Islamist fundamentalism on the move in Yemen

Well, we can't be against protecting virtue and fighting vice, can't we?

Ami Isseroff

Cleric initiates an authority for "protecting virtue and fighting vice"

By: Almigdad Mojalli

Abdul Majid Al-Zindani, Sadiq Al-Ahmar, Hussein Al-Ahmar and company prepare to address the crowd of 6,000 who gathered to hear about the new "Authority for Protecting Virtue and Fighting Vice." YT photo by Almigdad Mojalli

SANA'A, July 15 — A meeting hosted by Sheikh Abdul Majid Al-Zindani announced on Tuesday that it intends to create a new para-governmental authority to comb the streets and root out anything in society that the committee deems to be a vice, including co-education in schools and universities and television series played during the month of Ramadan.

The newly-created Authority for Protecting Virtue and Fighting Vice said they will work side-by-side with the concerned governmental authorities. Members said they plan that the authority will be responsible for finding offenders who are promoting vice and report them to the police, who will then decide what to do with them. The group said that it would be the Yemeni police force who would decide whether or not to punish those caught by the authority.

However, the government released a statement the same day as Al-Zindani's meeting saying that only the government should concern itself with citizens' freedom, and no other institution can give or take away rights. Likewise, various political opposition parties launched an intense campaign against the authority since hearing of its plans in May.

"The authority was supposed to be composed of 25 clerics and five ministers," said Hamoud Al-Tharehi, the Supreme Committee member from the Islah Islamic Party. However, during the meeting, it was decided that the authority will instead consist of 42 clerics alone. "We reconsidered the issue and decided to restrict the authority to the Yemeni Clerics Association," added Al-Tharehi, pointing out that cooperation between clerics and governmental authorities might be difficult and lead to more problems.

Abdul Majid Al-Zindani, the head of Al-Iman University and a controversial figure in Islam as well as in Yemen, reaffirmed that the security forces would really be the ones protecting virtue and fighting vice. "Our only medium of change is the word, but the act is left for the state," said Al-Zindani.

Al-Zindani also said that the authority will ask the government to close any workplace spreading vices like serving alcohol and permitting prostitution. "We will never be silent towards any place, wherever it is," he added.

Al-Tharehi stated that the authority would specifically target private institutions frequented by the wealthy. He said that those are the institutions that smuggle children and promote prostitution.

Al-Tharehi denied that the authority had any hand in recent restaurant closures, but praised those who were responsible.

"The individuals who closed the restaurants don't belong to the authority, but they have good faith," said Al-Tharehi. "Also, there are individuals in Hodeidah who have good faith and individuals in Aden who have good faith," he mentioned in reference to the vigilante anti-vice squads in those cities that seemingly spontaneously cropped up in the last year.

The Yemeni clerics who will make up the new anti-vice authority released a statement of their own, expressing shock at the spread of vices in the country. They said these vices included bringing Arab and foreign female singers and dancers to Yemen for performances, opening nightclubs, broadcasting or holding fashion shows, mixed-sex dancing and pornographic channels in some hotels.

The statement also condemned broadcasting certain television series that play during Ramadan, which they said contradicts with morals during the holy month.

Yet another vice in the eyes of the authority, according to its published statement, is sending female students away to study in foreign countries without companions from their families. The authority said it also considered co-education in schools and universities to be a vice.

In another statement, members of the authority condemned what it called "the press campaign" against the Authority of Protecting Virtue and Fighting Vice, accusing the press of encouraging the building of churches and an overall increased "Christianization" in Yemen. The statement also accused the media of insulting and satirizing verses from the Holy Quran, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and Islamic clerics in general. It added that the press was a herald for vice and pornography.

The meeting's attendees numbered around 6,000 people, consisting of tribal sheiks, clerics and Members of Parliament (MPs). However, the meeting didn't involve any academics, government representatives or women. Female journalists, including one from the Yemen Times, were turned away from the meeting and told leave. Al-Zindani claimed in the meeting that he had sent 100 invited to academics, but none responded.

Most of the attendees were wearing traditional Yemeni garments including the thobe and the jambiya and the overwhelming majority had long beards.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Did Hezbollah really lose?

This account of the Hezbollah victory in Lebanon, Armed and Dangerous, like many others, attempts to be optimistic about the final outcome: Hezbollah will be exposed as a group that is not really interested in fighting Israel so much as in taking over Lebanon. By using their arms against other Arabs, they forfeited their legitimacy and will eventually fail.

David Kenner writes in the New Republic article:

But by turning their weapons on their fellow countrymen earlier this month, Hezbollah has violated the "grand bargain" with the Lebanese public that has allowed them to remain militarized. And by targeting Sunni areas of Beirut and Druze villages in the Chouf, Hezbollah has revealed itself to be, at its heart, a sectarian militia after all, provoking new hostility among non-Shia Lebanese. "The street is very angry about what has happened," says Yehya Jaber, a journalist for The Future, a newspaper owned by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri whose offices were ransacked and set aflame during the clashes. "No matter what the politicians do, this is a temporary peace."
....
If Hassan Nasrallah had kept his weapons aimed solely at Israel instead of involving them in Lebanon's sectarian struggle, he may still have won Rabih's grudging respect. But local threats weigh heavier on his mind than geopolitical concerns. "It's two different worlds," Rabih explains, gesturing towards Barbour, no more than a minute's stroll away. "There is a deep hatred between these neighborhoods now."

