This post is a reply to a guest post over at Pommygranate’s blog, by Kizzie, a Sudanese Muslim woman, who currently resides in Cairo. In her post Kizzie tries to show that Female Genital Mutilation is not an Islamic practice, but rather a cultural one, partly basing her argument on the premise that the two are mutually exclusive. However, although FGM is a certainly a cultural practice that predates Islam, it is also an Islamic practice, which is what I am going to show below.

The reason that a Sudanese Muslim woman came to be guest-blogging on Pommygranate’s site, by the way, is the debate that has raged this week across the Australian blogosphere in the wake of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s visit here last week. Ironically Ali barely mentioned FGM when she spoke on Sunday night.
The first bone in the debate was thrown by Kim at Larvatus Prodeo. Tim Blair then pulled her up on her smug insensitivity , while in the meantime the fireworks really started flying in the comments to Kim’s post. Blair followed up and Kim attempted to fire back, only to get blasted to pieces by Blair (see the Update in last TB link). Far back along the way FGM became the focus of the debate, as it rippled out through the blogosphere and finally here we are. Phew.

Now to answering Kizzie’s post. She starts off explaining where FGM is practiced (many African countries and some Arab countries in the Middle East, like, you may be surprised to learn, in Kurdistan, where most women are “circumcised”) and describes the four classifications of FGM, which disfigure the female genitalia to various degrees. No argument so far. Except the part where she uses the term Female Genital Circumcision, but than refers to it as FGM thereafter, which actually stands for Female Genital Mutilation. A telling manifestation of double-think right there, I’d say.

Kizzie’s argument is divided into two parts and in the first she attempts to argue that FGM is not an Islamic practice, giving three arguments to support her view. Looking at them one by one:

1. FGM predates both Christianity and Islam since it is believed to date back to time of the Pharaohs.

Well, noone is going to argue with that. A lot of Islamic practices predate Islam, and some predate Christianity also. Thats hardly an argument that all those practices are not Islamic. The Islamic practice of not eating pork was a Judaic one before Islam, the Islamic practice of five prayers a day was practices by Zoroastrians before Islam, the Islamic symbol of star and crescent was a symbol of a number of Moon-Gods before Islam, and so on and so forth. The covering of the female body, polygamy, the washing of extremities before prayer and meals, fasting, all these have been cultural practices somewhere before becoming Islamic ones.
Here’s how Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar from Al-Azhar University put it (full quote and source further down):

”Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature.”

Anyway, what is important is how a person justifies their actions – is it because “thats just how we do things round here” (ie. a cultural practice, like shaking hands in the West or rubbing noses amongst the Eskimos), or is it because the practice is made compulsory or recommended by their religious belief system? I’ll get to the Islamic justifications (and recommendations) for FGM shortly.

2. FGM is found in non-Muslim societies example: Christians in Ghana and other non-Muslim societies in India and South America.

See my answer to one. If every Islamic practice was disowned because it was practiced by adherents of other religions there wouldn’t be much left thats Islamic. The question is does Islam give justification for the practice? When I get to the scriptural and scholarly references below it should be clear that it does. The distinction of Islam being a “complete way of life”, rather than merely a religion, as Muslims like to point out, gives extra weight to this argument, as virtually any act can be determined to be allowed, disallowed, recommended etc from the Sunnah (the tradition and example of the Prophet and his companions as recorded in the Hadiths). For the Islamic Ummah the lines between culture and religion are virtually non-existent, with an overriding Islamic culture superseding any local one. Anyhow, are there any Christian priests in Ghana giving religious justification for FGM or does it exist despite the opposition of the Church? Because there most certainly are plenty of Muslim Sheikhs giving religious justification for FGM.

3. If FGM was obligatory in Islam then Muslim scholars from all over the world wouldn’t be working together to ban its practice.

Here Kizzie tries to confuse the issue by using the word “obligatory”. FGM is certainly “obligatory” in most schools of Islam. In most schools it is seen as “noble”, “honorable” and “recommended”, but not obligatory. The distinction is much the same as that between the wearing of the hijab and the wearing of the niqab (which covers the face) in most Islamic schools. The niqab is deemed obligatory only in the more severe Islamic schools (the Wahhabi, Deobandi etc), by others it is viewed as kind “going the extra mile” to please Allah, a noble act of piety. Is wearing the niqab not an Islamic practice because most schools do not deem it “obligatory”?

Anyhow, Kizzie sites three example here, two of conferences and one of a “meeting” of Muslim scholars where FGM was denounced. Note that all three events are from the last 2 years. One conference was organized by a German human rights group and held in Cairo and involved scholars from Al-Azhar. The “meeting” was also held in Cairo’s Al Azhar university. The other conference was held in Nigeria and news reports again feature quotes from scholars from Al Azhar, which is the foremost Sunni institution in the world, so certainly has authority. It does appear that the issue has been seriously debated at Al-Azhar (links below). I do wonder though whether these denouncement draw a distinction between “female circumcision” and FGM, by which some Muslims only refer to infibulation.

