Desecration

via Laura, I came across Jeanne's reaction to a photo of American soldiers occupying a Falluja masjid. She calls it a desecration, and asks herself how she'd feel if it were her church. I can probably shed some light on the question - were it MY masjid, I'd be angry indeed. Then again, that's because in MY masjid, in Houston USA, we do not as a rule store bombs, weapons caches, or fire upon police from the minaret. So, the presence of American soldiers in MY masjid would be cause for great anger, yes.



However, what makes me genuinely furious, rather than merely angry, is the desecration of another masjid illustrated at right. The militia of Muqtada Sadr occupied the Kufa masjid, the site of the martyrdom of Imam Ali As himself, and used it for their crude and clumsy political ends. And it happened in MY masjid, too - the Kufa masjid was renovated (under UNESCO's auspices) with contributions from Dawoodi Bohra muslims around the world, including my family's. The Kufa masjid is an icon of my faith and part of the fabric of my community's practices and traditions - and history. Where is the outrage?



Oh yes, there certainly are desecrations of masjids to be angered about. But the desecration of the masjid that Jeanne speaks about happenned well before the soldiers arrived there.



In fact, perhaps it is cleansing in some way for that masjid to now host the forces of liberation rather than oppression.



UPDATE: Bill Allison finds a link I'd meant to add as context for this post but had lost - as usual we are on much the same wavelength. Excerpt:

As US and Iraqi troops mopped up the last vestiges of resistance in the city after a week of bombardment and fighting, residents who stayed on through last week's offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured.



Flyposters still litter the walls bearing all manner of decrees from insurgent commanders, to be heeded on pain of death. Amid the rubble of the main shopping street, one decree bearing the insurgents' insignia - two Kalashnikovs propped together - and dated November 1 gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city's library or face execution.



The pretext given is that the rebels wanted to convert the building into a headquarters for the "Mujahidin Advisory Council" through which they ran the city.



Another poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.



Two female bodies found yesterday suggest such threats were far from idle. An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the head.

Much of the offense taken by Muslims about the sanctity of mosques is almost transparently situational. I think that we muslims who have the good fortune to live in a place like Houston, rather than one like Falluja, have an obligation towards perspective. If there is self-deception, I believe it to be unintentional, and the blame can largely be placed at the feet of the false concept of Dar ul-Islam as a trans-national entity to which muslims should show some kind of allegiance. Clearly, in the case of Fallujah, membership in Dar ul-Islam is not something any western muslim would tolerate, having grown used to liberty.



Oh, and as for the template, I'm working on it :) You won't recognize the place, trust me, after I'm done...

Da Vinci Code: anti-Passion?

It's official - Tom Hanks will star in the movie version of The DaVinci Code.



What intrigues me about this, more than just the fact that it was an engrossing and thought-provoking book, is the possible reaction from the newly-empowered religious right.



Now, I should clarify something. The idea that Jesus may have been married to Mary Magdalene is at much at odds with my own religious theological framework as it is for Catholics (though, understandably, the Catholic faith is more directly threatened by the content). Ultimately, the key to appreciating The DaVinci Code is for what it reveals about DaVinci's personal beliefs through his paintings, not about Jesus's life.



The book has inspired an entire industry of Christian counter-propaganda, attempting to debunk or deny what they see as a threat to their faith. However, it is clear that the book represents a decidely non-conformist interpretation of DaVinci's beliefs, and the underlying message of his art. Regardless of whether you agree or not with that interpetation, it is clear that The Last Supper is a complex, subversive work and not one that seamlessly jibes with mainstream Christian views.



However, DaVinci has been co-opted by the religious right as a comrade in belief, and representations and derivative works of his paintings often completely obfuscate the subversive elements. Most notably, the diembodied hand and the gender of the person at Jesus's right-hand. In recreations (both painted and live-action) I observe that the hand becomes attached, somewhat awkwardly, to the figure peering leftwards, and the figure at Jesus's right is much more masculine. The fact that Leonardo deliberately bent gender identities in other paintings (not least of which is Mona Lisa / Amon Li) only adds to the mystery of that figure, and certainly isn't an argument in defense of the traditional religious interpretation of the painting.



So, it will be intriguing to see the reaction from the religious right to the release of this movie. It may well be the anti-Passion of the Christ. I have a feeling that we will see coordinated boycott campaigns, pressure upon movie theaters chains to stop the film, and a DaVinci-debunk-umentary on Sinclair-owned television stations.



