BREAKING: Congress has agreed on a new debt ceiling plan! Huge savings will come through a Social Security and Medicare reform program that’s also eco-friendly. It’s called “Soylent Green.” Obama: “We’ve always known that the solution to these problems lies in the American people themselves.” Details to follow.

According to Greek legend, an eagle would torment the bound Prometheus every day by changing his Facebook page format.

"But I was happy with the old Facebook! Really!"

“The Tragedy of Obama: a corporatist centrist giving endless concessions to Republicans who (successfully) portray him as a radical leftist.” – Anatoly Karlin, geopolitics analyst and blogger at Sublime Oblivion.

"All your Church are belong to us!"

In the Reformation, religious controversy and gunpowder mixed together on a large scale. Previous religious disputes involved swords, catapults, burnings at the stake, or sometimes just the pulling of beards and the smashing of wine bottles. In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the whiff of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate became “the devil’s incense” for theological struggles. In the West, the blog posts have replaced cannonballs as tools of controversy. But in Great Britain on the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Night keeps alive the memory of the era of “black powder theology.” In a way no one can ignore.

Guy Fawkes has long since passed to his eternal reward. But every 5th of November, he comes alive in effigy. His slouch hat and goatee once again make their appearance. Led by a procession of lit torches and the accompanying sound of firecrackers, jolly souls carry “the old Guy” to his fiery doom. Bonfires, burning in effigy, and fireworks complete the ceremony. It’s like a combination of Halloween and the Fourth of July.

Guy Fawkes’ Night commemorates the foiling of “The Gunpowder Plot,” which according to most historians would have wiped out King James, his court, and Parliament– and according to explosives experts, a good chunk of London.

On the surface, this seems to be an anti-treason and anti-terrorism holiday. Isn’t it a good thing to celebrate stopping such a horrible crime?

But there’s a deeper message to this, too. One that is very real for English Catholics.

Father to "No Islam!"

In our day, Islamophobes have used 9-11 as a means of spreading fear and hatred of American Muslims. Likewise, since the 1600s anti-Catholics in Great Britain used the bonfires of Guy Fawkes’ Night to attack English Catholics. This holiday was the capstone in the propaganda of “The Black Legend” – a term historians use to describe the image of a vast, nefarious Catholic menace seeking to subjugate the whole world to papal rule and the rebirth of “the Dark Ages.”

In reality, English Catholics were staunchly patriotic. Just as American Muslims have been key in fighting terrorism, English Catholics foiled a plot to kidnap James I in 1603, two years before Guy Fawkes’ “Gunpowder Plot.” English Catholics have generally opposed the very notion of blowing up Parliament and Crown. Although they oppose what the “Gunpowder Plot” stands for, English Catholics generally see Guy Fawkes’ Night not as a statement against treason, but as an element in the long campaign to paint Catholics as the devil.

American Muslims know what that’s like.

When will we stop associating beards with threats to "Homeland Security"?

"Does this hat make my bomb look big?"

The history of terrorism in the West has two key dates: September 11 and the Fifth of November.

9/11, of course, needs no introduction, its shadow is as prominent in our time as a Himalayan mountain overlooking a valley in Tibet. Britons excepted, we’re much less aware of the Fifth of November, in the year anno Domini 1605. The central figure of that day, Guy Fawkes, has become something of a hipster hero, thanks to the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta. In contrast, the details of the “Gunpowder Plot” that made his name (in)famous is little known. But although we are less conscious of it, this seventeenth-century terrorism plot has left its marks on the Anglo-American mind. It was a key event in the demonization of Roman Catholicism. The fear of “popery” has, in turn, influenced the way Muslim-bashers paint a menacing portrait of Muslims today.

Which brings us to Robert Spencer. Among the legion of anti-Muslim bloggers and writers, Bob Spencer stands supreme — the alpha male of the Islamophobes, one might say. His position, as he argued in a recent debate, is “The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim.” That is, a Muslim may not be a terrorist or a jihadist only because he or she ignores or changes the basic principles of Islam. For Spencer, Islam is essentially violent — while Christianity is not.

