Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

The Islamists are coming, the Islamists are coming

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Terrorism Issue


The Arab Spring has morphed into the pundits’ pandering about Islamism. An example, and there are many to choose from in the current political orgy of right-wing rhetoric, is in a New York Times op-ed by John M. Owen IV. It seems that when Muslims elect representatives who are Muslim they must be a new species called “Islamists.” Yes, throughout the Middle East, where the dominant religion happens to be Islam and there happen to be many forms of Islam, there is a strong interest in electing leaders who espouse religious values. In part this is due to decades of dictators who barely gave lip service to Islam and did all in their power to demonize those Muslims who opposed them. But just look at the current GOP field of candidates and tell me that voting on religious values is somehow unique to Muslims. Do read what Owens writes and then my reasons for being critical of this Islamist hunting…

Why Islamism Is Winning
By JOHN M. OWEN IV, The New York Times, January 6, 2012

EGYPT’S final round of parliamentary elections won’t end until next week, but the outcome is becoming clear. The Muslim Brotherhood will most likely win half the lower house of Parliament, and more extreme Islamists will occupy a quarter. Secular parties will be left with just 25 percent of the seats.

Islamism did not cause the Arab Spring. The region’s authoritarian governments had simply failed to deliver on their promises. Though Arab authoritarianism had a good run from the 1950s until the 1980s, economies eventually stagnated, debts mounted and growing, well-educated populations saw the prosperous egalitarian societies they had been promised receding over the horizon, aggrieving virtually everyone, secularists and Islamists alike.

The last few weeks, however, have confirmed that a revolution’s consequences need not follow from its causes. Rather than bringing secular revolutionaries to power, the Arab Spring is producing flowers of a decidedly Islamist hue. More unsettling to many, Islamists are winning fairly: religious parties are placing first in free, open elections in Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. So why are so many Arabs voting for parties that seem politically regressive to Westerners?

The West’s own history furnishes an answer. From 1820 to 1850, Europe resembled today’s Arab world in two ways. Both regions experienced historic and seemingly contagious rebellions that swept from country to country. And in both cases, frustrated people in many nations with relatively little in common rallied around a single ideology — one not of their own making, but inherited from previous generations of radicals. Continue reading The Islamists are coming, the Islamists are coming →

Welcome to America?

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Ethics, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Photo credit: AP | Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh speaks to reporters during a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Sanaa, Yemen. (Dec. 24, 2011)

Yemen rarely makes the front page of The New York Times, but today it did. The seesaw political succession game underway in Yemen has seen President Ali Abdullah Salih’s head bobbing up and down in the power vacuum like a bobblehead doll in the hands of a Little Leaguer on opening day in Yankee Stadium. According to the article, Salih requested a visa to receive medical attention at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian hospital. Why it is not sufficient to return to Saudi Arabia, where he first underwent surgery and medical attention for major burns and other complications, is not clear. To complicate matters, and Salih has a knack for complicating matters, Salih told the Yemeni public in a recent televised address that he was not seeking medical treatment in the United States but simply wanted to allow the political process to evolve with him on the sidelines.

The Statue of Liberty still holds the beacon of hope aloft. So what does Salih hope to get from this visit. The Obama administration is keen to insist that Salih is welcome only for medical assistance, not for refuge. There is a glaring precedent that urges such caution: when Jimmy Carter allowed the former Shah of Iran entry to the United States for treatment, the pre-nuclear revolutionaries back in Iran went ballistic and stormed the U.S. Embassy. The rest, as they say, is history, but not the kind one likes to repeat. Continue reading Welcome to America? →

Is it over “over there”?

Iraq War, Terrorism Issue

In the words of George M. Cohan from about a century ago, Johnny got his gun and the Yanks went “over there” and “they won’t come back ’til it’s over over there.” Billy Murray (the singer you probably do not know) sang it on Edison Records (the blue amberol cylinders you may never have heard). American troops have been over to several other “theres” since World War I, but ironically the longest lasting one has officially ended this morning in Iraq. There are only 4,000 troops of a high of 170,000 still left on the ground, a number less than the total of U.S. forces killed during the last nine years in Iraq. But if you think this is really “over”, think twice. The U.S. embassy will be the largest in the world with 15,000-16,000 people taking over a former air base.

The lingering question, for those who are even aware that Iraq is still on the current events map, is whether or not it was worth it. What started out as a big “if” (if there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) has made this an ever bigger “it.” As a ground war it was almost over as soon as it began. Sweeping through Iraqi territory to Baghdad was on the order of a Blitzkrieg; it was the ersatz policy for ensuring peaces that has been the problem. Iraq had no stockpiles of wmds. Yes, Saddam was a brutal dictator that most Iraqis were glad to see go, but few Iraqis have enjoyed the American occupation that ensued. The sectarian violence that continues to this day has ripped the society apart. Age-old fault lines of ethnic and religious were buried in historical rhetoric, but it was our invasion and inept mopping up that opened the wounds anew. The blood of tens of thousands of Iraqis is a legacy of this war that tarnishes any sense of having a “mission accomplished.” Continue reading Is it over “over there”? →

High heels, Cucumbers and Fat-Chance Fatwas

"Arab Spring", Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue


The so-called “Arab Spring” has sprung a moralistic leak. The fallen dictators were hardly prime specimens of devout examples for their people. Whatever differences there were between Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qaddafi, Ali Abdullah Salih and Bashshar al-Asad, all have self identified as holding back the tide of Islamic extremism. As elections are being held in Tunisia and Egypt, it is quite clear that conservative religious parties are making the most gains. The “secular” ideals supposedly upheld by the strong men (who embraced the secular mainly to bleed the wealth of their countries and garner Western military aid) are clearly being challenged. All the hype about letting democracy bloom in these “Arab” lands is now coming back to haunt the hawks who thought democracy was just another word for approving American foreign policy. Finally given a voting choice, it seems that those who brought down the dictators prefer having leaders with more conservative religious values.

