Author: Scott H

Farzaneh Milani on “Hostage Narratives”

Our University of Virginia friend, Professor Farzeneh Milani, has just published a brilliant review essay in the current issue of Middle East Report, “On Women’s Captivity in the Islamic World.”
Drawing from her own forthcoming book, long in the works, Milani analyzes how the Muslim woman is commonly reduced in American “non-fiction” bestselling pulp to being a “virtual prisoner…. the victim of an immobilizing faith, locked up inside her mandatory veil—a mobile prison shrunk to the size of her body.”
Here’s a splendid thematic excerpt:

“The recent spate of memoirs and autobiographies involving Muslim captors and their native or non-Muslim victims, a mutant category I call “hostage narratives,” puts a new and fascinating twist on the familiar theme of women’s captivity in the Islamic world. It is no longer mainly Western men who recount the tales of confinement, but women who recount them firsthand…. It is women’s own longing to escape, their own urgent plea to be liberated. The hostage narrative relies on the authority of personal experience, shares an insider’s perspective and commands more trust and legitimacy. Written in English, addressing Americans directly and concerned with national and international security for good measure, this category of literature fetishizes the veil.”

In formulaic works, from Mahmoody’s Not without My Daughter to Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran to Ali’s The Caged Virgin, women languish within a gulag, crying out for “liberation” from without. For this review essay, Milani avoids questions about the motives, agendas, or even veracity of the writers or publishers. Instead, Milani wants to know what makes us in the west so readily receptive to such stark presentations.
The analysis is laced with political implications, and Milani locates the genesis of the modern “hostage narratives” to a political event: the US-Iran hostage crisis.

An indelible sense of anguish etched itself into the collective memory of a justifiably outraged nation. “America in Captivity” was the headline that summed up the mood of a country in psychic pain. Like harrowing flashbacks of a trauma, hostage taking became a recurrent theme in books and films and news clips about Iran and, by extension, the Islamic world.

Wittingly or otherwise, American publishers have kept Americans largely hostage to sterile memories, now nearly 3 decades old.
Milani is not entertaining “illusions” and concedes that “repression, autocracy, political and religious purges, censorship, and gender inequity” within Islamic realms are realities that should be, and are, widely studied. Yet as I too have written, Iran in particular is “a land of paradoxes, a society in transition.”

“[N]o one can accuse the Islamic Republic of intolerance toward its own contradictions, particularly when it comes to the treatment of women. Indeed, two competing narratives of womanhood exist side by side in Iran today. Iranian women can vote and run for some of the highest offices in the country, but must observe an obligatory dress code. They can drive personal vehicles, even taxis and trucks and fire engines, but cannot ride bicycles. (an irony I explored here at jwn last July – scott) They are seated away from men in the back of buses, but can be squashed in between perfect male strangers in overcrowded jitney taxis. They have entered the world stage as Nobel Peace Laureates, human rights activists, best-selling authors, prize-winning film directors and Oscar nominees, but cannot enter government offices through the same door as men. “

More accurately then, life for Iranian women reflects a “complex mixture of protest and accommodation, of resistance and acquiescence.” The Monitor’s Scott Peterson recently captured this “ebb and flow” experienced by Iranian women; the problems grab the headlines, the push-back less so.
Milani’s review essay deserves close consideration, particularly her plea to fellow Americans to stop “suspending our critical judgment” and to seek out the competing narrative of the undiscovered Muslim woman. In her, Milani suggests we shall find

“a moderating, modernizing force, a seasoned negotiator of confined spaces, a veteran trespasser of boundaries, walls, fences, cages, blind windows, closed doors and iron gates.”

