Heavily armed security guards.
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
Dear bank execs: Watch your backs.
A Muslim scholar in Germany has questioned the validity of the existence of Mohammed. Muhammad Sven Kalisch lumps the alleged recipient of the recitation in the same category with Jesus, Abraham et. al., to which can probably be added Siddhartha Gautama:
He told the [Toronto] Star in a recent phone interview that his research leads him to believe that the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have mythical origins.
I like the hedging — probably mythical. There may after all be some factual truth to the Finger of YHVH scribing the Decalogue into literal stone tablets; or a resurrection; or Gabriel turning a random Arab into a kind of personal secretary to celestial middle management.1
Though to be fair, there’s no reason to believe Mohammed (and the others) did not exist. It’s just the superhuman attributes given to them that we have every reason to doubt. Nonetheless the Muslim world is reacting with its typical, measured and intellectually-balanced response:2
A spokesperson for the [German Muslim central] council, Ali Kizilkaya, has said if the Prophet Muhammad didn’t exist then the Qur’an doesn’t exist.
Which is not even slightly bombastic. What’s being impugned here, of course, is not the existence of the Koran, but rather its divine authorship or inspiration, and even then only from the most literal perspective. You don’t have to believe in Gabriel or Mohammed to believe, for instance, in a Deistic agent, one whose nature can be appreciated through all aspects of existence (since, in one way or another, all aspects of existence would derive ultimately from that entity).
But rather than marvel in silent awe at the beauty of a flower, the typical fundamentalist response is to become furious when verbatim transliteration is in any way challenged. Cue the reductio ad absurdum:
“This would mean that we would have to abolish the religion altogether,” Kizilkaya said.
Given the way fundamentalism in general chooses to express itself, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Though I’d hate to limit the abolition of religion to Islam alone.
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1. Yeah. Right.
2. Ibid.
A Colombian ad agency, promoting the Chevy Tahoe, has come up with an image that both sums up the mindset of SUV owners, and illustrates why the SUV can’t die soon enough:
[Text reads, “The street is yours.”]
And still Chevrolet can’t understand why their branding and message are obsolete.
I’ve been monitoring the English-speaking world’s response to the Mumbai attacks of last week, and in that time I’ve encountered (out of dozens) one editorial cartoon and one column that actually cut to the heart of the matter.
If you go to Daryl Cagle’s archive of political toons, you’ll find a subsection on the Mumbai attacks. Some of the images are clearly angry; some are reflective; some are mournful — but only one actually seems to get to the point, and it wasn’t even included in the Mumbai subsection. For the most part, you sense the outrage; but there’s almost a subtle squeamishness (to my mind) about the source of the outrage. It’s almost as though the cartoonists don’t want to directly state what the root of the Mumbai atrocity was.
Similarly, commentary has arisen from multitudinous keyboards but I find myself in agreement only with one column, and it’s written by Thomas Friedman, of all people.
In a recent piece he begins by pointing out how furious the reaction was in, ahem, Certain Quarters to the publication of a Danish cartoonist’s mockery of Mohammed in 2006, and has this to offer:
[W]hile the Pakistani government’s sober response [to the Mumbai killings] is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, I am still hoping for more. I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.
This is pointing to the crux, the heart of the issue that no one really wants to face. Those ten murderous psychopaths in India were not working with a “previously unknown” group, whether or not they were “stateless” (as Pakistani authorities said initially). Friedman does not explicitly delineate here who these “ordinary people” are, but he goes on to say:
We know from the Danish cartoons affair that Pakistanis and other Muslims know how to mobilize quickly to express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective. That is what is needed here.
And there it is, a bit more starkly. While some of the toons on Cagle’s site seem to indict Pakistan, and many others bewail generic terrorism, virtually no one seems to want to point to the actual problem.
I’m not about to try to minimize the Muslim-backed insanity in Mumbai; I just thought I’d point out that Islam isn’t the only Abrahamic religion that has a virulent fundamentalist streak. While this poster advertising a bible camp in New Delhi isn’t as totally obnoxious as some Christard efforts I’ve seen, it’s up there.
“If you don’t want to come for the camp, you can go to hell. Really.”
Yep. This all-powerful god of theirs is so weak he has to resort to petty, childish threats to get worshipers.
Well, given the execution of the graphics, it appears his followers truly are made in his image.