I also wonder why it took 14 centuries for these denouncements to come out. Where are the Fatwas banning the practice, other than those against Infibulation, the most severe of the four forms, prior to the the 21st century? Why did the scholars not try to rid of the Islamic world of this barbaric practice before Western influence shamed them into doing so? Why was a German human rights group needed to start the conference in the first place?

As for “Muslim scholars from all over the world [..] working together to ban its practice” (I am only seeing scholars from Al-Azhar), well, what about all the Muslim scholars all over the world encouraging it and using the Sunnah to justify it? They certainly seem to have the superior numbers.

Before I start quoting some of these scholars, here are some quotations from the Hadiths that are commonly used to justify the practice:

Although there is no mention of it in the Quran itself, there are several hadiths, where Female Genital Mutilation is encouraged by Mohammad.

The first hadith is from Abu Dawud (Book 41, Number 5251): Um ‘Atiyyah is reported as an exciser of female slaves who had immigrated with Mohammad.
On one occasion Mohammad allegedly asked her if she kept practicing her profession, to which she responded in the affirmative. Then she added: “unless it is forbidden and you order me to stop doing it.” Mohammad replied: “yes, it is allowed.”
Mohammad then gave Um ‘Atiyyah specific instructions on the methodology for female circumcision (Aldeeb, 1994, p. 6), explaining to her that his method of “female circumcision” would bring radiance to the face of the woman.
This hadith is also quoted by al-Hakim and al-Baihaqi on the authority of al-Dhaahhak ibn Qais (al-Sabbagh, 1998, p. 17).

Another well-known hadith is that of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He relates in his Musnad (5:75) from Abu al-Malih ibn, Usama’s father, that Mohammad said:
“Circumcision is sunna (tradition) for men and an honorable quality for women”

A third hadith states: “If the two circumcision organs (khitanan) meet, ritual ablution (gusl), becomes obligatory.” This is cited in Malik, Muslim, al-Tirmithi and Ibn Majah in their respective hadith collections and can also be found in other collections (al-Sabbagh, 1998, p. 38).

There are many documented justifications by Islamic scholars through the ages, based on these Hadiths. And many of them, coincidentally, are from the same aforementioned Al-Azhar university. Possibly because Egypt is pretty much FGM-central, with 97% of women there having been subjected to it. You’d think if the practice contradicted Sharia it would have become less prevalent, if not stamped out by now. Islamic countries don’t seem to have much trouble minimising alcohol consumption, for example. Anyway, lets hear from the Sheikhs:

In Reliance of the Traveler, a classical manual of Islamic law, endorsed by Al-Azhar in 1991 as conforming ‘to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,’ we find the following, with notes from several scholars and the translator:

e4.3 Circumcision is obligatory (commentary of Sheikh ‘Umar Barakat: “for both men and women”). For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Arabic: Bazr) of the clitoris (remark by the translator: “not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert”). (comment by Sheikh ‘Abd al-Wakil Durubi: Hanbalis hold that circumcision of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere courtesy to the husband.)”

A look at the original Arabic show the text to actually say:

Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female)
by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male,
but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris
(this is called HufaaD).

Further commentary (from a non-Muslim):

The deceptive translation by Nuh Hah Mim Keller, made for Western consumption, obscures the Shafi’i law, given by ‘Umdat al-Salik, that circumcision of girls by excision of the clitoris is mandatory. This particular form of female circumcision is widely practiced in Egypt, where the Shafi’i school of Sunni law is followed.

Some years ago Pamela Bone asked Sheik Fehmi al-Imam of the Preston Mosque about FGM and his reply was “You probably don’t need it but women in hot countries do”. (The Age, 21/7/01 p7) (same link)

In 1981 the Great Sheikh of the same aforementioned Al-Azhar University “stated that parents must follow the lessons of Mohammed and not listen to medical authorities because the latter often change their minds. Parents must do their duty and have their daughters circumcised.”. (same link)

How things have changed after 20 years of Western influence!

Again from the same link:

Sheikh Yussef Al-Qaradhawi, one of Sunni Islam’s most influential clerics and a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood favors partial circumcision for women as a moderate, just, and reasonable solution best suited to reality. In a Fatwa on this issue, he wrote, “Anyone who thinks that circumcision is the best way to protect his daughters should do it. I support this, particularly in the period in which we live.”

And still more the learned men of Al-Azhar:

On 12/2/2007 Al-Arabiya TV aired ‘Al-Azhar University Scholars Argue over the Legitimacy of Female Circumcision Practiced in Egypt.’ The debate was between Egyptian Al-Azhar University scholars Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar and Sheikh Mahmoud Ashur.

Muhammad Al-Mussayar: notes “All the jurisprudents, since the advent of Islam and for 14 centuries or more, are in consensus that female circumcision is permitted by Islam. But they were divided with regard to its status in shari’a. Some said that female circumcision is required by shari’a, just like male circumcision. Some said this is the mainstream practice, while others said it is a noble act. But throughout the history of Islam, nobody has ever said that performing female circumcision is a crime. There has been a religious ruling on this for 14 centuries.” “First of all, there are reliable hadiths in Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim which support female circumcision. The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘If a circumcised woman and man have intercourse, they must undergo ablution.’ Unreliable hadiths do not cancel out the reliable ones. We have unreliable hadiths regarding prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage. Should we abolish prayer and charity just because some hadiths are unreliable?..”Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature.” (reported by MEMRI.org 27/2/2007 and http://fgmnetwork.org) (same link)

So for 1400 years the scholars have been divided on whether it is an obligation (the Shafi’i school), sunna (the Hanbali school) or a “noble act”, an “honorable quality”, while in the Hanafi school it is apparently “a mere courtesy to the husband”. All a sudden in the last 3 years the final word comes out declaring the the practice neither obligatory or sunna, but suddenly Unislamic? Give me a break.

