of Jews, he was right on other topics.

But as for Islam, I stand by my statement. And, ironically, a few months ago, had I seen someone else post a similar statement, I would have replied much as you did.

But, after some months of watching the news, reading the posts of Muslims, both 'moderate' and 'extremist,' watching the MEMRI tapes -- or reading transcripts, since i do not speak Arabic -- and reading the Qur'an, I have come to a position similar to that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, Ibn Warriq, Taslima Nasrin, and most recently Dr. Wafa Sultan. Each of them, raised Muslim, have come to believe that the problem is NOT a small (or large) group of extremists, that the problem is inherent in Islam itself. (Of the people mentioned, only Manji sees the possibility of an Islamic Reformation. The others have rejected Islam entirely.)

One problem that I believe many people have in coming to grips with this is their assumption that the "Spectrum of Belief' is similar in Islam as it is in Christianity or Judaism. In those religions, the Specturm can be described -- the numbers are meant illustratively, not literally, as

20% Fundamentalist/Literalist
20% Conservative (accepting the sacred text as God-given, but accepting that there are some errors and myths)
15% Liberal (seeing the text as predominantly man-made but expressing the idea of God the believers accept)
10% Cultural (accepting the religion as part of their culture or traditions, but more accepting the rituals as a bonding with that tradition than seeing it as 'true.' This proportion is probably higher in Judaism because of the Holocaust and Judaism's 'ethnic' component)
30% secular (claiming membership in the religion, maybe attending the 'great ceremonies' but not seeing it as part of their day to day lives -- "Christmas and Easter Christians" or "Passover and Yom Kippur Jews")
5% rejectionist (atheist/agnostic/'spiritual' but not believers in the religion)

(I must stress that these are 'theological positions, and that there are wide variations both in interpretation and in social and political positions within each group.)

But the Islamic spectrum is different, mostly because there has been no Islamic Reformation. I recall that many Muslims complained, when there was condemnation of "Islamic Fundamentalism" in the media, that this was wrong, because 'all Muslims are Fundamentalists.'

This is not true, of course. But in Islam, the 'conservative' and 'liberal' points of view are the true 'small minorities' -- though over-represented in the 'blogosphere.' I'd argue that a more accurate 'Spectrum of Belief' in Islam is the following -- and again I repeat that there are wide variations within each division.

50% Fundamentalist/Literalist
5% (at most) Conservative and Liberal combined
10% Customary/Cultural
25% Secular
10% Rejectionist

Furthermore, there are differences in the way the three religions view their 'sacred texts' which affects the way they think.

Neither Christians nor Jews see their texts as 'the final, unchangable revelation dictated by God to their prophet' as Islam does.

Few C or J see their text as a blueprint for all of life. Nor are these religions -- any more -- involved with specific polities. (Israel is a secular state, after all, and few Catholics would support the Syllabus of Errors that condemned Democracy. And while some F/L Protestants seem to confuse religion and the Republican Party, few would, if asked, accept this as a theological position.)

Another important point is that, for F/L and Conservative Christians, at least, hell is seen as 'where sinners go.' For Muslims it is -- as is repeated endlessly in the Qur'an -- 'where Unbelievers go.' It is a subtle but important difference.

For the other religions, if a member rejects the religion, it is viewed as a problem between him and God. In Islam this is only true if he 'keeps silent' about his change in beliefs. Attempting to convince others is a serious transgression. "Extremists" view it as being punishable by death, but even 'secular' Muslim governments have imprisoned writers and scholars and forced them to divorce their wives for apostasy.

(Then there is the reported case of Dr. Sulieman Brashear who, while remaining a Muslim, found through his researches that Islam had developed over time and not 'sprung full-blown' from Mohammed's forehead. His colleagues at the University of Nablus are reliably said to have settled the dispute with him by throwing him out a second-story window.)

And, sadly, the Qur'an does contain ugliness, at least in Western eyes. There is considerable misogyny in it -- it contains NO verse directed specifically at women, who are always 'they', not you -- women are ordered to be subject to their husbands and must obey them, and they ARE permitted to be beaten. (As The United Nation Population Fund (UNFP) in its State of World Population 2005 report found:
In Egypt, 94 percent of women thought it was acceptable to be beaten, as did 91 percent in Zambia.)

(There is misogyny in the other sacred texts, but it is softened by stories of noble, heroic women. Not in the Qur'an)

There is NO equivalent to the Qur'anic injunction:
“Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allaah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allaah and His Messenger (Muhammad), (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”

or the command to kill the unbeliever wherever he is found.

There is also nothing like the insistence that 'unbelievers' REALLY know the 'the truth' and are simply refusing to become Muslims out of 'envy' or a wish to do evil. (Unbelievers, in the Qur'an are, by definition, evil and acting from evil motives.) Or, similarly, that the entire non-Muslim world is occupied in 'scheming' to keep Islam down.

(This paranoia, coupled with the gullibility that fundamentalism/literalism always brings, can readily spread beyond strictly religious bounds. Not only do Muslims frequently refuse to believe reports of such as 9/11 and other evil acts by Muslims -- 'no Muslim would do something like that' -- but, as an example, many Muslims are sure the Moon lnding was a Hollywood-produced hoax.

All of this combines to produce the effect I mentioned. The 'Muslim reality' is so different from that of the West. The Qur'an was NOT dictated by Allah. Mohammed was not the perfect human being. Sharia law does not work when applied. Muslim governments usually do not work well for their own people and are corrupt. Next to the West, the Muslim world IS backwards, and that is lessened only because they make use of Western technology. No modern society -- including Muslim ones -- can work without interest-charging banks. Etc.

But accepting these facts would mean challenging the tenets of their religion, which they cannot do without risking both the carefully described tortures of hell and civil punishments. All they can do are two things. One is to insist that the reason for the failures is that the people were not being Islamic ENOUGH -- the solution for the failure of Islam in political terms is MORE Islam.

And finally it is to impose their reality on the rest of the world rather than to accept the reality that causes them to doubt. And they do, violently, if necessary."

In the next post on Islam -- after some others, I hope -- I want to discuss some points I made, here, particularly about the specific negative effects of the form of literalism that is found in Islam.

But I continue to seek people who can point me in better directions, who can convince me that my fears and interpretations are overblown.

Bad Prup!!

2006-03-13T00:44:00.000-05:00

I have been neglecting this for a while -- mostly because I've gotten so busy reading other blogs and posting comments there that I forget I have one of my own. (And my comments are frequently as long as my posts.) I won't deny that the World Baseball Classic has taken up more than a little of my time as well. And maybe the one justifiable excuse is that I have been gaining more and more knowledge, and my positions are firming up a bit.

Sadly, they are firming up in a way less and less favorable to Islam. The more I read, the less likely I think that a reformation in it is possible, and the more likely I see of a major conflict with it. I continue to hope that someone will show me I am wrong, but the hope is getting thinner and thinner. (A bloger has promised to send me a book dealing with Muslim women that i expect to weigh carefully. She is one of the participants in it, and she is a woman who converted in adult life to Islam, so she'll be showing me a distinctly different viewpoint.)

I will be continuing the series, and I will also be doing posts on other things, including getting back to my cats, discussing the upcoming baseball season, and the season finales of STARGATE, ATLANTIS, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, as well as other things my wandering mind lights on. I'll try to post at least every other day, maybe I can squeeze out the time for daily postings.

Thanx for the nice comments I have already received. And let's cheat a bit and reuse a long comment I made on a blog for my next post.

Changing my mind

2006-03-03T19:18:00.000-05:00

I will not be posting the next part of my discussion on Islam until the begining of next week, at the earliest. I want to widen the topics on this blog, get back to politics, cats, tv, even mystery stories. (I may either copy or link to a discussion I am having with the Egyptian blogger, Tomanbay,
http://tomanbay.blogspot.com/ -- sorry, but my dashboard is not putting up links properly)
about a mufti who he sees as a possible voice for reason, but who I have my doubts about. (The discussion is already getting lively with a third party entering into the fray, so you might check it out.)

And much of what I have written and will be writing about is also covered on a VERY important website,
http://www.secularislam.org/Default.
which is the home page of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society.

But this is NOT what i am changing my mind about, though the information on the website is quite important to my change. Two weeks ago, I would have stated that the idea of a "Reformed Islam" was a desireable theoretical possibility, but that I doubted it would be politically practical. There are many Muslims in the blogosphere -- as well as those on my old fourm -- who have discussed the idea. But I felt that the key was that they were not either in power or seeking power. I know of no Muslim country where there is a Reformist, Secularist movement that is actually contending with the government -- usually secular governments are battling hard-line Islamicizers and making concession after concession to defeat them, up to the point of some attempt at instuting a version of Sharia law. (Turkey, with its unique history and the legacy of Ataturk is something of an exception, but even there, religious parties are important players and have gotten their own concessions.)

