Informed Comment

In the meantime, enjoy the following sites (the underlined parts are clickable):

http://www.jerusalem.indymedia.org/ (Palestine Independent Media Center);

http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/index.php3?language=en (Israel Independent Media Center)

and

http://www.iraqjournal.org/ Iraq Journal (Alternative views on the Iraq issue).

In general, theological explanations by themselves do little to explain foreign policy, while foreign policy debates tend to distort the meaning and history of theology. In Islam, the difference between the Medina chapters of the Koran (c. 622-632 A.D.) and the Meccan chapters of the Koran (610-622 A.D.) can be explained with proper reference to historical context. The two sections are not different because the former are “tolerant” and the latter are “belligerent”, but because the political situation had changed.

The pagan Meccan leadership in Mecca deeply disliked Islam and Muhammad from the time (c. 613?) he started denouncing polytheism. They harassed the Muslims, punished the weak among them, boycotted them, even chased away some to Ethiopia, for being monotheists. But the Meccans did not take really drastic action in the teens. In response, the Koran instructs Muhammad that he is only a ‘warner’ and has no sovereignty or political power.

Around 621-622 the Meccan leadership became so threatened by the continued spread of Islam in the city that they decided to assassinate Muhammad and to try to wipe Islam out. He knew that the city was becoming dangerous for him and when the notables of nearby Medina came to him seeking a “sheriff” figure to put their own town in order, he decided to leave his hometown. He escaped with a companion to Medina in 622, avoiding assassination, and was joined there by the Muslims.

The Meccan elite found the idea of Muhammad in charge of a rival city-state to be unacceptable, and it was clear there would be hostilities between the two. Muhammad’s forces fought three wars and several bedouin-style “raids” with the Meccan pagans, who wanted to wipe them out and kill their prophet. By 629 Muhammad and the Muslims had prevailed. Had the war gone the other way, they would have been slaughtered or enslaved by the Meccans. As it was, Muhammad announced a general amnesty and showed impressive generosity to his defeated foes, some of whom later emerged as leaders of Islam.

Even at the time that the Muslims were defending themselves from Meccan aggression, the Koran urges that peace be made if it can be, and forbids naked aggression. It is the Medinan chapters that assure pious Jews and Christians that they have nothing to fear in the afterlife and which praise the Hebrew Bible (Torah) and the New Testament (Injil) as full of “guidance and light.”

The odd sectarian enterprise of Mahmud Muhammad Taha (d. 1985) of Sudan, which aimed at discarding the Medinan chapters and creating a Meccan reading of the Koran, is not likely ever to be more than a minor heresy in Islam. It is in any case perfectly possible to construct a moderate Islamic modernism that eschews aggression on the basis of the entire Koran, and this has been done over and over again in the modern Middle East by scholars from Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) to Abdul Karim Soroush and Muhammad Sa`id `Ashmawi in the present. Indeed, violent radical Muslims can only make their case by neglecting to quote key Koranic verses (Bin Laden typically quotes only half a verse, completely skewing its meaning).

Where serious pacifist activists have arisen among the Palestinians, as with Mubarak Awad, they have been summarily expelled from the Occupied Territories by the Israeli authorities. See Mubarak’s profile at: http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/awad.htm

Al-Zawahiri complains that “The Upper Egyptian Company” has ceased its commerce, a reference to the decision of the jailed leadership of the Islamic Grouping (al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya) to give up armed struggle after the disastrous 1997 shooting of dozens of tourists at Luxor. The Gamaa is famed for being disproportionately drawn from Asyut and other areas of Upper Egypt. He says that since both “firms” (the Gamaa and his own al-Jihad al-Islami) are facing international monopoly capital (sharikat al-ihtikar ad-dawliyya), it is counterproductive to fight internally. At this point the commercial code seems to be more than just code, echoing Marxist ideas.

His correspondent seems to have been Egyptian; he expresses at the beginning of the letter his hope that they will meet again in “our country” (i.e. that the Islamists will overthrow Hosni Mubarak, which is the only way such a meeting could take place).

He says, however, that the Omar Brothers Company is open for business, referring to the Taliban/al-Qaeda. He thus seems to implicate Mulla Omar in al-Qaeda terrorism, the exact details of which are still murky. He also refers to Mulla Omar as “Amir al-Mu’minin,” or “Commander of the Believers,” a title of the Caliph.

Using the same sort of code, he refers to the joining of his al-Jihad al-Islami terrorist organization with al-Qaeda, producing the new improved “Qa`idat al-Jihad” or “Base for Holy War.” (Al-Qaeda means base in Arabic, and actually refers to Bin Laden’s earliest data base of graduates of his terror training camps in 1986-88). His correspondent is apparently a contributor to the Taliban cause and is assured that under Mulla Omar, the Omar Brothers Company is flourishing.

Al-Zawahiri hopes for success in an operation in “the Village” (Egypt) and urges sympathizers to come to Afghanistan for training. He said that his organization could not bear the travel expenses, and that volunteers would have to pay for the ticket out of their own pockets or take a small loan for that purpose.

The whole point of asking permission to put US troops into Turkey on the border with Iraq is to *forestall* Turkish military interference in the Iraq campaign. My own view is that it is unlikely that the American force striking from the north is actually necessary militarily or perhaps even wise. It is rugged territory and in any case is held by Kurdish U.S. allies. Rather than being aimed at Baghdad, such a force may well be envisioned as securing the Kirkuk oil fields. The Kurds have pretty openly announced that they will try to take them in the fog of war, and the Turks have been equally clear that they would find such a development unacceptable to the point of intervening themselves. Putting US troops in the north could forestall a Kurdish-Turkish side-war. But of course it risks the possibility of a US-Kurdish confrontation during the early stages of the war.