Iran Super Thread- Merged

[CBH99]

Just watched a documentary about this very thing actually....called "A Crude Awakening".  Very informative, very educational - learned a lot about oil & oil supply that I didn't know - a good rent if anybody's interested.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced from today’s Globe and Mail under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, is a comment from Canadian author/journalist, broadcaster, activist, self-styled ‘Muslim refusenik’ and all ‘round gadfly Irshad Manji:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070704.wxcomanji04/BNStory/International/home

Moderate Muslims must do more than preach moderation

IRSHAD MANJI
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

July 4, 2007 at 3:26 AM EDT

The dramatis personae arrested in the wake of the failed British terror plots include medical professionals. This seeming paradox has many scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, dispossessed and resentful about both?

The 9/11 attacks should have stripped us of that simplification. The hijackers came from means. Mohamed Atta, their ringleader, had an engineering degree. He then moved to the West, doing his postgraduate studies in Germany. No aggrieved goat herder, that one.

In 2003, I interviewed Mohammed al-Hindi, the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. A physician himself, he explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. "Suicide is done out of despair," he diagnosed. "But most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."

In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It's something else.

Time and again, that something else has been articulated by the very people committing these acts: their religion. Consider Mohammed Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who masterminded the July 7, 2005, transit bombings in London. In taped testimony, he railed against British foreign policy. But before bringing up Tony Blair, he emphasized that "Islam is our religion" and "the Prophet is our role model." In short, he gave priority to God.

Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Mr. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into Mr. van Gogh. So why didn't he stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate Mr. van Gogh? Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is an implement associated with seventh-century tribal conflict. Wielding it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into Mr. van Gogh's body, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic poetry. Let's credit Mr. Bouyeri with honesty: At his trial, he proudly acknowledged acting from "religious conviction."

Despite integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow up Parliament and behead politicians. They apparently called their campaign Operation Badr. This refers to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military triumph achieved by the Prophet Mohammed. Clearly, the Toronto 17 drew inspiration from religious history.

For people with big hearts and goodwill, this has to be uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-and-order types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press conference, police boasted about avoiding those words. If guardians of our safety intend such silence to be a form of sensitivity, they risk airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried out under its banner.

They're in fine company: Moderate Muslims do the same. While the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, a more important distinction must start being made - one between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones.

Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam but deny that Islam has anything to do with it. By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions - effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations. To do so would be to admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there. Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for reinterpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice their monopoly is over.

Reinterpreting doesn't mean rewriting. It means rethinking words and practices that already exist - removing them from a seventh-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a 21st-century pluralistic context. Un-Islamic? God, no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyze and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates, and quite possibly more constructive.

This week, a former jihadist wrote in a British newspaper that the "real engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology." Months ago, he told me that, as a militant, he raised most of his war chest from dentists.

Islamist violence - it's not just for doctors any more. Tackling Islamist violence - it can't be left to moderates any more.

http://www.muslim-refusenik.com

As I understand Manji she has problems with both Islam, per se, and with how it is interpreted and practised.  I think she sees the keys to Islamic reform within Islam, itself – as, arguably, early Protestant Christians and later Roman Catholic Christians saw the keys to Christian reformation and counter-reformation within Christianity, itself.

But I also think her biggest problem is with culture.  She says, “It [reinterpreting Islam] means rethinking words and practices that already exist - removing them from a seventh-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a 21st-century pluralistic context.”  It is the culture – a foreign, medieval, theistic, illiberal culture - imported to modern, secular, liberal Australia, Britain and Canada which needs to be changed.

All of us, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, animists, whatevers, have a shared interest in the reformation of the cultures which support radical Islamist* ‘philosophies’ from Morocco, across Africa, throughout the Middle East and throughout West and Central Asia.  But, we animists, Buddhists, Christians and whatevers cannot effect the requisite cultural changes: only Muslims, the peoples of those regions can do that.  I say ‘requisite’ because I believe that Sam Huntington is right, we are seeing a Clash of Civilizations and I do not doubt the outcome.  The medieval, illiberal Islamist ‘civilization’ (culture) is fighting a two front war: one against the modern, liberal West and the other against the modern, conservative East.  In an eventual ‘clash’ the Islamist civilization is bound to lose and may be destroyed.  That’s not, necessarily, a desirable outcome.  Religious reformation followed by socio-economic enlightenment is the best, I think the only way for Islam, proper, and the cultures which embrace it to find a way out of the ‘clash.’ 


