Quick Roundup 113
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Connectivity at home is dodgy this weekend and Monday promises me a whacked-out schedule along with little or no access to the Internet, so this might be it until tomorrow evening.
Useful Idiot Materializes from Nowhere
I do not really know exactly where the idea originated, but I recall -- from my D&D-playing youth, a Monty Python skit about "Orgo", the movie Dogma, and (most recently) a really messed-up episode of South Park -- that simply mentioning the name of a demon is supposed to conjure him up out of thin air.
Well, the other day, I said of the remarks of the Australian Imam who sermonized that rape is the woman's fault:
Remember this the next time you hear a Moslem whine about being "offended" by intellectual criticism of his religion. And the next time you hear some useful idiot insinuate that Islamic headdress for women is somehow "liberating" to them. [bold added]Well, that "weapon" "used by 'Satan' to control men" (as said Imam might put it) wrote a particularly silly column under the nom de guerre of Yvonne Ridley. It appeared in today's Houston Chronicle saying exactly that. The crux, so to speak, of her "argument" is that:
... A careful reading of the Koran shows that just about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman's gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute.Too bad we have the words of an Imam against this neophyte's to the contrary. [Memo to Useful Idiot: The better-versed person here just happens to be male, biologically speaking anyway.] We also have a whole laundry list of actual Islamic practice to boot. Incredibly, she ticks these off and then immediately pretends that Islam has nothing to do with them in the paragraph immediately preceding the one above!
But this level of evasion pales in comparison to her conclusion.
Violent men don't come from any particular religious or cultural category; one in three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to the hotline survey. This is a global problem that transcends religion, wealth, class, race and culture.What balls, Mizzzzzz Ridley! How can you seriously pretend that women are treated the same or better in the Islamic world than in the West? How the hell do you presume to know what I think about women? And how dare you take Pat Robertson -- although he is partly right in the above quotation -- as my spokesman? You and he -- who both claim to take orders from God -- have much more in common with each other than with me.
But it is also true that in the West, men still believe that they are superior to women, despite protests to the contrary. They still receive better pay for equal work -- whether in the mailroom or the boardroom -- and are still treated as sexualized commodities whose power and influence flow directly from their appearance.
And for those who are still trying to claim that Islam oppresses women, recall this 1992 statement from the Rev. Pat Robertson, offering his views on empowered women: Feminism is a "socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." Now you tell me who is civilized and who is not. [bold added]
And one more thing:
... What is more liberating: being judged on the length of your skirt and the size of your surgically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.Everyone, regardless of sex, is judged according to their identity and standards (which may or may not be valid). To hold Islam as "liberating" (i.e., superior) because it tosses everything aside in favor of "piety" (i.e., total surrender of one's mind to its dictates) is to attempt to treat the Nuremberg defense as if it were a moral ideal.
Well. Okay. She got that part right. To those who wish to avoid the burdens of rational thought and personal responsibility, it would seem that Islam is the path to "liberation".
Michael Hurd on the Elections
Michael Hurd favors a Democratic Congress, but stops short of Leonard Peikoff's advocacy of voting only for Democrats. Hurd makes several good points, but he fails to take into account the danger of the Democrats pulling a "cut and run" (which Hurd himself is against) via de-funding of the war if they do win Congress.
Also, I have a roundup of other Objectivist commentary on the elections at the end of this post.
Hugo Chavez to Steal Election?
The feds are now investigating something I sounded the alarm about long ago: Venezuelan involvement in a firm that manufactures electronic voting machines!
The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez.Given the collusion between Chavez and Democrat politicians in the Northeast and the dictator's meddling throughout Latin America, I am glad, on the on hand, that this is being looked into. I am a little concerned, on the other hand, that we are already so close to an election.
...
Since its takeover by Smartmatic in March 2005, Sequoia has worked aggressively to market its voting machines in Latin America and other developing countries....
Oh yeah, and that's not the only problem with electronic voting.
Pipes on Iraq
Daniel Pipes writes an interesting column that advises the United States to pull out of the populated areas of Iraq, but remain there while "protecting borders, keeping the oil and gas flowing, [and] ensuring that no Saddam-like monster takes power".
This isn't quite "take over the oil fields and let Allah provide for his followers", but it is very encouraging to see a major figure like Pipes reject the notion that the United States has an obligation to rehabilitate the nations it invades in order to protect its interests.
Benedict Deeply Mistaken
One Richard Winkler writes a good piece on the recent controversy surrounding remarks made by Pope Benedict on Islam.
Force is the only way for men to deal with each other when they choose not to live by reason. When animals are forced by circumstances to compete against each other for territory or some other value, their only resort is to attack or run away. Reason is not an option for them; that is why we do not call an animal a "murderer" when it kills.I fully agree when Winkler calls the attempt to "reconcile" reason and faith,"the untenable compromise the West has attempted to live by for the last 700 years."
Recent remarks by pope Benedict quoted in two separate articles in the Wall Street Journal: "Benedict the Brave" and "Pope Provocateur", frames this issue clearly, even as he commits to the same mistaken ideas that weaken the West in the battle of ideas against Islam.
--- CAV
9 comments:
Yo, Gus, you quote Yvonne Ridley as follows: "But it is also true that in the West, men still believe that they are superior to women, despite protests to the contrary. They still receive better pay for equal work -- whether in the mailroom or the boardroom -- and [women? AH] are still treated as sexualized commodities whose power and influence flow directly from their appearance." Some quick comments. First, what happens to women who don't toe the line in American and many Arab societies? Which ones are freer to disagree with the consensus, which ones will suffer less for it? And second, at least in the West women aren't seen as such sexual commodities whose power and infleunce flow directly from their appearance that they are bidden if not forced by law to keep their hair, figures, and even mouths covered to prevent them from arousing male lust and bringing dishonor on their families. Third, how many women work in the mailroom or the boardroom in, say, Saudi Arabia anyway?
