Thursday, December 31, 2020
Saturday, December 26, 2020
New Book: "To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations" (Cornel University Press, 2020)
When American evangelicals flocked to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century to fulfill their Biblical mandate for global evangelism, their experiences abroad led them to engage more deeply in foreign policy activism at home. Lauren Frances Turek tracks these trends and illuminates the complex and significant ways in which religion shaped America's role in the late–Cold War world. In To Bring the Good News to All Nations, she examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States beginning in the 1970s, assesses the effectiveness of Christian efforts to attain foreign aid for favored regimes, and considers how those same groups promoted the imposition of economic and diplomatic sanctions on those nations that stifled evangelism.
Using archival materials from both religious and government sources, To Bring the Good News to All Nations links the development of evangelical foreign policy lobbying to the overseas missionary agenda. Turek's case studies—Guatemala, South Africa, and the Soviet Union—reveal the extent of Christian influence on American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Evangelical policy work also reshaped the lives of Christians overseas and contributed to a reorientation of U.S. human rights policy. Efforts to promote global evangelism and support foreign brethren led activists to push Congress to grant aid to favored, yet repressive, regimes in countries such as Guatemala while imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions on nations that persecuted Christians, such as the Soviet Union. This advocacy shifted the definitions and priorities of U.S. human rights policies with lasting repercussions that can be traced into the twenty-first century.
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748912/to-bring-the-good-news-to-all-nations/
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Riyadh: "Over 100 mosque preachers fired for violating directives on Brotherhood" 12/15/20
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Call and Guidance has terminated the services of more than 100 mosque imams and preachers in the Makkah region for their negligence of the ministry’s directives to warn against the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Friday sermon. A number of preachers in the Qassim region were also sacked, according to a report in Al-Watan newspaper.
Saturday, December 12, 2020
Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl (UCLA and Usuli Institute) Receives American Academy of Religion (AAR)'s Martin E Marty Award (December 7 2020)
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is the recipient of the American Academy of Religion 2020 Martin E. Marty Award. Press release as follows: "Khaled Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at the UCLA School of Law and Chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA, is the recipient of the 2020 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. "In announcing the award, Evan Berry, chair of the AAR’s Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion (CPUR) acknowledged the award “identifies extraordinary, relevant, broad-reaching contributions to the public understanding of religion. We recognize Dr. Abou El Fadl’s influences inside and outside of the academy.” "At the UCLA School of Law, Abou El Fadl teaches International Human Rights, Islamic Jurisprudence, National Security Law, Law and Terrorism, Islam and Human Rights, Political Asylum, and Political Crimes and Legal Systems. The committee cited and commended his intellectual courage, ability to write for non-specialist audiences, longstanding commitment to human rights, and willingness to bring academic expertise to bear on the complex religious and political dynamics that have characterized the post-9/11 era." "The AAR Marty Award celebrates individuals whose work has a relevance and eloquence that speaks, not just to scholars, but more broadly to other publics as well. Founded in 1909, the AAR is the world’s largest association of religion scholars with some 8,000 members in North America and abroad. The AAR’s mission is to foster excellence in the academic study of religion and enhance the public understanding of religion."
Thursday, December 10, 2020
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Akbar Shahid Ahmed: "Trump Is Rushing Through His Biggest, Most Dangerous Arms Deal. Congress Could Stop It." (11/20/20)
President Donald Trump wants to spend the final weeks of his presidency transferring America’s most advanced fighter jet, a set of powerful armed drones and thousands of bombs and missiles to a Middle Eastern dictatorship that is deeply implicated in multiple civil wars and aggressively represses its own population.
A growing group of lawmakers and activists is mobilizing to stop him.
Trump plans to wrap up a $23 billion weapons sale to the United Arab Emirates by the middle of December. It would put an exclamation point on a presidency that has focused more on arms deals than any since President Dwight Eisenhower first warned of the political power of the military-industrial complex.
Before that happens, critics of the deal want both houses of Congress to pass resolutions disapproving of the transfer.
Their hope is that sending such a message in a bipartisan way, which would have to be the case for the bills to clear both the Democratic House and the GOP-held Senate, would pressure Trump to respect lawmakers’ reservations about how the belligerent UAE might use the weapons ― or would at least motivate President-elect Joe Biden to halt the transfers once he takes office in January.
On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) joined Democratic foreign policy heavyweights Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) in sponsoring four resolutions of disapproval for the arms sales. Now those lawmakers and a coalition of influential activists from humanitarian, anti-war and human rights groups will spend the weeks ahead convincing Congress to support the legislation and pushing leadership in the two chambers to bring it to a vote, starting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
For a number of reasons, the activists face an uphill battle. Senators will not reconvene until Nov. 30 and they are then only present and able to consider motions like these resolutions for a handful of days in December. It’s unclear exactly when the lawmakers’ statutory right to block the arms deals expires, but aides say that point should be on or around Dec. 10. In that same period, Congress will be considering possible additional coronavirus relief and hammering out a bargain to keep the government open ahead of a funding deadline of Dec. 11.
The UAE also has a positive reputation in Washington, bolstered by its suave ambassador, Yousef Al Otaiba, and his large lobbying operation. Both representatives of the Emirates and Trump administration proponents of the deals are likely to emphasize how they align on two priorities that are broadly shared across Capitol Hill: supporting Israel and countering Iran.
