WhirledView

Islam and the West: Heaps of Forgotten History—and a Heartwarming True Tale of Today

By PLS

(In this post I’m going to talk about three recently published books: Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists by Michael Hamilton Morgan, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk and Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.)

People forget (or decide to ignore) all kinds of history. Bad things, of course. But sometimes it’s convenient to repress the memory of the good things, too.

Muslim Genius

Michael Hamilton Morgan’s Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists reminds us of the greatness of Muslim civilization. All humanity stands on the shoulders of the luminous human beings who lived in Bagdad, Damascus, Al Andalus, Tabriz, Nishapur, Isfahan, Basra, etc., just as those immortals stood on the shoulders of the ancient Greeks, who for their part learned much from ancient Egypt. For all the anxiety about economic globalization today, it’s well to remember that trade and cultural exchange are normal for human beings. The world of knowledge has always been globalized, as scholars, mathematicians, astronomers, poets and others move from court to court, country to country, university to university. In any era the center that attracts the most brilliant scholars of the day gains prestige and profits in innumerable ways.

When Europe went through the dismal period known as the Dark Ages, a term which some are now attaching to the current relatively retro phase of Muslim history, the Islam-enhanced, largely forgotten learning of the Western past was preserved in Muslim libraries and archives. Those intellectual achievements, further developed by Western thinkers over the past few centuries, are now waiting to be reclaimed when—No! I’m not forgetting the brilliant individual Muslims scattered in universities around the world—the Muslim world at large is ready to support the enthusiastic creation of new knowledge again.

Michael Morgan is providing a terrific springboard for making the most of recovered memories. It’s hard to see how a Muslim student at Al Azhar or any other university could fail to be inspired by this fast-paced and very readable introduction to these intellectual live wires who illuminated Islamic civilization from the eighth century to the sixteenth when Akbar, the Mogul Emperor of India, illiterate himself, sponsored lively debates on the great issues of the day among the great scholars of his time, including Hindus and Jesuits as well as representatives of his natal religion Islam. Such debates seldom take place even in our so called advanced time.

Morgan has a wonderful talent for bringing his heroes to life and allowing us an almost visceral participation in each moment of insight. We meet great physicians like Ibn Sina whose science-based Canon of Medicine became the guide for European practice for over 700 years. We meet the less well known, but equally influential Ibn Al-Haytham, who studied light, astronomy and optics in the eleventh century, and we share with him the excitement of watching what sun beams do. Empiricism was alive and well way back then!

Ibn Sina went way beyond Galen, whom he acknowledged as a master; Al-Haytham built on Ptolemy, who was no slouch. And Westerners could never have become masters of the sea, if they had not been able to count on the navigational aid of the astrolabe as refined by Muslim scholars like Al Majriti, who also used his more sophisticated device for land surveys in Muslim Spain that were more accurate than the Roman-based surveying still in use until then. To build on the past is no indication of inferiority. It’s the way knowledge advances. And Muslims helped mightily, in the past.

If you don’t know much about Muslim intellectual history, this engaging book will bowl you over. It’s the perfect corrective for insufficiently informed Muslims depressed by the pre-eminance of Westerners in the intellectual world—and for Westerners who equate Islam with nothing but violence and backwardness. The message to young Muslims is this: if Islamic civilization could inspire such accomplishment in the past, it can happen again—and you—Yes, you!—might make it happen. The related message to non-Muslims is that terrorism is a malignancy on the body of Islam, not its essence.

Western Hubris

But why terrorism in our time? Why do young Muslims (even those who study science) turn themselves into suicide bombers, with or without the assistance of jet liners? Some people in the West, especially in the U.S., believe the violence arises because young Muslims are jealous of the Western life style They hate “us” for our freedoms. They hate “us” for democracy. They hate “us” for having the high standard of living that only the wealthy among them can enjoy. Maybe they also hate the over-sexualizing of our culture, and lots of us would agree that we could do with a bit less of that!

Veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk has a more convincing answer in The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. It’s this: They hate us for what we’ve done to them, to their countries, to their autonomy, to their self-respect, “them” being the Muslim world and “we” being the West—first Great Britain and France during the Colonial Era and now the United States, which exercises imperial power mostly without occupying the territory it dominates.

Thinking the Unthinkable: Leaving Iraq with Dignity, Compassion and Iraqi Employees

By PHK

Kudos to the Danes for undertaking the unthinkable and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker for at least broaching the subject. Crocker’s advice and concerns are a cold dose of realism in a US foreign policy which under this administration has generally been devoid of it.

Yet will the Bush administration listen?

