A Sufi Baul Minstrel grabs the headlines (at least on this blog) from the extremists

Today in Part 6 of our series on Mac the Man, otherwise known as Mac Haque, the lead singer of the great Bangladeshi band Maqsood O'dHAKA, Mac, as you will see below will answer two question. Be sure to scroll down to see Parts 1-5, not to mention the Introduction to this series on Alternative Voices from the Islamic World. And check out his music! You can find links in previous posts.

Will the jihadist movement change Islam in Bangladesh?

I think the reason why Bangladesh has for the most part been spared by Jihadist extremism is because of the value we place on Ijtihad and in our Sufi traditions. Ijtihad is widely practiced. Ijtihad is the Islamic tradition of inquiry, assessment, fact sorting, scripture analysis, logic and proof. The Sufi twist is that we do this to music.

In the far flung backwaters of rural Bangladesh, for example, Ijtihad is used to resolve disputes and in its musical form – part of our Sufi tradition - it is often the only form of ‘entertainment’ in many rural villages. I have a keen interest in Ijtihad music and collect many of these extraordinary songs.

Ijtihad is also part of the Baul quest for spiritual transcendence. Baul is a Bengali and Bengladeshi system of thought that combines elements of Sufi Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and has inspired Bengali and Bangladeshi musicians and poets for hundreds of years. I see myself as part of this Baul tradition. [UNESCO designated Baul as one of the "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" in 2005.]

Our rural culture in Bangladesh is neither backward nor close-minded. It’s the urban centers that produce the most of the communal and extremist elements!

Is sharia a solid basis for the modern polity?

A technical question indeed. Conservative Muslim thinkers would argue that sharia is ‘unchanging and unchangeable’ but is still appropriate even in modern circumstances.

Contemporary thinkers, on the other hand, say that sharia can be modified to adjust for the new conditions. This is where Ijtihad or debate comes in. If Ijtihad is allowed then, they say, sharia is appropriate even for a modern polity.

Bangladesh legislation is not based on sharia. Rather, it is modeled on the British system of law. Other than Family Law, where disputes are adjudicated in Islamic courts, everything else is secular.

By the way, I believe the development of Jihad and Ijtihad simultaneously does not in any way indicate that we are in a degenerative phase at this point of history, but rather, shows we are finally waking up from our collective slumber of centuries.

More grim news for Sudan's Darfur refugees

Somalian cartoonist Abdul Arts - whose cartoons I regularly post - sends along some news items on the plight of Sudanese refugees in Israel.

Readers might recall that Abdul Arts is himself a refugee - from Somalia, living in Egypt - so he has some firsthand experience of what the Sudanese may be going through.

What's ironic about this story is that these Sudanese refugees are desperate to stay in "the Zionist entity" otherwise known as Israel. This is because in Israel they can find work to feed their families - which is not the case in the brotherly nation of Egypt, their first port of entry as they flee the Sudan. In Egypt, they say, the work doesn't pay enough and they're also discriminated against by their fellow Muslims because of their skin color.

According to this IRIN release from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has decided it can no longer keep accepting African refugees at the rate they are flooding into Israel. As IRIN reports:

According to the new [Israeli government] plan, announced on 1 July, Israel will return to Egypt "infiltrators" crossing the countries' joint border. A government communiqué said they would be "quickly" deported and indicated they would not be able to make an asylum claim in Israel.

Accordingly, the Israeli security forces have been instructed to arrest and send back all those crossing the border, and to detain those who cannot be immediately returned.

The plan, which Israel formulated together with Egypt, has sparked concern among Israelis aiding African refugees, the majority of whom are from Sudan.

In the past few months alone, reports IRIN, some 1,400 Sudanese have made their way to Israel, including some 200 from Darfur.

The refugees, according to the Hotline for Migrant Workers, are afraid of being sent back to because they believe that in the worst case Egypt will only send them back to Sudan where they often end up soon dead, and in the best case, they can only look forward to being mistreated:

"We are not asking for anything, just our basic refugee rights, and maybe a little help from the state," said Nader, who added that she was originally from Juba and who arrived in Israel a few days earlier after being smuggled over the border. His seven-month-old daughter, asleep on his shoulder, had just been seen by a doctor.

Another refugee said she fled Egypt after being mistreated there. "Life is impossible for Sudanese like me in Cairo," one refugee was reported as saying, adding that she had been discriminated against for being dark skinned. Her husband said he could not find enough work in Egypt to be able to support the family.

The Associated Press (via ABC News) earlier profiled a 24-year-old Sudanese refugee from Darfur who had found work picking avocados on a kibbutz in Israel:

He said he fled five years ago to Khartoum, Sudan's capital, where the government imprisoned him for allegedly conspiring against it. After his release, he bribed his way into neighboring Egypt, and was arrested in Cairo. Once free again, he fled eastward with five others who paid a Bedouin to smuggle them into Israel. They feared police would shoot them.

"Then, thank God, we entered Israel and they welcomed us," he said.

At least temporarily. Israel has accepted refugees for decades, but the Sudanese pose a problem. Israeli law denies asylum to anyone from an "enemy" state, such as Sudan, and imprisons them until a third country gives them asylum.

Picked up by border guards, Ibrahim found himself back in jail.

As the AP reports, because many people in Israel still remember those who perished in the Holocaust because no nation would grant the Jews desperate to flee Nazi Germany refuge, many work on behalf of the African refugees in Israel.

As the AP report continued:

After a year in Israeli prisons, Ibrahim was moved in March to Yad Hannah, a kibbutz of 300 people which has taken in 36 Sudanese. They earn about $37 a day for farm work and shop and cook for themselves, but are still considered prisoners and cannot leave without written permission.

