Here is the last part of a very illuminating symposium on the Islamization of the West at FrontPage, in which the world-renowned terror expert Rohan Gunaratna demonstrates that he knows nothing about Islamic jihad -- a curious omission. "Symposium: Confronting Islamization of the West," by Jamie Glazov at FrontPage, July 11:
Spencer: Rohan Gunaratna is a Member of the Steering Committee of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, and is a Senior Fellow at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy's Jebsen Centre for Counter Terrorism Studies and Oklahoma’s Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. He is a litigation consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a former Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point. He has testified before the 9/11 Commission, has debriefed high-level Al-Qaeda detainees, and has served as a counter terrorism instructor for all sorts of organizations, including the US Navy Seals, the Swiss Federal Police, the New York Police Department, and the Australian Federal Police. He is coauthor of a book entitled Countering Terrorism: Can We Meet the Threat of Global Violence?.Given all this remarkable accomplishment, it is unfortunate and curious that there are so many lacunae in Gunaratna’s analysis about the Islamic ideology that forms the theoretical foundation and lays out the goals of today’s global jihad.
1. Mr. Gunaratna asserts that “it is incorrect to say that all schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to sugjugate [sic] the non-Muslims world through Jihad. Armed Jihad is just one part of the many kinds of Jihad that exist in Islam. Armed jihad can only be carried out in a legitimate battlefield and must be commanded by a hakim or Muslim leader. Islam does command jihad unless for a defensive cause, not in offense to kill or cause destruction.”
Mr. Gunaratna is correct: armed jihad is only one of many kinds of jihad. But to assert this does nothing whatsoever to refute the assertion that all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that the infidels must be subjugated through jihad. That subjugation need not be accomplished by force of arms. If it can be affected through stealthy, non-violent means, as is being attempted on a large scale in the West today, so much the better.
And all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence do teach this subjugation:
Shafi'i school: A Shafi'i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh ‘Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)...while remaining in their ancestral religions.” ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).
Of course, there is no caliph today, and upon this fact hinges the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes "obligatory for everyone" ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: 'Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until "the final descent of Jesus." After that, "nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus' descent" (o9.8).
Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”
However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)
Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”
Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”
Of course, these are all extremely old authorities -- such that one might reasonably assume that whatever they say couldn’t possibly still be the consensus of the Islamic mainstream. The laws of the United States have evolved considerably since the adoption of the Constitution, which itself has been amended. So why shouldn’t this be true of Islamic law as well? Many observers assume that it must be, and that contemporary jihadists' departure from mainstream Islam must be located in its preference for the writings of ancient jurists rather than modern ones. But in this, unfortunately, they fail to reckon with the implications of the closing of the gate of ijtihad.
Ijtihad is the process of arriving at a decision on a point of Islamic law through study of the Qur’an and Sunnah. From the beginning of Islam, the authoritative study of such sources was reserved to a select number of scholars who fulfilled certain qualifications, including a comprehensive knowledge of the Qur’an and Sunnah, as well as knowledge of the principle of analogical reasoning (qiyas) by which legal decisions are made; knowledge of the consensus (ijma) on any given question of Muhammad, his closest companions, and the scholars of the past; and more, including living a blameless life. The founders of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence are among the small number of scholars -- mujtahedin -- thus qualified to perform ijithad. But they all lived very long ago; for many centuries, independent study of the Qur’an and Sunnah has been discouraged among Muslims, who are instead expected to adhere to the rulings of one of those established schools. Since the death of Ahmed ibn Hanbal, from whom the Hanbali school takes its name, in 855 A.D., no one has been recognized by the Sunni Muslim community as a mujtahid of the first class -- that is, someone who is qualified to originate legislation of his own, based on the Qur’an and Sunnah but not upon the findings of earlier mujtahedin.
Islamic scholar Cyril Glasse notes that “‘the door of ijtihad is closed’ as of some nine hundred years, and since then the tendency of jurisprudence (fiqh) has been to produce only commentaries upon commentaries and marginalia.”
