Category Archives: Sunni

Tower of Babel, Saudi Style

the official website is https://www.neom.com/en-us

Long before Abraham/Ibrahim left Ur of the Chaldees for the promised land and became the ancestral icon of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there was that architectural wonder called the Tower of Babel. As noted in the eloquent phrasing of the King James Version of Genesis 11:4: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Readers of the text know what happened with that bravado venture. As a refresher, here is how the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder imagined that ziggurat tower in 1563.

Now what if instead of a massive tower, such an old-fashioned idea, a new world wonder was created with the narrow ribbon of an artificial skyscraper city some 75 miles long, and some 656 feet wide? One set of plans would make this the most eco-friendly living space ever conceived:

THE LINE will eventually accommodate 9 million people and will be built on a footprint of just 34 square kilometers. This will mean a reduced infrastructure footprint, creating never-before-seen efficiencies in city functions. The ideal climate all-year-round will ensure that residents can enjoy the surrounding nature. Residents will also have access to all facilities within a five-minute walk, in addition to high-speed rail – with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes.

This rival to The Pyramids would reach 1600 feet into the sky, thus becoming taller than the World Trade Center that several Saudi citizens destroyed in 2001 by crashing an airplane into the building. Of course such a major building enterprise would cost a lot of money, like a trillion dollars. I wonder what country would have that kind of funding available and what kind of resurrected Nimrod would think of such an idea?

Guess what? The plans are now on the board with the NEOM project known as “The Line”. You can read all about it on all kinds of websites, like NPR, The Independant, The Guardian, Time Out, and many other sources by typing “NEOM The Line” into Google. The patron of this marvel is His Royal Highness (I guess the Highness in his title inspired the idea to have the highest city in the world) MBS of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It would have been nice to read a review of this fiasco by the Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi, but he is no longer around.

Of all the places on earth, where would be the best location for this ethereal construction project? Why not at the crossroads of the planet? Now that all roads no longer lead to Rome, I guess that would be the Arabian desert in Saudi Arabia. After all who would not want to live in a natural setting with miles and miles of sand and rocks and hardly any sign of wildlife? Unfortunately there are only a few camels left in the Saudi desert, since most are now getting ready for beauty pageants. But at least there will not be the nuisance of fast-driving joy-riding by Saudi youth through the streets, since there will not be any streets. Instead, I suspect that people will get around by doing what they did on the TV show The Jetsons. Of course, Saudi lifestyles will still be enforced, so women will need a male escort and be veiled before taking that five-minute walk to anything they desire.

World reaction to this marvel of marvels is just beginning. Carlos Felipe Pardo informed NPR that “This solution is a little bit like wanting to live on Mars because things on Earth are very messy.” The choice of Mars is proper, since Venus would not be a good metaphor for Saudi censors due to all the naked images of the goddess Venus that are available on the web. I think there would be a positive response from endangered dictators like Vladimir Putin, since the Saudi government has given sanctuary to all kinds of nasty rulers in exile in the past, most recently Ben Ali of Tunisia. Idi Amin, the brutal ruler of Uganda, but clearly thought to still be a good Muslim in the Saudi style, spent his latter years in luxury as a guest of the Saudis.

The Tower of Babel was doomed from the start, but then Nimrod and his like did not realize the vast oil and gas wealth underneath their feet in the Middle East. If they had, we would all be speaking the same language that Adam and Noah spoke. Even Star Trek never imagined that.

Wahhabis in the Dustbin?

This is a fascinating analysis by Hassan Hassan of the Saudi royal family trying to rewrite its past. It is available on the New/Lines website.

Here is the conclusion:

Whatever Wahhabism is morphing into, though, it will not lead to a new lease on life. In Saudi Arabia and beyond, Wahhabism has been losing ground for too many years. The factors that once helped it grow no longer exist. Politically, the state no longer needs the ideology, which would not have flourished without the state. Even if the Saudi state decided to change its view about the utility of Wahhabism, it would not be able to reverse the trend. Wahhabism ran out of gas ideologically before it did politically. The ideology, sometimes seen as a distinct sect even from the Sunni tradition it emerged from, had long projected power disproportionate to its actual appeal and strength because it had the backing of a powerful and wealthy kingdom and a vast network of rich and generous donors. That bubble has now burst, and Wahhabism is reduced to its right size of being a minor player in the Muslim landscape, progressively including in Saudi Arabia.

