Dear Shaykh ul Islam President Barack Hussein ibn Obama.

All praises belong to Allah! Today is a great day for Islam. The President of the United States of America is a Muslim! The greatest nation is now ruled by the greatest religion. I congratulate you, Brother Barack, for pulling the wool over the eyes of the infidel, and I encourage you, now, to go ahead and tell them (y)our little secret.

I remember when we first met. It was at the 1429th annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Islamic Conquests! (S.A.I.C!) and you came by with your lovely second wife, Maryam bint Masud - did you tell Michelle about her yet? - and told all of us that you had gotten yourself elected to the U.S. Senate by pretending to be a Christian, and were now setting your sights on the American Presidency. You came to tell us that if we prayed for you, and more importantly, gave you $ 600 million dollars in donations at your website, you had a chance of being elected President of the United States. I don't remember what day it was but I remember we had just gotten done watching Little Mosque on the Prairie and I was imagining Sitara Hewitt converting to Islam so I could take my parents to propose to her parents for her hand in marriage.

Anyway, let me be the first to apologize for the way we treated you then. I can't believe we didn't take you seriously and instead ending up giving our money to Ron Paul (because he is a medical doctor and we like medical doctors more than we like lawyers). See, I thought you were, as black people say, "just playin." I mean, you have to understand that we're Muslims, and we aren't used to winning at anything, so when you were talking about how you had a "legitimate shot" at the Presidency, I won't lie, I thought you were talking about something else.

So what do you say? Let bygones be bygones? I know we, as the kids say, "chumped you" - see I'm trying to ingratiate myself to your style - but there is no reason for there to be, as they say, "beef" between us.

I mean, don't you think you already got enough revenge against us? Consider:

- You just refused to say, "There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim." (I mean we had to wait till Marty Peretz and Colin Powell for someone to say it out loud).

- As the New York Times reported you stopped hanging out with Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison.

- Your people told those Michigan Muslim girls wearing headscarves to get the hell out of the picture. (Thanks for apologizing though, "bro").

- You went to visit churches and synagogues but never a mosque.

- You let your first Muslim outreach advisor resign just because he had served, for a little while, on some board, with some shady character.

- The only imam you met was the one that President Bush hangs out with. There are more imams in the world!

- And, finally, what was up with returning the laddoos I sent you? Those little yellow balls of sweetmeat were expensive! You know I went all the way to Jackson Heights to get them?  Man they even had the little aluminum foil hats on them!

Damn right I was bitter, but you know what, we ignored you and you threw us under the bus, so we're all even.

Now you are the man and we just want to cuddle up to you. Seriously, Brother Barack, you have no idea how popular you became in the Global Islamic Conspiracy. You might not believe me but we were nervous for you the whole time. We really thought that people were going to figure out that you were Malcolm X's son. I bet my brother seven dinars that (Shaykh) Spike Lee was going to spill the beans on that one! Phew. We also got scared there for a little while when the pundits started saying that you'd be treated like an apostate in the Muslim world. I was eating hummus with the wives when I heard about that and I totally flipped. I couldn't go to any of them for a week. They were about to riot. Thank God that turned out to be a false alarm.

So, Brother Barack, now you are President of America, the most powerful man in the world, ruling - despite all contrary evidence - in the name of Islam, I have one simple request that you need to fulfill. Mind you, it isn't really a request, but a demand, because if you don't oblige, I'm going to go to the ayatollahs and get them to declare you a non-Muslim. It is this: immediately annex South America and appoint me governor of Brazil. I really wish to bring Islam to those people (no, this has nothing to do with my desire for super models). I await your response.

Jazakallah,

Your Fellow Believer in al-Islaam 

Related: Muslamism May Spell the Death of the West; Muslim! Now Available in Insult Form

V.S. Naipaul: saw the evangelical train a'coming Evangelical influence in the Unites states is not a secret. Intellectuals like Naipaul identified its ascent in the mid 80's. Of the four living presidents, two are avowedly evangelical. The public sphere is full of leading evangelical personalities, both on the left and right. Evangelical books are some of the biggest sellers in American publishing. Evangelicals have so thoroughly dominated the US that they have now set themselves up for a worldwide expansion and are exporting churches and the myth of intelligent design with considerable gusto (even to Muslims).

Just last week, pastor Rick Warren of California, author of the Purpose Driven Life, and head of the 22,000 strong Saddlebrook Church, held a conversation about religion and values with the two presidential candidates. The event was covered by every major news station. Among pundits and bloggers it was critiqued and evaluated as if it was a proper presidential debate. Barack Obama and John McCain talked about Jesus Christ and abortion and homosexuality; partly in neutral terms, and partly within the context of Christian theology.

Rick Warren, Barack Obama, and John McCain: seek a purpose driven life through jesus We are religiously permissive in the United States and over the last decade the general view has been to let religious people bring religion into the public sphere. For example, Bush introduced the Faith Based Initiative in 2000 without much opposition and Obama recently suggested that he'd be willing to continue it albeit with a overhaul (probably since most of the money in the Bush initiative behaved very racially), and was again met with little opposition.

Having said that, it seems that the days of such permissiveness towards bringing religion into the public sphere might be coming to an end. The Rick Warren debate, in other words, might be a farewell party for American Christianity in the political sphere. To substantiate this assertion I direct your attention to the Pew Forum which recently concluded a survey about Americans' views about religion in politics.

Thomas Jefferson: once said something about keeping religion and government separate It shows that in 1996, 43% of Americans felt that Churches should stay out of politics; today, that number is at 52% and its trending upward. In other words, the more religion gets introduced into the public sphere, the more Americans want it out (the survey notes that conservatives are the ones most changing their views about this, now at levels similar to moderates and liberals).

It seems that religious Americans are remembering again Jefferson's idea that the wall of separation between religion and state exists in order to protect religion. What happens when religion stuffs itself into the political sphere too long? You may want to ask a theocratic state like Iran. Only 1.4% of the population attends the Friday prayer in the Islamic Oligarchy. (This number is actually lower than the Church attendance number in those purportedly hedonistic European nations).

If You're Not a Terrorist: then who is? The British spy agency MI5 has a behavioral science unit which was apparently asked to draw up a profile of a violent extremist. While noting that these days the extremists resorting to violence do so 'in defence of Islam' they went on to conclude that they couldn't offer any specific pointers that would be useful in profiling who is more or less likely to become a terrorist. The Guardian has obtained the internal MI5 document.

Its findings show that an extremist can come from among British nationals, both born and naturalized, or from among asylum seekers, or illegal immigrants. An extremist can come from a non-practicing milieu, or can be a religious novice or he can be a zealous convert. They can be Pakistani, Caucasian, or Middle Eastern; male or female; younger or older; single or married with children. In other words terrorists "are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism."

In essence, then, the MI5 doesn't know what external markers identify a person who has become obsessed with killing in the name of Islam, just that there are these days some people who kill in the name of Islam.

Thanks MI5.

JFK Went to Germany: obama should go to pakistanOne of the most interesting things about the Obama-McCain showdown is that for the most part, most of the world, including the Americans, have already begun treating Obama as President. The sort of coverage he gets, and more importantly, the kind of international reverberation and impact his actions create, are Presidential in every way. One need only follow the way that Obama was received in Kuwait or the kind of noise his appearance in Germany has been creating.

Obama's plan in Germany, to hold a JFK-style rally in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate has come under attack from Germany's leader, Angela Merkel, as well as a host of critics who suggest that perhaps the Senator should wait before he's elected to make such a bold statement.

Yet, the interesting question to me is whether holding such a rally is anything but a great PR move. It certainly doesn't evoke any substantive benefit, to the world, or to America.

Tony Campbell at the excellent The Moderate Voice blog makes this point rather clearly when he suggests that rather than Berlin, Obama should go to Mecca.

"My suggestion to Obama: forget Berlin, go to Mecca. If you really want to be seen in a Kennedy / Reagan light in the diplomatic arena, you should use your popularity and your unique heritage to address the Christian and Muslim worlds. A thoughtful speech that focuses on our similarities, rather than our differences, is clearly needed between both communities of faith. Kennedy and Reagan in their speeches addressed the major foreign policy concerns of our country. Obama has the opportunity to do something similar if he takes up this challenge. However, the issue is much trickier and more dangerous than either Kennedy or Reagan had to face. Instead of disarming conventional and nuclear weapons, Obama has to disarm fear and prejudice on both sides, Christian and Muslim." 

Putting aside the various security and bigotry related reasons (Saudis don't allow non-Muslims in Mecca) that this can't happen, Campbell is, on the whole, right. When JFK went to Germany, it was the country at the heart of the conflict between Communism and the West. Today, Germany plays no role in the greater conflict enveloping the world -- that of West versus Islam. In other words, if Obama wants to make something as historic as JFK's speech, he needs to tackle the perception that there is a war between Islam and Christendom, and he needs to make such a speech in a Muslim country.

Where I disagree with Campbell is that Obama needs to go to Mecca (or to Tehran). JFK didn't go to Moscow or Beijing. Obama needs to find a place near to Mecca, with a sufficiently Islamic flavor, where the principles he wants to espouse -- those of open government and freedom of conscience and trust-building -- are present in sufficient qualities among the people. The recent (secular) democratic mini-revolution in Pakistan suggests that it is one such place. Pakistan has the benefit, unlike Egypt and Jordan and other Muslim countries where the democratic spirit is also high, of actually having a democratic government by virtue of having removed their tyrant. Security would be the only issue but there is no reason that it can't be surmounted. I also recommend Pakistan because Obama went there in college, has friends from Pakistan and his mother worked for Pakistani development in the World Bank, so that he has serious connections to the country. He can say that he witnessed Pakistan under Islamist Tyranny under General Zia ul Haq, and begin from there.

Pakistan, incidentally, also happens to be the place where the so-called confrontation between Mecca and Washington is the most blatant.

Obama should consider it. But wait till he's elected.

In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte of France, head of the largest army in the world, began the worst military campaign in history. His ill-fated and tragic invasion of Russia led to nearly two thirds of the French army getting killed. The effects of the doomed maneuver were so long-standing that France never again recovered its military potency. Senator Barack Obama recently stated that if he's elected president the US will engage in a military maneuver just as foolish.

