Islamophobia (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1 of this essay, Islamophobia, posted 8/9/10, I recounted some facts about terrorism that seems linked to Islam and I made some hypotheses about how Muslims in general array themselves with respect to this terrorism. In this second and last part, I divulge some of the bases of my worst suspicions regarding moderate Muslims.

I wish someone with credentials would help me disentangle who is what and in what proportions among Muslims in connection with the varying degrees of rejection of violent jihad described above. In the meantime, I feel intellectually free to speculate within reason and on the basis of other information I have, factual information, that is, not hearsay.

The first helpful element in my speculation is that, of course, I understand violent Muslim fanatics well. Anyone reasonably well versed in European history would, My ancestors used to be just like them. I never tire of repeating on this blog and elsewhere that the First Crusade (1099) massacred everyone there after taking Jerusalem. That massacre followed acts of cannibalism during the siege. And more recently, it’s clear that tens of thousands of witches were burned at the stake in Europe. (Note: The figure of millions advanced by feminists is silly propaganda bullshit.) Violent jihadists and other fanatics hold not mystery to me because I used to be they. Used to be.

The last witch burning in Europe took place before 1700. After that, we had the Enlightenment which made tolerance respectable. (I am mindful of the 13 year horror setback of the Third Reich.) I think the Muslim world in general has had no such experience. The official punishment for apostasy in several Muslim countries today remains death. It’s probably no applied often but I am sure it would have a chilling effect on any propensity to explore other religions. (See the comment by a Muslim acquaintance on this topic I posted 8/30/10.)

I disapprove of this completely. There is no ground for reconciliation there. I don’t want people who hold this belief to be my neighbors or to vote for those who govern me. Yet, I have never heard or read an American Muslim condemning this use of the death penalty against apostates. I may be misinformed, or under-informed although I am paying more attention to such matters than the average person and I read in three languages. I would be happy to publish any corrections regarding my suspicion that Muslims don’t care, or approve. In the meantime, if my intolerance of deadly intolerance is Islamophobia, then I am Islamophobic.

Muslim theologians and other Islamic (“mic”) apologists don’t help me getting rid of my “prejudice” when they insist that Islam, whose main moral/legal foundation was laid out in the 7^th century, is a blueprint for today‘s good and just society. For one thing, separation of religion from government is central to my view of a good society. Of course, that’s because I am aware of the horrors of the Crusades, of the bloody European wars of religion, and of the monstrous experience of the secular religion of communism. I am completely intolerant of anyone who even shows sympathy for religious rule. If that’s Islamophobic, then I am Islamophobic.

The second element helping my speculative interpretation of the concentric Muslim circles I imagine is my awareness of contemporary atrocities. I refer to atrocities in predominantly Muslim countries that Muslim moral authorities fail to denounce, or do not denounce often enough, or loudly enough. Note the careful wording: I don’t blame Islam for the atrocities in question. Instead, I express my distaste for moral leaders who keep quiet in their presence. It suggests to me that they don’t mind all that much or that they have something more important in mind.

The atrocities I am thinking about are the mass sexual mutilations of little girls across parts of the Muslim world, forced marriage of female children, and the prescribed stoning of “adulterous” women. The first concerns millions; the second, I don’t know, but more than a handful. The latter is rare but it plays a disproportionate symbolic role in Muslim societies. It serves to terrify women, specifically. If that were not the case, the stoning of adulterous men would also be practiced.

Here is how I use this information: People who accept these kinds of barbarisms and who accept their moral leaders’ quiet acquiescence of same live in a moral and mental world radically different from mine. It’s a mental world that is not only different but unacceptable to me. I am sure of this because it so resembles that of my own ancestors before they became civilized. (I am less sure of myself when it comes to cannibalism for example because I have no frame of reference there.) If this rejection makes me Islamophobic, then, I am Islamophobic.

The next logical step is almost unavoidable: Is it likely that people who are in favor of such atrocities, or morally indifferent to them, or morally passive before them, are also, in favor of, morally indifferent to, or passive before, violent jihadism?

Here is a metaphor about the accusation of Islamophobia:

Suppose I live in the desert close to scorpions. Most are inoffensive, others are mildly dangerous, a few are deadly, I know for a fact. All three categories of scorpions look the same and they behave more or less the same. No friendly scorpion ever lifts a dart against one of his deadly brethren. In that situation, does not reason itself require that I be arthrophobic?

And no, I did not say Muslims were scorpions, or like scorpions. This is a metaphor. If you don’t understand this, you are a moron, not smart enough to read this blog. Please, move on.

I am the first one to say that this whole edifice is fragile. Kick a leg or two of it by showing I am in error and it will collapse wholesale. The way to kick it is with facts that contradict what I think are facts but are not. Pointing out logical errors would work too. Incidentally, I hope the edifice will collapse. The whole thing distresses me. I hope to be wrong.

Three more points:

First, what I am taking apart above is not “prejudice,” pre-judgment in the absence of fact. I am reasonably sure my facts are facts. If they are not, I offer to correct myself publicly, on this blog and anywhere else I am required to do so. If this happens, I will admit that my position was one of prejudice.

Second, it’s possible, even likely, that my examination is overindulgent because I have known Muslims all my life and liked most of them, almost all of them, in fact. It’s difficult to avoid letting a dozen individuals you know well carry more weight than a dozen books and one hundred articles. Bearers of bad news I don’t know are easier to dismiss than carriers of sunshine I know. I have an inescapable pro-Muslim bias. (The only moral maxim posted in my house is said to be a quote from the Koran. It says in English and in elegant Arabic script,“Ignorance is a sin.”)

Third, a prediction: To the extent that any Muslim takes the trouble to contradict me rationally, his/her arguments will be mostly besides the point, changing the subject, disputing statements I have not made, etc. Here too, I hope I am wrong.

