Moderate Islam in America and CAIR's Strategy

This morning, I happened upon a 2002 editorial in the newspaper Pakistan Today. The editorial was written by Tashbih Sayyed, a reporter who had left the Pakistan for the United States as he was coming under increasing pressure to conform his articles to hardline muslim fundementalist mores. Mr. Sayyed addressed in his article what he saw as wrong with Wahhabi / Deobandi Islam, and tells how he had hoped to find a practice of moderate Islam in America, only to find much of the Wahhabi poison already seeping into the fabric of America.

In this 2002 article, Mr. Sayyed forecasts precisely the strategy of the Wahhabists and CAIR that we see being played out today -- to claim leadership of all muslims in America, to silence moderate muslim voices, and to drive a wedge between all Muslims in America and all non-Muslims. This is a very important read, particularly coming on the heels of the the Flying Imams (here and here) and CAIR's attempts to silence and belittle the Secular Islam Summit (here).

It is to help people like this author, Mr. Sayyed, that we need to challenge organizations such as CAIR at every turn. And it is Mr. Sayyed's voice, like the voices of those who participated in the Secular Islam Summit, that we need to amplify until it reaches decibels exponentially above that of CAIR's.

The US, more than any Muslim country, understands the principles Allah values and protects them through the US Constitution. The Constitution proclaims that the US government is a creation "of the people by the people and for the people." Allah's will does not favor a particular faith, color or creed, and neither does the American constitution. Allah advocates the middle road hoping that every person will not only take care of themselves, but will work to make the lives of their community members better as well. American values teach the same, translating the idea of social justice into civil liberties principles like the right to privacy, and education without any prejudice or discrimination. Volunteering and charitable work are respected as well. One only has to demonstrate a will to perform.

Islamists know that if American values are allowed to spread in the Muslim world, it will help the evolution of a Muslim state of mind that believes in democracy, pluralism and social justice. The real Islam which, up until now, has lain imprisoned in books, can finally be set free. The US can help in the establishment of a democratic society in the Muslim world after fifteen hundred years of intellectual despotism.
. . . .
In a polarized American society, it will be easy for the Islamists to achieve their goal. It will create a sense of insecurity among Muslims. To make the Muslims feel insecure in America and to force them to join the radical Islamist groups, a deliberate attempt is being made by Islamists to drive a wedge between Muslims and non Muslims. Innocent incidents are being turned into events that cause non-Muslims to dislike Muslims. The non-Muslims are intentionally made to hate Muslims. Situations are being created under which a non Muslim is made to think that Islam is not a peaceful religion and Muslims are not law abiding citizens.

I urge you to read the entire editorial here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Mr. Sayyad has written numerous editorials for Pakistan Today since the two I have linked here, and all are collected on the newspapers archives. I have not read them all yet, but do intend to do so over the next few days. You can find the archives here.

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Taliban & Al Qaeda Taking the Fight -- To Pakistan

The New York Times is reporting that the Taliban and al Qaeda, operating from their safe havens in Waziristan of the North West Fronteir Province (NWFP), are behind several recent suicide attacks aimed at targets inside Pakistan. The attacks are apparently meant as reprisals for prior attacks by the government of Perez Musharraf and as a warning against taking any future action.

[I]n recent weeks the suicide bombers have turned on Pakistan itself, carrying out six attacks and killing 35 people. Militant leaders have threatened to unleash scores more, in effect opening a new front in their war.

Diplomats and concerned residents see the bombings as proof of a spreading “Talibanization,” as Pakistan’s president, Gen. Perez Musharraf, calls it, which has seeped into more settled districts of Pakistan from the tribal areas along the border, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made a home.

In Peshawar and other parts of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, residents say English-language schools have received threats, schoolgirls have been warned to veil themselves, music is being banned and men are told not to shave their beards.

Then there is the mounting toll of the suicide bombings. One of the most lethal killed 15 people in Peshawar, most of them police officers, including the popular police chief.

The police, on the front line of the violence, have suffered most in many of the suicide attacks, diplomats and officials say. They are increasingly demoralized and cowed, allowing the militancy to spread still further, they warn.
. . . .
The creeping militancy has frustrated government agencies, who disagree over what to do about it, according to one intelligence official.

There is consensus that a large-scale military operation, like the kinds that have failed in recent years, is not the solution. But some diplomats say that the series of peace deals that the government struck with tribal leaders and militants in South and North Waziristan has not worked either.

For instance, according to another Western diplomat, General Musharraf knows the North Waziristan agreement is only 20 to 30 percent effective, but he continues to back it for lack of another plan.