Within Senator Obama's recent pronouncements on Iraq is an ominous and troubling prescription about the small land-locked country of Afghanistan. The proposal involves sending "at least" two additional combat brigades to support the 50,000 NATO troops already present in Afghanistan. He goes on to ask for more helicopters, more nonmilitary assistance, and more intelligence gathering.

All of this, in Senator Obama's eyes, is supposed to suggest his greater military aptitude; his attempt to show that he will finish the job -- capturing Bin Laden and defeating the Taliban -- that his Republican predecessor was unable to finish. It is also a lot of politics, because increasing troop presence in Afghanistan allows Obama to say that he supports troop withdrawal from Iraq without appearing like the "surrender monkey" that the Republican opposition will inevitably try to paint him as around election time.

Yet Senator Obama's proposal is one of the worst military ideas in recent history. Here is why:

Afghanistan is considered the "graveyard of empires." Shortly after 9/11, in his 2001 Foreign Affairs essay, Milton Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan in the 1980's, stated that unless the US proceeded with caution it would end up "on the ash heap of Afghan history."

The list of emperors and nations that have tried to hold Afghanistan is long and there is not a single success story. The Soviet Union spent ten years there, with helicopter gunships and tactical nuclear weapons, and failed. The British Empire spent nearly a hundred years trying to alternatively invade and control Afghanistan and veritably failed at both. The Ottoman Empire, which considered itself the inheritor of Roman power, never bothered with Afghanistan. In fact, they were actually dealt crippling blows by invaders from Afghanistan. In the seventh century, even the heaving Arab armies that had been able to take over then world power Persia in a mere five years after the death of Muhammad were unable to take Afghanistan. For Afghanistan to become Muslim more than a hundred years later it took a local ruler from within, and even then power was not centralized in one man. In other words, Senator Obama is setting the US up for failure of world-historical proportions.

Unfortunately most American policy makers don't quite understand the difficulty associated with holding Afghanistan because they think that successful invasion is tantamount to a successful occupation. That, of course, is the same tragedy that befell everyone from the Soviets to the armies of Muhammad. Afghanistan allows itself to be invaded. It doesn't allow itself to be held. Testament of this lies in the fact that it has now been seven years since the US military entered Afghanistan and yet just the other day an American base was actually infiltrated and 9 marines were killed. It will only get worse.

The reasons that Afghanistan is impossible to hold have to do with geography. Because of its centralized and landlocked location insurgents can disappear into any number of neighboring countries and use them as a base to launch attacks on the occupier. These days the base of insurgent operation are the tribal areas of Pakistan. Even if, miraculously, the US is able to clean out the tribal areas - an operation to which no sane Pakistani politician or military dictator would agree - it would simply mean that the Taliban would move to another one of the neighboring countries. It could be Turkmenistan or Tajikistan or most likely, Uzbekistan, which is now, as the noted journalist Ahmed Rashid pointed out in his aptly titled book Descent Into Chaos, producing militants at an alarming rate.

It would perhaps behoove Senator Obama to look at some of the ways the current Afghan insurgency uses the Afghan geography to its advantage:

- Recently US and UK forces captured one stash of Taliban heroin worth nearly two billion dollars going out from an Iranian port.

- Before that, an investigation by the Independent UK discovered that the Taliban are going to the northern border to purchase weapons directly from the Russians.

- Simultaneously an investigation by the NYTimes revealed that the Taliban have taken control of the marble mines in Pakistan's tribal areas.

All this doesn't even include any mention of the vast number of foreign fighters that come to Afghanistan from across the world, using the countless entry points into the country.

Historically, issues of geography have perhaps been at forefront of any military planning with respect to Afghanistan, but with Senator Obama, they barely register.

For someone who previously disparaged the Iraq war as a "dumb war" and a "rash war" his suggestions about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan is a mistake. It is the sort of thing that led Napolean Bonaparte to destroy France.

But perhaps the only thing worse than Senator Obama's ideas are those of Senator McCain. No doubt dueling with his opponent, he recently announced that under his plan the US will commit even more troops to Afghanistan than it would under Senator Obama's plan. Such breathless scheming taking place by the leading presidential contenders will lead to disaster.

Getting bogged down in Afghanistan would be infinitely worse for the national interest than any Iraq.

I was both amused and irritated by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's recent article at the Shmuley Boteach's Vision Of FemininityHuffington Post about single-sex education and its relationship to sexual polarity and eroticism. His basic argument is that going to school with the opposite sex from an early age desensitizes the two genders towards one another, which disposes people not to marry, and if they do, dulls their erotic intimacy. It also has the effect of making boys seek out the more beautiful girls - and vise versa - which creates a hierarchy of beauty.

Noble sentiments: fairness for ugly people; more marriages; more sex for married people. Unfortunately, all of these sentiments then rest upon Biblical gender essentialism. Here it is:

This is why the Bible insists on certain incontrovertible differences that must forever remain between men and women. It says that men cannot wear a woman's clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5) and men are not to uproot the hair on their faces (Leviticus 19:27) (yes, that is the reason we Rabbis have such undeniably sexy beards). Even in external appearance, men and women are supposed to look different. In the Jewish religion, men and women sit separately in the synagogue, with a literal divider down the middle, all designed to heighten, while never overdoing, the sexual divide.

Now, if an Orthodox Jew (or an orthodox Muslim who believes the same kind of stuff) wants to think that increasing the gulf between men and women is the best way of advancing their sex lives, hey, by all means, feel free to do so. What they can't do, though, is to get past the simple fact that for great parts of history --- and in the Muslim word even today --- gender essentialism has been the essential backbone of oppression.

A while back I wrote a piece on Jewcy about honor(less) killings among Muslims. It's a subject that I've confronted frequently in my life (largely because it really messes me up). In my piece, I tried to suggest that not just patriarchy, but many varieties of oppression itself, are historically rooted in Manichean readings of gender:

At this point I started to wonder: how did the idea of "I am better than you" originate in the first place? More importantly, how is that idea perpetuated? The only thought that I kept coming back to, one that I am starting to believe very deeply, is that somewhere along the way every system of inequality and supremacism justifies itself by positing the existence of a purportedly "natural" inequality between man and woman, the original dualism. Man equals strong, woman equals weak, and thus lordship, supremacy, mastery, control, power, all become tied to this purportedly "natural" difference.

Now, people like the good Rabbi, Christian priests, and Muslim clerics, have had thousands of years of attempting to prove that gender essentialism doesn't engender gender supremacy (always the supremacy of males). They have utterly and thoroughly failed.

I am not sure why, then, they should get another chance, even if they are now able to repackage their gender essentialism with 'hip' terms like 'sexual polarity.' Give me a break.

What we should be really focusing on is trying to emphasize the shared humanity of men and women. Why should we believe that a man's desires or fetishes are any different from a woman's? Just because our parts look different? Again: we tried looking at the world like that, and all we did was alienate women --- and excise them from legal, literary, social, and cultural spheres of society.

There is something even more pernicious in the Rabbi's comments, though, and since he's focusing on the Jewish-American community he probably doesn't realize it, but the argument he's advancing is precisely the argument used to advance the burqa.

Just in case we don't know what a burqa is --- it covers a woman from head to foot in a cloth, often even covering her eyes. It's that thing everyone from the Huffington Post to ultra-right Evangelicals and Jews are always trying to "save" those "poor Muslims" from.

I was talking to a prominent Muslim cleric a few years ago and we were discussing Islamic modest dress, specifically the hijab and niqab. He is a very honest and learned man and is always willing to accept multiple readings of scripture. At the conclusion of our conversation, he conceded that there were multiple ways of reading the Quranic Arabic upon which veiling is premised.

Lacking any further scriptural support for his position, he proposed the Rabbi's argument: "If my woman is covered, it makes me more wont to have sex with her when we're alone."

At which point I proceeded to lose respect for him.

Nevermind how pathetic it is to rest one's religiosity --- or salvation --- upon one's groin; the fact is, if you accept the idea that men will find women more arousing when they are not always in front of their eyes, you will very soon have men who will say a) remove these women from places where us men hang out or b) if they must be around then cover them up in black so its like they are not here.

The world has seen enough of that.

The rabbi no doubt has good intentions, as do the many Muslim leaders who espouse similar sentiments. However, the way to create more warmth and empathy between men and women isn't to separate them, but to cultivate and raise and rejoice in them as if they were essentially --- here's where that word is useful --- the same creature.

God is one. So should be us humans.

There are three kinds of large Islamic conferences: academic (boring and ignored); populist (consumerist and boisterous); and public relations (schizophrenic and confused). I've attended the first two myself, in debates about the hermeneutics of the Quran at various elite universities, and at the Islamic Society of North America's annual Labor Day convention, where everyone from Howard Dean to DOJ and DHS officials make a showing amid the bazaars and lectures. As I am not important (or interested) enough, I have never been invited to the third sort, but those are the ones I want to talk about.

Muslim bigwigs --- especially since 9/11 --- are the ones who go to the international public relations conferences. These are always promised to be genuine and honest discussions about the issues of the age: something about healing the rift between Islam and the West, something about a "dialogue" of civilizations, something about harmony of reason and revelation. They always have long and verbose titles.

Unfortunately, as two recent PR conferences show, such events are rarely true Delegates Meet At The Kuala Lampur Conference: Real leadership goes missingattempts to imbue the Muslim majority world with the spirit of liberty, inquiry and freedom of the kind that helped make it a world-historical religion. What they turn out to be, more often than not, is a showcase for dictators and theocratic stooges to wallow in self-pity.

Just last week, the elaborately titled 3^rd Annual International Conference on the Muslim World and the West opened in Kuala Lampur. Such Muslim luminaries as Turkey's Ekmeleddin Ihsanouglu (head of the 55 member Organization of the Islamic Conference and a member of the Post-Islamist AKP Party), Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (which, if you haven't heard, is not a dictatorship anymore), and Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al-Faisal, were in attendance.

So what kind of principles did these political leaders from three great Muslim nations put forward? Joshua Trevino was there and in the aptly titled piece --- Speechless in Kuala Lampur --- reveals that one of their primary interests was proving that there is no such thing as freedom of expression.

