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Voor Jonge Turken doet Nederland er niet toe

Posted on November 8th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Guest authors, Multiculti Issues, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Voor Jonge Turken doet Nederland er niet toe

Guest Author: Zihni Özdil

Turken in Nederland worden gediscrimineerd – zeker. Maar velen van hen doen niets om de vooroordelen weg te nemen.

Het opiniestuk van Tuncay Cinibulak over de ‘Turks-Koerdische rellen’ in Nederland bevat een aantal analytische fouten en een misplaatste causaliteit. Cinibulaks stuk illustreert dat de integratie van de Turken in Nederland bij lange na niet is voltooid.

Ten eerste maakt Cinibulak een fout die je in veel reacties op de rellen terugziet: hij noemt de relschoppers ‘jonge Turken en Koerden’. Het zijn in werkelijkheid jonge Nederlanders wier (groot-)ouders afkomstig zijn uit Turkije. Deze jongeren zijn in Nederland geboren en zullen uiteindelijk ook hier sterven. Deze vanzelfsprekendheid wordt bijna vijftig jaar na de arbeidsmigratie nauwelijks onderkend door de meeste Turkse Nederlanders.

Het klopt dat de ontvangende samenleving ‘allochtone’ Nederlanders altijd als ‘de anderen’ heeft gezien. Zo is er nog steeds veel discriminatie in Nederland, zoals bleek uit recent onderzoek van de VU naar de bereidheid van uitzendbureaus om allochtonen desgevraagd voor vacatures uit te sluiten. Ook het uitgaansleven is notoir racistisch.

Door de opkomst van het rechtspopulisme zijn Nederlanders met een moslimachtergrond bovendien gereduceerd tot ‘kopvodden’ en ‘straatterroristen’. Voor die tijd was Nederland in de houdgreep van de eigenlijk net zo uitsluitende multiculturalisten. Omdat de integratiegraadmeter voor multiculturalisten altijd is geweest de mate waarin een groep overlast veroorzaakt, werden de Turken dus als redelijk goed geïntegreerd gezien.

Waarom? Ze stelen geen handtasjes, vinden onderwijs belangrijk en voldoen aan het sociaal-economisch ideaal van de kleine burgerij. Dat de bedrijvigheid van veel Turks-Nederlandse ondernemers – shoarmazaakjes, semicriminele belhuizen en bakkerijen in zwarte wijken – zou bijdragen aan integratie is op zijn zachtst gezegd twijfelachtig. Het wordt in elk geval niet gestaafd door onderzoek, mits we een realistische definitie van integratie zouden hanteren, namelijk de sociale, maatschappelijke en culturele binding met Nederland.

In het multiculturele tijdperk werden voormalige gastarbeiders en hun nakomelingen gestimuleerd zich vooral in een geprefabriceerde en gesubsidieerde zuil te bewegen. Turkse Nederlanders waren hier bij uitstek zeer goed in. Verstopt in organisaties die banden hebben met dubieuze religieuze of ultranationalistische clubs uit Turkije waren de Turken goed aan het ‘integreren’. Cinibulak stelt terecht dat de recente rellen geen acties waren van losgeslagen jongeren. Maar hij legt het verkeerde causaal verband als hij stelt dat de oorzaak ligt in een ‘nieuwe fase’ van het Turks-Koerdische conflict. Ook schetst hij een ongefundeerd doemscenario: ‘De frustraties en de woede van de Turkse jongeren komen nu nog impulsief tot uiting. Maar het kan niet worden uitgesloten dat ze zich op een kwaad moment ook op de Nederlandse samenleving afreageren. Zo beschouwd, kunnen de rellen worden opgevat als een mogelijke voorbode van een nieuwe geweldsgolf.’

Cinibulaks stelling dat jonge Turken en Koerden in Nederland goed Nederlands spreken en vertrouwd zijn met de Nederlandse omgangsnormen is in regelrechte tegenspraak met de feiten: ‘De taalachterstand is het grootst onder leerlingen met een Turkse achtergrond (…) Turken zijn in hun contacten meer gericht op de eigen groep dan Marokkanen. Hierin is de afgelopen tien jaar weinig veranderd’, aldus enkele conclusies van het SCP.

In tegenstelling tot Cinibulaks beschrijving waren de rellen niet impulsief en ook geen nieuwigheid maar een te voorspellen actie binnen een vast historisch patroon. Net als in de jaren negentig en in het afgelopen decennium komen ook nu honderden jonge Turkse Nederlanders georganiseerd – door de Grijze Wolven in dit geval – in actie als het Turks-Koerdische conflict escaleert. Elke keer kwam het daarbij tot rellen in Nederland met soms doden als gevolg. Volgens onderzoek kijkt bijna 70 procent van de Turkse Nederlanders dagelijks naar Turkse tv-zenders. De verontwaardiging die de Turkse media ventileerden na de aanslag op Turkse soldaten, werd dus direct overgenomen door (jonge) Turkse Nederlanders. Op internet lieten ze blijken hoezeer ze begaan waren met ‘hun land’ en ‘hun soldaten’.

Cinibulak wijst op de vele, goed gedocumenteerde, sociaal-psychologische problemen die Turks-Nederlandse jongeren ondervinden. Maar net als de verontruste Turken die in januari een manifest opstelden, ziet Cinibulak deze jongeren vooral als zielige slachtoffers van ‘de Nederlanders’. Ik bestrijd dat. Deze jongeren zijn zelf ook Nederlanders en zijn allesbehalve zielig. Ze zijn intelligent en hebben veel potentie.

Maar hun toekomst in Nederland ligt in hun eigen handen. De meesten kiezen nog te vaak voor de makkelijke weg. In plaats van de op Turkije gerichte ketens van hun (groot-) ouders en al die organisaties van zich af te werpen, omarmen ze die juist.

In plaats van de mouwen op te stropen en zich samen met hun Marokkaanse, Surinaamse, Antilliaanse en autochtone landgenoten in te zetten voor een toekomst in Nederland zonder discriminatie en uitsluiting kiezen ze ervoor om alleen in actie te komen voor Turkije.

In april hield ik in Den Haag een toespraak tijdens een manifestatie tegen de onderwijsbezuinigingen. De Turkse studentenverenigingen waren uiteraard afwezig, en dat was te verwachten. Deze verenigingen ‘integreren’ liever door middel van het organiseren van jaarlijkse iftar-diners, Istanbul-reizen en enkele gastsprekers uit Turkije.

Cinibulak beseft niet dat de kern van het probleem ligt in de begrijpelijke maar op lange termijn funeste zelfidentificatie van deze jongeren. Hun Turkse afkomst is niet een erfgoed dat hun Nederlandse identiteit aanvult. Integendeel, anno 2011 zijn de Turkse ‘Blut und Boden’ juist de allesbepalende identiteit voor veel van deze jongeren.

Ik spreek regelmatig met uitwisselingsstudenten uit Turkije, en zij zijn altijd ontzettend verbaasd wanneer ze zien hoe conservatief en nationalistisch de Turkse jongeren in Nederland zijn.

De overmatig op Turkije gerichte organisaties in Nederland houden de geslotenheid van de gemeenschap en daarmee ook de schizofreen te noemen zelfidentificatie van jonge Turkse Nederlanders in stand. Fysiek leeft men in Nederland maar Turkije is vaak het enige land waar men zich werkelijk om bekommert. Het publieke debat over maatschappelijke kwesties in hun eigen land gaat grotendeels aan deze jongeren voorbij.

Zihni Özdil is docent en promovendus maatschappijgeschiedenis aan de Erasmus Universiteit. Dit opiniestuk verscheen in de Volkskrant (07 november 2011). Dit stuk is ook te lezen op zijn eigen site: zihniozdil.info

2 comments.

The Arab Autumn?

Posted on October 12th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Guest authors, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Guest Author: Samuli Schielke

I never liked the expression “the Arab Spring” because I know too well what happened to the Prague Spring in 1968. A short time of hope in a “socialism with a human face” was crushed by Soviet tanks, and it took more than twenty years before a new revolution could gather momentum.

2011, the year of revolutions and uprisings around the Arab world, has been marked not only by an amazing spirit of change, but also by fierce resistance by the ruling elites, and a fear of instability and chaos among large parts of the ordinary people. Some uprisings, most notably that in Bahrain, were crushed with brute force at an early stage. Others, in Yemen and Syria, continue with an uncertain future. Along with Tunisia, Egypt appeared to be one of the lucky Arab nations that were able to realise a relatively peaceful and quick revolution, a turning point towards a better future of justice, freedom, and democracy. This autumn, however, the situation in Egypt raises doubts about that better future.

Returning to a different country

I returned to Egypt on October 2nd, this time not with the aim to follow the events of the revolution but to begin a new ethnographic fieldwork on writing and creativity, pursuing questions about the relationship of fantasy and social change. I found Egypt in a very different state from what it had been when I left it behind in March. Returning here, I encountered an air of freedom, a sense of relaxation and ease, and a strong presence of creativity, discussion, and interest in politics. But I also encountered a fear of economic collapse and a continued sense of turmoil, with strikes (mostly successful) continuing all over the country, a political struggle among political parties to share the cake of elections beforehand through alliances and deals, confrontation between competing sections within the Islamist spectrum (which has much more presence and popular support than the liberal and leftist camp), an increased visibility and activity of what in post-revolutionary jargon are called the fulul, or “leftovers” (literally, the dispersed units of a defeated army) of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party that was dissolved last spring, renewed confessional tensions, and last but not least a military rule tightening its grip over the country.

My revolutionary friends are without exception extremely frustrated about the situation. Some see the revolution in grave danger, others say that it has already failed, that it in fact failed on 11 February when the military took over from the Mubarak family. In different variations, they argue that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has proven itself as a faithful follower of Mubarak, intent on taking over power through the manipulation of the upcoming elections, if necessary by the way of spreading chaos and terror. Also the Islamists in their different colourings, who until the summer were very supportive of the military rule (hoping to strike a good power share deal), have turned critical of the SCAF, beginning to realise that the army is deceiving them just like Gamal Abdel Nasser did back in 1954 when after a period of cooptation, the Muslim Brotherhood was prohibited and brutally suppressed. But a lot of people (probably the majority) are still trustful in the army, believing what state television says and what public sector newspapers write. And most Egyptians are first of all busy with the economic situation, which is very difficult.

It was in this mixed atmosphere of an air of freedom and a sense of frustration and anxiety about the way things are evolving that I arrived in Alexandria three days ago, after spending a week in Cairo. Alexandria is one of the power bases of Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their posters and banners are visible all over the city, but not to the exclusion of others: posters of liberal or leftist parties, banners of new parties by the fulul, graffitis by the radical opposition and politicised football ultras.

The massacre at Maspiro

On Sunday 9 October, large-scale Christian demonstrations were organised in several cities around the country in protest against the burning of a church and Christian appartments in Idfu (in the south of Egypt) more than a week earlier, and the very inappropriate reaction of the authorities. The governor of Aswan, rather than trying to solve the crisis, had declared that the church had been built without a licence anyway. A sit-in of Christian protesters in front of the state television headquarters at Maspiro (overlooking the Nile in Central Cairo) had been forcibly dispersed and many people had been injured. On 9 October, a large number of Christians, feeling to be under increasing pressure since quite a while, went out to streets in large numbers, and rather than just occupying one place, they took out in protest marches through the cities.

On the afternoon of that day, I was returning from downtown Alexandria to Mandara in the east of the city on a minibus when we entered a big traffic jam on the seafront Corniche road. The minibus driver diverted to the side streets, and after a while we saw that on the Corniche there was a large (a few thousands) march of Christians with lots of crosses visible from afar. Turning left and right on the narrow side streets, the driver managed to get us just ahead of the march, and stopped shortly to pick up passengers, calling them to hurry: “Get in, get in, let’s move before we get beaten up!” He didn’t specify who he expected to get beaten by – in any case, he sensed danger. In Alexandria, the march headed for the Northern Regional Military Headquarters, the standard destination of demonstration marches in Alexandria ever since the army seized power on 11 February (unlike in Cairo where demonstrations are usually stationary at Tahrir Square, in Alexandria they usually march through the city).

At the same time, a similar march was heading to Maspiro in Cairo. The events that followed and the terrible death toll are known, and there is nothing I can add to the many eyewitness reports from Cairo that tell about stones being thrown at the march on its way, the army attacking the protesters at Maspiro with live ammunition, armoured troop carriers crushing people, cars being set in fire, and riots evolving. The bits of pieces from eyewitness reports I get from Cairo tell of a chaotic situation evolving around the centre of the city, with various groups of Muslim citizens, some of them groups of (apparently hired) thugs, others people incited by the state media, going out to the streets, trying to break into Christian shops and institutions, threatening people, stealing things. Things were not everywhere simply a matter of Muslims and Christians, however. In Faggala, one witness reports on Facebook, the standoff was between poor youths and thugs on the one side, intent on looting Christian property, and Muslim inhabitants of the area who were not at all happy about the idea of stealing in the name of Islam.

In Alexandria, the night was tense, fights were reported in some parts of the city, and the protesters at the Northern Regional Headquarters were attacked by civilians, described as inhabitants of the district by news media. But to my knowledge no shots were fired in Alexandria, and nobody got killed.

More terrible than the veritable massacre committed by the army at Maspiro was its coverage by Egyptian state media that – this has become very clear in the past two days – openly called “the noble people of Egypt” to come to help the Army against Christians, reported that the protesters killed three Egyptian soldiers (to date it remains unclear whether any soldiers were killed at all), showed clearly dubbed interviews with injured soldiers. We don’t know what they really said, but the dubbed voices told of Christians seizing the weapons of the army, attacking people, stealing their money, beating soldiers to death. Also in the following days, after footage and eyewitness accounts have proven that the official version was not only skewed, but completely false, the state media and a big part of the independent media have continued to spread the version of 23 dead “from both sides,” giving the impression of an equal confrontation. Today, state-owned newspapers have began to distribute new versions of the story, one according to which the protesters stole the armed troop carriers, and another according to which protesters set a troop carrier in fire and killed a large number of soldiers inside it. At the same time, there is no official confirmation of any deaths from the ranks of the army and the police. After the direct incitement by state television in the first hours, the official tone has shifted to expressing compassion with “our Christian brothers” and commemorating “the martyrs from among the army and police.” There is a huge cover-up going on.

A lot of people continue to trust the state media, and especially when the issue becomes mixed with confessional sentiments, it becomes very compelling to believe that version of the story. D., a man from the countryside and very critical of the system since years, told me that he heard the news about the massacre at Maspiro in a cafe in Birimbal. In village cafes, people usually watch Egyptian Channel One which they still trust over other news media. He tells that based on the coverage of Channel One, he really believed its account of the events, and thought that if protesters get armed and attack the army, then nobody else than the military can control the situation and that they need to be given the power to do so. Only when he got home an hour later and opened the Internet did he find out that it was the army that shot at the protesters and drove over them with armoured vehicles. No wonder then if others, who are less determined supporters of the revolution and less critical of the army and the military rule, believed – and still believe – what state television said.

Many – if not most – Muslims in Egypt do not have a sense that Christians would be in any way disadvantaged. They claim that there is national unity in Egypt, that Muslims and Christians are united and equal – a powerful fiction that makes it easy to overlook the really existing forms of discrimination. This is the ground from which the claims by state media about armed Christian protesters attacking the Egyptian army could gain their credibility: a sense that the Christians are demanding more than is their fair share anyway, now turned into a terrible union of patriotic militarism with sectarian distrust of the religious other. In the social media, this sensibility is expressed without the veil of national unity and sorrow in the official state media, with comments that range from anger to open aggression towards Christians. For those who never liked Christians anyway but had no good reason for this sentiment, the official story of Christian protesters arming themselves and attacking the Egyptian army offers a legitimate reason to hate.