The resentment is even deeper among the few Sunnis who live in Barbour. "The army tried to come in [during the first day of clashes], but Amal humiliated them and told them to leave," says Sana, a Sunni shopkeeper whose son had to change his identifiably Sunni name to something more generic. "I used to have a picture of [assassinated former prime minister and Sunni leader] Rafik Hariri in my home," she continues, lamenting the need to adjust to life under Shia domination. "But I took it down when the fighting began, because I live next to one of the bodyguards of [Amal leader] Nabih Berri."

As the terror of last month's attacks subsides, the fear of Hezbollah among Lebanon's Sunni, Christian, and other minority communities is quickly turning to anger. By alienating the other sects, Hezbollah's short-term military victory seems to be turning into a long-term threat to its weapons and its autonomy. Their violation of the unspoken bargain of their militarization last month is a significant turning point in Lebanon's precarious sectarian balance--a move that has already started to undermine Hezbollah's special status among the Lebanese population.

Losing their weapons would be a major--and possibly fatal--blow to the group. Without its weapons, Hezbollah would probably lose the support of its Iranian sponsors (whose primary goal is to use the group as a front against Israel), making it difficult for the organization to maintain its patronage networks, and thus allowing space for new Shia leaders to emerge.


"It is difficult for me to imagine Hezbollah [surviving very long] as a toothless organization," Safa says. In light of this month's violence, that day may now be closer than ever before.

It might happen. The flaws in the above logic are legion however. Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah are not stupid and they understood exactly how far they could go. They have engineered the takeover in such a way that from now on they no longer need force. They have veto power over any government decision according to the terms of the agreement. Therefore, it is almost inconceivable that they will be induced to lay down their arms. Moreover, while their might be a lot of dissatisfaction with the Hezbollah in Lebanon, this is meaningless unless it can be translated into armed force. How many divisions has Future TV? None. It was shut down in fact by Hezbollah thugs. In the showdown, the army sided with Hezbollah, working out a near-bloodless capitulation to Hezbollah demands, that only required that they remove their troops from the streets. Saad Hariri had no say in the matter. He was a prisoner in his own house, and his Future TV was put off the air. As Hezbollah had won all their demands, there was no reason for them to keep their troops in the streets. The Qatar agreement simply put the seal of approval on the Hezbollah victory. Moreover, Kenner ignores the huge capacity of Lebanese and their politicians to delude themselves. One has only to read the Beirut Daily Star to understand that a significant element of Sunni Arabs and Christians are willing to make believe that the Hezbollah are really working for the unity of Lebanon and that the Qatar agreement is a "good thing." This is no doubt preferable to opposing the Hezbollah, which has often proven to be very bad for the health of journalists and politicians.

Hebollah has managed to take power by assassinating its most important enemies and then using just enough armed force to make clear who is boss. It is far more likely that if Hezbollah ever "surrenders its arms" it will be because its own troops have been absorbed in, and have come to dominate the Lebanese army. At that point, there will be nothing left of Lebanese sovereignty. The issue of popular support doesn't matter. Islamic Republics like Iran are not dependent on the support of a democratic electorate. They maintain their rule at gun point. The AK-47 and the explosive device, rather than the ballot and the public opinion polls, will decide the future of Lebanon, just as they have now decided the Qatar "agreement."

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Better in Baghdad?

I am not saying it's true. It is this man's opinion.

 

Perseverance Pays Off in Baghdad
By MELIK KAYLAN
April 12, 2008; Page A9

Baghdad

 

The recent violence in Sadrist areas of Baghdad should not distract us from the big picture. The capital city of Iraq is immensely more at peace than it was a year ago.

 

This time last year, there were deep booms and the rattle of extended firefights from virtually all around the compass throughout the day and night. Such incidents are now a rare occurrence in a week.

 

Some of the reasons for this progress are better known than others. The surge, the Awakening Councils and the neighborhood-based counterinsurgency program have received solid credit.

 

But the condign effects of the Iraqis' own Baghdad Services Committee and Popular Mobilization Committee have garnered little attention outside Iraq, perhaps because they are led by Ahmed Chalabi, the returned exile who is far more controversial abroad than at home. Yet these days the committees' weekly government-level meetings are attended by ministers and American and Iraqi generals from David Petraeus on down.

 

Whatever some Americans in the U.S. may think of Mr. Chalabi, this much is certain: He has stayed in Baghdad throughout the troubles, living in the Red Zone, touring the neighborhoods more than any Iraqi politician, and routinely incurring considerable risks. He could have lived safely abroad on his family wealth.

 

Mr. Chalabi has made no effort to advertise that he helped the surge succeed by implementing the civilian arm of the Baghdad Security Plan through the work of the two committees. Arguably, he has, more than anyone in the country, evolved a detailed sense of what ails Baghdadis and how to fix things.

 

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appointed Mr. Chalabi to launch the committees last year, no doubt because Mr. Chalabi's unusual habit of direct contact with the populace made him the only realistic choice.

 

The Popular Mobilization Committee (PMC) was launched in February 2007. It now supervises the activity of some 3,000 volunteers around Baghdad. They, in turn, operate a localized system of 120 neighborhood watch committees. They provide intelligence, report trouble, help settle returnees to their homes and the like. They have been crucial in stabilizing the city neighborhood by neighborhood.

 

Mr. Chalabi estimates that a total of perhaps one million (mostly Sunni middle-class) refugees left Baghdad after 2003. Many of them left Iraq, while some 350,000 were internally displaced. A quarter have now returned, and more are coming back, chiefly because their money has run out. They routinely find squatters in their homes.

 

According to Mr. Chalabi, the situation is often delicate, but not as bad as it might be. "Everyone knows who actually lives where," he says. "People work out reasonable solutions. Baghdadis are very clear about ownership." (According to a Chalabi aide, real estate values in the city have actually gone up in the last year.) Since many of the refugees were forcibly purged, a deal of suspicion and anxiety attends the process, which the local committees help smooth out.

