Raymond Ibrahim at EvCC

I tried my best to get to see this lecture from beginning to end, speeding past cops (it's a long way to Everett) and struggling to find parking (for an event open to the public, visitor parking spots were few and far between). Due to the inadequacy of the later, I got there for only the later part of his lecture (questions and answers), but what I did notice from the later part didn't make me feel in the slightest that it was worth the drive. In fact, this lecture was more likely a disservice to the student body at the college. The handful of things I did hear him speak about were flawed so deeply and displayed such an ignorance of everything the man is purportedly an expert of, down to basic 'Arabic, that he shouldn't be teaching an Islam 101 course let alone a topic as critical (Muslims in the West) as this one.

(1) He was asked by one guy if he could provide any evidence to suggest that the vast majority of Muslims held the ideas he ascribed to them. And that sure, he was able to give a handful of incidents, but that no credible academic could say "I saw these things happen - therefore this is true about the entirety of group X or a sizable portion of group X" . The man insisted that in order for something to be generalizable about a group (i.e. that a disturbing percent of Muslims believe the things Raymond Ibrahim had proposed), it ought to be supported by the statistics, and Raymond Ibrahim was unable to bring that. Basically, in the back and forth question that Raymond made every effort to avoid properly answering, the questioner would raise concerns over how Raymond's presentation wasn't grounded in science and couldn't be statistically applied to a significant percentage of Muslims and Raymond's response would be I NO KNOW MATH, No numbers in humanities, har har har - something I consider highly irresponsible to suggest in any academic field.

(2) Another one of the good questions he was asked (by Ronald J. Young, consultant to the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East) was why the vast majority of Muslim Scholars condemn al-Qaeda if in fact his speech is accurate. He replied that this is just strategic on the part of the majority of Muslim scholars, that they adhere to the same ideology deep down but do not openly share it under the pretense of Taqiyya.

- Taqiyya is a Shi'i practice, most people that claim to be Muslim condemn it including the majority of Islamic scholars. Muslims generally are allowed to break certain Islamic laws in the face of physical danger. For example, if a Muslim store-owner was being robbed, it would be well within his rights (as a Muslim) to lie to his assailant if the lie gave him the ability to, say, alert the authorities or find protection. Another instance where a Muslim is allowed to break an Islamic law is in the event that no provisions are accessible aside from those which are forbidden (such as pork) - the Muslim can than eat the pork in spite of this meat being prohibited in general.

- Those scholars who he alleges only condemn al-Qaeda for strategic purposes use the very same Islamic material he was casting in a negative light to condemn them! This is problematic for the general theme of Raymond Ibrahim's writings in multiple ways. It suggests that whatever material he did use was deliberately taken out of context in order for his argument to be in contradiction with the vast majority of scholars.

In support of his allegations he proposed something along the lines of (totally paraphrased): "c'mon, if you're a scholar living in America, what are you gonna say? Viva al-Qaeda?" Besides failing to respond to either of the issues above, this proposal also fails to contend with the reality that the vast majority of Islamic scholars are NOT American and reside OUTSIDE of the US in countries that would not have responded particularly harshly to pro-al-Qaeda statements immediately post-9/11. After 9/11, because of the role the US has played in the Middle East, particularly as it pertains to Israel, there were some Muslims who weren't particularly sickened by the event - even jubilant, that we Americans tasted something that they live with day in and day out. So clearly, the governments in these societies would not have brought down a hammer of punishment against any scholars that showed their support for the attacks like some of the unlearned people who only know that America is in some way associated with their deplorable living conditions. And yet we find the biggest Islamic scholars condemning the people involved in this attack, calling it heinous and un-Islamic, though they ought to have feared no repercussions (and would thus have no reason to lie).