Bulldozing Islamic Jeddah

mid-19th century view of Jeddah from Richard Burton’s travelogue

The current de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, MBS, has promoted a major development scheme entitled Vision 2030. This time, instead of sending henchmen with cleavers, he is authorizing imported Western bulldozers to basically turn the older parts of the historic port of Jeddah into a wannabe Dubai. As noted in a recent article on Qantara:

“Currently, the areas most affected by the destruction are those to the south and east of the old city, the Balad, parts of which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage sites. Prior to evacuation, between 10,000 and 50,000 people lived in each of these neighbourhoods. That means tens of thousands are likely to lose their homes. Estimates circulated by dissidents and demolition critics range from hundreds of thousands to one million."

The port of Jeddah has been the main stopping point for Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca for almost fifteen hundred years. It is described by early geographers in detail, given the amount of travelers who passed through. For the modern kingdom, however, history means nothing and can be erased by the whims of the super rich. This continues the destructive Wahhabi impulse that sacked Kerbala in 1802, as described below by ‘Uthman b. Abd Allah b. Bishr (d. 1872) in his Unwan al-Majd fi Tarikh Najd (Mecca, 1930):

“In the year 1802, Ibn Sa’ud made for Karbala with his victorious army, famous pedigree horses, all the settled people and Bedouin of Najd, the people of Janub, Hijaz, Tihama and others…The Muslims [i.e. the Wahhabis] surrounded Karbala and took it by storm. They killed most of the people in the houses and the markets. They destroyed the dome above al-Husayn’s grave. They took away everything they saw in the shrine and near it, including the coverlet decorated with emeralds, sapphires and pearls which covered the grave. They took away everything they found in the town—possessions, arms, clothes, fabric, gold, silver, and precious books. One cannot even enumerate the spoils! They stayed there for just one morning and left after midday, taking away all the possessions. Nearly 2000 people were killed in Karbala.”

When the well-primed news media talk about reform in Saudi Arabia, it is worth noting that reform has a long way to go, given the roots of its blood-soaked Wahhabi past. It will take more than letting women drive at the same time that women who protest are jailed, basic human rights in the kingdom are ignored, and heads are still chopped off in public. Even the chopping up of a journalist who dared to call out the corruption is now ignored, because of the profit for a family which defies the morality of the country’s own Prophet. As long as the Saudi regime buys Western military supplies, they are given free rein to use them, resulting in the world’s worst humanitarian disaster in Yemen, with thousands dead and more dying every day, and fueling the sectarian divide between the Saudis and Iran.

There is a saying that blood is thicker than water, but it seems that for the Saudi elite it is oil which is thicker than either blood or water. They have plenty of oil, have shed lots of blood and are desperate for water. All this leads to an economic domino effect: the world craves oil, oil revenues fuel a family wealth fund which spreads an intolerant interpretation of Islam worldwide, and then much of the oil revenues come back to oil-hungry countries who sell weapons to the Saudis.

Imagine if Greece leveled the Parthenon for a shopping mall and Italy replaced the Colloseum with a football field. In a sense that has already happened to Mecca and Medina. Welcome to Saudi Arabia in 2030…

Yemen Military in the early 19th century

The Library of Congress has an online print of an engraving by Andrea Bernieri. It does not appear to be based on an actual observation by the artist. Below is the description on the website:

