July 2, 2008
The Man Who Would Reform Islam
Every now and then we need reminding that there are Muslims who see the need to truly reform their faith. Dr Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix Arizona is one such man. Dr Jasser is the son of Syrian immigrants, and his medical specialty is internal medicine and nuclear cardiology. He served as a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, receiving an Honorable Discharge 1999. In March of 2003 he founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
Dr Jasser fully supports the U.S. Constitution and Western concepts of liberty. He is opposed to sharia law. Unlike most moderates who say that they are against violence but do not see the need for an Islamic reformation, Dr. Jasser clearly sees that Islam is at a crossroads.
Here is Dr. Jasser being interviewed by Pat McMahon, host of "The Pat McMahon Show" on AZ-TV on Wed. June 25, 2008
Part I
And here is Part II
Good profile of Dr Jasser and his AIFD in this news report
With their usual low cunning, the "human rights" sheikhs chose a courtroom that only seats 40 people so a big crowd (including CBC reporters) were wedged up peering through the glass in the door until the head sheikh (a judge best known for fining the Knights of Columbus for declining to rent their hall for a lesbian wedding) said the pressed faces of the people were distracting her and shooed them away. Typical. A third-rate bureaucracy that tells everyone from McDonald's to Maclean's magazine how to run their affairs can't even organize a show trial with minimal competence.Maybe the folks who can't get in should file a "human rights" complaint against the "human rights" tribunal for denying them the human right to attend a human rights trial. Say what you like about Saddam's justice system, but at least I'd be dead by now and out of my misery.
This is a big deal. From what I can tell the Canadian Human Rights Commission does have some serious powers. More than outright legal sanctions, though, is the message that will be sent if Steyn and Macleans loses; any serious criticism of Islam and we'll haul you before a tribunal and force you to spend thousands of dollars defending yourself. Still want to publish a book here?
Posted by Tom at 7:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 21, 2008
Straight Talk from McCain on Islamic Terror
Senator John McCain must be doing the right thing, because he's under attack from all the right groups:
A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.
"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."
However, the Senator is not backing down
An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.Steve Schmidt, a former Bush White House aide who is now a McCain media strategist, told The (Washington) Times that the use of the word is appropriate and that the candidate will continue to define the enemy that way.
"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully," Mr. Schmidt said. "But the reality is, the hateful ideology which underpins bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is."
Bingo
As of this writing there's nothing on his campaign website about the issue, but in the "National Security" section of his issues page there are three he uses the term; "Islamist extremism" once and "violent Islamic extremists" twice.
Good for McCain. I would actually prefer that he use the term "jihad", as this is what our enemies use, I'll take what I can get. This is a lot better than virtually any Democrat, none of whom to my knowledge even use "Islam" or "Islamic" in their descriptions.
Senator Barack Obama doesn't even have list "national security" or "terrorism" (or related) in the pull-down issues menu on his website. The closest we get is "foreign policy" and "homeland security". However, there is absolutely nothing about terrorism, let alone Islamic extremism, in either of those two sections.
Senator Hillary Clinton isn't any better. We find nothing about terrorism or national security on the pull down website either. If you dig you will eventually find a window with the headline "Hillary's Plans", and if you click on "Security and Opportunity: Hillary's Foreign Policy Vision" it takes you to the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, and from there to an article on terrorism that she wrote that appeared in their Nov/Dec 2007 print edition. If the word "Islam" appears in it I couldn't find it.
For a pair that claims to want to fight the "real" war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, they've got precious little to say about it. Maybe that's because they know their followers really couldn't care less.
The Islamic Society of Northern America
The The Islamic Society of Northern America seems to be an umbrella group who's membership consists of at least 8 groups as listed on their website:
* The Muslim Students Association of the US & Canada (MSA) * North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) * Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) * Association of Muslim Scientists & Engineers (AMSE) * Canadian Islamic Trust Fund (CITF) * Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) * Council of Islamic Schools of North America (CISNA) * Islamic Media Foundation (IMF)
Their mission statement and strategic goals:
ISNA is an association of Muslim organizations and individuals that provides a common platform for presenting Islam, supporting Muslim communities, developing educational, social and outreach programs and fostering good relations with other religious communities, and civic and service organizations.Strategic Goals
* Imam Training and Leadership Development
* Involvement of Youth
* Sound Financial Base
* Public Image
* Interfaith and Coalition Building
* Community Development
I don't have time to check out the websites of each group listed above, but the ISNA site is pretty bland. However, David Horowitz' DiscoverTheNetworks has this to say about them:
Established in 1981 by the by the Saudi-funded Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) calls itself the largest Muslim organization on the continent. ISNA was created by MSA with the help of one of Palestinian Islamic Jihad's founding students, Sami Al-Arian.Today ISNA's annual conventions draw more attendees -- usually over 30,000 -- than any other Muslim gathering in the Western Hemisphere. ISNA's mission is to function as "an association of Muslim organizations and individuals that provides a common platform for presenting Islam, supporting Muslim communities, developing educational, social and outreach programs and fostering good relations with other religious communities, and civic and service organizations."
ISNA focuses heavily on providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. Many of these mosques were recently built with Saudi money and are required, by their Saudi benefactors, to strictly follow the dictates of Wahhabi imams -- an edict that affects the tone and content of the sermons given in the mosques, the selection of books and periodicals that may be read in mosque libraries or sold in mosque bookshops, and the policies governing the exclusion or suppression of dissenters from the congregations.
Now it becomes clear. The ISNA is part of the Wahhabist lobby described by Dr Walid Phares in The War of Ideas.
Stephen Schwartz, director, Islam and Democracy Program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, had this to say about them in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on June 26, 2003:
The main organizations that have carried out this campaign (of Wahhabi control over mosques) are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), and CAIR....Both ISNA and CAIR, in particular, maintain open and close relations with the Saudi government -- a unique situation, in that no other foreign government directly uses religion as a cover for its political activities in the U.S. For example, notwithstanding support by the American Jewish community for the state of Israel, the government of Israel does not intervene in synagogue life or the activities of rabbinical or related religious bodies in America.
How big is the problem of Saudi/Wahhabist influence in U.S. mosques? Schwartz says that
At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques are under Wahhabi control. This does not mean 80 percent of American Muslims support Wahhabism...
So the Islamic Society of North America has no business telling anyone what to call anything, because they're part of the problem. To be sure, they're not a terrorist group. But they are spreading the hateful ideology of Wahabbism, which is one of three parts of the Islamic jihad that is trying to destroy the West.
That John McCain "gets it" means that he gets my vote this time around.
Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 27, 2008
The Global Patriot Incident
On March 25, the American Forces Press Service issued the following:
A ship on short-term charter to the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command fired warning shots at a small boat approaching the ship as it was preparing to transit the Suez Canal last night, military officials reported.There were no reports of casualties from the ship, the Global Patriot.
Officials said several boats approached the Global Patriot while it was preparing to transit the Suez Canal. The boats were hailed and warned by a native Arabic speaker on the Global Patriot to advise them to turn away. Other warning steps, including a signal flare, were used to caution the boats.
One small boat continued to approach the ship and received two sets of warning shots 20 to 30 meters in front of the boat's bow. All shots were accounted for as they entered the water, officials said.
Here's the same story with video
The initial report of no casualties, however, turned out to be wrong. The next day the AFPS issued this
U.S. 5th Fleet officials today expressed regret for the death of an Egyptian citizen who died the night of March 24, an apparent result of warning shots fired at a small boat approaching a ship chartered by the U.S. Navy."We express our deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased," Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, 5th Fleet commander. "We are greatly saddened by events that apparently resulted in this accidental death. This situation is tragic, and we will do our utmost to help take care of the family of the deceased."
The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet Command continues to work cooperatively with Egyptian authorities, including the Suez Canal Authority, through the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, officials said. A full investigation into the incident is under way....
Oh boy, I thought, here we go again. Will we get the same reaction from the left as we did in early January when several small Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats zoomed around 3 US Navy ships?
This blog doesn't get many comments, but I did get one on the post that I wrote about the incident from some leftist who wrote that "So, WHY was it that the Iranians threatened the US? Funny stuff, eh pal? Some jokester on the CB airwaves! The Pentagon once again has mud on its face." Over on his own blog he took great delight in mocking the administration. I heard much the same from commenter "anon" over at the most excellent DowneastBlog (I can't find the exact post).
The incident with the Global Patriot hasn't received the same coverage, but the Internet being what it is I felt sure that someone else was blogging about it. I checked the Daily Kos and Huffington Post to see if they had anything. To their credit, I have only been able to find straight-up news reports on those two blogs. So unless I'm missing something they're not engaged in any wackyness on this one. There is a long thread about it over at the Democrat Underground, but other than the usual talk about "mercenaries" not much of note.
You don't have to go far on Google, however, to find posts on "Global Patriot". This guy titles his post "Global Patriot Lied: Egyptian WAS Murdered", so you know where he's coming from. Another says that the incident proves that we're "ignoring sovereignty". His theory is that we're trying to paper over the affair because "It's just some Egyptian guy", but if it is was an Australian "the papers would go beserk!" There are more but these came up on page 1.
