South-East Asia security analyst Zachary Abuza has an op-ed piece in today’s SMH about the predominantly Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiah, prompted by the recent capture of it’s amir, Abu Dujana. In the final paragraph he mentions the escalating conflict in Southern Thailand, stating that although JI have not been actively involved in that confict, “it will be drawn in” and that Indonesians have increasingly been arrested in the zone. There are also signs of influence from further abroad. Due to recent developments there and the huge number of Australian tourists that visit Thailand, this issue could soon become of primary importance for Australia. Here’s a summary of the situation and developments this year in particular, also from Zachary Abuza, written for the Jamestown Foundation:

The first five months of 2007 have seen a dramatic increase in both the lethality and brutality of the Thai insurgency, prompting numerous Thai military officials to suspect the growing presence of foreign trainers. The arrest of an Indonesian on May 19 further raised suspicions. Nevertheless, Thai political leaders, including former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, head of the National Reconciliation Commission Khun Anand Panyarachun and current Prime Minister General Surayud Chulanont, along with the diplomatic community, have all insisted that the insurgency is a purely domestic affair with no foreign linkages. This view is being challenged by a growing body of evidence that shows that Thai officials have begun to speak more openly about the influence of foreigners on the Thai insurgents.

After three years of insurgency that has left some 2,200 people dead, militants have dramatically increased the tempo of attacks in 2007. The insurgents are clearly buoyed by their own successes, as well as the lackluster performance of the Thai security services. Moreover, the attacks this year have been far more provocative in various ways. At the political level, there have been three attacks on the Thai royal family or their entourage. At a more local level, beheadings, machete attacks and desecration of corpses have become more frequent. There have been 10 beheadings in 2007, one-third of the total number. Nearly as many people have been killed by machete attacks or have been bludgeoned to death. In dozens of cases, the bodies have been set on fire, and in one instance a female victim was burnt alive.

Targeting has also been more brutal—women, children and monks, people who would never have been targeted in earlier iterations of the Thai insurgency, are now systematically gunned down. In a shocking case that occurred in mid-March and was reminiscent of the carnage of Algeria or Kashmir, a minivan was disabled by an IED and all 10 passengers, including three women and a girl, were shot execution style (Terrorism Focus, April 24). IEDs have also grown in size and complexity. It took insurgents almost two years to develop IEDs larger than five kilograms. This year has already witnessed 15 and 20 kilogram devices used several times a week, causing much higher casualty rates, especially among police and soldiers. Many of the devices are similar to the one found and defused on May 28: a 20 kilogram ammonium nitrate bomb constructed in a fire extinguisher, stuffed with bolts, nuts and pieces of rebar and hidden on the side of the road awaiting an army convoy (Bernama, May 28). The bomb was command detonated, but cell phone detonators are still currently used. Casio watches, which have been used routinely in Iraq, are now also regularly employed in southern Thailand.

There is a possibility that exogenous factors are at play.

[..]

Thai military intelligence officials interviewed by this author believe that there are Middle Eastern trainers involved in the insurgency, based on the fact that the IED technology has improved so rapidly. They tend to dismiss the notion that such technology was available through the internet.
[..]
The veteran Middle East journalist Amir Taheri wrote in a March 2006 article in Asharq al-Awsat that “international jihadist circles” on the internet and across the Muslim world were discussing the possibility of waging a broader jihad in southern Thailand. He stated, “The buzz in Islamist circles is that well-funded jihadist organizations may be preparing a takeover bid for the southern Thailand insurgency.” There exists a potential for bleed-out from Iraq. As the Thai insurgency drags on (and it shows no signs of slowing), its profile will be raised in the consciousness of Muslims around the world, and it may attract more attention and funding.

Note that the dramatic increase in violence pretty much started since the coup last September, when the Thai military disposed of then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, after a very brief wait-and-see-who’s-in-change lull. Thaksin favoured a tough approach against the insurgents, while the leader of the junta that took power, Army Commander General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who is a Muslim, favoured negotiations, but claimed he can’t find anyone to negotiate with. General Sonthi’s soft approach has clearly been at least in part responsible for the emboldened mood of the insurgents.

The conflict zone is but a couple of hours drive away from major tourists spots, frequented by many thousands of Australians every year. It is growing in brutality, the sophistication and boldness of the attacks is increasing, as is the range of tactics used. If Middle East terror groups (and even JI) get involved, if they are not already, it is only a matter of time before Thailand begins to see suicide attacks. And it can already only be a matter of time before tourists become targets, most likely after the Thai army changes to a tougher approach (there are signs that they already are). It is not a remote possibility that the next attack that kills Australians on the scale of Bali will be in Thailand. Security in the tourists areas is relatively weak, the current government has been unable to effective consolidate power after the coup and remains unstable, with continuous rumours of another coup being in the works in Bangkok, as the junta is in serious disagreement with the interim Prime Minister. As the government and military continue to be preoccupied with their power plays, the potential for an international disaster in the South is growing and Australia should be taking note. This will not remain a domestic Thai issue for much longer, despite wishful thinking and reassuring words from Bangkok.

This post is a reply to a guest post over at Pommygranate’s blog, by Kizzie, a Sudanese Muslim woman, who currently resides in Cairo. In her post Kizzie tries to show that Female Genital Mutilation is not an Islamic practice, but rather a cultural one, partly basing her argument on the premise that the two are mutually exclusive. However, although FGM is a certainly a cultural practice that predates Islam, it is also an Islamic practice, which is what I am going to show below.

The reason that a Sudanese Muslim woman came to be guest-blogging on Pommygranate’s site, by the way, is the debate that has raged this week across the Australian blogosphere in the wake of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s visit here last week. Ironically Ali barely mentioned FGM when she spoke on Sunday night.
The first bone in the debate was thrown by Kim at Larvatus Prodeo. Tim Blair then pulled her up on her smug insensitivity , while in the meantime the fireworks really started flying in the comments to Kim’s post. Blair followed up and Kim attempted to fire back, only to get blasted to pieces by Blair (see the Update in last TB link). Far back along the way FGM became the focus of the debate, as it rippled out through the blogosphere and finally here we are. Phew.

Now to answering Kizzie’s post. She starts off explaining where FGM is practiced (many African countries and some Arab countries in the Middle East, like, you may be surprised to learn, in Kurdistan, where most women are “circumcised”) and describes the four classifications of FGM, which disfigure the female genitalia to various degrees. No argument so far. Except the part where she uses the term Female Genital Circumcision, but than refers to it as FGM thereafter, which actually stands for Female Genital Mutilation. A telling manifestation of double-think right there, I’d say.

Kizzie’s argument is divided into two parts and in the first she attempts to argue that FGM is not an Islamic practice, giving three arguments to support her view. Looking at them one by one:

1. FGM predates both Christianity and Islam since it is believed to date back to time of the Pharaohs.

Well, noone is going to argue with that. A lot of Islamic practices predate Islam, and some predate Christianity also. Thats hardly an argument that all those practices are not Islamic. The Islamic practice of not eating pork was a Judaic one before Islam, the Islamic practice of five prayers a day was practices by Zoroastrians before Islam, the Islamic symbol of star and crescent was a symbol of a number of Moon-Gods before Islam, and so on and so forth. The covering of the female body, polygamy, the washing of extremities before prayer and meals, fasting, all these have been cultural practices somewhere before becoming Islamic ones.
Here’s how Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar from Al-Azhar University put it (full quote and source further down):

”Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature.”

Anyway, what is important is how a person justifies their actions – is it because “thats just how we do things round here” (ie. a cultural practice, like shaking hands in the West or rubbing noses amongst the Eskimos), or is it because the practice is made compulsory or recommended by their religious belief system? I’ll get to the Islamic justifications (and recommendations) for FGM shortly.

2. FGM is found in non-Muslim societies example: Christians in Ghana and other non-Muslim societies in India and South America.

