Isn't it interesting that Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye-or are both pseudonyms? Those who emanate from the Islamic world and who dare to tell the truth about Islam are advised to do so incognito, lest the faithful exact their revenge.

Bernard Lewis is someone who has told the truth about Islam, but only occasionally, and only belatedly. Most of his life and work involves genuflecting before the great Islamic civilization, especially the Ottomans. One cannot help but feel a little bit of sympathy for a man who served as an apologist for Islam, and recognized his mistake far too late to recitfy the damage he had already done.

Posted by: scaramouoche at January 30, 2007 5:13 PM

"One cannot help but feel a little bit of sympathy for a man who served as an apologist for Islam, and recognized his mistake far too late to recitfy the damage he had already done."

Agreed. As to profs who helped Russia and China during that same time, and still have not rectified their damage, less sympathy.

A graphical illustration of old mistakes and young reality follows:

Links to Jill Carroll Captive and Jane Fonda AA gun photos and videos for comparison.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at January 30, 2007 6:16 PM

TLS = Times Literary Supplement, of the Sunday Times, of London.

on and off topic:

"polemical". Where have I heard that word recently? Wait. Its coming.....
Yes. The unfortunately "plummy" [heh] voice of Mr. D'Souza comes to mind, in a disingenuous attack on Robert Spencer, on Lores Rizkalla's radio show.

Unfortunately, that word can be difficult to avoid. A combination of passion, knowledge, and warning often leaves people uneasy. The easy response, of many, is to ignore the warning, by dismissively labeling it as "polemical", or a "polemic" -- or even more easily by swallowing another's statement that this or that writing is "polemical".

Sometimes the label can be avoided by not insisting to be completely correct. That is, by granting one's rhetorical opponent a part of the field, or some credit, as Hugh does above, with Bernard Lewis.

I don't like the label "polemic", particularly when used with a certain tired self-importance. I distrust people who use that label to attack their opponents. It's a broad-brush smear. Personally (of course I am an anonymous nobody on the internet), that was the statement by D'Souza, which turned me off to him. That was the statement, by him, which demonstrated that he is not a person of good will. That he was not sincere, if mistaken about islam, in the discussion. That usage was the defining smear, which defined D'Souza, to me, as disingenuous.

Posted by: del at January 30, 2007 7:17 PM

del,

The same is said (ie, "polemical") of virtually every westerner opposed to the jihadists -- from Daniel Pipes to Dershowitz to Glenn Beck -- they're all "polemicists." The MSM also uses the term "controversial" (this, however, is the term of choice for Islamist clerics who call for jihad against the west -- they're "controversial" -- but, not "polemicists.") The term "controversial" as used by the BBC, for example, always suggests that there's another side -- ie, there are the "pacifistic Imams" out there who would dispute the "controversial clerics." As if there were some kind of raging debate going on. In reality, of course, the Islamic pacifists can't be produced (or, if they are, they are considered kaffirs and apostates within their own community).

Posted by: J.S. at January 30, 2007 7:42 PM

Please, Mr. Hugh, explain this , I don't understand:

What's "model of Al-Hudaibiyyah"?

"in Baghdad, the most important city outside of Mecca in the mythology of Muslims, to the Rafidite dogs, those quasi-Persians, of Shi'a Islam."

Posted by: allat at January 30, 2007 8:03 PM

allat -

al-hudaibiyyano negotiations leading to treaties mean anything other than a temporary "truce treaty" on the model of that made by Muhammad at Al-Hudaibiyya with the Meccans -- a treaty he broke as soon as his forces became more powerful. If the Islamic tenets that require Muslims to attack and destroy Israel -- by degrees if necessary, where outright assault cannot work -- were known, then a great many people would realize that these treaties -- Oslo, Camp David, and so on -- are simply a snare, a delusion, a waste.

There's more at the Word Index to Hugh Fitzgerald's posts:
al-hudabiyya

al-hudaibiyaa

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyya

al-hudaibiyyah

Posted by: justamomof4 at January 30, 2007 8:31 PM

J. S.,

Yes, you are quite right. Anti-jihadists are consistently marginalized by being labeled as polemicists, which allows complete disregard for anything and everything they (we) write. Part of the trick in writing is to avoid, or slip free from, that label, which is so industriously applied by jihadi propagandists and muslim apologists, and believed by people too lazy to look at facts and sources.

