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Ten (new) commandments for 2010

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Jan 01, 2010

Controversial display of Ten Commandments outside the Texas State Capitol Building (courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Hello, Moses and Jesus? Hope y’all threw a great New Year’s Eve party in heaven Thursday night.

May I take just a minute of your eternal lives?  I’m a professor of leadership at New York University’s school of public service. In summer 2009, my program, the Moral Courage Project, launched a blogging campaign to stop the stoning of women.

One of the bloggers was Dana Gallagher. Something she posted about the sanctity of human rights caught my eye. I asked her to expand on it and, upon learning that she’s a Christian, I suggested she turn her initial post into an updated version of the Ten Commandments.

To sweeten the incentive, I promised Dana that I’d feature the new commandments on my website and bring them to my Facebook community for lively debate. Honestly, Prophets, I didn’t think she’d take me up on it. But whaddya know?

Be assured that Dana approaches this experiment with respectable values. She grew up in the American Midwest and graduated magna cum laude from Marymount Manhattan College.

Before we dive into her updated commandments, Dana wants you — and my readers –  to understand where she’s coming from. Here she is, in her own words:

I am a young Christian. I’ve been baptized, raised, and confirmed in the same church, and my experiences there have been among the most formative of my life.

Yet, as it is for so many people, my relationship with organized religion is complicated. The higher power that my soul recognizes and the one presented from the pulpit can be difficult to reconcile.

Over time I’ve learned not to fight the distance between them, but simply to let my faith guide me. And it’s my faith that inspires, even requires, me to re-think the Ten Commandments.

According to the Bible, God wrote the Ten Commandments twice. Moses got so fed up with his environment and the people around him that he broke the first set of tablets, and God had to make him some new ones.

With the challenges that we’ve faced in 2009, the first week of 2010 seems a good time to engage in some tablet-breaking of our own. But instead of destroying, let’s be constructive.  Let’s update God’s guidelines for the coming decade – or longer.

What if the commandments appealed to the best in us and what each of us is capable of, rather than assuming that the only thing keeping us from being lecherous, murderous, backstabbing thieves is endless guilt and the threat of hell?

With that in mind, welcome to my list of 10 for 2010:

I: Love yourself unconditionally. Christ asks us to “love thy neighbor as yourself.” Notice the pre-condition here: to embrace others, you must first make peace with who you are. So much of the hatred we direct towards others is spillover from the disdain we feel for ourselves. Love your whole, perfectly imperfect self.

And when you mess up, recognize that this is a part of the human journey. Feeling remorse is more than natural. It’s your spirit saying that your higher self believes you can do better. You can’t experience redemption if you don’t make mistakes. Forgive yourself, but equally important, pledge to do better. It’s the only way forward.

II: Love others unconditionally. Unconditional love is hard to contain, and if you’re able to cultivate it in yourself it’s likely to extend to the people around you. At the same time, it can be all too easy to shrink into ourselves until our hearts and minds narrow down to a lonely world of one.

Make a conscious effort to recognize the beautiful and, yes,  complicated individuals with whom you share this life. For better or worse, we really are in this together.

III: Don’t confuse loving with shoving. If your particular form of love comes with a big, leather-bound set of beliefs, kindly refrain from smacking innocent bystanders over the head with it. Pushing your beliefs on others isn’t faith; it’s insecurity.

IV: Corruption happens. The Bible has undergone many translations and revisions, often made by people whose intentions were not the purest.

No matter what any Sunday sermon or production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” would have you believe, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. None of the Gospels refers to her as such, and her bad reputation can be traced to a speech given by Pope Gregory the Great in 591 AD. The Vatican finally issued a quiet retraction in 1969; so quiet that many Christians simply never heard it.

With so much of Christianity being based on the Word, it’s worth taking a closer look and finding out what the Word actually says. There are lots of good books on the subject — Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman, Junia: The First Woman Apostle, by Eldon Jay Epp and the soon to be released And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, by Joel M. Hoffman, PhD, to name just a few.

