Comments on: Yusuf al-Qaradawi

By: kevin donoghue

kevin donoghue — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 14:37:28 +0000

It may or may not be of interest, but Abu Aardvark maintains that Juan Cole is doing Qaradawi an injustice. (I know exactly as much about Abu Aardvark as I do about Qaradawi so I’m staying on the fence.) Possibly Juan Cole placed too much reliance on a single report? http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2004/09/qaradawi_again.html

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 14:11:44 +0000

Yeh, I remember feeling bad about that battle we had, Seth; I think I had a point, but was probably needlessly aggressive.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 00:54:40 +0000

Obviously my comments before were not about al-Qaradawi as much as about the debate over him. I trust Juan Cole and I don’t trust Harry. Why is that? As I think I’ve said before, in a similar context (I just spent 10 minutes trying to find the post on CT where D2 wrote “put a fucking sock in it Seth!”) there is an ongoing conflict here and elsewhere between forms of programmatic logic a more flexible kind of intellectualism. D2: I remember that in the Foucault post, you and Olivia Benson passed right by each other in the discussion of stoning. “You work in my department. We hire a new guy; he’s Pakistani. You spend all morning saying “Don’t you agree that stoning women is bad, Hussain? Stoning women is bad, isn’t it, Hussain? What do you think about stoning women, Hussain? It’s really bad that Muslims stone women, isn’t it, Hussain?”. In the afternoon, I sack you for racially harassing Hussain. My guess is that you’d get a much more sympathetic hearing from Oliver Kamm than from Michel Foucault. Or for that matter, an industrial tribunal.” “Ah. And when do you stop saying embarrassing things about stoning women?” “Not sure what your point is here, Ophelia?” I thought her point was obvious, but that’s not saying I agree with it. You were talking about things in the context of their environment and Ophelia responded by saying that context was irrelevent. It’s similar to the debate over genital cutting. Does the fact that something is a ‘cultural practice’ have any bearing at all on our response? In a discussion of radical Islam, does the history of Islam, in the context of European expansion, later American policies, Israel etc. have any role in our response to terrorism? Why would a figure such as al-Qaradawi be popular in the 21st century, let alone someone such as bin Ladin. And how do we respond to his popularity? You don’t put it that way. I think you elide the issue by putting it in philosophical terms. Responding to Eve Garrard : “But you still seem to be operating on a view of the world which has things in it called “meanings”. Quine ended up concluding that there weren’t any such things, and some of the best bits in Foucault and Derrida involve trying to analyse the damage caused by the assumption that there are.” I think there is a relation between the belief that it is appropriate to stone women, and the act of stoning, and no linguistic gamesmanship will remove it. But there is a difference between potentiality and act, and there is a difference between aberrant and normative behavior in different societies. The question is not whether we should agree on the issue of stoning or genital cutting, but how should we respond. By my logic, Harry, Olivia Benson, and quite a few others- their friends- respond to complex social and political problems with simple, paper solutions. I think you respond to complexity with complexity, but for example in the debate with me http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002313.html“>(sock fucking etc.) you turned the discussion into one of economics, rendering it complex but abstract, while I thought it more important to understand how the problem itself could have been avoided. Any criticism of you here is minor. I agree with you, C Bertram, and Scott Martens; but I still think, as in the discussion of Foucault, that there are problems where being able to understand them and to act from that – whatever the actual response to a given situation- is more important than trying to form a logic for that is globally applicable. Harry et al. would rather oversimplify and moralize. The difference I have with you is that I think the complexity is not so much philosophical as human. peace out.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 22:33:30 +0000

Sorry, skipped reading the Dsquared post which made the same point- feel free to delete my post.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 22:30:22 +0000

‘We could discuss Dan’s touching faith in the Jordanian legal system but I think we both probably realise there is not much point to this.’ This is the C. Hitchens line: Chalabi was convicted in absentia of banking fraud by a Jordanian court and hence that verdict is worthless. Now leaving aside the news, which may not have percolated to all quarters, that rather a lot of questions have recently been raised about Chalabi’s honesty that have nothing to do with Jordanian banks, can one just add that the Jordanian case was in fact precipitated by the Swiss banking authorities bringing malfeasance charges against executives of Chalabi’s bank, who included his brother? Might one also add that these charges were not contested by the Chalabis? Has Switzerland joined Jordan on the ‘Harry’s Place’ list of banana republics intent on fitting up the Chalabi family?

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 19:44:34 +0000

Chris: Sorry, I’ve just realised why you thought culpability was at issue: “I can’t really blame people for not picking up information on Scott’s site. But Nick Cohen’s piece is a very different matter.” This carried an unintended implication. I should have said “No reason to expect that everyone will pick up information on Scott’s site…,” or something similar.

