Political & Elections

If Mubarak is still in the country, he is still "calling the shots"

This whole thing is just a ploy to defuse the protests and get everybody who has a job to go back to doing it.

They have just taken the enemy that they know and replaced it with the enemy they know.

Mubarak is out... we will see what happens. Will the people be content with the Intelligence chief in charge of the country? I do not claim to have much knowledge on the relationship between the Egyptian military and the Egyptian people.

It is interesting to consider the various responses of the Obama administration to recent events... Iran protests, Egypt currently, and the Honduran situation.

If Egypt was the internet, Mubarak would be a really big troll. Unfortunately, it is real life. The Egyptians are not going to allow the guy who gave all the intel to Mubarak about which Egyptians to crack down on to have control of things.

Also, if anyone missed Krugman the other day, he blamed the Egyptian uprisings on global warming.

Woodwork:

I agree entirely with your first two paragraphs, and we do not agree often.  In less articulate ways, I have been trying to make that point, so well said. 

As to your third paragraph, I think that aggressive atheism is responding to fundamentalsm.  Given political imbalance of power between the religious and the aregligious, that reaction is not difficult to understand.  An atheist is completely unelectable to high national office in this country no matter how qualified otherwise.  The pandering of politicians to the religious in this country is disturbing to me.

While I have no use for organized religion personally, I am not an atheist.  I simply do not believe in a divine being as described by the various religions and believe that if there is one, it is beyond whatever men could imagine 2000 years ago or now.  I tend to believe that it is unknowable, and I distrust anyone who claims to know its will or anything more than some hint of a feeling about it.

I see the totalitarian strain in extreme religion, not atheism.  However, I understand where you are coming from given the Russian and Chinese experience.  Extreme anything combined with totalitarianism is generally disasterous.

It is difficult to know where to begin --not to be insulting, but the actual ignorance of Islam and Christianity in this thread is overwhelming.

It is the habit and arrogance of cynicism to make the complex absurdly simple. Most of "what is wrong with Islam" has little if anything to do with religion, faith or belief. Like most political conflicts, what is wrong in Islam arises from the political, not the religious. What was once bandied about as what is wrong in the Irish conflict (religious belief, not political power) is now refurbished as the problem of the Middle East and Islam. It was the fault of Catholicism (or Protestantism) then, and it is the fault of Islam now. Which is to say, clearly, the real problems are political and the solutions are also political, not religious. But then, we would have to address the real problems and they are better described as Sisyphean, not Gordian; no quick cut will undo this knot. The problem involves power, resources, wealth and land. They involve geography and language far more than metaphysics. Religion is a complicated matter of faith and love: you are either in love or you are not and there is no sense trying to explain it to a cynic that is not then romantically inclined...until they are, if they are. You either believe something or you don’t…you cannot make yourself believe what you do not, and you cannot deny what you do believe by wishing it so. This is not a problem of good or bad math.

To me, trying to explain faith is like trying to explain why you behave as you do when you are in love. Not only is a rational explanation of love a false explanation, the act of explaining demeans the actual fact of being in love. Give it a shot with the person you claim to be in love with on your next night out, Romeo --or Juliet.

I've never encouraged anyone to fall in love, as I have never encouraged anyone to believe in god, or to follow a religion --yet, it too often seems that those that do not believe in the transcendence of faith --and more and more a lack of faith in love as well-- spend an inordinate amount of their time trying to convince others that their feeling or their personal belief is a false one...which is to say that they are, ironically, quite fundamentalist in their need for others to not believe what they honestly believe. There is a strong and discomforting totalitarian strain to atheism these days. It was not always so. I think, in part, it is because these days atheism has been so closely tied to a distinct political agenda. When I was younger I always enjoyed talling metaphysics with atheists.

nbachris2788 wrote:

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BigG wrote:

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Those two statements are/were both true at different times in history.

The Islam of 1000 AD is not the Islam of today.

The Christianity of 1000 AD is not the Christianity of today.

This is the fallacy that leads" true beliver" types to take holy writings out of their historical context and commit atrocities in other ages.

Nothing is always true. There are only assumptions that the universal constants of physics are truly universal. Certainly the physical constants were not during the initial phases of the Big Bang.

Peoples concepts of "God" are prejudiced by their desire for stability and constancy.
See "Portrait of Yahweh as a Young God".


-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 07:36:05 PM

-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 07:38:03 PM

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I agree.

