Iranian Justice

What was the crime these two Iranian boys committed that warrants being hung until dead? They were discovered to be gay. Whatever one thinks about the morality of homosexuality, to execute young men for it is barbaric.

I don't know how many gays there are in the United States but every single one of them should realize that this will likely be their fate if the Islamists prevail in their global jihad and the liklihood of that will increase exponentially if Iran is allowed to build the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons.

For another example of the Iranian interpretation of Islamic "justice" go here.

Does Poverty Make America Immoral?

David Batstone of Sojourners, in an article that is e-mailed by subscription and thus unlinkable, criticizes the Bush administration for aiding the wealthy while the poor languish:

The editors of The New York Times sounded that alarm this past week in an editorial: "Despite the Bush-era expansion, the number of Americans living in poverty in 2005 - 37 million - was the same as in 2004. This is the first time the number has not risen since 2000. But the share of the population now in poverty - 12.6 percent - is still higher than at the trough of the last recession, when it was 11.7 percent. And among the poor, 43 percent were living below half the poverty line in 2005 - $7,800 for a family of three. That is the highest percentage of people in 'deep poverty' since the government started keeping track of those numbers in 1975."

Standing alone, these backward slides are disturbing. Put into the context of our current political realities they are downright immoral.

I'm not sure what he means by "current political realities", but before I can agree with him that the numbers he cites reflect some moral flaw in our society I have to ask a couple of questions.

For example, in order for these statistics to reflect a moral fault in our body politic the people who are mired in poverty must be able to work and willing to work, but prevented from working against their will by some sort of institutional or social hindrance. Mr. Batstone evidently believes that there is such an impediment standing in the way of people who would otherwise make their way out of poverty, but he doesn't tell us what it might be.

What might the hindrance be? One possibility is that there just aren't any jobs, but this seems unlikely given that the economy is at almost full employment and that illegal immigrants are streaming across our borders, presumably because they know there's work to be found here.

Another reason why the people in Mr. Batstone's statistics might be victims of an immoral society is that they are largely minorities and perhaps they are being discriminated against on the basis of their race. However, if Mr. Batstone has evidence that racial prejudice lies behind the poverty numbers, he should adduce it, but he doesn't.

A third possibility is that these individuals are trapped in poverty because the government cut back on welfare in the 1990s, and these individuals, who would work if they could, for sundry reasons not their fault cannot work. Thus they're living in poverty without sufficient government assistance. If this is what justifies Mr. Batstone's charge of immorality then he needs to show us the data that support the allegation, but again, he doesn't. He simply points out that there are more poor now than previously, declares that to be an immoral state of affairs, and lets it go. This is just too facile.

What he doesn't seem to consider is that perhaps a lot of the people in poverty today are poor because of choices they themselves have made. Many people are not just unemployed but unemployable, and many of the latter are unemployable as a consequence of their own choices in life. Some people, for example, have chosen not to take advantage of a free public education and are thus unsuited for good jobs. A high school dropout will earn annually only 65% of what a high school graduate will earn. Other people have chosen to have children out of wedlock and are unable, as a consequence, to work enough to get ahead. Some people have chosen to abuse drugs and alcohol and/or to indulge in other dysgenic activities which make them a liability in the workplace. Some people have chosen not to develop good work habits and thus have trouble keeping a job, much less build a career.

How many of the individuals in Mr. Batstone's 12.6% fall into one of these categories? What responsibility, if any, does government have to these people? Again, we're left in the dark. Mr. Batstone gives us no reason to accept his claim that somehow the poverty situation in the U.S. is "immoral". If he can provide us with some reason to think that these people are poor because of the deliberate actions of others who know that their acts will prevent people who want to earn their way out of poverty from doing so, then he'll have a case worth heeding.

Until then there's little reason to consider his vague and unsubstantiated allegation of immorality as anything other than rhetoric.

Falling Gas Prices

I note that gasoline in my part of the country is now under $2.40 a gallon. As the price of a gallon has dropped almost 60 cents everyone is breathing a sigh of relief except opponents of the president and those who have to run against incumbents in congress.

