Watching Syria from afar: some thoughts on reading the Crisis Group's report "Tentative Jihad"

Photo Freedom House via Flickr/Creative Commons

I've long been interested in the extremities of politics in all directions. In the last year I've followed some discussion on Syria and taken part in others and it has been fascinating to see how different groups on far right and left, have tried to deal with the complexity of the situation and arrive at a 'position' on it. It has been both bizarre and amusing to see how many who describe themselves as being of the radical- or anti-imperialist-left have ended up, defacto, supporting the Assad regime. Jess Hill in the Global Mail calls these predominantly Western leftists: Assad's Useful Idiots; it's a bracing read if you, like me, find it deeply creepy how unwilling some are to not learn the lessons of the 1920s and 30s, and the willful ignorance of some over Stalin's crimes

Following the Syrian regime's line, the "anti-imperialist left" claim the rebels in Syria are all foreign-sponsored al-Qaeda throat-cutters, who want to turn a supposedly progressive Socialist secular state into a Taliban-style Islamic one. There are many things deeply problematic about this claim; it is at its heart deeply patronising, even orientalist. The Arabs of the Middle East are given no agency, they are forever pawns in machinations of the West (i.e. the US). Not only does this deny them agency, it also takes away the moral responsibility for their acts: if a Syrian rebel group decides to use a suicide bomb, well it's just because "they're al-Qaeda" and "they're being controlled by the Saudis/CIA/Mossad/Biderberg group/etc.". In actual fact those rebels should be answering for their actions just as the Syrian government should be. To me the moral case for the rebellion seems pretty clear; the Syrian regime has become a neo-monarchy, power passed from father to son; power that was, of course, gained originally in a military coup and maintained over the decades via violence, fear, corruption and co-option. The revolution began peacefully like elsewhere in the Arab Spring - protesters on the streets. But people power was met with regime bullets, mass arrests and torture. The anti-imperialists have to cling to the idea that those tens of thousands of unarmed Syrians on the streets in early 2011 were all "al Qaeda" or American stooges because, if not, then Bashar al-Assad's resort to brutal repression would be the crime that most know it is.

Nevertheless violence begets violence and the regime's reaction led to civil war. From Our Own Correspondent this week has a haunting illustration of this. Ian Pannell interviews an Aleppo businessman turned rebel commander. He was turned by the horrific torture he experienced and saw happening to others after being arrested for peacefully protesting:

"Dr Raouf said that before they were arrested, the group had long discussions about whether they should get some sticks to defend themselves during protests. 'But when we were released, we decided to buy every weapon we could afford,' he said."

Homs. Photo Freedom House via Flickr/Creative Commons

The situation in Syria has changed - it is evolving or, perhaps better, it is mutating. The recently released Crisis Group report "Tentative Jihad: Syria’s Fundamentalist Opposition" I think is a very important document of this. It is (as so often with Crisis Group reports) a fine example of actually 'going and looking', and reporting back on what you actually see - not what fits your ideological persuasion. I won't try to sum up the report, beyond saying it is centrally about the role of Salafism amongst the armed opposition, a role that is becoming progressively more prominent as Salafi groups both fight more successfully than the more secular groups (generally grouped under the FSA banner) and as those secular fighters become attracted to Salafism (be that for purely instrumental reasons - attracting funding from the Gulf monarchies and Syrian exiles - or because it's austere simplicity becomes attractive to men facing death daily). The Crisis Group report is good at pointing out that the Salafi ideology on the rise differs in some ways from the more nihilistic Jihadism that we have come to expect from the various al Qaeda franchises around the world, and most clearly seen in the horrors of Iraqi civil war. For example, Crisis Group argue that the most prominent Salafi group, Jabhat al-Nusr, while being the most radical and sectarian and unapologetic for suicide bombing a regime intelligence installation in a Christian neighbourhood of Damascus that killed many civilians, still made it clear that they were not targeting Christians per se, they were 'collateral damage'. This differs from the intentional massacres so often seen in Iraq.

I've seen many on the aforementioned "anti-imperialist left" say that the US/NATO is just itching to intervene in Syria, like it did in Libya. This is another bizarre claim in the face of now over a year of 'the West' failing to really do anything helpful for the people of Syria. Many in Syria were imploring the West to save them a year ago but the US electoral calendar, military exhaustion and budget deficit was always going to make this unlikely. If the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia are the only people handing out money for guns, you can see why some Syrians will grow beards, shorten their trousers and take the cash, even if it is obvious to outsiders that only further darkness will come of this. Crisis Group leaves us with a horrible image for the future of the Syrian Civil War:

"As the number of internally displaced and refugees grows, and entire towns and neighbourhoods are damaged to the point of becoming uninhabitable, armed groups risk cutting themselves off further from their social base and coming to resemble combatants roaming in the rubble. As they eat, struggle and pray together, fighters increasingly form insular units detached from the cross-cutting popular movement from which they sprung, inhabiting their own world, so more prone to spin out of control. Their reportedly high attrition rate may empower second-generation leaders with less of a strategic vision, legitimacy or experience – lacunae for which they might seek to compensate with ever more radical beliefs and violence."

