Kunwar Khuldune Shahid - "Don’t Blame the Taliban - Part III"

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

A Brave Man, No Kidding

Google Images

I've drawn attention to the Pakistani journalist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid and his criticisms of Islam twice before (here and here), and he has now published "Don't Blame the Taliban - Part III" (November 10, 2012) over at Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch. I should note that I read Spencer regularly but very critically because he has a tendency to shoot from the hip -- often accurately, I think, but sometimes off target -- and because he too often relies on snark that -- in my opinion -- mars his analysis. He wouldn't agree with me, of course, for he's defended his intentional snarkiness in response to criticism from others.

Be that as it may, I'd like to quote from Shahid's article, the third in his series taking Pakistani Muslim liberals to task for defending their moderate Islam as if it were the true Islam and not criticizing Islam itself, which according to Shahid is the Islam practiced by the Taliban. For instance, he cites the Qur'an 9:29 against the view that "Islam only prescribes 'defensive' Jihad":

"Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

He then explains its context to clarify its application to offensive Jihad:

Verse 9:29, revealed during the preparation of Battle of Tabuk, kick started the three-pronged Muslim course of battle - 1. Invitation to accept Islam 2. Demand for the payment of Jizya and 3. Instigation of war. This tradition was carried forward throughout Islam's expansionist phase; wherein refusal to accept Islam or pay Jizya was considered reason enough to launch a "defensive" war against the infidels. This trend was continued by the first four caliphs of Islam and the leaders that followed en route to formulating a gargantuan Islamic empire. Again, if the "blessed companions" of the prophet misapprehended his and Allah's ostensible concept of a "defensive war" the skeptics of Islam can be forgiven for the "misunderstanding" as well. Or of course it could mean that the prophet, the caliphs, and leading Islamic scholars understood the concept of Jihad rather well but the present-day apologists want Quran's message to appear differently, since the original command doesn't fit in too nicely with the modern-day norms.

For Islam, in Shahid's view, a "defensive" jihad is what the rest of the world would call offensive! Is there then -- in Shahid's view -- no hope? Oh, he offers a glimmer:

Islam needs a massive revamp for it to become attuned with the present day, which should begin with not taking it [the Quran] literally as the word of a divine deity. One could then perceive the Sunnah as fitting for the political movement at the time, and mould the teachings to ensure their compatibility with the modern age. We would then have the ideology that the [liberal] Muslim apologists propagate, which although is quite palatable and tranquil, it is still light years away from the original Islamic scriptures and their teachings.

In short, drop the universal Muslim view of the Qur'an as Allah's direct revelation. Well, good luck with that . . .

Don't Blame the Taliban -- Islam Really is the Problem!

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Google Images

Or so insists Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, the Pakistani journalist whom I wrote about several days ago, for he has posted another bold critique of Islamic ideology, "Don't blame the Taliban II," this one appearing in The Telegraph (October 19, 2012), where the original can also be read. But here's some of what he writes in the follow-up:

Which ideology can possibly justify killing a 14-year-old school going kid? . . . The Taliban claim that their ideology does . . . . The Taliban have defended the attack on Malala Yousafzai according to their scriptures and history . . . . Like for instance the case of Asma bint Marwan, a poetess whose murder was sanctioned in 2 AH[, i.e., two years following Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina,] after she conspired against Islam and the Holy Prophet, as narrated by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa'd. And then there are Ibn Khatal's two slave girls Fartana and Qaribah, who used to sing songs against the Holy Prophet and were among the ten shortlisted to be executed at the Conquest of Makkah[, i.e., Mecca,] in 8 AH -- one of them was killed, the second managed to escape (Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat - Vol 2). Women were ordered to be killed for conspiring against the religion by their ideological predecessors, and so is it entirely the Taliban's fault for taking cue and attempting to kill a girl who criticised their fundamentals; the fundamentals emanating from their 'authentic' religious scriptures? . . . [Moreover, a]ccording to Islamic teachings you're an adult and responsible for your actions when you reach puberty -- if a 9-year-old is considered old enough to get married [i.e., Aisha to Muhammad], a 14-year-old should be old enough for being condemned for 'conspiracy'. A plethora of Malalas under the pretext of threat to the religion bit the dust when the religion was expanding and therefore, if you're defending Islam as the ultimate truth you can't blame the Taliban for adopting violence as a means to assault the sceptics, unless you denounce the violence in 7th century as well and question the ideology.

There's much more that follows, wherein Shahid dismantles three critiques of the Taliban by moderate Muslims. His point seems to be that if you oppose the Taliban, you have to oppose Islam itself, for everything that the Taliban does can be condoned on the basis of Islam's fundamental sources. He closes his own critique by calling for voices to be raised against silence in the face of such barbarism:

Condemning violence but remaining shushed about its roots is not only hypocritical but pointless if you actually want to uproot the cause . . . . [L]ives are being taken every single day in our neck of the woods in the name of the 'religion of peace'. Considering the response to last week's piece there are many who are categorically against this ignorance -- how long do all of you plan on remaining silent about it?

I'm guessing that the man was shamed out of his own previous silence by the bravery of Malala Yousafzai -- even though he himself now must face the same threat of being shot . . .

Don't Blame the Taliban -- Islam is the Problem?

Malala Yousafzai

Wikipedia

As most of my readers are probably aware, Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl who harshly criticized the Taliban for closing girls' schools, was recently shot in the head by gunmen sent from that Islamist organization and left critically wounded, an atrocity raising near universal criticism, even in Pakistan. One fascinating article, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, was rather provocatively titled "Don't blame the Taliban" (Pakistan Today, October 12, 2012), and it says some correspondingly provocative things -- indeed, more than correspondingly provocative, as I shall make clear by bracketed specifications referring to Shahid's intended designation of Islam itself:

The Malala incident is déjà vu times million. You have religious 'extremists' manifesting brutality; the 'educated' class calls the act heinous, the 'intellectuals' label the offenders as beasts, the 'liberals' protest against the 'cowardly act' and while everyone is condemning the act, they remain shushed about the root cause of it all: the ideology.