Why Kosovo’s independence bid is (Not) unique

CS Monitor today includes an interesting story about pending recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The article is built around the theme that Kosovo’s bid is somehow unique, that Kosovo has emerged without the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council.
News flash to the Monitor: the UN Security Council is hardly the sole arbiter of international legitimacy in the world today. International “law” is not equivalent to Security Council “votes.”
Kosovo’s appearance as a new state owes to a long struggle for recognition from as much of the world as it could obtain. Yet Kosovo lies at a fault-line of great power tensions. Russia, not surprisingly, vehemently opposes the further partition of the former Yugoslavia, along with other (but not all) Slavic populated states. With Russia holding a veto at the UN Security Council, it’s of course not surprising that the Security Council could not bestow its institutional approbation on Kosovo.
To legalists who narrowly view the UNSC as the sole “guarantor of legality among nations,” Kosovo’s emergence will be “illegal.” Russia condemnation of Kosovo’s “independence” as “illegal” is something other than “candid,” when it alone is the reason for the technical basis of that claim.
To be sure, the UN Security Council, when it can agree, remains an important indicator of international norms and rules. But when consensus fails, the battle for international legitimacy goes on at other levels.
Kosovo’s case for international recognition outside the UNSC was won in the broader battles for international opinion, what Thomas Jefferson, when reflecting in 1825 upon America’s own revolutionary struggle, referred to as “the tribunal of the world.” Serbia’s claims to retain “sovereignty” over Kosovo were weakened by its own flagrant lack of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” It now reaps the fruits of that disregard for the opinions of a “candid world.” Huffing about “international law” won’t change that.

Virginia’s Primaries (& Huckabee/Copeland note)

There’s much to mull over concerning Iran’s pending parliamentary elections – the vetting process yet again. Yet for the moment, we have the American political circus to comprehend, and our own “vetting processes” are less than perfect. For our Presidential primary here in Virginia tomorrow, we are pleasantly surprised to contemplate that our votes might still mean something. Alas, (and this is Scott writing) my early favorites (Chuck Hagel, Bill Richardson, or Ron Paul) either chickened out, gave up early, or have been quite marginalized. But there is still a race on; in both parties, it’s not yet certain who will win.
What’s an independent thinker to do? I’m tired of being “embarrassed” every time our current President speaks, smirks, or slurs.
By contrast, Saturday’s Jefferson-Jackson Day speech here in Virginia by Barack Obama gives me hope that we might yet have a President by this time next year who won’t cause me to cringe:

[W]hile Washington is consumed with the same drama and division and distraction, another family puts up a For Sale sign in the front yard. Another factory shuts its doors forever. Another mother declares bankruptcy because she cannot pay her child’s medical bills.
And another soldier waves goodbye as he leaves on another tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. It goes on and on and on, year after year after year.
But in this election – at this moment – Americans are standing up all across the country to say, not this time. Not this year. The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result.

Many of these themes echo recent Obama stump lines. I especially like this passage:

If I am the nominee of this party, John McCain will not be able to say that I agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; agreed with him on giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; and agree with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like. Because that doesn’t make us look strong, it makes us look arrogant. John F. Kennedy said that you should never negotiate out of fear, but you should never fear to negotiate. And that’s what I will do as President. I don’t just want to end this war in Iraq, I want to end the mindset that got us into war. It is time to turn the page. (emphasis added)

Yes, this primary is personal for me. My son the Army reserves Lieutenant was just activated into the full-time Army, with his unit slotted for “deployment” later this year. So the ole’ “pro-life” card has, shall we say, a different meaning for me.
McCain, Huckabee & Kenneth Copeland!?
As much as I once liked him, voting for McCain, Mr. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran, or Mr. “stay in Iraq for a 100 years,” would, for me, be the antithesis of “supporting the troops.”
I do realize that many “independent” friends think McCain is one of them — and that may indeed explain much of his success thus far. But for me, McCain gave up the “Maverick” mantle when he went with the imperialists of old, backing the surge and now loose chatter advocating staying in Iraq without end.
Huckabee for a few moments intrigued me. To be sure, he’s the ultimate un-foreign policy candidate, and he’s tried to turn it into a joke. (He’s been staying at a lot of Holiday Inn’s lately). When he wasn’t “boasting” of consulting with John Bolton, his campaign did float some curiously “independent” ideas, such as the notion of serious talking to Iran (what a concept!) in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He also notably criticized the Bush Administration for its “counterproductive… bunker mentality” towards the world.
I anticipate Huckabee might do better than expected here in Virginia, though more on social issues, as conservative religious “folk” here remember John McCain’s blasts at them eight years ago. It was no accident that Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guliani – after courting Romney) Huckabee yesterday was “speaking” before Falwell’s mega-church in Lynchburg.
But Virginia’s “conservative Christians” are hardly a monolith; the formulas that worked before are in tatters. Jerry Falwell is gone; Pat Robertson is on the way out, and his once intimidating “Christian Coalition” barely even exists – even what it stands for anymore is a mystery. (A friend yesterday even hinted that the current CC leader is quietly supporting Clinton)

Continue reading “Virginia’s Primaries (& Huckabee/Copeland note)”

Two to Tango, or what did Khamenehi really say?

