The Iconoclast

Vali Nasr (Member of the US Council on Foreign Relations): "We Need Engagement with Iran"

No doubt Vali Nasr, the son of a well-known Shi'ite writer and apologist, wishes to enroll the Americans in Iraq in order to dampen the Sunni-Shi'a clash. But his perspective is that of a Shi'a, loyal to Shi'a Islam, although not to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which he no doubt deplores. That is understandable. What is not understandable is why his views should be those of Infidels, or that his desire to "avoid radicalization" of "both sides" by, of course, having the Americans remain and sticking it out, not for their own good, but for the good of both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, in Iraq.

Particularly piquant is Vali Nasr's inability to see that wherever Infidels are concerned, all the supposed assumptions about Sunni-Shi'a rivalry -- remember during Israel's attack on Hezbollah how we kept being assured that the Sunni Arab states were secretly delighted, and wanted Israel to keep going? -- tends to be muted, for the Infidels are the real enemy who will unite even warring sects of Islam.

This is how Vali Nasr put it:

"We saw this in Lebanon where a war that was initially an Arab-Israeli war -- a war that belongs to the old conflicts of the region -- very quickly became all about the Shiite-Sunni issue. Some Arab governments and radical Sunni clerics came out and characterized this as a Shiite power grab and said Hezbollah cannot legitimately fight for the Palestinian cause because it is Shiite and a heretical organization."

No, it is not true that the war became a Shiite-Sunni issue. Washington was quite disappointed, in fact, in dreamily assuming -- no doubt with Vali Nasr's prognostications and Shi'a-apologist advice in view -- that the Sunni Arabs would not denounce Israel. But of course they all did -- all of them. And while the Shi'a in Lebanon have managed to worry the Sunni Arabs in Lebanon, they have worried even more the Druse and, above all, the Christians.

And then there is Vali Nasr's ostentatious worry about "radicalization" (as if there could be even more) of both Sunnis and Shi'a in Iraq, and the implied corollary, which he never states outright, of the need to keep American troops there, in order to dampen those sectarian tensions and hostilities which, Nasr says, are so bad "for the region." Why yes, they are bad "for the region" -- that is, for the Muslims of the region. They aren't bad for us, the world's Infidels. For us Sunni-Shi'a tensions are a wonderful thing.

That is why Vali Nasr, and Fouad Ajami, just like the Shi'a apologists -- Chalabi and others -- who helped promote so cleverly the American invasion of Iraq in order to get the only power that could get rid of the Sunni despot Saddam Husein to do its work for it -- are to be listened to for some parts of their analysis, but with different conclusions drawn. They want a Muslim Middle East where the Shi'a are given their due. We, on the other hand, want something else: we want a world where the Camp of Islam, in and out of the Middle East, is weakened.

These are not the same thing. And no doubt the soft-spoken, personally winning Vali Nasr is, for that very reason, an inhibiting influence at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, where some of his colleagues might not quite grasp that his point of view is that of a devout, though not violent, Muslim, and he would not like a policy based, as any intelligent policy by any Infidel state must now be based, on the goal of weakening Islam, the power of Muslim states and groups to inflict harm, the size of the Muslim presence in the West, and the appeal of Islam to the economically and psychically marginal populations that are likely, unless Islam is allowed to make a spectacle of itself as it will, even more than it has, in Iraq if the Americans leave.

And what is more, if the Americans leave, the intra-Muslim violence in Iraq will be a kind of vivid demonstration of what Muslims do when there are no longer any Infidels immediately present to unify them in hatred, or to draw their malevolent attention, and when Infidel support of all kinds is also withdrawn.

Just look, if you need to, at Gaza today. What a spectacle. Why any Infidels would wish to stop it is beyond me. Only fools or appeasers or collaborators or hopeless antisemites wishing the "Palestinians" well not because they like them but because they hate, pathologically, the Israelis -- for the obvious reasons.

Let Iraq be Iraq. Never again should those who make high policy allow themselves to be inveigled by the Shi'a Lobby, whether of Chalabi and Makiya and Fouad Ajami and Vali Nasr, or of others yet unknown, or by the Sunni Lobby, including our "allies" in Jordan and Egypt and "staunch ally" Saudi Arabia. Neither My Weekly Standard, with its pro-Shi'a lineup (with blame laid only at those "Wahhabis" and no attention paid to the doctrines, or behavior, of Shi'a Muslims, whose differences with Sunnis are not about treatment of Infidels), nor James Baker who likes to refer to "our friends in the Gulf" (and you know he's talking about "our Arab friends" on the western coast, not the Iranian enemy on the other side of what the east-coasters call, with justice, the Persian Gulf, and what the west-coasters renamed, as they do everything, the Arabian Gulf).