Ibrahim said he still feels isolated, because he speaks only Arabic and can't communicate with his kibbutz employers. But he does feel safe.

"Israel is nice," he said. "No one will hit you in the street or yell at you. I had to come all this way before I could find someone to treat me this way."

Oh the ironies of life. Who would have imagined that it would be the enemy Zionist state that would a Muslim refugee's first choice for refuge. Not to mention that these refugees have to flee to Israel from a state that is being run by Islamists.

There are so many terrorist cells in Britain, the authorities are having trouble keeping track of them

From today's New York Times:

[T]errorism trials have become almost commonplace; Britain is awash in them. More than 100 people have recently been convicted, or are currently on trial, awaiting trial or facing verdicts in more than two dozen terrorism-related cases here.

A verdict is expected soon in one of the biggest cases: that of six men accused of the botched suicide bombing attempts on London’s subways and buses on July 21, 2005. The failed attacks — in which the bombs did not explode — took place exactly two weeks after the July 7 attacks that killed 56 people, including four perpetrators.

Another big case, that of the suspects accused in the audacious plot to use liquid bombs to blow up planes over the Atlantic last summer, has not yet gone to trial.

Meanwhile, seven men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 to 26 years last month for their roles as accomplices to a Qaeda terrorist planning attacks on targets in Britain and the United States, including the New York Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And in April, five men were found guilty of planning fertilizer-bomb attacks on targets around London, including a major suburban shopping center and a popular London nightclub.

The sheer number of cases shows how difficult it is for the authorities to keep on top of the activities of would-be terrorists in this country.

As the Times points out, these plots are not just the work of lonely crazy individuals or groups of crazies either:

While many of the suspects appear to be motivated by the same ideology — hatred of the West and support for violent jihad directed at targets symbolizing what they regard as Western power or decadence — the individual plots are hard to unravel. Relationships are complicated. Suspects work together or individually, with other Britons or people from abroad, often connected by evidence on computers or cellphones that requires painstaking investigation before charges can be brought.

“We are not looking at discrete terrorist cells that can be investigated, isolated and dismantled,” Peter Clarke, the senior antiterrorism officer at Scotland Yard, said in a speech in April. “We are seeing networks within networks, connections within connections, and links between individuals that cross local, national and international lines.”

I would say that now is the time for the Muslim community to rout out the criminals who live among them. If you wait for the police, innocent Muslims will surely suffer.

Surely it now has to be abundantly clear that the only one way to restore the community's good standing in the eyes of the world is to get rid of this criminal element among you.

(Even Hamas seems to be coming around to this way of thinking.)

Think of what the families of the London-Glasgow doctor-bombers must now be going through. So turn in those otherwise good sons and daughters before it's really too late.

Here's a Muslim that should be getting headlines: A pious Muslim who rocks and....

Well, all that you'd imagine a rock star doing....

Ok, maybe not ALL you'd imagine - I know there are plenty of overactive imaginations out there - and this is one rocker who stayed married to his childhood sweetheart until her untimely death in 2004....

So on that incredibly sad but also so entirely romantic note, meet Mac Haque, lead singer of the Bangladeshi band Maqsood O'dHAKA.

I introduce you to him in order to bring you alternative voices from the world of Islam. This is part 5 of my 10-part email interview with Bangladesh's "Poet of Impropriety," rocker, rasta, activist Mac Haque, otherwise better known as the lead singer of one of Bangladesh's leading bands, Maqsood O'dHAKA.

(Here is the introduction to this series, along with Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

But before you start reading, why not download some of his music for background?

Today's question for Mac was "What is Bangladesh doing to counter extremism?" Here is his response:

On the surface there is zero tolerance for Islamic extremism. Anybody found in possession of a Jihadist leaflet is subject to arrest and imprisonment. The laws are harsh. And as is the case in most nations fighting the War on Terror, there have been many violations of basic human rights. The state does what it has to in order to receive applause from the West.

But the real war is being fought culturally. The Sufi and Vaishnavite influences in our culture that have roots in Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as Islam, are the real ‘weapons of choice.’

After the series of 2005 bomb attacks and assassinations of judges, the Government activated an elite anti-terrorist police commando called the Rapid Action Battalion. Hundreds of mullahs linked to the Jama’atul Mujahideen, an Islamist party, were arrested. The key figures were executed after a quick trial in March this year.

But what I think had a greater effect was the reaction of the mainstream clergy. They went out in force, to explain Jihad to all the mosque goers in much the same way my father did to me when I was a child.

At Friday prayers they issued stern warnings saying there is no place for extremism in Islam – and that a Jihad cannot be declared in a nation such as ours, one with a pre-dominantly Muslim population, when there is no clear indication that war or war-like situation has been unleashed on it.

Cultural activists such as myself - and there are thousands others – have been active against the extremist movement for years now. In Bangladesh we have an abundance of progressive theatre, literature, song and poetry written by people who are committed socio-cultural activists against extremism.

Our ‘battle’ started much earlier than the Governments did, incidentally.

In my 1997 socio-political activism album Prapto Boyeshker Nishiddho (Banned for Adults), for example, I have a song called Parwardigar or The Creator, an adaptation, if you will, of the American singer Jim Croce’s song about the dangers of Christian extremism. As he wrote: “Which way are you going, which side are you on, one hand on the Bible one hand on the gun.”

Incidentally, I received a series of death threats after this, none of which made me afraid enough to want to back down.

I think we cultural activists in Bangladesh deserve some of the credit for the fact that our agenda for a peaceful, extremism-free Bangladesh seems to have taken root and crowded out the extremist forces.

Our War on Terror began long before it became fashionable, and we didn’t need the West or the US to tell us what to do!

