The Iraq war drags on and on endlessly, no end in sight.

They don’t want us there, so why don’t we just leave? Politics. We can’t leave until we’ve created something there in our own image and likeness. All for the love of oil we dust off our ideals and polish our principles. Unfortunately it’s much bigger than Iraq. It’s the new Crusade between Islam and everyone else. They want the world in their image and likeness every bit as much as Bush. There may not be a compromise possible to the Muslim issue. It’s hardball politics. They’ve got oil-derived wealth and intend to use it for political leverage. They feel they have a right to convert moderate Islamic states into religious theocracies with medieval fundamentalist overtones and undercurrents, regardless of who is inconvenienced and aggrieved. The situation reminds me of the American Indian’s encounter with Europeans. There is a just a fundamental clash of goals and values. Only now the stakes are higher, with Soviet-era surplus nuclear weapons unaccounted for. We’ll just have to wean ourselves from oil first, and then let the politics sort itself out. We’ll have to do it sooner or later anyway, so the sooner, the better.

ISLAM 101

Muhammad is the only prophet to turn a profit these days. Moses is bankrupt; Jesus is in Chapter 11, trying to write off II Corinthians as a total loss; Buddha just laughs it off, belly fat now after ‘going Chinese’. He doesn’t care about Nirvana any more than Jesus cares about Madonna. Islam is the only plan with a man. It’s a good investment, no interest allowed, but a piece of the rock implied, a place in Heaven guaranteed, and a piece of cake to boot. Applications are being accepted, no fee required. Islam is the religion for the rest of us, no thought necessary, just submission to Allah. Allah knows best, in his own inimitable way. Pray what you will; take what you need. Your body is a temple, point it five times daily toward Jerusalem; I mean Mecca. Put no pork in it, nor any other food that’s not kosher; I mean halal. Punish infidels, but spare the Fidels and the Rauls and the Saddams and Gomorrahs, as long as they’re enemies of our enemies. Annihilate pagans, Israelis, and Americans. Got it? There, that’s not so hard, is it? Religion 101, point and shoot.

GOD’S MANY FACES

Jesus Christ is now starring on the God channel, speaking from the grave in tongues and English, parables shining through the fog with colored lights and music. He broadcasts his message with satellites and stars to lands where Muhammad still speaks with sword and scimitar. Buddha can’t compete head-to-head with his non-message of middling accommodation between extremes of aggressive violence and aggressive entertainment. He communicates heart-to-heart with a message of non-aggression and reconciliation at all costs. The costs can be steep, payable in dignity and self-esteem, poverty and need. Some things just can’t be bought and some things just can’t be sold. Buddha picks a middle path through a maze of lotuses on one side and chrysanthemums on the other. Jesus can’t make up his mind between the conformists and the protesters. Muhammad tolerates no pussy footing. The Muslim Channel blares from loudspeakers five times a day in thirty some-odd (some VERY odd) countries. The middle path for Islam lies somewhere between a rocket launcher and a razor blade. The true middle path chooses no sides. If it doesn’t lead to eternal bliss, at least it leads to another tomorrow and an infinite, if indefinite, future. All paths lead to God.

SUICIDE BUMMERS

Islam has suicidal tendencies. The Bali bombers strike again, suicide bombers doing it all for the love of God. October must be the suicide season, fresh fertilizer for fallow fields. Flowers grow where tourists fell, the death knell for picnics and frolics and Muslims on the beach. This is unholy war. This is suicide. This is apocalypse. Muslims grab the torch of negativity from the communists and run with it. If neutral countries convert to Islam, then they’re on to something. The world could use a new Messiah, but I don’t think Osama’s it. He might be wearing robes, but I don’t think the Messiah will be demonstrating proper use of a machine gun. I think he’ll be speaking seven or eight languages fluently, preferably Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Swahili, French, Spanish, and, uh, oh yeah, English. That’s nine, a lucky number in China. I think the Bible or somebody predicted there’d by ten divisions of the world by about this time in history, so let’s add Malay/Indonesian, representing three countries and a quarter bil people directly, the entire Polynesian world by extension. Muslims should be happy to have four on the list, maybe five counting Swahili, so Africa’s got two with Arabic. Asia’s got a few, Europe’s got four, so everybody’s represented linguistically except American Indians. Maybe we should add Quechua, the language of some ten million dirt-poor Native Americans in the Andes Mountains of South America.

