ISIS is Islamic, but we should still shut up about them

Islam has never been united. For one thing, there is no Muslim pontiff who speaks for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims living on six continents. Yet even the Roman Catholic Pope speaks for only about half of the world's 2.2 billion Christians; and millions of those Catholics choose to disregard him on such crucial matters of the faith as birth control, premarital sex, divorce and gay relationships. 

If we sat down and took a deep breath, we'd all admit that there is no perfect, ideal version of Catholicism, or Christianity for that matter, that exists separately from the people who call themselves Christians. Anybody who says he is Christian and practices some form of the faith, no matter how strange, is a Christian. Attempts to label practitioners on the margins of a faith as "heretics" or "not true believers" has been tried, will continue to be tried, in vain. It only comes with conflict, violent schisms, cults and new denominations.

The same is true of Islam, with its Sufi, Sunni, Shia branches... and a bunch of sects and sub-sects that I don't know or understand. It is diverse and always changing.

ISIS in particular, with upwards of 30,000 fighters, or about 0.00002 % of the world's Muslims, is Islamic, just as they claim. A dark and evil part, but a part of Islam nonetheless. Just as violent white supremacists in the KKK or Branch Davidians are indeed part of the Christian pageant, because they profess themselves to be so. You or I can stand aloof and say they're not, but Christianity is what Christians do; Islam is what Muslims do; including all the good and bad. These religions are not what some sacred texts say. We can't just define away the behaviors -- and the believers -- that we don't accept as pure or "mainstream." (Although millions of believers will continue to do just that, to the detriment of world peace and understanding....)

Likewise, the U.S. should not -- and I'm thinking of Barack Obama specifically but before him scores of prominent conservatives -- engage in pointless, unwinnable schismatic debates about who is or isn't Islamic. It's apparent why both sides are tempted to do so: conservatives want to stoke xenophobic fear among Americans that justifies, post facto, their wars of choice in the Mideast and continued spying and infringements on our civil and constitutional liberties; and President Obama, in response, wants to calm Americans' nerves, and avoid antagonizing one-fifth of the globe, including America's peaceful 2 million+ Muslims. Conservatives' anti-Islamic argument is mean and stupid on its face; Obama is stupid for engaging seriously with stupidity.

Just as our arguing that ISIS is not Islamic does not seem to affect their appeal to disaffected recruits from all over the world, nor does our paying so much attention to ISIS hurt their cause. Just the opposite. When the most powerful nation in the history of the world -- not to mention the "Great Satan" -- declares that ISIS is scary and powerful, it's the best possible endorsement for the Islamic State's recruitment and fundraising efforts.   

Keeping a cool head and maintaining perspective on global threats are responsibilities of being a superpower. We must be serious when choosing our enemies, and more serious in how we fight them. That doesn't automatically mean all guns -- and mouths -- ablazing.

I've said it before: With all of its vast power, the U.S. shouldn't say that ISIS is an "existential threat," "clear and present danger," or anything of the kind.  It's the equivalent of a well-armed huntsman hyperventilating at a swarm of mosquitoes. 

Since 9/11, almost no leaders of any political stripe are willing to say the truth: We cannot defend ourselves against every attack on U.S. soil by extremists, especially by lone wolf terrorists inspired by the Internet and driven by deep personal resentments and/or violent mental illness. (ISIS's forte.)  And especially against those attacks on U.S. soil that require very little coordination or preparation (that could tip off domestic spies), and make use of readily available weapons of mass terror: assault-type weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making ingredients.  

In October 2002, I grasped this sad fact immediately and personally during the DC sniper attacks. The terrorists, who everyone was sure must be al Qaeda, ended up being a disgruntled, mentally disturbed Army vet (the sniper) and his impressionable teenage nephew (the spotter and getaway driver).  They were armed only with a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. They killed 17 people and wounded 10 others, and perhaps worse, caused widespread terror in several states before they were caught, by selecting victims at gas stations and shoppers in parking lots, two of the commonest places in American life. That's how easy terrorism is. And there's nothing stopping anybody today from doing exactly the same thing. Nothing. Nowadays we just have a few more cameras around that anyway wouldn't pick up snipers tucked away in the distance.... 

