Shaphan

An Iraqi 9/11

On Sunday, Coalition forces in Iraq killed about 250-450 'cult members', at the behest of the Iraqi government.  We, the British, contributed to the massacre, which, in relative-population terms, was equivalent to an Iraqi 9/11.

American Apache attack helicopters and F-16s, as well as British fighter jets, flew low over the farms where the enemy had set up its encampments and attacked, dropping 500-pound bombs on the encampments. [NYT]

Women and children are believed to have lived and died at the encampment.  Reports yesterday suggested the leader, who was believed to be a herald of the Imam Mahdi, had been killed along with this followers - but the NYT is not so sure.

Iraqi officials said Monday that they had killed the leader of the militia in the weekend fighting, identifying him as a man who went by the name Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani, but whose real name was Diyah Abdul Zahraa Khadom.  However, a Shiite cleric who has had contact with the group said the real leader was Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri.  The cleric said he believed that Mr. Basri was alive and probably hiding near Karbala.

I would have thought that, when faced with an apocalyptic cult, the last strategy to try would be to wreak apocalyptic violence upon its followers - it sort of reinforces the beliefs of the survivors.  In addition, targeting religious groups, such as the Soldiers of Heaven, is considered genocide under international law.   I'm lost for words.

Fisking Bunting

When I complained to the Guardian yesterday about Pope Benedict having been misquoted (see previous entry), I didn't directly criticize Madeleine Bunting's opinion piece, 'A man with little sympathy for other faiths'.  But I had been sufficiently wound up by reading it that I suspect it helped fuel yesterday's missive.  There were several of her comments that particularly bothered me.  [Mad Bunting's comments in this colour; mine in this]

Even the most cursory knowledge of dialogue with Islam teaches - and as a Vatican Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI would have learned this long ago - that reverence for the Prophet is a non-negotiable.  What unites all Muslims is a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad.

A non-negotiable what?  Demand?  Muhammad spoke out against idolatry, yet some of his modern-day followers make the error of idolizing him.  Jesus was against idolatry, God/Allah is reportedly against it, so why does Bunting call it a non-negotiable?  Reverence should be for God, not for one of his creatures, not even for one of his prophets.

18 A certain ruler asked [Jesus], "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 19 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone."  [Luke 18]

The phrase "a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad" reads vaguely like a warning to avoid criticizing Islam or face risking Muslims' ire.   Why is it wrong to criticize certain aspects of Islamic belief and practice, but fine to misquote the pope so as to present a distorted and unfair portrait of him in a national newspaper (see previous post)?

By an uncanny coincidence the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died last week.  No one connected the two events, but the Pope had already run into controversy in Italy by inviting the rabid Islamophobe to a private audience just months ago.

No one connected the two events?  Huh?  The only way I can see that the two events could directly be linked would be if Allah/God had killed Fallaci in revenge for Benedict's words, which I don't believe but maybe Bunting does.   But many people writing about Benedict and Islam did mention the Fallaci audience, and people reflecting on Fallaci's life and death mentioned the papal visit.  Maybe she means, no one at Demos, or in her house, connected the two.

At the time of her papal audience, Fallaci's ranting against Islam had landed her in court and there was outrage at the Pope's insensitive invitation.  The Pope refused to backtrack and insisted the meeting was purely "pastoral".

Fallaci was a dying atheist who faced jail for speaking her mind in the public square.  She admired Benedict's views on Europe and asked for an audience.  Benedict is a pastor, and there was the opportunity to minister to her.  Should pastoral care only be extended to the faithful and PC?  When Fallaci died,

She was buried in a white coffin wearing a tailleur and a military watch ^[5] around 11 am, at the same time the bell of the church of Sant'Ilario where her mother used to pray and she was baptized, was rung.  [Wikipedia]

Which sounds to me like her audience with Benedict in August 2005 had partially reconciled her to her Catholicism. 

Put last week's lecture in Bavaria and the Fallaci audience alongside his vocal opposition to Turkish membership of the EU, and the picture isn't pretty.

The picture Bunting paints is ugly, but I would suggest that says more about her than about Ratzinger.  His Regensburg lecture was an attempt, however faulty, to speak truth to the power of violence.  The Fallaci audience was, I've argued, pastorally justifiable.  On Turkey, Bunting is almost accusing him of xenophobia or worse.  Ratzinger's point about Turkey is that, historically and culturally, it is not a European nation.  If you read his words, he actually wishes Turkey would stop secularizing itself and become more Muslim again, and seek a leadership role amongst other Muslim nations.

"In the course of history, Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe," Ratzinger said, noting that the Ottoman Empire once threatened Vienna and fought wars in the Balkans.

