New Age Islam Edit Bureau
4 September4 2015
Anti-Muslim Bigotry Has No Place in Politics
By Terri A. Johnson and J. Richard Cohen
Dangerous Redefinition of ‘Terrorism’
By Robert Parry
The Muslim World Is Broken, It Doesn't Have To Be
By Haroon Moghul
Our Radical Islamic Bff, Saudi Arabia
By Thomas L. Friedman
The Islamic State Conundrum
By Graham E. Fuller
Stop the Syrian War, Stop The Refugee Influx
By Murat Yetkin
Why Iraq Needs A United Sunni Authority To Face Extremism
By Hamdi Malik
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Anti-Muslim Bigotry Has No Place In Politics
By Terri A. Johnson and J. Richard Cohen
September 03, 2015
Next week [Sept. 9], Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) will be taking the stage in Washington, D.C., at a rally sponsored by the Center for Security Policy. If this doesn’t concern you, it should. The Center for Security Policy is an extremist think tank headed by anti-Muslim conspiracist Frank Gaffney, a one-time D.C. insider. One of his regular conspiracy theories is that American Muslims are using a tactic he calls “stealth jihad” to infiltratethe U.S. government, and he’s said everyone from Hillary Clinton to Grover Norquist is secretly supporting this agenda.
Unfortunately, Cruz and Trump’s association with this kind of extremism fits right in with the xenophobic and bigoted rhetoric that has already been characteristic of this early campaign season. But these presidential hopefuls aren’t the only ones palling around with anti-Muslim activists. At the same time Trump and Cruz are sharing the stage with Gaffney, across town at least 14 members of Congress are scheduled to speak at the annual national conference of the anti-Muslim advocacy organization ACT! for America.
ACT!’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, is a self-described "terrorism analyst" known for her inflammatory statements conflating all Muslims with violent extremists. She, like Gaffney, has made a living spewing anti-Muslim rhetoric and ideas, claiming that "every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim" and that the "peaceful majority" of Muslims are "irrelevant." The New York Times Magazine is among those who call her a "radical Islamophobe," a designation she has earned over and over, as illustrated by this statement she made during a 2007 Defense Department course on Islam:
"If a Muslim who has — who is — a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America."
Gaffney and Gabriel's flippant proclamations about Muslims—and Trump, Cruz and other elected officials’ tacit endorsements of them—are not only false, they are dangerous. They have led to policy and law enforcement practices that unfairly target American Muslim citizens and aim to discriminate and profile. These comments also come at a time when hate crimes against American Muslims are five times more common than before Sept. 11, 2001. And, earlier this year the FBI confirmed to law enforcement agents that militia extremists had expanded their targets to include American Muslims and Islamic institutions.
ACT! for America, which boasts more than 800 chapters and 279,000 members, says it wants to stop a "creeping" threat that exists from the mere presence of Muslims in American society and from the "political correctness" that makes room for them. That’s the same message that’s expected to be carried into ACT!'s annual National Conference and Legislative Briefing on Capitol Hill.
This year’s keynote speaker is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has drawn wide criticism because of her calls for a war against Islam to be led by the West. Like Gabriel, Ali bases her argument on painful personal experiences, which she says drive her to help Muslims by reforming their religion. But, as journalist Rula Jebreal notes, it is hard to accept that Ali is sincere when she says the only way to reform Islam is to “crush” it.
Participants this year will also hear from Ann Corcoran, an activist who has suggested that the worldwide refugee effort is fueling a Muslim master plan to “dominate all the lands in the world.” Muslims are doing this, she says, “with the help and support of the U.N., the U.S. State Department and Christian and Jewish groups assigned to seed them throughout the country.” Corcoran’s absurd claims and calls to shut down the U.S. program to accept refugees fly in the face of the United States’ longstanding commitment to provide a safe haven for those who desperately need it.