PS In 8/28/10 Wall Street Journal, a British Muslim activist for peace named Maajid Nawaz wrote a column titled: “Islamism is not Islam.” I am glad he did but it’s not enough for me. He does not answer my most troubling questions. Perhaps that’s because it’s difficult to assess what matters to those who live far away. Worse, he makes a major factual mistake: Arguing in favor of the relative political innocuousness of Islamists, he asserts that they never came close to power anywhere in the Muslim world. That is not true. The violent Islamist FIS actually won free elections in Algeria in 1990 and 1991. (The military stopped them from taking over the government.) And there is the growing issue of the real nature of the elected Turkish government. All the same, I appreciate Mr Nawaz’s intervention. I hope there will be more like his. He is a brave man. We need more like him, Americans preferably.

First Muslim Comment on “Islamophobia.”

This a comment by a well-educated  and devout young Muslim I know well about my recent posting: “Islamophobia. Part 1 .”  The response is one of the things I wished for when I posted that piece so, I am grateful. Each reader may decide whether the comment responds to my concerns at all,  or to what extent. (The sign ////indicate my excisions from the original text. These excisions do not alter meaning.)

A  wrote:
“You do really like to pick and choose don’t you////?he Quran does not punish anyone by death for apostasy! Nowhere in the holy Book is it DIRECTLY written that one is to be killed for leaving Islam…the punishment for such a person in the Book is in the hereafter…therefore Islam in itself DOES NOT punish anyone by death for apostasy! Yes some Muslim countries do choose to interpret Sharia law that way by following a Hadith (Saying) from Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him regarding the apostates. Now if you want I can develop on that (where the misunderstanding comes from). Islam in itself insists on freedom of religion and freedom of worship:

Quran 10: 99-100 “If it had been thy Lord’s will, they would all have believed, all who are on earth! wilt thou then compel mankind, against their will, to believe! No soul can believe, except by the will of God, and He will place doubt (or obscurity) on those who will not understand.”

Quran 2:256 “Let there be no compulsion in religion:  Truth stands out clear from error:  whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold, that never breaks.  And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.”

Quran 15:2-3 “Again and again will those who disbelieve, wish that they had bowed (to God’s will) in Islam.   Leave them alone, to enjoy (the good things of this life) and to please themselves: let (false) hope amuse them: soon will knowledge (undeceive them).”

Quran 27:92 “And to rehearse the Qur’an: and if any accept guidance, they do it for the good of their own souls, and if any stray, say: ‘I am only a Warner.’”

Quran 42:6 “And those who take as protectors others besides Him – Allah doth watch over them; and thou art not the disposer of their affairs.

If you want I can keep going! Read the WHOLE Quran////Now for those countries that interpret Sharia based on their interpretation, it is THEIR law, though unfair. It should be respected just as the U.S. legal system is respected worldwide though unfair at times as well! Who are you to say that your system is better than someone else’s? “

This is JD:  I confirm that I think the US legal system is one of the best in the world as far as fairness is concerned but that was not the topic. Rather: What to think of a society so barbarous that it kills people for committing apostasy? And if such a society misinterprets the religious injunction against apostasy, where are the condemnations of this doctrinal error by religious authorities?

Islamophobia (Part 1 of 2)

The backlash that did not happen after 9/11 is taking place now because of Muslim stubbornness, arrogance, or simple lack of articulateness. Americans are tolerant and patient to the point of gullibility but there is a limit. When it comes to the establishment of an explicitly Muslim-anything near Ground Zero, many feel they have been deceived, that their good nature has been taken advantage of. To cap it off, the liberal media accompany some American Muslim spokespersons, and some ordinary Muslims in accusing them of the mysterious sin of “Islamophobia.” (Siddiqui: American anti-Muslim prejudice goes mainstream – thestar.com circa 8/26/10) I am referring to the majority of Americans who have expressed some degree of opposition to the plan to establish a Muslim cultural center including a mosque near the site of the 9/11 jihadist massacre. I am one of those so accused.

I tend to look seriously at any serious accusation thrown at me seriously. Often, it does not tell me anything about me and my behavior but it gives me an insight into the ways of thinking of the insulter. So, I will look at Islamophobia, the dislike and fear of Islam and, by extension, of all things Muslim, from the standpoint of what I know and then, from that of what I don’t know for a fact but that is plausible. I try to keep the factual and the plausible, the speculative, separate.

In the end, I want to know what I am guilty of, if anything, as an Islamophobic American. I don’t discount the possibility that I am guilty as charged.

Fact: On 9/11/2001, a handful of terrorists massacred about 3,000 people who had not done anything to them. Most of these people were Americans, not all. Most of those people were Christians, or former Christians, not all, There were many Jews (probably about 10% of he victims at the World Trade Center), and a few Muslims among the victims. The killing was indiscriminate. The killers announced clearly and repeatedly that they were doing it in the name of Islam, for Islam. Osama Bin Laden claimed on tape a few months later that he had organized the whole thing. Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim who says he is fighting for Islam.

Fact: All the violent jihadists together, those who have been caught  imprisoned or killed and those who have not, plus those who are in terrorism training right now, are but a handful of people among the 1,5 billion ( and growing) Muslims worldwide. I agree that Muslims in general are not a priori responsible for the tiny number who commits crimes in the name of their common religion.

Fact: However, I cannot help but note that the only terrorists currently killing in the name of religion are all Muslims. The Basque terrorists of today may well be Catholics but they don’t claim it’s their Catholic duty to kill civilians (mostly other Catholics). The IRA “Catholic” terrorists of twenty and thirty years ago were not acting either in the name of religion. And they were roundly denounced by their church. The Bengali fighters of Sri Lanka, whom one may consider terrorists or not, happened to be mostly Hindus but they never said they were fighting for Hinduism.

Speculation: I have heard and read bits and pieces of religious history that lead some commentators to claim that violent jihad cannot be separated from mainstream Islamic religious doctrine. I don’t know if this interpretation is correct but it sounds plausible. I have heard others cite verses of the Koran and quotes from the Hadith contradicting this view. I am not cultured enough to decide. That does not make the first interpretation false. It’s unfortunate that it coincides so well with my observations (see above) about religious terrorism.

