What was AP's first clue? Anyway, it is clear from this article that the Salafists are gaining strength because they are able successfully to present themselves as the adherents of authentic Islam. This shows up most pointedly the ridiculousness of the line the American government is following, with its new a priori assumption that the Salafis are inauthentic in their practice of Islam: it leaves American analysts no way to evaluate, or to develop ways to challenge, the Salafist appeal.
"Ultraconservative Islam on rise in Mideast," by Paul Schemm for Associated Press, October 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):
CAIRO, Egypt – The Muslim call to prayer fills the halls of a Cairo computer shopping center, followed immediately by the click of locking doors as the young, bearded tech salesmen close shop and line up in rows to pray.Business grinding to a halt for daily prayers is not unusual in conservative Saudi Arabia, but until recently it was rare in the Egyptian capital, especially in affluent commercial districts like Mohandiseen, where the mall is located.
But nearly the entire three-story mall is made up of computer stores run by Salafis, an ultraconservative Islamic movement that has grown dramatically across the Middle East in recent years....
Critics worry that the rise of Salafists in Egypt, as well as in other Arab countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, will crowd out the more liberal and tolerant version of Islam long practiced there. They also warn that the doctrine is only a few shades away from that of violent groups like al-Qaida — that it effectively preaches "Yes to jihad, just not now."...
Salafist groups are gaining in numbers and influence across the Middle East. In Jordan, a Salafist was chosen as head of the old-guard opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. In Kuwait, Salafists were elected to parliament and are leading the resistance to any change they believe threatens traditional Islamic values.
The gains for Salafists are part of a trend of turning back to conservatism and religion after nationalism and democratic reform failed to fulfill promises to improve people's lives. Egypt has been at the forefront of change in both directions, toward liberalization in the 1950s and '60s and back to conservatism more recently.
The growth of Salafism is visible in dress. In many parts of Cairo women wear the "niqab," a veil which shows at most the eyes rather than the "hijab" scarf that merely covers the hair. The men grow their beards long and often shave off mustaches, a style said to imitate the Prophet Muhammad.
The word "salafi" in Arabic means "ancestor," harking back to a supposedly purer form of Islam said to have been practiced by Muhammad and his companions in the 7th century. Salafism preaches strict segregation of the sexes and resists any innovation in religion or adoption of Western ways seen as immoral....
Its preachers often glorify martyrdom and jihad — or holy war — but always with the caveat that Muslims should not launch jihad until their leaders call for it. The idea is that the decision to overturn the political order is up to God, not the average citizen.
But critics warn that Salafis could easily slide into violence. In North Africa, some already have — the Algerian Salafi Group for Call and Combat has allied itself with al-Qaida and is blamed for bombings and other attacks. Small pockets of Salafis in northern Lebanon and Gaza have also taken up weapons and formed jihadi-style groups.
"I am afraid that this Salafism may be transferred to be a jihadi Salafism, especially with the current hard socio-economic conditions in Egypt," says Khalil El-Anani, a visiting scholar at Washington's Brookings Institution.
The Salafi way contrasts with the Islam long practiced in Egypt. Here the population is religious but with a relatively liberal slant. Traditionally, Egyptian men and women mix rather freely and Islamic doctrine has been influenced by local, traditional practices and an easygoing attitude to moral foibles.
But Salafism has proved highly adaptable, appealing to Egypt's wealthy businessmen, the middle class and even the urban poor — cutting across class in an otherwise rigidly hierarchical society.
In Cairo's wealthy enclaves of Maadi and Nasr City, robed, upper-class Salafis drive BMWs to their engineering firms, while their wives stay inside large homes surrounded by servants and children.
Sara Soliman and her businessman husband, Ahmed el-Shafei, both received the best education Egypt had to offer, first at a German-run school, then at the elite American University in Cairo. But they have now chosen the Salafi path.
"We were losing our identity. Our identity is Islamic," 27-year-old Soliman said from behind an all-covering black niqab as she sat with her husband in a Maadi restaurant.
"In our (social) class, none of us are brought up to be strongly practicing," added el-Shafei, also 27, in American-accented English, a legacy of a U.S. boyhood. Now, he and his wife said, they live Islam as "a whole way of life," rather than just a set of obligations such as daily prayers and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.
A dozen satellite TV channels, most Saudi-funded, are perhaps Salafism's most effective vehicle. They feature conservative preachers, call-in advice shows and discussion programs on proper Islamic behavior.
Cairo's many Salafist mosques are packed on Fridays. Outside Shaeriyah mosque, a bookstall featured dozens of cassettes by Mohammed Hasaan, a prolific conservative preacher who sermonizes on the necessity of jihad and the injustices inflicted on Muslims.
