Bigotry toward Muslims and Anti-Arab Racism Grow in US;
Dubai and the Quran
The constant drumbeat of hatred toward Muslims and Arabs on the American Right, on television and radio and in the press, has gradually had its effect. This according to a Washington Post poll. Even in the year after September 11, a majority of Americans respected Islam and Muslims, but powerful forces in US society are determined to change that, and are gradually succeeding. As they win, Bin Laden also wins, since his whole enterprise was to "sharpen the contradictions" and provoke a clash of civilizations.
Some 25% of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And 33% think that Islam as a religion helps incite violence against non-Muslims, up from 14% after September 11.
The Bush administration policy is to continually insinuate that the Muslim world is the new Soviet Union and full of sinister forces that require the US to go to war against them. But at the same time, America has warm relations with Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, etc., etc. When Saudi Arabia's then crown prince (now king) Abdullah came to the US, Bush brought him to the Crawford ranch, held hands with him and kissed him on each cheek.
This two-faced policy and self-contradictory rhetoric has contributed to growing hatred and bigotry toward Muslims in the US, which is no less worrisome than the hatred Jews faced in Europe in the 1920s. It is dangerous because of what it can become.
The subtext of bigotry and racism is what has blindsided the Bush administration with regard to the port deal for a company based in Dubai. Dubai is like the Fifth Avenue of the Middle East-- the place with the pricey shopping and the tall skyscrapers and the extravagant fashions. Dubai businessmen are no more likely to take over US ports and allow them to come to harm than US businessmen are. They want the deal in order to make money. Bush knows this very well. But since he has spent so much time fulminating against shadowy and sinister forces over there somewhere, he has spooked the American public and members of his own party.
The Big Lie eventually catches up with you.
The hatemongers are well known. Rupert Murdoch's Fox Cable News, Rush Limbaugh's radio program and its many clones, telebimbos like Ann Coulter, Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Congressmen like Tom Tancredo, and a slew of far rightwing Zionists who would vote for Netanyahu (or Kach) if they lived in Israel-- Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, David Horowitz, etc., etc. And finally, there are many Muslims who have an interest in whipping up anti-Islamic feeling. Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress helped maneuver the US into a war against Iraq with lies about a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection and illusory WMD. The dissident Islamic Marxist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is now placing equally false stories about Iran in the Western press and retailing them to Congress and the Pentagon.
The hatemongers think that the American public is sort of like a big stupid dog, and you can fairly easily "sic" it on whoever you like. Just tell them that X people are intrinsically evil and that the US needs to go to war to protect itself from them. Then they turn around and blame those of us who don't want our country reduced to footsoldiers in someone else's greedy crusade for being "unpatriotic."
All human beings are the same. They all have the same emotions. All laugh when happy and weep when sad. There are no broad civilizations that produce radically different behavior in human beings. All are capable of violence. (Christians killed tens of millions in the course of the 20th century, far, far more than did Muslims). Few commit much violence except in war. You can walk around any place in Cairo at 1 am perfectly safely, but cannot do that everywhere safely in many major US cities, including the nation's capital, Washington, DC. Even the idea of Islam as a cultural world or civilization opposed to the Christian West is a false construct. Eastern Mediterranean honor cultures (Greece, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Syria) have more in common with each other across the Christian-Muslim divide than either has in common with Britain or the US. And, Muslim states don't make their alliances by religion. Egypt was allied with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, then switched to the US in the 1970s and until the present. Four of the five non-NATO allies of the US are Muslim countries. Turkey is even a full NATO ally and fought along side the US in the Korean War.
Dangerous falsehoods are being promulgated to the American public. The Quran does not preach violence against Christians.
Quran 5:69 says (Arberry): "Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabeaans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness--their wage waits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow."
In other words, the Quran promises Christians and Jews along with Muslims that if they have faith and works, they need have no fear in the afterlife. It is not saying that non-Muslims go to hell-- quite the opposite.
