There are several stories in the news this week on the subject of the treatment of minor transgressions under Islamic law. There is also some additonal evidence of the foolishness of well-meaning westerners when dealing with the culture of the Middle East, if you know what I mean. First the foolishness.
The USAID is our foreign aid agency that dispenses aid to worthy causes. It is supposed to avoid giving money to terrorists. That would seem fairly basic. Well, it was too much trouble for some bureaucrats eager to give money to Palestinians. The result ?
After the shooting stopped, Fatah displayed large caches of weapons recovered from inside the university, and the Washington Times reported the school had received more than $140,000 in USAID funding. “In the basement of Gaza Islamic University, a U.S.-funded institution,” said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and requested the audit, “Palestinian police found several Iranian agents and an Iranian general teaching the students in the U.S.-funded chemistry lab how to make suicide bombs.”
David Frum’s comments on the USAID story explain a bit of the bureaucratic mind set. This sort of thing helps explain the recent NIE on Iran.
David Pryce-Jones has written an excellent book on the Arab Mind. Today, his column discusses mercy under Islam. Everyone has read the story about the female rape victim in Saudi Arabia. He recounts another, even more obnoxious if possible, incident. There, a fifteen year old Swiss boy was abducted by some men, and raped. When the injured boy went to the police to report this crime, he – again, the victim – was arrested for homosexuality, a punishable offence in Dubai. It is significant that it occurred in Dubai, a heavy investor in the US. There is an old saying: “When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon.” Is our spoon long enough?
There have been complaints, particularly on the left which opposes the Iraq War, that the fall of Saddam has worsened the situation for Iraqi women. There may be some truth to that. Early on, Saddam was a secular Arab although, as he lost his wars, he seemed to increase in piety, perhaps to stave off criticism from other Arabs. The fact is that the world is seeing a peculiar wave of Muslim radicalism and a return to the culture of the Arab Empire. This is manifested in a demand for return to the Sharia, a law that was appropriate, perhaps, in a culture of warriors and scarcity living in the desert of 900 AD. Islam closed its face to the western world about 1450 when Constantinople fell. The invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798 was an immense shock to the Islamic World as it recognized its backwardness. Since World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has sought modernism as most of Islam remained a backwater. Now even that may be changing with the new Islamic government. The Turkish cultural ambassador to the EU has asked for political asylum. This seems to be a tide that we are bucking in Iraq. What will be the result ? No one knows. God help the Arabs if the oil runs out before the tide of radical Islam does.
Hi Dr. K. Something interesting from your neck of the woods:
http://www.ocregister.com/column/corbett-school-teacher-1943456-high-class
Now, I don’t believe that religion should be in the classroom.
But imagine what the district would have done if the same teacher had said “When you put on your Mohammed glasses, you cannot see the truth,” and said exactly the same things about shariah law?
Why, he would be disciplined right now….for bringing up his personal issues in a classroom setting, inappropriate to the subject matter. But attacking Christians and Republicans is fair game.
This, in a nutshell, is why the Islamofascists are doing what they do: they see the asymmetry, and see it as a great weakness.
Off topic: Petraeus would have been Time’s Man of the Year if the surge hadn’t worked. As it is, the MSM is losing interest in Iraq because we’re winning, and politically speaking, they’re losing.
I agree, Nancy. I just don’t understand why the political establishment is invested in *losing* to islamofascists. Prediction: as Iraq goes well, we will start hearing about losing Afghanistan.
Hold on. That is happening right now. Again: an investment in failure. I could understand it if the opponents were socialists or Russians or something that the Left loves. But the islamofascists…ah…don’t share our attitudes regarding human rights on a number of levels. Which is why they are amused by the waterboarding business.
Not to mention some pinhead carrying on recently about how much better things were under Saddam Hussein.
Investment in failure.
Honestly, Nancy, I think the “Person of the Year” should have been “The American Soldier.” But that ain’t gonna happen. Not when there are dictators to applaud. Just you wait: Putin will get a Nobel Peace Prize in a few years.
>Investment in failure.
Mysteriously interesting. I’m wondering if it is from guilt over Western material success. Or, if the Left needs to overturn some current political structures, so they hope the Islamos can help them in this, and later they will cast out the Islamos, when they are done with them.
It all began in the 60s with hating their fathers. Once you see that, everything else seems to fit.
I have had the same thought, Dr. K. I see it in my brother’s son. My brother and his wife have given my nephew everything except boundaries. He has cracked up two cars, and they have given him a third (me, I would have given him an AMC Pacer, painted hot pink with green flowers on it). He never worked hard for grades, and impugned his teachers and professors as the problem, even though he spent most of his adolescence playing video games. He loftily dismisses religion without knowing anything about it, and actually carries on about politics, when he literally does not know the functions of the three branches of government (nor can he name his two senators and local representative). But he sure knows GWB is evil and stupid, and has government and international relations all figured out.
He says he hates racism, but when a Black female cop gave him a ticket the other day for running a red light, you would be surprised (or not) at the racist commentary emitting from his privileged mouth.
My nephew is the poster-child Trustifarian. It causes me physical pain, and keeps the family in an uproar.
He resents his parents because he KNOWS he cannot make it without them, and he resents that fact. So he turns them into the enemy, while taking their money and sneering about them. That is the Left, in a nutshell: take the money and sneer about the people giving it to you—while saying that other cultures that wouldn’t give them money and would imprison them for sneering are somehow superior.
Good news about my nephew is that he finally woke up. His undergrad grades couldn’t get him into a great urban planning program, so he is hustling in the program that did admit him. I even caught him thanking his father the other day.
But the Left never seems to grow out of that adolescent phase, sadly.
Long post. Sorry about that.
Trustifarian…Eric that is so stolen now, brilliant, and thank you. You can trust me to use it judiciously. Although, I’m sure you wisely put a coded expiration date on it.
Kind of you, Allan, but I am sure the term isn’t original with me. It is evocative of the entitled types. If you have not read “Generation Me,” by Jean Twenge, I highly recommend it. It’s scary though.
Incidentally, I do love my nephew. You know the Frost quote? “Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Ditto for family. My nephew is still a blood relation. He has between 12.5 and 25% of my genes, after all!
Hopefully not the snotty entitled ones!
Eric, that is a great comment. I really think the “baby boom” generation had a guilt complex about the sacrifices their parents made for them. The WWII parents wanted to give their kids the things they could not have when they were young. Remember, that is also the Depression generation. My parents were in their 30s when they married and my mother was 39 when I was born (My birth certificate says she was 29 but it was easier to lie about your age then). They wanted everything for their kids and they got ingratitude and a sense of entitlement in return. The prosperity after the War generated another form of guilt that we still see. I see some of it in my own kids.
Petraeus would have been Time’s Man of the Year if the surge hadn’t worked.
Great point.
Hi Dr. LaRoche! I still prefer “The American Soldier” as the “Man” of the Year. But Petraeus still rocks the house.