Daring Opinion by Elie Elhadj

A verdict on the “surge”

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:47:33 GMT

Three developments in Iraq since the middle of 2007 are noteworthy.
        The first is the success of the U.S. in arming and funding Arab Sunnis in the Anbar Province and Baghdad to stop shooting at U.S. soldiers and to fight Al-Qaeda. Named Awakening forces, these have grown to more than 70,000 men. “Awakening” men patrol local areas. They get paid about $10 a day each by the U.S. Many were formerly a part of the Sunni insurgency against the occupiers and Iraqi government security forces as well as against the Shi'a militias of AbdulAziz Al-Hakeem (Badr brigade) and of Muqtada Al-Sadr (Mahdi army).
        The second development has been the cease-fire on August 29, 2007 that Muqtada Al-Sadr ordered the Mahdi army militia to observe for six months, renewed on February 23, 2008 for six additional months.
        Concurrent with these developments was the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report of November 2007, which stated with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not restarted it. This NIE conclusion reversed the findings of a similar NIE report in 2005.
        How is one to read these developments on the short-term and the long-term?
        On the short-term, Washington is happy; the number of U.S. casualties dropped significantly to hastily declare success. Tehran is happy; the threat of a U.S. war against it has receded. Tehran is also happy because a substantial decrease in violence would make it difficult for Washington to stay in Iraq under the pretext of maintaining the peace. Iraq’s Arab Sunnis are optimistic; they think that in return for “Awakening,” Washington would force the Baghdad Shi'a dominated government to amend the “federalism” provisions in Iraq’s constitution and, among others, reverse Paul Bremmer’s de-baathification program, which together with dissolving Iraq’s army have turned Sunnis' lives upside down and cost hundreds of thousands their livelihood and lives.
        The Al-Maliki government, however, is uneasy; the U.S./Sunni accommodation means U.S. pressure to give the Sunnis concessions. Iraq’s defense minister stated on December 22, 2007: “Iraq will not allow US-backed neighborhood patrols to become a ‘third force’ alongside police and the army.” Violent clashes between government security forces and Awakening units in certain areas have already been reported.
        If the Iraqi government acquiesces to Sunni demands, Shi'a/ Sunni reconciliation would follow. If it rejects them, the sectarian violence would return.
        As for maintaining the current lull in American casualties on the long-term, the prospect is a function of how Tehran would react to Washington’s actions.
        Ultimately, Tehran and Washington are locked in a conflict over who would control GCC oil. Washington, being 10,000 kilometers away, has traditionally relied on military bases for decades to support Arab tribal emirs, kings, sheikhs, and sultans. Iran is next door. The Bush administration’s destruction of Tehran's great enemies to the east; the Wahhabi Talibans in Afghanistan, and to the west; Saddam’s regime in Iraq, turned Iran into the region’s major power.
        Iran has a solid infrastructure of support in Southern Iraq. Most of Iraq’s 15-million Shiite population live there. Shiism’s holiest shrines are there. The prominent families of Najaf and Karbala trace their roots to long lines of marriages with the leading clerics families of Iran. Ayatollahs have cross-country followings. From Najaf and Karbala, Iranian clerics often led the world of Shiism.
        Furthermore, Tehran’s men control Iraq. Strengthening Tehran’s grip on Baghdad are the personal rivalries that exist among Iraq’s Shiite leaders, particularly the Sistani/Hakeem camp (supporters of the Maliki cabinet today) and the Sadr organization. In their turf wars, these men are compelled to seek assistance from Tehran. Iran is their natural habitat.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is obeyed by millions in Iraq and Iran. Born and raised in Iran, he does not accept Iraqi citizenship. Through his disciples, he has been heavily involved in the American designs on Iraq. While consolidating Shi’a control Al-Sistani, and Tehran as well, have a good reason to support the presence of the occupation troops. Notwithstanding this support, however, Al-Sistani is no friend of the American occupation. An objective of the election platform of the Al-Sistani-approved list of candidates that contested the January 30, 2005 elections was a timetable forthe withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq. Middle East Online reported on May 23, 2008 that Al-Sistani   has been quietly issuing fatwas declaring that armed resistance against US-led foreign troops is permissible. Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem is the head of SCIRI and the Badr Brigade. Badr is a militia of thousands; created and sustained by Iran. Al-Hakeem spent most of his adult life in Iran. He is the leader of the largest Parliamentary bloc. When his older brother was assassinated in August 2003, Tehran declared three days of mourning. Al-Sistani and Al-Hakeem may be described as Tehran’s instruments to institute clerics’ control over Iraq.
        Muqtada Al-Sadr may be described as Tehran’s instrument to harass U.S. forces. His father and uncle were Grand Ayatollahs. His uncle founded in 1958 the Islamic Daawa Party (IDP). IDP received big support from Tehran. Its leaders, Al-Jaafari and Al-Maliki, became Iraq’s transitional prime minister and full-term prime minister, respectively. Both men lived in exile for years in Iran.
        It is inconceivable that these leaders would turn to Iraq’s Sunni neighbors for support. In Arab countries, the Shiites look to Iran for deliverance from Sunni subjugation. To Sunnis, the Shiites are heretics. Shi'a areas in Saudi Arabia are the poorest despite containing the entire oil wealth of that country. In Bahrain, the Sunni minority mistreats the 60% Shi'a majority. In Kuwait, the Shiites are second-class citizens. In Lebanon, the Shiites are underprivileged. In Yemen, the Zaydis, aShi'a sect, accuse the Sunni government of genocide. In Syria, until seizing power in 1970, the Alawite minority, a Shi'a sect, lived in abject poverty. In Iraq, until 2003, the Shi'a majority was deprived. Egyptian President Mubarak declared recently that, Shiites in Arab states were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. The notion that Iran might encourage the GCC Shiites to demand their human rights sends shivers in GCC circles and beyond.
        Divide and rule is a powerful weapon in the hand of Iran’s ayatollahs to keep Iraq’s Shi’apoliticians virtual surrogates and Tehran their ultimate arbiter. That Iran made representatives of Al-Sadr and Al-Hakeem/Iraqi government end the recent fighting in Basra (The Nation, March 31, 2008) is a case in point. It follows that it is in Tehran’s ayatollahs’ power today to decide when to direct their Iraqi surrogates to fight the Americans. The presence of American troops in Iraq is a pressure tool in the hand of Tehran's ayatollahs against Washington. Iran’s Defense Minister declared in August 2004 that these “forces would turn into a hostage” in any military confrontation with Washington.
        It may be argued that in return for cooling the Bush administration's threats to attack Iran over the nuclear issue and in the expectation that peace in Iraq would mean Iraqi and US domestic pressure on Washington to withdraw its forces from Iraq, Tehran calmed Iraq. However, the recent lull in American casualties could be temporary; it would end once Washington provokes Tehran.
        Regardless of whether the U.S. increases the level of its military presence in Iraq or withdraws altogether; whether the Democrats or the Republicans control the White House and/or Capitol Hill, and regardless of whether Iraq emerges from its current chaos as a single entity, a federal republic, or broken-up into three states the occupation has set in motion events that make it difficult to predict how lifting the lid on Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic tensions could lead to anything but to Iranian domination over southern Iraq, to Shi’a emboldenment everywhere, and to endless long-Term Shi’a/Sunni conflicts spilling rivers of blood and breeding hoards of Jihadists until the Sunni leaders in the region would either accept Iran’s hegemony or succeed in stopping the march of Shiism.
        In his report to the Congress on April 8, 2008 General David Petraeus described the situation in Iraq as “fragile and reversible.” Washington could, of course, destroy Iran’s infrastructure militarily. But, that would not solve much in the long-term.