Posted by: del at January 30, 2007 10:55 PM

allat,

"Rafidite dogs" is a term of derision applied by some Sunni muslims (particularly wahhabis), as an insult, about Shia muslims. Hugh often uses it in a somewhat sarcastic sense, while temporarily channeling the idiocy of those who use it with intent.

Here is an example, from an al-qaeda communique, of its use (from memri and the free muslim coalition website):
http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=920

Although wikipedia is often full of garbage, its short article on "Rafida" seems useful:

"Rafida (رافضة, pl. Rawafid) is an Arabic collective noun which means "turncoats, dissenters, deserters", from the Arabic verb root ر ف ض which can mean "to reject".

It is an Islamic term, which refers in a derogatory way to those who (in the opinion of the person using the term) reject legitimate Islamic authority and leadership." /end wikipedia

Posted by: del at January 30, 2007 11:09 PM

Hugh/

Really, should one say such things about Lewis! Consider, with ligula firmly embedded in the gena:

"...For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right:..."

But then, I suppose, "Created half to rise, and half to fall;..." also aptly sums him up!

Both from Pope, I think - but check them if you will.

Dominic.

Posted by: necessitasnonhabetlegem at January 31, 2007 12:19 AM

"What's "model of Al-Hudaibiyyah"?

"'in Baghdad, the most important city outside of Mecca in the mythology of Muslims, to the Rafidite dogs, those quasi-Persians, of Shi'a Islam.'"
n from a posting above

Others above have answered the query about Al-Hudaibiya and "Rafidite dogs." I didn’t know this when I started preparing this answer ten minutes ago(I’ve been watching “Kabuyahan Swak na Swak” on television – I wouldn’t miss it for the world), but I hope there are details in it that do not overlap with what has already been posted. And it might be good to have both taken care of in the same posting.

Furthermore, aside from answering the question about al-Hudaibiyya and "Rafidite dogs" I have taken note of a piece in today's "Wall Street Journal" in which Fouad Ajami makes a prediction about Sunni acquiescence in the loss of Baghdad, and this gives me a chance to predict that he's dead wrong about that Sunni acquiescence, because of the role that Baghdad plays in the Arab imgination, the Arab mythology.

Ajami can be funny and forthright about many things. He gave Said repeated whippings, though nothing so fine as what Bernard Lewis delivered. And he is often a truth-teller, and in the past has told many home truths that are more effective it given by -- well, you know, a "native." His finest hour came on television several years ago, when Dan Rather or Charlie Rose was vaporing on about Saddam Hussein's supposed "secular" and "Western" makeup, and Ajami got up, and in mick-mockery, pointing to his trousers, and somewhat exasperatedly, noted: "You wear pants, I wear pants.”

He can also write to set your teeth on edge.: “The truth of Iraq will assert itself on the ground.”. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Perhaps, though the boy has been taken out of the Arab East (though he enjoys that pronoun “we” as in “we, the Americans”), the East hasn’t taken the Arab East out of the boy. A little too much of the Oriental muchness and poetic-boozy superflux is still present – though compared to Hamid Dabashi, and that tribute to Edward Said, Ajami is as laconic as Beckett. But he must come to understand that his notion of what constitutes "fine writing" perhaps comes from an Arabic or Persian linguistic mental subtext, and here in the Western world it’s something to be avoided. Unless of course you are named Dominique de Villepin, or Bernard-Henri Levy, and thank god, we aren’t..

So here goes:

1.Hudaibiyyah is the name of the place where Muhammad made an agreement with the Meccans in 628 A.D. In engage for Muhammad agreeing not to attack the city, the Meccans would permit Muhammad and his followers to enter Mecca in order to make an annual pilgrimage, the umra (now the “lesser pilgrimage”). The agreement was to last for ten years. The agreement was honored on both sides for the first year. But eighteen months into it, feeling stronger, Muhammad on a pretext attacked the Meccans.

