Shi'a Pundit

Devoted to the viewpoint of Islam of Muhammad SAW and Amir ul-Mumineen, Ali ibn Abi Talib SA, in the Shi'a Fatimi Ismaili Dawoodi Bohra tradition.

the light is brigher when seen through the tunnel.

Essential reading - the NYT carries a powerful op-ed from a man in saudi Arabia who talks frankly about the atmosphere of religious oppression and the damage being done to his country by its Wahabi symbiosis.

The most recent government crackdown on terrorism suspects, in response to this month's car-bombing of a compound housing foreigners and Arabs in Riyadh, is missing the real target. The real problem is that Saudi Arabia is bogged down by deep-rooted Islamic extremism in most schools and mosques, which have become breeding grounds for terrorists. We cannot solve the terrorism problem as long as it is endemic to our educational and religious institutions.

Yet the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Islamic Affairs have now established a committee to hunt down teachers who are suspected of being liberal-minded. This committee, which has the right to expel and punish any teacher who does not espouse hard-core Wahhabism, last week interrogated a teacher, found him "guilty" of an interest in philosophy and put on probation.

During the holy fasting month of Ramadan, imams around the country stepped up their hate speech against liberals, advocates of women's rights, secularists, Christians and Jews — and many encouraged their congregations to do the same. I heard no sermons criticizing the people responsible for the attacks in Riyadh, in which innocent civilians and children were killed. The reason, I believe, is that these religious leaders sympathize with the criminals rather than the victims.

I cannot but wonder at our officials and pundits who continue to claim that Saudi society loves other nations and wishes them peace, when state-sponsored preachers in some of our largest mosques continue to curse and call for the destruction of all non-Muslims. As the recent attacks show, now more than ever we are in need of support and help from other countries to help us stand up against our extremist religious culture, which discriminates against its own religious minorities, including Shiites and Sufis.

Even more essential reading - read the letter with Dan Darling's in-line commentary.

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glass houses.

via LGF is this interview with self-appointed non-muslim expert on Islam, who has a special demand of all the world's moderate muslims:

The only Koran that really matters is what's in Arabic, because as far as traditional Islamic theology goes, Allah . . . was speaking to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, and the language is intrinsic, can't be separated from the message. The fact is that what's in Arabic is very clear . . . but in two opposite directions. What you have are very many verses of peace and tolerance, and also very many verses sanctioning and mandating violence against non-believers. . . .

You find many moderate Muslim spokesmen and American-Muslim advocates in this country, who quote you the peaceful and tolerant verses, and no reference to the violent verses.

What we need to see is a forthright acknowledgement of it and reform from moderate Muslims themselves, the same way that the Pope has apologized for the Crusades and Christianity at large . . . has repudiated the theology that gave rise to them. So we need to see . . . moderates on a large scale repudiating the theology that has led to violent jihad, which the radicals are using to justify their actions.

I've addressed the Qur'anic perspective towards vioence before, that part of this guy's attack is stale indeed. But what interests me is his call for moderates to renounce the Qur'an. Let's play with this idea for a moment... he makes an analogy between written Qur'anic verse and the theologic interpretation that led to the Crusades.

Well, moderates have already been repudiating violent interpretations of the Qur'an. For 1400 years. If, however, he wants to assume that the interpretation is intrinsic to the text (ie a declaration by moderate Muslims that "verses xx:yyy are no longer applicable"), then he should also be calling upon all moderate Christians to repudiate the Bible.

The real issue is whether interpretations are the target, or something much more basic.

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Eid-ul-Fitr mubarak.

Mubarak to all.

On the occassion, I would like to share the story of the Conquest of at Mecca by the Prophet SAW:

In 5 AH, Rasullulah (SAW) had a revelation which inspired him to leave for Makkah to perform umra. The Makkans, having lost a number of battles against Rasulullah, swore they would not let him enter their city. Their army intercepted the unarmed and pilgrim-garbed Rasulullah at Hudaibiya. Here, a famous pact was entered into by the two sides which assured peace for 10 years. Rasulullah was to return to Madinah and perform umra after 12 months. However, within 10 months, one of the terms of the treaty was violated by a tribe allied to the Makkans. When given the opportunity to retract or to declare the treaty void, the Makkans chose the latter. Rasulullah swiftly prepared an army to march into Makkah. The Makkans realised their mistake and attempted to renew their treaty but it was too late. The time for cleansing the Kaaba of the impure idols had come. The month was Ramadan, the month of fasting and purity, the month of Allah and in it, Makkah was destined to return to Islam.

