Pajamas Media

30 Comments

Wolf Pangloss:

Recall that the teddy bear came from by a political cartoon about the American president at the time, Teddy Roosevelt, and a hunting incident in Mississippi. Roosevelt and America embraced the teddy bear cartoon and the toy. These days cartoons and teddy bears prompt riots and killings among some. The difference could not be more stark.

Dec 8, 2007 - 5:46 am tanstaafl:

Thank you, drima.

Every one of your observations is exactly what I have thought about Sudan in general and the recent teddy bear furor in particular.

We in “the west” need a “sociopolitical blog on Sudan” like yours.

It gives me (something of a student of Islam since 911) hope for communication in this world.

I also appreciated seeing Moez Masoud on tape.

Dec 8, 2007 - 5:55 am Linda Frank:

Sir, it is reassuring to know there are people like you in the world. Thanks you for this article.

Dec 8, 2007 - 7:00 am WR Jonas:

Somehow Islam always ends up being mis understood. Poor Muslims ,they can’t get a fair shake.
Baloney. I gave Hirsi Ali’s INFIDEL a read and her whole life in Africa was one of beatings,mutilation and subjugation. When she fled and denounced Islam she was condemned to death.
She must have missed the part about mercy and protection for women and children. She never found either.
So spare us the tears and realize Westerners can smell bs when they encounter it.

Dec 8, 2007 - 7:21 am MikeM:

Excellent article, I have a question that I have not seen addressed on any web site. As you pointed out the bear was named by the class. Since the class was not religious in nature, nor the teacher a follower of Islam, then her students received their religious teachings from parents, other adults and religious leaders. So my question is this, why don’t the parents or religious leaders bear responsibility? They don’t seem to have taught their children the meaning of their religion.

Dec 8, 2007 - 7:35 am Colin:

Thank you for speaking up. To me, the most troubling part of this whole incident (other than the incident itself, of course) is the lack of moderate Muslim voices like yours.

Dec 8, 2007 - 7:58 am swassociates:

So where were all the “Moderate” Sudanese Muslims counter protesting their typical “Muslim I Hate Everything and Must Decapitate It” countryman?

Dec 8, 2007 - 8:45 am venividivici:

The teddy bear extravaganza also succeeded in making Islam look utterly ridiculous again.

If it wasn’t the teddy bear, it would have been something else. There’s something inherently ridiculous about being a Muslim in the 21st century. You don’t see people walking around claiming to be followers of the Ancient Greek religion too frequently, do you? Yet, from a purely rational point of view, the Ancient Greek religion is probably a billion times more sane than Islam at its best.

Let us not forget though that Islam is as monolithic as we Muslims ourselves are - hardly at all. Many Muslims rely on reason and their own conscience rather than blindly following religious clerics.

Islam’s monolithic enough for me. That’s why all of it’s called “Islam” and something like 95% of Muslims are either “Sunnis” or “Shites”. This whole “Islam isn’t monolithic” idea is a red herring and similar to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Spengler described a community as “many hands, one head”. We’re debating whether Islam has a billion “hands” or merely 999 million “hands” or whether it has 1.25 “heads” or 1 “head”. The idea that we need some sort of scientific precision to answer these questions ignores the fact that we aren’t doing a science experiment, we’re deciding whether or not Islam tout court can co-exist on equal footing with people, like myself, who wouldn’t want to be Muslims if I lived another billion years, nor would I submit to dhimmi status.

In the West, we require sex offenders to register with the police when they move to a new neighborhood. Are sex offenders “monolithic”? No, but we still require them all to register as part of their penalty to be paid to society for offending in the first place. So, the idea that somehow a group must be “monolithic” to pose a threat and prompt a response is, as I said, a red herring.

And yes, I am comparing Muslims to sex offenders. If you don’t like it, I don’t care. Maybe Mohammed shouldn’t have married that six-year old girl.

You seem like a nice guy. Why don’t you just drop Islam (which is so philosophically absurd as to be barely worth commenting on) and go to some other religion that doesn’t embarrass you so much. Since Allah doesn’t exist, it’d really be no big deal, other than having to deal with the community pressure you’d obviously face, what with those apostacy laws and all.

