‘Women, children and people’

On Sunday’s ‘Scotland after the Bomb’ (BBC1, 10.15pm), Bashir Maan, Scotland’s representative on the Muslim Council of Britain, declared that Islam does not condone the killing of ‘women, children and people’. Maan unintentionally revealed the underlying Islamic tendency to class women as minors alongside children, as opposed to men, who are evidently the only proper ‘people’. As one of the chief representatives of moderate Islam in Britain, Maan exposed the fact that this dangerous prejudice applies not only to extremists, but to moderate Muslims also.

Written by Ms. Kok, an associate of the Yucca

pop-leftism

“The Popular Left”, by Ms. Kok

false truisms

This is for all those who think that the view that Blair has endangered us by going into Iraq is self-evident.

Al

Now that he’s no longer the #1 American Loser, will he run? And, if he does, how long will it take the GOP to notice that his first name smells very Arabic?

Blair, Responsibility, and Terrorism

Just heard PM’s interview on Radio4. An issue came up which already came up yesterday in the Commons; an issue of responsibility. Let us suppose that terrorism (or attacks against westerns, or whatever) has increased since, say, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Are the US and UK Government responsible for that, given that their invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq was deliberate and intentional? Blair has a good answer to that: look (as he always, annoyingly, starts his answers), we can’t be responsible for the actions of others. And this is true. Responsibility is not causally transitive. So even if it made sense to say that the decision of the UK Government to invade Iraq caused the terrorist’s decision to blow up tube trains in London (and it isn’t at all clear what it means for one’s action to cause another’s action, given that the former, supposedly, was not sufficient to bring about the latter, otherwise the latter would not be an action), that does not mean that the UK Government is responsible for those trains being blown up; it is only who blew them up that is responsible. So that the counterfactual ‘the London trains would have not been blown up if the Government had not invaded Iraq’, even if true, would not bring with it responsibility for the Government. But there are at least to replies to Blair’s answer which, unfortunately, John (who fancies himself a bit too much to be a good interviewer) did not put to the PM: firstly, responsibility comes in if the government could have prevented what happened (but if the counterfactual is true, wouldn’t not invading Iraq have been a way to prevent the attacks? I guess the issue is whether you can do counterfactuals with people’s intentions and actions; and still, even then, it’s not clear that they would carry any responsibility). Secondly, there is an issue of prediction: because it is the Government’s responsibility to try and predict threats, it the Government could have predicted the threat, then, even though it cannot be responsible for someone else’s action, it would still be responsible for not having predicted someone else’s actions, which resulted in the attacks. In this latter case, both who blew up the trains and the Government would be responsible for the people who died on 7/7, because both who blew up the trains and the Government could and should have prevented what happened.

Choosing your readers

Today The Guardian runs a commentary, by Garton Ash, under the title: ‘We must stop Bush bombing Iran, and stop Iran getting the bomb’. If the title had been the other way around, I might have bothered to read the article; this way, they can forget it.

with god on his side

now he really can’t lose

(Fran, Ron, and Probus: I swear that’s the last one)

Islamic feminism

When the world’s last hope is an oxymoron, then you know we are screwed. No, seriously, these people are probably misreading the Koran, but if their fight is female liberation across the Muslim world, then they deserve our full support!

The (private) making of a leader

Osama’s school days (look at his peers!)

leaders lead

taken from him, and dedicated to the Home Secretary