I fully expect to see the right attempt to consolidate its influence and strive to enact actual social policy during Bush's second term. I hope I am proven wrong, but already even supposedly mainstream, big-tent Republican groups are interpreting Bush's mandate as a stimulus for sustained jihad against pro-choice GOP politicians and trial balloons about banning divorce (an action whose inherent misogyny would put the Taliban to shame). The war on choice has expanded to a war on birth control. And don't think for a moment it stops there - the self-styled architects of Bush's re-election, the ones who delivered the I-4 Corridor in Florida and the balance of power in Ohio, are suddenly conspicously public, and reminding the President that they expect their due this term. (UPDATE: More on Mullah Dobson here).



I think that The DaVinci Code, as a movie, will become a rallying-point. For both sides in the culture war that the religious right seeks to provoke.



UPDATE: I thought I was quite clear in the post above, but judging from some of the reaction in comments, trackback, and email, I guess not. The DaVinci Code is indeed a work of fiction, and is indeed based on historical fact and art history. The fiction part is the global conspiracy to hide the living descendants of Jesus Christ. The factual truth part is the description of details in Leonardo's works of art that do not jibe with mainstream Christian interpretation. Believe or not, you can not deny that The Last Supper, and The Mona Lisa, are subversive works, despite the varnish of orthodoxy applied to them in subsequent centuries.



Look at The Last Supper yourself. I have cropped the image at high res (see at right) to focus on Jesus, Mary/John, and the disembodied knife. Note that the character whose hand slashes across Mary/John's troat is the one usually depicted as holding the knife, but if you look carefully, it's impossible, because both his hands are accounted for already. One is slashing the throat of Mary/John. The other is actually holding the wrist of the disembodied hand! There is a character in the foreground between the Slasher and Mary/John, but both his hands are accounted for (see annotated figure). It's possible that the hand belongs to Mary/John, but from my viewing it seems to far away for it to be anatomically possible. And why would either Mary or John want to have a knife at the table? The figure to the left of the hand also has his hands accounted for. That hand truly is disembodied. It's creepy.



Now, you could argue, so what? creepy hand with knife floating around - it IS a painting that foretells Jesus's betrayal, after all. But the point is that the disembodied nature of that hand has been systematically erased from all other versions post-Leonardo. I've seen countless reproductions of The Last Supper since reading The DaVinci Code, from websites to Wal Mart, and they all without exception attach the hand to Slasher.



This isn't any kind of proof that Jesus married Mary, or that the figure at the table is Mary, or anything else. It's just proof that Leonardo had layers of meaning and symbolism that are well beyond the boundaries of the orthodox view. Where The DaVinci Code excels is in generating a renewed interest in the art, and is forcing the viewer to ponder not just The Last Supper but also The Mona Lisa, The Virgin of the Rocks, and many others in more detail. That's something to laud Dan Brown for, regardless of your beliefs.



UPDATE: I seem to have really ticked this guy off. Still, given his civil dialog with this other guy who criticizes his book, he seems a decent fellow. He seems strangely defensive to the phrase "religious right" and perceives a critique of the Bush Administration in my post, which baffles me. Maybe if he returns the courtesy and reads a bit more of my blog he'll see I'm not quite the stereotype muslim for whom "Dan Brown = Salman Rushdie" would be an illuminating analogy.

Incredible

It was the best movie I've seen all year, with the exception of Return of the King. Must pre-order my copies of both.



Meanwhile, dour progressives insist on extracting every last drop of righteous offense they can. Blood from a stone indeed. That's the same mentality as the people who tried to provoke me into being offended by Lord of the Ring's "Easterners" as the bad guys vs The Men of the West. Listen, pal, count me firmly among the Valinor on that one.

religious beliefs informing abortion views?

At Dean Nation, I've commented on the phenomenon of pharmacists refusing to fill birth-control prescriptions, citing their pro-life religious beliefs. Fundamentally, being anti-birth-control is completely at odds with the pro-life position, because birth control prevents undesired pregnancy, obviating the need for abortions (the exception is the morning-after type pills, which could legitimately be interpreted as an abortion pill if you define life as beginning at conception).



It's tempting to ascribe the religious Christian right's self-defeating take on birth control as stemming from their religious attitudes towards human sexuality. I have very little knowledge on this topic, but the stereotype of the Christian faith is a Puritan attitude, where sex is a sinful act. The repressive attitude towards the topic may even account for the profusion of cabarets and erotic clubs in the South - when I moved from Boston to Houston, I was struck by how much more blatant these types of establishments are in their advertising and presence.



