The Athenaeum

"Hot Fuzz" and "Georgia Rule" Alan Farrell

Two more film reviews from Alan Farrell:

Download hot_fuzz.doc

Download georgia_rule.doc

Colloquy at UDC

On May 7 a group of "old sweats" got together at the Univeristy of the District of Columbia to celebrate the new book, "The Italian Letter" by Peter Eisner and Knut Royce.  The ensuing conversation was captured on tape and the transcript published.  The transcript appears at "No Quarter."  The second URL posted here is for the audio recording of the event.  pl

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/forum_features_.html#more

http://media.itsac.com/turcopolier/070507_eisner_royce_event.wma

Ecumenism in Islam

I was asked to open a thread where people can discuss this.  I would urge "David" and others to define the term "ecumenism" as they use it here.  pl

"Survey: U.S. Muslims Assimilated, Opposed to Extremism" Cooperman

"Titled "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," the Pew report draws a picture of a diverse population of about 2.35 million U.S. Muslims, of which two-thirds of the adults were born abroad, and which has a generally positive view of the larger society.

Most call their communities good or excellent places to live, and most report that a large portion of their closest friends are non-Muslims. They are slightly more satisfied than the general public is with the state of the nation.

On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the United States should adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct. And they are even more inclined than other Americans to say that people who want to get ahead can make it if they work hard; 71 percent of U.S. Muslims agreed with that statement, compared with 64 percent of the general public.

"What emerges is the great success of the Muslim American population in its socioeconomic assimilation," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University who was a senior adviser on the poll. "Given that for the past few years they've been dealing with the backlash from 9/11, these numbers are extremely impressive."

A majority say their lives have become more difficult since Sept. 11, 2001, and most think the government has singled out Muslims for monitoring. About one in four said they do not think that "groups of Arabs" were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks."  Cooperman

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I was involved in a panel discussion at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia which addressed the potential for what was called "Home Grown Terrorism" in the United States.  It can be found below posted on 4/18/2007.  The focus was on the possible generation of "sleeper cells" among the US Muslim population.  I maintained at that meeting that the circumstances of Muslim life in the United states are so different from those in Europe that the emergence of such "cells" is quite unlikely.  At the same time, I said that the lack of organizational structure and centrally ordered control of doctrine that are inherent in Islam (see my "Lecture on Islam" posted above) ensure that it is always possible that some small group of Muslims may take it upon themselves to make jihad without regard to the opinions of any substantial Muslim community.

My opinion was generally shared by the "experts" present while the Europeans present understandably were reluctant to accept such an opinion.

I am happy to see that this Pew study supports my contention.  The estimated population number also is much like my own.  I think that the population numbers usually cited by groups like CAIR (7 million) are simply too high.

Lastly, I think it is unfortunate that 25% of American Muslims polled think that Arabs were not the perpetrators in 9/11.  The identities of the hijackers has been very clearly established.  Anything else is fantasy and self-deception.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201463.html

"The Chalabi Archive" Anon.

Our old friend "anonymous,"  (no not that one) has made us a gift of a compendium of media articles, court records, etc. concerning Ahmad Chalabi.  Chalabi is his hobby and "Anonymous" has been collecting bits and pieces on him for a long time.  It is made available here as a resource for researchers and the merely curious.  pl

Download Chalabi_2.doc

"The Torture of the Grave.." Halevi

"Hardly a week goes by without front-page news of Muslims dying somewhere in the world in a violent way. Despite all the media attention, there is little understanding among non-Muslims of Islamic views of death and the afterlife.

Everyone knows, of course, that after death martyrs go straight to the Garden of Eden, where they recline on couches, savor meats and fruits and enjoy the company of dark-eyed houris while listening to the sound of flowing rivers.