Now, I'm sure that many leftists are being responsible about this incident, as my search of the Daily Kos and Huffington Post showed. And no doubt the right has it's share of nutty bloggers as well.
I just rather thought I'd use this post to discuss this from a larger perspective. Because if the left isn't going nuts over the incident with the Global Patriot, the one in January with the Iranian speedboats showed that too many will rush to see anything as another Gulf of Tonkin Incident, just as every spike in violence in Iraq is seen as portending another Tet Offensive.
My friend (ok I've only met him once) Steve Schippert was writing the other day over at National Review's The Tank blog about an incident in Iraq, but his words apply here as well
There are things beyond our control in Iraq. And there are mistakes we make. But there are far more things that we simply are not aware of because we are not omniscient or omnipresent. Or, you can believe that we are a torturous, imperialistic force of bad actors and worse actions. Take your pick.
Anyone who has read this blog at all knows that I take the former position.
With regards to the Global Patriot, any one of a number of things may have happened. Our guys may have simply miscounted the rounds as the hit the water and not realized that one hit the Egyptian. Or the rounds may have skipped along the water (yes this really happens) and then hit the Egyptian. The contractors simply assumed that the rounds went into the water.
Another possibility is that Egyptians may really be members of a Jihadist organization like al Qaeda and killed their own guy to stage an incident (kind of like a suicide bombing but for purely propaganda purposes). It's also possible that the contractors lied about the incident.
Maybe we'll never know.
The question is, what is your initial reaction? If it's to give our side the benefit of the doubt then you possess moral clarity. Yes, let's pursue a vigorous investigation. But as with Schippert, it annoys me to no end that there are those who's first reaction is to assume that the American government is lying, misleading, racist, on and on.
And please, lets not have any tripe about how we all need to "question authority". That's not what this is about. It's about a knee-jerk leftism that lives in the past and wants every American military venture to become another Vietnam.
The bottom line is that bad things happen by accident. You can take every imaginable precaution and you will still have incidents of this sort. And it doesn't matter whether a conservative Republican or liberal Democrat is in the White House.
This said, we do need to be aware that incidents such as this one will be exploited by the anti-American and Jihadist media to their fullest extent. As I have written many times, we are engaged in a War of Ideas as much if not more than one involving bombs and bullets. We need to do all that we can to keep these incidents from happening. We also need to do all that we can to put our own media in place so that when they do we can get out our side of the story quickly and efficiently.
I think that the responsible position is to simply wait for the results of the investigation. If we don't think the investigation was honestly done, then let's say so. If the results of the investigation are such that we need to change our procedures, fine, let's do so. If we even need to prosecute people let's do so, though this seems unlikely. But it's at best irresponsible to judge before the facts are in.
In the meantime, though, can we please give our side the benefit of the doubt?
Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 4, 2008
"Countering Global Insurgency"
In my effort to understand the nature of our struggle against Islamic extremists, I have investigated many thinkers and ideas, rejecting some and embracing others. Following are the ones that made the cut. Note please that far from being in competition with each other, each compliments the other. Each simply looks at a different aspect of the conflict.
War of Ideas: Dr Walid Phares says that our enemy are Jihadists of the Wahabbi, Muslim Brotherhood, and Khumeinist variety. While some of the fighting will be by nature military, it is primarily a war of ideology, and the winner will be the side that convinces young people that it's ideas are better than the other. Future Jihad and War of Ideas are his two most important recent books.
World War IV: Norman Podhoretz believes that our struggle is best termed World War IV. While I have not read his book of the same name, there is much about it on the Internet, including this article in Commentary Podhoretz believes that democratization is the best way to defeat the extremists.
The Power of Demographics All of the strategy and ideas in the world may not help us if radical Islam takes over Europe by producing more babies. This is the theme of Mark Steyn's America Alone.
Global Insurgency: Lt Col (Dr) David Kilcullen spent 20 years in the Australian Army. Throughout 2007 he was a senior advisor on counterterrorism to Gen David Petraeus. He is not a senior advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In his 2004 wor, Countering Global Insurgency, Kilcullen says that our enemy is best thought of as an insurgency, albeit on a global scale instead of just in one country.
In this post I will summarize and review this final way of looking at our global struggle.
Kilcullen's thesis is pretty straightforward
- The 'War on Terrorism' is actually a campaign to counter a global Islamist insurgency. So counterinsurgency, not counterterrorism, may provide the best approach to the conflict.
- But classical counterinsurgency is designed to defeat insurgency in one country. Hence, traditional counterinsurgency theory has limitations in this context. Therefore we need a new paradigm, capable of addressing a globalized insurgency.
- Classical insurgency uses systems analysis, but traditional reductionist systems analysis cannot handle the complexity of insurgency. However, the emerging science of Complexity provides new tools for systems assessment - hence, complex systems analysis may provide new mental models for globalized counterinsurgency.
- Complex adaptive systems modeling shows that the more global nature of the present Islamist jihad, and hence its dangerous character, derives from the links in the system - energy pathways that allow disparate groups to function in an aggregated fashion across intercontinental distances - rather than the elements themselves.
- Therefore, countering global insurgency does not demand the destruction of every Islamist insurgent from the Philippines to Chechnya. Rather, it demands a strategy of disaggregation (de-linking or dismantling) to prevent the dispersed and disparate elements of the jihad movement from functioning as a global system. Applying this approach to the War generates a new and different range of policy options and strategic choices.
Kilcullen devotes a chapter of his paper to each of these topics, and each flows from the other. If one insists that we are simply fighting terrorists, for example, the rest of the paper makes no sense. Because of the importance of understanding the nature of our conflict, it is good that we spend some time here.
Al Qaeda, in the person of OBL's deputy Ayman al Zawahiri, issued a statement shortly after 9-11 that laid out a two-phase strategy. First, they would focus on the Middle East area. Their objective here was to force the U.S. to leave and then establish a new Caliphate based in Egypt. In phase 2 they would use the power of this new Caliphate as a launch pad for a jihad against the West. The objective here would be to establish Islam as the dominant force in the world.
Al Qaeda has a presence in at least 40 countries around the world. It is a global organization. However, it is not a monolithic or centrally directed organization, but rather functions through "theatres of operation". Organizations in each theatre "follow general ideological or strategic approaches" from the worldwide leadership.
The principle theatres in which al Qaeda and similar organizations are active are The Americas (they try to infiltrate the US from Canada and Mexico, and have a strong presence in the border areas of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil) Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (which organizationally separate from Western Europe), Australasia, and the Greater Middle East. East Africa, the Caucuses and European Russia, South and Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Al Qaeda maintains links with it's affiliated organizations through a variety of links. These links are ideological, linguistic, personal, family relationships, financial, propaganda, operational and planning, and doctrine techniques and procedures. Kilcullen ties it all together
What is new about today's environment is that, because of the links described above, a new class of regional, theatre-level actors has emerged. These groups do have links to the global jihad, often act as regional allies or affiliates of al Qaeda, and prey on local groups and issues to further the jihad. They also rely on supporting inputs from global players and might wither if their global sponsors were significantly disrupted.Sitting above the theatre-level actors are global players like al Qaeda.
The relationship of al Qaeda to it's affiliated organizations, Kilcullen says, is one of patronage, or patrion-client authority. As such, it is similar to traditional Middle Eastern arrangements.
So why is all this best described as an insurgency and not a terrorist movement?
Insurgency can be defined as "a popular movement that seeks to overthrow the status quo through subversion, political activity, insurrection, armed conflict, and terrorism.
Conversely, Terrorism can be defined as "politically motivated violence against civilians, conducted with the intention to coerce through fear", and is in the tactical repertoire of virtually every insurgency. ...Terrorism is a component in almost all insurgencies, and insurgent objectives (that is, a desire to change the status quo through subversion and violence) lie behind almost all non-state terrorism.
By this definition, the global jihad is clearly an insurgency...." Terrorism is a tactic within an insurgency.
The jihad is, therefore, a global insurgency. Al Qaeda and similar groups feed on local grievances, integrate them into broader ideologies..." The objective being the restoration of the Caliphate and to subdue the West.
Terrorist groups of the 1970s; the Japanese Red Army, the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof gang and Red Brigades, were independent groups and there was little link between them and any global movement. Few of them (except the IRA) had any coherent objectives.
Terrorists were therefore thought of as criminals. In our current war, this has been the way many think of it. For example, many people fixate on the failure to find OBL, as if we were fighting a criminal enterprise.
The insurgency paradigm is quite different. Under this approach, insurgents are regarded as representative of deeper issues or grievances within society. Governments seek to defeat insurgents primarily by winning the "hearts and minds" of the broader population, a process that by necessity often involves compromise and negotiation....In this paradigm, insurgency is a whole-of-government problem rather than a military or law-enforcement issue. Based on this, we adopt a strategy-based approach to counterinsurgency, rather than to "apprehend the perpetrators" of specific acts.
