WhirledView

America's Unsuccessful War in Pakistan

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Pakistan is the world’s sixth largest country, with a population of nearly 168,000,000 people, most of them Muslims, which means there are multiple deeply held divergences in the interpretation and practice of Islam, although these chasms may disappear when outside force is applied—U.S. force included. To understand this dynamic, Americans might remember how bipartisanship crops up when external threats appear. So Americans should not be surprised that even relatively secular urban Pakistanis are not enthusiastic about American efforts to vigorously pursue or eradicate “Islamist insurgents” within their northern borderland. There is certainly a problem of law and order in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a problem that is acquiring urgency because the ferment is spilling out and into other parts of Pakistan. Terrorists have threatened Islamabad and Lahore as well as the ever volatile megacity of Karachi, for example. Above all, longstanding, largely tacit understandings about cultural autonomy and spheres of influence within and across national boundaries have been abused and violated by many players.

But employing the Pakistani Army to slaughter unruly tribals by the hundreds or thousands in order to pluck Osama bin laden, America’s Enemy Number One, out of his mountainous safe haven would appear, to most Pakistanis, like swatting a fly with an atom bomb: a strategy certain to do more harm than good. And Pakistan is jealous of its sovereignty.

“Half of all Pakistanis want their government to negotiate and not fight Al Qaeda, with less than a third saying military action by the Pakistani government is called for,” according to a recent poll by Terror Free Tomorrow. They'd prefer to negotiate with the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, too. Some 73 per cent of those polled said that “the real purpose of [America's] war on terror is to weaken the Muslim world and dominate Pakistan.” Part of me wonders if a more effective Public Diplomacy effort might have led to less negativity. Part of me replies, "It's the policy, stupid."

American policymakers should pay attention to such disheartening poll results. Pakistan, as a semi-cooperative ally, is endlessly exasperating to American policy makers. Pakistan as a sullen ex-ally would be far worse, and all it would take to accomplish such a divorce is the capture and public parading of a few U.S. special forces operatives nabbed on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The furor over America's border-crossing bombs, called in to kill alleged insurgents who turned out to be Pakistan Border Corps troops, of whom 11 died, gives a tiny hint of the likely reaction. American popularity in Pakistan is at an all time low these days, while sympathy for Al Qaeda’s goals, if not the violence with which those goals are pursued, is rising. Thus, the secular elite that has been governing Pakistan since its inception is increasingly under siege. To stay in power the non-religious parties must maintain their nationalist if not their Islamist credentials. A popular way of criticizing Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush’s increasingly marginalized ally in the “war against terror,” is to call him an American tool.

Hands Across the Border

Once upon a time India served as the juicy scapegoat for Pakistan’s nationalists, and not so long ago outside observers worried that India (or Pakistan) might inadvertently (or intentionally) lob a nuclear device across the border. To defend the brand new country against the threat of Indian irredentism is what the Pakistan army was created for. And why did Pakistan originally encourage the activities of violent Islamists who are now, in classic blowback fashion, threatening a form of Islamic revolution within Pakistan itself? Why, to weaken India on the cheap, by forcing New Delhi to deal with incessant insurgency in Muslim majority Kashmir.

But things may be changing on the Indian front. When asked the tired old question as to whether a “foreign hand” might be “fanning trouble in the tribal belt,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani replied “yes.” Yet India wasn’t named this time. The alleged culprits were “some foreigners from Central Asian States.” No doubt American policymakers would have preferred a Gilani diatribe against Arabs, as in Osama bin Laden, or Egyptians, as in Aymen Al Zawahri, but the latest series of talks between India and Pakistan seem to be achieving some degree of trust between the traditional enemies. The still wary neighbors are discussing peach and security, confidence building measures in Kashmir, economic ties, prisoner exchanges and anti-terrorism.

Better yet, from that point of view, a recent editorial in Dawn applauds the new sanity:

....detente between Indian and Pakistan will impact positively on global politics. With no signs of Islamabad winning the “war on terror” in the immediate future and the militants recognizing no borders, a wise strategy demands that India and Pakistan join hands in their security endeavour.

However, the Dawn editorial ends with a twist that may not please Washington:

In that context their agreement...to hold meetings of their anti-terrorism mechanism regularly is encouraging. It would also reduce Islamabad’s dependence on Washington in world politics.

