EGYPT’S NEW LEADER SPELLS OUT
TERMS FOR U.S.-ARAB TIES
“If you want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment,” – Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said in an interview with the New York Times on the eve of his visit to the United States to address the United Nations. “When the Egyptians decide something, probably it is not appropriate for the U.S. When the Americans decide something, this, of course, is not appropriate for Egypt.”
“Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region,” he continued, by backing dictatorial governments over popular opposition and supporting Israel over the Palestinians….
When asked if he considered the United States an ally, Mr. Morsi answered in English, “That depends on your definition of ally,” smiling at his deliberate echo of Mr. Obama….
Arabs and Americans have “a shared objective, each to live free in their own land, according to their customs and values, in a fair and democratic fashion,” he said, adding that he hoped for “a harmonious, peaceful coexistence.”
But he also argued that Americans “have a special responsibility” for the Palestinians because the United States had signed the 1978 Camp David accord. The agreement called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza and for full Palestinian self-rule. “As long as peace and justice are not fulfilled for the Palestinians, then the treaty remains unfulfilled,” he said.
He made no apologies for his roots in the Brotherhood, the insular religious revival group that was Mr. Mubarak’s main opposition and now dominates Egyptian politics.
“I grew up with the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “I learned my principles in the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned how to love my country with the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned politics with the Brotherhood. I was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.”… (Empahsis ours – Ed.; New York Times, September 23, 2012) (Top)
__________________________________________________________________
COLLAPSE OF THE CAIRO DOCTRINE
Charles Krauthammer,
Washington Post, September 20, 2012
In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.
Never lacking ambition or self-regard, Obama promised in Cairo, June 4, 2009, “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.
But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption. First, he would cleanse by confession. Then he would heal. Why, given the unique sensitivities of his background — “my sister is half-Indonesian,” he proudly told an interviewer in 2007, amplifying on his exquisite appreciation of Islam — his very election would revolutionize relations.
And his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the [Iranian] Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar al-Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the United States and Israel.
These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.
It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.
The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and may not even exist. What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to American influence?
Religious provocations are endless. (Ask Salman Rushdie.) Resentment about the five-century decline of the Islamic world is a constant. What’s new — the crucial variable — is the unmistakable sound of a superpower in retreat. Ever since Henry Kissinger flipped Egypt from the Soviet to the American camp in the early 1970s, the United States had dominated the region. No longer.
“It’s time,” declared Obama to wild applause of his convention, “to do some nation-building right here at home.” He’d already announced a strategic pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific. Made possible because “the tide of war is receding.”
Nonsense. From the massacres in Nigeria to the charnel house that is Syria, violence has, if anything, increased. What is receding is Obama’s America. It’s as axiomatic in statecraft as in physics: Nature abhors a vacuum. Islamists rush in to fill the space and declare their ascendancy. America’s friends are bereft, confused, paralyzed.
Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf states beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily
to restrain . . . Israel.
Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And a sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.
What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”
A foreign policy in epic collapse. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin just expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development from Russia. Another thank you from another recipient of another grand Obama “reset.” (Top)
___________________________________________________________________________
EGYPT HAS NO BUSINESS ACCUSING
CANADIANS OF INSULTING ISLAM
Globe Editorial
The Globe and Mail, Sep. 23 2012
Egypt appears to be trying to make the crime of “offending Islam” a worldwide one. Or perhaps it just wishes to offer a bone to the mob. Its prosecutor-general has put out an arrest warrant for two Canadians and several other Coptic Christians allegedly involved in the making of Innocence of Muslims, the anti-Prophet Mohammed film that has sparked deadly riots in some Muslim countries.
It may be primarily a symbolic gesture, but it does, in effect, put people on notice everywhere that taking issue with Islam is a dangerous thing to do. The prosecutor says the charges in the warrant (which also include causing sectarian violence and harming Egyptian independence) carry a possible death sentence.
This is a strange approach for a nascent democracy, and a bad signal from the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds power. They seem to think that democracy means giving vent to the popular will, or elements of it, even if those elements are behaving as a mob. Since when does one democracy purport to tell people in other democracies that if they speak out in certain ways, they could be charged and even put to death?
