RUTHFULLY YOURS

The production of three-volume novels may have dried up, but their place has been more than adequately taken by the Netflix/Amazon Prime market. Just as readers of the past found it hard to put down a really good novel, so today it is impossible not to click the “next episode” box once an episode is over. Or binge-watch a season in a sitting.

I was recently persuaded to watch The Looming Tower, an adaptation of Lawrence Wright’s excellent 2006 book on the run-up to 9/11, having resisted because of a presumption that it would not be perfect for any down-time. Yet the series is not only well scripted and acted, but also — as with much of the best art — constantly throws light on recent events. One came from the reminder about the amount of time the world — and America in particular — spent in the 1990s talking about Monica Lewinsky.

It is easy to portray those days as halcyon in retrospect. A film adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain once made precisely that error. In fact the episode felt at the time, as it was, tawdry, demeaning and suggestive. That the nation which had saved the world from destruction three times in a century should finish its great century in such a fashion seemed at the time — as now — to be emblematic of some greater falling away.

Yet what attention and energy was expended. The makers of The Looming Tower do not over-focus on it, but the thought is placed each time a television flashes in the background with a discussion of “that dress” that if people had not been focused on other matters, worse things might have been averted.

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It is unprovable, of course. Besides which fact, democracies — and democrat — need to be able to multitask. But in recent weeks the feeling does occur that this era might recur. Anderson Cooper’s interview with the porn star Stormy Daniels was treated like, and trailed as, one of the big political interviews of yore. Every day’s news seem similarly stuck on the gleeful pile-in onto whatever is that day’s scandal. Even those stories which should give pause — North Korea, the use of chemical weapons in Syria — swiftly degenerate into a “what did X (usually the President) say about Y on Twitter?”. One wonders what it would take to shake us out of this.

This could be a turning point in the fortunes of the West. If they are willing to be led by America, Britain and France, the democracies could now cease to turn a blind eye to subversion, abandon appeasement and refuse to be blackmailed. The sponsorship of terrorism and assassination, the proliferation of propaganda and intensification of cyberwarfare, the lobbying and corrupting of Western elites, aimed at lifting sanctions and creating energy dependency: these are just some of the methods deployed by Russia, Iran and other enemies of the open society. They should have been stopped long ago. They still need to be stopped. And now they can be stopped.

President Trump may not be the ideal leader of the free world. But he understands what is at stake, he knows what must be done and he has the willpower to see it through. It is time for the high-minded to set aside their low expectations and judge Mr Trump by his actions rather than his words. There is method in his “madman diplomacy”. And it seems to be working. North Korea is negotiating with him on denuclearisation. Iran may soon be forced to follow suit. China is negotiating on trade. And Russia is no longer under any illusions that America will give it a free hand, either in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe. For the first time in a decade, a US administration is taking the lead, not “leading from behind”. Western leaders of very different political views, such as Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, are eager to work with Mr Trump. The transatlantic establishments have underestimated this president, just as they underestimated Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush — but overestimated Barack Obama. A little humility from the great and good, who took it for granted that they had a better grasp of reality than a reality TV star, would not go amiss.

Airstrikes, however, are not enough to save Western civilisation. We need to win the battle for hearts and minds, as John Ware explains. In British debates about intervention in Syria of recent weeks, the Labour leadership, plus assorted Greens, Scottish Nationalists and Islamists, have been dancing to the tunes of the Russian, Iranian and Syrian regimes. It suits the world’s most depraved despots to sow panic and inhibit punitive action. The awkward fact remains that Assad has used chemical weapons at least 50 times. “They are,” in Mr Trump’s words, “the crimes of a monster.” And monsters never lack for useful idiots.

A Rohingya Muslim militant organization slaughtered dozens of Hindus in Myanmar last year amid violence that included the military’s bloody campaign that forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee the country, a report released Tuesday by Amnesty International said.

The report marked the most definitive account of atrocities against civilians allegedly committed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in violence that engulfed the western state of Rakhine. The military has borne the brunt of human-rights scrutiny. The aid agency Doctors Without Borders estimates that some 6,000 Rohingya were killed and the U.N. said the campaign bore the hallmarks of genocide. But the military has contended that the militant organization massacred civilians in addition to waging coordinated attacks against police and military outposts.

Both Muslims and Hindus are minorities in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, including in Rakhine state, but the Rohingya Muslims have been the target of focused persecution for decades. The Myanmar government considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and a security threat.

A Sunday afternoon massacre last August could rank as one of the largest by Myanmar‘s security forces since the military initiated its campaign against the Rohningya. (May 11, 2018)

Amnesty International said that it had interviewed numerous Hindus, including survivors, who were present during the alleged massacres and reviewed other evidence, such as photos of mass graves.

One attack documented in the report occurred in Ah Nauk Kha Maung, a mixed Hindu-Muslim village, where the militant organization allegedly abducted 69 Hindu villagers. According to villager accounts shared with Amnesty, the militants blindfolded and robbed the Hindus, marched them to a creek and executed most of them by weapons including knives and iron rods. Of the 69 captives, only 16 were spared—women and children who agreed to convert to Islam. The report documented similar violence elsewhere.

Egyptian intellectual Dr. Khaled Montaser referred to the “scientific-miraculous” nature of the Quran (i’jaz) as a “great delusion” and “an anesthetic or a nice sedative” for the Arabs and the Muslims.

“Where does extremism come from? People, we must admit — as our president has often said — that there are elements in our books of heritage that incite to this. We must admit this.” — Dr. Khaled Montaser.

Montaser’s harsh criticism should be understood as a call, similar to that of other caring Muslims “trying to fix this,” not to abandon Islam, but to modernize or risk remaining “at the tail end of all the nations.”

In an interview with Sky News Arabia on April 20, Egyptian intellectual Dr. Khaled Montaser referred to the “scientific-miraculous” nature of the Quran (i’jaz) as a “great delusion” and “an anesthetic or a nice sedative” for the Arabs and the Muslims, making them feel superior: “we are superior,” “we are the best,” “we are the greatest.”

Montaser, head of the Dermatology Department of the Suez Canal Authority, linked this “delusion” to the prevalence of Islamic terrorists. “As Muslims,” he said, “we pay a steep price for this. We are at the tail end of all the nations.”

“Among the names of all those who detonated explosive belts in Europe or America,” he went on, “one cannot find a single Hindu or Buddhist name. They always have Muslim names. Furthermore, how come Muslims always oppose modernity?”

“Our interpretation,” he went on, “is in conflict with modernity…”

“They insist on screaming their religion out loud: ‘I am a Muslim!’ They are always screaming that they are the only ones in possession of the truth, that they are the best, the only ones to be spared the Hellfire. They carry these notions with them wherever they go… Where does extremism come from? People, we must admit — as our president has often said — that there are elements in our books of heritage that incite to this. We must admit this… As a thinker trying to fix this, I must find this shocking. The reality is bitter. As Muslims, we pay a steep price for this. We are at the tail end of all the nations.”