But rarely do people bother to make that distinction. Christian supremacists will pretend as if the Islam of today is the Islam of the past, present, and future. Likewise, the Islamic supremacist of 1000 years ago would've pretended that the Christianity of his day was also the past, present, and future of Christianity.

I think most people, including liberals and many Muslims, would agree that today's fundamentalist Islam is messed up and needs to change. That's not where the argument lies.

 

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The question isn't about whether fundamentalist Islam is bad, it's about the *size* of it. Fundamentalist Islam is the most rapidly growing portion of Islam.

http://volokh.com/2011/02/08/a-muslim-mob-burned-churches-as-mob-members-demanded-the-death-penalty-for-a-christian-man-convicted-of-blaspheming-against-islam/

Absolutely ridiculous. Neglible cultural value.

 

Those two statements are/were both true at different times in history.

The Islam of 1000 AD is not the Islam of today.

The Christianity of 1000 AD is not the Christianity of today.

This is the fallacy that leads" true beliver" types to take holy writings out of their historical context and commit atrocities in other ages.

Nothing is always true. There are only assumptions that the universal constants of physics are truly universal. Certainly the physical constants were not during the initial phases of the Big Bang.

Peoples concepts of "God" are prejudiced by their desire for stability and constancy.
See "Portrait of Yahweh as a Young God".


-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 07:36:05 PM

-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 07:38:03 PM

I am not trying to argue with anyone asserting that large parts of the Middle East are appallingly primitive in their treatment of women, prejudice against other religions, and so forth and so on.  All I am asking is whether that is inherent in the language of the Quran more so than other ancient religious texts, or is it a product of a particularly benighted interpretation of it.  The latter can, and does, happen to any mainstream religion.  The Old Testament says lots of truly bizarre things and arguably encouages mass slaughter of non-believers - women, children, and men, who are unlucky enough not to be among the chosen people in the promised land.  The New Testament can be stretched to support the Westborough Baptist Church by wackos interested in so stretching it, slavery by the slaveholding south, etc.  Is Islam worse, or just practiced by more crazy folks than other religions.

busdriver11 wrote:

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Many Christians or Jews doing that? And if so, yep, we generally do think they are a little nuts. Unless of course, it is something as harmless as, "Love Thy Neighbor."

Many Muslims doing that? Why yes, I do believe so. Not just taking the ancient text literally, but believing the ancient text itself is sacred and cannot be disturbed in any way. And leaving it up to the all-knowing religious scholars to interpret that ancient text as they choose, and enforce it with fatwas. Sounds like alot of crazy to me.

So can we rationally compare some of the more bizarre lines in the Old Testament that nobody but nutcases believe is proper, to those in the Quoran that are constantly enforced, elaborated and expanded upon....that are forced upon hundreds of millions?

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The point is that most religions have some kind of inherent barbarism in them, and if those religions want to thrive in the modern world, they will need to modernize. It's not as if the greatly neutered and greatly secularized Christianity of today is the same Christianity of the Dark Ages. Yet there are some who will pretend that Christianity has seamless and effortlessly remained true to its roots while allowing progress, whereas Islam is incorrigibly backwards and degenerate.

busdriver11 wrote:

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"And religion is the only difference that caused the change in situations, or even the primary reason? I suspect that religion had an influence but secondary to other factors like politics, geography, and natural resources. Oil was not important until the last quarter of the 1800s. By then, countries with the resources that mattered before then were way ahead and could exploit Middle Eastern oil resources for themselves, and the benefit of the ruling classes of the Middle East, screwing the people as always."

Oh, groan, moan, Bogney, give us a break from that stuff.

Come on, the reason why the vast majority of predominantly Muslim countries are living in conditions centuries behind western civilizations is not because they have been exploited for their oil. What is the reason that women are treated like dogs, cattle, slaves? Why is there massive corruption? Why are people grossly uneducated, legal systems in shambles and human rights abuses a joke, and most of the money from resources going to select, corrupt few?

How about a little honesty and pinpoint the fact that countries run for hundreds of years by different dictators or ruling families who pocket most of the money for themselves and their associates, is not a receipe for a prosperous society. That countries who rule based upon a restrictive and constantly controlling view of Islamic law, as determined daily by mullahs and religious scholars, will never be successful for the vast majority of their citizens.

