Clint Watts on "No Al-Qaeda?"

Clint Watts

Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)

I've not posted on Al-Qaeda in a while, though they also never write, never call, but there may be a reasonable excuse for their long silence if Clint Watts is correct in his FPRI article, "What If There Is No Al-Qaeda? Preparing For Future Terrorism" (July 2012):

Today, in comparison to ten years ago, al-Qaeda does not have the ability to execute attacks on a regular basis due to its declining mass -- a function of limited safe havens, dwindling recruits, loss of critical human capital (leaders and technical experts), and a reduction in financial support. Al-Qaeda has not executed a successful attack on the West in the West since the London subway bombings of 2005. Three of the most credible al-Qaeda plots in recent years have arisen from an affiliate, AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] in Yemen, rather than the group's central leadership in Pakistan. Does this mean that al-Qaeda will dry up and never attack the U.S. again? Absolutely not! But the decline in the pace of al-Qaeda's attacks illustrates the group's broader struggles to recruit foreign fighters, prepare operations, and effectively resource missions.

But Al-Qaeda's problems don't mean that the threat of Islamist jihadi groups is past:

While the battle with al-Qaeda is not entirely over, the U.S. and its allies should begin imagining how the remnants of the old al-Qaeda threat will re-emerge as a new manifestation among regional and transnational extremist upstarts. The West should work vigorously to identify what this new frontier in terrorism will look like.

The greatly weakened Al-Qaeda thus still poses a residual threat, but it is just one jihadi group among many in a decentralized terrorist world. And there are some ironies stemming from Al-Qaeda's misfortunes:

A current assessment might instead suggest those groups most closely aligned with al-Qaeda seem to be shedding the "al-Qaeda" name to strengthen their local credibility, while those groups least connected to al-Qaeda and harboring little popular support have taken on the moniker to boost their global credibility.

The Islamists closest to Al-Qaeda are embarrassed to admit the connection, while those farthest away try to wrap themselves in the faded black flag of its failing legitimacy.

I forwarded the article to one of my contacts in the military who served with NATO in Afghanistan, where he was directly focused on the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism missions, and who still associates with individuals at US Central Command and US Special Operations Command, and he wrote back, "Very interesting and updated. Thank you for sharing."

Maybe some readers will feel the same way . . .

Sara Elizabeth Low: Flight Attendant on American Airlines Flight 11

Sara Elizabeth Low

(Image from Guardian Unlimited)

Five years ago, as I was remembering 9/11 on this blog, my brother Tim posted an unexpected comment:

It's hard to believe it has been five years since 9/11. Thinking about Sara, a flight attendant I knew from Batesville, who died on Flight 11.

Astonished to learn of this so late, I responded:

Tim, I had no idea that you knew someone who died in the 9/11 attacks.

I'm sorry to hear this. Was she a close friend?

Tim replied:

I know Sara's father well and knew Sara when she was in her teens and early 20s. She was an intelligent and beautiful person who deserved better than her tragic end.

Five years had passed since 9/11, and only then did I learn that one of my own brothers knew someone from Batesville, Arkansas, a place not far from our hometown of Salem, who was killed on September 11, 2001. Sara died when she was only 28 and deserves far better tributes than those I have annually given, for I didn't know her personally, but I try to remember her memory.

As Tim mentioned, Sara was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, and that plane was only fifteen minutes into its flight when Mohamed Atta, an Al-Qaeda member who had trained as a pilot, took over the plane with the assistance of three other hijackers and flew it off course toward New York City for about thirty minutes until reaching the World Trade Center and crashing it directly into the North Tower between the 93rd and 99th floors at 8:46 a.m. in the first terrorist strike of what quickly became that day of tragic horror.

In those thirty minutes between the hijacking and the crash, though the hijackers were surely unaware, the flight attendants did not passively wait for events to develop, but immediately took action to deal with the emergency and thereby resist the hijackers. Sara Low gave her father's calling card to another flight attendant, Madeline Sweeney, who used it to make a call on an Airfone and contact Logan Airport to convey crucial information about the hijacking. Through that card, we have Sweeney's report down to the final instant of impact. Without Sara's help, that report wouldn't exist.

There's no real closure to the story of 9/11, not even with the killing of Osama bin Laden, for the memory of that terrible day will continue to come up every year on this date. The best that we can do is to carry on the struggle against Islamism and never forget those who died on that day, one of those being a young woman from Batesville, Arkansas named Sara Elizabeth Low.

Malise Ruthven on the Rightwing Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik

Leaving Oslo Municipal Court, Norway

July 25, 2011

Rex Features/AP Photo

(Image from New York Review of Books)

Malise Ruthven has a useful, insightful article, "The New European Far-Right," in a blog for the New York Review of Books (August 9, 2011), and I largely agree with his analysis of the rightwing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik:

Judging from his manifesto, Breivik is an obsessive man, with an idée fixe about the evils of Islam and multiculturalism. He believes that European leaders, especially those belonging to social democratic parties, are cultural traitors who are inflicting irreversible damage on their countries. Hence his attack on Utoya island, where the flower of Norway's social democratic youth -- reservoir of its future leaders -- were gathered. He wants to see all Muslims expelled or repatriated unless they allow themselves to be converted into believing or "cultural Christians." These aims may seem impracticable -- but given the history of population expulsions and exchanges that he cites at some length in his document, they are neither utopian or millenarian.

The right is being awfully quick to disown the fellow -- and understandably so -- but Ruthven acknowledges the parallels, even to the mainstream right:

His anxieties may be vastly exaggerated, but his ideas are presented systematically, and are generally consistent with the critiques of Islam and multiculturalism appearing in the mainstream press, as well as right-wing blogs. It would be premature, even dangerous, to suppose that the source of his action can only be understood by reference to synaptic glitches in an individual psychopath's brain.

Many on the anti-Islam right have been adamant that their writings could not have influenced Breivik because he has been planning an attack since the latter 1990s, several years before most of them were even concerned about Islam. But can we believe Breivik's claim? Do we have any writings from him that date to the latter 1990s? And even if we do, we can't assume that he learned nothing later from the anti-Islam right in Europe and the US. His advocacy and practice of violence, however, do distinguish Breivik from most of the anti-Islam right. His emphasis upon Western Civilization, on the other hand, is something that he shares with the anti-Islam right, and it distinguishes him from the nationalist, racist, and fundamentalist right. His call for war, though, reminds one more of Al-Qaeda and other Islamists. Ruthven notes many of these points:

As Thomas Hegghammer, the Norwegian expert on Islamism, has argued, Breivik is in some respects an occidental mirror of Osama bin Laden -- a dangerous monster, perhaps, but not necessarily an irrational one. Breivik's manifesto, Hegghammer explains, departs from established categories of right-wing extremism such as ultra-nationalism, white supremacism, or Christian fundamentalism, to reveal "a new doctrine of civilizational war that represents the closest thing yet to a Christian version of al-Qaeda." The concept of "civilizational conflict" or "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West, first articulated by Bernard Lewis, is shared by many on the right and some in Europe's liberal mainstream.