The Mirage of Arab Democracy

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:06:48 GMT

Arab democracy is fantasy. Democratic ideology cannot defeat Islamic theology.
        Notwithstanding that Arab rule is tribal, corrupt, and mired in favoritism and nepotism it is significant that Arab rulers typically stay in office until death, be it natural or resulting from a military coup. No Arab king or president, however, spares an opportunity, to display the loyalty of his subjects. While the presidents conduct stage-managed referendums in which they consistently manage to achieve near 100% approvals, the monarchs draw mile-long queues of happy-looking men on every national and religious occasion to demonstrate their people’s allegiance. Are such shows indicative of true approval, or devoid of genuine support?
        Regardless of the contrived appearance of these demonstrations, a degree of real support for Arab rulers does exist. It is impossible to falsify every ballot and force every subject to hail the king. When the presidents of Egypt and Yemen allowed contested presidential elections on September 7, 2005 and September 20, 2006; respectively, the former gained a fifth term with 88.6% of the votes cast, hardly different from his four previous uncontested referendums, and the latter won 77.2% majority, after 28 years of rule.
        Representative democracy is not a natural choice for most Arabs. Obedience to hierarchical Islamic authority is. Obedience is at the heart of Ulama's teaching. In the Arab home, school, mosque, work place, and the nation at large a culture of blind obedience to autocracy prevails. Poverty, illiteracy, and ill health, together with a fatalistic belief in predestination make the masses politically quietist, save for small minorities of Jihadists on the one hand and Western influenced professional activists on the other. It should be noted that the Shiite partisans of Ali have been rebellious against the religious and temporal order of Sunni rulers since the early Islamic state. Obedience here, therefore, refers to the obedience of the adherents of a specific sect to the rulers of their own sect.
        Curiously, Muslim, but non-Arab countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey, together representing almost two thirds of world Muslims, conduct democratic elections and allow female prime ministers and presidents. Obviously, these non-Arab Muslims have a more relaxed attitude to Islamic dogma than Arabs do.
Why is the political persona of the Arab masses quietist?
        First, the masses fear the security forces.
        Secondly, the masses worry that change could result in a worse ruler.
        Thirdly, the influence of Islam is strong on the Arab peoples. The Quran describes them as the “best nation evolved to mankind” (3:110). The Prophet, His Companions, the Quran, and the Sanctuaries in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem are all Arabic. Arabs feel they are the guardians of an Arabic religion. Additionally, political frustrations during the past half-century over U.S. policies in the Middle East and Israeli humiliation have been drawing Arabs closer to Islam.
         Obedience to authority is the hallmark of Islam’s political theory. In the harsh environment of the Arabian Desert, disobedience and strife could waste scarce water and staples. Islam is a way of life guided by the Quran and the Prophet’s actions and words in the Hadith. To be a good Muslim one must abide by the rules of the Quran and the Hadith. The Prophet Muhammad, a product of desert living, enshrined obedience to authority into the Islamic Creed. In 4:59, the Quran orders: “Obey God and obey God’s messenger and obey those of authority among you.” The Prophet has also reportedly said: “Hear and obey the emir, even if your back is whipped and your property is taken; hear and obey.” Belief in predestination makes tyrannical rulers seem as if they were ordained by God’s will. Many eminent Islamic jurists opine that in the name of societal peace, years of unjust ruler are better that a day of societal strife. Unless the historicity of the Quran and the Hadith are allowed to be freely examined; rationally and philosophically, without the fear of persecution under blasphemy laws and Ulama intimidation genuine Arab democratic reforms will not evolve for generations, if ever.
        Today, Arab rulers exploit Islam to prolong their dictatorships. Egypt’s president and the Saudi king declared on February 24, 2004: “The Western model of democracy does not necessarily fit a region largely driven by Islamic teaching.” Pandering Ulama to Arab kings and presidents preach that obedience to Muslim authority is a form of piety.
        Fourthly, in the Arab home, poverty drives the father to transform his children into a ‘security blanket’ for old age. Fear of destitution makes the father into what Nobel Laureate Najib Mahfouz calls the “central agent of repression,” constantly threatening his children with the wrath of God if they disobey him.
        At school, corporal punishment terrorizes students into blind obedience in classrooms.
        The manager at work, a product of the Arab milieu, demands obsequiousness from subordinates. In the thin Arab labor markets, the employee finds that blind obedience averts financial catastrophe.

Islamist democracy is no Western democracy
Lately, leaders of the Arab World’s best known Islamist movement, the Muslim Brothers, have been supporting free parliamentary elections.
    Is Islamist parliamentary democracy consistent with Western democracy? The answer is no. The parliament in an Islamist democracy is not the final authority in lawmaking. Sovereignty in Islamist democracy is to God whereas sovereignty under Western democracy is to the people. Islamist parliamentary democracy superimposes an Islamist constitutional court; composed of unelected clerics, on top of an elected parliament to ensure that man’s laws comply with God’s laws, a structure similar to Iran’s Council of Guardians.
    Is the Islamist constitutional court similar to Western constitutional courts? Again, the answer is no. While the former adjudicates according to the Ulama’s interpretation of Islamic law, the latter adjudicates according to parliamentary laws.

The failure of Washington’s Arab democratization project
Washington has been supporting Arab dictatorsin order to keep the Islamists at bay. The advances that the Islamists made in every one of the Arab countries that held elections in 2005 and early 2006 at the instigation of the Bush administration indicate that the foray into Arab elections might be over.
    In the occupied Palestinian territories, the Islamist Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats.
        Iraq’s January 30, 2005 elections were expedited, if not forced, by the leader of the country’s Shii majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. His candidates won 140 of the 275 parliamentary seats: In the December 15, 2005 elections, they won 128 seats.
    In Saudi Arabia, the 2005 municipal council elections were theatrics. Women were excluded altogether. One-half of the councilors were government appointed and the councils have no power, merely a local advisory role.
    In Egypt, democratic reforms meant many restrictions on the opposition and a fifth term for the incumbent.
    Finally, the cause of democracy was certainly not enhanced when Colonel Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, capitulated to U.S. pressure without an ounce of change in his tyrannical rule.
        The U.S. “War on Terrorism” has also delayed Arab democratic reforms. Since Arab rulers’ cooperation is needed to eliminate the local Jihadists, Washington cannot seriously pressure its dictator friends to become democrats, because of the fear that democracy could usher more Islamists into city halls. Furthermore, the enormity of the damage inflicted upon Iraq since 2003 by the American occupation in the name of democracy has repelled the Arab masses from democratic reforms.
    Arab kings and presidents are delighted!

What is the solution?
Since democratic governance is unlikely to grow in Arab soil, an alternative would be benevolent dictatorship. Except for its non-representative nature, benevolent dictatorship could deliver participatory rule, ensure justice for all, fight corruption, nepotism, sectarianism and tribalism; thus, defusing the anger that breeds and inflames the Jihadists.
    How likely is it that benevolent dictatorships might replace Arab rulers’ tyranny? The answer is that since benevolent dictatorship does not evolve institutionally there is no predictable pattern to discern here. There might be a coup d’état by a benevolent dictator tomorrow; or, there might not be one, ever.
    Arab democracy is fantasy.

The battle for Lebanon

Thu, 29 May 2008 10:35:47 GMT

The battle for Lebanon is a battle between a relatively rich minority among Lebanon’s four million people and a poor majority. The minority controls the political and economic fortunes of the country. On the other hand, the majority refuses to be dominated. The Lebanese divide is political and economic, not religious or sectarian; though, Lebanon is home to 18 different religious sects, all recognized in the Lebanese constitution.

The minority encompasses factions within the Maronite and other Christian communities, traditionally known for their anti-Syria, pro-France and the United States affiliation led by former president Amin Gemayel’s Phalange Party and Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces. Additionally, the minority includes Sunni Muslims, traditionally pro Syria but changed sides recently, led by the young Saudi/ Lebanese billionaire Saad Al-Hariri’s Future Movement, and a large faction among Lebanon’s Druzes who had been pro-Syria but changed sides too; led by Walid Junblat’s Progressive Socialist Party.

The majority includes Maronite and other Christians; led by former general Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. The majority includes also the downtrodden Shiites; led by Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah and Nabih Berri’s Amal movement, in addition to Sunni Muslims; led by former prime minister Omar Karami and Sunni cleric Fathi Yakun’s Islamic Movement of Lebanon, and Druzes; led by Talal Arsalan’s Druze Democratic Party. The poor majority looks to Syria and Iran for support.

It is difficult to know with accuracy the religious and the sectarian make-up of Lebanon’s population. The last census was taken in 1932. That census gave Christians more than half of the population, with the Maronites a third of the population. However, Christian numbers have been declining since 1932 due to relatively low rates of population growth compared to Muslims’ growth rates, especially the Shiites, and to migration from Lebanon to Europe and the Americas.

Today, the general consensus is that Shiites represent just over 40% of the Lebanese, Christians roughly 35%, Sunnis around 20%, and Druzes about 5%. That no census since 1932 has been allowed to take place reflects the seriousness of Lebanon population issue.

The rich minority may be guesstimated at about 40% of the population. In the 2005 parliamentary election, this minority won the majority of the seats: 72 out of 128seats, or 56%. The poor majority, estimated at about 60% won 56 seats, or 44%. The skewed representation in parliament is the result of a flawed election law and the power of Saad Al-Hariri’s billions. The rich oppose a meaningful change to the election law; the poor support the change.

Saad Al-Hariri is a son of Rafiq Al-Hariri. He holds Saudi and Lebanese nationalities. Rafiq Al-Hariri was born in 1944 in the Lebanese port city of Sidon to a Sunni Muslim family of modest means. In 1965, he left for Saudi Arabia, working as an accountant in a construction company. In Saudi Arabia, he moved from rags to riches swiftly. Fifteen years later, Rafiq Al-Hariri was on the Forbes top 100. After his assassination in 2006, his family members featured in Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2006. He reportedly left an estate of $16.7 billion. Saudi Oger, a construction company owned by Al-Hariri is a thriving business in Saudi Arabia today specializing in the construction and maintenance of profligate palaces for the senior Al-Sauds.

