zenpundit.com

[by Charles Cameron — whereof scholars are in disagreement, how shall generals, presidents, you, or for that matter i, be expected to get things right? ]
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Oh, wow:

National Security Threat HR McMaster, who's like Obama on Islam, is at it again, purging rational actors at the NSC https://t.co/SGzztkY6na pic.twitter.com/EAuSQSLYKk

— Bosch Fawstin (@BoschFawstin) August 3, 2017

Nah!

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Is Westboro Baptist Church a Baptist Church?

Is Westboro Baptist even Christian? Is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Islamic? Islamist? Heresy? Specoifically, Khawarij?

Surely there are senses in which the answers, both with regards to WBC and ISIS, are Yes, and senses in which the answers are No. To my way of thinking, the question of ISIS and Islam has a great deal to do with what audience a given speaker wishes to reach — and what second order consequences that speaker wishes to avoid.

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But Khawarij, specifically?

The site Millat Salaf [“Path of the Predecessors”] asks, ISIS are Khawarij or not?

So who are the Khawarij? What are their beliefs? Are they Kuffar? Should they be killed? When should they be fought? We must compare the methodology and beliefs of the ISIS before slapping the title “Khawarij” to their backs and going all Shariah on ’em.

Millat Salaf goes on to note some of the beliefs of the Khawarij of the time of the Prophet — jhere are three of a dozen examples:

They Permit the Greater Khilaafah to be a man from other than Quraish, free man or a slave, arab or a non-arab, and other groups from within them do not see having a Khilaafah as important at all, rather the people should sort out their affairs for themselves, and if they feel the need for an Imaam they may choose one.

They Abolish the ruling of stoning of the adulterer.

Some of them deny Surat Yusuf saying that it is not befitting to have a love story in the Quran.

On the basis of these and other significant details, and comparing them with ISIS doctrine and practice, Millat Salaf declares that the members of ISIS are not Khawarij.

On a more general level, however, Millat Salaf described the Khawarij as both a contemporary and an end-times group:

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said “Leave him, for he has companions, and if you compare your prayers with their prayers and your fasting with theirs, you will look down upon your prayers and fasting, in comparison to theirs. A people will come at the end of time; as if he is one of them, reciting the Qur’an without it passing beyond their throats. They will go through Islam just as the arrow goes through the target. Their distinction will be shaving. They will not cease to appear until the last of them comes with Al-Maseeh Ad-Dajjaal.” Bukhari (and An-Nisaa’i with different wording)

In these terms, the Khawarij are more ostensiveloy (ostentatiously) pious than other Muslims, but their practice is hollow.

So.. I mean..

It is perfectly possible, from within the Salafi stream of Islam, to suggest as Millat Salaf does:

we cannot agree with the claims of the FSA and their allies that the ISIS are Khawaarij

It is also perfectly possible within that same Salafi stream to hold, as Sheikh Abu Basir al-Tartusi does, that ISIS is Khawarij and worse. From a page titled Conclusive scholarly opinions on ISIS:

The group known as ISIS are from the fanatical Khaw?rij, rather they have surpassed the Khaw?rij in many of their characteristics and actions, combining between fanaticism, aggression, hostility and shedding inviolable blood.” He further said: “We call upon all sincere individuals who have been fooled by them while still with this misguided group to severe their ties with it and to declare their freedom from it and its actions.”

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And what of Westboro Baptist from a Christian perspective? Christianity Today carried a piece titled The Westboro Baptist in All of Us, observing:

It’s easy to distance ourselves from Westboro Baptist Church. They’re extremists with monstrous practices that flow from a twisted theology of a deceived people. We’re not extremists. We’d never dream of protesting the funerals of American soldiers or even conceive of picketing the funerals of Sandy Hook Elementary victims in the name of God while smugly declaring via Twitter that “God sent the shooter.” We’d never indoctrinate our children as they have and call it nurture. Between most of us and those at Westboro Baptist Church, there’s a great gulf fixed.

But then..

