Here are a couple of quotes I came across on a martial arts forum, of all places, about Josef Stalin, another avid fan of brutalist architecture.

From Malcolm Muggeridge’s accounts of a conversation with Svetlna Stalin, from the book “Can Man Live without God”, by Ravi Zacharias:

“On one occasion Stalin called for five live chickens and proceeded to use it to make an unforgettable point before his henchmen. Forcefully clutching a chicken in one hand, with the other he began to systematically pluck out its feathers. As the chicken struggled in vain to escape, he continued with the painful denuding until the bird was completely stripped. “Now you watch, ” Stalin said as he placed the chicken on the floor and walked away with some breadcrumbs in his hand. Incredibly the fear-crazed chicken hobbled toward him and clung to the legs of his trousers. Stalin threw a hand full of grain to the bird, and as it began to follow him around the room, he turned to his dumbfounded colleagues and said quietly, “This is the way to rule the people. Did you see how that chicken followed me for food, even though I had caused it such torture? People are like that chicken. If you inflict inordinate pain on theme they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.”

Every chicken has its day:

Stalin’s death fits Aristotle’s thought that ‘a tyrant is of all persons the man who can place no confidence in friends, as every one has it in his desire and these chiefly in their power to destroy him.’

Some of Stalin’s colleagues certainly had reason to hope for his death. He was preparing another purge and had also indicated that he was thinking of removing Beria from his post as head of the secret police. The night before his stroke, he had kept his colleagues up until four in the morning. He had said that some of the leadership thought they could get by on their past merits. Some of them may have been chilled by his further remark that ‘they are mistaken’.

All the next morning, Stalin did not appear. His staff started to worry at midday, but they knew better than to enter his room unless they were sent for. They first went in at eleven o’clock that night and found Stalin on the floor, conscious but unable to speak. The called Malenkov and Beria, but Malenkov would not come without Beria. At three in the morning, Beria arrived and said Stalin was only sleeping.

Under Beria’s instructions, no doctors were called. Beria and other leaders came back at nine a.m. The doctors followed.

Beria had delayed medical help for perhaps a whole day after the stroke had occurred and it seemed clear that Stalin could not live. Khrushchev described Beria at the bedside: “Beria started going around spewing hatred against him and mocking him. It was simply unbearable to listen to Beria.”

But Stalin regained partial consciousness and pointed to something on the wall. Stalin’s daughter noted how Beria changed: ‘Beria stared fixedly at those clouded eyes, anxious even now to convince my father that he was the most loyal and devoted of them all, as he had always tried with every ounce of his strength to appear to be.’ Khrushev says that Beria then ‘threw himself on his knees, seized Stalin’s hand, and started kissing it. When Stalin lost consciousness again and closed his eyes, Beria stood up and spat.

– Jonathan Glover; (1999); from ‘Humanity A Moral History of the Twentieth Century’

UPDATE: Stalin not a John Wayne fan.

Continueing on the theme of Francis Fukuyama’s essay I posted yesterday, there is quite an interesting ongoing debate on the issue of Multiculturalism and Muslim integration (or lack thereof) in Europe on signandsight.com (a site that “gathers voices from across Europe on a variety of topics, aiming to foster trans-European debates and the creation of a European public space”):

Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Are the rights of the group higher than those of the individual? With a fiery polemic against Ian Buruma’s “Murder in Amsterdam” and Timothy Garton Ash’s review of this book in the New York Review of Books, Pascal Bruckner has kindled an international debate. By now Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek and Paul Cliteur have all stepped into the ring.

The departure point for the debate is the book “Murder in Amsterdam” by Ian Buruma about the murder of Theo Van Gogh and a review of it by “English journalist and academic” Timothy Garton Ash. In the book Ian Buruma voices his disagreement with Ayaan Hirsi Ali over her persistant criticism of Islam and Garton Ash, who Bruckner calls “the apostle of multiculturalism” and Bruce Bawer recently termed “official-expert-on-Europe”, then goes on to call her an Enlightenment fundamentalist.

The first installment by Pascal Bruckner defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the subject of much debate and media attention this week, as her new book “Infidel” was released on Tuesday, concluding:

It is astonishing that 62 years after the fall of the Third Reich and 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an important segment Europe’s intelligentsia is engaged in slandering the friends of democracy. They maintain it is best to cede and retreat, and pay mere lip-service to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Yet we are a long way off the dramatic circumstances of the 1930s, when the best minds threw themselves into the arms of Berlin or Moscow in the name of race, class or the Revolution. Today the threat is more diffuse and fragmented. There is nothing that resembles the formidable peril of the Third Reich. Even the government of Mullahs in Tehran is a paper tiger that could be brought to its knees with a minimum dose of rigour. Nevertheless the preachers of panic abound. Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude - dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today’s directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!

Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash fire back with weak replies about “tolerance for cultural diversity” (Ash), because “a free-spirited citizen does not tolerate different customs or cultures because he thinks they are wonderful, but because he believes in freedom.” (Buruma).

