Iraq and the Muslims

by Ron Coleman | December 2, 2007 10:41 am

It’s easy enough to be horrified with what the more severe Muslim regimes are doing to humans trying to just live these days.

In Saudi Arabia, the news has been about a woman victimized by rapists who was punished for immodest behavior. I wrote earlier [1]that this does not mean that Saudi Arabia becomes, as a strategic matter, an enemy of the U.S., and in fact this is a story that is more complex[2] than has been reported, but no matter what, it reflects abominably on the application of sharia law by theocracies.

More recently the brutal Sudanese regime, as well as by all indications the majority of its Muslim population, have demonstrated that Islam is not only violently intolerant[3] of the smallest perceived slight, but freewheeling in its multivalent hatred[4] — lashing out against an idealistic Briton who, enamored of the “noble savage” conception of Islam cooked up in Britain’s viciously anti-semitic (and hence Islamophilic) media, sacrificed everything to share the white man’s burden and nurture the gentle native persons to adulthood.

All this provides an interesting framework for this discussion on Dean’s World[5] about what happens among the presently relatively quiescent Muslim infighting in Iraq once Uncle Sam leaves that stewpot. It’s clear that the majority Iraqis of all stripes have reached a point where they reject the most extreme aspects of Islamist violence, at least when perpetrated against other Muslims. (Don’t ask what they think about when it’s perpetrated against, oh, I don’t know… Jews? Luckily suicide bombings in Israel are not on most Iraqis’ agenda — thanks to George W. Bush.) But once G.I. Joe is out of the way, will Shias and Sunnis go back to their ancient practice of trying to blow the hell out of each other? Some pretty knowledgeable people are weighing in on the discussion — we can all learn something. Maybe this time, before it’s too late, we will.

Ron Coleman, who writes about politics and things at Likelihood of Success[6], also writes a blog about trademark and copyright law, Likelihood of Confusion[7], which was named this week to the Blawg 100[8], “the 100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers, as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal.”