Most of us wouldn’t go to the same lengths as those at Westboro, but collectively, we have our own prejudices, rigid rules, regulations, and zealotries. These drive us to marginalize, cast aspersions upon and exclude others within our own churches, Christian organizations and institutions who so much as dare to differ, even slightly, from our own political or theological stances.

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If Christianity is understood as the religion of love, then from a Christian perspective, WBC’s excessive and hate-fueled zeal distances them from the very Christianity they claim, and which in historical perspective gave rise to them. Mutatis mutandis, If Islam is understood as the religion of Peace, then from an Islamic perspective, ISIS’ excessive and hate-fueled zeal distances them from the very Islamic faith they claim, and which in historical perspective gave rise to them.

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Unfortunate McMaster — caught in the crossfire between the theological snipers of Is and Isn’t.

[Mark Safranski / “zen“]

A friend asked me to weight in on the response of Russian Prime Minister Medvedev to the signing by President Trump of the Russia sanctions bill passed by Congress.  A translation of Medvedev’s remarks today:

“The US President’s signing of the package of new sanctions against Russia will have a few consequences. First, it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration. Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia. Third, the Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. This changes the power balance in US political circles.

What does it mean for them? The US establishment fully outwitted Trump; the President is not happy about the new sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill. The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg. New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power. A non-systemic player has to be removed. Meanwhile, the interests of the US business community are all but ignored, with politics chosen over a pragmatic approach. Anti-Russian hysteria has become a key part of both US foreign policy (which has occurred many times) and domestic policy (which is a novelty).

The sanctions regime has been codified and will remain in effect for decades unless a miracle happens. This legislation is going to be harsher than the Jackson-Vanik amendment as it is overarching and cannot be lifted by a special presidential order without Congress’ approval. Thus, relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress’ makeup and regardless of who is president. Lengthy arguments in international bodies and courts are ahead, as well as rising international tensions and refusal to settle major international issues.

What does it mean for us? We will steadily continue our work on developing the economy and social sector, take efforts to substitute imports, and solve major national tasks, relying mostly on ourselves. We have learned to do so in the past few years, in conditions of almost closed financial markets as well as foreign investors’ and creditors’ fear of investing in Russia upon penalty of sanctions against third parties and countries. To some extent, this has even been to our advantage, although sanctions are meaningless overall. We will cope.”

My short take on this is that we are all watching a gambler or manipulator (President Putin not Medvedev) who has overplayed his hand and is now flailing about, trying to stir the pot a little, because they don’t have a follow up play.

Longer take: I find the reference to Jackson-Vanik extremely interesting. Far more than the crude effort to push Trump’s buttons or the lack of understanding on how our constitutional machinery works and agitprop spin.

Most Americans have forgotten Jackson-Vanik and the refusenik issue but Russians of Putin’s generation have not and it means something very different to them than to us. The reference to Jackson-Vanik is aimed less at us than their domestic audience and I find that quite telling. I certainly would not have used it if I were in their shoes. It would be like Xi exclaiming that some action by the US was an “unequal treaty“.

Here’s the significance in my view. During early Détente, the Soviet side had the objective of leveraging better relations with the US to improve the Soviet economy. Brezhnev personally valued this outcome as a way to have both guns and butter. There were Soviet internal political drivers at work too in that Brezhnev was using Detente and the material rewards that would flow from it, to elbow aside Kosygin and Podgorny in the politburo and become the de facto leader of the USSR. And Nixon and Kissinger obliged, having the theory that a combination of trade, aid, American credibility, linkage, arms control, the China card and such could tame the Soviet bear and split the Soviet bloc while easing US problems in Vietnam. So in this time period you had incongruities like the rabidly anti-Communist Bill Casey, then Nixon’s head of the Import-Export Bank, defending credits, loans and various deals with Communist countries in Congressional testimony.

