Commentary on the Politics, History and Culture of the Middle East and Central Asia, by Brian Ulrich
Thursday, March 31, 2011
MLB 2011 Predictions
NL East
Philadelphia Atlanta (Wild Card) Florida New York Washington
There is a case to be made for Atlanta winning this division, but the Phillies have proven they can overcome the type of adversity people are expecting, and the stamina and professionalism of their pitching staff will overcome a weaker offense. Atlanta, however, will win the wild card.
NL Central
Milwaukee Cincinnati Chicago St. Louis Houston Pittsburgh
Milwaukee has finally put some starters alongside a great offense. I'm concerned about the bullpen, but this is a better team than won the 2008 Wild Card. I'm expecting sophomore slumps from Cincinnati's pitching staff. If everything on their own team happens like the Cubs hope it will, they will win this division as they did two years ago, but I'm guessing that won't happen until next year.
NL West
San Francisco Colorado San Diego Los Angeles Arizona
The Giants are developing a strong young offense to produce runs for a pitching staff that equals or surpasses the Phillies'. Given that, I can see them not just winning the division, but am picking them to return to the World Series as NL champions.
AL East
Boston Tampa Bay New York Toronto Baltimore
Even if Boston were to suffer the same level of injury horror they did last year, Crawford and Gonzalez will make up for it. This team will win the World Series. The Rays still have parts to plug in, which will keep them ahead of the aging but still dangerous Yankees.
AL Central
Chicago Minnesota (Wild Card) Detroit Kansas City Cleveland
The White Sox have put together complete packages on both offense and at the plate, and represent Boston's biggest competition for the pennant. Minnesota is, as usual, stronger than people think. What pushes me into picking them for the Wild Card is that with the unbalanced schedule, improvements in Toronto and Baltimore will hold back Tampa Bay and potentially the Yankees.
AL West
Texas Oakland Los Angeles Seattle
Oakland is following the San Francisco blueprint, but isn't quite there yet. I'm not fully sold on Texas's pitching staff, but it got them by last year, and they can prop it up through trades.
"Mahmood al-Yousif reportedly tweeted 'police here for me' early on March 29 in a post that has since been deleted from his profile on the popular information-sharing website (see hashtag on arrest). Yousif's brother and son followed up by tweeting a confirmation of the arrest.
"Yousif runs several important websites in Bahrain, a small but strategic Persian Gulf country that has seen mass protests against the ruling monarchy in recent months as part of a wave of unrest in the region.
"Among them is the antisectarian website Just Bahraini, which campaigns for Shi'a and Sunnis to overcome their differences. He blogs at Mahmood's Den, a website that also serves as a larger blogger and information portal for Bahrainis."
"The protests, which began on March 15, have turned deadly, with at least 15 people killed in clashes between demonstrators and security forces. Activiststs and human rights organisations put the figure higher, with Amnesty International claiming 55 had been killed.
"In Tafas, south of the capital Damascus, angry residents set ablaze a police station and the local headquarters of the Baath party, which has ruled Syria single-handedly for close to half a century.
"The residents had gathered for the burial of three demonstrators who had been shot dead by security forces in rallies on Friday.
"In Daraa, a tribal town that has emerged as the symbol of the Syrian protests, some 300 shirtless young men climbed on the rubble of a statue of Hafez al-Assad, the late Syrian president, shouting anti-regime slogans, witnesses said...
"In the northern city of Latakia, "armed men" on rooftops fired at passers-by, a Syrian official said, without disclosing whether there had been any casualties."
"In recent years, King Abdullah has taken measures, such as challenging the rulings of judges, sacking prominent religious figures from their official posts, and calling for greater oversight of the judicial system, to check the scholars' power and reverse the post-1979 religiopolitical compact. But amid the current crisis, the reconfiguration of the Saudi-Wahhabi relationship has been put on hold. The clergy came out in opposition to planned protests on March 11, declaring them un-Islamic. A group of top official clerics issued a statement several days beforehand asserting that 'demonstrations are forbidden in this country' and that 'reform and advice should not be via demonstrations and ways that provoke strife and division, this is what the religious scholars of this country in the past and now have forbidden and warned against.' It was a powerful show of support for the ruling family. And they are poised to be richly rewarded.
"A significant part of the domestic aid program outlined last Friday will be directed toward the kingdom's religious establishment. Millions of dollars will be poured into the coffers of the country's religious police, an organization that has been beleaguered recently by domestic criticism. The regime also suggested that criticism of the religious establishment will no longer be tolerated, reversing a trend in recent years toward more open public discourse on the role of religion and religious values in Saudi society. It is also noteworthy that while some unofficial clergy, such as Salman al-Awda, have taken to calling for political reform; the official religious establishment has continued to insist on the legitimacy of the existing political order."
