>Ah but my point was that such chanting is a very individual act for many
Islamic
>folks. Reading Koran verses is a form of individual prayer and as often
resists
>government communal dictates as support communal action. Travelling in the
So was reading Nietzche by Germans - some construed it as a celeberation of individual virtues, other as a justification of German racial superiority. The point is that the same script can be used for very different political purposes, a proposition with which you seem to agree.
>The point is that defending Russian or Serbia suppression of minority Islamic
>populations in the name of defeating Islamic "fascism" is a cure that looks a
>heck of lot like the disease it is suppose to end.
I think it is more complicated than that - both Russian and Serbs have a number of valid claims against the said minorities. Of coursed that does not condone human rights violations. The point I am trying to make that reality on the ground is much more grey than the black and white picture presented by either side to both conflicts.
>First, explicit US anti-terrorism law now makes you more likely to be
deported
>for being a fundamentalist Islamist than for being a communist. If
anything,
>you have the rules reversed. The US Communist Party is treated as a
benign joke
>by the powers that be, but active radical Islamic groups are treated
instantly
>as dangerous malefactors that need to be monitored and investigated. When
the
>Oklahoma City bombing happened, they didn't spring to investigate
Communists but
>immediately pinned the actions on Islamic groups that had recently held a
>convention in the city.
You did not use the proper time frames. You should compare the treatment of islamists today -i.e. when they represents an actual threat to the US interests, to the treatment of the communists when they represented a "threat" (real or perceived) to the US interests, that is early 1950s. The treatment of of islamists you describe pale in comparison with the witch hunt during the McCarthy era.
>Cold War. It is notable, however, that dictatorships in countries like
Algeria
>have suppressed democratic elections where Islamists won popular mandates.
In
>that, anti-Islamic ideology has increasingly become a handmaiden of
dictatorship
>in the region.
Somehow, I have problems using the word "democracy" next to islamists. Popular majority does not mean democracy, because the later means protection of minority rights - and most current islamist countries have a dismal record in that respect. Mind that Hitler was also "democractically" elected.
>
>Islam is eroding. There are plenty of movements with Islamic elements
that are
>repugnant, but they should be condemned for those repugnant elements, not
>because they are Islamic.
I agree.
>
>And the justification of the attacks on Chechyna citing the latter's Islamic
>character is exactly the dictatorial method one should fear. That Putin,
a man
>of the security services, is riding the issue to the Presidency is a classic
>authoritarian fascist tactic. Notably, in neither Kosovo or Chechnya is
there
>an identifiable Feurer-style figure, but in both Serbia and now Russia, there
>are singular leaders who used attacks on a religious minority to stabilize
their
>power. Just as Weimar social democracy gave way to racist scapegoating and
>war, so too did formerly socialist-minded Yugoslvia and the Soviet Union give
>way to racist scapegoating in Serbia and Russia. These latter
developments seem
>much more alarming revivals of fascism than anything in the Islamic world.
>
There is truth to those statments, but as I said the situation on the grounds is much more complicated and "grey." Chechen and KLA terrorism is a fact, not an invention of Mr. Putin or Mr. Milosevic.
To summarize, I agree that we should judge a regime or a movement by its deeds rather than the ideology it espouses. Having said that, however, my main objection to islam is its treatment of women - which amounts to institutionalized slavery (intellectual debates among islamic scholars nothwithstanding).
wojtek