After that comes the good part. First comes the Turkish German author Necla Kelek’s excellent response to Buruma, then Paul Cliteur takes on multiculturalism and relativism:

[..] Think of the principle of free speech. The answer of postmodern cultural relativism is: refrain from criticism. Be reticent to comment on unfamiliar religions. Let reform come from within and avoid provocation and polarization.

[..] What remains a mystery is why many intelligent people stick to the postmodern frame of mind, even though so many intelligent writers - Terry Eagleton and John Searle, to name just two - have thoroughly deconstructed its tenets. I think this has to do with the postmodernist conviction that an attitude that they see as relativistic and pragmatic would help in the struggle against religious terrorism. They hope that, if we abstain from radical criticism of the terrorist mindset, we can pacify the most radical elements.

[..] Buruma thinks he knows why terrorists hate Van Gogh, Ellian, and Hirsi Ali: because religious terrorists have a conflict with “radical Enlightenment.” Buruma and many other postmodernists labor under the delusion that once we reject radical Enlightenment, and thereby radical critique of religion and provocation, we can pacify the terrorists.

There is a final reply from Buruma, which is barely worth mentioning, following by some links to further articles relating to the discussion, including Fukuyama’s article and reviews of Hirsi Ali’s book.

I’d add to this collection Bruce Bawers review of Tony Judt’s (the other “official-expert-on-Europe”) book “Postwar”, a history of Europe after world war II from the Winter 2007 issue of the Hudson Review:

Judt knows a great deal about how Europe renewed itself after being devastated by one totalitarian ideology and how it survived the nearly half-century-long domination of its eastern half by another totalitarian ideology. Today Europe confronts a third totalitarian ideology. In two world wars, it committed suicide; now it’s doing so again—and this time it may not rise from the ashes. Yet Judt either can’t accept it or won’t admit it. He’s not alone, of course: most of today’s academic “Europe experts” are utterly useless on this subject. Some don’t even dare mention the elephant in the room. Predictably, Judt concludes that the real problem here is “Islamophobia” (this is one word he doesn’t put in scare quotes) and the rise of “far-right,” “anti-immigrant” parties.4 For all his flagrant denial of reality, however, one is still astonished to see him conclude on a note of sheer fantasy, insisting, in his closing sentences,
on Europe’s right “to offer the world some modest advice” on how to live and suggesting that “the twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe.” More likely, Europe will by the end of the century belong, in whole or in part, to the Islamic world, and will be governed, in whole or in part, according to sharia law. Yes, this disaster may yet be averted; but only if people like Judt—that is to say, the teachers, professors, politicians, writers, artists, and journalists who shape government agendas and public attitudes—summon the courage to face difficult challenges and speak uncomfortable truths before it’s too late.

I’ll round the post of with one more article that draws on material from both Bruce Bawer and Ayaan Hirsi Al - “Appeasement takes hold again in Europe”, by Paul Sheehan, from Monday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Faced with the rising tide of bomb attacks, plots, threats, demands and belligerent victimology from a violent, ignorant and sexually repressive subculture, the centre of European civilisation appears to be doing exactly what it did the last time blackshirts were on the march in Europe - appeasing, denying and capitulating.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has a letter for Keith Ellison, currently the only Muslim in the American Congress. It is a challenge to Rep. Ellison to speak out on behalf of women in predominantly Muslim countries.

I hope he reads it. I hope he gets it. I hope he acts on it. I also hope he realises that the issues raised in the letter are at least in part a result of the adherence to the Koran and Sunnah.

Why? Well, yesterday Robert Spencer posted some reasons why his book “The Truth About Muhhamad” was banned in Pakistan for “objectionable material” about Muhhamad, and reasons 3 and 4 relate directly to the answer. Here’s a couple of reasons why the government of Pakistan can’t handle the Truth, that relate directly to the treatment of women in Islamic cultures:

3. Also in The Truth About Muhammad I discuss Muhammad’s marriage to little Aisha, which is specifically addressed in the hadith collection Sahih Bukhari (generally considered by Muslims to be the most reliable such collection). According to several traditions recorded by Bukhari, “the Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88; see also 7.62.65; 7.62.64; 5.58.236; 5.58.234).

It is quite obvious that many Muslims take very seriously and act upon the material on which I depended to write the book. Imitating the Prophet of Islam, many Muslims even in modern times have taken child brides. In some places this even has the blessing of the law: article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”[i]

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight.[ii] Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”[iii]

Time magazine reported in 2001:

In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys. The law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move. An attempt by conservatives to abolish Yemen’s legal minimum age of fifteen for girls failed, but local experts say it is rarely enforced anyway. (The onset of puberty is considered an appropriate time for a marriage to be consummated.)[iv]

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that over half of the girls in Afghanistan and Bangladesh are married before they reach the age of eighteen.[v] In early 2002, researchers in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found half the girls married by age thirteen. In an Afghan refugee camp, more than two out of three second-grade girls were either married or engaged, and virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. One ten-year-old was engaged to a man of sixty.[vi]

This is the price that women have paid throughout Islamic history, and continue to pay, for Muhammad’s status as “an excellent example of conduct” (Qur’an 33:21).

