Sharia law returns to Afghanistan
Entirely predictable, including the new secrecy part:
As for their laws and punishments which Turabi insists are not to be criticized, he said that “cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” but that the new Taliban government hadn’t yet decided whether to carry out the punishments in public as they have in the past but pledged they will “develop a policy” to handle brutal punishments for actions they deem to be crimes. If that’s what the Taliban is admitting publicly, there’s surely worse happening that’s so far gone unpublicized.
The Taliban have learned a bit about PR from their last stint in power and then their years in exile. They will keep their brutality more secret this time, but they will continue to be brutal. They have learned how to keep the West at bay – and indeed, it’s easier to do so than before, because the West is far more tired and feeble and has lost the courage of its own former convictions.
The Biden administration has insisted that it’s up to the Taliban to choose how they want to lead and have called on their new government to [be] inclusive and tolerant…
Laughable and delusional on the part of the Biden administration – although I don’t really think they believe for a moment that it would be possible.
“… returns…”?
Somehow the word on the street is the U.S. government had helped Afghanistan get a Sharia based constitution before we left. If so, at this point, what difference does it make? The testimony of two women equal the testimony of one man in court. None of the “he said she said” nonsense.
Milwaukee:
Which street?
How about the Afghanistan Ambassador to the United States, in 2016?
https://pjmedia.com/columns/nicholas-ballasy/2016/05/28/afghan-ambassador-this-is-the-most-islamic-constitution-a-country-can-have-n103795
“Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Hamdullah Mohib”
”
“We have Sharia law. Our constitution is based on Sharia. It may be the version of Sharia that is not the strictest of interpretations that perhaps some extremists want in Afghanistan but our constitution is based on Sharia. It has been for the past 15 years,” he said.”
Islam, like Protestants, lack the Magisterium the Catholic Church has. The teaching of the Magisterium, teachings of the Doctors of the Church, usually provide pretty clear guidance. Usually, because some matters are settled, like belief in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. Some matters are not settled and left to the discretion of the believer. The Islamic faith has room for groups to have very different interpretations, hence the Sunni/Shia split. The adherence to how strictly Sharia they are going to be needs working out.
Do you really think it ever went away apart from in a few Potemkin Pockets of Poz?
Really not trying to sound like a been there done that know-it-all… but seriously… anyone who has been around in the Third World gets that you take a left or right turn off whatever passes for the local boulevards and down a lane and 50m in you’re back in another world and age. And not just in architecture and amenities. And that’s the big cities with the CNN crews. Out in the villages in the walled compounds…
You came… you spent X Trillion teaching Pashtun Girls to put condoms on sex toys… and then The Caravan Moves On and the various usual warmongering suspects go stick a microphone in front of the dogs who were always barking anyway.
Milwaukee, Islam has a magisterium of sorts in the settled jurisprudences dating to about 900-1000 AD. The Sunni and Shi’a disagree on who should be the caliph, but not really on the five pillars or on any other matters of general life. Life under sharia is going to be about the same no matter where Islam is strictly observed.
My working definition of a religion is a belief system capable in the Current Year of inducing society-wide purity-spiraling.
By that definition, Islam is a religion, Christianity is not. Judaism is not, Wokeness is.
C & J were religions in the past. They still are in small pockets of people who fundamentally (heh) do not matter as far as wider society is concerned.
Much useful stuff to be learned about Purity Spiraling by reading bloggers on the reactionary right (e.g. Jim). Why? Because stopping Purity Spirals from developing is nice if you don’t like Pogroms, Purges, Yesterday’s decriminalisation of homosexuality becoming today’s veneration of Trannies and tomorrows apotheosis of pedophilia.
I’d argue that Iranian Sharia Islam is actually the least inclined to purity spiral given relatively regimented clergy with lots of vested interests now that they’re well and truly embedded in the power structure. Al Azhar has nothing on the Mullahs of Qom who have errr Talmudified Islamic Jurisprudence to a degree that would be anathema to the Sunni.