Many of the public officials who are attending the ACT! for America conference or participating in the Center for Security Policy rally are the same people who have made statements strongly in support of “religious freedom” and against “religious persecution” abroad, and yet are embracing organizations whose purpose is to ostracize people based on their religion.
ACT!’s brand of bigotry has no place in politics and there is no excuse for politicians like Trump, Cruz, or any member of Congress who amplify it. It is time to hold our elected leaders—and those vying to lead us—to a higher standard.
Johnson is executive director for the Center for New Community. Cohen is the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/religious-rights/252605-anti-muslim-bigotry-has-no-place-in-politics
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Dangerous Redefinition of ‘Terrorism’
By Robert Parry
September 3, 2015
The classic definition of terrorism is the intentional killing of civilians to make a political point, as in planting bombs near the finish line of a marathon or crashing commercial jetliners into buildings filled with office workers. Yet, the mainstream U.S. media has broadened the definition to include killing U.S. soldiers or allied troops even those operating in foreign lands.
For instance, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman on Wednesday cited as a supposed example of “Iran’s terrorism” the bombing of the Marine base in Beirut in 1983, “believed to be the handiwork of Iran’s cat’s paw, Hezbollah.” And Friedman is hardly alone in citing the Marine bombing in 1983 as “terrorism” along with Iran’s support for Shiite militias who fought the American occupying army in Iraq last decade.
The U.S. media routinely treats such cases as deserving of the unqualified condemnation that the word “terrorism” implies. Similarly, that attitude is extended to Hezbollah attacks on Israeli military forces even in the 1980s when Israel was occupying southern Lebanon.
But attacks aimed at military forces – not civilians – are not “terrorism” in the classic definition. And this is an important distinction because the word carries deservedly negative moral and legal implications that can put those nations accused of “terrorism” in the cross-hairs of economic sanctions and military attacks that can kill hundreds of thousands and even millions of civilians.
In other words, abuse of the word “terrorism” can have similar consequences as terrorism itself, the indiscriminate deaths of innocent people — men, women and children. Much of the case for sanctions and war against Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s was based on dubious and even false claims about Iraq’s alleged support for Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
And, the 1983 case is especially significant because it is a go-to emotional argument in accusing Iran of having “American blood on its hands” and thus unworthy of any normal diplomatic relations. However, when examining the real history behind the Marine barracks bombing, a much more complex and nuanced story unfolds with blame to be apportioned to all sides.
The immediate context for the tragedy was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the multi-sided civil war raging among Lebanese factions. Israeli invaders reached the Lebanese capital of Beirut in a matter of days as part of a campaign to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Then, after more fighting and protracted negotiations, Israel forced the P.L.O. to leave Lebanon, departing for Tunisia. But the P.L.O. left behind women and children in refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila, where Israeli officers allowed Israeli-supported Christian militia forces to massacre more than 700 and possibly thousands of Palestinian and Shiite civilians, one of the most shocking atrocities of the war.
Into this chaos, President Ronald Reagan dispatched a force of Marines as peacekeepers, but they gradually were pulled into the fighting on the side of Israel and its militia allies.
National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, who often represented Israel’s interests in the upper echelons of the Reagan administration, convinced the President to authorize the USS New Jersey to fire long-distance shells into Muslim villages, killing civilians and convincing Shiite militants that the United States had joined the conflict.
On Oct. 23, 1983, Shiite militants struck back, sending a suicide truck bomber through U.S. security positions, demolishing the high-rise Marine barracks in Beirut and killing 241 American servicemen. Reagan soon repositioned the surviving U.S. forces offshore.
Though the U.S. news media immediately labeled the Marine barracks bombing an act of “terrorism,” Reagan administration insiders knew better, recognizing that McFarlane’s “mission creep” had made the U.S. troops vulnerable to retaliation.
“When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American ‘referee’ had taken sides,” Gen. Colin Powell wrote in his memoir, My American Journey. In other words, Powell, who was then military adviser to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, recognized that the actions of the U.S. military had altered the status of the Marines in the eyes of the Shiites.