You can also purchase some of Mac's music - not to mention other Bangladeshi recordings at http://www.amadergaan.com - and at the low, low prices of $1.89. You can even pay via PayPal and so have confidence that this is not just some, er, jihadist ruse to get your address or credit card information. (At those prices, you can't even call this a capitalist scheme.)

Al Qaeda is sounding desperate

So desperate, that even the media can no longer ignore the signs. The Associated Press reports:

A new video by al-Qaida's deputy leader Thursday left no doubt about what the terror network claims is at stake in Iraq — describing it as a centerpiece of its anti-American fight and insisting the Iraqi insurgency is under its direct leadership.

But the proclamations by Ayman al-Zawahri carried another unintended message: reflecting the current troubles confronting the Sunni extremists in Iraq, experts said.

As the report continues:

In the unusually long video — at just over an hour and a half — al-Zawahri depicted the Islamic State of Iraq as a vanguard for fighting off the U.S. military and eventually establishing a "caliphate" of Islamic rule across the region.

"The Islamic State of Iraq is set up in Iraq, the mujahedeen (holy warriors) celebrate it in the streets of Iraq, the people demonstrate in support of it," al-Zawahri said, "pledges of allegiance to it are declared in the mosques of Baghdad."

I wonder what Zawahiri has been smoking. Because from all the press accounts I've seen, this Islamic State in Iraq is far from being celebrated. As the AP reports:

But al-Qaida in Iraq — the group that claims allegiance to Osama bin Laden's goals — has been put on the defensive. Some Sunni insurgent groups have publicly split with it, distancing themselves from its bomb attacks on Iraqi civilians and accusing al-Qaida of trying to strong-arm their members into joining.

One influential faction, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, has openly helped U.S. forces in new offensives against al-Qaida in and around Baghdad, and some Sunni tribes have turned against it in western Anbar province.

The doctor, apparently realizing that I wouldn't be the only one out there who wouldn't buy into his assessment, did kind of sort of acknowledge that even previous supporters may have given up on Al Qaeda's competence.

As the AP continued to quote him:"The mujahedeen are not innocent of deficiency, error and slips," he said on the videotape. "The mujahedeen must solve their problems among themselves."

I do wonder what his assessment of the mujahedeen's problems would be. Demanding that people stop mixing vegetables perhaps?

More from the Muslim rasta, rocker, poet, pundit...

Samurai, whatever....call him what you want but just don't call him late for dinner (as my grandmother used to say) or describe him as a 'moderate Muslim.' You'll find out why below.

Part 4 of my interview with Mac Haque, lead singer of the band Maqsood O'dHAKA, live from the Islamic world. Scroll down my home page for Parts 1-3.


Today's question for Mac was: Is Islamic extremism a problem in Bangladesh?

And this was his response:

Over all, it would be very unfair to say we have a major problem with Islamic terrorism here in Bangladesh. We had some simultaneous bombings in 2005 that were attributed to Islamic terrorists but I had and continue to have serious doubts about the government’s version of these events.

A recent expose suggests that my initial hunches may have been correct. Now that many of the politicians then in power are now behind bars on corruption charges, perhaps the truth about these attacks will finally emerge.

In my view, many Westerners have a lot of media-driven misconceptions Muslims. This started when Bill Clinton coined the term ‘moderate Muslim’. There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim and there never has been one. The pluralist nature of the Muslim people speaks for itself.

Then I object to this idea that madrasas produce terrorists. I have never seen convincing evidence of this – at least not in Bangladesh.

Westerners need to understand that for poor children, a madrasa education is often their only option. Madrasas are for the most part free and in many cases, these schools also double as orphanages. Without the madrasa system here, millions would be left completely illiterate. We are simply not a rich enough country to mandate compulsory education for all.

That said, there has been a concerted effort to incorporate a modern education into the Islamic syllabus. There is a successful training program here in Bangladesh, funded by the U.S., that offers prayer leaders and madrasa teachers English-language and computer-skills training. Western NGOs also work with the madrasas to educate them on the concept of Islam in a changed world. Many madrasas now teach HIV awareness, contraception, and gender issues - subjects that even five years back were taboo.

By the way, you can purchase some of Mac's music (and other Bangladeshi recordings too) - for the incredibly low price of $1.89 at http://www.amadergaan.com. Key in the word pOTAKA in the SHOP section. And here's this note from Mac about these recordings:

One word I would like to mention about the pOTAKA, it is NOT a dHAKA album, but a special project I took up for my Baul musician friends both urban and rural under my Heritage Revival Ensemble banner. So its a bunch of young , little or unknown musicians (including my son Dio playing 9 out of the 10 tracks) backing me on all tracks.

Let Mac know if you buy this music, and he'll send you what all the songs mean.

Daniel Pearl's father on mindless tolerance

Judea Pearl, father of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who was beheaded by Islamic extremists in Pakistan writes in The New Republic:

I used to believe that the world essentially divided into two types of people: those who were broadly tolerant; and those who felt threatened by differences. If only the forces of tolerance could win out over the forces of intolerance, I reasoned, the world might finally know some measure of peace.

The fallacy in this way thinking, he says, is the same that Bertrand Russell elucidated in his famous paradox. (We have to bear with Danny's father here, as he is a computer science professor.) As he writes:

The political lesson of Russell's paradox is that there is no such thing as unqualified tolerance. Ultimately, one must be able to expound intolerance of certain groups or ideologies without surrendering the moral high ground normally linked to tolerance and inclusivity. One should, in fact, condemn and resist political doctrines that advocate the murder of innocents, that undermine the basic norms of civilization, or that seek to make pluralism impossible. There can be no moral equivalence between those who seek--however clumsily--to build a more liberal, tolerant world and those who advocate the annihilation of other faiths, cultures, or states.

