Deconstructing Ajami's Latest

from Najam Haider

Last Wednesday, Fouad Ajami, once again graced us with an article in editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. The piece begins with a discussion of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi's relentless campaign within Iraq that mainly targets Shi'a as collaborators with the American opposition. He notes that Zarqawi "is a holy warrior on behalf of a wider Arab world that has averted its gaze from his crimes, that has given him its silent approval."

Disparaging Arab reactions to political developments within Iraq, he maintains that the crux of opposition lies in the fear of a new-born Shi'a/Kurd dominiated state with the potential for changing the political landscape of the Middle East ("An Iraqi polity with a modern social contract would be a rebuke to all that Egypt - and the rest of the Arab world - stands for..."). Finally, he argues that the Shi'a have traditionally been scapegoated by idealogues of hatred like Zarqawi and do not seek to create a theocratic state in the image of Iran.

Leaving aside Ajami's Bernard Lewis-esque assertions about "the Arabs" as a monolithic faceless mob with "an addiction to failure" and a "culture of shame," his argument can be reduced to two main points:

1. Zarqawi has widespread support within the Arab world exemplified by the lack of a vocal opposition to his attacks on Shi'a. While this statement may be correct in the context of American and European media coverage, the fact is that the attacks have seriously divided the global Jihadist movement and led to a seriously decline in popular support for Zarqawi. Evidence for this can be found in a recent article by NYU Professor Bernard Haykel who writes, "Zarqawi’s mentor, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (aka `Asim al-Barqawi), has expressed his unease about the strategy deployed by the Jihadis in Iraq... making the case that the killing of ordinary Shiites is not permitted in Islam... and moreover that suicide bombing is a tactic to be used only in extreme and exceptional circumstances." Every indication points to a decline in the global popularity and cohesiveness of the Jihadi movement in the aftermath of these attacks. Where, then is the silence, when Zarqawi's mentor himself is condemning attacks of Shi'a?

2. The primary cause of opposition to the government of Iraq lies in the empowerment of the Shi'a and the Kurds. While there is no doubt that Ajami is correct is detecting a hesitation on the part of dictatorial Nationalist government in dealing with the new Iraqi state, he assumes that the government is an independent state free of outside political control. In reality, the national government is primarily composed of exiles with little legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people (not to mention Arabs in other countries) while local leaders are laregly powerless. The recent incident in Basra where British forces destroyed a prison facility to free soldiers being held on domestic charges is evidence for the complete disempowerment of local structures of power. Ajami makes no mention of the power dynamic of 150,000 occupying troops and its impact on Arab perceptions of the Iraqi government. Let us also keep in mind that the Shi'a were central to the formation of the Baathist Party in Iraq (see Yitzakh Nakhash's The Shia of Iraq), fought as ARABS against the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, and help high positions in the government and Baathist party leading up to the crackdowns in 1992. Arab Nationalism in Iraq was traditionally tinged with a Shi'i flavor.

Ajami is absolutely correct in assessing the tactics used by Zarqawi against Shi'i civilians. He is also correct is detecting a skepticism on the part of the wider Arab world with respect to the new Iraqi government. It's a shame, however, that instead of placing these development in a nuanced wider political context, he chooses to manipulate it to support a laregly essentialist misreading of Islamic (and Arab) history.

CAIR Event on Sunni Shia Relations

The Council on American-Islamic Relations held an event with Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr on the topic “Shias, Sunnis, and the Future of U.S. Relations with the Muslim World.”

I attended the event this morning and I walked away quite impressed. While he did not speak exactly on topic, Dr. Nasr gave an overview to Shiism and was rather candid when discussing the roots of some of the mistrust (and violence) against Shias today.

Some highlights:

• He said that Shias number 14%-15% worldwide but that that number does not reflect the geographic distribution of where Shias live. He said from Egypt to Morroco there are virtually no Shias and the same is true from Bengal to Japan. The majority of Shias are concentrated in the “center” of the Muslim world, with of course some exceptions.
• He made reference to the notion that Persians are always Shias and Arabs are always Sunni. I appreciated how he said that the terms Sunni and Shia were and are fluid. Some entire communities that are now Shia were once Sunni and vice versa.
• He applauded Ayatullah Sistani for his leadership and criticized Iraq’s Sunni community for not having a counterpart who could similarly control the Sunni community.
• I asked a question if sectarian violence in Pakistan was partly a byproduct of the Iranian revolution. He said political groups in Pakistan who posit this notion are “the height of hypocrisy.”

Email CAIR to applaud them for a great event: cair@cair-net.org

Let the Eagle Soar...

