This is obscene.

In the interest of fairness one must note that making a living as a fortune teller was (and in many states is still) illegal in the United States.  However, these are not capital offenses.  Apart from the lack of proportionality for the alleged offense (which to me should not be illegal), my rant is headed in a different direction.  The Saudis are not the first country to assert Universal Jurisdiction for crimes unconnected or fairly lightly connected to their country.

A few years Belgium ticked off many of its allies by granting its courts legal jurisdiction to hear human rights complaints from any corner of the world even if no Belgian national or Belgian interests were involved.  Just why Belgium smugly decided it had the right to sit in judgment over the world is not clear.  It is not as if the Belgian nation in its rickety 180 years of existence has been particularly pure, particularly in the Congo.  It was at the same time Spain asserted its right to overrule the political agreement in Chile whereby Augusto Pinochet stepped down and permitted the restoration of democracy in exchange for immunity, by trying to arrest the former dictator.  This conveniently ignored a similar amnesty Spain instituted for the Falange after the death of Franco.  Human rights groups like Amnesty International have cheered on these attempts for national courts to enforce Universal Jurisdiction.  I disagree.

National sovereignty is no longer an absolute protection for human rights violations.  But the ugly reality of international law is that human rights cases are enforced only against the weak.  The other ugly reality is that they are often a sword used to justify political ends and harass opponents.  Also arrogating the power to try a bunch of human rights cases to a bunch of former colonial powers reeks of neo-colonialism.  Decisions by these courts are unlikely to hold much moral water in the countries being targeted.

A spin-off of the claims of universal jurisdiction for the type of cases cited above are “crimes” performed in another country that are broadcast around the world by the internet or satellite television.  Many of the cases (particularly in Europe) have involved lawsuits against the instruments of broadcast like Google or YouTube.  For example see here.

While Amnesty has criticized the horrendous Saudi case on free speech grounds it has not acknowledged the harm of letting the universal jurisdiction genie out.  In a world where cultural norms vary and where a large portion of the world does not follow the Western devotion to individual human rights, this is a double edge sword.  So we are creating an odd situation where the sovereign shield may not protect its own subjects but can be used as a sword against unconnected foreigners.  Also, cases like the claims against Google will strike at the roots of global commerce and chill free speech on the web.  The burden should shift to countries to institute filters on what cannot be shown in their country rather than gratuitously striking at foreign entities.  Of course this reeks of the censorship practiced by China and Iran so the Europeans prefer to strike back in home courts.

Federalism in the United States has struggled to adapt to changing technology and improvements in communication technology.  Needless to say the burdens are far higher at the international level where different social, legal, religious and cultural norms collide with another.  More cases like the unfortunate Mr. Sibat are likely to arise unless the concept of universal legal jurisdiction is reined in.  For Mr. Sibat his best hope is to pray for King Abdullah who has shown clemency for similar judicial excesses in the past to step in.

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Separation of church and state is a trick subject for Islam since its founders and early leaders combined secular and religious powers in the same individual.  However, after the fragmentation of the Abbasid Caliphate even Islam saw a bifurcation of these functions.  To the extent Sultans exercised religious authority, it was not different than Christian monarchs proclaiming themselves god’s vice-regents on earth.

I had an interesting conversation with someone who supported the proposed French policy today.  However, I cannot help but wonder whether the support would have remained in place if a similar ban was targeted at that person’s religion rather than at what is currently an unpopular religious minority.  A ban of this nature would not be constitutional in the United States.  While I have no fondness for religious fundamentalism and am generally unmoved by overt public religious displays, I will take the liberty granted by the American constitution to the type of secularism (and cultural xenophobia) rammed down people’s throats in France.

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Worth reading for a different perspective is a blog sent to me by a family friend that demolishes the New York Times hypocritical standards in reviewing Doniger’s book and publishing Mishra’s review and highlights Doniger’s peculiar obsessions and biases in her scholarly work.  See link.

More on this issue will follow one I have finished reading the book.

