No, this one is not about Iran.

Vanity Fair has an edited excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s diary, which is going to be published this month, containing this entry:

Tues. Dec. 7, 1982 • The weather turned out fine for the official greeting ceremony for Pres. Zia of Pakistan. We got along fine. He’s a good man (cavalry). Gave me his word they were not building an atomic or nuclear bomb. He’s dedicated to helping the Afghans & stopping the Soviets.

(via Judith Klinghoffer, who draws attention to the potentially catastrophic trouble brewing in Pakistan)

Speaking of broken promises, here’s another entry from the diary:

Fri. July 22, 1983 • Today was Pres. Gemayal (Lebanon) day. We had a good meeting & lunch. I think he is reassured that we are not going to abandon them. While we were meeting word came that Beirut was under rocket attacks by the Syrians. We are going to send them the latest in Radar art which can zero in on exactly where the rockets are coming from.

If you’re wondering what “Islamic Revolutionary state” in the title has to do with Pakistan, here’s one more entry for you:

Thurs. June 16, 1988 • Zia has declared Islamic Law is law of Pakistan. That puts them into the Fundamentalist Revolution with the Ayatolah & Qaddafi.

And onward round the circle we go.

Below are excerpts from an interview with a very interesting fellow called Rory Stewart. Here’s a bit about him:

Rory Stewart is chief executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a non-profit organization in Kabul devoted to social and urban redevelopment in Afghanistan. A former member of the British Foreign Office, he served, from 2003 to 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq as Deputy Governor of the southern provinces of Maysan and Dhi Qar, an experience he described in the book The Prince of the Marshes.[*] The following text is based on Stewart’s dialogue about Iraq with audience members, after his discussion with broadcast journalist Dan Harris, at the Asia Society in New York on April 20, 2007.

Rory on the reconstruction effort:

Woman in audience: I wanted to know since you were in Afghanistan in 2002, and then had left and gone to Iraq in 2003–2004, what made you want to go back and live there?

Rory Stewart: The experience that I had in Iraq was a disillusioning one. Originally I supported the invasion because I had served in Indonesia, the Balkans, and Afghanistan and I thought Iraq could be more stable and humane than it had been under Saddam. I realized in Iraq that I had been wrong. I was working for the British government as coalition deputy governor of the southern provinces of Maysan and Dhi Qar and I had by April 2004 $10 million a month delivered to me in vacuum-sealed packets which we were supposed to be dispensing in order to get programs going. And almost none of the programs caught the imagination of the local population; and then I was facing hundreds of people demonstrating outside my office day after day, saying, “What has the coalition ever done for us?” And we restored 240 out of 400 schools; we restored all the clinics and hospitals; but nobody seemed interested or remotely engaged with the process.

There were only two projects we did that I thought had some kind of impact: one of them was the restoration of the bazaar in al-Amara, the capital of Maysan province, and the other was the creation of a carpentry school for street children in Nasiriyah. The carpentry school took two hundred children and had them go through a pretty good training course in carpentry and then found them jobs. It was the one project where suddenly we had the Iraqi police chief and the Iraqi mayor of Nasiriyah visiting it, and Iraqi television stations and al-Jazeera covering it, and people seemed gripped by it.

So coming to Afghanistan again in 2005, I saw that a quarter of the historic city of Kabul was due to be demolished again. They had resurrected the 1976 East German master plan under which it was to be flattened and replaced with East German–style concrete blocks. And I discovered that people like Ustad Abdul Hadi, who had been among the most famous craftsmen in the country, were selling fruit in the marketplace, the historic buildings were collapsing, and the garbage was seven feet deep in the street. Afghans wanted jobs, incomes, and a renewed sense of national identity. I sensed that restoring the traditional commercial center of the city and creating a crafts center that would make furniture, ceramics, and textiles would not only be good for the economy but would also catch imaginations. I could not undertake this kind of project in Baghdad. Those are some of the things that came together to make me do it. [..]

Moderator: Does the carpentry school still exist in Nasiriyah?

The carpentry school in Nasiriyah does not still exist, unfortunately. The funding stopped. It ran out of money.

I’d like to hear his thoughts on why “nobody in Iraq was interested or remotely engaged with the process” or reconstruction. Resentment, cultural differences, fear, stubbornness, prejudice, all of the above?

And his thoughts on withdrawal:

[.] I believe that the time has come to withdraw, that our presence is infantilizing the Iraqi political system. That we’re like an inadequate antibiotic. We are sufficiently strong to have turned what might have been a conventional civil war into a highly unconventional neighborhood conflict. But we’re not strong enough to eliminate it entirely. At the same time I fear that, without intending to, we have discredited democracy in the eyes of many Iraqis. We have created a situation in which many Iraqis now feel that the only way to keep security is to bring back a strongman. They are extremely skeptical of our programs and suggestions for development.

I think that Iraqi politicians are considerably more competent, canny, and capable of compromise than we acknowledge. Iraqi nationalism, in my view, can trump the Shiite–Sunni divisions. Our continuing presence is encouraging Iraqi politicians to play hard-ball with each other. Were we to leave, they would be weaker and under more pressure to compromise. In our relations with the Iraqis we often blocked negotiations with Moqtada al-Sadr or Sunni insurgency leaders, or the offer of troop withdrawals and amnesties for former Baathists and insurgents, among others. Yet these will probably be elements in any kind of settlement.

And therefore, my belief—and I emphasize this is my belief, not a certainty—is that were we to withdraw, things would improve

He goes on to further explain his reasoning and why he believes even the prospect of region-wide escalation or intervention by neghbouring states do not trump the reasons for withdrawal. I think he perhaps underestimates the ruthless determination of the Iranians and the extent to which they have already penetrated Iraqi society and the implications of this for the long term stability of the whole region. Iraq’s future is no longer a matter between the US and the various Iraqi factions. On a strategic level it is largely a matter between the US and Iran. Steward addresses the possibility of Iranian invasion or Iranian destabilisation of Iraq with covert operations. The problem is they may have already consolidated their power base in the Shiite regions too far for either option to be necessary. And then there is the question of what would happen to Kurdistan in the event of an complete withdrawal.

From a Radio Free Europe interview with Irshad Manji:

RFE/RL: You argue that Islam needs to be reformed and that the Koran — the holy book of Muslims — is a contradictory human book. Is your view, your perspective, being taken seriously in the Muslim world?

Irshad Manji: Well, it is in fact being taken seriously; and the reaction is most intense among young people in Muslim countries. It’s interesting [that] when my book first came out in English, and because of the burst of international press that it received, my e-mail box overflowed with messages from young Muslims in the Arab world begging me to get the book translated into Arabic so they could share these ideas with their friends, whom they said were hungry for honest conversation about Islam. My standard unimaginative response to them was, “Come one, name one Arab publisher that will have the guts to translate this book, let alone publish it.” And most of these young people wrote back to say, “You’re right, but so what, Irshad? You get the book translated into Arabic [and] you then post that translation on your website; and when we can download it privately, that means that we can read it privately and therefore safely.”

