Dean's World

Women's rights movements are springing up in Indonesia as well, the most heavily-populated islamic state in the world. And I suspect the same trend either is happening or shall happen soon in many other islamic societies.

If so, all this is highly encouraging.

But none of this necessarily implies some sort of crusader-zionist plot against the true believers. Maybe -- just maybe -- everybody around the world comes to a point where they no longer tolerate someone fucking them over in the same of either an ideology or a religion.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

NO ONE is saying or insinuating that Moslems cannot support freedom/equality/modernity.

You are completely incorrect, and probably being naive. Tons of people are saying it constantly. Others obviously believe it because any time I post any positive story on Islam, some glum person comes around and says "that looks good but really there's no hope" or something like that. It's ridiculous.

Do not attempt to argue with me on this, I've had too many people tell me baldly, flatly, that Islam cannot support freedom, equality, or modernity--argued with me vociferously, at length, with much passion taking that position.

So don't call me a liar again, m'kay? Open your eyes. There are tons of people running around claiming exactly what you just said "nobody" is saying.

Get over it, Snippet: Islamophobia is real, and it's pretty sickening and destructive stuff.

I've heard the likes of Michael Ledeen saying the end is near for the Iranian regime for years now. Wake me when these protests amount to anything. Every year I hear how young the population of Iran is, and how pro-reform and pro-America they are. Well it hasn't made a dime's worth of difference.

When you don't have the guns it ends up being useless. Ghandi and MLK could change the policies of their nations because they were dealing with civilized people. If these Iranian kids accomplish anything other than getting bullets behind their ears I'll eat a big helping of crow. One only needs to look at what happened in Lebanon last summer, and Iraq for the last three years to see what good idealism does you in the Middle East. It is worthless.

One only needs to look at what happened in Lebanon last summer, and Iraq for the last three years to see what good idealism does you in the Middle East. It is worthless.

This is specious to compare Lebanon and Iraq. Lebanon threw out its oppressor Syria with peaceful protests. And it has done them a lot of good. Is it perfectly stable? No, but it's doing okay, and it's gov't still hasn't given in to Hezbollah pressure. I'm hoping to go later this summer, so then I can report more, but I hear they are busy rebuilding.

DanielH: I agree that Lebanon is obviously better off today than they were. I'd also say that it's obvious that Iraq's much better off today too than it was under Saddam--because by most measures it is. And progress continues apace.

The problem some people have, I think, is that somehow they got this notion that with a few waves of a magic wand, the Middle East would suddenly stop being a violent, ethnically torn region. It doesn't work like that. Reforms happen over a period of years.

Dean, you may well be right that Iraq is better now, but I have not read enough to be able to make that judgment myself (though I know I should). Still, I think one can easily say that Beirut is a lot safer than Baghdad (and a lot more fun!)

Such an argument would be that no REALY/TRUE/GENUINE Moslem could advocate democracy.

That's a theological how many angels can dance on the head of a pin type o' deal that doesn't interest me too much.

The argument may not interest you too much, but many others make that exact argument, and it is quite offensive to people who see themseleves as real Muslims and real liberals and real democrats. It wouldn't hurt to acknowledge that others (though I suppose not you) make such arguments all the time. And if the argument doesn't interest you, why do you have a problem with Dean's arguing against the argument?

DanielH,

I do accept that for many, Islam inspires a love for beauty, truth, and justice.

Also, I would like to say that these Iranian protesters are showing a degree of courage that puts the vast majority of contemporary Western "Progressives/Liberals/Leftists" to shame.

Unlike their would-be counterparts in "The West," these guys are standing up for real freedom, not some sort of freebie handout or racial quotas or. Nor are they, unlike their Western counterparts, publically criticising those who they can be quite confident will never hurt them.

These guys are not posers. If they draw inspiration from Islam, more power to them. Such inspiration will stand compared to the less pleasant inspirations that come from Islam in a balanced assessment of this belief systems influence.

DanielH (and by the way, how delightful is it to know a Muslim named Daniel?): I think the cancer that has eaten deep into the left in this country, and maybe internationally, is shown most clearly on Iraq.

There is a notion that somehow we have attempted to "impose" Democracy on Iraq. Since when do you "impose" fundamental human rights?

There is a notion that we are "no better than" Saddam because of Abu Ghraib and other mistakes. As if the Americans are running rape rooms, children's prisons, plastic shredders to feed dissidents through, or routinely cutting off the limbs of those who displease us. Or, in more extreme cases, cutting off the heads of those who offend us and forcing the families to pay an execution fee and to keep their loved ones' heads on their front lawns for a week or two at a time. All of which Saddam's regime routinely did.

There is a notion that we are at least as evil as the "insurgency," which routinely murders women and children and innocent men, because after all "we don't belong there."

As I have pointed out so many times, if we were genuine "imperialists" in Iraq, it's pretty clear what we'd do: we'd either have come in, killed Saddam and his supporters, and promptly left, OR, we would have never bothered with any of this silly election foolishness, would have simply seized the oil fields, installed a puppet dictatorship, and killed anyone who dared criticize us in any way in that country.

This is why I continue to find most left or "liberal" to be both morally and intellectually incoherent on this point. Including our friend Ali.

Since when did political progressivism and liberalism include making excuses for the vile monsters who make up the vast bulk of the Iraqi "insurgency?"