Up until recently ( play or download mp3), Deborah Rodriguez has been congratulated as a conscientious activist for social change in Afghanistan. Her work in putting together a beauty school in Kabul where, up until a few years ago, the Taliban would publicly beat women for putting on makeup is just the sort of heartwarming story that Hollywood and American book publishers love.
In fact, they loved her story so much that Random House gave her an $80,000 advance for the book and there's a movie deal in the works.
And the plucky budding Afghan beauticians?
They get nothing. They get worse than nothing. Apparently, they claim that Rodriguez promised she would not publish photos of them because they live in a violent repressive society (remember how Islam is a religion of peace?) and they feared their lives would be in danger if it ever became public knowledge that they are running a beauty school. Sure enough, those photos did appear in the book—the book that has earned the Afghan women nothing—and they do now fear for their lives. And where's that warm-hearted made-for-Hollywood heroine from Michigan amidst all this? Long gone. She left Afghanistan last month. But she hasn't fully abandoned her friends:
Rodriguez says that she knows the women are angry and terrified—but that they should realize that things take time. She also claims the girls misunderstood what she promised them.
That's right, ladies . . . I mean girls, I know you're afraid because I knowingly endangered your lives after I promised I wouldn't, but you have to realize: they were giving me a lot of money! Surely you see that, right? And it's not like I've completely forgotten about you: I'm working really hard to get you out this mess, but these things take time. And of course I want to share some of my newfound good fortune with you:
She says she plans to give the girls a small part of the royalties from the book, along with 5 percent of her earnings from the movie Sony Pictures is planning.
This story about prison programs that are clearly (if not explicitly) designed to indoctrinate and convert inmates who - as the headline astutely points out - are a "captive audience" sickens me. If you want to know how Americans should be reacting to this, just try this simple mental exercise. Read the article and make a few replacements:
Replace "Christian" with "Muslim."
Replace "Christianity" with "Islam."
Replace "Christ" or "Jesus" with "Allah."
Now, tell me how the average American would react to such news. Imagine the outcry against the politicians who are lining up to support the current program if they supported the one in our mental exercise. That reaction (focus on it again) should be exactly the same as the reaction to the actual content of the article. Is it?
Yesterday I was talking to an old friend - a thoughtful, intelligent, well-educated, successful, and religious man. I told him that I was concerned that my sister was growing up in an environment that was leading her to believe in a religious account of life and to reject evolution. Since, like my sister, he is also a Muslim, I asked him about his own stance on evolution. His response was interesting - if not disheartening. He said that it wasn't an issue he thought about much, but he accepted the general Islamic account that rejects evolution. We talked about it briefly, but it was clear that we weren't going to get anywhere. The interesting part, however, was his claim that those who argue for evolution are just as "fundamentalist" as those they claim to reject.
This claim underscores the very real danger of breaking every issue down into a dichotomy. It is similar to the "intelligent design" tactic of "teaching the controversy." And luckily, on this small point, I managed to convince my friend that passion does not equal fundamentalism. I tend to argue by example - and here is the example I drew: suppose two people are arguing. One of them believes that (1 + 1 = 10) whereas the other believes that (1 + 1 = 2). Even if we suppose that both of them are arguing just as loudly, the fact is that only one point of view is defensible. The sheer volume of the right arguer does not make him a fundamentalist. And one can only hope that there is no "controversy" to teach in this case.
The underlying assumption of my analogy was that the defender of (1 + 1 = 2) had arrived at his conclusion by reason. So if circumstances had been different - suppose they had been talking about a binary numeral system - he would have been perfectly willing to accept that in such a system (1 + 1) does indeed equal 10. In other words, when he is confronted with a good reason to change his views, he will. The fundamentalist, on the other hand, is committed to his belief regardless of evidence. By a funny coincidence, I happened to read Richard Dawkins' take on being called a fundamentalist because of his passionate defense of evolution today. (This is my second Dawkins link this week. Go figure.)