The accord has brought some order to the area’s capital, Miram Shah, according to officials with knowledge of North Waziristan. It has also forced a split among the militants, with the more aggressive followers of Mr. Mehsud and their Qaeda allies congregating in the town of Mir Ali, they said.

Some officials are now arguing that the government should move against the militants in Mir Ali, while supporting the more reasonable ones.

Read the entire article here. I posted an editorial here from a Pakastani paper that dealt with the growing threat of Talibanization spreading its tentacles out from the NWFP into Pakistan proper, as well as another Pakistani editorial here on Musharraf's problems with the NWFP safe havens. Ultimately, neither Musharraf nor the United States and NATO can allow these Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens to exist. But for now, Musharraf must make some hard decisions of how to address the problem.

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NYT Gets It Right, Wrong & Left on Afghanistan - & NYT Misses the Vietnam Parallel

The NYT, in their follow up article on the suicide bombing in Afghanistan allegedly targeting VP Cheney:

Get it right - the Taliban is growing in strength;

Get it wrong - Suicide bombings are not a sign of that strength

Get it left - gratuitous "anonymous" criticisms of the Bush administration with no basis in reality;

And NYT misses the parallel with Vietnam: If the enemy has a safe haven; they are almost impossible to defeat.

The NYT Gets It Right.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened
in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago, and since the Bush administration claimed to have decimated much of their middle management.

That is right. The Taliban were decimated and they fall back into Pakistan, into the radical Deobandi madrasas from which they grew. The area into which they fell was Northwestern Frontier Provinces -- an area so wild that the Pakistani government has never held sway there, even though it is nominally part of Pakistan. And we know that, over the past several years, the Taliban has reorganized, trained and recruited, probably with the support of rouge elements of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI.

The NYT Gets It Wrong -

The audacity of a suicide-bomb attack . . . underscores . . . a deepening . . . concern that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent.

American officials insisted that the importance of the attack, by a single suicide bomber who blew himself up a mile away from where the vice president was staying, was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney.

But the strike nonetheless demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region . . .

Resorting to suicide attacks, as a historical rule, demonstrates military weakness. Such attacks are only used when the attacker does not have the military strength to achieve a victory on the battlefield. Such attacks are not emblematic of any sort of military resurgence. The fact that such attacks are not stopped beforehand is emblematic of how difficult it is to identify such attacks in advance. That is much more of a police function then a military one.

Two, the NYT hints around it but does not seem to grasp the import of such attacks. The main goal of militant Muslim suicide attacks is to be consumed by the western electorate through the prism of the Western press, who aid the terrorism through their "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy. Suicide attacks have been adapted by the Taliban precisely for that cause. The Taliban, though insane by our standards, are by no means stupid. And they see the cumulative effect of press reports of suicide attacks on the western electorate -- the election of a group of representatives and senators who want nothing more then to leave Iraq. Thus the Taliban would be fools not to adopt such a strategy.

The NYT gets it Left:

[C]ritics [of Bush and Cheney] . . . said the strike was another reminder of how Iraq had diverted the Bush administration from finishing the job in Afghanistan.

Oh, spare me. Who said that, the author? the editor? Please, that is just so nonsensical at this point. The Taliban were driven from Afghanistan. More troops were not needed to accomplish that. And as I recall, the cries about more troops in Afghanistan had much more to do with capturing bin Laden. That is ancient history.

Two, would another two battalions in Kabul have stopped a lone suicide bomber from infiltrating? Hardly.

The NYT Misses the Vietnam Parallel:

For all of the attempts of the left to draw parallels between Vietnam and our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is the one place were such a parallel would have been accurate. The Vietnam War actually began in the early 1950's, during the Eisenhower administration. The reason it dragged on twenty years was because the prime element responsible for the war, the communist North Vietnamese, had an untouchable safe haven in their own country. It was Nixon's bombing of Hanoi in December, 1972 that finally led the North Vietnamese to come seriously to the table for peace talks. One of the first rules of war is not to allow an enemy a safe haven. That is, unfortunately, what we have with the Taliban, and al Qaeda today, safe in nominally Pakistani territory. That is a real Vietnam parallel. And it is the one that needs to be addressed immediately. The NYT missed that one.

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COUNCIL OF EX-MUSLIMS LEADER INTERVIEWED

Der Spiegel interviews Iranian-born Mina Ahadi. She is currently living under a death threat from radical muslims for criticizing Islam and denouncing her faith. The interview is short and an interesting read. I do not believe that she is correct in her belief that it is not possible to modernize Islam, but if it does happen, it will not be in our lifetime. Unfortunately, Islam has never undergone a renaissance or reformation, and indeed, the internal mechanisms for such modification - ijtihad - were frozen over one thousand years ago.

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