“Ignorance is reigning supreme”: Rula Jebreal on Charlie Hebdo, Bill Maher & our inane foreign polic

[applegrove]

“Ignorance is reigning supreme”: Rula Jebreal on Charlie Hebdo, Bill Maher & our inane foreign policy

by Elias Isquith at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/16/ignorance_is_reigning_supreme_rula_jebreal_on_charlie_hebdo_bill_maher_our_inane_foreign_policy/

"SNIP...............


Is this a problem best solved locally or will it also require a more coordinated, global response?

It’s important to target and monitor locally and have your community helping you, but there is also an ideology that’s out there that needs to be struck … The root of it is Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism. [Saudi Arabia is] exporting more extremism than oil. Every mosque that’s been opened [by them] has a Wahhabi imam behind it and Wahhabi money and Saudi money and support.

In fact, while Saudi Arabia was publicly condemning what happened in Paris, they were lashing a [liberal blogger] because he dared to criticize Islam. But we don’t say anything about Saudi Arabia! We don’t dare to criticize them or even to demand reforms.

Foreign policy matters, in other words.

Nobody stands up to Saudi Arabia, nobody stands up to Egypt. These are the two countries who gave us the ideology of political Islam, but they continue to be our allies. This contradiction needs to end now. I can’t blame an ordinary Muslim in the suburbs of Paris and not blame Saudi Arabia.

Which would make more of an impact, if the U.S. were to significantly change its relationship in order to force (or allow) reform: Egypt or Saudi Arabia?

Both, because they are connected to each other. Do we need to choose? They both are our allies; they both depend on the U.S. for protection and aid. When you are negotiating and dealing and you have trade agreements with these countries, you can’t look the other way when it comes to their violations and what they are spreading because this will come to haunt you for decades. We can’t ask them to reform during the day and at night ask them to torture for us or do the dirty work we don’t want to do.



................SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. Good that she is criticizing brands of Islam herself. This will help a great deal.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Well, we got the dictators of Saudi to postpone another Friday public lashing of a jailed blogger.

There is that.

[Augustus]

3. "Moderate" religious people: Little more than enablers

Notice that Rula Jebreal, being a "moderate" herself, consistently falls short of actually speaking toward the real problem, which is religion itself.

Political Islam, Wahhabism, and any other extremist religion does not exist in a vacuum. You can't have Wahhabism without a moderate base of support in the same way you can't have the Westboro Baptist Church without the Roman Catholic and the many denominations of other Protestant churches.

The "moderate" religious people (which, if you actually ask them for specific beliefs usually turn out to be a hell of a lot less tolerant than you may think at first) are the enablers of the extremists. They are the masters of lip service: Condemn violence against anyone, but being gay is still a sin, having an abortion still makes you a murderer, and "blasphemy" against their God, whether it be an art exhibit of a crucifix in urine, or a cartoon drawing of Mohammed, condemns you to whatever punishment God might intend.

"They had it coming", they may think, but not actually say. The pope just said it out loud, probably mistakenly.

[applegrove]

4. My point is that moderate muslims are speaking up. There was

a woman with a kid who had joined ISIL being interviewed by Anderson Cooper last night who blamed herself for her conservative teaching of islam without talking about the negative side of it. People are waking up. This is a great sign. They have to fight for their religion while we all fight the war on terror.