This hand-colored engraving of a work by Andrea Bernieri (flourished 1826–42) depicts Yemeni horsemen with lances exercising in the courtyard of a fort. The horsemen are watched by a soldier holding a musket, and civilians are looking on in the foreground. Bernieri was one of the Italian artists who contributed works to a 15-volume set by Giulio Ferrario (1767-1847) entitled Il costume antico e moderno, o, storia del governo, della milizia, della religione, delle arti, scienze ed usanze di tutti i popoli antichi e moderni (Customs old and new, or the history of government, militia, religion, arts, sciences, and the ways of all nations, ancient and modern) published in Italy in 1823–38. Ferrario was a Milan publisher, printer and librarian whose monumental work contained more than 1,500 hand-colored plates depicting clothing from the classical period through the early 1800s, as well as many architectural drawings and engravings. The engraving appeared as plate 29 in Asia, volume 5 of Ferrario’s work. It is from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at the Brown University Library.

Bernieri, Andrea, flourished 1826-1842.

I have not been able to find the exact match of the volume with the image above, although an edition from 1833 includes two engravings of Arabs of the Peninsula in a chapter that is primarily about Mecca. These come across as rather fanciful, especially the females with no veils. These images are attached below.

As pointed out by Noha Sadek, the military image above is a copy of an earlier image in an edition of Niebuhr’s travel account. Below is the earlier image it is based on from the 1774 French edition:

Far Horizons, Arduous Journeys, and The Conference of the Birds

“The Concourse of the Birds” (ca. 1600), Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Jon W. Anderson

Amid the blizzard of punditry and spin-doctoring – especially spin-doctoring from perpetrators and advocates of prescriptions for Afghanistan who turned from the Bush administration’s original goal of smashing al-Qaida and denying it sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which the 9/11 attacks were hatched to destroying Iraq and “nation-building” in Afghanistan – it is worth pausing to take account of how the startling swift advance of the Taliban there from a border post to a provincial capital then to all other provincial capitals in less than a week and Kabul on the weekend looks from Afghan and perhaps even Taliban perspectives. So far, those have been limited to interviews with media-savvy Afghan modernists, on the one hand, and a Taliban press conference on the other. Or, all the news that fits the script(s).

What is new among facts closer to the ground is the much derided and in recent months ignored Doha “process,” if we might borrow that term. Doha is the proximal point of departure for everything that has happened in Afghanistan since the former Trump administration negotiated, signed, and exchanged copies of an agreement with the Taliban last year. From the outside, to external observers, this all looked very diplomatic, including accepting the Taliban as a de facto international player. Very diverting, and pundits were diverted into deconstructing it as variously hasty, overdue, giving up on Afghanistan, or a typical Trump deal, all show but bankrupt at its core. But that wasn’t the Doha Process from Afghan perspectives.

By setting a date for withdrawal of US troops on the ground in Afghanistan in return for Taliban agreeing not to molest that withdrawal, that Trump agreement with Taliban negotiator-representatives reset the game in two ways. First, it concluded armed hostilities in a classic Afghan form of conflict-management where one side concludes it cannot win, stops fighting, and effectively changes sides (while on the surface hiding that) by withdrawing from the field, with the other side accepting that instead of destroying its foe. Second, it provided a sort of non-aggression pact, or informal, more private than public, assurance that the withdrawing party would not be molested in return for effectively laying down arms. This underlying structure of the Doha Agreement from an Afghan perspective, on which foreign observers focused as leaving the Afghan government to make its own agreement, has a denser significance in customary Afghan approaches to conflict management. In those terms, the high-level Doha agreement provided a model subsequently applied “down the line,” as it were at all the points of actual armed conflict in myriad local discussions, agreements, and private assurances by Taliban that they would not molest or revenge themselves on soldiers who laid down (and especially surrendered) their arms nor civilians who didn’t oppose them. They may or may not have had a strategy to preserve and take over existing apparatus of government, as well as discarded military equipment much paraded before the cameras. But this much is basic: they managed a negotiated cessation of fighting and freedom of movement for themselves.

I don’t have direct evidence of myriad local negotiations and private assurances of this sort; but the alternative favored by external pundits – that thousands of soldiers and police, all of them, spontaneously and simultaneously deserted a government too corrupt, distant, and indifferent to their own welfare – is inherently implausible. It is implausible, first, that all would do this at the same time, as if Afghans were of one mind like a flock of pigeons and, second, that the occasional holdouts might not have been taken by Taliban as betrayal of the deal justifying their return to fighting. By all accounts so far, there was little of that and a lot of quietly stopping and simply stepping out of their way.

