Islamist gets taste of his own medicine . . .

Junaid Jamshed
Begging Other Islamists for Mercy

Pakistan Today

According to an unsigned article from the Monitoring Desk of Pakistan Today (12/6/2014), "Junaid Jamshed has no immediate plans to return" to Pakistan and face the music:

Junaid Jamshed, the pop star-turned-televangelist accused of blasphemy by the sectarian Pakistan Sunni Tehreek, is in hiding in London and has no immediate plans to return to Pakistan, according to a member of the Tableeghi Jamaat . . . . Karachi police opened an investigation into Jamshed's alleged blasphemy after a viral video showed the 50-year-old evangelist citing the youngest wife of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to make a broader point about women's alleged inherent flaw of seeking attention.

A visibly distraught Jamshed apologised for his actions . . . . "This is my mistake and it happened because of my ignorance and lack of knowledge and I seek forgiveness from the Muslim world . . . . I request my brothers to forgive me and I am thankful to them for pointing out my mistake, . . . [which] happened unintentionally and I seek forgiveness from Allah."

However, Mohammad Mobin Qadri, a Sunni Tehreek leader who accused Jamshed of blasphemy, says this [ignorance] was "irrelevant," and demanded the former pop star answer for his alleged crimes.

The former singer maintains his innocence, but appears to have become dejected by the blasphemy allegations.

Ludovica Iaccino writes in an earlier article for the International Business Times (December 2, 2014) that this "Pakistani pop singer begs forgiveness after being accused of blasphemy," first informing us precisely what was said:

"Mother Ayesha was an attention seeker. She would often fake illness to gain the attention of the Prophet Muhammad," he allegedly said. "Even a prophet's companionship cannot change the nature of a woman."

Sarwat Ijaz Qadri, chief of the Pakistan Sunni Tehreek organisation said: "Juniad Jamshed should be immediately arrested and put on trial under the blasphemy laws . . . . He doesn't deserve to be forgiven for his sacrilegious remarks about the Mother of Believers, Hazrat [i.e., Honorable] Ayesha."

The police have opened a blasphemy investigation and it is also believed that Islamic authorities issued a fatwa - a religious ruling which sometimes results in a death sentence . . . . Blasphemy is a serious crime in Pakistan, which can carry the death sentence in some cases.

What an irony if Mr. Juniad Jamshed is allowed to remain in London of the infidels hiding from his fellow Islamists! He might as well now turn to Islam's Shia branch, for I'm told that they openly denigrate Ayesha, and if so, he can be an Islamist all over again!

Islamist Threat to Minorities in Syria

Shattered Church in Syria

Reuters/NYT

Last Wednesday, August 1 (2012), I posted on the rise of jihad in Syria, noting that the Sunni Muslims who come under Islamist influence will turn against not only the ruling Alawites but also the Shi'ites and the Christians, as well as all other minorities. A couple of days later, I posted a comment on Malcolm Pollack's blog post concerning President Obama's 'secret' order providing US support for rebels against the Syrian government:

So . . . we're going to support the Sunni Muslims against a brutal dictator who protects minorities so that the Sunnis can set up a brutal dictatorship that will wipe out the minorities? To replace a theocratic Iran with a theocratic al-Qaeda? Do we stand to gain anything from this?

Does anybody other than Sunni Islamists stand to gain anything? Apparently not, as Kapil Komireddi reports from Syria for the NYT in an article, "Syria's Crumbling Pluralism" (August 3, 2012):

The day begins here with the call to prayer and ends with the roar of gunfire. Syria's pluralistic society, which once rose above sectarian identity in a region often characterized by a homicidal assertion of religious belief, is now faced with civil disintegration and ethnic cleansing.

Komireddi summarizes the transformation in Syria:

Syria's 2.3 million Christians, constituting about 10 percent of the country's population, have generally known a more privileged existence under the Assad dynasty than even the Shiite Alawi sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs. Yet their allegiance to Assad was never absolute. Some Christians openly clamored for political change in the early months of the anti-government uprising. But as the rebellion became suffused with Sunni militants sympathetic to or affiliated with Al Qaeda, Christians recoiled.

Komireddi talks with a Syrian Christian:

A churchgoing Syrian told me that he used to see himself primarily as "Syrian" and that religious identity, in political terms, was an idea that never occurred to him -- until an opposition gang attacked his family earlier this year in Homs. "It's a label they pinned on us," he said. "If their revolution is for everyone, as they keep insisting it is, why are Christians being targeted? It is because what they are waging is not a struggle for freedom, and it's certainly not for everyone."

Follow the money:

As Saudi Arabian arms and money bolster the opposition, the 80,000 Christians who've been "cleansed" from their homes in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan in Homs Province in March by the Free Syrian Army have gradually given up the prospect of ever returning home.

Meanwhile, the US, which should be the natural allies of threatened minorities, again stabs itself in the back:

The seeming indifference of the international community to the worsening condition of Syria's religious minorities -- and the near total absence of censure of the opposition forces by the Western governments arrayed against Assad -- is breeding a bitter anti-Americanism among many secular Syrians who see the United States aligning itself with Saudi Arabia, the fount of Wahhabism, against the Arab world's most resolutely secular state.

