Searching for a ‘Moderate Islam’

Frontpage Magazine has a symposium on the current state of Islam that is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand whether or not a “moderate” version of Islam exists and how/if one could be promoted (H/T Andy McCarthy).

The guests mostly agree that there are forms of moderate Islam that reject the advancement of a political Islamic society, the concept of takfir, and the use of violence against anti-Islamist Muslims. They also agree that the current mainstream Islam is Islamist (something the left and this administration need to understand). Where there is some disagreement among the guests, however, is on the strategy for advancing a moderate Islamic movement.

UPDATE: The blog Patheos has been hosting a series on the future of various world religions, and it just ran the series on the future of Islam.

Obama Administration Stalls Military Commission for USS Cole Bomber

USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was supposed to be tried in a military commission, despite President Obama’s past opposition to such commissions. The administration, however, is now stopping that prosecution of al-Nashiri, but explanations are all over the map. A cited military official thinks the move is about politics, while a White House official defends the military commissions and the Department of Defense suggests that the investigation is ongoing.

The al-Nashiri case is very politically charged, so it’d be difficult to convince anyone that politics aren’t a factor. President Obama had criticized military commissions before taking office, and then allowed them with some cosmetic changes. When it was announced that KSM would be tried in civilian court, the plan was to hold military commissions for the USS Cole bombers. There was never much of a detailed explanation for the difference in approaches.

The left surely wasn’t satisfied with the use of military commissions, despite some modifications. Most of the country opposed a civilian trial for KSM. What were President Obama and AG Holder to do, and are they still holding out for civilian trials? Andy McCarthy takes a guess:

They want to treat the war like a crime and endow our enemies with all the rights and advantages of civilian courts; yet, they went military in the Cole case, despite the fact that there is a pending Justice Department civilian indictment addressing that attack. There can be only one explanation for that: they are afraid the case against Nashiri is weak and might not hold up under (slightly) more exacting civilian court due process. That is, the Obama/Holder position is not principled — for all their “rule of law” malarkey, they are willing to go where they have the best chance to win. But there were no military commissions when the Cole was bombed, so what is the basis for trying it militarily? Answer: the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war[.]

So the administration might be willing to use a military commission for practical reasons, but if a civilian trial could hold up, the administration may change its mind. It’s possible that, and wouldn’t be surprising if Obama and Holder are planning to use civilian trials, as they originally intended for KSM, but are simply waiting until after the election to announce the decisions.

We’ve noted for a while now that these prosecutions can be complicated, so there may be good reason to believe that the administration is carefully considering its options for practical purposes. The way that this administration has jumped the gun and has changed its mind on these decisions as the politics demanded, however, suggests that it is once again playing politics to avoid telling us its true intentions. And as McCarthy notes, the administration might want to use a civilian trial for one of the embassy bombers as a way to put the 9/11 and Cole attackers into a civilian court as well.

On another terror trial note, here is the latest on the court challenge of the authority of federal judges to determine the outcomes of Gitmo detainees.

What the CBO Didn’t Say About ObamaCare Until Now

Keith Hennessey noticed something interesting in the CBO summer baseline update. Democrats worked hard to get the ObamaCare budget score to a $124 billion deficit reduction (which we know is misleading), but what the CBO did was combine spending and taxes of the legislation into one line item showing the net effect on the deficit.

Now, however, the CBO is telling the full story:

Only now does CBO tell us in a parenthetical:

Taking into account all of the provisions related to health care and revenues, the two pieces of legislation were estimated to increase mandatory outlays by $401 billion and raise revenues by $525 billion.

This is a very different picture.  Imagine two scenarios of a lawmaker who was on the fence last March.  He or she is a Blue Dog Democrat, or a Democrat from a fiscally conservative red district, and is deeply concerned that the legislation may be fiscally responsible.  He is presented with two different statements from CBO:

1. “CBO says these bills will reduce the budget deficit by $124 billion over the next decade.”
2. “CBO says these bills will increase federal entitlement spending by $401 billion over the next decade, and will increase taxes by $525 billion over that same time period, for a net deficit reduction of $124 billion.”

Why would the CBO only now release this breakdown when it had the information before and normally doesn’t combine spending and taxes into a single item? Hennessey suggests that the CBO was pressured to not show the information at the time. That’s a pretty serious charge, but not an unreasonable one.

Hennessey has an important point here. Had the spending and taxes been shown separately, they might have had more negative impact with the public and members of Congress who were on the fence. People who read the bill and the budget score and followed the discussion closely were aware of how the CBO arrived at the score, but those people are probably not the majority. If CBO had done what it should have, perhaps there would have been a different outcome.