Sectarian tension has a decades-long history in Egypt, and while it is evident that the army and state television did their best to incite confessional tensions, they were only able to do so because they really are widely shared by Egyptians. While Christians are at the losing end of these tensions due to their smaller number and their lack of presence in key nods of the military-media complex, it does not mean that they would be innocent of sectarian intolerance. There has been a strong turn to religion as the basis of identity and good life among Muslims and Christians alike, and part of this has been an increasing degree of closure towards the religious other. If Egypt were a 90% Christian country, we might have seen Muslim protesters massacred at Maspiro on Sunday.

The success of the media cover-up is far from total, however. It may have been aimed at tightening the army’s control over the country, but rather than creating a unified public opinion, it has deepened existing political splits. A lot of people don’t buy the army’s version of the story, and even many who are sympathetic of the army say that they don’t know what to believe.

One of the paradoxes of the Massacre at Maspiro is it that targeted people who otherwise would have been very likely to be supportive of a military rule that guarantees continuity and stability. Under Mubarak, many Christians would see in the ruling system a protector of Christians against the Islamists, even if they suffered from it as much if not more than everybody else. Last Sunday turned a big part of the Christians from hesitant supporters of the system into angry opponents of military rule.

Also among Egyptians of Muslim faith, many are putting the blame on the army, the more so after huge numbers of eyewitness accounts and horrible photographs and videos on the Internet and on some television stations have shown the extent of the violence by the army and the outright lying of the state media. The euphoric sense that “the army and the people are one hand” has been shifting more and more towards a distrust in the army’s ability (and good will) to run the country properly. Add the fact that there is not only a lot of sectarian tension in Egypt, but also quite some opposition to it by people who resist the momentum of sectarian closure. Who wants to be informed in Egypt, can be. Those who didn’t trust the military anyway, see in the events at Maspiro is a terrible proof of how much the SCAF, aided by the fulul, is intent to resorting to the tactics of chaos and terror that the Mubarak regime tried in the first days of the revolution last January.

D. sees that there is a plan that is being executed step by step. Not a clever one, and not well implemented, but a plan. The attack at the Israeli embassy in Cairo was one step, a way to exploit nationalist sentiment while inciting fear of unrest. The massacre at Maspiro was another step. The elections will be the next one, and D. expects that they will turn very violent and will be cancelled after the first round. The army intentionally lets the situation deteriorate, to let chaos prevail, the economy collapse, and the worse things get, the more people are willing to accept military rule as a guarantee of stability and security. In 2013 or 2014, D. predicts, an army candidate, most likely chief of staff Samy ‘Annan, will run for presidency, and even if the elections were fully free and fair (which they will not be), he will win.

My friend S. from Alexandria, since long frustrated about the current state of affairs since has strangely enough found new optimism in this moment. He thinks that what the country is going through now may be the birth labours of a better future. He (a Muslim by the way) is teacher at a school that has a large portion of Christian pupils and teachers, and confessional tensions have been very tangible there since long. Today, he gave the daily school opening speech. He started with telling that he saw Hosni Mubarak in a dream, the former president telling him that from his point of view, everything is going exactly as he wants. Calling the teachers and pupils to fight the Mubarak that continues to live inside them, S. concluded with an appeal to humanity and the need of people to recognise each others as humans. The speech moved people to tears, Muslims and Christians, and S. says that it made him feel a lot more optimistic.

A., calling me on the phone from the Emirates where he is working as a migrant labourer, tries to take it with humour: “The solution is that the Muslims burn the churches and Christians burn the mosques and everybody prays at home.”

Revolution as continuity

In Egypt this autumn, what in the way of a bad omen was called the Arab Spring is being crushed under the wheels of a military-media complex intent on employing sectarianism and the fear of chaos to consolidate their hold of the country. There are plenty of reasons for pessimism. Is there reason for optimism?

A few people whom I have met these days express a sense of optimism that they cannot quite explain. There is a sense that something has changed, that there is no return to the past, a sense that the events that we see these days, no matter how terrible they are, may actually be signs of the revolution’s success. Even if it may be a mistaken optimism – revolutions are very unpredictable and dangerous events, and they can go awfully wrong (think of the Russian revolution of 1917) – it is something to take seriously.

Part of this optimism is related to the sense of freedom, the wave of creativity, discussion and communication that goes on in the society. It is related to social dynamics released by the revolutionary momentum that are likely to influence the formation of the coming generation even if the political aims of the revolution may fail. This is what I would like to call the progress theory of the Egyptian revolution, a vision of the revolution creating something new, something that wasn’t there before. It has a grain of truth, but I think that by emphasising the novelty of the January 25 Revolution, it overlooks the history of revolutions in Egypt. To conclude this essay, I try to think about 2011 from the point of view of what I call the continuity theory of the Egyptian revolution. Rather than something completely unprecedented, the January 25 Revolution can also be seen as a return to a historical normality – and it’s a hard landing.

Until this year, Egypt as I knew it was that of the late Mubarak era, one of the most depoliticised times in Egypt’s contemporary history. I first arrived in Egypt in the late 1990’s, a time when the de facto civil war between the regime and the Gama‘at al-Islamiya in southern Egypt was ending with a bloody defeat of the Islamist militants. From the 1990’s until 2010 was a time when everybody in Egypt, including the Islamists, were compelled to yikabbar, to mind their own business and not get involved. In retrospect, however, the Mubarak era that was Egypt as I knew it, appears as an exceptional one, an interruption in a long history of revolutions and uprisings in Egypt since the 19th century.

The Egyptian book market has been flooded by a wave of books about the revolution, most of them of mediocre value at best. But there are pearls among them, and one of them is Muhammad Hafiz Diyab’s Uprisings or Revolutions in the History of Modern Egypt (Intifadat am thawrat fi tarikh Misr al-hadith, Cairo: Dar al-Shorouk, 2011). Diyab presents a history of popular uprisings, student and strike movements, riots, and full-fledged revolutions that begins in the 19th century and continues throughout the 20th century, with the 1919 revolution against British colonial rule, student protests in 1935, student and labour protests in 1946, the military coup of 1952 and the following revolutionary rearrangement of political and economic power, demonstrations in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and the so-called “bread riots” of January 1977, a wide-scale protest movement involving workers, students, and political activists of different colourings against Anwar al-Sadat’s policies of economic liberalisation. These different uprisings share a number of important features: a key role played by young people (especially students, and since the 1940’s by industrial workers), significant participation across political and party lines, large-scale demonstrations often focussed on Tahrir Square (formerly Isma’iliya Square) in Cairo, a visible role played by women, and an at best moderate degree of success of the protesters in realising their demands.

The fantastic moment of standing in Tahrir square in January and February 2011 was a moment that went beyond the wildest dreams of who participated in that moment, a moment of utopia turned into material reality. For those who were there it has gained a quality that comes close to that of a religious belief. That fantastic quality has created two blind spots about the relationship of the revolution with the ordinary world. The first blind spot is a practical one. The reality of social and political change is a lot more difficult, a lot less pure and grand, and comparing it with the fantastic moment of revolution can create a sense of powerless that makes it difficult to make a realistic assessment of what is to be done next. The second blind spot is a temporal one. The fantastic moment of revolution carries an experienced singularity of a once-in-a-lifetime moment that because of its singularity exceeds ones wildest fantasies. The January 25 Revolution was not a singular event, however. It stands in a tradition, and without repeating history, it builds on its predecessors and paves the ground for struggles to come, struggles that are now becoming evident.

This, I think, is the source of the inexplicable optimism in these difficult days of what, in Egypt at least, looks like the beginning of an Arab autumn, a period of authoritarian restoration and violent confrontations. January 25th 2011 was not the opening of a new era in Egypt. It was the return to the historical normality of a nation in revolt, the continuation of a state of uprising that began in 1919, or perhaps already in 1881, and that is bound to continue.

Samuli Schielke is a research fellow at Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin. His research focusses on everyday religiosity and morality, aspiration and frustration in contemporary Egypt. In 2006 he defended his PhD Snacks and Saints: Mawlid Festivals and the Politics of Festivity, Piety and Modernity in Contemporary Egypt at the University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. During his stay in Cairo at the time of the protests at Tahrir Square he maintained a diary. This article was also published on his blog.

Samuli Schielke wrote earlier:

2 comments.

Spring in the Arab Spring

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

Guest Author: Gert Borg
Spring

If, in Google, you type “Arab Spring” and hit the button, you get more than 14 million hits back. If you type the Arabic equivalent “al-rabî‘ al-‘arabî” you are bound to find 4 million hits, which gives it a decent second place.

The question that Google will not answer is: “Do these words really mean the same?” “Spring” evokes the idea of a new beginning, of rebirth and new fertility. But what does rabî ‘ mean? For this we go back to an Arabic saying: al-shi‘r dîwân al-‘Arab, which roughly means: poetry is the common memory of the Arabs.

What does rabî ‘ mean in Arabic poetry? First, of course, it is the season after winter; winter in the Arab desert is a dry and stormy season, that makes it difficult for nomadic tribes to survive. Draught, famine and need forces them into skirmishes, raids and battles, mainly for food.

In contrast rabî ‘ is the season of rainfall, flowing wâdî’s and a green desert, enough to feed the hungry cattle. Rabî ‘ is the season of lush abundance. Rabî ‘ can also indicate the cloud that brings plentiful amounts of rain. Therefore metaphorically the word can be used to signify a generous person or even generosity itself. You’ll see that there is a subtle difference from the meaning of spring in western languages.

Cynically the only ones who met generosity in the months of the Arab spring were those Arabs who did not rebel against their leaders: the governments of Saudi-Arabia and some Gulf states provided their subjects with large funds and allowances as a compensation for their willingness to oblige. And those who revolted will certainly not feel that, as a result of their rebellion, material wealth came their way. The population in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria will probably remember these months for shortage and destitution., often more so than in the days of dictatorship. What they can be proud of, though, is their newly won freedom, liberty of speech and hope for a better future.

In spite of all the setbacks at the moment, has the Arab world become a better one for the people who live there? It definitely could not become any worse than it was before. I would even say, that the developments of these last months will change the Arab world for a long time to come. The Arab world will probably never be the same.

But why was this revolution necessary in the first place? The population obviously freed itself from dictatorship and military rule, but these were not in place since the Beginning of Time. So how did they emerge in the Arab world after colonization by western powers? Did local dictators simply replace the former foreign powers? Some in the Arab world tend to believe that, but I think it’s a wrong assumption. Let’s not forget that the first generation of national leaders aroused an enormous enthusiasm and feeling of optimism among the local population.

If it is true, that a leader can only develop into a dictator, when he can be certain that he will not be easily replaced, then there must have been outside factors that kept him in this situation. And it is here that I believe that the two s-words should be mentioned. I strongly believe, that the ultimate responsibility for keeping the dictators in place lies with the western world for reasons of (1) stability and (2) a steady flow of oil. But it was certainly shortsighted to believe, that dictators could contribute to political stability as dictatorship is probably one of the most volatile and unstable forms of government as can be witnessed now.

Let’s not forget that in countries like Egypt, Iraq and Syria after the revolutions that freed these countries from colonialist powers there were actually parties and social organizations such as trade unions. The decades of dictatorship, supported and sponsored by the West, eliminated these necessary organizations that the Arab world so badly needs at the moment.

What went down with these organizations was social cohesion and social commitment and what remained was individual selfishness, materialism and a total lack of meaningful self-organization. The problem at the moment is: how can the Arab world regain values such as social commitment, mutual respect and dignity, transgressin local, tribal and religious interests.

Freedom can and should be conquered. Democracy, however, is an attitude that can only be slowly acquired.

Gert Borg is assistant professor Islam and Arab studies at Radboud University Nijmegen and former director of the Dutch-Flemish Institute in Cairo. This text was a spoken column at the Lux / Soeterbeeck debate with Tarek Osman on the Arab Spring

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Tarek Osman en het verhaal van Egypte

Posted on September 12th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Datum: 13 november 2011
Lokatie: Lux Nijmegen, Mariënburg 38-39

Tarek Osman is een Egyptische econoom en auteur van Egypte; een geschiedenis van Nasser tot aan Mubarak. In dit boek, dat verschijnt bij uitgeverij Bulaaq, beschrijft Osman de moderne ontwikkeling van het land Egypte.

In Egypte zijn twee van de belangrijkste moderne stromingen in de Arabisch- islamitische wereld ontstaan; het Arabisch nationalisme van de charismatische presidenten Nasser en Sadat en het radicaal islamitische gedachtegoed van de Moslimbroederschap. Osman’s boek biedt daarnaast inzicht in hoe het moderne Egypte, met mondaine steden als Caïro en Alexandrië, is verworden tot een autocratisch geregeerd land dat tot armoede is vervallen en waar de jeugd (70% van de bevolking is jonger dan 35) weinig tot geen perspectief heeft. Het boek biedt daarmee tevens een blik op het ontstaan van de Arabische Lente in Egypte. In deze lezing, in het kader van het Soeterbeeck Programma, Tarek Osman zal aan de hand van zijn boek vertellen over zijn ervaringen tijdens de volksopstand die uiteindelijk Mubarak verdreef en mogelijke toekomstscenario’s van zijn land schetsen.

Gert Borg, onderzoeker bij Islam en Arabisch aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen spreekt een column uit over de Arabische Lente. Zijn collega Martijn de Koning, schets een overzicht van de situatie in de Arabische wereld. Prof. dr. Evert van der Zweerde, hoogleraar Politieke filosofie aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, zit de avond voor.

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Closing the week 35 – Featuring the politics of food, fasting and feasting

Posted on September 4th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere, Religious and Political Radicalization, Ritual and Religious Experience, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

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Featuring the politics of food, fasting and feasting
tabsir.net » The Politics of Ramadan

Religion and politics have always been intertwined, even though some rituals would seem to be above the fray. Consider the fasting month of Ramadan, which has just ended. The Islamic hijra calendar is lunar with arbitrary 30-day months for a lunation which is not exactly 30 days. So determining when a month begins is linked to the sight of the new moon. Before the age of mechanical clocks it was also necessary to fix dawn by observation of the sunrise and decide at what point it was possible to say the sun had risen. In the early days of Islam the timing of Ramadan and the prayer times was based on visible signs. Scholars devised scientific and folk scientific means of telling time, but the basic premise is that a pious individual must make the call.

Foreigners and Their Food : David M. Freidenreich – University of California Press

Foreigners and Their Food explores how Jews, Christians, and Muslims conceptualize “us” and “them” through rules about the preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about the “other.” Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative study of religion.

Is Eid Tuesday or Wednesday? – India Real Time – WSJ

The confusion about Eid-ul-Fitr, the day Muslims break their month-long Ramadan fast, is on again.

Ramadan 2011 – Alan Taylor – In Focus – The Atlantic

Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, began earlier this month with the sighting of the new moon. Throughout this ninth month on the Islamic calendar, devout Muslims must abstain from food, drink, and sex from dawn until sunset. The fast, one of the five pillars of Islam, is seen as a time for spiritual reflection, prayers, and charity. After sunset, Muslims traditionally break the fast by eating three dates, performing the Maghrib prayer, and sitting down to Iftar, the main evening meal, where communities and families gather together. Collected below are images of Muslims around the world observing Ramadan this year. [42 photos]

When Is Eid? Muslims Can’t Seem To Agree : The Two-Way : NPR

Today is Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. Except that it isn’t.

Today, many Muslims in the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are celebrating Eid. Meanwhile, many Muslims in Indonesia, South Africa, India and Oman are not celebrating Eid until Wednesday.

Eid ul-Fitr marks end of violent Ramadan in Syria – CSMonitor.com

Eid ul-Fitr is normally a festive time, but Syrian citizens say seven were killed today by security forces. The regime faces EU oil sanctions by week’s end and weakening support at home.