“the West is far more tired and feeble and has lost the courage of its own former convictions.” neo
Slaughter stiffens the spines of those who refuse to flee. Example: pre-WWII England was overwhelmingly pacifist and appeasing. Hitler forcing the Brits backs to the wall stiffened that public’s spine.
Count on it, Islamists and the Communists will stiffen the West’s spines. How much slaughter will be required is the only question.
Milwaukee on,
“The teaching of the Magisterium, teachings of the Doctors of the Church, usually provide pretty clear guidance.”
Teachings that Pope Francis regularly contradicts. But on matters of doctrine he’s infallible, right?
“The Islamic faith has room for groups to have very different interpretations, hence the Sunni/Shia split.”
The Shia/Sunni split is the only major schism that has ever persisted within Islam and, for about 1400 years. They slaughter each other whenever the opportunity arises. As Iraq, Lebanon and Syria’s recent history testifies.
I have been surprised at the “Gentler” Taliban PR.
I expected a much more in your face P.R. To deliberately embarrass the US, something more along what the Iranian did under Carter.
Or perhaps that will happen after the infighting over who gets what Afghan power positions dies down.
My limited understanding on Islam, it it has a built in keeping it pure ability. And the latest part in the Koran is always the most correct. And the chapters are arranged in order of size, not date. And somebody went around making sure there was only one version. And if you try to modernize Islam, you are an apostate, and sentenced to die.
And the Saudis (ksa)have a huge amount of influence in all the Madrasas they funded, and teach their back to basics (think Original Calvanist) version of Islam.
KSA made the deal after the Mecca siege to export their version of Islam, as long as it was kept peaceful at home. After 9-11 the deal was updated to reduce Al Queda, but there is still a support foundation out there. And the Saudis after Nasser (?) threw out the Muslim brotherhood out of Egypt allowed then into KSA as teachers.
RaySoCal,
“And the Saudis after Nasser (?) threw out the Muslim brotherhood out of Egypt allowed then into KSA as teachers.”
The Muslim Brotherhood was never thrown out of Egypt. Both Nasser and Mubarak repressed public expressions by the Brotherhood but as long as they acted outside of Egypt they were tolerated.
In 1954 supposedly the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate Nasser, and was then banned / suppressed in Egypt until Sadat made nice with them. Lots were imprisoned / tortured, but some decided to go to Saudi Arabia. The Teacher of Bin Laden was Muslim brotherhood, and there seems to be a lot of relationships between Al Queda and The brotherhood, and at a minimum was highly influenced by them.
There seems to have been a lot of the enemy of my enemy should be helped by various parties in the Middle East. Very pragmatic, but short sighted.
After Morsi got power a lot of the Egyptian Brotherhood went to Qatar.
But the brotherhood has deep roots in Egypt, and especially in their Muslim theology schools. My understanding for Sunni, Egypt is where the leading Muslim theology centers / colleges are.
The Brotherhood was definitely in Egypt when we were there, late in the Mubarak years. As long as they did not create large public disturbances they were tolerated. Morsi was a Brotherhood leader. The Sissi government has returned to the Mubarak standard — it cannot completely suppress Islamist movements, but it keeps them tamped down to some extent.
Al Azhar, in Cairo, is considered the center of Sunni Islamic learning.
Geoffrey. Pope Francis is a Jesuit, they are famous for their intellectual prowess. Pope Francis loves to start conversations which seem to be going in a new direction and he closes with….but the teaching of the Church is…., dashing hopes of change. The Pope is considered infallible when speaking from the Chair of St. Peter on matters faith or morals. Having a chat during a long flight home while speculating on events of the day doesn’t qualify.
The Islamic faith has room for groups to have very different interpretations, hence the Sunni/Shia split.
Milwaukee:
My impression is that the Sunni/Shia divide is, as Kate said, based on a succession disagreement after Muhammad died, not major matters of doctrine. The Sufis are a bit more complicated.
