Closing the Week 21 – Featuring Mladic and the Shadow of Srebrenica

Posted on May 29th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Blogosphere, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

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Featuring Mladic and the Shadow of Srebrenica
Duke University Press Log: Judith Armatta on the Arrest of Ratko Mladic

The arrest of Ratko Mladic demonstrates how far the world community has moved from providing warlords and tyrants with golden parachutes. The arrest of Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarek and the indictment of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi provide further evidence of the degree to which accountability for crimes by the powerful has taken root. Mubarek will stand trial in Egypt before an Egyptian court. Gaddafi has been indicted by the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, an indictment that must be confirmed by a trial chamber of the ICC before an arrest can be made, which at this point is not imminent as Gaddafi remains in power.

The Duck of Minerva: Mladic, OBL and International Justice

What I find fascinating about the international reaction to his arrest is the importance of this man being brought to trial. At no point I am aware of during his years of hiding was it argued that he should instead be taken out by a targeted killing – partly because it was recognized that justice for his victims required a trial. Recent empirical research demonstrates that these courts have not only been able to effectively carry out prosecutions, but have had a number of other important positive side-effects, with few of the negatives originally feared. I remain puzzled that the ad hoc tribunal model has not been seriously considered for KSM, OBL or other terrorist masterminds.

Diana Johnstone: Srebrenica Revisited

The false interpretation of “Srebrenica” as part of an ongoing Serb project of “genocide” was used to incite the NATO war against Yugoslavia, which devastated a country and left behind a cauldron of hatred and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The United States is currently engaged in a far more murderous and destructive war in Iraq. In this context, the Western lamentations that inflate the Srebrenic massacre into “the greatest mass genocide since Nazi times” are a diversion from the real existing genocide, which is not the work of some racist maniac, but the ongoing imposition of a radically unjust socio-economic world order euphemistically called “globalization”.

Dutch relief at the arrest of Mladi? | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

The arrest of Ratko Mladi? has been warmly welcomed in the Netherlands. The former Bosnian Serb army chief is accused of a genocide that took place virtually under the noses of the Dutch UN forces. They were supposed to be protecting the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in 1995. The fall of the enclave and the murder of almost 8,000 Bosnian Muslims is therefore remembered by the Dutch as a black page in their country’s history. It was the worst atrocity committed in Europe since the Second World War.

Mladic in Belgrade court for extradition hearing – Crime – Salon.com

Mladic, 69, was one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives — the top commander of the Bosnian Serb army during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which left more than 100,000 people dead and drove another 1.8 million from their homes. Thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed, tortured or driven out in a campaign to purge the region of non-Serbs.

Mladic in the Dock-At Last – NYTimes.com

Less than a month after the death of Osama bin Laden, Ratko Mladic, one of the most evil men of the 20th century, has been captured. The moment is sweet. For me, bittersweet. For 16 years, Mladic had been Richard Holbrooke’s nemesis, and my husband died without seeing him brought to justice. Mladic’s freedom all these years after the Dayton Accords put an end to the Bosnian war was a personal wound for Richard, the chief architect of that agreement. We cannot call Dayton a success while Mladic is free, my husband used to say.

Profile: Ratko Mladic – Europe – Al Jazeera English

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military leader during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, was indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in 1995 on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Serbia announced his arrest on May 26, 2011.

“On behalf of the Republic of Serbia we announce that Ratko Mladic has been arrested,” Boris Tadic, the country’s president, said.

“Today we closed one chapter of our recent history that will bring us one step closer to full reconciliation in the region.”

Executions Were Mladic’s Signature, and Downfall – NYTimes.com

With video cameras capturing the moment, Gen. Ratko Mladic’s bodyguards handed out chocolates to Bosnian Muslim children, promising terrified women that the violence was over.

“No one will be harmed,” the Bosnian Serb commander said on July 12, 1995, gently patting a young boy on the head. “You have nothing to fear. You will all be evacuated.”

Worst European massacre since WWII – The Irish Times – Thu, May 26, 2011

As Bosnian Serb troops brutally ‘cleansed’ their ethnic rivals from land they claimed, Mladic and Karadzic defended their actions.

What the arrest of Ratko Mladic means – International Crisis Group

Not only is Mladic’s arrest important, but so too is the reaction of average Serbs. So far it has been extremely balanced and accepting. On the morning of the Mladic’s detention, President Tadic said that his arrest was necessary to restore Serbian honor. This is indeed a time for Serbs, but also the rest of the Balkan population to recognize that terrible crimes were perpetuated in their name, but those who committed the crimes will face justice.

Mladic and his ilk should never be allowed to become local heroes; all people of the Balkans should clearly see them for who they are: ruthless cold blooded war criminals. This will provide the basis needed for reconciliation and forgiveness.

The meaning of Mladic’s arrest | The Multilateralist

Serb authorities arrested today Ratko Mladic, former commander of the Bosnian Serb army and author of the Srebrenica massacre. Serbia is reportedly arranging Mladic’s transfer to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague. Serbian president Boris Tadic has denied that the arrest was arranged to occur on the eve of a report from the ICTY and a visit by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. There’s long been speculation that the Serbian authorities knew where Mladic was but hesitated to seize him because of support for him in the armed forces.

Haunting Images of the Massacre That Shamed Europe – Photography by Andy Spyra | Foreign Policy

On July 11, 1995, the Serbian army entered the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the days that followed killed 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. The Srebrenica genocide was the largest mass murder in Europe since the end of World War II, and the country is still recovering from the war that ended 15 years ago.

Live from Belgrade – following the arrest of Ratko Mladic « A Slice Of Serbian Politics

Almost eleven years since the gloriously announced democratic reforms and sixteen years since the Dayton agreement it is a high time for Serbia and the rest of the region to start walking towards the better future. Although Serbian Radical Party earlier today announced peaceful citizens’ protests and an opinion poll few days ago showed that 51 per cent of Serbia’s citizens is against Mladic’s arrest, I do not think that there is a political party or leader who would be able to make a political profit from organizing the protests similar to those when Radovan Karadzic was arrested.

Balkans via Bohemia: First thoughts about the arrest of Ratko Mladic

The arrest of indicted Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic is a watershed moment in the region. But there are significant perils in it as well, and perhaps not where one might expect to find them.

Mladi? deserves a fair trial, but he will not get it… « BORUT PETERLIN in a rabbit hole of photography

I’ve been in Srebrenica and also in a morgue with several hundred unidentified bodies and also in Crni vrh – Zvornik the largest mass grave from a genocide in BiH. I wish Ratko Mladi? a fair trail, because fairness is what he deserves, although it can not be delivered in Haag or any other trial and also not in a/one lifetime, but he will get what he deserves! Above are images from Crni Vrh, Poto?ari, Sarajevo, Bijeli potok, Srebrenica. The sign on a billboard, written in Cyrillic is taken in Serbian part of BiH and my best translation would be “It is difficult to god, the way we are!”.

The devolution of Ratko Mladic – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

After rejecting ethnic division and asserting “brotherhood and unity”, how did Mladic become an accused war criminal?

Thomas Cushman, Anthropology and genocide in the Balkans from Anthropological Theory

This article examines scholarly discourse on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. It focuses on relativistic arguments put forward by anthropologists and shows how such mask and elide central historical realities of the con?ict. Relativistic accounts of serious modern con?icts often mirror and offer legitimation to the accounts put forth by perpetrators. In this case, several leading accounts of the wars in the former Yugoslavia display a strong af?nity to those asserted by Serbian nationalists. The article addresses the issue of ethics and intellectual responsibility in anthropological ?eldwork in situations of con?ict and the problem of the political uses of anthropological research.

Religion and the Public
Views: Matters of Ultimate Concern – Inside Higher Ed

The papers and exchanges at the Cooper Union in October 2009 were, for the most part, sober enough. Discussions of the concept of the public sphere tend to be more civil than the actually existing public sphere itself. But we shouldn’t take this for granted. Quite a bit has changed since Habermas introduced the term about 50 years ago — and the vectors of argument in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere place his initial formulation under a lot of strain.

Butler, Habermas, and West on Religion in the Public Sphere

In The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere a group of preeminent philosophers confront one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does — or should — religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jürgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of “the political” in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

Dutch blasphemy law likely to stay as Christian fundamentalist takes Senate balance of power – The Washington Post

Dutch courts have not prosecuted a blasphemy case since putting a novelist on trial in 1966 for a story about wanting to have sex with God, who had taken the form of a donkey.

Theology and cognitive science | Helen De Cruz’s blog

Traditionally, cognitive scientists have argued for a large cognitive divide between folk religion and theology. Folk religious beliefs are considered to be cognitively natural, whereas theology is chock-full of concepts that are difficult to represent. Pascal Boyer has termed the tendency of laypeople to distort official theological doctrines to reflect more intuitive modes of reasoning ”the tragedy of the theologian”.

Arab Uprisings
Three Days in Yemeni History | Waq al-Waq | Big Think

As I write, shelling is still going on around Sadiq’s house, and there are rumors that the 1st Armored Division is preparing for war. Meanwhile, tribesmen loyal to Sadiq are rushing south from Amran towards the capital to defend their shaykh, while the US ambassador is reportedly preparing to depart the country.

It isn’t clear where this headed, or what can be done from the outside, probably not much. Salih has let slip the dogs of war. This is likely to get worse before it gets better.

A Palestinian Revolt in the Making? | The Nation

The May 15 demonstrations reinvigorated the long-alienated Palestinian refugee community; although it is 70 percent of the Palestinian population, it has been largely shut out of the negotiations process with Israel. The emerging unity was on display at Qalandia, where youth trying to symbolically march from Ramallah to Jerusalem wore black T-shirts with the slogan “Direct Elections for the Palestine National Council, a Vote for Every Palestinian, Everywhere.” The PNC is the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation organization and is responsible for electing its executive committee. Traditionally, seat allocation in the PNC has been divided to represent the influence factions within the PLO, of which Hamas is not a member.

Readers’ Questions & Answers: More Thoughts on Arab Uprisings « The Moor Next Door

Last week reader sent an email asking a number of questions about the impact of the Arab uprisings on the Arab region in terms of the foreign policy of the countries in the region, from the perspective of some one who generally focuses on the Maghreb. Another reader emailed and asked for thoughts on Libya specifically. This is the response to both, not totally coherent (these are areas of generally peripheral interest/knowledge for this blogger) but here is a summary and then a very general thought dump on: Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Iran and regional Islamist movements (some of it is a bit dated, since it was written a week ago). Take it all with a grain of salt.

Showdown in Morocco | The Middle East Channel

What started as a small group on Facebook earlier this year, has since grown into a nationwide movement made up of a loose coalition of leftists, liberals and members of the conservative Islamist right. Inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings and powered by new media, the movement convinced hundreds of thousands to take to the streets. The demonstrations held week in, week out, were remarkably peaceful. In response, King Mohammed VI promised a package of constitutional reforms to be submitted to a referendum in June. But as protesters, unconvinced by the King’s promise, vow to keep up pressure on the regime, authorities seem increasingly impatient and determined to break up protests violently, paving the way toward escalation and confrontation with the street. The middle class is joining the mass of demonstrators, moving the protests beyond the core of mobilized youth. Their target is the makhzen — which has become a code word for the monarchy’s abuses of power and monopoly over large sectors of the economy.

Free of Qaddafi’s Grip, Young Libyans in Benghazi Find a Voice – Bloomberg

Berenice Post, an Arabic and English weekly, is one of more than 50 publications that have sprung up in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi since the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi. Young Libyans in this eastern city are taking advantage of newfound freedoms to churn out publications, sketch anti-Qaddafi caricatures and record revolutionary rap.

The future of the Arab uprisings – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

A specter is haunting the Arab world – the specter of democratic revolution. All the powers of the old Arab world have entered into a holy alliance with each other and the United States to exorcise this specter: king and sultan, emir and president, neoliberals and zionists.

While Marx and Engels used similar words in 1848 in reference to European regimes and the impending communist revolutions that were defeated in the Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there is much hope in the Arab world that these words would apply more successfully to the ongoing democratic Arab uprisings.

Ducking the Arab Spring in Morocco « The Immanent Frame

The wave of protests shaking the Arab political regimes has quietly but forcefully made its way to Morocco. The February 20 youth movement—made up of a loose coalition of independent groups, backed by liberal, leftist, labor, and Islamist opposition movements—is leading the call for democratic change. Since February it has organized two mass demonstrations across fifty major cities and towns, drawing several hundred thousands of protesters. Social and political protests in Morocco are not new, nor do they yet threaten the survival of the regime. But the revolutionary spirit and mass appeal of the movement signal a major shift in popular attitudes regarding the monarchy’s monopoly and abuses of power.

Visualizing protests for media-bias and sectarianism » the engine room

Reuters ran a story last month alleging media bias in Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Arab Spring. This spawned a short flurry of online commentary, some posts more vitriolic than others. It also raised the awkward issue of how sectarianism impacts the regional spread and response to unrest, which is worth more considered attention than I have seen it given in mainstream reporting.

The thrust of the Reuters piece was that Al Jazeera, much applauded for their critical role in disseminating information on protests in Tunisia and Egypt (praise rightly deserved), had turned a blind eye to Bahraini protests out of deference to Qatari royal interests.

Racism, Sexism, Islamophobia
Dutch court rejects anti-Islam MP’s bias claim < | Expatica The Netherlands

An Amsterdam court rejected a claim by far right leader Geert Wilders that an earlier court decison was biased and that hate speech charges against him should be dropped.

“The request is denied,” said Judge Marcel van Oosten, during a hearing broadcast on the Internet by Dutch public television. “The trial must go on.”

Racist Science: An Evolutionary Psychologist on Black Women :: racismreview.com

Kanazawa’s argument is of course baseless and there is no scientific evidence to support his notion that black women have more testosterone than other races of women. The perception of Kanazawa and the Ad Health interviewers is a direct reflection of the historical social construction of black women (and whites) by elite white men, such as Thomas Jefferson and Georges Cuvier. This is a society historically constructed by elite white men, whereby their notion of beauty is treated as the irrevocable truth. A socially created “truth,” that has not only been accepted by whites, but also by some people of color. As far back as the 15th and 16th centuries, European travelers and scientists have defined black women as innately inferior to white women in beauty, sexuality, and femininity. These early European travelers often defined black women as masculine and thus fit for the hard life of slavery.

Asian people 42 times more likely to be held under terror law | UK news | The Guardian

People from ethnic minorities are up to 42 times more likely than white people to be the target of a counter-terrorism power which allows the stopping and searching of the innocent yet grants them fewer rights than suspected criminals, official figures seen by the Guardian show.

USC Knight Chair in Media and Religion

As media coverage shifts to the rising backlash against the chauvinism of Strauss-Kahn’s defenders, journalists should remember that in France, as in the U.S., sexism is rarely separable from racial and religious prejudice. While journalists rightfully dismiss conspiracy theories from anonymous bloggers, they would do well to heed the insights of scholars and op-ed writers who highlight the relationship between male chauvinism and anti-Muslim prejudice in French culture.

Anthropology
EthnoSense

This blog is for those who have experienced what other possible worlds are out there, who have dedicated time of their own to get to know another culture, another lifestyle… for those who realize that things could be different.

From fieldnotes to fieldtags « media/anthropology

I seem to spend a lot of my social media research time tagging web contents rather than taking fieldnotes. By ‘tagging’ I mean attaching keywords such as ‘activism’, ‘protest’, and ‘sinde’ to online materials that seem useful and then saving them on the bookmarking site Delicious.com, or (less frequently) on this blog, or ‘sharing’ them via Twitter through hashtags (e.g. #activism, #socialmedia, #egypt).

The Memory Bank » Blog Archive » The ethnography of finance and the history of money

Marcel Mauss was a prolific financial journalist, writing about the exchange rate crisis of 1922-24 at the same time as he was writing The Gift; but he kept them in separate compartments and economic anthropologists have been content to ignore his political writings. The recent emergence of the ethnographic study of finance promises to break down this division. But how might such an approach be integrated into the history of money at the global level? This paper outlines an approach to the anthropology of money drawing both on classical sources and on developments since the 1980s. With this in mind a number of ethnographies of finance are reviewed, paying attention to their methods and conclusions. How much has this exciting initiative contributed to a better understanding of the world economy today? What else is needed?

Paul Venoit: Giving Anthropology a Little Lip Service

Not for the faint of heart, red lipstick is like vibrance and confidence in a tube. But where did its sultry reputation originate? And why doesn’t a pale lip or a smoky eye conjure the same mood as only a red mouth can? Here’s where apothecary meets anthropology.

On Neoliberalism by Sherry Ortner « Anthropology of this Century

I find all of this encouraging on a number of counts. I am encouraged that there are wealthy persons like Ferguson who have both a critical intelligence and a conscience, as well as the talent to make a powerful film. I am encouraged that the film had the power to expose and shame an influential person, his field, and his institution, and possibly bring about some small but real change. I am encouraged that the Times covered, and indeed constructed, the story. It will only be out of some complicated conjuncture of people and forces like this – between wealthy and powerful renegades like Ferguson, powerful media like the New York Times (and smart reporters like Sewell Chan), anthropologists and others writing and teaching about what is going on, and ordinary people themselves, in their infinite practical wisdom, in every part of the globe – that some kinds of solutions may emerge.

Misc.
An Iraqi view on the Netherlands | Standplaats Wereld

During my explanation my father joined us on Messenger, and Zahra started talking:

– Daddy, do you know? Ali said that the people in the Netherlands do not have any kind of problems, and that is the reason they create their problems, and then they demonstrate against their imagined problems!!

I honestly didn’t use this theoretical level of words! Now I wondered: who is the sociologist in my family??!!

News : Exclusive: Guildford Four and Birmingham Six solicitor condemns Tony Blair’s role in the “layers and layers of deceit” in Pan Am 103 case : THE FIRM : SCOTLAND’S INDEPENDENT LAW JOURNAL

Peirce, whose recently published book “Dispatches from the Dark Side” contains an essay entitled “The Framing of Al Megrahi” spoke to The Firm exclusively about the Pan Am 103 case and said that her involvement was prompted in part by her learning that the same discredited personnel whose flawed evidence was instrumental in convicting the Guildford and Birmingham convicts were also the providers of the key flawed evidence in the Megrahi case.

AFP: 50 years for Germany’s Turkish community

Aylin Selcuk may be the granddaughter of a Turkish immigrant, and a Muslim to boot, but she only really began to feel different from other Germans after a certain central banker spoke out.

Bin Laden’s TV

In part, the presumed self-evidence of the footage is attributable to its form – this being a video steeped in the familiar YouTube aesthetics of amateur production which we have all learned to read; indeed, some media outlets referred to it as a “home movie.” Yet self-evidence also depends on the video’s co-star: the television (indeed, the first minutes of footage focus solely on the TV screen, featuring a menu of channels and Bin Laden’s incriminating choice, Al Jazeera). If we believe the mainstream media, the video’s ability to “demystify the Bin Laden legend” rests in no small measure with the television itself. Consider the media’s depiction of this damning scene: “The video shows bin Laden sitting alone in a drab, run-down room in front of an old TV connected by a bundle of bare cables to a satellite receiver.” Or, from Tom Fuentes, former assistant director of the FBI on CNN: “An aging man crouched before a TV — a junkie TV, I might add — in a darkened room. Not exactly how most people picture the man who called for global jihad.” And: “So it’s a sort of a different image that some of this followers were being used to….There was nothing ostentatious about this video of Bin Laden. It wasn’t like he was looking at a flat screen…” (this from CNN’s ‘counter-terrorism expert’).

Fatemeh Fakhraie: A feminist Muslim breaks stereotypes | OregonLive.com

Fakhraie’s piece, “Roots,” appears in “I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim.” The collection of writing by 40 American Muslim women under the age of 40 was published this month by Ashland’s White Cloud Press. Each entry breaks open the life of a young woman who is at once ordinary and exceptional, who lives her life of faith under a spotlight that is often harsh.

Dutch
Alarm: meer dan helft van Amsterdamse bevolking allochtoon

Niet iedere allochtoon is zoals de Telegraaf suggereert ‘geen Nederlander’, de meeste zijn genaturaliseerd en net zo Nederlands als Maxima. Veel hier zijn hier geboren en net zo Nederlands als Amaiia, onze toekomstige koningin. Maxima en Amalia zijn net als veel andere allochtonen ‘wit’ en geen moslim.
Van islamisering van Amsterdam is voorlopig geen sprake. Al jaren schommelt het aantal Amsterdammers dat zichzelf moslim noemt rond de 12%.

Amsterdam is net als veel andere hoofdsteden een stad met vele etnische groepen en nationaliteiten. Dat is op zich geen reden voor zorg of alarm. Wat wel reden tot zorg geeft, is dat er in Amsterdam steeds meer sprake lijkt te zijn van etnische tweedeling

Etnische tweedeling in Amsterdam neemt toe

De segregatie langs etnische lijnen in Amsterdam neemt nog altijd toe. Vooral buiten de ring is er sprake van een stijging van het aandeel niet-westerse allochtonen. Onder deze groepen is de werkloosheid fors hoger, ligt het opleidingsniveau lager, is er sprake van een slechtere gezondheid, heeft men minder vaak een eigen woning en voelt men zich vaker eenzaam en gediscrimineerd. Turken hebben de meeste problemen met hun gezondheid, de ontwikkeling van Surinaamse Amsterdammers stagneert en maar liefst 42% van de Marokkaanse kinderen leeft in armoede.

Wat ook niet vrolijk stemt is dat steeds meer Amsterdammers alleen vrienden uit de eigen etnische groep hebben. Dit geldt voor Surinamers, Turken en Marokkanen en ook voor autochtonen.

Dat zijn enkele conclusies uit de vorige week gepresenteerde participatiemonitor De Staat van de Stad VI en de Diversiteits- en Integratiemonitor 2010. Beide onderzoeken zijn uitgevoerd door het Amsterdamse onderzoeksbureau O+S.

‘Probleem is extremisme, niet sharia’ – Arabische opstand – TROUW

“De deur is geopend voor conservatieve krachten in onze maatschappij, die een bedreiging vormen voor de positie van de vrouw”, zegt Tanahi al-Gabali. Zij was de eerste vrouwelijke rechter van Egypte, en is nu lid van het hooggerechtshof. Trouw spreekt met haar over de positie van vrouwen in Egypte na de revolutie.

