Ralph Peters is a retired officer who is often sensible about the uses of military force, and he takes a dim view of the Arabs. He is also said to be a scholarly sort, with books in Russian and German in his library (at least, this is what the articles about him unfailingly convey). So why doesn't he exercise the same caution, and engage in the same kind of mental preparation, in proceeding to make assumptions and utter pronouncements about Islam? This is especially necessary in light of the dreamy idea that Occupied Iraq is not a whit different in its prospects from Occupied Germany or Occupied Japan after World War II -- and that all those who claim differently must either be appeasers or Nay-Sayers, when in fact some of those Nay-Sayers want the "Light Unto the Muslim Nations" Project stopped not because they do not worry about Islam, but because they really worry about it.
They worry most not about the "war on terror" but about the likely islamization, through Da'wa and demography, of Western Europe, and having studied the history of Islam, they agree with Reza Afshari and Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina that the sharia and human rights are flatly incompatible with Western values: free conscience, free speech, equal treatment of women and minorities are all impossible under the Sharia, or under a legal system that "takes its inspiration" from the sharia, as the Egyptian legal code does, or as the "new" Iraqi Constitution, which gave in so much to the Islamists, does -- infuriating Allawi (he could not have been pleased with the naivete of Noah Feldman et al).
This unwillingness to study Islam -- to study first the Qur'an and a few hundred of the hadith, and then the sira, or to immerse oneself in the classic scholarship about Islam ("classic" meaning not the shallow apologetics of the past 40 years, which includes Esposito, Sells, Ernst, et al) -- means that no one has a right to utter an opinion about Islam without such study, or at least paying attention to those who have engaged in such study. And that includes those whose instincts and heart may be in the right place, but who have not permitted their minds to follow.
One hopes, in the case of Peters, that he will allow himself the leisure to read -- beginning, perhaps, with Bat Ye'or's The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam and then, perhaps, looking at Muir's biography of Muhammad (not outdated), at Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim, and at a number of the articles to be found online at www.secularislam.org and www.faithfreedom.org. Ibn Warraq's essay on the similarities between "Islam and Fascism" should also be studied.
If Ralph Peters is reading too much Schwartz et al in the pages of The Weekly Standard, that might explain the problem. Amir Taheri is the best of their writers on Islam, but even he has to, at times, pull his punches.
He is seemingly unable to sit down with the texts, and is willing to substitute his own anecdotal evidence for facts: a visit to Senegal, his impressions of the marabouts, that sort of thing -- no different from what Madeleine Albright or Tom Friedman do when they collect their impressions, or what Paul Wolfowitz did when he learned all about Islam as the dynamic, take-charge, get-out-in-the-field ambassador in Jakarta.
I took note of that inability here at Jihad Watch two years ago, but I was too hopeful that he would start to study, too trusting that he would stop substituting his own anecdotal evidence for the study of Islamic tenets, immersion in Qur'an and Hadith and Sira, and further immersion in the history of Islamic conquest and subsequent subjugation of non-Muslims. Instead, this "author of 21 books" substituted his own travels, his own brief encounters, in countries where he did not know the languages (but he is careful to demonstrate, on every conceivable and some not-so-conceivable occasions, his knowledge of Russian and, especially, German) and in which the Muslims he saw were not in the Arab lands, but on the periphery -- countries where specific local conditions had diluted the effect of Islam, had blended it with local easygoing ways and easygoing customs (those marabouts of which he speaks, for example -- and of which V. S. Naipaul also writes with far greater keenness in his Among the Believers and Beyond Belief.
Ralph Peters fails to see that where he finds Islam acceptable, or unmenacing, it may be for reasons having to do with the fact that the Muslims he sees are not the full-blooded thing. It would be as if he took the Ahmadi sect -- treated as non-Muslims by the orthodox -- as representative of Islam, or took Andrey Sakharov as a representative product of Soviet Communism, or Oskar Schindler as a typical member of the Nazi Party. He sees, but uncomprehendingly. What’s more, on those lightning-tours to places where neither English nor German nor Russian (his apparent languages) are spoken, he is an Important Personage. Those to whom he is introduced are those who would not mind meeting this Important American Personage.
