Here's a video of his speech today at the American Enterprise Institute. I thought it was excellent (he is an excellent orator.). He does also briefly address the Cordoba House issue, explaining his perspective. I agree with him that its origin lies in politics more than religious piety, though I still side with Berchmann's on the idea that when it comes to the application of our principles, it's largely irrelevant what other countries (such as Saudi Arabia) do.
Anyway, I quibble with several arguments he makes (particularly about the war strategy in Afghanistan), but I think he makes a powerful broader argument. I particularly agree with him about Sharia.
The speech is roughly an hour long, but well worth watching if only for the the discussion it engenders. It's titled "America at Risk: Camus, National Security, and Afghanistan."
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4 hours ago
This speech made me so spectacularly angry and depressed, I had to do the "count to 10" routine or risk exploding on the keyboard. I just cannot understand why conservatives think sharia law is creeping, under the cover of stealth, into mainstream American culture.
ReplyDeleteA few examples, strung from around the country, do not make me at all worried that American jurisprudence or cultural norms are at risk. (It's certainly nice, of course, to hear conservatives talk about the value of the Americans with Disabilities Act -- which right-wing judges have systematically dismantled in the last two decades -- or the issue of cruel and unusual executions, a standard Scalia and Thomas essentially believe does not exist.) Whether or not Harvard decides it wants to study Islamic finance -- a topic that countless investors and scholars find genuinely interesting for reasons other than promoting Islamofascism in America -- does not warrant my concern either.
Gingrich is too eager to portray certain disputes (the seeing-eye dog, for example) as another battle between America and Islamism, when they could just as easily be secularism v. religion. I'm not suggesting we look to sharia as a source for judicial decisions, but whether or not to follow religious or secular law is a long-running battle that modern societies routinely confront (take, for example, Israel, which allows the religious domain huge control over certain issues).
But, again, Gingrich's views on Cordoba make absolutely no sense. He says if the project's backers wanted to build a mosque in the South Bronx, he would have had no problem -- an argument made even more ludicrous (and tragicomic) when he says he is tired about being lectured on religious liberty. At the risk of sounding as know-it-all as Gingrich does in the speech (I lost count of the unnecessary references to authors after Nitze), let me say: you should be allowed to build your religious community wherever land is available.
The standard he suggests -- why so close to Ground Zero -- ignores that there are already mosques near the ex-World Trade Center site, and it raises even more difficult and intriguing questions: can we have mosques at 14th Street, but not Christopher? What's too close, and what too far -- do the mosques have to be on the other side of the East River?
And, on a final note on this subject, calling the project 'triumphalist' as if it is meant to celebrate the destruction of the World Trade Center is just shocking and absurd without showing evidence that the project's backers are connected to the 9/11 hijackers or radical Islamists at large.
So, Esquire, explain to me: what, exactly, do you particularly agree with Gingrich about sharia?
Gingrich and I both believe that Sharia is a system too easily abused and misdirected towards oppression and violence (if not by definition, then by practice). Further, I'm against the imposition of religious cannon as a binding legal code anywhere.
ReplyDeleteAs for the dangers Sharia would pose to Western societies...It seems inarguable to me that there are movements that wish for it to be permissible that Sharia law can regulate Muslim communities in Western countries (I've actually read arguments making that case in Canada and the UK, so it's not just me conjecturing. There are people who try to argue for that in court/legislative bodies.)
Canada and Europe are pretty far along in that regard, though in varying degrees. (The Netherlands in particular has been having national arguments about to what degree religous freedom permits the imposition of Sharia on citizens of historical muslim lineage (whether they're practicing or not.)
That's not to say that Sharia is already the order of the day in Western Society (particularly in the US). But I also don't have confidence that Western, Liberal societies maintain societal confidence to uphold their values in the face of a determined, outspoken, and sometimes violent minority group ("minority" in the literal, not racial sense). Or at least, i've seen no evidene that suggests that they do. (That was the subject of Mark Steyn's book, and a number of others...and for a historical comparison is also the argument of Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire...so it's not a ridiculous notion that it's conceivable for a society to lose confidence)
The creep of Western Jurispudence seems to me to suggest that our own fears of offending PC sensibilities have resulted in a weakening of our resolve. I don't simply discount the instances that Gingrich mentions in his speech as you seem to. I'd already heard about them and others. (I was wondering if there could ever be a potential intersection/logical extension of the Liberal judicial logic of looking at foreign jurisprudence, btw...)
Clearly I think the US is less susceptible to it than other places, particularly European countries. (And we already have the past precedents from Mormon history in our favor).
But I do view Sharia as a challenge to Western society. It's a slow creep to be sure. But a creep in my view nonetheless.
As a quick aside: ...his comment about the origins of the name Cordoba are interesting and don't seem to me to coincidental. But I think his points about it be triumphalist has more to do with the size of the proposed project in relation to its necessity for the religious community there. As you said, there are already Mosques in that area. Why did they decide on building a super sized structure? I'm actually asking here too. Perhaps there are reasons that make sense. But it also seems like it's likely part of the typical religious idea of building massive structures as a demonstration of your religions importance/power. And in that context, it seems weird to me that any religion would choose to do that so close to what is essentially a battlefield (particularly if it was a perverse interpretation of your religion that caused all the death and destruction)
Maybe another way to look at it is: Do you think it would be inappropriate to build a monumental church or mosque right by Auschwitz? 'Cause I do...
I'm not sure I understand what's debatable about a particular religious group wanting to build a big, or a small, or a medium-size building. It's up to them, the land's owners, what they want to do with it. The burden of proof is on the other side opposing the building, (and by extension, the principle of property ownership), no? Would you be fine with the project if it were smaller -- and if so, how smaller? One-story? Two-story? At what point does a building become less "triumphalist"? And, again, even if the building's size was meant to project Islam's importance, so what? Here's the test: if the Catholic Church had proposed the same project, do you really believe there would be as much opposition to it?
