Tag Archives: Muslim

The Psychological Scar of the Six Day War

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Current Events, History, War

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Six Day War Western Wall

“After years of rhetorical attacks on Israel, Nasser demanded the removal of UN peacekeepers in the Sinai and then blockaded the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. [In the summer of 1967] Israel responded with an overwhelming preemptive attack that destroyed the entire Egyptian air force within two hours. When Jordan, Iraq, and Syria joined the war against Israel, their air forces were also wiped out that same afternoon. In the next few days Israel captured all of the Sinai, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, while crushing the forces of the frontline Arab states.

It was a psychological turning point in the history of the modern Middle East. The speed and decisiveness of the Israeli victory in the Six Day War humiliated many Muslims who had believed until then that God favored their cause. They had lost not only their armies and their territories but also faith in their leaders, in their countries, and in themselves. The profound appeal of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt and elsewhere was born in this shocking debacle. A newly strident voice was heard in the mosques; the voice said that they had been defeated by a force far larger than the tiny country of Israel. God had turned against the Muslims. The only way back to Him was to return to the pure religion. The voice answered despair with a simple formulation: Islam is the solution.

There was in this equation the tacit understanding that God sided with the Jews. Until the end of World War II, there was little precedent in Islam for the anti-Semitism that was now warping the politics and society of the region. Jews had lived safely — although submissively — under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio… infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice. After the war Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

The founding of the state of Israel and its startling rise to military dominance unsettled the Arab identity. In the low condition the Arabs found themselves in, they looked upon Israel and recalled the time when the Prophet Mohammed had subjugated the Jews of Medina. They thought about the great wave of Muslim expansion at the point of Arab spears and swords, and they were humbled by the contrast of their proud martial past and their miserable present. History was reversing itself; the Arabs were as fractious and disorganized and marginal as they had been in jahiliyya times. Even the Jews dominated them. The voice in the mosque said that the Arabs had let go of the one weapon that gave them real power: faith. Restore the fervor and purity of the religion that had made the Arabs great, and God would once again take their side.”

 __________

Pulled from the second chapter of Lawrence Wright’s 2006 book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. The above photo shows Motta Gur’s paratroopers, the first wave of Israeli troops to reach Jerusalem’s Old City during the conflict.

I apologize for the brief hiatus. I’ve been busy in my time off, reading (Pale Fire, the news) and adding to an already massive drafts folder. Your regular programming will resume this week.

You can watch Wright discuss the subjects of Tower with the University of California’s Harry Kreisler below. It’s lulling to listen to such mellowed, Peter Sagal-type tones describe the world’s most notorious barbarians.

Then read on:

Lawrence Wright

Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Muslim Brotherhood

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in History

≈ Comments Off on Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Muslim Brotherhood

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

“In ‘53, we really wanted to compromise with the Muslim Brotherhood, if they were willing to be reasonable.

I met the head of the Muslim Brotherhood and he sat with me and made his requests. What did he request? The first thing he asked for was to make wearing a hijab mandatory in Egypt, and demand that every woman walking in the street wear a tarha (scarf). Every woman walking [someone in audience yells ‘Let him wear it!’, crowd erupts].

And I told him that if I make that a law, they will say that we have returned to the days of Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who forbade women from walking during the day and only allowed walking at night, and my opinion is that every person in his own house decides for himself the rules.

And he replied, ‘No, as the leader, you are responsible.’ I told him, ‘Sir, you have a daughter in the Cairo school of medicine, and she’s not wearing a tarha. Why didn’t you make her wear a tarha?’

I continued, ‘If you… [crowd’s cheering interrupts] if you are unable to make one girl, who is your daughter, wear the tarha, how can you tell me to put a tarha on 10 million women myself?'”

__________

Gamal Abdel Nasser, saying the now nearly unsayable in a 1966 speech in Cairo.

As Menachem Begin once observed, “Civilization is intermittent.”

