‘The decadence of the Turk’

[A]fter the Second Balkan War a British diplomat, Sir George Young, was commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace to investigate the causes that led to conflict in the Balkans, he blamed the failure of the Ottoman empire to modernize on Byzantinism. “The failure of the Turks”, he wrote, “is due to Byzantinism.” The British diplomat saw in Byzantinism a “decadent social system” with “no democracy, no simple virtues, and no sound vitality.” “The decadence of the Turk,” he wrote, “dates from the day when Constantinople was taken and not destroyed.” Byzantinism as an imperial principle of statehood was the antipode of European nationalism, which he, writing shortly before the onset of World War I, viewed in very positive terms.

Source [pdf].

Life is hard

Van Gogh, “Old Man in Sorrow”

Conspiracies

My problem with conspiracy theories is not so much identification of the fact that people attempt to conspire in order to produce a desire outcome (you would have to be incredibly naive to think governments and its agencies have not, and do not, ‘conspire’).

My frustration with this approach is that it often ends up replacing political, cultural, historical or social analysis.

Fox Attacks

The following video was made by Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker behind Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s war on journalism.

(Via Chapati Mystery.)

Great moments in British television

Courtesy of Paxo.

Implicit Association Test

Psychologists understand that people may not say what’s on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. For example, if asked “How much do you smoke?” a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may purposely report smoking only 2 packs a day because they are embarrassed to admit the correct number. Or, the smoker may simply not answer the question, regarding it as a private matter. (These are examples of being unwilling to report a known answer.) But it is also possible that a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may report smoking only 2 packs because they honestly believe they only smoke about 2 packs a day. (Unknowingly giving an incorrect answer is sometimes called self-deception; this illustrates being unable to give the desired answer).

The unwilling-unable distinction is like the difference between purposely hiding something from others and unconsciously hiding something from yourself. The Implicit Association Test makes it possible to penetrate both of these types of hiding. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.

Source.

Take one of the tests.

Anti-political legalism

John Gray in Two Faces of Liberalism says this of Rawls’ liberalism:

The central institution of Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ is not a deliberative assembly such as a parliament. It is a court of law. All fundamental issues are removed from political deliberation in order to be adjudicated by a Supreme Court. The self-description of Rawlsian doctrine as political liberalism is supremely ironic. In fact, Rawls’s doctrine is a species of anti-political legalism. [my emphasis]

Could a similar remark be made for the majority of Muslim thinking on this subject?

(The chapter of Gray’s book from which the quote is taken can be read online.)

Spineless Second-Choice Steve’s England lose to understrength Germans

Second Choice Steve is clueless and inept manager. The decision to pick and play Beckham has to rate as one of the most spineless by any England manager. He was reduced to letting Micah Richards do most of his running last night. However, Second Choice is lucky — he has a convenient scapegoat in the form of Paul Robinson.

Let me say that Robinson’s mistake was just one of those unfortunate incidents in a match; the cross from the German player was never intended to float so close to the crossbar (what if it had been crossed as intended and Robinsno had remanied glue to the goal line?).

There is a clique of “star players” in the England team who will never be dropped no matter how poorly they perform or how badly they fit into the intended tactics for the night’s match.

Until England hire a manager with some cojones, this circus will continue.

Ingird Mattson puts Muqtedar Khan in his place

University of Delaware political scientist M.A. Muqtedar Khan gives Mattson mixed reviews. He calls her “an angel” and “the queen of American Muslims.” But he adds, “She’ll never rock the boat.

“She’s not radical on anything. She’s allowed ISNA to take strong positions against terrorism, but she’ll never be at odds with the government. You won’t see any criticism of U.S. policies. You’ll see her continue the talk about the diversity within Islam. She’ll make her mark as an activist with things like her chaplaincy program but not as a scholar with influential ideas or someone who modernizes thinking within Islam,” says Khan.

Won’t rock the boat?

Mattson rolls her brown eyes. Headline-making, provocative individual action holds no attraction for her.

“That’s the ‘great man’ theory of history. Look where that’s gotten us. I want to build something. I’m interested in long-term institutional strength,” she says.

Source.

Why pick on Muslims?

The wearing of the veil (seen, in the face of the facts, as involuntary) becomes an emblem of a deeply-laid plan of Islamic subversion. All arranged marriages are seen as forced marriages and therefore repressive. The ultimate aim of the well-known Muslim intellectual, Tariq Ramadan, is deemed to be to turn France into an Islamic state. The periodic riots in the Paris banlieues are seen as signs of Islamic revolt rather than social protest.

Mr Roy rejects all of these contentions and, along the way, has some fun at the expense of those who have created an Islamic exception. Why attack only Islam as discriminatory? Should we not stigmatise the Catholic Church for not allowing women to be priests? Why not ask Jews to give up the notion of the “chosen people”? More seriously, he suggests it might be honest, though hardly honourable, to admit that Islam is singled out because it is the religion of immigrants and because it is associated, in entirely negative ways, with the Middle East.

In truth, conservative Muslims view sex and family in essentially the same way as conservative Christians and Jews. Mr Roy argues that in all cases the state’s attitude should be the same—to distinguish between moral values and legal norms. Those who regard abortion or gay sex as a crime are not required to renounce their views, only to respect the law (and not, for example, assault gays or set fire to abortion clinics). You can believe what you want provided you obey the rules of the game.

Source.