V: Keep your laws on your own naughty bits.  It’s strange to obsess over someone else’s sexual behavior, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Everyone is not, however, entitled to force those opinions on other people (see III).

Tend to your own naughty bits, please. Just as self-hatred often manifests as hatred of others, sexual repression often rears its ugly head as judgment and punishment of the sexual behavior of others. Show your body some love and maybe it won’t be so concerned about what everyone else is doing with theirs.

VI: Challenge the “bros before hoes” approach to religion. There is just no good reason to insist that women hold a “separate but equal” role in the church. As we all learned during South Africa’s apartheid years, “separate but equal” is a euphemism for subservience.

As with white supremacy, so with male superiority: most of the Christian arguments for it rely on sketchy Biblical quotes (see IV).  The rest can be boiled down to the schoolyard logic of “girls are stupid.” It’s 2010, and it’s time to grow up already.

VII: Be not afraid of scientists. I refer here to actual research-conducting, fact-checking, history-acknowledging scientists, not to dogmatists who jettison or distort any information that doesn’t align with their worldview.

Real scientists do the life affirming work of finding ways to repair the damage we’ve inflicted on the planet, advancing medicine and shedding light on our place within the universe. Yet they’re often subject to suspicion, oppression and hostility by members of the Christian community.

It’s time to make amends. Doing so does not make you an atheist any more than attending Sunday services strips a scientist of her passion for discovery.

VIII: Polar bears are God’s creatures, too. Just because there were only two polar bears on the Ark doesn’t mean there are only supposed to be two on the planet. We all have a responsibility to take care of the Earth and the life that goes with it. Let’s keep working to leave it in better shape than we found it.

IX: Keep your candle lit. Hope fuels our faith when it looks as though there isn’t any love, unconditional or otherwise, to be had. Each of us has a unique light to offer the world. Why else would our Creator have bothered to bring us into it?

X: Know when to be humble. So we don’t have it all figured out. So what? The wonderful thing about being one small part of a much bigger, much greater piece of work is that we don’t need to have all the answers. That’s the Almighty’s role. Our role might very well be to stop and listen after we’ve made nine brazenly big points.

What are yours? 

*****

Click here to join our Facebook community and engage directly with Irshad and Dana. Or email us your ideas: comments@irshadmanji.com.  However you decide to communicate with us, remember: every orthodoxy began as a heresy…

“Ten Commandments,” as rendered by Lucas Cranach the Elder and displayed in the townhall of Wittenberg, Germany (courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Democracy in Iran: “Tipping point to come”

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 26, 2009

Last June, I tweeted this message to my followers: “Heard from connected friend in #Tehran that many say this is beginning of end for clerics - new generation now awake. Tipping point to come.”

Six months later, at the close of 2009, I believe my friend is right.  The tipping point for democracy in Iran is coming, and it could arrive as early as this week.

The Ahmadinejad regime has banned major memorials for the late reformist, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, which are (or were) to take place on Sunday. But that day also coincides with something  nobody can squelch: Ashura, the most meaningful moment in the Shia Muslim calendar.

That’s when Shias around the world commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, who entered battle against a Muslim tyrant named Yazid. Hussein knew he would be massacred, but decided that it’s more dignified to challenge authoritarianism for the sake of social justice than to live on your knees.

Welcome to the transcendent paradigm that drives so many of Iran’s pro-democracy activists. Couple that with the passing of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who “died at exactly the right time” according to Iran scholar Rasool Nafisi, and you can see why young dissidents are finally being joined by older people of faith as well as progressive clergy.  Such a coalition could be potent; even unstoppable.

We’ll know that Iranian democrats have reached a tipping point when Khameini’s street thugs, the Basij, are bludgeoning clerics in droves. In fact, they’ve already started attacking the holy. More of those crackdowns mean, quite simply, that more mullahs are marching in the democracy movement. This will lend not just numbers but also cred to the uprisings.

