Arab News Blog

I received some snarky message after the Shahzad attempted bombing in Times Square, asking if I were still standing behind the idea of Islam as a religion of peace. It was a stupid comment. Classical Islamic law forbids murder and forbids terrorism, and it forbids aggression. Whether that makes it a religion of peace is a matter for debate; it isn’t my diction. Medieval Islam, like medieval and even modern Christianity (cf. the Portuguese and Spanish Empires’ ‘God, glory and gold’), was used as an imperial ideology, sometimes for conquest states– but that use of it was contrary to the verses of the Qur’an instructing believers not to commit aggression and to agree to peace treaties with others who seek them.

But in any case, no contemporary Muslim-majority country I can think of would launch a war of naked aggression purely on an Islamic basis. In fact, few wars of naked aggression have been initiated by Muslim-majority countries in the past few decades. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980 was an act of aggression on a self-proclaimed Islamic state by a secular Arab nationalist one, and premised on Arab nationalism, not Islam. Violence in the Levant is usually at least framed as a response to Israeli aggression. The issue of Morocco in the Western Sahara is national and territorial, and both parties are Muslim.

That is, few self-consciously “Islamic” polities have behaved as illegally and wrongly as did George W. Bush when he invaded Iraq on false pretenses and in the absence of an attack by Iraq on the US.

The people who say that “Islam” authorizes aggressive violence are a fringe of cultists and typically non-state actors. Those kind of people, you have in any society. The Hutaree in Michigan are a Christian sect that allegedly makes similar assertions. And you have the Christian fundamentalist Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.

So the snarky question was a stupid and uninformed question. But it looks even stupider in the light of the revelation that it was a Senegalese Muslim, Alioune Niass, who discovered the smoking SUV in Times Square and urged a friend to call 911. That is, New Yorkers were saved from that bombing by a Muslim. See this MPAC article. (MPAC is a really great group and non-Muslims worried about bigotry against Muslims really should join it (membership link here).

Niass was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, which noted that he got no recognition for his heroism.

And, the snarky question would look even more stupid in light of the announcement by Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the Greater Middle East and of the struggle against the Pakistani Taliban that Shahzad acted as a lone wolf, not as part of an organized plot. Shahzad is a Pashtun from an elite family (his father had been the equivalent of a two-star general in the Pakistani air force). He had not been a student activist of the Jamaat-i Islami, the fundamentalist party in Pakistan. If he did plot the bombing, he is as likely to have been motivated by Pashtun nationalism as Islam. Pashtuns are an ethnic group in northwest Pakistan, and often feel disadvantaged by the policies of the Punjabi-dominated central government in Islamabad. Even nationalist Pashtuns like the Awami National Party, which now rules the North-West Frontier Province (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) initially objected to Pakistani military attacks on Pashtun Pakistani Taliban because of ethnic solidarity, not religious.

And, everybody in Pakistan is upset by the continued US Predator drone strikes on Pakistani soil by covert operatives and sometimes by Blackwater-Xe contractors. (President Obama unwisely joked about the Predators last Saturday; it is not a joking matter in Pakistan). I have long worried about the unforeseen consequences of the Predator strikes, which are illegal in international law and done as a covert operation and so outside the US democratic framework. None of this in any way excuses the bloody-minded terrorism plot against civilians in Times Square. But to simple-mindedly equate such violence with “Islam,” the religion of 1.5 billion people or nearly a sixth of humankind, and to blame it on the Qur’an, is, well, I’ll say it again: uninformed and stupid.

PS For Pakistani-American anxieties over being tarred with this brush, see this report from Aljazeera English:

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FBI raids on the Hutaree Christian militia brought to light this formerly little-known group based in Adrian, Michigan.

Unlike the generally secular white supremacist organizations, Hutaree are explicitly Christians. Many seem to be millenarians, expecting the end of time to come soon. Like the so-called Patriot Movement, they are gun nuts. They are said to be organized to kill the Antichrist, and some reports say that they planned violence against American Muslims.

