Stygius

Punctuation mark reductionism

I was among those appalled that when President Bush, on CNN, outrageously reduced the death and suffering in Iraq to a punctuation mark:

Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy. (emphasis added)

Now, Ian Welsh fills us in on the dog whistle:

The phrase is: "Never put a period where God has put a comma." Which is to say - it ain't over yet, and God may well make it better. So Iraq's bad, but if we trust in God, he'll make it better.

This is the thing about Bush - he is constantly littering his speeches with code words and phrases meant for the religious right. Other people don't hear them, but they do, and most of the time it allows Bush both to say what those who aren't evangelical or born again want to hear, while still reassuring the religious right wants to hear.

Salazar a culture war general?

Using a speech at Denver's Brown Palace hotel to hit back at SpongeDob.org's latest attack on him, Senator Ken Salazar essentially accused Focus on the Family of lying. (See Rocky Mountain News.) Colorado Pols also noted the futility of FoF's assault on Salazar; Dobson just doesn't carry the political weight in Colorado that he thinks he does.

But I mainly want to highlight Colorado Luis' interesting take:

The last time Salazar went toe to toe with James Dobson and FoF, he pointed out anti-Catholic remarks that had been made by a member of the FoF board, and I observed at the time that Salazar was driving a wedge between Protestant fundies and the Catholics they are trying to unite under a right wing Christian banner.  Today's "Eighth Commandment" reference -- which had to be explained by the Rocky's reporter for the Protestant readers -- is a return to that theme.  Salazar is sending a message to his fellow Catholics that his attackers are a bunch of Protestant fundies.

Socially conservative Catholics makes up a significant portion of the radical base on which the current Republican ascendancy depends; thus, they are politically unified with evangelicals despite the historic anti-Catholicism of radical Protestantism. An example of a Christian-Evangelica alliance is the Christians-under-siege conference led by Sen. Rick Santorum and Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput. Another is the token Catholic presence at events like Justice Sunday. See also a March New York Times piece from the Terri Schiavo fiasco.

Yet this alliance is inherently temporary, being unable to escape its oxymoronic tensions. For while the two groups may share some sort of visceral theocratic fantasy, these mutual fantasies are not only competitive, but definitionally depend on the elimination of the other. This recent bit of jabbering paranoia gets at what I'm describing.

Perhaps Luis is right, and Salazar -- like former Senator John Danforth, an Episcopalian -- is emerging as a crucial warrior in the culture wars pushback, now beginning to gather steam. The papered over ideological differences in "the base" may be precisely the right focal point for them.

On Roy Moore

I never paid much attention to ex-judge and theocratic right-winger Roy Moore until I read Joshua Green's piece in The Atlantic. Read it.

Now the Moore has announced as a GOP candidate for Alabama's governor chair, against the incumbent Republican, this will be an interesting race to watch. Moore, America's new George Wallace, is riding a wave of faux-populism against the establishment party. Green writes:

In style if not in substance, Moore's religious populism is a lineal descendant of the race-baiting that propelled Wallace to the statehouse a generation ago. Moore has begun to wield a similar sort of influence. Last year he began targeting the eight justices who removed the monument, saying they had abandoned God. Of the three facing re-election, two opted to retire, and the third was defeated by one of Moore's lawyers. Next year three more are up for re-election, and can expect Moore-supported challengers if they run.

Moore is not just eyeing the governor's office but putting together an entire slate of candidates to run under his auspices in the Republican primary. Another of his lawyers is running for lieutenant governor, and the search is under way for an attorney-general candidate. Moore has in effect established a splinter sect of religious conservatives bent on taking over the Republican Party, and his reach extends to every corner of the state.

Now, from the Associated Press:

The Republican race for governor will take shape in the coming week, with ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore and Gov. Bob Riley expected to announce their candidacies and set up a classic battle between the GOP's two cornerstones: religious conservatives and business groups.