When speaking of the 7th-century situation in the Muslim city-state of Medina, which was at war with pagan Mecca, the Quran notes that the polytheists and Arabian Jewish tribes were opposed to Islam, but then goes on to say:
5:82. " . . . and you will find the nearest in love to the believers (Muslims) those who say: 'We are Christians.' That is because amongst them are priests and monks, and they are not proud."
So the Quran not only does not urge Muslims to commit violence against Christians, it calls them "nearest in love" to the Muslims! The reason given is their piety, their ability to produce holy persons dedicated to God, and their lack of overweening pride.
The tendency when reading the Quran is to read a word like "kafir" (infidel) as referring to all non-Muslims. But it is clear from a close study of the way the Quran uses the word that it refers to those who actively oppose and persecute Muslims. The word literally meant "ingrate" in ancient Arabic. So the polytheists ("mushrikun") who tried to wipe out Islam were the main referents of the word "infidel." Christians, as we see above, were mostly in a completely different category. The Christian Ethiopian monarch gave refuge to the Muslims at one point when things got hot in Mecca. The Quran does at one point speak of the "infidels" among the Jews and Christians (2:105: "those who committed kufr/infidelity from among the people of the Book.") But this verse only proves that it did not think they were all infidels, and it is probably referring to specific Jewish and Christian groups who joined with the Meccans in trying to wipe out the early Muslim community. (The Quran calls Jews and Christians "people of the book" because they have a monotheistic scripture).
People often also ask me about this verse:
[5:51] O you who believe, do not take Jews and Christians as friends; these are friends of one another. Those among you who ally themselves with these belong with them.
This is actually not a good translation of the original, which has a very specific context. In the Arabia of Muhammad's time, it was possible for an individual to become an honorary member or "client" of a powerful tribe. But of course, if you did that you would be subordinating yourself politically to that tribe. The word used in Arabic here does not mean "friend." It means "political patron" (wali). What the Quran is trying to do is to discourage stray Muslims from subordinating themselves to Christian or Jewish tribes that might in turn ally with pagan Mecca, or in any case might have interests at odds with those of the general Muslim community.
So the verse actually says:
[5:51] O you who believe, do not take Jews and Christians as tribal patrons; these are tribal patrons of one another. Those among you who become clients of these belong with them.
Since the Quran considers Christians nearest in love to Muslims, it obviously does not have an objection to friendship between the two. But apparently now it is some Christians who have that hateful attitude, of no friendship with "infidels."
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/09/2006 12:37:00 AM
|
Facebook
34 Comments:
On the subject of how stoking these kind of prejudices serves the neo-colonialist foreign policy agenda, readers may be interested in my recent ZNet article “Are Muslims from Mars and Europeans from Venus”; a discussion of the Danish cartoon row, where I say:
“It is no coincidence that those who most enthusiastically peddle the fiction of a “clash of civilisations” also portray the opposing “other” as a force that seriously threatens to destroy “our way of life”, and therefore advocate an aggressive US-led military strategy across the Islamic world. Manichean rhetoric eulogizing the liberal idealism of “our values” and the necessity of defending them against those who “hate our freedoms” has been the very essence of Western pro-war advocacy in recent years. Observing essentially imperial foreign policies being depicted as altruistic endeavours aimed at bringing enlightenment to backward, inferior (if exotic) cultures, or at least at defending us against them, hardly places us in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, subjugation almost invariably goes hand in hand with the deliberate dehumanisation of those who are being subjugated by those responsible for or whose acquiescence is essential to the act of subjugation”
David Wearing
The Democrat’s Diary
London, UK
Thank you Professor Cole for saying something I was trying to express on my blog earlier today.
Except that yours was better informed and written.
It's sad that you have to point out the obvious here Juan Cole.
It seems to me that the "average" American is so full of fear, fear of losing his job, fear of being bankrupted by the medical-industrial complex, fear of being bankrupted by big oil, and so angry in response to his fear that he is low-hanging fruit ready to be picked by the hate mongers.