Neither the Shi'a nor the Sunni Lobby need be listened to. We are not Muslims, after all. We need to weaken the Camp of Islam, not to improve it for Muslims, not to make the "region" less alarmed. Let the region be alarmed. Let there be a squandering of resources, within the Camp of Islam. Let them channel their natural aggression -- natural because of the attitudes that naturally arise in societies suffused with Qur'an, Hadith, and the violent figure of that conquering warrior Muhammad -- against one another.

Let Wanda Ga'g (see "Millions of Cats") be your guide to policy in lieu of Vali Nasr.

Byron York has an interesting article up at NRO:

Everybody knows George W. Bush is determined to win the war in Iraq. What came through in a meeting with conservative journalists in the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon, though, was the president’s frustration in not being able to find more meaningful ways to measure progress in the war, and in not being able to make the case more effectively to the American people that progress is, in fact, being made.

But beyond that loomed an even larger concern: In today’s Iraq, the president conceded, it is the enemy, and not the United States, that is defining what victory means.

The frustration in the room stemmed not so much from internal divisions and paralysis in the Iraqi government, or lagging indicators like oil and energy production. Rather, it came from the fact that American forces simply do not seem to be winning the war — on anyone’s terms — and that most Americans are disinclined to leave the troops in Iraq without some clear movement toward victory..

the rest is here

We are having a lovely time.  See you all when I get back.

Love Esme.

WaPo: BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lashed out at the United States Wednesday, saying his popularly elected government would not bend to U.S.-imposed benchmarks and timelines and criticizing a U.S. and Iraqi military operation in a Shiite slum of Baghdad that left at least five people dead and 20 wounded.

Maliki's comments came a day after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the prime minister had agreed to timelines for accomplishing several critical goals, including developing plans to deal with militias, amend the constitution and equitably distribute Iraq's oil revenues.

"I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it," Maliki said Wednesday at a nationally televised news conference. "The Americans have the right to review their policies, but we do not believe in a timetables."

Daniel Gross writes at Slate:

....The Fischer-Tropsch process  that Sasol [the Exxon-Mobil of South Africa] uses to turn coal or natural gas into liquid fuels was first developed by two chemists working in Germany in the 1920s: Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch. The two men died in the 1930s. But their invention was used by the Nazis to fuel the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. After World War II, the vast oil fields of Arabia made it uneconomic for most free nations to pursue the technology. But South Africa, which had plenty of coal but little petroleum, wasn't a free nation. In 1948, the newly elected National Party regime formally instituted apartheid. Two years later, it created Sasol. Aside from mining and manufacturing chemicals, Sasol set out to develop a domestic gasoline-production capability, a goal that became more urgent when many oil-producing nations refused to sell oil to the apartheid regime. In the late 1970s, using government loans, the firm built a huge complex at Secunda, where it has produced some 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline that is functionally no different than the gas produced from Texas crude.

(...)The United States, for example, is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 200-plus years of reserves. And some Americans, among them Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, believe that coal-to-fuels technology has the potential to make the United States energy independent (and his constituents rich).

"The Iraqi insurgency is now very well organized around Iraqis. Those who want to fight, but not necessarily to die as martyrs, go elsewhere."
-- from a reader, quoting a French specialist on the matter

The "Iraqi insurgency" of which he speaks is, of course, the Sunni Revolt. There are three constituent elements to that revolt. The one that has received the most publicity is that of outside volunteers for Al-Qaeda, the group whose head was the late Al-Zarqawi, and which regards the Shi'a, all Shi'a, as Infidels, and the Shi'a in Iraq as "Rafidite dogs," and are willing to kill them not only as a result of their "collaboration" with the Infidel Americans, but for being Infidels themselves. A second, larger group, consists of Sunnis who regret the end of Saddam Hussein's regime, and wish for the Ba'athist fist to smash local enemies -- all those who would not be willing to submit to such a regime -- a disguised form of Sunni despotism -- again. The third, and largest group, consists of almost all the Sunnis, who will never acquiesce in their new, and inferior, status, a reflection both of their real numbers in the population, and the resentment that their previous behavior has aroused in Shi'a Arabs and in (predominantly Sunni) Kurds.