Our leaders continue to lie to us that by eliminating (as in 100%!) the threat of Islamist extremism "over there," and oppressing the peaceful Muslims at home, we can keep ourselves safe "over here."  In fact, by persecuting Muslims at home, and making stupid wars of choice over there, we make Americans less safe over here, in ways that we've witnessed numerous times. (In a word: blowback).  And worse, we who usually refuse to trust our leaders, who know they tell us what we what we want to hear, choose to believe their lies. (The 240,000-employee strong Dept. of Homeland Security, which didn't exist prior to 9/11, the NSA, the Pentagon's top brass, and the military-intelligence contractors getting $285 billion a year certainly thank us for our choice!)  We should know better.

When influential bloviators like Glenn Beck, and even conservatives that I know, say that radical Islam is one of America's most dire problems, nobody dares laugh at them. Yet if I said the KKK was something every U.S. Presidential candidate should propose a plan to fight, I'd be laughed out of town. Never mind that there are upwards of 3,000 Klan members in the U.S., in all 50 states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as opposed to 100 or fewer members of ISIS in the United States, according to the Pentagon.

Either way it's like arguing which is worse, the mosquito or the fly. The West, in particular the United States, has many more important problems to address. 

Publicly, we should ignore ISIS; outside the public eye of cameras and journalists, we should fight ISIS seriously but in proportion to the threat they pose, in the time and manner of our own choosing, and not have our actions be driven by the release of disgusting YouTube videos.

U.S. should stay out of bloody Mideast religious wars

Hear, hear!  Before we insert ourselves in a sectarian conflict of Sunni vs. Shia in Syria, Iraq and beyonjd, Hoffman asks us to consider what bloody horrors we "reasonable, rational" Europeans inflicted on ourselves during our sectarian wars [emphasis mine]:

The agreements reached in Westphalia followed 130 years of strife, including the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England beat back Catholic King Philip II of Spain’s rampage across Europe to put down heresy. Other rulers fomented mob violence with incidents such as the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France, when the Catholic king targeted well-born Protestants. The king’s assassins murdered nobles in their beds while commoners knifed and strangled Protestant neighbors in the streets.

One-quarter of Europe’s population was killed during the devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-48), another bloody phase of the Reformation. Brutal punishments included burning at the stake and pouring excrement down the throats of captives, a torture known as the “Swedish drink.” War spread famine and bubonic plague across Europe. Like now, greed complicated religious conflict, as combatants wrestled over lands and gold.

Exhausted, Protestants and Catholics finally agreed to negotiate. Gathering in separate towns, they sent messengers back and forth to avoid seeing one another’s despised faces. After five years of argument, the Peace of Westphalia concluded the tragic wars of religion. Separation of church and state took hold.

Avoid a classic blunder: Stay out of religious wars in the Middle East

By Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman

September 16, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS9679781720140916

Atheists should pray for Pope Francis?

Oh no! Sara Palin called Pope Francis, "kind of liberal." That changes everything! I'll have to re-think my support. Popes come and go, but the Tea Party is forever!....

Seriously though, in a widely read interview with an Italian Jesuit magazine, Pope Francis said, "I see clearly that the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle" [emphasis mine].

Funny, but as a liberal, that's kind of how I see the government's role: before anything, we must reach out and protect the neediest and most threatened. We must perform triage on a deeply wounded country. If we can't manage that, then what's the use of all America's power and highfalutin ideals about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  

Likewise, Jesus started by healing the sick, feeding the hungry and seeking fellowship with society's outcasts. Jesus had zero tolerance for rules-quoting pharisees -- he condensed everything those holier-than-thou needed to know in one Golden Rule -- and he had no patience for religiosity that prevented caring for and loving other people. It was a radical approach then, just as it is today, because Jesus was a liberal; and liberals are always viewed as dangerous. Thankfully, it seems the current pontiff is a liberal, too. Let's pray he keeps it up!

You can't get girls in a Ford Focus! But I guess the Pope doesn't care....

Why even atheists should be praying for Pope Francis

By Jonathan Freedland

November 15, 2013 | Guardian

That Obama poster on the wall, promising hope and change, is looking a little faded now. The disappointments, whether over drone warfare or a botched rollout of healthcare reform, have left the world's liberals and progressives searching for a new pin-up to take the US president's place. As it happens, there's an obvious candidate: the head of an organisation those same liberals and progressives have long regarded as sexist, homophobic and, thanks to a series of child abuse scandals, chillingly cruel. The obvious new hero of the left is the pope.