Dec 8, 2007 - 8:59 am RedDog:

Thank you Drima. I wish more Muslims would speak out as you have.

Dec 8, 2007 - 9:53 am Morton Doodslag:

So I suppose we’re supposed to lap it up, express our fawning gratitude that “Sir, it is reassuring to know there are people like you in the world”, and go back to our daily bread thinking it’s been a good day for the ‘infidels’?

Does this or any Muslim imagine we ‘infidels’ are supposed to be bought off by the scribblings of one lone Muslim out of 1.2 billion?

Apparently he’d have some evidence that feckless commentary such as the exhibit above works for quite a few infidels — witness all those fawning above in debased gratitude.

Where are his arguments that the “radicals” actually have Islam wrong? Where’s his argument that he and not they can give the proper interpretation of Islam, the better interpretation which will permit Islam to co-exist with the other 4.8 billion people of earth?

It’s sadly missing as it’s sadly missing from every Muslim commentary which appears or sounds moderate…

So one moderate sounding/appearing Muslim speaks up at long last, but as is also nearly always the case — this Muslim is once again making his point to the infidels and not his 1,999,9999,999 fellow Muslims. Why?

What we get from the Muslims, rather than reformation, rather than confrontation with the supposed perverters of their “religion, what we always observe is that the Muslim unicorns emerge from the forest to tell us how bad they feel about it all, but I can’t help but notice quite a bit in this tiresome pattern:

1. Why does he only speak out when he’s been humiliated beyond tolerance, not humilated by the 100s of thousands of murders conducted by his supposedly morally superior government, but after a “teddy bear blasphemy” … the mention of the slaughter certainly appears like an afterthought here, one to make his pleading more creditable…

2. aside from their extremely rare appearances, these same Muslim unicorns only emerge in large gatherings of infidels, never in large gatherings of Muslims. Why? On the rare occasion of their emerging, they then regale the ‘infidels’ with the hideousness of those who distort Islam and embarrass Islam and succeed in “making Islam look utterly ridiculous”. Again — where are the substantive arguments to counter the hideous literal interpretation of their primitive creed?

THAT argument is even more elusive than the moderate seeming Muslim unicorn — for I have never seen its like. Never.

Dec 8, 2007 - 10:51 am bour3:

Wow. Thanks for that. Honestly did not know this kind of thinking was possible in Sudan.

Dec 8, 2007 - 11:01 am A. N. Pierson:

“Why does he only speak out when he’s been humiliated beyond tolerance, not humilated by the 100s of thousands of murders conducted by his supposedly morally superior government, but after a “teddy bear blasphemy” … the mention of the slaughter certainly appears like an afterthought here, one to make his pleading more creditable…”

Morton Doodslag, if you read Drima’s blog, The Sudanese Thinker, you would see that he speaks out continually.

Dec 8, 2007 - 11:27 am ushie:

Thank you, Drima. I hope that your country can be saved from the fanatics who wish to ruin it.

Dec 8, 2007 - 11:52 am Denny:

Thank you, Drima, for adding a needed bit of context to this story.

Dec 8, 2007 - 2:40 pm Little Much:

Dear Drima,
It is very rare, almost non-existant in fact that the West EVER heard a person of Muslim faith challenge any other Muslims whether protesting something irrational or not.

We desperately NEED to hear more voices like yours because in all honesty, many in the West know of no other voice but the “irrational” one of your Muslim faith…and it is a frightening and threatening one.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
American citizen

Dec 8, 2007 - 2:47 pm Don Cox:

“There’s something inherently ridiculous about being a Muslim in the 21st century. ”

Or a Christian fundamentalist, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Hindu fundamentalist. _Literal_ belief in the tenets of any of these old religions is now absurd. However, if taken as metaphors or legends or parables, they can often say things that are impossible to say in plain language.

Dec 8, 2007 - 3:23 pm dougf:

Well I guess you have to live in a place to appreciate the nuances of it, but the only thing I remember from my history classes about the Sudan was the Mahdi.