No wonder one of the biggest stories in 2009 is bound to make international headlines in 2010.  “Inshallah,” as we Muslims say, “God willing.” Of course, the people must be willing first. For, as the Quran tells us, “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” (13:11)

For more of my analysis, here’s a recent discussion about Iran between me and a journalist with The New York Times on PBS “Worldfocus”:

Facebook Muslims to young European Jews: “Thank you”

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 18, 2009

(Courtesy: 4 International Flags)

A few weeks ago, the Swiss voted to outlaw minarets in their midst. Denunciation came from the usual suspects. But one highly unusual source stood out.

After I learned that an umbrella group representing young Jews in Europe openly opposed the minaret ban, I was propelled to ask: How can young Muslims reciprocate this good will? That’s when I posted the following message on my Facebook fan page:

“The European Union of Jewish Students has issued a public statement condemning the Swiss ban on minarets. Agree or disagree with their position, their larger point is that faithful Muslims deserve the freedoms that democratic societies offer. This is a noble gesture by young European Jews and we should do something to acknowledge their inclusive message. So I’m now asking my Muslim fans to post PERSONAL messages against anti-Semitism here.“

Many Muslims did. Highlights:

“The Jewish community has always been in the lead defending human rights. They stand by their gift to the world, that code of ethics which puts human dignity first.

It was they who first made the UN aware that dropping food packages containing pork wasn’t appropriate for the Bosnians under siege in Sarajevo, and they sent doctors to help. Israel relocated many Bosnians, then Albanian Kosovan families. Not to mention that refugees from Darfur in Sudan work and live in Israel, when hardly any Muslim country would give them refuge.

When Uzbek Jews left the Soviet Union, they were not comfortable leaving many of their close Muslim friends behind, so Israel relocated many of them. When the communist world collapsed, most Albanian Jews were married to Muslim and Christian Albanian spouses. The spouses and their families were invited to Israel too.

It may be possible that the God of Abraham smiles upon and continually blesses the Jewish people, to whom so many prophets were sent, because they are so caring for that high point of His creation, the family of Man.” – Ismael

“I’d like the day you posted this challenge to be officially known as Hug a Semite Day. Find a Semite (Arab or Jew) and give them a big hug in the name of world peace.” — Yusuf

“It’s about time to let go [of] prejudice and hatred simply caused by our ancestors’ unwillingness to understand one another. To begin clearing the air, first get rid of hatred, anger and suspicion as well as [the] feeling of superiority from within ourselves.  Show and not tell them – people of different race and religion — that we care and love them for what they are.“  – Emmy

“Growing up, there was social & religious indoctrination to hate, condemn & kill the Jews. Secular education & global awareness reverse that thinking. I embrace all the goodness of mankind.“ — Mazlina

“I come from a part of the world that has been ravaged by Israeli aggression. That fact has never stood in the way of recognizing that anti-Semitism is unjustified under any circumstance.  Racism, including anti-Semitism, is inhuman, un-Godlike, immoral and criminal. Anti-Semitism is especially reprehensible because of its long history and horrendous outcomes through the ages…

It has been my personal experience that our Jewish brothers and sisters are always at the forefront of reaching and speaking out in favor of justice and tolerance. This recent example from the European Union of Jewish Students is no exception.

I think more Muslim believers need to reach out to the Jewish community and say ‘thank you’ for this recent initiative on their part re: Switzerland… Words alone will never be enough to show gratitude.“ — Marilyn

“As a high school student in the 70s, I was lucky to be one of those recipients of a national service award in Malawi conducted by members of the Israeli Armed Forces… In college many of my friends were from the Middle East — Muslims, Christians and Jews. It is a collective effort by all, including forums such as this with courageous comments, that will enlighten and free many of us from carrying around learned hatred for other people.” – Yunus

“As long as you’re living and breathing and supporting each other’s human rights, I’ll be by your side. Oh , and don’t forget to smile. (=” – Pitoresmi

“I’m from Indonesia. We are one unity and VOTE PEACE and start to make a better world…” – Hasan

“I pledge my solidarity with the Jewish Community. In my world, there is no difference  between a Jew and a Muslim, or between black and white. I will stand by any cause that I deem just.” – AbdiShwak

“When I was very young, living in a remote part of a predominantly Muslim country, my teacher asked me if I was a Shia or a Sunni (sort of like asking a Christian if he is a Catholic or a Protestant). Since I honestly  didn’t know, she asked me to check with my parents.