My mind is not made up. It’s open. In fact, I beg to be instructed. My Muslim friends and acquaintances only answer my queries with one or two peremptory sentences. That’s not enough for me. I don’t know if they are reticent or simply too ignorant to give a coherent reply. No Muslim religious authority has stepped forward for the task. Imam Rauf (of the Near Ground Zero mosque) should be on American television talking to me right now rather than gallivanting around Muslim countries. This overwhelming absence of Muslim religious scholars is like an elephant in the room. Incidentally, Fox News would love to have any of them on. And I would think it’s NPR’s duty to give them a podium.

Fact: Some Muslims in several countries, including in Palestine, danced in the streets and distributed candy on 9/11. These obscene demonstrations were quickly put down by authorities but they did occur. I could not forget them if I wanted to. There was no report of Russian orthodox, or of Papua animists, or of Hindus dancing in the street.

Speculation: Such indignities tend to confirm something that I suspected strongly anyway: Beyond the small number of violent jihadists, there are Muslims who are not terrorists but who rejoice at acts of terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam. I don’t know how many there are. I would like to know, even ever so roughly (1 in 10 or 1 in 10,000). When Muslim authorities and Muslim organizations give answers to this question that sound like, “two or three, maybe four” it makes me even more suspicious. Either they are lying consciously or they are in deep denial. By the way, I take the denial explanation seriously. I think it covers much of the Obama administration behavior and, before it, much of the Bush administration policies with respect to the Middle-East.

Speculation: Beyond this second ring, I suspect, again.based on both readings and live conversations with Muslims spread over forty years, that there exists a much broader circle of Muslims who are shocked and distressed by jihadist violence but who cannot in their hearts condemn it because it seems to be condoned by some of their old religious scriptures.

Many or some are sophisticated enough to transmute religious justifications into non-religious ones. That is not a speculation; I have heard it several times with my own ears. I have read it many times. It goes something like this:

The US, and before it, Britain, have been supporting secular tyrants in much of the Muslim world for many years. When the rebellion against tyranny comes, it takes a religious form almost of necessity.

This form of argument is only superficially sophisticated. The first sentence is true to fact, I think. But: why not a nationalist rebellion, why not a Communist rebellion for that matter?(There was a “Maoist” rebellion in Nepal until recently that won, for practical purposes.) And, by the way, why not a democratic revolution, American-style?

I might be persuaded if those who hold this line of reasoning engaged in serious debate. In my unavoidably limited experience, they don’t; they just walk away as soon as you ask them more than one question.

Speculation: There may be (“may be”) and even wider circle of Muslims who are appalled by violent jihadist terrorism, who are opposed to it without ambiguity but who are too afraid to speak up. I understand this and I don’t blame all of them but this is kind of a false issue. To the extent that there are individuals and organizations who have set themselves as speaking for Muslims, it would be unnecessary for your ordinary non-hero to take the risk. The Muslim spokespersons’ first task, of course, should be to denounce the intimidation of peace-loving Muslims by terrorists.

I have made it a practice to visit explicitly “Muslim” and “Islamic” Internet sites when a Muslims is accused of violent acts. These visits give me the overwhelming impression that those sites are staffed by a bunch of whiners. They use as much space to denounce a rude remark to a Muslim woman wearing a head veil in a small Alabama town as they spend on the killer Major Hassan. It’s as if they inhabited a different country where evil forces mass ominously to insult Muslims and jihadists attacks are more or less like lightening strikes: They happen but what can you do? This does not inspire intellectual respect in me.

Note: the above paragraph is all impressionistic. Even my example is invented. I am sharing my impressions, as an overall reasonable gu, in the hope that some Muslim organization or other will take note.

I say above that I don’t blame “most of them,” most Muslims for being frightened of violent jihadists. After all, as I don’t stop repeating on this blog, they have murdered many more Muslims than any other category of humans. Yet, I don’t wish to exculpate all Muslims. That’s because I can’t help notice that there are Muslims willing to die for what they think is right. They are the violent jihadists themselves who engage in suicide bombing. Apparently, they are more numerous- even in their tiny numbers – than Muslims who detest terrorism and who are willing to take big risks to denounce it. That is unavoidably a comment on Islam, it seems to me: It’s a religion that is better, by a long shot, at inspiring self-sacrifice among its extremists than among its moderates. And here again, if I am wrong, I would like to be corrected, on this blog or on my radio show. (“Facts Matter” KSCO Santa Cruz, 1080 AM, Sundays, 11 am to 1 pm.)

Finally, I have no doubt that there are many Muslims, in America and elsewhere, who just want to live their lives undisturbed, people who wish to remain unconcerned as long as possible. I know some personally. They all happen to be bad Muslims. They do not pray; they do not abstain from alcohol consistently. They are not observing Ramadan as I write. Personally, I have no quarrel with such “cultural” Muslims. I know that I would not feel particularly involved if Catholics started murdering Lutherans, for example because I am an ex-Catholic, a cultural Catholic at best. Curiously, I have never heard a Muslim spokesman present this simple defense: People who are Muslims in name only bear no responsibility for the crimes of Muslims.

Part 2 in a day or maybe two at most.

Liberal Terrorism and Even More on the Mosque

A young man stabs a taxi driver in NYC after questioning him on his religion. The victim is a Muslim. The attacker practicing this private form of terrorism belongs to a group that supports the Near Ground Zero mosque project. No, this is not a mistake: supports. Here is the report from rabid right-wing newspaper The New York Times, dated 8/26/10: :

“ Mr. Enright is a volunteer with Intersections International, a nonprofit that works to promote cross-cultural understanding and has spoken out in favor of the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero.”

Several blogs and others blame Fox News! (Deuh!)

Another Muslim intellectual talks about the Near Ground Zero mosque in the Wall Street Journal of 8/26/10 (See my posting about his predecessors: “ Declaration by Muslim Intellectuals on Ground Zero Mosque, posted 8/16/10.) She says pretty much what I posted a couple of days ago (“ The ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque Issue Clarified,” posted 8/20/10.”) Yet, she says it better because she is better informed. Her name is: Irshad Manji.

She makes several proposals to ferret out malice and disingenuity in the mosque developers. Here are excerpts from her column in the Wall Street Journal today and my explanatory comments in parentheses:

“Where will be the men’s side to the mosque?” (To find out if the congregation will be segregated according to sex during prayer.)