Today an international coalition began attacking military forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar al-Qadhafi, with the official aim of protecting civilians in rebel-held areas of the country, especially the major city of Benghazi. The Obama administration is working hard to ensure that this is not perceived as an American operation. I believe this scenario is correct:
"Perhaps the Obama administration has cleverly figured out a way to bring about the neoisolationist fantasy of the 1990s: making the rest of the world shoulder the load of global policeman. Many of the critiques of U.S. military intervention over the past twenty years have been critiques of U.S. involvement, not military intervention, per se. The cases in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and so on were deemed not to be in our interest. Perhaps they required military intervention, but let someone else bear the costs.
"The Bush 41 and Clinton administrations tried this, but were never able to get the rest of the world to handle matters satisfactorily. The United States was 'indispensable,' Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright concluded. If we did not lead and shoulder the leader's load it would not get done, whatever it was that needed doing (the East Timor exception that proved the rule notwithstanding).
"In Libya, the Obama administration followed the old Bush-Clinton playbook, but stuck with it much longer. For weeks, nothing much happened. Hawks bemoaned the fecklessness. Doves praised the 'strategic reticence.' And Qaddafi steadily slaughtered the rebels.
"Finally, the French and British couldn't take it anymore and, just before the rebels couldn't take it anymore, forced through the Chapter VII UNSCR that made military intervention imminent."
This fits with Obama's usual modus operandi, which centers around patience and sticking to a strategy past the point where everyone else is a nervous wreck clamoring for action, as well as his public statements and what appears to be actually unfolding in the conflict zone. The United States has been involved in missile warfare to degrade Qadhafi's air defense capabilities, but the French are leading publicly and actually flying the bombing runs into Libya. Whether the domestic and international perceptions are what Obama hopes they will be remains to be seen.
Regardless of the allied leadership configuration, however, I have concerns about where this is headed. The textbook successful no-fly zone, in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990's, depended on the group we were protecting having ground forces who could defend a perimeter such that the U.S. and Co. really only had to worry about the Iraqi air force. This is not the case in Libya, which is why we also have the "no drive" zone.
Another difference, however, is that unlike the Kurds the Libyan rebels are not interested in just maintaining autonomy, but want to topple Qadhafi. The international community has just offered to supply an air force allowing them to do so. What happens, however, if the civil war in Libya becomes a stalemate? This whole operation reminds me of Operation Deny Flight, which led after two years to a wholesale aerial bombardment of Bosnian Serb targets. If this conflict drags on, I expect the alliance currently enforcing UN Resolution 1973 to determine that eliminating Qadhafi is better than a commitment of resources with no end in sight.
Then, too, there is the aftermath. The ad hoc organization of the rebels does not seem to provide a clear, nationally recognized leadership which could take over if Qadhafi falls. We should even keep in the mind the possibility that civil war could continue among different factions, with the country possibly even splitting into Tripolitanian and Cyrenaican, or western and eastern, factions fighting for control of the oil in and around the Gulf of Sirte. It is possible the coalition could pull out once the threat of Qadhafi's massacres is removed, but that would defy history and certainly leave a sour taste in mouths in the participating countries.
I am not opposed to a mission to stop massacres from happening. I am, however, concerned about the future direction these events could take. "Mission creep" seems not just a possibility, but a certainty unless the rebels quickly regroup and finish off the regime, and even then, if the country collapses, former colonial powers are not the ideal choices to manage the aftermath. This could indeed be the dawn of an odyssey on which none want to embark.
I had been dubious about the significance of the protests in Yemen, but escalations over the past month are proving me wrong. Nir Rosen chronicles their development since the fall of Mubarak, and predicts that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih will be the next to go:
"The role of independent youth was a new phenomenon which had gained a crucial fillip from Tunisia and Egypt. 'We’ve never had real street mobilizations,' Yemeni political scientist Abdulghani al Iryani told me, 'Tunisia and Egypt were massively significant. Before Tunisia the opposition had a demonstration of 200. After Tunisia they came in the thousands. After Egypt it became an avalanche. There is a new appreciation of collective power. What the formal political establishment could not do, to bring the people together, the youth protest has succeeded in doing...'
"The Yemeni regime responded like Arab dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere. But the people’s fear was gone, and the regime’s days were numbered...
"The demonstrations continued to grow forcing the establishment opposition parties to take a more aggressive stance against the regime and leading to defections of major tribal leaders. Taghir, change, became the semi-official name for the demonstrator’s camp, and even al Jazeera referred to it as such.
