Taking Sides: Why Gaza?

Introduction

The latest stage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being played out on newsfeeds and timelines as we speak. Free from the curatorial process of professional news editors, who decide which views and perspectives get aired to a captive audience, subaltern perspectives are now able to reach a wide audience.

The loss of life and devastation of infrastructure experienced by the people of Gaza is both too visceral and too widespread to be denied. In response, a new apologetic tactic has emerged: an affected neutrality that recognizes, to some extent, the human rights violations committed by the Israeli government but attempts to minimize them by dehumanizing the Palestinians and promoting easily debunked myths about them, by depicting the conflict as inevitable and intractable, and attempts to deter activism by concerned citizens by either a ‘pox on both your houses’ stance or by engaging in concern trolling by bringing up other international conflicts that have higher death tolls or less morally ambiguous combatants. There are three compelling arguments that can be made against this studied indifference and for activism by Americans on behalf of the people of Gaza.

The American Role

The first is that, unlike many other human rights disasters, the US plays a direct role in the form of military aid and political support that it gives to Israel. The same is not the case for ISIS, the Taliban, the Assad regime and its opponents (with some exceptions). As US citizens, we have a chance to influence policy and create a better, more just outcome, even if it is a small one. We also have an obligation to use that influence in an attempt to prevent injustices committed in our name or on our dime.

The Nature of Israel

The second argument is that Israel is a liberal democracy that can be swayed by public opinion and is very conscious of its image both abroad and internally. ISIS and the Assad regime couldn't care less and Saudi only cares to a small extent. Similarly, we hold liberal democracies to a higher standard than rag-tag terrorists groups, brutal dictatorships, or absolute monarchies because they represent the will of a sovereign people and ostensibly stand on a moral foundation of consent, consultation, and justice.

Part of that standard is proportionality in military response. This does not mean that casualties on either side have to be equal or nearly so, but that it is illegal when “an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage” (Moreno-Ocampo).This is clearly the case in regard to the current operation in Gaza where the military goals include stopping rocket fire that has resulted in less than three dozen casualties over the course of a decade and collapsing tunnels alleged to be used to smuggle parts for the rockets (but are also known to be used to smuggle food and medical supplies as well). The military response has killed over 40 times more civilians than the offense that ostensibly provoked it. That is the definition of disproportionality.

It might be objected that Israel is showing great restraint and that they don’t intentionally kill civilians- why would they when it hurts their image? Israel IS sensitive to how it is perceived abroad but it is even more sensitive to internal Israeli opinion and nothing makes that go sour like military casualties. As Norman Finkelstein has pointed out during a recent speech, “Israel’s first rule is to minimize combatant casualties.” One way of achieving this goal is by indiscriminate bombing that leaves little standing in its wake. He also mentions other motivations such as revenge for IDF casualties and a strategic goal of using widespread bombing to cow the Palestinians into submission. The argument that Israel is showing 'great restraint' has been ably debunked by P.Z. Myers. Needless to say, the good intentions of the IDF will not bring back the civilians they have killed.

It may be said that holding the Israeli government to a higher standard than the Arabs is an example of the 'racism of lower expectations.' I have to disagree with this. Israel is a state with a liberal democratic form of government. The Arabs are an ethnic group with a vast degree of differences among them in terms of forms of government, language, and cultural features. It's an apples to oranges comparison. My argument is not that Arabs are not/should not be held to a higher standard, it's that liberal democratic states are and should be held to a higher standard than non-state terrorist groups, authoritarian dictatorships, and absolute monarchies. A state, and especially a liberal democratic state, enjoys the monopoly of the legitimate use of force in a given territory. In order for that monopoly to remain legitimate, it must observe certain moral standards and maintain the rule of law. Not observing them actually degrades the rule of law, the enforcement of which is one of the main justifications for the state's existence.

Tolerance and even receptiveness to criticism is the strength of an open society. Nobody does Israel (or the United States, for that matter) any favors by attempting to shield it from criticism. It is a virtue that Israel does care about the opinions of its citizens and, to a lesser extent, it's image in the rest of the world (especially the West). Assad couldn't care less. Putin couldn't care less. This means that we have some small means of influencing Israel's actions towards a less destructive path that we do not have in relation to conflicts elsewhere in the world.

The Siege

The third argument is that the siege of Gaza, which constitutes an ongoing act of war that has cause far more death and suffering than the rockets fired by Hamas, makes it impossible for the civilian population to flee. This makes the situation different, and far more dire, than is the case in Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, and other countries. There is no safe, neutral ground to which refugees can flee and receive aid to ease their suffering. This makes a direct political/social intervention in the conflict more pressing because it is the only alternative available if a truly staggering amount of death and suffering is to be avoided. For example, according to a UN report, by 2020 Gaza will be incapable of supporting its population. This is a direct result of Israeli policy aimed not at an organization but at an entire people.

There are some who maintain that the occupation of Gaza ended in 2006 with the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the dismantling of the settlements there. This is erroneous. An ongoing siege that confines a population to a small territory cut off from the rest of the world and that is repeatedly punctuated by bombardment and invasion is indistinguishable from an occupation, a view with strong support in both International and Israeli law.

Conclusion

The claim that the conflict is insoluble because of the tribalism on each side and the purported religious roots of the conflict obfuscates the actual material goals of each side, goals that can at least be partially met via compromise. The settlements, the confiscation of land, the network of checkpoints that impede free movement by Palestinians, control of the borders between the territories and their Arab neighbors, seizure of valuable natural resources, most especially water, all have a clear, material goal: increasing the level of control that Israel has over the Palestinian people and increasing Israel's own strategic depth vis-à-vis its neighbors. Hamas also has outlined clear material goals (based on international law) the satisfaction of which would lead to a long term truce. A treaty that met the material goals of the Palestinian people while at the same time giving Israel security from its neighbors would make the settlements and checkpoints unnecessary and would allow the Palestinians to rebuild their lives, undermining calls for further violence on both sides. The Palestinians have a clear record of supporting a resolution to the conflict on the basis of international law. It is Israel that remains recalcitrant in regards to its obligations and we have a duty, as Americans whose government has given so much support to Israel, to hold it accountable.

It has been pointed out that a great deal of the outrage over the conflict in the Middle East is selective and that the focus on Israel is due not to a concern for human rights but to a hatred of Jews. Even if true, this is beside the point. Haters gonna hate. People quite often do the right thing for the wrong reason. The question is what motivates you to take notice and take sides. And have no doubt; not taking sides when a civilian population is facing siege and bombardment IS taking sides- against them.

A Review of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (The Way Things Are)

This book represents the classic statement, in poetic form, of the natural and ethical philosophy of Epicurus. The natural philosophy is materialist and atomic. It is surprisingly prescient, as will be seen later. This materialist philosophy of nature, which argues that the soul/mind/spirit is a material substance dispersed at death and that the universe shows no evidence of divine planning or providence lays the foundation on ethical philosophy which advocates the pursuit of the simple and tranquil life. Pleasures are to be pursued within the limits of prudence, above all the pleasures of friendship and learning. Political ambition and avarice are to be shunned as disrupting tranquility and engendering pain, unreflective hedonism is to be avoided as leading to a surplus of harm over pleasure, and the observance of the natural justice of reciprocity and honesty is argued to be the key to security. Above all, Lucretius wants to free us from the baseless fears of religion, which spoil our lives with a spectre of post-mortem torment and waste it on needless and even harmful ritual. For him, the surest way to achieve this goal is to understand ‘the way things are’ (one possible translation of the title) and realize that death is nothing to be feared and that there is no divine wrath to be engendered by breaking taboos.