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Islam acknowledges that God sent prophets to other peoples before the arrival of Muhammad.  This list specifically includes Jesus and Christians are deemed “people of the book” to whom god made a divine revelation and provided a book of prayer.  It naturally follows in Islamic theology that the God of the Christians (setting aside the concept the trinity and the divinity of Jesus which Muslims do not accept and is not at issue here) is the same divine entity.  Indeed under the monotheism inherent in Islam a different interpretation cannot hold.  Yet for some reason Malaysia banned Christians from using the word Allah to denote God in the Malay tongue.  Evidently the alternative words available to be used in native dialects did not measure up to a representation of the divine and Christians asked that the ban be rescinded.  Now fanatics with a limited grasp on their own theology have resorted to violence.

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The text of the constitution does not help with the realities of Republican Party politics today, as Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne found out.  In a desperate kowtow to the faithful and to stop attacks by his opponents, Mr. Byrne clarified the following “heretical” quote: “”I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.”

Also submitting to the wrath of the faithful was grocery chain Piggly Wiggly, which felt the backlash from anonymous Internet posters like the following quote in the article linked above: “”Just got a call from a person at my Church letting me know about this.  My family will not be shopping at Ragland Piggly Wiggly stores anymore or anything else they own…. I don’t shop at places that think it is OK to stand next to people who don’t believe the Bible is all true.”

As noted earlier, this is another example of the just how far the theocrats control the conservative movement and the Republican Party.  This does not happen merely in Alabama.  For all the complaints about the assault on Christianity by people like Britt Hume, can you even imagine the furore if a President today emulated John Quincy Adams and took his oath of office on a book of American laws?

The theology is suspect too.  See previous post on the three kings of the nativity here as an example.

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The relevant quote from the video above:

“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith,” Hume said. “He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

The pomposity of a TV anchor (who ignores the recent rash of C Street conservatives (John Ensign, Chip Pickering and Mark Sanford) whose overt religiosity did not prevent their inclinations to adultery) is one matter.

But this is yet another example of how the right wing cannot resist injecting religion into debate.  Hume is hardly alone on Fox News.  Bill O’Reilly is on record bemoaning attempts to weaken the “White, Christian, male power structure” in this country.  Fox News regularly features Ann Coulter who infamously in the aftermath of 9/11 said we should “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”  Shortly before Christmas the otherwise highly regarded Indiana governor Mitch Daniels went off on an amazingly ignorant screed about the evils of secularism.

This is not new.  But coupled with the attacks on Barack Obama allegedly being a Muslim (not helped by Obama’s politically calculated response to treat the accusation as if it were a slur – previous blog here) they seem to be rising to a crescendo.

There used to be a religious left in this country that publicly backed the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam war.  The first “born-again” President elected was a Democrat Jimmy Carter.  But Roe vs. Wade and the ensuing culture wars saw evangelicals start aligning behind the Republican Party and enter politics with a vengeance in the Reagan years.

In the 2000 Republican primaries all Republican candidates other than John McCain (who named Teddy Roosevelt) named Jesus Christ as their favorite political philosopher (ignoring the irony that the most political pronouncement of Jesus supports the principle of separation of Church and State).

A few years ago Andrew Sullivan termed the Republican Party and the right-wing Christianists who by co-opting the gospels for their political message are surprisingly akin to the Islamist political forces they condemn.  With the emergence of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and their ilk it is very hard to dispute that claim.

There was a time where American politicians took pains to assure voters that their faith would not interfere with their governmental obligations.  In the 1960 Presidential Campaign John F. Kennedy took pains to assure voters that he would not take orders from Rome.  Today Congress asks the Conference of Catholic Bishops to sign off on health care reform.  In one sense, it shows the integration of Catholics into American society.  But it also is an example of elected politicians kowtowing to the clergy in a manner that would be unthinkable a few decades back.

The excess religiosity caused other countries to question American motives in the Bush years.  The wave shows no signs of ebbing.  Which brings up the question raised above.  The answer a few decades back was an emphatic yes.  Today with the Republican party in the thrall of the religious right (as poor Mitt Romney found out) it is very difficult to be a non-religious American conservative in the corridors of power.

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UPDATE: Particularly amusing is the portion when Oliver raises the issue of Nazi gold to be met with stony silence.  The ambassador is a good sport though on the litmus test.  Meanwhile a Swiss politician puts his foot in his mouth raising the hackles of the Jewish community as well.