And the US just keeps digging that knife in deeper:

Washington is aware of the scale of the problem. As early as June 2011, Robert Stephen Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, briefed his counterparts in Damascus about Al Qaeda's penetration of the opposition forces. By still ploughing ahead with its support for Saudi Arabia's effort to destabilize Syria, Washington, far from assisting Israel or weakening Iran, is helping to fuel a humanitarian crisis that will come back to haunt the United States.

I disagree on Iran. If Syria's government falls, Iran will lose influence in the region, but the trade-off will not be to America's benefit if the Sunni Islamists take over. Nor will such a state of affairs help Israel, as Komireddi notes, a point on which I agree, for Islamists will be even more hostile to Israel than the secular Alawites.

Could this be prevented? Perhaps if the West had worked more closely earlier with Russia on getting Bashir to step down, but nobody has been ahead of the curve on these developments in Syria . . .

Rise of Jihad in Syria . . .

Map of Syria

New York Times

I've condensed a NYT article by Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad, "As Syrian War Drags On, Jihadists Take Bigger Role" (July 29, 2012), for it reports on a development that I've already been keeping an eye on from other sources:

[T]he uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's government . . . is becoming more radicalized: homegrown Muslim jihadists, as well as small groups of fighters from Al Qaeda, are taking a more prominent role and demanding a say in running the resistance . . . . [L]arger, more organized and better armed Syrian militant organizations [are] pushing an agenda based on jihad, the concept that they have a divine mandate to fight . . . . [I]t attracts more financing . . . . [In] Idlib Province, the northern Syrian region where resistance fighters control the most territory, . . . jihadists [are] fighting under the black banner of the Prophet Muhammad . . . . The groups demanded to raise the prophet's banner -- solid black with "There is no god but God" written in flowing white Arabic calligraphy . . . . [T]he changes on the ground have actually brought closer to reality the Syrian government's early . . . claim that the opposition was being driven by foreign-financed jihadists . . . . Salafist groups, or Muslim puritans, now receive most foreign financing . . . . [J]ihad has become a distinctive rallying cry . . . . [G]reater attention has been focused on a Qaeda involvement in the uprising since mid-July, when fighters professing allegiance to the terrorist organization appeared during the opposition takeover of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey . . . . Fighters, activists and analysts say that jihadi groups are emerging now . . . . [M]ost of the money flowing to the Syrian opposition is coming from religious donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region whose generosity hinges on Salafi teaching . . . . One recent . . . video, highlighting the storming of a police station hear Aleppo, featured a pistol, the Koran and a song about fighting [for Islam]. "The Koran in our hands, we defy our enemy, we sacrifice with our blood for religion."

Given the religious complexity of Syria, and the fact that these are Sunni jihadists, we can expect an increasing division of forces in which Sunni Arabs radicalized by Islamists drive Alawites, Christians, Shi'ites, and other minorities to band together in a common front opposed to the Sunnis and expressing support for the secular government.

This conflict could get very bloody as the government uses the minorities to fight an increasingly radicalized Sunni Arab majority (60%) to the death . . .

Iranian Refugees' Interest in Christianity

Iranian Converts

Photo by Kairospress

Christianity Today

An extremely interesting article by Matthias Pankau and Uwe Siemon-Netto, "The Other Iranian Revolution," appeared in Christianity Today (7/17/2012), reporting on Christian converts among Iranian refugees living in Germany:

[Apparently, there are] countless reports of Muslims having visions of Jesus. According to . . . [those] interviewed for this article, most of these appearances follow a pattern reported by converts throughout the Islamic world: Muslims see a figure of light, sometimes bearing the features of Christ, sometimes not. But they instantly know who he is. He always makes it clear that he is Jesus of the Bible, not Isa of the Qur'an, and he directs them to specific pastors, priests, congregations, or house churches, where they later hear the gospel.

How did these conversions get started?

Twelve years ago, Trinity Parish in Leipzig, a tiny congregation of the Independent Lutheran Church, began teaching German as a second language to asylum seekers awaiting government approval of their refugee status.

Trinity used Luther's Bible translation as a textbook. Linguists credit that translation with having created the modern German language. Intrigued by what they read, several exiles asked to be baptized. They brought along friends who also wished to learn the basics of the Christian faith. "Today, one third of our 150 members are Persians," says Markus Fischer, Trinity's pastor.

That's the story in Germany, anyway, but there's a broader answer, for Iranians have been converting to Christianity since the 1980s, repelled by Iran's Shi'ite Islamist government, with its system of enforced Islamic law, and attracted by Christianity, with its emphasis upon grace rather than law. Or as one German pastor explains:

"Islam is like a rope ladder on which people try to reach God . . . . They manage to climb a few rungs, but with each sin, fall off the ladder and must start all over again. Christians, by contrast, need no ladder because Jesus comes down to earth for them. Christians have salvation. Muslims don't."

Also, Iranian refugees tend to be well-educated, and among educated Iranians, Islam has lost a lot of moral legitimacy due to Iran's theocratic system, or so the article says. But I would add two more things. Shi'ite Islam in some forms speaks of a divine spark or divine light within the early caliph they honor, Ali, so the Christian concept of Jesus as both human and divine is not so foreign, and Ali's suffering at his death -- betrayed and dying of thirst -- can recall the death of Jesus. But religious concepts aside, Iranians are very proud of their pre-Islamic civilization and don't accept the Islamic view that everything pre-Islamic was mere ignorance, what Muslims call jahiliyya, a very negative expression. Iranians tend to see Islam as an Arab ideology and Islamization as Arabization, and I think there's merit to their opinion.