The war and oil lobbies want the anti-Islam wars to continue because they are very profitable from their perspective. The AIPAC wants the US to so hate Islam as to expend its last energies of its own final throes of empire sowing chaos in the Middle East.
And this American regime is only too happy to accomodate them.
See this link for a picture of Dick Cheney taking his victory bows at the AIPAC meeting where he sealed Iran's fate.
What matters with regard to the port deal with Dubai is the ensuing connectivity that is likely to bring to the middle east. Dubai is like the fifth Avenue of the Middle East and through it we can connect the rest of teh region to globalization's core.
Dear Juan,
Your comments are well taken. However, there are many who believe that no foreign powers should have control of our ports.
With regard to the Muslim view of non-Muslims. Muslims are known to hold esteem for "people of the book", Christians and Jews. With regard to Buddhists, Hindus, or other traditions, they appear to consider them beyond the pale. What is your comment on this?
Sincerely,
Bill R.
I read somewhere that veiling and segregation of women was something picked up from the Byzantines. That is, the early Arab Muslims did not have that tradition, but adopted it after contact with the Byzantines.
I post merely to discover if this is true and to point out that, if true, it puts veiling in a different light...
I commend the very true analysis and positive interpretation of Quran with reference to prevailing bigotry towards Muslims & anti-Arabs racism that grow in US with the examples of recent DUABAI-DEAL and Qu'ranic verses.
US and western media lack the understanding of Islam and Muslim culture. On one hand US maintains
close friendship with many Muslims
countries as indicated and on other hand, US has bias and negative rehtoric about Islam and
its followers-Muslims.
If there is many many JUAN COLES in the world, then conflict as percieved between jews/christian &
Muslims can become non-visible.
Moreso, Islam is based on "MONOTHIEST" conceptof "One Allah/God" as started by ABRAHAM (prophet-IBRAHIM) and continued thru chain of Moses (MUSA), Jesus (Isha) and prophet Mohammed.
Qur'an admits and revers all these
prophets. As such, Jews, Christian and Muslims are the sibbling of prophet ABRAHAM whom Muslims call
"IBRAHIM NABI". They must respect each other as cousins and members
of a large Abrahamic-Family. US Jews & Christian communities should not keep any Islamphobia and bigotry because of negative
propagation about Islam by media
thru TV, Radia and newspapers.
By : Shk. TAYEB POONAWALA,
President, Indo-American Interfaith-New York, 718 476 9750.
e-mail: Tpoonawala@aol.com
El Cid or a history knows him Rodrigo Alavarez de Vivar has been protrayed by literature as the Castilla's chamopin against the Moors, but in fact he was a mercenary general that worked for Iberian princes and Moorish caliphs. In fact, the Spanish language , culture and literature ows much to the Islamic precence in that country.
So much so, that my mother's last name is Arrufat, which seems to suggest that at one time it was of North African decent.
Dear Juan,
As a long time reader of your site, I would just like to take this opportunity to thank you for your insight and wonderful commentary. I appreciate your opinions and information sources on current affairs in the middle east, and I view your postings as a beacon of rationality in an otherwise polarized blogosphere.
Please keep up the great work.
Thank you, Dr. Cole.
As a Protestant liberal with no general beef with Islam, I am struck by the similarity between your comments and their mirror-images in Protestant Christianity. In particular, critics of Christianity have let straw-man disproof-texts stand in for nuanced interpretations of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.
At the same time, Christians often use proof-texts to stand in for Christian culture: "Believe what I believe, not what I do." The megachurches' consumerist atmosphere might be an example. "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" is more said than lived there.
Is there a similar disconnect between the proof-texts you've cited and tolerance of other religions in Islamic cultures? Is this another case of the religion of the scholars being drowned out by the religion of the crowd? That's how I feel about Christianity in American political life lately.