Many members of Congress, among others, perceive the arms sales as a gift to the Arab nation for its agreement earlier this year to normalize relations with Israel. Al Otaiba is expected to play on Americans’ anxieties about Tehran and their sense that his country is uniquely moderate and pro-Western among Muslim-majority nations to win support for the deal.
Still, a dozen well-informed observers told HuffPost they are increasingly confident that a rare combination of progressives, hawks and more on Capitol Hill will send a big signal about changing U.S. foreign policy to prioritize human rights and give less credence to bellicose, often unreliable dictators abroad.
“I expect quite a fight in Congress… a short and fierce fight,” said Philippe Nassif of Amnesty International, one of the groups opposing the sale.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-arms-deal-uae_n_5fb6e9b3c5b618e45b468a37
Akbar Shahid Ahmed: "Major Jewish Group Joins Fight Against Trump’s Massive Middle East Weapons Sale" (12/6/20)
J Street, a prominent Jewish American organization working on Middle East issues, is joining the growing push to stop President Donald Trump from sending $23 billion in military arms and equipment to the United Arab Emirates. The group’s opposition, which has not been previously reported, bolsters the effort to block the deal through a congressional vote later this week.
“We oppose this arms sale and urge Senators to vote for the bipartisan resolutions rejecting it introduced by Senators [Bob] Menendez, Chris Murphy and [Rand] Paul,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami told HuffPost in an email. “The sale of a massive quantity of such destructive weapons systems to the UAE would only further fuel an escalating arms race in a region already suffering from destabilizing wars that endanger civilians and undermine U.S. interests.”
Menendez (D-N.J.), Murphy (D-Conn.), Paul (R-Ky.) and other opponents of Trump’s dangerous deal with the UAE could benefit from the added support. Congress has 30 days from when the State Department notified it of the weapons transfer to vote to block the sale. The Senate is expected to vote on resolutions opposing the arms deal on Dec. 10 or 11, just within that 30-day window. Those resolutions will need support from all Democrats and a handful of Republican senators to pass. If they do, the Democratic-led House is all but guaranteed to immediately take them up and pass them as well.
While Trump is almost certain to then veto the legislation ― as he has previously done to defend UAE ally Saudi Arabia ― votes against the deal would be a major rebuke of the UAE government’s policies and would send a message to President-elect Joe Biden, who could halt the weapons shipments.
J Street’s decision, in particular, to oppose the deal is highly significant because of the group’s status as a pro-Israel voice that’s respected by progressives, mainstream politicians and even some hawkish figures.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/uae-arms-sale-israel-j-street_n_5fcabc06c5b619bc4c32fd2f
Saturday, December 5, 2020
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
"UAE- 7th Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Communities to be held virtually on 7-9 December" (Nov 30 2020)
(MENAFN - Emirates News Agency (WAM)) ABU DHABI, 30th November 2020 (WAM) - Under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Seventh Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Communities will convene virtually on 7-9 December.
Chaired by Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah, President of the Forum, the event brings together leading Islamic scholars, religious leaders and advocates of peace, in line with Abu Dhabi's commitment to promoting global harmony, peace and tolerance.
Titled 'Human Values After Corona: Reviving Virtue in Times of Crisis', the forum will discuss how the pandemic creates opportunities for economic and social unity across the world.
Walaa Quisay and Thomas Parker: "On the Theology of Obedience: An Analysis of Shaykh Bin Bayyah and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s Political Thought" (Jan 8, 2019)
While both men are well-known for their religious authority, what is less well-known is Bin Bayyah’s long political career. After Mauritanian independence from France [in 1960], Bin Bayyah took part in the then-ruling Mauritanian People’s Party, for which he was a Permanent Trustee of the Party and a member of its Cabinet and Permanent Committee from 1970 to 1978. He afterwards held the following positions: Judge at the High Court of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Head of Shariah Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Deputy President of the Court of Appeal, Main Negotiator on Religious Affairs in the Republic, First Minister for Islamic Affairs and Education, Minister of Justice and Official Holder of the Seals, Minister Of State for Human Resources – with the position of Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of State for Directing State Affairs, Organizations and Parties (which included overseeing the Ministry of Information and Culture, the Ministry of Youth & Sport, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and the Ministry of Postal Services and Communication). This is important to mention because it is precisely his symbolic authority as a Sufi untouched by modernity that causes many who would not accept Shaykh Bin Bayyah’s current political stances and reasoning in other contexts to turn a blind eye to these positions. These voices also reference the shaykh’s long experience in politics, suggesting that he is well aware of the consequences of his thought.
[...] To put the above quote in context, it is crucial to note exactly who it is Shaykh Hamza thinks wants to tear everything down: Islamists. Specifically, in the genealogy he builds, Islamists are violent because they have been influenced by Marxism to seek a utopia in the dunyā. “They want the ideal world; they want to eliminate evil…This is their goal to create paradise on earth. To create the Marxist dream to create paradise on earth … once we establish equality on earth.” [...] However, a careful analysis of Shaykh Hamza’s thought would demonstrate a certain blurring of the lines between the categories of the ‘ideological,’ the ‘Marxist,’ and the ‘neo-Marxist,’ enabling a fluidity to the scope of analysis – if not accuracy itself – which allows him to construct meaningful links and designations to an incredibly wide spectrum. Nonetheless, a great deal of the shaykh’s discourse rests on this Islamist=Marxist=Utopian narrative and we will return to this equation in the following sections.