He comments on Senegal. But why not ask black Africans from Niger, students in France who return to Niger from time to time, what they have to say about the effect of Saudi money and Saudi mosques and Saudi-funded madrasas on the practice of Islam in Niger -- where that syncretism, and those marabouts, are on the run, and everywhere now the once-unknown burqa can be seen.
All kinds of people have spent "time in the Muslim world." Bassam Tibi has, so has Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina, and Azam Kamguian and Irfan Khawaja, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Many intelligent people have not only "spent time" in the Muslim world but were born into it, and raised in it, and finally, upon coming to live in the West and being able to breathe and think freely, have chosen to leave Islam. They do so only after having carefully analyzed what Islam teaches, what they hear being said in the mosques about Infidels, behind those Infidel acts. They know perfectly well the attitudes and atmospherics of societies suffused with Islam. Why does Ralph Peters think that his visits “from Senegal to Sulawesi, from Delhi to Dearborn,” with “no end of vibrant, humane, hopeful currents in the Muslim faith” have given him an understanding and insight superior to that of these articulate, intelligent, thoroughly pleasant and altogether reasonable, and almost always humorful people – not to mention others who offer testimony that can be found, in book form (see Leaving Islam) or at such websites as www.faithfreedom.org?
There is nothing hate-filled and hysterical about any of these people, who are adamant in their implacable opposition to Islam, in their dismay at those Westerners who fall for every bit of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, who seem never to get their fill of that “dialogue” or never to quite understand why it is that Islam cannot conceivably be reformed – god knows a few people, in the last century, tried, but kept coming up against the reality of the Qur’an and the Hadith, and the figure, or rather Model, of Muhammad.
Why does Ralph Peters think his impressions, “from Senegal to Sulawesi,” are more important and accurate than what these defectors tell us? Why, for that matter, does he think that the Islam analyzed in such piercing detail by Snouck Hurgronje or St. Clair Tisdall or Arthur Jeffery or another hundred people who devoted their lives to studying the subject, are to be so easily dismissed by him, for their views on the impossibility of the reformation of Islam, and their analysis of its suppression of free and skeptical inquiry, and encouragement of the habit of mental submission, are everywhere so evident in their writings, but when others, today, say or write the same things, Peters finds them “islamophobic” and “hate-filled”?
Perhaps Peters will beg to differ. But at least he should be willing to read Ibn Warraq, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ali Sina and Walid Shoebat and many others. And he ought to actually read those books about Islam some of which have apparently (according to my informants) been sent to him, and the contents of which so disturbed him that he immediately lapsed into the “all religions do it” argument that some find so soothing to believe, but others – those who count on them for instruction – will find unacceptable as a response.
I was too kind to Peters when I wrote about him here two years ago. I believed him capable, though a product and participant, apparently, in the Cold War, of being able to learn new and sometimes difficult things. The difficulty comes first in learning the doctrine, and then in seeing how the phrase "moderate" Muslim is distinctly unhelpful, because there is no bright line separating the "moderate" from the "immoderate" Muslim, and the "moderate" in many ways furthers the Jihad -- which Peters apparently conceives of only as one involving violence as its instrument, rather than recognizing that jihad fi sabil Allah is the struggle to spread Islam by whatever means are most effective, including the use of the money weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest. He leaves all this out. In this respect, he is a True Believer in the Administration and in the policy, based on the smug assumption that there is no problem with Islam, but only with those "terrorists" who "hate freedom" -- and which has led to tarbaby Iraq, and the squandering of men, money, and materiel, now too obvious to hide.
And while Peters, that ex-military man who is careful to bring journalists to his home to see his library of German and Russian books, which never fail to be mentioned, as if that were a guarantee of something, he appears not, after all, to be such a great reader, such a dutiful student. It was permissible on 9/10/2001 to know nothing about Islam. In the five years since, it has become impermissible for any one to comment on Islam without having studied it first.
And he has not.
Hugh, Ralph Peters writing on the war since 911 has been insightful and some of the best military analysis around. So it is disappointing to see that he retains such a simplistic view on the religious (Islamic) motivation of the enemy. Our enemies keep telling us that these are jihad attacks. We should take them at their word.