I am afraid that, were any Reformist group to actually approach power, to begin to gain seats or to challenge for the presidency or prime ministership of a Muslim country, the hardliners would use every weapon, including violence and election fraud, to keep them out of power. (Were they to gain power, well, we have seen Muslim governments do their best to destabilize Muslim countries that they disapprove of.)

But after the events of the last two weeks, I have come to the conclusion that a "Reform Islam" is no longer even a theoretical possibility. (The key events were the events in Iraq and the declaration signed by Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and ten other intellectuals who were raised Muslim. If you are unaware of this, I'll refer you to Tomanbay again, since he was the first person to mention this.

The complete list of signers is:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

I decided to Google each of them and read more about them, except for Hirsi Ali who I have already discussed here. The comments I read, and the quotes from their works convinced me that Islam is not reformable.

Let me give an analogy. I had an old computer before I got my present one last year. It was so old that it had an original Pentium chip, and that had been new when I bought it. My wife asked if we couldn't just 'fix it up,' rather than replace it.

I explained that to 'fix it up' I'd have to replace the CPU. I'd have to change the motherboard, or I couldn't install the new CPU. I'd have to change the video card and have more video memory, and probably the sound card as well. I'd have to add about 20 times the RAM and replace the hard drive with one that was at least 40 times as big. And I'd have to change the modem, which was 28.8 kps. I might even have to change the cooling system because of the new CPU. In other words, to 'fix it up,' I'd be left with nothing but the case and maybe the speakers, and the case wasn't in great shape either.

Sadly, that is a good analogy for Islam. I am afraid that there is too much wrong with it for a reform movement to succeed, that the changes would simply leave 'nothing but the case.' Now certainly there are other religions which have the same problems as Islam. Mormonism, Christian Science, the Jehovah's Witnesses come to mind. BUT THEY DON"T CONTROL COUNTRIES, and they don't attempt to use blackmail and violence to win acceptance for their own beliefs. (And they don't consider 'apostasy' punishable by death.)

Were Islam, at least in the West, able to accept Western values and liberties (including the liberty any Westerner has to leave the religion he was brought up in), were there no attempts to acquire special treatment for their communities, were there none of the horrors of forced and kidnapped marriages, compulsory veiling, even honor killings in the West, were there not attempts to establish Sharia law in Western societies, were there not violent attacks in the West, I might, regretfully, argue that Islamic countries had the right to establish their own systems, that Muslims had the right to their own beliefs, and to hope for the eventual triumph of reason and rationality. (Though I'd also want the West to offer asylum easily to those who were fleeing Islamic societies.)

Sadly, I am afraid that this is not going to happen, and the possible consequences scare me, which has been the point of this entire discussion of Islam.

MPwI 3.2 Infectious literalism

2006-02-27T19:29:00.000-05:00

Finally I get to the point of this section -- though if you have read the earlier posts, you know I'll be doing some dancing around it as well.

What is the problem with fundamentalism, both in general and in the specific Muslim variant? The answer is the effect not just on a person's religious views -- as I've said, I support the right to be wrong -- but on the overall way he views the world. For me, one of the most important mental skills a person needs to develop is 'critical thinking,' the ability to weigh a statement against the evidence, against facts and the 'real world,' the ability to accept that people, even religious leaders, political leaders, teachers, and parents can be wrong. (Even to take the first step of understanding that religious leaders, politicians, teachers, and parents are people first, and not labels, is useful.)

Now I am not saying that we should automatically reject what such people tell us, any more than that we should automatically accept it. The person who says "Politicians are all liars' is just as stupid as the one who says "Our President tells us... and Presidents wouldn't lie." Both are using labels rather than looking at people, they are just using different ones. A skeptic, at least in the sense I use it, is not just a 'doubter' or all the alternate medicine cranks and holocaust deniers would qualify. He's someone who insists on checking statements against facts.

And that skill is the one thing any fundamentalist finds difficult to develop. Difficult and dangerous. Because if you have the skill, there's always that temptation to use it on your religion, on your religious leaders, on your 'sacred-text.'

And no fundamentalist viewpoint can stand up to that. (The other parts of the spectrum can. The 'conservative' and 'liberal' views -- I defined them in Part 3.1 for newcomers -- can accept the allegories, the simple errors and contradictions, the fact that the writer was a 'product of his time,' and says things that fitted then but we've grown out of -- like Paul's defense of slavery and the prohibition against wearing clothes made from two different types of cloth, even (easier for liberals than conservatives) the sexism, homophobia, and myths, creationist, floods, etc.)

But a fundamentalist can't use critical thinking on his sacred text without his world-view being shaken. If the works are 'God's Word,' how can they have errors?

It's a difficult and dangerous balancing act at best. Maybe some can train themselves to think critically about some things and build a 'Chinese Wall' sealing off religion. Some can see the problems, can raise the objections, and then be told by their religious leader to just 'have faith,' and they'll get through their period of doubt. (A friend of mine from the old forum, a person who I called 'the best advertisment for Islam I had known,' told me he'd gone through that stage and survived with his faith intact.) And some simply accept the problems and say, in the Catholic phraseology, "Credo quia incredibile." (I believe because it is incredible.)

But those, I would expect, are the exceptions. Most literalists simply make sure they never pick up the skill. For them, the 'voice of authority' is enough. If a person with the right label, or the right costume, or the right oratory tells them something, they'll believe it, especially if the person plays to the right prejudices.

And there's a joker in the deck there. The one way NOT to convince this sort of person, frequently, is to parade evidence before him, to demonstrate the way critical thinking supports your position or criticizes his. Again, if he accepts the benefits of critical thinking, he's in the danger I discussed above.

(This may be why so many non-critical thinkers will accept the wildest crackpottery or medical quackery on mere say-so, but will dismiss anything a scientific investigator or someone who actually knows something about medicine has to say.)

What i've written here would fit a fundamentalist Christian perfectly well -- or even a fundamentalist, uncritical atheist and there are such.

But Islam's particular type of fundamentalism/literalism has extra aspects, and it is one of the reason why I worry that Islam cannot change, why I do fear the rush to a serious, dangerous clash.

But that will go into the next post -- and why do I think this doesn't surprise you?

And furthermore...

2006-02-27T18:21:00.000-05:00

Three quick things, on various topics.

1: I am not just worried about the possibility of a conflict between Islam and the West. I may be even more worried about intra-Islamic conflict between any combination of Sunnis, Shiites, Selafis, or a conflict between an Islamicized country and a country which is making strides towards reform.

2: I have requested a number of people to comment on my arguments. with the length of my posts, comments could easily get buried -- even my fingers get tired paging down to check. So if anyone wants their comments in the form of posts, just e-mail them to me and I'll copy and post them. (For all I know there's an easier way of doing this, and, maybe someday I'll figure it out. I'm even going to get a blogroll up soon, I hope.)

3: Sprout, my orange bed-cat, has been complaining that I posted Poo's bio, and then stopped when he was next in line. Can't get my favorite lion mad at me, so after I post another post in the topic, I'll take a break from trivialities like world politics and deal with the important thing in life, cats, or at least one cat.

Interlude -- why this series

2006-02-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a tolerant person. How many other ex-Catholic athiests are not extremely anti-Catholic? I consider Catholicism wrong about a lot of things, but, except in the area of sex/gender/reproduction, I think it has done as much good as harm, and I am still glad and proud that I went to a Jesuit High School. And, because I insist on the 'right to be wrong' -- I need it myself often enough -- I even accept tax exemptions for religious salaries, income, expenses and real estate for specifically religious purposes -- though I would not extend it to businesses or real estate owned by churches but not used for narrowly-defined church-related purposes.

And I have always been skeptical of gloom-and-doom culture clash scenarios. I grew up in the 50s, during the height of the Cold War, when many people were sure there would be an atomic clash between Communism and the West. I saw that, in every case where there had been a Communist revolutio in a country, it was against the advice of the USSR who cautioned that it wasn't time. And then I realized that, since Lenin, there hadn't been a Soviet ruler who actually believed in Marxism no matter how much lip service they paid it.

During the Nixon phase of the Vietnam War, when so many people were expecting either a 'revolution' or an extreme repression, I kept my faith in Democracy and expected things to settle down without the clash.

But this time I AM scared. I do not see a settlement of THIS cultural clash. Yes, there are moderate Muslims, a lot of them in the blogosphere. (And anybody who reads blogs from the young Iraqis like Baghdad Girl, Coloured Bubbles, and A Star from Mosul will see there is plenty of hope in the next generation, if it gets that far.)

But this is the blogosphere, and much as I'd like to, I can't live there. In the outside world, I don't see any effective movement by the truly secular or Reformist Muslims that has even begun to have any political power. What I see are, for the most part, semi-secular regimes who need to pay deep obesiance to the religious elements to maintain power, being pushed on one side by the Islamicizers, and not being pushed at all by the secular/Reformist elements.