Reagan’s redeployment of the Marines offshore also didn’t end U.S. intervention in Lebanon. The tit-for-tat violence in Beirut continued. CIA Director William Casey ordered secret counterterrorism operations against Islamic radicals and dispatched veteran CIA officer William Buckley. But on March 14, 1984, Buckley was spirited off the streets of Beirut to face torture and death.
In 1985, Casey targeted Hezbollah leader Sheikh Fadlallah in an operation that included hiring operatives who detonated a car bomb outside the Beirut apartment building where Fadlallah lived.
As described by Bob Woodward in Veil, “the car exploded, killing 80 people and wounding 200, leaving devastation, fires and collapsed buildings. Anyone who had happened to be in the immediate neighborhood was killed, hurt or terrorized, but Fadlallah escaped without injury. His followers strung a huge ‘Made in the USA’ banner in front of a building that had been blown out.”
In other words, the U.S. government dove into the bloody swamp of terrorism even as it was condemning other parties of engaging in terrorism. But the moral morass that was Lebanon, circa 1982-85, is not what Friedman and other U.S. propagandists describe when they smear Iran as some particularly evil force. Nor does Friedman operate with an objective definition of terrorism.
As Colin Powell recognized, once the United States joined the Lebanese civil war as a belligerent, U.S. troops became legitimate targets for retaliation. As much as one may lament the deaths of 241 U.S. personnel (or any deaths for that matter), it was not an act of “terrorism.”
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
consortiumnews.com/2015/09/03/dangerous-redefinition-of-terrorism/
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The Muslim World Is Broken, It Doesn't Have To Be
By Haroon Moghul
September 3, 2015
We saw you, Aylan. What was left of you, at least, after your soul had moved on. Your body was washed ashore; face down in the sand, before being cradled in the hands of a Turkish police officer. Your brother, Galip, and your mother, Rehen, were discovered nearby. Your family drowned trying to flee, reportedly hoping to make another try for Canada, which had denied your request for asylum. Even as your lungs filled with water, millions of Muslims were beseeching the Almighty for the ummah's upliftment, for the security and prosperity of our global community.
I have seethed on far too many days like this, watching helplessly from afar. As Syrians make their way into Europe, fleeing north through the Balkans, they cross lands where Muslims died in great numbers not two decades ago. There are more refugees now than ever, more than during World War II. But there is no world war.
Almost 1 in 4 people today are Muslim; by 2050, it's estimated that will be 1 in 3. So why does it feel like the more of us there are, the worse off we are? We're like foam on the sea, subjected to currents we not only do not control, but can't seem to predict. And certainly not assist.
So it is to Europe so many refugees go, a Europe that already has trouble coming to terms with its growing Muslim communities. We can expect rising numbers of refugees to empower further an already rising right-wing across Europe: Slovakia, for one, considered accepting "200 refugees" on condition they were Christian.
But Syrians have nowhere else to go.
Yes, Lebanon has taken in huge numbers, and Turkey hosts more refugees than any other country (surpassing the previous record-holder, Pakistan). Yet the world's wealthiest Muslim countries, the Gulf Arab states, have offered no refuge. Israel, which like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, expends great energy warning us of the Iranian menace, likewise refuses asylum to the victims of Iran's ally, Bashar al-Assad.
It is in moments like this that the contrast between Israel and Western democracies is most obvious. Israel didn't just refuse Muslim refugees -- it has refused any Syrian refugees. Still, I find it much harder to understand why the wealthiest Muslims ignore their fellow Muslims, most of whom are Sunni Arabs like themselves.
But the question isn't just "why don't Gulf Arab countries accept the Aylans or Galips?" It's not even, "why don't Muslim countries offer the advantages to Aylans and Galips that European countries might?" It's "why must Aylans and Galips, little children, innocent of any crime, flee at all?"