For these people, particularly Democrats, falling gas prices are terrible news. Never mind that cheaper gas means a heavy burden is lifted from the backs of the poor, the fact is that the Democrats don't want the price of gas to come down for two reasons:

First, many of them believe that keeping the price high cuts consumption which in turn has several salutary effects. The less gasoline that's burned the less greenhouse emissions we dump into the air, the more we conserve a precious resource, and the less wealth that flows to the Middle East and thence into the pockets of terrorists.

Second, cheaper gas redounds to Mr. Bush's political benefit, and that is a painful blow to Democrats. Already his approval numbers appear to be responding to the drop in the cost of a tank of petrol.

Rasmussen has the President's approval rating, as it stood prior to his Monday night speech and the 9/11 observances, up to 47% which is not only a good trend for the President but also good for Republicans running for congress this year.

Astonishingly, from a liberal point of view, falling gas prices are good for both Republicans and the poor. Now that seems an unlikely juxtaposition, one that would doubtless cause many Democrats some cognitive dissonance. It'd be fun to listen to Democrats explain to advocates for the poor why higher fuel prices are more important than the economic well-being of those who can't afford to buy heating oil and gasoline.

Proof: Men Are Smarter!

John Rushton is either very brave or very foolish. He has published a study which finds that men, on average, are smarter than women. This is one of those things that men have tacitly believed for, well, forever, but gallantry forbade them from voicing. Gallantry and an instinct for self-preservation.

Now Mr. Rushton, following the lead of academic kamikazis like Charles Murray and Lawrence Summers, rushes in where angels fear to tread.

Prof. Rushton also claims that just as women prefer men as mates who are taller than they, they also prefer men who are smarter than they. If so, many of them are no doubt disappointed.

In any event, the news report on this study is interesting. You can read it here. Feel free to pass it along to the special woman in your life.

Steele v. Cardin

Having defeated Kweisi Mfume in Maryland's Democratic senatorial primary race Representative Ben Cardin will now run against Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Paul Sarbanes.

There are some interesting dynamics at play here. Polls show Cardin leading Steele 49.4% to 40.2%, but Steele's holding a couple of political aces. Steele is a black Republican and Cardin is a white Democrat. It's unclear how enthusiastically the traditional African-American base will greet a Cardin candidacy. Black Democrats may not vote for Steele, but many of them may not wish to vote against him, either, especially if doing so means voting for a white candidate. Moreover, a statewide survey of black voters commissioned by the Maryland Democratic Party showed that 44 percent were open to a Steele candidacy.

In other words, a lot of black voters may either vote for Steele or simply decide to sit out the election. Either result would be very bad news for Cardin who probably has no chance to win without a strong African American turnout on his behalf.

Add to this the fact that Steele has about double the cash on hand that Cardin does and it looks as though Steele has a pretty good shot at winning the seat.

The Pope Slams Naturalism

The headline of this article declares that "The Pope Slams Evolution", but this is not quite accurate. What the Pope seems to be slamming is the idea that the universe and life can be explained in purely naturalistic terms without any reference to God. The headline might more accurately have read, "The Pope Slams Darwinism" because Darwinism holds evolution to be a purely mechanistic process with no explanatory need for any intelligent input from any non-physical source.

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable".

Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable".

The homily appeared to throw the Catholic Church's full weight behind the theory of intelligent design (ID) - a subject of massive controversy in the United States. The Catholic Church has for over 50 years accepted Darwin's theory of random selection as the most probable cause of development, but has alway stressed God's role.

Recently, however, top theologians have clashed with Catholic scientists over so-called 'evolutionism' - that is, attempts to make evolution explain everything. Vatican theologian Christoph Schoenborn made headlines with a New York Times article a year ago which endorsed the ID theory that has roiled US academic debate and appeared to back full-fledged Creationism, the core Bible story....

Schoenborn [clarified] his position, saying that evolution as a body of scientific fact was compatible with Catholicism, but that evolution as an ideological dogma that denied design and purpose in Nature was not.

[The Pope] told his young audience in St Peter's that "science supports a reliable, intelligent structure of matter, the design of Creation".

"Accounts about Man don't add up without God, just as accounts about the world, the vast universe, do not add up without Him".

Evolutionary theories, he said, posit that "the Irrational, without reason, strangely produces a cosmos controlled by mathematical rules, and even man and his (powers of) reason".

