Sistani, Homosexuality, Cole

Juan Cole attempts a limited defense/elaboration of Iraqi Ayatollah Sistani’s call for executing gays "in the worst, most severe way of killing." Cole’s post is, as so often, learned, informative and revealing. But he seems caught between his commitment to defend Islam against the West, and his reluctant recognition that, with respect to gay people, Islam is barbaric, when it isn’t grotesquely sexist. So Cole tries a third option: he blames all this on what he regards as the misguided attempt to get rid of Saddam. Ah: Saddam. The pomo-left’s last great hope for Arabia.