Communicating Arts - Main Web Site"Some say the Shi'ites are lucky because they are now ruling Iraq, but that is wrong. It is the Islamist Shi'ites who are ruling Iraq. Their victory was a curse for us," said one sheikh. [1]
Before anyone can fix a problem, someone has to define it in an addressable way.
For most U.S. and other western readers--and here I will exclude myself as I've been following the Islamic Small Wars more closely than most--less than the analysts, more than joe consumer--the "crayon principle" applies: not fine definitions delineations, and lines mark the minds of reader but thick smears of color.
"Those bad Turks" some, if not many, will say this week in regard to the "Armenian Genocide" bill recently released for consideration to the U.S. House of Representatives. The horror may remain a still disputed historical event, 92 years old and associated with a defunct government, but the message for most will boil down to a "+" or "-" influence on psychological affect for the Turks, among the most tolerant of people as regards religions that lay outside of Islam.
Iraq, for most, presents a similar simplification: for most, it's a civil war pitting Shi'ite against Sunni Muslims, and all of the shades are lost, including the representation of secular-minded Muslims who would tolerate, overlook, or set aside historical or other differences in religious identity to lead better lives for themselves and their people.
For the new minted reader, one has always to remind that the Saddam Hussein's Baath Party in rhetoric espoused pan-Arabism, socialism, and secularism, a formula that had operational presence in the oil-funded modernization or contemporary physical development of Baghdad and surrounds and its ability to grow and sustain a middle class of professional service providers.
Today, according to the Reuters article cited, the new society cultivated by Kalashnikov has been altered to the following effects:
- Dancing: forbidden
- Music tolerated: religious only
- Alcohol: forbidden
- Women's rights: are you kidding?
I am myself kidding a little on that last point; however, Reuters notes, "Women were also harassed for wearing clothing deemed inappropriate," a statement that fits in with the "Bad Hajib Day" stories some months ago out of Iran (Hamid Tehrani's piece at Global Voice Online [2] may serve as an example).
One understands both the necessity and strength in sustaining alternative beliefs and decorum between cultures. Abundance, imagination, and elaboration in design, including social design, would seem by now an established fact of nature--the world's many "peoples" may not share the same origin or divinity stories or sentiments, but the common possession of some kind of communal and personal sentiment and story is universal.
Another unnamed sheik (representing another undisclosed location and tribal people) interviewed for the Reuters story went on to note, ". . . we are believers, but at the same time we like to live our lives and we like freedom."
Here, here.
Freedom may not require alcohol, but it nonetheless may depend some on the right to speak directly and openly (i.e., free of intimidation) about issues of concern to persons individually and their communities (as the aggregating sources of business, political, and religious outlooks held in common).
At this point, I'm going to do what I generally do: refer back to the way it was and, for me, the little bit of grit that started a pearl or two, maybe, out of this shell: Phillip Robertson's, "The death of Al Mutanabbi Street" in Salon a little more than two years ago. The tag on the title was, "Iraqi culture was reborn when Saddam fell, only to die again. A report from Baghdad's fear-haunted literary cafes." [3]
"Moderates" who have not organized for defense and aggressive assertion of the privileges and "inalienable rights" that are objectively theirs become instead the targets of zealots.
The job--that thing George Bush too hastily said was done--is, in my opinion, to be able to sit in a cafe and read practically anything and converse through speech or writing about anything with anyone free of intimidation and the scrutiny of government and other organizations with exception made only for speech of directly intended criminal (economic, sexual, or political) design.
The loose saying in the United States: without the First Amendment, all of the others are meaningless.
1. Karouny, Mariam. "Shi'ite tribal leaders in Iraq say Islamism on rise." Reuters, October 16, 2007.
2. Tehrani, Hamid. "Iran: Crackdown on Women Again." Global Voice Online, April 30, 2007.
3. Robertson, Phillip. "The death of Al Mutanabbi Street." Salon, August 26, 2005.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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