Alongside the cassettes, a book titled "The Sinful Behaviors of Women" displayed lipstick, playing cards, perfumes and cell phones on the cover. Another was titled "The Excesses of American Hubris."
Critics of Salafism say it has spread so quickly in part because the Egyptian and Saudi governments encouraged it as an apolitical, nonviolent alternative to hard-line jihadi groups.
These critics warn that the governments are playing with fire — that Salafism creates an environment that breeds extremism. Al-Qaida continues to try to draw Salafists into jihad, and its No. 2, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, praised Salafists in an Internet statement in April, urging them to take up arms.
"The Salafi line is not that jihad is not a good thing, it is just not a good thing right now," said Richard Gauvain, a lecturer in comparative religion at the American University in Cairo.
The Salafis' talk of eventual jihad focuses on fighting Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, not on overthrowing pro-U.S. Arab governments denounced by al-Qaida. Most Salafi clerics preach loyalty to their countries' rulers and some sharply denounce al-Qaida.
Egypt, with Saudi help, sought to rehabilitate jailed Islamic militants, in part by providing them with Salafi books. Critics say President Hosni Mubarak's government sees the Salafists as a counterweight to the opposition Muslim Brotherhood....
"The Excesses of American Hubris"?
So tell me, why do we borrow two billion dollars a year and send it to Egypt?
Let's get some fiscal conservatism and stop borrowing money to send to foreign countries. They clearly don't need it.
"the more liberal and tolerant version of Islam long practiced there"
I'm just having a hard time reading a sentence with the words "liberal", "tolerant" and "Islam" in it.
I must be an Islamophobe!
This shows up most pointedly the ridiculousness of the line the American government is following, with its new a priori assumption that the Salafis are inauthentic in their practice of Islam: it leaves American analysts no way to evaluate, or to develop ways to challenge, the Salafist appeal.
Exactly the point that DoD analyst Stephen Coughlin made last year in his thesis, "To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad." For those who came in late, this indispensable document may be accessed at:
http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.176/pub_detail.asp
And if you think the American government's line is ridiculous now, wait until you see what it looks like under an Obama administration -- should we fail to forestall one.
The article above repeatedly refers to 'Salafis' or 'Salafists', but the real question is - is that what they actually call themselves? I've never seen Islamic groups appeal on the basis of their sectarian identity: Iran, for instance, just calls itself an Islamic republic, not Shia (even though they are more than happy to manipulate Shia puppets in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Bahrein); Saudi Arabia too just calls itself Islamic, not Wahabi - and the same is true about the Taliban and the Deobandis/dar ul Uloom. This emphasis on the various sub-classes of Islam is something that Infidel - particularly Western - analysts place on such trends, seeking to isolate it from the larger Islamic character of the jihad against Infidels, supplemented when necessary with takfir violence against other non-compliant Mohammedans, who are then branded Kafirs.
The reason for this emphasis on their Islamic aspect should be obvious - as long as one declares themselves Islamic, who else in the ummah could publicly object? But once one states itself as a particular entity, they throw themselves open to jihad from non-members within the ummah.
I have a theory that Infidel analysts tend to superimpose the fragmented reality of other religions - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism et al - on Mohammedans, and assume that Mohammedans are as sectarian in their attitudes and as isolated from the universal Islamic requirements as others are. However, in reality, there has never been problems with different sects of Mohammedans uniting against Infidels.
One reason for this is that in Islam, the obsession with a purity of identity as a Believer is widespread, mainstream and paramount. Not only that - the obsession with "purity" in Islam is more starkly bipolar: one is either in, or one is out, either a Muslim or Infidel. There seems to be little tolerance for the idea of a spectrum of fervor, even if that may happen to be a de-facto reality -- indeed, the idea itself could be grounds for the accusation of takfir. As a result, this segmentation of the ummah is less like the fragmentation of non-Muslim groups, be it Catholics vs Protestants, Orthodox vs Reform Jews, Vaishnav vs Shaivite Hindus, Theravada vs Mahayana Buddhists. It is just the superficial effect of various Muslims and Muslim groups jockeying for the privileged label of "pure" -- which in the world of Islam, is achieved by successfully demonstrating the others as 'impure' and by inference, infidel.
Numbers play a role in this in no small way - the larger the membership in any of these splinter groups, the likelier is its chances of success in owning the 'Islamic' label, which is why 'Islamic' can mean Wahabi in a Saudi or Afghan context, 'Shia' in an Iraqi or Lebanese context, 'Sunni' in an Egyptian, Syrian or Paki context, and so on. As a result, Muslims-in-name-only Mohammedans end up effectively enabling this binary dynamic of Pure/Impure, regardless of whether they are observant of Islam or not.