I want to believe I'm wrong, that the clash of world-views is resolvable, that there is an effective Reform Islam in the works -- 'moderate Muslims' are NOT the same thing. They share the same world view, only the interpret it differently -- or that I am misinterpreting Islam and its beliefs. That's why I've asked and will be asking a number of bloggers to 'come and argue with me,' both Muslims and skeptics (particularly the sort who understand 'critical thinking').

And that's why I am laying out, at lengths interminably long even for me, what problems I see.

MPwI 3.1 The Qur'an and L/F

2006-02-26T21:09:00.000-05:00

I was able to get back to this sooner than I expected, though this still may not be complete until tomorrow -- I'll publish a preliminary piece of it if I don't complete this section.

For someone who is just discovering this blog, this is a continuation of my previous post, and it probably would be a good idea to wade through that first, at least the final section on the 'spectrum' of attitudes towards the 'sacred text' as shown in Judaism and Christianity. (Hey, I warned people I was long-winded.)

Anyway, once I started investigating Islam and the Qur'an, I found significant difference from the other religions, some of which I think may go a long way towards explaining the conflicts between "Islam" and "The West."

First, the Testaments are 'anthologies,' collections of books by many different writers. Even the most conservative of Christians have no problem in accepting that there are at least 8 writers in the New Testament. Most scholars would put the number considerably higher. And the Old Testament is a melange of different books, mostly uncredited. (Orthodox Jews hold that the Torah, the first five books were by Moses, but few other Jews and few scholars would accept this. It is generally conceded, except by the Orthodox that they are the weaving together of the works of at least four different writers.) As for the other books, they simply aren't credited, for the most part, and seem to be by many different writers.

The Qur'an claims to be, and obviously is, by one writer. Most Muslims would state this author was Allah, through the medium of Gabriel, dictating the work to Mohammed. (In section four of this I will argue, I believe conclusively, that this cannot be so. However, I have no problem in believing that Mohammed believed in his visions and thought he was receiving Divine Dictation. Perhaps not completely, there seems to be some evidence that some of the work was deliberately shaped by him to meet the changing circumstances, but even then I would have no problem accepting that he believed he was led by Allah to do so.)

The Testaments are filed with stories, people, characters. There is very little of this in the Qur'an. A few stories are referenced from the Testaments, but without the details of the original -- and occasionally with the details changed. (I still have no idea where the she-camel story comes from, the one possibly original story in it.) And the stories are not told AS stories, or AS parables. They are rather used as parts of sermons. Because that is what the Qur'an is, a collection of sermons.

These last two sections have a certain importance i will discuss later. But what makes Islam so different are the claims it makes, and the Spectrum of Belief (If you didn't get through my last post, I'll explain this briefly when i get to it.)

Even to someone who has been exposed to the most extreme Fundamentalist Christianity the level of claim made for the Qur'an is staggering.

First is that the book was in fact dictated by Allah in its entirety. Mohammed was merely a 'messenger of Allah,' who in no way composed the book. (There is a problem with this on its face because of the method of compilation, but we;ll get to this in a later section.) Thus what is there cannot be changed, cannot be reconsidered in the light of changing circumstances. (This is not just an article of faith, it is a logical necessity, since if Allah wrote this, since he knew the future, he would have anticipated any changing circumstances and made allowances for them.)

Also following from this is that it is true from beginning to end. (A Diety cannot lie, because if he were capable of lying how could you trust anything that he said? The legal axiom "false in ine, false in all" applies even more strongly here.)

It is true that Allah claims that some of the work is literally true and some is allegorical. (Sura 3:7 Pickthal translation:

3:7 He it is Who hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture wherein are clear revelations - they are the substance of the Book - and others (which are) allegorical. But those in whose hearts is doubt pursue, forsooth, that which is allegorical seeking (to cause) dissension by seeking to explain it. None knoweth its explanation save Allah. And those who are of sound instruction say: We believe therein; the whole is from our Lord; but only men of understanding really heed.

Yusuf Ali puts it as:
7. He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:" and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding.

Shakir:
He it is Who has revealed the Book to you; some of its verses are decisive, they are the basis of the Book, and others are allegorical; then as for those in whose hearts there is perversity they follow the part of it which is allegorical, seeking to mislead and seeking to give it (their own) interpretation. but none knows its interpretation except Allah, and those who are firmly rooted in knowledge say: We believe in it, it is all from our Lord; and none do mind except those having understanding.

None of which, to me, clears things up, and none imply that the words themselves or the ideas expressed can be changed. If the book declares that interest is forbidden, or that two women's testimony in certain matters equals one man's, those are not allegories, and they remain true.)

------------------------(breathe, get coffee, come back -------

The second claim is that this is not just Allah's revelation, but his final one. "The book of prophecy is closed, the pen is put away, the inkwell has run dry." (I'm not sure if this comes from the Hadith, but a member of the forum used it, and it was so well-said I have used it. I do not believe that a strict Muslim would deny it.)

Think about this for a minute. EVERYTHING Allah had to say to mankind is in this book, expressed in terms understandable to a 7th Century Arab. Forget whatever growth in knowledge we have had over the past 1350 years, forget the growth in morals that has seen us realize the evil slavery is, the evil it was to take women prisoners in war and marry them by right of conquest, forget the political changes, the social changes that came after that time. The message is here, once and for all.

(And Allah, we must assume, had the option when he would make this final revelation. He could have waited a millenia or so to find his messenger. If he chose to make it then, to close his message then, it was deliberate. Those other changes in humanity, in knowledge, in social arrangements, in morals, COULDN'T have mattered, or else he would just have waited before he sent Gabriel to Earth. Again, there is no changing of this message, no reinterpreting it in light of Copernicus, Gallileo, Darwin, Jefferson, Lincoln, King, Einstein, Pasteur, even Shakespear. The 'inkwell has run dry,' and Allah knew it would.)

And then there is the third incredible claim. This message is not just the message Allah gave to Mohammed, it is the same message he gave to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus. And they got it right. It was just their followers who messed it up. I have heard it said, quite definitely that Jesus was a Muslim, that Adam was a Muslim, that Moses was a Muslim. (Oops, there goes evolution, because if Adam was a Muslim, that means he existed.)

-----take another break, your bladder MUST be full --------------

If the "Spectrum of belief' was the same in Islam as it was in Christianity and Judaism, this wouldn't be that important. I described this Spectrum in the last post. I didn't give names or (purely illustrative) percentages to the divisions. I'll try that here, but to understand it, go back and check out the post.

Christianity and Judaism divide pretty much like this -- again, these aren't meant to be accurate numbers, just illustrative
Literalist/Fundamentalist 5%
Conservative 25%
Liberal 25%
Casual/secular 20%
Social/customary 20%
Atheist/Agnostic 5%
(I'm basing my figures on America and Europe for Christianity. In America you'd see a jump in the Literalist/Fundamentalist number and a drop in the others, mostly in the Liberal.)

Now there is a wide range of opinion in Islam, but NOT because these groups exist in similar numbers. Islam has no heirarchy, no authoritative clergy. The interpretation of what the words mean differs from person to person, from group to group, but there is almost no difference as to the fact that the words are literally true.

The Literalist/Fundamentalist group is not a small minority, it is the majority. And the second and third groups seem to disappear.

PLEASE, this is my observation. If anyone can correct me on this, please do. I hope I AM wrong about this.

It seems as if people move from Fundamentalist to secular or customary without stopping, and many move straight out the door to atheism or rejection at least of Islam.

And this, as I'll show in my next post, leads to a GREAT number of difficulties.

And there is a final claim of Islam. Not as strong as the others, at least not in the extension of it. But there. That islam is a 'complete way of life,' not a religion. Everything involves Islam. Perhaps the most important part of this involves the insistence of Muslims that they must be under Sharia law.

We'll come back to this later, but the key is that, for a large number of Muslims, this involves politics as well. Islam is seen as an eventual world government, there is a belief in the revival of the caliphate, of a working towards a Unification of all Muslims, or at the least of turning Muslim states into Islamic states. Another thing that will be important in future posts.

Okay, you can relax now. That buzzing and ringing in your ears will fade after a while. But there will be more, tomorrow.

Because Literalism has a cost, a very serious cost. And I'll start discussing this in my next post.

MPwI 3 - The Qur'an and literalism/fundamentalism

2006-02-26T19:23:00.000-05:00

(At last some meat, or at least a healthy-sized appetizer. I'll still wander a bit, but this will start getting to the point -- and no, for those who have spoken with me 'getting to the point is NOT against my religion,' it just takes me a while.)

About seven months ago, I had never had much discussion with Muslims, and I had only glanced at the copy of the Qur'an I owned -- the Palmer translation. I had assumed my problems with it was due to the age of the translation, and had put reading it on my "To Do -- Someday" list.