Juan, as usual you hit the nail on the head in regards to Muslims being used as the new whipping boy to instil fear and hatred in Americans. I wonder if you are familiar with the book "The War On Truth: 9/11 and the Anatomy Of Terrorism" by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed? In it the author documents the strange and contradictory relationships between western intelligence agencies and al-Qaeda from the 70's up until the present. His research begs the question as to whether al-Qaeda has been used as a western intelligence asset from time to time to further western interests as well as standing in for the new Soviet threat. I for one can't understand the environment of fear so prevalent nowdays in our country. My dad & uncles fought in WW2 where we went to war on 2 fronts against real big armies & defeated them as well as going into production overdrive at home. Now we wimper & cower like babies in the face of our new enemy whom we are told are a rag-tag band of terrorists in caves, while Bush tells us our patriotic duty is to go shopping, give up our rights, crawl in a hole & trust dear leader to brake any law he sees fit to protect us! Roosevelt had it right we he said "The only thing to fear is fear itself."
The Islamophobes seem to be unaware that they are "gradually succeeding," their own theory of the case is very different indeed, to judge by the following specimen from this morning:
"Robert Spencer took up the task, pointing out that the current war is a war against a unified ideology, rather than against a tactic. Therefore, the preaching of violent jihad should be regarded as no less dangerous than its violent execution. Seconding Spencer was Phyllis Chesler, who noted that that fighting against this former front has been strongly suppressed in the West."
Juan, you make good points that need to be made. But.... This doesn't scratch the surface of why people are increasingly freaked out by Muslims. Nobody cares what the correct translation of the Quran is because there are Muslims who don't seem to care, and who go around using the holy book as an excuse to kill Shia, Sunni, capitalists, communists, and anyone else who gets their goat that day.
I think the real point to make is that in this they are not so unique. You can find plenty of passages in the bible about brotherly love, and yet we have a bunch of loonies driving around the country, desecrating funerals because of an insane attitude to homosexuality. Christians also have Pat Robertson. And, of course, George Bush....
There is a culture clash. It is between theocrats and people of good will. If we called things by their right names, there'd be a chance that some of that fear and anger would hit the target: people who go around preaching mayhem and hate.
It is--forgive me if this is too rude--foolish to tell people not to fear extremism. Yes, it needs to be pointed out that Islam does not equal extremism. In the next breath, the extremism that does exist needs to be acknowledged. It needs to be exposed for what it is, whichever so-called "religious" umbrella it hides under.
This point has been brilliantly made by writers, like Salman Rushdie, and others who supported free speech in the cartoon debacle. See the BBC report with further links.
It seems that the U.S. isn't the only country experiencing this kind of phenomenon at the moment:
Muslims in Spain Under Cloud of Suspicion
"Some 25% of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And 33% think that Islam as a religion helps incite violence against non-Muslims, up from 14% after September 11."
Look at it this way: They still outpoll the President.
Juan, what does the Quran have to say about atheists?
Give me a break.
The reason why the Romans were opposed to the Christians, and the kafir to the early Muslims, is that both those groups are against pluralism. The infidels did not declare war on the early Muslims, the early Muslims declared war on them.
Every anti-pluralist impulse in the world today can be traced to the eradication of traditional religion in favor of monotheism.
There is huge ignorance about what Islam is really about - to counterbalance the "message" conveyed by suicide bombers and Muslim fanatics. We need more people explaining the Koran. We need to hear the Koran interpreted - its true message - in every square in every city in the Western world. In order to head off the otherwise inevitable outcome of the US' present foreign policy - an exchange of nuclear weapons.
First of all, sorry if I make english mistakes, I am not a native Englis-speaker.
I definitely agree with all what you said, I just want to add something about the way Christians and Jews are perceived by Muslims. In the Muslim dogma, you are right: Muslims believe in all Jews' and Christians prophets, the same way as Tayeb Poonawala summarizes it. And yes, Christians and Jews are considered as they are when you say "the people of the book": Muslims consider themselves as the "continuity" of what God started to do, with Abraham and Jesus.