See my answer to one. If every Islamic practice was disowned because it was practiced by adherents of other religions there wouldn’t be much left thats Islamic. The question is does Islam give justification for the practice? When I get to the scriptural and scholarly references below it should be clear that it does. The distinction of Islam being a “complete way of life”, rather than merely a religion, as Muslims like to point out, gives extra weight to this argument, as virtually any act can be determined to be allowed, disallowed, recommended etc from the Sunnah (the tradition and example of the Prophet and his companions as recorded in the Hadiths). For the Islamic Ummah the lines between culture and religion are virtually non-existent, with an overriding Islamic culture superseding any local one. Anyhow, are there any Christian priests in Ghana giving religious justification for FGM or does it exist despite the opposition of the Church? Because there most certainly are plenty of Muslim Sheikhs giving religious justification for FGM.

3. If FGM was obligatory in Islam then Muslim scholars from all over the world wouldn’t be working together to ban its practice.

Here Kizzie tries to confuse the issue by using the word “obligatory”. FGM is certainly “obligatory” in most schools of Islam. In most schools it is seen as “noble”, “honorable” and “recommended”, but not obligatory. The distinction is much the same as that between the wearing of the hijab and the wearing of the niqab (which covers the face) in most Islamic schools. The niqab is deemed obligatory only in the more severe Islamic schools (the Wahhabi, Deobandi etc), by others it is viewed as kind “going the extra mile” to please Allah, a noble act of piety. Is wearing the niqab not an Islamic practice because most schools do not deem it “obligatory”?

Anyhow, Kizzie sites three example here, two of conferences and one of a “meeting” of Muslim scholars where FGM was denounced. Note that all three events are from the last 2 years. One conference was organized by a German human rights group and held in Cairo and involved scholars from Al-Azhar. The “meeting” was also held in Cairo’s Al Azhar university. The other conference was held in Nigeria and news reports again feature quotes from scholars from Al Azhar, which is the foremost Sunni institution in the world, so certainly has authority. It does appear that the issue has been seriously debated at Al-Azhar (links below). I do wonder though whether these denouncement draw a distinction between “female circumcision” and FGM, by which some Muslims only refer to infibulation.

I also wonder why it took 14 centuries for these denouncements to come out. Where are the Fatwas banning the practice, other than those against Infibulation, the most severe of the four forms, prior to the the 21st century? Why did the scholars not try to rid of the Islamic world of this barbaric practice before Western influence shamed them into doing so? Why was a German human rights group needed to start the conference in the first place?

As for “Muslim scholars from all over the world [..] working together to ban its practice” (I am only seeing scholars from Al-Azhar), well, what about all the Muslim scholars all over the world encouraging it and using the Sunnah to justify it? They certainly seem to have the superior numbers.

Before I start quoting some of these scholars, here are some quotations from the Hadiths that are commonly used to justify the practice:

Although there is no mention of it in the Quran itself, there are several hadiths, where Female Genital Mutilation is encouraged by Mohammad.

The first hadith is from Abu Dawud (Book 41, Number 5251): Um ‘Atiyyah is reported as an exciser of female slaves who had immigrated with Mohammad.
On one occasion Mohammad allegedly asked her if she kept practicing her profession, to which she responded in the affirmative. Then she added: “unless it is forbidden and you order me to stop doing it.” Mohammad replied: “yes, it is allowed.”
Mohammad then gave Um ‘Atiyyah specific instructions on the methodology for female circumcision (Aldeeb, 1994, p. 6), explaining to her that his method of “female circumcision” would bring radiance to the face of the woman.
This hadith is also quoted by al-Hakim and al-Baihaqi on the authority of al-Dhaahhak ibn Qais (al-Sabbagh, 1998, p. 17).

Another well-known hadith is that of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He relates in his Musnad (5:75) from Abu al-Malih ibn, Usama’s father, that Mohammad said:
“Circumcision is sunna (tradition) for men and an honorable quality for women”

A third hadith states: “If the two circumcision organs (khitanan) meet, ritual ablution (gusl), becomes obligatory.” This is cited in Malik, Muslim, al-Tirmithi and Ibn Majah in their respective hadith collections and can also be found in other collections (al-Sabbagh, 1998, p. 38).

There are many documented justifications by Islamic scholars through the ages, based on these Hadiths. And many of them, coincidentally, are from the same aforementioned Al-Azhar university. Possibly because Egypt is pretty much FGM-central, with 97% of women there having been subjected to it. You’d think if the practice contradicted Sharia it would have become less prevalent, if not stamped out by now. Islamic countries don’t seem to have much trouble minimising alcohol consumption, for example. Anyway, lets hear from the Sheikhs:

In Reliance of the Traveler, a classical manual of Islamic law, endorsed by Al-Azhar in 1991 as conforming ‘to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,’ we find the following, with notes from several scholars and the translator:

e4.3 Circumcision is obligatory (commentary of Sheikh ‘Umar Barakat: “for both men and women”). For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Arabic: Bazr) of the clitoris (remark by the translator: “not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert”). (comment by Sheikh ‘Abd al-Wakil Durubi: Hanbalis hold that circumcision of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere courtesy to the husband.)”

A look at the original Arabic show the text to actually say:

Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female)
by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male,
but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris
(this is called HufaaD).

Further commentary (from a non-Muslim):

The deceptive translation by Nuh Hah Mim Keller, made for Western consumption, obscures the Shafi’i law, given by ‘Umdat al-Salik, that circumcision of girls by excision of the clitoris is mandatory. This particular form of female circumcision is widely practiced in Egypt, where the Shafi’i school of Sunni law is followed.

Some years ago Pamela Bone asked Sheik Fehmi al-Imam of the Preston Mosque about FGM and his reply was “You probably don’t need it but women in hot countries do”. (The Age, 21/7/01 p7) (same link)

In 1981 the Great Sheikh of the same aforementioned Al-Azhar University “stated that parents must follow the lessons of Mohammed and not listen to medical authorities because the latter often change their minds. Parents must do their duty and have their daughters circumcised.”. (same link)

How things have changed after 20 years of Western influence!

Again from the same link:

Sheikh Yussef Al-Qaradhawi, one of Sunni Islam’s most influential clerics and a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood favors partial circumcision for women as a moderate, just, and reasonable solution best suited to reality. In a Fatwa on this issue, he wrote, “Anyone who thinks that circumcision is the best way to protect his daughters should do it. I support this, particularly in the period in which we live.”

And still more the learned men of Al-Azhar:

On 12/2/2007 Al-Arabiya TV aired ‘Al-Azhar University Scholars Argue over the Legitimacy of Female Circumcision Practiced in Egypt.’ The debate was between Egyptian Al-Azhar University scholars Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar and Sheikh Mahmoud Ashur.

Muhammad Al-Mussayar: notes “All the jurisprudents, since the advent of Islam and for 14 centuries or more, are in consensus that female circumcision is permitted by Islam. But they were divided with regard to its status in shari’a. Some said that female circumcision is required by shari’a, just like male circumcision. Some said this is the mainstream practice, while others said it is a noble act. But throughout the history of Islam, nobody has ever said that performing female circumcision is a crime. There has been a religious ruling on this for 14 centuries.” “First of all, there are reliable hadiths in Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim which support female circumcision. The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘If a circumcised woman and man have intercourse, they must undergo ablution.’ Unreliable hadiths do not cancel out the reliable ones. We have unreliable hadiths regarding prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage. Should we abolish prayer and charity just because some hadiths are unreliable?..”Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature.” (reported by MEMRI.org 27/2/2007 and http://fgmnetwork.org) (same link)

So for 1400 years the scholars have been divided on whether it is an obligation (the Shafi’i school), sunna (the Hanbali school) or a “noble act”, an “honorable quality”, while in the Hanafi school it is apparently “a mere courtesy to the husband”. All a sudden in the last 3 years the final word comes out declaring the the practice neither obligatory or sunna, but suddenly Unislamic? Give me a break.