I had expected it, in my ignorance, to be much like the Bible, a collection of anecdotes, parables, stories, speeches, rules, etc. I certainly never expected to find anything in it that would challenge my atheism, any more than I did in the Testaments. But I expected, as I do with the Testaments, to find parts that were interesting, uplifting, morally wise, charming, even beautiful. If I did not expect divinity, I expected humanity. Some things I knew would repel me, or I would consider absurd, again as with the Testaments, but I expected these would be in the minority. And, at the least, I expected a 'good read.'

I also expected to find a spectrum among Muslims something similar to the one I found with Christians and Jews. There would be a small minority of 'literalist/fundamentalists,' who saw the book as the 'word of God,' unchangeable, every word meaningful and unquestionable. (For later reference, I'll number the groups. I)

There would a considerably larger group that accepted the book as the 'divinely inspired Word of God,' and accepted this in essence, accepted the existence of a divinity much like the one portrayed, but realized that the books were also the word of men, affected by their times, limited by their human abilities.(II)

A similar-sized group would accept the basic idea of a divinity as described in the book, would accept that the essence was accurate in religious terms, but would realize that many of the parts were questionable, contradictory, or simply wrong. (The most common Christian Phraseology is "The Bible is a book of Religion, it is not meant as a book of History or Science.")(III)

The next group would be more secular, who would accept, maybe in general terms that there was a God, for Christians, that Jesus was also divine, but didn't think that much about it. They'd accept parts of the Bible as having gotten it right, but realize that it was a work written by men, good, ethical men, men who believed, but who would give it only a little more weight than any other religious work, Augustine's CITY OF GOD, Theresa's mystical writings, Maimonedes and Hillel, maybe even the texts of Buddhism, seeing them as all attempts to find the 'right way to live.'(IV)

A smaller group would be totally secular, though maybe still performing the rituals of the religion for cultural, historical, or social reasons -- religion as a form of social binding. The type, in Christianity who might accept the Gospels, love things like the Sermon on the Mount, might weep at the Passion and Crucifixion, would probably never bother to spend much time with Paul, and who would consider the Apocalypse as the wild phantasmagoria it is, giving it little weight as anything but a collection of images.(V)

AQnd finally there would be those who were simply turned off by the nonsense in it, had no ability to accept the concept of a God, who might, as well, be turned off by the actions and history of the 'Men of God,' the preachers and teachers that used the book for power, or who were hypocrites, or whose puritanism or confusion of ritualism with ethics or denial of the wonder of human sexuality simply drove them from religion. (I am in this group, but my rejection was predominantly intellectual. I find the concept of a God an absurdity, backed by no evidence whatsoever, I am aware of the contradictions of the Testaments, the logical contradictions in the concept of a God.)(VI)

Anyway, that is the 'spectrum' of Christianity and Judaism, as I have witnessed it, and when my discussions in the Pakistani Forum and my own fascination with religion as a human activity caused me to look closer at Islam and the Qur'an, I didn't expect to find Islam that much different.

(I expected to find the Fundamentalist end a bit bigger than in the other groups, and the 'plain wacko' types like Bin Laden and the suicide bombers in Palestine to be a larger minority than the equivalent -- and I considered, at the time, that the 'suicide bombers' were innocents manipulated into political acts through the appeal to a twisted form of their religion. And I knew there were a higher proportion of Muslims who embraced some of the -- to me -- odder manifestations of their religion, the Hijab and Nijab, the praying five times a day facing Mecca. But I still expected the basic spectrum to be similar.)

Those of you who are Muslim will know that I found that few of my expectations were realized. I found a different type of book than I had expected, a different attitude towards it than I found in Christianity or Judaism, much higher claims for the Qur'an than the Testaments make, and a completely different spectrum.

But this post has gone on long enough, and the outside world is calling me. I hope to get the next post done later tonight, if not, then tomorrow evening -- I'll be busy during the day on that personal problem I've mentioned. I'll discuss what I did find when I looked into Islam and the Qur'an then.

MPwI 2 7/8 - The Qur'an

2006-02-26T19:07:00.000-05:00

Just a quick preliminary post. I am aware that, to a Muslim, the Qur'an ONLY exists in Arabic, and that any translation is properly referred to as "The Meaning of the Qur'an." I am not using that convention. I do not read Arabic, so when i refer to the Qur'an, I am referring to one of the four translations available to me, the Palmer, Pickthal, and Yusuf Ali (on the wonderful Internet sacred-texts website
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/index.htm

and the Shakir, available on
http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/

(The Palmer translation includes a lengthy introduction dealing with the history of Mohammed and the environment in which he lived. I may mention this, but as of yet I have not had a chance to compare his comments to other sources. The Shakir translation has the advantage of being searchable.)

I have also made some use of the "Skeptic's Annotated Quran" available on
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm

(For those of you who check this out and conclude it is a Christian plot to degrade Islam, at least see how he handles the Old and New Testaments. He's much rougher on them -- he also annotates the Book of Mormon, though he hasn't finished that yet. In fact, he totally misses the Qur'an's repeated support for a geocentric Universe. He uses the Pickthal translation, btw.)

My problems with Islam 2 1/2

2006-02-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note before I start on the Qur'an to insist that I do NOT blame Islam for its perversions, like Osama (or al-Zawahiri, the real brains behind OBL -- if it wouldn't be misunderstood, I'd call him the Karl Rove to Osama's Bush) or the Taliban. These are no more Islam than some of the wilder sects are Christianity. So please don't dismiss me on a 'here they go again,' auto-reaction.

My problems with Islam 2 -Help and hope, PLEASE

2006-02-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

As I said in the last post, I WANT people to argue with me, to show me where I am wrong, to prove my pessimism unjustified. Not the standard apologetics, but some evidence that the moderate, reforming Muslims won't remain in a minority, too often fearful for their lives or freedom. Some evidence that Islam can free itself from its literalness, its paranoia, its double standard that excuses anyone who 'acts in the name of Islam,' or denies it.

The wonderful Egyptian, The Big Pharoah wrote, earlier this month,

"I wrote before that we’re currently in the midst of a clash of civilizations and this clash won’t end unless Islam experience what Christianity and Judaism experienced which is religious reform. However, there is another clash going on, a subset of the larger clash of civilization, a clash between Islam and Christianity.

...

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are marching towards very dark days. The gulf between Islam and the west is getting wider everyday. And the west don’t need to show more tolerance because it has already shown it. It is us who need to change. It is us who need to complete what we started over 80 years ago and got interrupted by fake nationalism and lately chauvinistic religiosity."

He also wrote the "New 10 Commandments" which ended with

"10.Your leaders should know that what was OK in the year 706 might not be OK in the year 2006. I won’t get upset if you changed a few things in the laws and regulations as long as you continue to profess faith in me, pray to me, fast during Ramadan, give alms, and perform Hajj if you’re capable of doing so."

(Both, and much other wisdom is available at
href="href="http://bigpharaoh.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_bigpharaoh_archive.html"

Please, write in and argue with me. I may fight back against the arguments "There are moderate Muslims out there" which there are unless you can tell me they are even considering attempting to gain political power. I will not be quiet if you say "The problem is that people aren't being Islamic enough, and the solution is MORE Islam" unless you've responded to my other points.

But please, write something, not because I need comments, but because I need peace, and to stop doubting my own ability to be tolerant of something I believe is wrong, and to think that Islam is merely wrong the way Christianity is, and not the way Nazism, segregation, and Communism were.

I'll start, in my next post, with a discussion of the Qur'an, of the attitude towards it, and why I think this bleeds over into other aspects of Muslim life.

My Problems with Islam 1

2006-02-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

I was going to call this the "Muslim Mindset." I reconsidered, and am glad I did. There isn't, of course, a "Muslim mindset." Muslims aren't all of a piece. And my apologies for the cliche, but it is literally true that since I have been actively communicating on the net, most of my friends, and most of the blogs I read happen to be by Muslims. (It all started with checking out Egyptian SandMonkey's blog, and following links to links to links. If I ever get a blogroll up, there will easily be fifty to a hundred different blogs from the Middle East, or from people who came from there, and if I ever get in touch with my Pakistani friends, I'll be including many of them here.)

I read their good and sensible words -- okay sometimes some of them lean a little too much towards the neo-con for me, but I can understand this. I read their challenges of mob rule, of crazy imams, of hypocrisy, and I cheer. So many of them are secular, or speak about a moderated Islam, an Islam that -- though they might not use the word -- is truly a Reformed Islam. Or sometimes they don't discuss religion at all, just talk about their lives, what they experience, even their cats. Reading them gives me hope.

But they are such a small minority. As I read them, I also read the news, the intersect fighting in Iraq, the stories they tell of Islamicizers moving closer to power. (I know of no Muslim country where the sort of moderation that I read from Sandy, or the Big Pharaoh, or the others is even a minor political force, is even attempting to get some power. Perhaps I am wrong, please tell me I am wrong and give me examples. All i read is countries where a moderately secular government is trying to hold power against the Islamicizers, and usually making more and more concessions to them to hold on to power -- Sharia, Hudood ordinances, etc.)

