Ajami on the new Arab Human Development Report

Once more Ajami hits the nail on the head. Arab nationalists can't escape his scalpel, and for all the right reasons. However, he (as do all other honest interpreters of the Middle East) still needs to be more forthcoming on this and admit that without doing away with the silly notion of an "Arab nation," and without reevaluating the dogmatism and rigidity of prevalent (Arabist) paradigms on the modern Middle East, we won't even begin approaching an understanding of the the region's problems (let alone attempt resolving them.)

The Ayatollahization of Lebanon

Lebanon's Shi'ites need to speak up and stop expecting other Lebanese to do their dirty work for them to throw off the yoke of Hezbollah's Thugocracy. Ziyad Makhoul's courageous piece in this morning's L'Orient le Jour offers perhaps an incentive. But do they read?

By the way, Makhoul's piece is riddled with silly bromides about "differentiating" between Zionists and Jews, that not all Jews are Zionists and/or supporters of Israel etc.., and other such stupid cant. But that's Lebanon's universe of inverted realities, anyway: the Lebanese always feel obligated to burnish and flaunt their anti-Israel credentials before daring criticize the thugs that rule them and hijack their decision-making. This sort of lack of scruples and lack of maturity is embedded in Lebanon’s political culture; a political culture of unprincipled merchants and duplicitous/obsequious "intermediaries" (سماسره) always doing the Arabs’ bidding, eagerly kowtowing to Arabs' needs, splashily feigning "sensitivity" to Arabs' hangups (about non-Arabs, non-Muslims, Jews, Holocausts, Ham and Cheese sandwiches, foreign language practitioners, you name it...) Case in point, Miss Lebanon cannot be seen in the same room (let alone stand in the same row) as Miss Israel; Lebanon had to withdraw from the 2005 Eurovision because the Lebanese contestant spoke to the Israeli contestant... There are many other similar childish horror stories validating “official” Lebanon’s lack of maturity, hypocrisy, and phoniness, and Makhoul certainly fits the bill here. But his article still showcases a number of honest, courageous, and long overdue censures of Hezbollah and their quisling leadership. My translation follows:

One is hard pressed to understand what motivates Hezbollah and its media-propaganda instruments, which have demonstrated yet again, over the last few days, their senseless and dangerous mastery of the art of brainwashing and the poisoning of minds. For, even a three-year old child, stricken with glaucoma, would not have been fooled by that photo supposedly featuring Gad Elmaleh donning an IDF uniform; a photo whose only physical feature in common with Gad Elmaleh, as with hundreds of thousands of other human beings across the planet, is its character’s blue eyes. Yet interestingly, neither Hezbollah nor al-Manar threw a similarly jaundiced tantrum back in 2006 when this same Gad Elmaleh was slated for a performance at the Byblos Festival; that is before the Festival got canceled due to [Hezbollah’s ill-conceived] July War. And finally, the increasingly frenetically and fanatically [thuggish] militia-like behavior of a party that is neither above nor even alongside “the law”, but rather against it, is becoming increasingly lethal.

One is hard pressed to understand why Hezbollah and al-Manar, after an otherwise very positive four-hour face-to-face meeting between Walid Jumblatt and Hassan Nasrallah, would decide to launch their attack on [Gad Elmaleh] and consequently on the Beiteddine Festival. One cannot but wonder whether the party of God had all along much grander schemes and a much bigger fish to fry; that is, attacking one of Lebanon’s two most important cultural events of the Summer season.

Obviously annoyed at the outcome of the legislative elections of three weeks earlier, elections which in spite of Michel Aoun’s regal assistance did not lead to Hezbollah’s anticipated victory nor to their subsequent initiation of their pro bono surgical modification of Lebanon’s identity and face, Hezbollah resolved to proceed differently. And so, an alternative strategy was devised. It set out to start small, keep a steady pace, and hope to achieve nefarious objectives by way of cross-paths and longer, more discrete, and less radical avenues than those necessitating the initiation of hostilities with Israel; but paths and strategies that smelled of a rat anyway. Hezbollah’s elixir now became staining Lebanon’s image and demolishing its standing in the eyes of the world; an image of a Lebanon coming back to life; a Lebanon reconnecting with its millenarian tradition as a hub for tourism, culture, art, and entertainment; a Lebanon as a land-bridge region between two, five, a thousand shores; a happy and joyous Lebanon in spite of its travails; a happy and joyous Lebanon because a Lebanon madly in love with life.