UPDATE: Hennessey has noticed a table in a March CBO letter that does separate spending from revenues, and he retracts his guess that the CBO had been pressured by Congress to combine the line items and bury the information. We certainly do not want to suggest any wrongdoing by the CBO, and never did (we only showed that Hennessey was making that case), but the way that much of the data was presented is certainly questionable, as Hennessey reemphasizes:

My underlying substantive point remains:  I am concerned that Members, staff, and outsiders in both parties focus solely on deficit effects, to the exclusion of thinking first about the gross spending and revenue effects of legislation.  We should care about the size of government (as measured by spending), and also about how we finance any given level of government (the balance between taxes and deficits).  When we focus only on the deficit effect of legislation, we blur these two separable questions and confuse the discussion.

Need Healthcare? Ask a Politician to Pull Strings

This story, if true, is outrageous on multiple levels, and it is a reminder of why we should not want more politics in healthcare. Reportedly, a big time Democrat fundraiser needed a cancer drug that was not approved for his condition. The manufacturer of the drug did not want to provide the drug off-label (and there are some complicated issues about doing that kind of thing), so big time Democrat politicians tried to pull some strings. Ultimately, it was Nancy Pelosi who obtained the drug for her political ally:

The younger Baron posted an open plea online to Biogen, noting that Bill Clinton, Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and even the head of the Food and Drug Administration had urged the company to reconsider.

“You talk about mental anguish,” Blue recounted. “Fred, every day, would wake up and he said, ‘Am I going to get the drug?’ “

Others were supportive, she said, but Pelosi “put her heart and soul” into the cause, as did Harkin.

Somehow – Blue still isn’t sure how – Pelosi cajoled the FDA to find a legal justification that let Mayo administer the drug, even without Biogen’s consent.

“Nancy figured out a way,” she said.

Anyone who has had a dying family member knows the feeling of desperation to do anything for that person, and it can be frustrating when the laws and economics just aren’t in our favor. Ms. Blue wanted an exception for her husband, and it’s hard to blame her, but making a few exceptions for situations that could apply to a lot of people is a slippery slope. What justifies one person’s need over another’s? In this case, the answer seems to be politics.

We should not want politics trumping laws and economics, no matter what our specific situation is. Government operates on politics, so expanding government into healthcare as we are doing is only going to increase political influence there. What will that look like?

Let’s consider the Medicare cuts of ObamaCare that are supposed to pay for the bill. Will those cuts actually be made? The law says they should, but the law also ties Medicare physician payments to the SGR, and Congress has repeatedly avoided making those payment cuts because of politics. Politicians now have a choice: cut half a trillion dollars of Medicare at the expense of seniors and doctors, or further strain a broken Medicare system and rack up more debt. How will this decision be made? Just follow the politics to see what the best option is.

The best political option, however, is not always the best economic option, and is not always the best for the country. Liberals like Nancy Pelosi will only continue to do what is convenient for them, regardless of the laws and economics, so if you don’t like that approach, don’t elect Democrats in November.

Senator Baucus Warns That ObamaCare Is Only a Start

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus admits he hasn’t read the bill, but he knows that the Democrats have even more plans:

“It’s not perfect, nothing’s perfect, but I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s a good start,” Baucus said. “Mark my words, several years from now you’re going to look back and say, ‘Eh, maybe it isn’t so bad.’ ”

Or maybe we’ll look back and realize how big of disaster it was and conclude that it was designed and passed irresponsibly. That’s the realization that many are coming to. What is going to change the sentiment: The increased premiums? The choice between Medicare benefit cuts or soaring deficits? The added bureaucracy? The loss of employer-sponsored insurance? You see where I’m going.

Senator Baucus knows what this bill was really about. When your goal is redistribution of wealth, then you can’t accept this expensive but watered down bill as a success. Senator Baucus and other liberal Democrats wanted much more, but took what they could get. Sure, they’re pretending to tone down now to survive November, but Senator Baucus has just reminded us what the Democrats really want to do.

Imam Rauf Doesn’t Seem Particularly Moderate

Including the good work done by Iran expert Michael Ledeen, Andy McCarthy highlights some of Imam Rauf’s troubling words and his support for the Khomeinist mullahs in Iran.

Two Prop 8 Appeals Expedited

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has expedited appeals in two Prop 8 cases: the original case and another appeal filed by representatives of Imperial County, CA. The Imperial County officials are also claiming their right to intervene on the case. Here is a compilation of interesting posts on the question of standing to defend Prop 8.

Also worth reading is former Attorney General Ed Meese’s op-ed on Judge Walker’s decision.