In 1978, Rafiq Al-Hariri was made a citizen of Saudi Arabia. He returned to Lebanon in the early 1980’s; implanted by the Saudi ruling family in response to the absence of a viable Sunni leadership in the country and the rising power of the Shiite population since the early 1960s under the leadership of the cleric Musa Al-Sadr (disappeared in 1978 while on an official visit to Libya).

The Shiites have been for centuries the downtrodden of Lebanon, suffering abject poverty, illiteracy, and ill health. Marginalized and discriminated against as second-class citizens by the government and society, Lebanon’s Shiites have suffered centuries of indignity and humiliation. Their liberation started in 1959 with the arrival to the coastal city of Tyre of Musa Al-Sadr, an Iranian-born Lebanese Shiite cleric, son of a long line of distinguished Shiite scholars. At the turn of the nineteenth century, his ancestors escaped Ottoman persecution from Tyre to Iraq’s holy city of Najaf, then to Iran.

A close religious connection between Iran and the Shiites of Lebanon had been established some five centuries ago. Shah Ismail made Shiism the state religion of the Safavid dynasty (1502-1737) instead of Sunnism, presumably to fight the Sunni Ottomans. Lacking the clerics to convert and teach Shiism to his subjects, Shiite scholars from southern Lebanon (Mount Amel) were invited to establish schools and train Persian clerics in Shiism. Ever since that time a theological bridge between Iran and Lebanon flourished.

Musa Al-Sadr awakened in the Shiites of Lebanon a sense of dignity and worth unknown before. He replaced their innate self-pity, sorrow, and submission by a fiery spirit of hope, defiance, and revolution. In 1974, Al-Sadr formed the Movement of the Disinherited, a political movement aimed at social justice. In 1975, the Amal movement was formed as the militia wing of the Movement of the Disinherited. After Al-Sadr’s disappearance in 1978, the momentum of his work gave rise in the early 1980s to Hezbollah, a militia trained, organized, and funded by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards. In addition to its military wing, Hezbollah organizes extensive networks of social development programs, running hospitals, schools, and social help for the poor.

In Lebanon, Rafiq Al-Hariri started to establish his power base through making large donations and contributions to various groups and causes. He laid the groundwork for the 1989 Taif Accord, which Saudi Arabia organized. Taif ended the fifteen-year civil war (1975-1990) and paved the way in 1992 for Al-Hariri to become prime minister. He was prime minister from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 until his resignation on 20 October 2004. Hariri was assassinated on 14 February 2005.

Until the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001 took place Rafiq Al-Hariri was content to rule in Lebanon under Syria’s domination. Syrian troops entered Lebanon in 1976 at the request of the Lebanese. They put an end to Lebanon’s civil war. Syrian troops were in Lebanon for 29 years before being forced to withdraw unceremoniously on April 26, 2005, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 2004. After 9/11, however, matters changed.

The Bush administration’s response to 9/11 was to want to reshape the Middle East; change the regimes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon plus Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip; and, force a settlement in the Arab Israeli conflict on Israel’s terms. US forces occupied Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in April 2003. Saudi Arabia would play a major role in Washington’s unfolding plans.

That 15 out of the 19 murderers on 9/11 were Saudis threatens catastrophe to the Al-Sauds. Fearing America’s retaliation, the Al-Sauds performed an act of preemptive surrender. Events since 2001 suggest that the Al-Sauds have become even more obsequious and obvious in their submissiveness to Washington than ever before.

Traditionally, Saudis traveled the more than thousand kilometers or so to Lebanon as tourists seeking temperate climate, breathtaking mountains, beautiful women, delicious cuisine, and abundant alcohol. Post 9/11, Saudi Arabia’s interest in Lebanon took a new purpose; install in Beirut a pro Washington government, destroy Hezbollah, and change the regime in Damascus. The instrument would be a Trojan horse loaded with Saudi money called Al-Hariri.

Since the 2005 parliamentary elections the Al-Hariri/ Gemayel/ Geagea/ Junblat alliance, known as 14 March alliance, has been in control of the Lebanese parliament and the cabinet. Prime minister Fouad Seniora has been for years an employee of Al-Hariri companies serving as finance director. Seniora was made finance minister in Rafiq Al-Hariri’s cabinets then prime minister in 2005 by Saad Al-Hariri and his Saudi handlers. The 14 March alliance succeeded in removing Syria’s troops from Lebanon in 2005.

The Saudi plan, however, has run into trouble. Hezbollah proved to be more resilient than to be sidelined easily. In July 2006, Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah despite 33 days of relentless bombardment from the air, land, and sea using the most sophisticated weapons that destroyed much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and killed about 1,000 civilians. Also, when Lebanon’s cabinet decided on May 6, 2008 that Hezbollah’s communication network should be dismantled and that the head of Beirut’s airport security must be removed, Hezbollah reacted violently forcing the cabinet on May 14, 2008 to reverse the two decisions. In the aftermath of this showdown, government and opposition representatives reached on May 21, 2008 in Doha, Qatar a power-sharing agreement in which the Hezbollah-led opposition increased its seats in the cabinet from six to eleven out of 30 seats; winning a veto power over the cabinet decisions.

Syria objects to Saudi Arabia’s political encroachment of Lebanon. Syria and Lebanon have been over the millennia one society. Natural Syria has always signified Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. A look at the map shows why. Lebanon, a small land of 10,230 square kilometers, is surrounded by Syria from all sides (375 kilometers), the MediterraneanSea to the West (225 kilometers) and a strip of land to the south bordering Israel (79 kilometers). Less than two-hour car ride separates Damascus from Beirut. Many of the families in Beirut and Tripoli, for example, have branches in Damascus and Homs. Syrians and Lebanese share the Arabic language, values, customs, habits, food, music, let alone centuries of being ruled as one entity. They became two separate states after the French mandate ended in the mid 1940s.

Syria fears that threats to its own national security could come from Lebanon in two ways. First, Damascus worries that a Saudi controlled government in Lebanon would compromise the defenses of Syria’s own border with Israel. Given their contiguous geography, the military defenses of the Syrian and Lebanese fronts need, in Syria’s view, to be closely coordinated if the Syrian front is to remain viable. Post 9/11, Riyadh’s intentions and policies became suspect. Under such conditions, Syria would strive to keep Lebanon’s southern border from falling under the control of a Saudi controlled government in Beirut.

Secondly, Syria considers Wahhabi intolerance towards other Islamic sects and religions as a threat to Syria’s age-old religious and ethnic harmony. To Syria’s ruling Alawites, Wahhabi belief that the Alawites are non-Muslim heretics could endanger the very existence of the Alawites and their regime. To most Syrians, Wahhabism is a primitive doctrine exploited by the Al-Sauds to subdue the populace in the name of extremist interpretation of Islam; an anathema to Syria’s moderate Hanafi Sunni rite, let alone Syria’s other religions and sects. As such, Syria would resist Saudi Wahhabi attempts to make Lebanon a gateway to Syria. It may be predicted that even if Syria reaches its own peace agreement with Israel in the future, Damascus’ would strive to keep Lebanon free of Wahhabi control. That factions amongst Lebanon’s Maronites and moderate Sunnis, let alone the Druzes, have found it politically convenient to ally themselves with the Wahhabis is like the lamb befriending the wolf.

It ought to be remembered that Wahhabi designs over Syria (and Lebanon) go back to the early days of independence from the French Mandate. In the early 1950s, until the fall of the Baghdad monarchy, the Hashemite kings in Iraq and Jordan were in the way of Wahhabi ambitions. In the late 1950s, Nasser’s Egypt was in the way. To many in Syria, Lebanon is not for sale to Saudi Arabia.

Is Muslims’ Treatment of Women Islamic?