As I confessed, though, I simply don't know enough about Christian theology to have an informed opinion on the real religious impetus behind why this hostility towards birth control arises from the pro-life crowd. I do know that in Islam, sex between married couples is considered a religious act, and earns the man and woman blessings. The specific issue of whether birth control is valid or not was one i was previously unaware had any controversy attached (though I laughed along with everyone else at the "every sperm is sacred" skit in Monty Python, I didn't think that was actually practiced).



What are the religious justifications for a ban on birth control? I can't answer, and I suspect that there might well be none. Ultimately, this issue is probably driven more by political extremism (complete with purifying litmus-test jihad) than by any rational adherence to religious precepts or a sincere desire to reduce abortions overall.



Certainly, if reduction of abortion was the real goal, then methods like birth control that actively promote the desired results would not be under attack. That they are, I think, suggests something.

Fallujah: for the children

The issue of whether we should invade Fallujah is the wrong question. The right question is, why is it now neccessary to invade? The answer is, because of poor decisions by the Administration, most notably in the knee-jerk decision to disband the Iraqi Army and the mismanagement of the reconstruction funds.



But go in, I believe, we now must, mainly because as long as Falluja remains a foreign insurgent power base, then the future of liberal freedoms in Iraq is threatened. This is why:

Several people in Jolan said that the foreign fighters�Saudis, Tunisians, Moroccans, Yemenis, and Lebanese, directed by Syrian militants�had been crucial to the defense of the neighborhood. The groups of mujahideen who hung around mosques included men who looked to me like Arabs from the Gulf. Most of them were dark, with angular features, and they had long, well-groomed beards. Their dishdashas were short, in the Wahhabi style, ending a little below their knees. Friends of mine who had been held by mujahideen told me they had heard men speaking with accents from the Gulf, Syria, and North Africa.



The foreign mujahideen still in Jolan imposed strict Islamic codes of behavior on the neighborhood. They harassed Iraqis who smoked cigarettes or drank water using their left hand, which is considered impure. They banned alcohol, Western films, makeup, hairdressers, �behaving like women��i.e., homosexuality�and even dominoes in the coffeehouses. Men found publicly drunk had been flogged, and I was told of a dozen men who had been beaten and imprisoned for selling drugs.

These grafs are excerpted from Nir Rosen's compelling and exhaustively investigative reporting from Falluja, for the New Yorker magazine. The point here is that liberal freedoms are being curtailed by Islamicists who seek to turn all of Iraq into an explicitly Taliban-modeled nightmare state.



Of course, the selective blindness of the far left with regard to human freedom continues. One acquaintance sent me this typically-overwrought excerpt from Counterpunch.org:

Hush. Enough chatter about the stupid American election. I'm trying to listen to Fallujah right now.

[...]

I'm trying to hear the sounds of their helicopters overhead, trying to feel the rattle in my bones as chop, chop, chop, over Falluja, they draft the very air into war.

[...]

Chinaview reports (8 hours ago) that two have been killed and six injured in Fallujah, but we know since reading last Friday's article in the Lancet (editor's note: methodology completely discredited) that we have to multiply these numbers times ten.



So shush that grating talk about how we're all soon back together in some conspiracy of imperial purpose, all hailing the chief.



I'm listening for the still-born child, the heart attack, the stroke. The sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare hands.



Please mute that electoral count recap, would you?



I've got to listen to Falluja right now.

This is of course an elaborately crafted piece of propaganda that completely evades any attempt at discussing the merits of our post-war reconstruction policies, to try and simply score some theatrical points on emotion. To which, I respond with this:

November 5, 2004

Release Number: 04-11-12

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INSURGENTS TARGET CHILDREN OF RAMADI



CAMP RAMADI, Iraq � An Army unit assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force, discovered and defused an explosive-laden youth center in Ramadi Nov. 4, which was rigged by insurgents to detonate and potentially kill dozens of Iraqi children. They also discovered more than two tons of explosives hidden in a mosque.



The discoveries were made during a sweep of the city looking for improvised explosive devices.



After a thorough investigation of the youth center, the Soldiers discovered that the explosives were rigged to detonate three ways: through a light switch, a remote control and by wiring that ran from the youth center to the nearby Al-Haq Mosque, where the unit discovered the firing mechanism.



At another mosque, a search yielded the discovery of more than two tons of ammunition, explosives, mortar systems and RPGs. Artillery rounds; assault rifles and various IED-making materials were found, as well. Fifty suspected insurgents were also detained during the sweep.



Mosques are granted protective status due to their religious and cultural significance. However, when insurgents violate the sanctity of the mosque by using the structure for military purposes, the site loses its protective status.