Source: http://www.cdla.co.uk/?page_id=1859

Lucretius explanation is expansive, touching on physics, chemistry, cosmology, astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. As is to be expected, he gets a fair amount wrong but what is surprising is the number of things he gets right. He was able to discern a number of principles and facts that were later confirmed thousands of years later using only his own reason and observation, informed by the teachings he had inherited from previous philosophers. I will here expand on an argument formulated by Saif Rahman in his book “The Islamist Delusion.” It is frequently claimed that a certain religious scripture is miraculous because it contains scientific knowledge that was unknown to the people of the time and only recently confirmed by modern science. Common examples of this argument include the description of embryology in the Qur’an, the order of creation in the Book of Genesis, and the anticipation of the quantum mechanics in the Tao Te Ching. Any scientific absurdities in these texts are either ignored or explained away. Lucretius work is a strong argument against the tenability of these arguments. The list of scientific advances he anticipated rivals that adduced to any of the scriptures considered sacred by the world’s religions and his mistakes can, like those in the Bible and the Qur’an, be ignored or re-interpreted. Given that this is the case and that we know that Lucretius was not the recipient of supernatural revelations, these supposed scientific miracles are not in need of a non-naturalistic explanation. The naturalistic explanation of human insight and observation combined with luck is sufficient to explain these supposed miracles, just as they explain Lucretius numerous successes. Lucretius poem also refutes another old saw used to explain the lack of scientific rigor in the sacred texts: they were addressed to the people who lived at the time of their composition/revelation who would not have have been able to integrate advanced scientific knowledge into their worldview. Yet we find Lucretius discoursing at length and eloquently on particle physics, an infinite universe teeming with worlds and alien life, and causes of lunar phases. If a man could do it, why couldn’t an infinitely wise God?

The following is a list of the scientific discoveries and modern philosophical notions that Lucretius anticipated, referenced by the page number of the Penguin Classics edition of 1951 (R.E. Latham, translator) (NB: inclusion on this list does not imply a claim that Lucretius originated the idea, merely that he reported it):

Atomic theory- Page 28
The first law of thermodynamics- Page 31, Page 33
Ecological circulation of matter- Page 34
The circle of life- Page 35
Our sense of smell is caused by sensing particles- Page 36
‘Solid objects’ are actually full of space- Page 37
Newton’s first law- Page 62
Experimental inference- Page 63
Lack of teleology in nature- Page 65, Page 156, Page 177
Quantum indeterminacy- Page 66
Galileo’s law of falling bodies- Page 67
Lightning is a finer substance than fire- Page 71
Particle theory of light- Page 71
The properties of a smell depends on the properties of the particles that cause them- Page 72
Water filtration- Page 74
Visible bodies are composed of atoms of various types- Page 80
Atoms are colourless- Page 81
The properties of bodies are due to the types of particles of which they are composed and their arrangement- Page 82
Colour is a result of the eye being stimulated in a certain way by light- Page 84
“We are all composed of heavenly seed”- Page 89
Infinite worlds and extraterrestrial life; Carl Sagan’s ‘what a waste of space!’ argument- Page 91
Metaphysical naturalism- Page 92
Arguments justifying SETI/precursors of the Drake equation- Page 92
The problem of evil- Page 92,93
The role of circulatory system in distributing nutrients- Page 93
The Earth has finite resources- Page 94
The mind and body are one material unity- Page 101
Physiology determines personality traits and temperaments- Page 105
The eyes see, not the mind- Page 107
There are thresholds of sensation below which we sense nothing- Page 107
Reincarnation is bunk- Page 116
Theory of the eternal recurrence- Page 122
Dreams can be explained naturalistically- Page 131, Page 155, Page 160
The underlying objects of sense are the same objects experienced by different modalities- Page 137
Darkness is the absence of light- Page 141
Absolute skepticism is self-refuting- Page 145
Argument for Empiricism- Page 145
Naturalistic explanation of echoes- Page 148
Nutritional value is independent of taste- Page 150
Physiology determines diet- Page 150
Physical underpinnings of smell- Page 151
Parts of the brain associated with sight are stimulated when ‘seeing’ things in a dream- Page 153
The psychology of expectation in explaining dreams- Page 155
The organs of the body predate their current uses- the tongue predates its current use by humans in speech- Page 156
The psychology of habituation in explaining dreams- Page 160
Naturalistic/Physiological explanation of sexuality, infatuation, and lust- Page 161
Women enjoy sex- Page167
Genetic basis of heredity- Page 168
Offspring are the result of the mingling of both male and female seeds- Page 169
Naturalistic explanation of sterility/infertility- Page 169
Fertility is influenced by diet- Page 170
Mind is a natural phenomenon- Page 172
The Earth and the heavenly bodies are neither eternal nor divine- Page 174
The reality of entropy- Page 180
Nebular hypothesis of the origin of the Earth and heavenly bodies- Page 184
The sun and moon are both globes- Page 185
The moon reflects the Sun’s light- Page 188, Page 192
The moon is closer to the Earth than the Sun- Page 190
Correct explanation of Lunar phases- Page 192
The Earth’s shadow can cause eclipses of the moon- Page 194
An inkling of natural selection- wasteful diversity filtered by trial in nature- Page 197
The social contract- Page 202
An inkling of Chomsky’s universal grammar- Page 203
Naturalistic account of the origins of religion- Page 207
The cause of thunder- Page 220
The origin of lighting- Page 222
Natural disasters are natural phenomena, not divine judgments- Page 229
The water cycle- Page 231, Page 236
Partial explanation of earthquakes- Page 234
Explanation of avernian lakes- Page 240
Epidemics can be explained naturalistically- Page 250
Environmental causes of human variation- Page 251

Why I am Against the Drone War

For the current policy of drone war against suspected terrorists around the world to be morally justified it must, as a necessary condition, pass muster before the bar of at least one of the commonly accepted moral theories: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory.

From a consequentialist (i.e. 'ends justify the means') perspective, the drone war is justified if and only if it will result in the deaths of less people than would die if it were not pursued.  This saving of lives would occur via a combination of having prevented terror attacks that would resulted in mass casualties, saving infrastructure that is vital to the well being of people, and allowing a higher level of education in the targeted countries (this consideration would primarily apply to Pakistan and Afghanistan).  The administration and its supporters have not presented a convincing case for this net saving of lives.  There is, in fact, good reason to be skeptical that the drone war is even having a significant effect in reducing terrorism, let alone creating a net surplus of saved lives, as described in this article.  