The structural condition for this outcome was set by the final US strategy of driving Taliban into the mountains and hinterlands while securing urban centers where most of the population lived. To old hands, this might resemble an old Vietnam strategy and defiance of the Maoist alternative, though it probably follows a more contemporary counter-insurgency doctrine of pushing insurgents to the margins so the centers can develop and develop constituencies for development. Again, I do not know if this was the rationale, but the effect of pushing Taliban out of sight was to push them out of mind and so to fail to register localizations of the Doha Deal for what they were, a deal and not just threats to kill any who opposed them.

Second, subsequent Afghan behavior supports the hypothesis of quiet assurances not just in Doha and not just in myriad local settings but all up and down the spectrum from local to national forces and government. The sudden night-time flight of President Ghani, a day after a final – recorded – broadcast in which he proposed to plan a meeting to mediate a national council to negotiate differences, followed the next day by not-so-former grandees who still represented important constituencies, some armed, stepping forward to announce that they stood ready to organize and host such a meeting with the Taliban, suggests the fix was in, notwithstanding his professions of sudden decision and sudden departures. Former President Hamid Karzai, current co-President Abdallah Abdallah, and surviving Mujahadin leader Gulgbeddin Hikmatyar interposed themselves with not-so-subtle reminders of other constituencies in Afghanistan, including armed ones, that Taliban would have to take into account.

While Taliban do not have such a reputation from their previous takeover and time in power, their performative defiance of the rest of the world in that period has so far (not this week but since the Doha Agreement) taken a back seat or at least been supplemented by professions of wanting international recognition following performances of such at Doha and in – of all things – a press conference in Kabul two days after Taliban fighters entered the capital. Whether a Conference of the Big Birds will occur, and whether it might include the volunteer grandees, the gesture and the roles claimed by persons making it are wholly Afghan. Call it speculation in settlement, jockeying for position, attempts to take the game ahead now that the game behind is up. This is the normal next phase in customary Afghan conflict-management: it is not de-escalation, not compromise or cutting the difference, but realignment that recognizes and accepts interests and a politics of alliance-making that begins with collusion. Even former President Ghani’s statements from his new not-yet-exile in the UAE are such a bid to, in journalist terms, “relevance.” In this regard, it may have been wiser than the pundits realized for US President Biden to blame the Afghan army for its debacle, since that cast him, an outsider, and not them as the betrayed party.

Where does this leave journalists and other observer-interpreters? For the most part, they have been outside the local versions of the Doha Process in Afghanistan; within Afghanistan they have been close to modernist constituencies that hitched their stars after the first Taliban period to the two domains that Taliban then forbade, especially to women – namely, education and media broadly interpreted to extend from fashion to broadcasting, publicity, and centering on expressive professions. These are most accessible to foreign observers, first, because they want to be – those are their reference groups – and second because foreign observers already have categories for them that provide a kind of pre-understanding that is at best thin when it comes to Taliban but also when it comes to the other demographic most threatened by them in the past, the Shia Hazara.

The coming test not just for the New Taliban but for the old grandees is who will take an interest in those Afghans in whom foreigners take an interest. This is not just the media world of commentators and interpreters focused by modernists, and particularly by urban women who have grasped the opportunities in education and media to measure the distance they have come from the last time Taliban were in power; it also must include the Shia Hazara whose marja (religious leader/exemplars) in neighboring Iran have deep networks among co-religionists in Afghanistan. This time, Iran is not a bystander and, for those who worry about such things, has two decades of experience recruiting and deploying third-party volunteers/mercenaries in its own regional adventures. Whether or not it could mobilize them, at the least, Iran would take an interest in direct threats to the welfare of Shia in Afghanistan. Arguably, the stability of Afghanistan going forward will depend on such negotiations and alliances formed that Taliban neglected (or rejected) last time but whose public spokesmen now profess to want to engage.

