Tag Archives: Turkey

Keep Gitmo Going

The case for retaining the vital detention and interrogation facility at Guantánamo Bay

 

E.J. Kimball, esq.

Benjamin Lerner, esq.

 

MAY 28, 2009

 

On January 22, 2009, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order (EO) mandating the closure of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility (Guantánamo) within one year.[1]  About two-thirds of the nearly 800 detainees held at Guantánamo have either been repatriated to their home country or released to a third-party country; none have been released outright.[2]   The EO presumes that closure of the facility will “further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.”[3]  There is ample evidence to contradict such a presumption.

The inmates currently housed at Guantánamo are not mere criminals – they are hardened Islamist terrorists who believe they have a religious duty to kill Americans and destroy the United States, and will sacrifice even their own lives to accomplish this objective.  Of the nearly 500 detainees who have been moved from Guantánamo, at least 61 have returned to terrorism according to official Department of Defense reports.[4]  Some sources within the Pentagon have indicated that the number of former Guantánamo detainees that have returned to terrorism may be much higher, at 100 or more.[5]

This direct threat to American national security was made apparent when the U.S.embassy in Yemenwas attacked on September 17, 2008.  Eleven people were killed, including Susan Elbaneh, an eighteen-year-old Muslim American teenager from upstate New York.  The purported leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen, the group responsible for the attack, is Said Ali al-Shihri, a former Guantánamo detainee.[6]

The most lethal attack by a former Guantánamo detainee took place last March 23 when Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi, released in 2005, carried out a suicide attack in Mosul, detonating a 10,000 pound truck bomb that killed 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi army division and injured 42 others.  An Al Qaeda website praising the attack called him the “Lion of Guantánamo.”[7]

Additionally, the Taliban’s top operational officer in southern Afghanistanas of March 2009, Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is a former Guantánamo detainee who returned to the Taliban after being transferred from Guantánamo to Afghan authorities, which in turn released him.[8]  Other released detainees have been documented participating in terrorist activities with-al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Turkey, Morocco, Russia, and Iraq.[9]

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One civilization clashing

On June 7 Hizbullah will likely take over Lebanon and formally bring the oldest Arab democracy into the Iranian axis.

Iran’s stalking horse will not become the ruler of the largely pro-Western, non-Shi’ite majority country through a violent revolution. Lebanon will become yet another Iranian vassal state through ballots, not bullets. On June 7, Hizbullah and its allied parties are set to win a smashing popular victory in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections.

Hizbullah’s projected victory in these elections is of course not an isolated event. It is part of an Islamist electoral sweep in democratic elections throughout the region. Indeed, Islamists have won every free or partially free election in the region for the past six years.

Beginning with Turkey’s Islamist AKP party’s first electoral victory in 2003 – followed by its even more decisive reelection in last year’s race; moving to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in the relatively free, (although not open), presidential elections in his country in 2005, to the Muslim Brotherhood candidates’ sweep of nearly all electoral races they were permitted to contest in Egypt’s 2005 parliamentary elections, to Hamas’s electoral victory in the Palestinian Authority’s legislative elections in 2006, the Islamist candidates and parties have been victorious in state after state.

The only outlier in this pattern is Iraq. But then, Iraq is the only country in the region where the West overthrew an enemy regime and retained an empowered military force in the country in the years that followed. What will happen in Iraq once US forces are withdrawn is an open question.

Generally speaking, Western analysts have attributed the Islamists’ victories to their well-run welfare programs for the poor, and to the fact that unlike their secular opponents, Islamist parties and politicians are perceived as honest.

No doubt, economic interests have played a role in their election. But the fact is that people who voted for the likes of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmadinejad, and those who are poised to vote for Hizbullah are not blind and they are not disengaged from the ideological currents of their societies. They know full-well what these parties and their leaders represent and seek.

Turkish voters, for instance, know that Prime Minister Recep Erdogan wishes for Turkey to be an Islamic state and a leader in the Islamic world. Palestinian voters did not vote for Hamas just because it runs the best soup kitchens. They supported Hamas because they support its goal of destroying Israel.

Iranian voters chose Ahmadinejad over former president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani not merely because Rafsanjani was corrupt, but because of Ahmadinejad’s outspoken extremism. Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt know that the jihadist movement calls for the overthrow of the government and its replacement with a caliphate and that the group spawned both al-Qaida and Hamas. And in Lebanon, voters know that a vote for Hizbullah is a vote for war against Israel and the West and a vote for placing Lebanon under effective Iranian control.

They know all this, and still they vote for these parties and leaders. And once in office, these leaders do not disappoint them. In addition to expanding welfare benefits for their supporters, they have worked steadily and aggressively to Islamify their societies internally and to strengthen their alliances with likeminded governments against the West in foreign affairs. At home, through patronage, repression of political opponents, introduction of Islamic laws, and incitement against the West, these democratically elected regimes have been moving their people further and further away from secularism.

AS FOR the burgeoning alliances between and among these likeminded jihadist states, events of the past week alone make clear that backed by popular support at home, these governments are steadily expanding their military and commercial ties in a naked bid to challenge and defeat the West.

Buffeted by US President Barack Obama’s warm embrace of Turkey earlier in the month, Erdogan has moved swiftly to consolidate his place as a central pillar in the new regional jihadist axis spearheaded by Iran, which includes Syria, Lebanon and the PA. Over the past week, his government signed a military pact with Lebanon committing Turkey to providing arms and training for the Lebanese army – a force which is already largely subservient to Hizbullah and will likely come under its complete control on June 7.

It signed a defense agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Defense, and even more provocatively conducted a three-day joint land forces exercise with the Syrian military. This was the first joint exercise between Syria and a NATO member.

As for Iran, Turkey signed a trade agreement with the mullocracy that is slated to double bilateral trade between the two countries within five years. Even more significantly, Ankara gave a green light to Iranian gas exports to Europe through the Nabucco gas pipeline which runs from Turkey to Austria. The Nabucco pipeline was supposed to bypass both Iran and Russia and increase instead gas exports from the former Soviet republics to Europe. Iran’s access to the pipeline will earn it billions of dollars annually and increase its political power as Europe increases it dependence on Iranian gas.

BOTH THE popularity of Islamist parties and their behavior after being popularly elected have confounded conventional Western reasoning – particularly in the US. Quite simply, successive administrations in Washington have been unable to provide an accurate explanation of what drives the populations of these countries, and increasingly of the Islamic world in general to support Islamist parties and movements.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration came to the conclusion that it isn’t that these parties and movements are popular. It is just that people are intimidated into supporting them. Were the people given the freedom to choose, they would choose to be led by liberal political forces interested in living at peace with the West. For former president George W. Bush and his advisers, the root of Islamic extremism was authoritarianism and the solution was Westernization through open elections.

When time after time the citizens of these countries or societies voluntarily elected jihadists, the Bush administration was confounded. Rather than seek an alternative explanation to understand what was happening, the administration alternatively denied reality – as in the case of Turkey where it pretended that the AKP was a moderate, pro-Western Islamist party in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Or they claimed that the people were simply voting against corruption and showered them with money – as has been the case with the Hamas-supporting Palestinians. Or, as in the case of Egypt and Iran, they have simply ignored the fact that elections took place.

The same of course occurred after Hizbullah’s violent coup last May. Rather than cut off ties with the Saniora government – which had been compelled to accept Hizbullah control over its affairs – the Bush administration continued to support Saniora and increased US military assistance to the Lebanese army – hoping that it could pretend away the problem.

SINCE HIS first moments in office, President Barack Obama has embarked on a policy course which rejects Bush’s belief that the quest for freedom is universal as so much American chauvinism. For Obama, Islamic hostility towards the West is caused by American arrogance, not the absence of freedom. And because American arrogance is the root of the problem, the solution must be American contrition. It is this view that propels Obama from one international apology tour to the next and causes him to air the CIA’s laundry in public. As far as he is concerned, the more apologetic he is, the more contrition he expresses for the actions of his predecessors, the greater the payoff will be.

And yet, as we see from the behavior of Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iran over the past week alone, Obama’s apologetics are not winning them over, but emboldening them to take more aggressive positions against the West. How can this be explained?

There is an alternative explanation for the behavior of the peoples of the Islamic world that actually can explain events, and has successfully forecast them. It has even engendered policy recommendations that might have mitigated both the popularity of Islamist parties and deterred these parties, once elected, from taking provocative steps against Western states and interests. Unfortunately, every time this explanation is raised, Western policy-makers head for the hills.