Mr. Pearl then goes on to share his concerns him about what viewers will take away from the recently released Angelina Jolie movie, A Mighty Heart, about Daniel's kidnapping and ultimate murder:

I am worried that A Mighty Heart falls into a trap Bertrand Russell would have recognized: the paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far. You can see traces of this logic in the film's comparison of Danny's abduction with Guantánamo--it opens with pictures from the prison--and its comparison of Al Qaeda militants with CIA agents. You can also see it in the comments of the movie's director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote on The Washington Post's website that A Mighty Heart and his previous film The Road to Guantánamo "are very similar. Both are stories about people who are victims of increasing violence on both sides. There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."

As he goes on to note, this endorsement of moral relativism is already being shamelessly exploited:

Indeed, following an advance screening of A Mighty Heart, a panelist representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations reportedly said, "We need to end the culture of bombs, torture, occupation, and violence. This is the message to take from the film." The message that angry youngsters are hearing is unfortunate: All forms of violence are equally evil; therefore, as long as one persists, others should not be ruled out. This is precisely the logic used by Mohammed Siddiqui Khan, one of the London suicide bombers, in his videotape on Al Jazeera. "Your democratically elected government," he told his British countrymen, "continues to perpetrate atrocities against my people ... . [W]e will not stop."

That moral relativism should have ended with Danny's death, he writes, suggests just how deeply mindless our thinking class really is:

Today, with Western intellectuals overextending two-sidedness to reckless absurdities, [such moral relativism] reflects nothing but lazy conformity. What is needed now is for intellectuals, filmmakers, and the rest of us to resist this dangerous trend and draw legitimate distinctions where such distinctions are warranted.

My son Danny had the courage to examine all sides. He was a genuine listener and a champion of dialogue. Yet he also had principles and red lines. He was tolerant but not mindlessly so. I hope viewers will remember this when they see A Mighty Heart.

I hope they do too, Mr. Pearl. And may peace be upon your son.

Who are the "Islamophobes" again?

Amir Taheri ponders whether accusations that Britain is "Islamophobic" are really fair in a New York Post editorial. Here are some key excerpts:

Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects - most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth.

A Shiite Muslim can't build a mosque in Cairo; his Sunni brother can't have a mosque of his own in Tehran. Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran. The works of a majority of Muslim writers and philosophers are banned in most Muslim countries.

In Britain, all mosques are allowed; no Muslim author or philosopher is banned. More importantly, rival Muslim sects do not massacre each other, as is the case in half a dozen Muslim-majority countries.

The only time that the British media practice self-censorship is when an item might be seen as remotely anti-Islamic. . .

Even the most rabid anti-West and pro-terror Islamist clerics are granted visas to come to the United Kingdom and spread their message of hatred (at times, as guests of Mayor Livingstone and his friends). Hamas and Hezbollah are strongly present in Britain; the Islamic Liberation Party, banned in all Muslim countries, has its headquarters in London.

Pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah militants are featured on British TV almost every evening. The Islamic Republic of Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, maintains a "personal office" in London with twice as many personnel as Iran's official embassy.

Taheri suggests that the real "Islamophobes" are those who slaughter innocents under the banner of Islam:

The terrorists who tried to kill people in London and Glasgow are the same ones killing people in Baghdad and Karachi. They are the same who killed tens of thousands of Egyptians and perhaps as many as a quarter-million Algerians over the decades. They are motivated not by any religious grievance but by an insatiable appetite for political power. They want to seize control of societies, break them into submission and impose on every individual a mad tyranny of terror in the name of God.

If Islam is the religion of peace, then the real Islamphobes are those who planted the car bombs in London and Glasgow - not the poor Brits who are censoring themselves and curbing their hard-won freedoms in order not to offend "the Muslim community."

Turns out these London-Glasgow plotters weren't the first crazy doctors

Check out this list of famous physicians provided by Wikipedia:

John Bodkin Adams - British suspected serial killer.
Karl Brandt (1904-1948) - Nazi human experimentation
Baruch Goldstein - assassin
Radovan Karadžić (b. 1945) - accused of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia
Josef Mengele (1911-1979) - known as the Angel of Death, Nazi human experimentation
Herta Oberheuser (1911-1978) - Nazi human experimentation
Shiro Ishii - headed Japan's Unit 731 during World War II which conducted human experimentation for weapons and medical research
Harold Shipman (1946-2004)- British mass murderer
Ernesto Che Guevara - ...cold-blooded murderer, sadistic torturer, and a terrorist...

Here's where we should be sending terrorist wannabes

Maybe we could rechannel some of this drive to blow things up. I refer to the New York Times report on an exciting new option: "Explosives Summer Camp."

Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of United States citizenship pay a $450 fee that covers food, lodging and incidentals like dynamite. In the course of a week, the 22 students at this session set off a wall of fire, blasted water out of a pond, blew up a tree stump and obliterated a watermelon. They set off explosive charges in the school’s mine and finished off the week by creating their own fireworks show for their parents.

“We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives,” said Paul Worsey, a professor in the department of mining engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, the only university in the country that offers an academic minor in explosives engineering. More than six billion pounds of explosives are used each year in this country by civilian commercial industry for things like mining and demolition.

And look parents, there really aren't enough explosives experts out there - not outside of Iraq, that is:

Dr. Worsey said he created the camp, now in its fourth year, to try to boost the ranks of the aging population of mining and explosives engineers.

Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said the number of graduates of engineering schools with training in explosives cannot keep up with the demand in the mining industry, the leading employer of explosives engineers, and the current population of engineers in the field is aging toward retirement.

So all you little explosives freaks out there, terrorism is not your only career option.