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It is tempting to point to the United States as an example, but this country has acquired experience absorbing immigrants since its inception.  Even here the process has been hard, from Benjamin Franklin complaining about the effect of rising German immigration on the use of English and the resulting political threat (sound familiar Mr. Dobbs?) to concerns a 100 years ago that Italian immigrants were importing their brand of seditious anarchism.  But this country survived and the original English culture grew richer by the addition.  It is not an easy lesson to transfer to the inherently more culturally conservative and homogeneous old world.

It will be interesting to observe whether the vote this weekend leads to a financial backlash.  The usual bunch of xenophobes in Denmark and The Netherlands have already piped up to call for similar referendums.  Just how far this spreads remains to be seen.  However, it is still unclear whether this referendum will be upheld by Swiss courts.

One final point in this imbroglio should be made.  While Muslim immigrant groups in Europe should speak up to combat discrimination, it is hard to extend the same latitude to the howls of outrage emanating from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.  While some of these countries are all to willing to cast stones at Europe, they have been singularly unwilling to grant similar freedoms to religious minorities at home.   And the religious minorities in many cases are not foreign immigrants but locals.  As the old saying goes, people in glass houses should not toss stones.

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]]> http://rashtrakut.com/blog/2009/11/30/a-disgraceful-vote-in-switzerland/feed/ 1 http://rashtrakut.com/blog/2009/11/10/albania-ruffles-some-feathers-in-kolkata/ http://rashtrakut.com/blog/2009/11/10/albania-ruffles-some-feathers-in-kolkata/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:33:06 +0000 Rashtrakut http://rashtrakut.com/blog/?p=590 By demanding the return of Mother Teresa’s remains to the land of her ancestry, Albania has ruffled some feathers in the city where the diminutive nun conducted her mission.  Not surprisingly the request has been summarily rebuffed.  But it raises a question of national identity and ethnic pride.

To what extent should one bask in the accomplishments of ethnic kin that were almost entirely achieved in another country?

2009 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan caused some heartburn in India when he publicly wondered why so many people in India kept contacting him to offer congratulations.  Most such emigres do not share Dr. Ramakrishnan’s humility and are only too eager to soak up all the adulation they can get.  Likewise the people granting the adulation often merely seek to bask in the reflected glory from their ethnic kin.  A more positive use would be to use the ready made role model to inspire and encourage future accomplishments on the home front.

However, this amusing bumper sticker I have seen brings home the futility of any attempt to eliminate prayer from schools:  ”So long as there are exams, there will always be prayers in schools.”

Doniger and her cohorts have the tedious tendency to dismiss all her critics as Hindutva fundamentalists.  However, the controversy surrounding their scholarship does raise some questions: (a) how appropriate is it to apply the social mores of today in reviewing books written thousands of years back rather than the cultural context of the time? (b) how effective is a peer review process when most of the reviewers are not practitioners of that religion, and (c) who gets to define a religion, its practitioners or academic scholars who openly admit they are not practitioners.

These are not straight forward questions and the answers in my opinion can come tinged in gray.  Research into Hinduism and provocative theories and research into Hinduism should be encouraged and the perspective of someone raised outside a cultural milieu can provide valuable insight or provide a thought provoking moment for practitioners.  The problem is that Hinduism academia in the United States is largely filled by non-practitioners and non-Indians.  Even with the best of intentions it very easy to miss cultural contexts in this isolated academic ivory tower.

However, the 1000 lb gorilla in the room is whether the mis-characterization of Hindu texts and beliefs (even if unintentional) will be used for propaganda purposes.  Post 9/11 we have already seen how selectively quoting verses from the Quran can be used to demonize a whole faith.  It will be naive to assume that the works of Doniger and Courtright are not been eagerly lapped up for aggressive missionary work in India.

Doniger’s book by its title indicates that it should not be used as an introduction to Hinduism.  An “alternative history” suggests a book written to advance a view-point or an agenda. However, Doniger’s high profile presence in American academia suggests that it will be used exactly for that purpose.   And that creates the risk that a work by an admitted non-practitioner whose scholarship has been questioned could become part of the academic curriculum in the United States.