NO MO’ INDONEASY ISLAM

It used to be you’d eat in a Chinese restaurant during Ramadan in Indonesia since the locals were closed (not that the locals have that many restaurants anyway, outside the tourist areas). That’s getting harder. Bali used to get some special consideration for its tourist clout and the fact that it’s not Muslim anyway, Hindu-Buddhist since the early days, written and spoken language deriving much from the same wave of Hindu-Buddhism that converted Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand. Not anymore. The Bali bombers changed all that. They said they were only ‘Sari’ that their victims weren’t American. Sounds like somebody needs a geography lesson. Ever seen students in these madrasahs bobbing their heads and chanting? You’d think you were in a back room in Brooklyn if you didn’t know better. Now if they start strapping little books around their heads… what would a visitor from another planet think? Indonesia would be a basket case if all the Chinese were forced out of the country, but it’s happening, little by little. First they go to Bali, and then they leave altogether. Indo-Aryans have been propping up Islam commercially and intellectually for centuries, but they can only go so far, especially when Iran itself and now Pakistan are both hotbeds of radicalism. Thailand’s better off than Indonesia, but the problem spills over in the three southern provinces where Muslims are the majority, as they have been for centuries. It’s all so much bullshit politics and posturing. Malays will raid Thai whorehouses to make sure there are no Malay girls there, while Surabaya in Indonesia plays host to the biggest red-light district in the hemisphere. As it continues to make gains in the ‘Arabization’ of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam increasingly is the religion of the poor and people of color. David slew Goliath with a slingshot, and they can bring down Consumer Culture with fear. A word to the wise probably won’t be sufficient.

NEGATIVE SPACE, NEGATIVE RELIGION

Indonesia’s being ruined by the jihad. Fundamentalists hate Islam lite almost as much as they hate Western hedonist consumerism. Actually I’m not that crazy about that blind materialistic part of Western culture myself, but religion is everyone’s personal choice, isn’t it? Not in Islamic countries, it’s not. You don’t get to change your mind. In that they’re similar to the previous Communist regimes, lack of freedom and the lack of fun. But Islamic countries stress non-materialistic goals while many of them are rich beyond imagination, yet the communist regimes were totally materialist with barely a pot to piss in. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that the downfall of Communism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism were timed by some cosmic clock. It’s funny how most, if not all, the Communist countries and client states joined the rush to capitalism with hardly a second thought while very few have joined the jihad. That’s too bad for Indonesia, which traditionally shares affinities as much with the South Pacific and Southeast Asia as it does with Islam. They became Muslim to facilitate trade centuries ago, and the rest is history. Philippines made the switch from Islam to Christianity under Western imperialism, except for Mindanao, but Indonesia didn’t. It’s no problem until fundamentalists decide to impose their negativity on the rest of the populace. I was asked to leave a Muslim mosque in Malaysia once, simply because I’m white. I’m a student of religion, a BA in philosophy, but unmistakably white. So are Bosnians, but that’s another story; they ‘surrendered’. I was sitting there minding my own business, soaking in the atmosphere, meditating just like everyone else, but to no avail. I was asked to leave. I decided right then and there that Islam is probably not the religion for me.

MUSLIM OUTCALL 24/7

Muslims just don’t get it. Life can be fun and religious, too. The two are not mutually exclusive. Or are they? Certainly Christian fundamentalism is almost as conservative as the Islamic variety, but at least it allows for some good clean fun. It doesn’t lock women in the house or behind the veil. I doubt Judaic fundamentalism is much of a rocking time, either. I think that a negative attitude toward life emanates from the Middle East, for what reason I don’t know. It could just be a guilt complex at finding pleasure in sensation rather than God, or just good old-fashioned female control methods to assure male dominance, but I suspect it’s low cultural self-esteem at seeing their once vast domain now vastly reduced. Fortunately it’s not all like that. Moroccans are certainly some of the nicest people in the world, at least once you get past les faux guides working the tourists in Interzone. Indonesia is the same. Without the local Taliban policing people’s panties, you’d have something like a low-key Thailand. I guess that’s what they don’t want. That’s why the jihadis blew the Balinese joints up. Laos maybe? Communism is more fun than Islam any day. The problem is that all restrictions are restricted to women. Men can do whatever they want, and do. Bar boys twitch their butts and giggle and make chitchat at bars in Bali. Beach boys (no, not THOSE Beach Boys) escort young Japanese girls and older Western women openly and freely (pay in kind). Gay guys roam Kuta Beach at night preying on tourists and praying for tips to the point that I’d rather watch TV than suffer the annoyance. Girls used to walk that beach until the Mafia or the Taliban moved in to protect its turf. I had sex in a lifeguard stand there once. Hey, we were in love! What’s wrong with those Muslims anyway? The last time I was in Indonesia, a week before the 10-12 Bali bombers, a guy stalked me all over the streets of Malang, speaking perfect English and talking about the CIA. Life’s weird.

SOME THINGS ARE FREE

The medium is the message: MONEY, dragging us all down to its own pathetic level of 0’s and 1’s for ease of computation and digital logic. Its best defense is a good offense, get there first with the most and close the door behind. Share the monopoly board with your arranged marriage partner. The dirtiest most untouchable thing in the Dark Age of religion now grabs us by our genitalia and leads us down dark alleys with weird characters. Chinese pictographs and ancient petroglyphs are scrawled on walls in a conspiracy of silence, telling us what we already know in a language we’ve long forgotten. Muslims got the male suicidal death wish down pat: me against my brother, me and my brother against our father; the three of us against our neighbor. OK, love your neighbor in a nod to Jesus as the next to last prophet to actually turn a profit, but forget the others and their other brothers. So on and so forth, relationships’ strengths run in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from the source of separation. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, bad cosmetic surgery masquerades as high desert philosophy masking macho misogyny. If you gotta’ put a veil over your wife’s head, why not just try some makeup instead?