[...] Lastly, the fear mongering against Islamism in the West cannot be separated from structural Islamophobia in the West. After the war on terror in general, but particularly after Donald Trump came to power, there have been attempts to criminalize Muslim institutions by branding them as Islamist. In early 2017, Senator Ted Cruz introduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Act which aimed to criminalize such mainstream organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In fact, the UAE itself made that link prior in a bid to criminalize these organizations. Similarly, Al Arabiya English – a Saudi owned news organization – ran a piece accusing not only the newly-elected Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, but also the Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The implications of this global war against whatever the UAE and Saudi Arabia define as being Islamism could have an incredibly harmful impact on the lives of ordinary Muslims in the West. In fact, the UAE foreign minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, under whose auspices the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies is held, warned of the potential terror risk posed by Muslims living in the West, calling them an ‘ulcer’ that needs to be cured from the stomach of the West.
[...] This also demonstrates the artificiality of how we define “Islamism.” If we still term Ghannouchi (called by some the intellectual godfather of the Arab Spring) an Islamist when he argues for Islamic citizenship in the contemporary world, then does that also make Shaykh Bin Bayyah and Hamza Yusuf Islamists? If Ghannouchi and our shuyūkh are arguing for the same thing, then is Ghannouchi still a utopian Marxist? If neither Ghannouchi nor our shuyūkh are Islamists, then are the Arab Spring protestors still seeking “heaven” on earth? What this entire shaky edifice does suggest though is that while their thought, such as the general metaphysical framework, has remained constant, their discourse has not. Rather than being based solely in the realm of ideas, their discourse is seemingly very much based on political contingencies.
[...] Not only has the “political” changed, power too has changed. Specifically, to what degree can the modern state be compared to the ḥākim or ruler? What analogy can be made between a ruler who would have to wait months to put down a rebellion, would have to wait days or even weeks to receive news from his province and a modern state which can throw you in jail for conversations over Whatsapp? What analogy can be made between a ruler that had very little power over both of what is now the legislative and judiciary and the modern state which not only takes your children away for hours every day to teach its curriculum, but also decides what they will eat for lunch?
The modern nation-state has the power to penetrate all layers of society in a way simply incomparable with anything in the pre-modern period. In any other field of fiqh, if this much change had been witnessed, the scholar would take great care before simply transferring the ruling across centuries. All of this is to say, we tend to project the vertical relationship between the modern state and citizens (often composed solely of nuclear families) back into the past. However, societies were in fact much stronger than they are now, with Muslims often having multiple relations, whether that be to the extended family, a guild or a Sufi tariqa. As such, power was far more horizontal than it is now and much of what we now consider “political” would in the pre-modern era in fact be located in the “social.” This can be seen in how the Arabic word “siyāsa,” which originally meant something closer to statecraft, that is limited to the executive, now means politics in the general sense. Therefore, when we consider that the ʿulamāʾ held both the legislative and judiciary in their hands, often made interventions for the community when taxes were too high, and were effective social actors, the ʿulamāʾ were not just political, but political par excellence.
See the full article at https://themaydan.com/2019/01/theology-obedience-analysis-shaykh-bin-bayyah-shaykh-hamza-yusufs-political-thought/
Dr. Andreas Krieg: "How the UAE weaponised western fears of Islam to crush dissent" (Nov 30, 2020)
At the forefront of the crusade against "Islamism" are the United Arab Emirates, an absolutist tribal monarchy where civil liberties are absent and where Islamic scholarship has been subordinated to religiously justify the oppression of civil society, freedom of speech and any form of political activism.
The Emirati Fatwa Council has developed into a powerful tool of state control domestically and strategic communication internationally. Led by Sufi scholar Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah, the Fatwa Council has become a political means for the regime in Abu Dhabi to reshape Islamic discourse based on an empty narrative of "tolerance" that only applies to those who submit to quietist political obedience to the regime.
Thereby, while the pursuit of genuine tolerance would be commendable to fight extremism in all its shapes and forms, the Emirati concept remains hollow as it does not allow for any open-minded, theological discourse on the role of Islam in 21st century socio-politics.
[...] Abu Dhabi has managed to capitalise on orientalist fears in the West to stigmatise "Islamism" as a catch-all phrase, encompassing any form of extremist ideology coming out of Islam. Thereby, "the" Muslim Brotherhood has become the broad-brush scarecrow of choice to describe liberal activists on one end and Islamic State group death squads on the other end of a scientifically debunked myth of a continuum.
Saying that a democratically motivated activist who happens to be a sympathiser of the Muslim Brotherhood finds himself on a conveyer belt to Salafi-jihadism is like stating that liberalism in Europe led to Nazism – both are "Western" ideologies emerging out of the Enlightenment and uphold secular values.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-uae-tries-compromise-islamic-scholarship
Dr. Andreas Krieg: "On the sinister objectives of Abu Dhabi's 'crusade' against political Islam" (Jan 21, 2020)
The UAE’s narrative was purposefully designed to appeal to a Western, particularly American audience, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Islamist surge during the Arab Spring, and the rise of the Islamic State.
