Religion

The Onion is "reporting" on apathy amongst terrorists cells in the U.S. According to the report,

"We remain wholly committed to the destruction of America, the Great Satan," al-Sharif said. "But now is not a good time for us. The season finale of Lost was such a cliff- hanger that we have to at least catch the first episode of the new season. After that, though, death to the infidels."

"Probably," added al-Sharif, who noted that his nearly $6,000 in credit-card debt from recent purchases of a 52-inch HDTV and a backyard gas grill prevents him from buying needed materials for the attack.

Though the members of the cell said that they "live only to spill the blood of crusaders who oppress Muslims," they cited additional reasons for the delay, including an unexpired free Netflix trial and nagging lower-back pain.

"I think I'm entitled to a little time to fully enjoy the in-dash MP3 adapter and heads-up display that Allah, in His infinite wisdom, has seen fit to provide me with," munitions expert Mohammed Akram said of the 2006 Mercury Mariner that is intended to be used as a car bomb during the attack. "Also, I have nine months left on the lease. But after that, I am more than willing to load it with explosives and go to my glory in its all-leather interior and heated seats."

Cell member Sayyid al-Tantawi, a Cairo-born former physics professor who was able to obtain employment at San Onofre as a reactor technician, once routinely worked 18-hour days so he could secretly obtain security codes and detailed schematics of the facility. But since his promotion to senior project manager last November, al-Tantawi has grown accustomed to perks such as higher pay, mandatory vacation time, delegation of responsibilities, and long lunches with other managers.

"Don't get me wrong, I totally wish swift and painful death to all American pigs, especially that jerk [general manager] Dave [Landis]," al-Tantawi said. "But I'm no longer the new guy—why bust my ass all day long anymore? When I get home after a day at work, I don't savor staying up all night designing dirty-bomb triggering mechanisms like I did when I first got here. Sometimes I just want to pop in a CD by that soulful infidel Chris Daughtry and relax."

Who needs AlJazeera when you can get news like this?

(hat tip: Bruce Schneier)

The Pew Research Center has just released it's findings from a survey of American Muslims. It's findings? Muslim Americans are

...largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.

It's an interesting survey and well worth the read. The findings shouldn't shock most Muslims brought up in the "West" (or South Africa) and are probably inline with a random sample of Muslims from Johannesburg (or from my wonderfully diverse team).

Some highlights:

• Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.
• Large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society....And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
• Roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere... Among native-born Muslims, roughly half are African American (20% of U.S. Muslims overall), many of whom are converts to Islam.
• ...the Pew Research Center estimates the total population of Muslims in the United States at 2.35 million.
• Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries....
• A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks....
• Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism...

The answer to the question "Can suicide bombings of civilian targets to defend Islam be justified?" seems to be causing a small stir since 13% of respondents aged 18-29 answered "sometimes". Marc Lync provides some well needed perspective to this question/answer and I'm enjoying the resulting comments. Glenn Greenwald also weighs in with a great piece on Salon.com (you may need to click through an annoying ad to get to it) where he argues that

The reality, though, is that it is almost impossible to conduct a poll and not have a sizable portion of the respondents agree to almost everything. And in particular, with regard to the specific question of whether it is justifiable to launch violent attacks aimed deliberately at civilians, the percentage of American Muslims who believe in such attacks pales in comparison to the percentage of Americans generally who believe that such attacks are justifiable.

He provides examples from other polls showing large numbers of Americans supporting attacks on civilians and that 2/3 of US troops support torture to extract information and that most of them would not report collegues who had mistreated civilians.

Of course, whenever quoting these sorts of numbers from polls/surveys, it's always worthwhile remembering the famous Disraeli quote..."There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Last week Turkey banned access to video sharing site YouTube because of a video..

...which has now been taken down, showing Greeks criticizing Turkey and insulting Turkey’s national flag and founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

As expected, some were quick to blame this block on "Muslims" which makes absolutely no sense as the ban was a response to an insult to the non other than Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk was the founder of "modern" Turkey and the man who tried to purge Turkey of its Ottoman and Islamic character by introducing a tradition which I call "Extremist Secularism". From replacing the Arabic script to abolishing religious law and education, Atatürk tried to wish away a long and rich period of history in which the Turks led the Islamic Empire. Given the character of Turkey and the extent to which Islam is ingrained in the fabric of the society, Atatürk's purge was the equivalent of a national lobotomy.

Trying to impose an ideology that is foreign to a nation can only be done by force, intimidation and coercion. And this is why the form of secularism in Turkey manifests itself in this sort of extremism and intolerance. Anything that remotely challenges the idea of secularism and the icons of secularism (in this case Atatürk himself) becomes a threat to the status quo and thus needs to be rooted out.

Take for example another ridiculous ban in Turkey - that of disallowing headscarfs in universities and in Parliament. To everyone (except possibly the French) this seems like a ridiculous measure - I mean, we're meant to embrace diversity aren't we?

Extremism in any form is bad news - even if the alternative to it is "not secularism". Trying to enforce "secularism above all other" will lead to something that looks uglier than fascism...

Marc Lynch has an interesting post called "Brotherhood of the blog" on the Guardian's comment is free. From the article:

Over the last few months, young Muslim Brotherhood members have begun blogging in force. This sudden, dramatic development may come as a surprise to western observers, who generally assume that blogging empowers liberal, pro-western voices. And it's true that the first wave of Arab political blogging featured mostly westernized, relatively liberal voices writing in English - often brilliantly individual voices who made little claim to represent the broader political spectrum. Much coverage of the Arab blogosphere continues to focus on these voices....

But the Arab political blogosphere has changed. Over the last couple of years, a new wave of more politically engaged bloggers has emerged, often writing in Arabic and deeply connected to local political campaigns. The young Bahraini bloggers who denounce repression against human rights NGOs, or the young Egyptians using blogs to support the Kefaya movement and expose police brutality still fit a recognizably liberal story of popular empowerment. But the Egyptian Muslim Brothers using the same blogging platforms and the same campaign strategies to raise awareness of the imprisonment and mistreatment of their brethren do not.....

Still, the Brotherhood's online activity has more in common with the secular political activists of the younger generation than with the older members of the Brotherhood. Today's younger Muslim Brothers are trying to harness blogging technology to generate the kinds of solidarity, support and attention that Alaa Abd al-Fattah and Kareem have enjoyed

This is an interesting trend to watch since many may argue that the Muslim Brothers represent the broader Arab (or Muslim) opinion. When Ethan Zuckerman, a co-founder of Global Voices (GV) was in Doha last year one of the things we discussed was that the GV bloggers (while fantastic) were not neccessarily representative of the broader communities that they came from. My concern was that since they are mostly English speaking and affluent (at least affluent enough to use an internet cafe) and thus may not represent the same aspirations as the "Arab Street" (or South American Street or African Street...). Of course, the good folk at GV are aware of this and are currently looking to hire an Outreach Director to bring others into the conversation.

And now that the Muslim Brothers from Egypt are blogging, it would be interesting to see how much weight Global Voices (and other bloggers) give to these voices.