Making Sense of Jihad

Ideological Advantage

Our enemy has Ibn Tamiyya, Hassan al-Banna, and Sayyid Qutb.

We have "post-colonial" studies:

The postcolonial moment in security studies
TARAK  BARKAWI  and MARK  LAFFEY

Abstract

In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed since World War II. The taken-for-granted historical geographies that underpin security studies systematically misrepresent the role of the global South in security relations and lead to a distorted view of Europe and the West in world politics. Understanding security relations, past and present, requires acknowledging the mutual constitution of European and non-European worlds and their joint role in making history. The politics of Eurocentric security studies, those of the powerful, prevent adequate understanding of the nature or legitimacy of the armed resistance of the weak. Through analysis of the explanatory and political problems Eurocentrism generates, this article lays the groundwork for the development of a non-Eurocentric security studies.

And I have a headache

AQ, NIE, and our IC

NY Times reporting on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) this weekend was comical, but the Times article, and today's subsequent release of the NIE summary exposed two common weaknesses in the intelligence community (IC):  1) its pervasive left-leaning leadership, and 2) its consistently weak counterterrorism analytical capabilities.  Of the two, I am more concerned about #2, than #1.  Old lefties retire and fade away, but generation after generation of weak analytical capabilities will guarantee more American deaths in the future.

First, the intelligence community is run for the most part by career government employees, some of whom identify closely with the counterculture movements of the 60s/70s.   Many are leftists, some are hard left.  Now I knew a lot of good, hard working lefty analysts, but I also worked with senior IC employees who openly expressed their hatred for the President.  Outward disdain for President Bush wasn't uncommon.  It wouldn't take much for a few to leak their spin of the NIE to the NYT.   As a matter of fact, I would expect these kinds of leaks for every national election until the activist analysts retire (and then they'll write books). 

Second, it exposes how very weak much of the analytical thinking is throughout the IC.  As Michelle Malkin says of the NIE, it's a "historically ignorant view of jihad more suited for the moonbat Left than our premier intelligence agencies."   The part of the NIE that caught her attention, also caught mine:

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement:  (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq "jihad;" (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims - all of which jihadists exploit. 

This is the influence of academic subject matter experts on our strategic thinking.  It's the grievance-based analysis so pervasive in "post-colonial" theory.  It has no basis in the jihad "sciences " that occupy the lives of Al Qaeda's ideologues and strategists.  It offers no insight into our enemy's broad historical view.  It makes no allowances for radical dawah (proselytizing) efforts, or the Islamization of education.  It makes no mention of ongoing centers of jihad (outside of Iraq).  It could be that these factors are discusses in more detail within the body of the NIE.  I hope so.  If not, we're looking at a new generation of analysts trained to think in "root causes" fallacies and who know nothing of the enemy.

The original NYT article was necessary, because it exposes the utter cluelessness of the senior intelligence officials who leaked the information in the first place.  It was leaked for political reasons (as many leaks are) in an attempt to influence the elections, and it displays for the American people how partisan the IC has become.  It also shows the leakers' ignorance of the current media landscape.  They are unaware of the center-right media's influence as a counterweight to the MSM.  This may appear naive to blog readers, but for the most part I'm describing senior officials whose only daily exposure to "open source" information is the hard copy of the NY Times and Washington Post, and NPR's Morning Edition during the drive in to work. It's a comfortable, suburban, highly educated bubble of awareness that partly influences analytical judgment.

Just think about it, if they're that clueless about American elections, why should the President (or the American people) trust their analytical judgment on any other country?

From the "Holy Sh-t!" Department

BBCNews is reporting that British soldiers killed Omar Farouq -- a senior al Qaeda leaders -- in Iraq.

Omar Farouq was in Iraq?!  Was in Basra?  The BBCNews piece has a bit of bio on the guy:

Born in Kuwait of Iraqi parents, Farouq is believed to have joined al-Qaeda in the early 1990s and trained in Afghanistan.

He became a top lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden in south-east Asia and he is believed to have been planning a series of bomb attacks on US embassies there when he was arrested in Indonesia in 2002.

To the considerable embarrassment of the Americans, he and three others escaped from the US military prison at Bagram airbase in Kabul last year.

He even appeared in a video on an Arab TV station to boast about it.

More on this later...

Alexander Russell Webb

While I was trolling university press sites for anything interesting, I came across this book: 

A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb

Who knew?  Well, several months back I had come across an article Alexander Russell (Mohammed) Webb wrote for Current Literature in 1893. It's a conversion story, not unlike Adam Gadahn's.   Though written in a late-Victorian idiom, its supremacist declarations and defensive tone are instantly recognizable:

As soon as I reached maturity I began the study of the various religions, and of the mysteries of life and death.  The possession of some knowledge created a thirst for more.  Desiring to personally investigate the workings of the Mohammedan religion, I secured, through the kindness of President Cleveland, in 1885, the Consulship of Manila, in the Philippine Islands.  The little time I had to spare outside my official duties I spent in the pursuit of further enlightenment.  There could be but one result.  My investigations made me a thorough Mussulman.

Why?  Because I found the morals of the followers of Allah were better than those of the people of our own Christian America.  Because there is nothing about the traditions or precepts of Mohammedanism incapable of proof.  Because its higher philosophy is the most perfect in the world.  Because there is nothing of superstition, bigotry or intolerance about it.  And because I believe it can accomplish in America what Christianity has so long attempted and so signally failed in doing.  I am here to teach its beauties, its philosophy, and its salvation.

I am often asked who furnishes the money to carry on this work in America.  There are rich and devout Mohammedans as well as rich and devout Christians.  Wealthy Indian merchants have pledged themselves to support the mission for a period of five years.  At the end of that time I have no doubt but that funds for the future will be forthcoming.

Other excerpts....