"Making the two continents identical would be a mistake," he said. "It would mean a loss of richness, the disappearance of the cultural, to the benefit of economics."

The German-born cardinal said Turkey "could try to set up a cultural continent with neighbouring Arab countries and become the leading figure of a culture with its own identity". [Aljazeera]

He actually said this to Le Figaro:

La Turquie, qui se considère comme un Etat laïc, mais sur le fondement de l'islam, pourrait tenter de mettre en place un continent culturel avec des pays arabes voisins et devenir ainsi le protagoniste d'une culture possédant sa propre identité, mais en communion avec les grandes valeurs humanistes que nous tous devrions reconnaître.

Ratzinger may not be a pretty picture, but he has a reality that is not captured by Bunting's words.

'A woman with little sympathy for her own faith', I could have titled this essay.

Benediction?

Some thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI's controversial lecture on Christian theology.

• Caveat lector, taking Benedict's reported choice of words too literally.  The story of the disputation between Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and his Persian friend was written down in 14thC Greek.  A 20thC Lebanese-born German scholar translated, and edited, it into German, the version from which Benedict read, and now we've got the English translation.  The Arabic press will be translating this English translation into Arabic.  Nuances can get lost in this processing.
• According to the BBC's Rome correspondent, David Willey, reporting last weekend on the radio, the Vatican was briefing reporters that this would be almost certainly be Benedict XVI's last visit to his homeland, and that it was expected that his papacy would be much shorter in duration than was his predecessor's - words to that effect.  The underlying message, it seemed to me, was that Benedict and those around him believe that his end will be nigh before much longer.  I think that's why his text covers so many bases.  He doesn't know how much longer he has, so he tried to put it nearly all down in one go.
• The secular press are mostly ill-equipped to report accurately Benedict's words and meanings, so a caricature gets reported as if it were factual.  Then the media send camera crews and reporters to cover the demonstrations organized in protest at what's been reported in the media. 
• The pope's lecture was about the relationship between reason and faith - only marginally was it about the theology of jihadism.  It was also an apologia for the place of theology within the modern university;  it was, as he himself described it, a broad-brushed "critique of modern reason from within";  it was a defence of the Christian roots of Europe;  and, above all, it was about the nature of logos as both reason and word, as both Greek and Christian, and that theologizing and dialoguing are impossible without logos.  It was beautifully constructed, and every word he quoted from Manuel II was relevant to Benedict's argument.  I'm not a Catholic but I have a degree in theology, and from my point of view, it's a gift to have a pope who thinks and writes theologically.  The trouble is, most people don't have a theology degree.
• I have two main criticisms of his argument.  The first, and lesser one, is this: is it true that violence "is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul"?  The Old Testament God is violent at times.  The Big Bang was violent.  Nature is raw, in tooth and claw.  The Catholic Church has traditionally argued that some warfare is just.  Benedict's point would be clearer if his critique was only of violence-caused conversions rather than of violence generally.  Benedict misses the point if he thinks contemporary jihadist violence is primarily about forced conversions - it's more about defending one's homeland against invaders who are intent on converting, by violence if necessary, the world to liberal, secular humanism.  In his critique of violent conversion, he should have addressed it equally, if not more so, to the Americanist ideology.
• More seriously, is human reason really analogous to the divine logos?  Wasn't human reason at all corrupted by the Fall?  How, for example, does Benedict know that violence is incompatible with God's nature?  To me, that seems more a statement of faith than of reason.  Reason tells me that human reason is fallible and that, if God exists, divine reason is probably infallible.  The pope rightly (I think) pleads for more reason in religious matters, but, ironically, like most secular humanists, he overestimates humanity's capacity for reason.  Greater intellectual humility would help him achieve the better dialogue with Muslim theologians that he desires.

Er, that's it for now.

On Zarqawi, RIP

Two things about Abu Musab I'll remember, which weren't much covered in all the reports and obituaries published today.

The first was his dramatic, symbol-laden entry on to the Iraqi battlefield.  If you don't know what I'm referring to, that's because our dozy media missed it and the American authorities chose, at the time, not to draw attention to it.  On August 7, 2003, the Jordanian embassy was truck-bombed - it was the first vehicle-borne bombing in Baghdad after the invasion.  Following the August 19, 2003, bombing of the UNHQ, I wrote this on an openDemocracy board:

Muslim idolatry

In Osama's latest message he spends time decrying the Danish cartoonists and their republishers.  It seems to me that some, perhaps many, Muslims have an idolatrous view of Muhammad.  He was the messenger, not the Message.  To believe that the message is the Messenger is idolatry.  Osama rails against polytheists, yet he portrays the prophet as a semi-divine being, to be revered and worshipped like a Christ figure.  He's a hypocritical semi-polytheist.  If Muhammad wanted to be so revered, then he wasn't a true prophet.