At least some are asking the right question , seems everyone even those who know the truth choose to be apologist when given the chance to reach a wide audience .
The terrorist are devout muslims following a literal interpretation of the Quran and following Mohammad’s example , cant microphone pick up those syllables ?
"Ralph Peters writing on the war since 911 has been insightful and some of the best military analysis around..."
-- from a posting above
Not insightful enough to recognize that terrorism is but the tip of the Jihad iceberg, only one of its instruments, and that the same goal can be achieved through a variety of other instruments about which those whose duty it is to protect and instruct us have paid no seeming attention.
As for his other analyses, at what point did he suggest that the sectarian and ethnic fissures in Iraq should be exploited to the fullest, and that only the Iraq War #1 -- that undertaken to scour the country for major weapons and weapons projects, and to destroy or seize the first, and interrupt if not permanently end, the second.
At JW, another analysis, one that recognized that the messianic project made no sense, was made on a misunderstanding both of Islam and of Iraq, was presented. It was reasonable for the Administration to be indulged long enough so that it might capture Saddam Hussein, his sons, and the Fifty-two Pick-Ups, facecards and jokers the lot of them, and to search for those weapons of mass destruction. A year, but no longer. That year was up at the end of March 2004. Check what was written at JW in the first week of April to see what analysis, nothing like what Ralph Peters continued to offer until a month ago, was set out.
"In the five years since, it has become impermissible for any one to comment on Islam without having studied it first."
If only that were true.
Unfortunately, there are far too many intellectually lazy and dishonest pretenders who take the liberty of discussing Islam, Jihad, and the history of the Dar al-Islam without going through the painstaking, time-consuming labor of studying these subjects first. Even more farcical, these pseudo-intellectuals and bogus academics presume to explain what motivates the likes of al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeinist Iran and Hizb'Allah without ever referring to the scriptural texts, exegeses, histories and testimonies of the jihadis themselves. Nor will they seek the wisdom and guidance of legitimate scholars - including our learned hosts Robert and Hugh - who have spent decades studying these subjects.
Ralph Peters made a reprehensible mistake smearing intellectually honest and courageous scholars and experts who have gone so far as endangering their lives speaking to difficult and uncomfortable truths and questions concerning Islam with the same brush he tars bonafied bigots who have nothing but ignorance to offer.
Hugh,
Old Ralph has gone off the deep end recently. First off, he is not a "warrior" ex-LTC from the trenches. Ralph was an intelligence weeny (no combat experience I'm aware of) who now attempts to play the role of the "tough guy" ex-military intellectual. Too much adoration has allowed his ego to make him believe he is the world's expert on all matters.
I recently saw a piece in which he blithfully spewed all the patently false Liberal theology about Christianity (A religion supposedly "confused" about whether it should go beyond the Jewish locale, despite Jesus' admonition to take the Gospel to all the nations at the end of the synoptic Gospels and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). He makes the normal Liberal comparisons between Christianity and Islam, without understanding that Christian oppression and conquest was a deviation from scripture, while Islamic oppression and conquest is following scripture (and much, much worse).
On another recent piece, Peters spewed the crap about Hispanic immigration to the US being no different from early European immigration. That Hispanics are integrating without a problem. Any rational analyst knows this is absolute garbage. However, anyone who disagrees with Ralph is a reactionary racist.
I could go on, however the bottom line is that Peters has swollen head syndrome to the point he may be beyond help. He is the "expert" on everything in the world. Anyone who disagrees will get the nuclear bomb in Western discourse: Bigot, racist, etc. etc. Has anyone heard his weak, patsy voice?
I also wonder if Peters may be a bit afraid of incurring Islamic retaliation if he doesn't throw in a bit of appeasement. Seriously, as he has been hard in some areas about the war on terror, he may be trying to cover his butt in his "religion of peace" garbage now.
Ralph: Keep travelling and writing books, but don't pretend to be something you are not.
Hello. Am i talking with CIA?