Someone may object that the drone war costs less lives than either a full or partial invasion.  But this is a false dichotomy.  There are other options besides the drone war, including complete disengagement (i.e. dealing with terror related issues as law enforcement problems within the targeted countries) and special forces operations of the type that killed Bin Laden (which resulted in far fewer civilian casualties than a drone strike).  Both these options would likely result in less civilian casualties than are being created in the drone war.

Someone may object that the Pakistan army cannot handle the problem of terrorism by itself.  First, it is questionable whether it cannot handle terrorism or it simply will not, given the ties between Pakistani military intelligence and various extremist groups.  Second, the US cannot sustain the beat of being the policeman of the world.  It does not have the material resources nor does it have the necessary sophistication to carry out this function while avoiding large civilian casualty tolls.  Besides this, the primary goal of the drone campaign is not secure civil society in Pakistan.  The goal is to secure the US and its citizens at home and abroad.  If the moral calculus is thus narrowed, it is extremely difficult to make the case that the drone war is saving more lives than it is taking.  Pakistan, if it is to survive, needs to take care of its own security needs.  The negative social and political consequences of US military intervention are already being felt and will only worsen as the drone war continues. As long as America is giving aid to that army it should, of course, insist that certain goals are met (i.e. actually protecting its civilian population), but these goals must be met in a manner consistent with international human rights agreements that both countries recognize. Apart from that, aid aimed at revitalizing the Pakistani economy and providing for a more prosperous and educated citizenry is the best that America can do to help Pakistan in the long term.

From a deontological, or duty/rights-based, perspective, there is little that can be said in defense of the drone war.  It certainly cannot be made a universal maxim that all males of a certain age in a kill zone be treated as targets. The civilians who are killed in the course of the drone war are not being treated as ends in themselves but as mere things ('collateral damage').  The drone war has even adopted the 'double-tap' tactic long associated with terrorists in order to target aid workers and thus discourage the natural human instinct to help victims of a disaster.  The targets themselves are also denied the procedural rights that they are guaranteed by universal human rights conventions and, in some cases, by the US constitution.  This is a situation that cannot be justified by invoking the categorical imperative, the golden rule, Felix Adler's ethical maxim ("always act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby yourself"), or other accounts of ethics in terms of duty.

What can virtue theory tell us about the drone war?  In Aristotle's account, a virtue is the mid-point on a continuum of behavior the ends of which are vices.  If you donate too much to charity (i.e. to the point that it harms you and those dependent on you) you have manifested the vice of prodigality.  If you give to little, you are miserly.  If you consistently give the maximal amount that you can sustain without harming yourself or those dependent on you, you have attained the virtue of liberality.  

This scheme can be applied to the policy response to the problem of terrorism.  There is a continuum of such responses, the poles of which represent inaction to the point of criminal neglect and total destruction of the civilian areas in which terrorists pursue their campaigns.  It goes without saying that both of these poles are vicious.  The virtuous mean on this spectrum is identical to that policy that will achieve the goal effectively hampering terrorism while minimizing to the utmost civilian casualties.  The question to be asked is: Does the drone war meet this criteria?  With at least two other viable options (criminal investigation and special operations) available, both of which are likely to result in less civilian deaths than drone strikes, it is very difficult to answer that question in the affirmative.

To sum up: if the drone war is to be justified, it must be acceptable according to at least one of the generally accepted ethical theories.  A justification on deontological grounds is unlikely if not impossible, a justification on consequentialist grounds hinges on evidence that is, at the current time, doubtful at best, and a justification on the grounds of virtue theory could only be obtained after experience shows that less violent strategies have failed.  I therefore cannot support the drone war and must reject it as immoral.

A Review of A.C. Grayling's 'The God Argument'

I loved this book.  Grayling opens with a critique of religion that focuses first on the most likely historical and psychological roots of religious belief and then on the most common arguments for the existence of God.  The latter are dismantled with the precision one would expect from a philosopher.  I was particularly pleased by his discussion of Plantinga's modal version of the ontological argument.

He also deals with issue of framing the discussion between atheists and believers, noting that the use of the word God (as opposed to 'gods and goddesses' or 'Fred') as a proper noun conveys a sense of gravitas to theological discourse to which it is not entitled.  It also obscures what is really going on in the standard pro-theistic arguments by creating the illusion that they are about something more substantive than a something-we-know-not-what.

The second part of the book moves beyond the negation of religion and argues for the adoption of Humanism as a life stance.  Humanism affirms the centrality of human experience in understanding ethical values and posits the flourishing of human beings as the goal of ethical action.  After elucidating what he means by humanism, Grayling proceeds to describe the elements that make up a good life.  He then moves on to more specific issues, such as human sexuality, abortion, drug use, and euthanasia.  He closes with a contrast between the religious and humanistic views of the world and concludes that all that is good in the former is present in the latter, while the negative qualities of the former are avoided.

This is a welcome addition to literature on atheism and to the current ongoing debate on the place of religion in public life.  Atheism as such is negative- it is nothing more or less than a lack of belief in gods and goddesses.  Much of the atheistic literature focuses on the absurdities and harmful effects of religion.  This is good and necessary, as far as it goes, but it brings me pleasure to see authors moving on to discuss the next step beyond the rejection of religion- the affirmation of the life of this world.

Allah, Goodness and Justice

"Theologians have always taught that God's decrees are good, and that this is not a mere tautology: it follows that goodness is logically independent of God's decrees."- Bertrand Russell


If there is no conceivable state of affairs that would force you to admit that, in this case, Allah has acted unjustly or in a manner contrary to the good, then you have denuded the concepts of goodness and justice of meaning.  For example, Al Ghazali informs us that "harm is not conceivable from Allah - the High - because He does not encounter any ownership of other than Himself, in which His dealing could be described to be harmful" and "He is able to bring upon His creatures all manner of torture and to try them with all kinds of pain and affliction. Even if He should do this, it would be justice from Him, it would not be vile, it would not be tyrannous." 

Justice is intimately bound up with the concept of rights; a common definition of what it is to be just is to observe the rights of others.  In  a situation where there are no rights at issue, there can be no justice.

As for the good, we humans generally understand good people to be hose who are beneficent to others and avoid harming them.  Leaving aside the question of whether Allah is in fact good according to this definition (and the prevalence of 'natural evil' such as earthquakes and tornadoes should make one doubt it), can the claim that 'no matter what Allah does, he is good' be squared with any definition of the good that we would otherwise accept, independent of theology?  I doubt that it can.  To claim that Allah could torture babies for eternity and still be considered good or to conceive of this as something other than a harm, is to misunderstand what is meant by the word good. 

If a word can be applied to describe any conceivable state of affairs, it is meaningless.  Given that Muslims apply the words 'good' and 'just' to Allah's actions without consideration of what these actions may be, they apply these terms incorrectly, without regard to their meaning.  They thus render them meaningless.  Such nihilism in regards to basic ethical terms (one shared by many fundamentalist Christians and others), once it seeps into the deep structure of a mind, prepares it to commit horrors.

Response to Ghilan on Evolution

A couple of months ago, Mohamed Ghilan published a blog post in response to a conference in the UK entitled “Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution?” I have take issue with his characterizations of atheists, his description of the history of epistemology in Western philosophy, and his depiction of the context and function of evolution in the history of ideas.