How does all this tie into the war in Iraq, as well as the various "rogue states" around the world?
Indeed, current actions in the War on Terrorism appear disparate if viewed through a terrorism paradigm. Some (like international law enforcement cooperation to counter terrorist financing) fit the terrorism paradigm neatly, while others (the Iraq War, counter-proliferation initiatives, building influence in Central Asia, containment of North Korea and Iran) appear unrelated to an anti-terrorism agenda and are thus viewed with suspicion by some. However, if viewed through the lens of counterinsurgency, these actions make perfect sense.
So those who insist that Iraq has nothing to do with 9-11, or that it is a "distraction" from "getting bin Laden" misunderstand the nature of our conflict. We are not fighting terrorists. We are fighting something much more serious and lethel; a global insurgency.
To be sure, it would be nice if we could kill Osama bin Laden. The question, though, is not "should we get him", but "is it worth the resources required to do so?" If ,as seems conventional wisdom, he is in the Waziristan province(s) of Pakistan, it would be very difficult to get him. There are tremendous logistical difficulties in just getting there, and we could roam the countryside for years losing hundreds of Americans to no avail. Oh and it would involve invading Pakistan with not a single country backing us.
Further, if Kilcullen is right, killing bin Laden would have no more effect on defeating the global insurgency than the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1968 had in ending the Vietnam War. We saw in Iraq that the insurgency got worse after we killed AQI leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in June of 2006. It was only after surging troops and adopting a true counterinsurgency doctrine that we began to turn the tide. So it would probably be if we killed bin Laden.
In the rest of his paper Kilcullen goes on to discuss how traditional systems analysis might work if the insurgency was confined to one country (though even with Vietnam it broke down), it certainly will not do for one that is global. He then goes into how the "emerging science of Complexity" might hold the key.
It all gets a bit esoteric and above my head. I encourage readers who have gotten this far to download the paper and digest it as best you can. I think that Kilcullen is on the right path here. He correctly identifies the enemy as "jihadists" and not simply terrorists, and recognizes that they are not some small band hiding in the mountains waiting for another opportunity to hijack another airplane. If you don't understand the nature of the enemy, you won't get the nature of the war, and you'll certainly never get the solution right.
Posted by Tom at 8:50 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 31, 2008
The Definition of "Jihad"
Hint: It isn't "peaceful inner struggle", like some apologists try and tell us.
I had my own experience with this "nicer" definition. Shortly after Sept 11 2001, I went to a church where they had invited two Muslims, a man and his wife, to come and speak. The purpose behind the invitation was noble; like many well-meaning people they were afraid that a backlash against Muslims might develop in the wake of the terrorist attack. Indeed, I had thoughts along those lines too for a time. As such, these two Muslims were there to explain their faith, which after all was something not many of us were familiar with at the time. Anyway, one of the things that the two insisted on was that the proper definion of jihad was "peaceful inner struggle", something that one did to purify oneself before God. They asserted that any definition of it as "war" was from ancient times. Even then I knew they were blowing smoke, but of course was too polite (like everyone else) to say so at the time.
In case you need proof that jihad really means something along the lines of "war against the infidels, the invaluable MEMRI has this immaculately researched piece:
The Arabic word jihad has gained wide currency in the media worldwide. Since the 1990s, various countries around the world have seen numerous terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims calling themselves "jihad fighters" - the most deadly of them being the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. But what exactly is this concept of jihad, which has so much impact on life in the world today?The Meaning of the Word Jihad
Let us begin with the meaning of the word jihad as it is understood by the "ordinary" contemporary speaker of Arabic (and also by Muslims who are not Arabs) - I refer to the meaning of the word in "common parlance," to use a British legal term, or in what the Jewish sages called "the language of ordinary people." In the language of ordinary people, jihad means war against the enemies of Islam. Since this interpretation often arouses controversy or objection among academic experts, I present here a word-for-word translation of what is said about the concept of jihad in a standard 11th grade textbook used in Jordan and the Palestinian Authority:
"Jihad is the Islamic term equivalent to the word 'war' among other nations. The difference is that jihad is [war] for the sake of noble and exalted goals, and for the sake of Allah… whereas other nations' wars are wars of evil for the sake of occupying land and seizing natural resources, and for other materialistic goals and base aspirations."It should be noted that the literal meaning of the word jihad is not "war." Jihad is the nominalized form of the verb jahada, which means "to strive," "to exert oneself." The textbook from which the quote is taken presents this etymological information, but what it stresses - and what is relevant to this investigation - is the accepted meaning of the word in Muslim culture and history, and, of course, its accepted meaning today. [
The Place of Jihad in the Muslim World View
To properly understand the place of jihad in the Muslim world view, it is important to keep in mind that Islam has been, from its very beginning, not only a religion but a political community - the nation of Islam (ummat al-Islam). Muhammad was not merely a prophet communicating the word of God, but a political leader and military commander. Hence, any victory by the army of a Muslim state over non-Muslims is perceived as a victory for Islam itself. According to Islam, Allah promised the Muslims victory and superiority over all other religions worldwide. ...
ust as humanity is divided into two - into believers and infidels - the world itself is also divided into the abode of Islam (dar al-Islam), namely the region under Muslim rule, and the abode of war (dar al-harb), referring to all lands not yet under Muslim rule, which must be conquered by the sword, i.e., through jihad.
However, jihad, important though it is, is not regarded as a personal obligation (fard 'ain) incumbent upon each and every Muslim. In this, it differs from the "five pillars of Islam" - the declaration of faith (shahada), prayer, fasting, pilgrimage to Mecca, and the payment of zakat (alms tax) - which are personal obligations of every individual believer. According to the shari'a, jihad is a collective duty (fard kifaya) of the Muslim nation, or community, as a whole. It is the Muslim ruler who decides when and against whom to declare jihad. When a Muslim ruler declares jihad, it becomes a personal obligation for those whom he orders to take part in the war.
There is only one situation in which jihad becomes a personal obligation of each and every Muslim even without an order from the Muslim leadership - namely when non-Muslims attack Muslims or invade a Muslim country. Bin Laden and the adherents of extremist Islam claim that this is the situation today: Islam is under attack, both physically and ideologically. The infidels - Christians and Jews - are invading the lands of Islam: Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, they maintain that waging jihad has become a personal obligation incumbent upon all Muslims, wherever they may be.
Be sure and read the whole thing for historical background and documentation (the piece is heavily footnoted)
Previous
Posted by Tom at 9:14 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
December 10, 2007
Saudi Influence in Academia
There's a big story in today's Washington Times about something I've been blogging about for some time now; the Wahhabist penetration of academia through use of oil money. Scholar Walid Phares has written extensively about this, most particularly in his books Future Jihad and The War of Ideas. I reviewed both here; see "Book Reviews" under "Categories" at right.
Here are a few excerpts, but you'll want to read the whole thing:
Two years ago this month, a Saudi prince caused a media splash — and raised eyebrows — when he donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities to fund Islamic studies. ...Some call the Saudi gift Arab generosity and gratitude for the years American universities have educated the elite of the Arab world. Others say the sheer size of the donations amounts to buying influence and creating bastions of noncritical pro-Islamic scholarship within academia.
"There's a possibility these campuses aren't getting gifts, they're getting investments," said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "Departments on Middle Eastern studies tend to be dominated by professors tuned to the concerns of Arab and Muslim rulers. It's very difficult for scholars who don't follow this line to get jobs and tenure on college campuses.
"The relationship between these departments and the money that pours in is hard to establish, but like campaign finance reform, sometimes money is a bribe. Sometimes it's a tip."
As Phares noted in The War of Ideas, it all started after the 1973 oil embargo, when the Saudis realized they had a lot of power at their hands. They did some investigation and discovered that many American universities were eager for their money. As Phares documents, the Saudis also discovered that in return for the money college administrators were eager to believe the Saudi version of Middle East history.
The article is fair, pointing out that "The idea of giving endowed chairs to advance a point of view is not exclusive to wealthy Arabs." Mormons and Israelis have also gotten in on the action.
Influence buying is wrong no matter who does it. We should not, however, fall into moral equivalence. Saudi influence is far greater, and their kingdom is a totalitarian nightmare.
At the end, the article quotes Zuhdi Jasser, an American reform-minded Muslim that I have written about before and who "gets it".
Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and a Muslim who is chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says Islamic governments are looking for a free pass."Islamists such as the radical fundamentalists seen with the Saudi Wahhabis exploit American universal tolerance to provide a vehicle for the dissemination of their propaganda free of critique," he said in an e-mail. "It is important to emphasize — 'free of critique' ... it is the tolerance which permits that.
"But I would hope that we correct our response not by changing our tolerance but by intensely critiquing political Islam and its incompatibility with our pluralistic democracy. America"s laboratory of freedom and liberty should not change."
The Wahhabists are one of the three branches of the jihad that is trying to destroy the West. Dr Jasser is probably correct in that an absolute prohibition on Saudi money would violate our tradition of tolerance. Rather, the best way to deal with the Wahhabists is to expose them for what they are.