This explanation is really nothing more than an observation. It observes that the populations of Islamic countries and societies support Islamist parties like the AKP and Hizbullah and Hamas because they support what they stand for. This explanation notes that tens and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, Turks, Egyptians and others voluntarily congregate in public venues and swoon when Islamist leaders tell them that Islam will defeat the West and promise the death of America and the death of Israel.

The jihadist message resonates with them. Their hearts and minds have already been won over. Contrary to what Western leaders as distinct as Bush and Obama believe, the hearts and minds of the Islamic world are not presently in play. From Beirut to the Taliban-controlled Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan, jihadists enjoy public support because the public supports their aim of defeating the West with bullets, with bombs, and with ballots.

It is too early to know how Obama will react when he like Bush is no longer able to deny that his strategy for winning over the hearts and minds of the Islamic world has failed. We don’t know if like Bush before him, he will simply ignore reality and pretend that nothing has happened; if he will blame his political opponents or Israel for not joining him in his contrition; or if he will cast about for another central organizing principle that will explain hostile Islamic behavior.

What is clear is that in the absence of Western – and specifically American – willingness to consider the possibility that what is happening in the Islamic world has next to nothing to do with either what the West embodies or what it has done, and everything to do with the resonance of the Islamist message within the Islamic world, events like the expected loss of Lebanon in June will continue to be met with incoherent prattling and confusion.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Obama Administration stacking the deck with Islamists

As we try to understand where the Obama administration will fall with regards to the global threat of political Islam, the first few months have provided a number of hints, not least of which was the tenor of the recent visit to Turkey. It was painfully obvious after witnessing the length to which the Obama team went to avoid any substantive discussion on political Islam and the threat it poses to human rights abroad and domestically. Domestically, in the weeks preceding his trip, Islamists inside the Beltway began to more openly play their cards to what they obviously perceive to be a friendly administration. Groups like the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association (CMSA) are trying to establish themselves in a position of influence inside the White House, the House, and the Senate.

 

It’s the Ideology!

First just review some of the activities and commentary of Beltway Islamists since the transition and the Inauguration. On January 8th, the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association sent out an email announcing that they would be hosting an inaugural gala titled, “Muslim Inauguration Gala”. Guests included Congressman Keith Ellison, (D-MN), Cong. Andre Carson (D-IN), “Representatives of the Obama Administration”, Rev. Walter Fauntroy (DC-Delegate), Zaid Shakir and Hamza Yusef (of the Zaytuna Institute), Fmr. Capt. James Yee, Senegalese President Abduolaye Wade, CAIR Michigan Director, Dawud Walid, and Johari Abdul-Malik of the Muslim Alliance of North America. This list reads like a Who’s Who of leading Islamists in the United States, all of whom share the ideological framework of political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. One need not look far to see the types of ideas shared by these Muslims. For example, Mr. Johari Abdul-Malik spoke just last year at a July 2008 London conference of the “Radical Middle Way”. This Radical Middle Way, sadly British government supported, is an ideological outgrowth of the ideas of Sheikh Yusef Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdul-Malik stated the following about the Obama campaign and Islamist activism in a speech entitled “Can Muslims Trust Obama?”
Now Barak Obama has been able to identify himself as both black and white. When he’s in Chicago he’s black, when he’s in Kansas he’s white, and when he’s in Hawaii he’s Hawaiian [audience laugh]. He actually is Hawaiian because he was born there…
In the place that we live now the strategy for Muslim Americans now, is to place the priority of regime change in Washington. Because the White House was putting out this message that we need regime change in Iraq, we need democracy and freedom in Iran. Malcolm said ‘when they told me to go out and find the enemy I don’t have to go as far as Vietnam to find that enemy, I can find the enemy right here. So if we’re willing to fight for freedom there, then we ought to be able to fight for freedom here.’ So in America, we’re looking for regime change in Washington. And the only regime change that we can look forward to in the near future is to get the Democrats in the White House and put the Republicans, as Malcolm would say, ‘in the dog house’….
After his speech, Mr. Abdul-Malik was asked whether it was permitted to vote in American elections according to Islam. In response he stated, “I could take the examples and say subhn Allah, how can you do that, it’s a Christian system and it’s unlawful. The Nagashi of Ethiopia, he was secretly a Muslim and head of State – that’s permissible.”
 
Mr. Abdul-Malik is actually very proud of the political tarring and feathering he does as an imam at a mosque (classical Islamism) in Northern Virginia and in fact predicts the utility of soon a Muslim candidate for a ‘full-fledged candidate for President”:
I told some Muslims, you know, we should invite some of our political enemies to our rallies and meetings so that they can be taught and so we can say we love them, and let them say ‘no no no.’ And by the way, this really did happen. One candidate in northern Virginia came to the mosque and he was attacked by some conservatives, saying ‘why did you go to the mosque?’ and he said ‘no, I’m not with them at all-believe me-I’m not.’ It was political suicide for her, but we helped him. We put the tar on him, opened up a pillow case and waited for a wind to start blowing and feathered him right there. So I think the question of political accountability will be there for whoever wins…. our thought would be to run a full-fledged Muslim candidate for President. In which all the questions would not be about the economy, not about jobs, healthcare – it would be about Islam.
Abdul-Malik also makes no bones about discussing how the election of President Obama is a step forward in the project of Islamization and the long term goal of Islamist domination which falls right in lock-step with that of the Muslim Brotherhood as revealed in their manifesto. He said:
This is our challenge; to say ‘ok, I’m not a Muslim but I’m fascinated by the nation of Muslims and Islam and so on and so on… People of da’wa think that the outcome is to turn everyone into a Muslim and that will turn the tide. That was not the case in Yathrib, at the time of the Prophet (saw), it was not the case in Andalusia, it was not the case in so many civilisations that Islam had impacted upon. It took hundreds of years in some societies for Muslims to become 50% of the population but they had those four sections of the population to say ‘we will not have racists and bigots  and sexists to have dominance over people who are fair minded, reasonable and rational…
Abdul-Malik finally makes a very revealing statement about his prediction about the collapse of the United States government:
For me, again, I’m not putting my faith in the Government. My faith is in Allah, I don’t believe in the Government. If I believed in the Government, then we would have been involved in the civil rights movement. Slavery – my people were slaves, I don’t know if you know that, we did not rely on the good will of the Government to get us out of slavery. We organised internally and externally to end slavery. Now what your idea would have been would be to get out of the abolitionist movement. Eventually the United States Government will fall under its own weight and you’ll be free
Notice Abdul Malik’s reference to “Muslim nation”. Notice his reference to “regime change.” Notice the magic number of ‘50% Muslim’ where Abdul Malik’s Muslim political party (aka Muslim Brotherhood) can then control the electorate and enact their interpretation of “shar’ia’ law” as a majority in their mobocracy. This was just a peek into Abdul Malik’s beliefs. He is no small fish in the American Islamist community. He is a protégé of Siraj Wahhaj, the well known Islamist and unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing. He is President of the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO) and the outreach director for Dar-Al Hijra mosque in Northern Virginia. The CCMO represents more than 50 Muslim organizations and mosques in the D.C. area. This same group, true to Islamist separatist ideology recently signed a statement from the “grand pooba of Islamist organizations in the United States” (the American Muslim Task Force) suspending their relationship with the FBI. Hardly the action of a “mainstream Muslim group.”
 
Each of the invitees to the Muslim Inaugural shindig has a plethora of speeches and writings in the public space which documents their own transnational agenda of political Islam. Abdul-Malik told his colleagues long before how,
…even under the pressures that you and I know about, the deen of Islam is growing because people see even within all of this struggle it is better to be a Muslim under these conditions than to be a kaffir under any conditions… before Allah closes our eyes for the last time you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America-that’s where we are now- to being the first religion in America.
Look into the comments and ideologies of others at this so-called ‘Muslim’ gala. These Islamist headliners have long been spreading their collectivist, socialist and oppressive ideologies of political Islam across the world.
 