I don’t think Catholic/Protestant comparisons are helpful for Westerners to understand Islam.
Perhaps you have better information.
Does this mean we have to bomb somebody?
It’s Tradition!
More stuff from the same geniuses who brought us Kabul:
China is a Declining Power — and That’s the Problem
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/24/china-great-power-united-states/
Paywalled, so have not read it.
Does this mean we have to bomb somebody?
Maybe. It could come to that again. You may not be interested in jihad, but jihad is interested in you.
I’ve never heard a good answer from our fearless anti-neocons on what we were supposed to do after 9-11.
Smile, keep shopping and call it “Don’t give in to terrorism”?
On the tenth anniversary of 9-11, I took on Robert Cringely and his commenters who were oh-so-smart-and-contemptuous of Bush 43’s response, but absolutely zero of them would offer the barest suggestion.
https://www.cringely.com/2011/09/11/to-a-man-with-a-hammer-some-thoughts-on-the-pentagon-and-world-trade-center-terrorist-attacks/
If people *from* another country attack you, retaliation is the right thing to do. Retaliation… not ‘Nation Building’.
Coffee is for Closers. Nation Building is unlikely to succeed at the best of times, but it is decidedly not for countries which can’t run an efficient local DMV office.
1945: An aeon ago in a different universe. Different Potter, Uniquely special Clays. Not an Afghan dung heap.
If people *in* another country decide that they want to paint purple polka dots on all *their* sidewalks or have unnatural relations with *their* livestock or turn back the clock on female emancipation within *their* borders… that is quite simply nobody else’s business.
There is too much of a tendency for both sides of the Liberal Democracy Punch & Judy Show to want to butt in on Other People’s Lives.
Robert X Cringley…. Now there’s a name I have not heard in a very long time.
“My working definition of a religion is a belief system capable in the Current Year of inducing society-wide purity-spiraling.
“By that definition, Islam is a religion, Christianity is not. Judaism is not, Wokeness is.”
A most interesting definition, no doubt. Though somewhat limiting, some might say (others might way, “perverse”)….
But interesting. Definitely interesting.
(To offer a bit of contrast, others might designate “C and J” as religions while calling Islam a “death cult”…but that might also be a bit of a stretch. Clearly, definitions, like taste, have a tendency to be a bit on the subjective side…)
In the above case, it would seem that “inducing” is the keyword; hence the following corollary(?):
If one can consistently (perhaps even admirably?) force, intimidate, threaten, coerce—the more barbarically the better(?)—groups of people to do things or behave in ways they would probably prefer not to, then you’ve got yourself a true religion…even if it sounds more like a “cult”; but I may have missed something in passing.
If no coercion (bloody, violent or “loving” as the case may be) is on the menu—or if one is permitted to have “freedom of choice” in the matter(?)—then we’re not talking about “religion” but something dull, dry, ersatz, Disneyesque(?), derivative, false—a trend or fad, perhaps, but most definitely not the true article, not the real McCoy.
People have, of course, called “Communism” a religion (at least of a secular sort). No doubt it was more of a “genuine” sort when Uncle Joe or the “Great Helmsman” or especially Enver Hoxha (that purest of purists) was in the cat seat. Though, perhaps, Communism has, in our day, similarly gone the way of “C and J”…. On the other hand, there’s always the possibility of a great Communist revival. (In fact, some have been opining that Xi has recently been “born again”!…though this assumes that he was at some point “unborn”, which is a debatable proposition…. To be sure, Xi does enjoy “confusing the enemy” and has a sense of humor almost as uproarious as America’s “Great Transformer”… Moreover, how might one define the great “moral” madness that has infected significant swaths of the USA?)
As for the Great Transformer’s current Manifestation in the WH, it would seem that “Biden”—according to the above definition—is intent on making a State religion of the Democratic Party’s current “repression-is-freedom” ideology, across the board “ends-justify-means” policy and ubiquitous “lies-are-TRUTH” ethic.