Both Breivik and the leaders of al-Qaeda see themselves as engaged in a conflict that extends back to the Crusades, with both of them using references to medieval chivalry. Both have resorted to catastrophic violence on behalf of transnational entities: the Ummah or "community" of all Muslims in the case of al-Qaeda, and "Europe" in the case of Breivik. Both frame their struggle as wars of survival, with the emphasis placed on defending a religiously-based culture rather than a distinctive nationality or ethnicity. Both hate their respective governments for "collaborating" with the outside enemy. Both use the language of martyrdom. Where Islamists refer to suicide bombings as "martyrdom operations" Breivik refers to an individual "martyr cell" in anticipation of his attack on defenseless youngsters. Both, as Hegghammer notes, lament the erosion of patriarchy and the emancipation of women.

Just as al-Qaeda represents an extreme, activist variant of political views held by a much wider constituency of Muslim radicals, most of whom would never consider crossing the boundary between thinking and action, so Breivik (judging from his manifesto) holds a broad range of positions common to what might be called the "counter-jihadist" or "paranoid right." This is represented -- among others -- by Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Pamela Geller in the US, the controversial Dutch legislator Geert Wilders, and Bat Ye'or and Melanie Phillips in Britain. All these writers -- most of whom have denounced the Utoya massacre in the most unequivocal terms -- subscribe to variants of the thesis that Europe is sleepwalking into cultural disaster or (in the case of Phillips) enabling Islamist terrorists to gain a foothold.

I disagree with Ruthven's designation of most of these "counter-jihadists" as the "paranoid right," though I find Geller so emotionally over the top that I can't bring myself to read her writings, and I find Ye'or interesting but bordering on a conspiracy-theory interpretation in her Eurabia history. As for Spencer, he is full of information, but consistently sarcastic -- not my style, though I do read him. I also regularly read a site unmentioned by Ruthven, Gates of Vienna. The couple who maintain this blog are more to the right than I am, but they're refreshingly honest, even in acknowledging the parallels between Breivik's views and their own, minus the violence:

In fact, that's one of the disturbing things about Anders Breivik -- when simply voicing his opinions, he sounded a lot like normal, non-violent people who oppose the Islamization of the West. And this is not all that surprising, given that he plagiarized quite a number of us for his manifesto, but it's still disconcerting to read about it.

I could acknowledge some of the same things. Breivik shares a lot of ideas in common with things that I've written about on this blog, excepting the advocacy of violence against Muslims and the nondistinction between Islam and Islamism. My opposition to radical Islamists is partly grounded in my views on the evil of terrorism, especially its killing of innocent people. I also maintain a distinction between Islam and Islamism, the latter being the political use of Islam, though I acknowledge that the line distinguishing the two is not easy to draw.

But to return to Breivik . . . in my view, he is both sane and rational, and therefore to be judged in moral terms as evil, just as Osama Bin Ladin was evil, for the shooting of dozens of young people on the island of Utoya and the use of passenger planes to kill nearly 3000 innocent civilians in the World Trade Center were both evil acts.

I think that most of us should be able to agree upon this.

Osama bin Laden Killed

Dead Man No Longer Walking

(Image from Yahoo News)

The news came to me yesterday afternoon that Osama bin Laden had finally been hunted down and shot dead, so I scrounged around on the internet and found this on Yahoo News:

A screen grab from FBI's Most Wanted website taken May 2, 2011 shows the status of Osama bin Laden as deceased. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden waskilled in a U.S. helicopter raid on a mansion near the Pakistani capital Islamabad early on Monday, officials said, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide hunt for the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. officials said bin Laden was found in a million-dollar compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, 60 km (35 miles) north of Islamabad. After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden was among several people in the mansion killed. A source familiar with the operation said bin Laden was shot in the head.

Head shot, eh. From my familiarity with horror films, I understand that's the only thing that'll take down a zombie, which is what bin Laden had been for the past ten years, a dead man walking.

To be honest, I'd half-figured that he was already dead past any walking since we'd heard so little from him since 9/11, and the few words attributed to the man were so out of touch that he scarcely seemed alive.

I find celebration difficult, and not merely because I know that we'll be inundated with conspiracy theories about how this wasn't really bin Laden but more because I know that this war against Islamist jihadis is far from over . . .

Larry Goodson and Thomas H. Johnson on US Tactics and Strategy in Afghanistan

ISAF

(Image from Wikipedia)

As I've occasionally mentioned, I'm on the mailing list of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), so I receive something of interest once every couple of weeks or so. Yesterday, an article by Larry Goodson and Thomas H. Johnson popped into my email box, "Parallels with the Past -- How the Soviets Lost in Afghanistan, How the Americans are Losing" (April 2011). Goodson is a professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Johnson is a research professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, so they should know what they're talking about. Their article is interesting and informative, but I wasn't quite persuaded about the Soviet-American comparison.

Why not?

Their claim is that there are "startling and unsettling similarities between Soviet strategies and tactics in Afghanistan during their Afghan war of 1979-1989 and American coalition strategies and tactics in Afghanistan since October 2001." They focus on "three similarities . . . central to current U.S. and NATO Afghan strategies: the focus on key population centers, reconciliation, and the development of 'Afghan' solutions to a variety of security concerns."

None of these three worked for the Soviets, they point out, so the three are unlikely to work for the US, either. That sounds plausible, except that I recall the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan well. The Soviets employed extremely brutal, scorched-earth tactics of warfare and alienated most Afghans. On this point, the Americans have endeavored to use very different tactics based on a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategy aimed at protecting the civilian population from the Taliban and other insurgents, nothing at all like the Soviets' scorched-earth approach.

I therefore wondered what someone involved in planning the tactics and strategy used in Afghanistan by the US Military would think of the article, so I forwarded Goodson and Johnson's paper to one of my contacts who had been closely involved in working out those tactics and strategy (and to whom I've promised anonymity), and I inquired about this person's opinion. Here is the reply concerning the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan:

Interesting piece with some good points. I'm probably a little biased, but the article didn't adequately "connect the dots" between the history and the current situation for me. The comparison to the USSR's approach was superficial with cherry-picked, dated examples to draw connections or similarities that don't exist. A more thorough review of the ISAF population-centric approach shows a fundamental difference compared to that of the Soviets'. I suppose advancing such a provocative proposition is the authors' way of getting people to read and discuss their article, and I'm also not sure the authors know what's really been happening there the past year and a half. In the end, the authors actually advocate the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued. The authors are correct that the central government is one of the biggest problems, and it undercuts the connection to the population distributed throughout the country with its incompetence and corruption. The outcome in Afghanistan is still to be determined. I think by the end of summer 2012 we should see if the McChrystal/Petraeus approach is successful. Let's hope that all our blood and treasure yield some significant level of success.

I wish that my contact had said more about "population-centric approach," as well as about "the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued" -- and these two approaches are complementary, I gather, being two different aspects of the ISAF endeavor. Anyway, concerning the former point, about the "population-centric approach," my memory is that the Soviets really did abandon the countryside and simply hold the cities; the ISAF, however, has not abandoned the countryside -- at least not in my reading of reports from Afghanistan. As for the latter point, about "the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued," I assume this approach is a variant on the counterterrorism strategy advocated by Goodson and Johnson:

Counterterrorism is Enough -- A counterterrorism approach does not accept the necessity of nation-building -- or at least holds that such a commitment of means is not justified by the ends. Instead, adherents of this [counterterrorism] approach, increasingly in the ascendance in Washington, believe that the United States and its allies can achieve minimal national security goals through the relatively secretive activities of counterterrorism specialists.