To this day, I have not forgotten the answer my father gave.  He said: ‘What sort of stupid question your teacher has asked you? Tell her tomorrow that you don’t believe in any divisions and even Jews and Christians are your brothers.’ 

A couple of decades have passed and I still believe in this. I consider all Jews my brothers and always look forward to befriending them.” – Mustafa

*****

Now for a sample of the responses, first from an atheist Jew and then from an orthodox Jew:

“As a Jew (atheist), I’m writing to the Muslims who replied to Irshad’s call to speak out to embrace the European Jewish students: you have my tears of gratitude and my re-awakened consciousness to the humanity of man.” – Ed

“I want to applaud all the Muslims here who have given such positive feedback! It is something I have been looking for since 9/11 and first heard it loud and clear with Irshad’s book… Let’s keep this open conversation going. I am an Orthodox Jew and this is beyond refreshing to read.” – Estherhadas

*****

Finally, two dissenters:

“I don’t think the decision to ban minarets had anything to do with discrimination. Switzerland is trying, and should (in my opinion) preserve its historic and cultural architecture. Though, I never hear that much from western media regarding how non-Muslims living in Muslim countries get discriminated against and harassed.

My relatives are Iranian Jews and you can’t even imagine what they are going through. I hope those European Jewish students and the media would find more ways in standing up for minority rights, rather than focusing on petty issues such as minarets.

Muslims in Europe should stop asking for special treatment and privileges from western societies, especially when they know how minorities are treated in their former countries. These are the same Muslims that have failed to stand up for minority or religious rights while they were living in their former countries. Now that they’ve left these countries, we never hear any condemnation/criticism from them towards the way minorities are treated in Muslim countries.” – Hussein

“Well said, Hussein. Here in Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia], I know of a shopping mall not being able to get its planning permit approved because the proposed mall was taller than the adjacent mosque. And to build a church, you will need permission from, among others, the the state Islamic Council. So guys, wake up. We are persecuted too.” – Eugene

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Kids! B4 u join the jihad, read this

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 11, 2009

Muslim victims of jihadist violence (Credit: MSNBC)

Five young  Muslim-Americans have been arrested in Pakistan on suspicions that they intended to commit terror against U.S. forces.

According to The Chicago Tribune, “One of them left behind  a video that showed American casualties. In the video he stated that Muslims needed to stand up and fight to defend their fellow Muslims…”

Whoops. It turns out that al-Qa’ida’s jihad kills eight times more Muslims than Westerners.

Here’s the data to prove it. Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al-Qa’ida’s Violence Against Muslims is a new study that uses Arabic-language sources to track down and add up the casualties of jihad. Some of the conclusions:

* “From 2004 to 2008, only 15% of the 3,010 victims [of al-Qa’ida attacks] were Western.”

* “From 2006 to 2008, only 2% (12 of 661 victims) are from the West, and the remaining 98% are inhabitants of countries with Muslim majorities.”

* “One could argue that non-Western casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan are unfortunate martyrs or collateral damage given the ongoing wars initiated by the United States.” But “[o]utside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, 99% of al-Qa’ida’s victims were non-Western in 2007, and 96% were non-Western in 2008. From 2006 to 2008, only 9 of 352 victims were Westerners (3%), meaning that non-Westerners were 38 times more likely to die in an al-Qa’ida attack outside of Iraq and Afghanistan during those years.” 

The authors of this report — Nassir Abdullah, Scott Helftstein and Muhammad al-Obaidi of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point — emphasize that their data is drawn “from exclusively Arabic news sources” in order to pre-empt charges of Western bias.

And the research illuminates an unmistakable reality: “Irrespective of al-Qaeda’s justifications,” the authors write, “if history provides a glimpse into the future, the group and its associates will pose the greatest threat to fellow Muslims.”

