Totem wrote:
Good luck nuancing yourselves out of trouble should the Islamofacists, ie the Taliban, get their hands on the nuclear munitions Pakistan owns. But hey, I'm sure the right wing will be able to bumper sticker something usable into easly digestable analysis if that happens.
Me too. Something about Clinton, probably.
Quote:
Explain how outside of the expediency of attempting to assuage political rivals by allowing the implementation of Sharia(n?) law that anyone on the left from this board could justify anything the Taliban would put into place.
No one is "defending" it. But the Swat valley had Sharia law through-out the 90s, and it wasn't half as bad as what the Talibans did in Afghanistan at the same time. It was quite a popular tourist destination for Westerners at the time.
"Sharia law" doesn't mean much
per se, only the application of Islamic principles, but these are open to interpretation. Sharia law doesn't necessarilly mean chopping off girls ****, and stoning adulterous women. That's only some people's version of Sharia law. It's the one that gets publicity in the media, and that gets Right-wingers all wet, but it's not the norm.
I'm trying to find a parallel, and I guess it's similar to the Christian Right in the US wanting to have laws that follow their religious beliefs, like preventing gays from being married, or forcing teachers to talk about creationism in schools. You can take this as far as you want, and some would take it further than others. Puritans in the late Middle-Ages were acting in the name of God and the Bible, and it wasn't very different to the most extreme cases of Sharia Law today. So "Sharia Law" is no different to "Christian Values". The only difference is in their practical application, which differ greatly from country to country.
What I would defend, to some extent, is the right of certain semi-autonomous regions to have some form of devolution, or local government, that allows them to be self-governed to an extent, if it has popular support. It doesn't make for a great bumper sticker, but it doesn't seem that extreme either. You could argue that this would entrench Taliban power over these people, but I would argue that repressive and bloody policies from Pakistan's central government only alienates moderates in those regions, thereby making them turn to people like the Talibans for armed resistance.
So, all this to say what? That knee-jerks reactions to deals like self-government in the Swat Valley are bound to be wildly inaccurate, since you have (let's be honest here) no idea what it actually entails. But, you heard the magic words "Sharia law", and got your knickers in a twist.
Quote:
I stand amazed that for a group that could cry about minor issues like preventing gay marriage would be casually blase about lopping off girl's **** and stoning people for things like adultery or prostitution.
I don't think anyone here would defend that. Maybe Pensive in one of his more excited moments, but that's about it. What you won't find here, though, is people wetting themselves everytime Sharia law is mentionned. We don't think "OMG these people want sharia law it means they cut off girls **** and have sex with Bin Laden's beard."
The problem in Pakistan is complex. Pakistan is complex. Our answer has to calibrated to this complexity, or it will cause as many problems as it solves.
And our Western history is littered with poor and simplified reasoning like this. Remember when the bad guys were the Russians? We armed the fu
cking talibans to the teeth in order to fight them. And look where that got us, it indirectly created the civil war in afghanistan which lead to the Taliban coming into power and to Bin Laden taking refuge there to plan his operations. The horrific state of Central American states, with incredibly high levels of violence and drugs and murder, are the lingering consequences of US operations to defeat "Communist" governments there. That's just 2 exemples, but there are lots more.
And yet, all the right-wingers at the time were adamant that Commies were evil and that US actions were righteous, despite their complete lack of foresight, or care for local populations.
Some of us are saying that we should try not to repeat those actions, while others are calling us Taliban-f
uckers for saying so.
Edited, May 28th 2009 2:41pm by RedPhoenixxx