The obvious and frightening parallel is Syria's neighbour to the east; six or seven years ago as the US lost control and civil war flared. But as the armed groups amongst the Sunni Muslims sections of Syrian society differentiate themselves on religious grounds, or by allegiance to one area or one commander, and whilst Alawi communities radicalize in support of the rump regime, other communities like Christians and Kurds will end up either defending themselves with militias or fleeing. Syria's neighbour to west, Lebanon, and the horrors it saw from the 70s to the 90s in its vicious and multifaceted civil war, serve as another stark example of what Syria may still have to face.

The pharoah has gone - optimistic reflections on a revolution.

When Anwar Sadat was killed in 1981, his assasin, after running out of bullets, is said to have shouted "I have killed the pharaoh, and I do not fear death!". The use of the word pharaoh was deliberate because Khalid Islambouli - the assasin - was a Jihadist (although I don't think that word was in use back then) and wished to connect Sadat to the pre-Islamic history of Egypt. That pre-Islamic era was consider to be Jahiliyyah, classically used to be mean 'before God's guidance', but adapted and perhaps corrupted by radical ideologue Said Qutb, the inspiration behind Islambouli's violence, to mean un-Islamic and therefore without worth or indeed worthy of destruction.

Until 30 minutes ago, that was the last time leadership was transferred in Egypt; bloodily, violently and as a result of a radical, exclusionary reading of a religion. Now once again the Pharaoh has gone, but he is not dead. Instead Mubarak appears to be retiring to the seaside. His non-assasins - the democracy protestor -; men and women, young and old, secular and religious, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor; have shown day after day in Tahrir Square that, like Islambouli, they were not afraid to die, but unlike him they would not resort to violence except in self defence (against hired thugs in uniform or not). And again, unlike Islambouli, their motivation has been democracy, self respect, and human rights. The army should respect their sacrifices and their liberal sentiments and quickly give the Egyptian people the democracy they so richly deserve.

What's up with the "Counter-Jihad"?

I got the chance to listen to Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation yesterday. I've read his story in the past: in brief; racist violence and police profiling in Essex where he grew up, joining Hizb ut Tahrir as 16 years old and rapidly becoming an important organiser in the UK, Pakistan and Denmark for HuT, getting arrested in Egypt and spending 4 years in prison there. Coming home to the UK, turning his back on Islamism and becoming an advocate for pluralism, secularism and democracy. He has led an interesting life and speaks about it engagingly. But he also had a solid and well argued analysis of the different forms of Islamism  and why we have to be concerned about them using social movement theory. Interestingly, he reckoned there are now four identifiable social movements resulting from the Islamist ideology, the Ikhwani (Muslim Brotherhood) network, the so-called "Shi'a Crescent"; basically the Iran-Iraq-Hezbollah axis of politicised Shi'a Islam, the Saudi Wahhabi tradition; and now - following the thesis/antithesis logic - the new European anti-Muslim politics. I think Maajid makes a really good point, and as anyone who has followed this blog for any length of times knows, all four of those strains interests me, an particularly how they relate to each other. I'm interested in the collapse of the domestic/international distinction in politics; much of political life is both local and global at the same time. Geert Wilders is speaking in NYC at the anti-Ground Zero Mega Mosque/Park 51 Islamic community centre protest one week, and then is in Berlin surfing the wake of Sarrazin's book there the next. In between, he is doing a bit king-making back home in the Hague for the Dutch government. Wilder's vilification of Muslims, his warnings to Europeans to save their own culture from them, is as often as not based on human rights abuses and terrorist crimes committed outside of Europe as much as in it. Like I said, everything is local and everything is global.

Anyway, being interested in these issues for years I have read a lot anti-Islam blogs with some regularity. Kenneth, a regular and long standing commenter here, writes Tundra Tabloids, another English language but Finland-based blog, and I hope Kenneth will take it as complement when I say it is very representative of the "Counter-Jihad" blogosphere. I don't think we really agree on anything (except that there is nothing wrong with having either too many rucksacks or flashlights), but I have found lots of other, well let's just say - "interesting" sites from starting at Tundra Tabloids and have been reading that milieux enough now to have a feel for the lay of the land. It was from reading the Counter-Jihad blogosphere that I started realising the importance of philosemitism and pro-Israeli politics to the new European anti-Islamic populist right. It is something that perhaps Vlaams Belang and the Sweden Democrats have done prominently. Also some of the Italian post-fascist parties have done this as well, although I have no great knowledge of Italian politics. This means that although still populist rightwing parties, these parties are showing they are very different to more traditional neo-fascist European far right parties like the very worrying and scary Jobbik in Hungary.

