By William Fisher
Try Googling: “James Dobson, Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, and Religious Right”. Then click “search within results” for “Bush Administration, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Freedom of the Press, Independent Judiciary, Guantanamo Bay, Intelligence Reform, Prisoner Abuse, Poverty Reduction, Religious Tolerance, US Aid”.
You may be surprised by the results.
Out of millions of documents, you will find virtually none that refer to Guantanamo Bay, Prisoner Abuse, Poverty Reduction, Religious Tolerance, or Intelligence Reform.
On the other hand, you will find hundreds that refer to Bush Administration, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Freedom of the Press, and Independent Judiciary.
But these are almost exclusively devoted to the relationship of these issues to one over-arching subject: SEX.
Thus, the “human and civil rights” citations are about the evils of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, teen pregnancy, contraception, and kindred issues.
“Freedom of the Press” is reduced to attacking the ‘left-wing bias’ of journalists who disagree with the religious right – and lionizing those who agree.
The “independent judiciary” category is monopolized by Roe v. Wade, Terri Schiavo and other end-of-life issues, opposition to ‘activist’ judges who ‘legislate from the bench’, Darwin vs. Creationism, and embryonic stem cell research, support for Bill Frist and Tom delay, and acclaim for President Bush’s court nominees.
US AID is dominated by scathing criticisms of the family planning, HIV prevention, and sex education programs America funds in poor countries.
And under “Bush Administration”, you will find unquestioning enthusiasm not only for the president’s positions on these issues but, implicitly and explicitly, for virtually every position and action Mr. Bush has ever taken.
So the issues most trumpeted by the so-called religious right are about how we got here, how we reproduce ourselves, how we should die, the kinds of intimate relationships we should and shouldn’t have, who should judge the appropriateness of those relationships – and how our Constitution should be protecting us against the ‘devil’ in our midst.
In other words, by an obsession with reproduction. SEX!
How the religious right got from Calvin to “The Crucible” to Condoms and Terri Schiavo requires a long journey through history. For theological scholars – indeed, for all of us -- it is a fascinating and illuminating journey. But we’ll have to save that for another time.
For now, the more relevant questions are: Is this what faith is about? And, if not, where are those people of faith who express alternative views? And why aren’t we hearing their voices?
Well, you may not have noticed, but we are. These voices are not as deafening or as undoubting or as strident as Pat Robertson’s or Jerry Falwell’s or James Dobson’s. But they’re out there. And they’re struggling to be heard over the cacophony of the politically-savvy, exquisitely-organized, Bible-quoting machine of the extreme right wing of the God-squad.
There are many moderate voices among ‘people of faith’. Perhaps best known is Rev. Jim Wallis, an evangelical Protestant who edits “Soujourners” magazine and is the best-selling author of “God’s Politics”.
Wallis says, “I've witnessed a new movement of moderate and progressive religious voices challenging the monologue of the Religious Right. An extremely narrow and aggressively partisan expression of right-wing Republican religion has controlled the debate on faith and politics in the public square for years. But that is no longer true…"The monologue of the Religious Right is finally over, and a new dialogue has begun!"
There are, he says, “visible signs that the Religious Right does not speak for all Christians, even all evangelical Christians. What I hear, from one end of this country to the other, is how tired we are of ideological religion and how hungry we are for prophetic faith.”
Wallis is conservative theologically, yet believes his faith mandates support for progressive policies. "The Bible is full of poor people," he said. "Biblical politics has the poor at the center."
Wallis is not alone; many religious groups and conservative Christians oppose the Religious Right -- both in politics and in their church hierarchies. For example:
The Interfaith Alliance "is a non-partisan, clergy-led organization dedicated to promoting the positive, healing role of faith in civic life and challenging intolerance and extremism."
The Rev. Albert Pennybacker, a Lexington, Ky.-based pastor, is head of the Clergy Leadership Network, a cross-denominational group of liberal and moderate religious leaders seeking to counter the influence of the religious right and to mobilize voters to change leadership in Washington. Pennypacker says he is “tired of the conventional wisdom that equates religiosity with conservatism. He says the religious right “often squeezes out the left in public debate”.
Sojourners for Peace and Justice is an evangelical progressive Christian commentary on faith, politics, and culture. Episcopal Bishop John Chane said at a recent Sojourners/Call to Renewal chapel service: "We've gone from a war on poverty to a war on the poor."
The Evangelical Environmental Network is a coalition of Christian groups promoting environmental protection.
A web site by a former Catholic Priest turned Methodist minister, “Christ as a Liberal”, demonstrates a religious/political alternative to the Religious Right.
These are but a few of the so-called "freestyle evangelicals" who are averse to the right wing's intolerance and lack of charity. Their concerns extend beyond the conservative morality issues of abortion and gay marriage to a broad range of issues –from social justice for the poor to America's role in the world.
They are beginning to attract sizable audiences. And for at least some politicians, their message is beginning to resonate.
For example, Governor Bob Riley of Alabama proposed a tax increase to help the poor, calling this action his Biblical duty. On CBS News, Gov. Riley said, "we're supposed to love God, love each other, and help take care of our poor."
And former US Ambassador to the United Nations John C. Danforth, a former senator and an Episcopal minister, says he does not fault religious conservatives for political action on high-profile issues like the Terri Schiavo case, but that the Republican party has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement. He warns that, aside from obvious First Amendment issues, the work of government and political leaders is to hold together as one people very diverse nation in which religion can be uniting influence but is more often highly divisive.
Karl Rove notwithstanding, ‘people of faith’ like Jim Wallis and John Danforth may well be triggering a backlash against right wing Christianity. Watch this space!
William Fisher writes for InterPress News Service. He has managed economic development programs for the US Agency for International Development and the US State Department in the Middle East and elsewhere. He served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
HOPE FOR IMPROVING RELATIONS WITH THE MUSLIM WORLD?
By William Fisher
As the Muslim world continued to demonstrate its hostility to the U.S. on the heels of a Newsweek magazine article charging that a copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet, America’s premiere foreign policy organization issued a new report claiming that better communications could still win Muslim hearts and minds.
But the report, issued by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said better U.S. communications will require "listening more, a humbler tone, and focusing on bilateral aid and partnership, while tolerating disagreement on controversial policy issues," as well as substantial funding and effort.
Newsweek reported that it was told by an unnamed source that evidence of desecration of the Koran would be included in an upcoming government report on events at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The source later turned out to be unreliable, and Newsweek retracted its story.
The CFR report -- A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World – is based on the results of focus group research in Morocco, Egypt, and Indonesia. The research was carried out by Craig Charney and Nicole Yakatan of Charney Research.
The report points out that in all three countries, images of the United States are dominated by resentment of American power and anger directed at President George W. Bush--negative attitudes that spill over to American brands and people. "Perceptions matter: most Muslims do not hate America for 'who we are' or 'what we do', but for what they perceive we do."
The Council said, “Muslim views of the United States as domineering and hostile reflect relentless local reporting on Iraq, Palestine, and purported negative American attitudes toward Muslims, along with ignorance of U.S. aid programs to the region and U.S. support for regional reform.”