Does Shahid mean Islamist ideology? No, he doesn't:

Throughout the past every single person who has denounced the Taliban has acted as an apologetic, justifying the religious ideology [of Islam itself!] and claiming how those 'uneducated morons' have 'unfortunately' misinterpreted the teachings of peace and tranquility -- no, they haven't, 'unfortunately' . . . . The poor chaps are only doing what their scriptures [of Islam itself!] -- the ones that the pseudo intellectuals extol, or don't have the cojones to criticize -- tell them to do.

Shahid offers several examples of what he says the Qur'an teaches Muslims and throws them in the face of Muslim liberals who venerate the Qur'an but condemn the very practices and acts that it condones and even exhorts:

When you are being taught, through the scriptures [of Islam itself!] that are universally recognized by the followers as 'authentic', that all the non-believers or threats to the grandeur of your ideology [of Islam itself!] should be killed, you will kill them, where is the misinterpretation here? [Or here:] Finding [ownership of] slaves or slave girls, repulsive; physically assaulting women, disgusting; cutting off hands for theft, inhuman; stoning people to death, beastly and then venerating the ideology [of Islam itself!] that permits this at the same time is hypocrisy of the very highest order. You sit there, criticize and mock the Taliban that follow your religion [of Islam itself!] in its true form while you live in oblivion with your extremely palatable, but simultaneously blatantly fallacious, brand of religion and then claim that the Taliban are misinterpreting and misapprehending your ideology [of Islam itself!]? Oh, the irony.

Shahid points to Islam's history -- in which even Muslim liberals take pride -- as filled with the same sort of atrocity as befell Malala Yousafzai:

The Taliban have defended the attack on Malala Yousafzai through scriptures and historic precedents. You can clamor all you want about how there is a lack of understanding [of Islam itself!] on the part of the Taliban, but how on earth can you refute clear messages of violence and historical evidence -- scribed by historians of your faith [of Islam itself!] -- depicting brutality on the part of some of the most illustrious people in the history of the religion [of Islam itself!]? It is easy to launch vitriol against the Taliban for attacking a 14-year-old girl, but it is also equally hypocritical and pathetic when you eulogize people from your history who did the same in the past, who massacred masses, destroyed lands, pulverized places of worship, raped women, just because they ostensibly did it in the name of your religion [of Islam itself!]. Don't blame the Taliban for following their lead, don't blame the Taliban for using violence as a means to cement religious superiority [of Islam itself!] -- something that has been done for centuries -- don't blame the Taliban for the fact that you don't have the guts to call a spade a spade even though it has been spanking your backside for centuries now.

Shahid calls for liberal Muslims to make a choice:

It's time our 'thinkers' stopped taking the easy way out and finally picked a side. You either follow a religion [of Islam itself!] in its true form or you're irreligious. The Taliban know which side they are on. Do you?

Rather bold. Kunwar Khuldune Shahid speaks like an irreligious 'Muslim' sounding a call to arms against the religion not of Islamism, but of Islam itself! I wonder how long before the Taliban go after him for . . . for . . . for saying that they're being faithful Muslims?

Not that I agree with him, of course . . .

Heather Mercer on Personalizing Relations with Muslims

Heather Mercer with Kurdish Woman

(Image from Christianity Today)

Ten years ago, Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were Christian social workers assisting Afghans through Shelter Now, a housing outreach organization, and had been arrested by the Taliban, ostensibly for proselytizing among Muslims. The charges were probably accurate, in a general sense -- though the two did not explicitly attempt to convert Muslims -- for they believed that living for Christ would draw Muslims to Jesus. Both Heather and Dayna were threatened with capital punishment, but I had the impression from the news reports that the Taliban weren't sure what to do with them. Eventually, they were rescued by anti-Taliban forces as Nato's intervention overthrew the Islamist government in the aftermath to 9/11.

According to Timothy C. Morgan, "How Heather Mercer's Hostage Stint Turned into Global Hope," Christianity Today (September 12, 2011), Heather relocated to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003 and has continued relief work among Muslims. Her experiences seem to indicate that despite the clash of civilizations, cordial relations can be forged across cultural fault lines. Individual Muslims seem to respond well to personalized religious overtures, as we see from the following interview conducted by Morgan:

What can American Christians do to better understand Muslims?

Muslims are people just like us. They have the same desires, the same ambitions. They want to raise their family to be healthy, happy, and whole. The first point is bringing a human face to Muslims. Many Muslims are god-fearing people. They believe in a monotheistic God. They want to experience the promise of eternal life. But they have been handed a religious system and tradition that does not allow them to know the God we know.

Muslims come to know Christ through an authentic relationship with a follower of Jesus, through reading the Scripture in their language, and through having a personal encounter with Christ -- through a dream, or a vision, or through supernatural healing.

Evangelicals in this country can take their experience with Christ and share that with their Muslim neighbors. For the most part, Muslims are very open to that. They love relationship; everything rides on the spirit of hospitality. They love prayer. Engage them on those levels.

Do you believe that relations between Christians and Muslims are improving?

I don't think we're as far as we need to be. There are 1 billion Muslims around the world and 88 percent of them have never met a follower of Jesus. The church needs to rise up with love and humility, and have a willingness to lay its life down for the Muslim world.

Where should a Christian leader start?

It can feel very intimidating. Start a conversation with a Muslim. Find out what they believe. Talk to them. Understand their life. Ask questions. Try to understand their worldview. Get training. In this country, helping to train the American church to reach Muslim neighbors is an organization called Crescent Project.

Another step is pray like crazy. Start a prayer ministry at the church praying for the Islamic world. Visit the local imam and ask him for dialogue. I've never once had a Muslim deny prayer in the name of Jesus. I always ask them, "May I pray for you in Jesus' name?" I want them to know who it is I worship. It's not an easy assignment. But it's a worthy one. If God can use a 20-year-old, blonde, blue eyed, single American girl then he can use anybody.

Heather is no longer just 20, of course. A decade has passed, and she has undoubtedly learned a great deal since 2001. What I find interesting about her remarks is the statement that Muslims "love relationship; everything rides on the spirit of hospitality." That suggests to me that everything is personalized for Muslims. They take nearly everything personally, which might also explain their tendency to easily take offense at perceived slights. Or at real insults.