Speaking of Washington, when asked about making Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, available for further interrogation from IAEA as a result of recently uncovered evidence that his one-man proliferation operation was even more generous than previously known, Gilani said, “the issue of Dr. Qadeer is over.” This will displease the Americans. So will Gilani’s present position on the Pakistani nuclear weapons program: “we are not a rogue state and are neither indulging in an arms race with any one” although “minimum deterrence will be maintained in this regard.

Desperately Seeking Bin Laden

Above all, the Americans are definitely not happy with Pakistan’s failure to nab Osama bin Laden or to permit American forces to nip over the border from Afghanistan to do the job for them.

Congregations Against Torture

by Cheryl Rofer

I drove past the Santa Fe Unitarian Universalist Church this afternoon, after viewing "Constantine's Sword," which is about Christianity and antisemitism and, I might add, power. The sign in front was covered with a black banner with white letters condemning torture. I commented to my passenger that the antiwar movement of the sixties and early seventies included more church people than the priests and nuns depicted in the movie, and it was about time to see the churches taking a stand on torture.

I was wondering about how much of a movement might be developing, so I checked for news stories. Apparently the movement is among individual congregations, mostly Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations, but including Jewish congregations and a few others for a total of about 300.

The Washington Times is one of the few newspapers bothering to cover this development, at least according to what I find in Google News. Papers in localities where the signs are going up are also covering the news. (Corvallis, Oregon; River City, Iowa; Atlanta)

Inang Bayan’s New Clothes – A Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Shhh. This delightful children’s book may – or may not - be off-limits to Americans. So let’s pretend you didn’t hear about it from me. But it’s a best seller in the Philippines.

I first learned about Inang Bayan’s New Clothes from one of the few informative articles I’ve come across of late in State the State Department’s in-house magazine so I sent out feelers to see if I could obtain a copy.

Don’t ask how I got it but I did.

That’s best kept part of my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – because of an outdated law known as Smith-Mundt that restricts Americans’ access to learning what our taxpayers’ dollars are supporting overseas. Thanks to the Internet, however, you can at least see American Ambassador Kristie Kenney on the US Embassy’s webpage reading from the book to a group of Filipino girls in 2006 when it first appeared. It then took over a year for the story to appear in State – but better late than never.

Suffice it to say that I’ll bet you never dreamed that US government money would help finance a story about two Filipino girls – Feliza and Nurhana, one Christian and the other Muslim – who live in Mindanao, work in a dress shop after school and despite their families’ religious differences are best of friends.

The purpose of this book is to promote inter-communal understanding – and it is clearly aimed at Filipino girls. It is full of pretty clothes, lovely pictures, and paper dolls to dress. In so doing, it shows the multi-ethnic heritage of Filipinos and it also depicts how it is possible – two girls at a time - to play a part in overcoming the devastating religious cleavage that has bedeviled the southern-most part of the archipelago for years. The name Inang Bayan means the Philippine Motherland or Spirit. It dates back - at least - to the early 1900s. Inang Bayan is also known as the "first muse" of Philippine poets.

In short, this little paperback book with cut-outable inserts is a winner.

Its authors – Tony Perez and Agnes Caballa - are veteran Filipino public diplomacy staff at the US Embassy in Manila and its illustrator is Frances Alcaraz, a illustrator and Ateneo de Manila University professor. Perez is an award winning author in his own right and Caballa is a television script writer, lyricist and stage director, as well as co-editor of the magazine Muslim Life in the Philippines. The book was published by Anvil, a major Filipino publishing house, and its publication and production was financed by the U.S. government. Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, apparently, still in print – or perhaps back in print because it is so popular. But don't expect to find it on Amazon. The text is in both Cebuano (the language of Mindanao) and English.

Now you might ask why the US government would invest in a children’s book of this sort. It’s not, after all, about promoting the US image abroad. But in the event you’ve forgotten, in 2002 the US sent a small number of troops to the Philippines to help the Philippine armed forces cope with Mindanao-based Muslim insurgents including those with ties to Al Qaeda. As far as I can tell, the insurgents as well as Philippine and US troops are still there and the government’s long-standing insurgency problem has yet to be resolved for numerous reasons.

Yet Inang Bayan’s New Clothes is, at the very least, a tiny – delightful - step in the right direction.

Guess What? American Muslims Aren’t That Different

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I always sit up and pay attention when another Pew survey is announced, and the report that was covered in my morning NYT on June 24 had to do with religion in the U.S.

