Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Shariah at the Kumback Café By ROGER COHEN - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07iht-edcohen.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

Op-Ed Columnist

Shariah at the Kumback Café

By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 6, 2010
PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.


Damon Winter/The New York Times
Roger Cohen

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So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.


Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.”

You might not expect Shariah, a broad term encompassing Islamic religious precepts, to be a priority topic at the Kumback given that there’s not a Muslim in Perry and perhaps 30,000, or less than one percent of the population, in all Oklahoma. And you’d be wrong.
Shariah is the new hot-button wedge issue, as radicalizing as abortion or gay marriage, seized on by Republicans to mobilize conservative Americans against the supposed “stealth jihad” of Muslims in the United States and against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat. Not since 9/11 has Islamophobia been at such a pitch in the United States.

The neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington recently described Shariah as “the pre-eminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Many Republicans, with Newt Gingrich leading, have signed up. Their strategy is clear: Conflate Obama with creeping Shariah and achieve the political double-whammy of feeding rampant rumors that he’s a closet Muslim and fanning the fears that propel a conservative lurch.

It’s not pretty, in fact it’s pretty odious, but to judge by the Republican surge last month, it’s effective in an anxiety-filled America.

Galvanized by State Question 755, barring “courts from considering or using Shariah Law,” Republicans swept to the Oklahoma governorship and veto-proof majorities in the Legislature for the first time.

Question 755 was “a pre-emptive strike,” in the words of its most active proponent, Republican State Representative Rex Duncan, whose portrait hangs in the Kumback. The question arises, given the quiet on the prairies, against whom? A prominent Oklahoma pastor, Paul Blair, told me it was aimed at those “whose plan is not to coexist but bring the whole world under Islam.”

A preliminary federal injunction, granted after a prominent local Muslim, Muneer Awad, challenged the constitutionality of the amendment in the nation where “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has blocked its certification for now. The very curious case of Shariah and Oklahoma may be headed to the Supreme Court.

Marilee Macias, the bubbly owner of the Kumback, swung by. “Duncan’s ahead of the game,” she said. “He’s a military guy, been around the world. I don’t know what these Muslims are preparing but I know that stoning women, we don’t want that here.”

Bud Johnson, 84, who worked in Washington and is gently mocked at the Kumback for his East Coast liberalism, shook his head. “It’s going to cost the state a lot of money to try to defend a stupid law,” he said. “There should be a reason for a law, not just hatred and emotions. But my view went down here like the Titanic. The fear element has got us.”

To understand U.S. politics today, try “It’s the fear element, stupid.”

I asked Frank Lawson, 83, about Obama. “I think the young man’s a Muslim,” he said. Case closed. He continued: “I got on the computer, punched in Koran, and there it is in black and white: They are out to rule the world and if you don’t convert, they kill you.” Cherry-picked inflammatory phrases, attributed to the Koran but more often lifted from interpretations of it, course through Oklahoman churches and spread via Internet chatter.
Sherman asked me what “that huge Muslim movement that took over Europe,” was called. I couldn’t help. “Begins with ‘O”’ he said. “The Ottoman Empire?” I ventured. Yep. Case closed again.

Things were quiet on Perry’s main square. So quiet the “Muslim threat” was hard to imagine. It was even harder to imagine that, right here, Timothy McVeigh, the homegrown terrorist who killed 168 people in a 1995 Oklahoma attack, was held after being stopped by a state trooper outside Perry for having no license plate.

Nobody initially suspected McVeigh. Suspicion fell on men “of Middle Eastern.

Call for ‘ethical orientation' to planning process - Special Correspondent -THE HINDU

http://hindu.com/2010/12/07/stories/2010120753390500.htm



Call for ‘ethical orientation' to planning process Special Correspondent


JAIPUR: Noted economist and Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council member V. S. Vyas on Monday called for giving an “ethical orientation” to the planning process by adopting moral principles common to all religions to ensure equitable growth and address distortions of the modern economic system.

Addressing a dialogue on “Ethical issues in planning and development” at Yojana Bhavan here, Prof. Vyas said Islamic economic principles could provide answers to some of the serious challenges of modern economy advocating limitless production and consumption which “invariably leads to poverty, deprivation and exploitation”.

“Among all religions, Islam has the most egalitarian system of equitable distribution of wealth to benefit the poor and the needy through Zakat and Sadaqat,” said Prof. Vyas, adding that this financial arrangement needed to be further explored to find out the scope for its adoption in the mainstream economy.

Prof. Vyas' remarks came as a pleasant surprise to the advocates of Islamic economy and banking who have been requesting the Union Government for a long time to introduce the system on an experimental basis for those unwilling to subscribe to the interest-based economy which is perceived as promoting usury and exploitation.

Zakat, which is one of the five pillars of Islam, comprises alms giving of 2.5 per cent of one's possession every year as a welfare contribution to poor and deprived Muslims. Its payment is mandatory on four categories of items – farm produce, livestock, trade and commerce merchandise, and gold and silver. Sadaqat are voluntary charities over and above Zakat.

Prof. Vyas, who is also Deputy Chairperson of the Rajasthan Planning Board, said the ethics should be implemented at the macro level, going beyond individuals, to help the development paradigm include all marginalised groups of society: “We need to ensure that the [growth in] gross domestic product is actually reflected in the country's development.”

Alternative model

Policy planners, academicians, economists and experts attending the dialogue also examined the feasibility of “relative economics” propounded by the late Jain Terapanth scholar Acharya Mahapragya as an alternative model for providing a humane face to development. The model envisages sustainable development through equitable distribution of resources.

Jain Vishwa Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Samani Charitra Prajna said the “greed in various forms” was the main cause for deviation from ethical norms and the humanity could not progress without morality and moderation. These values should be taught to youngsters as early as possible in their lives for changing their hearts and minds, she added.

The Planning Board's head for the working group on education, Ashok Bapna, said the practices of non-possession and limited possession laid down in Jainism could help define the level of consumption rampant in the modern society and control the culture of wantonness. He said the social fabric could be remodelled by bringing in ethics as an essential component of development.

Anuvibha president S. L. Gandhi said the incorporation of righteousness in economic system would equip it to address the challenges of widening gap between the rich and the poor, absence of social security for the underprivileged sections, environmental degradation and depletion of life-sustaining resources in the world.
While economic analyst L. N. Nathuramka affirmed that ethical values around the world were shrinking because of corruption and terrorism, social economist R. L. Bajpai said the policy planners should first deal with regional disparities in the country while translating ethical concepts into practice.

Among others, Planning Board member Raj Singh Nirvan, Pratham Rajasthan chief trustee Kulbhushan Kothari, educationist Ved Prakash and senior civil servant Rajendra Bhanawat also took part in the dialogue. It was pointed out that various institutions attached to Acharya Mahapragya's Anuvrat Movement had been organising a series of events on relative economics during the past five years.

The International Centre for Economics, Non-Violence and Sustainability and Jaipur-based IILM Academy of Higher Learning extended support to the Planning Board in organising the half-day event.