We’ll start with his invocation of the trope of the ‘angry atheist.’  This is simply insult, not rational argument.  There are, of course, many intellectuals who have taken upon themselves the education of the public about evolutionary theory.  They have published many books, given many lectures.  The tone of these materials is generally calm and professional.  There is sometimes exasperation, but this tends to be caused by the fondness with which Creationists use out of context quotes to attempt to frame a narrative of  a ‘theory in crisis.’  One would expect that Ghilan would be the last person to stereotype another group of people as ‘angry.’  As it is, atheists do not hold violent protests outside of the Creation Museum nor do they call for the assassination of those who criticize evolution in the public square.  As we all know, the case is quite different when someone violates the ‘sanctity’ of the person of Muhammad.


Towards the beginning of the article, after the slurs, he notes:

“Everyone seems to want to talk about the evidence for or against it. No one is interested in the foundation that it’s built upon, and the subsequent logic and coherence of the theory itself.”

Given that the question is itself (in this particular case) whether it is in fact the case that humans share a common ancestor with all other living species, it is rather obvious that people would want to discuss the evidence for and against the proposition.  The problem for Ghilan, as he himself admits is that Muslims:

“proceed to point out whatever holes the theory has and what it doesn’t explain. Well, if history is any guide, those holes will be filled at some point as the theory goes through the normal scientific course of being re-worked, and some clever scientists will come eventually to explain those things that haven’t been explained”

Unable to win a case on the merits (i.e. the evidence), he proceeds to argue the technicalities.  He proceeds to give an adequate account of the difference between material and inferred evidence and provides a passable account of the various criteria a theory has to satisfy to be accepted as scientific (although I am a bit put off by his putting the words objective reality in scare quotes).

He assures us that “Material evidence presents no problems for Islam.”  Perhaps.  But that is primarily because what he calls material evidence (“ the hard data,” “observed phenomena”) does not tell us very much about the world unless it is integrated into an elaborated body of theory.

He begins his discussion of the underlying foundations of evolutionary theory with an overly-simplistic account of the history of epistemology in the Western world.  He informs us that

“What the Western intellectual crowd determined for itself was that all that exists is what we can touch, smell, feel, taste, hear, and see.”

This is, of course, completely false.  That western intellectual crowd, while holding a great diversity of philosophical views, does generally believe that things such as numbers, logical truths, and the past exist (although we can find exceptions to belief in each of these).

He continues:

“ There’s no such thing as pure reason. To be rational means to make empirically-verifiable statements. “

Again, completely false, as any first year student of philosophy could tell you. He completely ignores the analytic-synthetic distinction.   While it is true that deductive arguments do not reveal new truths about the external world, they do organize the truths we do know in new ways and draw out their implications.  As A. C. Grayling writes, “There is no logical novelty in the conclusion, though often enough there is psychological novelty” (The God Argument).  One cannot be rational if they ignore the results of sound deductive arguments that are relevant to what is being discussed.  He also caricatures Descartes skepticism.  I think Pierce said it best:

“We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begun with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices cannot be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be mere self-deception, and not real doubt”

Descartes doubt was a thought-experiment through which he attempted to derive indubitable first principles on which he could build up an edifice of knowledge.  Once the foundation was set, empirical evidence could be accepted, analyzed, and employed.  The other rationalist philosophers thought similarly- a Platonic skepticism towards sense perception as a source of knowledge as such is not a prominent feature of modern rationalism.  Conversely, the empiricists did not deny the utility of ‘pure reason’ as exemplified by mathematics and formal logic in analyzing the data of sense perception.  They simply rejected the doctrine that the ultimate foundation of knowledge consists of a series of rationally intuited indubitable truths.  Instead, they posited the evidence of the senses as the foundation of knowledge.  The dispute did not consist of one side rejecting an entire avenue of knowledge that was accepted by the other- it was a debate over the ultimate foundations of or justification for knowledge.

By contrast, Ghilan tells us that “The Muslim approach was never an either/or in this extremist sense.”  There was, of course, no Muslim approach as such.  There were a diverse array of thinkers in the Muslim world who dealt with epistemology and they reached conclusions that were just as diverse as those in the west.  Al-Ghazali, for example, ultimately drew skeptical conclusions concerning both the use of the senses AND demonstrative reason, and was only released from his doubt  “by a light that God almighty cast into my breast, which is the key to the greater part of cognizance" (Deliverer from Error).  As for western approaches to overcoming this dichotomy, there have been many from Immanuel Kant’s categories of thought, through the American pragmatists such as Pierce and James, to the modern anti-foundationalist thinkers.

Ghilan then takes a card from the deck of the Christian creationists- he decides that the issue is not one of science but of religious worldviews.  He cites Dawkin’s oft-quoted (by fundamentalists) passage about Darwin making “it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist” as evidence that “evolutionary theory is meant for” justifying atheism and that “major function of evolutionary theory... is to provide a pacifier for the reader who might have any inclinations to feeling any reverence towards anything metaphysical.”  This is belied by the actual historical facts concerning the genesis (if you pardon the pun) of the theory and by the numerous religious scientists who accept the theory because of its scientific merits, such as its fit with the empirical evidence its explanatory power, fruitfulness in generating research projects, and.  Darwin himself tells us in his Autobiography that “  Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality.... The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered” (p. 85-87).

Ultimately, the problem for Ghilan, as it is with creationists such as Phillip E. Johnson, is philosophical naturalism, described by the former as the “assumption that there is nothing beyond this physical realm, and “ that “give[s] a context to the combination of your material and inferred evidence.”  Once this is assumed, he admits that “you cannot escape having to accept evolutionary theory as an account for where things came from.”  Indeed.

Ghilan’s problem is that philosophical naturalism, in its epistemological form, is a necessary precondition for the scientific endeavor.  You cannot frame general laws and theories concerning the physical world which invoke entities that are not subject to the laws of that world and that can flout them at will.  Once you allow evil genies (ala Descartes) or gods and goddesses fudge the results by speeding up the decay rates of radioactive elements or tweaking the speed of light, you’ve said goodbye to any confidence you can have in general scientific theories concerning the past.

Besides this concern, it deserves mention that the existence of this physical realm is a shared assumption of common sense, scientific investigation, and the Abrahamic religions.  To move beyond it and assert the existence of a supernatural realm and to invoke supernatural explanations of natural phenomena is a step that needs to be argued for.  It is not basic in the same way as the assertion that the physical world exists.  Ghilan is correct that we cannot evaluate evidence without first principles- but not all first principles are created equal.

He makes the claim that:

“If one were to take all the assertions such as “this evolved from that to solve the problem of moving from water to land”, and restrict the material to just describing structure and function and pointing out the similarities without inducing relatedness, and classify based on similarity rather than “relatedness”, it wouldn’t all of a sudden be any less scientific.”