A major survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. This openness to a range of religious viewpoints is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States, as documented in a survey of more than 35,000 Americans that comprehensively examines the country’s religious landscape

Religion is a hot political topic these days. The wall of separation between church and state is under assault, and the administration has declared war on radical Islam. So I was very eager to read this article which declared that a “survey of religion in U.S. finds a broad tolerance for other faiths.”

The tabulations that followed included nine categories: Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Unaffiliated. But where were the Muslims? Was it possible that the Pew people had neglected to include Muslims?

Or was it that data involving Muslims was simply ignored by the reporter, whose name showed her to be of high caste Bengali Hindu descent. Was this a snub that went back to the ancestral culture in Indian West Bengal?

OK. Reporters are human. But where was the editor? Surely an editor would have noticed that Muslims were absent from the story submitted by the reporter. Except, it seems, the editor didn’t, unless the Pew people had been very very negligent.

So, naturally, I went on line. I found, to my great relief, that the Pew people had not failed to include Muslims in this very important tabulation (though the consolidated data comes from different studies).

Above all (and this is of major political importance) it seems that Muslims in America aren’t statistically all that different from any other Americans in the essence of their theology or the resulting political implications.

Thus, under the category “Many Paths to God,” it appears that 56% of American Muslims agree that “many religions can lead to eternal life.” Mormans rank only 39% on this item and Jehovah’s Witnesses lag at 16%. Nobody who can tolerate other roads to god is likely to throw bombs, so we should certainly be reassured that a solid majority of Muslims are very tolerant indeed. (And most of the rest aren’t fanatical or suicidal, just as most evangelicals wouldn't bomb an abortion clinic.)

Even more interesting as a perspective on American Islam was the category which involved “Conception of God.” This choice had to do with whether one believes that god is “a person” one can have a “relationship” with or that god is “an impersonal force.” Some 42% of Muslims saw God as an impersonal force. That’s more than the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians—and nearly as many as the Jews, who stand at 50% in this category. Now I ask you, if someone thinks of God as an impersonal force, is that person likely to support or go on a violent jihad? I think not.

The third category category reported in the NYT had to do with the comparative value of “ensuring peace" through “diplomacy or military strength." Some 84% of Muslims prefer diplomacy. Catholics come in at 64%, Protestants at 55% and Mormons at a mere 49%. What does that say about the supposedly violent inclinations of Muslims as a whole? Totally demolished.

It’s often said in political commentary today that violent Islam is espoused by those who feel their values are threatened by America’s popular culture or by those who are dissatisfied with their lives or opportunities. The Pew poll shows that American Muslims are no more worried than other Americans about whether “Hollywood threatens my values” and they are equally satisfied with their lives. So American Muslims aren’t disproportionately alienated either.

Perhaps we are over the worst human rights abuses which followed the destruction of the World Trade towers, but simplistically negative ideas about Muslims and Islam are still all too prevalent. This Pew study should go a long way toward inoculating non-Muslim Americans against such prejudice.

The Sins of the Fathers: Thoughts on the Fulbright Snafu in Gaza

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Here’s the gist of it: because Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas, Gaza has been turned into a concentration camp, and even the children of those naughty voters must be punished, according to Israel and its primary financial and moral (ahem!) backers in the Bush administration. As a result, Palestinian students can’t count on exit visas to study abroad, even when they’re awarded the full scholarships they need to do so. Not even when those scholarships are sponsored by Israel’s official friends in the U.S.

So, Palestinian children are to be punished for the sins of their fathers even unto the umpteenth generation. This sort of thinking goes back to the Bible. It’s purpose, several millenia ago, was to account for the baffling cosmic injustice by which good people suffered very bad things. The explanation: God designed it that way. You’re in trouble because you had a bad daddy or mommy ad infinitum.

Well, that explanation may work, sort of, for some people, to account for the consequences of natural phenomena like tsunamis and earthquakes and tornadoes. Unavertable catastrophes kill a lot of innocent people and even some saints, no doubt. Such premature mortality doesn’t seem fair, but people often feel better if they can find a “good reason” for the horror.

Actually death by typhoon, etc., isn’t fair, because fairness has nothing to do with nature.