The Western tradition has arrived at the view that "pacta sunt servanda" -- treaties are to be obeyed. The Muslmi tradition says that Muslims may make a "truce" treaty (not a real "peace" treaty) that can last up to ten years, with Infidels, but that whenever they believe themselves in a position to breach the treaty in any way -- either particular provisions, or its entirety -- they are fully entitled to, and should, do so.

It is amusing to see how, in the Encyclopedia of Islam, someone -- I forget if it is Claude Cahen or Montgomery Watt -- tries to present Muhammad in as good a light as possible, but fails. Muslims will tell Infidels two things, that contradict each other:

First, that Muhammad had every right to attack because it was a tribe allied to the Meccans that first attacked a tribe allied to Muhammad.

Second, that Muhammad was a brilliant war-maker and his deception at Hudaibiyyah was truly admirable, and to be emulated.

What matters is this: as Majid Khadduri wrote in his "War and Peace in the Law of Islam," Muslims have a right to breach, and should breach, any agreement with Infidels whenever they can, in order to further the cause of Islam.
________________________________________

#2. The past, the mythologized glorious past of high Islamic civilization, means everything to Muslim Arabs. It is the high point, supposedly, of their existence, and in their imagined past all kinds of Christians and Jews, or those who were non-Arab Muslims -- Persians, Central Asians, Kurds, and many others -- become "Arabs" (Saddam Hussein was not the only one to claim Saladin as an Arab, nor was Saladin the only famous figure, non-Arab or non-Muslim, from the Islamic past who has been claimed or believed by many to be, a Muslim Arab).

Baghdad was the capital of the most important Abbasid Caliphate. The fabulous city of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid. The city of Mutanabbi, and other poets. The city of the House of Translators. Madinat al-salam, the City of Peace, for 500 years, from 762 A.D. , when it was founded, until 1258, when it was conquered and much of it destroyed by the Mongols under Hulegu, it was the most important city in the entire dar al-Islam. And in Muslim memory and Muslim mythology – they are usually the same thing – it remains the most important city even if stripped of all the glories of that fabled – in every sense – past. Cairo, that is Fustat (Old Cairo), is a distant second. Mecca has its place as the center of the religion, but for Islamic history, it is Baghdad all the way.

Now that Baghdad is in danger of falling into the hands of those “Rafidite dogs.” The exact meaning of “Rafidite” has to do with distant Muslim history, and the literal meaning – as a follower of Zaid – is not important here. What is important is that the term is one used by Sunnis to curse Shia. It was a favorite phrase of Al-Zarqawi, and was used in, for example"What's "model of Al-Hudaibiyyah"?

"'in Baghdad, the most important city outside of Mecca in the mythology of Muslims, to the Rafidite dogs, those quasi-Persians, of Shi'a Islam.'"
-- from a posting above

1.Hudaibiyyah is the name of the place where Muhammad made an agreement with the Meccans in 628 A.D. In engage for Muhammad agreeing not to attack the city, the Meccans would permit Muhammad and his followers to enter Mecca in order to make an annual pilgrimage. The agreement was to last for ten years. Eighteen months later, feeling stronger, Muhammad on a pretext attacked the Meccans.

The Western tradition has arrived at the view that "pacta sunt servanda" -- treaties are to be obeyed. The Muslmi tradition says that Muslims may make a "truce" treaty (not a real "peace" treaty) that can last up to ten years, with Infidels, but that whenever they believe themselves in a position to breach the treaty in any way -- either particular provisions, or its entirety -- they are fully entitled to, and should, do so.

It is amusing to see how, in the Encyclopedia of Islam, someone -- I forget if it is Claude Cahen or Montgomery Watt -- tries to present Muhammad in as good a light as possible, but fails. Muslims will tell Infidels two things, that contradict each other:

First, that Muhammad had every right to attack because it was a tribe allied to the Meccans that first attacked a tribe allied to Muhammad.

Second, that Muhammad was a brilliant war-maker and his deception at Hudaibiyyah was truly admirable, and to be emulated.