In other words, rather than acting as leaders, these men played to the lowest common denominator: They peddled, pandered, dare I say, got down on their knees and gave a sumptuous blowjob to the guy who starts spitting when he hears words like 'Geert Wilders', 'Danish Cartoons', or 'Salman Rushdie'. Not one of them could manage to stand up and show Muslims that the best reaction to people like Wilders is to let them spout their ignorant head of steam while averting one's gaze. In fact, when it came to Wilders' movie (the subject of plenty of debate here at Jewcy) most Muslims in the West did simply turn a blind eye to it. Rather than use Western Muslims as an example, these three so-called leaders chose to give legitimacy to the idea that when people invoke religion to engage in violence against artists and poets and filmmakers they are doing a service to their faith. Shameful stuff.

Could it be that the Kuala Lampur conference was just a fluke, and others will be better? Not if Saudi Arabia's recent interfaith conference, held a week before the Kuala Lampur meeting, is any indication. The Saudi king's conference was focused not on relations between Islam and the West, but among Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. And from external appearances, it looked promising: a conference in Mecca! a few steps from the Holy Mosque! with not only Jews invited, but even prominent Shia leaders as well as other, mostly spiritual leaders of Islam! So, how did it go?

Well, let's check in with Guardian journalist Riazat Butt, who was there. A quick glance of her report reveals that shortly after King Abdullah's adequately harmonious tidings of tolerance, he was contradicted by the Grand Mufti of his own state, according to whom:

[D]ialogue with other religions was a way to bring non-Muslims into Islam. The cleric, who is the highest official of religious law, told the delegates that converting people to Islam was the ultimate goal of dialogue, a point he made several times. "It is the opportunity to disseminate the principles of Islam. Islam advocates dialogue among people, especially calling them to the path of Allah."

In other words, no one had told the most important religious leader in the room that tolerance is different from evangelism. The contradiction was so thick that Ms. Butt, a journalist, was forced to follow up her report with a blog-piece, where she called the views at the conference "dogmatic, intolerant and inflexible." (There was also the issue that no one really bothered to take the point about not bringing politics into religion very seriously, but let's not go there for now).

Light-hearted ribbing aside, there is a very serious issue underlying these two failed conferences, namely that neither political leaders (as with the Malaysian conference) nor religious leaders (as with the Saudi conference) are making any real effort to clean up their houses. Political leaders use these conferences to score cheap points before the audience. Religious leaders use the venues to galvanize their followers' evangelist zeal. In the process, the very real issues of women's emancipation, treatment of minorities, and separation of mosque and state go wholly ignored.

What these conferences show is that the very idea of international Islamic conferences is completely irrelevant. There is no such thing as top-down change. It is usually just pageantry or farce. If there is reason to have hope about resolving thorny issues in the Muslim world in liberal and democratic directions, that hope doesn't reside with Muslim leaders. It resides with average people who live and suffer through extremism and oppression, and thus can understand the value of qualities like generosity, tolerance, and openness, in ways no dictator or theocrat ever could.

Ed Note: The discussion of neoconservatism starts here and continues here. Ali Eteraz jumps in to respond to the latest round, here.

Daniel Koffler says that when it comes to foreign policy, neoconservatism is neither liberal internationalism, nor illiberal expansionism, but really just an elitist and intellectual project, defined primarily by its belligerence, exceptionalism and (Straussian) secrecy. Koffler comes up with this third category because he is intent on showing that neoconservatism is not a "movement" like the other two foreign policy views, and therefore cannot quite qualify as a "nationalism."

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that neoconservatism is a conspiratorialLet's not give the neocons too much credit cabal. In Koffler's words: "an exclusively elite movement with limited membership."

That gives neoconservative foreign policy too much credit. Intellectual and elitist movements (even conspiracies) usually have some kind of identifiable structure to them. Yet, neoconservative foreign policy, since 2001, has been a morass of empty slogans and ambiguous declarations. It has been an idea in construction. It was never settled on where it was going. It was for this reason that it put forward nebulous ideas like "terror" and "axis of evil" and "doctrine of integration" and "with us or against us." If anything, neoconservatism is the 21^st century version of 19^th century nativism, the 1920s Red Scare and 1950s McCarthyism --- yet another instance of America panicking in the face of a global encounter.

We know this because before 9/11, and before being elected President, the Bush foreign policy shop had said that that they would not focus on international humanitarianism as Clinton had done (I believe this was in Rice's Foreign Affairs article in 2000). Yet, after 9/11, humanitarianism --- in the form of "nation-building" --- was the first thing out of the neoconservatives' mouths (which as Ahmed Rashid points out they then botched). No rhyme, no reason. That's why one day Bush was talking about Islamofascists and the next acknowledging that the term wasn't accurate, why one day we were entering Iraq because of WMD and the next day because of Saddam's links with Al-Qaeda. That's why one day we were declaring war on all state-sponsors of terror and the next day we were hobnobbing with Saudi Arabia.

Now, nearly every faction ---- from neo-conservatives to liberal hawks to libertarians (like Koffler) --- objects to understanding neoconservative foreign policy as inherently devoid of any content. Neoconservatives themselves reject this idea because they think it smacks of confusion, and my, it couldn't be that they had no idea what they were doing. Liberal hawks reject it because they feel extra guilty for being duped by a movement that had no idea what it was doing. People like Koffler reject this reading because in order to justify their preferred projects it is more effective to demonize neoconservatives as a cabal than to recognize them as people who had little idea of what to do when thrust into Hillary Clinton's 3 AM scenarios.

As much as I'd like to believe that neoconservatism was a conspiracy that broke out after 9/11, the more reasonable explanation is that the people we had in charge were utter incompetents who, when confronted by the world coming to their shores, didn't know what to do, so they did everything under the sun. Pre-emptive war? Yes, we do that! Humanitarian war? We do that too! 100 years war? That too! Nation-building? Sure, why not! Empire? Fuck yeah! (as a Bush advisor told Ron Suskind in slightly different terms). War on terror? Check! World War IV? If we include Iran, yeah baby!

The fact is, and as pitiable as it sounds, on 9/11 America got hit in the head with a mallet, and rather than taking a moment to get a sense of who we were, our government started behaving like a punch drunk boxer.

Neoconservatism foreign policy is 21^st century American hyperventilation. It is panic, and panic is a far worse characteristic in a government than institutional corruption. People like Koffler who actually oppose neoconservatism shouldn't give it historiographical credit.

More than a year before 9/11, veteran journalist and author Ahmed Rashid, wrote a book called Taliban. It described the rampant extremism in Afghanistan and asked the US to consider an immediate nation-building intervention. That warning went ignored --- with disastrous results.

His recent book, Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Federally Administered Tribal Areas Of Pakistan: Not really administered by PakistanBuilding in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, is informed by nearly a decade observing and evaluating US policy in south and central Asia, and finding it baffling. Bin Laden is still free; the Taliban are expanding into Pakistan and Afghanistan; despite the increasing number of terrorists with verifiable links to the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas in Pakistan, nothing is being done to address the underlying issues there; and no one is paying any attention to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Tukmenistan and Uzbekistan, despite the fact that these countries exhibit many of the same (and some unique) characteristics that led to problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan. None of these developments, in Rashid's reckoning, was inevitable. Mishandling and misjudgment by the Bush administration has abetted and enabled various ills that make the world unsafe. American failure to comprehensively defeat terrorism is America's own fault.

According to Rashid, the Bush administration's decision to project its power in Mesopotamia, at the cost of not attending to far more urgent issues in south and central Asia, is among the greatest strategic blunders any American president has made. Shifting the theater so quickly and suddenly after the invasion of Afghanistan --- for example, US troops that liberated Qandahar from the Taliban were moved to Iraq within three months --- led the US to outsource its job of eliminating terrorism to a disingenuous dictator in Pakistan and a still inchoate Afghan democracy. Both led to disastrous results. Pakistan's General Musharraf and ISI either turned a blind eye to terrorists or tried to co-opt them to advance their own agendas, while a better than token investment in nation-building in Afghanistan --- which would have cost a pittance compared to the war in Iraq --- could have stemmed many of the wounds that festered into security crises today. Instead, the US abandoned Afghanistan, thereby allowing the Taliban to mount a powerful insurgency that will cost huge quantities of money and human life to roll back.

Such errors of grand strategy were compounded by smaller-scale but non-trivial errors. As a Pakistani citizen who traveled widely throughout central Asia, Rashid can testify first-hand to the practical consequences of America's rubbishing and violations of the Geneva Convention, the imperial language of its officials; unnecessary maligning of the religion of Islam, and the usurpation of the State Department's customary prerogatives by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon --- which played a direct causal role in the collapse of any serious commitment to nation-building well before any US soldiers touched down in Afghanistan.

Yet Rashid did not write this book to admonish. He is genuinely disturbed by the perpetuation of terrorist power, not to mention the continuing paucity of liberty, economic opportunity, and human rights that citizens of South and Central Asia face daily. His positive proposals for American policy are extensive in range, thoroughly grounded empirically, and ought to be required reading by members of the American foreign policy community.

I'll focus on just one of his positive suggestions. Rashid traveled through FATA --- Pakistan's Federally Administrated Tribal Areas --- with a Pashtun guide. He describes the region as "terrorism central," and not only the near certain secret redoubt of not only Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, but also the base of operations of numerous terrorists and terror suspects spread throughout the world, whose identities Rashid lists. He argues that there are two possible ways of dealing with the threats based in FATA. The first is dispatching a military force to defeat the militants in an outright confrontation. This option has slim odds of success; the Pakistani military already tried it and failed, and external invaders are even less likely than Musharraf's army to have the requisite tactical and political support to succeed.

The second option --- the viable one --- highlights the indispensability of Rashid's book. FATA is one of those hinterlands of the globe that suffered through the transition from ethnic tribalism and economic feudalism to a nation-state paradigm. The literacy rate there is only 17% (3% for women!), there are no economic, opportunities, no legal system apart from an arbitrary mish-mash of tribal decision-making nominally supplemented by a statutory scheme inherited from the British Raj, and no educational system apart from whatever the mullahs could provide. There have never been political parties, much less a political culture, in the region. FATA exists outside of the sphere of international law and outside of the reach of the governments Kabul and Islamabad, its only political order the spiritual thrall of extremist religious leaders and the brute force of warlords. who use intimidation to impose themselves. In other words, it is the absolutely ideal sanctuary for al Qaeda and other stateless criminals gangs --- even better, arguably, than al Qaeda's other sometime homes in Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and since the American invasion, Iraq).