“ Will the swimming pool (at the proposed multicultural center) be segregated between women and men…?”

“ May women lead congregation prayers any day of the week?”

“ Will Christians and Jews, fellow People of the Book, be able to use the prayer sanctuary for their services…?”

“ What will be taught about homosexuals?About agnostics? About atheists? About apostasy?” (In some Muslim countries, renouncing Islam, apostasy, is punishable by death.)

Professor Manji is a brave woman. I wish she were an American.

Note: In an earlier draft, I identified this brave person as a man and as an American. A reader kindly corrected me: Wrong on both counts. Shame on me because I had read about her a year ago; I just forgot her name.

In the meantime, I am having face-to-face bits and pieces of conversations with Muslims I know about the Near-Ground Zero mosque controversy. That would include devout Muslims who are currently observing Ramadan, and fallen Muslims heading for Hell. I encounter the same problems with both kinds:

First, they are slippery. They want to respond without answering my simple questions.

Second, I can’t seem to get across my position which I think is simple. Here it is, again:

The Constitution gives the Near-Ground Zero developers the right to build their multicultural center. As a conservative, I think private property is private property. No level of government should interfere with their right to do whatever they want with it, including build a mosque.

Here is what my Muslim acquaintances don’t seem to understand: The Constitution forbids the government from interfering with freedom of religion or with the freedom to enjoy one’s property. The Constitution does not obligate me to be nice according to the rules of multiculturalism I think of as brain paralysis. The Constitution does not enjoin me to show “tolerance” toward what I abhor. Neither the Constitution nor my belief in private property gives the near-Ground Zero mosque developers the right to be free from my thinking they are hypocritical ass-holes. It’s my constitutional right to think it and to say it. And also to draw cartoons disrespectful of Prophet Muhammad.
NEXT ON THIS BLOG: ISLAMOPHOBIA

Amazigh Music

Here is a link to popular culture I like a lot. Try it.

The Amazigh are the people who lived in North Africa before the Arab conquest.  Saint Augustine was an Amazigh. They are still there, by the millions, and their culture is flourishing

Karl Marx Was Right (Pretty Much)!

Karl Marx spent a lifetime arguing that the motor of history, what caused social change, was the “class struggle.” (Marx said other, more complicated things in relation to the class struggle . I don’t care to talk about them right now because they are obscure and there is little agreement among Marxists about what they mean.) Marx also did not assign enough importance to technological progress, it’s true. That would happen largely as a result of ever greater densities of population, irrespective of any political system. Many people in close contact in cities are more likely to come up with better ways to get things done than few people who barely ever meet anyone outside their small group. Literacy also helped, of course, by helping preserve accumulated knowledge. With these major lacunas, I think Marx was mostly right.

Marx had an elaborated conceptualization of social class that he never really completed. First, what “class” is not, according to Marx (also according to Delacroix). Class explicitly does not refer to “the rich and the poor” as many think. That would have been of limited usefulness when Marx was writing and it would be utterly useless now. The fact is that the distribution of wealth in modern, capitalist societies (the ones Marx had in mind) is continuous, that is, there is not break-up point. Next to the person, or family who owns $1,000, 000 there is one that owns $999,000, and next to that one, there is another that owns $998,999. Likewise, next to the person or family who owns $50, there is one that has $51 in wealth. And so forth. Moreover, who owns what is not fixed except at the lowest end. I was poor when I was thirty, I am not anymore. People who own vast wealth are liable to lose large portions of it in a day or two, thanks to the normal operation of the stock market, for example. Thus, there is frequent re-shuffling and rich and poor are pseudo-categories and therefore, useless.

Marx explained at length that what social class one belongs to is determined by one’s “relation to the means of production.” This is a bad translation of the bad German that prevailed at the time Marx was writing. Generations of Marxists everywhere have striven to conserve this opaque language because it made them sound profound, not least in their own eyes, and because it made them look like possessors of higher, “scientific” knowledge. Let me dispose of the scientific claim right away. It’s pure propaganda, deliberate bullshit, one of Marx’s public relations achievements. He made his claims seem more serious than they otherwise would have seemed by calling them “scientific” at a time when the word conveyed much intellectual prestige. Again, it’s bullshit. What makes anything scientific is that it can be refuted by comparison with reality. Another way to say nearly the same thing is to say that scientific claims can be tested. (Don’t worry about the “nearly” in the previous sentence; the statement is good enough for our purpose.) Marx’s claims cannot be tested in a rigorous, logical manner. All Marxists can do is to cry, “See, Marx said so,” after the fact, whenever something develops more or less according to one of Marx’s many unclear predictions. One issue about which Marx was clear was the class struggle. More on this below.

The world in which Marx lived was different from ours in important respects two of which are crucial for understanding the idea of social class in the 21^st century.

1 When Marx was observing and writing, in the second half of the 19^th century, land was losing much of its age-old importance as a source of income, in comparison with manufacturing and mining, and later, railroads. While agricultural productivity was making steady gains in the richest countries, manufacturing and, in its wake, mining, were growing explosively thanks to the Industrial Revolution. (Note what I am not saying: Income from agriculture was not shrinking in absolute terms, it was expanding.) It was clear to most observers then that the quick way to riches was to capture the fast rising income generated by those industries. The best spigot was thus the material industries of manufacturing, mining and later, railroads.

The claimants to this income were uncommonly well defined. On the one side were a small number of mostly family-based companies like the Krupp in Germany, the Schneider in France, the Rockefeller in America, and so on. These highly visible companies owned the manufacturing plants, the mines, and later the railroads. Here is a useful digression: Marx seemed not to have understood the importance of publicly owned companies in which small people and other groups could invest their small savings. He probably thought big corporations would remain in a tiny number of hands forever. Correspondingly, he did not understand well the role of stock exchanges either. He was wrong on this, wrong by large omission.

The other claimants to manufacturing, mining and railroad income were also highly visible. They were the masses of workers flocking to the cities and mining centers from the countryside. Those people were visible because of where they lived, near the centers of cities. Originally, they were also poorly paid and overworked. Marx observed that they were in a favorable situation to organize along labor union lines and also politically to an extend unimaginable by their peasant forebears. This, because of their geographic concentration and because of their ability to realize that they shared a certain type of misery.