What matters is this: as Majid Khadduri wrote in his "War and Peace in the Law of Islam," Muslims have a right to breach, and should breach, any agreement with Infidels whenever they can, in order to further the cause of Islam.
________________________________________

#2. The past, the mythologized glorious past of high Islamic civilization, means everything to Muslim Arabs. It is the high point, supposedly, of their existence, and in their imagined past all kinds of Christians and Jews, or those who were non-Arab Muslims -- Persians, Central Asians, Kurds, and many others -- become "Arabs" (Saddam Hussein was not the only one to claim Saladin as an Arab, nor was Saladin the only famous figure, non-Arab or non-Muslim, from the Islamic past who has been claimed or believed by many to be, a Muslim Arab).

Baghdad was the capital of the most important Abbasid Caliphate. The fabulous city of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid. The city of Mutanabbi, and other poets of the period. The city of the House of Translaters. The city known by a special name: the "madinat al-salam." The city where Muslim history was made. In today’s Wall Street Journal Fouad Ajami, a piece mixing his wonted good sense and his penchant for empty and grandiose phrases that he really out to cut out, claims that eventually the Sunni Arabs will acquiesce, will reconcile themselves, to the new Shi’a order in Iraq, and above all to Shi’a control of in Baghdad. He writes:

In the fullness of time, the Arab order of power will have to come to a grudging acceptance of the order sure to take hold in Baghdad. This is a region that respects the prerogatives of power. It had once resisted the coming to power of the Alawites in Syria and then learned to accommodate that "heretical" minority sect and its conquest of Damascus; the Shia path in Iraq will follow that trajectory, and its justice is infinitely greater for it is the ascendancy of a demographic majority, through the weight of numbers and the ballot box. Of all Arab lands, Iraq is the most checkered, a frontier country at the crossroads of Arabia, Turkey and Persia. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq and beyond have never accepted the diversity of that land. The "Arabism" of the place was synonymous with their own primacy.”

I beg, I plead with you, to differ.

I don’t think Sunni Arabs anywhere would ever permanently acquiesce in the loss of Baghdad: not in Iraq, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Jordan, not in the U.A.E., not in Egypt, not in Syria. The Kurds, Shi’a, and Sunni each will now control a region, but Baghdad is where they meet (well, the Kurds a little less so), and Baghdad is the hero of the Arab narrative, a narrative in which people are identified by their cities, not by nation-states, and Baghdad is the City of Peace, that madinat al-salam that can never be allowed to be lost to Shi’a Islam, or still worse – to the Shi’a Islam of Arabs increasingly tied to, linked with, cunning, ruthless, and relentless Persian neighbors.

Now I really must go to the television -- I think I may be able to catch a late re-run of "Just Pooja." And I couldn't see it before, because it was running at the same time as that Kabuhayan Swak na Swak I simply couldn't miss. Say, I think on television they mispelled it, for obvious phonetic reasons, as "Kabuhayang." I must have a word with the station manager.

Posted by: Hugh at January 31, 2007 1:00 AM

Baghdad was the capital of the most important Abbasid Caliphate. The fabulous city of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid. The city of Mutanabbi, and other poets. The city of the House of Translators. Madinat al-salam, the City of Peace, for 500 years, from 762 A.D. , when it was founded, until 1258, when it was conquered and much of it destroyed by the Mongols under Hulegu, it was the most important city in the entire dar al-Islam. And in Muslim memory and Muslim mythology – they are usually the same thing – it remains the most important city even if stripped of all the glories of that fabled – in every sense – past. Cairo, that is Fustat (Old Cairo), is a distant second. Mecca has its place as the center of the religion, but for Islamic history, it is Baghdad all the way.

As far as the 'deen' goes, doesn't Medina follow Mecca - after all, Infidels are forbidden to enter Mecca or Medina, but does any such rule apply to Baghdad, Damascus or Cairo?

This brings up the second question. After Abu Bakr's death, the conquest of terretory outside the Arabian peninsula (now verboten to Infidels) started. The first city to fall was Damascus, and it was there that the first Caliphate was established. Given that, shouldn't that have been the #1 city for the Arabs, rather than Baghdad or Cairo?