What's more important to note here is that Raymond Ibrahim didn't object to the assertion that most Muslim scholars do condemn the attacks. And in spite of the data contradicting his contentions, he suggested that the data was wrong as he, Raymond Ibrahim, reader of hearts and minds was able to ascertain the true diabolical objectives of the lying scholars of Islam. Statistics really mean nothing when you can read into them something that isn't even there. It just goes to show that with bigots like Raymond Ibrahim, it wouldn't matter if all the Muslims in the world came out to condemn al-Qaeda, people like this will still see in it what they want to see, not what's unmistakably evident.

(3) He was also asked why he thought Muslim society was incapable of change, as it relates to their legal system in particular. He said that Muslim society is different from Western society because Muslim's believe in God's law, and as a result, their laws are unchangable. The questioner responded that Shariah is a human interpretation of God's law - so how can it be unchangable? He responded by avoiding the question and asked how can you change, for example, that Muslim men may have four wives?

Firstly, his example is flawed because there are less than 500 legal verses in the Qur'an (including those which have no pertinance to an Islamic state) of several thousand verses. So the number of set "laws" by God is limited (and this doesn't account for abrogation). Secondly, besides a handful of examples, such as the one he brought up, not all of them are exactly clear-cut and unopen to interpretation. And further considering the diversity of legal ikhtilaf (differences of opinion) amongst Muslim scholars in general, not just between madhahib (Schools of Thought) but also the ikhtilaf within a madhab, his reasoning is clearly flawed. Just one example that comes immediately to mind is the variety of opinions amongst Islamic scholars as to what sorts of meat are permissible for Muslim consumption. So his idea that Islamic legal practice is immutable and unopen to change is false on that account.

We constantly see changes in the legal systems throughout the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia where women used to be prohibited from driving throughout the kingdom. Today, we see small referendums instituted by the government as well as moves towards giving women more freedom to actually drive. Many of the laws, in fact, which signify shariah to the West are inherently cultural, a point easily missed when a bigot is speaking about Islam and will cherry-pick the handful of laws that are in fact unalterable. These laws were put in place at a time when the cultural norm demanded them, and as indicated in the article above, would feasibly be removed as society no longer sees the matter as an issue and even considers it an economic burden.

(4) Somebody asked him a question from the floor (which wasn't allowed), to which he responded: "Are you Sh'a? Do you believe in Ijtihad." This again displays ignorance of Islamic jurisprudence. Ijtihad is essentially a scholar's attempt at coming to a professional opinion about a legal matter in Islam - and the idea that Sunnis don't perform ijtihad is ludicrous. There are many Fiqhi Masa'il (Legal Problems) for which the voluminous texts of the past don't deal with - though the Muslim scholars have discussed and come to conclusions on many topics, new legal matters always arise in the face of growing technology. For example, the issue of space exploration inspired a short piece by Malaysian scholars about performing the daily prayer from outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Legal issues surrounding prayer on planes are also technically new matters which have required modern ijtihad, as have technologies like radio, Television, and so forth.

(5) One more issue I found troubling was that when he began to speak about "Wahabis" near the end, he wasn't able to display a strong control over the 'Arabic language. For somebody who's made it their career to badmouth a religion that they describe as an "Arab religion," I don't think it's too assuming of me to hope they have a good grasp of the language. And yet we see him referring to Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab as "Wahab" - something incorrect in Arabic for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, the man's name was Mohammad, not Wahab. Secondly, even the father's name was Abdul Wahab, not Wahab ("Ibn" means "son of"). And finally, there is a big distinction (especially religiously) between saying "Wahab" and "Abdul Wahab", whereas "al-Wahab" is a name of God according to Islam, "Abdul Wahab" means "Slave of al-Wahab" in Islam. This wasn't the only mistake when it came to 'Arabic language that this "translator" made (I don't know who employed him, but they were clearly wasting their money - Arab kids in a primary school would have a better grasp of their language than this man).