The angst over political Islam among Abu Dhabi’s elite emanates from the belief that the narratives of Islam, once married with political objectives, can no longer be controlled by the state or the regime, creating a potential civil-societal dynamic that could undermine the status quo. The Arab Spring was a case in point. Yet, for Abu Dhabi, its crusade against Islam in the political space has another, more sinister objective: depoliticising civil society while monopolising sociopolitical power and authority in the hands of the state. Abu Dhabi’s Islamist paranoia is rooted in a deep-seated fear of the soft power appeal of political Islam as the traditional opposition to the region’s authoritarian status quo.
Hence, as the old authoritarian status quo started to crumble in 2011, the UAE was quick to mobilise its financial and military power to shape the region’s future sociopolitical trajectory. From Libya, to Egypt, to Yemen and Sudan, the UAE has been the region’s foremost counterrevolutionary force, trying to install or support regimes that contain civil society, champion military rule and remain immune to the appeal of political Islam.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uaes-foreign-policy-far-secular
Friday, November 27, 2020
James Traub (Foreign Policy): "Under Biden, the Middle East Would Be Just Another Region" (Sept 9, 2020)
Biden, in short, occupied the realist wing of the Obama administration on Middle East issues. Trump might claim residence for himself in that wing, too. But if a “realist” is guided by objective interests rather than ephemeral values, then Trump’s crass and value-free mercantilism in the region has emptied that term of all meaning. He has truckled to brutal autocrats including Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman even as they have meddled in civil wars in Libya and Yemen in a way that plainly harms U.S. interests. Biden would not hesitate to criticize their behavior both at home and abroad. He has said: “I would end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen and order a reassessment of our relationship with Saudi Arabia.” It would be up to Saudi Arabia, he warned, “to change its approach.”
The same principle would apply to the United Arab Emirates, which, however, has withdrawn from the Yemen war, made quiet overtures to Iran, and, of course, agreed to open diplomatic relations with Israel. Biden would strike a new, more distant, equilibrium. The former aide said that he expects Biden to “resist pressure from progressives to punish them.” He would continue working with repressive regimes even as he sought to deter them from exacerbating local conflicts.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/09/biden-is-planning-change-not-hope-for-the-middle-east/
Thursday, November 26, 2020
NOI, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and Nasser, Islam as revolutionary solution, transnational connections
The Nation of Islam, founded by W. D. Fard Muhammad in 1930 as the Temple of Islam in Greater Detroit, was only one of the many Muslim groups established in the interwar period, but it emerged after World War II as the largest single African American Muslim organization, and by the late 1950s it was arguably the most prominent Muslim organization in the United States. [5] Like most other African American Muslim groups, whether Sunni, Ahmadi, or Moorish in religious orientation, the politics of the Nation of Islam linked the struggle for Black dignity, freedom, and self-determination in the United States to the struggles of all people of color abroad, the so-called Dark World. In its rejection of Christianity, racial integration, and other components of liberalism, the Nation of Islam became a radical symbol of anti-Americanism. [6] Unlike many Black radicals who saw an alternative in communism, however, Elijah Muhammad identified Islam as the solution to such problems.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Nation of Islam members would debate, define, and engender this revolutionary Islam in different ways. At least some members, especially Malcolm X, saw Gamal Abdel Nasser, the revolutionary leader of the United Arab Republic (the combined state of Egypt and Syria), as a model and leader of Islamic moral and political engagement. Like others around the world, many African American Muslims and African American leftists hailed Nasser's weathering of the Suez Crisis of 1956. Some members hung pictures of him in their homes. [7] In 1958, the year during which the UAR was formed and Nasser convened a meeting of the Afro-Asian Conference in Cairo, Elijah Muhammad cabled Nasser to seek his support for the NOI. In words that seem to be crafted by Malcolm X, he urged Nasser to see their movements as branches of the same tree. "Freedom, justice, and equality for all Africans and Asians is of far-reaching importance, not only to you of the East, but also to over 17,000,000 of your long-lost brothers of African-Asian descent here in the West," the cable read.
-Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 36-37.
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Peter Beinart: "Obama and the Israel Lobby" (Nov. 25, 2020)
A good piece that Dr. Hatem shared about Palestine, Israel, AIPAC, Obama and organizing/activism:
In his new autobiography, A Promised Land, her former boss, Barack Obama, tries a different tack. He gives the reader enough information to glimpse what Washington policymaking on Israel/Palestine is really like. He details the political realities that constrained his ability to challenge Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and will likely constrain Joe Biden’s, too. But he doesn’t spell out the implications of his narrative, perhaps because it so closely resembles the argument of one of the most incendiary foreign policy books of the last two decades: Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby. [...]
Obama certainly believes that US support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank damaged US interests. That support, he writes, “continued to inflame the Arab community and feed anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.” The bottom line: “the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians made America less safe.” As president, Obama tried to change that, but found his efforts stymied, in large measure, by the Israel lobby. Soon after taking office in 2009, he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement growth. Obama levels criticism at Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whom he considered overly cautious. But he argues that “[t]here wasn’t much Abbas could give the Israelis that the Israelis couldn’t already take on their own.” So “given the asymmetry in power . . . I thought it was reasonable to ask the stronger party to take a bigger first step in the direction of peace.”