And so Hezbollah’s Mighty-Campaign, launched last week by al-Manar, was definitely and eminently a political one. An insidious operation of deception and doctoring up of facts, which duped even the otherwise respectable and discerning Le Nouvel Observateur into swallowing Hezbollah’s story hook line and sinker. Lebanon sees Gad Elmaleh as an Israeli soldier quipped one of Le Nouvel Observateur’s titles. Where Hezbollah becomes the villain (and alongside Hezbollah all the complicit mutisms emanating from Rabieh and elsewhere) above and beyond the intellectual terrorism that Hezbollah has elevated to the level of statecraft, above and beyond Hezbollah’s anti-semitism and its insane racism that is incapable of differentiating between Judaism and Zionism, and above and beyond Hezbollah’s rejection of the “Other”--especially when this “Other” has never fought on the side of Israel and is indeed an adept practitioner of self-derision, and a pointed critic of his own coreligionists-- it is at this point that Hassan Nasrallah’s organization begins initiating, with unmatched ferocity, a process of regression, completely stunting and asphyxiating Lebanon’s cultural accretions. Where Hezbollah becomes the villain is when Nasrallah invests everything in his power to ascertain that this country never becomes anything more than a filthy nest for obscurantisms of all kinds, a haven for Grand Inquisitors itching for witches and bonfires and countless pyres, a life-size laboratory for the group-think types and (clockwork) “Orange” lobotomies, an appendix for the 10,452 square kilometers at the service of an ever-expanding Ayatollahland where all the elder brothers of Moussavi must be broken and beaten into shape. It is surprising, even amazing to see that the great minds of Hezbollah, otherwise known widely for their sharp lofty intellects, have not yet become aware of the Herculean power of Lebanon’s Civil Society, a decidedly sumptuous Civil Society. Of course, the zealots have won this battle: naturally, and legitimately fearing for his own physical well-being, Gad Elmaleh will not come. But one thing is clear: we will never stand for another cultural jihad and another fatwa of this kind, whether or not initiated by Hezbollah.

Finally, it is sad to see that at a time when the entire world is doing everything in its power to undermine and dissipate a so-called global clash of civilizations, Hezbollah continues to work with infinite patience to create, on a very small intra-Lebanese scale, a deadly clash of cultures. Today more than ever there is a need to listen, and more importantly a need to hear the voices of Lebanese Shi’ites convinced of the noxious nature of the options proposed by Hezbollah. Today more than ever, there is an urgent need for those [Shi’ite] voices to rise up in defiance.

Bravo Sarkozy!!

Let me begin by saying that I'm not even a fan of this tiny megalomaniac, but his comments here are welcome, needed, and long overdue. "The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement—I want to say it solemnly... It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic." Voilà, c'est fait! Finally, someone with enough intellectual and moral courage to admit the obvious, without resorting to the usual stupid PC platitudes (spouted by leftists and feminists, no less.) I wonder what kind of new sanctimonious bullshit Obama is going to come up with now. He's already shown the effectiveness of his naif "ideology of loving your enemies" to spite George Bush. What now?

Again, Mr. President, your tiny French counterpart got it right this time, so why don't you dismount the high horse and stop pretending you're above the fray: "Le port de la burqa et un problème de liberté, de dignité de la femme... Ce n'est pas un problème religieux... C'est un signe d'asservissement, d'abaissement de la femme... [La burqa] n'est pas la bienvenue sur le territoire de la République... et nous ne devons pas avoir peur de nos valeurs". ["We mustn't be timid and apologetic about our values."]