Sharia4Holland pleit voor gescheiden toiletten – GeenCommentaar

Als het aan de radicale islamitische groepering Sharia4Holland ligt bieden restaurants, café’s en uitgaansgelegenheden zo spoedig mogelijk aparte toiletgelegenheden voor mannen en vrouwen. Tevens pleit de organisatie voor gescheiden sportteams en aparte gelegenheden tot douchen achteraf. Moslims in Nederland reageren verheugd, tegenstanders vrezen ‘een stap terug naar de middeleeuwen’.

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Making sense of the emotional field

Posted on May 26th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Method, Notes from the Field.

This is one of those Stories of the Field. And maybe it is about Why I love anthropology as well. I’m not sure.

I often tell people, just let me do my fieldwork and leave me the hell alone. It is in my fieldwork, previously among Moroccan-Dutch Muslim youth in the city of Gouda and now among Salafi Muslims in the Netherlands, where I am most comfortable. But besides the fact that fieldwork is interesting, fun and challenging it is also often cumbersome, exhausting and leaves me with feelings of being a stranger everywhere. I find it remarkable how many accounts of the fieldwork in PhD thesis and articles are often so neat and slick; if one encounters a problem it is solved rationally, explained away rationally or if there is no other option, legitimized rationally. No signs of emotional breakdowns, feelings of alienation, sadness, happiness and joy (except professional joy when there is a breakthrough in the research), boredom and despair. I admit, I am one of these anthropologists who can remain in the field with real people for years without showing any kind of emotional attachment or something like that.

Of course, I am not. Sometimes my fieldwork hits me right back in the face. The first time was years ago. There was this teenage girl who had a lot of problems at home. In my work as youth worker and anthropologist I tried to help her as much as possible. First with her homework and later with her preprarations for a job at a prestigious institution. I must admit, I felt very proud when she made it, proud of her and of myself, even more so when she climbed the ranks very quickly. Until she had an accident that made her disabled for the rest of her life in a very very severe way; I felt nothing but sorry, sadness and even some existential confusion. So there you are, you have all the odds against you, but you still make it and then you end up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life…

The second time happened last year. In 2008 I defended my PhD on Moroccan-Dutch youth and the formation of a Muslim identity. I had already started with my post-doc project on Salafism and one of the persons (lets say M.) who was present at several meetings where I was as well, contacted me to get a copy of the book. M read the book and subsequently send me a list of questions about the book. And these were very good questions, some of them on a more intellectual level but also questions pertaining to M’s own personal experiences. As time past by I felt I was triggered by M’s questions and responses and at the same time felt admiration for M’s ambitions and they way M engaged with others in the often heated debates in webfora and chatrooms; M was strict, kind, serious but with a good sense of humor and one of those persons who had a kind word for everyone.

M was clearly on the path of training trying to become a pious Muslim. M visited courses, lectures, and so on. Of course M was not without personal difficulties and flaws, since no one is, and some people felt M had too much of a public presence given the fact that for some time M ran a popular chatroom (which was gender mixed) and contributed a lot to debates on several webfora. Because of some restrictions M put on our interaction, we usually were very formal in our contacts on the chatroom and both of us kept a distance in our contacts. Nevertheless, although certainly not always agreeing with M on a personal level, I enjoyed the contact with M because it was intellectually challenging, provided me with new insights, ideas and contacts and M’s honesty was admirable and confronting. At the same time M used me as a sounding board for personal experiences and so on.

M was one of the people therefore I grew very fond off during my years of research in a way that is often not possible within all circles of the Salafi movement. Last Summer, I had not heard from M in a while; nothing extraordinary and usually M would contact me again after a while. The only thing I heard now was a good bye message on the internet a few months earlier which I did not know how to interpret then. In this message M asked people to forgive any wrongdoings M might have done or engaged in.

Several months ago I heard the reason behind this message; M knew that it was the last message. When I heard the news about M’s death I was shocked, I was impressed by the dignified way M carried on until the end, I was sad by the fact M was so young and had a difficult exhausting end and I was confused and curious about the inner peace M expressed and seemed to experience towards the final moment.

So where do these emotions leave me as an anthropologist? Or is merely asking this question already a sign that I’m an overstressed workaholic? One person said to me, you are just human so you are sad that is all. Another one said, wow this as a perfect opportunity to explore some dimensions of people’s lives that you could not do earlier. I have problems with both responses. To start with the latter, this is probably the type of response you encounter in most fieldwork reports, PhD thesis and so on. Yes of course, the person was right of course but to me this seems to be rationality to the extremes. The first response is one you may find in the acknowledgements of books and articles, or occasionally a book is dedicated to the deceased; when you work in the field several years and you know some people already for years and even their personal stuff, you should feel sad. If you don’t, you lack the necessary empathy needed for doing sound ethnographic research. But is it really, you are just sad…and that is all? What does it say about my position as an anthropologist? Is it professional to feel really sad about the death of one of your key informants? What does it say about distance and proximity; two key elements in fieldwork? Does experience particular emotions about your informants mean that you have become too close, lost your impartiality and that, instead, you should view the people merely as raw data? Or are emotions also ways of knowing and understanding what is happening in the field as Shane J. Blackman seems to argue? And does it matter if we like or do not like our informants? Or what if one learns to share the same feelings of anger and hatred as Ghassan Hage describes? Or are we just using other people’s experiences and emotions to study our own fears, doubts, and understandings of the world as David Picard in an article at Anthropologies (What is anthropology?) reveals he realized at one point in his career?

In recent years anthropology appears to have a little more interest in emotions and the field. In ‘Emotions in the Field. The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience‘ Davies and Spencer argue for a more sophisticated and reflexive approach of emotions and experiences in order to translate them into meaningful data (see also Emotions in the Field and Relational Anthropology by Dimitrina Spencer). Or as Shweder tells us ‘sometimes dormant or unknown emotional and cognitive structures within oneself are activated through participation. When they are activated, all of a sudden understanding occurs in a far more profound way’ (1997:162) (referred to in an article by Anne Monchamp in a special issue of Anthropological Matters on emotions in the field H/T Lorenz at Antropologi.info). At some point, no matter how unsettling these emotions were at a given point in time, reflecting upon these emotions should lead to a greater understanding of the field. And I think that is true, to some extent. As explained by Andrew Beatty, emotions do not just refer to the experience of being, for example, angry at a person, but emotions define the position of people and what is at stake in a field of interactions. Emotions, as he explains, function as social signs.

One of the aspects of religiosity that I always sort of admired, maybe I even envy the people because personally (at an emotional level) I do not really understand, is the profound feeling of peace people like M have when they are faced with death. It is something that has driven me into the field of religion from the start. In my Salafi circles it appears to be a given that one will show up before God and has to account for oneself. Alas, M’s personal but also public farewell to visitors of a webforum and a chat room. Also, more recently, at a gathering a video was shown of a young Salafi ‘brother’ I had met twice and who was in hospital now, diagnosed with cancer. He was speaking with the interviewer about his faith, the support he sought with God (and somehow found). Most impressive for the audience watching however was, besides the fact that he was so seriously ill, his confidence in God, his confident testimony about it and addressing people in the audience by saying that it is never too late to repent but also you never know when it is your time. It was the last video in a meeting called ‘Your future’ (meaning not one’s future as a husband, wife, careermaker or whatever, but death) and it left many men with tears. It is such events that did not leave me unmoved that has led me to asking the question what does the Salafi movement do, rather than what the Salafi movement is.

But of course this is different from the death of one of the key persons in your research. Still, what struck me in M’s personality is something that has given a profound shape to my research. Yes M was a dedicated participant in the Salafi movement with sometimes rigid views and uncomprimising and not always tolerant practices. M was dedicated to become a pious (in the Salafi sense) Muslim in thought, speech, behaviour and appearances. Sincerity and authenticity in personal faith was of the utmost importance and no compromise should be made. But M, like some others, also introduced me into the negotiations in daily life, the ambivalence and ambiguities of every day Salafi religiosity, into M’s realization that not everything M did was correct according to Salafi interpretations and the doubts that come with that realization. And M introduced me into the peace in the end, realizing that it was ok not to be perfect and that it was now upon God to rule. That is M made me aware once again that there is more to a Salafi Muslim than a person with full-formed moral identity connected with radicalism, fundamentalism or whatever label you want to give it. We often here only about the ideas of moral perfection and the idealized version of Islam, yet like others M remained vulnerable to the ambiguities and ruptures inherent in everyday life and within the Salafi movement. (See for a similar idea Schielke’s article Boredom and Despair in Rural Egypt). And isn’t that something all of us, religious or not, are concerned with? And it is probably why I like anthropology so much and sometimes hate it too. It is probably also a major reason why I was so confused with M’s death because I learned the person behind the internet nickname, behind the kunya and behind the Salafi label. Because M was not raw data but  a real person. A modest person dying at a very young age while trying to make the best out of life but who did not get the chance to pursue the dreams and hopes a lot of us have, but was at peace with that.

Thank you my dear M. “Thanks for all the trouble and charity…hehehe”

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Bin Laden, geweld en de ontkenning van de politiek

Posted on May 23rd, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Guest authors, International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Guest Author: Roel Meijer

Bij al het commentaar over Bin Laden gedurende de afgelopen week, hebben weinig mensen stil gestaan bij de erfenis van Bin Laden voor het Midden-Oosten. De aandacht gaat meestal uit naar geweld en terreur tegen het Westen. Maar dit is maar een gedeelte van het verhaal. Bin Laden was het resultaat van politieke en culturele stagnatie en de wanhoop om veranderingen in het Midden-Oosten tot stand te brengen zonder geweld te gebruiken.

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Laten we even stilstaan bij Osama bin Laden zelf. Het is niet toevallig dat hij geboren is in Saoedi-Arabië, het land dat van alle landen het meest erin slaagt het concept van politiek volledig te ontkennen. Zo is het in dat land alleen mogelijk de koning op discrete wijze van advies te dienen. Het mag niet in het openbaar gebeuren en dan nog alleen door de geestelijken, die sinds een jaar of veertig allemaal zijn aangesteld door het regime zelf. Politiek als concept is overbodig en de praktijk van het nemen van beslissingen wordt overgelaten aan het Koninklijk Huis dat daarover een monopolie heeft. Hierin wordt de zittende macht ondersteund door de officiële ideologie van het land, het Wahhabisme (een strikte vorm van islam), dat eveneens ontkent dat er zoiets als politiek bestaat. Als iedereen maar de shari’a volgt komt het allemaal goed. Geholpen door een allesoverheersend patronagesysteem, waarin de hele bevolking gevangen zit, ontstaat er een verstikkend apolitiek politiek systeem dat veel op de politiek van Sinterklaas lijkt: ‘Wie goed is krijgt lekkers, wie stout is de roe’. In termen van het Salafisme – de meer abstracte benoeming van het Wahhabisme, de vorm van islam in Saoedi-Arabië – betekent dit dat iemand die zich gedeisd houdt, nauwkeurig de regels volgt en braaf de heerser gehoorzaamt, beloond zal worden in dit leven en in het volgende. Voor een potentiële terrorist is geen saaiere context denkbaar dan deze. Politiek is vooral persoonlijk moralisme, met het idee dat als iedereen maar een goede moslim is het met de wereld vanzelf beter zou gaan. Mochten moslims dat vergeten, dan is er altijd nog de religieuze politie om je daaraan te herinneren. Politiek is eigenlijk gereduceerd tot de discipline van vijf keer per dag bidden – een manier van nauwe sociale controle – een preek op vrijdag, en veel koningshuis op de tv. Ieder debat, iedere onenigheid, ieder verzet, laat staan een opstand, werd en wordt afgedaan als de grootste doodzonde tegen de islam. Zo’n gedrag leidt immers tot verdeeldheid (fitna) en partijvorming (hizbiyya). Wie afwijkt van het rechte pad, is een verdwaalde, en in het ergste geval een afvallige, een murtadd of kafir. Geen wonder dat takfir, het excommuniceren van personen, in Saoedi-Arabië tot een dagelijkse sport is verheven.

Het zal niemand verbazen dat sommige mensen graag uit dit keurslijf willen springen en iets spannends willen beleven. Hoewel iedereen denkt dat Bin Laden daar wonderwel in geslaagd is en hij voor bewonderaars een held is die het systeem heeft afgezworen en een radicaal andere weg is ingeslagen, is dat maar helemaal de vraag. Want wat heeft Bin Laden zo anders gedaan dan wat het regime en het Wahhabisme voorschrijft? Hij is zeker niet braaf geweest, maar revolutionair was hij allerminst. Het discours dat hij heeft overgenomen, bestond allang. Het westerse radicale politieke gedachtegoed bestaat in het Midden-Oosten al sinds er contacten zijn met Europa. Het voeren van de jihad was ook al geen originele gedachte. Dat werd zelfs gepropageerd door het Saoedische regime zelf, dat de jihad ondersteunde in Afghanistan en later in Tsjetsjenië en Bosnië. Zelfopoffering en martelaarschap werden al heel lang door het Saoedische koningshuis toegejuicht, zo lang het maar buiten de deur gebeurde, op veilige afstand, in solidariteit met andere moslims die onderdrukt werden door niet-islamitische landen. Op een gegeven moment werd het een soort traditie voor Saoedische studenten om in de zomervakantie naar Afghanistan te gaan om een beetje mee te vechten, ook al kwamen de meeste Saoedi’s niet verder dan het Pakistaanse Peshawar. Het verschil was dat Bin Laden deze onderneming wat serieuzer nam. Hij nam bijvoorbeeld bulldozers van zijn vader, die een bouwonderneming had, mee om grotten te graven voor de mujahidin: de beroemde Tora Bora-grotten. In zijn religieuze houding was Bin Laden als puber zelfs uitermate saai. Hij was vooral moralistisch en onopvallend. Hij hield van voetballen maar dan niet in een korte broek, want dat was te westers. Zijn oudere broers deden heel wat spannender dingen. Zij gingen in de jaren zeventig in de VS studeren om daar de bloemetjes buiten zetten. Het enige benul dat Bin Laden op de middelbare school van de wereld had werd hem bijgebracht door leraren die lid waren van de Moslim Broederschap. Maar ook dat was niet erg revolutionair. Hoewel de Moslim Broederschap in die tijd de opstand tegen de heerser propageerde bij monde van denkers als Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), was die houding allerminst gebaseerd op politieke ideeën maar eerder op het consequent doorvoeren van het gedachtegoed waar het Wahhabisme ook goed in was: er is niets buiten de shari‘a, ieder menselijk handelen is fout, en men dient zich gedachteloos over te geven aan Gods wil. Het enige spannende aan dit nieuwe inzicht was dat de gehoorzaamheid aan de heerser, het gezagsgetrouwe element in het Wahhabisme vervangen was door het recht op opstand en de suprematie van de onderwerping aan God. Dat impliceerde een zekere bevrijding, maar de rol van de mens als handelend wezen, als agent, bleef vooral beperkt tot het bedenken van methoden om de heerser te bestrijden. De heroïek die daarmee verbonden was werd beloond met het martelaarschap. Alle andere elementen in deze ideologie van het verzet bleven tamelijk traditioneel: de mens diende zich nog steeds te onderwerpen aan een volkomen abstract concept dat geen enkele garantie gaf op bevrijding. Want wat nou precies die shari’a was, dat bleef oningevuld. Het moderne, bevrijdende element zat vooral in de daad om in opstand te komen, maar dan wel ten koste van je eigen leven.

Hoe banaal dit opstandige gevoel was blijkt uit het ideeëngoed van de Gama’at al-Islamiyya. Deze Salafistische beweging was van de jaren zeventig tot de jaren negentig actief in Egypte. Hoezeer in haar politieke filosofie politiek en kleingeestig moralisme werden verward blijkt bijvoorbeeld uit haar verzet tegen de Egyptische president Sadat. Leiders van de beweging waren even verontwaardigd over het feit dat hun president zijn vrouw liet dansen met de toenmalige president van de VS, Carter, als over zijn politiek ten aanzien van de Palestijnse zaak. In hun ogen waren beiden even grote vormen van onrechtvaardigheid (zulm) en morele corruptie ( fasad) en diende Sadat daarvoor gestraft te worden. Het is ook niet voor niets dat de opstand tegen Sadat niet verder kwam dan de spectaculaire schietpartij tijdens de militaire parade ter herdenking van de Oktoberoorlog. Andere voorbereidingen werden nauwelijks getroffen. Het bleef bij een opstand in de Opper-Egyptische stad Asyoet. De kater die volgde op de arrestatie van de leden van de organisatie, was dan ook enorm. Martelingen van gevangen leden radicaliseerde de groep verder. Maar ook de politie moest er even aan wennen Moslim-activisten in de gevangenis te hebben. Zij waren immers altijd zo braaf geweest in hun piëteit en ze hadden toch jarenlang de steun van de regering ontvangen voor het terroriseren van linkse studenten op de universiteiten?

Bin Laden heeft niet heel veel meer gedaan dan op deze praktijken en onderliggende concepten voort te borduren. Zijn eigen originele bijdrage bestond vooral daaruit dat hij het doelwit van het geweld verschoof van de eigen heersers naar het Westen, of zoals hij het in een bizarre ahistorische combinatie noemde, naar de ‘kruisvaarders en zionisten’. Daarbij wist hij handig al het onrecht dat moslims ooit werd aangedaan gedurende de gehele geschiedenis te mobiliseren voor zijn eigen doeleinden. Dit essentialisme is een Moslim-variant van Huntingtons clash of civilizations, waarin culturen eeuwig met elkaar in strijd zijn in een zero sum game. Het meest recente onrecht werd vertegenwoordigd door de Palestijnen, voor wie Bin Laden overigens nooit veel belangstelling heeft gehad (anders was hij wel in Palestina en niet in Afghanistan gaan vechten). Wel pikte hij het tot verbeelding sprekende ideaal van de bevrijding van Jeruzalem. De weg daarnaar toe liep in zijn ogen niet langer door Caïro maar deed via een omweggetje eerst Washington aan. Kortom, eerst moest de Verenigde Staten aangepakt worden voordat de eigen landen aan bod kwamen. Immers de Verenigde Staten waren de belangrijkste mondiale boosdoeners die overal lokale potentaten in het zadel hielden. The rest is history, zoals ze in Amerika zeggen.

Valkuil
Het rampzalige van dit scenario is dat de VS in de valkuil gevallen is die Osama Bin Laden voor ze heeft gegraven. Even gevoelig voor de Hollywoodachtige performance die Bin Laden met zijn compagnon, de even grote fantast Ayman Zawahiri, opvoerde in de grotten van Afghanistan, lieten ze zich verleiden tot rampzalige handelingen die de Verenigde Staten waarschijnlijk definitief verzwakt hebben. De onnodige verovering van Afghanistan, waarbij het doel – de uitschakeling van Osama bin Laden – even over het hoofd werd gezien en per ongeluk het Taliban-regime omver werd geworpen; de nog rampzaliger inval in Irak, waarbij in de jaren daarna waarschijnlijk evenveel doden zijn gevallen als in de jaren onder Saddam Hussein – het zijn blunders van ongekende omvang.

Aan al deze fouten ligt hetzelfde probleem ten grondslag: de overschatting van het eigen vermogen andere landen te kunnen veranderen. Maar even belangrijk is diep pessimistische aanname dat de ander totaal niet in staat is zichzelf te veranderen, behalve met hulp van buiten af. Even erg als de doden die te betreuren zijn is het terrorisme-discours dat daarna ontwikkeld is om de eigen positie te rechtvaardigen en de ander volkomen te dehumaniseren. Het geniale van Bin Laden ligt daarom vooral in het feit dat hij de misvatting van een clash of civilizations tot een echte realiteit heeft weten te maken. In een periode dat Europa bewust werd van het grote aantal moslims die hun plaats moesten vinden in de Europese samenleving, was het terrorisme-discours het middel om de relaties tussen moslims en niet-moslims te verzieken en op scherp te zetten. Daarbij wist Bin Laden niet alleen het Westen de instrumenten in handen te geven zijn nieuwe burgers te behandelen als een vijfde colonne, hij wist moslims die zich verzetten tegen de westerse discriminatie bovendien van een Salafistische terminologie te voorzien die alles in zich had om moslims in het isolement te jagen en niet-moslims te provoceren. Het puberale gescherm met jihad dat we kennen van Samir Azzouz, het hanteren van termen als al-wala wa-l-bara (loyaliteit aan de eigen gemeenschap en het nemen van afstand van de niet-islamitische gemeenschap), shirk (afgoderij), bid‘a (niet toegestane vernieuwing). Wie nog iets wilde snappen van deze nieuwe subcultuur, moest zelf een halve moslim worden. Zo werd iedereen gevangen in Bin Ladens strik en werden we allemaal exegeten van zijn duistere speeches en onwillige toeschouwers van zijn show. Zijn propaganda heeft zelfs gevolgen gehad voor het onderzoek en onderwijs in Nederland. Niet voor niets zijn alle Midden-Oostenafdelingen op de universiteiten bij religiewetenschappen ondergebracht. De essentialistische redenering was: het Midden-Oosten, daar wonen immers alleen moslims, dan kan men beter maar de hele afdeling onderbrengen bij de faculteit waar dat onderzoek thuishoort, religiestudies. In die zin heeft zelfs de studie van het Midden-Oosten aan Bin Laden te danken dat we ons niet langer mogen bezighouden met autocratische staten, partijpolitiek, of zelfs olie, tenzij we ze expliciet ‘moslims’ noemen. Politiek is alleen islamitische politiek en richt zich op de Moslim Broederschap of Al Qaeda, olie heeft een islamitisch luchtje, corruptie ligt vooral aan de islamitische cultuur, enzovoorts. In die zin volgen we tegen wil en dank het deprimerende voorbeeld van Wilders en de PVV: “Er heerst daar nu eenmaal de Barbarij die zijn barbaarsheid dankt aan een religie, daarom moeten we die religie onderzoeken”.