The arrest warrant may also be a way of intimidating Coptic Christian activists and silencing them about discrimination against that minority in Egypt. The two Canadians cited in the warrant say they had no involvement in the film; one had publicly denounced the film in a statement from the Middle East Christian Association.
Of course Canada would not extradite the men to Egypt. But their travels in the Arab and Muslim world must surely now be limited. And who knows what drastic consequences having one’s name on such an infamous list could have….
This country should make it clear to Egypt that Canada does not appreciate the threat, symbolic or otherwise, of prosecution and death against its people. (Top)
_______________________________________________________________
Robert Fulford
National Post, September 22, 2012
The dark, blood-drenched word “blasphemy” has lately re-appeared across the world, like some grotesque monster from the depths of humanity’s unconscious. It is always bad news, the prelude to unnecessary suffering. Someone in the United States made a video that some Muslims call blasphemous. So other Muslims, driven to a frenzy, have died in riots, along with non-Muslims, in order to “protest” this alleged offence against the prophet.
For centuries, unspeakable crimes have been committed in the name of regulating what people say about religion. During the long Catholic nightmare of the Spanish Inquisition the ecclesiastical authorities competed in devising punishments for those with unauthorized religious views. Boring a hole in the tongue with a hot wire was a common penalty. Laws against blasphemy have been favourite tools of all those who lust for power over their fellow humans — popes, kings, bishops, imams, theologians and professional inciters of the mobs.
A charge of blasphemy works as a screen hiding the schemes of would-be rulers who dream of Taliban-level dictatorships. The masses in the Arab countries learn of Danish cartoons and other blasphemies when they are told about them by rabble-rousers.
In democracies the charge of blasphemy should not be treated with sympathetic understanding, as it is so often. It is the enemy of tolerance as it is the enemy of modernity. On Saturday “Canadians Against Blasphemy” will hold a protest meeting in front of the U.S. consulate in Toronto, asking people of all faiths to join in their outrage.
Instead we should be praising blasphemy, in fact proclaiming its many virtues, rather than sheepishly apologizing for it as a necessary evil we must reluctantly tolerate because of our belief in the freedom of speech. Bernard Shaw may have been overstating the case when he gave to one of his characters the pronouncement that “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” But not by much.
Blasphemy, the challenge of official doctrine, helped create freedom over the centuries — and still needs to create it in many countries, such as Pakistan and Indonesia. Blasphemy is a corollary to freedom of religion. It expresses the right to have no religion, in fact the right to disdain all religions.
The creators of Protestant Christianity were all denounced for blasphemy; so were generations of scholars in a dozen countries who campaigned for the critical examination of the Bible. Without the courage of those who were called blasphemers there would be only one acceptable religion in every country today. Certainly that’s how the royal and church authorities of the 18th century saw the future. As late as 1766, as the Enlightenment was proceeding, a freethinking 20-year-old Frenchman, Jean-François de la Barre, was tortured for blasphemy. He had his tongue cut out before he was burned to death, his copy of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary thrown on the fire with him. Today there’s a statue of him in Montmartre, as the last person executed for blasphemy in France.
Consider what happened in Hyderabad this week when a mob of hundreds, claiming to be upset about the American video, demanded that Haji Nasrullah Khan demonstrate solidarity with their cause by shutting his 120 shops. He said he didn’t feel like it. The mob accused him of supporting the video. They ransacked his house and drove him and his family into hiding. Leaders of a prominent mosque called for his death. The police chief said there was no evidence that he had blasphemed but a charge of blasphemy was brought against him because there was no other way to disperse the crowd.
The people who directed that mob may or may not have been honestly interested in religious truth. A pro-Taliban religious party and an al-Qaeda-linked militant group were said to be among Khan’s enemies. Police think agitation may have started with tenant shopkeepers Khan was trying to evict for late payment of their rent. Charges of blasphemy originate with many sources, some innocent, most of them vile.