My only prediction is that the process will drive outsiders crazy, and lacking local points of reference will test abilities to tell their own. Among those local perspectives…

In The Conference of the Birds, the Persian Sufi poet Farid al-Din Attar of Nishapur (1142-1220) described a meeting of all the birds to decide who would be their sovereign. Each bird represented some human fault, and after some discussion the wisest urged that they seek out the Simorg. To do that, they had to pass through seven valleys, one where they abandon dogmas, one where they abandon reason for love, one where they abandon worldly knowledge, another where they abandon desires and lusts.  In the Valley of Unity they realize that everything is connected, in the Valley of Wonderment that they have never understood anything, and in the final valley of Poverty that the ego is nothingness.  The birds experience agonies and pain.  Many die of fright even at the prospect of the journey, but some do set out, and a final 30 reach the abode of the Simorg (=30 birds in Farsi), which they realize is like the reality of a mirror in which one sees oneself reflected.

Jon W. Anderson is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the Catholic University of America. He conducted ethnographic research in Afghanistan in the 1970s.

Geocolonialism and the War in Yemen

harb
In April Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the situation in Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. After more than three years of a lopsided war between a Western-supported Saudi/Emirati coalition and a rebel group in control of the capital Sanaa and most of the estimated 28 million Yemenis, the crisis is only getting worse.

Now coalition forces are attempting to wrest control of the vital port of Hodeidah from the Huthi forces, thinking that such a loss would force the Huthis to accept their terms for a total submission. Since this port supplies most of the food and aid entering Yemen, loss of the port would likely trigger a siege to literally starve the Huthi areas into submission. The Huthis know this and are not likely to give up the port without a bloodbath. Meanwhile several hundred thousand residents fear for their lives and many have already fled to areas with no resources whatsoever. The UN fears a renewed outbreak of cholera, which has already affected more than one million Yemenis. Negotiations continue by the UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to stop the impending violence.

But in the midst of all this turmoil, one recent pundit argues that the eastern province of Marib, firmly in control of the Saudi/Emirati alliance, shows how one province succeeds in the midst of Yemen’s war. Not only is this sparsely populated and oil-rich area considered a success, it is said to be “thriving.” A football stadium with German turf and according to FIFA standards is being constructed and there is a new university for 5,000 students. The biblical land of the Queen of Sheba and famous Marib dam mentioned in the Quran (which was bombed at one point by the Saudis) is said to be “regaining a slice of its historical importance.”

So what is the lesson for Yemen’s future from this miracle in the desert? For journalist Adam Baron “Marib’s experience holds wider lessons for Yemen’s future: embracing decentralisation, empowering local actors, and focusing on ground-up stabilisation are all strands of the story that international and local players interested in bringing peace and stability to Yemen should note.” The main local actor here is a tribal sheikh named Sultan Arada, drawing on support of the conservative Islah movement. With outside money pouring in, he has morphed into the sultan of a fiefdom. The current “stability” is grounded not on local concerns but from the top-down flow of money from the neighboring international players, Saudis and Emiratis.

Yemen’s future is not in Marib, nor in building state-of-the-art FIFA stadiums in a country with a ravaged infrastructure, ongoing water crisis and sectarian violence fueled by the grueling three years of war. Marib is currently a colony of the Saudis, just as the Emiratis would like to take control of the island of Socotra and the port of Aden. The two wealthiest states of the now moribund GCC are carving out their zones of influence on the backs of people in the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula. Without the billions of dollars worth of weapons and strategic intelligence from the West, this war dividend could never have been realized.