Singapore’s Curry Solidarity · Global Voices

An Indian family in Singapore has agreed not to cook curry when their newly arrived neighbors from China are at home after the latter complained to authorities about the smell of curry. To show solidarity to all Singaporeans who love curry, which is after all a national dish, a “Cook A Pot of Curry Day” event was organized last Sunday, August 21. The Facebook page of the event had a confirmed attendance of more than 60,000. Below are some online reactions.

Video – Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

The duo that last year visited 30 U.S. mosques in 30 days is now visiting 20 mosques in 20 days during Ramadan.

Guestview: Ritual slaughter ban reflects fights over food and faith in the Netherlands | FaithWorld

In the recent Dutch debates about ritual slaughter, food has become a field where people battle over political, religious, economic, social and animal welfare issues. I do not think it is that speculative to say that the Animal Party has profitted from three major developments in Dutch society.

Guernica / Nicola Twilley: The Politics of Our Changing Foodscape

Nicola Twilley: Food is a political issue because politicians, and, indeed, our whole system of government, play such a large role in shaping what we do or don’t eat. For example, the government literally feeds a vast number of Americans (there were a record 45.75 million food stamp recipients last month) through its food assistance programs, and it feeds them with commodities it has purchased in bulk—purchases that are in themselves designed to support and stabilize prices for particular crops and industrial processes. Marion Nestle is a great person to read on how public health programs such as nutrition labeling or dietary guidance are shaped by our political system, including the undue influence of corporate lobbyists. It’s interesting to look at how dietary guidance, for example, shifts by country, for political as well as cultural reasons. The government plays a huge role in agricultural research (look at the influence of the extension programs at universities across America), environmental regulation, food safety (including guidelines around genetic modification and nanotechnology), and the economic landscape within which food production occurs. It is government policy on monopolies that allows four companies to dominate America’s meat supply, for example. Given that food is a health, environmental, infrastructural, economic, and technological issue, government investment, policy, and regulation ends up being one of the largest forces shaping the contemporary foodscape.

Religion and politics
Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith – NYTimes.com

Yet when it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively. Michele Bachmann was asked during the Iowa G.O.P. debate what she meant when she said the Bible obliged her to “be submissive” to her husband, and there was an audible wave of boos — for the question, not the answer. There is a sense, encouraged by the candidates, that what goes on between a candidate and his or her God is a sensitive, even privileged domain, except when it is useful for mobilizing the religious base and prying open their wallets.

New York Times Editor Bill Keller’s Religious Test for Presidential Candidates – The Daily Beast

Do religious conservatives operate far outside the American mainstream and pose a serious threat to our pluralistic democracy?

USC Knight Chair in Media and Religion

The New York Times’ Executive Editor Bill Keller struck a nerve when his weekly column in the Times Magazine called for journalists to pay “closer attention” to what the GOP’s candidates for president “say about their faith and what they have said in the past that they may have decided to play down in the quest for mainstream respectability.”

Political theology and political existentialism « The Immanent Frame

Kahn’s book is fascinating, insightful, and a delight to read. But it is many things. Although its arguments are set forth in a largely holistic fashion, one can distinguish at least three distinct aims: 1) a more or less faithful and analytic reconstruction of Carl Schmitt’s 1922 work, Political Theology; 2) a meditation on the applicability of Schmitt’s political-theological insights to specific features of contemporary American political-legal practice; and 3) a bold proposal, only loosely grounded in Schmittian textual evidence, that argues for political theology as the indispensable framework for grasping the character of politics in the modern world. The first of these aims helps to explain why the book owes its title and its chapter-by-chapter architectonic to Schmitt’s original work. The second explains why Kahn not infrequently departs from the task of reconstruction by offering illustrations drawn from contemporary American law and politics. The third leads us to Kahn’s most provocative conclusion, that there is something distinctive about modern politics qua politics that can only be understood if we remain alive to the theological sources that animate this dimension of our experience. Unlike some of the other commentators, my training and interests do not lie in the sphere of contemporary politics, and most certainly not American politics. I will therefore refrain from offering any challenge to Kahn’s reconstructive or illustrative purposes and will focus my attention chiefly on the third and final strand of the book.

Oxford University Press: The Myth of Religious Violence:

The idea that religion has a dangerous tendency to promote violence is part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of religion to efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East. William T. Cavanaugh challenges this conventional wisdom by examining how the twin categories of religion and the secular are constructed. A growing body of scholarly work explores how the category ‘religion’ has been constructed in the modern West and in colonial contexts according to specific configurations of political power. Cavanaugh draws on this scholarship to examine how timeless and transcultural categories of ‘religion and ‘the secular’ are used in arguments that religion causes violence. He argues three points: 1) There is no transhistorical and transcultural essence of religion. What counts as religious or secular in any given context is a function of political configurations of power; 2) Such a transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion as non-rational and prone to violence is one of the foundational legitimating myths of Western society; 3) This myth can be and is used to legitimate neo-colonial violence against non-Western others, particularly the Muslim world.

A suspension of (dis)belief « The Immanent Frame

Most academic discussions in political science and international relations presuppose a fixed definition of the secular and the religious and proceed from there. Most realist, liberal, English school, feminist, and historical-materialist approaches treat religion as either private by prior assumption or a cultural relic to be handled by anthropologists. Even constructivists, known for their attention to historical contingency and social identity, have paid scant attention to the politics of secularism and religion, focusing instead on the interaction of preexisting state units to explain how international norms influence state interests and identity or looking at the social construction of states and the state system with religion left out of the picture.

Encounter – 12 June 2011 – Islam and the Arab Spring

As old regimes are torn down and new constitutions established in North Africa and the Middle East, how will these majority Muslim countries handle the challenges of liberal democracy and secularism?

Salafists boycott Egypt’s constitutional principles meetings – Politics – Egypt – Ahram Online

The Salafist Call (Al-Dawa Al-Salafya) and Nour Party release a statement explaining their boycott of yesterday’s constitution meeting called by Egypt’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali El-Selmi

Is there a crisis of secularism in Western Europe? « The Immanent Frame

Even quite sober academics speak of “a contemporary crisis of secularism,” claiming that “today, political secularisms are in crisis in almost every corner of the globe.” Olivier Roy, in an analysis focused on France, writes of “The Crisis of the Secular State,” and Rajeev Bhargava of the “crisis of secular states in Europe.” Yet this is quite a misleading view of what is happening in Western Europe.

Arab Uprisings
Ex-Jihadists in the New Libya – By Omar Ashour | The Middle East Channel

Abd al-Hakim Belhaj, the commander of Tripoli’s Military Council who spearheaded the attack on Muammar al-Qaddafi’s compound at Bab al-Aziziya, is raising red flags in the West. Belhaj, whom I met and interviewed in March 2010 in Tripoli along with Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, is better known in the jihadi world as “Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq.” He is the former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihad organization with historical links to al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Egyptian al-Jihad organization. Does his prominent role mean that jihadists are set to exploit the fall of Qaddafi’s regime?

Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring: The Myth of Authoritarian Stability « Kajian Internasional Strategis

For many Middle East specialists, this remarkable record of regime stability in the face of numerous challenges demanded their attention and an explanation. I am one of those specialists. In the pages of this magazine in 2005 (“Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?” September/ October 2005), I argued that the United States should not encourage democracy in the Arab world because Washington’s authoritarian Arab allies represented stable bets for the future. On that count, I was spectacularly wrong. I also predicted that democratic Arab governments would prove much less likely to cooperate with U.S. foreign policy goals in the region. This remains an open question. Although most of my colleagues expressed more support for U.S. efforts to encourage Arab political reform, I was hardly alone in my skepticism about the prospect of full-fledged democratic change in the face of these seemingly unshakable authoritarian regimes.

Libya’s spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism | Richard Seymour | Comment is free | The Guardian

The murder of black men in the aftermath of the rebellion speaks of a society deeply divided for decades by Muammar Gaddafi

Egypt approves founding of Karama and Asala parties | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today’s News from Egypt

The Asala Party is the second approved Salafi party, after the Nour Party. It was founded by Adel Abdel Maqsood Afify, Ihab Mohamed Ali Sheeha and Mohamed Ibrahim Abdel Fattah Sultan.

Egyptian Salafi says Mubarak trial un-Islamic Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

The Egyptian Salafi preacher responsible for the sensational fatwa condoning the killing of potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei has surfaced again. This time however, Sheikh Mahmud Amir, has issues a fatwa rejecting the legal persecution of former President Hosni Mubarak, saying that Mubarak’s actions were authorized by Shariaa law.

The Politics of Royal Pluralism in Jordan

While the people have demanded the fall of their regimes in streets and squares across the Arab world this year, those regimes have offered a persistent, if predictable, reply: “the people just aren’t ready for us to go yet.” This accusation of unpreparedness has taken a few different forms in different contexts: “The people are too sectarian” (Bahrain and Syria); “too tribal” (Libya and Yemen); “too Islamist” (Egypt, Libya, Syria); “too underdeveloped,” “too radical” “too violent,” “too weak and defenseless,” et cetera. In every case, the people are portrayed as inept and a threat to themselves. Meanwhile, regimes clinging to power in the face of mass protests portend that the only solution to this unpreparedness is their steady hand ferrying their societies into the harbor of democratic governance (eventually).

Awe and history in the Arab revolts

In their ongoing revolts against police states and overly centralised autocratic governments, ordinary Arab men and women are compressing into a single moment their equivalent of perhaps the two most outstanding global historical movements of the past 300 years or so: the democratic revolutions that engulfed the world from their starting points in France and the United States in the late 18th Century; and the global decolonisation movement that swept much of the Third World in the mid-20th Century.

The Middle Ground between Technology and Revolutions – Technology Review

Social media didn’t cause the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, but it did achieve unique visibility.

In Egypt, the Lure of Leaving – NYTimes.com

The first time I met Ayman, he insisted on picking me up in his shiny black Chevrolet sedan outside the King of Shrimp, a popular fish restaurant in the Cairo neighborhood of Shobra. It was April, and he had just returned from Berlin, where he attended a conference on tourism (“the world’s biggest”) for his job. A brand new “I Love Berlin” key chain dangled from his rearview mirror. Also dangling was a small metallic cross, along with “I Love London” and, of course, “I Love New York.” As a procurement manager at a multinational company, he travels a great deal. “I have a busy passport,” he told me during that first meeting, handing me his overfull visa pages to inspect.

Human rights irony for the US and Arab world – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

Ten years after September 11th, human rights flounder in the United States but flourish in the Middle East.

Qaddafi’s Fall Rivets Yemen – By Tom Finn | Foreign Policy

But in Yemen, the poorest and youngest country in the Arab world, tens of thousands were also tuning in to soak up the drama unfolding in North Africa. It was the downfall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in early February that first set Yemen’s protest movement ablaze, sending thousands of young men spilling into the capital’s dusty streets to face the rubber bullets and water cannons of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime.

Yusra Tekbali: Libyan Women Active Force In Revolution

Many of the Libyan women we interviewed tried to change society from within, but were repeatedly bogged down by the lack of bureaucracy and corruption in the law, saying the regime’s tight restrictions and constant interference were a constant threat. As Salha, a former employee in the oil and gas sector put it, corrupt officials and unpredictable laws meant “your business, your life, everything you work for can be here one day and gone the next.” On the other end of the spectrum, I met with Gaddafi supporters, such as the head of Tripoli’s Women’s Council and the commander of the Women’s Military Academy.

Radicalization and counter-radicalization
Kosovan Albanian admits killing two US airmen in Frankfurt terror attack | World news | The Guardian

Arid Uka, 21, tells court he was influenced by online Islamist propaganda before shootings at airport in March

University staff asked to inform on ‘vulnerable’ Muslim students | Education | The Guardian

Lecturers and student unions express disquiet over new anti-terror guidance on depressed and isolated students

Abraham H. Foxman: The Day Hate Became Everyone’s Problem

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were a national and personal tragedy. It was one of the darkest days in the history of America. Many of us knew people who died that day at the World Trade Center.

But it was also a day of resolve.

US Muslims find selves target of monitoring, abuse – Boston.com

More than half of Muslim-Americans in a new poll say government antiterrorism policies single them out for increased surveillance and monitoring, and many report increased cases of name-calling, threats, and harassment by airport security, law enforcement officers and others.

Still, most Muslim-Americans say they are satisfied with life in the United States and rate their communities highly.

New York becomes the Occupied Territories – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

As the US security state grows and civil rights and liberties erode, Osama bin Laden gets the last laugh.

New report maps the roots of Islamophobia – Islam – Salon.com

In a 140-page report released Friday, researchers at the Center for American Progress have traced the origins of rising Islamophobia in the United States to what they call a “small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing.”

The report features profiles of some figures — blogger and activist Pamela Geller and think tank denizen Frank Gaffney — who will be familiar to regular Salon readers. It names Gaffney and four others as the leading “misinformation experts” who generate anti-Muslim talking points that spread in the media: Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum; David Yerushalmi at the Society of Americans for National Existence (who is also the architect of the anti-Shariah movement); Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch; and Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Guernica / Rania Khalek: How the Political Right Bullied the Department of Homeland Security Into Ignoring the Threat of Right-Wing Extremism

After right-wingers freaked out about a report detailing the rise in right-wing extremism, Homeland Security effectively dismantled a unit tasked with tracking it.

Guernica / Russ Baker: Who—And What—Are Behind The “Official History” Of The Bin Laden Raid?

When you look closely, nothing seems right about what will surely become the accepted account of the raid that nailed America’s enemy number one. And then things get even weirder…

tabsir.net » Muslims of Color

Here is propaganda so blatant and smiley gross that it deserves a place alongside the insidious emulation of Lenin by the Soviets and idolization of dictators the world over. The cover image is an interesting spin on the separation of church and state in our land of the free: here we see the tattered American flag flying above a cross illuminated by a beam of light from above, at the feet of which lie a firefighter’s helmet and police hat. To label the libel in this colorfully designed “Kid’s Book of Freedom” a “Graphic Coloring Novel” strikes me as a misspelling; is it not more aptly named a “Pornographic Coloring Novel,” to be rated so for the sensational violence mongering rather than any out-of-place showing of body parts?

Misc.
Immigration law: No offence | The Economist

THE American Immigration Lawyers Association just released a report detailing what happens when criminal-law enforcement agents—ie, the police—enforce civil-immigration law. It looked at 127 cases from 24 states and Washington, DC in which clients of immigration lawyers were stopped, questioned or arrested by police for minor offences that resulted in the commencement of deportation proceedings. So it is a small sample, and not necessarily a representative one: most of these cases involved immigrants represented by or able to speak to counsel; there are plenty of others who were unable to contact an attorney before removal, and so represent themselves pro se during the removal process. It makes for dispiriting reading.

A question on affect « The Immanent Frame

I have a question about affect, the current it-word for cultural studies and critical theory. Roughly, “affect” gets at a kind of interactive, embodied experience that functions outside of meaning, rationality and intention. It is a capacity, intensity, or resonance of the body that acts autonomously from the subject. Affect is at work in inexplicable fads, social buzz, or even the mundane act of blushing. We can translate blushing into an emotion in a linguistic and psychological system—shame, attraction, anxiety—but the translation necessarily loses the very interactive, embodied, asignifying thing that makes affect such a fruitful and provocative topic. So, then, what does it mean to write about affect?

enthusiasm | frequencies

In German, there are two words—three even. Enthusiasmus, like the English enthusiasm, is rooted in the Greek “en theos,” to have the god within, to be inspired by god or the gods. But Enthusiasmus was inadequate to contain the sixteenth-century German reformer Martin Luther’s rage against those who purported to receive direct divine inspiration. For them, he coined the term Schwärmer, from the verb schwärmen, to swarm, as in the swarming of bees. The Schwärmer were those, like the so-called Zwickau prophets, Nicholas Storch, Thomas Drechsel, and Marcus Thomas Stübner, who claimed to have direct revelations from the Holy Spirit, or Thomas Müntzer, who insisted that direct revelation and prophecy continued to occur in history. For Müntzer religious radicalism and political radicalism went hand in hand; the new prophecies and apocalyptic revelations he proclaimed called for the re-ordering of society, and not just of the church. In denouncing Müntzer, the Zwickau prophets, and others as Schwärmer, Luther rejected not only claims to continuing revelation, but also the forms of religious and political agitation to which he believed such claims gave rise. To be a Schwärmer, most often translated as enthusiast or fanatic, was to be ungovernable by either human or God.