As far as Muslim mythology goes, from the Arabian Nights, Sindbad the sailor comes to mind. He was one of the courtiers of Harun al Rashid, and would travel from Baghdad to Basra, and then set sail from Basra. Given that fact, I would think that the Sunnis in Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, et al resent losing more than merely Baghdad - Basra in the hands of the Shia isn't palatable either.

In the fullness of time, the Arab order of power will have to come to a grudging acceptance of the order sure to take hold in Baghdad. This is a region that respects the prerogatives of power. It had once resisted the coming to power of the Alawites in Syria and then learned to accommodate that "heretical" minority sect and its conquest of Damascus; the Shia path in Iraq will follow that trajectory, and its justice is infinitely greater for it is the ascendancy of a demographic majority, through the weight of numbers and the ballot box. Of all Arab lands, Iraq is the most checkered, a frontier country at the crossroads of Arabia, Turkey and Persia. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq and beyond have never accepted the diversity of that land. The "Arabism" of the place was synonymous with their own primacy.”

Once the Shia firmly establish themselves in power in Baghdad, wouldn't that make it easier for the Alawites to expel Sunnis from Syria, with support from Iraqi Shia, Iran and Hizbullah? Drive them all into either Jordan or Lebanon?

The other thing worth noticing is that Shia and Sunni power are really even, if one does the following:

• Remove the 0.5 billion Sunnis who live in all countries east of Iran, and all countries west of the Red Sea;
  
• After all, those other countries, while part of the world Jihad, aren't included in the internecine Shia-Sunni war in the Mid East, the Sipah e Sahaba in Pakistan notwithstanding;
  
• Add up the populations of Iran, the Shia populations of Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrein and Yemen, the Alawites in Syria (any Shia there?) to get the number of Shia in the region (any in Jordan and PA?)
  
• Add up the Sunni Arab populations of Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq - you'll find out that they exceed the Shia, but not by much.
  

This provides for a regionwide balance between the sides. If the above scenario materializes, the entire Mid East could see itself under the threat of being converted from Sunni to Shia. Of course, the scales could easily be tipped heavily the other way should Egypt or Pakistan choose to intervene.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at January 31, 2007 3:09 AM

The poster above notes that while Shi'a are a distinct minority in Islam (and so they are: about 15% of the population) in the Middle East --from the eastern border of Iran to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean on the West, the Muslim population is about evenly-divided between Sunni ahd Shi'a.

But his other point is pure speculation: the one about Shi'a missionaries managing to convert Sunnis. It's a worry for the Sunnis, and the news of Shi'a missionaries must really worry. But to call the Alawites "Shi'a" rather than to note their uncertain status even as Muslims, because of their syncretistic cult of Mary (go to Alawite villages and you will see the pictures of her everywhere), is to misdescribe them. It is true that, desperate to be called Muslims, the Alawites a few years ago found someone in Iran who issued a fatwa declariing the Alawites to be Muslims. But that's not what the members of the Ikhwan think, and were the Assad regime to fall, the real Muslims would come out to murder everyone in those Alawite villages.

Shi'a have managed to increaes their relative numbers in Iraq, over the past 80 years, and in Lebanon, over the past 50 years, by simply outbreeding the Sunnis. In this respect, they are like the Muslims in Western Europe, or for that matter in India, outbreeding the non-Muslims. Apparently not only Muslims, but Shi'a Muslims, can play that game. The notion of mass conversion of Sunnis to Shi'a Islam strikes me as fantasy. It's a fantasy I like. It's a fantasy that worries Sunni Muslims, and that's always good. Here and there there may be a little success -- probably Syria would be the place for it. But on the whole - fantasy.

Posted by: Hugh at January 31, 2007 9:03 AM

Hugh,

"Just Pooja"? At first I thought you were perhaps referring to a foreign news segment devoted to analyzing the anti-war rally in D.C. this past weekend, where protesters were carrying signs with the words "Just Poop". This led to a momentary rethinking of a decision I made years ago to limit my telly choices by tuning in with rabbit ears. Before relenting and calling Time-Warner, I googled the intriguing phrase and low and behold, I found out you're pulling my leg - again!

We have so much to be thankful for . . .

