JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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1
Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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2
Confrontation
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3
U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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4
California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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5
Kuroki reported pregnant 2 weeks after denying relationship with Akanishi
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
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SezWho2
WilliB, it is not the religion that is issuing the death threat. It is a person interpreting that religion. I don't know if all religions have such persons, but Islam is not the only one that does.
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SezWho2
In the matter of Molly Norris, what would you have Obama chastize the American people for or what do you think he direct his AG to call us? Do you think he should say, "About six months ago I authorized the targeted killing of al-Alwaki. Let me be perfectly clear that it is completely unconscionable that this individual would call for the death of an American citizen."
What do you think he should say to the American people on this account?
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SezWho2
This is your take on my response to WilliB?
Was his context WW2? I didn't get that it was. My point was that to identify a problem is not the same thing as solving it. Problems that cannot be solved must be ameliorated or endured.
We could do what we did with success in Iraq and none in Afghanistan, storm into Yemen and hunt down the offender. Do you think that would solve the problem? What do you think will? Standing around and ragging on Islam or Muslims will not.
Moderator: Back on topic please.
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SezWho2
WilliB, I know what analogy you are looking at. My point was that this analogy offered nothing in terms of solving the problem.
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SezWho2
Do you think it would solve the problem if we whipped up anti-Japanese sentiment and then, concentrated many of the Japanese in our own country and for good measure, invaded Japan? It seems to me we did that already and the right-wingers are still here. They might not reach you in Ames, Iowa, but in Los Angeles you'd be just another push-pin on a crime map. And, of course, you'd better leave Kawasaki before the last train has gone.
It seems to me that one of the problems here is that very few people are talking about approaches to the solution of the problem. Instead we folks seem to be blaming Islam for being inherently evil or blaming Islamic moderates for not standing up to extremists. I don't think that the problem is either.
The problem is that al-Alwaki serves himself more than Allah in the issuance of this fatwa, that he has too wide an audience among those who see themselves as politically oppressed and who find an excuse for action in the more violent passages of the Qur'an and that the Yemeni government sees no percentage in working with the US primarily and other Western nations secondarily.
We should be working toward international agreements regarding what terrorism is, when interference with national sovereignty is warranted and how justice should be meted out to those who violate the agreements. People will argue that this is not practical and I would say that given the world as it exists today, such agreements will not be immediately effective. Which is why I use the phrase "working toward".
It seems to me, though, that blaming Islam gets us nowhere.
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SezWho2
And with you, it seems that no matter what I say, your topic will always be that I am engaging in hate speech against the US. You say that you refuse to engage with me because that only gives me another opportunity to do what you say I invariably do. Yet here you are giving me another opportunity.
So, I will say to you what I said to another chap who is overly sensitive to criticisms of the US and I will repeat the points that I made concerning Norris in my original post.
I hate that she has to go into hiding because of her exercise of free speech.
I hate that anyone has to go into hiding or deny their perspectives because others object to their testimony. (Increasingly I find great relevance to that very point in our discussions.)
Without respect to the countries in which people live, people should not be calling for the deaths of other people. No prayers for silver bullets.
Doing so is a crime, not an indication of some supposed evil of Islam.
It is a crime whether or not recognized by the governments in which those countries live.
It is in the US interest to promote the universal recognition that it is a crime and to promote the willingness to prosecute it as such.
The US will probably have to give up something in order to get something and in this case I think it will have to give up its ability to make war at will.
Which ones of those do you disagree with and why do you seize upon #7?
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SezWho2
sailwind, thank you for your post. I actually agree with most of what you say. I just have two observations.
I don't contend that Islamic extremists do violence against us because of what I refer to as our imperialistic foreign policy. I think that our policy aggravates the extremist's willingness to use violence and that wars in largely Islamic countries worsen it further. I don't think wars are the answer and I think we will come to regret the two we are now engaged in.
I agree with your statement that we are the Playboy under the mattress to the traditional Islamic purist. I think that Playboy is probably too gentile to serve as an emblem to what we are to them. I would differentiate between a purist and an extremist but, be that as it may, I would observe that the traditional clerics of any religion--at least any that I know of--are afraid of losing control. Furthermore, all religions that I know of except possibly the Shakers, have suffered a loss of control, most of them without any permanent damage. So, while the purists may fear that, I'm not sure the moderates do. I think our job is to assist the moderates. You and I seem to disagree on how best to do that.
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SezWho2
sailwind, if only you could resist the impulse to caricature other people's arguments!
If you want to find who the imperialist is, you have only to look at whose troops are stationed furthest from home, whose language is being spoken and whose currency is being used. It doesn't matter if you call it protection of democracy instead of imperialism. As long as democracy is the system of the imperialist, it is still imperialism. And as long as it is imperialism, it will create opposition and anger.