For more evidence still, see also this fascinating and shocking recent debate (and it is at least good to see they have plenty of those) involving a male lecturer from, once again, Al-Azhar university, debating a female lecturer (not sure from which institution) on the subject of FGM. The male sheikh again argues that milder forms of FGM are sunna, while total removal of the clitoris is forbidden, while the female lecturer argues against all forms of FGM. Dr. Muhammad Wahdan concludes:

In Egypt we have four and a half million spinsters. The definition of a spinster is a woman who has reached 30, without ever receiving a marriage proposal. We have a spinster problem in the Arab world, and the last thing we want is for them to be sexually aroused. Circumcision of the girls who need it makes them chaste, dignified, and pure.

But back to Kizzie’s post, and in part two of her essay, having apparently show FGM is not an Islamic practice, she tries to show that FGM is actually a social/cultural practice. Firstly Kizzie states that the less severe forms are practiced in Indonesia. I would have thought that only goes to prove my point? Then she goes on to point out some age-old cultural justifications for the ancient FGM tradition in Africa, which only serves to moot the waters, as ancient cultural reasoning does not trump modern Islamic reasoning, so I’ll simply leave that part alone. But as Indonesia has been brought up, I will follow up with that example. It is true that the type of FGM practiced in Indonesia is almost always not as severe as that of North Africa. And here I can agree that we are seeing “cultural differences”. FGM is a part of Islamic culture, it is an Islamic practice, which came to Indonesia with Islam and did not exist there prior. However the differences between how it is done there as opposed to say Egypt, can be put down to “cultural practice”. Lets not be confused by that distinction, however.

Here are some extracts from an article that appeared in The Age, in 2004 about FGM in Indonesia:

The practice of female circumcision in Indonesia has moved into hospitals. Greater genital mutilation is the likely result. Matthew Moore and Karuni Rompies report.

Hospitals across Indonesia are offering new parents a one-price surgical package for their just-born girls — as well as piercing their ears, they’ll circumcise them.

At Jakarta’s Hermina Hospital the price for the two procedures is 95,000 rupiah (about $A16), at IDI hospital in Surabaya in East Java it’s only 15,000 rupiah, while in Makassar’s Khadijah Hospital in Sulawesi, hospital staff quote 25,000 to 30,000 rupiah.

[..] While hospitals might be more hygienic, health care experts are worried by strong evidence that the move has led to more of the child’s genital tissue being cut because medical practitioners use different implements and techniques.

Village-based midwives and traditional healers have been circumcising girls in Indonesia for centuries, although the extent and details of the practice are only now emerging.

[..]

In an attempt to find out more about female circumcision, the US AID-funded study by the Population Council surveyed 1694 households in eight separate regions and found all the boys and 97.5 per cent of girls had been circumcised.

[..]

The concern now relates to changes due to circumcisions in hospitals, where health care professionals use scissors in more than 75 per cent of cases, which invariably means cutting flesh.

[..]
It’s not only babies who are circumcised, with one-third of those surveyed circumcised between the ages of five and nine, and some even older.

Several hours out of Jakarta in Bandung, the Assalaam Foundation has been holding free mass circumcisions for males and females for almost 50 years, with as many as 400 people turning up at a time. Syarief Hamid, treasurer with the foundation, which runs several schools, said the circumcisions were timed to honor the Prophet’s birthday, and were growing in popularity each year.

While religion is the main reason for circumcising girls, he says there are also health reasons. “I understand that a girl who is not circumcised would not have clean genitals after she urinates and sometimes that can cause cervical cancer,” he says. “The religious view is, if you are not circumcised you won’t have clean genitals after urinating. If then you pray, your prayer won’t be legal.”

[..]

Religion was the reason cited by 55 per cent of mothers surveyed for circumcising their daughters, although none could identify parts of the Koran or the Prophet Muhammad’s guidance, called Hadith, where it is stipulated. While 32 per cent nominated health and hygiene as the perceived benefit, 9 per cent said they did not know what benefit it would bring.

Masitoh Chusnan, from the women’s wing of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia’s two biggest Muslim organizations, says circumcision of girls is regarded in Islam as an honorable practice.

“The Hadith did not say it’s obligatory, but it is recommended to have it done,” she says. “There is the Prophet’s words saying girls must be circumcised, but you should not cut too much.”

[..] current practice shows no signs of a decline in popularity, with more than 90 per cent of mothers questioned supporting the practice continuing.

And one in five mothers even suggested social sanctions should be imposed on girls who were uncircumcised.

The above dove-tails perfectly with what the religious arguments above – it is not an obligation, but an “honourable practice”. But far disturbing still are stories about the hundreds, if not thousands of Christian women from Indonesia’s Molucca Islands who were forcibly converted to Islam and in the process forcibly circumcised:

Christian woman recalls horror of forced conversion to Islam

Posted on May 1, 2001 | by Brittany Jarvis

AMBON, Indonesia (BP)–”My scar healed quite fast, but the sad, humiliated feeling stayed. I feel like I’m no longer complete, both as a person and a woman.”

That is the testimony of Christina Sagat, a 32-year-old Christian from Kasiui, Indonesia, who was forcibly circumcised by her Muslim neighbors. Unfortunately, as traumatic as her story sounds, hundreds of women have endured similar oppression.

“My niece, Cecilia, who at that time was eight months pregnant, was also circumcised,” Sagat said. “My mother, who was in her 70s, was also circumcised. Teenagers, and even infants, were circumcised. I don’t understand these people.”

[..]

More details on whats been happening on Ambon Island and other Molucca Islands, where thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced here. Hundreds of Christian families have been given the choice – convert or die. The women and children are then separated from the men and “converted”. Men and children are circumcised using the same dirty razor blade and then told to go and wash in the sea to disinfect the heavily bleeding wounds. Many of the ‘holy warriors’ perpetrating these crimes are members of Laskar Jihad, a Salafi-Jihadist group whose leader studied in Pakistan and considers himself more “fundamentalist” than Osama bin Laden, who he says is ignorant of true Islam. That doesn’t seem to stop his followers from wearing Osama t-shirts though. Laskar Jihad has between 3000 and 10000 fighters, who have been receiving training and assistance from the Indonesian Army. Strange that having studying in some madrassah in Pakistan this douche-bag has decided that circumcising women should go hand-in-hand with their conversion to Islam. This may be a somewhat extreme example, but it goes to show that there is at least a significant number of Muslims, even in Pakistan and Indonesia, who believe in the religious justification for FGM as a very Islamic practice indeed.

Kizzie says resents that when a Muslim kills a Christian man, in a post-9/11 world, his religion is invariably mentioned, whereas when, say, a Christian kills a Christian religion is not mentioned. Well, Kizzie, in a post-9/11 world Westerners have begun to take greater note of the fact that many Muslims use religion as justification for murder. Perhaps if the common occurence was that a Muslim and a Christian fought to the death over a donkey in the marketplace there would be no need to mention religion. However when the Muslim shouts ‘God is Great!’ in the act of murder and kills in the process of waging Jihad on the Kuffar, there most certainly is reason to mention his religion, because clearly religion was at least in part a motivating factor. Likewise when a child’s sexual organs are disfigured because it is supposed to be a “noble” act in the eyes of Allah, you bet we are going to take notice of the religious motivation behind the act. Because take away the religious justification, without a doubt the incidence of the practice would decrease and be easier to eradicate, when only the cultural motivations are left, no longer multiplied by the powerful force of religiosity.

Kizzie concludes by voicing her resentment that FGM has begun to be viewed in a religious rather than a cultural context and continues to assert the mutual exclusivity between the description of the practice of FGM as either cultural or religious. But clearly, as shown above, it is a cultural practice, that many Muslims view as religious and observe for religious reasons, thus it is a religious Islamic practice also. There is clear justification for that viewpoint in Islamic scripture, with there merely being a disagreement between various schools and scholars on whether the practice is obligatory or merely a “noble” or “honorable” act. And only in recent years certain Islamic scholars, mainly from Egypt, have began voicing an opinion that all forms of FGM are haram, ie forbidden, but this view goes against 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence.