Addendum:
A propos, read this Le Monde article, and surtout, the readers' comments. As the French say, Faiza and her husband veulent le beurre et l'argent du beurre; they have nothing but contempt for France and everything the republic stands for, yet they complain Faiza has been denied French citizenship (hell, even in lax America there is a modicum of "civicism and patriotism" a foreign spouse has to demonstrate before acquiring US citizenship.) And here's their lame response to Frenchmen objecting to the normalization of the Niqab and Burqa in French life:

"Nous aussi, il y a des choses qui nous choquent : les pédés qui vivent ouvertement ensemble, les couples qui ne se marient pas, les femmes à moitié nues dans la rue...", s'emporte-t-il [Karim]. "Blessés", ils [Faiza et Karim] ont songé à faire la hijra, l'émigration dans un pays musulman, en l'occurrence l'Arabie saoudite. "Là-bas, tout le monde est comme nous, on ne se ferait pas opprimer", s'enthousiasme Karim, qui s'est rendu déjà trois fois à La Mecque. Mais le projet tourne court, "trop compliqué"... "Cela reste mon rêve d'y aller, souffle Faiza. L'Arabie saoudite est une terre qui aime les musulmans."
[There are things that offend us as well: fags who live together openly, unmarried couples, and half-naked women on the streets..." he [Karim] quips. "Hurt," [Faiza and Karim] have considered making hegira, immigrating to a Muslim country, namely Saudi Arabia. "Everybody is like us over there, no on will oppress us" says Karim enthusiastically, who's been to Mecca three times already. But the dream is cut short, "it's too complicated" [to immigrate to Saudi Arabia.] "But this remains my dream" adds Faiza, "Saudi Arabia is a land that loves Muslims."

Here's the question: if France is so oppressive and so offensive to their mores and their beliefs (calling homosexuals "fags" suggests it is), and if Saudi Arabia is such a tolerant, liberal land of opportunity, why stay in France? Why insist that Faiza (who wants to impose her superannuated mediaeval mores and ways on a place she chose to immigrate to, that is France) get French citizenship when only condescension and repugnance can describe her attitude vis-à-vis France? Some people REALLY have balls the size of Chelsea!

Finally, just for laughs, and only if you understand French (some things just can't be translated), check this out:

America's Jesus Gets Another Nail.

Since we're on the topic of distorting history for political point and to ingratiate oneself to a senile and obsolete professoriate, check out Dr. Krauthammer's devastating skewering of Santa Obama. I'm sure he'll turn the other cheek, and like his demiurgic inspiration, he will beseech his heavenly father to "... forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Kiss ekhta, even Thomas Friedman had the intellectual honesty to confess that sometimes resolve and "power matters.".

Please, pretty please Mr. President, get off the sauce (and off your horse [say it in a Southie accent]) and do the freaking job you were elected to do: that is, fixin' the economy, YES, but also making the case for America, you numbnuts, not self-flagellating and comparing the plight of women and minorities in the Muslim world to that of women who haven't yet reached parity with men in America. When will this madness stop?

An Entire Post to Nona

Hey Nona, my response to you exceeded Blogger's alloted word-count for the comments thread; so there you go, you've earned yourself an entire post; don't you feel special? ;)

Anyhoo, just for the record, I wasn’t dwelling on anything and there isn’t much resentment in any facet of my life, professional, social, or otherwise. My abrasive style stems from exasperation, not resentment. Actually, save for shaky semantics, I don’t think there is much in terms of substance that I disagree with you on. I am a firm believer in elective and self-defined identities in their sublime anglo-french interpretations (and as such, I am completely with it when Palestinian, Jordanian, and other Levantine and Middle Eastern Christians and Jews flaunt their Arabness; whether real, imagined, fabricated, or constructed. By the same token, I object in the strongest terms to the sloppy and politically motivated inclusion of all Middle Eastern and Levantine Christians--and others as well--under the dubious label “Arab.” )

All I was doing in this post (and all I do in this blog) is point out the hypocrisy and sanctimony of “Others” in describing and dictating the history of other “Others” (the other “Others” in my case happen to be the Lebanese, and at times Lebanon’s Christians, as in my view they were the ones who brought modern Lebanon into being, and they are the ones most often targeted by thuggish possessive Arabists and their Western sympathizers.)

