Wow. Trump. What a Villain, and What a Shame for the USA.

(May 05, 2018.)   

The other day, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement.  And now I read that Israel has launched strikes on the Iranian military installations in ruined, embattled Syria - something just short of an out-and-out attack on Iran itself.  Both actions are assaults on international peace and security, on Western credibility, and on human decency.  Both events are scurrilous blows to all the diplomats, leaders and activists who toiled for years to forge an anti-nuclear agreement with Iran, one that mitigated a great international threat without the firing of a single shot.  Both events simply hasten World War III, in my opinion, accelerating the current world-wide descent into barbarism, resulting in the suffering of further millions.

No statesman would have done this, in effect putting Iran back on the road to a nuclear confrontation and certainly setting back Iran's entrance into the civilized world of diplomacy; no decent individual would have gone back on America's word, backed out of our own promise, unilaterally tore up the contract; only an arrogant, giddy villain like Trump, dastardly, violent, and provocative, would have done this.  It is easier to understand Netanyahu's policy of endless violence - Israel lives under a shadow of Muslim and Arabic race and religious hatred - but Trump has no excuse.

But then, he didn't need one.  Because the Republican Party's answer to everything is always war and more war.  He and his adherents already despised the Deal, ignoring that it had succeeded in restraining Iran from direct development of nuclear weapons. They and Trump all harbor a primary contempt for diplomacy and a primary hunger for war.  And - of course - their obsession with destroying any of President Obama's substantial accomplishments.

This decision will alienate European allies; it will morally empower Iran to begin once more to develop nuclear weapons.  And, plainly, it served as a red flag to Netanyahu's Israel, signalling them to go ahead and begin undeclared war in Syria.  And so the USA joins not only the company of backward warlord-states like Russia, but also joins Al-Qaeda and such supra-national terrorist bands, all dedicated to a future of barbarism and carnage.

Standing Up ...

The topic in "Standing Up..." here is Islam and what we can understand of it in the world today.   

 

More specifically, this topic began as the problem of the superficially "missing" moderate Muslims.  It's a common American prejudice nowadays that no one can be Muslim AND be a decent person at the same time; that the religious primacy of God and the Quran universally subverts Reason in Muslims and converts them all into passive or active supporters of Radical Muslim terror.  This isn't true, per se, but there have been more than enough murders committed in the name of Islam by fanatics and punks that the notion keeps presenting itself. 

But it behooves us to get "relative" about it.  (Yes, one can "get relative" without becoming a moron.  But if you're a dyed-in-the-wool absolutist anti-relativist for whom the world is always morally black and white, where only "we" are good and all others are bad, then you can just ignore what follows.)  While an exception may disprove the absoluteness of a rule, the exception is NOT the rule: the real world is infinitely complex and composed of endless Individuals.  Only bigots accept and apply pejorative "rules" to the exclusion of facts. 

My little investigation into the topic of moderate Muslims seems to show me (so far) four political and religious classes of Muslims:

• Atheists who are, technically, 'Muslim' (like the many technical Christians and Jews and so on);
• Moral Believers, people who are Muslim but judge others as people and not by labels; 
• Overly Devout folks who are extra-religious or even fundamentalist Muslims who are, nonetheless, horrified and saddened by Radical Islamic terror; and -
• of course - the Radical (Fundamentalist) Muslims who either support or perform acts of terror. 

I expect the same sorts of division apply to any group of a collective religious or political identity.  My point is that American and other reactionaries fail to appreciate the variance in Muslim attitudes and conditions, and instead lump every Muslim in the same trash bin with the Radical Muslims.  (The American Left makes the same mistake with Republicans and Christians and so on.)  They justify this by the murderous extent of Radical Islam's terror-movement, and its inhuman proclamations.  But the excesses of a few are still not the customs of the many. 

 

There are lots of modern Muslims who, in their own lives, can integrate God, the Quran, AND human decency, just as there are such people in any religious group.  We can pin a violent past (or present) on any of these other groups as well, whether Puritanical Christians, Communists, CEO's and "working men", Populists, et cetera; but that doesn't automatically make all the members of such groups murderers and rapists.  

 

I want to mention one author who speaks to the whole question of the "missing" moderates:  Ranya Tabari Idliby, author of two books:

• The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew - Three Women Search for Understanding (ISBN 978-0743290487)
• Burqas, Baseball, and Apple Pie: Being Muslim in America (ISBN 978-0-230-34184-5)

I am reading the second of these.  Ranya is decidedly Muslim; but she is also decidedly American.  She is heroic enough to condemn the murderers and criminals who slaughter and claim it as a service to God; and she is reasoning enough to have a commitment to Freedom and Goodwill - which makes her like a lot of un-sung decent Muslim folk who have not been interviewed or printed or otherwise published.  I hope to get back and sum up more of what I get from her book later. 

 

So, again, for people who think they're People of Good Will, don't condemn all Muslims for the actions of a few angry, crazy macho-types; but do read Ranya's book - very timely reading for all of us non-Muslims (Stoic, Baptist, Atheist, Catholic, Buddhist, whatever). 

 

Some Movement (re prior blog entry, 'Stereotypes')

Salvete, qui legentes --

Just after I'd posted the blog entry 'Stereotypes' the other day, the news came out that the attack in San Bernardino was indeed politically and religiously motivated -- although strangely targeted.  It's apparently the same old Wahhabist anti-Western violence, this time on a more modest suburban scale.  (Guns furnished, gladly, by the membership of the NRA. That's another and potentially salutary group, apparently currently composed of nincompoops, that needs to wake up -- but that'll be a different story.) 