Israel's Arsenal and Arsenal's Israel's

For my sins and graces, I am a supporter of Arsenal FC, having lived within earshot of Highbury for 20 years.  I will continue to support Arsène Wenger, his staff and the players, but the Board has now lost my confidence.  First there was David Dein telling Patrick Vieira, in my view Arsenal's greatest-ever player, that the club was neutral about keeping him.  But that's about the playing side, and Dein is paid to make those decisions, so I could forgive that.

But then there was the decision to accept £100 million in sponsorship money from Emirates Airline.  Emirates Airline is owned by the Emirates Group, which is itself owned by the Dubai government (read, the al-Maktoum family), which founded the company in 1985.  The chairman is HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, who is also president of Dubai's civil aviation authority. In other words, Emirates Airline isn't an ordinary commercial company - it is the state airline of the UAE and an agency of the Maktoum 'royal' family of the Dubai emirate.  There is no voting nor voters in the UAE, and political parties are forbidden.  The state dictates who runs the Sunni mosques and what is preached in them at Friday prayers.  So the UAE manages to offend the sensibilities of democrats and Islamists alike.  But the Maktoum 'royal' family in Dubai has managed to seduce the West, first with its oil wealth and now in its diversification into tourism and commerce.  Arsenal FC should not be promoting the interests of the Maktoum family, which is an enemy of both secular and religious freedom.

And now the board of directors has gone and signed an agreement with Israel to promote Israel as 'Arsenal's' tourist destination of choice, both on the website and on banners around the new ground, the Emirates Stadium (see above).  Oddly, the news was not announced, and is not yet posted, on the Arsenal website.  But Israel's tourism minister commented: "(Through the deal with Arsenal) Israel will get a lot of coverage as a preferred tourist destination in the consciousness of millions of people, not only in England, but around Europe and the world." 

To Arsenal, it's worth £350,000 in the first season - peanuts compared to the UAE deal but the Israelis seem satisfied.  But we, ie Arsenal, shouldn't be accepting Israeli money, nor promoting its interests "in the consciousness of millions".  It's as morally reprehensible as the Emirates sponsorship, and arguably more so.  Israel has an arsenal of 120-plus nuclear weapons, unbound from any treaty agreements with the IAEA or the UN, which are pointing at Tehran, Qom and Damascus.  While Israel has an undeclared arsenal of nuclear weapons and other WMD, Arsenal FC shouldn't be taking Israel's money.  When Israel agrees with Syria that the Middle East should be WMD-free, then we should take their money (provided they've also returned Jerusalem and the West Bank to its people).

The Arsenal board of directors' seem willing to accept money from anyone, even if that leaves the fans more vulnerable to terrorist attack.  At the moment, the club accepts my money as a registered user of the website (although I haven't attended a match for years).  Unless Arsenal FC changes its decision, my moral imperative will be to withdraw my miniscule financial support from it.  I'll miss the video of match-highlights and player interviews, damn it.

Samarra

Who bombed the golden-domed mosque in Samarra?  I'm surprised at how little the media have asked this question.  Maybe they believe it had to be either Zarqawi's group or Ba'athist insurgents so there's no mystery to unravel.  Maybe so, but neither explanation convinces me as yet.

AFP yesterday had details of how the bombing operation was executed [Iraq shrine bombing was specialist job: minister].

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The bombing of a revered Shiite shrine which sparked a wave of violence in Iraq was the work of specialists, Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said Friday, adding that the placing of the explosives must have taken at least 12 hours.

"According to initial reports, the bombing was technically well conceived and could only have been carried out by specialists," the minister told Iraqia state television.

(It's worth reading it all.)  To me, that doesn't sound like Zarqawi's group.  Their modus operandi is to use humans as guided bombs, whether on foot or in a vehicle.  The Samarra bombers, by contrast, acted more like a well-disciplined military unit trained in sabotage and demolition.  While that points more to Ba'athist ex-army members as culprits, I find it hard to believe that any Iraqi, let alone a group of up to a dozen, would premeditatively destroy such an icon of Iraqi history and national identity.

And then there's the Twelfth Imam angle.  Below the mosque is the mausoleum containing the remains of the Tenth and Eleventh Imams, the grandfather and father of Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth and final Imam.   The Mahdi was hidden away by God whilst still a child, and will return at the endtimes to bring justice, peace and Islam to all the world, the Twelver Shi'as believe.  Most Twelvers live in Iran.  The world's most famous Twelver is Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  He, and his fellow devotees, must have felt the bombing as a painful, personal blow.  It's no wonder he and Ayatollah Khamenei reportedly believe the US/UK/Israel axis was responsible for the bombing.

