Aziz Poonawalla: May 2009 Archives

At Talk Islam, Willow asks, (of my atheist friend Razib)

[how] would you boil down the idea of the 'god of the philosophers' in layman's terms? And explain how, in theory, this god is ideologically and functionally different from a religious deity?

and an intelligent debate ensues. Actually, atheism is a topic that gets discussed a lot over there.

A British newspaper, The Telegraph, is claiming that the unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib include images of rape and sexual abuse of men and women, as Seymour Hersh alleged a few years back. What makes this claim more credible is that they quote as their source, Maj. General Antonio Taguba, who was the lead investigator conducting the official inquiry into the events at Abu Ghraib. That report can be found online via NPR (PDF) and Taguba was forced into retirement by the Bush Administration for doing his job.

The Telegraph story quotes Taguba in an exclusive interview they had with him, though a transcript of the full interview is not available and Taguba has not yet commented. They quote him as follows:

"These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. ... I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan. The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."

Now, I argued earlier that these photos should not be released (yet) for precisely the reason that doing so would indeed imperil our troops, contingent on the personal guarantee that President Obama made that the photos contained no new information. However, I also said that if the photos contained new information about further abuse of detainees that went beyond what we already knew, then the need for justice outweighs the harm. President Obama himself said,

"I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."

(my emphasis). It's impossible to reconcile that statement with Taguba's assertions above. Taguba says that there is no reason, other than a legal one, to release the photos - but the legal reason is sufficient and paramount.

The blunt truth is this: Either Obama or Taguba is lying.

A charitable interpretation might be that Obama did not see all the photos that Taguba saw; one might imagine a scenario where the military filtered the photos they gave him for review. A less charitable interpretation would be that Obama is speaking the technical truth; Taguba's report did indeed contain allegations of rape (and, much worse - abuse of children) and so these photos don't represent "new" information in that sense. And a truly exculpatory scenario might be that the photos to which the Telegraph refers are private ones which are not the same photos to which Obama refers.

We don't know the truth, because we haven't seen the photos ourselves and cannot judge. That was the risk that Obama took in choosing not to release them - I supported him in choosing to withhold them, but transparency is always a better policy in the long run from a political sense. Had Obama simply released the photos, he wouldn't be in this political mess.

So far, Obama has not commented on this (and with his upcoming speech in Cairo next week, it's obvious why). Taguba has not said anything yet either - and it is notable that the official White House spokesman response avoided criticizing Taguba entirely, and just leveled snipes at the British press.

The ball is in your court, Mr. President. My advice is to resolve it before you go to Cairo.

Related: solid diary on this mess over at Daily Kos. Also I am indebted to Thomas Nephew for taking me up on my offer of guest-posting his disagreement (part 1, part 2) to my earlier argument for withholding the photos. That was a good debate, though the response i had originally planned is rendered moot by these new revelations. We will be discussing this at Talk Islam as well. Finally, we need to remember: torture is terror.

Michael Totten and Michael Yon are two independent journalists who travel to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle East hot spots (notably Lebanon) on their own dime, embed with the military, and strike out on their own with local guides, They then take amazing photos the likes of which you've never seen, and write incredible, cogent commentary and analysis. You might disagree with what they have to say but they make you think - and they make you see.

They are worth your time. And they could use your support, if you like what you see. And I suspect you will, indeed. 

One thing missing from the arguments of most poliitical opponents of Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court is actual data - such as her legal written opinions from decades of serving on the bench. The SCOTUS Blog has done true yeoman's work in going through these records and has published a number of case studies that are worth highlighting for insights. Of these, I found this case rather interesting.

[I]n Ford v. McGinnis, 352 F.3d 382 (2d Cir. 2003), Sotomayor wrote an opinion that reversed a district court decision holding that a Muslim inmate's First Amendment rights had not been violated because the holiday feast that he was denied was not a mandatory one in Islam. Sotomayor held that the inmate's First Amendment's rights were violated because the feast was subjectively important to the inmate's practice of Islam.

That seems the right decision to me, mainly because the inmate's observance of the holiday does not infringe on anyone else. In general, religious observances should be accomodated in such situations where there is no conflict.