Ultimately, according to some Islamic schools FGM is obligatory (a minority position), and according to most others it is “noble”/”honourable” or sunna (tradition), which clearly serves as a powerful motivator based on religion. In both cases it can thus be described as an Islamic practice and will continue to be so until Muslims stop practicing it, Skeikhs stop using the Sunnah to justify it and its practitioners stop citing the Islamic religion as a motivating factor.

UPDATE (10/6): Kizzie has posted a reply. Not much there I disagree with, really, and don’t have time to comment further just now. Perhaps on Tuesday. Thank you for the debate, Kizzie.

Here’s Alamgir Hussain of IslamWatch getting to the point on Islamist secessionism:

The experts quickly disregard the most obvious fact that whenever Muslims form a sizable population in a region of an otherwise non-Muslim country, they start a secessionist campaign for independence of that region to form an Islamic state. That’s also exactly what is happening in Kashmir, Chechnya, Mindanao and Kosovo and now in Thai South. The unsuspecting experts naively buy Muslims unsubstantiated allegations of oppression and marginalization as the underlying and justifiable cause for the insurgency. Despite decades of such incidences, the experts, consciously or unconsciously, ignore the most obvious fact that the people involved in these insurgencies are the Muslims and their common binding factor is Islam.

And Olivier Guitta getting to the point on the veil debate, in the Weekly Standard (h/t LGF):

For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab. This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque.

But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups.

[..] millions of women are forced to wear the veil for fear of physical retribution. And the fear is well founded. According to Cheryl Benard of RAND, every year hundreds of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone are killed, have acid thrown in their faces, or are otherwise maimed by male fanatics.

Given the Islamists’ ferocious determination on this point, it is worth asking: Why exactly is covering the female so important to them? The obvious answer is that it is a means of social control.

[..] Commenting recently on the veil and the Islamists’ strategy, Professor Iqbal Al-Gharbi, from the famous Islamic Zaytouna University in Tunis, explained: “The veil is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the veil, there is the regressive interpretation of the sharia [Koranic law]. There are the three essential inequalities which define this interpretation: inequality between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, between free man and slave.”

“Islam is the solution” is the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, the real solution to the veil problem in Europe and in modern countries elsewhere is the defeat of radical Islam, making possible the peaceful integration of normal Muslims into Western societies on Western terms.

Michael Young gets to the point of what Syria and Iran are trying to achieve in Lebanon:

The ideal Syrian and Iranian scheme looks like this. Syria’s condition to allow a return to stability is that the March 14 majority agree to give up on the Hariri tribunal. Once that happens, Emile Lahoud’s presence would no longer be as essential, so there might be room for a presidential election. The winning candidate would be neither from March 8 nor March 14. And it would not be Michel Aoun, whom Syria and Hizbullah don’t trust, even as they ransack his vanity. The likely victor could be someone like Riyad Salameh, the Central Bank governor, or the army commander, General Michel Suleiman, who can play both sides. At the same time, a new government would be formed in such a way as to grant the opposition veto power, if not more. The Iranian and Syrian goal would be to have in hand the means to block any Lebanese effort to consolidate Resolution 1701 through further normalization of the situation in South Lebanon. This would be the culmination of a downward spiral for anti-Syrian forces, and with Hizbullah as their enforcer, Syria and Iran could systematically dismantle the remaining outposts of Lebanese autonomy.

In a FrontPage interview Gregory M. Davis, author of the “Religion of Peace?” and producer of the feature documentary “Islam: What the West Needs to Know”, getting to the point on why the West does not understand the threat it is facing:

FP: How would you interpret the West’s illusions about Islam?

Davis: The West is guilty of the ages-old error of projection, of imposing its own ideas, beliefs, and aspirations onto the other guy. When Westerners approach Islam, they imagine that it is a religion like others that they are familiar with – like, say, Christianity. They see Islam as basically another item on the religious menu available in an integrated world. What they fail to understand, however, is that Islam is decidedly outside the Western tradition and therefore Western assumptions are inapt when assessing it.

In “Islam: What the West Needs to Know”, we talk with Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Bat Ye’or, Serge Trifkovic, and Abdullah Al-Araby, who all affirm that the most important aspect of Islam not understood in the West is that Islam is less a personal faith than a social and political plan for organizing humanity – really, a system of government.

It was only in the West that religious power developed in parallel with secular power but distinct from it thanks largely to the doctrinal distinction in Christianity between giving ‘to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God’s what is God’s.’ While religious and secular power have certainly commingled at times in the West, it is fully possible for the two to coexist separately. But in Islam, there has never been a distinction between religion and political power; the two are inseparably united. An Islamic society is invariably a theocracy ruled by Sharia (Islamic) law, which is understood as God’s prescribed legal code for all mankind, based on the commandments of the Koran and the precedents set by Muhammad.

There can be no question of the type of government in Islam because Islam is a government, which Allah through Muhammad has ordained to comprehend the entire earth. Once the political nature of Islam and its universal pretensions are grasped, it is not hard to see why Muslims and Muslim societies are so hostile toward the rest of the world.

Speaking of documentaries, this has been around for several weeks, but if you haven’t already, do watch Glenn Beck’s to the point special “Exposed: The Extremist agenda” that aired on CNN, on Novenmbr 15th, I believe.

And if any of these points seem a bit long winded, here’s the point of my post “Why the Muslim world was left behind” in pictorial form.

Seeing as its official disaster day today and you are probably tired of hearing about it by now, here’s another one you may not have heard of – a “mud volcano” in Indonesia:

A WALL of mud that has destroyed the homes of 13,000 Indonesian villagers following a gas-well eruption looks set to cost the Australian joint venture partner involved in the project about $24.3million.

And the bills may continue to mount for oil and gas giant Santos, with some geological experts warning the most severe gas-well “blowout” in history may never be properly plugged.

As some estimates put at $2 billion the total potential cost of the eruption, which in May began burying eight villages on East Java at Sidoarjo, Santos’s joint venture partner Lapindo Brantas has been accused of attempting to avoid liability.

[..] Lapindo has agreed to pay each displaced household an annual rent allowance of $US276 for two years.

The disaster unfolded on May 29 when drilling 3km underground caused a build-up of water pressure that forced mud and silt to the surface.

Between 100 and 140 cubic metres a day has been burying nearby villages in a 400ha radius.

[..] Costs associated with the disaster are estimated at about $US160 million, and rising.

Actually that figure of 100-140 cubic metres, quoted in The Australian, is missing some zeroes. About 3, in fact:

Every day, up to 150,000 cubic metres of mud continues to spurt from a large crater, 200 metres from the Banjar Panji exploratory well, defying all efforts by engineers and geologists to stop it.

Santos have also revised their cost estimate to $A43.7 million.

The amount of mud flowing out daily is enough to cover a football field about 75 feet deep and has extended over an area about the size of Monacco. At first dykes were built to try and contain the flow:

Eleven miles of dykes are being built by 1,500 soldiers and labourers around the clock to contain the growing catastrophe, in which 11,000 people have lost their homes or been forced to evacuate.

However the dykes have already been breached in several places and with the arrival of the wet season this month are not expected to hold. And there dont seem to be many options as to what can be done with the relentless flow:

The government recently gave permission to dump the mud into the sea via a local river. But experts question whether that will get rid of the sludge faster than it gushes from the hole, and environmentalists are opposing the plan as a threat to the marine ecosystem.

The mud, which stands as deep as 16 feet in places, has submerged or washed into houses in four villages. At least 20 factories and many acres of rice fields and prawn farms have been destroyed.

The sludge has repeatedly washed over a major road, closing it for weeks at a time, and now it is threatening a rail line in the industrial area just outside Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city.

[..] After two unsuccessful attempts to stop the flow, Lapindo is digging three shafts alongside the hole, hoping to kill the eruption by pumping in concrete.

Experts are skeptical that will work.

