The Death of Edward Said -- A tribute

TAhmed and Stuka (and Sameer?)

Thank you for defending me; I do appreciate it. Given that MNI has done little but throw out gratuitous insults without really attempting to address the basic question of just how good was Said`s scholarship in ``Orientalism,`` I`m not sure its worth wasting much time on him and his chelas.

I was a bit angered at his sneering disdain for any one that dares to criticize his heroes and his preferred school of though without he even trying to address any of the issues raised. This is something that I`ve experienced in many classes and seminars during both my graduate and undergraduate days. Partisans, whether of the Left or the Right, really do not do well with logic or evidence, do they?

There are some honourable exceptions to this. My graduate Political Theory professor, a leading authority on Lesbian Rights/Feminism, was one of the few I`ve met who was capable of judging an argument fairly and impartially.

Regards.

Saminasha #123 Please re-read my posts, and you will realize that I did not thank them for clarification, since I required none (having read enough of Said to realize that the man was without integrity).

Rather, I thanked them for writing good, rational posts at a time when they seemed to be on short supply on this board.

Dost Mittar:

``[36:60] Did I not covenant with you, O Children of Adam, that you shall not worship the devil? That he is your most ardent enemy?

[36:61] And that you shall worship Me alone? This is the right path.

[36:62] He has misled multitudes of you. Did you not possess any understanding?

[36:63] This is the Hell that was promised for you.

[36:64] Today you will burn in it, as a consequence of your disbelief.

[36:65] On that day we will seal their mouths; their hands and feet will bear witness to everything they had done. ``


This is funny. I have never read the Koran, but these verses sound like they are right out of the Old Testament. In fact, the crux of the message is exactly the same as what Yahweh tells the Chosen People (the jews)

If anything, Islam should not be studied in isolation but in conjunction with Judaism and Pre Roman Christianity.

``You are the one who confidently insists that Said lied -- ot ``exaggerated``, not ``mischaracterized``, but lied. ``

HAHAHA!!! If the left does it, it is ``exaggerated``...but the right always ``lies``...Wah wah!! Two different sets of rules, and these people actually believe they hold the moral high ground!!

Talk about self delusion.

temporal, tahmed:
temporal saheb, I agree with you, IF it is permitted:-)
tahmed saheb, I did not toss in a few random verses from quran but the ones immediately preceding the one you had quoted which, to my admittedly untrained mind, seemed to provide the context to your verse.
Hey, I would love to see all Muslims accept your interpretation of Islam. That would be wonderful for all Muslims and even more wonderful for kaafirs like me. But to me, your religion seems more like Akbar`s Deen-e-Illahi.

Also, Fuzair and Tahmed...lets see what Benard Lewis makes of this....


Is Bush`s War in Iraq A ``Brain Fart``?
09/26/2003 @ 4:50pm
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Did retired General Anthony Zinni really call George W. Bush`s war in Iraq a ``brain fart``? That seems to be the case. But first, some background.

On Thursday night, Zinni, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline. And he was rather sharp in his assessment of George W. Bush`s policy in Iraq. Before the war, Zinni, who had been an envoy for Bush in the Middle East, opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq, arguing that Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat. On Nightline, Zinni compared Bush`s push for the war with the Gulf of Tonkin incident--an infamous episode in which President Lyndon Johnson misrepresented an attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers in order to win congressional approval of the war in Vietnam--and he challenged ``the credibility behind`` Bush`s prewar assertions concerning Iraq`s possession of weapons of mass destruction and its association with anti-American terrorists. ``I`m suggesting,`` Zinni said, ``that either the [prewar] intelligence was so bad and flawed--and if that`s the case, then somebody`s head ought to roll for that--or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people.`` Zinni said he believed that Hussein had maintained ``the framework for a weapons of mass destruction program that could be quickly activated once sanctions were lifted`` and that such a program, while worrisome, did not immediately endanger the United States.

Zinni raised the issue that Bush might have purposefully misled the public and not shared with it the true reason for the war: ``If there`s a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it`s the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a model democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the [public] case based on that strategic decision....I think it`s a flawed--like the domino theory--it`s a flawed strategic thought or concept....But if that`s the reason for going in, that`s the case the American people ought to hear. They ought to make their judgment and determine their support based on what the motivation is for the attack.``

Zinni was, in a way, being polite. Earlier in the month, he addressed a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. There he let loose. Reflecting the views of high-ranking U.S. military officials who were dubious about launching a war against Iraq and skeptical about the occupation that would follow, Zinni accused the Bush crowd of having not been ready for the challenges to come after defeating the Iraqi army. ``We`re in danger of failing,`` he noted, because the Bush administration had not readied itself for what would follow the initial military engagement. ``We fought one idiot here [in Iraq], just now,`` he said. ``Ohio State beat Slippery Rock 62 to 0. No shit! You know! But we weren`t ready for that team that came onto the field at the end of that three-week victory.`` He went on:

``Right now, in a place like Iraq, you`re dealing with Jihadists that are coming in to raise hell, crime on the streets that`s rampant, ex-Ba`athists that still running around, and the potential now for this country to fragment: Shi`ia on Shi`ia, Shi`ia on Sunni, Kurd on Turkomen. It`s a powder keg. I just got back from Jordan. I talked to a number of Iraqis there. And what I hear scares me even more that what I read in the newspaper. Resources are needed, a strategy is needed, a plan. This is a different kind of conflict. War fighting is one element of it.``

Zinni displayed little confidence in Bush and his aides. He said that their Iraq endeavor has landed the United States into the middle of assorted ``culture wars`` in the Middle East. ``We don`t understand that culture,`` he remarked. ``I`ve spent the last 15 years of my life in this part of the world. And I`ll tell you, every time I hear...one of the dilettantes back here speak about this region of the world, they don`t have a clue. They don`t understand what makes them tick. They don`t understand where they are in their own history. They don`t understand what our role is....We are great at dealing with the tactical problems--the killing and the breaking. We are lousy at solving the strategic problems; having a strategic plan, understanding about regional and global security and what it takes to weld that and to shape it and to move forward.``

Do you think Zinni is angry over the war? He did get worked up as he ended his speech:

``We should be...extremely proud of what our people did out there....It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties and the sacrifice that`s being made. It also kills me when I hear someone say that, well, each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, they`re insignificant statistically.`` (Perhaps he had in mind the comment Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made in June, when he played down attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq by saying, ``You`ve got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month; there`s going to be violence in a big city.``) Zinni continued: ``When we put [our enlisted men and women] in harm`s way, it had better count for something, It can`t be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn`t thought out.``

Brain fart? That`s not quite a military term. But those are fighting words. And Zinni practically counseled his audience to rebel against the Bush administration. U.S. troops, he said, ``should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting--our generals will take care of that--but for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept this, if we accept this level of sacrifice without that level of planning? Almost everyone in this room, of my contemporaries--our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And you`re going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are.``

Brain fart. Garbage and lies. Never again. This was harsher rhetoric than Zinni deployed on Nightline, though his message was essentially the same. With such talk, he is in sync with Senator Ted Kennedy, who was blasted by Republicans for calling the war a ``fraud.`` Note to Kennedy and other critics of the war: Fire away. If a Republican counter-attacks, you can always reply, at least I didn`t say Bush is asking Americans to give their lives for a war based on mental flatulence.

COMING SOON: David Corn`s new book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers, due out September 30).

Tahmed,

Can you actually explain how Sigalph`s or Fuzair`s posts clarified Said`s body of scholarship for you?

dost mittar #115 Your basic point clearly is that the Quran seeks to compel the individual to reject other faiths and accept only Islam. You couldnt be more wrong. I`ll come to the lines you quote in a minute. Please look up Surah Baqarah (considered to be a summarization of the Quranic message), where it explicitly states that ALL individuals, regardless of religion, will be judged on the Judgement Day. And this is consistent with the message elsewhere in the Quran: e.g. where it says that what the message given to the prophet muhammed is no different than that given to messengers before him; where it says prophets have been sent to every people, to convey the message to them in their own language; where it refers to itself as the ``Arabic Quran``, sent to a people who are not familiar with other languages; where it addresses ``O Mankind``, not ``O Muslims.

I am surprised that you think that when the Quran admonishes people to use their eyes and ears this is ``contrary to the central basis of Islam - as well as other religions with the exception of Buddhism - which is faith``. A moments reflection should make it clear that far from being contrary, it is fully consistent with the concept of a God who cannot be seen. The Quran makes it clear in a number of places that man cannot ``see`` everything. So: logic would say that the Quran tells us to use your eyes and ears to do what they are supposed to do (like catching liars and fakes like Whiny Eddy, even if they are idolized by third world intellectuals for pandering to their knee-jerk anti-westernism). However, we use our heads to realize that we can only perceive so much of reality.

You toss in a few Quranic verses as if they substantiate what you are saying. They dont mean anything out of context. How, for example, does even one of these verses demand that people convert to Islam? And particularly when the Quran has made it clear (as I discuss above) that ALL INDIVIDUALS, regardless of faith, will be judged.

While what you are saying would be music to any mullahs ears (who also like to think that it is either the ``muslim way`` or the highway), it simply isnt true. Any careful reading of the Quran makes it clear. I suggest you read the Quran one more time, and check for yourself the points I make.

