Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

Love is not Denial

Ethics, Iraq War, Terrorism Issue

Conservative backlash against President Obama, which has not ceased from the first day he was elected, has stooped so low as to claim, a la former Mayor Giuliani, that the President does not love his country. Apparently for Giuliani, the Rush-Limbaugh to judgment is that only Republicans, perhaps even certain kinds of Republicans, can love their country. This seems to be a case of misplaced tough love; Giuliani finds it tough to love someone he disagrees with. I suppose it also depends on what country there is to be loved. The country of Giuliani’s imagination is not very loving. The CIA torture authorized illegally and committed during the Bush era is not something I love. I don’t think Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine would have loved it either, if you want to get colonial about it. On Monday the New York Times took the courageous step of joining the call for criminal charges to be brought against former Vice-President Dick Cheney and those who caused, directly and indirectly, not only torture of innocent victims but death. Do I love the fact, and it is a fact, that my country violated not only its own moral principles but also the international protocol on torture? No. Does this mean I do not love my country? No. Love, tough love, is not about denial; love is about admitting mistakes and justice.

No one is calling for a firing squad. The NYT makes it clear that the issue is about not sweeping illegal acts under the rug. Continue reading Love is not Denial →

This stupidity needs to end

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Iraq War, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Syria, Terrorism Issue

This stupidity needs to end: Why the Atlantic & NY Post are clueless about Islam

Pundits claiming that ISIS is emblematic of Islam ignore the intellectual traditions at the heart of the religion
by H.A. Hellyer, Salon, Februrary 20, 2015

This week, President Obama hosted a summit on countering “violent extremism,” where he received criticism from some on the rightwing over his refusal to call such violence “Islamic.” American media outlets, particularly the Atlantic and the New York Post, have struck a similar chord of late. All of this happens against a rather poignant backdrop: Only a few days ago, ISIS released a video showing the killing of 21 Coptic Egyptians in Libya. The group expressed what it considered to be Islamic justification for its actions. Long after the summit, specialists in the field of counter-extremism will continue to ask the question: Is ISIS actually representative in some way of Islam? And what, really, is the relationship between the group that calls itself the “Islamic State” and the world’s second largest religion?

There will be those that will insist that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam or religion in general — that ISIS is primarily a social and political phenomenon, bereft of ideology entirely, or simply using Islam as a superficial justification. Counterterrorism studies indicate that for very many people in the broader radical Islamist universe, non-ideological factors certainly play magnificently important roles. At the same time, it is also the case that for radical Islamists, an ideological component not only exists, but is crucial in understanding their world views. In some shape or form, for ISIS supporters, religion certainly plays a role. But what religion, precisely?

The easy answer is to say “Islam” – but it is also a rather lazy answer. There are around 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. The vast, overwhelming majority of them, needless to say, are not members of ISIS — and, in fact, Muslims actually make up the majority of ISIS’s victims, its most active enemies on the battlefield, and its most prominent detractors. Continue reading This stupidity needs to end →

Lessons in Yemeni Machiavellianism

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Development, Huthis, Journalism and Media, Salafi, Sanaa, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, Zaydi

by Samaa Al Hamdani, Fikra Forum, February 20

[For this article in Arabic, click here.)

Last September, a rebel militia known as the Houthis successfully captured large portions of Yemen’s north and its capital, Sana. A few months later, in January 2015, President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi and his government resigned following clashes with the Houthis. By February 10, diplomatic missions in Sana’a had evacuated the country to protest the “illegitimate Houthi takeover.” Overnight, the Houthis became Yemen’s new rulers, but very little was known about them.

