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But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities....
Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.
At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards.
-- Edward Luttwak,"President Apostate?" New York Times, May 12, 2008.
A shame Barack Obama will never be able to visit the Middle East without being killed.
But at least the issue of a visit to Israel is off the table, since Iran destroyed it with nuclear weapons almost two years ago.
"Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. "
Followed by this mind-twister:
"They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption."
They will bomb first because they are irrational and also because they know we will bomb first.
Solved!
Dylan Justin Hirsch-Shell -
7/28/2008
Ah yes, just like Iraq was producing nuclear weapons. Nevermind that, as Brian Ulrich pointed out, the latest NIE refutes your claim. Of course, I can understand your confusion, since one can never place too much confidence in the estimates of the intelligence community these days....
But for the sake of argument, let's suppose that Iran actually is producing these weapons you claim it is. Do you really think that Iran is stupid enough to attack Israel when Israel itself has at least 200 nuclear warheads/bombs and the United States has an additional dozen in nuclear subs in the Gulf that it could launch within several minutes of learning of such an attack?
Or are you one of those people who argues that Iranians are somehow different from other people because they are irrational religious zealots and mutually assured destruction will not deter them?
Chris Bray -
7/28/2008
Melissa,
Many thanks for the kind words. I'd love to post more often -- the obstacles are that we have a newborn, I have a dissertation to research, and I'm doing some work on the side to try to keep us in diapers. Times are tough.
Also, I'm lazy. But I'll see what I can do!
Serge Lelouche -
7/27/2008
"Ahmadinejad's repeated if implausible analogy for Israel's elimination is the USSR."
Wow, haven't heard that lie for almost two years either!
Actually the idea that Iran is producing nuclear weapons is speculation unsupported by recent U.S. intelligence estimates. What's more, while Iran has reserved the right to have nuclear weapons, their justification is regional balance of power vis a vis Israel. Ahmadinejad's repeated if implausible analogy for Israel's elimination is the USSR.
Melissa Ann Spore -
7/27/2008
Ah Chris, I always like your posts & do miss them. Could you contribute more often?
Chris Bray -
7/27/2008
To be perfectly clear, I didn't regard it as a joke -- because I instead regarded it as a brutally stupid and cruel piece of hack garbage.
I think people in Israel have enough fear and violence to deal with without someone speculating in public that they might all die in a couple of weeks. Hey, uh, just a thought, you know, maybe or maybe not, take it for what it's worth, but you may be incinerated pretty soon.
Disgusting.
Serge Lelouche -
7/27/2008
I'm pleased to hear that. Comparisons between the Iran's genocidal threat to Israel with an imagined attack on Taco Bell by Tuvalau (or whatever it was) would lead one to believe otherwise.
Chris Bray -
7/27/2008
I was less than fifty miles from Iran throughout 2006, including August 8 (the date the WSJ published the warning that nuclear war *might* be coming) and August 22. I wasn't in West Hollywood, and I didn't regard it as a joke.
As for Iran "producing nuclear weapons with the stated purpose of using them against Israeli civilians," do you mean to use that helpful "might" again? Because I think the next pending attack is just as plausible as the one back on August 22, 2006.
Serge Lelouche -
7/27/2008
Iran is producing nuclear weapons with the stated purpose of using them against Israeli civilians. What sounds like a joke in West Hollywood isn't so funny in some neighborhoods.
Serge Lelouche -
7/27/2008
Iran is producing nuclear weapons with the stated purpose of using them against Israeli civilians. What sounds like a joke in West Hollywood isn't so funny in some neighborhoods.
Chris Bray -
7/27/2008
My own bid for the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times (and Serge Lelouche's deep respect):
Millions of Mahdi Army paratroopers might rain down from the skies above St. Louis on Tuesday evening! The island nation of Tuvalu might soon send its nuclear zeppelins to dissolve Cleveland in a haze of killing gas! The prime minister of Belize might be just hours away from stabbing the U.S. secretary of agriculture in the face with a letter opener! The Federated States of Micronesia may be infiltrating Taco Bell restaurants all over Nevada in order to put poison in all the cheesy chalupas!
And if any of that doesn't happen? Well, please. I didn't say that it would -- I was only engaged in a sober discussion about the realm of the possible.
Chris Bray -
7/27/2008
People of Israel: You and your children might soon be slaughtered in a nuclear holocaust!
Uh...Why all the nervous faces? I only said you might be.
I'm now going to walk around my neighborhood and tell all the neighbors that I might break into their houses tonight and shoot them in the head while they sleep. They won't mind, because I will have qualified it with "might."
Serge Lelouche -
7/27/2008
Isn't there difference between saying something will happen and saying it could happen?
Chris Bray -
7/27/2008
Well, Jesus. That's totally different.
Serge Lelouche -
7/26/2008
I checked the link--Bernard Lewis didn't say Iran would destroy Israel in August 2006, he merely said it was a possibility. But Bray's "history" is pretty much of the "nah nah nah" school anyway, so we should let him have his point.