Well only a year and a half later, I can tell you that there have been already 200,000 downloads of the Arabic version of the book. Just last week, I received an e-mail from a reporter with “The New York Times” magazine who said that she saw how the book in Arabic is being distributed among young people in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Even when I was in Cairo this time last year, young Muslim men — not just women — would approach me to say, “Thank you, we’re reading it, our friends are reading it, and it’s now making the rounds of the democracy movement.” So much of the criticism that you hear is more from an older generation. The younger generation — the one that knows that it lives in a very interdependent, wired, and connected world — is hungry for more information and wants these debates even when the conclusions are ones that they can disagree with.

Drops in an ocean or a sign of changing currents? Proceed with caution.

Writer and philosopher Dariush Shayegan believes that the currents are indeed changing in.. Iran:

. In a lecture given last year and now translated for the magazine, he comes to a surprisingly optimistic conclusion. “Tehran is on the brink of fundamental change. In the shadows of this grey and sad city an astonishing new world lies hidden, and when its underground powers surface one of these days, we will witness a radical change in perspective. Its lay character will emerge in all its freshness from inside the so-called Islamic society. We hope that we are gradually beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel through which other Islamic countries, in the hope of establishing a religiously determined order, are travelling in the opposite direction. In the not too distant future Tehran will become the lively and eloquent example for change.”

And Fareed Zakaria concurs:

In five or ten years, an Iran will emerge with more modern policies than the other countries of the Middle East, putting religion once more firmly in the private sphere. That’s just the way it is: life exerts a natural pressure toward modernisation, and sooner or later religion follows.

Ever the optimist Zakaria has recently written that the Islamic Reformation has already started, pointing at the conflict between the Shia and the Sunnis. No, I don’t understand his logic either. For now I am taking his opinion with more than a grain of salt.

Back to Irshad though, with a bit of a feel good story:

RFE/RL: You have proposed the plan of reforms that you call Operation Ijtihad. What does that include?

Manji: The idea would be here for one plan to happen in the traditional Islamic world and another plan to take place among Muslims in the West. In the traditional Islamic world, the idea would be to offer women microcredit loans so that they can start their own businesses, earn money from their businesses. And there is consensus within Islam that when a woman owns her own assets, she gets to keep 100 percent of those assets and do with them as she sees fit. Now what could women do with the money they earn from micro-businesses? Well, for a starter they could become literate — learn to read the Koran for themselves instead of relying only on imams to give them selected verses. And when they learn to read the Koran for themselves, they see all of the passages that the Koran has that give them dignity and self-respect — passages that, for example, tell them that they have the right to choose marriage or not choose marriage. Let me tell you a quick story.

About eight months ago, a journalist in Kabul e-mailed me to say, “Remember those progressive female-friendly verses of the Koran that you identified in your book?” “Yes,” I said. And she said, “Today I met a Muslim woman in Afghanistan who took a microcredit loan from a nongovernmental organization; she started her own candle-making business, she earned her own money, and she learned to read the Koran for herself with that money. And she saw all the passages in there that give her options for dignity; she then recited those passages to her husband, who was illiterate and who had been beating her ever since they got married. And when he realized that these passages are in God’s book, he has never hit her again.

Good for her of course, but whats going to happen when she reads him the various “war verses” or even the verse that instructs that men are actually allowed to beat their wives? Something tells me she may skip that last one. Maybe she can explain that the Koran is a “contradictory human book” first.

Taqiyya: easy as ABC.

Yvonne Ridley ducks, weaves, splutters, lies, goes berzerk on the ABC’s AM radio program last Saturday:

JANE COWAN: Can you categorically condemn suicide bombing?

YVONNE RIDLEY: You know, the greatest purveyors of suicide bombing are the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist organization, largely of the Hindu faith; I’m not really quite sure why it is being attached specifically towards Muslims.

JANE COWAN: But if you’ve been reported as saying you support suicide bombing, would you now here condemn it, no matter who perpetrates it?

YVONNE RIDLEY: I condemn shoddy journalism and poor research, and people like you should know better than to try and tackle people like me over things that have allegedly been said or not said.

ANE COWAN: But this is an opportunity for you to clarify your views, and …

YVONNE RIDLEY: I’ve clarified them. What don’t you understand?

Listen, I have told you exactly what I have said, now you tell me why you need me to condemn something that is as plain as, you know, as the language that I’ve just said. What didn’t you understand about what I have just said?

JANE COWAN: My question is, do you or do you not support suicide bombing?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Of course I don’t.

Feel free to read the whole thing, just to make sure she is not being taken out of context and that it still makes no sense what-so-ver. There is not much more to it.

Anyhow, of course she doesn’t support suicide bombing. The term that is. She much prefers the more glorifying description of martyrdom operations:

A: Yvonne Ridley – “Muslims have lost confidence since September 11th. Something as simple as suicide bombers being martyrs is being denied by prominent sheikhs. The dictionary definition of a martyr is a person who gives up their life for a cause – suicide bombers are martyrs.”

Now, about that bit on the Tamil Tigers and why oh why, as Yvonne wonders indignantly above, is suicide bombing associated with Islam.

Suicide bombing: 1980 – 2001

Lets start with the following numbers on Wikipedia and go from there:

“Lebanon saw the first bombing, but it was the LTTE Tamil Tigers who perfected the tactic and inspired its use elsewhere [2]. Their Black Tiger unit has committed between 76 and 168 (estimates vary) suicide bombings since 1987.

That first statement is a strange one to make, considering the Black Tigers carried out their first suicide bombing in 1987, by which time they were already common place in Lebanon, for example the suicide car bombing of the Iraqi embassy by Islamists in 1981, the bombing of the U.S. embassy by Hezbollah in 1983 and the bombing of the American and French barracks, also in 1983 and also by Hezbollah and Iran. In the least the word “bombing” above should be plural. Further, for a decade after 1987, most of the suicide bombings perpetrated by groups other than the Tamil Tigers were carried out by groups originating either in Lebanon or Israel, ie Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Brigades. Did Hamas need inspiration from Sri Lanka, when they already had plenty from next door in Lebanon, where they were also involved in the Lebanese uncivil free-for-all?

A quick look at those numbers on Black Tiger bombings – “between 76 and 168″.

The lower number, 76, is taken from Robert Pape’s book, “Dying to Win”:

Pape says that the group [the Tamil Tigers] accounted for 76 of 315 suicide attacks carried out around the world from 1980 through 2003, compared with 54 for the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and 27 for Islamic Jihad.