Now, on the ground, the same way we talk about "average American" fearing and disliking Muslims, the same way there are "average Muslims", who kind of reject more or less clearly Christians and Jews, unfortunately... I definitely condemn this, but my argument here is that the situation is not that easy or straight. And such interpretations of Al Quran have to be much more promoted within the Muslim world than they are, for behaviours to change. Especially that also, in the mind of the average Muslim, "Jews" is mixed with "Israel", and there are also habits and thoughts inherited from parents about how to deal with the other (Jew or Christian) that have nothing historically to do with religion but only with mentalities.
The growing feeling of hatred from Americans towards Muslims is a pity, it is not even justified by the point that I just mentionned above, and things have to change on that side, it is very important. But mentalities have also to improve in the "average Muslim" side too.
Prof. Cole, Sadly, I feel that you are preaching to the choir here. The moneychangers are in charge of the temple, both here and in Iraq. I am not holier than they are but, I have some belief that "love is light no matter where it resides, and hate is darkness no matter where it chooses its nest". The only thing the common man can do, is persevere for what is right and just, have faith, and in the end it will be justified.
Great analysis as always.
I see the demagogery [sp?] in both parties, among the media elites, within the public discourse.
Exactly: we are all helping our government play into bin Laden's hands.
And if there is such a Great Civilizational Clash to come, we bear major responsibility for it, which cannot just be blamed on rightist 'populism'.
[Center for Random Rantage]
I'm not sure right-wing propaganda has had the greatest impact. I think it's the long list of nasty events (commuter bombings in Madrid and London, suicide bombings in Baghdad, riots in France, riots over cartoons...) that have been featured repeatedly in mainstream media.
I confess to a fear that in many areas of the globe, including the slums of western European cities, radical Islam is filling a vacuum left by the collapse of Marxist ideology, offering an anti-Western alternative vision to the millions who are not benefitting from the current world order. And Islam can offer more than Marxism ever could: paradise after death.
What puzzles me about the "clash of civilizations" are the notions that the Muslim world has the desire and wherewithall to conquer the west, then dictate its social and religious framework.
9/11, the Madrid and London Bombings, the Cole, etc. were all very bad things but they certatinly didn't open a beachhead. If anything they focused the anti-terrorist forces of the world more tightly on al Qaeda.
None of these bad things come close to the scale of action that the US has taken in Iraq and Afghanistan (and seems to threaten Iran with). We actually did go in and attempt to dictate the social and religious framework. Mr. Bremer treated Iraq like a big ball of playdough that he could shape into anything he wanted. Telling these countries to "get secular" and "free market" is dictating national religious and social orientation.
In my simple view the message of the Islamist terrorists acts is "back off", not "here we come to get you".
Talk about an unsubstantiated allegation! The Bush administration has tied itself into knots to avoid blanket prejudice against Muslims. Take the frisking of little old white ladies at airports as just one example. The reason for increased prejudice by Americans against Muslims is quite simply the behavior of Muslims. The cartoon riots have had a precipitous effect on American opinion. Many Americans who initially bought into the administration's policy of trying to root out the extremist from the "moderate" Muslims have simply thrown up their hands and have taken a "nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out" attitude. This is, I believe, an unfortunate development, but it is pointedly NOT the policy or the goal of the Bush administration.
Thanx for the great post, Juan. I am afraid the average American is easily hoodwinked by the (mainly right-wing) media. They seem now prepared to wage a war against my country, Iran. Even some bloggers blatantly suggest using nuclear bombs against Iranians. Americans used to be very popular in Iran, but little by little people are hating them and starting to rally the regime, even if they vehemently oppose it.
BillR wrote:
"Muslims are known to hold esteem for "people of the book", Christians and Jews. With regard to Buddhists, Hindus, or other traditions, they appear to consider them beyond the pale."
Hi BillR,
That's an interesting question which I myself have studied, and the answer is: Muslims indeed *have* given esteem to Hindus and Buddhists in the past as "People of the Book," as a matter of political necessity alone if not quite genuine Judeo-Christian-Muslim doctrinal adherence.
