Embrassez L’Infâme!

Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki on Friday [6 June 2008] said religious awareness would end “terrorism” in Iraq, applauding the role of Iraq clerics in fostering Shiite-Sunni ties. “Religious awareness promoted by clerics and religion scholars would end terrorism (...) clerics educating correct jurisprudence are the state backers in combating terrorism and outlaws”. He stressed the importance of “fostering Sunni-Shiite alliance after ending sectarianism”.

Just a touch of cupboard love
there , possibly? Poor M. al-Málikí (the Hannibal of Da‘wa!) more or less is L’ÉTAT, out there amidst the bushogenic shambles of the former Iraq. Naturally he would like to have as many statebackers as possible, and as few statebashers. Do most subjects of Núrí Ibn Dubya share his peculiar tastes? I wonder.

Still, it is relentless OnePercenters of whom we speak, Mr. Bones, both the self-obtruded palefaces of AEI-GOP-DOD, and their swarthier spiritual brethren and ideobuddies native to the International Zone. [1] Whether the ninety-nine percent would prefer to bash or to back is a question of restricted interest. Not quite of zero interest, however, because somehow the Crawfordite aggression has brought majoritarianism to the notice of many ex-Iraqis. When the Supreme Hakemes, and Hannibal of Da‘wa himself, are accused of ‘sectarianism’ by troublemakers, which only happens about 132,809 times a day now that Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and Party Proconsul Crockerius have got everythin’ colonial all straightened out with Bribe-a-Tribe™ and whatnot, the real objection is very often factual or demographic rather than religionistical at bottom. Is the Imámí theocommunity of Peaceful Freedumbia to possess (nominally) sixty percent, maybe even one hundred percent, of such political power as Little Brother and Big Management graciously delegate to mere natives on the basis of constituting a bit over six-tenths of the population?

In our own holy Homeland, Mr. Bones, it is easy enough to find antimajoritarians. We have AEIdeologues, and Hoovervillains, and Heritagitarians, and Catoholics -- and these hobby-horsemen of the Apocalypse are only the merest beginning of an exhaustive enumeration. Indeed, I should say that the most fundamental commitment of the Big Management Party, taken as a whole and as a historic phenomenon, is to the proposition that dollars ought to be allowed to vote as well as citizens. Though all dollars are created equal and more dollars invariably beats fewer, as far as I know, yet the whole traditional AEI-GOP shtyk is bound to seem antimajoritarian to Mr. Jefferson and Gen. Jackson and Mrs. Roosevelt and thee and me, to the party of America as opposed to the Party of Grant and Hoover and Atwater.

Nevertheless, nobody, not even Sen. Calhoun long ago, has ever dragged the Peaceful Freedumbian type of ‘sectarianism’ into the dispute. As far as Soc. Sci. knows, dollars are sect-free, [2] and, although human persons are not, yet in the holy Homeland only cranks drag any one sect’s sectarianism into political debates. The Big Management Party’s neocomrade R. J. Neuhaus, dancin’ that wild and crazy "Naked Public Square" fandango of his , may or may not deserve to be dismissed as a crank. Even our champion First Estate enthusiast, though, stops short of explicitly demandin’ extra votes for everybody with any sort of sectarianism to show for herself.

Unsectarianism in America would, it seems, be put down by informal social pressure rather than by interference from Big Government, should Neocomrade Neuhaus ever get his druthers. Poor M. al-Málikí is on a completely different wavelength, obviously: "Clerics educating correct juriprudence are the state backers in combating terrorism and outlaws."

Though I stumbled into a Málikí-Neuhaus comparison by accident, ’tis a felix culpa at the end of the day, because contrast with the conventional pieties of Wombschool Normal U. and the neo-eccentricities of First Things magazine brings out some of the suchness and inscape of His International-Zone Excellency’s bloviation. Did thee ever expect, Mr. Bones, to find Muslim or neo-Muslim religion professionals celebrated as natural allies of State and Statism? Is that not very odd indeed? Maybe it is so odd that it is not really there. The Hannibal of Da‘wa might conceivably only mean that, like the comparable VC crew in Western Sieve, mullas and muftis and mujtahids can -- usually -- be counted on to come out for elementary law and order rather than for pushing the envelope of muqáwama. There is a good deal to be said for being able to cross the street without being shot at, but when somebody stands up and says it, does that make him a whole-hearted ally of the Wicked State? I think not, and, being a wicked statist myself, I may possibly have some idea what I am talking about when I claim that the religion pros of Islam are not card-carrying members of the Statist Conspiracy.

Another way to avoid taking Hannibal II perfectly seriously on this topic is to notice that he talks this talk in conjunction with a state visit to the evil Qommies. If Khomeinianity were the only surviving form of Islám, perhaps one could indeed orate with a straight face that "Clerics educating correct juriprudence are the state backers in combating terrorism and outlaws." In the real world, of course, that is like pretending that most of recorded human history has taken place in Western Sicily since two weeks ago next Thursday -- i.e., it is a really ridiculous exercise in tail wagging dog. At Tehrán, though, there may well exist audiences of beards and turbans who would not bat an eye at such stuff. The Islamic Republic does, in theory, repose itself upon "educating correct juriprudence," even if no majority-Muslim state ever did so before in anything like Hannibal’s sense. And Hannibal would, in practice, certainly be pleased if somebody authoritative could put Sadr Tertius in his place, closing all the laddie’s kangaroo courts and persuading the soldiers of the Expected One to submit to IDP and the Supreme Hakemes and AEI and GOP and DOD until Himself actually shows up personally to direct otherwise -- plus obliterate the Wicked State forever, presumably.