This tendency toward offense, the personalized coin's other side, doesn't work well in the West, where many Muslims are migrating these days -- that old clash of civilizations again -- for the West is largely based not on personal relations but on rational-legal ones. Evangelicals, however, offer friendship and helpful assistance based on relationships patterned after the personal relationship that they believe themselves to have with Jesus, and they offer Muslims the possibility of enjoying this same divine relationship. Muslims often find that combination irresistable.

I, too, have found Muslims to be very friendly on a personal level, though I've also learned that I have to be careful in what I say, for their honor compels them to an affronted defense of Islam, especially among Arab Muslims.

Heather's emphasis upon friendship with Muslims is a significant insight, but the West expects more of individuals than personalized relations, and a rational-legal system can't work without ignoring personal connections, so the larger problem remains.

Heather and Dayna, by the way, are Baylor alumni, which partly explains my interest in their story.

Larry Goodson and Thomas H. Johnson on US Tactics and Strategy in Afghanistan

ISAF

(Image from Wikipedia)

As I've occasionally mentioned, I'm on the mailing list of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), so I receive something of interest once every couple of weeks or so. Yesterday, an article by Larry Goodson and Thomas H. Johnson popped into my email box, "Parallels with the Past -- How the Soviets Lost in Afghanistan, How the Americans are Losing" (April 2011). Goodson is a professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Johnson is a research professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, so they should know what they're talking about. Their article is interesting and informative, but I wasn't quite persuaded about the Soviet-American comparison.

Why not?

Their claim is that there are "startling and unsettling similarities between Soviet strategies and tactics in Afghanistan during their Afghan war of 1979-1989 and American coalition strategies and tactics in Afghanistan since October 2001." They focus on "three similarities . . . central to current U.S. and NATO Afghan strategies: the focus on key population centers, reconciliation, and the development of 'Afghan' solutions to a variety of security concerns."

None of these three worked for the Soviets, they point out, so the three are unlikely to work for the US, either. That sounds plausible, except that I recall the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan well. The Soviets employed extremely brutal, scorched-earth tactics of warfare and alienated most Afghans. On this point, the Americans have endeavored to use very different tactics based on a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategy aimed at protecting the civilian population from the Taliban and other insurgents, nothing at all like the Soviets' scorched-earth approach.

I therefore wondered what someone involved in planning the tactics and strategy used in Afghanistan by the US Military would think of the article, so I forwarded Goodson and Johnson's paper to one of my contacts who had been closely involved in working out those tactics and strategy (and to whom I've promised anonymity), and I inquired about this person's opinion. Here is the reply concerning the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan:

Interesting piece with some good points. I'm probably a little biased, but the article didn't adequately "connect the dots" between the history and the current situation for me. The comparison to the USSR's approach was superficial with cherry-picked, dated examples to draw connections or similarities that don't exist. A more thorough review of the ISAF population-centric approach shows a fundamental difference compared to that of the Soviets'. I suppose advancing such a provocative proposition is the authors' way of getting people to read and discuss their article, and I'm also not sure the authors know what's really been happening there the past year and a half. In the end, the authors actually advocate the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued. The authors are correct that the central government is one of the biggest problems, and it undercuts the connection to the population distributed throughout the country with its incompetence and corruption. The outcome in Afghanistan is still to be determined. I think by the end of summer 2012 we should see if the McChrystal/Petraeus approach is successful. Let's hope that all our blood and treasure yield some significant level of success.

I wish that my contact had said more about "population-centric approach," as well as about "the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued" -- and these two approaches are complementary, I gather, being two different aspects of the ISAF endeavor. Anyway, concerning the former point, about the "population-centric approach," my memory is that the Soviets really did abandon the countryside and simply hold the cities; the ISAF, however, has not abandoned the countryside -- at least not in my reading of reports from Afghanistan. As for the latter point, about "the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued," I assume this approach is a variant on the counterterrorism strategy advocated by Goodson and Johnson:

Counterterrorism is Enough -- A counterterrorism approach does not accept the necessity of nation-building -- or at least holds that such a commitment of means is not justified by the ends. Instead, adherents of this [counterterrorism] approach, increasingly in the ascendance in Washington, believe that the United States and its allies can achieve minimal national security goals through the relatively secretive activities of counterterrorism specialists.

I presume that this is what my contact was referring to in stating that "the authors actually advocate the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued." The US approach does seem to have given up on any belief that reforming Karzai's government is possible, so rather than get any deeper into nation-building, if that means setting up a government in Afghanistan that isn't corrupt, the Americans will be content with the lowered expectations of counterterrorism to ensure that Al-Qaeda doesn't ever again obtain a foothold there. This alone may take some doing, however, for Goodson and Johnson note that jihadists are not the most flexible individuals:

History would suggest that secular insurgents negotiate, jihadists do not. Rather, the Taliban that matter most within the movement are jihadists with perceived intense religious obligations (for instance, Mullah Omar, the Amir ul-Momineen, or Leader of the Faithful). "Peeling" such individuals away from the Taliban is virtually impossible because they believe they are following the mandates of a higher calling. Indeed, history suggests that no jihad has ever ended with a negotiated settlement or via reconciliation.

What holds for the Taliban jihadists would hold for Al Qaeda jihadists, too, as well as any other jihadists. A fully successful long-term counterterrorism strategy would have to determine why some Muslims turn to jihad and terrorism and would need to utilize policies that dissuade potential jihadists and potential terrorists from becoming actual jihadists and actual terrorists.

Good luck on that, though, for I'm not too hopeful . . .

Joshua Foust on Robert Kaplan

Registan Banner

(Image from Registan)

Joshua Foust over at his Registan blog takes issue with Robert Kaplan's Foreign Policy article that I commented upon and linked to yesterday. In particular, Foust dismisses the notion that the Taliban in any way signify Pashtun nationalism:

The Taliban are not an expression of Pashtun nationalism. As but one example, Abdulkader Sinno argues in excruciating depth that the Taliban were successful only because of their organization (and the disorganization of the mujahideen), and not necessarily because of their ideology or sense of nationalism. In fact, neither Afghan nor Pakistan Taliban are nationalist -- they are explicitly pan-Islamist. They want an Islamic State, not a Pashtun one (their ethnicity is merely how they are organized, not motivated).