Meanwhile, in saying that “armed jihad can only be carried out in a legitimate battlefield and must be commanded by a hakim or Muslim leader,” and that “Islam does command jihad unless for a defensive cause, not in offense to kill or cause destruction,” Mr. Gunaratna is confusing several distinctions that are made in the Islamic theology of jihad. It is true that offensive jihad – which he denies even exists – can only be called by the caliph as leader of the Muslims, but defensive jihad, as we have seen, becomes fard ayn, or personally incumbent upon every individual Muslim to participate in somehow, when a Muslim land is attacked.
As for Mr. Gunaratna’s claim that jihad can only be defensive, it is contradicted by numerous Islamic authorities. I already explained above that in his eighth-century biography of Muhammad, the earliest such biography, Ibn Ishaq explains that Muhammad received revelations about warfare in three stages: first, tolerance; then, defensive warfare; and finally, offensive warfare in order to convert the unbelievers to Islam or make them pay the jizya – the tax specified in Qur'an 9:29 for Jews, Christians, and other “People of the Book.” Mainstream Islamic commentators on the Qur’an including Ibn Kathir, Ibn Juzayy, As-Suyuti and others also emphasize that the teachings on offensive jihad abrogate every peace treaty in the Qur'an. For Mr. Gunaratna simply to assert in the face of this evidence that jihad can only be defensive is not persuasive.
2. Mr. Gunaratna asserts that “eminent scholars of Islam like Al-Jalalain, At-Tabari and Ibn Kathir did not teach about using violence and terror against the non-Muslims and Muslims in their interpretations of the Quran.” Unfortunately, this is flatly false:
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a highly influential commentary on the Qur’an, says in its exposition of Qur’an 9:29 that Muslims must fight against those who “follow not the Religion of Truth,” for Islam “is firm and abrogates other deens [religions].”
Ibn Kathir explains about the same verse: “This honorable Ayah [verse] was revealed with the order to fight the People of the Book…Allah commanded His Messenger to fight the People of the Scriptures, Jews and Christians, on the ninth year of Hijrah, and he prepared his army to fight the Romans and called the people to Jihad announcing his intent and destination.” As the Romans had not attacked the Muslims, apparently Muhammad himself did not believe that jihad was solely defensive.
And Tabari? He quotes an early Muslim: “We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in the Cause of Allah. Killing him is a small matter to us.” He registers no disapproval of these ideas.
3. Mr. Gunaratna claims that the “majority of the Muslims in the west, or even in the world are moderate….Being a moderate Muslim does mean that he reject the religion's teaching that Islam must subjugate the world under the rule of Islam.”
While it is obvious that there are millions of Muslims who are not fighting jihad in any way today, there is no evidence that they actually reject the supremacist teachings of Islam – and tellingly, Mr. Gunaratna offers no evidence to support his claim.
4. There is a bitter irony to Mr. Gunaratna’s claim that Muhammad “promoted this concept of interfaith dialogue and he showed good examples by building a good relationship with the Jews and Christians in Medina during his period there.” In reality, according to the earliest Islamic sources he exiled two of the three Jewish tribes of Medina and massacred the third. Here again, Mr. Gunaratna offers no evidence at all for his claim that “a Muslim who is in favour of interfaith dialogue rejects the notion that it is responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through Jihad,” and invokes the fact that “the Qutran [sic] emphasizes that there is no compulsion in the religion” as if this lone Qur’anic phrase itself abrogated the book’s many exhortations of hatred for and warfare against unbelievers. Unfortunately, that has never been the position of any school of Islamic jurisprudence.
The problem is not, as Ayla Iqbal claims, that anyone is in danger of “broadly defin[ing] all Muslims.” No one is doing that except in the febrile imaginations of Western apologists for jihad and their useful idiots. Much more present is the danger that we will ignore or downplay the jihad threat out of wishful thinking and ignorance, and deceiving ourselves into believing that we are facing a tiny minority that has twisted and hijacked Islam while the broad majority of Muslims support Western pluralism and the idea of peaceful coexistence with unbelievers as equals on an indefinite basis. While all Muslims are indeed not involved with the jihad, the problem is much more deeply rooted and broader in scope than Mr. Gunaratna apparently realizes; I earnestly hope that he will study these matters closely and begin to provide to his many high-placed and influential students a more realistic and comprehensive picture of what is popularly known as the terror threat.