The four months I spent in Indian form the pleasantest memory of my life.  I lived among Mohammedans all of this time.  I found a richer, better, higher civilization among these so-called "barbarians" than I can find in the great metropolis of the new world to-day...

One has no right to condemn what he does not understand.  However many of those who have called me an "audacious fanatic" because I believe in the Koran, have ever read the Koran?  How many of those who condemn its followers as "barbarians" have ever met or converse with an intelligent Mohammedan?  We of the West judge Mohammedanism by the Arabians of the desert.  Mohammedanism satisfies the soul; Christianity does not.  But I will not burden you with missionary pleading...

Far from being a new phenomenon, Islam has survived and thrived in the US for more than a century (and that's a good thing).  We need to look deep into our past, deeper than the 1960s in order to build a better understanding and a more accurate picture of Islam in America.  Without a better view of the "threat landscape," we'll continue to stumble.

[Download webb_islamism_1893.pdf]

Free Chapters on Islam

Princeton University Press offers a huge collection of sample chapters from their backlist, and a few of the books are on Islam, terrorism, etc.   

I haven't read any of them, and so I can't blog to the quality of the content.  Coming from an academic institution, I'm betting the insights range from the interesting to the utterly worthless. But what the heck!  They're free chapters.

The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam
F. E. Peters
A New Edition with a foreword by John L. Esposito
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i7816.html

Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians
F. E. Peters
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i7483.html
   
The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror
Michael Ignatieff
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7578.html

Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia
Robert W. Hefner
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s6966.html

Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism
Timur Kuran
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7731.html

Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice
Michael Bonner
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s8280.html

Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason
Bill Maurer
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7998.html

Islam and the Challenge of Democracy: A Boston Review Book
Khaled Abou El Fadl
Edited by Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7754.html

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.
Saba Mahmood [PDF only]
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7888.pdf

Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the Age of Terrorism
George P. Fletcher
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7340.html

Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence
Bruce B. Lawrence
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i6281.html

Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam
David Farber
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i7807.html

Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space
John R. Bowen
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s8260.html

Think Tank Watch

International Assessment and Strategy Center

Recent report: Salafists, China and West Africa's Growing Anarchy

The most visible armed Islamic threat emerged in the form the small Salfist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), Led by Amar Saifi, known as Al Para because he was a French-trained paratrooper in the Algerian military, the GSPC declared his loyalty to al Qaeda. The group gained a small degree of international notoriety last year after kidnapping a group of 32 "extreme tourists" in the Sahara. Most of the tourists were German, and the German government paid a reported $8 million ransom to free its citizens.

In one of the few cases where the United States has had the foresight to act aggressively, Gen. Charles Wald of the US European Command moved quickly to get the defense ministers of Chad, Mali, Niger and others together for the first time ever, to coordinate a strategy of going after the GSPC before it became a serious security military and political threat. The U.S. also provided satellite intelligence to the governments to help them track the GSPC as they moved across the desert. Using that information, African government troops took action. In combat in Niger and Chad, Al Para lost some 40 men, and ended up, along with a few dozen of his followers, as prisoners of an obscure rebel movement in Chad, the Movement for Democracy and Justice (MDJC).

Men Get It, Too

There's nothing radical ulema have not considered.

Shaving the Beard; A Modern Effeminacy

Shaving the beard results in a series of Islaamic violations, as is obvious from Allaah's Book and His Messenger's Sunnah. The following is a list (not necessarily comprehensive) of such violations:
a. A Disobedience to Allaah
b. A Disobedience To the Messenger
c. A Deviation from the Appearance and Guidance of the Messenger
d. A Deviation from the Way of Believers
e. An Imitation of the Disbelievers
f. Changing Allaah's Creation without Permission
g. An Imitation of Women
h. Shaving the Beard Contradicts the Pure Fitrah (Nature)

I remember images from Afghanistan soon after the Taliban fell.  Arabs went down.  Kites went up.  And the beards and burkas (sort of) came off. 

No one cried for the Taliban.  Remember that.

Drams of Salafist Thought

Read them to know them.

The Manners of COMPANIONSHIP
By Badrud al-Ghazzi

Politics in the Sharî’ah
by Shaykh ’Alî Hasan al-Halabî

Jihadi Real Estate (in Africa)

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog has a post on a topic I've discussed before:  the jihad's need for real estate:

It is important to understand that Islamists view the holding of a territory, virtually any territory, as vital to the re-establishment of the Caliphate. It does not really matter where the banner is raised. It is more important to raise the banner.

This was clear in Afghanistan, when Azzam, backed by many leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, agreed that the Afghan struggle took precedence over the Palestian struggle because it would give them an Islamist state. Lawrence Wright points this out in detail in “The Looming Tower.”

It was true later when many in al Qaeda viewed the biggest loss, resulting from the 9-11 attacks, as the loss of the head of the Caliphate. This is not an abstract concept to Islamists. While the Shi’ia have their state in Iran, the Sunni Salafists have only the debauched states of the Arab Gulf, corrupt, flacid and abased before foreign powers.

This is why Somalia matters on a more fundamental level in the war on Islamists and their allies. I have been in meetings where the Islamist triumph in Somalia is dismisseed as unimportant because Somalia has no vital natural resources and is not viewed as being of strategic consequence for the United States. Neither did Afghanistan in 1996, when the Taliban rolled in.

Not of strategic consequence?  Really? So all the oil flowing out of the Gulf is of no strategic consequence?  Typical. 

Now that Taliban Part Deux controls a good chunk of the Horn of Africa, there are a few things I wouldn't want to be:

1. Owner/Operator of an oil refinery on the Arabian Peninsula
2. A tourist in the Sinai or Kenya
3. Captain of any ship navigating through the Gulf of Aden or the Red Sea
4. A Christian living in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya,
5. Any sub-Saharan country with a Muslim minority

But none of this is of strategic importance. 