You guys can reminisce about how 1,000 years ago, Islam created a wonderful society, especially compared to those Christian Crusaders.....but that is little solace to the many women of the Middle East who have been methodically abused and suppressed as long as they can remember.

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Busdriver, you and I agree on your second to last paragraph.  What was the cause of the ruling elite taking profits for themselves and leaving the people in the cold,  striking deals for money and arms with countries that wanted their oil thereby securing their positions and making themselves fabulously wealthy, or a belief in Islam?  I tend to think the former.

To whom does religion that emphases a reward in the afterlife most appeal, the exploiter who would go to hell or the exploited who might go to heaven?  The people getting screwed policitcally often turn to religion, sometimes radicalized religion for comfort and hope.  Mullas are happy to step in and provide it, increasing their power and status in backwards societies.

The cause is not the religion as much as the maldistribution of wealth througout the region which then allows poverty and ignorance to flourish and extreme religion to provide succor.  Kuwait is relatively wealthy and relatively enlightened politically for the region, though not by our standards, and is relatively stable except for the fear of radical Islam. 

Poverty and political impotence are the cause, extreme religion and/or extreme politics are the effect.  In societies with better wealth distribution and more representative government, there is less extreme religion or politics - see western Europe, Japan, and the U.S.

As far as women, they were second class citizens in the U.S. until 1964, not that long ago.  The could not vote until the early 1900s.  We are ahead of them by about 100 years, and parts of our society - like fundamentalist Mormons still abuse women terribly.  This is not a defense of benighted Muslim societies.  I am still waiting to hear how their religion is so inferior to bizare interpretations of Christianity or Judaism.  They are all highly suspect if taken literally or used to radicalize a population against some form of authority.

 

"My question goes to whether there are particular passages in Quoran that are more offensive than passages in the Old and New Testaments, because there are offensive passages in all of them that have been interpreted to support slavery, etc. Anyone who chooses to take an ancient text literally is a little nuts and therefore at least potentially dangerous."

Many Christians or Jews doing that? And if so, yep, we generally do think they are a little nuts. Unless of course, it is something as harmless as, "Love Thy Neighbor."

Many Muslims doing that? Why yes, I do believe so. Not just taking the ancient text literally, but believing the ancient text itself is sacred and cannot be disturbed in any way. And leaving it up to the all-knowing religious scholars to interpret that ancient text as they choose, and enforce it with fatwas. Sounds like alot of crazy to me.

So can we rationally compare some of the more bizarre lines in the Old Testament that nobody but nutcases believe is proper, to those in the Quoran that are constantly enforced, elaborated and expanded upon....that are forced upon hundreds of millions?

And religion is the only difference that caused the change in situations, or even the primary reason?  I suspect that religion had an influence but secondary to other factors like politics, geography, and natural resources.  Oil was not important until the last quarter of the 1800s.  By then, countries with the resources that mattered before then were way ahead and could exploit Middle Eastern oil resources for themselves, and the benefit of the ruling classes of the Middle East, screwing the people as always.

My question goes to whether there are particular passages in Quoran that are more offensive than passages in the Old and New Testaments, because there are offensive passages in all of them that have been interpreted to support slavery, etc.  Anyone who chooses to take an ancient text literally is a little nuts and therefore at least potentially dangerous.

Actually both Abyss and the hypothetical millenial Muslim would be correct from their own perspectives and could marshall compelling arguments in favor of their own views.

The question for us is why the Muslims became "degenerate" and how we can avoid the same fate.

"He who laughs last laughs best" simply does not apply to the cyclical nature of history.

The Chinese had been in a down cycle for centuries due, in part but not totally, to Western European exploitation. Now they seem to be in an upswing.

Google "hydraulic empire". Hint, it has to do with fluid mechanics and its effect on civilization. Does control of money flow and information flow constitute the basis far a modern version of a hydraulic empire?

We seem to be in a downswing, which wouldn't be so bad if it were relative to a "higher" civilization and not a general decline in well-being.

May the peaks and valleys each be higher for each and every iteration of human civilization.

-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 06:48:12 AM

-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 06:50:49 AM

-- Edited by BigG on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 12:00:04 PM

Abyss wrote:

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nbachris2788 wrote:

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Just because liberals roll their eyes when superstitious and patriarchal Christians attack Muslims for being superstitious and patriarchal doesn't mean that liberals think Islam is the best religion out there.

