On Priests and Imams

Here’s what it’s come to: the banner headline in today’s printed version of El Nuevo Día quotes the Secretary of Justice saying, Quedan protegidos los pederastas (Pederasts Remain Protected).

And here’s what’s worse…

My reaction?

That’s news?

The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico has decided to cave in to the Catholic Church, specifically the diocese of Arecibo, and allow the church to withhold documents requested by the Justice Department related to abusive priests. Why? Because some of the victims chose to tell the church, and all that communication is “confidential.”

Here’s what happened, or at least what I presume happened: some kids got abused, walked around wounded for months or years, and finally got the courage to go to the church and complain. Not surprising, because listening for fifteen minutes to the morning radio shows in Puerto Rico will tell you exactly what you don’t want to have happen to you. And that’s being the topic of the day.

If you know anything about the dynamics of sexual abuse, you’ll know that the victim, paradoxically, usually feels responsible or guilty for his or her own abuse, and that it takes a level of maturity not often seen in kids to have the strength to confront the adult world, especially when that adult world is wearing a Roman collar. So the likelihood is that most of the victims were kids, and most of the victims coming forward were young adults who reported abuse years after it happened.

So the Supreme Court has ruled that a lower court judge has to look at all the documents, determine if the complainant is an adult, and then ask the person if he / she wants the documents released to Justice.

Guys? We’re talking about crimes here.

However, so loopy is our need to “protect” religious freedom, covering up abusive priests may be perfectly legal; here’s Wikipedia on the topic:

A communication is "confidential" if made privately and not intended for further disclosure except to other persons present in furtherance of the purpose of the communication.

Yeah? So if I sit in an office and tell the bishop that the parish priest had his hand on my crotch four years ago, that’s confidential?

Yup, and that’s why we have seven priests in Arecibo who have been defrocked, and who are all walking around, or perhaps lurking outside school playgrounds, reenacting all those lurid 1950’s educational films. And does anybody think out there that those priests got defrocked for something that wasn’t illegal?

It doesn’t stop surprising me, the stuff that religious people get themselves up to, because who knew that the largest chain of charter schools is run—maybe—by Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic Imam from Turkey, now living in the Poconos?

Here’s what the website for the chain’s Texas branch has to say:

Our mission at Harmony is to prepare each student for higher education by providing a safe, caring, and collaborative atmosphere featuring a quality, student-centered educational program with a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. 

In Numbers:

            40 Campuses (24 T-STEM schools) 

            25,000 Students

            2,276 Faculty and Staff

            Student-to-Teacher Ratio of 14-to-1

            100 percent Graduation Rate for Seniors

            100 percent College Acceptance Rate

Umm… 100% college acceptance? 100% graduation rate?

Well, if true, that would account for the waiting list of some 30,000 kids—more kids than are currently enrolled in the system. And in the video below, the kids certainly look happy, and the school is a knockout. True, most of the teachers are Turkish, and some of them are substantially less fluent in English than I am in Spanish. Which is odd, since some of them are teaching…English.

And that 100% Graduation Rate? Well, here’s one less-than-gruntled account by a teacher fired by a Gülen school:

When it came time for OATs, as they were called then, testing was a disaster. Several Turkish men arrived and pulled “at risk” students from their classrooms, taking them to the moldy rooms in small groups, despite the lack of written documentation allowing accommodations. The week after testing, I went to school on a Saturday morning in order to keep ahead of my planning, and I saw a dozen Turkish men sitting in a classroom with stacks of OATs on their desks. The current principal brought a cup of tea and a plate of cookies to me while I worked alone in my classroom. He said that the men were simply darkening in the answers for students who wrote too lightly.

Right—we all know that kids have an instinctive bent for delicacy, which undoubtedly accounted for those faint markings….

And there have been questions, as well, about how accountable these schools are. Reports have surfaced that at least the Turkish teachers have to kickback up to forty percent of their salary to the Gülen movement. Oh, and what about the question of immigration? Is there really such a shortage of American teachers?  And do these “teachers” have any formal training?

That said, it’s also true that, bar having done if for twenty plus years, I’m completely untrained too, and that didn’t stop me from fooling a passel of students and the world’s largest company into thinking I knew what I was doing.

Nor is Gülen, apparently, the most virulent of imams. Because his message was / is that the Muslim world doesn’t need more mosques and madrasas, but rather schools that focus on the sciences and math. And though virtually a recluse, his movement carries such weight that, in Turkey at least, his opponents fear that he may be planning a coup. 

And the schools—are they really connected to Gülen? They—some of them—say no, others say yes. Why the confusion, or the secrecy?