And I read the others, and remember the discussions I had on that forum I have spoken of. And I remember the sites I was directed to, the arguments I got into, friendly ones yes, but the sadness of the responses I received.

And I read Omar, and his Bridging the Gap project. Such a brilliant idea, if it had been what he had purported it to be. Instead I read the same old apologetics, the same old 'don't blame us for a few crazies' (but the crazies aren't a few), 'aren't Christians sometimes terrorists too?' (yes, a minute minority that are rejected by any government they come in contact, but what Muslim government is cracking down on terrorists), "Islam isn't anti-woman, Mohammed was far ahead of Christianity when he wrote" (yes, but the West moved ahead -- partially by 'taming Christianity' and becoming secular -- but the Qur'an is immoveable and 'unchangeable.')

And I remember the superstitions and gullibility of my friends, and how sad it was that they saw the world that way. Really believing in djinns, and ghosts, and that "good dreams come from Allah, bad ones from Satan.' Creationism and the phrase one (admittedly young and not overly bright) Muslim said in the discussion, "You say monkeys turned into men, I say that men were turned into monkeys." (And I have found the verses in the Qur'an which gave him this idea). I remember the ones, not always unintelligent, not at all overly religious, who denied the Moon Landing, who bought into the "9/11 was a plot by Bush" idiocy. And the ones who in all seriousness and sincerity talked about Bush (or America) killing 'millions of Muslims.'

And the paranoia, the firm belief by so many of them, by so many writers I have read, that everybody was plotting against Islam. The belief that some of them had that "Armageddon" (and the belief that the end of days was near was as rampant among them as among the most scared of Christian Fundamentalists) would be a battle between Christians and Muslims, and their belief that Christians 'believed the same thing, the only difference was who would win.' (For those of my readers who are Muslim and who believe the same thing, let me say that I have NEVER read a Christian Apocalypticist even mentioning Muslims or Islam. They have different enemies in mind.)

And I remember a friend, who, in fact, described himself as a 'closet atheist' but who was so infected with the idea that non-Muslims were 'enemies,' that it took me a month to get him to even consider reading Naipaul, for no other reason than he was Indian (even though Naipaul's family had been Trinidadian for generations, he had no religious faith, and I praised his objectivity and abvility as a reporter.) Another discussion of Pakistan was dismissed, not because it was wrong, but because it had been published in a Bangladeshi newspaper and therefore had to be unworthy of notice.

And then come the true horrors -- and don't tell me that Christians do the same. They have committed some horrors, as have Jews, and Hindus, and others. But if I could put a pie graph here of all the horrors in the past twenty-five years, the suicide bombings, the religious riots, the other bombings, the murders of 'people who have offended our religion', the honor killings and girls kidnapped into marriage, the rapes as 'punishment', the beheadings and kidnappings and murders in churches and destruction of religious symbols and sites -- all the actions that were taken 'in the name of religion' there would be tiny, almost invisible slices for the other religions, maybe, with the abortion clinic bombings and the 'troubles' in Ireland, a larger slice for Christianity, but 99% of the chart would be colored green.

Now I have some ideas as to why these attitudes, these problems are endemic to Islam, and I am going to explore them. Hopefully more coherently than I have in this post. But please, i WANT arguements about what i have to say. As I'll explain in the next post.

(And yes, I'll get back to cats, and tv, and domestic politics soon enough.)

Not quite yet

2006-02-23T21:54:00.000-05:00

Another delay in posting. The personal problem has settled down, but the events in Iraq yesterday and today have gotten me so divided between anger and depression that I am afraid I couldn't post anything about Islam with anything like rationality. Fortunately the existence of Iraqi bloggers of all types is calming me a little. Tomorrow hopefully.

Slight goof

2006-02-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

For some reason the title to my post on Islam below got removed. It should have been listed as "My experience with Muslims and Islam."

The "Word From Above"

2006-02-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

Everybody else has his or her own blog, so why not God? If you want to know what he has to say, check out

http://bigoldgod.blogspot.com/

Since I am an atheist, I have to admit that I can't really accept this is by a diety. On the other hand, if I ever were to be convinced of the existence of one, I'd hope he'd be like this particular God, funny, caustic, tolerant, and friendly.

As I so frequently must, I give thanks to the Egyptian Sandmonkey for turning me on to this.

http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/powers-that-blog.html#comments

(The Lucifer blog he refers to isn't nearly as clever or funny. And the "Talk to God" blog that Lucifer links to isn't worth your time. Different 'aspect of the deity' entirely.)

As I said to Sandmonkey, what would be interesting is one purporting to come from Allah or Mohammed. Unfortunately, neither of them seem gifted with a sense of humor, nor do their followers.

2006-02-20T21:21:00.000-05:00

I have been promising, in comments on several sites, to post a long discussion of my view of the "Muslim Mindset." (Of course, that would be idiocy if taken literally. Muslims are no more 'all alike' than any other group.) What I am going to try to portray and explain are certain traits that seem to be very common in Muslims that result in some of the conflicts and misunderstandings on both side of the Muslim/Western rationalistic divide.

Some of the topics I hope to touch on, in what may become a long series of posts -- and I seem to have a number of 'series of posts started, which i do expect to get back to and complete -- include the difference in the attitude of Muslims to the Qur'an (similar to the Fundamentalist/Literalist mindset of a minority of American Christians, but with some specific twists), the Muslim tendency towards gullibility and lack of critical thinking, the Muslim paranoia that frequently sees every other group's actions as aimed at Islam, the confusion between opponent and 'enemy,' the Muslim double standard that frequently seems to prohibit or explain away or deny actions by other Muslims -- or to claim of any Muslim that does anything wrong that 'he isn't really a Muslim.' (This leads in the extreme to '9/11 denial'(and I should state that I do not consider the Osamists anything other than perverters of Islam, not exemplars of it), but also comes up in discussions of things such as 'honor killings' and women's right.

But what right have I to talk about such things, or rather what right do I have to be listened to when I do. All I can do is give some of the sources of my observations -- and to stress that I have only discussed things that seem to be patterns shown in various observations. (I have also requested several Muslim bloggers to look in on and comment on these observations.)

I am someone who follows world news, and who has also been interested in History for much of my life. (And I am the sort of person who tries to read several books on a given subject and to 'triangulate' the various observations rather than accepting them whole.) I have studied areas such as the Middle East, the split between India and Pakistan, etc. I have also followed and read closely comments about events that have been in the news over the past few months. The Danish cartoon controversy, of course, but also the stories of Mukhtar Mai and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, stories of honor killings, the Indonesian beheadings, the Pakistan church killings, the Saudi Arabian destruction of Islamic historical sites, etc. In each case I have been as interested in the reaction to such events by Muslims as I was in the events themselves.

I have found the insights in V.S. Naipaul's AMONG THE BELIEVERS very valuable, even though they are somewhat dated. Even older by a hundred years is the introduction to E.H. Palmer's translation of the Qur'an, and I am still hoping to get other sources on his statements, but I found his description of Mahammed and the early history of Islam to be thought-provoking.

My most important insights came, however, from a five month period I spent on an almost entirely Pakistani forum. (I didn't go there to 'do research.' I went there because I love Pakistani music, and expected to be discussing that. Instead I found a very wide range of topics being discussed from many varied viewpoints, and was welcomed when I joined in on these.

I cannot stress enough that despite my status as an 'odd duck' -- not coming from South Asia or of South Asian descent (there were a handful of Indians, everyone else was Pakistani or Kashmiri), non-Muslim and in fact an atheist, (there were a couple of Hindus and one Pakistani Christian, everyone else was brought up Muslim, though there were some who had left the faith), the second oldest in a group of mostly teenagers and people in their twenties, bisexual in a somewhat sexually conservative group -- I was received with great friendship and respect and, in fact have rarely enjoyed the company of a group of people as much as i did them. I left the group voluntarily because, after having finally begun discussing my atheism and in the heated and lively discussion being repeatedly referred to the Qur'an, I finally read it through. I realized that if I stayed, I would find myself attacking their faith instead of merely giving my own beliefs. Many of them were at the age when I ceased being able to be a believer. I have never doubted that i made the right choice in this, but it was an extremely stressful decision and i simply refused to possibly be the direct cause of some of them making the same decision. So I left.

But while i was there i heard many things that helped me get an idea of what i have called the Muslim mindset, things that have only been confirmed in seeing other comments by Muslims. (Even when they were Muslims who objected as strongly as i did to the attitudes that bothered me, they described them and I saw echoes in the discussions I had had. And few of them would claim to be in anything but the minority when they objected, few would claim the attitudes i saw were 'just a few extremists,' mostly because many of them lived in communities where they saw the ideas expressed every day. (Not that any of them, or any of the forum members would necessarily accept my interpreatation of them.)

