Two excellent minds — liberal activist and journalist Mona Eltahawy and Huffington Post UK political editor Mehdi Hasan — went head to head at the Oxford Union on whether, per the provocative headline of Eltahawy’s article in Foreign Policy Magazine, Arab men hate women.

Go to it, accidental theologists!  But…

Please view the whole video before you comment.  Let’s get beyond knee-jerk reactions.  It’s true that it’s a long video, but if you don’t consider the whole issue important enough to merit 47 minutes of your time, I hereby suggest you forfeit the right to comment.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/T9UqlEmKhnk]

Unless you have the misfortune to live under their flight paths, it’s easy to push drones to the back of your mind.  That’s what’s so perfect from a US military point of view:  remote-control warfare, with the emphasis on ‘remote.’  See no evil, know no evil. What does an operator sitting in a bunker in Nevada know of what’s happening on the ground in Pakistan?

What do you?

While you might have registered the fact that US drone use in Pakistan quintupled in the Obama years from the Bush years, you’ve probably avoided dwelling on it.  You almost certainly haven’t thought through the personal and political havoc these drones are wreaking.  And you probably don’t want to even consider reading Living Under Drones, a 165-page report by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Center at Stanford and the Global Justice Clinic at NYU (that mouthful of authorship is off-putting enough).

Enter Mohsin Hamid, the Pakistani writer whose deliciously wicked novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist touched the raw edge of western anxiety, and whose newly published satire How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia is a well-deserved best-seller.  Hamid has the novelist’s ability to bring you inside experience that otherwise remains… remote.  So it was a savvy move when the New York Review of Books asked him to review the Stanford/NYU report, even if they then published his piece under the almost perversely understated headline ‘Why Drones Don’t Help.’  If you don’t read the report itself (there’s a summary here, and the full report is downloadable), at least read Hamid’s review of it.

Here’s an excerpt:

If there is any misconception that the drone strikes are primarily counter-terrorist in nature, aimed at key leaders of international terror networks, this can be dispensed with [….]  The elimination of ‘high-value’ targets — al-Qaeda or ‘militant’ leaders — has been exceedingly rare:  fewer than 50 people, or about 2% of all drone deaths.  Rather, ‘low-level insurgents’ have been the main targets [….]

In the media, the term ‘militant’ is often used in describing drone casualties.  The report makes clear that this blurs together two legally very different groups of people.  A ‘militant’ who is a member of the Taliban, planning to attack US troops, is not the same as a ‘militant’ who normally herds livestock, carries a rifle, and today is sitting with other members of his clan to discuss a threat top his isolated village from a neighboring clan.

Furthermore, according to the report, the ‘current administration’s apparent definition’ holds that any male of military age who is killed in an area where militants are thought to operate (and where, therefore, drones operate) will be counted as a militant if killed.

In other words, if you’re killed by a drone, the Obama administration says that this makes you by definition a militant.  Your death in a drone strike is all the proof that’s needed of your guilt, and thus of the right to have killed you.

Neither Orwell nor Kafka could have dreamed up better.

Hamid continues:

This has allowed administration officials to make wildly unrealistic claims, disputed by even the most conservative analysts of drone casualties, that civilian deaths are ‘extremely rare’ or have been in ‘single digits’ since President Obama took office.

If you disregard this novel definition and then try to ascertain what category of person was actually killed, you will arrive instead at an estimate that some 411 to 884 civilians have died in US drone strikes in Pakistan, including 168 to 197 children.

This includes so-called ‘signature strikes’ which attack unknown people for gathering in groups or otherwise “behaving like militants” as well as people trying to bring aid to injured victims of strikes.

Hamid goes on to look closer at the harrowing experience of those affected, and at the widespread Pakistani revulsion at the use of drones.  And with the US now intensifying its drone campaign elsewhere, as in Yemen, he cogently makes the case that their use only weakens already weak governments and thus severely undermines America’s own foreign-policy interests.

In other words, this isn’t counter-terrorist; it’s counter-effective.  What’s touted as “clean” technology (for the man in the bunker) is in fact as dirty as ever.  And the depressing conclusion is that the Obama administration is as stuck as its predecessor in the self-defeating meme of a military “war on terrorism.”

Could that pernicious video have ended up working against itself?  Could this be the tipping point for both Islamophobia and its mirror image, militant “Islamist” extremism?  Is this where both are revealed for the ugly con game they really are?

Perhaps the one good thing about the video is that it is so upfront in its ugliness.  It’s no longer just you and I saying it;  it’s also the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, whose anger was palpable:  “To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.”

Now we know who made the video:  a convicted con man, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, indicted on multiple charges of bank fraud and check-kiting.  And he may indeed end up back in jail, since by posting his work to the Internet he violated the terms of his probation.  That’s little consolation, of course, for the multiple deaths he’s caused — at least a dozen so far.  And none at all for those who don’t understand that the principle of freedom of speech, no matter how hard it is to accept, applies to all. Under a different administration, the same principle by which they demand that he be jailed could then be turned around and applied to them.