Reports on television networks largely hostile to the United States are Muslims' main source of information; U.S. government-sponsored media (Al-Hurra TV and Radio Sawa) have little impact in the region.
The effects of unfavorable media coverage are reinforced by stereotypes about the U.S. decision-making process, particularly about alleged Jewish influence on U.S. foreign policy.
However, the report finds, America currently has a window of opportunity to change Muslim attitudes. Positive impressions about tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia, Iraq's recent election, and new Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts are providing the second Bush administration a chance for a fresh start.
“Rather than trying -- and failing -- to persuade Muslims to support American policies in Iraq or Palestine”, the report says, “the United States should publicize its significant development aid to their lands, which, despite soaring aid budgets, is almost invisible to them.”
Other commentators have taken a different view.
“The US government can repackage its policies all it wants, but people will see through the words as long as the US government continues to treat the region simply as a means to an end: strategic control over oil,” said Brian Foley, a professor at the Florida Coastal Law School in Jacksonville, Florida.
And Jack N. Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, said, “Nothing in the PR or public diplomacy arena can offset the acts of the U.S. and the statements of Bush himself, which remain dictatorial, arrogant, and insensitive to the Arab world and it peoples. AID remains locked into its old-style assistance and cannot apparently focus on the fundamental, long-term needs there -- namely education, development of enterprise, and employment opportunities, plus openings to the world economy. Joining the world community gives hope, but it must be done while permitting cultural differences--so long as they do not include intolerance from any quarter.”
The CFR report says, “When focus group members learned of U.S. aid efforts -- via media reports on tsunami relief in Indonesia or support for women's rights in Morocco -- it significantly improved their attitudes toward the United States”.
Although the seriousness of the anti-American attitudes has won growing recognition, neither public nor private efforts have addressed Muslim hostility to America with the sustained focus or resources required, the CFR said.
Among the report's recommendations:
Focus on partnerships in support of local Muslim initiatives, without presenting the United States as the motor of change.
Agree to disagree on contentious issues involving other countries, such as Iraq or Israel and Palestine.
Engage local and regional media via press releases, interviews, Op-Eds, press conferences, and site visits.
Launch an advertising campaign on U.S. aid and support for reform in local and regional media, and acknowledge the U.S. government as the source.
Improve reporting of aid programs, particularly those concerning economic, education, and health aid, in U.S. government media.
The CFR research found that immediate reactions to the United States reveal resentment of American power and of President George W. Bush. American behavior is perceived as being largely predatory. The report said this hostility is spilling over into negative attitudes toward American people and brands.
Other key findings:
“Since September 11, 2001, the United States is also viewed as hostile to Muslims both abroad and domestically, in its visa policy as well as in daily life.
The Palestinian intifada and the Bush administration’s embrace of Israel’s government have helped strengthen the impression of double standards in
America’s treatment of Muslims.
These attitudes have been reinforced by “widespread stereotypes and misinformation about American foreign policy, particularly regarding Jewish influence on it, even among the well-educated Muslims in the focus groups”.
Another important influence is the rise of television, especially Arabic satellite networks such as al-Jazeera. “Their constant critical coverage of U.S. policy is the main source of information about America for focus group members and drives local Arab media.
Focus group members “do not take seriously U.S. government media, such as Radio Sawa, al-Hurra TV, and Hi magazine, as information sources.
Prominent local Islamists have little following among the educated Moroccans and Egyptians but have some standing among Indonesians. Osama bin Laden retains substantial appeal as an anti-American symbol in all three countries.
American development assistance has become “all but invisible to the populations it benefits”.
What Muslims say they want from America is respect, understood as consultation and nonintervention, and development aid in which they, not Americans, define their needs.
The CFR cautioned that “substantial efforts will be required to communicate more effectively. Turning information and initiatives into communications that are heard requires more actively engaging local media—including the controversial al-Jazeera — as well as paid advertising, effective spokespeople, and logos and labels on aid. “
Numerous reports by government agencies and private non-government organizations have been harshly critical of U.S. public diplomacy efforts. President Bush recently nominated his former senior aide and close confidante, Karen Hughes, to lead a new public diplomacy push by the U.S. State Department. Several high profile figures have taken on the task in the past few years, but have ultimately resigned.
As the Muslim world continued to demonstrate its hostility to the U.S. on the heels of a Newsweek magazine article charging that a copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet, America’s premiere foreign policy organization issued a new report claiming that better communications could still win Muslim hearts and minds.
But the report, issued by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said better U.S. communications will require "listening more, a humbler tone, and focusing on bilateral aid and partnership, while tolerating disagreement on controversial policy issues," as well as substantial funding and effort.
Newsweek reported that it was told by an unnamed source that evidence of desecration of the Koran would be included in an upcoming government report on events at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The source later turned out to be unreliable, and Newsweek retracted its story.
The CFR report -- A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World – is based on the results of focus group research in Morocco, Egypt, and Indonesia. The research was carried out by Craig Charney and Nicole Yakatan of Charney Research.
The report points out that in all three countries, images of the United States are dominated by resentment of American power and anger directed at President George W. Bush--negative attitudes that spill over to American brands and people. "Perceptions matter: most Muslims do not hate America for 'who we are' or 'what we do', but for what they perceive we do."
The Council said, “Muslim views of the United States as domineering and hostile reflect relentless local reporting on Iraq, Palestine, and purported negative American attitudes toward Muslims, along with ignorance of U.S. aid programs to the region and U.S. support for regional reform.”
Reports on television networks largely hostile to the United States are Muslims' main source of information; U.S. government-sponsored media (Al-Hurra TV and Radio Sawa) have little impact in the region.
The effects of unfavorable media coverage are reinforced by stereotypes about the U.S. decision-making process, particularly about alleged Jewish influence on U.S. foreign policy.
However, the report finds, America currently has a window of opportunity to change Muslim attitudes. Positive impressions about tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia, Iraq's recent election, and new Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts are providing the second Bush administration a chance for a fresh start.
“Rather than trying -- and failing -- to persuade Muslims to support American policies in Iraq or Palestine”, the report says, “the United States should publicize its significant development aid to their lands, which, despite soaring aid budgets, is almost invisible to them.”
Other commentators have taken a different view.
“The US government can repackage its policies all it wants, but people will see through the words as long as the US government continues to treat the region simply as a means to an end: strategic control over oil,” said Brian Foley, a professor at the Florida Coastal Law School in Jacksonville, Florida.
And Jack N. Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, said, “Nothing in the PR or public diplomacy arena can offset the acts of the U.S. and the statements of Bush himself, which remain dictatorial, arrogant, and insensitive to the Arab world and it peoples. AID remains locked into its old-style assistance and cannot apparently focus on the fundamental, long-term needs there -- namely education, development of enterprise, and employment opportunities, plus openings to the world economy. Joining the world community gives hope, but it must be done while permitting cultural differences--so long as they do not include intolerance from any quarter.”
The CFR report says, “When focus group members learned of U.S. aid efforts -- via media reports on tsunami relief in Indonesia or support for women's rights in Morocco -- it significantly improved their attitudes toward the United States”.
