&uotAbout two years ago, I walked into a large bookstore, which shall remain unnamed, that had a wide variety of Islamic books in Arabic and English. The owner had gone through some trouble to make displays of book collections around various topics. One such collection had a book at the top that caught my eye, mainly because it had the out-of-place visage of Adolph Hitler on the cover. A closer look revealed that it was an Arabic translation of "Mein Kampf". I confronted the owner and asked why such a book was on display. An embarassed look followed, then silence.

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated case. A few of us went through various online Islamic booksellers looking for similar books that had questionable content (racism, violence, etc.). While most bookstores passed our little test with flying colors, one did not. This store not only carried one such offending book, but it ws listed in their ;Top Five" list. (The good thing is that, when confronted by us, they removed it from their catalog immediately.)

Now we hear news from Australia that some irresponsible booksellers were selling books with racist views and one promoted terrorism - complete with an endorsement by Osama bin Laden on the cover. And a small Islamic bookstore in Leeds where two of the London bombers were known to have met has been found selling jihadi videotapes. Especially in the wake of the recent attacks in London, these kinds of materials in Muslim-owned bookstores is more than just irresponsible - it perpetuates the views and violence we all claim to oppose and leaves us open to accusations of intolerance once the media finds us red-handed with these books in our hands.

So why are books like these offered for sale? Some, like the bookstore in Leeds, really want to promote violent jihad. Most, however, I found to be simply ignorant of the items they are carrying. While the typical American bookstore is staffed with people steeped in the literary arts, I found that most Muslim bookstores are run by businesspeople rather than bibliophiles. Unfortunately, they tend to place orders for a variety of books from distributors without being selective, and stock their shelves with whatever shows up. This can result in offensive books being put on display by otherwise well-intentioned people. The good news is that having a community with bad businesspeople, however unfortunate, is preferable to having a community with people who support terrorism. The bad news is that there's still a lot of trash to clean up.

Our community has two choices - we can let organizations like Freedom House rummage through our bookstores and mosques, holding up the most incriminating material they can find as evidence of "Muslim hatred", or we can be informed consumers that police our own institutions and insure that racist or violent material doesn't pollute our community.

>>Thats very admirable of you, but why not grant Christian and Muslim book stores the right to sell what they please. Why isnt freedom of speech applicable to them ?<<

It is applicable to them. Neither Shahed's article nor anyone in the thread, that i'm aware of, is advocating a *legal* remedy to force a religious bookstore to carry or not carry anything. The whole point of freedom of speech is to keep the government from interfering with your expression of your priorities. The person with the authority to form the priorities of a bookstore or establishment that calls itself Islamic is: you, as a Muslim, and your coreligionists. To think of it in terms of 'censorship' vs. 'freedom of speech' is to misapply legalistic terms to an extralegal situation. No one is advocating coercion. It is not coercive or censorial to suggest that a religious bookstore should impart the character of that religion. Otherwise, why not just open another franchise of Barnes&Noble;and call it a day?

gambino,

With respect to your earlier response to my post,

>>1. >The best-kept non-secret about this Empire >is that, when it is run the way it was >intended to be, its edges are soft

>>I believe this policy planning quote by George Kennan (the father of the containment policy and Marshall Plan) sums it up best:

<snip: Kennan quote, see above in thread>

>>So to claim that this militarism is something that is recent or simply a product of Bush is a gross oversimplification. Actually, he is following the blueprint which has been laid down since the U.S. left it's "splendid isolation" phase in post WWI.<<

While Kennan's 1948 statement does, and should, sound monstrous to modern ears (including American ears) when considered in isolation, it is important to understand its historical context.

In 1948, in response to the institution of the Marshall Plan, which was itself an extension of the Truman doctrine, the Soviets imposed a blockade of Berlin. It was perfectly clear at this point that Stalin's goal was to claim all of Berlin and thus leverage future claims on Germany, whose rule by the allies in conjunction with the Soviets was becoming untenably tense. When Kennan made the statement you cite, the elephant in the room was the obvious expansionist ambitions of Soviet communism. Understood in this light, his statement reads like what it is: namely that of a strategist coming to terms with the fact of a formidable adversary who was likely to cramp the excercise of any higher notions by way of its steady antagonism. This prediction was largely correct. Stalin, as is well established, was a totalitarian nightmare who oversaw massive expansion of Soviet territory while murdering millions of Soviet citizens. By mid-decade the antagonism between the philosophies of the superpowers would be unabated as Kruschev's immortal shoe-banging amply demonstrated.

(cont'd)

This is what the cold war was and what it remained for more than four decades thereafter - a death struggle between ideologies. Believe me, i'm no market fundamentalist, but reminding you of the open, systematic persecution of Chinese Muslims that occurs in the People's Republic to this day, i leave it to you to decide which form of governance would be less inimical to Islam.

I did not claim that US militarism is anything new. I want to be sure that i am understood when i say that this Empire has 'soft edges when correctly run': what i mean is that, more than any other form of governance currently in existence, it is changeable from within. It absorbs cultures, in the short term strips them of some of their structures and priorities, masking them with its own, but is in the long term, by design, vulnerable to the imposition of the priorities of the individuals it has admitted. This includes Muslims. Want to change the direction of this leviathan? You just might be able to do it more effectively from within than from without.

Also, to suggest as you do that there is an unbroken line from the reactive militarism of Kennan to the proactive militarism of Bush is itself a gross oversimplification. It elides the constant tension between authoritarianism and decentralization that has characterized the past century in this country, with the players even changing sides several times. The Bush doctrine of preemptive war is extremely controversial and has been opposed by critics, by politicians, by people in the streets by the millions, by voters in the booth who constitute barely less than a majority. His actions can, and have been repeatedly and vehemently, criticised from within the system of which he is a part. He can be said to have failed *on its own terms* by principled analysis.
(cont'd)

Look again at the list of his departures from principle that i outlined in my first post: the abandonment of prisoners rights in favor of a vague instrumentalism, the failure to show true respect for democracy by leveling with the citizenry. These are problems of *deviation* from the correct practice of democracy.

More tomorrow evening hopefully, in Part II. (To be continued...)

I pretty much agree with Shahed and find some of the 'critique' absurd.

A couple of things. Firstly, the presence of books such as Mein Kampf alone is not problematic. You'll find it in most university libraries and its probably interesting to look at if your studying the genesis of genocide just as material put out by Rwandan Hutu's would be.

Contemporary jihadist literature is on the other hand a completely different matter. Yes there are root causes which lead to young men being attracted to radical preachers. However, radical preachers are also a root cause of the violence. People from other countries and of other faiths and indeed most Muslims opposed the war and Israeli occupation without resorting to blowing themselves or others up.

How many people think that if Israel contiues what's happend in Gaza to the whole of the West Bank and withdraws settlements and America leaves Iraq that Osama bin Laden will suddenly call on all people to desist from Jihad?

It's counterintuitive but I would suggest that people examine the history and ideology of men like Al-Zawahiri and Muslim Brotherhood in the Sadat assasination for example.

Finally you can't necessarily blame bookshop owners for not stocking say Irshad Manji's book as I doubt there would be demand for it and he could disenchant his customers.

Thanks, would be interested in replies.