I hate unnecessary conspiracy theories, especially if Israel is their subject.  But given that I don't see the work of Jihadists or Ba'athists in the bombing, nor of Iranians or Sadrists, other possibilities are worth considering.  I doubt the US or UK had any involvement - the bombing makes their situation worse.  But the Israelis...  They're not happy about Iran's growing influence in and over Iraq and its new government.  They didn't like Ahmadinejad's comments about erasing the borders of the Zionist entity from the Middle East map, or re-locating the Zionist colonists back to Europe and America.  And they've got a new PM, who needs to earn the respect of Mossad and the IDF's special forces.  So I find it quite conceivable, damn it, that it was an Israeli operation.  They'd know al-Zarqawi would get blamed, despite the absence of suicide bombers.  They'd hope the attack would destabilize and delegitimize al-Jaafari's Iran-friendly government.  And they could send a personal message to Ahmadinejad - continue to verbally attack us and we will destroy all that you hold most dear.

I'm not saying Israel did it, only that it's not implausible and there exist no obvious, other candidates.

Cultural coincidence

I wonder how long it will take for critics of Pope Benedict to notice that the former Cardinal Ratzinger and Sayyid Qutb both wrote books whose English titles are Milestones.  Somebody's going to have fun drawing out the genuine similarities between Qutb's and Ratzinger's views on secularism, sexuality, liberalism etc.  Ratzinger's views will be likened to Usama bin Laden's.  It'll be al-Qaeda and the Roman Catholics united against the new world order.  Cool.

Al-Qaradawi blues

Sometimes Nick Cohen writes really well, but this week's attack on Qaradawi wasn't one of those times.  I guess, in his eyes, I'd be a pseudo-leftist.  I read the GuardianObserver, believe in tolerance and social justice, and reckon the only admirable act of Ken Livingstone's mayorship has been his support for Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi.  It's that last clause that marks me out as an apostate leftist.  According to Cohen, "[y]ou have to go back to the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 to find a similar accommodation with the dictatorial right."  Yikes.

Cohen rightly describes Qaradawi as a theologian, yet he critiques Qaradawi on secular grounds, relying on secular sources of information, and showing no evidence of having read anything by Qaradawi in its context.  And Cohen's main source seems to be Outrage, which is, er, outrageous (it's like going to IslamOnline to learn about the gay experience).  But Cohen goes even further than Outrage in decontextualizing Qaradawi.  For example he writes:

In June 2003 Qaradawi pondered the question of how a Muslim who decided of his own free will to convert to another religion or become an atheist should be treated. Instead of saying it was none of his business what adults choose to believe, Qaradawi replied: 'He is no more than a traitor to his religion and his people and thus deserves killing.'

He based this on the first item in Outrage's dossier.

1.  Dr al-Qaradawi supports the killing of people who have turned away from Islam ("apostates").

In a fatwa issued in June 2003 concerning organ donation, Dr al-Qaradawi stated: "it is not permissible to donate it to an apostate as he is no more than a traitor to his religion and his people and thus deserves killing."

See:http://www.islamonline.net/fatwa/english/FatwaDisplay.asp?hFatwaID=49276

A question on organ donation?  But Cohen made it sound as if it was a general fatwa to kill apostates.  That is dishonest, abject journalism.  One doesn't have to agree with Qaradawi's interpretation of Shari'a to believe he shouldn't be demonized by 'true-leftist' journalists like Nick Cohen.

Censoring insight

Link: Telegraph | Charity grovels for lampooning murdered film-maker.

Index on Censorship has apologized for not censoring the words of one of its associate editors.  In November, in response to Theo van Gogh's murder, Rohan Jayasekera wrote a piece that offended IoC's readership.  He's now written a response to his critics.  I thought Jayasekera's original piece was brave and truthful.  I too saw TvG not as an entirely innocent victim, as a martyr to be iconized by secularists, but as a willful actor in a tragic drama.  Being critical of Van Gogh doesn't mean supporting his murder.

I thought the film 'Submission' was worse than most people have acknowledged.  The 10-min film was of a woman praying to Allah, sharing with Him her pain and confusion.  So far so good, but then it deteriorated.  This fictional woman has faced all sort of abuses from her men-folk.  The cause of this suffering is a verse in the Qu'ran (nothing else - not the men, her, grinding poverty, tribal customs, et al).  TvG illustrated the point by inscribing that verse on young women's lightly veiled bodies, and while I'm not against soft porn, it did jar in the context of a prayer to Allah.  In addition, the film presented one woman's awful experiences as if it was what all Muslim women experience at the hands of Muslim men, which is a nonsense.

Anyway, Index on Censorship should maybe change its name to Organ of Censorship.