For those who would say that Islam is restrictive to women, and especially those who say that Shi'ism is the worst of these, I recommend this interview from my friend Chris's blog.
Israel's military condemned soldiers for wearing T-shirts of a pregnant woman in a rifle's cross-hairs with the slogan "1 Shot 2 Kills," and another of a gun-toting child with the words, "The smaller they are, the harder it is."
I can't say that I'm surprised, and there are many reasons for my reaction. As I said over and over again in defense of American soldiers after the Abu Ghraib incident, in a war zone, a soldier has to learn how to de-humanize his enemy, or else he can't do what a soldier has to do in war. I have to think that this would be even more the case for a young Israeli soldier, who has to serve in the military regardless of his opinions on the IDF, unless he's willing to face a year of solitary confinement in jail. I'd like to say that I would, in that position, have the moral fortitude to be a refusenik, but the fact is that I'm not in that position, and I'll never know how I would respond. I do know that, despite my moral fortitude, I can be taken in and brainwashed as easily as the next guy, even if Rotary Youth Exchange brainwashing (not better, not worse, just different! peace one friendship at a time!) is pretty benign in comparison! What both Israelis and Palestinians have endured over the last 60 years is frankly beyond my comprehension, and I just know that it must make it that much easier for each side to demonize the other!
Nor am I saying that the bad taste in cartoons is one-sided, either! My pro-Israel friends will surely point out that
Hamas-controlled media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis, and cartoons in Palestinian newspapers frequently use anti-Semitic images of Jews as hook-nosed, black-hatted characters.But in light of recent reporting by the United Nations, I find this kind of talk on Israel's part to be, at best, disingenuous, and at worse, pure hypocrisy:
Hamas also mocked Israeli suffering, staging a play about its capture of an Israeli soldier in which it makes fun of the serviceman crying for his mother and father.
On Monday, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, defended his troops.
"I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army. I have no doubt that exceptional events will be dealt with," Ashkenazi told new recruits. Gaza "is a complex atmosphere that includes civilians, and we took every measure possible to reduce harm to the innocent."
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups fire rockets from heavily populated areas, and Israel says Hamas is to blame for the civilian deaths because it leaves the military no choice but to attack them there.
U.N. human rights experts said Monday that Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian as a human shield during the Gaza offensive. The military ordered the boy on Jan. 15 to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in a Gaza neighborhood and enter buildings before them, said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. secretary-general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict.
Israeli army spokesman Capt. Elie Isaacson denied the military used human shields, saying "morals and high ethical standards are paramount" in the army. [all emphasis mine]
Reuters has provided more examples of UN claims as to how Israel violated human rights and international law in their Hannukah offensive last year:
In one [incident], [the Sri Lankan human rights lawyer] said, Israeli soldiers shot a father after ordering him out of his house and then opened fire into the room where the rest of the family was sheltering, wounding the mother and three brothers and killing a fourth.My hat goes off, as well, to UN special rapporteur Richard Falk, who was banned from entering Gaza previous to the Hannukah offensive because of what Israel perceived as an anti-Semitic bias, but who continues to call for
an independent experts group to probe possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas. [He] also suggested that the U.N. Security Council set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal.
There's all kinds of ranting and raving going on around the United States and among Americans abroad about the new stimulus package Pres. Barack Obama is trying to put through Congress, about how it's too little too late, how it's just the same as the Bush stimulus that didn't work. People are complaining that the government isn't coming down more harshly on AIG for using government bailout award bonuses to their executives (contractually obligated bonuses which, incidentally, amount to only 0.03% of the government's total AIG bailout). My roommate's new complaint is that Pres. Obama is now reversing his campaign slogan of "the fundamentals of the economy are wrong" to echo the old Bush comment that "the fundamentals of the ecnomy are strong."
All of this is justified criticism, and since the early Bush years, I've applauded any critique of governmental policy, because genuine critical thinking about the government became a scarce commodity under George W. Without a doubt, Pres. Obama ran on a platform that included fixing what's wrong with the economy, and he should be expected to follow through on that promise. And I believe that he will, not merely because it will help get him re-elected in 2012, but also because I think he genuinely believes in the American promise.
