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Professor Khan Speaks

We've always had a great deal of respect for Professor Liaquat Ali Khan, ever since he spoke for two hours without notes, repetition, deviation or hesitation to the 1L class on our first day at Washburn. We suspect that his writings are not widely known in our town, and we'd like to see that change.
Since 9/11, Prof. Khan has become one of our town's most articulate critics of the Bush Administration and America in general, stopping somewhere short of condoning hijacking commercial airliners and flying them into office buildings, but still seeing the global war on terror as a genocidal war against Islam itself.
Of course, we're not inclined to agree. We'd feel a lot more comfortable with Islam if more of its adherents had more to say in opposition to honor killing, anti-Christian persecution, arresting people for walking dogs or drinking coffee with unrelated men at Starbucks.
All of which is not surprising, since Prof. Khan is given to saying things like:

Islamic moral rights mandate that the Quran's integrity and honor be upheld
against any physical or verbal attack. Islamic law prohibits any intentional
and hateful burning or mutilating the pages of any copy of the Quran. [citation omitted]
Furthermore, any proposal to amend the Quran is offensive to the Book's
inherent dignity. Likewise, any attack on the person of the Prophet infuriates the entire Islamic community. In fact, any derogatory remarks about Allah or the Quran or the Messenger are occasions for Muslim revenge and punishment.

The quotation comes from something called The Cumberland Law Review, lives in an article that can be found here.
Links to more along these lines can be found here.
For a lawyer teaching at an American law school, Prof. Khan's respect for the First Amendment seems a little thin. Or maybe not, given the debased state of the legal profession.
This item comes from The Statesman, in Peshawar, Pakistan, and is dated September 27, 2005:

US democratisation gift to Muslim nations What is in the belly of Trojan horse?
Dr. Liaquat Ali Khan
US democratisation offerings to the Muslim world supposedly carry America?s good will and soft power. It is a gesture of peace and friendship. A few Muslims however appreciate the urgency with which they are being wheedled to accept the democracy gift. By all counts, the timing is suspicious. At a time when the Pentagon is pulverising Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House is threatening action against Syria and Iran, US generals are ridiculing Allah and military guards are desecrating the Quran, and hundreds of Muslims are rotting in secret prisons, the soft talk of democracy comes across as brazenly cynical. Muslims worry that if they accept the US-sponsored democratisation, soldiers will pop out from the belly of the Trojan horse.
...
No one disputes that Muslims need democracy. Unfortunately, the American gift of democratisation will confuse the process. Rightly or wrongly, most Muslims see the US democracy initiative as part of a larger war against Islam. It would be best for all, therefore, if the democratisation carousel stops. Let Muslim nations ride their own fate and build their own democratic structures. But will the US ruling elites accept such a genuine notion of self-quest and self-rule?

The whole thing lives here.
We're not so sure that "no one disputes that Muslims need democracy". The ancient caliphate was not a democratic institution, excluding as it did non-Muslims and women from participation in the political process.
Nor are we entirely persuaded that restraining Muslims whose notions of self-quest and self-rule entail blowing up Americans is necessarily genocidal. The problem that Prof. Khan does not address is less one of America respecting the rights of tribesmen in Pakistan to throw tablecloths over there womenfolk as it is one of Muslims imposing their values on Americans in this country.

Full post as published by West Neanderthal Drive on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).