But the Israeli exit visa policy has nothing to do with god or nature. It’s a political decision, and it’s hubris or sacrilege for humans to think they may act like god. On the human level, meanwhile, the notion of punishing children for the sins of their fathers is not only unjust inhuman and unjust, it’s ludicrous. It assumes that a person’s future can be predicted at a very early age. It also assumes that children always or mostly turn out like their parents.

On what sage-worthy grounds might an Israeli security staffer deny an exit visa? The kid threw stones at Israeli soldiers when he/she was 12 or 14? He/she shouted anti-Israeli slogans or scribbled anti-Israeli graffiti? He/she has a father, mother, cousin, uncle who is/was a Hamas member or supporter?

In practice, no such factors reliably predict anyone's future philosophy or behavior. For example, when I entered college, I was a Christian, a Republican and an ardent Israel supporter. I am none of these now, and I have changed no more than many people do over a lifetime.

Sometimes children adopt the parental religious orientation or profession; sometimes they don’t. Some children get more liberal as a result of travel and education. Some get more conservative. Furthermore, we all know that siblings can be as different as night and day. Thus, there is no way to know how a young or inexperienced person will react when exposed to foreign countries and cultures.

To give the devil his due, it’s true that some foreign-educated engineers and doctors have become terrorists. Yet most turn out to be beneficial members of society. Is it reasonable to punish 1000 potential agents of good in order to avert the minuscule risk of one (or less) going amok? The Israeli policy of denying foreign education to Gazans is a crude and vicious business of punishing children for the supposed sins of their fathers, a policy of totally gratuitous cruelty.

It’s cruel in another way, too. It assumes that parents will do anything you want them to do if you make life hard for their children. It assumes, in this case, that Gazans, at a certain point of deprivation and humiliation, will hug their babies, fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness, after which they will humbly vote as Israelis want them to vote. By now, it should be clear that such self-negation will not happen. Not even the Bush administration is willing to let Gazans starve.

Fortunately, then, most of the trapped children will grow up, but there’s a consequence to consider. Although the principle of non-predictability applies across the board, I strongly suspect that a larger proportion of those who never experience a more benign environment will be angrier and more vindictive than those who left to study at Harvard or Michigan State or Bryn Mawr. Or Oxford. Or Heidelberg.

How could the U.S. have slavishly acquiesced in this policy of punishing youth for the sins of the grown ups? I don’t understand it, but I am deeply grateful to those who spilled the beans and hope (not very optimistically) they will not be punished for disclosing this injustice. There is nothing like public humiliation to cause policy change. The Palestinian Fulbrighters will travel.

I am no less happy to see that exit visas will also be issued to hundreds of Gazans who had been denied the opportunity to travel to other countries for education.

However, nothing can be taken for granted. Vigilance will be required, lest the prison gates be locked again, after this little brouhaha dies down. And should an administrative “bottleneck” occur again, I suggest that the proper U.S. response should not be to revoke Palestinian grants or to plead for reversal, but to immediately reassign all Israeli Fulbright grants to Muslim students elsewhere in the world.

Not all Fulbright awards go to young students, of course, but visas for older scholars are equally defensible. Surely no Israeli official in his or her right mind can believe that a Palestine without professionals and academics will be good for Israel’s future security. Unless, of course, Israel’s true goal really is the genocide, total expropriation or perpetual serfdom that some Israelis, at least, seem to envision for the Palestinians.

Funny Friends in the Middle East

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Who hates us? Who loves us? Who’s an enemy? Who’s an ally? These are important questions, but the people who presume to answer them for us often seem to be more than a little disingenuous—or just plain ignorant—when they try to persuade Americans that we’d be fine if we could shut down the Shia and rely on the Sunni, among whom we have so many staunch friends.

Let’s look at a few Sunni rulers in the Middle East, beginning with the Saud corporation.

The ruling Al Saud family in Saudi (what else!) Arabia are Sunni. The Bush family have been in profitable alliance with this large parasitic family, who rule but do not represent the native born residents of their share of the Arabian peninsula. In the past there was a useful little pact: the U.S. gave the al Sauds the military wherewithal to feel secure as they pumped oil out of the sand, while the Sauds gave America the oil required to fuel and lubricate our life style. The deal worked to America’s advantage (it seemed) so long as America was the primary reliable customer for oil. The apparent excess of supply over demand kept prices low enough to sustain America’s now notorious car culture. Unfortunately, there are friends and friends, as evidenced by George W. Bush’s unsuccessful oil-begging trip to Saudi Arabia last week. It seems there are other big customers for oil these days.