There's more to the article, including, unfortunately, some irritating misunderstandings about the theory of intelligent design. For instance, in one of the above paragraphs the writer says that:

Vatican theologian Christoph Schoenborn made headlines with a New York Times article a year ago which endorsed the ID theory that has roiled US academic debate and appeared to back full-fledged Creationism, the core Bible story.

This is misleading. It gives the impression that Intelligent Design is Creationism, but this is simply not correct. Creationism is a theory of origins based on the Genesis account in the Bible. ID is a theory based upon the empirical evidence for design that we see in biology and cosmology. Creationism uses the raw material of science to make a number of theological claims, and it rests on theological assumptions about the existence of God and the literal truth of Genesis. ID, as a theory, makes no theological claims and rests on no theological assumptions.

The article also errs at the end where it states that:

Supporters of ID hold that some features of the universe and living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence.

This is not exactly true. No IDer thinks that complexity alone implies a creative intelligence. What they do assert is that there is both irreducible complexity and specified complexity (information) in the biosphere and that it is these kinds of complexity which point to an intelligent provenience. Not all examples of complex systems display the properties of irreducibility and specificity, but those which do, if in fact they do, cannot be explained in terms of any purely physical, non-sentient mechanisms that we know of. In other words, complexity that is irreducible and/or specified (i.e. it constitutes information - like DNA does) strongly suggests an intelligent origin and cause.

The big question that both critics and advocates of ID are wrestling with is whether there really are unquestionable, indubitable instances of irreducible complexity in the world and whether it's true that those obvious examples of specified complexity, like the genetic code, really cannot be plausibly be explained apart from intelligence.

Syrian Machinations

Yes, I know. The Syrians did a great job of protecting our embassy in Damascus. Thanks. But, at the risk of being hyper-cynical, I can't help being skeptical. This seems, after all, like a rather amateurish attack. The "terrorists" never set off the big bomb in the van, they fought ineffectively, and in short, the operation wasn't well-coordinated and didn't seem to have much of a point.

So I have to ask, why did these thugs waste their lives on what appears to have been a futile mission? Maybe they were led to believe that circumstances on the embassy's perimeter would be different from what they were. Maybe, in other words, the Syrian security forces actually put the attackers up to the deed, and then allowed them to be cut to ribbons by the guards at the embassy who appear to have been prepared for the assault.

Why would Assad have orchestrated such treachery and intrigue? Because by appearing to defend the Americans in the embassy the United States becomes indebted to him. He's seen as someone who, despite his flaws, really means well. This makes it considerably more difficult for us to pull the trigger on Syria if it should ever become necessary to do so. Condemning or imposing sanctions against Syria for their sundry crimes and misdeeds after they have fought so nobly in our defense would look like a terrible betrayal of their "friendship".

The attack in Damascus may have been a genuine attempt hatched by inept terrorists to kill Americans, or it may have been a clever attempt by a Machiavellian regime to buy American good will in order to immunize it against sanctions - or worse. Perhaps we'll see soon enough.

The Global War Against Non-Muslims

The bacillus of world-wide jihad against the infidel is not confined to attacks against the West. It has afflicted Africa, India and is raging also in Asia. This is from a report on the situation in Thailand:

September 8, 2006: The 32 months of violence in the Moslem south [southern Thailand] have so far caused nearly 4,300 casualties (40 percent of them fatal). During that period, there were some 5,500 incidents of Islamic terrorist violence. That's an average of 5-6 a day, among a population of 2.4 million (some 80 percent Moslem). The violence was largely directed at the 400,000 or so non-Moslems. The terrorist attacks have had the effect of doubling the normal murder rate in the south. A religiously inspired crime wave, so to speak. But the terror is very real as well, especially for non-Moslems. Since most of the deaths are among the non-Moslem minority, the death rate for that community has risen to about 15 per 100,000 per year. The rate in the U.S. is about 6 per 100,000 people per year.

While the number of bombings has increased this year, the casualty rate has gone down. This is largely because of the thousands of additional soldiers and police sent to the south. These security forces are everywhere down there. But the damage has already been done, and thousands of non-Moslem Thais have fled the south. The main objective of the Islamic terrorists is to expel all non-Moslems from the south, and then set up a religious dictatorship.