For more evidence still, see also this fascinating and shocking recent debate (and it is at least good to see they have plenty of those) involving a male lecturer from, once again, Al-Azhar university, debating a female lecturer (not sure from which institution) on the subject of FGM. The male sheikh again argues that milder forms of FGM are sunna, while total removal of the clitoris is forbidden, while the female lecturer argues against all forms of FGM. Dr. Muhammad Wahdan concludes:

In Egypt we have four and a half million spinsters. The definition of a spinster is a woman who has reached 30, without ever receiving a marriage proposal. We have a spinster problem in the Arab world, and the last thing we want is for them to be sexually aroused. Circumcision of the girls who need it makes them chaste, dignified, and pure.

But back to Kizzie’s post, and in part two of her essay, having apparently show FGM is not an Islamic practice, she tries to show that FGM is actually a social/cultural practice. Firstly Kizzie states that the less severe forms are practiced in Indonesia. I would have thought that only goes to prove my point? Then she goes on to point out some age-old cultural justifications for the ancient FGM tradition in Africa, which only serves to moot the waters, as ancient cultural reasoning does not trump modern Islamic reasoning, so I’ll simply leave that part alone. But as Indonesia has been brought up, I will follow up with that example. It is true that the type of FGM practiced in Indonesia is almost always not as severe as that of North Africa. And here I can agree that we are seeing “cultural differences”. FGM is a part of Islamic culture, it is an Islamic practice, which came to Indonesia with Islam and did not exist there prior. However the differences between how it is done there as opposed to say Egypt, can be put down to “cultural practice”. Lets not be confused by that distinction, however.

Here are some extracts from an article that appeared in The Age, in 2004 about FGM in Indonesia:

The practice of female circumcision in Indonesia has moved into hospitals. Greater genital mutilation is the likely result. Matthew Moore and Karuni Rompies report.

Hospitals across Indonesia are offering new parents a one-price surgical package for their just-born girls — as well as piercing their ears, they’ll circumcise them.

At Jakarta’s Hermina Hospital the price for the two procedures is 95,000 rupiah (about $A16), at IDI hospital in Surabaya in East Java it’s only 15,000 rupiah, while in Makassar’s Khadijah Hospital in Sulawesi, hospital staff quote 25,000 to 30,000 rupiah.

[..] While hospitals might be more hygienic, health care experts are worried by strong evidence that the move has led to more of the child’s genital tissue being cut because medical practitioners use different implements and techniques.

Village-based midwives and traditional healers have been circumcising girls in Indonesia for centuries, although the extent and details of the practice are only now emerging.

[..]

In an attempt to find out more about female circumcision, the US AID-funded study by the Population Council surveyed 1694 households in eight separate regions and found all the boys and 97.5 per cent of girls had been circumcised.

[..]

The concern now relates to changes due to circumcisions in hospitals, where health care professionals use scissors in more than 75 per cent of cases, which invariably means cutting flesh.

[..]
It’s not only babies who are circumcised, with one-third of those surveyed circumcised between the ages of five and nine, and some even older.

Several hours out of Jakarta in Bandung, the Assalaam Foundation has been holding free mass circumcisions for males and females for almost 50 years, with as many as 400 people turning up at a time. Syarief Hamid, treasurer with the foundation, which runs several schools, said the circumcisions were timed to honor the Prophet’s birthday, and were growing in popularity each year.

While religion is the main reason for circumcising girls, he says there are also health reasons. “I understand that a girl who is not circumcised would not have clean genitals after she urinates and sometimes that can cause cervical cancer,” he says. “The religious view is, if you are not circumcised you won’t have clean genitals after urinating. If then you pray, your prayer won’t be legal.”

[..]

Religion was the reason cited by 55 per cent of mothers surveyed for circumcising their daughters, although none could identify parts of the Koran or the Prophet Muhammad’s guidance, called Hadith, where it is stipulated. While 32 per cent nominated health and hygiene as the perceived benefit, 9 per cent said they did not know what benefit it would bring.

Masitoh Chusnan, from the women’s wing of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia’s two biggest Muslim organizations, says circumcision of girls is regarded in Islam as an honorable practice.

“The Hadith did not say it’s obligatory, but it is recommended to have it done,” she says. “There is the Prophet’s words saying girls must be circumcised, but you should not cut too much.”

[..] current practice shows no signs of a decline in popularity, with more than 90 per cent of mothers questioned supporting the practice continuing.

And one in five mothers even suggested social sanctions should be imposed on girls who were uncircumcised.

