A painting that says it all by Sulafa Hijazi on Arab Women Artists.
Category Archives: Syria
This stupidity needs to end
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
Enough on ISIS already
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
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
Beams and Motes
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
A Tale of Two Trucks
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
So begins the classic Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, written over a century and a half ago. The two cities in question were revolutionary Paris and Dickens’ own squalor-laden London. As fiction it was an unpacking of black-and-white, good and evil, wealth and poverty, kindness and cruelty. But as Dickens wryly noted from the start, such a period of stark contrast “was so far like the present” that it cried out for comparison. When I came across the two images juxtaposed above, the title of Dickens’ novel raced into my mind. What can one say about these two images, the iconic “American” image of the pick-up in the current political maelstrom that plagues the Middle East. What is this tale of two trucks?
So what do we see in both these images? Young men out for a thrill, one group actively seeking to kill. The top image reflects the top of the economic ladder, these young men of the UAE in a country that boasts a GDP (in 2012) of 383.80 billion dollars, representing .62% of the world’s economy. The rock-hard bottom is apparent in the bottom image of ISIS fighters. As for ISIS between Syria and Iraq, the GDP for Syria in 2012 was 73.67 billion dollars, while war-torn Iraq is elevated to 223 billion in 2013. God bless the hands that pump the oil. What would the region be without its black baraka? Continue reading A Tale of Two Trucks
Those Levantine British Libertines…
[Webshaykh’s Note: This study is perhaps a bit dated and overstretched, but it can help explain why Iraq and Syria still matter (well, sort of…). I sort of doubt all the handsome men were farmers back then… or could it be that handsome Turks turned the eyes of lassies in Ireland independent of their farming expertise?]
Most Britons descended from male farmers who left Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago (and were seduced by the local hunter-gatherer women)
By David Derbyshire for MailOnlineUpdated: 13:37 GMT, 20 January 2010
Most Britons are direct descendants of farmers who left modern day Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago, a new study has shown.
After studying the DNA of more than 2,000 men, researchers say they have compelling evidence that four out of five white Europeans can trace their roots to the Near East.
The discovery is shedding light on one of the most important periods of human history – the time when our ancient ancestors abandoned hunting and began to domesticate animals. Continue reading Those Levantine British Libertines…
ISIS at RISK
Risk goes Mideast
The more the media spreads news about ISIS or ISIL or IS or Da’ish, the crazier it gets. The current Wikipedia entry is one of the longest I have ever seen. But let’s take a reality check here. ISIS is a digital creation as much as a successful terrorist operation that feeds the current media frenzy with Islam and terrorism. If social media precipitated, or at least facilitated, the Jasmine Revolution that blossomed into a wider Arab Spring, then cyberspace is the spontaneous generator of ISIS. This is no homegrown group, despite the caliphal self appointment of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (remember “whose your daddy?”) It has been hugely successful in recruiting, with estimates as high as 31,500 fighters according to the CIA over a month ago.
Wikipedia’s red scare
I am not sure who took the census, nor if anyone was counting the disaffected white guys who crossed the Turkish border over the past several months, but this is a rather large number for a ragtag wannabe caliphate. It is a bit of a mystery how this number, incredible as it is, has been so successful against the Iraqi army, said to have 271,500 active personnel and 528,500 reserve, or Syria with 250,000 active personnel in its army. If this were a RISK game, I would say that both Iraq and Syria are not into gambling as much as ISIS is. Remember those games when your nerdy friend put all his troops in Kamchatka and conquered all of Asia only to lose everything before his next turn when everyone else ganged up on him. If only this was a Risk game.
ISIS has a glossy side
I am fully aware of the horror of ISIS. If you read Revelation and like Armageddon scenarios, these guys are the Beast, the Antichrist and even the Whore of Babylon rolled into one. And why not throw in that stealth Mohammedan Barack Hussein Obama. Continue reading ISIS at RISK