I presume that this is what my contact was referring to in stating that "the authors actually advocate the approach that General McChrystal and Petraeus have pursued." The US approach does seem to have given up on any belief that reforming Karzai's government is possible, so rather than get any deeper into nation-building, if that means setting up a government in Afghanistan that isn't corrupt, the Americans will be content with the lowered expectations of counterterrorism to ensure that Al-Qaeda doesn't ever again obtain a foothold there. This alone may take some doing, however, for Goodson and Johnson note that jihadists are not the most flexible individuals:

History would suggest that secular insurgents negotiate, jihadists do not. Rather, the Taliban that matter most within the movement are jihadists with perceived intense religious obligations (for instance, Mullah Omar, the Amir ul-Momineen, or Leader of the Faithful). "Peeling" such individuals away from the Taliban is virtually impossible because they believe they are following the mandates of a higher calling. Indeed, history suggests that no jihad has ever ended with a negotiated settlement or via reconciliation.

What holds for the Taliban jihadists would hold for Al Qaeda jihadists, too, as well as any other jihadists. A fully successful long-term counterterrorism strategy would have to determine why some Muslims turn to jihad and terrorism and would need to utilize policies that dissuade potential jihadists and potential terrorists from becoming actual jihadists and actual terrorists.

Good luck on that, though, for I'm not too hopeful . . .

Whither Egypt? -- Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

(Image from Wikipedia)

The recent Arab uprisings began while I was vacationing in regions with slow internet access, so I missed out on those beginnings and have been playing catch-up ball ever since. I did express a passing opinion last January 30th when I managed to access the Marmot's Hole:

If the protests bring down the Egyptian government, the Islamists will almost certainly take control.

The government hasn't quite fallen because the military retains control, but the Islamists in Egypt are positioning themselves to take advantage even though the January 25th Revolution was largely led by secular youth. One needs to recall the events of Iran's 1979 Revolution, in which the secular revolutionaries were edged out by Islamists guided by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Do we see anything similar happening in Egypt? According to Dan Murphy, "Egypt revolution unfinished, Qaradawi tells Tahrir masses" (Christian Science Monitor, February 18, 2011):

Leading Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi returned from Qatar to rally hundreds of thousands at Tahrir Square today in his first public speech since 1981 . . . .

The devout crowd . . . was also a reminder that huge sections of Egypt take their Islamic faith seriously -- and that real and open democratic reform will almost certainly lead to a stronger role for the faith in the nation's political life.

"Qaradawi is very much in the mainstream of Egyptian society, he's in the religious mainstream, he's not offering something that's particularly distinctive or radical in the context of Egypt," says Mr. [Shadi] Hamid[, research director at the Brookings Institute’s Doha Center in Qatar]. "He's an Islamist and he's part of the Brotherhood school of thought, but his appeal goes beyond the Islamist spectrum, and in that sense he's not just an Islamist figure, he's an Egyptian figure with a national profile."

This doesn't bode particularly well, in my opinion. The Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, want Shariah (Islamic law) for Egypt, and that is what is ultimately meant by "a stronger role for the faith in the nation's political life." Hamid insists that Qaradawi is more mainstream, more moderate that other Islamists. Perhaps he is comparatively less extreme, but that doesn't make him a moderate. Magdi Abdelhadi, reporting for the BBC News, "Controversial preacher with 'star status'" (7 July, 2004), relates Qaradawi's views on suicide bombing against Israelis:

Defending suicide bombings that target Israeli civilians Sheikh A-Qaradawi told the BBC programme Newsnight that "an Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier.

"I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an evidence of God's justice . . . . Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do".

Is this really so different in principle from Al-Qaeda's view that suicide bombings against the West are legitimate because Westerners are not innocent victims? Qaradawi distances himself from Al-Qaeda, but he seems to me to be of the same cloth.

And worrisome if true is this Agence France-Presse report in the Hindustan Times: "Egypt protest hero Wael Ghonim barred from stage" (February 18, 2011):

Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt's uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

I've not been able to confirm this through any independent reports on other news sites, but if this should be an authentic report, it also does not bode well for the secular leaders of the January 25th Revolution.

Whatever the case on that report, let's hope that the youthful secular leaders of Egypt's January 25th Revolution prove tougher, cannier, and better organized than Iran's were back in 1979.

Some Islamists sort of like Gypsy Scholar . . .

Bismillah

(Image from Islamic Awakening)

Some Islamists read Gypsy Scholar and, apparently, like what they read . . . kind of. About three years ago, I posted an entry titled "Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh Slams Osama bin Laden" (September 24, 2007) and cynically wondered why this cleric was coming out against his former 'friend' Osama bin Laden -- possibly to align himself with the Awakening Councils against Al-Qaeda in Iraq? But you can click on the link to find out the details of my post about that.

Somebody else clicked there, and not using a link that I had set up, for my site meter provides the following:

Domain Name (Unknown)
IP Address xxx.xxx.xxx.# (Unknown Organization)
ISP Unknown ISP
Location Continent : Unknown
Country : Unknown
Lat/Long : unknown

Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Firefox
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1)
Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor Resolution : 1366 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Dec 20 2010 8:33:14 pm
Last Page View Dec 20 2010 8:41:55 pm
Visit Length 8 minutes 41 seconds
Page Views 3
Referring URL
Visit Entry Page
Visit Exit Page
Out Click

I've deleted the IP Address because I figure that should be kept private, but the Referring URL was to a discussion thread at Islamic Awakening that had a comment by a certain 'Abu Jihad' complaining about 'Awdah (Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh):

Well, seeing as though 'Awdah is a serious sellout . . . (he went from saying things like 'those scholars talk about everything in the heavens and under the earth and they leave off the waaqi'' to giving entire broadcasts about the mubaah types of breast enlargements on satellite tv!!)

I would say that his fataawaa in support of the saudi government, while pretending to support jihad in iraq, and remaining hardcore against al-qa'idah (Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh Slams "Brother" Osama bin Laden, Warns Him He'll Be Responsible for Deaths of Millions, Reminds Him He Must Face Allah. Ironically timed at around 2007) is a winning mix if you plan on starting some awakening councils.

I'm not the only one with that type of understanding. Check out this Kaafir link: Gypsy Scholar: Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh Slams Osama bin Laden.

Well, I'm honored. I must be indeed a rare Kaafir (Infidel) to have even a degree of credibility among Islamists . . . though that comment was posted over a year ago, so perhaps I'm out of favor by now. The recent visitor stayed nearly 10 minutes, however, so maybe my star is ascending . . . though there's no guarantee that the visitor was Muslim. Could just be another Kaafir with time on his hands . . .

But more seriously, this does remind me that a large number of individuals out there come across my blog . . . and that not every one of them will read my posts with friendly eyes.

Paul Berman: Treason of Western Intellectuals?

Tariq Ramadan

Illustration by Kim Bost

(Image from International Herald Tribune)

Paul Berman has a new book out, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which I've not yet read but intend to. Meanwhile, I have read a review of it by Anthony Julius, "The Pretender," in the International Herald Tribune (May 16, 2010), so I can report on that. Mr. Julius reminds us that:

Over the past 10 years, Paul Berman has been exploring a theme: the repudiation by liberal intellectuals of their values and ideals. The theme has been elaborated in several books -- "Terror and Liberalism," "Power and the Idealists" and now "The Flight of the Intellectuals." Berman himself is a man who identifies "with the liberal left."

I've read Terror and Liberalism. I recall reading it in 2003, the year that it was published -- reading it on long bus and subway trips as I commuted to Seoul and back while I was living in Osan and teaching at Hanshin University, which has campuses in both places.