 

Meanwhile, the PMC takes Shiite leaders into Sunni areas and vice-versa. "We just did two reconciliation meetings where hostile tribal chieftains invited each other just because they heard we were coming," Mr. Chalabi told me.

 

Through the PMC, Sunni mosques are returned to Sunnis. Intersectarian prayers are held. The PMC also monitors the prisons, and provides legal help to citizens, as requested by the local committees. To avoid favoritism and the appearance of patronage, "we decided that whoever does the most work gets to lead the committees," says Mr. Chalabi. As a result, even the most hostile sectarian areas welcome his efforts as practical rather than political, and above all as efficacious.

 

This is especially true of the Baghdad Services Committee, which concentrates on water, electricity, infrastructure repair and the like. The BSC was launched in November 2007, with the immediate goal of reclaiming the circle of power plants deliberately positioned by Saddam Hussein around Baghdad in Baathist areas.

 

Much of the city's post-Saddam power supply was either hijacked or deliberately sabotaged, until the BSC identified the problem. It demanded a military presence to protect substations, while arranging for the railways to transport diesel into the city. Electricity supply today is three hours on, three off, up from one hour a day last year.

 

Mr. Chalabi complains that the U.S. does not do enough to help the power supply. "In Mahmoudiya [a suburb], we are asking the Russians to come back and complete a power station which they half-finished in Saddam's time," he says. "Electricity is crucial also for pumping water. Baghdad needs three million cubic meters of water a day. The most reliable source north of Baghdad can provide almost a half of that, but it needs power. We got . . . [from the US military] a massive generator of 60 megahertz, whereas all our system is designed for 50 megahertz – it's just sitting there."

 

Some Baghdad neighborhoods are improvised shantytowns with no access to water and no sewage system. Says Mr. Chalabi: "We must provide 1,000 tanker trucks quickly by this summer. But I'm not confident we'll get them. The real, long-term solution is to build housing with proper infrastructure – we are in desperate need of new housing."

 

The BSC has gained a considerable reputation around Baghdad for taking government ministers into neglected areas, television cameras in tow, to shame the government into action. Mr. Chalabi's political party, the Iraqi National Congress, also recently launched a weekly newspaper entirely about services, in which citizens get to sound off and government officials are asked to respond.

 

The practical projects of these committees aside, one could argue that their greatest service has been psychological: to show that the problems of Baghdad, and by implication Iraq, are not some bottomless pit of chaos. They can be dealt with concretely and overcome with perseverance.

 

Mr. Kaylan is a writer based in New York.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Salah Choudhury: The Man Islamists Cannot Silence

The Man Islamists Cannot Silence

http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1594

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - By: Benkin, Richard

---

He fired the first salvo in 2003 and has been sticking his thumb in Islamist eyes ever since.  Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury describes himself as a "Muslim Zionist."  He is unabashedly pro-US, pro-Israel, and anti-Islamist.  More importantly, he remains all of that from within the Muslim world, which he refuses to leave.  I have fielded any number of asylum requests for him, and he declined them all.  "Retreat is not in my vocabulary," he says, for he believes that if he were to leave his country, his credibility would be gone, and Islamists would claim victory; a satisfaction he refuses to give them.  "Bangladesh is my country," he says.  "Let the radicals leave!"

Since 2003, we have fought not only a battle of ideas but also a battle of wills with our adversaries; and the skirmishes never end.  Shoaib has been imprisoned and tortured.  He has been beaten, and Islamists bombed his newspaper before they and their cronies in the ruling party seized the premises.  All of this happened after Shoaib published articles that exposed the rising strength of Islamist radicals in Bangladesh, urged relations with Israel, and advocated genuine interfaith dialogue based on religious equality.

In November of that year, he was about to board a plane for Bangkok and then Israel (there are no direct flights between Dhaka and Tel Aviv), agents grabbed him.  Eventually, they charged him with sedition, treason, and blasphemy, which are capital offenses and could send Shoaib to the gallows. 

In 2005, however, after an intense seventeen month campaign for his freedom, Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) took on his case.  He summoned then Bangladeshi Ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury to his Washington office, and the three of us had a sometimes acrimonious, always difficult, hours-long meeting.  As Kirk (a member of the House Appropriations Committee) describes it, we had a "full and frank discussion," after which Dhaka agreed to free Shoaib Choudhury.

Our elation was short-lived, however, when Shamsher Chowdhury clarified that Shoaib would be freed on bail even though the ambassador had just admitted that there was no substance to the charges.  To be sure, we had won the most important point: Shoaib would be free.  Still, I looked up and said, "Not good enough.  It's an old and tired ruse used by tyrants," I continued.  "Free the dissident but keep the charges pending in order to silence him."  And so we argued some more until Chowdhury relented and agreed that Dhaka would drop the charges not long after Shoaib's release.

That was three years ago.  The charges remain, even though numerous Bangladeshi officials have made the same admission as the ambassador; that the charges are baseless and are maintained only to placate the country's radical Islamists.  Bangladesh's population is about 88 percent Muslim, a figure that is growing constantly, especially as Hindus are being ethnically cleansed from that country, falling from 18 to nine percent of the population.  Although radical Islamists affiliated with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations represent only a small proportion of the population, they have infiltrated and taken charge of almost every major institution in Bangladesh from education and banking to police and the judiciary.