In the Criminal Code of Code of Canada, blasphemy remains a crime, a remnant of the era when governments did all they could to satisfy the wishes of organized religion. Section 296 says that anyone who publishes a blasphemous libel can be jailed for two years. The section has not been used in 75 years but it lurks in the statute books, ready to be brought back to life by some eccentric prosecutor. Expunging it would be an appropriate symbolic act by the federal government. The best possible time to accomplish that reform would be before the end of this blasphemy-crazed year. (Top)
_______________________________________________________________
FANATICISM MUSTN'T PREEMPT FREEDOM
Jonah Goldberg
Real Clear Politics, September 24, 2012
“No One Murdered Because Of This Image.” That was a recent headline from The Onion, the often hilarious parody newspaper.
The image in question is really not appropriate to describe with any specificity in a family newspaper. It’s quite simply disgusting. And, suffice it to say, it leaves nothing to the imagination.
Four of “the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity,” according to The Onion, and yet “no one was murdered, beaten or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday.”
“Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes and continued on with their day.”
There was one conspicuous no-show for the celestial orgy: the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
The Onion’s point should be obvious. Amidst all of the talk of religious tolerance and the hand-wringing over free speech in recent days, one salient fact is often lost or glossed over: What we face are not broad questions about the limits of free speech or the importance of religious tolerance, but rather a very specific question about the limits of Muslim tolerance and the unimportance of free speech to much of the Muslin world.
It’s really quite amazing. In Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, Christians are being harassed, brutalized and even murdered, often with state support, or at least state indulgence. And let’s not even talk about the warm reception Jews receive in much of the Muslim world.
And yet, it seems you can’t turn on National Public Radio or open a newspaper without finding some oh-so-thoughtful meditation on how anti-Islamic speech should be considered the equivalent of shouting “fire” in a theater.
It’s an interesting comparison. First, the prohibition on yelling “fire” in a theater only applies to instances where there is no fire. A person who yells “fire” when there is, in fact, a fire is quite likely a hero. I’m not saying that the people ridiculing Muhammad — be they the makers of the “Innocence of Muslims” trailer or the editors of a French magazine — have truth on their side. But blasphemy is not a question of scientific fact, merely of opinion. And in America we give a very wide legal berth to the airing of such opinions. Loudly declaring “It is my opinion there is a fire in here” is not analogous to declaring “It is my opinion that Muhammad was a blankety-blank.”
You know why? Because Muslims aren’t fire, they’re people. And fire isn’t a sentient entity. Muslims have free will. If they choose to riot, that’s not the same thing as igniting a fire.
Indeed, the point is proven by the simple fact that the vast majority of Muslims don’t riot. More than 17 million people live in greater Cairo. A tiny fraction of a fraction of that number stormed the U.S. Embassy to “protest” that stupid video. And yet, the logic seems to be that the prime authors of Muslim violence are non-Muslims who express their opinions, often thousands of miles away.
Our devotion to free speech can cause headaches and challenges. But so can any number of non-negotiable facts of life. There’s nothing wrong with exercising sound judgment, even caution, when it comes to offending anybody’s most cherished beliefs. But the First Amendment isn’t the problem here, the dysfunctions and inadequacies of the Arab and Muslim world are.
James Burnham famously said that when there is no alternative there is no problem. If free speech in America causes a comparative handful of zealots to want to murder Americans, the correct response is to protect Americans from those zealots (something the Obama administration abjectly failed to do in Libya) and relentlessly seek the punishment of anyone who succeeds. Because, as far as America is concerned, there is no alternative to the First Amendment. (Top)
-
Washington Post, September 19, 2012
Charles Lane
There’s no place for censorship-by-riot -
Weekly Standard, September 24, 2012
Stephen F. Hayes
-
Front Page Magazine, September 24th, 2012
Andrew Harrod
World Leaders Rally for Blasphemy Laws
-
CNN (You Tube), September 20, 2012
Pamela Geller
Pamela Geller Defends Free Speech on CNN – (video) -
National Post, September 21, 2012
David Frum
Obama Failed to Convince Muslims that
America’s not their Enemy