Clearly, therefore, an effective means of shutting down terrorism in south and central Asia is to integrate regions like FATA into the international economic community. And indeed, Rashid notes that there were proposals in recent years for a referendum in FATA which would have allowed it to either become an independent province associated with Pakistan or choose to become part of the NWFP province. Naturally, those entreaties were shunted aside by Musharraf, the man the Bush administration foolishly treated as their number one counter-terrorist.

The US could begin to address to the challenge of FATA today by reviving discussion about FATA's provincial status with the democratic parties now in power in Pakistan, who are completely befuddled by the problem of what to do with the region, and are passively allowing the tribal leaders there to extend Sharia law over secular legal opposition.

That proposal for FATA is only one of many constructive ideas in Descent Into Chaos. Rashid's long-standing relationships with the leading political figures of south and central Asia, his fluency with US policy, and his decades-long experience with the region, make the a necessary resource for anyone interested in the post 9/11 world. It should be slipped onto the essential reading lists of the foreign policy experts advising John McCain and Barack Obama.

Houda Nonoo: the arab world's first jewish envoy The Arab world has its first Jewish Envoy. It's a woman no less. Thank the tiny state of Bahrain:

The selection of Houda Nonoo was made by decree on Wednesday and reported by local media in the Gulf Arab kingdom on Friday.

The decree, published by the official Bahraini News Agency, did not state which nation Nonoo would be appointed to but media reports have said that the US is her likely destination.

Nonoo, 43, said she would undertake the role "first of all as a Bahraini" and that she was not chosen because of her religion.

Bahraini media had speculated over Nonoo's selection for the past few months.

Nonoo, a businesswoman and mother of two children, has served as a legislator in Bahrain's all-appointed 40-member Shura Council for three years.

More on that at Al-Jazeera English, and if you follow the link, there is mention of a synagogue for the country's 40 Jews. There is also mention that Bahrain is planning on giving full citizenship rights to Jewish returnees. The idea of "full-citizenship" in the Gulf states is an important one because these countries are extremely reluctant to let immigrants come in and acquire citizenship—kind of like Switzerland, but worse. The fact that Jews who have presumably been gone for decades will be welcomed back as full citizens is a sign that Bahrain is open to recognizing the historical connection that Jews had to the land, which is interesting because even Muslims who don't have a connection to the land can't just come in and become citizens.

I do not think that this in any way means a thawing of relationship with Israel, as last year Bahrain stripped one of its athletes of citizenship after he participated in a race in Israel.

There is, however, an attempt by the Arab states to begin engaging with Jews. Kuwait is planning on building a "1001 Tower"—yes, like the Arabian Nights—the top of which will house a mosque, synagogue and church. Saudi Arabia's ruler recently called for inter-faith dialogue inclusive of Jews which was welcomed by Israel's Chief Rabbi. Qatar, another tiny state, home of Al-Jazeera and Yusuf al-Qardawi, held another inter-faith meeting at which rabbis from Israel were present.

This piece of news comes at the heels of the grim article in the NYTimes about the last Jews in Babylon.

The Bush administration has been a failure in applying and enforcing antitrust laws. As Albert Foer, head of the American Antitrust Institute (and also father of The New Republic editor Franklin Foer and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer) put it in 2006, the Bush administration doesn't "even seem to think that monopolies are bad. Big is efficient and efficient is good. This is a story about how ideology has taken over the law enforcement process."

Although antitrust policy doesn't get much play in the media, lax enforcement is bad for consumers, bad for small businesses, bad even for farmers (as John Edwards has observed) --- in other words, bad for huge numbers of Americans (even worse than a shortage of flag lapel pins).

Barack Obama --- you know him as the candidate with no actual policies --- has consistently been going after the Bush administration on its derelict antitrust policy. In a November 2007 statement (PDF) to the AAI, he noted that from 2001 to 2006, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department challenged fewer than half as many mergers per year as they did between 1996 and 2000, and that the Bush DOJ had not brought a single monopolization case, and concluded that "the current administration has what may be the weakest record of antitrust enforcement of any administration in the last half-century."

Just last week, Obama stepped up the press on antitrust enforcement, promising that "[w]e are going to an antitrust division in the Justice Department that actually believes in antitrust law. We haven't had that for the last seven, eight years." In particular, he pledged to be vigilant in guarding against improper media consolidation (which would make for a striking contrast with the Bush DOJ's green light for a merger between the only two players in the satellite radio market --- it's enough to make one think they don't know what 'monopoly' means.)

Despite the perception that he is the media's golden boy, Obama is committed to putting criticism of corporate media practices front and center in his campaign, and takes a non-negligible risk in doing so. Although it's unlikely that attacking mergers and consolidation will turn the media's coverage of him negative in any sweeping way, his comments about media monopolization, as the AAI points out (PDF), got effectively no play in the media whatsoever. Moreover, an editorial and ideological slant is increasingly prevalent in media venues controlled by people like Rupert Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife. And though the Murdoch-Scaife–sphere isn't likely to be friendly to Obama under any circumstances, things can always get worse, and may very well if Obama continues pressing a position guaranteed to antagonize media executives.

In fact, in what would be a wonderful post-modern irony, it's possible that by vigorously attacking media consolidation, Obama will provoke the media to cease being the handmaidens of the government they were during the Bush years. But more likely, unfortunately, any press backlash Obama policies might cause will be restricted to venalities, the media quickly forgetting their watchdog jobs in the run-up to the next war.

Recently, a group of Evangelical Christian leaders let loose an Evangelical Manifesto upon the world (short summary here). By attempting to save Evangelical Christianity from the political and religious excesses that threaten believers and non-believers alike, the authors point to possible way forward for Muslims living in western countries, attempting to be good liberal democratic citizens and maintain their faith at the same time.

"Insistently moderate" as Alan Jacobs calls it, the Manifesto abjures a sound-biteAmerican Muslims: American, as well as Muslim discussion of Christianity and criticizes the whole spectrum of the Evangelical movement from right to left, including its own authors. And it extends beyond its own tribe, asking secular humanists and new atheists and liberals of all stripes if they are satisfied with the relationship that society and religion currently have, and taking a pox-on-both-thy-houses approach to "French style secularism" as well as "Islamist violence."

Evangelicals must not, the authors contend, become "useful idiots" to any political party --- no doubt a reference to Republican operatives like Karl who call Evangelicals "loons" behind their backs --- and they must not try to coerce or force other people to believe in their way. They must not try and depict themselves as the apex of truth. They must not be fundamentalist (yes, the manifesto uses the f-word), must help the poor, the under-trodden and needy. Over and again, the document condemns the "dangerous" alliance between church and state, denying that Christianity deserves special treatment because it's the majority faith, contending instead that "no one faith should be normative."

What's more the emotional and argumentative crux of the Manifesto --- the claim that "Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally" --- draws a necessary and important distinction between religious and other kinds of identities that should be instructive to people of all faiths, and to western Muslims in particular.

Is there such a thing as a "Muslim vote" or "Muslim politics"? And if there isn't should Muslims try and vote as "bloc"? Or should there be Muslims for Ron Paul, Muslims for Obama, Muslims for George Galloway, Muslims for Ken Livingstone, and Muslims for Joe Lieberman? Should mosques endorse candidates? Should our national organizations pander to politicians? Should there be "Muslim" PACs or "Muslim" foreign policy initiatives?

The Manifesto says "no," loudly. Muslims should define themselves theologically and not politically, socially, or culturally. They should see that their primary relationship to Islam isn't utilitarian but salvific, and that "Muslim" identity isn't a fulcrum with which to advance certain ends in the public sphere, but simply a pact with God, whose rewards are identity reaped in the next life.

Many Muslims will be quick to retort that given the current climate --- where they are under attack not just from fundamentalists among them but Islamophobes of every stripe --- taking such an apolitical approach to being Muslim is virtually impossible. Every day, Muslims are asked to condemn bombings, and address beheadings, and talk about foreign wars against their co-religionists. How, then, can anyone suggest that when Muslims talk about Islam, they should focus on the afterlife? Even if we wanted to, Muslims will say, other people wouldn't let us!

The Evangelical Manifesto has an ingenious response to this problem, interpreting it as a "cost of discipleship":

Unlike some other religious believers, we do not see insults and attacks on our faith as offensive and blasphemous in a manner to be defended by law, but as part of the cost of our discipleship that we are to bear without complaint or victim-playing.

In other words, when Muslims are put in a position where others are speaking for them --- and putting them into political and social and cultural categories --- it will be up to them to resist the temptation of accepting these categories. They, as the Manifesto suggests for Evangelicals, will have to say:

[W]e insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our --- true motives and our --- real agenda.

By taking this approach to political debates, even debates about Islam, Muslims could at last enter the debate not as Muslims, but as Americans. Or, say, as Philadelphians. Or as lawyers.

Perhaps precisely because Evangelicals have had the experience of acquiring massive political power and squandering it, they are singularly qualified to provide a lesson to American Muslims, who have virtually no power as a religious community. When religion becomes inextricably tied to partisan politics, it can be bought and sold like stocks, simultaneously cheapening the faith and corrupting the secular principles of liberal government. Addressed to every faith community in the US, the Evangelical Manifesto is a warning American Muslims should heed. To be accepted as full members of a liberal polity, they have to be prepared to accept that their profession of faith is just one feature of their identities among many, and not the one that should dictate their engagement with politics.

You cannot understand Pakistan without understanding its military. It is involved --- and profits --- from nearly every nook and cranny of Pakistani life. Which is why Shuja Nawaz's examination of Pakistan's military, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army and the War Within, recently published by Oxford University Press, should be required reading for policy makers.

Pakistan's army has ruled the country for a majority of the sixty years the nation hasInvaluable Reading For Anyone Interested In Pakistan's Political And Military History existed. The country's political history contains volatile and uncertain democratic periods with long military dictatorships in nearly every decade. Since 9/11, Pakistan's military has essentially served as an arm of America's War on Terror. All in all, Pakistan received nearly $12 billion in aid from the United States since 2001, nearly three quarters of which went to the military (what's more, about one quarter has been in the form of untraceable cash transfers).

Nawaz, former newscaster with Pakistan Television and winner of the Henry Taylor award at Columbia University School of Journalism, begins his exploration with the fledgling state in 1947 on through to the present day. It is a fascinating, thorough and in many ways awesome narrative.