----------
* I remind readers that I don’t especially like the word Islamist but it is the least objectionable way to describe a whole hockey sock full of cultural impedimentia which characterize the societies in which we find the toxic mix of medieval Arab/Persian/Asian culture and fundamentalist Islam.

 

[GAP]

You have done an excellent job of pointing out the Islamist POV, but to put it into context, is there not a 21st century Christian equivalent, or do we have to reach back into our far past for an equivalent?

 

[Edward Campbell]

You have done an excellent job of pointing out the Islamist POV, but to put it into context, is there not a 21st century Christian equivalent, or do we have to reach back into our far past for an equivalent?

I hold no brief for, or against, any religion, including Islam.  For a start, I am ignorant.  I know little, beyond childish nursery rhymes,* about any of them.  I am not convinced that religion, in an of itself, has done (or is doing) either great good or great harm.  I doubt that a belief in a pantheon of gods jump started civilizations in Asia or Europe and I doubt that Christianity, per se led to the Holocaust.

That being said I’m less than thrilled by:

1. The relativistic view of morality which many, many traditional Christians embrace; and

2. The strict moral views of religion fundamentalists.

And, yes, I recognize the inherent problem with that position, and no, I don’t have any answers.

I think that the West, despite a strong (but not overwhelming) reaction in the USA, is, essentially, a secular ‘civilization.’  That doesn’t have to mean irreligious, it can mean tolerant of all religions as a private matter but intolerant of any intrusion of any religion in the public affairs of the state and the people (as France, for example, tries to be, constitutionally).  The ‘Islamic Crescent’‡, on the other hand, consists, mainly of theocratic governments – those, and there are several, which do not use the Koran as a constitutional base do embrace Islam as a ‘state religion.’  I think that is a quite fundamental and important distinction.  Not as important, however, as liberal and conservative, at the top (but opposite ends) of the socio-politiocal inverted bell curve, to illiberal at the bottom of it.

Uncivilized behaviour is not unique to Muslims; Buddhists managed in e.g. Cambodia and Myanmar and Christians did, too, in Germany, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc, etc, etc.


----------
* “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so” etc, etc

‡ A geographic expression, with which not everyone agrees, describing the countries from Morocco, across North Africa, through the Middle East, West and Central Asia and down through Malaysia to Indonesia.  It is, at best, a pretty rough crescent and it is not all Islamic, but I like the term as shorthand.

 

[GAP]

I keep thinking of Islamic dominated countries, similar to those mentioned, but nothing specific, as countries who, for the most part, the powerful have worked towards keeping the population poor and ignorant, thus able to be manipulated either through religion/carrot-stick promises/ or by fear of a state controlled security machine. ( or any combination of the above)

That said, I also think that much of the Islamic fundamentalism going on now, is those very regimes bursting out at the seams. Just because they are doing something in  the name of, does not mean they actually believe what they are saying, so much as using their interpretation as a motivating force behind change/no change/change of the guard only.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I deleted a comment which may have been gratuitously provocative, even insulting, and did not add much to the 'conversation.'

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Actually Islam was the first real and sustained attempt to counter the Arab culture. Which was based on strong tribal customs and animist beliefs. Muhammad as a trader had a lot contact with Christians, Jews and others in the region, he borrowed heavily from them to create Islam, which he saw as a unifying voice to enable the Arab tribes to be equal to the other groups. He also for the first time codified the rights of woman, slaves and men which was a step up from their previous existence.

Much of Islam’s rituals predate Islam and are centered around the Kaba which was purportedly built by Abraham, to gain acceptance he had to incorporate the existing rituals into the new religion. The Kaba and the area around it was considered holy ground and a meeting place for the tribes where warfare and raiding was not allowed.

Much of what is wrong with Islam can be based on 2 things.

Lack of a evolving religious doctrine

The takeover of Islamic culture by tribal customs

In other words Muhammad failed to contain tribalism and his predications of the weakness of tribalism and it’s effect on Arab unity has come true. He could not have predicted the oil wealth which has artificially sustained the unsustainable.     

 

[GAP]

Hmmmm....you learn something every day..

 

[Kirkhill]

You do indeed GAP.  Thanks Colin.

 

[Flip]

Bravo Colin! and thanks.

As an aside, I think it's safe to point out a few things.

Darfur is an excellent example.-Arab muslims attacking african muslims.
This can only be explained by culture. Not justified in any faith.