Meanwhile, the non-democratic Saddam Hussain was a Sunni, but he was not a friend—except when he was at war with Iran, in which case he was such a good friend that we evidently helped him out with the chemical weapons we would later condemn him for using on the wrong enemies. Afterwards, when he decided to gobble up Kuwait, he became an enemy, of course. Bush the 41st, having won the first Iraq war, gave a humbled Saddam a chance to be a friend again, but Saddam bit the hand that would befriend him, and, to show his father what real manhood is, Bush the 43rd hung him. Soon we were to discover that the Sunni of Iraq didn’t want to be our friends, though the Shia were delighted with the results of our incursion: a Shia majority (surprise! surprise!) claimed the right to rule, but the winners in their internal power struggle weren’t the cohorts of the scheming secular Chelabi, but those allied to warring clerical factions, all of whom turned out to be more or less friendly with Iran. This causes more than a little grief for the Iraqi government’s friendship with America. Friendship, evidently, is supposed to be monogamous!

In Afghanistan, the Taliban are 100% Sunni, but they are not our friends, while the Hazara and most other members of the Eastern Alliance with whom we joined up during the anti-Soviet war on Afghan territory were Shia, which didn’t keep them from being our close friends. President Karzai, a Sunni, is obliged to pretend he is a friend, but he looks so unhappy when he complains about U.S. troops' collateral damage to Afghan civilians that I wouldn’t count too much on the relationship, should the flow of funding cease. Buying loyalty works only so long as the checks arrive.

As to the widely admired, late King Hussain of Jordan, a Sunni monarch often considered a friend of the West and even of Israel, that good king sided with Iraq during the first Iraq war, to a very large extent because the majority of the residents of Jordan are Palestinians, who are Sunni, and the only way Hussain could keep Jordan together was to favor his belligerent neighbor. Abdullah, his son and heir, comes to the U.S., from time to time, in an effort to instill a little savvy into American policy toward the Muslim world, but so far seems to have had little impact, though he also achieves his other goal, financial support for his kingdom, which in 2008 comes to about $50 per Jordanian or $300,000. That certainly buys a modicum of friendship.

To continue: Socialist Gamal Abdul Nassar of Egypt was also a Sunni, but he was not seen as a friend of America, since he found the Soviet Union more amenable to his goals, but subsequent non-democratic Sunni presidents of Egypt have been seen as friends, especially when they shut the unfriendly-to-the-U.S. Sunni Muslim Brotherhood out of legitimate politics. So, these Egyptian Sunni, are they friends or enemies of the U.S.?

Whooops! I almost forgot the Palestinians. They are largely Sunni, which should make them our friends, except when they oppose Israeli occupation—or vote, in an honest election, for Hamas, in which case they become our enemies, especially when they turn toward Shia Iran for weapons with which to oppose Israeli oppression. The Bush administration thinks the Iran link is terrible. But, at worst, isn’t this Hamas-Iran axis a little like the U.S. befriending nasty dictators during the Cold War? When you need allies, you don’t ask embarrassing questions. On the West Bank, at least, we have real friends, under the hapless leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas, yet even Abbas was snubbed when Bush came to congratulate Israel on 60 years of independence, since that also means 60 years of displacement to Palestinians. Come to think of it, who in all of Palestine considers the U.S. an honest broker, let alone a friend these days?

What a confusing, mixed up business this is! Why can’t the Sunni just be clones of one another? The right kind of clones, of course.

On the other hand, maybe a certain homogenization is happening, which should not be at all comforting to the Bush administration, because the less U.S.-friendly have gained strength and influence, even in Indonesia. When it comes to aggressive missionary activity–and successful conversion, the prize-winners seem to have been the puritanical Sunni Salafists, whom the oil-wealthy Saudis have funded generously to preach their version of Islam globally. Anti-American books are distributed widely by the Saudi World Muslim League, free for the asking, courtesy of gas-guzzling American drivers. So, while the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. is welcomed as a courtesy uncle (even better than a friend) in the Bush family, his government is pushing a xenophobic, misogynistic Wahhabi form of Islam as the only authentic practice for the truly pious. Though Osama bin Laden is now persona non grata in Saudi Arabia, it’s not because he’s charged with misusing Islam to justify terrorism against kafirs. It’s because he considers the Saudi ruling family to be irreligious and thus unfit for rulership. And Al Qaeda of Iraq may or may not be controlled by the home office in Waziristan, but it’s members are definitely Sunni.

