Intelligent Design of our very own "madrassas"

It would seem to me that the proponents of intelligent design (ID) would likely concur with the literal meaning of the title of Thomas L. Friedman’s new book, “The World Is Flat”. After all, there is the popular myth that Christians in the Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat. The even greater myth associated with that era concerns Galileo, who is believed to have committed heresy by suggesting that the earth was round? As a matter of fact, however, Galileo actually suggested much to the chagrin of the Church that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the universe. For this sacrilegious proposition, Galileo was condemned by the Church in a 1633 trial to lifelong imprisonment. In 1992, over 350 years after Galileo’s death, the best redemption that Pope John Paul II could offer Galileo was admitting

“that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the Galileo case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates round the sun.”

We have had our own taste of the “religion vs. science” debate with the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, where the teaching of evolution in state-funded classrooms was deemed unlawful. In the decades since that infamous ruling, however, the United States has always been a nation on the leading edge of science and technology. Unfortunately, some educators in the country now seem determined to take actions that would put our youth at a disadvantage. In a May 17 editorial entitled “The Evolution of Creationism”, The New York Times laments that ID proponents in Kansas seek

“to change the definition of science in a way that appears to leave room for supernatural explanations of the origin and evolution of life”.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is picking up on cutting-edge scientific discoveries that encroach into the boundaries of what ID proponents call “creationism”. So we will fall behind, not only due to the flattening of our world, but also due to the flatulence of our “creative” Luddites. Maybe this limerick might help shock them back to the infallibility of science:

Conservatives from the plains of Kansas
Are creating doubts about the sciences
Evolution they say is not fully refined
So with one small step for intelligent design
They take a giant leap to our very own “madrassas”

Or maybe rapid developments in science will do the trick, anyway? In an editorial today entitled “A Surprising Leap on Cloning”, The New York Times bemoans the fact

“that leadership in ‘therapeutic cloning’ has shifted abroad while American scientists, hamstrung by political and religious opposition, make do with private or state funds in the absence of federal support”.

The Times reported yesterday that President Bush further exacerbated the problem by promptly threatening to deploy the first veto of his presidency “over the thorny issue of embryonic stem cell research”. So we have a President — although beset with serious foreign policy crises in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea and facing gargantuan domestic policy issues such as social security and budget deficits — choosing instead to expend his political capital over the Terri Schiavo case, the “nuclear option” on judicial appointments, and stem cell research! If the President and his Republican cohorts in Congress don’t get their act together real soon, these moral and social values — which they claim got them elected with improved majorities in 2004 — will surely come back to haunt them in 2006. At least that's what all the recent polls — scientific polls, I might add — are indicating?

Colonial Imprints and Perceived Proselytizing in the Muslim World

The Wall Street Journal ran, what I thought was, a self-serving editorial entitled “Journalists and the Military” on May 17. In it they sanctimoniously chastised Newsweek for its explanation of what they called a “dubious Koran desecration story”. So I wrote them the following letter in response:

Why is it that conservative media outlets, such as yours, exhibit a “holier than thou” attitude when writing about the media in general? The “basic media mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam and has shown itself with a vengeance during the Iraq conflict and the war on terror” is a figment of your imagination. The reality is that the larger media is still smarting from being “led by the nose”, by the Bush Administration and its conservative media backers (you, again), during the build up to the Iraq war. I am inclined to believe that the larger media does not mistrust the military – it mistrusts those that led us into this war on false pretenses!

Needless to say, my contrarian viewpoint was not included among the seven largely supportive (of their editorial) letters that got published in today’s edition of the Journal under the headline, “Newsweek and the Story That Never Was”. Notwithstanding their rejection, I was placated by David Brooks’ column entitled “Bashing Newsweek” in today’s New York Times. By seeing the forest for the trees, this conservative columnist offered a rational analysis of the entire incident, including the subsequent hysteria that it generated.

Now, Anne Applebaum had also made some good points on the Newsweek story in her column entitled “Blaming the Messenger” in yesterday’s Washington Post. However, she had concluded her piece with the following statement:

And, yes, people whose military and diplomatic priorities include the defeat of Islamic fanaticism and the spread of democratic values in the Muslim world need to be very, very careful, not only about what they say but about what they do to the Muslims they hold in captivity.

In my mind, there is an inherent contradiction embedded in this statement and it is captured in the phrase “Islamic fanaticism”. When the western media qualifies the fanatical behavior of terrorists by associating it with the Islamic faith – that in of itself is a problem! Even if this association were true in the eyes of the western media, the war on terrorism can never be won until such a derogatory association between fanaticism and Islam is severed. If we are to win over the hearts and minds of the larger Muslim populace, the western world – which happens to be a largely Judeo-Christian world – has to “cease and desist” from linking terrorism with Islam. As long as the insurgents in Iraq are viewed as defenders of their faith by the larger Muslim populace, it will be almost impossible for us to rid Iraq of the insurgency. Similarly, Osama Bin Laden can never be captured as long as we continue to represent him as an “Islamic fundamentalist”. In fact, I have repeatedly made this point in my forthcoming book, “The Bush Diaries”, as illustrated in the sample below:

History has proven time and again that wars, which are based on religious differences, last for the longest time. Neither side is ever willing to concede that they are the “children of a lesser God”. The western world’s consistent references to “Islamic fundamentalism” only fuel the anger of the Muslim world. If the war on terrorism is ever to be won it has to be divested of its religious inferences.

This might sound simplistic, but it is the truth. Newsweek happened to touch a raw nerve, which had long been exposed by the serial bungling – as characterized by Ms. Applebaum in her column – of the Bush Administration in its prosecution of the war on terrorism. If we are to win this war, the western world’s policies must be consistent – not only “walking the walk” without any colonial imprints, but also “talking the talk” without any perceived proselytizing – throughout the Muslim world.