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See, from my perspective, it's not merely about Islam being "not the best". It's about Islam being the worst. I can't think of any modern religion of meaningful size that is worse than Islam.

Christianity (all sects), Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. They're all better in theory and practice. Islam is the worst and should not be given a pass because they blow people up. If anything, that means we shouldn't be playing with kid gloves.

-- Edited by Abyss on Monday 7th of February 2011 07:02:56 PM

 

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Islam in its current state does indeed have huge flaws. You can't expect rational thought from a religion that holds that its holy book is indeed the inviolable word of their god.

Christopher Hitchens was right when he said that Christianity was a plagiarism of Judaism, and Islam an even worse plagiarism from the same source.

But there's no reason to believe that Islam cannot be reformed. Catholicism once had some hard and fast rules that nobody listens to anymore out of common sense. Does anybody believe in the infallibility of the pope anymore? Not any Catholic I know.

And what does any of that have to do with your opinion as to why Islam is the worst major religion?  Are you saying that Islam is responsible for the state of Middle East?  If so, what is your basis?  Their lack of resources other than oil, which has been exploited by the west and rulers making wealth for themselves would seem to have something to do with it, but I guess that goes beyond your 50 year time frame for worthwhile history. 

Do you know anything at all about history?

By the way, I asked a legitimate question.  Rather than being an ass, you could actually attempt to answer it.  Go ahead and call spades spades.

-- Edited by Bogney on Monday 7th of February 2011 11:01:52 PM

Abyss:  What specifically makes Islam the worst of the major reigions?  To me fundamentalists of any stripe are the problem.  Moderates of any stripe are not.  Conditions in the Middle East are such as to encourage the kind of dissatisfaction that can drive political and religious extremism.  On CC, someone had a post about the problems caused in Israel by fundamentalist Jews who are burdening the state without contributing much but controversy (long ago, don't know where it is).  Fundamentalist Christians who speak in tongues, profess literal belief in the Bible, and include snakes in their ceremonies are pretty scary folks too.

nbachris2788 wrote:

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Just because liberals roll their eyes when superstitious and patriarchal Christians attack Muslims for being superstitious and patriarchal doesn't mean that liberals think Islam is the best religion out there.

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See, from my perspective, it's not merely about Islam being "not the best". It's about Islam being the worst. I can't think of any modern religion of meaningful size that is worse than Islam.

Christianity (all sects), Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. They're all better in theory and practice. Islam is the worst and should not be given a pass because they blow people up. If anything, that means we shouldn't be playing with kid gloves.

-- Edited by Abyss on Monday 7th of February 2011 07:02:56 PM

Abyss wrote:

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Bogney wrote:

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I think the world, or at least the Middle East, needs a new prophet to shake things up on the religous axis.  Any volunteers?

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A liberal actually admitted that Islam might not be the best religion out there? A true miracle.

 

 

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Just because liberals roll their eyes when superstitious and patriarchal Christians attack Muslims for being superstitious and patriarchal doesn't mean that liberals think Islam is the best religion out there.

 

Excerpt from the NYT article BigG cited:

Hillary Rodham Clinton warned on Sunday that removing President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt too hastily could threaten the country’s transition to democracy.

Her remarks were the Obama administration’s most explicit sign yet of its growing emphasis on averting instability in Egypt, even at the expense of the key demand from the Egyptian protest movement: Mr. Mubarak’s immediate removal.

Citing the Egyptian Constitution, Mrs. Clinton said that if Mr. Mubarak stepped down now, Egypt would have to hold elections for a new president in 60 days — too little time for the government or the opposition to organize a credible vote.

Her comments, made to reporters on the way home from a conference in Munich, echo what administration officials have said privately and some of what the White House’s temporary diplomatic emissary to Cairo, Frank G. Wisner, said publicly on Sunday: Mr. Mubarak is likely to remain in the picture, at least a while longer.

Mrs. Clinton reiterated that Mr. Mubarak’s future was up to the Egyptian people and declined to discuss what role he should play between now and September, when Egypt is scheduled to hold an election in which he has said neither he nor his son Gamal will compete.

But Mr. Mubarak’s resignation now would set off a chain of events, Mrs. Clinton said. Under the Constitution — a document she conceded not having thought about before this week — the speaker of Parliament would step in as a caretaker president, followed by quick elections.

“Now the Egyptians are the ones who are having to grapple with the reality of what they must do,” she said, noting that opposition leaders, including Mohamed ElBaradei, had also talked about the need for time. “That’s not us saying it; that’s the Egyptians saying it,” Mrs. Clinton said.