Now that I think about the point, I realize that I ought to have recognized this myself. I've been reading about the Taliban since the 1990s, when they were relatively unknown but successfully bringing order to Afghanistan's chaos while also imposing their strict, Wahabi-funded version of Islam upon the areas that they had 'pacified.' I knew nothing then of an ethnic base to the movement, and the point made at that time was that this Islamist movement was being funded by Saudi Wahabists and organized by Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. Or so I read in the papers that I was reading in those days, e.g., The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, various German papers.

At the time, if I recall, one big question concerned their ideological motivation. Did they want Afghanistan alone, or did they have larger aims? The attacks of 9/11 focused attention on the fact that the Taliban was hosting Bin Laden, and even if they had not directly contributed to the attacks, the fact that they protected Bin Laden after 9/11 raised suspicions that they might have aims beyond Afghanistan.

Since 9/11, I've noticed that the Taliban are strongest in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, so Kaplan's view that the Taliban is an expression of Pashtun nationalism sounded plausible. But Foust is right about the Taliban: "their ethnicity is merely how they are organized, not [how they are] motivated." They are pan-Islamist, which helps explain why they would want all of Pakistan, why they have links to Al Qaeda, and why they have foreign jihadists among their fighters.

I need to read Joshua Foust at Registan more often (and thanks to John B. of Clever Turtles for the tip).

Robert D. Kaplan: "Revenge of Geography"

Geopolitics

Illustration by Aaron Goodman

(Image from Foreign Policy)

Robert Kaplan has an excellent (though disputed) article in the latest issue of Foreign Policy (May/June 2009): "The Revenge of Geography." Although his article is global in scope, emphasizing the role played by geography in conflicts along what he calls "shatter zones" (reminiscent of Huntington's "fault lines" between civilizations, except geographic rather than religious), it has some especially significant observations about the specific case of Pakistan:

Of course, the worst nightmare on the subcontinent is Pakistan, whose dysfunction is directly the result of its utter lack of geographic logic. The Indus should be a border of sorts, but Pakistan sits astride both its banks, just as the fertile and teeming Punjab plain is bisected by the India-Pakistan border. Only the Thar Desert and the swamps to its south act as natural frontiers between Pakistan and India. And though these are formidable barriers, they are insufficient to frame a state composed of disparate, geographically based, ethnic groups -- Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pashtuns -- for whom Islam has provided insufficient glue to hold them together. All the other groups in Pakistan hate the Punjabis and the army they control, just as the groups in the former Yugoslavia hated the Serbs and the army they controlled. Pakistan's raison d'être is that it supposedly provides a homeland for subcontinental Muslims, but 154 million of them, almost the same number as the entire population of Pakistan, live over the border in India.

To the west, the crags and canyons of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, are utterly porous. Of all the times I crossed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, I never did so legally. In reality, the two countries are inseparable. On both sides live the Pashtuns. The wide belt of territory between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River is really Pashtunistan, an entity that threatens to emerge were Pakistan to fall apart. That would, in turn, lead to the dissolution of Afghanistan.

The Taliban constitute merely the latest incarnation of Pashtun nationalism. Indeed, much of the fighting in Afghanistan today occurs in Pashtunistan: southern and eastern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. The north of Afghanistan, beyond the Hindu Kush, has seen less fighting and is in the midst of reconstruction and the forging of closer links to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, inhabited by the same ethnic groups that populate northern Afghanistan. Here is the ultimate world of Mackinder, of mountains and men, where the facts of geography are asserted daily, to the chagrin of U.S.-led forces -- and of India, whose own destiny and borders are hostage to what plays out in the vicinity of the 20,000-foot wall of the Hindu Kush.

Geography, ethnicity, and religion -- a witches' brew that makes up the dysfunctional state that we know as Pakistan. We're rather far from Francis Fukuyama's End of History and the Last Man, which saw human history as a struggle between ideologies that had reached its Hegelian goal of liberal democracy. But we're also not precisely in those civilizations where Samuel P. Huntington placed us, either, for the Islamic civilization that ought to glue Pakistan together is a rather weak binding agent, given the corrosive acid of ethnicity. The good news in what Kaplan shows is that the Taliban, being an expression of Pashtun nationalism, will encounter resistance from the Punjabis who rule Pakistan and wouldn't want their nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of a different ethnic group. We can therefore expect the Pakistan army to show more resistance than it previously did, for the stakes have been raised by the Taliban's push beyond the Swat Valley.

Or can we? Another scholar, Thomas Barfield, raises some doubts, noting the rise of Islamic radicalism within Pakistan's heavily Pashtun Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and its previously secular army:

A lot of people in the ISI are Pashtuns because they had the language skills. During the Soviet War period, [Mohammad] Zia ul-Haq began Islamizing the army. Before, the army was fairly resolutely secular, but since the '80s you saw a greater and greater influence of Islamists in the army as well as the ISI. By the time they were helping the Taliban, some [army officials] were highly sympathetic to this idea of a Wahhabi-style Islamic state. Pakistan was formed as a state for Muslims separated off from India -- its name means "land of the religiously pure" -- and it's always been like, "Well, are we Muslim enough?" (Michael Mechanic, "Could Pakistan Dissolve Altogether? (Interview with Thomas Barfield)" Mother Jones, May/June 2009)

Barfield worries not just about a Pashtun attempt to take over Pakistan but also about even a failed Pastun attempt to grab the entire country if Pakistan's army holds steady and manages to keep the Punjab region for itself in the ensuing chaos:

The army has always stood to prevent that [sort of takeover], so presumably if they would hold on to the army, the army would hold on to Punjab and prevent things from getting out of hand. But then the question would be, if it starts to fall apart like that, would India feel the need to make a preemptive strike to go after the nukes? (Mechanic, "Could Pakistan Dissolve")

This is where things get really scary . . . and even scarier is the recognition that the world is full of 'Pakistans'! Perhaps not nuclear-armed ones, but increasingly militarized "shatter zones" destabilized by the tyranny of geography.

I have seen the future, and it is murder.

UPDATE: Commentor John B. (below) links to a strong and informed rebuttal of Kaplan at the Registan blog.

Taliban: Conquest of Pakistan?