Ultimately, it's fundamentally dishonest to criticize a foreign policy or a military action on humanitarian grounds when the application of moral righteousness is so transparently one-sided. Anyone with genuine concern for the children of Fallujah have to concede, if they possess any intellectual integrity, that the future of those children is brighter under an elected Iraqi government rather than a Taliban-inspired city-state.



UPDATE: an email correspondent writes:

I couldn't agree with you more on the lines you conclude your argument with. In the minds of many who disagree with you, however, they stand out in stark

contradiction to some of your opening lines:



"But go in, I believe, we now must, mainly because as long as Falluja

remains a foreign insurgent power base"



The WE who are going into Falluja now were also instrumental in creating the

Taliban who have now run amuck. And the WE are also *foreign* fighters who

have supported Saddam historically. The WE were also complicit, a hair short

of encouraging, in Saddam's butchering of Shiite Kurds.



The issue has never been that anyone suppports the Taliban, or their brutish

ways. The problem has been the credibility of the occupying force. How can

you, per your own words, apply moral values so one-sidedly in favor of this

occupying force?

There's a fallacy here, of conflating all American foreign policy interventions as one monolithic bloc. You have to recognize that the realpolitik foreign policy doctrine of the Reagan Administration is completely different from the neo-conservative/PNAC doctrine animating the present one.



As I argued in the first paragraph, the fact that invading Fallujah is neccessary is a direct result of post-war incompetence by the present Administration. Extending causality beyond that is a pointless excercise, otherwise you might as well blame the British for creating Iraq in the first place.



I simply don't agree that the "credibility" of the occupying force is an issue. The bottom line is that the Taliban-lite DO control Falluja, that they DO want to control all of Iraq, and that they ARE a barrier to free elections in January. In other words, Falluja is an obstacle to both Iraqi and American self-interest. The self-interest of the Iraqi people is the primary objective, and the self-interest of America derives as a secondary measure from that one.



The question above has a certain idealistic tinge, that all motives must be pure, which I reject. Self-interest is a valid, even neccessary, requirement of policy. Whatever America's historical role may have been, this nation evolves much like any other. And so do their relationships, such as the enmity-turned-alliance of Germany and Japan with us today. Or America and Britain.



The important point here to construct our policy upon is to look forward, towards an alliance with a free Iraq (an invasion I did not support but whose outcome now I am committed to seeing succeed).



The invasion of Fallujah serves to liberate its inhabitants from the mini-Taliban, whom the "many who disagree with me" refuse to address.



As a liberal humanist, I believe that we must use our strength to liberate the oppressed whenever possible. There are cases where military power alone will not suffice however, such as Iran, a nation that invading would only hamper, rather than encourage, liberal reform. In Falluja, however, the course is clear, and there are no other options.

less politics

wondering why I haven't commented on the election, predicted the outcome, endorsed a candidate officially? That's because I'm making a concerted effort to shift all political discussion to Dean Nation. Go there if my opinion on suchlike matters, I've thrown down a gauntlet of sorts there recently.



Here, no more politics (unless I get REALLY provoked). Foriegn policy, religion, philosophy, tech, everything else, but no more politics.



Oh, and I'm moving to a new blog, and shutting UNMEDIA down. Time for some change, a fresh look, and a new name. Details to follow...



UPDATE: ok, I'm just going to rename the blog, not shut it down. The new URL, if all goes well, will be http://cityofbrass.blogspot.com. Hopefully the archives will transfer intact...



UPDATE 2: Seems to be working... one snafu is that the way in which I moved the blog means that all permalinks to old entries are probably (but not neccessarily) broken. However those entries are still here under the new URL, cityofbrass.blogspot.com instead of unmedia.blogspot.com, so if you just swap out "unmedia" with "cityofbrass" then you'll get to it.



Yeah, the template is inconsistent.. will do that later, since it's much more involved.

Muslim, wake up!

Truly astonishing column at MWU arguing that muslims should vote for Nader.



Astonishing because it actually assumes that a Nader vote would lend Muslims more political clout. The basic thesis is completely backwards - voting Nader and contributing to another squeaker win of Bush over his opponent would essentially make the Muslim community a pariah. By handing the election to Bush in 2000, Nader's entire relevance has plummeted. To those who call for a muslim voting bloc and dream of excercising influence upon the process, voting Nader is an anathema.



You want political clout? Deliver Michigan to Kerry. And watch both parties come begging in 2008 to your doorstep.



(Not that I don't have serious issues with the alliance of Muslim identity with progressive liberal politics, but that's a separate issue).