Although the seriousness of the anti-American attitudes has won growing recognition, neither public nor private efforts have addressed Muslim hostility to America with the sustained focus or resources required, the CFR said.
Among the report's recommendations:
Focus on partnerships in support of local Muslim initiatives, without presenting the United States as the motor of change.
Agree to disagree on contentious issues involving other countries, such as Iraq or Israel and Palestine.
Engage local and regional media via press releases, interviews, Op-Eds, press conferences, and site visits.
Launch an advertising campaign on U.S. aid and support for reform in local and regional media, and acknowledge the U.S. government as the source.
Improve reporting of aid programs, particularly those concerning economic, education, and health aid, in U.S. government media.
The CFR research found that immediate reactions to the United States reveal resentment of American power and of President George W. Bush. American behavior is perceived as being largely predatory. The report said this hostility is spilling over into negative attitudes toward American people and brands.
Other key findings:
“Since September 11, 2001, the United States is also viewed as hostile to Muslims both abroad and domestically, in its visa policy as well as in daily life.
The Palestinian intifada and the Bush administration’s embrace of Israel’s government have helped strengthen the impression of double standards in
America’s treatment of Muslims.
These attitudes have been reinforced by “widespread stereotypes and misinformation about American foreign policy, particularly regarding Jewish influence on it, even among the well-educated Muslims in the focus groups”.
Another important influence is the rise of television, especially Arabic satellite networks such as al-Jazeera. “Their constant critical coverage of U.S. policy is the main source of information about America for focus group members and drives local Arab media.
Focus group members “do not take seriously U.S. government media, such as Radio Sawa, al-Hurra TV, and Hi magazine, as information sources.
Prominent local Islamists have little following among the educated Moroccans and Egyptians but have some standing among Indonesians. Osama bin Laden retains substantial appeal as an anti-American symbol in all three countries.
American development assistance has become “all but invisible to the populations it benefits”.
What Muslims say they want from America is respect, understood as consultation and nonintervention, and development aid in which they, not Americans, define their needs.
The CFR cautioned that “substantial efforts will be required to communicate more effectively. Turning information and initiatives into communications that are heard requires more actively engaging local media—including the controversial al-Jazeera — as well as paid advertising, effective spokespeople, and logos and labels on aid. “
Numerous reports by government agencies and private non-government organizations have been harshly critical of U.S. public diplomacy efforts. President Bush recently nominated his former senior aide and close confidante, Karen Hughes, to lead a new public diplomacy push by the U.S. State Department. Several high profile figures have taken on the task in the past few years, but have ultimately resigned.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The Easy Way of Blaming the Victims
The op-ed piece below is reprinted from the Jordan Times, Amman.
By Hasan Abu Nimah
Earlier this month, Newsweek reported that American interrogators used provocative methods, such as the desecration of the Holy Koran, in order to force Muslim detainees to release desired information. In one instance, the paper claimed, the holy book was flushed down a toilet.
This obviously inflamed sentiments all over the Muslim world. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, there were violent popular eruptions in protest and as a result, sixteen demonstrators were killed.
Newsweek, clearly under official administration pressure, finally had to retract the story and apologise for having it wrong.
Some Muslim reaction was undoubtedly severe, and this is understandable. Not only because any community would be equally enraged if its religious symbols were so badly and so deliberately treated, but also because this happened in a context of repeated American scandals related to inhumane and illegal treatment of Muslim detainees.
It is probable that anger, therefore, was more for the ongoing trend than for the incident itself. New scandals bring to light older ones, and people tend to see them together, and to react to them together, too.
The scandal of the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib caused enormous damage to American Muslim/Arab relations. But further, repeated revelations about the treatment and, of course, torture of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Bagram prison, Afghanistan, at the hands of their US captors have been putting Washington in a very critical standing before international law. Even American justice ruled that the Guantanamo detention formula was illegal.
Last Sunday fresh news broke out about brutal atrocities in Bagram prison. “Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him,” Tim Golden wrote in the International Herald Tribune on May 21-22, 2005.
The story of the death as a result of torture of the two Afghan men Delawar and Habibullah within six days from each other in December 2002 emerged from a 2,000-page file of the US Army's criminal investigation into the horrifying case which The New York Times had obtained and reported on.
The army report ,according to the paper, indicated that many of Delawar's interrogators believed he was innocent. He was a taxi driver who simply drove past the American base with three other passengers after a rocket was fired at the base. Many months had however passed before the army knew of such details. But even after the military coroners had ruled the two deaths as homicides, military spokesman declared that the two men had died of natural causes. Like in Abu Ghraib earlier, the Bagram file “depicts young, poorly trained soldiers repeatedly abusing prisoners”, sometimes to extract information, at others as punishment by military police guards, and in yet other cases, “the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty or both”.
This harsh treatment was, according to the file, routine, and guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity.
Within this ever expanding context of US soldiers treating their Muslim detainees as less than animals, it was perhaps normal to view the desecration of the Holy Koran as an abstract expression of degradation and contempt to people who, in the eyes of the tormentors, deserve no better. In another report, Saman Zia Zarifi wrote in the same issue of the International Herald Tribune that “ for more than two weeks before the magazine [Newsweek] ran its story, newspapers in the United States, Britain and throughout the Muslim world published interviews in which detainees held by United States in Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq claimed that their guards and interrogators denigrated Islamic religious symbols and in particular desecrated copies of the Koran by kicking them across the floor, tearing out pages and tossing them into toilets”.
Washington, with scandals regularly unfolding, was right to struggle to contain the damage, although not by trying to repair one wrong by committing another, such as suppressing press freedom.
This is not the view of the famous columnist Thomas Friedman, who, in his column in the same IHT which reprinted the Bagram torture scandals, apparently prefers to blame the Arab and Muslim worlds instead.
Friedman chides the White House spokesman for “excoriating Newsweek... while not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to Newsweek report”.
He urged President George Bush that, while he should declare that any desecration of any holy book is wrong and is to be punished if proven, he should also require that the “Arab-Muslim world must also look in the mirror when it comes to how it has been behaving towards an even worse crime than the desecration of God's words, and that is the desecration of God's creation”.
Reading Friedman's thesis immediately after the IHT's report on the army file on desecration of “God's creation” in Bagram and remembering Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, I was for a moment bewildered at this terribly flawed and deeply confused logic. Who was actually desecrating both God's words and God's creation?
But Friedman's super-confidence has apparently elevated him far above the level of analysts and opinion writers, to the level of those whose word must simply be taken for granted as the final truth. He wants to know, he wrote, why Muslim spiritual leaders do not repeat his words that Islam “teaches that you show reverence to God by showing reverence to his creations”. That is absolutely right. The only difference is that those sixteen Muslim victims he mourns, who were killed for protesting the American desecration of their holy book, were killed by Muslims representing a democracy which America had just established, by a US-made puppet regime. And the carnage in Iraq, (which he also cites as proof of his “novel” thesis), condemnable as it should be, is the result of the illegal war in a country which is under US occupation. Under international law, it is the responsibility of the occupiers, the 140,000 US soldiers there, to secure the safety of all Iraqis and to preserve order.