Anyway, this particular zone of the internet has been hitting the mainstream press recently, mainly as a result of Pamela Geller's central involvement in the protests against the Ground Zero Mega Mosque/Park 51 Islamic community centre (yeah, I know it's tedious trying to be neutral. Perhaps I can just call it "Stroke place" in the way that "Londonderry/Derry" became "Stroke City" to journos in NI in the bad ole' days of the Troubles). I wrote three years ago about how Little Green Footballs was taking on the rest of the Counter-Jihad blogosphere over whether Vlaams Belang were fascists or not (LGF - yes, everyone else - no). Well, amusingly LGF's main man, Charles, has completed his political odyssey right to left to write a critical screed against Pamela in the Guardian! The Guardian! It's all somewhat reminiscent of the American 60s Trots who ended up as the 90s NeoCons. But still, to blow my own trumpet (it's a special skill, are you jealous?) I blogged about it two and half years before the NYT - the "lamestream media" after all... Anyway, going back to my collapse of the international/domestic divide, it is interesting that in the Guardian (the Guardian!) Charles is citing Geller's endorsement of the EDL as one of her 'crime' (the EDL want to be part of that new right I mention above, and not seen as neo-Nazis, but this is difficult when their leadership are covered in Swastika and Celtic cross tats).

Anyway, I had a good handle on the Pam vs. Chuck blog war, but as I've been reading the main Counter-Jihad blogs recently about both the Ground Zero Mosque protests and American support for the EDL, I keep reading about other fights that are going on. This is both confusing and interesting - if many of the main players seems to be falling out with each other, is there really a "Counter-Jihad blogosphere" any more? So far, as far as I can see Debbie Schlussel hates Pamela Geller, why seems quite complicated - although Schlussel also says that Geller is involved in some insurance scam and worse crimes, you can google all that for yourself as I couldn't make much sense of it. Debs also hates Mr. Jihadwatch, Robert Spencer, and keeps calling him "Slobbert" which seems just plain mean. But then again Spencer hates Andrew Bostom, because Bostom accuses Bobby of plagiarising his books. Meanwhile Pamela doesn't like "the Baron" from the Gates of Vienna any more - he is a small, petty man reputedly. She doesn't like the Baron's friend Vlad either. The reason for all this appear to be a question over copyright of some videos. Ho hum, it's all a bit high school-esque isn't it? I don't suppose al-Qaeda is quaking in its combat boots.

The geopolitics of cement

I met a chap last week I know who had just come back from Afghanistan. He commented that it would be a good time to be in the cement industry in Kabul as they are throwing up concrete blast barriers everywhere. He reckoned the whole city felt very uneasy and all the expats were very gloomy and nervous - and that plus the blast walls reminded him of Baghdad in the even-worse-ole'-days.

Still on a cement theme, last weeks episode of This American Life had a remarkable interview with one of the tunnel owners who runs a business smuggling things into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. He noted that building materials still make up a lot of the produce going into Gaza after the war a year and a bit a go, but bizarrely now they are smuggling a lot of guns out of Gaza and into Egypt where they command a higher price. Supposedly the Hamas government in Gaza has banned the public carrying of weapons, plus there are so many stockpiled in the strip, there are now plenty of spares to be sold off to Egyptian crooks.

The Rafah crossing on the blockaded Gaza-Egypt Border (click to enlarge)

Finnish fringes

Finnish fringes - supposed Islamists and Russia fans rally in Helsinki (photo from Wikipedia)

Sometimes if I get a late bus home, I see my friendly neighbourhood Salafi. Salafi-chic is a lot less common in Finland than it is in, say, parts of London so he sort of sticks out. He's a skinny white guy with a friendly and slightly goofy smile - but the rest is classic neo-Salafi: the straggly beard, the skull cap, the shalwar kameez, but crucially with mid-calf trousers, and of course some old army surplus jacket over the top. A bit Tora-Bora 2001 for my taste, but there's nowt as queer as folk and each to their own. He wears combat boots though, which I thought was missing the point as aren't Salafis meant to show their ankles to follow the Prophet's example? But ankles and Islamic jurisprudence are by the by - whenever I see him, I think of the Finnish Islamic Party and Abdullah Tammi.

You don't get more loony fringe than Tammi - who may or may not have been a neo-Nazi, communist, fireman, KGB spy, wife beater, entrepreneur and captain in the Red Army. And if that isn't an interesting enough life, now he most definitely is the leader of the tiny Finnish Islamic Party. The FIP aren't solely white converts, but they do seem to make up the majority of the party. The Finnish Muslims I know from more traditional immigrant backgrounds seem to treat them with polite scepticism at best.

Tammi along with some other FIP guys were protesting today outside of the Helsingin Sanomat offices in Helsinki - but it wasn't their protest. Oh no. They were there with the "Nashi", the Russian, pro-Putin and sort of ultranationalist youth outfit - more famous for chasing and harrassing ambassadors in Moscow from countries they don't like, such Estonia and the UK. Now the Nashi don't really seem to be mad at Finland, their fire is directed at Estonia, but for reasons you need to read the news story to see if you can work out (because I'm not sure if I fully do), it was more convenient to protest here.