According to a July 21, 2007 article in the International Herald Tribune, the Danish government has “secretly airlifted about 200 translators and other Iraqi employees and their relatives out of Iraq to try to keep them from coming to harm after it withdraws its ground forces later this summer.” In a similar vein as reported in the Washington Post on July 22, Crocker, in a two page cable, “has asked the Bush administration to . . . grant immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the US government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured safe passage to the U.S.”

It’s more than time for the US to get those departure ducks in a row. We turned a blind eye in Vietnam in 1975 and hundreds and thousands of loyal Vietnamese US government employees and their families were left to fend for themselves. This often meant “reeducation camps,” separation, loss of livelihood, personal hardship and finally, for the lucky, escape by small boat through treacherous waters. Some made it – others didn’t.

Given America’s poor track record on the taking-care-of-those-who-work-for-us front, it’s no wonder that current Iraqi employees of the U.S. government now demand assurances for the afterwards. They and their families will need to depart Iraq to survive. The US government on its part has a moral obligation to help them resettle elsewhere – most likely the US.

It’s that simple.

There's also the wide scope, character and history of the US occupation of Iraq, the numbers of refugees will be thousands more than the small contingent working for the Danes – but then the U.S. is also a far larger country.

If we do it right this next time, we won’t need to deal – years later – with thousands of displaced persons like we did with the Vietnamese boat people. When I was Cultural Affairs Officer in the Philippines from 1992-4, the final Vietnamese refugee camp only closed there nearly 20 years after the US withdrawal from Vietnam.

Cambodia and Vietnam: How to do it and how not

The evacuation of the US Embassy in Vietnam April 1975 was the most botched operation I witnessed during my nearly 28 year Foreign Service career. Not only did the evacuation leave Vietnamese employees behind but it also almost left my USIS American colleagues and the entire staff of one of our Consulates there too. I don’t remember the consulate story as well – but if my memory still serves me, the Consulate staff had not been told of the evacuation. They were left to learn by hearsay and find their own way out via private river boat down the Mekong.

Full Service Pays Off

by CKR

I can't believe how many birds are coming to my feeders. The piñon jays are working on the seed blocks. Many of them are quite grayish, probably this year's young. And many, many lesser goldfinches at the thistle feeder, some also obviously young. The goldfinches have been checking out the seed blocks, too. None of the other birds seem to be intimidated by the jays.

But here's today's surprise. Click on the photo to enlarge, and look right from the seed block.

I didn't think roadrunners ate seed, but this block also contains dried cranberries.

Update (later in the afternoon): After a very much needed rainstorm, there were about thirty jays around the two seed blocks. I couldn't count them accurately because they were moving around too much.

Progress in North Korea: What We Can Expect Next

by CKR

Now that we have more or less reconstituted the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, things are moving forward. The IAEA inspectors have verified the shutdown of the Yongbyong nuclear complex in return for shipments of fuel oil.

North Korea is even talking about declaring all its nuclear weapons programs as well. This is where the potential stumbling block lies. In 2002, the United States ended the cooperation of the Agreed Framework because, the US claimed, North Korea had embarked on a uranium enrichment program. The US provided very little evidence of the claim, but North Korea seemed to agree that it had such a program in progress. What it has said since then has been more ambiguous. Experts such as Mark Hibbs and Selig Harrison have found no evidence of a North Korean uranium enrichment program.

So as we progress toward a North Korean declaration of all their nuclear capabilities, we can expect that the phantom uranium enrichment program will be brought up again. It's very hard to prove a negative, that there is no program, and those who want to trash the agreement with North Korea (John Bolton and other warlike neocons) will remind us that just because the inspectors can't find it doesn't mean it's not there.

This is true, of course, but UN inspectors provided the most accurate picture available of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Including the weapons that weren't there.

The US and Russia: Why Can’t An “Incoherent” Relationship Be Changed?

By PHK

I can’t help wondering who’s really in charge of America’s relations with Russia and what their motives are.

After reading the non-reports of Putin’s fishing expedition off the coast of Maine – or the "lobster summit” as the media dubbed the meeting between Russia’s president and George W. Bush in Kennebunkport just before W gave Scooter Libby a “get out of jail free card” which resulted in that subsequent media blitz over the Fourth of July - I began to question whether there had been a substantive reason for the US-Russian bilateral lobster quadrille at all.

In a July 3, 2007 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR Russian expert Stephen Sestanovich characterized the overall US-Russian relationship as ‘incoherent’ but observed “that the two countries are putting increased emphasis once again on nuclear issues.”

Putting Coherency into an “Incoherent” situation

Well, maybe – and maybe those and other outstanding security issues could be dealt with in a coherent fashion if the Bush administration decided to put aside other differences for the moment and began to negotiate with the Russians on such weighty issues that affect the existence of the planet. Such talks did have lengthy precedent in US-Soviet relations.