De Ommekeer
De ontwikkelingen die zich sinds eind vorig jaar in de Arabische wereld hebben voltrokken zijn in meerdere opzichten een revolutie. De allerbelangrijkste omwenteling is echter in het doorbreken van deze geestelijke spiraal omlaag. Arabieren van Marokko tot Iran hebben weer zichzelf gevonden, weten precies wat er mis was met hun landen en hoe ze die problemen moeten rechtzetten. Ze hebben ook de les geleerd dat geweld niet werkt en alleen tot meer geweld leidt. Niet de enkeling die in het geheim bommen in elkaar knutselt en zich opblaast terwijl hij Allahu Akbar uitroept en zoveel mogelijk doden veroorzaakt is de nieuwe held, maar bewegingen waarvan de leiders onbekend zijn, nauw moeten samenwerken, doeleinden moeten formuleren, tactieken moeten uitdenken, nauw moeten samenwerken: die zijn de nieuwe helden en houden de aandacht van de wereld vast die ademloos toekijkt hoe ze weer een nieuwe dictator ten val brengen (dat die dictators eindeloos door ons zijn ondersteund zullen we maar even vergeten). Niet de namen van martelaren, maar van pleinen, bewegingen, of, in Syrië, steden, zijn belangrijk. Als er helden zijn, zoals Muhammad Bouazizi, dan is zijn daad af te meten aan zijn zelfopoffering – of de mythe van zelfopoffering – niet aan het aantal mensen dat hij meenam in zijn graf. Bij al deze bewegingen zijn oude versleten begrippen als solidariteit weer uit de kast gehaald. Zo gaan in Syrië al wekenlang inwoners van verschillende steden de straat op uit protest tegen de moordpartijen in de plaats Dar’a, waar alleen al meer dan honderd doden zouden zijn gevallen.

Het andere verschil is dat de huidige beweging rationeel is: men wil hervormingen, die nauwkeurig worden geformuleerd en uitgevoerd. De eis van rechtvaardigheid wordt nu gekanaliseerd in demonstraties, aanpassingen van tactieken, in het bedenken van telkens andere slogans ( de vrijdag van de woede, standvastigheid, verzet, etc), in plaats van willekeurig te worden botgevierd in explosies en bloedvergieten. De eisen zijn concreet, realistisch en uitvoerbaar, niet utopisch. Voor het eerst in lange tijd heerst het optimisme en is het pessimisme dat ten grondslag lag aan het terrorisme even vergeten. De resultaten zijn navenant. Wie had een jaar geleden kunnen denken dat Mubarak, Ben Ali en mogelijk andere dictaturen ten val konden worden gebracht?

Wat zijn dan de eisen en waar ageert men tegen en hoe verschilt dat van de ideologie van Bin Laden? Laten we een paar voorbeelden noemen. Een daarvan is corruptie. In het Arabisch is het woord daarvoor fasad. Maar dat woord heeft in het Bin Ladens jargon een religieuze klank. Het is een affront tegen de religieuze moraal, tegen de goddelijke wet waar iedereen zich aan heeft te houden. In de nieuwe beweging is dat niet geval, of misschien zit dat er wel in, maar veel belangrijker is dat corruptie een overtreding is tegen het volk (sha‘b). Men gaat uit van volkssoevereiniteit en van de veronderstelling dat politici verantwoording schuldig zijn aan het volk. Concreet: er is geld van het volk gestolen en dat moet terug en diegenen die het gestolen hebben moeten daarvoor gestraft worden voor een gewone rechter die volgens objectieve wetten en regels recht spreekt en een veroordeling uitspreekt. De politie en veiligheidsmensen die op demonstranten hebben geschoten moeten op dezelfde manier terecht staan. Voor Midden-Oosterse begrippen is dat op zich al een revolutie. Natuurlijk zitten hier allerlei haken en ogen aan: is er wel een betrouwbare, onafhankelijke rechterlijke macht? Deugen de wetten wel, en zullen de rechters niet onder druk worden gezet, door ofwel de ‘restanten’ van het ancien régime of door nieuwe volkswoede? Maar alleen al het feit dat de discussie in Egypte om dit soort vragen draait, betekent dat men streeft naar een rechtsstaat waar burgers gelijk zijn en niemand boven de wet staat. Het concept van burgerschap (muwatana) is opeens weer springlevend. Het bestond altijd al in het Midden-Oosten, waar het vanaf de negentiende eeuw via de Engelse en Franse politieke filosofie voet aan wal zette, maar het was helemaal uitgehold door de autoritaire regimes van de jaren zestig. Die regimes hadden bij hun aantreden eigenlijk een soort overeenkomst gesloten met de burgers: jullie leveren jullie rechten in en dan geven wij jullie daarvoor in ruil onderwijs, banen en gezondheidszorg. Het instorten van de regime heeft veel te maken dat dit sociale contract allang eenzijdig is opgezegd door de dictators en dat nu pas de burgers hun rechten opeisen.

Een ander voorbeeld: de Salafi’s waartoe Bin laden behoorde, houden niet van verkiezingen. Volgens hen leiden die alleen tot tweespalt (fitna). Ze zijn ook tegen partijvorming (hizbiyya, afgeleid van het woord hizb, partij), die de umma, de Moslimgemeenschap, alleen maar kan verdelen. Een andere, politieke reden was dat deelname aan verkiezingen een erkenning van het ‘ongelovige’ politieke systeem impliceerde. Zawahiri schreef een afrekening met de Muslim Broederschap, De bittere oogst, waarin hij betoogde dat na zestig jaar de Broederschap nog steeds niets had bereikt. Meedoen aan de façade-democratie van Mubarak, had volgens hem alleen tot compromissen geleid en tot een verzwakking van de islamitische principes.

Het ziet ernaar uit dat Zawahiri en met hem Bin Laden ongelijk gaan krijgen. De Moslim Broederschap heeft de afgelopen drie decennia een enorme ontwikkeling doorgemaakt en is zelf de democratische spelregels gaan waarderen. Na jarenlang te zijn onderdrukt door autoritaire regimes, eerst door Nasser, daarna door Mubarak, weet de Broederschap liberale principes op waarde te schatten. Onlangs werden die verankerd in de statuten van de nieuwe partij die de Broederschap heeft opgericht, de Partij van Vrijheid en Rechtvaardigheid. Daarin staat dat de rechterlijke macht onafhankelijk moet zijn, dat iedereen gelijk is voor de wet, en dat vrijheid van meningsuiting en organisatie gerespecteerd zullen worden. Het is waar: de meest liberale leiders van de Broederschap zijn inmiddels weggelopen. De relatie tussen de beweging en de partij is veel te nauw. En de vorige leider van de Moslim Broederschap, Muhammad Akif, opperde dat de revolutie van 25 januari ‘een geschenk van God is en geen mensenwerk’. Niettemin ziet ook de Moslim Broederschap nu de voordelen van een democratisch systeem. Daarvoor heeft ze te veel ervaringen opgedaan in het organiseren van verkiezingen. Maar het is waar dat de Moslim Broederschap nog een fundamentele interne revolutie moet doormaken. Zij is te hiërarchisch, te autoritair en te weinig op de buitenwereld gericht. Maar de beweging kan zich niet onttrekken aan de huidige ontwikkelingen en zal ook aan de ferme kritiek van haar eigen jeugdbeweging, die veel kritischer is dan de leiding, tegemoet moeten komen. Sinds de val van het regime in februari – en dat geldt ook voor Tunesië – is er een vrijemarktwerking ingezet die zegt dat partijen zich moeten inspannen om de gunst van de kiezer te winnen. Daar zal ook de Moslim Broederschap zich niet aan kunnen onttrekken. Vooralsnog domineert daarbij het discours van de bevrijding. Het discours van rechten, rationaliteit, geweldloosheid en nationale eenheid, waarin moslims en kopten gelijkwaardige burgers zijn.

Het zal niemand verbazen dat al deze ontwikkelingen een klap in het gezicht betekenden, niet alleen van Bin Laden als persoon maar van de salafisme als geheel. Het is dan ook geen wonder dat de Salafisten juist onder autoritaire regimes zoals die van Mubarak en het Saoedische koningshuis enorm hebben gedijd. Het principe altijd de leider te volgen, ongeacht diens karakter en politiek, is een ideale partner voor repressieve regimes. Het is dan ook geen wonder dat veel aanhangers van de revolutie in Egypte geloven dat de Salafisten samenwerkten met de inmiddels verboden staatsveiligheidsdienst, de Egyptische Stasi.

Het is mijn stelling dat in de Salafistische beweging politiek als concept en praktijk zo weinig is uitgewerkt dat zij eigenlijk maar twee kanten op kan: die van quiëtistische, apolitieke stroming die gehoorzaamheid betoont is aan de heerser, of die van een gewelddadige beweging die geweld, de jihad, gebruikt om veranderingen af te dwingen. De tussenvorm – het bedrijven van politiek, het sluiten van compromissen, de erkenning van verschillen en van de gelijkwaardigheid van de ander – is binnen een compromisloze doctrine die de waarheid in pacht heeft een onmogelijkheid. De complete desoriëntatie van de Salafistische beweging in Egypte uit zich in stelselmatige pogingen om de aandacht af te leiden naar zaken die niet van belang zijn voor de omwenteling of die zelfs tegenhouden. Zo maken duizenden Salafi’s zich druk over vermeende bekeringen van koptische, christelijke vrouwen die zich dan schuil zouden houden in kerken die vervolgens afgebrand worden. De tombes van soefi’s worden aangevallen en vernietigd omdat je geen intermediairs tussen God en de mensen mag vereren; politici worden aangevallen; moskeeën worden bezet; kathedralen door duizenden omsingeld en geestelijken bedreigd. Kortom, in hun hardnekkige streven om politiek te vermijden veroorzaken de Salafi’s chaos, onrust, sektarisch geweld en uiteindelijk een ondermijning van de democratische revolutie.

Conclusie
De gebeurtenissen die nu plaatsvinden in het Midden-Oosten zijn zo belangrijk omdat ze hoopgevend zijn, rationeel de emancipatie van de politiek voorstellen. Wat niemand voor mogelijk hield, voltrekt zich nu. Er is in de Arabische wereld een nieuwe burger opgestaan die zijn rechten opeist, de dictators verjaagt, en het heft in eigen hand neemt. Er is een nieuw soort humanisme opgestaan dat niet alleen de ‘muur van angst’ maar ook de tradities van hiërarchie, patriarchaat en blinde gehoorzaamheid heeft doorbroken. Het grote voordeel van deze ontwikkeling is dat we ons niet langer eindeloos hoeven te vermoeien met islamitische theologie, maar nu weer gewoon de gebeurtenissen ouderwets in revolutie en contra-revolutie kunnen indelen. Het is duidelijk waar de reactie zit, bij al die bewegingen die nog stoelen op autocratische macht, maar vooral bij die landen die hun legitimiteit danken aan het salafisme, met Saoedi-Arabië voorop. Uiteindelijk hoort Bin Laden, ondanks al zijn kritiek op het Saoedische koningshuis, in die laatste categorie. De ontwikkelingen van de afgelopen paar maanden hebben dat duidelijk gemaakt. Zijn dood heeft dat nog eens onderstreept.

Dit is de volledige tekst van een lezing door Roel Meijer bij het Actualiteitencollege van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen en het Soeterbeeck Programma Osama bin Laden is dood. Het einde van een tijdperk? Roel Meijer is universitair docent Geschiedenis van het Midden-Oosten aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen en senior onderzoeker bij het Clingedael Instituut.

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Closing the week 20 – Featuring Women2Drive

Posted on May 22nd, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere, Gender, Kinship & Marriage Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Most popular on Closer this week:

  1. Veil, For a Change
  2. Het einde van religie in Europa?
  3. Egypt: After the Revolution by Samuli Schielke
  4. Diyanet in Turkey and the Netherlands – Transnational politics and politicization of research by Thijl Sunier
  5. Catastrophe and Independence – Continuing Claims of Memory
  • If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

Featuring Women2Drive Saudi Arabia
Saudis arrest YouTube activist challenging ban on women drivers | World news | The Guardian

Saudi authorities have arrested an activist who launched a campaign to challenge a ban on women driving in the conservative kingdom and posted a video on the internet of her behind the wheel, activists said.

Saudi Arabia

Campaign by Saudi women to drive began on both facebook and Twitter: “On Fri Jun 17th, we women in Saudi will start driving our cars by ourselves.” You may follow fb link and on Twitter @Women2Drive.

A Few Brave Women Dare Take Wheel in Defiance of Saudi Law Against Driving – Bloomberg

Manal, a 32-year-old woman, is planning something she’s never done openly in her native Saudi Arabia: Get in her car and take to the streets, defying a ban on female drivers in the kingdom.

Saudi Women: “I Will Drive Myself Starting June 17”

Us women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are the ones who will lead this society towards change. While we failed to deliver through our voices, we will not fail to deliver through our actions. We have been silent and under the mercy of our guardian (muhram) or foreign driver for too long. Some of us barely make ends meet and cannot even afford cab fare. Some of us are the heads of households yet have no source of income except for a few hard-earned [Saudi] Riyals that are used to pay drivers. Then there are those of us who do not have a muhram to look after our affairs and are forced to ask strangers for help. We are even deprived of public transportation, our only salvation from being under the mercy of others. We are your daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers. We are half of society and give birth to [the other] half, yet we have been made invisible and our demands have been marginalized. We have been deliberately excluded from your plans! Therefore, the time has come to take the initiative. We will deliver a letter of complaint to our father the King of Humanity and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques calling on him to support the Women of June 17.

Xenophobia and Governance of (Muslim) minorities
The new faces of the European far-right « The Immanent Frame

Two hitherto marginal but rising forces proved pivotal in the 2009 European elections: a burgeoning Green movement and a renascent far-right. On one hand, the British National Party won its first entry to the European Parliament, while in the Netherlands a rich multicultural heritage has been challenged by the electoral victories of the nativist Party for Freedom (PVV). On the other hand, the breakthrough of environmental groups on the political scene was celebrated everywhere in Europe. In Germany, where there was already a strong Green tradition, and in France, they outstripped the center parties in unprecedented fashion. But since the election, the actions of the Greens have remained virtually invisible, while the far-right never ceases to occupy the public stage, shaping societal debate across Europe and positioning itself as a viable alternative political force.

Xenophobia and the Civilizing Mission | openDemocracy

The return of the figure of the foreigner in Europe questions the ways in which Europe has sought to reconstruct itself after a historical moment of deep importance: the fall of colonial empires. Medias and public opinion usually refer to two contemporary facts that define Europe, its contours, its ‘spirit’: the rise and fall of Nazism and totalitarianism, summarized in the Second World War and the ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall.’ Both occurred in Europe. However, the creation and fall of the colonial empires, events of considerable importance in the making of modern Europe, is very rarely included. The ways in which colonialism and its end have shaped Europe are not quite part of European cartography. What occurred in the colony is never entirely seen as the creation of modern, democratic Europe but as a monstrous perversion carried out by ‘uncivilized’ men. The colony is externalized, excised from political thought, framed between the beginning of colonization and its end. The ‘colonized’ is a foreign figure, framed within fixed categories, lazy, ungrateful, aggressive, violent, sexist. His woman is ‘oppressed,’ veiled, caught in tradition. The figure of the foreigner remains opaque, someone who is entirely a stranger, unable to ‘integrate’ European culture and values. And yet, only through this integration might the stranger enter civilization.

Abuse of Muslims shows equality is still an open question in Europe – CSMonitor.com

Religious intolerance is a daily reality in Europe, mainly targeted at Muslims. We need to better understand the dynamics behind the new trend of laws and popular opinion banning minority religious expression and stigmatizing Islam.

The future of Islamophobia: the liberal, the Jew, the animal | openDemocracy

So suddenly there has been a curious reversal in the fortune of Muslims and Jews in Holland. For Muslim organizations, this controversy has become an opportunity to demonstrate their reasonable willingness to adapt Islamic practice to the findings of modern science and the norms of Dutch society. For Jews, it has been to discover that they have been demoted from Holocaust survivors to a religious minority like any other. Suddenly it matters more that they are ‘religious’ than that they are ‘Jews.’ Neither the international pleas personally addressed to Dutch political leaders by the American Simon Wiesenthal Center, nor public statements from European rabbis, nor calls to remember the proud Dutch tradition of tolerance towards the Jewish community have made any difference. That is to say, today, so far as the secularist Dutch majority is concerned, once religious Jews disagree with them they are little different from Muslims: trapped in stubborn irrationality and medieval practices. Liberal secularism is on its way to becoming the new group-think.

Entrapment and Racialization: The “Homegrown” Canard

The very public disagreement between the two law enforcement agencies disrupted the usually tidy media narrative about “homegrown,” Muslim American terrorism, disrupted by vigilant and effective surveillance. Suddenly, messy notions of entrapment and false accusations targeting stigmatized minorities started to seep into the mainstream discussion.

Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister in call for tolerance after Ataka mosque incident – Bulgaria – The Sofia Echo

Bulgaria is one of the few countries in Europe which for more than 50 years has been an example of tolerance – ethnic, religious and other forms – and no one should damage this, Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov said after a clash outside a mosque in central Sofia between supporters of ultra-nationalist party Ataka and Muslims led to injuries and arrests.

Bulgaria: Right-Wing Group and Muslims Clash in Sofia · Global Voices

Violent clashes erupted between sympathizers of the nationalist Ataka (The Attack) party and local Muslims at the Bania Basha mosque in the center of Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, during today’s nationalist demonstrations against the mosque’s loudspeakers.

The Arab Revolutions and Beyond
Reflections on the (In)Visibility of Copts in Egypt

I’ve been thinking lately about the circumstances under which Coptic Christians emerge on the Egyptian socio-political landscape. Those circumstances tend to be, in a word, ugly. Copts become a visible religious community when they are attacked. And then Westerners in particular wonder: “Who are the Copts?” (I should also point out, however, that although well aware of the existence of Copts, or al-aqbat in Arabic, most Egyptian Muslims are equally unfamiliar with Coptic religiosity.) This strange play between visibility and invisibility is the problematic that I take up here, arguing that what is desirable for Copts in a new Egypt is a visibility that takes seriously their religiosity. I do so by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork I have been doing among Copts and reflecting on recent events in Egypt.

Who are the Coptic Christians? | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

Attacks on churches, communal divisions – Cairo has recently seen conflicts between some Muslims and Coptic Christians. But who exactly are the Copts and how did they come to be in Egypt? Part of the answer lies in Coptic art.

War & revolutions: Europe and the Arab world – Empire – Al Jazeera English

Europe has dramatically changed its tune. Having once embraced Arab autocrats it is now supporting democracy in the Middle East, selectively. In Libya, they are intervening militarily, although Gaddafi was until recently a guest of honour in their capitals.

This diplomatic double dealing might be common place in international relations, but it is now being dressed-up in the moral hyperbole of humanitarian intervention.

To some, the NATO-led intervention has complicated the natural progression of the Arab awakening; others feel that despite their cynical calculations Western powers are, for the first time, on the right side of Arab history.

Empire travels across Europe’s centres of power to examine the hypocrisy of the Arab world’s closest neighbours.

Arab Spring, Turkish Fall – By Steven A. Cook | Foreign Policy

The Arab uprisings seemed tailor-made for the “new Turkey” to exert its much-vaunted influence in the Middle East. Since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power almost nine years ago, Ankara has actively courted the region, cultivating warm relations with certain Arab countries, winning plaudits from Rabat to Ramadi for its principled stand on Gaza, and using its prestige to solve problems in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. A central focus of Turkey’s so-called “zero problems” foreign policy has been a concerted effort to improve and expand relations with the countries to its south and east. Now, with millions of Arabs standing up and demanding their freedom, Turks are not the only ones to have held up the “Turkish model” — the democratic development of a predominantly Muslim society in an officially secular political system — as a possible way forward for the rest of the Middle East.

Terrorism After the Revolutions | Foreign Affairs

Although last winter’s peaceful popular uprisings damaged the jihadist brand, they also gave terrorist groups greater operational freedom. To prevent those groups from seizing the opportunities now open to them, Washington should keep the pressure on al Qaeda and work closely with any newly installed regimes.

Egyptian uprising’s reporter: ‘Two Egypts have emerged’ | World news | The Guardian

In the past 100 days, two Egypts have emerged. One is revolutionary Egypt, driven by ideals and demanding reform and institutional change. And then there is the other Egypt, in which the military tries to maintain law and order. In certain areas, those two Egypts conflict; in other areas, they converge. Right now, they are torn apart and heading in very different directions.

Twitter’s window on Middle East uprisings Jon Friedman’s Media Web – MarketWatch

Her use of Twitter, for instance, is fascinating to me. Journalists have long done research by looking at such tools as government-issued reports. But by examining data from Twitter, Shereen Sakr can come up with first-hand findings.

An interview with the MB’s Mohamed Morsy – Blog – The Arabist

Mohamed MorsyFollowing a symposium in London organized by the Egyptian Community in the United Kingdom, a diaspora association of Egyptian Muslims in Britain, Arabist reader Dalia Malek had the chance to follow up with Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Council member and president of Justice and Freedom Party Mohamed Morsy and ask further questions about his lecture. She sent in this transcript of the interview and her notes on Morsy’s lecture.

Egypt: Why Are the Churches Burning? by Yasmine El Rashidi | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books

On the weekend of May 7 and 8, in the Cairo district of Imbaba—an impoverished working-class neighborhood that has been a stronghold of militant Islamists in the past—a group of Salafis tried to force their way into Saint Mina Church, a local Coptic house of worship. They were demanding the release of a woman, Abeer, an alleged convert to Islam whom they claimed—without evidence—the church was holding against her will. (Christians here have long alleged that Islamists kidnap their girls, rape them, and force them to convert to Islam. In recent weeks, those allegations have grown. Now, some Salafis have been making similar charges about Copts.).

Israel and Palestine: Here comes your non-violent resistance | The Economist

FOR many years now, we’ve heard American commentators bemoan the violence of the Palestinian national movement. If only Palestinians had learned the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we hear, they’d have had their state long ago. Surely no Israeli government would have violently suppressed a non-violent Palestinian movement of national liberation seeking only the universally recognised right of self-determination.

Gamal al-Banna: No to civil state with Islamic reference | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today’s News from Egypt

Banna, whose views are widely criticized in religious circles in Egypt, said that promoting the idea of a civil state on the condition that it should be based on religion, is “a fallacy.” His words represented a not-so-hidden attack on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which calls for a civil state with an “Islamic reference”.

