Steamrolling the "Arab Spring"

An Ill Season - Andrew C. McCarthy - National Review Online

Screaming “With our blood and soul, we will defend you, Islam,” jihadists stormed the Virgin Mary Church in northwest Cairo last weekend. They torched the Coptic Christian house of worship, burned the nearby homes of two Copt families to the ground, attacked a residential complex, killed a dozen people, and wounded more than 200: just another day in this spontaneous democratic uprising by Muslim hearts yearning for freedom.

In the delusional vocabulary of the “Arab Spring,” this particular episode is known as a sectarian “clash.” That was the Washington Post’s take. Its headline reads “12 dead in Egypt as Christians and Muslims clash” — in the same way, one supposes, that a mugger’s fist can be said to “clash” with his victim’s face.

Al Qaeda, Islamism and the months to come

As coincidental companion pieces to my "Perspective" column in Sunday's Knoxville News-Sentinel, here are some read-worthy essays. (Don't you love it when a plan comes together? My deadline to Knoxville was Tuesday even and these articles all cam out before the end of the week.)

1. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Will Muslim Brotherhood succeed where Osama bin Laden failed? Osama bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda may soon follow him to the grave. But the doctrine of jihad – exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood – lives on."

Unlike Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and learned the hard way that the use of violence will be met with superior violence by state actors. The clever thing to do, it now turns out, was to be patient and invest in a bottom-up movement rather than a commando structure that risked being wiped out by stronger forces. Besides, the gradualist approach is far more likely to win the prize of state power. All that Khomeini did before he came to power in Iran was to preach the merits of a society based on Islamic law. He did not engage in terrorism. Yet he and his followers took over Iran – a feat far greater than bin Laden ever achieved. In Iran the violence came later.

2. Reuel Marc Gerecht: "Whither Jihad? Islamic militancy preceded Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, it will probably outlast him, too."

The excesses of al Qaeda and allied Islamic groups in spilling blood in Muslim lands since 9/11—especially in Iraq—have created considerable unease and sometimes even fire-and-brimstone disgust among Muslims. The Great Arab Revolt is altering how Arabs see themselves. It’s still much too early to know where this awakening is going—whether it will lead to democracy or back to dictatorship—but it’s not too early to see how the turbulence that started in Tunisia has discombobulated the holy-warrior set. Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri fell silent when these popular pro-democracy eruptions started. Both Iran’s ruling elite and al Qaeda finally described the Arab Revolt, surreally, as an Islamic movement that mirrored their most cherished principles.

3. "Egypt’s Other Extremists - While the Muslim Brotherhood gets all the ink, the Salafists go on a rampage." Salafism is Islamism of Saudi Arabian ancestry, while the Muslim Brotherhood is an Egyptian product. A joke in the Middle East is that a Muslim Brother is a Salafist who has learned how to read and write. In Egypt recently,

Some Salafists joined the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, and others have said they will enter politics—in many cases by supporting the Brotherhood. Often the two groups have been opposed to one another, with the Salafists accusing the Brotherhood of compromise, but in the March 19 constitutional referendum, Salafi clerics urged their followers to support the Brotherhood in campaigning for a “yes” vote.

Perhaps thinking that these more extreme Islamist currents make it appear relatively moderate, the Brother-hood condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden. Already before that, it had become more outspoken about its own desire for an Islamic state.

On April 14, at a forum in Cairo, the Brotherhood’s deputy supreme guide, Mahmoud Ezzat, said his group wanted to establish an Islamic state when they achieved sufficient support through their Freedom and Justice party. At the same forum, another Brotherhood leader, Saad al-Husseiny, stated that they aimed to apply Islamic law and establish Islamic rule. On April 22, a senior spokesman, Sobhi Saleh, said the Brotherhood wished to apply “Islamic legislation.”

4. Muslim author Irshad Manji: "Islam Needs Reformists, Not 'Moderates' - Bin Laden's followers represent a real interpretation of Islam. Why don't more Muslims challenge it?" Manji's point is the "moderate" Muslims are the problem, not the solution.

in announcing bin Laden's demise, the president fudged a vital fact. Echoing George W. Bush, he insisted that al Qaeda's icon "was not a Muslim leader."

But this is untrue. Bin Laden and his followers represent a real interpretation of Islam that begs to be challenged relentlessly and visibly. Why does this happen so rarely?

"Moderate" Muslims are part of the problem. As Martin Luther King Jr. taught many white Americans, in times of moral crisis, moderation cements the status quo. Today, what Islam needs is not more "moderates" but more self-conscious "reformists." It is reformists who will bring to my faith the debate, dissent and reinterpretation that have carried Judaism and Christianity into the modern world. ...

It is time for those who love liberal democracy to join hands with Islam's reformists. Here is a clue to who's who: Moderate Muslims denounce violence committed in the name of Islam but insist that religion has nothing to do with it; reformist Muslims, by contrast, not only deplore Islamist violence but admit that our religion is used to incite it.