While you are too busy at your valuable nation engineering you forgot the people of Turkey, what they think about your very intelligent and creative ideas.
I cannot comment in "redrawing borders" issue but somehow it was closed too soon. Having another Ralph Peters (aka genious) can be an option, or can it be not.
I find it extremely interesting how far the imagination of neo-cons like yourselves. You cannot still get away with the crimes committed in your history, and you still can't handle your "war against a bunch of extremist folks" but that don't stop you from day-dreaming.
Let me tell you what Turkey is, folks. Turkish nation is in Asia Minor sinse the 11th century that was long before your Anglo-Saxon nation invaded America and slaughtered native Americans.
The land which we now reside is rightfully ours as well as the Kurds. So if you are isolating the Turks from today's daydreaming, i will tell you one thing, read more history!
The Kurds within our borders are our brothers and they won't fight your dirty wars, i guarantee you.
Sadly, Ralph Peters, a man to whom I was first introduced through one of his excellent works of fiction, 'Red Army' has been propelled by his success along a tiresomely predictable evolution. He now plays to the ignorant elites and has adapted his world view to curry favor with their sensibilities. His recent column revealed an irresponsible ignorance of even the most basic precepts of islam. If he is too preoccupied to read the quran, he should at least pay attention to the sentiments of the vast majority of the umma! He seems to have contracted a fatal case of political correctness. That damned disease is going to be the death of western civilization.
- Turkish nation is in Asia Minor sinse the 11th century that was long before your Anglo-Saxon nation invaded America and slaughtered native Americans - Bezgin
Hey, Bezgin, keep up rhetoric like that and some might perceive you to be an ignorant little racist creep. Turkey takes a backseat to no nation in the genocide department. "Anglo Saxon" post-enlightenment tolerance for islamic fundamentalist savages is worn extremely thin at this point in time, so don't expect much sympathy for your pathetic sense of grievance. Get your head out of your a** and the twelfth century and back into reality. I guess most turks never heard of Constantinople. No surprise.
"Elites are the fruits of a society. Elites do not fall from outer space: they grow from the society, and to the extent that a society is democratic (sophomores: please note the small "d"), elites reflect the broader, deeper, prevalent currents of the society out of which they have grown."
From the essay, ‘Elites’—a peculiar obsession of Jihad Watchers, on this blog:
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2006/08/elitesa-peculiar-obsession-of-jihad.html
"Turkish nation is in Asia Minor sinse the 11th century..."
-- from a posting above
The Seljuk Turks first entered what was then the Byzantine Empire, and had previously been part of the Eastern Empire of Rome, in the 11th and 12th centuries. Central Asian tribesman, they managed to conquer parts of Asia Minor, and later, the Ottoman Turks took over, and even entered Europe before finally conquering Constantinople in 1453. Greek scholars with their manuscripts left Byzantium over those centuries, helping to bring about what used to be called, and may still be called, in history courses, the Revival of Learning.
In the cult of The Turk that Ataturk carefully created, and that was further advanced by Inonu, and a host of scholars and pseudo-scholars, a Turkish national myth was created, one that unlike that expressed in the posting above, went back as far as the Hittites to claim that everything that had happened in Asia Minor, all of its peoples, somehow became Turks avant la lettre. The cult of "The Turk" and "The Turkish Nation," and the cult of personality that grew even after Ataturk's death, was clearly intended to replace, or offer an alternative to diminish the force of, the cult of Islam and Ataturk became a kind of local substitute for Muhammad as the object of Turkish worship, affection, emulation, and esteem.
It is amazing, however, how the Chrisetians of Byzantium, whose descendants of course must make up the majority of the population in Turkey today, though those descendants of Christians, both islamized and turkified, would hardly dare to recognize their own origins. Perhaps the very poster in question is the descendant of forcibly converted Armenians or Greeks, or of others, non-Turks and non-Muslims -- but will not permit himself to even consider that possiblity.
And why would it matter? It would not, except that sometimes the realization of non-Muslim originas, say by Pakistanis who might begin to think of their own Hindu ancestors, who were converted either under threat of death, or in order to avoid the onerous, nearly intolerable conditions of being dhimmis (zimmis), might unsettle, might disturb, might cause one to think.