Nawaz has a command of every major book written about Pakistan over the last 60 years, and as a member of one of Pakistan's leading military families --- his brother, Asif Nawaz, was Pakistan's top general between 1991 and 1993) --- he was able to gain unprecedented access, including Pakistan's mysterious and shadowy intelligence service, ISI, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Parvez Musharraf, and a number of American generals, including Brent Scowcroft and Anthony Zinni. (In fact, Mr. Nawaz knows some of these people so well, that when I spoke to him, he casually mentioned receiving Blackberry messages from Benazir, and cracked jokes Nawaz Sharif told him in Punjabi). His research and sources coalesce into a history of Pakistan's army, its cronyism, its involvement in civil society, its corporatism, and its unstated project to centralize power in Islamabad.

Crossed Swords is not just history. There are important lessons and warnings to be found in the text. For example, the immense number of generals appointed by former Islamist dictator Zia ul Haq --- who seized the presidency from Benazir Bhutto's father in a coup --- have not yet taken hold of power. When they do, after the current group of leading generals resign in perhaps five to ten years, Pakistan's famously secular military may be disposed to take an Islamist turn.

Its not all pessimism though. Pakistan's military is becoming less dominated by the Punjabi and Pashtun ethnicity and slowly becoming more representative of the national character. History also reveals that it has contained good and honest individuals within it.

What makes Crossed Swords fascinating for the general reader, beyond the largerLate General Asif Nawaz narrative about the military, are the little anecdotes: the way Zia ul Haq really lived; how a gift of BMW cars led to a conflict in the military; how the ISI played its hand in various conflicts. These are nuggets from an insider to which no pundits in the US and most Pakistanis do not have access. That's no surprise: the military has done a remarkable job hoarding information. And the information they do release is unreliable, as with a military report on Zia ul Haq's 1988 death in a plane explosion which makes no mention of any form of combustion at all.

One of those little anecdotes, hidden in the appendix, reveals the author's personal motivation for writing the book. General Asif Nawaz Janjua, Shuja Nawaz' brother, died under mysterious circumstances in 1993. (His hair was revealed, in an independent toxicology report, to contain perplexingly high levels of arsenic and chromium.) Mr. Nawaz details how the efforts of General Asif Nawaz' widow and family to get clarity around the causes of death were stymied by the Pakistani military. As Mr. Nawaz puts it: "the army command had closed ranks and was protecting itself." Closing ranks --- or crossing swords if you will --- is what the Pakistani military does best.

If there is a shortcoming to the book, it's that it would have benefited from a more spartan editor. Crossed Swords is a bit longer than most comparable investigative books, and some of the portions should have been cropped (though I'm at a loss to say which ones). The length will be prohibitive to some general readers. Also, the linguistic style is probably appropriate for the kind of formal English that Pakistani and British academics speak, but it takes a bit of getting used to for an American ear. Also, it's reportedly not very widely available, which is quite a shame given how often Pakistan is in the news today and how important it is for Pakistanis to have transparency when it comes to their nation's most powerful institution.

But all in all, Crossed Swords is an essential reference for anyone doing research on Pakistan and a worthwhile, informative read for anyone interested in the ways autocracy, power and corruption have intersected in a Republic that has too often been a dictatorship.

Related in Jewcy: Pakistani politics, a Darwinian struggle; Michael O'Hanlon and Frederick Kagan's imbecilic fix for loose Pakistani nukes

In the global discussion about Islam, words matter. The US government apparentlyThe Artists Formerly Known As Jihadists agrees, and has begun a review of some of the words that it had been using since 2001. The AP reports that "Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as 'jihadists' or 'mujahedeen.'" Bad news for fans of "Islamo-fascism": that's out, too.

According to the AP, the government has caught on to the fact that particular inflammatory terms "may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates."

The decision seems to be a recognition and affirmation of the position on language of CENTCOM General Abizaid, who must have acquired his appreciation of how language affects diplomacy and relationships with Muslims during his time in Iraq. At a CSIS event last September, Abizaid said:

I mean, even adding the word Islamic extremism, or qualifying it to Sunni Islamic extremism, or qualifying it further to Sunni Islamic extermism as exemplified by government such as Bin Laden, all make it very, very difficult because the battle of words is meaningful, especially in the Middle East to people...[snip]...

The key is to figure out how we don't turn this into Samuel Huntington's Battle of Civilization's and we work toward an area where we respect mainstream Islam. There's nothing Islamic about Bin Laden's philosophy, there's nothing Islamic about suicide bombing. I believe that these are huge difficulties that we need to overcome, this notion of Christianity versus Islam. It's not that, it doesn't need to be that.

Abizaid is right, and so, in this case, is the Bush administration, whose decision is sound both politically and intellectually. It will go a long way towards warming up many of the Muslim moderates --- even many in the US --- who felt that the odd experiments with purposefully controversial language that the Bush administration was engaged in were detrimental to any foreign policy not aiming at antagonizing Muslims pointlessly.

It seems absurd on its face that for so long our government, which ostensibly seeks to advance a more secular worldview in the middle East, would have purposefully advanced terms that were chosen by and utilized by extreme religious fanatics. Ownership of language --- what lawyers and PR people call "framing the issue" --- is very important in adversarial confrontations about information (which the war on terrorism certainly is). With this decision the Bush administration is opening up the possibility of the US government devising a lexicon that allows it to evaluate terrorism, religious fanaticism, and Muslim violence on its own terms.

When the government plays fast and loose with language, the political ramifications can be severe, so the news that the Bush administration is finally adopting responsible linguistic principles guided by attention to the actual outcomes of policy, as opposed to various kinds of oneupsmanship in sanctimony, is welcome.

Having said that, we, average people, are not the government, and we ought to resist the impulse to standardize or check our use of language. Certainly we should try to employ language as accurately as possible and attend to important distinctions --- for example, that between political theocrats and violent theocrats. By the same token, we should be clear in our definitions, avoid unnecessary hyperbole, and do our best not to use language illogically or ahistorically. But it would be futile to hope for a single lingua franca in discussions of terrorism, and would do little good to have one in the first place.

The fact is that the term "jihadism" has become part of the English language, just like "fatwa," "intifada," and "ayatollah." The term "Al-Qaeda" will always be associated with a conspiratorial movement engaged in violence, the same way we associate certain collectivist criminal characteristics with the Sicilian word "mafia." For the average Joe, these terms are useful means of conveying ideas, which is good enough reason to keep them around.

Perhaps most importantly of all, we should be vigilant in not allowing the government to dictate what is and is not acceptable when it comes to words. The fact that the world of 1984 and Newspeak is remote from our own isn't reason to ignore its warnings. Expressions like "un-good" and "double plus un-good" might seem unlikely to take purchase any time soon, but there is a long history of governmental and military euphemisms crowding out and eventually replacing equivalent, vivid ordinary language expressions, with the ultimate effect of making it far more difficult to talk about matters of war and peace, life and death, except in an abstract manner far removed from any actual lived experience.

Hence, at the same time we recognize that tactical and strategic imperatives obligate a responsible government to be judicious and frequently euphemistic in its use of language, that obligation on the part of the government clearly underscores our own obligation to defend and maintain our ordinary language, in all its varieties, vagaries, and vividness. A certain amount of vagueness, anachronism, regional variation, and even confusion, in addition to being a token of the health of a language, is also a vital bulwark against authoritarian politics.

Sign seen in Philadelphia I had a meeting this morning and I was running late. I realized I had missed the bus and there were no cabs to be found. I started walking towards Center City all while hoping I’d miraculously run into a lost cabbie. Didn’t happen. I stopped at a busy intersection, pulled out a five dollar bill and started approaching cars.

“Five bucks if you drop me at Market Street.”

After suffering glares from a couple of old people and making a couple of frightened girls zoom off – I shouldn’t have had my hood up – I found an African-American guy in an Explorer, listening to Ne-Yo, pulled up and let me in.

“I’m in a good mood today,” he said.

I got in. After a brief lull in conversation I reminded him that later in the day ObamaRemember, It's The City Of *Brother*ly Love: Apparently Hillary Clinton's ovaries, as well as her tactics, are costing her votes in Philadelphia would be holding a major rally near the Liberty Bell.

“You gonna vote?” I asked.

“Hell yeah,” he said.

“Who for?”

“Obama!”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t trust a woman to be President,” he said.

I was shocked. Here was a black guy not voting for Obama because the junior senator references Jay-Z in his speeches.

That was sarcasm, by the way.

I egged him in a little bit and found that he didn’t particularly have a reason for supporting Obama aside from the fact that Hillary was a woman.

“Well, also because that’s what my Church wants me to vote,” he said.

I probably should have stopped and inquired whether it was his Church that was feeding him the line about Hillary’s gender. But I had reached my stop. I paid him and scampered off.

(Yes, I did make my meeting on time).

***

I found my morning encounter interesting because of another experience involving Obama and Hillary.

One night, three of us – me, one Princeton graduated white guy in Big Pharma, and a middle class Indian lawyer – got in a cab being driven by an African immigrant. He heard us talking about politics and asked us who we were voting for.

“I’m leaning towards Obama,” I said.

My Indian friend – a former Republican – said he was totally for Obama, while the white guy said that he would support anyone who didn’t raise his taxes.

“So two Obama and one McCain?” the cabbie confirmed. “Why not Hillary?”

Before I could answer, he answered his own question.

“I tell you why, man! She lies about every policy. Voted for war, says she’s against it. Says she’s for little guy, is in bed with corporations.”

“So you’ll vote for Obama, then?” I asked.

“No man, I can’t vote,” he replied. He wasn’t yet a citizen. However, he assured the three of us that every passenger he picked up he would try to convert them away from Hillary.

“Even McCain is better than her,” said the cabbie who can’tvote.

***

A few days earlier, I was taking a trip out to the sub-urbs to see one of my friends. I went to 30^th Street train station and waited for my train to arrive. In the meantime, I saw a couple of Obama activists approaching the travelers. To pass the time, my friend and I went up to them.

“Pretend to be a Hillary supporter,” I told him.

He went up (naturally) to the cute girl and started peppering her with questions about Obama as well as dropping positive commentary about Hillary.

She argued with him fervently. Ultimately, though, her argument could be summed up in one line: “How can you trust Hillary? She’s just not trust-worthy.”