Besides demonstrating an extreme misunderstanding about evolutionary theory (features do not evolve to solve problems ala Lamarck- new features emerge which incidentally allow organisms to exploit new niches), Ghilan is omitting that science is, at heart, a theorizing activity that moves beyond the given evidence to infer explanations for that evidence which can then be tested in some manner or other. It is not, as Taner Edis put it in describing the peculiar view of science held by Muslim creationists,  “a set of practical applications and concrete facts to be collected and organized like stamps.”(An Illussion of Harmony)

He proceeds to create a farcical and condescending dialogue intended to show how close-minded and dogmatic atheists are, quotes a passage from two authors who are not actually denying the fact of evolution but rather the explanatory power of natural selection, and then embarks on a rant about “all the problems seeping from evolutionary theory” (which he does not describe), invoking (of course) Kuhn about all theory being data laden and in which he alludes to the “foundations” of “the science-worshipping militant new atheist crowd” being shook (how?), before ending on an appeal for Muslims to take up the study of traditional theology.  Yes, I’m sure that will work.

Beyond Irony, Beyond Islam

"A confession has to be part of your new life. -Wittgenstein"

Since starting this blog, I've come to realize that my I can no longer in good faith affirm that Islam is of supernatural origin.  From my studies, I have concluded that it is completely explicable in natural and cultural terms.  I do not see the Qur'an as a divine incursion into the natural world.  It is a human document.  It has poetic beauty and practical wisdom, as do many scriptures revered by one or another section of humanity.  Like these other scriptures, it also contains many things that are morally unacceptable and much that is simply factually incorrect, besides.  Despite that, I still appreciate many aspects of Muslim culture- I like eid, I appreciate the literature produced across time throughout the Muslim world.  I am still intensely interested in what is commonly termed 'Muslim' philosophy and in the Arabic language.  And I love the food. I will, as before, oppose racism, xenophobia, and social injustice, whether directed at Muslims or non-Muslims.  But I can no longer affirm the shahadatayn, I can no longer pray, and I can no longer observe the fast of Ramadan as anything other than a method of training the will and of learning deeper empathy for the needy.  Sadaqah is still a cardinal virtue, as any humanist will affirm. I will be taking time to detail some of my criticism in detail but this very brief statement will be sufficient for now.

The Book of Jihad

Excerpted from Qadi Abu Muhammad Abdul Wahhaab ibn Ali al-Baghdaadi's "At-Talqeen fil fiqhil Maliki" (The Instruction in Malik's Jurisprudence)

Purpose:  The purpose of this translation is to present an authentic and reliable source for the Sunni view of Jihad.  It is intended as a contribution to the current dialectic which posits that Jihad is either the free-for-all of homicidal terrorism described by the Islamophobes or the purely spiritual, sweetness-and-light struggle posited by the Muslim apologists.  It is neither.  Jihad is in some ways similar to the "just war" of Catholicism, but broader in scope and open ended.  It neither encourages the killing of civilians nor does it prohibit it entirely.  It certainly does not conform with modern standards of international law but it is not lawless.  It is also quite clear from the classical texts, such as the one presently translated, that it is neither obligatory on each and every Muslim nor something that can be entirely abandoned.  Between the extremes of the dialectic we can find the truth.

The author of this blog believes firmly in non-violence, except in strict self-defense.  Terrorism, pre-emptive war, slavery, apartheid, and occupation, along with most of the tactics, strategies, and weapons used in modern warfare, are morally repugnant and ought to be rejected, regardless of what any religion says.

Note on the translation: This translation is based on Darul Kutubil 'Ilmiyyah edition published in 1999.  The text begins on pg. 68. Being a student, and not a master, of Arabic, I welcome any corrections to my translation, provided permission is given to publish them with credit according to the terms of this blog's Creative Commons license. I have tried to render this translation into idiomatic English because keeping to the formal structure of the book would inhibit clarity. I have summarized rather than translated the section on the conditions for participating in the spoils due to lack of contemporary relevance. Anyone interested in this particular topic can consult Aisha Bewley's translation of the Risalah.

Jihad is a communal obligation* and is incumbent, some of the time, on those who face the enemy. It is not permissible to abandon it entirely in truce except from an excuse. He (the Mujahid**) does not desist from the enemy except that they embrace Islam or enter into our pact (dhimma) and hand over the poll-tax (djizya) in our abode. It is desirable that they are called to Islam before fighting them except that they swiftly descend upon us. It is permissible to harm the enemy via all possible means from among the following: burning of the planted gardens and of fodder, cutting date-palms and trees, wounding animals, and destruction of the country side. Do not touch the bees unless they are numerous. In that case the consensus transmits their destruction.

The spoils are divided in five, all of it, it’s substance and its incidentals, equally, except the gardens, for they are left as pious endowments (awqaaf). Looting and the like are, without distinction, not favoured during fighting except with the permission of the leader (Imam) when he deems that appropriate. The leader takes from the spoils one fifth (al-khums) of it and distributes among the army four fifths of it. It is not permissible to steal from the war booty before it is distributed and the doer of that is punished. His saddlebag is not burned and his portion is not forbidden. The army may eat the food, slaughter the livestock, and take the fodder of the enemy without the permission of the leader. The leader does not reckon it among the spoils.

...


[The author here gives the conditions for participating in the spoils, including that it was gained by fighting or at least by "the exertion of horses" and that it may be distributed to those who are part of the army but did not fight due to sickness and the like. Also, the shares due to cavalrymen and infantry are described. ]

…

Women and youths are not killed nor are very old men, nor hermits nor monks, unless harm or a ruse is feared from them. And their wealth is given back if they are many and what was left for them is only a little.

Protection of the enemy commanders is legally valid. Protection of other than them from the rest of mankind, according to Malik (Allah have mercy on him!), is also valid and their destruction is not permitted. And he also said: “To them [commanders in the Jihad] is the right to permit it or deny it. And when it is permitted it is all the same whether it is a man or a woman, or slave or free adult or adolescent."

In regards to captives, the leader has a choice in the disposition of one fifth. The choices are: killing them, enslaving them, freeing them as a gift or ransoming them, and contracting a covenant. In regards to spies and to the return of hostages, the leader exercises independent reasoning (ijtihad). If they become Muslims, then he who became Muslim is entitled to a settlement and he has the right of possession of his land. And he who became Muslim after his land was forcibly conquered, then it is of the spoils and not returned to them with his Islam. The leader secures it to whoever he deems appropriate. He takes its land tax from he who possesses it. The commandments of booty, the leader's fifth, the land-tax, and poll-tax are one; the leader takes his business from it without assessment and returns the remainder in consolation of the Muslims, and he gives the first quarter from it according to his independent reasoning.






Notes:


*-A Communal Obligation (fard kifayyah) is an act that must be performed by at least one member of the community else the whole community is sinful.

**-Mujahid is the active participle (ismul faa3il) of jaahada, meaning "to endeavor, strive; to fight...; to wage holy war against the infidels" according Hans Wehr. One who engages in Jihad is a mujahid.

Islam and Female Genital Mutilation

While not as much in the news lately as it has been in the past, Female Genital Mutilation is still a scourge of women worldwide.  Muslim apologists have repeatedly claimed that this practice is strictly cultural and has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. For example, the Muslim Women's League informs us that "According to Sayyid Sabiq, renowned scholar and author of Fiqh-us-Sunnah, all hadiths concerning female circumcision are non-authentic."  Shaykh Tantawi and Shaykh Ali Gomaa of Al-Azhar were both against the practice.

