Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

Pazuzu, Inc.: On the Movie Syriana

Film and Video, Iraq, Iraq War, Terrorism Issue

By Gregory Starrett
UNC Charlotte

“Now, the characteristic feature of mythical thought. . .is that it builds up structured sets. . .by using the remains and debris of events. . . .Mythical thought for its part is imprisoned in the events and experiences which it never tires of ordering and re-ordering in its search to find them a meaning.”
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind

In a previous post, Desiree Marshall faulted director Thomas Gaghan’s recent movie Syriana, implying that a combination of bias and ignorance spoiled what might otherwise have been a useful exploration of identity and politics in the Middle East. While her misgivings are likely shared by others, she and most of the film’s other reviewers have missed its point entirely. Syriana is not at all “about” the Middle East except in the sense that it uses the debris of current events to reveal larger truths and tell much older stories. In fact, Syriana is what French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss would recognize as a structural transformation of another tale: director William Friedkin’s 1973 screen version of novelist William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. The two films are variants of the same myth. Continue reading Pazuzu, Inc.: On the Movie Syriana →

This Split within Islam Must End

Qur'an, Shi'a, Sunni, Terrorism Issue

by Abdullah Al Rahim

What is it that makes people slaughter one another in the name of religion? Which among all these warriors can claim the integrity to dictate the terms by which God is to be venerated and who is to be slaughtered in God’s name? They call these sects Sunni and Shia. So I ask, which one of these post-Prophet innovations called sects did the holy Prophet Muhammad belong to? Which of these slaughters will he approve of, should he come back today?

We hear in mosques every time the word Bida’a [innovation] which is used to fight anything new we come up with, even if it is positive. So let me ask both, Sunnis and Shias: what are these sects? are they not innovations [Bida’a]? They are the most dangerous of all innovations which have never united but always divided the house of Islam. Continue reading This Split within Islam Must End →

Slam Drunk Fascism:Coming to a Campus Near You

Gender and Sexuality, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Fascism, a thorn rather than a rose by any other name, has a long and sordid history. The modern term was resurrected from the gore-galore glorified history of ancient Rome by Benito Mussolini in the 1920s to signal the power of the state (his state, of course) über alles (as his ersatz Aryan co-fascist to the north put it). As an ideology it dispensed of a need for any other religion than the twisted Durkheimian notion that the dictatorial “state” was really at stake when talking about “God.” As a fashionable pejorative term to heap abuse on one’s enemies, “fascist” readily becomes the modern day equivalent of saying the hated other is a bloodthirsty cannibal.

Now there is the recent moniker “Islamofascism,” which appears to have been coined by the Marxist French scholar Maxime Rodinson to describe the overthrow of the Shah and unexpected rise of an Islamic Republic in Iran. If so, this demonstrate the malleability of a term in which one form of fascism seemingly replaces another. But then the rhetorical door opens at least a crack for renaming the Vatican a “Christofascist” city state — surely a word game that would make both Mussolini and the popes turn over in their graves.

Confused? Not to worry … because David Horowitz, an idiotologue out to save “Western civilization” along with Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer, has embarked on a cybercrusade campaign to make “you” aware of the apocalyptic dangers of Islamofascism. Forget about global warming (a liberal trick to discredit the Bush administration) and look out for bearded jihadis on the march. Mark your calendars for the week of October 22-26 for the coming of “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” Don’t expect any parades down Main Street (we need to keep up the barriers so the terrorists don’t get us at home), but man the campus barricades and stick it to the Women’s Studies Centers. Continue reading Slam Drunk Fascism:Coming to a Campus Near You →

NYPD.EDU

Islam in America, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

I write from the Syracuse International Airport, inside the security zone. Despite my guilty conscience, I passed the non-unionized TSA without a hitch. One guard even described my informal greeting as “the American way.” Would that other authorities so exercised their ethnographic faculties. But they do not, and recently two NYC cultural documents recalled our attention to this country’s addled take on religion, politics, and radicalism.

On Aug. 15, the NYPD published an “Intelligence Report,” which warns that Islamic radicalism is “permeating” (p. 66) New York City. Then on Aug. 19, Columbia University Professor Mark Lilla’s NY Times Magazine’s cover article ascribed the US-Islamic divide to the West’s advancement beyond, and Islam’s arrested adherence to, political theology. Continue reading NYPD.EDU →

Revenue Sharing, but not Drug-free

Afghanistan, Luke R. E. Publican, Osama Bin Laden, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


[The American plan to convince Afghan farmers not to grow poppies: some good old cow dung smothered in politically expedient B.S. Photo from the New York Times.]