Adrian,
Thank you. Those are all points better made explicit here. This was such a facile piece of tripe, and to think it occupied the entire front page of the opinion section of today's paper! Time to write or not, I had to say something.
There is (perhaps little) more going on here, but this article brings to mind the related notions of "familiarity breeds contempt" and, conversely, fascination with the exotic unknown. I think al-Ridley, being a Westerner by place of birth, anyway, is far more familiar with the pecadillos of the West than with the mortal sins of the lands of the religion she has adopted and seems so mind-blowingly uncritical of.
Gus
Yo, Gus, you write, "The feds are now investigating something I sounded the alarm about long ago: Venezuelan involvement in a firm that manufactures electronic voting machines!" The great thing is that it even made the comics page! For anyone who missed it, Sunday just past's Foxtrot is very good.
Yo, Gus, you write, "This was such a facile piece of tripe, and to think it occupied the entire front page of the opinion section of today's paper! Time to write or not, I had to say something." Yep. And there's a lot more I could say about it now, now that I've had a good night's sleep and thought a bit more about it. But I'll limit myself since I'm a bit pressed for time myself.
Ridley wrote: "What is more liberating: being judged on the length of your skirt and the size of your surgically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex." (My emphasis.) Note first the pitiful equivocation between "character and intelligence" and "piety." In fact, the two are distinct and in many cases opposed. You don't have to be at all smart to be pious--quite often the stupider you are, the easier it is. And you certainly don't need character to be pious--especially in the case of Islam, in which a man's crimes are washed away by conversion. (One of the early Umayyad governors, I forget which, converted to Islam shortly after murdering a man since that way he could go innocent, for example.)
In other words, piety is a single virtue; using it as the standard of judgment is truly a recipe for one-dimensional man! Character, on the other hand, is a summation of all a man's virtues, such as integrity and honesty, and all his qualities, like wit and equanimity. Breast size and skirt length on the one hand and wealth, power, or position on the other are distinct from character, intelligence, and piety, and here serve merely as a smoke screen for reducing all of human life into the perilous straits of piety and faith. (This leaves aside the whole issue of female beauty and sex appeal, which to an extent do reflect character and intelligence; they are praiseworthy in certain social settings but of course shouldn't serve as the basis for judging a woman's quality as a human being.)
Second, she writes: "Women in Islam are considered equal to men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman's gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute." Of course, there's the broad stroke of saying "in Islam" since there are many Muslims who do accept women as men's equal in moral dignity and human worth; some of them are friends of mine, in fact. (And it might do Ridley good to sit with some of them and listen to their criticisms of their common religion--or better, no; she'd probably turn them into the nearest imam so he could issue a fatwa on them.)
But "among many Muslims" is not the same as "in Islam" or even "in Arab society," much less "among the leaders of conservative political Islam" or "in contemporary law in most predominantly Islamic states," and her statement as it stands is as dubious as her broad statements about what "the West" thinks and believes. But get that last clause. The same could be said of a herdsman's attitude to his brood mares! The question is to what extent any other of a woman's qualities are esteemed, and Ridley's already answered that--just her piety. What's so appealing to a feminist in that? That's exactly the charge they lay against traditional conformist American culture.
And back to one of your comments, Gus: "There is (perhaps little) more going on here, but this article brings to mind the related notions of 'familiarity breeds contempt' and, conversely, fascination with the exotic unknown." Yeah, among people in the humanities it's often called "secondary patriotism," and I've even heard some of the more hard-bitten ones referred to as "secondary chauvinists."
Adrian,
Thanks for the additional comments. First, I also saw Foxtrot when my wife pointed it out to me in the paper Sunday, so thanks for that link.
Also, your comments on piety (vs. character and intelligence) are on the mark and mirror thoughts I had later in the day. It also helps to know about the term "secondary patriotism".
Gus
I wrote: "And you certainly don't need character to be pious--especially in the case of Islam, in which a man's crimes are washed away by conversion. (One of the early Umayyad governors, I forget which, converted to Islam shortly after murdering a man since that way he could go innocent, for example.)"
It was Al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba al-Thaqafi, first Umayyad governor of Kufa. Here's the story.
"As governor of this most difficult city [Kufa], the caliph [Mu'awiya I] chose a man of ability and experience if of somewhat disreputable morals. Al-Mughira b. Shu'ba al-Thaqafi came from the holy family of Ta'if [a city close to Mecca], just as Mu'awiya did from that of Mecca. Before the conquest of his city by the Muslims, he had fled to Medina and embraced the new religion in the year 8/629-30 to escape the consequences of a particularly outrageous murder. Islam, as Muhammad said, cancelled all that had gone before and al-Mughira, like Mu'awiya, became one of the Prophet's secretaries." (Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, 1st ed. 1986, p. 84).
Very interesting! Thank you for posting yet another jaw-dropping historical vignette!
Heh, forgot to post this earlier. Gus, you write, "I do not really know exactly where the idea originated, but I recall -- from my D&D-playing youth, a Monty Python skit about "Orgo", the movie Dogma, and (most recently) a really messed-up episode of South Park -- that simply mentioning the name of a demon is supposed to conjure him up out of thin air." Well, speak of the devil!
And speaking of pop-cultural references ...
"D'oh!"
Post a Comment