Looters

From Keeping Up Appearances - Looters Brought To "Justice".

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Egyptian Bloggers Get Results

The Sandmonkey has a great post up on how persistient blogging can bring a news story from "didn't happen" to front page news. The story is about a mob gone wild and police doing nothing.

The bloggers available downtown documented the whole thing, and provided pictures of it as well. Reading their accounts I can't help by feel my heart being torn on what the people of the country has turned to. The one that broke my heart the most was Sharqawi's account (remember, he is the guy who got sexually assaulted by the police during interrogation ) and how it suddenly danwed at him that what happend to him wasn't an isolated incident. That The Police forces didn't came from another planet, that they were born and raised egyptians, amongst the egyptian people, the same egyptian people who have produced those mobs who found it in their right to attack girls in middle of crowded downtown for 5 houres under the police's watchdul eyes. The ones who approached the police asking them to do something were told : "what do you want us to do? It's Eid. Happy Eid to you too!" The same response was given to women who went to the police stations to report the incidents. The police refused to do their jobs and take a report, because it would probably reflect badly on their downtown peers. Some people were surprised at the Police's reaction, but the majoirty of us weren't. Those are the same police officers who facilitated the assaults on women last year during the referendum. This is business as usual for them.

What was unusual was the silence of the press. Nobody was mentioning it. Nobody was bringing it up. It seemed like there was some consensus of just not reporting it and maybe it will just go away. What at first seemed like a conspiracy got later on confirmed by my sources in the news media. Al Jazeera had taped the incidents but were forbidden to air it at the request of the egyptian authorities. The editor at the leading english-speaking newspaper refused to touch it with a 6 foot pole. This was going to be one of those incidents that only the blogsphere would talk about, while the mainstream media ignored.

Until Nawarah Negm blew the whole thing wide open on live television on the Dream Channel.

She was brought in as a writer to be part of a fluffy segment on Mona Al Shazly show talking about the Ramadan TV shows, and the girl's first response to the question was: "What Television shows do you want to discuss, when egyptian girls are assaulted on the streets of Cairo while the police watched and did nothing?" When Mona counterd that she never heard of it before, Nawarah told her all about it, in details and how it's all over the internet.

All of Egypt saw that. The cat was out of the bag. A cover-up was no longer feasiable.

The Sandmonkey has much more and copious links. GRTWT.

Clayton Cramer has some thoughts: Is There Something Broken in Islam?

Tribalism

Across the sea,
Corpses in the water;
Across the mountain,
Corpses heaped on the field;
I shall die only for the Emperor,
I shall never look back.

Japanese Popular Song: Umi Yukaba
The war against Islamofascism is not the first time we in America have faced enemies who loved death more than life. Honor more than victory. We have faced such enemies every time we have faced one of the oldest human cultures on earth. Tribalism.

What we call western civilization is really a series of attempts to get past tribalism and move towards universalism. The Jews with their universal laws (good for Jews and gentiles - the Jews of course were chosen to be burdened with more laws than the gentiles). The laws are (taken from this Wiki):

The seven laws (commonly rendered as Sheva Mitzvot Shel Bnei Noach) are:

1. Avodah zarah - Do not worship false gods.

The universe is a unity. Since it is a unity there can be only one Maker. Tribal gods are null and void. Unity for a nation then becomes possible. Egypt solved the unity problem by incorporating local gods into their religion. They would find in their pantheon a god or goddess that was similar and graft the tribal god to it. The Romans pretty much took the Greek gods wholesale. Eventually Christianity spread the Jewish idea of the unity of the universe and the pagan gods and goddesses were junked. Still the Catholic Church will, if the demand is great enough, incorporate tribal gods disguised as saints.

2. Shefichat damim - Do not murder.

What is special about this law is that it was applied not just within the tribe, but universally.

3. Gezel - Do not steal (or kidnap).

Again what is special about this law is that it was applied not just within the tribe, but universally. There is no such thing as fair game for theft, kidnap, and plunder.

4. Gilui arayot - Do not be sexually immoral (forbidden sexual acts are traditionally interpreted to include incest, bestiality, male homosexual sex acts, i.e. sodomy, and adultery.)

The acts are still forbidden, but the prosecutorial zeal is not what it once was. Except for incest and adult-child sexual relations. That Jesus guy may have had something to do with this. Plus the fact that the status of women has risen from that of property (goats as one of my commenters likes) to people.

5. Birkat Hashem - Do not "bless God" euphemistically referring to blasphemy.

Again the act is still forbidden, but the prosecutorial zeal is not what it once was. Even among the devout, at least in the current western practice.

6. Ever min ha-chai - Do not eat any flesh that was torn from the body of a living animal (given to Noah and traditionally interpreted as a prohibition of cruelty towards animals)

This gives the idea that unnecessary cruelty is not a positive virtue. You can still eat your meat, but the kill must be with as little suffering as possible.

7. Dinim - Set up a system of honest, effective courts, police and laws.

Here is a truly novel idea. Your brother in law or cousin doesn't get special treatment. Every one is equal under the law.

The Talmud also states: "Righteous people of all nations have a share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 105a). Any non-Jew who lives according to these laws is regarded as one of "the righteous among the gentiles". Maimonides states that this refers to those who have acquired knowledge of God and act in accordance with the Noahide laws.

In the west even the most devout secularist adheres to these laws as currently practiced. Exceping for some on the left who wish to devolve back to a state of tribalism in the name of multi-culturalism where certain tribes are to be given special favor. Everyone is not equal under the law. Of course this destroys the unity of a nation and would reduce the nation state to groups of warring factions when the big advantage of the nation is that it eliminates open warfare within a nation thus making the nation more economically advantaged and stronger morally and militarily. United we stand... and all that.