"Taking advantage of the lack of any strong U.S. response to his regime’s abuses and the earthquake in Japan distracting the world’s attention Saleh’s forces increased their violent crackdown over the weekend of the 12th and 13th of March, killing at least seven protestors while injuring hundreds of others. In a pre dawn raid the youth demonstrators camped by Sanaa University were ambushed with live automatic rifle fire, rubber bullets, electrical stun guns, and some form of gas that caused terrible convulsions. The regime also began to expel the few remaining foreign correspondents covering the protests. Obama’s silence on Saleh's escalating attacks on demonstrators and its tacit support for his tactics makes it likely that when Saleh falls the government that succeeds him will be less friendly to the United States. President Salih has offered reforms but as in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya, once the dictator declares war on his own people his days are numbered. The recent Arab revolts have also shown that once a dictator concedes to the demands of the people he is transferring legitimacy to them, and their victory is inevitable. The chants in Yemen are now 'After Qadhafi, oh Ali!'"
"Thousands of Yemenis poured into the capital's al Tagheer Square yesterday to show solidarity to victims of a government assault a day earlier that left at least 50 protesters dead and more than 600 wounded.
"The violence in Sana'a on Friday prompted President Ali Abdullah Saleh to declare a state of emergency after weeks of unrest that have rocked the ruling government despite a raft of reforms and concessions meant to appease the protest movement...
"Despite the emergency decree, which limits public gatherings, about 15,000 teachers joined the protest yesterday in Sana'a after the Joint Meeting Parties, a six-party opposition, called on Yemenis to take to the streets."
The involvement of professional associations was a key factor in both Egypt and Tunisia, and its appearance in Yemen should definitely worry the regime. However, as Barak Barfi notes, Salih still has bases of support, and this could become bloody after the fashion of Libya or Bahrain before all is said and done.
"The Bahraini government yesterday announced it had restored order in the country after Bahraini forces, backed by tanks and helicopters, cleared protestors from the Pearl Roundabout in Manama and elsewhere and imposed a 12-hour, nationwide curfew.
"The country had almost ground to a halt after a month of protests, and reports in recent days suggested demonstrators had begun putting up ad hoc checkpoints as talks between the government and opposition figures failed to get off the ground.
"But the violent crackdown - three protesters and three police were killed and hundreds wounded, security forces were reported to have prevented ambulances from reaching hospitals and opposition leaders were rounded up and arrested - is at best likely only to provide temporary calm."
Troops from several GCC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, entered Bahrain prior to the crackdown. Although they do not seem to have participated directly, their presence may have freed the Bahraini forces from other duties to do the job. It was certainly important as a symbolic move.
"The response of the Bahraini regime has implications far beyond the borders of the tiny island Kingdom -- not only because along with Libya it has turned the hopeful Arab uprisings into something uglier, but because it is unleashing a regionwide resurgence of sectarian Sunni-Shi'a animosity. Regional actors have enthusiastically bought in to the sectarian framing, with Saudi Arabia fanning the flames of sectarian hostility in defense of the Bahraini regime and leading Shia figures rising to the defense of the protestors. The tenor of Sunni-Shi'a relations across the region is suddenly worse than at any time since the frightening days following the spread of the viral video of Sadrists celebrating the execution of Saddam Hussein.
"The sectarian framing in Bahrain is a deliberate regime strategy, not an obvious 'reality.' The Bahraini protest movement, which emerged out of years of online and offline activism and campaigns, explicitly rejected sectarianism and sought to emphasize instead calls for democratic reform and national unity. While a majority of the protestors were Shi'a, like the population of the Kingdom itself, they insisted firmly that they represented the discontent of both Sunnis and Shi'ites, and framed the events as part of the Arab uprisings seen from Tunisia to Libya. Their slogans were about democracy and human rights, not Shi'a particularism, and there is virtually no evidence to support the oft-repeated claim that their efforts were inspired or led by Iran.
"The Bahraini regime responded not only with violent force, but also by encouraging a nasty sectarianism in order to divide the popular movement and to build domestic and regional support for a crackdown."
Recent days have seen Moammar Qadhafi's forces advancing steadily against Libya's rebels and gathering for a final assault on their stronghold in Benghazi. The United Nations Security Council just voted in favor of strong action:
"The United Nations Security Council approved a measure on Thursday authorizing 'all necessary measures' to protect Libyan civilians from harm at the hands of forces loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.
"The measure allows not only a no-fly zone but effectively any measures short of a ground invasion to halt attacks that might result in civilian fatalities. It comes as Colonel Qaddafi warned residents of Benghazi, Libya, the rebel capital, that an attack was imminent and promised lenient treatment for those who offered no resistance.
"'We are coming tonight,' Colonel Qaddafi said. 'You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.'