The higher number, 168, is taken from this report by Jane’s Intelligence Review (note these numbers stop just before the start of the intifada in Israel in 2000, see more recent figures from that region further down):

NUMBER OF SUICIDE ATTACKS BETWEEN 1980 – 2000

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India 168
Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina 52
Hamas in Israel 22
The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey 15
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel 8
Al Quaida in East Africa 2
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in Croatia 1
The Islamic Group (IG) in Pakistan 1
Barbar Khalsa International (BKI) in India 1
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria 1

What we have above is 10 groups out of which 7 are Islamic, 2 are Marxists-Leninist nationalists (the LTTE and the PKK, although the latter began reclaiming their Islamic identity from the late 1980s on) and one Sikh separatist group, BKI. What we also have, by the way, is numbers pretty damn different to Robert Pape, whom everyone (and especially Islamist apologists) seems to quote, usually out of context, as an expert on suicide bombing.

The list from Jane’s seem far from exhaustive, for example the suicide bombing of the Iraqi embassy in 1981 in Beirut was carried out by the Islamic Dawa Party, which is a militant Shiite party, to which the current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs. Others were also carried out in Lebanon by groups like Amal and even the schitzophrenically fascist Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who are credited with the first suicide bombing by a woman. Overall however, terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman calculates that 31 out of the 35 groups that have carried out suicide bombings since 1980 are Islamic (2005 figure).

Suicide bombing since 2001.

Looking at the numbers above, Yvonne would have had a point had she made her statement, often repeated by Islamist apologists, 5 or more years ago. Since then however the picture has changed completely, no matter how you look at it. As the number below will show, 95% – 97% of the suicide attacks in the last 5-6 years have been carried out by Islamists, with a large number against civilian targets.

In 2002 a ceasefire was signed in Sri Lanka and the suicide bombings ceased, until renewed hostilities in 2004. In the three years since 16 suicide bombings have been carried out by the Tamil Tigers. Taking the 168 from the Jane’s article, and adding the 16 recent one, plus 7 that occured between October 2000 (when the Jane’s article was published) and the ceasefire and we get a total of 191 in 20 years. Note however that most although certainly not all, of these were against military targets.

In the meantime the Second intifada started in Israel in September 2000. In 2002, as a ceasefire was signed in Sri Lanka, the intifada was at its peak – 42 suicide bombings were carried out by Palestinian Islamists that year, killing 228 people. Dozens more followed since. About 130 suicide bombings have been carried out in Israel in the last 15 years, about 75 of those by Hamas, 22 by Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades and 32 by Islamic Jihad. The number would be much higher had it not been for the excellent work of the Israeli security services and the security wall. And then came Iraq. There were about 30 suicide bombings in Iraq in 2003. Then two to three times that in 2004. In 2005 the numbers went off the chart, as this Washington Post article from July 2005 that I’ve already quoted above documents:

The numbers in Iraq alone are breathtaking: About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings. In May, an estimated 90 suicide bombings were carried out in the war-torn country — nearly as many as the Israeli government has documented in the conflict with Palestinians since 1993.

Hundreds more have followed in Iraq since. A November 2006 estimate by David Cook put the number at 540, with a death toll between 16,000 and 18,000. Stratfor put the number above 500 for 2005 alone (subscription only). Dozens more have followed in other countries. In the 1980x only three countries experienced suicide attacks – Labanon, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. By 2002 this had risen to 15, including countries as far and wide as Croatia and Argentina, Russia (23 suicide attacks since 2000, 6 against civilian targets) and Algeria. The number is now above 30 (hint: the Tamil Tigers have not expanded their area of operation). The Tamil Tigers have long been superseded by the various Islamist groups in terms of number bombings and even more so in number of casualties, especially civilian casualties. Islamist terrorist groups are responsible for the most deadly suicide attacks – at least the top 10, the suicide attacks that killed the most civilians – again easily the top 10, and the attacks that used the most bombers at one time. The genocidal Islamist terrorist organization Lashkar e-Toiba pioneered the use of suicide squads (fedayeen) in their operations. Just in 2005 Islamist groups in Iraq alone carried out more attacks than all non-Islamist groups in the last 30 years combined, the civilian death toll has also been proportionally larger. Islamists have flown planes into building killing thousands of civilians, blown themselves up to kill hundreds on trains, in mosques, and in crowded markets, walked into weddings, cafes, nightclubs and onto buses killing dozens or more. All the while they were screaming “Allahu Akbar!”, fantasizing of virgin flesh and yearning to please Allah. In the background of the carnage Islamic clerics have been issuing fatwas that support these suicide attacks, not only against military targets, but also against civilians. Is it clear yet why the question is being asked specifically in relation to Muslims yet, Yvonne?

Perhaps it isn’t, after all, this is Yvonne Ridley we’re talking about, so lets continue.

So how about your pals, the Taliban then, who claim to have 2000 suicide bombers (and 10,000 fighters) ready for the imminent spring offensive? OK, we all know thats bullshit, but even if we go with the much lesser estimate given by the commander of US forces in Afghanistan Major General David Rodriguez, who says they have more like 500 suicide bombers and 3,000 fighters, thats still a substantial number. Potentially record breaking even. Speaking of breaking records, lets see – Afghanistan had 25 bombings in 2004, 139 in 2005 and about 30 so far this year, targeting not only military targets but also civilian buses and markets, with 84% of the victims of these attacks being civilians (Feb 2007 figure). Add to that their 8 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year so far (ie not even looking at previous years) we get a total of 201, thus making the Taliban greater “purveyors of suicide bombing” than the Tamil Tigers (in 3 years versus 20). And all they are trying to do is catch up with their friends in Iraq.

Speaking of Pakistan, last week the chief cleric of the Red Mosque [Lal Masjid] in Islamabad had this to say:

“Our youth will commit suicide attacks, if the government impedes the enforcement of the Sharia and attacks Lal Masjid and its sister seminaries,” Maulana Abdul Aziz, the in-charge of the mosque said in his Friday sermon. The fresh suicide bombing threat is stated to be the strongest given so far by the hard-line clerics of the Lal Masjid, intensifying fear among Islamabad residents.

How about Morocco, where 4 bombers were killed or killed themselves yesterday and another detonated himself last month, his exposition leading the the uncovering of a plot involving at least 12 bombers? These bombers were working in Casablanca, by the way, where 45 people died in the Islamist suicide bombings in 2003 carried out by 14 bombers from the Al-Qaeda linked group Salafia Jihadia. The list goes on and on – London, Bali, Moscow, Riyadh. Islamists, Islamists, Islamists, Islamists. And the latest news – a twin suicide car bombing in Algeria, that killed 30 people. What kind of group may the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) be? Oh sorry, I see they’ve recently changed their name to the Al-Qa’ida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

The “martyrdom-seeking nation of Iran”.