Financing the Somali Jihad

J Peter Pham at ReportingWar.com has an article on continuing government efforts to thwart funding of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the Somali Islamist group that recently consolidated power within the country, and has implimented sharia law (a la the Taliban). 

You'll be surprised to know that a lot of their funding comes from the United States:

While, as I have previously documented in this column, ICU council chairman Sheikh Hassan Dahir 'Aweys and his minions have received moral and material support – including an endorsement from Osama bin Laden and funding from various Islamic "charities" – as well as Arab, Afghan, Kashmiri, Pakistani, Palestinian, and Syrian fighters, it might come as a shock to many Americans that a not insignificant contribution to the Islamists' victory came from a massive fraud involving a money transfer business that operated until a few months ago with licenses in several U.S. states, including Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

The company in question, Dalsan, was, depending on the account, usually described as either the largest or the second-largest Somali money-wiring company (its competition was Al-Barakaat, whose assets were frozen by Executive Order 13224 almost immediately after 9/11).

Read the whole thing.  It appears as if Dalsan was smoothly operating the kind of transaction pretzels typical of all sophisticated money laundering schemes:

• From mid-2004 until April 2006, the directors of Dalsan began selling tens of thousands shares in the company to hundreds of outside investors, mainly drawn from the Somali diaspora. The effort, including Somali-language prospectuses promising divinely-assured "risk free" investments ("Haddii at dhacdo inaad la kulanto wax aan ku raali galin waxaan ka siinaynaa mag dhow. Laakin ma dhacayso Alle Idamki!") raised somewhere between $10 million and $30 million in capital from investors, many of them hardworking Somali exiles.
• During the same period, the company rapidly expanded its operations. It established some sixteen branches in Mogadishu as well as operations in the northeastern Somali region of Puntland. Dalsan also aggressively marketed its services to Somalis working in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, and other Western countries who wanted to send money to families and other relatives in Somalia, promising internet transfers payable "within 5-10 minutes anywhere in the world."

The question may seem moot.  After all, the Islamists are in control of Somalia's strategic real estate.  Does it matter who funded them?  Yes, it does.  Financing a jihad costs a lot of money.  There are militiamen to arm and feed.  There are populations that need to be "won over" with bribes.  There's gas for the technicals, and bullets for the guns.  Without natural or human resources to exploit, the ICU will have to continue to rely on outside donors and criminal enterprises.  As long as those donors are willing to give (and the phoney companies continue to send money), the ICU will have money to keep their militias armed and fed.

Terrorists are like backyard birds.  They'll return to the same feeder over and over again until it's empty.

Voices of Jihad Database

RAND has designed a searchable collection of jihadi fatwas, analyses, interviews, etc, called the "Voices of Jihad" database:

This online database is a compilation of speeches, interviews, statements, and publications of jihadist leaders, foot soldiers, and sympathizers. Nearly all content is in English translation, and has been collected from publicly-accessible websites. Original links are provided, along with excerpts and full-text content when available.

This is a search of the word "strategy."  The database runs on Vivisimo a far more useful search engine than Google, because it organizes results based on concepts represented in the search results. The first hit is the strategy paper thought to have inspired the 3/11 Madrid bombings, Jihadi Iraq:  Hopes and Risks.

Domestic Implications

Some of da 'boyz at Counterterrorism Blog have posted their recent congressional testimony.

Steve Emerson, "The Homeland Security Implications of Radicalization"

Homegrown terrorism poses a challenge to law enforcement because the individuals in the plots,  prior to their radicalization, have not necessarily shown any evidence of extremist views, much less any connection to terrorist activity. They appear to lead normal lives, at times even after indoctrination into an extremist ideology. The examples to be presented demonstrate that there are several underlying similarities characterizing homegrown terrorism.

<SNIP>

The majority of these radicalized individuals who become involved in such plots are below the  age of 30 and are often times radicalized in private study circles or by individuals they meet at their place of worship. In several instances, an older and charismatic imam or spiritual leader is involved such as Ali Al-Timimi or Juma al-Dosari in the U.S., and in the case of the Toronto plot, by Qayyum Abdul Jamal, a 43-year-old mosque volunteer from suburban Toronto. These homegrown jihadists are often well-integrated into Western society and many were students at American universities.

Certain domestic radical Islamic civil society groups engender radicalization through spreading a false sense of persecution and alienation in the Muslim community in the West, labeling the war on terrorism as a war on Islam. These conspiratorial allegations facilitate and maintain indigenous Islamic alienation from host governments, reinforce loyalty to the larger Muslim ummah, and in some cases rationalize acts of terrorism.  In nearly all of the post-9/11 terrorist plots, unsuccessful and successful, the perpetrators have claimed that they are only avenging crimes committed by the West against Muslims.

Walid Phares, “INTERCEPTING RADICALIZATION AT THE INDOCTRINATION STAGE”

The strategic penetration operated by the Jihadists before and since 9/11 is based on three models: One are the Jihadists who originates overseas and move to the United States, either legally (visa, lawful immigration, marriage, political asylum) or illegally. In either of these cases the Jihadis ends up operating on the inside of the country, using its laws and facilities. The estimate of Jihadists who have infiltrated the country over the past two decades is certainly in the hundreds, possibly close to a thousand. This "first generation" Jihadists has organized itself to perform two activities: One is to grow its own strength for "future Jihads." Two is to *produce the second generation of American-born Jihadists.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, "Prison Radicalization: Are Terrorist Cells Forming in U.S. Cell Blocks?"

I would like to briefly examine the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation’s connections to international terrorism in order to demonstrate the charity’s ideological orientation. Ultimately, the story of Al Haramain’s dawa program is one of missed opportunities for the charity and its terrorist backers. The program was set up in such a way that it could have been used as a major vehicle for terrorist recruitment. The program was not used in that way. But Al Haramain’s connections to terrorism mean that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the prison dawa program might be used in that manner.