In the old days (before 9/11, the posters for Osama dead or alive, the seeming fall of the Taliban, Operation Shock and Awe, etc.) before terrorism merited an all-out war, there were more socially-minded wars on the American political scene. An earlier Texan (so early he was Democratic) named Lyndon Johnson started a War on Poverty. The wealth of Bill Gates shows how well that succeeded. Then Betty Ford helped launch a War on Drugs. Casualty figures for this have been withheld by the government for insecurity reasons. Indeed, today’s New York Times has an article that suggests the War on Drugs has fused with the War on Terrorism and we are losing on both fronts. “Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.” writes David Rohde in his article “Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again.” He adds, “Here in Helmand, the breadth of the poppy trade is staggering. A sparsely populated desert province twice the size of Maryland, Helmand produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Myanmar, Morocco and Colombia. Rampant poverty, corruption among local officials, a Taliban resurgence and spreading lawlessness have turned the province into a narcotics juggernaut.” Continue reading Revenue Sharing, but not Drug-free →

Soccer Diplomacy

Iraq War, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

Forget the World Cup head butt, football (soccer for those who think “football” is a foreign word for the world’s most popular sport) may now be one of the only bright spots in war-torn Iraq’s immediate future. In case you have not heard, the Iraqi National Team won the Asia Cup. They did it with Shi’a, Sunni and Kurd and without the threat of torture for a missed goal. Their star, Younis Mahmoud, scored the winning goal against Saudi Arabia. Soon after ordinary Iraqis took the streets with guns, but shot into the air in celebration rather than at each other. At least for one day. Simon Apter has a nice article about this in The Nation.

Iraq’s success in soccer is, perhaps, one of the few concrete triumphs to have come out of the quagmire. Call it a beneficent side effect. The WMDs were, indeed, not there, but the bastinado was, awaiting whomever Uday capriciously felt had embarrassed the country with a sub-par performance. Running possibly the only Ministry of Sport complete with a torture chamber and jail, Uday made Bob Knight look like Francis of Assisi. Continue reading Soccer Diplomacy →

Springtime for Osama

Islam in Europe, Music and Dance, Terrorism Issue

If you had taken a poll of Holocaust survivors after their liberation from death camps in World War II, chances are few would have imagined that a future comedian (and a Jewish one at that) would produce a box-office smash that included a chorus line of goose-stepping rockettes prancing to “Hitler in springtime.” For the record, Mel Brooks spares no one, including a Busby Berkeley romp with Torquemada through the Spanish Inquisition. Nor does Monty Python, who satirized Nazis and, spam-spam-spam, The Spanish Inquisition, on the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, neither Brooks nor Python would have kept their heads (or the body parts they make the most jokes about) in 15th century Spain. So if even the cruelest atrocities of history can be lampooned with hindsight humor, when is a good time to rip into Osama Bin Laden and the distorted political mantra of jihad?

Jihad: The Musical already hit New York, and now it is taking Britain at the fringes (if Edinburgh can be deemed a fringe venue) according to the latest news reports on the BBC and The Guardian. Continue reading Springtime for Osama →

The Contribution of Overseas Doctors to Britain’s NHS

Immigration Issues, Terrorism Issue


By Omar Dewachi

The recent failed terrorist plots that targeted the heart of London and Glasgow airport came as a shock for many as the identity and background of the suspects were revealed. Most of the detained were medical doctors who worked in Britain and who had Indian, Iraqi and Jordanian backgrounds. The fact that they were doctors was seen as a betrayal of the medical profession with its aim to save lives. However, the bigger shock in the UK was that these were overseas doctors who were working in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), the main provider of health care to the country. As the new Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, promised in his first press conference to review the NHS recruitment, more background checks and surveillance of overseas doctors is going to take place. However, one wonders how this surveillance is going to take place and who is going to pay its heavy price and consequences? Britain has always imported its medical staff from abroad using them as an expandable labor pool. In this wave of hysteria about background checks and surveillance, the contribution of the overseas medical population in building Britain’s NHS must not be forgotten. Continue reading The Contribution of Overseas Doctors to Britain’s NHS →