Although such a Holy (not to mention Spiritual) crusade would seem to counter the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, I’m not sure that “Biden” would be too put out. “He” might even be tickled by the challenge: one that would enable “him” to precipitate ANOTHER crisis (or three) and, further, would give “him” (additional) saintly rationales to prevaricate unceasingly…all the while giving “his” opponents conniption fits…which would, of course, be an elegant win-win situation for the current “occupant” of the WH.
(That such a scenario would appear to be inspired by both Islam and the Chinese Communist Party is, no doubt, purely coincidental….)
@BarryMeislin:
“Some might say perverse…”
My work here is done!
On a more serious note, I think you have slightly missed the point. To my way of thinking, ‘inducing’ was not quite it and then you went off into a rhapsody about coercion — a whole other kettle of fish. My stress was heavily on the purity-spiraling part of it.
Not that coercion can’t work and should not be a part of any benign despot’s toolkit!
One minute you (John Bull, Jacques Bonhomme, John Chinaman) are about sola scriptura and not paying over the odds for your indulgences, the next minute you’re the Muenster Anabaptists and in need of having an example made of yourself. That kind of thing is purity spiraling in action.
Movements where there’s nobody (at least for a long enough while) who can apply the brakes once it gets going because there is every incentive to spiral more ‘Leftward’ than your neighbor and some strong disincentives to being caught out as a laggard.
I don’t think anyone in China is particularly obsessed with Communist Ideology. It’s a bit like studying the Confucian Classics and writing tedious Eight-legged essays for the Imperial Exams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-legged_essay
Hoops to be jumped through to show that one is a compliant team player.
Unlike us brave free upper middle class Westerners who carefully curate our children’s lives and ensure that they attend the right summer camps, volunteer for the right charities, and say the right things in admissions essays.
The difference is that Whitey Kid had better damn purity spiral in his essay if he wants to get into one of the Ivies. In fact he’d do well to grease his path in as an Imperial Eunuch these days. You don’t purity spiral Stalin or Emperor Pooh. You just don’t.
Generally speaking, it can be a bad move to pull the purity spiral act on the Mullahs of Qom, too… They’re onto a good thing and they don’t feel like being knocked off their hard-earned carpets by upstarts. After some initial enthusiasms… Iran has more or less settled down to quietly spinning up centrifuges and encouraging homos to get sex changes instead of just hanging around doing nothing. The poor benighted Sunnis are ripe for ever more purity spiraling though.
@BarryMeislin:
Random thought I have from time to time is that even if (to pick at random) Chinese think tankers are forced to bash their arguments into the rough shape of a Dialectical Fortune Cookie instead of stuffing them into an Eight-legged Essay — the discipline involved in doing so may help in weeding out wooly thinking and the more bonkers flights of fancy.
Really, It’s no more ridiculous than some Georgetown Phoney juggling the Treaty of Westphalia, the Thucydides Gap, and Grotius whilst whistling Dixie and explaining why he needs to bomb you because you won’t institute an IVF program for male homosexuals in your benighted little country.
In fact, it may even be a sharper tool than our blunt and misapplied tools. It doesn’t have to be Right. It just has to be Better. I’m pretty sure that when a bunch of Chinese Communist Think Tankers sit down to game strategies, strengths, weaknesses, etc.. they are able to verbalize a wider range of contingencies and facts than Westerners.
E.g. it is objectively true that Diversity and Inclusion and Equity (yay!) have seriously weakened the US Military. Chinese can discuss and strategize around this. It is career ending to raise this in the West and therefore the problem can only get worse.. And any workarounds have to be couched in language of misdirection, further compounding the Garbage In / Garbage Out issues and also messing with morale.
I posit that there is more ‘truthiness’ information content in average Chinese government communication in the current year than there is in the West. That doesn’t mean that they don’t lie and obfuscate and tell bosses what they want to hear… Just means there are fewer areas where it is compulsory to lie.