Only installed in March, Pope Francis has already become a phenomenon. His is the most talked-about name on the internet in 2013, ranking ahead of "Obamacare" and "NSA". In fourth place comes Francis's Twitter handle, @Pontifex. In Italy, Francesco has fast become the most popular name for new baby boys. Rome reports a surge in tourist numbers, while church attendance is said to be up – both trends attributed to "the Francis effect".

His popularity is not hard to fathom. The stories of his personal modesty have become the stuff of instant legend. He carries his own suitcase. He refused the grandeur of the papal palace, preferring to live in a simple hostel. When presented with the traditional red shoes of the pontiff, he declined; instead he telephoned his 81-year-old cobbler in Buenos Aires and asked him to repair his old ones. On Thursday, Francis visited the Italian president – arriving in a blue Ford Focus, with not a blaring siren to be heard.

Some will dismiss these acts as mere gestures, even publicity stunts. But they convey a powerful message, one of almost elemental egalitarianism. He is in the business of scraping away the trappings, the edifice of Vatican wealth accreted over centuries, and returning the church to its core purpose, one Jesus himself might have recognised. He says he wants to preside over "a poor church, for the poor". It's not the institution that counts, it's the mission.

All this would warm the heart of even the most fervent atheist, except Francis has gone much further. It seems he wants to do more than simply stroke the brow of the weak. He is taking on the system that has made them weak and keeps them that way.

"My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost," he tweeted in May. A day earlier he denounced as "slave labour" the conditions endured by Bangladeshi workers killed in a building collapse. In September he said that God wanted men and women to be at the heart of the world and yet we live in a global economic order that worships "an idol called money".

There is no denying the radicalism of this message, a frontal and sustained attack on what he calls "unbridled capitalism", with its "throwaway" attitude to everything from unwanted food to unwanted old people. His enemies have certainly not missed it. If a man is to be judged by his opponents, note that this week Sarah Palin denounced him as "kind of liberal" while the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs has lamented that this pope lacks the "sophisticated" approach to such matters of his predecessors. Meanwhile, an Italian prosecutor has warned that Francis's campaign against corruption could put him in the crosshairs of that country's second most powerful institution: the mafia.

As if this weren't enough to have Francis's 76-year-old face on the walls of the world's student bedrooms, he also seems set to lead a church campaign on the environment. He was photographed this week with anti-fracking activists, while his biographer, Paul Vallely, has revealed that the pope has made contact with Leonardo Boff, an eco-theologian previously shunned by Rome and sentenced to "obsequious silence" by the office formerly known as the "Inquisition". An encyclical on care for the planet is said to be on the way.

Many on the left will say that's all very welcome, but meaningless until the pope puts his own house in order. But here, too, the signs are encouraging. Or, more accurately, stunning. Recently, Francis told an interviewer the church had become "obsessed" with abortion, gay marriage and contraception. He no longer wanted the Catholic hierarchy to be preoccupied with "small-minded rules". Talking to reporters on a flight – an occurrence remarkable in itself – he said: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" His latest move is to send the world's Catholics a questionnaire, seeking their attitude to those vexed questions of modern life. It's bound to reveal a flock whose practices are, shall we say, at variance with Catholic teaching. In politics, you'd say Francis was preparing the ground for reform.

Witness his reaction to a letter – sent to "His Holiness Francis, Vatican City" – from a single woman, pregnant by a married man who had since abandoned her. To her astonishment, the pope telephoned her directly and told her that if, as she feared, priests refused to baptise her baby, he would perform the ceremony himself. (Telephoning individuals who write to him is a Francis habit.) Now contrast that with the past Catholic approach to such "fallen women", dramatised so powerfully in the current film Philomena. He is replacing brutality with empathy.

Of course, he is not perfect. His record in Argentina during the era of dictatorship and "dirty war" is far from clean. "He started off as a strict authoritarian, reactionary figure," says Vallely. But, aged 50, Francis underwent a spiritual crisis from which, says his biographer, he emerged utterly transformed. He ditched the trappings of high church office, went into the slums and got his hands dirty.

Now inside the Vatican, he faces a different challenge – to face down the conservatives of the curia and lock in his reforms, so that they cannot be undone once he's gone. Given the guile of those courtiers, that's quite a task: he'll need all the support he can get.

Some will say the world's leftists and liberals shouldn't hanker for a pin-up, that the urge is infantile and bound to end in disappointment. But the need is human and hardly confined to the left: think of the Reagan and Thatcher posters that still adorn the metaphorical walls of conservatives, three decades on. The pope may have no army, no battalions or divisions, but he has a pulpit – and right now he is using it to be the world's loudest and clearest voice against the status quo. You don't have to be a believer to believe in that.

