I tip my hat to those who dare to speak out against tyranny, oppression, and stupidity.

The Big Pharaoh reports and comments on the controversial remarks made about the veil by Egypt’s culture minister:

The uproar that followed the culture minister’s comments on the hair cover summarizes everything wrong with the current version of Islam being practiced today. Unreformed religious leaders, currently maintaining a monopoly over the Islamic discourse, attacked Farouk Hosni as if he blasphemed the Prophet himself. And when people who follow a certain religion get all excited over a piece of cloth that they say should be on a girl’s head then you know something is definitely wrong with how this religion is interpreted and preached, and that it’s in dire need of reform.

First, it is important to note something. If you are living in the West, you probably have heard all sorts of explanations and justifications from hijab advocates as to why Muslim women are required to wear it. The most cited justification is modesty. Muslim women (god, why does it always have to be women!) are required to be modest in their dress and not reveal too much flesh. Now that’s an absurd excuse because you can dress modestly without essentially covering your hair.

The other justification that really blows my brain off is this: the hijab protects women against evil things such as rape. This argument is even more absurd since a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan and the gangs who harassed women in downtown*** Cairo did not differentiate between the covered and the uncovered. …
Proving that God is not stupid will only be realized once Islam meets reformation, when Muslim scholars and thinkers decide the time is ripe to dig into their holy and history books and come up with a version of the religion that is compatible with the age of space tourism and genetic engineering. Judaism, an Abrahamic faith that is close to Islam, had done it. +++ Why can’t Islam?

Read the whole thing.

——-

***BP is referring to a horrifying incident of “wilding” (mass sexual harassment of women in public on the streets) that occurred in downtown Cairo some weeks ago.

+++In fact, Judaism has its own fundamentalists (of varying degrees), and its own probems with its fundamentalists both in Israel and in the Diaspora.

Not that there’s anything right about this.

He’s now telling David Letterman that he was heckled onstage and he “lost his temper.” He “went into a rage.” He’s “busted up over this.” He’s “very sorry” and admits to “hate” and “rage” and is concerned about more “hate and rage and anger.”

Stage rage. That’s a new one.

I’m sick to my stomach.

I’ve been reading Fouad Ajami’s The Foreigner’s Gift. I was struck by how simply he expressed a reality that no one writes about:

It was not an isolated band of misguided young men who came America’s way on 9/11. They emerged out of the Arab world’s dominant culture and malignancies. There were the financiers who subsidized the terrorism. There were the intellectuals who winked at the terrorism and justified it. There were the preachers — from Arabia to Amsterdam and Finsbury Park — who gave it religious sanction and cover. And there were the Arab rulers whose authoritarian orders produced the terrorism and who looked away from it so long as it targeted foreign shores.

The “Arab world’s dominant culture and malignancies” that Ajami references were summed up by Fahed al-Fanek, writing in Al-Ra’i [partially state-owned, pro-government, in Amman, Jordan], who summed up the first (UN-sponsored) Arab Human Development report in 2002 [emphasis mine]:

The team [UN director of the Arab regional office Rima Khalaf] chose and led [to created the report] was 100-percent Arab in order to avoid accusations of bias against the Arabs or of focusing on negative points in an attempt to distort the image of the Arabs in the world, according to the conspiracy theory.

But, despite that, the report was a bombshell nonetheless, though the only thing that would surprise those who are familiar with the situation in the Arab world is its nondiplomatic language and criticism, and naming of the faults. Arab societies are paralyzed because of the absence of political freedoms, the persecution of women, and isolation from the world and new ideas.

…

The Arab development report hangs out the Arabs’ dirty washing before the world and offers a wealth of information that mars the image of the Arabs in the world, but unfortunately the information is correct. Perhaps the most Arab regimes will do after reading it is to pressure Kofi Annan to move Rima Khalaf and ask her to pack her bags and return to her home in Amman.