Pour en revenir à nos moutons, what I was doing in this post was simply marvel at how the exodus and marginalization of Middle Eastern Christians (and other non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities as well), 14 centuries in the making, is somehow attributed to the 11th century (delayed and defensive) Crusades, Israel, and often to those very indigenous wicked Christians and minorities themselves, rather than face and recognize the undeniable truth of the 7th Century Arab-Muslim conquest. And you don't have to take my word for this, Nona, read below, from the Brill Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, under the heading Ethnicity and Language:

“Before the movement of the Arabs out of Arabia and across the Levant, Mesopotamia, and North Africa, the area now [mistakenly and misleadingly, lnh] called the “Arab world” had hosted many other cultures, including the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans [ahem, that’s Greeks and Romans, no less, lnh]. Before the arrival of Islam, it had seen the birth of Judaism and Christianity. The legacies of these pre-Islamic peoples and cultures did not all simply disappear with the advent of the Muslim Arabs.”

Let me repeat that last sentence, Nona, “The legacies of these pre-Islamic peoples and cultures did not all simply disappear with the advent of the Muslim Arabs.”

Now, I’m not arguing that some Levantine Christians do not view themselves as Arabs; as I agreed with you earlier, many do, and that’s their own prerogative, and I am not prescribing an identity for them other than the one they recognize for themselves and desribe (and even flaunt) to others. All I’m saying is that those who reject their imputed “Arabness” and hark back to pre-Arab ancestors (that is, the Copts, Maronites, Chaldaeans, Syriacs, others, and yes some--not all, some--Jordanian and Palestinian Christians) should not be dismissed or denigrated or marginalized or accused of treachery and disloyalty to Arabs (that is, تخوين, something most Lebanese Maronites are accused of. The funny thing that I often ask in this case is “how/why
should I be perceived to be “disloyal” to Arabism, if I'm not an Arab to begin with?" But anyway, that's another issue altogether; again, revenons à nos moutons.)

I appreciate the fact that you do not fall into the category of thuggish totalitarian Arabists, who argue that one is an Arab regardless of whether or not they recognize that putative Arabness (something I talk about at great length and ad nauseam in this blog.) I also respect the fact that you seem to find the Renanian identité elective (and some minorities’ harking back to pre-Arab progenitors) to be a reasonable impulse. However, that is not the traditional knee-jerk reductive Arabist view, and you’ll have to forgive my lashing out every so often at misleading Arabists and their Western sympathizers and facilitators when they use faulty semantics on that subject.... Your attitude, noble as it is, is belied by the Arabists’ different “truths”; “truths” incapable of recognizing the MIddle East’s diversity and the “non-Arabness” of the “Other.” For the rest, again, I don’t think there is much I can honestly disagree with you on, except perhaps, and again, that’s an issue of semantics not substance, that Arabists do paint Arabism and Arabness as an ethnicity, not merely a linguistic identity. (btw, the whole issue of language and what constitutes “the Arabic language” is another can of worms that, I'm sure, you and I will have much to disagree on, but again, this blog treats this at some length, and I suspect you know what I'm talking about.)

For now, allow me to leave with another priceless snippet from the Brill Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics:

If the Arab invasions are viewed as a flood arising in Arabia and engulfing the regions from Spain to the Indus, then in parts of these regions the floodwaters bearing Arabic and Islam seem to have entirely submerged what was there before, while other parts were not covered at all, forming islands. In still other places there was a mingling of the floodwaters with lakes or rivers already present, so that the boundaries between the two became fluid. Finally, in some places the floodwaters eventually receded so that lands once under water re-emerged, possibly showing residual effects of the flood. Some peoples of the region resisted the forces of Arabicization, Islamicization, or both; even among those who underwent both these processes, this was not always accompanied by a total abandonment of their earlier culture. Thus, there are still pockets across the Arab world using languages other than Arabic and practicing religions other than Islam, and there are still groups convinced that their ancestors belonged to a people different from those of their neighbors. The extent to which the various groups assert their distinctiveness may vary over time and in relation to circumstances, and individuals may also feel allegiance to more than one group, so that it may be necessary to recognize overlapping identities rather than ones that are wholly incompatible. Our concern here is with the relevance of language to these identities.

National Geographic "Gets It"; Exactly WRONG!!!

Check out this awful National Geographic article. I'm coming on the tail end of it, as many thoughtful commentators have already torn it to pieces. See for instance these entries on the always pointed and penetrating Solomonia. CAMERA also had their piece, and so did the fearless and articulate Phyllis Chesler.