Worst still is Friedman's reference to a “courageous Arab intellectual” who joins him in ridiculing Muslim reaction, quoted as saying: “When thousands in Afghanistan are concerned about a report in a magazine that does not reach them, written in a language that they do not speak... it tells us more about the dangers of propaganda.”
Is the message, then, that one has the right to be offended and the right to react only when the offence is made in his own language and when the magazine which carries the offence reaches him physically? And who determines that English and Newsweek are not read in Afghanistan?
This logic only adds insult to injury and is bound to aggravate even further a situation which is critically bad.
The US does indeed need to repair a lot of damage to its relations with the Arab-Muslim world, and to its standing in the world for regular violations of human rights and international law. Looking into the mirror is probably one way of doing it, but by no means the only way. Blaming the victim is always easy, but it is only bound to make the situation worse.
By Hasan Abu Nimah
Earlier this month, Newsweek reported that American interrogators used provocative methods, such as the desecration of the Holy Koran, in order to force Muslim detainees to release desired information. In one instance, the paper claimed, the holy book was flushed down a toilet.
This obviously inflamed sentiments all over the Muslim world. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, there were violent popular eruptions in protest and as a result, sixteen demonstrators were killed.
Newsweek, clearly under official administration pressure, finally had to retract the story and apologise for having it wrong.
Some Muslim reaction was undoubtedly severe, and this is understandable. Not only because any community would be equally enraged if its religious symbols were so badly and so deliberately treated, but also because this happened in a context of repeated American scandals related to inhumane and illegal treatment of Muslim detainees.
It is probable that anger, therefore, was more for the ongoing trend than for the incident itself. New scandals bring to light older ones, and people tend to see them together, and to react to them together, too.
The scandal of the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib caused enormous damage to American Muslim/Arab relations. But further, repeated revelations about the treatment and, of course, torture of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Bagram prison, Afghanistan, at the hands of their US captors have been putting Washington in a very critical standing before international law. Even American justice ruled that the Guantanamo detention formula was illegal.
Last Sunday fresh news broke out about brutal atrocities in Bagram prison. “Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him,” Tim Golden wrote in the International Herald Tribune on May 21-22, 2005.
The story of the death as a result of torture of the two Afghan men Delawar and Habibullah within six days from each other in December 2002 emerged from a 2,000-page file of the US Army's criminal investigation into the horrifying case which The New York Times had obtained and reported on.
The army report ,according to the paper, indicated that many of Delawar's interrogators believed he was innocent. He was a taxi driver who simply drove past the American base with three other passengers after a rocket was fired at the base. Many months had however passed before the army knew of such details. But even after the military coroners had ruled the two deaths as homicides, military spokesman declared that the two men had died of natural causes. Like in Abu Ghraib earlier, the Bagram file “depicts young, poorly trained soldiers repeatedly abusing prisoners”, sometimes to extract information, at others as punishment by military police guards, and in yet other cases, “the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty or both”.
This harsh treatment was, according to the file, routine, and guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity.
Within this ever expanding context of US soldiers treating their Muslim detainees as less than animals, it was perhaps normal to view the desecration of the Holy Koran as an abstract expression of degradation and contempt to people who, in the eyes of the tormentors, deserve no better. In another report, Saman Zia Zarifi wrote in the same issue of the International Herald Tribune that “ for more than two weeks before the magazine [Newsweek] ran its story, newspapers in the United States, Britain and throughout the Muslim world published interviews in which detainees held by United States in Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq claimed that their guards and interrogators denigrated Islamic religious symbols and in particular desecrated copies of the Koran by kicking them across the floor, tearing out pages and tossing them into toilets”.
Washington, with scandals regularly unfolding, was right to struggle to contain the damage, although not by trying to repair one wrong by committing another, such as suppressing press freedom.
This is not the view of the famous columnist Thomas Friedman, who, in his column in the same IHT which reprinted the Bagram torture scandals, apparently prefers to blame the Arab and Muslim worlds instead.
Friedman chides the White House spokesman for “excoriating Newsweek... while not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to Newsweek report”.
He urged President George Bush that, while he should declare that any desecration of any holy book is wrong and is to be punished if proven, he should also require that the “Arab-Muslim world must also look in the mirror when it comes to how it has been behaving towards an even worse crime than the desecration of God's words, and that is the desecration of God's creation”.
Reading Friedman's thesis immediately after the IHT's report on the army file on desecration of “God's creation” in Bagram and remembering Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, I was for a moment bewildered at this terribly flawed and deeply confused logic. Who was actually desecrating both God's words and God's creation?
But Friedman's super-confidence has apparently elevated him far above the level of analysts and opinion writers, to the level of those whose word must simply be taken for granted as the final truth. He wants to know, he wrote, why Muslim spiritual leaders do not repeat his words that Islam “teaches that you show reverence to God by showing reverence to his creations”. That is absolutely right. The only difference is that those sixteen Muslim victims he mourns, who were killed for protesting the American desecration of their holy book, were killed by Muslims representing a democracy which America had just established, by a US-made puppet regime. And the carnage in Iraq, (which he also cites as proof of his “novel” thesis), condemnable as it should be, is the result of the illegal war in a country which is under US occupation. Under international law, it is the responsibility of the occupiers, the 140,000 US soldiers there, to secure the safety of all Iraqis and to preserve order.
Worst still is Friedman's reference to a “courageous Arab intellectual” who joins him in ridiculing Muslim reaction, quoted as saying: “When thousands in Afghanistan are concerned about a report in a magazine that does not reach them, written in a language that they do not speak... it tells us more about the dangers of propaganda.”
Is the message, then, that one has the right to be offended and the right to react only when the offence is made in his own language and when the magazine which carries the offence reaches him physically? And who determines that English and Newsweek are not read in Afghanistan?
This logic only adds insult to injury and is bound to aggravate even further a situation which is critically bad.
The US does indeed need to repair a lot of damage to its relations with the Arab-Muslim world, and to its standing in the world for regular violations of human rights and international law. Looking into the mirror is probably one way of doing it, but by no means the only way. Blaming the victim is always easy, but it is only bound to make the situation worse.
Monday, May 23, 2005
A SAUDI JOURNALIST SPEAKS OUT
Editorial: Outsourcing of Torture
The editorial below was published in the Arab News newspaper in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 21.
The Bush administration misses no chance to trumpet its devotion to the ideal of upholding the rule of law at home and abroad. It has imposed sanctions on those regimes with a poor record in the rule of law, especially those suspected of torturing prisoners. Yet increasingly the evidence is that Washington is quite prepared to cut corners and split legal hairs to justify actions which, in less heightened times, US legislators and jurists would reject out of hand.
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram air base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq all serve to undermine American claims that they are behaving with justice and fairness.
Now comes no less serious evidence that US spies have been kidnapping terrorist suspects and handing them over to governments where beatings and torture are a regular part of the treatment of detainees, against whom no guilty verdict has yet been delivered by the courts.
Investigations are under way in three European states — Sweden, Germany and Italy — into the abduction of suspected international terrorists, who were then flown, often in US aircraft, to third countries for interrogation in order to wring confessions from these individuals.