And that, in turn, might change the fixed views of some who might begin to see the forced conversion of their ancestors as not something that had to be ignored, or glossed over, and might provide a reason for converting back, jettisoning a belief-system that is responsible for the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim societies today -- precisely to the extent that they remain loayl to the tenets of Islam. Turkey and Tunisia and Kazakhstan are the most advanced Muslim societies; Sudan and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Egypt the least advanced.
Something for someone who thinks of himself as "a Turk" and a member of "the Turkish nation" to think about. After all, there was a large and settled population in Byzantium before tribesmen from Central Asia arrived -- Seljuk and then Ottoman Turks. As with the Arab armies that conquered far more numerous peoples, the Turks must have conquered peoples far larger than they, but managed to seize control, for in those days, and even much later, conquerors could hold territory even if greatly outnumbered. In the 19th century and early 20th century, for example, a force of fewer than 100,000 soldiers and British civlians controlled 250 million Indians. It was no different with the Arab conquerors, or the Turks. How many of those "Turks" were never really "Turks" at all, but islamized indigenous Christians who took or were given Turkish names, used Turkish, and ultimately, began thinking that they were Turks -- and how many of those now in Turkey are descended from those forcibly converted?
"Hey, Bezgin, keep up rhetoric like that and some might perceive you to be an ignorant little racist creep"
Is it your barbaric nature that provokes you to blame me without a proof is beyond my imagination. Attack without a reason, you can get away with it, it is a new fashion.
I am not muslim, and i am a part of Turkish nation. There may be angry tone in my words, it is a very common feeling among thge people of Middle East people, because no one hears us, nio one really pays attention. Yes i am angry because people like you, tomahawk, you don't read and don't listen.
I won't regard your opinions as they are too disrespectful and insulting for my understanding.
Hugh,
Thanks for your valuable feedback, i appreciate it. And thanks for creating the common ground for further discussions.
You say the Turks at the time conquered Anatolia and ruled a a mixture of nations bigger than their amount. Yes, you are right.
But please tell it to the 55 million Turkish people who are assimilated and identify themselves as Turks that makes about 80% of the Turkey's population. What do you recommend me? Should i refuse Turkish identity and search the traces of my Armenian roots, or Greek, or Kurd?
My mother's family roots back to Sudan and Bulgaria. My Grandfather (RIP) was a Slavian and my granmdmother is like every woman you can see in Sudan. So what do you want me to decide. I was born in Turkey, i studied in Turkish schools and what does that make me. I don't ask anyone to feel Turkish. But what gives Mr. Peters the right to decide for people?
There is a double standard in the way the western fellows percieve us Turks. When comes to minority issues we are all barbaric Turks, and when we say we want to be involved when USA decides for our destiny we are not Turks anymore we are a bunch of assimilated people. I really don't understand it, i don't know, maybe it is against my barbaric nature.
This new social engineering plans of USA is just ridiculous. And it seems USA won't listen to what we are saying.
I am not against a referandum in parts of Anatolia where the Kurdish population is the majority. This has to be done not because of thepressure from the greedy neo-cons and their Kurdish friends (Talabani, Barzani and other tribal leaders in Northern Iraq), but we have to show the world we have nothing to fear or lose from a possible Kurdish seperation.
Call me only one imperial power having solved its minority problems without mistakes and crimes. Remember Los Angeles, 1991? Don't the French have such problems, or the Germans?
Ottoman Empire had done mistakes and so did the Turkish Republic, just like USA has done and still is doing. But USA has a very successful marketing strategy, we are allowed only to see the good side, not the evil.
USA is planning to build a country inside the soil of Turkish Republic and doesn't feel a need to ask the assimilated and barbaric people of Turkey. That is what pisses us. That was my point.
Have a good day.
I would like to add one last hought.
Look at the areas, countries that USA intervened to solve the problems. Yugoslavia, Somalia, Philippines, Chili. There is not one good example that USA accomplished a mission without focking things up Sorry for the definition but it matches perfectly).
This, for some, reveals the real intentions of current and the previous American administrations.