Which is a long lead up to this very interesting look at tribalism in the Middle East.

To understand the nature of the enemy in the Middle East and to evaluate the prospects for democracy and peace, we need to extend our gaze not five years into the past, but five hundred and even five thousand.

I've spent the last four years writing two books about Alexander the Great's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, 331-327 B.C. What has struck me in the research is the dead-ringer parallels between that ancient East-West clash and the modern ones the U.S. is fighting today — despite the fact that Alexander was pre-Christian and his enemies were pre-Islamic.

What history seems to be telling us is that the quality that most defines our Eastern adversaries, then and now, is neither religion nor extremism nor "Islamo-fascism," but something much older and more fundamental.

Extremist Islam is merely an overlay (and a recent one at that) atop the primal, unchanging mind-set of the East, which is tribalism, and its constituent individual, the tribesman.

Tribalism and the tribal mind-set are what the West is up against in Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgency, the Sunni and Shiite militias, and the Taliban.

It looks like what we are confronting is a very old form of human organization. The problem with this type of organization is that the justice it provides is not universal. The in tribe gets a measure of justice. The out tribes get the leavings.

What exactly is the tribal mind-set? It derives from that most ancient of social organizations, whose virtues are obedience, fidelity, warrior pride, respect for ancestors, hostility to outsiders and willingness to lay down one's life for the cause/faith/group. The tribe's ideal leader is closer to Tony Soprano than to FDR and its social mores are more like those of Geronimo's Apaches than the city council of Scarsdale or Shepherd's Bush.

Can the tribal mind embrace democracy? Consider the contrast between the tribesman and the citizen:

A citizen is an autonomous individual. A citizen is free. A citizen possesses the capacity to evaluate the facts and prospects of his world and to make decisions guided by his own conscience, uncoerced by authority. A congress of citizens acting in free elections determines the political course of a democratic community.

The citizen is an altogether different animal from the member of a tribe. He lives by a diffeent set of rules. A set of rules the tribalist considers unmanly and without honor. The civilized man rates peace and prosperity higher than honor. Which is not the same as being without honor. A mistake tribalists have been making about the democratically civilized for a very long time. Because the civilized man will allow himself to be dishonored for the sake of peace the tribal man assumes that the civilized man is weak. In fact the civilized man can be more brutal than the tribalist when the civilized man goes into the honor mode. When in that mode it is not just tit for tat revenge he seeks, but the complete destruction of the disturbers of his peace.

The value of the civilized man is the value of the merchant who will take small humiliations for the sake of profit. For the tribalist no amount of profit is worth any humiliation. Which is why merchants and bankers are so despised by the tribalist.

A citizen prizes his freedom; therefore he grants it to others. He is willing to respect the rights of minorities within the community, so that his own rights will be shielded when he finds himself in the minority.

The tribesman doesn't see it that way. Within the fixed hierarchy of the tribe, disagreement is not dissent (and thus to be tolerated) but treachery, even heresy, which must be ruthlessly expunged. The tribe exists for itself alone. It is perpetually at war with all other tribes, even of its own race and religion.

The tribesman deals in absolutes. One is either "of blood" or not. The enemy spy can infiltrate the tribal network no more than a prison guard can worm his way into the Aryan Brotherhood. The tribe recognizes its own. It expels (or beheads) the alien. The tribe cannot be negotiated with. "Good faith" applies only within the pale, never beyond.

The tribesman does not operate by a body of civil law but by a code of honor. If he receives a wrong, he does not seek redress. He wants revenge. The taking of revenge is a virtue in tribal eyes, called badal in the Pathan code of nangwali. A man who does not take revenge is not a man. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the sectarian militias of Iraq are not in the war business, they are in the revenge business. The revenge-seeker cannot be negotiated with because his intent is bound up with honor. It is an absolute.

Perhaps the most telling difference between the citizen and the tribesman lies in their views of the Other. The citizen embraces multiplicity; to him, the melting pot produces richness and cultural diversity. To the tribesman, the alien is not even given the dignity of being a human being; he is a gentile, an infidel, a demon.

The tribesman grants justice within the tribe. In his internal councils, empathy, humor and compassion may prevail. Outside the tribe? Forget it.

Civilization is a fragile thing because the lure of tribalism is always there. Socialism's appeal is that the government will take care of you in the way that being a member of a tribe did. The Nazis' appeal was to the greater German tribe. Sadly in America the Democrat Party is the Party where tribes gather; they just don't get civilization. Civilization works by encouraging the tribes to make the tribal identity secondary.

I'm going to be looking into this topic further over time. The number one question is how the tribalist can be converted either over time or by generational change to more universal values.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The civilized man pursues happiness. The tribalist pursues narrow justice.

The number one problem for the civilized and the tribalized alike is mirror imaging.

Update: 26 Sept '06 1651z

Commenter Paul noted in the comments this very interesting piece by a libertarian anthropologist: Observations on Arabs

Update: 27 Sept '06 1803z

Clayton Cramer comments.

Update: 30 Sept '06 0059z

Elder of Zion and Liberty ans Justice and Infidel Bloggers Alliance comment.


Update: 02 Oct. '06 0807z

Captain's Quarters discusses Afghan tribalism. The comments are especially good. See the one by Dale in Atlanta.

Update: 16 Oct. '06 1405z

Israel Matzav has a good bit on tribalism in Gaza.

Cross Posted at Classical Values 01 April '08.