But what happens to the vast majority of Muslims, those who do not die as martyrs?"  Halevi

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As a second offering in our ongoing seminar on "Islam beyond the survey course,"  we have here Professor Halevi's views on Mulim beliefs concerning the voyage from death to the final judgment.  pl

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/04/opinion/edhalevi.php?page=1

Jamestown and Plymouth

"American history today begins with the Pilgrims because their experience in Plymouth has been molded to offer a more acceptable foundation story than the exploitative dog-eat-dog world of the early Chesapeake. The Puritans' arrival in Boston, where they built John Winthrop's "city on a hill," clinched it for Massachusetts.

The Pilgrim story took over as our founding fiction after the Revolutionary War, when New England and the South began to pull in different directions. The Massachusetts colonists were labeled the Pilgrim Fathers in the 1790s, and the agreement they signed on arrival became the Mayflower Compact about the same time. Because Puritanism had come to be seen as repressive (think of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter"), early American leaders such as Daniel Webster brought the Plymouth colonists forward as the kinder, gentler Puritans.

This is the origins story we prefer and the one we promote. We prefer it because we like to think that we are descended from a humble and saintly band, religiously motivated and communal in organization, who wanted nothing more than the freedom to worship God. The individualistic, grasping capitalists of Virginia offer much less appealing antecedents."" Wapo

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At last, someone gets it right!  It is a long standing mystery in Virginia.  How did the Massachusetts people succeed in appropriating to themselves both; the founding of the United States and Thanksgiving?  It is true that times were hard at Jamestown "in the beginning" but the truth is that times were equally hard at Plymouth.  The colonists at Jamestown were tough on the Indians?  The idea that the Puritans were not is laughable.  Who here knows that the Indians killed a third of the people in Jamestown colony in 1622. A third, in a sudden, colony wide onslaught.

Massachusetts was a model of democracy ? Not!  The original Massachusetts Bay Colony was an oppressive theocracy, founded on the basis of a controlled emigration policy in England which screened potential colonists for wealth, submissiveness to church rule and orthodoxy (Puritan) of belief.

If you do not accept that characterization of the Massachusetts colonies, see "Albion's Seed" by Fischer.

pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102052.html

"Expended Casings" - Alan Farrell

My friend, Brigadier General Alan Farrell has published an unfortunataly all too brief book of his verse.

He has given me permission to put it on "The Athenaeum."

sample -

"In the days when there were giants in the earth

And men plunged deep into the jungle far beyond 

Artillery fan and voice radio range

The Keeper of the Runes was the commo man." 

The Commo Man

  pl

Download expended_casings_covers_cropped_5.5x8.5).pdf

Download chapbook_contents.covr.doc

Download casings_intro.doc

Download Chapbook.doc

Download chapbook_intro.doc

The book is available at Lulu Press, Charlottesville, Virginia

Al Sharpton and the angel Moroni

The Reverend Al is remarkable.  First he responds to Hitchens by implying that Mormons do not believe in God, and then, when challenged over this statement, blames his characterization on Hitchens. Remarkable.  What else can you call it?

Even more remarkable is the reaction of the MS and Corporate Media.  In spite of the fact that polls show many American Christians either of the opinion that Mormons are not Christians or uncertain on the question, the MSM is only interested in the PCness or lack of PCness of the question.  Is this significant?  Yes.  Romney is in many ways one of the most attractive and interesting of the presidential possibilities.  If this question of his religion is going to be a problem in either the primaries or the general election, it should be discussed openly in advance.  Al Sharpton may have done us all a favor by stumbling into the opening of such a discussion.

It is not the lives of the Mormons as a community of faith that may be the issue.  Anyone who has known them, knows that in general they are hard working, well educated, family oriented people imbued with patriotic feeling and probably more healthy than most of the rest of us because of their acceptance of the guidance of the "Word of Wisdom" that they abstain from stimulants, tobacco and other practices hurtful to the body.  An admirable people in many ways.

The question really resides in their theology.  I will welcome comment on my understanding of their theology from LDS people or anyone else. 

As I understand their theology the central tenet of their belief is that "As God is, man will be."