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:45:37 GMT

On March 11, 2002, fire struck a girls’ school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Firemen and concerned citizens were quickly on the scene. However, the religious police locked the schoolgirls inside the inferno rather than let them escape into the streets without their veil and head-to-toe cloak. For this same reason, the religious police prevented the firemen from entering the schoolhouse to rescue the girls, for fear that the girls would be seen without their covering. Fourteen young girls were burned to death and dozens more were injured. Is this treatment Islamic?
    To answer this question, a comparison will be made between the noble treatment that the Prophet Muhammad reportedly accorded to the most celebrated Muslim woman of all, His first wife Khadija, on one hand, and the treatment of women that emerged under Sharia (Islamic Law). The Prophet’s example will be also compared with contemporary extremist interpretations of Sharia by orthodox overzealous Ulama (Islamic scholars or clergy).
    We are told that the Prophet’s first wife was the best born in Quraish, a successful businesswoman and, too, the richest. We are also told that Khadija employed young Muhammad in her business, that she proposed marriage to him when he was about 25 years old, and that she was about 15 years his senior and twice a widow. We are told that for the 25 years of the Prophet’s marriage to Khadija, until her death in 620, He remained monogamous to her, that she was the one person to whom He turned for advice and comfort, and that Khadija was the first convert to Islam. Such an image makes Khadija an emancipated, commanding woman of high standing in Meccan society and in the eyes of her husband par excellence, and that the Prophet treated her with faithfulness and devotion.
    The difference between the Prophet’s treatment of Khadija and the treatment of women that emerged under Sharia Law is stark. To begin with, the Quran subordinates women to men. In 2:228: “men have an edge over women.” In 4:34: “Men are the masters [protectors, maintainers] over women... As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct admonish them and refuse to share their beds and hit [beat] them.” In 18:46: “Money and Sons are the finest adornment of earthly life.”
    On the legal standing of men relative to women, one man is equal to two women when bearing witness in a legal setting. In 2:282: “Have two of your men to act as witnesses; but if two men are not available, then a man and two women you approve, so that in case one of them is confused the other may remind her.”
    Also, in inheritance, a male’s share is equal to that of two females: In 4:11: “The share of the male is equivalent to that of two females.”
    On marriage, the Quran allows Muslim men to have up to four wives simultaneously, on condition of equitable treatment. In 4:3: “Marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that you cannot treat so many with equity, then only one.”
        Regarding divorce, a husband can divorce his wife without giving reason, though the Prophet is reported to have described divorce as the most hateful privilege granted by God. A wife can divorce her husband only after establishing good cause such as impotence, madness, or denial of her rights.
    Allowing the Muslim male to marry four wives simultaneously and divorce any one of them at will without giving cause is synonymous with unlimited polygamy.
    Additionally, Shii religious scholars interpret Verses 4:4 and 4:24 of the Quran as if men are allowed a temporary marriage contract (when traveling, for example), called Mut'a for which a payment to the woman is made by the man in return for her companionship for a specific period of time with no consequent obligations. In 4:4: “Give to women their compensation (dower) willingly, butif they forgo a part of it themselves then use it to your advantage.” In 4:24: “Give those of the women you have enjoyed the agreed remuneration (dower).” The Shii Ulama believe that the Prophet allowed the Mut’a contracts, but Omar, the second Caliph (634-644) prohibited it. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, “it is certain from Tradition that Muhammad really permitted Mut’a to his followers especially on the longer campaigns. But the Caliph Omar strictly prohibited Mut’a and regarded it as fornication (a group of Traditions already ascribes this prohibition to the Prophet).”
    Then, there is the Misyar marriage, sanctioned by the Sunni Ulama. Under Misyar the man is not responsible financially for the woman and the couple live apart; the man visits the woman at her home whenever he wishes. Unlike Mut’a, Misyar has no date certain for divorce. Misyar has been sanctioned by the Mecca-based Islamic Jurisprudence Assembly, which declared on April 12, 2006 that a marriage contract in which the woman relinquishes her right to housing and support money and accepts that the man visits her in her family house whenever he likes, day or night is valid. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and the Grand Mufti of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Islam’s venerable thousand-year-old university, have both sanctioned Misyar. The Misyar contract has become widespread. A recent survey conducted by the Saudi newspaper Arab News found that in Saudi Arabia some marriage officials say that many marriage contracts they conduct are Misyar marriages.
    It is clear that Misyar and Mut’a marriages represent sanctioned adultery. Misyar and/or Mut’a permit couples desirous of an illicit affair to evade being charged with adultery, a serious charge punishable under Sharia Law by stoning to death [according to the Hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet); but not the Quran, which specifies 100 lashes instead. In 24:2: “The adulteress and adulterer should be flogged a hundred lashes each.”]
    The Prophetic Sunna (sayings and acts attributed to the Prophet) contains Traditions unflattering to Women as well. Sahih Al-Bukhari attributed to the Prophet saying that most of those who are in hell are women, that women’s "lack of intelligence" is the reason why a woman’s testimony in an Islamic court of law is equal to half that of the testimony of the Muslim male, and that the reason why women are prohibited from praying and fasting during menstruation is due to them being "deficient in religious belief." Sunan Al-Nasai attributed to the Prophet saying: “People who entrust the management of their affairs to a woman will fail.”
        Thinking of women as having less religious belief, being less intelligent, and more sinful than men reduces womento wicked deficient beings.
    Sharia Law is not applied uniformly. In Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam, the Wahhabi Ulama, acting on behalf of their benefactor rulers, interpret Sharia as to eliminate the potential political opposition of one half of the population to the Saudi government. Saudi Sharia means guardianship over and responsibility by the male in the family (father, brothers, husband) over the actions of the women in their charge. Saudi Sharia means strict segregation of the sexes at work, schools, hospitals, shops, public parks, elevators, etc. It also means banning women from driving motorcars,traveling without the guardian’s written permission, and wearing a black cloak from head to toe to conceal not only their face and hair but also the side of their shoes. It is not surprising, therefore, that Al-Bukhari's attributions became a common popular Saudi proverb: "women are light on brains and religion.”A well known Saudi cleric told Lebanese television viewers on June 19, 2008 that it is permissible for girls to get married as young as age one but have the consummation of the marriage postponed until age nine; following the example of the Prophet who took Aisha to be his wife when she was 6, but had sex with her only when she was 9.
    By contrast, in Muslim non-Arab Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey, Sharia Law is interpreted in such a way as to give women more rights, including becoming presidents and prime ministers.
    Is veiling and covering women from head to toe Islamic? Orthodox overzealous Ulama think so. Moderate Ulama disagree. The Quran demands modesty only. In 24:31: “Tell the believing women to lower their eyes [gaze] and guard their sexual parts, and not to display their charms except what is apparent outwardly.” Similarly, the Quran has no specific demand to segregate the sexes, although, orthodox Ulama made segregation as if it were a religious requirement.
    The contradictions between the Prophet’s fine treatment of His first wife Khadija and the way Sharia evolved on the treatment of women need to be reconciled. Harmonizing Sharia with the Prophet’s way of life (Sunna) is all the more important because the Prophet’s Sunna as a way of life has been made by the Ulama of the tenth century equal to the Quran as a source of Sharia Law.
    A meaningful first step here was announced in June 2006. Turkey has formed a committee of thirty-five religious scholars to study the removal of all Hadith references attributed to the Prophet that encourage violence against women.
    To recap, in marriage, divorce, inheritance, social standing, legal rights, and piety Sharia Law has left women with fewer rights than men, leading to damaging attitudes towards women. Consider, for example, the saying in the popular culture of some Arab communities: Women are like Persian carpets; they get better with beating.

De-politicize the Bible and the Quran

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:25:00 GMT

The Arab Israeli conflict has become a religious war. Politicizing the Bible’s Genesis 15:18: “The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” politicized the Quran. Defeated, humiliated, and powerless, Arabs took refuge in Islam; invoking hostile Quranic Verses, recounting purported stories of the Prophet Muhammad’s troubled relationship with the Jewish tribes in Medina, drawing lessons from the symbolism of substituting Friday for the Sabbath and the direction during prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca.
        For thirteen centuries, however, these were non-issues. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived harmoniously among Muslims in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
        Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s first and thus far the only person of Jewish parentage to reach the premiership (1868 and 1874-1880), described in his novel Coningsby the “halcyon centuries” during the golden age of Muslim Spain in which the “children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves.” Disraeli described glowingly how Muslims and Jews alike “built palaces, gardens and fountains; filled equally the highest offices of the state, competed in an extensive and enlightened commerce, and rivaled each other in renowned universities.”
        Later, in 1492 the Muslim Ottoman Sultan Bayezid-II (1481-1512) encouraged great numbers of Jews to settle in the Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.
        Islam venerates Judaism. Arabs believe they share a common ancestry with the Jewish people going back to the sons of Abraham, Ismail and Ishaq. The Quran praises Abraham as the first Muslim, describing Islam as the Religion of Abraham. The Quranic Chapter 14, with its 52 Verses is named after Abraham and to Joseph the Quran names Chapter 12, with its 111 Verses. Muslim men are allowed to marry Jewish women, without the need to convert them to Islam (the children must be Muslims). Today, Jewish-derived Arabic names like Daoud, Ibrahim, Ishaq, Mousa, Sara, Sulaiman, Yacoub, Yousef, Zakariyya are common in every Arab society.
        Politicizing the Bible politicized the Quran; creating a vexing religious confrontation, pushing the moderates among Arab Muslims into orthodoxy and the orthodox into Islamism and Jihadism. The victory of Hamas in the January 25, 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the popularity of Islamic Jihad, are reminders that this conflict has been delivering the Muslim masses into the hands of the Islamists. History suggests that this religious war could go on for a thousand years and that military actions alone against the Jihadists will breed more Jihadists. Unless the Arab Israeli conflict is resolved justly and quickly, Islamism and Jihadism will multiply.