From these accurate observations, it was fairly natural to predict that there would eventually be a clash between the super-rich owners of the means of production, manufacturing plants, mines and railroads, and those who toiled for them. It looked like there was at any time, a zero-plus sum game being played: Whatever the owner took, the workers did not get, and vice-versa: capitalists (owners) vs proletariat (industrial workers, broadly defined).

But everyone who was not a worker was not a capitalist in that sense, and everyone who was not a capitalist was not necessarily an industrial worker. The lawyers who serviced the capitalists could be expected to join with them. The tavern owners whose own income came from workers’ drinking would side with the workers, and so forth. This scheme makes it clear that a starving lawyer could be in the capitalist camp and a prosperous pub owner in that of the workers. Hence the idea that people would line up politically according to their “relationship to the mean of production.” This is a more sophisticated idea and also one much more applicable than the “rich vs poor” of the popular imagery of social class.

2  The second big difference between Marx’s time and ours is the size of government. Throughout the 19^th century. governments everywhere were small and poor. There was no income tax; they derived revenue largely from customs (border taxes) and from excise taxes. Governments then were a fiscal burden on everyone if not equally, then commonly, but a fairly light burden most of the time.

Today, governments in the developed world are large to huge. They consume anywhere between 40% approximately and 70% of Gross Domestic Product. They are also everywhere by far the largest accessible source of income.

Superficially, the amorphous, ill-defined “service sector” seems even larger since it accounts regularly for more than 70% of GDP (in rich countries including the US). However, it’s fragmented, heterogeneous, controlled (to the extent that is is controlled) by a myriad owners. Much of it is not very profitable, as opposed to 19^th century manufacturing, for example. The services workforce is also extremely fragmented and it tends to be transient. It would be difficult for that workforce, or for anyone else to get together to capture anything of value. There is not much to take from the service sector and it would be hard to get.

By contrast, the large to very large chunk of money that is in governments’ hands at any one time is easy to capture. It does not take much more than a well engineered vote to get one’s own hands on it. Furthermore, unlike private sector’s funds that depend on the vagaries of the market and on management’s competence, government grants in various forms tend to have a long shelf life. The WWII subsidy to chinchilla farmers was only repealed about ten years ago, fifty years late! Civil service pension funds are another case in point. Obtaining money from government entities is well worth the effort. The government is both a big spigot and an easy one to turn on.

I know I promised to tell you that Marx was almost right. Well, what we see in America today is a classical Marxian class struggle. The classes in conflict are not those Marx described because he was writing almost 150 years ago and he had not foreseen the monstrous growth of government. (No one else had.) The Obamanian/Obamist faction of the Democratic Party has engineered and is engineering an alliance between the main social class of today, government workers, on the one hand and a few other, opportunistically selected groups, on the other hand.

First among the government workers class allies are the small minority of workers in labor unions (maybe 7 or 8% of all employed and unemployed people). Labor unions have always used government to grab what their own muscle failed to achieve. Second, are the majorities of racial minorities. Many – but not most- are poor for reasons that ceased a long time ago to be related to racism. The largest racial minority, so-called “Latinos,” is heterogeneous and many of its members are immigrants or one generation removed from immigration. The Obamists are trying to grab them before they meld into the traditional American dream.

The second largest minority is “blacks.” Only about half of so-called “African-Americans” are descendants of slaves with a historical grievance that is supposed to be addressed by affirmative action. Many in that half, of southern church background, are addicted to resounding speeches about injustice and to the idea that the remedy to their ills can only come from government. They will vote for the best “injustice speech” giver irrespective of what they gain afterwards. (Usually nothing. The Democratic Party had been using and abusing blacks for thirty years.) The other half of Americans with African blood are immigrants and their children. Like Obama himself, in my book, they have no historical claim on the nation. That second half of the second minority might surprise us soon, politically. They, are experiencing normal American social mobility, like general Colin Powell for example, the son of Jamaican immigrants. They are at best temporary members of the Obamian recruits, I think. He, and his Left-Democrat conspirators cannot count on them for the long haul.

A flat and slow-growing economy is always especially hard on immigrants. That’s the main reason western Europe has always – until now – had worse immigrant problems than we have. Immigrants in America open a small business and their kids go to to college and they become the doctors and lawyers and engineers our normally expanding economy requires. Immigrants in France, for example, go to college and then remain underemployed forever because the French escalator is hardly moving at all.

There are no other racial minorities in America today that want to be considered minorities. They are all doing well without recourse to government favor. Many may have voted for Obama without understanding what they were doing. If I were an American communist trying to take over by legal means, I would not count on them further. In the same breath, I would refer to the scarce but disproportionately influential American Jews. I think more than 75% voted for Obama. That was a downright perverse and obstinate vote. I don’t think many are communists. I suspect many more are coming to their senses right now. (I may be placing too much confidence in an unsystematic sample here. All the Jews I know are conservatives. Ten years ago, I did not even know of Jewish conservatives.)

Finally, the Obamists exercise control over a large under-class that they are trying to enlarge yet: All those who are not working but who exist temporarily or permanently thanks to government payments. Marx had described something like this when he spoke of the politically unstable lumpenproletariat, the sub-working class “dressed in rags.”

So, here we are: On the one side, the large and growing class of government employees and the small allied class of union members. Both classes earn considerably more in wages and benefits than the employed in the private sector, nearly twice as much on the average. One bus driver in my small town belongs to both classes, as a government employee and as a union member. Last year, he earned $160,000 (that’s with overtime, let’s be frank). The job requires a high-school education. (I hope he is the one bus driver in this town who is not habitually gruff.) This is the same town where coffee shop baristas with a college degree earn $9/ hour if they are lucky, with no benefits. (I am speaking of Liberal Arts and Environmental Studies majors. Again, let’s be frank!)