The lesson of the Arab Spring should be clear: Oppression leads to extremism and to rebellion. To stop the extremism and the rebellion, end the oppression. Do the hard work of building inclusive societies. The lesson the autocrats took, however, was: We weren't dictatorial enough. The blowback, when it comes -- and trust me, it will -- will be much worse the next time. As terrible as it is, Syria might be merely a prelude to far more devastating conflicts.
So the Muslim world appears broken -- unable to take care of its own, unable to solve its conflicts, unable, it seems, to be moved to care. Not only is Saudi Arabia refusing to help the victims of Syria's war, it is creating a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, to which we have so far paid little attention.
On days like these, many Muslims feel helpless, disgusted, ashamed. What is wrong with us? We often reach for colonialism, for imperialism, for occupation. But this misses the point. Many other parts of the world suffered foreign interference, too. And then they didn't. China and South Korea, for example. Or India and Brazil. Now they have far more control over their destinies. They provide much more for their people. They are spoken of as rising powers. At some point, something changed. Something that made them not victims of the world but actors in the world.
It's a something modern Islam seems helpless to find.
We are torn apart by al-Assads and al-Baghdadis, el-Sisis and al-Zawahiris. Our most vulnerable wash ashore, flee for their lives or cower under bombardment, from missiles above or car bombs around. But if there is any dim hope, it is in this: Our problems are not natural disasters or unforeseen tragedies. They are the product of human error, of human villainy.
Muslim countries are not poor; they are poorly governed. They are not backward; they are held back. And though they may be this way today, it does not mean they have to be forever.
edition.cnn.com/2015/09/03/opinions/moghul-refugee-response-muslim-countries/
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Our Radical Islamic BFF, Saudi Arabia
By Thomas L. Friedman
SEPT. 2, 2015
The Washington Post ran a story last week about some 200 retired generals and admirals who sent a letter to Congress “urging lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear agreement, which they say threatens national security.” There are legitimate arguments for and against this deal, but there was one argument expressed in this story that was so dangerously wrongheaded about the real threats to America from the Middle East, it needs to be called out.
That argument was from Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, the retired former vice commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, who said of the nuclear accord: “What I don’t like about this is, the number one leading radical Islamic group in the world is the Iranians. They are purveyors of radical Islam throughout the region and throughout the world. And we are going to enable them to get nuclear weapons.”
Sorry, General, but the title greatest “purveyors of radical Islam” does not belong to the Iranians. Not even close. That belongs to our putative ally Saudi Arabia.
When it comes to Iran’s involvement in terrorism, I have no illusions: I covered firsthand the 1983 suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, both believed to be the handiwork of Iran’s cat’s paw, Hezbollah. Iran’s terrorism, though — vis-à-vis the U.S. — has always been of the geopolitical variety: war by other means to push the U.S. out of the region so Iran can dominate it, not us.
I support the Iran nuclear deal because it reduces the chances of Iran building a bomb for 15 years and creates the possibility that Iran’s radical religious regime can be moderated through more integration with the world.
But if you think Iran is the only source of trouble in the Middle East, you must have slept through 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Nothing has been more corrosive to the stability and modernization of the Arab world, and the Muslim world at large, than the billions and billions of dollars the Saudis have invested since the 1970s into wiping out the pluralism of Islam — the Sufi, moderate Sunni and Shiite versions — and imposing in its place the puritanical, anti-modern, anti-women, anti-Western, anti-pluralistic Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.
It is not an accident that several thousand Saudis have joined the Islamic State or that Arab Gulf charities have sent ISIS donations. It is because all these Sunni jihadist groups — ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Nusra Front — are the ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.
And we, America, have never called them on that — because we’re addicted to their oil and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.
“Let’s avoid hyperbole when describing one enemy or potential enemy as the greatest source of instability,” said Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, who is an expert on Islam at the Hudson Institute.