Some people might get the impression that the fact that Raymond Ibrahim misused a name (multiple names in fact), is not a big issue, nor does it reflect on his knowledge of 'Arabic. I'd respond by presenting a similar example in English. How much credibility would you give to the English of a man who picked up the Bible, and after reading about "Jesus of Nazareth," began to call Jesus as Nazareth? Comparably, if the same person read "Jesus, son of Mary" and began to refer to Jesus by saying "Mary"? This is the same exact thing. We have here a man, who worked as a translator, unable to differentiate between "Son of Abdul Wahab" and "Muhammad."

Suppose his supporters than argue that, even if his grasp of 'Arabic is rudimentary at best, his knowledge of Islam is tip-top. Raymond Ibrahim himself however suggested that Islam is an 'Arab religion, with it's primary texts rooted in the 'Arabic language - a religion where even the devout Indonesian must read the Holy Text in the original language. The fact of the matter is that Islam can not be stripped from 'Arabic, just as Shakespeare can not be stripped of English. And if the same publicly funded institution had hired a lecturer, with audible incompetence as far as the English language was concerned, to come speak about Shakespeare - there would be a lot more of an uproar than there is over EvCC's humanities director Joyce Walker's invitation to this ineffectual bigot.

 

Finally, he said that CAIR is a bunch of liars and that he exposed them. He said CAIR called him racist whereas he had said nothing about race in his entire speech (untrue as he did just minutes before suggest that Islam is an Arabic religion and non-Arab believers must give precedence to this Arab tradition over their own in order to be devout Muslims). That of course doesn't support the proposition that he's racist, and I wasn't there long enough to pick out any racially motivated comments on his part. However, he most definitely is a bigot from what I've seen myself. And before he singles CAIR out and tries to make it look like it was just a bunch of Muslims purportedly tied to Hamas (as he said) that opposed him:

http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/evccletter.pdf

The letter was sent to EvCC prior to the event, signed by 50 interfaith leaders from OUR community (contrast that against the numerous Facebook spammers, spurred on by "Act! For America" from around the country that have absolutely no connection to Washington state or EvCC).

EvCC to Invite Islamaphobic Speaker Raymond Ibrahim Tomorrow

Everett Community College is having  Raymond Ibrahim speak tomorrow about Islam. Exciting! Commentators on Facebook are saying stuff along the lines of it being "Fair and Balanced" (I kid you not, you can tell what these guys are watching on TV) to give the man a platform to speak just like legitimate organizations and individuals. Now I'm all for having conflicting views argued on a common platform, but by analogy, is it really "Fair and Balanced" to give any credence to flat-Earthers at all? You know, the people that even to date, would consider all the findings of reputable scientists as bunk. Is it fair to use State-funded money in promoting such a concept, which is fairly well-established as being categorically false, in an educational institution? I don't think so. And yet the leadership at EvCC is more than willing to go out of their way in giving the podium to a man like Raymond Ibrahim.

What's more interesting than the man himself though is the myriad of individuals coming to his support, both in person and online. First and foremost, there's Joyce Walker. EvCC's director of Humanities who started this April and clearly hit the ground running. I believe she's more directly responsible for the selection of speakers for of an event put on by the humanities department than the president, and I'd like to pose an open question to her: Would she give the same platform she's giving to Raymond Ibrahim tomorrow for her "Islam in America" week to David Irving during one of her Holocaust Forums? She regularly runs the Holocaust Forum at EvCC, and if she has any decency and intends to uphold even a shred of credibility, she should do with her Holocaust Forum (next year) what she's so adamant about doing with a forum on Islam. Of course she won't though - and she didn't. The Holocaust forum this year was held just a month ago, and Miss Walker felt absolutely no need to present an "alternative" view than as she does now when it comes to Islam and the West.

Off campus, support for this event is almost entirely online (since most of these people hitting up Facebook are out of state tea baggers partiers). I wonder how many of these tools posting the thank you messages are actually students, staff and faculty of EvCC, let alone residents of Washington State, and how many are random neo-cons from around the globe with no affiliation and no intention of attending simply spurred on by Act! for America's call to spam the EvCC Facebook Wall.