For conservatives, charity's all about THEM

Rush Limbaugh's latest monologue on government assistance vs. charity is quite telling on his part.  Unintentionally so.

See, he sets up government assistance and charity in opposition to one another. That's not necessarily so, it's not a zero-sum game, but let's go with his conceit. So, which one is better?

I've settled this before.  First, look at U.S. poverty statistics pre- and post-LBJ's War on Poverty.  Presumably, America has been just as Christian and charitable all along, so the only independent variable here is government spending, which made all the difference.  Second, there is scant data on how effective charity is.  (I'm not talking about overhead rates; I mean, how well do they achieve their stated mission.)  Most charities don't seek to measure their effectiveness, and most contributors don't demand it in the first place.  So next time somebody tells you charity is more effective than government assistance, ask him to prove it.  He probably can't.  Or if he can, only anecdotally*.  Third, and perhaps most important, both charitable giving and poverty are pro-cyclical.  So as people's incomes go down in tough economic times, so does charitable giving.  As a result, charity is at its weakest when it's needed most.  Whereas government can borrow all it wants at low interest rates even during downturns -- especially during downturns, in America's case.  (Never mind, for now, the downsides to over-borrowing.)

Beyond the pre-eminent effectiveness of government aid, what's so telling about Rush and conservative's view of charity is their focus on the giver.  See, with government assistance there is no "should I/should I not donate" moment of moral decision-making for the giver.  The decision on the amount, the form, and the recipient, is decided by our elected officials. According to conservatives, government assistance "deprives" givers of the good feeling they get from giving.  And it "deprives" them of the moral opportunity to be good Christians and decide personally whom to give their money to.  You see, it's all about making them feel good and getting them into heaven, not helping the needy.  

That shouldn't surprise anybody, since their rock-bottom belief is that our world is evil and sinful; it is a "vale of soul-making" constructed as an elaborate test to separate the Saved from the Damned, like God's version of Survivor.  Therefore, by design we are not entitled to enjoy our time on Earth, they firmly believe.  Indeed we should expect pain and privation, perhaps even welcome the chance to endure it.  And if we are well off, well... according to Evangelicals at least, that's a sign of God's blessing for a righteous life.  Thus it is doubly sinful of government to "punish" the righteous with higher taxes as it "takes away" their chance to be charitable.  Rush dog whistles at this all the time.

I know too many Christian conservatives to say, as some liberals do, that this is all about their greed. For the super-rich One Percent, it certainly is about greed.  But for the GOP base it is not so simple.  Nay, there is a distinctly Evangelical Christian underpinning to all this.  (Rush acknowledged the rift among Christians by calling out the Catholic Church's consistent and principled stand for government aid to the needy.)  Nevertheless, it's all about their feelings and their salvation, not the needy.

(*The question of results/performance is all about them, too, in a way.  Monitoring and evaluation of results demands precious resources that many small charities don't possess. A possible way to overcome this is to have many small charities working very locally, where the results are "evident" to givers.  "Seeing is believing" for most conservatives who distrust statistics, especially government stats.  They may also want that good feeling of seeing the people they benefited.  But to have only micro-scale charity would not only be inefficient and duplicative, but also dangerously inadequate and unequal, because it would concentrate charitable giving around wealthy people, creating vicious cycles of local poverty and virtuous cycles of local well-being, both isolated from each other.)

It really does come down to whether or not you believe we're all in this together. Conservatives don't.  

If you do, then the question is not so much the how (the process of giving assistance), but the result (improved well-being for the needy).  To put it in ethical terms, liberal-progressives believe that one's personal moral satisfaction should not come from being a superior charitable giver (in relative or absolute terms, no matter); one's satisfaction should come from knowing that he contributes to a fair and just society that guarantees the basic needs and dignity of those who can't take care of themselves, for whatever reason.  Liberals don't want to live in God's obstacle course for human gerbils; liberals want to live in a normal, civilized country where everybody is better off.  It is well within our power to make that happen, therefore it is our moral obligation.  

If you're morally serious about that aim, then you have to look at statistics, you have to put pre-conceived notions aside, and make evidence-based decisions.  And government assistance, as mentioned above, has proven in every developed country to be the best way to achieve that aim.