Andy McCarthy: Ground Zero Debate Is About Which Version of Islam Prevails in America

Andy McCarthy looks at the big picture of Islam in America when considering the Ground Zero mosque:

It so happened that in the same day’s Journal, Bret Stephens penned a sharp essay about Muslim “moderates” who turn out not to be so moderate. As his counterpoint, he offered a courageous, progressive Muslim reformer, Irshad Manji. Rather than pretending that Islamic doctrine has nothing to do with terrorism, Ms. Manji is forthrightly confronting the doctrine and working to change it. What is it that needs change? As illustrated in her spellbinding book, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, much of what ails Islam is sharia sclerosis. Sharia, she elaborates, represents the legal opinions of classical Muslim jurists, frozen a millennium ago and, ever since, impervious to critical inquiry.

Frozen it remains thanks to atavistic zealots, prominent among them the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded by fundamentalists in the 1920s and lavishly funded by the Saudis since the 1950s, an outfit Manji correctly describes as “the al-Qaeda of its generation.” These Islamists are the true enemies of religious liberty. It is they who foreclose modern Muslims from the right to reason independently, to evolve.

Whether Ground Zero mosque proponents realize it or not, the cause they are advancing — against the will of the American people, and, perversely, under the guise of “religious freedom” — is the Islamist cause. It is the Brotherhood, not American Muslims, insisting that this monument must be imposed on this sacred spot.

…

The Ground Zero mosque controversy is not about religious liberty for Muslims. It is about which Islam will thrive in the United States: the one that is fighting Americans, or the one American Muslims are fighting for.

UPDATE: McCarthy adds another column, this time advocating the creation of a moderate Islam that his research and experience have led him to conclude does not currently exist in mainstream form. Of course, as he notes, this would require confronting the Islamists’ sharia agenda.

Big Employers Plan to Pass on Higher Healthcare Costs to Employees

A survey of large employers suggests that employers expect their health costs to rise by about 9% next year. How will they handle the increase?

• Next year, 63% of employers who responded said they’ll increase the proportion of insurance premiums paid by their employees. Some 46% plan to raise the limit on annual out-of-pocket payments; 44% plan to raise deductibles for in-network services.
• So called consumer-directed health plans, such as a high-deductible plan with a health savings account, are one of the tactics employers are using to control costs; 61% plan to offer a consumer-directed plan in 2011.

…

• On the retiree health benefit front, employers said they were trying to keep a lid on costs via caps on company contributions (46%), boosting employee contributions (37%) and eliminating coverage for future retirees (33%).

In other words, outside of using high-deductible plans, the response will be to pass on the additional cost to employees and to reduce benefits. That may be partly why public confidence in healthcare has dropped and why some ObamaCare proponents are suggesting a move away from promising lower costs.

President Obama Created This Religious Quagmire

The global president who was supposed to unite us has instead dragged us into a nasty religious fight. While we should take the president at his word that he is a Christian, it was he himself who created this mess. That almost one in five Americans now believe President Obama is a Muslim is not because of sheer ignorance, but it is a result of how Obama sold himself during the campaign and of how he has acted since taking office, including his stance on the Ground Zero mosque.

One could argue that the roots of this ugly debate over the Ground Zero mosque came from the Bush administration, as it is arguable that that administration tried too hard to seem sensitive to Muslims. President Obama, however, didn’t have to take that Muslim outreach to such extremes as he has. Obama sold himself as a global leader whose background allowed him to understand and sympathize with the Muslim culture. He then launched his presidency in Cairo with a speech in which he attempted to sound like everything for everyone at once. He put himself in a difficult position later when his policies scrubbed the relationship between Islam and the war we are fighting.

It was therefore logical (although wrong) for President Obama to implicitly accept the Ground Zero mosque at his dinner with sharia supporters. He hadn’t made a case against Islam’s role in violent jihad or dawa (although his Justice Department’s positions have sometimes implied an understanding of the threat), so it wouldn’t have made much sense for him to all of a sudden claim that a giant symbol of Islam near Ground Zero was inappropriate and provocative. Yet, despite putting himself in a difficult position to oppose the mosque, he still could have done so by advocating the zoning of the land for the public good. The politics of opposing the mosque were in his favor, but President Obama is probably bound by his ideology.

The reason President Obama has sounded more sympathetic to the world than to America is likely because of a flawed view that suggests that people will like America more if we don’t promote America. This silly idea is partly why many of us argued that Obama was not fit to be president. We are now seeing the results of his efforts that may have gotten him elected, but have been disastrous in policy.

UPDATE: To clarify, I’m saying that while there may be some loons out there, President Obama has created a lot of confusion about his background, and has followed his misguided ideology into an ugly situation. I am not in any way suggesting he is a Muslim, and I have never done so.