Haroon Moghul, “Interview With a Muslim”
Q: Charlie Hebdo. Muslims go in, shoot up the place, yell Allahu Akbar.
A: I’m a humorist. I’m a satirist. I’m a journalist. I’m a writer. It’s terrible.
Q: Have you condemned the attack?
A: I’m sorry, what?
Q: Do you as a Muslim condemn this attack?
A: Well yes. But.
Q: Why do you hesitate?
A: If I condemn the attack I could make it seem like I’m justifying a collective guilt. That worries me.
Juan Cole, “Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaida Attacked Satirists in Paris”
“Sharpening the contradictions” is the strategy of sociopaths and totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted purposes of a self-styled great leader.
The only effective response to this manipulative strategy … is to resist the impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to carry out identity-politics reprisals.
James Cone, “You can’t overcome something if you never acknowledge its presence”
Doctor Science, “It’s not about the danger or difficulty of police work, it’s about Respecting My Authority”
I suspect that one of the big differences between cops and other high-risk workers is that both police culture and popular culture exaggerate and heroicize the risks cops face, whereas taxi drivers, loggers, barbers, roofers, etc. tend to downplay (or ignore) the risks of their work.
Police use this romantic, exaggerated idea of the risks they take to justify their demands for “respect,” but they’re not really asking for the kind of respect we give taxi drivers or fishermen. They want unquestioned, untrammeled authority.
Kaya Oakes, “Does Catholicism have a ‘man crisis,’ or is Cardinal Burke paranoid?”
It is ironic that the same man blames women for the drop in vocations to the priesthood when many of those women would make excellent priests.
It is ironic that women are considered a threat to a church that refers to itself as the “Bride of Christ.”
It is ironic that women who do the majority of catechesis at parishes, who educate priests, who write landmark works of theology and give birth to cardinals, bishops and popes are still not able to be leaders in the church. Because, according to Cardinal Burke, we’re just girls. And everyone knows girls are icky.
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