During an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm, Banna said that most Muslims today are Salafis, a fact that he attributes to the closure of the door to ijtihad (the process of making a jurisprudential decision by interpretation of the sources of the Islamic law), and people’s blind following of Salafi interpretations of Islam.

Where do gay rights come in the Arab protests? – Ahwaa.org

The revolutionary protests sweeping across the Arab world has left me wondering if this is one step closer to gay rights or if we have yet to reach that stage of tolerance, open mindedness and acceptance in our lifetime

The Associated Press: Israel’s religious gays battle for acceptance

A once unimaginable movement is emerging from within Israel’s insular Orthodox Jewish community: homosexuals demanding to be accepted and embraced, no matter what the Bible says.

Egyptian Chronicles: Nakba Revolution : The people want to return back to Palestine and Golan

I do not remember that the anniversary of Nakba was as hot and as intense as today seriously. The people want the right of the return , the people want to return back to Palestine.

Thirteen killed as Israeli troops open fire on Nakba Day border protests | World news | guardian.co.uk

Israeli troops opened fire on pro-Palestinian demonstrators attempting to breach its borders on three fronts, killing at least 13 people. Scores more were wounded at Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

On Salafism
Salafis 101: 5 key facts – What does ‘Salafi’ mean? – CSMonitor.com

Salafi Muslims are often associated with militant Islam and violent groups such as Al Qaeda, though most Salafis disavow violent jihad. Repressed for decades by secular dictators such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Zine Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Salafis may find new breathing room now that the Arab Spring has ousted such leaders. Here are five facts to help you understand them.

Rise of Salafism in political sphere is muffled by media – The National

The Salafis have been accused of inciting recent violence, although there is no conclusive proof to that effect. The group did not initially support the Tahrir Square protests, but have gained great power in its aftermath.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Salafism: The unknown quantity

Sectarian incidents like the burning of churches in Imbaba have put the spotlight on Salafis. Who are they, and what do they espouse, asks Amani Maged

Rape, sex and race
The DSK arrest could be bad news for French Muslims | FP Passport

That said, the arrest would seem to be bad news for one constituency: immigrants. If the scandal cripples the Socialists, the far-right may come to be seen as Sarkozy’s primary competition in the race, meaning the president will have to pander even more to anti-immigrant sentiment. As Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse wrote in March about Sarkozy’s recent denunciations of “multiculturalism” — which hasn’t, in any case, been official policy in France for years — as a transparent ploy to appeal to supporters of the Le Pen family’s brand of right-wing politics:

The Media’s Aggressive Groping Problem | | AlterNet

There’s a very big difference between consensual sex and assault. Our media’s screwed up coverage of DSK’s rape charges and Schwarzenegger’s groping would suggest otherwise.

Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn, and Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About Race? | Feminist Law Professors

The questions of class and power dynamics are real, important and significant ones in any conversation about either of these cases. Noticeably absent from the conversations I’ve read so far, however, is an acknowledgment of complex racial issues that may be involved.

The alleged victim in the Strauss-Kahn case is an African immigrant to the United States.

The mother of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s non-marital child is speculated by some to be Latina.

Misc.
What Obama did say – Blog – The Arabist

As with previous speeches, it’s well written and was well delivered. There is a certain consistency with the Cairo speech, as Obama highlights. There is an endorsement of the idea of freedom and democratization (not that any US president has ever delivered a speech in praise of dictatorship — it’s an easy score.) There was an admission of US interests in the region that would have otherwise made this speech simply too hypocritical (it’s going to be attacked for that anyway). I’m just not sure why those interests should include concern for one state’s security (Israel’s) and not others. Nor why self-determination in the pursuit of liberty is something that doesn’t apply for Palestinians. But here we tread old ground.

People believe subway maps over reality – Greater Greater Washington

Maps matter. Metro’s and London’s transit maps present distorted geographies in order to make the system’s organization clearer. They have become iconic, but the way they present distances shapes people’s understanding of space and distance in their region.

Explaining Islam to the public « The Immanent Frame

The expectation that Islamic studies scholars were prepared to “cover” the Islamic tradition and speak to its beliefs and practices on a normative, global basis was stressful for many of us. The idea that we could speak with authority about the practices of 1.4 billion people who speak dozens of languages and have inhabited the planet for the last 1400 years is absurd, of course. Like other academics, Islamic studies scholars are trained in certain fields of knowledge; in the best of programs, they are trained to be exceedingly careful about claiming too much. The pressures to become the academic voice of Islam both on campus and in the media frequently led scholars to abandon caution. We reached for our copies of the Encyclopedia of Islam and sent out queries, sometimes quite urgently, to the AAR Study of Islam listserv. “What does Islam say about x?” was the way questions were often framed. We were not allowed to answer, “It depends.” What was generally desired, it seems, was a fatwa, an authoritative ruling on what the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the ulama say about “x,” not a lecture on how the historical practices of real people refuse easy generalization.

Anonymous: peering behind the mask | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Are members of the ‘hacktivist group’ Anonymous defenders of truth and seekers of knowledge, or simply a bunch of cyber terrorists? Jana Herwig investigates

Getting Past the Enlightenment » Sociological Images

In this 11 minute animated talk, Matthew Taylor argues that scientific study of humans in the tradition of the Enlightenment has taught us, ironically, that Enlightenment values alone cannot be trusted to usher humanity into a better future.

To fight the xenophobic populists, we need more free speech, not less | Timothy Garton Ash | Comment is free | The Guardian

Geert Wilders should not be on trial for his words on Islam. But mainstream politicians must confront and not appease him

Seeing “Bridesmaids” is a social responsibility – Bridesmaids – Salon.com

How the fate of female-driven movies came to rest upon the success of “SNL” star Kristen Wiig’s new comedy

Mozart Sounds Like an Arab Love Song – Qantara.de

? This audacious project has foundered more than once and even this time its success hung by a thread. Daniel Barenboim performed a concert in Gaza with a group of European musicians. Hans-Christian Rößler reports

Dutch
Stop de teloorgang van de universiteitsjournalistiek – de Volkskrant – Opinie

krantjeop_300_01
Imago-obsessie bedreigt de vrijheid van universitaire media

De Bouali-norm « Wat Je Zegt Ben Je Zelf!

Daar waar de Balkenende-norm een doel dient – ik ken trouwens niet één Marokkaanse graaier bij de (semi-)overheid of in het bedrijfsleven… – is de Bouali-norm dus een compleet zinloze standaard, waar we heel snel van af moeten. Eerst was er alleen maar aandacht voor de “slechte” Marokkaan en nu is er aandacht voor de “wenselijke” Marokkaan. Maar wanneer komt er eens aandacht voor de echte en menselijke Marokkaan?

Frontaal Naakt. » Bij de dood van Osama

Hoe ironisch dat de Westerse toon en seculiere houding die de verschillende leiders hanteerden, minder heeft gedaan voor het imago van de Arabische wereld dan de simpele, maar volhardende acties van de mensen nu. Blijkt het gewone volk de taal van de diplomatie en PR beter te begrijpen dan de in dure, Westerse universiteiten opgeleide despoten.

OM vervolgt ‘imam’ Abdullah Haselhoef voor fraude :: nrc.nl

Binnenland

Het Openbaar Ministerie vervolgt Abdullah Haselhoef voor fraude. De NOS meldt dat hij naar schatting 2,5 miljoen euro aan kinderopvangtoeslagen zou hebben ontvangen voor opvang die in werkelijkheid nooit heeft plaatsgevonden.

Column van Willigenburg: waarom we de PVV dankbaar mogen zijn | DeJaap

Het is juist dáárom gekmakend, omdat diezelfde mensen iedereen voortdurend inpeperen dat je “niet te snel moet oordelen”, “genuanceerd” moet denken en “niet vanuit je onderbuik moet reageren”. Wát een gotspe. Als je de PVV niet meteen en ondubbelzinnig veroordeelt (maar haar handelen en voorspoed probeert te verklaren vanuit het recente verleden), kom je frontaal in contact met hún onderbuik! En die onderbuik is harder, strakker, gemener en onverbiddelijker dan de boze en soms hysterische onderbuik die rechts parten schijnt te spelen. Het is de onderbuik van de georganiseerde uitsluiting en verkettering.

Song of the Week
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Naar de haaien – De dood van Osama bin Laden

Posted on May 19th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism.

Guest Author: drs. Leon Wecke

Het zou een realityfilm worden. Uitgenodigd waren de president zelve, ene Barack Obama, zijn minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Hillary Clinton, en een aantal belendende politieke en militaire hotemetoten. En hoewel in feite de voorstelling deels bestond uit een ooggetuigeverslag, stond weinig een natuurgetrouwe verbeelding in de weg. De hoofdfilm begon zonder voorprogramma, om zo te zeggen, men viel met de deur in huis en wel letterlijk. De inzittenden van de vier helikopters, een tachtigtal in oorlogstenue gestoken jongelui van de afdeling Navy Seals betreden met enig geweld het pand. Zachtjes behoefden ze het niet te doen, de kinderen waren toch al wakker geworden van het motorgeronk van de helikopters en de saluutschoten waarmee de onverwachte visite werd verwelkomd. Obama deed een schietgebedje en Hillary deed even de handen voor de ogen.

Het tafereel was eerst de eerste verdieping. Een mevrouw vroeg nog of de gasten thee wilden of liever op de koffie kwamen. Maar in hun slechtste Pashtun maakten de ongenode gasten duidelijk dat ze iets anders wilden. Er werd geschoten en één keer teruggeschoten. En zoals dat in de opzet van het A-team past werden de justitice-doeners niet geraakt. Dat kon je van de tegenpartij niet zeggen.

Een mevrouw, die in de weg stond, was het eerste echte doel, een paar lijfwachten meteen daarna het tweede target en toen de hoofdprijs, die op de tweede of derde verdieping in zijn volle lengte zichtbaar was. De meest in aanmerking komende optie luidde: IOESV: ‘indien ongewapend, eerst schieten en dan vragen’. Bill, de hoogste in rang, mocht het eerst en daarna Johnny, die ooit zijn certificaat gehaald had bij een schietvereniging in Appingendam. Vanuit de dekking van het deurportaal kreeg Osama een gaatje in de borst en een in het hoofd, hetgeen voldoende bleek. ‘Geronimo-EKIA’ werd er geroepen, wat geen verwijzing naar een Zweedse meubelzaak was, maar ‘Osama, Enemy Killed In Action’. Het was een kreet die bij het oefenen van de missie meermalen ten gehore was gebracht. Terwijl Hillary duidelijk door het tafereel was aangeschoten, bracht de president, niet al te origineel uit: ‘we got him’. Er was geen aftiteling en slechts een onhoorbaar applaus. De aanwezigen wisten dat nu plan B in werking zou treden: identificatie, DNA vaststellen, een fotosessie, vergelijken vòòr en na de behandeling en dan het antwoord op de vraag wat doe je met een lijk?. Obama had zich er persoonlijk mee bemoeid. ‘Volgens de islamitische traditie’, was het recept. En dat was een meevaller: binnen 24 uur. Hoe sneller hoe beter. Maar hoe zonder een bedevaartsplek te creëren?

Voor de vorm werd er toch nog even gebeld. Wie wil hem hebben? De Bin Laden-familie, die gebrouilleerd was met het zwarte schaap van de familie, antwoordde dat ze te druk met bouwzaken waren en de relatie met de Amerikaanse zakenvrienden niet in de waagschaal wenste te stellen. Dan maar het lijstje afwerken. Ben Ali van Tunesië was niet thuis en ook Mubarak van Egypte was de hort op, Kadhaffi zei dat hij met al Qaida al genoeg te stellen had, Assad van Syrië zei druk te zijn met een grote schoonmaak en Saleh van Jemen, die zei alleen ‘jeminee’ en legde de hoorn op de haak. De enige, die volgens de CIA nog overbleef, was Mark Rutte van Holland. Bekend was dat dat volkje van hem als het om geld ging de ogen wel wilde toeknijpen. En ja hoor, ze hadden plek op de Efteling. Er zouden wel wat mensen komen kijken, maar de directie van het park zag het wel zitten. En, zo werd er aan toegevoegd, dagjesmensen in boerka of met hoofddoek zou men weren.

Obama, nog steeds met een liveverbinding verbonden met de projectmedewerkers op het vliegkampschip Carl Vinson in de Arabische Golf, fronste de wenkbrauwen. ‘Zo gaat onze overwinning toch nog naar de haaien’ vreesde hij. ‘Haaien’, dat was het, zo bedacht de Commander in Chief. En zo geschiedde: ‘Een twee drie, in naam van Allah’. Een van de bemanningsleden had nog snel met een paar meegesmokkelde bakstenen uit de muur van de compound in Abbottabad de lijkwade verzwaard. Hij deed het met een gekweld gemoed, want bakstenen uit de muur van Osama brachten op Marktplaats VS een fortuin op. En toen gebeurde het. Osama kwam in het koude water van de Arabische Zee weer snel bij kennis. Het was een wonder waar paus Johannes Paulus Twee zijn vingers bij zou aflikken.

De eerste die Osama tegen kwam was een grote mensenhaai. Hij was door Neptunus getipt dat er een gekruid – gekruit met een t – hapje voor hem aankwam. Maar alvorens eraan te beginnen, wilde het beest, zoals bij ritueel slachten ook al de traditie is, enige eer aan zijn versnapering bewijzen. Hij vroeg: ‘hoe kom je hier?’. Osama liet een renditionkaartje van de reisvereniging CIA zien.‘Hij vroeg hoe kom je hier? Ik wist niet dat het paradijs zo vochtig was’, bracht hij uit, om meteen te vervolgen ‘waar zijn mijn 72 maagden? Sommigen zeggen dat dat meer een kwelling dan een beloning is, maar tegen de eeuwigheid afgezet is het bitter weinig’. De haai lachte verstolen en vroeg: ‘hoezo recht op 72 maagden?’. Osama stak van wal: ‘Ik heb naar eer en geweten gestreden tegen de westerse en Amerikaanse onderdrukkers, de roofdieren uit het koloniale tijdperk, die hun roof hebben voortgezet, de steunberen van onze corrupte regeringen, de lieden, die ooit de Arabische wereld naar willekeur in landen hebben opgedeeld, de dieven van onze grondstoffen en olie, de oorzaken van onze armoede en onze ziekten’. De haai knikte instemmend. ‘Ik heb de ongelovigen, ook die uit eigen gelederen, wat hardhandig de wacht aangezegd, dat is waar, maar dat was mijn plicht, aldus Osama. ‘En nu hebben ze ook nog mijn revolutie laten stelen door jongeren met twitter en Face Boek’. Hier wachtte Osama even en hapte naar lucht. De haai wierp hem een paar in camouflagepapier verpakte luchtbellen toe met het opschrift ‘Made in China’. Osama vervolgde: ‘Het is waar, ik heb enkele duizenden naar hun hemel en waarschijnlijker hun hel gestuurd, maar zijzelf, onze vijand, is goed voor het tien- zo niet honderdvoudige. De echte’as van het kwaad’ bestaat uit milieuvervulling, armoede, honger en ziekten, die zij nog steeds bevorderen en in stand houden. Ze liegen dat het een aard heeft. Ze fantaseren over atoombommen en terroristen, waar ze niet zijn. Ze hielpen mij om die Sovjetrussen Afghanistan uit te jagen en zeiden vervolgens dat ze ons bevrijd hadden terwijl ze ons bezetten. Het zijn jokkebrokken en liegbeesten, meneer de Haai’.En dan mij, ook nog buitenrechtelijk executeren, terwijl ik ongewapend was. Die Obama moet als moordenaar voor het door hem niet erkende strafhof in den Haag’.

De Haai verkleurde, zoals sommige haaien plegen te doen als ze kwaad worden. ‘Maar U, waarde Osama hebt buitenrechtelijk vele duizenden mensen omgebracht, U bent een stiekeme massamoordenaar, een schoelje, een uitschot, dat zijn eigen religie misbruikt. U hebt op 9/11 geen heldendaad verricht maar op termijn uw eigen doodvonnis getekend. U hebt ene Bush aan het argument geholpen om Irak binnen te vallen en een nooit vertoonde wereldwijde samenwerking tegen terrorisme tot stand gebracht. U bent een domme massamoordenaar,die allang is ingehaald door twitterende jongelui,die ‘Osama was al dood en nu is hij het helemaal’ in hun facebook schrijven. U diende niet alleen buitenrechtelijk geëxecuteerd te worden, maar beter levend in stukken gescheurd. Osama riep nog ‘niet doen, ik ben ongewapend’, maar de haai had de daad al bij het woord gevoegd.
De in het zeemansgraf meegegeven camera deed het nog uitstekend. Obama en Hillary wisten niet wat ze zagen. ‘Dit moet geheim blijven’, besliste Obama, maar helaas, de haai had het al opYouTube gezet en de volgende dag stond een grote bloederige foto op de frontpagina van De Telegraaf.

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
Column door drs. Leon Wecke, polemoloog bij het CICAM van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. Deze tekst werd uitgesproken als column bij het actualiteitencollege Osama bin Laden is dood. Het einde van een tijdperk? op 10 mei 2011.

1 comment.

Veil, For A Change

Posted on May 18th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Gender, Kinship & Marriage Issues, Multiculti Issues, Ritual and Religious Experience.

A few weeks ago the Dutch blog and twitter community saw a (small) explosion of messages about the headscarf. What happened? A young Tunisian-Dutch lady with the pseudonym Dunya Henya expressed her feelings and experiences about people who call her names and show other types of offensive behaviour because she wears a headscarf. The post, called ‘Fucking Headscarf’ (or literally Cancer Headscarf) was written quite well in the sense that it contained assertive and affective language and examples that were very compelling. According to her, she wears the headscarf out of her free will and stated that she does not force anything up to anyone, she adjusts and participates in society. The fact however that she wears a headscarf is, according to her, enough for some people to degrade her and treat her demeaningly as if she is a second rate citizen who can be called all kinds of abusive names. She stated ‘I draw a line, thus far and no further.’ and ‘Not the (non-existent) islamization is a danger to this society, the growing intolerance however is’.

Her blogpost probably should be seen in the context of the ‘battle of the veil’ that is going on in Europe today; a debate about the headscarf in many European countries that not only has consequences for the public sphere and on a political level but (as the post clearly shows) also on the streets of Europe. I think the combination of the assertive and affective language makes her post so strong and remarkable. There are more women of course speaking and complaining about the negative reactions they receive, but only seldom they clearly say back off like Dunya Henya did. There is clearly an obsession (often among white men) with Muslim women with headscarves. It appears that when people think about Muslim women they think about women with a veil and then indeed criticize, verbally abuse or even attack women who comply with that stereotype.

Important in Dunya Henya’s defense (and of many others as well) is the right to choose. Look for example at the next video of two American women who cover themselves (one with niqab and the other hijjab) in order to fulfill their desire of modesty:
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It is often, as Dunya Henya states as well, to strive for modesty and being guarded against things that may harm them; not only because they feel their religion says so, but also because they actually experienced harmfull things.

In particular women wearing the face veil are currently at the center of the debate with the current ban in France and similar plans in other countries like the Netherlands. Even more so than women with a headscarf women with niqab are absent in the debates. Interesting therefore is Naima Bouteldja’s account of her research among French niqabi’s.

France’s false ‘battle of the veil’ | Naima Bouteldja | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The authors of the bill assert that displaying the flag from one’s “country of origin” during demonstrations or celebrations often conveys a “provocative attitude towards our republican values”.

Unveiling the Truth illustrates the rupture between the hysterical national discourse on the women who wear the full-face veil and their own concrete realities. The testimonies of the 32 women interviewed in towns and cities across France challenged many of the myths relayed during the controversy. Rather than reflecting an attempt to subvert society, the adoption of the niqab was, in most cases, the result of a personal and extremely individualistic journey, a modern spiritual approach in an effort to transform the self.

Of course various other factors played a role in the women’s decision to adopt the veil. But most of them were the first members of their family to adopt the veil, the majority had no niqab-wearing peers, their attendance at their mosque was minimal, and their affiliation to any Islamic bodies almost nonexistent.

Her report also reveals how women with niqab receive almost no support from representatives of Islamic organizations that appear to comply with the French state’s discourse, policies and laws although they did oppose the ban. I think one can find the same in the Netherlands (with the exception of the Salafi networks). Most organizations appear to be against a possible ban but also state that niqab is not compulsory in Islam and that it has no basis in the Qur’an. True or false that doesn’t really matter, what it produces is that women with niqab receive no sign of solidarity at all. Instead, as Annelies Moors showed in her research on Dutch niqabi’s, part of the discourse aimed against it constructs the law as a matter of security while ignoring that women with niqab experience abusive behaviour or even violence against them.
France’s false ‘battle of the veil’ | Naima Bouteldja | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

This might explain why in a sample of 32 women, 10 young women decided to adopt the full-face veil, some clearly in an act of defiance, after the launch of the debate. Bushra, a 24-year-old former rapper who did not even wear a hijab in April 2009, explained: “The controversy put a flea in my ear … Already, for Eid, they don’t allow us to slaughter our sheep, they don’t let us go to school with our headscarves, they don’t let us do anything!” Giving them a taste of their own medicine, she adopted the veil. She adds, with a laugh: “Thanks to their nonsense, I stopped mine.”

It is indeed this dialectic of the state who tries to control women that has led some feminists to reconsider their own stance against the veil, such as Leila Ahmed who in the past saw the veil as representing political islam and who was very disturbed by the sight of women in the US wearing hijab:
Veil of Ignorance – By Leila Ahmed | Foreign Policy

Until recently, I thought, as Hourani did, that the disappearance of the veil was inevitable; I was sure that greater education and opportunity for women in the Muslim world would result in the elimination of this relic of women’s oppression. For decades, in books, op-eds, and lectures, I stood firmly and unquestioningly against the veil and the hijab, the Islamic headscarf, viewing them as signs of women’s disempowerment. To me, and to my fellow Arab feminists, being told what to wear was just another form of tyranny. But in the course of researching and writing a new book on the history of the veil’s improbable comeback, I’ve had to radically rethink my assumptions. Where I once saw the veil as a symbol of intolerance, I now understand that for many women, it is a badge of individuality and justice.