Update
If you still think that the problem of Saudi influence in either K-12 or our university system is exaggerated, please see these two articles by Stanley Kurtz:
Saudi in the Classroom: A fundamental front in the war
Taking Sides on Title VI: Middle East Studies reform goes partisan
Posted by Tom at 8:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 2, 2007
Newt Nails It
Many of us on the right are increasingly dissatisfied with the Bush Administration's handling of the "war on terror". Most of us aren't even really happy with that term, and those of us who accept it tend to do so only because either they don't think it can be changed or because none of the other choices seem better.
The president started out strong after 9-11, and it seemed that there was a new sheriff in town. The rest of the world saw that after those attacks on our homeland we did not hesitate in quickly going to Afghanistan and routing the Taliban and al Qaeda there. A little over a year later we removed another cancer in the region by quickly smashing the Iraqi army and rolling into Baghdad.
The outlaw regimes of the world trembled and the rest of the world looked on in awe.
This is the type of respect that I want for our country. When Democrats, reporters, news anchors ask "how can the U.S. regain the respect of the rest of the world" they are looking for a politically correct answer along the lines of "pull out of Iraq, apologize for invading, and only do what the UN allows us to do". But that's appeasement, not respect (As a side note, why is it that no one thinks to ask "what can the rest of the world do to gain our respect?")
When Iraq turned out to be more difficult than anticiplated we stumbled, and in the years that followed slowly lost our way. I've detailed all this in numerous posts on this blog, but no one does it better than Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich is simply one of the most brilliant speakers there is. I heard him last year at CPAC
In an article posted the other day at Family Security Matters, he takes us through the genesis of our problem and how to fix it. Following are the most important excerpts, but I encourage you to read the whole thing
Our current problem is tragic. You have an administration whose policy is inadequate being opposed by a political Left whose policy is worse, and you have nobody prepared to talk about the policy we need. Because we are told if you are for a strong America, you should back the Bush policy even if it's inadequate, and so you end up making an argument in favor of something that can't work. So your choice is to defend something which isn't working or to oppose it by being for an even weaker policy. So this is a catastrophe for this country and a catastrophe for freedom around the world. Because we have refused to be honest about the scale of the problem. ...What's the primary source of money for al Qaeda? It's you, re-circulated through Saudi Arabia. Because we have no national energy strategy, when clearly if you really cared about liberating the United States from the Middle East and if you really cared about the survival of Israel, one of your highest goals would be to move to a hydrogen economy and to eliminate petroleum as a primary source of energy.
...So then you look at Saudi Arabia. The fact that we tolerate a country saying no Christian and no Jew can go to Mecca, and we start with the presumption that that's true while they attack Israel for being a religious state is a sign of our timidity, our confusion, our cowardice that is stunning.
...So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis.
...So we accept this totally one-sided definition of the world in which our enemies can cheerfully lie on television every day, and we don't even have the nerve to insist on the truth. We pretend their lies are reasonable. This is a very fundamental problem. And if you look at who some of the largest owners of some of our largest banks are today, they're Saudis.
...We have created our own nightmare because we refuse to tell the truth. We refuse to tell the truth to our politicians. Our State Department refuses to tell the truth to the country. If the president of the United States, and again, we're now so bitterly partisan, we're so committed to red vs. blue hostility, that George W. Bush doesn't have the capacity to give an address from the Oval Office that has any meaning for half the country. And the anti-war Left is so strong in the Democratic primary that I think it's almost impossible for any Democratic presidential candidate to tell the truth about the situation.
And so the Republicans are isolated and trying to defend incompetence. The Democrats are isolated and trying to find a way to say, "I'm really for strength as long as I can have peace, but I'd really like to have peace, except I don't want to recognize these people who aren't very peaceful.
...None of our enemies are confused. Our enemies don't get up each morning and go, "Oh, gosh, I think I'll have an existential crisis of identity in which I will try to think through whether or not we can be friends while you're killing me." Our enemies get up every morning and say, "We hate the West. We hate freedom." They would not allow a meeting with women in the room.
...Now what do we need?
We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they're weak, are ruthless when they're strong, demand mercy when they're losing, show no mercy when they're winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we're living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You'll be able to tell who won and who lost by who's still standing. Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn't going to stop this war. They're just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it includes winning the argument in the rest of the world. And it includes being very clear, and I'll just give you one simple example because we're now muscle-bound by our own inability to talk honestly.
Iran produces 60% of its own gasoline. It produces lots of crude oil but only has one refinery. It imports 40% of its gasoline. The entire 60% is produced at one huge refinery.
...n the 28 years since the Iranians declared war on us, in the six years since 9/11, in the months since Gen. Petraeus publicly said they are killing young Americans, we have not been able to figure out how to take down one refinery. Covertly, quietly, without overt war. And we have not been able to figure out how to use the most powerful navy in the world to simply stop the tankers and say, "Look, you want to kill young Americans, you're going to walk to the battlefield, but you're not going to ride in the car because you're not going to have any gasoline."
...We had better take this seriously because we are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust. Three nuclear weapons is a second Holocaust. Our enemies would like to get those weapons as soon as they can, and they promise to use them as soon as they can.
I suggest we defeat our enemies and create a different situation long before they have that power.
I don't think we're quite at the point where we need to take out that single Iranian refinery, or blockade their shipping, but we're getting close.
Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 28, 2007
Book Review - The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy
Following up on his blockbuster Future Jihad, Walid Phares has written another must-read book; The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy. Although it is not absolutely necessary to read the former before the latter, it is highly recommended. In Future Jihad, Phares describes our enemy and ....the historical background. Once identified, Phares takes us through the various international battlegrounds in The War of Ideas.
Phares is Lebanese by birth, and came to the United States in 1990. He has a law degree from the University of Beirut, a Masters degree in International Law from the Universite de Lyon in France, and a Ph.D. in International Relations and Strategic Studies from the University of Miami. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, D.C. His website is WalidPhares.com, the one for this book is TheWarofIdeas.net and the one for his 2005 book FutureJihad.com
Although the war has a military aspect, it is primarily a war of ideologies. On one side stand the forces of tyranny and opression, and on the other those of liberty and pluralism.
How do our enemies plan on winning the "war of ideas"?
All it takes for the jihadists to make progress is to continue to implant their ideology in the minds of the younger waves of followers. And all it takes for the supporters of the radicals within international society (and particularly inside Western democracies) is to prevent the public, especially youth, from understanding this equation.
What is their main weapon?
Al Qaeda and Hezbollah's real strength isn't their terrorist capacity, but the ability of their ideologues to incite and take control of the minds of their adherents to the hightest level of threat - against the very idea of life.
Soldiers from other civilizations will fight to the death, but only if necessary. The jihadi masters have developed the idea of istishhad; "jihadi suicide" or "suicide bomber", although the weapon need not be a bomb.
Clash of Civilizations?
Professor Samuel Huntington published a famous article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 titled "The Clash of Civilizations", in which he argued that rather than individual nations, economic blocs, or even ideologies as we have understood them, large civilizations would become the main players on the world stage. Phares agrees with this assessment, adding that civilizations "exist not only culturally, but also politically, including via their votes in the United Nations." While Huntington believes that clashes between these civilizations is inevitable, Phares does not.
Interestingly, although many Western (usually liberal) scholars discount or are even horrified at the thought of a clash of civilizations, the jihadists endorse it. They descrivbe their struggle as one between the umma (Muslim community) or dar el Islam (house of peace" or "house of Islam) and the dar el harb ("house of war"; any non-Muslim area) More than simply believing in it, however, the jihadists are willing to die for it, and take anyone standing in their way with them.
What is Jihadism?
Jihad is a well thought out concept that has its roots in the Middle Ages. It is not a reaction to specific Western policies, or "the legacy of colonialism". Nor is it a reaction to historical abuses (real and imagined) heaped on Arab peoples by outsiders. Although I explain jihad according to Phares more fully here and here, suffice it to say for now that jihad is defined as "constant effort on behalf of Allah".
What this comes down to is that "historically, jihad was a state tool for war mobilization under Arab and Ottoman Empires". The purpose of such war was to spread the faith. Only the Caliph or his designate could declare a jihad. Once the caliphate was overthrown in 1924, the legal body who could declare jihad ceased to exist. In the wake of this, some Muslims declared that they had the authority to declare jihad. Thus, jihad was "privatized". One of the first to "privatize" jihad was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The objectives of the jihad are:
1) Tahrir, or "liberation" of Muslim lands from rule by non-Muslim governments.
2) Tawheed, or "unification" of all Muslims into one country with common borders.
3) Khilafa, or "caliphate". The jihadists wish to reestablish the caliphate as the government for Muslims, which will eventually rule the world.
At a risk of repeating what Phares said in Future Jihad, it is still nevertheless useful to restate the members, or three branches of the jihad: the Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Khumeinists.
It is important to note that disguising the true nature of "jihad" is part of the war of ideas being waged against the forces of democracy. It is quite common, for example to hear the falsehood of jihad described as a "peaceful inner struggle" that one has to purify oneself so as to satisfy Allah.