In so doing, Obama picked a fight not only with Netanyahu, but with AIPAC. “Members of both parties worried about crossing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” Obama writes. “Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.” When Obama proposed the settlement freeze, “[t]he White House phones started ringing off the hook, as members of [his] national security team fielded calls from reporters, leaders of American Jewish organizations, prominent supporters, and members of Congress, all wondering why [they] were picking on Israel . . . this sort of pressure continued for much of 2009.” Obama admits that the pressure took a toll. He writes that the “noise orchestrated by Netanyahu had the intended effect of gobbling up our time, putting us on the defensive.” Picking a fight with Israel, he declares, “exacted a domestic political cost that simply didn’t exist when I dealt with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, or any of our other closest allies.”
It’s worth lingering over that last line. Obama doesn’t just describe the pro-Israel infrastructure as powerful. He says that, because of the Israel lobby, it was harder to align US policy toward Israel with the US national interest than it was in the case of any other ally. In describing AIPAC as using its financial muscle to intimidate politicians, he is repeating a charge that helped earn Walt and Mearsheimer (and more recently, Ilhan Omar) the label of antisemites. [...]
This is Obama as feature writer, stepping back from his role as most-powerful-man-in-the-world to render—and deprecate—his fellow leaders. But it’s unfair. If the Middle Easterners were pantomiming, so was Obama. He depicts himself as an innocent, slightly naïve, bystander in this grim Levantine drama. In reality, Obama was Netanyahu’s patron—his government helped fund Israel’s military and shielded it at the UN. If Obama had deployed the full weight of American power, he could likely have ensured that the summit turned out differently. He could have transformed Israeli behavior. But he chose not to because the domestic political costs were too high. And the domestic political costs were too high, as he acknowledges earlier, because of the Israel lobby.
Obama’s real message can be found in an exchange that isn’t recounted in his book. In 2010, a man at a fundraiser reportedly asked the new president to push for a just solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Obama responded by recounting Franklin Roosevelt’s answer when the Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph implored him to do more for civil rights. “I agree with everything that you’ve said,” FDR allegedly replied, “But I would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is go out and make me do it.”
In his memoir, Obama implicitly makes the same point: That he can’t change US policy until Americans—through their activism—eliminate the political obstacles that constrain US presidents. To progressive activists, “make me do it” may sound like a politicians’ way of shifting the blame for his own lack of courage. But it’s an accurate depiction of how American politics actually works. Changing government policy toward Israel/Palestine—like changing government policy on climate change or policing—requires grassroots mobilization powerful enough to overcome entrenched interests. The presidency of Joe Biden—a man even less inclined to challenge the Israel lobby than Obama—will expose how much more of that mobilization we still require.
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Professor Mohammad Fadel: "Muslims, Trump and Islamic Political Ethics," (11/23/20)
The content of Islamic political ethics, of course, originates in the Quran and the Sunna, but it is also found in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. Space constrains what can be said on this topic, but the Quran emphasizes numerous “political” virtues, such as consultation (shūrā, e.g. al-Shūrā, 42:38 ), altruism (īthār, al-Ḥashr, 59:9), rational deliberation (naẓar), honesty in dealings with others (but especially with judges) (al-Baqara, 2:188), and the faithful and prompt discharge of one’s trusts (Āl ʿImrān, 3:75). It condemned Pharaoh for his tyranny and his penchant for setting one group of his people against another (al-Qaṣaṣ, 38:4), and commanded guardians of orphans to deal with their wards’ property only in the “most beautiful manner (al-aḥsan)” (al-Anʿām, 6:152 and al-Isrāʾ, 17:34), i.e., for the benefit of the orphan not the benefit of the guardian.
The Sunna reinforced these principles and emphasized the duty of public servants to use their skills for the public good rather than their own private interests. The Prophet (S), for example, is reported to have said, “Whoever is entrusted with authority over any affair of my community, and does not exert himself sincerely on their behalf (lam yajtahid wa lam yanṣaḥ lahum) shall never enter Paradise.” The Prophet (S) also is reported to have said, “Religion is sincerity (al-naṣīḥa). ‘We said, “To whom, Messenger of God?”’ He said, ‘To God, His Book, His messenger, to the leaders of the Muslims, and to everyone in the Muslim community (ʿāmmatihim).’”
The opposite of good-faith, sincere judgment for the good of the community is self-serving decision-making. The Arabic term for self-serving decision-making is muḥāba, such as when a public official exercises his discretion to further his own private interest rather than the common good, including, by appointing unqualified persons to public offices because of their personal loyalty to the appointing official rather then their dispassionate commitment to the public good. One report has the Prophet (S) say the following, “God curses anyone who is given authority over any of the affairs of the Muslim community, and then appoints someone over them who is unqualified, for his own advantage.”