Polling shows that about 1/4 of members of the Republican Party believe that President Obama is the Antichrist, and one fears that Hutaree may agree.

Irregular times has a good overview of their beliefs, which include secession from the US and return to colonial times, perhaps in preparation for another revolution. (Will they have to register in South Carolina?). Some are antinomians, rejecting US laws. They fear a liberal ‘new world order.’

Fox Cable News and Rupert Murdoch bear some responsibility for such groups. When Glenn Beck tosses around a charge like ‘anti-Christ’ at a prominent liberal, he knows that term is an incitement for militant Christians. And the years of rabid Fox promotion of hatred of US Muslims is bound to get someone among them killed– and is therefore murder by television.

I am struck that Hutaree has a great deal in common with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. The Hutaree militia seems to recruit from the poor or lower middle class. Michigan’s real unemployment rate is said to be 17%, and for many Michigan workers there have been years of hopelessness and joblessness, inducing despair and anger. The Mahdi Army likewise drew on Iraqi unemployed and angry youth. Many Sadrists believe that the Mahdi or Muslim messiah will soon come, perhaps accompanied by the return of Christ. The Mahdi Army has sometimes targeted Christian video or liquor shops, as a symbol of the oppressive other (yes, that is unfair to Iraqi Christians but they had the misfortune to be W.’s co-religionists.). The Hutaree, a mirror image, target Muslims. The Mahdi Army considered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the Dajjal or anti-Christ. Both have an unhealthy interest in firearms for political intimidation of others. The Hutaree fear the United Nations, as the Mahdi Army fears the US occupation. (Muslim radical groups often also hate the UN.)

Both groups are victims of a neoliberal world order that uses and discards working people, while protecting and cushioning the super-wealthy. Instead of a rational analysis of exploitatation, however, they are responding with emotion and symbol, projecting their economic and political alienation on other religious or ethnic groups (the Mahdi Army ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims from Baghdad in the name of anti-imperialism. They resort to irrational conspiracy theories, to religion and guns. Admitedly, the Mahdi Army is somewhat more rational, since they really do face foreign occupation, though their targeting of Sunnis instead of forming a nationalist front was highly dysfunctional.

The US press is saying the Hutaree people are a Christian “militia” but is avoiding calling them ‘alleged Christian terrorists.” Apparently only organized Muslim radicals can now be called terrorists.

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My thanks to AP for having compiled and published these (most likely conservative) figures today:

U.S. TROOP LEVELS:

March 31, 2003: 90,000.

October 2007: 170,000 at peak of troop buildup.

March 1, 2010: Just over 96,000.

COALITION TROOP LEVELS:

Number of countries that participated in “Coalition for the Immediate Disarmament of Iraq” at the start of the war: 31, including the United States.

As of August 2009, all non-U.S. coalition members had withdrawn from Iraq.

PRIVATE CONTRACTORS:

Number of U.S. private contractors in Iraq as of August, 2008: 190,000.

CASUALTIES:

Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of March 19, 2010: at least 4,385.

States with the highest number of U.S. troop deaths as of March 19, 2010: California, 470; Texas, 411; Pennsylvania, 195; Florida, 193; New York, 188; Ohio, 183; Michigan, 159; Illinois, 156.

Deaths of civilian employees of U.S. government contractors in Iraq as of Dec. 31, 2009: 1,457.

Deaths of coalition troops (non-U.S.) as of March 19, 2010: at least 315.

Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion: more than 95,680, according to the Iraq Body Count database.

COST:

More than $712 billion, according to the National Priorities Project. To date, $747.3 billion has been allocated to the war in Iraq since 2003. In August 2008, the Congressional Budget Office projected that additional war costs for the next 10 years could range from $440 billion to $865 billion.

COST PER MONTH:

As of July 2008, the Department of Defense’s monthly obligations for contracts and pay averaged about $9.9 billion for Iraq.

As of July 2009, the Department of Defense’s monthly obligations for contracts and pay averaged about $7.3 billion for Iraq.