But what is the reality?  When we examine classical, relied upon texts on Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), another picture emerges.  In Umdat as-Salik, translated as the "Reliance of the Traveler" we find that "Circumcision is obligatory... for both men and women." In the Risalah of Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, a core text of the Maliki school of fiqh, it is recorded that circumcision for women is "honourable."  Notably, the translation for the commentary on male circumcision was provided while the commentary on female circumcision was omitted.  It gives some detail as to what is required and so I have decided to translate it myself.  The commentator, Shaykh Saalih Abdus Samee al-Azhari, tells us that "[Circumcision [literally: reduction] in women] And it is cutting the protuberance at the top of the vulva that is like the comb of the rooster. [is honourable] ... with the meaning that it is desirable."  Quite colourful.

What of the modern inheritors of the classical tradition?  Shaykha Shazia at Sunnipath tells us that "Female circumcision is it itself obligatory in the Shafi`i school, and Shaykh Nuh Keller’s translation in the Reliance of the Traveler is accurate and defines the meaning well. She emphasizes that the clitoris should not be completely cut off and laments " that the correct practice has become an almost-lost art."  Abu Haleema at the Hanafi Fiqh Blog informs us that the practice is "sunnah" according to "the view of the Hanafis and Maalikis, and [this] was narrated in one report from Ahmad." This is after giving an over view of the textual evidence in favor of the practice. The Guiding Helper, a modern Maliki fiqh text, defines circumcision as "the removal of the foreskin at the head of the penis or the small cap that covers the clitoris)" (Footnote 2186) and notes that "it is a fadilah (weaker mandub) to remove the small cap over the clitoris in females (of all ages).  [Nothing more than this small cap should be cut.]  Please note that cutting this small cap usually does not affect the ability of the female to reach orgasm (and by cutting this cap, the female will be able to get mandub credit in the next world for having performing circumcision)" (Footnote 2188).

What is one to make of all this?  First, the practice of cutting the sexual organs of women is definitely an Islamic practice.  It is not merely cultural and is either obligatory or encouraged in all of the four schools of law.  Second, the cutting countenance by the shariah is limited (it is not removal of the whole clitoris) and does not include common practices such as sewing up the vagina.  Some critics have maintained that Shaykh Nuh was being dishonest in his translation and that the text literally means to "cut off the clitoris."  The Arabic verb qaTa3a means both to cut and to cut off, among other things, but the Shaykh is drawing on the entire tradition of Shafi'i scholarship to which he is heir.  The intended audience of the Reliance is the body of English speaking Muslims, not non-Muslims, so I don't think there is a reason to be deceptive because this would constitute misleading fellow Muslims.  If his intent was to sugar-coat the issue, he would have simply removed the material entirely or left it untranslated, such as he did with the section of the Umdat that deals with slavery.
But, it must be said, the insistence of modern Shuyookh such as Faraz Rabani, that the practice is no longer recommended (besides being questionable from a fiqhi standpoint) implies that they recognize the abuses that can come out of even this limited permission to cut.  The question is, given that the proper procedure has become a "lost art" and horrendous abuse is rampant, why would any scholars recommend it all?  Is adherence to medieval formulations of religious law worth all the (female) suffering that results?

Returning to Irony

After an absence of several months, I all but shut down this blog, deleting all of its entries and posting a short mea culpa. My heart wavers before the blows of opposing arguments, now swaying one way, now swaying another. But each time I return to my skepticism I am more vehement in it. My previous arguments (now restored to this blog) I maintain more forcefully. I will expand on them as time permits.

What occasions this change? Anger. Anger at having been sold a bill of goods. Anger at my own lack of critical thought. Anger at believing apologists.

Anger at the instructions given by Shabbir Ahmed Usmani in his commentary on 34th ayay of Suratan Nisaa’ that, when beating one’s wife for being “impudent or discourteous or impolite” that “the beating should not be serious- short of bone fracture.” Again, “the beating should not be so serious that the bone is fractured, nor the blow should be so hard that it may smite a wound leaving a scar after healing.” He admonishes us that “Every fault has its own degree [of beating]” and that “if there is any big fault on the part of woman [sic], then there is no sin or fault in beating” (Volume I. pg. 335) provided that she has been first admonished and then, if she persists, been abandoned sexually. Only after these first two measures have failed does the Shaikh, in his magnanimity to the women, recognize that beating is permissible. This was all prefaced by a discussion of the “natural” and “material” reasons for the superiority of men over women, reasons such as the “fact that man is superior to woman in knowledge and action- and the whole sociology (sic) is controlled by this one single fact” (ibid., pg. 334-335). These are not the obscure writings of a back water Shaykh. These statements are found in a tafseer of the Qur’an famous throughout the sub-continent, written by a scholar of world-wide renown and a major figure within the Deobandi movement.

Anger at the double standards displayed by Muslims activists. I am still opposed to Zionism, just as I am opposed to all forms of colonialism and racism. But the attitude of Islamic activists on the issue of Palestine disturbs me. While rightfully decrying the destruction of the olive trees and confiscation of land that the Israeli Army practices, acts which are against international law and any morality with pretensions towards universality, they ignore the fact that these types of actions are allowed in Jihad. The Talqeen, a relied upon manual of fiqh (jurisprudence) within the Maliki school of thought, states that burning planted gardens, cutting trees and date palms, wounding animals, and destruction of the country are all permissible in Jihad. A condemnation of Isaeli actions cannot be based upon Islamic morality because this morality countenences these acts when performed by Muslims against non-Muslims. An Islamic condemnation can therefore be nothing but tribal and thus unworthy of support by anyone with a critical mind. Similarly, there has been much justified anger in the Muslim world at the practice of extra-judicial killings and drone assassinations by the US, actions which frequently result in the deaths of civilians (euphemistically referred to as 'collateral damage'). The case here is the same as that of the Palestine: I condemn these actions as immoral, striking against the very notion of the rule of law and due process. This condemnation, however, is a product of a secular process of critical moral deliberation. The Islamic critique, in so far as it is traditional and not itself a product of secular modernity, can only be tribal: it is wrong for them to do it to us, but not for us to do it for them. This issue can be considered under two headings: a.) the permissibility of extra-judicial killing in Islam and b.) the permissibility of undertaking military action when it is known that this will result in civilian deaths. Both of these types of actions can be established from sound Islamic sources. The first is established from the assassinations that were ordered by the Prophet of Islam against his enemies such as Ka'b ibn al-Ashruf and Abu Rafi’. These are all mentioned in reliable sources such as Al-Bukhari. The second is established from a hadeeth in Bukhari which is as follows:

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 256:

Narrated As-Sab bin Jaththama:

The Prophet passed by me at a place called Al-Abwa or Waddan, and was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, "They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans)." I also heard the Prophet saying, "The institution of Hima is invalid except for Allah and His Apostle."