Whatever the motivation, these conversions are certainly a phenomenon to keep one's eyes on in the shifting kaleidoscope of contemporary European multiculturalism.

Slaying of Shaima Alawadi: Not a 'Hate' Crime After All?

Fatima Al Himidi

Photo from Daily Mail

This won't be news to most readers since I first read the report late on Thursday evening. I would have posted it yesterday, but I had already composed a blog entry for posting, and because I'm blogging later than usual this Saturday morning, there are likely far better reports by now. I did notice the New York Times had an article yesterday. My source is a San Diego paper that I'd never heard of before. Anyway, according to Kristina Davis, writing for the U. T. San Diego, "Records hint Iraqi woman's death not a hate crime" (April 4, 2012) :

Shaima Alawadi . . . was apparently planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas when she was killed, [and her] 17-year-old daughter, Fatima Alhimidi, who called 911 to report the attack, was distraught over her [own] pending arranged marriage to a cousin . . . . [Moreover, a] search of Fatima's cellphone records shows that while she was being interviewed by investigators hours after the attack, someone sent the teen a text message that read, "The detective will find out tell them (can't) talk" . . . . Fatima [had] told [the] El Cajon police that she heard her mother squeal, and 10 seconds later heard the sound of glass breaking, the affidavit said. She told police she thought her mother had dropped a plate. Ten minutes later, the daughter discovered her mother lying unconscious on the ground, near a computer, and called 911 . . . . [Making matters more complex, a]neighbor reported seeing a skinny dark-skinned male running west from the area of Alawadi's house. He was described as being in his late teens to early 20s, 5 feet 7 inches tall, 150 pounds, wearing a dark blue or black hooded sweatshirt and carrying a brown doughnut-shaped cardboard box . . . . An autopsy noted the assault was "extremely violent" and showed Alawadi had at least six hits to the head, with at least four skull fractures. The injuries were possibly caused by an object similar to a tire iron, with a striking edge that is narrow and made of a hard material, according to the records . . . . [Oddly, the] sheriff's crime lab determined [that] a threatening handwritten note found near the victim was a copy, not the original . . . . During a search of the home and the couple's vehicles in the hours after the attack, police found court paperwork to file for divorce in Alawadi's Ford Explorer. The packet was not filled out, but a form requesting a court fee waiver was filled out in handwriting with Alawadi's name, address and phone number . . . . Police also searched computers, cellphones and other devices . . . . Investigators also learned of a previous police contact with Fatima . . . . [On the third of November 2011, the] police found Fatima with a 21-year-old man after responding to a report of two people possibly having sex in a car . . . . Officers called her mother, who came to the location and picked up the girl. As they were driving away, Fatima said, "I love you, mom," before jumping out of the vehicle onto Mollison Avenue at 35 mph [and] was taken to a hospital with several injuries, including a possible broken arm. She refused to talk to police at the hospital but reportedly told paramedics and hospital staff that she was being forced to marry her cousin and didn't want to. [But] Rawnaq Yacub, the man in the incident, told U-T San Diego Wednesday that police interviewed him after the slaying and some of his clothes were taken from the home he shares with his family. He said he has no connection to the crime . . . . [and] described Fatima as a "best friend" and said there is no romantic relationship. He and Fatima were only talking in the car when police contacted them five months ago, he said . . . . [The daughter,] her father and a brother flew to Iraq last week for Alawadi's funeral on Saturday and planned to stay for two weeks, a family friend said.

I don't usually quote so extensively, but this is an important point to get correct, namely, whether this is a hate crime or an honor killing. From this report, I would have thought the police to be investigating two possible angles, the father (due to the impending divorce) and the daughter (due to the boyfriend). However, the police allowed both of them to leave the US for Alawadi's funeral in Iraq, so I'm guessing that the actual police investigation is focused upon the daughter's 'boyfriend.' Yet, I'm still surprised that the daughter and father were allowed to leave the US.

Alawadi's death, at any rate, looks much less like a hate crime . . .

Samuel Helfont: More on the Sunni Divide

(Image from Princeton University)

Some readers will recall a blog entry of nearly one month ago posted on Samuel Helfont's article for the Foreign Policy Research Institute's E-Notes, "Politics, Terrorism, and the Sunni Divide." If the article interested you, then a longer version in monograph at 74 pages will likely interest you even more:

The Sunni Divide: Understanding Politics and Terrorism in the Arab Middle East

Mr. Helfont is a doctoral student in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department -- hence the logo above even though the monograph comes by way of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), where he is an Adjunct Scholar.

I have not yet had time to read Helfont's monograph, for he -- having noticed my blog post on his FPRI article -- sent me the link only yesterday, but it looks interesting and informative.

Helfont's counterintuitive argument is that the Shia-Sunni divide is not the truly significant one. Rather, a divide internal to the Sunnis is far more significant, the divide between Wahabism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

I'm particularly interested in reading the monograph because I need something explained to me, as noted in my previous post on Helfont:

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.

Perhaps I'll find the explanation when I get into the monograph, and if so, I'll report back, but meanwhile, readers can see for themselves what Mr. Helfont has to say.