Kids, do like the Prophet and “read!” (That’s what the Angel Gabriel told him upon bringing down the first Quranic revelation). Read! This. Study.

Moral Courage Project named Visionary of the Year

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road, Announcements on Dec 04, 2009

With Emmy-winning Iranian actress Shohreh Agdashloo

“Hola!” from Los Angeles, where I’m accepting the 2009 Visionary Award bestowed by the Women’s International Film and Television Showcase.

This award recognizes the human rights campaign that the Moral Courage Project led over the summer. Inspired by the independent film, “The Stoning of Soraya M,” we used the movie and my thousands-strong Facebook community to galvanize people worldwide against the tribal practice of stoning in countries like Iran, Somolia, Afghanistan and Sudan.

According to Iranian actress Shohreh Agdashloo, who stars in “The Stoning,” international pressure has paid off: A few weeks after the film came out and our campaign gained steam, Iranian authorities announced that stoning would no longer be part of Iran’s penal code. Whether the new regulation gets enforced — particularly in rural Iran — is another matter altogether.

Still, we can all take strength that global campaigns work when back-channel diplomacy doesn’t. Just ask Maziar Bahari. He’s the Newsweek journalist unjustly jailed by Iranian authorities.  After 118 days in the notoriously nasty Evin Prison, Bahari was sprung. Last week, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that an international and very public effort by his wife and fellow journalists made all the difference.

In my next book, I’ll offer more examples of people in the West allying with people in the East and triumphing for the eminently universal cause of human rights.

For now, here’s my message: Don’t be silenced by the woe-is-us crowd who insist that we’re merely pawns of The Man.  They don’t know world history or individual agency.  Most tragic, they also don’t know what it means to leave a legacy.  If you want to leave a legacy, then exercise your personal leadership for a greater good.

You can start by joining my Facebook community.  Facebookers form the vanguard of the Moral Courage Project. They’re the ones who propelled the summer 2009 campaign against stoning. They’re the ones who made it viral. They deserve the Visionary Award that brings me to Los Angeles.

I accept it on behalf of them.

If Sarah Palin can have a ghost-writer, dang it…

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Nov 26, 2009

With this post, I’m inaugurating a unique feature on my blog. I call it, “Notes From My Next Book.”

My next book will be a leadership guide for a new generation of progressives. By “progressives,” I don’t mean left-wingers or right-wingers. I mean those of us — those hundreds of millions of us worldwide — who believe that progress comes from the moral courage to be honest about all that we are, since that’s when we replace lying with living.

Building on the success of The Trouble with Islam Today, I’ll show that the mission of reform-minded Muslims contains leadership lessons for anybody who hungers to make positive change inside his or her community.

* Are you desperate to marry the love of your life, who’s not from your faith tradition, but who deserves a chance from your ultra-traditional parents?

* Are you a Christian who’s sick of the prosperity preachers reducing faith to net worth, and wants to do more than complain about it?

* Are you an atheist who’s disgusted by the intolerant scientific supremacy of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and is equally disgusted by your continued silence about his missionary atheism?

* Are you a Jew busting to call out the hypocrites who coo about Israel’s democracy but won’t let secular Jewish women in Israel get proper divorces?

* Are you an African-American girl who craves to shout from the mountaintop, “Why is it that when a white man calls me a nappy-headed ho, he’s racist but when my Black brothers pull the same shit, they’re entertainers?!”

* Are you a money manager interested in learning how to convince Wall Street that free-market fundamentalism only corrupts the capitalist project?

* Are you a reporter troubled by your boss’s refusal to hold certain ethnic, cultural, or religious leaders accountable in order to avoid offending and losing ad dollars?

* Are you a European (or Aussie, or Kiwi, or Canuck, or Yank) whose conscience screams when you hear about the latest stoning in Somalia yet screams even louder when you’re told that “it’s none of our business because we’ve done enough harm to Third World people”?

* Are you a closeted Muslim reformer dying to emerge from the shadow of fear so you can finally speak your truth and be one with Allah?

Then my next book is for you. All of you.