This implies that God is a being who was once something like a man, and that man through adherence to the LDS Church and the conduct of a virtuous life can achieve a status like unto God.  That implies that there are, perhaps, many "gods."

The LDS Church also holds that God (this particular god) exists in a corporeal body, as does Jesus (this God's son) and that humans will continue to exist in their corporeal body after death.  In fact, some LDS leaders have said that this belief in the status of the body, so different from that in majority Christianity leads to a different attitude towards the body in general.

The evidence of Mormon lives should tell us that adherence to this kind of belief should not be any kind of "bar" to office.  Indeed, the Constitution insures that, but, that is not the question.

The important issue is political.  Will conservative Christians of every denomination whether Evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics or, whatever, vote for a man who holds these beliefs?

Will they consider him to be a Christian and what will their judgment signify in the real world?  pl

PS  The picture depicts Joseph Smith's first vision of God and Jesus.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/09/sharpton.romney/

Not AQ connected - What a Relief?

"“When it comes to defending your religion, when someone is trying to attack your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad,” Eljvir Duka, 23, who also went by the nickname Elvis, is quoted as saying in the complaint. His elder brother Dritan Duka, who is 28 and known as Tony, said at another point that “as far as people, we have enough.”

“Seven people, and we are all crazy,” Dritan Duka said. “We can do a lot of damage with seven people.”

Federal agents said that it was unclear when the attack was to take place, because in the taped conversations the suspects said they were waiting for a fatwa, or authorization from an Islamic cleric. But prosecutors and officials said they had no doubt that the suspects were both capable and determined to strike.

“Today we dodged a bullet,” J. P. Weiss, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Philadelphia office, said at the news conference. “In fact, when you look at the type of weapons that this group was trying to purchase, we may have dodged a lot of bullets.”

Mr. Weiss added: “We had a group that was forming a platoon to take on an army. They identified their target, they did their reconnaissance. They had maps. And they were in the process of buying weapons. Luckily, we were able to stop that.”"  NY Times

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Every time something like this happens or is even discussed as a possibility in an academic setting the same things are said over and over again:

- "They aren't real Muslims."  This is usually said by some well meaning Muslim or set of Muslims.  Americans want to hear that.  They don't want to think that a group of people identified by religion would decide on the basis  of that religion to attack them.  What they seem incapable of grasping, or perhaps accepting, is that the particular religion in question is susceptible by its lack of authoritarian structure to the formulation of small group opinions as to what Islam really is for that group.  Once again, Islam is a religion of laymen.  There is no hierarchy, There are no clergy.  There is no "pope" of Islam.  It is undoubtedly true that for the vast majority of Muslims living in the United States, the contemplated actions of these six men are an abomination, but that is largely irrelevant.  Why?  It is because for those six men what they intended to do was justified by their conception of Islam.  You notice they were looking for a religious scholar who would "approve" their jihad in a fatwa.  They might have looked a long time.

- "They are not connected to Al-Qa'ida."  International takfiri jihadism is not an attempt to create an international "country" called "The Caliphate" under the "command" of AQ. That is a popular conception in the US government but it is incorrect.  The takfiri crazies talk about "The Islamic Republic of Iraq" and similar fantasies.  They imagine that the re-appearance of Muslim communities based on the early Sunna would be wonderful, but this is largely a wondrous work of imagination.  The truth is that AQ is not a kind of headquarters for the jihad.  It does not have to "create" such groups as the "Cherry Hill Six" in order for them to come into existence.  The takfiri jihad is a set of ideas.  Lawrence would have said that this set of ideas is drifting on the wind.  In today's world the ideas are drifting on the winds of the internets.  There is a lot of resentment among Muslims over the "injustice" of predominant Western power.  There is a lot of alienation on the part of Muslims living in the West towards the oh so seductive culture that surrounds them and which is seeking (in their imaginations) to lure them away from "the path."  That is what calls these groups into being.  It will continue to do so.  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/us/09plot.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=us

See my "Lecture on Islam" above.