For a durable solution, the Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized.
The two-state solution, currently in vogue, is inherently unstable. A single democratic and secular state for Jews and Palestinians promises a more durable long-term solution locally and regionally. The two-state solution is capricious for four reasons:
        First, demographically, a purely Jewish state is impossible to attain. The Zionist dream of creating an exclusive state for the Jewish people in Palestine is unsustainable in the long-term. Presently, more than 1.3 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel, or 25 percent of Israel’s 5.2 million Jews. Due to their high population growth rates the Palestinian-Israelis will eventually become the majority. The Palestinian-Israelis are in addition to the 4.2 million Palestinians who live under Israel’s occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Outside Palestine, 2.6 millions are registered in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, plus 1.5 million scattered worldwide.
        Unless the Palestinian-Israelis somehow vanish, Israel’s Jewish population will eventually become the minority and the Palestinian-Israelis the majority; the population growth rate of the Palestinian-Israelis is twice that of Israeli Jews. To demonstrate the significance of the demographic issue, the number of Palestinians in Israel in 1948 was about 150,000.
        If Israel would allow the future Palestinian-Israeli majority full citizenship rights, they’ll control the government. If Israel subjects the majority to an apartheid regime, the system will unravel. Apartheid regimes have short lives: Witness Rhodesia and South Africa.
       Secondly, intractable issues stand in the way of a two-state solution: Jerusalem, borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights, settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return. Since the signing of the Oslo Agreement on September 13, 1993, none of the thorny issues has been resolved. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat attempted in July 2000 to tackle these issues at Camp David, the negotiations collapsed, leading to the second intifada.
        Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement, the extremists on both sides would undermine the agreement.
        Fourthly, the Arab masses will shun a Zionist state. Judging from Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (March 26, 1979) and Jordan (October 26, 1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and Israelis failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions.
        A single state is the solution.
        Western democratic and secular ideals should inspire a single, democratic, and secular state for Palestinians and Jews for three reasons:
        First, the intractable obstacles that have bedeviled the two-state solution would disappear.
        Secondly, a single state will commingle Palestinians and Jews into an inseparable mix. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, estimated at about half a million in more than 125 settlements, could become instruments of integration between Palestinians and Jews, not segregation; a mixture of Jews among Arabs as difficult to unscramble as removing the Palestinian Israelis from Israel. A single state would lead the Arab governments to recognize the new state. Muslims everywhere, Arabs especially, would no longer have an excuse to boycott their Jewish “cousins.” Economic, cultural, educational, and social interaction would follow. The two sides would quickly learn how much they could benefit from one other.
        Thirdly, a single state solution would allow Arabs and Jews full access to the entirety of Palestine.
        The secular democratic one-state solution has been gathering pace. A well attended conference by Arabs and Israelis at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was held on November 17-18, 2007 to address the various aspects of this concept.

Arab and Jew can live together in peace
Around the time of Israel’s creation, more than 850,000 Jews migrated from Arab countries, 600,000 going to Israel. The charge that the Jews migrated because of Arab maltreatment is an unfair political expediency. The migration happened in the course of Israel’s creation. During this period, 531 Palestinian villages were depopulated and 805,000 refugees lost their homes, according to Palestinian sources (650,000 to 700,000 refugees, according to Jewish sources).
        Had Zionism adhered to the stipulation in the 1917 Balfour declaration: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” the Muslim/Jewish conflict would not have developed.
        Durable peace and the long-term prosperity of the Jewish people in the Arab World require the genuine welcome of the Arab masses. Smart bombs and nuclear weapons cannot force Arab peoples’ acceptance of a Zionist Israel. The 600,000 Jews, who had lived in Arab countries for centuries and are today a major proportion of Israel’s Jewish population, could becomea positive link with the Arab World. They share with the Arab peoples many customs, habits, values, food, music, dance, and, for the older generation, the Arabic language. Indeed, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are instruments of integration between Palestinians and Jews, not segregation, a mixture as difficult to unscramble today as removing the Palestinian Israelis from Israel.
        Whether it would be a good bargain to exchange a partial and declining Jewish exclusivity in an unstable two-state solution for a durable single state embracing Jews and Muslims is a question Israel’s Jewish people alone can answer.
        In provoking the enmity of their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term interests of the Jewish people.