During her research (read the review at Wall Street Journal) Leila Ahmed learned that the meaning of hijjab changed from being ‘fraught with ancient patriarchal meanings’ in societies where it is required by law or through social pressure to wear one, to gender equality, social justice, rejection of negative stereotypes and affirming Muslim pride in Europe. This for example occurs among women who are the forefront of new and alternative interpretations of key Quran verses pertaining to women (Ahmed for example mentions Laleh Bakhtiar who published a new translation of the Quran: The Sublime Quran) but also ‘ordinary’ women who feel they are and should be free to wear whatever they want. At the same time this discourse of free will and free choice is under debate. Consider the next excerpt from Nadia el Awady’s blog on the women and headscarves in Egypt:
Societies Overpowered by a Headscarf: It’s Time for Change « Inner Workings of My Mind

A woman, we shout, has the right to choose.

But do we Muslims really believe this or do we use this argument when it suits us?

Do women in Muslim countries – or for that matter do women living in Islamic communities all over the United States and Europe – truly have the right to choose? Does a woman truly have freedom of choice if the societal impacts of that choice have the potential to devastate the very core of her existence?

In recent years in Egypt, a growing number of women are deciding to take off their headscarves. This growing number is still small, mind you it is no phenomenon, but there are enough women doing this that most Egyptians know someone who knows someone who has taken off the hijab. Their reasons for taking off the hijab vary as much as their reasons varied for donning it to begin with. Most of the women I know who have taken off the hijab live in circles of semi-liberal families and friends. This makes the choice relatively easier for these women. Every one of these women, nevertheless, has faced harsh judgment by some family members and friends because they chose to doff the hijab.

These women are immediately analyzed to their faces and behind their backs. Their original reasons for wearing the hijab were the wrong reasons. Her faith is weak. She has been moving in circles of friends who have tainted her soul. She has no proper understanding of the Islamic faith. She has opened too many doors to the devil and this is the result. The list goes on and on. And the snobby advice does as well. We’ll pray for you, dear sister. Remember to keep up your five daily prayers. That will save you. Be careful because you have started down the slippery slope to hell. We will pray to God to protect you and give you guidance.

She is immediately interrogated over and over and over about her reasons to take off the hijab. She is forced to entertain long discussions about the obligatory nature of the hijab in Islam. She is subjected to long explanations about how accepting Islam as a religion means accepting the doctrine. She is not allowed to disagree. She is not allowed to have her own opinion or her own interpretation. She is not even allowed to be uncertain – not really knowing in her heart whether the hijab is obligatory or not and deciding that it was not for her and that she would have faith in God’s understanding.

The woman must be convinced. She must be made to see the light. She must be saved.

The right to choose has all of a sudden gone to hell along with this woman who has chosen to take off her hijab.

These women I refer to above – those living among semi-liberal family and friends – are the lucky ones.

Women who come from more conservative circles barely stand a chance.

Nadia El-Awady points out that in that in Europe and America she is odd because of the hijjab and that there is a strong social and political pressure to put if off, while in Muslim societies she is successfull because of the hijab. In both cases she is judged and scrutinized because of the headscarf. This is also very clear when we look at a recent video and series of interviews with American Muslim women speaking about how people treated them when they wore the headscarf, how they experienced wearing it and…why they decide to take it off and still felt like practicing Muslim women. These women did experience social pressure to wear it but were also genuinely convinced that it was a good thing to do as a Muslim woman and they were criticized when they put it off. You can see the video here (via Muxlim.com):

And listen to the audio interviews at the site of NPR.
Although I liked the article, video and audio there is something that bothers me with that piece. It seems that putting off the headscarf (or wearing it for that matter) is seen as a fixed identity statement. Both practices, taking off and putting it on, reduce the practice of wearing a headscarf to communicative acts reflecting a full-formed moral identity that is also related to women being liberal, integrated, westernized, truly Muslim, modesty and so on. That is just not how it works however. Many women in my previous and current research put it on, take it off, put it on and take it off again, switch between several modalities of veiling several times during their lives. It shows different modalities of how women constitute and nurture their moral dispositions, identities (plural!), and commitments during various stages of life and in particular everyday and/or political contexts. It is probably difficult to have such a processual account of women’s lives and practices into a video and audio. Nevertheless the idea of women with a hijab or without having a fixed, full-formed identity makes it difficult to transcend to current debates on hijab and the social pressures laid upon them by Muslim and non-Muslims because it captures them in a discourse that is not theirs but of politicians trying to forbid the veil or those trying to force the veil upon women (see also Nicole Cunningham‘s account on Muslimah Media Watch for a similar view). This politicized idea of the headscarf makes real debates with Muslims and among Muslims almost impossible because the different points of view are reduced to simple us and them categorizations. And indeed, at one point someone really has to say: I draw a line, thus far and no further!

0 comments.

Het einde van religie in Europa

Posted on May 17th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Religion Other.

Volgens Amerikaanse onderzoekers Abrams, Wiener en Yaple zal georganiseerde religie uiteindelijk verdwijnen in negen Westerse democratieën: Oostenrijk, Tjechië, Finland, Zwitserland, Ierland, Canada, Australië, Nieuw-Zeeland en…Nederland. Met name in die laatste vijf ‘religion will be driven toward extinction’ zo stellen zij. In hun paper, A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation, baseren zij zich op een wiskundig model (mede gebaseerd op een model over het uitsterven van talen die door slechts kleine groepen mensen gesproken worden) dat laat zien dat ‘unaffiliated’ (niet gebonden aan een georganiseerde religie) de sterkst groeiende groep is in die landen. Hun model is daarbij gebaseerd op twee sociologische vooronderstellingen:

  1. Dat het aantrekkelijker is om deel uit te maken van een meerderheid dan van een minderheid (het meerderheidseffect). Mensen zullen volgens de onderzoekers eerder overstappen naar grotere groepen en slechts enkele verbindingen die mensen hebben met de groep ‘ongebonden’ is voldoende zo stellen ze.
  2. Er zijn sociale, economische en politieke voordelen verbonden aan ongebondenheid in landen waar religies in verval zijn (utiliteitseffect).

Religieuze verbondenheid blijkt volgens hen te voldoen aan die twee vooronderstellingen en derhalve zal de groei van de groep ongebonden doorgaan. Het is niet zo, zo benadrukken de onderzoekers, dat ongebonden mensen ook atheïsten of niet-gelovigen zijn. Het gaat om mensen die zich niet verbinden aan een bepaalde religie of religieuze organisatie op het moment van hun survey. Zij verwachten dat in Nederland de groepen ongebonden zal groeien van 40% nu tot 70% in 2050. De trend die zij zien voor de genoemde Europese landen zal niet wezenlijk veranderen door de immigratie van moslims zo verwachten zij.

Het is nog maar de vraag of je ontwikkelingen met betrekking tot religie zo kunt voorspellen. Het is terecht dat zij wijzen op de groeiende groep ongebonden mensen; dat is volgens mij een trend in vrijwel heel Europa. In die zin is er, in tegenstelling tot wat vaak wordt gesteld, geen sprake van een religieuze opleving in Europa. Maar of dat ook wil zeggen dat religie verdwijnt is nog maar de vraag. We weten nauwelijks iets van buiteninstitutionele religie, gewoonweg omdat het nauwelijks onderzocht is onder christenen. Daarnaast hebben de onderzoekers gekeken naar verbinding van mensen met de reguliere religieuze instituties, maar er zijn genoeg alternatieve vormen van religie die minder geinstitutionaliseerd zijn, maar wel degelijk een sterke verbondenheid vragen. Met name recent onderzoek van Abby Day, die niet uitgaat van de vraag tot welk geloof behoor je, maar wat geloof je en hoe doe je dat, laat heel interessante resultaten zien van gelovige en ongelovige ongebonden mensen. Er zijn, voor Europa althans, genoeg aanwijzingen dat religie ‘as we know it’ langzaam zal verminderen, maar tegelijkertijd zijn er ook genoeg aanwijzingen dat religiositeit van mensen, de geleefde religie, zich aanpast aan de veranderende omstandigheden. Dat mensen hun religie dus anders beleven, wil nog niet zeggen dat religie ook uitsterft. Dat stellen de onderzoekers overigens ook niet; zij hebben het over mensen die gebonden zijn aan reguliere geïnstitutionaliseerde religies. In de publiciteit hierover wordt deze nuance vaak vergeten. Onderzoekers die al eerder wezen op het einde van religie, maken een soortgelijke conceptuele fout.

En als de ons bekende religies zouden uitsterven, dan nog is dat geen garantie voor het uitsterven van religie. Immers, waarom zou er niet zoals zo vaak in de geschiedenis, een andere religie voor in de plaats kunnen komen? In vormen die we misschien nog niet kennen. Daarnaast lijkt er in andere delen van de wereld juist wel een stijging van religieuze gebondenheid plaats te vinden zoals in delen van Afrika en China. Het interessante is, en dat geldt voor de gehele wereld, dat door de mondialisering (bijvoorbeeld via internet en migratie) de keuzemogelijkheden voor mensen groter zijn geworden en dat lijkt ook te gelden, onder jongeren althans, voor de ideologie van de keuze; mensen moeten de mogelijkheden in hun leven maximaliseren door vrij en zelfstandig keuzes te maken. Dat kan voor religie zijn, maar ook er tegen en dat kan ook resulteren in een zeer ambivalente houding. En dan komen we onder andere weer op die utitiliteitsthese van de genoemde onderzoekers. Als het nut van ongebondenheid groter is dan van gebondenheid, dan zal geïnstitutionaliseerde religie nagenoeg verdwijnen. Dat zou best eens kunnen. Op het moment dat het omgekeerde geldt, dat het nut van gebondenheid weer groter wordt, kan religie ook weer toenemen. Geloof dient nuttig te zijn, te werken en gegrond te zijn in het dagelijks leven wil het kunnen leven. En als religieuze instituties zich dat niet realiseren dan zou de toekomst er in ieder geval voor hen nog wel eens ongunstig uit kunnen zien.

3 comments.

******joden aan het gas – Wat is anti-semitisme?

Posted on May 16th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

Dus Ajax is kampioen, gefeliciteerd! Werd wel weer eens tijd ook of niet? Waarschijnlijk daarom die vreugde uitbarstingen. Maar probeer eens even de volgende zoekwoorden op Twitter: #hitler+Ajax #kankerjoden en joden aan het gas. Onsmakelijk is het en onfris ook. Maar is dat nu anti-semitisme of niet?

Wellicht is het geen direct anti-semitisme aangezien met ‘joden’ Ajax wordt bedoeld en niet de joodse gemeenschap. Ajax wordt vereenzelvigd met joden zoals wel meer clubs dat worden (bijvoorbeeld Tottenham Hotspur). Wel lijkt het te wijzen op een toename van de acceptatie van anti-semitische leuzen zoals Simon Kuper ook stelde enkele jaren terug:
Eerst Ajax, daarna het land | NRC Boeken

de identificatie van Ajax als `jodenclub’ ook bij de Amsterdamse supporters leeft (een deel van de Amsterdam Arena golft op en neer bij `Wie niet springt, die is geen jood’), ziet hij het als een teken dat het taboe op antisemitisme in Nederland steeds zwakker wordt.

Dat werd Kuper pijnlijk duidelijk toen hij drie jaar geleden onderzoek deed voor een speciaal nummer van voetbaltijdschrift Hard Gras dat onder de titel Ajax, de joden, Nederland de kern vormde voor het nu verschenen Engelse boek. Kupers toon werd in Hard Gras bepaald door een verwante, schokkende ontdekking: in tegenstelling tot wat Kuper als in Leiden wonend kind van joodse afkomst altijd had geloofd, was Nederland helemaal niet collectief `goed’ geweest in de oorlog. Kupers woede over het halfhartige gedrag van de Nederlanders (eerst doen of er weinig aan de hand is, later pochen over minimale verzetsdaden) was constant voelbaar, bijvoorbeeld in een passage over een `Verboden voor joden’-bord dat Kuper aantrof in het archief van Sparta. `Het zou nog eens van pas kunnen komen’, sneerde de auteur.

Dit wordt nog eens versterkt doordat ook zelfbenoemde voorvechters van de vrijheid van eigen meningsuiting zoals Bert Brussen ook niet schromen om opmerkingen te maken die grappig bedoeld zijn, maar vooral laten zien dat het taboe op ‘grappige’ verwijzingen naar het lot van de joden in de tweede wereldoorlog aan het verzwakken is (zie ook de RT’s bij Godvoordommen). In het geval van moslimjongeren is ook een dergelijke erosie te zien die met name sterker wordt iedere keer als Israël een actie onderneemt tegen de Palestijnen. Ook dat is geen klassiek anti-semitisme denk ik, maar anti-semitische leuzen, al dan niet ontleend aan Nederlandse tradities, kunnen wel degelijk worden gebruikt om geweld te legitimeren of onrecht te bekritiseren. Recent onderzoek in Brussel overigens betwist dat, de onderzoekers stellen dat het theologisch anti-semitisme is.

Gezien de gretigheid echter waarmee mensen duiken op, al dan niet vermeende, anti-semitische uitingen en deze scherp veroordelen laat overigens ook wel zien dat het taboe niet helemaal verdwenen is. Anti-semitische uitingen zijn voor veel mensen nog steeds over de morele grens heen en uitingen worden dan vaak ook zeer emotioneel veroordeeld of anderen worden zeer emotioneel beschuldigd van anti-semitisme. De vraag is wel of we daarmee nu niet in een patstelling zijn gekomen. Eén waarbij óf anti-semitisme als zeer serieuze en alomtegenwoordige zaak gezien (en waarbij kritiek op de staat Israël en ook de anti-ajax uitingen inherent anti-semitisch zijn of op z’n minst het residu zijn van anti-semitisme) óf als een non-probleem dat afleidt van de ‘echte’ issues (rechten van Palestijnen, islamofobie, geweld door Israël, enzovoorts). Het aloude anti-semitisme in Europa, dat onder meer ten dienste stond van politieke entrepeneurs die homogeniteit (lees ‘etnische zuiverheid’) van de Europese staten wilden scheppen heeft zo goed als afgedaan. Daarmee is het nog niet weg natuurlijk. Het wegredeneren van leuzen als ‘hamas, hamas, enz…’ als ‘slechts’ humor kan misschien wel terecht zijn, maar heeft toch ook veel weg van het wegredeneren van anti-semitisme. Tegelijkertijd wordt de beschuldiging van anti-semitisme ook gebruikt om discussies uit de weg te gaan over Israël, de rechten van Palestijnen, enzovoorts. Het is dus niet óf óf maar én én.

In een interessant artikel op de site van het NIOD (dat een onderzoek doet naar hedendaags anti-semitisme) van Evelien Gans, gaat ook in op de vraag ‘Wat is anti-semitisme?‘ (pdf).

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Catastrophe and Independence – Continuing Claims of Memory

Posted on May 15th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Society & Politics in the Middle East.

In a book from 2007 Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, Nakba: Palestine, 1947, and the Claims of Memory, analyze the contradictory, competing claims of memory about the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinians by armed Zionist organizations in 1948. They do this within and by engaging with the larger framework of history/memory/identity and the hegemonizing and silencing of historical narratives.H-Net Reviews

The authors contest the idea that Palestinian collective memory is ontologically given, and agree that no memory is pure or unmediated. They outline its historical emergence, the challenges to it by marginalized voices, and the moral and political implications of its erasure. This collection of sophisticated essays reveals how the process of remembering and forgetting is informed by present contingencies and by factors like gender and generational experience. The authors discuss the heterogeneous manifestations, content, and sites of Palestinian memory, expressed in such forms as oral narratives of refugees and survivors of massacres, and the remembrance and remapping of destroyed villages in court records, in Palestinian cinema, and in various literary genres, especially novels, poetry, and theater. Two of the volume’s contributors, Lila Abu-Lughod and Omar al-Qattan, take us along, in the company of their parents, on anguished journeys of return to Jaffa. These returns to “half-ruins” (when those who had lived in pre-1948 Palestine search for the traces of their childhood in heaps of rubble, in houses now occupied by strangers, in old trees that survived uprooting, and beneath Israeli inscriptions) reveal much about the importance of place, generational relationships, and the shape of unrequited memory.

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This week again is the week of the Nakba remembrance but also of Yom Ha’zikaron, Memorial Day, to remember those who lost their lives during the establishment and defense of the state of Israel and of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and of Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day). For these Israeli days the sirens go off three times during two days.
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Shimrit Lee explains:
13. | ??? ?? ???

These sirens dictate and synchronize societal consciousness, so that the nation is emotionally manipulated from the lowest low to the highest high. The siren ensures that no one forgets. We’re all in this together (whether we like it or not).

Bereavement and commemoration of those who have “fallen” in battle is particularly important in the context of national Israeli solidarity. Death in battle is death in the service of the Nation and therefore has to be endowed with national meaning. Themes of idealized sacrifice and heroism of “the fallen” are central to the Israeli ethos of bereavement and commemoration.

These symbols (bereavement, heroism, commemoration, and so on) are appropriated by the collectivity and reproduced in public life so as to sustain collective boundaries and national ideology, while other symbols are simultaneously excluded from the national discourse in order to maintain salience in national identity. These boundaries and shared ideologies are the building blocks of the imaged community. The Remembrance Day ceremony in Israel therefore exemplifies the collectively realized performance within which national ideology can be maintained and reproduced. According to anthropologist Meira Weiss, “Remembrance Day is a theatrical performance in which the performers directly address the audience, without any attempt to create a realistic illusion. Performers and audience become one in a binding myth of sacrifice and martyrology” (Weiss 2011). Much like the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in U.S. schools for example, collective remembrances connect us with our national symbols and consolidates group solidarity through contact with the “sprits of the fathers.”

Because Israel is under an existential threat, the nation is obsessed with commemoration and national symbols. The “national cult of memorializing the dead” (Aronoff 1933:54) is used as a mediator between past and present, as Zionism ideology struggles to construct a historical bridge to a land from which the Jewish people had been exiled for nearly two thousand years.

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Israel’s Independence Day and the remembrance of the Nakba coincide. The latter is important because it clashes with the narratives and memory of Israel:
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by the early 1990s, annual commemorations of the day by Palestinian citizens of Israel held a prominent and symbolic place in the community’s public discourse. Much like the commemoration of Israel’s fallen soldiers has become an act of public mourning rather than of individual familial loss, so too has the Nakba been adapted to a collective Palestinian experience of bereavement.

This symbolic act of loss and mourning on behalf of the Palestinians is seen as dangerous by Israelis who view Nakba Day as a celebration of alleged wishes for the dismantling of the Israeli state. Further, this commemoration is a threat to the “imagined community,” as it creates a whole range of conflicting narratives that spoil the salience of the “ultimate Israeli truth.” On March 22, the Knesset passed “the Nakba Law” which legislates the withdrawal of state funding from any institution that commemorates the Palestinian day of mourning.

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Shimrit Lee participated in both experiences of memory and refers to Ariel Azoff’s (also participating in activities of remembrance from different sides) blog who wrote on the Nakba Law:midthought » Reconciliation in the Shadow of the Nakba Law

The Israeli narrative is: the Jews defeated their enemies and created a state where they could forever have a homeland and be protected from persecution. Valid. The Palestinian narrative is: a homeland was taken from them. Also valid. Yes, these seem hard to reconcile, and they have proven to be so. The cruel irony of the situation, though, is that reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible without mutual recognition of the validity of both narratives.

A reconcilliation is deemed necessary and rightly so, although both Shimrit Lee’s and Arial Azoff’s account show how memory and history are tontested because they are part of the whole conflict. The next video about the village of al-Walajeh, located to the south of Jerusalem, adequately sums up the current situation:
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While in the Israeli case it seems to be the state that is forcing its definition of remembrance upon the people (incl. Palestinians) also the Palestinian narratives and memories are hegemonic, in the sense that they focus on belonging and displacement and resistance vs. capitulation.Another side of the Nakba « Beirut, Beijing, Beyond and Back

The day’s events, the demonstrating children, the unflinching politician and the diplomatic reaction of one who had suffered as a refugee for her entire life, combined to give real substance to a question of immediate saliance. It is a notion raised by anthropologist Dianna K. Allan in the volume Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and the claims of memory (2007, Columbia University Press): “Do institutionalised commemorative practices […] make it harder for subsequent generations of refugees to articulate a sense of identity and belonging in terms of present realities and their own hopes for the future?” (Allan, 2007, 257)

Alternatively, I contemplated: what space does the rhetorical insistence on the right to return leave for the young generations in the camp to carve out an identity not separate from, but possibly parallel to, Palestinianness as defined by resistance and displacement?

It is clear that also researchers might fall into that trap. This is not to say of course that dispossession, destruction, and so on, do not exist. On the contrary, they are still very much part of every day life which make it also hard of course to find parallel articulations of identity. Consider for example the next video initially displaying Gaza as a tourist attraction but then going on to discussing occupation, wars, and blockade:
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(H/T: Arabist.net)
Nevertheless, searching for and allowing for alternative visions of remembrance may be necessary and Abu Lughod sees, very optimistally, a great possibility for this precisely because Nakba and Independence, Palestinians and Israeli are so tightly connected:
SPIEGEL Interview with Lila Abu-Lughod: ‘Any Solution Will Have to Involve More Creative Thinking’ – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Nakba is a national trauma for the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes and villages behind. But of course the number of those who actually lived through it decreases every year. Has this changed the meaning of commemorating the Nakba?

Abu-Lughod: This is a wonderful question. Dr. Rosemary Sayigh, who has been interviewing Palestinians about their experiences for decades, describes her work as a race against time. But Diana Allan, an anthropologist from Harvard who has been videotaping old men and women in the refugee camps all over Lebanon to create a Nakba Archive, would be the first to insist that though it is important to get these stories, it should not distract us from the contemporary problems Palestinians face, in Lebanon and elsewhere. I have been following with interest, though, the way this particular Nakba commemoration has galvanized people and spurred storytelling: a good example is the series of “untold stories” on the Web site of the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Nakba and the founding of the State of Israel can’t be separated from one another. What does this mean for relations between Israelis and Palestinians today?

Abu-Lughod: Palestinians and Israelis are tightly entangled. Any resolution must involve a recognition of the fact that Israel was founded on the expulsion of Palestinians. Then we can think and talk together about restitution, redress, compensation, or whatever it takes for a more just way forward. In Israel and Palestine we have an amazing opportunity — to think about changing history by considering a democratic state with a living future for everyone.

