Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja

A Plea for Ceasefire and Hostage Exchange

Posted on by under Palestine

I posted this on my Facebook page this past Tuesday (slightly reworded here). It’ll be my last post on October 7 here at PoT as well, at least for awhile. I’d prefer to take some time and process the event before I say very much more.

I’m getting off of Facebook for awhile. It’s a cesspool at the moment, and I’m sick of it.

Just to clarify my own views before anyone decides to put any in my mouth while I’m gone: I do not accept the legitimacy of the 10/7 Hamas attack on Israel. I believe in a right of self-defense and of resistance, but I don’t regard this attack as an instance of those things. I know enough about suicidal behavior to recognize it when I see it. This is an enactment of murder-suicide. It’s not liberation. There is nothing here to valorize. If you feel differently, feel free. But don’t expect my support. It’s not forthcoming. Continue reading →

Apocalypse Now

Posted on by under Palestine

This morning’s Hamas attack on southern Israel is being portrayed, predictably, as an initiatory act of aggression by Hamas, and a total bolt from the blue. It’s no such thing. The situation in Gaza has been decades in the making. Israel conquered Gaza in an act of aggression in 1967, occupied it, settled it, de-developed it, then abandoned its settlements there, falsely to proclaim its occupation of Gaza to have ended. Since then Israel has besieged Gaza, bombed it, raided it, and murdered and maimed its inhabitants at will. No one should venture comment on the situation in Gaza without engaging with the authoritative work of writers like Amira Haas, Sara Roy, and Norman Finkelstein, of human rights organizations like B’Tselem, or before viewing films like “Tears of Gaza,” which depicts ordinary life there. And this is to set aside the treatment of Golan, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.  Continue reading →

Fr. David B. Burrell, CSC (1933-2023), RIP

Posted on by under Memorials and Obituaries

I was saddened to read of the passing of Fr. David Burrell, CSC, Hesburgh Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He passed away on Sunday, October 1st. I knew Fr. Burrell when I was a grad student at Notre Dame in the 1990s, but regrettably never took a class with him, and have only recently–decades after the fact–come to understand and appreciate his work. Continue reading →

“It’s OK to Be Gay”: Hamtramck and the Jihad for Gay Pride

Posted on by under cancel culture, ethics, Fatwas

This Washington Post article tells the story of a betrayal–a double betrayal, really. The first betrayal is the one mentioned in the article itself. The Muslims of Hamtramck, Michigan accepted the generosity and hospitality of pro-immigrant activists, including Pride activists, then stabbed them in the back.

In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.

“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”

That betrayal is obvious. The other one is harder to see, but just as real. The Muslims of Hamtramck have not only betrayed their neighbors but their co-religionists: Muslims abroad fighting for gay rights and pride. Continue reading →

The Lessons of 9/11: Twenty-Two Years Later

Posted on by under Memorials and Obituaries

I post this every year around 9/11 (have done so since 2014), so here it is again with some revisions. I seem to have neglected to post it last year, and have not yet had the chance to add anything specific to the Ukraine War or proxy war more generally. But some of the implications should be obvious enough.

Today is the twenty-second anniversary of 9/11. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from two decades of perpetual warfare. I offer them somewhat dogmatically, as a mere laundry list (mostly) minus examples, but I have a feeling that the lessons will ring true enough for many people, and that most readers can supply appropriate examples of their own.

Continue reading →

“Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism: Philippa Foot and Ayn Rand”

Posted on by under General announcements

The latest issue of Reason Papers is out, vol. 43:2/Fall 2023, featuring a symposium on “Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism: Philippa Foot and Ayn Rand.” Participants include Aeon Skoble (Bridgewater State University). Douglas Rasmussen (Emeritus, St. John’s University), Douglas Den Uyl (Liberty Fund), Tristan de Liège, and Timothy Sandefur (Goldwater Institute). The issue also includes the latest installment of Gary Jason’s series on political films, discussing D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.”