When the Muslim Mongol-Timurid descendant Babar conquered much of India to found the Mughal Dynasty, his fellow Muslim nobles had a population of millions of Hindus with whom they had to achieve some semblance of harmony to stay in power (the old adage of Machiavelli about winning the respect of the conquered people), so they extended the "People of the Book" label to Hindus. Members of the Hindu religion, after all, do have the Rig Vedas, Mahabharata and other legends/sacred texts with moral advice, which can more or less be deemed something approximating a scripture, and besides, it was politically practical to do this. Same went for Muslims in charge of (or associating with) Buddhist nations. In general, with the exception of partly Buddhist Mongol Il-Khanate-- in which Muslim-Buddhist hatred after the bloody sack of Baghdad in the mid-1200's was indeed severe-- Muslims in general haven't had all that much political strife with Buddhist or Buddhist-fringe nations. East Asia, for example-- with the exception of the Philippines-- has really been the one region of Eurasia where Muslims never really extended much of a political or cultural foothold.
It's interesting that a large fraction, if not a majority of the Mughal rulers really were quite competent, and even today in India many Muslim Mughal rulers (such as Akbar and Shah Jahan) are well-respected even by Hindu nationalists. Despite all the aspersions cast against Muslim nations today, it seems that historically at least, Muslim rulers-- even when in the minority-- did a well-above average decent job of harmonizing peoples in a multicultural society. The Mughals, by and large, even managed to prevent large-scale famines and economic problems in India.
Contrast this record with the British, who deliberately exploited India to the hilt, smashed India's industries at home (flooding with exports), literally taxed the Indian people to death and seized so many farms in India-- exporting food and other products to Britain-- that upwards of 25 million people in India starved to death, in the late 1800's alone, from these artificial famines which were probably worse than even the Stalinist or Pol Pot Khmer Rouge famines in their scale.
http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/colonial.html
The British also seemed to have a visceral hatred of the Indian people-- Winston Churchill for example was a famous and determined India hater who reviled India so much that he couldn't contain his hatred of Indians even of official visits. When the Bengali Famine ripped through East India and killed almost 4 million Indians in 1943, Churchill not only refused to help, but fanned the flames by continuing to appropriate Indian foodstuffs in the "rice denial scheme", ostensibly to forestall a Japanese invasion but in part to weaken the Indian independence movement led by Bose.
http://www.samarthbharat.com/bengalholocaust.htm
Read especially any work by Amartya Sen, or that American author Michael Davis to see how the British took as many opportunities as they could to wreak horrid damage on the Indian people and the economy, quite unlike the Mughals, who sought to keep the people fed if for no other reason than to prevent regional unrest. It's amazing that the supposedly "civilized" British, and Churchill in particular, were possibly the most brutal, barbaric and damaging rulers that India ever experienced.
I think it's deeply necessary to address the way Islam views atheism. To me it seems self-evident that any religious aesthetic as an organizing principal of society is inherently corrupt as it will necessarily deny social validity to anything but itself and nearer variations of itself.
Consequently Islam, or any other religion, as a political theory or intellectual force cannot be compatible with liberal democracy or the self-determination of either the individual or, by extension, society.
This is an excellent analysis of where the US is going. I saw it coming and have been saying so ever since September 2001. Sometimes it's a real drag to be right.
Thank you for the clarification of the verse 5:51. It has worried me for some time, particularly while making friends with people in Jordan and Syria and Iran.
It was good of you too to make reference to Arberry's translation so I know which version you are referring to.
Shukran Jazeelan. Thank you very much, Professor Cole, for letting non-Muslims understand a little bit better. It really sickens me how much everyone in America picks on Muslims as an easy target. The American far left seems to hate religion, and the American Right hates all OTHER religions. Muslims wound up the victims of pundits on all sides. It's a shame not everyone shares your opinion, and the comments on this blog kinda depressed me. It's the same anti-Semitism from the 1930's with a new name and maybe a bit more articulate to fool people into thinking it plausible.
