Denis MacEoin has taught Arabic and Islamic Studies in Fez, Newcastle and Durham University, and has published extensively on Islamic topics. In the Jerusalem Post he writes this open letter to Tony Blair, in response to Blair's recent policy speech. (Thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald, who hopes Denis MacEoin will imagine his chagrin and accept his apologies.)
Dear Mr. Blair,I'm writing to encourage you to continue to do your utmost to see a just and realistic end to the fighting in Lebanon, and to support you in your determination to ensure that Hizbullah, an organization with a long history of terrorist activity against Israeli and Western targets, be not allowed to emerge from this conflict still intact and capable of regrouping, re-arming, and, in the end, growing strong enough to accomplish its long-stated goal of destroying the state of Israel.
Let me say, very briefly, that I take a particular interest in this conflict.
I used to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University, but my specialization has always been in Iranian affairs, specifically aspects of Shi'ite Islam. I am also a regional coordinator for the Israel Peace Forum, and much involved in presenting an accurate and nuanced picture of the Middle East conflict as a whole.
I believe that your analysis of a wide arc of terror is entirely accurate, and that failure to act now against the spreading evil of radical Islam may expose this country, its allies, and many other nations round the globe to increasingly severe acts of terror that will shift, given time, to more conflict of the kind now seen in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
I know that international pressure for a cease-fire in Lebanon is intense, and I realize that time must be running out for you and those few nations who have seen the real danger Israel now faces. Please stand firm.
To leave Hizbullah largely intact would be to guarantee greater and bloodier fighting in the years ahead. The danger, as I am sure you are aware, is not only to Israel, but for the people of Lebanon, who may find themselves at Hizbullah's mercy.
Not only that, but a perceived victory for Hizbullah would permit both Syria and Iran to extend their baneful influence further through the region. If Hizbullah is seen to be capable of fighting with reasonable success against one of the world's best armies, how may that not be interpreted elsewhere in the Islamic world? It would certainly be a boost for recruitment to radical jihadist ideology, to active jihadist groups, and to international organizations like al-Qaida.
Here in Britain, support for terrorism among large sections of the Muslim population is an alarming trend that must surely be cut off before it grows to unmanageable proportions. I believe you are right to call for the glorification of terrorism to become an offence, but I also believe you have been taking advice from sections within the Muslim community that are committed to an anti-Western, anti-British, and anti-Semitic view of the world.
If Hizbullah should proclaim even a partial victory, I would expect to see more young Muslims here flock to the banner of jihad, whether to fight abroad or here in the UK.
In the Middle East, force alone will not solve a deeply embedded problem.
But one thing I am certain of and that is so long as its neighbors do not recognize Israel and its right to exist, there will never be peace.
With a terrorist organization in control of Gaza and dominant in the West Bank, with a terrorist army on its borders, and with an apocalyptic Iranian president determined to wipe it from the map, Israel is faced with the greatest threat ever suffered by any nation since these islands faced the armies of the Third Reich.
In the 19th century, a sectarian group of Shi'ite Muslims in Iran, believing the advent of their messiah, the Twelfth Imam, to be imminent, purchased and made arms and prepared for the final jihad. They made ready to fight in order to bring the Imam to earth.
Today, there are reliable reports that President Ahmadinejad holds an identical belief, that he anticipates the return of the Imam in a short space of time, and that he may be preparing to force his hand by initiating the holy war necessary to his advent.
Given that context and the knowledge that that the destruction of Israel would win its author acclamations from every quarter of the globe, I fear for Israel. I have seen documents that suggest al-Qaida already possesses nuclear materials. I know, as you do, that Iran is bent on the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Even a small number of such weapons in the hands of Hizbullah could wreak untold calamity on the people of Israel and open up chaos in international affairs. Unlike Ahmadinejad, I do not wish to sound apocalyptic.
But I do believe that the elimination of Israel is planned, plotted, and even scheduled with great care and seriousness in more than one country. And I am convinced that, if Israel disappears, the consequences for all of us will be fearful.
You are a resolute politician, and I think you see this threat more clearly than most. If there was ever a time to act, I think this is it.
If an international force does enter Lebanon, can you ensure, in tandem with the United States, that it will have teeth, that it be empowered to implement UN Resolution 1559, that it be capable of disarming Hizbullah with or without the cooperation of the Lebanese government, that Israel, which has never been the aggressor in the wars it has fought, be enabled to contribute to the downfall of this fascist-like group, and that both Israel and Lebanon finally enjoy secure borders across which they can work together to mend the breaches that have opened up between them?