"With the recent advances made by pro-Qaddafi forces in the east, there was a growing consensus in the Obama administration that imposing a no-fly zone by itself would no longer make much of a difference and that there was a need for more aggressive airstrikes that would make targets of Colonel Qaddafi’s tanks and heavy artillery — an option sometimes referred to as a no-drive zone. The United States or its allies might also send military personnel to advise and train the rebels, an official said."
When Libya's uprising first started, I posted in support of a no-fly zone. Subsequent discussion made me realize that would not work under Libyan conditions the same way it did those in late Ba'athist Iraq. What we have now is what we could easily have been pushed toward then, a full assault on air and ground forces in conjunction with Libyan rebels. In other words, the United States and its allies are about to become a full part of this war.
"The political marginalization of one of Iran’s most prominent politicians, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, took a turn for the worse on March 8, when he was forced to cede his seat as head of the Assembly of Experts, one of the government’s most powerful bodies, to rival Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, a traditionalist cleric.
"Responsibility for Rafsanjani’s turn for the worse lies squarely with the Supreme Leader. While his rivalry with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly must have played a role in stepping down, Rafsanjani has weathered similar attacks before without being defeated. However, Rafsanjani’s loss of the chair of the Assembly of Experts could only have come about if sanctioned by Supreme Leader Khamenei. Ahmadinejad has supporters in the Assembly of Experts, but the man slated to replace Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, is by no means in the Ahmadinejad camp and gained widespread support because he is seen as a moderate. Mahdavi Kani’s nephew is married to the Supreme Leader’s daughter.
"While at present it is impossible to determine with certainty, events in the Assembly of Experts and statements by officials with direct ties to the Supreme Leader indicate that Khamenei may finally have tired of Rafsanjani’s support for Iran’s opposition; he has both expressed his support for the Green movement and also condemned the regime’s actions since 2009. Rafsanjani’s only remaining position, which is as head of the Expediency Council, expires in 2012, leaving him little time to regain his strength before the next opportunity to marginalize him emerges."
According to Iran's constitution, the Assembly of Experts chooses and supervises the Supreme Leader, and Rafsanjani reportedly tried to activate the latter power during the crisis following the 2009 presidential elections, to no avail. I agree with the above analysis that this was orchestrated by Ayatollah Khamene'i. Furthermore, while in 2009 I speculated that Khamene'i was simply riding a wave created by Ahmadinejad and his backing in the IRGC, this is probably the final nail in the coffin in that idea. The two may not always get along, but they have a common interest in augmenting the power of the government bodies they control against the demands of civil society and what's left of an independent mercantile class.
Last night and into this morning, 13 people were killed in violence between Christians and Muslims. The sectarian balance is disputed, with official Coptic sources saying all the dead were Christians, while reports based on official government sources and the list of names claim some of them were Muslims. These clashes spiraled out of tensions over local conflict involving an interfaith love affair which led to the burning of a church. Copts protested for the rebuilding of the church, which the Egyptian government has already agreed to, as well as the failure of security forces to protect them. The violence last night took place near the Muqattam Heights, an impoverished area with a large Christian population concentrated in an area called Manshiyat Naser. Last night's Christian protest was attacked. al-Masry al-Youm claims the attackers were Salafis, but I'm not sure if that means they were theologically salafi or if the paper just uses that to refer to strongly conservative Muslims which you'd find many of in the impoverished neighborhoods around Cairo. One opinion current on Twitter is that the Copts were joined by sympathetic Muslims from their neighborhood, perhaps after the violence started, which might account for some of the confusion on sectarian casualties.
Interlocking with this narrative of sectarian violence, however, is another thread I raised here, and that is the actual role of the military in current events. The military did not act last month on behalf of the people or democratic values, but rather on behalf of stability hoping to maintain as much of the current order as possible. I also mentioned the role they played in attempting to clamp down on the many protests over particular interests which have proliferated since Mubarak's resignation. Here is what Jenna Krajeski found in the neighborhood this morning:
"Several residents I spoke to were adamant that, while thugs looted and burned their homes and cars, the Army had fired on them; they presented bullet casings as evidence, pointing to engraved numbers on the bottom. Their trust in the Army was eroding...
"On the second floor of a concrete building, an eleven-year-old boy was lying in bed, recovering from gunshot wounds to the chest and arm. His family showed us the bullets, also convinced they came from the Army. The boy’s father sat in the living room, smoking cigarettes and picking at shards of a flatbread crumbled on the coffee table. On the wall behind him, a large picture of Jesus divided two colorful landscapes, one a panorama of Upper Egypt and the other a painting of a colonial-style American suburban house, surrounded by a white picket fence."