Anyway, that's why I think what i think about islam. Over the next few days i will be describing in detail what it is i DO think. sorry for the length this is getting to be, but i hope at least a couple of your have gone through it at least enough to have an idea where I am coming from.

Now it is 45

2006-02-18T16:52:00.000-05:00

People killed in the cartoon riots. At least according to the Associated Press.

In my discussion of blame in the last post, I should have made a special point of condemning the imam who forged three cartoons -- truly offensive ones, far worse than the original -- and included them in the folder he claimed had been printed. If they actually had been in the group, it would have made the over-reaction, if not excusable, a little more understandable.

27 and counting

2006-02-17T21:33:00.000-05:00

I have probably overlooked some, but right now the death toll stands at at least 27 as a direct result of Muslim violence in responce to the 'insult' of the cartoons. 10 in Libya, 12 in Afghanistan, 5 in Pakistan (including an 8 year old boy). I'd appreciate anyone telling me any I've missed. I will keep a running total on this blog every day. Is Muslim society the only current one where instituting the Code Duello would mean an improvement?

And no, I do NOT blame the newspapers who originally or subsequently published the cartoons, even if they were meant as deliberate provocations. Free speech MEANS being provocative, and it belongs to everyone, not just to those who can pass a test of political innocuousness.

Why we are in Iraq

2006-02-17T00:40:00.000-05:00

I'll start by saying I think we made many mistakes in going into Iraq, that I opposed it and still do -- though I supported the first Gulf War. I believe we should have worked with the United Nations to solve the problem. I think the American people and the world were misled about the reasons for going into Iraq. I believe that, while toppling Saddam was a good thing, and whatever push we have given Iraq towards a working Democracy is good, many of our actions -- in Fallujah and Abu Gharaib in particular -- and our lack of a coherent way of leaving may threaten to undo that good. And I feel our blunders have so disgusted the American people that a possibly far more justifiable attack on a nuclear Iran has become politically impossible.

I think we have to begin a disengagement, but one which whill preserve as much as possible of the good results of our incursion. (And I do not think we can disengage entirely until Saddam has been convicted and imprisoned or executed -- war crimes committed by a head of state or his closest associates might be the only exception I would make to my opposition to the death penalty. If a Saddam were not put to death, it would leave open the possibility of a 'return from Elba,' the worst possible result of our incursion.)

But what this is about is why we are there. By now certain things are obvious to all but the most hypnotized. There were no WMD, and Bush had been told this. There was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam -- in fact Saddam represented the sort of secularist leader of a Muslim country that Bin Laden most hated. And there were plans for the invasion of Iraq that predated 9/11.

Most people see the invasion as a 'fiendishly clever' scheme by Bush -- even supporters see it as this in some cases, of course agreeing with the ends. (For those who see the absurdity of combining George Bush and 'fiendishly clever,' the villains are the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Cheney group, manipulating Howdy Georgy.)

I'm going to suggest another explanation. It's pure speculation, but based on a lot of observation of Dubya, and the memory of two facts that get overlooked.

I do not believe George Bush LIED about the WMD or AlQaeda link. Lying is making statements that are known to be false. I believe that George Bush believed they were true. I believe he has the sort of religious mentality that, when it believes it knows "THE TRUTH" and is shown facts that contradict it, equally 'knows' the facts HAVE to be wrong and can be disregarded. (It's the mentality of Creationists, among many other types -- and his occasional support for Creationism seems heartfelt rather than political.)

I believe he convinced himself because, from the time he entered office, he wanted to invade Iraq, and he needed an excuse -- not to the world, but for his own conscience. (It's not a new phenomena. It's like the person who deliberately antagonizes someone so he will swing, and the first person can argue, "I didn't want to fight, I was just acting in self-defense.")

I don't think he was manipulated at all. I doubt if he understood the Wolfowitz/neo-con arguments. He was just glad to have them as a further 'cover.'

But why? Here is where I am speculating, but my explanation seems at least plausible. Remember two things. First, that Saddam was behind an attempt on the Senior Bush's life. Second, that Bush I got criticized, by many people, put particularly by Republicans, for failing to 'press on to Baghdad' and topple Saddam -- at a time when most of the world expected precisely that, and much of it -- including the Muslim world -- hoped he would.

Then remember 1994. It seems obvious, and has been stated repeatedly, that the Bush family had a plan to avenge Daddy's defeat by Bill Clinton. Jeb would run for Governor of Florida, and George for the Texas Statehouse. Jeb -- the handsome, charismatic, appealing one -- would win, and use it as a springboard to the White House. If George won, great. He could use the office as a way of helping Jeb. And he couldn't do much damage, since the Texas Governor is one of the weakest of State Executives. (I've seen it stated by students of Texas politics that he not only ranks below the heads of the legislature, but below the Secretary of Agriculture.) If not, which was likely since he was trying to defeat Ann Richards, okay, he at least had a shot.

The only thing that nobody expected was what happened. Jeb lost, and George -- Dumb, funny-looking, overly religious, uncharismatic ex-drunk George -- WON. Okay, change the strategy, and hope the Democrats run somebody beatable even by George. (And Jeb DID manage to win the Governorship in 1998, so he'd be able to help, but nobody guessed how his help would be needed or given.)

Now George isn't the brightest, but he's not a total idiot. And, as people tend to forget about politicians, he's a human being first, a member of a family, with the stresses any family puts on a child, only magnified because of the prominence of THIS family.

Think about it. Think about a child, probably loved, but looked down on. Little Georgie, getting a chance to do two things at once. First to avenge Daddy. (Look, Daddy, see what I did for you!) And then to succeed at one thing that Daddy 'failed' at. (Look, Daddy, you couldn't get rid of Saddam. But look at who did. Me. Dumb George. I did what you couldn't. Who's the dumb one now?)

I can't prove it, it's pure speculation, but it makes a lot more sense to me than any of the other theories I've heard.

What do you think?

This one I DON'T understand

2006-02-14T10:57:00.000-05:00

I've always tended to get a lot of wrong number calls, but recently I have been getting automated ones. The phone rings, I pick it up, and an obviously mechanical voice goes "Sorry, my mistake."

Huh?

It seems likely there is something behind this. If five minutes later I got a call from one of the many services trying to offer me a new mortgage -- on a house I don't own -- or a GREAT BUY on satellite tv -- which, being sensible, I got years ago -- or the discount coupon book I won for entering a contest in local shopping malls -- which I haven't been to in ten years -- I'd understand it. But so far I haven't gotten any followup.

Is there some sort of mechanical equivalent of "if a man answers, hang up?" (Wonder how they would have dealt with my mother, whose voice was so 'masculine' that I loved seeing the look on the faces of friends when she called their homes. "Who is this?"
"Jim's mother."
"His WHAT!!!!???)

Does anyone out there have the faintest idea what is going on with these calls?

Err, the pictures were supposed to be there

2006-02-14T02:03:00.000-05:00

And they will be, soon. I was told they were uploaded, but somehow they didn't show up. Well, if you learn by your mistakes, give me a couple of more weeks and I'll be a bloody genius.

Meet The Family: 1 (Poo)

2006-02-13T15:04:00.000-05:00

The family includes five cats, one wife, and me -- and I assure you Em would want the cats listed first too. Rather than introduce them all at once, -- they can be a bit overwhelming in a group -- I figure I'll let you meet one at a time, hopefully every other day or so.

The first one -- I'm going in order of seniority here -- is Poo, our feisty old lady, who actually has been here longer than I have. We aren't sure whether she is 19 or 20. She was an adult cat 18 years ago when Em's then roommate, Roz, found her chained up outside a store on Chambers Street and rescued her, and she's been with Em ever since.

She doesn't show her age much. Occasionally she'll have a 'senior moment' when she stands around looking confused, wondering what she was doing, but I've been having those sorts of moments myself for about 50 years. She looks frail and delicate, but she's got the best appetite of any of the group, and when her plate is finished she'll pick the nearest plate and start finishing that.

Oh, she loves to eat. She's always been bossy, but she's refined it through the years. Now, if I'm a little late with a meal, she lets the whole house know it. If I'm more than a little late, she lets all of Midwood -- my section of Brooklyn -- know it. I try and tell her that I know she's lying when she insists that she hasn't been fed for three whole days -- it's usually closer to six hours since the five cats get fed three cans a day plus dry food -- but she gets even more insistent.

And her 'frailty' doesn't stop her from being part of the 'sparring matches' that our cats have made part of their pre-meal ritual. But it does win her a few special privileges. Our house -- actually we have the bottom floor of the house Em grew up in, we got it when her folks moved permanently to Florida -- can get chilly, so Poo is taken out to the living room couch at night and tucked in with blankets surrounding her. And there are certain 'people foods' that she automatically gets a share of, tuna, other fish, or chicken.