The "Gunpowder Plot" would have devastated the heart of London. (Image: IOP/Guildhall Library)

Which makes one wonder what Bob Spencer thinks of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes’ plot, in relative terms, would have caused much more damage than 9-11 had it succeeded. Many today, including some Catholics, defend Fawkes, the way some “Politically Correct” people defend Hamas and Hezbollah. So, I ask Mr. Spencer: What’s your position? Do you condemn “Gunpowder, Treason and Plot”, and the current pro-Guy Fawkes fad?

This isn’t a “gotcha question.” I’m genuinely curious about what Robert Spencer what he thinks about Guy Fawkes’ violence. He did give an interview to the anti-modern right-wing group Tradition, Family and Property, an analogue to the Muslim Brotherhood from his own religion. We have mutual friends, so I know from his social circles there are people who reject Vatican II’s embrace of modern religious liberty and think Guy Fawkes a cool guy.

I would also like to know what Robert Spencer thinks of the way anti-Catholic bigots exploited this conspiracy — especially since James I spoke about Catholics in the same way that Spencer talks about “Good Muslims/Bad Muslims.”

Edward Hicks, "The Peaceable Kingdom"

A friend of mine collected these. I find them helpful, and thought maybe others might find them helpful, too:

“What have I got to fear from my enemies? I carry my Paradise in my heart; it goes where I go.”- Ibn Taymiyya

“Be kind; for everyone you meet is fighting such a hard battle.” – Philo Judaeus

“God made all of us, and we all come from one woman, sucked one bubby; we hope we shall not quarrel; that we shall talk until we get through.”
-Chief Holata Mico to Gen. Wylie Thompson, Oct, 24,1834, in Seminole treaty negotiations

Muslim-bashers like to style themselves as “defenders of Western civilization.” Like all effective lies, there’s a certain grain of truth to their assertion. They do not stand in the Western traditions that support reason, liberty and tolerance. They do, however, recycle themes and motifs that have appeared in previous waves of fear against “witches,” Jews, lepers, Catholics, and others.

A striking recent example is the use of pig imagery.

The following image is from a German-language Islamophobic site (my apologies fro reproducing a blasphemous image, but we need to be frank about political pathologies):

Piglets suckling on a sow bearing the Arabic name of God. Translation of the caption: "Muhammad, from German lands. Fresh on the table."

Pity the discipline of economics! It has tried so hard to win the respect of all as a “science.” It even gets an annual prize in Sweden mimicking the Nobel Prizes for natural sciences. That may assuage its “physics envy” for a while. For most of us, however, economics is the “Rain Man” of academia. It has an impressive command of models and facts, and yet seems to be strangely out of sync with the realities of economic life. How do we explain this?

Over at The Distributist Review, John Médaille offers a few suggestions on this in the course of his review of a new book by Robert E. Prasch, How Markets Work: Supply, Demand and the ‘Real World.’ I have not yet read Prasch’s book. If, however, Médaille’s review does it justice, then How Markets Work should be in every progressive’s library. The reason is that it seems to offer a paradigm shift in thinking about how supply and demand determine prices and, most importantly of all, wages.

Guess what? Arizona is more liberal than Canada, or at least, the provincial government of Ontario.

Ontario passed legislation giving police new identification-demand and search powers– and most disturbing of all, this legislation was passed in secret.

At least in Arizona, SB1070 was debated and passed in public.

From The Ottawa Citizen:

The Ontario government secretly passed legislation giving police sweeping new powers for the duration of the G8 and G20 summits.Police are now able to jail anyone who refuses to furnish identification and submit to a search while within five metres of a designated security zone in downtown Toronto.

A Sufi leader who had worked for peace and interfaith understanding was able to continue that work even after his death. Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze gathered together for the funeral of Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari in Old City Jerusalem on June 1. His mourning tent received rabbis, priests, imams, and other visitors for three days.

