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 hysterical skies update.

Zack puts things in much needed perspective, and points out the analogy to the Alligator Alley incident, where again the accused were completely inncoent, but in this case ended up losing their medical residency in Florida due to death threats against them. And wait until you read about Ansar Mahmood.

I'd also like to note that the Reverend Donald Sensing, whose reaction to the Alligator Alley incident was particularly odius and offensive, has been a voice of reason on the "hysterical skies" incident.

NRO solves the mystery of the unknown Syrians. But true to form they are more concerned with:

But evidently no one even engaged these guys in a conversation, and no one, not the flight crew, and not the air marshals, challenged their egregious violations of protocols about congregating near restrooms or standing up in unison as the plane started its descent. Nothing was done to alleviate the terror Jacobsen, and probably a lot of the other passengers, felt.

Their outrage over such "egregious violations of protocols" apparently does not include why airline stewardesses would confide in the presence of US air marshals on the flight with a passenger. Priorities noted. I've egregiously violated the supposed bathroom protocol myself many times, as noted above, and an air marshal has yet to body-check me, but I'll keep you all posted.

Reporters from KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles actually got comments from the air marshals aboard the flight, who reveal that the entire thing was an over-reaction by Mrs. Jacobsen and that their main concern was that she would panic the other passengers, and blow their cover. Excerpts:

Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.
[...]
“The lady was overreacting,” said the source. “A flight attendant was told to tell the passenger to calm down; that there were air marshals on the plane.”
[...]
Jacobsen and her husband had a number of conversations with the flight attendants and gestured towards the men several times, the source said.

“In concert with the flight crew, the decision was made to keep [the men] under surveillance since no terrorist or criminal acts were being perpetrated aboard the aircraft; they didn’t interfere with the flight crew,” Adams said.

The air marshals did, however, check the bathrooms after the middle-eastern men had spent time inside, Adams said.

FBI agents met the plane when it landed in Los Angeles and the men were questioned, and Los Angeles field office spokeswoman Cathy Viray said it’s significant the alarm on the flight came from a passenger.

“We have to take all calls seriously, but the passenger was worried, not the flight crew or the federal air marshals,” she said. “The complaint did not stem from the flight crew.”

Several people were questioned, she said, but no one was detained.

Jacobsen’s husband Kevin told KFI NEWS he approached a man he thought was an air marshal after the flight had landed.

“You made me nervous,” Kevin said the air marshal told him.

“I was freaking out,” Kevin replied.

“We don’t freak out in situations like this,” the air marshal responded.
[...]
The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.

Air marshals’ only tactical advantage on a flight is their anonymity, the source said, and Jacobsen could have put the entire flight in danger.

The bottom line is that Jacobsen put the plane in more danger than the musicians - by forcing the marshals' hand. If you're a passenger, stay vigilant, but keep calm and don't freak like Jacobsen did. Just stay calm, and observant. Clearly Jacobsen thinks she's a hero, but in reality she was the real problem aboard that flight.

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damn. The secret's out.

nothing for it then but to drop the pretense and get around to the bloodly part. My one billion coreligionists will be at your doors tomorrow morning. Resistance is futile.

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Reformation this.

Some time ago, TheBit at "Muslims under Progress" wrote a stimulating essay on "secular fundamentalists" - which triggerred a response from the uber-secularists at Gene Expression. I highly respect the GNXP crew, especially Razib, but my sympathies are of course with TheBit on this topic. TheBit has now posted an excellent response which I consider a must-read (in full, so no excerpting).

A related problem is the political alliance that Muslims have made with the Progressive Left. For example, I consider Laura of Veiled4Allah to be a role model for the assimilation of muslims into American culture with retention of Islmaic values, but her support for the Dennis Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party neccessarily means that her allies become people like the odious Amy Richards. This association is difficult to justify to the more conservative muslim mainstream, and is perhaps precisely the neutering that the secularists want to see - a Christian-inspired "buffet" approach to Islam where specific elements are embraced and others rejected, heavily influenced by local cultural mores rather than universal principles. Diversity of interpretation is good but erosion of the essence of the basic teachings is not - and the navigation of those conflicting mandates is fraught with difficulties of both the spiritual and the worldy kinds.