I conclude with a simple question: when columnist Thomas L. Friedman speaks of robustly supporting our Sunni friends and allies in the Middle East, who on earth can he be referring to? The king of tiny, ethnically split Jordan? A fragile government in ethnically-complex Lebanon? The nice, but powerless Abbas on the West Bank? A few Sunni emirs in the Persian Gulf whose oil-producing kingdoms contain more unprivileged foreigners (and Shi’a) than native-born Sunnis? A bunch of Iraqis in Anbar who are friends because we pay them to fight for instead of against us? Some friends! Some allies! Pretty thin reeds to tie a policy to.

Friedman ends his lament over Hezbolla’s increased power in Lebanon with a quote meant to suggest that the more Hezbolla appears to succeed the weaker it will be. To me, it seems as if the quote is more applicable to the Bush administration’s Middle Eastern policy:

Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus, without bringing everybody in,” said the Lebanese columnist Michael Young. “Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects.” In the Middle East, he added, your enemies always seem to “find a way of joining together and suddenly making things very difficult for you.”

Yup!

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think: Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Earlier this month, a friend recommended one “must read” book for inclusion in a short list of books and other materials on the Muslim world for a hand out at a recent symposium the World Affairs Forum held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The symposium was entitled “Meeting Minds with the Muslim World” and was conducted on a “non-attribution” basis.

The “must-read” book was Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed. It was published in 2007 by Gallup Publishers and it should be at the top of the reading lists for all three U.S. presidential candidates, their advisors as well as American voters, the vast majority of who desperately need far more accurate information about Muslims and the Islamic world than the US media normally provides.

Short, well organized, timely and an easy read

Who Speaks for Islam? is mercifully short (184 pages). It is well organized and easy to read. Its findings are a distillation of reams of first rate data collected by the Gallup organization between 2001 and 2007 in hour long, face-to-face interviews using open-ended questions with tens of thousands of “residents of more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have substantial Muslim populations.” As I understand it, the book confirms the results of numerous – but far less comprehensive - opinion surveys conducted by other western survey research organizations over the same period.

These results presented in Who Speaks for Islam? explode virtually every assertion about the Islamic world and Muslim views of the West that the Bush administration has promulgated since 9/11 to justify its controversial policies in the Middle East.

Islam’s Silenced Majority: the “clash of civilizations” is a canard

First, according to Who Speaks for Islam?, there is no “inevitable clash of civilizations.”

Sorry Professor Huntington, I’ve also never agreed with your overly simplistic and often inaccurate divisions of the post Cold War world on questionably-drawn religious/ethnic grounds. This includes your monolithic characterization of the Islamic world. In Who Speaks for Islam?, Esposito and Mogahed demonstrate that a majority of the world’s approximately 1.3 billion Muslims do, in fact, value democracy and human rights. So, Mr. Bush, pray tell, where is the “inevitable clash of civilizations” based on irreconcilable differences of values upon which you have based our foreign policy for the past seven years?

Most Muslims do not hate the West, or the US, because of our values – despite what Mr. Bush and his neoconservative supporters at the American Enterprise Institute and other rightwing think tanks continue to attempt to shove down our throats through various media outlets – the problem is most Muslims object to America’s not living up to those values. This begins with human rights abuses at Abu Graib and Guantanamo, the administration’s covert rendition and discriminatory visa policies and moves on to its ill-considered invasion of Iraq coupled with unconditional support for a greater Israel.

The Gallup data also tell us that there are major differences between how Muslims view the West. Just as we should - but too often do not - recognize that the Islamic “world” is far from monolithic, the majority of Muslims realize that there are major differences between France and Germany, for instance, and the US. France and Germany come out far ahead because of American unilateralism based on the Bush administration’s militaristic approach to the world, in particular the invasion of Iraq and the administration’s one-sided support for a greater Israel’s domination of the Middle East.

War against whom? Against what?

Old Russian Merchants and New French Modernism

By James West, Guest Contributor

Dr. James L. West is Professor of Humanities, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont.

