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Courtesy of the NYT - A peek into Pakistan's politics of extremism
Despite what Pakistani politicians might say, extremism isn't all cut and dried in a hugely diverse (and equally stratified) country of 170-odd million people. This article by Sabrina Tavernise in the NYT lays it out nicely.
In a country where whisky-happy politicians ban alcohol and bribe-taking lawyers confront military dictators, pretty much everything comes down to politics.
"The university's plight encapsulates Pakistan's predicament: an intolerant, aggressive minority terrorizes a more open-minded, peaceful majority, while an opportunistic political class dithers, benefiting from alliances with the aggressors."
Well worth a read.
As usual, the New York Times
As usual, the New York Times refuses to look at the history of Jamaat - and for that, you need to pick up Steve Coll's Ghost Wars:
"By late 1979 the student wing of a conservative Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami (the Islamic Group, or alternatively the Islamic Society) had taken control of Quaid-I-Azam's student union. The Jamaat student activists, while a minority, intimidated secular-minded professors and students, and shamed women who adopted Western styles or declined to wear the veil. Like their elder political leaders, Jamaat students campaigned for a moral transformation of Pakistani society through the application of Islamic law. Their announced aim was a pure Islamic government in Pakistan... Despite its leaders' call to arms, Jamaat had mainly languished on the fringes of Pakistani politics and society, unable to attract many votes..."
So, how did Jamaat become more influential in Pakistan? Via the petrodollar money train that fueled the Saudis and Osama bin Laden, spurred on by the billions the CIA funneled into the region under the guidance of Casey and Bearden:
"Because it had long cultivated ties to informal Islamic networks in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, Jamaat-e-Islam found itself afloat during the 1970s on a swelling tide of what the French scholar Gilles Kepel would later term "petro dollar Islam," a vast infusion of proselytizing wealth from Saudi Arabia..."
Yup, here we have the "special Saudi-American relationship" - about as shady as the "special Israeli-American relationship" although I'm sure that the "who's shadier" discussion would be very lively... not that you'll see that discussion on a NYT op-ed page, ha ha ha.
"The Saudi clergy followed an unusual, puritanical doctrine of Islam often referred to as "Wahhabism" after its founder, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, an eighteenth century desert preacher who regarded all forms of adornment and modernity as blasphemous. Wahhabism's insistent severity stood in opposition to many of the artistic and cultural traditions of past Islamic civilizations. But it was a determined faith, and now overnight and extraordinary wealthy one."
There are Jewish and Catholic and Protestant versions of Wahhabism as well - Opus Dei, Likud, Southern Baptists - all characterized by a focus on political control of their respective societies. These religious maniacs are natural allies of one another - which explains why some elements of the U.S. government are so willing to get in bet with the fundamentalist freak show - they all hate Constitutional Law. They'd rather have some autocratic version of Sharia Law, Judaic Law, Natural Law, Biblical Law - and why?
Simple: they all hate the notion of democratic rule in an open society that tolerates all religious faiths (at least the ones that agree to tolerate others). They'd rather have religious police on hand to crush any dissent, than to be forced to defend themselves in an open debate.
All autocratic anti-democratic movements have this in common: they rigidly enforce a single set of beliefs - be it Marxist communism, Wahhabism, free-market capitalism, or whatever.
I've just discovered why the
I've just discovered why the Salesman is soooo annoyingggg...
A Plague O' "A" Students...
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/plague-%E2%80%98a%E2%80%99-students
"The Tea Parties and Middle Class's plight encapsulates America's predicament: an intolerant, aggressive minority harasses a more open-minded, peaceful majority, while an opportunistic political class dithers, benefiting from alliances with a predatory financial class" ....
Now don't worry Londonstani. One day soon we'll leave, and all can kill each other in peace. Until China does something.
PJ Rourke - another moron in
PJ Rourke - another moron in a fancy suit. Here's what he had to say about the root causes of the Iraq war, 2003:
Flying back from the firing range, I had a moment of clarity about one of the supposed underlying causes of the conflict in Iraq. The Kuwaiti desert is as flat as a patio and as big as Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. The entire space appeared to be covered with tanks, artillery pieces, Bradley fighting vehicles, Humvees, transport trucks, and Patriot missile batteries. Streaks of asphalt runway ran in all directions. The tarmac held fighter planes, cargo planes, and hundreds more helicopters: Chinooks, Black Hawks, Apaches, Kiowas... Military force extended from me to the horizon, 360 degrees of war. It is much cheaper to buy oil than to steal it.
Much cheaper to buy than to steal? We are talking about 200 billion barrels at project prices of $100 a barrel (back then, anyway)... do the math. Not only that, there were some other issues...