A year before, I had given a talk on 9/11 that was well attended at the Osan campus but that had also raised some controversy. I was branded a right-wing ideologue because I went against the grain of the times and the spirit of Hanshin University in arguing that Al Qaeda had attacked the US on 9/11 not just because they didn't like American foreign policy but also because they were radically opposed to democratic principles. Much of my audience held only to the former reason and blamed the US for provoking Bin Laden. I showed that this was not true by quoting Bin Laden himself on his anti-democratic reasons for the attack, but the quotes had little effect. Al Qaeda was seen as the victim. I knew that I needed to learn more about this mindset, so I turned to Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism, which had been recommended to me and was precisely what I needed to read, for as Mr. Julius notes:

For Berman, the contemporary intellectual's temptation . . . . consists of the following elements: the false identification of liberal values with an oppressive West, and of political Islamism with an oppressed third world; an unreflective, unqualified opposition to every exercise of American power; a certain blindness regarding, or even tenderness toward, contemporary expressions of anti-Semitism.

In the current book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, Mr. Julius informs us that:

Berman has two targets. First, he takes on the Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, whom he contrasts with the admirable and courageous secularist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Ramadan, a professor at Oxford, was recently permitted to enter the United States after being barred for six years under the Patriot Act.) And second, Berman challenges the commentators Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash for their qualified endorsements of Ramadan and their disparagements of Hirsi Ali, noting the "tone of contempt that so frequently creeps across discussions" about her, the "sneering masculine put-downs of the best-known feminist intellectual ever to come out of Africa."

Tariq Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and while one can't ever choose one's pedigree, one could repudiate what a grandfather stood for. Mr. Ramadan doesn't clearly do so:

Berman identifies duplicity as part of the problem with Ramadan, that is, his tendency both to say different things to different audiences and to speak with such equivocality as to be understood in different ways by those audiences. There is "a dark smudge of ambiguity" that "runs across everything he writes on the topic of terror and violence." In consequence, Ramadan cannot be trusted to know his own mind, and therefore cannot be trusted when he claims to speak it. Further, his language of accommodation, his project of defining a minority Islam at peace within liberal democracy, emerges as somewhat phony, the more hard-line stance that he advocates from time to time more accurately reflecting his true views.

Ambiguity is not a particularly admirable virtue at a time when:

. . . intimidation and violence [is being] directed at that "subset of the European intelligentsia -- its Muslim free-thinking and liberal wing especially" -- who "survive only because of bodyguards." This, Berman concludes, has been unheard of in Western Europe since the fall of the Axis. "Fear -- mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip of a bizarre ideology -- has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life."

Against such intimidation, one must speak out, so Mr. Berman does, and so should we.

Scott Atran on Defeating Al-Qaeda

Afghanistan?

Jonathon Rosen

(Image from New York Times)

The anthropologist Scott Atran has an op-ed piece, "To Beat Al Qaeda, Look to the East," in New York Times (December 12, 2009) that's worth reading. I've read elsewhere that the US Military has contracted professional anthropologists as paid advisors to obtain insights into local culture so as to help defeat insurgencies and engage in state-building. I suppose that such advice is enlightening . . . though from my experience at academic conferences, I wonder if two different scholars can agree on anything.

Scott Atran, however, doesn't have a position with the US Military, though he has apparently received research funding through the US Defense Department. His professional positions are as an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, at John Jay College, and at the University of Michigan. He has recently authored Listen to the Devil . . . whatever the hell that title might signify. Listen to the devil we don't know? It's forthcoming, and I've not seen a synopsis, but he has other books already published.

Anyway, the crux of Atran's argument on how to defeat Al-Qaeda reduces to his focus on three critical factors that bind terrorist networks together and that can therefore be utilized for rooting them out and tearing them apart. He gives the example of success in Southeast Asia, specifically Indonesia, whose security forces killed Noordin Muhammad Top, head of Al Qaeda for the Malaysian Archipelago (a splinter group of the Islamist organization Jemaah Islamiyah), and he lists these three factors in that context:

First is friendship forged through fighting: the Indonesian volunteers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan styled themselves the Afghan Alumni, and many kept in contact when they returned home after the war. The second is school ties and discipleship: many leading operatives in Southeast Asia come from a handful of religious schools affiliated with Jemaah Islamiyah. Out of some 30,000 religious schools in Indonesia, only about 50 have a deadly legacy of producing violent extremists. Third is family ties; as anyone who has watched the opening scene from "The Godfather" knows, weddings can be terrific opportunities for networking and plotting.

He then describes how the three factors were applied, but you can read the article for that. What I find interesting is that in the entirety of his long and insightful op-ed piece, Atran never uses the term "Islam" or even "Islamism," as though Islamist ideology played no role. Perhaps he ignores it because it plays little role in the practical job of rooting out terrorist networks? One need only follow up the links of friends, school, and family? That might work once a terrorist has already been identified, but where would one go about looking for terrorism in the first place? The friendships were formed during jihad (the fighting in Afghanistan), the schools taught Islamist ideology, and the families undoubtedly raised up a child in the radicalized Islamic way he 'should' go. Moreover, the defeat of Al-Qaeda is only one battle in the defeat of various Islamist groups and, more importantly, in the defeat of Islamist ideology.

But I don't fault Professor Atran for avoiding these larger issues. He's focusing on a practical problem, rooting out Al-Qaeda, and pointing toward a way to do so. Moreover, the three factors that he notes might offer some predictive power as to where Islamist ideology might lead to terrorist acts. Islamism doesn't inspire every Muslim to terrorism -- and not even every Islamist. Where, then, can we expect terrorists to emerge? Follow up the links of friendship, schools, and families.

Samuel Helfont: "Politics, Terrorism, and the Sunni Divide"

'Qibla' Quibble?

What Direction Sunni Islam?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Samuel Helfont, doctoral student in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, has written an article for the Foreign Policy Research Institute's E-Notes, "Politics, Terrorism, and the Sunni Divide," that is required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Islamism. Helfont opens the article with perfect clarity:

Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood are two distinct forms of Sunni Islamism. They have separate histories and separate worldviews. In reality they are not even the same type of movement. Their origins were largely unrelated. Their historic missions have been completely different, as are their current goals and means of achieving those goals. Unfortunately, these differences too often are overshadowed by a false Sunni-Shia dichotomy that tends to lump all Sunni Islamists together. But learning the differences between Sunni Islamists is critical to understanding politics and terrorism in the Arab Middle East. One could even argue that the most important division shaping Arab politics is not between Sunnis and Shias but between the Wahhabis and the Brotherhood. Before delving into current issues, however, it is first necessary to define differences between Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

One might suspect that Helfont is somewhat exaggerating the significance of the internal Sunni divide over the more traditional Sunni-Shia divide, but he manages to clarify for me a distinction internal to Sunnism that I had sensed but lacked the expertise to articulate. As "an Iraq war veteran and . . . intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve," Helfont perhaps had a practical bent along with the experience that led him to notice the difference and investigate it.