To summarize: Government employees and union members owe their superior earnings to their relationship to the means of re-distributing income forcibly, government. They seek to extend and consolidate their hold on government with the help of precariously allied ethnic minorities and of unstable recipients of welfare under various names. On the other side is everyone else, everyone who does not work for government and who pays the taxes that feed the others. They too are defined by their relationship not to the “mode of production,” (see above) but to the spigot of government.

Here is a key figure: Almost 50% of Americans paid no federal income tax last year. That’s a lot of people who are not against the government confiscating legitimate income though legal means.

Once you start looking at the events and policies of the past 18 months as elements of a normal class-struggle, you gain much clarity. And, incidentally, this thesis does not contradict my repeated statements that the Obama administration and the President himself, are not very bright. They are relying on an old play-book that tells them pretty much what to do and that does not require much inventiveness.

I am astounded – if I say so myself – by the predictive power of my historical explanation. We even have the third highest elected official in the land ( third in order of succession to the President) engaging overtly in fascist intimidation: Speaker Pelosi threatened around August 16th “to investigate” those who oppose a mosque near Ground Zero! (See my  column on this: “The ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque Issue Clarified,” posted 8/20/10)

And, by the way, for those of you who got Cs in public school, or Bs in private school because the school needed the tuition, no, I am not confused. The Obamians are a species of communists and, communism is just one brand of fascism. See my two essays on the topic on this blog:“Fascism Explained,” posted 5/27/09 and “How About Communism?” posted 6/1/09.

The “Ground Zero” Mosque Issue Clarified

First, it’s not at Ground Zero but nearby. Small exaggerations make conservatives lose credibility. That’s what the other guys do. We must refrain. Second, there is no way to forbid the proposed mosque from being built that is both constitutional and legitimate. Conservatives protest rightly when any level of government abuses zoning laws. Let’s be consistent here.

The issue is not one of permission by civil authorities but one of a debate that should be taking place within the American Muslim community but is not.

American Muslims and their spokespersons are being judged, probably for a long time to come. Rational and moderate Muslims should be the most loud voices opposing the “Córdoba” Center. Here is why.

Its designated imam does not want to condemn Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist group. I think it is. The US State Department has officially designated Hamas a terrorist group. My opinion does not matter much (but it should matter some to Muslims). However, when it comes to terrorism, freedom of speech should be self-limiting. There is no constitutional guarantee to express the belief that murdering Jews – or anyone – is a sacred duty. This is one of these cases where if you are not with me, you are against me. The imam is an enemy of the US irrespective of what services he may have given to US governments in the past. He should be treated as an enemy.

The imam also said that this country should be ruled to a greater extent by Sharia, Islamic law. In several parts of the world, adulterous women are stoned to death in the name of Sharia. Others merely receive one hundred lashes of a whip, enough to kill a frail woman. By the way, under some or all interpretations of Sharia, an adulterous woman is a woman who has sex with someone to whom she is not married. That would be nearly all the single women in my town of Santa Cruz. In some cases, still under Sharia, some victims of rape are further punished for adultery. I am not making any of this up nor am I generalizing unduly. That’s one interpretation of Sharia. If the imam does not squarely denounce that particular interpretation of Sharia as barbaric and criminal, he is the enemy of most Americans. There is no ground for reconciliation at all. Hating such an imam is not intolerant, it’s a moral duty. It’s a moral duty for Muslims as much as it is for me. If they don’t, they are my enemies too and they don’t deserve any tolerance.

The leader of the group of developers involved is on the record stating that he doesn’t rule out accepting Saudi money for the project. That’s wrong. Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Malaysian, Indonesian funds are fine. Saudi money is unacceptable until there is an official Christian church somewhere in Saudi Arabia to serve the tens of thousands of Christians who work there, and until there is a synagogue. The synagogue could be tiny, it could be an oversized, glorified closet somewhere; it would have to be called a synagogue though. Until the Saudis do the obvious, those who accept money from them to erect their own place of cult show disrespect for our values. I have no obligation to like them or to respect them. Neither do American Muslims who are very well located to observe and to appreciate the benefits of religious freedom.

So, it’s fine for any American to take sides and to denounce the Islamic cultural center planned near the site of the 9/11 mass murders by Muslims.

American Muslims have an even greater obligation to take sides and to denounce because each of their voices counts for two or three in this case. If they don’t, they will bring upon themselves the enmity of their fellow-citizens and a big wave of  what they stubbornly persist in calling “intolerance.”

As to what rank-and-file conservatives can do, here is the best proposal I have heard: Set up a large gay nightclub as close as possible to the planned Islamic Center. If there were a public subscription to facilitate such a project, I would gladly contribute. I would also like to see a charcuterie on the other side. That’s a French-style butcher shop specialized in pork products.

I defy anyone to raise arguments against these two small, private, peaceful proposals that do not also destroy the rationale for an Islamic center within blocks of Ground Zero.

For more opinion on this topic see on this blog:

“Declaration on Ground Zero by Two Muslim Intellectuals,” posted 8/16/10.

Declaration on Ground Zero Mosque by Muslim Intellectuals

For years, in my writings, including on this blog, and on my radio show (“Facts Matter” on KSCO Santa Cruz, 1080 AM, Sundays 11am to 1 pm) I have been railing about the shortage of unambiguous anti-violent jihadism statements by Muslims. I included in my condemnations my personal Muslim friends and major Islamic institutions.

Below is an opinion published around August 15th by the Canadian newspaper the Canadian Citizen. I reproduce it without any alterations. It answers my questions about Muslim ambiguity. It’s from Canadian citizens rather than from American Muslims but it”s a step in the right direction.

Last week, a journalist who writes for the North Country Times, a small newspaper in Southern California, sent us an e-mail titled “Help.” He couldn’t understand why an Islamic Centre in an area where Adam Gadahn, Osama bin Laden’s American spokesman came from, and that was home to three of the 911 terrorists, was looking to expand.

The man has a very valid point, which leads to the ongoing debate about building a Mosque at Ground Zero in New York. When we try to understand the reasoning behind building a mosque at the epicentre of the worst-ever attack on the U.S., we wonder why its proponents don’t build a monument to those who died in the attack?