Two other aspects of this stand as background. One is the military's attack on Coptic monasteries in Wadi Natrun. In addition, a purported state security document indicates that the Mubarak regime played a role in the Alexandria church attack. As with other such files, it was spread over the internet, and its authenticity has been questioned. It did, however, cause a Coptic protest in Tahrir Square several days ago, and confirmed suspicions held by many Egyptians that the government has played a role in keeping a level of insecurity around to serve as justification for its internal security policies.
Regardless of the exact interplay between anti-Christian sentiment on the part of some Muslims and the duplicity of the country's current rulers, today's protest outside the state television station held the military to account. Another protest, however, dominates today's headlines as the famous thugs were back attacking protestors in Tahrir Square. The army then forcibly removed demonstrators from the square, and demonstrators claimed afterward that soldiers had played a role in instigating the clashes with the thugs early.
"A few months ago, there was a big dispute over the construction of an Islamic community center in Murfeesboro, Tennessee. Opponents of the project sued in court, where they actually tried to argue that Islam wasn't a religion, using the kind of language contained in the new Sharia proposal, which suggests that Sharia directs Muslims to overthrow the United States government. One of the people who testified was Frank Gaffney, whose associate, David Yerushalmi, is the author of the new Tennessee bill. The opponents of the Murfeesboro Islamic center argued that the builders had a secret agenda to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in the U.S...
"The law essentially allows Tennessee to have its own counterterrorism policy, empowering the state attorney general to freeze the assets of any organization designated a 'Sharia organization,' much in the same way the federal government goes after the financial transactions of designated terrorist groups...
"So instead of having to put forth their ridiculous arguments before a judge in order to block the construction of Muslim religious buildings, Muslim-haters in Tennessee would simply have to persuade the state attorney general to designate the local congregation a 'Sharia organization' and freeze their assets. No need to get the courts involved when the state can arbitrarily declare you a terrorist for practicing your religion."
Two days ago I argued that some conservative leaders were stoking baseless fears of shari'a in the United States as a stalking horse leading to broader anti-Muslim prejudice. I also pointed out that shari'a is not a cut and dry legal code, but rather a code of life for Muslims, whatever you believe its tenets consist of. Banning shari'a is therefore tantamount to banning Islam. Serwer's post goes on to mention something I did not know, but should have guessed, and which makes this point soundly. Among the targets of the bill's authors are Muslim religious schools operated by the network associated with Fethullah Gulen, the most influential Muslim leader in Turkey, and probably the entire Turkic world. Perhaps also supporting my suggestion that demonization of Islam goes hand in hand with the conspiracy theory which holds that President Obama is a secret Muslim, one conservative activist claims the entire Race to the Top program is to promote these Gulen schools, which are then cast as a catspaw for an Islamist takeover.
I have personal experience of the Gulen Movement, which had an active branch at the University of Wisconsin when I was in graduate school. Even calling them "Islamist" robs the term of most of its meaning. I invite readers to peruse his web site and Twitter feed. Frank Gaffney accuses him "stealth jihad." Gulen addresses jihad here:
"Derived from the root j-h-d, jihad means using all one's strength, as well as moving toward an objective with all one's power and strength and resisting every difficulty. This latter definition of jihad is closer to the religious meaning.
"Jihad gained a special characteristic with the advent of Islam: struggling in the path of God. This is the meaning that usually comes to mind today. Jihad occurs on two fronts: the internal and the external. The internal struggle (the greater jihad) is the effort to attain one's essence; the external struggle (the lesser jihad) is the process of enabling someone else to attain his or her essence. The first is based on overcoming obstacles between oneself and one's essence, and the soul's reaching knowledge, and eventually divine knowledge, divine love, and spiritual bliss. The second is based on removing obstacles between people and faith so that people can choose freely between belief and unbelief. In one respect, jihad is the purpose of our creation and our most important duty. If the opposite were true, God would have sent Prophets with this duty."
Notice how he shifts the idea of the "lesser jihad" almost entirely away from military matters altogether in favor of an idea of "material" struggle, as becomes explicit later. Anyone who lumps him in with al-Qaeda and company is either a deceiver or deceived.
Tennessee's proposed law is a symptom of a cancer eating away at American conservatism, one which preys on fear and ignorance of which they will one day be ashamed to acknowledge.
Undemocratic regimes don't consist of just one powerful person. They exist with the support of certain elements in society that profit from their continuation. Because of this revolutions aren't just protests which depose rulers, but broader social movements by which different social groups try to improve their position, whether economically, politically, or even culturally. Egypt is clearly following this trajectory, as protests since Mubarak's resignation continue to reshape the country.
Perhaps the most significant development for the future of Egyptian society, however, is that noted by Ursula Lindsey
"One of the most interesting (and hard to follow) phenomena of the moment in Egypt is the proliferation of demands for reform at the level of institutions and workplaces. At all sort of different organizations, workers are demanding the resignation of top officials and the institutions of more equitable pay scales.