Non-conformity invites backlash from dogmatists in every conceivable camp: liberal, conservative, religious, atheist, queer, homophobic, socialist, capitalist, feminist, misogynist, nationalist, multi-culturalist, you name it. After all, purity disdains honesty.

Tough. My motto: “I don’t mind being a pariah. I do mind being a liah.” (Imagine delivering this with a New York — excuse me, a New Yawk — accent.)

In the same spirit, my next book will demolish the profound dishonesty driving today’s geo-politics, international relations and cultural debates.  Among other things, I’ll reveal:

* What inter-faith marriage can mean both for personal happiness and for social policy. 

* Why Muslim moderates are part of the problem, while reform-minded Muslims are part of the solution.  I’ll also explain why Martin Luther King would have agreed that moderation is an extreme cop-out in times of moral crisis.

* Who inspired Gandhi’s approach to non-violent resistance, and how these inspirations prove that your identity is not nearly as important as your integrity.

*  Where the Statue of Liberty was really born. (Hint: It’s neither America nor France.)

* How we can be pluralists — people who appreciate multiple perspectives — without becoming relativists — people who fall for anything because they stand for nothing.

I could go on and on about the myths, mysteries and misunderstandings that the next book will tackle, and that’s why I’m launching “Notes From My Next Book.” This new feature will bring you into my writing process.  What big ideas am I grappling with?  Why do they matter to our world — and to your life? How can you use this information to live with greater purpose every day?

As an author, I know that whenever I sit down to write, I embark on a winding, even tumultuous, journey. That’s if I’m being honest with myself.  Now, you get to be part of that adventure. With “Notes from my next book,” you’re invited for the ride.

More than “riding” with me, though, you’ll be writing with me: I want you to comment on the ideas that I’m posting. If your comments strike a nerve with me, I’ll use them to refine my drafts.  Usually, too, I’ll post these ideas on my Facebook fan page. There, you can discuss them with fellow Facebookers, helping me clarify my thoughts that much more. If Sarah Palin can have a ghost-writer, dang it, why can’t I get a little help from my friends?

You never know — your comments could produce the final title of my book.  I’ve got a working title, but you’re bound to come up with a better one. In fact, I hope you do.

This could be fun. At the very least, it’ll be a fascinating experiment, pushing the parameters of social networking.  So please return to this site every few days for a new post under the banner, “Notes From My Next Book.”

The End.  For now.

Afghanistan: What Obama is doing right

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 18, 2009

President Obama faces one helluva decision as he returns from China, a decision made even more wrenching by the Fort Hood shooting and  the U.S. justice department’s move to put suspected terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in a transparent, civilian court near 9/11’s epicenter.  Under such circumstances, the specter of bungling national security has to haunt any president — all the more so when we grasp what’s actually going down in Afghanistan.

Recently, I spent a few days in Europe at a human rights gathering. As we discussed, debated and plotted what we all hoped would amount to progress, Afghanistan loomed large on everybody’s minds.  But I hadn’t appreciated just what a dog’s breakfast that country has become until I spoke privately with one of the conference participants. She’s a young Afghan woman who has launched a series of schools in her region.

“How do you feel about the fact that the November elections are now canceled?” I asked her after news broke that Karzai’s rival had dropped out, citing corruption of the process.

“It’s the least worst of the options,” she sighed. “What the media never reports is that the people of Afghanistan are literally tortured whenever we hold another election. In the previous election [on August 20], the Taliban actually sliced off the noses of some voters.  And they cut the ears of other voters.

If we are going to hold a new election, it cannot be a game. Since the election results will be corrupted for sure, there is no point in having one right now. All that would be achieved is more death and damage to the Afghan people.”

“So, should President Obama should commit more troops?” I continued.

She paused. “Yes,” came the ultimate answer. “Let me tell you why. When the international forces arrived, they said to women, ‘Here is the deal: You build your society and we will protect you as you do that. We cannot re-construct your nation for you. But we can secure your efforts to create a better situation for all.’ 

