09-Jan-15: Moderates, murderers and jihad

Trocadero Square, with a view towards Paris' Eiffel Tower
[Image Source: Reuters]

For reasons that range from admirable to appalling, there's a great deal of focusing today in the global news and commentary on the idea of Islamophobia, "a term for prejudice against, hatred towards, or fear of the religion of Islam, Muslims, or of ethnic groups perceived to be Muslim".

Wednesday's massacre at the offices of a French satirical magazine is the immediate trigger, naturally enough. (See the BBC today, for instance: "Could Charlie Hebdo attack fuel tensions over Islam?") But a perception that widely-dispersed violence - mild, extreme or murderous - waged in the name of Islam and as likely to target practitioners of Islam as non-Muslims - is rising in volume and intensity is clearly part of the picture too.

Ben-Dror Yemini, a respected Israeli columnist whose public appearances and writings we have enjoyed, has an article ["France attacks are jihad's doing, not Islam's"] on Ynet today in which he shares some cogent observations about where the problems are and are not:

Millions of Muslims have nothing to do with terror but, according to surveys, hundreds of thousands support jihad, suicide bombings and even the Islamic State. Thousands of them actively join global jihad. And there are few who carry out terror attacks in France. So what can Europe do? How does it cope with this? ...The Muslim community in Drancy, a Paris suburb less than a 30-minute drive from the scene of Wednesday's attack, is led by Imam Hassan Chalghoumi, who combats any expression of radicalism. In the past few years, he has been repeatedly warning against what is happening in mosques in France. The French Muslim Council has ostracized him. All his appeals to the French establishment have been rejected. He has to walk around with bodyguards following a series of attempts to hurt him and his family members.

Imam Chalghoumi [Image Source: Le Figaro]

Imam Chalghoumi is little known outside the world of French speakers. The Wikipedia entry about his life and works suggests that's a lost opportunity:

He has good relations with Jewish organisations in France, which sometimes caused demonstrations and clashes in Drancy mosque... He studied in Syria and Pakistan in fundamentalists medersa before coming to France in 1996... In 2006, he made a speech in front of the deportation memorial in Drancy. His house was vandalized a few days later... At the beginning of 2009, he was invited to the Elysée and the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF), a French Jewish organisation... Some of his opponents call him "Imam of the Jews" for his activism... He is naturalised as a French citizen in 2005. [Wikipedia English - the much more comprehensive Wikipedia French entry is here]

Why do the messages of Islamic political moderates go so unheeded in their own ranks? Why is there so little interest - among Moslems but not only - in Moslems who speak in calm and reasonable tones? Why are such men and women the target of often-violent hatred among parts of their own community? Why does Islamophobia get so much attention (about 3 million hits in this Google search). And why does it become such a hot subject when Moslem terrorists carry out a terror attack in the name (explicitly) of their religious outlook?

Factor into the analysis that certain prominent Islamic voices reject the very idea that "moderate" and "Moslem" can legitimately appear side by side in the same phrase. For instance

Speaking at Kanal D TV’s Arena program, PM Erdogan commented on the term “moderate Islam”, often used in the West to describe AKP and said, ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” [Source: Milliyet, Turkey, August 21, 2007, via MEMRI, a specialist translation-to-English service]

The same Turkish politician restated the same core idea two years later at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in a speech he entitled "Alliance of Civilizations and Turkey's Role". Hurriyet, a leading Turkish newspaper, published extracts at the time (April 2009); here are three:

• Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected attempts to call Turkey the representative of moderate Islam. "It is unacceptable for us to agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not..."
• "The animosity [of different religions and cultures] unfortunately, strengthens the scenarios that there is a so-called clash of civilizations in the world. Those, who defend such speculations, may go further to identify the terrorism with Islam which is based on peace"...adding that the situation helps those who try to globalize Islamophobia. 
• "It should be known that adopting a malicious and offending approach toward the sensitive issues of Islamic world by hiding behind some democratic freedoms like freedom of speech and right of free publication is unacceptable"

That last comment raises the matter of how Erdogan would have classified Wednesday's systematic murders at the Charlie Hebdo office.

How Wednesday's gunmen felt about "sensitive issues of Islamic world", about "freedom of speech" and about "right of free publication" is less of a puzzle since we have news reports [via the BBC, for instance] that witness

heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "God is Great" in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar").

Today, though, Erdogan's are not the views that are uppermost in people's minds. Yemini's article offers considerably more wisdom than the Turkish politician does anyway:

• "This terror attack was written on the wall... France is helpless. It's hard to monitor a creeping radicalization which is taking place in thousands of mosques, but all the funding sources could have been blocked, especially the capital which arrived from Qatar. Money is not the only problem, but it's definitely a problem.
• "This is a painful attack, which is connected to the very heart of free France. The targeted magazine is not the most popular or most circulated newspaper in the country – far from that – but it has positioned itself at the front of the battle for freedom of expression and has clarified that it would not give in to threats.
• "It would be sad to see the far right, which is usually racist and anti-Semitic, gaining political power as a result of this attack. And it would be encouraging if the free world starts taking the Muslims from Chalghoumi's school more seriously and showing them more sympathy. There is no need for Islamophobia, it's time for jihadophobia. [Ynet, today]

That last line is critical. As comforting as it is for many people to sink into melancholic reverie about the clear and present threats to freedom of expression in today's Europe (not only Europe, and not only from the Islamists), the real story here is not that. It's jihad. And the dangers are considerably more physical, personal and immediate than the (undoubtedly real) assault on democratic freedoms.