The above dove-tails perfectly with what the religious arguments above – it is not an obligation, but an “honourable practice”. But far disturbing still are stories about the hundreds, if not thousands of Christian women from Indonesia’s Molucca Islands who were forcibly converted to Islam and in the process forcibly circumcised:

Christian woman recalls horror of forced conversion to Islam

Posted on May 1, 2001 | by Brittany Jarvis

AMBON, Indonesia (BP)–”My scar healed quite fast, but the sad, humiliated feeling stayed. I feel like I’m no longer complete, both as a person and a woman.”

That is the testimony of Christina Sagat, a 32-year-old Christian from Kasiui, Indonesia, who was forcibly circumcised by her Muslim neighbors. Unfortunately, as traumatic as her story sounds, hundreds of women have endured similar oppression.

“My niece, Cecilia, who at that time was eight months pregnant, was also circumcised,” Sagat said. “My mother, who was in her 70s, was also circumcised. Teenagers, and even infants, were circumcised. I don’t understand these people.”

[..]

More details on whats been happening on Ambon Island and other Molucca Islands, where thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced here. Hundreds of Christian families have been given the choice – convert or die. The women and children are then separated from the men and “converted”. Men and children are circumcised using the same dirty razor blade and then told to go and wash in the sea to disinfect the heavily bleeding wounds. Many of the ‘holy warriors’ perpetrating these crimes are members of Laskar Jihad, a Salafi-Jihadist group whose leader studied in Pakistan and considers himself more “fundamentalist” than Osama bin Laden, who he says is ignorant of true Islam. That doesn’t seem to stop his followers from wearing Osama t-shirts though. Laskar Jihad has between 3000 and 10000 fighters, who have been receiving training and assistance from the Indonesian Army. Strange that having studying in some madrassah in Pakistan this douche-bag has decided that circumcising women should go hand-in-hand with their conversion to Islam. This may be a somewhat extreme example, but it goes to show that there is at least a significant number of Muslims, even in Pakistan and Indonesia, who believe in the religious justification for FGM as a very Islamic practice indeed.

Kizzie says resents that when a Muslim kills a Christian man, in a post-9/11 world, his religion is invariably mentioned, whereas when, say, a Christian kills a Christian religion is not mentioned. Well, Kizzie, in a post-9/11 world Westerners have begun to take greater note of the fact that many Muslims use religion as justification for murder. Perhaps if the common occurence was that a Muslim and a Christian fought to the death over a donkey in the marketplace there would be no need to mention religion. However when the Muslim shouts ‘God is Great!’ in the act of murder and kills in the process of waging Jihad on the Kuffar, there most certainly is reason to mention his religion, because clearly religion was at least in part a motivating factor. Likewise when a child’s sexual organs are disfigured because it is supposed to be a “noble” act in the eyes of Allah, you bet we are going to take notice of the religious motivation behind the act. Because take away the religious justification, without a doubt the incidence of the practice would decrease and be easier to eradicate, when only the cultural motivations are left, no longer multiplied by the powerful force of religiosity.

Kizzie concludes by voicing her resentment that FGM has begun to be viewed in a religious rather than a cultural context and continues to assert the mutual exclusivity between the description of the practice of FGM as either cultural or religious. But clearly, as shown above, it is a cultural practice, that many Muslims view as religious and observe for religious reasons, thus it is a religious Islamic practice also. There is clear justification for that viewpoint in Islamic scripture, with there merely being a disagreement between various schools and scholars on whether the practice is obligatory or merely a “noble” or “honorable” act. And only in recent years certain Islamic scholars, mainly from Egypt, have began voicing an opinion that all forms of FGM are haram, ie forbidden, but this view goes against 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence.

Ultimately, according to some Islamic schools FGM is obligatory (a minority position), and according to most others it is “noble”/”honourable” or sunna (tradition), which clearly serves as a powerful motivator based on religion. In both cases it can thus be described as an Islamic practice and will continue to be so until Muslims stop practicing it, Skeikhs stop using the Sunnah to justify it and its practitioners stop citing the Islamic religion as a motivating factor.

UPDATE (10/6): Kizzie has posted a reply. Not much there I disagree with, really, and don’t have time to comment further just now. Perhaps on Tuesday. Thank you for the debate, Kizzie.

Pommygranate has posted a fantastic report on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s presentation at the Sydney Recital Hall last Sunday night. Inspirational stuff.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in town and we have seen the predictable reaction from various representatives of the Muslim community. Yawn.

Whats more disconcerting is the criticism Hirsi Ali has received, particularly in Europe, from various intellectuals and philosophers, cultural relativists in-denial and morally obtuse apostles of the coming great Multiculturalist Utopia, some of whom had the gall to call her an “Enlightenment fundamentalist”. This attack on Hirsi Ali, and the accompanying championing of “moderate Islamist” Tariq Ramadan was the subject of a momentous debate I posted about earlier, which serves as the background for this post.

The cover story of the current issue of The New Statesman is called “Who’s afraid of Tariq Ramadan?” (and doesn’t Ramadan ever look the part of a modern philosopher?), by Paul Berman, and contains the most erudite, complete and clear defense of Ayaan Hirsi Ali against the lot above, yet. The whole essay is very long, broken up over 12 pages, so I recommend heading straight for the “print” version, which allows you to view it in one page. Feel free to search the page for “Ayaan” to get the relevant part (not that the whole thing is not worth reading, it is).