Leave it to the Russians to confuse ancient tradition and avant-garde modernity in ways that leave westerners scratching their heads. Such hallucinogenic juxtapositions of old and new can easily be seen in the streets of contemporary Moscow, as ancient cathedrals long destroyed are resurrected alongside soaring twisting glass towers of the latest Deconstructive architectural design. The current show of Russian and French art at the Royal Academy in London calls to mind another time exactly a century ago when Russia’s mixture of ancient and contemporary nurtured the nascent Modernist movement in art and music. In the last years of Imperial Russia, Russian elites and Russian artists were able to draw out of Old Russian culture elements of astonishing modernity. In little-known ways, the Russians fueled and shaped the Modernist canon as we know it today.

Explosion of Russian cultural activity

In the first years of the twentieth century, Russia virtually exploded with cultural creativity. It could literally be said that Russian artists and musicians led the Modernist revolution before the First World War. Much of that experimentation consisted of reinterpretations of Old Russian Culture in modernist idiom. The brilliant abstract art of Vasilii Kandinsky was heavily influenced by medieval Russian icons, the brilliant original hues of which had only recently been discovered by a hapless chemist who spilled acid on a darkened icon and was the first since the Middle Ages to see it true colors. Kandinsky’s modernist canvases of the pre-war years are literally “abstract icons,” whose bright yellows, reds and greens were inspired by the vibrant tones of the Moscow, Novgorod and Tver Schools of medieval icon painting. In a similar way, the young Igor Stravinsky looked to Russian folk culture and peasant tales to inspire his modernist musical compositions for Diagilhiev’s Ballet Russe in Paris from 1908 until 1913. The ancient tale of the Firebird became the ballet of the same name, the traditional Russian Shrovetide carnival inspired Petroushka, and the breakthrough piece of modernist music, The Rite of Spring, was Stravinsky’s exploration of the most ancient time of all, the pre-Christian world of Kievan Rus.’ Likewise, Natalia Goncharova’s modernist-primitivist paintings of the same period were drawn from the folk tradition of the lubok, colorful wood-block prints which served as the art of
the peasantry at least from the time of Peter the Great.

The history of Modernist art has amply recorded these retro explorations by Russian modernist artists and composers. What is less known, however, is the way in which certain individual Russians influenced the creation of the Modernist canon in Europe.

In the years before the First World War, the Russian merchants Ivan Morozov and Vassili Shchukin stalked the studios of Paris buying modernist art from obscure and poverty-stricken painters like Picasso and Matisse, virtually keeping these struggling artists afloat in a market that disdained their work. The paintings they bought and shipped off to Moscow later became some of the most important on the century. The story of how these men got to Paris, and the role they played in shaping our contemporary understanding of Modernism, is another fascinating example of Russia’s ability to jostle tradition and modernity in surprising ways.

"Quieter than grass, lower than water"

Traditionally, Russian merchants were the most deferential and most despised of Russia’s elite groups. Shunned by aristocrats and peasants alike, the kuptsy remained “quieter than grass, lower than water.” Calamity followed upon unpopularity, as the old merchantry of Moscow was virtually destroyed by the great fire of 1812. From the ashes of that conflagration emerged the lowest of the low, itinerant peasant rag-pickers hawking their wares around the streets and bazaars of the reviving city. These industrious peasants were the founders of the Moscow textile dynasties, whose descendents three generations later emerged as the wealthiest and freest men ever to live in Russia until the New Russians a century later. Flush with resources and self-confidence, this new private elite set forth to do battle both with the tsarist government, whose repressive instincts feared all initiative from below, and with the aristocratic elites, whose taste and influence dominated Russian culture and politics.

Many activist merchants and industrialists were Old Believer descendants

Ironically, many of the activist merchants and industrialists of this period were of Old Believer origin, descendants of the schismatics who, in the seventeenth century, rejected reforms of the Orthodox Church under Patriarch Nikon, as well as the later westernization of Peter the Great. Through more than two centuries of persecution as heretics, the Old Believer peasants remained faithful to their Muscovite rituals, and consistently rejected innovation in either religious or secular life. In order to distinguish themselves from the “Nikonians” (Orthodox) majority, they followed the path of religious minorities elsewhere by cultivating the virtues of literacy, sobriety and enterprise.

