Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

The “Muslim” Problem

CyberOrient, Egypt, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Libya, Muhammad, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue


The past week has seen a dramatic punctuation in the political present. This present is one in which several countries in North Africa and the Middle East are emerging from years of “stable” dictatorial rule in which human rights were ignored by the Western countries who philosophize how important human rights (or at least the right kind of rights) are. There is also a presidential election looming in the most powerful nation on earth, a nation divided in a partisan way with few realistic ideas on how to frame a way out of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. It is raining politics and that is fire and brimstone in the current climate.

The drama starts with the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, which like the abduction of Helen of Troy, prodded the United States to engage in two decade-long wars that have resulted in the deaths of former figure-head foes (Saddam and Bin Laden) but which are unwinnable in the old-fashioned “sign a peace treaty and let trade make us friends” sense after World War II. The spark, a most surreal one at that, is a pathetic trailer for the kind of film no one would ever pay money to see. Before Youtube, before the Internet, this would have been yet another throw-away on the huge cinematic rubbish pile already brimming with porn. But in a scenario that a producer would probably laugh away, an Islamophobic individual dubs intentionally hateful dialogue denigrating the Prophet Muhammad. For non-Muslims the main thing offended is taste; for Muslims this is hateful and hurtful, akin to throwing something sacred into a toilet.

The politics has exploded all over the media, not in spits but a massive vomit. Continue reading The “Muslim” Problem →

Mitt miffs the tweets

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Election 2012, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Libya, Muhammad, Terrorism Issue


US Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney listens to questions on the attack on the US consulate in Libya, in Jacksonville, Florida, September 12, 2012. [Reuters]

Romney poses, as militants burn a US consulate over Islamophobic film

By Juan Cole, Al Jazeera, September 14, 2012

As Mitt Romney misfires on the campaign trail; scholar argues that the events in Benghazi are atypical of the new Libya.

Predictably, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tried to make political hay of the tiny demonstrations in Cairo and Benghazi by Muslim militants. The Benghazi mob turned violent in clashes with police and the consulate ended up being burned and an embassy staffers being killed.

Romney seized on the frantic tweets of the Cairo embassy, which condemned the sleazy Youtube videos by American Islamophobes that had provoked the ire of the crowds, as evidence that the Obama administration was sidingwith the attacking mobs. First of all, really? Romney is trying to get elected on the back of a dead US diplomat? Second of all, really? He thinks the State Department thought the attack on themselves was justified? Third of all, really? Romney is selective. When it comes to Christianity, Romney decries a ‘war on religion.’ But apparently he thinks there *should* be a war on Islamic religion. Romney’s intervention (he is just a civilian at the moment) in American foreign policy is unwise and risky, not to mention distasteful. Continue reading Mitt miffs the tweets →

Beyond religion in the Middle East

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Film and Video, Islamophobia 101, Libya, Terrorism Issue


An Egyptian protester tries to raise an Islamic flag at the U.S. embassy during a protest, in Cairo, Egypt on September 11, 2012. (Khaled Elfiqi / EPA / September 13, 2012)

Violence in Egypt and Libya is more about local politics than Islam.

By Mimi Hanaoka, LA Times, September 13, 20121

The chaotic violence that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three American staffers in Libya, and that resulted in a mob storming the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, has been garbed in religious language and references. However, the religious rhetoric from all corners distracts from the real issues: serious domestic political fragmentation in Libya and Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and America’s place in the region.

Media attention has focused on a polemic 14-minute movie trailer for “Innocence of Muslims” posted on YouTube, which prompted protests in Benghazi and Cairo. The film was allegedly produced by Sam Bacile, who has identified himself as an Israeli Jew. In the Wall Street Journal, Bacile called Islam a “cancer” and claimed he raised $5 million from about 100 Jewish donors to fund the film, details that only intensify the film’s polemic power.