Now I could be wrong and overly biased, but have been revising my priors on this for some years now and think probably not.
Indeed, it is true that once “purity spiraling” is unleashed, or—better—launched, it (fueled by “the faithful”, imbued as they are with zealous, unrelenting “passionate intensity”) has a tendency to achieve ever more hysterical—and destructive—heights…until by its sheer weight (the “tipping point”? the “saturation point?”) such spiraling MUST collapse from within (or be destroyed from without).
The only question being for how long. And this would seem to be a function of the level of COERCION and/or the robustness of the brainwashing process undergone by “the faithful”…
(In fact this might be precisely why so MANY different crises have to be manufactured and presented/exploited as “crusades”…IOW, why Climate Change(TM) is waiting in the wings as the “Next Best Thing”….)
File under: Loving Big Brother….
“Just means there are fewer areas where it is compulsory to lie.”
Not certain about this, since from what I understand of—general, (I must stress)—Asian culture and especially Communist “culture”, the truth, when less than pleasant, MUST be perfumed (by a “white” lie? by a total fabrication?) and underlings MUST NOT tell those higher up in the hierarchy that which the former believes the latter might not wish to hear.
Which, if the above is correct—for the economy? for social planning? for construction? for the military?—makes an OODA loop effectively impossible while increasing the distillation of extravagant “theoretical” solutions…which “cannot fail”.
(But I may be wrong about this… Given your own life experience and powers of observation, you likely have far more background and in-depth knowledge regarding such matters as the IMPOSSIBILITY of an effective OODA loop in—general—Asian culture, etc., etc., etc….)
Priors being recalculated as we speak…
OK done. So what if there are two types of Purity Spiraling?
Type A: One with roots in the Religious Impulse Gene which can start from a single person’s public display of some newfangled piety. Starts from a ‘virus’ and, well… Goes Viral.
Type B: The other sort based on some Compulsion Forcing Function: e.g. you do NOT want to be the first person to stop clapping after Stalin makes a speech. You *do* want to be the most enthusiastic Stalinist in your lunchroom.
They’re clearly not orthogonal as Type A can morph into Type B. And necessity being mother of invention, Type B can tap into the Religious Impulse in order to sublimate the fear/degradation aspects.
Crude examples:
If you’re a teenage girl in Riyadh… you’re subject to Type B.
If you’re out in the field with ISIS or whatever it’s called this week, you’re more in Type A territory.
One problem seems to be that in the absence of Pre-Existing ‘Benign’ Type B Dispensation, it’s only a matter of time before a Type A Event occurs which morphs eventually into a Strongly Non-Benign Type B Situation.
Henry the Eighth would have piled up pyramids of Roudheads.
The long and short if my above longwindedness: Lies (in Asian society) DEMAND to be told….
(Not that Asia is the only place, certainly: look at the recent debacles surrounding Swiss—SWISS!!—as well as German(!) banking….)
“And this would seem to be a function of the level of COERCION and/or the robustness of the brainwashing process undergone by “the faithful”…”
Yikes! You’re right: I forgot to mention FEAR….
(That great motivator…)
Which might make one wonder about the FEAR-HYSTERIA-ENTHUSIASM-LOVE-HATE-PERFECTIONIST-ALTRUISM nexus….
“Which, if the above is correct—for the economy? for the military?—makes an OODA loop effectively impossible while increasing the distillation of extravagant “theoretical” solutions…which “cannot fail”.”
Crossing the T at Tsushima.
Dien Bien Phu.
1975.
Asians Can.
It’s arguable that the Vietnamese got inside the Chinese OODA loop in 1979. Chinese seem a bit sore about it still.
Jury is out on Chinese capabilities in 2021. They can probably afford to learn by making some mistakes. Questions surround desirability of being the sucker provides them with Teaching Moments.
It *is* possible to communicate disagreement in East Asian cultures. But there are ways in which to do it which seem inscrutable to us. Face is Real. Very real. What’s not encouraged is argument for the sake of argument. They don’t idolize the Agora. We do in theory. In practice, just you try going down to the Public Square and trying out any heterodox thoughts on the general public.