Sheikh Bukhari was the head of Naqshbandi Holy Land Sufi Order, and also the head of the Muslim Uzbek community in Jerusalem. He was a direct descendant of Imam Muhammad Ismail al-Bukhari, the most prominent compiler of hadith (oral traditions attributed to Muhammad (saws)) . Sheikh Bukhari’s family had moved from the Uzbek city of Bukhara to Jerusalem in 1616. The Ottomans placed them in charge of shrines in the Holy Land and Lebanon.

Sheikh Bukhari continued his family’s tradition of service, in part, through active engagement in interfaith activities. He was a co-founder of Jerusalem Peacemakers, and participated in the Interfaith Coordinating Council in Israel, Interfaith Encounter Association and the Sulha Peace Project. Nourished by Islamic traditions and a student of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, Sheikh Bukhari believed that religious leaders have an important role to play in peacemaking.

Human Rights Watch has issued a comprehensive– and disturbing– report on female genital mutilation, aka female genital cutting, aka female circumcision, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

I’ve written a story on the report at ILLUME Magazine (read it here). You can also read the full report from Human Rights Watch here.

Briefly– it’s a widespread problem, affecting at least 40% of girls and women in different parts of Iraqi Kurdistan, and severely affecting their health.

And the attitude of Kurdish officials? Dismissive. HRW’s report has a number of disturbing quotes from government officials; dismissing FGM as occasional, not widespread, almost extinct. “Not a big deal.”

Thankfully, there are number of NGOs in Iraqi Kurdistan that ARE dealin with this problem. I will inquire about what Americans can do to support them, and post what I find out.

I recently posted on Tikkun Daily the following quote on JRR Tolkien vs Ayn Rand:

“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kld’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.” – John Rogers http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html

It’s been somewhat of a hit with Tikkun Daily readers (as I write this, it’s ranked #5 on our “most read posts of the past 7 days” list). This led me to wonder: Did Tolkien have a view on political economy?

Frodo's mentor

We know what kind of economics John Galt and other Randian heroes espoused. And many more people get turned on to lassez-faire capitalism by Rand’s novels than by libertarian economics treatises. (The first history of libertarianism, by Jerome Tucille, is actually titled It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand). So, if fantasy novels can provide an ideological basis for the opposition, can progressives find inspiration from Tolkien, one of the greatest storytellers of all time?

In other words: What would Frodo do?

“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kld’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.”

UPDATE: I’ve written a post here at Tikkun Daily looking more closely at JRR Tolkien as an alternative to Ayn Rand– see here.

UPDATE 2: John Rogers, screenwriter, film producer, comedian and comic book writer, is the original author of this statement. Raj Patel heard it from a friend without knowing it was published earlier, and quoted it in his The Value of Nothing. Like many others, I thought Patel was the author. I’m grateful for two Tikkun Daily readers who pointed out the need for a correction. You can find the original statement here: http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html

Ako Abdul-Samad, Iowa state representative

June 8 witnessed perhaps the most unusual political campaign battle connected to the same-sex marriage debate: a Muslim state legislator vs an ordained Christian minister. The Muslim, Ako Abdul-Samad, had the backing of a pro-LGBT rights organization, while his opponent Clair Rudison, Jr. got his biggest donation from a social conservative political fund.

My report on the story is at ILLUME Magazine, a Muslim American news magazine that’s doing ground breaking work in bringing a Muslim American perspective to professional journalism. You can read the story here.

Here at my nest at Tikkun Daily, a comment on the significance of this story:

Baldies of the world, unite! We can now go to the People’s Republic of China, even from Taiwan.

Does "bald" equal "dangerous"?

Most men who are genetically “chrome domed” are concerned about how their natural tonsure will affect romantic prospects. It turns out that visa restrictions are a possibly more pressing problem.

Press service AFP reports that the People’s Republic of China has lifted its ban on visas for bald travelers from Taiwan:

The rule imposed by the southern Chinese city of Xiamen barred bald people from applying for one-year multiple-entry permits before it was cancelled earlier this year, according to Taiwan’s Travel Agent Association.