The Ideas of Jihad
Jihadi propaganda, and their Western apologists say that if specific grievances were addressed, the fuel for their fire would disippate. Quite the contrary, says Phares. While their propaganda uses specific grievances to manipulate public opinion, "solving" them would do nothing, because more would simply appear in their place. It's really more a game of "whack a mole" than anything else.
Rather, the jihadists are opposed to ideas of pluralism, tolerance, and democracy as we in the West understand them.
They will use peaceful means, and even work within a democracy if necessary, but it's all just a tactic. Radical groups in Europe, North America, and Australia are pushing for Sharia-type laws to be allowed within their own communities. Far from assimilating (wth the usual immigrant give-and-take) into their host countries, all too many are demanding that the host country assimilate into them.
One of the worst aspects of jihadism or radical Islam (some would say Islam itself) is what Phares calls "gender apartheid". Under the Sharia law the jihadists have in mind, women have absolutely no rights and must live under a strict set of rules with no ifs ands or buts. The jihadists fear "womens rights" greatly, for they know that if they lose this battle then they lose their grip on power, and thus the war.
The end goal is to overthrow democracy and institute "pure" Islam, which means harsh Sharia law.
History as Yesterday
We in the West tend to think of anything that happened more than a few hundred years ago as "ancient history", and as such only marginally relevant to how we think and behave today. Not so with the jihadists. Osama bin Laden refers to events that occured a thousand years ago as if they took place only yesterday. Participitants on Jihadist websites talk as if battles that took place during the Middle Ages occured last Thursday.
It would be a mistake to see all this as simply nursing ancient grievances, or as nostalgia for the past glories of Islam. Jihadists believe that they are living out the continuation of ancient history, of ancient struggles. Theirs is the continuation of the one-thousand year running war between Islam and Europe (and parts of Asia) that went on from the 7th to the 17th centuries. To them this war didn't really end; they are fighing the same fight as Saladin did against the Crusaders, and there is no break between ancient and modern worlds.
Their most important slogan is that there is a "war on Islam", or as they describe it: "the war on Islam (al harb ala al Islam). In their view of history, it is the Muslims who have been under assault from the days of Muhammed in the 7th century, not the other way around. All of their wars of expansion, therefore, were really just defensive wars waged to defend themselves against aggression. As might be imagined, the Crusades (1095–1291) as well as 19th and 20th century colonialism play a major role in their version of history.
The First War of Ideas: 1945 - 1990
Phares has identified three distinct phases in the War of Ideas. The first took place during the Cold War. It was ignored by most people, as the Cold War swept everything in its path. Jihadism and democracy crossed paths but there was no overt conflict.
The Wahabists chose to ally with the United States against the athiest communists. Secular Ba'athist regimes allied with the Soviet Union. The Khumeinists of Iran sent shock waves through the Sunni world when they announced that they would oppose both camps.
But as Phares notes, "during the Cold War the Arab and Muslim world split along the fault line of pro and anti-Soviet, rather than pro and anti-American." All of them hated the West. We knew about but ignored this reality.
There were two defining events during this first "ware of ideas: the oil embargo launched in 1973 by OPEC, and the Khumeinist revolution in Iran.
The main consequence of the oil embargo event was that the oil producing Arab governments started to realize the power they had over the West. The price of oil skyrocketed, and they use their money to start start the "oil-funded penetration of Western education", something that continues to this day. Middle Eastern studies programs were set up on many college campuses, and were essentially told to teach the version of history that the Wahabists wanted taught; i.e. a sanitized version that misrepresented the true nature of their objectives. Human rights abuses in Muslim countries was to be completely ignored or explained away.
The Khumeinist revolution put the third leg of the jihad into place. Theirs was not a nationalist revolution, but a theological one. The objective of the Khumeinists is to establish a regional Imamate, dominate the Sunni regimes around them, and chase all Westerners from the area.
The Second War of Ideas: 1990 - 2001
Western elites and opinion-makers (on both sides of the political divide) continued to ignore human rights abuses in the Muslim world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The primary reason is that we were told that people in the Middle East were "upset not at their own governments, but were rather with the remnant of colonialism, Israel, and the new Western Imperialism." Dissidents (yes there are many) were completely ignored.
One of the primary objectives of the jihadists and their Baathist allies was to shield their respective governments from cricisism, and to prevent democracy and liberty from taking root anywere in their countries. They did not want to share in the fate of the Soviet Union. The jihadists wanted to continue to hide their real ideology and goals, and in this they were largely successful. Few in the West paid any attention to Islam in general, and "radical Islam" in particular.
As during the first War of ideas, we in the West were told that the primary problem plaguing the region was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Human rights abuses, we were admonished, were a "domestic affair", and oil money continued to fund Middle East studies programs in our universities that essentially lied about Muslim history.
In the meantime, the Wahabists continued their infiltration of Western societies, the objective of which was to "weaken, delegitimize, and then defeat" us.
The Third War of Ideas: 2001 - Present
Osama bin Laden upset the plans of the jihadists with his September 11 attacks. The Wahabists had planned a long campaign of infiltration into Western Society. The Muslim Brotherhood was busy infiltrating Middle Eastern societies in preparation to taking over their governments. The only way their infiltration would work is if we remained blind to their true nature and goals. bin Laden's attacks, however, forced the issue into the open. The jihadists rightly feared that Americans and others would now begin to study them, and when the truth became known, they would be effectively countered.
In short, bin Laden "jumped the gun." The other jihadists were furious at him, and went into full blown damage control mode. They were desperate to prevent us from learning the answer to the question many in the United States were asking: "Why do they hate us?" Their first goal was to prevent the United States and it's allies from destroying all of their totalitarian regimes. They realized that they couldn't protect the Taliban, that was asking too much. However, if they acted quickly they could protect the various countries in which Sharia or near-Sharia was practiced. They continuned to promote the primacy of "solving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Other tactics of the "Wahabi lobby" have been to deflect any serious cricism of Islam, to insist that "jihad" can only be defined as a "peaceful inner struggle", and that there is no such thing as "Islamism". Taking advantage of Western sensitivities towards minorities is another favorite tactic, as is playing on our "colonial guilt complex". Pressure groups scream "Islamophobia" and transform anti-terrorist measures into "singling out Muslims."
As Phares puts it, "the claim that the world hates America is nothing but a retaliation against U.S. efforts (regardless of success or failure) to foster democracy in the region." further,
...the so-called hatred of America - or, as they paint it, of this specific administration - is, in fact, a manufactured political and ideological mobilization against the agenda that the Bush-Blair alliance has pushed in response to rising fascism in the region.... peoples in the region, or more precisely, certain segments of societies, were "conditioned to hate" whomever the regime bosses, the militant cadres, and al Jazeera's ideologues targeted for hating.
More
And in order to stop Ameria and its allies from tuirning the tables on regional totalitarianism, the combined resources of jihadists and authoritarians were put into the mother of all propaganda wars. The "hatred manufacturing" can be controlled, cultivated, and unleashed when needed.
Unfortunately for the jihadists, there has been an American awakening. Scholars and ordinary citizens alike have taken it upon themselves to learn about Islam and the Middle East. I spent most of my formative years studying the communist threat. I read a lot of books during the 1990s, but none about Islam. It took me awhile after 9-11 to get going, but even a quick persual of my book reviews tells you that I am at least trying to inform myself as to the nature of the threat. Indeed Phares cites the Internet as one of the primary means by which we are trying to learn about it.
What To Do About It? Conclusions and Recommendations
Here's what Phares says we should not or need not do to win
It's not about public relations. We in the West have this idea that if only we could elimiate the Abu Ghraibs, close the prison at Guantanamo bay, not torture prisoners, solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and (depending on how extreme one gets) apologize for the sins of colonialism, Muslims will "come around". This mistakes the nature of the conflict, Phares says. The jihadists and their followers do not have a set of specific greviances that they need solved. They want to weaken the West's will to self-defense so they can take us over.
Following are some recommendations taken from the book's last chapter
1. "Democracies must educate their own publics on the history, evolution, and future development of Jihadism and its allies"2. "Open the debate about Jihadism, and vote for laws that would ban ideologies that discriminate within societies, divide humanity into enemy and peace zones, and legitimize violence outside international law"
3. Muslims too must step up to the plate. "In the Muslim world and its diasporas, what is needed is for more democratic and reformist currents to rise up and express themselves...."
4. And by the same token, we in the West must support Muslim dissidents and democracy groups. We must welcome and chamion their cause, just as we did the dissidents in the Soviet Union and apartheit-era South Africa.
5. "Within the United States and other democracies and among partners in the War on Terorrism worldwide - including those in the Muslim world - reform the educational system to advance public awareness and counter the radicalization of certain societal segments."
6. "Use the public media for education and information." This includes funding and expanding counterterrorist U.S. government funded networks like al-Hurra and Radio Sawa.
7. In short, "expose the jihadi network and lobbies and explain their strategies to the public" the point being that a "U.S.-led campaign needs to be backed by a determined, unified,a nd convinced public."