She's not as mobile as when we first moved in here four years ago. The move was a very good thing for her. In our old apartment she was a little too crowded and had some trouble with the younger cats -- she's always been a problem in one way. Somehow, even as a young cat, she never got the page in the cat manual about covering up after bathroom trips, and some of our cats are very formal and would get annoyed at her. To the point where she was spending almost all her time on the kitchen table. (Surprisingly enough, the cat that caused the most trouble for her when she was on the floor was the one who would sleep there with her, you'll meet Kittenz in due time.)

But here she had more room, eight rooms rather than three, and she was freer to wander around without getting into trouble, and the cat room -- we have turned one room completely over to the cats, for their dining room with a closet for their bathroom -- meant she had less trouble. But she still now limits her excursions to the living room, the radiator in the parlor and her own chair in the hall outside the cat room -- even if Em is stiing on it, when she wants it, she gets it.

She no longer comes and sleeps on my ankles, though she's sleep on Em's chest when she's lying on the living room couch, and her purr is a lot weaker. But she's still a loving and much loved member of the family.

And here are a couple of (bad) pictures of her. Unfortunately, I took the batch of pictures you will be seeing here. Em has promised to take some more when we can, and she's a much beter photographer.

But, to introduce Miss Pooness -- Poo for short

The trouble with this here bloggin' stuff

2006-02-13T14:51:00.000-05:00

Is that there is so much good stuff available to read that sometimes I get lost in a series of blogs and forget I'm supposed to be posting one of my own. Yesterday I was reading a great group of them from the Middle East -- or by people from the Middle East who have moved to America. Today I almost got trapped in the Carnival of Bad History #4
http://www.neuralgourmet.com/badhistory/4/cobh4 but pulled myself out in time. Anyway, if you see me miss a few days, blame yourselves for not being boring enough.

How could I forget

2006-02-12T12:35:00.000-05:00

When I mentioned The Big Pharaoh to also include these other voices.

Nadz Online - a delightfully tart-tongued Palestinian-American
http://nadz101.blogspot.com/

And the wonderful Egyptian SandMonkey
http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/

There will be many more entries on my blogroll, once I've got one, but these two should be checked out soonest.

Prup

Maybe I've finally figured out

2006-02-11T15:55:00.000-05:00

how to post a link. If so, here's one everyone should see. It's to a very good Egyptian blog by "The Big Pharaoh" and you HAVE to see his "New Ten Commandments." Hilarious, but also very meaningful.

http://bigpharaoh.blogspot.com/

The entry is dated Feb. 09.

Advice to Democratic candidates: I

2006-02-11T15:00:00.000-05:00

Many years ago (at least 45) I was, briefly, a fan of professional wrestling, not one of my prouder moments, certainly, but I was. Apparently today no one claims it is real, and because of that, they are able to script it better, with all sorts of characters. Back then there were only a few regular types. One I remember was the 'stupid hero.' His job was to go into the ring against the 'new villain' get clobbered, and thus set up -- and sell tickets for -- a big live match between the 'new villain' and the real hero.

There was almost always one scene where the villain, after pulling all sorts of 'rotten stuff' would walk towards the S.H. with his hand out. "Let's shake and stop all this dirty stuff." The audience, having IQs at least high enough to enable them to find the program in the TV guide, or to get to the arena without getting lost, knew what was coming and would yell to the S.H. "No, don't trust him."

But the hero knew he was a 'good guy' and would reach his hand out to shake, and *wham* he'd be kicked in the balls, or hit over the head, or whatever was the villain's pet nasty.

What has this got to do with politics? Well, I've seen a lot of Democrats play the part of the stupid hero over the years I've been watching politics. They play by the rules -- and rightly so -- but they seem to expect that the Republicans will too.

Guys, Republicans lie. They slander. They misquote and misrepresent. They confuse issues so badly that some Fundies are convinced that extending tax cuts appears somewhere in the Bible.

How do you THINK they keep on getting elected? You've seen the polls. You know that the majority of the people are on your side on the issues. The trouble is that you think this is the ONLY thing that matters. It matters, sure, but so does the way people feel about the candidates, and that's where the Republicans know all the tricks. They'll pick one or two controversial issues and try and get you to waffle on them (I'll have more on this in another post) and then paint you as untrustworthy. They'll misquote your record. They'll do anything they can to make the election about YOU.

And you fall for it, too often for the good of the country.

So, my first advice is for anyone who is pretty sure he's going to be running for Congress, and running in a doubtful district -- some of you couldn't lose whatever happened, some of you couldn't win if Jesus, Moses and Mohammad all appeared on your platform and testified for you. But for those running where the vote is going to be as close as 60-40, either way:

Go out and find a Karl Rove type. Get him to plan the nastiest, rottenest, most underhanded campaign imaginable, one that is as totally unfair as he can be -- against YOU. Study that campaign. be ready for anything your opponent can throw against you. Be ready so that the moment a particularly rock-filled mudball comes your way, instead of standing there wiping your face, you can duck, or better, catch it and throw it back.

You can use his charges, lies, and labels against him, not by throwing mud yourself, but by taking the charges and reinterpreting them. To take the most obvious example, you'll be called a liberal. If you are to the right of Rupert Murdoch you'll be called a liberal, but I'm assuming that in fact you ARE one, at least compared to your opponent.

Now for fifty years, at least, the Republicans have tried to make the word a BAD word. The trouble is that Democrats have let them, have even encouraged them. "Liberal! Who, me? Oh, no, I'm not one of those nasty, rotten things. I'm a Progressive, or a Moderate, or 'don't try and stick labels on me'" Meanwhile, people are going to think both that you are a liberal and that you are ashamed of being one.

What is wrong with running an ad that goes something like this:

"My opponent has been running commercials claiming I'm a liberal. I want to thank him for saying it. Somehow he thinks its bad to call some one a liberal, and maybe he's got you thinking it is. So let's look at some of the things liberals have stood for over the decades.

'Liberals produced social security, and when they did, conservatives called it socialistic.

'Liberals called for civil rights for all people, whatever their color. It was conservatives who argued that we should protect states' rights, who said that we shouldn't change a social system that had lasted for many years.

'Liberals fought for the rights of people to form unions. Conservatives called this violation of a worker's right to 'freedom of contract.''

'Liberals fought for freedom of speech for all opinions. Conservatives argued that questioning the government was dangerous and even was near to treason.'

'Liberals called for women to have the right to work at whatever job they wanted to, to be paid equally, to have the same rights as men, to choose whether to have a career outside the home or to stay home with their family. Conservatives worried that if they could choose it would threaten the stability of the home, the stability that could only be maintained, they said, if women only were mothers and housewives.'

'So yes, I'm a liberal. Not on every issue, but on some important ones. Think about it, and maybe, on some of them, you'll find you are liberals too."

(to be continued)

WHOoray! (I hope)

2006-02-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

Finally, this March, we in America will be able to see the New DOCTOR WHO series that has been running on the BBC for a little over a year. And from what I've seen of the clips, this is the REAL Doctor, unlike the horrible Americanized telemovie that ran on Fox in the nineties. (That was, fortunately, the only tv appearance of the 8th Doctor, though there have been a whole series of books featuring him that make him a real, if somewhat dull incarnation of the ever-changing Time Lord from Gallifrey.)

The upcoming series features Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, though he's already regenerated into the 10th (played by David Tennant).

As you have probably already gathered, I'm a DOCTOR WHO fan, and have been since several local PBS stations began running the series. I've seen almost all the available episodes -- the BBC wiped the tapes of most of the First and Second Doctor adventures, a decision they have greatly regretted. (As have I, and most fans. Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor was one of the more interesting ones, judging from the few fragments that have remained available and from the novelizations and 'further adventures' that have appeared in book form. World Game which i just finished in particular is a fun adventure in which the Second Doctor finds himself dealing with Napoleon, Talleyrand, and Wellington.)

I know I'll be enjoying the new series, as will most of those who saw the Doctor on PBS. (The first episode brings back villains from the 3rd Doctor who are authentically scary -- and I think there's been only one other time when a tv show actually scared me, and I was in my early teens then.)

What worries me is whether there will be enough people who know the series to keep it going, that and the fact that it is the Sci-Fi channel that is running it. This isn't the first time they've tried to deal with Doctor Who. In fact the commercials they ran before they went on the air featured shots of William Hartnell (the 1st Doctor) at the controls of the TARDIS. Unfortunately, once they started they slotted the Doctor in an odd time period and rather quickly dropped him -- I didn't see how the episodes were presented then. Brooklyn had just been wired for cable and with their usual incompetence Cablevision had somehow managed to miss the fact that the building I lived in existed. It took, literally, a call to a City Councilman to get us wired, and by that time the Doctor was gone from the air. (Even more annoying, by buying the rights, they kept the PBS stations from bringing the show back.)