The Islamist goal, it seems quite clear, is to purge the world of non-Muslims. It has been their goal for 1300 years and will be long past our lifetimes. This is not a challenge that can be met solely by good police work and negotiations. Those who think it is are simply not fully awake to the nature of the struggle in which we find ourselves embroiled. The Islamists aren't the mafia. They're not driven by lust for wealth or territory, per se. They are driven by a fanatical interpretation of the Koran that they believe anoints them to carry out genocide in the name of Allah. All that's keeping them from mass slaughter of infidels is their present lack of a capacity to carry it out.

No Way to Fight a War

This article from the New York Post will pop the blood pressure cuff right off your bicep:

WASHINGTON - Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral - and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone - dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report. U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial, NBC News reported.

The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground. "We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture," one U.S. Army officer told NBC. But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report.

Pentagon officials declined comment and referred The Post to Central Command officers in Afghanistan, who did not respond to a request for comment or explanation.

Agonizingly, Army officers could do nothing but watch the pictures being fed back from the drone as the Taliban splintered into tiny groups - too small to effectively target with the drone - and headed back to their mountainside hideouts.

Read the rest of the story at the link. Democrats introduced a motion today requesting that President Bush fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for incompetence. In light of this New York Post story even Republican congresspersons are going to find it hard not to vote for it. One wonders how many American kids are going to die because somebody thought it just wasn't proper in the midst of a war to kill terrorists in a cemetery, of all places. If these Taliban cutthroats had all been gathered in a soccer stadium surrounded by live civilians the military would have pulled the trigger and chalked the civilian casualties up to unfortunate collateral damage, but we dare not take them out if they're surrounded by dead people. That would be uncivilized.

Here's a picture of the Post's front page showing a picture taken from the Predator drone of the ranks and files of the Taliban leadership all lined up like ducks in a row. Looks like several hundred of them. Perhaps they're engaged in a prayer of thanksgiving to Allah that the American officer who has to decide whether to unleash a missile on them was busy spinning the propeller on his beanie.

Attriting the Taliban

Strategy Page wonders why the Taliban are employing suicidal tactics in Afghanistan against coalition forces. There doesn't seem to be any good answer to the question:

September 11, 2006: In Afghanistan, government officials, tribal leaders and NATO generals are trying to makes sense of the seemingly suicidal, and pointless, Taliban tactics. For the last six months, the Taliban has been conducting a lot of raids, ambushes, and suicide attacks. This is reasonable for an irregular force. But they've also been carrying out a lot of operations that involve larger forces (e.g., on platoon, company, and occasionally higher scale). Moreover, these troops don't "melt away" as soon as Coalition/Government troops turn on the heat, but fight back. They Taliban tend to lose these stand-up fights, and they don't inflict very many casualties. In fact, the Taliban have been losing 10-20 men for every NATO or Afghan soldiers they kill. Even by Afghan standards, this appears insane. So what are they up to?

It's possible that increased activity has allowed them to reestablish their influence in a lot of areas, particularly along the Pakistani frontier, since they can pitch even their defeats as victories to the largely illiterate tribesmen from whom they recruit.

It's also possible that they're trying to wage a war of attrition. Most analysts, right as well as left, civilian as well as military, believe the Taliban is trying to raise the Coalition casualty count to the point where Europeans, who are so sensitive about their soldiers getting killed, will decide on a withdrawal. But despite some reservations, the current rate of deaths doesn't seem likely to do that.

The Taliban may be hoping that, even though they incur seriously heavy casualties, if they can, in just one battle, inflict really heavy loses on Coalition troops (wipe out a platoon, perhaps), they might be able to trigger the withdrawal of some of the NATO contingents. But doing that might cost the Taliban hundreds of more dead followers.

Piling up the number of casualties may actually serve as a recruiting tool, since it may attract recruits seeking to avenge the deaths of kinsmen (a popular pass-time in the region) as well as many of the most ardent among the faithful who want to seek martyrdom themselves. But how long can they keep this up? Sooner or later the pool of volunteers is going to dry up. American and NATO intelligence officers are readying informer networks that will report on what the "chatter" is, over the Winter, in pro-Taliban areas. Considering the heavy losses the Taliban took this year, are their supporters eager for another round in 2007, or are they dismayed and discouraged? There may be enough chatter to analyze, by the end of the year, to form some conclusions.

