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Category Archives: Fatwas
Don’t Replace the Kiosks
A Statement to Princeton Council
400 Witherspoon St
Princeton, New Jersey
January 12, 2025
(I had originally intended to give this statement at Public Comments on January 12, but got delayed at work and never made it to the meeting. I’ll be giving a different, re-written statement on January 26th.)
My name is Irfan Khawaja; I live in Princeton. I’m here to speak about an issue that in some sense has already been decided, except that the decision is so wrongheaded that even belated criticism seems better than silence. I’m referring to the replacement (or even partial replacement) of the kiosks on Nassau St with electronic versions whose messaging is controlled by the municipality.
Let me go through some of the things members of this Council have said, from least to most objectionable, and respond to them. Continue reading
Eminent Domain and the Resort to Force
I was pleased to see that my letter on Princeton’s use of eminent domain to acquire Westminster Choir College was printed in the January 7 issue of Princeton’s Town Topics, with a note from the editor (p. 13): “Thank you for your letter. We stand corrected.” Good to hear it.
Whether the topic is genocide or eminent domain, mainstream American journalists have an addiction to euphemism about the use of force that should be corrected at every turn. If journalists described the use of force more vividly and accurately, people would grasp its ubiquity in public life, and stop being surprised when it took egregious forms, as in the killing of Renee Good. Continue reading
Aggression and Evasion
It’s sad and telling that with respect to both the US attack on Iran in June 2025 and the current attack on Venezuela, few if any commentators, whether supportive of the United States or opposed, have described what happened in essential terms. In both cases, the United States committed an unprovoked act of aggression against a country that had not initiated aggression against it. Put another way, the United States deliberately breached what had previously been a condition of peace between the two countries on the unargued premise that it had the moral right to attack its perceived enemies at will, regardless of anything they may or may not have done to warrant an attack. There are other things worth saying about both cases, but nothing more fundamental than that.
Continue readingNo, Eminent Domain is Not Purchase
Another letter to the editor of Princeton’s Town Topics, a newspaper that seems to have a pronounced allergy to fact-based reporting.
To the Editor:
A summary of the year’s events in the December 31 issue of Town Topics asserts: “The former Westminster Choir College campus is now under the aegis of the municipality, which purchased the Walnut Lane site in April, and is currently exploring design alternatives.” The same article later asserts: “In February, the municipality took another step toward purchasing the Westminster campus by hiring the Newark-based consultants Topology….The $42 million acquisition was finalized in April.” Continue reading
Rome If You Want To
Here’s a parlor game anyone can play. Familiarize yourself with the controversy about the “ICE manger” at St Susanna’s Church in Dedham, Massachusetts. Then get into an argument about it with any specifically Christian critic of the parish and/or apologist for ICE. Then count how many minutes it takes before they sacrifice both Baby Jesus and the Holy Family to Herod, Caesar, and the Roman Empire. In my experience, it takes about two.
Continue readingOminous Parallels
Mutatis mutandis, that’s exactly what I think of Stephen’s own writing. First and second wave Hicks had some interesting arguments, but then came the decline.
Those “Drowned Out” Zionists
Joshua Leifer’s “Conflictedly Connected” Liberal Zionist Center
The well-regarded left Zionist writer Joshua Leifer has a much fawned-over piece in Ha’aretz that’s been adopted in some quarters as the expression of profound wisdom. In it he argues that there’s a “conflictedly connected” Zionist quasi-left “majority” that’s been “drowned out” by the extremist voices of the “ultra-hawkish right” and the “anti-Zionist left.” If only this “conflictedly connected” majority could be liberated from the shackles placed on it by these twin extremists, the Golden Mean would prevail, and virtue would flourish on the topic of Israel and Palestine. Continue reading
Questions for Princeton Council (1)
Public Comments and “Disruptions”
My name is Irfan Khawaja. I’m a resident of Princeton. I have a question for the Council, to which I request a forthright answer.
There’s a video now in the public domain which shows Councilwoman Fraga at the New Jersey League of Municipalities conference in Atlantic City, disclosing that this Council made a decision to move public comments to the end of the meeting in order to forestall disruptions.
This is what she said, verbatim. Continue reading
If You Want Blood
Do yourself a favor. Go back and re-read the Declaration of Independence, but do it this way: skip the beginning and the end, and read the bill of particulars in the middle. It’s too long to quote here. You really just have to read it for yourself. Once you do, you’ll see that details aside, we’re living in the very world that the Declaration describes, excoriates, and uses as the basis of its declaration of war. Virtually everything in it is something that our present government is doing to us. Like the people of British North America ca. 1776, we are a people under military occupation. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 