27-Mar-14: Shouldn't this creative approach to terrorism get a little more exposure?

Insiders: Members of Saudi royal family attend funeral
of Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz  in Mecca,
June 17, 2012. AFP/Saudi Press Agency

Stand-by for some really penetrating and courageous journalistic reportage from the mainstream media. The president of the United States is going to be a guest of the family who run the business called Saudi Arabia tomorrow, Friday.

(If anyone out there is put off by that characterization, we wonder why. As the people at Freedom House who study these things point out:

"Saudi Arabia is not an electoral democracy. The 1992 Basic Law declares that the Koran and the Sunna (the guidance set by the deeds and sayings of the prophet Muhammad) are the country’s constitution. The cabinet, which is appointed by the king, passes legislation that becomes law once ratified by royal decree. The king also appoints a 150-member Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council) every four years, though it serves only in an advisory capacity... Women are not treated as equal members of society, and many laws discriminate against them. They are not permitted to vote in municipal elections, drive cars, or travel within or outside of the country without a male relative... Islam is the official religion, and all Saudis are required by law to be Muslims. The government prohibits the public practice of any religion other than Islam... Academic freedom is restricted, and informers monitor classrooms for compliance with curriculum rules... The judiciary, which must coordinate its decisions with the executive branch, is not independent... The penal code bans torture, but allegations of torture by police and prison officials are common, and access to prisoners by independent human rights and legal organizations is strictly limited... Substantial prejudice against ethnic, religious, and national minorities prevails..." 

And so on. In their most recent ranking, Freedom House gave Saudi Arabia the lowest possible score on all three of their measures of freedom.)

This strikes us as a good moment to reflect on how the laws of some of the most powerful countries in the Arab world get less scrutiny than perhaps they deserve. To demonstrate this, we offer an extract from a startling review (published five weeks ago) of a new legislative initiative that focuses on Saudi prevention of terrorism, sort of:

Saudi Arabia's new terrorism law might look like a step forward, if only because it's written down. Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries with no written criminal penal code, and the penal regulations that authorities have issued are so vague that Saudis are mostly in the dark about what specific acts constitute crimes. The Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing (the "terrorism law") is the latest of a series of criminal laws that Saudi officials have created over the last five years, under international pressure to reform the criminal justice system. But instead of achieving their stated purpose of defining specific crimes, in practice these piecemeal reforms have created a veneer of legality for ongoing human rights abuses by Saudi criminal justice authorities. The terrorism law is no exception... Inside the kingdom, "terrorism" can evidently be non-violent—it comprises "any act" intended to, among other things, "insult the reputation of the state," "harm public order" or "shake the stability of the state," which the law fails to clearly define... The terrorism law is a vague, catch-all document that can—and probably will—be used to prosecute or jail anyone who criticizes the Saudi government and to violate their due process rights along the way... The law applies not only to Saudi citizens or residents, but to non-Saudi citizens outside the kingdom, who could face terrorism charges for aiming to "infringe on the interests of the kingdom, or its economy, or its national or social security"... [It allows Saudi authorities to send accused persons] including those who have not faced trial—to special "rehabilitation centers" that aim to "correct incorrect concepts" or "deepen patriotism" in lieu of detention and prosecution. [Source: "Terrorism to Ignore Due Process in Saudi Arabia", Adam Coogle, JURIST ­- Hotline, Feb. 22, 2014]

The Saudi legal system is startling in other respects too. During the period 2007-2012, the kingdom finished third among countries that judicially execute people. Traditional leader China led the field with "thousands", according to Amnesty International's tally. Second was Iran with 1,663. And in third place, Saudi Arabia with 423, well ahead of fourth-ranked Iraq's 256.

The Saudis are also among the last four remaining countries, along with Iran, Syria and Yemen [source: Wikipedia], that carry out executions in public - including in the center of the capital, Riyadh.

Tomorrow's visit makes Saudi Arabia the only Middle Eastern or Gulf nation on Obama’s overseas itinerary. A serious opportunity for the Leader of the Free World to explain matters to his eager hosts, right?

We can think of some talking points (borrowed from this source) that we wish his speech-makers would consider adding to the presidential Powerpoint:

• "Saudi Arabia’s links to jihadist groups go back decades." 
• Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi.
• "The 9/11 Commission Report identified Saudi Arabia as the main source of al-Qaeda financing." 
• "In 2010, WikiLeaks published U.S. diplomatic cables which identified Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups." 
• "Members of Congress and human rights organizations have also been calling on Obama to address the kingdom’s treatment of women, religious minorities and political activists."

Chances of these issues being discussed? Probably not so great. As Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said on February 3 when the visit was announced: 

“Saudi Arabia is a close partner of the United States, and we have a bilateral relationship that is broad and deep and covers a range of areas.”

The mind boggles.