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July 26, 2004
Stockholm Syndrome By Proxy
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, supports a variety of right on, socially progressive causes many of which I would broadly agree with. Yet the Archbishop has chosen to speak at Al-Azhar University, Cairo on the anniversary of September 11 (via Daimnation!). It is reported the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi condemned those attacks but I find little comfort in his words given his contradictory views on suicide bombing and "jihad" against Coalition forces in Iraq. His views on Israel are entirely predictable. Perhaps Archbishop Williams hopes for a similar breakthrough for ecumenism such as followed the Sheikh's meeting with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Israel Lau in 1997. An interview with al Jazeera clarifies the Sheikh's views of the encounter.
Tantawi: "Reality refutes it. I did not ask to meet with the rabbi; he was the one who asked to meet me and when he left the meeting, his face looked like his behind… This journalist did not attend the meeting and, therefore, he is a liar."
Leaving any potential remarks about the Archbishop's face, I find it difficult to believe he could agree with the faculty of Al-Azhar in their support for, to cite only one example, wife beating despite any common Abrahamic tradition. I can only credit an hallucinatory stupidity that would choose to legitimate the views of those people who would put your own to the sword. I can empathize, if not sympathize, with the people of the Philipines who should choose to knuckle under to the religious war of their captors lest they find their heads on the block. Archbishop Williams has no such excuse. He finds himself in a country where his liberties have the protection of law and his personal views have constitutional and historical leverage. That he should choose to exercise his power in this way is a direct betrayal of every value it is his duty to protect.
Cross-posted to The Shotgun
Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 26, 2004 08:24 AM
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