Be sure to link on the story and check out all the photos and multi-media stuff.

Bangladeshi rocker Mac recalls an era when Jihad was still a form of entertainment

In an effort to see what sane Muslims around the world really think of the War on Terror, I'm posting excerpts from an email interview I did with Maqsoodul Haque, lead singer of the band Maqsood O'dHAKA.

Here's one of his recordings on YouTube to download and play while you read this post.

For the record, I'm not promoting Mac's way of thinking here as my own. While I believe him to be a person of good will - as someone who wants to build bridges across this great chasm we must now all confront - I disagree with many of his assessments on why we are in the particular fix we are. And for the record, I'm sure he has lots of, well, quibbles with my views too. But hey, there's room enough in the world for both our points of view, isn't there?

The hyperlinks in his responses, incidentally, were supplied by Mac, and I encourage you to click on them as I think they clarify some of his reference points.

Yesterday Mac described what he learned about jihad from his parents and Islamic tutors. Here he explains what some real-life (or, as he says, "reel-life") jihads taught him:

...Then came 1971 and we watched the bloody birth of Bangladesh, our nation having fought a heroic guerrilla campaign to oust the Pakistani oppressors. With independence also came our doubts about the US and its intentions in the region. . .when it deployed its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal – to intervene and frustrate the aspirations of the Bengalees, so as to assist the Pakistani Army in carrying out their various crimes. All of this happened when I was an impressionable fourteen-year-old.

But it was also your great nation, together with British rockers, that organized the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden that publicized our struggle. . .

Then there was the Jihad called by the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1908s that was supported by the [Carter and] Reagan administrations as part of the US interest to do away with the Soviet Union. That was when the mujahideen were seen as freedom fighters by the U.S. Congress. . .

The Jihad in Afghanistan was the first Jihad in a thousand years and we could watch it on TV and at the movies (Rambo)….When a Muslim nation declares Jihad it becomes obligatory for other Muslims to join in and the least I could do was watch.

I was surprised by the numbers of volunteers who were queuing up to fight the Jihad but with the US backing and Pakistan providing the supply and support base, this classic Jihad was surely destined for victory.

Blow-by-tragic blow, we saw the fall of Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the departure of the Mujahideen. The initial lessons from this Afghan jihad didn’t come from the Koran, but from US-funded text books.

Then it was the rise of the Taliban, Bin-Laden Terror Inc, the cataclysmic fall of the Twin Towers, the fall of the Taliban, Iraq and its rulers, and - as if this grotesque theatre was in need of a new 'reel-life' drama - the capture and hanging of Saddam Hussein.

Who but the lunatic fringe would seriously contemplate any kind of militant engagement with the West?

But, despite all the demonization, the mud-slinging, and unhealthy abuses hurled on Muslims since 9/11, there has at the same time been a rise in the understanding and awareness of Islam never before witnessed in history.

The state of the world today is a glaring example of how much caution and close scrutiny are required to trap the genie of Global Jihad that has been unleashed on all of us.

I am convinced that neither Muslims, Christians, Jews, nor Hindus are the enemy. As my Bangladeshi Poet friend Nadeem Rahman put it:

Christ the Jew has become me and you, the Serb, the Croat, the Muslim Bosnian, cut to pieces with a burst of hideous laughter from a heartless machine gun. From the Dome of the Rock to the Babri Mosque shot down like a dog in the name of countless gods, Christ cried at the cross and died of shame, for the Judas in all of us.

Is this what the niqab is supposed to signify?

Bret Stephens has an interesting take on the purpose of the niqab - or face veil - in today's Wall Street Journal. Here are some key excerpts:

Seen from a narrow angle, it's easy to tie oneself in knots debating the correct attitude of Western societies toward the veil. The liberal says: People generally ought to be entitled to dress as they choose. The liberal also says: Veiling the female face isn't merely an expression of sexual modesty but an obliteration of a woman's public identity and hence a violation (even if self-imposed) of her political rights. The conservative says: If religious freedom is a bedrock Western value, then the rights accorded to the Amish or Hasidic Jews to dress as they do must also extend to ultraconservative Muslims. The conservative also says: Liberal societies cannot allow illiberal and separatist practices to flourish under the banner of multiculturalism, particularly if those practices are often enforced by violence.

Yet all this misses the fundamentally tactical element of niqab. "It's about enforcing separation," notes a former senior French Interior Ministry official who helped draft his country's 2004 ban on religious headgear in public schools and government buildings. "It is best understood as an intra-Muslim show of strength, a way to intimidate their own women, a way to intimidate the infidels, a way to make themselves more visible, a way to make sure no one strays from their world vision."

Is this how the Prophet Muhammad intended the niqab to be seen?

Did he really perceive it to be the symbol of Muslim arrogance, oppression, and Islamic terrorism that it has become?

Alternative Voices from Dar al-Islam: Bangladeshi rocker, Mac Hacque on Jihad

Here's the second installment of my 10-part interview with Bangladeshi rocker, poet, and pundit, Maqsoodul Haque, lead singer of the band Maqsood O'dHAKA. (Part 1 is here.)

So why the interest in global jihad, Mac?

Although I grew up to become an agnostic by choice, my childhood and teen years were thoroughly inculcated with Islamic culture. My mother was a pious believer and insisted I study the Koran – which a cleric would come to teach me.

Since we didn’t understand a word in Arabic, our knowledge of the Sura (or Koranic verses) was all via word of mouth. The way my mother explained what the Koran said, however, pointedly differed from what the cleric was teaching us. And because we went to a Christian missionary school, the cleric would criticize us for using English to communicate among ourselves and admonish us for having Hindu friends. ‘Mingling with infidels!’ he would say. I remember one day mother had a serious disagreement with the cleric over this issue and very soon, to our delight, a younger and more educated one replaced him.