TQF is pleased to welcome Najam Haider to our ever-rapidly expanding (ok not really) team of bloggers. Najam is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University hoping to submit his dissertation focusing on the formation of sectarian identity in 8th century Iraq in the Fall of 2006. He will be teaching a course on early Islamic history this spring as an adjunct Professor at New York University.

This is his first entry.
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The New York Times reported today that Attorney General John Ashcroft and other high ranking officials will have to appear in a civil lawsuit filed by some Muslims held in Brooklyn after 9/11. This is a huge victory for civil liberties groups that had been trying for months to draw attention to the plight of Muslim communities in Brooklyn.

The staggering rate of Pakistani departures from Brooklyn has been the repeated focus of Washington Post articles over the last few years. Michael Powell documented the voluntary exodus in February 2003 and its impact on the community in May 2003 but this is the first indication of an organized legal response.

Al Jazeerah addresses condition of Saudi Shi'as

Aljazeera English website features an article on September 27 entitled "Saudi Shia seeks greater rights."

The article says that "Shia are believed to make up around 10% of Saudi Arabia's native population of 16 million and complain of being marginalised by a government closely attached to religious conservatives who consider Shia beliefs heretical." (In Amir Taheri's article, he pegs that number at 15%)

According to the article, "Abdullah, who as crown prince launched a 'national dialogue' two years ago that brought Saudi Sunnis and Shia together for talks, has overseen a modest easing of restrictions on Shia in the Eastern Province."

Others would disagree.

Here we go again...

During the summer, my friend Mohamed Sabur and I sat down to create a new organization. I was skeptical then and, well, I still am.

Neither of us was (and is) interested in creating an advocacy group or an “umbrella group.” But we were both drawn by a desire to promote self-education within the Shi'a community, especially on socio-political concerns..

Enter The Qunoot Foundation. Our purpose is three fold:

1) To distribute scholarships for internships in Washington, DC. The details are still being ironed out and we hope to make an announcement soon.

2) To organize forums that address community concerns. Our first will be held on November 12, 2005 at GW Law School and more info can be found here.

3) To create content. We have kept that term purposefully vague. This summer we launched a series of podcasts on iTunes. Whats a podcast? Click here

Another part is this group blog. Our purpose is not to provide ad nausem commentary on events, like the killing of 5 Shi'as in Iraq, but rather to aggregate these news items and perhaps offer snippets of insight.

A few ground rules should be established (Ahem—read up interested Qunoot bloggers):

1) All entries will be under 350 words. Or at least we will try.

2) Whenever possible, we will try to use hyperlinks and quote excerpts and not the entire article.

3) No personal information will be posted. Just aced your LSAT? Congrats. That does not belong here. But if you were recently harassed (or treated kindly) on account of being Shi'a in your local masjid, MSA, whatever, let us know. We need to start documenting our experiences—positive and negative.

4) Entries will address concerns of the Shi'a community. This is not limited to just events where the word “Shi'a” are mentioned. Think the US response to Katrina sucks? Well a lot of people do. Send us your thoughts. We just might publish it. And if you come to our conference, you just might get an extra cup of masala chai.

5) Humor is not haraam. Well some of it is. But use the halal kind. We like it and, frankly, Muslims need more of it.

That’s 365 words. I went over. Ok so just this once we will make an exception. I shall go now and stand in the corner as punishment.

Send us your thoughts: info@qunoot.org*.

*If you go over 350 words, we will not banish you to the corner. Well we might.

God Is Quite Popular During A Hurricane - alt.muslim

(Link: http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1540_0_25_0_C38)

The wounds created by hurricane Katrina and hurricane Bush are far too deep and far too painful for just our donations to heal.

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By Zahir Janmohamed, September 7, 2005

God is quite popular during a hurricane. First God was credited with causing hurricane Katrina and now God is being represented by fundamentalists - Muslim, Christian, even secularist - who each claim to know why God "masterminded" Katrina. Examples of this rhetoric range from al-Qaeda's disturbing insistence that Katrina is the "wrath of God" to comments by Church leaders like "Father Bob" Masset of St. Mary Magdalene Church in Metaire who noted that "this storm was in God's plan." Even the normally restrained Rabbi Michael Lerner of the progressive group Tikkun invoked religious language to describe Katrina. He wrote, "This is a classic case of the law of karma, or what the Torah warns of environmental disaster unless we create a just society, or what others call watching the chickens come home to roost, or what goes around come around."