Bernard Lewis Sees Hope

And so do I:

What is the possibility of freedom in the Islamic world, in the Western sense of the word? If you look at the current literature, you will find two views common in the United States and Europe. One of them holds that Islamic peoples are incapable of decent, civilized government. Whatever the West does, Muslims will be ruled by corrupt tyrants. Therefore the aim of our foreign policy should be to insure that they are our tyrants rather than someone else's--friendly rather than hostile tyrants. This point of view is very much favored in departments of state and foreign offices and is generally known, rather surprisingly, as the "pro-Arab" view. It is, of course, in no sense pro-Arab. It shows ignorance of the Arab past, contempt for the Arab present, and unconcern for the Arab future. The second common view is that Arab ways are different from our ways. They must be allowed to develop in accordance with their cultural principles, but it is possible for them--as for anyone else, anywhere in the world, with discreet help from outside and most specifically from the United States--to develop democratic institutions of a kind. This view is known as the "imperialist" view and has been vigorously denounced and condemned as such.

In thinking about these two views, it is helpful to step back and consider what Arab and Islamic society was like once and how it has been transformed in the modern age. The idea that how that society is now is how it has always been is totally false. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or the Assad family in Syria or the more friendly dictatorship of Mubarak in Egypt--all of these have no roots whatsoever in the Arab or in the Islamic past.

I never bought into the chauvinist idea peddled among the educated classes here in DC that Muslim Arabs were somehow intellectually incapable of understanding representative democracy.  Being poor, dispossessed, and ignorant of basic democratic concepts, the argument goes, these bumpkins only understand the violence and intimidation of the "strong man."   

People used to say similar things about Catholics and women here in the US.  The same folks who sneer at the idea of chador-draped women voting, forget that Arabs (Muslims and Christians) have been participating in American democracy since the great immigration of the early 20th.  They could learn here, and they'll learn there.

MSM Meme Overload

According to NPR, there's a rising tide of the angry Arab street seeking a voice for the impoverished.  US and Israeli acts are just enraging them more and "strengthening support" for radical Islamist:

Political Islam is a rising tide, embraced by a younger generation who believe the way to good governance is through their religion. They also believe the Bush administration is waging an undeclared war on Islam; the battlefields are Iraq, Palestine and, most recently, Lebanon. These views show up consistently in opinion polls, and in conversations across the region.

The war in Lebanon has strengthened support for Islamist groups, as many Arabs believe that Arab leaders failed to stand up to Israel, while a disciplined Islamist movement inflicted serious damage to the Israeli army.

That was September 12, 2006. This is NPR reporter Linda Gradstein in January 2003:

GRADSTEIN: Abu Samed says he gained new respect among his peers when he joined Islamic Jihad, and he says he recruited eight of his friends to join as well. Their commander, a soft-spoken 25-year-old, says Islamic Jihad has more recruits than it can absorb and has had to turn people away. He says new recruits are carefully screened to make sure they are truly committed to Islam and to the Palestinian cause. Abu Samed says Israel's recent assassinations of Islamic Jihad leaders only strengthened the movement.

This from NPR's Sarah Chayes (after the US bombing of AQ training camps in 1998):

CHAYES:  Moaidzee and others say the strikes will have the symbolic impact of demonstrating that the United States won't remain passive if attacked.  But, critics suggest that the bombings might provoke a chain reaction of attacks and reprisals with armed Islamist groups and their sympathizers growing increasingly radical.

I don't have any time to go through all the examples.  NPR and other MSM outlets have been peddling the same damn narrative about the Middle East since the 1990s.

An Interview with a Salafi Sheik

Asharq Alawsat recently interviewed Adel al- Moawda, former political leader of the Al Salah salafist party of Bahrain. 

The sheik discusses the difference between political "Salafism and the Salafi Jihadist movement, Iraq, terrorism and sectarian conflict in the region:"

Q) It has been argued that Salafism has caused sectarian conflict in Iraq through the practices and conduct of Salafi Jihadists. What is your reaction to this argument?

A) The tafkir ideology is what caused sectarian conflict in Iraq; however, was it Sunni or Shiite followers of this ideology? Not even the Salafi Jihadist movement caused sectarian conflict. The tafkir ideology is responsible for what is taking place in Iraq and this thinking exists amongst both Sunnis and Shiites.

There are Sunnis who follow the tafkir ideology and believe that Shiites should be killed, and vice versa. As far as we know, the Shiite followers of the tafkir ideology began to kill Sunnis in central and southern Iraq some weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the killing still takes place on a daily basis and this was before there was any Salafi Jihadists in Iraq.

Sunni followers of the tafkir ideology took the opportunity of Shiites killing Sunnis to react by killing Shiites so innocents were murdered on both sides. May God help the people of Iraq.

Q) Why is it rare to hear moderate voices from the Salafi movement?

A) There is moderation in Salafism as moderation is required to achieve justice. This is the truth behind the Salafi mission, which calls for placing everything in its correct place. We worship only Allah and we do not believe that it is just to separate religion from life. We do not condone dictatorial rule or secularism, but we call for the arbitration of Shariah law. We do not wish to tyrannize anyone or be tyrannized ourselves. The Salafi movement has a good chance of achieving this in moderation.

What is required from Muslims is to abandon exaggeration and extremism and choose moderation. However the call for moderation does not mean abandoning the fundamentals and the constants of religion.