Reuel Marc Gerecht: "The Koran and the Ballot Box"

Edward G. Shirley

aka

Reuel Marc Gerecht

(Image from FDD)

Reuel Marc Gerecht, whose columns I recall reading shortly after 9/11, is an intelligent and informed hardliner on Iran and the Middle East. Around that time, I believe, he was with the Neo-Conservative Project for the New American Century, working as director of its Middle East Initiative. Earlier, he had served in the CIA as a specialist on the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran, it seems, for he wrote Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey Into Revolutionary Iran (1997), which -- despite the title -- was an ex-spy's journey into Iran (albeit written under the pseudonym Edward G. Shirley). He now works for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a senior fellow. I think that I should note, perhaps not just in passing, that he has defended "physically coercive techniques" used to extract crucial information on imminent terrorist actions, a defense that you can read about in his exchange on this point with Andrew Sullivan.

Make of him what you will (and opinions will no doubt differ), Gerecht has written a very interesting article, "The Koran and the Ballot Box," for the New York Times (June 20, 2009). He argues that we are seeing " the unraveling of the religious idea that has shaped the growth of modern Islamic fundamentalism since the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928," or more precisely, two incompatible ideas combined in Iran: "that God's law . . . would rule, and that the people of Iran had the right to elect representatives who would advance and protect their interests." As a new generation grew up and got educated, a systemic contradiction developed, for "God's will and the people's wants were no longer compatible."

Gerecht therefore believes that we are currently "witnessing not just the end of the first stage of the Iranian democratic experiment, but the collapse of the structural underpinnings of the entire Islamic approach to modern political self-rule," as "Islam's categorical imperative for both traditional and fundamentalist Muslims --'commanding right and forbidding wrong' -- is being transformed." Gerecht notes that this imperative was, historically, "understood as a check on the corrupting, restive and libidinous side of the human soul," but that "modern Islamic militants," also known as Islamists, have used it as "a war cry" and as "a justification of the morals police in Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the young men who harass 'improperly' attired Muslim women from Cairo to Copenhagen." The implications are thus far-reaching and wide-ranging, and therefore clarify why "Ayatollah Khamenei will try to stop a democratic triumph in his country, since real democracy would allow men, not God and his faithful guardians, the mullahs, to determine right and wrong." Even if the Ayatollah stops Iran's democratic movement, the world can see the significance, says Gerecht:

Westerners would do well to understand the magnitude of what is transpiring in the Islamic Republic. Iran's revolution shook the Islamic world. It was the first attempt by militant Muslims to prove that "Islam has all the answers" -- or at least enough of them to run a modern state and make its citizenry more moral children of God. But the experiment has failed.

Gerecht acknowledges that we cannot be certain what the opposition leader "Mr. Moussavi thinks about democracy," but he believes that Moussavi is "willing to entrust the people with more power than was [a previous opposition leader] Mr. Khatami," a reformer who "could neither really break with his ruling clerical brethren, nor free himself from the age-old Islamic belief that the faithful need clerical supervision."

Previously, the Islamic Republic of Iran has managed to depict itself "as a virtuous state with a workable level of democracy -- just enough to give the regime legitimacy and stability," but Gerecht holds that "the clerical regime can no longer make this argument," for "Iranians have come to know theocracy intimately," and "secularism has become increasingly attractive." Indeed, Gerecht states that "Iran now produces brilliant clerics who argue in favor of the separation of church and state as a means of saving the faith from corrupting power." In effect, the "Iranians are on the threshold of turning the Koran's ethical injunction into a democratic commandment: nothing good can be commanded without a vote of the people."

Moreover, though Iran is a Shi'ite Persian state, Gerecht thinks that Sunni Arab fundamentalists will "will surely see the awesome power of democracy" and "will probably conclude . . . that God cannot be the sole legislator of the laws and ethics that good Muslims want to live by."

Well, this all sounds enormously positive, and I hope that Gerecht is right, but we'll just have to see how this plays itself out in Iran. Repression might work for a long time. The Soviet Union lasted 70 years, long enough to destroy a great deal and thereby wreak enormous damage upon the peoples whom it ruled, and the great difficult labor of repair will continue for a long time. Even if the current demonstrations overturn the Shi'ite Islamist system in Iran, would the Sunni Islamists truly learn a lesson about the necessity for democracy? Why would the 'orthodox' learn from the deviations of the 'heretical'? We can hope that Gerecht is correct and that history will limp to the right . . . but only time will tell.

Meanwhile, here's a good site for updates on Iran: Radio Free Europe.

Islamist Distrust of Human Reason

Matthias Kuentzel

(Image from International Analyst Network)

From my reading on Islamism this semester as I lead discussions with my students, I've learned that Salafi Muslims would have some objections to human curiosity and the knowledge that it seeks. Indeed, the Salafists objections are far more radical than any objections formulated by St. Augustine, and I suppose that we need another Blumenberg to explore the "trial of theoretical curiosity" in Islam.