“If they manage to stop it, it will be the first time in the world that it has been done,” said geologist Arif Munsyawar.

This Aussie lot seem rather more hopeful:

Australian company Century Resources has been engaged to drill one of two relief wells at the site, and it is hoped the operation will stop the mudflow “around” the end of the calendar year.

Century Resources have some serious competition however:

They’ve come from far and wide, hundreds of self-proclaimed mystics, psychics and spiritual leaders. But no-one has yet been able to stop the mud.

[..] Hasan, a local businessman and chief of the threatened Kedung Bendo village, is offering a new house worth 50 million rupiah ($A7,200) to anyone who can stop it.

He says the contest – suspended temporarily during the current Islamic holy month of Ramadan – has attracted 300 people who have come to pray, mumble incantations and even cast live goats and chickens into the bubbling expanse of mud.

[..] “I’m going to give a house as a reward to anyone who can stop the mud.

“Plenty of people have come, they did their rituals, gave offerings – goats, a bull’s head, chickens and cows – but the mud didn’t stop.”

I vote this guy gets the free house anyway:

One letter has even come from Essex, England, with advice for the chief.

“I have read about your village and want to help and claim the 50 million rupiah reward when the hole is plugged,” the letter said.

“You, chief, take a stick of your choosing and tie (the enclosed) bandana on the end of it, then stick it in the hole … and leave it there to stop the leak.”

But a sceptical Hasan says the area is too dangerous to get close enough to throw the bandana in, let alone “stick it in”.

Power to the sceptic. I agree, nothing less than a bull’s head will do. Are Century Resources eligible for the house also? I am sure they can organise an offering of some sort to go with their services.

Contrary to what some hippies have been ranting the mud is not actually toxic. In fact it can even be used a water feature in your living room:

“We went to one house where a man took us into his living room. He opened the cupboard beneath the television, and there were seeps erupting,” Mazzini said after a recent trip.

Sweet, when you get bored of watching TV you can watch the volcano underneath it for a while. Making sure your inhale.

So where did all this mud come from? There are five possibilities:

The mudflow is thought to have been caused by one of four possibilities: gas-charged fluids breaching coral mounds on top of the limestone rock; a magmatic reaction generating gas; a new-born mud volcano; or hydrothermal fluids migrating from neighbouring areas.

I know I said five. Here’s our sceptic Hasan with the fifth:

That is why village chief Hasan is prepared to put his faith in a shaman, who under a trance said the mud flow was caused by the ghost of a slain unionist.

Hah, its a Revolutionary Volcano!

Here are some more photos:

The mud flow in Sidoarjo started in May and continues to spread

A villager steps on a bamboo raft at a submerged village due to mud spewing from an exploratory gas drilling accident, in Sidoarjo-East Java 18 October 2006. An Indonesian company will pay more than 100 million USD this year towards cleaning up a mudspill that erupted at one of its gas wells in East Java nearly five months ago.

On the first day of Eid in Sidoarjo, Indonesia, Muslims cross earth dykes used to contain massive flows of steaming mud released from a crack in the ground during gas drilling.

A resident evacuates belongings from her home flooded by mud flow in Porong, East Java, Indonesia

See the Hot Mud Flow blog for more images and maps (Indonesian).

UPDATE: A positive spin?

The government’s Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology has recommended that the mud be deposited in the delta area of the Porong river, which flows near the disaster zone, senior agency official Agus Kristijono said.

[..] Kristijono said the agency had surveyed around 2,600 hectares of the delta and considered it the best area for the mud to be deposited.

“The mud, depending on its compactness, could form around 30 hectares of surface area in a year,” he told AFP.

“We estimate that 45 million cubic metres of mud would take five to 10 years to cover the entire area of 2,600 hectares.

[..] Kristijono said the mud would be confined in pools, which would in time form mudflats where mangroves could grow after the land stabilised.

(I ran out of time yesterday, so posting part 3 today)

Ever so lightly.

Firstly a look at developments in some “moderate” Muslim nations.

Nibras Kazimi looks at Turkey in the NY Sun: “Return of the Gazi”

Psychoanalyzing the Turkish nation is a favorite pastime for many analysts since Turkey’s recurring identity crisis gives ample material for all sorts of conjecture: Is it trying to be Western? Is Turkey trying to rediscover its eastern roots? Is it getting more comfortable with its Ottoman inheritance?

This has been going on for decades, with some haughty Westerners finding it bemusing that a Muslim nation is trying so hard to put on sophisticated – read European – airs. Well, now Turkey’s existentialism is no longer eccentrically cutesy. Whichever way Turkey lands could potentially determine the outcome of a war between two civilizations – the West and Islam.

The acquittal of writer Elif Shafak is a small but positive sign. (Washington Post editorial).

But the overall trend is looking bleaker. Leon de Winter has more Turkey questions at his Free West blog (a recent discovery for me and highly recommended):

This is a decisive moment for Turkey. Either it recognises Greek aspirations and reneges on its promise to protect the Turks of northern Cyprus in order to be able to join the European Union, and at the same time pursues a peaceful solution for the Kurdish problem in its eastern provinces. Or it stands firm on Cyprus, bringing its candidacy for European Union membership crashing to a halt, and at the same time focuses on expansion into Iraqi Kurdistan in a kind of Molotov-Ribbentrop deal with Iran.

Which is to be? Can Turkey survive as a nation if it gives up on its fear of the irridentist Greeks? Can it continue in its present form if it accedes to Kurdish demands for autonomy? Could Turkey ever turn itself into a docile federal democracy without risking a further loss of territory? Spain, Portugal and even Greece were transformed under the protective mantle of the European Union. Could it happen in Turkey, or will the Turks turn their backs on the West and allow themselves to become drawn into the approaching Middle East conflagration?

Maznah Mohamad in Lebanon’s Daily Star on the Malaysian crossroads: “Malaysia’s unsettling turn toward Islam”

Malaysian society is now gripped by a fundamental question: Is the country, which is more than half Muslim, an Islamic state? In practice, various religious and ethnic groups give Malaysia a distinctly multi-cultural character. But the Malaysian Constitution provides room for arguments on both sides of the question, and the relatively secular status quo is facing a serious challenge.

Olivier Guitta in the Weekly Standard on developments in Morocco: “The Islamization of Morocco” Extremism is displacing moderation in the North African kingdom.

A LITTLE MORE THAN three years ago, Morocco experienced Islamic terrorism firsthand. On May 16, 2003, Casablanca was hit with four simultaneous attacks that left 45 people dead and hundreds injured. The attacks were perpetrated by Moroccan citizens who were members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (known by its French acronym, GICM).

Needless to say, the kingdom was stunned that its sons had turned violently against it. Now, the dismantling of another extensive Islamist cell in Morocco confirms that extremism is spreading inside what has long been viewed as one of the most moderate countries in the Arab world.

In a series of arrests over the past month, Moroccan authorities have seized 59 people and over 30 kilograms of TNT, more than was used in the 2003 attacks but of the same type. The alleged targets were political and military leaders, along with locations in Marrakesh, Morocco’s premier tourist destination, the air force base of Salé, and the U.S. embassy in Rabat.

But the most troubling aspect of this cell by far is its membership. While the suicide bombers of 2003 came from the slums around Casa blanca, the newly arrested suspects are from all walks of life. They include five members of the military, three policemen, a Domestic Security officer, two imams, and four society women. Two of these women, the wives of Royal Air Morocco pilots, had volunteered for suicide missions in Iraq and Israel.

Now a brief look at Thailand.

David Warren’s analysis on the coup, on RealClearPolitics.com: “Thai Democracy”

There have been at least a dozen military coups, since Thailand first embarked on the “path to democracy” before the Second World War. After each comes the ritual of a gleaming new constitution. The good news is the coups get farther and farther apart. The bad is that the most recent coup — bloodless and fairly happy — happened this week.