INDICTMENTS AND CONVICTIONS:

As of Jan. 30, 2010, the work of Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction investigators has resulted in 26 arrests, 33 indictments, 25 convictions, and more than $53 million in fines, forfeitures, recoveries and restitution.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN IRAQ:

January 2004: 30-45 percent.

January 2010: an estimated 15.5-30 percent.

COST OF A BARREL OF OIL:

March 28, 2003: $21.50.

March 12, 2010: $77.32.

OIL PRODUCTION

Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.

March 17, 2010: 2.43 million barrels per day.

ELECTRICITY:

Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 4-8.

March 3, 2010: Nationwide: 6,090 megawatts. Hours per day: 15.0.

Prewar Baghdad: 2,500 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 16-24.

March 3, 2010: Baghdad: Megawatts N/A. Hours per day: 15.5.

Note: Current Baghdad megawatt figures are no longer reported by the U.S. State Department’s Iraq Weekly Status Report.

TELEPHONES:

Prewar land lines: 833,000.

Jan. 2010: 1,300,000.

Prewar cell phones: 80,000.

Jan. 2010: An estimated 19.5 million.

WATER:

Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.

Jan. 30, 2010: More than 21.2 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:

Prewar: 6.2 million people served.

Jan. 30, 2010: 11.5 million people served.

INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS:

September 2003: 4,900.

Jan. 2010: 1,600,000.

INTERNAL REFUGEES:

Prewar: 1,021,962.

March 2010: At least 1.5 million people are currently displaced inside Iraq.

EMIGRANTS:

Prewar: 500,000 Iraqis living abroad.

March 2010: Approximately 2 million Iraqis, mainly in Syria and Jordan.

Jan. 2010: At least 216,430 refugees and internally displaced persons have returned to Iraq.

All figures are the most recent available.

Sources: The Associated Press, State Department, Defense Department, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, The Brookings Institution, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, National Priorities Project, Department of Labor, Congressional Budget Office, Iraq Body Count, Energy Information Administration.

Let us also remember that the ‘pre-war baseline’ presented itself represented a standard of life (and death) for the Iraqi people that had been massively depressed as a result of 13 years of very tight sanctions, whose tightness was maintained from about 1993– Clinton’s arrival in power– primarily by the insistence of the U.S. and its sidekick in the U.K. on maintaining them in a punitively tight way. Throughout that period, the U.N. estimated that around 500,000 Iraqis, mainly the very young and the very old, died deaths that would have been avoidable in the absence of sanctions.

In memoriam of all those who died and with solidarity and compassion for all who survived.

~HC

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Niraj Warikoo, freep.com, Airport body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslims say, 11 Feb 2010 "The Fiqh Council of North America – a body of Islamic scholars that includes some from Michigan – issued a fatwa this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty."
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The new year is not very old, but several recent revelations cast the the US fight against al-Qaeda (a tiny if deadly fraternity of a couple thousand fanatics spread in dozens of countries) in a bad light, if not to say a scandalous one. The entire premise of combating al-Qaeda as though it were an enemy army, using the Pentagon as the lead agency, while simultaneously militarizing the CIA, needs to be questioned. But so too do a lot of other premises about a so-called American ‘Long War’ with parts of the Muslim world, including drone strikes, secret bases, and torture. Worst of all, embarrassing revelations are coming out about damaging or even criminal actions and policies that can only harm any genuine counter-terrorism program.

1. Evidence is surfacing, according to Scott Horton writing in Harper’s, that the supposed group suicide of three prisoners at Guantanamo in summer of 2006 may have in fact been murder–that is, they may have died of asphyxiation during aggressive interrogation that involved stuffing rags in their throats to cut off air. The explosive allegations may put further pressure on President Obama to fulfill his pledge to close the prison.

2. The FBI falsely invoked terrorism emergencies 2000 times between 2002 and 2006 to engage in illegal phone wiretapping of Americans without obtaining a warrant. The agency was using a provision of the PATRIOT act, which Bush administration officials had assured Congress would never be used for ordinary domestic cases.