Advancing on Mecca

The Life of the Prophet (1595)

Siyer-i Nebi

(Image from Wikipedia)

Many of us are watching with great interest and not a little apprehension as the Taliban make inroads into eastern portions of Pakistan. Recently, the government there turned over the Swat Valley to Taliban control, allowing implementation of Islamic law (sharia). Some readers will recall the recent video of a 17-year-old girl publicly whipped (34 lashes) for going outside her home without the escort of a close male relative. The comment of one moderate Muslim living in the city of Mingora is quite revealing:

When the Taliban took over Swat, they held a "peace" march. Thousands of men in black turbans and regulation beards stomped through the city. "There wasn't a single local among them," a schoolteacher in Mingora recalled. "I sat at home with my family and quivered with fear." Then he hesitated and made sure that my recorder was switched off, afraid that what he was about to say might be seen as blasphemous. "I felt like a non-Muslim citizen of Mecca the day it was conquered by prophet Muhammad's army. And I am a practicing Muslim." (Reported by Mohammed Hanif, "My Country, Caving to the Taliban," The Washington Post, Sunday, April 26, 2009)

To put this another way, the fearful schoolteacher felt that he would be treated by the Taliban as the infidels were treated by a conquering Muhammad: given the choice of submission to Islam . . . or death.

Now, it's true that not many Meccan infidels died when Muhammad marched victoriously in, but that's undoubtedly because they submitted to Islam and the destruction of the idols in the Kaaba. It's also true that 'monotheistic' non-Muslims are allowed to continue in their religion so long as the jizya is paid and other restrictions are accepted, but one purpose of the jizya and the various restrictions is to put pressure on non-Muslim 'monotheists' to convert to Islam, and the Taliban are already putting pressure on non-Muslims to pay the jizya, convert to Islam, or face execution.

The Taliban's aims are not limited to the Swat Valley. The great prize is Pakistan itself, and if the Pakistani government continues to 'cave' to the Taliban, then these Islamist militants could succeed.

And just to concentrate our minds, let's recall that Pakistan has an estimated 90 to 250 nuclear weapons.

Korea Herald: "Foreign terrorists active in Korea: NIS report"

Near Itaewon Subway Station

Seoul, South Korea

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've just recently read an alarming report by journalist Song Sang-ho, who drew on information relayed from Korea's National Intelligence Service for his article in yesterday's Korea Herald: "Foreign terrorists active in Korea: NIS report" (September 22, 2008). The link leads to a Daum portal site because the Korea Herald's website is set up to prevent linking, but the articles are identical.

Yes, that's right, the Herald doesn't seem to want people reading its online newspaper, and that's certainly unfortunate in this case, for this is very serious material, as "more than 70 foreign terror suspects have been captured in Korea in the last five years." According to the report, "the National Intelligence Service began an antiterrorism crackdown in 2003, which has led to the capture of 74 people in 19 cases with ties to international terrorist networks."

This crackdown began in 2003 because the Korean government realized that in sending its troops to Iraq as part of the coalition, it would be setting itself up as a target for Islamist terrorist attacks within Korea.

The terrorist networks discovered include members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Jemaah Islamiah. There's also this:

In February last year, 10 members of Hawala, a huge network of money brokers primarily located in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, were captured for illegal foreign currency transactions.

That might be a bit misleading, for "hawala" is not a proper noun and therefore not the name of an organization. It's a method, rooted in Islamic law, of transferring money to distant locations. A hawala broker in one place accepts money from a local client and contacts a second hawala broker in another place, asking that second broker to dispose of the money as the client has directed. Both brokers receive a small fee, and the debt between them is settled later. No promissory notes are exchanged between the brokers, so the transaction operates on the honor system and thus does not require formal law for enforcement. No records are kept aside from the tallies each hawala broker jots down or remembers.

We need little imagination to understand how this sort of system might prove useful for funding terrorist groups.

How did these terrorist networks establish themselves here in South Korea? The article does not state, explicitly, but the answer is obvious. These networks have formed within the foreign worker community, many of whom are Muslim and come from places as distant from each other as Pakistan and Indonesia. I mention these two countries because the information helps us understand the presence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, on the one hand, and Jemaah Islamiah, on the other. The former are based in Pakistan and the latter in Indonesia.

I suspected this back in 2003 and advised a church near Osan Air Base in Songtan not to include any of its American members on outreach programs directed to Muslims in South Korea. I pointed out that many of the Americans in that church had military connections -- either as soldiers or as contractors -- and that since the US was currently fighting Islamist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, then sending such Americans on mission work among the Muslim community in Korea might not be such a good idea. I suggested that the work be handled solely by Koreans.

Whether I was providing wise counsel, I don't know, but according to the report:

The networks, including al-Qaida, are alleged to have whipped up anti-American sentiment, sought to gather intelligence on U.S. forces stationed here, and smuggled illicit drugs to bankroll their terrorist activities.

This incitement of anti-American sentiment has probably taken place only among Muslims within the migrant-worker community here in Korea, but I would not be surprised to learn of links to Koreans on the hardcore left, nor would I be surprised to learn of connections with North Korean spies. North Korea has links to radical Islamists in Pakistan, for the North was part of the international network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan to exchange materials and information for establishing nuclear weapons programs.

Perhaps the Islamists here are merely using South Korea "as a safe haven for terrorists' money laundering," as the article suggests, but if they're also here to "gather intelligence on U.S. forces stationed" in Korea, then they might be planning more than just distant terrorist acts -- something that I've previously speculated about -- and they wouldn't have to look far for a target, for America's Yongsan Garrison borders on Itaewon, where many migrant workers live.

National Assembly representative Won Hye-young, who serves on the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee, openly warns about terrorist attacks in Korea:

"Given the Korea-U.S. alliance and our status in the international community, the possibility of terrorist attacks here in Korea is higher than at any other times."

South Korea, therefore, ought to keep the pressure on these groups -- and from this report's information, I gather that Korea is doing so.

On a more personal note, I guess that I ought to take precautions myself since I often blog about Islamism in ways that Islamists might not appreciate . . . and some of these Islamists are living not so very far away.

Various Remarks on Korean Christian Missionaries

Korean Missions in Muslim Lands

15,000 Korean Missionaries in the World

(Image from New York Times, 2004)

We often hear that merely 7 degrees of separation stand between any two individuals in the world, which means, for example, that I probably know somebody who knows someone who knows some person who knows some individual who knows some soul who knows some acquaintance who knows Bin Laden.