The coups are justified because each elected government proves corrupt and incompetent. (So why don’t we have coups in Canada?) The Thai military goes in with a new broom, or at least a new set of officers from the last time, and usually enjoys, as now, great initial popularity. This wears thin fairly quickly, setting the stage for a new round of public celebration when democracy is restored. That sours, in turn, when the party that wins the election errs on the side of demagoguery, featherbeds to an unconscionable degree, and creates the conditions for another coup.

This pattern is not always strictly followed. When a mistake is made, in the established etiquette, a lot of people get killed. In one case, two generations ago, the army and navy found themselves on opposite sides of both the political spectrum, and Wireless Road. The resulting shoot-out made it perhaps Thailand’s least happy coup.

[..]

The situation is now complicated because in the far south of Thailand, adjoining Malaysia, where the Muslims are concentrated in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, another wave of revolution has come. Southern Thailand is now one of the many bloody fronts in the international “terror war”, where thousands have been killed, both by Islamofascist jihadis, and in police operations. The Western media wrongly describe this as a “separatist movement”, whenas the revolutionists are demanding the same imposition of the Shariah as they do in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Israel, France, and England.

[..]

The outgoing government was elected by “conservative” rural Thailand over the visible sneering of “liberal” Bangkok. The ex-prime minister was using brutal and insensitive methods to discourage the spread of “Islamism” in the south. Bangkok disapproved that sort of thing. The urbane people of that once-fair city, like the urbane people over here, have no alternative in mind, nor any willingness to confront the question. But neither will it go away.

Democracy is a beautiful flower in any garden. But in Thailand as elsewhere it does not survive, unless the beneficiaries have the guts to do the necessarily unpleasant weeding.

For insightful background info on the events in Thailand, have a read of Zachary Abuza’s piece in The National Interest: “A Coup in the Making? Expert in Bangkok says Autumn had been Dawning on the Thai Patriarch”

Now some famous last words. Last Monday, the day before the coup, Thaksin Shinawatra, (then) prime minister of Thailand, was answering some questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (via Carolyn O’Hara of Foreign Policy):

Q: In your vision of a Thai democracy, who provides the check and balances on the military and security class?

THAKSIN: The role of military is [decreasing] in terms of involving in politics. So we don’t need a check and balance system on that part anymore because…this is [the] 21st century…[t]he memory is still about the 20th century. This is 21st. I think things [are] changing a lot. Thank you.

Obviously!

Guess this country.

It’s army, under the command of the ruling regime, is engaging in a campaign of genocide against racial and religious minorities, often beheading, raping and torturing its victims, but it is not the Sudan.

Children as young as 12 are being forcefully recruited into this army, but this is not the Taliban in Afghanistan or “Saddam’s Lion Cubs” in Hussein’s Iraq.

The military regime is busily building bunkers in a strongpoint defence matrix, allegedly in anticipation of a US attack, but it is not Iran.

This country is removing any crosses or other Christian symbols from public spaces, bit it is not Algeria.

This country has the world’s largest narcotics-trafficking militia operating on its territory, but it is not Columbia.

This country has a health crisis worse than the poorest areas of Africa, with more children dying before age 5 in some areas, than the Congo, but it is not Afghanistan.

This country has recently agreed to allow Russia to share in exploitation of its oil fields, in exchange for weapons shipments, but it is not Venezuela.

This country, while shunned by the West, counts China as its main political and economic ally, but it is not North Korea.

While the world’s attention is focused on several noisy ideologically and religiously driven nutjob regimes, one old backyard hussler is slowly but surely losing touch with reality, seemingly by way of good old fashioned drug-induced psychosis. That twitchy little battler is Burma.

“The side road the soldiers have blocked off is 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the city of Pyinmana in the central Burmese plains. The jungle stretches for more than 400 kilometers (249 miles), like some vast, green carpet, toward a line of jagged peaks on the distant horizon marking the Golden Triangle bordering Laos and Thailand. The only destination worth seeing in this rural stretch of Burma is its tropical rainforest research institute.

But Burma’s ruling generals recently declared the region a restricted military zone, making the trip to the institute off-limits to outsiders. The Junta is having its new capital built somewhere at the end of this 20-foot-wide highway. The central government’s officials were already required to move there last November.

..

Burma’s leadership apparently plans to barricade itself into its remote new capital, from which it expects to control the country in the future. The nearest major city, Mandalay, is a 250-kilometer (155-mile) journey away on a deeply potholed road, and the trip to Rangoon takes about eight hours. Naypyidaw, or “Royal Country,” is the name Than Shwe, the junta’s 73-year-old leader, has personally selected for his government’s secretive new headquarters. According to official instructions to be followed in the event of a foreign attack, “Naypyidaw is our war bunker, where we will wait, during an American attack, until the Chinese hurry to our aid.”

Sounds like a brilliant plan. Although, considering the pace of events in Iraq and throwing in some generous estimates for the actions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Trans-dnestr my estimated date of invasion is somewhere around hmmm.. how does 2090 sound? By which date you won’t need to wait long for China to help, because you’ll be a part of it.

So what the hell is going here? Well, I did mention drug-induced psychosis, didn’t I?

“Beheadings by troops are common. So too are beatings, the use of forced labour and rape. Growing use of amphetamines among Burma’s 400,000-strong army is fuelling this violence.

A narcotics expert from the Australian National University who is based in Thailand, David Matheson, said researchers had concluded that many troops went into battle high on amphetamines. “When they come across dead Burmese soldiers, they find methamphetamine tablets on most of them if not all of them, particularly in the Shan state.”

The brutality of the attacks is evident in video footage, taken by members of the evangelical Christian missionary group the Free Burma Rangers, of the burning of villages. The video shows young men, armed with AK-47 rifles, setting fire to bamboo homes as residents flee in terror.”

Lets put two and 400,000 together here. “Most if not all” of the military is marching to the rhythm of an ICE binge, and its leadership is barricading itself away from the world in the middle of the jungle, declaring their new place of residence “Royal County”. Add the delusion and paranoia up with the erratic acts of violence, and this is obviously one hell of a tweak out. And it is sure to be followed by one hell of a come down, yet oddly enough “Royal County” just doesn’t sound like a rehab centre to me.

But I propose a solution. Send in the bicycles. That should keep them busy for at least a couple of decades. Heck, maybe after that we can arrange for them to sort through the world’s garbage for recycling, and get on top of that global warming biznit too. Hey, its far more likely to have an effect than another UN Resolution.

Over at Claudia Rosett’s blog, where she points out the lunacy of Kofi Annan’s announcement that Ahmadinejad has “reaffirmed” Resolution 1701, in light of Hezbollah being Iran’s proxy army and all, a commenter asked:

The sooner Annan’s out, the better. So, who are the candidates to replace him? Who do you predict will eventually take his place?

Good question and one to which Greg Sheridan believes he may have an answer. It will certainly be a relief to see Annan go. But what are the prospects for any improvement?

The Secretary-General’s term ends at the end of this year. It is normally rotated between the major regions of the world in turn. This time it is Asia’s turn. Convention has it that it can’t be someone from a country which is a permanent member of the Security Council, so that rules out China.

And probably China would effectively veto a Japanese. The leading Indian candidate, Deputy Secretary General, Shashi Tharoor, suffers, like Kofi Annan himself, from being an absolute UN insider. [TOD: recent interview with Shashi Tharoor here]

The best Asian candidate is the South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, who visited Australia last week. I had a discussion with him and found him to be formidably smart and on the ball.

[..]

While a charming diplomat in his own right, Ban would not have Kofi Annan’s charisma. That is a huge plus. He is organisationally hard-headed in the Korean way. That is a huge plus. He is not instinctively anti-American and would be much less likely than Annan has been to drift off into third world banalities.

That is also a huge plus.

Alexander Downer thinks Ban the most formidable of the Asians so far in the mix. Downer should back his Korean counterpart.

Ban certainly gets my vote.

The Australian position should be simple: Ban’s the Man.