The enigmatic Houthi movement transformed from a Zaydi revivalist group in the early 1990s, to a rebel movement in the mid-1990s, to an enemy warring against the Yemeni state in the early 2000s. Following the revolution in 2011, the Houthis secured 33 seats in the National Dialogue Conference (NDC), because they had significant local influence and were considered victims of the former regime. The Houthis were granted a specialized committee in the NDC solidifying them as an influential political player. However, as soon as the dialogue concluded, the Houthis lost faith in the internationally backed political transition. Since then, the Houthis – led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi – have employed Machiavellian tactics to gain influence in Yemen, taking advantage of the dismal performance of Hadi’s National Unity Government to seize territory and power.

In September 2014 Hadi lifted fuel subsidies, which angered much of the Yemeni population and provided an opening for the Houthis. Cleverly, the Houthis sided with the people against the government; thereafter, within six days, they seized the capital. Months later, on February 11, they mobilized mass protests to overshadow any activities by the opposition. It is likely that a Houthi-led protest will take place on March 18, the anniversary of the “Friday of Dignity,” during which 56 protestors were killed in 2011. By hijacking public rallies, the Houthis aim to silence the opposition and, in this specific case, avoid criticism by the Gulf Cooperation Council and the United Nations Security Council.
Continue reading Lessons in Yemeni Machiavellianism →

Enough on ISIS already

"Arab Spring", Apocalypse Watch, Bible and Holy Land, Iraq, Islam and Christianity, Syria, Terrorism Issue


Let’s hope that in another decade we will be back to this ISIS (Isis depicted with outstretched wings (wall painting, c. 1360 BCE) and be thankful the carnage of the current ISIS is past

In the media, cyberspace, Facebook, Twitter and just about everywhere punditry is pandered to we are hearing experts expound on what ISIS really is and really wants. One of the latest broadsides is an article in the Atlantic by the journalist Graeme Wood, who pieces together quotes from scholars with comments of a couple of ISIS supporters he talked with in London and Melbourne. Here is how the Atlantic keyworded the article:

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

And if one reads further on, the following claim is made:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Let’s start with the obvious. If you really want to know what makes ISIS tick, avoid anything a journalist who seems to know little or nothing of the history of Islam says, even if he goes to the experts. Also, what somebody willing to talk to the journalist and not smash in his head with a rock (a point raised in the article as part of ISIS strategy in Western countries) says ISIS is or wants is probably not going to help you understand what the people who claim to be ISIS are actually doing, nor the variety of their views.

I am not interested in rehearsing the subjective misreadings of the article, which others have already done. But there comes a point when the bombast propagated in the media frenzy to cover this made-in-Hollywood real-life action thriller is enough already. So here are four points I want to make about the way in which the story of ISIS is being framed by many outlets in the media and why we need to move on. Continue reading Enough on ISIS already →

Today’s Top 7 Myths about Daesh/ ISIL

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islamic Law, Syria, Terrorism Issue

By Juan Cole (Informed Comment), February 17

The self-styled ‘Islamic State’ Group (ISIS or ISIL), the Arabic acronym for which is Daesh, is increasingly haunting the nightmares of Western journalists and security analysts. I keep seeing some assertions about it that strike me as exaggerated or as just incorrect.

1. It isn’t possible to determine whether Daesh a mainstream Muslim organization, since Muslim practice varies by time and place. I disagree. There is a center of gravity to any religion such that observers can tell when something is deviant. Aum Shinrikyo isn’t your run of the mill Buddhism, though it probably is on the fringes of the Buddhist tradition (it released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995). Like Aum Shinrikyo, Daesh is a fringe cult. There is nothing in formal Islam that would authorize summarily executing 21 Christians. The Qur’an says that Christians are closest in love to the Muslims, and that if they have faith and do good works, Christians need have no fear in the afterlife. Christians are people of the book and allowed religious freedom by Islamic law from the earliest times. Muslims haven’t always lived up to this ideal, but Christians were a big part of most Muslim states in the Middle East (in the early Abbasid Empire the Egyptian and Iraqi Christians were the majority). They obviously weren’t being taken out and beheaded on a regular basis. They did gradually largely convert to Islam, but we historians don’t find good evidence that they were coerced into it. Because they paid an extra poll tax, Christians had economic reasons to declare themselves Muslims.