Among the spin-off benefits of a US-Iran hotline, as suggested by R.K. Ramazani in the previous entry, is the possibility that it “could help restore Iran-U.S. diplomatic relations….” As he explained,

“Contrary to widely held myths, Iran has never closed its door to diplomatic relations with the United States. Khomeini left the door ajar “if America behaves itself,” that is, if the United States refrains from imposing its will on Iran. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, subscribes to the Khomeini line, saying that Iran’s lack of contacts with the United States “does not mean that we will not have relations indefinitely.”

Yet just this past week, the hawkishly neoconservative “Committee on the Present Danger” (CPD) repeats the myth. In an essay proclaiming that “It takes two to tango,” to have a diplomatic relations, to have a “grand bargain,” the Iranians are portrayed as not being willing to dance. To the contrary, CPD invokes segments from a recent speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi:

“Cutting ties with the United States is one of our basic policies,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, told students in the central city of Yazd just days ago. And while “[w]e have never said that they will be cut for ever,” Khamenei explained, “[t]he conditions of the U.S. government are such now that it is harmful for us to resume relations… Despite some talkative people’s claims, it has no benefit for the Iranian nation.”

CPD concludes that this “pours more than a little cold water on the suggestion that Washington should push for an immediate rapprochement with Tehran… (as) the ruling ayatollahs don’t seem interested in mending fences.”
This is selective and disingenuous cherry picking for a negative spin. Here’s the full passage of the January 3rd speech in question, without ellipses, as made available via BBC World Service.** (see note below) This is from a translation of a long report provided by Tehran Radio (Voice of the Islamic Republic). Emphasis added and my comments follow:

The leader of the Islamic revolution [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene’i] referred to relations with America and said: The cutting of relations with the US is one of our principle policies. However, we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely. On the contrary, the US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment. So we should not pursue such relations.
The leader outlined the harm of establishing relations with the US and reiterated: First, the establishment of such relations will not lessen the danger posed by the US because that country had political relations with Iraq when it attacked it. Secondly, the establishment of these relations will prepare the ground for the growth of Americans’ influence in the country and the travel of their intelligence officers and spies to and from Iran. As a result, this is why contrary to the claims made by some talkative people [inside the country] these relations have no benefit for the Iranian nation. Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.
The leader added: Some accuse us of promoting enmity with America. However, that country’s enmity towards the Iranian nation is not based on the [Iranian] president and other people’s harsh interpretations. On the contrary, they are against the principles of the Iranian nation and such a thing has existed since the beginning of the Islamic revolution.

I have been reading Khamenehi speeches and Friday Prayer Sermons for 24 years, dating to when he became President amid the Iran-Iraq War. Khamenehi has long been more adaptable in his “open door foreign policy” pronouncements than commonly understood in the west. (I may prepare a full article just on this narrow, yet critical question about Iran’s “dance” with the question of if and under what circumstances it can renew ties to America.)
Yet to be brief on just this speech, consider:
1. Quite in line with Professor Ramazani’s analysis, Khamenehi yet again emphasizes that there’s no automatic bar to improving ties to the US. Characteristically, he cites the revolutionary hallmark, the cutting of the old ties to America, what became the signature “neither East nor West” revolutionary dictum, so that Iran might be independent and “self-confident,” that it might be free from the relations between “the lion and the lamb.” All that not forgotten, “we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely.”
2. The standard objections and grievances to current US policy are noted. Talks and relations in themselves can bring dangers to Iran, despite the hopes of “talkative people” (e.g., Iranian reformists and pragmatists in Iran).
3. Khamenehi also delivers a back-handed lame defense of Iran’s lightning-rod President when he notes that America’s enmity towards Iran predated Ahmadinejad’s “harsh interpretations.” The fact that Khamenehi is even referencing Iranian criticisms of Ahmadinejad for “promoting enmity with America” startled many observers, and was interpreted as quite a slap.
4. Totally left out of the CPD report is the not so subtle message to America: “The US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment.” Hint, hint America: it doesn’t have to be this way. The US government might change, and it logically then follows that better relations might not be to Iran’s detriment.
5. As a friend suggested in a closed forum, it may also be that Khamenehi is signaling Iranian contenders in the pending Parliamentary and Presidential elections that they may campaign more creatively on foreign policy, to shield them from ideological “heat.”
6. Shamelessly omitted from the CPD essay is Khamenehi’s kicker: “Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.”
That day may be sooner that the CPD and neocon naysayers think – say, if somebody reminds Bush Jr. of Bush Sr.’s inaugural Address (the one about “goodwill begetting goodwill”) or, by this time next year, when two new Presidents are in the wings.
(**Footnote: Curiously, the US government’s parallel translation service – the Open Source Center (formerly FBIS) data base available to the public via World News Connection – does not include the report on this speech. I’ve seen this happen before — somebody at OSC and WNC owes us an explanation)