As for Mr. Kruglanski, it is unfortunate that he, like so many others, invokes the Crusades and Inquisitions, as if the existence of these historical facts somehow mitigates the reality of Islamic jihad activity today, or frees us from the responsibility of confronting its religious aspects. The reality is that the jihadists are recruiting and justifying their actions by reference to core tenets of Islamic theology and law. The longer we ignore this or pretend that it is not happening or is unimportant, the longer this recruitment will continue without any kind of response being mounted against it at all.
I thought that Islam considers that for a non-Muslim to reject the call to Islam and the jizya constitutes an attack on Islam, and that therefore all the violence of jihad is, in the eyes of Islam, intrinsically defensive.
"Rohan Gunaratna" -- the name rings a bell. He must be the same Rohan Gunaratna who wrote six books on the Tamil Tigers, and never gave a syllable of attention to Islam, and then, all of a sudden, after 9/11/2007, promptly repackaged himself for a new and booming market as an "Al Qaeda expert" and, bien entendu, a man who must, therefore, know all about Islam, and its texts, tenets, the attitudes those texts and tenets naturally promote. Yes, he's all over the place with his nostrums and his careful camouflage of his own ignorance both of Islam as an ideology, a Total Belief-System, and of the details -- those pesky details! -- of the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims, which is the best evidence we have, is it not, extending as to how Muslims have acted upon their beliefs. from Spain to East Asia, over 1350 years.
Oh, Rohan Gunaratna is like that robber baron or corrupt politician of the Mauve Decade who proudly said: "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em." Yes, Rohan Gunaratna saw his opportunties, and he took 'em.
"Seen his opportunities, and he took 'em":
"Rohan Gunaratna is a Member of the Steering Committee of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, and is a Senior Fellow at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy's Jebsen Centre for Counter Terrorism Studies and Oklahoma’s Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. He is a litigation consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a former Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point. He has testified before the 9/11 Commission, has debriefed high-level Al-Qaeda detainees, and has served as a counter terrorism instructor for all sorts of organizations, including the US Navy Seals, the Swiss Federal Police, the New York Police Department, and the Australian Federal Police. He is coauthor of a book entitled Countering Terrorism: Can We Meet the Threat of Global Violence?"
Clueless.
The West cannot prevail against Islamic intentions as long as it remains ignorant of those intentions. Islam is the main problem but a very important ancillary one is continued obfuscation and distortion of Islamic tenets by non-Muslims trying to redeem Islam in the eyes of Westerners. The Gunaratnas and Kruglanskis of the world are not doing those who love Western concepts of freedom and democracy any favors. None at all. Excellent post, Mr. Spencer.
Rohan Gunaratna's problem is that he has never met Allah...
http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=161&CATE=14
HAVING THE CALIPH'S PERMISSION
q2.3 Some scholars stipulate that the person delivering the censure must have permission to do so from the caliph (def: o25) or his regional appointee, and do not grant that private individuals may censure others. This is untrue, for the Koranic verses and hadiths all indicate that whoever sees something wrong and does nothing has sinned. Stipulating that there must be permission from the caliph is mere arbitrary opinion.
INTIMIDATION
q5.7 The sixth degree is threatening and intimidation, such as by saying, "Stop this or I'll-"; and when possible this should precede actually hitting the person. The rule for this level is not to make a threat that one cannot carry out, such as saying "or I'll seize your house," or "take you wife hostage," because if one says this seriously, it is unlawful, and if not serious, then one is lying.
ASSAULT
q5.8 The seventh degree is to directly hit or kick the person, or similar measures that do not involve weapons. This is permissible for private individuals provided it is necessary, and that one confines oneself to the minimum needed to stop the reprehensible action and nothing more. When the action has been stopped, one refrains from doing anything further.
