Amir Taheri: The Terrorist Challenge—Understanding and Misunderstanding//Mshari Al-Zaydi: The fight against terrorism is our war

The Terrorist Challenge—Understanding and Misunderstanding
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/Friday, 4 Jul, 2015

Faced with the growing threat of terrorism, Western officials and analysts seem hard put as to how to deal with something they find difficult to understand. British Prime Minister David Cameron has advised the media not to use the term “Islamic State” for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—known as “Da’esh” in Arabic—because, he claims, the “caliphate” based in Raqqa in Syria is not Islamic. In other words, Cameron is casting himself as an authority on what is Islamic and what is not. At the other end of the spectrum, French Premier Manuel Valls speaks of “Islamofascism” and claims that the West is drawn into a “war of civilizations” with Islam. Cameron continues Tony Blair’s policy in the early days of Islamist attacks on Britain. Blair would declare that although the attacks had nothing to do with Islam he had invited “leaders of the Muslim community” to Downing Street to discuss “what is to be done.”

As for Valls, he seems to forget that Islam, though part of many civilizations including the European one, is a religion not a civilization on its own. He also forgets that civilizations, even at the height of rivalry, don’t wage war; political movements and states do. While it is important to understand what we are dealing with, it is even more important not to misunderstand the challenge. To circumvent the hurdle of labeling the Da’esh-style terror as “Islamic,” something that runs counter to political correctness and could attract cries of Islamophobia, some Western officials and commentators build their analysis on the “sectarian” aspect of the phenomenon. Thus, we are bombarded within seminars, essays and speeches seeking to explain, and at times explain away, the horrors of ISIS and similar groups as part of sectarian Sunni–Shi’ite feuds dating back to 15 centuries ago.

However, the “sectarian” analysis is equally defective. There is no doubt that much of the violence in the Middle East today does have a sectarian aspect. However, what we have is not a war of Islamic sects but wars among sectarian groups. Nobody has appointed ISIS as the representative of Sunnis, some 85 percent of Muslims across the globe. And, in fact, so far ISIS has massacred more Sunnis than members of any other sect or religion. The Internet “caliph” and his cohorts have beheaded more of their own comrades than any kuffar (Infidels). At the other end of the spectrum no one has appointed the Khomeinist mullahs in Tehran as leaders of the Shi’ites. The Khomeinist regime has killed many more Shi’ites than members of any other sect or religion. (Human Rights groups put the number of those executed since Khomeini seized power at over 150,000.)

Equally absurd is to present the Alawite (or Nusayri) community in Syria as a branch of Shi’ism, something that no Shi’ite theological authority has ever done. Even then, the Ba’athist regime led by President Bashar Al-Assad has never claimed religious credentials, boasting about a secular, supposedly socialist ideology. In Shi’ite theology, the Alawites are classified among the “ghulat” (extremists) with a host of other heterodox sects.

The Khomeinist regime’s backing for the Houthis in Yemen cannot be explained in sectarian terms either. The Houthis belong to the Zaydi sect which, though originally exported from Iran to Yemen, has never been regarded by Twelvers (Ithna-’ashariyah), who make up the bulk of Shi’ites across the globe, as being part of the Shi’ite family. In the 1970s Iran’s Shah bribed a few ayatollahs in Qom to issue declarations in favor of Zaydis—which they did, without however providing definitive theological endorsement.

In any case, the Houthis, though representing a good chunk of the Zaydi community, cannot be equated with that faith as a whole. Tehran’s support for them is politically motivated as it is in the case of Assad in Syria and the various branches of Hezbollah, notably in Lebanon. (The other night in a discussion circle in London a self-styled expert was mistaking Zaydis with Yazidis, insisting that former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh was a Yazidi!)

There is no doubt that Tehran arms and supports a number of Shi’ite groups, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hazara in Afghanistan. However, it also supports some Sunni groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Tehran also did all it could to help the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, including the sending of a high-level mission with offers of billions of dollars in aid provided the brotherhood agreed to purge the Egyptian army.

In Afghanistan, Iran sheltered and, for years, financed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Sunni Hizb Islami, although it had massacred quite a few Afghan Shi’ites in the early 1990s. Since 2004, Tehran has also maintained contact with the Taliban, a militant anti-Shi’ite Afghan terror group. (At the time of this writing Iran is preparing to allow the Taliban to open an unofficial embassy in Tehran.) Iran is also training and arming Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, almost all of them Sunnis, to fight ISIS, which casts itself as the standard-bearer of Sunnis.