Irshad Manji has stated point blank in interviews that her primary beef with the
muslim community is Arab Culture and tribalism.
I think "honour killings" were something she mentioned in her discussion
a few months ago on CBC.

One could say that trouble with religion starts when there is a departure
from the "faith" that is, when religion becomes manipulated into
an excercise in social engineering.  The intolerance toward Jews in the
middle east has been a work in progress for a hundred years or so.
European intolerance of Jews can reasonably be described as a european thing.

We should note - In the Bible nearly eveyone is Jewish!

Wahabism is the current movement back toward the bronze age
that has caused the formation of Al Qaida.  The Shia theocracy
in Iran of course, competes for influence and Islam per-se is left in the dust.
Moderates have been a little too quiet in my opinion.

Yes, we have been sucked into "their" civil war as Western society is
their common enemy.  Who ever beats "the great Satan" - wins.

Humans seem to come by tolerance and reason the hard way.
I suspect the struggles will continue until moderate muslims
say "enough!".








   

 

[Colin Parkinson]

A rather "pro-Muhammad" website but useful background information. I take the comments in this site with a grain of salt. He was known to extracted revenge on the Jews of Mediana for not helping him and what he felt was betrayal.

http://muhammad.net/j/index.php

 

[Kirkhill]

http://www.ismaili.net/page4b.html

Another slant on the culture vs religion debate.

The Aga Khan is a Shia muslim that has had a very positive and high profile in Britain for as long as I have been around.  I knew of him before I came to Canada (ie very young) and he was noted for modernity, western friendly attitude and most importantly his charitable works.  I don't think that profile has changed.  Although he can't be called a supporter of regime change and intervention that doesn't stop him from being moderate and calming in his tone - and still conducting his charitable work.

Unfortunately, from what I can gather: he is Shia, so anathema to immoderate Sunni like Bin Laden; he is Ismaili so anathema to Twelvers like Ahmadinejad; and there is some element of "mysticism" within the body of his followers that distances them from the more "rational" muslims.  Rational in this sense meaning those that disown "faith" and rely on "knowledge".

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Found this quote

Two trends are at work here: humiliation and atomization. Islam's self-identity is that it is the most perfect and complete expression of God's monotheistic message, and the Koran is God's last and most perfect word. To put it another way, young Muslims are raised on the view that Islam is God 3.0. Christianity is God 2.0. Judaism is God 1.0. And Hinduism and all others are God 0.0.

One of the factors driving Muslim males, particularly educated ones, into these acts of extreme, expressive violence is that while they were taught that they have the most perfect and complete operating system, every day they're confronted with the reality that people living by God 2.0., God 1.0 and God 0.0 are generally living much more prosperously, powerfully and democratically than those living under Islam.

by: Thomas Friedman, columnist for The New York Times

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Yep, "No compulsion under Islam"

Malaysia claims to be a secular state, but if you are born or convert to Islam, no more secularism for you.


Malaysia 'convert' claims cruelty
By Jonathan Kent
BBC News, Kuala Lumpur 



A Malaysian woman held for months in an Islamic rehabilitation centre says she was subjected to mental torture for insisting her religion is Hinduism.
Revathi Massosai, the name by which she wants to be known, says she was forced to eat beef despite being a Hindu.

Miss Massosai was seized by the Islamic authorities in January when she went to court to ask that she be registered as a Hindu rather than a Muslim.

The case is one of a number that have raised religious tensions in Malaysia.

Miss Massosai was born to Muslim converts and given a Muslim name, but she was raised as a Hindu by her grandmother and has always practised that faith.

However, under Malaysia's Islamic law, having Muslim parents makes one a Muslim and, as such, one is not allowed to change one's faith or marry a non-Muslim.

But Miss Massosai married a Hindu man in 2004 and the couple have a young daughter.

Headscarf

When in January she asked a court to officially designate her a Hindu she was detained and taken to an Islamic rehabilitation centre.


Her detention was twice extended to six months, during which time she says religious officials tried to make her pray as a Muslim and wear a headscarf.

However, the claim that will particularly shock Hindus is that the camp authorities tried to force her to eat beef.

A lawyer representing the Malacca state Islamic department responsible for Miss Revathi's arrest, rejected her allegations and said officials believe that she can still be persuaded to embrace Islam.