A Humanist's Eye

Camille Paglia reviews several recent works about Marie Antoinette and manages to crystallize our dark, tragic times in a few paragraphs:

Has representative democracy, paralyzed by rancorous partisanship and bureaucratic incompetence, become the waning ancien régime assailed by hordes at the gates? There is an uneasy sense of siege in Europe and the United States from restive immigrant minorities who have taken to the streets or bred saboteurs. The intelligentsia seem fatigued, sapped by pointless theory, and impotent to affect events. Fervor has shifted to religious fundamentalists in both Christianity and Islam. Materialism and status anxiety (evident even in higher education, with its brand-name snobbery) have come to the fore in the glitteringly high-tech West. Yet the turbulent third world offers agonizingly stark contrasts. The Marie Antoinette story, with its premonitions of doom amid a giddy fatalism, seems to signal a pervasive guilt about near-intractable social inequities.

The court machinery created by Louis XIV at Versailles was a precursor of the star-making Hollywood studio system, with its glorification of beauty and glamour. Under the dithering, ineffectual Louis XVI, however, the artificial superstructure of the French elite had reached its decadent limit. As Weber shows, Marie Antoinette's fashion display was no longer about the nation but about unfettered self-indulgence. Similarly today, "image," as fabricated by stylists and often divorced from any discernible achievement, has become the primary focus of celebrity culture (and has overflowed into the art world). Yet stars have become smaller and smaller, interchangeable ciphers with blank doll faces. The perverse agelessness created in the late 18th century by powdering of the hair of both sexes is now paralleled by cosmetic surgery and nerve-deadening injections, which produce a strained simulacrum of youth.

In this period of bland, gender-neutral ideology in the workplace, the Marie Antoinette milieu may offer the archaic fantasy of sophisticated womanly wiles and the alluring arts of seduction. At times, the novels about Marie Antoinette seem to recall Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, with its epic panorama of the destruction of a pleasure-driven, heedlessly exploitative civilization. But Scarlett O'Hara, of course, survived through spunk and grit. The picture of an innocent Marie Antoinette as scapegoat, facing down her accusers and led to the slaughter, is reminiscent of plays and films about Joan of Arc, which used to be much more in circulation. There are also resemblances to Princess Diana, who was similarly recruited for royal procreation and found herself lost in a cunning, deceptive courtly maze. And like Marie Antoinette, Diana came to a violent end in Paris.

After 9/11 — when great towers fell, like the Bastille, in a day — coping for the professional class has required cognitive dissonance. Life's routine goes on amid a surreal bombardment of bulletins about mutilations and massacres. When since the Reign of Terror has ritual decapitation become such a constant? The fury and cruelty of the French mob were strangely mixed with laughter — as when the severed head of Marie Antoinette's friend, the Princesse de Lamballe, was spruced up by a hairdresser and waved on a pike outside the royal family's window. These are the grisly surprises that now greet us every day through our own windows — the glass monitors of TV's and PC's. The return of Marie Antoinette suggests that there are political forces at work in the world that Western humanism does not fully understand and that it may not be able to control.

A Mumbai Bombing

Times of India has a must read report on certain operational details about the 1993 bombings in Mumbai that ultimately killed 257 people:

Mumbai's first taste of terror was a culmination of the biggest one-time smuggling operation through the sea route India has seen.

A whopping 5,000 kilograms of RDX, hand-grenades, detonators, AK-56 rifles, magazines and automatic pistols were smuggled through the obscure and rocky terrain along the Raigad coast between 2 February and 8 February 1993.

Obscurity, of course, suited the brains behind the plot fine. It also helped that most of the foot-soldiers were smugglers of gold and silver and robbers and, at worst, murderers who had never participated in terror.

It also helped that the brain behind the blasts, Tiger Memon, knew the western coast like the back of his palm; his years as a smuggler had taught him that.

Provoked by the January 1993 riots, in which his Mahim office was burnt down, he met ally Dawood Ibrahim in Dubai and hatched the conspiracy.

Four suspects were convicted last week for their participation in the attacks.

Moussed Mujahideen on Trial

Albany courtroom drama began last week for Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossein (aka the "Moussed Mujahideen"), defending themselves against federal money laundering charges.   

The jury heard testimony from Shahid "Malik Hussein," the FBI informant who posed as a terrorist wishing to launder money through Hossein's business in order to fund an assassination attempt on Pakistan's ambassador to the US.  Federal prosecutors showed the jury tapes of the business dealings between Hussein and the suspects:

Prosecutors also had a fellow Kurd testify about Aref membership in the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, working for a time in the group Damascus office.  Aref also caused a fuss with an act of witness intimidation (Capital 9 News downplays the event):

There was also some drama in the courtroom Thursday. Aref jumped up out of his seat smiling and waving hello to the witness who identified him as being part of that political group -- an obvious cultural divide between those who are conducting the trial and the defendants.

Albany news outlets have been fawning all over the two, portraying them as hapless victims of a ruthless government sting. Aref is regularly described as a "refugee."  Hossein is described in this Times-Union report as "Bangladeshi immigrant had committed no crimes, paid his taxes, worked numerous jobs and saved enough money to buy a couple of rundown houses in Albany that he fixed up and rented for income." 

Fred LeBrun, a columnist for the Times-Union all but proposed marriage to the suspects last week:

In other words, Hossain never sought to break the law or become involved in any way with terrorism. When the fast-talking informant produced a supposed surface-to-air missile at a private meeting, Hossain had to be told what it was. According to the government's own videotape at the trial, all the inflammatory terrorist rhetoric came from the informant, not from Hossain. If anything, Hossain looks like a guy humoring someone he believed to be a wealthy businessman who was going to make him a desperately needed loan.

By Islamic custom and law, Hossain needed a witness to the financial transaction. He called his imam, Yassin M. Aref, to be the witness and that eventually led to charges against Aref. Even though Aref was never present when the supposed missile was around, we're now told Aref was really the fellow the feds were trying to nab in the first place, apparently on the basis of foreign intelligence. Intelligence that in recent years has also inspired little confidence, or less.