On 6th of Ramadan, as Rasulullah approached Makkah at the head of an army of 10,000, the Makkans panicked. They had treated their own son, Mohammed (SAW) shamefully. They had fought him bitterly. Now, they thought, he was returning in revenge. Even Abu Sufyan, their head, betrayed his own people and submitted to Islam to save himself. As Rasulullah's army entered Makkah, its denizens hid themselves in their houses as they had been promised refuge if they did so.

Giving praise to Allah he immediately approached the Kaaba and performed tawaf. He then delivered a powerful khutbah reminding Muslims of their obligations and how Allah had chosen to favour them. Then, he set about doing what he had come to Makkah for. He entered inside the Kaaba with his wasi Ali (SA) and together, they destroyed the idols, returning it to the original state that the Prophet Ibrahim (SA) had made it. The Makkans watched as the symbols of their superstitious idol-worshipping religion were reduced to a heap of rubble, and along with them their prestige and honour in Arabia.

Born in Makkah, and raised to prophethood there, Rasulullah had preached Islam amongst the Makkans for 13 years whilst they had ridiculed him. They had opposed him, put him under house arrest, tormented him and his followers and finally plotted to kill him. Even when he left for Madinah, they had raised armies against him. Now the Makkans expected that Rasulullah would exact a just retribution.

Instead, Rasulullah forgave them all. Not only that, but he declared Makkah a safe-haven for man and animal alike. The nobles and those from amongst his family who repented and embraced Islam were even rewarded. His magnanimity startled the whole of Arabia and overwhelmed the Makkans who repented their past actions tearfully. Even the Madinans were taken aback by his benevolence and feared that the Prophet might make his home in Makkah again. They approached him and asked:

"O more beloved than our souls, will you now disregard the treaty of Aqaba and forsake us?"

The Prophet replied that he would never do so and consoled the Madinans thus:

"Do not fear my bestowals to the Makkans, for you will always have me".

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who cares?.

via Arash, I see that Johnny Hart (cartoonist of the B.C. comic strip) has drawn some criticism for a cartoon that could be interpreted as anti-Islam. It's not the first time he's been the subject of such religious controversies:

In the past, Hart has gotten into trouble for religious-themed strips -- most notably on one recent Easter Sunday when his strip showed the seven candles of a Jewish menorah being extinguished, one by one, with each image accompanied by one of Jesus Christ's last utterances. As the last flame disappeared, and the words "It is finished" appeared, the menorah became a cross.

Many Jewish readers were outraged, claiming Hart was making the argument that Christianity had extinguished Judaism as a "better" religion. Hart denied it, protesting that the cartoon was intended to honor both religions. To many, his explanation seemed hollow.

Asked about the outhouse strip this week, Hart denied that it was about Islam at all. He said that interpretation stunned him.

Somehow, I think Islam will survive. Judaism seems to have prospered despite an equally ambiguos and easily rationalized attack by Hart, after all.

UPDATE: Here are the two offending strips. Judge for yourself: Easter 2001, Ramadan 2003

Maybe CAIR and the ADL could join forces and become one super-organization, the Council of Americans Against Defamation of Islam and Judaism by Anyone who is Not Muslim or Jewish but who Dares to Express an Opinion About the Actions of a Nation whose Citizens are Adherents of Islam or Judaism. The CAADIJANMJDEOAANCAIJ could be quite effective in bringing peace to the Middle East, I'm sure.

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sacrificing security .

Most conservatives, unlike Tacitus, subscribe to the notion that liberals critique the President because they hate America. The idea that a liberal might critique Bush because they actually disagree with the implicit assumption that Bush has made this country safer, runs counter to the Hannity-FOX-Limbaugh-NRO indoctrination of minds receptive to that particular flavor of groupthink (regrettably, far more mainstream than the corresponding groupthink on the left).

Still, Tacitus does assume that Bush makes this country safer, and hence his challenge to find fact-based evidence that the bombings in Istanbul were the result of the diversion of resources from the legitimate war on Terror to the illegitmate-but-now-essential-to-finish war on Iraq, is worthy of answering.