3. The FBI photoshopped the face of leftist Spanish parliamentarian Gaspar Llamazares, combining it with the features of Usama Bin Laden, to produce a supposed portrait of what the aging terrorist now looks like. Spain was furious and the whole incident spoke of amateurism and stupidity in an area, counter-terrorism, where neither is desirable. Hint to the FBI: Usama Bin Laden has not produced a video message since October 2004. We may conclude that he is either badly disfigured by a strike on his position that almost succeeded, or that he is dead. You can’t project his appearance forward with photoshop usefully either way.

4. George W. Bush claimed that he had misspoken when he called his ‘war on terror’ a ‘crusade.’ But it turns out that the Michigan company that makes rifle sights for the US military inscribes them with Bible verses. The capture of the US Air Force Academy by Christian fundamentalists is worrisome enough, but a Military-Evangelical Complex is truly frightening.

5. The Iraqi government that came to power under the auspices of George W. Bush is spearheading a class action suit against the Xe (then known as Blackwater) mercenary corporation for injuries its security men inflicted on Iraqis. Xe, headed by militant fundamentalist Christian, is a prime Pentagon contractor, which replicates the work of GIs but charges 12 times as much for it. The Iraqis were furious when a government case against Blackwater mercenaries for shooting up Nisour Square in Baghdad and killing over a dozen civilians collapsed because of prosecutorial misbehavior. Based on this good recommendation, the US military has brought Xe mercenaries to Pakistan where they are allegedly involved in US drone attacks on that country, further winnning hearts and minds.

6. Worse, the Pentagon is considering bringing thousands more Blackwater security men to Afghanistan. The great Rep. Jan Schakowski (D-Ill.) is introducing a bill banning the use of such mercernary firms.

7. Der Spiegel has revealed yet another CIA plot to kidnap a citizen of an allied country on suspicion of involvement in terrorism (a suspicion years of investigation by German authorities was unable later to support). Allies don’t take kindly to this sort of thing. An Italian judge recently convicted 23 CIA operatives in absentia for carrying out a kidnapping in Italy.

8. It has been revealed that then British foreign minister Jack Straw wrote a letter to PM Tony Blair in 2002 warning him that a war on Iraq would be illegal, that many Labor MPs would oppose it, that Saddam was not connected to 9/11 or al-Qaeda, that Iraq likely had no weapons of mass destruction of any importance, and that there was no guarantee that the condition of Iraqis in the wake of such a war would be an improvement on their situation in 2002. The letter shows that Blair committed to the war at Crawford, TX in April 2002, even though he later repeatedly told his own MPs that no decision had been made. The letter vindicates the ‘Downing Street memo’ from a few months later in which the head of British intelligence complained that the decision to go to war had been made and that the intelligence was being fixed around the policy. It also shows that the mantra of the Bush administration, that all US allies had made the same errors of judgment about Iraq as had Bush-Cheney, is simply incorrect. The British foreign ministry knew better.

9. The Obama administration has been forced by an ACLU suit to release the names of the prisoners it holds at Bagram base in Afghanistan. The Obama administration maintains that these individual have no human rights at all, though some are scheduled to be tried in military tribunals. It is hard to see why Guantanamo is bad but Bagram is good. There have been allegations of torture of inmates, including of teenagers. The whole facility and its prisoners are to be turned by the US over to the Afghan government later this year.

10. The Obama administration’s initial reaction to the underpants bomber was flatfooted and included forbidding children to hold teddy bears on their laps during the last hour of a flight, as well as renewed drone strikes and deeper involvement in Yemen, on the grounds that there are 300 al-Qaeda members in that craggy, inaccessible and tribally-organized country. Al-Qaeda has dug trapping pits for the US to fall into as it pursues its small, nimble foe, and the US keeps lumbering into them. The prospect of a US troop presence in Yemen provoked its council of clerics to threaten to call a jihad or holy war on the US if any attempt were made to occupy the country. The US attempted to allay such concerns with a firm statement it would not send troops, but not before the Yemenis had already gotten their backs up and anti-Americanism increased.