We all know that Kentucky snake handlers are a Christian cult and that snake handling isn’t typical of the Christian tradition. Why pretend that we can’t judge when modern Muslim movements depart so far from the modern mainstream as to be a cult? Continue reading Today’s Top 7 Myths about Daesh/ ISIL →

No one expected the Spanish Inquisition…

Bible and Holy Land, Ethics, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue

Faux News expanded its crusade against President Obama (who is reduced to POTUS in their pseudo-news hocus pocus) and Islam (which is only newsworthy when it is called extreme) with a line right out of Monty Python. At the White House Prayer Breakfast (which Fox seems to think only included “evangelicals”) the president made a simple moral point that we should get off our “high horse” and remember that atrocious acts have been committed in the past by Christians in the Crusades and Inquisition. He might have added that “witches” were routinely burned at the stake in Christian Europe. The response from the right was that the president must hate Christianity if he compares the horrific acts of ISIS to marauding Crusaders and Torquemada. Some have such vitriol for Obama that they claimed the Crusaders were acting in self-defense.

I do not have the stomach to watch Faux News (and mercifully I choose not to have a cable connection in Qatar), but the tidbits that float through Facebook and Youtube cannot be easily avoided. Continue reading No one expected the Spanish Inquisition… →

Terrorism and the Failure of Patriotism

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Immigration Issues, Islam in Europe, Terrorism Issue


Joan of Arc—Miniature from the 15th century (detail)

By Anouar Majid, Tingis, February 2, 2015

Many people are asking what, exactly, is causing Muslims to be behind so many acts of terror and whether something could be done to change the situation for the better. The alienation of immigrant youth in Europe, the failure of Arab autocrats to provide a sense of hope to new ambitious generations, the growing disenchantment with the uneven promises of the global economy, and the perceived wrongful occupation of countries in the Middle East are some of the main explanations for the eruption of Islamic extremism in recent decades. Although these reasons play a role, they are byproducts of a disposition that is rarely discussed: the failure of nation-states to inculcate a strong sentiment of patriotism in its citizens.

While Western elites around the world are more interested in the concerns of their exclusive club of privilege, Muslims have weaker attachments to their nations than they do to the idea of an Islamic community, or umma. Whether one is a Muslim in Morocco, France, or China, the lure of Islam is more powerful than loyalty to nation. This is, in a nutshell, one of the major causes of Islamic terrorism today, but it is an issue that has yet to get the attention it deserves. Continue reading Terrorism and the Failure of Patriotism →

Beams and Motes

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Jordan, Syria, Terrorism Issue


Large crowd looking at the burned body of Jesse Washington, 18 year-old African-American, lynched in Waco, Texas, May 15, 1916. (Library of Congress)

Growing up on the King James Bible, there are certain passages that are forever embedded in my mind. One of these came vividly to mind after reading a powerful essay by Bill Moyers on the recent horrific burning of a Jordanian pilot by ISIS. The verse is from Matthew 7:5:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Like the jot and the tittel (Matthew 5:18), this is a phrase that not only resonates in the rhetoric of this classic text but serves as a reminder of our all-too-human capacity to selectively forget disagreeable parts of our own past. The issue is not about the barbaric and savage public display of a young Jordanian man burnt alive. This is a despicable act, like the beheadings, perpetrated in order to get a reaction. It is no more a unique “religious” act than the post auto de fe burnings of the Inquisition in Spain, unless you believe that it is only religion that motivates one human being to torture and cause pain on another. I think it does not do injustice to the verse to say that casting a beam out of one’s own eye is important even for casting out the beam in another’s eye.

The beam in the other is the burning of the pilot. The beam in our own eye is microcosmed in the testicle cutting, lynching and burning alive of a young black man named Jesse Washington in 1916 in Waco Texas. Continue reading Beams and Motes →