It seems that no one is paying much attention to ideology anymore. Roll Call ran a piece “People really want to believe in this president…it has a lot to do with who he is and the campaign he ran. He involved different groups, and they feel they had a part in this.” Revealingly, it did not seem to be very important to Casey Hynes of Roll Call to query any Muslim organizations who chose not to attend this gala. discussing the gala quoting Kucinich and Ellison. They included this comment from CMSA coordinator and staff of Cong. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), Assad Akhter, “People really want to believe in this president…it has a lot to do with who he is and the campaign he ran. He involved different groups, and they feel they had a part in this.” Revealingly, it did not seem to be very important to Casey Hynes of Roll Call to query any Muslim organizations who chose not to attend this gala.
 
 
Stacking the Deck
 
With that platform laid out, the CMSA also began a push during the transition to distribute a “Resume Book” of Muslims to offices on the Hill including the House, Senate, and the White House. The email from Mr. Saleh on November 20, 2008 stated,
 
This is an important initiative that CMSA feels is greatly needed to promote the hiring of talented Muslim American staffers in the 111th Congress. It is CMSA’s desire to provide Congressional Leadership, new Member Offices, and Committee Chairs with Resume Books that represents the diverse, highly educated, and young professional Muslim American community. This can only happen if a broad cross-section of the Muslim American community receives the "Request for Resumes.
 
In a subsequent email, Mr. Williams lists some of the positions sought to be filled including Chief of Staff, Professional Staff, Legislative Director, Legislative Assistant, Press, and Scheduling. A Chicago Tribune report of March 29, 2009 soft-peddled the move as “driven by community leaders…and bumped up two weeks ahead of schedule because White House officials heard about the venture” quoting J. Saleh Williams of the CMSA who put together the ‘book’ of around 49 names from a list of greater than 300 Muslims. This is an oddly soft piece from the Tribune considering many of the leadership of CMSA have worked closely with leaders of the Muslim American Society in D.C. and other Islamist groups which the same TribuneMuslim Brotherhood (MB) in her November 19 2004 in her exposé on the MB in the United States. reporter exhaustively connected to the international movement of the
 
Williams further told the Tribune that, “it was mostly under the radar…we thought it would put President Obama in a precarious position. We didn’t know how closely he wanted to appear to be working with the Muslim American community.” This group of Islamists is, here, openly telling reporters that they are advocating for placement in positions of influence “under the radar.” They do this with the appearance and false assumption that somehow all Muslims in the U.S. would be overjoyed by their activities and ideology. The report by Abdul-Ullah went on to also link other global Islamist ideologies for outreach to their resume book initiative including outreach to the Syrian and Iranian governments and Islamist complaints about the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts inside a few mosques.
 
Abdul Malik Mujahid of the Muslim Democrats also pointed to the example of Zalmay Khalilzad who was appointed as Ambassador to Iraq and then to the U.N. under the Bush administration as an example of someone they emulate. I have a sneaking suspicion Mr. Khalilzad would never have even entertained allowing his resume to be placed in a booklet which offers no other unifying ideas except being Muslim and advocates of political Islam.
 
Some could try to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with an effort by any ‘faith group’ to place its ‘best and brightest’ in positions of influence in government. The point here is not to disagree with that sentiment at all. But this is not an effort by all “Muslims” but rather by Islamists. As anti-Islamist Muslims, the mission of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), is to point out that this group and other Islamists hardly represent a ‘diverse’ group of Muslim Americans and in fact this type of collectivization of Muslims only caters to the Islamist agenda. Most anti-Islamist and non-Islamist Muslims would likely be less than pleased to have Muslims who all arise from the Islamist ideological movement claim to represent “Muslim interests” or the “Muslim community” in the United States. One would be hard pressed to find any statements made by members and leaders of the CMSA against the Islamic state or the global movement and ideas of political Islam (i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood).
 
 
Affirmative action for Muslims
 
As made abundantly clear here at the outset, Mr. Abdul Malik and his colleagues at the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO) of D.C and the CMSA have a long history of supporting Islamism and the advocacy of shar’ia law in society. Their statements are all part of the public record and easily discoverable. Forwarding a group of resumes under the heading of “Muslim” to House offices or the White House, I actually find rather offensive as a Muslim. Those who actually seek the integration and success of Muslims in the United States should do so not as a result of filling slots simply filled into quotas saved for “Muslims” but rather because they have achieved their success because of the merits of their work. I would hope that my children achieve their successes because of merit not because of their chosen faith and their minority identity.
 
At AIFD we have a mantra, which is that “we are Americans who happen to be Muslim rather than Muslims who demand to be American”. My parents came to the United States in the 1960s because they understood our nation to be a meritocracy and not one plagued with the inequities of political correctness which are more concerned with immutable characteristics of individuals such as race or religion than with real equality and merit. Islamists thrive on identity politics and the deceptive collectivization of Muslims into one “bloc”. This resume book and the Islamist interests of the CMSA feed into that mentality where the faith identity of Muslims is not a private matter of concern only in the mosque and at home. Their resume book is all about influence for Islamists under the banner of ‘being Muslim.”
 
The CMSA campaign feeds on the guilt of Americans who are concerned about discrimination and want to make sure that the tribal leaders of Islamist organizations have no means by which to point to any ‘paucity’ of Muslim representation in their administration or beltway leadership. It also feeds on the disenfranchisement of Muslims while telling them that such campaigns will correct that disenfranchisement. Under the banner of religion, these groups feign democracy and politics but actually put into place primarily the interests of political Islam.
 
 
Will the post-racial candidate be a post-racial President?
 
If the Obama administration or any group in leadership uses the fruit of this effort to fill their staff rolls they will be simply grabbing the lowest hanging fruit which showed up in a booklet on their desk quite by design. This, in fact, seems un-American from an administration which prides itself on being a “post-racial” candidacy which spent little time on identity politics and purported to want to focus on ideas. While being Muslim is not a race but rather a belief, the Islamist mindset of collectivizing all Muslims feeds into that same mentality of minority victimization which candidate Obama avoided.
My hope and prayer as an American and as a Muslim is that this administration, our President, seek candidates first on merit and then if some happen to be Muslim so be it. I may not agree with the ideology of the Obama administration, but from both sides of the aisle, we should be able to assume that no political leaders be advocates of Islamism since shar’ia law is incompatible with our Constitution. But to first choose from a booklet of resumes which are fed to them from Islamists is wrong any way you look at it. 
 
After missing so many opportunities from the inauguration to Obama’s speech in Ankara, it is time for the Obama administration to make it clear that advocates of political Islam will not find a welcome home in their administration. Rather their administration should make it a domestic and foreign policy litmus test that the ideology of all its staff, whether Muslim or not, be anti-Islamist – that is advocates of liberty and freedom over the establishment of political Islam.
 
 
M. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and Chairman of theAmerican Islamic Forum for Democracybased in Phoenix Arizona. He is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, a physician in private practice, and a community activist.

Shariah bankers: West ready for ‘faith-based alternative’

Backers of Shariah-compliant finance see an opportunity for expansion amid the global economic downturn, and some Western banks are welcoming this growing source of new business.

"Islamic bankers should do some missionary work in the Western world to promote the concept of Shariah banking, for which many in the West are more than ready now," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the World Islamic Economic Forum last month in Jakarta.

Such statements have given rise to fears that Shariah finance is a stalking horse for hidden political or religious aims. Shariah finance is an extension of Islamic law, pushing a faith-based alternative to Western banking.

Key Islamists who advise Shariah financial houses have called for full Shariah law to be adopted in Western countries and, in some cases, have made statements supporting terrorist groups.

Shariah finance means institutions and norms that fit with Islamic law. Fully compliant Islamic financial institutions are prohibited from interest payments and require transactions to be backed by tangible assets.

Speculation and hedge funds are off limits — ditto for anything connected to porn, gambling, alcohol or pork. Shariah finance targets Muslims who want to avoid what are deemed "un-Islamic" Western banks or financial practices, and appeals to clients’ faith as well as their bottom line.

The practice has its detractors.

"A shift from present global economic practices [in which many Muslims participate] to Shariah-based practice" would mean "an unacceptable intrusion into Western culture," said Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism.

Mr. Schwartz said the sector is arguably un-Islamic by contradicting the traditional Islamic teaching that "Muslims living in non-Muslim societies must accept the laws and customs of the countries to which they immigrate."

Depending on the measurements used, the Shariah finance sector manages assets of $700 billion to $800 billion, according to the Islamic Financial Services Board, an industry body. Standard and Poor’s estimates that the sector could reach $4 trillion before long.

Shariah banks make up a small fraction of the global banking sector, and they may have suffered less than Western counterparts by being sheltered from the subprime crisis.