It's good to see someone in the administration is reading my posts on this board.

Bogney wrote:

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I think the world, or at least the Middle East, needs a new prophet to shake things up on the religous axis.  Any volunteers?

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A liberal actually admitted that Islam might not be the best religion out there? A true miracle.

 

A couple of interesting snippets from today's NY Times Egypt blog:

In the Turkish newspaper Sunday’s Zaman, Joost Lagendijk reports that Mr. Ramadan has been busy batting away suggestions that Egypt’s uprising will end up like the 1979 revolution in Iran. Mr. Lagendijk wrote:

How big is the chance that the Muslim Brotherhood will be the largest, most popular and most effective opposition group? It is the question asked by all journalists to every academic expert on Egypt and, if possible, to each informal leader of the Tahrir Square demonstrations. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant asked Tariq Ramadan, an influential Egyptian-Swiss philosopher at Oxford University, known for his work on reinterpreting Islam. But more importantly, Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Ramadan calls on the West to stop demonizing each and every Islamist movement and recognize that there are huge differences between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011. In Iran, according to Ramadan, Ayatollah Khomeini was involved in the revolution from the start and Islam played a major role. In Egypt, religion is not an important factor in the uprising, which he characterizes as an informal, spontaneous people’s protest. Therefore, Ramadan is not afraid of Egypt becoming a second Iran. Interestingly, he focuses on Turkey, praising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for speaking out so clearly in favor of the protesters and expressing the hope that Egypt will be the next Turkey.

In Mr. Zizek’s Guardian essay, he lambasted Western leaders for not embracing the uprising, writing:

What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilized through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. [...]

Here, then, is the moment of truth: one cannot claim, as in the case of Algeria a decade ago, that allowing truly free elections equals delivering power to Muslim fundamentalists. Another liberal worry is that there is no organized political power to take over if Mubarak goes. Of course there is not; Mubarak took care of that by reducing all opposition to marginal ornaments, so that the result is like the title of the famous Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The argument for Mubarak – it’s either him or chaos – is an argument against him.

The hypocrisy of western liberals is breathtaking: they publicly supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion, they are all deeply concerned. Why concern, why not joy that freedom is given a chance? Today, more than ever, Mao Zedong’s old motto is pertinent: “There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is excellent.”

Where, then, should Mubarak go? Here, the answer is also clear: to the Hague. If there is a leader who deserves to sit there, it is him.

poetgrl wrote:

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Does anyone have any insight into WHY he is trying to hold on?  I mean, besides the obvious one-liner that he is nuts.

I mean, he's 80.....you'd think he would have had enough by now. 

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Supreme dictators of 30 years tend to be a little narcissistic, to say the least.  Initially, he probably thought that if he rides it out long enough, passions will die (pardon the pun), and he can turn the situation to his advantage.  De-Nile is not just a river that runs in Egypt!  Why did Sadaam behave the way he did in the face of an imminent US invasion?  But now, even if Mubarek does now see the hieroglyphics on the wall (I'm beginning to sound like Bogney), he will not voluntarily leave abruptly for the sake of pride.

I sympathize with Obama because unlike his fumble with the Green revolution in Iran, which was an easy call, here he's got to balance the support of our ideals with the real costs of turning on a long-term ally and potentially throwing Egypt into chaos.  That said, it bothers me that he is coming off as so weak, equivocal, and ingratiating, even in his increasingly strong support for the anti-government protestors.  He has limited control over how events will actually play out in Egypt, but completely control over the tone of US leadership that he presents to the world.

So what should we do?  Hell if I know.  But it seems to me that Mubarek has already agreed to a transfer power, its just a matter of when.  I would hope that there is a way to support the pro-democracy forces (if that's what they really are), strongly, and to strongly support the role of the army in maintaining order, while not being the ones to dictate (or attempt to dictate) publicly the timeline for when Mubarek leaves, as that only makes us look like hypocritical turncoats at best or ineffectual blowhards at worst.  I think we can voice strong support publicly for both transition and stability, and if that means Mubarek ends up having more time to salvage his pride and arrange his golden parachute, so be it.  I'm reading that even many of the anti-government protesters, who were probably motivated as much by economic despair as by Jeffersonian ideals, are tempering their exuberance with concern about further economic and political chaos.