Will they do better this time? It's hard to tell. So far they have done nothing to publicize the acquisition, even on their web site, which bothers me. (They have been known to publicize mini-series six months in advance.) And their track record on shows is spotty, to say the least. They've done a wonderful job on the new BATTLESHIP GALACTICA, and they kept STARGATE SG-1 alive long enough for it almost to get back to the level it was when it was running on SHOWTIME.

On the other hand, they've also given us STARGATE ATLANTIS. (Other shows tend to have poor continuity between episodes. Sometimes watching ATLANTIS I wonder if the writer remembers in the last half -- of a one-part episode -- what he wrote in the first half.) And their "Movies of the Week" make me wonder who they think their audience is, and scares me that they might be right.

I can only hope. But if I were running the show, I'd take the week before the preview to run episodes from the classic series during their daily marathons, episodes that would give their audience some idea of the background that the new series assumes. That and start giving this background and some publicity on their web pages. If they don't do something like this, well, I'll enjoy the episodes for as long as they last, and maybe after that I'll be able to get the DVDs.

I'll learn how to post links eventually

2006-02-10T12:38:00.000-05:00

But I haven't yet. To get to the link mentioned above, just do a Google for her -- her site is about the fifth listing down. And DO IT, she is worth getting to know.

A new hero

2006-02-10T09:58:00.000-05:00

Okay, it isn't possible not to discuss the "Danish cartoon flap." It's simply too important. My position is simple, that the cartoons are banal, pretty tame, and for the most part, not funny. The paper had the right to run them, and yes, Muslims had a right to be offended by some of them. Had they taken non-violent action against the paper, or even its advertisers, I could have no question with this. I couldn't have supported it, but would have accepted it as their right -- I've boycotted a few things in my life that offended me.

But once they started pressuring the Danish government, and once they started threatening violence, the situation changed. At that point it became necessary to support the publication, and to republish the cartoons. (I'd link to them here, but they are too generally available.)

But what I find fascinating is some of the side facts. The heroism of the Jordanian editor who published them, and King Abdullah's criticism of the protestors. The cowardice of so many important news media in American and Europe in not showing them. The fact that the worst of the cartoons were forgeries apparently created by Muslims to stir things up -- the pig, pedophilia, and dog cartoons. (I'm going to have a long piece on Muslim paranoia and double standards sometime in the next couple of days.)

But one result of this has been to give me a new hero. Her name -- yes, her, for me the word 'hero' like 'actor' and 'doctor' comes with neither gender nor genitalia attached -- is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A few months ago Mukhtar Mai was being called the 'bravest woman in the world' for her fight to have her rapists and the Pakistani village council that ordered the rape prosecuted. She deserves the honor, yes, but she should share it with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Some of you may know of her. More of you should. Many of you remember the killing of Theo VanGogh for directing the short film "Submission" about the treatment of women in Islam. Ms. Hirsi Ali wrote the film, has written a second one about the treatment of gays in Islam, and is writing a third in which Allah features as a main character.

She is a woman who was born in Somalia, grew up in Saudi Arabia and Kenya, was a pious Muslim, but who 'defected' to the West, or to Western culture after she had been 'married' (an arranged marriage) to a Canadian Somali cousin she had never met. She left the plane they were on in Germany and sought asylum in the Netherlands. She was, then, still a pious Muslim, but as she began to work with Muslim women and saw the position they had been placed in, she rethought her beliefs. She has since become an MP in the Netherlands, despite the death threats she has received for her apostasy and for her films. (The killer of Van Gogh left a letter pinned to the corpse's chest with a knife. It was addressed to her.)

She has been speaking out consistently about Islam, its intolerance, and its treatment of women, and she has been a major speaker in Europe against the reaction to the cartoons. Sadly, though she was profiled in the NYTimes magazine she is not well-known in America. The link above is to her website -- the English version, and I would suggest that anyone interested in the subject do a google on her and read some of the entries, particularly the NYTimes Magazine article -- I was going to post a link, but I'm still learning how to use this new toy called a blog. You might also read the IslamOnLine comments as a comparison. (It's fascinating how sure they are that she knows little about Islam, and how much she in fact does.)

I'd thank the site that told me about her, but I was looking at so many sites yesterday that I am not sure whose it was. I think it was Andrew Sullivan's. If so, thanks. If it wasn't thanx to whoever it was, and thanx to Mr. Sullivan for a great site anyway -- I'm nowheres near as conservative as he is, but I respect him nonetheless.

One thing I should have warned you about

2006-02-10T09:01:00.000-05:00

I'm long-winded. In the forum I mentioned, I contributed about 1600 posts in 5 months, and few of them were less than a page in length. I tend to go on and on about a topic, saying things in about twice as many words as anyone else will, and wandering and disgressing wildly. There's usually a point to it, if you have the patience, but when I really get going, I can provide a cheap, non-prescription sleep aid.

What this blog - and I -- am about

2006-02-10T08:33:00.000-05:00

It will be an eclectic stew, I guess. Primarily the topics will be on politics (I'm a liberal Democrat) -- religion (a tolerant atheist) -- skeptical thinking (not tolerant here, not of quackery, psuedoscience or general nonsense) -- sex (I'm bisexual, and was brought up in a lesbian household in suburban New Jersey in the 50s, which gives me a different slant on a LOT of things), you know, the usual stuff people used to be taught not to talk about at parties and that the blog world would disappear without.

But there will be a lot of other things popping up here and there. TV, Baseball (been a Mets fan since there were Mets -- if not before -- and even remember the 63 team -- everybody remembers the 62 Mets, even if they weren't born then, but I remember Larry Burright and Tim Harkness on the right side of the infield *groan*), mystery stories, Pakistani music (I'm not desi and can't speak Urdu, but I discovered it a while ago and it is the best pop music currently going), occasional recipes (I'm the cook in the house), and, of course, cats. (I have 5 who will be introduced slowly.)

And anything else that my wandering mind happens to stumble on or over.

I'll also be having at least one regular columnist popping up, a cyber-friend from Dubai who should have an interesting slant on things himself. We don't agree on much, we haven't since we both were members of a forum, but we like each other and he should serve as a counterweight to some of my wilder ideas.

Speaking of counterweights, I am married. I don't know if I can convince my wife to contribute -- in fifteen years I've rarely been able to convince her to do anything -- but I hope to. What she'll talk about is anyone's guess.

And one last thing in this post -- they'll be getting smoother as I get used to doing this -- the title and my nickname. Both from my favorite G&S line:

This
Particularly Rapid Unintelligible Patter
Isn't generally heard and
If it is it doesn't matter.

(from "The Gondoliers")

Now that I have this

2006-02-09T01:09:00.000-05:00

I'll start posting tomorrow, since I only tried to make a comment to Deborah Lipstadt.

If it is it doesn't matter

HAVA Problem?

It Oughta Be Simple

Here we go again, better (I hope)

My apologies, particularly to Katie

The 35th Edition of the Skeptical Circle

Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes

No Longer a Hero

Another distraction - like I needed one

Baseball: No Soda in April

Reprint of Meet the Family 1 -- Poo

My new blog

Enough is enough and THIS is too much

Why Feingold?

As usual

That Other League

Life Begins on Opening Day

Response to Ali and LouLou

Where are my fellow liberals?

But then...

Haditha

More later on the questions

Question - transition between 3 and 4

Question 3

Question 3a

Questions 3b

Question 3c

Questions 3d

Questions 3e

Question 3f

Questions 3g

Questions 3g

Questions 1 &2 -- comments

Question 2

Question 2a

Question 2b

Question 2c

Question 2d

Questions 2e

Question 2f

Question 1

Question 1a

Question 1b

Trying again with the questions

Questions for Moderate Muslims #3

Questions for Moderate Muslims #2

Questions for moderate Muslims and Muslim reformers

A point I have made is demonstrated

A few minor changes

Paging Dr. Kafka

Dr. Kafka, I presume

How to answer a critic of Islam

Three questions

Exchange with Deborah Lipstadt

Bad Prup!!

Changing my mind

MPwI 3.2 Infectious literalism

And furthermore...

Interlude -- why this series

MPwI 3.1 The Qur'an and L/F

MPwI 3 - The Qur'an and literalism/fundamentalism

MPwI 2 7/8 - The Qur'an

My problems with Islam 2 1/2

My problems with Islam 2 -Help and hope, PLEASE

My Problems with Islam 1

Not quite yet

Slight goof

The "Word From Above"

Now it is 45

27 and counting

Why we are in Iraq

This one I DON'T understand

Err, the pictures were supposed to be there

Meet The Family: 1 (Poo)

The trouble with this here bloggin' stuff

How could I forget

Maybe I've finally figured out

Advice to Democratic candidates: I

WHOoray! (I hope)

I'll learn how to post links eventually