Dean's World

Four questions:

1) What is this woman's profession?

2) What region of the world is she likely from?

3) What religion do you suppose dominates there?

4) What do you think they'd do to her if she tried moving to modern Iran or modern Saudi Arabia?

To answer at least one question, this dance art form goes by many names, but has been around for thousands of years and has flourished throughout Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, and until quite recently, Iran (where it's now almost completely illegal).

Question to ponder: A certain religion has been absolutely dominant over that entire region for about 1,400 years. How is it even possible that there is such a profession under that religion's rule?

It is almost impossible sometimes to grasp the intricacies of another person's religion. Someone like me, who has a strong interest in these things, may spend a lot of time attempting to do that, but a lot of people don't want to bother. But in some cases, you should bother. You should bother when it leads you to major conclusions that might have dangerous repercussions.

For example, let us take this excellent-as-usual essay by Neo, one of my favorite writers. I actually agree with 90% of it. Make that 99%. The 1% is contained in this troubling statement, when discussing the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man who was persecuted in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity:

And yes, I'm sure not all adherants of Islam subscribe to the idea that apostates and converts must die. But it seems to be an extremely common position.

Seems. Huge word, that. Huge. May be the most important word in the entire piece, for how things seem almost certainly colors one's entire perception of the discussion. It's the 1% I have an issue with, because it doesn't seem extremely common to me. It seems to be extremely common in Afghanistan, which happens to be one of the most primitive nations on Earth, with people still living literally medieval-tech lives in most of the country.

Where else is it common? I'll bet you can name, at most, a handful of other countries. But where the mentality also seems most common is in the Western media.

This reminds me very much of the discussion we had in the earlier thread entitled "Let's start to name them and shame them" (see below). The entire discussion boiled down to a disagreement over one word: Sharia*.

What is that?

Is it "politicized Islam?" Sometimes yes, often no.

Is it "systematic oppression?" It can be, but isn't always.

Is it "incompatible with modernity?" A lot of Saudi Arabian theologians would like you to believe that, as would some of the Mullahs in Iran.

Is it "oppressive of women?" Some think so, some don't.

Is all that equivocation? No, it's not. Those are arguments over what it is. What can be objectively said about it is this:

Sharia is the study of Islamic religious doctrine, and the consensus opinion about it that is currently held by scholars of the faith. There are at least five different schools of it, with many sub-schools. Some form of Sharia is found in the body of law in many Muslim-dominated nations. Some of those nations are very medieval by our standards, but some are actually quite modern and tolerant.

That, as it happens, is the factual, indisputable truth. You will find bits of Sharia embedded in the laws of many countries which are not vile oppressors of women, do not embrace slavery, do not murder homosexuals or kill heretics. They are nations which do embrace democratic institutions, separation of mosque and state, free press, free speech, rights for women, and so on. Indeed, the world's largest Muslim nation, which also happens to be one of the largest liberal democracies, is Indonesia. Last year they had a big fight over reforming some of the nation's Sharia laws. The liberals won, as it happens, which is part of why Freedom House noted they'd moved upwards dramatically on civil and political freedoms.

They did not "throw out Sharia." They changed what Sharia meant to them. Americans might find that hard to understand, we're so used to our rigid "separation of Church and State," but I'll bet people like the British and the Norwegians and several other nationalities find that a no-brainer: after all, those are officially Christian nations, and their governments have been known from time to time to define what "Christian law" means to them.

Not long ago I read a blog that darkly warned that "Indonesia is thinking about implementing Sharia." They were referring to news accounts of politicians who wanted to overturn some of the recent Sharia reforms. It was annoying, because they reported it so backward: No one was proposing "implementing Sharia in Indonesia." Indonesia never freaking stopped using Sharia. It's still part of their law today. The radicals were wanting to put in their Sharia rather than the revised Sharia that Indonesia's been working toward over the last decade or so. This is a fight that's still going on over there, and although the good guys are winning, they could use some support (see the case of Yenni Wahid for more).

By the way, if they had "thrown out Sharia," what would have happened is almost certainly a terrible erosion of civil rights, because most people would have thought their government was insane and simply rebelled. Or they would have abandoned their government in droves, setting up their own extra-legal kangaroo courts run by whoever the local bullyboys were. Rather as if, in 1906, the American government declared they were rejecting Christianity and the Bible. People back then would have assumed the government had simpy gone nuts and either revolted or started completely ignoring it.

Which all gets me back to that huge word of Neo's: "seems." How things seem.

Over at Rusty's generally excellent blog, I notice that someone finally asked the $64,000 question that every "conservative" (whatever that means) thinker should be asking: "If it's true that MSM has failed to tell the story about our strategy in Iraq, omitting not only the big picture but most of the successes, why is it not also true that MSM has failed to tell the story of moderate Islam?"

Our friend Matoko says it even better right here: "I mean, Islamic Scholar Writes Book Disagreeing with Fine Points of Haditha just doesn't have the bite that Muslims Threaten to Behead Christian Convert does, right?"