Cultural Relativism 2011 – DSK, Guinea, Anthropology 101

When I first flagged the op-ed by anthropologist Mike McGovern, “Before You Judge, Stand in Her Shoes,” I also included comments from parenthropologist who wrote, “I fear that Mike McGovern’s point, in his op-ed, will be lost on too many Americans who feel that there are too many immigrants, legal and especially illegal, in ‘their’ country.” But it’s worse. In “Don’t walk a mile in her shoes” Robert Fulford uses McGovern’s article to attack anthropology and the idea of cultural relativism (thanks to anthropologyworks for the update).

James Mollison’s Photos of Children’s Bedrooms Are a Commentary on Class and Poverty – NYTimes.com

Mr. Mollison’s new book, “Where Children Sleep,” had its origins in a project undertaken for a children’s charity several years ago. As he considered how to represent needy children around the world, he wanted to avoid the common devices: pleading eyes, toothless smiles. When he visualized his own childhood, he realized that his bedroom said a lot about what sort of life he led. So he set out to find others.

Dutch
Kafirs en Zeloten: geschiedenisfantasieën met Martin Bosma – GeenCommentaar

Maar wie waren die piraten nou eigenlijk? Bosma heeft het over ‘drijfjachten van moslims’ – alsof het zou gaan om religieus gemotiveerde zeloten, maniakken die voor eigen zielenheil in het wilde weg random christelijke dorpen ontvolkten omdat Allah nou eenmaal groot is en God niet. Niets is minder waar. Het is zoals Bill Clinton zei: it’s the economy, stupid. Het was handel. Keiharde handel. Mensenhandel. Foute boel. Maar: handel. En waar handel is, daar is Dietschen bloed niet ver weg. Een bekend en berucht piratenleider was Symen Danzeker – Simon de Danser. En wat te denken van Suleyman Reis, ook wel bekend als Dirk de Veenboer, en Murat Reis, geboren Jan Janszoon. Britten waren er ook, overigens. John Ward is ‘n bekende. En Lipari werd veroverd door een Ottomaans-Franse alliantie. Dus dat hele ‘moslims-tegen-christenen’ verhaal van Bosma is vierkant geleuter. Veel van de ‘islamitische’ piraten waren uiteindelijk Europeanen – en ze waren lang niet allemaal bekeerd tot de islam. Het ligt veel pragmatischer: in Europa kon je christenen niet als slaven verkopen. In de Arabische wereld daarentegen wel. Daar lag de verkoop van Moslims weer ietsje lastiger. Zo ziet u maar, die Arabieren lijken meer op Europeanen dan we geneigd zijn te denken.

Antwerpen wil moslims uit garagemoskeeën – Religie – TROUW

De 42 kleine moskeeën van Antwerpen moeten plaatsmaken voor een paar grote. Wethouder Monica De Coninck (SP.A) ziet moslims graag vertrekken uit hun achterkamers en garages.

Hoogleraar Jean Tillie: etnische en religieuze organisaties goed voor democratie

Religieuze en etnische gemeenschappen bedreigen de democratie niet, maar bevorderen die juist. Etnische en religieuze organisaties dragen bij aan democratie. Binnen deze organisaties vindt zelfreflectie plaats en worden burgerlijke vaardigheden ontwikkeld. Cruciaal voor dit democratisch proces is wel dat gemeenschappen niet geïsoleerd raken en ‘zwakke verbanden’ hebben met andere gemeenschappen. Het kabinet morrelt echter aan deze verbanden door in wij-zij-tegenstellingen te spreken. Daarmee ondermijnt het de democratie.”
Dat verklaarde Jean Tillie, hoogleraar en adjunct-directeur van het Instituut voor Migratie en Etnische Studies van de Universiteit van Amsterdam, die als coreferent optrad tijdens de Anton de Kom-lezing in het Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam. De lezing werd dit jaar gegeven door voormalig minister Ab Klink en is een jaarlijks initiatief van Art.1 en het Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam. Met de lezing willen de organisatoren aandacht vragen voor de strijd tegen intolerantie en discriminatie in heden en verleden.

Arabische Lente? – GeenCommentaar

Hoe zit het nu met die zo bejubelde Arabische Lente, is een win-win situatie wel mogelijk? Die vraag van een van mijn trouwe reageerders laat zich goed beantwoorden door een gerenommeerd politiek commentator uit het Midden-Oosten: Rami Khouri. Over het belang van historische analogieën om de ontwikkelingen in het Midden-Oosten op waarde te kunnen schatten. En waarom de westerse term ‘Arabische Lente’ de lading niet dekt.

Boerkaverbod is het product van een paternalistische overheid

Boerka’s verbannen maakt de samenleving niet veiliger, bevordert het samen leven niet, en helpt ook niet tegen de onderdrukking van moslima’s. Emancipatie is beter.

4 september: Suikerfeest voor vrouwen en kinderen : Nieuwemoskee

Op 4 september organiseert Al Nisa een actieve, inspirerende en gezellige workshop voor de vrouwen en een feestje voor kinderen. De bijeenkomst start om 13.00 uur met een inloop vanaf 12.30 uur. Vervolgens zullen we met de Ramadan in ons achterhoofd in een interactieve workshop onder leiding van Al Nisa bestuurslid Sandra Doevendans op zoek gaan naar wie we echt zijn. Neem iets mee wat belangrijk voor u is.

Sociale Vraagstukken » Etnische diversiteit versterkt sociale banden

Autochtonen die in regio’s wonen met een hoge etnische diversiteit blijken wel degelijk goede informele contacten met andere autochtonen te onderhouden, anders dan de Amerikaanse socioloog Robert Putnam vond. Voorwaarde is dat men geen etnische dreiging ervaart.

X, Y, zzzz: een pleidooi tegen generaties | DeJaap

Het begrip ‘generatie’ wordt – zoals dat gaat met tot de verbeelding sprekende begrippen als ‘authenticiteit’, ‘interactiviteit’ en ‘duurzaamheid’ – alom misbruikt. Misschien komt deze ellende wel door Pepsi. In de jaren ’80 hield zij jongeren voor dat zij “the next generation” waren. Die jongeren gingen dat geloven. Mensen geboren in de jaren ’60 en ’70 wilden zich graag onderscheiden van die groep voor hen, de babyboom generatie. Ze kwamen bekend te staan als generatie X – de babybusters. Hiermee was het hek van de dam en wilde iedere generatie een eigen label.

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Religion & Film: Of Gods and Men

Posted on September 1st, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Arts & culture, Religion Other, Ritual and Religious Experience, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Psalm 82:6-7, “I have said, ye are gods and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

In 1996, during the Algerian Civil War, seven monks of the Tibhrine monastery in Algeria (belonging to the Roman Catholic Trappist Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance) were kidnapped. They were held for two months and killed. It remains unclear who the perpetrators were: the Armed Islamic Group (GIA – who claimed responsibility) or the Algerian army who may have killed them during an attempt to rescue them.

The film of Gods and Men is based on that event and follows the lives of French Catholic monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria in the 1990s. As the country is caught into a terrible civil war between an oppressive secularist state and radical Islamists, the Trappist brothers face the question of how to ‘love thy neighbour’.
Monks in Algeria: loving thy neighbor at gunpoint

Caught between the brutal Algerian government and the ruthless Islamists, the monks struggle to know and share God’s love and peace. What they experience alongside the beauty of the love they live out on a day-to-day basis in their monastic community is unbounded hatred, unspeakable violence, and, ultimately, unstoppable death seeping into their world. They must decide whether to remain in their monastery or flee the violence and return to France.

In their vocations, they seek to love and serve God by being “brothers to all”—in their monastic community and with all the people they encounter. All this becomes exponentially more complicated when new neighbors—a group of radical Islamists—come to the region. The battles between the Algerian government and the Islamists for influence and control unleash persistent horror and tragedy.

Love thy neighbors, all of them

The monks face a new question: What does it mean to share brotherly love at gun point? Over the years, the lives of the monks and the neighboring villagers became intertwined. The monks realize that if they leave, the consequences will be immense not only for themselves but also for the Muslim villagers who work in the monastery and whom the monks serve through a free medical clinic.

This is not a film about Christians vs. Muslims. Rather, this is a film about Christians trying—imperfectly but still genuinely—to love Muslims. And the monks must sort out what love means amid competing interpretive claims on the Muslim faith. In the Islamists’ political fanaticism and obsession with political power, the monks encounter a “distorted” Islam that stands in sharp contrast to the religious faith the monks experience in the lives of the Muslim villagers who live alongside the monastery in peace, Muslims who love their families and their neighbors.

The film is magnificent in the sense that it brings out the struggles each of the monks has with living together with others with whom they share many things but whom they also fear. It is in their prayers before God that these struggles are most clear. Trying to remain steadfast Christians and to respect Muslims against the background of the Civil War and trying not to resort to a dead end us vs. them game. The solution they found was ‘to love thy neighbour’ even at gunpoint.Journal of Religion & Film: Of Gods and Men (2010) by Wendy M. Wright

Each of the monks reacts differently to the felt sense of impending peril. But viewers are not treated to a story of one individual against many but to a story about genuine community in which individual struggle is honored and at the same time the integrity and deep bonds of the whole are acknowledged. The oscillation between common and individual dynamics is captured through the filmmakers’ choices. When the army wants to thrust its machines and armed men upon the monastery, Fr. Christian peremptorily refuses: this is the antithesis of the life of peace and hospitality (another one of those other Benedictine themes) that he has chosen. But his confreres gently but firmly call him out: we did not elect you to make your own unilateral decisions they say, reminding him of his appropriately humble and un-autocratic role as outlined by St. Benedict’s Rule. Alternately, the solitariness of Fr. Christian’s burden of leadership is evident as he paces alone across the remote windswept acres of the monastic lands while wild fowl wing across a vast expanse of sky and dwarf his silhouette.

[10] Thus begins a remarkable series of scenes that reveal the process of spiritual discernment, genuine listening to the Spirit of God as it is refracted through individual conscience, through community members, through others, and through the tradition. This is where the centrality of the liturgical office and the prayer to which the men return again and again becomes clear. The words of the midnight liturgy of Christmas echo powerfully as the shaken community gathers after the terrorists disappear into the night. Allusions to the crucified one and to the sacrifice of love resonate in the music the men sing. As the danger looms, they listen in the refectory to a reading by Carlo Corretto (a French spiritual writer and member of the Little Brothers of Jesus, a community inspired by hermit Charles de Foucauld who lived and was assassinated in the Algerian desert). Carretto’s words about surrender sink in, helping to sharpen the discernment the men are making. What is stability? What does it mean to vow fidelity to a community? What does it mean to follow the crucified God of Love? What is martyrdom? What of the people in the neighborhood to whom they have pledged their presence? The filmmakers use some dialogue to explore these questions but much of the questioning, both individually and communally, is visually expressed through facial close ups and by careful attention to the nuances of posture, gesture, tone of voice, and unspoken interactions among community members as they gather to decide together what they should do.

I think when used with articles and books that shed some more light on Algerian politics of the second half of the 20th century this film is excellent for teaching purposes.

0 comments.

Religion & Film: Of Gods and Men

Posted on September 1st, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Arts & culture, Religion Other, Ritual and Religious Experience, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Psalm 82:6-7, “I have said, ye are gods and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

Caught between the brutal Algerian government and the ruthless Islamists, the monks struggle to know and share God’s love and peace. What they experience alongside the beauty of the love they live out on a day-to-day basis in their monastic community is unbounded hatred, unspeakable violence, and, ultimately, unstoppable death seeping into their world. They must decide whether to remain in their monastery or flee the violence and return to France.

In their vocations, they seek to love and serve God by being “brothers to all”—in their monastic community and with all the people they encounter. All this becomes exponentially more complicated when new neighbors—a group of radical Islamists—come to the region. The battles between the Algerian government and the Islamists for influence and control unleash persistent horror and tragedy.

Love thy neighbors, all of them

The monks face a new question: What does it mean to share brotherly love at gun point? Over the years, the lives of the monks and the neighboring villagers became intertwined. The monks realize that if they leave, the consequences will be immense not only for themselves but also for the Muslim villagers who work in the monastery and whom the monks serve through a free medical clinic.

This is not a film about Christians vs. Muslims. Rather, this is a film about Christians trying—imperfectly but still genuinely—to love Muslims. And the monks must sort out what love means amid competing interpretive claims on the Muslim faith. In the Islamists’ political fanaticism and obsession with political power, the monks encounter a “distorted” Islam that stands in sharp contrast to the religious faith the monks experience in the lives of the Muslim villagers who live alongside the monastery in peace, Muslims who love their families and their neighbors.

Each of the monks reacts differently to the felt sense of impending peril. But viewers are not treated to a story of one individual against many but to a story about genuine community in which individual struggle is honored and at the same time the integrity and deep bonds of the whole are acknowledged. The oscillation between common and individual dynamics is captured through the filmmakers’ choices. When the army wants to thrust its machines and armed men upon the monastery, Fr. Christian peremptorily refuses: this is the antithesis of the life of peace and hospitality (another one of those other Benedictine themes) that he has chosen. But his confreres gently but firmly call him out: we did not elect you to make your own unilateral decisions they say, reminding him of his appropriately humble and un-autocratic role as outlined by St. Benedict’s Rule. Alternately, the solitariness of Fr. Christian’s burden of leadership is evident as he paces alone across the remote windswept acres of the monastic lands while wild fowl wing across a vast expanse of sky and dwarf his silhouette.

[10] Thus begins a remarkable series of scenes that reveal the process of spiritual discernment, genuine listening to the Spirit of God as it is refracted through individual conscience, through community members, through others, and through the tradition. This is where the centrality of the liturgical office and the prayer to which the men return again and again becomes clear. The words of the midnight liturgy of Christmas echo powerfully as the shaken community gathers after the terrorists disappear into the night. Allusions to the crucified one and to the sacrifice of love resonate in the music the men sing. As the danger looms, they listen in the refectory to a reading by Carlo Corretto (a French spiritual writer and member of the Little Brothers of Jesus, a community inspired by hermit Charles de Foucauld who lived and was assassinated in the Algerian desert). Carretto’s words about surrender sink in, helping to sharpen the discernment the men are making. What is stability? What does it mean to vow fidelity to a community? What does it mean to follow the crucified God of Love? What is martyrdom? What of the people in the neighborhood to whom they have pledged their presence? The filmmakers use some dialogue to explore these questions but much of the questioning, both individually and communally, is visually expressed through facial close ups and by careful attention to the nuances of posture, gesture, tone of voice, and unspoken interactions among community members as they gather to decide together what they should do.

I think when used with articles and books that shed some more light on Algerian politics of the second half of the 20th century this film is excellent for teaching purposes.

0 comments.

Young and Invisible – African domestic workers in Yemen

Posted on August 13th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Filmmaker Arda Nederveen and anthropologist Marina de Regt have made a short documentary about Ethiopian and Somalian women who work as domestic workers in Yemen. Many families in economically developed countries make use of migrant women as domestic workers and cleaners. But even in a relatively poor country such as Yemen, migrants and refugee women do paid domestic work. The majority of these come from the Horn of Africa. Why do these young women come to Yemen and what are their living and working conditions? Instead of portraying the women as victims, the film gives them a face and lets them show their resilience. The documentary will be shown on 16 December in Amsterdam.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, yet despite this attracts large numbers of refugees and migrants, mainly from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Dutch researcher Marina de Regt studied the backgrounds and motives of Yemeni employers and migrant domestic workers, the interactions between both parties, and the influence of outsourcing domestic household work on the families and society.