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We live in an even more regimented society than the 1950s and early 1960s. We live in a society where protests can be confined to ‘protest zones,’ where peaceful protest or critical comment can place activists and journalists on a no-fly list (while the authorities still seem routinely to overlook actual terrorists), where our electronic mail is routinely snooped into by agents of the federal government, where civil disobedience is being redefined as material support to terrorism. On the occasion of Martin Luther King Day, it is worth remembering Dr. King’s speech at Western Michigan University on December 18, 1963, in which he called for an international society of misfits who would dare challenge the injustices in the prevailing order.

The passage quoted below is about conformism and about the attempt of Establishment social scientists to create conformism as the social norm (a tendency that went further in the Soviet Union but was also present in the US).

Today, we are told by the Republican minority that is holding the country hostage in the Senate that we are maladjusted if we object to 37 million Americans not being covered by health care. We are maladjusted if we want to see banks regulated. We are maladjusted if we want a graduated income tax so that the richest, with their billions in bonuses, pay more for government social services from which they and their corporations benefit. We are maladjusted if we object to escalating the war in Afghanistan or to covert drone assassinations in Pakistan or to starting a whole new war in Yemen. We are maladjusted if we object to racially profiling Arabs and Arab-Americans. We are maladjusted if we object to mountain top removal coal mining, or, indeed, if we object to destroying the world with the burning of coal in general. We are maladjusted if we won’t disfigure our shorelines with oil rigs. We are maladjusted if we support choice for women or marriage for gays. (It is not that Dr. King, a man of his own era, would have necessarily supported all these causes in his own day, but that they are causes analagous to and growing out of the ones he did embrace).

We honor today a man who repeatedly broke the law. Who conspired to break the law. Who put tens of thousands of people up to breaking the law. He broke the law while adhering to the principle of active non-violence, of loving the jailer and winning over the persecutor. He broke laws that he saw as unjust and unconstitutional, and over time he redefined them as illegitimate by his passionate advocacy.

We honor a man from a different age, when Americans seemed to care about social injustice enough to come out into the streets and risk police dogs, tear gas, and imprisonment. When depression came from being unable to ensure that no American child went to bed hungry, not from being unable to stay in Avatar-world. Those in King’s tradition stand on the verge of being routed, on health care, the environment, bank regulation, abolition of the ‘PATRIOT’ acts assaults on the constitution, and the rendering of warfare a permanent institution in American life, like interstate highways and social security. If we are routed, will we effectively protest? Will there be consequences for the insurance companies, the arms dealers, the warmongering ‘think tanks,’ the advertisers, the lobbyists who mobilized to preserve the unjust old order? Or in today’s world is it enough to put up a facebook page and text a dollar to our favorite causes? Is that the kind of thing that would have satisfied Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?

This is what, among other things, Dr. King said here in Michigan a little over 26 years ago:

‘ There are certain technical words within every academic discipline that soon become stereotypes and cliches. Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities.

But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination.

I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry.

I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence. But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence, and the alternative to disarmament. The alternative to absolute suspension of nuclear tests. The alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. This is why I welcome the recent test-ban treaty.

In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment–men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos. Who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’

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Predictable, sad & true!

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In the Huffington Post, here

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn) a renowned hawk and one of the foremost champions of the invasion of Iraq, warned on Sunday that the United States faced “danger” unless it pre-emptively acts to curb the rise of terrorism in Yemen.

“Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war,” Lieberman said, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday”. “That’s the danger we face.”

The Connecticut Independent, who heads the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, made his remarks just days after a Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — a Nigerian with apparent ties to terrorist networks in Yemen — failed in his attempt to blow up a plane above Detroit, Michigan…..

“I know the president made a promise he’d close Guantanamo because of what it represented in world opinion,” Lieberman said. “But today it’s a first-class facility. It’s way above what’s required by the Geneva Convention or our constitution. It would be a mistake to send these 90 people back to Yemen because, based on the past of what’s happened when we’ve released people from Guantanamo, a certain number have gone back into the fight against us. Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight.”…..”