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From Hallelujah to Ya Ilahi

Posted on May 13th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Arts & culture.

Leonard Cohen came with a beautiful song, years ago. Hallelujah. According to him a tribute to the imperfection of life.
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And then came Jeff Buckley. And sort of ruined it for everyone trying to cover the song. He redefined Cohen’s tribute in a song of desperation and loss:
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And now we have Muhammad Husayn, again redefining the song as a nashid and, with new lyrics, making it into a tribute to Allah and a song of gratitude, regrets and redemption:

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I don’t know if there are more examples of songs that are being translated and reworked from English into Arab or the other way around. There are several artists using Arab styles and phrases in their songs. One my of all time favorites is Mano Negra’s Sidi’h Bibi:

Mano Negra : Sidi'h bibi live door tartenpion333

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Seminar Dynamiek van islamitische culturen

Posted on May 11th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, ISIM/RU Research, My Research.

De afdeling Islam & Arabisch van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen houdt haar jaarlijkse studiedag. Op deze dag zullen diverse onderzoekers van de afdeling vertellen over hun onderzoek. Aan het einde van de dag zal Dr. Samuli Schielke, Research Fellow Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)Berlijn, een lezing geven met als titel “Second thoughts about the anthropology of Islam, or how to make sense of grand schemes in everyday life“. In zijn lezing ontvouwt Samuli Schielke een antropologische benadering voor het bestuderen van het dagelijks leven moslims op een manier die religie serieus neemt, maar mensen niet reduceert tot hun religiositeit. Samuli Schielke schreef eerder op dit blog over de opstand in Egypte “Now, it’s gonna be a long one” – some first conclusions from the Egyptian revolution en Egypt: After the Revolution. Hij houdt ook een eigen blog bij: HIER.

Datum: vrijdag 13 mei 2011
Locatie: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Gymnasion GN7

Programma

10.00-10.15 Inloop

10.15-10.20 Introductie onderzoeksprogramma

10.20-11.00 Gender & Islam
Sahar Noor
Annemarie van Geel

11.00-11.15 Pauze

11.15-11.55 Islamitische Kunst
Karin van Nieuwkerk
Joseph Alagha

11.55-12.35 De pre-islamitische tijd
Gert Borg
Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort

12.35-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.30 Salafisme & Wahhabisme
Joas Wagemakers
Martijn de Koning
Carmen Becker

14.30-14.45 Pauze

14.45-15.45 Keynote: Dr. Samuli Schielke, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlijn

15.45-16.30 Borrel

De toegang tot de sessies is gratis en vrij toegankelijk. Wilt u een lunch tijdens de middagpauze en koffie/thee in de overige pauzes dan s.v.p. aanmelden bij Sahar Noor (s.noor@rs.ru.nl). Aanmelden voor de lunch/koffie/thee kan tot en met woensdag 11 mei. Daarvoor geldt een eigen bijdrage van € 5.

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Diyanet in Turkey and the Netherlands – Transnational politics and politicization of research

Posted on May 10th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Headline, Multiculti Issues, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Guest Author: Thijl Sunier

Do you agree that foreign governments should not intervene in matters of integration, or interfere with the religious life of people in the Netherlands?”
“If this still happens, do you agree that this is counterproductive to integration [of Muslims]?

These questions were posed by liberal MP’s in the Dutch Parliament to the government in February this year following the publication of the research report Diyanet. The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs in a changing Environment that I wrote together with colleagues from the Netherlands and Turkey. The Diyanet is a state institution that regulates the mosques in Turkey and a considerable number of Turkish mosques in Europe.

The time that researchers could pretend to work in an academic bubble is definitively over, if it ever existed. It is common knowledge that research results especially those dealing with culture are not just blind data that simply ‘add to our knowledge’. Cultural data are the result of a multilayered process of communication and rhetorical technique. We also know that the conditions under which social scientists carry out research are inextricably linked to political conditions. Data are not ‘neutral’ packages of knowledge up for grasp. They play a role in political processes and they are always part of specific power configuration. Scientific knowledge is socially situated.
It is also common knowledge that the political sensitivity of research on Muslims and Islam in Europe has become particularly critical in the last decade. Doing research in the post 9/11 political climate about issues such as the place of Islam in European societies is caught up in a complex political and social web of opposing requirements and assumptions. The presence of Muslims in Europe has become first and foremost an issue of either integration policy, or security, or both. This has not only determined research agendas, but it has also made outcomes multi-interpretable almost by definition. Researchers on issues such as the application of sharia practices in family legislation in Europe, the different outlooks and convictions of young Muslims, the religious affiliations of women, or even innocent topics such as regulations for Islamic elderly people, cannot ignore the fact that their results bear a high political sensitivity.

Both integration and security have become social engineering industries with their own assumptions and trajectories. Governments and policy makers, providers of research money increasingly ask for ‘hard facts’ about the presence of Muslims. There is of course an abundance of (mainly quantitative) research output that is completely geared towards the policy requirements of the day. Researchers produce readymade data that can be applied instantaneously.
But there are also an important number of scholars that carry out research with a broader scope. Their results cannot so easily be applied to policy development, or, even more importantly, the outcomes are not at all unambiguous. Their research agenda reflect academic debates, theoretical and thematic inquiries, and socially and politically relevant problematic. When the results of such research are published the authors can be brought in awkward positions because the interpretation and hence the implications of the results can be diverted in all different directions completely beyond their control. Discussions may arise about issues that are only loosely related to the topic of the research and so on.

Our research project was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The main question to be answered was to what extent the coming to power of the moderate Islamic Party for Justice and Development in Turkey (AKP) in 2003 has caused a policy shift towards the aforementioned Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). The relevance of this question arises from the central role Diyanet plays in shaping and organizing Islam, both in Turkey and in Europe. The Diyanet was founded in 1924 by the new Turkish republic as an institute that resorted directly under the prime minister’s office. The first aim of Diyanet was to control religious life in Turkey, a state that had applied a radical secularist policy. Secondly Diyanet had the task to facilitate religious life, to train priests and to issue religious educational material. Although the organization is officially meant for all religious denominations present within the borders of Turkey, the actual fact that over 75% of the Turkish population is of Sunni Islamic background means that Diyanet is de facto a Sunni institute. Since the new Constitution of 1982 Diyanet has adopted the additional task to protect and endorse Turkish national identity.
This makes Diyanet into a pivot in the debate about the separation of religion and state in Turkey and the freedom of religion. Diyanet was primarily designed to control Islam and to prevent Islamic teaching and practice that was not monitored by Diyanet. To what extent is the strong control on religious practices at odds with the freedom of religion and to what extent does the set-up of Diyanet guarantee the religious freedom of other than Sunni Islamic religious groups in Turkish society?
Since 1982 Diyanet operates in Europe, notably in the Netherlands. They facilitate the opening and organization of mosques and the practicing of Islamic duties. They have an arrangement with the Dutch government to send imams who are trained in Turkey for a period of four years to their mosques. Unlike Turkey Diyanet has no monopoly position with regard to religious services in the Netherlands, but they outnumber other religious organizations. An adequate assessment of its position and the possible changes in this position is relevant for European governments and their representatives in Turkey because it may influence the position of Turkish immigrants in Europe. The activities of Diyanet in European host countries and its close connection with the Turkish state is common practice for over 25 years.
In 2003 the AK Party in Turkey obtained an absolute majority during national elections. The AK party has a moderate Islamic agenda and is supported by the emerging internationally oriented but conservative urban middle class. Since Diyanet resorts directly under the prime minister, the question arises whether AKP has influenced the traditional functions of Diyanet with regard to Islam. This is not only relevant in order to understand the position of Diyanet, but also because it touches on the present debate about the future membership of Turkey of the EU and to what extent Turkey meets the ‘Copenhagen criteria’ with respect to the freedom of religion.

The initial motivation to commission this research was related to worries on the part of the Dutch government that the AKP would undermine the secular principles of the Turkish republic and subsequently exert an influence on the mosques in the Netherlands that resort under the Diyanet. Instead of sticking to the formal question about the possible influence of the AKP on the agenda of Diyanet, as good academics we broadened up the question arguing that the growth of the AKP as the most powerful political force in Turkey in the 2000s and consequently the possible changes in the position of Diyanet, should be understood against the background of much more fundamental transformations of Turkish society. Since the 1980s Turkey has witnessed not only the emergence of a successful new urban middle class, but also the gradual growth of a civil society. This has brought Islam into the center of the political debate. One of the most remarkable and, according to some, paradoxical developments is the fact that the political and social forces that made Islam into a pivotal political issue are the same that require Turkey to open up to the world, to democratize and to break down the strong position of the state. So what we have observed in Turkey is a very complex transformation in which some of the traditional political and social dividing lines are put upside down. These transformations are so fundamental that they can hardly be turned reverse anymore even if the present AKP government tends to exhibit some of the nasty statist and authoritarian practices so typical of many of the Turkish governments of the past.
With respect to the situation in the Netherlands we have observed a gradual detachment of mosques organizations from the countries of origin, a process that is taking place since the 1980s. They develop their own agenda despite the fact that they are part of a formal juridical top-down structure. As in the case of Turkey, such developments can only be understood if we place short term research results into long-term social, cultural and political contexts. In short, the outcomes of our research were consistent with the long term developments just sketched, but it did not reveal sudden changes, dramatic developments or breaches in long term trends. In fact the outcomes were nuanced, multidimensional and in many respects poly interpretable. This made the report an ambiguous project.

Our research took place in a very sensitive context. The research was commissioned by the Dutch government dealing with a state bureaucracy of another country. The outcomes are relevant for the discussion about Turkey possible EU membership. What would this membership imply for expected opening up of the border? How should the Netherlands position itself in the debate about the identity of Europe? On the domestic level the issues raised in the report are relevant for the debate on integration and the position of Muslims in the country. In the 1980s the sending of Diyanet imams was welcomed because it would constitute a barrier against radicalism among Muslims. Today the same practice is depicted as unacceptable foreign influence exerted on domestic affairs and an obstacle against integration. The questions in the Parliament with which I started indicate clearly this remarkable political change. The sensitivity of Islam in the Netherlands is further stirred up by the anti-Islamic rhetoric of the right-wing party led by the populist Geert Wilders. There was even a strong rumor that the ministry of foreign affairs wanted to postpone the publication until after the regional elections on the 2nd of March 2011. Some feared that the issue of the ‘long arm of Ankara’ would be used by Wilders to depict the presence of Muslims as a fifth column and to gain electoral benefit.
Also the very strong political polarization among Turks, both in Turkey and in Europe made the outcomes contested. During a public debate in Amsterdam some secular Turks accused us of being too credulous, even naïve by interviewing and citing officials of Diyanet. According to some representatives of organized Islam the report did not pay enough attention to the diversity, debates and contestations among Muslims in the Netherlands.

It is hard to predict what the implications of the report will be. The media attention prior to the publication of the report was considerable, but very moderate and piecemeal afterwards. The editorial office of the main Dutch television news desk mailed us almost weekly to ask when the report would be published. But once it was published they decided that it was not dramatic enough for a news item. And eventually the timing is crucial but completely beyond one’s control: the amazing and dramatic developments in North Africa turned our report (and quite understandably so) into a footnote….!!

Thijl Sunier is VISOR chair Islam in European societies at VU University Amsterdam, Dept. Of Social and Cultural Anthropology. He conducted research on inter-ethnic relations, Turkish youth and Turkish Islamic organisations in the Netherlands, comparative research among Turkish youth in France, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands, and international comparative research on nation building and multiculturalism in France and The Netherlands. Presently he is preparing research on styles of popular religiosity among young Muslims in Europe, religious leadership, and nation-building and Islam in Europe.

The research on Diyanet was done by Thijl Sunier, Nico Landman, Heleen van der Linden, Nazl? Bilgili and Alper Bilgili

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Closing the week 18 – Round up Osama Bin Laden

Posted on May 8th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere, International Terrorism, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

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  1. In Memoriam: Osama bin Laden (1957-2011)
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Featuring Osama bin Laden; a round up
The Kill
» Osama Bin Laden Pronounced Dead… For the Ninth Time Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

When Obama pronounced Osama Bin Laden dead in a televised announcement heard round the world last night, he was at least the ninth major head of state or high-ranking government official to have done so.

Thinking Images v.16: Osama Bin-Laden and the pictorial staging of politics | David Campbell

The images that have emerged around the killing of Bin-Laden show how much of the pictorial record of politics is staged. Staging is not the same as faking. Political photography records events in front of the camera faithfully. But political events are often photo opportunities in which politics becomes theatre. Photography is complicit in this act when it doesn’t look beyond the immediate frame.

The White House’s release of a series of photographs on its Flickr stream showing the President and his national security advisers in and around the Situation Room (see above) was a fascinating but carefully managed insight into the conduct of Bin-Laden’s killing. If the post-mortem photo were to be released, it would also be part of this managed stream. But it was a small detail around another picture in the Flickr stream, of President Obama addressing the media, that showed how central the photo-op is to politics.

Bin Laden’s Quiet End | The Middle East Channel

So Osama bin Laden has finally been killed. This obviously represents the achievement of a goal long sought by virtually all Americans and most of the world, and is a cathartic moment capturing the attention of the world. As most counter-terrorism experts (and administration officials) have been quick to point out, his death will not end al-Qaeda. It does matter, though. There could be some major operational impact on the relative balance among al-Qaeda Central, the decentralized ideological salafi-jihadist movement, and the regional AQ franchises. But I will leave those crucial issues to others for now in order to focus on the impact of his death on Arab politics and on the broader milieu of Islamism.

The Big Lie: Torture Got Bin Laden – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

Old-fashioned, painstaking, labor-intensive intelligence work. The American way. We never needed to stoop to bin Laden’s standards to get bin Laden. We needed merely to follow our long-tested humane procedures.

Targeted Killing « LRB blog

The killing of Osama bin Laden is an instance of a much more general policy pursued by the United States and its allies – the targeted killing of named individuals in the war against terrorism and against various insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the midst of American celebration of the fact that al-Qaida has lost its charismatic leader, it is worth getting clear about targeted killing in general, i.e. about the legality and the desirability of a policy of this kind. Targeted killings are of two kinds. The first involves killing people who are actually engaged in carrying out terrorist acts – planting a bomb or preparing someone for a suicide bombing. The second involves the elimination of high-profile individuals whose names appear on a special list of active commanders and participants in terrorism or insurgency. These killings are part of a strategy of disruption and decapitation directed against terrorist organisations.

Who told them where he was? « LRB blog

A US Special Forces operation in Pakistan has taken out Osama bin Laden and a few others. He was in a safe house close to Kakul Military Academy (Pakistan’s Sandhurst). The only interesting question is who betrayed his whereabouts and why. The leak could only have come from the ISI and, if this is the case, which I’m convinced it is, then General Kayani, the military boss of the country, must have green-lighted the decision. What pressure was put on him will come out sooner or later. The event took me back to a conversation I had a few years ago.

Bin Laden finally dead – Blog – The Arabist

A bittersweet moment: he deserved to die, but it took so long to track him down, despite all of the billions spent in intelligence and high-tech defense gear, that by the time he died it seemed almost irrelevant to the wider problems of the region. Also, to think of all the time and lives wasted, and the unnecessary, criminal ventures like the war on Iraq that were justified in the name of fighting Bin Laden. But I’m a believer in revenge, and symbolically this is important for the US, and for the families of the victims of 9/11. Let’s hope this might be used as an occasion to turn the page in US foreign policy.
Several things do strike you, though.

Osama bin Laden obituary | World news | The Guardian

To his enemies, whatever colour or creed, he was a religious fanatic, a terrorist with the blood of thousands on his hands, a man who had brought war and suffering to a broad swath of the Islamic world and come close to provoking a global conflagration on a scale not seen for decades. To his supporters, whose numbers peaked in the few years after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in America that he masterminded, he was a visionary leader fighting both western aggression against Muslims and his co-religionists’ lack of faith and rigour. For both, Osama bin Laden, who has been killed at the age of 54 by US special forces at a compound near Abbottabad, a town about 50 miles north-east of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was one of those rare figures whose actions changed the course of history.

Dynamic Relations: Thoughts on Bin Laden’s Death

I’m trying to wrap my head around all the posts that copy some nice, idealistic quote from Martin Luther King Jr or Gandhi or whomever. Why the non-violent sentiments now? Why the sentiments for a hypocritical narcissist who hid behind the veil of religion to convince others to die for his cause while justifying his own life? Why the sentiments now when 46 Americans were executed by 11 states in 2010 by legal decree? I’m not smart enough to know if killing Bin Laden was morally correct or not, but I do have enough insight to know that our celebration is misplaced. Celebrating his death only redefines the Us-Them divide and misdirects our gaze from the conditions that have led to the state of the world. His death won’t cause more violence, but the West’s continued political economic imperialism will (because We know best for Them). There is a strong inverse correlation between violence and economic opportunity (50% of death row inmates never graduated high school). Perhaps if we did better to place those ideals from MLK into the fabric of our society–into industrial capitalism, foreign policy, international trade agreements, and education at home and abroad–we wouldn’t be in this mess. Celebration blinds us to empathy and deludes us into thinking that the world is easily knowable.

Market Anthropology: Violence Begets Violence

If there was ever a more fitting bookend to the bubble that is silver and gold – we received it tonight.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

The poster-face of the fear trade has been killed.

Anthropology 1200: Osama Bin Laden is Dead

As I am watching the three hour old news about the recent success of the American mission in Pakistan, I am struck by conflicted emotions. The leader of Al Qaeda, the man responsible for the death of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, was killed at the hands of the CIA. After nearly a decade of hunting, the man responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been killed during a raid on his compound by U.S. Navy Seals. I find it somewhat odd that after so much death, pain and suffering that the American people are so ecstatic over more death. I completely understand the jubilation that people have about the complete neutralization of the man responsible for killing 3,000 American citizens and countless military but I, for one, am sick body bags. I’m not going to celebrate the murder of a murderer but I will celebrate that this is one step closer to being finished.

anthronow:: Bin Laden is Dead

Susan Hirsch, a Professor of Anthropology and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, talked to NPR’s Melissa Block about Bin Laden’s death. Susan Hirsch’s husband was killed in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

News Desk: Notes on the Death of Osama bin Laden : The New Yorker

No doubt there will be time to reflect more deeply about the news announced by President Obama last night. For now, I thought it might be useful to annotate some of the initial headlines.

Osama | Center for a New American Security

I had told myself for years that the death of Osama bin Laden would not mean anything. Decapitation campaigns against sophisticated, mature terrorist networks, I knew, rarely yield strategic effects. But standing in that Washington bar, I was overcome with emotion.

The Ability to Kill Osama Bin Laden Does Not Make America Great – COLORLINES

Osama Bin Laden, evil incarnate, has justified so, so much American violence in the 21st century. We have launched two wars and executed God knows how many covert military operations in the ethereal, never-ending fight he personifies. We have made racial profiling of Muslim Americans normative, turned an already broken immigration system into an arm of national defense, and reversed decades worth of hard-won civil liberties while pursuing him, dead or alive. We have abandoned even the conceit of respect for human rights in places stretching from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay in the course of hunting him down. Now, finally, the devil is dead.

Geronimo
Museum Anthropology: Bin Laden Code-name “Geronimo” Is a Bomb in Indian Country

Although perhaps a bit far afield for Museum Anthropology, this editorial fundamentally relates to the issue of representation — how American Indians are represented in the public sphere, an issue of great importance to museum anthropologists.

Bin Laden’s Code Name Was ‘Geronimo’ « zunguzungu

Anyway, if we look at this story as revelatory of who we are now, what ethical constraints, imperatives, and licenses are being instantiated in the Global War on Terror, then I think we have a lot of reasons to be distinctly un-celebratory. The fact that his code name was “Geronimo” makes me tired and sad. If this is the story we are meant to celebrate, then we should think carefully about what it is that we are supposed to be happy to be defined by: the use of torture to get intelligence from detainees, a kill-first, hold-the-trial-later operation which targets households (and includes the deaths of nearby family members), and the idea that OBL’s corpse is more important than, say, capturing him and putting him on trial. We may decide that these things as justifiable, may think that the ends legitimize the means. But it may also only confirm a great deal about who we already knew ourselves, as a country, to be: our security apparatus has been doing exactly this sort of thing for years now. And can we really be comfortable with that? Can we be happy with it? Can we call it victory, justice? And is this the conclusion or the final normalization of “9/11??

Osama, Geronimo, and the scalp of our enemy « zunguzungu

Osama, Geronimo, and the scalp of our enemy

» “A Very Kind and Peaceful People”: Geronimo and the World’s Fair SAMPLE REALITY

Exactly ten years ago this week I turned in my last graduate seminar paper, for a class on late 19th and early 20th century American literature taught by the magnificent Nancy Bentley. The paper was about the 1904 World’s Fair and Geronimo, a figure I’ve been thinking about deeply since Sunday night. Because of the strange resonances between the historical Geronimo and the code name for Osama Bin Laden, I’ve posted that paper here, hoping it helps others to contextualize Geronimo, and to acknowledge his own voice.

Codename: Geronimo | Savage Minds

Following quick on the heels of the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s demise at the hands of U.S. Special Forces Special Operations personnel, the public has learned more about the top secret operation to find this elusive enemy. One of the most revealing bits of trivia has been that Bin Laden was assigned the code name “Geronimo” by the operation tasked with capturing and killing him. This raises the question, what does a nineteenth century Apache leader have to do with twenty first century Saudi millionaire? Perhaps nothing when viewed from an academic standpoint, it seems more like a non sequitur. But when read as expression of an underlying ideology, one that has legitimated American military action for centuries, the answer is: quite a lot, actually.

American Indians object to ‘Geronimo’ as code name for bin Laden raid – The Washington Post

He died 102 years ago in Oklahoma, a beaten warrior, a prisoner of war, an exile from his homeland, a propped-up sideshow, a gambler and a lukewarm Christian. His family was murdered by Mexicans. The Americans stripped him of most everything else.