Sometimes, the degrees are more, sometimes less.

We're also told that we need not reach back too far in the geneological tables to find that everybody around the world is related.

Sometimes, the relationship is closer in time and space.

I thus read with some shock that Pastor Bae Hyeong-kyu, the first of the two Korean hostages murdered by the Taliban, is the younger brother to a brother-in-law of Peter Beck.

Who's Peter Beck? Well, I know him, having met him over dinner last January. At the time, I related an anecdote that he had told us over our meal in an Uzbek restaurant about his excursion to the very brink of North Korea, and he has since granted me the permission to identify him as the one who told the tale:

One of those present yesterday, an American (and I'm leaving him unidentified since I'm not sure if he'd want to be identified), told an anecdote about his near visit to North Korea. He was on a raft that was being poled on the Tuman River by two Chinese Koreans. The three of them waved to a North Korean border guard, who waved back. So ... they poled closer. The guard asked for money, so the American tossed some. The guard asked for more. The American said, "I'll give you more if you'll let me shake your hand." The guard considered this, but then shook his head no. So, the American asked, "Could I step on shore, then? I've always wanted to visit North Korea." Again, the guard considered but declined. The Chinese Koreans then poled away, back toward China, and they told him that the South Koreans who go rafting with them toss far more money and make no conditions.

The American telling the story then smiled and remarked to us that this neatly captures the difference between the respective policies of the United States and South Korea toward the North.

At the time that I met Peter, he was director of the International Crisis Group's Seoul Office, but he has very recently moved on to take on the position as executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and is now stationed in Washington, D.C.

As you might guess by the anecdote, Peter is hardly averse to taking some risks ... but he does draw some crucial lines, as he tells us in a recent column, "Understanding people of faith," written for the September 3rd edition of The Korea Herald:

When I learned that 23 Korean missionaries had been abducted in Afghanistan, I told my wife, "Looks like another group of crazy Korean Christians." It struck me as the height of recklessness and foolishness to take a group of inexperienced Christian relief workers into the heart of Taliban country.

Imagine his shock at the response of his Korean wife:

My wife responded by informing me that the leader of the group, Rev. Bae Hyeong-kyu, who would soon be the first executed, was a relative.

Coming to grips with this, emotionally, took some time for Peter:

As son-in-law No. 3, even though I am very close to son-in-law No. 4 (my family slept on his family's floor when we moved to Korea three years ago and we would move nearby), I had not met his younger brother, Rev. Bae. I did know that like my wife's family, he and his family are devout Christians. In fact, I am one of the only non-religious people in my wife's entire extended family. When word came that he had been killed and I was interviewed by America's most influential radio network, National Public Radio, I felt like I had been rather cold and detached. Indeed, a close friend who heard the interview would later inform me that my lack of religiousness came through the interview loud and clear. However, after spending that evening with my brother-in-law and learning about what amazing humanitarian work his brother had done in Africa and the risks taken and sacrifices made by Western missionaries to bring Christianity to Korea, the next interview I did for CNN was much more sympathetic. To my regret, I would receive dozens of messages about the NPR interview, but none about the CNN interview.

Peter does not tell us what humanitarian work Bae did in Africa, but he adds this remark about Bae's family:

As fate would have it, we spent our very last evening in Korea with Rev. Bae's parents and siblings. I was impressed with how their deep faith was guiding them through unfathomable grief. Rev. Bae's mother told me, "Our son is with God now. My concern is for the families who are waiting for their loved ones to return."

Many of us know from various news reports that Reverend Bae and the other missionaries have been accused of using poor judgement, and I agree with some of the criticisms. We don't know all of the details, of course, and I've been waiting to learn more before drawing a firm conclusion, but so far, I hold to what I said a few weeks ago.

First, I reminded critics that the Korean Christians, no matter how 'fanatical' they might be, were not the moral equivalent of the Taliban:

These Christians go to do volunteer work in health and charity services as well as to witness to their faith, which is by and large a peaceful one.

That seemed necessary to point out, given the harsh criticism that these Christians were receiving for doing missionary work in a Muslim country. Many people even seemed to think that the Christians deserved what they were getting at the hands of the Taliban, a reaction that I cannot understand.

My second point was directed toward the Korean government:

The Korean government should not negotiate with the Taliban over these hostages. The Taliban are murderous, violent, fundamentalist Islamist terrorists. Negotiating with them will lead to more hostage-taking -- especially hostage-taking of Koreans.

The Taliban themselves have since confirmed this point:

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi vowed to abduct more foreigners, reinforcing fears [expressed by many individuals and governments] that South Korea's decision to negotiate directly with the militants would embolden them.

"We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful," he told The Associated Press via cell phone from an undisclosed location. (Amir Shah, "Taliban free last South Korean hostages," Yahoo News, August 31, 2007)

This won't stop the missionaries, of course, no matter what the Korean government has agreed to with the Taliban about preventing any more Koreans from going to Afghanistan for any reason but especially for reasons of mission work. Indeed, Korean missionaries are already protesting the government's agreement:

The Korea World Missions Association, has expressed “dissatisfaction” with the agreement between the Korean government and Taliban banning missionary work in Afghanistan. It has also released a document that proposes setting up a crisis management team for overseas missionaries and lays out ground rules for crisis management. In other words, if there is an another hostage crisis, then these guys will take the lead in negotiating with the hostage takers. ("Missionary Work to Continue in Afghanistan?" Marmot's Hole, September 1, 2007)

Many will continue to criticize Christian missionaries, but as Peter Beck notes:

Only two types of people are willing to risk their lives to help North Koreans trying to flee the North: brokers working for money and missionaries working for God. At some point, we must each decide how much risk we are willing to take to help others. Those of strong faith tend to be more risk-taking than those of us with little faith.

Peter is not without his criticisms of Korean Protestant Christianity, and I can agree with some of his points, but my larger agreement is that Christian missionaries are "more risk-taking" than most other individuals.