How to Prevent War at the Strait of Hormuz

R.K. Ramazani weighs in with an essay on how to prevent military incidents at the Strait of Hormuz from catalyzing war between Iran and the United States. Ramazani, known widely as “the Dean of Iran Foreign Policy Studies,” quite literally “wrote the book” on this subject, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. What he wrote on the eve of the Iranian revolution remains a compelling read.
In his current essay, Ramazani, an Emeritus University of Virginia Professor of Government & Foreign Affairs, sets out the stakes and his key argument.:

“The recent naval encounter between the US and Iran extended their cold war for the first time to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Such incidents could escalate into armed conflict, with catastrophic consequences for the world economy, especially the price of oil. To prevent such escalation, Washington and Tehran should establish a “hot line” and an Incident-at-Sea agreement as Washington and Moscow did during the Cold War.”

The need for such a de-conflict mechanism (a regular theme here at jwn) was amply demonstrated by Bush Administration rhetoric:

“… instead of calming down the situation and seeking a creative way of preventing such encounters from escalating into confrontation in the future, the Bush administration increased tensions by exaggerating the episode as if it were a real crisis.
President Bush depicted the maneuver of the Iranian speed boats as “a provocative act,” linked it to America’s dispute with Iran over the nuclear issue, and declared that Iran was, is and continues to be a threat if it is “allowed to learn how to enrich uranium.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates categorically dismissed the view that the Iranian sailors had behaved in a fully proper manner, and the State Department formally protested the actions of the Iranian patrol boats. “

The Republican Presidential candidates, Ron Paul notably excepted, were besides themselves with fevered war talk. While evidence is emerging that the Administration consciously “embellished,” if not blatantly fabricated key aspects of the incident, Ramazani focuses on the strategic context and the need for caution:

“Such hyperbolic charges reveal a dismal lack of understanding of Iran’s unmatched geo-strategic position at the Strait, and of the conception held by the Iranian leaders about the Strait’s security in times of peace and war. Recognizing Iran’s vital interest in the Strait is a crucial first step to establishing a hot line between Washington and Tehran.
Geo-strategically, the narrow and shallow Strait of Hormuz constitutes, as I coined it in 1979, the world’s “global chokepoint.” Oil tankers carrying Gulf oil exports must pass through the Strait before traversing the Bab al-Mandab and Suez Canal waterways to the Eastern Mediterranean or the sea lanes of the Strait of Malacca in the Pacific Ocean.
As the dominant Persian Gulf power at this “chokepoint,” Iran stands as the “global gatekeeper” for world oil markets. Iran’s territorial water abuts the entire eastern shore of the Strait, and numerous Iranian islands dot the sea lanes of the Strait. “