For months, both sides had settled into a sort of stasis until this past fall when the Bangladeshis tried illegally to revoke Shoaib's bail and send him back to prison.  The fact that we continued to frustrate these attempts could have had something to do with what happened next.  On the evening of March 18, as Shoaib sat at his desk working on another edition of his newspaper, Weekly Blitz, a large contingent of armed goons from the government's paramilitary squad -- the hated and feared Rapid Action Battalion or RAB -- burst into his office.  They ordered all employees out, seized Shoaib's means of contacting the outside, and began "interrogating" him. 

Fortunately, his driver quickly alerted Shoaib's brother, Sohail, who telephoned me in the United States.  Shoaib's life was in very real danger, so we determined on an immediate course of action.  Sohail called Luke Zahner, Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Dhaka, and a long time supporter of Shoaib's.  Zahner, who had previously helped set up USAID's elections support program in Iraq, notified U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Geeta Pasi.

I telephoned Kirk's office and described the events unfolding in Dhaka and their life-and-death nature to Andria Hoffman, who is Kirk's point person on the Choudhury case.  "These [RAB] are bad people.  I know them, and you don't even want them as friends, let alone be on their bad side.  They're the kind of group where people sometimes go into their custody and 'disappear.'" 

Hoffman got to Kirk, and they set up an emergency command center in his Longworth Building office.  I then called three other legislators who have been especially supportive of Shoaib:  Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ), and Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA).  Their staffs -- who had frequently worked with me on Shoaib's case -- said they would take action and coordinate further with Kirk's office. 

That done, I telephoned Bangladesh's DC embassy and told them the following:  "If I don't receive a telephone call confirming that Shoaib has been released unharmed and soon, you're going to have a s**t storm like you've never even imagined." Within a short time, the embassy received calls from all four members of Congress mentioned above, as well as several others who they got involved.  Hoffman called the Embassy's political secretary, Sheikh Mohammed Belal on his personal cell phone, demanding action.

Cut to Bangladesh.  After holding Shoaib for about an hour an a half, an RAB officer said (and I am paraphrasing here), 'Oh look, it appears he has some illegal drugs in his desk drawer.'  Now, I have known Shoaib as a brother for years, and we have spent a lot of time together.  The man is simply not involved in any way with drugs.  Moreover, he and I have spoken on many occasions of the paramount importance of his remaining  "squeaky clean" in every way so as not to give his enemies an excuse to further persecute him.  According to Sohail Choudhury, the evidence had to be planted, a tactic that RAB has been known to use rather liberally.  No matter; they blindfolded Shoaib and took him to a "detention center" within RAB's office in the capital.  According to Shoaib, the officers continued the verbal assault non-stop.  They threatened him specifically and journalists in general for their criticism of the current military-backed government.  They repeatedly called Shoaib a "Zionist spy and agent of the Jews."

At one point, Shoaib reminded them that they were violating a US Congressional Resolution that calls for an end to this sort of harassment, something with which the government said it would comply.  House Resolution 64, authored by Kirk and co-sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) calls on the Bangladeshis to drop all charges against Shoaib and end all harassment of him and his family. It passed last year by an overwhelmingly 409-1 margin.  Their response was a string of expletives about the United States and the value of its resolutions. 

As they approached the three hour mark, things were turning even nastier.  RAB officers told Shoaib that he could expect a steady diet of this, or even worse, unless he began working for them; something that he called "ridiculous."  Then the phone rang.  The officers told Shoaib that the call came from "a high government official" ordering them to let him go.  He phoned Sohail and asked him to bring him home. 

Before they allowed them to go, however, Shoaib's captors forced the pair to sign an affidavit giving RAB the power to enter their home or business at any time and for any reason; although it should be added that it had no warrant or other sort of order when its men broke into his newspaper earlier.  As such, Shoaib remains in danger, especially as his legal status remains equivocal at best.

Although Shoaib was released unharmed, the action represents a serious escalation of the government's and its Islamist cronies' attempt to silence this courageous journalist who now counts supporters on every continent.  Equally important, we have learned over the years that they do these things periodically to probe us and test our resolve.  They want to know if we are going to react or note.  They want to know if we still are ready to defend Shoaib and other anti-Islamists or if we have lost interest. 

Unfortunately, they started this false persecution on the assumption that no one would care what happened to Shoaib, and many in the government still believe that we Americans have little resolve -- and actually have told me that.  And so they go after us.  Our enemies count on this and point to success when they hear proposals to make concessions in Israel or to pull up stakes in Iraq and elsewhere.  If we don't respond, and respond with strength, they'll continue persecuting Shoaib and others like him.

Because, in fact, the stakes go beyond even the fate of this hero.  Muslim editors from Pakistan to Indonesia (and even the United States) have told us that Muslims throughout Asia are watching this case.  They want to know if it is possible to stand against the radicals and prevail -- without running to the safety of the West, as they put it.  If Shoaib prevails, they will be emboldened to act similarly.  If we let him go down -- and that is exactly how they will see it -- they will remain silent.

When Shoaib was in prison, his brother told me that people all over the world who need a champion to save them from oppression look only one place, the United States; not to Europe; not to tyrants like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad or Fidel Castro who claim to be freedom fighters; and not to terrorist like Osama Bin Laden.  When we stand with Shoaib, we reinforce their belief in us.

In the meantime, Shoaib Choudhury refuses to be silent, especially he says given all the support he received.  Two days after his abuse at RAB's hands, he published another edition of Weekly Blitz.  Two of its headline articles were "RAB Cocoon of Terror" and "They want to Appease Islamists."  He is our ally; he is my brother; he is the bravest man I know.  He is the man whom Islamists cannot silence.

