bambina writes

The Silent Majority

A Muslim friend of mine, Dodi Tabbaa, a hugely talented artist living in Amman, sent me this in an email, which apparently was written by a German doctor living in the States. So many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, and ethnic cleansing, and communism, and empire... And so many of us have remained silent for decades.

The whole Islam vs Christianity thing has a lot of resonance for me, not merely because I'd lived in Jordan in the early 90s and encountered nary a Qu'ran thumping fanatic. In fact, I loved my three years in Jordan - for me it was the best overseas posting ever. And now I've used the country as the setting for my current work-in-progress. Religious conflict plays a huge part in it - a YA novel which is kind of Meg Cabot meets Khaled Hosseini - and I realize that I have to tread delicately around the issue as it is such a minefield, even if none of my characters are murderous radicals out to behead every infidel. Because none of the Jordanians I've ever met were like that at all.

Full House

The whole Britney saga is so nauseatingly inane, boring and white trash to the core that when I see anything about her on Perez Hilton or wherever, I don't even bother to give the news item a cursory glance. But this, from Moorish Girl, the blog of Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami, made me laugh:

I heard that Britney Spears wants to convert to Islam. There comes a point in every lunatic celebrity's career when this happens (See: Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, etc.) And all I can say is: Our nut house is full, Britney. Please take up another religion, we have enough crazies of our own.

Yup, there ain't no room at this inn!

PS I'm still mourning Heath Ledger. So sad. Clearly NOT one of the crazies.

Stuff It

In his column in the NYT yesterday, Thomas Friedman made an interesting analogy. Analyzing the latest US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, he simplifies it as thus:

…Now, Bush officials are trying to tell everyone: “No, no, Iran is still dangerous. You have to keep the coalition together to get Tehran to stop enriching uranium.” But in a world where everyone is looking for an excuse to do business with Iran, not to sanction it, we’ve lost leverage. Everyone in the neighborhood can smell it — and it worries them.

Said Gary Samore, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Clinton administration expert on proliferation: “The U.S. N.I.E., by leading with the statement that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program, has left the misleading impression that the danger has passed."

The danger has not passed, because Iran is, in fact, still blatantly violating the UN proliferation rules to which it agreed and is still enriching uranium.

Friedman likens the situation to the state fair attractions of his youth, in which a guy would guess your weight within 5 pounds just by looking at you. If you managed to fool him, you went home with a stuffed animal. Similarly,

Out here on the Persian Gulf, where small countries learn quickly how to survive large predators, they’ve developed a similar skill: They can calculate a country’s power within 5 pounds, just by looking at it. If they’re wrong, they end up as a stuffed animal.

With the way the US N.I.E. framed their latest estimate, Friedman clearly believes it is Iran that will be left holding the stuffed animal.

I bet it's not a teddy bear named Mohammed.