In Defense of Pre-Islamic Arabian Culture

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:00:14 GMT

The pre-Islamic epoch in Arabia has become commonly known as the age of Jahiliyya, meaning the age of barbarism, darkness, and ignorance of God’s guidance. The absence of reliable historical sources makes ascertaining the truth about pre-Islamic life challenging. On one important evidence of pre-Islamic life, poetry, Taha Hussain, the eminent Egyptian scholar, philosopher, historian; doyen of Arabic Literature, contended in 1926 that the “great majority of the poetry reputed to be pre-Islamic had been forged by Muslims of a later date and has nothing to do with Jahiliyya. Such poetry, Professor Hussein continues, is Islamic, representing the life of the Muslims, their predilections and inclinations more than the life of the Jahilis (On Jahilyya Poetry, 19).
        The Ulama (Islamic scholars or men of religion) has had a vested interest in promoting a terrible image of pre-Islamic religious beliefs, values, and way of life. The reason is simple; contrast a Jahili age of darkness with the enlightened age under Islam. The Ulama succeeded in depicting the pre-Islamic period as an age of polytheism, licentiousness, adultery, polyandry, prostitution, gambling, drunkenness, plundering, and girl-infanticide, among a long list of other vulgarities. They also succeeded in painting their Jahiliyya colors over not only the Prophet’s habitat in pagan Mecca but also over the geographic entirety of the Arabian Peninsula, despite the existence in the northern parts of Arabia at the time of the Prophetic mission of Jewish tribes in Medina, Fadak, and Khaybar and of Christian settlements in Najran and the southwest of the Peninsula as well as in Byzantine Syria to the north. Even in the Prophet’s household in Mecca Christianity appears to have been known. A cousin of the Prophet’s wife Khadija, Waraqa Bin Nofal, an old man who had already been Christian when Muhammad’s Prophetic mission started and who “had written from the New Testament in Hebrew” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, "The Start of the Revelation" Book, Tradition 3). Khadija took Muhammad to Waraqa to seek his advice on her husband’s future religious mission (Ibid.).
        Astronomical amounts of writings and sermons have proclaimed the great reforms bestowed by Islam upon mankind. This article is not concerned with these declarations. This article is concerned with addressing a specific question: Was the pre-Islamic way of life truly so terrible?
        To answer, a comparison would be made between what the Holy Quran tells us about certain aspects of the pre-Islamic way of life and how the same aspects have become basically a part of the Islamic way of life; such as: Beliefs about monotheism, the ritual of the Mecca pilgrimage, beliefs in Jinn and angels, treatment of women, wine drinking, and slavery.
        On monotheism, although the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs worshipped many deities, they recognized a supreme God, “Allah.” The Quran testifies that the pre-Islamic Arabs recognized Allah’s awesome powers:
        In 29:61, if you asked “. . . Who created the heavens and the earth and set the sun and the moon to work, they will certainly reply, Allah.”
        In 29:63, if you asked “. . . Who sends down rain from the sky and gives life to the earth after its death they will reply Allah.”
        In 39:3: “Those who take for protectors other than Allah say: we only serve them in order that they may bring us nearer to Allah.”
        Al-Udhri noted that, “when Khalid Bin Sinan’s daughter heard the Prophet reciting the Al-Ikhlas Sura (Quranic Chapter 112, composed of four Verses), she said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, this is what my father used to say.’ The Prophet did not contradict her and praised her father” (Abdullah, A. Y. Al-Udhari, 1991. Jahili Poetry Before Imru Al-Qais. Ph.D. dissertation. School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, p. 73).
        In naming their children, the pre-Islamic Arabs often preceded the name of a preferred deity by the word Abd (meaning slave, servant) as a sign of respect, fear, or subservience. Indeed, the name of the Prophet’s father was Abd Allah.
        Therefore, in making the first article of the Islamic faith “La ilaha illa Allah,” meaning: “There is no God (deity) but God,” in designating Allah as the only omnipotent God, Islam did not invent a new deity. The Prophet “Muhammad . . . contended himself with ridding the heathen Allah of His ‘companions’ subjecting Him to a kind of dogmatic purification” [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, s.v. Arabs (Ancient)].
        On rituals, Encyclopedia of Islam (New Edition, s.v. Kaaba) states: “It is incontrovertible” that Islam took from the pagan Arabs “an entire pre-Islamic ritual, previously steeped in paganism.” This ritual is the veneration of and the pilgrimage to the Kaaba at Mecca. For the pre-Islamic Arabs, “the Kaaba was the center of worship where the Jahilis prayed and went round it seven times. The Jahilis went on pilgrimage to the Kaaba once a year in Dhul-Hijja for a week, and they performed the Waqfa [standing in or stoppage at] on Mount Arafat” (Al-Udhhri, 1991, 77). In their ritual, the Pre-Islamic pilgrims halted at Muzdalifa, stayed at Mina, made seven runs between Safa and the Marwah hills, sacrificed animals, and shaved their heads.They performed the lesser pilgrimage (Umrah) outside the month of Dhul-Hijja.
        Islam adopted the entire ritual. It recognized the Kaaba as the temple of God and the center of worship, retained the Black Stone, consecrated the Haram sanctuary, and ordered Muslims to perform the pilgrimage, if possible, once in a lifetime on the eighth day of the last month of the Islamic lunar year, Dhul-Hijja. Muslims today, like their pre-Islamic ancestors, circumambulate the Kaaba seven times, halt at Muzdalifa, stay at Mina, make seven runs between Safa and the Marwah hills, sacrifice animals, stone the devil, shave their heads, and wear a special simple garb. They perform the lesser pilgrimage (Umrah) outside the month of Dhul-Hijja,
        Islam has also in common with the pre-Islamic Arabs their belief in Jinn. The pre-Islamic Arabs were “fully convinced,” in the existence of shadowy, crafty, mischievous, even destructive beings called jinn (Watt and Bell, Introduction to the Quran, 1977, 153). While usually invisible, the jinn are capable of assuming forms of snakes, scorpions, lizards, and other creeping things or mad humans (Ibid.). Sura Al-Jinn (Quranic Chapter number 72, composed of 28 Verses), is dedicated to these spirits. Other parts of the Quran recognize Jinn’s existence: “They link Him with jinn by lineage” (37:158); that God created Jinn from fire (55:15), and that Jinn’s end, like men’s, is to serve and worship God (51:56). The Quran reveals also that God sent messengers to Jinn and men (6:130), and teaches that Jinn may believe in God and His Holy Book: (72:1), as well as that Jinn may be unbelievers as well (6:130). Jinn promised that they will not “Associate in worship any gods with our Lord” (72:2).
        The Quran speaks in 41:14 as if the conception of angels had been known and acceptedby pagans: “They said, if our Lord had so pleased, He would certainly have sent down angels.”
        On the treatment of women, the Ulama class succeeded in creating the perception that Islam was the liberator of the pre-Islamic woman. To this end, the Ulama created a barbaric image of the personal and family lives of the pre-Islamic Arabs, depicting them as practitioners, among other dreadful things, of unlimited polygamy and of treating women like chattel. A closer look, however, shows that Islam allows unlimited polygamy and treats women like chattel all the same. In allowing the Muslim male to marry four wives simultaneously and, divorce any one of them at will without giving cause, in giving the woman one-half the weight of the man in an Islamic court of law as a witness and in inheritance, in instituting the Mut’a marriage (the man "marries" the woman for a specific period of time and pays for her companionship during the specified period), and the Misyar marriage (the man visits his Misyar "wife" at her home without financial obligation), Islam has sanctioned adultery, encouraged promiscuity, and reduced the woman to a piece of property.
        By contrast, Khadija, the Prophet’s first wife, we are told, was the best born in Quraish, a successful businesswoman and, too, the richest. Khadija employed young Muhammad and proposed marriage to him. He was 25 years old. She was 40 years old and twice a widow. For their 25-year marriage, until Khadija died in 620 AD, the Prophet remained monogamous to her.
        In comparison with Khadija, Aisha, probably the Prophet’s favorite wife, whom he married after the death of Khadija, was a small child of nine years of age, too young to have known what was happening to her, let alone to have had a say in the marriage. According to attributions to Aisha as recorded in Sahih Al-Bukari, Sahih Muslim, and Sunan Abi Dawood, Aisha reportedly said that the Prophet married her when she was six years old (possibly seven years old according to some accounts), and consummated their marriage when she was nine years old, and that she became a widow after nine years. The Prophet was in his early fifties when he married Aisha. She was one of nine simultaneous wives of the Prophet when he died. For the extra five wives, beyond the four allowed, God granted the Prophet a dispensation. In 33:50: “We have made lawful for you, O Prophet, wives to whom you have given their dower, and God-given maids and captives you have married . . . This is a privilege only for You and not for the other believers.”
        If Khadija were the prototype of the pre-Islamic woman, then pre-Islamic women had had superior basic rights to what Islam granted them. For more on this subject, see the article below: "Is Muslims' Treatment of Women Islamic?"
        Pre-Islamic Arabs spoke of wine drinking, and Islam declared in Verse 47:15 that: “The semblance of Paradise promised to the pious and devout is that of a garden with rivers of water incorruptible . . . rivers of wine, delectable to drink; and rivers of honey pure and clear.” But Islam prohibited in 2:219 wine drinking on the Earth.
        Islam institutionalized pre-Islamic slavery. However, the Quran instructed that slaves should be treated humanely (2:177)and their manumission (24:33) was made into a pious act. Saudi Arabia’s government did not abolish slavery officially until 1962.
        Furthermore, Islam shares in common with desert living a culture of obedience to hierarchical authority. Survival in the burning heat of desert days, freezing winter nights, and scarcity of food and clean water necessitates obedience to tribal hierarchy, if the tribe’s scant resources are not to be wasted in internal quarrels. The Prophet, being a product of desert living, enshrined blind obedience to authority in the Islamic Creed. God orders in 4:59: “Obey God and obey God’s messenger and obey those of authority among you.” Similar wording occurs dozens of times in the Quran. Also, according to Book 20, Chapter 8 of the Hadith compilation in Sahih Muslim: the Prophet is reported to have said: “He who obeys me obeys God; he who disobeys me, disobeys God. He who obeys the ruler, obeys me; he who disobeys the ruler, disobeys me.”
        The belief in Monotheism could have helped Islam’s adoption of blind obedience to authority. Monotheism transferred in one swoop all the powers that hadbeen the preserve of the many gods of the pre-Islamic polytheists into the hands of the one and only omnipotent god, Allah. As the Messenger of Allah, the Prophet was divinely inspired. Being divinely inspired, the Prophet’s authority became rooted in Allah’s unlimited and absolute powers.
        From the above, it may be concluded that Jahili society was not the barbaric society the Ulama made it out to be. Taha Hussein again: “No, the Jahilis were neither ignorant nor stupid, they were not rough and did not live primitively; rather, they were people of knowledge and intelligence, of sensitivity, delicate emotions, refinement, and affluent living conditions (On Jahiliyya Literature, 1927, 74).

