Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

How safe is home?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam in America, Terrorism Issue


On March 11 an American soldier slipped out of his base before dawn and ended the lives of 17 Afghan civilians, who had returned to what they thought would be a safe home near the protection of the American military base. The general reaction to this is that the man “snapped,” an isolated act. Then there is the case of a Florida vigilante who shot an unarmed, young black kid wearing a hoodie and walking home; the man who shot him claims that it was in self defense. Someone must have “snapped” in the encounter. Yesterday an as-yet-unidentified killer took the life of an Iraqi mother living in El Cajon, California. The murderer snuck into her bedroom and bludgeoned her to near death, leaving a note that said “go back to your country.” Perhaps this was also an individual that “snapped”? A trial is now ending for a student at Rutgers who played a prank on his roommate by setting up a web-cam to record a homosexual encounter; his roommate killed himself. I guess one could say that the suicide happened because this young man “snapped”? Four different deaths, but all assumed to be because an individual acted in an abnormal way, a criminal act (suicide is still a criminal act in U.S. law) that goes counter to a society’s moral norms.

Such immoral acts have been going on since the get-go of human civilization; even ardent biblical literalists point to the fratricide of Cain. But assuming that an individual has “snapped” explains nothing, except to say “well, that is not supposed to happen.” Following the media, we are far too snap-happy in explaining away murder. Consider the bumper sticker mentality that “guns do not kill people, but people do.” To me this is like saying that malaria doesn’t kill people, but mosquitoes who carry the malaria do. Obviously it is a combination of the two. People use guns to kill people, either issued by the military (as in Afghanistan) or because of a constitutional American right to bear arms and stand one’s ground (as in Florida). People also use knives and steel rods, or even their bare hands. There are various means, but is it really useful to cite “snapping” as the rationale? Continue reading How safe is home? →

Berserk, Breivik and Barzakh

Afghanistan, Ethics, Terrorism Issue


An Afghan man looks over the dead bodies of people killed by coalition forces in Kandahar province, March 11, 2012. Afghanistan’s defence ministry said coalition forces killed 15 civilians in a shooting spree in Kandahar province on Sunday.
Photograph by: AHMAD NADEEM, REUTERS

The senseless killing of more than a dozen Afghan villagers, while they slept, by a U.S. soldier has captured the headlines worldwide. Many of these headlines are variants of “In Afghan Civilian Killing Rampage, U.S. Soldier May Have Gone ‘Berserk'” The choice of “berserk” to describe this act is telling, since the word itself derives from old Norsk in reference to, as the OED puts it, “A wild Norse warrior, who fought with frenzied fury.” In the Norse legend, however, the warrior had a cause, while the Rambo-rampage here was a solo act, a random act as far as war strategy is concerned. The explanation that immediately comes to mind is that he “lost his marbles,” perhaps because those marbles had been jostled too many times during his three tours in Iraq.

A few days ago a court in Norway ruled that Anders Behring Breivik, “the 33-year-old right-wing extremist psychotic,” as USA Today terms him, might go to a psychiatric ward rather than prison for his “bomb and shooting rampage” that left 77 people, many who were young people, dead. News reports also labeled Breivik as someone “gone berserk.” But neither in Norway nor Kandahar do the men who aimed their guns at innocent victims demonstrate any kind of courage in the “just war” alibi. The old Norse warrior Berserk exuded raw courage, battling without armor and with the intensity of a bear or wolf. Of course, he was not a good man, having killed his wife after she delivered 12 sons (or so we are told in legend), but his battle-axe was aimed at fellow warriors, not sleeping children. One can understand, even if it is hard to appreciate, the fury of a battle, when blood runs hot as it is slashed out of bodies in hand-to-hand combat. But is “berserk” really the right word for deliberate singling out of men, women and children that in all normality are innocent? Continue reading Berserk, Breivik and Barzakh →

Saving Face

Gender and Sexuality, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue


HBO is rebroadcasting the documentary “Saving Face” today (8:45 am) about the attacks in Pakistan on women. It will also be available in their on-demand service.