When that old-time-religion comes back, and that religion, or rather Total Belief-System, is Islam, that can only mean disruption and danger for Infidels, whether they are in the Muslim-dominated lands (Copts in Egypt, Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq), or if those Muslims, with their innate supremacism and a triumphalism (that alternates with pessimistic and sullen passivity, when their inculcated impulse urge to make raids on, and overcome, non-Muslims, must be held, for now, and only temporarily, in check.
When Islam was seen as obviously weak relative to the West-- as it was for about a century and a half (roughly, from 1820 to 1970)--then Muslims were relatively quiet. In fact, they even made moves to placate the West in meaningless ways. For example, both Azzam Pasha, the first Secretary of the Arab League and the one who promised that the war against the Jews in 1948 would result in a "massacre" the likes of which "had not been seen since the days of the Mongols," the man who is also the great-uncle of Ayman Al-Zawhiri (I am apparently the only one who finds this of note, for I keep mentioning it, and no one picks up on it), in 1951 did remember to convey his good wishes to Christians at Christmas time. And for the same political calculations, when Ayatollah Khomeini had not yet solidified his power, for one time, and one time only, he similarly wished Christians of the world his best wishes at Christmas time. We know, as the world's Christians did not know then, what Khomeini's real views, what Azzam Pasha's real views, on the rights of non-Muslims should be in a well-ordered society, and a well-ordered world --they are the same rights as dhimmis possess under the Shari'a, which means no rights other than those temporarily granted, by benevolent Muslims, as long as the conditions of their dhimmi status are never broken, are faithfully and completely kept. And even then, Muslims have over time, whenever they felt like it, managed to find excuses for pogroms and mass forced conversions, or slaughter, whether of Copts in Egypt, or of Jews and Armenians in Tabriz under Shah Abbas II, or in the massacres of every Jew in Grenada in 1066, on the flimsiest of pretexts.
The Jihad is not "back." It never went away. Jihad, the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam all over the world has always been, and always will be, central to Islam. What changed over the past fifty years is the perceived strength of Muslims, which is the result not only of the removal of the French from North Africa (and the British bases along the littoral of the Persian Gulf, in what were called the "Trucial States" -- where the Royal Navy kept the truce among states and tribes that would otherwise be in a state of natural, and constant, warfare), but in the main, the result of the happy accident of geology, by which Muslims have received, through no effort on their part, more than eleven trillion dollars since 1973 alone, with more trillions coming along all the time. That has given them power. That has given them reach. That has given them the ability to pay for campaigns of Da'wa, to build mosques and madrasas, and what's more, maintain them, all over the Western world. That is what has enabled the Saudis alone to spend nearly one hundred billion dollars to further the Cause of Islam; the entire budget for Soviet propaganda abroad, over 70 years, was about 7-8 billiion. That has given them the ability to buy up, in ways small and big, all kinds of government officials, in office and out of office, including ambassadors to Arab states, journalists, teachers and other specialists in Middle Eastern affairs, businessmen with contracts dangled before them. From Colin Powell, seeing nothing wrong with allowing himself to be befriended by Prince Bandar, making him his steady racquetball and tennis companion, and saw nothing wrong with pocketing, just a few days after he had resigned, the gift of a Jaquar from Prince Bandar, the representative of one of the most hideous and, to the United States, dangerous and malevolent, regimes on earth. And if Colin Powell managed, somehow, to retain a quite-unjustified reputation for probity -- so that Senator Stevens of Alaska is relying on the character reference that Colin Powell has supplied, singing the praises of Stevens as having as much probity as...well, impliedly, as Colin Powell himself, and few of us who know about Powell and his resistible, ridiculously inflated rise, and his Prince-Bandar connection, would disagree with that.
The money was necessary, but not sufficient. At the same time, and in each country for slightly different reasons, there has been massive, seemingly unstoppable, Muslim immigrationh, and then, once in, and on the dole of the Western welfare state, Muslims have steadily outbread their hosts, so that, for example, in The Netherlands, there were 1,500 Muslims in 1960, 15,000 in 1970, 400,000 in 1997, and today there are ove a million, with Rotterdam and several other cities soon to have Muslim majorities.