Read on:

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Inside the Mind of Muhammad Atta

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in History, Religion, War

≈ Comments Off on Inside the Mind of Muhammad Atta

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

9:11 Security Camera

“What the [9/11 hijacking] recruits tended to have in common — besides their urbanity, their cosmopolitan backgrounds, their education, their facility with languages, and their computer skills — was displacement. Most who joined the jihad did so in a country other than the one in which they were reared… The imams naturally responded to the alienation and anger that prompted these men to find a spiritual home. A disproportionate number of new mosques in immigrant communities had been financed by Saudi Arabia and staffed by Wahhabi fundamentalists, many of whom were preaching the glories of jihad. […]

Although they would often be accused of being a fascistic cult, the resentment that burned inside the al-Quds mosque, where Atta and his friends gathered, had not been honed into a keen political agenda. But like the Nazis, who were born in the shame of defeat, the radical Islamists shared a fanatical determination to get on top of history after being underfoot for so many generations.

Although Atta had only vaguely socialist ideas of government, he and his circle filled up the disavowed political space that the Nazis left behind. One of Atta’s friends, Munir al-Motassadeq, referred to Hitler as ‘a good man.’ Atta himself often said that the Jews controlled the media, banks, newspapers, and politics from their world headquarters in New York City; moreover, he was convinced that the Jews had planned the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya as a way of holding back Islam. He believed that Monica Lewinsky was a Jewish agent sent to undermine Clinton, who had become too sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

The extreme rigidity of character that everyone detected in Atta was a Nazi trait, and no doubt it was reinforced in him by the need to resist the lure of this generous city. The young urban planner must have admired the cleanliness and efficiency of Hamburg, which was so much the opposite of the Cairo where he had grown up. But the odious qualities that Sayyid Qutb [the founder of modern Islamism] had detected in America — its materialism, its licentiousness, its spiritual falsity — were also spectacularly on display in Hamburg, with its clanging casinos, prostitutes in shop windows, and magnificent, empty cathedrals…

Atta was a perfectionist; in his work he was a skilled but not creative draftsman. Physically, there was a feminine quality to his bearing: He was ‘elegant’ and ‘delicate,’ so that his sexual orientation — however unexpressed — was difficult to read…

On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque. It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation Grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged, and by filling out his last testament during the attack he was offering his life in response.

Although the sentiments in the will represent the tenets of his community of faith, Atta constantly demonstrated an aversion to women, who in his mind were like Jews in their powerfulness and corruption. The will states: ‘No pregnant woman or disbelievers should walk in my funeral or ever visit my grave. No woman should ask forgiveness of me. Those who will wash my body should wear gloves so that they do not touch my genitals.’ The anger that this statement directs at women and its horror of sexual contact invites the thought that Atta’s turn to terror had as much to do with his own conflicted sexuality as it did with the clash of civilizations.”

__________

An excerpt from Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

If you’re yet to see it, spend two hours watching the new HBO documentary Going Clear, based on Wright’s book of the same title. It’s an eerie, engrossing, and absolutely scandalizing look at the Church of Scientology and its hucksterish origins and practices.

Wright is interviewed throughout the film. His speech is always clear, never hyperbolic, and tuned to challenge viewers’ easy assumptions and reflexive piety. His command of the material shows through. I was impressed and liked the guy, so I decided to read his book on 9/11 — and I encourage you to do the same. It reveals the origins of not only that day — the most important day of any of our lifetimes — but also of the kind of fiendish, extremist worldview (what Martin Amis once called “the dependent mind”) that we’re now confronting in nearly every country on earth. It’s a stranger and even less coherent creation story than you’d expect.

Read on:

Lawrence Wright

A Global Attractor for Psychopaths

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Current Events, Freedom

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

12 Dead In French Magazine Shooting

“Murderous and self-sanctifying, radical Islam has become a global attractor for psychopaths. It has never been embarrassed to proclaim its list of hatreds: education, tolerance, plurality, pleasure and, above all, freedom of expression — the freedom that underpins all others.