These conclusions come from a lifetime of reading literature coming out of the Middle East, watching their news shows and Internet videos, and debating Muslims on networks like al Jazeera (born and raised in Lebanon, Phares is fluent in Arabic).
Phares and similar thinkers certainly have their share of critics, most I think from the left, but many from the right. The left will accuse him of "stereotyping Muslims" and all that PC nonsense, but the Bush/Baker establishment right or who claim that they are simply part of the "realist" school do not like what he says either. Lastly, the oil lobby and all that it funds will not want to hear anything bad about their patrons.
Phares asks us to believe that there is a world movement to undermine and take over the West. Although the movement he describes is loosely organized, it is determined and fanatical. During the 1990s or before I would have said he was exaggerating. After all, we had defeated the Nazis and Soviets. How could this bunch destroy us?
I remember years ago listening to G Gordon Liddy on the radio. Liddy would go off about how "the Saudis are our enemy!" At the time I thought that while he made good points, surely he exaggerated. "We need the Saudis" for this or that strategic reason, I thought, and anyway there was no way anyone in the West would fall for their propaganda.
How wrong I was. Although of course I was familiar with the major Middle East terrorist groups, I had little clear idea of their ideology, or didn't know much more than that they hated Israel. 9-11 woke a lot of us up and prompted us to learn what was going on, to seek answers to that "why do they hate us?" question. Phares was writing about jihadism for years before that terrible day. We should have listened to him then, but we were preaccupied and didn't listen. We need to listen to him now.
Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jihadi Terminology
This is only a list of terms that are useful in understanding the jihadist threat. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of Islamic terminology. Terms will be added periodically. If readers have other jihadist terms they think should be listed, or have alternate definitions, please be so kind as to leave them in the comments.
Most of these definitions are taken from Walid Phares' The War of Ideas and/or Future Jihad. All quotes are from one of these works. Where I have gone elsewhere for additional information, you'll find a link. Note that because there is no single accepted system for transliteration, spellings vary.
al harb ala al islam - "War on Islam". This is the slogan of the Salafists. To them, all of history since Muhammed is seen as a war of Muslims versus everyone else, and that Islam is constantly under seige as it is being attacked by people of other faiths. This slogan is a primary theme in jihadist propaganda.
Dar el harb - "house of war"; that part of the world not ruled by Muslims. Ideologically it is best translated as "zones of the enemies", with "enemies" being defined not only as infidels, but as anyone who does not subscribe to the jihadi version of Islam.
Dar el Islam - "House of Islam". Not simply that part of the world where Muslims live or are in the majority, but "it is the the Islamic state rules or where the jihadists are struggling for it."
Dhimmi - "people under custody". Historically, the harshness of dhimmi status has varied considerably, but it is accurate to say that the milder forms were only practiced where the Muslim authorities did not have the power to impliment the harsher versions. Dhimmis must comply with the "Omarian Conditions", which include paying the Jizya (tax, or penalty), dressing differently, wear signs on their clothing, and are barred from most public offices. Jihadists have made it clear that they will impose dhimmi status on Christians and Jews in areas that come under their control.
Deobandi - Globalsecurity: Started in Deoband, a city in northern India, in the 1860s and 70s as a reaction to British colonial rule. Deobandis believe "that the reason Islamic societies have fallen behind the West in all spheres of endeavor is because they have been seduced by the amoral and material accoutrements of Westernization, and have deviated from the original pristine teachings of the Prophet." "The Deobandi interpretation of Islamic teachings is widely practiced in Pakistan." Wikipedia: "a Sunni Islamic revivalist movement." "Deobandi purport to be characterised by a strict adherence to the Sunnah and an emphasis on Sharia". Deobandism has also spread to the UK. The Taliban practice Deobandi Islam.
Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood or Brothers) - one of the three branches of the jihad, the other two being the Wahabbis and the Khumeinists. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. The Brotherhood arose out of urban areas, and is a true "grass roots organization, having no state sponsor. It's objective is the resurrection of the caliphate and world domination. The method it uses to achive this is the infiltration of societies in the Middle East in an attempt to take over key institutions, such as the military, press, industry, and government. It will form outright terrorist organization to achieve regional goals, Hamas and Islamic Jihad being the primary examples.
Istishaad - usually translated as "martyrdom". "Istishaad includes dying for one's belief, but it also includes taking other people's lives. Dying for religion is martyrdom; killing as well as being killed is the jihadi concept. The philosophical difference is enormous."
Jihad - "constant effort on behalf of Allah" to spread the faith. "Historically, jihad was a state tool for war mobilization under Arab and Ottoman caliphates and various Muslim dynasties." Although "spiritual jihad" is "theoretically and philisophically possible, jihad throughout history was a state public policy on war and peace, and it was sanctioned by religious edicts." The three main branches of the jihad today are the Wahabbis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Khumeinists.
Khilafa - "caliphate" This is one of the three main objectives of the modern-day jihadists.
Khumeinist/Khomeinist - the ideology of the Shiite jihadists as dictated by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Not a nationalist ideology but a theocratic one, the objective of the Khumeinists is to establish a regional Imamate uniting all Shiites centered in Iran. They will also establish terrorist organizations to achieve regional goals, with Hezbollah being the main example. Syria, although ruled by a Ba'athist party, is increasingly allied with Iran, partially because the Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam, controls their Ba'athist party.
Kuffar/Kafir/Kufr/kafir - kuffar/kufr = infidels, kufr = infidelism, kafir = infidel. The root is kufr, which doesn't have an exact translation. An approximation would be "agression against the divine", or "sinning against Allah". From a Western philosophical perspective it relates to "the 'other'". The term can also simply mean Muslims who are not "pure" enough, from the perspective of the jihadists. The mechanism for demonizing the "other" is the takfir.
Murtad Answers.com: "A person born of Muslim parents that rejects Islam is called a "murtad fitri" (natural apostate), and a person that converted to Islam and later rejects the religion is called a "murtad milli" (apostate from the community)."
Qadiya to Qadiya - "cause to cause", as in "The jihadist media move from qadiya to qadiya to keep their viewers constantly inflamed and angry at their enemies." Each qadiya is a "hot button issue" designed to inflame viewers. It adds up to a "series of carefully staged psychological operations", the result of which is to manipulate public opinion. It is important to understand, then, that the "outrage" of Muslims is not the "natural relations people in the West imagined."
al Riddah/ridda - "reconversion" of Muslims to back another faith. Wikipedia: "the rejection of Islam in word or deed by a person who has been a Muslim." Ridda is the process, a murtad is the person.
Salaf - "return to the path of the predecessors". Started by Ibn Taymiya (1263 -1328). Taymiya saw the Abbasid dynasty collapse in the wake of invasion by the Crusaders and later the sack of Bagdad by Mongol invaders in 1258. He reasoned these events occured because Allah was unhappy with Muslims. To remedy the situation, he "developed the doctrines of jihadtakfirjihadi and SalafiSalafi is someone who has adopted this version of Islam. The two main jihadist branches of Salafist Islam are the Wahabbis and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Takfir - "rendering (Muslim) opponents infidels", the purpose of which is to purify Islam against those who, in this view, have corrupted it. A Takfiri is someone who has adopted this version of Islam.
Tahrir - "liberation" of Muslim lands from non-Muslim rulers. This is one of the three main objectives of the modern-day jihadists.
TaqiyyaWikipedia: "Within Shi'ite Islamic tradition,[1] the concept of Taqiyya (التقية - 'fear, guard against')[2] refers to a controversial dispensation allowing believers to conceal their faith when under threat, persecution or compulsion.[3]
The word "al-Taqiyya" literally means: "Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of imminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury." A one-word translation would be "Dissimulation."
More on taqiyya at Jihad Watch
Tawheed - "unification" of all Muslims within common borders under one ruler. Existing national boundaries are to be dismantled. This is one of the three main objectives of the modern-day jihadists.
Tikbar - world infidel powers, or countries ruled by infidels.
Wahhabism/wahabism - started by Mohammed Abdel Wahab/Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (1703–1792). Along with the Muslim Brotherhood, it is one of two main branches of Salafist Islam.
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November 27, 2007
Some Questions for Muslim Schools
The Islamic Saudi Acadamy, located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC, should be closed simply because it is operated and funded by the Wahabist government of Saudi Arabia, which is a totalitarian nightmare. But what about Muslim schools where we cannot find a direct link to a jihadist government or organization? How do we determine if the school has a jihadist or Islamist curriculum, or whether it is simply a religious school that happens to be Islamic?
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim American and former Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, answers these questions in an article posted at Family Security Matters. Mr. Jasser is the founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Phoenix based organization. That Family Security Matters is a pretty conservative outfit vouches for the AIFD by itself, but please visit his website if you'd like to be reassured. These days, it's understandable.