If these strong suspicions are confirmed, then Washington will be convicted of deeply depressing cynicism. So far Bush administration officials have protested that as and when alleged terrorists have been handed over, often to their home countries, it has only been following an assurance from the local authorities that the men will not be tortured in order to extract information from them and will be given fair trials.
Human rights groups maintain that such protests are nonsense. Many suspects have been tortured and their trials have been travesties of justice.
It simply will not do for the United States to be a strident champion of human rights one minute and then use, either directly or indirectly, torture on people that it chooses to believe have somehow placed themselves beyond the protection of law. For a start, this double standard totally undermines all the criticism that Washington has launched against China, Russia, Cuba and Middle East countries for the selfsame abuse of human rights.
World leaders who have to endure these self-righteous lectures from top American politicians can stifle a yawn and ignore them. In the tough world of realpolitik, maybe this duplicity is not so important. But among ordinary people across the world, it is.
President Bush’s readiness to abandon his own high standards just whenever it suits him is corrosive of fragile confidence. Washington’s double standard is a betrayal of all those who hope that somehow America can take a leading role in the region and not only defeat Al-Qaeda but can also bring a just and lasting settlement to Palestine.
Tragically, every time the United States approves an abuse of human rights, it gives another victory to the terrorists and another defeat to all decent people, who expected better of the Land of the Free whose citizens pledge “liberty and justice for all”.
The editorial below was published in the Arab News newspaper in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 21.
The Bush administration misses no chance to trumpet its devotion to the ideal of upholding the rule of law at home and abroad. It has imposed sanctions on those regimes with a poor record in the rule of law, especially those suspected of torturing prisoners. Yet increasingly the evidence is that Washington is quite prepared to cut corners and split legal hairs to justify actions which, in less heightened times, US legislators and jurists would reject out of hand.
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram air base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq all serve to undermine American claims that they are behaving with justice and fairness.
Now comes no less serious evidence that US spies have been kidnapping terrorist suspects and handing them over to governments where beatings and torture are a regular part of the treatment of detainees, against whom no guilty verdict has yet been delivered by the courts.
Investigations are under way in three European states — Sweden, Germany and Italy — into the abduction of suspected international terrorists, who were then flown, often in US aircraft, to third countries for interrogation in order to wring confessions from these individuals.
If these strong suspicions are confirmed, then Washington will be convicted of deeply depressing cynicism. So far Bush administration officials have protested that as and when alleged terrorists have been handed over, often to their home countries, it has only been following an assurance from the local authorities that the men will not be tortured in order to extract information from them and will be given fair trials.
Human rights groups maintain that such protests are nonsense. Many suspects have been tortured and their trials have been travesties of justice.
It simply will not do for the United States to be a strident champion of human rights one minute and then use, either directly or indirectly, torture on people that it chooses to believe have somehow placed themselves beyond the protection of law. For a start, this double standard totally undermines all the criticism that Washington has launched against China, Russia, Cuba and Middle East countries for the selfsame abuse of human rights.
World leaders who have to endure these self-righteous lectures from top American politicians can stifle a yawn and ignore them. In the tough world of realpolitik, maybe this duplicity is not so important. But among ordinary people across the world, it is.
President Bush’s readiness to abandon his own high standards just whenever it suits him is corrosive of fragile confidence. Washington’s double standard is a betrayal of all those who hope that somehow America can take a leading role in the region and not only defeat Al-Qaeda but can also bring a just and lasting settlement to Palestine.
Tragically, every time the United States approves an abuse of human rights, it gives another victory to the terrorists and another defeat to all decent people, who expected better of the Land of the Free whose citizens pledge “liberty and justice for all”.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
ANOTHER DISPATCH FROM THE FRONT
Below is the latest email from my 'mole' in Iraq. Where is the so-called mainstream press?
The election at the end of January 2005 was more than a national election to elect an assembly to write a constitution. It also included elections in governorates and districts, and in the Kurdish areas of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulamaniyah, the populace was asked to elect a Kurdish Regional Parliament.
The Kurdish Parliament is suppose to appoint a Kurdish Regional Government,or KRG. And the KRG, is the Kurds pay-off for supporting the neo-cons before and doing the Bush Jr. war.
Bremer enshrined the KRG in the Transitional Authority Law. The TAL is a highly controversial document, even though it had significant input from the Governing Council. The two most controversial features of the TAL are the KRG and the phrase that Iraqi law is based on Islam as the national religion. This is one of those documents that had to satisfy everyone, and thus satisfied none.
None the less, perhaps its most important achievement was to lay out a timetable and the steps needed to elect a democratic government in Iraq. And this is what was suppose to happen in January 2005.
Of course in the Kurdish region of Iraq all of us knew who would win the election. Long before the voters went to the polls, the word on the street and at dinner tables around Arbil was that Talabani would get a national high level position, probably President, which is what happened, and that Masoud Barzani would become the President of the KRG. Also, the two main parties, KDP and PUK agreed that the Prime Minister of KRG would be Nachrivan Barzani, the nephew of Masoud, and that the deputies would be from Talabani's PUK. (By the way, Dohuk and Arbil are KDP and Barzani; and Sulamaniyah is PUK and Talabani.) The plan at the time of the election was that as soon as the national government is formed, the KRG would be formed. And what that meant was that the two governments in the Kurdish region, KDP's in Arbil and PUK's in Suly, would be merged, and representation in the assembly and amongst ministers would be evenly split between the two groups.
But that has not happened. Even though the national government was formed about two weeks ago, there still is no KRG and the two government remain divided as before. Why? Simply put, because Masoud Barzani reneged on all agreements. He was suppose to be in office as KRG president as long as Talabani is Iraq's President. But instead, he is demanding a 12 year term of office, control of the Kurdish security forces, control of the economy and finance, and he refuses to accept a deputy president.
The Suly PUK is naturally not amenable to any of this. It would be anathema for them to cede this level of power to this tyrant (and he really is).The KRG is thus not formed, and it does not look like it will be any time soon.
Though speculative, but good speculation, Condi's mission to Arbil this week was to get Masoud to cooperate. The photos and videotapes showing Condi and Masoud scowling at each other are clear evidence that their meeting did not go well. I can imagine that Condi told Masoud that the US did not come to lose soldiers in Iraq to make him a dictator over Iraqi Kurdistan. He probably told her to stuff it, and mind her own business.
As an aside, but one with tangential relevance, one cannot find an Iraqi flag in Arbil and Dohuk. The Kurdish flag flies over all government buildings, it is on the shoulders of soldiers' uniforms, and the Iraqi flag is absent even at the border at Zakho. More recently, especially since the election, certain buildings and uniforms have dispensed with the Kurdish flag also in favor of the KDP flag. Except for the currency, there is no evidence anywhere in these two governorates that this is part of Iraq. But even accepting new money was not without protest. Bremer had to work very hard to get Barzani to do away with "Swiss Dinars" and use instead what the
locals here call "Bremer Dinars".