So now we're up to our earlobes in the government's interpreting what all this means through a host of difficult-to-understand witnesses, conflicting translations, contradictory statements and confusing video footage. And a constant parading of the bogus surface-to-air missile for the jury to contemplate.

Talk about an inflammatory piece of evidence inappropriately brandished, beginning the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Straight up, if the defendants were not a couple of swarthy Middle Easterners who fit the profile, this case would be a laugher. But to the contrary, for reasons that have little to do with Aref and Hossain, I fear what can happen here is no laughing matter at all. Justice is on trial.

I openly wonder if they can even get a fair trial

Capital News 9 has a sympathetic report on evidence of Aref's association with the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (note: I see no decent information on the group, this BBCNews report is about as good as any of them).  Its offshoots include Ansar al-Islam and the Kurdistan Islamic Union. A Capital News 9 reporter also tells us what to think about Thursday's proceedings when the government admitted into evidence audio tapes of Aref's sermons:

A translator read each word of the translation the government may be using to show an inclination toward radical Islamic thought -- including statements like, "We should sacrifice our lives for the sake of the religion."

But the speeches, in their long sermon-like ways, when put in context are more about Aref's preaching against Kurds leaving their homeland for places like Europe and America, which he does call "the house of infidels."

The "speeches" clumsily mentioned here actually are sermons.  The "house of infidels" mentioned here is probably the Islamic concept of the "dar ul harb," or the "house of war."  Skippy, the Cap 9 reporter, (watch the video, you'll see what I mean) doesn't tell us what context we're supposed to put this in, but that doesn't stop him.

The lefty local press can boo-hoo for these men as much as they want.  If the government can prove Aref lied about his affiliations the verdict won't matter; he's a goner.  Aref will be deported back to Kurdistan, much like fellow Kurd, Sam Malkandi, recently deported for known connections to senior Al Qaeda ground commander, Tawfiq bin Attash. 

Deportation may prove to be the best motivator for Aref to start talking.

He's Not the Only One

IPS News & Reuters report on a new Harper's interview with the former senior CIA official, Emile Nakhleh, who retired at the end of June as director of the agency's Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program.  It's a terrifying look into the mind of the senior IC community leadership:

The latest report found "significant shortfalls" in the government's knowledge of both Islamist militancy abroad and the potential extremist threat at home and said it had failed to counter the rhetoric of anti-American Islamist extremists The intelligence community has only a single office devoted to understanding political Islam -- the CIA's Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, created in 2004 to study the issue, advise policymakers and engage academics worldwide, it said. It said the effort should be expanded, and called on U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte to create similar operations at other agencies. The CIA had no immediate comment on the report.

But the CIA program's former director, Emile Nakhleh, played down the problem and estimated only two to three percent of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims were politically active. "Political Islam is not a threat," Nakhleh, who retired from the CIA in June, said in an interview posted on the web site of Harper's magazine. "The threat is if the people become disenchanted with the political process and democracy, and opt for violence."

Good God, there's a Great Big Analytical Fallacy coming right out of the mouth of a man who once had a key position in the IC.  Terrorism is just some sort of violent crie de coeur of the dispossessed.  It's the 70s-era leftist analysis super-imposed on a new threat in a new era:

In an interview published this week by the online edition of Harper's Magazine, Emile Nakhleh, who retired at the end of June as director of the agency's Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme, said that the Bush administration's tactics had "lost a generation of goodwill in the Muslim world" and its Middle East democratisation programme "has all but disappeared, except for official rhetoric".

I'm sorry, but did I miss the last 36 years of Middle East history or something?  What "good will" is he talking about?   My favorite new "line" of argument among the analytical gray hairs is "engagement:"

"The growing influence of Hezbollah, and its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, across the region and within the Sunni street, and the growing regional influence and reach of Iran, are two new realities that we should recognise and engage," [emphasis mine] he told Harper's editor, Ken Silverstein.

Actually in international, lefty diplo-speak Engagement = Money & Political Power.   This would be fine if you were talking to a western-style political terrorist group like the IRA.  Offering a few seats in Parliament is a victory for peace.  But when the stated goals of an organization isn't a voice in government, but the elimination of the state of Israel, I'm not quite sure what you're going to engage on.  And to be honest, neither do folks like Mr. Nakhleh.

Many agencies in the IC require their new recruits counterterrorism training.  As a general rule, these courses are awful.  When I went through CT training, we were first introduced to the "major" terrorist groups of the 70s. It made perfect sense, most of the gray matter experts in IC are in fact gray-haired, too.  Their CT experience is based almost entirely in the 70s/80s era of "political" terrorist groups like the IRA.  To them, terrorism is a tactic used to further specific political goals. 

Well, jihad is different.  It has been the goal of political Islam to seize global dominance in the name of Islam since the Muslim Brotherhood's founding day.  Thus political Islam is only one method among many to bring about the global caliphate. This isn't political, it's ideological.  It's not the IRA, it's communism. To approach political Islam and jihadism like they're some semi-legitimate form political expression is to miss the threat entirely. 

What should concern everyone is not the strategic position this very blind person once held,
but that his colleagues are still working in equally powerful positions.  From the interview summary, it appears that like many former CIA managers, Mr. Nahkleh is just settling old scores with the administration on Iraq.  It's an example of how badly IC leadership hates the president, and how far they're willing to go to undermine his policies.

However, I suspect also that there is the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in this man's understanding of political Islam.  Look for an interview at IslamOnline soon.

More of this, please

London's Evening Standard has an expose of one of the UK's most prominent active (unjailed) Islamist leaders:

This week [Anjem Choudary] stood outside Westminster Cathedral in central London to call for the execution of the Pope as punishment for 'insulting Islam'. He fulminated against Pope Benedict XVl, adding: "Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment."