Well, the heroic and unsung Dr. Khalaf hung on till early 2006, but the intractable problems of the Arab world remain, it seems, intractable. Certainly, no one discusses them. At least not that I’m aware of.

And it’s because of incidents like the one described by Sir Harry Evans in “Narcissism on Stilts.”

Something … happened at this year’s Hay-on-Wye festival, sponsored by the Guardian, where a five-person panel discussed “Are there are any limits to free speech?” One of the Muslim panelists said if anyone offended his religion, he would strike him. A lawyer, Anthony Julius, responded that Jews had lived as minorities under two powerful hegemonies, Christian and Muslim, and had been obliged to learn how to deal nonviolently with offense caused to them by the sacred scriptures of both. He started by referring to an anti-Semitic passage in the New Testament — which passed without comment. But when he began to list the passages in the Koran that denigrate Jews, describing them as monkeys and pigs, the panelists went ballistic. One of them, Madeline Bunting of the Guardian, put her hand over the microphone and said words to the effect, “I am not going to sit here and listen to any criticisms of Muslims.” She was cheered, and not one of the journalists in the audience from right or left uttered a word about free speech — not hate speech, mind you, but free speech of a moderate nature.

I tip my hat to Sir Harry, whom I’ve written about before, for his ringing defense of freedom of speech. I wish his op-ed had appeared in the NYT or the WaPo.

Hamas’s hammer, Khaled Meshaal, says that the West will have no choice but to accept its unity government and to lift its siege of the terrorist “government” of the Palestinians:

“This is an opportunity for the international community to correct its mistake. Some of its members did not respect the will of the Palestinian electorate. They now have to learn and respect Palestinian consensus,” Meshaal said.

“The atmosphere with Fatah is positive. We want to tell the world we form one Palestinian line and the siege has to be lifted. The international community has no option but to respect Palestinian will,” Meshaal said after a late night meeting with Ahmad Qurei, a high level Fatah member.

Well, there are a couple problems here that I can see. First off, the internal drama among the Palestinians continues: there is no unity government between Hamas and Fatah. Meetings for today were called off, in fact.

Then there’s the sticky issue of Hamas refusing to recognize Israel, which Reuters, true to form, lies through its teeth about, putting the onus on Israel for Hamas’s failure to recognize its legitimacy and existence:

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and end its armed struggle, saying such moves would be futile so long as Israel shows no sign of relinquishing all occupied land and keeps expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

By its charter, Hamas is sworn to the destruction of Israel.

Charlie Rangel misses sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, the civil rights movement, and…the draft:

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said.

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, has said the all-volunteer military disproportionately puts the burden of war on minorities and lower-income families.

Please. The Democrats are making fools of themselves.

We may yet end up with a draft—I don’t discount it, and it sends a chill up my spine to think that we might actually end up in a war that requires it—but this is so transparently political. And so ill-timed.

The pseudonymous Spengler at the Asia Times has been counseling for years now—most recently here—the United States needs to embrace chaos, because that’s what’s on the horizon geopolitically.

It is embarrassing to read the musings of American strategists about their supposed options in Iraq. In an October 20 essay in the Wall Street Journal, Professor Eliot Cohen listed as candidates for “Plan B” the following: (1) ask Iran and Syria to help, (2) withdraw, (3) send in more US troops, (4) let the civil war proceed with US troops sheltered in secure bases, (5) put a military strongman in charge, and (6) partition the country. “All of the options for Plan B are either wretched to contemplate or based on fantasy,” concluded Cohen.

In fact, there is another option, namely to stop treating the conflict as an Iraqi matter and extending it to the whole region, first of all by attacking Iranian nuclear installations, and second by destabilizing Iran. Regime change as such may be a fantasy, but keeping the Iranians busy with problems inside their own borders is not. Widening the conflict is just what the US could not do in Vietnam without risking war with Russia or China.