The fact is that Al-Qaeda is evolving. Via Phil Carter's excellent analysis, the La Times has an editorial on this evolution by Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. :

Al Qaeda has always been relatively decentralized and unstructured. But today it moves faster, inciting attacks that require less time, expertise or high-level supervision, said Matthew Levitt, a former FBI analyst and terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"It was always a network of networks whose inner core would wait patiently for three to five years to carry out spectacular attacks," Levitt said. "What's different today is that it's not clear they can conduct attacks with that kind of command and control. So to maintain relevancy, they gave the go-ahead: Do what you can, where you can, when you can. And they are targeting softer targets more frequently."
...
The resurgent global menace leads critics to assert that the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have boomeranged by scattering Al Qaeda's forces, making them harder to detect, and inspiring like-minded extremists.

"I think it [U.S. strategy] has backfired," said Alani, of the London defense studies institute. "There is no evidence they can cope effectively with these groups."

On the other hand, some U.S. and European officials see signs of weakness as inexperienced, improvised terrorists turn to soft targets. Even in a diminished condition, Al Qaeda has shown how effectively it can harvest the seeds of hate, said Olivier Roy of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.

"It's a movement that functions by franchise," Roy said. "You find a local group like the Casablanca group who exist all over, who are radicalized and controlled by intermediaries. Al Qaeda gives a general attack order, and then it's not really important if the attack is rational. Casablanca was not rational in many aspects.... The real message was in the suicide, not in the targets. It was necessary to strike fear."

Al-Qaeda's recent attacks in Saudi Arabia itself underscore this fact. Phil adds his own analysis, noting:

This is truly a living, breathing, thinking, evolving enemy. Its original form was probably the "Afghan Arab" movement which successfully fought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with a composite force of Afghans and Arabs supported by America and others. In the 1990s, this force mutated into the international terror network responsible for the 1996 bombings in Africa, 1998 embassy bombings, 2001 USS Cole attack, and Sept. 11. Over that period, the Al Qaeda network evolved, building redundancy and operational capabilities, building doctrine, and learning lessons from other conflicts. One lesson it learned well was how to survive the eventual Western counter-attack.

The organization had enough redundant operational capability, as well as enough dispersal, to withstand our operations in Afghanistan and continue its operations abroad. The best that can be said is that Al Qaeda has been diminished. It currently appears to lack the ability to conduct "spectactular operations" in the U.S. or Western Europe. But Al Qaeda does not lack the ability to conduct operations abroad, either in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. It appears likely that Al Qaeda has adopted a purposeful operational strategy of "wait and strike where we can."
...
To lure more recruits and more donations from sympathetic Arabs around the world, Al Qaeda doesn't have to launch another 9/11-style spectacular operation. They can simply go on, throwing rocks and bombs at insignificant targets while being hunted by American special operations units. Doing so will inspire their followers, which will make them stronger.

At some point in the future, Al Qaeda 3.0 will resume its larger operations, perhaps when we have become complacent or when America can no longer politically justify the exhaustive hunt for Al Qaeda. This enemy has the tactical patience to wait for that moment, and to strike then.

Relevant to this point is this timetable of attacks by Al-Qaeda since 9-11 by Lt. Smash - note that they are exclusively confined to the Islamic world. Far from eroding their base of support, it will fuel it, since they are franchising violence by extreme groups within these societies. AlQ has been affected by our war on Terror, but by no means dismantled, and in fact has evolved into an even more virulent strain of terror ideology exporting than before. Given that we are committed to Iraq, it's not a challenge we have resources to address effectively, because Al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts are aimed at the radical fringe in Islamic societies, who will not be receptive to the beacon of a Free Iraq.

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this post is jihad II.

Tacitus looks upon the violence in Saudi Arabia between the Royals and the monster they have reared with a far more jaundiced eye than do Arash or Dan Darling^[1] (the latter two analyses, taken together, are essential and definitive). Tacitus argues in the comments:

Jihad is wrong, sickles. The definition you mention as "extremist" is, in fact, the generally-accepted definition of jihad throughout Islamic thought and history.

It's a minority who subscribe to the "peaceful" definition of jihad. They're trying to "reclaim" the term, by redefining it with a meaning never suggested until the 19th century. Frankly, they might as well try to reclaim "lebensraum."

Tacitus is wrong.

Muhammad SAW never fought an offensive war. The abuse of the term jihad did start with the Caliphs 1 - 3, and was restored to its rightful meaning and implementation under Ali ibn Talib AS (4th Caliph and the true Imam of the Shi'a).