FORCE OF ARMS
q5.9 The eighth degree is when one is unable to censure the act by oneself and requires the armed assistance of others. Sometimes the person being reproved may also get people to assist him, and a skirmish may ensue, so the soundest legal opinion is that this degree requires authorization from the caliph (def : o25). since it leads to strife and the outbreak of civil discord. Another view is that there is no need for caliph's permission.
http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=161&CATE=14
Most of what I needed to know about Islam, I learned on 9/11/01.
The rest, I've picked up here and at DW.
"a familiar ring..."
Yes, and here's a past article on the very same thing:
Fitzgerald: The inexpert experts
A poster at this website recently asserted about the jihad in Thailand that “The underlying issue is essentially an ethno- nationalist one – it is bound up with Malay identity and the failure of the government in Bangkok to accommodate Malay aspirations. Religion is very much a secondary issue."
Utter nonsense.
"Rohan Gunaranta [sic], a renowned expert on Islamic terrorism, also affirmed the same: He pointed out the parallels with Chechnya and Kashmir. ‘Those groups were initially nationalist but eventually developed a pan-Islamist outlook,’ he said. ‘I believe that within the next five years southern Thailand will become like the southern Philippines.’"
He also pinned high hopes earlier on that coup in Thailand, saying: "The coup was "a great opportunity that cannot be missed." [Telegraph, UK, 29 Sept 2006]."
Gunaratna is not the least offending, but he is all over the place, solemnly delivering himself, like so many of these "terrorism experts," either of the pointlessly obvious or of the entirely misleading. There are so many of these people. Every network has at least a few of them on well-paid retainer. Their self-assured ignorance, and the description of them as "terrorism experts" by the respectful newscaster (so-and-so is a "terrorism expert" who is then consulted for his semi-worthless or downright idiotic opinion) leave the credulous public worse off, by telling it what to think, than that public would be were it asked to make sense of things itself -- without benefit of false authority.
It is the ex-Muslims, the defectors from Islam, the people who know all about it and are permanently unfoolable, who should be consulted in the corridors of power and in the broadcasting houses of the Western world. By and large, they are not touched with a ten-foot-pole.
Has Ayaan Hirsi Ali been to Congress or the White House? Has anyone in Washington asked to see a group -- Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, and many others -- of those clear-eyed defectors? Or is there a fear of the reaction should sinister CAIR find out about it?
Is that it? We shall all suffer, made to endure or perhaps even share continuing widespread confusion, because of timidity and fear and ignorance on the part of those whose duty it is to instruct and protect us?
There is a story, reported as fact and not as apocryphal by Woodward, I believe, that Bush didn’t understand or even know about the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites. But even if such a story were apocryphal, it is clear that no one making policy believed that there would be the hostilities between Sunnis unwilling to acquiesce in the loss of political and economic power, and Shi'a unwilling to give the Sunnis (why should they?) what they want. Once Saddam Hussein was removed, those hostilities became inevitable. The timetable and the ferocity of those hostilities might vary a little depending on the acts of the Americans, but the outcome -- not at all. And the same goes for what the Kurds see as their one chance at independence which, despite the existence of some Kurds in the so-called national government (President Talebani, etc.) remains an inextinguishable desire.
Those who made policy in 2002-2003 were snookered or inveigled by Shi'a in exile, westernized, secular, attractive Shi'a, who assured one and all that all manner of things would be well once the Americans invaded. They forgot to add: all manner of things shall be well for us. As for you Americans, who cares?
And now that Wolfowitz and others who listened to all those assurances are out, a new group of American policymakers has arisen. These are the ones now prepared to stay in Iraq because they are credulous believers in what the Saudi, Egyptian, and Jordanian rulers tell them. They "must" stop Iran, but not, of course, by dealing with Iran's nuclear project (no, that would help Israel). They "must" stop it by remaining in Iraq to make sure the Sunnis get their share, and of course that "share" as defined by the Sunnis is far more than what the Shi'a or anyone else save those Sunni Arabs would consider to be their "share."