The trailer, translated into Arabic and viewed thousands of times in the Middle East, portrays the prophet Muhammad as, among other things, a child abuser. Florida pastor and provocateur Terry Jones, who burned the Koran in 2011, claims to have screened the film; a self-described Christian militant in California claims to have consulted on it. Continue reading Beyond religion in the Middle East →

Hakadha (Thus Spake Zahed Sultan)

"Arab Spring", Kuwait, Music and Dance, Terrorism Issue, YouTube Watch


Zahed Sultan Releases ‘Revolutionary’ New Song & Music Video

Watch Zahed Sultan’s new ‘Like This (ha-ka-tha)’ music video on www.youtube.com/zahedsultan

Sign up on www.mousemusic.org and download free ‘Like This (ha-ka-tha)’ wallpaper for your computer.

Zahed Sultan announces the release of his new song & music video entitled “Like This (ha-ka-tha).” The song pays tribute to the social frustrations that have plagued the MENA region prior to the Arab Spring. In classical spoken-word Arabic, Zahed calls upon the Arab people to stand in unity, against tyranny, with a sense of civic pride.

In his music video, Zahed gives a gripping account of the revolutions as they sequentially unfold in each Arab country through use of raw-footage (shot by protestors with cell-phones) and stop-motion animation.

Be an active part of the change happening around you and share Zahed’s latest song & music video with your network!

About The Artist

Zahed is a music producer and social entrepreneur from Kuwait. He released his debut album “Hi Fear, Lo Love” on April 1st 2011and attained success with his 2nd single “I Want Her But I Don’t Want Her.” Parisian Dj, Stephane Pompougnac, featured the single on the internationally acclaimed Hotel Costes 15 compilation, which was released on Sept. 26th 2011. Continue reading Hakadha (Thus Spake Zahed Sultan) →

Ali Abdullah Salih: Not invincible, not invisible

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


A little over six months ago, Ali Abdullah Salih finally resigned himself to the fact that he was no longer wanted by the people of Yemen or the international community as president-for-life in Yemen. But instead of taking his stashed away millions to exile in Saudi Arabia, which has open-armed several past dictators with Muslim names, or bribing a poor country to host him and his family, he remains in Yemen. I suspect when someone is in power for as long as Salih was, that delusion is the normal path. Perhaps he thinks that if things keep on getting worse (ignoring the fact that the problems are largely his own creation), Yemenis will bring him back. Perhaps he has heard those Iraqis who say things were better under Saddam? Perhaps, but his delusion contributes to the problem as long as he is living in Yemen.

Salih played the “dancing on the heads of snakes” game throughout his tenure at the head of the Yemeni state. He built a family-run state, allying himself with tribal powerbrokers like Shaykh Abdullah al-Ahmar, and shaping the military into a private army. Corruption was rampant and few Yemenis were fooled by the state-tun media myth of Salih as the father of his country. His triumph of uniting north and south was a ruse from the start, extending his control rather than actually caring to build a united country. But his downfall is largely due to backing the extremists, the Jihadis back from Afghanistan, those whose ideology he could never uproot for his own advantage. When his troops took over Aden in the 1994 civil war, Salih allowed northern zealots to raze religious shrines and demolish the one beer factory in the country. As the zealots shouted “Allahu Akbar” the guy in the presidential palace could only think of himself as the “akbar.” Building a monster mosque in the capital, not unlike Saddam’s architectural piety, could hardly disguise the fact that here was a man who worshipped himself. He was not the first to do so, is not alone in doing so, and will not be the last. Continue reading Ali Abdullah Salih: Not invincible, not invisible →

Did Islamophobia Fuel the Oak Creek Massacre?

Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue


Sikhs hold up placards with photos of six mass shooting victims after a candlelight vigil in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, August 7, 2012. The killings of six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin has thrust attention on white power music, a thrashing, punk-metal genre that sees the white race under siege.
Photograph by: JOHN GRESS , REUTERS

by Moustafa Bayoumi, The Nation, August 10, 2012

The tragedy of the shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, is enormous. Six innocent people were gunned down in a Sikh temple by a white supremacist—but they weren’t innocent because they were Sikh, they were innocent because, well, they were innocent! Had Wade Michael Page walked into a mosque and begun shooting Muslims, the victims of his rampage would have been no more deserving of death.

