Today's Stories

April 23, 2009

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 23, 2009

A Perilous Situation in Pakistan

Deconstructing the Taliban

By FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN

"Although she believes her days are numbered, Joya is not fearful for the future. "I am not frightened because we will all die one day," she says. "What matters is that we fight despite the risk and we sacrifice despite the cost. Only then can we succeed."

From “A Voice of Hope for Afghanistan's Women,” by Frud Bezhan, April 15, 2009, The Age (Australia).

Malalai Joya, one of a handful of Afghan female parliamentarians who hasn’t yet been gunned down by Taliban extremists, has it exactly right in the above-cited quote. The courage to stand up and fight, with words more powerful than any AK-47s, against the power-hungry crazies whether they are warlords, former Mujahideen, current corrupt government officials, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda operatives or western imperialists—in most cases, all of the above. Yes, to stand firm against all those who are fighting to preserve or gain access to power and in the process, hunting down and squashing any voices of resistance to them, including, and especially, the voices of women—that is the need of the day.

Pakistan now desperately needs voices like those of Malalai Joya to speak out, loudly and unequivocally, against the Islamist groups who represent the most obviously clear and present danger to the state and the people of the country. While I am no fan of Hillary Clinton’s, I agree with her sense of urgency that “the Pakistani people and the Pakistani diaspora ... need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents,” and that “Pakistanis, living both in and outside the country, must realize how terrorism threaten[s] the very existence of their state.”

Clinton goes on to state that the Pakistani government needs to address the very real grievances of the average Pakistani citizen in terms of economic inequalities and lack of provision of basic services as well as a dysfunctional court and justice system for the poor and underprivileged which have all led to the rise of the various jihadist groups such as the TNSM and Tehrik-i-Taliban who have filled a power vacuum in areas like Swat with their own illegitimate brand of rough-and-ready justice.

I agree with this class-based analysis, and indeed, in several articles I have published in Counterpunch over the past couple of years, have said pretty much the same thing, as have many other analysts of Pakistan. I still recall cringing when, conducting an interview a few days prior to the storming of the Red Mosque, with Umm Hassan (wife of the recently-released Islamist cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz of Red Mosque fame, and herself the founder and principal of the women’s madrassah there)-- she said to me in a biting tone: “You people [I believe she meant my class of the urban educated elite as well as the government power structure]—you people have treated us like lizards on the walls, like cockroaches on the ground.” She continued to look me up and down, her glance scornful, withering. Several of her students and teachers who were part of the group I interviewed that blisteringly hot summer day added that they would pray for what they could see was my unrepentant westernized soul, and that the ultimate victory would be theirs.

I walked out that day from the premises of the Red Mosque thinking that these “Muslimahs” had a point, at least regarding the deep class inequalities and injustices that marred the psychic, economic and political landscape of the country of my birth. Their anger against the “comprador elite” was justified—and hence also against Western, specifically US imperialist interests being shored up by this ruling class. Indeed, of late, the US itself has helped the case of the various Taliban groups by continuing to bomb the hideouts of these and Al-Qaeda outfits in the Northern Areas with their remotely-piloted Drone and Reaper predator missiles. But I no longer think of the Pakistani Taliban and their female counterparts as deserving of any empathy whatsoever. In fact, I am prepared to go as far as calling them non-Muslims.

What sort of Muslims—nay, human beings—can justify the public whipping of that poor 17-year-old Swati girl, Chand Bibi, which the world was shocked to see circulating on the net? What sort of Muslims—nay, human beings—kill and maim MUSLIM worshippers at mosques such as the one in Jamrud, a town in the tribal Khyber region, where a suicide bomber struck during Friday prayers, leaving more than 50 dead and over a 100 wounded, most critically, in one of the bloodiest recent attacks in the nation. And the 22 Shi’ites dead in another recent suicide bombing at a Shi’ite mosque in northern Pakistan? And the remote-controlled bombing of CD shops in Peshawer? And the attack on the Frontier Corps post in Islamabad leaving eight of them—all working class-- dead? And the attack on the police cadets in training on the outskirts of Lahore—all of them of poor backgrounds? What ire against them??