"I just did a piece looking at this for the radio show The World. One of the people I spoke is my old friend Sabah Hamamou, who is one of the leaders of an effort to reform state newspapers. She and 300 other journalists wrote a letter of apology to readers for Al Ahram's coverage of the protests. The editors refused to print it so they called a press conferences and read it out loud."
"Workers were critical in bringing the reluctant generals to the decision to ask Mubarak to step aside (or force him out, it’s unclear). They also continue to play a role by engaging in strikes since Mubarak’s departure...
"Certain kinds of anti-corruption demands also have a specific working-class component. For example, workers demanded the dismissal of the CEO of the public sector Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra, the largest textile enterprise in Egypt, on the grounds of corruption. And they won this demand after a three-day strike...
"The business cronies of Gamal Mubarak, the son of the former Egyptian president, people like the steel magnate Ahmad Ezz, have been dealt a strong blow. But they will not disappear so easily, and it is very possible to imagine that once 'stability' has been re-established they, or others like them, will return."
At the same time, a counter-revolution is under way:
"A look at the most prominent discourse making the newspapers and airwaves during the last week indicates that the army (or parts of it) and elements of the old regime will resist attempts at meaningful democratic reforms. While paying lip service to the youth, the revolution, and the martyrs, the ubiquitous appeal in all the local media has been to urge Egyptians to get back to work in order to get the economy back on track – as if the economy was ever on track in the first place...
"In the Egyptian context, the counter-revolutionary 'who' is not too difficult to identify: It certainly includes those officers of the despised state security services who fear being eventually brought to trial (however unlikely that scenario is) for their participation in the systematic torture of Egyptians, as well as people in the intelligence service who are loyal to Omar Suleiman. It includes corrupt businessmen who fear future prosecution and forfeiture of their wealth, and high- and mid-level operators of the now-defunct National Democratic Party for whom it would be almost impossible to do a facelift in a new era. It also includes those media executives, editors-in-chief, journalists and pundits who “spun” the most for the Mubarak regime and who are anxious about their own ouster...
"In this counter-revolutionary discourse, Mubarak’s name is being invoked in nostalgic terms, whereas Wael Ghoneim, who emerged as one of the most prominent figures of the revolution, is being written and talked about as a foreign stooge, a member of the Free Masons, and even as a yes-man for the security services...
"The counter- or contra-revolutionary media blitz has been in full swing over the last week. Mona Shazly, whose program 10 pm has a large following, deserves to become an honorary member of the High Army Council for her recent performance when she interviewed three of its generals and only one young activist. She helped paint the military in the best possible light by allowing the generals to repeat the same vapid media catchphrases: 'forgive and forget,' 'we are all one,' and 'Egypt is above all.' It was a tour de force, which suggests that this police state might be able to get away with the same crimes that it has been committing for the last 30 years if public opinion is persuaded to embrace this discourse of forgiveness and the parallel discrediting of continuing revolutionary 'chaos.'"
Implicit in this is the assumption that the Egyptian military concluded that Mubarak was lost, but that his ruling structure as a whole, one from which they benefited, could still be preserved. Recent weeks have seen the army attack protestors. More dramatic, if away from the cameras, was the attack on Coptic desert monasteries which had built walls for their protection in the unstable revolutionary security situation. At issue seems to be the fact they did not seek government permission for this construction, but in practice it looks like the continuation of the Mubarak regime's policies which forbid construction on Christian religious buildings without explicit government permission. A deeper issue is the level of force used, which was clearly excessive and designed to send some sort of message.
"Libya’s very ad hoc rebel movement does not currently appear to possess a clear command and control structure. According to a frontline spokesman, it is currently known as Jaysh-e-Libi al-Hurra (The Army of Free Libyan Forces) and the movement terms itself the 'February 17 Revolution,' denoting the day the uprising began in Benghazi, Libya’s second city and one-time dual capital until the 1960s. Tribes comprising the anti-Qaddafi forces include the Maghrebi, Zwaiye, Zawawi, Faqri, and Gebayli. They insist their fight in Libya is not a civil war but a revolution with the aim of overthrowing Colonel Qaddafi’s nearly 42-year reign and reunifying the country from its current state of bifurcation and fawda (anarchy). The local commander leading the surge against Tripoli’s advances is a defecting brigadier general named Mahdi al-Arabi, who is purportedly a cousin of Colonel Qaddafi. [2]
"Frontline forces, far removed from the intellectual architects of the provisional government being established in Benghazi, espouse no coherent political ideology. When pressed, the fighters profess no vision for the structure of a future state and have difficulty stating goals beyond the ouster of the current regime, other than vaguely stating 'we are fighting for freedom and democracy...