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 19:38:08 +0000

Chris: I didn’t mean to suggest that you’re culpable of anything. My point was more general: that the true nature of al-Qaradawi was not hard to discern by anyone who was interested (no reason why you should be particularly interested—even you can’t blog everything!), and even his most high-profile critics could not be dismissed as a “bloody appalling claque.” And I suppose I meant to express some surprise—nothing more—that you hadn’t cottoned on to Cohen’s report of al-Qaradawi’s website, given that you had mentioned his essay on CT. D2: Fair enough.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 19:22:25 +0000

Is this entirely ingenuous, D2? I’m sure Harry cares about my opinion of him even less than you do, Jimmy, but for what it’s worth I think he’s a fine journalist and a decent man of the left, with a massive blind spot when it comes to being sold a bill of goods under the name of “Islamism”, and a slightly irksome tendency to call people fascists when they aren’t.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:48:55 +0000

Jimmy, the initial fuss over Qaradawi was at the beginning of July. I posted a brief note of the Cohen piece “a very different matter” on 16th August (6 weeks later) , after receiving an email about it from Chris Brooke, mainly as a courtesy to Chris. I was then away from the 18th to the 24th and again from the 28th to the 31st! Do you really think me culpable for not extracting the relevant info and blogging about it?

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:26:38 +0000

D2: “’So even when you raise the spectre of the notorious Chalabi to illustrate Harry’s lack of judgement…’ Not at all; I’ve simply dug it up to show that it can happen to the best of us.” Is this entirely ingenuous, D2? Is Harry “the best of us,” or the author of “an unbelievable amount of rubbish,” given to “shouting and screaming…crap,” with a “track record of talking hysterical bollocks”? I find it difficult to see how he could be both.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:21:26 +0000

This is an object lesson in how sources can lead you astray; if you’d read other sources than Hitchens on the subject of Chalabi (specifically, if you’d read the comments section of your own site where I warned you about this, twice), you’d know that the collapse of the Petra Bank in Jordan was actually precipitated by the collapse of another Chalabi family entity (Mebco), which in turn was precipitated by that entity having its banking license removed after investigation by the Swiss banking authorities. As I say, it happens to the best of us.

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:13:46 +0000

Chris: Of course I agree about the epistemic value of Melanie Phillips’s judgements. I believe my original source was the far more reliable and in many ways rather admirable Scott Burgess, who linked to a Guardian comment piece from about three years ago in which the illustrious moralist Faisal Bodi approvingly quoted al-Qaradawi explicitly justifying the murder of Israeli civilians. See the Daily Ablution July 7th and 9th of this year for extensive documentation, with links to original sources, of al-Qaradawi’s eccentric views. Of course I can’t really blame people for not picking up information on Scott’s site. But Nick Cohen’s piece is a very different matter. The article quoting al-Qaradawi’s words, which I in turn quoted in my response to D2, was published in the New Statesman (available, unusually, online) and was the most blogged-about “state of the Left” essay of the last six months at least (see Socialism in an Age of Waiting 18th August et seq—sorry, too stupid to link—for a rundown of the discussion). In fact, I know you read the Cohen piece, or part of it, because the SIAW people were, unfairly, very cutting about your remark that “Nick Cohen … cites my post …” I agree that Harry’s response to you was intemperate and unjustified.But the substance of his first response to D2 was: “I have read multiple sources on al-Qaradawi, including the original source material of his fatwas (easily avaliable in English on his own Islamonline website). It was not at all difficult to make one’s mind up about what kind of views he held” and I must say that he is absolutely right. The suggestion that you were “smearing al-Qaradawi’s critics” amply warrants the “exclamation-mark of absurdity” with which you report it. A similar charge against D2’s characterisation of the Sheikh’s critics as a “bloody appalling claque,” however, would not be so easy to dismiss.

By: Harry

Harry — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 17:53:09 +0000

Chris, Given that I don’t very often venture into these esteemed environs and rather spend my online time writing “hysterical bollocks” at my own weblog, I think the ‘troll’ accusation is a bit unfair. We could discuss Dan’s touching faith in the Jordanian legal system but I think we both probably realise there is not much point to this.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 17:52:42 +0000

So even when you raise the spectre of the notorious Chalabi to illustrate Harry’s lack of judgement Not at all; I’ve simply dug it up to show that it can happen to the best of us.

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 17:15:52 +0000

Quite funny, I agree—but nowhere near as funny as it would have been if Nick Cohen, echoed by other emphatically non-”bloody appalling” people, had conspicuously written, “Chalabi’s website is available for the world to read. It supports the murder of Israeli civilians and declares that “on the hour of judgement, Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them”. Homosexuals, the website continues, are depraved and abominable and should be put to death to cleanse Islamic society of its “perverted elements”. As for women, they must be kept in their place. Wives are forbidden to rebel against their husbands’ authority. A husband may beat his wife “lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts”. Rape victims must carry a portion of the guilt if they dress “immodestly…” which is what Cohen did say, perfectly accurately, about al-Qaradawi’s own website. Howevere certain you may be that Chalabi is an equally disgusting character, I rather doubt that you can point to any comparably unequivocal self-condemnation, in a context in which he is explaining to the world at large what he’s really all about. So even when you raise the spectre of the notorious Chalabi to illustrate Harry’s lack of judgement, you do nothing to banish the suspicion that all this cautious “consider the source” bollocks about al-Qaradawi is an expression of a grotesque double standard. What’s more, as a regular visitor to Harry’s Place, I can assure you, who have long since consigned the site to your “don’t bother” list, that the post on Chalabi is far closer to an aberration than to a representative sample. As for misrepresenting what you said, since I assume you’re not referring to the part where I actually quote your words, I have no idea what you’re talking about.