Islamism 2.0

by Daniel Pipes

To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a U.S. congressman) represent Islamism 2.0.

The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization. The 1.0 version attacks those perceived as obstructing its goal of a society ruled by a global caliphate and totally regulated by the Shari'a (Islamic law). Islamism's original tactics, from totalitarian rule to mega-terrorism, encompass unlimited brutality.

Three thousand dead in one attack? Bin Laden's search for atomic weaponry suggests the murderous toll could be a hundred or even a thousand times larger.However, a review of the past three decades, since Islamism became a significant political force, finds that violence alone rarely works.

Survivors of terrorism rarely capitulate to radical Islam – not after the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat in Egypt in 1981, nor the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombings of 2002, the Madrid bombing of 2004, the Amman bombing of 2005, or the terrorist campaigns in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Terrorism does physical damage and kills and intimidates but it rarely overturns the existing order. Imagine Islamists had caused the devastation of Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 tsunami – what could these have lastingly achieved?

Non-terrorist violence aimed at applying the Shari'a does hardly better. Revolution (meaning, a wide-scale social revolt) took Islamists to power in just one place at one time - Iran in 1978–79. Likewise, coup d'état (a military overthrow) carried them to power just once – Sudan in 1989. Same for civil war – Afghanistan in 1996.

If the violence of Islamism 1.0 rarely succeeds in forwarding the Shari'a, the Islamism 2.0 strategy of working through the system does better. Islamists, adept at winning public opinion, represent the main opposition force in Muslim-majority countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Islamists have enjoyed electoral success in Algeria in 1992, Bangladesh in 2001, Turkey in 2002, and Iraq in 2005.

Once in power, they can move the country toward Shari'a. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the wrath of Iranian street demonstrators and bin Laden cowers in a cave, Erdoğan basks in public approval, remakes the Republic of Turkey, and offers an enticing model for Islamists worldwide.

Recognizing this pattern, Al-Qaeda's once-leading theorist has publicly repudiated terrorism and adopted political means. Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (b. 1950, also known by the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl) was accused of helping assassinate Sadat. In 1988 he published a book that argued for perpetual, violent jihad against the West. With time, however, Sharif observed the inutility of violent attacks and instead advocated a strategy of infiltrating the state and influencing society.

In a recent book, he condemned the use of force against Muslims ("Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers") and even against non-Muslims (9/11 was counterproductive, for "what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?").

Sharif's evolution from theorist of terrorism to advocate of lawful transformation echoes a much broader shift; accordingly, as author Lawrence Wright notes, his defection poses a "terrible threat" to Al-Qaeda. Other once-violent Islamist organizations in Algeria, Egypt, and Syria have recognized the potential of lawful Islamism and largely renounced violence. One also sees a parallel shift in Western countries; Ramadan and Ellison represent a burgeoning trend.

(What one might call Islamism 1.5 – a combination of hard and soft means, of external and internal approaches – also works. It involves lawful Islamists softening up the enemy, then violent elements seizing power. The Hamas takeover of Gaza proved that such a combination can work: win elections in 2006, then stage a violent insurrection in 2007. Similar processes are possibly underway in Pakistan. The United Kingdom might be undergoing the opposite process, whereby violence creates a political opening.)

In conclusion, only Islamists, not fascists or communists, have gone well beyond crude force to win public support and develop a 2.0 version. Because this aspect of Islamism undermines traditional values and destroys freedoms, it may threaten civilized life even more than does 1.0's brutality.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Daniel Pipes

Australia - Join Muslim Asia or perish: Taliban

Abraham Rabinovich

AN official Taliban publication warns Australia that it will have to assimilate into a dominant Asia or face the prospect of being overpowered and forced to take population overspill from Asia.

The choice is spelled out in the latest issue of the online Taliban monthly magazine, Al Sumud (Steadfastness), whose lead article offers a sweeping view of a post-war order in which a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan becomes a moral pivot for a pan-Asian renaissance that will coincide with the decline of Western power.