America’s Dilemma in Iraq

Fri, 09 May 2008 19:25:53 GMT

The Bush administration wanted a secular democratic Iraq, where the rule of law reigns supreme, with a market-driven economy closely linked to US corporations and investors, flowing with abundant crude oil, supportive of US policies, welcoming to permanent American military bases, a strong ally in “War on Terror,” and friendly to Israel. They dreamed of Iraq as a beacon of democracy for the Arab world to emulate.
            Five years later, the opposite was achieved. A theocratic dictatorship allied to Iran complete with an Islamist constitution tinged with a wilayat al-faqih (rulership of the senior-most Shiite cleric) odor replaced the Arab world’s most secular regime. Five years later, the opposite was achieved. A theocratic dictatorship allied to Iran complete with an Islamist constitution tinged with a wilayat al-faqih (rulership of the senior-most Shiite cleric) odor replaced the Arab world’s most secular regime. Washington’s elimination of the Wahhabi Taliban in afghanistan and Saddam’s regime allowed Iran to become the major power in the world’s richest oil region. On April 9, 2003, control in Mesopotamia was transferred to Iraq’s 60% Shi’a majority after a thousand years of Arab Sunni control. On April 9, 2003, the U.S. won the battle against a tattered Iraq. But Iran, without firing a shot won the war for Iraq; a triumph for the Khomeini revolution--- one of Shiism’s greatest moments since Saladin ended the rule of the Shii Fatimid State in Cairo in 1171 A.D., a cataclysmic event that turned Iran into an unstoppable regional powerhouse. The British think tank, Chatham House, concluded in August 2006. “The greatest problem facing the U.S. is that Iran has superseded it as the most influential power in Iraq,” The key to the future of Iraq is in Tehran today.
            From the Abu Ghraib Prison, the image of American decency and fair play was shattered. From the devastated Anbar, Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul, Najaf, Ramadi, Samarra, Tikrit, and Tal-Afar, with thousands upon thousands of innocent children, women, and men killed and maimed, in addition to the more than four million displaced Iraqis, Arab and Muslim enmity to American policies, sadly, has deepened to a frightening level.
            In the process more than 4,000 American soldiers were killed, 30,000 injured, US$500 billion spent, possibly three times as much in terms of economic cost. These figures turned out to be considerably higher than the prewar forecasts. Less than six months before the war, the White House’s budget director put the monetary cost at US$50-$60 billion. In early January 2003, a few weeks before the invasion, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the number at under $50 billion. "How much of that would be the US’s burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question," Rumsfeld said. Not only were the financial forecasts wildly off, the US Central Command’s war plan postulated in August 2002 that the United States would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq by December 2006, a far cry from the 141,000 US military personnel on the ground in Iraq at the end of December 2006. In Iraq, “America is living a nightmare with no end in sight” warned the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, retired general Ricardo Sanchez in October 2007.
            Why was the Iraq project undertaken? The simple answer is that the benefits from the project were perceived to outweigh its cost. Groups with different agendas pushed for the removal of Saddam’s regime and the occupation of Iraq in the name of serving the best interest of the United States, but in reality each serving its own parochial interest. All these parties contributed to administering a sugarcoated bitter pill to the American people.
            Leading the charge were the oil men who wanted to control Iraq’s 113 billion barrels in proven reserves and later go after Iran’s 90 billion barrels; the chiefs of the military-industrial complex who were tantalized by new opportunities to sell expensive arms systems and gain huge contracts to reconstruct war-ravaged infrastructure; Israel’s lobbyists who sought to demolish Iraq’s fighting capabilities and later those of Iran and Syria; the Christian evangelicals who fantasize over speeding up the return of Christ; the neo-con ideologues who found in the War on Terror a replacement for the Cold War; and Tehran’s cunning Iraqi moles who were bent on luring the US not only to hand them the keys to Baghdad but also hand Tehran control of the predominantly Shi’ite southern Iraq.
            Notable among those Iraqis was Ahmad Chalabi. Befriending many of the men in the highest offices of the Bush administration, Chalabi provided what later proved to be false information regarding Iraq’s WMDs. In the Spring of 2004, rumors circulated in Washington that Chalabi had been duping the Americans all along while spying for Iran. With the approval and funding from Washington, Chalabi had maintained an office in Iran.
            Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem is the head of the Badr Brigade, a militia financed, trained, and equipped by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which fought on the side of Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). He and his older brother, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir, fled to Iran in 1980. As Baghdad fell in April 2003, Abdulaziz was appointed to the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakeem was assassinated in Najaf in August 2003. Iran declared three days of official mourning following his assassination.
            The senior leaders of the Islamic Daawa Party are closely linked to Tehran as well. Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, spent twenty years in exile in Iran. He became Iraq’s transitional prime minister in April 2005. Nouri Al-Maliki succeeded Al-Jaafari in April 2006 as Iraq’s first full-term prime minister. Al-Maliki, a hard-line activist, spent two decades in exile in Iran and Syria.
            Five years after the occupation, Washington finds itself in an untenable position. Staying means facing four fronts: a nationalist war of liberation, a Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian war, a Shi’ite-Shi’ite turf war, and a war against Al-Qaeda. The cost of staying is high, especially when it is to protect anti-American ayatollahs and Iraqi politicians linked to Tehran. However, as the cost of the war mounts, the United States will sooner or later withdraw. When this happens, Iraq will be left as a broken country, plagued by civil war—a haven for gangsters and terrorists. The United States will leave behind a Middle East rife with Shi’ite-Sunni conflicts, spilling rivers of blood, breeding battalions of hardened terrorists, until Iraq’s Sunnis and the Sunni majorities in the neighboring countries manage to either halt the march of Shi’ism or accept Iran’s hegemony.
            The paradox between the fantasy and the reality is astounding.
            How did such a situation develop? Why did the actual cost of the occupation turn out to be so drastically greater than planned?
            The explanation is that Iraqis in their millions did not turn out to welcome America’s soldiers with roses, as Washington’s Iraqi “friends” had promised. In naming Iran as a member of the “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, a few weeks before the invasion President Bush made US plans towards Iran clear, regime change. Rather than wait for America’s onslaught on Iran, America became bogged down in Iraq.
            The lack of knowledge by the Bush administration’s war managers about Arab history, Islam, Sunnism, Shi’ism, Arab social and cultural subtleties and the makeup and dynamics of Iraq, or other Arab religio-ethnic structures. Many of the administration’s “experts” had never visited Iraq or any Arab country before the occupation, let alone studied Arabic, or read the Quran, or deliberated its message from an Arab or Muslim perspective. Most of these “experts” do not speak Arabic. They had little or no contact with Arabs, Arabic food, Arabic music, or the Arab way of life, save for a life-long indoctrination from anti-Arab and anti-Islam rhetoric in Hollywood movies or hostile and prejudiced Madison Avenue prototypes of Arabs and Muslims as dirty, nasty, violent, and nefarious beings.
            This ignorance was also behind the wishful thinking, or the mistaken belief that the Arab masses everywhere would want to copy the Iraqi nirvana. These experts failed to foresee that the masses would regard the American occupation as an anti-Islam colonial adventure. These “experts” could have never imagined that the Quran may be transformed into a weapon against occupation.
            An additional factor is the arrogance of power, the feeling of self-righteousness stemming from the belief that superior force can suppress resistance, and that the Arab people understand only the language of force. The natural outcome of such a mindset is escalating violence, especially when martyrdom-seeking jihadists are at the receiving end.
            Former president George Bush (Sr.) and Brent Scowcroft wrote on why the first Bush administration decided against occupying Iraq in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.”
            In March 1991, when he was defense secretary, Dick Cheney toed his superiors’ line. He said on ABC-TV, in answer to a question as to why US forces did not go to Baghdad to remove Saddam Hussein from power: “I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shi’ite government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Baath party? Would it be fundamentalist Islamic. I do not think the United States wants to have US military forces accept casualties and accept responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. It makes no sense at all.”
           To pretend that the failures are only tactical in an otherwise sound strategy is to put on a brave face with a brazen political spin. To blame the failures on Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian divisions or on the meddling of neighbors is to run away from responsibility. Was it not the American occupation that released these demons in the first place? History will remember Iraq as Mr. Bush’s gift to Iran, a strategic blunder of gigantic proportions. The followers of Shi’ism will be forever grateful. Arab Sunnis will never forget or forgive.
            As for those former officials of the Bush administration who were relentless in their eagerness for the war and who later found it convenient to blame the failures on the Bush administration’s mismanagement, such finger pointing is morally deficient. Two leading neo-cons, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, attacked the Bush team in Vanity Fair Magazine (November 3, 2006). Both had been senior defense department officials and members of a Pentagon advisory board. Both had argued vociferously for war in Iraq. Richard Perle declared thathad he known how it would turn out, he would have been against it. “I think now I probably would have said, ‘No, let’s consider other strategies.’” Kenneth Adelman said, “They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era . . . Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.” Donald Rumsfeld “fooled me,” Adelman added.
            In a speech in October 2007 the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, retired general Ricardo Sanchez labeled US political leaders as “incompetent” and “corrupted” and declared that they would have faced courts martial for dereliction of duty had they been in the military.

The March of Shiism

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:55:24 GMT

The British think tank, Chatham House, concluded in August 2006: “The greatest problem facing the U.S. is that Iran has superseded it as the most influential power in Iraq.”
        On April 9, 2003, control in Mesopotamia was transferred to Iraq’s 60% Shi’a majority after a thousand years of Arab Sunni control. Washington’s elimination of the Wahhabi Talibans and Saddam’s regime in Iraq allowed Iran to become the major power over the world’s richest oil region.
        Unlike other religions and sects, Shiism binds Shiites together, especially among the Shiites of Iran and southern Iraq. To appreciate the reasons why Iran has now the upper hand in southern Iraq a brief outline of the Shi’a/Sunni divide is helpful.

