Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

Deoband’s Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Ethics, India, Terrorism Issue

by Yoginder Sikand, March 11, MADRASA REFORMS IN INDIA

The mammoth ‘Anti-Terrorism Convention’ organised at Deoband late last month, which brought together ulema from all over the country, has received wide media coverage. While smaller conventions of this sort have been organized by other ulema bodies in recent years, this one, unlike others, caught the attention of the media particularly because it was organized by the Dar ul-Ulum Deoband, probably the largest traditional madrasa in the world, which large sections of the media have been unfairly berating as the ‘hub’ of ‘terrorism’.

The speeches delivered at the convention have been considerably commented on in the press. By and large, the non-Muslim press has focused almost wholly on the resolutions that were passed that labeled ‘terrorism’ as ‘anti-Islamic’, leaving out other crucial issues that were raised by numerous ulema who spoke on the occasion, particularly about Western Imperialism and Zionism as major factors behind global ‘terrorism’, and the hounding of Muslim youth and mounting Islamophobic offensives across the world, including India, in the name of countering ‘terror’. Muslim papers have dealt with these issues fairly extensively, but, following most of the speakers at the convention, they have placed the blame for ‘terrorism’ almost entirely on what they identify as ‘enemies of Islam’, thus presenting a very one-sided picture. In short, media reporting about the convention, by both the Muslim and non-Muslim media, has been inadequate and somewhat imbalanced. The same can be said of several of the speeches made at the convention. Continue reading Deoband’s Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections →

So if it’s not about religion …

Bible and Holy Land, Ethics, Iraq War, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

The War on Terror, upon which the GOP presidential candidates (minus libertarian Ron Paul) have been feasting, is promoted as a clash of civilizations masquerading as religions. In this pop culture scenario there is the secular West, which promises freedom of religion and only tolerates freedom from religion, vs. the fanatically religious non-West currently reduced to mad mullahs and Islamic Jihadists. We are told it is not about religion. That is true. It is, however, about religions. The West assumes it has tamed its religious impulse to crusade and colonize the Gospel to the ends of the commercially driven earth. Our religious wars are in the history books. Or are they?

Inquistors with holy orders have been replaced by mega-church preachers with rock-music intros. Witch trials have been overturned by a mentality that still thinks the 10 Commandments trump the U.S. Constitution. The United States is in legal theory not allowed by law to prohibit religious worship (although it did so against Native Americans). But America has only a veneer of secularism. Religious organizations no doubt take in more money than the IRS and not all that goes to charity. Much of this freedom of religion is an invitation to convert others or to promote outmoded notions such as biblical creation and Noah’s flood. The fact that half of the population in the U.S. still holds on to the myth of Adam and Eve as an explanation for human origins, despite the evidence from scientific research, says we are not yet free of irrational thinking.

Then there is “their” religions. Continue reading So if it’s not about religion … →

An Iranian Laptop Dance

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iran, Terrorism Issue

Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group

by Gareth Porter, from IPS

WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (IPS) – The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” — 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop — as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme. But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad. Continue reading An Iranian Laptop Dance →

God’s Crucible Reviewed

Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamic History, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue

Detail of Carl von Steuben’s depiction of the Battle of Poitiers, fought in 732, the year Muslim armies crossed the Pyrenees.

A Better Place

What if the Muslim armies hadn’t been stopped at the French border?

by Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, February 4, 2008

In 610 A.D., Muhammad ibn Abdallah, a forty-year-old man from a prosperous merchant family in Mecca, repaired to a cave on nearby Mt. Hira to meditate—a retreat he had made many times. That year, though, his experience was different. An angel appeared and seized him, speaking to him the words of God. Muhammad fell to his knees and crawled home to his wife. “Wrap me up!” he cried. He feared for his sanity. But, as the voice revisited him, he came to believe that it truly issued from God. It called on him to reform his society. Poor people were to be given charity; slaves were to be treated justly; usury was to be outlawed. Muhammad’s tribesmen, the Quraysh, were polytheists, like most people in the Arabian Peninsula at that time, but this God, Allah, proclaimed that he was the only God. He was the same deity that the Jews and the Christians worshipped. Jesus Christ wasn’t his son, though. Christ was just a prophet, like the prophets of the Old Testament. Their word was now superseded by Muhammad’s, as their creeds were supplanted by this new one, Islam. Continue reading God’s Crucible Reviewed →

Primary Hellfire and Born Again Brimstone

Iraq War, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican, Osama Bin Laden

In yesterday’s Super Tuesday slapdown, John McCain appears to have bailed out in his Republican quest with a majority of the party’s caucus-oid delegates. But not without friendly, which is actually unfriendly, fire from his right. At the last minute the conservative evangelical bornagainagogue James Dobson delivered his protestant version of papal bull: “I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are … I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.” It is though Dobson in his daily bible reading, found a new translation of Matthew 16:15: “And I tell you, John McCain, on this rock I will not tell my church to vote and the gates of hell will prevail is he is elected.” Or to tell the Gospel truth, Mr. Dobson cannot see the mote in his candidate’s eye for the large walk-the-plank in his own.