However, as Duncan McKenzie, director of economics at International Financial Services London (IFSL), told The Washington Times: "Islamic finance is one model but is by no means a panacea. The Islamic finance industry faces a number of challenges, including the need to standardize interpretation of Shariah law, harmonize tax and regulation of the industry, and develop the skills base."

Christopher Holton, vice president of the Center for Security Policy and director of its Shariah Risk Due Diligence Project, told The Times: "It is a myth that Islamic finance has provided a hedge against crisis. The FTSE Islamic Index has fallen 41 percent, and the all-world index 44 percent, similar losses over the past six months."

Shariah finance remains dominated by banking, but the sector is diversifying. A growing proportion — up to 20 percent according to some estimates — is taken up by sukuk, which is a Shariah-compliant bond issuance. Malaysia is a dominant base for this particular service. Bonds can play a key role in helping countries deal with the global economic crisis, but the global sukuk market has fallen for two years in a row, in step with the global downturn.

Despite the varying prohibitions, some Shariah banks find creative ways to make the equivalent of market interest rates by other means, such as by pegging debtor repayment rates to his or her future profits, or when a bank offers a "hibah," or gift to those who open an account — in essence a way of attracting new customers in lieu of interest accruals on savings.

Shariah finance likely will grow in coming years, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates being followed by Indonesia, Turkey, Singapore and some Western countries as viable locations for expansion.

The IFSL recently published a detailed report on the sector highlighting how "the U.K. is getting ahead of the game, in Europe at least, in facilitating this sector" — as noted by Emile Abu-Shakra, media relations manager at British bank Lloyds TSB.

Lloyds stole a march on the competition by greasing the wheels for Shariah-compliant bank-to-bank transactions, and now Britain has a bigger Shariah finance sector than Egypt or Pakistan.

In total, 22 financial institutions offer Shariah-compliant services in Britain, compared with nine in the United States. However the American financial sector is eager to source and provide new products — among them Shariah finance.

American International Group Inc.’s December pledge to bring Islamic home insurance to the United States was met with a written rebuke by Rep. Sue Myrick, North Carolina Republican, and Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, who warned that opaque charitable transfers made by Shariah finance advisers could end up funding terrorists.

Mr. Holton said some Islamic financial institutions have been implicated directly in bankrolling terrorists. "From 1988 to 2001, when it was designated a terrorist entity by the United States and the United Nations, Bank al Taqwa [registered in the Bahamas] transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and others," he said.

An elite cadre of scholars dominates the advisory boards of Shariah institutions, and these same thinkers are often called by Western institutions who want to develop Shariah-compliant products. However some, such as Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, are banned from entry into Britain and the United States for making statements supporting Islamist terrorism, while another, Mufti Taqi Usmani, who has advised the Wall Street Islamic index, has promoted extension of full Shariah law into Western countries.

Most troubling, perhaps, is the appearance of Bank Melli of Iran at the top of a listing of the world’s top 500 Islamic financial institutions, published by the Banker in November 2008 and reproduced in the IFSC report. Bank Melli is under U.S. and EU sanctions for facilitating Tehran’s support of Hamas and Hezbollah and funding Iran’s uranium enrichment program. In total, Iran has six of the 10 biggest Shariah-compliant institutions and double the Shariah assets of any other country.

 

Originally published in The Washington Times

 

‘The bow’: Obamas abominable obeisance

Is Obama’s deep bow (with slightly bent knee) to the Saudi king as bad as it seems? The White House, apparently forgetful that we live in the Internet age, where everything is swiftly documented and disseminated — or else thinking it leads a nation of the blind — insists the president did not bow. He supposedly always bends in half when shaking hands with shorter people, though he certainly seemed quite erect when saluting the British queen, who is much shorter than the Saudi king.

Obama bowed; this much is certainly not open to debate. All that is left now is to place his odious obeisance in context. As such, history has much to say about the seemingly innocuous bow.

Millennia before the current war between the West and Islam — the war Obama insists does not exist in the first place — the ancient Greeks (forebears of Western civilization) warred with the Persians (forebears of the soon-to-be-nuclear Islamic theocracy, Iran).

Writing in the 5th century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus explained: “When the Persians meet one another in the roads, you can see whether those who meet are of equal rank. For instead of greeting by words, they kiss each other on the mouth; but if one of them is inferior to the other, they kiss one another on the cheeks.”

This explanation reminds one of Bush’s hand-holding/kissing sessions with the same Saudi monarch, which some insist exonerate Obama’s bow. Not so; as the Greek historian explains above, such behavior is representative of equal rank in Eastern cultures.

As for Obama’s conduct, Herodotus continues, “yet if one is of much less noble rank than the other, he falls down before him and worships him.”

“Much less noble rank”? Could Obama, like his wife Michelle, who only recently became proud of America, be operating under the conviction that being American is not all that noble?

As for “falls down before him and worships,” this phrase is a translation of the Greek word proskunesis, which means “to make obeisance,” to “worship, adore,” as one would a god, or king, or god-king. Basically, to fall on one’s face in prostration to another. Connotatively, it implies “to make like a dog” — base, servile, and submissive.

While common to the caste-like system of Persia, prostration was something the freedom-loving Greeks scorned. Indeed, wars were waged simply because the Greeks refused to submit — literally and figuratively — to Persian tyranny.

According to Arrian’s chronicle, at the height of Alexander the Great’s power — when his hubris against the gods and megalomania against man were most burgeoning — he decided to implement the proskunesis in his court, provoking controversy among the Macedonians, until one of their numbers, Callisthenes, rebuked him by saying, “Will you actually compel the Greeks as well, the freest of mankind, to do you obeisance?” Another close companion to Alexander, Clitus, vexed at the former’s increasing pomposity and the lack of manly dignity at his court, told Alexander, in the words of the historian Plutarch, that “he [Alexander] had better live and converse with barbarians and slaves who would not scruple to bow the knee to his Persian girdle.” His words cost him his life.

It was one decade ago, when I studied ancient history with Victor Davis Hanson, that I last examined the proskunesis (never thinking the day was nigh when it would have modern applicability — and thanks to a U.S. president!). Recently corresponding with VDH about this whole sordid affair, he confirmed that “the Macedonians seemed to really have felt proskunesia was about the worst thing someone could do.”

In light of the West’s ancestors’ utter contempt for proskunesis, let us now examine Obama’s prostration in context:

First, it must be affirmed that, as with ancient Greeks, Americans find bows, prostrations, and other servile gestures distasteful. Interestingly, the Muslim world shares this same view, particularly so-called “radicals,” who are constantly condemning “manmade” governments, such as democracies, as systems of “human-worship” to be eschewed at all cost. Writes Ayman al-Zawahiri: “Know that democracy, that is, ‘rule of the people,’ is a new religion that deifies the masses by giving them the right to legislate without being shackled down to any other authority” (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 130).

This, by the way, is why the Saudi monarch does not tamper with Sharia: doing so would be tantamount to self-apotheosis. Expecting prostrations from others would be viewed little better by the theocrats surrounding him. (Watch the video and note that, while the king proceeded with an extended right arm, Obama dived in with a bow, almost taking the former aback.)

In short, both Muslims and Americans (at least until very recently for the latter) find bowing to be an odious enterprise and therefore do not offer it to, nor expect it from, others.

Conversely, some Far Eastern cultures incorporate the bow. Had Obama been in Japan and bowed (and received a reciprocal bow signifying equality), his actions would have been culturally appropriate (not to mention expected). Yet, Obama had as much reason to bow to a Muslim as he would have to a Christian or Jew.

Yet surely he didn’t bow to Abdullah due to the latter’s exalted status in the Muslim world (”Guardian of the Two Sanctities”), but rather out of politeness, because Abdullah is a king, royalty. Not so. Were this true, upon meeting the British queen — equal “royalty” — Obama would have stooped to her as well. (Nor can his iPod gift be considered surrogate.)

Whatever prompted that rather instinctive bow — Obama may be used to bending the knee to Saudi royalty, considering that Saudis may have paid his college tuition — and regardless of antiquated notions of “honor” and “dignity,” merely diplomatically, it was a bad move.

Not only is the Wahhabi king a symbol of the most “radical” form of Islam — it’s not for nothing that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, not to mention bin Laden, were Saudis — but his Sharia-enforcing kingdom is cited as one of the worst human rights violators in the world. Bowing to this man was therefore symbolically a bow of submission to radical Islam and all its attendant human rights violations.