New York currently boasts at least 30 mosques so it’s not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as “Fitna,” meaning “mischief-making” that is clearly forbidden in the Koran.

The Koran commands Muslims to, “Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book” — i.e., Jews and Christians. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of “fitna”

So what gives Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the “Cordoba Initiative” and his cohorts the misplaced idea that they will increase tolerance for Muslims by brazenly displaying their own intolerance in this case?

Do they not understand that building a mosque at Ground Zero is equivalent to permitting a Serbian Orthodox church near the killing fields of Srebrenica where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered?

There are many questions that we would like to ask. Questions about where the funding is coming from? If this mosque is being funded by Saudi sources, then it is an even bigger slap in the face of Americans, as nine of the jihadis in the Twin Tower calamity were Saudis.

If Rauf is serious about building bridges, then he could have dedicated space in this so-called community centre to a church and synagogue, but he did not. We passed on this message to him through a mutual Saudi friend, but received no answer. He could have proposed a memorial to the 9/11 dead with a denouncement of the doctrine of armed jihad, but he chose not to.

It’s a repugnant thought that $100 million would be brought into the United States rather than be directed at dying and needy Muslims in Darfur or Pakistan.

Let’s not forget that a mosque is an exclusive place of worship for Muslims and not an inviting community centre. Most Americans are wary of mosques due to the hard core rhetoric that is used in pulpits. And rightly so. As Muslims we are dismayed that our co-religionists have such little consideration for their fellow citizens and wish to rub salt in their wounds and pretend they are applying a balm to sooth the pain.

The Koran implores Muslims to speak the truth, even if it hurts the one who utters the truth. Today we speak the truth, knowing very well Muslims have forgotten this crucial injunction from Allah.

If this mosque does get built, it will forever be a lightning rod for those who have little room for Muslims or Islam in the U.S. We simply cannot understand why on Earth the traditional leadership of America’s Muslims would not realize their folly and back out in an act of goodwill.

As for those teary-eyed, bleeding-heart liberals such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and much of the media, who are blind to the Islamist agenda in North America, we understand their goodwill.

Unfortunately for us, their stand is based on ignorance and guilt, and they will never in their lives have to face the tyranny of Islamism that targets, kills and maims Muslims worldwide, and is using liberalism itself to destroy liberal secular democratic societies from within.

Raheel Raza is author of Their Jihad … Not my Jihad, and Tarek Fatah is author of The Jew is Not My Enemy (McClelland & Stewart), to be launched in October. Both sit on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Mischief+Manhattan/3370303/story.html#ixzz0wnfZeu2c

The Little Greatness of America

A Celtic music band plays loudly on the stand. Three little girls look at one another demurely, they exchange a few words and pretty soon they are dancing in front of the stand. The little blonde took the initiative and the lead, but the black girl twirls in the air with the grace of a young gazelle. The third girl is Asian, as luck would have it. She copies assiduously the blond girl and the black girl. What can I do? I am not deliberately creating or reinforcing stereotypes; I am calling the play as it unfolds before my eyes.

I must add, for the sake of the integrity of my reporting, that the little black girl seems surprisingly well-prepared. Her eight braided queues make her look adorable. That hairdo must have taken hours to create. She came wearing black tights and a matching short black skirt with sequins. Her elegant performance looks a little premeditated. I compliment her mother as they are leaving. Mom thanks me brightly but do I detect a bit of smugness in her smile?

My small town is having its annual summer Arts and Wines Festival. Some of it is a little pokey, of course, because this is a small town. Having heavy wine breath in the sunny afternoon would be an example of pokey by my standards. Much of the weekend festival is good, or even very good, like many artsy-craftsy things are in Santa Cruz.

One member of the Celtic band is a piper and Irish whistle player I knew when he began, under the influence of a local radio program. Every year, the piper takes a long tour of Scotland and of Ireland. What he brings back is not your daddy’s Celtic music however. I wonder if anyone outside the Western Hemisphere puts more invention and plays this genre a music with more brio and with more spirit . That’s a genre that sees itself as determinedly traditional in the areas where it was born.

Three troupes of belly-dancers accompanied by a band of six together replace the Celtic group in the afternoon sun. Language fails me a little here. First, there are 13 dancers on stage in all. That’s many more than you will see in any Middle-Eastern night-club. Second their performance is only at its core “belly-dancing.” The women do wear slutty costumes that say, “belly-dancing.” They all begin together with conventional motions from the traditional repertoire. Soon however, each group takes off in its own direction. The largest group does a number they call “Turkish can-can,” with high boots worn below fish-netted thighs and under raised skirts. If the name sounds a little ridiculous, the act itself is not. It forces your mind to see things that don’t normally go together. It works because the number is well choreographed and perfectly rehearsed. The mind comes out refreshed, invigorated. “I will be damned,” one part of my brain tells the others.

The second group’s numbers are fairly conventional but their costumes are eye-popping. Below the more or less usual sequined push-up bras, they wear long, wide flowing skirts over harem-pants. The skirts are decorated with masses of thick fabric flowers. On their heads are elaborate flowered and gold bonnets held to the hair with a smartly hidden system of pins. No specialized supplier anywhere in the world offers this kind of outfit. Evidently, the women designed and sewed them themselves.

I don’t have the talent to describe the third group’s performance. It’s a narrowly locally-based troupe and it’s headed by a slim local Mexican-American woman. I have not seen her perform in two years. She looked wonderful two years ago; she is even better now. It seems to me that she specializes in taking conventional belly-dancing moves and extending them beyond what you would think physically possible. That’s what other women flock to her group to learn from her.

A Moroccan friend of mine is also watching. He is a gifted composer and a talented, versatile musician. He co-founded a band composed mostly of local musicians that is now in demand in Morocco itself. My friend has seen one hundred times more belly-dancing than I have. His own American honey is a belly-dancer, and a good one. He confirms my impression of the last troupe of belly-dancers and he explains it. “These women,” he remarks to me, “these women go to the gym every day. They have good muscle tone. It’s unheard of in the Middle-East.”