This Muslim immigration was allowed to take place as a result of the same inattention to Islam, to what Islamic texts say, to what Islam teaches, to the likely and predictable effect of Islam on the minds of its adherents. After all, there are 1350 years of history of Muslim behavior, from Spain to the East Indies, that can be studied, examined, learned about, and that might just serve as a guide to Muslim behavior today. But just as the doctrine of Islam -- the texts, the tenets -- were so blithely ignored, so has the actual practice of Muslims over time and across space ignored, to examine, and to learn about, that just might have served as a guide, but that, like the canonical texts, been ignored by the political and media elites all over the Western world. And it is the continued ignoring of both the doctrine, and the practice, of Islam that has caused, and is causing, and will cause, such unnecessary suffering on the part both of the indigenous Infidels, and those non-Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the West, all at the hands of Muslims, and all of it utterly predictable.
Islam is triumphalist. Arab Muslims who have oil declare that it is a gift from Allah to the "best of people" -- though they are careful not to share that gift to other Muslims, even to other Muslim Arabs. But the money, and the abasement of the Western world, reinfordes the conviction, that comes from Islam, that History Is On Their Side. Any victory, anywhere, for the forces of Islam, encourages Muslim triumphalism.
But then there is another reason for the return to Islam, or to the stricter outward conformity with Islam to be seen in such places as Egypt. The further away Egypt gets from the past, the past of Lord Cromer, the past in which non-Muslims, Copts and Jews, were not subject to daily humiliations and attacks -- because the government, prompted by the British, did not countenance it -- and the more it becomes "Arab" rather than "Egyptian" (the latter identity may be encouraged, the former discouraged, by those who want to weaken the hold of Islam), the more it beomces Islamic. Islam explains to the rich and powerful Arabs their wealth and their power, and justifies their extraordinary behavior, from the domestic slaves they dare to take with them when they live in London, or outside Washington, or when their children attend those Western schools, or they themselves enter those Western hospitals, for the rich Arabs simply could not do without Western education and medical care, just as they need the West for Rest And Recreation, for that funfair-cum-brothel atmosphere that they find, and the world is their oyster, they can get away with all kinds of criminal behavior (see the Saudi bribery scandal in Britain, or the Saudi prince who tried to smuggle 66 suitcases of cocaine into France and claimed, when caught, "diplomatic immunity"; see the sex-slave scandals, the strange unexplained disappearances of Western women from Australia, from Spain, from everywhere, many of whom are believed to end up in Middle Eastern harems, disposable as kleenex of course, as all Infidels are ultimately disposable, once they have been made use of by their Arab masters).
Islam is the answer for the rich Muslims. It is the answer, the consolation, for the poor Muslims. Only when Muslims are forced to confront the reality of Islam can things possibly improve. What is it they must confront? They must confront this reality: that the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of societies and states suffused with Islam are a direct result of Islam itself.
How can they be made to confront this? They can be made to confront this if many Infidels, having studied the matter, will arrive -- some regretfully and surprised, some with a grim air of "I knew it but did not dare say it" -- at that understanding, and will explain, uninhibitedly, why they think it so. A demonstration project will soon reveal itself in Iraq, if the Americans leave (and Islam reverts to its own level), and could, too, in Afghanistan, which is no more the "central front" in the "war on terror" (itself a misnomer) than is Afghanistan; both McCain and Obama have things wrong, and both at this point seem incapable of learning enough about Islam to fashion intelligent, and far less costly -- in expenditures of men, materiel, money -- policies. Islam may no longer to be viewed through any prism of sentimental messianism (Bush's bringing of "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East who will then, presto-chango, become our friends, for our being Infidels doesn't matter in the Bush Administration's mental universe), but there is still a refusal to see what Islam inculcates, why this cannot change, why the Infidels of this world are all, in different ways, and at different rates, threatened by Islam, and because the texts of Islam are immutable, it is silly to ignore this, and pretend that Islam will, after 1350 years, somehow "reform" itself or, still more misleading, that the very nice, smiling, plausible Muslims one may meet, even if one were to believe and trust them (and given the emphasis on deception in Islam, and even the religiously-sanctioned doctrines of Taqiyya and Kitman, it would be foolhardy to do so) somehow "represent" Islam, and policies can be based on the existence of these people who are either sinister, or if not, if they really mean it, ill-informed about Islam, or out of embarrassment deliberately pretending to be so, because if you are a Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslim, you still are afraid to become a defector, in the Ibn Warraq or Wafa Sultan or Ayaan Hirsi Ali manner, are still perhaps feeling a residual filial piety that forces you to defend, or to pretend there is no need to defend (because you feign surprise when aspects of Islamic doctrine are presented to you for your response), Islam.