“It is an oversimplification,” he said. “While Iran has been a source of terrorism in supporting groups like Hezbollah, many American allies have been a source of terrorism by supporting Wahhabi ideology, which basically destroyed the pluralism that emerged in Islam since the 14thcentury, ranging from Bektashi Islam in Albania, which believes in living with other religions, to Sufi and Shiite Islam. “The last few decades have seen this attempt to homogenize Islam,” claiming “there is only one legitimate path to God,” Haqqani said. And when there is only one legitimate path, “all others are open to being killed. That has been the single most dangerous idea that has emerged in the Muslim world, and it came out of Saudi Arabia and has been embraced by others, including the government in Pakistan.”
Consider this July 16, 2014, story in The Times from Beirut: “For decades, Saudi Arabia has poured billions of its oil dollars into sympathetic Islamic organizations around the world, quietly practicing checkbook diplomacy to advance its agenda. But a trove of thousands of Saudi documents recently released by WikiLeaks reveals in surprising detail how the government’s goal in recent years was not just to spread its strict version of Sunni Islam — though that was a priority — but also to undermine its primary adversary: Shiite Iran.”
Or consider this Dec 5, 2010, report on BBC.com: “U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last year in a leaked classified memo that donors in Saudi Arabia were the ‘most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.’ She said it was ‘an ongoing challenge’ to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority. The groups funded include al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, she added.”
Saudi Arabia has been an American ally on many issues and there are moderates there who detest its religious authorities. But the fact remains that Saudi Arabia’s export of Wahhabi puritanical Islam has been one of the worst things to happen to Muslim and Arab pluralism — pluralism of religious thought, gender and education — in the last century.
Iran’s nuclear ambition is a real threat; it needs to be corralled. But don’t buy into the nonsense that it’s the only source of instability in this region.
nytimes.com/2015/09/02/opinion/thomas-friedman-our-radical-islamic-bff-saudi-arabia.html?_r=0
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The Islamic State Conundrum
By Graham E. Fuller
September 2, 2015
The West remains transfixed with ISIS (Islamic State, Da’ish) and the debate about its character goes on. In one sense this discussion is totally understandable, given the movement’s seeming sudden appearance on the public screen not much more than a year ago (although its roots were long since there), combined with its theatrical brutality, and extreme views and actions that make it impossible to ignore.
Over time, this debate seems to center around three key issues:
–Is ISIS driven essentially by theological and religious motivations? Or pragmatic political considerations?
–Is ISIS essentially a medieval movement in character — or a “modern” movement?
–Is the movement durable? Or is it a transient, radical, ultra-reactionary spasm in the tortured evolution of Iraq — a country still coming to terms with the U.S. destruction of the country’s political and social infrastructure? And in Syria feeding off the tragic breakdown of order under Assad’s gross and brutal mishandling of early Arab Spring rioting, that invited in the subsequent wars by proxy of external players?
The classic response to many such deep-rooted questions is “all of the above.” This isn’t a cop-out answer; it simply reflects the complexity of the phenomenon we see.
ISIS is undeniably religious in that it draws on solid basis of Quranic scripture and the Hadith (the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad.) It knows its theology and texts, but it is indeed highly selective in what texts it stresses—one might call it exegetical cherry-picking, something well-known in all religious traditions when scripture is invoked to political ends.
But ISIS is also undeniably political in that it has a clear political (not just moral) agenda, and a political strategy (though often improvised to meet circumstances); indeed the founding of a state (caliphate) is the supreme political act only made possible by the collapse of Iraq.
But which comes first, theology or politics? Chicken or egg?
In my experience in looking at ideology in the world over the years, I increasingly lean towards the sense that the political — indeed the psychological — impulse often precedes and shapes the ideological. If an ideological seed is to sprout, the receptive political/psychological soil must first exist (even if not always fully consciously).
