Jens 'n' Frens


	Jens 'n' Frens Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political. "A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures." -- Daniel Webster

Sunday, March 06, 2011 ::: I suppose it's possible that the House Homeland Security Committee will jump to conclusions, but let's not jump to conclusions. I think a hearing about "the radicalization of American Muslims" is a perfectly reasonable thing for the committee to consider. And, yes, I think they should be careful not to tar all American Muslims in the process. But my guess is that they will be more than sufficiently sensitive about that. You could say I'm jumping to conclusions in assuming the protesters have jumped to conclusions about the committee jumping to conclusions. After all, the lyrics cited by CNN aren't those of the Jumping to Conclusions song. But I don't think you usually hold a protest over an outside possibility. And there's this: Meanwhile, at a Muslim community center in Virgina, Denis McDonough, deputy national security advisor to the president, spoke about the need to prevent violent extremism and said U.S. Muslims are part of the solution. "The bottom line is this - when it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you're part of the solution," McDonough said. "Of course, the most effective voices against al Qaeda's warped worldview and interpretation of Islam are other Muslims." CNN reports that the White House denied that this was a "prebuttal" to the committee hearings, a denial which strikes me as entirely unnecessary; based on Chairman King's comments, it looks to me as though they're on the same page. Labels: Islam ::: posted by Steven at 10:47 PM (0) comments Wednesday, September 29, 2010 ::: People periodically call on non-violent Muslims to repudiate terrorism committed in the name of Islam. I may have publicly welcomed such a gesture myself; I know I have privately. When there is such a gesture, it seems to me to be worth highlighting. I don't know how important this group is, but I hope they have some influence in shaping how Islam is perceived, especially by those within the Muslim community, but also by those without. I know this isn't the first time any Muslims have released such a statement, by the way, but it still seems worth calling more attention to this. Labels: Islam ::: posted by Steven at 10:20 AM (0) comments Friday, September 10, 2010 ::: So is the Koran-burning off or on? I've lost track. I think I first heard of this story through Volokh, a bit before this point about how he and CAIR are playing off of each other. CAIR, though, isn't alone in making the point that this could stoke violence, in particular among those our troops are facing. I don't actually think much of that point, though. The fact that we have the right to do something obviously doesn't mean that we should (a point that Andrew McCarthy uses to tie this story to Cordoba house), and many people have tried to persuade the pastor of this. But if the fact that we are harboring a crank who likes to burn books causes some people to attack our troops, I'm not inclined to think of those people as the sort of people we should compromise with. I'm more inclined to think of them as the reason we have troops. We shouldn't condemn this act because it will offend Muslims who will want to kill us, we should condemn it because it will offend hundreds of millions - maybe billions - of Muslims who don't want to kill us. As President Obama noted in his press conference today, Bush always made it clear that we were not at war with Islam; in fact, many Muslims are on our side. It is their sensibilities we should be sympathetic to. A few extras: Althouse highlights the distinction between burning one's own books and confiscating books from others; while I share with the Washington Post writer to whom she responds the visceral reaction against any kind of book destruction, Althouse's distinction is, in fact, quite important. A friend of Glenn Reynolds laments the attention that this is getting relative to the many acts of charity performed by churches across the country. MSNBC invited the pastor onto a show, where the host behaved more poorly than he did. Labels: Islam, MSNBC, philosophical issues in democracy ::: posted by Steven at 11:47 PM (0) comments Saturday, May 08, 2010 ::: Not fundamentally important, but interesting: apparently, the t-shirt vendor who first noticed the smoking car in Times Square last weekend is a Muslim. The source of that datum claims to have learned it here, where I don't see it now, but it does say he's an immigrant from Senegal, which Wikipedia says is 95% Muslim; I would guess non-Muslims would be more inclined to emigrate to the US. Since it doesn't really matter, though, I consider this good enough. Labels: Islam ::: posted by Steven at 11:00 PM (0) comments Monday, November 30, 2009 ::: The first story I read on the Swiss banning new minarets on mosques noted in the first or second paragraph that it could hurt their relations with Muslim countries. I thought the Swiss referendum seemed like an overreaction, but I think any Muslim country that objects to the referendum that suppresses Christianity — and I'm pretty sure most of the big ones do — can put a sock in it. Mark Krikorian had a similar response to a man-in-the-street reaction from Turkey. On a similar note, I've just noticed that I never blogged on this story about a month ago, in which White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: You hear in this debate, you hear analogies, you hear references to, you see pictures about and depictions of individuals that are truly stunning, and you hear it all the time. People -- imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler. Hopefully we can get back to a discussion about the issues that are important in this country that we can do so without being personally disagreeable and set up comparisons to things that were so insidious in our history that anybody in any profession or walk of life would be well advised to compare nothing to those atrocities. Yes, just imagine someone a few years ago comparing the President to Hitler. Labels: crazy people, Islam, Robert Gibbs, Switzerland ::: posted by Steven at 11:48 PM (0) comments Wednesday, November 25, 2009 ::: This coming Saturday at 4:09PM Eastern Time (3:09 Central), the sun will be almost exactly on the opposite side of the earth from Mecca. If you can see your shadow at that time, it will point toward Mecca. It may also mean another six weeks of Ramadan. I'm not sure — my knowledge of Islam is pretty hazy. Labels: Islam ::: posted by Steven at 2:27 AM (0) comments