No martyrdom-seeking roll call can be complete without the “martyrdom-seeking nation of Iran”:

In an earlier interview with Parto-Sokhan, Jaafari [commander of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison”] announced that more than 50,000 individuals had been enlisted in the Iranian military garrison opened to recruit and train volunteers for “martyrdom-seeking operations”.

He added that several military divisions of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison” had already been established in several of Iran’s provinces and others were presently being formed to “confront threats by America and Israel”.

The leader of the glorious Iranian bullshit-spinning entity praised his death-seeking fanatical compatriots a couple of weeks ago: “Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future”, brimming with pride that Iran is capable of recruiting “hundreds of suicide bombers a day”.

In the name of Islam.

Perhaps its time to hear from a Muslim, here’s Yasmin Al-Mas in “Something has gone wrong” where she looks at challenging the Islamic justification for suicide terror, used by the Salafi-Jihadists, Q-News Magazine, November 2005:

Worldwide, in merely three years after 9/11, the number of suicide bombings in the name of Islam had increased three-fold than it had over two decades whilst the number of people killed had doubled. Suicide bombing in the name of Islam had now occurred in 26 countries: Lebanon [1981], Kuwait [1983], Argentina [1992], Panama, Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories [1994], Pakistan, Croatia [1995], Saudi Arabia [1996], Tanzania, Kenya [1998], Yemen, Chechnya [2000], USA, Kashmir, Afghanistan [2001], Tunisia, Indonesia, Algeria [2002], Morocco, Russia, India, Iraq, Turkey [2003], Uzbekistan and Spain [2004] and the United Kingdom [2005].

The bigger picture.

Here’s Walid Phares, with some more numbers (Feb 2007):

Asked to estimate the number of jihadist insurgents worldwide, Phares had some unsettling news.

“It depends on what the duty of such people [insurgents] would be,” he told NewsMax. “Suicide bombers would be lower in number than of those who will fight, those who will spy, those who will provide funds. There are about from 5% to 6% to 8% jihadist sympathizers in the Muslim world, which is 1.1 billion, so we are talking about 50 to 60 million who sympathize with these ideas.

“They are all not committed, but out of those you have probably 1% of people who would fight. That’s an army of 1 million. Among those, if you want to go to the most narrow dimension, there are about 100,000 suicide bombers around the world. For example, in Iraq there are probably 5,000, in Iran another 8,000 to 10,000, and within Hezbollah, 2,000.

“There is a pool of 100,000 people who have received this jihadist ideology and could be recruited for suicide bombing. Internationally, from an operational standpoint, there are somewhere around 5,000, and that’s a huge number of suicide bombers. Look at England, for example the operation of [July 7, 2005 -- the subway bombings] involved eight terrorists The next year, in the operation that wanted to bring down the airliners, there were about 50. So it grows geometrically.”

Why you should verify what you read on Wikipedia.

While we’re on the subject of “shoddy” reporting, take a look at this Wikipedia article on the Tamil Tigers:

LTTE had carried out more suicide bombings than any other organization on the face of the earth. According to the experts at Janes securities, between 1980 to 2000, LTTE had carried out a total number of 1,680 suicide attacks on civilians, political, and military targets. The number of suicide attacks easily exceeded the combine total of Hizbullah and Hamas suicide attacks carried out during the same period.[48]

Reference 48 is the Jane’s article which I quoted above. As you can see the original Jane’s article seems to be missing that extra 0.

UPDATE: I compiled the data above into the table below.

Top perpetrators of suicide attacks since 1980.

Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) 500-800
Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan 200+
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India 190+
Hamas in Israel 75
Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina 52
Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades 32
Chechen groups in Russia 23
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel 22
Al Qaeda outside of Iraq 20+
The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey 15

Note: Where I am not quoting other sources, for attacks where multiple attackers were involved I am adding up the number og targets attacked, not the number of attackers. Thus for the Casablanca 2003 bombings, there were 5 targets attacked, with 14 bombers, 12 of which detonated successfully, so I am counting that as 5. I wanted to avoid skewing the numbers by counting it as either 1 or 14.

Regarding the Al Qaeda in Iraq estimate, in 2006 Ayman Al Zawahiri, claimed Al Qaeda carried out 800 suicide bombings in Iraq. Al Zawahiri is of course exaggerating, but the total number of attacks over the last 4 years would be approaching that number. Also according to a report from the Gulf Research Center (see last link), there is four groups other than Al Qaeda that have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq. The same report also states that suicide attacks in Afghanistan increased 750% between 2001 and 2006, jumping from 21 to 180, suggesting a total far higher than what I’ve stated above, so as you can see I am playing it safe with the numbers.

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, The Pet Haven, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, , Bumpshack, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Planck’s Constant, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Here’s an excellent documentary that aired on the Cutting Edge program on SBS on Tuesday night. It has already been shown on British television in December 2006 and was made by Journeyman Pictures.

(be patient, it may take a few seconds to load when you press Play)

The Journeyman website has a transcript of the program.

About the documentary:

Videos of smiling suicide bombers and insurgent attacks have become as important a weapon as explosives in Al Qaeda’s global jihad against the West. The jihadis have seized on the power of the internet and their message cannot be silenced. But who actually watches these videos and what effect are they having on young people in the Muslim world? And – for that matter – on their enemies in West?

Abu Muawiya smiles and blows a kiss to the camera. He’s about to ram his car, packed with explosives, into an Iraqi checkpoint. Hours later, a slick and sophisticated video of his death is available to download. This is the jihadi propaganda machine, designed to inspire its supporters and terrify its enemies. The video is emotional, powerful and – thanks to the internet – you can get it anywhere in the world.

“We use the programme ‘Windows Movie Maker’ to make the films”, explains one jihadi producer. The whole process is taken very seriously. Only when the video has been checked and approved by the group’s chain of command will it be taken to an innocuous internet café to be uploaded. “The CIA can search for ages. Even if they find the café where it was uploaded, they can never find the person”, explains journalist Faris bin Hizam.

Al Qaeda have always recognised the importance of propaganda. When planning September 11th, they filmed the wills of the hijackers against an easily replaceable background. This enabled them to edit in shots of the World Trade Centre in flames later. For them, 9/11 was as much about creating iconic images as killing their enemies. But it was the war in Iraq and spread of broadband internet that turned the trickle of propaganda into a torrent.
[..]

An excellent article in the Times Online:

Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai — nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public.

When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality,” my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to foreign wives — perhaps to make it impossible for them to leave. Overnight, my husband became a stranger. The man with whom I had discussed Camus, Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams and the Italian cinema became a stranger. He treated me the same way his father and elder brother treated their wives: distantly, with a hint of disdain and embarrassment.

In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.