And this is precisely the problem for the Korean government, for there are approximately 15,000 Korean Christian missionaries scattered throughout the world. I astonished several professors at the annual Kyung Hee University retreat two weeks ago when I told them this fact, for they had no clue that Korean mission work was so extensive. We had been discussing the hostage situation, and I had given my opinion that the Korean government should not be negotiating. They had disagreed, maintaining that the government could not refuse to negotiate for the release of Korean hostages, but when I cited this statistic about the 15,000 Korean missionaries, they immediately grasped the potential problem and began to see things my way.

Evangelical Christians, who supply many if not most of the missionaries in the world, tend to see themselves as being at odds with the world, with worldly culture, and with worldly power. If they truly believe this, then they should not be relying on the world to rescue them if they are kidnapped or otherwise persecuted. Worldly organizations can do so if they feel a humanitarian obligation, of course, but the missionaries should not expect this and, indeed, should make clear that they take risks without expecting rescue, that they will instead rely upon their faith in God.

I think that they'll be far more effective if they do so.

Pastor Douglas Shin: "our faith has become very corrupt"

Saemmul Stained Glass Window

Stained glass, stained hearts?

(Image from Saemmul Presbyterian Church)

The online Christian news site Compass Direct News ran an interesting article about a week ago, "North Korea: Refugees Facing Crackdown" (July 31, 2007), an interview with Pastor Douglas Shin, "a Korean-American pastor living in Los Angeles who has built 'underground railroads' for North Korean refugees since 2000 as leader of the 'Exodus 21' movement."

For those not in the know, the expression "underground railroad" originally referred to the routes from safe house to safe house that escaped slaves used for secretly passing from America's southern slave states to the northern free states or on to Canada in the time prior to the Civil War. I presume that the expression "Exodus 21" alludes to the Exodus story in the Bible of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt but updating that story to the 21st century and applying it to the North Korean refugees.

The entire interview is fascinating (as was an earlier interview from May 2001 in the Chosun Journal), especially when the interviewer posed the following question:

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken Korean aid workers hostage and killed two of them -- how could South Korean media and others blame the victims for wanting to do good?

Pastor Shin had a revealing answer:

Korean Christians, while numbering less than 3 percent of the population early in their history during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), were the spiritual -- as well as physical -- leaders of Korean society. With the outward growth since 1970s concurrently with the economic growth of the country, our faith has become very corrupt, emulating the secular sector, not vice versa. We have shown many bad examples to the people, so they've come to hate us now.

In short, Korean churches have grown corrupt and disliked ... though Shin doesn't specify precisely how. But Shin doesn't harshly blame the missionaries taken captive by the Taliban:

These Sammul Church folks are the cream of the crop of Korean believers, and Koreans have very little for which to blame them -- except for that picture they took at the Seoul airport [in front of a sign warning of the dangers of traveling to Afghanistan], and the tourist bus they chartered in Kabul -- yet, they are vulnerable to the avalanche of criticism from the Netizens and the media because of the general social ethos here that is willing to shoot down any Christian at any time for anything whatsoever.

For some harsh but intelligent, albeit speculative criticism of the Saemmul Church missionaries being held by the Taliban, see Michael Hurt's Metropolitician blog entry "Cunning Christian Stunts":

[W]hat I see ..., rather than brave Christian lambs, are rather the self-deluded and culturally insensitive Christians in Korea, whom I encounter all the time, who berate and preach to anyone within earshot about how they will go to Hell, about how Jews and Muslims are not "real" religions, and a million other things I need not mention here.... I think this is a case of a bunch of idealistic, mostly young folks who saw this whole thing as a cunning Christian stunt, and they never really felt the fear of death.... These are middle-class kids who've lived in sanitized apartment complexes, have been kept in a cocoon of constructed innocence, and probably saw this whole thing as a great adventure, while the church elders who put them up to were likely thinking about how this would enlarge the name of their church as well. "Look! We went to Afghanistan and taught prayer songs to kids! What'd your church do?" Bigger name means more members, means more money, means more power.

So, who's right on the Saemmul Church missionaries, Korean-American Douglas Shin or the American half-Korean Michael Hurt? I guess that we'll just have to wait for the details.

Of course, readers know that I've recently gone on record defending the missionaries in my blog post "Two opinions on the Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan...," but I don't know the real motives of these particular missionaries any better than other bloggers do. However, in a blog entry over a year ago, "Christianity Today on Korean Christianity and its Missions" (February 26, 2006), I expressed some skepticism about 'voluntary' missionaries sent by Korean churches. The South Korean missionary group Durihana, for instance, sends North Korean converts living in China back into the North to proselytize secretly, and when criticized for this, Durihana's director insisted that they "don't force them to go back" but instead "send only volunteers." At that claim, I mused:

Volunteers. Hmmm ... well, anyone who's been around Korean churches understands what that means. Korean Christianity reflects Korean society -- hierarchical and Confucian. If the 'seniors' favor evangelism, the 'juniors' will volunteer.

That may be the sort of thing that happened with the Saemmul Church missionaries, too. Whether Shin, Hurt, or I turn out to be correct, we all three see problems in Korean churches for the way in which they reflect some of the less appealing aspects of Korean society.

Let us nevertheless hope that the remaining 21 captives are released by the Taliban unharmed and without any concessions on the part of the Korean, Afghan, or American governments and that Korean Christians draw some appropriate lessons from this experience.

Absolute National Sovereignty to the Taliban?

Taliban's Destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas

All power to the Taliban?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Over at Malcolm Pollack's WakaWakaWaka, an individual going by the name "Gak Seolli" has posted a comment about the Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan that includes the following remark:

The Taliban, no matter how morally repugnant we may find them, doesn't [sic: don't] have to answer to anyone in regards to what they do on their own land. They've guaranteed no safety for foreigners, offered no invitation to missionaries. They've quite plainly done the opposite....

When questioned on this point, Gak Seolli elaborated that concerning the Taliban, he had merely:

...inquired into the rights anyone had to enter their territory and what rights outsiders would have to demand that the Taliban allow certain behaviors or visitors on their lands. Did the Taliban not make it pretty clear that outsiders and non co-religionists should stay out of their land? The US/Korean governments got the message, By what right do we declare that their declaration is invalid?

These two brief statements don't provide much for me to go on, but the basic position seems to be what one might call "absolute national sovereignty," for the Taliban need not "answer to anyone in regards to what they do on their own land."

