Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

“There is no such thing as an Islamic state”

Islamic Law, Sudan, Terrorism Issue


Prof. an-Naim speaking at Harvard in October, 2007

The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article about Emory law professor Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim and the “Muslims Heretics Conference” held in Atlanta a week ago. Here is a brief excerpt, but click here for the whole article.

Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim has seen what can happen to an Islamic reformer: His mentor was executed in 1985 in Sudan; he himself had to flee the country. Still, the self-described “Muslim heretic” has no trouble traveling the Islamic world spreading his controversial message:

There is no such thing as an Islamic state.

A secular state and human rights are essential for all societies so that Muslims and others can practice their faith freely, he tells his co-religionists.

“My motivation is in fact about being an honest, true-to-myself Muslim, rather than someone complying with state dictates,” says Mr. Naim, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta since 1999. “I need the state to be neutral about religious doctrine so that I can be the Muslim I choose to be.”

So committed is this scholar to opening the door to free debate within his faith that he helped organize the first “Muslim Heretics Conference” in Atlanta over the weekend. Some 75 Muslims, engaged in various reform projects, gathered to discuss issues related to sharia (Islamic law), democracy, and women’s rights – and how to cope with dissent and its consequences.

“We celebrate heresy simply to promote innovative thinking,” he says. “Every orthodoxy was at one time a heresy.”

Jihadi studies

Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue


The obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better

by Thomas Hegghammer, Times Literary Supplement, April 2, 2008

We were all frightened by the destruction caused on 9/11. Yet most of us, regardless of political orientation, assumed that there would be people in the intelligence services or in academia who possessed detailed knowledge about the jihadists. It might take time, and we might disagree on the methods, but the experts would eventually bring the perpetrators to justice. How wrong we were. Of course, the CIA knew the basics about al-Qaeda, such as the location of the Afghan training camps and the approximate whereabouts of the top leadership. But as Osama bin Laden slipped out of Tora Bora one foggy morning in early December 2001, al-Qaeda left the realm of tactical intelligence and became the complex organization-cum-movement which, six years later, we are still struggling to understand. For a few years, the commanders of the so-called War on Terror enjoyed the benefit of the doubt. After all, we did not know what they knew. However, it has become increasingly clear how little was known about al-Qaeda back in 2001, and how long it will take for us thoroughly to understand the dynamics of global jihadism. Continue reading Jihadi studies →

Gangs of Thugs

Iraq War, Islamic History, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue


Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “Napoleon in Egypt,” 1867-68.

Please read the following quote:

“Gangs of thugs looting, as well as other hooligans, thieves, pickpockets, robbers, highwaymen, all having a field day. Relations between people ceased, and all dealings and business came to a standstill. The roads in the city became insecure, not to mention those outside it. Violence flared up in the countryside, and people began to kill each other. They stole cattle and plundered fields. They set fire to the barns and sought to avenge old hatreds and blood feuds, and so on.”

So who said this and what tragedy is being described? If you are thinking that this could be the post of an embedded journalist in Iraq or an Iraqi blogger looking out at the violence on the streets in the past couple of days, it would not be a surprise. Of course, this kind of atrocity-ridden rabble-ous melee has happened over and over again. When security goes down the tubes, violence almost always takes over. This is not because humans are evil by nature, but evil times draw out the worst in us all.

The excerpt above was written as an eye-witness account about events in Cairo in 1798. The author was ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, an Islamic religious authority who wrote a chronicle of events about the invasion of Egypt by a Western power. Continue reading Gangs of Thugs →

Iraq, $5,000 Per Second?

Iraq War, Terrorism Issue

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, March 23, 2008

The Iraq war is now going better than expected, for a change. Most critics of the war, myself included, blew it: we didn’t anticipate the improvements in security that are partly the result of last year’s “surge.”

The improvement is real but fragile and limited. Here’s what it amounts to: We’ve cut our casualty rates to the unacceptable levels that plagued us back in 2005, and we still don’t have any exit plan for years to come — all for a bill that is accumulating at the rate of almost $5,000 every second!

More important, while casualties in Baghdad are down, we’re beginning to take losses in Florida and California. The United States seems to have slipped into recession; Americans are losing their homes, jobs and health insurance; banks are struggling — and the Iraq war appears to have aggravated all these domestic woes. Continue reading Iraq, $5,000 Per Second? →

We are not that

Music and Dance, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue, YouTube Watch

It has been said that music is able to soothe the savage soul, so perhaps it can help reduce the bias that assume Muslim souls are innately savage. A recent video, called Yeh Hum Naheem, with several Pakistani pop stars, has been released and can be seen on YouTube.

Here is the description from the website:

Yeh Hum Naheen has become a truly unprecedented musical movement. Featuring the vocal talents of some of Pakistans biggest music artists, including Haroon, Ali Haider, Ali Zafar, Shufqat, Strings, Shuja Haider and Hadiqa Kiani, uniting to sing out the message the world needs to hear.

