Tariq Ramadan

It is really tragic, in my mind, to see the world of intellectual scholarship damaged by the "War on Terror." In a recent court case, the U.S. Government's decision to revoke Professor Tariq Said Ramadan's visa, thereby barring him from accepting a position at Notre Dame University, was upheld.

Ramadan, a Muslim Swiss professor of Islamic Studies, is a controversial character -- his statements on what he perceives as "human rights violations" on the part of the Israeli state have brought him under suspicion of anti-semitism, and he has been vocally critical of the Iraq invasion -- but the revocation had nothing to do with any of these positions. His visa was revoked because he gave money, over a period ending in 2002, to two Swiss charities set up to aid Palestinians. The U.S. declared the charities "terrorist funding organizations" in 2003, a year after Ramadan quit donating to them. This is the sole reason (at least the sole stated reason) for denying him the visa; the government mentioned that he "should reasonably have known" that the organizations funded terrorists. Ramadan pointed out that it would have been hard for him to have known before the government itself did, and I have to admit he has a point there.

Now, the ironic thing is that Ramadan has been speaking out his whole career about Euro-Muslim identity and the urgent need for Muslims to use non-violence, give up the death penalty, and respect the laws of whatever nation they reside in. He encourages them to respect the freedom of religion they are given in the West and not worry that Westerners drink alcohol or tolerate pre-marital sex, since none of this is forced on any Muslim. He strongly condemned the 9/11 attacks, called for punishment to be wreaked on the perpatrators, and has specifically spoken out against suicide bombing. Goodness, he even said that Muslim anger at Pope Benedict XVI's (in)famous speech was disproportionate and made Muslims look bad.

So this leaves, in my view, three things to object to:

1. The official reason -- Ramadan did not anticipate, by at least one full year, the U.S.'s discovery that two charities he gave a thousand bucks to subsequently gave some money to Hamas;

2. The fact that Ramadan opposes U.S. foreign policy, indicating a desire to admit only those scholars deemed ideologically sound by the oh-so-scholarly Bush administration;

or 3. His last name is Ramadan, and we know that is some scary thing that terrorists celebrate. If he would just change that name to something nice, like "Wolfowitz" or "Mukasey" . . . . . .

"Political Correctness"

I was reading over a couple of articles recently that brought to my mind the slippery and oft-cited concept of "political correctness." One of them, about a Seattle public school teacher who asked her pupils to remember that Thanksgiving is not a happy time for Native Americans, comes from the FoxNews Network, which like all media has a radical left-wing bias. The other, an opinion piece by Michael Medved, gives historical evidence for a unicultural America.

I don't mean to interact with either of these articles point-by-point, but each is worth reading, and I do not wholly disagree with either. However, I have a bone to pick with some assumptions that underlie each article. The former asks us to share a laugh (or a scandalized ubi sunt?) over the state that this country (or at least its radical coasts) has come to. Apparently, the idealistic teacher tried to build a case for Thanksgiving being a time of sorrow and lament among the Native American community, which is apparently not quite factual. My response to this would be "stop being silly and try to make your otherwise good point without recourse to inaccuracy." The article (I read between the lines here a little) asks us to gripe "Look at that. Undermining our sacred values, by God."

Medved argues for some kind of "melting-pot" uniculturalism by stating, among other things, that the Know-Nothing party's machinations against Catholics demonstrate an American unwillingness to accept the unassimilated other. All he really seems to prove is that yes, in the past, immigrants to America were expected to "Americanize" and desist from their bizarre foreign behavior. True enough; people in this era also sold cocaine as children's headache relief and believed the Negro to be closer to the original ape than the enlightened whitey, so I'm not sure that archaic views on society and culture are appropriate corroborations for one's argument. All of this aside, however, I was still left wondering what the fundamental reason behind this argument was; why, after all, are we so against multiculturalism or cultural diversity?

I think the answer lies in this vague and mutable little concept of "political correctness." The term originated from the well-known early 20th century totalitarian regimes that forced individuals to either spout the party line or risk being "purged." No one would argue that this is going on in the USA as of now, so a new definition came about: basically, the ridiculous stuff that the Left wants to replace our values and heritage with. Hyphenated names, gay pride, class consciousness, the right of women to vote ... etc.

I am more than willing to concede that some of these concepts, and the people who push them, have significant cloud of the ridiculous hanging about them. But so does any political ideology. My problem is when anything that seems to smack of social justice for any minority, or of an attack upon corporate misdeeds, or even the vague and demure suggestion that sometime, somewhere, in all the decades since Jamestown, it is possible that misdeeds have been committed on the American continent by white men of British descent, is instantaneously branded "PC," which apparently then gives us license to ignore it and/or rail against it. The Right, by fostering an almost paranoid skepticism of government (but not big business, for some reason) and then trotting out this label, has conveniently found a way to ridicule many voices that, despite any attendant silliness, are really quite well-intentioned and helping fight the battle for justice and equality. All this based on the assumption that rights are somehow a zero-sum game, and that if Native Americans or homosexuals are freed from discrimination, then somehow white, straight Evangelicals will be in for a round of persecution.

Instead of the paranoid and perjorative definition of "political correctness," I would like to offer a re-contextualization. "Political," at heart, just means "social" or "pertaining to the polis." What if PC could just mean acceptable in the polis -- i.e. polite, just, non-discriminatory? It doesn't have to mean that we hate America or white people, or that we intend to establish draconian racial quotas, or make Spanish an official language, or condition our children to be gay. It does mean that we should treat everyone with respect, whether in speech, or hiring, or education; and that applies to a lesbian Khazakh-American muslim just as much as it does to me.

Sullivan on Obama

I read over most of this article today while at Barnes & Noble, and found it very interesting. According to Sullivan, Obama is the only candidate who will not polarize voters along lines drawn in the 1960s and growing ever more acrimonious. Let me know what you think ...

HEY ANON-Y!

Hello everyone ...

I was tired of logging in as "anonymous," so instead of, like, writing a poem and like, not attributing it to myself, I made a new blog. I think the old one is still accessible, but I was writing in it about three years ago and then stopped, so I think it would be a little discontinuous and weird.

I cannot promise frequent posts, but I can make sure that the ones you get will be relatively interesting.