[snip]

For months, Moore has been saying that he was praying about whether to run for governor, and that if he ran, he expected it to be as a Republican.

There's a very good chance Moore can seize the nomination and win the governor's seat. This isn't your standard wacko campaign; the guy really knows what he's doing. Moore has been running Moore-clone candidates against other sitting Republicans -- and winning.

He's a fanatic, but in a lovable sort of way. I tend to think that one of the marvels of our federal system is that we can get away with giving one state -- say ... Alabama -- over to these folks as a sort of contained science project with which to horrify the rest of the Nation away from this stuff. After witnessing "God's will" inflict a political crash-and-burn on the state after the zealot's typical lust for unaccountability takes over, the rest of America will once again tire of sanctimonious politicians who have the presumption to tell them what God's will is.

Bishops get figurative on Genesis

The Times of London:

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.

I'm curious when all the raving will commence. Specifically:

[The] first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces”.

I read Genesis last week, and the thing is -- quite frankly -- a mess. I genuinely pity the literalist camp. If you read it straight through, the misplacements, the inconsistent repetition of events, and the overall miserable editing job left me rolling my eyes. I'm trying to get through it all straight through, but I've bogged down in Leviticus. All the fat burning, pleasing odors, and blood-splattering-on-altars gets tedious. The religio-economic system in Leviticus 25 alone is utterly insane.

Giblets triumphant

I was thrilled that Ratzinger was selected Pope. We need a real reactionary to keep alienating American Catholics. Ratzinger will advance the noble project of Church-State separation quite effectively, methinks. There's nothing like the truth of If no Mindless Absolutism, then Demonic Relativism as a prelude to denying reality. Let's hear it for more election meddling with threats of excommunication, abuse scandals as "perception" problems, and shame-laden sex.

Oh wait: Giblets Triumphant!

"So, how does Giblets look? The skin doen't fit Giblets that well - it kind of droops, and I'm standing on top of two dwarves and a monkey just to reach the point where I can operate the head properly.

"Vatican tidbit: the sash Giblets is wearing allows me to travel into the ninth pit of hell unscathed to extract the pure essence of the Godbread from Lucifer's still-living brain, but only when dipped in pure childblood. Interesting stuff."

"Oxygen" for the Middle East

Today's Christian Science Monitor has a fascinating article on the Middle East's Heya Channel. Heya means "she" in Arabic. It is essentially the Oprah channel for the Middle East, with some obvious implications. Imagine 15 million women -- voiceless, unrepresented, unempowered women-- watching this exchange:

Television talk-show host Matilda Farjallah shifts forward in her chair and looks the white-bearded Sunni sheikh sitting across the table directly in the eyes. "Tahzeeb al-mara ["instructing the woman"] is discussed in the Koran. Does it allow instructing a woman by beating her?" she asks.

Men, the sheikh responds, can instruct women - but "only with words."

Yet, the sheikh adds, if the woman doesn't seem to get the message, the husband can strike her. "But only lightly with a ruler," the sheikh says, "and only on the rear end."

Ms. Farjallah grows animated, her elbows lifting from the table. "Some men," she says, "take advantage of the Koran and say:  'It is written, We can beat women. It is within our rights.' "

The rest.

American Muslims split over gender role

From the Christian Science Monitor:

During her pilgrimage to Mecca, Asra Nomani was surprised when men and women prayed all together; in her mosque in the US, women weren't allowed in the same room.

That experience fueled her personal jihad (or struggle), which, she says, is to reclaim the rightful role of women in Islam given by the prophet Muhammad, but denied by centuries of cultural tradition.

The rest

Jihad or Hiraba?

Documentary producer Anisa Mehdi had an interesting commentary on NPR the other day, called "Rethinking the Word 'Jihad'." Listen here. I believe this December 29 column is mostly the same. Like many Muslims and non-Muslims, Mehdi despairs at the corruption of the word Arabic jihad. Since jihad has been appropriated by islamist terrorists to elevate their suicidal slaughter to a form of religious expression, the original meaning--it is argued--has not only been corrupted, most Westerners have only encountered the word in the context of terrorism and thus don't distinguish jihad from terrorism. (See this google search for more background on the term.)