Justice, State Power and the War on Terror
The Osama bin Laden exception – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

Beyond the apparent indifference to how this killing took place, what has also surprised me somewhat is the lack of interest in trying to figure out how the bin Laden killing fits into broader principles and viewpoints about state power and the War on Terror. I’ve seen people who have spent the last decade insisting that the U.S. must accord due process to accused Terrorists before punishing them suddenly mock the notion that bin Laden should have been arrested and tried.

Geoffrey Robertson: Why it’s absurd to claim that justice has been done – Commentators, Opinion – The Independent

America resembles the land of the munchkins, as it celebrates the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. The joy is understandable, but it endorses what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done”. Amoral diplomats and triumphant politicians join in applauding Bin Laden’s summary execution because they claim real justice – arrest, trial and sentence would have been too difficult in the case of Bin Laden. But in the long-term interests of a better world, should it not at least have been attempted?

The Torture Apologists – NYTimes.com

The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden’s death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Popular reactions
No dignity at Ground Zero | Mona Eltahawy | Comment is free | The Guardian

So it was a shock to find hundreds of others had turned that hallowed ground into the scene of a home crowd celebrating an away victory they hadn’t attended, the roots of which they were probably not there to experience or were too young to remember.

Us?mah Bin L?den is Dead: Forum Reactions | JIHADOLOGY

NOTE: Older quotes are first. Newest quotes toward the bottom of this post. This post was last updated 5/2/11 9:10PM US Central time.

Osama bin Laden Largely Discredited Among Muslim Publics in Recent Years | Pew Global Attitudes Project

In the months leading up to Osama bin Laden’s death, a survey of Muslim publics around the world found little support for the al Qaeda leader. Among the six predominantly Muslim nations recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, bin Laden received his highest level of support among Muslims in the Palestinian territories – although even there only 34% said they had confidence in the terrorist leader to do the right thing in world affairs. Minorities of Muslims in Indonesia (26%), Egypt (22%) and Jordan (13%) expressed confidence in bin Laden, while he has almost no support among Turkish (3%) or Lebanese Muslims (1%).

Over time, support for bin Laden has dropped sharply among Muslim publics.

“USA! USA!” is the wrong response – War Room – Salon.com

Bin Laden’s death is a great relief, but by cheering it we’re mimicking our worst enemies

News: More anthropology needed on bin Laden story

These responses do not come from any deep recesses of human nature, or some kind of evolved instinct. No, to get this right we must get closer to our present particularities rather than mythical evolutionary history. As I wrote in my blog-post “Anthropology, Barack Obama, Osama Bin Laden,” the sources are:
a) That since 2001 this has been ginned as a “war on terror” rather than the prosecution of criminals.
b) That people have individualized these events, trying to turn this into a “thank you President Bush.”
c) That there has been a recent upsurge in xenophobic nationalism.
Unlike the social sciences mentioned in this article, anthropology recognizes the particularities of “human nature” at this specific political-economic juncture.

YouTube – US Muslims hope for new start

Muslim American groups have welcomed the news of Bin Laden’s killing.

After September 11, 2001, many Muslims claimed they were treated with suspicion and endured increased discrimination in the United States.

Al Jazeera’s Monica Villamizar has more.
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The Muslim World Sounds off on Bin Laden’s Demise | Informed Comment

Usama Bin Laden, a mass killer, passed virtually unmourned from the scene. There were no demonstrations against his killing in the Arab world. A few Taliban protested in Quetta and Afghanistan, as one might expect. Mostly Muslims denounced him and expressed relief he was gone.

Bin Laden carried out 9/11 to begin a big political and social movement. Nearly 10 years later the vast majority of Muslims did not trust him and many seem glad to see the back of him, while large numbers had decided that he was irrelevant to their lives.

tabsir.net » To hell with Bin Laden?

For the past decade it has been “Where the hell is Bin Laden?” Now that he is dead at last, the tabloid mantra is “ROT IN HELL,” at least for the medium of unsubtleness known as the NY Daily News. In less than 24 hours after his James Bond style killing a website appeared on Facebook called Osama Bin Laden is Dead. As can be seen from the screen shot below, the insults of revenge are having their day.

Bin Laden, the myth
LRB · Charles Glass · Cyber-Jihad

Now, the kids are terrified of some guy in a cave. The successors of McCarthy, Hoover and the 1950s television network bosses teach them that the madman Osama bin Laden can kill them at any minute, that he hates their freedom (perhaps not so much as their parents do) and is out to get them just because they are free. Unlike Khrushchev, Osama bin Laden has neither ICBMs nor nuclear warheads capable of destroying mankind ten times over. He does not even have a country. Yet he scares more than Khrushchev did. As every American schoolchild saw, bin Laden attacked the homeland on 11 September 2001 – burying a few thousand of us. He may yet bury more. We, of course, are sending his kind to their graves in Afghanistan, Iraq and other corners of the Islamic patrimony.

?????? ?? ????? Views from the Occident: IN PICTURES: Usama bin Laden, In Visual Retrospect: Part I

With reports that Al-Qa’ida Central leader Usama bin Laden (Osama bin Laden, Ladin) has been killed in a U.S. military attack, talk has shifted to what’s next for the once-premier organization. This is the first part of a series of “In Pictures” posts that will focus on providing a visual retrospective on Bin Laden in jihadi-takfiri cyber artwork. The artwork is taken from my research archive.

As I have written previously, graphic artwork is an important medium for jihadi-takfiris and they use it extensively.

Commentary: Bin Laden’s Death Shatters Conventional Wisdom | The National Interest

The triumphal news of Bin Laden’s killing yesterday has also called into question—if not shattered—much of the conventional wisdom about al-Qaeda’s leader and the movement he founded. First, the assumption was that he was hiding in a cave in some isolated mountain range, cut off equally from his supporters and from the creature comforts that make life as a fugitive more bearable. Yet we learn that he’s been living a stone’s throw from the Pakistani capital, both in comfort and relative anonymity. This in turn calls into question some of the assumptions about the aid and assistance he doubtlessly would have needed to receive from a variety of plotters to be located right under the nose of the government and its military and intelligence authorities. Also, the assumption was that Bin Laden was in such isolation and so cut off from communication that he’d nearly been reduced to a figurehead, a marginal character, in al-Qaeda’s operations and destiny. His presence in an urban hub, presumably with a variety of modes of contact, calls into question the supposedly hands-off, irrelevant role he had been believed to play in al-Qaeda’s strategy and perhaps even day-to-day operations. Indeed, it may have been his active participation in key al-Qaeda decision-making and operational matters that allowed us to track him to his hideout—there must have been an unusual number people coming and going, functioning essentially as couriers. It may thus be that he’s had much more of a role in al-Qaeda than we believed.

Top Ten Myths about Bin Laden’s Death | Informed Comment

New details of the operation against Usama Bin Laden have emerged. Here are the myths that people keep bombarding me with and which are now known to be untrue.

We Killed Osama bin Laden, Now Let’s Kill the Myth – New America Media

The United States is jubilant over the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. However, it will be some time before history catches up with the mythology that arose around him and the al-Qaeda organization in the past 10 years. Osama bin Laden at the end was far from the looming powerful figure he was made out to be. He had outlived his usefulness both as a bogeyman for the West, and as an Islamic responder to the neo-colonialist forces his organization purported to confront.

Now he’s dead, so what?

After Bin Laden: what next for al-Qaida and global jihad? | World news | The Guardian

Do the various Islamist groups in Pakistan and al-Qaida affiliates around the world pose a real threat to the west, and what strategic direction will they now take?

Wanted: Charismatic Terror Mastermind. Some Travel Required. – By Leah Farrall | Foreign Policy

As speculation about al Qaeda’s leadership succession mounts in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, the answer to who will assume control next lies in the organization’s rules and regulations — like those of any good corporation. Written and reviewed by a group of senior leaders, some of whom may now be poised to assume new positions within al Qaeda, they provide insight into how this critical transition will be handled, and will factor heavily into who is selected to move up the leadership ladder.

Al Qaeda’s organizational protocols (some earlier versions of which are available at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) make clear that a chain of succession exists.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Bin Laden Plagued the Arab World, As Well

Based on an unscientific review of today’s Arab media, Arabs and other Muslims, too, are taking quiet comfort from his demise, with good cause, although predictable voices of Arab resentment surfaced, as well.

Osama’s Dead, But How Much Does It Matter? – An FP Round Table | Foreign Policy

Bin Laden’s death will have profound implications for al Qaeda — and for U.S. engagement in the Middle East.

Osama bin Laden’s death: What now for al-Qaida? | Jason Burke | Comment is free | The Guardian

What does the death of Osama bin Laden mean for the future direction and leadership of militant Islamism?

So Osama’s dead. And? — Registan.net

What does this mean, many ask. My answer? Not a whole lot. Mullah Omar is still drawing breath, as are Haqqani pater and fils, as is Hakimullah Mehsud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and countless others. And of all of them, Osama commanded smallest number of men, and in many ways was nothing more than a figurehead. ISAF troops continue to flow into Afghanistan today, not from it. Deployment dates remain firm. Attacks have not ceased. The war stopped being about Osama a loooong time ago.

Don’t Get Cocky, America – By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross | Foreign Policy

Osama bin Laden’s death is a significant blow for al Qaeda, removing a figurehead who had evaded the largest manhunt in world history for almost a decade, and who seemingly managed to remain operationally relevant up until he was killed. In the torrents of commentary that will follow his announced death, many will agree with the puzzling proclamation that analyst Peter Bergen made on CNN last night that this marks the end of the war on terror.

News Desk: Bin Laden: Hey, Hey Goodbye : The New Yorker

Bin Laden is dead but is Al Qaeda? Certainly, his terror organization could not die without its leader being killed or captured. In the last few months it was fashionable to say that bin Laden was irrelevant. But the fact that he was able to evade justice since 1998, when he authorized the bombings of the two American embassies in East Africa, emboldened terrorists all over the globe.

On Bin Laden’s death and the Arabs – Blog – The Arabist

The trends that are winning out in recent years are the radical-resistance ideologies of Hizbullah (and to a lesser degree Hamas) and the radical-centrist view that fueled the uprisings. And in the longer-run, it is the latter rather than the former that have a vision of societies that are not constantly mobilized towards an external (or internal) enemy. The views of Hamas and Hizbullah address the problems of war and occupation, but not those of these societies beyond those problems. Bin Laden never really addressed either, his fight was for the glory of the impossible and in the hereafter.

OBL is Dead, Al Qaeda Isn’t – By Daniel Byman | Foreign Policy

Let’s begin with some notes of caution. As any expert will tell you, one of bin Laden’s biggest successes is creating an organization that will survive him. When bin Laden and a few associates founded al Qaeda in 1988, the organization was tiny and relied on the Saudi millionaire for the bulk of its funding. In subsequent years the organization has grown to support insurgents throughout the Muslim world, issued propaganda swaying the views of millions and, of course, murdered thousands through terrorism and its participation in civil wars. Thousands were asked to formally join the organization, and tens of thousands received training. So al Qaeda will not collapse overnight.

Obama and the End of Al-Qaeda | Informed Comment

Usama Bin Laden was a violent product of the Cold War and the Age of Dictators in the Greater Middle East. He passed from the scene at a time when the dictators are falling or trying to avoid falling in the wake of a startling set of largely peaceful mass movements demanding greater democracy and greater social equity. Bin Laden dismissed parliamentary democracy, for which so many Tunisians and Egyptians yearn, as a man-made and fallible system of government, and advocated a return to the medieval Muslim caliphate (a combination of pope and emperor) instead. Only a tiny fringe of Muslims wants such a theocratic dictatorship. The masses who rose up this spring mainly spoke of “nation,” the “people,” “liberty” and “democracy,” all keywords toward which Bin Laden was utterly dismissive. The notorious terrorist turned to techniques of fear-mongering and mass murder to attain his goals in the belief that these methods were the only means by which the Secret Police States of the greater Middle East could be overturned.

Anzalone, After Usama: The Jihadi-Takfiri Trend after Bin Laden | Informed Comment

The killing of Usama bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qa‘ida Central, this week in Pakistan has opened the door to intense speculation about the future of the militant organization and the transnational jihadi-takfiri trend that it represents. A great deal of attention has been paid to who the next leader of al-Qaeda Central, its next public face, will be. Bin Laden’s killing, while certainly a major loss to al-Qaeda Central and its regional affiliates, does not sound the death knell of the transnational trend known as the jihadi-takfiri (those who view Muslim holy war [jihad] as a pillar of the faith and who lightly excommunicate [takfir] and attack other Muslims who disagree with them). While the importance of his killing should be recognized, it is critically important to not exaggerate its likely impact.

Experts Explore Ripple Effect of Bin Laden’s Death

Thomas Gibson, professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester, has taught on Islam and global politics for the past decade in response to Sept. 11. He calls al-Qaida a decentralized network of “religiously inspired revolutionaries” who failed to achieve their objectives in their home countries. This network, he says, was kept alive by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq because it made the U.S. appear as the greatest threat to ordinary Muslims rather than their own corrupt governments.

“Recent pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria have made both ‘U.S. imperialism’ and radical Islamic revolutionaries seem less relevant to ordinary people. It is now clear to most observers that Arab dictators have been using the threat of Islamic extremism as an excuse to extract resources from the U.S. to maintain their power,” Gibson says. “So-called terrorist groups in South Asia are a different matter, and many of them are, in fact, tactical fronts for the Pakistani military’s struggle with India.”

Gibson says there is good evidence that the Pakistani military has deliberately played both sides in the Afghan civil war to extract military resources from Washington. The fact that bin Laden’s villa in Abbotabad was just two miles from the Pakistani Military Academy and just 30 miles from the capital of Pakistan, he says, indicates that they have probably been using him as a bargaining chip for the past 10 years.

Misc. I
Anthropologists: “It’s time to kill the Osama bin Laden myths”

Anthropologists: “It’s time to kill the Osama bin Laden myths”

Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination by Manan Ahmed – Just World Books

But it did not work out that way. Where the Wild Frontiers Are vividly captures the failure of most members of the U.S. elite to successfully “imagine” the reality of people’s lives and society in Pakistan in this important way. Ahmed unsparingly criticizes most of the so-called “experts” who prognosticate about Pakistan and its region in the U.S. mainstream media. About Robert Kaplan, he writes that “”The empire… will surely invite him to speak to groups with shinier brass and shinier domes. The historians reading [his] book will have less cause to be charitable”. A similar charge, he lays at the feet of Rory Stewart and Greg Mortenson.

Magnus Marsden, Living Islam. Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier

1This pleasure is rarely given to a book reviewer, so I shall put it simply: Living Islam is an important work, and this justifies assessing it in earnest and at length.1 ‘What does it mean to live a Muslim life?’ wonders Magnus Marsden. Asking this basic but powerful question has perhaps never been as strong a scientific imperative as today. To be sure, everyone—from the media and think-tanks in the West to religious and political authorities in the Muslim world—claim monopoly over the answer. This is particularly true when it comes to Pakistan, a country where disputes over the right to define ‘what a Muslim is’ have direct political and legal consequences.

Misc. II The Arab Uprisings
The Salafist challenge: Coming out of the Arab woodwork | The Economist

Extreme Islamists are growing more confident in the wake of the upheavals

Perspectives #2 May 2011, Special Issue: People’s Power – The Arab World in Revolt – Statehood & Participation – Heinrich Böll Stiftung

The self-immolation of young and jobless Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, being deprived of his vegetable stand and humiliated by the authorities, triggered popular movements and historic events in the Arab World completely unexpected in their magnitude…

The Reawakening of Nahda in Tunisia | Middle East Research and Information Project

There were two revolutions in Tunisia over the winter of 2010-2011. The first is already the stuff of legend. Twenty-six year old Mohamed Bouazizi, in an act of outraged despair at the indignity of not being allowed to work, set himself afire and released a revolution that spread from the interior to the coast and thence to the region, toppling two dictators of 24 years (Tunisia) and 30 years (Egypt) along the way.

The second upheaval was just as remarkable, even if it was eclipsed by the convulsions in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and now Syria. From January 18 — the day Ben Ali fled — to March 4 a grassroots coalition of trade unions, leftists, human rights groups and Islamists, mainly but not only from the Nahda (Renaissance) movement, turned Casbah Square into a pulpit for protests against any and all attempts by remnants of Ben Ali’s regime to regain control of the transition away from dictatorship. Having refused to open fire on protesters in the first revolution, Tunisia’s 30,000-strong army withdrew to its constitutional role in the second: It guarded certain civic sites but allowed the struggle to play out between regime and opposition.

And play out it did.

Dutch
11/9 en de dood van Osama bin Laden – GeenCommentaar

Nee, de titel is geen slip-of-the-pen. Want ik heb het niet over de aanslag in New York, maar over die in Amman, in het hart van het Midden-Oosten. Geen wonder dus dat de mensen in Amman net als die in New York blij zijn met het nieuws dat Osama bin Laden dood is. Genoot Osama bin Laden er ooit aanzienlijke steun, in de afgelopen jaren is die gesmolten als sneeuw voor de zon. Hoe kan het ook anders…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali en de strijd tegen de radicale islam: Osama Bin Laden dood

Osama_Bin_Laden De meest gezochte man door de Verenigde Staten en het meesterbrein achter de aanslagen van 9/11 is dood. Amerikaanse troepen hebben Osama bin Laden in Pakistan tijdens een helikopteractie gedood en hebben zijn lichaam in handen. Dat heeft de Amerikaanse president Obama even na half zes vanochtend Nederlandse tijd tijdens een persconferentie gezegd. “Het recht heeft gezegevierd”, aldus de president.

Bin Laden dood, terrorisme springlevend | Wijblijvenhier.nl

Als je na de dag van gisteren niet weet dat Osama bin Laden is vermoord, dan vraag ik mij af in welke grot jij hebt geleefd. Afijn, ik mag je dan bij deze wel als eerste feliciteren met het goede nieuws. Osama, hoofdrolspeler in zijn eigen producties, liefhebber van gevaarlijke speeltjes, die zovelen een euthanasiewens aanpraatte, de enige celebrity zonder facebookaccount, de verpersoonlijking van de onderwereld… is neergeschoten, onderzocht en begraven… in zee… want president Obama had natuurlijk wel respect voor de religie van Osama en die zegt dat hij zo snel mogelijk moet worden begraven. Ik neem aan dat de leden van de Amerikaanse special forces ook hun schoenen uitdeden voor ze zijn vila – goed ‘verscholen’ nabij een militaire academie en een politiebureau – in Pakistan binnentraden om hem voorzichtig neer te schieten?

Soeterbeeck Programma – Osama bin Laden is dood. Het einde van een tijdperk? Actualiteitencollege aan de Radboud Universiteit

De opkomst van Al Qaeda in de jaren negentig was een reactie op de toenmalige politieke repressie in het Midden-Oosten. Inmiddels is in veel landen een streven naar democratisering op gang gekomen. Bin Ladens ideologie was gebaseerd op de woede over vernedering en onmacht, terwijl de huidige ontwikkelingen gebaseerd zijn op het terugwinnen van waardigheid. Roel Meijer stelt de vraag of Bin Ladens dood het einde van een tijdperk markeert en het begin van een nieuw hoofdstuk in de geschiedenis van het Midden-Oosten. Leon Wecke spreekt de column uit.

1 comment.

Strijd om de publieke ruimte – Hizb ut Tahrir op de Dam

Posted on May 7th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues, Public Islam, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Vandaag organiseerde de organisatie Hizb ut Tahrir (HuT – Partij van de Bevrijding) een demonstratie in Amsterdam op de Dam.
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De HuT is een zogenaamde pan-islamitische organisatie die er naar streeft om moslims te verenigen in één staat op basis van islamitisch recht, een kalifaat, met een kalief als gekozen leider. De HuT is in Europa vooral actief onder Turkse groepen (of verwante etnische groepen) en met name in Engeland redelijk sterk. In Nederland veel minder hoewel Noord-Holland wel een actieve club lijkt te zijn. In Duitsland is de organisatie (voorlopig?) verboden. Met uitzondering van degenen die voor radicale veranderingen zijn, lijken hun ideeën over jihad en het kalifaat niet zo erg aan te slaan en men krijgt vrij veel kritische respons vanuit andere radicale / fundamentalistische en ook uit de mainstream hoek. Niettemin is het niet verwonderlijk dat een organisatie met dergelijke uitgangspunten de nodige zorgen oproept, zeker wanneer men gaat demonstreren en dan mannen en vrouwen gescheiden houdt.
Demo-organisator: ‘Zo doen wij het, simpel’ – AT5 Nieuws

Het commentaar van een woordvoerder van de organisatie: “Het scheiden van mannen en vrouwen is een Islamitisch oordeel. Dit is hoe wij het doen, heel simpel. Als het mensen niet bevalt dan kunnen wij daar natuurlijk niets aan doen. Als morgen een vrouw tussen de mannen staat dan zullen we netjes vragen of ze aan hun eigen kant willen gaan staan.”

Dat levert de nodige reacties op. Zo doen we dat immers niet in Nederland toch? En we hebben hier gevochten voor gelijke rechten en dan past zoiets hier niet. In Amsterdam moeten mannen en vrouwen gezamenlijk kunnen demonstreren en eventueel moet de politie dat bewaken. Althans dat lijkt de teneur dus van die reacties. Maar de HuT houdt er dus aan vast, ook al zou dat leiden dat een ‘moreel failliet‘ of tekent het het mislukken van de integratie en betekent het dat er een vrijheidsstrijd nodig is.

De reacties, hoewel zeker niet representatief (althans dat weet ik niet), gaan hier dus niet zozeer over het feit dat moslims geen demonstratie mogen houden ter ondersteuning van de opstanden in het Midden-Oosten, of dat moslims als moslims geen publieke manifestatie mogen houden, maar wel dat bepaalde uitingen de normen overschrijden van een publieke ruimte die door sommigen als neutraal en modern wordt gepresenteerd, maar die in feite een liberale secularistische orde is. Dat daarbij her en der wordt verwezen naar de Dodenherdenking op diezelfde Dam in Amsterdam van afgelopen week, maakt deze demonstratie natuurlijk helemaal zwanger van de symboliek. Een (antropologisch gezien) zeer interessant en mooi voorbeeld van politiek van de publieke ruimte waarbij de verschillende opvattingen, breuklijnen en conflicten boven komen drijven en waarbij zowel tekst, als beeld en het publieke spektakel een rol spelen.