The research yielded various results. The domestic workers come from countries that are even poorer than Yemen and migrate to improve their own position and that of their families. Yemeni women do not want to do paid housework as it has a very low status. Yemeni employers emphasise that the treatment of domestic workers in Yemen is better than in other Arabic countries, but discrimination and racism are clearly prevalent.

De Regt’s research is particularly relevant for the developmental problems in Yemen, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. There are scarcely any national and international organisations that defend the rights of domestic workers. They often work in isolated circumstances, have poor conditions of employment, make long working hours and are sometimes the victims of abuse and exploitation and have no possibilities to defend their rights. One of the indirect outcomes of the research was the start of a UNIFEM-funded project to improve the working conditions of domestic workers. The documentary will be used to promote awareness about the living and working conditions of domestic workers in Yemen, but also further afield.

Source: NWO

0 comments.

Some first thoughts on Moroccan reforms and khitab

Posted on June 18th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Last night Moroccan king Mohammed VI announced reforms and a constitutional referendum.

This can be seen as the answer of the Moroccan establishment to the protests in Morocco. Will it be sufficient for the protesters? The ideas of the king sounded healthy and promising but isn’t it more of the same…again? At the same time I’m also not that sure of the ‘revolutionairy spirit’ is so strong anymore. Furthermore it remains to be seen whether the supporters and opponents of reform will get an equal share of media publicity in the weeks leading up to the referendum. And if the referendum will be a clear yes for the reform, will the reforms eventually lead to a substantial decrease of the power of the current elite? Journalist Achmed Benchemsi has a good first take I think on the speech at Al Jazeera:

Read the full text of the king’s speech on Moroccans for Change.

2 comments.

Closing the week 23 – Middle East Trials and Tribulations

Posted on June 12th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Most popular on Closer this week:

Previous updates:

Tunisia Uprising I – Tunisia Uprising II – Tunisia / Egypt Uprising Essential Reading I – The Egypt Revolution – A Need to Read List – Women & Middle East Uprisings – The Syrian Uprising – Women2Drive. See also the section Society and Politics in the Middle East (Dutch and English guest contributions).

If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

You can follow me on Twitter: Martijn5155

YouTube – Middle East – Trials and Tribulations

Syria
‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ called into question — real or not? – BlogPost – The Washington Post

Addressing the doubts Wednesday, Carvin wrote on Twitter: “Again, people should operate under the assumption that there is a real blogger under detention in Syria. Who they are is another matter.”

After Report of Disappearance, Questions About Syrian-American Blogger – NYTimes.com

Although it remains possible that the blog’s author was indeed detained, and has been writing a factual, not fictional, account of recent events in Syria, readers should be aware that the one person who has identified herself — to The Times, the BBC and Al Jazeera — as a personal friend of the blogger, Sandra Bagaria, has now clarified that she has never actually met the author of the Gay Girl in Damascus blog. Ms. Bagaria told The Lede that she had also never conversed with Ms. Arraf face to face via Skype, but had conducted an online relationship with her since January entirely through Internet communications in writing, including more than 500 e-mails.

A Gay Girl in Damascus: Apology to readers

I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative vo?ce may have been fictional, the facts on th?s blog are true and not m?sleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.

I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in th?s year of revolutions. The events there are be?ng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.

This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.

However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.

Best,
Tom MacMaster,
Istanbul, Turkey
July 12, 2011

The sole author of all posts on this blog

The Two Homs—By Esther Adorno (Harper’s Magazine)

I ask Qassem who the Shabbiha (“shadow”) are. “Shabbiha is how we used to call the gangs making money during the Syrian occupation in Lebanon,” Qassem says, lighting a cigarette. “They used to travel in ghost cars without plates; that’s how they got the name Shabbiha. They would smuggle cars from Lebanon to Syria. The police turned a blind eye, and in return Shabbiha would act as a shadow militia in case of need. . . . Now that soldiers are being killed for refusing to shoot civilians, or for refusing to shoot those running across the Lebanese border as refugees, Shabbiha is definitely more reliable than the army.” But as more people are stuffed in jail, and more protests are organized by relatives who want these prisoners released and returned home, more men are needed to suppress the opposition—and that’s why recruiters here come knocking at the door of young men like Qassem. He won’t even tell me what sect he belongs to.

The Syrian uprising: The balance of power is shifting | The Economist

A MONTH ago seasoned watchers of Syria reckoned that the regime’s ferocious crackdown would keep the lid on dissent, albeit with President Bashar Assad’s legitimacy badly impaired. Now the prevailing wisdom is changing. Rather than subside, the protests are spreading and intensifying. Having started in the south and spread to coastal cities such as Banias, they moved to Homs, Syria’s third-biggest city, and the surrounding central districts. More recently they have gripped Hama, the country’s fourth city, famed for its uprising in 1982, when 20,000 people may have been killed by the then president, Hafez Assad, the present incumbent’s father. After starting in the rural areas, the unrest has hit cities all over the country. And the death toll, well past 1,200, has begun to rise more sharply. On June 3rd, at least 70 people are reported to have been killed in Hama alone.

Syria Comment » Archives » Idlib and Aleppo

Idlib province, which is only 45 minutes from Aleppo is the eye of the hurricane. The government is poring troops into the region to make sure it remains under firm control. Syria cannot afford to lose territory where an insurgency or rebel army might emerge. Damascus will do everything it can to preclude the formation of a Benghazi, which would allow foreign intelligence agencies and governments to begin arming and training a rebel army, as happened in Libya.

Egyptian Chronicles: The association of Syria street

The logo of the association
at one of the shops there “Facebook”
Syria street is known to be a busy vital street in Mohendessin area. It is not only busy but also crowded thanks to its shops making it a hell for parking at the evening. Lately people have noticed something in the street then new shops , they noticed a sign with the name “The Youth of Syria street association”. Now who are those youth and what is this association !?

Syria intensifies assault on anti-Assad protesters | Reuters

(Reuters) – Syrian security forces intensified their assault on protesters calling for President Bashar al-Assad to quit, killing at least 34 demonstrators in the latest crackdown in the city of Hama, activists said.

Syria: Crimes Against Humanity in Daraa | Human Rights Watch

(New York) – Systematic killings and torture by Syrian security forces in the city of Daraa since protests began there on March 18, 2011, strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Egypt
The Rubicon is in Egypt: an interview with Azza Karam « The Immanent Frame

Azza Karam is the Senior Culture Advisor at the United Nations Population Fund, where she has pioneered efforts to make human development work more attentive to religion. Karam was born in Egypt and grew up, as the daughter of an Egyptian diplomat, in countries around the world, eventually earning a doctorate in international relations from the University of Amsterdam. Her several books include Transnational Political Islam (2004) and Islamisms, Women and the State (1998). Prior to joining UNFPA, she worked for the World Conference of Religions for Peace, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the United Nations Development Program, among other organizations.

This interview was conducted in conjunction with the SSRC project on Religion and International Affairs. Karam here speaks only for herself, not for any institution, organization, or board.—ed.

NS: Before we get to your work at the United Nations, let’s start with recent events in Egypt, your home country. How, in your view, is the Egyptian revolution of a few months ago proceeding? Has it been betrayed yet?

In Egypt, Islamist Salafist movement vies for political power in wake of revolution – The Washington Post

For years, the rugged Mediterranean shoreline here has been a favorite necking place for young Egyptian couples. But now menacing new messages have been spray-painted on the rocks.

“Would you find it all right for your sister?” one message says, addressing the men who bring girlfriends to the rocky area where waves break. “God sees you.” Other messages decry alcohol. One says simply, “Enough sins.”

The fresh scrawls are the work of Islamists who are emerging from the fringes of Egyptian society with zeal and swagger. Their graffiti and billboards calling for a more conservative Egypt have become pervasive here in recent months, part of a rapidly growing debate about what should emerge from a revolution that toppled an autocratic leader and unleashed long-subdued social and political forces.

Egyptian religious minorities fear rise of Islamists | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today’s News from Egypt

Amid sectarian clashes and uncertainty about their future, religious minority leaders are expressing concern about the possibility of certain Islamic groups rising to power and writing a new constitution that does not protect minority rights.

Yemen
Was there a Yemeni Revolution? | Informed Comment

Aljazeera Arabic is reporting that later in the day Sunday, clashes between armed groups of pro-Saleh and anti-Saleh gunmen broke out in the capital, where the situation is “unstable,” after Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh flew to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment late Saturday.

On the National Democratic Party – Blog – The Arabist

In mid-January, I found myself at a seminar in Rome presenting a paper on Egypt’s National Democratic Party. Others spoke about the economic situation, the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian foreign policy. We all shared a gloomy view of situation in Egypt at the twilight of the Mubarak era and predicted trouble in the year ahead as Gamal Mubarak would make his bid to succeed his father. A couple of days later, I went to Tunisia to cover the revolution there, and then cut that trip short to make it back to Cairo by January 28, the day protestors defeated the police and security services across the country.

My paper on the NDP saw the party as the battleground of elite politics over the last decade, a place where different elements of the regime fought out their parcel of privilege and influence.

Bahrain
What next for Bahrain? by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen | The Middle East Channel

The lifting of the emergency law in Bahrain on June 1 seemed to pay immediate dividends two days later when the FIA reinstated the Bahrain Grand Prix in October. This decision signified a degree of international approval for the government’s efforts to contain the instability that broke out in February. Yet “normality” rests on a repressive maintenance of public order and a sustained closure of political and oppositional space, and is underpinned by foreign security personnel and Peninsula Shield Forces. These insulate the ruling Al-Khalifa family from opposition pressures and reduce the likelihood of any significant reform process in the Kingdom. In light of recent developments, what does the future hold for Bahrain, and for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) involvement?

Saudi Arabia
Could Women’s Rights Finally Improve in Saudi Arabia? – Max Fisher – International – The Atlantic

Six months in, it’s still unclear whether the still-ongoing demonstrations and battles of the Arab Spring will produce a net positive or negative change for the region. They have yielded revolution in Tunisia, potential revolution in Egypt, civil war in Libya, potential civil war in Yemen, and violent crackdowns in Bahrain and Syria. Thousands of civilians have died, and though some regimes have changed for the better, some have only entrenched their worst behavior. It may be months of years before the uprisings recede and we can understand their impact. But there is one area where the Spring could finally produce one of the region’s most-needed, most-overdue reforms: women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.

A Conversation With Saudi Women’s Rights Campaigner Wajeha al-Huwaider | The Nation

Wajeha al-Huwaider is perhaps the best-known Saudi campaigner for women’s rights, human rights and democracy. She has protested energetically against the kingdom’s lack of formal laws (the Koran is it) and basic freedoms and in particular against the guardianship system, under which every female, from birth to death, needs the permission of a male relative to make decisions in all important areas of life—education, travel, marriage, employment, finances, even surgery. In 2008 a video of her driving a car, which is forbidden for women in Saudi Arabia, created a sensation when it was posted on YouTube. Al-Huwaider is a strong supporter of the June 17 Movement, which calls on Saudi women to start driving on that date, and made the celebrated YouTube video of its co-founder, Manal al-Sherif, jailed for nine days in May for driving. While this interview was in preparation, she was briefly detained by the police when she tried to visit Nathalie Morin, a French-Canadian woman held captive with her children by her Saudi husband.

Libya
NATO drops bombs on Gaddafi tweets | Herald Sun

NATO has scrambled warplanes against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces after Libyans tweeted troop movements on the micro-blogging website, alliance officials say.

The present conflict clearly represents the death agony of the Jamahiriya. Whether what comes after it fulfils Libyans’ hopes for freedom and legitimate government very much depends on how and when Qaddafi goes. This in turn depends on how – and how soon – the armed conflict gives way to political negotiation allowing Libya’s political actors, including Libyan public opinion as a whole, to address the crucial questions involved in defining the constitutive principles of a post-Jamahiriya state and agreeing on the modalities and interim institutions of the transition phase. The international community’s responsibility for the course events will take is very great. Instead of stubbornly maintaining the present policy and running the risk that its consequence will be dangerous chaos, it should act now to facilitate a negotiated end to the civil war and a new beginning for Libya’s political life.

Morocco
A few links on Morocco – Blog – The Arabist

The February 20 movement continues to challenge the monarchy in Morocco, on the eve of the unveiling of a royal commission’s proposal for constitutional reform. Adl wal Ihsan, the country’s largest Islamist movement and a key supporter of the reform movement, has called for a civil state (rather than a religious one) as the regime launches a campaign to tar February 20 has having been taken over by Islamist and leftist radicals. Rachid Nini, Morocco’s most influential journalist, is sentenced to a year in prison, while the police begins to crack down on protestors, killing one last week. This and more in the links below, and analysis of Morocco will come at some later point. Do check out of the first link, which is an interactive website to debate, article by article, the constitution — it’s a great model to follow and someone in Egypt should do the same.

The Middle East Uprising general
Why social scientists failed to “predict” the Egyptian Revolution

We’ve heard it many times: The Egyptian revolution was unexpected. Especially in Western countries, it is often called “Facebook Revolution”. That is not only wrong but insulting as it renders invisible the previous demonstrations, strikes and other political activities, going back 10 years or even longer, said prominent blogger and activist Hossam El-Hamalawy who blogs at 3arabawy.

This political activism has gone unnoticed by many researchers and political analysts, especially in the West. Why?

Rising Literacy and a Shrinking Birth Rate: A Look at the Root Causes of the Arab Revolution – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

In a SPIEGEL interview, French social scientist Emmanuel Todd discusses the demographic roots of the Arab revolution, which he argues was spurred by rising literacy and rapidly shrinking birth rates. He also muses on the ghost of Osama bin Laden, arguing “al-Qaida was already dead,” and on why he believes Germany is not a part of the “core West.”

Three Powerfully Wrong–and Wrongly Powerful–American Narratives about the Arab Spring

The “Arab Spring” that actually began in the dead of winter has spread from Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria…and the year only half over. As the media, policymakers, and global audiences struggle to make sense of changes that have inspired hundreds of millions to “just say no” to decades of dictatorship, a number of narratives have taken hold in the US—evident in remarks on cable news talk shows, at academic and policy symposia, and on Twitter—about precisely what is happening and what these massive crowds want. While elements of these narratives have some foundation in truth, they also present such a simplified view as to obscure crucial dimensions of the power struggles across the region. Below we unpack three of the most common narratives whose “truth” has become almost conventional wisdom, tossed out at cocktail parties and across coffee shops and metros. We aim to highlight what kinds of politics are made possible (and what kinds of challenges to power are foreclosed) as these narratives become part of the “common sense” that shapes our understanding of these extraordinary events.

Middle East misc.

THE VIEW FROM FEZ: Don’t miss the Aissawa Sufis tonight @Fes Festival

A number of teams of Aissawi musicians work in each city in Morocco, but the sound especially permeates Fez and Meknes. Each group is led by a muqaddam, literally a presenter or leader. Abdullah is one such muqaddam, one that is known throughout the country. His father and grandfather were both Aissawa muqaddams, it runs in his family. He lamented that he has no son to continue the family business and, although he has two daughters who are well steeped in the style, he is concerned about the future. He and another prominent figure from Fez’s Sufi community, Abd ar-Rahim Amrani, will be joined onstage by maqaddams from Rabat, Fez, and Meknes, giving tonight’s performance an all-star cast. Amrani, an orchestrater of this week’s events, will bring elements of his own Hamadcha Brotherhood to the stage, insha’allah (God willing). These two are revered outside of Morocco as well – they just returned from a short stay in California where they performed and gave workshops to students at UCLA.