Here’s Berman’s explanation of why these people attack Hirsi Ali:

If you open either of her books and read a few lines at random, you will discover one reality that you would hardly guess from reading those attacks. Buruma–and he is not the only one to do this–presents Hirsi Ali as a diehard enemy of Islam, dedicated to hurling insults, which, to be sure, she does do, and with gusto. But this is not her major theme. In her books, and in the little film that she made with van Gogh, she dedicates herself mostly to something else, and that is to describe and to decry the miseries of women in the portion of the Muslim world that she knows best–in East Africa and Saudi Arabia, together with the immigrant zones of Europe. Her account of her own genital mutilation as a little girl, and of the botched genital mutilation of her sister, and the sister’s tragic life and suicide; her portrait of girlhood and marriage in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, not to mention her own forced marriage, which she fled; the portrait of her grandmother, the Somali nomad, and the patriarchal customs of the past, which do seem to have lingered on; her sense of horror, as a girl, at seeing the women of Saudi Arabia for the first time, these women who have no faces because of their veils and whose black garments hang so shapelessly upon their bodies that, in order to know which way the women are facing, you have to look to see which way their shoes are pointing; her account of the shelters for abused Muslim women in Holland; her account of the terrors of refugee existence, and the double terrors of refugee existence for women–all these passages express something that can never be detected in a certain kind of high-minded cerebral journalism today. It is a visceral anger at oppression. A moral indignation, and not just a wistful pragmatism.

But mostly these passages in Hirsi Ali’s books raise the issue of women’s rights, and not from an outsider’s point of view, regardless of how many times she has been denounced for making herself an outsider to Muslim life. Hers is a story marked by knives–the knife at her own genital mutilation, and at her sister’s; the knife at the murder of her friend and colleague, pinning to his chest the sheet of paper threatening her own life. This is not a Swiss professor! Here is the actual insider; the real thing. I suppose that all this unironic indignation can only be annoying in the extreme to a certain kind of refined sensibility. Something about those knives takes away the quality of abstraction that allows a social issue to be shrugged off. It is always good to be subtle and nuanced, but Hirsi Ali’s writings have the effect of making a large number of nuanced subtleties look ridiculous.

About Hirsi Ali we do not have to wonder: where does she stand on the question of stoning women to death? Or on the obligation for husbands to beat their wives? Read one page by her and you will know the answer; and if you read two pages, you might begin to suspect that, on the television screens of France, the man who defended the oppressed of the oppressed in the poorest neighborhoods of Europe was Nicolas Sarkozy. But that has got to be the problem from a perspective like Buruma’s. This talk of women’s rights–doesn’t it point ultimately in directions that ought to be regarded as (here is the mystery of our present moment) conservative? Better the seventh century than Nicolas Sarkozy.

If there is an intellectual establishment, and I suppose there is, the attacks on Hirsi Ali radiate from its center. And this, the campaign against Hirsi Ali–this, like the anti-Semitic mob assault during the Paris peace march of 2003, or like the spectacle of millions of Britons marching under the leadership of an Islamist organization, or like the calm discussions in The New York Times of why it would be wrong to condemn with any vigor the stoning of women to death–this does represent something new. Here is the new development among journalists and intellectuals, the development that Ramadan’s career has served to illuminate. Something like a campaign against Hirsi Ali could never have taken place a few years ago. A sustained attack on an authentic liberal dissident crying out against injustices in remote parts of the world and even in the back streets of Western Europe, a sustained attack that appears nearly to have erased the very mention of women’s oppression and the struggle for women’s rights from discussion–no, this could not have happened yesterday, except on the extreme right. This is a new event. This is a reactionary turn in the intellectual world.

And delving deeper, past “the reactionary turn”, we happen upon a nose-dive:

[the French writer Pascal Bruckner] wrote a criticism of the leftist doctrine that in [the seventies] was still known as “Third Worldism”–meaning the hope and the expectation that, around the world, the impoverished countries, the former colonies and semi-colonies, would generate, as an aspect of their struggle against Western imperialism, a worldwide revolutionary alternative, a soulful new kind of socialism, a new and revolutionary culture. This was the doctrine that venerated revolutionary leaders such as Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro not because they were communists but because they were the leaders of the Third World revolution.

But Bruckner, in writing about the “Third Worldist” idea, noticed that among the good-hearted leftists of the Western countries, sympathy for oppressed people in the former colonies had turned into a kind of dehumanizing contempt for the oppressed people in the former colonies, without anyone having noticed. He called his book The Tears of the White Man, and in its pages he served up a spectacular exposé of left-wing European clichés about the poor and the oppressed in faraway places–an enormous catalogue of Noble Savage imagery and other fantastical pictures of the superior qualities of downtrodden people in poor countries, compared with their former oppressors in Europe. The book was a demonstration of how, through a combination of guilty consciences and patronizing ignorance, the European intellectuals had ended up re-creating the worst sorts of racist and colonialist imaginings of what people in other places and with other skin tones must be like: their wisdom, virtue, selflessness, brilliance, and, above all, their profound quality of being different.