The jist of it seems to be that those who criticise the Soviet Union are really just criticising the Russia of today, and they are doing this because they are fascists. All the breakaway states from the USSR - like Estonia - are full of Russia-hating fascists. It's a rather silly argument, but then the Nashi are a populist youth movement so perhaps expecting much more would also be silly. But anything to do with Russia can bring the 'interesting characters' out of the woodwork in Finland - Johan Bäckman being one such. He appears to think that the anti-Russian sentiments prevalent in the Baltics are being imported to Finland. This strikes me as odd as you really don't have to dig very far to find Finnish anti-Russian sentiments. Why they would need to be imported from Estonia escapes me. Bäckman is a member (founder member I think) of the Finnish antifascist committee that seems to be more interested in criticising the Baltic "apartheid regimes" and supporting Russia than the more normal sort of Antifa activities like rucking with skinheads. All very odd.

What Tammi is doing there is anyone guess (beyond the stated protesting for better recognition of Muslims in Estonia - if I was an Estonian Muslim [or should the be the Estonian Muslim], I'd be running in the opposite direction from Tammi's 'support'). I suppose he couldn't get much more weird in the eyes of the Finnish public. But for a man who has praised bin Laden, turning up at a Nashi protest, an organisation that lionises Putin - the destroyer of Grozny, is strange to say the least.

Somalia-UK, and other bits and bobs of interest

Some quality reporting from the UK's Channel 4 from last month that I only just stumbled across, looking at the links between British Somalis and suicide bombings in Somalia/Somaliland.



Don't just watch the vid, read Jonathan Rugman's report as well. Also if this is your type of thing, check the Jamestown report that Rugman mentions, on the various stories of western Somalis who have gone back to fight - Americans, British, Canadians, Swedes and possibly Norwegians - but no Finns mentioned. I wonder if any young Somalis have gone back to fight for any of the other groups besides the Jihadists? The answer could be no - in which case it leads to the question why not? Why aren't, say, Puntland nationalists or Les éradicateurs of the TFG as an attractive a cause for a kid in a western city as wack-job jihadism? It sort of makes Olivier Roy's globalised Islam point for him. Alternatively, the answer could be that Somalis have gone back to fight for other groups - their clan militia, the TFG etc. and we just haven't heard about it because it's not then part of the 'terrorism-link' game the media and some analysts like to play. If British Tamil kids go and get themselves blown up in Jafna fighting for the Tigers, frankly who in the media gives a shit? I hope MI5 do, but it's not going to make Channel 4 News, let alone the front page of Sun*.

Apropros to nothing and probably only of interest to those who have similar research/geeky interests to me; I note the Jamestown report is written by James Brandon. I was at a seminar with James last year, and because he was at from the Centre for Social Cohesion, I was a little bit suspicious of where he was coming from. So I noticed with interest he's now at the Quilliam Foundation. Hmm.... I think: "from the outwardly neoconservative, to the group just called neoconservative by it's critics... interesting", but looking just a wee bit further into it, I found this quite amazing op-ed by James in CiF. Well said, Mr. Brandon. If you ever need to write a resignation letter, it would be good to do it with the honesty and clarity of James' piece.

*And just as a side note, the Sun has been caught making up nasty-Muslim stories. Again. The victim of the Sun's lies is thirty grand richer, and good for him, but at Pickled Politics they have a few suggestions of how to make a paper really think twice before running this sort of shit.

More IslamExpo

Oddly this is the second time that a visit to London has turned into a tiny walk-on bit-part in the greater production that is the "British State meets Political Islam". The Guardian reports that the Department of Communities and Local Government told their ministers not to go to IslamExpo, and I reported yesterday on how various journalists had pulled out over the Harry's Place situation. In Comment Is Free, Seamus Milne puts the other side of the argument. Milne was on the panel discussion I watched this morning, and after in the Q&A he actually admitted that English libel laws are generally unfair tools accessible disproportionately to the wealthy. This was my little bit-part as I asked the question suggesting to Anas Altikriti that it was disingenous of them to not explain to the audience why Douglas Murray wasn't on the panel (because of the threat of libel action), and if Islamist groups such as his own want to be treated fairly by the press, bringing libel actions against a blog for - at worse - reporting a mistake made by an international news provider, is hardly the way to go about it.

Less depressing, and also more interesting, is the reporting about debates at the Expo from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Nesrin Malik.

Back to boring old Helsinki tomorrow, although I need the rest after about 234 large café lattes, too much good food from all around the world and too little sleep. Big Up the London posse (norf an' sarf') for beers, laughs and a space on the floor. You know who you are.

London innit?

Gis' us a sugarlump or I'll nick you

This somehow sums up the tube

Tariq Ramadan - sometimes accused of being a bit fuzzy, looking fuzzy

The thin chestnut line - helping to make Finsbury Park a bit more crappy

Knife crime, this summer's avian influenza

Just in case anyone has been wondering, I'm in London. I've been at two day conference held on the fringes of Islam Expo, along with all sorts of Islamist figures, hacks, spooks, ex-spooks, plods, professors - and finally other various lowly academic researchers and thinktankers such as myself. It has been a mixed bag, some wonderful presentations of academic clarity and objectivity - particularly from the American and Turkish professors - and then some political posturing without saying much substantive from others. My contribution from the floor was to suggest to Anas Altikriti that if Islamists parties want to be treated just like 'normal' parties they should stop whining when liberals points out they are ultra-conservative on social issues and if you are a woman or gay you have plenty of reasons to be very nervous about their politics. I think this annoyed him.