Well, Congressional Democrats led by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson began putting sticks in the spokes of Nixon’s wheel, culminating in Jackson-Vanik in 1974. The Soviets reacted with rage out of all proportion to the actual value of the US-Soviet trade at the time, protesting this law was a violation of Soviet sovereignty; more to the point, Jackson-Vanik terminated the prospect of any future spigots of American cash that Brezhnev intended to use to increase consumer goods or reform moribund Soviet agriculture. Furthermore, it wounded Soviet prestige by essentially denying the equality between the Superpowers that Brezhnev and company were fairly desperate to trumpet on the world stage.

While there was an effort to sustain Detente through the Ford administration it was winding down and it collapsed entirely under President Carter as Soviet foreign policy became increasingly aggressive and adventurous in the Third World. The Soviets saw Jackson-Vanik as a turning point in relations with America and complained bitterly about the law ever after. In retrospect, you could trace the American pressure that nudged the USSR toward collapse in 1991 back to Jackson-Vanik; and whether Russian nationalists see the law as part of the vast Western conspiracy to destroy the Soviet Union or not ( many would) it is certainly seen as an example of our hostility. These events were part of Vladimir Putin’s formative experience in acquiring his chekist-siloviki worldview when he was a law student already in the KGB recruit track.

So given the vulnerability of the export based, relatively small Russian economy their reaction today strikes me as bluster and empty bravado. They really can’t win a serious economic confrontation with the West ( which these sanctions are not) and they know it. There’s some panicky, sky is falling, undercurrents here. The danger is that Putin’s regime if handled poorly may attempt to compensate, as did Brezhnev’s USSR, with small, foreign adventures. Russia can’t really afford this either – not sustained combat operations over months against a new semi serious conventional opponent, but subversion, terrorism and little green men paramilitaries are cheap

[ by Charles Cameron — reminders — from July ]
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Humans:

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The image above:

Mosques Served Hindus With Open Arms In Gaya. Great, Right?

It is the same country we are talking about where chants of intolerance had been, since a few months, at its apex, where communal disharmony had been a routine and where cows had driven on to kill another. It is true that good too blossoms amidst the bad. Intolerance does flip to tolerance. The bitter lips do better to spread love around. Likewise, the imams of mosques too lovingly served water to the heat-ridden Hindu pilgrims.

Such news surfaces up to rekindle our lost faith in the unison of the two rival faiths.

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The backstory of religious tolerance should not be forgotten:

How a Hindu temple was renovated by a Muslim and a Sufi shrine revamped by a Sikh in Pakistan

Today as thousands of devotees pay homage to the patron saint of Lahore every day, it is conveniently forgotten that a Sikh Maharani played a crucial role in the development of this shrine, just as the fact about a Muslim concubine of the Maharaja renovating a Hindu temple has faded from memory.

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Sad that we need to be reminded:

Muslims serving Hindu devotees during annual Kanwar Yatra: Communal harmony project-37

The photograph on the left shows a Muslim man providing first-aid to a Hindu devotee, termed Kanwaria [Kanwariya]–youth taking the Kanwar.

The other photograph shows Muslim men offering sherbet to the devotees passing by the town.

[ CC note: I haven’t included the photos here on Zenpundit for reasons of space, but you can see them at the link]

These photographs need to be published here because mainstream media doesn’t provide space to them and ignores such examples of communal harmony.

During Muslim processions, Hindus offer sherbet at many places. And in case of Hindu processions, Muslim youths too offer their services. This is Indian culture.

Unfortunately, we live in an era when even such gestures, that are common in towns, need to be photographed and shared.

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A hero, plain and simple:

Amarnath Yatra terror attack: Driver who saved pilgrims is a hero, the fact that he’s Muslim is irrelevant

Sheikh Saleem Gafoor did what any decent human being would do. The 37-year-old bus driver saved those in his care and in the process, saved himself.

Bullets are indiscriminate. They don’t choose their targets with care.

Sheikh had the presence of mind to get out of there. He did that. He did not idly sit behind the wheel and think: These are a bunch of Hindus, so let them die.

So, let’s not demean his actions by defining him by his religion. That’s patronising and presumptuous.

It only underscores the sentiment that we, the majority are surprised that a Muslim would do this.