Doniger’s book will generate the inevitable firestorm.  One hopes that the critiques and reviews that come steer clear of ad hominem attacks and focus instead on the substance of her book.  This will require a dispassionate reading of ancient texts which may lead to some unsettling conclusions.  However, this will generate a genuine exchange of ideas and opinions that ultimately will serve the cause of American scholarship on Hinduism.

This brings up a conversation I had with an extremely religious neighbor a few years back that free speech should not allow people to offend.  Actually it should…otherwise the speech is not truly free.  The assault on free speech is not unique to any ideologies, but it should be pointed out that free speech also does not  prevent others from calling out bigoted or hateful comments.  There is some unintended irony in the attempt by Muslim countries to pass such a resolution.  All of the founders of the Abrahamic faiths (including Islam) would have likely violated this resolution by “defaming” the religious practices of their neighbors.  But then this is not really intended to be an ecumenical resolution.

The Canadian representative at the United Nations this March got it right, “Individuals have rights, not religions.”  The OIC would be better off in assisting the victims of discrimination, cooperating with the West in combating incidences of bigotry and cleaning up their own acts at home.

When mainstream parties latch on to this fervor it can backfire.  In the United States the California Governor Pete Wilson latched on to anti-immigrant fervor to win re-election in 1994.  When the fervor died down it emerged that he had driven Hispanic voters into the Democratic column for the foreseeable future.  Egged on by CNN commentator Lou Dobbs and Republican congressmen like Tom Tancredo, certain sections of the Republican party adopted a similar tack dooming the Presidential ticket in the Southwest and scaring off white middle class voters in the 2008 election.

But the Time article does raise a valid issue of how these concerns are to be addressed.   This issue has affected many other European countries like France, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary etc.  The fundamental problem in Europe has been that as non-immigrant societies they have struggled to integrate their immigrants.  Even though the United States has had nativist outbreaks dating back to Benjamin Franklin grumbling about German immigration, the immigrant populations have generally integrated into American society.

The burden does fall both ways.  While immigrants should have a right to have their religious and cultural traditions respected, they must also understand that their is a reason why they left their homelands to settle down far away and the inhabitants of the country can feel unsettled by a sudden influx of people who look, dress, eat, worship and talk differently.  A healthy dialogue of communities is essential to prevent repeats of stories like this one from last month.  For the follow up click here.

Ultimately a lot of the BNP’s support appears rooted in economic malaise.  Immigrants are likelier to compete for jobs with people at the lower rungs of the economic ladder.  The added competition in a shrinking job market provides a simple breeding ground for the type of emotions the BNP feeds on.  And job creation is not an easy task in the current economic climate.

Now the Catholic church has decided to fish for believers in troubled Anglican waters.  With Catholics set to surpass the number of Anglicans in England, Pope Benedict XVI announced yesterday that the Catholic Church would make it easier for Anglicans to join the Catholic communion.  What this does for the ecumenical dialogue initiated by Pope John Paul II and the reception that Pope Benedict will receive when he visits the United Kingdom next year remains to be seen.  However, the Catholic Church’s eagerness to integrate disaffected Anglicans could have unwanted side effects by rehashing a theological dispute Rome considers resolved.  If married Anglican priests can be ordained Catholic clergy (even if they cannot become Bishops) just like the married clergy in Eastern Rite churches in communion with Rome, why is a similar approach not possible for regular Catholics?  Similar pragmatism could help stem the severe shortage of priests in American and European dioceses and bring clergy who can relate culturally with their flock, instead of the imported priests from India, Africa and the Philippines.  Rome’s justification for this contradiction will be interesting to watch.

This post brings up the question from General Powell quoted in a previous blog. “Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” The bigotry spewed from the right wing now reaches such proportions that Republican congressmen (albeit from the extreme fringe of an already fringe party) seek to initiate a McCarthyesque search for “infiltration” of Congress by the practitioners of a religion with over a billion practitioners world wide.

In this world view Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and Wahhabi inspired fundamentalist preachers somehow represent the religious spectrum of an entire faith in a way that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell could never do so for Christianity. While lashing out at the bloody history of radicalized Islam, they conveniently forget the violence wreaked elsewhere by other religions.