"Libya’s anti-Qaddafi fighters, having control of the roads in virtually all of Cyrenaica, are operating a highly efficient evacuation route for wounded civilians and combatants with the most serious cases being transported across sand blown highways to superior medical facilities in Benghazi.
"The key rebel objective is to consolidate control along the Mediterranean coast along the way to Sirte while coordinating with defecting forces in western Libya’s Tripolitania region in order to eventually mount an assault on Tripoli itself. Many of the fighters are untrained agriculturalists and pastoralists who have volunteered in droves as the movement against Qaddafi’s rule continued to gain momentum."
Is this Mahdi al-Arabi a possible successor to Qadhafi?
Several days ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations released the following video showing demonstrators outside a charity fundraiser by a Muslim group in Yorba Linda, California:
Because of the recent spate of activist video clip manipulations, I held back to see if anyone protested. All I've seen is a statement by Congressman Ed Royce, stating that he was actually at a nearby park, and said of the protesters in the clip: "I disavow those remarks and conduct. It was wrong." He also specifically defended his involvement with the park rally, which was targeted at two keynote speakers, who seem to be the reason it was singled out all along. The more important was Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was at one point one of 170 people named in an attorney's memo as a possible unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and who testified as a character witness in the 1995 trial of Omar Abd al-Rahman, who masterminded that bombing. Although right wing sites frequently assert that he was officially named an unindicted co-conspirator, or even "a co-conspirator of 9/11," I can find no supporting evidence of that and several denials that he was so named. He has apparently refused to condemn Osama bin Laden, but also apparently doubts that Bin Laden perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. As an expert witness in a 2001 trial, he testified that Islam prohibited terrorist activities. He seems to be a theologically conservative religious community activist who believes in conspiracy theories against the U.S. government, and that's about it. In explaining his opposition to Wahhaj, Congressman Royce repeats some of what I mention above as right-wing activist tropes, as he probably got his information from conservative activists in his district.
What I want to focus on about this video, however, is what the protestors are shouting. The "Go back home!" chant and terrorism references are obviously reprehensible to anyone likely to be reading his post, as Muslims have been in the United States since independence, and Founding Fathers explicitly mentioned Islam and Judaism among lists of Christian denominations to which they foresaw extending freedom of worship. More significant Muslim immigration began in the 1920's, and chances are almost all the Muslims pictured were natural born American citizens. Part of what's happening today, however, is that the U.S. is becoming more multicultural, and people who are used to living in a Christian bubble are having that bubble popped.
What mainly interests me is the emphasis on shari'a, which is becoming central to grassroots hostility toward Islam in the United States. Shari'a is usually translated as Islamic law, and is probably best thought of as God's all-encompassing path for how people should live their lives in the world, including not only basic faith and morals, but personal status and criminal law. (The word was used in the 7th century to refer to a path which led to a desert watering hole.) In Sunni shari'a, there have for centuries there have been four recognized schools of thought, as well as a long-standing belief that the use of individual reason was no longer permitted and all Muslims should follow versions of shari'a as codified by these four schools around 900 CE. The consensus on this latter point as been steadily breaking down since the 1800's, though medieval views continue to dominate in the Middle East which is what most Americans think of when they think about Islam.
"Last week, Tennessee state senator Bill Ketron introduced a law that would prosecute any practice of Shariah law -- defined as a 'legal-political-military doctrine' that promotes spread of 'homegrown terrorism' -- as a felony, punishable with a minimum of 15 years of jail.
"In no unclear terms, the law equates the practice of Shariah -- the oft-debated guidelines of the Muslim faith -- with treason. '[K]nowing adherence to Shariah and to foreign Shariah authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government -- with the aim of imposing Shariah on the people of this state.,' it reads...
"Like the Vatican's Code of Cannon Law for Catholics, Shariah, derived from the revelations of the Quran and the life of the Prophet Mohammad and interpreted by various scholars of Islam , offers a nebulous outline on how to practice Islam and adjudicates on matters of faith. Given that it many of the guidelines are highly specific instructions on religious rituals -- for instance, on whether feet must be washed in each pre-prayer ablution -- it is hard to imagine why legislators are so concerned with it.
"On a purely factual level, Shariah law has in fact been used and recognized in U.S. courts. If enforced, a major effect of the laws which include language banning not only the use of Shariah but foreign laws as well, could be that Shariah-compliant marriage contracts and international business contracts are rendered void."