At the other end of the spectrum, various opponents of the Khomeinist regime, among them some Sunni powers, have supported anti-regime Shi’ite groups at different times. Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein protected, financed, and armed the People’s Mujahedin, an Iranian Shi’ite group, for decades, and at one point sent them to fight inside Iran itself.

Pakistan, a Sunni-majority country, has become a base for anti-Iran terror groups which, according to Iranian Border Guard, have been responsible for more than 80 deadly attacks over the past 12 months. At one end of the spectrum it is not enough to be Shi’ite of any denomination. Unless you also worship the “Supreme Guide” you are worse than the “infidel.” At another end, being a Sunni Muslim is not enough to let you live a reasonably human life in areas controlled by ISIS; you must also pledge fealty to the self-styled “caliph.”

The Khomeinists, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, Boko Haram, Hizb Islami, and a whole host of other outfits may try to market their discourse with a religious narrative. They may even be sincerely motivated by rival interpretations of Islam. What they cannot claim is the exclusive representation of Islam as such or a particular sect. They are part of Islam but Islam is not part of them. These are political movements using violence and terror in pursuit of political goals. They pretend to be waging war against the “infidel” and may even be deviously sincere in that claim. But they are primarily waging war against Muslims, regardless of schools or sect.

The fight against terrorism is our war
Mshari Al-Zaydi/Asharq Al Awsat/Thursday, 04 Jul, 2015
The United Arab Emirates has given, through law, a practical lesson after its Federal Supreme Court sentenced to death Alaa Al-Hashemi, the woman known as the Al-Reem Island ghost, who stabbed to death an American woman at an Abu Dhabi shopping mall last December. The court rejected claims that Hashemi suffers from psychological problems, instead providing evidence that she was radicalized online.

Does anyone still doubt that “all” Arabs and Muslims are involved in an existential war with armed extremist groups? We all saw what happened in Egypt on Monday, when the country’s prosecutor-general was killed by a car bomb. The assassination coincided with the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled the Muslim Brotherhood. And now, while you are reading this article, Egypt is fighting a war with Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants in North Sinai.

After the criminal attack that targeted Shi’ite citizens at the Imam Al-Sadiq Mosque, Kuwait decided to follow a new path, declaring an all-out war on armed extremists—whether belonging to ISIS or not—and taking a series of procedures, including strict legislations. Following the criminal beach attack in Sousse, Tunisia has also has entered into an open war with armed religious groups. President Beji Caid El-Sebsi has said the country will take strong measures in response to the attack. Even in Britain Prime Minister David Cameron said in recent days ISIS poses “an existential threat” to the West.

But we need to see the big picture, not just the minor details. The problem is in no way limited to a specific country. It goes far beyond country-specific problems, such as the removal of Egypt’s Islamist former president Mohamed Mursi; the sectarian behavior of Abdul Hameed Dashti and Walid Al-Tabtabai, two Kuwaiti MPs; Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s time in office; secret plots against Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda Movement in Tunisia; or the conduct of the British police as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) apologists claim.

All these details limit our vision because the problem is much deeper and bigger. It lies in the “mentality” that dominates the consciousness of ordinary Muslims, young and old, and the Sunni and Shi’ite sheikhs who instigate sedition in society. To put it differently, I acknowledge that each country has its own political circumstances and that several intelligence agencies are recruiting some Islamist groups, with or without their knowledge, to target their enemies in the Arab world, particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the bigger picture: the fundamental flaw in the culture that produces the fighters and supporters of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Brotherhood. This flaw is the source of the entire misfortune which has been left uncured.

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said during the funeral procession of prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat that Egypt is fighting a war with a despicable enemy, and despite a weak legal system. Therefore, he added, Egypt must introduce legal reforms to cope with the threat of terrorism. Kuwait’s interior minister said in recent days his country was facing a real war and that it was seeking to introduce new legislation and policies to enable it to fight terrorists and those who look up to them. Declaring war on those groups will reduce a heavy cost that could be caused by laxity and procrastination. It is a war we have delayed for far too long.