I could go on for a long time about the awful antics of Barzani and his KDP. But this is enough to digest for now. The perplexing feature of this story is what you are on about all the time - why is this story not reported in the main stream press. This is yet another Bush failure. Has our media become so timid that they cannot report on the recalcitrance of a Saddam in the making?
The election at the end of January 2005 was more than a national election to elect an assembly to write a constitution. It also included elections in governorates and districts, and in the Kurdish areas of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulamaniyah, the populace was asked to elect a Kurdish Regional Parliament.
The Kurdish Parliament is suppose to appoint a Kurdish Regional Government,or KRG. And the KRG, is the Kurds pay-off for supporting the neo-cons before and doing the Bush Jr. war.
Bremer enshrined the KRG in the Transitional Authority Law. The TAL is a highly controversial document, even though it had significant input from the Governing Council. The two most controversial features of the TAL are the KRG and the phrase that Iraqi law is based on Islam as the national religion. This is one of those documents that had to satisfy everyone, and thus satisfied none.
None the less, perhaps its most important achievement was to lay out a timetable and the steps needed to elect a democratic government in Iraq. And this is what was suppose to happen in January 2005.
Of course in the Kurdish region of Iraq all of us knew who would win the election. Long before the voters went to the polls, the word on the street and at dinner tables around Arbil was that Talabani would get a national high level position, probably President, which is what happened, and that Masoud Barzani would become the President of the KRG. Also, the two main parties, KDP and PUK agreed that the Prime Minister of KRG would be Nachrivan Barzani, the nephew of Masoud, and that the deputies would be from Talabani's PUK. (By the way, Dohuk and Arbil are KDP and Barzani; and Sulamaniyah is PUK and Talabani.) The plan at the time of the election was that as soon as the national government is formed, the KRG would be formed. And what that meant was that the two governments in the Kurdish region, KDP's in Arbil and PUK's in Suly, would be merged, and representation in the assembly and amongst ministers would be evenly split between the two groups.
But that has not happened. Even though the national government was formed about two weeks ago, there still is no KRG and the two government remain divided as before. Why? Simply put, because Masoud Barzani reneged on all agreements. He was suppose to be in office as KRG president as long as Talabani is Iraq's President. But instead, he is demanding a 12 year term of office, control of the Kurdish security forces, control of the economy and finance, and he refuses to accept a deputy president.
The Suly PUK is naturally not amenable to any of this. It would be anathema for them to cede this level of power to this tyrant (and he really is).The KRG is thus not formed, and it does not look like it will be any time soon.
Though speculative, but good speculation, Condi's mission to Arbil this week was to get Masoud to cooperate. The photos and videotapes showing Condi and Masoud scowling at each other are clear evidence that their meeting did not go well. I can imagine that Condi told Masoud that the US did not come to lose soldiers in Iraq to make him a dictator over Iraqi Kurdistan. He probably told her to stuff it, and mind her own business.
As an aside, but one with tangential relevance, one cannot find an Iraqi flag in Arbil and Dohuk. The Kurdish flag flies over all government buildings, it is on the shoulders of soldiers' uniforms, and the Iraqi flag is absent even at the border at Zakho. More recently, especially since the election, certain buildings and uniforms have dispensed with the Kurdish flag also in favor of the KDP flag. Except for the currency, there is no evidence anywhere in these two governorates that this is part of Iraq. But even accepting new money was not without protest. Bremer had to work very hard to get Barzani to do away with "Swiss Dinars" and use instead what the
locals here call "Bremer Dinars".
I could go on for a long time about the awful antics of Barzani and his KDP. But this is enough to digest for now. The perplexing feature of this story is what you are on about all the time - why is this story not reported in the main stream press. This is yet another Bush failure. Has our media become so timid that they cannot report on the recalcitrance of a Saddam in the making?
Saturday, May 21, 2005
REMEMBER LINDA BROWN?
By William Fisher
It was only fifty-one years ago this week that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that would forever change life in America. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” schools for white and African-American children were inherently unequal.
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren looked down from the bench to a hushed and tightly packed courtroom to read the unanimous decision:
“Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?” he asked.
“We believe that it does,” he answered. “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
That landmark – and unexpected -- decision triggered years of protest throughout the segregated Southern states of America, and opened the gates to an avalanche of additional civil rights legislation and court decisions that reversed laws and practices in force since the abolition of slavery in the U.S. in 1865.
Paradoxically, the beginnings of the case – known as Brown v. Board of Education – had nothing to do with education. It was about railroad cars.
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a statute providing "that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races…”
Homer Plessy, a 30-year old shoemaker, was jailed for sitting in the "White's" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was a mix of seven-eighths white and one-eighths black. But Louisiana law still considered him black.
Plessy went to court and argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge ruled that Louisiana could regulate railroad companies that only operated within its state. He found Plessy guilty, and the Louisiana Supreme Court agreed.
Plessy then appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1896, the court found Homer Plessy guilty once again. In an 8-1 decision, the judges ruled that the Separate Car Act “does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery...The object of the [Fourteenth Amendment] was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but… it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."
The lone dissenter was Justice John Harlan. “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law…”, he wrote.
Justice Harlan proved prophetic. But it would take another 64 years before "separate but equal" would be struck down as the law of the land, in a case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
In the city of Topeka, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. In the other cases outside Kansas, African American children attended poor facilities without basic school equipment and supplies.
Brown approached the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. Other black parents joined Brown and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction to stop segregation in Topeka's public schools.
The head of Brown’s defense team was Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s chief lawyer, who was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At the Circuit Court trial, Marshall argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal.
The Board of Education's defense was that, because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood.
The Court ruled that segregation of white and colored children in public schools indeed had a “detrimental effect on the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.” But Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had yet overturned that decision. Thus the lower court felt "compelled" to rule in favor of the Board of Education.
Brown and the other families appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging school segregation in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, as well as in Topeka.
The Supreme Court’s decision was the end of a long road for opponents of ‘separate but equal’ schools. As early as 1849, African American parents had challenged separate schools based solely on race. In Kansas alone there were eleven school integration cases dating from 1881 to 1949.
In 1955, the Court completed its ruling by ordering the states' to desegregate "with all deliberate speed."
But the Brown decision did not immediately end school nor did it deal with segregation in public accommodations, such as restaurants or bathrooms, owned by private parties. This would not be achieved until well into the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, led by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The school desegregation decision generated two decades of fierce resistance, especially in the American south. In Virginia, a U.S. Senator organized a resistance movement that called for the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. Throughout the south, so-called Citizens’ Councils attempted to set up white-only private schools. The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization, terrorized African Americans and those who supported them. Businesses siding with the Supreme Court were boycotted.
In the South, most public schools would not be desegregated until about 1970 under the Nixon administration.
There are many lessons to be learned from Linda Brown’s long march to justice. One is that our system of democracy can be infuriatingly slow and frustrating in righting wrongs. Another is that our independent judiciary is the pivotal actor in this process – even when we hate some of the decisions it makes. The third lesson, sadly, is that the Justices who handed down the Brown v. Board decision would be pilloried today as ‘judicial activists’.
Have we really learned anything?
