Recently in USA Category

Recently, I had discussions on two blogs about the legitimacy of takfeer, meaning calling someone a non-Muslim, against people who appear to be Muslims but who have deviant beliefs or opinions about a matter of Shari'ah. On Umar Lee's blog, the author mentioned a woman he had come across, who wore a hijab and a jilbab, yet favoured gay marriage because "gay marriage is a good thing and Islam is for what is good". At Harry's Place, David T posted a 10-minute bit of audio from Yasir al-Qadhi, heavily edited to make it look like he was calling all Shi'ites kaafirs and suggesting that he should not have been allowed into the UK to speak at the recent Global Peace & Unity event.

I'm sure nobody will be surprised that I'm pleased that Barack Obama has won the election. I've got various cousins in the USA (of the two I actually know, one lives in North Carolina and one has recently lived in California, Virginia, Mexico and Cuba, depending on where the US State Department sends her), and the latter in particular told me that her colleagues were particularly displeased at having to work for Condi Rice instead of Colin Powell. I am particularly pleased that both Virginia and NC went blue (not that it matters which states went blue and which red, as they all get the same president in the end). I heard the election called a landslide, but really it wasn't - many of the states which had a majority for Obama this time border onto states which voted for Kerry in 2004, and Obama made few inroads in the south, even in places which had voted for Clinton (in fact, many of these places had a heavy swing towards McCain). So, it seems like more a case of boundaries being pushed back from 2004 than a revolution. (More: Ginny, Izzy Mo, Abu Eesa, Haroon Moghul: [1], [2], [3], Umar Lee: [1], [2], Tariq Nelson: [1], [2].)

George Monbiot, in the Guardian last Tuesday, on the link between religious belief and the anti-intellectualisation of US politics:

Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves around the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15 year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD(3).

He notes that, in the early days of Darwinism, it was bound up in the USA with social Darwinism, in which the rich were supposed to be at the top of an evolutionary ladder. However, another reason was the religious involvement in slavery and subsequent racism. He assigns a large part of the blame to the Southern Baptist Convention:

Last Monday, BBC broadcast a Panorama programme, Obama and the Pitbull: An American Tale (requires Flash), about what you'd think were the two Presidential candidates (McCain himself hardly gets a mention). Watching the trailers, you would have thought that it was mostly about what they called "the Palin Effect", but the first two thirds of it - and it was only half an hour (or less) long. Really, they barely scratched the surface, talking about how he went from college to the South Side of Chicago, allegedly aiming to be a civil rights activist "15 years too late", and giving plenty of people time to accuse him of having no experience and of having moved from one base to another in no time at all.

The problem is that Palin's half does not go far beneath the surface either, not that there is that far to go in her case; however, although they do interview a few ordinary Americans who say that Obama's colour might count against him, there is no mention of the mud thrown at him on account of his Muslim background, of the thuggish behaviour of some of Palin's fans, and the way McCain has reacted to all of this (such as his reaction to someone in the audience who called Obama an "Arab"; the reaction generally has been to state that he is not, rather than take it on as an issue of bigotry). Tariq Nelson has posted a series of examples ([1], [2], [3], [4]) of the ignorant provincials who appearently form the backbone of McCain and Palin's body of supporters, including the persistent emphasis of Obama's middle name and the incidents of people shouting "kill him" at Republican rallies.

However, at the end of the day, what could make the difference is not the stupid and vicious, but the smart and vicious - Republican officials and state administrations using their powers to make sure that potential Democratic voters cannot vote. Last Wednesday, the Guardian printed a report on various laws existing in mostly Republican-run states which impose stringent identification rules which tend to obstruct poorer, younger, and minority-ethnic residents from voting - and that is even before you get to the issue of whether the voting machines are honest. In an election in which the right's candidate is someone who lacks consistent support from the right-wing media, it becomes more important to make sure that his potential opponents cannot vote.

As for Panorama, this programme is a typical example of why the 30-minute format doesn't suit it - it does not allow time to go into the issue in any depth, only for skimming the surface of a few parts of the story with a couple of soundbites. It is not the same programme that Panorama used to be, which was a serious documentary; it has the same name only because the BBC couldn't be seen scrapping its documentary slot. However, it's not worthy of the name; it should have its time increased, or be renamed.

Jonathan Freedland: McCain or Obama? The US election result will have a huge impact on us | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Or, to use the actual headline, "This pansy-ass limey Brit won't butt out -- the US election is our business": a response by Jonathan Freedland, who wrote this article three weeks ago in the Guardian, to the abusive and bigoted responses which followed. You can see my comment on both here, but here's some of what Freedland received in his email:

In their thousands, Americans wrote to tell me they read my words not as a simple prediction of the consequences of an American decision broadly to maintain the Bush-Cheney approach -- but as some kind of threat. I was not merely commenting on the US election, they said, but intervening in it, seeking to blackmail American voters with the threat of global ostracism (as if I'm in a position to issue such a threat).