Syria, Iran’s main ally in the region, would be caught up in the whirlwind. …

US policymakers, I wrote this March, “are deep in denial, or, as the case may be, deep in the Tigris. Like or not, the US will get chaos, and cannot do anything to forestall it. My advice to President George W Bush: When chaos is inevitable, learn to enjoy it. Take a weekend at Camp David with a case of Jack Daniel’s and Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.”

Now, establishing his regional bona fides, Ahmadinejad has called the Iraqi and Syrian leaders to Tehran for a pow-wow.

Wretchard (in the comments of this post) is all doom and gloom:

The US voter may be sick of bailing out the Iraqis, but the war was only partly about them. It was about helping Iraqis to be sure, but the war in Iraq also involved protecting US national interests, though President Bush put it so poorly that often the point was forgotten. Many voters may have honestly thought it was all about whether or not to support the “purple fingered Iraqis” and as Cedarford said, they had enough. However, Teheran and Damascus will soon remind everyone just what it was all about. And then the public will come to realize the part the Liberals left out. In throwing out the purple fingers they were throwing out other important stuff too. And now we start seeing just what else got thrown out with them.

Segolene Royale just told Tony Blair to leave America or to leave Europe. And for the first time I think many Brits might say, “choose Europe”. The “superpower’s” check just bounced, even though there are funds in the bank, because the capital of will has dried up. However powerful America as a nation is, if the will of its political leadership is gone, like the Third Republic, then nothing matters.

I wrote after the election that we would see a rout; that things would get far worse before they got better. The pain has not even begun, nor will it begin to cease until both parties decide something is worth defending and convey that message to the enemy. But that day, alas, is far.

I wish I could be more encouraging. But one known way out of a problem you can’t solve is to expand the problem: make it bigger. This man has provided the opportunity:

But we will see much blood and many more tears before it’s over.

A few years ago, my dad joked (sadly) that the New York Times had become like Pravda: you had to read between the lines to get it. It’s not only the Times, though. I don’t know any MSM news outlet that covered the detailed speech General Abizaid gave after he testified before Congress last week. (That appearance was the main event covered by the MSM, because it offered the newly triumphant Dems an opportunity to question the war in Iraq—they didn’t get what they wanted, though.)

According to the brilliant Walid Phares in “Listen Carefully to General Abizaid,” it’s not just the American people who don’t get it; even the well-informed members of Congress are ill-informed. They just don’t get it.

Indeed, the ultimate objective in this war (at least the counter-terrorist part of it) is to help the Iraqis help themselves. Surely with half a million boots on the ground you can saturate the whole country, but from what? There is no standing army the U.S. is fighting against.

The fight is against a factory that is producing Jihadists, both external and internal. The answer is to build the counter-factory: i.e. an Iraqi military and intelligence force. And to do so, you have to allow it to fight the battle, with all the sacrifices and setbacks that come with it. U.S. forces cannot keep fighting instead of the Iraqis, and win the war for them.

Aware of this reality, General Abizaid (along with his colleagues) was trying to explain to Congress that – in the historical context of it – the war against terrorism in Iraq is one of the centers of the global conflict. …

How can we accomplish this? We must train more Iraqi soldiers. Even more important, we must build the morale and political will of the Iraqi people to join “our” (i.e., Iraq’s) side, not the side of jihad and totalitarian control of Mesopotamia. How do we do that?

If Iraqi citizens “see” their army engaging the terrorists and winning, the tide will turn. It is not about how many new troops or about the statistics of death. It is between al Jazeera convincing Iraqis that the U.S. is defeated and that former Secretary of State Jim Baker (co-chair of the Iraq Study Group) is supposedly negotiating the terms of the surrender, and between al Hurra TV showing Iraqi commanders fraternizing with Shia and Sunni villagers after encounters with terrorists and sectarian militias. It boils down to this: who would the Iraqis send their sons to fight with: The Jihadists of all types or the multiethnic Army?

Phares is brilliant, but he misses one point: people who long for freedom don’t need to be encouraged to fight for it. Indeed, it’s hard to contain them.