First the Shi'a call the tune, now the Sunnis. And the Americans remain eager to please, incapable of figuring out why they should leave and let whatever hostilities can continue to simmer continue forever. Instead of deploring such hostilities or trying to head them off, they should wish devoutly for aid to come from Hizballah in Lebanon (thereby using up volunteers and weakening Hizballah in Lebanon), and from Iran on one side, and from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan on the other, with Syria, as always, allowing both Sunni volunteers, and Iranian weaponry were necessary, to pass through. That is a way for the Alawite ruler to assure, as he sees it, his own continued survival. He's very likely wrong.
But so are the Americans. When Gates says we must get it right and avoid all kinds of bad things happening in Iraq -- you know, bad things like the Saudis and Iranians fighting a proxy or not-so-proxy war -- he has it all backwards. But what did you expect, of such a company man? Did you think he had spent the last several years studying up on Islam? What was the ratio, do you think, of the time he spent attending football games with big donors or supporters at Texas A. & M., to the amount of time he spent studying the one subject that he and everyone else involved in the making of foreign policy, or even in having an intelligent opinion about foreign policy, should be studying: the tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam, and the worldwide manifestations and varied instruments of Jihad?
[Posted by Hugh at December 8, 2006]
Excellent article, Robert.
Mr. Gunaratna fails to grasp the delicate nuances of Islam and of the Koran's teachings.
Robert was good, but Abul Kasem stole the show with an excellent defense of his reasonably good 8-point plan:
I particularly cracked up at Kasem calling for the regulation of mosques like brothels or pubs. He was also right about the allegence issue - when I first came to the US, I too was asked in the form whether I was ever a member of the Communist Party. Seeing such a question on a form would make MINOs nervous, and also put jihadis on notice that if caught being Islamic, they'd be deported.His last point about dawa was something that he sold well, but to buy that, the US (and the West in general) would have to first for legal purposes recognize Islam as a cult, rather than a religion. If this very major threshold is achieved, then 90% of the things he listed would be a fait accompli.
Why must we not treat Islam as a dangerous belief system that wants to subjugate the entire mankind to slavery, barbarism, terror and murder?
IP,
We have that pesky First Amendment. As long as Islam is considered a religion, how can it be banned?
Mormons had to give up polygamy. Why aren't Muslims required to renounce sharia?
An excerpt from a previous post that mentions Gunaratna as a specific example of a more general phenomenon:
Many who started life studying one subject, usually Kremlinology, have quickly moved over, while the getting's good, to "terrorism" and thence to "Islamic terrorism" and thence, in still a further sly elision, to "Islam" itself. Ronan Gunaratna wrote six books on Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (his country of origin) and then, in 2001, he was one of four authors (how many people does it take these days?) to c0o-write an article, with an organizational chart and lists of leaders of Al Qaeda. Then came the attack of 9/11/2001. Suddenly he was Mr. Al Qaeda, and like so many these days, became an "expert" on "terrorism" with a steady gig on Sky Television. Now you can't miss him, and he's suddenly also an expert on Iraq, and what's to come there (my, he knows exactly what's going to happen there -- it's going to turn into a "Terrorist Disneyland" overnight if the Americans leave), and he furthermore knows just How To Fight Islam, because all those who wrote "Inside Al Qaeda" books have such experts on the whole matter, and have no need -- Ronan Gunaratna has no need -- to discuss, in detail, the tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, and the fissures, ethnic, sectarian, and economic, that have been repeatedly discussed here but have received so little attention elsewhere. His warning about a "Terrorist Disneyland" was preposterous, but apparently not preposterous enough for him not to make it before a too-credulous audience in London a few days ago.
