View original postWell let me add in a disclaimer, I am by no means claiming expertise in this area, quite the opposite, my time there and the circumstances around it result a fairly high degree of ambivalence, which doesn't make for fertile ground to cultivate objective thought in, to put it mildly.
True.
View original postYou're right that the contradiction is mostly at surface detail, the most obvious analogy I think would be the police, possibly a very apt one in other respects too. It is very easy for people to simultaneously positive and negative views on law enforcement, akin to the ambivalence I remarked on feeling, and for the police to feel the same way about their own beats. It is not at all uncommon for inner city leaders to praise law enforcement one moment then turn around and blame them for every problem and accuse them of exaggerated or even imaginary abuses. Depending on the individual this may be entirely logical and reasonable or outright cynical power games.
Agreed that that is an apt analogy. And yeah, some measure of cynical power games
is logical and reasonable for anyone taking a political position, I'm afraid...
View original postThe tendency to use nationalism or traditionalism along with foreign or minority scapegoats to cover over rampant incompetence or corruption is, of course, hardly uncommon. Ditto the habit of glossing over the faults of enemy-of-my-enemy allies. Don't know if there's a Europe-wide generally-right pro-Israeli Hawk faction that might inspire that though.
Not really, no. You have to keep in mind that the European nationalist right, or at least some of those parties, have historical ties to pro-Nazi parties, so it takes some political manoeuvring to get to a pro-Israeli Hawk position. At least in my own country, for a long time one of the most important demands of the far-right party was retroactive amnesty for the "collaborators" during WW2, those who voluntarily cooperated with the Nazi occupiers and were harshly punished for it after the liberation - it's kind of hard to do that with the one hand while courting Israel with the other. They have indeed come around to doing so by now, though.
But no, it's not really about enemy of my enemy, it's just about them feeling that the Nakba and Israel's actions since justify the behaviour of Hamas and Hizbullah - while glossing over Hamas' treatment of its own people.
View original postIt's understandable, but it still opens the door for justified cynicism toward them.
Sure.
View original postI'm sure he has a vision, I'd just guess it is decidedly narcissistic in nature. People who try to straddle that many fences publicly either are in it for personal glorification or have one very specific and public goal they make no secret of.
Heh. Probably.
View original postYou're making sense, and I forgot the time zone difference. I'm open to the possibility of what you're suggesting, tight-rope-wise, and indeed I do believe that is often the case, nor do I take as a given that the Sec-general of a group automatically is a good and/or representative spokesman. However, I do think the more cynical interpretation applies to some and I don't think we want to be cutting too much slack either. But I'm tired myself, and we're far outside my zone of expertise for me to be able to get any more solid or specific.
You don't have to cut them too much slack on my behalf. I think the most important point to keep in mind, more than the tightrope walking thing, is the "political correctness" one - the strong pressure within the Arab Muslim and to a lesser extent other Muslim communities that makes it very difficult to make even seemingly common-sense statements like "the majority of the Palestinian refugees will have to remain where they are for good, no matter what", or "a number of passages in the hadith are deeply problematic and should be ignored" or a good number of others. It's easier to come across such statements in places where the Muslims don't feel nearly as beleagured from all sides - like Turkey, or South-East-Asia. But even they feel the pressure from abroad.
View original postWell, in the US anyway, with the endless cycles of immigrants, we've always cut a certain extra slack for those community leaders juggling total integration with 'the old country' views, trying to find either an optimal integration or at least an acceptable one. I'd imagine much the same applies elsewhere. Nevertheless, I don't think there's anything like the degree of anti-immigrant hostility that justifies either the radicalism or the extra slack to those immigrant community leaders in dealing with it, in terms of two-faced rhetoric. I'm not blind to the fact that there is still a lot of hostility, and some fairly intense pockets of it, Burqa bans and all, but its definitely not the 'bad old days', so to speak. The problem is that most of the reasonable goals I've heard - and many are reasonable, we can not deny some, at best, troubling double-standards seem in play, varying in type and degree from nation to nation in the West - do not seem to justify, or even benefit from, warm ties with radical elements. Quite the opposite, I'd say.
Hm, true. But yeah, Qaradawi would not be considered as a radical element.
"Bad old days" may be an American concept that does not apply - in most of Western Europe, having any significant number of immigrants of a different religion and culture is a rather recent concept, dating back only to the sixties and seventies. Hell, having any significant number of inhabitants of a different religion, immigrant or no, is a rather recent concept in my country and some others. Perhaps Americans are liable to forget that until the Muslim immigrants started coming, the bulk of Western Europe consisted of essentially homogeneous regions and countries, in religious terms, having changed extremely little since the turn of the sixteenth century, before the Mayflower even left. Protestants in northern Germany, the bulk of the Netherlands, Switzerland, some parts of France; Catholics in southern Germany, the southern Netherlands and all of Belgium, most of France and all of Italy, Spain and Portugal. In most cases by majorities of 90 if not 95% and more, except perhaps in the big cities. Only the UK had any kind of real mixture, with Catholic and Dissenter minorities dispersed throughout the country (at least, I think they are dispersed, there may still be regions where they are notably more prominent than elsewhere, but I really don't know the details). And yes, Jewish minorities in most of these countries of course, but too small and too concentrated in a small amount of cities to make much of a difference.