Scott Adams argues that atheism is becoming more acceptable to the American public, but I think he's misreading the significance of a few bestselling books.
I think the hidden benefit of Islamic extremism is that it freed the atheists from their closets. The old mindset in the United States was that almost any religion was good, and atheism was bad. But since 9/11, atheism has moved above Islam in the rankings, at least in the minds of Christians and Jews in the United States.
(Scott Adams - The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays)
I think if there has been a trend, it has been one of polarization. The religious in this country (and others) have become a much more concerted voice than they used to be. To a much lesser extent, atheists, too, have been asserting themselves in public discourse. This isn't one of those cases - like general politics - where I can claim to be a centrist. "Faith" is ruining the modern world. Perhaps it has always existed, but why should it always have to?
How nominally strict laws cause very real suffering
Many laws are "on the books" even though they are known to be effectively unenforceable. The Texas sodomy laws were a perfect example of this phenomenon until they were struck down (PDF) by the Supreme Court. These laws often remain in effect for generations, unnoticed until they are enacted by sheer dumb luck. In most countries with a Muslim majority where apostasy laws exist, the laws are often in existence to meet with what is perceived to be adherence to strict Islamic law. However, most people do not have direct experience with the application of these often-harsh laws, nor do they expect to: when everyone you know is a Muslim, how often does apostasy occur?
Regardless of their inherent unfairness, which should be taken for granted, if apostasy laws are just posturing, where does the problem arise? In most cases, like in Abdul Rahman's case, these laws are enacted only after third parties with ulterior motives seek their application. Abdul Rahman's family reported him to the authorities years after his conversion, only when he sought custody of his children. In effect, the apostasy laws created a "nuclear option" that any aggrieved party could turn against a convert with no fear of comparable retaliation.
Conversion and Apostasy
Judaism, Christianity and Islam treat conversion and apostasy quite differently. And while making broad generalizations like this might be somewhat rash, the demographic trends in these three religions corresponds neatly with each one's treatment of converts and apostates.
Despite practicing the oldest of these three religions (by far), Jews are exponentially outnumbered by Christians and Muslims. The main reason for this is the active avoidance of proselytism and the extreme ease of apostasy. Compounding the problem, it is very difficult to convert to Judaism: the requirements are both intellectually rigorous, and (for men) circumcision as an adult is physically daunting.
Because of a six-century head start, Christianity is the most widely practiced of these three religions. However, its rate of growth is slower than Islam's. While it is easy to become a Christian, it is equally easy to leave Christianity. It wasn't always so easy.
Even though its adherents are not as populous as Christianity's, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. It is both easy to convert to Islam and difficult to leave.
Tom Standage, who is the technology editor for the Economist, has written a holiday op-ed contribution in the New York Times today. He writes that elitism in wine drinking has a long history, but that we should largely ignore the ratings and just drink what we enjoy. That's fine. And then we find this paragraph:
The close association between wine and sophistication in the ancient world contributed to its rejection by Muslims. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Mohammed's followers expressed their disdain for the previous ruling elites by replacing wheeled vehicles with camels, chairs and tables with cushions and by banning the consumption of wine. Being devout, they signaled, was more important than seeming sophisticated.
This is the first time I've heard this interpretation of Islam's prohibition on alcohol. As far as I can tell, it's entirely wrong. In fact, the injunction against alcohol is one of the best attested traditions in Islam and it can be directly linked to the Qur'an. The rest of the paragraph is inaccurate, too. Wheeled carts had been replaced long before the rise of Islam for economic reasons, and not class warfare. I'm not sure where Mr. Standage came to have this interpretation, but as the technology editor of a widely respected journal, I would expect him to understand the overwhelming technological benefit of using the camel in the Arabian climate. I don't know the social history of early Islam well enough to comment on his claim about the use of cushions instead of tables and chairs, but again, I would suggest that he is probably wrong and the lack of furniture may have more to do with the dearth of wood in the Arabian peninsula than it does with rejection of the imperial elites.