On the Muslim Sabbath (Fridays), I was dragged to the nearby mosque by father to hear the mullahs instill the fear of aLLAH in my little heart (as they still do today in many mosques). Compassion and mercy were rarely the subject of the sermons. The mullahs would instead exhort at length about history, the great Jihads, and that the Prophets of Islam had fought to ‘slaughter the Infidels.’ All of this had the effect of activating the deeper introspection cells within my brain.

Father was a liberal and would painstakingly address all my innocent curiosity about Jihad. The first lesson I learned from him was that the greatest Jihad is against the self, the battle to suppress greed, hatred, anger, mischief, or waywardness - and the struggle to be caring and humble.

He also explained the spirit of Ijtihad and how the world had changed since the earliest days of Islam. He told me that Islam had assimilated many cultures, including our own, and its spread to almost all corners of the globe would not have been possible had it not had a peaceful or humane mandate.

I was imparted with this one solid lesson which has remained with me all of my adult life: that Jihad of weapons is the lowest form of Jihad, and one that aLLAH dislikes the most.

Tomorrow we'll hear about Mac's ringside side on the jihads that began in 1979 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...So stay tuned.

But meanwhile, check out another one of his band's video recordings here via YouTube.

The lowdown on Iran's Al Quds Force

That is, the group that the U.S. military is now firmly convinced was behind the killing of 5 American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq in January. As RFE/RL reports:

A top U.S. military official told a press conference in Baghdad today that the information [that convinced them] comes from a senior Hizballah operative captured in southern Iraq in March.

The Hizballah operative referred to is Ali Musa Dakduk, who was captured in March. Dakduk served in the organization for 24 years. He was described as a "surrogate" Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps' Quds Force by the military official, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner. As the RFE/RL report continues:

"Quds Force, along with Hizballah instructors, train approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time, sending them back to Iraq, organized into these special groups," Bergner said. "They were being taught how to use EFPs [explosively formed penetrators], mortars, rockets, as well as intelligence, sniper, and kidnapping operations."

Bergner said Dakduk was a contact point between the Quds Force and a breakaway militant Shi'ite group. He said that group had been led by Qays al-Khaz'ali, a former spokesman for radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

So what is this Iranian Quds Force?

Here's how the Quds Force was described in a February RFE/RL interview with one Mahan Abedin, the director of research at the London-based Center for the Study of Terrorism and the editor of "Islamism Digest" journal:

RFE/RL: What is [the Quds Force] main function and in what countries has it been operating in the past two decades?

Abedin: Its essential function is to conduct special operations outside of Iran, and historically -- over the past 25 years or so -- it's been involved in the following theaters: involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s; it had extensive involvement in Lebanon; extensive involvement in Iraq throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, when they were working with Iraqi dissident groups and the Kurdish faction in the north to undermine Saddam [Hussein's] regime. [The Quds Force] was extensively involved in Bosnia in the early 1990s; it was in charge of supplying arms to the Bosnian Muslims. Their operations -- which have rarely received any coverage -- [included] their involvement in southern Sudan in the early 1990s, when they worked with the Sudanese army. So it's been involved in various theaters."

RFE/RL: What role does the Quds Force play in Iraq, and how does it operate?

Abedin: What they do essentially is work with militias and armed factions in Iraq, and they enable them to gain a critical advantage over their adversaries -- and their adversaries are, first and foremost, the Sunni factions.

RFE/RL: Does that mean they provide them with training?

Abedin: It depends on what you mean by "training." They would certainly give them highly specialized training in forming networks whose primary function is to gather and manipulate intelligence, and that's the primary battle in Iraq. . . If you talk about arms training, that is not necessarily the case, because a lot of these [fighters] already have that training.

Later on in the interview, Abedin disputes the notion that the Quds Force could possibly operate independently of Tehran:

Abedin: The Quds Force, although it's a highly specialized department, it is subject to strict, iron-clad military discipline. It's completely controlled by the military hierarchy of the IRGC, and the IRGC is very tightly controlled by the highest levels of the administration in Iran. If the Quds Force was going around blowing up American soldiers, then that would be definitely sanctioned by the highest levels of the Iranian government. But my point is that they're not doing that, because Iranian policy in Iraq is not about that. Iranian policy in Iraq is to give proper training and support to Iran's natural allies in Iraq in order to influence their political positioning in post-occupation Iraq. The Iranians are far too smart, in my view, to challenge American power in Iraq directly.

As to the size of this force:

Abedin: I think its core doesn't go beyond 800 people. These kind of specialized departments tend to be very small. But it's a very capable force -- their people are extremely talented [and] they tend to be the best people in the IRGC.

Look at this strange coincidence

Check out who Hamas is now fighting in Gaza. From the New York Times:

Hamas on Monday arrested the spokesman of a shadowy group holding a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter....

Hamas has demanded that the Army of Islam, led by a violent Gaza clan, free Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped on a Gaza City street on March 12.

But the group, whose formerly close relations with Hamas have soured, has demanded that Britain first release a radical Islamic cleric with ties to al-Qaida. It has threatened to kill Johnston if Hamas tried to free him by force.

Now consider what else the Times reports:

The Army of Islam threatened to release what it said were damaging documents about Hamas if its spokesman, Abu Khatab al-Maqdisi, remained in custody. The group also kidnapped 10 members of Hamas....

Al-Maqdisi was arrested while trying to fire on members of a Hamas-allied security force, said Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, who denied any link between al-Maqdisi's arrest and efforts to free Johnston.

To me this suggests that Hamas is now fighting the same type of insurgents the U.S. is in Iraq - that is, Al Qaeda linked insurgents.