Not wanting to be left out of talking to the cute girl I chimed in: “That’s an interesting accent you got there. Where are you from?”

“Oxford University,” she said. “I’m a visiting student at Penn.”

When the train arrived, we walked away. As we left, the girl who couldn’t vote in the elections reminded us again that Hillary was untrustworthy.

***
Hillary hate is pretty high in Philadelphia. It’s not just the Churches, and the cabbies, and the rich Penn kids. It also infects the right-wing anti-abortion activists.

When I was returning from the aforementioned meeting earlier I got on a bus that went past the historic City Hall.

At a distance, hanging between two light-poles, right next to the Masonic Temple, were two tremendous signs.

The letters were in black, except for the word ‘Jezebel’, in parentheses.

“HILLARY (Jezebel) KILLS BABIES” read the first sign. The second one featured a gruesome picture of a dismembered fetus.

After I pushed down the bile in my throat, I asked myself why the sign didn’t say anything about Obama. After all, he, like Hillary, is also pro-Choice.

***

It was at that point that the germs for this article began coming to my head. It appeared that no one had particular reasons for their Obamamania other than the fact that they hated Hillary.

I also begin asking myself. If Obama’s support in Philadelphia – a relatively well-educated and progressive city – is premised on such irrationality, then can’t it be the case that in other parts of the country, support for Hillary or McCain or even Bush, is also premised on irrationality and closed-mindedness? If so, what does it really say about politics in America? Is it really the case that our leaders are bankrupt or is it that our leaders are a reflection of ourselves; even, dare I say, Obama? 

Prior to Geert Wilders' release of the film, Fitna, Reason Magazine's Michael Moynihan wrote a piece on the subject, which is worth reading as he and I are about to engage in a mini-dialogue on many of the questions it raises.

Michael argued that while Wilders was "something of an extremist" and whose views on Islam were "both reductive and puerile" his film, once released, needed to be engaged "on its intellectual merits." Further, he argued that "not to support Wilders" was tantamount to acquiescing to "bullying" by "religious crackpots."

At the broad level, Michael and I agree that Wilders' film should not have been banned and needed to be engaged on its merits.

In my review of the film, I did precisely that. So did numerous other people,Iranian Student Protestors: Far more deserving of our sympathy than an illiberal fraud like Wilders including Irshad Manji (in both English and Arabic), Sadegh Kabeer, (Iranian in the Middle East) and Mona Eltahawy (Egyptian in the US). Not one of these three Muslim dissenters -- each with a long history of disavowing Muslim extremism -- found Wilders' film interesting or coherent. The film is intellectually lacking.

Where I particularly disagree with Michael -- and why I maintain that we owe nothing to Wilders -- is over the fact that Wilders is a threat to liberal society. I do not believe that Wilders' views must be criminalized by the state, but they should be deemed out of the bounds of liberal society much the same way that we consider discrimination on the basis of gender unacceptable. Further, the threat of a civil and democratic discussion --- yes, the threat of a discussion --- about the criminality of his views should be left on the table as a deterrent. Our aim should be to rid liberal society of people like Wilders. This can only start if we ignore Michael’s exhortation about looking out for Wilders’ rights, and spend our time either ignoring or mocking him.

Wilders' obfuscations are pernicious. He conceals his xenophobic nativism by waving (incorrectly translated and randomly picked) verses of the Quran. Sprinkled in the middle of Fitna, which Wilders would have us believe is about the Quran, are Dutch news clippings included for no other reason than to provoke an emotional backlash against immigrants. This is why I don't believe this film had anything to do with theology. Fitna was nothing more than a veiled attack on the newest "outsider." Jews and Chinese in the past, the Polish in London today and Latinos here in the US, have been the butt of similar tactics by ideologues. Demagogues enjoy taking pot-shots at the things immigrants hold closest --- in this case, the Quran. I have no doubt that if it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Muslims held dear, Wilders would be trying to equate Muslims with Oompa-Loompas. The job of public intellectuals like Moynihan is to cut through the veneer and get to the heart of the matter.

Here, the heart of the matter is nativism, not Islam, and not whether Wilders has an unqualified right to speak.

Today, in Europe, immigrants from Muslim countries are viewed as being inherently incapable of becoming good citizens in the West. It reminds me of the late 19^th century when discussion waged in Europe about how it was impossible for a Jew --- who gives obeisance to Talmudic Law --- to simultaneously give allegiance to the state.

Similarly, the threat of "Eurabia," promulgated by men like Wilders, is not very different from the threat of "Aztlan" raised by anti-immigrant forces in the US. Neither scenario is likely. But in a picture where immigrants are painted as gang-bangers, rapists, arms and drug dealers, rioters, and multiplying like the Borg, the narrative quickly shifts from irrational phantasmagoria to social policies that are either explicitly bigoted, or which turn a blind eye to the immigrants' concerns. This shifting is what men like Wilders excel at.

What Wilders manages to do with relative ease is to shift the discussion away from how power and resources should be apportioned between native and immigrant Europeans into a referendum on jihadism. This is wrong and unfair. By and large, European Muslim grievances with Europe are grievances with the state apparatuses --- with unemployment, with police brutality, with poverty. Yet Wilders and his cohorts would have us believe that the issue is all of Islam all across the world and if you do not characterize immigrants' agitations in a theo-political manner then you are either "with the enemy" or have already turned into a "dhimmi." This is called missing the point.

A perfect example of this missing-the-point occurred during the riots by immigrant youth in France. The New York Times and various other news agencies took a barracking, right here at Jewcy, for referring to the rioters as "youth" and not as "Muslim." Yet, the fact was that the latest rounds of the riots were touched off not only by the 40% unemployment rate --- a rate that matches Saudi Arabia's --- among immigrant youth but the police mandate to deport 25,000 illegal aliens a year and the specific incident of the police rather bizarrely running over a pair of youth on a motorcycle. As the UK Spectator and Reuters both noted, what needn't have been about Islam, became about Islam.

If Wilders were interested in discussing extremism, jihadism or even Islamism, he would have done it in a way that allowed Muslims who oppose these things to join with him. However, he purposefully chooses to marginalize such people in order to pretend that they don't exist. In some quarters this is called bigotry. I’ve already pointed out, even dissenting Muslims are acknowledging that while Wilders shouldn't be banned, they are also feeling that he isn't someone to be taken seriously either. There are reasons for this, reasons having to do with the fact that the guy is not just a bore but also a boor. We don't jail boors, but we shouldn’t be particularly interested in what they are saying either.

What people like Wilders ultimately do is to encourage the worst parts of the discourse to feel empowered, whether Islamophobic or Islamophilic. I am, for example, not particularly surprised that on the heels of Wilders film we have news about French Muslim graves --- from World War I no less -- defiled by Islamophobic elements (which previously used Nazi imagery on Muslim graves). Nor am I surprised that around the world handmaidens of dictators have tried to stir violence in response to the film. (The Jamat-e-Islami’s protests are particularly disgusting given that they participated in the rigged 2002 elections of Pakistan and boycotted the 2008 elections because they were free and fair).

While I do not believe that we ought to be influenced by what ayatollahs and extremists on the other side of the globe think, I do think we ought to speak in a way that will promote our values: democracy, decency and exemplarism. When the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty went to Tehran to criticize religious oligarchy, their lectures were attended by an astonishing 1500 people. Those of us who profess to support democracy cannot forget that in the world today our allies aren't people like Wilders, but those 1500 dissenters in Iran who brave torture and prison to exchange in the best of our ideas. If for no other reason than for the sake of their emancipatory project, we should reach out to them and tell them: As you fight your supremacists, we fight ours. The only way we can make this showing is if Wilders is aware that he is perpetually "this close" to losing his right to offend. I don't want Wilders criminalized but I certainly don't understand why I ought help make him more audacious.

At the end of the day, Michael, when I bully Wilders, it's not because I am a religious crackpot, or in league with any such people, or antagonistic to free speech, but because I consider Wilders a threat to our liberal principles (and so does the Dutch Parliament). As you said, people like Wilders have a right to offend, but simultaneously people like me have a right to chastise the offensive. My optimistic sense is that in liberal societies people like me far outnumber people like Wilders and always will. I happen to think this is a good thing.

I just watched Islamophobic Dutch right-winger Geert Wilders' film, Fitna. He had promised it to be too shocking, too frightening, too disturbing and much of the world was holding its breath in morbid, anxious, wait for its release. The media feared rabid violence by those angry Muslims.

My initial reaction is a yawn. The soundtrack is Tchaikovsky's mellow classical "Arab Dance." Quick tip to future demagogues: When trying to incite riots, try not to use musical pieces that are based on Georgian lullabies. Quick tip to future Islamophobes: When trying to demonize Islam, try not to use elements of Western culture that are inspired by Arabs and Muslims --- doing so reveals that Muslims have something positive to contribute to the world, which somewhat undermines the whole point of the exercise.

Anyone who has seen terrorist propaganda films is familiar with most of the scenes and most of the disgusting conflations of the Quran with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and antisemitism. Such behavior has been condemned resoundingly among Muslims. Those who use the Quran for illegitimate and criminal ends should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

The real question about this underwhelming effort is whether Wilders is protestingGeert Wilders: Genius at work against Islam, or against the monopoly extremists already have over grainy, low-budget, youtube videos. The only difference I see is that Wilders plays the best of Western classical music — an insult to the legacy of Tchaikovsky — rather than death chants. So he gets credit for improving the audiovisual quality of terroristic propaganda. Also, the metamorphosis of "Fitna" into "Fin" at the end was pretty cool.

As for the rest of the film, it's a sixteen minute forty-eight second hatefest, cobbling together the most painful and heart-wrenching scenes of terror-strikes with shots of extremist imams, uncontaminated by any logic or argument or point except to turn the entirety of Islam into a demonic edifice. This is neither new nor interesting. It is a facile trick for facile minds. Cartoons show a more subtle grasp of the human condition. Focusing in more specifically, the film appears to be nothing more than a screed by a nativist. Anti-immigrant demagogues exist in every society, from Arab to American. Their sole job is to belittle and antagonize the mostly poor immigrants and stultify and romanticize their country’s own history.