Even more important than the abstractions are the people that jihadists hate and have killed: children, schoolgirls, gays, women, atheists, non-Muslims, and many, many Muslims. To that list we must now add the brave and lively staff of Charlie Hebdo, who hoped to face down hatred with laughter. The slaughter in Paris is a tragedy for the open society.

On a dark night for mental freedom, a few fragile points of light: the calm, determined crowds gathered in cities across France; the hope that the general revulsion at these murders might have a unifying effect; the fact that a cult rooted in hate is a frail thing and cannot last; the fact that the psychopaths are vastly outnumbered.”

__________

Ian McEwan’s blog post following the Charlie Hebdo attack. These remarks echo the prophetic words of McEwan’s best friend, Martin Amis, who in 2006 said, to much controversy, “Islamism will become a sink for every wannabe Wahabi, every Walter Mitty of murder, every functioning schizophrenic, every rampant anti-Semite… There is a rage in Islam which has been building for the past century which is hoping to rebuild its superiority through violence.”

Watch McEwan reflect on the attack and its wider significance below.

An Open Letter to Brandeis University

10 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in Freedom, Original

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Dear Brandeis University,

As one of the now thousands of voices to pipe up in this discussion, I want to express support for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and condemn the recent attempts to minimize such a towering and indispensable figure. The choice to revoke Ali’s honorary degree in Social Justice is not simply an appalling precedent to set in regards to academic free speech; it is a capitulation to the false and pernicious belief that in a free and multi-cultural society, any group may immunize itself from offense. In yielding to a 6,000-signature petition, you rob many more thousands of the opportunity to engage in a much-needed dialogue about Islam and women. The decision to bow to the atavistic urges of those few who would prefer to plug their ears and hum only affirms the ludicrous idea that feelings about what is most important in our lives may replace the adult imperative to think.

It is worth recollecting a pertinent anecdote:

In the days following Dr. Johnson’s compilation and publication of the first English dictionary, socialites around London were eager to fete the now famous lexicographer. There is an accompanying story from this period – probably too good to be true – which describes how, at a dinner party, a group of distinguished women approached their guest of honor. “Dr. Johnson,” said the women, “we would like to congratulate you for not including any profane words in your dictionary.” Johnson, ever tactful, replied, “Ladies, I congratulate you for being able to look them up.”

This rejoinder reveals much about the roots of the gag-reflex — this instinct to suppress or silence, even if it means going fishing for stray garbage in an ocean of words. There will always be some people who positively want to be offended. It is an easy impulse to understand. Offense-taking is not just a way to shut up ideological adversaries, and thus painlessly shirk the burden to support your views; it is also a way to exhibit faux moral superiority. Yes, I am so pure that I won’t even go there.

And several centuries later, those pious few now have troves much larger than Dr. Johnson’s dictionary to rifle through, as a few keystrokes can unfurl a million Google results of interviews, books, articles, and essays which may then be conveniently quoted out of context and used to suppress provocative discourse. Anyone can do this: unlike argumentation, it takes no skill. In fact, Brandeis University, it is precisely what I set out to do as I glanced over your register of vaunted honorary degree recipients, looking for names to smear. I had neither the time nor attention to delve deeper into more of these luminaries, though two in particular immediately caught my eye.

The first is Tony Kushner, an immensely talented writer who has produced several second-rate movies and one of the best plays of the past half-century. He is also a figure who has repeatedly sneered at the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, treating as risible an idea that many modern Jews see as sacrosanct. Surely if any ethnic or religious group deserves protection from the barbs of hateful speech, it is the Jews. Yet despite some mild protest, Kushner was (rightly) awarded his honorary degree, using the moment to express solidarity with the Jewish people, support for Israel’s right to existence, and regret that his criticisms were “grossly mischaracterized.” Thus, from the depths of a contentious argument arose a platform for clarification and compromise. This is the First Amendment at work.