This is compounded by the fact that, immediately preceding this ignoble bow, Obama was busy profusely apologizing to the Islamic world, insisting that the U.S. is not at war with Islam — and “never will be.” Jihadis the world over must have been relieved to know that not only does the leader of the most powerful Western nation have no intention of naming them or placing them in context — so much for that first strategy of warfare, “know your enemy” — but that nothing they do in the future will ever cause the sleeping infidel giant’s leader to arouse it.

Similarly, Obama’s obeisance should give nuke-seeking Iran even more hope in its endeavors. After all, if the leader of the free West so readily bends the knee to Wahhabi despotism, how long before he bows to Iran, the true heir of proskunesis-Persia? And if he does not fully bow willingly, that is only more incentive for Iran to hasten and acquire nukes, so he can be made to bow unwillingly.

Finally, any would-be “moderates” or assertive governments who may have been serious about combating radical Islam and its attendant humanitarian abuses via Sharia have, through Obama’s bow to the personification of radical Islam, just received a clear message: aside from occasional, perfunctory lip service, you’re really on your own.

As for all those who would defend Obama’s bow by saying he was being “diplomatic,” because, you know, we “need” Saudi oil, how does that justify bowing, unprecedented from an American president, unexpected from the Saudi king?

When Alexander the Great, drunk with hubris, took on despotic ways, demanding that others prostrate themselves before him, the Macedonians revolted; some were put to death. What a long way Western civilization has come when today the leader of the free world and heir to democratic ancient Greece, far from despotically demanding that others offer him obeisance, voluntarily opts to prostrate himself — and in essence, all of America — before another. And what another.

 

Originally published at Pajamas Media.

Raymond Ibrahim is the associate director of the Middle East Forum and the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.

 

Surviving in a post-American world

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world’s policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama’s presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq this past week.

Somewhere between apologizing for American history – both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US’s nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America’s missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, "Don’t worry, be happy," as he leaves them to Moscow’s tender mercies; humiliating Iraq’s leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world’s aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama’s supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn’t be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN’s former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, "America’s… superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy."

The pro-Obama US and European media are so pleased with America’s abdication of power that they took the rare step of applauding Obama at his press conference in London. Indeed, the media’s enthusiasm for Obama appeared to grow with each presidential statement of contrition for America’s past uses of force, each savage attack he leveled against his predecessor George W. Bush, each swipe he took at Israel, and each statement of gratitude for the blessings of Islam he uttered.

But while the media couldn’t get enough of the new US leader, America’s most stable allies worldwide began a desperate search for a reset button that would cause the administration to take back its abandonment of America’s role as the protector of the free world.

Tokyo was distraught by the administration’s reaction to North Korea’s three-stage ballistic missile test. Japan recognized the betrayal inherent in Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s announcement ahead of Pyongyang’s newest provocation that the US would only shoot the missile down if it targeted US territory. In one sentence, uttered not in secret consultations, but declared to the world on CNN, Gates abrogated America’s strategic commitment to Japan’s defense.

India, for its part, is concerned by Obama’s repeated assertions that its refusal to transfer control over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir provinces to Pakistan inspires Pakistani terror against India. It is equally distressed at the Obama administration’s refusal to make ending Pakistan’s support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan. In general, Indian officials have expressed deep concern over the Obama administration’s apparent lack of regard for India as an ally and a significant strategic counterweight to China.

Then there is Iraq. During his brief visit to Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, Obama didn’t even pretend that he would ensure that Iraqi democracy and freedom are secured before US forces are withdrawn next year. The most supportive statement he could muster came during his conversation with Turkish students in Istanbul earlier in the day. There he said, "I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence."

Hearing Obama’s statements, and watching him and his advisers make daily declarations of friendship to Iran’s mullahs, Iraqi leaders are considering their options for surviving the rapidly approaching storm.

Then there is Europe. Although Obama received enthusiastic applause from his audience in Prague when he announced his intention to destroy the US’s nuclear arsenal, drastically scale back its missile defense programs and forge a new alliance with Russia, his words were anything but music to the ears of the leaders of former Soviet satellites threatened by Russia. The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments were quick to recognize that Obama’s strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.

It is not a coincidence, for instance, that the day Obama returned to Washington, Georgia’s Moscow-sponsored opposition announced its plan to launch massive protests in Tblisi to force the ouster of pro-Western, anti-Russian Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

And as for Russia, like Iran, which responded to Obama’s latest ode to the mullahs by opening a nuclear fuel plant and announcing it has 7,000 advanced centrifuges in operation, so Moscow reacted to Obama’s fig leaf with a machine gun, announcing its refusal to support sanctions against North Korea and repeating its false claim that Iran’s nuclear program is nonaggressive.

Finally there is Israel. If Obama’s assertions that Israel must support the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, his declarations of support for the so-called Saudi "peace plan," which requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for "peace" with the Arab world, and his continuous and increasingly frantic appeals for Iran to "engage" his administration weren’t enough to show Israel that Obama is sacrificing the US’s alliance with the Jewish state in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran, on Tuesday Vice President Joseph Biden made this policy explicit.

When Biden told CNN that Israel would be "ill-advised" to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, he made clear that from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. That is, the Obama administration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence.

AMERICA’S BETRAYAL of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies – enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease. And as the US strengthens their adversaries at their expense, these spurned democracies must consider their options for surviving as free societies in this new, threatening, post-American environment.

For the most part, America’s scorned allies lack the ability to defeat their enemies on their own. India cannot easily defeat nuclear-armed Pakistan, which itself is fragmenting into disparate anti-Indian nuclear-wielding Islamist and Islamist-supporting factions.

Japan today cannot face North Korea – which acts as a Chinese proxy – on its own without risking a confrontation with China.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August showed clearly that its former republics and satellites have no way of escaping Moscow’s grip alone.

This week’s Arab League conference at Doha demonstrated to Iraq’s leaders that their Arab brethren are incapable and unwilling to confront Iran.

And the Obama administration’s intense efforts to woo Iran coupled with its plan to slash the US’s missile defense programs – including those in which Israel participates – and reportedly pressure Israel to dismantle its own purported nuclear arsenal – make clear that Israel today stands alone against Iran.

THE RISKS that the newly inaugurated post-American world pose for America’s threatened friends are clear. But viable opportunities for survival do exist, and Israel can and must play a central role in developing them. Specifically, Israel must move swiftly to develop active strategic alliances with Japan, Iraq, Poland, and the Czech Republic and it must expand its alliance with India.

With Israel’s technological capabilities, its intelligence and military expertise, it can play a vital role in shoring up these countries’ capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them. And by containing the likes of Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, they will make it easier for Israel to contain Iran even in the face of US support for the mullahs.

The possibilities for strategic cooperation between and among all of these states and Israel run the gamut from intelligence sharing to military training, to missile defense, naval development, satellite collaboration, to nuclear cooperation. In addition, of course, expanded economic ties between and among these states can aid each of them in the struggle to stay afloat during the current global economic crisis.

Although far from risk free, these opportunities are realistic because they are founded on stable, shared interests. This is the case despite the fact that none of these potential alliances will likely amount to increased support for Israel in international forums. Dependent as they are on Arab oil, these potential allies cannot be expected to vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly. But this should not concern Jerusalem.

The only thing that should concern Jerusalem today is how to weaken Iran both directly by attacking its nuclear installations, and indirectly by weakening its international partners in Moscow, Pyongyang, Islamabad and beyond in the absence of US support. If Japan is able to contain North Korea and so limit Pyongyang’s freedom to proliferate its nuclear weapons and missiles to Iran and Syria and beyond, Israel is better off. So, too, Israel is better off if Russia is contained by democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe. These nations in turn are better off if Iran is contained and prevented from threatening them both directly and indirectly through its strategic partners in North Korea, Syria and Russia, and its terror affiliates in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the past 16 years, successive Israeli governments have wrongly believed that politics trump strategic interests. The notion that informed Israel’s decision-makers – not unlike the notion that now informs the Obama administration – was that Israel’s strategic interests would be secured as a consequence of its efforts to appease its enemies by weakening itself. Appreciative of Israel’s sacrifices for peace, the nations of the world – and particularly the US, the Arabs and Europe – would come to Israel’s defense in its hour of need. Now that the hour of need has arrived, Israel’s political strategy for securing itself has been exposed as a complete fiasco.

