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Fitzgerald: The Manama Canal

Oct 5, 2005 10:08 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald on Sunni-Shia efforts against Israel in Manama, Bahrain:

“The move is part of joint efforts by the Sunni and Shiite communities to resist steps to normalise relations with Israel.”

”””’

“We are also collecting signatures from 15 Sunni and 15 Shiite leading scholars on a petition that calls for resisting moves to have relations with Israel.”
— from the article here

Sunnis may be at the throats of Shi’a in Pakistan, where bombs routinely go off near Shi’a mosques, or in Hasa where the o’erweening Wahhabis push around the local Shi’a, or of course in Iraq, where the Sunni-Shi’a split predates the American invasion not only those 80 years since Gertrude Bell was writing about it, but by 1300 or so years — since those who went with the son-in-law of Muhammad were ill-treated by those who went with the his father-in-law (where was the Family Therapist in those days?).

And then there is little Bahrain itself, where these “scholars” above are from. You know Bahrain. It’s always the same coverage: the Little Island That Could. Freewheeling Bahrain, with that bridge to the mainland, easy-going Bahrain, where Saudis come to let down their hair, their daggers-and-dishdashas limited existence. For so hideous is life in Saudi Arabia that even life in Bahrain seems better, and of course the Shopping (the center of life for rich Arabs, rivaled only by the desire to do damage to Infidels and spread Islam) Is Non-Stop and Shop-Till-You-Drop, because after all, what else can rich Arabs do? That is, aside from their visits to brothels, their maintenance of Western call girls or domestic sex slaves from Asia, their cheering on their favorite camel (and who is that tiny figure, in the rider’s seat, with that emaciated and tormented look on his face — oh, who cares?), and buying up whatever they can buy (let’s see the latest Ramadan Catalogue of Toys from Lockheed, Boeing, United Technologies, Raytheon, Dassault, all the way down to what the Brazilian aerospace companies are offering)– yes, we’ll have a few hundred of each please, and don’t bother to wrap them, just send them right along.

Bahrain has its own problem of Sunni and Shi’a. And what better way than this anti-Israel Sunni-Shi”a accord to paper over the hostility that radiates so obviously now from Iraq and affects the views of both Sunni and the Shi’a? If only the Administration had half a mind, or a quarter of a mind, and would let its own people go, and allow the horribly unpleasant Sunnis, and the slightly slighter, but in the end just as unpleasant Shi’a, to go at it and let those divisions widen, widen, widen until an abyss opens, and not Infidels, as the Administration seems to fear, but Muslims fall right in.

Yes, o’erpapering that fissure with fatawa — and what better fatwa, made of sturdier paper, practically pergament, can be imagined than a fatwa taking a Brave Stand against the mighty empire of Israel? Now is the time for Sunni and Shi’a in Bahrain to stand together, and to show that whatever is happening in Iraq, the Sunni and the Shi’a are together on this matter.

Is it impossible for anyone in the current Administration to begin to understand why there is no such place as “Iraq”? Apparently, there are many people who, having had a good Cold War, think that they are therefore given a pass on Islam. Their willful ignorance of Islam and their irritation when the nature of Islam, the psychology of Muslims, and the immutable texts of Islam are brought to their attention illustrate this abundantly. Mark Steyn has been revealing his own change-of-mind about Islam. He who used to make jokes about the islamization of Europe and to support the Administration’s effort in Iraq, its scheme for creating Iraq-the-Model, now changes on the page, without quite owning up to that change. John Derbyshire now writes in support of an independent Kurdistan, though he has not yet raised the larger reason justifying such support, which as discussed here several dozen times over the past two years, is as follows: the existence of a non-Arab Muslim state could inspire other non-Arab Muslims, such as disaffected Iranians or Berbers or blacks in Darfur. Islam, despite its universalist claims, has always been a vehicle, by its very nature, of Arab supremacism and especially for linguistic and cultural arabization. Islamization always implies all this, and has only here and there been successfully resisted.

As Steyn and Derbyshire come to their senses on Iraq, Victor Davis Hanson perhaps will do so (the articles of his colleague and friend Bruce Thornton may help). And more and more commentators will realize that they need not be inhibited by having the same policy prescription — Out of Iraq — as the most unpleasant and foolish elements in American life, since they will hold it for completely different, far more sensible reasons. It is MoveOn.org that will be fooled when we are out of Iraq, not in order to appease Islam, but to better divide, demoralize, and constrain it, with Iraq as a catalyst. At this point, there is nothing Saudi Arabia fears more than an American withdrawal from Iraq, and what would then happen to Sunni domination there, and to Shi’a communities suddenly inspired elsewhere.

Since the late summer of 2003, it has been noted at JW that Iraq is the perfect place to exploit the two main fissures within Islam: those that arise from the Arab bullying and persecution of non-Arab Muslims, and those that arise from the bullying and persecution of Shi’a by Sunnis wherever they have been able to do so.

As the Sunni and Shi’a in Manama, Bahrain in solemn conclave assembled do their damnedest to focus attention not on what divides them, but on the shared hatred for non-Muslim Israel, this should move those who make policy in Washington to understand that when Muslim Arabs ostentatiously unite in such a way, emphasizing that they are both Sunnis and Shi’a, that is one more sign that events in Iraq are taking a useful — for Infidels — turn, if only the Americans would get out of the way.

Such a fatwa is one more sign that the Sunni-Shi’a split that divides the Muslim world, and can be seen, most starkly, in Iraq, is not something to avoid but to warmly encourage — simply by removing ourselves from the middle of the fray, and standing back, and watching.

The Iraqis, if left alone by Infidels to settle their scores in their own predictable way, will not disappoint. If we are lucky, the fight will go on forever, and use up the men, materiel, and attention of both Sunnis and Shi’a. And the two communities united in hate in Manama, will have the brook that divides them become a wide, very wide, possibly unbridgeable canal. You’ve already guessed its name: the Manama Canal.

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