Not just anyone suddenly exposed to violent ideology becomes radicalized or violent; they are radicalized only when an ideological explanation for their existing distress suddenly makes sense, rings true; the explanatory power comes as a revelation: “of course, that’s the reason why all this is happening to us.” And ideology suggests a path towards alleviating such hardship. In the absence of particular deep grievance then ideology does not find fertile soil.
Marxist communism made sense to young Americans during the Great Depression, but not today (at least not yet). Hitler’s Nazi ravings would not have found resonance if Germany had not been the object of destructive political and economic revanchism by victorious and vindictive Allied Powers after World War I. The Russian Revolution and Lenin’s charisma might have gone nowhere were it not for the desperate conditions in Tsarist Russia late in World War I. Examples abound.
The proximate cause for ISIS’ dramatic appearance on the scene and its sudden success obviously could not have taken place without the destruction of Iraq’s political, social and economic order and the American occupation. Assorted other grievances of Muslims living in the West as well as in the Middle East equally played into ISIS’ message.
ISIS’ political, cultural and ideological message draws on deeply resonant (but selective) Islamic themes — the symbolism of caliphate, literal adoption of selective early Islamic practices — but not resonant enough to make most Muslims really want to sign up. Most inhabitants of the Islamic State did not choose to do so in any case, ISIS chose them by conquering the turf where they live. The ISIS message becomes a harder sell when more moderate interpretations of political Islam (like the Muslim Brotherhood) offer a viable and contemporary Islamic alternative.
Is ISIS medieval in conception? Or modern? Both. Its theological precepts stem indeed from the earliest periods of Islam, often taken quite literally — hence its insistent claim to “authenticity.” But ISIS is quite modern in its use of media, technology, PR, its playing to the international gallery, strategic global view, and its exploitation of existing international rivalries at work in the region.
The Taliban, for instance, also promoting a quite reactionary and retrogressive view of Islam, were clueless in terms of developing a PR story aimed at an international and modern audience of tech-savvy westernized Muslim youth.
So we need a holistic explanation of the ISIS phenomenon that embraces both the religious as well as the political explanations, and an awareness of its “medieval” as well as “modern” character.
Its survivability? I’ve gone on record in stating that I don’t think the ISIS model has much of a future. I don’t think it can really run a state for a long time without massive repressive techniques and permanent war. Its “solutions” to Muslim ills are not really solutions — a fact that will become ever more apparent to those inside and outside its boundaries.
Sadly, in the interim it is causing shocking cultural damage and brutalizing and killing a lot of people (mostly Muslims) in acts designed to shock with their “authenticity.” But the number of deaths from ISIS itself pale next to the ongoing deaths and devastation resulting from over a decade of western-imposed war.
Why do these arguments matter? I do not believe that the West itself can discredit ISIS on theological grounds; western motives are utterly suspect. Muslims, however, can undertake this mission. Regrettably some Muslim clerics who denounce ISIS lack real credibility themselves since they are perceived as “hired” clerics working for existing autocratic regimes.
But gradually the word is getting out that ISIS is not the future most Muslims aspire to at all. Ultimately Muslim forces themselves need to take on ISIS, although few regional regimes possess much real credibility either. The western role in this pushback needs to be circumspect and limited.
But above all, a restoration of political and social order in Iraq and Syria is the indispensable prerequisite to rolling ISIS itself back. Solutions to crises in both those states must assume highest priority.
Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American’s crisis of conscience in Pakistan.
consortiumnews.com/2015/09/02/the-islamic-state-conundrum/
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Stop the Syrian War, Stop the Refugee Influx
By Murat Yetkin
September/04/2015
His name did not appear in agency bulletins. He is also somebody’s son, like the 3-year old Syrian toddler Aylan al-Kurdi whose dead body was swept by the waves of the Aegean Sea to Turkey’s Bodrum shores as the boat carrying them to Greek island of Kos sunk early September 2.