Religious concepts are not as mutable as linguistic words. They are absolutes. Tomorrow if the word "baptize" were to gain widespread acceptance as slang for "fornicate", it would be no less irrelevant to the actual meaning of the concept. As long as a sole Catholic remained performing baptism in the true sense, the truth of the word would be eternal.

But Tacitus is wrong to argue that the majority of the world's muslims believe that jihad means an offensive war waged against innocents (ie, hirabah). The majority of the world's muslims do not engage in violence and respond to Bin Laden's amply-broadcast and distributed calls to hirabah via satellite television and the internet. The Arab street did not rise. The Holocaust - a large-scale, systematic genocide of a specific religious group - has not been repeated in history. If Tacitus was right, the world would be a blood bath on a scale as you can not imagine - just look at the Hajj and imagine that sole dedication of purpose turned towards a violent end.

And Tacitus is even wrong to assert that to moderate muslims like myself, jihad has a purely peaceful definition. In fact jihad does permit violence - in defensive measures. The best analogy to this aspect of jihad is "Jacksonian" warfare - don't start war, but when attacked, win. Then show mercy and make sure your enemy sees the wisdom in being your friend. If they don't get it, though, educate them on what it means to be your enemy.

This is the lesser jihad. A greater jihad is that of the tounge, whereby you speak out against evil and defend yourself and the faith through argument.

The greatest jihad, however, is that of pious action - by simply living in accordance with Islamic teachings. In so doing, you act as an example of the faith to others. This jihad is the greatest jihad because it is also the most difficult.

All of these aspects of jihad were elucidated by the Prophet SAW, are described in the Qur'an, and were further explained by Ali AS. This definition of jihad therefore dates from the 7th century, not the 19th.

Compendiums of false hadith such as the complete works of Bukhari are the only source of hadith that are used to justify hirabah. Bill Allison provides some excerpts from Farid Esack's The Qur'an: A Short Introduction, that describes the hadith manufacturing industry in detail:

With Sunnah now equated with the sunnah of Muhammad and elevated to the level of a source of religio-legal authority, and with Hadith established as the only means to authenticate Sunnah, the various disputants attempted to justify their views and to strip their opponents of legitimacy on the basis of Hadith. This contributed to the emergence of both a corpus of Hadith literature and an entire science around it, much of it based on the growing informal hadith manufacturing industry.
...
Brown notes that the "extent of the forgery was dramatic. Forgers became active even during the life of Muhammad, in spite of the warning that whoever spreads lies about him would burn in hell. In the Caliphate of 'Umar, the problem became so serious that he prohibited transmission of hadith altogether. Forgery only increased under the Umayyads, the first dynasty of Islam that reigned from 661 until 750. They considered hadith a means of propping up their rule and actively circulated traditions against 'Ali in favor of Mu'awiyah [ibn Abi Sufyan (d. 680), the founder of the dynasty]. The Abbasids [who succeeded them] followed the same pattern, circulating Prophetic hadith which predicted the reign of each successive ruler. Moreover, religious and ethnic conflicts further contributed to the forgery of hadith. The Zanadiqah (those who professed Islam while holding Manichean ideas, as we are told by the heresiographers), for example, are reported to have circulated 12,000 fabricated traditions. The degree of the problem can be seen from the testimony of the muhaddithum themselves. Bukhari, for example, selected 9,000 traditions out of 700,000."

A majority of muslims do indeed honor Bukhari as legitimate, but still do not rise in jihad against their non-muslim neighbors. It is only a small subset indeed that take the false hadith and twist them further into their contorted arguments.

The greatest jihad has been waged every day by the vast majority of muslims in their daily lives, which far outstrips the hirabah of the terrorists and despots, who would try to invoke it to lend their political causes false legitimacy.

^[1] Dan pulls no punches and demonstrates how the Saudis have largely been doing nothing, and how even right now noted financiers of Al-Qaeda remain free. But that there has been a shift in the Saudi royals' thinking, there can be little doubt. Whether the Saudis make a different cost-benefit calculation remains to be seen.

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About Shi'a Pundit

Shi'a Pundit was launched in 2002 during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The blog focuses on issues pertaining to Shi'a Islam in the west and in the Islamic world. The author is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. Bohras adhere to the Shi'a Fatimi tradition of Islam, headed by the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).

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