The "insurgency" of which the French specialist speaks consists now of the second and third elements. They will never give up. They will never permit the Shi'a to lord it over them, or to dominate the Land of the Two Rivers. It doesn't matter what form of "prosperity" is brought by either the endlessly foolable and Marxist (for that is what George Bush and his fan club are, Marxists who believe that economics determines everything, and all else is merely epiphenomenon, so that if the "Iraqi people" thrive economically, all manner of problems and hostilities and rivalries will vanish) Americans, for it is a question of who is to rule, who is to dominate. The oil wealth is there. The government that controls that wealth is there. The land that was once ruled by Sunni Arabs, and where so much of Islamic history was made, must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Shi'a. And that is the belief of Sunnis in Iraq and, fortunately for Infidels, who can draw up a chair and watch the spectacle, for Sunni Arabs all over the Arab countries. Let them fight on, to recover for Sunni Islam the Land of the Two Rivers. Let them fight on forever.

Kurt Cobain is now the world's top-earning dead celebrity after beating Elvis Presley into second place.

Elvis, who has topped the rankings for the last four years, was toppled after Cobain's wife sold a quarter of her stake in the singer's back catalogue.

Courtney Love, who claimed two years ago that over £20 million had gone missing from the trust fund set up after Cobain's death, sold the interest after claiming that managing his estate had become "overwhelming".

Third on the list is Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon strip, who earned £18.4 million, followed by John Lennon in fourth (£12.6 million) and Albert Einstein in fifth (£10.5 million). Einstein bequeathed his estate, as well as the use of his image, to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Andy Warhol is sixth in the chart with earnings of £10 million helped by the film Factory Girl, which features Guy Pearce as the artist.

Ray Charles (£5.3 million) and Johnny Cash (£4.2 million) also make appearances in the top ten after recent biopic films of their lives.

The author JRR Tolkien, Beatle George Harrison and reggae star Bob Marley are just outside the top 10.

"[my friend] persists in believing that Karen Armstrong is a respectable scholar."
-- from a reader

Why? What has she studied? And when? A hysterical ex-nun with a score to settle with Christianity, and an ill-concealed animus toward Judaism and Jews, expressed in her propagandistic work on Jerusalem (in which "three faiths" -- oh, she loves that "three faiths" business -- are held to have claims identical in duration and scope and significance to Jerusalem), she flits from book to book. Now a little thing on Christianity, and now something on Islam in which she manages to allude to exactly one hadith, the one that is not in Bukhari or Muslim, the one about that "lesser Jihad" and the "greater Jihad." And then books on Jerusalem, and Buddhism, and wasn't there on her own terribly fascinating Spiritual Search or Spiritual Travails or Spiritual Hide-and-Seek? Yes, and now its back, one mo' time, to the subject of Muhammad, that great man, or as Karen Armstrong has found him, truly -- uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.

She's not merely an idiot, but easily seen to be such. This is not a difficult matter. Take her book on Islam. Take a pen. Start marking in the margins.

Then read your marginalia aloud. No, it won't sound like Coleridge reflecting on German philosophers. It will sound more like "che cretino" or "this is completely false" or "on what basis does she call Muhammad a bringer of peace" or "!!!" or "good God" or...fill in other possibilities here, with "nonsense on stilts" or "Christ on a crutch" or "vzdor" or "treve de betises" or whatever other phrases naturally come to your mind, whatever your native tongue, and whatever you claim or believe you believe, or if you are a permanent non-believer in anything at all except your wits, which you have kept about you and by which, alas, you must live.

"One day, my professor even had us act out the five pillars of Islam in class..."
-- from this interview with a student at Butler University in Indianapolis

This is a dead giveaway. The focus on what is hardly doctrine, but essentially, for Infidels, the utterly trivial, because seemingly devoid of ideological content, rituals of worship. Who would object if some people in some religion or cult, pray five times a day? Or once? Or twenty? Who would object, without knowing the significance in making Islam a vehicle for Arab imperialism, to those people prostrating themselves toward Mecca? Who would object, unless they understand the ferocious collectivism of the prayers, and especially of the Friday Prayers, and especially of the sermons (khutbas) at those Friday Prayers? And who would object to the hajj, unless you knew exactly what was done at the hajj, the primitive pagan worship, the throwing of stones at a pillar that symbolize not merely Evil, but the evil embodied in the Unbeliever. And why should you object to Ramadan? Or to the giving of zakat -- but only to fellow Muslims, unless by occasionally giving to Unbelievers that furthers the cause of Islam (see bin Talal's check ostentatiously handed over to Giuliani just after 9.11.200).