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Understanding Al-Qaeda - a battle between Muslims

The conclusion to be derived from thesis presented in The Two Faces of Al Qaeda is fairly straightforward. The war of Al-Qaida is at present primarily a war between Muslims, not a war of Muslims against the west. Bin-Laden wants power in Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Muslim world first and foremost. Perhaps at a later stage this power would be used against the West. The aim of the terror attacks is not to destroy the West, but to mobilize support for extremism in the Muslim world.

It follows that criticism of Jihadist extremism is not "islamophobia," and that well meaning people who try to ignore or euphemize Islamism are not helping moderate Muslims in any way: quite the contrary.

Ami Isseroff

Chronicle of Higher Education

September 21, 2007

The Two Faces of Al Qaeda

By RAYMOND IBRAHIM

When the September 11 attacks occurred, I was in Fresno, Calif., researching my M.A. thesis on the Battle of Yarmuk, one of the first yet little-known battles between Christendom and Islam, waged in 636 A.D. That battle, in which the Arab invaders were outmatched and yet still triumphed, would have immense historical repercussions. A mere four years later, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and all the land between, would become Islamic. A century later, all the land between southern France and India would be added to the House of Islam.

The next time I came across any reference to this pivotal battle was four years later, as I was translating the words of Osama bin Laden. Surprisingly, an event that seemed so distant, almost irrelevant, to the West was to bin Laden a source not only of pride but of instruction. For him it was not mere history but an inspiring example of outnumbered and underequipped mujahedin who, through faith-inspired courage, managed to defeat the Western empire of Byzantium. When the Arab and Afghan mujahedin, including bin Laden's nascent Al Qaeda - outnumbered and underequipped - defeated the Soviet invaders, history was repeating itself.

Yet why would this band, so reminiscent of their seventh-century forebears, attack the United States, its onetime ally against the Soviets, and in such a horrific manner? What was its motivation?

Finding answers seemed easy enough. From the start, the Internet -- unregulated, uncensored, unfettered -- has been Al Qaeda's primary mouthpiece. Then, as now, whenever Al Qaeda has wanted to communicate with the West, it has posted videotaped messages, some complete with English subtitles.

After the events of 9/11, my increased interest in Arabic language and history led me to enroll in Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Before and during my studies at Georgetown, I avidly read any and all posted Al Qaeda messages. The group's motivation seemed clear enough: retaliation. According to its widely disseminated statements, the West in general, and the United States in particular, had been -- overtly and covertly -- oppressing and exploiting the Islamic world. The accusations included: unqualified U.S. support for Israel at the expense of Palestinians; deaths of Iraqi children due to U.N. sanctions; U.S. support for dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world; and, most recently, Western occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Every single message directed to the West by Al Qaeda includes most of these core grievances, culminating with the statement that it is the Islamic world's duty to defend itself. "After all this, does the prey not have the right, when bound and dragged to its slaughter, to escape? Does it not have the right, while being slaughtered, to lash out with its paw?" bin Laden asks.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even the 9/11 strikes are explained as acts of reprisal. After describing the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, where several high-rise apartment buildings were leveled, reportedly leaving some 18,000 Arabs dead, bin Laden, in a 2004 message directed at Americans, said: "As I looked upon those crumpling towers in Lebanon, I was struck by the idea of punishing the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America -- giving them a taste of their own medicine and deterring them from murdering our women and children."

Soon after relocating to Washington in order to attend Georgetown, I landed an internship, which later evolved into a full-time position, at the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, where thousands of new books, serials, and microfilms arrive yearly from the Arab world.

Numerous Arabic books dealing with Al Qaeda passed through my hands in this privileged position. A good number contained not only excerpts or quotes by Al Qaeda but entire treatises written by its members. Surprisingly, I came to discover that most of these had never been translated into English. Most significantly, however, the documents struck me as markedly different from the messages directed to the West, in both tone and (especially) content.

It soon became clear why these particular documents had not been directed to the West. They were theological treatises, revolving around what Islam commands Muslims to do vis-à-vis non-Muslims. The documents rarely made mention of all those things -- Zionism, Bush's "Crusade," malnourished Iraqi children -- that formed the core of Al Qaeda's messages to the West. Instead, they were filled with countless Koranic verses, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and the consensus and verdicts of Islam's most authoritative voices. The temporal and emotive language directed at the West was exchanged for the eternal language of Islam when directed at Muslims. Or, put another way, the language of "reciprocity" was exchanged for that of intolerant religious fanaticism. There was, in fact, scant mention of the words "West," "U.S.," or "Israel." All of those were encompassed by that one Arabic-Islamic word, "kufr" -- "infidelity" -- the regrettable state of being non-Muslim that must always be fought through "tongue and teeth."

Consider the following excerpt -- one of many -- which renders Al Qaeda's reciprocal-treatment argument moot. Soon after 9/11, an influential group of Saudis wrote an open letter to the United States saying, "The heart of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is justice, kindness, and charity." Bin Laden wrote in response:

As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High's Word: "We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us -- till you believe in Allah alone." So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility -- that is, battle-- ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed, or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! Allah Almighty's Word to his Prophet recounts in summation the true relationship: "O Prophet! Wage war against the infidels and hypocrites and be ruthless. Their abode is hell -- an evil fate!" Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred -- directed from the Muslim to the infidel - is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.

Bin Laden goes so far as to say that the West's purported hostility toward Islam is wholly predicated on Islam's innate hostility toward the rest of the world, contradicting his own propaganda: "The West is hostile to us on account of ... offensive jihad."

In an article titled "I was a fanatic ... I know their thinking" published by the Daily Mail soon after the London and Glasgow terrorist plots, Hassan Butt, a former jihadist, helps explain the Islamist dichotomy between the propaganda of reciprocity and the theology of eternal hostility toward the infidel: "When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network ... I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings, and 7/7 was Western foreign policy."