Though that seems plausible superficially, I am really not so sure about it, Mr. Bones. It is not easy to imagine that Hannibal II can seriously suppose that the evil Qommies are authoritative for the Sadr Tendency and the Mahdí’s troops. Or that Hannibal would wish Safavid religion pros to be authoritative over the Twelvers of the former Iraq, were such a thing possible. Being a westoxicated OnePercenter, a rootless cosmopolitan native of the International Zone, head of a (fragment of a) party in exile that decided to break with the beards and turbans, poor M. al-Málikí may have only a vague and cloudy notion of the system of superstition that he nominally adheres to. Yet surely there are limits? Hannibal II must know at least a little something about ‘his’ religion, no?

It is really hard to tell, Mr. Bones. How much did Ike know about his religionism when he sounded off with

Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."

To compare Dwight David Eisenhower with M. Núrí (Jawád) Kamál al-Málikí of the Islamic Da‘wa Party of Peaceful Freedumbia in political or military talent would only be ludicrous. However a narrow comparison as regards Superstition and Enthusiasm may not be entirely a joke, since Islám and neo-Islám have yet to sink to the depths of Norman Vincent Peale, which is obviously the level where Ike’s own deep faith feelin’s tended to congregate. The Hannibal of Da‘wa may be very ignorant of the Ithná‘ashariyya, but one can be quite sure that his ignorance does not take the form of entertaining some grotesque private-judgmental travesty of the publicly attested system.

And Hannibal definitely beats Ike if we go by political religionism alone. The practical advantages of having the International Zone neorégime prayed for from every pulpit from Zakho to Fao -- and, better still, obedience to it inculcated! -- is manifest. Whereas no amount of Norman Vincentism present or absent could have made any detectable difference to the Eisenhower Administration.

But God knows best.


____
[1] Think of the International Zone figuratively, sir, as a state of mind and a corruption of values. Like the Hell of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, sir. I am well aware that nobody above the age of five can be IZ-born in the clinical or hospital sense, not Hannibal Redux himself, nor M. le Docteur A. Tchélabí, nor M. le Prof. Dr. K. Makiyya, nor ... (a number of others).

If thee will but apply a little majâz to my words, Mr. Bones, thee may appreciate that the more important question is whether these such westoxicated OnePercenters as these have ever set foot outside the International Zone since the day they were hatched.

I thought thee understood my reasons for calling the focus of extremist Republican Party militancy in the former Iraq by the name that the bozos themselves officially prefer. To repeat: if one sneers at their "Green Zone," one means only that the Big Party bozos and their indig pets are not absolutely safe holed up inside it. Bozodom still is not altogether safe, as it happens, yet there is no reason in principle why it should not come to be so eventually. Only a technical question can arise about any zone’s level of greenness.

To sneer at their "International Zone" is much more promising. What kind of sovereign independent constitutional democracy can exist as the emanation from an "International Zone"? Only a phony-baloney one.

Furthermore, internationality is a "non-natural property," like The Good of Principia Ethica. Internationality is not distributed on any hit-or-miss bell-curve basis, as literal green -- and allegorical safety too, to a large extent -- is distributed. Hannibal’s home zone is 100% international by fiat, just as every human creature possess perfect and total dignitas humana according to the neomythology of Vatican City. Perfectly secure against moths and rust and thieves [Ev. Matt. VI:9] is the Dignity of the Human Person™, and the internationality of M. Núrí's zone. (The price of this transcendency may be noted in passing, though, namely that such edifying Cloudcuckooland imports are of no use at all when a crisis breaks out down in the sewer of Romulus. Oh, well, one can’t have everything simultaneously, not even in Peaceful Freedumbia!)



[2] I suppose somebody might drop Max Weber’s name as that of one who thought Prod dollars ought to count for more than Papist dollars, or, at any rate, that they did so count in Greater Europe at a certain period not extremely remote. That name is bound to come up in short order in any serious discussion of the correlation of farces as between statebackers and statebashers, even way out in the exotic boondocks of Peaceful Freedumbia. However I think for a couple of reasons that Weber had little of pertinence to say: (1) he was not much interested in democracy and its mechanisms, and (2) the entire Geist of his economic Calvinism assumes that the Urcalvinismus of Superstition and Enthusiasm had already become passé centuries ago in the circles he chose to single out, though scarcely in Western Sieve generally.

It was picturesque when, as thee will remember, we came across a Yank wingnut who professed himself a theological Maxweberian, supposing in effect that the correct answer to Cur Deus homo? runs "Why, in order to instantiate Chamber-of-Commerce capitalism, of course!"

Though splendid fun, that was obviously mere Wombschool Normal University fodder and nothing to do with the historic St. Max, who took for granted that when Rational Capitalism is present, there cannot be much (irrational) sectarianism around in its immediate neighborhood.