I'd like to quote a passage from Quintan Wiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29:3 (2006), 207-239:

Perhaps the most dangerous challenge to pure Islam, from the Salafi perspective, is the application of human intellect and logic to the original sources ("rationalism" in the Salafi lexicon). Salafis operate as though the Qur'an and hadith are self-explanatory: if the scholar has enough training and knowledge, then the vast majority of derived rulings are clear and indisputable. As a result, there is no need to apply human systems of logic. The scholars are, in a sense, reduced to the archeology of divine texts: their function is to simply unearth the truth that lies somewhere in the Qur'an and Sunna. In this understanding, there is really no such thing as interpretation -- the sources either sanction or prohibit particular beliefs, choices, and behavior; there is a single truth, as revealed by the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad; and there is no room for interpretive differences or religious pluralism. Any time humans attempt to apply their own logic or methods of reasoning (the scientific method of Sir Francis Bacon or Ibn Khaldun, for example), they open the way to human desire, distortion, and deviancy. Approaches that are guided by human logic will necessarily fall foul of human desire, which will lead to the selective and biased extrapolation of religious evidence to support human interests rather than religious truth. (Wiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement," page 210)

Wiktorowicz is describing the suspicion with which Salafi Islamists view any use of reason in interpreting the Qur'an or the hadith, but since the problem lies specifically in how human desire misleads reason, then this distrust of our reasoning powers would seem also to apply in all realms of knowledge.

Well, that's Salafi Islam, a Sunni form of Islam. What about Islamist views in Shia Islam? From reading Matthias Kuentzel's article "Antisemitism, Messianism and the Cult of Sacrifice: The Iranian Holy War," SPME Faculty Voices (April 10, 2008), I learn that Iranian Shi'ite Islamists have a similar distrust of human reason, as several passages from a subsection entitled "Reason as sin" will demonstrate:

For us, the employment of reason is the most self-evident thing in the world. For Islamists the use of reason -- apart from in the natural sciences -- is an expression of arrogance -- hence our castigation as the "World of Arrogance" -- and an offence against God. Their starting point is that the Koran must be interpreted and applied literally. But evidently, any kind of reason-based doubt undermines such an approach to the Koran. As a result, doubt and conjecture are opposed.

I'm not sure why Kuentzel exempts the "natural sciences," but let's see what else follows:

For Islamist academics, the term "Western imperialism" refers not so much to economic aggression, but first and foremost to an "intellectual invasion" of the world of Islam. In the words of the Islamist Syed al-Attas, "The contemporary challenge of Western civilization . . . is the challenge of knowledge . . . which promotes scepticism, which has elevated doubt and conjecture to 'scientific status' in its methodology." The primary goal of academic Islamism is to "de-westernize" the sciences, i.e. to free them from the principles of doubt and conjecture.

So far, Kuentzel is talking about Islamism generally, not specifically Shi'ite Islamism, for he quotes the Sunni Muslim Syed al-Attas (Syed M. N. al-Attas, cited by Bassam Tibi, Islamischer Fundamentalismus, moderne Wissenschaft und Technologie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), page 139). However, Kuentzel supplies evidence that Shi'ite Islamists think similarly:

At Columbia [University] Ahmadinejad clearly articulated his aversion to the Western concepts of "reason" and "reality". According to him science is permitted only to the strict believer: "Science is the light which illuminates the hearts of those who have been selected by the Almighty . . . . Science is the light and scientists must be pure and pious" . . . . Ahmadinejad is here laying down the criteria to be followed in purging the teaching body of Iranian universities.

At the same time Ahmadinejad also showed in [his speech at] Columbia that he defines his notion of "reality" in religious terms. What is real is the message of the Koran, while "material desires place humans against the realities of the world." And so, just as only the "pure and pious" can be a scientist, so only those who have fully subordinated themselves to the Koran can grasp what "reality" truly is. At Columbia Ahmadinejad said: "Corrupted independent human beings resist acceptance of reality and even if they do accept it, they do not obey it."

Now, Kuentzel may be using the term "science" here in the German sense of "Wissenschaft," which is broader than our English use of the term "science," but since "Wissenschaft" would include both the natural and the human 'sciences', then I suspect that for Shi'ite Islamists, using reason to pursue knowledge leads to corrupt knowledge if one is a "Corrupted independent human being," namely, if one is not a Muslim who has submitted reason to Allah's revelation in the Qur'an. At any rate, the denigration of human reason seems to apply pretty broadly for Shi'ites, for Kuentzel suggests that the submission of reason applies in the realm of power as well:

This rejection of human reason also affects how power is understood. The very word Islam means "submission", in the sense of subjection to God. If people cannot achieve knowledge through reason, all the less so are they capable of shaping and determining their own fate. While the secular answer to the question "can people rule themselves" is positive, from an Islamist point of view it is a priori negative: only God is the sovereign, only God can rule via the Caliphate. To sum up: the second characteristic of the new religious war is its goal: the replacement of individual and social self-determination by a sharia dictatorship.

I wish that Kuentzel had cited Shi'ites other than Ahmadinejad, but from my own, broader reading, I think that Kuentzel is probably right.

And if Pope Benedict XVI is correct in his Regensburg address on "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections," then not merely Islamism but Islam itself has profound doubts about human reason.

Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh Slams Osama bin Laden

Salman al-Odeh

Ex-friend of Bin Laden?

(Image from Islam Online)

I've been sitting on this old news because I didn't know enough about Salman al-Odeh (aka Salman al-Oadah aka Salman al-Ouda aka Salman al-Awdah).