We need to be able to formulate an independent voice from the Progressive Left and the Secular middle - and recognize that not all amongst the conservative Right are neccessarily opposed to our values. That triangulation is essentialy to preserving our religion's practice and our integrity in the larger Ummah as a whole.

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suspicious things I've done in an airplane.

In response to this, this, and this, which have triggered accusations of hoax, reasonable explanations and debunkings, I thought I should write about some of the things I have done on airplanes for some perspective.

For reference, I am about 5'8", dark black hair and untrimmed beard length about three to four inches. I weigh about 160lbs and have brown skin. I am of Indian descent but am frequently mistaken for Arab. I often wear religious headdress when traveling (a white cotton cap with gold trim).

Here's some of the things I have done on an airplane, and why:

- Speaking a foreign language in hushed tones with other similar males

My language is a variant of Gujarati, with many Arabic vocabulary words. I consider it rude to talk loudly on a plane, since people are sleeping, and prefer to talkin my language with my friends or family if we are discussing personal things because in my experience, people eavesdrop in close quarters.

- getting up frequently to visit the bathroom

Due to rapid dehydration, I drink a lot on planes, mostly water and ginger ale. Also I go to the bathroom to wash in preparation for prayer, which I do in the rear of the aircraft near the stewardess area (with their permission). I prefer praying on a plane to praying in the terminal because I usually get stared at intensely and it's discomfitting; the rear of the plane affords more privacy and with zero exceptions, the plane crew has always been understanding and helpful.

- taking pictures of the plane

I love taking photos from the window seat, I've got thousands of prints taken of geography and cities. I have taken photos of the actual plane interior as well, mainly family shots (like my daughter sleeping) or just for memory's sake (I took photos of my first trip on a 777 because the interior is like an office building, beautiful, roomy, softly lit, etc). I also have taken video of the Flight Information displays which show your current location and geography.

- made strange signals and gestures to other people in my group

Usually, shouting across the aisles is not conducive to communication. In groups, many times I use gestures to save myself the trouble of extricating myself from my wedged-in seat position and navigate about the cabin obstacle course of food carts, children, guys waiting to use the bathroom etc.

- not been friendly to other passengers

Especially when traveling alone, I sometimes don't feel like socializing. The more cramped the quarters, the more others are in my personal space, and coach class always makes me less inclined to share. I'd rather be in my shell than have to interact with other people, and do my own thing.

The bottom line is that I'm an American, but I'm also ethnically Indian, and religiously Bohra, and that means that there are lots of cultural things I do that won't make always sense to someone of whiter, Christian persuasion. Like travel to do a pilgrimage in a war zone. Just the logistics of praying on time make me behave in oft-bizarre ways.

The bottom line though is that the threat of a hijacking scares me too. I travel with my family, including my toddler, and it's her safety, not mine, that I fear for (especially now that a hijacking is a fatal event for the passengers rather than just an inconvenience). But there's a legitimate threshold for suspicion, and there are legitimate authorities and professionals to handle those assessments. If the threshold gets lowered, or assessed by amateurs, then the number of false positives will overwhelem the ability of those professionals to find (let alone cope with) the true threat. Chicken Little ain't just a movie, it's a parable which is very relevant and bears remembering.

permalink | posted by Shi'a Pundit

canary in the coal mine.

Why are we in Iraq? No, it's not the WMD, say supporters of the war, it's to build a democratic state to act as a beacon for American values in the world. I take this argument more seriously by far than the counter argument by the detractors of the war, whose only argument is oil and Haliburton.

But I've long suspected that high-rhetoric aside, the supposed democracy-promotion of the Administration has been a front for the good old "strongman" approach - yes, the same realpolitik of "he's our son-of-a-bitch" - and the selection of Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi certainly set off alarm bells on that score.

Well, the former Friend of Saddam has let show some of his true colors:

Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi killed six suspected insurgents just days before he was handed power, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The report cites two witnesses to the killing who say Allawi fatally shot the prisoners, who were handcuffed, blindfolded and lined up against a wall in a courtyard near the maximum-security facility at al-Amariyah security centre near Baghdad. They quoted Allawi as saying the men "deserved worse than death" because each had killed some 50 Iraqis.