Basically, he argues that Wahhabism is a reactionary, puritanical Islamist movement that seeks to reform Islam in light of strictly defined Islamic categories and thus rejects any ideas contaminated by non-Islamic sources of inspiration, whereas the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical, politicized Islamist movement that seeks to reconceptualize Islam in light of contemporary ideologies, both Islamic and non-Islamic. This does not mean that the Muslim Brotherhood is liberal by Western standards -- the Brotherhood accepts suicide bombing, for example -- but it does mean that it is more willing to compromise with democratic processes than is Wahhabism. This does not make the Muslim Brotherhood friendly to the West, of course, as we see in Helfont's analysis of the difference between the Brotherhood and Wahhabism:

Because of this friction between pre-modern and modern norms, the Muslim Brotherhood has reinterpreted the meaning of jihad, infusing it with modern concepts. It generally understands jihad as resistance to expansionist warfare and imperialism. It does not consider domestic political violence to be jihad and it condemns attacks on other Muslims. The only time the Brotherhood considers jihad to be legitimate is when it takes place on Muslim land that it deems occupied by a non-Muslim force. Today, this would include Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir and other similar locales. Once jihad is declared, however, the Brotherhood uses whatever means it has at its disposal. This includes suicide bombings, targeting civilians, and the use of women and children . . . . Wahhabists generally see the Brotherhood's reinterpretation of jihad as an abomination. Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab's interpretation of jihad makes no apology for aggression. In fact offensive jihad was essential for the spread of Wahhabism in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The famous union between abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad ibn Saud was based on the idea that Saud would have much to gain from religiously-sanctioned expansive warfare.

Neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor Wahhabism are compatible with Western Civilization's basic values, but their hostility will be differently expressed and acted upon and will therefore need to be differently responded to, and Helfont offers some policy recommendations. To deal with the Wahhabists, Westerners would need to gain expertise in Islamic laws and values, especially in the Wahhabist tradition. To deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, one could take advantage of contradictions in its unstable mix of modern and premodern ideas.

All this is quite interesting to consider.

One problem with Helfont's analysis, however, is that it does not very well account for the rise of Al Qaeda, which combines aspects of both types of Islamism -- as Helfont notes -- for given the stark distinction drawn between the two, one wouldn't expect to find such a combination.

Abu Taha 'Abdallah Al-Miqdad: "democracy . . . is an infidel regime"

Sada Al-Jihad

Pro-Jihad Islamist Magazine

(Image from MEMRI)

I recall explaining to a skeptical Korean audience on September 11, 2002 that the 9/11 attacks of the previous year were not merely a consequence of America's foreign policy but also an expression of Al Qaeda's hatred for American democracy. I even quoted one of Al Qaeda's spokesmen, Suleiman Abu Gheith:

America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. (MEMRI: Special Dispatch No. 388)

Anti-American sentiment in Korea was peaking at that time, so my words didn't go over particularly well, but most Islamists still seem to hate democracy, for Abu Taha 'Abdallah Al-Miqdad tells us:

Though our clerics [i.e. salafi jihadi clerics] have spoken of democracy and clarified that it is an infidel regime, I will cite for you Wagdi Ghneim, who is known for his affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood movement, who are the greatest proponents of democracy in our time. He stated in his book Divine Shura and Manmade Democracy (Rabaniyyat Al-Shura wa-Wadh'iat Al-Dimuqratiyya): 'Democracy is erroneous from its foundation. Allah's religion [i.e. Islam] considers it wrong, and anyone who believes in it, promotes it, confirms it, accepts it, or acts according to it . . . is an apostate, even if he has a Muslim name and falsely claims that he is a believing Muslim -- because in Allah's religion, Islam and democracy are absolutely incompatible.'" (MEMRI: Special Dispatch No. 2434)

Abu Taha 'Abdallah Al-Miqdad is a hardcore Salafi Islamist who dislikes even the Muslim Brotherhood's flirtation with democracy and cites one of the Brotherhood's intellectuals to demonstrate the inconsistency. I suspect that the Brotherhood's interest in democracy is purely instrumental, a means to power and not an end in itself, but even that instrumental concession goes too far for Abu Taha 'Abdallah Al-Miqdad.

Why is he so opposed to democracy? He tells us the fundamental reason:

"The dangers of democracy are clear for all to see, since it directly impairs tawhid [the belief in Allah's unity]."

By this criticism, he means that a Muslim should live only for Allah and follow only his laws, an imperative contradicted when Muslims submit to manmade laws, for this means that Muslims are submitting both to humanity and to Allah simultaneously, an insult to Allah and a division of Allah's unity through the sin of shirk (i.e., associating something nondivine with the divine Allah).

This shirk -- this democracy -- leads to moral deterioration:

"Human history has never known villainous massacres such as those of the era in which democrats emerged. World Wars I and II are evidence of the extent of the democrats' moral deterioration and their failure to take into account the simplest of [moral] principles of life customary among people in past eras."

I suppose that Abu Taha 'Abdallah Al-Miqdad would have preferred the nondemocratic regimes to have emerged victorious in those conflicts . . . even though those same nondemocratic regimes were also not Muslim. And if they had won, he might have decided that they, too, were full of democrats, for he sees democrats everywhere:

[On the one hand] are piled up all the democrats -- Christians, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Shi'ites, Zoroastrians, apostates, hypocrites, Murji'ites, and Ash'arites -- and [on the other hand are] the ranks of the Muslims clinging to the path of Allah.

Abu Taha 'Abdallah Al-Miqdad includes an image of Ayatollah Khamenei casting his vote in the recent Iranian election as evidence of that Shi'ite regime's democratic apostasy, but perhaps he will have softened his criticism on that since the election seems to have been less than fully democratic.

Be that as it may, the continuing hatred of most Islamists for democracy is useful to know as a reminder of one primary motive for the jihadist terrorism that the world confronts.

Support for Bin Ladin: "Lies, Damned Lies, and . . . Statistics!"

World Trade Center Towers Burning

National Park Service Photo (9/11)

(Image from Wikipedia)

Recently, my blog had a visiter by the name of "Ahmed" who had followed a link from Malcolm Pollack's fine blog, Waka Waka Waka. Ahmed posted a comment to my blog entry on President Obama's speech in Cairo, from which I had excerpted the remarks on Al Qaeda's role in the 9/11 attacks, and he made the following claim about the Muslim reaction to 9/11:

"99% of Muslims, didn't like what happened on Sept 11. I know that because i am a Muslim and full aware of what my people think."

Ahmed's statistics surprised me, so I responded:

"The 99% disapproval sounds a bit high, compared to statistics that I've seen, but I won't quibble."

Ahmed asked for my figures:

"I think you are wrong, but i would love to see your statistics. Please provide them as i could be the wrong one."

That sounded reasonable, so I replied:

"As for the statistics on Muslim support for Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, I'll have to do some Googling, but I am certain that I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent . . . though I don't expect that to be accepted as fact unless I provide confirmation."

Ahmed immediately requested that confirmation:

"With all due respect, you cannot just through 'I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent' without clearly substantiate it with a creditable reference. I am sure that you are aware of the fact that 30% out of +1.5 Billion is a lot, and the US is in deep trouble if that is the true. That is a +450,000,000 . . . . throwing numbers like that without consciously thinking about them doesn't really help at all."

I replied that I would try as soon as I had time:

"Ahmed, you are correct to ask for 'a creditable reference' for the numbers that I said that I'd seen. In fact, you may recall that I myself stated that 'I don't expect . . . [the numbers] to be accepted as fact unless I provide confirmation.' So, I wasn't 'throwing numbers [around] . . . without consciously thinking about them.' I Googled on this statistics issue yesterday for about an hour but couldn't find any statistics at all. I'll try again when I have time, but I'm in the midst of grading final papers and tests, so I can't devote much time to this issue."