Every year in Pakistan, many people – the majority of them women – are known to be victimized by brutal acid attacks, while numerous other cases go unreported. With little or no access to reconstructive surgery, survivors are physically and emotionally scarred, and many reported assailants, typically a husband or someone else close to the victim, are let go with minimal punishment from the state.

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, SAVING FACE chronicles the arduous attempts of acid-attack survivors Zakia and Rukhsana to bring their assailants to justice, and follows the charitable work of Dr. Mohammad Jawad, a plastic surgeon who strives to help them go beyond this horrific act and move on with their lives. Directed by Oscar and Emmy nominee Daniel Junge and Emmy-winning Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, SAVING FACE debuts THURSDAY, MARCH 8 (8:30-9:15 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

Anthropology, anthropologies; Islam, islams: Fields in Flux

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, CyberOrient, Islam: Introduction, Islamic History, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue


The Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) presents

Anthropology, anthropologies; Islam, islams: Fields in Flux

a talk by Daniel Varisco

Thursday, March 8, 2012 6:30-8:00pm Room 9206,
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street
New York, NY 10016
Directions

Can there be an anthropology of Islam when both the discipline of Anthropology and the idea of Islam appear to be suspended in a state of undisciplined flux? This talk places Abdel Hamid El-Zein’s suggestion that anthropologists study “islams” in dialogue with John Comaroff’s recent response to “Is anthropology about to die?” Professor Varisco explores the ways anthropologists have been rethinking the idea of Islam. He also offers suggestions on how anthropologists can contribute to the broader study of Islam as practiced in contemporary cultural and historical contexts.

Daniel Martin Varisco is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at Hofstra University. His latest book, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (2007), is a study of the contested debate over Edward Said’s seminal Orientalism. His Islam Obscured (2005) is a critical assessment of the seminal texts of Clifford Geertz, Ernest Gellner, Fatima Mernissi and Akbar Ahmed on Islam.

Co-sponsored by the Committee for the Study of Religion and the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology

And the game goes on in Yemen

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


The ink is barely dry on the thumbs of millions of Yemeni voters and the political rhetoric has once again heated up. One of the leaders of AQAP, Fahd al-Qasa‘a, is lashing out against the election of al-Hadi. Hardly any surprise here. But at the same time, as reported in the Yemen Post, he is blasting (so far only in words) Islah, the largest Islamic party in Yemen. For anyone who knows Yemen, this is also hardly a surprise, although many on the outside still think an “Islamist” is an “Islamist” no matter what the facts on the ground. Alienating Islah, which is as much a regional power block as a religious party, seems a sign of desperation or else a calculated outreach to disaffected southerners. Criticism of al-Hadi as a clone of the United States, Saudi Arabia and the GCC resonates well with many southerners, where AQAP hopes to make inroads. The former President of the PDRY and Vice President to Salih after unification, Ali Salim al-Baydh, has also labeled al-Hadi a hack in the grasp of foreign interests. Strange bed fellows indeed.

But the plot thickens. The statements by al-Qasa‘a were quoted in a newspaper owned by Ahmad Ali Abdullah Salih, the man who would be king after his father. You can follow his exploits on a Facebook page. The current dissension among the political rivals is anything but tranquil. It almost makes the current Republican debate circus in the United States look like a love fest. But one need not quote Machiavelli to see that the bottom line here is political power, not religious persuasion. Anyone who thinks that Zaydi vs. Shafi’i is still the way to carve Yemen up into sects or that Islah and AQAP are of the same cloth needs to do a lot of rethinking.

And the game is far from over.

Can AQAP mount an insurgency?

"Arab Spring", Terrorism Issue, Yemen


by Issandr El Amrani, The Arabist, February 14, 2012

[This post was co-authored by the editor of the recently released report “A False Foundation? AQAP, Tribes, and Ungoverned Spaces in Yemen”, Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, and the author of the same report. For reasons of security and to facilitate future research in the region the author’s name has been withheld from the report. Gabriel is an associate at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and an instructor in the Department of Social Sciences.]