However, we cannot and should not rely on the goverment alone to fix the problem. For a start, the government can't do it alone. Indeed, for the government alone to make any sort of dent in the economic crisis would mean mortgaging our grandchildren and great-grandchildren's futures with an even greater ballooning of the national debt than George W. Bush foisted upon them. Even if the government had the money to make a difference, though, would they really be able to implement quick and effective policies? National government is by definition cumbersome and slow, and it is exactly that quality of our goverment that helps protect us from too much dictatorship and oppression. Primarily, however, the goverment is too large and impersonal to see what individual communities need and what solutions individual problems warrant.
That's why I've been so excited to see a trend of Do-It-Yourself Stimulus peppering the news.
Sit-In Leads To Green Revolution
The first inkling I got of this was when my roommate started talking about a factory in Chicago where 240 workers were staging a sit-in after their factory was foreclosed with just 3 days notice. The complaints included the fact that Bank of America had been awarded funds in the stimulus package precisely to keep it from foreclosing on businesses and pushing up unemployment. This commentary by UC Santa Barbara's Prof. Nelson Lichtenstein explains why factory sit-ins are both rare and significant. The conclusion of this event is even more exciting than the effectiveness of this kind of civil disobedience. Just a month ago, the factory was bought by a California company making energy-efficient windows, making this a green revolution, too!
Several other cases have come to my attention more recently of mid-sized businesses and even individuals stepping up to the plate and sacrificing to help those even worse off in this economic crisis.
Hospital Cutbacks
From the Boston Globe came the story of the President and CEO of Beth Israel Hospital who, faced with the need to slim the budget, took a hard look at "the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, who empty the trash cans, and he realized that a lot of them are immigrants, many of them had second jobs, most of them were just scraping by." He also recognized that the interactions of food servers and people who pushed wheelchairs with patients were a vital part of the practice of medicine at his hospital. So instead of announcing job cuts as he had originally thought, he asked his employees to
"...do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them.And, having been asked, his workers were more than happy to give up cost-of-living increases, bonuses, a few vacation days and a little sick leave if it meant that everyone would keep their jobs.
"Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice," he continued. "It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits."
He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.
Public Defenders
I remember reading a year or two ago that the Public Defenders office somewhere in the Upper Midwest was unable to keep lawyers on their payrolls. With mounting costs of law school and little to no chance of scholarships and other financial aid, new lawyers had so much debt piled on their shoulders that they couldn't afford to work for the public good, no matter how desperately they might have wanted to. The goverment was considering options to forgive those loans just to keep enough lawyers in the Public Defenders office to do what the Constitution demands. According to this article, the economic crisis may be helping public services, and at a time when lawyers are desperately needed to deal with the flood of foreclosures and bankrupcies rocking the country.
Philanthropy Rising
Even individuals are ponying up and doing what they can to help those worst effected by the economic crisis. This article explains how Salvation Army Kettles have raised record donations this past Christmas season, funds desperately needed in such times. I've also read that donations to church social action funds are also on the rise.
So while the economic situation in America may be bleak, I think that for many people, this crisis is bringing out the very best parts of the American spirit, that can-do attitude that got our nation to the top of the global pigpile to begin with. It renews my faith in the power of human compassion. I just watched Will Smith's "Independence Day" yesterday, and I still believe that what that movie says is true:
When the going gets tough, Americans get going!
Waltz with Bashir is an animated Israeli docu-drama, nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009 and winner of many other awards. On the surface, it is a film about a former IDF soldier's attemts to reconstruct his memories of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in Beirut in 1982. Much to my surprise, however, it was actually the post-Modern pastiche of time that appealed to me most about this film. Generally speaking, I hate post-Modernism (even though it makes my Goucher Girls flinch when I say so), but this film used the techniques of post-Modernism to great effect. In particular, the juxtaposition of times and genres mimicked the way the mind recalls repressed memories in response to unexpected stimuli like an old song, the casual comment of a friend, or an image seen on the news.