Chinese history is full of Emperors not getting the full story from officials and Bad Things happening as a result. They’re not blind to this kind of thing. XJP knows full well that he sees Potemkin Villages when he goes on inspection tours. He knows… they know he knows… He knows that if he issued strong instructions not to be shown Potemkin Villages all that would happen is that more artful Potemkin Villages with the most high-tech wabi sabi around the edges would be constructed for his delectation. Is this a Chinese problem? Pretty much universal, I think.
Is it any more ridiculous than the class of Western phenomena exemplified by No Child Left Behind? Any more or less deleterious? Different Cultures, different inefficiencies and failure modes. Do they cancel out when integrated over the n-dimensional geostrategic manifold? (Just made up that bit of pseudo Georgetown Wankery)
Things get a bit more weird the further you go into SE Asia: Javanese, Malays, Thais, Laos, Khmers. Especially the Thais/Laos/Khmers… there’s something about the old Hindu-Buddhist Deva Raja cultures: higher ups really do not like being contradicted by uppity underlings. Having seen how things go wrong down there, and up here, and in the West… I’m kind of inclined to see the East Asians as being roughly in the middle of a spectrum instead of polar opposites to Whitey.
All of this, however, sets of those clanging warning bells (gongs?): Morality without GOD (as a kind of check, or brake, to man’s arrogance) is a tricky, if not downright dangerous—even fatal—business.
(Not sure, however, how convincing that might be to the principled doubters or non-believers….)
Yes, the Vietnamese are indeed a genuine and fascinating “but”.
But then historical reasons may likely have forced them to be…let’s call it, “vigilant” and “prepared”. And “ruthless in their own self-defense. OTOH, the Japanese mowed through them…of course the Japanese mowed through most of their opponents…until the tide turned.
I.e., might the reason for this (Vietnamese “exceptionalism”) be their millennial proximity to—and extreme distrust/hatred(?)—of China?…And here, Pierre-Eliott Trudeau thought, heh, that Canada’s MAJOR challenge was ITS southern neighbour—that “elephant south of the border”… Well, I guess problems are all relative…)
Well, shoulda said “…without GOD (or Confucious)…”
…since those vacuums have a tendency to fill up mighty fast….
“He knows… they know he knows…”
But that’s precisely the fascinating point.
Xi HAS TO play the game.
(Of course he always has the prerogative to declare “TILT” and “cause” certain individuals to “retire” from the scene.)
I would imagine that the great bugbear for Xi is corruption (and always has been).
Of course, corruption exists most everywhere (perhaps the word “most” is extraneous). The only question is how to minimize it (or at least how to control it.)
Quite possibly, the victory of the West (or should that be the “north”?) is due to the fact that it succeeded in controlling (minimizing?) corruption…even if currently the “post-Christian” West appears to be pushing it hard.
When China opened up economically (the Chinese “miracle”) they did so without controlling corruption. It may not even have been possible without cracking down on their brand of “Capitalism” or “economic openness”.
Looks like the corruption, now out of control, may well threaten the country and so, time to crack down; to revert to more familiar forms….
What is that French expression?…
Pour encourager les autres, perchance?
(My perennial favorite. Luckily the System still has antibodies against me.)
The time for runaway corruption has passed.
Non-China version: LKY tacitly encouraged software piracy in Singapore during 80s and into early 90s despite supposed squeaky clean image. Pure pragmatism: adopt and grow first, clean up when Gates big enough to buy enough senators.
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of “Plus ca change…” but sure, why not….
Oops.
I guess the “Crack Down” bit is well… Crack to me.
“…antibodies…”
That reminds me. I have to go get a serology test…
(But, it’s been fun—well, depending on what the definition of “fun” might be—for which, thanks!)
File under: “Definitions, definitions, definitions…”
As always, a pleasure. For which thanks, too.