Many others who got their degrees in Soviet studies, and who now realize that the market for that has gone out of fashion (but they should hold on -- Russia is coming back into grim fashion). One of them is Frederick Kagan, he of the "we can't leave those decent Iraqis"-- all 50,000 of them out of 27 million, because otherwise "no one in the Middle East will ever trust us again" (as, you know, they have been all along because we, and the Arabs of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and so on share a common view of things, which would be destroyed by the "betrayal" of our leaving Iraq. Another is Michael Waller, Kremlinologist out of the International Relations program at B.U., recently turned expert on the "war of ideas" with Islam, which war, he thinks, can only be won if we do nothing to demoralize or anger Muslims, but instead pretend that Jihad is not a central duty and furthermore does not mean what Muslims have so clearly taken it to mean over 1350 years.
[in the original there was here a discussion of Mary Habeck, which I no longer fully stand by and so have gallantly removed – galanterie pas morte, Mesdames et Messieurs]
These presto-chango makeovers just won't do. And they won't do even if one is a "conserviatve" and a "Republican" (whatever those words mean these days). One has to not only have read things, but had the time to have them make sense, the time to thoroughly assimilate them so that aspects of the problem today can be better understood.
There are many owho have taken this route. Everyone and his brother, everyone and her sister, knows all about Islam. Martha Nussbaum does. Just ask her --no, actually there's no need to ask her. She'll tell you in a book what she thinks -- about everything. Amartya Sen knows all about Islam -- after all, he is from India, so he must be an expert on the tenets of Islam, and on Islamic history -- he picks it up from the atmosphere. Timothy Garton Ash is an expert on Islam, because he was at St. Antony's College in the East European and Russian wing, so had a chance to speak with all those convincing people -- such as Tariq Ramadan, and before him others who the late Albert Hourani carefully brought for their diploma-mill D.Phils (no courses, no waiting, and try to write, if you can, about something to do with "Palestinian Identity" but whatever you do, don't you dare study Islam too closely). [N.B.: Ash won’t be writing publicly much about Islam any more; he’s frightened to death of Muslims because in a debate in London last year, in which he was the apologist for Islam, he suddenly lost control, and admitted that "of course" Muhammad was a "monster" etc. etc., and then, after the debate, realizing that what he had said had been caught on various cameras and tape-recorders, and terrified of what Muslims might do to him, he spent days tracking down any tapes or videos, of the finally truth-telling Timothy Garton Ash, and begged that they be destroyed. Very amusing]. Ian Buruma, Ash's friend [now safely tenured at Bard, where Leon Botstein was much impressed with those New York Review of Book Performances)] also knows all about Islam -- and because his heart is in the right place about Jews, you see, he is exempt from the need to actually study the matter, and so he can give Ayaan Hirsi Ali what-for, mocking her right and left. He wrote a particularly absurd piece about Tariq Ramadn for the Sunday Times Magazine, and his performance earned the vigilant and detailed contempt of Paul Berman in an article on Ramadan in "The New Republic."
And so many others also know all about Islam. Why, Karen Hughes knows all about Islam. She knows that "public diplomacy" requires winning Muslim hearts and Muslim minds by never saying anything that might offend Muslims -- because how can you win hearts and minds if you offend? Mary Cheney, Cheney's daughter, deeply involved in that "democratization project" apparently also knows all about Islam, just as her father does, and her father's boss George Bush. Generals know all about Islam. They know that Islam is a fine thing, if only the extremists can be dealt with, and they know -- they just know -- that the "mission" can succeed if only we apply sufficient force along with a sufficient winning of hearts and minds, over about...well, did you know that according to General Petraeus, and all those counter-insurgency Gaululites around him (the late David Galula providing, with his long-overlooked book on the Lessons of the Algerian War a Magic Answer to All Insurgencies, Wherever They May Be). And since they "know" that Islam is no problem, they don't need to bother with Jihad, or the other instruments of Jihad aside from warfare -- as the money weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest of European lands -- but can "fulfill the mission" without ever questioning the mission they are so busily, and so vainly, attempting to fulfill.
