The Washington Post seems to see Abu Theeb's abandonment of violence for political action as a positive development, and from the standpoint of those he might have murdered, it most assuredly is. However, the Post doesn't pay much attention to the fact that Abu Theeb is working for the same goal by different means, and that that goal, a Sharia state in Iraq, bodes ill for non-Muslims and women there. Would the bare fact that a Sharia state was democratically elected make it a good thing? Was Hitler's regime a good thing since his party received a plurality of votes and he was duly asked to form a government by the German President?
"The New Sunni Jihad: 'A Time for Politics': Tour With Iraqi Reveals Tactical Change," from The Washington Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
NORTH OF BAGHDAD -- For weeks before Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote -- and vote against the constitution."It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."...
"Politics for us is like filthy, dead meat," he said, referring to pork, which is eschewed by observant Muslims. "We are not allowed to eat it, but if you are crossing through a desert and your life depends on it, God says it's okay." Even if politics gets him a result he likes, he said, he will continue to wage war against the Americans, because he views them as occupiers....
The "insurgency" in Iraq is that of Sunnis who labor, as so many Muslims so naturally do, under a delusion: the delusion is that they do not constitute 20% (or less) of the population, but more than twice that. A further delusion is that it was entirely right for the Sunni Arabs to lord it over, and worse, the Kurds and Shi'a Arabs, but any attempt by the Kurds and Shi'a to end this state of affairs, or even to give back a little of what they have received during the entire history of modern Iraq. Is it surprising that the Shi'a, who have been on the receiving end of Sunni cruelties and persecution for more than 1300 years (which doesn't stop the Shi'a from being, when it comes to Infidels, just as implacably and ferociously hostile -- vide any documentary about the Islamic Republic of Iran), are indifferent to the Sunni demands for both power and a share of national revenues from oil far beyond what their numbers entitle them to. For not only do they believe, are completely convinced (how do you unconvince such people?) that they are at least 42% of the population, but they are completely unwilling to recognize what they have done over many decades to the Shi'a and Kurds, and are uncomprehending as to why those Shi'a and Kurds might, in fact, resent them, and naturally would have no sympathy for the reversal of Sunni fortunes, and would be perfectly willing to break up Iraq, since they would have the oil, and be well rid of people who for a long time, and certainly now, have brought the Kurds and Shi'a Arabs, misery, mayhem, and murder. Why the American government thinks that this can somehow be patched-up, or fools itself into thinking that if the Sunnis take part in a vote they will ever drop their demands or change their attitudes (they won't), is an interesting topic. Why the American government thinks it has a stake in holding Iraq together, and why the prospect of "civil war" is regarded as something that should induce horror, brividi, when in fact it would do much to damage relations between Sunni and Shi'a and cause each side to receive men, money, and materiel from the Sunni Arab states, on one side, and Shi'a Iran (and possibly the various Hezbollah groups, especially in Lebanon) on the other, for what one hopes would be a long, inconclusive, and very draining war waxing now hot, now cold, now again even hotter. What, from the point of view of Infidels, would be better? What promises to use up Iranian attention and the remaining fanatical supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran? What promises to cause at least headaches for Saudi Arabia (along with Iran, the chief beneficiary of the removal of Saddam Hussein), if the Shi'a in the oil-producing province of Hasa, not to mention Shi'a in Bahrain and Yemen (where Sunni and Shi'a are almost equally divided) begin to reflect the hostility, or open warfare, to be observed in Iraq?
It takes a good deal of wilful blindness to ignore the opportunity that Iraq presents. It takes a fear of seeming to endorse blood-letting. But no one need rub his hands in open glee. We need only calmly, soberly, announce that we have done what we can do, and that our presence at this point, in the creation of a "free and democratic Iraq," is "counter-productive." And leave. And wait.
Perhaps everything will turn out just fine, and Sunni lions will lie down with Shi'a lambs. Okay. Then we can all crow about something which I did not even know existed -- something apparently called the "Bush Doctrine" which dignifies, and elevates, the series of lit-up-amygdala-induced ad hoc or ill-thought-out series of acts that we are supposed to believe is the result of a carefully considered comprehension of the world, though strangely until the last month Bush gave no real signs, and still gives little, of understanding Islam (and not "radical" or "extremist" or "Jihadist" Islam or "Islamofascism" or whatever other careful attempts to modify fore or aft what should be the stand-alone noun "Islam").
If there is going to be a "victory" in Iraq, that can only mean a sitatuion is created that will help to divide and demoralize and render less attractive to Infidels Islam itself. This can only happen if the American forces get out of the way, and let the locals do their stuff.That will not prevent American intervention -- for example by giving equipment to the Kurds, and exerting severe pressure on Turkey to accept a free Kurdistan. Nor would it prevent, at any time, American drones or spy-planes from feeding information to one side or another, or any of the other activities that may have been employed during the previous Sunni-Shi'a war, the Iran-Iraq War that lasted eight years, and should have gone on forever.