I'm sure the NGM has already had its fill of Letters to the Editor, so I won't bother adding to those; mainly because:
a) a publication with the NatGeo's intellectual dishonesty--all the while flaunting their planet-friendly chique--will most probably not post anyone calling them to task;
and b) this June issue (about them, ahem, "Arab Christians", whatever that means) has been out since May (Chesler wrote her response on May 18th. But I'll echo and copy what Salameh and Cabaret wrote on Solomonia:

Don Belt's essay's pithy title, "The Forgotten Faithful Arab Christians" [sic.] of the Holy Land, adumbrates a compelling story of dispossession, marginalization, and extinction; yet, the factual errors, omissions, and distortions throughout his narrative disappoint and misinform.

Attributing the dwindling numbers of Near Eastern Christians to the Crusades is not only shoddy history, it is at once hypocritical and dangerous. Whatever happened to the Arab-Muslim conquests of the 7th Century? Did they not precede the Crusades by some 400 years and had already begun Islamizing Near Eastern Christians? Weren't the Crusades delayed defensive Christian wars, waged in an attempt to take back from Muslim conquerors what was taken by force from Christians some five centuries prior? Belt's dubious history doesn't stop with the condemnation of the Crusades and the whitewashing of the 7th Century Arab-Muslim conquests; his unrelenting references to Near Eastern Christians as "Arab Christians" -- wrongly subsuming them en masse under a monistic Arab ethno-national and linguistic label -- is a sinister and cruel expropriation of the history of indigenous, pre-Arab, Near Eastern Christians. Today's Copts, Maronites, and Assyrians, heirs to the ancient Pharaohs, Canaanites, and Aramaeans, would be amazed at Don Belt's assertion that Arabs were "among the first to be persecuted for the new faith, and the first to be called Christians." One wonders, whatever happened to the Jewish Jesus, and to the Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek speaking followers of Jesus? Whatever happened to Levantine Jews, Roman, and Greek Pagans and Pantheists who adopted Christianity some seven centuries prior the Arabs' blood-soaked entry into the Levant?

Aside from a host of other factual errors, Belt puts the onus for the disappearing Christians of the Holy Land squarely on modern Israel and Israeli policies, while 13 centuries of Arab-Muslim persecutions get nary the cursory mention. One wonders what role Israel plays today in the disappearance of the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites of Lebanon, the Chaldaeans and Assyrians of Iraq, and the Syriacs of Syria among others? Is their dispossession of their homelands over the past 13 centuries also the result of "Israeli occupation?" Can someone at the NGM spell anachronism in this narrative?

I commend the National Geographic for attempting to shed some light on the plight of the forgotten Christians of the Near East. But under the guise of telling their story, Don Belt has set out to erase the historical memory of Near Eastern Christians. Subsuming them under a uniform, reductive "Arab" identity, and assuming pre-Muslim Arabs inhabited the Holy Land prior to the 7th Century advent of Islam is not only unscrupulous and misleading reading of Levantine history; it is hypocritical, inaccurate, ideologically motivated, and potentially dangerous. There are already enough misconceptions about the Middle East being intellectualized in the media and the academy; sadly, instead of correcting, illuminating, and informing, Don Belt's essay contributes to further distortions and politicization--not to mention forced "Arabization"--of Near Eastern history.

Thank you,

Franck Salameh
Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies
Coordinator of the Arabic Studies and Hebrew Program
Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures
BOSTON COLLEGE


It is profoundly disappointing how broad a brush Mr. Belt has used to paint Middle Eastern Christians (in the June 2009 issue of the National Geographic, pp. 84-97.) Rather than reducing them to the simplistic and inaccurate label "Arab", Mr. Belt should have had the intellectual honesty to recognize the complexity and diversity of these pre-Arab, ancient Near Eastern peoples, not all of whom take kindly to the label "Arab", and most of whom brandish proud histories, languages, and traditions predating the Arabs and Muslims by centuries if not millennia. Besides the obvious contempt Mr. Belt has for these people -- quipping snidely at one point that "candidates for sainthood" don't ordinarily come to mind when speaking of Lebanon's Maronites -- his article was more a reflection of his ideological bias than it was a dispassionate "history" of the Christians of the Holy Land as the NGM's cover page misleadingly announces. His disturbingly inaccurate observation that Arabs were among the first people to adopt Christianity demonstrates either an immodest and unsubstantiated revisionism, or else Mr. Belt's breathtaking ignorance of both the history of Christianity and the history of the pre-Arab Eastern Mediterranean. It is unfortunate that the National Geographic chose to publish such an inaccurate and politically charged treatise -- by the journal's Senior Editor for Foreign Affairs no less; someone for whose past writings I otherwise had the utmost appreciation and respect.