It's not mentioned in the article but these suicide assaults are also degrading the Taliban strength in another way by attriting their trained warriors. The new recruits being thrown into the breach are presumably going to be less well trained and less effective. In other words, things are not going well for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Both Barrels

Marty Peretz, publisher of the center left The New Republic, cuts loose with both barrels on the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation and all those lefties who pranced merrily along behind the special prosecutor carrying the kindling with which they fully expected to immolate Dick Cheney and Karl Rove over the Valerie Plame leak.

The last half of Peretz' barrage goes like this:

No one is interested in the case of the "outed spook" and her "outer" any longer. And that is because we now know who exposed the lady to Robert Novak, and he isn't and never was part of the Cheney White House. He was part of the anti-Cheney State Department, liberal heroes, sort of. That man is Richard Armitage, latterly deputy secretary of state and multi-lateralist par excellence. He has now expressed his soulful contrition for the leak. One thing everybody in Washington knows about Armitage is that he doesn't take another kind of a leak without asking Colin Powell first. So there is now added to this weird case the question of what were Armitage's--and Powell's--motives in this exposure. And they should also be asking about Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at State, and his possible role in this affair.

None of these men were especially taken with the Bush administration's war in Iraq. So they are, so to speak, off the hook with the anti-war folk with regard to the leak. The fact is that neither Armitage nor his associates ever told the president who was responsible for the leak. If I were George W. Bush, I'd be ripshit. And, since Armitage two weeks ago unambiguously admitted to being the culprit, should he not now face charges?

Now, there is one person who has been indicted--not for violating the Intelligence Identification Protection Act, the law which Armitage has actually confessed to breaking--but for obstructing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation.... The indicted man is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and he has become MoveOn's designated scapegoat for the entire war. Folk who wouldn't have thought Alger Hiss or the Rosenbergs or Philip Agee guilty of treason have been calling him a traitor. This is laughable.

Let me concede: I am a friend of Scooter Libby. But I do not like his boss. And I do not like his boss's wife. I know this gets me no credit with the all-or-nothing crowd. Still, I like Scooter, who is quite brilliant, very honest, and brave. Also funny. I've contributed to The Libby Legal Defense Fund and have joined the fund's advisory committee, which is not large because in Washington old pals dessert when even their college roommate gets into trouble. In a time when self-styled civil libertarians are giving money to defend Muslim terrorists, I am happy to help defend an American patriot, some of whose politics I do not share and some of whose politics I do, from a cynical onslaught of the special prosecutor who put journalists into jail for not telling him what he already knew.

The campaign of wrath and virtue against Libby was mostly fueled by simulated outrage. Now that everybody knows who committed the offense, such as it was, the charges against Libby should go into the trash.

Peretz is right. The Libby prosecution and the hunt for the "outer" of Valerie Plame is a shameful episode in our contemporary politics perpetrated by the opponents of the current administration. It is, in fact, a case of abuse of power by the special prosecutor and lynch mob mentality on the part of the media. The whole business is a disgrace and those who joined and abetted the mob should be ashamed of themselves.

One Arab's Apology

If more Muslims wrote pieces like this and fewer sounded like apologists for the Islamists, Americans might have a different impression of Islam than many of them do:

September 12, 2006 -- WELL, here it is, five years late, but here just the same: an apology from an Arab-American for 9/11. No, I didn't help organize the killers or contribute in any way to their terrible cause. However, I was one of millions of Arab-Americans who did the unspeakable on 9/11: nothing.

The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.

Well, I'm sick of saying the truth only in private - that Arabs around the world, including Arab-Americans like myself, need to start holding our own culture accountable for the insane, violent actions that our extremists have perpetrated on the world at large.

Yes, our extremists and our culture.

Every single 9/11 hijacker was Arab and a Muslim. The apologists (including President Bush) tried to reassure us that 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam, but was a twisting of a great and noble religion. With all due respect, read the Koran, Mr. President. There's enough there for someone of extreme tendencies to find their way to a global jihad.