The jurists subsumed these various political virtues under the concept of integrity, ʿadāla. Integrity was an obligatory condition for every public office, with most jurist agreeing that it was required both at the time of appointment, and for the office holder to continue in his position. In other words, no one could be validly appointed to public office unless he possessed integrity at the time of appointment and did nothing to impugn his integrity after taking office. While private morality was a component of integrity, it did not exhaust it. Honesty in dealings, fairness, and trustworthiness were crucial components of integrity as the jurists understood this concept. When ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb asked about a man’s integrity for purposes of admitting his testimony in a lawsuit, and someone declared him trustworthy, ʿUmar asked that man whether he ever had done business with the prospective witness in the market, travelled with him on a lengthy journey, or had been embroiled with him in a legal dispute. It was these kinds of interactions that were relevant to discover the truth about this man’s character. When the would-be character witness said he had not, ʿUmar reportedly said, “You are ignorant about this man’s character. Your ‘knowledge,’ I think, is that you might have seen him raise his head and lower it in the mosque.” Another report attributed to ʿUmar quoted him as saying “Look not to a man’s prayer or his fasting [to know whether he has integrity], but look to his truthfulness when he speaks, whether he faithfully discharges his trusts, and his self-restraint when he is angered.”
The National (Abu Dhabi): "UAE Fatwa Council designates Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation" (11/23/20)
The UAE Fatwa Council on Monday denounced the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and urged Muslims to steer clear of the group.
The statement came during an online meeting of the council led by Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah and supports a similar pronouncement by Saudi Arabia's Council of Senior Scholars.
The UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia have designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. The group’s spiritual leader Yusuf Al Qaradawi is living in Qatar, despite being sentenced to life in prison in his native Egypt and being banned from France and the UK for his extremist views. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in 1928 in Egypt.
The Council called on all Muslims to reject division and to refrain from affiliation or sympathy with groups that “work to divide the ranks and inflame discord and bloodshed”, UAE news agency WAM reported.
It reiterated that “it is not permissible to pledge allegiance to anyone other than the ruler,” and said the community should show “respect and commitment” to leaders.
Also see:
https://twitter.com/wamnews/status/1330887589658816512?s=20 (The Official Twitter feed for Emirates News Agency, WAM)
(Re-tweeted by Shaykh Abdullah bin Bayyah's Twitter account)
Monday, November 23, 2020
Roundtable on State Islam after the Arab Uprisings (11/23/20)
from David Warren's rejoinder:
In the case of the UAE, a key benefit these ʿulamāʾ organisations provide comes from their value for convincing foreign powers to maintain their interests in the country’s security. Despite the significance of Bin Bayyah’s articulate “regime Islam,” to use Brown’s parlance, his value internationally likely outweighs his value domestically. After all, the UAE has an extensive security apparatus that moves swiftly to extinguish local dissent and maintains lavish rentier payments to its citizens. Consequently, the ruling family’s need for a regime Islam to buttress its legitimacy domestically is likely somewhat limited. Moreover, as Walaa Quisay has noted here, and Muhammad Amasha has pointed out elsewhere, the UAE has sponsored a diverse array of ʿulamāʾ and Muslim thinkers, ranging from Bin Bayyah to Muhammad Shahrur (d.2019).
Thus, the greater benefit that Bin Bayyah and FPPMS provide for the UAE is at the level of state-branding, an important element of foreign security policy for the Sunni Gulf monarchies. Since the Gulf states are dependent upon outside powers to preserve their security, they must brand themselves in order maintain those powers’ interest in their independence. Since the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine, that outside power has been the United States, though the establishment of a Turkish base in Qatar, closer regional links with China, and normalization agreements between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain hint at a coming shift in the status quo.
For the UAE, this state-branding has not only involved developing itself into a global centre for commerce, transportation, and finance, it has also included building a particular brand of Islamic reform. This brand intersects with the US State Department’s long-running “efforts to reshape and transform ‘Islam from within’” as part of its post-9/11 policy. This points helps us further appreciate the significance of Bin Bayyah and FPPMS’s acceptance of the hegemonic discourse that “misleading fatwas” and “competing religious claims” are the root cause of regional violence and anti-US feeling. For Bin Bayyah, the solutions to such problems lie in alleviating the Chaos of the Fatwa, interfaith dialogue, and a particular form of religious freedom[3] in place of deeper reflection on, for example, the UAE’s and/or the US’s destabilising roles in the region. This helpful obfuscation strengthens the country’s state-brand as a centre of Islamic reform in American eyes, which in turn helps maintain US interest in the Al Nahyan’s security in the face of both external and internal challenges. The fact that the UAE has been praised by the US Ambassadors-at-Large for International Religious Freedom from both the Obama and Trump administrations (David Saperstein and Sam Brownback respectively) is testament to Bin Bayyah and the FPPMS’s success in this regard.
Looking forward to Warren's forthcoming book (should be out Jan 2021 iA), Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis.
Friday, November 20, 2020
Monday, November 16, 2020
Joseph Cox (Vice): "How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps" (Nov. 16, 2020)
"A Muslim prayer app with over 98 million downloads is one of the apps connected to a wide-ranging supply chain that sends ordinary people's personal data to brokers, contractors, and the military."
https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/jgqm5x/us-military-location-data-xmode-locate-x
Thursday, November 12, 2020
A fascinating article about Muhammad Asad's life (1900-1992) by Shalom Goldman in the Tablet (July 1, 2016)
It was during those years in New York City that Asad reestablished connections with some of his Jewish relatives, including relatives who lived in Israel. And it was in New York that he wrote The Road to Mecca, an autobiography published by Simon and Schuster in 1954 and very positively reviewed in the leading journals and newspapers of the day. The New York Times reviewer called it an “intensely interesting and moving book.” Disillusioned with the Pakistani politics, he then made the transition to the world of Islamic scholarship, moved to Europe, and between 1964 and 1980 produced what many today deem the finest translation of the Quran into English, accompanied by an extensive scholarly commentary.