Welcome to the latest, post-Cold War twist in the land once thought to be Holy. It is no longer direct Western intervention but a shared geocolonialism, in which the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is applauded and abetted by Western leaders. Muhammad bin Salman’s recent trip to the U.S. sold his snake-oil reform in exchange for buying more weapons and all that he assumes oil-drenched money can buy. Meanwhile the Saudi abysmal track record on human rights and the war crimes of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen are ignored. If Marib is the model for Yemen’s future, then the only democracy, for its flaws, in the Arabian Peninsula will be geocolonized into yet another make-believe kingdom or emirate.

al-Juwayni on Islamic Law

juwayni

David R. Vishanoff has recently published online A Critical Edition, English Translation, and New Commentary on Imām al‑Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī’s Leaflet on the Sources of Law
(Kitāb al‑Waraqāt fī uṣūl al‑fiqh).

“For an English-speaking student who wishes to understand the theory behind Islamic law, the first step is to read an introductory legal theory text such as Muslim students traditionally read and memorize in the Arab world. The Kitāb al-Waraqāt fÄ« uṣūl al-fiqh, or Leaflet on the Sources of Law, attributed to the KhurāsānÄ« ShāfiÊ¿Ä« AshÊ¿arÄ« scholar Imām al-Ḥaramayn AbÅ« al-MaʿālÄ« Ê¿Abd al-Malik ibn AbÄ« Muḥammad al-JuwaynÄ« (d. 1085), is a good choice, for two reasons.

First, it is brief, yet covers all the main concepts, terms, and principles of the classical Islamic discipline of legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh), which explains the scriptural “roots” or “sources” (uṣūl) from which the detailed rules of Islamic law (fiqh) derive their authority, and the interpretive process that connects each rule to its sources. It defines what law and legal theory are, then explains how to analyze the language of Muslim scriptures (how to translate commands into laws, and various ways to resolve contradictions between texts), and then goes on to describe several other tools that one can use when scripture does not provide a clear rule (e.g. textual criticism and reasoning by analogy). It concludes with a description of who is qualified to use legal theory, and how certain they can be about the conclusions they reach.

Second, it is representative of mainstream SunnÄ« views that dominated legal thought in al-Juwaynī’s day and that are still widely accepted today…”

click here to go to the website.

Reforming Saudi Arabia?

postwar

Mystique of Monarchy

Post-War Watch – April 19, 2016
https://postwarwatch.com/2016/04/19/mystique-of-monarchy/

MADAWI AL-RASHEED — Limited social and political reforms in Saudi Arabia only prolong the life of authoritarianism.

Although Saudi Arabia’s government relies on the religious establishment for its legitimacy, there are multiple groups and factions that fall under the Islamist category. How does the monarchy understand the relationship between Saudi’s religious establishment and political governance?

The dynamic at the heart of this question is better understood as one between religion and politics within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The relationship between these two spheres has evolved through the twentieth century. There is not one way of describing the interaction between religious and political entities, simply because it is subject to the political will of the regime — and the government’s evolving connection to official Islam and Islamists’ discourses and practices. Ultimately, this relationship has gone through three distinct phases since the consolidation of the modern state

The first phase (1960s-1990s) can be described as one of cooperation and instrumentalization. Since the establishment of the modern Saudi kingdom in 1932, the al-Saud political leadership tried to cooperate with the religious establishment in their country. The royal family institutionalized their discourse by creating specific religious bodies and honoring key figures for their support of the regime. Saudi Arabia’s government claimed legitimacy as the leadership that applies Islamic law and protects the Holy Cities — as well as directs outreach to Muslim communities around the globe. The regime’s efforts to incentivize religious bodies to support the monarchy derived potency from the fact that Saudi’s religious groups operated according to a populist ethos: religious figures can reach people in mosques, schools, universities, as well as exercise control over the judiciary.

The second phase began in the early-1990s, following the 1990-1991 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. During this period the Saudi regime alternately repressed and accommodated opinions from the multiple voices within the religious establishment and the splinter groups around it. Saddam Hussein’s military operations posed a serious threat to Saudi Arabia’s security and economy. The royal family understood that it needed to bring foreign, non-Muslim soldiers onto Saudi soil to defend the Kingdom — an action that angered conservative religious elements. Immediately after the Iraqi invasion, the Saudi regime began repressing Islamist voices that dissented against cooperation with United States and other foreign militaries.

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