Probably the most famous graduate of the nutbars-r-us academy, he might feel right at home in Khartoum at the moment. Based upon recent events I find it very hard to believe that overall the Sudan has really progressed very greatly over the years. Take away the Oil MONEY and what do you think the place would look like if it looks suspiciously like a medieval backwater now. With all that Oil money flowing like wine.

Ooops, sorry about that wine analogy. One must be sensitive to ‘other’ cultural values mustn’t one.

Did not Churchill have some interesting things to say about the impact of Islam on sub-Saharan cultures and the States that grew up to sustain them ? I don’t recall it was very ’sympathetic’, and he didn’t even have the teddy-bear debacle to factor into his observations.

Dec 8, 2007 - 4:30 pm David W. Lincoln:

Episodes like this, or of a daughter of an Imam is in hiding because she became a Christian, or the calling for the execution of Abdel Rahman (who prefers to be called Joel) and is now in Italy, or the rioting that came from the cartoons printed in Danish newspapers (and this includes cartoons not printed, but said to have been in Danish newspapers) - pardon my skepticism, but a pattern has emerged.

Whether it is by the bomb, or the ballot box, like we are seeing in Malaysia or Turkey - Islam is based on the justification of man’s inhumanity to man, and I am not at all interested in dhimmitude.

Dec 8, 2007 - 6:13 pm venividivici:

Or a Christian fundamentalist, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Hindu fundamentalist. _Literal_ belief in the tenets of any of these old religions is now absurd.

Don, don’t defang my point with your intellectually shallow moral equivalence. If those other religions are “absurd”, Islam is “superabsurd”, and stands in relation to absurdity in the same relationship as Nietzsche’s “Superman” stood to man. The fact that Muslims are still fighting over who was the rightful successor of Mohammed, while at least Christians, Jews and Hindus have joined the broader sweep of history, puts Islam in a class of absurdity all its own.

However, if taken as metaphors or legends or parables, they can often say things that are impossible to say in plain language.

Yeah, like I really care about metaphors, legends and parables. Don, the only important verse of the Koran, for me as an “infidel”, is 9:29:

Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

I don’t care if the rest of the Koran is a retelling of the time Mohammed cleaned the Augean Stables with Hercules and they met up with The Prodigal Son and Vishnu afterwards for a few beers, as long as Muslims have this “literal” command to put me under their thumb, they can go pound sand.

Dec 8, 2007 - 7:59 pm Candide:

If I could get a hold of this Teddy Bear I’d put it on E-Bay.

Dec 8, 2007 - 9:09 pm Drima:

Thank you all for the feedback. There are some here though who still clearly aren’t satisfied and have questions.

I’ll get back with replies shortly but first I need to brush my teeth and have my breakfast.

Dec 8, 2007 - 9:21 pm Drima:

WR Jonas, it looks like your vaguely implying that I’m practicing Taqiyya.

Being a cautious American in a post 9/11 world is a good thing. There are indeed Muslims practicing Taqiyya when dealing with Americans and non-Muslims.

Being super paranoid is something else all together. Draw the line somewhere.

MikeM, the following two articles will answer your questions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7122562.stm
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article24988

You said:
“They don’t seem to have taught their children the meaning of their religion.”

Islam and its various aspects mean different things to different Muslims.

swassociates, most Sudanese Muslims in Khartoum ignored the spectacle since they believed it to be utterly silly and not worth their time.

venividivici, it seems that you’re hostile to faith in general. If someone lives by an interpretation that is personal and mainly spiritual, I don’t see why you
should be but hey, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Morton Doodslag, I understand that for you it’s hard to tell whose interpretation is right or wrong. Well let’s just say this, you’ve got the crazy rigid types and
you’ve got liberals, seculars, reform-minded, moderates etc. All your stance does is reaffirm the interpretations of the former as valid while ours as “fake”.

That isn’t helpful, constructive or even strategic.

Little Much, you may want to check out these two links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7122562.stm
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article24988

dougf and David W. Lincoln, see my reply to Morton Doodslag.