Read the whole column at the link. It closes with these words:

Five years after that awful day, it's time for all Arab-Americans, and Arabs around the world, to protest against Islamic fascism, to raise our voices - and, where necessary, our arms - against these tyrants until their plague of terror has been driven from the face of the earth forever.

Note that the writer doesn't shrink from calling the scourge we face "Islamic fascism", a term which triggers in Democrats an anxiety attack when the President uses it, but which is precisely accurate nonetheless.

Put Me in, Coach

Ramirez comments upon the Democrats' readiness to play in the big leagues:

We can imagine the coach (voters) saying, "I'll put you in when we get so far ahead that you can't do too much damage."

Arab Reaction to 9/11

MEMRI has a video compilation of the reactions to 9/11 in the Arab world. It's about 43 minutes long and you may not want to watch all of it, but it's chilling in the hatred it shows among Arabs for the U.S., the virulence of the anti-semitism that exists in the Arab mind, and the incredible gullibility and moral stupidity of even the most well-educated people in the Middle East. Give it a look.

Thanks for the tip to PowerLine.

Fearsome Logic

Those Democrats sure are a caution.

The President's opponents keep asking whether we're safer now than before 9/11, and they insist, in answer to their own question, that we are not. The President's policies, they proclaim, have made us less safe than we should be. President Bush denies this, of course, and in a speech last week firmly asserted that we are indeed safer than we were prior to the attack on the WTT and Pentagon five years ago.

Now the President's answer notwithstanding, I think the question whether we are safer than before 9/11 is foolish because there's no way it can be answered. No one has stated what the criteria are for assessing whether we're safer, and a person would have to be omniscient in order to know whether, in fact, we are in greater or lesser peril than previously. The most we can say is that as long as there are Islamists out there who wish to kill us we are not safe. Nevertheless, the Democrats adamantly insist we're less safe and the President assures us that we're more safe.

But here's the funny part. Assorted Dems and their media mouthpieces - John Kerry, Harry Reid, and Juan Williams among others - all chimed in over the weekend to accuse the Republicans of spreading "Fear" in their attempt to win the upcoming elections. The Republicans are trying to win in November by scaring the bejabbers out of the ignorant masses by talking about the need to remain steadfast in the war on terror.

This was a very odd thing for them to say. The Dems are ululating over how unsafe we are, and grabbing every passersby by the lapels to press upon them the message that terrorists can too easily strike us again, that our ports are insecure, and so on, while the President replies that, on the contrary, we're safer now than we were in the 1990s. Yet it's the Republicans, the Democrats snif, who are campaigning on "Fear".

That's the sort of droll reasoning that the Democrats evidently hope to bring to both houses of Congress after November's election.

Is it not the Democrats who are not only warning us that Bush hasn't made us safe from terrorism, but also insisting that the world is getting warmer, that we can expect more frequent and more violent hurricanes, that the Republicans want to take away old folks' social security, that Republicans, if they have their way, will cause the deaths of thousands of women by forcing them into back alley abortions, and that Republicans are at any moment going to strip blacks of their civil rights?

This is real fear-mongering, but it's not the Republicans who are engaging in it. You'd think the media would be embarrassed to let it pass, but apparently it takes more than tortured logic to embarrass the media.

Re: The Islamic Stereogram

Byron reflects on the previous post and uses it as a springboard for posing some provocative questions on the psychology of extremism. Read his thoughts on The Islamic Stereogram on our Feedback page.

The Islamic Stereogram

A couple of years back people found themselves to be fascinated by stereograms, pictures of repeating patterns of color and shapes in which, if stared at for a few moments, a 3-D figure could be discerned. I thought of stereograms while reading an article in The Washington Times in which Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, expresses puzzlement about the motives of the 9/11 hijackers:

What motivated 19 relatively well-off Arab men, all Muslims, to become such horrific suicide bombers? Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the national September 11 commission, says motivation was the "big question" the panel could not answer.

"We were never able to answer why the 19 were willing to kill themselves. What was the motivation? I am talking in a very personal way," Mr. Hamilton, a Democrat who represented Indiana's 9th District in the House for 34 years, said in an interview with The Washington Times.

"What was the motivation for each one of these hijackers? I think the question of motivation was opaque to us. We just could not nail it. They were dead, of course."

I'm not sure how, after all that the terrorists themselves have said, anyone in the West who hasn't been asleep could say that their motives are "opaque" to us. For the benefit of those who have not been paying attention and for those like Mr. Hamilton who are staring at the stereogram but simply can't pick out the figures, let me suggest one short-term, one mid-term, and one long-term goal of the jihadis:

In the short-term they want the United States out of the Middle East. There are two main reasons for this: One, we are infidels and our very exhalations defile their sacred land. Two, it's difficult for them to achieve political power in those Muslim states which are still governed by less radicalized rulers as long as we're in the way.

In the mid-term they want to destroy Israel. The Israelis are not only infidels who occupy land in the very heart of the future Islamic caliphate, but the success of the Israelis, political, economic, and military, is an indictment of the ineptitude and incompetence of the Arabs and hence of their religion. This incurs Arab hatred of the Israelis far more than does the "Palestinian problem" which most Arabs couldn't really care less about.

Having achieved the first two goals and consolidated their power in the Middle East, their long-term ambition is to spread their religion across the globe. Their dream is that the whole world be Islamic. The world will essentially be given the Centanni option: Those who will convert will be allowed to live, those who won't, won't.

Thus, what motivated the 9/11 hijackers was goal number one which they saw as a necessary step to reaching goal number three. The hijackers were motivated purely by a religious ideology that sees the war against America as the biggest battle in the struggle to impose Islam on the world.

Why do they hate us? They hate us because we're infidels and we're successful. In their minds it is they who hold the truth and yet they've been failures since the 14th century, while the West believes the lies of Satan and has been incredibly successful. This fills them with a burning rage borne of jealousy and humiliation coupled to a profound anguish over the injustice of it all.

But now they believe Allah wants to change that, and they are willing to give their lives in his service and to his cause. Like the Communists who believed that they were on the right side of history, the Islamists believe that they can't fail because they're carrying out the will of Allah.

They themselves have said all this which is why it is surprising that Mr. Hamilton and the members of the 9/11 Commission profess to be unable to discern the pattern in the Islamic stereogram.

William Wilberforce Movie

A movie on the life of William Wilberforce is set to be released early next year:

Like Martin Luther and Nate Saint before him, real-life hero of the Christian faith William Wilberforce will be making his big-screen debut next year, with a new historical drama called Amazing Grace. Directed by Michael Apted, the film will receive a U.S. distribution from Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions.

The Walden Media movie-set to be released on February 23, the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade-stars Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four) as Wilberforce, an outspoken Christian and political activist who played a large role in bringing about the slave trade's end. Albert Finney, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, and Michael Gambon also star.

The distribution companies plan to market the film to a wide variety of audiences-arthouse crowds, human rights activists, and also religious groups. Roadside's Howard Cohen notes that "Wilberforce is a hero to many Christians because he combined political actions and his belief in God." Cinematical reports that there may be plans in the works for Walden Media to join in the film's marketing campaign.

Wilberforce is a man with whose life too few people are familiar.

He devoted his life to the cause of abolishing Britain's role in the institution of slavery almost from the time he converted to Christianity in 1784 until his death in 1833.

As a member of the British parliament he gave his first speech against slavery in 1789 and continued the fight for abolition throughout his life, often against massive and vicious opposition. In 1807, he achieved his first victory when it was made illegal for a British subject to transport slaves, but slavery itself was still legal throughout the Empire, and British slavers did a brisk, if illegal, business in slave trafficking. Sea captains were fined 100 pounds for every slave found aboard their vessels, so, to avoid the fines, the slave ships' crews, when they saw a naval patrol boat approach, would throw as many slaves overboard as they could. This practice outraged enough people that eventually it was recognized that slavery had to be outlawed altogether.

Wilberforce himself felt that slaves couldn't simply be emancipated only to be left to fend for themselves uneducated and unskilled. Nevertheless, the forces he had set in motion in 1789 eventually proved ineluctable, and one month after his death in 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.

William Wilberforce is a genuine hero in the fight for human rights, and he deserves to have a quality film made about his life. I hope the one coming out in February does him justice.