Right. Shouldn't you folks who are so anxious to question the Mainstream Media (the dread "MSM") on certain things, not also be willing to question them on the picture they give us of Islam, a faith of over 1,400 years of history, spanning dozens of nations, hundreds of ethnic groups and languages, spread out over every continent? Given all that's going on in the world, with the War On Terror and all that, is it wise to accept the broadest, crudest, most nasty generalizations about the followers of that faith--and to thereby alienate the many among them who want to be our friends and allies?

So you see some riots over some cartoons--what our friend Aziz so aptly called "The StupidStorm"--and you find out that worldwide, literally hundreds of Muslims rioted, and literally dozens of people died.

Wow. Sounds like what happens when the Lakers win the NBA championship to me.

Or what happens over soccer/football matches in Europe. That's what you call your worldwide Jihad? Uh, please man: get a grip. (The issue of despicable death threats and cowardly censorship is another matter entirely. But let's stick to the subject shall we? No actual death threats have been carried out. The cringing, simpering appeasement of these barbarians by Western so-called "liberals" in response to it all will require a whole 'nother essay. Suffice it to say: let's get a grip on how little some threats actually amount to. And if we're going to hate people just for having boycotts, well, let's start making a list of all the world's boycotts shall we?)

Stacey Philbrick, who's currently woring out of Cairo in Egypt, recently posted a review of a book that's making all kinds of waves in the conservative Arab part of the world: Muhammed Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil’s Islam and International Human Rights Declarations. Sadly, it appears to be available only in Arabic at the moment (Arabic citation: محمد عبد الملك المتوكل. 2004. الاسلام والاعلانات الدولية لحقوق الانسان. صنعاء: مطابع صنعاء الحديث للاوفت ). Fortunately for us, Philbrick summarizes his arguments for us in her review. You should read her entire piece, and commenters, but I'll quote her liberally in her overview of his reasoning:

a) The reason that Muhammed took up arms against the Quraysh was because they were preventing people from converting to Islam. It cannot logically hold that he would take up arms in defense of individual choice, and then deny it to others.

b) There are scores of ayat mentioning the offense of kufr (unbelief), but no mention in the Quran of any worldly punishment. There are comparatively few mentions of the crimes of adultery, theft, and murder, but there are clearly articulated worldly punishments in the text of the Quran itself. Despite an ill-substantiated hadith to the contrary, one cannot hold that the immutable and perfect Quran simply "neglected to mention it." The decision – by states or by ulema - to punish a kafir is therefore illegitimate.

c) Those who draw a distinction between a kafir (unbeliever) and a murtad (apostate, or one who has "turned his back" on Islam after previously submitting, by birth or by conversion, to its authority) and advocate killing the murtad simply on the basis of his apostasy are also in error. The foundation of the numerous hadith that justify the killing of the murtad do so on the grounds that he (or, in one particularly well-noted case, she) takes up arms or otherwise conspires to overthrow the Islamic state. This is simply treason, and it should be treated as treason, he argues, not as an issue of conscience.

Each of these points is exhaustively documented by reference to the Quran, the Sunna of the prophet, and the writings of the fuqaha’. What is particularly interesting is that he cites clerics with conservative reputations, thus making the "hard case."

In short, the book is a lengthy fatwa on Sharia. And if its reasoning becomes accepted by a consensus of Muslim scholars of any one of the major branches of Sharia, or even just some sects, it'll be Sharia for those who do accept it.

And it's not written for me or you, or to impress any Westerners. It is not a "liberal" or "moderate" work either. Although there are certainly liberal movements within Islam--start here if you want a place to begin exploring--that's not what this book is. It's a conservative work of religious scholarship, very much in the traditional spirit of Islam.

Back around Christmas, just a few months ago, we saw half a million Mosques in Bangladesh declaring terrorists enemies of Islam. We saw Indonesia's largest Muslim organization rallying to protect Christian churches at Christmas. We learned that Muslim-dominated Senegal loves to celebrate Christmas, despite the fact that they're majority-Muslim, because they just think it's a cool holiday. And while Bangladesh still has some growing to do, Senegal is a liberal democracy, as is nearby Muslim-dominated Mali. And they're not alone, or unique, in that regard.

Indeed, there are a large number of Muslim nations that have never been major exporters of terrorism. The one thing they all have in common; they're at least relatively free compared to nations like, say, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, or Iran. Some of us find it hard to believe that's a coincidence.

What grates the teeth of some of us, even some of us who are very much hawks on U.S. foreign policy, and very much believers in human rights, is when we start seeing people say "Islam is this," "Muslims believe that," "Sharia says this" and so on. There are Muslims all over the world who despise terrorism, repressive governments, and tyranny. There are many here at home as well. Most people I know go ballistic if they're held to answer for everything their coreligionists do or say. Rightly so. Why should muslims--or their friends--be any different?

If you want to help change a nasty part of the world, it helps to know who your real enemies are, and who your real friends are. Before you decide for sure, you should look closely.

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* - For the record, I usually prefer anglicized words for such terms. After all, people who speak other languages, such as Arabic, feel entitled to do the same with English words and terms. Thus I use Koran, Sharia, Baathist, Hadith, and so on. These are spellings that any American can easily read and pronounce. People who choose to do differently can follow their own practices. I prefer simple readability. I don't expect Arabic speakers to say things like "Presbyterian Synod" or "Transubstantiation" perfectly, and would not presume to "correct" them if they transliterated them somewhat.