Dec 9, 2007 - 12:32 am RE:

Hopefully people like Drima will be able to restore some sense of sanity to the Islamic world, but until that day comes, we in the west should meet intolerance with intolerance.

I cannot and will not deny the evidence. I look at Lebanon and the Balkans today and see enough to realize Islam should receive no benefit of any doubt in the West. When Mecca’s doors open as wide as the Vatican’s and a person is not thrown into a Saudi jail for carrying a Bible, we might be able to talk, But until then there is no point in engaging with Islamic hypocrisy, double standards, and taqiya. The ball is entirely in the Islamic ‘moderates’ court id such ‘moderates’ do exist. Until they make tangible reforms, the door is shut in my mind. It is not our burden in the West to understand them on our turf.

As Thomas Mann once said, “Tolerance Becomes a Crime When Applied to Evil “

Dec 9, 2007 - 5:07 am dougf:

“dougf and David W. Lincoln, see my reply to Morton Doodslag.”–Drima

Thank you very much for both an interesting initial commentary and for a useful and valid follow-up. I am impressed by your sincerity and your ‘values’ and as I said, you probably have to ‘be’ in any one place to truly appreciate the subtleties of that place.

Perhaps it’s all just a matter of ‘bad press’.

But— with all respect two minor little quibbles do continue to give me pause. And these are directly from your two recent citations.

How many people actually protested in the UK about the asinine behaviour of the ‘few’ Sudanese extremists ? Was it thousands or merely a handful ? And were there protest marches in Khartoum about this obscene hi-jacking of a ‘tolerant’ religion ? Did the ‘extremists’ get put in their proper place by the Sudanese people ? Are they like the loons who march in neo-Nazi rallys in Western cities in 2007 ? Or are they more like the loons who marched in Nazi rallys in 1934? You imply the former but forgive me if I still suspect the latter.

Which brings up my second reservation. You cite a comment in a Sudanese Newspaper as evidence of a prevailing mood in the country. Quite apart from the fact that ‘elite’ opinions tend to be very divergent from the values of the street, we still have the telling fact that is quoted directly in the very opinion piece you cite.

“The current rulers of Sudan” are the ones making and enforcing the RULES. Did we judge the values of the Reich by consulting with some powerless sophisticate in Berlin or by the actions of the leadership ? Should we not evaluate both Sudan and Islam in Sudan by the same criteria?

If you and your friends that are offended and humiliated by your ‘current’ Regime, are not enforcing the Rules nor for that matter even making the rules that are enforced, are you the driving or the driven forces in Sudan ?

In short while I sincerely appreciate your insights, I remain unconvinced that you are driving HISTORY in the area. And I remain unconvinced that the ’small minority of extremists’ are either that small a minority, or that un-representative of the prevailing culture.

There have been some polls lately that indicate a Muslim backlash against the violent insanity of those who have become the public ‘face’ of the faith. But I am nor really sure of the WHY behind this development. I would very much like to believe that it is all due to an intellectual revulsion to fanaticism and extremism. But a small voice keeps whispering something about it being merely a matter of a ‘ strong horse, and a weak horse.

I guess we both live in hope that the small voice is wrong and that what we see as REALITY in the Sudan will soon become more reflective of what you say IS the reality of the Sudan.

But all that aside, thanks again for your insights into a country so far removed from my own. Very much appreciated and valued.

Dec 9, 2007 - 6:48 am WR Jonas:

Drima; Good morning . I do not know what taqiyya is so therefore I am not accusing you of anything.
Your defense of Islam is the same pathetic effort we always hear. IE,We do not understand the rich historical context and nuance of your layered and complex religion. That is true , so I read INFIDEL and someone who grew up and worshipped Islam found it abhorent, cruel and utterly FALSE. Now I admire people of courage and I find it important that she would risk everything including her life to tell us something. I surmise that Ayan Hirsi Ali is telling me the truth. The evidence of Muslim behavior around the world convinces me that she is right and you are deluded.
Examine your faith and see if it measures up the same standards as Christianity.