The second name is Leon Wieseltier, a critic and writer I have not read extensively but follow (and not just because his ice-white hair, like Graydon Carter’s, has something of the appearance of a fright wig). Wieseltier has lampooned the persecution of the Christian Messiah, joking that the solemn anniversary Good Friday should be called “Excellent Friday”. Did a single Christian raise a placard or write a petition to stop your University from conferring on him an honorary degree? No, and presumably because it should be clear that recognition of a public figure does not equal an endorsement of every single thing he or she has ever said. If some minorities cannot assimilate this simple truth, that’s too bad. But the way to teach them that one man’s dogma is another man’s doggerel is not to capitulate to a tiny group’s preemptive demands.

Beyond their obvious parallels, the cases of Kushner and Wieseltier are informative because, despite their considerable esteem, Ali surpasses them in dignity and significance in current affairs. She is an icon to millions, including me. Israel has never oppressed Kushner; Christians have never persecuted Wieseltier. But from her birthplace in Somalia to her adopted country the Netherlands and current home in the United States, the forces of radical Islam have followed Ali and tormented her all along the way. As a victim of forced marriage and genital mutilation, and later a target of numerous death threats, she has the right to criticize radical Islam. This right is not hers because of this harrowing personal experience, nor is it because she is a woman or former Muslim or Fellow of Harvard’s Kennedy School. It is granted her by our First Amendment, and guaranteed by those heirs of Madison who believe one citizen should not arbitrarily supersede another’s freedom of expression.

Ultimately, the central, unmentioned irony at the heart of this entire affair is the very name of your University. Surely you are not unaware of the immortal decision rendered by Justice Brandeis in his decision in Whitney v. California (1927), where he stressed that contentious disputes were the beating heart of the American political system.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. […] They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.

So what happened to our priorities? In the battle to produce a public discourse worth having, we must categorically affirm that not only will truth set us free, but only freedom will set each of us on the way toward finding truth.

__________

Additional reading:

  • Brandeis’s official statement on the choice to revoke the honor
  • Aayan Hirsi Ali’s response to Brandeis
  • The editors of Tablet magazine jointly condemn the Brandeis leadership
  • William Kristol’s powerful defense of Ali
  • A previous post on Justice Brandeis’s concurrence in Whitney v. California

On Life with a Death Sentence: Reflections on 25 Years Since the Salman Rushdie Fatwa

13 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Freedom, Literature, Original, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Salman Rushdie Fatwa

On February 14th, 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwā against the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie, in retaliation for Rushdie’s allegedly blasphemous book The Satanic Verses. Stripped of context, what this event signified was the theocratic leader of a foreign country openly offering money for the murder of an author living 3,000 miles away, as punishment for the crime of writing a novel.

But with that declaration, the distance between London and Tehran took on darkly allegorical shades, too. In this twisted reworking of the Athens-Jerusalem paradigm, forces of barbarism and fanaticism around the globe were quick to riot against Rushdie, burning copies of his book and effigies of him. Judging by sales, a majority of these rioters had not read the novel, and a large majority of that majority probably couldn’t have read it if they’d tried. Nevertheless, Rushdie immediately went into hiding as Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, was stabbed to death, and Ettore Captiolo, its Italian translator, was gravely wounded. Rushdie’s wife Marianne Wiggins would later recall that in just the first three months after the fatwā, the couple moved 56 times.

In 1998, the newly inaugurated Iranian President Mohammad Khatami revoked the fatwā. That decade, which was in certain ways a prelude to the events of 2001, had begun with one of the most momentous events in modern literary history. A field of battle had been cleared, and down its center a line was drawn. On one side, a culture that sections off certain sacrosanct ideas, censoring them from inquiries and perceived insults; on the other side, a culture that categorically affirms no individual can be killed for what he or she says or writes.

Yusuf Islam

Below are two striking personifications of this split. First, Yusuf Islam’s (née Cat Stevens) response to the fatwā. Second is Rushdie’s response, 20 years later, to Islam’s (the musician) take. While short, their responses are enormously suggestive about where ethical and free people must stand in this ongoing struggle for the freedom of expression.