I came originally because I'm interested in the injection of Islamist politics into UK politics, and how different reactions to this have formed on both the left and the right. There were going to be various debates and discussion about these issues at the Expo and I wasn't just interested in hearing what the experts and pundits said, but how an audience of British Muslims reacted to it. But IslamExpo has become a victim of those new politics, albeit with a self inflicted wound. With rather stupid timing Mohammed Sawalha, the head of the British Muslim Initiative (one of the organisers of the whole Expo) and who is also closely linked to Hamas, threatened to sue Harry's Place for reporting his allegedly racists comments (read the whole thing on HP because it is a bit of long story around an Arabic translation). Looking from the outside it would appear that Harry's Place is in the right and Sawalha is pissing in the wind, but time and lawyers will tell. Anyway, in protest - and I think understandably - Martin Bright of the New Statesman pulled out of the debate he was to be part of, and now also Douglas Murray (Britain's own proud neo-con) has also withdrawn from another session tomorrow I was thinking of watching. It is a shame that Bright did pull out because he has done excellent work investigating British Islamist figures and we got left with Soumaya Ghannoushi ranting in circles and and no one calling her out the general innanity of her 'argument'. Her tone is also somewhat reminiscent of Thatcher which is never going to be reassuring...

On the way back to my friend's place tonight I stopped in Finsbury Park to go and see the infamous mosque, as it had been discussed this morning. Having not been to Finsbury Park before I can safely assure anyone else who hasn't that it is a shithole and you haven't missed anything. I'm sure the majority of the residents are lovely people but it has to be one of London's shabbiest boroughs.

What's wrong with the MCB?

I wrote a conference paper not long ago on the British State meeting political Islam that had quite a lot about the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in it. I've been asked to submit a revised version of the paper for an academic journal which is very flattering, as it was essentially an elongated version of the type of stuff I tend to go on about here, but of course if must go through peer review so I'm not home and dry yet. Anyway Yahya Birt has written an excellent, brief and pithy piece on the MCB for Open Democracy - laying out it's limited achievements and numerous failings and structural weaknesses. If you're even vaguely interested in the new-ish British politics of "communities", it's well worth the few minutes it takes to read.

“Inside Egypt” John R. Bradley.

“Inside Egypt” by John R. Bradley.

It’s too long since I’ve done a book review so I think I should mention John Bradley’s “Inside Egypt: the land of the Pharaohs on the brink of revolution”. I saw it sitting on a colleagues desk and asked if I could read, “yes” was the reply, “but do it quickly”. Well it has taken me two days so that says a lot for the readability of the book. I’ve not been to Egypt and this book unfortunately isn’t likely to make anyone go, unless of course you are a weird social scientist who is interested in political disasters. So, I’m more interested in going now than before.

Bradley paints a very bleak picture of a country failing. The regime has no ideology and stands for nothing except its own continuance, hence the Egyptian state is utterly corrupts and having no other way to rally the nation to its cause, uses violence to repress society instead. Bradley suspects this is unsustainable as, unlike say China, the regime is not bringing people out of poverty whilst denying them freedom. Actually it is doing the opposite, pushing the middle class into penury whilst ignoring the poverty stricken working and underclass.

He notes that Egyptian civil society is utterly beaten down, producing virtually no culture, despite the country’s immensely rich multi-ethnic and –religious heritage. Not even the corrupt super-rich are using their money to make anything beautiful or interesting: “In all but ethnically cleansed and culturally purged post-Nasser Egypt… even money has gone stale, producing for the rich only barren imitations of life elsewhere, and financing only the thugs’ indulgence in beating any individual expression to a pulp.” (p.55)

He argues that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the greatest beneficiary of this oppression, as Mubarak has crushed all secular opposition. His view of the MB is that its rise is indicative of the malaise in modern Egypt, where demonstrations of public piety cover private spitefulness and corruption of the spirit. Bradley believes that they would just be a minor force if real democracy was allowed – noting although they took 20% of the vote in 2005 parliamentary elections, only 25% of the electorate could be bothered to vote in the heavily rigged elections and mostly consisted of committed supporters of the Brothers and then the state employees forced or obliged to vote for Mubarak’s NDP. Hence that 20% probably greatly overestimates their support in the country. He believes that the MB is true to its word that it is a peaceful organisation, yet at the same time is a clerically-fascist, sucking all the joy and celebration out of Egyptian heritage, and spreading sectarianism amongst different groups in the countries.