One of the things the film did was to try and link some of the verses of the Quran to acts of violence. Most people familiar with the Quran, including Christian polemicists I’ve debated, accept that you can have the Quran say pretty much whatever you want. For example, there is, among Muslims, a pretty hefty industry of “scientists” who are constantly “proving’ that various Quranic verses predicted the marvels of modern science. I once saw a presentation by one of these guys. It was, in a way, very similar to what Wilders has done. First there would be a slide with a Quranic verse. Then there would be a bunch of images of some modern scientific marvel. Apparently, everything from the space-time continuum to modern meteorology and congenital biology are supported by verses from the Quran. Like I said, when put into the hands of fanatics and fools, the Quran — like any book of religious scripture — can say anything. If suicide bombers wanted, they could even go into the Old Testament, cite to Sampson, and justify their heinous acts.

What the film really makes clear is that when it comes to challenging Islamism, Wilders is completely lost. He resembles nothing so much as a socially awkward, marginalized, introverted child in a schoolyard whose solution to persecution at the hands of a bully is to write the bully's name in his notebook and then rip up the page.

If Wilders really wanted to expose Islamism — the entire legacy of 20th century ideological Islam — he would start with the French Suez Canal Company's funding of the Muslim Brotherhood's first mosque. That fact is casually mentioned in Hasan al-Banna's autobiography (which I am certain Wilders never bothered to consult). Alternatively, Wilders might have tried to spur a criminal proceeding in the international criminal courts against those men who came up with the genius idea of encouraging disaffected Arab youth to go to Afghanistan and then gave them $1 billion in machine guns, bombs and stinger missiles to play with. Or Wilders could have expressed some outrage at the drafters of the new Iraqi constitution, working in consultation with Western lawyers to make Sharia the law of the land (a fact bemoaned by Iraqi feminists).

But Wilders isn't actually serious about challenging Islamism. He is concerned only with multiplying the number of times his name is pinged on Google. Couldn't he have taken solace in the fact that his name is pinged more than mine?

I can't be sure how the Islamist demagogues will spin this film. Presumably some of them will consider this a kind of frontal assault against their idiocy — idiots recognize one another — and begin agitations which the media will be too happy to cover. However, the fact is that a majority of Muslims are going to react to this film with the same kind of casual shrug of the shoulders that it deserves. If there are Muslims who wish to protest — and I really don't see why it's even necessary — my advice for them is to emulate Hossein Nouri. He is the paraplegic painter who, during the Danish Cartoon Fiasco, painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary in front of the Danish embassy. Here is a picture of his marvelous work.

In terms of sheer originality, though, the best response to this film came from a friend of mine who watched the film — and calling it a film is to abuse both the English language and the legacy of cinema — on my computer with me.

"I could have masturbated in that time."

Related in Jewcy: Muslamism May Spell the Death Of The West; Belgium No Longer Exists 

First they told us that not all Muslims were evil. We didn't resist.

Then they told us that not all Muslims were Islamo-fascists. We stayed silent.

Then they told us that not all Muslims were Islamists. We conceded the point.

Now there are no labels with which to stereotype and generalize all Muslims.

I have seen this state of affairs come to pass and I feel bad for my fellow man, who is deprived of access to a word that might allow him to reduce 1.2 billion people to one essential characteristic.

Given that I am already considered by Muslims to be part of the Crusader-Neo-Con-Zionist alliance to undermine, subvert, and sabotage Islam – not to mention seduce-all-Muslim-women-without-marrying-them-four-at-a-time – I thought I would go ahead and offer non-Muslims a little bit of information that will assist them in stereotyping my people.

Here it goes: my friends, most Muslims are Muslamists. It is a fact of which I am only now becoming aware.

Napoleon Bonaparte: Muslim Due to my delay in identifying this malaise, I, humble House Muslim, avid fantasizer about white girls, rabid luster after Jewish approval, secret puppet of the American Enterprise Institute, perennial supporter of Paleo-cons, Neo-cons, Deceptacons, and A-Kon, ask for an apology from all my real and imagined masters: I should have told you about this sooner. If you would be so kind as to re-stamp my "moderate Muslim" card, I will promise to never let myself be so lax in my service.

Having said that, let me blare the alarm loud and forthright. Let us become vigilant. Let us pay attention. Only the fate of a Western civilization (that has been intact for three thousand years) is at stake!

I have found, looking back at my life, that Muslamists are everywhere. They are always slithering around with their slithery little tongues, slithering with slither. Muslims have been Muslamist at parties; Muslamist in thoughts; Muslamist in class-room arguments; and yes, Muslamist during sex.

The Muslamist phenomenon is a difficult one to define but perhaps it can be illustrated through my first open experience with it.

I was a wee child at a desi auntie's party – in Muslamist code you call all marriedGöthe: Muslim women "aunties" and all married men "uncles" – eating a helping of biryani and gosht. A college aged Muslim brother, a dapper pseudo-intellectual (defined as a Muslim who quotes leftist theory in order to support Islamic revolution but hates actual lefties such as feminists, queers and transgendered), was discussing European history with the uncles.

All the uncles were doctors – due to the MD next to their name they were considered by all the fawning riff-raff as the apex of Muslim success – and presumed to have an IQ six to seven hundred points higher than us mortals.

"I believe it was after Napoleon's imperialist and colonialist entry into Egypt in 1798," said the Pseudo-Intellectual, "that the meta-narrative of Western Hegemony truly brought itself to bear against the Placid Palaces of the Islamic Empires of Yesterday!"

With the characteristic nonchalance – as well as characteristic ability to miss the point – of the Muslim doctor-god, one of the uncles with a heavy Arab accent leaned forward and grasped the Pseudo-Intellectual by the collar.

"You aaaaare, ze, tokking abou ze Napoleon?"

The Pseudo-Intellectual replied: "Yes, Napoleon…"

"Bona Party?" yelled out another of the doctor-gods, this one a Bangladeshi Ob-GYNShakespeare: Muslim woman (though I repeat myself). "You arrrre the thaaking about that the Napoleon?" The glee in his eyes far exceeded the glee that shone in them on his wedding night, when he lost his virginity at forty seven years of age after seven fellowships and three residencies.

"Yes uncle!" said the flustered Pseudo-Intellectual. "Napoleon's incursion into Dar-al-Islam! The natural hegemonic culmination of the Enlightenment dialectic! That Napoleon!"

The doctor-gods looked at one another. Silence filled the room. In the living room, the aunties stopped doing their dance of seven veils (which is what all Muslim women do when alone). I stopped chewing and shifted my eyes side to side.

All at once, the doctor-gods of the community leaned forward and like the Athenian chorus, sang out together:

"Did you know Napoleon was a Muslim?!"

That, my friends, is Muslamism in a nutshell. It is the belief, dogmatic and secure, unimpeachable and ideological, that all famous people are all covertly Muslim, that all inventions ever made are due to Muslim ingenuity and that all events in the world somehow connect back to Islam – though most of the time we just don't know how. Like all ideologies, there are moderates and extremists. Moderates tend to only believe in the possibility of a connection to Islam if there is some minuscule amount of evidence offered by the historical figure.

Extremists need no evidence. Their mere assertion – "He was Muslim!" followed by a pronounced nod of the head (up and down for Arabs, side to side for Pakistanis) – is sufficient.

According to Muslamist theory, the great German poet Goethe, despite being a devout Christian, was a Muslim because he appreciated Sufi poets such as Hafiz and Omar Khayyam.

Shakespeare, despite promoting all sorts of vices, was a Muslim – a Sufi woman at that (and no, not a Jewish woman).

Henry VIII, despite being the first Anglican, was Muslim because he had multiple wives.

Dante, despite his hatred of Muhammad, stole his story from Muslim sources.Nietzsche: Muslim atheist

Thomas Aquinas, a Christian saint, was secretly a Muslim because he relied on Averroes' books.

Columbus probably wasn't a Muslim, concede the Muslamists, but he relied on Muslim navigators and captains to find the new world. In Muslamist parlance reliance is a form of constructive belief.

Nietzsche, despite his atheism and hatred of organized religion, was more or less a Muslim too, because he said that Spain's Islamic baths were beautiful and that there was something commendable in the Wahhabi antipathy to alcohol. Muslamism towards Nietzsche is particularly strong, with Allama Muhammad Iqbal, India's foremost Muslim philosopher once declaring that had he been alive before Nietzsche suffered dementia he would have been able to convert Nietzsche to Islam.

Obviously, as already discussed, Napoleon was a Muslim – based on the mere fact that he owned a Quran and that later it was discovered that he had read it.

The Muslamist list of other individuals in history, who no sane person could conclude were Muslim, is long – and sometimes even extends to individuals who preceded Islam.

However, historical Muslamism pales in comparison to its contemporary version, of which Michael Jackson has been the pre-eminent ambassador. Living in Pakistan in the 1980's, I met Extremist Muslamists who were thoroughly convinced that Jackson was a Muslim. Their reasoning was simple:

"All popular American blacks are Muslim! Elijah Muhammad, and Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X! Michael Jackson is black and he is popular, therefore…!"

When recently, Jackson purchased a palace in Bahrain, these same Muslamists cameMichael Jackson: Muslim until he bleached his skin rushing forward with a knowing smile on their face. "The King of Men!" they sang, referring to the Prophet Muhammad. "And now The King of Pop! Islam is truly a perfect religion!" When I pressed these uncles about The King, Elvis, I was summarily dismissed. "He would have been too but he just didn't get a chance to encounter Islam. Our evangelism was weak in the 50's." As of yet, there are no Muslamist theories about King James (but wait till he gets traded to the Brooklyn Nets).

Muslamists aren't completely irrational though. Sometimes they will confer Islam upon an unwitting person only to later strip the individual. Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington falls in this category. When he starred in Spike Lee's film "X", Denzel became a household name among Muslims. To this day, graying Muslim aunties overcome their latent fear of their children's black friends by saying, "well that Denzel is good black man so your friend might be safe to play with too." When as a youth my Sunday school teacher played Spike Lee's film for us in class, one of the Muslamist children next to me leaned in and told me "that the actor converted to Islam after playing a Muslim!"

However, Denzel's adoption by the Muslamists was short-lived. In the late 90's, Denzel starred in the film "The Siege" which most Muslims thought was akin to a cinematic hate-crime.