Of course, in this as with the other instances I have adduced, other Islamic authorities differ. Some claim that in repeating the traditions from Bukhari, I am perpetuating misunderstandings – despite the manifest fact that these “misunderstandings” are quite widespread in the Islamic world. If they are indeed misunderstandings, the problem lies with Sahih Bukhari, which is very ancient and essentially canonical, not with my book, which has been available for less than three months and will be forgotten before too long.

But is Sahih Bukhari banned in Pakistan? Of course not.

4. Finally, in my book I explain why it is today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. False adultery accusations against Aisha led ultimately to the requirement that four male Muslim witnesses must be produced in order to establish a crime of adultery or related indiscretions. In cases of sexual misbehavior, four male witnesses are required to establish the deed — in accord with a revelation that came to Muhammad to exonerate his youthful wife (Qur’an 24:13).[vii] This requirement allows unscrupulous men to commit rape with impunity: as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery.

That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.[viii] Several high-profile cases in Nigeria in recent years have also revolved around rape accusations being turned around by Islamic authorities into charges of fornication, resulting in death sentences that were only modified after international pressure.[ix]

Because they’re rooted in Qur’anic dictates, such abuses are extraordinarily resistant to criticism and reform. Witness the recent situation in Pakistan, the same country where my book has just been banned. The new Women’s Protection Act has reclassified the crime of rape so that it can be prosecuted according to modern standards of evidence and testimony, without relying on the four male witnesses required by the Qur’an. But Muslim hardliners have staged protests against the new law, calling it “un-Islamic, immoral and unconstitutional.” And they have a case, based on Qur’an 24:13 and the story of Aisha’s exoneration.

And thats all even before we get to:

• The stoning of women for adultery - a tradition abrogated from the Koran, but preserved in the Hadiths.
• Honour killings - a cultural degeneracy, unmitigated by Islamic tradition due to its misogyny.
• Female genital mutilation - another cultural degeneracy OKed by Muhhamad, as long as you “don’t cut too deeply” or “don’t overdo it”.
• The instruction to beat one’s rebellious wife in the Koran.

The first two reasons that I omitted in Robert Spencer’s list above, by the way, relate to the 3 stages of Jihad, as directed by Muhhamad (”conversion to Islam, subjugation without equality of rights with Muslims under the rule of Islamic law, or war”) and abrogation in the Koran, the consequence of which is that the later “war verses” override the earlier “peaceful” verses.

I’d love to hear Rep. Ellison’s views on all of the above. Which camp will he belong to? Will he say its all just a big misunderstanding? Claim ignorance? Or flatly declare that the example of the Prophet Muhhamad was perfect and the instructions of Allah are not open to interpretation? Will he fade away in embarassment perhaps or explode in outrage? All heard and seen before. All going pretty much nowhere.

Drawing attention to the letter to Rep. Ellison is a 910 Group campaign and was originally the of idea of No Apology.

A must read op-ed in the LA Times, by Raymond Ibrahim:

[..] when Muslims beat infidels, it’s just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords’ rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.

[..] If some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until Islam dominates the globe, they are only being true to Islam and its doctrines as they understand it. However, in that case, where the world is divided into two warring camps, Islam and Infidelity — or, in Islamic terms, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — how can these Muslims expect any concessions from the international community? The natural conclusion of the view that “might makes right” is “to the victor go the spoils.”

[..] But perhaps Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting special treatment, as well as believing that jihad is righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out of its way to confirm such convictions. By criticizing itself, apologizing and offering concessions — all things the Islamic world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged status in the world.

[..] Muslims’ zeal for their holy places and lands is not intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there’s something to be said about being passionate and protective of one’s own. Here the secular West — Christendom’s prodigal son and true usurper — can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West concedes ideologically, politically and especially spiritually, Islam will be sure to conquer. If might does not make right, zeal apparently does.

So anyone going demand an apology for court ordered Bible burning in Uzbekistan? Can we get a little outrage at Christians, including priests, beaten and their Bibles burned in Kyrzystan? Christian priests brutally tortured and murdered in Pakistan and Kurdistan? Christians not being allowed to repair their churches in Egypt or churches demolished in Pakistan and Malaysia or burned in Nigeria? Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia (their parents said they forgave the killers)? Any imams, muftis, sheikhs out there apologised for any of this yet?

Raymond Ibrahim, an assistant in the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, has a book coming out called “The Al Qaeda Reader” which will be published April 17th 2007. The book contains “translations of religious texts and propaganda”, tracing “the origins and evolution of Al Qaeda” and “revealing an ideology that calls for a relentless jihad against non-Muslim “infidels,” repudiates democracy in favor of Islamic law, stresses the importance of martyrdom, and mocks the notion of “moderate” Islam.”

You can find more great op-eds from him on Victor Davis Hanson’s site.

(h/t Snapshots)