As CKR recently pointed out, this is being done with others. We’re talking – finally - to the North Koreans about their ceasing and dismantling their fledgling nuclear weapons program – but in so doing, we did not insist they change their internal political system as a precondition or throw up other barriers that could not be met by a dictatorship clinging to power by the barrel of a gun.

As a result, there’s now very good news for Americans on the North Korea nuclear reactor front. All it took was a change in US policy and people that resulted from the departure of obstructionists John Bolton, Robert Joseph and Donald Rumsfeld and the arrival of the realist Bob Gates. Let Bolton and Joseph fulminate at AEI as well as on the pages of the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal – better than allowing them to continue to play block and tackle in sensitive government posts.

I trust there are at least some people in the US government prepared to engage in bilateral nuclear weapons negotiations that could begin to clear the troubled air – like extending the START Treaty that has underpinned the US-Russian relationship for years and that is set to expire 18 months from now. Seems to me this should be a major priority for both them and us.

Or agreeing to negotiate the de-targeting of the intercontinental missiles that we both still have aimed at each other's cities – now 16 years after the end of the Cold War.

It’s also clear, however, that other American so-called foreign policy experts will never be amendable to such diplomatic responses - particularly those still co-habiting the Vice President’s tent and their departed colleagues now camped out back at the American Enterprise Institute. From the neocon perspective, no treaty is a good treaty because treaties ipso facto hamper that hallowed (to them) tenant of US unilateralism that has "served" us so well since 2000.

Pavlovian response

These are, after all, some of the same people who brought us Missile Defense and the requisite unilateral withdrawal from the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Never mind that Missile Defense technology is years from working and, in my view, a large waste of the national treasure that foremost enriches certain US defense contractors. Placing ten Missile Defense interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic - countries that not only bordered the Soviet Union but until 1989 were its allies, however, is bound to provoke a Russian backlash. It’s Pavlovian. How would the US like it if the Russians decided to negotiate a similar agreement with the Canadians, the Mexicans, or the Venezuelans? Didn’t we almost go to war over a Russian attempt to place missiles in Cuba in 1962?

It didn’t help that the US failed to consult the other NATO members before announcing this latest hard-line Central European missile defense “coup” to the world either. This was just another of those stealth “fait-accomplis” so reminiscent of the way Cheney and the neocon cabal conduct business. But this administration's latest example of needless gunboat diplomacy didn't sit well with a number of Europeans either. And apparently no one bothered to survey the less than enthusiastic Polish people either.

"Suspension" and "pull out" are not synonyms

The latest news on the US-Russian front tells us that the Russians have suspended the CFE Treaty for the next 150 days. The suspension has, however, either been ignored or characterized in sensationalist headlines in the little media reporting I’ve seen. As, for instance, the Sunday, July 15 Observer’s headline “Kremlin tears up arm pact with Nato” republished in the Guardian or the Reuters report entitled “NATO ‘Very Concerned’ at Russia Treaty Pull Out” published the same day.

At least the Reuters reporter had the wherewithal to describe the Kremlin’s decision as a “suspension” – it was the news agency’s headline writer who provided the sensationalist title - but far too much of the article focused on the Polish reaction to the Russian announcement rather than explaining the motives for Putin’s move or likely US options and reactions. Isn’t the latter, however, what a reporter is supposed to do?

The single Reuters report, by the way, was the only information on the topic printed in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Whether this means the staffs are taking the Russian decision as a grain of salt, don’t understand the reasons behind it or whether their experienced defense reporters are on holiday is beyond me.

“Tit for tat”

When I lived in Moscow in the late 1970s, it seemed to me that Soviet negotiating behavior was based on “tit for tat.” I tend to think this approach reigns today with the Russians as well.

Tuesday Fall in the Air Blogging

by CKR

Every summer, there is a first day that reminds me of its end. The weather usually goes back to hot and dry after that, but then there is another and another. Usually that first end of summer day comes in August. This year it was last week.

The air bears a definite chill, if only for a day or so. There may be wind carrying in that new air, and possibly rain.

I know it wasn’t my imagination, because I have a flock of agreement.

The piñon jays descended on my neighborhood just after the wind. They were stomping on the roof of my office this morning, and earlier they were shouting (kirrr, kirrr, kwerrr) outside my bedroom window. They also have sort of a quacky chuckle, along with a jay-trademark squawk/shriek.

They look a lot like scrub jays, although bluer and less white around the face, a more squared-off tail. And they travel together.

I usually first see them just before the piñon nuts are what humans consider to be ready. The cones aren’t anywhere near that now.