Sincerely,
Pascale Cabaret

Writing on the plight of vanishing Middle Eastern minorities, and omitting the role that modern Muslims and the 7th century Muslim conquest played in actuating this exodus, is like writing on the marginalized and vanishing Native Americans with the equally preposterous omission of European settlement of the New World. This is to say nothing of how deeply offensive and condescending towards Muslims it must be to completely ignore the momentous event that was the 7th century Muslim Conquest of the Middle East.

"Obama the Underminer"

Check out this excellent piece by Lee Smith. It predicts with eerie accuracy Obama's muddling and shoddy grasp of things Middle East--albeit a misleadingly eloquent muddling and shoddiness.

As Smith predicted, Obama shoots himself in mouth (and shoots mouth) regurgitating old worn out cliches and reciting tried and tired pieties about so-called "Arab" and "Muslim" worlds. What are the Muslim and Arab worlds anyway? The so-called "Muslim World" is as culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and socially diverse, heteroclite, and fractious as is the so-called "Arab World"; "heterodox" as Smith called it. Why then this silly persistence in treating it (them) as some monolithic and cohesive universe? Don't get me wrong, there were many passable passages in Obama's hyped speech, but in the end, his condescending inability to view the Middle East (and the so-called "Muslim world") for the varied and richly textured mosaic of cultures and civilizations that it really is, was a disappointment and a disturbing harbinger for things to come; more sloppiness and more disregard for Middle Eastern minority narratives and minority rights (Middle Eastern minorities who are neither "Arab" nor "Muslim", but who nevertheless continue to be subsumed under the faulty Muslim-Arab label.)

There's more. Santa-Obama quotes three sacred texts:

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written. The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another." The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace." The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Why, that is just so sweet, ain't it? Let's all hold hands and sing Kum ba ya, shall we? One wonders why the Talmud and the and Gospels quotes contain the word "Peace", but not the one from Koran? Either Obama's speech writer picked a terrible quote, or else there were no parallel Koranic exhortations to "Peace" without "Submission" for the writer to brandish for the boss (um, ahem, as in آسلم تسلم, aslem taslem [convert to Islam and you shall be spared]...)

Yeah, I know, the multi-culturalists out there are going to come back with their hackneyed "but, يا استاذ, all triumphalist religions commit heinous acts of violence in the name of religion, and therefore all are not peaceful" blah blah blah, and "Islam means Peace, anyway!!!" Well, fact check for those of you who have already guzzled your (northeastern, liberal) professors' koolaid, Islam means "submission" not "peace," so, puhleaze, spare me the silly bromides. And while some might argue that there are many similarities between the three "Abrahamic faiths," those are apparent, not real similarities; "similarities" that mislead rather than enlighten. For one, the Prophet of Islam was at once God's messenger, a ruler, a judge, a law-giver, a tax-collector (and often booty and war-spoils collector as well), a military commander (who killed, exhorted to kill, and was injured on the battlefield), and an instigator and major inspiration behind one of the largest colonial conquests in the history of mankind; conquests that have all the classic markings of an imperialist enterprise in the modern sense--similar to the "imperialist enterprises" that Arabs and Muslims accuse others of having undertaken, forgetting the fact that they are themselves avid imperialists.

Additionally, while it is true that, like Muslims, Christians and Jews might have waged war in the name of their respective religions, in the case of Christianity this was so in spite of the message of the Gospels, not because of it; what's more, the PACIFISM of the Christian message is undeniable (both textually and empirically in the acts of the founder.) There is no pacifism in Islam, and it's founder was a general and a war strategist, not a peace-maker. I wish the morons who shower us with risible bromides about Islam and peace etc.. (our President included) would bother looking at the glaring evidence before shooting their mouths.