This must stop. Substitute Arab or Islam in these screeds with any other race or religion and even the supine Republican leadership that kowtows to these purveyors of hate would have to step in. The Republican Party attempted to re-brand itself with a new website this week, only to find that all its civil rights heroes dated before the Civil Rights Act or back to the Civil War and that baseball hero Jackie Robinson was an independent who turned against the Republican Party after the 1964 convention that nominated Barry Goldwater. The Republican Party lost its moral high ground on race when it embraced the Southern strategy. It is time it rediscovered its civil rights roots and displayed the moral fortitude to stand up to the rank bigotry some of its congressmen displayed today.

However, Colin Powell is about the only public figure to ask the basic question “[W]hat if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”

Powell’s comments were prompted by the picture above in a New Yorker photo-shoot of a grieving mother mourning her dead soldier son who happened to be a Muslim.  Regrettably very few politicians have stepped up and embraced Powell’s message.

In a post-911 world it appears that two kinds of public bigotry are acceptable. Against Arabs and Muslims. Hence the screeds by Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingram etc. that would have been unacceptable against other ethnic groups are somehow deemed an acceptable part of the public discourse.

There was some push back when right wing commentator Dennis Prager suggested that Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison was somehow being unpatriotic by taking his oath on office on the Quran instead of the Bible.  But most politicians stayed away from the fray in calling out Prager’s bigotry.  Generally politicians, including Barack Obama, have elected to observe the maxim that discretion is the better part of valor.

With its history of absorbing immigrants America has avoided the ghettoization and radicalization of its Muslim immigrants. It would be unfortunate if short sighted jingoism for political gins achieved that end.

It wasn’t until the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state (something hated by Christian fundamentalists today) that many of the freedoms we take for granted in the West occurred.

The history of any religion is amazingly consistent in its patterns – whether there is an Episcopal hierarchy like the Catholic Church or whether it does not have a formal organization or structure like Hinduism. The priestly class tries to stick itself at the top of the hierarchy, the secular class pushes back. Translating the holy books into the language of the common man causes concerns – from legitimate ones regarding the quality of the translation to the more cynical power grab deeming it blasphemy. Even if Rulers do not want priests dictating to them they are more than willing to use it as a matter of state policy.

It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that states of Western Europe and America would stop seeing to “make windows into men’s hearts and secret thoughts.”   The reduction of religion’s role in political life (something the right wing is furiously trying to overturn) has been a big part of why Christianity and Judaism seem more tolerant today. It is also unfortunate that the Hindutva brigade in India instead of embracing the ecumenical tradition of its faith is intent of emulating the worst bigotry of the monotheistic faiths they despise.

In addition to the secularism encouraged by the Enlightenment there is the social revolution in the West in the aftermath of World War II when women entered the professional workforce in droves (in spite of the attempt turn the clock back in the 50s) followed by the sexual revolution of the 60s. That social transformation caused immense cultural dislocation in the West. It is hardly surprising that the Islamic world which was not subject to the same social transformation time table and hade more traditionalist societies to begin with has not kept up.

Ironically it is the Islamic Republic of Iran that may ultimately convince the Islamic world of the benefits of separating church and state. It is the living example of the axiom that combining religion and politics tarnishes both. Even though the Green Revolution this summer was crushed by what was essentially a coup d’état it is unclear whether the regime is sustainable. By all accounts the power hungry mullahs are widely despised by a populace mostly born after the fall of the Shah. The Chinese regime survived by quietly morphing into fascists and providing double digit growth in exchange for freedom. The Iranian economy teeters on the brink of collapse.

Unlike the Baathist regime in Syria and previously in Iraq the mullahcracy does not appear to have a similar iron grip and has not yet displayed a willingness to mete out a Hama or a Halabja.

If the regime does fall, a relatively secularized Iran will be a far more appealing and enduring symbol of secularism in the Middle East than the to-down variety imposed by Ataturk in Turkey. For every Ataturk, there are many King Amanullahs.

While the Obama administration has had its missteps, it is refreshing to see leadership in Washington that understands that it should not step in when its enemy is doing a good job hanging itself. Given the debacle of regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan, the shortage of troops and the absence of any staging sites to launch an invasion, it hard to understand what the bomb Iran crowd expects its belligerence and desire for machismo will achieve.