Taxes and Welfare Do Not Equal Charity

September 11, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/09/11/taxes_and_welfare_do_not_equal_charity

Paul Ryan is not a Catholic and he said so

Remember when the Right said that Obama had to repudiate Jeremiah Wright if he wanted to be President?  Remember how they doubt Obama's confessed Christianity, even to this day?

Why then is Paul Ryan, a self-proclaimed Catholic whose own parish priest has come out against him, and who is opposed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, getting a free pass by the media on his love for the atheistic philosopher of self-interest, Ayn Rand?  Imagine if the Mormon Church came out and said that Mitt Romney did not represent their beliefs!

Here's what Ryan said about his hero Rand in a 2005 interview:

The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.... I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.  It's inspired me so much that it's required reading in my office for all my interns.

Note that he didn't mention the Bible, Jesus, Catholic catechism, or anything religious at all.  Ryan said his value system was formed by a dead atheist who hated religion more than Karl Marx.  

Now that Ryan is a VP nominee he's trying to back-track, saying he rejects Rand's philosophy; he just likes her economic ideas.  But not so fast.  Rand's economic ideas are based entirely on a morality of strict self-interest that is in direct conflict with Catholic-Christian teaching.

So, I'm going on the record to say I don't believe Paul Ryan is a Catholic or a Christian.  Nowadays we don't have to take a politician's word for it -- the Right taught us that with Obama.  So I don't buy Paul's recent coming to Jesus.  He was a grown man and an elected Congressman with a wife and children when he said that in 2005, and it's not like he's changed since then.  He's simply telling us now what he thinks we want to hear.  Remind you of anybody?

Ayn Rand & Paul Ryan

August 29, 2012 | The Colbert Report

URL: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/418458/august-29-2012/ayn-rand---paul-ryan

Sirota: U.S. Muslims more loyal than Evangelicals

They used to say the same thing about Catholics: when JFK was elected, non-Catholics were worried he'd take orders from the Pope in Rome. Nowadays it's Muslims' turn.

Why Many Evangelical Christians Are More "Un-American" Than US Muslims

By David Sirota

November 29, 2011 | AlterNet

If you have the stomach to listen to enough right-wing talk radio, or troll enough right-wing websites, you inevitably come upon fear-mongering about the Unassimilated Muslim. Essentially, this caricature suggests that Muslims in America are more loyal to their religion than to the United States, that such allegedly traitorous loyalties prove that Muslims refuse to assimilate into our nation and that Muslims are therefore a national security threat.

Earlier this year, a Gallup poll illustrated just how apocryphal this story really is. It found that Muslim Americans are one of the most — if not the single most — loyal religious group to the United States. Now, comes the flip side from the Pew Research Center's stunning findings about other religious groups in America (emphasis mine):

American Christians are more likely than their Western European counterparts to think of themselves first in terms of their religion rather than their nationality; 46 percent of Christians in the U.S. see themselves primarily as Christians and the same number consider themselves Americans first. In contrast, majorities of Christians in France (90 percent), Germany (70 percent), Britain (63 percent) and Spain (53 percent) identify primarily with their nationality rather than their religion. Among Christians in the U.S., white evangelicals are especially inclined to identify first with their faith; 70 percent in this group see themselves first as Christians rather than as Americans, while 22 percent say they are primarily American.

If, as Islamophobes argue, refusing to assimilate is defined as expressing loyalty to a religion before loyalty to country, then this data suggests it is evangelical Christians who are very resistant to assimilation. And yet, few would cite these findings to argue that Christians pose a serious threat to America's national security. Why the double standard?

Because Christianity is seen as the dominant culture in America — indeed, Christianity and America are often portrayed as being nearly synonymous, meaning expressing loyalty to the former is seen as the equivalent to expressing loyalty to the latter. In this view, there is no such thing as separation between the Christian church and the American state — and every other culture and religion is expected to assimilate to Christianity. To do otherwise is to be accused of waging a "War on Christmas" — or worse, to be accused of being a disloyal to America and therefore a national security threat.

Of course, a genuinely pluralistic America is one where — regardless of the religion in question — we see no conflict between loyalties to a religion and loyalties to country. In this ideal America, those who identify as Muslims first are no more or less "un-American" than Christians who do the same (personally, this is the way I see things).

But if our politics and culture are going to continue to make extrapolative judgments about citizens' patriotic loyalties based on their religious affiliations, then such judgments should at least be universal — and not so obviously selective or brazenly xenophobic.