Mehdi writes:

For me growing up, "jihad" was a beautiful word. Jihad was the effort you made to do your best in school; your struggle to polish the talents God gave you; how you strived to live up to your parents' and your own highest expectations; to lead a life acceptable to the Almighty.

So, people flying planes into buildings, beheading hostages in Iraq and fomenting hatred against people of other religions -- that's not jihad!

Instead of merely complaining about that she is oppressed when non-Muslims misunderstand jihad, however, Mehdi tries to fight back in the language war.

According to the Qur'an, the holy text of Islam, the Almighty does not reward the murder of innocent people. Nor does the Creator condone suicide -- as in suicide bombings. Terrorism is sociopathic. In secular terms, it is criminal behavior. In religious terms, it is blasphemy to claim cold-blooded murder in the name of God. It is not jihad.

What's a journalist to do? The good news is we can call a spade a spade. There is an Arabic word for these crimes against individuals and crimes against humanity, and the word is "hiraba." War against society.

People who are following God or practicing jihad do not join war against society. Terrorists serve Satan, if anything. They are bad people, criminals in a secular sense and blasphemers in the sacred. Just because they think they're on God's side doesn't mean the American media and our government PR folks need concur! But by parroting their misuse of the word "jihad," that's just what we're doing.

Mehdi correctly understands how a religious concept can sacrilize a barbaric act, and how combating a dangerous idea requires fighting back with more coherent ideas:

So what happens if we call a spade a spade? Think of the disincentive to young, hungry, cynical Muslims -- angry at their own governments and angry at ours for bolstering theirs. If they heard "hiraba" instead of "jihad," if they heard "murder" instead of "martyr," if they heard they were bound for hell not heaven, they might not be so quick to sign up to kill themselves and a handful of so-called "infidels" along the way.

At the same time, it is not just Western media, documentary producers, and bloggers who need to comment on and disseminate the hiraba concept. It requires the religious authorities, who actually have some stature, to apply hiraba in Islamic cultures' internal conversation about jihad-as-terror that Osama bin Laden has started. This is a point Mehdi doesn't reach, but where her argument needs to extend.

Ultimately, Mehdi's strategy is to recode suicidal islamism so that its appeal to its core constituency of disaffected, self-loathing young men is diminished. As I wrote last August, and shamelessly quote here:

Osama bin Laden's islamofascism is at the point of assuming the status of the paradigm of masculinity to which young men look to measure themselves and create a comprehensible identity. This phonemonon (sic) occurs throughout cultures, but is merely represented differently -- i.e., it is coded differently.

. . .

Young men wanting to make sense to themselves and to the world are looking for an intelligible model by which to do so, which they then emulate. The affirmation of their assumed masculinity comes through acts-as-expression. Ultimately, the only way to deal with this is to fashion a way of making the code nonsensical; so that it doesn't cohere as a masculine ideal. Doing so requires that it be made irrelevant and unintelligible. How possible this is, what with the demographics and socio-economic geography that we're contending with, is open to doubt.

Hiraba (note: harabah seems to be a more common romanization), properly disseminated, may help play a role in challenging the intelligibility and legitimacy of bin Laden's ideology of ecstasy-through-slaughter. (Also see thisI don't know what role the American blogosphere, let alone the West's media sources, can legitimately play in that dissemination, but at the very least Muslims can start demanding that hiraba play a role in the fight rending Islam apart.

At any rate, for some background on the term, hiraba (or harabah), see this. Aziz Poonawalla in 2002 wrote this widely read piece on harabah. (LGF hilariously misreads Poonawalla in this April '03 post, sanctimoniously accusing him of justifying a suicide bombing while Poonawalla is calling for lanat (curse) on the bombers.)

I may update this post a bit more in the near future.