Thanks, Dr. Cole, for this shift in focus and creating the public space to counter anti-Muslimism. I am an American living in Israel. I have found all of my encounters with Arabs here, in Jordan and in the Gulf states, to be very warm and welcoming.
I am a Buddhist. I was afraid at first to mention this to Arabs, because I thought they would think me an infidel. However, I was mistaken. Every Arab I talk to about it has said, with a smile, "Ah the Buddha -- he was one of the prophets."
How many more misconceptions are there out there?
Unfortunately, this bogotry translates in many cases into violent actions. i have tried to keep track of the latest ones by creating a blog for that:
http://stoonami.blogspot.com
peace
Hi there,
Those interested in the constructed dichotomy between "Us" and "Them", Muslims and non-Muslims, Islam and the West, might be interested in my research on international terrorism which suggests complex linkages between elements of certain radical Islamist networks and Western strategic and economic interests.
I've just started a new blog at http://nafeez.blogspot.com to discuss some of my work. My latest research is about the London bombings, which I believe was a form of blowback not merely from our unsavoury exploitation of al-Qaeda during the Cold War, but from our ongoing selective co-optation of certain elements of al-Qaeda in the post-Cold War era in the Balkans, Central Asia and North Africa (in particular, as there are other regions).
For example, consider the evidence from the Dutch intelligence files (appendix B of the Srebrencia report) documenting how the Pentagon, with British acquiesence, flew in thousands of al-Qaeda mujahideen into Bosnia to use as shock troops to manipulate that conflict.
Whatever the motives, this was clearly a huge error that facilitating extremist Islamist activity in Europe. Much the same happened with Kosovo (and now Macedonia) when we hooked up with the KLA, which is reportedly financed by Osama bin Laden and interpenetrates with al-Qaeda in terms of fighters, training and weapons.
Believe it or not, similar policies have been carried out in countries as diverse as Azerbaijan, Algeria and the Asia-Pacific.
best regards
Nafeez Ahmed
www.independentinquiry.co.uk
I'm a bit concerned about using Nafeez Ahmad as a guide, given that he may be diffusing a hidden agenda: a right-wing Islamist one, which has strong anti-secular overtones.
Most people are unaware of his lesser known writings, especially his book, ‘Al-Mahdi: His Portended Revolution & Its Implications for the Global Islamic Movement’ (http://www.mutah.com/al-mahdi.doc). In this book, Nafeez Ahmad (in his own words) advocates establishing “a perfect, single global Islamic government”. This is scary stuff.
And he gets weirder. In the conclusion to this same book, Ahmad argues:
“The doctrine of the return of Imam Mahdi is one of the most revolutionary aspects of Islam. The return of Imam Mahdi signifies the ultimate destruction of all oppressive systems, the final negation of all false gods, and the total annihilation of the forces of injustice. It signifies the complete removal of kufr from the earth, and the decisive establishment of a perfect, single global Islamic government under the rulership of Imam-e-Zaman, whose reign at last will bring all affairs of humankind under the justice, freedom, love and purity of the Divine Law”
Under another chapter, ‘II. The Objective of All Islamic Political Struggle’, Nafeez Ahmad details his perspectives on what he considers to be “the correct objective of our Islamic political struggle”.
From what we know, to date, Nafeez Ahmad has not publicly or privately renounced his Islamist political writings. He is very authoritarian from reading the above book.
Further, let's not forget that Nafeez Ahamd used to work and write for the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC). According to Awaaz, an organisation that monitors religious fundamentalism in South Asia/South Asian communities, IHRC is considered be a neo-Khomeinist organisation and is rumoured to have received funding from the office of Ayatollah Khameni, the supreme leader of Iran. According to Awaaz, IHRC is part of a corpus of right-wing Islamist organisations "which adhere to the ideology of the ‘absolute rulership of the clerics’ and ‘Islamic government’ advocated by Khomeini and developed by other representatives of political Shi’ism. The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in the UK can be said to represent an association with this kind of ideological influence" . Some of Ahmed's published reports and briefings can be found on the IHRC website.
Post a Comment
<< Home