She is adamant that she will remain a Hindu. In the meantime, Miss Revathi and her daughter have been placed in the custody of her Muslim parents.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6278568.stm

 

[Kirkhill]

Money quote from a Forbes article on Iranian oil production

......a quote from Mohammed Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Iran's deputy oil minister for international affairs: "If the government does not control the consumption of oil products in Iran  ... and at the same time, if the projects for increasing the capacity of the oil and protection of the oil wells will not happen, within 10 years, there will not be any oil for export." That's from their guy, not a Western academic.

And in the same report from Roger Stern of Johns Hopkins University (NOT Sir Nicholas Stern of IPCC infamy)

"A more probable scenario is that, absent some change in Irani policy ... [we will see] exports declining to zero by 2014 to 2015. Energy subsidies, hostility to foreign investment and inefficiencies of its state-planned economy underlie Iran's problem, which has no relation to 'peak oil.' "

http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/05/iran-gasoline-rationing-pf-guru-ii-in_jm_0705soapbox_inl.html?partner=alerts

Hence the "hurry up" offense and the need for nuclear power.  They are rapidly approaching the point (if they haven't reached it already) where they can no longer supply cheap gasoline that drives the local economy.

Gasoline costs about $.34 cents a gallon in Iran, or 9 cents a liter. You can fill up your Honda Civic for $4.49. In the U.S. it costs almost $40. In neighboring Turkey it costs almost $95. Iran is spending 38% of its national budget (almost 15% of gross domestic product) on gasoline subsidies!

They have reached the point where the masses can't be supplied with "bread and circuses".  With history as a guide revolution usually follows.

 

[a_majoor]

Since Iran imports almost all its gasoline, there is an obvious pressure point, without even opening hostilities. Holding tankers in international waters for "environmental inspections" comes to mind. (Don't want tankers leaking into the Gulf, now, do we  >)

 

[Kirkhill]

There is a line in the Forbes article about when an enemy is defeating himself just stand back and watch it happen.

In this case I don't think any more pressure is needed. It seems to me that pressure is a safe strategy if you are dealing with rational actors whose reactions you can predict and/or you can seal off the "experiment" to contain the fallout.  I don't think we have rational actors here in Iran nor can we contain the consequences with any degree of surety.

In this case I think it is better to concentrate on the existing trouble areas and keep beating down the flare ups.  If I can use a poorly understood fire-fighting analogy (poorly understood by me that is), it appears to me as if we have a forest fire in the middle east just now.  We are managing the fire by beating down flare ups and have instituted a couple of controlled burns that we are having trouble containing.  Still for all of that the fire is under control. The proof of that is that most people aren't affected by the war/fire unless the press tells them of the latest casualties.  It could be a lot worse if the fire expands because we don't seem to have the resources to deal with more than is on our plate just now.


Apologies for mixed metaphors.

 

[Flip]

Colin P.

To put it another way, young Muslims are raised on the view that Islam is God 3.0. Christianity is God 2.0. Judaism is God 1.0. And Hinduism and all others are God 0.0.

Loved that one!  ;D

So I guess that would make B'Hai into God XP?

Personally, my processor can't anything above 2.0 maybe 2.5

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced from today’s National Post under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, is more on the Culture matters! front:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=32e4731b-96d3-4fea-8f5b-ea6b91fd5136

History offers little chance for Arab democracy
Regional, Tribal Influences Still Dominate

Matthew Fisher, National Post

Published: Monday, July 09, 2007

JERUSALEM -In an absorbing discourse last week, one of Israel's greatest thinkers, Shlomo Avineri, sketched out the bleak history of democracy in the Middle East and what he called Palestine.

This history explained why the 74-year old Polish-born intellectual is deeply skeptical that it will take root any time soon except, curiously, perhaps in Iran, which at the moment is threatening Israel with nuclear annihilation.

After noting that Iran is not, of course, Arab, and that the ideas of the current government repel him, Avineri told a small group of foreign journalists that Iran can nevertheless be defined as a "civil society" because it holds elections including presidential runoffs, that women can drive, vote and sit in a parliament that is not controlled by the president.

This is not true of the Arab League. Big or small, monarchy or republic, not one of its 21 states has taken many step towards democracy except Lebanon, which has what might be described as a non-functioning party system.

Why, Avineri asked rhetorically, has there been monumental political change in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and eastern Europe over the past 20 years while the Middle East has been immune to the trend?

"This is not because of Islam. That is a total red herring," the usually soft-spoken emeritus professor of political science at Hebrew University thundered scornfully.

