If the mountain will not come to Mohammed,

Mohammed will go tell it on the mountain

Earlier this afternoon one of my roommates and I watched a show on the History Channel about the history of Islam. They dedicated at least a half hour to telling us what jihad means (hint: it doesn't mean killing infidels) and discussing the correctness of Osama Bin Laden's interpretations of Koranic verse (hint: he's wrong).

That's all well and good, but whenever I see something like this on TV or read it in the papers, I must admit there's a part of me that gets a little irked. Why? Well, let me explain.

A bunch of guys somewhere over in the middle east agree that Islam means submission and the Koran teaches that it's imperative to kill or conquer people who think differently than they do. Then they start acting on this idea and blowing people and things (and themselves) to kingdom come. As a reaction to this, other guys get on the TV and the radio, and in the newspaper, saying that Islam means peace and the Koran teaches us tolerance and not killing. Fine. Good. All right.

But why is it that they are always saying this to the victims? We're not the ones that need to hear this. Tell it to the folks back in the middle east who disagree with this non-violent interpretation. Convince them. They're the ones who need to be persuaded that Islam means peace and jihad means an inner struggle against the desire to sin. Not me. I'm not the one blowing people up.

Some people of a different political persuasion would disagree with me on this point. American soldiers are over in the middle east killing people, including some very innocent people. Americans do need to be convinced that Islam means peace, they would argue, because if they are not, they will keep fighting wars with Muslims.

Well, I would of course take issue with the implicit moral equivalency between terrorists and soldiers. But there is nothing new in this comparison, and nothing to be gained from my taking issue, so let us move on.

Let us presume, for the sake of argument, that the reason the United States has fought two wars with Muslim states in recent years is that Americans believe Islam is violent and threatening, and that convincing them of Islam's pacific nature would prevent further wars. Let us then ask why Americans believe this. Is it because their leaders teach them this? Well, George W. Bush makes a point of saying "Islam means peace" whenever the subject comes up.

So why do Americans believe that Muslims are commanded to conquer and subdue the infidels? Because some (indeterminate but non-trivial) number of Muslims believe this, and some (smaller but still significant) number act on this belief. Actions speak louder than words. If Americans think of Islam as a threat, it is because some Muslims act threatening.

As long as there are people shouting "Allahu akbar!" as they detonate themselves on public transportation, some Americans will persist in believing that Islam is not a religion of peace. No number of talking heads saying otherwise will be sufficient. On the other hand, in a world where terrorists do not claim that they are fulfilling Allah's will by killing infidels, I think it would take very little effort to persuade Americans that Muslims are peaceful, which would mean we wouldn't be doing all this regime-changing.

So, again, we come to the same conclusion. The guys on TV who are telling me about the true meaning of Islam and the correct interpretation of the Koran are preaching to the wrong guy.

Go tell it to Osama.

--DAOUD AL-RAHIMI

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Site problems. Fnord. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

--HOUSE OF PAYNE

Noam Chomsky's secret shame

I will be the first to admit that I have feelings which are not entirely positive about my school. At this point, though, school and I have pretty much learned to live with each other.

There is one thing, though, that never fails to bring up the bile. And that is when someone, upon learning where I go to school, says, "Oh, you must know Professor Chomsky!" At this point, I must carefully control my facial muscles, to prevent them from assuming a snarling rictus of fury. Then I politely inform the person that Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics, and not political science. So I have no contact with the man.

So it was with unspeakable delight that I read a story this morning about Chomsky's hypocrisy. (h/t: Dean.) It seems that the anti-capitalist hero of pot-smoking America-haters everywhere is a capitalist. Imagine that.

One of the most persistent themes in Noam Chomsky's work has been class warfare. The iconic MIT linguist and left-wing activist frequently has lashed out against the "massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich," and criticized the concentration of wealth in "trusts" by the wealthiest 1%. He says the U.S. tax code is rigged with "complicated devices for ensuring that the poor -- like 80% of the population -- pay off the rich."

But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of US$2-million, decided to create one for himself. ...

Chomsky favours massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.

There's plenty more, and it's damning, but not surprising. The man clearly has few scruples. In the fall of 2001, I attended one of Mr. Chomsky's talks. He said that the American invasion of Afghanistan would cause the deaths of millions of Afghans by starvation, and further that this was the purpose of the invasion.

(I should not need to add that he was very wrong on both counts. Americans labored very hard to save the lives of people who would have died of starvation that winter had the Afghan civil war continued without our intervention. The warlords there are not so tender-hearted as we are.)

At this moment I knew two things. First, Noam Chomsky is not a serious thinker or writer about international politics. Second, Noam Chomsky is not a friend of America. And so it is with great pleasure that I find him being exposed as a hypocrite: the dedicated Marxist who is just as dedicated to acquiring capital, and preventing the government from taking it away through taxes.

Now that he's been outed, maybe he can finally admit what so many of us have long suspected: His capitalism-o-phobia was only a ruse to cover his own secret capitalist yearnings. Come on out of that closet, Noam. Being a capitalist is nothing to be ashamed of. It's beautiful, it's natural.

It will be difficult for some of your followers to accept your money-philia, but who are they to tell you who or what to love? And could it be that some of those anti-business hippies are suffering from the same secret shame?