I first read of al-Odeh's condemnation of Osama bin Laden's terrorism in an article at MEMRI:

"I say to my brother Osama [bin Laden]: How much blood has been shed, and how many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed, displaced, or banished in the name of Al-Qaeda? Would you be pleased to meet Allah while you bear responsibility for hundreds or even millions of people?" ("Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh Slams 'Brother' Osama bin Laden," MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, September 20, 2007, No. 1717)

According to Fawaz A. Gerges, writing for Yale Global:, this is a first for al-Odeh:

"Although al-Oadah and other senior Muslim scholars condemned the 9/11 attacks, they had refrained from direct criticism of bin Laden. With al-Oadah's new frontal assault on the elusive Al Qaeda leader, any ambiguity vanished. He holds bin Laden personally accountable for the occupation of Muslim lands in Afghanistan and Iraq, displacement of millions of Iraqis, killings of thousands of Afghans, internment and torture of promising and deluded young Muslims, and a tarnished image of Islam all over the world." (Fawaz A. Gerges, "Disowned by Mentor, Bin Laden Seeks New Pastures," Yale Global, 19 September 2007)

Gerges says that al-Odeh had previously "condemned the 9/11 attacks," but I haven't yet seen that condemnation, so I cannot comment upon it. Al-Odeh's current criticism seems clear enough:

"My brother Osama, what happened on 9/11 was the killing of several thousands, maybe less than 3,000, who died aboard the planes and in those towers, whereas there are unknown preachers, through whom Allah has guided hundreds of thousands of people, who have been enlightened by the light of Islam, and whose hearts have been filled with the love of Allah. Is the difference not clear between one who kills and one who gives life?" (MEMRI)

Al-Odeh may be concerned for his own soul, for he writes further, asking Bin Laden:

"Are [you] determined to come to power, even if it is over the bodies of thousands and hundreds of thousands of policemen, soldiers, ordinary Muslims, or innocent people who are sometimes killed -- and then you say that they will be resurrected according to their intentions. Indeed they will, but the question is how we shall be resurrected, and how we shall appear when we meet our God, when so much blood has been shed under our patronage, whether we like it or not." (MEMRI)

Gerges quotes al-Odeh as pleading to Allah:

"O Allah! I plead my innocence to You from what Osama is doing, and from those who affiliate themselves to his name or work under his banner." (Gerges, "Disowned by Mentor")

One wonders what has taken al-Odeh so long to condemn Bin Laden, especially since he seems so concerned here about the blood "shed under our patronage." Perhaps he only gradually came to his conclusions, for he was one of the 26 Saudi scholars signing a fatwa in November 2004 that endorsed resistance in Iraq:

Without a doubt, fighting the occupiers is a duty of [all] who [are] able. It is a "defense jihad," and it comes under the law of rebutting the aggressor. It does not require a jihad of initiative or demand. It [defense jihad] does not require leadership but is employed as much as possible, as God said: "Be as pious as much as you can." (cf. the ninth signatory Salman Ben Fahd Al Awda to "Open Sermon to the Militant Iraqi People," Frontline (Third Summary Point))

Even earlier, prior to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, al-Odeh is said to have been aligned with Bin Laden:

The clerics, Safar Hawali and Salman Ouda, were identified in the first World Trade Center bombing trial as spiritual advisers to bin Laden. (Susan Schmidt, "Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S.," Washington Post, October 2, 2003, Page A01)

Moreover, a report by Dan Darling in The Weekly Standard suggests rather close relations:

While al-Ouda has long been characterized as a "friend" of Osama bin Laden, federal investigators told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March 2003 that he and al-Hawali "have direct contact" with Osama bin Laden. In a number of al Qaeda propaganda videos, bin Laden has praised al-Ouda for "enlightening" the Muslim youth as well as for his support of jihadi causes. (Dan Darling, "Jihad TV," The Weekly Standard, March 24, 2006)

Darling also notes:

There is evidence connecting al-Ouda to one of the suspected masterminds of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In September 2004, El Mundo and Corriere della Sera reported that Rabei Osman Ahmed, a former Egyptian army explosives expert and one of the purported masterminds of the bombings, was quoted in conversations wiretapped by Italian authorities as saying that al-Ouda was "Everything, everything" to him and that "I worked for him [al-Ouda] in Spain. I did really well in that period, in which I earned 2,000 euros ($2,400) a month. There were days I earned 1,000 euros ($1,200)." (Darling, "Jihad TV")

I suppose that all of this is hearsay, rumor, circumstantial evidence, and lack of proof, but it doesn't seem to leave clear distance between al-Odeh and Bin Laden. Sheikh al-Odeh, therefore, may be concerned about more than his soul in his recent attempt at a clean break from Bin Laden.

I wonder, as well, if the Anbar Awakening phenomenon has influenced al-Odeh. Al-Qaeda tortured and killed so many Sunni Muslims in the western, Anbar region of Iraq that the former insurgents there have turned against Al-Qaeda and aligned themselves with the Americans for the purpose of eliminating Al-Qaeda from Anbar. Sheikh al-Odeh cannot expect much influence among Iraqi Sunnis so long as his name is tainted by an association with Bin Laden and his organization. Moreover, al-Odeh may now be deeply concerned about a potential loss of Sunni power to the Shi'ites in Iraq and the entire Gulf region unless the Sunnis concentrate less upon ideological purity and more upon Realpolitik.

Meaning: explicitly ditch Bin Laden, implicitly support the Sunnis, and discreetly quieten down about the Americans ... for a while.

A Message from Mr. Bin Laden on the Iraq War

Mr. Bin Laden Wants You!

(Image from Wikipedia)

In a recent Yahoo News report, "Bin Laden urges Americans to convert," correspondent Lee Keath informs us that:

Over the last few years, al-Qaida leaders appear to have gotten better at distributing their missives. They are using subtitles and different languages and using the Internet to distribute them, rather than depending on a particular television station or network.