Problem #1: Saddam wasn't selling his oil, he was granting contracts to Russia and China and France while locking out the U.S. and Britain. Recall the Cheney Energy Force documents?
http://www.judicialwatch.org/iraqi-oil-maps.shtml
Problem #2: Saddam was selling his oil for euros only, for which he was widely criticized in the West - until the euro jumped 30% against the dollar. Meaning, we'd have to trade our dollars for euros at a loss, and then use those euros to buy Saddam's oil - while being locked out of any lucrative oilfield deals. Not cheap!
As far as all those planes and tanks and bombers? Well, those have to be bought as well - and if you look at the Bush Administration neocons, where are they all now? Chertoff is at BAE, Cambone (Rumwit's sidekick) is at Qinetiq (working the cyberwarfare bull), Wolfowitz is fiddling with Taiwanese arms sales - hey, there's plenty of loot to go around, as long as you can rip it off from the American taxpayer!
Here's a Russian spy handler, the guy who ran Ames and Hanssen, (Cherkashin) on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the role Brezhnev played:
“These stolid men represented the mass of party cadres who were no longer able to countenance Khrushchev’s anti-Stalinism. Led by their chief ideologue, Mikhail Suslov, the Brezhnev group put an end to boat-rocking questions about the past, setting up a regime that provided for their mutual security. That arrangement would eventually lead to massive stagnation in the 1970s, when – unable to address the state’s inefficiencies – the Kremlin “reformed” by allowing corruption to spread throughout society.
Let's rephrase that:
"Led by their chief ideologues, Dickwit Cheney and Donald Rumdoodle, the neocon group put an end to boat-rocking questions about the past, setting up a regime that provided for their mutual security. That arrangement would eventually lead to massive stagnation in the late 2000's, when - unable to address Wall Street's inefficiencies - the Congress and White House "reformed" by allowing corruption to spread throughout society."
Sabrina rules!
Sabrina rules!
Interesting article, though
Interesting article, though it reads like a drastically shortened version of a more important piece Tavernise could have written, one I hope she does someday.
I hope Londonstani will overlook the off-topic streetcorner rants his brief post provoked.
Oh come on Zathras - what
Oh come on Zathras - what specifically was "off-topic"?
Opus Dei, Southern Baptists,
Opus Dei, Southern Baptists, P. J. O'Rourke, Saddam Hussein, and Michael Chertoff.
I didn't see anything about the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky or whether Mel Kiper has a better read on Jimmy Clausen than Todd McShay does, but that may be because I wasn't reading carefully.
Zathras, if you want to know
Zathras, if you want to know the genesis of the current ideological conflicts in the Middle East as well as in Washington D.C., you have to look at the development of radical Islamic fundamentalism as well that of radical neoconservative ideology.
Jamaat-e-Islami is a direct outgrowth of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, that was persecuted by Nasser, right? Sayyid & Muhammad Qutb more or less founded the movement, and when he was executed, Ayman Zawahiri took over - who you might recognize, as he issued a fatwa with Osama bin Laden in 1998 under the title "World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders"?
What is of interest here is that the ideology they espouse - that of jahiliyyah - is one that says that Islam has been perverted by modern society and has moved away from the original truth, and only be reverting to Sharia law can Islam be saved.
Now, this is almost the same general stance that the neoconservatives espouse - that modern liberal society has corrupted the original intent of the Founding Fathers, and that society must be unified and reformed around an ideology of American exceptionalism - the shining beacon on the hill, the center of good in the world. The neocons (in their warped little minds) are the elite vanguard, showing the way to the ignorant masses - who need simple myths to believe in.
Likewise, this is what the Catholic sect of Opus Dei - very popular in Washington circles, apparently - has to say about the liberal reforms in the Catholic Church and modern society - and like the Islamic fundamentalists, they have their exclusive religious schools (much like Jamaat), and they preach the "natural Christian law" as the basis of the moral society, much as Jamaat preaches the "natural Islamic law".
These groups all believe in their own elite superiority relative to other members of their society. They think that any means justifies their "ultimately moral aim" of reforming societies in their own image - and hence they are among the most dangerous groups on the planet - particularly in the era of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons in the hands of ideological fundamentalists - not good.
However, and this is why I brought it up, probably one of the best ways to break the grip of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and elsewhere is to explain to them how similar these groups are to the American neocons, Opus Dei, the Israeli Likuds, and many other groups that they claim to oppose. They rely on fear-based political manipulation, not on public debate - because the masses don't know the truths that they know, and hence the public cannot be trusted, but must be led about by a small elite group - Daddy knows best, in a nutshell. It's no secret either that the neocons had close ties to Opus Dei and Likud, either.
There's a not bad movie that describes how these groups have gained political power - the neocon interviews are particularly interesting:
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
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