On February 21, 1989, Yusuf Islam was asked by a student at Kingston University about whether the fatwā against Rushdie was Quranically justified. He replied, “[Rushdie] must be killed. The Qur’an makes it clear. If someone defames the prophet, then he must die.”


Two months later, Islam was a panelist on the BBC program Hypotheticals, which was moderated by Geoffrey Robertson. There the two men exchanged the following words:

Robertson: You think that this man deserves to die?
Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes.
Robertson: Would you give him shelter?
Islam: Yes, I’d try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.
Robertson: Would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Islam: I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing; but actually, no, if it were just an effigy I don’t think I’d be that moved to go there.

Salman Rushdie

Two decades after these remarks, Salman Rushdie, now out of hiding and promoting his memoir about those harrowing days, sat for an interview about about Yusuf Islam and the fatwā with George Stroumboulopoulos.

Stroumboulopoulos: The “Rally for Sanity” just happened, with Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, and Yusuf Islam performed… he kind of laid it on you during the fatwā. How did you feel about that?

Rushdie: Not good. Not good. Actually, you know, he’s dropped the ‘Islam’ now for mysterious reasons. Yes now he’s just ‘Yusuf,’ like Cher or Madonna, except with a very big beard.

No, but I actually think it was a mistake to have invited him, and I called up Jon Stewart and we had a couple of conversations, and I think that, by the end of it, he was pretty clear that is was probably a misstep.*

Because he’s is not a good guy. It may be that he once sang “Peace Train” – and there was a point when I was a college student when I had a copy of Tea for the Tillerman – but he hasn’t been Cat Stevens for a long time. He’s a different guy now.

Stroumboulopoulos: Are you a different guy from the guy who wrote that book?

Rushdie: I’m older. But I’m the same writer. You know, I feel very proud of that book. And I think one of the great things about the time having passed, is that now people can read The Satanic Verses as a novel… And so now some people like it, some people don’t like it, but that’s the ordinary life of a book.

Stroumboulopoulos: Is there any fear in you that now you’re going to reprint and relive that stuff?

Rushdie: No. I think we have to stop thinking like that. That’s pussy thinking.

*In 2012, Stewart commented on Rushdie’s allegations, saying, “I wouldn’t have done [the bit], I don’t think. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have done it. Because that to me is a deal breaker. Death for free speech is a deal breaker.”

__________

For more on this subject, take a look at two recent works by Rushdie: Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002 and Joseph Anton: A Memoir.

Salman Rushdie at 9/11 Memorial

The great voice on this subject, as with so many other topics, was Christopher Hitchens’s.

Dennis Perrin, a friend and protégé of the Hitch, recounts a moment in 1991 when the two men were conversing in a D.C. pub and Cat Stevens’s “Moonshadow” began to waft from the jukebox:

Hitch stops talking. His face tightens…

“No,” he said, shaking his head, exhaling Rothman smoke. “No–get rid of that!”

Bartender asks, “Excuse me?”

“Get rid”–gesturing to the music in the air–“of that.”

“Can’t. Someone played that song.”

“Well, fuck it then.”

Don’t know if Hitch is serious. Yes, his anger about the fatwā is real and understandable. And the fact that the former Cat Stevens, Yusef Islam [sp], endorsed the mullahs’ death sentence clearly enraged him. But getting shitty over “Moonshadow”?

“You know,” I say, “Yusef Islam [sp] renounced everything about his past. He hates Cat Stevens more than you do. He gave away or destroyed all his gold records. If you really want to show your disgust for him, embrace Cat Stevens. Play his stuff loud and often. Whistle ‘Peace Train’ or ‘Oh Very Young’ when you pass the local mosque.”

Hitch listens, head down, fresh Rothman lit.

“No. Never. Fuck them both.”

In one of Hitchens’s smoothest rhetorical flourishes, he riffed on this issue as a guest on Question Time in 2007. His argument is a full-throated defense of not only Rushdie, but absolute free expression and the value of our language. (London Mayor Boris Johnson’s more comical take is also worth a listen.)