Some financial analysts last summer lamely tried to downplay the significance of the Strait of Hormuz today, claiming that the US could withstand oil shocks were a hot war in the Gulf break out. One remembers the argument that invading Iraq would be a “self-funding” war.
Such “optimism” avoids a sober look at just how much oil transits the Strait of Hormuz. Consider figures from the US Government’s Energy Information Agency. According to the EIA, “oil flows through the Straits of Hormuz account for roughly two-fifths of all global crude oil and petroleum product tanker shipments.”
That is, 40% of the world’s oil traffic by sea must first pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Various alternate pipelines across Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula, even if they could accommodate extra traffic and be kept open in time of conflict, cannot possibly take up the 17 million barrels per day presently exiting via the Hormuz Strait. Never mind the analysts, the oil traders know better: the very talk of military clashes in Hormuz sent oil futures spirally up another 10%.
Yet in this regard, Iran and the world community have a shared set of interests. The world needs the oil; Iran needs to export it. Any Iranian leader, of any political stripe, would agree — with one caveat:

“Iran considers the safe passage of all ships through the international waters of the Strait as inseparable from its vital interest in the security of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s oil, the backbone of its economy, needs to be exported through the Strait. Ideologically Iranian policy makers view the Strait as a “divine blessing” and strategically they see it as Iran’s “key asset” in any “defensive war.”
Tehran is committed to the right of transit passage for all ships through the Strait. Yet any prolonged obstruction of Iran’s oil exports by perceived enemies such as the United States could prompt Iran to retaliate by blocking the Strait. This guiding principle was set by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iraq-Iran war. He warned that if Iran’s oil exports through the Strait were interrupted by hostile acts, Iran would prevent “the passage of a single drop of petroleum from there” to world markets.
Hojatolislam Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament during the Iraq-Iran war, considered “such an eventuality unlikely.” But he warned those Americans who doubted Iran’s capability that Iran could effectively close the Strait by creating “a wall of fire” over it, firing its guns from Qeshm and Lark islands near the Strait, and launching air-to-sea missiles from planes, and from underground depots.”

In other words, if Iran can’t export its oil, it would retaliate by attempting to prevent all exports from passing through its front yard. In short, as Iran sees it, oil exports through the Strait should be safe for all, or safe for none.

Continue reading “How to Prevent War at the Strait of Hormuz”

Ever On, Dan Fogelberg (1951-2007)

(Note – this is Scott writing.)
Independent thinkers, activists, and peacemakers have lost a friend in the passing yesterday of Dan Fogelberg. Just 56, Dan “the artist” Fogelberg succumbed to a long battle with prostate cancer.
To be sure, Dan Fobelberg is most famous for his soft-rock hits: tales of loves (Longer, Since you’ve asked); loves lost (The Long Way, Tell me to my face); and greed gone bad (Sutter’s Mill). Dan will also likely be “immortal” for tributes to New Years (Same Old Lang Syne); to the Kentucky Derby horses (Run for the Roses); to Geogia O’Keefe (Bones in the Sky); to under-appreciated fathers everywhere (The Leader of the Band); to abandoned seniors (Windows & Walls) and to the renewing power of nature (To the Morning).
Fogelberg’s range across 20 albums was extraordinary; he could do sappy (Wysteria), driving rock (As the Raven Flies), classical (Netherlands), jazz (Holy Road), or blue grass (High Country Snow).
I encountered his music long before he became a pop icon, via a progressive free-spirit who prized his early albums.

Continue reading “Ever On, Dan Fogelberg (1951-2007)”

Ramazani: “Bridging the Divides”

** Updates posted below **
As regular justworldnews readers will recognize, Helena and I have presented and commented on numerous essays here by R.K. – “Ruhi” – Ramazani. Here’s one on Jefferson & Iraq, another on “Making Gulf Security Durable,” and this one on why massive arms sales are not the answer. Tomorrow, he faces a complex heart surgery.
On the eve of this potential life crossroad, the University of Virginia, via UVA Today on-line, published a multimedia tribute to Professor Ramazani’s generous service to students, the University, and to the cause of “understanding” between Americans and peoples of the Middle East.
I especially like Professor William Quandt’s comment at the essay end:

“One of Ruhi’s great hopes has been that he could personally help bridge the divide between the country of his birth, Iran, and the country where has lived for most of his adult life, the United States,” said William B. Quandt, the Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs and an expert on the Middle East. “It remains to be seen whether Ruhi’s hope for reconciliation between the two countries he knows best will take place, but if and when it does, he will have played an important role behind the scenes.”