There seem to me to be two problems with this position, one empiricial and the other theoretical:

Concerning the former, empirical problem: Are the Taliban actually the political authority in Afghanistan? If they are not -- and they don't seem to have political power at the moment -- then is Afghanistan "their own land" in the relevant political sense? If the Taliban are to speak in terms of absolute national sovereignty, then they ought at least to hold political power before doing so. Political power, however, is currently held by the government of President Hamid Karzai under a constitution ratified by the loya jirga in 2003. This official government has demanded that the Taliban free the Korean hostages. If absolute national sovereignty is accepted, then how can the Taliban oppose its own government?

Concerning the latter, theoretical problem: Is absolute national sovereignty a reasonable political position? Does a governing authority really not have to answer to anyone with regard to what it does on its own land? That seems counterintuitive to me, for it implicitly leaves one without the right to criticize the internal affairs of any foreign country for any policy whatsoever. Does one truly not have this right? If a country is committing genocide within its own borders, can one really not legitimately criticize this? My moral intuition suggest that we should not only criticize such an internal policy, we should also attempt to stop it. If this intuition is correct, then absolute national sovereignty is an unreasonable political position to hold.

My intent here is not to set up a straw man for attack, and I don't know that I've correctly understood Gak Seolli's position, but absolute national sovereignty would seem to be the logical implication of the view that the Taliban need not "answer to anyone in regards to what they do on their own land."

Variants of absolute national sovereignty have had eminent theoreticians, such as Thomas Hobbes or Carl Schmitt, but most political thinkers decline to adopt such a political philosophy.

Two opinions on the Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan...

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus

André Thévet, Les Vrais Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes Illustres

"semen est sanguis Christianorum" - Tertullian

(Image from Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon)

I suppose that I should have an opinion on the hostage crisis in Afghanistan.

I mean the 23 (now 22) Christian medical missionaries from South Korea captured by the Taliban and threatened with execution if South Korea doesn't withdraw its troops 'immediately' or pay a ransom, or if the Afghan government doesn't exchange 23 (now 22?) Taliban prisoners for them, or if the United States doesn't do something (probably), or if the whole world doesn't convert to Islam (eventually). As you see, I'm not absolutely clear on what the Taliban want.

Even one local police chief in Afghanistan, Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi, acknowledges that the Taliban demands are confusing: "One says, let's exchange them for my relative, the others say let's release the women, and yet another wants a deal for money."

While the Taliban may not know what they specifically want, they do want the world to know that they are very serious. They've already killed one prisoner, the 43-year-old pastor, Bae Hyung-kyu, who was leading the group, reportedly because he "was sick and couldn't walk and was therefore shot." I don't know if that early report was accurate, but it's hardly one to counter the negative image that many already have of the Taliban.

Anyway, I suppose -- as I said -- that I should have an opinion on the hostage crisis in Afghanistan.

Actually, I have two opinions, and I've already expressed both of them ... not here at Gypsy Scholar, but over at the Marmot's Hole. My first opinion was in reaction to the spate of initial criticism blasted at the missionaries themselves by a number of commentors, who considered the missionaries stupid -- first for being Christian, second for going to a Muslim country as missionaries, and third for going to a war zone. At that time, people didn't know much about the situation and were reacting to the report in ways that sounded less like reasoned analysis and more like the results of a Rorschach Test, revealing less about the hostages than about the commentors themselves.

Here -- from the Marmot's original posting on the hostage crisis -- are my own Rorschach results:

I think that every Korean Christian heading to Muslim countries has been perfectly aware of the potential cost ever since Kim Sun-il was beheaded in Iraq three years ago.

These Christians go to do volunteer work in health and charity services as well as to witness to their faith, which is by and large a peaceful one.

When they speak to Muslims about their faith, they speak of a God who loved the world enough to take human flesh and die for humanity, and they see as their mission to live a Christlike life, which for them means living -- and possibly dying -- in the service of others.

They don’t force anyone to become a Christian -- and in fact believe that belief cannot be forced.

They are among the last individuals whom I would look down upon. (Posted July 20, 2007 at 9:31 pm)

Later, in the comments to another Marmot post, I expressed my other opinion -- the Rorschach results this time revealing my Realpolitik views:

As I told the folks in my Sunday School class, these 23 missionaries chose to express their faith by going to Afghanistan to minister to the Afghans. They knew the danger, and they took the risk. They made their choice. The Korean government should not negotiate with the Taliban over these hostages. The Taliban are murderous, violent, fundamentalist Islamist terrorists. Negotiating with them will lead to more hostage-taking -- especially hostage-taking of Koreans.

If Christian missionaries wish to witness -- in word or in deed, or both -- to Muslims, then they should not expect their own governments to pay ransoms for their release. It was said -- perhaps by Eusebius -- that the blood of the martyrs watered the seeds of the church. If that’s so, then Christians should accept the possibility of martyrdom.

That said, I do not know what these missionaries have expected, nor am I sure that anyone knows clearly since their wishes have not been expressed in any reports that I’ve read. Doubtless, their faith is on trial. Faced with death, whose thoughts wouldn’t be concentrated? -- if I may borrow a thought from Samuel Johnson. I hope that they are released unharmed -- the 22 remaining ones, at any rate -- but that should be the decision of the Taliban, and nothing more than moral pressure should be exerted, with the exception of a rescue operation if that be the decision of the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

I suspect that the Korean government has already gained the reputation as one willing to pay ransom, based on the experience of hostage-taking by Somali pirates and Nigerian rebels. Unless I’m mis-remembering what happened in such cases... (Posted July 26, 2007 at 6:29 pm)

The Western Confucian (Joshua Snyder) corrected me:

[I]t was the heretic Tertullian, God bless him, who said it: "sanguis martyrum semen christianorum." (Posted July 26, 2007 at 9:44 pm)

Thanks, Joshua. For the benefit of those whose Latin is rusty, here's what Tertullian meant to say: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians." I haven't located this exact quote, but Tertullian says something similar in his Apology: "semen est sanguis Christianorum" (Apologeticum (Apology) 50.13), i.e., "the blood of Christians is seed."

But Tertullian's insight may also be true for Islam: "sanguis martyrum semen muslimorum."