A similar hadeeth can be found in Muslim:

Muslim Book 019,Number 4322:

It is narrated by Sa'b b. Jaththama that he said (to the Holy Prophet): Messenger of Allah, we kill the children of the polytheists during the night raids. He said: They are from them."

Note, however, that I am not claiming that these narrations are used to justify suicide bombings or the like; they are sufficient, however, to establish that the likelihood of collateral damage is not sufficient for a military operation to become impermissible under Islamic Law (see http://www.load-islam.com/artical_det.php?artical_id=414&subsection=Misconceptions#29 for a more detailed discussion of this). It is hypocritical for Muslims to condemn the US (or Israel, for that matter) for an action that would be permissible if Muslims carried out themselves. The only way to avoid this hypocrisy is to posit a universal ethical framework that applies to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Anger over women being forced to veil. According to the Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi’i jurists, the face veil is obligatory. Not something that the apologists like to mentioned, to the annoyance of traditionalists such as Ustadh Abdus Shakur Brooks and Abu Layth. Being a civil libertarian, I don't think it should be banned, but any critically thinking person has to ask themselves: is this the type of social relationship between the sexes that I can affirm? Is it right to confine women to a mobile cage of cloth?

One good thing to come from my recent re-embrace of traditionalism was a renewed commitment to the Arabic language. I love its beauty and rhythm and richness. I love its poetry. And it is the miftaah (key) to understanding Islam. To getting beyond the gloss of the apologists. To getting to the truth of Islam, whatever is commendable or repugnant from the view of critical consciousness. The concept of shariah has been a hot topic in American culture for the past year. I hope to weigh in on this subject with translations from authentic texts representing the traditional (pre-Modern, pre-Apologetic) views on such topics as Jihad, Apostacy, the status of women and non-Muslims under Islamic law. If there is to be a fruitful discussion of this subject it must be conducted on the basis of the historically normative legal views of classical Islamic scholarship, not on the basis of the misrepresentations of both the Islamophobes and the Islamophyles.

Culture War is not Liberation

I recently intended an informal gathering that featured a long lecture on Islamic politics. One of the points made during this talk really struck me as typical of the problems of Muslim political thought in the current era. The speaker said that Islam was currently the only force capable of resisting the onslaught of Western imperialism and that this was because, to paraphrase, Muslims don't drink liquor and their women don't follow western modes of dress. This, of course, was in a room with many women, at least half of whom were dressed in western clothes. 

I talked to the him later and asked him to clarify his remarks. He then gave me a more nuanced, if flawed, explanation of his words: Western Capitalism is constantly seeking out new markets for its products and the social restrictions peculiar to Islam hamper this expansion significantly. The glaring flaw of this statement is that the one country that, more than any other, imposes all of these social restrictions "with extreme prejudice" is also the most integrated into the global capitalist system. I am writing, of course, of Saudi Arabia. While subjecting women to the most restrictive controls of any country on the planet and imposing strict forms of censorship various cultural practices, they not only function as a leading petroleum exporter but as a major investor as well. They've been more than willing to invest massive amounts of money in the American economy to keep it going, fueling the very culture it is intent on resisting.

I take his point that alcohol and other drugs have been used by those in a position of power to keep their charges in state of thralldom. The use of alcohol to subjugate American Indians is well known. The FLN targeted bars and brothels during the Algerian independence struggle because these institutions were used by the French to demoralize and degrade the Algerian people, weakening their capacity to resist. The penetration of American urban ghettos by liquor stores is widely noted as contributing to the downward spiral of the disenfranchised. These attacks on what can be called the political economy of liquor are not sufficient to justify a total cultural prohibition of the practice. Alcohol consumption, for example, has often been used by progressive and leftist groups to build up comradery and group solidarity. The numerous drinking songs of the Wobblies and other left groups are an example of this (the International makes an excellent drinking song!). The absolute prohibition on consumption therefore can not be justified on political grounds alone. In the hands of an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, the prohibition becomes another means to cultivate subservience to royal fiat. Abstaining from drink does not make you a chic revolutionary and indulging in it does not make you a dupe of imperialism.

The political economy of women's dress is a long and complex topic. It is easy to find justification for a number of views simply by observing the endless conga line of fashion trends that surge into prominence and then fade into oblivion. Coach bags? Those are totallyVeblenian objects of conspicuous consumption, meant to inspire an invidious comparison between those who possess them and those who do not. In previous times, a well-accessorized woman was a reflection of worth of the man who kept her, a form of vicarious consumption. Now these items have become direct status-symbols for the woman, reflecting the increasing integration of women into the mainstream of economic life. 

The endless round of seasonal variations that characterizes fashion in Pakistan serves many purposes: conspicuous consumption, assertion of identity in the midst of enforced religious anonymity, a creative outlet to compensate for narrowing prospects of professional empowerment. While on the subject of fashion, the speaker stated that it was odd that gay men worked as fashion designers for women. Acting on the theory that gay men are rejectors of women, he cited this as an example of the producers of mass culture having contempt for its consumers. This struck me as odd. It would seem to me that if one wanted a form of dress that did not attempt to objectify women as mere sexual objects, gay men (and heterosexual women, of course) would be just the ones to turn to. But I guess its hard to resist taking pot-shots against the gays.

The reasons which prompt individual women to take up the abaya and niqab are too numerous to mention. When this mode of dress becomes a uniform enforced by the power of the state, such as in Saudi, the effect is to reduce women to the status of what Agamben named Homo Sacer: sacred humans. Their rights are guaranteed in the abstract so that they may be violated in the concrete particulars. They are protected by way of abuse. In the words of the No Doubt song Just a Girl, 

"'Cause I'm just a girl, little 'ol me 
Don't let me out of your sight 
I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite 
So don't let me have any rights

'Cause I'm just a girl I'd rather not be 
'Cause they won't let me drive 
Late at night I'm just a girl, 
Guess I'm some kind of freak 
'Cause they all sit and stare
With their eyes"

This perfectly encapsulates the paternal voyeurism that plagues gender relations in most Muslim societies. The restrictions are really protections and any woman who in the least way foregos them is fair game for the male gaze and the male hand. I am reminded of Marx's passage in the Communist Manifesto: 
"Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class... the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class." 

One could easily rephrase this as:
"Burqas: for the protection of women. Driving restrictions: for the protection of women. Chaperones: for the protection of women. A patriarch is a patriarch, for the protection of women."


What the fight over women's dress in the context of Islam most thoroughly unveils (don't kill me!) is the extent to which women are excluded from this struggle. A political football can't be allowed to dictate its own trajectory. Militant secularists in Tunisia rip the veils from women and then rape them with soda bottles, Islamists (or old-fashioned misogynists) splash acid in the faces of unveiled women, representatives of Saudi state force girls back into their burning school because they don't have their scarfs, veiled women are denied a place in civil society in Turkey, Tunisia, and, increasingly, Western Europe. What is lacking, or, to be precise, actively silenced or ignored, is the voice of Muslim women themselves. The debate over appropriate dress needs to be one internal to the community of Muslim women, without the bearded men or the humanitarian warmongers intervening. Of the Muslim women who have been most active in shaping the debate over hijab, the four most influential have been Fatima Mernissi, Amina Wadud, Maryam Jameelah, Yvonne Ridley, and Asra Nomani. The first three wrote influential books touching on the issue and the last two have been prominent in activism and journalism. Of these four, only the latter has been prominent during the latest phase of the debate: the recent increase in islamophobia in the US and the attempts to criminalize the veil in Western Europe. Whatever side they take on this issue, Muslim women need to play a more prominent role in how it is decided. They should not remain mere objects of debate, but the principal participants.

