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), Eskander Sadeghi (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.