It was only fifty-one years ago this week that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that would forever change life in America. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” schools for white and African-American children were inherently unequal.
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren looked down from the bench to a hushed and tightly packed courtroom to read the unanimous decision:
“Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?” he asked.
“We believe that it does,” he answered. “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
That landmark – and unexpected -- decision triggered years of protest throughout the segregated Southern states of America, and opened the gates to an avalanche of additional civil rights legislation and court decisions that reversed laws and practices in force since the abolition of slavery in the U.S. in 1865.
Paradoxically, the beginnings of the case – known as Brown v. Board of Education – had nothing to do with education. It was about railroad cars.
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a statute providing "that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races…”
Homer Plessy, a 30-year old shoemaker, was jailed for sitting in the "White's" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was a mix of seven-eighths white and one-eighths black. But Louisiana law still considered him black.
Plessy went to court and argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge ruled that Louisiana could regulate railroad companies that only operated within its state. He found Plessy guilty, and the Louisiana Supreme Court agreed.
Plessy then appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1896, the court found Homer Plessy guilty once again. In an 8-1 decision, the judges ruled that the Separate Car Act “does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery...The object of the [Fourteenth Amendment] was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but… it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."
The lone dissenter was Justice John Harlan. “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law…”, he wrote.
Justice Harlan proved prophetic. But it would take another 64 years before "separate but equal" would be struck down as the law of the land, in a case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
In the city of Topeka, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. In the other cases outside Kansas, African American children attended poor facilities without basic school equipment and supplies.
Brown approached the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. Other black parents joined Brown and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction to stop segregation in Topeka's public schools.
The head of Brown’s defense team was Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s chief lawyer, who was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At the Circuit Court trial, Marshall argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; therefore, the schools were inherently unequal.
The Board of Education's defense was that, because segregation in Topeka and elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood.
The Court ruled that segregation of white and colored children in public schools indeed had a “detrimental effect on the colored children...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.” But Plessy v. Ferguson allowed separate but equal school systems for blacks and whites, and no Supreme Court ruling had yet overturned that decision. Thus the lower court felt "compelled" to rule in favor of the Board of Education.
Brown and the other families appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging school segregation in South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, as well as in Topeka.
The Supreme Court’s decision was the end of a long road for opponents of ‘separate but equal’ schools. As early as 1849, African American parents had challenged separate schools based solely on race. In Kansas alone there were eleven school integration cases dating from 1881 to 1949.
In 1955, the Court completed its ruling by ordering the states' to desegregate "with all deliberate speed."
But the Brown decision did not immediately end school nor did it deal with segregation in public accommodations, such as restaurants or bathrooms, owned by private parties. This would not be achieved until well into the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, led by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The school desegregation decision generated two decades of fierce resistance, especially in the American south. In Virginia, a U.S. Senator organized a resistance movement that called for the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. Throughout the south, so-called Citizens’ Councils attempted to set up white-only private schools. The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization, terrorized African Americans and those who supported them. Businesses siding with the Supreme Court were boycotted.
In the South, most public schools would not be desegregated until about 1970 under the Nixon administration.
There are many lessons to be learned from Linda Brown’s long march to justice. One is that our system of democracy can be infuriatingly slow and frustrating in righting wrongs. Another is that our independent judiciary is the pivotal actor in this process – even when we hate some of the decisions it makes. The third lesson, sadly, is that the Justices who handed down the Brown v. Board decision would be pilloried today as ‘judicial activists’.
Have we really learned anything?
Thursday, May 19, 2005
PROGRESSIVE ISLAM: NOT AN OXYMORON
By William Fisher
In the US, many Roman Catholics support a women’s right to choose – but remain Catholics.
In Latin America, many priests practice ‘liberation theology’ – but remain Catholics.
American Episcopalians elect a gay Bishop – but remain Episcopalians.
Adherents of many American Protestant denominations want to impeach judges for their ‘activism’ – but remain Protestants.
And an increasing number of conservative and some Orthodox Jews are exploring possibilities of reconciling their faith with feminism -- and still remain Jewish.
Why then should we find it so surprising that Muslims are engaged in similar kinds of internal struggles with their more conservative brothers and sisters?
For Americans, and many others in the West, the principal reason is their monolithic, homogenous view of Islam. They think all Muslims love death more than life. They think all Muslims routinely abuse and exclude women from virtually everything save childbearing. They think all Muslims mete out barbaric forms of punishment. And, post 9/11, they think all Muslims are terrorists.
The truth is that internal debate about how to interpret the Qur'an has been going on for centuries. But what is also true is that today the debate has risen to a new level, fuelled by the emergence of a small but rapidly growing branch of the faith known as Progressive Islam.
What is Progressive Islam, where is it, what does it believe?
Long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many Muslim spokesmen realized there was a growing, worldwide network of Muslim terrorists killing in the name of Allah. They also knew that the rights of women and non-Muslims were being routinely denied by Islamic regimes such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
"We have our fanatics just like everyone else", says Prof. Omid Safi, co-chair of the Study of Islam section at the American Academy of Religion, and a professor of philosophy and religion at Colgate University. Safi was one of the co-founders of the Progressive Muslim Union (http://www.pmuna.org), which launched in 2004.
"We have to take a stand against Saudi-infected extremism,” says Safi. Many American Muslim communities, he adds, “are far too uncritical of Salafi and Wahhabi tendencies.”
He and other progressives believe that unless these radical tendencies are defeated, “The humanity of Muslims will be reduced to the caricature of violent zealots painted by fanatics from both inside and outside the Muslim community. It is time to start a-changin’,“ he says, borrowing from the lyrics of a famous Bob Dylan song.
In North America, Progessive Islam a small but growing movement of Islamic scholars and activists whose believers include gays, peace and justice advocates, feminists advocating gender equality and Muslims working to improve Islamic relations with Jews and people of other faiths. Numbers are hard to come by, but they are surely in the millions, particularly if we include the many Muslims who are progressive, but who have never heard of the term “Progressive Islam.”
Progressive Islam is a kind of Islamic humanism. Concrete social action and transformation is the movement’s defining characteristic.
Progressive Muslims oppose racism, Islamophobia, classism, sexism, and homophobia. They see their task as giving voice to the voiceless, power to the powerless, and confronting the ‘powers that be’ who disregard God-given human dignity.
“Justice lies at the heart of Islamic social ethics. Time and again the Qur'an talks about providing for the marginalized members of society: the poor, the orphaned, the downtrodden, the wayfaring, the hungry.” Progressive Muslims believe that it is time to ‘translate’ the social ideals in the Qur'an and Islamic teachings into “a way of action that those committed to social justice today can relate to and understand,” Prof. Safi says.
Progressive Muslims begin with a simple yet radical stance: The Muslim community as a whole cannot achieve justice unless justice is guaranteed for Muslim women. Gender equality is a measuring stick for the broader concerns of social justice and pluralism.
“There can be no progressive interpretation of Islam without gender justice. Gender justice is crucial, indispensable, and essential. In the long run, any progressive Muslim interpretation will be judged based on the amount of change in gender equality it is able to produce in small and large communities,” Prof. Safi says.