Could the surge plan be working?

Preliminary numbers suggest that it may in fact well be. Even the New York Times reports:

Iraqi officials estimated that civilian deaths nationwide had dropped 36 percent in June, down to about 1,200. Civilian casualties in May had topped 1,900, they said. The Web site icasualties.org, which tabulates news reports of civilian deaths, put the number of deaths in June at about 1,342, down from 1,980 in May.

In Baghdad, 730 civilians were reported killed in June from assassinations, bombs or small-arms fire. That was down from 1,070 in May, a decline of almost 32 percent, an Interior Ministry official told The New York Times.

The cost of this good news for Iraqis, it should be duly noted, has largely been borne by U.S. military members who made the ultimate sacrifice for Iraq. As the Times reports:

With the increase in American troops starting early this year, there has also been a rise in soldiers’ deaths, although somewhat fewer American troops died in June, 101, than in April, 104, or May, when deaths reached 126.

Not to mention what all this is costing the American taxpayer.

Lord Ahmed defends himself against, he says, being "deliberately misquoted"

I finally got around to asking Lord Ahmed, the first Muslim peer in Britain's House of Lords if he had been properly quoted by the London Telegraph.

The Telegraph story I was referring to ran Monday with this headline: "Muslim peer compares Rushdie to 9/11 bombers." According to the London daily, Lord Ahmed responded to a query from the French newspaper Le Figaro on Salman Rushdie's knighthood with the rhetorical question: "What would one say if the Saudi or Afghan governments honoured the martyrs of the September 11 attacks on the United States?"

Now, I happen to know - and, full disclosure, like - Lord Ahmed. I got to know him because I interviewed him at length in London last January, when I was there to blog about the Clash of Civilizations debate between London Mayor Ken Livingstone and my sometimes coauthor, Daniel Pipes. (See my write-up here.)

I knew the Lord could be provocative. I did see him stand up and proclaim "[But] I am an Islamist" in front of a worried crowd that had assembled in a Whitehall lecture room to hear the scholar Bat Ye'or expound on her Eurabia thesis about the coming Islamist takeover of Europe.

As Lord Ahmed told me later, he did this in an effort to infuse what he thought was some reality into the crowd's alarmism. Were these people really seriously fearing the likes of him? - a loyal British citizen and a Lord no less, whose forebears had been serving the British crown for generations, first as colonial subjects and now as citizens? His forebears, as he went on to remind the crowd, had like many British Muslims, even in some cases sacrificed their lives defending the British flag.

His appeal fell largely on deaf ears. My reading of the crowd's reaction to his remarks was that before he opened his mouth that afternoon in January, Lord Ahmed had long been written off as a person of suspicion. As someone in attendance later pointed out, after all, it was Lord Ahmed who had invited the notorious anti-Semite, Israel Shamir, to address the House of Lords.

According to Stephen Pollard who wrote about this in an editorial published by The (London) Times not long after this event:

The gist of Shamir/Jermas’s speech at the meeting can be gleaned from its title, “Jews and the Empire”. It included observations such as: “All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.” “Your newspapers belong to Zionists . . . Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.” “In the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble — and that is Jewish supremacy drive . . . in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East.” “The Jews like an Empire . . . This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance . . . Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se.” “Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England . . . they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”

In his defense, Lord Ahmed told me that at the time he had invited Shamir to address his fellow peers, he had no idea how vicious some of the man's views were. He had met Shamir in Jerusalem, of all places, and he had been introduced to him as an Israeli who was uniquely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. It was on this basis that he had invited him to come to the House of Lords.

Though it became abundantly clear to Lord Ahmed during the course of Shamir's talk that any sympathy his invited speaker might have had toward the Palestinians seemed to be rooted in a corresponding hatred for Jews, Lord Ahmed admitted to me that it never once occurred to him to shut his invited guest down. He did feel free to interrupt him a few times, though. And he remained fully confident throughout Shamir's lecture that, as he recalled for me, his fellow peers were also sophisticated enough to draw their own sensible conclusions and raise their own points of contention with his notorious guest.

He was unwilling to apologize for having allowed such a person into such a respectable venue, he said, because in his view it was better to have such controversial views publicly debated as opposed to suppressed. The gist of his argument, as I recall, was that such ideas should be aired so they can be judged on their merits - or deficiencies - as the case may be.

In a similar vein, he told me, he would not have dreamed of trying to prevent Bat Ye'or from speaking that day at Whitehall. Even though, as he suggested, her argument struck him as remarkably similar to Shamir's. Only according to Ye'or, he pointed out, it is the Muslims as opposed to the Jews who hold the evil empire designs.

Anyway, based on the hours of conversations I have had with Lord Ahmed, and the numerous emails we have exchanged, I couldn't believe that Lord Ahmed was now referring to the 9/11 hijackers as martyrs - as in martyrs who had died for Islam, his beloved religion - even if a London newspaper was saying it were so.

Lord Ahmed, after all, was the same Lord Ahmed who had proposed replacing the term "Islamic terrorists" with "apostate terrorists." He was also the Lord Ahmed who had advocated deporting radical clerics such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri - a position that earned him a fatwa calling for his death. And, he was the same Lord Ahmed who headed the committee that proposed having British imams pass English exams before being allowed to preach in British mosques. He even went so far as to recommend that these new English-language certified imams should then be monitored to ensure they wouldn't use their now proven facility with the Queen's English to inculcate an even wider audience with any values incompatible with British citizenship.

These were not the positions of someone who would logically see the hijackers as martyrs in my view. Had he then misspoken to the French newspaper? Had the reporter gotten it wrong? Were his remarks mistranslated? Or - horrors - had I misread him? To find out, I contacted him by email and this was his response:

I have always believed that the terrorists who attacked the twin towers on 9/11 and the terrorists who attacked London on 7/7 were despicable, evil fanatics.