The news-worthier part of the story is this:  that American Muslims are raising money to give help the families of the victims of that attack.  Here's a link to the article:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-muslim-fundraise-20151208-story.html , and to the organization:  http://www.celebratemercy.com/ .  The fund itself is called "Muslims United for San Bernardino"; they acknowledge that donations of money will not correct the evil done or ameliorate the suffering of the survivors, "but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way."  God knows, there will be funeral expenses and more such petty miseries.  But what is news-worthy is this:  American Muslims are human, and despite their particulars many of them have simple human sympathy for the victims and their devastated friends and families. 

“Since 9/11, we’ve felt we need to come out of our cocoons,” said Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the Islamic Institute of Orange County [ https://www.facebook.com/m.ibnfaqih/info/?tab=page_info ]. “We’re as American as anyone else … but if society is not feeling it, it means I’m not doing enough.”  Again, Sheik Faqih is of a younger and American-grown generation of Muslims, but by God! he's got the right attitude.  He is connected with a religious organization called the AlMaghrib Institute [ http://almaghrib.org/ ]. 
Dr. Faisal Qazi, the Southern Californian neurosurgeon who initiated the fund for the families, has several interesting things to say.  "The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society.  What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society.” 

Some Muslims do speak out against the violence, despite those voices sounding weak.  But they are there, nonetheless.  For example, see www.m-a-t.org/ , a Canadian Muslim organization that speaks against it, albeit with a conservatively religious voice.  Across the pond in the UK, there is a yearly "UK Arbaeen Procession" which is a Muslim-organized multi-faith march for "unity and friendship between people of all ages and cultures" [ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-muslims-marching-against-terrorism-6977099 ]. 
 
Better still, to me, is www.freemuslims.org , a group proud to be an American-Muslim organization "willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously."  They acknowledge that too many Muslim-American authority figures are not so willing and some are indeed sympathetic to terrorist aims.  This adds a note of realism to their stance, that they admit that people in Muslim-American communities have divergent opinions on the crisis.  "Free Muslims will challenge these beliefs and target the sympathetic support given to terrorists by Muslims", says their 'About Us' blurb on their website (above).  

All in all, this gives me hope.  American Muslims may finally be waking up, especially the younger of them.  Now, could some of these sympathetic organizations actually be concealing terrorist supporters?  Sure, it's possible.  But in what part of human history has there not been angry people?  The Republican Party is made of little else, it sometimes seems.  There have been more peaceful times, certainly.  But think about it:  the USA and her republic have survived the Depression, World War II's Nazi Bund, urban riots in the 60's, and (of course) the September 11 attack.  Even if -- okay, when -- there is more terrorist bloodshed here at home, still the republic, the American way of life, will survive.  It's too good to be thrown away.  And I think a lot of American Muslims would say the same.

Bene valete.

Ah, Give Me the Cold War ...

In the 1960s, poised beneath the uncertain nuclear stalemate between the USA and USSR, there continued to be hope for universal peace -- the hoped-for product of World War II.  The First World War's "never again!" notion had gone to hell with the rise of Bolshevism, the world-wide Depression, and the subsequent rise of Fascism in various formats the world over.  World War II made a monstrous desert of much of the earth and a pause ensued -- a hostile one, which began to be amended in the 60s and 70s.

At my age, I long for the age of nuclear standoff, when there was still a hope in Hell that Russians and Americans might figure out how to get along.  I have to remind myself that to be fond of such a time is to be unfair to those who had suffered in the Gulag and otherwise behind the Iron Curtain. Still, what fond hopes.

But this is life, and friction governs.  Universally, the molecules and animals are all itchy and will not be patient, fair or just.  Reason goes far to make weapons, only a small way to create peace.  Mao Tse-Tung (the fat old spider) ran China into the ground; Pol Pot arose in Cambodia to patriotically murder and destroy his own people; old Russian fascism (Bolshevism, Stalinism, etc.) got its comeuppance in Afghanistan (little did Americans supporting Muslim resistance realize who they were abetting in their covert operations).  No, not freedom but new fascisms reveal themselves everywhere, and nowhere so well as in their various forms in the Middle East.  Even Israel, child of Jews, a whole people homeless and abused for centuries, succumbed to the Rule of Brutality, and in defending itself became a conqueror and colonizer of others' lands, aping the success of their own Nazi persecutors and the bile and xenophobia of their racist Arab opponents.

What a world.

Post-Midterm Elections, 2014

"Dear Diary - "

"But every time there's a thunder storm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, 'Dan'l Webster--Dan'l Webster!' the ground'll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake.  And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying, 'Neighbor, how stands the Union?' Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground."  --The Devil and Daniel Webster, by Stephen Vincent Benet

It's certainly better that Republicans have their turn than that more of them go underground and turn their backs on the United States' republic itself.  I am content if "the Union stands" and hasn't gone fascist. 

When President Obama was elected back in 2008, the American Right went insane - Birchers, racists, Confederate-sympathizers and conspiracy nuts came out of the woodwork, and the Tea Party spontaneously formed around the hard-assed and dissatisfied among us.  It was a "Yokai Dai Sensou" American-style, and it found itself well-funded and popular, and it went right to work.  In 2012, and after these 2014 Mid-Term Elections last night, I was glad that - at the least - there was no coup attempt, no death-squads, no assassination attempt; that the United States' republic still stood and the rule of law still stood.  Even drowned in Republican super-pac money, the house still stands.

As individuals we have no control over life, over others, or over how others think.  All you can do with regard to political opposites is point out their fallacies, their immoralities, and their hostility to life.  Beyond that, it's all about looking at that life and reviewing your own perceptions against reality and good sense. 

And so on and so forth.  Valete.