And then there is Condoleeza Rice, dutiful graduate student, dutiful professor. Not brilliant, not especially anything. Dutifuly plodding, dutifully without any flashes, without showing herself to have the ability to grasp a new sitatuion and understand that she did not understand, and would have to learn -- but in this respect she is no different from all kinds of people, including Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who still are unrepentant about the Iraq fiasco, still unwilling to recognize their own ignorance about Iraq and about Islam.
Mary Habeck is not worse than these others. She's better than most of them. But for her to suggest that Jihad as a doctrine comes and goes is absurd. For her not to recognize the three things that brought Jihad back as a possiblity (hint: ten trillion dollars in OPEC money since 1973, millions of Muslim migrants now settled deep within the Lands of the Infidels, and finally, the exploitation of Western technology, including the Internet and satellite channels and videocassettes, to disseminate the message of Islam, and propaganda for violence as an instrument of Jihad) is not acceptable.
Everyone knows about Islam. Bush, Cheney, their loyal generals (the ones who are not brave enough, to quit and denounce the war's squandering of men, money, materiel, in the manner of Major-General, Batiste), everyone who studied the Kremlin and now wants in to the Long War. Everyone in the think tanks and consultancies that are making out like bandits. You too can start one. Just select one or two words from among the following, then arrange them with the articles and prepositions of your choice: "Center" and "Security" and "National" and "International" and "American" and "Security" and "Foreign" and "Strategic" and "Studies" and "Future" and "Conflict" and "Resolution" and "Peace" and let's not forget "War."Now you've got yourself a Think-Tank-cum-Consultancy, and you're off to the government-money races or is it, perhaps, a trough.
In the time of Louis XIV, le roi soleil, the Courtiers at Versailles had least had to display a sooterkins of wit as they strolled the grounds or attended a levee or a ruelle. Not now. High seriousness, the furrowed brow, the portentous voice, is in permanent fashion. Displays of wit, or general cultivation, not allowed. The glass of fashion and the mold of form is a Kagan or a Cordesman. Portentous as hell.
Go ahead. Be an Instant Expert on Islam. Write the book on What Needs to Be Done. Run it up the flagpole. Everyone -- or rather almost everyone --will salute.
[Posted by: Hugh at May 19, 2007 12:53 PM]
As I was reading the response of Gunaratna today morning, I was wondering in which planet he is mainly living.
This is utter disregard for data and inventing theories that have no real relevance.
Robert Spencer trapped him intelligently and got him thoroughly exposed.
Gunaratna, by the way, contacted Andrew Bostom and asked him to send him not one but two copies of his sourcebook, "The Legacy of Jihad," one for himself, distinguished expert on "Islamic--hold the Islam -- terrorism" Rohan Gunaratna, and another for a government minister in Singapore to whom he, Rohan Gunaratna, wished to deliver a signed copy of Bostom's book, no doubt hoping to give the impression that he was a close friend of Bostom (who has never met him) and possibly a colleague.
No doubt the Singaporean Minister got the copy, and was duly impressed. But possibly he was so very busy that he had no time to read the book, or if he read it, to actually take it in, to make sense of its contents.
What's Rohan Gunaratna's excuse?
Just read the full Front Page symposium. Robert, you are magnificent... Deo gratias
The concept of "muslim lands" made by islamists cannot be accepted, as all lands before muhammad's army were never muslim. islamists claim to parts of Europe and retaken by Europeans must be proclaimed fovever free of islam. l would see the day islam is driven back to a tiny bit of desert dirt just to remind us how disgusting they are.
4. There is a bitter irony to Mr. Gunaratna’s claim that Muhammad “promoted this concept of interfaith dialogue and he showed good examples by building a good relationship with the Jews and Christians in Medina during his period there.” In reality, according to the earliest Islamic sources he exiled two of the three Jewish tribes of Medina and massacred the third.
The claim of a Muslim associate that Muhammad only attacked the Jews of Medina because they refused to pay the jizyah motivated me to study the subject based on the original sources. For anyone interested, it is the three part "Muhammad and the Jews" recently posted at staringattheview.blogspot.com