Hamas, Sinn Fein, and Avoiding Bad Comparisons

Time for the Grillmaster to put on his Comparative Ethnic Conflict hat once again. With diplomas now officially in hand, the crew of Midnight Marauders from Belfast can call ourselves Masters. Cheers to all. Kate, I assume that yours is still lost in the mail?

It's fitting that we got our parchments the week of a truly historic election in Palestine. There has been much ink spilled in the past few days in turn describing Hamas' victory as a disaster for the peace process and the Palestinian people, or as the triumph of democratic government and a chance for accountable negotiation. The Grillmaster won't add that that general debate, except to briefly say that their victory is obviously disheartening in some ways, but also offers a real opportunity to change the systematized stagnation that the peace process (if you can call it that) has seen over the past five years.

I want to talk a bit about the transitions that militant groups make to democratic parties, and develop a comparison between the current state of Hamas and that of Sinn Fein over the course of the last decade. I've heard it said by a few people (including the BBC's always worth reading Mark Davenport) that Hamas might today be at the kind of transitional stage that Sinn Fein experienced in the last 15 years. There may be some similarities, but responsible comparison of these ethnic conflicts has to acknowledge the differences that will stand in the way of a Sinn Fein-like moderation on the part of Hamas.

The development of Irish republicanism is a powerful example of how a highly organized, highly violent, highly ideological movement can transition its organization and ideology away from violence. That development isn't complete, but is well on its way. What were some key steps in that development, and how might one reproduce them in Palestine?

First, the IRA's core of volunteers had to be absolutely convinced that the political process could advance their cause more effectively than violence. In Palestine, this will require Israeli politicians to make it perfectly clear that IF Hamas transitions away from violence, Israel will be willing to deliver real political consequences. Such assurances will run into a history of mistrust even deeper than that in Northern Ireland.

Additionally, Sinn Fein realized that it HAD to moderate it's use of violence in order to secure broad electoral support within the Irish nationalist community. This is a key difference with the state of affairs in Palestine. Hamas has been delivered to majority status WITHOUT an explicit renunciation of violence. The Palestinian people have given at least implicit approval to Hamas' violence. No such majority support ever existed in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein faced pressure both from domestic political constituencies and from key Irish-American allies to moderate the IRA's violence. Funders and highly visible politicians in America made it clear that Gerry Adams would gain a level of public support if he could move the IRA leadership away from violence. American and European governments may be able to exert similar leverage through funding delivered to the now Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority. It would be even more helpful if Arab voices would step forward and encourage Hamas to continued political maturation.

Finally, there is no doubt that a highly ambitious, courageous, and bold group of Sinn Fein leaders dragged Irish republicanism, sometimes kicking and screaming, away from its history of violence. Say what you will about Gerry Adams' flaws, his leadership has overall been a profound force of moderation within republicanism. With so many of Hamas' senior leaders killed by Israel in recent years, there's no doubt in my mind that it will be the character of the rising generation of Hamas leadership that will exert vast influence on its development as a political force.

All of these key factors in the moderation of Irish republicanism are either missing or yet to be determined in Palestine. This also leaves aside the special role of Islam within Hamas and the corruption of the Fatah movement. In a decade Hamas may indeed have given up violence in favor of a non-violent political strategy. But to quickly assume that Hamas will follow Sinn Fein's path is a perfect example of the WRONG way to do comparative ethnic conflict. Trust me, I'm a master of it...

No Pill's Gonna Cure My Ills

Alright, as any number of you have pointed out, the Grillmaster is not, in fact, a doctor. Nor a nurse. Nor a vet. The breadth and depth of my medical knowledge extends to charcoal-filtered self-medication, and not much further. Which is all a round-about way of making excuses for the fact that diagnosing the discourse disease in this country is quite a bit easier than finding the miracle drug to ease our pain.

There may be some progress to be made on the political front. There are a few commentators, notably Noah Feldman in his well-worth reading recent book Divided By God, who have tried to propose grand compromises by which the Religious Right gives up on things like mandatory prayer in schools while the secular Left admits that abortion shouldn’t necessarily be as widely available as, say, Big Macs.

The recent opinion in the Dover Intelligent Design case is an excellent example of a judge rejecting a fairly clear violation of the Establishment Clause while explicitly stating that his ruling did not seek to attack religious belief. He even goes out of his way to point out that Intelligent Design might have a place in a comparative philosophy course. It’s the sort of fair ruling that does justice to the Constitution but avoids feeding the fears of militant judicial secularism that fuel reactionary rhetoric from parts of the Christian Right.

I’d like to think that reasonable people could be convinced to reach such an arrangement across the board (mostly because it’s what the Grillmaster believes). Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons to be doubtful. First, even reasonable people have deep differences of opinion on these issues, and it would be either naïve or arrogant to assume that they can just be negotiated away. Second, there are an AWFUL lot of completely UNreasonable people out there, who engage in shrill public rhetoric because they seem to like it (The Grillmaster hypothesizes that they need more beer-can chicken in their diets). And finally, there are well-funded political lobbies on either side that thrive on this devolution of discourse. In the Grillmaster’s growing experience, all of this applies to both left and right.