We believed them. Now that we are in the middle of running new schools and medical clinics and so on, we are meeting our end of the bargain. If the international forces do not met their end of the bargain, then we are left in the hands of the Taliban. They know exactly who we are, and we will be the first ones slaughtered when the soldiers walk away.”

Hearing this from an Aghan woman who expresses herself gently and without rancor has left me even more sympathetic to the task that President Obama faces. Despite caustic accusations of dithering and dissing his generals on the ground, the president is absolutely right to be asking question upon question before announcing any decision.

What happens when you don’t dig deep with precise and sometimes annoying questions? Here’s an extract from historian Gordon Goldstein’s, Lessons in Disaster. He tells the story of McGeorge Bundy, a top presidential adviser whose spectacular career successes at Harvard and elsewhere dazzled all.  But:

“In response to the crisis in Vietnam, the administration’s preeminent intellectual demonstrated a fundamental lack of rigor in his analysis of the ends and means of American strategy… He did underestimate the resilience of the enemy. He did fail to examine the plan for military action. And he did fail to anticipate that the American escalation would be met with a furious countervailing escalation by the forces of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army…

There was no analysis or evidence to validate Bundy’s expectation that Ho Chi Minh and his fervent followers would capitulate. Bundy also failed to insist that the national security bureaucracy quantify the policy implications of a coercion strategy. How many bombs will it take to dilute the will of the insurgency? How much disruption and destruction would the United States have to impose on their lines of supply and reinforcement? How many US troops would be required to persuade the Vietnamese communists  that they could not prevail? How many casualties would be required to compel them to quit? How many years would it take?…

In scattered notes conveying his struggle to identify the roots of a disastrous military strategy, Bundy wrote, ‘LBJ [President Lyndon B. Johnson] and the rest of us don’t ask how much Ho can endure… We think of ourselves as propping up Saigon, which will do better and do its share and somehow do – enough.’”

Welcome to one of the biggest leadership challenges that any president must confront: lack of moral courage in his inner circle. Dr. Irving Janis, a psychologist who studied “groupthink,” concluded that in small and cohesive clusters of people, critical thinking typically loses to the comforting sway of consensus. In other words, unity will almost always be confused with uniformity.

Both in the Bay of Pigs and in the Vietnam fiascoes, a highly educated and confident fistful of individuals — all of them distinguished in their chosen professions — abandoned their questioning faculties in the bubble of the White House.

That’s why, when it comes to investigating the facts, the President has to take the lead — and take the time to get his hands mucky in details. He doesn’t know what information is being kept from him by his advisers because they, themselves, might not have posed the right questions (if any) to their sources.

Like I said: a dog’s breakfast.  It’s an accurate description not just of Afghanistan, but of what it will take to make Afghanistan less of a mess.

Debating Fort Hood and Islam

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 12, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Who says newspapers no longer matter? After my Globe & Mail commentary about why we shouldn’t whitewash Islam from the analysis of the shooting at Fort Hood, MSNBC called. Then they called again.

This week, I appeared on two of MSNBC’s signature shows. Click the box above for my discussion on “Morning Joe” and the box below for my debate with Chris Matthews on “Hardball.”

But please don’t tell my editor any of this. I’ve got book deadlines, dammit…

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Fort Hood: Analyze it, don’t sanitize it

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 10, 2009

Editorial cartoon by Anthony Jenkins, Globe & Mail

In my latest column for the Toronto Globe & Mail, I argue that we shouldn’t whitewash the words “Islam” and “Muslim” when publicly discussing the Fort Hood shooting. Here’s an extract:

Let’s be clear: If an alleged criminal merely happens to be a Muslim, then religion may well be immaterial. But if his crime is committed in the name of Islam, then religion serves to motivate. In that case, the suspect’s Muslim identity absolutely matters. Words, gestures and images should be analyzed – fully, openly and honestly.

Read my entire commentary, then join the discussion on my Facebook fan page.

A Catholic and his conscience

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Oct 29, 2009

Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice

Friends and foes: What do you do when you’re knee-deep in book-writing deadlines, you want to keep your blog fresh and dynamic, and you believe that new voices deserve to be heard on the very themes for which your audience turns to you in the first place? Hell, you share your platform with guest boggers!