Fuzair #111 Great post. After reading your post it becomes clear that the emperor is not only has a tendancy to fib, he cant translate too well either (where he translates the french for ``Ionian sea`` to ``Ionian sky``) and cant get his facts straight either.

sigalph #113 Just when one is ready to give up on the ability to think rationally of people on chowk, you and fuzair come along to set things straight.

One minor quibble: Agreed one should not speak ill of the dead, but only if one is within earshot of a close relative (in order not to hurt the feelings of the grieving widow). Said is a public figure, he made public statements on things that had to do with matters of life and death (since surely the events of 9/11 have caused so many people to die, and 9/11 was at its root a case of knee-jerk anti-americanism from hell). I think it is OK to expose him for what he was in life. May God forgive his wrongdoings and his mendacity.

Thanks for the post.

dost-mittar & hamidm
...at the risk of over-simplifying...yes the Book says it all ( and more)...the medieval stickler…the orthodox mullah is as guilty of picking-and-choosing passages from it as is the modern revivalist...

(...if Islam is for all times it cannot be rigid...)

...it is incumbent upon the silent majority and well-meaning folks to also pick-and-choose

urstruly
....perhaps you misunderstood...it is not ideas but the proponents of those ideas....specifically the hardliners...

the truth is this…hard liners and extremists of any position lob grenades at each other without regard to the vast silent majority trying to survive in the middle…call it north/south, left/right, developed/developing, have/have-nots:)...

rgds,

t

temporal

I dont think, when it comes to ideas, there exists a ``middle``. Either ``you are with us or you are with them`` or you have to open up your own school of thought. Or you can say that you have no opinion about anything. No one will beleive ya even then.

And yes, I know there are some grammatical mistakes in my last post, but I have just woken up and have a wretched cold.

Fuzair Sahib,

re:
“…First off, you and your friends appear to be very worked up about my using the term “neoMarxist” to describe Said….”

If when using the phrase “neo Marxist”, you and the readers understand that you are referring to the theories that:

1. Literature and Culture are inextricable from the politics of class relations.
2. A society’s wealthy class also control the means for making wealth: factories, corporations, private schools
3. The society in which we live separate wealth accruing professions from the realms of manual labor
4. WHAT literature says and HOW it says it will be determined by the aforementioned structure
5. “Literature” and “Culture” approved by these structures will concern itself with NOT challenging the basic assumptions of the class structure of society. (You may add race, gender, sexual orientation and its corresponding interdisciplinary intersections and theory, if you are up to the task)
6. IF and WHEN makers/producers of literature and culture take serious issue with those assumptions, their ideas will be either silenced or treated with VERBAL VIOLENCE on the part of the cultural apparatuses with the economic power/leverage.
7. Silence is consensual-yours, mine, our institution’s
8.Most of us are expected to produce more labor for less compensation-and therefore the necessity of focusing on survival
9. Culture is one of the FEW sites where one can pause, stand back and look at the system critically.
10. Culture does the job of keeping us in line OR
11. Culture is a rich and complicated set of discourses; there is no one DOMINANT narrative, but many different ways of signifying reality.

If this is understand as “Marxist”, then it is an acceptable term for the theories that are well acknowledged among academia who can actually discuss it in a thoughtful manner.

tahmed32#88
Does one have to be a scholar to understand the real meaning of quranic verses. For instance:
````And He gave you (the faculties of) hearing and sight and feeling (and understanding): Little thanks do ye give!``
I would have thought that this is to merely to express gratitude to God for his blessings. To relate it to religious matters would make it contrary to the central basis of Islam - as well as other religions with the exception of Buddhism - which is faith. Because wouldn`t then some people start questioning the very existence of the unseen God, let alone that of angels bearing revelations to chosen individuals?

Similarly, you say:
``More significantly, this verse is consistent with the spirit of the Quran which stresses individual responsibility. Thus (to quote another verse):
36:66 Ya Sin ``That Day (the Judgement Day) shall We set a seal on their mouths. But their hands will speak to Us, and their feet bear witness, to all that they did.`` ``

However, when I read this verse in conjunction with the preceding verses, it seems to me a warning to Muslims not to believe other than quran; individual responsibility would then relate to obeying the Message as delivered by the Prophet. Here are these verses:

``[36:60] Did I not covenant with you, O Children of Adam, that you shall not worship the devil? That he is your most ardent enemy?

[36:61] And that you shall worship Me alone? This is the right path.

[36:62] He has misled multitudes of you. Did you not possess any understanding?

[36:63] This is the Hell that was promised for you.

[36:64] Today you will burn in it, as a consequence of your disbelief.

[36:65] On that day we will seal their mouths; their hands and feet will bear witness to everything they had done. ``

sigalph #113,

Said has categorically denied being a poor Palestinian refugee, most recently
in his memoirs. He has never made any secret of his privileged upbringing in
Cairo, as far as I can tell.