Once we in the West understand that the reasons for the hideous state of the Muslim world -- its penchant for despotism, its reliance on Infidel aid or on the manna of oil, both of which reflect inshallah-fatalism, its mistreatment of non-Muslims and of all women, its inhibiting of art and of science and even of music, its stifling of free inquiry, and suffocating intellectual atmosphere that deems everything outside of Islam essentially unimportant, all of this explains why Pakistan has turned out to be...Pakistan, and not(for all of its difficulties) India, why Malaysia is not Singapore, why the Arab OPEC states, despite being the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth -- and unearned to boot -- in human history, are still completely dependent on foreign wage-slaves, many of them treated atrociously by these desert Simon-Legrees, all daggers and dishdashas, with their sneers of cold command.
Infidels must learn this first. Infidels who understand this must replace, in the policy-making positions, those who will not or cannot grasp the nature of Islam, its texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospheris. And once Infidels, and their governments, have understood this, it will be hard for many of the world's Muslims to ignore this realization. At the very least, this will demoralize many Muslims, put paid to their triumphalism. At most, it may lead to man, such as non-Arab Muslims, having been made aware of the fact that Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, may turn away from Islam, may even discover their pre-Islamic roots (sometimes those roots are very close to the surface, in a not-too-distant past). When Muslims in India, or in Pakistan, or in Bangladesh, for example, begin to wonder about their Hindu ancestors, and what made them convert to Islam, and imitating little Arabs, and claiming an Arab genealogy, then we will be getting somewhere. When black African Muslims begin to find out more about the Arab slave trade, and Arab slavgery today, and the theft, by Muslims, of oil wealth that lie under the lands of Christians in the southern Sudan, and southern Nigeria, when they further learn that Islam causes economic statis because inshallah-fatalism does not promote economic activity, then we will be getting even more to that fabled somewhere.
And so on.
All it takes is a few brains to be well-placed in Washington.
Is that much to ask?
It's "ultra conservative" Islam. AP's next term would be "mega ultra conservative" Islam i guess.
"The gains for Salafists are part of a trend of turning back to conservatism and religion after nationalism and democratic reform failed to fulfill promises to improve people's lives. Egypt has been at the forefront of change in both directions, toward liberalization in the 1950s and '60s and back to conservatism more recently."
This piece was obviously written by a liberal ideologue. You can tell that his world view is something like this:
Conservativism by definition is backward and troglodytic.
All religion is backward and irrational.
Nationalism is inherently corrupt, self-serving, and fascist.
Democratic reform of foreign cultures (as the U.S. has been trying to push in the Middle East and which has most recently been applied in Iraq, for example) is Western cultural arrogance and rightfully doomed to fail.
Economic development is supposed to determine human behavior (Marxism), so the wealthy salafists are a mystery. But much more Western aid is needed to bring economic justice to these regions so that movements like "conservative" salafism will die on the vine.
Capitalism, which is just a form of exploitative imperialism, is a failure in the third world, if not everywhere. It rewards only the capitalist pirates and makes everyday people miserable.
This article, which first appeared in the NYT I believe, is based on two false premises:
1) Salafism (حركة السلفية) is an homogeneous, one size fits all renaissance movement.
2) Salafism is gaining adherents amongst the Cairene bourgeoisie.
Firstly, the Salafist movement in Egypt is minute and only a teensy weensy proportion of those who would self-identify as Salafists, would fit into the Pakistani/Afghani/Western convert conception of a what a Salafist might be.
Whilst overtly Salafist clerics are gaining popular cultural legitimacy on stations such as an-Nas(قناة الناس), the vast majority of the growth in visible Islamic adherence (beards, niqabs, qur'an reading on public transport) is in relation to economic uncertainty and is confined mainly to the poor working class.
To suggest, as this article does, that there is an ostensibly greater adhesion to Islamic mores amongst the intelligentsia is grossly inaccurate and misleading.
Many Cairo shops and restaurants have for years closed at prayer time. One of the photos issued with this article, in the Washington Post, suggests that Muslims are so multitudinous that they are praying in the street. This is egregiously overstating the role of prayer in Egyptian public life: at the Mohandessin Computer Mall in question, as in much of bustling, overcrowded Cairo, mosques can be found on most streets, often incongruously (or not) to be found next to places of commerce. Not unusually, there just so happens to be a small mosque next to this particular shopping centre and worshippers, due to the cramped nature of the prayer space, can often be found prostrating on the pavement outside. This is far from unusual in Cairo (or other urban metroplises in the ME) and neither reflects Salafism nor a greater visibity of religion within the public sphere.
It appears that islam will eat its own, and those muslims states will implode under the weight of their ultra pious practicing muslims.
Stop the presses: Jihadist sentiments rising in Middle East!
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WOW.. REALLY ??!! Who could have ever imagined!
And guess whose fault it all is: Yours and mine. Of course!