"The end of European leadership in the world will place the white settler diaspora in Australia before two choices," writes the author, Mustafa Hamid, a former senior al-Qa'ida member who in 2001 married Australian Rabiah Hutchinson, a Sydney mother with links to Islamic extremists.

"It can either return to its motherland in Europe or reconcile with its Asian surroundings and assimilate into it as a wealthy and active member."

Otherwise, he warns, a lengthy conflict will ensue in which Australia will be overpowered "by Asian waves that are better armed and more numerous".

"There is no doubt that the huge growth in the population of Asia, together with its economic and military development, will make Australia into lebensraum -- to use the European term," writes Mr Hamid. Lebensraum, meaning living space, was a term used by Nazi Germany as a motivation for territorial conquest.

Asia, Mr Hamid writes, is facing a population explosion "while Australia is nearly empty of people, apart from scattered groups of white residents".

Residents of "the Israeli outpost" at the other end of Asia are likewise warned to return to their countries of origin or face an "unequal conflict".

These warnings, however, are marginal to the central vision offered in the article -- the emergence of a vibrant pan-Asian identity in which Islam, and the Taliban in particular, constitutes a powerful moral and cultural force but not an exclusive one. Its emphasis on pan-Asian political identity rather than pan-Islamic sets it apart from al-Qa'ida ideology. The Taliban article does not call for jihad, although it hints at the possibility of "peaceful Islamic expansion" and the linchpin role in the "Asian Age", as the author terms it, is ceded to non-Islamic China.

Western power is fading fast, he writes, "to the benefit of Asian giants, and first and foremost among them the colossal economic and human power of China".

Even Russia, whose invasion of Afghanistan 30 years ago would prove a milestone in the emergence of militant Islam, is depicted as an ally arraigned with Asia against the "arrogance" of the West.

"Today, Russia is taking a defensive position against the Western advance which aims to break (Russia) up into statelets and to cross it on the way to China to break it up as well. Russia desires a coalition with China, with India, with Iran if possible, and even more so with Afghanistan, and even more so with the Taliban movement (which) is a serious, realistic and victorious leadership in that vital country (Afghanistan)."

In the article, "The Return of the Islamic Emirate: A vision of Afghanistan's role in the coming international order", Mr Hamid depicts a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan having a fundamental leadership role in the new Asian order -- "not in the field of finance, industry and interest-bearing banks" but as a moral force.

"This was demonstrated by the ability of Islam to inspire a small, poor people to resist and defeat five military campaigns of the largest armies on earth."

Source: The Australian

Islamic Civilization in Peril

By Ali A. Allawi

I was born into a mildly observant Muslim family in Iraq. At that time, the 1950s, secularism was ascendant among the political, cultural, and intellectual elites of the Middle East. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Islam would lose whatever hold it still had on the Muslim world. Even that term — "Muslim world" — was unusual, as Muslims were more likely to identify themselves by their national, ethnic, or ideological affinities than by their religion.

To an impressionable child, it was clear that society was decoupling from Islam. Though religion was a mandatory course in school, nobody taught us the rules of prayer or expected us to fast during Ramadan. We memorized the shorter verses of the Koran, but the holy book itself was kept on the shelf or in drawers, mostly unread.

The elderly still made the pilgrimage to Mecca to atone for their transgressions in preparation for death — more an insurance policy than an act of piety. I don't recall ever coming across the word "jihad" in a contemporary context.

The political rhetoric of the day focused on Arab destiny and anti-imperialism. A bit of religious fervor surfaced during the Suez crisis of 1956, when the radio broadcasts out of Cairo blared out martial songs calling for divine support against the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion, but that was an anomaly. Women, not only in my own family but also throughout the urban middle class, wore only Western-style clothes. They had long ceased to wear the hijab, or head scarf. My only connection to a premodern past was my grandfather, who continued to dress in the dignified robes and turbans of an old-line merchant.

Apart from religious holidays, there were few public observances of Islamic rituals. The rites of Muharram, a Shia Muslim practice to commemorate the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, during which participants often indulged in self-flagellation, was celebrated, sometimes wildly, but I was advised to stay far away; such ceremonies were considered unbecoming of genteel folk, who preferred to hold semiliterary soirees to remember the passion of the martyr.