Perhaps because of their “Protestant Ethic” ethos and practices, many of their number were included in those merchant elites who transformed the Russian economy with their entrepreneurship in the early nineteenth century. By the end of the century, many, like Ivan Morozov, had adopted a modern lifestyle without forsaking the faith of their ancestors. Thus it was representatives of families like the Riabushinskys, the Konovalovs, and the Morozovs who patronized the modernist artistic experimentation, while others struggled for the rule of law in Russia in order to put an end to the arbitrary power that had persecuted their ancestors. It was another ironic twist of old and new in Russia that this most traditionalistic group contributed to the modernization of Russia’s culture at the end of the tsarist era.

Merchant Moscow the only place in Europe where modernism was accepted - that, by the way, includes France

Morozov the Old Believer, and Shchukin the loyal Orthodox, became protean figures whose resources and restless search for self-identity fueled much of the artistic experimentation of Moscow Silver Age. Shunning the classicist aesthetic of the aristocracy they despised, they patronized modernist experimentation the theater, in literature and in the arts. The strange thing was that merchant Moscow was virtually the only place in Europe where modernism was accepted- European bourgeoisies, including the French, mimicked the classicist pretensions of their social superiors, and nymphs and satyrs dominated the art production of Europe right up until the First World War.

Forty Years Ago

by CKR

Martin Luther King's death was a turning point, from the principled civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties to the insanities that came later. Those insanities, unfortunately, mark too much of what we label "The Sixties." David Brooks recognizes this today.

E. J. Dionne details the political turning. As I read this article, I wondered how our present would have been shaped by a narrative that focused on the white racist sniper and his fading ideology rather than the one we we received about blacks and youth being out of control.

And Edward W. Brooke, one of the two surviving members of the Kerner Commission that looked into the causes of the riots that followed King's death in cities across the country, reminds us that the problems that report detailed continue today. The other surviving member, Fred Harris, was a guest on Bill Moyers's program last Friday.

As I'm thinking of alternative history, it occurs to me that a world in which Martin Luther King was not killed in this way would be worth thinking out. Or even the world of that alternative narrative.

There were riots in the cities over the war; whites and blacks, under King's leadership, were able to come together on that. The nation was shocked to recognize the conditions described in the Kerner Report and moved to rebuild the cities in a massive works project that prevented the inflation and oil shock of the seventies. That made a firmer platform for the internet boom to take off from, and although it bubbled, it didn't collapse so violently. Our foreign policy was able to be more alert and responsive, on the basis of that prosperity. The Soviet Union collapsed in pretty much the same way, but we offered the fifteen former Soviet Republics a Marshall Plan that rebuilt Russia and allowed Gorbachev (who, because the transition was smoother, remained in office) and the American president to destroy all their nuclear weapons while pressing the other nuclear powers to do the same. In the course of those negotiations, India, Pakistan and Russia found it was to their advantage to support the rebuilding of Afghanistan, which undercut the machinations of the salafi extremists to build their base there. 9/11 never happened. Russia joined the EU. A much better treaty than Kyoto was developed with worldwide support to address global warming.

That's probably the most optimistic scenario. It doesn't include any unexpected events and violates my usual precepts on alternative history in a number of ways, not least by not providing reasonable causal links.

We can't go back, but we could look at this alternative history for some clues as to what we might do now.

The End of PC?

by CKR

We’ve tried to minimize our commentary on the Democratic primary race here at WhirledView. There are a number of reasons for that, perhaps foremost that we feel we can contribute more to the discussion through analysis and our various expertises than through partisanship.

So I’ve thought long and hard about saying something about Barack Obama’s speech on race in America. I’ve waited a bit because it seems to me that the response to it will be more important than the speech itself.

Lyndon Johnson took a big gamble in signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Not so much a gamble in one sense; he knew that it would lose the South’s support for the Democratic Party. He was right. In another sense, it was indeed a gamble, and he was on the right side there: most of us now recognize that it was the right thing to do.

It was an enormous change, and the Republican Party’s willingness to politicize racial differences in the service of increasing its power (Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”) contributed to the exploding tensions of the late sixties and early seventies. Perhaps even without that politicization, dreadful things would have happened, as they happened before in changes between the races in America.

But no society can endure continuing open strife between internal groups, and we found the way to a ceasefire. We would not discuss such matters openly, except in extremely structured venues. Like any ceasefire, it was unstable and occasionally breached. As Obama noted, the discussion went on in segregated forums. That tended to harden views into patterns.