He argues that American policy of support to Egypt, the second biggest recipient of US aid after Israel, in return for its “cold peace” with the Jewish state is part of the problem. American support for democratic reform was both half-arsed and half-baked, and was abandoned immediately once it became apparent elsewhere in the Middle East that Islamists groups would win free elections in the current geopolitical climate. He quotes Hisham Kassem, a human right activist who was awarded a Democracy Award from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy in 2007. Kassem got to meet President Bush as a result, and Bush’s bemusement at being told how the current situation is building the MB’s support is telling: “we give your country $2 billion a year in order to keep it stable and prevent it from turning into a theocracy” Bush replied looking dismayed.

The book is very readable and cracks along at a fair pace, but isn’t perfect. The chapter on the Bedouin of the Sinai is basically a discussion of the Crisis Group report on the area. Crisis Group reports are generally excellent, but the other chapters show Bradley’s original reporting and feel for the country much more. His chapter on “Lost Dignity” is basically about old European women and European gay men coming to Luxor to find young Egyptian “studs” to shag. It’s really depressing but perhaps verges on the salacious. Bradley makes a decent case that it is representative of wider issues in the country, but in comparison to his horrific chapter on the endemic torture and violence in what passes for Egypt’s criminal justice system it seems like something of a smaller issue that just attracts disproportionate media attention as it involves sex and westerners.

"Wicked Jihad?"

I by accident found this interesting piece called "Wicked Jihad?" (or direct to the PDF) by Jamie Bartlett on the DEMOS website. I left a longish comment and, being a lazy git, I'll recycle the comment below rather than trying to think too much for one evening...

It's great to see this argument, as it should be one of those "well, Duh!" moments when someone states the incredibly obvious, yet still it isn't. Counter-terrorism commentators, researchers and students get all mixed up in, say, the relative importance to Qutbist Egyptian political Islamism versus Saudi-based Wahhabi fundamentalism (I know, I've been there), and totally miss the hip-hop.

In 1991(?) when Ice T released Cop Killer, there was discussion about gansta rap being a threat to national security, and with the LA riots of 1992 it didn't seem too much of leap. Partly as a result - rap, particularly it's not very "conscious" West Coast form, went global as the guaranteed-to-scare-your-mum teenage rebellion of choice. Compare it to UK indie of the same era - that might have vaguely embarrassed your mum but no more. It would seem obvious that "jihadi-chic" is now going to have the same sub-cultural pull on young men in Western Europe now. But the danger is always there that if the aesthetic is the attraction, some with darker intentions will exploit the young and stupid, just like some of those who listened to Snoop Dog and Ice Cube even in the suburbs really decided to live the gansta-life and stick a gun in the back of their baggy jeans and sell drugs.

Trying to react appropriately to genuine security threats whilst not over-reacting to youthful posturing (and by doing so actually beginning to really marginalize and perhaps radicalize) is the policy puzzle to solve.

Book review: "God's Terrorists" by Charles Allen

It was the subtitle of this book that made me buy it - "The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of the Modern Jihad". I've been trying to understand more about modern Saudi political history, and how the official Wahhabi form of Islam in Saudi Arabia has produced both a very politically conservative form that is absolutely supportive of the Saudi monarchy and the Salafi-Jihadis who want the violent overthrow of the same royal family, and thought the book might have something to say on the background of this. I was to be disappointed.

"God's Terrorists" isn't a bad book, it's just 90% a different book to the one suggested by the cover. See the camels in the picture? And the head scarves? Doesn't that sort of suggest Arabia? But oddly this is a book about Imperial India. Allen is a respected historian of the Raj, and perhaps that should have been a clue, but I would say both the front cover and back cover blurb deliberately set out to suggest this is book about the roots of modern jihadi terrorism and not about Empire-era India. What the meat of the book is about is Muslim radicalism within British-India, generally known at the time as the "Hindustani Fanatics". This is a fascinating story in itself: the origins of this group were Indian Muslims who in the early 19th century had gone to Saudi Arabia and had been inspired by Wahhabi puritanicalism and brought their zeal back with them. They were somewhat involved in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, but this was not a Muslim thing in particular with Hindu regiments mutinying as well. They fled India to hide out in the mountains of the North West frontier, bringing British and Indian-native forces into various skirmishes and minor wars with Pashtun tribes of the India/Afghanistan border regions. The Pashtuns didn't think much of the British invading their lands, but they didn't think much of the Wahhabis either, with the Imperial forces sometimes doing deals with them to drive the fanatics out - much like the current Pakistani government at times tries to do, co-opting the tribes against various foreign al-Qaeda groups.

This is all very interesting but really didn't have much to do with what was happening in Saudi Arabia at the time. In fact Allen notes that the Deobandi school of Islam, the specifically South Asian school that began in India in 1866, was set up in opposition to the Wahhabi inspired Hindustani fanatics (p.206-7). The Deobandi school has an important role to play in the development of Pakistani Islamism, and more globally because of the influence of Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, who along with Sayyid Qutb, was central to the development of modern Islamism. The Taliban are also described as Deobandi, although some say the claim is problematic.