The good news is that no doubt sooner rather than later, Obama’s similarly disastrous bid to denude the US of its military power under the naive assumption that it will be able to use its new stature as a morally pure strategic weakling to win its enemies over to its side will fail spectacularly and America’s foreign policy will revert to strategic rationality.

But to survive the current period of American strategic madness, Israel and the US’s other unwanted allies must build alliances with one another – covertly if need be – to contain their adversaries in the absence of America. If they do so successfully, then the damage to global security induced by Obama’s emasculation of his country will be limited. If on the other hand, they fail, then America’s eventual return to its senses will likely come too late for its allies – if not for America itself.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Reality checks: Obama’s unreal initiatives meet the real world

Two images last week contrasted sharply with President and Mrs. Obamas’ otherwise adulatory treatment in Europe and Turkey.  The images show how out of touch with reality Team Obama is on two of the most important national security threats of our time: 1) the totalitarian theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls “Shariah” and 2) the proliferating danger of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that will deliver them.

The first image was reportedly captured by a cellphone camera in the Swat Valley of Pakistan’s Northwest Territories.  According to Saturday’s New York Times, a two-minute video recorded the agony of a seventeen year-old girl being flogged by a “Taliban commander.”

The Times could not ascertain the exact “crime” that precipitated this brutal beating. One source said that it could have been that the girl “stepped out of her house without being escorted by a male family member.” Another said that “a local Taliban commander had falsely accused the teenager of violating Islamic law after she refused his marriage proposal.”

The video is inconvenient as it provides a vivid insight into the repressive, totalitarian and misogynistic nature of Shariah at the very moment that President Obama has been aggressively promoting the idea that the Islamic world must be “respected.” To do so, he insists that non-Muslim Americans must use “respectful language” with regard to Islam and its followers.  He went beyond words to demonstrate his submission to the King of Saudi Arabia by deeply bowing before him (something he did not do for the Queen of England).

The trouble is that any criticism of Shariah and of those – including the Taliban – who practice it as authoritative Islam dictates is not simply seen as disrespectful. It amounts to blasphemy, a capital offense according to Islamic law.

Among those promoting the application of Shariah blasphemy laws worldwide are: the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a kind of international mafia enterprise made up of 57 Muslim-majority countries around the world; the so-called “Alliance of Civilizations,” which met in Turkey during Mr. Obama’s visit there; and the United Nations Human Rights Council and General Assembly, which are – like the Alliance –increasingly dominated by the OIC.

Non-Muslims’ obligation to “respect”  Islam is also high on the agenda of the seditious Muslim Brotherhood and scores of groups in the United States that operate as fronts for it.  (Worryingly, some of the latter claim the Obama administration has expressed a desire to pursue the hiring of 45 Muslim Americans the Brotherhood types have vetted for the purpose.)

The New York Times reports, however, that the video from the Swat Valley (perhaps it should be called the “Flog Valley” from now on) has precipitated an intense controversy in Pakistan.  After all, this evidence of the Talibans’ application of Shariah law is offending many Pakistanis who, like large numbers of Muslims around the world, do not practice their faith as Shariah prescribes and have no more interest in living under this barbaric code than do the rest of us.  They are questioning the wisdom of their government’s recent decision to surrender the valley to the Taliban, and to agree to the latter’s demand that it be allowed to impose Shariah in the region.

This development is of particular relevance as the Obama administration recasts its policy towards Afghanistan.  Notwithstanding the beefing up of U.S. forces there, the United States in the person of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has signaled an openness towards accepting the sort of deal for the Afghans that the Pakistanis have now acquiesced to in the Swat Valley.

Moreover, on Monday in Turkey, President Obama went so far as to declare that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.  In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical…in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject.” Unfortunately, the “fringe ideology” to which he refers is really Shariah.  And those who endorse it include the recognized, “mainstream” institutions, traditions, scholars and texts of the faith – not just those like al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood who engage in jihad, whether of the violent or stealthy kind, in the name of Shariah.

The second discordant image of the week was of a ballistic missile fired by North Korea over Japan and in the general direction of the United States. It comes as Mr. Obama was grandiosely declaring his commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons and his administration was gutting the funding required to develop and deploy effective anti-missile defenses and scuppering the NATO-agreed plan for emplacing radars and interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. (This reckless act of unrealism will be discussed at greater length in next week’s column.)

Suffice it to say for the moment that the two images of trouble ahead should be borne in mind even as they conflict with the dominant motif of the week: a President accorded the Euro-equivalent of Jesus’ palm frond-graced entrance into Jerusalem.  Let us pray that the folly being perpetrated by the object of such misplaced veneration today will not bring his country great grief tomorrow.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.  

 

From fashion to fortitude: the road to resilience

This is the text of a speech by Dr. Liam Fox, currently Shadow Defence Secretary and Member of Parliament for Woodspring, UK, on March 31, 2009.

Politics and public policy do not exist in a vacuum. They exist within and interact with the social values and fashions of the day.  We need to understand, and if necessary correct for, these trends if we are to control our direction of political travel. The alternative is to drift in the wake of the conventional wisdom of the day and we need to decide whether we shape the world around us or are content to be shaped by it.

Maybe we should remember that only dead fish go with the flow.

Since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, we have transformed our world. While we have lurched at times into bloody conflict, we have also excelled in literature, art, science and medicine. We have expanded the rule of law and democratic systems in our world and we have alleviated more physical poverty in our own generation than in the whole of history. The triumph of our political and economic systems, with strong and decisive leadership, have enabled us to see off the threats of Nazi fascism and Soviet communism. Yet there is a crisis of confidence, an uncertainty and a lack of optimism in our society which I believe should trouble us.

Today, I want to first look at a number of factors which I believe threaten to derail the trend of our progress, sap our political strength and threaten the resilience of our country at a time of considerable external threats.

Some of these factors may seem trivial when considered alone. Certainly, none of them are lethal in themselves but cumulatively they are profoundly affecting the body politic. Diminishing social mobility, the cult of the celebrity society, the decline in serious learning, the increasing disregard for empiricism and social attitudes verging on valuephobia threaten to cast a shadow on the enlightened western liberalism which has taken us so far.

 It takes only a passing glance at any newsstand today to see the influence of celebrity. Society seems obsessed with celebrity, fame and trivia while serious learning and difficult achievement take second place.  Where in previous generations youngsters would aspire to be scientists or astronauts the answer to the question "what would you like to be?" is now simply:  " famous". 

In a time when it is possible to be famous simply for being famous (and moreover wealthy for simply being famous) it is an understandable temptation.  Yet, the celebrity culture masks one of the most worrying trends in society in recent years. The decline in social mobility in the last decade in Britain should be a prime concern in a country which needs to harness the potential of all its citizens if it is to compete successfully in a cutthroat global economy. But while social mobility has diminished in the new Labour years we have a plausible alternative – we have the illusion of social mobility in the celebrity culture.

Yet while the pages of Hello! and OK may be opened up to reality TV stars and footballers’ girlfriends, the doors of the universities and the law seem to be closed to far too many. And the dangers of aversion to difficult learning should not be underestimated. While India is producing huge numbers of mathematics, physics and chemistry graduates British numbers are falling, being replaced with soft subjects such as media studies. The unavoidable consequence is that we will have to import these skills from abroad or do without them altogether. Hardly a great accomplishment for our educational system.

My next concern is that the moral relativism which emerged post war- and which is probably unavoidable in a liberal society- has morphed into something much worse- what we may call intellectual relativism. It is a state of affairs where people seem to believe that the validity of their views is determined by the strength by which they hold them not by any reference to empiricism.  Thus we get the use of phrases such as "well that is your truth- it’s not mine" or the increased frequency of the one word which is doing untold damage to the concept of objectivity – "whatever".  When confronted with evidence which undermines the fashion du jour or your own prejudices simply lift your hand and say  " whatever" and you can avoid all the discomforts of the value of truth or objectivity or of being plain wrong.  "Whatever" means never having to say you’re stupid.