Posted by: Malinois at January 31, 2007 9:20 AM

Hugh

I recognize that it is probably unrealistic, but I was thinking about what happened in medieval Iran - when the Safavids forcibly converted the entire coutnry from Sunni Islam to Shia, and even forced the Moghul emperor Humayun to convert when he sought refuge there. It is a potential precedent. As far as the breeding race goes, looking at Lebanon, where Shia have outbred Sunnis to gain a plurality, I was wondering whether the same couldn't happen in Sunni territory? Note also that I am thinking forced conversions at gunpoint, not the usual Dawa that one sees from Naseem and the like.

As for the Alawites, we all know what the Sunni think of them, but what about the Shia? Do they also regard them as infidels? Given how Syria has been a willing accomplice of Iran since 1981, would the Shia have a strong reason not to ally with them? I'd only expect such an alliance to unravel if and when the Shia get a dominating upper hand. Given how supportive Hizbullah is of Syria, I'd think that the Alawites have enough support among Shia radicals to get recognized as mainstream Shia.

One point about the Shia-Sunni balance in the Middle East - I didn't include Turkey in my calculations. However, I was stretching things in favor of the Shia by not including Egypt - that country is more a part of the Middle East than it's of Africa.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at January 31, 2007 12:04 PM

Another _tour de force_ from Hugh Fitzgerald.

I hadn't passed by here for quite some time, but having come across Bernard Lewis's astounding (for him) candour, I had to know what was said here.

As ever, well-informed, well-argued, mordant. But who's paying any attention? -- more comfortable to believe there is no problem.

And Bernard Lewis's tactics? Cross your fingers and hope for the best. It didn't work, did it?

Besides, what does the following mean?

"yes, you are right, I agree but also right now you shouldn't say such things."

Lewis is capable of castigating those who don't care for truth, Edward Said being one example. Unfortunately, it seems *he* does not care enough for it, either. Imagine if the scientists took the same view:

E=mc2, I agree, But right right now you shouldn't say such things.

What price Lewis's scholarship now, and how can I take anything he's written at face value now, knowing as I do that his accounts of what was so ("history") are subject to his opinion on what should be believed to have been so?

Moreover, people like Lewis disarm the West by dissembling about its real situation. He's not such a politician as he thought.

Posted by: Yojimbo at January 31, 2007 4:05 PM

Hugh,

You wrote: "It's a fantasy that worries Sunni Muslims, and that's always good." So, you want to know some more fantasies that worry Sunni Arabs? Did you catch that article published in the National Post on Jan 29, 2007? ("Middle East ready to Tumble: if Lebanon falls to the Shiites, rest of region could follow" by Matthew Fisher).

The article reads: "What is happening with Iran, Iraq and perhaps Lebanon, adds momentum to a new domino theory, which is far more credible and menacing than the famous one that never came to pass in Southeast Asia after the Communists conquered Vietnam."

"If Hezbollah were to gain power in Lebanon, shattering the traditional power-sharing arrangement between that country's three principal religion communities, the other dominos that may begin to teeter are in oil-rich eastern Saudia Arabia, where there is a Shiite majority; in Bahrain, which is Sunni-ruled but has a Shiite majority; and sheikhdoms such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, where there are significant Shiite minorities, which have long felt aggrieved their version of their recent history has been that they have not received their share of the oil and gas bonanza."

Yeah, ok, let the dominoes fall?

Posted by: J.S. at January 31, 2007 4:32 PM

"If Hezbollah were to gain power in Lebanon, shattering the traditional power-sharing arrangement between that country's three principal religion communities, the other dominos that may begin to teeter are in oil-rich eastern Saudia Arabia, where there is a Shiite majority; in Bahrain, which is Sunni-ruled but has a Shiite majority; and sheikhdoms such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, where there are significant Shiite minorities, which have long felt aggrieved their version of their recent history has been that they have not received their share of the oil and gas bonanza."
-- quoted in a posting above

The author appears to regard this as a Bad Thing. Something to be avoided, something we should try to head off. Since the beginning of 2004 I have argued that the Sunni-Shi'a split in Iraq cannot be healed by Infidels, or by anyone else, and Infidels should not wish to have it healed but welcome it. Furthermore, the other split, the ethnic split between Kurds and Arabs, cannot be healed, but if the Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs are at each other's throats this will make it easier for Kurds to create and defend an independent Kurdistan, a Kurdistan that would disturb, and more than disturb, both Iran and Syria, with their Kurdish populations, and in the case of Iran, might also inspire other non-Persian minorities -- Baluchis, Azerias, the Arabs of Khuzistan -- to revolt. Finally, the example of one non-Arab Muslim people, the Kurds, throwing off their Arab masters would be the real example -- not Iraq the Model but Kurdistan the Model -- to Berbers, black African Muslims, and others who have been on the receiving end of Arab cultural, linguistic, economic, and political imperialism.