Ahmed responded with generosity:

"Numbers: I am not really in a hurry, i will be back here in few days to see if you can provide something, or even longer if you wish, so please take your time."

I promised again:

"As for statistics, I will look further. I know that I've seen reports of 20 to 30 percent support for 9/11. Now, whether those reports were based on reputable sources is another thing to be considered even if I find the numbers. Doubtless, the statistics would also differ over time."

After some time, maybe half a day, I posted some stopgap data:

"A Pew Global Attitudes Project Report (2007) offers some interesting statistics -- and change in statistics -- posted in 2007. In the table 'Confidence in Bin Ladin to do the right thing regarding world affairs,' we find these numbers:

'In Morocco, just 26% of the public now say they have a lot or some confidence in bin Laden, down sharply from 49% in May 2003. In Indonesia, the public is now about evenly split, with 35% saying they place at least some confidence in bin Laden and 37% saying they have little or none; that represents a major shift since 2003, when 58% expressed confidence in bin Laden. In Pakistan, however, a narrow majority (51%) places some measure of confidence in bin Laden, a slight increase from 45% in 2003. And in Jordan, support for the Al Qaeda leader has risen over the last two years from 55% to a current 60%, including 25% who say they have a lot of confidence in him.'

Now, this isn't explicitly a confirmation of support for 9/11, but support for Bin Ladin would, presumably, correlate strongly with support for the 9/11 attacks carried out by Al Qaeda.

I'll try to find something in the next few days to supply some numbers."

Some anonymous poster left a comment at this point:

Why are Jews against Obama? i hope the don't kill him like they did with Rabin.

To that anonymous poster, I replied:

"[A]s for 'the Jews' -- they're hardly monolithic on Obama, nor were they on Rabin.

The Jewish Task Force site that you linked to represents a small number of Jews and has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center."

To my surprise, I heard not from the anonymous poster, but from an irate Ahmed:

"So those Jews who openly call for the death of Obama, calling him a Muslim -- just to insult him -- which is clear racism and hateful, you so anxiously calling them a small minority within the Jewish faith, but when it comes to Muslims you seem to be loose on figures and eager to point out that they are sympathizers of Al Qaeda. You went as far as using a 30% figure (!!??). This is a clear bias on your behalf Jeffery, a bias against Muslim and for Jews. On one hand you are trying to prove how bad Muslims are 'I Googled on this statistics issue yesterday for about an hour but couldn't find any statistics at all. I'll try again when I have time' (Jeffery), on the other, you are arguing with me against, as i clearly put it earlier, that there are no shortage of 'Morons on both sides'. You also, trying very hard to belittle and marginalize the incident of the 5 'Jewish' Israeli soldiers, or the 60 Mosad agents who are under FBI custody since 911 (according to the same sources). As i have clearly stated that i am a Muslim, my question to you, from which we can get some insights into this exchange: Are you Jewish?, and if so are you a Zionist? and if neither, how do you feel about Zionism?"

I was surprised by the bold assumptions, the harsh accusations, and the tendentious questions -- and wondered if Ahmed had posted the anonymous comment on "Jews against Obama" -- but I decided to dial the emotions down a bit:

"Ahmed, let me remind you that you are a guest here on my blog, and the implicit rules of hospitality require that both host and guest maintain courtesy.

If you want to get better acquainted with me, then I suggest that you look around on my blog. You'll probably learn enough that way to answer your questions.

In this forum, however, I prefer to stay on topic. I therefore pose no personal questions -- and also have no desire to answer any."

Ahmed replied to this:

"I talked about your 'loosely' generated figures that you throw out there and now struggling to find one reference to justify it. I have just reminded you, and since your an academic, that you need to have your 'creditable and clear refereces' on hand before you start using percentages and figures -- common sense, nothing more. On the contrary to your accusation, i have showed despite all this, patience and understanding and mentioned earlier that i don't think that you are doing this out of malice, and offered that you withdrew it. Clearly you do not wish to.

Finally, I have always tried to stay on topic despite your attempt to turn it to 'Jews cannot do no wrong', and despite your own admittance that you have not read the speech 'At any rate, I also am interested in Obama's speech, which I've not had time to analyze.' (Jeffery) Which means that you blogging about something you have not even read.

Now! and since my presence here is not welcomed i will take my leave"

Since Ahmed preferred things this way, I acceded:

"Ahmed, I believe that you are overreacting to what I have written, but since we seem to have difficulty communicating, then perhaps your choice is for the best."

I don't know why Ahmed grew so upset at my remarks, why he queried me about my possibly being Jewish or a Zionist, why he imagines that I think that Jews can do no wrong, why he forbids me from commenting briefly on a short passage in Obama's Cairo speech, nor why he failed to respond to the statistics that I did provide showing enormous support for Bin Ladin even after 9/11, which surely correlates strongly with approval of the 9/11 attacks -- though these stats weren't precisely what I was looking for.

Aside from the unnecessary concern that I might be Jewish, which the occasional reader seems to worry about, the oddest part of all this for me is that Ahmed wanted me to retract my statement that "I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent." I can only imagine that he wanted me to say that I had never seen such statistics, but that wouldn't be true. I have seen such statistics. Whether I can locate those precise numbers now, eight years after 9/11, I won't hazard to say, but I've already supplied figures on support for Bin Ladin, and I can now offer statistics on Muslim support for 9/11 that amount to more than the 20 to 30 percent that I'd mentioned. In the The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon report on a survey conducted by the Sunday Times in the UK soon after the 9/11 attacks:

"40% of British Muslims believe Osama bin Laden was right to attack the United States. About the same proportion think that British Muslims have a right to fight alongside the Taliban. A radio station serving London's Pakistani community conducted a poll which 98% of London Muslims under 45 said they would not fight for Britain, while 48% said they would fight for bin Laden." (page 213)

Now, this was a poll taken solely in the United Kingdom, but it's 10 percentage points higher than the upper figure that I mentioned to Ahmed, so I believe that I've provided sufficient warrant for the trustworthiness of my words, namely, that "on Muslim support for Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, . . . I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent." I wonder that Ahmed never offered any statistical support for his claim that Muslim support for the 9/11 attacks was 1% or less, an estimate that is absurdly low.

Of course, statistics on this and related issues are in flux (e.g., Al Qaeda and the Taliban being less popular these days among Pakistanis), and if readers know of other polls showing similar or different statistics, feel free to provide them -- along with links to the websites (if possible).

President Obama's words in Cairo about 9/11

President Obama in Cairo

(Image from LA Times Blogs)

I haven't been carefully following President Obama's trip to the Middle East, but I am interested in what he said to the Muslim world in the major speech that he presented in Cairo. I've not yet read his words closely, for the end of the semester is upon us here in Korea, and grading starts today, but I did find this interesting passage by skimming the printed text:

I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with. (Available on Johanna Neuman's blog entry at LA Times Blogs)

I'm glad that President Obama emphasized this point because so many conspiracy theories constantly distract people from the fact that Al Qaeda has repeatedly taken credit for the attack. I've had students here in Korea who have asked if they can write their essays defending some conspiratorial point -- such as the rumor that no Jews showed up for work in the World Trade Center on 9/11, that the collapse of the WTC's two towers was due to controlled explosions, or that the US Government, the Mossad, or perhaps the Illuminati planned and carried out the attacks. I discourage students from writing such essays because they'll be defending something about which I am profoundly skeptical, rendering their task of persuasion more difficult than ordinary, and I tell them pointblank that they're likely to receive a poor grade unless they can write a very detailed, in-depth, fact-based persuasive essay that can adequately address questions and competently quell doubts. So far, they've all chosen to write on something else.