This trend is exacerbated by the culture of political correctness.  In line with the lack of critical analysis generally, political correctness further restricts free expression and, by extension, thought.  How often do we hear people say " of course you’re not allowed to say that are you" or  "I’m not supposed to think that, am I ?". This is neither a small nor a trivial matter.  Political correctness is not just linguistic repression. In the name of liberal thought it is the very antithesis of liberalism.  In true Orwellian doublespeak fashion it is the imposition of a particular set of, usually left leaning, social and cultural mores.  The good manners and respect for others’ differences on which civilised behaviour depends should not be confused with the restrictive language and thought control which the PC culture promotes. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression are essential in the pursuit of reason.  It is reason that will lead us to truth and the pursuit of truth has been the driving force behind progress since the Enlightenment.  We cannot allow the age of reason to gradually shift into reverse.

There seems to be a particular confusion when it comes to the expression of social, moral or religious values in some quarters.  Indeed there are those who almost seemed so afraid of causing offence to anyone that they prefer to express no values whatsoever. What we may term valuephobia is manifested in some of the debate around issues of tolerance, diversity and the secular Society.

To tolerate is to treat with indulgence, liberality and forbearance.  But tolerance is not the same as surrender.  Because we tolerate the views and ideas of others does not mean acquiescence to them or the glib acceptance of the creed of inevitable moral equivalence.  An enlightened society tries to resolve conflicts of ideas with reason but it has to be a two-way process.  We are all in some aspects of our lives majorities and other aspects minorities- be it in gender, race, religion or politics.  While majorities have to tolerate the views of minorities, minorities also need to tolerate the rights of the majority to disagree with and even disapprove of them.  Tolerance certainly does not require the majority to ditch or apologise for its value set simply because a minority dislikes them.  The tyranny of the minority would not be any more tolerable than the tyranny of the majority.  Tolerance itself must be equally applied.

Confusion also seems evident in the debate about the concept of the secular Society. A secular society does not have to be a valueless society.  Because a state does not have an affinity to a set religion does not mean it should avoid value systems.  For the most part our concept of right and wrong is in tune with our basic instincts and our understanding of the consequences of our actions.  These rights and wrongs are codified by religions not invented by them. In any case there are other, different, non- religious values which are part of our heritage-the concept of looking after those who cannot look after themselves, of hard work, perseverance and saving for a rainy day. States cannot operate without values and the seemingly all pervasive fear of causing offense because someone may disagree needs to be balanced by considerations of the benefits that can accrue to individuals and society alike of clear guidance on what is desirable behaviour.

Similar problems exist in our discussions about the diversity within our society.  Britain has historically had a reasonably good track record in the assimilation of minority populations.  Yet we have been so obsessed in recent years with celebrating diversity that we have forgotten to celebrate our commonality.  Diversity is a good thing but we are also a society with a strong historical identity and we must not lose sight of who we are and how we have come to be the people we are.  If we fail to emphasise what we have in common and the cohesive forces which have made us the country we are then we will produce not diversity but fragmentation. It has been interesting to watch in the recent American presidential election groups within the electorate referring to themselves as Irish American, Italian-American or African American. While clearly retaining their cultural identity, the common word is always American.

How are some of these trends affecting our political discourse.

A lack of critical thinking and an over accommodation with the conventional wisdom and fashion can result in policies which are one-dimensional.  An example is the debate about poverty.  An increase in material wealth has not diminished many of the social problems associated with the most deprived parts of our society.  It has been a personal source of irritation that so much of the debate about poverty, including among many of our churches, has been about material poverty.  Whilst the work to eradicate material poverty is important and must continue, we must also realise that on its own this is not enough.  The real poverty which stops so many young people from getting on the ladder to better well-being is the poverty of ambition, the poverty of aspiration and the poverty of hope.  I am lucky.  I came from a privileged background.  We were not wealthy but my parents had a richness of ambition for their children, for their education and well-being.  You see, it’s true, you don’t have to be posh to be privileged.  We need to break away from the uni-dimensional debate about poverty simply as a material issue. Until we address some of the personal spiritual poverty, the lack of ambition and the lack of hope which afflicts some of our most disadvantaged citizens then we have no chance of making real poverty history.

All of these are important factors to get right if we are not to cast a shadow on the enlightenment.

But there is another area where I believe the lack of critical thinking puts our society at a disadvantage and that is in terms of our security.

There seems to have been a view developing in recent years that defines peace simply as the absence of war.  If only we can avoid armed conflict the argument seems to say then we will live in a more peaceful world.  But peace is not simply the absence of war.  Real peace has an unavoidable set of values which accompany it.  Freedom from tyranny, freedom from oppression and freedom from fear are essential for real peace.  Unfortunately we sometimes have to fight and even to die for these freedoms. The need to maintain public support for the conflicts which are sometimes required to ensure these freedoms is a burden which democratic states have to carry but many of our enemies do not.  The absence of a clear and rational argument for the necessity of military action in certain circumstances can hand the advantage to those who wish to undermine our democratic systems and, indeed, our whole way of life.

This is where our social attitudes, our political direction and our national security converge- in the crucial question about the state of our national resilience.

For it is our resilience-  our political and social fortitude- which will determine whether or not we are able to deal with the threats and challenges which lie before us.

Our current enemies answer to no public caucus-no court of electoral legitimacy. It is we, in the conflict adverse West-who carry what can be a fundamental weakness. We must make it a strength if we are to prevail. And the threats we face are many, diverse and imminent.

Beyond the credit crunch there is a big bad world out there: The twin threats of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism; a resurgent Russia; a violent Islamist fundamentalism; an emboldened Iran and the global threats of climate change and pandemic.

 

Russia

First, a resurgent Russia.

Russia is not a failed state but it is being increasingly likened to a gangster state, a state fattened by hydrocarbon wealth but unable to translate this into shared wealth and stability. It is probably not a direct threat to this country but threatens our interests abroad and our allies.

Russia’s swift and strategic invasion of Georgia in mid-August 2008 highlighted the stark reality of energy geopolitics in Eurasia.  Aside from the objectives of scuttling Georgia and Ukraine’s NATO membership hopes and demarcating a clear sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space, Moscow intended to send the message to the broader West that it takes the competition over control of energy resources more seriously than any other player in the game.

As the whole world watched what looked like a juggernaut roll into Georgia, Russian officers on the ground witnessed a poor fighting force using out-of-date equipment with huge deficiencies in night fighting capability, communications, and supply and maintenance. Consequently, Russia is working hard to improve these capability gaps in its ground forces.

Russia will spend over $200 billion between now and 2015 upgrading its forces.

We now have Russian strategic bombers probing British airspace again-something that occurred on a regular basis during the Cold War. There are reports of similar activity by the Russian Navy inside British territorial waters.

The cyber attacks in Estonia, Georgia and most recently in Kyrgyzstan, where the finger still points at Russia is another reason why we must maintain our vigilance and invest in the technology to deal with future threats.

While some debate the merits of Britain building two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, Russian plans for its navy include the construction of six nuclear powered aircraft carriers, eight ballistic missile submarines, and the largest nuclear icebreakers in the world for use in the Arctic.

The latter is of great importance to the Russian Navy as the scramble for Arctic resources heats up and the ice continues to melt. In 2007, Russia announced its intention to annex a 460,000 square mile portion of ice-covered Arctic. Scientists claim that that area, on which Russia has audaciously set its sights, may contain 10 billion tonnes of gas and oil deposits. With ice melting in the Arctic, and shipping passages and possible mineral exploitation becoming an increasing possibility, we may be witnessing a scramble for this resource-rich territory with all the tensions that this will bring.

Russia may be building from a low base given the degraded state of its conventional forces and it may not pose a direct threat to the security of this country but the Russian leadership has shown in Georgia how they could destabilise our allies and indirectly threaten our security through their strangle hold on energy supplies.

 

Iran

Secondly, there is the threat of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and the subsequent nuclear proliferation and regional arms race that could follow. 

There are those who say that we must accommodate Iran as a nuclear weapon state. Let me give you three reasons why this is simply not acceptable.

First, the nature of Iran’s leadership.  Those such as President Ahmadinejad who talk about wiping Israel off the map simply do not belong in the civilised family of nations.

Secondly, the Iranian regime has shown itself to be, par excellence, a net exporter of terror and destabilisation. Do we really want to see nuclear weapons added to this mix? Do we really want to see Hamas or Hezbollah able to make a dirty bomb – a subject I will come to in a moment.

Iran has already shown its intent to destabilise the region. According to intelligence sources, Tehran has already begun the process of building a new supply line to replenish depleted stocks of missiles and other materiel for Gaza terrorists.  Hamas are currently trying to acquire new missiles from Iran, especially Fajr missiles which could hit Ben Gurion airport or Tel Aviv if launched from within Gaza. Do we wish to see fissile material added to this mix?