I really get that you do not want to think of America in those terms. However, I think that your refusal to do so hurts, rather than helps, the country you love. I think that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq hurt us. They hurt us at home, draining capital that we do not have and setting citizen against citizen with respect to their necessity. They hurt us abroad as being extra-legal at best and needlessly destructive at worst. They hurt us within the Islamic community by feeding extremism and by making it more difficult for moderates to hold sway.
But, with respect to that, we have only a difference of opinion. I can live with that. What I find a lot harder to live with is the lack of charity ("...but the greatest of these is charity...") that you and others bear towards people who dare to criticize your--and their--government.
I think it's great that you'll keep on loving your country. Not so great, however, is that you think that these fatwas are from 8th century neanderthals. Less great still is the idea that this particular fatwa was issued because of our imperialistic foreign policy. It was issued because of Norris's stance toward the prophet. Least great of all would be a suggestion on your part that I think any private US citizen deserves a death fatwa because of such a policy. If you think that is what I have written you are reading what you want me to have written and not what I wrote.
Do I think that the US "somehow deserves" Muslim animosity? You bet I do. However, when I say it, my emphasis is on "somehow". It is on the non-deniability of responsibility, on the necessary acknowledgment that we are not without fault in this matter. It sounds to me that when you say it, the emphasis is on "deserves" and that you suggest that I greet American pain with a sense of schadenfreude. You seem to suggest that you are somehow a better American than I am. And that you may be--but by nothing that you have demonstrated here.
Moderator: Readers, please stay on topic. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not relevant to this discussion.
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SezWho2
Criticizing the US is not the same as bashing the US. However, you choose to conflate the two and you have chosen to make the argument about me rather than about what I have said about Norris. So we careen from pillar to post talking about points that are further and further removed from my point.
You deny American culpability for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. You deny culpability for sanctions. And I suppose you would as well deny culpability for constant American interference in the affairs of Middle-Eastern and Islamic countries. You seem to be a Patriot if not a PATRIOT. I myself am only a patriot, but that doesn't seem to be enough for you.
Here is a list of my points about Norris:
Now, which of these do you disagree with and why have you been spending all your time with number 7?
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SezWho2
We can discuss it any time you are actually willing to address a point without resorting to sarcasm or without opening up a line of argumentation which you then run from when it is countered. Until then I'll continue to do my best to represent my point of view and you'll have to carry on with whatever it is you're doing.
No one should be issuing death decrees. But it is not Muslims we need to be down with that. It is governments throughout the world. Yet governments throughout the world are unlikely to cooperate with us as long as we make it clear that we hold ourselves above everyone else's justice.
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SezWho2
Not so. I don't approve the fatwa. What double standard are you talking about? We have a double standard now. I am arguing for a single one.
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SezWho2
If you can't get the name right as you are creating your pejorative categories, I'm not really sure how we can trust you to get anything else right either.
The Nuremberg standard for war criminality held that the aggressor was responsible for all subsequent acts. If you were to look up "casualties of the Iraqi war" in Wikipedia, you will find numbers for Iraqi deaths that range from 100,000 to 1,000,000. These numbers do not include Afghani deaths and they certainly do not include the 500,000 Iraqi children that Unicef estimated as having died as a result of US-sponsored sanctions prior to the war, a number of child deaths which Madeleine Albright famously described as being one worth paying.
Add the refugees in both countries and add the destruction of infrastructure and the inadequate replacement of it. What we have caused in those two countries and in waging wars of choice simply beggars belief--especially when one looks at the lack of success we have had in stopping terrorism of any stripe, especially terrorism from politically aggrieved Islamic extremists.
You seem to be greatly in denial about the amount of damage that these wars have caused in those two countries. Moreover, you seem to be unable to address what has always been my main point--that the issuance of fatwas by clerics in Yemen and elsewhere is a crime and it is a crime that would be best solved by international cooperation, including the cooperation of Arab and Muslim states. And that, furthermore, needless war against Arab countries and holding ourselves aloof from international justice does not create an environment where international law can flourish.
Al-Alwaki is quite wrong in putting Norris on his fatwa list. But the American government has given Muslims precious few reasons to believe that Americans are not the enemy, particularly those who take liberties with the prophet. We cannot sanitize the globe through war.
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SezWho2
He wasn't. But you are observing without taking responsibility for making a clear point. If your point is that there were fatwas before now, yes there were. As were there causes for grievance--particularly with respect to the fraught religious situation in India and particularly in consideration of Rushdie's Muslim roots.
If your point is that it would have been impossible to exacerbate the situation that existed in 1989, that would be just flat-out wrong, I think. And I would cite George W. Bush's adventures as corroborating evidence.