The Shi'a in the U.A.E. are to be found mainly among the 400,000 Iranians now in Dubai. And they, and their tens of billions of dollars in investments, are hostage -- if necessary -- both to Sunni Arabs, and to a United States that could selectively destroy Iranian-owned assets in and out of Iran. The Iranians need to understand that nothing will be safe, including those topless towers in Dubai.

Posted by: Hugh at January 31, 2007 5:55 PM

Hi Hugh,

Can you specify which article of Lewis' you were referring to here:

"(that masterful dispatching of Said in an essay, and especially that single footnote about "thawra")",

Thank you

Posted by: alcibiades at January 31, 2007 7:18 PM

"The Question of 'Orientalism.'" Reprinted in one of his books. The footnote on "thawra" is, I believe, no. 27. But I've been wrong before.

Posted by: Hugh at January 31, 2007 7:34 PM

Lewis is too proud,
too attached to his beliefs
to give them up. Even though
he knows now that his vision failed,
that his understanding was faulty,
he can't humble himself it seems.
So his name will be forgotten
and blow away with the ashes of his dreams

Posted by: the poetess at January 31, 2007 9:04 PM

Yes, Matthew Fisher appears to be arguing (not outright, but implying) that any attack against Iran (to take out the nukes) could have dire/unknown consequences. Fisher also warns that Afghanis could become teed off (they "share the Farsi language with Iranians," Fisher notes) and, Afghanis could mount deadly attacks against Canadians stationed in Afghanistan.

I don't know, is more chaos beneficial?
There seem to be all these unknowns (remember Rumsfeld's quip?) -- it's like shaking up a bottle and popping the cork -- and who knows what will happen. (I'd tend to agree with your assessment if the "violence" of Shiite vs Sunni were confined/contained to Iraq...going into Iran, though, it's bound to spill out into other areas...)

Posted by: J.S. at January 31, 2007 10:02 PM

Oh, I just found this thread again.

Thanks for the explanation, guys.

I tell you this whole thing is so complicated - all this matter about the terms and phrases of islam and the history.I do remember now, reading in the website "HIstory of Jihad about the various battles m' fought, one being the Battle of the Ditch - was it a Makkah? A trick the swine mo' played on simple, honest people.

Here I am taking a crash course - trying to put all the pcs together, researching.

Posted by: allat at February 1, 2007 1:20 AM

"The Western tradition has arrived at the view that "pacta sunt servanda" -- treaties are to be obeyed. The Muslmi tradition says that Muslims may make a "truce" treaty (not a real "peace" treaty) that can last up to ten years, with Infidels, but that whenever they believe themselves in a position to breach the treaty in any way -- either particular provisions, or its entirety -- they are fully entitled to, and should, do so."

No, Mr. Hugh, may I respectfully remind you, that the West has NOt keep every treaty entered into - our side has been wrong also.

FOr every Treaty the U.S. entered with the AMerican Indians has been broken. The world of the Indian was 'TURNED UPSIDE DOWN" - in fact, THEIR world ended, for the West destroyed it. They're in Concentration Camps now - and Christian missionaries forced the Indian to convert, and even taking their young children away - for years.

God forgive us!

Posted by: allat at February 1, 2007 1:28 AM

Poetess/

"...and blow away with the ashes of his dreams."

What a lovely phrase. In general I do not appreciate your poetry, your 'poesy', but that phrase grabbed my imagination and conjured images divine.

Well done. Well phrased. Well said.

Dominic.

Posted by: necessitasnonhabetlegem at February 3, 2007 1:24 AM