Thirdly, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon then Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are likely to be next in the queue. Surely we do not want a new nuclear arms race in the world’s most unpredictable region. After all that we went through in the Cold War, is this a legacy we want to leave to the next generation?

 

Nuclear Terrorism

Thirdly, and this ties into my point regarding Iran, is nuclear terrorism. Put simply, nuclear terrorism is a problem that is not going away. I am afraid that many decision-makers in the West wish to ignore the issue hoping that by doing so the threat will simply disappear or at least not happen on "their watch". This is both naive and dangerous. 

Much has been written and discussed on what form a nuclear terrorist attack may take. Of course, as with most things, there is a higher probability of one kind of attack over another. Regardless of the method, any successful or attempted nuclear attack would have a huge impact on our way of life.

It is generally accepted that there are three distinct possibilities: 

  1. An attack on a nuclear installation, for example, a nuclear reactor; 
  2. A dirty bomb using radioactive material to contaminate a wide area; 
  3. The explosion of a nuclear device itself with mass fatalities and potentially catastrophic economic circumstances.

Of these three it is the second, the detonation of a dirty bomb, that I am most concerned with. 

While it may be regarded by terrorists as the poor man’s nuclear bomb it could be socially and economically devastating – while relatively simple to carry out.  The creation of a nuclear bomb itself would require access to uranium or plutonium, a dirty bomb could be made out of a wide range of radioactive materials.  These sorts of radioactive materials can be found in a range of hospital equipment and machines discarded on industrial sites. 

The first ever attempted dirty bomb terror attack occurred in November 1995 by a group of Chechen terrorists. A Russian television station was informed that 10lbs of dynamite had been buried with caesium in a Moscow park.

While the bomb was not detonated and later found by police neither the terrorists nor the source of the caesium were ever identified.  Nonetheless, the terrorists successfully sowed the intended seeds of fear in the minds of both the populace and the authorities.

The struggle against nuclear terrorism can only be won out right by taking preventive and pro-active measures. We would have lost the battle if terrorists were able to detonate a nuclear device in one of our cities or major shipping lanes. Regardless of our response after the attack the physical, psychological, and economical damage would have already been done.

Islamic Extremists

And while we are dealing with all of these we will still have to deal with the ever-present threat of Islamist fundamentalists and their violent anti-west campaigns.

There are those in the Islamic world who dislike us for what we do – our involvement in Iraq or our close ties with Israel. Their resentment is a reaction to our deeds but our differences are largely containable. But there is another group who hate us – not for what we do – but for who we are. They hate our culture, our way of life, our history and our traditions. They are irreconcilable to our political system and our values. They will have to be confronted as they have already decided to confront us. We must not make the mistake that everyone who wishes us ill is reconcilable by dialogue and reason. Fanaticism is alien to our way of thought but we must not forget that it exists or what it can mean. The 1930s should have taught us that lesson.

In an age of global terrorism no one, no where is safe.

We need to show the political, economic, and military commitment to the battle with global terrorism that we brought to the long battle with communism in the cold war. It is where our resilience will matter.

Terrorists make an intention assessment not a capability assessment.  It is not based on the fact that the state is stronger, which it clearly is, but on what it is willing to do.  The asymmetric advantage for the terrorist depends on the fact that the state will adhere to legal and ethical international norms while they have no requirement or intention to do so.  In the Cold War when faced with a nuclear threat we responded with a nuclear deterrent of our own.  This was in the classical mould of speaking softly and carrying a big stick.  When dealing with terrorism it is essential that we speak loudly and clearly and also be willing to use, not just carry, the big stick.

 

Conclusion

The threats I have outlined are both real and imminent. Immersing ourselves as a society in celebrity headlines and trivia and pretending the dangers don’t exist would be irresponsible. Politicians need to be frank with themselves and with the public about the risks we face. Both politicians and the media need to get away from the bad habit of saying what people want to hear and tell people what they need to hear because they are going to have to confront the inevitable. As a society we have to find the resilience to deal with the challenges of our generation as previous generations dealt with theirs.

We can begin by understanding who we are and what brought us to where we are before we lose our hard won gains. To shape the world or be shaped by it?  That, indeed, is our question.

 

Lawfare and Obama’s transnationalist

What is wrong with this picture?  We learned this weekend that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, is preparing to prosecute six Americans who worked as senior legal and policy advisors to President George W. Bush – including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith.  The alleged crime?  The opinions they provided Mr. Bush supported the use of torture against enemy combatants.

Most Americans would find this assertion of what has come to be called "transnational law" to be troubling on several grounds. Its application is an affront to due process and the rule of law in this country.  It would criminalize internal U.S. policy-making deliberations, with profound implications for U.S. sovereignty.  If allowed to run its course, this prosecution would have a profoundly chilling effect on the willingness of subordinates to provide a president with advice, or perhaps even to serve in government.

One would hope that President Obama would recognize that this use of legal mechanisms as a form of warfare against the United States – increasingly known as "lawfare" – holds serious dangers not just for the country and those who ran it for the past eight years, but for his administration, as well.  That would appear not to be the case, however, in light of his choice of Harold Koh to be the State Department’s top lawyer.

In fact, as dean of Yale’s law school, Mr. Koh has been an unalloyed enthusiast for transnational law.  For example, in a 2006 article in the Penn State Law Review, he extolled the "transnationalist faction" on the Supreme Court and the wisdom shown by four, and sometimes five, of its justices in rejecting the impulses of what he disdainfully calls "the nationalist faction":

Generally speaking, the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists tend instead to focus more on preserving American autonomy.  The transnationalists believe in and promote the blending of international and domestic law; while nationalists continue to maintain a rigid separation of domestic from foreign law.  The transnationalists view domestic courts as having a critical role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law, while nationalists argue instead that only the political branches can internalize international law. 

The transnationalists believe that U.S. courts can and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system, while the nationalists tend to claim that U.S. courts should limit their attention to the development of a national system.  Finally, the transnationalists urge that the power of the executive branch should be constrained by judicial review and the concept of international comity, while the nationalists tend to believe that federal courts should give extraordinarily broad deference to executive power in foreign affairs.

How many Americans are aware that some, let alone an actual majority, of the Supreme Court’s justices believe that this country should be ruled by something other than the Constitution of the United States, laws made pursuant thereto and treaties clearly consistent with it?  Assuredly, few of us know that such an assault on our sovereignty is afoot; in all likelihood, fewer still would support it.

The same would likely apply to Harold Koh’s embrace of myriad other controversial transnationalist initiatives.  He favors U.S. submission to the International Criminal Court, enabling that tribunal to have the right tomorrow to take up the sort of foreign prosecutions of Americans contemplated by Spain’s Judge Garzon today.

Dean Koh goes even further than John Kerry, who argued that American uses of force must meet what the Senator euphemistically called a "global test."  Koh believes the United States must obtain pre-authorization by the UN Security Council.  In keeping with this view, he condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which lacked such a mandate, as "illegal."

The State Department Legal Advisor-designate has also actively opposed virtually every instrument the previous administration deemed necessary to wage and win the war against terror-wielding adversaries. Koh insisted that Guantanamo Bay be closed coercive interrogation techniques be halted and trials in civilian U.S. courts be afforded to captured enemy combatants.  To be sure, these positions largely track with those of President Obama, although the latter has left himself some latitude in their implementation.  Koh’s critique of the government’s terrorist surveillance, though, is even more extreme than that of Mr. Obama, who as a Senator voted to allow the program to continue.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Koh seems untroubled by international accords that assault our Constitution-based sovereignty.  These include such onerous and invasive agreements as the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Another candidate could be the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s effort to circumscribe freedom of expression by criminalizing speech that "offends" Islam.

It is absolutely predictable that the United States will find itself under ever greater assault in the form of lawfare as notions of the supremacy of transnational law take hold among elites, both here (notably, in the Supreme Court) and abroad.  Mr. Obama can spare himself and the country considerable grief when he meets this week in Europe and Turkey with some of the leading practitioners of lawfare by repudiating Judge Garzon’s extraterritorial over-reach, rejecting the application of transnational law more generally and selecting a State Department Legal Advisor who is an avowed "nationalist," not a committed "transnationalist."

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.