ReplyDeleteThe point about the other mosques in the area was supposed to raise this question: if the other mosques close to WTC are fine, why not the Cordoba House? Or is Gingrich calling for the other mosques to be removed?
As for the Cordoba name, you can read more about it here: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/gingrich-cordoba-and-history.html
As for one of Gingrich's examples: so you have a problem with universities even studying Islamic finance? That shouldn't be discussed at all? Even though millions of people -- including banks and investors -- seek to understand it so they can tap into a particular market?
ReplyDeleteThere's a part in his speech when he says he wants to debate with Saudi Arabia about its stand on religious liberty. That's fair -- and, by the way, I think he's a bit too harsh on progressives, many of who have long highlighted the plight of Muslim women there -- but he doesn't go on to say, The American government should stop supporting Saudi Arabia. No, because that would involve actually delving into a complicated, nuanced subject not easily made for political applause lines (like that ridiculous suggestion to pass a federal law to ban sharia, as if there were such a widespread movement in American legal circles to even adopt it).
I don't know much about the sharia debates in other countries, because I don't see them as being as widely pervasive as your side believes, but at least in Canada, the issue is much more complicated than Gingrich -- or you -- let on.
ReplyDeleteI believe Canada allows Catholics and Jews to resolve certain family disputes (custody and divorce battles) in religious courts. Certain segments of the Muslim population wondered why they were not extended the same privilege. If you oppose sharia, then you should oppose the other panels. Feel free to send me examples of other debates or proposed legislation that I have missed. (Again, I'm not on sharia watch, because I think our nation has much, much more pressing dangers.)
I also wanted to comment briefly about Gingrich's references to the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks. His lecture -- which can be read in full here: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1581 -- dealt more with the difficulties of accommodating religious groups in a secular society (a topic I would have thought conservatives would understand better than others).
So, he asked, why can we support exceptions for Catholic doctors who don't wish to perform abortions, but not other loopholes for other communities? It's a fair question, and it goes, again, to what I see as the major battle here: between secularism and seriously religious people. As Stanley Fish has argued, liberalism likes to pretend that it tolerates all viewpoints, religious or otherwise, but when confronted with actual religious beliefs (like, e.g., polygamy), it basically says, No dice. That's an interesting political discussion to be had, and one that continues to unfold in modern societies.
What's particularly interesting to me is that you think "PC sensibilities" might weaken Western society. Read the Archbishop's speech -- it hardly shirks away from profound and potentially offensive discussion (e.g. "There can be no blank cheques given to unexamined scruples"; "...while a legal system might properly admit structures or protocols that embody the diversity of moral reasoning in a plural society by allowing scope for a minority group to administer its affairs according to its own convictions, it can hardly admit or 'license' protocols that effectively take away the rights it acknowledges as generally valid.")
You will eventually conclude, I think, that Gingrich was the one playing to the crowd, while the Archbishop was testing society's shibolleths in unbelievably brave ways.
Here's Krugman's take on the recent ADL statement on the Cordoba House:
ReplyDelete"Outside my usual beat, but the statement from the Anti-Defamation League opposing the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero is truly shocking. As Greg Sargent says, the key passage — it’s a pretty short statement — is this one:
'Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.'
Translation: some people will feel bad if this thing is built, and we need to take these feelings into account, even though proponents "have every right to build at this site.
So let’s try some comparable cases, OK? It causes some people pain to see Jews operating small businesses in non-Jewish neighborhoods; it causes some people pain to see Jews writing for national publications (as I learn from my mailbox most weeks); it causes some people pain to see Jews on the Supreme Court. So would ADL agree that we should ban Jews from these activities, so as to spare these people pain? No? What’s the difference?
One thing I thought Jews were supposed to understand is that they need to be advocates of universal rights, not just rights for their particular group — because it’s the right thing to do, but also because, ahem, there aren’t enough of us. We can’t afford to live in a tribal world.
But ADL has apparently forgotten all that. Shameful — and stupid."
I agree with Krugman on this one.
Part of the thing is this isn't merely a legal rights issue (I'm not arguing for example that there is any or should be any legal reason that they can't build the Cordoba complex there, given the circumstance).
ReplyDeleteBut there is a well understood notion that just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean to ought to do something.
Again, I would refer to my previous example of building a monumental Cathedral or Mosque right next to the Auschwitz death camps. You might be able to have the right to do it, but it doesn't mean you should or would be beyond reproach if you did.
I fully understand where you guys are coming from and agree there's a logic to what you're suggesting. But I don't get why you guys don't seem to understand why people might also find it troublesome.
I suspect that it has most to do with how we each view Islam. I'm not nearly as convinced that the Islamist fringes of Islam are as "fringe" as you think. (Polls, while imperfect of course, often find support for bin Laden and terrorism diminishing in Muslim countries. But they still have support rates between 20 - 60% depending on the country in the last polls I've seen (which were 2007), which in real terms is a significant number of people in a religion that has around 1.5 billion adherents.
Because I'm more cynical about the Islamic world outlook, I'm less inclined to remain entirely sanguine about things like the Cordoba House. Though I will say that on the scale of things, the Cordoba House is very low on my list of things in that regard.
(btw Berchmanns: I never said I agreed with Gingrich's assertion about study of Islamic finance, so I'm not sure why you're expecting me to defend him. I studied it myself in my counter-terrorism classes, because it's one of the primary mechanisms of funding for Islamic extremists.)