Quite true, as I can confirm, for Mr. Bin Laden has requested that I post this message here on my widely read blog, Gypsy Scholar, which he says that he much admires for its attention to Islamist issues (any publicity being good publicity, apparently). Anyway, here's what Mr. Bin Laden would like Americans to know:

There are two solutions to stopping it. One is from our side, and it is to escalate the fighting and killing against you. This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out.... The second solution is from your side.... I invite you to embrace Islam.... It will also achieve your desire to stop the war as a consequence, because as soon as the warmongering owners of the major corporations realize that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and have begun to look for an alternative, and this alternative is Islam, they will run after you to please you and achieve what you want to steer you away from Islam.

What a surprise! All this time, I considered Mr. Bin Laden a postmodern terrorist, but here he is falling into the Modernist fallacy of binary oppositions! Either democracy or Islam, he says, setting forth the supposed alternatives.

The subtext here is that Mr. Bin Laden needs some more recruits, and he'd be willing to let bygones be bygones if America would just come over and join his Al Qaeda club. If we do that, then ... well, someday, we'll all be able to look back and laugh about our little 9/11 misunderstanding.

Speaking for myself ... thanks, but no thanks, Mr. Bin Laden. Even in your heyday, I didn't find your movement all that attractive, and from the reports that I read, your "Al Qaeda in Iraq" branch might not be in Iraq much longer because even the Sunni insurgents hate Al Qaeda's imposition of Islamist rule. Look, if conservative, Sunni Muslims of Iraq who've been fighting American forces since the fall of Saddam are now aligning themselves with the American military to eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq, then your alternatives of Al Qaeda's brand of Islam or America brand of democracy would appear to be overly limited. You're confronted by your previous Sunni allies who despise your Al Qaeda so much that they're even willing to cooperate with the hated Americans to get rid of you.

What a twist of fate, eh?

One day, Mr. Bin Laden, you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack, and you may find yourself in another part of the world, and you may find yourself beneath the wheel of a large automobile, and you may find yourself just a loseable louse, with a losable life. And you may ask yourself -- well ... how did I get here?

How, indeed.

Well, maybe you haven't been helped by holding to a form of Islam so extreme that you make even the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia appear more moderate? That's just a suggestion, by the way, and I could be wrong, but it might explain how you lost your Sunni friends in Iraq. You know, if you're killing your own friends, grabbing power from them, imposing your own harsh rules upon them, stuff like that, they'll tend to not like you anymore.

Besides, you and your Al Qaeda are not the only game in town. The world is a complex place, isn't it? In Iraq alone, you're confronted with ethnic Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shi'ite Arabs who might not like each other so much but who've come to dislike you a lot more. Then, there's Iran, whose larger strategic interests don't coincide with yours at all despite their being Muslim. I guess that when you invited Americans to embrace Islam, you didn't mean the Iranian version, did you?

I expect that we'll be hearing from you again, Mr. Bin Laden, but we recognize that your invitation for us to embrace Islam is merely a softly worded threat meaning "embrace Islam ... or else."

We'll stay alert about that "or else" message ... so you take care now to extend us the same courtesy. Bye...

Martin Kramer on Hizballah's Ayatollah Fadlallah

Martin Kramer

(Gazing at You From Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I alluded to Martin Kramer's useful website, which provides articles that he has written on Hizballah, among other topics.

One fascinating article is titled "The Moral Logic of Hizballah," taken from Walter Reich's edited book of articles by various scholars, Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998). Kramer's first footnote cites an article from 1988, but "Moral Logic" seems initially to have appeared as Occasional Paper No. 101, published in August 1987 in Tel Aviv by the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Thus, the article represents Kramer's thinking on Hizballah about 20 years ago, but it has details relevant to our understanding of suicide martyrdom:

Hizballah owes much of its reputation in the wider world to the unprecedented wave of suicidal bombings carried out by Lebanese Shi`ites from the spring of 1983 to the summer of 1985. These attacks were directed against U.S., French, and Israeli targets in Lebanon, and they met with astonishing success in bringing about policy reassessments by all these extraneous powers.

...

The more complicated moral issue from Hizballah's point of view concerned the method of the attacks, which depended upon the premeditated sacrifice by Muslims of their own lives. The frequency with which this issue was addressed by Shi'ite clerics following the attacks suggests that resort to this method did not meet with universal approbation within Hizballah, because of the strong Islamic prohibition against suicide.

The eternal consequence of committing suicide is dire, as Kramer notes in footnote 24:

The accepted theological view is that suicide is a grave sin, and the person who commits suicide is doomed to continual repetition in Hell of the action by which he killed himself. Franz Rosenthal, "On Suicide in Islam," Journal of the American Oriental Society 66 (1946): 243, 245.

Islamic law therefore strongly condemns suicide, so the use of attacks in which one's own death was necessary -- indeed, even a meticulously planned necessity -- raised troubling questions due to their success ... but only because of their success. Had they been utterly unsuccessful, they would have been roundly condemned. Their success required their justification. Their justification required a man steeped in Islamic law.