It’s true that we don’t yet know Page’s precise motivations, but in all likelihood it wasn’t Sikhophobia, a term barely known in the United States. It was Islamophobia [1]. That’s why to say that Page made a “mistake” in targeting Sikhs, as many have reported [2], or that Sikhs are “unfairly” targeted as Muslims, as CNN stated [3], is to imply that it would be “correct” to attack Muslims. Well, it’s not, and even if this is an error embedded in the routine carelessness of cable news, we need to be attentive to the implications.

Over the last few days, there has been a lot of media coverage about the Sikh religion and its origins and practices. Knowledge is always welcome over ignorance, but what we really need to educate ourselves about is the way racism operates in this country and its deadly character. The facts are not consoling. According [4] to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the extreme right wing grew “explosively” in 2011 and for the third year in a row. The SPLC now tracks 1,018 hate groups, up from 602 in 2000, the year that Page is reported to have appeared on the Neo-Nazi scene. The number of hate groups, in other words, has almost doubled in the last twelve years, and that growth has accelerated since the election of Obama. The targets have also expanded. White supremacists have always been obsessed with Jews, blacks and the LGBT community as their objects of hate. And ten years ago, Jews and blacks were Page’s villains, according to Pete Simi, who interviewed him in 2001. But things have changed over this past decade. What continues to be underappreciated is how the hatred of Muslims [5] has become a major motivating and mobilizing force in this putrid scene. Continue reading Did Islamophobia Fuel the Oak Creek Massacre? →

The best Kurd?

CyberOrient, Ethics, Kurds, Terrorism Issue, Turkey


In the social media revolution Twitter has taken a breathtaking role. The Arab Spring may still have sprung without cellphones, but the rapid ability to communicate has been an enormous aid to coordinating protests. But it seems that much of Twitter is for twits, to whit media narcissists who think the public lives to follow their quotidian banality and the full range of bigots who use Twitter to spew out hate. Take the Turkish phrase “En Ä°yi Kürt Ölü Kürt” (“The best Kurd is a dead Kurd.”), which trended on August 9, as reported on Al Jazeera. The trend came after news coverage of an ambush of a Turkish military bus by suspected Kurdish separatists. But the anti-Kurdish sentiments may also have been heightened by Turkey’s decision in June to allow the teaching of Kurdish in schools.

Part of the trend was the response by Kurds who were angry at the racist post. Continue reading The best Kurd? →

In whose interests?

Development, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Yemeni children in the Tihama coastal zone; photography by Daniel Martin varisco

The struggle for security and against terrorism in Yemen: in whose interests?

by Helen Lackner, Open Democracy, 20 July 2012

When Yemen features in the news, it is usually due to the supposed activities in Yemen or outside of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP], the group said to be a follower of Osama Bin Laden’s similarly named organisation. The most prominent such events have been the 2010 ‘underpants bomber’ who was trained in Yemen, the 2011 ‘cartridge’ bombs which were sent from Yemen and – most important for Yemenis – the occupation of a Southern Governorate [Abyan] by AQAP and its associate Ansar al Shari’a between May 2011 and June 2012, when they were ousted.
AQAP and Ansar al Shari’a[1]

While the first two of these events are of limited interest to the average Yemeni, the presence of AQAP is one of the many security issues which Yemenis have to face on a daily basis. Although AQAP had been present and active in many remote parts of the country [Shabwa, Mareb and Abyan Governorates] since the beginning of the century, this presence only became a direct serious threat to the population in the last year when they occupied all the major towns of Abyan as well as some in Shabwa. Although earlier their presence had made it difficult for development and aid agencies to operate, these occupations led to mass displacement of over 200,000 people who have taken refuge either with relatives in neighbouring governorates [eg al Baidha] or moved to Aden where they settled in schools and other facilities and became Internally Displaced Persons [IDPs] recognised as such by UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies. These groups were successfully ousted from their positions between May and mid-June 2012 after holding the area for a year.
Continue reading In whose interests? →