In contrast, however, consider the case of a school district in New Haven, CT which is considering adding two holidays in observance of Eid ul Adha and Eid ul Fitr to the school calendar. The problem with this proposal is that it starts to cut into the number of days school is in session. Accomodating the (minority) of muslim students on this compels the district to also accomodate Jewish students as well, so the number of additional holidays will need to increase. Ultimately it is simply more efficient to allow students to take some number of excused absences a year for religious observances and let them allocate it on a personal basis. That said, there is a reasonable expectation that the school itself not schedule major exams, etc on major holidays for minority-faith students either. There needs to be a balance.

This makes for a curious irony that inmates in prison have more religious "freedom" per se than do students in school (though the latter surely see themselves as akin to the former in spirit).

This is a guest post by G. Willow Wilson, in response to this discussion thread at Talk Islam.

The reason I don't like discussions about the situation of white Muslims as a community, or the power relationships between white converts and their birth culture (ie, the loss or retention of white privilege), is because I do not believe there is any such thing as a white Muslim community. There is only a white Muslim here, a white Muslim there. The very fact that we have chosen to be part of this religion means that our experiences are radically divergent from the majority of other white westerners. What those experiences were differs quite a bit from convert to convert. Some people were unhappy with the status quo and saw Islam as a purer, more moral way of living. Some married in. Some had spiritual epiphanies. Some started out in other Abrahamic faiths but felt there was something missing. The differences don't stop there: we're from different classes, different parts of the West, different cultural backgrounds. In other words, despite the fact that we try and try to build a single narrative for ourselves, we have very little in common.

We are not a community. We are statistical outliers. A tiny minority in a religion that is overwhelmingly non-white and overwhelmingly non-western. So why do we keep trying to build a narrative about white Muslims? Why so much attention to what we do or do not represent?

Simply put, because the one thing we do have in common is that we were raised at the center of our civilization. Whether we were rich or poor, educated or not, as whites we were the main characters in the story of our culture. Letting go of that expectation-that we will be protagonists in the unfolding saga of our community-is next to impossible, no matter how humble and pure of heart one is. I'm talking about something that runs much deeper than racism here. To me, the impulse to narrative-build, whether self-congratulatory (I have lost white privilege, hurrah!) or self-flaggelating (I can never lose white privilege, oh how I suck) is a symptom of this inability to let go.

We are guests-protectorates, wards, bit players-in the Islamic narrative. If this was a Shakespearean drama, we'd be Second Spear-Holder From The Left. What we contribute to that narrative will, in all probability, never be of direct benefit to us as individuals. We will always be outliers, both in our birth communities and in our religious communities. Our significance, and more importantly, our relevance, is massively exaggerated. By adoring Muslim communities who hold us up as coddled symbols of the power of Islam? Mais non. By ourselves. If we become coddled symbols, it is because we let it happen. And, in all probability, encouraged it. Consciously or unconsciously. Because that is what we were raised to expect: centrality. Whether the story is tragic or comic, it is always about us. If it isn't, we hardly know what to do with ourselves.

We don't really represent any experience but our own. There is some freedom in that-approached in the right spirit, it has its advantages. Being an outlier is not the same as being an outcast. But we should resist the urge to create a communal narrative where none exists. There are almost no general statements one can make honestly about white Muslims. Some retain more privilege than others, but the reasons why are not always as clear-cut as habits of dress and social interaction. I wore traditional hijab to a recent comics convention in Seattle. I was the only covered woman in a crowd of many thousands of comics enthusiasts, a population with an anecdotally higher ratio of atheism and heterodox religious ideas than the mainstream. I was curious to see what this would do to my book sales. I sold out before the end of the first day. So I'm not sure I buy the idea that hijab automatically deducts points from one's social status, or from one's 'whiteness'.

I'm not saying we have to gag ourselves or keep silent, though for a long time that is exactly what I thought. But we do have to realize that there is less 'we' than we'd like to think.

Willow is the author of the graphic novel Cairo and the award-winning series Air: Letters from Lost Countries . She graciously gave me permission to reprint her comment from Talk Islam above. Also see her earlier comments about the difference between American and Egyptian Islam.