Rising to the occasion was the Lebanese Shi'ite religious scholar Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. His defense of suicide martyrdom never amounted to a fatwa, but in a piece of complex moral reasoning, he came as close as possible to issuing one without formally doing so:

First, he said, no other means remained to the Muslims to confront the massive power commanded by the United States and Israel. In the absence of any other alternative, unconventional methods became admissible, and perhaps even necessary.

...

[Second, he argued that d]eaths in suicide bombings are no different from more commonplace deaths of soldiers who enter battle knowing that some of them will not return but confident that their sacrifice will advance the common cause.

As Kramer notes:

Fadlallah's moral logic thus rested upon two opposite but complementary assertions. The Muslims had just cause and need to resort to extraordinary means; yet the suicide bombings were not that extraordinary after all, and his closer analysis revealed that those Muslims who perished in such attacks died deaths that did not differ from battlefield deaths. These were the complex mechanisms of moral disengagement that permitted Islamic Jihad, in good conscience, to recruit and deploy young men in suicidal missions.

Fadlallah's reasoning is more nuanced than presented here, so interested readers should go to Kramer's article for a closer reading, but Kramer's concise summary reflects arguments that I've seen in various Muslim sources, which implies that Fadlallah's views have met a strongly felt need in the broader Muslim community despite his minority status as a Shi'ite Muslim.

Interestingly -- as reported in Wikipedia -- Fadlallah "condemns terrorist attacks against civilians such as those of September 11 and the beheading of Nick Berg" at the hands of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Fadlallah wouldn't care much for Zarqawi, of course, since the Salafi Sunni Zarqawi hated Shi'ites and would gladly have cut Fadlallah's head off, too.

Hezbollah and Civilian Shields: Dr. Mounir Herzallah's Letter

Flag of Hezbollah

Showing a Soviet AK-47 Above the Globe

(Flying at From Beirut to the Beltway)

You see above the flag of Hezbollah, the Shi'a organization currently fighting Israel in southern Lebanon. According to Wikipedia, the Arabic in the flag can be transliterated as follows:

Top: فان حزب الله هم الغالبون fa'inna hizb Allah hum al-ghaalibuun

Center: حزب الله hizb Allah

Bottom: المقاومة الاسلامية في لبنان al-muqaawamah al-islaamiyah fi lubnaan

Wikipedia also translated the Arabic:

The upper text means "Hezbollah will be the victor."

The green text is the name of the group — with the first letter of "Allah" reaching up to grasp a Soviet AK-47.

The bottom text means "The Islamic Resistance Movement in Lebanon."

I do not claim to know much about Hezbollah, other than what little I have read in the news, at Wikipedia, and on Professor Martin Kramer's website.

One assertion that I recently heard was that Hezbollah does not use civilians as shields, which contradicted reports that I seemed to recall having read elsewhere, so I went searching online and soon found this apparently firsthand report, albeit in German, a letter to Der Tagesspiegel ("Kein Frieden in Nahost," July 30, 2006) purportedly from a Shi'a man, Dr. Mounir Herzallah, who had lived in southern Lebanon but who now lives in Berlin-Wedding, Germany:

Ich wohnte bis 2002 in einem kleinen Dorf im Süden nahe Mardschajun, das mehrheitlich von Schiiten wie mir bewohnt ist. Nach Israels Verlassen des Libanon dauerte es nicht lange, bis die Hisbollah bei uns und in allen anderen Ortschaften das Sagen hatte. Als erfolgreiche Widerstandskämpfer begrüßt, erschienen sie waffenstarrend und legten auch bei uns Raketenlager in Bunkern an. Die Sozialarbeit der Partei Gottes bestand darin, auf diesen Bunkern eine Schule und ein Wohnhaus zu bauen! Ein lokaler Scheich erklärte mir lachend, dass die Juden in jedem Fall verlieren, entweder weil die Raketen auf sie geschossen werden oder weil sie, wenn sie die Lager angriffen, von der Weltöffentlichkeit verurteilt werden ob der dann zivilen Toten. Die libanesische Bevölkerung interessiert diese Leute überhaupt nicht, sie benutzen sie als Schilder und wenn tot als Propaganda. Solange sie dort existieren, wird es keine Ruhe und Frieden geben.

Here's my rough translation:

I lived until 2002 in a small village just to the south of Mardschajun, where a majority of Shi'ites like me lived. After Israel withdrew from Lebanon, not much time passed until Hezbollah had its say among us and in all other areas. Greeted as successful resistance fighters, they appeared with weapons and set up a rocket cache in a bunker near us. The social work of this Party of God consisted in building a school and apartment building on top of this bunker! A local sheik, laughing, declared to me that the Jews in any case would lose, either because the rockets would be shot at them or because they -- if they attacked the munitions depot -- would be condemned by world opinion due to the dead civilians. These people [i.e., Hezbollah] are not interested in the Lebanese population at all, for they use them as human shields, then as propaganda if they die. So long as they [i.e., Hezbollah] exist, there will be no peace and freedom.

Dr. Mounir Herzallah states that he lived in a village just south of Mardschajun, which I take to be the same as Marjayoun, which can be seen on this online interactive map.

Is this letter authentic, i.e., is Dr. Herzallah who he says that he is? I have no way of knowing, but unless someone demonstrates that this letter is fake, I'll take it at face value and cite it as a piece of evidence that Hezbollah does use civilians as shields.

Note that I am limiting myself to this narrow point of "civilian shields" and not commenting upon the larger war currently raging in southern Lebanon, which is a far more complex issue.