There are some chapters that deal with Saudi Arabia, both the beginnings of the Wahhabi sect in 18th century and its more modern history, but they aren't anything I haven't read elsewhere and feel like a basic review of the known history, rather than an a fresh delve into primary sources - diaries, reports, statistical data - that Allen clearly has mastery of in the case of Raj-era India. Perfunctory would be the word. His descriptions of minor battles and skirmishes between the British and Indian Armies and the Pashtun tribesmen at the fag-end of the 19th century are well written military history. This is obviously Allen's 'thing', not Saudi Arabia. I'm pretty certain Allen had a book pretty much written just on Muslim radicalism during the Raj, but then his publishers suggested that if he gets the words al-Qaeda and Taliban in there a few times, and they put the word "terrorist" in the title, it would sell 20 times the amount that a military history of British Army skirmishes in the Hindu Kush a century ago. I bought it, so they were probably right. More fool me.

You will learn lots of things if you read this book. Just not what you expected.

A very British bombing

I've just read an excellent article "My brother the bomber" in Prospect magazine. It is about Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the London bombers and takes a serious stab at explaining the sociology of the attacks. The author, Shiv Malik, deserves congratulations.

It was, it turns out, a very British bombing. Not because of British troops in Iraq; as Malik writes:

"Khan may have felt indignant about western foreign policy, as many anti-war campaigners do, but that wasn't the reason he led a cell of young men to kill themselves and 52 London commuters."

You could say it was more about who you marry, or that the bloke down the mosque was boring and couldn't speak English properly. It's about Barelvi traditionalism of the Kashmir colliding with Salafi* modernism of the internet on the back streets of Leeds. They wanted to be global jihadis, and indeed have become that in death - I'm sure they would have wet their pants with excitement at the idea of their deaths being lauded by Ayman al-Zawahiri. But what made them take that path is to be found more in Yorkshire than in al-Anbar or South Waziristan.

The depressing thing is how, in retrospect of course, it all makes sense. I remember taking a leaflet from the guys manning a stall of one of the Hizb ut-Tahrir affiliates/fronts outside the student union of my university in Manchester in maybe 2003. It was about resisting arranged marriage. Malik nails it by saying the Salafism is in effect "liberation theology" against the ultra-conservative traditions brought to the UK by the country-bumpkin Pakistani parents (again - that is the sociology, it's not just about immigrants being 'Pakistani' or 'Muslim', it is about the specific social, economic, and cultural situation that led to Pakistani emigration to Northern England three decades ago). The leaflet I took hits a tone somewhere between radical feminist pamphleteering, reactionary evangelicalism and a teenager whining "just leave me alone!" to his parents. I'm not sure if the fathers of modern Salafism would be delighted or horrified by this.

Obvious in retrospect... I interviewed a senior British counter-terrorism police officer recently - a fascinating couple of hours. He noted that in the aftermath of 9/11 the government hauled in a load of British imams and "community leaders" for a round-table to help them 'understand' al-Qaeda and, of course, they were all clueless - having basically no more idea about bin Laden than the rest of the country. I suggested that it was like asking your local vicar to help explain Timothy McVeigh, he laughed and agreed. But people like Olivier Roy had spotted it, even if he didn't layout the specific English/Pakistani dimension. And as Malik points out in the piece, people in Khan's community knew what was going on, but just thought they were angry young men mouthing off and who ultimately wouldn't really do anything.

But they did. They stepped across the line that divides the Salafi fundamentalist (who despite having, to my mind, a reactionary and intolerant theology remains peaceful) from the violent jihadi. It seems easily done in some cases, but many thousands of others stay resolutely on the legal side of that line. It's a hard distinction to see from the outside, but I know that at least parts of the police and security forces are trying to understand better where that line is, and how to keep angry young men, like Khan, on the right side of it.

*Malik uses the term Wahhabi in his piece instead; I thinks it's inaccurate but it is a rather complex and not very important point.