Several years ago, I published a biographical sketch of how Ramazani’s scholarship has compelling echoes in his own life journey. I hope to have it available on line shortly. I’m also in the early stages of a project to “digitize” the best of his half century of writings for ready access to all via the web.
The UVA Today item includes marvelous clips from a recent interview with “the” Professor himself. (look for the link near the top right) In addition to the quotes on what the University has meant to him, about America’s fixation with “fixing” things, and his ending optimism about the “oneness of humankind,” do enjoy the breathtaking scenery behind him. Warms the heart.
Let’s send our good thoughts, wishes, and prayers for his surgery and speedy recovery. We can endeavor to emulate the bridgebuilder; but not replace him.
****************************
Update as of Sept. 26h, 5:00 p.m. est: Via Ruhi’s family, we are greatly encouragedby the good reports from the outstanding University of Virginia heart surgeons. Ruhi has pulled through the surgery, with even a few positive surprises. Thank you Dr. Kron!
Ruhi, enjoy your “vacation….” :-} We – and the world – still need you.

An Iranian Schindler’s List: “Zero Degree Turn”

Remember the controversy over the current Iranian President’s inflammatory questioning of the Holocaust, at one point doubting its extent, at other moments playing up old regional wounds, asking why the Mideast had to “pay” for Europe’s sins? Iran’s image has taken a severe beating as a result of such rhetoric.
Ironically, Iranian state television since April has been showing an extraordinary series, entitled “Zero Degree Turn.” The most expensive production in Iranian TV history, the government approved and funded program sympathetically portrays the suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis, and depicts an Iranian embassy employee in Paris as a hero who helps his Jewish love and her family flee.
The intriguing series has been a smash hit inside Iran. It’s also gaining an audience internationally, via satellite and net re-broadcasts. Here’s a ten minute sample, with English sub-titles, on YouTube.
For an overview of the series, see Sunday’s AP report. Among Israeli reviews, here’s an early skeptical Ha’aretz report in June. Ynet ran this more upbeat assessment just last week. Ynet draws from an interesting interview of the series producer, Hassan Fatthi, in The Wall Street Journal..
Some may object to Fatthi’s comment that, “The murder of innocent Jews during World War II is just as despicable, sad and shocking as the killing of innocent Palestinian women and children by racist Zionist soldiers.” Yet even David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post is more impressed by the fact that,

“Monday night after Monday night across Iran, Fatthi is broadcasting an unmistakable challenge to his own president’s efforts at historical revisionism. State TV is essentially telling Ahmadinejad to shut up.”

While the show’s central love story is fictional, Fatthi’s inspiration for his series is true, of an Iranian diplomat in Paris during WWII, Abdol Hussein Sardari, who “saved over a thousand European Jews by forging Iranian passports and claiming they belonged to an Iranian tribe.”
Move over Cyrus.
—————-
I don’t have the time to highlight these reports and comment. In the next few days, I’m finishing an essay about the previous Iranian President’s critically important reformist legacy, one that Iran doubters dismiss too readily. Anybody else miss Khatami’s “Dialogue Among Civilizations?”
Funny thing, just as I’m crossing the “T’s,” this report appears in today’s Financial Times: “Khatami Plots a Comeback.”
If “they” let him run in 2009, my sense of the Iranian landscape (at least as of today) is that he’d win in a landslide. Imagine, we could have a second chance at a Khatami-Clinton Summit.

“Rick Warren should be in jail”

“Rick Warren should be in jail.” So should Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, Robert H. Schuller, and perhaps even…. Helena Cobban. :-}
I’m referring, if you haven’t guessed, to prison libraries and to the NYTimes report on new Federal Prison guidelines for libraries, specifically their sections on faith.
Kudos to Sojourners and “Sojo mail” for the catchy, if purposeful, headline about Mr. Warren. From their e-mail today:

Imagine walking into your local library, planning to read a theologian such as Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth, or a popular inspirational work, such as Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life or Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
But instead of finding such important and popular titles, you discover that the religion section has been decimated – stripped of any book that did not appear on a government-approved list.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now to inmates in federal prisons under a Bush Administration policy. As The New York Times put it, “chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.”

