And so she did ...

... go boom, and in their faces! (But they still learned nothing.)

Back in January, I blasted the Sallyport, Rice University's slick alumni mag. What's an alumni mag? If you've been to college, you doubtless know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, or you haven't graduated yet, you may not. Alumni magazines are supposed to spur generosity on behalf of the university. You may have finished paying tuition and fees. But that is no reason to think that your former university does not still want your money. It also doesn't mean that they would necessarily agree that the fact that you still owe on student loans is hardship enough. Think of your alma mater in more modern terms as someone you have a life-long relationship with. This is a relationship that involves endless pleas for your attention. And it also involves frequent transfers of money from your pocket to that someone. You may not fully realize it at the time, but that piece of parchment being handed to you isn't just your diploma: It's the adoption paperwork for your first child. Her first name is "Alma!"

At least that's how your college or university would like you to see it! (I had fun writing that paragraph! After over a week of writer's funk, that's a relief, and it proves Chap's point!) So in the effort to get you to part with as much money as possible, a university will frequently publish a glossy magazine designed to help you remember what a great time you had there, what great things get accomplished there, and how nice it would be to send someone like yourself there. (I'm not saying colleges shouldn't do this to raise funds. I have another point here....) In the minds of the fundraisers, these magazines are to be attractive, upbeat, and -- above all -- uncontroversial!

Well, in its Winter 2004 issue, which wasn't yet online when I blogged it, the staff of the Sallyport stepped in it! I urge my readers to take a look at both the article and my reaction to it. If it gets you good and mad, I have some great news for you: It had the same effect on its intended audience of milch cows.

In this issue of Sallyport, which will not be online for some time, four readers -- including a professor at Rice and two alumni (one of them a Moslem) -- took the trouble to write in to express their outrage at this article. No letter praising the article was printed, but the editor apologized for it. I am proud to say that my alma mater -- except maybe for the editorial board of Sallyport -- is no bastion of political correctness. Or at least, it doesn't fully succeed in brainwashing its students!

A professor of computational engineering and computer science writes:

The article displays an attitude of moral relativism that implicitly legitimizes terrorism. The moral-relativist tone starts with the title, where murderers are referred to as "radical female Muslims." Going further, the term "martyrdom," used without quotes, rather than, say, "suicide bombing," adopts the terrorists' legitimizing term for these heinous acts.

... While Professor Cook's academic freedom entitles him to pursue his scholarship in any matter that he deems to be appropriate, I do not believe that this neutral stand toward terrorism should be endorsed, even implicitly, by Rice University.

Amen to that, except that I found his calling the stand "neutral" to be a tad on the generous side.

One Diane Krieger, whom I presume is not an alumna, of Los Angeles, California, writes:

[W]hen I saw a female suicide bomber's action characterized as "martyrdom" in your pages and "Chechnya and Palestine" characterized as "more secularized countries," I felt I had to call these provocative word choices to your attention. A suicide bomber's act is murder. And neither Chechnya nor Palestine are countries.

I blame the crow epistemology for the fact that I missed that attempt to slip in a geography reeducation on the part of Sallyport. (Yes. The article is that bad.) The rest of the letter is choice, and makes the right call: "[It] certainly sounds like the Sallyport endorses the notion that blowing oneself up to kill others is a pious act."

One alumnus writes:

If Sallyport wants to report on Rice studies of this type, then so be it, but please leave out the implicit support of such actions by women (or anyone) and leave out the euphemism "martyrdom operations."

And the second alumnus, a Moslem, says the following in a lengthy letter.

The article "Radical Female Muslims Redefining Islam" joins most of the Western press in nurturing the concept that jihad is war and that terrorists are martyrs. ... Cook shows in the title his misunderstanding of the term "jihad."

This reader comes across as a secular or moderate Moslem., although he could merely be engaging in damage control for his faith. He seems convinced that his religion does not condone terrorism. On this count, he says:

I realize that from the point of view of a terrorist [sic], they believe jihad and martyrdom are what they are doing. But that is not from the Koran; it is from radical "clerics" who have co-opted these ignorant people and lied about what the Koran says to further their own personal agendas....

This point reminds me of two things. First, what would this reader have to say about these Koranic tenets as reported by Frosty Wooldridge.

It specifically states in the Koran to kill all “Jews and Pagans.” Regarding infidels, Jews, Pagans and non-believers, they are the Muslim's "inveterate enemies." (Sura 4:101) Muslims are to "Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere." (Sura 9:5) They are to "Seize them and put them to death wherever you find them, kill them wherever you find them, seek out the enemies of Islam relentlessly." (Sura 4:90) "Fight them until Islam reigns supreme." (Sura 2:193). "Cut off their heads, and cut off the tips of their fingers." (Sura 8:12)

How does any of this contradict what the terrorists are doing? Is their only sin suicide? But more importantly, it reminds me of an issue Felipe and Blair have been batting around (And I agree with their conclusion.): Our culture needs fixing most urgently in the realm of epistemology. David Ammerman, the author of the letter above, may well be a moderate or even a secular Moslem, but as Sam Harris points out in The End of Faith (a book I don't particularly recommend):

[W]e must decide what it means to be a religious "moderate" in the twenty-first century. Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. ... [T]he moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism ... draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written. In America, religious moderation is further enforced by the fact that most Christians and Jews do not read the Bible in its entirety and consequently have no idea just how vigorously ... God ... wants heresy expunged. (pp. 17-18)

What to keep and what to throw out in a scripture? When one regards faith as a means of knowledge, the correct answers: "None" and "all of it" will never be reached. The religious are nonthreatening only to the degree that they either ignore their religion, implicitly accepting reason in certain areas of their life, or to the degree that they randomly "believe" that harming others is wrong.

And it is on an epistemological note that I come to the editorial apology, which indicates a complete failure to understand anything these letter writers had to say. An unconditional retraction would have been the correct answer here. Be that as it may, here's the gist. (Hint: Of all the choice passages they could have used as a sidebar quote, they use: "I realize that from the point of view of a terrorist [sic], they believe jihad and martyrdom are what they are doing. But that is not from the Koran...")

We regret that Sallyport erred in using the word "martyrdom" in the introduction to the story and in failing to make clear the source of the term as used in ... Cook's scholarship. Neither Rice nor Sallyport nor Professor Cook condones acts of violence [a leftist catch-all term that includes war --ed]. The article reported research by a respected religious studies scholar seeking to understand the mindset of people in whose name such violence is used [Italics mine -- WTF?].

"In whose name?" Hell, I suppose I do everything I do in my own name. The letter goes on for a bit, building up Professor Cook. But it never bothers to look back in the rear-view mirror at the obvious fact that the article made what these women did (or what these girls were tricked into doing) sound like a great advancement for women in the most benighted parts of the Islamic world. In fact, as the italics above indicate, the minds of the editorial board are so pickled in the brine of multiculturalism that they use the passive voice -- and the cumbersome phrase "in whose name" -- to avoid even implying that one of these poor, exploited victims of Western racism-sexism-imperialism did anything even remotely wrong.

If there is anything laudable to be gleaned from that mealy-mouthed letter of "regret," it would be this: At least they didn't promise they would never write something so horrid again. This is good, because they'd be unable to deliver! The very fact that this article passed muster in the first place is bad enough. But to have the thing thoroughly fisked by four readers and still fail to understand what was wrong with the article indicates a collection of -- shall we say -- invincible intellects at work.

-- CAV