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Solar Power Costs 50% Lower than Last Year : CleanTechnica

Thin-film solar is leading the way down to greater affordability. Higher finance costs have hurt recently, but those are expected to ease, while the equipment is likely to get cheaper.

Solar is the only real game in town to decisively solve the world’s energy problems– addressing renewability, pollution and climate change.

Almost everyone could now be heating their water with solar, but unfortunately in most states there is no retail infrastructure for providing it, and no tax abatement. Here in Michigan I called around, finally found someone, and was told there would be a two-year wait for installation and I’d get my money back typically over 6-8 years but that the state would not help out in any way. It shouldn’t be so hard.

I know, I know, things are different in California. Most of us do not live in California (or Washington State, which is also responsible).

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Cont’d (click below or on “comments”)

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Generally speaking, when a fire is already burning, throwing gasoline on it is contra-indicated. Iran’s launching of long-range missiles on Yom Kippur was pretty much a case of spraying gasoline on the grill, but the troubles on Sunday on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif are also an indicator of potential explosion. Remember that it was Ariel Sharon’s visit to the platform on which stand the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock that provoked the entire second intifada.

I’ve been cautious about writing anything so far because the events occurred just hours before the Israeli media (and Israel generally) went into the 26-hour blackout that is Yom Kippur. I didn’t want to comment purely based on Arab media, such as this Al-Jazeera report or this one in the Daily Star. Now we’re starting to see more Israeli reports on the events. Also here and here and here. Some of the early accounts may have been exaggerated. What’s still not clear to me from the Israeli reports is who the Jewish visitors who went to the Mount accompanied by police actually were; the Palestinians obviously believed they were a settler group, and saw this as a provocation.

And there is, certainly, no more explosive 35 acres on the planet than the one Jews call Har ha-Bayit, the Temple Mount, and Muslims call Al-Haram al-Sharif, usually translated as “the Noble Sanctuary.” Along its western face lies the Western Wall (Ha-Kotel ha-Ma’aravi), the remnant of the wall of the Second Temple Platform and the holiest site in Judaism, and on its surface lie the Masjid al-Aqsa (the “Farther Mosque,” believed to be the site of Muhammad’s isra’ and mi‘raj or Night Journey to Jerusalem and vision of heaven), and the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat al-Sakhra, often misnamed “Mosque of Omar” in Western guides), together the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina. (Christians of course have plenty of Gospel references to Jesus at the Temple, but perhaps fortunately don’t have any acreage on the Mount at the moment.)

Sorry. There are multiple issues when it comes to holy places. There’s the question of free access on the one hand, and of respect on the other. I frankly don’t know who’s at fault here: were the Jewish visitors seeking a provocation, or were the Palestinians overreacting to a rumor? It’s not clear from the reports, even a couple of days after the fact. I’ve always been scrupulous about complying with everybody’s rules at holy sites: shoes off in mosques, kipoh on in synagogues, both in places like Hebron where both religions share a single building, no shorts in churches, etc. etc.. After decades of spending timein the region I can flip from Catholic to Greek Orthodox to Muslim to Jewish custom in an instant. But most folks in the region aren’t trying to respect the other, they’re trying to one up the other.

What worries me is that this may have been a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation by settlers or an unwarranted overreaction by Palestinians. Honestly, I still can’t tell. But you don’t throw gasoline on a hot stove. Everybody should calm down and back off.

I know there’s a lot of nonsense out there, from the Palestinian clerics who keep insisting, against all evidence, that there’s no evidence the Jewish Temple ever stood there, to the Temple Mount Faithful who want to blow up the Dome of the Rock and build a Third Temple. It used to be — probably still is — pretty easy to buy a photoshopped picture of a new Temple on the Temple Mount, if you looked in certain parts of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. And of course if there’s a Palestinian cafe anywhere from Jerusalem to DC to Michigan that doesn’t have the Dome of the Rock on the wall I’ve yet to see it. This is high-octane, weapons-grade emotional religious explosiveness, here. Everybody needs to step back a bit.

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