Dec 9, 2007 - 7:02 am venividivici:

venividivici, it seems that you’re hostile to faith in general. If someone lives by an interpretation that is personal and mainly spiritual

You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m hostile to Islam, due to its specific “rendition” of the godhead and the qualities of the prophet it venerates. The fact that it has only one prophet also bothers me, but I’ll leave that to the side for the moment.

I’m enough of an armchair anthropologist to know that humanity and religion are linked together throughout history, probably inescapably. That doesn’t mean that each religion has the same value or even that there’s such a thing as “religion in general”. If there is such a thing, I’m not hostile to it, at least insofar as the things I am hostile to in Islam (such as the division of the world into the “land of the faithful” and “the land of war”) are attenuated or spiritualized in this abstract “religion in general” amalgamation of all known religions.

The founders of religions, being guided by a superior level of insight regarding human nature, knew, among other things, that people cooperating in a shared venture accomplish more than one individual. Thus, all religions start with a community, e.g., the Islamic ummah, the Jewish nation of “Israel”(in the Biblical sense). So, your idea that religion can be “mainly personal and spiritual” is actually not in keeping with the intent of any religion’s founder. I would argue that it is also unsustainable over time and that religions will inevitably (to the extent that they even survive the “personal and spiritual” phase) go back to the original intent, which was to form a community under the banner of a specific interpretation of The Divine.

This, arguably, is the intention of those groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The fact that of the four main trends I can discern in Islam (those who want to have some kind of separation of religion and politics, those who want secularism, those leaving Islam, and those who want what the Muslim Brotherhood wants) the Muslim Brotherhood is the one gaining the most ground means I must plan for a future in which the Muslim Brotherhood is the “outward” and “political” face of the countries in which Islam is predominant. Thus, as a non-Muslim, I have to be prepared to deal with Muslim polities whose policy toward my polity can be encapsulated in Koran verse 9:29, as quoted in my post above. Now, I would love it if the Muslim Brotherhood (and its analogues in the Sudan) were “reasonable” people, but to the extent that they aren’t, that isn’t my fault and it is going to have to factor into the specific means I advocate to deal with the inevitable friction that will result between us.

Given my belief that all of the good things about Islam can be found in other religions and/or modern social philosophies such as classical liberalism, and all of the bad things about Islam aren’t found in any other extant religions (although Islam doesn’t have a monopoly on them, it’s just that the religions that held to simplistic social philosophies similar to Islam’s died out, for the most part, prior to the modern age), or any extant religion with Islam’s “numbers”, what do you think my opinion on the response to the Islamic challenge will be? Islam creates nothing but “costs” for me, without any attendant “benefits”. Seriously, can you name one benefit for me, a non-Muslim who doesn’t want to be a Muslim, that Islam creates or even could create in a best case scenario? That’s the difference between it and other religions. Christian fundamentalists create no costs or benefits for me, nor do Orthodox Jews or Hindus. And I’m sure there are millions of people in the West who have that very same experience and, as productive and law-abiding citizens ourselves, we’re getting just about completely fed up with everything Muslim. All these costs and no benefits. Hmmm, what to do about that? I know what happens in the business world when a product is all cost and no benefit.

Dec 9, 2007 - 7:26 am dougf:

I apologise for the extra comment here but I just now came across this article, which I think bears upon the points made previously and stands as a real rebuttal to a citation of ‘tolerance’ and ‘outrage’ made earlier.

Kaffirs Be Damned.

Dec 9, 2007 - 7:51 am Morton Doodslag:

I’ve read Drima’s site, and it simply confirms my comment above that no exegesis is provided there to refute the murderous interpretation of Islam which many or most Muslims seem to subscribe to globally. Rather, what is presented is a stress on the individual interpretation of Islam that Drima seems to subscribe to. What use then is his contribution, or his commentary above if he simply practices an interpretation that few or no other Muslims share?