It's a long way from his days as a medical student at Southampton University, where, friends say, he drank, indulged in casual sex, smoked cannabis and even took LSD. He called himself 'Andy' and was famed for his ability to drink a pint of cider in a few seconds.

One former acquaintance said: "At parties, like the rest of us, he was rarely without a joint. The morning after one party, I can remember him getting all the roaches (butts) from the spliffs we had smoked the night before out of the ashtrays, cutting them up and making a new one out of the leftovers.

"He would say he was a Muslim and was proud of his Pakistani heritage, but he did-n't seem to attend any of the mosques in Southampton, and I only knew of him having white girlfriends. He certainly shared a bed with them."

On one occasion, 'Andy' and a friend took LSD together. The friend said: "We took far too much and were hallucinating for 20 hours."

Radical Islamist communities all over the world (even in the US) are generally centered around one or two charismatic imams.  They promise, lie, and intimidate followers.  They bully fellow imams who may not support their view of Islam.  Any effort to undermine the credibility of these men is a good effort.  It may not undermine support of his current followers, but it could cause curiosity seekers to pause.

Making More Terrorists

Raymond Ibrahim, writing at Victor Davis Hanson's website, notes the attraction some young men have to the Islamist promise:

There is another subtle factor that makes Islam attractive.  Traditional masculine roles are well preserved in Islam.  Indeed, manly honor, courage, patriarchy, and a sharp division between the sexes are at the core of Islamic culture. This may be appealing to Western men who find it difficult to express their “manhood” in increasingly neutered societies. Harvey Mansfield, author of Manliness, defines that term as “a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our gender-neutral society does not like it but cannot get rid of it.”

There's this misconception that any event or policy in the Middle East somehow creates more terrorists.  As if there weren't any there before said event or policy.  I'd also like to see hard data to support this assertion.  Where are the stats that prove we've made more terrorists?

However, there's one factor that regularly and effectively create terrorists, and that's aggressive secularism.  Secular societies don't provide secular answers to many of the spiritual longings of young people.  They're empty, purposeless; they offer no identity and no answers.  Most Westerners muddle through, but many Western converts to radical Islam-- like Richard Reid or John Walker Lindh -- come from troubled backgrounds with no strong spiritual backgrounds.  They don't have the family or social support structures that keep most people away from criminal behavior.  To these troubled young men (and women), radical Islamists offer answers.   

In Western Europe, aggressive secular societies are butting up against Muslim immigrant populations that come from societies where religion is well-integrated into every day life.   A second generation of Muslims-- born in Europe -- feels no connection to the secular societies they live in. 

The Iraq war has generated a lot of anger (especially in the West), but there is one, consistent, long-term factor that draws young people into the global jihad:  the empty, impoverished narcissistic culture that presses down on us all.

The Brotherhood Retreats (with Update)

Fascinating.  Mohammed Habib, the same Muslim Brotherhood leader who yesterday demanded a personal apology, now says that the Holy Father's Sunday statement is "sufficient."

"We can consider them a sufficient apology, even if we had wanted the pope to outline his ideas and vision of Islam," said Habib, whose opposition Islamist group has inspired similar movements across the Arab world.

The Pope said he was "deeply sorry" at the anger caused by his remarks on Islam and said a quote he used from a medieval text about holy wars did not reflect his personal thoughts.

The apology was not the kind of apology that MB leaders wanted,

On Sunday, he stressed the words "were in fact a quotation from a medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought."

"At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," the pope told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome.

But for some reason not clear to me at the moment they've backed down.  Perhaps in this case they realized they had over-reached their capacity to respond to a likely Christian reaction.  It's one thing to "fight" the weak, empty ideology of secularism, embodied in EU leadership, ie the Cartoons.  It's quite another to target the Roman Catholic Church.  No one is willing to kill (let alone die) for right to have more unemployment payments and interspecies marriages.   

The faith of our Lord gave us is another matter all together.  And I like to think that our's is a rational enemy.

UPDATE:  Spoke too soon.  The Brotherhoood has retracted it's earlier statement.

The Fool Named Juan

I rarely comment on the foolishness I read at Professor Juan Cole's blog, because once I start I could end up writing for days, non-stop. But the man is an honest-to-goodness leftist academic, the kind who are training a new generation of government expert analysts.  Along with Univ of Chicago wit Robert Pape, Cole's  about all the left can show for decades of dominance in the field of Middle East studies.

In Prof Cole (and in his recent post on the Pope) we have all the professional "qualities" that make our academic experts on the Middle East so thoroughly worthless:

1) Dependency on post-modern ideological fads

Some commentators have complained about Muslim sensibilities in this regard. But in my view, this sensitivity is a feature of postcolonialism. Muslims were colonized by Western powers, often for centuries, and all that period they were told that their religion was inferior and barbaric. They are independent now, though often they have gained independence only a couple of generations (less if you consider neocolonialism). As independent, they are finally liberated to protest when Westerners put them down.

To an academic like Prof. Cole, shoving all historical challenges into the Western framework of a single ideological fad -- Edward Said's "post-colonialism" -- you're actually thinking deep into the issue.

2)  Absurd over-confidence in analytical ability (leads to stupid, unrelated historical analogies)

There is an analogy to African-Americans, who suffered hundreds of years of slavery and then a century of Jim Crow. They are understandably sensitive about white people putting them down, and every time one uses the "n" word, you can expect a strong reaction. In the remarks the pope quoted about Muhammad, he essentially did the equivalent of using the "n" word for Muslims. It is no mystery that people are protesting.

3) Millimeter deep understanding of world religions (resulting in naive over-generalizations):

All he has to do is quote Vatican II on Islam, which is still Catholic doctrine last I knew, and the whole issue would blow over.

Because a group of radical Islamist involved in a power grab are going to accept the authority of Vatican II?