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There’s clearly an extraordinary story to be told here:

Muslims perform last rites of Hindu in Kashmir Valley

It was seen that about 3,000 people belonging to two different communities gathered to perform the last rites of the Kashmiri Pandit. They not only participated in it but also took part in doing all the arrangements of the funeral. Rising above religious lines, Muslim people actively took part in the funeral of a Hindu. Be it may the making of flower garlands which are kept above the body or carrying it to the cremation pyre, Muslim community took part in each and every ritual. According to the relatives and neighbours of the late Tej Kishan, he was a great example of communal harmony as he decided to stay back in Kashmir Valley with his Muslim brethren during the tumultuous years of 90s, when all Pandits were leaving the region due to militancy. Thus, the effort of one man, who showed courage at that time when others decided to quit had served a long way in uniting people of different religious communities.

[ by Charles Cameron — DoubleTweet — the self-reference and enantiodromia of the hunt ]
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When the Hunter Becomes the Prey
Hyderabad, c1750
Douce Album
Now in the Bodleian pic.twitter.com/UAGRBlRwtS

— William Dalrymple (@DalrympleWill) July 30, 2017

This clever illustration of the hunter(s) hunted.. reminded me inevitably of the hunter Actaeon, who saw the goddess Artemis / Diana naked, bathing in a pool. She turned him into a stag, and his own hounds then tore him to pieces..

Diana did not find Acteon particularly endearing. #mythology #medievaltwitter Le Romant des Fables Ovide le Grant, c.1325 pic.twitter.com/8AZEevv1IE

— Emily Steiner (@PiersatPenn) July 31, 2017

These two tweets, one following fairly closely on the other though from different sources, just about made my day!

[ by Charles Cameron — with a stinger from Bucky Fuller in the tail ]
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Here’s boustrophedon —

— since it’s harder to find a decent illustrations for enantiodromia.

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Boustrophedon is the motion of an ox ploughing a field, up to the top and then back down: it’s a motif of reversal, but the farmer’s volition is the same both going up and coming back down. Enantiodromia, o the other hand, is just straight reversal as I understand it, a sudden switch of direction not caused by continuing intent, but by balance restoring itself after excess.

Hence, Trump blowback as described in WaPo’s Behold the Trump boomerang effect would fall in the latter category of form.

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Fred Hiatt opens his piece under that title:

Did your head spin when Utah’s Orrin Hatch, a true conservative and the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, emerged last week as the most eloquent spokesman for transgender rights? Credit the Trump boomerang effect.

He carries on:

Much has been said about White House dysfunction and how little President Trump has accomplished in his first six months. But that’s not the whole story: In Washington and around the world, in some surprising ways, things are happening — but they are precisely the opposite of what Trump wanted and predicted when he was sworn in.

The boomerang struck first in Europe. Following his election last November, and the British vote last June to leave the European Union, anti-immigrant nationalists were poised to sweep to power across the continent. “In the wake of the electoral victories of the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump, right-wing populism in the rich world has appeared unstoppable,” the Economist wrote. Russian President Vladimir Putin would gain allies, the European Union would fracture.

But European voters, sobered by the spectacle on view in Washington, moved the other way. In March, the Netherlands rejected an anti-immigrant party in favor of a mainstream, conservative coalition. In May, French voters spurned the Putin-loving, immigrant-bashing Marine Le Pen in favor of centrist Emmanuel Macron, who went on to win an overwhelming majority in Parliament and began trying to strengthen, not weaken, the E.U.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Trump belittled for having allowed so many refugees into her country, has grown steadily more popular in advance of a September election.

There’s more, of course, but you get the picture.

Unintended consequences.

There’s a huge industry that advises us to shoot for the goal — but yachtsmen know that sometimes to get places, you need to tack with the wind. And Buckminster Fuller said [Critical Path, chapter titled “Self-Disciplines of Buckminster Fuller”] the most interesting effects occur in a manner that’s orthogonal to force applied:

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What a fascinating world we live in!