In a perfect world where Muslim maniacs weren’t rampaging across the globe murdering, calling for mass extermination, and waging war against all non-Muslim nations and cultures, allowing or tolerating Muslims to practice idiosyncratic versions of their religion would be no problem for most people in the West. But Muslims ARE rampaging in the name of Islam, Muslims ARE murdering in the name of Islam, and Muslims are working across the spectrum to insinuate themselves further and further into “infidel” lands and societies…

What are they doing here? WHY are they coming? This is specially curious, given that many Muslims express revulsion at our society, and claim with wagging fingers that Islam is superior in every way. Why come to the horrific “infidel” lands, lands filled with “unbelievers” in all their satanic decadence if it is so horrible here? Further, Muslims are coming and increasingly insisting that they are here in the West to stay as if we have nothing to say in the matter — as if we have no right to judge them and their religion and their culture, or as if we have no right in our own home to judge whether their values and beliefs are harmful to us or not. Where does this hideous arrogance come from among the Muslims — especially since their cultures of origin show themselves to be genocidally opposed to any beliefs which go “against” Islam.

As a collective community, from France, Canada, the USA, UK, the Philippines, Russia, India, the Muslims are lashing out — they are relentlessly proving their susceptibility to violence in support of Islam, to endless rage at our societies, rage which they concoct and use to justify more violence against us. We also see endless efforts by that Muslim community to subvert and deflect tour efforts to protect ourselves from their terrorism. When we do this, the Muslims have the gall to label US the “unbelievers” and “infidels” in our own lands, they have the gall when we are critical to label US the bigots and “Islamophobes”, they have the gal as we attempt to grapple with the nightmare they’ve brought to our homeland with their heinous primitive religion, to accuse US of being the intolerant ones! It’s just too much.

I have noticed that in response to the comments in the thread above that at his site, Drima also takes special pains to describe the posts above primarily a conflict between theists and atheists — a very deceptive characterization of most of the discussion and most of the criticism leveled at him and hist religion above.

This formulation also cleverly equates the religiosity of himself (such as it is) with that of Christians and Jews, as if all religions are equal. I consider this a grotesque distortion of the facts, and a form of amoral relativism and equivalency nonsense. The world is NOT filled with Christian and Jewish priests exhorting their followers to wage war. The world is NOT filled with millions of Christians and Jews taking to the streets to maim and behead. The world is NOT filled with Christians and Jews threatening to exterminate their enemies…

Whereas the world IS filled with Muslim world leaders and priests exhorting their followers to wage war. The world IS filled with millions of Muslims taking to the streets to maim and behead. The world IS filled with Muslims threatening to exterminate their enemies…

Again, I challenge Drima to provide what is grossly missing from his article above and from his website:

Provide an exegesis of your religion which proves that your syncretistic interpretation of Islam is an accurate interpretation of Islam, and that the so-called ” extremists’ ” interpretation of Islam is incorrect.

Until so-called “moderates” Muslims prove that they have an interpretation of Islam based on the Islamic texts and the life of Islam’s prophet which counters the literal interpretations the Jihadis use consistently to justify their murderous rampage — I will remain a complete skeptic.

Highly individual and exotic interpretations of Islam such as that apparently put forward by Drima are useless. It’s clear they have absolutely no traction among the world’s Muslims, and claims of Islam’s moderatness based on these interpretations are truly red herrings. As such — those supposedly “moderate” Muslims who claim that the extremists have “hijacked” their religion without proving HOW their religion has been “hijacked” are just blowing hot air. Worse — they are perpetuating a flim flam which has worked very well so far among many in the West — that Islam has nothing to do with all the terrorism, totalitarianism, corruption, murder, and backwardness which the world sees wherever Muslims raise their heads and proclaim their religion.

Dec 9, 2007 - 2:20 pm Margo:

Drima:

I’ve read your blog since you first started. I admire you and am fond of you for being a wonderful young man, but I must ask you honestly:
What would happen to you personally if you ever renounced the Islamic faith?

Dec 9, 2007 - 6:04 pm M. Ibn Tahhara:

The controversy was also all the odder because of the long history between Islam and bears; some have argued that Winnie the Pooh himself was clearly a Muslim …

hara/

Dec 11, 2007 - 2:17 am

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