Al-Qaida Video: Zawahiri Vows to Continue Bin Laden’s Work – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

First he praised Osama bin Laden, and then he issued threats to Pakistan and the United States. One month after the al-Qaida leader was shot dead in Abbottabad, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has promised that the group will stay the course. But he remained silent about the group’s new leadership.

Iran is challenging FIFA’s decision to ban its women footballers from playing an Olympic qualifier match because of their Islamic dress.

Reformist Islam – Qantara.de

Philosopher Jawdat Said, little known in the West, has been propagating a vision of Islam free of violence for the past 40 years. His books have been widely read and discussed by Islamic activists in the Arab world. A profile by Bashar Humeid

Beyond denial « The Immanent Frame

For a brief moment in 2007, news of a hit Iranian television series, whose Farsi title was translated variously as Zero Degree Turn or Zero Point Orbit, proliferated across the print and digital mediascapes of the Anglophone world. The series, created by Iranian director Hassan Fathi at great expense and broadcast in a thirty-episode season on the flagship state television station IRIB1, revolves around a Romeo and Juliet plot of illicit romance, with a distinctive twist: while the proverbial Romeo is one Habib Parsa (played by Iranian hearthrob Shahab Hosseini), a Muslim Iranian pursuing his studies in France, his Juliet is none other than a Jewish classmate, Sarah Astrok (played by the French actress Nathalie Matti), with whom he falls in love.

Misc.
Think You Can Handle Over 150 Facebook Friends? Not!

Got ego? Trying to garner Facebook friends infinitum? Well you can’t!

According to Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University, the Facebook yardstick that your brain can only handle is 150 friends.

Research Focuses on Muslim Women Under Khmer Rouge | News | Khmer-English

Cambodia’s women Muslims are increasingly embracing their own identities, as the minority group as a whole struggles with the impacts of the Khmer Rouge, according to new research.

Express highlights its own inaccuracies on Muslim burkha ban challenge | Full Fact

The Express had two of its perennial bugbears – immigration and Europe – in its sights this morning when it reported that a Muslim couple that had settled in Britain were to use taxpayers’ cash to fight France’s burkha ban in the European Court of Human Rights.

It’s headline boldly declared that: “French Muslims to use our cash to fight burkha ban.”

San Francisco’s proposed circumcision ban galvanizes religious opposition – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs

The nation’s largest evangelical Christian umbrella group has come out against San Francisco’s proposed circumcision ban, evidence that the voter initiative is beginning to galvanize national religious opposition.

Counter-terrorism and multiculturalism: Better than cure—but difficult | The Economist

Good riddance, say critics who think that officialdom, in its efforts to combat terrorism, has gone too far in co-operating with Muslim figures who are themselves far from liberal democrats. They argue that Mr Baker’s ideological roots as a Salafi—one who takes very literally the precepts of Muhammad and his companions—makes him an unsuitable recipient of state funds. Mr Baker was also chairman from 1994 to 2009 of the Brixton mosque, where Richard Reid, later known as the “shoe bomber”, rolled out his prayer rug for a while. (Mr Baker says he warned the police repeatedly about militant recruiting there.) The critics felt vindicated when STREET’s website recently carried advice on clothing and music from clerics who in other contexts excoriate gays and Jews.

Britain’s wrestling match with ‘extremists’ is self-defeating – The National

All over Europe, amid increasingly harsh political debate, governments are having to address the issue of how to integrate Muslims communities. In some cases the response has been populist: Belgium is expected next month to follow the lead of France in banning the veiling of women’s faces in public.

In countries as diverse as Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria and Italy, political parties are on the rise that focus the generalised discontent of voters on to Muslim communities. Views which only a few years ago would have been dismissed as fascist are now part of mainstream debate.

Muslims call for action against hate crimes – Crime, UK – The Independent

Britain’s largest mainstream Muslim organisation will today call for “robust action” to combat Islamophobic attacks amid fears of growing violence and under-reporting of hate crimes.

Bulgaria Election | Nationalists | Religion Violence | Muslims

Every Friday at noon, Muslims gather at the only mosque in Bulgaria’s capital, waiting for the daily prayer to start. Since their gathering turned bloody three weeks ago, police officers and television cameras have joined them.

Muslim women’s group launches ‘jihad against violence’ | UK news | The Guardian

A British Muslim women’s group has launched a “jihad against violence”, in a bid to reclaim the term jihad from extremists.

Algeria’s Impact on French Philosophy: Between Poststructuralist Theory and Colonial Practice

In the past few years, there appears to have been a falling out between Middle Eastern studies and post-structuralist theory. Edward Said’s Orientalism remains necessary reading for most graduate students, but the surrounding debates in post-colonial and post-structuralist theory have fallen decisively out of fashion. It would seem that the so-called “cultural turn” (often – mistakenly – taken to be synonymous with post-structuralism or postmodernism) was actually a dead-end. While there is a robust debate in critical theory as to the political implications of post-structuralism, in Middle Eastern studies the current refrain sometimes begins with: “just say No to Discourse.”

A more sustained engagement with both critical theory, on the one hand, and Middle Eastern history, on the other, might offer a productive way out of this impasse.

New Statesman – We will continue to spy on Muslims, says Theresa May

“I don’t see anything wrong with identifying people who are vulnerable to being taken down a certain route.”

tabsir.net » Cruising above the Empty Quarter

There is a spectacular photographic website devoted to a book by George Steinmetz, who took photographs across the fabled Empty Quarter of Arabia.

Dutch
Kabinet zet zich niet meer in voor etnische minderheden – Nieuws – VK

Het kabinet-Rutte zet zich niet in voor de emancipatie van etnische minderheden. Dat is een breuk met het verleden: het vorige kabinet plaatste de emancipatie van minderheden nog hoog op de agenda.

Secularisme, scheiding van kerk en staat en islam

In Nederland en veel andere Europese landen wordt steeds vaker een beroep gedaan op een strikte scheiding van kerk en staat in beleidsvorming ten aanzien van de Islam. Regelmatig worden ook de geschiedenis van het secularisme en de Verlichting aangeroepen als antwoord op de crisis van het multiculturalisme. Dit sterker wordende secularistische discours is herkenbaar uit de Franse context waarin het al jaren gangbaar is. In het Frankrijk van na 1989 was de laïcité lange tijd een gematigd en liberaal antwoord op de racistische strategieën van Le Pen. Ook in andere Europese landen lijkt secularisme het fatsoenlijke alternatief voor populistische anti-Islam discoursen. Voor linkse politiek lijkt het een goede, zelfs veelbelovende optie voor de omgang met de Islam, want hoewel secularisme niet per se de zichtbaarheid van de Islam in Europa bevordert, gaat het hier niet, zo is de gedachte, om de uitsluiting van de Islam, of eventueel zelfs om racisme ten aanzien van moslims. Secularisme wordt juist opgevat als de neutraliteit van de staat ten aanzien van alle religies. Religies dienen vrijgelaten te worden door de staat, mits ze de gewetensvrijheid van anderen maar respecteren en hun waarden en praktijken niet indruisen tegen de grondrechten van ieder individu in de liberale rechtsstaat. Het grote verschil met het multiculturalisme is dan, in de ogen van de secularisten, dat een seculiere orde het paternalistische optreden van de overheid, waarbij conservatieve religieuze elites vaak als vertegenwoordigers van hele groepen of zelfs ‘culturen’ werden gezien, overboord zet.

Eindhovense moskee zet zich in voor bloeddonatie

De komende twee weken zal Stichting Waqf van de Eindhovense moskee zich inzetten voor bloeddonatie en het belang hiervan benadrukken door de moslims bewust te maken van dit maatschappelijke onderwerp. Hiermee willen ze dat moslims zich maatschappelijk inzetten. Aldus de woordvoerders van de stichting: “Het tonen van betrokkenheid en het zich inzetten voor de maatschappij is een vereiste voor alle burgers.”

Sjaria op de Krim blijkt broodje aap – Sargasso

Moslimmeisje van 19 gestenigd na schoonheidswedstrijd’, kopte de krant. Drie jongemannen zouden een dorpsgenote met stenen om het leven hebben gebracht omdat haar deelname aan een regionale miss-verkiezing “niet in overeenstemming” zou zijn geweest “met de sjaria”. Andere persbureaus en media, waaronder ANP, Algemeen Dagblad, De Pers, Elsevier, Reformatorisch Dagblad, Nederlands Dagblad en tal van regionale dagbladen, volgden slaafs.

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Haykel and Schmitz on Conflict in Yemen

Posted on June 6th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Bloggingheads.tv has an interesting talk between Bernard Haykel and Charles Schmitz on the current developments and its backgrounds in Yemen. If you ever wanted to have a crash course on Yemen politics, tribes, Al Qaeda and history, watch and listen.

Bernard Haykel is professor of Near Eastern Studies and director of The Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, at Princeton University. Read his ‘five books‘ interview at Browser.com earlier this year in which he elaborates on his choice of essential reading on Yemen.
Charles Schmitz is Associate Professor of Geography at Towson University, President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, and a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Read also his recent article, Yemen’s Tribal Showdown, on Foreign Affairs.

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Saudi Arabia – Reform, Revolution and Hypocrisy

Posted on June 5th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, International Terrorism, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Professor of Social Anthropology at King’s College, London. Born in Saudi Arabia, she currently lives in London. Her research focuses on history, society, religion and politics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Her recent publications include Politics in an Arabian Oasis, A History of Saudi Arabia, and Contesting the Saudi State. In an interview with The Real News she reflects on current developments in Saudi Arabia against the background of the Middle Eastern uprisings and ‘Western hypocrisy’

In the next video you find another interview with Madawi Al-Rasheed that gives you some more background information on who rules Saudi Arabia and the War against Terror.

You can find Madawi Al Rasheed’s website HERE.

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Buitengewoon gevangen in de war against terror – De casus Saddek Sbaa

Posted on June 4th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization, Society & Politics in the Middle East, Young Muslims.

In juli 2009 wisten Nederlandse media te melden dat er in Kenia vier Nederlandse jongeren (één van Somalische en drie van Marokkaanse afkomst) waren opgepakt in Kenia. Zij zouden van plan geweest zijn om door te reizen naar Somalië om daar deel te nemen aan de gewelddadige jihad; volgens eigen zeggen waren ze slechts op vakantie. In oktober 2010 is de zaak tegen hen geseponeerd wegens gebrek aan bewijs.

Eén van de mannen die destijds is opgepakt is Saddek Sbaa (24) die sinds zijn vijfde in Nederland woont maar niet de Nederlandse nationaliteit heeft (in tegenstelling tot zijn familieleden). In 2010 is de verblijfsvergunning van Sbaa ingetrokken. Hij ging daar tegen in beroep en zat hangende dat beroep vast in Vught in (ondanks het sepot) de terroristenafdeling van de EBI in Vught. Vanwege het, volgens eigen zeggen, ‘ondraaglijke detentieregime’ en ‘getreiter door de AIVD’ vertrok hij in november 2010 uit eigen beweging naar Marokko. Niet verstandig zult u misschien zeggen en ook zijn advocaat waarschuwde hem voor de risico’s. De IND (die zijn verblijfsvergunning had ingetrokken op basis van de informatie van de AIVD) zou echter gesteld hebben dat Sbaa in Marokko geen gevaar liep. De rechter oordeelde daar overigens anders over. De advocaat maakte de afspraak met de AIVD dat Marokko niet geinformeerd zou worden over zijn komst maar bij aankomst bleken de autoriteiten wel degelijk op de hoogte te zijn en pakten ze hem op. Volgens de advocaat betekent dat dat de AIVD tóch, ondanks de afspraak, het dossier had overgedragen aan Marokko. (Zelf denk ik overigens dat dat niet noodzakelijkerwijze zo is, Marokko houdt Marokkaans-Europese terreurverdachten sowieso in de gaten). Ook een vriend van Sbaa zou in Marokko ondervraagd zijn over Sbaa. Sbaa verdween na opgepakt te zijn, maar na vier weken nam hij contact op met zijn familie om te laten weten dat alles goed was. Later echter werd duidelijk volgens vrienden (die het dagboek van Sbaa in handen hadden gekregen) dat hij gemarteld was. Sbaa is veroordeeld tot twee jaar cel op basis van de Kenia-zaak en de beschuldiging dat hij deel uitmaakte van een terreurcel in Nederland.

Sinds 15 februari 2011 demonstreerde Sbaa samen met medegevangenen in Sale (bij Rabat) dagelijks tegen de slechte detentieomstandigheden en voor eerlijke processen.

Statement I

Statement II

Protest in de gevangenis, gevangenen die het islamitische lied Ghuraba brengen. Let op, tussen seconde 10 en 14 ziet u een jongeman met puntige baard, gestreept gewaad met korte mouwen en zwarte tulband die aan het filmen is. Dat zou Saddek Sbaa zijn.
In de nacht van 18 op 19 mei bestormde de Marokkaanse politie de gevangenis. Daarbij vielen één dode en diverse gewonden. Zie HIER het verslag van Amnesty.

Een Italiaanse moslima doet verslag van de inval van de ordetroepen
Op zaterdag 21 mei hielden zijn vrienden een protestbijeenkomst voor de Marokkaanse ambassade in Den Haag en vroegen aandacht voor het lot van Sbaa en andere gevangen van wie ‘rechten worden vertrapt’.

Statement tegen martelingen in Marokko van Behind-Bars en Team Free Saddik

Getuigenis van een Marokkaanse vrouw tijdens de persconferentie over de de inval in de gevangenis van Sale; naar aanleiding van de zaak tegen Younes Zarli

De demo in Den Haag staat niet op zichzelf. Op facebook is de groep Saddik Free actief, er is een website Behind-Bars en dus (diverse) Youtube kanalen. En er is een groep die zich richt op het schrijven van brieven naar gevangenen.

Al eerder kwam er een dergelijke oproep voor Filiz Gelowicz die in Duitsland gevangen zit nadat ze ze schuldig werd bevonden aan terrorisme gerelateerde feiten. Haar man, Fritz Gelowicz, was al eerder veroordeeld in de geruchtmakende zaak over de Sauerland-groep. Zie HIER een interview met hem.

Nu zijn de campagnes vrij ideologisch geladen. Maar niettemin laat de zaak van Sbaa (ondanks de nodige onduidelijkheden) toch wel weer enkele punten zien die ik al eerder heb aangeroerd hier, bijvoorbeeld in de zaak van de Curieuze verdwijning van Mohammed Chentouf en over rechtspositie van vermeende terreurverdachten (of dat officieel niet eens) in Terreur, macht en privacy en in de meest recente zaak waarbij 12 Somalïers werden gearresteerd op verdenking van terrorismeplannen. Een paar vragen:

Hoe zit het met de rechtspositie van vermeende terreurverdachten?
Hoe kan de IND voor eigen rechter spelen op basis van dezelfde informatie die voor het OM onvoldoende bewijs inhield voor een strafproces? (ik weet, het één is administratief en het ander strafrechtelijk)
Hoe zit het met de rechtspositie van Marokkaanse Nederlanders in Marokko (ik weet Sbaa heeft geen Nederlandse nationaliteit en in het geval van Chentouf zeiden politici letterlijk ‘good riddance’)
Wat is nu precies de rol van de AIVD?

Dat laatste komt vandaag aan bod bij het radioprogramma Argos van de VPRO:
Argos , Archive » 4 juni 2011: De AIVD-connecties in de Arabische wereld

De opstand in de Arabische wereld maakt eens te meer duidelijk hoe gehaat de regimes en het ondersteunende veiligheidsapparaat zijn. In Egypte werden zelfs de burelen van de veiligheidsdienst bestormd door betogers. Gerard Bouman, hoofd van onze eigen inlichtingendienst AIVD, was daar vorig jaar nog op de thee bij Omar Suleiman, het toenmalige hoofd van die dienst. Niet voor niets, want sinds eind jaren negentig werkt de AIVD in het kader van de terrorismebestrijding nauw samen met inlichtingendiensten in de Arabische wereld. Ook diensten die het niet zo nauw nemen met de mensenrechten.