Here’s hoping. South Korea recently announced that it will not run for a nonpermanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, so that Ban Ki-moon can run for the Secretary-General post.

There are however other candidates. One apparent hopeful is the deputy prime minister of Thailand Surakiat Sathianthai, who claims his candidacy is backed by 10 countries in SE Asia.
Former U.N. disarmament chief Jayantha Dhanapala from Sri Lanka is another possibility, according to a Security Council straw poll in July.

Time magazine has been engaging in some speculation of their own:

“Other possible candidates are former Malaysian Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim and two contenders to be the first female secretary-general: Singapore Ambassador to Washington Chan Heng Chee – said to be a US favourite – and New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark”

Anwar Ibrahim or Helen Clark would be a bigger disaster than Annan. Fortunately neither is a real contender. Also fortunately Chan Heng Chee and Ban Ki-moon are.

UPDATE: We have a new contender! (hat tip EU Referendum)

This article by Maloy Krishna Dhar, the former Indian Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) Joint Director, gives a fascinating insight into how the global Jihad is looking from India’s pespective. Maloy Krishna Dhar is also the author of “Open Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled” and “Mission to Pakistan: An Intelligence Agent in Pakistan”.

Here’s an extract:

..

However, India has not been able to cope with the threat from regional and global Islamist jihadist forces. This multidimensional cancer travels through the arterial system of the country along the scarred tissues of fractures and carcinogenic gaps left by the neurosis of pre and post independence philisophy and the unassimilated edges of history.

The Pakistani establishment and the ISI have deftly exploited these gaps and unmatched edges in collaboration with the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh and the Islamic tanzeems patronised by them.

Journeying through the Afghan killing fields, tangoing with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and resurgent global Islamist thrusts, Pakistan has emerged as the geopolitical epicentre of Islamist jihad with a binary centre in Bangladesh.

Extension of Pakistan’s proxy war through jihadist tanzeem tools to all conceivable corners of India is a part of its strategic war plan — mostly carried out through subversive terrorist attacks and sometimes with a Kargil-type forward thrust.

It is, nonetheless, part of a planned war.

India’s internal security and the seams of national unity and solidarity have been repeatedly threatened by jihadist operations carried out by ISI and DGFI-aided Pakistani and Bangladeshi tanzeems. This war, under the facet of peace, is about to invade every Indian home.

On a scale of one to ten, the jihadi tanzeems and handful Indian collaborators score success in about eight-and-a-half cases. The Indian intelligence agencies and state police forces can claim success in about two-and-a-half or three cases. On the scale of the law of averages, this is classified as failure.

Why do we fail in over 85 per cent of cases? We fail because:

With minor exceptions the political class — the presumed custodian, driver and preserver of the Constitutional Democratic Republic — fails to recognise that India exist beyond ballot boxes.

On either side of the imaginary ’secular fence’, there is an abominable amnesia about the historical roots of the jihadist thrust against India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other global jihadist tanzeems. They communalise or trivialise the grave threat to national security, unity and integrity by throwing mud on each other with squinted eyes on the bulge of the ballot box.

The threat is not about ’secularism’ or ‘Hindu Muslim divide’; this is all about an undeclared multidimensional war involving India (irrespective of community and religion), Pakistan and Bangladesh, overlorded by International Islamic Jihadist Inc, represented by Al Qaeda al Sulbah and its global franchisees.

Political parties on either side of the imaginary ’secular fence’ (like the Tropic of Cancer that divides India almost into two equal halves) should understand that even before partition of the subcontinent certain Islamist leaders had targeted Indian Muslims for carving out a Muslim First Nation, which they called Pakistan. The descendants of same Hulagu (grandson of Genghis Khan, who ruled over much of southwest Asia) conquistadors are targeting to divide India on communal lines, while the gullible vote-blinded politicians still cling to their ballot boxes and keep dividing the country from behind their respective Tropic of Cancer. They fail to recognise that the cancer is real, and not an imaginary geographical line.

..

Here’s also an excellent interview with Maloy Krishna Dhar after the Mumbai bombing last month.

“It’s a battle of ideas as much as it is a military battle.”
—General John Abizaid, January 29, 2004

So apparently we are losing the battle of ideas in the war against radical Islam. You know, the one that can’t be won with tanks and bombs and all that. And the problem goes well beyond PR disasters resulting from military misadventure, perceived or otherwise.

How can this be, you may ask? You’d think that after winning the Cold War this would be one aspect of the war the West would have down pat, right? After all, the same battle-hardened “ideas” that won then have been set to work now, so victory is in the bag.

Newt Gingrich, for one, certainly seems to think so:

“On the Sunday talk shows, former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been insisting that the White House pursue Mideast regime change and “use the kind of strategy we used” in Eastern Europe to encourage democratic revolts in terrorist states.”

The strategy used in Eastern Europe was to deploy behind enemy lines the implicitly secular ideas of individual freedom and democracy against the ideas totalitarianism and oppression. Lo-and-behold, the ultra-secular populace more than gladly capitulated and liberation was imminant. And if freedom can be measured by the number of nightclubs and shopping malls per capita, Moscow and Prague are poised to become freer than Paris and London by the end of the decade.

Apparently this is the strategy that Mr Gingrich has in mind for the White House. Ditto for President Bush, although her prefers to use subtler terms like “promoting freedom and democracy”. Thats President Bush who betrayed his absolute ignorance of Islam, let alone radical Islamism he is supposedly leading the free world against when, two month before the invasion of Iraq, he expressed curious surprise after members of the Iraqi opposition mentioned there being two kinds of Islam – Sunni and Shiite. This conversation allegedly took place when President Bush invited the Iraqis to watch the Superbowl with him, perhaps eager to show off one of the fruits of freedom and democracy and thus whet the appetite of the Iraqis for the coming liberation. (source: former US Diplomat Peter Galbraith in “Iraq: The Reckoning” documentary, nov 2005 )

Besides the folly of equating the ideological battleground of secular Eastern Europe, prostate beneath the boot of atheistic Communism, with that of the religiously conservative Islamic Middle East (and Islam in the rest of the world, for that matter), even one that is in parts beneath the boot of secular military dictarship, there are two problem with simply reapplying the Cold War approach. Both of them stem from the forces of globalisation that have reshaped the world since the Cold War ended. The first is the demographic Achilles heel the West has created for itself through irresponsible mass immigration. The second is the exponential multiplication of ideological battle fronts brought about by advances in communications technology.

As Mark Steyn wrote last week:

Our enemies understand “why we fight” and where the fight is. They know that in the greater scheme of things the mosques of Jakarta and Amsterdam and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., are more important territory than the Sunni Triangle. The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it’s not enough, it never has been, and it never will be.

That is the territory for which the battle of ideas, the famed battle “for hearts and minds” should now be waged in the West, as well as the Middle East – mosques, schools, universities, libraries, internet forums, the blogosphere and all other forms of electronic and print media. That is the battle being lost, that must be won and which has now drawn all of us in. Yet far beyond not “understanding “why we fight”, most people in the West are oblivious to the fact that there is a fight on in the first place.

Here’s a couple of examples from the weekend’s press that serve as both metaphor and example of why we may be losing.

Exhibit A: In Germany a group of Muslims have launched a new dawah initiative – a mosque on wheels. Presumably taking advantage of the current heat wave, the truck rolls around the cities of Germany, reeling kids in by playing the ice-cream truck melody familiar to children everywhere. “Would you like a Koran with that?” Ok, I am joking about the ice-cream. But the rest is true.
The “Islamobil” is touring Germany, with the goal of “informing Germans about Islam”, explains one of the tour organisers, Gülüzar Keskin. Well, it sure beats door knocking. One of the first things that comes to mind is what the response may be if a Christiamobil attempted a loop of Cairo, Tehran or Islamabad, but I won’t dwell on the obvious.

The tour has apparently going very well:

‘Many visitors have already asked us if we have addresses for mosques nearby, so that they can get more information about Islam.” Keskin said.