This one is 13-years-old and he is lucky enough -so far- to make his way to Hungary. He is from Daraa, where the Syrian civil war was started when the Bashar al-Assad government forcers opened fire on civilian protesters in the spring of 2011. His simple words sounded more reasonable than all politicians on earth who are in a blame game in order not to assume responsibility in this human tragedy of Syrian refugees, especially after the shocking photos of the Syrian toddler on the Turkish shore.
“Please help the Syrians” the boy spoke in English, an indication of coming from an educated, urban family.
“You just stop the war, we won’t want to go to Europe. Just stop the war in Syria.”
His words hit the wires almost at the same time as the words of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, saying “refugees threaten Europe’s Christian roots.” Hungary is likely to raise those concerns at the coming European Union summit that faces the biggest refugee flux the continent has faced since World War II. In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron is under fire because of his words found by the British press to be ignoring the human tragedy side of the refugee problem. Finland recently decided to take 750 refugees in 2015, while there are nearly 2 million refugees in Turkey.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to find a more reasonable and responsible way, hoping to find François Hollande’s France as one of the countries among the main targets of the flux. This was especially after the not-so-bright idea of Merkel’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to establish a refugee camp in Turkey to stop the flux before the gates of the EU. But then why not establish such a camp in Syrian territory, protected by the EU or the U.N. as Turkey has suggested?
Or much better, as the Syrian boy said, why not pay more effort to bring an end to the Syrian war as soon as possible?
It is the Syrian civil war which has given birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), the most notorious terror organization of modern times. An international coalition lead by the U.S. has been carrying out military operations (now fully joined by Turkey) against ISIL for around a year now but little success has been achieved so far; on the contrary, ISIL has captured important towns and cities in both Iraq and Syria during the last year.
The level of their terror causes more people to leave their hometowns in Syria and flee to Europe, risking their lives; they think they have nothing to lose if they stay.
The U.S. Ambassador to Ankara, John Bass, said a solution to Syria would be without Assad in power, in an interview with the CNN Türk channel. But Russia and Iran do not agree, as the main supporters of Assad regime there. But when elephants dance, the grass gets trampled; Syrian people are paying the price. And if the EU makes its choice not according to humanitarian values but to religious ones, it will show an amazing degree of political short sight, which will ruin all of us, not just the EU.
hurriyetdailynews.com/stop-the-syrian-war-stop-the-refugee-influx.aspx?pageID=449&nID=87942&NewsCatID=409
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Why Iraq Needs a United Sunni Authority To Face Extremism
By Hamdi Malik
Defeating the Islamic State (IS) and other extremist organizations will take a many-pronged approach requiring the cooperation of the Iraqi government and unity among religious leaders.
It seems evident today that a multidimensional strategy is required — one that considers military, security, political and even economic approaches. Such a strategy should also focus on the intellectual and religious aspects of IS' destructive ideology.
IS gave its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, supreme religious power over the world's Sunni Muslims after he declared the rise of the Islamic caliphate on June 29, 2014. Baghdadi gained legitimacy among his partisans by fitting the requirements of a "vilayet." Historically, a Muslim caliph should have Sharia knowledge, descend from the Prophet Muhammad’s tribal lineage — the Qureish tribe — and be sane. Baghdadi is all of this, in addition to having a career rife with jihadism.
IS relies on Islamic religious heritage — though this is debatable — in all its activities, including murder, slaughter, enslavement of women and the burning of detainees alive.
In his most recent voice recording on May 14, Baghdadi used Quranic verses and Islamic religious texts to support his extremist version of Islam, which he summarized as follows: “Dear Muslims, Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of combat.”
This radical religious rhetoric coupled with heinous violence was strongly condemned by some Sunni clerics in Iraq and abroad. On April 22, 2014, former Sunni Endowment Diwan head Mahmoud Sumaidaie described IS as an infidel, spiteful group. On Sept. 7, 2014, Iraq’s Sunni Grand Mufti Mahdi al-Sumaidaie issued a fatwa calling to fight IS.