As much as this is a film about the 1982 Lebanon-Israel War, I had a feeling very early on in the film that this was also about the 2006 Lebanon-Israel War. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I feel like the 2006 War awakened in Israel some old wounds dating back to the 80s, and that it also energized the peace movement generally. I would like to think that this movie, Waltz With Bashir, reflects a shift in Israeli culture that is becoming increasingly aware of the toll that the endless conflict with its neighbors is having on the Israeli psyche.
But it's probably just wishful thinking from the eternal optimist!
Nas is a very brave man, and everyone interested in free speech in the Middle East should be reading his blog!
...since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice.
"Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." They would cite his open nature and habit of reaching out to critics, reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad's own approach....
Asma Gull Hasan's article in Forbes Magazine, My Muslim President Obama, reflects many of the reasons I've also heard here in Jordan about why people here are so excited to see Pres. Barack Obama in the White House.
...Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not Muslim.
Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam. These realists said that, although not an avowed and practicing Muslim, Obama's exposure to Islam at a young age (both through his father and his stint in Indonesia) has given him a Muslim sensibility. In my book, that makes you a Muslim--maybe not a card-carrying one, but part of the flock for sure. One realist Muslim ventured that Obama worships at a Unitarian Church because it represents the middle ground between Christianity and Islam, incorporating the religious beliefs of the two faiths Obama feels connected to. Unitarianism could be Obama's way of still being a Muslim.
I've heard this from many imams and sheikhs in the United States, when I say that I am Unitarian Universalist. "Oh, Unitarian? Well, that's practically Muslim!" Initially, it always strikes me that this is merely because the translation of Unitarian into Arabic, tawHeed, means "unity of God" (as opposed to trinitarianism: Father, Son and Holy Ghost), which is a central tenet of all Islam, or "oneness with God" which is the ultimate goal of Sufi Islam. But on further reflection, it becomes apparent that Unitarians and Muslims have a very simliar agenda of social justice, too, and see the world in a very similar way. There is an aya (verse) in the Qur'aan that says, "I have made you into tribes and peoples so that you might know each other better," and this is very much like the Unitarian view of the world: that all the varied cultures and religions of the world help us to understand ourselves, our communities, and our common humanity better.
The rationalistic, Western side of me knows that Obama has denied being Muslim, that his father was non-practicing, that he doesn't attend a mosque. Many Muslims simply say back, "my father's not a strict Muslim either, and I haven't been to a mosque in years."
This reminded me of all the times in the village that my students' mothers would say, "Do you see how Maryah dresses? Are you paying attention to how Maryah treats others? Have you noticed that she put her sweater back on because she thought your father was coming through the door? She's a much better Muslim than you are! Why can't you be as good a Muslim as Maryah?" They all knew I wasn't Muslim. One mother even suspected that I wasn't a believer of any sort, but it didn't stop her from telling her daughters that I understood Islam and lived the tenets of Islam better than they did!
Sometimes even the girls would say it to each other. Some of the neighborhood girls liked to come and cook lunch at my house once or twice a week. (It was a great deal for me, because they cooked, washed up, and scrubbed my floors to thank me for having them!) One day we had a particularly large group of the cousins over, and they kept saying they wanted to make more food, and I kept saying, "It'll be enough, it'll be enough!" And when we had all eaten our fill, there was no food left on the mat on the floor. The oldest of the cousins said, "Maryah, you cook by the sunna!" Sunna are the traditions of the Prophet Mohammad and his Companions. "Why is that?" I asked. Safa' replied, "The Prophet Mohammad said that one should never make more food than one can consume in one sitting." Of course, this made perfect sense in the Eighth Century Arabian Peninsula, without refrigerators to keep the food from spoiling. "You, Maryah, never make more food than you can eat in one sitting. We never do that. Our mothers always make enough for several meals."
Asma Gull Hasan's article, however, gets right to the heart of one of the things I love most about Islam. The most important thing in Islam is intention, and when it comes to Judgement Day, one's actions and one's intentions count equally towards one's eternal reward or punishment. Even if one was not a practicing Muslim, but had all the right attitudes towards his brothers and God, one can still achieve Paradise. I think this is what Ms. Hasan means when she says Pres. Barack Obama is a Muslim. He is a generous, well-intentioned man who tries to help others and create a more just local and global community as much as he is able, and this is the very heart of Islam.