In the article, Mr. Jasser pulls no punches in his description of the Saudis, who's "Wahabism is arguably the primary cancer cell in global militant Islamist ideology." But we shouldn't just stop with the Islamic Saudi Academy, he says, but rather we should use this as a "first step" in bringing accountability to other Islamic schools in the U.S. It's not a small issue, either, for his article cites a 2004 National Center for Education Statistics study which determined that there were 182 Islamic private schools in the United States. This may seem a small number, but these schools can graduate a lot of students. History shows that determined minorites can make a disproportionate impace.
Harboring no illusions, he warns that
The (Islamist) schools around the country are all relatively new and wasting no time in creating a generation of students which are more likely than not to be defenders of Islamism over anti-Islamist systems based in universal liberty. While only a minority of Muslims send their children to these schools, they are a growing and significant minority countered only by a silent majority of Muslims.
What we need to do is "discuss in a comprehensive public manner, the context in which Islamic parochial schools teach Islamic history." This means examining their curriculum. Mr. Jasser has a series of questions that we need answered by Islamic schools:
1. How does the school teach American history and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights? What is taught about the struggle of our founding fathers against theocracy? Is European Enlightenment ideology taught? Are students encouraged to learn from non-Muslim philosophers especially those who influenced our founding fathers and taught liberty and freedom?2. Are students taught that sharia is only personal or that it also specifically guides governmental law? Does their answer change whether Muslims are a minority or a majority?
3. Do they view non-Islamic private and public schools as part of a culture of ‘immorality’ and decadence since they are not Islamicized or can non-Islamic schools be morally and equally virtuous?
4. Do they teach their children that ‘being American’ and being ‘free’ is about moral corruption or is being American and free about loving the nation in which they live and sharing equal status before the law regardless of faith tradition?
5. Is complete religious freedom a central part of faith and the practice of religion? In the Islamic school, how are children treated who refuse to participate in school faith practices?
6. Are the children taught Muslim exclusivism with regards to the attainment of paradise in the Hereafter? From that, are the children also taught that government and public institutions must thus be ‘Islamic’ in order for the community as a whole to be able to enter the gates of Heaven?
7. How are student discussions, debate, and intellectual discourses approached regarding American domestic and foreign policy? Do the teachers have a political agenda? Does that agenda demonstrate a dichotomy between Islamist interests and American interests?
8. Is the historical period of Muslim rule of Spain (Andalusia) taught in the context of the history of the world during the Middle Ages or is it looked upon as superior to current day American ideology even after the advances of the Enlightenment?
9. Is the pledge of allegiance administered every day at the beginning of the school day?
Mr. Jasser gets it. He is a true reformer, not one of those "moderates" we are told about who end up holding views antithetical to Western ideas about liberty.
I've blogged about Muslim reformers before, and how we need to support them. Mr Jasser and others like him should be invited to the White House and Congress should invite them to testify. While I can't prove neither has happened, I rather doubt it.
We are in a worldwide war against the forces of jihadism. While part of it will be fought on the battlefield by military forces, in the final analysis it is a War of Ideas. The way you win a War of Ideas is to prevent older believers from passing their ideas into the next generation. I'm going to post a lot more on this shortly, but an obvious first step is to scrutinize Islamic schools, and to do so boldly but fairly. Those that pass muster are more than welcome to particulate fully in our great nation, but those that don't must change or be sent packing.
Posted by Tom at 7:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 21, 2007
Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 6: al Qaeda
Scroll to bottom for links to previous parts of this review
It will seem odd to the uninitiated that a discussion of al Qaeda has not appeared until Part 6 of a book review on jihadism. To most people, I think, al Qaeda is the jihad. They've heard our president and leaders talk about a "War on Terror", and it was al Qaeda who attacked us on Sept 11. Most people by this point are suspicious about Islam as a "religion of peace", but they still see al Qaeda as the primary, if not the only, enemy.
And I am not trying to downplay the threat from al Qaeda. If they had the capability they would set off nuclear devices in all major American cities.
But as Walid Phares patiently explains in Future Jihad, the threat is far more extensive than that of a single terrorist organization, no matter how dangerous it might be. In the first five parts of my review of his book, I laid out the historical background and logic of jihad, and discussed the three parts of the jihad; the Wahabists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Khumeinists as explained by Phares.
In this part of the review I'll explain the origins of al Qaeda, why Phares describes it as a "neo-Wahabist" organization, why Osama bin Laden decided to directly attack America, and what he thought would happen after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The Origins of al Qaeda
As Phares tells it, "Osama bin Laden did not create al Qaeda. It created him." By this he means that it was the culture of jihad the permeates the Middle East that "sculpted" him for the roll. Comparing it to the Lord of the Rings series, Phares says that in the case of al Qaeda and OBL it was the "rings" that found the lord.
al Qaeda ("base" in Arabic) is described by Phares as "an advanced form of neo-Wahabi jihadism." He also calls them the "SS of the jihad" because they have taken Saudi-based Wahabist teachings and carried them to their logical conclusion. This is why during the 90s Saudi leaders did not reveal in any detail to American policy-makers the philosophy of al Qaeda, because to do so would have exposed them as having the same goals of al Qaeda minus the terrorism.
Once the Ottoman caliphate fell in 1924, and the ability to call for a jihad went private, al Qaeda was inevitable. As mentioned earlier, it is simply the logical conclusion of Sunni Salafi Wahabist Islam (think of it as concentric circles; Islam is the largest circle, them Salafism, then Wahabism, and finally al Qaeda).
Bin Laden's three causes were Beirut, Kabul, and Baghdad. He was in Beirut in the summer of 1982, and was incensed at the sight of Israeli jets rocketing downtown buildings. The invasion of Afghanistan by the athiest Soviets was the second outrage. The third trigger was the presence of American troops in Muslim lands, particularly Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina.
The Importance of Afghanistan
Between the fall of the caliphate and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in 1979, there were few opportunities to put the jihad into action. The Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood could infiltrate their targets, but there was no place for those inclined to direct action to participlate. Even the fight against "the Zionist entity" was carried out by secular Arab regimes.
Afghanistan provided "the perfect war and a huge opportunity for the jihadists worldwide." The Saudis provided most of the support for the jihad, believing that they could achieve two objectives; the first to mobilize all Salafis under their banner, and secondly to get in the good graces of the West by showing that they were good allies in the fight against Soviet communism. The purpose of the first was so that the Saudis would be in control of the worldwide jihad, the second that it is simply easier to infiltrate a society that thinks you're their friend.
The war in Afghanistan drew jihadists from around the world. All those of the Salafist tradition, whether Wahabist, Muslim Brotherhood, or other factions, eagerly participated. Best of all from their standpoint, much of it was funded by the United States. Even those monies that came from Saudi Arabia came by way of oil revenues from the West. Painful as it is to admit it, our money jump-started the very jihadists we are fighting today.
Me: As commenter "jason" pointed out in the previous segment of this review, all jihadists are not allied in some sort of united movement. While they all share the same general goals, they spend considerable time fighting among themselves. In Afghanistan, for example, there was never a united front against the Soviets.
Me again: So was it right for us to support the Afghan resistance? Yes, even if we had known that we were creating jihadists. The reason is that Soviet communism was the greatest single threat to the planet in the latter part of the 20th century, and we had to do everything we could to defeat it. It was not knowable at the time whether the Soviet Union would fall, or what would be the straw that breaks the camels back. Some today say that the Soviet Union would have fallen anyway, even if we had not supported the Afghan resistance. But such things are unknowable. Our fault was not in supporting the Afghan resistance, or even in shipping them Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, it was in ignoring the country once the Soviets had left.
Why Attack America Directly
Put simply, bin Laden decided to attack America because his reading of the 1990s showed that we were a paper tiger. Time and again he or other jihadist terrorist organizations attacked Americans and got away with it.
The list of attacks by jihadist groups on America in the 80s and 90s that we did not respond to is long: Beirut(1983 Marine Corps barracks), Algeria, Somalia, the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Khobar Towers, Chechnya, Bosnia (we allowed a jihadist brigade to form up and fight "alongside" us), ignoring the Taliban, the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole.
Worse, on Feb 22, 1998 Osama bin Laden issued a formal declaration of war against the United States. He had all his t's crossed and i's dotted; the text met all of the legal requirements as established by centuries of Islamic law. Yet the United States completely ignored it. Bin Laden was stunned.
His assumption was that it was a sign from Allah that America was ripe for the picking.
What Osama bin Laden Thought Would Happen after September 11
Osama bin Laden thought that three things would happen after the attacks
Popular Chaos: Bin Laden thought that Americans would rise up by the millions against the government. He thought that congress and the president would be paralyzed and that the economy would collapse.
Backlash on Arabs and Muslims: Bin Laden expected us to do what he would do if the situation was reversed; slaughter anyone remotely associated with the enemy. Let us not think that by "backlash" bin Laden was expecting what we would call "discrimination" or even name-calling; he was expecting pogroms of the sort that used to happen against Jews in Czarist Russia. He thought there would be armed strife whereby fascist militia groups would murder Muslims by the hundreds or even thousands.
American Wrath Overseas: Just as bin Laden would have slaughtered his enemies at home, he would have done likewise with a foreign enemy that dared to attack him. He was thus expecting us to lash out at all Muslims and Arabs overseas, perhaps even using nuclear weapons in a mass slaughter.