Adding to the smoking cigar of Rush puffed endlessly in Big Mac’ weathered face, Super Tuesday turned into the GOP version of American Gladiators. Move over, Chuck and Arnie, here comes Hulk Hogan onstage to officiate, only without the scantily clad and pumped-up Amazon models. Here is last night’s apocalypse now. The great Latter Day Conservative from Utahssachusetts lies bloodied and hanging on to the Washington-is-broken ropes, waiting for a Good Samaritan to come along and say Mormonism is not a cult. Meanwhile, down in the holler hides the Huckabilly, who is able to have his Southern cruisin’ grits and eat them too; but likely this will be his Last Supper of the primaries and not for want of Ron Paul’s fundraising ability. On the other side, Hillary and Obama both took the Jesus-like approach of saying you should love your enemy. This time around, in not-so-swift Kerry-like fashion, the Republicans seem hellbent on electoral suicide that will holocaust the party a victory in November. Think of it this way, which pile of shit would you rather avoid: that of a donkey or an elephant?

Politics astride, you would have to be severely politically anemic not to see the irony of the moral majoritarian Dobson damning Big Mac to an undisclosed level of hell and at the same time playing up the spectre of Radical Islam’s Threat to the Western World. Continue reading Primary Hellfire and Born Again Brimstone →

To Hell with McCain?

Immigration Issues, Luke R. E. Publican, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue

As Election Super Bowl Tuesday looms, slogans are flooding the airwaves and talking heads jerking off over digital networks. With the side attraction candidates now on the newsunworthy sidelines, it is mano a mano time: Bill-supported Hillary vs. JFK-scent Obama and Admiral Big Mac vs. the Olympics-sized CEO Romney. Tomorrow will show the world just how American democracy works, the electoral college-bound Rube Goldberg contraption that allows pockets of regionally-minded voters, jerry-rigged delegate rules and a last-minute, last-ditch advertizing blitz to masquerade as political choice. Now that the warm-up Iowa Caucus and town meetings of New Hampshire have been proudly displayed as proof we are a nation of concerned voters, the two parties can break out the cigars and place the oil-profit crown on the great hope that promises to deliver the spoils to the White House in November. Politics is the media orgy of our time; we all get drunk with promises and laid on with promises. Not until after we pull the lever will we know that we can’t help puking and ending up with a hangover that lasts about four years. Most of us, so the polls tell us, are still reeling from the last time around.

There are plenty of issues to campaign about. The economy is in the recession-bound Red Zone and most economists think the stimulus packages being thrown up hail-Mary into the air will be dropped in the end. After all we have troops locked into a war that even a troop surge cannot rescue from political stalemate. Take your pick of the non-Pauline candidates, the score will be the same: less money in your wallet and more national debt for being the world’s superpower policeman. Would that we had a silly and totally irrelevant reason to pick candidates, like their stand on gay marriage. That worked like a piece of cake last time. But then that election had two white guys mud wrestling, one a war vet from the wrong color state and the other a family (Bush family that is) man who thought Jesus was the greatest philosopher of all time. Now in the semi-finals we have the kind of diversity that makes you dress for your grandmother’s funeral. The Democrats have a woman (so the opposition can’t be too sexist) and an African American (so the race card has to be hidden under the table); the Republicans have a Mormon (who is a latter day conservative saint) and a suspect conservative maverick (who is as old as Methuselah). Continue reading To Hell with McCain? →

What is There to Study?

Afghanistan, Journalism and Media, Taliban, Terrorism Issue

Tomorrow I am scheduled to teach a class on the political advice of Niccolo Machiavelli, some five centuries removed. If this noted Florentine were alive today, he would probably display an unseemly Italian gesture at the political disarray of his beloved Italy and the ineptness of the world’s remaining superpower’s involvement to his geographic Orient. Can you imagine this advice in an updated edition of The Prince: when in doubt or unwilling to act, form a study group. Just over a year ago we had the highly touted and now conveniently shelved Iraq Study Group. The media touted the prominent bipartisan members, the report was available free to the public, and the sitting President more or less brushed aside any recommendation that did not flatter him. This would no doubt please Machiavelli’s realism. He just surged ahead, sending more troops rather than admitting a flawed policy in the first place.

Each day the news media report suicide bombings, now more commonly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. For some this might mean the surge is working. But what about the surge in violence outside Iraq, especially in Afghanistan, the place it all started. Somebody forgot to form a study group for Afghanistan, but now we have it. Continue reading What is There to Study? →