Both the issue of alcohol and women's dress demonstrate the limits of a culture war as a response to empire. A culture war can easily provide the pretext for a community's incorporation into the global capitalist economy via the ideology of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is a ploy to support capitalism: it buys off the Muslim leadership, sells out the women, and paves the way for the more thorough capitalization of the Muslim world. We must think dialectically here. It is not a matter of islamophobes getting the government to start concentration camps. The professional islamophobes serve certain very specific goals: invoking the feared Other during a heated election, supporting US foreign policy vis-a-vis Israel. They will come and go as required. It is the ideology of multiculturalism that is the key to the long-term sustainability of capitalism. The dialectic of the closed, mono-cultural, (usually) mono-racial society proposed by the Islamophobes and their secular anti-immigrant allies pitted against the institutional advocates of liberal multi-culturalism will soon give way to a new synthesis: an ‘enlightened’ yet ‘principled’ tolerance that tames the Other, defangs it, and displays it for purposes of ideological reinforcement and entertainment. 

This dialectical process will repeated on a larger, global scale vis-a-vis the West and the Islamic world. The ultimate result will be ‘quaint’ survivals useful for justifying the existence of Western civilization as a way of life and, on the more liberal end, to meet the ideological requirement of tolerance of diversity. These survivals will be economically integrated, their resources, both physical and cultural, will be tapped, but they will be self-policing. Identity politics will give way to identity police. Saudi Arabia and Occupied Palestine are both illustrative examples. 

In the latter case, the West Bank plays the part of the respectable, secular Arab state. It clamps down on the Islamists, negotiates with Israel, and accepts money from the US in order to more effectively control its own people (an example of the latter being the funding of the Dahlan gangs’ attempted take over of Gaza). The Gaza Strip, under the rule of the Islamist Hamas party, acts as a crucible of Islamist political identity. When the pressure increases, the women feel it. Women, for example, can no longer smoke sheesha (hookah) in public. Lingerie ads are now banned, although perhaps this affects the men more than the women. Women are no longer free to have fabulous male hair-dressers. There is a dialectic at work here: the harder that one side asserts its secular/islamic identity, the greater the identity policing performed by the other side. In Gaza, women are slowly being squeezed back into the home while in the West Bank the space of political participation is being restricted to Fatah apparatchiks. The only solution for the vicious dialectic of multiculturalism is a new global project committed to universal emancipation. Partial solutions and parochial battles are no longer sufficient.

More Thoughts on Domestic Violence

One of the acts of a wife which may trigger the chastisement discussed in the earlier post on domestic violence is "nushuz" or disobedience. Nushuz covers many acts, including leaving the home without permission or refusing to have sex with the husband. Because of this, acting in a way that many if not most women living in the west (including Muslim women) take for granted, whether it be freedom of movement, freedom to work outside the home, the right to refuse her husband when she is angry or because she is simply not in the mood, is criminalized in the Shariah. While it is true that a wife may place many stipulations in the marriage contract, most women do not and, to quote Kecia Ali, "this approach misses the forest for the trees" because it "fail[s] to address the basic parameters of the marriage contract itself and the assumptions it is based on." More than this, it fails to take into consideration the universal ethical principles that make life in a diverse, multicultural society possible.

It is this lack of principle that I find to be the most objectionable trait of the Muslim community. All the other evils that I have written about or will write about in this blog, gender injustice, racism, irrational prejudice against Jews and homosexuals, etc., are symptoms of this cardinal failing. Muslims are quite quick to condemn the injustices done to them by invoking universal moral norms or by taking shield behind legal structures that embody these norms, such as the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, when criticism is made of certain Islamic practices, they are just as quick to retreat into the particularities of their own religion, eschewing any universal framework for moral thought. 

While the theoretical foundation can be quite different and specific application may vary, the universal ethical principles which have guided moral decision making have at least one trait in common: they admonish us to place care for the other and care for ourselves on equal footing. This is true whether we are talking about the Golden Rule (in it's Jewish, Christian, or Confucian forms), the principle of utility, the Categorical Imperative, veil of ignorance underlying Rawls' Theory of Justice, or Schopenhauer's injunction to "harm no one; on the contrary help everyone as much as you can." These rules force use to take a universal perspective in our decision making, to consider other people as beings with the same inherent worth as we ourselves possess. This universality is independent of their usefulness to us, our emotional attachment to them, or their familial, cultural, or religious bonds to us. Unfortunately, Islam's version of the universal rule, "Love for your brother what you love for yourself" is ambiguous. While many Muslims interpret the term "brother" (akh in arabic) in a universal sense, embracing all of humanity, there are a large number of Islamist ideologues who interpret this term in an exclusive way, referring only to the brotherhood of Muslims. Another ambiguity, to return to the topic of this post, is the manner in which this principle is applied in practice. 

Islam is the religion of Submission. Muslims seek the pleasure of Allah and a share in his paradise by way of a life-transaction or, in Arabic, deen. This life-transaction requires sincere submission to a number of religious rites, restrictions, and duties. When notions of gender equality are mentioned to Islamic scholars and other ideologues, the most common apologetic tactic is to invoke the notion of this ultimate goal. Yes, we should love for our sisters in Islam what we love for ourselves. In this case, we should want them to go to paradise just as we desire to go to paradise. The way to paradise according to Islam is clear: in the sphere of gender relations it requires obedience to certain norms regarding dress, speech, association with members of the opposite gender, and compliance with certain laws regarding marriage and family life. Islam is not concerned with equality but equity. A good husband is not the one who indulges his wife's desire but one who ensures that she gets to paradise via adherence to the formal code. Indeed, as any member of the Tableeghi Jamaat will tell you, men will be held accountable for the action of "their women." This creates a further incentive, beyond the strictly ethical, to maintain prescribed norms within the Muslim household. The problem with this approach is that it permits virtually any behavior in the name of the benevolent tutelage of the wife and the sanctity of the home.

To what extremes can this attitude lead? Kecia Ali argues that, based on a study of several Sunni legal texts, "The husband's right to derive pleasure from his wife... led the jurists to grant him total control over her mobility." She quotes a striking example from the Hanafi Law Book, Kitab an-Nafaqat, by Al-Khassaf. What measure can the husband take in response to a refusal of sexual relations? "Is it lawful for the husband to have sex with her against her will...? It is lawful because she is a wrongdoer." This is not an isolated opinion, at least not within the Hanafi school which is dominant in South and Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. Marital rape is a serious issue in every community. It does not need a religious sanction or motivation to occur; it is an expression of the desire for absolute power over another. When this illicit desire is fed the fuel of piety and righteousness, when it is combined with the urge to punish a wrongdoer, it is easy for the marital chamber to become a torture chamber.