But we know more.  We know that the protests against the video have been used and manipulated by Al Qaeda and Salafi types, who manipulated the sincere outrage and insult of protestors to further their own political agenda and try to destabilize newly elected governments.  In the process, they also furthered the agenda of their Islamophobic blood brothers, providing graphic images of Muslims doing everything Islamophobes expect — rioting, burning, killing.  But for the first time, all countries involved seem to have clearly recognized this and given voice to it, perhaps none more perfectly than Hillary Clinton: “”The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob.”

We know that Twitter is alive with condemnations of the violence from Libyans, Tunisians, Egyptians, and more.  Mainstream Muslims, both religious and secular, will no longer tolerate being intimidated into silence by those who claim to speak in their name for a violent, extremist travesty of Islam.  They are speaking out in unprecedented volume and numbers.

And we know this:  the new governments of Libya and Yemen instantly condemned the violence and apologized for the death of Ambassador Stevens.  In the words of the president of the Libyan National Congress, it was “an apology to the United States and the Arab people, if not the whole world, for what happened.  We together with the United States government are on the same side, standing in a united front in the face of these murderous outlaws.”  Residents of Tripoli and Benghazi staged demonstrations to condemn the attack on the Benghazi consulate and to express their sorrow at the death of Stevens, who was widely admired for his support of the revolution that ousted Qaddafi.

Even the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt finally realized that this was not a matter of defending Islam against outside enemies, but of defending it against its own worst enemies on the inside.

All this, it seems to me, is new.  As is the reaction of the US administration, led by Obama and Clinton — calm, measured, determined, and in the spirit of Ambassador Stevens himself,  the opposite of the heavy-handed American imperialism of the past.  Imagine if this had happened under Bush, or under Romney, and shudder at how they would have reacted.

Could it be, finally, that more and more people are getting it?  That both the Islamists and the Islamophobes are losing?  That sanity, however high the cost in lives, might actually prevail?

You might think it absurd that a woman driving a car is news.  But then this is the absurdity known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, now frantically trying to censor video clips of Manal al-Sharif driving.  An apparently government-supported online drive is under way to beat women caught driving, and al-Sharif  (this is her, to the right) is being held in detention for “inciting public opinion” and “disturbing public order.”

That is, for driving while female.  DWF.  A crime.

Watch the Al Jazeera report here.  Check out the newly replicated Facebook page here.  Read al-Sharif’s instructions for the June 17 ‘drive-in’ protest here on Saudiwoman’s Weblog.

And then consider the far greater absurdity of the continued existence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which refuses to extend the most basic civil rights (even the vote) to half its population, and whose wealth and power is entirely fueled by the Western thirst for oil.  An intensely repressive Middle East regime, that is, funded directly by Western money.

But that’s only the surface.  This Western oil money is still funding the worldwide Saudi export of the most conservative and repressive form of Islam.  If there is one single country that has enabled violent Islamism, it’s not the perceived enemies of the United States like Libya, Afghanistan, or Iran, but our “good friends” the Saudis — our oil dealers.

The Saudis thought they had escaped “the Arab spring.”  They sent their military into Bahrain to help squelch protests there.  They encouraged the violent suppression of protests in Yemen.  They thought they had things under control.

But another kind of Arab spring may now be in the making.  An Arab summer, perhaps.  Six months ago, a single Tunisian street vendor couldn’t take it any more and sparked a revolution by setting himself on fire.  Now a tech-savvy Saudi woman refuses to take it any more and threatens to spark another revolution by simply taking the wheel.

This is how it starts — with individual acts of defiance, with a refusal to knuckle under, with an insistence on basic dignity.  And with the support of a vast and unsquelchable online community.

The links are above.  Go to it, everyone.

It’s kind of absurd that I should even be writing this post, since I know next to nothing about Libya.  But I’m writing it because I have the uncomfortable impression that those policy-makers who urged the current American and European military intervention in Libya – aka instituting a “no-fly zone” (a strange formulation when it involves so much use of fighter jets) — know very little more than I do.

I hope I’m wrong about this.  But hope isn’t much of a substitute for reason when people’s lives are at stake.

Why Libya?  Apparently because it seems safe.  Everyone in the west can agree that Qaddafi is nuts, that his regime sucks, and – most important from their point of view – that they have nothing to lose by intervening.  No strategically important naval base to protect, as in Bahrain.  No major oil supplier to coddle, as in Saudi Arabia.  No “partner” in the struggle against the elusive Al Qaeda, as in Yemen.  No close military ties, as in Egypt.

I can almost imagine the decision-makers thinking “Finally, a chance to prove that we really are on the side of freedom and democracy and all the things we keep talking about but don’t back up with action.  Phew!”

Of course the last time they did that – barging with heavy firepower and astounding ignorance into a country where it seemed clear who was Good and who was Bad – the result was disastrous.  Iraq is still a mess.  Afghanistan, an even worse mess.   But this time, you see, it will be different.  This time, we’ll do it right.  From the air,.  No feet on the ground.  So what if we don’t even know who’s who in Libya?  They hate Qaddafi;  what more could one ask for?