Backed by an ideology of martyrdom through suicide or fighting - an ideology with deep Shiite roots, now disseminated from Teheran - radical jihadist Muslims have come to seem invincible. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Lebanon, they are starting to believe they can triumph over the forces of democracy, reason, and justice.
They are starting to think they can destroy Israel, win back Spain, and impose shari'a law in Europe.
Just as our parents and grandparents fought the dark ideology of Nazism in the 1930s and 40s, so I believe this generation has the heaviest of responsibilities face to face with this growing threat to all civilized values. Not just the West, but the peoples of the Islamic world too may see their way of life changed for ever should the totalitarian spectre impose itself and its deadening hatred of life on all we and they hold dear.
I don't like to speak in terms of historic moments or symbolic conflicts, but I'm afraid that, as this struggle intensifies, I am bound to do so.
Civilization itself is at stake. The values of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and the open society are as much or more at risk today than in the decades when we confronted, first German fascism and then Soviet communism.
It may or it may not be your destiny jointly to lead the free world in this clash of civilizations. But I ask you to hold firm now and in the future, not just here in Britain, but in the Middle East, where a sort of Armageddon is being fought on the television screens of the world.
Excuse my prolixity and my overwrought language. I intended something simpler.
I wanted to say in a few words what I have now written in four pages. By all means ignore most of this, if, indeed, it ever crosses your desk. But promise me one thing: that if it is your destiny to stand up for Israel in the time of its greatest peril, you will not prove fainthearted.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Denis MacEoin
Off topic, but it appears an Israeli was murdered in Australia yesterday. The usual suspects are being blamed
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1154525813236&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
It's not off topic. Shi'ites are as hostile to Jews as they are to Israelis; I'm not even sure if those written about above make the distinction. And let's all keep an eye out too for the Australian police ordering extra security on mosques - to counter all those Jewish suicide bombers and revenge killers who are so, so prevalent.
Generally those who teach Arabic or Islam, get to become aplogists or propagandists for Islam.
This letter is most unusual.
"Generally those who teach Arabic or Islam, get to become aplogists or propagandists for Islam"
-- from a posting above
There are several reasons for this. One is that many who go into this field may be self-selecting. Something about it "attracts" them and makes it "appealing" to them not so much because of the fascination of what's difficult, or what needs to be studied by Westerners because it is only they who can dare to study, say, the origins of the Qur'an, or the Hadith (think of Ignaz Goldziher), with a mental freedom, and often with the scholarly resources that only the West, but not the Islamic world, provides. If you want to find out about the warsh and nafs versions of the Qur'an, you do so in the West. If you want to study and publish on the Qur'an the way Mingana did, or Arthur Jeffery in that lavish publication on foreign words in the Qur'an, paid for by the Gwakior of Baroda, you do so in the West. If you want to study, as Joseph Schacht did, Muhammadan Law, you may spend time in Egypt, gathering material (when Schacht lectured in Cairo, he was capable of doing so in Arabic), but you will write in the West. Those were different people, entirely of a different level (as is true in so many academic fields based on the study of history and literature) of linguistic and other training, of broad cultivation, who above all were steeped in, and had been from an early age, a system of rigorous education that assured their knowledge of, and therefore the natural appreciation for, the artists, the scientists, the thinkers, of the Western world, of the Western tradition.
And since the Western world has not quite realized how difficutl, if not impossible, it is for a Believer, who is also teacher of any subject having anything to do with Islam, to be, at the same time, anything other than a stout if sly Defender of the Faith, a Defender who has no conception of, or fealty to, the idea of disinterested academic study, and who will attempt to prevent others from learning about, much less teaching about himself, the real progress being made in Western study of early Islam, or indeed, will not permit any study of Islam that appears to open up Islam to Western criticism. Thus the entire subject of the dhimmi is either ignored, or reduced, in the Lewisian manner, to a few paragraphs, or a single completely misleading phrase, of the kind any of us can so easily compose.
Here's my version: "Non-Muslims living in the Islamic world were treated with far more tolerance than were non-Christians living in Christian-ruled countries; they could live quietly, practice their religion, and of course everyone knows that the Ottoman Sultans, just like the chivalrous Saladin, always had Jewish doctors." Sometimes, if the instructor thinks the undergraduates may have heard about it and wants to pre-empt any doubters in the house, will refer to the "Jizya" as "a tax on non-Muslims which was simply a substitute for the 'zakat" that Muslims had to pay." All completely false in the sly meaning so slyly conveyed -- but to deconstruct every phrase, to show what is misrepesented, and what is omitted entirely, takes time -- and most students will have no idea how deeply and gravely they have been mislead.