No, the "acting out" of the Five Pillars -- it's the kind of thing one would assume might be tried on Third-Graders, in their World Religions unit on Islam (and there too it would be unacceptable, but at least, as a pedagogic tool, not out of place), in a college course, is among other things an attempt to focus the attention of students on the trivial and not what matters -- not on the view of the world that divides it uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel, and requires endless hostility between the two, until all obstacles to the spread of Islam (interpreted to mean any attempt to retain one's own ways and beliefs, as anything that is other than complete appeasement and abasement), so that Dar al-Islam will simply take over whatever still remains of Dar al-Harb, the Domain or House of War, where Islam does not yet dominate, and Muslims do not, as they ultimately must, yet rule.

What the teacher does not teach, because he is so busy with this acting out of the Five Pillars, is what is most important. The business of where the Qur'an is to be placed sickens, of course, but is not the main thing.

What is on the syllabus? What does the teacher say? Other faculty members, with heads on their shoulders, should take a much greater interest in what is taught -- or not taught -- about Islam. And that is true at Butler, at Columbia, at Harvard, everywhere that, in a display of criminally negligent behavior, administrators and faculty have allowed the apologists to completely dominate the teaching, the transmission, of knowledge about Islam -- at the very moment when all of our lives, and certainly all of our policies, depend on an intelligent and widespread apprehension (in both senses) of Islam.

Entering a local Borders outlet tonight, I noticed that front and center on the "New Non-Fiction" table was Karen Armstrong's "Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time." That set me to wondering whether "The Truth About Muhammad" was in stock. I looked in the Religion section and found Armstrong and Emerick's biographies, but not yours. Checking on the store's computer, I found it had been placed in the Middle Eastern History section -- well away from every other book on Muhammad. This was annoying enough to prompt me to take a copy up to the "New Non-Fiction" table and set it right by Armstrong's tome. - from an email sent to Robert Spencer

Tell not merely the salesman on the floor or at the checkout counter, but the Manager, and then send an email to Borders, that you regard the deliberate difficulties placed on would-be buyers of "The Truth About Muhammad" and other books that do not toe the party line of apologetics, by the staff of Borders, as a very good reason not only for you, but for those you know and whom you think you can influence, to simply stop patronizing Borders altogether. Bookstores are worried about the competition from on-line sellers. Borders has so far managed to withstand better than most that competition. Put it on notice. Only 1% of the population in this country -- one hesitates to describe it as the American population at this point -- is Muslim. Less than 1/10 of 1% of the book-buying population is Muslim. Although members of MESA Nostra (which google) will no doubt complain when they visit the "Islam" sections of bookstores, they are part of the problem, and their indignation, upon finding books by Spencer, Bat Ye'or, Ibn Warraq, the anthology edited by Bostom, or "While Europe Slept" in the history section, can be safely dismissed.

Inflict, or threaten to inflict, permanent and large-scale economic damage on these bookstores. Have the matter taken up by the hosts of radio talk-show programs. Make it an issue. The public is being denied the possibility, as much as possible, of finding out certain obvious home truths about Muhammad. Bookstores and publishers, and even certain reviewing organs in the apparently permanent control of Muslim sympathizers, or the determined cabal of Muslim reviewers who work fulltime damning the good and praising the bad at Amazon -- would anyone be surprised to discover that some are on the payroll of Muslim organizations and states? -- have done their damnedest to make it as difficult as possible for non-Muslims, in the United States as elsewhere, to inform themselves -- without having to rely on such people as John Esposito and Karen Armstrong, or the members of MESA Nostra, or the good doctors of CAIR.

Make your views known clearly -- that you will make every effort to take your business, and that of everyone who listens to you, elsewhere, if there is no clear change in policy.

Given the previous Eid al-fitr messages Bush so thoughtlessly -- his entire life has been one of insufficient thought -- instituted beginning in November 2001, and so has now made it very difficult for his successors to avoid continuing this ill-advised, and misleading-to-Infidels, practice.

What might he, or advisers cleverer than he, decided should be issued? How might they have worded it?

Here's a stab:

"Today is Eid al-fitr, the day that formally ends Ramadan, the month-long period of abstinence by Muslims, during the daylight hours, from both food and drink. In some faiths, there is complete abstinence from certain foods, year-round. In others, there is abstinence from certain foods, for a specific time period. Thus observant Jews do not eat pork, or observant Christians do not eat meat during the period of Lent. Islam includes examples of both such observances: pork and alcohol are forbidden all the time, and at Ramadan all food consumption during the day is forbidden.