In America, my husband was proud that I was a natural-born rebel and free thinker. In Afghanistan, my criticism of the treatment of women and of the poor rendered him suspect, vulnerable. He mocked my horrified reactions. But I knew what my eyes and ears told me. I saw how poor women in chadaris were forced to sit at the back of the bus and had to keep yielding their place on line in the bazaar to any man.

I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes — one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male “prison”-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence).

Read the whole thing.

Jamestown Foundation reports:

Astoundingly, of the 21 attacks carried out this year [2007], in 16 cases the only fatality has been the suicide bomber himself. In the 17th case, the suicide bomber succeeded in killing himself and one policeman. In two other cases, the suicide bomber was arrested or shot. This translates to 19 Taliban suicide bombers for one Afghan policeman, hardly an inspiring kill ratio for would-be-suicide bombers. In most of these cases, the suicide bombers attacked foreign convoys on foot or in cars and were unable to inflict casualties on their targets. Typically, the suicide bombers’ explosives went off prematurely or their bombs failed to kill coalition troops driving in heavily armored vehicles.

In only three of the 21 cases for 2007 were there notable fatalities. In the first successful case, a suicide bomber killed two Afghan policemen and eight civilians (Camp Salerno, Khost, January 23). In the second case, three policemen were killed (Zherai District, Khost, February 4). In the third case, the February 27 attack on Bagram Air Base while Cheney was visiting, the bomber succeeded in killing 15-23 people (including two to three coalition soldiers).

[..] the Taliban are clearly playing a dangerous game, and this author’s findings back up the Pentagon’s claim that as many as 84% of the victims of suicide bombings in Afghanistan are civilians [1]. In several instances, Afghan suicide bombers have attacked foreign military convoys and succeeded in killing more than a dozen civilians and only one or two soldiers [2]. On other occasions, suicide bombers have killed or wounded innocent bystanders in mosques, hospitals, restaurants, or waiting for visas to partake in the Hajj. In the recent attack on Bagram Air Base, the vast majority of victims were once again civilians, and hundreds came to mourn their deaths. Not surprisingly, this has caused widespread resentment and protests in several Afghan cities.

Even in the best of circumstances, suicide bombing is not a precise technique and Afghanistan’s feckless bombers seem far better at killing themselves and Afghan civilians than foreign troops. Far more coalition troops in Afghanistan have died from IEDs, gunfire, RPG attacks and other conventional methods than they have from suicide bombs. One Afghan study of the bloody 2006 campaign has found that suicide bombings in that year took 212 civilian lives, while leading to the death of only 12 foreign soldiers [3].

Mark Stein seems to think he knows what the Norwegians are doing in Afghanistan:

And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means “fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don’t have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones”. That’s to say, Norway is “participating” in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are “not sufficiently trained to take part in combat”, they’ve been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.

Alas, even being in the general vicinity of regions where fighting is taking place got a little too much so the Norwegians demanded a modification of their rules of non-engagement and insisted their “soldiers” be moved to parts of Afghanistan where there’s no fighting whatsoever by anyone at all. Good luck finding any.

No, Mark. Their mission is something far more sinister. Oh, they are trained alright. Here’s the real reason why the Norwegians are stationed two provinces away from the Americans:

“We never really know what happens after we go. Tough luck for Kosovo.
Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania. Its Euro and Nato, why the hell did we go…
We’ll kick their ass and then we’ll see how it goes… and then, we really don’t know – that sucks for Kosovo.”

Michael Totten interviews historian Michael Oren, author of “Days of War and Power, Faith, and Fantasy.”, about the history of American involvement in the Middle East:

Past:

MJT: When speaking of the Barbary War you used the word “jihad.” I don’t think you used that word in your book, though, did you?

Oren: No, I didn’t really have to. There was the case in 1785 where Thomas Jefferson is sent to negotiate with the envoy of the Pasha of Tripoli. Jefferson says to him that America only wants peace with the Barbary states. And he says to Jefferson “No, we want war with you. We have a holy book called the Koran which says that we have to conquer and enslave all infidel states. And the United States is an infidel state. And moreover our holy book the Koran tells us that if we are killed in the course of carrying out this war that we’ll go directly to Paradise.” So I didn’t think I even had to put the label jihadist on there. I figured that remarkable report of Jefferson’s at the Continental Congress would suffice to alert contemporary readers what Jefferson was dealing with in the Middle East.

Future:

MJT: You have taken the long view of American involvement in the Middle East perhaps more than anyone else in the world. Having done that, are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

Oren: As a historian I’m optimistic. Listen, I view the war in Iraq not as a war, but as a battle in a much more protracted war. Iraq is America’s Bull Run in the war in the Middle East. It’s our first losing battle.

It is not Vietnam. You cannot withdraw from Iraq and be confident that the enemy is not going to follow you. Because the enemy is going to follow you. America can’t detach from the Middle East because the Middle East is not going to detach from America. And America’s going to have to learn to fight this fight to win in a much more prudent and effective way. And there are ways America can fight it more effectively.

Present:

MJT: What do you suggest?

Oren: I suggest America invest very heavily in intelligence and training an entire generation of service women and men to speak the languages, be conversant in the languages and the cultures of the Middle East. America has to invest much more heavily in intelligence gathering. America has to invest much more heavily in rapid response forces in the Middle East and retain them there.

America has to get involved in theology. We’ve been fighting a theology with an ideology. It doesn’t work. We have to get in the business of promoting a reformist Islam. It’s important. It’s controversial, but important.

MJT: How do we do that? Do you mean by promoting the moderates who already exist?

Oren: Well there are some moderates who exist. They don’t have any places where they can go out and speak and speak free of harm. We can help disseminate their ideas. Right now the extreme Wahhabi interpretation of Islam predominates in schools across Europe. The West has basically given up the field to these people.

About the Michaels:

Michael Oren is the of the best-selling books Six Days of War and Power, Faith, and Fantasy. He is a graduate of Princeton and Yale Universities and works as a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Michael J. Totten’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Reason, LA Weekly, TCS Daily, and Beirut’s Daily Star. Visit his blog at michaeltotten.com.

You can read the whole interview at Pajamas Media.

If you need more convincing that withdrawal from Iraq is not a smart option, the following is from “Iraq: Jihadist Perspectives on a U.S. Withdrawal”, by Fred Burton of Stratfor (subscription only):

Al Qaeda leaders and the jihadist movement in general always have taken a long view of the war, and discussion of a U.S. withdrawal from either Iraq or Afghanistan has long been anticipated. In planning the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda leaders clearly expected that the United States, once drawn into a war, eventually would weaken and lose heart. A study of al Qaeda’s philosophy, mindset and planning — conveyed through the words and actions of its leadership — is a reminder of just how the current U.S. political debate fits into the jihadist timeline and strategy.