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De weg naar Osama – Over barbaarsheid en beschaving

Posted on May 6th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Dus we hebben ‘m. Die Osama bin Laden. Gefeliciteerd, maar niet heus.

Op 11 september 2001 viel Al Qaeda ‘de vrije wereld’ aan. Zo werd het snel gepresenteerd, ook in Nederland. Wij waren de vrijen, de deugdzamen, de goeden en zij de niets en niemand ontziende slechterikken. Zelfs onschuldige burgers vielen ze aan. Op 7 oktober 2001 begon de aanval op Afghanistan en de jacht op Bin Laden. Nu is OBL dood en dat heeft de wereld een stuk veiliger gemaakt.

Natuurlijk. Klaarblijkelijk zijn we ‘even’ vergeten dat de war on terror van een oorlog tegen terrorisme in het algemeen en Al Qaeda in het bijzonder, is verzand in een oorlog waar vooral de volkeren in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq en Afrika last van hebben. Mensen die over het algemeen helemaal niet zoveel op hebben met Al Qaeda, maar wel fanatiek strijden tegen corrupte en dictatoriale heersers en tegen de Westerse leiders die allerlei militaire missies in hun landen uitvoeren en ook nog eens bevriend zijn met de leiders van die landen. En als het zo is, zo werd het destijds bij de inval ook gebracht, dat de wereld een stuk veiliger zou zijn zonder Bin Laden waarom moeten we dan nog steeds waakzaam zijn, heeft de VS haar dreigingsniveau verhoogd en zijn ook de Europese veiligheidsdiensten in hogere staat van paraatheid? En wat is daar eigenlijk precies gebeurt in die Pakistaanse villa? Waar zijn de voorvechters van mensenrechten onder Nederlandse politici en opinieleiders nu? De meesten lijken erg zwijgzaam en opgelucht terwijl meer openheid en een grondig onderzoek naar de gang van zaken toch zeker wel gewenst is. Sommige voorvechters hadden weliswaar ‘liever’ gezien dat OBL voor het gerecht was gebracht, maar dat zal echt een veroordeling zijn waar iemand van wakker zal liggen. En het lijkt erop dat men er ook vooral bij moet zeggen dat men desondanks geen traan zal laten om de man.

Tot nu toe lijkt het er vooral op dat het niet meer of minder dan een politieke moord is. Waar zelfs de nazi’s een rechtvaardig en eerlijk proces kregen is dat voor OBL dus anders. Natuurlijk we zijn in oorlog, of liever gezegd we zitten gevangen in de retoriek van oorlog, en de rechtvaardiging luidt dan ook dat je in een oorlog ‘nu eenmaal’ je tegenstander mag doden. En dit is wel een speciale categorie he, vijandelijke strijders! Vandaar nu ook waarschijnlijk de rechtvaardiging van martelpraktijken om de informatie los te krijgen die zou hebben geleid tot het pakken van OBL. Nog afgezien van de juistheid ervan, marteling is namelijk helemaal niet zo effectief, kunnen we ons afvragen of het doel wel de middelen rechtvaardigt. En waarom wordt de mastermind van 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, dan wel vervolgd? In 2004 kwam er een speciale zitting van de Veiligheidsraad van de VN naar aanleiding van de moord door Israël op Hamas-leider Yassin; iets waar ook de VS ‘deeply troubled‘ over was.

Dat dit allemaal kan heeft te maken met het feit dat de War on Terror een oorlog is, waarbij de strijdende partijen hoogstens geweldsinstructies hebben, maar niet gebonden lijken te zijn aan internationale conventies. Vroeger vonden er in Spanje debatten plaats tussen de kerkelijke elites of de inheemse ‘wezens’ van de Caribbean wel mensen waren en dus recht hadden op de ‘christelijke vrijheid’. De Taliban en Al Qaeda zijn, als aanvallers van de vrije wereld, weggedefinieerd uit de beschaafde wereld, worden niet beschermd door Geneefse conventies en kunnen onderworpen aan ontvoeringen, martelingen en moord en men kan zelfs een Amerikaans staatsburger zonder vorm van proces op een hitlist zetten. Als mens-zijn betekent dat hij/zij beschikt over de rechten van een mens omdat hij/zij een mens is, dan wordt degene die niet beschikt over de rechten van de mens dus minder dan een mens.

Clair Norton gaat in een stuk op Bad Subjects, Marines versus Fedayeen: Interpretive Naming and Constructing the ‘Other’, over de vijandsbeelden met betrekking tot Irak, in op de logica die we ook hier kunnen zien. Waar de Westerse troepen strijden voor rechtvaardigheid, vrede en veiligheid over de hele wereld, maar zich wel te buiten gaan aan misstanden als Abu Ghraib, het bewust bestoken van burgers in Chora door Nederlandse troepen blijven we over hen spreken als soldaten, mariniers, special forces enzovoorts. Zij zouden immers de vertegenwoordigers of voorhoede zijn van een legitieme instelling van staten: het leger. Hun geweld is gelegitimeerd en toegestaan. Derhalve zijn zij geen gewapend tuig, criminelen of terroristen, maar soldaten die werken volgens een geweldsinstructie voor het hogere belang. De Taliban en opstandelingen daarentegen worden neergezet als ongeregelde strijders, paramilitairen, milities, terroristen, enzovoorts. De morele legitimiteit van de (westerse) staten is zo goed als onaantastbaar waardoor strijders die buiten de natie-staten vallen buiten de orde staan of worden gezet. Zij vallen aan waar de staat zichzelf slechts verdedigd. Hun geweld is dan ook terreur, ‘ons’ geweld is goed politiewerk, humanitaire interventie en ‘wij’ werken voor vrede en veiligheid die verstoord wordt/is door terroristen. Omgekeerd geldt het ook; als zij de illegitieme, barbaarse ander zijn, moeten ‘wij’ wel de goeden zijn. Dat er zoiets bestaat als staatsterreur door Westerse staten past niet in dit verhaal.

Maar is het zo vreemd dat de ander denkt dat het Westen de slechterik is? De War on Terror heeft duizenden burgerdoden gekost in Afghanistan en Iraq, talloze mensen op de vlucht doen slaan waarbij we ‘ons’ best doen die vooral niet op te nemen, we martelen mensen en werken mee aan ontvoeringen of voeren ze uit, we houden onschuldige mensen, onder wie kinderen, gevangen in mensonterende omstandigheden (en laten klaarblijkelijk gevaarlijke mensen vrij…), we doden bewust onschuldige burgers op een manier dat het lijkt alsof het slechts een videospelletje is (een andere vorm van de-humanisering) en we steunen in naam van democratie en veiligheid regimes die het niet al te nauw nemen met de democratie en veiligheid voor hun burgers. Het lijkt me dat het makkelijk voor te stellen is dat in zo’n situatie jonge mensen de boodschap van Al Qaeda op het eerste gezicht aantrekkelijk vinden. De War on Terror is namelijk geen project van vrede en veiligheid voor hen, maar één van dood, vernietiging en ontheemding. Het is een project om de Westerse hegemonie te verdedigen ongeacht of zelfs ten koste van allerlei ‘Westerse’ principes. In Nederland en de rest van Europa heeft de war on terror onder meer geleid tot vormen van ethnic profiling, securitisering en een uitholling van burgerrechten en privacy voor diegenen die aangemerkt worden als Al Qaeda betrokkene. Natuurlijk zijn ‘wij’ (Nederland) ook actief in Afghanistan en we doen goed werk is het verhaal. We gingen er heen om te helpen Bin Laden te pakken en de Afghanen wat beschaving bij te brengen want dat zou in het bijzonder goed zijn voor vrouwen en kinderen. Helaas is het leven voor de Afghanen (het leven van degenen die nog leven) niet heel veel beter geworden en zeker niet voor de Afghaanse kinderen.

In die tegenstelling tussen beschaving en barbaarsheid gebeurt nog iets interessants; namelijk een tegenstelling binnen het Westen. Die tussen Europa en de VS. Kijk, ‘wij’, Europeanen behoren natuurlijk tot die zelfde coalitie als de Amerikanen, maar wij zijn niet zo onbeschaafd als die ordinaire Amerikanen die op straat gingen om feest te vieren na de dood van Bin Laden (of die Marokkanen die dat in Ede hebben gedaan na 9/11, zoals de mythe luidt). Nee, dat is onbeschaafd en zijn wij niet de bakermat van de beschaving? Dan wordt het ineens niet ‘wij’ het westen, maar ‘zij’ de Amerikanen, in het bijzonder het plebs. Het is ook een manier om toch om te gaan met de wat wrange gevoelens die er wellicht toch leven met betrekking tot deze Amerikaanse actie. Het stelt ons in staat om Obama te feliciteren en tegelijkertijd toch wat afstand te nemen ten opzichte van die doldrieste, ordinaire Amerikanen.

En wat te denken van die Amerikanen zelf? Dat men OBL de codenaam ‘Geronimo’ gaf, is veelzeggend. In de Amerikaanse traditie worden Indianen enerzijds gezien als authentieke symbolen van vrijheid en mensen die dicht bij de natuur leven en anderzijds barbaren die ‘gepacificeerd’ moesten worden. De indiaan behoort zowel tot Amerika als niet. Het is de vriendelijke inboorling, maar ook de stoere krijger die een waardig opponent is. Op die manier wordt de Amerikaanse ‘overwinning’ alleen grootser; ze hebben een legende verslagen; ‘wij’ zijn superieure krijgers. Het is een manier om zin te geven aan oorlog en actie door het ene verhaal te wortelen in een ander aloud verhaal dat bol staat van de tegenstellingen en spanningen tussen beschaving en barbaarsheid. Zoals ook de war on terror bol staat van die spanningen.

Bekritiseer vooral de acties en ideologie van Al Qaeda, maar denk niet dat ‘wij’ heel veel beter zijn en dat onze beschavingsoffensief goed is voor de hele wereld. Uiteindelijk dienen we ons toch de vraag te stellen waar en wanneer de oorlog tegen terrorisme is omgeslagen in een oorlog van terreur waarin vooral onschuldigen (van welke zijde dan ook) worden geraakt. De volgende docudrama laat dat goed zien aan het verhaal van de Tipton Three; drie Britse moslims die twee jaar gevangen werden gehouden in Gitmo en vervolgens zonder aanklacht zijn vrijgelaten.


tvxs.gr | The Road to Guantanamo door tvxorissinora

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Doing Anthropology

Posted on May 3rd, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology.

As Talal Asad has suggested anthropology is:

the comparison of embedded concepts (representations) between societies differently located in time and space [and] the forms of life that articulate them, the power they release or disable

(2003:17).

Anthropologists therefore have to analyze, reveal and understand people’s view of reality and how their practices are related to that. But what does that actually mean? What is it that anthropologists do? What is their research about?

In the next video, three members of MIT’s Anthropology Department, Stefan Helmreich, Erica James, and Heather Paxson, talk about their current work and the process of doing fieldwork.

H/T: Kerim at Savage Minds

From now on this video will be featured on the right side of this site.

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In Memoriam – Osama bin Laden (1957-2011)

Posted on May 2nd, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Osama bin Laden 10 maart 1957 – 2 May 2011

Voor zijn supporters was hij een leeuw, een held, een verzetsstrijder, een strijder voor gerechtigheid, een sheikh, een man met een visie die voorop ging in de strijd. Voor zijn tegenstanders was hij verdwaald, verblind door emoties als haat en afkeer, de oorzaak voor de slechte naam van de islam of juist exemplarisch voor de islam, een man met het bloed van duizenden onschuldige mannen, vrouwen en kinderen aan zijn handen, de man die de wereld in een nieuwe oorlog stortte. Voor de één had hij de X-factor; voor de ander Fear-factor. Wat je er verder ook van mag vinden er zijn niet zoveel mannen met zo’n grote impact op de hedendaagse geschiedenis als Osama bin Laden; gestorven op 54 jarige leeftijd door een actie van de Special Forces van de VS in Abottabad, Pakistan.

Ingenieur Osama bin Laden is geboren in een rijke Saoedische familie die haar fortuin vergaarde in de bouwwereld. Hij koos echter een andere carrière; die van strijder en islamitisch leider. Samen met anderen bouwde hij Al Qaeda op; een terreurorganisatie die als hoogtepunt de aanvallen van 11 september kende, een mondiale sociale beweging die wereldwijd steun genoot en een franchise-organisatie waarvan de formule door tal van lokale netwerken gekopieerd werd. Hij groeide op in een periode dat de Saoedische islam gepolitiseerd raakte en zich tegen het politieke en religieuze establishment keerde. In het jaar dat hij afstudeerde vonden drie grote gebeurtenissen plaats: de Iraanse revolutie, de bezetting van de Grote Moskee in Mekka en de inval in Afghanistan door de Sovjet-Unie. In de jaren ’80 vertrok hij naar Afghanistan evenals enkele duizenden anderen Arabieren. Hoe groot zijn militaire rol was, is volgens mij niet helemaal duidelijk (al zijn er wel berichten dat deze zeer overdreven wordt neergezet), maar hij was in ieder geval zeer bedreven in de fondsenwerving. Daarnaast speelde hij een grote rol in het samenvoegen van de Afghaanse en Arabische strijders in Afghanistan. Hij werkte daar onder meer met Abdullah Azzam, één van zijn leermeesters, en kwam in contact met Ayman al Zawahiri; een Egyptische militant. Met hem richtte hij eind jaren ’80 Al Qaeda (De Basis) op. In tegenstelling tot vele andere jihadistische groepen die zich vooral beperkten tot nationalistische strijd, was Al Qaeda van meet af aan een beweging met mondiale aspiraties. Het doel was onder meer om via guerilla-acties en spectaculaire gewelddadige acties te komen tot een massa-mobilisatie van moslims.

In 1991 keerde hij zich tegen zijn vaderland Saoedi Arabië. Tijdens de Eerste Golfoorlog stationeerde de VS haar troepen in dat land, terwijl het regime eerder een aanbod van Bin Laden om te vechten tegen Saddam afsloeg. Hij bekritiseerde zowel de religieuze als politieke gezaghebbers van dat land en stelde dat de aanwezigheid van de troepen in het land van Mekka en Medina een ontheiliging van de Arabische grond was. Hij vluchtte naar de Soedanese hoofdstad Khartoum en werkte verder aan de ontwikkeling van Al Qaeda. Dat verliep echter zeer moeizaam; zijn gewelddadige acties zetten weinig zoden aan de dijk en de pogingen om allianties met andere clubjes op te zetten leken ook te mislukken. In 1996 werd hij het land uitgezet door Soedan, na druk van de VS. Hij ging weer naar Afghanistan en bouwde Al Qaeda uit van een voorhoede in de strijd tot een echte basis met trainingskampen, logies en andere faciliteiten. Langzaam maar zeker kreeg ook Al Qaeda als een militante mondiale beweging en als een netwerk van netwerken haar beslag.

Bin Laden had zeer snel door hoe hij de publieke opinie kon bespelen met gebruikmaking van de modernste technologie. In 1998 vormde Al Qaeda met vier andere organisaties het Wereld Islamitisch Front voor Jihad tegen Joden en Kruisvaarders en gaf hij een fatwa uit die moslims opriep tot het gehoorzamen van God. Hetgeen in zijn ogen onder meer betekende dat Amerikanen, ook burgers, vermoord moesten worden. Hij gaf zelf het voorbeeld met de aanslagen op de ambassades van de VS in Dar es Salaam en Nairobi. De VS antwoordde, onder Clinton, met luchtaanvallen op vermeende faciliteiten van Al Qaeda in Soedan. Bin Laden intussen zat veilig in Afghanistan onder bescherming van de Taliban die onder leiding stond van Mullah Omar.

Aanvankelijk wees Bin Laden de plannen van Khalid Sheikh Mohammad om vliegtuigen te kapen en met behulp daarvan de VS op eigen grondgebied aan te vallen af. Later werden ze toch geaccepteerd ondanks de vrees voor de Amerikaanse tegenreactie. Op 9 september 2001 vermoordden twee mannen, onder leiding van Al-Zawahiri, de Afghaanse leider Ahmed Shah Massoud. Op 11 september 2001 vonden de aanvallen op de VS plaats met behulp van vier gelijktijdig gekaapte vliegtuigen. Binnen enkele uren had president Bush Bin Laden als de schuldige aangewezen en begon de VS met de voorbereiding van een nieuwe agressieve militaire campagne: de Global War on Terror. De jacht op Bin Laden begon en het Taliban regime stortte snel in mede door de hulp van anti-Taliban groepen in Afghanistan. De fysieke organisatie van Al Qaeda verschrompelde doordat vele leidende figuren werden opgepakt en de kampen werden vernietigd. De top echter bleef ongedeerd.

Het was dan ook niet het einde van Al Qaeda, maar eerder een nieuwe periode. Eerder van voorhoede tot basis, werd Al Qaeda nu een ideologie, een methode voor urbane strijd met een jihad-doctrine die sterk afweek van wat gebruikelijk was en die voortdurend gevoed werd met video en audio boodschappen van Bin Laden. Geholpen door de oorlog in Irak inspireerde Al Qaeda tal van netwerken van Waziristan, Indonesië, Marokko, Spanje, Engeland tot het Hofstad netwerk in Nederland. Diverse Europese jongeren probeerden naar de trainingskampen van Al Qaeda te gaan, maar inmiddels bleek dat toch wat ingewikkelder dan in het verleden bijvoorbeeld ten tijde van de oorlog in Bosnië. Met name 2005 en 2006 leken de topjaren van Al Qaeda te zijn en toch wilde één ding maar niet vlotten. Ondanks alle alarmerende verhalen over massale radicalisering van moslimjeugd in Europa bleek het telkens om kleine geïsoleerde groepjes te gaan.

Voor Nederland betekende de ’11 september’ voor jongeren van het Hofstad netwerk dat men het idee kreeg dat met de gewelddadige jihad volgens de Al Qaeda doctrine de zaken te veranderen en E waren in Palestina, Afghanistan, Tsjetsjenië en later ook Iraq en Europa. Dat men eindelijk iemand gevonden had die de wereldgemeenschap van slachtoffers (zoals de spottende naam luidde voor de ummah – de wereldgemeenschap van moslims) kon leiden in de strijd voor rechtvaardigheid en tegen onderdrukking. De moord op Theo van Gogh leerde echter velen dat geweld geen oplossing is, dat men (radicale moslims e.a.) een groep had die men niet onder controle had en dat de reactie nog zwaarder was dan men van tevoren te verduren had. Weliswaar leek radicalisering daarna toe te nemen, maar ook hier is bij lange na geen sprake geweest van massa-radicalisering. In het Midden-Oosten kreeg men zo langzamerhand ook genoeg van al het geweld al was het maar omdat het eerder leidde tot een versterking van de Amerikaanse hegemonie dan een verzwakking. Maar ook Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi die in Irak huis hield onder de vlag van Al Qaeda heeft velen doen realiseren dat de orgie van geweld die hij daar lanceerde onverantwoord, inhumaan en volgens de meesten ook tegen de islam was.

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Er leek een zekere marginalisering van Al Qaeda plaats te vinden, misschien nog wel het duidelijkst zichtbaar in de Arabische revoluties van 2011. De roep om vrijheid, gerechtigheid en een einde aan machtsmisbruik en corruptie was zeker niet nieuw voor Bin Laden cs.; wel nieuw was dat zij volkomen buitenspel stonden en irrelevant waren. Voorbij de slogans van Al Qaeda ontdekten velen naar verloop van tijd vooral leegte: in plaats van hoop, rechtvaardigheid, toekomstperspectief zoals de belofte en de hoop van veel radicale jongeren luidde, was er slechts wraak, geweld en haat. Nu zijn we een war on terror in gesleept die ons brengt naar gebieden waar we nooit van hadden durven dromen daar nog eens militair actief te zijn. Maar bovenal zijn we duizenden doden verder door enerzijds de gewapende strijd van moslims en anderzijds (en nog meer) de jacht op Bin Laden en de war on terror. En Bin Laden zat niet in een grot in de bergen, maar in een villa.

Osama bin Laden laat vier vrouwen en 19 kinderen achter. Eén van zijn kinderen stierf samen met hem.

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Three days of the West – What is Westernization?

Posted on May 1st, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Blind Horses, Joy Category, Multiculti Issues.

Last week in the Netherlands we had, again, a debate on young asylum seekers. It was decided that a 14-year old Afghan girl and her family could remain in the Netherlands although their asylum request had been rejected. The girl, Sahar, lives in the Netherlands for more than 10 years now and is a pupil at a higher secondary school. One of the criteria that played a role in the recent decision to let them stay is that Sahar is ‘westernized’ over the years which leads politicians to the conclusion that she (as a girl) could get into trouble when she has to live in Afghanistan (there are indeed examples of that). The criterium of ‘Westernization’ is not defined however and not extended to boys or other girls from Afghanistan (let alone other countries) in a similar situation. The next video provides some information on this discussion:

What's Westernization? door NewsLook

Service oriented as this anthropologist is, I have decided to look into the matter of Westernization a little more closer in order to come up with a definition that includes the fact that we talk about women (gender), upper class (with regard to education) and style of democratic participation (given the way people have lobbyed for the girl or against her). Important is that the elements of the definition have to extend beyond the Netherlands but not exclude the Netherlands and that they have been rooted in Western societies for a long time. Now it happens that in the last three days we have seen three perfect examples of those Western traditions that could be the corner stones of this definition.

29 april: A very elegant burqa for women
William and Kate got married. Have you seen Kate’s dress? A beautiful elegant with a face covering veil that both hides as well as accentuates the beauty of this woman.
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“A modern bride, in a modern dress but with a historical allusion” and also think about ‘Grace Kelly’s dress’.

30 April: Get drunk, act silly, get together: Queensday in the Netherlands
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30 April is the day the Netherlands celebrates the birthday of queen Beatrix. The atmosphere is somewhat similar to when the Dutch national soccer team plays and can be described as temporary Orange Fever.

1 May: Traditional political participation: Jump right out of the line and revolt!
The celebration of 1 May is a perfect and very old example of political participation: demonstrations, blocking the streets, violence by police and protesters. Let’s have a look at one of the mobilization video of the German 1 May movement:
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As such this idea of Westernization is more real than reality, in fact a re-make of reality. Have fun.

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