Bruckner has returned to this topic from time to time over the years, and just last year he came out with a sequel called La Tyrannie de la Pénitence, or The Tyranny of Penitence, updated to our own age, in which the “Third World” of yore has been renamed the “south,” and the imperialists have been renamed the forces of globalization. And the sequel has led Bruckner to take a new glance at how, in our own time, the progressive intellectuals of the Western countries, out of a continuing self-contempt and feeling of guilt for the Western crimes of the past, have likewise updated their fantasies about the wronged and inscrutable people of other regions without really changing them. Ian Buruma, because of his sundry books, was the ideal person for The New York Times Magazine to assign a profile on Tariq Ramadan; and Pascal Bruckner, because of his own books, has turned out to be the ideal person to write about Ian Buruma. Bruckner noted the peculiarities of Buruma’s campaign against Hirsi Ali. He took note of Timothy Garton Ash’s contribution to this campaign in The New York Review of Books. And Bruckner offered a philosophical analysis.

Buruma and Garton Ash, Bruckner concluded, had fallen for the intellectual miasmas of the postmodern sensibility, and the miasmas had led, via the errors of relativism and an indiscriminate multiculturalism, to the simplest of philosophical mistakes. This was the inability to draw even the most elementary of distinctions. In the postmodern idea, the Enlightenment has come to be looked upon as merely one more set of cultural prejudices, no better and very likely rather worse than other sets of cultural prejudices–a zealotry that is unable to control its own excesses. From this point of view, someone like Hirsi Ali, who grew up in an atmosphere of Islamist radicalism and the Muslim Brotherhood in Africa and has taken up a new outlook committed to rationalism and individual freedom, has merely gone from one fundamentalism to another–not much different, seen in this light, from van Gogh’s murderer.

Or not.

(h/t Ryan Northcott)

In non-Hajj-related news, I am going on vacation mid next week for a couple of weeks, and will not be near a computer for most of that time. I won’t have time for much posting in the next week either, so its looking like this blog won’t be back in full force for another three weeks or so.

Anyone looking for something to read, I’ve recently been enjoying Michael Totten’s posts on the developing situation in Lebanon, where he visitted in December. Bill Roggio’s recent coverage of the war in Somalia as well as other global Jihad hotspots has been great also.

For a list of some fantastic blogs you should be reading, have a read of this interview, where Hugh Hewitt hammers to pieces Joseph Rago for his article in the Opinion Journal, in which Rago lamely attempted to write off the whole blogosphere as somehow irrelevant. In the interview, which is quite entertaining in itself, Hugh presents a lists of worthy blogs to set the stage for their discussion. Take a look, you’re bound to come across a couple of new gems.

And check out the new 910 Group movement, of which this blog is now a part. Blogs to read, forum to chat in, projects to be a part of it. Get into it.

Another one from Hirsi Ali, explaining that people in the Muslim world have never even heard of the Holocaust (via Blue Crab Boulevard):

It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my half-sister visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6 million Jews in Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: “It’s a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed.”

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn’t want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.

Whole thing in the LA Times.

Which prompted Jules Crittenden to ask:

How many millions of Muslims first heard of this business of German Nazis killing 6 million Jews compliments of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insistence that they didn’t?

Good question, because even the vermin at the conference don’t really deny that the Holocaust ever happened, they are just trying to haggle on the numbers. But the fact remains that the lesson of the Holocaust is that it happened, not that some quota was reached. Genocide is genocide. Not that the numbers are up for debate amongst people with any degree of sanity. But even the crazies can’t deny that having a conference about it implicitly broadcasts the fact that if did happen it was wrong and must not happen again. Which is kind incompatible with the “All Jews of the world must be destroyed” line. Hmm, I am starting to think Ahmadinejad is a Zionist imposter.

Unless of course all his luney-sounding rhetoric has the purpose of giving the impression that he and his mullah comrades are dark-side-of-the-moonbat crazy, unhinged and thus dangerous. You know, pretty much the line that North Korea has been playing. The line that is followed by the one where they get nukes, followed by stepping over the finish line in Camp Untouchable. Quite a Haiku for loose cannon.

Then again.

I’ve been a bit too busy this week to post much, doing fun things like having a chipped wisdom tooth pulled out and am a little behind on whats been going on. Here’s a great article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali thats a couple of weeks old now, but didn’t seem to get the exposure in the blogopshere that it deserves, that I meant to post earlier.

People ask me incessantly what it’s like to live with perpetual death threats. This question is most often asked by Westerners, with the naiveté of those who consider life to be naturally peaceful. Born in Somalia, the daughter of an opponent of Siyad Barré’s dictatorship, I grew up in my country, then in Saudi-Arabia and in Kenya in an environment in which death invited itself without end. A virus, a bacterium, a parasite, a drought, a famine, a civil war, soldiers, torturers: death could take all forms and hit anyone, anytime. When I had malaria, I got well again. When I was circumcised, my wound transformed into scar tissue, and I survived. When my Qur’an teacher fractured my skull, doctors saved me. A bandit put the blade of his knife against my throat: I’m still alive, and more of a rebel than ever before.