Well, would you want to be a Muslim in America? And here, I have to say that however radicalized I might be as an atheist, I’d welcome an imam like Gülen who—if true—is a moderate and condemns extreme forms of Islam. We need these guys….

And the charter schools? With their reports of not accepting some students, of kicking out students who don’t perform, of shifting kids around? That’s the negative stuff. But what about all those kids you see in videos who are solemnly swearing that school is fun, learning is cool, going to school is a joy?

Don’t know. But this I do know: if I were a parent, I’d certainly check out the charter schools in my area….

Doña Georgina Bids Farewell

Right, so I had some really important things to say about the situation in the Muslim world, since I had spent the weekend busily figuring out what was wrong with the 1.2 or 1.4—don’t remember and don’t care—billion people who practice the religion.

And what’s wrong, you ask? Well, according to the Canadian Muslim Irshad Manji, the problem with Islam is the Muslims, who…

…but wait, let Manji speak for herself, since—as someone once said of Rachel Maddow—she couldn’t look stupid if she spend a month trying. Click on the clip below. Oh, and by the way, better have the fire extinguisher handy, ‘cause those sparks really fly….

Right, then I had to worry about “Islam—A Religion of Peace or Violence?.” So there Christopher Hitchens was—do I have to tell what side he was taking?—butting heads with Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. The problem? Hitchens I understood completely, but Ramadan? Well, I guess you gotta be religious to get it….

So that meant that I had to watch a documentary about Islam, during which I learned that the only reason we have this thing is that Mohammed spent 22 years going into trances, much of the time alone in a cave. He then came down and dictated the whole thing to his buddies, all illiterate, so what did they do? They memorized it, and then, a couple decades after the death of Mohammed, the third Caliph—or somebody or other—decided it should be written down. So there was a great to-do, and versions were checked against each other, and there had to be two eyewitnesses, and now we have the Koran, WHICH IS THE ABSOLUTE AND FINAL WORD OF GOD. See?

In fact, so immersed was I in the Muslim world that I had gone into the website of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), since Manji had mentioned that the imams, contrary to what one sheik averred, had not been quick to denounce the September 11 attacks: they had to be pressured into it. And since the sheik, Ibrahim Mogra, was connected to the MCB, it was definitely time to look into that. Oh, and the MCB describes itself thus, on its website:

The Muslim Council of Britain is one of the UK's largest and most diverse Muslim umbrella organisation with over 500 affiliated national, regional and local organisations, mosques, charities and schools.   

There is, of course, nothing about the Nigerian group Boko Haram, which abducted close to three hundred schoolgirls over a month ago. But I did find this ringing denunciation, which all of you out there should take to heart:

The Muslim Council of Britain condemns in the strongest terms the act of violating a place of worship by the recently formed extreme far right, anti-Muslim group, Britain First. The most recent incident occurred at midday yesterday, where the emboldened action by three middle aged men and woman entered one of the largest Islamic institutions in the country, wearing their shoes and trampling on prayer surfaces to carry out their misguided propaganda. This has left many members of the community angered and disappointed with the inability of the government and the authorities to curtail this type of thuggish behaviour.

Guys? You really shouldn’t make it so easy….

OK—it’s clear, I realized, that these girls are never going to see their families again, and why not? Because the Muslim world either doesn’t want to or is too craven to speak up.

OK—so what about men? What would happen if all of the world’s men—except for the 1.2-billion-divided-by-two Muslims—stood up and said that real men didn’t do this to their daughters, their wives, or their mothers.

Well, when the going gets tough, Marc makes a tee shirt, so here it is:

Pretty cool, hunh? Wow, that would put the fear of Allah into those bastards!

So I was scratching a hole quite deeply into my head thinking about all this, when Mr. Fernández called, proposing a trip to the beach. And I realized: a trip to the beach would do more for me than I could do for the 300 schoolgirls, or even the 1.2 billion Muslims. So off we went.

And I’ve woken up, today, to the startling news that our local power company didn’t have the money, last Friday, to buy fuel to make electricity? Why? Because the Justice Department raided the purchasing department on Friday, seizing records and looking for irregularities. And then the banks got nervous and revoked the line of credit. So that meant that they had to scamper around and transfer 60 million bucks to pay off the debt. Oh, and here’s more interesting news:

“Claro que no les podemos pagar a los suplidores, si entre el gobierno y las corporaciones públicas nos debe casi $300 millones”, manifestó el ambientalista. “La misma gente que anda criticando la Autoridad es la que la ha llevado a la quiebra”.