One is reminded of the captured video showing bin Laden laughing and gesticulating soon after the 9/11 strikes, boasting that many of the hijackers weren't even aware that they were on a suicide mission. Butt continues:

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology. ... As with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today program, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

Whatever position one takes as to why Al Qaeda has declared war on America, one thing is clear: We must begin to come to terms with all of Al Qaeda's rhetoric, not just what is aimed specifically at Western readers. We must particularly come to better appreciate the theological aspects that underpin radical Islam. As Butt puts it:

The main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever -- and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

When news of The Al Qaeda Reader leaked to the press in 2005, some on the left questioned whether the book would be a pseudoscholarly attempt to demonize Muslims. Others on the right worried that unfiltered exposure to the radical beliefs and propaganda of bin Laden and his cohorts might unintentionally lead to more converts or sympathizers.

My reply is simply this: Whatever one's position in regard to the "war on terror," understanding the ideas of our enemy is both a practical necessity in wartime and a fundamental liberal value. It is my hope that both sides in this bitter debate will profit from a deeper acquaintance with these works. In any case, it simply will not do to dismiss Al Qaeda as an irrational movement without ideas.

Raymond Ibrahim is editor and translator of The Al Qaeda Reader, recently published by Broadway Books. All translations in this article are from the book.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 4, Page B13

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Christian 'activist' killed - by Palestinians

Headline:

 

Palestinian Christian activist found dead in Gaza City

An "activist" is generally someone who plants bombs in Middle East newsspeak, but this activist was director of the Teacher's Bookshop, Gaza's only Christian bookstore, which is run by the Bible Society of Gaza Baptist church. Health Ministry officials confirmed his death.

 

Ayyad had been missing since Saturday evening. Over the years he had received repeated death threats from unidentified people displeased with his missionary work. He was found stabbed to death in a street in Gaza City early Sunday.

 

The associated press article adds gratuitously and incorrectly, that Muslim-Christian relations have not deteriorated since the Hamas takeover in June. Apparently, this means that the Muslims burn churches and murder "activists," and the Christians smile and say "I can't complain."

 

Ami Isseroff 
 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Sabotaging moderate Muslims

Guess who wrote this?

"Islamist fundamentalist groups, which have concentrated virtually all their efforts on recruitment and consolidating forces, fear the open door from which the winds of independent thought might shake their unity of rank. Thus, their members have been left to create the contours of the fundamentalist dream on the basis of ancient works of jurisprudence. As a result, they have become even more rigid than their leaders and have come to form a powerful pressure group within the movement that not only hampers their leaderships' ability to proclaim fresh ideas but also restricts their leaderships' manoeuvrability, which is one of the essential prerequisites for any drive to attain a dream. What remains, then, is the vast ability to cause problems, bring down disaster on others and generally obstruct progress and development. "

Was it a Zionist Islamophobic Neocon? An advocate of war of civilizations? If we believe some Western whitewashers of Islamist fanaticism, only such people would write bad things about the nice Islamists like the Hezbollah, the Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood Group (see for example, Islamism: Perception versus Reality )

But in fact, it was written in Al Ahram newspaper, by Salah Eissa. In Muslim societies troubled by Islamist (or Jihadist) extremism, there is a growing movement of justifiable alarm and disillusionment with the extremist views and the narrow and reactionary concepts of society that these groups want to impose. Where "Islamist" or more properly "Islamic" political parties have succeeded democraticaly, in countries such as Turkey, they have abandoned, at least temporarily, the ambition of imposing Sha'aria law on all of society.

Paradoxically, in the West, the Islamist fanatics have recruited a coterie of apologists, who insist that any criticism of Islamism is "Islamophobia," and that Westerners had better learn to love restriction of intellectual life, persecution of homosexuals and repression of women in the interests of dialogue and multipluralistic liberal values. This paradoxical acceptance of an ultra-reactionary movement by "liberals" threatens to sabotage the efforts of moderate Muslims to return their societies to sanity, and to find a reasonable and progressive path between the corruption and failure pan-Arabist dictators and reactionary sheikhs on the one hand, and the threat of totalitarian religious societies posed by Islamists.

Ami Isseroff

Islamist inertia
In shutting the door to change, difference and reason, contemporary Islamist movements bind themselves to a mummified past, writes Salah Eissa*

Since 1979, when the Iranian revolution succeeded in toppling the peacock throne and founding an Islamic republic, "The Islamists are coming!" has been a cry that voiced the hopes of some and the fears of others.

For Islamist groups across the Arab- Islamic map, the Iranian revolution rekindled dreams of a victory of their own, even though these groups still suffered the after effects of successive waves of assault waged against them by Arab nationalist regimes from the early 1950s to the mid- 1970s. Not only did these campaigns throw Islamist groups into organisational disarray, and most of their leaders into prison, they also succeeded in turning the majority of the Arab public against them while luring it to the Arab nationalist model which seemed poised to realise their social and national aspirations.

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, the credibility of the Arab nationalist project waned and its popularity dwindled. By the time of the Iranian revolution, Islamist groups had just begun to emerge from their cocoons and present themselves as the alternative to all preceding national revival projects, as the untried path untainted by disaster and defeat.

Since then, all signs indicated that the Muslim fundamentalist movement was marching relentlessly forward. A military coup paved the way for their seizure of power in Sudan. They were steadily gaining ground in the parliaments in Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Algeria and, indeed, they won sizeable majorities in legislative elections in Palestine and Turkey. Their mounting popularity across the Arab world was also reflected in their growing, if not controlling, presence in many civil society organisations, notably in the occupational syndicates.