"Turkey has industrialized, is democratic and has an Islamic-based party. Bangladesh and Indonesia are more-or-less free countries. In Iran there is Islamic representation and there are political debates."

What is absent in the Middle East is a history of democracy. There has been no inspirational figure such as Ataturk, who forged modern democratic Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. As a result there have been no democratic building blocks for Arab nations to copy.

"Those countries in eastern Europe that became democratic such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, had had long democratic traditions before communism," Avineri said. "There was no such democratization in Russian because it had had a long history of authoritarian regimes."

Instead of democracy, what Arab countries have are pre-modern institutions where tribal and regional allegiances are paramount, the British-educated academic said, citing the example of Iraq. "There was a history of Sunni hegemony because the British put them in power," he said. After Saddam was overthrown the Shia-majority used the country's first elections to come to power, but neither Iraq's majority nor its minority knew how to behave in a democracy with chaos and carnage being the grim result.

Something similar has taken place more recently in Gaza and the West Bank. After Hamas defeated Fatah in elections in January, 2007, the first response of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah, was to take over some of the security services. Hamas countered by creating a rival militia known as Executive Force.

"Abu Mazen [Abbas] says he doesn't want a civil war. That is not an abstract idea. If you look at the history of Palestine, what you have is a failure of nation-building."

As was seen again when BBC journalist Alan Johnston was freed after 114 days as a hostage when Hamas fighters surrounded members of another Gaza faction that had kidnapped him, their differences were "settled through the barrel of a gun."

As part of his 75-minute tutorial, Avineri detailed how the Arab Revolt against Britain and Palestine's Jews that lasted from 1936 to 1939 had fizzled out because of internal divisions that resulted in Arabs killing more of their own than Britons or Jews. Similar problems surfaced again when during the war that created Israel in 1947 and 1948 because, unlike the Jews, the Arabs continued to operate as region-based clans rather than under a unified command.

The direction the Jewish and Arab communities who share what was British Palestine were to take on governance was already apparent in the 1930s, Avineri said.

Because it was a Mandate and not a colony, the British allowed some institutions of self-government.

"At the time there were 120,000 Jews in Palestine and they held an Assembly of Jews," chuckling at the fact that it had 17 different parties. "What the Arabs did was the opposite. They set up a High Committee of notables who were never elected."

Such deeply rooted historical attitudes are crucial to understanding why achieving democracy in the Middle East is so problematic and so unlikely.

© National Post 2007

Although many Army.ca members will not like the idea, I think we must accept that we are not going to bring ‘democracy’ – in any form – to Iraq or Afghanistan.  We can help Afghanistan give itself enough security to allow its own people to make their own political decisions in their own way, but democracy?  It is to laugh, and to cry.

 

[Kirkhill]

Edward, I think you are overly hard on the middle east tribal culture.

It is precisely BECAUSE of that culture that I believe that the only real solution for that part of the world is Parliamentary Democracy based on the Westminster model of Lords and Commons.  Forget all the flim flammery of constitutions.  They mean nothing at all.  Nor should law making be up to intellectuals with the right credentials.

Parliaments are about balancing powers.  They give strong leaders the tools to balance one group against the other.  They are pragmatic expressions of power struggles.

Afghanistan and Iraq are both well positioned to support an early model parliament.  They have both a class of Lords (Spiritual, Temporal and Law) that represent the traditional predominantly rural culture, and they have a class of Burgers, a class of commoners from the increasingly secular, modernizing cities.  Given Kabul, Qandahar and Herat's position on historic trade routes they have an exploitable, if modest, history of cosmopolitanism.

We can't get them to the apogee of  democracy (Which constitution defines that exactly: the Russian? the French versions 1,2, 3, 4,5,6,7 or 8? or the US one which is constantly being amended and reinterpreted?)

Perhaps we can get them to the level of democracy enjoyed by the Swiss where, until recently, you needed a sword to vote and you had to be a man.  A primal example of the pragmatism of their democracy.  Votes were an alternative to fighting by making it clear that the alternative to abiding by the decision of the majority was to take the fight to the streets - and probably lose.

I think we can establish the institutions (In Afghanistan they have an upper an lower house - let's stop fretting about the upper house being comprised of unsavoury characters - that is a good thing - they are inside the discussion).  We can train the troops and police. We can support the leadership - Karzai or his successor.  We can bring stability.  Then we have to leave it up to the locals, the commoners, to bring the barons into line.  I think that will take a lot less time than it did in Britain because the locals have working examples of what they want to achieve......US.