4)  Occasional glimpses of productive thinking

The Pakistani parliament passed a resolution condemning the Pope's remarks. (Since the Pakistani parliament has been fighting Muslim fundamentalists and trying to avoid implementing Islamic law, this was an easy way to stress their Muslim bonafides even as they pursue secular policies).

To an analyst like Prof. Cole, the underlying, overarching, all-encompassing explanation for every ill in the Middle East is the lingering effects of Western "colonialism," "post-colonialism," or "neo-colonialism."  All western concepts, by the way, with no Islamic analogs.

Designate the Muslim Brotherhood

Given its role in the current threats against the Pope (and Christians in general), it's time the US designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. 

What? you ask.  We don't recognize the MB as the terrorist organization that it is?

No.  As a matter of fact, there are many individuals within the State Department and the intelligence community (IC) deluded enough to believe its leadership when they tell us infidels that they're moderate:

Some federal agents worry that the Muslim Brotherhood has dangerous links to terrorism. But some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials believe its influence offers an opportunity for political engagement that could help isolate violent jihadists.

"It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world," said Graham E. Fuller, a former CIA official specializing in the Middle East. "It's something we can work with." Demonizing the Brotherhood "would be foolhardy in the extreme," he warned.

I can't explore ALL the reasons why this nearly-hundred year old institution of global terrorism hasn't been designated.  However, if you're interested in, say, what Mr. Fuller has been up to since leaving the CIA, you can browse his "Guest CV" at one of the Brotherhood's main websites, IslamOnline (Sheik Qaradawhi's site).

Secretary Rice wouldn't answer a direct question about the MB after her 2005 trip to Egypt.  And as recently as 2006, the head of the State Department counterterrorism division was addressing the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a Hamas front group raided by the feds in early 2002. Hamas is an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

These antics need to stop.  The president needs to pull aside the senior IC bureaucrats stonewalling this designation and give them an offer they can't refuse:  designate or retire. 

On Faith and Reason

Like the Danish Cartoon insanity earlier this year, the current threats and violence against the Holy Father and Christendom in general have their source in the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically its spiritual leader, Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi.  As the London Times notes:

The murderous Muslim Brotherhood was the first out of the blocks, demanding that all Islamic countries cut their ties with the Vatican. The “liberal and moderate” Islamic scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (pro death penalty for homosexuals, female circumcision, suicide bombings against Jews and other similarly tolerant stuff) has insisted the Pope must apologise. Soon the placards will be out, the effigies, the foam-flecked demonstrators and attacks by adolescent suicidal nutters.

The Brotherhood is still the radical Islamist organization they were when founder Hasan Al-Banna said

He who dies and has not fought (ghaza - literally: raided) and was not resolved to fight, has died a jahiliyah death." No movement can succeed, Banna insists, without this dedicated and unqualified kind of jihad.

The hyper-violent mau-mauing being perpetrated by mostly illiterate, ignorant Muslims, is a reaction manufactured by Qaradawi and his clerical leaders in Islamists mosques all over the world.  It serves an important role in the Brotherhood's struggle for greater control of Islamic institutions throughout the Middle East.

Remember, the Brotherhood is still "persecuted" in most Middle Eastern countries.  Membership is illegal, and its members are often jailed, their assets are often subject to seizures.  I suspect that they are just as threatened by the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as is Al Qaeda and Iran.  It would explain, in part, Qaradawi and the Brotherhood's role in these violent, global mau-mauing incidents. Most of which have happened since 2003.   It's their way of flexing power through Western media.

In his Friday sermon, Sheik Qaradawi -- the most popular Muslim cleric in the world -- demanded an apology from the Pope.  This started the ball rolling, and as images from Friday prayer protests began to filter through the Western media it all seemed so spontaneous, but there was nothing spontaneous about it.

Players in the global jihad politics -- men such as Sheik Qaradawi and the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (a paid representative of the Saudi royal family) -- have decided to face down the Pope.  This is not unexpected.  For years leaders of radical Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood have been hinting at a clash with "Rome."   Qaradawi says as much in this fatwa:

In a fatwa posted on the website www.islamonline.net,[1] in response to a reader's question, Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi wrote of the "signs of the victory of Islam," citing a well-known Hadith: "… The Prophet Muhammad was asked: 'What city will be conquered first, Constantinople or Romiyya?' He answered: 'The city of Hirqil [i.e. the Byzantine emperor Heraclius] will be conquered first' - that is, Constantinople… Romiyya is the city called today 'Rome,' the capital of Italy. The city of Hirqil [that is, Constantinople] was conquered by the young 23-year-old Ottoman Muhammad bin Morad, known in history as Muhammad the Conqueror, in 1453. The other city, Romiyya, remains, and we hope and believe [that it too will be conquered].

"Rome" here can mean the West, as well as the seat of the Pope.  Either through ignorance (Muslim societies generally do not permit comparative religion studies), or through radical Islamist supremacist world view, most Muslims do not understand the distinctions in Christian practice.  We're all just Christians, and "Rome" is the center of Christendom.

On Saturday, a political leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Habib, echoed Qaradawi:

"We want a personal apology (from the Pope). We feel that he has committed a grave error against us and that this mistake will only be removed through a personal apology," Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Leader Mohammed Habib told Reuters.

Expect more of this from MB leaders.  If they can  pressure the leader of Christendom to accommodate their authority, then their teaching and authority gain more legitimacy, and average Muslims will accept a greater role for the MB in spiritual and political life.

For the record, here is the Holy Father's speech.  To be honest, with a few exceptions, probably no Muslim leader (or NY Times editor) has read this speech and understood it.  The Holy Father is an erudite man, and he is teaching in a language of academic abstractions.  This is the language of Western "dialogue," and has no meaning for our Eastern enemy.