"The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright

I've recently finished reading Lawrence Wright's excellent "The Looming Tower". It is the result of years of reporting and hundreds of interviews all around the world. Wright, a investigative journalist from the New Yorkers, paints a vivid pictures of what can be called loosely "the Islamist world" pre-9/11; a world of radicals and reactionaries, conservatives and revolutionaries, those obsessed with politics and those who only are interested in religion. This diversity is something that many still now in the West do not understand, or will not acknowledge. They don't know about the vicious infighting and attacks on each others' characters that the two leaders of the Egyptian radical groups that were active during the Afghan Jihad carried out. Ayman al Zawahiri leading Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman of the Gamaa Islamyia clearly loathed each other despite their supposed common purpose (p.138). Few would be interested to know that Hasan al-Turabi, the famous 'radical' Sudanese Islamist thinker and leader was radical in part because of his views on the importance of the emancipation of women - that women should vote, lead prayers and even fight - from a Koranic perspective. Few will know how at the end of the 80s and start of the 90s, there were major division in the foreign Mujahideen in Pakistan and Afghanistan between the Takfiri tendencies and the far more mainstream Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist organisation, but they were loathed by the Takfiris for their moderation and interest in democratic politics. Wright paints a nuanced picture of Abdullah Azzam, now often fetishized in Jihadi circles as a great leader of the Afghan Mujahideen. Wright notes that this man famed now for having been involved in setting up Hamas and wanting to bring the Jihad to Palestine after the defeat of the Soviets, was also hated by the Takfiri crowd in Peshawar, including increasingly al Zawahiri, who saw him as too attractive to young volunteers coming to fight in Afghanistan. They saw him as collecting support for the Muslim Brotherhood and hence taking away influence from their more violent and radical aims. Azzam also came to support in the Afghan civil war, as the Soviets left, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Massoud was assassinated by al Qaeda just days before 9/11. Massoud resisted the Taliban in the late 1990s and because of this has been celebrated by some in the west, rather simplistically, as some kind of hero who withstood Islamic totalitarianism. But through the war with Russia and the civil war that followed, Massoud was a brutal warlord much like the others and just as interested in imposing his version of an Islamic state on Afghanistan. Azzam's support for Massoud was interesting as Massoud was a Tajik whilst his rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was a Pashtun and hence much closer to the Pakistanis with whom most the Arab volunteers were coordinating and it was his support for Massoud that most likely led to Azzam's assassination in 1989.

Its a great book, fascinating in it details yet still very readable. Journalism at its best.

Salafism as anti-Imperialism (part I)?

What prompted my earlier ramble on the current fragmented nature of left was trying to think of a better way of saying the following “currently one of the Shibboleths of the left is…” Clearly what follows isn’t a discussion of a Shibboleth of everyone who considers themselves progressive or leftwing, just some. If you want to know exactly whose Shibboleth it is, I refer you to my previous post. Having said that, lets start again.

Currently one of the Shibboleths of the left is that the wave of Jihadi terrorism that has been gripping the world’s attention since 9/11 is basically a new form of anti-Imperialism. This fits nicely with the “blame America” ideology that typified much of the opposition to the Iraq War and even, to a lesser degree, the response to the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001. At its most crude, this argument makes Bin Laden and his band of merry men out to be plucky freedom fighters resisting the new American empire of hegemonic Hollywood culture and neo-liberal free markets. This is a complex debate, but at its heart there is some truth to it, it’s just that the major flaw in this analysis is that it gets the empire wrong. The ideology of al-Qaeda can be called Salafi-Jihadi (al-Salafiyya al-jihadiyya), it is the violent wing of the Salafi movement. Salafism is often used interchangeably in the media with Wahabbism, the ultra-orthodox Saudi version of Islam, and with some justification as the two movements have increasingly merged over the last half a century – but they did not start out together. The Salafi movement began in the Middle East towards the end of the 19^th Century as essentially a modernist movement. Its founders, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Mohammed Abduh wanted the Muslim world to be able to compete with the rising powers of the West and believed that to do so they would need to borrow from the West ideas in science and even social organization. Although Afgani in particular was no fan of the British Empire, he was not an anti-imperialist per se. Firstly the Muslim world was at the time synonymous with the Ottoman Empire and even outside of the Ottoman’s realm he was not averse to taking the support of one empire, Russia, to tweak the nose another, Britain, if it fitted his agenda.

Afghani realised that the Muslim world had created a history of culture and jurisprudence that would see the use of Western ideas as heretical or ‘un-Islamic’. Abduh and al-Afghani set out to clear the decks of over a 1000 years of sedimented Islamic scholarship that would deny the legitimacy of their modernising ambitions and continued to leave the reactionary conservative scholars, the ulema of the Ottoman Caliphate in power. To do this they looked back to the time of the companions of the Prophet, and the generations of followers who came immediately after, who were known as the Salafi – hence the movements name. The Salafis of the 19^th Century argued that this seventh century Arabian Islam was the purest, and hence correct, form of Islam and what had evolved since was unwelcome innovation – or Bida. This argument, although sounding conservative, was actually progressive as it took away power of the ulema alone being able to say what was and wasn’t acceptable. This de-legitimisation of the religious “establishment” gave theological breathing room to allow the importation of western ideas including liberal democracy and constitutional government into the Islamic discussion.

Yet the First World War intervened, destroying the Ottoman Empire which had so long staked its claim as the seat of the Caliph, and hence the centre of the Muslim world. The remains of the Ottoman Empire were divided up between the British and French empires, with most of the modern states of the Middle East coming into existence as vassals states of those empires. The idea of a modernist reform movement borrowing ideas from the West had made sense whilst much of the Muslim world had at least been nominally linked to the Caliphate – but once so much of the region had become part of the Western Empires, resistance took precedence over renewal. From the 1920s onwards under Rashid Rida, one of Abduh’s disciples, the Salafi movement became increasingly anti-western as the trauma of the dissolution of the Caliphate and the increasing power of the European empires made many in the Muslim world believe that West was interested in not only political dominance but also ideological hegemony – to undermine Islam itself. Now operating from inside the European empires and aimed at resisting them, Salafism had become by default an anti-imperialist ideology.