When I was a dreamy adolescent, I used to think that if I could only go round the world with a six-shooter and assassinate the worst dictators, the world would be a better place.  I spent hours deciding which six I would target (some weird English sense of fair play dictated that I could only have six bullets), until I grew up enough to realize that those I killed in my dreams would only be replaced by others, that this was not a matter of individuals, but of systemic social and political problems way beyond my grasp. (As for “solving” violence by violence, I’m glad to say I quickly grew out of that too.)

Now, in 2011, it seems that powerful nations are acting like that naïve adolescent that I once was, the difference being that their choice of target is determined not by dumb idealism, but by strategic realpolitik.  So sorry, Bahrain – we know you’re right in your demand for democracy, but our hands are tied.  Too bad, Egypt – we know the military has no intention of giving up power, but we need them.  You’re on your own, Yemen – who knows if you mightn’t threaten our good Saudi friends next?

But Libya?  Thank god for Qaddafi.  A chance to prove how good we are, at last…

I know you probably don’t have time for this long a video, but for the record, here’s my February 19 keynote speech at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, MI — on fundamentalism, stereotyping, and (with suitably Jewish agnostic chutzpah) religion, as well as on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and the effect they may have on American attitudes toward Islam.

The occasion, at the largest Shia mosque in America, was the celebration of the birthday of Muhammad.   The still shot has a somewhat disturbingly preacher look to it, so please tell me I’m not preaching, just talking…

(The sound comes in fully after about 45 seconds.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hTxDvRVlo]

“I can’t believe you don’t believe in anything!” someone wrote on this blog a while back, commenting on my agnosticism (actually, she used capital letters and lots of exclamation marks, but I’ll refrain).   And I was a bit shocked by that.  What kind of human being can I claim to be if I don’t believe in anything?  A nihilist?  A god-forsaken creature left to the whims and mercies of fate?    A craven whimpering coward afraid to commit herself?

So in between keeping up with what’s happening in Egypt and Tunisia and Bahrain and Yemen and Jordan and Iraq and Iran and oh-my-god Libya, I’ve been haunted by what she said — and have realized that she placed the stress on the wrong word.  It doesn’t belong on the word ‘anything,’ but on the word before it:  ‘in.’

Of course there are things I believe.  I just don’t generally feel the need to believe in them.  I may well believe that such-and-such a thing is true, though in fact this is much the same thing as saying “I think that…” or the more amorphous “I feel that…”  and I’m trying not to be amorphous here.  And in fact there are some things I do believe in, prime among them the possibility of some seemingly impossible form of peace between Israel and Palestine.

If I look at Israel/Palestine rationally right now, I see no way to a peaceful resolution.   So in the lack of empirical evidence, I have no choice but to fall back on belief – that is, on the conviction that peace is possible, despite all evidence to the contrary.

I’m not being over-idealistic here.   The first step in any thinking about peace is to get rid of all those images of doves fluttering around all over the place and everyone falling on each others’ shoulders in universal brother/sisterhood.  Peace is far more mundane than that.  It’s the absence of war.  It’s people not being killed.  It’s the willingness to live and let live.  And that will do just fine.

There’s no love lost between England and Germany, for instance, but they’re at peace after two utterly devastating wars in the first half of the 20^th century.  There’s less than no love lost between Egypt and Israel – in fact it’s safe to say that for the most part, they detest each other —  but that peace treaty, signed by an Egyptian dictator and an Israeli former terrorist, has lasted three decades.  It’s nobody’s ideal of peace, but however uneasily, it’s held, and will likely hold whatever the changes in Egypt – a frigid kind of peace, but peace nonetheless.

But even thinking in terms of pragmatic, undramatic, boring peace, which once seemed as impossible for England and Germany, and for Egypt and Israel, as for Israel and Palestine, I still can’t see it.  Of course this may simply mean that I have a very limited imagination, and so can’t see the forest for the trees.   But to think that something is impossible because I can’t see it is not only an absurd assumption, but also a dangerous one.

What we believe affects how we act.   If we stop believing that Israel/Palestine peace is possible, or even desirable, as the Israeli government seems to have done, then that affects how we act:  we really do make it impossible.  That is, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy of unending conflict.   We act in our own worst interests.

I’d rather be naïve than nihilistic.  So in face of the despair that often overtakes me at the latest news from Gaza or from the West Bank, I have to fall back on belief in the possibility of peace, no matter how seemingly irrational.  After all, if it was rational, it wouldn’t require belief.

One definition of despair is in the inability to imagine oneself into the future.  It is, in a very real sense, a failure of the imagination.  So perhaps this is what belief really is:  an act of imagination.   The astonishing human ability to imagine something into existence, and to act in accordance with that imagination.

That’s what we’ve seen these past few weeks in Tunisia and Egypt and Bahrain (and maybe even in Libya), and that’s what’s been so inspiring about it:  belief transformed into possibility.   Belief not as faith in the divine, but as faith in the human ability to act and to change the future.   Belief, that is, in ourselves.