I don't expect President Obama's remarks to persuade those who believe in conspiracies other than the single correct conspiracy theory -- namely, that Al Qaeda conspired to carry out the 9/11 attacks -- but he at least addressed the issue directly in a place where false conspiracy theories are widely believed.

Enough on that, for my day must begin.

Raymond Ibrahim: Al-Qaeda's 'Contradictory' Statements?

Raymond Ibrahim

(Image from RaymondIbrahim.com)

Raymond Ibrahim, whom I've previously cited for his report on the Coptic priest Father Zakaria, is better known for his published book, The Al Qaeda Reader, but has also recently published an article for The Middle East Review of International Affairs, "An Analysis of Al-Qaeda's Worldview: Reciprocal Treatment or Religious Obligation?" (asp, pdf, in Volume 12, No. 3, September 2008), in which he compares the vastly different justifications made by Al-Qaeda to Westerners and to Muslims, respectively, for the 9/11 attacks.

Ibrahim calls the statements made to Westerners "propaganda" and the statements made to Muslims "theology," and he characterizes these as contradictory. I'm not sure that, strictly speaking, these two categories are contradictory, for both can express Al-Qaeda's motives, but we'd have to look closely at Ibrahim's article to judge for ourselves concerning contradictions in specific statements. Let's therefore look:

Al-Qa'ida has maintained that its hostilities to the West have absolutely nothing to do with the latter's freedoms. Speaking to the Americans, bin Ladin asserted, "From the start, I tell you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life; free men do not underestimate their security -- contrary to [President George W.] Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, let him explain to us why we have not attacked Sweden, for instance." [The Al Qa'ida Reader, 214].

Speaking to the Europeans, bin Ladin tries to define terrorism: "[W]e inform you that your description of us as 'terrorists' and our actions as 'terrorism' necessarily means that you and your actions must be defined likewise. Our actions are merely reactions to yours . . . ." (The Al Qa'ida Reader, 234)

Finally, bin Ladin makes it quite clear that terrorism is used only in reciprocity since al-Qa'ida has no other choice: "Shall a man be blamed for protecting his own? Self-defense and punishing the wicked in kind -- are these shameful [acts of] 'terrorism'? And even if it is, we have no other option." (The Al Qa'ida Reader, 216)

Taken together, all these messages assert that the terror al-Qa'ida inflicts upon the West has nothing to do with Western freedoms and everything to do with reciprocal treatment. Moreover, by stating "we have no other option" than to engage in acts of terrorism, bin Ladin clearly implies that terrorism is being relied upon as a last resort out of desperation. Thus al-Qa'ida maintains that there is no correlation between Western freedoms and Islamic terrorism -- that the latter is never used simply to suppress the former.

This is not the case when addressing the Saudis. After they wrote to the Americans saying that Islam does not allow coercion in matters of religion, bin Ladin . . . revealed his true beliefs and ultimate goals. The Saudi intellectuals had declared, "It is not permitted to coerce anyone regarding his religion. Allah Most High said: 'There is no compulsion in religion' [Koran 2:256]. Thus Islam itself does not comport with coercion." (The Al Qa'ida Reader, 40) After explaining that this verse has to do with matters of the heart and not Islam's destiny to rule the whole world, bin Ladin quotes the Hadith:

Whenever the Messenger of Allah appointed someone as leader of an army or detachment, he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and be good to the Muslims with him. Then he would say: "Attack in the name of Allah and in the path of Allah do battle with whoever rejects Allah. Attack! . . . If you happen upon your idolatrous enemies, call them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, accept it and stay yourself from them. [1] Call them to Islam: If they respond [i.e., convert], accept this and cease fighting them . . . . [2] If they refuse to accept Islam, demand of them the jizya: If they respond, accept it and cease fighting them. [3] But if they refuse, seek the aid of Allah and fight them." Thus our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue -- one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice -- and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, through physical though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword -- for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die. [The Al Qa'ida Reader, 41-42]

On the evidence of these passages, Ibrahim would appear to be correct in claiming that Bin Ladin is expressing contradictory statements about Al-Qaeda's terrorism, justifying it to Westerners on the basis of "retaliation" and to Muslims on the basis of "jihad." I would bet, however, that Bin Ladin could reconcile the two justifications by arguing that since since infidels are in a state of rebellion against Allah, then every jihad is retaliation on Allah's behalf.

So -- to answer Bin Ladin's rhetorical question -- why hasn't Al-Qaeda attacked Sweden? Apparently, the time for that particular 'retaliation' hasn't yet arrived. But it will . . . unless the Swedes convert or pay the jizya. Either way, Bin Ladin would acknowledge, they will someday have to submit to Islam.

Incidentally, on some of my blog entries concerning Al-Qaeda's role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I've had occasional comments posted by individuals who claim that 9/11 was planned and carried out by the US government. To say that I am skeptical about such a claim would be a vast understatement. Some readers might wonder why I don't take such claims seriously, and I suppose that I could devote a blog entry to my reasons for skepticism . . . except that I suspect that I would be wasting my time. Fortunately, a website exists that poses questions to those who claim that the US government planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks, so anyone who wants to know the sort of blog entry that I would post if I had to post one can go read the article at Counterknowledge.com.

Sorry about today's late post, by the way, but I was too run-down from my on-going, day-long grading to get up early this morning.

Al-Qaida's 'Charm' Offensive Against President-Elect Obama

Ayman al-Zawahri

Using the N-Word?

(Image from MSNBC)

MSNBC supplies an Associated Press release reporting on al-Qaida's ever-charming Ayman al-Zawahir and his view of President-Elect Obama: "Al-Qaida No. 2 insults Obama with race epithet":

In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect -- along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice -- "house Negroes."

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house Negroes."

Al-Qaida supplied that subtitle because even though the Arabic word "abeed" literally means "slave," it is also commonly used to refer to black Africans, an idiomatic legacy from 1400 years of Arab Muslims enslaving black Africans.

Why doesn't Zawahiri like Obama? Because Obama wants to go after Al-Qaida in Afghanistan (and possibly also in Pakistan), and Zawahiri thinks that this military policy is a bad idea:

He said Obama's plan to shift more troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.

"Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them," he said.

Am I misreading this, or does Zawahiri's expression "the dogs of Afghanistan" refer to those "Afghans [who] will resist"? Apparently, Zawahiri is so accustomed to speaking in insults that he inadvertently insults his own allies.

Thanks for the own goal, Zawahiri.

Echoes of change in the Arab world . . .

Father Zakaria

(Image from Zakaria's Site)

Since I don't know Arabic, my information about the Arab world comes to me already filtered, which is a reason for concern, of course -- am I being misled, misinformed, misdirected, mystificated? -- but we all depend upon filters for most of what we know, so we have to learn to deal with that by finding more than one filter.