The Muslim Brotherhood Mobilizes

Pajamas Media » The Muslim Brotherhood Mobilizes

With 75 percent of Egyptian telling Pew polling that they support the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Brothers are making maximum push to capture a majority of seats in parliament. If they gain only one-third they will have enough to block any legislation unaligned with their agenda.

As I will point out in the Knoxville News-Sentinel's "Perspective" section tomorrow, bin Laden's death bodes only the continuing decline of sympathy for al Qaeda and terroristic Islamists. But the Brotherhood brand has been waxing even as bin Ladenism has been waning.

Fighting the Brotherhoods of Islam will be much more difficult than fighting al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden's body mishandled

I don't mean that OBL's body was not handled in accordance with Islamic practice, although for the life of me I don't understand why the administration went to all the trouble to do so.

I mean what Damian Thompson writes in The Telegraph: Osama bin Laden dead – but no body. Now for an explosion of conspiracy theories.

The Islamic world is amazingly receptive to what I call “counterknowledge”. Let’s start by reminding ourselves that most people in Muslim countries have their doubts about 9/11, and millions them believe unquestioningly that it was plotted by the CIA. ...

It’s inconceivable that America would announce the death of its deadliest enemy without offering evidence that would convince any reasonable person; I’m surprised that it hasn’t been produced already. Moreover, why did it allow bin Laden’s body to be dropped into the sea? Is the US really so sensitive to Islamic burial practices that it is prepared to hand conspiracy theorists such a gift?

Well, I posted this morning that the conspiracy theories had already taken wing.

I think that the administration is so eager to prove that it respects Islam that these considerations never occurred to them. "We don't want Muslims mad at us!" is their greatest fear. So they rush-jobbed disposing of the body presumptively in accordance with Muslim practice. But, as Rand Simberg reasonably asks, "CAIR and other "moderates" continually remind us that Osama bin Laden was not what Islam is all about. Then why bury him as a devout Muslim?"

It has been reported that after Osama bin Laden was dispatched yesterday, he was given a burial at sea, in the “Islamic practice”:

In accordance with Islamic practice, bin Laden was washed and wrapped in a white sheet before buried at sea at 2 a.m. local time, senior U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

This was presumably done in the interest of impressing the “moderate” Muslims of the world with our respect for their religion, but if anything, it does just the opposite. What we were unwittingly implying by that politically correct act was that we agree with those who claim that Osama was a true Muslim, and that we don’t accept the account of the reformers that he was an apostate. What are the latter to make of it? And how does this in any way discourage his supporters, knowing that when we dispatch them to get their virgins (or raisins, or whatever) we will take pains to ensure their safe arrival in heaven?

Not that the solicitude of throwing OBL to sleep with the fishes did any good, no matter how carefully and Islamically it was done. The LA Times reports, "EGYPT: Islamic leader condemns Osama bin Laden's sea burial."

The head of Cairo's Al Azhar university, the most influential seat of Sunni Muslim learning, said that the burial of Osama bin Laden at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition.

The action “runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs," Sheik Ahmed Tayeb was quoted as saying by Associated Press.

The customary Muslim practice is to place the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Sea burials are permitted only when death occurs on a ship, and the body cannot be quickly brought to shore, religious scholars said.

You just can't please some people.

Muslim Brotherhood behind Syrian unrest?

Syrian security forces, many of whom are actually Iranian, have been shooting demonstrators in the streets of cities there. Now Assad's regime claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind all the unrest.

Syrian presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban blamed a renowned Sunni Muslim cleric for the unrest in Latakia, saying Qatar-based Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi had incited Latakia's Sunnis to revolt with his sermon in Doha on Friday. Al-Qaradawi, who has millions of followers around the world and is seen as one of most influential voices in Sunni Islam; told his audience that, "Today the train of revolutions arrived at a station that was inevitable it would reach: the station of Syria."

"Syria is like the others — and it is more deserving than others of these revolutions," he said. "When there are those who are killed, know that the revolution has been victorious!"

Shabaan said those words were responsible for the unrest in Latakia.

"There was nothing (in Lattakia) before Qaradawi's sermon on Friday," she told reporters in Damascus. "Qaradawi's words were a clear and honest invitation for sectarian strife."

Egyptian al-Qaradawi is one of the top intellectuals of Islam whose theology is a guiding light of the original Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. He has an immense audience in the Arab world for his al-Jazeera regular broadcasts. Significantly, Qaradawi is Sunni Muslim while Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is Alawite Muslim, a small, mystical sect that is an offshoot of Shia Islam. If there is anything that Sunnis generally and the Brotherhood specifically despise, it's Shiites. So no wonder Qaradawi preached against Assad.

This is not to say that the demonstrators in Syria are all Brotherhood members or newrecruits to the Brotherhood. It is to say that the demonstrations there have a renewed religious, Islamist nature that is not captured by the usual Western drivel of describing them almost exclusively in political terms.