(“Of course we can’t pay our suppliers, when the government and the public corporations owe us almost $300 million,” stated the environmentalist. “The same people who are running around criticizing the Authority are those who have brought it to bankruptcy.”)

‘It’s too much,’ I think. ‘I absolutely cannot be responsible for 1.2 billion people who are driving all the rest of us crazy because they believe something dreamed up in a cave in Saudi Arabia, and I can’t be responsible for the power company, which didn’t have the money to buy fuel, despite the fact that the electric bill comes in at 400$ a month, and anyway, it’s the start of the week, and if I’m feeling this way today, how am I going to be on Friday?’

So I turn the page and get this:

Yup, Puerto Rico strikes again! Because one of our zany habits, much beloved by some, sniffed at by the humorless, is to have wakes—called in Spanish velorios—with the dead displayed in various and characteristic positions. And this charming lady—who had wanted to be waked wearing skates, but settled for her wedding dress instead—is doña Georgina Chevroni Lloren; the funeral was yesterday,

It all started with El Para’o, or the standing one, who had bragged to his enemies that they would never see him lying down. So what did he do—OK, what did he instruct be done—after he got eleven bullets shot into him? Take a look!

This image, by the way, I lifted from an article called “Dead Men Standing….”

That’s when it hit me, since we had joked about all this in those days when I was pretending to teach English at Wal-Mart.

“Yes, I intend to be waked in this very room,” I would assure the students, “in fact, in this very chair!”

“You do, Marc?” The students would lean in and peer into my eyes.

“Absolutely, I intend to die with my boots still firmly planted in the fertile fields of Wal-Mart! Others may retire, but mine is a passion, not merely a career. I may very well die in this room, but if not, I’ll certainly be waked in this room! And one day, however many decades it will be, you’ll walk in and see me….”

Here I would raise my hand with my index finger pointed to the board, and then…

…freeze!

Ahh, readers, life had other plans—it so often does. So what to do?

I run over to the other shop, where Lady is busy blow-drying a casita, and sit patiently, thinking, as I wait—shouldn’t I be doing something serious? Doesn’t the Great American Novel still wait to be born? Would Hemingway or Tolstoy have wasted his time this way?

At last the house is dry, packed, and given to the tourists—it’s time to show Lady the print edition of El Nuevo Día.

“Just in the event, “ I start, and Lady gets it immediately. She begins slapping my knees with the paper, and then puts it over her head as she roars with laughter.

“It’s the kind of thing that could only happen in Puerto Rico,” I tell Lady, who has just told me that Georgina has gone viral; she’s sitting all over the web.

“You think it’s true that García Márquez said ‘they didn’t believe me when I wrote about Macondo, so they really wouldn’t believe me if I wrote about Puerto Rico?’” I ask Lady. I’ve looked it up a thousand times….

Lady pauses, and then comes up the answer…

“…well, it’s either true or it should be true….”

Good enough for me!  

Passports to Many Countries

OK—first off. I tremble to write this post, because if Irshad Manji reads this it, and troubles to respond, she’ll wipe me off the map. She’s both smarter and tougher than I.

And who is Irshad Manji? Well, many people in the Arab world have an answer—she’s an infidel, a heretic, a traitor. Or, some would say, she’s a person who’s finally had the guts to speak some unpleasant truths.

Some months ago, I was trying to write a review in Amazon.com, since a number of Iguana readers were having trouble uploading their reviews. Not having read anything recently, I decided to review the King James Bible. (It seemed fair—I had read it, though years ago, and it’s a text that has survived for a substantial amount of time. I doubted anything that I could say would seriously hurt it….) I went to the page, scrolled down, and was startled to find that 46 people had give it one star, Amazon’s lowest level. Here’s my favorite:

444 of 534 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars

Far too pornographic for a Christian home!, October 6, 2012

By 

Mrs. Betty Bowers "Mrs. Betty Bowers, America... - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy Bible: King James Version (Hardcover)

I simply refuse to poison my Christian children's precious minds with lascivious tales of daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him (Genesis 19:30-38) - or harlots lusting after penises that are the size of donkeys' (Ezekiel 23:20). It is, however, excellent for cracking nuts and slapping bottoms.

I tell you this story because a surprising number of Christians are treating the Bible as…well, a sort of supplemental text. Or perhaps additional reading, if wanted.

Right, you say. But what does this have to do with Irshad Manji?

Well, to put words into the lady’s mouth—something certainly unnecessary and probably dangerous—it’s interesting that Christians can do that, and yet a Muslim doing the same with the Quran? In Canada, yes—but how about Saudi Arabia? I bring you The Australian:

A FAMILY row that developed into a televised debate in Saudi Arabia has ended in disaster for a young activist now facing seven years in jail and 600 lashes, as the kingdom continues to crack down on online dissent.