Since I found out about it, I have been duly disgusted by the "Conservative Punk" website, not because I don't like conservatives, though I tend to reject a lot of what they stand for, and not because I don't like punks, though I can't help but recoil in embarrassment at my own punk rock youth. Rather, the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" conceit is a powerful deterrent, and here is that motif played out as fully as anywhere. I am not a big fan of contradictions, and "conservative punk" sounds more like a bad joke than a real movement. Anyway, there is a funny segment of that site endorsing a boycott of Chinese goods:
While some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods.
So, basically, it's wrong to punish workers because "the suits" might have politics we don't like, but it's perfectly fine to punish the Chinese because their "suits" have politics we don't like. Good call. What was it I was saying about contradictions, earlier?
The punks go on to point out several reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods. Some of them are indeed valid, but the very first one is:
China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?
In effect, aren't you tired of allowing the Chinese to compete with us fairly? Wouldn't you prefer to tip the scale back in our favor? I guess they take the punk D.I.Y. ethic so seriously that they demand we "do it ourselves."
Heir Apparent apparently errs:
I'm a little mystified by this report that Prince Charles plans to "explain the virtues of Islam" to President Bush. Apparently, he believes that the US has been too confrontational against Islam (as a religion, I take it). Believe me, I have plenty of objections to the Bush administration, and I have often complained about them here. But I do not think Bush has misrepresented Islam as a religion, and I can think of many occasions where he has made it a point to stress that our enemy is not Islam or Muslims. Frankly, I think too often our liberal (and honorable) tendency to try not to offend the sensibilities of others leads us to absurd situations where we are paralyzed to speak the truth. One group I particularly admire for taking a hard line against Islamist terrorism are the Free Muslims. Perhaps if Prince Charles advocated a line more akin to the Free Muslims (which British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now beginning to do) than an unconditional appeal to multiculturalism and acceptance, then Britain might be a less hospitable place for radical clerics who want to destroy the open governments that allow them to preach in the first place.
Sort of related to terrorism, I guess:
My friend Brandon asked to see the code for the terror alert function, so I thought others might be interested as well. Here it is:
function getTerrorAlert() 'Version 1.1
'*********************************************************************
'Do not modify the variables unless you know what you're doing. *
'(1) intTimeout is fair game, change it to whatever timeout length *
'you like, but don't exceed Server.ScriptTimeout. *
'(2) strErrorResponse is self-explanatory. *
' *
'Version 1.0: Got the alert *
'Version 1.1: Includes a timeout value. *
'Future versions aren't planned unless something is wrong with this. *
' *
'Afshin Darian - http://eighties-night.com/ *
' *
'AS USUAL, THIS IS UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. CHECK MY SITE *
'FOR THE LINK TO THE MOST CURRENT VERSION OF THE LICENSE. *
'*********************************************************************
dim intTimeout : intTimeout = 10 'in seconds
dim strErrorResponse : strErrorResponse = "couldn't contact dhs"
'*********************************************************************
dim strTemp, xml, xmlhttp, timeStart, timeCurrent, LOADED, strURL
strTemp = ""
LOADED = 4 'This is the readyState value when xmlhttp has loaded
strURL = "http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition"
set xmlhttp = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
set xml = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xml.async = false
call xmlhttp.open("GET", strURL, false)
call xmlhttp.send()
timeStart = now
do
timeCurrent = now
intTimeTaken = cint(datediff("s", timeStart, timeCurrent))
if (intTimeTaken > intTimeout) then
strTemp = strErrorResponse
call xmlhttp.abort()
exit do
end if
loop while xmlhttp.readyState <> LOADED
if (xmlhttp.readyState = LOADED) then
call xml.loadxml(xmlhttp.responsetext)
strTemp = xml.selectsinglenode("/THREAT_ADVISORY").getAttribute("CONDITION")
end if
set xmlhttp = nothing
set xml = nothing
getTerrorAlert = strTemp
end function