The fact is, my last question is a stupid one. Nothing justifies this insane killing spree of the self-styled “Muslim” terrorists, so why bother looking for an explanation? This is what we liberals and progressives on the Left do: look for reasons that could help us “understand” why power-hungry, deranged fanatics do what they do. In this search for some sort of “rationale” for unjustified, unjustifiable barbarism, we err in ways not so dissimilar to those of “conspiracy theorists” who abound in Pakistan and in many liberal-left circles in the US, who want to lay the “blame” for all this terror on “foreign influences” (read: CIA, Mossad, MI-5 , RAW and so on)—as well as those of liberal or “moderate” Muslims who are anxiously and eagerly trying to reclaim their faith from the extremists.

So, for example, we have the case of a well-heeled Islamic scholar from Canada who writes up a letter on behalf of a prominent US-based organization of “progressive” Muslim women, which is meant to serve as a collective rebuke from this group to the Pakistani Taliban for their public flogging of the 17-year-old Chand Bibi. In the letter, this moderate female Islamic scholar states that while the group she represents is appalled at the punishment being meted out to this poor woman in the name of Islam, and sees such action as inconsistent with the message of Islamic justice, fairness and human decency, nevertheless Islam does condone such punishment for acts like adultery and fornication provided stringent conditions of proof are met. And since these were not met, therefore the punishment in this particular case was unjustified! Wow!

If so-called progressive Muslim scholars, and female scholars at that, are going to undertake this manner of exegesis which tries to adhere to the letter of the law (however “progressively”), then we are all in deep, deep trouble. While I respect the genuine intentions of the women in this group, I have serious reservations about this manner of debate—the “hunt” for a “true,” a “good” Islamic interpretive paradigm, as opposed to the “bad,” or “regressive” kind of the Taliban variety. Such a battle of interpretive supremacy ultimately remains within the confines of literalism, a fight over the “Word” and its original meaning—which cannot really be won by self-styled moderates because they are by the very nature of such a binaristic enterprise doomed to playing the role of apologists—forever on the defensive against the “true” believers, the fundamentalists who “know” that everyone else except them is out of touch with the “real” Islam—as indeed, several of the leaders of the TNSM in Pakistan have just said of the rest of Pakistan and Pakistanis, hence demanding their version of Shar’ia law be instituted in the entire country.

Perhaps it is time to bring the theoretical insights of Derridean deconstruction to bear upon the reading of the Quranic text and declare a search for “true meaning” impossible—and turn our attention instead to the much more interesting and fruitful study of systems of signification and how we derive meaning rather than what meaning is, since, given the slipperiness of language systems, meaning is ultimately undecided-able, endlessly “deferred.” Maybe, with Barthes, we Muslims too need to accept the notion that the Author is dead, and turn our attention instead to the Reader(s)—and thence to Cixous’s notion of the jouissance or pleasure of multiple readings of the Quran and hadith literature which reveal more about the interpretive communities of readers than they do about any “original” text.

I believe it is high time—and possibly already too late, though I hope not with all my heart and soul---that all of us who wish Pakistan well and want to see it stable and prosperous instead of “the most dangerous place on earth”—declare to each other and to the world, as well as to the fanatical non-state actors within, that Islam “signifies” never having to make public what is private. Islam signifies never having to justify your Muslim-ness to anyone who isn’t God. Islam signifies never having to cheat, lie, amass millions and build a palatial home to live in while your neighbor goes hungry and can’t afford to send her kids to school, living in a “jhugi” without access to water, gas, electricity. Islam signifies never having to kill innocents or getting them to adhere to your intolerant beliefs at gunpoint or by exploiting their grievances as a path to securing your own power. Islam signifies learning to live in peace and dignity with others different from yourself, while giving them what is their just due. Above all, Islam signifies never having to say you are sorry for signing as a Muslim while condoning savagery in the name of religion. Maybe Derridean derision does need to be qualified: not all positions or “signifiers” are ambiguous. Or maybe in the face of ambiguity, and the murkiness of life, we still need to take unambiguous stands.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a Professor in the Department of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She can be reached at: khanf@mail.montclair.edu

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