It also is an indicator that a U.S. withdrawal from Muslim lands is not al Qaeda’s ultimate requirement for ending attacks against the United States or American interests abroad.

[..]
Perceptions of American Resolve

Long before the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Osama bin Laden clearly stated that, in the jihadists’ opinion, the United States was not prepared to fight a war of attrition.

Prior to 9/11, bin Laden’s public statements conveyed his dim view of the U.S. military’s capabilities and resolve, as well as of the willingness of the U.S. government (and to a larger extent, the American people) to take casualties in a sustained war. In a 1997 interview with Peter Arnett, bin Laden said, “We learned from those who fought [in Somalia] that they were surprised to see the low spiritual morale of the American fighters in comparison with the experience they had with the Russian fighters. The Americans ran away from those fighters who fought and killed them, while the latter were still there. If the U.S. still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia, then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return.”

It is widely believed that the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon, following the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, and from Somalia in 1993 were important precedents in driving the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The jihadists believed that if they killed enough Americans, U.S. forces would leave Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden’s opinion of U.S. resolve was not shaken by the “shock and awe” campaign that was unleashed in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. In a February 2003 message, he said, “We can conclude that America is a superpower, with enormous military strength and vast economic power, but that all this is built on foundations of straw. So it is possible to target those foundations and focus on their weakest points which, even if you strike only one-tenth of them, then the whole edifice will totter and sway, and relinquish its unjust leadership of the world.”

[..]

A Four-Part Strategy

The United States’ military response to the 9/11 attacks was the reaction al Qaeda wanted and expected. The statements of al Qaeda leaders have made it clear that the jihadists’ goal was to make sure these became protracted, painful and costly wars.

Ayman al-Zawahiri put it this way in August 2003, as the insurgency in Iraq was beginning to take hold: “We are saying to America one thing: What you saw with your eyes so far are only initial skirmishes; as for the real battle, it hasn’t even started yet.”

Now, whether al Qaeda or the jihadist movement actually retains the capability to achieve its long-term goals is a matter for vigorous debate, and one we have explored at other times. For purposes of this analysis, however, it is useful to examine just what those long-term goals, to which al-Zawahiri obviously was alluding, actually are.

Internal al Qaeda documents indicate that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan is but one of the stages factored into the movement’s long-term planning. One of the most telling documents was a July 2005 letter from al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, outlining a four-step strategy for establishing a caliphate in the “heart of the Islamic world.” (The authenticity of the al-Zawahiri letter has been questioned by some, but our own analysis has led Stratfor to conclude it was bona fide.)
The steps he outlined were:
1) Expel the Americans from Iraq.
2) Establish an Islamic authority or emirate in Iraq.
3) Extend the jihad wave to secular countries neighboring Iraq.
4) Initiate a clash with Israel.

Al-Zawahiri said he was proposing the four-step strategy in order to “stress something extremely important” to al-Zarqawi, “and it is that the mujahideen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.” He clearly wanted the jihadists to press on toward bigger objectives following the U.S. withdrawal.

In the letter, he cautioned: “Things may develop faster than we imagine. The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations and their plans to fill the void behind them. We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us, wherein our lot would be to merely resist their schemes.”

It follows from this that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be construed by the jihadists as an opportunity to establish an important base or sanctuary — and then to consolidate their gains and continue their “jihad wave” to other parts of the region. With that in mind, jihadist attacks against “Jews and Crusaders” could be expected to continue even after a U.S. departure from Iraq and Afghanistan.

[..]

The Ultimate Objective
[..]

In a February 1998 statement, bin Laden declared that “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the Al Aqsa mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”

An important point is that al Qaeda defines terms like the “lands of Islam” as territory that includes present-day Israel, India and Spain. While Israel is clearly more significant to Muslims than other areas, given the importance of Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa mosque to Islam, Spain — which was the Caliphate of al-Andalus from 711 to 1492 — is also in the crosshairs. An equally important point is that the political shift in Madrid (which followed a 2004 commuter train attack in the capital) and the government’s decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq have not removed Spain from the jihadists’ target list. In a July 2006 message — in which he threatened revenge for the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and the Palestinians — al-Zawahiri said, “The war with Israel … is a jihad for the sake of God … a jihad that seeks to liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine, and to liberate every land which (once belonged to) Islam, from Andalus to Iraq.“

In other words, at least as long as the state of Israel exists — and the “apostate” governments in places like Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco and Kuwait remain in power, with U.S. support — the jihadists will continue to complain about U.S. “aggression against Islam.” And, insofar as they are able, they will carry on their war.

See my previous posts on Al Qaeda’s 20 years strategy and the tragedy of Andalus for more.

And lets not forget Iran now.

Below are some extracts from the Sufi teacher Abdullah Dougan’s book, “40 Days: An Account of a Discipline” that give considerable insight on the nature of the Islamic religion today, as well as the culture of its epicentre and birthplace, Arabia. These observations were made in 1974, as Abdullah travelled to Arabia on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam that every practicing Muslim must complete. Abdullah travelled to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan with his student Abdul. Before being allowed entry into Arabia the two men had to swear before an Afgani High Court that they were Muslims, following which the judge told them “with a straight face” that now they were Muslims, by Koranic law they could be killed if they decided to return to being Christians. On entry into Saudi Arabia the customs inspector confiscated a book Abdullah had by the Hindu guru Ramdas, because it was “against their religion”. Abdullah observed: “This action on the part of the customs was typical of the bigotry of many Muslims, who observe only the outside part of their religion.”

I am posting this because you’d be hard pressed to find such honest and direct descriptions of a Hajj experience anywhere else, for reason that will soon become apparent, as well as a continuation from my last two posts. The Hajj is also presently a somewhat more orderly experience (or not?), perhaps because the Saudis have been embarassed into action by foreign visitors and governments, so it is important to capture this instructive bit of recent history.

Anyhow, I found reading the stories below to be a fascinating insight.

Abdullah on the meaning of the Hajj:

There are many explanations of the Hajj, by Muslim theologians, most of which follow a very literal line, as is customary in the Muslim world. Anything in the Hadith or Koran is held to be true, no matter how far-fetched to objective reasoning. The Koran, like the bible, has inaccuracies caused by the ego of writers intruding into universal truths.

On his experience at Masjid El Noor ( Mosque of Light), where he and Abdul stayed in Medina:

[..]The people who ran the school where part of the Tablig school, traditionalists trying to keep the clock back in the days of the Holy Prophet, who would slavishly follow many of the injunctions given in the Hadith or traditions of the Prophet.