The ability of Muslims to remain so strong and observant in their faith, and through the observance of Ramadan to both demonstrate and express their willing submission to the Will of Allah, should impress all of us with what it says about their commitment to that faith, and the larger significance for all of us of that firm commitment."

That took three minutes.

What do they do all day in that White House, with that bloated staff of advisers and running-around-with-their-heads-chopped-off (or fear of having them chopped off) speechwriters?

What?

Dean Godson writes in the Times (London) on the University of St Andrews awarding an honorary doctorate of law to a former president of Iran, Mohammed Khatemi (via Glyn).

Presidential Message: Eid al-Fitr

October 20, 2006

I send greetings to Muslims in the United States and around the world celebrating Eid al-Fitr.

Islam is a great faith that has transcended racial and ethnic divisions and brought hope and comfort to many people. Throughout Ramadan, Muslims have fasted to focus their minds on faith and to direct their hearts to charity. Eid al-Fitr marks the completion of this holy month with the Festival of Breaking the Fast. During this joyous celebration, Muslims thank God for his guidance and blessings by gathering with family and friends, sharing traditional foods, and showing compassion to those in need.

America is strengthened by the countless contributions of our Muslim citizens, and we value our ties with Muslim nations throughout the world. For people of all faiths, Eid al-Fitr is an opportunity to reflect on the values we share and the friendships that bind all who trace their faith back to God's call to Abraham.

Laura and I send our best wishes for a joyous Eid and for health, happiness, and prosperity in the year ahead. Eid Mubarak.

GEORGE W. BUSH

_______________________________________

Yes, Islam has transcended racial and ethnic divisions. It is a univeralist religion. That is why there is no need for non-Arab Muslims to read or memorize the Qur'an in Arabic even if they do not understand a word. That is why no one need prostrate himself qiblawards - towards Arabia -- five times a day, or take an Arab name, or pretend to a false Arab lineage, or find the source of all virtue in a seventh century Arab and his seventh-century Arab companions. That is why the Kurds have never had any problems with fellow Muslim Arabs in Iraq, the Berbers have never suffered any linguistic or cultural persecution at the hands of Arabs in Algeria, why the black African Muslims are embraced so warmly by the Arab Janjaweed in Darfur. It is why one can be sure that when at long last s "prosperity" and "jobs" are brought to the long-suffering "people of Iraq" that Shi'a and Sunni will get along splendidly, compromising in the true spirit of Islam, emulating the model of Muhammad, that famously Great Compromiser who would put Henry Clay to shame.

That is Islam.

That is Eid al-fitr.

And that is George W. Bush.

Yes, Rebecca.

Words that come to the mind --when he thinks, though he tries not to think too often, for his own mental stability, of Mira Belochkina, his first and only true love, murdered by the Germans -- of Professor Timofey Pnin. The words are set down not by Pnin himself, who is thinking in their shadows, but by the narrator who upon occasion steps in to comment upon, or even express the thoughts of, or otherwise lend a hand to, the unforgettable creature whom he, that narrator, knows so well and whom he helps, as that narrator's creator -- and creator of Pnin -- helps him, with words, words, words.

"The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University has been renamed after Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $20 million to its projects. And while that may be just the tail, the dog appears to be moving away from its historic Catholic and Jesuit teaching philosophy too.

The Center's leaders say it now will be used to put on workshops regarding Islam, fostering exchanges with the Muslim world, addressing U.S. policy towards the Muslim world, working on the relationship of Islam and Arab culture, addressing Muslim citizenship and civil liberties, and developing exchange programs for students from the Muslim world." -- from this WND article

Why, it sounds as though the activities it plans are no different from those of the State Department or, more generally, the idiotized and paralyzed American government: explaining, and explaining away, Islam, through the "workshops" and "fostering exchanges" and "working on relationships" and "addressing Muslim citizenship and civil liberties" (would that include discussing the relation of Islam, and the conceivable loyalty of Muslims, to the American Constitution and especially to the Bill of Rights and "developing exchange programs."