Modernity was flooding in everywhere. Cinemas and snack bars; cabarets and country clubs, freely flowing alcohol and mixed-sex parties; Baghdad was turning into Babylon, its hedonistic predecessor of yore. Things were not much different, as memoirs of the era testify, in Cairo, Casablanca, Damascus, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, and Tehran.

When I first left Iraq, in 1958, whatever lingering interest I had in religion was ground down further by my exposure to the stifling atmosphere of an Anglican boarding school in England. Enforced attendance at chapel and endless formulaic sermons helped nurture an abiding distaste for organized religion. But in hindsight, I can see that the seeds of my rekindled interest in Islam may well have been planted during this time. I instinctively reacted to the slights against Islam that ran throughout the curriculum — the depiction of the Crusaders as brave knights defending against marauding Saracens, for example, or the casual dismissal of the leaders of the so-called Indian Mutiny against 19th-century British rule as bloodthirsty barbarians.

There were other Muslims in the school, mostly from Britain's shrinking empire. They were no different from me; we all came from the same type of secularized background. Despite our resentment at the depiction of Islam, our presence in England seemed proof that modern civilization was anchored firmly in the West. Our Islamic past may have been glorious, but it was just that — the past. The future was in the West — the more Western, the better. I spent most of my last year at school dreaming of America.

In 1964, when I began my studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was impossible not to be swept up in the cultural and political convulsions of the era, even if you were an outsider. I enthusiastically participated in sit-ins and teach-ins, civil-rights and antiwar protests. I was fascinated by the struggle for black empowerment in America, which demonstrated that a spiritually charged movement could effect great change. Martin Luther King Jr. was a far cry from the establishment churchmen I had encountered in England. And Malcolm X was a practicing Muslim. I began to think about Islam as a force for social transformation.

Later, like many young people during the 1970s, I was preoccupied with the search for a meaningful ethic to fill the spiritual and moral void of the times, to find an inner balance against the excesses of the counterculture. Those thoughts crystallized in the unlikely setting of 1976 London, amid a disintegrating British economy beset by labor strife and the first whiffs of hyperinflation. Between April and June, London was host to the World of Islam Festival, an event designed to convey to the West the richness and diversity of Islam's culture and civilization. More important, it showed the unity of Islamic civilization across its component nations, languages, and cultures. Read more here......

Source: Chronicle Review

Ali A. Allawi is a senior visiting fellow at Princeton University. He has just been named one of the first two Gebran G. Tueni human-rights fellows at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His latest book, The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, was published in March by Yale University Press.

A Home-grown Conspiracy to Bring Down the West?

By Mumin Salih

Conspiracy theories exist in all societies. They are often convenient inventions by those people, who do not have the courage to admit their mistakes or face their failures; they use it as useful tool to heap up all blames upon others. Conspiracy theories act as a comfortable retreat for the minds of those, unhappy about their misfortunes or unable to come to terms with their poor achievements. This world of conspiracies is, particularly, the favourite resort for the tired minds of Muslims. Backward and under-achiever, and hence, never happy in the real world, they love to live in a world of fantasy, which they shape in their own imagination and satisfaction.

The Islamic threat to our civilization is real; the Muslim terrorists have, time and again, proved their extraordinary capabilities to take terrorism to previously unknown heights and frontiers. As a former Muslim living in the West, I can explain Muslims’ motivations to destroy our civilization, because I know their mindset and how Islam stunts its followers’ ability of rational reasoning.

However, I find it difficult to understand the endless Western apathy towards such an obvious menace. Normally, I am not a fan of conspiracy theories. But my inability to explain the West's determination to cave in to Islam, I am afraid, is pushing me to ask some inevitable questions, which may sound somewhat conspiratorial:

* How is it conceivable that the West, who lead the world in science and technology, can miss such an obvious danger to all that their society stands for?
* How is it possible that the West has reached such a level of wisdom and still cannot separate the right from wrong in simple matters?
* Or is there a well-planned policy to subjugate Europe and the rest of the West to Islamic domination? Read more ...

Source: Source: Islam Watch