One factor that facilitated this progress was that some governments allied themselves with moderate Islamists in the hope of obstructing the danger of radical fundamentalists that espoused the use of violence. Some political parties and movements also pursued the same tactic, if for different ends, such as to combine forces against a common external enemy (the US and Israel) or against a domestic adversary (dictatorial regimes) or merely to hitch up with the Islamist trend in order to win more votes in the polls.

The West, spearheaded by the US, was alarmed at this development, in spite of the fact that it was instrumental in fostering it. The West had worked assiduously to destroy Arab nationalist governments that were once a bulwark against the fundamentalist tide. It also enlisted Muslim fundamentalists in its fight against communism. This alliance reached its zenith in the war to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation and came to a reverberating close with the events of 11 September 2001.

But is the march of Muslim fundamentalists towards power in the Arab world, whether they succeed by coup or through democratic processes, irreversible? Has the civil state ended as a phase in political evolution and must we ready ourselves for a theocratic state?

The answer to these questions is affirmative if we judge solely by the balance of power between Muslim fundamentalists and other political forces. But it quickly moves to the negative once we take a closer look at the contradictions within the greater Islamist movement itself and unearth a number of weak points that could hamper its progress and perhaps thwart its goals entirely.

The problem with the Muslim fundamentalist project is that it is founded upon the utopian dream of reviving the Islamic state as it existed in its golden era. What is conspicuously lacking in the discourse of proponents of this project is a clear conception of the material means needed to resuscitate that past so many centuries after its death and to revive all the attendant circumstances that had enabled that state to flourish.

True, the ability of abstractions to tickle the deep religious grain of the Muslim people is a major reason for the widespread popularity of the fundamentalist project. However, when forced to come down to earth and deal with the difficulties that obstruct its path, or with the brass tacks of rule as dictated by balances of power and the various demands of reality, the project runs out of steam.

The fact is that the fundamentalist project has an Achilles heel. It posits a dream of reviving the glory of the Islamic empire but ignores the fact that what enabled that empire to flourish was its openness to other cultures and civilisations. This applies to Muslim jurists and theologians, as long as the doors to dialogue and the exercise of reason in light of the changes and challenges of contemporary reality remained open, furnishing a constant source of inspiration and renovation. Conversely, the decline of Islamic civilisation began when the door leading to the application of reason and independent thought was slammed shut. If their aim is to revive our ancient glory, proponents of the fundamentalist project should first strive to breach the gap between the 4th century in the Islamic calendar, when the door to ijtihad was closed, and the present, so as to be able to formulate a philosophy that suits the times in which we live.

But this seems unlikely. Islamist fundamentalist groups, which have concentrated virtually all their efforts on recruitment and consolidating forces, fear the open door from which the winds of independent thought might shake their unity of rank. Thus, their members have been left to create the contours of the fundamentalist dream on the basis of ancient works of jurisprudence. As a result, they have become even more rigid than their leaders and have come to form a powerful pressure group within the movement that not only hampers their leaderships' ability to proclaim fresh ideas but also restricts their leaderships' manoeuvrability, which is one of the essential prerequisites for any drive to attain a dream. What remains, then, is the vast ability to cause problems, bring down disaster on others and generally obstruct progress and development.

The danger, therefore, is not so much that "The Islamists are coming," but that they still have the power to obstruct progress towards democracy in Muslim countries.

* The writer is editor-in-chief of Al-Qahira weekly newspaper.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

The Jewish worriers - Open letter to Larry Derfner & Maurice Ostroff about God's Warriors and their correspondence

Dear Larry and Maurice,
I have followed your correspondence regarding the now notorious CNN film as best I could, and tried to make sense of all of it.

Larry Derfner wrote:

But on the subject of the Israeli-Arab conflict, you are, according to my definition, a hardline right-winger. I say that because your view, or at least your stated view, of the conflict is that in 100% of the disputes between Israel and the Arabs, Israel is 100% and the Arabs are 100% wrong.

This is a continuation of the sort of argument you used in your article, is it not? "It is right wing, and therefore it is wrong." Serious analysts don't base arguments on calling names. Leave that to Stalin in the sessions of the Politburo. It doesn't matter if Maurice is an agent of the reactionary kulaks, a right-deviationist, a wrecker of the five year plan or a left deviationist. It doesn't matter if CAMERA is composed of third-temple fanatics or A.N.S.W.E.R. advocates. What matters is the logic of their criticism.

If Maurice is a hardline right-winger, then what might Benjamin Netanyahu be? You don't seem to have much gradation in your scale. Such distinctions are usually the mark of superficial minds that want to substitute labeling for analysis, and to dismiss uncomfortable and inconvenient facts by painting them with the stigma of "wrong opinion" or "not PC." Churchill was a "hard line right winger" but he was right about Nazism, and his opponents were wrong. They got away with discrediting him for many years just by using labels like "war monger."

There are some simple propositions that are central to our problems: Settlements are wrong, terrorism is wrong, and Jihadist fanaticism is a danger to civilization of all types. It is hard to make all three statements without being labeled a leftist self-hating Jew and a traitor by one group, an Islamophobic neocon by the other side, and a Zionist war monger to boot. I happen to hold all three beliefs. I don't know where that puts me on the Larry Derfner political scale, and I don't care either. Until we get all those self-serving fools and fanatics out of the room, we cannot have a real discussion.

Propositions have to be considered independently of who is saying them, and independently of other ideological baggage they might bring with them. You need to learn to stick to the issues, and to teach your readers to think rather than to lob labels at each other like grenades. If Aumann or Haniyeh say that the Sun is shining, then the way to prove if they are right or wrong is to look out the window, rather than arguing about whether they are right-wingers or left-wingers. Forgive me for saying that it is an embarrassing and juvenile sort of argument. It may sell newspapers. You are in business to do that. But it makes heat, and not light.