The Shi’a/Sunni divide
The Prophet died in 632 A.D. He left no male children and devised no succession plan. According to Shi’a clerics, the Prophet had “designated” Ali as His successor. Ali was the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law who married the Prophet’s daughter Fatima and left two sons, Hasan and Hussein. Hussein was killed in 680 A.D. seeking the Imamate (Caliphate), the religious and temporal authority over the Muslim community. Shiites everywhere commemorate Hussein’s martyrdom annually with astonishing displays of sorrow.
        Sunnis reject “designation” and the belief that the Prophet had purportedly designated Ali. This conflict over the Caliphate of Ali inspired scores of heterodox sects among Ali’s followers, some forming independent states that lasted for centuries.
        While Sunnis today represent 85% of the 1.3 billion Muslims, with 15% Shi’a minority, the opposite ratio existed around 1000 A.D.
        Most Shiites today are “Twelvers.” They believe that the twelfth Imam descendant from Ali and Fatima, Muhammad Al-Muntazar (the awaited one), disappeared around 874A.D. and is hidden in a state of occultation but will return someday to fill the earth with justice and prosperity. Meanwhile, significantly the Shi’a Ulama have become the Hidden Imam’s representatives, uncovering for the masses his judgment on all matters; in effect conferring upon themselves the power of lawmaking. Senior Shi’a clerics are regarded as standards for emulation (Marjaa).
        Shi’a/Sunni disputes caused great battles. Two events in particular sharpened the schism between them. The first was the Mongols’ destruction of Baghdad and with it the Caliphate in 1258 A.D. Sunnis accuse a Shiite minister in the Caliph’s palace and Hulago’s Shiite astrologer of having facilitated the catastrophe. The second event was Shi’a complicity with the Christian Crusaders against the Sunnis.
        The bitterness continues. In Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the founder of the kingdom treated the Shiites legally as non-Muslims. Shi’a towns are still pathetically poor, though they hold the world’s richest oil reserves. In Bahrain, the Sunni minority dominates the Shi’a majority. In Iraq, until the U.S. changed in 2003 the country’s power pyramid, the Shi’a majority was deprived. In Kuwait, Shiites, almost one-third of Kuwaitis, are second-class citizens. For example, they share one mosque for every 13,000 persons, compared to one mosque for every 600 Sunnis. In Lebanon, Shiites, a third of the population, are underprivileged. In Syria, until seizing power in 1970, the Alawites, a Shi’a sect, lived in abject poverty. In Yemen, the Zaydis, a Shi’a sect, are a third of Yemen’s twenty million people. They accuse the Sunni government of genocide.

Shiism, a binding force
Iran’s influence in Iraq goes back to Islam’s early days. Persian ideas, thoughts, wines, wives, mistresses, and songs won the day since the Abbasids ruled the Arab Muslim empire from Baghdad around 750 A.D. In southern Iraq, Najaf and Karbala (Ali’s and Hussein’s burial places) are the holiest cities. Kazimayn, nearby, has the tombs of the Seventh and the Ninth Imams. Samarra has the tombs of the Tenth and the Eleventh Imams plus the revered Mosque of the Occultation, from where the Twelfth Imam allegedly disappeared (this mosque was blown up on February 22, 2006 and again on June 13, 2007). In the cemeteries of these cities many illustrious clerics are buried.
        In Iran, the Eighth Imam is buried in Mashhad, and in Qumm his sister is buried. Just outside Damascus, Syria, Zainab, the sister of Hasan and Hussein, is buried.
        In commemorating the suffering of the Imams, huge pilgrimages pull the Shiis together.
        Furthermore, in the seminaries of Najaf,Karbala, Mashhad, and Qumm the best-known clerics teach. The prominent families of Najaf and Karbala trace their roots to long lines of marriages with the great families of Burjurid, Isfahan, Kirmanshah, and Tehran.
        Ayatollahs have cross-country followings. From Najaf and Karbala, Iranian clerics often led the Shi’a world. In 1920, the rebellion against the British occupation of Iraq was led from the two holy cities by the two global Marjaas at the time, both from Iran. Since 1970, Iranians; Abu Gharib Al-Khoei (1970-1992) and Ali Al-Sistani (1992-present), have been the leaders. Ayatollah Khomeini taught in Najaf for 13 years before Saddam Hussein's regime expelled him in 1978.
        The Shi’a minorities today, especially in Arab countries, look to Iran for deliverance from Sunni discrimination. Egyptian President Mubarak declared recently that the Shiites in Arab states were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. Indeed, the Badr Brigade, an Iraqi Shi’a fighting force founded and commanded by the late Iraqi Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakeem and his brother of Abdulaziz fought in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) on the side of Tehran.
        The so-called “historical ethnic enmity” between Arabs and Persians is an exaggeration. The conflict has always been among the rulers, not the Shi’a masses. Abbasid Baghdad (750-1258) had a long history of rivalry between Turkish and Persian generals over who would dominate the Caliph’s palace. The Sunni Ottoman Sultans fought Iran’s Shi’a Safavid rulers (1501-1732). After the Ottoman defeat in World War One in 1918, the conflict had been between Baghdad’s Sunni rulers and the Shah of Iran and later, the Ayatollahs. That ethnic enmity between Arab and Persian would keep Baghdad and Tehran far apart is wishful thinking. This notion may have been promoted by those Iraqis who lobbied Washington’s offices of power to change Saddam’s regime and hand them control of Baghdad.

Iran’s infrastructure of influence in Iraq
Iraq is too important to Iran. The two countries share some 1,000-mile-long border. Southern Iraq has the holiest Shi’a shrines, plus ninety billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
        Iran has a solid infrastructure of support in southern Iraq. Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, is the supreme authority for millions in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere. He has declined Iraqi citizenship. His heavy political involvement since the 2003 American occupation suggests that he belongs to Khomeini’s Wilayat Al-Faqih School (rulership of the senior clerics). For more on this issue, see the article in my Blog: Is Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani a spiritual guide or a political leader?
        Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is no friend of the American occupation. However, while consolidating Shi’a control, the Ayatollah has refrained from fighting the occupation forces.
        Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem, is the head of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and its military arm, the Badr Brigade. Badr is a militia of many thousands; equipped, trained, and funded by Iran. On December 21, 2006, US troops raided Al-Hakeem’s compound in Baghdad and detained two members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. AbdulazizAl-Hakeem spent most of his adult life in Iran. He returned to Iraq following the U.S. occupation, joining the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). He was at the top of the Al-Sistani-approved candidates in the January 30, 2005 parliamentary elections. When Abdulaziz’s older brother, Muhammad Baqir, was assassinated in Najaf on August 28, 2003, Tehran declared three days of national mourning.
       Like Al-Sistani, Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem is no friend of the American occupation. His pronouncements clearly indicate that his acceptance of the American occupation is only temporary, until Shi’a control becomes firmly established in Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani and Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem may be described as Tehran’s instruments for the institution of Shii control over Iraq.
        Muqtada Al-Sadr, on the other hand, may be described as Tehran’s instrument to remove U.S. forces from Iraq. Muqtada Al-Sadr is the heir to a prominent Arab Shi’a clerics’ dynasty. He bases his claim to authority on his family’s lineage. In his mid-thirties, Muqtada Al-Sadr does not possess the scholarly qualifications required of a senior Shi’a cleric. To improve his religious credentials, Muqtada Al-Sadr was appointed in April 2003 as Iraq’s representative of Grand Ayatollah Kazim Hussein Al-Haeri, a well-regarded Iraqi exile in the Hawza (Shi’a seminary) of the famous religious city of Qumm, Iran.
        Muqtada Al-Sadr is a son of the highly revered Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq Al-Sadr. His uncle, another Grand Ayatollah, Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr, a colleague and a close associate of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during his exile years in the Najaf Hawza (September 5, 1965 - October 3, 1978), founded in 1958 the Islamic Daawa Party (IDP).
        IDP is the oldest Shi’a organized political party in Iraq. The Party’s senior leaders are closely linked to Tehran. IDP’s name describes its mission: proselytization. IDP aims at forming a theocratic state. Grand Aytatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr championed Wilayat Al-Faqih concept in his 1975 book, Islamic Political System. Four years later the Khomeini revolution was born.
        IDP received big support from Tehran. IDP activists helped form Hezbollah in Lebanon. IDP leader Ibrahim Al-Jaafari became Iraq’s transitional prime minister. Al-Jaafari was in exile for many years in Iran. Nouri Al-Maliki, IDP’s second in command when he became Iraq’s first full-term prime minister succeeded Al-Jaafari. Al-Maliki, a hard-line activist, spent two decades in exile in Iran and Syria.
         Strengthening Tehran grip on Baghdad are the personal rivalries that exist among Iraq's Shiite leaders, particularly the Sistani/Hakeem camp on one hand and the Sadr organization on the other. In their turf wars, these men are compelled to seek assistance from Tehran. It is inconceivable that they would turn to Iraq’s Sunni neighbors for support. If they would do, assistance would almost certainly be denied. Iran is the natural habitat for these men. Under such conditions, divide and rule is a powerful weapon in Tehran's aytollahs' hand to keep Iraq’s Shi’a politicians virtual surrogates.
         On April 9, 2003, the U.S. won the battle against a tattered Iraq. But Iran, without firing a shot won the war for Iraq; a triumph for the Khomeini revolution--- one of Shiism’s greatest moments since Saladin ended the rule of the Shi'a Fatimid State in Cairo in 1171 A.D.
         Irrespective of whether the U.S. increases the level of its military presence in Iraq or withdraws altogether; whether the Democrats or the Republicans control the White House and/or Capitol Hill, and regardless of whether Iraq emerges from its current chaos as a single entity, a federal republic, or broken-up into three states the occupation has set in motion events that make it difficult to predict how lifting the lid on Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic tensions could lead to anything but to Iranian domination over southern Iraq, to Shi’a emboldenment everywhere, and to endless long-Term Shi’a/Sunni conflicts spilling rivers of blood and breeding hoards of Jihadists until the Sunni leaders in the region would either accept Iran’s hegemony or succeed in stopping the march of Shiism.