Obama takes the cake when he begins pontificating about how France should jettison its "republican values" so that oppressed and submissive French Muslim women can still display the symbols of their meekness and passivity, and continue wearing the veil. Although there are many a lesson on tolerance that Obama might be able to give the French, me think he knows jack about French republican law, and he'd be better served minding his own business.


------
Addendum:
More gems on Obama's fumblings on the Middle East:

David Frum writes: ...the job to which he was elected was not that of impartial judge, but that of leader and champion of the American nation.

TNR's Jim Kirchick appreciates Obama's elegance and, unlike his predecessor, his unwillingness to impose American values on others. But he rightly argues that "democracy... the rights of women and [the rejection of] the use of terrorism in resolving political differences" are values worth fighting for, and perhaps even imposing. Enough "liberal" pussyfooting and assuaging and excusing the Arabs' inhumanity and brutality! There's more.. the TNR piece is worth quoting in its entirety:

Even if you didn't like the president's speech, there were certainly elements to applaud. He did not shy away from defending the American-led mission in Afghanistan. His moving commentary about the Holocaust was absolutely necessary in a part of the world where so many people deny its existence. Those were the good parts. Unfortunately, these noble sentiments were accompanied by a series of worrisome ones.

We'll get to the substance of the speech in a moment. But first, it is worth dwelling on its tone--the detached quality of it. As David Frum writes:

...in Cairo he exhibited the amazing spectacle of an American president taking an equidistant position between the country he leads and its detractors and enemies. It is as if he saw himself as a judge in some legal dispute, People of the Islamic World v. United States. But the job to which he was elected was not that of impartial judge, but that of leader and champion of the American nation.

Obama has said that he doesn't want to "impose" American values on the rest of the world. Fine. But there are arguments that are worthy of passion--about democracy and the rights of women and against the use of terrorism in resolving political differences. If the president of the United States hopes to defend his side--indeed, our side--of these arguments, cool logic is not enough. In fact, logical arguments about these matters are not credible unless backed by some urgency. I know the president believes that he can elegantly float above it all, playing the role of global healer. But if he doesn't forcefully make the American case, then who will? And who would believe it?

I wish the president had said more about Iran and its nuclear program, an issue that should be central to any grand analysis of the region like this. But he barely even talked about the Mullah's aspirations. Indeed, the ambiguity of his expectations for Iran stood in stark contrast to the forthrightness of his case against Israeli settlements. "Threatening Israel with destruction--or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews--is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve," Obama said, without mentioning just who it is that is "threatening Israel with destruction." Similarly, Obama soft-peddled his description of the Iranian regime itself. "Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians," he said. Actually, Iran has done more than just "play a role" in international brigandage and murder. It is a leading state-sponsor of such activity. Why not just say Iran has "taken hostages" and "killed" U.S troops and civilians?

Another disturbing strand of argument in the speech: "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons." This is a line basically conforming to the rhetoric and worldview of the Mullahs. Even in a fantasyland where no nation has nuclear weapons, the statement that "no single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons" would not make sense: In such a pre-nuclear situation, the United States would optimally play such a role. But in the world in which we live, wouldn't it clearly be better, for instance, if South Korea, and not North Korea, had nuclear weapons? And as to the line's specific context: Israel's unchallenged possession of nuclear weapons actually contributes to regional stability. Obama's rhetoric here gives credence to the complaint that Iran's desperate quest for nuclear weapons is somehow justified by a legitimate fear of a nuclear attack by Israel. It sets up a false moral equivalence between the legitimacy of a democratic state's possession of a nuclear deterrent, and the nuclear aspirations of a theocratic regime openly calling for the destruction of that state.

Perhaps, the president had his reasons for pulling his punches. Maybe the Iranian "election" is on his mind. But tone matters. And he has set the tone of the debate in a deeply unsettling way. There are many countries and movements in the Middle East that foster extreme pathologies and that work overtime to undermine our interests in the region. Yet, the one country the president seems intent on pressing with the greatest intensity is our most unbending ally in the world. Very strange.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic.