What the Elections Mean: More Focused Discussions

What the Elections Mean: More Focused Discussions

Most everyone saw it coming: the election of moderate Islamists. Backroom dealings bring former foes together. We all hoped that discussions amongst themselves would lead to democracy. Now we know that political wannabes will not alter their core positions. For the clerics, that means rejecting everything Western, be it a tool, a media artifact, or an idea.

The revolutions had nothing to do with Islam or the MB. But like Algeria in 1992, the demonstrations were manipulated, hijacked. That's the fear. In our archive, the reader can find our studies of moderate Islam. Let us turn to the elections.

Egypt -

Big protest demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Cairo, in Alexandria and elsewhere, did not prevent parliamentary elections from going forward to Monday, Nov.28. Now votes are being counted. The Ikhwan Muslimiyya will gain some 43% of the seat (according to our calculation last autumn). In response, Gen. Hussein Tantawi meets with Muhammad Al Baradei. Mr. Al Baradei has been trying to link up with the Ikhwan, since July, 2011. He has had many 'enlightening discussions' with mullahs and muftis. This man who handled nuclear weapon data, enforcing controls, is now handling a fire burning just as brightly: the drive for a country where the shari'a is the basis of all legislation.

Leave it to the Brothers to screw things up yet again. Following Hasan Al Banna, they see every thing, tool, idea, practice coming from the West, as evil. In order for them to come forward, they need to back out of their assumed posture, as eternally at war with Israel, Britain and the USA.

Another problem is that the Brothers, for all their study, do not have access to modern sciences, physical, psychological and social. They do not read the texts critically. They are interested in being seen as pious alongside others. Islam can provide a total experience, 'unpolluted.' That would be fine if they were following Muhammad Qurayshi's precepts and practices at Medina. But of course bad laws broke into the shari'a. Before these alien and destructive laws are removed from the books, Islamic countries will be criticized by the rest of the world. Who wants to get stoned? Or cut the hand off of a repeat shoplifter? And the persecution, demonization, genocide, against other families of Abraham?

Why the terror? The killing of innocents? What verse of what sura justifies and prompts this behavior?

And jihad. There is no theory of war in the Qur'an, but look at them fight.

Washington and other NATO nations are worried that the Islamists are going to come out on top. Curiously, we have never met, in all of our travels, a mullah, mufti or scholar of religions, who could see the Islamic-system' of seven ways of holding land. They just were not trained to use phenomenological analysis to critically 'lift' that system from the early books of Malik ibn Anas, Numa, Ahmed ibn Hanbal, Al Mawardi, As Suyuti.of their key terms.

You can check out the innards of a curious book entitled “A Phalanx of Lies: How Falsehoods Bedevil Peace in the Middle East and Central Asia. Here we go at fundamentalist here in the USA, in Israel and in Islamic countries. We know which passages from the Torah, the New Testament and the Qur'an they are using to justify and guide their genocidal urges. Why?

When people get so poor they go into survival mode, dying off early, they'll cling to the steady hand of the local cleric, who provides something the West cannot. Even the Egyptian state cannot provide services for a third of its people, a vacuum the Islamists fill. This is their proper place, and should be supported. Together, secular and sectarian could and should provide all kinds of services. Education is not a service. Egyptian children should learn about Islam and other religions. Will the Islamists be involved? Maybe as students. Only rarely is a mullah trained in modern social sciences, or even how to read a text. Symbols get taken for sign-posts: the little mind sees a big pattern. Hence the childish extreme beliefs about Islam, that it involves wearing robes and being seen in the mosque. If our attention gets stuck in form, irrelevant aspects, like how long my beard should grow, or dominance over women, then there is not enough attention left to ferret out the practical, useful core truths.

The Salafis and the fundamentalists, Shi'i or Sunni, claim to find everything in the Qur'an. They'll kill you if you say the book was written by a human. Of course such reverence for a book is the sin of shirk, of associating God with another person or thing. The Qur'an was pieced together a half century after the prophet's death. The first written biographies of the prophet (Sira) were written some 160 years after his death. All those stories about Muhammad – most have grains of truth.

Readers are invited to log on to www.middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com to find therein, two papers. One, “Islam under the Knife: Reform Brings Power” shows how obnoxious inhumane laws wormed their way into the shari'a. They are: stoning, the cutting off of hands and gouging out of eyes, the repression and control of women, persecution of non-Muslims, terror, jihad, genocide.

Last week, SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) led by Hussein Tantawi 'the Sphinx,' suggested that elections for a prime minister be held this coming summer. He also has been conferring with many technocrats, generals and commodity suppliers. Al Azhar sheikhs should be discrete and not jump into street Islam.

Tunisia -

Like the MB in Egypt, the An Nada party may have an ax to grind. I remember way back in 1985, an Amnesty International meeting where some twelve of us met two Moroccan human rights representatives. We were to defend several Islamists in prison, but the two educated Moroccans exhibited an authentic fear. We kept arguing for the immediate release of two clerics, but AA in Tunis was not pleased. “These street clerics are not educated. How can you rule, or even play it straight, unless you were educated? “

He has a point there. In regard to the 'conflict crescent,' the emergence of a nuclear stand off, one better play straight. In Egypt, Tunis, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, the protesters are a fraction of the populace. Yet educated citizens remain vigilant. The new constitutions will not abrogate secular civil and criminal codes. Family law may suffer. If only the shari'a were purged of the 'laws' like stoning and the cutting off of hands, persecution of non-Muslims, enforced supervised prayer, the demonization of other faiths, terror and jihad. The Qur'an has no theory of war. The high author, channeled through M., addresses the consequences of war: the care of widows and orphans, prisoners of war. It never say “Attack before they attack.” In no place does the Qur'an say “Go attack and kill.” There are three verses – one liners with exclamation marks – urging his squad of soldiers to “attack them (the non-believers) everywhere. If they resist, slay them where they stand, but if they surrender, let mercy guide your actions.” There is also a hadith where Muhammad says: “If violence breaks out, find out who started it, then attack him.”

The Brothers are winning over young men in the poor suburbs, and outside Tunis, in Sousse, Tebessa, Sfax, Kasserene and, of course, Kairoun. An Nada is national movement, still expanding, and now in office. Their leaders have some education. As they learn about the Tunisian people these high muftis slough off the carapace of identification, and slither from one huge problem to another. But the rest of the country are educated Muslims, who see no contradiction between Islam and democracy. Foolishly, most cleric argue and work against this modernization of the code. The competency of a legal system depends partly on how it reforms itself, from decade to decade.

I remain hopeful that the shari'a will be purged of its alien parts, to base itself on the precepts and practices of Muhammad at Medina and Mecca. And so be compatible with international norms and laws.

Algeria -

One of many curious aspects of Algeria is the ability of government and private companies to devise and install, power and desalination plants, highly specialized industries, all supported by other industries. This money was enriching an elite, but that elite required complete competency in these critical endeavors. Riots originated in Tindouf in June 2010, and infected Algeria. Self-immolations started with Tuareg Sahrawis protesting Morocco's annexation of their country, then spread to the suburbs of Algiers, and from there leaped Libya the armed forces and intel police.

Libya -

The same mixing and study of actual conditions needs occur in Libya. 'Experts' like Qaddafi himself, saw the Cyranaica as a blood exiswtential enemy. That rivalry goes back to 800 BCE. (Tripolitania was a Phoenician colony, Benghazi and Cyrenaica a Greek one.) Thank God that many other places exist in Libya, so to mitigate the inevitable rivalries between east and west. The Fezzan is determined to retain a long-suppressed independence, vital to nomads (even if they live in small towns).

My research assistant called my attention to videos of the last minutes of Qaddafi's life. As they lifted him from the truck, Qaddafi, face bloody, was smiling like a surprise child.

Palestine -

We have heard this from two of our Palestinian Arab friends: “OK, Israel, you have won. We surrender. Now there is only one big country, and we naturally seek full equal status before the law.”

This is the infamous one-state solution, never really achieved, either by the Israelites, the Judeans, or

by the eight imperial administrations, from Middle Egypt, Canaan (Phoenicia), Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonian, Seleucid/Ptolemy Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Turk, Norman, Mameluke and Fatimid, Seljuk and Ottoman empires, the Brits and the Americans.

Such is the racial and sectarian discrimination, taught to their children at an early age, using the scripture in perverse ways, to engender hatred of the other Abrahamic brother, that we cannot see a successful 'one nation approach.' In Gaza, there are some 3,000 warriors ready for suicide attacks. Another 3,000, Shi'a, sit in bunkers in southern Lebanon. They now rule Lebanon, its parliament and the executive. Will they sacrifice themselves for the marji'? (Twelver Shi'a clerical establishment, most in Iraq and Iran, but also in Lebanon.) Many Palestinian Sunnis are also given weapons to fight.

Curiously, yet typically, the Israelis cut Palestine's own money stream, but it had no effect on the Gazan people and regime. On Dec. 2, the Israelis announced they were opening the money taps, money that belongs to the Arabs.

No contact between Arab West Bank and Gazans means they'll further polarize. The border with Egypt is now open, but where does that get you? Hunted down like dogs by Bedouin working for both the Israelis and the Egyptians?

Maybe the one-state solution should be given legs and wings and let fly. The religious Jews, following the Torah, will not like sharing holy places. And that land, reading from the bible, stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Of course this is all nonsense. As an archaeologist and anthropologist specializing in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, who worked in the back rooms of museums (the Rockefeller), there is no record or artifacts backing up this historical expansion.

Israel -

The Jewish state is also a Muslim state. The supreme court of Israel trains its own people in Arabic and they study the early shari'a texts, Malik, Numa, ibn Hanbal. Most Israelis judges speak and read Arabic, and they routinely use the shari'a and fiqh to adjudicate in cases. Most pertain to proterty that had, long ago, been 'dedicated forever' to some social purpose. These are the waqf (auqaf pl) properties, the administration of which is the responsibility of the local cleric(s).

Israel had its Spring also, a series of demonstrations and occupation. But that broke up after Gazan terrorists ambushed an Israeli tour bus, killing eight. Some five Egyptian soldiers were then killed by an Israeli helicopter, causing an attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo. The government and army seems to have woken up. Of course the Sinai has been a hotbed of crime and terror.

Israel would like to recruit Arab Bedouin to run ops into Sinai. So, too, the Egyptians. There are still some UN post strung along that border. Foolishly, Israel is forcing its Bedouin into government-controlled settlements, using money incentives. I've traveled amongst Israel's Bedouin, and they are harmless. They graze their animals on land no one else uses. In actual fact, they are being removed from the land. I remember seeing camel caravans on the move to the Old City (1978).

If Jerusalem really were sacred land, it would be shared, easily. The destiny of Israel and Arab Palestine is to become nations amongst other nations. History has many examples where and when two nations merge to colonize each other. Nomad and settled folk often worked out arrangements. This was the Neolithic achievement that made possible civilization. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad – all knew it. They were not revolutionaries bring in new universal law codes, as much as traditionalists you sought to retrieve from the past, old life ways bound by shared agreed-upon laws and norms.

Today, the US asks Israel to engage in diplomacy to retrieve relations with Egypt and Turkey. Diplomacy requires some give, as well as take, and this the Likud will not agree. Why? Because the hard-lined fundamentalist rabbis are using scripture as both justification and as a blueprint. (See Exodus 23: 23-32. That's the script they're using. Note that is calls for a gradual conquest, a slow-motion genocide.

Syria -

The Ba'athi regime of Al Asad rejoices in the support it's receiving from the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans and the Vietnamese. UN sanctions are limited. The Arab League is in a state of deep indignation at the slaughter of unarmed citizens by Syrian police and military. Everybody, it seems, is trying to prevent a sectarian civil war. But the regime is up against the wall, like a rat cornered in a dark space. Where is it getting its money to pay its 3 million employees?

All spring and summer and autumn we were very pessimistic that peace would return to Syria anytime soon. But now I'm tracking indications of exhaustion and stress, not just amongst specific urban populations, but amongst the 16 active organs and agencies perpetrating genocide against their own citizens. Like any siege, exhaustion leads usually to a request for mercy.

Yemen -  

Some seven killed in Ta'iz on Dec.2,, probably free army soldiers and Islamists resisting the new state army. That army is still commanded by Ahmed Saleh. His father, president Ali Abdullah Saleh, has thrown in the towel and migrated once again to Saudi capital Riyadh.  Such an ignominious defeat must depress all his friends and family who hold large junks of money and power.

A sudden steep learning curve for the opposition, who want Saleh and his sons tried in court. There are some ten elements on the street that need be factored in to any analysis.: the liberal, secular, educated leadership; the shebab or youth, with electronic media; the clerics, with their congregants, usually the young toughs;  labor unions and socialists and communists; the tribes; professional associations; women's groups. School children; university students; disaffected army and police.

Can these folks get it together to make a new Yemen?



United Arab Emirates -

There is much dissent in the UAE. The Bedouin gripe, the mullahs scheme, the majority non-native population is suppressed if not oppressed. Even the super-rich bitch as if they are victims. Many are, in Dubai, where property is still sold for twice its worth.. But the economy is damn good, so it perplexes his majesty, president Al Khalifa, that anyone should feel bad.. It must have been him who felt so insulted by what opposition members put out in the airwaves, that they sentenced a score to prison terms 'for insulting the government.

UAE has a parliamentary upper house, some forty members, working with the prime minister M. Rashid Makhtoum. He also presides over the Council of Ministers.

Bahrain -

The tragedy of the Bahrain spring was the manipulation of the educated demonstrators by unseen clerical 'hands.' This threatened to bring in Iran. The occupation of Pearl Square turned into a riot, an occupation of a vital shared space, so drew fire. There's no excuse for that, of course.

Before the Pearl Square occupation, the ministers were trying to draw in responsible Shi'a. But any Shi'a MP had to obey the soft-power dictates of the marji'oun (Iran'Iraq's clerical establishment and hierarchy).

As Iran prepares its bomb and ballistic missile, word has been relayed to the Bahrain leaders, that their country will not survive an attack on the American 5^th Fleet in Manama harbor. So, in the years to come, I see the Americans being asked to leave. The Americans can always come back if trouble develops.

Iraq -

The last American soldiers will be leaving Iraq in just three weeks. The Pentagon wanted to keep some eight big bases in the country, but Iraq simply threatened to sue American offenders in Iraqi courts. That was enough to get the Americans to cut and run.

The Shi'a in the top offices are not sharing power, except with the Kurd Talebani, who is now pro-Iranian. The various Sunni intel services are gearing up for a secret war. How unfortunate that Iraq may not recover...She's open for business, though. Oil, gas, dates, AK-74s, RPGs. They all go together. Too much body armor. Where's Ayyad Alawi?

-John Paul Maynard

The author is the moderator/instructor for the online discussion group 'Islamic civilization' hosted by the Graduate Alumni Association, Harvard University.