But I put up a full-service bird yard last week. I have hesitated to put seed out because of the rock squirrels. But my poisoning campaign seems to have rid the neighborhood of the plague-carriers, so I am becoming braver. The thistle seed I’ve had too long in the larder doesn’t interest them, so I put out a sockful. I though I’d see if a seed block in a juniper tree a long way from what seems to be the squirrel entry point into my yard would be resistant. The jays have also found a suet block that I bought (erroneously) for the roadrunner and that has been nibbled at (bushtits, I think) since.

I’ve been more consistent about keeping water in the birdbath, too, even scrubbed it with bleach.

The thistle sock seemed to be going down rather quickly. Settling, I thought at first, but it seemed to keep going down. While I was working in the yard this weekend, I saw a pair of lesser goldfinches enjoying it. Not as spectacular as the American goldfinches I saw in North Carolina, but very nice indeed. The seed continues to go down, but I don’t see them much.

The jays have completely eliminated the seed block. I just went outside to fill the birdbath and they withdrew to a strategic tree while I checked out the area under where the block was. Nothing. I did hear the female black-headed grosbeak that has been enjoying the block. Nice that she hasn’t been intimidated by the noisy flock.

Update (later in the morning): I now have two seed blocks near the birdbath, one the giant economy size. We'll see how long it takes the jays to work that one down. I'm still seeing mourning doves on the ground around the birdbath, and a curve-billed thrasher that may be one of the nibblers at the suet.

Diplomacy in Action

by CKR

President Bush summed up a strong American feeling: “I don’t do nuance.”

We like to think of ourselves as straightforward and honest. On top of that is a frosting of self-actualizing feelgood that says we can work it out if we come clean with each other.

That works, sometimes, in personal relationships, largely one to one.

Diplomacy and its rhetorical relatives (I’m using rhetorical in its positive/neutral sense) have been worked out for the more complex situations that attend life in a world of interlocking and conflicting personal relationships, like in the organizations we work for and the relationships of nations in the world.

We Americans also like to see ourselves as the good guys, as the cavalry riding through the middle of the bad guys, saving the day. That sometimes works, too, but difficult problems are more often solved by nibbling away at the margins. And, confusingly, sometimes it seems to be a combination of all of the above.

The Bush administration has gone far beyond these American leanings with its exhortational diplomacy: they know what they have to do. This, of course, puts other leaders in a box. They can continue doing what they are doing or look like they are bowing to US pressure, never a good way to maintain their position in the world or at home.

Diplomacy and its rhetorical relatives make room for changes of mind and heart. They avoid casting principle into concrete actions that cannot be altered if a better idea comes along. They set up win-win situations if possible. This can make diplomacy seem slippery and unprincipled to those whose preferences lie in those simpler realms and who lack imagination. Those who don’t do nuance.

Diplomacy has had a pretty good run this past few weeks, but it’s easy to lose sight of it in the sea of partisan rhetoric. North Korea and its five partners seem to be moving toward a nuclear settlement. Iran has said it will open its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection. Russia has suspended its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. The last may or may not be good for world stability in the long run. It is, however, skillful use of diplomacy.

Bits and Pieces

by CKR

Just a few things I’ve picked up lately.

Nuclear History
An interview with Paul Tibbetts, the pilot of the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, interspersed with historical footage. (Hat tip to DS.)

Viral History
Our genomes carry a history of the viruses our ancestors were exposed to and developed immunological defenses against. So do the genomes of gorillas and chimpanzees. It’s not entirely easy to read this history, but one part has been deciphered and reported in the 22 June Science magazine. It appears that humans developed a defense against an ancient virus that our relatives are more susceptible to. But that same defense makes humans more susceptible to HIV-1.

Kitty Crack
I do enjoy the antics of Ripley (also the name of my sister’s ancient cat) and Madeleine at Plush Life, along with Kevin Drum’s Friday Catblogging. I’ve had cats, but I feel that my traveling schedule wouldn’t be fair to them. So here’s a little present for all those kitties out there. The instructions say that pure nepetalactone (the active ingredient in catnip) won’t hurt your cat, but if you extract it, I’d suggest you share it with your little friend(s) very carefully.

Medieval Blogging
In my conversations, I’ll refer to Helmut of phronesisaical or J. of Armchair Generalist or Eric Martin of American Footprints. That’s personal name (sometimes psuedonymous) plus blog name. Some of these people have last names, some don’t. It reminds me of medieval names: Wolfram of Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strassburg. People mostly didn’t have last names then, just an identifier of the town they lived in. Some of those names became “family” names, or sometimes the “family” name was the name of a father or grandfather, or further back as the name continued to stick. But the "family" name didn't show up in clickable blue.