Fareed Zakaria has a noble attempt to argue for the imposition of liberal institutions in the Islamic world in this week’s Newsweek. I wish I could buy it. I wish I could believe that democracy could – even in its most basic form – take root in Islamic culture. But I don’t. Compare Zakaria’s hopeful essay with this riveting little piece of colonialist condescension from one Albert Kinross in the Atlantic in 1920. Here’s my favorite anecdote from it:
“My soldier-servant, Ibrahim, put the whole political situation in a nutshell, when, before we were separated by order of the higher authorities, he asked me to get him a new job.
‘Why don’t you go to one of your own people?’ I replied. ‘I am only an Unbeliever and an Englishman.’
We were excellent friends and understood one another perfectly, and so I could permit myself these candors.
‘If I go to an Egyptian, he say, “Bring me money, or bring me a girl, and then I find you a job.” If you send me to an Englishman, he say, “What can you do?” and he give me so much pay.’ Thus Ibrahim.
‘Where would you find a girl?’ I asked next.
Ibrahim shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘My sister.'”
Do we really think this part of the world is much different today?
DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE (FOR EXCESSIVE RIGHT-WING RHETORIC): “So President Bush, fighting terrorism abroad, now invokes executive privilege to keep us from getting to the bottom of FBI terrorism back home. I don’t understand. Except in terms of the body count, what’s the difference between an al-Qaeda savage on Tora Bora and a crooked G-man in Boston? A badge, and that’s about it. They both kill Americans or help fiends who do. And when they’re confronted, they run away and hide. The Arabs cower in caves, the retired FBI agents sun themselves in Florida.” – Howie Carr, Boston Herald.
NAZI ARAB CULTURE WATCH: I’m assuming this picture isn’t what it appears to be. But even Hamas must know what a Nazi salute looks like. And getting school kids to do it?
LETTERS: You pitch in on the Goldberg-Sullivan debate on what conservatism really means.
MARY FRANCES BERRY: A deeply pleasurable George Will column on the lawless hoodlum chairing the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The Dish 