“It would probably have raised the question of discrimination if Chinese customs officials were to ask visitors to remove their wigs,” said Roger Hsu, a spokesman for the association.

This is good but strange news. Good that the cause of equality, non-discrimination, and acceptance of “hair pattern diversity” has been advanced. But strange that such a ban was in place at all. What gives?

[This story also appears  at Illume Magazine, an American Muslim news site.]

The recent passage of a ban on the construction of minarets in Switzerland has a very interesting side story. A member of the political party that pushed for the minaret ban announced that he had become a Muslim. Outside of Switzerland, the mainstream media has ignored this. Muslims around the world, however, have picked up on this story, circulating it on blogs and on Facebook. In the process, however, the story has become distorted into a fairly bizarre shape, and so creating some confusion. Meanwhile, at least one anti-Muslim blog has picked up on the story. Looking at the comments it appears that some opponents of Muslim immigration want to dismiss the fact of his conversion all together. Nevertheless, it is a verifiable fact that a Swiss elected official belonging to the Swiss People’s Party- the principal backer of the minaret ban- converted to Islam.

This story is a dramatic example of the increasing pressure European Muslims face, as rightwing nationalism makes its grim resurgence.

What is especially troubling is how this political tension is affecting the lives of children and teenagers. No one should have to go through her or his own mini-Kristallnacht at a school, field trip or school event.

The anti-Islamophobia site LoonWatch.com, citing The Croatian Times, has reported the following incident:

Two schoolgirls are to be expelled after setting a Muslim girl’s hijab headscarf on fire during a school trip.

The 15-year-old girls, from Graz, Austria, escaped race hate charges by claiming the attack was a prank and not related to the victim’s religion.

LoonWatch goes on to quote an article in The Austrian News, commenting on this incident, discussing how it reflects growing insecurity among Muslim Austrian girls and women who choose to wear hijab.

This initially surprised me. Sarah Palin has been criticized on many grounds. (I would try to list them, but their number, like the demons that afflicted the Gerasene demoniac in the Gospel of Mark, are legion). Being insufficiently conservative on social policy is not one of them. Alan Keyes, however, never ceases to amaze even the most jaded political observer. He has attacked Sarah Palin for not being a genuine pro-life candidate. He charges that she has expressed her opposition to abortion only in personal terms, but has given no principled, ideological reasons for limiting or banning abortion. In doing so, she leaves herself room to waffle later on. Here’s a summary of his view:

The Financial Times has a story on the work and recent death of Jean-François Bergier, a Swiss economic historian who chaired an international commission that examined Switzerland’s policies in World War II. Calling himself a “conservative patriot,” Bergier apparently believed that the highest patriotic duty is to help one’s nation understand itself, looking at both lights and shadows.

The story of how he came to chair the commission is fairly dramatic:

Revelations about the dormant Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims and the stonewalling that greeted the efforts of relatives to gain access drew such stinging international criticism that in December 1996 Switzerland set up an international commission of experts to examine the country’s wartime role. Bergier was roused from his bed late at night by a call from officials in Bern and asked to take on the job of chairing it. He was given quarter of an hour to make up his mind — and agreed….

Backed by a staff of about 100, the commission, which reported in March 2002, went well beyond the initial question of relations with Nazi Germany. In 25 volumes and almost 11,500 pages, Bergier and his colleagues delved much deeper, encompassing the Swiss government’s approach to the thousands of Jews seeking entry to escape Nazi oppression.

Among other issues, the commission examined Switzerland’s wartime immigration policy — a topic relevant to the Swiss minaret ban controversy, since most Swiss Muslims are refugees from the former Yugoslavia:

Immigration was an acutely sensitive issue just before and during the war, with Bern intensely aware of the risks of provoking the Nazis. Some Allied countries, let alone nonbelligerents, hardly extended a warm welcome to Jewish refugees. But the commission concluded that Bern, tainted by anti-Semitism, could have done much more and was aware of the fate of those turned away — “needlessly” as Bergier stated.

To be consistent, why don’t the Swiss just ban algebra?