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SezWho2
I think you're confusing George W. Bush with the US there. That would be the George W. Bush who led us into two needless and unwinnable wars against countries where the predominant faith is Islam. The Bush that dealt in half-truths to pursue a political agenda and persuade the American people that we must kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims and displace millions more on account of Muslim extremists.
I think we should at least consider the possibility that this has spread extremism like water on a grease fire and think about where we want to go from here: more water or a different approach?
I don't really get the point of this question. If she were my daughter, I would be quite afraid for her. But I would have been afraid for her without the fatwa much as I would have been afraid for her were she an abortion clinic doctor.
If she were my daughter I would be very sad that I might never see her again were she to enter a protection program and I would be very angry at the intolerance of certain Muslims. I think I would probably want to throttle al-Alwaki if not castrate and then gut him.
I would probably not want the US to invade Yemen on this account but I would most likely not reflect on how the world got to be the way it is and what we should do about it.
Your point is...?
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SezWho2
You are complaining again.
People can speak out against "Muslim crime" all they want and you will not hear any complaint from me that they do so. I rarely comment on anyone who speaks from the heart unless there is something that is uninformed or blatantly prejudicial in their remarks. What you will mostly hear from me is counterargument to what I consider to be people's unthoughtful rants against "Muslim crime".
So what if my counterarguments point to US involvement or responsibility? So what if they suggest that the US needs to reexamine its own actions in the matter? Let's assume, just for ten seconds and for the sake of argument, that my counterarguments and suggestions are perfectly valid. Should I keep quiet? If you can agree that I should not, it seems to me that the proper way to handle my comments is to show that they are irrelevant or false. You do neither.
If you want to be a moderator, please apply for the job. It seems to me that what you want to do is to determine what is and what is not relevant without having to be bothered with giving a reason for your determination.
As much as I dislike quoting myself I will repeat the last 4 lines of my 13-line original post to which you took umbrage and in which the first 9 lines were devoted to the crime:
Yes, this is a criticism of the US. However, it is also an observation that we lack a strong international justice system precisely at the time that international justice systems would or could be a help in addressing crimes of this sort. You chose to see in this only a criticism of the US. What's up with that?
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SezWho2
I think the simple answer to that question is that she should have this right. But where do you go from there?
Personally, I think I should have the right to go to my office without worrying that some nutcase who is packing heat gets derailed by something someone else says or does and starts opening fire. I think I should have the right to drive the speed limit on the Interstate without having to worry that an enraged driver decides that I am impinging upon his personal space and starts blasting away at me with his 9mm. I think I should have the right to go to a hockey game and have a difference of opinion with someone else without having to worry about being beaten up and left a paraplegic. I think I should have the right to have dinner in my own home without having to worry whether or not my daughter is going to be struck by a stray round from a drive-by.
Life is fraught with dangers. Freedoms have never conferred safety. I have little doubt that if the Internet were so constructed that you could press a button and permanently--and I mean permanently--quiet someone whose opinions we did not like, it would either become a more civil place or the world's population problem would begin to be solved.
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SezWho2
Again, you have struck into the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is this: instead of answering my criticisms, you claim that I am anti-American and excuse yourself from answering the criticisms on that account.
You have no idea what the US is to me except through what I say. And if you will not trouble yourself to confront what I say, but instead content yourself to dismiss what I say based on your inference of anti-Americanism from selected passages, you are likely not ever to understand what the US is to me. No skin off my nose.
The difference between my relationship with WilliB and yours with me is that I argue the opposite with WilliB without accusation. You have taken to accuse without argumentation. Rather craven, I think, for one of your obvious ability.
In a perfect world Norris should not have to live under threat of this fatwa. You've noticed, though, that we do not live in a perfect world. It is pointless to argue that our imperfections are not as bad as their imperfections. The thing to note is that we should be willing to remove the beam from our own eye before complaining about the mote in another's.
What I see in America of late, particularly in regard to Islam, is the tendency to turn the meaning of the aphorism on its head. We construe Islam to have a beam and ourselves a mote, if anything at all. And then, regardless of the virtual impossibility of ever having a beam in one's eye and the consequent meaning of the aphorism, we credit ourselves with clarity of vision.
Yes, a fatwa of death is a vile thing. But "they envy us our freedoms" is a poor answer.
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SezWho2
I don't think it is anti-American to be pro-tolerance or to be critical of US policy. But at last, I think, we have reached the heart of the matter.
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SezWho2
It's kind of hard to have a fair vote when 12% of the polling stations, mostly in Pashtun areas, have been closed.
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SezWho2
SuperLib, it's difficult to be polite to one so determined to deal in rudeness. I realize that may be a point you would like to make about Islam. However, I don't think the situation will improve by rudeness on both sides.
Please get back to me when you have something to say that is relevant to the conversation.
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