[...] And in the following year, 2012, Asad’s widow Pola Hamida (his third wife), assisted by the Pakistani scholar M. Ikram Chaghatai, published Home-coming of the Heart, a compilation of previously unpublished writing by and about Asad. Within that volume is Hamida’s memoir of the mid-1950s, the period in which Asad left the Pakistani U.N. delegation and wrote his best-selling book The Road to Mecca. Hamida notes that Asad’s political adversaries among the Pakistani elites spread the rumor that Asad, living in New York City, had “abandoned Islam and reverted to Judaism.” To clear his name of this accusation Asad wrote detailed and lengthy letters to Pakistani newspapers, where the controversy about him raged for a few months in 1954. Subsequently Asad was “exonerated” of this charge of apostasy and his good name restored.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jew-helped-invent-islamic-state
Monday, November 9, 2020
Imam Zaid Shakir: "Trump: Hawk or Dove" (2/27/2020)
During his recent State of the Union Address, President Trump boasted of his record levels of military spending. Despite that boast and its deadly implications, there are those who naively believe that Mr. Trump is rolling back America’s military presence in the world, some even going so far as to describe the President as “antiwar.” This naiveté has been encouraged by the ongoing negotiations to “end” the Afghan war. Contrary to popular perception, President Trump is escalating America’s military presence globally in ways that not only expand American military footprint but create unprecedented dangers to the world community.[...]
In conclusion, it is true that Trump did not start the militaristic policies he perpetuates with great gusto. He is, however, doing nothing to alter those policies in ways that would allow anyone to entertain the illusion of his somehow being anti-war or in any way less militaristic than his predecessors. In addition to what has been mentioned above, Trump has glorified the military with rhetoric, symbols, and ceremonies, such as his proposed Kremlin-style military parade, in ways that create an atmosphere conducive to further entrenching militarism as an inextricable facet of American life and society. Those who see the inherent danger of the denigration of American diplomacy, the expansion of American military adventurism, arbitrary nuclear proliferation, reckless arms sales, and the corrosion of American society by the leeching of a toxic militarism into ever deeper recesses of our body politic, cannot be silent. We must decry this madness and help organize to bring it to an end.
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Ben Hubbard on MBS (Saudi) - MBZ (UAE)
MBS was also little known in the wider Arab world, including among Saudi Arabia's closest neighbors. Like its fellow smaller monarchies in the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates had long viewed Saudi Arabia warily as the region's giant, whose wealth, power, and population dwarfed its own. For years, the Emiratis had wanted to step out of the Saudi shadow and develop their own national standing, and their leaders privately looked down on their Saudi counterparts as elderly conservatives wedded to ossified ways. [...]
The de facto ruler of the Emirates was Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, a helicopter pilot and sharp tactician known by his own three-letter moniker, MBZ. He was tall, kept in shape, and maintained a modest demeanor that was uncommon among Gulf royals, sometimes rising during meetings to serve guests coffee or tea. MBZ had worked to give country international clout that outweighed its size. The Emirates had fewer citizens than Dallas, Texas, and a relatively small army. But he equipped it with billions of dollars' worth of American weapons and built special forces units that fought alongside American troops in Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere. While few Americans had heard of his country or its leader, he had poured huge sums into lobbying efforts in Washington to make sure that his views on the Middle East reached the centers of power.
[...] MBZ impressed his vision of the region on the inexperienced young Saudi [MBS], particularly his animosity toward Iran and the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood.
-Ben Hubbard, MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman (New York: Ti Duggan Books, 2020), pp. 37-8
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
'Ubayd Allah Sindhi's (1872-1944) 'socialist leaning' 'Qur'anic Revolution'
Brief background: "Born a Sikh in the Punjab, he had converted to Islam as a youth, spent some time with a Sufi master in Sindh and, as signified by the suffix 'Sindhi,' made it his adopted home. [39] He subsequently studied at Deoband, where the most important of his teachers was Mahmud Hasan (d. 1920), a revered professor hadith." (Zaman, p. 11).
For now, we should note that Sindhi rails often in his discourses against the dual oppression of the capitalists and the religious elite ("Brahmanism"), and he sees their alliance as being at the heart of much economic misery. [15] The capitalists are sometimes also referred to as the 'imperialists,' [16] which, of course, is in line with his solid anti-imperialist credentials. As for his criticism of the religious elite, it is not limited to the 'ulama. Scholars in other traditions are equally culpable for their 'intellectual capitalism,' by which he means not only their placing limits on people's access to religious knowledge or a concomitant desire to maintain their own privileged position through such knowledge but also their failure to address the economic concerns of ordinary people. Sindhi had no doubt that, properly understood, all religious traditions are deeply concerned with economic issues. And, on his return to India, he urged Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh scholars to devote themselves to demonstrating the accord between 'the spirit or philosophy of their religion and European economic thought,' [17] by which he evidently meant socialism.
[...] Another work comprises the Sindhi's commentary, after his return from exile, on select chapters of the Qur'an with a view to providing a model to fellow Muslims on how to understand the Islamic foundational text. [18] Social and economic concerns and indeed, a call for radical socioeconomic change in light of the Qur'an teachings -- a 'Qur'anic revolution' -- are at the heart of this latter work, and it is on this that I will primarily focus here.