But these intermittent and uncoordinated statements and stances have been unable to penetrate IS' mindset. IS succeeded in building a religious institution with different divisions and a hierarchy linked through several committees to the supreme religious authority represented by the caliph, Baghdadi, who commands obedience.
IS also spreads its religious ideas through educational and pedagogical curricula by extremist clerics and by publishing speeches and ideas of IS leaders on the Internet and social media. It exploits the absence of a moderate and united Sunni authority in Iraq that would be capable of deterring IS' extremist behavior and the Sharia courts in regions under its control or influence.
After the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime on April 9, 2003, the prevalence of radical armed groups contributed to institutionalizing some extremist notions, such as using jihadism to impose religious control on Islamic communities.
That concept was nurtured by the chaotic state of the telecommunications sector in Iraq that allowed radical satellite channels and websites to broadcast an extremist image of Islam that is unfamiliar to Iraqi Sunni society, which is known for its religious moderation. For instance, Wesal TV, which claims its mission is to reveal the absurdity of the Shiite sect, pitted Sunnis against Shiites.
Yahya al-Kabisi, an Iraqi researcher in political affairs, noted in an article on May 6, 2013, that a state of hostility has prevailed throughout history between Iraq’s Sunnis and the Wahhabi movement, saying, “Sunni Iraq has never witnessed the Salafi Wahhabi trend, except to a very limited extent.”
With the current radical ideological attack on Iraq waged by IS and other extremist groups in neighboring countries, there is a pressing need to form a united Sunni religious authority that can face this escalating expansion. Several factions and religious figures are competing for this position.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a researcher in Islamic Affairs, told Al-Monitor, “The Sunni religious authority in Iraq is loose and unstable due to the different affiliations of scholars, some of whom are Sufis, Salafis, Muslim Brotherhood advocates or followers of the four main Sunni sects [Shafi'i, Hanbali, Hanafi and Maliki]."
According to Hashimi, several groups have tried to establish a supreme Sunni authority over the years. “Those included the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Council of Sunni Scholars, the Iraqi Scholars’ Association, Iraq’s Dar al-Ifta, Sunni Ifta Council and the Fiqh Council of Senior Scholars. But these attempts only widened the rift instead of uniting and organizing Sunnis,” he said.
The deep disagreements between these parties resurfaced recently, after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced he would appoint Abdel Latif al-Humaim as acting head of the Sunni Endowment Diwan. Many Sunni parties were competing for the position.
The Sunni Ifta Council urged Abadi to choose Humaim, and prominent Sunni clerics including Ahmad al-Kubeisi, Abdul Razzaq al-Saadi and Rafe’ al-Rifai supported his nomination. On June 24, the Iraqi Scholars’ Fiqh Council — one of the most important Sunni institutions in Iraq — stated it would not accept Humaim's nomination. The council considered the nomination a breach of the Sunni Endowment Diwan’s 2012 Law No. 56, which requires the council's approval to appoint the Diwan’s head. Such disagreements undermine chances of forming a united and strong Sunni authority. Sunni religious institutions and clerics are the ones to blame in these failed attempts.
Iraqi constitutional organizations, including the executive and legislative authorities, must extend their hands to Sunni religious institutions to form a politically and financially independent Sunni authority that enjoys the Sunnis’ respect and distances them from foreign influence. The parliament and government, which are controlled by Shiite parties, must give up their fear of a strong Sunni competitor. Indeed, some Shiite parties and political figures have always been afraid of a united Sunni platform and capitalize on the political and religious Sunni division. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and some of his Shiite allies were accused of marginalizing the Iraqi National List, which represented Sunnis to a large extent, thus leading to its final disintegration.
Experience has proven that the Iraqi political system will not remedy the situation unless there are strong political and religious Sunni figures who clearly recognize a democratic political process, represent the Sunni people and put an end to the Sunni leadership crisis.
al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/09/iraq-sunni-shiite-united-fight-religious-extremism.html#
10:59 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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