Another Moroccan I know is sitting in the front row with his new wife, a recent import from the old country. The wife is about forty. She seems dazzled. She and I don’t have a language in common. I ask her husband in French what she thinks. “She is dazzled,” he says.

After several encores, the belly-dancers and their band are pushed off to make room for the next and last performance of the afternoon. A largish Salsa band walks on stage. The band leader is a Mexican, not a Mexican-American, an immigrant, my ears tell me when he presents his musicians in Spanish. Salsa originated in the Caribbean, in Cuba, in the Dominican Republic and in Puerto Rico. It was perfected in New-York, like much else in the world, and in New Jersey. No Mexican Salsa band leader would make it anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world, only in the United States. Here, we are not so punctilious about authenticity, the deep-frozen version of quality for the shy of judgment.

Let me explain: My mother used to warn me against making hasty judgments. Everyone’s mother did. The last time, in my case, must have been around 1975. Our half-educated, liberal elites stopped passing judgment on anything but “right-wingers” around the same time my mother gave me the last admonition Yet, they are inveterate snobs, yearning to appear cultured, even in their own eyes. Their cultural safe haven is the worship of “authenticity,” of that which is reputed not to have changed ever and is therefore untouched by the dreaded pollution of “commercialism.” And yes, the assumption that some cultural artifact has existed for centuries and has not changed for centuries is itself usually wrong. Thus, when it was destroyed, the Plains Indians (Sioux, Cheyenne) beautiful, manly horse-centered culture could not have been in existence for more than three hundred years at most. And, even more heart-breaking, there was no reggae in Jamaica, or anywhere before 1960 at the earliest. Much of the American cultural elite spends its time fooling itself with the cult of authenticity so it does not have to be “judgmental.” Fortunately, the rank and file of this country is not paying attention. But back to the Arts and Wines Festival.

Soon, people begin to dance, many of the Latinos attending, of course, but not only they. A good number of Anglos join in. It’s apparent they have attended Salsa school, probably right here in town. The descendants of Germans, Swedes and Irishmen can dance tropical if they half put their minds to it. I don’t speak derisively of Salsa lessons. They would never happen in Europe. Regulations and fees, and taxes collected in advance of any business income would discourage the most courageous entrepreneurs there. It’s true that in some locales of some countries, government agencies might offer free “Salsa” lessons as part of some educationally multi-cultural program or other. But when the government agencies were finished with the offering, it would not be Salsa anymore, it would be mayonnaise, the healthful egg-free kind, probably!

And then there is the issue of finding paying students in sufficient numbers. Europeans are not used to paying for cultural anything except movies. Nearly everything else is subsidized and usually mediocre. (There are a few cultural events that are both subsidized and brilliant in Europe. I am currently thinking hard about these important exceptions). At any rate, few European adults could be counted on to join Salsa classes. The Brits and the Irish spend six hours each and every day drinking beer. They are just not available for frivolous pursuits. The French would be too terrified to look ridiculous in the end. The Germans would try it, enthusiastically, and most would end up looking ridiculous. Some Spaniards might go for Salsa at first but they tend to be mightily dignified people, full of an exaggerated sense of self-regard not much compatible with the disciplined abandon Salsa demands. I don’t know about the Italians. I have never seen an Italian dance, under any circumstances. And I traveled within Italy several times, I even lived there for five months. It’s a mystery.

How about the other Europeans, you want to know? They are all some kind of Germans. I am well aware of the fact that many have spent centuries eviscerating each other either to defend the notion that they were not German, or at least, that they were somewhat special. I don’t care. Almost all of them eat sausage five times a week. I rest my case! As for the Russians, I don’t really know. They are not European. Every time they pretend to be, the mask slips down the face of a man holding a knout. (That’s the technical term for the horse-whip used to keep the peasantry in-line and satisfied.) They might learn Salsa though. The Russians have surprised us before.

Not all but many of the Salsa dancers are so-called “mixed couples.” Opposites do seem to attract. Mature Mexican-American women dance with their Anglo boyfriends or perhaps, with their second-chance Anglo husbands. A short, stocky, muscular, dark Central American guy is whirling a thin blonde with a striking Finnish face (emerald-green eyes, broad cheek-bones). Or maybe, Salsa school is where people of different backgrounds have the best chance of bumping into each other and of seducing each other. When the opportunity arises, Americans will take it. They always have.

I notice an older, tall, whiter-than-white couple. They call to mind two chicken breasts lightly-broiled on white bread. Both have light-gray hair. They Salsa graciously rather than merely competently. The man wears gray and silver running shoes with orange trim. I suspect the silver shines in the dark. He is seriously balding. He has a gold loop in each ear. Well, everybody does not have to practice understated cool like me!

Unlike members of any other nation, Americans very generally are willing to try new stuff. They also have an endless faith in self-improvement. Many end up inventing, creating the sorts of novelties that only trickle occasionally out of other national cultures. What goes for belly-dancing and for salsa goes for engineering, and for chemistry, and for political initiative, and for movies, of course, and for fiction, by the way. Here is the long and the short of my little story: By any count, even on a per capita basis, the United States has legions of “amateur-this” and “amateur-that.” It has so many that the best American amateurs are often better than professionals elsewhere. This the little base of American greatness. It’s there, even when we are flopping as a nation-state, even when we are becoming poorer by the day, even when we give ourselves awful political leadership. Underneath and aside from the ever-tightening government institutions, there thrives a profoundly anarchistic, self-reproducing, enormously creative civil society.

©Jacques Delacroix 2010

Obama: Le debut de la fin.

La cote du President Obama est au plus bas. Ce qui est plus important, on renifle la debandade dans le parti Democrate. Il y a des elections partielles en Novembre qui peuvent faire perdre aux Democrates leur majorites dans les deux chambres. Il y a aussi des tonnes d’elections locales le meme jour. Les candidats Democrates a tous les niveaux font des esquives gracieuses pour eviter que le President ne les soutiennent trop ouvertement.

Des majorites de sondage rejettent toutes ses grandes initiatives politiques et surtout, economiques. De plus, il se revele peu intelligent. Les dispendieuses vacances “en filles”  de Michele en Espagne n’est que la derniere des bourdes de la Maison Blanche.