Marokko is de laatste jaren speerpunt in die samenwerking, terwijl de manier waarop dat land omgaat met gevangenen door internationale mensenrechtenorganisaties betiteld wordt als martelingen. Een Nederlands-Marokkaanse man, wiens terrorismezaak in Nederland bij gebrek aan bewijs werd geseponeerd, zit nu voor dezelfde feiten in Marokko in de gevangenis. Argos over terrorismebestrijding over de grens.

Argos zaterdag 4 juni, radio 1, 12.15 – 13.00 uur

Behind-Bars en Team Free Saddek hebben de volgende promo gemaakt met daarin een fragment van de getuigenis van Bochta Charef over de martelingen en vernederingen in At Tamaraah (de gehele getuigenis staat in drie delen op hun youtube kanaal):

PS.
Overigens hoort u in de filmpjes voortdurend dezelfde nasheed, islamitische a-cappella muziek. Het betreft hier Ghuraba, de vreemdelingen.

2 comments.

"V for Vendetta": The Other Face of Egypt's Youth Movement

Posted on June 3rd, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Guest authors, Headline, Society & Politics in the Middle East, Youth culture (as a practice).

Guest Author: Linda Herrera

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea […] and ideas are bulletproof.” – From the film V for Vendetta

Image from Google Images In the summer of 2010 the youth of Facebook, “shebab al-Facebook,” began a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience through the Arabic “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook Fan Page. The success of their “silent stands” throughout the country gave youth a media friendly face as a group that espouses peaceful non-violent forms of civil disobedience to confront oppression and tyranny. The inspiration for the peaceful side of the movement was derived from divergent sources. Analysts writing in the western press were keen to point out the influence from celebrated figures and icons of nonviolence like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Gene Sharp and the human rights orientation of the cause. [1] The reputation the youth garnered as deft in nonviolent civil disobedience was well deserved and the silent stands were a feat of group solidarity, DIY youth activism, and the art of on-line to off-line mobilization. [2] But in actuality the youth movement has moved on multiple fronts and employed diverse strategies. The page itself vacillates between using bellicose language and images when talking about the objects of their rage — for example, the police and Interior Ministry — to instructing the community on non-violent peaceful strategies. The two approaches coexist in a symbiotic relation. On the flip side of any mask of peace is often a mask of menace.

From Google Images

The Guy Fawkes mask lifted from the comic book series and film V for Vendetta has been a staple of the page and the movement from the start. V for Vendetta enjoys cult status among certain segments of shebab al-Facebook who fall under the rubric of leftists, anarchists, Mohamed el Baradei supporters, Islamists, post-Islamists — which are by no means mutually exclusive categories. The potent imagery and eminently quotable lines from the film permeate individual Facebook pages and the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook Fan Page as posts, threads, cartoons, video links, and wall photos.

Cartoon posted on Arabic "We are All Khaled Said" Wall on July 29, 2010. The text reads: "We seek God's aid against misery."

The film, written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski and adapted from the comic book characters created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, is set in a dystopian future that is a totalitarian Britain. The story serves as a warning to governments not to push their people too far and is a reminder to people of the formidable power they possess if they know how to harness it. The antihero, V, whose name stands for vendetta, vengeance, victim, villain, victory, violence, and “vestige of the vox populi,” also denotes “veritas,” truth. V survives a personal ordeal of captivity and torture and dedicates his life to taking revenge on his captors and awakening his fellow citizens to their oppression. He uses the mass broadcast system, the state’s propaganda machinery, to transmit his message. He proclaims:

“[T]he truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice . . . intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told . . . if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.”

The speech continues:

“I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen [Guy Fawkes] wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words — they are perspectives.”

V not only speaks the truth about the complicity of individuals in perpetuating the system, but makes them aware that they hold the power to overturn it. He declares to his fellow citizens:

“You are but a single individual. How can you possible make any difference? Individuals have no power in this modern world. That is what you’ve been taught because that is what they need you to believe. But it is not true. This is why they are afraid and the reason that I am here: to remind you that it is individuals who always hold the power. The real power. Individuals like me. And individuals like you.”

On June 14, 2010, eight days after Khaled Said’s killing at the hands of two officers, a short film, “Khaled for Vendetta,” was uploaded to YouTube with links to it on the Facebook page. A second film, “Khaled Vendetta,” followed on July 29, 2010.

The five-minute film “Khaled for Vendetta,” written and directed by Mohamed Elm elhoda (Matrix2008 studio), masterfully draws out the parallels between the totalitarian society in V for Vendetta and Egypt under Emergency Law.

The film opens with ominous music from V for Vendetta followed by a fade in and out of Khaled’s image over a black backdrop. The shot cuts to the Peoples Assembly (Majlis al-Sha`ab) session of May 11, 2010, with the then Prime Minister, Ahmed Nazif, announcing the renewal of Emergency Law for two more years. He declares it will be used only to confront drugs and terrorism. Members of parliament applaud. The words “drugs and terrorism” are repeated over and over.

V sets down the first domino.

The next scene opens with a homemade film of a smiling Khaled in what appears to be his bedroom, followed by the now infamous photo taken at the morgue of his mangled face. A text states that Khaled Said was beaten by two plainclothes police under the auspices of the Emergency Law.

The masked man stacks more dominos.

The shot moves to a scene from the original film, a conversation between two police investigators about how everything is connected:

Finch: I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It was like I could see the whole thing; one long chain of events that stretched back […]. I felt like I could see everything that had happened, and everything that was going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern laid out in front of me and I realized that we were all part of it, and all trapped by it.

Dominic: So do you know what’s gonna happen?

Finch: No. It was a feeling. But I can guess. With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty. And then, Sutler [the leader] will be forced do the only thing he knows how to do. At which point, all V needs to do is keep his word. And then . . .

In the meantime V is setting up an elaborate pattern of dominos in the shape of an encircled “V.” He flicks the first domino and it sets off scenes of violence, chaos, destruction, fire, protests, shouting, upheaval.

The film ends with two still images. The first is of police in disproportionate numbers surrounding a small group of demonstrators. The second and final image is of the people outnumbering and surrounding the police. This closing image no doubt conveys the famous dictum from the film, “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

In June of 2010, after the film was uploaded, a handful of viewers posted comments which are revealing of the movement within a movement.

“Brilliant video . . . Maybe Dr.El Baradei will be our “v” here in Egypt to save? us . . . I recommend this movie for everyone, it is like a mirror to the current situation here in Egypt . . . God bless you”

“Beneath this mask there is more? than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Adly, and ideas are bulletproof.”

“It brought the tears to my eyes? I can see it all coming soon isa? [inshaallah] it’s not khaled for vendetta anymore . . . it’s? Egypt for vendetta thnx mohamed for that awesome video”

With the fall of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011, an image that immediately started circulating on Facebook was that of a masked man in the foreground of Tunisia’s flag. As Egyptians prepared for their own revolution, the simple image of the masked V made the rounds.

Image posted on Facebook

The appearance of this mask signaled that shebab al-Facebook were becoming restless. Their strategy of silence, even a deafening silence, was perceived as no longer enough to achieve the kind of political change they anxiously desired. And change they got.

In this post-revolution, post-Mubarak period, the mask and spirit of V have been more of less dormant. If events take a turn for the worse, if the crackdown from the military becomes unbearable or a dreaded counterrevolution occurs, V may very well resurface. But for now this seems unlikely, as youth are working in coalitions to develop civil political strategies to meet the changing circumstances. They are making some inroads as they press for democratic change, for working towards the realization of a society that affords people dignity and livelihoods. Yet so much remains unclear. What is certain is that the idea for change has been firmly planted and cannot be eradicated. Ideas after all, as V proclaims, are bulletproof. The struggle continues.

[1] See, for instance, articles about the influence of Gene Sharp in the revolution and articles about the Arabic translation of a comic book about Martin Luther King and strategies of non violence.

[2] For more on the silent stands see the excellent articles by Nadine Wahab and Adel Iskandar.

Linda Herrera is a social anthropologist with expertise in comparative and international education. She has lived in Egypt and conducted research on youth cultures and educational change in Egypt and the wider Middle East for over two decades. She is currently Associate Professor, Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is co-editor with A. Bayat of the volume Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global North and South, published by Oxford University Press (2010).

This is article also appears on Jadaliyya.com. Other articles by Linda Herrera on Closer are:
Two Faces of Revolution
Egypt’s Revolution 2.0 – The Facebook Factor

1 comment.

“V for Vendetta”: The Other Face of Egypt’s Youth Movement

Posted on June 3rd, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Guest authors, Headline, Society & Politics in the Middle East, Youth culture (as a practice).

Guest Author: Linda Herrera

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea […] and ideas are bulletproof.” – From the film V for Vendetta

From Google Images

Cartoon posted on Arabic "We are All Khaled Said" Wall on July 29, 2010. The text reads: "We seek God's aid against misery."

“[T]he truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice . . . intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told . . . if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.”

The speech continues:

“I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen [Guy Fawkes] wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words — they are perspectives.”

V not only speaks the truth about the complicity of individuals in perpetuating the system, but makes them aware that they hold the power to overturn it. He declares to his fellow citizens:

“You are but a single individual. How can you possible make any difference? Individuals have no power in this modern world. That is what you’ve been taught because that is what they need you to believe. But it is not true. This is why they are afraid and the reason that I am here: to remind you that it is individuals who always hold the power. The real power. Individuals like me. And individuals like you.”

V sets down the first domino.

The masked man stacks more dominos.

The shot moves to a scene from the original film, a conversation between two police investigators about how everything is connected:

Finch: I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It was like I could see the whole thing; one long chain of events that stretched back […]. I felt like I could see everything that had happened, and everything that was going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern laid out in front of me and I realized that we were all part of it, and all trapped by it.

Dominic: So do you know what’s gonna happen?

Finch: No. It was a feeling. But I can guess. With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty. And then, Sutler [the leader] will be forced do the only thing he knows how to do. At which point, all V needs to do is keep his word. And then . . .

In June of 2010, after the film was uploaded, a handful of viewers posted comments which are revealing of the movement within a movement.

“Brilliant video . . . Maybe Dr.El Baradei will be our “v” here in Egypt to save? us . . . I recommend this movie for everyone, it is like a mirror to the current situation here in Egypt . . . God bless you”

“Beneath this mask there is more? than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Adly, and ideas are bulletproof.”

“It brought the tears to my eyes? I can see it all coming soon isa? [inshaallah] it’s not khaled for vendetta anymore . . . it’s? Egypt for vendetta thnx mohamed for that awesome video”

Image posted on Facebook

[2] For more on the silent stands see the excellent articles by Nadine Wahab and Adel Iskandar.

This is article also appears on Jadaliyya.com. Other articles by Linda Herrera on Closer are:
Two Faces of Revolution
Egypt’s Revolution 2.0 – The Facebook Factor

1 comment.

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.

Most popular on Closer last week

Making sense of the emotional field
Bin Laden, geweld en de ontkenning van de politiek door Roel Meijer
Egypt: After the Revolution by Samuli Schielke

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You can follow me on Twitter: Martijn5155

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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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.

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.

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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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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.

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.

Shimrit Lee explains:
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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.

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.

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:

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:

(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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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

1 comment.

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

0 comments.

Zanga Zanga in Libya

Posted on April 8th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere, Joy Category, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

A few weeks ago Libyan leader Kadaffi gave an already famous speech in which he vowed to fight and die as a martyr. The rest of the speech was ominous but also incomprehensible. His speech appears to have become a youtube’s meme like for example Hitler’s speeches taken from the great film Der Untergang that has produced many hilarious new takes on Youtube. I will give you four here. The first one links Kadaffi’s speech with the one from Hitler who asks the Libyan leader to comment upon his book:

The second one is Gaddafi in the same speech (of course) but it seems he was speaking in a different language: Swedish

The third one is the Zanga Zanga remix; zanga referring to allyway.

And the fourth, and last, one is Conan O’Brien’s take on the speech:

1 comment.

Oman – State, Tribes and Revolution

Posted on March 31st, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Guest authors, Headline, Society & Politics in the Middle East.

Guest Author: Corien Hoek

Tribalism
Although Oman normally appears to be a very quiet country the spirit of the revolutions seemed to have reached this country a few weeks ago, putting it at the center of attention in the Netherlands because of a scheduled visit of the Dutch queen at that time. In this media attention a lot of time and effort was devoted to explain that Oman is a tribal society. “Tribal societies lead to civil war when the central authority declines. Tribal leaders become war lords who seize power and tribal wars are imminent. Thus there is little hope that these societies will be successful in transforming their institutions, once they have ousted their dictator.” This bogy dooms large in the media and blur our understanding of the current uprisings when the revolutions and concomitant transformations are discussed that take place in the Middle East. However if one looks at these societies from an anthropological perspective a different image of this social phenomenon, not typical for Middle Eastern societies alone, may arise. Based upon my research in Oman, I will show that in this country, state and nation building over a long period of time has thoroughly transformed the tribal organization even though tribes still constitute the back-bone of society at grass-roots level. These social formations have an important integrative function, whereby seeking consensus, and negotiating with representatives from all groups concerned are well-proofed methods and conditions for the success of authority and stability within and between the tribes. Moreover equality of the families, their leaders and the members is a guiding principle, in which the Islam has its role too.

Oman: A Confederacy of Tribes
Oman enjoys one of the longest statehoods in the Arab world, only rivaled by Egypt. The state is based on the tribal organisation, which the Arabs brought into the country about two millennia ago. However, in the course of time the state transformed from a confederacy of semi-autonomous tribes headed by the supra-tribal ruler to a nation state with a national government, laws, judicial powers and civil services. State formation has been the important factor in diminishing the power and significance of the tribal system.

The tribe in Oman is made up of clans or factions (fakhdh, pl. fukhudh) which are groups of people bound to each other by obligations deriving from their common descent. While the family is the minimal descent group, the clan represents the intermediate level and the tribe is the maximal descent group with a sense of corporate responsibility and solidarity (asabiya). Members of this kinship system acknowledge a common forebear, whether fictitious or real, who gives them their identity and often the common name. The tribal system is patrilineal and hierarchical even though the leaders (shaykh pl. shuyukh and rashid pl. rushada) elected from specific lineage groups at the various levels, are seen as more equal among equals. The tribe is agnatic endogamous (marriage within patriline c.q. tribe) through the preference of eligible parallel cousin partners. Tribes used to organize their own authority and judicial power through councils (majalis, sing. majlis) and religious courts (al-qada` al-shar`i) on the basis of consensus building and negotiations by representatives of various groups. Thus they functioned as relative autonomous social formations.

Tribes would form regional confederations through alliances with other tribes for example in contiguous areas. The hierarchical organisation of confederations of tribes throughout the country used to determine the national power balance. National leaders in Oman, whether religious or secular, were elected from core tribes, resident in certain areas in the interior provinces of Oman. Since 1744 the Al Bu Sa’id tribe established a ruling dynasty through hereditary succession. The present Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id Al Sa’id is the fourteenth ruler.

Multi-resources group
Traditionally, the tribe structured territorial and economic links besides kinship and social political relations. A tribe has a distinctive territory (dar, pl. dira) which constitutes its home- and rangeland. Tribal members used to depend for their source of subsistence primarily on the natural resources of the tribal territory. This also determined in a sense their life-style. Thus in the desert and mountain areas, where water is limited, people practiced pastoral nomadism i.e. animal husbandry by natural graze of goat and camel, moving with their livestock to grazing pastures. In areas where water was available, the inhabitants cultivating dates and vegetables could lead a sedentary life in oasis settlements. Finally, people who lived close to the sea could take up fishing. In addition to these subsistence activities (other) members of the tribe were occupied with trading, craft work or other maritime activities, to supplement the income. Depending on the range of territorial lands tribes consisted entirely or dominantly of pastoral people (bedu), or sedentary people (hadhar) or comprised a large variety of occupational groups. When territories did not offer enough opportunities to make a living, members, families or factions could split off, move, or take up other occupations which offered more perspective. The tribal organisation may still consist of occupational groups related to the presence of natural resources, but modern economic activities, not directly related to natural resources, have become a dominant source of income for individual members. Employment in the government (administration, army), the oil- and other industries is pursued by the sedentary and bedouin alike.