Muslims maintain there are no monks in Islam, but this type of situation belied the assertion. The borthers lived the life of a monk at MAsjid El Noor, grting up at 4:30am for prayers, doing their ablutions at a cold tap which was the merest trickle and on a few occassions not even that so they would have to store water to use out of one of the spouted pots. Prayers were going on constantly as well as the five communal prayers. In between, someone was always lecturing others. There was a continual stream of visitors from among the pilgrims, for the Tablig school are the missionaries of Islam. They call themselves the Jumat (brothers) and go to other mosques to waylay people and harangue them constantly, trying to influence them back to their religion. They also attempt to convert any infidel they find interested in Islam. They are all most sincere, trying to live life to the Koran, and most are very feaful and superstitious. [..]

The Holy Prophets ideas on cleanliness wre a thousand years ahead of his time, for when the people of Europe were having baths only once a year, if at all, the Prophet had his peolpe bathing once a week. However the Law of Seven [TOD: an esoteric concept governing the atrophy of processes devoid of conscious guidance] has cought up with this, and now the Muslim people must contend for first place among the dirtiest races in the world. At El Noor there was never any hot water for a bath, and most people used no soap; this applied for wuzu, the ceremonial washing of hands and feet before prayers. Often there was no water at all because the town was so overcrowded the system could not cope. There were no flush toilets, but pans let into the floors with an adjacent tap, and even when there was water about half the users would not wash away their stool. To add to the lack of hygiene the cookhouse was adjacent to the toilets.

Most of the people there very pleasant and friendly. Many came to talk to me, some to learn, others to teach me the right way as they saw it through the Koran and Hadith. I formed the opinion that most were [overly] identified with sex and [the] devil, for these usually came up in conversation. As has been said elsewhere, Muslims are obsessed with reward and punishment, and much of their attitude towards sex is very archaic. The penalty for adultery is stoning to death, and in recent years a Christian at Jeddah killed a Muslim he caught in bed with his wife, so the Muslim’s friends and relatives killed the Christian by running him over with a truck. Most who spoke to me had not the slightest idea of sex psychology, still believing women to be the instrument of the devil. One young South African Indian who came each night for a chat summed up his primitive conception of sex when he observed that “women are the trouble”. Much latent homosexual behaviour noticed among Muslim friends stemmed from sexual frustrations. The South African Indian friend told me with a very straight face that the devil was in the toilet and you should always cough before going in left foot first, being careful to wear your hat. Whoever told him about the devil must have been referring to masturbation – it wasn’t clear why he had to keep his hat on.

[..] Having lived for 16 days with these brothers, I had become more aware just how hard it was for anyone to wake up to the inaccuracies of the exoteric teachings of Islam. The branwashing was, and is, constant.

Abdul, whom the brothers earnestly lectured about subjects of utmost importance such as in which hand one should hold a teacup in and where the right foot should be placed in prayer noted that Tabliah Jumat’s “appointed task seemed to be the emphasis of the irrelevant”.

Abdullah on Haram Sharrief, which houses the Prophets tomb:

Muslims do not believe in idols, and wherever they have conquered have destroyed priceless works of art by breaking off the faces; but unfortunately they have made idols of their shrines, with people fighting to touch a sacred place. A great deal of the pushing and shoving at Haram Sharief is attributable to this idolisation. Objectively watching people around the Prophet’s grave, one could only come to the conclusion that they have created an idol here. Nearby are some of the Prophet’s wives’ graves, and the crying and touching of the walls is no different from what goes on in Catholic countries.

In Saudi Arabia the classic Muslims law prescribes the cuitting off of the right hand as the penalty for stealing, but Abdul had his white gown cut at the pocket and the money he was carrying taken. Other people told of similar experiences. During the Hajj season the prices for everything where exhorbitant, as the shopkeepers had no conscience about profiteering.

On the other Haram Sharrief, which contains the Kabah in Mecca:

On the Friday before the Hajj started, we went to the Haram Sharrief with over a million others to do the mid-day prayers, or Jumuh. We saw armed guards tossing people off the main entrance to the mosque to make room for the VIPs who arrived hours later than the waiting pilgrims. I couldn’t get into the mosque proper, but remained in the street with thousands of others. The conditions outside were chaotic. Nearby was a truck with a machinegun mounted on its back direcred towards the main door and I wondered what would happen to the congregation if the gunner had to fire it. These precautions were taken to give protection to King Faisal and his ministers.

Mina, 5 miles from Mecca, first day of the Hajj:

[..] Many people died, and at one time the Egyptians [friends of Abdullah] counted ten dead stacked in an ambulance [TOD: they were staying opposite a hospital] Conditions were archaic, and very little water and only one hundred public toilets for one and a half million people. A great deal of time these toilets were closed through lack of water, and under guard. The streets became a quagmire of extreta and urine, especially behind the parked vehicles.

Day 2, going to Arafat and staying at a mosque called Masjid-I-Namdaram.

[..] All the passageways soon became occupied, causing complete chaos, with real fights all over the place.

As the hour of prayer drew near, peopel appeared to to become quite mad in their endevours to gain a place in which to pray. [Abdul and I] made room for two old Turks by squeezing together, but this didn’t stop two others pushing in, thus making it almost impossible for the Turks to find a place to put their heads in prayer. The hysteria of these people had to be seen to be believed. I observed to Abdul that one could easily see the mis-use of sexual energy in all these irrational actions.The Saudi government had no organisation to cope with the vast horde of people, so there was no crowd control in the mosque at all, unless they wanted to make way for some personage. The whole Saudi nation appeared to be concerned only with making money from the pilgrims, whom they exploited to the fullest limits. Every commodity was at least double the usual price, according to the friends who lived in Medina.

The pelting of stones at idols at Mina:

It was impossible to get near the idols unless you were unconcerned about getting hit by the flying pebbles, and there was such a crush within a hundred feet of the idol that you couldn’t get your hands above your head. Before attacking the situation [our friends] the Egyptians tied Ehram sheets tightly around their money and possessions, because they knew that thieves operated in the vicinity of this idol, taking advantage of the fact that if a person had his hands above his head there was no way of checking on purses. Abdullah made a token job of pelting and returned to the rendezvous. When it was Abdul’s turn he was pushed over by a group of negroes who charged him down, and lost his watch. The behaviour was completely stupid, again with no direction from the authorities, who could easily have controlled the flow of people.

By now Abdul and I were completely disgusted with this type of conduct so decided to leave Mina, although most people stay there for three days to throw the pebbles and also sacrifice an animal, which both found repugnant for several reasons. They clipped their hair.

After Arafat, back at the Kaaba Abdullah had his shoes stolen. Finally the animal sacrifice at the end of the Hajj:

The whole street where the vehicles were parked was one great cesspool with filth everywhere When [we] came down the mountainside [we] found pieces of animal along with extreta and tents. The Egyptians were cutting up a leg of camel, which seven of them had shared in the sacrifice, and had some ram and goat meat as well. They gave [us] some, which [we] took back to Mina and made into a soup.