Once you answer this question you can answer them all.
A-bombing in Nagazaki and Hiroshima, was it a war crime?
The poster just above, who judging by his various posts must be a Muslim Turk, decries the effects of American intervention.
One may agree that after the Iraq fiasco -- a fiasco because the Bush Adminsitration refuses to recognize the way that the situation in Iraq offers the most obvious ways to weaken the camp of Islam, which that same Administration does not dare to do, since it contradicts its stated policies and goals, goals that are the very opposite of those it should wish to, and could, achieve by withdrawal of American forces.
One lesson of the Iraq business is that the Americans should never again intervene in a Muslim country to make it better, to help those who live in it. The only reason to intervene in a Muslim country, from now on out -- the main lesson of the venture in Iraq -- should be to prevent that country from acquiring major weaponry. Only in the extraordinary case that major supplies of oil are threatened with sabotage, should the United States, along with other non-Muslim powers, seize the major oilfields of Saudi Arabia and the sheiklets, the oil convenient to tankers ready in the Persian (not the Arabian, please note) Gulf, without long pipelines to guard. Contact with Muslim states should be reduced to the absolute minimum. Consulates and embassies should be closed, no admission of Muslims into the United States or to any other countries that wish to remain in NATO or otherwise to depend on ultimate American protection. Goods and services from the Western world should be made available only most reluctantly. Hospital care, for example, access to the Mass General or the Children's Hospital (where the black burqes, I am told, are out in force), should be limited to those who pay, for the privilege, a large sum -- say, a one million dollar surcharge for being permitted access to Western medicine. There are plenty of rich Arabs perfectly willing and able to pay that; they should be made to pay.
As for the poster's bizarre list, one wonders why he would disapprove of the American intervenition in Yugoslavia. One can understand why those who understand the tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam far better today than they did a decade ago, would now rethink that policy of bombing the Serbs, and were they to do things over, would concentrate on sympathetically addressing the Serbioan fears, induced by the likes of Izetbegovic, and confirmed by the behavior of Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia (including the destruction of Serbian churches and villages, and the appearance of all sorts of Arab fighters), that led them to support a man like Milosevich in the first place.
As for what the poster calls "Chili" what intervention is he referring to? The intervention of professors from the Economics Department at the University of Chicago? Does he think the attempt to bring peace, and also to supply food and other aid, in Somalia was a mistake? I do, but for reasons quite other than those he presumably does. I think no aid should ever be supplied by the Infidels to Muslim peoples, period. What was his objection to the intervention in Somalia?
Finally, he asks the following:
"A-bombing in Nagazaki and Hiroshima, was it a war crime?"
The Japanese believers in Kodo were not about to surrender. They were fanatically insistent on defending the home islands, and were prepared to sacrifice millions of their own soldiers and civilians, and the Americans estimated that they would suffer a half-million dead if they had to invade and seize those hoome islands. Proof of fanatical determination by those brainwashed in the cult of Kodo was that even after the bombing of Hiroshima, the Japanese refused to surrender. They demonstrated by that act the rightness of the decision to use it (on that need, see the writings of Luis Alvarez, who took part in the A-Bomb's development). The bomb dropped on Nagasaki finally changed minds.
So the answer is not difficult:
No.
To Hugh's post above, I can only say, as an agnostic, "Amen".
To the prior poster, I can only scratch my head in puzzlement when he writes, "But USA has a very successful marketing strategy, we are allowed only to see the good side, not the evil."
The USA has, actually, an abysmal marketing strategy, apparently: nearly the whole world, including millions of Americans, thinks the USA is an evil empire and has been ever since it cruelly enslaved blacks and practiced "genocide" against American Indians. That's a successful market strategy!???
A strange mindset, hard to cope with.
I would beg you to search in Wikipedia how many civilians has USAF killed and injured since 1942.
Your selfishness blinds you.
214.000 people died the mass-destruction. The severe biological effects lasted for years. You are talking about 500.000 more probable civilian killings. Yes, i know, they were willing to kill more.
Nevermind, whatever i say you will maintain your self-righteousness. There is a thick wall before your conscience.