Raif Badawi, 30, founder of a liberal website, has been sentenced by a court in Jedda - convicted of insulting Islam and denouncing the kingdom's feared religious police. A charge of apostasy that could have carried the death penalty was dropped.

Tacked on to those offences was a charge of "parental disobedience", stemming from a bitter dispute between Badawi and his father. The row became so ugly that among those denouncing his son as an apostate was Badawi's father himself.

I read about it at the time, and then considered writing about it. I didn’t, partly out of politically correct fear of playing into Islam / Muslim bashing, and partly because, well, what is there to say? It’s ridiculous and outrageous; now, what about the other 998 words in my post?

It’s a problem I’ve had with the some parts of the Muslim world for some time. A Danish cartoonist draws an offensive cartoon—embassies burn and 100 people die in Nigeria alone in violence related to the affair. This we have to take seriously?

Manji wrote a book, The Trouble with Islam Today, in which she provides the answer—the Muslims. And I saw her defend her beliefs in a great show from Al Jazeera English called Head to Head; it was filmed in temperate waters of the Oxford Union.

Well, she was bright and articulate, as well as quite passionate. And I had come to her through music, specifically through Daniel Barenboim, the pianist and conductor. Barenboim spent ten years in Argentina before his parents moved to Israel in 1952. And speaking of courage, he’s fully the equal of Manji—would you have the balls to break a decades long prohibition of playing Wagner in Israel?

Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival,[40] had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works.[41] In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous," and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."

Said was Muslim, and went on to become friends with Barenboim, and later to write a book with him.

Oh, and the two also dreamed up the idea of an orchestra that would have both Jewish and Muslim members. So they started the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999, and it was not always smooth—discussion between the players could get very heated.

Barenboim is believed to be the only person who holds citizenship in both Israel and Palestine. What would happen if all of us did?

Two Muslims (Part Two)

Readers may remember my rant against a “religious” Muslim, who in the name of Islam was going to kill his 15-year old daughter for the sin of writing a boy’s name in her notebook.

Three hours after writing the post we’re in a cab, John and Jeanne and I. The driver is clearly an Arab, and—let’s assume—Muslim.

The first thing he says?

“Wow, Ma’am, that’s a wonderful button you’re wearing! I love it!”

“Oh, you mean the one of Big Bird?” asks Jeanne.

“Yeah, it popped right out at me—even before I stopped! Love it—it’s terrific!”

And so we meet our second Muslim.

Who doesn’t lack for words, nor opinions. In fact, he’s on a par with Puerto Rican volubility—and that’s high in the nineties on the standard scale.

“My daughter just loves Obama—she calls him ‘Barrack.’ And the other day, she told me, ‘Daddy, why does your belly stick out and Barrack’s doesn’t? You’re never gonna get to be president with your belly sticking out!’”

Jeanne inquires—how many kids does he have?

Two girls—12 and 5.

And he wants to know—where can he get that Big Bird pin?

The pin is round, has Big Bird smack in the middle. Above—“Save Big Bird.” Below—“Vote Obama!”

“I was almost going to give him mine,” says Jeanne later, “but I have a collection of pins going back decades, and this one is special.”

That’s when she remembers—the Obama campaign committee is striking camp at Broadway and 93d. So she proposes that he stop, she’ll get out, grab one, and we can be on our way.

“God bless you, Ma’am!”

So we do, picking up one for me as well.

Well, the cabbie is ecstatic with the gift; he can barely wait to get home and give it to his daughter.

We go on to talk politics.

“You know, it’s incredible to me that the first thing the Republicans are saying is that they’ll do everything possible to prevent Obama from doing ANYTHING! I mean, aren’t they elected to lead, to make compromises, to make the country a better place? Isn’t that what we pay them for?”

A cab? Nah—we’re in the Democratic National Convention, with the cabbie the keynote speaker!

“And you know, what I like about Obama is that he’s all about the next generation, about improving the schools, about making a world that’s better for all, about seeing your kids go places that you couldn’t get to!”

Balloons are dropping!

“People come into my cab who are Republican, I tell them ‘hey, that’s OK! We’re all American, we’re all working for the same goal, and even though we may disagree, that’s great! That’s what makes us strong! That’s what unites us, our ability to listen, criticize, compromise, and respect each other! That’s the American way!’”

Confetti!

“I see my kids learning things I never knew and I know that their world is going to better than mine!”

And the spotlights pan the backseat!