Every single item is transparent. Every single one, phrased so innocuously, is full of promised threats to the legal and political institutions of this country, to its social understandings and arrangements, to the harmony of its society. Everything that the sinister Esposito and his handmaids -- Voll, Haddad, and so on -- and his Saudi backers, all smiles in official Washington (from the now-banished tennis-playing Aspen-Xanadu'ed Prince Bandar, to the gravel-voiced Al-Turki who replaced him) and all daggers and dishdashas, and the sneer of cold command, at home, where all the masks kept on in front of the powerful Infidels of Washington are torn off, just the way Muslim women can tear off, at home, the clothes they wear when they go outside.

Who could object to such a list of goals, all carefully crafted to appear to be aimed at greater "dialogue" and harmony?

Who could object?

I could.

You could.

Everyone who has begun to look around the world, and trusted the evidence of his senses, including the sensorium of his mind, could.

Light sentences for horrible crimes such as this is to quote Theodore Dalrymple, "morally frivolous" but oh so culturally sensitive. (h/t: DW)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Egyptian nationals who pleaded guilty to enslaving a 10-year-old Egyptian girl at their Southern California home, making her work long hours serving their family of seven, were sentenced on Monday to prison terms.

Abdel Nasser Youssef Ibrahim, 57, was sentenced to three years in federal prison and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewisabd Motelib, 43, was given 22 months behind bars by a federal judge. Prosecutors said the pair will be deported after serving their sentences.

U.S. District Judge James Selna also ordered the defendants to pay their victim more than $76,000 in restitution, which represents the money the girl should have been paid during the two years she worked for their family...

In pleading guilty in June the defendants admitted bringing the girl to the United States from Egypt in 2000 when she was 10 under an arrangement with her parents, confiscating her passport and forcing her to work 16 hours a day as a domestic servant.

The girl was required to assist the couple's youngest children in getting ready for school, to prepare and serve food, clean the home, do laundry and work in the yard, according to court papers.

She was not allowed to attend school and was told she would be arrested if she was spotted alone outside their home. The couple each admitted to slapping the girl at least once to get her to work, the court papers said. Authorities did not say how her plight came to light.

Anne Applebaum writes at Slate: "...the curious fact is that the veil won't go away as a political issue. The French have banned not only the full veil but also head scarves in schools. Some German regions have banned the head scarf for civil servants, and they are not permitted in Turkish universities at all. Slowly, the issue is coming to the United States: Just this month, a Michigan judge dismissed a small-claims court case filed by a Muslim woman because she refused to remove her full-face veil. Critics call the veil a symbol of female oppression or of a rejection of Western values. Defenders say the veil is a symbol of religious faith and that it allows women to be "free" in a different sense—free from cosmetics, from fashion, and from unwanted male attention. Debate about the veil inevitably leads to discussions of female emancipation, of religious freedom, and of the assimilation, or lack thereof, of Muslim communities in the West.

And yet, at a much simpler level, surely it is also true that the full-face veil—the niqab, burqa, or chador—causes such deep reactions in the West not so much because of its political or religious symbolism, but because it is extremely impolite..."

This is one issue all American women of every political persuasion should unite around, but I'm afraid the argument will have to go much deeper than this.

Hugh, were you by any chance playing off this passage:

"those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background...."??

UC Irvine: More than a dozen Jewish student leaders met with Chancellor Michael Drake and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Manuel Gomez on Wednesday, October 18 to discuss the recent anti-Semitic vandalism here amidst a broader discussion about how Jewish students feel they are treated. ..

Some of the Jewish students at the meeting revealed that they and others had been subject to verbal and physical intimidation at the hands of MSU members, and that they had previously reported these claims to campus security. In light of this, some students asked that Drake place restrictions on where MSU events are held, saying that if their events were held in classrooms as opposed to public spaces, their effect would not be as broad. However, Chancellor Drake told Jewish students at the meeting that he cannot restrict any club, that it would be “violation of law to prohibit certain speech.”
Gomez emphasized that though hate speech may be present, he would not seek to curtail it, as “one person’s hate speech is another person’s education.”
Drake stated that it is not in the power of the University of California to prohibit speech on campus in any fashion because it would be against the constitutional rights of individuals.

But, at Pace University, when a Koran was found in a toilet, they pulled out all stops and  the NYPD's hate crime task force is called in to arrest the perps and then they instituted sensitivity training for people who had nothing to do with it. So, the lesson our children are learning is, if it's against Jews, it's free speech and is protected by our Constitution, but if it's against Muslims, it's hate speech and should be prosecuted. Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg.

"A journalist dressed in a Muslim burka was not required to reveal her face to Copenhagen airport security" - from this news item

"those eyes, that guile, those date-palms and dunes in the background...."