"In focusing on current abuses in the Middle East, perpetrated by those claiming the mantle of Islam, Americans -- whose Constitution continues to permit enslavement as punishment for crime -- deflect attention from partial U.S. responsibility for the current crisis in Iraq. Sanctions followed by military invasion and its brutal aftermath laid the groundwork for the situation Callimachi describes. Moral high ground is in short supply. The core idea animating enslavement is that some lives matter more than others. As any American who has been paying attention knows, this idea has not perished from the earth."
The never-ending stream of idiocy flowing out of academia continues, in this case, from Boston University, where a professor of religion, Kecia Ali, has written a post for the Huffington Post that argues that sexual slavery as practiced by ISIS has-you guessed it- nothing to do with Islam. In addition, Ali predicatbly assigns partial blame for this problem to-you guessed it- America.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kecia-ali/islam-sex-slavery_b_8004824.html
Correction: Ali should have said "confinement" as punishment for crime-not enslavement.
So once again, we blame ourselves for what ails the Middle East and the Islamic world.
Ali may as well argue that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS beheading their prisoners notwithstanding all those references in the Koran about "spite their necks". (They weren't talking about giving their girlfriends hickies.) As for the killing of Christians, that is not just ISIS. They are doing the same thing in other parts of the region and the world (Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan etc).
The problem, which Ali omits, is that what is commanded in the Koran, the hadith and sharia law is not ancient and forgotten as relics of a lost time. They are still valid today. There is nothing outdated about the Koran, hadith and sharia law. What Mohammad, the Messenger said and did is the example to be followed. True, not all or even most Muslims act out these outrages, but that is why ISIS does, I could throw in the stonings honor killings and everything else, which involves more people, but there is just too much for Professor Ali to explain away.
Ali should have said "confinement" as punishment for crime-not enslavement.
ReplyDeleteNot true Gary. The 13th amendment bans involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Prison systems make extensive use of that loophole. In fact, for decades the southern states maintained a large slave labor pool contracted out to private growers by vigorously enforcing various small vice laws according to the big boys' need for cheap labor at any given point in time. Then there's UNICOR.
The rhetoric about U.S. responsibility for ISIS is a bit overdone. The truth is very simple. We barged into a situation thinking it would be wine and roses after three weeks, and created the vacuum that allowed ISIS to emerge.