I remember Saudi-Arabia where, under the cover of purity, our most minor gestures were haunted by sin and fear: hangings, the cutting off of hands, women controlled and stoned to death, such was and such remains the everyday life of that country. The respect for the literal words of the Prophet is incompatible with human rights, in contradiction to philosophy of classical liberalism. Submerged in a medieval mentality, numerous Muslim countries profit from Western technological advances, pretending to ignore that these advances find their very origin in Enlightenment-thinking. It’s this blindness coupled with hypocrisy that renders the transition towards modernity a most arduous one for the faithful. I quit the world of faith, genital mutilation and forced marriage for that of reason and sexual emancipation. I made the journey towards human rights. At present, I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other.

Some, in the West, find such a distinction to be politically incorrect, but it’s necessary to realize that it is Islam which is most traumatized by fundamentalism, not the Western world. Europe only feels the shock waves because of immigration and globalization. It’s by making morality relative and by affirming the equality of cultures that a number of Western intellectuals embark on the path, without realizing it themselves, of self-destruction. Three concepts are at the heart of your culture: 1) freedom of the individual as an end in and of itself, 2) rationality, 3) separation of the scientific and the religious.

Created on a humanist base, your institutions are the expression of the life here on earth, while Islamic philosophy, rejecting individual freedom, submits the individual to God. On Islamic soil, rationality and science enter into a conflict with the Qur’an: any innovation becomes unacceptable. The government cannot be founded on the thought of man: life on earth, after all, is only temporary. It’s necessary to invest in the hereafter. Islam is a cult of the hereafter. Such is the veritable schism with the West: the two world views are incompatible. I, personally, have opted for life in the here and now.

When I was a child in Somalia, under the tree where she braided, my grandmother told us stories and asked us questions, in order to know if we had understood the concept: being able to recognize the enemy, in particular. She told me: “It’s a very useful instinct. If you don’t know what you have to fear, you will not survive.” And when she caught me in flagrante delicto of incomprehension, she called me doqon! This word means two things: being foolish and naïve. We said, in Somalia: “Stupid like a date palm tree!” Dates from that tree are treasures, and the one who loses them is an imbecile.

No, Europe is not traumatized by Islam, but she is like a date palm tree which despoils itself, foolish and naïve. Things fall. She remains inert. Worse, she gives freedom to the enemies of freedom. At the heart of your beautiful West, it is the right-thinking people with a socializing tendency who do this the most, in the spirit of pacifism, voluntary blindness and conformism, when confronted with the rise of fundamentalism, when confronted with the aggressiveness of radicals, when confronted with the dangers of communitarianism. Stupid. Like the data palm tree. Please: don’t be doqon.

May Europe be blessed with more voices possessing such courage, insight and moral clarity. (And may Europe not drive these people out, like was done to Hirsi Ali) I won’t hold my breath however.

Victor Davis Hanson in the National Review, Nov 3: “Before Iraq: The assumptions of a forgetful chattering class are badly off the mark” (***)

Long forgotten is the inspired campaign that removed a vicious dictator in three weeks. Nor is much credit given to the idealistic efforts to foster democracy rather than just ignoring the chaos that follows war — as we did after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, or following our precipitous departure from Lebanon and Somalia. And we do not appreciate anymore that Syria was forced to vacate Lebanon; that Libya gave up its WMD arsenal; that Pakistan came clean about Dr. Khan; and that there have been the faint beginnings of local elections in the Gulf monarchies.

Yes, the Middle East is “unstable,” but for the first time in memory, the usual killing, genocide, and terrorism are occurring in a scenario that offers some chance at something better. Long before we arrived in Iraq, the Assads were murdering thousands in Hama, the Husseins were gassing Kurds, and the Lebanese militias were murdering civilians. The violence is not what has changed, but rather the notion that the United States can do nothing about it; the U.S. has shown itself willing to risk much to support freedom in place of tyranny or theocracy in the region.

Instead of recalling any of this, Iraq is seen only in the hindsight of who did what wrong and when. All the great good we accomplished and the high ideals we embraced are drowned out by the present violent insurgency and the sensationalized effort to turn the mayhem into an American Antietam or Yalu River. Blame is never allotted to al Qaeda, the Sadr thugs, or the ex-Baathists, only to the United States, who should have, could have, or would have done better in stopping them, had its leadership read a particular article, fired a certain person, listened to an exceptional general, or studied a key position paper.

Charles Moore in the Telegraph, Nov 4: “From Suez to Iraq: how to weaken the will of the West”

Today, everyone blames the neoconservatives. It reminds me of a remark by Daniel Defoe in the early 18th century that the apprentice boys of London have very little idea of what a Papist is, but thousands of them are more than happy to go out and break his windows. Who in Britain knows that neocons are a phenomenon of the Left and that neither George W. Bush, nor Dick Cheney, nor Donald Rumsfeld has ever been one? Indeed, devilishly clever though neocons may be, they can’t be very good at PR, for they were responsible for about five per cent of the action in Iraq and have attracted about 95 per cent of the blame.