With these structural and substantive obstacles in place, what’s the hope for restoring our public discourse about religion and politics? In the short run, it might have as much to do with religion as politics. Faith leaders would do a service to both our politics and their religious traditions by speaking with some authority not just on the substance of our policy debates, but the style with which those debates are conducted. We may passionately disagree with one another on the substance of issues, but there is certainly no possible Christian justification for the politics of personal attack that is so venomous in today’s political environment. I’d imagine that Jewish and Muslim leaders could make similar arguments from within their traditions.

To prove the Grillmaster’s ability to be non-partisan, check out this remarkable article by none other than Chuck Colson to get a taste of the type of charitable, humble public discourse that Christians are really called to engage in.

So Much for Prescriptions

Just lost a nearly completed post. Nothing particularly brilliant, but frustrating enough to make me give up and go to bed. More to come shortly.

I Got a Bad Disease

The Grillmaster has remarked before in this space on the remarkable ability of the radical religious right to drum up unreasonable feelings of fear and victimhood in service to political causes. This has caused some grumblings in the ranks of readers, at least in part over the use of the word 'unreasonable.' The counterargument goes, in short, that conservatives in this country have every right to be fearful, and need to rally to defend the Christian (or as we today call them, Judeo-Christian) values upon which this country was founded. The Ralph Reeds of the world don't create fear out of whole cloth; they simply mobilize it to their own ends.

There are a few substantial problems with this counterargument. First, if you look at the history of these fearmongering campaigns, it is clear that Reed and others make their living by exaggerating and generalizing a crisis based upon often innocuous events. That's how politics works, on both left and right, and I would hope that intellectually honest conservatives could admit this. Second, I'm still far from convinced that the kind of aggressive civic religion advocated by these groups is actually good for the churches they want to protect. The ongoing fall from grace of Mr. Reed ought to serve as a cautionary tale to preachers both right and left about the dangers of intertwining one's message too closely with the big business of contemporary politics.

The obvious question becomes this: What is to be done in response to this repeated pattern of fearmongering? For too long, the response from much of the Left has fed these feelings of fear and victimization. It is here that my debate partners have a point. Liberals have talked down their well-educated noses at the uncivilized fringes (or is that masses?) who actually dare to believe in God. How quaint. While conservative operatives may drum up fear to unreasonable levels, snobby secularists have a bad habit of giving them plenty of easy material for their work.

This patronizing cycle has proven threatening to both the Democratic party and American democracy. The threat to the Dems became self-evident in 2004 with the by now well-documented rise of the 'value voters' who in part returned Bush to the White House. The party faces many challenges, but one of the most important is to convince voters once again that it stands for both a set of programmatic prescriptions AND a relatively coherent vision of American values. An increasing number of progressive leaders understand this challenge; it will be interesting to see how that understanding develops in the coming years.

The threat posed to our democracy in general is less obvious, but far more pernicious. Irrespective of who is at fault for the decline in public discourse, particularly around values issues, that decline has thoroughly permeated our political system. Judicial nominations are a pathetically veiled game of interest politics. Lobbying machines on both sides of the aisle perpetuate their own existences by stirring up division. State ballot initiatives 'fire up the base' rather than propose meaningful solutions to the pressing problems of the day.

As Dr. Grillmaster diagnoses things (oh yes, I'm a M.D.), this is one of the most significant ailments of contemporary American politics. The prescription? That will have to wait for Part II...

Poor Peyton; Seattle Super?

Has it been cold without me? Apologies for the extended holiday hiatus on the part of the Grillmaster. Travel, welcome visits from the Grillmistress, sickness, and more travel all conspired to keep me occupied. And yes, as has been pointed out by many, the fact that I have left a soccer post up for nearly a month is enough to question my American citizenship. Sooo, in a shameless piece of ethno-nationalistic jingoism, Over Hot Coals returns to the self-important blogosphere with a brief post on the NFL. That’s right, real football, baby!

Some claim that the Grillmaster is prone to hyperbole, but reputation be damned, this was the best weekend of football I’ve ever seen. All four games featured exciting big plays, controversial officiating decisions, clutch performances from stars, and HUGE choke jobs from some of the league’s greats. And hey, as a loyal Bawlmoron, it was great to see the Colts go down in flames yet again. It’s a cursed ship Peyton; head for the lifeboats if ye ever want to see the sunny shores of a Super Bowl sideline!

The million dollar question now is obviously who winds up winning this thing. The inconsistent Steelers? The one-dimensional Panthers? The lumberjack led Broncos? No no my friends, the Grillmaster will officially go on the record to predict glorious victory on the part of the who-dat Seattle Seahawks. Why not? This has been one of the stranger NFL seasons I can remember, so why not have a team from the far reaches of our country win the big one. Why not have the NFC win it, in spite of being the far inferior conference once again.

My rationale for this pick (when everybody seems to be jumping on the Steelers bandwagon)? I am thoroughly unconvinced that any of the other three teams is Super Bowl quality. Living on the East coast, I haven’t seen the Seahawks play enough to be disappointed by them. Ain’t league parity grand…

With my Americanism firmly reestablished, I’m on to more substantive posting later this evening. But first, dinner calls.