From this perspective the tribal organization constituted a flexible, multi-resource and multi-occupational group offering the tribal members a variety of economic options when necessary. Less fortunate members, families or factions of the tribe could depend on the solidarity and common responsibility of others. This proved vital to survive in the unpredictable environment of a desert climate. Similarly on a higher level, forming coalitions between tribes, merging or even subjugation of tribes, or tribal factions, served as much the economic needs of the people, as it was induced by sheer political motivation.

State formation
Omani people converted to Islam in the seventh century. The allegiance of the Islamic community (umma) to one God provided the members of the independent tribes with a principle of social and moral integration. Under the Ibadhi doctrine, developed and professed in Iraq and Oman, the religious leader (Imam) had to be locally elected, which based the formation of the state as early as the 8th century. The religious authority for the state’s leadership was in the hands of representatives from tribes which guarded the Ibadhi principles.

The Imam was nominated and elected by a council of chiefs, while other representatives of the tribes and provinces swore allegiance to him. If the leader did not adhere to the religious principles, he either had to repent or else he could be deposed. The democratic concept of the Ibadhi leadership had parallels with the elected leadership of the tribes in Oman. The ruler depended on the allegiance of the tribes, but the physical power remained with the tribal representatives in their homelands. This gave them a position of relative independence and the possibility to restrict the ruler’s control over the region.

In the course of history the semi-autonomous tribes were integrated into one political entity under a religious power (Imamate), or under a secular power (Sultanate) at times when the religious community did not have the power to provide for the leadership. These periods were interspersed with periods when the more dominant tribes pursued their own autonomy thereby opposing central power.

Political stability as a factor for a beneficent period depended on the balance between the tribes and the national power. A ruler who was powerful enough to unite the tribes, who succeeded in securing the wealth the country derived from its strategic location in the profitable maritime trade (i.e. gaining access to the ports, thereby safeguarding a neutrality towards the commercial activities in the ports, expanding Oman’s maritime empire etc.), and who reinvested the revenues in the country’s development to secure allegiance of the tribes, opened the door to prosperity. Oman’s modern history is a repetition of a successful interplay between these main determinants, whereby the introduction of the new asset: oil, further contributed to the prosperity and stability of the country.

Present time
Since the 1970s oil revenues secure a steady income for the state. Under the rule of the present sultan and his government these revenues are continuously invested in further development of the state and the country. Existing institutions at the national level are strengthened and new ones, related to governing the nation state, added. Moreover the oil wealth is relatively equally distributed throughout the country. Roads, electricity, water, schools and hospitals have been laid out at a high speed and reach even the most remote areas and isolated hamlets.

The significance of the tribal organisation in the context of the modern nation state formation decreases. All tribes co-operate with and participate in the central state organization. Central interests transcend tribal interests. In the beginning of the rapid development process, the tribal system played its part in the distribution of state owned amenities and services throughout the country; all tribes being keen to have their share of the state owned wealth in their own territories. The government, in which tribal representatives participated, naturally underlined this principle of equal distribution, though not necessarily distributing goods only along tribal lines. At the same time representation of the tribe at the national level is losing its significance too. Whereas in the 1980s, the tribes assigned their representatives for the State Consultative Council, since 1991 members for the Consultation Council are elected by the people and represent municipalities (wilayats) rather than tribes. On its part, the government has its representation in the region such as the wali (mayor) police, army, judicial courts and local branches of ministries.

On the other hand, at the grass-roots level of Omani society the tribal organisation still plays its role in matters of kinship, affiliation and as a social network for its members. Tribal leaders often function as mediators between the members of the tribe and between members and the administrative representatives at various levels of society. The chiefs continue to take counsel with the male members of the tribe in their sabla (council hall) in their territories to discuss a wide variety of subjects relevant to the tribe, ranging from tribal history, religious and judicial matters and national and international affairs, to local and economic issues such as palm cultivation, water distribution in the oasis, trade opportunities and last but not least marriages and other family themes. Supporters, advisors and guests are always welcome to join in the sablas. In addition, kinship affiliation and -loyalty bring members informally together on social and cultural occasions such as birth, marriage, death and other celebrations. The tribe therefore is still a strong cohesive force for families and individual members whether close by or living dispersed in the country or abroad. Thus, it supports the integration of people within the region and the country at large.
The society at large however, is clearly transforming from an “ascribed” to an “achieved” society where the individual qualities and achievements gradually obtain more weight than the tribal position and personal status therein of its members. Education, mobility and the process of individualisation play their roles in this development. Individuals join affiliations other than the tribal ones such as social formations based on occupational, ethnic, religious or other identities. These have their own autonomy and integrate themselves in the society through economic, social and cultural participation, playing their role in the development process in the country.

References
Chatty, D., 1986. From Camel to Truck: The Bedouin in the Modern World, New York: Vantage.
Harik, I., 1987. ‘The Origins of the Arab State system’, in Salame, G., ed., : The Foundations of the Arab State, Volume I, London: Croom Helm.
Lancaster, W., 1988. ‘Fishing and the Coastal Communities: Indigenous economies- decline or renewal’, Journal of Oman Studies Special Report, No. 3, 485-494. Muscat.
Wilkinson, J. C., 1972a. ‘The Origins of the Omani State’, in D. Hopwood ed., The Arabian Peninsula: Society and Politics, 67-88, London: George Allan and Unwin.

Corien Hoek is board member of the Dutch Anthropology Association. She did extensive fieldwork in al Sharqiyah region in Oman and in 1998 defended her PhD “Shifting Sands, Social economic development in Al Sharqiyah region, Oman”. Besides her work on socio-economic issues in the Middle East (from an anthropological perspective) she is also board member and co-founder of the MECART Foundation (Middle Eastern Culture and Art) for the exchange of Middle Eastern art and artists and the promotion of better knowledge of the Middle Eastern societies and cultures in the Netherlands.

2 comments.

Analyse van de Libische revolutie is vooral geen zaak voor prutsers

Posted on March 30th, 2011 by martijn.
Categories: Society & Politics in the Middle East.

De opstanden in het Midden-Oosten spreken tot de verbeelding. Eén van de vragen is/was voortdurend of de opstanden zouden overslaan vanuit Tunesië en Egypte naar andere landen. Alsof revoluties zomaar even resoneren en pats boem het is overal raak en de ene na de andere revolutionaire groep kruipt uit zijn hol. Nee dus. Dat lijkt wel het geval te zijn met zelfbenoemde Midden-Oosten deskundigen. Ik ga heus niet op al die doemprofeten (want dat zijn het meestal) in, maar soms verschijnen er commentaren die zo stupide zijn, zo waanzinnig flauwekul, tsja dat ik er eigenlijk juist niet op zou moeten reageren. Maar ik doe het dan toch maar.

Rob van Kan is vertaler en woont in Italië. Dan weet u het wel. Een echte islam- en Midden-Oostendeskundige. Laat ik beginnen met de op één na meest verstandige zin in het stuk dat hij recent schreef (ik zal afsluiten met zijn allerverstandigste zin). Nou ja een deel van een zin: ‘We weten te weinig over de islam’. Gelukkig weet Rob van Kan het wel en hij weet dan ook dat we niet moeten ‘ingrijpen in die complexe wereld’. Waarom? Rob van Kan heeft een spectaculaire ontdekking gedaan. Hij heeft ontdekt dat de Libische opstandelingen door Al Qaeda gesteund worden. Of misschien zelfs wel Al Qaeda zijn. Hoe hij dat weet? Door één lichaamskenmerk, van één van de vermeende (!) leiders van de opstand. Eén lichaamskenmerk mensen. Geen statement van Al Qaeda of de opstandelingen die zich wentelen in islamistische retoriek, geen bewijzen van wapenleveranties, geen enkel signaal van de gebruikelijke Al Qaeda tactieken, geen enkele Al Qaeda strijder, geen enkele waarschuwing van de CIA of Europese veiligheidsdiensten. Nee, een lichaamskenmerk. Eén. Van een man. Eén.

En welk kenmerk dan wel? De zebibah. Een lichaamskenmerk die sommige moslims krijgen naar eigen zeggen krijgen vanwege het vele bidden: een donkere plek op het voorhoofd doordat men het voorhoofd tegen de grond drukt tijdens het islamitische gebed. Zij worden gezien als tekenen van vroomheid, maar ook wel minder positief gezien als een teken van overdreven vertoon mede als gevolg van een onderlinge vroomheidscompetitie. Midden-Oosten deskundige weet dat je zo’n plek niet krijgt van het bidden, maar dat je die expres zou moeten maken. En het zijn beroemde mensen die het hebben hoor, zo weet hij. Mohammed Badie, leider van de Moslimbroederschap en…Ayman Al Zawahiri de nummer twee van Al Qaeda. En toen hij dezelfde plek zag op het voorhoofd van alle opstandelingenleiders in Libië was natuurlijk één en één twee. Oh nee, wacht, niet alle leiders, slechts één: Abdel-Jalil. Om er even zeker van te zijn dat hij het bij het rechte eind had heeft hij het nog even opgezocht in Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Islam en alle andere gezaghebbende bronnen. Om vervolgens iets te vinden bij Salman Rushdie:

“Also present was the town postman, Muhammad Ibadalla, who bore upon his forehead the gatta or permanent bruise which revealed him to be a religious fanatic who pressed brow to prayer-mat on at least five occasions per diem, and probably at the sixth, optional time as well.” (Salman Rushdie, Shame, 1983, p. 41-42)

Natuurlijk, dit magisch-realistisch fictie werkje van Rushdie is de bron waarin je al deze informatie kunt vinden. Mooi boek hoor daar niet van, maar heus, iemand met een gebedsplek is nog geen fanaticus, net zoals een vrome gelovige nog geen fanaticus hoeft te zijn. Vijf keer per dag bidden is gewoon een islamitisch voorschrift. Ook al krijg je misschien daar niet zo’n plek van en moet je daar wat extra’s voor doen, dat is nog geen teken van fanatisme, maar gewoon iemand die zijn vroomheid wil laten zien. Midden-Oosten deskundige Van Kan gaat echter nog een stapje verder en maakt dus de volgende redenering: vroom = religieus fanatisme = fundamentalisme. Een al lang gelogenstrafte redenering die je hoogstens nog in kroegen tegenkomt en bij Hans Jansen. Vroomheid is een toewijding om je leven zoveel mogelijk te leiden op de manier waarvan jij denkt dat hogere machten het willen (of wil, in geval van God). Religieus fanatisme is op een extreme manier je interpretatie van de religie volgen; over het algemeen ook politiek gericht. Daarmee kan het fundamentalisme zijn, maar gezien het feit dat deze deskundige naar Al Qaeda verwijst wordt hier ook geweld bedoeld. Geen van de drie verschijningsvormen van religiositeit hoeven iets te maken te hebben met geweld. Maar toeval bestaat niet volgens de broer van Rob van Kan. En dus vindt Rob van Kan dat ook. Temeer nog omdat, in de logica van deze deskundige, de regimes in Tunesië, Egypte, Syrië en Libië seculier van aard zijn. Tsja dan moeten er zich onder de opstandelingen wel, ja wat eigenlijk bevinden? Gelovigen? Ook seculiere mensen kunnen gelovig zijn en gelovigen kunnen seculier zijn. Hij bedoelt, gezien de rest van het stuk, natuurlijk Al Qaeda. Ja ja, dus als het om islam gaat is volgens Van Kan de keuze tussen seculier of Al Qaeda?

Kijk dat deze vertaler zijn onzin spuit op zijn eigen weblog moet hij zelf weten. Nou ja eigenlijk ook niet maar vooruit het is zijn persoonlijke pagina. Maar dat een blad als HP/De Tijd dit gewoon overneemt is toch wel te zot voor woorden. En dat geldt ook voor Sargasso dat zich graag als kwaliteitsweblog presenteert. Kan ik dan met de logica van Rob van Kan ook een artikel schrijven voor HP/De Tijd over de inval in Libië? Wist u dat Mark Rutte een bril draagt? Net als voormalig president Bush? En dat een bril helemaal niet nodig is in een tijd van contactlenzen? En dat volgens politiek deskundige Glamourista de bril wordt gebruikt om een ‘intelligente look’ te krijgen? Men wil zich dus beter voordoen, voelt zich superieur. Het Westen is zo superieur en vreedzaam in de logica van Van Kan dat ze niet zullen ingrijpen in Libië. Temeer omdat Europa en de VS bij de vorige regimes ook niet ingrepen tijdens de onlusten. En er is dus nu ook geen actie tegen Libië ? Nee mensen er is geen no-fly zone, de Fransen zijn niet actief, onze soldaten zijn daar ook nooit geweest. U vergist zich want Rutte draagt een bril. Volgens de Rob-van-Kan-logica dan.

U vraagt zich misschien af: hadden Rob van Kan en HP/De Tijd niet even wat feiten kunnen checken? Dan had hij ook wel kunnen zien dat met name de regio van Benghazi volgens sommigen wel het gevaar van (religieus en/of politiek) extremisme zou kunnen herbergen, maar dat moeten we ook niet overdrijven. Extremisme of niet, daar heeft geen gebedsplek op het voorhoofd iets mee te maken. Misschien vind je het aanstellerij, ‘slechts’ uiterlijk vertoon of geloofswaanzin, maar extremisme is het niet. Nee, dat laten we allemaal achterwege. We gaan ook niet even langs. Bij deskundigen. Bij moslims. Gewoon, om even te vragen waarom die moslims in het Midden-Oosten toch zo slecht luisteren naar de deskundige analyses van deskundigen als dr. Rob van K(lav)an. Ook daar heeft deze deskundige een antwoord op:
De Libische revolutie is vooral een fundi-zaak – HP/De Tijd

Misschien denkt u nog dat ik gek ben. Zou kunnen, sluit ik niet uit

Ik weet het wel zeker, en met hem HP/De Tijd en Sargasso die eigenlijk dit stuk zouden moeten rectificeren.

Wilt u iets meer weten over de zebibah, lees dan dit stuk in de New York Times: Fashion and Faith Meet: on the Forheads of the Pious. Verder ben ik de beroerdste niet, dus ik heb de rectificatie die HP/De Tijd en Rob van Kan kunnen plaatsen alvast gemaakt. Het voorstel is dit:

RECTIFICATIE

Sargasso en HP/De Tijd van 29 maart publiceerden een artikel geschreven door Rob van Kan met de titel “De Libische revolutie is vooral een fundi-zaak”. Daarin werd ten onrechte gemeld dat de opstandelingen in Libië Al Qaeda aanhangers zijn en dat mensen met een gebedsplek op het voorhoofd Al Qaeda aanhangers zijn. Het artikel was prutswerk, gebaseerd op onjuiste weergave van de feiten en ondeugdelijke argumentatie. Het op de zebibah gebaseerde verband tussen Al Qaeda en de Libische opstandelingen is daarmee onjuist. Bovendien hebben wij geen hoor en wederhoor gepleegd en ook geen deugdelijke bronnen geraadpleegd. Het spijt ons, wij zijn een beetje dom geweest.

Hoofdredactie HP/De Tijd, Weblog Sargasso en Rob van K(lav)an

Want allemaal mooi en aardig mensen, het gaat natuurlijk ergens over daar in het Midden-Oosten. Bekijkt u even de volgende hommage aan Mohammed Bouazizi, die gisteren 27 jaar geworden zou zijn.

Hydra Mohamed Bouazizi_0001 door mcpalestine

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