And now Abdullah’s somewhat less patient and forgiving companion Abdul’s description of the same journey:

Rampant commercialism of the most spiritually destructive kind was widespread in Mecca, to the extend that the Holy of Holies of all Islam, the Ka’aba, was but an adjunct to the main motive for the modern survival of the city – the systematic removal of every last cent a pilgrim might have brought with him. It was typical of the attitude of the Meccan Arabs to the Bayt-al-Haram (Haram Sharrief) that when the new building was constructed a large shopping cetnre was incorporated in its strucrture. The only thing that could be said for the Meccan merchants was that their greed was if anything “bettered” by their colleagues in Medina, who sent their children into the precincts of the Prophet’s last resting place itself in order to tout their wares – to the exctent that the main courtyard of the mosque often looked like a marketplace rather than a place of worship.

Trenchant Muslim critics of the Hajj seem to be few and far between, perhaps because fear is such a strong force in Islam as it is practised. We found plenty of degrading spectacles to warrant comment. Men fought for places in the front prayer rows of the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, caring little if they forced out of place men who have been sitting there for four hours or more. The shoving, punching and kicking that went on wherever “two or three are gathered together in My Name” was aa consistent feature of the Hajj and nothing was done to control it by the Saudi authorities, with the odd ineffectual exception.

The culminatinf riot, for it could be called little else, took place around the Shatan stones in Mina, several miles outside Mecca where I, for all my size and weight, was knocked to the ground and had my watch removed by a band of Central Africans who bludgeoned all before them in an insensate forced passage through the packed crowd. Twenty people were trampled to death that day, we were told, and the report was easy to believe. Certainly no nation in the throng would have taken honours in politeness except the South-East Asian Muslims whose small size and good manners made them easy victims of the crushing crowds. It was no surprise to discover that the Indonesian government had warned the Saudis that unless measures where taken to police the crowd during the next Hajj season, they would not be allowing any of their own nationals over the age of 40 to travel to Arabia.

Ideally, the pilgrims slept at least three nights at Mina but after the first night we were in little mood to continue the punishment. The Mina streets ran with urine, and the diarrhoeic turds which lay everywhere, due to the almost complete lack of any toilet facilities, gave the lie to the proud Arab boast that they never suffered from dysentery. The only public toilets, for some classic Arab reason, were locked at night and at any rate, although newly built, were a squalid uncleaned mess giving point to the blunt British phrase to describe incompetence: “They couldn’t even run a public shithouse!” To cap it all, fresh water taps were few and far between, and invariably had a heaving scrum around them.

We returned to our sleeping place on the roof of the mosque I was already calling “Hellfire”. On the second day of the Shatan stoning we journeyed out to Mina, more as observers than anything else. I had begun to come to terms with the fact that there was a much bigger thing behind this pilgrimage of ours than I had earlier thought, that related directly to the course which Abdullah’s teaching would in the future. Personally, I knew I had to be bludgeoned between the eyes in order to learn something, and the Hajj was the blunt instrument to teach me the crucial lesson of Islam which I might never have learned for some time, had I not embarked on it. I learnt that a dead religion can take a long time to decompose. The stench of of its rotting was most penetrating at the slaughtering grounds outside Mina, where hundreds of thousands of animals, from sheep and goats to camels, are ritually slaughtered in commemoration of Abraham’s original sacrifice. In the Prophet’s time the sacrificial flesh was used to feed the poor, but Muhhamed could never have foreseen the day when two million Muslim fundamentalists would follow in his footsteps. What I saw made me angry and disgusted at man’s stupidity. I could understand something of the mentality behind the flashing knives of the peasant folk in the blood-lusting crowd, but what contortions of rationalisation were going on in the minds of the more informed Muslims who were part of the twentieth century, to explain the anarchy that reigned all around us? My companions, one a well-educated Egyptian, seemed quite at a loss to understand why one should object to the gushing blood, squirming and gasping animals, and the dehumanized people participating in the whole macable carnival. In the central compound, where the largest (qurbaanee) animals are slaughtered, carcase was being butchered on top of carcase. Bulging entrails, shit and blood squelched everywhere underfoot, and I begun to feel the gulf which separates this insane expression of religious fanaticism from the subtle workings of the Spirit. No wonder so few Muslims we met could grasp the inner meaning behind their religion, if a display such as this could them still still contented.

As I left the grounds, workmen were throwing ammonium chloride onto heaps of carcases shovelled together by bulldozers from the previous day’s carnage. It could have been symbolic.

“O Ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean. So let them not come near the Inviolable Place of Worship after this their year. If ye fear poverty (from the loss of their merchandise) Allah shall preserve you of His bounty if He will. Lo! Allah is Knower Wise.” (Surah 9, v28, Koran, Pickthall trans)

Recent examples confirm not a whole lot has changed in Arabian attitudes in the 30 plus years since this was written.

Abdullah’s comment on Adbul’s description:

“In reference to Abdul’s remark about Islam dying, I would like to say that all organised religions must come under the Law of Seven in their outer manifestations. The inner parts of all religions usually say the same truth.”

As I said previously, I hope something of the inner teachings reamerge to guide Islam back into life once the present process of decay is complete, realistically, in decades to come.

One person that agrees with the assertion above that Islam is a dying religion is Theodore Dalrymple. From a recent essay by Fjordman, “Why the future may not belong to Islam”:

Theodore Dalrymple thinks that “Islam has nothing whatever to say to the modern world,” and states that “Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism. They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle, as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history, it is all or nothing. (…) Islamism is a last gasp, not a renaissance, of the religion; but, as anyone who has watched a person die will attest, last gasps can last a surprisingly long time.”

From the same essay, the view of Belgian orientalist, Dr Koenraad Elst:

Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists, thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing.

And some final words from Fjordman:

“The impact of globalization and modern mass media is more complicated and has contradictory results. As one pundit at ex-Muslim Ali Sina’s website put it: “Rituals are important as brainwashing tools to instill discipline and loyalty. Islam’s focus on rituals remind me of the rituals in the military. (…) But what worked well for a medieval war machine is disastrous for Muslims in the modern world. The Arab war machine was supported by the blind obedience, brotherhood, courage, hatred and high birth rates inspired by Islam. (…) But these same qualities are handicaps for Muslims in the age of the microchip. Today they lead to poverty, belligerency, war and defeat.”

Islam was perfect for medieval warfare, but gradually lost out to the West, especially after the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, which could never have taken place in Islamic lands because of their lack of freedom and their cult of authority. Ironically, history has now gone full circle. Muslims are still useless in developing anything new, but as a result of migration, modern communications, the presence of Muslims in infidel lands and Arab oil revenues, they can more readily buy or expropriate technology from others. The Iranian Revolution was aided by audio cassettes of speeches by the Ayatollah Khomeini.