That some Sunnis, such as Abu Theeb mentioned in the article, may be willing to participate in political maneuvering, not as a replacement for but in addition to open warfare against both teh Shii'a, and the Americans, should not be cause for consolation, or a belief that "if only we hold on" everyhing will "come right" in the end. The Sunnis will never reconcile themselves to being ruled, in the most important land of Islam, the former site of the Abbasid Caliphate, of Haroun al-Raschid, of the essential mythology and mythologizing that for Arab Muslims is so psychically essential, for it keeps their eyes fixed on a largely imaginary glorious past, so as to continue to avert those eyes from the last thousand years or so of total failure in every regard, in every area of human endeavor -- a failure, if they only thought clearly, attirbutable to Islam itself.
This will not be done, not this year, and not if the Americans remain even for eight or nine years, as some policymakers naively believe possible -- there is no possibility, thank god, of the American public permitting this nonsense to continue beyond 2009, when this administration leaves office. The real question is: will people come to their senses before that, and begin to see that the "victory" for the Infidels is at hand in Iraq, but only if the Americans leave, rather than stay? For some this may be counter-inuitive. For those who have studied both Islam and Iraq, and do not see the enemy as "poverty" or as "lack of democracy" or an "ideology that perverts the great religion of Islam" but rather, the clear unambiguous texts to be found in Qur'an, Hadith, and in the details of the life of Muhammad, what should be done in Iraq to demoralize and divide Islam -- should be obvious.
How many more times must that obvious be stated?
The Sunnis should consider themselves lucky that they are even allowed to participate. In other places they would not be so fortunate. At the founding of the United States, nobody cared what the Tories, who opposed the Revolution, thought. The message to them was "You lost, either deal with it, or get out", which many of them did. The message to the Sunnis should be something similar. Something like "You were the Baathists, the Fedayeens and the Republican Guard. You lost, either live with it, or Saudi Arabia is that way. Otherwise, you keep up the nonsense, and the Sunni Triangle becomes the Sunni Pancake. Note that the last option is an absolute last resort
The time for fighting, combat, qital, is when fighting proves effective. The time for politics is when the same goal is better pursued using political means, possibly because fighting has been ineffective. In the same way, there may be fewer demands, and more sweetnesss-and-light Outreach to Infidels, in Europe and North America, so as to minimize wariness and deflect criticism. But that should fool no one.
"There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."
If the jihadists truly turned from violence to other methods (propaganda, harrassment using the legal system, political donations, immigration, high birth rates, etc.) that would be a major step in the right direction.
True, their goals of a global Caliphate would be the same, but we shouldn't be prosecuting them for thought crimes. Their beliefs are their beliefs. If they think that 9 year old girls are ready for marriage, or that blaspheming is punishable by death, or that there should be no displayed images of human beings, fine. If they want to actually marry a 9 year old girl, or execute someone for blaspheming, or burn down a business because it has a poster of Ronald McDonald (tm), then it's a quick trip to the hoosegow. And if they can convince a majority of Westerners of the validity of their beliefs and change the laws, then we deserve what we get. [Incidentally, that is also my feeling on the current Administration, but I digress].
Non-violent methods of jihad can be countered by education, education, and more education about what the true foundations of Islam are. Which is why "PIG to Islam" being on the NYT best seller list for so long is such a big deal. It will take centuries for Westerner's to forget again what we've recently learned about Islam.
Another outstanding essay Hugh. More than anything it is your essays that keep me coming back, I hope someone somewhere is compiling and catalaging your essays.
BTW, I just started reading V.S.Naipauls most excellent Among the Believers. It starts out in Iran six months after Khomeini's bloody revolution.
How strange that the Reagan Administration nor it's successors, never made mention that the EVAK (Secret Police of the mullahs) which replaced the Shah's SAVAK was even more ruthless and bloody than the Shah's could have been, and it still is, that chamber of horrors called Evin Prison has it's own torture chambers and it is a one way trip for all too many. A couple of years back an Iranian Canadian photo journalist, name of Zareh Kazemi was arrested outside the prison for photographing it, was tortured to death inside the prison, and to this day the Mullahs will not release her body nor investigate the death, although plenty of evidence abounds that she was beaten so severely that she died from a fractured skull.
And on the subject of the SAVAK, seems that they knew how to deal with the Jihadis, as their "victims" (actually volunteers by nature of their violent activities) were communists, revolutionary Islamists and other filth, which the west subsequently gave refuge to as "political prisoners".
There may have been a few secular or Christian refugee's let into America and Europe, but it was Iranian "refugee's" who tried to kill Salman Rushdie, and it is Iranian refugee's who have been implicated in the mullah directed assassinations of many an Iranian expatriate. No one seems to have cared to screen these people, and they still don't screen "refugee's" or "students".
And Iran hasn't changed a bit, it is even worse now than at the time that Betty Mahmoody wrote of her own experiences in Not Without My Daughter
Nariz:
You don't quite have your facts straight about Kazemi. The Iranians held a [show] trial and used it to aquit senior officials of complicity in her beating death and convict a minor official of a trivial offence. They continue to refuse to release her body to her son who remains a Canadian citizen, claiming Kazemi's mother wanted her buried in Iran.