I know betting is haram (forbidden) in Islam, but I'd be willing to put a hundred bucks on not even half of them being current students of EvCC. It wouldn't even be gambling, having looked at random Facebook pages over the course of 4 hours:

6 had properly protected their Facebook Privacy Settings, giving no data on location.

3 grew up out of state.

5 live out of state presently.

The data sample is too small considering the number of posts (in the hundreds), but knowing that generally Washington State is known for a more liberal and open-minded political outlook and Washingtonians are less likely to be members of organizations reminiscent of the tea-party, such as Act! For America, I imagine it would be a pretty safe bet on my part.

Musharraf Comes to Bellevue

I went to see former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. I figured I could probably give a more detailed presentation of the actual discussion than the soundbites you might catch on the news, so without further ado, here's a summary of much of the things he talked about:

- Concerning the issue of missing person's, the former President suggested that these people weren't systematically killed or interred but that they had themselves disappeared to join the Mujahideen in Kashmir. He says that of a list of 100 missing persons, they verified (supposedly) that only 12 were unaccounted for and the rest were fighting for Kashmir. He even mentioned that some of his close friends had lost their own children due to this fight where the children would get "brainwashed" by the Mujahideen. This doesn't really address the issues raised by his opponents highlighting the holes in such over-generalizations of all the people that have disappeared.

- When he had barely begun to speak about secularization, many members of the crowd began to clap enthusiastically (and rather presumptively). But much to their dismay, he reiterated that Pakistan is an Islamic republic, that the values by which it ought to be governed are Muslim ones. He also highlighted though much of what he had done to benefit the minorities in Pakistan and highlighted that it was in accord with the ideas of Iqbal (rah) concerning the other religions.

- In justifying his alliance with the West and assuaging claims of his being a poodle for the Western governments, he argued that he had in fact not bent over backwards for all their claims. Soon after 9/11, it was demanded of him to allow the use of all of Pakistan's airspace, the air bases and the naval bases [albeit this being a rather common political tactic in dialogue actually]. That he had only relented by giving a very narrow corridor of airspace and two isolated air-bases, and that he felt he had no other option. He said that had he the chance to do this once again, he would go right ahead and repeat it. The negotiations before he finally gave in last for five days, he suggests.

- He spoke against the various groups in Afghanistan (and even Pakistan) as being un-Islamic. He argued that they can't consider their deeds as jihad because (a) suicide is haram in Islaam and (b) in order for their fight to be considered a jihad - they require the mandate of a ruler over some land which they don't possess. In effect, he stressed that these groups are un-Islamic.

- He spoke extensively of Pakistan's opposition to the Taliban and the "Taliban culture" in spite of the cordial relations between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan during the Soviet era war. During this part of his talk, he mentioned that there are some who are concerned over the Muslims, the Pakistanis, killed during his tenure. In response to their question he poses another question. Do you support Taliban culture in Pakistan? If not, than there is no choice but to have firm resolve and keep killing them. If you do, well than, what more can be said?

- He suggests, also in justifying his alliance, that during the war with the Soviets, than too Pakistan was on the same side as the West. Nobody back than accused Pakistan of merely being the puppet of the West. Rather, what the leadership did was in the benefit of Pakistan and it merely happened to be mutually beneficial to the West - the intention of Pakistan though was to preserve her own national integrity. This shouldn't be seen any other light, he argues. He said that Pakistan called it a jihad to drive Mujahideen to the country to come fight for it (he specificlly said "called it a Jihad so that..." as if to imply that it actually wasn't and that these people were merely being used as pawns for Pakistan's sake). He mentioned to this effect a gift given to the head of ISI, a piece of the Berlin wall with words etched on it yet preserved in the former President's memory, "to the ones who struck the first blow".