It is not mad ideology that got us into this war – or rather, the madness and the ideology come from our opponents, not from ourselves. If we do pull all our troops out, mock Blair and Bush, and hail some deal with Iran as “peace”, we shall have a few weeks of self-congratulation, but that is all.

The Islamist movements that wait to cheer our withdrawal are not militarily strong, but they are good at what they call “the management of savagery”, and they know that the West’s attention span is much shorter than their own. It is a pity that we seem so determined to prove them right.

Sean M. Maloney on Macleans.ca, Nov 6: “The exit strategy”

Victory in Afghanistan means understanding what we can achieve there, then sticking to it

Any discussion of a Canadian exit strategy for Afghanistan must take into account the reasons we are there in the first place, what we hope to accomplish given the current situation — which has evolved over the course of five years — and how we get there from here. All of this must be balanced against what resources Canada can bring to bear and how those resources are balanced with other national requirements. This is the essence of strategy.

Canada is al-Qaeda’s enemy. We stand for everything they hate, and they cannot be negotiated with — negotiations are neither acceptable nor desired, on either side. The war in Afghanistan is one of several conflicts that fit under the umbrella of the global war against the al-Qaeda movement, what is now referred to as “The Long War.” Afghanistan is but one front: in the Second World War there were operations in Europe, the Atlantic, Pacific, North Africa and so on, but Canada committed mostly to the Atlantic and Europe. In this case, Canada has chosen to focus on Afghanistan and not Iraq, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, nor the streets of Madrid or London.

[..] A lack of perspective in Canada is a continuing problem. False analogies to the Soviet period (and even Vietnam) even figure in parliamentary committee debate: “the Soviets and the British couldn’t succeed, therefore we can’t,” one MP told me. We are not trying to do what the Soviets were attempting, but let’s look at the numbers anyway. The Soviets killed two million Afghan civilians using indiscriminate firepower and socialist societal transformation techniques. Soviet losses from their illegal intervention in 1979 to their withdrawal in 1989, we now believe, were around 28,000 killed over 10 years, or 2,800 per year. NATO and OEF losses over a five-year period are around 500. We are not employing indiscriminate firepower, there are comparatively few civilian casualties, and we are there in support of a legitimate, elected government. There is no real comparison.

[..]Canada will be walking out the front gate when we feel the job is done, not slink out some dark back window when the going gets rough. After the disasters at Hong Kong and Dieppe during the Second World War, it was difficult if not impossible to see victory three and four years later in 1945. In the dark days of 1995, we never believed that peace could be achieved in Bosnia, yet in 2004 the situation was stable enough for Canada to withdraw. We are in a stronger position in Afghanistan against our enemies now than we were in the Balkans five years in, and during the first years of the Second World War: let’s not throw it away and say it was all in vain because of ignorance and fear.

Nibras Kazimi in the NY Sun, Nov 6: “Something Is Changing”

Lately, I’ve been hearing worrisome things about the Iraq Study Group. James Baker, the co-chairman of this congressionally mandated bipartisan body, reportedly is going to recommend some radical strategic changes in America’s Iraq policy. But my worries were laid to rest last week when President Bush made it very clear that he is indeed staying the course, even though he put some rhetorical distance between himself and the loaded catchphrase.

According to multiple sources, the Baker report, to be released late November, will counsel burying the “democracy as stability” doctrine for the Middle East and also recommend opening lines of communication with Iraqi insurgents and their cheerleaders in Iran and Syria. Furthermore, the Saudis will be brought in to “fix” Iraq — just as they were asked to step in and fix Lebanon in the early 1990s.

The report, arriving at a politically melodramatic moment for Mr. Bush’s political opponents at home, will likely find favor among foreign opponents to Mr. Bush’s vision for the Middle East. But Mr. Bush, whose instincts are commonsensical, is likely to send the report back with some pertinent questions scribbled in the margins:
[..]
But Jim, there is one thing I’d like to know and that is why did Lieutenant Mohammad Hikmet al-Badrani, a young Iraqi Sunni from Mosul, keep firing his weapon when attacked by the insurgents two weeks ago, and why did he give up his life for a new Iraq?

It is easy for journalists to ride the ” Iraq is failing” wave and churn out the safe stories that tell us that all is bad. It is much harder for them to make sense of why so many Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fighting back when attacked rather than dropping their weapons and cowering for safety. Something is changing in Iraq, and it is happening despite the serial bungling of Mr. Maliki’s government or the incessant predictions of an American withdrawal. It is happening because more and more Iraqis understand what is at stake should those murderous insurgents win.

Would Lieutenant Badrani have cut and run had he been aware of Mr. Baker’s wobbly recommendations? I don’t think so. And I don’t think that Mr. Bush’s resolve on this long course ahead will fail either.

James Q. Wilson in the Wall Street Journal, Nov 6, “The Press at War: What ever happened to patriotic reporters? “

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

Naturally, some of the hostile commentary reflects the nature of reporting. When every news outlet struggles to grab and hold an audience, no one should be surprised that this competition leads journalists to emphasize bloody events. To some degree, the press covers Iraq in much the same way that it covers America: it highlights conflict, shootings, bombings, hurricanes, tornadoes, and corruption.

But the war coverage does not reflect merely an interest in conflict. People who oppose the entire war on terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult.