“Those willing to trawl through Ramadan’s written and recorded output will find no shortage of material calling into question his supposedly liberal intent. It’s clear that what Ramadan wants isn’t a modernised, secular Islam, but an Islamised modernity.”

Over at Sign and Sight, Pascal Bruckner continues his multiculturalism debate with Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash. Bruckner makes a number of important points regarding competing assertions of difference and the loss of common values. He also argues, “It’s not enough to condemn terrorism. The religion that engenders it and on which it is based, right or wrong, must also be reformed.” But of particular interest is Brukner’s criticism of those, like Buruma and Garton Ash, who endorse Tariq Ramadan as an “Islamic reformer” and a beacon of moderation. Bruckner reminds us that Ramadan is, in fact, far from liberal in his outlook, most obviously when addressing Muslim audiences rather than Western journalists. Even Buruma’s own generous portrait of Ramadan reveals less than progressive tendencies, of which Bruckner says:

“While propagating the feminine sense of shame and recommending that Muslim women should abstain from shaking men’s hands and using mixed swimming pools if they wish, Ramadan states that for his part, he does shake women’s hands. Yes, you read it right: in 2007, a self-styled ‘progressive’ Muslim… pushes audaciousness to the point of admitting that he shakes women’s hands…

It seems to me a blatant error to start talking with conservatives just because they don’t openly call for the holy war. This amounts to renouncing reform of Islam, provided Muslims renounce violence. But preferring modern fundamentalism to terrorism runs the risk of having both.”

Via Zombietime, some peculiar sights from Sunday’s anti-war protest in San Francisco. Follow the link for more images and clips. It’s a feast of cliché, moral preening and badly made signage. Zombie’s Hall of Shame, which documents other protests, is also worth a visit.

Setting aside the tin foil hats, the optimistic invitations to join dead religions and the homoerotic stilt dancers, even stranger sights remain. For instance, it’s hard not to marvel at the juxtaposition of “Bush=Hitler” T-shirts with calls for the destruction of Israel and expressions of solidarity with those who would bring that about, given half a chance. And some “anti-war” protestors have an unusual disregard for life, provided it’s American.

Update: In the interests of maintaining “solidarity”, I’m guessing news items like this one are studiously ignored. The Marxist gentleman, shown above, who believes that “violence is a consequence of class distinction” might want to reflect on this. And, in not entirely unrelated news…

Christopher Hitchens is on fine form in Slate magazine, on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the moral contortions of her PC critics:

“Accompanying the article is a typically superficial Newsweek Q&A sidebar, which is almost unbelievably headed: A Bombthrower’s Life. The subject of this absurd headline is a woman who has been threatened with horrific violence, by Muslims varying from moderate to extreme, ever since she was a little girl. She has more recently had to see a Dutch friend butchered in the street, been told that she is next, and now has to live with bodyguards in Washington, D.C. She has never used or advocated violence. Yet to whom does Newsweek refer as the “Bombthrower”? It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it…”

The Hitchens piece prompted me to unearth this article, written for 3:AM, about Laila Lalami’s criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Readers may spot similar patterns of rhetorical evasion.

“In an attempt to rebut Hirsi Ali’s contention, Lalami wields a list of Muslim figures who dare to question orthodoxy. Oddly, she omits any mention of how most of those she names have faced censure, persecution or serious threats of violence for demonstrating their capacity for critical thought.”

Laila Lalami’s Nation article addresses non-Islamic views of female roles within the Muslim world, and the phenomenon she describes as “the burden of pity.” Central to her argument is an attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji, whose scholarship and rigour are called into question, along with several sins of omission. The details of this criticism can be read in full via the link above, and some valid secondary points are made. However, Lalami’s own essential argument is far more tendentious and evasive than those she critiques. Lalami argues that Muslim women are unfairly singled out as objects of sympathy and sadness. She writes, “Christian and Jewish women living in similarly constricting fundamentalist settings never seem to attract the same concern. The veil, illiteracy, domestic violence, gender apartheid and genital mutilation have become so many hot-button issues that symbolize our status as second-class citizens in our societies.” In doing so, Lalami rather refutes her own assertion. To the best of my knowledge, relatively few Christian or Jewish women face enforced shrouding, physical abuse, death threats or honour killings as a matter of piety or routine.

Perhaps Lalami can provide a list of priests and prominent rabbis who advocate the beating of women and publish books on how to go about it. As when Mohammed Kamal Mostafa, a “respected” imam from Andalusia, published The Islamic Woman, a helpful guide advising Muslim men on how to beat “rebellious” women without leaving visible signs of injury, in accord with Muhammad’s teachings. Mostafa’s advice included how to avoid incriminating bruises and scar tissue, and how to “inflict blows that are not too strong nor too hard, because the aim is to make them suffer psychologically and not to humiliate them or mistreat them physically.” Jailed in November 2004, Mostafa’s sentence was reduced from 12 months to 20 days and the imam was ordered to complete a training course in basic human rights.

In my review of Robert Spencer’s The Truth About Muhammad, I wrote: “In his book, Islam and the West, the historian Bernard Lewis argued: ‘We live in a time when… governments and religious movements are busy rewriting history as they would wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was.’ This urge to sanitise unflattering facts is nowhere more obvious than in biographies of Muhammad, of which, Karen Armstrong’s ubiquitous contributions are perhaps the least reliable.” I’ve since received a number of emails asking me to clarify why Armstrong is unreliable in this regard. To that end, here’s a brief catalogue of Ms Armstrong’s errors and distortions, a version of which was first published by Butterflies & Wheels. Some of her rhetorical airbrushing is, I think, quite spectacular.

“Armstrong would have us ignore what terrorists repeatedly tell us about themselves and their motives. One therefore has to ask how we defeat an opponent whose name we dare not repeat and whose stated motives we cannot mention…”

Karen Armstrong has been described as “one of the world’s most provocative and inclusive thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world.” Armstrong’s efforts to be “inclusive” are certainly provocative, though generally for reasons that are less than edifying. In 1999, the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles gave Armstrong an award for media “fairness.” What follows might cast light on how warranted that recognition is, and on how the MPAC chooses to define fairness.

The following article outlines how the mainstream organ of the British left has given a sanitised promotional platform to the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time this piece was written, the Guardian‘s comment editor was Seumas Milne. When not promoting obnoxious Islamist mouthpieces and calling 9/11 a “self-inflicted wound,” Milne felt obliged to praise Stalinism for, among other things, its “genuine idealism.”  However, as noted over at Harry’s Place: “the real source of Milne’s disgrace is that he… is responsible for making fascism respectable on the left.”

“One has to wonder how contempt for pluralism and free speech, along with the theological mandate of arbitrary murder, have become such obvious causes for a ‘progressive’ newspaper. Granted, the Brotherhood shares with much of the left a hatred of U.S. ‘imperialism’, which is, allegedly, the cause of all evil in the world. Though, again, I’m not sure how these anti-imperial credentials sit with the slogan that still adorns the Brotherhood’s literature and website: ‘Islam will dominate the world’…”

In his Guardian columns, Faisal Bodi, a news editor of the Islam Channel TV station, has said many strange and wonderful things. In March, during the Abdul Rahman apostasy case, Bodi championed the orthodox punishment for those who leave the Religion of Peace™ – despite it being rather permanent and involving ritual murder: “It is an understandable response from people who cherish the religious basis of their societies to protect them… from the damage that an inferior worldview can wreak.” In a climate of cultural equivalence, it’s somewhat refreshing to hear a Guardian columnist openly refer to an “inferior worldview.” Though I suspect one might disagree with Bodi’s estimation of which worldview is less enlightened.

Taken in isolation, Bodi’s advocacy of Islam Taliban-style might seem little more than an attempt to be contentious. But in matters of Islamist zeal a remarkable pattern of endorsement runs throughout the Guardian’s commentary. It began, more or less, in January 2004, when the paper published a speech by Osama bin Laden  in the form of a regular opinion piece, prompting waggish comments about the al-Qaeda figurehead being “recruited as a Guardian columnist.” Dubious humour aside, at least readers were clear about the author’s political affiliation. However, the Guardian has subsequently published no fewer than 14 opinion pieces by members of, or advocates of, the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical group whose militant ideas directly inspired bin Laden. Curiously, the commentators’ links with the group were not disclosed to readers.