Manly Men and the Vanishing Christian Male

Joe Carter brings his sharp wit to bear on the trend in some circles to portray Jesus as some sort of Hell's Angel with a halo. He writes:

First, my bona fides. I'm a former Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I've spent fifteen years in the Corps and fifteen seconds (cumulatively) riding bulls. I've spent my summers in 100 degree weather baling hay, shoeing horses, castrating hogs, and running laps for sadistic football coaches. I've fixed pump jacks in Texas oil fields and made auto parts in a Missouri factory. I've changed engines on F-18s, tires on Humvees, and a carburetor on a '76 Gremlin.

I've hunted snipe and fished for shark. I've eaten rattlesnake, alligator, and the pork pattie from an MRE. I've lived through tornados, typhoons, and a divorce. I own a .40 caliber Glock. My hero is John Wayne.

In other words, there is some evidence that I am-or at least once was-a fairly "manly man." I'm also a devout Bible-believing Christian. But for the life of me, I can't discern how the two are connected, much less why one is necessary for the other. Yet that is the impression I often get when I read about the "feminization of the church" and the move to provide young Christian men with "masculine" role models.

Carter has specifically in mind here a pastor named Mark Driscoll who evidently makes much of the need for a more masculine Christianity. Joe doesn't necessarily disagree with the general idea, but he does wonder, as I do, about the concept of masculinity that is sometimes promoted in the name of a "muscular" Christianity. Contrary to some who think otherwise, I don't believe there's much about a professional wrestler, for instance, or an ultimate fighter (except perhaps their courage) that a young boy should emulate.

Even so, I think it's important that we begin to reemphasize masculinity and masculine virtues, properly understood, because, Joe's concerns about the "move to provide young Christian men with 'masculine' role models" notwithstanding, there is a need for young men to see mature males in positions of leadership in the church. If this does not happen, the church will be increasingly regarded by young men as a women's club, and more of them will think it irrelevant to their lives.

This is already a concern in many churches whose pews and leadership positions are often filled with women. Perhaps the erosion of male interest is partly due to the gospel's emphasis on gentleness, submission and love for a male figure (Christ). I think such an emphasis is psychologically and subliminally difficult for many men, but this is meliorated somewhat when men see other men preaching, teaching and leading in the church. When they don't they tend to lose interest.

Thus there are two trends in today's church that'll eventually prove unhelpful if we wish to increase male interest in church. One is the growing number of gays in the ministry, and the other is the growing number of women in positions of leadership. Leave aside all the arguments pro and con for both of these trends, the fact is that, if they continue, young men will increasingly see the pastorate as a calling for either gays or women, they'll not see it as something that "straight" men do. Forget about whether this is right or wrong. It's simply a fact, I believe, of male psychology.

An anecdote: I used to coach high school football. Back in the 1970s all our managers were young men who were proud to be part of the team and to play a role in the team's success. Then we began accepting girls as managers and within just three years boys simply stopped doing it. The role of manager had come to be seen as one that girls fill, and the guys looked for other outlets for their energies. Today, it's unusual to find a male manager in any sport in any high school anywhere.

A similar evolution will take place, I suspect, in the pulpit of our churches. In those denominations which are ordaining relatively large numbers of women, there will be a corresponding decline in the number of young men who choose to go into the ministry. It's already happening, of course, but it's hard to tell at this point whether the decline in male candidates has led out of necessity to a rise in female clergy or whether the increasing numbers of female pastors has led to the decline in males. Perhaps both phenomena are responsible. The point is, however, that we need to be aware that ordaining women (and I'm not saying that we shouldn't) is going to accelerate the shrinking of the numbers of young men who take an active interest in matters of faith.

This may lead to a vicious cycle where the decrease in the number of committed young men will lead to a decline not only in the number of males entering the ministry but also the number of males in the pews. The same thing will happen, I suspect, in churches in which gays are prominent in positions of leadership.

This is not an argument for refusing ordination to women or to gays (if they're celibate). It is, though, a call to understand that unless we take into account its ramifications on the male psyche we can expect a dwindling number of straight men in the pew as well as in the pulpit and this would be a sign of a church in serious distress.

Re: Young People

A student of mine responds to the post titled Young People and the Church on our Feedback Page.