Ahmed does not mention the conservative, highly codified idea of shari'a, but does report on the idea of shari'a as it is lived and advocated in the United States. As she correctly points out, the Tennessee bill bans the practice of Islam, if not belief, and as such is sure to be struck down under the U.S. Constitution's "free exercise" clause. These efforts, however, serve to keep a hostile vision of Islam front and center in the public mind. Part of this may relate to the insecurity felt by many conservative Christians at the bursting of their religiously monolithic bubbles mentioned above, which is also seen in their declining ability to use state power to promote their religion. It is also linked to support for American military ventures in the Middle East, conservative support for Israel, and perhaps in some cases holds shadowy hands with the idea that President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.
Hostility to Islam became unmistakable over the summer, when Rick Lazio made the previously unremarked Park51 community center in lower Manhattan a campaign issue. Those fires were also duplicitously stoked by FOXNews, the leading conservative news outlet, as seen clearly in this memorable Jon Stewart segment. Last month, FOXnews also interviewed Anjem Choudary, a British Muslim cleric who advocates shari'a, presumably the conservative, codified version, in the Unites States. He's British, however, has little American support, and wound up not showing up for the pro-shari'a protest he tried in vain to get together. I can think of no reason to give him a platform save to stoke fear and try to portray a phantom menace as real. And then, what actually happened, was that protestors motivated by Choudary's publicity in the American media, simply harassed a nearby Muslim performing his daily prayers.
Certain politicians and media outlets are using shari'a to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States for use in political grand-standing, as a wedge issue, and perhaps for ratings. As with Congressman Royce, most who partake of this discourse do not harass individual Muslims, or even condone such behavior. A portion of them do, however, and since the entire line of concern is fantasy, those who are stirring the pot bear a moral burden for the social climate they create. And that this is a social climate problem for American Muslims can be seen in the way the spreading of the shari'a meme even co-opts other people and institutions into its service.
The best example of this is Catholic Bishop of Springfield Thomas John Paprocki, who in his Christmas Eve homily said, "If we are lukewarm about our Christianity, the Islamists won't need to invade with armies like they marched into Vienna in 1683, but they could simply continue to move in peacefully and legally as they are already doing in Western Europe and even here in the United States until they reach a majority and impose Islamist values and sharia law with little or no resistance." Paprocki later said in response to the uproar that: "The context of my homily was the fact that Christian churches in Iraq had cancelled their Midnight Mass and other Christmas celebrations due to the threats of al-Quaida on their tiny Christian community that was still terrified from a bloody siege on a Baghdad church this past Oct. 31...My Midnight Mass homily was a call 'to live our Catholic faith and practice our Christian beliefs much more fervently.'" I happen to believe him. Junaid Afeed called his comments, "misguided opinions of a priest dabbling in matters far beyond his expertise.". The man can't even spell al-Qa'ida correctly. The quote just mentioned, for example, references "Islamist" immigration, not "Muslim" immigration in general, and I believe that this would have been written differently by a man who hated all Muslims. On the issue of Christians in Iraq, Juan Cole among others has called attention to their plight.
Consider, however, the way in which this was done, which as Afeef pointed out was "dangerous an inflammatory." One thread is Paprocki's historical sense of a clash of religious civilizations, which probably resonates because of the survival over the centuries of a centralized and authoritative top hierarchy within the Roman Catholic Church. This is clearly not the case in Islam, however, and I can think of little Osama bin Laden has in common with the Ottoman Empire aside from Islam and the fact they both fought people. The other thread, however, is conservative orthodoxy. Bishop Paprocki's comments about Iraq read like a vintage 2004 Republican campaign assessment. He also called for racial profiling, and then there's the central bit about the non-existent creeping shari'a. In this case, I suspect that many within the Catholic hierarchy, based mainly on common views of abortion and gay rights, have come to identify strongly with American movement conservatism, despite the latter's roots in American nationalism and conservative evangelical Protestantism. As part of this, they rely mainly on conservative media outlets, and so fall victim to the epistemic closure of the American right, which proves critical in shaping opinions on all issues where there is not a strong countervailing trend, such as that found in Catholicism on immigration, Orthodoxy on the environment, and so forth. In any case, however, Paprocki's homily functionally cast a pall of suspicion over Muslim immigrants, and especially since most people still see Muslims as Others within the United States, all American Muslims, even if at this point nothing has happened in Springfield as has happened elsewhere.
This is the path of a dangerous falsehood. Produced by those with an agenda, it is passed to those who are either naive, ignorant, frightened, or culturally anxious, picked up by new potential channels of authority from those who might not listen to the original sources. And from there, even if most do no more than grandstand or propose meaningless laws, some act to harass and intimidate, and that is felt by Muslims throughout the country.
I am an Assistant Professor in History at Shippensburg University, where I teach courses in Middle Eastern and world history. My two major research areas are the Middle East from the 7th through 10th centuries and the Persian Gulf from ancient times to the present.