MESA, or as it is more accurately known around here, MESA Nostra (the Middle East Studies Assocation) in 1970 had a membership with perhaps 5% Muslims. Now the Muslims among its membgers constitute 60%. But that is not the only important thing. The non-Muslims who must work with, attend departmental meetings with (how awkward to be in the same department with people who will bear an eternal grudge against you if you dare say one word about Islam that they find is not to their liking, if you dare to present Islam as anything other than something wonderful, and if you dare to suggest that the Muslim and Arab view of the universe is not always and everywhere to be endorsed), rely on Muslim colleagues, who have and will always have power over you -- whether for obtaining grants as a graduate student, or on your doctoral examination committee, or vetting your thesis, or recommending that your thesis be published by a certain press, or later giving you teaching assignments, and then voting on your tenure, and then even if (and how many who are not deemed suitably compliant, insufficiently "collegial" as that curious criterion is now officially deemed important in judging one's fitness for academic promotion and tenure -- an absurdity that would have appalled Joseph Schacht and Franz Rosenthal and so many others, as part of the simpering sentimentality that would have kept out so many great teachers and scholars, and favors the careful-to-offend-no-one mediocrity, and thus are whole departments ruined, degree by degree, apppointment by appointment). Forever you will need those book blurbs, those easier teaching assignments, those recommendations for grants, grants, grants, that trip to Bellagio and the Lago di Como. It never ends. And if that depends on your not offending so many powerful Defenders of the Faith -- well, you are not going to say a word about Luxenberg or Patricia Crone, or Ibn Warraq's anthologies of scholarly writing, you are not going to say a word about the "Jihad" that makes real sense, you will never refer to the Shari'a in a way that conveys just what it means for non-Muslims, you will not discuss the tenets of Islam and their incompatibility with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you will not discuss the real treatment of non-dhimmis, never mention the killings of 60-70 million Hindus under Muslim rule, never come to grips with what it is in the statements of Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri and so many others that come straight from the Qur'an, the Hadith, the details of Muhammad's life, will never discuss inshallah-fatalism in courses on "economic developoment in the Arab/Muslim world," will never discuss the Islamic suppression of free and skeptical inquiry, or narrow limits placed on acceptable vehicles for artistic expression. You will, essentially, lie and be a collaborator in lies. And your courses will be almost entirely worthless, and the keenest students, capable of reading on their own, capable of comprehending along the way, what is happening, are likely simply to leave the field, not to enter it -- and the ones who enter it will be those well-satisfied with what, say, Hamid Dabashi or Omid Safi or any number of others tell them about Islam, and clutching their copies of Sells's bowdlerized "Approaching the Qur'an" (the "lyrical" parts only, so as not to trouble anyone), or Carl Ernst's apologetics, or that favorite for Muslim instructors on these new concoctions "Islam and the West," that compilation of old romantic cliches and up-to-date misinformation, Maria Rosa Menocal's "The Ornament of the World," all about that "convivencia" in Islamic-ruled Spain that so many still want to believe, because if it somehow was true somewhere, then won't, please won't it be again, in the islamized Europe toward which we are heading, and which we do not know how to stop?
MESA, MESA Nostra. And it is just as bad wherever, of course, Arab money has managed to create "Centers of Islamic Studies," or endow certain chairs for certain purposes -- and when the Saudis and other Arabs give money, they make sure that their rules are applied, and they install local enforcers in those centers, and departments, to make sure that they get their money's worth. Look at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, at Georgetown, run by lean, mean, jogging apologist John Esposito, making a living far beyond what he ever dreamed of before he found his true calling. Look at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, also at Georgetown, so convenient to both the corridors of uninformed and unwary power, and to those members of the press and television who will call you up to take advantage of your proffered, amiable, furrowed-brow serious, "expertise."
I could go on. But you get the dismal picture. A crock, almost everywhere you look.
PS: It is a good idea to send emails to PM Blair along similar lines. He is under pressure, and emails or better still, a letter backing his position will help. Remember that Muslims in the UK and elsewhere, will be writing to Tony Blair as well.
Hugh
That is terrific.
If you can take any of your writings, almost any actually that is germaine to this issue, and send them to PM Blair, it will be a great help.
Lebanon government joins forces with bid to have Blair tried in Scotland for war crimes
http://www.sundayherald.com/57093
Well Mr. Blair, you fashioned this PC web now wrapped around your neck; no wiggle out of it and start acting like Winston Churchill for a change!
But saddly sir, don't have what it takes to be another Winston Chruchill!
Maybe you are better off at the Hague in the end for trumpet up war crimes; perhaps you will rot in Salvodan's old cell -- it's almost funny to contemplate.
witness
That is an interesting development. I'm glad that Muslims are bringing this action. The more they protest "We are now all Hezb'Allah", the more it works in our favour.