Imagine, the Federal Prisons have labored to compile lists of approved books on faith; those not on the list get pulled or blocked. The specific criteria and the actual approved lists are not open for public review; this is, after all, the Bush-Cheney Administration.
Here’s a Sojo link for a suggested protest letter to the Prisons’ Director.
So how did the Bush Administration, reputed for faith-based approaches to social problems, come up with this bizarre policy? Maybe it comes from the “Feith-based” neoconservative view of the world — as in, “it’s all about national security.” According then to the “Stardardized Chapel Library Project,” we prevent prisoners from accessing anything that would “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.” As claimed by the Federal Prisons spokesperson quoted in the Times,

“We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”

Just who, we wonder, determines what religious materials are “reliable teachings?” What’s meant by “radicalize,” or “discrimination?” Should we prohibit a book that says there’s only one way to be accepted by God? Wouldn’t that be “discriminating” against others who pointed to another “path?” One would think, this is absurd. Or as the Mark Early of Prison Fellowship puts it,

“It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer…. There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.”

Meanwhile, back to the front lines in Iraq – and their religious freedoms – consider this allegation that some US soldiers are being compelled to participate in Christian services. Perhaps there’s a “devil” or two in the details here, as I find it hard to believe that the Pentagon, much less Secretary Gates, would knowingly mandate the practice of any religion by soldiers.
Yet as we’ve noted here before, some “dispensationalist” Christian-zionist groups still view Iraq as a “crusade” for the spread of Christianity. It’s advance will bring on the rapture, Armageddon, the return & reign of Christ, etc. etc. See, for example, Max Blumenthal’s report on “Operation Straight Up” a group that operates with the Pentagon’s “blessing” and proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military, including with inflammatory apocalyptic video games.
In the judgment of Mikey Weinstein, a former Reagan Administration White House,

“The constitution has been assaulted and brutalized,… Thanks to the influence of extreme Christian fundamentalism, the wall separating church and state is nothing but smoke and debris. And OSU is the IED that exploded the wall separating church and state in the Pentagon and throughout our military.”

Meanwhile, the US State Department recently issued its annual, heavily politicized report on religious freedom around the world.
No doubt the rest of the world wonders:

“What, pray tell, gives you the standing to show us the way?

And now for the “Right to Drive” Movement

Recently, I waxed airily about the “right to dry” movement and the “answer blowing in the wind.” Can’t resist noting, in the same (ironic) spirit, the budding “right to drive” movement in our erstwhile ally, Saudi Arabia.
Nascar dudes, check this out: (from The Independent)

“Women in the only country in the world which still bans women from driving want to put their best foot forward – on the accelerator.
Saudi Arabia’s newly established League of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars plans to deliver a petition to King Abdallah Bin Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud, calling for their “stolen” entitlement of free movement to be restored.
In a statement on the Arab website Aafaq, (note – from Sept. 4th) the women said: “This is a right that was enjoyed by our mothers and grandmothers in complete freedom, through the means of transportation available.”

One wonders what “means” the grandmothers then had ?
By the way, MEMRI ‘s translation of the statement includes this curious statement:

“We Would Like to Remind Everyone That Rights Are Not Given or Earned – They Are Taken”

Taken? I wonder if something here still “got lost in the translation.” (I haven’t yet found the original or an OSC rendering.) Might there be a Jefferson echo here, that rights are “inalienable” — as in God given, but “men” take them away, and now women beseech the men to give them back?
See also yesterday’s Arab News (Jeddah) for further insights into this “social” issue. Legally speaking, “there is no law in the Kingdom that explicitly states that women cannot drive.”
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Side subject:
One might also ponder just where the American publishing houses have been on Saudi women’s issues? And how about that unique literary genre of the American “true story” — the “captivity narrative?” Or are those best-selling formula books reserved just for women in countries currently on the bad guy list? (fill in the blank, Iraq, then Afghanistan, and now Iran….)
Here via jwn, I’ve previously mentioned Farzaneh Milani’s ongoing investigations into this realm of American publishing, that of the “hostage narrative.”
For those who missed it, we also featured (via the delic sidebar) a recent compelling oped on the subject by Susan Faludi, entitled “America’s Guardian Myths.”
If you’re not familiar with what 1675 might have to do with 2001, read it. Hint:

“Our original “war on terrorism” bequeathed us a heritage that haunts our reaction to crises like the one that struck on that crisp, clear morning in the late summer of 2001.”