I am all for interfaith and intercultural dialogue and Westerners learning about Islam. But that is different from open-ended religious campaigning. A measure of a society’s instinct for cultural self-preservation must surely be also applied.

Exhibit B: Channel 4 is soon screening a program titled a “A Beginner’s Guide to Islam.” Fair enough, you may think, any education enquiry into one of the world’s great religions is welcome just about now. But wait, here are the details:

Sir Bob Geldof’s daughter, Peaches Geldof is to present a new TV series about religion for Channel 4.

As part of ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Islam’ Peaches will be moving in with a devout Muslim girl from Morocco and her family.

The house [sic] long programme intends to find out what the Islamic world makes of someone like mardy Peaches and disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation.

During the show Peaches will be witnessing the sacrificing of a sheep and attend a ‘taking the veil’ party…rocking.

A programme spokeswoman said to MSN: “The contributors will come face to face with three of the worlds most talked about religions, exploring their unfamiliar rituals and testing regimes.”

Other programmes in the series will feature Paul Nichols taking a look at Hinduism in India and comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli trying to find out what Scientology really is all about.

More details here:

Geldof sets out to prove that Islam does not deserve its “bad reputation”.

The hour-long program will find out “what the Islamic world makes of this precocious London party girl”, according to Channel 4.

17 year old Peaches Geldof (full name Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof), whom I wish the best of luck in her experience, is pictured top right.

Now, I understand that “the battle of ideas” is the furthest thing from the minds of the shows producers and that for them it is all about the battle of the ratings. Channel 4 is not the global Embassy of Western Secularism (perhaps that honour can be reserved for the culturally sensitive organisers of Kabul’s first fashion show). My point is rather that their attitudes and the recruitment of Peaches Geldof to present a “Beginner’s guide to Islam”, is representative of a misguided and naive championining of certain aspects of Western culture, beneath the banner of “freedom”, that have become the de facto frontline deployment in the aforementioned battle of ideas. A battle, that, as mentioned previously, has been globalised into a universality. ( Meaning that, by the way, whether they like it or not, Channel 4 ARE involved in the battle. And in that context, can you think of anything more idiotic than sending an over-sexualised teenager in a mini-skirt, accompanies by soft porn promo shots to “learn [and thus teach her viewers] about Islam”? Is the cult of youth, beauty and ratings obsession of the West so far gone that it is completely oblivious to the moral irresponsibility of this undertaking?) The aspects I am talking about are liberated sexuallity, adolescent self-determination, the cult of youth etc. – all of which, in this context, are examples of a degraded understanding of a great and noble idea of individual freedom.

The show will present yet another opportunity for Muslims to point out the moral depravity of the West, the lack of modesty in Western women, to lecture about parental irresponsibility, chastity, alcohol and drug use etc etc. Is it not mundanely predictable yet, “what the Islamic world will make of this precocious London party girl”? Is there a better vehicle for dawah? (Well, yes, probably the Islamobil, you might think). Peaches may be a perfectly innocent and intelligent young woman, but what matters here is comparative perception and reputation, which may or or may not have been caricatured by the gossip press.

Of course this would be at least in part a result of a deliberate baiting of controversy, a sure ratings winner. Perhaps for their next sensation they can send Tommy Lee to do a semester at Al-Azhar University. That sure fire hit would really be a service to Western civilisation.

In the Cold War years youth, beauty and mini-skirts may have screamed “freedom” to repressed masses stuck in the bland greyness of Communist totalitarianism. But for most of the deeply conservative and often bitterly alienated Muslims that radical Islam targets for its recruitment these same things only scream about Western depravity and godlessness. For many Muslims rather than being the personafication of freedom, Peaches will be a mini-skirt inch away from being a sign of the pending apocalypse.

A “Beginner’s Guide” may well do with dictionary and for that purpose I recommend Wolfgang Bruno’s Islamic Dictionary for Infidels”, which should perhaps be required reading for all our esteemed leaders:

Andrew G. Bostom, author of “The Legacy of Jihad,” notes that President Bush has repeatedly stressed the paramount importance of promoting freedom in the Middle East. However, Bostom points out that Hurriyya, the Arabic for “freedom,” and the uniquely Western concept of freedom “are completely at odds.” Hurriyya – “freedom” – is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master,” expressed it -“perfect slavery” under the will of Allah. Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Encyclopedia of Islam, maintains that:

“…there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West.”

Meanwhile, the German- Syrian scholar Bassam Tibi, a Muslim reformist, is warning the West against wishful thinking in its “dialogue” with Muslims. “The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other.”

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(The whole essay is highly recommended reading)

It is wishful thinking indeed that Cold War strategies can work against an enemy ideologically alien to the previous one, on a ubiquitously redefined battlefield. And what could possibly examplify the “gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists” better than Peaches Geldof being sent to “find out what the Islamic world makes of her” and “disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation”.

We are taking damage in this “battle of ideas” and the source of the damage is friendly fire.

Do read Hugh Fitzgerald’s empassioned and brilliant essay, inspired by Richard Cohen’s column on Tuesday, obscenely titled “Hunker Down With History”.
Hugh starts off taking modern journalism to task, but achieves so much more. I am not going to quote any of it here. Read the whole thing. It is a history lesson the West urgently needs.

Another fantastic history lesson for Cohen was written by Israel Matzav here. Here’s a part of it, but again, it is well worth reading in full.

The term “Palestina” was invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian. The Romans wanted to rename Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) after the Philistines, the longtime enemy of the Jews. Hadrian believed that by renaming the Jewish homeland after the Jews’ archenemy, he would be able to forever break the bond between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

But even the name of the Philistines, from which the term “Palestine” was adopted, is completely alien to the Land of Israel.

The name Philistines in Hebrew is plishtim, which comes from the Hebrew verb polshim (foreign invaders).
Arabs only came to the Land of Israel in large numbers after the Jews returned in the 20th century and started to rebuild the nation, thereby creating economic and employment opportunities for Arab immigrants.

Prior to 1870, when Jews started to return to the Holy Land in large numbers, there were fewer than 100,000 Arabs living in what is today the State of Israel – including Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District).

This small number of nomadic, tribal Arabs who lived in the Holy Land before the modern Jewish return never considered themselves to be a separate people or nation.

The Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel were not “Palestinians” but Arabs – part of a huge Arab people with 22 very large independent nations that control one-ninth of the land mass on the planet Earth.

In an interview given by Zuhair Mohsen to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 1977, Mr. Mohsen explains the origin of the ‘Palestinians’:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

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Israel is anything but a mistake, and history shows the justice of Israel’s cause. With the exception of the period between the two Jewish Temples between roughly 586 and 516 BCE, Jews ruled this land continuously from approximately 1300 BCE until 68 CE. Since that time, no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capitol, and no other people has called this land its home. It is not history that is Israel’s enemy but the false narrative of history presented to the World by the Arab Muslims. It is not history that is Israel’s enemy, but Arab attempts to wipe out the vestiges of that history, as if destroying all of the Temple artifacts on the Temple Mount will confirm that it was ‘always’ Haram al-Sharif, that two Jewish Temples never stood there and that Jesus never argued with money changers there.

This country was deserted swampland for much of the period between 68 CE and the beginning of the return of larger numbers of Jews started in 1870. Israel’s interior areas were mainly a desert-like wasteland while her coast was a malaria-ridden swamp. But Jews always prayed three times a day that God should gather them in from their diaspora and bring them back to this country. Many Jews attempted to come here on their own. Jews were a majority of the population of Jerusalem in the 19th century, and settled many of the cities of the Galilee as well. In 1844 – when the Land of Israel was controlled by the Turkish Muslims – the Turkish census counted 7,120 Jews and 5,000 Muslims living in Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem was already a Jewish city 160 years ago. Until an Arab massacre wiped them out in 1929, there was even a large Jewish community in Hebron, which included a major Talmudical academy, which was transplanted from the village of Slobodka in Lithuania.

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Don’t forget to read Hugh Fitzgerald’s piece now.