The gab-fest benefits the film itself, because any publicity is good publicity, and it benefits the organizations who are dumping on the film, and who will get more donations from their loyal followers. It does nothing to advance either truth or the cause of Israel, regardless of whether these are the same or different. No neutral or anti-Israel person is going to be convinced by CAMERA or Honest Reporting, and there is no way to ascertain the facts without seen the film and doing the research. Reading these reviews adds nothing. I know who Osama Bin Laden is and I know what he wants. I don't need Honest Reporting or Christianne Anampour to tell me. By now I suspect that only about three dozen people care about that film. It was just another bit of vacuous entertainment with no more truth value (maybe less) than an episode of The Shield or House, and less entertainment value. Discussing it gives it publicity.

The last time there was a similar dustup it was about Spielberg's film, Munich. Reading the criticism of Jewish organizations, I thought that Spielberg must have joined the PLO or maybe the Hamas. Then I saw the film, which was largely sympathetic to Israel and the Zionist cause, and portrayed humanistic and humanitarian Zionists tortured by the necessity of killing, contrasted with fanatic and one-dimensional Arabs. I have learned not to trust the moral standards and aesthetic and professional judgements of these organizations and to form my own judgement.

That said, any film that shows, at the same time, and as part of the same problem, the Jihadist threat along with Zionist and Christian extremists, is showing a lie. Nobody disputes that Amanpour does that. There is a difference between a movement that is morally wrong and theoretically a problem, and a political movement that is an active problem and a clear and present danger. Anti-abortionist fanatics and third temple builders are not my favorite people, but they haven't yet the power or the announced intention to destroy Western civilization. They are not a danger of the same order of magnitude as Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist extremists. There is no way to make Baruch Goldstein into Osama Bin Laden, or to turn Mr. Hagee into the equivalent of Ahmadinejad. Hagee doesn't run a state. He isn't building an atom bomb, and he hasn't declared the intention to make a world without anyone. Goldstein and his friends and supporters represent a morally reprehensible cause. Fortunately there are not a lot of them, and they have no power. They are not a threat to the United States, Western Civilization or Israel. Not yet. The proposition that Bin Laden has something to do with Israeli settlements is intellectual rubbish. Bin Laden's last message didn't even mention Israel. Some people don't want to admit what the real problem is. There is no reason to assist them in their self-delusion.

Larry wrote:

But the question she raises is, if the settlements are a bad thing (a point of view she supports with factual material), and every U.S. government has spoken against them to some degree, why doesn't the U.S. back up its sentiments with action - by pressuring Israel monetarily and politically to stop building settlements? And her answer is: because of the Israel lobby.

But the question I raise, is what do settlements have to do with Islamist fundamentalism in Afghanistan or the price of hay in China? Just because Bin Laden may say it is an issue, doesn't mean it is so. Bin Laden and his followers are not against settlements in the West Bank. They are against the existence of Israel. Just because Jack Kelley wrote that settlements are due to the activities of religious fanatics, doesn't make it so either. The evil of Jim Crow in the United States did not justify, and was not equivalent to, the evil of Stalinism in the USSR. Some people did equate them. It is clear now that they were as wrong as those who equated Stalin and Hitler and insisted that the US and Britain should stay out of World War II.

In any case, a lot of very unreligious people support those settlements. So what is the point? What is the connection to God's Warriors?

Bin Laden and his friends are also against loose morals in women, such as allowing divorce and parading about without a Hijab. So what? Why should this issue even be raised? Who cares what these people claim they support? Their "issues" are all just excuses for taking power by violent means.

And the other question I raise is, if the Israel Lobby is so all-powerful as you and Mearsheimer and Walt and Amanpour pretend, then why hasn't the US taken an unequivocally pro-Israel stance on so many critical issues for Israel, even when Israel is clearly in the right (that happens too sometimes)? How do they screw us? Let us count the ways:

- Boycott - United States continues to do business with Gulf and other countries that maintain primary boycotts of Israel, and the US keeps making believe it doesn't happen.

- Israel's right to exist - US does business with, and supports, numerous regimes that deny and have denied the right of Israel to exist.

- Refugee problem - the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the entire mechanism of UNRWA is possible only because of the support of the United States and its allies. No other group of refugees is treated in the same way as Palestinian refugees. An entire mechanism, funded by generous contributions of US and European taxpayers, has been created solely to perpetuate the conflict and the misery of the refugees. The United States has never lifted a finger to change this reality, never threatened to cut off support to the UN, never tried to cajole allies into changing the status of UNRWA.

- Jerusalem - the United States, despite the efforts of the vaunted Israel lobby, does not recognize even West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Congressional resolutions, promises of Presidential candidates, all avail nothing.

It may not suit either AIPAC nor Mearsheimer and Walt and their friends to admit it, but the effectiveness of the Israel lobby is close to zero. The US government does what it sees fit to do, and then justifies it in terms of support for Israel, or not.

Concerning the legality or illegality of settlements, it is a red herring issue, Maurice. You have to decide whether you want to fight Islamism with clean hands or defend settlements. You cannot have both. By raising this issue, you are playing right into the hands of those who want to equate Israeli actions with those of Osama Bin Laden. The whole settlement issue simply didn't belong in a documentary of that type, and its presence there is bizarre. The Tal lawthat exempts Ultraorthodox Jews from the draft is also wrong, and it is religiously motivated, but that doesn't have much to do with Jihadism either.


Ami Isseroff
Posted at Israel News

Continued (Permanent Link)