Written by Ali Moeen, Pakistans foremost lyricist, with music composed by Shuja Haider, its the central message of the song that has compelled so many people to become involved. It is a message of reconciliation, a message of peace and a message of truth. Capturing the imagination of people across the board, Yeh Hum Naheen has given a voice to the silent majority, those in the Muslim world who have for too long been mis-represented. These are the people who although not appearing on our television screens are saddened and shocked at the high-jacking of Islam by terrorists, and want to stand up and shout “This is Not Us”. The song is the brainchild of Waseem Mahmood, author and media consultant, who took inspiration for the project from his children. They were tired at the way a minority of misguided young people were vehemently putting forward a message of radicalization and terrorism which was at odds with what the majority of Muslims believe. It is time to re-address the imbalance, and from the smallest child to the oldest person, Yeh Hum Naheen seeks to give a voice to the voiceless.

The Iraq experience has laid bare the limits of raw military power

Iraq War, Osama Bin Laden, Shi'a, Terrorism Issue

by Max Hastings, The Guardian, Monday, March 17 2008

[This article appeared in The Guardian on Monday March 17 2008 on p32 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:05 on March 17 2008].

The Iraq war has shown how high is the pain threshold of the west. Five years after the 2003 invasion, the daily roll call of Iraqi suicide bombings, murders, firefights and body-bags has become as familiar a part of our landscape as traffic jams on the M1 and Los Angeles freeway.

The media class on both sides of the Atlantic is deeply engaged, indeed impassioned. The war is much discussed in the US presidential election campaign. But most Americans and Europeans display vastly less interest in the Middle East than in troubles closer to home – the global banking crisis foremost among them.

They have grown used to Iraq in the way they do to a chronic personal ailment. It is there. It is nasty. They wish that it would go away. But it does not inflict the sort of agonising pain that causes democracies to force urgent action upon their governments. Continue reading The Iraq experience has laid bare the limits of raw military power →

No Room at the Mosque

Islam in Europe, Terrorism Issue


In Lleida, Spain, Muslims gathering in front of a cramped, converted garage that serves as a mosque. The congregation has grown to 1,000 members from 50 over the past five years.


Spain’s Many Muslims Face Dearth of Mosques

By VICTORIA BURNETT, The New York Times, Sunday, March 16, 2008

LLEIDA, Spain — As prayer time approached on a chilly Friday afternoon and men drifted toward the mosque on North Street, Hocine Kouitene hauled open its huge steel doors.

As places of worship go, the crudely converted garage leaves much to be desired, said Mr. Kouitene, vice president of the Islamic Association for Union and Cooperation in Lleida, a prosperous medieval town in northeastern Spain surrounded by fruit farms that are a magnet for immigrant workers. Freezing in winter and stifling in summer, the prayer hall is so cramped that the congregation, swollen to 1,000 from 50 over the past five years, sometimes spills onto the street.

“It’s just not the same to pray in a garage as it is to pray in a proper mosque,” said Mr. Kouitene, an imposing Algerian in a long, black coat and white head scarf. “We want a place where we can pray comfortably, without bothering anybody.”

Although Spain is peppered with the remnants of ancient mosques, most Muslims gather in dingy apartments, warehouses and garages like the one on North Street, pressed into service as prayer halls to accommodate a ballooning population. Continue reading No Room at the Mosque →

Bernard Lewis Gets It Wrong

Islamic History, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue, Traditions (hadith literature)


[Editor’s Note: I include this article not because I agree with its spin, but due to the irony of someone attacking Bernard Lewis for being soft on terrorism in the name of Islam.]

By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, March 14, 2008

Last week (March 6, 2008) The Jerusalem Post published an interview with historian Bernard Lewis that touched on a range of subjects, from Lewis’ own cultural identity, to his views on feminism and jihad.

Writer Rebecca Bynum has commented aptly on Lewis’ remarks about feminism, and the condition of women; I will confine my own analysis to Lewis’ remarkable statements on the jihad.

Lewis’ Claim (1):

What we are seeing now in much of the Islamic world could only be described as a monstrous perversion of Islam. The things that are now being done in the name of Islam are totally anti-Islamic. Take suicide, for example. The whole Islamic theology and law is totally opposed to suicide. Even if one has led a totally virtuous life, if he dies by his own hand he forfeits paradise and is condemned to eternal damnation. The eternal punishment for suicide is the endless repetition of the act of suicide. That’s what it says in the books. So these people who blow themselves up, according to their own religion – which they don’t seem to be well-acquainted with – are condemning themselves to an eternity of exploding bombs.

Doctrinal and Historical Reality (1):

But Lewis conflates “suicide”—as the tragic outcome, for example, in modern parlance, of clinical psychiatric depression, which is impermissible in Islam—with “martyrdom,” which is extolled.

“Martyrdom operations” have always been intimately associated with the institution of jihad. Professor Franz Rosenthal, in a seminal 1946 essay (entitled, “On Suicide in Islam”), observed that Islam’s foundational texts sanctioned such acts of jihad martyrdom, and held them in the highest esteem: Continue reading Bernard Lewis Gets It Wrong →