Fearing that at any moment the Stars and Stripes Forever would fill the taxi, I asked about the gasoline situation. The governor has imposed rationing, and so you can only get gas every other day, depending on the last number of your license plate.

And yeah—that applies to cab drivers, as well.

‘What,’ I think, ‘that’s completely outrageous! Gas is the lifeblood of this guy’s business!”

The guy responds—he was in a line from 7 to 11PM to get a tank of gas.

Right—but what about tomorrow? Will a tank of gas last him?

“It’s a hard life,” remarks Jeanne. “Most cabbies gotta make 200 bucks a day, just to pay rent, expenses, gas….  So a lot of them have partners, who can work the extra shift.”

I’m thinking something different. I’m thinking of two parents, two fathers. And three girls. One father is somewhere in Pakistan, planning—perhaps—a ritual killing of his daughter in America.

The other father is on the streets of Manhattan, driving for hours on end, thrilled that a stranger—now a friend!—would stop and buy him a campaign button.

Two fathers, both Muslim.

One has gone forward—physically, to another country; spiritually, to another reality.

The other is locked into his past.

We should have a word, I think.

“Two fathers, both Muslim,” I wrote four paragraphs up.

A word for a father who is, and who is not.

Two Muslims (Part One)

Well, New York continues to surprise.

Or maybe not. Coming to the city as a new (or perhaps altered) person, I’m not sure what was here before that I couldn’t see, versus what was never here at all.

“She’s a pretty amazing person,” said Jeanne about her colleague, who conducts evaluations for people requesting asylum in the US.

Then she told me the story of a fifteen-year old girl from—where? Let’s call it Pakistan, though it could be any one of countries where fundamentalist Islam is raging.

The girl wrote the name of a schoolmate in her notebook. The family discovered it.

So?

The schoolmate was a boy.

Well, you and I would probably say “so,” and maybe even wonder whether the family had any business looking inside the girl’s notebook. Not being a parent, I don’t know if that’s standard operating procedure….

You can probably guess.

Family wasn’t pleased. So they gave the girl two options:

1.     marry a fifty-some guy whom the family would chose

2.     ritual killing by a family member

The girl chose:

       3.   get the hell outta town

Well, she did. Don’t know the story of how, but she landed in the United States. And is now in hiding because she fears her family may be sending / arranging a hit man to kill her.

That’s where Jeanne’s colleague comes in. Working for a group called Physicians for Human Rights, she does evaluations for people seeking asylum in the United States.

Which has, by the way, the largest number of petitioners for asylum of any industrialized country. About 40,000 people, if yesterday’s-read-today’s-not-findable number is correct in my memory.

And she trains young physicians and med students to do the evaluations as well.

The evaluations themselves are interesting. They’re not supposed to be therapeutic—though paradoxically, they can be. Instead, they’re meant to make the person requesting asylum relive and retell the worst of the (usually) torture that they have endured—to do it fast and dirty, as it were.

Why?

Because the person requesting asylum is gonna face a judge who is going to rule on the question—has this person truly suffered persecution or terror? Is he or she in danger, should the US deport? How convincing is the evidence? Yes, you call appeal the decision. Better, though, if you don’t have to.

The person doing the evaluation, then, becomes a psychic surgeon—applying the saws and drills to the mind and memory, extracting the most painful abuse and torture to display to the judge.

Curiously, some people find the process helpful.

Right, so Jeanne’s colleague had a problem. A fifteen-year old in hiding somewhere, without cash or food or clothes. And Super Storm Sandy bearing into the city. What to do?

Rent a car and deliver the goods, make sure the kid was safe.

Well, I did my share of snorting and some of Franny’s share as well. It seemed to call for it. Look, I don’t give a shit about culture and respecting religions and pluralism and anything else. This family? Rather, these guys—since they have completely subjugated the women?

They’re unspeakable. “Heinous,” perhaps, is the adjective that springs to mind. “Abominable,” certainly, is another alternative.

I can make a case—sort of—for why Islam developed the rules and traditions it did when it was a desert religion. A religion formed where water was precious, hospitality was a necessity not a nicety, when a harsh environment forged a harsh societal code.

Right, but now?

I’d say something that I think any woman would say. There is nothing more important than the family—the husband she has loved, the children she has born and has raised. And for a guy who is willing to kill his daughter for the “crime” of writing a boy’s name in a notebook? A guy who has sent her fleeing in terror halfway around the world, and who is hiding who-knows-where as a massive hurricane / Nor’easter / snowstorm bears down on the region? A guy who does that for his family’s “honor?”

Off with his balls!

(Stay tuned for part 2.)