The point I was trying to make with the French Reporter as well as with all the other reporters , was that Rushdie's knighthood is to Muslims as if the evil terrorists of 9/11 were to be awarded by the Afghans or the Saudis. We would be horrified.

Now, I have to say, missing from his comments were the clarification that I would have expected - that terrorism and blasphemy should in no way be equated, that one is clearly a more despicable crime against humanity than the other.

But in Islam, it should be recalled, blasphemy by a Muslim is apostasy, a crime punishable by death. So, while one might not like this sort of equivocating, I do think that in the end, Lord Ahmed did correctly peg the reason for the Muslim outrage.

And notice that he never suggested that Rushdie, like the terrorists, was either evil or despicable. He was just saying Muslims were horrified that Britain had bestowed one of its highest honors on someone who they, rightly or wrongly, believed had attacked them by having insulted their religion.

Did he mean to imply in his statement that knighting Salman Rushdie simply wasn't the best way to introduce the Muslim world to the merits of freedom of expression I asked him in a follow-up phone call. Yes, he said, this was certainly not the best way to convince Muslims of the importance of free speech.

"The Bangladesh Poet of Impropriety"

In an effort to bring you alternative views from the Islamic world, here is the first of my 10-part email correspondence with Maqsoodul Haque, who, as he writes on one of his many blogs is a "Bangladesh based anti-establishment radical thinker, columnist and jazz musician."

As a lead-up to this interview series, a few days ago I posted this YouTube video of one of his recent concerts.

So who are you Mac?

Just an average Bangladeshi with a lot of varying interest, the foremost being a passion for music and one that has been a part of my life for almost thirty one years. In my family tree which I can track back to six generations I find no musicians and I guess I learnt it all from the hours spent listening to the radio. My parents were poor and couldn’t afford music lessons for me, but my stern yet affectionate father noting my enthusiasm encouraged me to sing along with the radio. The ‘shower’ is where I probably graduated next and where I would lock myself in and sing to my hearts content. Without an audience I would conjure mental images of playing to thousands and all of it miraculously added up to my real life experience! I must be blessed? To date, I remain musically illiterate i.e. I cannot play any instrument, not the guitar, I do not know what a chord or a note is, or which key I am singing, but my discography has about sixty songs that I wrote, composed, and sang and made popular – so I must be doing something TERRIBLY RIGHT. I have ten albums to my credit, the most recent being in October of 2006. What amazes me is the fan following I have and last week when I was at a FM station I was deluged by over 300 text messages by a generation of listeners that wasn’t even born when my earliest recordings were released. I average about fifty live concerts a year.

Tomorrow I'll be posting his answer to the question: "Why the interest in global jihad?"

Meanwhile, enjoy another of his video recordings. Mac, incidentally, is the lead singer of the group, or, as he puts it, "I am the guy with a mullah beard and 'Gumcha' on my head."

On Saddam's non-relationship with Al Qaeda

Just when you're sure all the intelligence was sexed up prior to the Iraq invasion, comes this account from a former Defense Department intelligence analyst in today's Washington Post. Christina Shelton, who was in a position to know what she is talking about, suggests that in fact, the intelligence was sexed up after - for example in George Tenet's post-mortem of his career as the CIA director:

On Aug. 15, 2002, I presented my part of a composite Pentagon briefing on al-Qaeda and Iraq to George Tenet, then CIA director. In his recent book, "At the Center of the Storm," Tenet wrote that I said in opening remarks that "there is no more debate," "no further analysis is required" and "it is an open-and-shut case."

I never said those things. In fact, I said the covert nature of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda made it difficult to know its full extent; al-Qaeda's security precautions and Iraq's need to cloak its activities with terrorist networks precluded a full appreciation of their relationship. Tenet also got the title of the briefing wrong. It was "Assessing the Relationship Between Iraq and al-Qa'ida," not "Iraq and al-Qa'ida -- Making the Case."

That day I summarized a body of mostly CIA reporting (dating from 1990 to 2002), from a variety of sources, that reflected a pattern of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda, including high-level contacts between Iraqi senior officials and al-Qaeda, training in bomb making, Iraqi offers of safe haven, and a nonaggression agreement to cooperate on unspecified areas. My position was that analysts were not addressing these reports since much of the material did not surface in finished, disseminated publications.

As Shelton goes on to eviscerate Tenet:

It's notable that on Oct. 7, 2002, Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence stating that "our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving." He wrote:

."We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade" and of "the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad."

. "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression" and that "al-Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

· "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action."

And she concludes with this coup de grâce:

A more complete understanding of Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda will emerge when historians can exploit the numerous seized documents free from the politics of the Iraq war. For his part, Tenet, who was at the center of the political thicket, placed himself on both sides of the issue: providing intelligence on al-Qaeda and Iraq's relationship while at the same time inferring that no ties existed, only "concerns."

Are last night's would-be bombers in London related to the Harrow gang?

This ever-connecting mosiac, is all I have to say.

ABC News blog, The Blotter, reports:

British police have a "crystal clear" picture of the man who drove the bomb-rigged silver Mercedes outside a London nightclub, and officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com he bears "a close resemblance" to a man arrested by police in connection with another bomb plot but released for lack of evidence.

The bomb plot being referred to here is the Harrow Street gang. This gang plotted to blow up all sorts of places in Britain and the U.S. The ringleader, one Dhiren Barot, a Hindu convert to Islam had close enough ties to Al Qaeda that he worked directly with KSM, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and after KSM was arrested in 2003, he was able to call a meeting with the Al Qaeda leaders in South Waziristan.