Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Source: http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

Child by Gary Knight

Woman by Antonin Kratochvil

Exhibit Review: Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Forgotten War | pegasusnews.com

Despite being the bloodiest conflict since World War II, with anywhere from 3.5 to 4 million deaths since the start of fighting in 1996, the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the least known and publicized conflicts in the modern era. Seeing their opportunity to shed light on the atrocities and suffering taking place in the region, five world-renowned photographers from the VII Photo Agency visited DRC with Doctors Without Borders. Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged, and James Nachtwey spent four months between May and August of 2005 documenting their experiences through photography. [I was not able to enlarge the photographs posted above.]

David Ignatius - The Dignity Agenda - washingtonpost.com, October 14, 2007

After I mentioned Brzezinski’s ideas about dignity in a previous column, a reader sent me a 1961 essay by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which made essentially the same point. A deeply skeptical man who resisted the “isms” of partisan thought, Berlin was trying to understand the surge of nationalism despite two world wars. “Nationalism springs, as often as not, from a wounded or outraged sense of human dignity, the desire for recognition,” he wrote.

“The craving for recognition has grown to be more powerful than any other force abroad today,” Berlin continued. “It is no longer economic insecurity or political impotence that oppresses the imaginations of many young people in the West today, but a sense of the ambivalence of their social status — doubts about where they belong, and where they wish or deserve to belong.”

A final item on my dignity reading list is “Violent Politics,” a new book by the iconoclastic historian William R. Polk. He examines 10 insurgencies through history — from the American Revolution to the Irish struggle for independence to the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation — to make a stunningly simple point, which we managed to forget in Iraq: People don’t like to be told what to do by outsiders. “The very presence of foreigners, indeed, stimulates the sense first of apartness and ultimately of group cohesion.” Foreign intervention offends people’s dignity, Polk reminds us. That’s why insurgencies are so hard to defeat.

‘Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir’ by Shalom Auslander - BOOK REVIEW - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com, october 14, 2007

Auslander…can be a moving writer; many passages describe with great skill the airless, oppressive climate of Monsey. Perhaps the finest chapter recounts the time his father — a carpenter who wanted for respect in the scholarly community — was commissioned by the local rabbi to build a new ark for the congregation’s Torah scrolls, only to be humiliated and ignored upon its unveiling.

And he can be funny: A reminiscence of his first dalliance with non-kosher food ranks with sections of “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Auslander watches a Gentile order ahead of him at a poolside hot-dog stand. “Vinnie stood beside me, piling his pig dog high with sauerkraut and thin-cut pickles. I stared, open-mouthed, as he flipped his hair back, cleared a path to his mouth, and took a bite. It was as if he’d never heard of Leviticus 11:7.”

Tim Rutten, Coulter’s anti-Semitic comment too dangerous to ignore, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2007

Earlier this week, Coulter went on “The Big Idea,” a talk show aired on CNBC, the cable channel devoted to business news. Its host, Donny Deutsch, is a preternaturally affable businessman who invites successful people on to talk about how they turn their ideas into money. Coulter was there to describe how she had — in our vulgar commercial argot –”branded” herself. At one point, Deutsch asked her what an ideal country would be like, and she replied that it would be one in which everyone was “a Christian.” Deutsch, who happens to be Jewish, protested that Coulter was advocating his people’s elimination. She responded that she simply hoped to see Jews “perfected” through conversion to Christianity….

Meanwhile, Coulter was on the Kevin McCullough radio talk show, making the utterly absurd case that Deutsch somehow had ambushed her. On his blog later in the day, McCullough agreed. Deutsch, he said, “is an angry anti-Christian bigot, looking to make a name for himself by biting into Christian icons.”

Rosner, Is it okay for Ann Coulter to want all Jews to become Christian? - Haaretz, October 14, 2007

DEUTSCH: Christian - so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?