With that in mind, let me intro you to Janice Formichella.  An activist for Afghan women, among others, Janice stood out the moment I came to know of her. Propelled by struggles with her own religion, she read of my book, The Trouble with Islam Today, took my  NYU course, “Public Leadership and Moral Courage,” earned among the top grades in that class, and is now campaign director for the Moral Courage Project.

In that capacity, Janice led last summer’s social networking around “The Stoning of Soraya M,” an indie film about the heroic efforts made by Iranian women to challenge human rights abuses in their country.

Janice didn’t worry about whether a “Western feminist” has the right to support Iranian women; as a citizen of the world, she and her conscience powered forth.  I’m glad they did. And I think you’ll enjoy her latest contribution to the theme of moral courage below:

A Catholic and his Conscience

By Janice Formicella

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice. The interview took place first thing on a Monday morning and, I have to say, listening to this activist’s enthusiasm and morally courageous work was the perfect way to begin my week.

Catholics for Choice (CFC) is an organization that seeks to represent Catholics who “disagree with the dictates of the Vatican on matters related to sex, marriage, family life and motherhood.” Jon states that the goal of CFC is to “be an example of Catholicism as lived by normal people” with “an understanding of the world in which we live.” The leadership, he says, have “misunderstandings about sex that have nothing to do with how people live.”

CFC is largely concerned with ending poverty and does a significant amount of work overseas. Jon points out that the Vatican’s attacks on choice do not make as deep an impact in the U.S. as they do internationally. For instance, in the U.S. a Catholic can easily practice the “right to disagree” with the leadership over birth control by going to any drug store to buy condoms or taking the pill; however, those in the global south do not have such luxuries. This is why so many Catholics find it offensive that the church leadership lobbies the UN against distributing condoms.

Although the “uber conservative” Catholic world vision states that Catholics must obey leadership regardless of their views, Jon says that is not a Catholic teaching. In fact, he informed me that as a Catholic, “you are required to follow your conscience.”

I asked Jon to give me an example of such a heritage in the Catholic faith. “Imagine how Galileo’s mother felt,” he said to me. After all, “it took the Vatican 1000 years to forgive him for having scientific integrity and speaking the truth.”

Galileo

Jon also gave the examples of Ted Kennedy and Kevin Dowling, a priest in South Africa who believes that the Catholic hierarchy must change its approach to teaching from one that claims to be “open to life” to one that tries to prevent death.

Like Dowling, Kennedy and Galileo, CFC has come under severe scrutiny from the hierarchy of the Church. However, Jon derives his moral courage from the “knowledge that what we are saying is the truth.”

Having come from a religion with similar troubling positions regarding women and sex, I was curious where CFC stands on working with Catholics who choose to leave the faith. Jon says he is “deeply hurt” to hear of people who have been wounded by the leadership of the church, especially women and gays. However, Jon says that he respects “the moral courage involved in saying ‘I need to go.’”

According to Jon, those who have left the faith “have a great sensitivity to how the institution hurts people.” I asked him if ex-Catholics can stay involved in his movement. His response: “Of course.”

Why do he and others at CFC stay in the Church?  Not because they are afraid to leave, Jon clarifies, “but because we are the Church. The Church is a community of people. Ownership does not reside in the Bishops.”

Jon joked that CFC should be given a retainer for all those who have remained in the faith thanks to the presence of his organization. Jon meets Catholics all the time who have been struggling about “how to stay Catholic,” given their deeply held views. After discovering CFC, people often express relief and remark how great it is to have “representation” after feeling alone for so long.

I was touched by Jon’s dedication to his religion, despite what seem to be the many roadblocks to his faith. But it all seemed to come together when he put it this way: “We are each asked to stand up. If we don’t, there will be nothing left to stand up for.”

By the way, in his new book What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell tells us about the inventor of the birth control pill — a devout Catholic, it turns out.

Get more info about how the Moral Courage Project can help you stand up for what you believe. Passionately.

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