Justice ('adl) is foremost among the norms Sindhi finds in the Qur'an. [19] In fact, the idea of justice is taken to be constitutive of taqwa itself, a central Qur'anic idea often translated as 'the fear of God.' [20] Establishing justice in society means, inter alia, removing inequalities and providing for the poor and the unprivileged. The rich will be questioned on the Day of Judgment for how they conducted themselves in the world. [21] At the time, people will experience the consequences of their actions: a miser who had seen a person starving but had done nothing to help him will undergo the latter's suffering on that day. [22] Yet such reckoning is obviously not to be deferred only to the hereafter. A government guided by Qur'anic norms is equally obligated to rein in the rich and mighty, and a central concern of such a government would be to serve the interests of the poor. [23] To this end, the government has the right to impose whatever taxes it sees as necessary beyond the zakat, which all Muslims of means are required to pay annually and which is one of five pillars of the faith (alongside the profession of belief, prayer, fasting, and Hajj). [24] Helping the poor, either individually or by way to a government guided by Qur'anic norms, is not, however, a matter of maintaining an army of beggars. Rather, as Sindhi envisions it, the poor ought to be provided with education and means of livelihood so that they, and all others, can become productive members of society. [25]
All this has a strong socialist ring to it, and Sindhi has, indeed, often been characterized as a socialist. [26] He would not have disdained the label, except in cautioning against the atheism with which socialism was often intertwined. His reading of the Qur'an and his understanding of the work of Wali Allah seemed to him to offer ways of combining an engagement with the socioeconomic uplift of the impoverished masses with ethical norms derived from religious, and it is this combination that he wanted to impart to his audiences. This was not just a strategic choice, driven by the conviction that a reformist program divorced from religion would not succeed in the Indian context. Underlying it was also his belief that the love of God offered the surest basis for the love of God's creatures. [27]
-Muhammad Qasim Zaman, "Socioeconomic Justice," in Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 225-7.
Monday, November 2, 2020
AHM on France and Muslims in his book "Travelling Home"
The French model, grounded in Enlightenment anticlericalism, claims a fierce exclusion of religious affiliation of any kind from its concept of belonging. This does not concern Islam alone, but was made clear more than a century ago in the Republic's response to the Syllabus of Errors: a law was passed preventing priests from mentioning the papal document from the pulpits. Thus was a process established whereby secularity could win important victories over freedom of speech.
[n10: Which has more recently surfaced in the form of censorship of Muslim literature, including, since 1994, the pamphlets of Ahmad Deedat.]
And Catholicism, though the victim of a deep anticlericalism, was at least seen as indigenous. In the republic's more recent travails with Islam, a empathy with Maronites, the dirty war in Algeria and a general official disdain for religion have made the exclusion of Muslimness in the name of Republican laicity particularly natural and emphatic, and Jim Wolfreys' book Republic of Islamophobia offers an impeccable and troubling study of this ideology.
[n11: Jim Wolfreys, Republic of Islamophobia: The Rise of Respectable Racism in France (London, 2018).]
Hence the constant susurration of French media rage against Muslim difference, and the broad-based consensus among liberals that women who wear the niqāb, or Parisian Muslims caught praying together in public places, should be detained by the police.
-Abdal Hakim Murad, "Can liberalism tolerate Islam?" in Traveling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe (Cambridge: The Quilliam Press, 2020), 22-23.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Rokhaya Diallo in the Washington Post: "After another tragedy, France should be combating terrorism, not criminalizing Muslims" (Oct 30, 2020)
It is the responsibility of any government to address such atrocities and the context that allowed them to happen. But what has happened in France since Paty’s murder is different. Instead of working to bring the population together, the government has chosen to adopt reactionary language and direct its rhetoric toward criminalizing and stigmatizing France’s Muslim population.
A couple of days after the killing, Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, proclaimed “a war against the enemies from within.” He then launched a series of police operations and raids against Muslim organizations and individuals who, in his words, “were not linked with the investigation but to whom we are clearly willing to send a message.” Darmanin also announced his intention to immediately disband several anti-Islamophobia organizations, labeling one of them an “enemy of the republic.” The minister then went further, saying he was “shocked” to see halal and kosher sections in supermarkets, because he apparently finds them divisive.
Setting a climate of suspicion in a moment of major tension is irresponsible. Using the national emotion to target political opponents is even worse.
Yet that is what happened to “Observatoire de la Laïcité” (Secularism Observatory) rapporteur Nicolas Cadène, who learned he might be removed from the position from the media. After repeatedly opposing Islamophobic policies, the observatory has been criticized by those who have repeatedly tried to single out Islam and Muslims. The office of Prime Minister Jean Castex seized the opportunity to declare that the institution “should evolve so that it can be possible in France to defend [secularism] without being branded as Islamophobic.” There is now momentum for the government to disqualify all those who are accused of being too soft or complacent.
This has also become prevalent in academic settings. The education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, has opposed what he termed “intellectual complicities with terrorism.” He said that so-called “Islamo-leftism . . . wreaks havoc in university” and in organizations such as UNEF, a prominent students’ union whose vice president is a Muslim woman. The union promptly responded in a statement that it was regrettable a person who was supposed to lead “the institution of knowledge” had “sunk into ignorance and hatred.”
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