All of a sudden the Huntingtonian clash talk is gathering more momentum. The idea that any political party would hoist the banner of “Islam” is scaring Western commentators. Some journalists, who try to be sympathetic to the people they write about, argue for nuance. Wednesday Nick Kristof wrote an oped in the New York Times about an apparently with-it young woman of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, arguing that she is just an ordinary person who happens to wear a hijab. Maybe, maybe not: this is one of those situations where indeed only time will tell.

Drowning out a semblance of nuance are the Islamophobes who are having a field day with the spate of silly fatwas coming out of Egypt (and elsewhere). Within the last couple of days it seems like The Onion has been scooped by sites like Jihad Watch. The wishy-watchers on that Watch quote al-Arabiya, so we learn: Continue reading High heels, Cucumbers and Fat-Chance Fatwas →

A Madventure in Yemen

Animals, Film and Video, Food and Drink, Humor and Satire, Orientalism, Terrorism Issue, Travel, YouTube Watch


Take two rather weird Finns, a camera and a mountain of jocularity. The result is one of the stranger travelogues you will ever encounter: Madventures YEMEN. This film was made shortly after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in 2008. The two travelers are hardly experts on Yemen and much of what they say (about tribes and geography, for example) should be taken with a grain (at times a pillar worthy of Lot’s wife) of salt. But I love this film, once you get by the Ali-G-ness of the two f-ing (a word they use to the hilt) Finns. First, the cinematography is fantastic and you hear from a number of Yemenis, who often make far more sense than their guests. Second, it does not treat qat as a drug and the Yemenis come across as anything but the “terrorists” portrayed in the media. Indeed, at one point, the traveler Rika notes that despite the number of weapons in Yemen it probably has less crime than the country you are watching the film from.

Check it out and enjoy…

There are three parts to the film available on Youtube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Robert Spencer and the Stealth Jihad

Islamophobia 101, Terrorism Issue

Robert Spencer and the Stealth Jihad
by David L Johnston, Humantrustees.org, November 1, 2011

A reader of my previous blog, “McCarthyism Returns in the 2010s,” asked a very reasonable question [when it was first posted on the Peace Catalyst website]. He or she had wondered how accurate my placing Robert Spencer among the “purveyors of hate and misinformation” actually was. I like this. I want feedback and the opportunity to promote an honest and transparent conversation. What is more, I write this answer trying to emulate the Apostle Paul by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15).

I used “purveyor of . . . disinformation” as a blanket statement on the heels of Fear, Inc.’s Chapter 2 title, “The Islamophobia Disinformation Experts.” In that sense, this covered Spencer and several others, including Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes.

Yet Spencer is the most prolific – at least 11 monographs on Islam, including the 2005 title, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), with hundreds of newspaper articles and blog entries to his name. He’s written nonstop on Islam since his Masters Degree in 1980 (Religious Studies, University of North Carolina), and though he’s accumulated a good deal of knowledge, his sources are either secondary or translated into English.

For this blog I have carefully combed through two of his more recent books, as I discovered that his works do overlap a fair amount. I also glanced at a large volume he edited in 2005, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims. None of the authors of that volume are scholars with academic posts, and they are generally considered too biased to be taken seriously by Islamicists in the academy.

Nevertheless, two of these writers have international reputations. Bat Ye’or, who has specialized in the historic treatment of the dhimmis (“protected minorities”) under Muslim rule, authored seventeen chapters in The Myth of Islamic Tolerance; and Ibn Warraq, the pen name for a former Muslim from Pakistan who writes scathing critiques of Islam, contributed the Foreword and a chapter on apostasy. As the other contributors to this volume, they clearly have an axe to grind. Continue reading Robert Spencer and the Stealth Jihad →

The Nation on The Arab Spring

"Arab Spring", Journalism and Media, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue


The Nation‘s special issue on The Arab Awakening (September 12, 2011) is available free and is a useful resource for anyone teaching (or wanting to learn more) about the political protests. Click here to get a pdf of the issue.

“Articles are devoted to the situations in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Palestine and Israel, as well as thematic issues affecting the entire region, such as the struggles for social justice, labor rights and self-determination. Wrapping it all up is an analysis of Washington’s response to these cataclysmic events.”

Hostages and the Yemeni Crisis

Anthropology/Sociology, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Taking hostages is hardly a new phenomenon. In far too many cases a hostage is nothing more than a political pawn, perhaps for a showcase video or as an “eye-for-an-eye” beheading. In Yemen the majority of hostages in tribal areas are negotiation acts. When Hunt Oil worked the Marib fields, local tribes would periodically “detain” American workers in order to get the government to do what they wanted or needed. The workers were treated as guests, for the most part, and it was a recognized game which generally led to the government doing what it should have done all along. This changed in the mid 2000’s with several high-profile al-Qaida killings of tourists. But generally when someone is taken hostage, the point is to get something out of it and not just to get publicity for a cause. This is especially the case when the context is tribal, since there are mechanisms within customary law for mediating such disputes.

Three French hostages kidnapped by al-Qaida fighters in Yemen more than five months ago have arrived in the Omani capital Muscat after being freed. Al Jazeera is reporting a recent release of three French aid workers who had been kidnapped last July in Hadramawt, one of the safer areas in Yemen at the moment, by suspected Al-Qaida operatives. They were released to Oman after a round of negotiations, as discussed in the news report: Continue reading Hostages and the Yemeni Crisis →