Progressive Muslims also stand squarely on the shoulders of many ‘liberation theologians’ who viewed a purely conceptual criticism of theology, devoid of any real commitment to the oppressed, as ‘radically irrelevant’.
At the same time, progressives are equally comfortable with Edward Said’s challenge to Muslims to “speak truth to the powers”. Like Said, they believe that many (though not all) previous generations of ‘liberal’ Muslims were often defined by a purely academic approach that reflected their elite status.
Says Prof. Safi, “Vision and activism are both necessary. Activism without vision is doomed from the start. Vision without activism quickly becomes irrelevant. “
But progressives face a delicate balancing act. They need to defend Islam against virulent stereotypes but also to acknowledge oppressive practices and ideas within Islam.
The movement is profoundly skeptical of nationalism, whether American, Arab, Iranian, or otherwise. They also reject the notion of an ‘American Islam’ to be exported to the world. Their opposition to neo-colonialism is a way to avoid their appropriation by the United States’ administration, which has used the language of reforming Islam to justify its invasion of Muslim countries such as Iraq.
North America is probably the most fertile soil for progressives at the moment. One indication of growing popularity is found at a website called Meetup, which publishes a new list 143 different progressive Muslim meetup groups. The largest are in New York City, Toronto, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. But the movement says it is following, not leading, like-minded adherents worldwide. The socially active communities in Iran, Malaysia, and South Africa, are examples.
In keeping with its views on modernity, the movement is using 21st century technology to cross-pollinate ideas -- for example, using email to seek one another out, read each other’s work, and collaborate with one another’s organizations.
The movement is still embryonic and faces huge challenges from conservative Islam, and conservatives of other religions as well. But for Islam, it holds out the promise of a consequential paradigm shift in the relationship of Muslims to Islam and to modernity.
In the US, many Roman Catholics support a women’s right to choose – but remain Catholics.
In Latin America, many priests practice ‘liberation theology’ – but remain Catholics.
American Episcopalians elect a gay Bishop – but remain Episcopalians.
Adherents of many American Protestant denominations want to impeach judges for their ‘activism’ – but remain Protestants.
And an increasing number of conservative and some Orthodox Jews are exploring possibilities of reconciling their faith with feminism -- and still remain Jewish.
Why then should we find it so surprising that Muslims are engaged in similar kinds of internal struggles with their more conservative brothers and sisters?
For Americans, and many others in the West, the principal reason is their monolithic, homogenous view of Islam. They think all Muslims love death more than life. They think all Muslims routinely abuse and exclude women from virtually everything save childbearing. They think all Muslims mete out barbaric forms of punishment. And, post 9/11, they think all Muslims are terrorists.
The truth is that internal debate about how to interpret the Qur'an has been going on for centuries. But what is also true is that today the debate has risen to a new level, fuelled by the emergence of a small but rapidly growing branch of the faith known as Progressive Islam.
What is Progressive Islam, where is it, what does it believe?
Long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many Muslim spokesmen realized there was a growing, worldwide network of Muslim terrorists killing in the name of Allah. They also knew that the rights of women and non-Muslims were being routinely denied by Islamic regimes such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
"We have our fanatics just like everyone else", says Prof. Omid Safi, co-chair of the Study of Islam section at the American Academy of Religion, and a professor of philosophy and religion at Colgate University. Safi was one of the co-founders of the Progressive Muslim Union (http://www.pmuna.org), which launched in 2004.
"We have to take a stand against Saudi-infected extremism,” says Safi. Many American Muslim communities, he adds, “are far too uncritical of Salafi and Wahhabi tendencies.”
He and other progressives believe that unless these radical tendencies are defeated, “The humanity of Muslims will be reduced to the caricature of violent zealots painted by fanatics from both inside and outside the Muslim community. It is time to start a-changin’,“ he says, borrowing from the lyrics of a famous Bob Dylan song.
In North America, Progessive Islam a small but growing movement of Islamic scholars and activists whose believers include gays, peace and justice advocates, feminists advocating gender equality and Muslims working to improve Islamic relations with Jews and people of other faiths. Numbers are hard to come by, but they are surely in the millions, particularly if we include the many Muslims who are progressive, but who have never heard of the term “Progressive Islam.”
Progressive Islam is a kind of Islamic humanism. Concrete social action and transformation is the movement’s defining characteristic.
Progressive Muslims oppose racism, Islamophobia, classism, sexism, and homophobia. They see their task as giving voice to the voiceless, power to the powerless, and confronting the ‘powers that be’ who disregard God-given human dignity.
“Justice lies at the heart of Islamic social ethics. Time and again the Qur'an talks about providing for the marginalized members of society: the poor, the orphaned, the downtrodden, the wayfaring, the hungry.” Progressive Muslims believe that it is time to ‘translate’ the social ideals in the Qur'an and Islamic teachings into “a way of action that those committed to social justice today can relate to and understand,” Prof. Safi says.
Progressive Muslims begin with a simple yet radical stance: The Muslim community as a whole cannot achieve justice unless justice is guaranteed for Muslim women. Gender equality is a measuring stick for the broader concerns of social justice and pluralism.
“There can be no progressive interpretation of Islam without gender justice. Gender justice is crucial, indispensable, and essential. In the long run, any progressive Muslim interpretation will be judged based on the amount of change in gender equality it is able to produce in small and large communities,” Prof. Safi says.
Progressive Muslims also stand squarely on the shoulders of many ‘liberation theologians’ who viewed a purely conceptual criticism of theology, devoid of any real commitment to the oppressed, as ‘radically irrelevant’.
At the same time, progressives are equally comfortable with Edward Said’s challenge to Muslims to “speak truth to the powers”. Like Said, they believe that many (though not all) previous generations of ‘liberal’ Muslims were often defined by a purely academic approach that reflected their elite status.
Says Prof. Safi, “Vision and activism are both necessary. Activism without vision is doomed from the start. Vision without activism quickly becomes irrelevant. “
But progressives face a delicate balancing act. They need to defend Islam against virulent stereotypes but also to acknowledge oppressive practices and ideas within Islam.
The movement is profoundly skeptical of nationalism, whether American, Arab, Iranian, or otherwise. They also reject the notion of an ‘American Islam’ to be exported to the world. Their opposition to neo-colonialism is a way to avoid their appropriation by the United States’ administration, which has used the language of reforming Islam to justify its invasion of Muslim countries such as Iraq.
North America is probably the most fertile soil for progressives at the moment. One indication of growing popularity is found at a website called Meetup, which publishes a new list 143 different progressive Muslim meetup groups. The largest are in New York City, Toronto, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. But the movement says it is following, not leading, like-minded adherents worldwide. The socially active communities in Iran, Malaysia, and South Africa, are examples.
In keeping with its views on modernity, the movement is using 21st century technology to cross-pollinate ideas -- for example, using email to seek one another out, read each other’s work, and collaborate with one another’s organizations.
The movement is still embryonic and faces huge challenges from conservative Islam, and conservatives of other religions as well. But for Islam, it holds out the promise of a consequential paradigm shift in the relationship of Muslims to Islam and to modernity.
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