The symposium topic is particularly timely, given the recent publication of three books on closely related themes: Benjamin Lipscomb’s The Women Are Up to Something (discussing Foot alongside Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgely), Claire Mac Cumhail and Rachael Wiseman’s Metaphysical Animals (discussing the same four philosophers), and Wolfram Eilenberger’s The Visionaries (discussing Rand alongside Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil). No Foot-Rand comparisons there, however. As it happens, the Foot-Rand parallel hit me during my first week of graduate school about three decades ago; I wrote my first paper in grad school on Foot and Rand on morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. Mercifully, the paper has long since been lost. I’m glad that competent philosophers are now pursuing the topic.

Hats off to editor Shawn Klein (Arizona State) for his hard work on the issue.

“Radical Theology: An Introduction to Karl Barth”

Posted on by under General announcements

I don’t know how many fans of radical left-wing Protestant theology read this blog, but in case any do–or in case any might miraculously materialize–my friend Heather Ohaneson is teaching a course on the theology of Karl Barth for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research starting next Monday evening, September 11th, 6:30-9:30 ET. I took Heather’s course on the Book of Job earlier this year, and found it startling, illuminating, and fun. If you can say that of Job, I figure you can say it of Barth. (Barth was, by the way, an early influence on Alasdair MacIntyre, for any MacIntyreans out there. Apparently, Big Mac gave up on Barth after reading Hans Urs von Balthasar’s criticisms of him, or so he says. How else to grasp the esoterica of that dispute but to take this course?)

Heather is a great teacher, and the material is, shall we say, interesting. If you thought you understood what Protestantism was about before engaging with Barth, you might read a page or two or twenty of his work, and start to wonder. If you didn’t think you understood what Protestantism was about before you encountered him, well, you might end up doing much the same. A win-win!

Continue reading →

Every Way You Look At It, We’ve Lost

Posted on by under Ukraine

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose–
Every way you look at it, you lose
–Simon and Garfunkel, “Mrs Robinson“

I didn’t watch the Republican debate last night. I don’t even remember what I did instead. I read about the debate this morning. I’m glad I missed it.

On foreign policy, the Republicans are divided over Ukraine, but united in their desire for war with Mexico, China, and migrants. That’s all I need to know to dismiss them from consideration. The Democrats have the mirror image view: united on war in Ukraine, divided and equivocal on the rest. That’s all I need to know to dismiss them. Continue reading →

“Persecution and the Art of Acting”

Posted on by under Fatwas, General announcements

I have a longish essay in the Fall 2023 issue of Isonomia Quarterly, a newish online journal edited by Brandon Christenson of Notes on Liberty. The essay is called “Persecution and the Art of Acting,” a take-off on Leo Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing. It’s an informal autobiographical account of my commitment to a Judeo-Islamic form of religious fictionalism.

Sample belligerent passage:

Jews, Muslims, and atheists all make claims to religious freedom, but usually make those claims under a single description–”Jew,” “Muslim,” “atheist.” As a fictionalist, I make the same claim to freedom under all three descriptions at once, reserving the right to add as many more descriptions as I wish. In short, when it comes to religious freedom, I demand the right to have things all ways at once, and demand the right to act on it without apology. Some may find that endearing. Others may find it offensive. I regard it as non-negotiable.

I guess we’ll see what happens when the first fatwas come in.

August 15: Front page treatment at Real Clear Religion. The irony. Ht: Brandon Christensen

irony

Fuller on Aspirations and Duties

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Fuller's Morality of Law

Having finished with Gerald Gaus’s The Tyranny of the Ideal, our MTSP Philosophy Discussion Group is now back to reading philosophy of law, working our way through Lon Fuller’s The Morality of Law (1964/1969). Fuller’s book is Roderick Long’s choice, part of a sequence of books on philosophy of law we’re reading at his suggestion, starting with H.L.A. Hart, passing through Fuller, eventually en route to the work of Ronald Dworkin. 

Having just read the first chapter of Fuller (and for the first time), I have to say that I find Fuller a refreshingly clear and engaging writer, much easier to read than, say, Gaus, Scanlon, or Hart. But clear as Fuller is, I don’t find his arguments in this first chapter sound. In this post, I want to offer a quick-and-dirty (but still, I think, effective) criticism of just one point he makes in the chapter, namely, his supposed distinction between “the morality of duty” and the “morality of aspiration.” Continue reading →