- He highlighted the incompetence of Nawaz Sharif, who he referred to as "closet Taliban", and suggested that the man was incapable of working with anybody. He also highlighted how Benazzir Bhutto had reneged on their agreement when she returned by entering the public lime light, and that she was unfortunately killed.

- He suggested that to-date, nothing has been done to make the Pakhtuns of Afghanistan feel accommodated. As they are the vast majority ethnic group of their country, they can't be alienated. But Musharraf strongly disagrees with those in the West who've called for dialogue with so-called "moderate Taliban". The former President suggests that there is no such thing as "moderate Taliban" but that there is a such thing as Talibanized Pakthun and non-Taliban Pakhtun, and that the non-Taliban Pakhtun should be reached out to.

- He suggests that there is no corruption in the (upper levels of) the military and that corruption is not actually the biggest problem facing Pakistan.

- Concerning the issue of bijlee (electricity), he argued that during his tenure, much was done to ensure the increase in Pakistan's energy output but that even than it wasn't matching the budding economy which he claims a result of his own policies. He mentioned the gas pipeline with Iran that seems to have never gone through. He suggests that the alternatives to Pakistan will naturally be coal, and nuclear as usual but that Pakistan should also look towards energy from the sun and wind, two things Pakistan has a lot of (chuckle).

- Some woman suggested that if we really want peace, that Pakistan should secularize more and just give up Kashmir to India. Musharraf retorted that India should just give back Kashmir to Pakistan if our problems were really that simple. Rather, it seems that Pakistan will always be a thorn in the side of India and that India's issue isn't merely over Kashmir, but over the existence of Pakistan as a whole.

- Highlighting his peace efforts and building of bridges with the Indians, Musharraf mentioned how he had first approached the Indian prime minister. He initially tried to go in from the rear but than he thought about it, "what if he turns the other way" and so on. So after much strategic deliberation, to be expected of an army man and a general at that, he came at the Indian prime minister from the front leaving him no chance to escape and this demonstrates where the initiative for the rebuilding of bridges between the two countries drew it's impetus from.

- He mentioned the military might of Pakistan, that the conventional military might is enough to keep the Indians at bay (considering how the Indians did eventually back down after the post 9/11 standoff and that it wasn't Pakistan who blinked) and the unconventional ability (being one of 7 nuclear nation-states).

- He would not go "into detail" about the NRO and it's contradiction to his own stated opinions, but it was the only thing about which he suggested that if he had another shot, he would "maybe" re-think it. He said though, addressing the concern about it, that in spite of the corruption of these people, the Pakistanis still see them as our leaders and that therefore there is no reason to be opposed to it. That the courts don't pursue their cases, drop their cases, and in one Swiss case, have been ongoing for over 10 years without any veritable progress (he joked that the Swiss court had outdone even the Pakistani courts).

- One of the questioners asked him about whether or not he intended to return to power. He suggested that at present he has no legitimacy in the eyes of the populace but that he wanted to leave things open, and that if he were to return, he would not want to do it barely winning but winning the absolute majority in a real democratic election (read: as soon as things start getting really sour, as they ought to under the present line-up of corrupt and tried candidates - *hint* those strengthed by the amnesty of NRO... */hint*, and we realize that he is really our only reputable viable option - he'll be back in action).

Unfortunately, and to the dismay of the people who protested or supported them, some of the most important questions were never actually raised or answered. As for the protesters outside, I would hazard to guess that they weren't less at their peak (when I was arriving) than the number of people inside - they just didn't pay the $50-$1000+ dollars it would've cost them to come enjoy the dinner and possibly have one of their questions/concerns answered. It seems to be a recurring theme that when controversial personalities come by, the people who oppose them never actually lend an ear, and the people who support them never actually open an eye to anything beyond flattery, and the figures themselves don't go out of their way to reach out to the opposing demographic. We all seem to go back with what we came, no new information and no real change of ideas.