"He cannot be Muslim!" said Muslamists at the Islamic Center I attended. "No one involved in that film can be Muslim, even that Arab, Shalhoub, cannot be Muslim!" Another Muslamist chimed in. "Did you know that Allah punished the director of that film? He was driving and he hit a stop sign and the pole speared his brain?"

Most recently, Princess Diana and Britney Spears have been the favored Muslims among Muslamists given the former's relationship with Dodi al-Fayed and the latter's tryst with a British-Pakistani paparazzo.

Still, perhaps nothing better reveals the potency of Muslamism than the fact that it has infiltrated the sex life of average Muslim couples. Even Islamo-fascism couldn't pull that off.

I was once at a banquet sitting with some young Muslim males. We were discussingWill Smith: Muslim Scientologist how one distinguishes a Muslim female who just appears engaged – many single Muslim girls tend to wear a ring on their ring finger – from one who is truly engaged. Conversation shifted to "post-marital action." Intoxicated on leechi flavored lassi, the brothers revealed their inner most yearnings. "Is it Islamically permissible to drink your wife's breast milk during the sexual act?" asked one, in preparation for his wife's pregnancy. "No!" came the reply. "If you drink her milk then under Islamic law you are equivalent to her child. Then you will not be able to have sex with your wife because she will be your mother."

"What is the Islamic view on role-playing?" asked another. Immediately the attention shifted to him. However, because role-playing somehow seemed to most of us more taboo than drinking your wife's breast-milk, no one followed up on his inquiry. Later when we were alone, the brother revealed his quandary. He and his wife liked to role-play as various celebrities.

"Don't worry," he assured. "Before we get it on, we role-play my wedding to the celebrity. You know I keep it Islamic! Anyway, all was good when my wife pretending to be other women and I was just myself."

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Well, now she wants me to pretend to be other men! In theory I'm cool with that, but you know Muslim women can't be married to non-Muslim men! How can I give this to my wife? Its not allowed under Islam!"

The answer, of course, lay with Muslamism.

"Why don't you role-play her marrying some celebrity who everyone thinks is a Muslim?"

"Who?"

"You could try Will Smith!" I said. "He played Muhammad Ali in the film Ali. He probably converted at some point. I heard rumors…I mean, his kid is freaking named Jabari…"

The beleaguered husband shook his head for a while. "No, me and Will are not the same body type, you know? My wife likes my body type."

"Tall, dark and skinny?"

"That's it!" he said with a yelp. "I know a celebrity that everyone thinks is a Muslim, which must mean he is a Muslim!"

"Who?" I asked.

"Barack Obama!" said the Muslamist. "You know that brother is a Muslim! I don't know why he fronts with this 'I am a Christian' business!"

It should be apparent to everyone that Muslamism threatens the future of WesternBarack Hussein Obama: Well, duh civilization. If Muslamists can think that real people are Muslim, then what will happen once they start thinking cartoons are Muslim? Unless in an act of collective fiat we become Enlightenment Fundamentalists and declare war on Muslamism we will never be able to rid ourselves of this scourge.

After diagnosing the problem, it bears asking how Muslamism can be defeated. Obviously, the first step is for some illiberal Guardian of the West – with a menacing beard reminiscent of Leonidas to give him gravitas – must launch a website.

MuslamistWatch.org, should be set up immediately; on it, the latent traces of Muslamism in society must be identified and collected. Once it establishes a regular readership of five to six thousand people we will be ready for the next step.

Then the intellectual attack will commence. The most feasible counter-Muslamism strategy is to reveal it to emanate from non-Muslim sources. That would attack the Islamocentrism that lies at the heart of Muslamism.

Thankfully, there are many examples of religious self-obsession that precede Islam, the most potent of which is Hinduism. Indian uncles are notorious for claiming that Islam's Ka'ba is really a Hindu shrine, that Muhammad is a character from the Gita, that the West got sexual positions from the Kama Sutra, that Hegel stole his philosophy from the Vedas and that Hindus invented math because they were the first to come up with numbers.
If Muslims can be shown that Muslamism is just a re-creation of Hindu egoism, then over time Muslamism may lose its draw.

Then, happy, shining, liberated Muslim youth can usher in the Islamic Reformation cum Enlightenment cum Counter Reformation cum Sexual Revolution cum Chevy Revolution that will save the world.

Somewhat based on partly true events.

In Chris Hedges' New York Times bestselling, Oprah-endorsed book American Fascists, Hedges repeatedly uses the term 'Christo-fascism'.

Hedges essentially equates fundamentalist Christians in the deep South with Nazis and Japanese fascists. I have no love for Evangelicals -- especially given my time among them -- but it's obvious that Hedges has not read any Yukio Mishima. Fascism was directly connected with racial purity and physical prowess. Christian fundamentalism is not. If it's not okay to use the term 'Islamo-fascist' because Islamists aren't corporatists, then it's not okay to use 'Christo-fascist' because fundamentalist Christians aren't concerned with biology.

It's sad that men like Rove and Bush, who cared nothing for Evangelicals, have givenShould read "No to 'Bush Christian Fascists'" Evangelicals such a bad rap that you can now reach bestseller status by calling them names. But 'Fascism' is a term with a particular meaning and reference, and shouldn't be inflated to include just any extremist movement.

It certainly shouldn't be inflated to include a movement that is not universally malign. There are some great Evangelicals like Jim Wallis, and even Mike Huckabee is intellectually honest (as per his appearance on the Tyra Banks show). During the Pastor Wright flap, Huckabee said that it was unfair to read too much into Obama's connection with Wright. That doesn't sound like the making of totalitarianism.

Those who (like me) oppose using the term 'Islamo-fascist' and opposed "Islamo-fascism Awareness Week" ought to have the intellectual consistency not to use 'Christo-fascist'. (Encouragingly, another Muslim writer, Shadi Hamid of the Project for Middle East Democracy, agrees.)

The case is different with the terms 'Islamist' and 'Christianist', frequently used in in political parlance as synonyms for 'Islamo-fascist' and 'Christo-fascist'. That conflation is mistaken. Islamism is political Islam of the non-violent variety, i.e the sustained political program by conservative Muslims to acquire --- not impose --- theocratic rule within their nation-state.

It is unhelpful, even from a pragmatic perspective, to collapse 'jihadism' (which refers to a violent movement) and 'Islamism'. The reason is that equating Islamism with violence ruins the opportunity to encourage post-Islamist groups -- who are roughly akin to Germany's Christian Democratic Party and represent a case of Islamism defeating itself using self-evaluation. On the same grounds, if Hedges had been more careful with his language, he would have used the term 'Christianism' to apply to the Evangelicals in his book, since by his analysis, they too are seeking to acquire --- not impose --- theocratic rule using non-violent means.

Farris Hassan, the young Iraqi-American from Florida who left home and snuck into the AP offices in Iraq in 2005, engaged in another interesting "immersion" project after returning.

At the height of the Israel-Hezbollah War, he went to Dearborn, Michigan, which has a large Arab community, wore a Star of David, and pretended to be a Jew named Jacob Malachi. He writes:

I traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, home of the largest concentration of Muslims in North America, and spent more than two weeks researching anti-Semitism in the American Muslim community. This issue affects me personally because although my parents are Muslim, the majority of my prep school and nearly all of my friends are Jewish. Having previously researched Muslims as a fellow member of their community, in Dearborn I wished to go further.

To that end, I immersed myself with the Muslims as Mr. JacobFarris Hassan Malachi, a Jew who wore a Star of David necklace but had an open mind and was trying to gain a greater understanding of the Muslim community. In irony, I was not the Jew investigating the Muslim community's hatred of his people, but rather I was the Muslim literally putting himself in the skin of a Jew in order to directly feel the hate in his own community. My research was especially provocative because at the time Israel was waging war in Lebanon and the world Muslim population was more feverishly incited than ever.

The story was about relationships: between religions, between nations, between local communities, and between individuals. I did not try to rile up my subjects by zealously attacking all things Muslim; rather I closely examined the effects of my efforts to build friendships with them from the position of being a member of their much touted arch nemesis – the Jews. I wondered whether they would receive me with grace in light of my curious and tolerant disposition or attack me in light of my Jewish identity.

I interviewed the religious leaders of two mosques and attended three Friday prayer services and two memorials for victims of Israel's war in Lebanon. I met with patrons of the Bint Jbeil (Hezbollah's capital) Club and journalists of the Arab American Newspaper. I rubbed shoulders with hundreds of angry Muslims at a peace rally in Detroit and thousands outside the White House, where I heard, unfortunately not for the first time, the chant "La illaha ilallah, Hezbollah! Hezbollah!"

Through this journey I discovered that American Muslims, with an emphasis on American, make a surprisingly strong distinction between Jews and Zionists. Walking amongst them in the streets, restaurants, and mosques while displaying a Star of David necklace and my school's Jewish Club t-shirt, I had expected to get beaten up within days. Instead, I was met with a curious hospitality. I found that Muslim anger draws not from a religious or cultural conflict, but almost solely from the political quagmire of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Certainly no clash of civilizations is tearing the world asunder. To the contrary, Muslims told me they felt a closer kinship with the religious culture of Judaism than of Christianity.

Still, ugly ideas reached me. I discovered once again that many Muslims hold elaborate conspiracy theories about Jews, which seemed to be instilled by the political context of their upbringing. The following misconceptions were conveyed to me: Israel is eradicating Lebanese civilians so that they can clear "open livingspace" for Zionists to settle; the beheadings, assassinations, suicide bombings, and other terrorist acts occurring in Iraq and across the Middle East are often orchestrated by Mossad agents in order to suppress and vilify the Muslim people; and under Zionist influence, President Bush is waging not a war on terrorism, but a war on Islam.

I tried to mitigate their paranoia and conspiracy theories by presenting myself as a Jew speaking on behalf of the peaceful and wholesome aspirations held by most of his people. At the beginning they were mostly suspicious and cynical, but after meeting a Jew who defied all stereotypes and advocated peace, love, and unity, their animosity subsided. By the end, they embraced me as one of their own. That accomplishment, of making a positive difference in the minds of others, by itself made my trip worthwhile.

When Hassan first traveled to Iraq, a number of right-wing websites, including Newsbusters (the right's version of Media Matters), suggested that Hassan must have been a closet jihadist looking to foment jihad. Never mind his declared allegiances and obvious decency, look at his name. His website, with archived writings, is here.