The net result, he thought, would be that the United States would be in disarray and Arab Sunni Muslims would rally around him and annoint him the new caliph.
What Might Have Happened
It is easy to smile at what bin Laden thought would happen, for in fact he was wrong on all counts. But what if he had waited 5 - 10 years? What if he had waited until he was able to infiltrate hundreds into this country instead of barely more than a dozen?
Instead of 19 hijackers on 4 airplanes, imagine 50 - 60 on a dozen or more.
Imagine also that the terrorists are not only boarding airplanes, but that al Qaeda has infiltrated people into the FAA, where they now work as air traffic controllers. Others are mechanics at working at airlines. On the appointed day they all work in unison. The air traffic controllers issue bogus commands, and the mechanics sabatoge aircraft.
Truck bombers attack attack police stations and government offices, not just in Washington DC or New York, but around the country.
U.S. Military bases experience terrorist attacks carried out by soldiers and sailors working for al Qaeda. Aircraft are destroyed and ships crippled. Others in intelligence or communications units work to sow confusion.
Still terrorists act as snipers in cities, perched atop buildings or holed up in strategically located apartments, shooting at random those below.
How would Americans have acted then? The answer is that we don't know, but it might get ugly very quickly.
Phares lays out just such a scenario in Future Jihad. Now, I think the chances of such a plot going undetected are pretty slim, even in a pre-9/11 mentality. Yet even so, it is not clear that if we had caught some terrorists we could have prevented the entire operation. It is something to think about, certainly.
Up Next:
Guidelines and prescriptive policies.
Previous
In Part 1 I introduced Walid Phares' book Future Jihad and explained the logic of jihad.
In Part 2 I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares.
In Part 3 we discussed methods of the jihad as told by Phares.
In Part 4 we covered how the Saudi Wahabists Undermine the West
Part 5 was about the success the Muslim Brotherhood has had in penetrating the government of Egypt, and it's success in establishing an Islamist government in Sudan
Posted by Tom at 8:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 14, 2007
Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 5: Brotherhood Success Stories
In Part 1 I introduced Walid Phares' book Future Jihad and explained the logic of jihad.
In Part 2 I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares.
In Part 3 we discussed methods of the jihad as told by Phares.
In Part 4 we covered how the Saudi Wahabists Undermine the West
The Muslim Brotherhood: Success Stories
As explained earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the three branches of the jihad. The first two are Sunni Salafist; the Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood. The third is Shiite; the Khumeinists. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s by Hassan al Banna. Not directly affiliated with any government, it "uses the power of Muslims" at the grassroots level throughout the Middle East to infiltrate socities from the bottom up.
In Part 3 I laid out the Brotherhood strategy as explained by Phares; they infiltrate a target government from the bottom up and then back down again, carerful not to confront the regime until they have appropriate strength. Ideally they'll gain enough power to stage a coup, if not, influencing the rulers will do.
Their ultimate goal is the same as the Wahabi Salafists; a worldwide caliphate.
Today we'll examine some some Brotherhood success stories.
The Sudan
The biggest success of the Muslim Brotherhood has come in Sudan. In 1989 a coup brought to power the National Islamic Front(NIF). The military officers who seized power were led by General Umar al Bashir, and the NIF was led by Dr Hassan Turabi, described by Phares as a "shrewd intellectual."
As everyone knows, the government of the Sudan decided to wage a series of jihads against their own citizens. The first was against Christian and animist Africans in the south of the country, and the second, which continues today, is against African Muslims in Darfur. In addition to waging genocidal jihad, they used another weapon; slavery. Tens of thousands of Africans were sold into slavery around the Arab world in an attempt to subdue the target populations.
Turabi also invited the world's most infamous terrorist into Sudan; Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden stayed there as a guest of the NIF approximately from 1991 to 1996. From Sudan al Qaeda planned and executed a series of terrorist attacks, which we will cover in future installments.
The Palestinian Authority
In order to achieve it's goals against Israel, the Brotherhood created Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Of the two the former has been by far the most successful, gaining power in the Palestinian Authority after winning the January 2006 elections.
Hamas, of course, is part of the "rejectionists"; no negotiations and no recognition of Israel's right to exist. Their reason is not geopolitical or some Western concept of revenge for alleged wrongs, but rather purely Islamist; any land once ruled by Muslims must never revert to rule by the infidels. Brotherhood writings make clear that this holds true not only for "Palestine", but Chechnya, Kashmir, and even Spain.
Egypt
The base of the Muslim Brotherhood is still in Egypt, where it remains popular, despite being officially outlawed. President Hosni Mubarak (b 1928) is growing old, and the Brotherhood sees a chance to seize power when he dies.
In order to prepare for the day when Islamists can seize power, they have been infiltrating Egyptian institutions. Over the decades the government has attempted to destroy the Brotherhood by mass arrests and persecution, but has never been completely successful, as the Brotherhood always comes back.
The Brotherhood advocates democracy, and uses elections to place its own people in power. In fact they have made strong showings in recent elections, sometimes teaming with other parties in alliances of convenience.
Other Countries
The Muslim Brotherhood has chapters in almost all Arab Middle Eastern countries. As many of these countries have a parliament, they always try to get their members elected.
The Brotherhood is also active in the United States. According to Wikipedia, Muslim activists involved with the Muslim Brotherhood have started organizations in the US including the Muslim Students Association in 1963, North American Islamic Trust in 1971, the Islamic Society of North America in 1981, the American Muslim Council in 1990, and the Muslim American Society in 1992, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the 1980s.
Next Up: Al Qaeda
In the next installament we'll examine the origins of al Qaeda, it's goals, and what Osama bin Laden thought would happen after the attacks of Sept 11 2001.
Update
Two articles of interest on the Muslim Brotherhood today.
In the first one, Candace de Russy writes on NRO about that "darling of the left", Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood:
Joseph Crowley reports that this past weekend Ramadan tangled with a young policewoman who stopped him from entering a prohibited area of Charles de Gaulle Airport. Crowley writesan indignant Ramadan pitched such a macho hissy fit that airport police felt compelled to detained and officially charged him with “insulting a public agent” - punishable by up to 6 months of relatively torture free imprisonment and a € 7,500 fine.
Crowley wonders if “you can take the chauvinist out of Sharia” and “if the SOS-Racisme…, the French equivalent of our ACLU, will pick up the Islamophobic gauntlet thrown down by the French police in this case.”
In the second, M. Zuhdi Jasser writes about "The Not-So-Moderate Muslim Brotherhood", after Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke tell us in an article in Foreign Affairs that the Brotherhood's “relative moderation offers Washington a notable opportunity for engagement.”
After reviewing their argument, Jasser comments that
As a devout anti-Islamist American Muslim I have been struggling to explain to all those who will listen the central incompatibility of the Islamist doctrine with America’s pluralistic ideology. The literal Islamization of society, consciousness, and government as advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood is an anathema to America as it is to a pluralistic and liberated Islam. Leiken and Brooke, in effect, whitewash an international organization whose mission is at odds with our own Constitutional system of governance.
Read the whole thing.
March 30 Update
Egypt is trying to stamp out the Brotherhood, and the latest tactic is constitutional reform. In an article published Monday the 26th by Amir Taheri tells how President Mubarak's proposals would rewrite 34 articles of the constitution. He says it will move the country towards democratic pluralism. Critics say that the objective is really to consolidate the grip on power held by existing elites and the armed forces. Among the critics is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Taheri relates how the proposals target the Muslim Brotherhood in two ways
* They would make it illegal for any political party or group to be based on religion, forcing the Brotherhood to drop the word "Muslim" from its name and its old slogan, "Islam is the Solution."* They would enable the government to stop the Brotherhood and similar Islamist organizations raising funds and establishing welfare networks as a means of recruiting members. The authorities may use the new constitutional provisions as an excuse to seize the Brotherhood's considerable assets, accumulated over some 80 years of business activities.
Analyzing all this, Taheri says that
Despite the Brotherhood's objections, the idea of banning political parties based on religion appears to have substantial support across Egypt. Mubarak's liberal and leftist critics support the measure because it forces the Brotherhood and other Islamist outfits to fight for votes by offering political programs rather than fomenting religious passions.The idea that political parties should not be based on religion is gaining ground in much of the Muslim world.
I certainly hope so.
A quick news search shows some predictable headlines: "Voters Scarce as Egypt Holds Constitutional Referendum", "Blogs show footage alleging vote rigging in Egypt’s referendum", and "Egypt introduces changes, but much remains the same"
Sigh.
Posted by Tom at 8:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 13, 2007
Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 4: How the Wahabists Undermine the West
In Part 1 I introduced Walid Phares' book Future Jihad and explained the logic of jihad.
In Part 2 I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares
In Part 3 we discussed methods of the jihad as told by Phares.
How the Wahabists Undermine the West
As Phares tells is, the Wahabi strategy runs like this:
Inside Saudi Arabia, "pure" Islam would be practiced. Sharia law