Maybe it's time for a tearful confession, perhaps on Oprah. It might sound something like this:

"Good afternoon. Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

...from my early days in school until the present day, I acknowledged some feelings, a certain sense separated me from others. But because of my resolve and also thinking that I was doing the right thing, I forced what I though was an acceptable reality onto myself, a reality which is layered and layered with all the, quote, good things and all the, quote, right things of typical adolescent and adult behavior.

...

At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.

And so my truth is that I am a capitalist American, and I am blessed to live in the greatest nation, with a tradition of civil liberties, the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world, in a country which provides so much to its people."

There, now. That's not so bad, is it?

--JOHANNES CLERK

Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog

Best parody blog ever. Not that there's a lot of competition, actually. Sort of a puzzle, isn't it? I guess it's hard to keep up the act for long. The obvious exception, of course, is the redoubtable Ayn Clouter, but she is a synthesis of Ayn Rand and Ann Coulter, which is really a new character entirely.

--REDBEARD

(h/t: Ace.)

Words of wisdom

If sarcasm could kill, Congress would be introducing a bill to ban this post. Wow. (h/t: Dean.)

--ABDUL ALEM

Speaking of places which no longer have over-population problems

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

--PADDY O'PAGAN

Good for something

Experts are predicting that China will soon be experiencing a population problem. An under-population problem.

Recent reports from researchers at Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs suggest that China's workforce may begin to shrink sooner than we thought. According to Deutsche Bank's analysis, the percentage of working-age Chinese in the population (those aged 15 to 64) will peak around 2010 at 72.2 percent. Over the next 40 years, that number will fall steadily to just 60.7 percent, according to U.N. forecasts. The steep drop is due in large part to China's one-child policy, first implemented in 1979. Also, many Chinese retire before they are 64; China's current retirement age is 50 for most women and 60 for most men.

There are two reasons this shift will put considerable strain on China's economic performance. First, the country's explosive economic growth over the last several years is due mostly to its plentiful supply of cheap labor. When the working-age population begins to drop five years from now, China's appeal to international investors may begin to fall as well.

Second, by 2050, every 10 Chinese workers will support seven Chinese who are too young or too old to work, according to Goldman Sachs. Even that projection is based on the optimistic assumption that the central government will soon persuade its citizens to work until they are 64. The Deutsche Bank study includes a warning from the International Monetary Fund that the transition from the current pension system to a more sustainable one could cost developing China $100 billion, not including the financial burden on local governments.

Funny that the countries which were supposed to have too many people are now predicted to have too few. But it should come as no great surprise: Malthus was wrong. God created an abundant earth, and there is still "enough and to spare" -- especially if we use our ingenuity.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and as human beings have needed to get more productivity out of limited resources, we have continued to find new ways to live, thrive, and survive. People consume resources, it's true, but they can also be resource multipliers, through innovation and hard work.

Dean Esmay is right: People are good for something.

--JACQUES "BIG JACK" LE PEN

Pick on someone your own size

My friend Scott often asks me what the future me would say to the present me if we could communicate. Now I think I know. He would say, "I'm suing myself."

--MAJOR BLUDD

Ancestors

There is an interesting article on Slate today about genealogy and ancestry. Since the farther back you go in time, the more ancestors you had, virtually everyone alive today is descended from virtually everyone in the ancient world.

Say you go back 120 generations, to about the year 1000 B.C. According to the results presented in our Nature paper, your ancestors then included everyone in the world who has descendants living today. And if you compared a list of your ancestors with a list of anyone else's ancestors, the names on the two lists would be identical.

You may have heard of people who can trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne. Well, if you had better records, you probably could, too. And the farther back you go, the more likely you are to be related. I am almost certainly descended from the Roman caesars, and even more certainly descended from King Solomon.

Keep these observations in mind the next time you read about people being linked to famous ancestors. Newsweek recently gushed that "one in five males in northwest Ireland may be a descendant of a legendary fifth-century warlord." In fact, virtually everyone with any European ancestry is descended from that man. One-fifth of Irish males may be descended from him in a direct male line—that is, through their father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on. That's what genetic tests can measure. But almost everyone else in Europe, and many people living elsewhere in the world, is descended from him through genealogical lines that include women. And of course, we're just as much descended from our mother's parents and from our father's mother as from our father's father.

Mormons (myself included) believe that they are in some way the descendents of the Israelites. (To be specific, most Mormons believe they are of the tribe of Ephraim.) Some of the more skeptical Mormons contend that we are spiritual, not literal, descendents of Israel: adopted into that lineage through covenant. However, if the theories discussed above are correct, it is likely that almost every Mormon is a literal descendent of not just one Israelite, but almost every Israelite.

Cool, huh?

--YOHANNA BEN-DAVID

Good riddance

Thuggish Balkan dictator Slobodan Milosevic is dead. Good roundup of the news coverage at Slate. Personally, I'm glad he's dead, although it would have been nice to see him convicted.

I wonder how Bill Clinton is feeling these days. Of his greatest enemies, Saddam is on trial in a democratizing Iraq, Slobo just died in prison. Only Kim Jong-il is still at large and acting crazy. Well, him and Ken Starr.

--YAHYA AL-RIIFI