On 15 January a member of a United Nations team was kidnapped from an upscale neighborhood in Yemen’s capital. He was reportedly taken to the eastern governorate of Marib and held for more than a week by heavily-armed tribesmen who demanded the release of their relatives held on suspicion of supporting al-Qa`ida. The day of the abduction, word spread of militants from an alleged al-Qa`ida affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia`a, overrunning a city just 80 miles south of Sana’a. A week later, footage of an alleged commander of the group, a tribal sheikh and brother in law of Anwar al-`Awlaqi named Tariq al-Dhahab, was posted on YouTube. The clips seem to show Ansar al-Sharia`a fighters in control of the city’s mosque, enjoying support from some local residents, and for the first time on video, soliciting oaths of allegiance from young men on behalf of al-Qa`ida’s leaders in Yemen and Pakistan. (Click here for videos)

Both events have been interpreted as the latest evidence of Yemen’s imminent collapse, an outcome especially troubling for the United States. Whereas the Arab Spring has spurred varying degrees of optimism regarding political developments in Tunisia, Egypt, and even Libya, Yemen appears headed in the opposite direction. The prospect of al-Qa`ida inspired militants moving to fill the void left by a faltering central government makes a bad situation that much worse. AQAP is not alone in taking advantage of the chaos. Across the country the Yemeni government is ceding ground to a variety of sub state actors. These include Southern Secessionists in the former PDRY (People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen), Houthi insurgents in the North, and since May of 2011 in Abyan and perhaps Baydah governorates, al-Qa`ida’s local offshoot, al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Ansar al-Shar`ia. Continue reading Can AQAP mount an insurgency? →

Top Five U.S. misconceptions on Iran

Iran, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue


By Hooman Majd, Politico, January 17, 2012

Top five, 10 or 100 lists are standard at the end of the year. Though the Iranian year doesn’t end for roughly two months, given the escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran, with threats and counter threats over the Strait of Hormuz — to say nothing of most GOP presidential candidates’ views on what to do about Iran — it might be useful to compile one on the growing Iran crisis, early 2012 here and late 1390 there:

1) More severe sanctions will eventually cause the regime to blink.

Um, no. Thirty-plus years of sanctions have had no effect on Tehran. None. The regime can’t blink — even if it wanted to. Not after it has spent energy, money and every tool it has convincing its people that the nuclear program is a matter of national pride, that the West wants to prevent Iranians from enjoying the fruits of technological advancement and that their suffering under the sanctions is for the country’s greater good.

The regime’s credibility has already suffered because of the opposition protests in 2009 and 2010. So what would it have left if it caved to foreign demands that even the opposition describes as unreasonable?

2) Increasing sanctions will cause the Iranian people to hate the regime even more, leading to an uprising against the ayatollahs.

No. The Iranian people may blame their government for economic mismanagement, as well as human-rights abuses — but most won’t blame it for U.S. actions. Similarly, Iranians may blame President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for exacerbating domestic problems or creating problems with the West because of his rhetoric. But they don’t blame him for, say, sanctions that prevent Tehran from buying parts for its aging airplanes, which fall out of the sky with alarming frequency.

Think about it: When a nation is attacked, or under severe external pressure, it usually blames the external enemies, not its own leaders. If you factor in the assassinations of scientists on the streets of Tehran and mysterious factory explosions, sanctions and threats may make life miserable for Iranians but are unlikely to cause them to overthrow their rulers. Continue reading Top Five U.S. misconceptions on Iran →

The Salafis, Politics and the Revolution in Yemen

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

The Salafis, Politics and the Revolution in Yemen

Monday, January 23rd; 12:30pm-2pm
208 Knox Hall ~ 606 West 122nd Street, New York, NY

A lecture by Laurent Bonnefoy
Moderated by Brinkley Messick

Since the early 1980s, Salafism in Yemen has developed as a mostly apolitical movement. Yet, the revolutionary process that emerged in 2011 is changing much of its face in the country and fostering deep recompositions in the Islamist field. This lecture will analyze these changes and concentrate on showing why this political movement matters beyond issues of counter-terrorism.

Laurent Bonnefoy (PhD), born in 1980, is a researcher in political science at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) based in Palestine. Building on four years spent in Yemen, his research focuses primarily on contemporary religious identities in the Arabian Peninsula. He is the author of Salafism in Yemen. Transnationalism and Religious Identity (Columbia University Press, 2012).

Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute and the Alliance Program.