The newspaper added the killings were seen by about a dozen Iraqi police and four Americans from Allawi's security team. Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, another alleged witness, is said to have congratulated Allawi.

The Herald report in its Saturday editions said both Allawi's office and Naqib denied the report.

A longer article in the Sydney Morning Herald has a lot more background on Allawi, which puts things in more context:

The rationale offered by some is that if the Prime Minister spilt blood before their eyes, then the police would know they could kill with impunity. He would become a man to be feared and all too quickly the force would impose that fear on the community.

Then there are the Baghdad whispers, invisible but frightening weapons of mass intimidation, which Saddam himself used to powerful effect.

Spreading like wildfire, tales of his conduct and that of his murderous agencies set the rules by which people might survive. They were whispered from one person to the next, drawing lines within which most people might get on with their meagre lives - with a level of immediate personal security they can only dream of these days.

Once the Allawi whispers started a few weeks ago, there were signs that the image of the new strongman was already being cultivated. Allawi may have worked out that, to succeed, he too must go down the Saddam road, which, in any event, seems to be his natural inclination.

Saddam acted tough and he kept the lights on; Allawi has been talking tough, and now he is trying to act tough so that the same troubled Iraqi minds might fall in behind him.

A casual driver retained briefly by the Herald said he had picked up a version of the alleged police station killings in the swirl of fixers, translators and drivers in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel.

He was more impressed than he was shocked.

Elsewhere, a doctor claimed the killings were being discussed "all over town". He speculated: "Maybe Allawi wants to be seen like Saddam, because when Iraqis hear a rumour like this they presume it is based on fact."

The desire of the Iraqi people for a benevolent dictator is natural - they're a traumatized society and it will likely take two generations to recover from Saddam's tyranny. A whole generation of youth must grow up without the specter of Saddam's control, without the fear of summary judgement, disappearing and secret tribunals, dark places like Abu Ghraib held over their heads as a remonder of the futility of fighting the power of the State.

But if the due process of law is never established, or only paid lip service while the same dark underbelly of state power operates, silently and without accountability, then such an awakening of the true nature of freedom - and the societal empowerment and explosion of culture and economic success that it brings - will never occur.

Witness Egypt. So much progress, but still so achingly far. Was everything we sacrificed in Iraq, as Americans, worth it to simply replace Saddam with a Mubarak clone? The supposed champions of freedom should ask themselves hard questions on this. And reflect on just how divorced from reality the rhetoric has been, for a man such as Allawi - even if he didn't execute the accused insurgents - to be allowed to rule Iraq rather than govern it.

UPDATE: The journalist who broke the story, Paul McGeogh, is interviewed and defends the accuracy and credibility of his sources. Worth reading if you're skeptical that the event happenned, and also if you aren't.

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Wassef Hassoun beheaded?.

Reports are that Wassef Hassoun, the muslim US marine captured by terrorists, has been beheaded by his captors. Google News is starting to pick it up, and a friend of mine who works in Washington at the Pentagon writes with direct confirmation:

Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (formerly the Arab contingent of Ansar al-Islam, which is part of Zarqawi's al-Tawhid, which is part of al-Qaeda) has just beheaded Wassef Hassoun. It's the same brutal stuff as when they killed Paul Johnson or Nick Berg or any of the other people who have been killed by these scum, but from what I gather he met his end well. The communique we're seeing here is from an Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud and it says that they killed him because after releasing the Turkish and Pakistani hostages they wanted us to know that they weren't going to spare fellow Muslims who side with the US.

InnaLillahi Wa inna Ilahi Raji'un.

This 4th of July, it's worth remembering the sacrifice of patriots past and present for the ideals of freedom. I don't know what Iraq 2050's textbooks will say about the history of Iraqi independence, but I hope they give some mention to people like Hassoun, who died a shahid in the jihad of liberty.

UPDATE: Hassoun is alive and at the US Embassy in Beirut. It's completely unclear just what the heck is going on, and whether he was ever really captured or whether it was a hoax. If a hoax, then he deserves to be prosecuted under US law. If not, then he's a pawn in some large game which is far to murky to understand at present. I've added a question mark to the title of the post accordingly...

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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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