The counterblasts featured all the usual themes familiar to any columnist or blogger who wades into this terrain. America had saved Europe's "ass" twice before -- and we would doubtless come bleating for help again when we inevitably sought rescue from the Muslim hordes imposing sharia law on London, Paris and Berlin. We can't defend ourselves, of course, because we are limp-wristed "Euroweenies", effeminate socialists whose own decline robs us of the right to say anything about the United States, which remains the greatest nation on earth.

Britain specifically forfeited the right to meddle in US affairs more than two centuries ago, when it lost the War of Independence. Besides, Obama is a Marxist, so Europe is welcome to him. One Bill07407 managed to capture the flavour of this virtual avalanche -- including the curiously homoerotic undercurrent that runs through much rightwing American invective -- with this effort: "If you want Comrade Obama we will gladly ship him over after he loses in a landslide. Meanwhile you can kiss my ass. I bet you would enjoy it faggot." Equally reflective, this from bioguy777: "I love it! A pansy-ass limey Brit begs the US to do his bidding while his own country slips further towards total Islamic rule. We're electing McCain, and the rest of the world can piss up a rope if they don't like it. 1776, BITCH!"

His response is that the election is not just Americans' business, because its result affects everybody: the wars in which other countries participate are started in the USA, the "credit crunch" and the difficulties it has caused in Europe were partly the fault of American financiers' sloppy practices, and there is a global environmental emergency to which the USA is a substantial contributor. Personally, I don't agree with his conclusion that the USA was ever supposed to be some sort of example to the world - there was always a whole lot of humbug in all the talk of freedom which overlooked the presence of millions of Black slaves - but I do share his objection to being rudely told to butt out when our country is supposed to be their ally and when it helped them out on several recent occasions.

In the Wake of "Obsession" Hate-DVDs: Muslim Children Gassed in Ohio Mosque | MuslimMatters.org

For the last few years the Daily Express, in the UK, has been running a front-page hate campaign against Muslims, continually harping on every petty concession they hear Muslims have received from some council or other, and crowing about every purported move to "get tough" on Muslims, as with the cover story on the most recent Sunday Express. My contention has been that media vilifications of ethnic or religious groups can lead to violence, and said as much in my letter two months ago to Standpoint, which they finally got round to printing in the most recent edition. While they printed most of the letter, they omitted that bit, despite the low hum of violence which has sounded for the last few years: an imam blinded in London, another suffering brain damage, a mosque being destroyed in Basildon, a man threatened with a chainsaw in Bolton, and this past weekend, a Muslim cemetery vandalised in Southall, west London.

Last Wednesday, Jonathan Freedland, a former Guardian US correspondent, wrote this article suggesting that the international judgement will be harsh if the Americans elect McCain and Sarah Palin, with her record of putting religion ahead of general good governance in her home state, and that it would reflect a nation out of touch and in decline. That prompted some idiot called Miguel Giles in Sacramento, CA, to write a bigoted rant, which appeared in the paper on Friday.

Linda Grant wrote this article in last Thursday's Guardian, on why small-town Americans vote Republican, even those who are well-educated like one she spoke to. Those she actually knows perceives "whitebread Republicans" as "like children - someone has to tell them what to do and what to think, they're incapable of independent ideas":

I asked a sophisticated and well-travelled Republican why he voted the way he did. He described growing up "dirt poor" in a small town in Northern California where joining the military was your sole ticket out; where the people in his family who depended on welfare stayed where they were and the ones who worked their fingers to the bone managed to make a better life for themselves. For him, joining the army led directly to an education. In fact, it led all the way to Princeton. But how, I asked him, baffled, could someone as intelligent as he is believe that George W Bush was anything but a cretin?

Because, he explained, people in small towns don't like or trust intellectuals, particularly ones who appear to be sneering at them for their supposed stupidity. They admire a plain-speaking man; it's what they know and what they are used to.

They always assumed Bush was a regular guy who could keep his thoughts concise.

The problem is that many of these "plain speaking" Republican politicians are not those who have worked themselves rich or to a good education, but actually people born into rich families and educated at many of the same places which produce the "sneering" liberal intellectuals. Thomas Frank's two most recent books, What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew, provide examples of the type, wealthy pro-corporate conservatives who rely on the working-class vote to push policies which benefit only themselves and their friends, and never the working classes whose votes they rely on (also see Joe Bageant in Tuesday's edition).

Most of them did not have to "work their fingers to the bone" to get where they are, Bush himself being the classic example, and while some do and succeed, very many more do and stay poor. I wonder if Linda Grant bothered to put this point to him, since these politicians' backgrounds are no secret. I can see the virtue of not wanting to remain dependent on the state, but successful people often forget that their success might be down to good luck as well as hard work (hence we sometimes find that they refuse to leave much or anything to their children, because they want them to work as hard as they had to).