Yes you are right. Blair fashioned a rope to hang the Serbs, to wrench their historic lands from them in Bosnia and Kosovo, ignoring all the while the utter devastation caused to the Serbian population though hundreds of years of Islamic subjugation.
The chickens have come home. Yet, it is the future that counts, and we have to do something to bolster his position in his stand against what he calls the "crescent of extremism". The use of "crescent" is telling. PM Blair, each passing day, is coming nearer to name the enemy. No one else has come anywhere close.
Dr. Denis MacEoin letter was well written,clear and concise on point.
His reflections; in that he may have displayed to much prolixity is not there at all for me, but it does show the humblenesss in from which he writes in an effort to make his points.
I sent the letter off to a few conservative talk show hosts after reading it this morning.
The key here is that any display of weakness or desire to stand down against Hizballah on the part of Israel will encourage and emboldened other terrorist groups to move against not only israel but eventually other western nations as well.
Muslims are now in the process of invading these isles and the West as a whole. It wont be long, in historic terms, before subjugation of non-muslims begins in earnest. It is divinely mandated, and I cant see any reason why the West will be an exception. It has already started in some towns such as Bradford (Hindus are complaining of being persecuted by muslims youths), and Lancashire.
We have to do something to bolster his PM Blair's position in his stand against what he calls the "crescent of extremism". The use of "crescent" is telling. PM Blair, each passing day, is coming nearer to name the enemy. No one else has come anywhere close.
The chickens have come home, and the roosting is now in process. It is the hatching that we now have to stop.
Sometimes it gets hard to determine between the Western MSM or the terrorists as to who is doing the most to plan, plot and schedule the elimination of Israel.
Compare MacEoin’s letter with this one - a piece of Muslim propaganda by a non-Muslim - printed in today's London 'Observer' (6th Aug 06) . The writer is a practicing Zen Buddhist, active 'green' politician and academic in the UK:
"If Shakespeare had been a Muslim
Martin Bright is right to oppose ‘the rise of radical Islam’ (Comment, last week), if by this, he means a Muslim ideology based on hatred, particularly hatred of women, the gay community and other religions. Yet as Bright has made clear, most Muslims in Britain and, indeed, in the world, far from being ‘Islamo-fascists’, are from Sufist traditions. Sufism is notoriously tolerent [sic] and pluralistic. Sufism has produced great musicians and poets such as Nusrut Fateh Ali Khan, Rumi and Omar Khayyam. Sufi thinkers such as the great scholar Nasr have long advocated environmental concern and non-violence. Far from being anti-female, some of the greatest Sufis have been women such as Rabia al-Adawiyya,
It’s a historical accident that Britain was conquered by Christians. But for a twist of history, we could be a Muslim nation; after all, Islam reached France in the eigthth [sic] century. We could have mosques instead of churches, beautiful shrines to Sufi saints and some rather different musical traditions. I would guess a Muslim Shakespeare would have still written Hamlet, although Othello might have been from Norway.
Dr Derek Wall
Windsor, Berkshire"
Needless to say that the English and Irish were converted to Xtianity by missionaries, while the native Britons retained the religion from Roman times. An Islamic army, rather than Islam, reached France in the 8th century. The fanatical intolerance, jihadist propensities and martial activities of many sufis are well known. The Muslims never bothered to get their Jewish and Christian translators to produce Arabic versions of the classical dramatists and there was no equivalent in Islam to the Christian 'passion plays'. These two tradions were the basic inspiration for 16th century drama.
Dr Derek Wall could well start his re-education by reading this piece, in the American Thinker entitled "Sufi Jihad".
Here's an extract about Islam's most revered Sufi mystic, Al-Ghazali:
So "tolerant and pluralistic", isn't he.
... radical jihadist Muslims have come to seem invincible. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Lebanon, they are starting to believe they can triumph over the forces of democracy, reason, and justice.
Absolutely they do. First, they find an ocean of oil under their asses and rake in trillions of dollars. Then the EAD throws open the door to free living in Europe. Next antisemtitism explodes in Europe among the dhimmis feeding and closing the newly imported Moslems. Worst, dhimmi professors and admiministrators at the universities warmly embrace Islam. Then, and most important, a long list of pussy responses to the emerging Great Jihad.
I mean, if you're a Moslem and the first thing you hear from Dubya on 9/12 is the infamous verbal white flag "Islam is a religion of peace," of course you're greatly encouraged.
"A crock, almost everywhere you look."
Including doctored photos. Stalin (as you pointed out) also engaged in such Orwellian distortions of reality. Meanwhile, a pathetic sneering indignation is all people like Esposito have when confronted with facts as they peddle half-truths that tell whole lies..