I therefore rely not only upon MEMRI but upon a diversity of sources, even the mainstream media. Some time ago, I learned -- through the mainstream media -- of the Copt Raymond Ibrahim, who is fluent in both Arabic and English and has edited The Al Qaeda Reader (August 2007), a book that I really ought to read since it "gathers together the essential texts and documents that trace the origin, history, and evolution of the ideas of al-Qaeda founders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden," or so the product description at Amazon states, and I suppose that it does attempt to do this since it is a "collection of the key texts of the al-Qaeda movement."

Mr. Ibrahim also writes for the National Review Online, which may be the mainstream source where I first read of him, and offers yet another window into the Arab world through his expertise in Arabic. In March of this year, he offered on NRO a view of "Islam's 'Public Enemy #1' Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire." I read it at the time and forgot about it, but it has recently again come to my attention. The "public enemy" stuff might sound over the top, but that's simply a designation being reported by Ibrahim:

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros -- named Islam's "Public Enemy #1" by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid -- has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries -- mostly Muslim converts -- he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., "Life TV"). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance -- free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros's excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

This is the sort of fascinating development in the Muslim Arab world that those of us ignorant of Arabic miss out on. Outside our ken lies an entire world where people debate issues that most of us know little to nothing about. For instance:

The most dramatic example of [Muslims debating issues raised by Botros] . . . occurred on another famous show on the international station, Iqra. The host, Basma -- a conservative Muslim woman in full hijab -- asked two prominent ulema, including Sheikh Gamal Qutb, one-time grand mufti of al-Azhar University, to explain the legality of the Koranic verse (4:24) that permits men to freely copulate with captive women. She repeatedly asked: "According to sharia, is slave-sex still applicable?" The two ulema would give no clear answer -- dissembling here, going off on tangents there. Basma remained adamant: Muslim youth were confused, and needed a response, since "there is a certain channel and a certain man who has discussed this issue over twenty times and has received no response from you."

The flustered Sheikh Qutb roared, "low-life people like that must be totally ignored!" and stormed off the set. He later returned, but refused to admit that Islam indeed permits sex-slaves, spending his time attacking Botros instead. When Basma said "Ninety percent of Muslims, including myself, do not understand the issue of concubinage in Islam and are having a hard time swallowing it," the sheikh responded, "You don’t need to understand." As for Muslims who watch and are influenced by Botros, he barked, "Too bad for them! If my son is sick and chooses to visit a mechanic, not a doctor -- that's his problem!"

That sort of debate must be fascinating in the Middle East, where speech is not quite so free as we're used to hearing in the West. What are the results of such free speech? Ibrahim 'reports' that many Muslims are abandoning Islam for Christianity:

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity -- if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam -- who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday -- is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros's public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV's "unprecedented evangelical raid" on the Muslim world.

The Islamic cleric's warning about "six million Muslims" converting annually to Christianity sounds to me like a figure plucked from the air. If the conversions are "clandestine," how would we know that there are "mass conversions"? How would we know that Magdi Allam's conversion is "only the tip of the iceberg"? This is a point where I grow skeptical about some of the information that I'm receiving through my filter.

Whatever the truth on that matter, we at least hear an echo of things that the Muslim Arab world is talking about, and we see that debate is going on there in a world that is rapidly changing -- and changing in unexpected ways different even than those articulated in the debates over the Coptic priest Zakaria Botros. For a fascinating look at some of these other changes, read Robert Slackman's recent article for the International Herald Tribune, "Young and Arab in land of mosques and bars" (September 22, 2008).

Young Arabs at Exclusive Bar in Dubai

(Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times)

Islamism ain't the only game in town.

Korea Herald: "Foreign terrorists active in Korea: NIS report"

Near Itaewon Subway Station

Seoul, South Korea

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've just recently read an alarming report by journalist Song Sang-ho, who drew on information relayed from Korea's National Intelligence Service for his article in yesterday's Korea Herald: "Foreign terrorists active in Korea: NIS report" (September 22, 2008). The link leads to a Daum portal site because the Korea Herald's website is set up to prevent linking, but the articles are identical.

Yes, that's right, the Herald doesn't seem to want people reading its online newspaper, and that's certainly unfortunate in this case, for this is very serious material, as "more than 70 foreign terror suspects have been captured in Korea in the last five years." According to the report, "the National Intelligence Service began an antiterrorism crackdown in 2003, which has led to the capture of 74 people in 19 cases with ties to international terrorist networks."

This crackdown began in 2003 because the Korean government realized that in sending its troops to Iraq as part of the coalition, it would be setting itself up as a target for Islamist terrorist attacks within Korea.

The terrorist networks discovered include members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Jemaah Islamiah. There's also this:

In February last year, 10 members of Hawala, a huge network of money brokers primarily located in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, were captured for illegal foreign currency transactions.

That might be a bit misleading, for "hawala" is not a proper noun and therefore not the name of an organization. It's a method, rooted in Islamic law, of transferring money to distant locations. A hawala broker in one place accepts money from a local client and contacts a second hawala broker in another place, asking that second broker to dispose of the money as the client has directed. Both brokers receive a small fee, and the debt between them is settled later. No promissory notes are exchanged between the brokers, so the transaction operates on the honor system and thus does not require formal law for enforcement. No records are kept aside from the tallies each hawala broker jots down or remembers.

We need little imagination to understand how this sort of system might prove useful for funding terrorist groups.

How did these terrorist networks establish themselves here in South Korea? The article does not state, explicitly, but the answer is obvious. These networks have formed within the foreign worker community, many of whom are Muslim and come from places as distant from each other as Pakistan and Indonesia. I mention these two countries because the information helps us understand the presence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, on the one hand, and Jemaah Islamiah, on the other. The former are based in Pakistan and the latter in Indonesia.

I suspected this back in 2003 and advised a church near Osan Air Base in Songtan not to include any of its American members on outreach programs directed to Muslims in South Korea. I pointed out that many of the Americans in that church had military connections -- either as soldiers or as contractors -- and that since the US was currently fighting Islamist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, then sending such Americans on mission work among the Muslim community in Korea might not be such a good idea. I suggested that the work be handled solely by Koreans.

Whether I was providing wise counsel, I don't know, but according to the report:

The networks, including al-Qaida, are alleged to have whipped up anti-American sentiment, sought to gather intelligence on U.S. forces stationed here, and smuggled illicit drugs to bankroll their terrorist activities.

This incitement of anti-American sentiment has probably taken place only among Muslims within the migrant-worker community here in Korea, but I would not be surprised to learn of links to Koreans on the hardcore left, nor would I be surprised to learn of connections with North Korean spies. North Korea has links to radical Islamists in Pakistan, for the North was part of the international network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan to exchange materials and information for establishing nuclear weapons programs.

Perhaps the Islamists here are merely using South Korea "as a safe haven for terrorists' money laundering," as the article suggests, but if they're also here to "gather intelligence on U.S. forces stationed" in Korea, then they might be planning more than just distant terrorist acts -- something that I've previously speculated about -- and they wouldn't have to look far for a target, for America's Yongsan Garrison borders on Itaewon, where many migrant workers live.

National Assembly representative Won Hye-young, who serves on the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee, openly warns about terrorist attacks in Korea:

"Given the Korea-U.S. alliance and our status in the international community, the possibility of terrorist attacks here in Korea is higher than at any other times."

South Korea, therefore, ought to keep the pressure on these groups -- and from this report's information, I gather that Korea is doing so.

On a more personal note, I guess that I ought to take precautions myself since I often blog about Islamism in ways that Islamists might not appreciate . . . and some of these Islamists are living not so very far away.