I fear there aren’t enough freedom-loving and -demanding people left in Iraq to tip the balance. As Wieseltier said, the Iraqis seem to have rejected the “Foreigner’s Gift.”
 

Let’s be generous and say that ten years down the road, someone somewhere will want to write something about Tom Cruise. In that unlikely event, I’m linking to the definitive, concise tale of the recent downfall and hopeful comeback of the Toothy One—the story of the “never-ending kiss“:

“I can’t be cool. I can’t be laid-back,” a starry-eyed Cruise said on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” “Something happened and I want to celebrate it.”

Many were skeptical of the over-the-top emotion, suspicious that it was an act to help publicize each star’s then-current movies: “War of the Worlds” and “Batman Returns.” But those critics were temporarily silenced when, in June 2005, the couple became engaged at Paris’ Eiffel Tower happily posing for photographers and reporters immediately afterward.

The relationship, People magazine deputy editor Larry Hackett remarked at the time, “was presented fully baked for public consumption.”

In stark contrast, the couple did not provide the public a peek of Suri until 4 1/2 months after her April 18 birth, leading to fevered speculation that she didn’t even exist. The couple finally unveiled her, true to megastar form, on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Many celebrities attended the Cruise-Holmes nuptials, but the most symbolic attendee was Brooke Shields. Cruise had very publicly criticized Shields for taking antidepressants after the birth of her first daughter; he apologized to her in person a few months ago.

The actor’s perspective on antidepressants echoes that of Scientology, and Cruise became more vocal about his religion after firing longtime publicist Pat Kingsley. Cruise’s sister, Lee Anne DeVette, took over as his publicist in March 2004, but was replaced last November after Cruise’s image seemed in decline.

After describing the birth of the couple’s daughter, Suri, the author goes on to mention Mr. Cruise being cut off from Paramount by Sumner Redstone, which was followed soon after by the lavish unveiling of Suri, whom Cruise had kept mysteriously hidden away until she was ready for her close-up on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Soon thereafter, a business deal for Mr. Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, was announced in Hollywood (not mentioned for some reason in what I’ve otherwise called The Definitive Short History of the Recent Adventures of No Longer Top Gun Tom Cruise).

Finally, we get to the climax:

The public, of course, loves a big movie-star marriage. But will the castle ceremony help Cruise and Holmes restore a measure of normalcy to their relationship, or serve as yet another unique spectacle?

Stay tuned. But don’t hold your breath.

With neither star expected back on the big screen soon (Cruise is slated to begin shooting “Lions for Lambs” with Robert Redford in January; Holmes has nothing planned) it will be a while before the box office provides an answer.

That’s a lot of time and expense and PRopaganda (TM) production value that Mr. Cruise has put into a devastating loss of credibility among his peers and, more important, a fading career at the box office. If he proves unable to maintain his stardom, though, it won’t be for lack of trying.

It is kind of amazing to see the lengths he and his celebrity peers are willing to go to in order to retain their faded glory. Haven’t they heard? Hollywood is in eclipse.

Oakland mayor (and former California governer) Jerry Brown is appalled by the San Francisco school board’s having voted down the JROTC program, which I mentioned here:

Here’s Brown’s reason [emphasis mine]:

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, a JROTC alum, was appalled at the board’s decision. As Brown told me, “The notion of the new left is decentralization. It’s choice. It’s respect for difference. It’s diversity. All four of those principles were fundamentally violated by the school board.”

And: “I oppose the war in Iraq, too, but that has nothing to do with the value of ROTC and the right of people to choose that.”

I’m on board. Where do I sign up for this “new left”?

Secret ballot? What secret ballot?

Inside the room where the election [for Majority Leader] was being held, there were boxes for members to drop their secret ballots. Pelosi and her crew watched as people voted. Some members actually brought fellow lawmakers with them when they marked their ballots so they could prove to Pelosi that they did vote for Murtha. And because the Murtha vote ended up being so small, the Pelosi forces can count almost down to the last ballot who voted for Murtha and who for Hoyer.

(via Mickey Kaus)