But perhaps most damaging are the self-aggrandizing depictions, often laden with words like "Lo" and "behold," that natural disasters are a great equalizing and even humbling force. Indeed the wind and the rain may not discriminate between people but our preparedness and our reaction reflects our imperfections, biases, and even, naivetÈ.

Critical Analysis

One of the unusual things about hurricane Katrina is the immediate emergence of critical discussions. Hip-hop artist Kanye West, for example, departed from NBC's shameless self-promoting telethon last week to launch a verbal critique against Bush. In a visibly (and uncharacteristically) shaken appearance, West noted that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," prompting NBC to censor his remarks from the West coast telecast.

Too often, however, these critical discussions do not emerge. Two problems arise from the absence of this dialogue ó first we seldom assess (or even acknowledge) the ethnic, racial, and economic landscape of disaster areas before we donate. After the recent Tsunami, for example, Human Rights Watch documented how aid money did not reach Dalits, or untouchables, in Tamil Nadu, India. In previous articles, I have documented how aid money given to rehabilitate the Gujarat earthquake in 2001 often ended up in the hands of Hindu nationalists, unbeknownst to donors who failed to do their due diligence.

Second, we do not critically evaluate how our reaction to various "natural" disasters differs according to our own biases. The New York Times recently reported that President Jalal Talabani angrily criticized Arab Sunni leaders for their muted response to the stampede last week in which 1,000 Shia piligrims died on the largest day of casualties since the US invasion. A critical examination of our assistance as Muslims may reveal that not only are we marginalizing certain communities in our aid but also that our aid money may be furthering racial, ethnic, and sectarian divides by unconsciously aiding one community over another.

Targeted Help

The failure (or perhaps unwillingness?) to research before donating is what leads, in part, to our self-congratulatory insistence that aid money must always be "color-blind." While we may applaud the spirit of this approach, it ignores the unfortunate ó but very real ó biases that invariably creep into how aid monies and goods are allocated. In an article published in Common Dreams on September 24, 2004, writer Mike Davis describe the chilling discrepancy in how different communities in New Orleans were equipped to respond to last year's hurricane Ivan. He observed that "affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less ó mainly Black ó were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath."

For Davis, this discrepancy represents both a racial bias and an ongoing effort to trample the rights of the poor. He writes, "City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have relentlessly attempted to push the poorest segment of the population ó blamed for the city's high crime rates ó across the Mississippi River. Historic Black public-housing projects have been razed to make room for upper-income townhouses and a Wal-Mart. In other housing projects, residents are routinely evicted for offenses as trivial as their children's curfew violations. The ultimate goal seems to be a tourist theme-park New Orleans ó one big Garden District ó with chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and prisons outside the city limits."

Targeted aid is about collecting assessments like Davis' and then assisting the very communities that may be marginalized by relief efforts or by persistence racial and economic bias. It is not, however, an excuse to help, say, only the Muslims of Louisiana or Mississippi. Targeted aid is about helping those communities most in need ó even if they are from communities that we may disagree with in other matters.

Sustainable Assistance

One thing that struck me about Katrina are the images of how parts of Mississippi and Louisiana looked before Katrina. The hurricane has exposed America's neglected underbelly and reminded us that perhaps the words "first world" and "third world" are more relative than we think. The Houston Chronicle recently reran an editorial from its December 1, 2001 paper noting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency "ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country." This is not to suggest some conspiracy theory that our leaders knew of imminent disaster and chose to ignore it.

Katrina should be seen as part of the daily violences occurring for generations in America's neglected poor, largely non-White areas. This includes, but is not limited to, a poor health infrastructure, an inadequate minimum wage, and a deeply flawed legal system. Our aid assistance should seek to tackle both the immediate needs (blankets, food, clothing, money) but also seek to address the institutional and governmental failure of equipping this region with proper care.

Emotional and Moral Rehabilitation

America failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and it's frightening to consider the reasons why. In an article in the Guardian, columnist Jonathan Freedland writes that in the aftermath of Katrina, "(Americans) have learned that 35% of black households in (Louisiana) did not have a car. Or that the staff and guests of the Hyatt hotel were evacuated first, while the rest, the mainly poor and black, were at the back of the queue. Or that 28% of the people of New Orleans live in poverty and that 84% of those are black. Or that some people in that city were so poor, they did not have the money even to catch a bus out of town ó that race, in other words, determined who got left behind." But Freedland remains pessimistic that America will learn from the lesson on race taught by Katrina. He notes, "Like a character in Shakespearean tragedy, race is America's fatal flaw, the weakness which so often brings it low."

As Muslims continue to pat themselves on the back for pledging to raise $10 million dollars, it would be a disservice that if in our efforts to "help out," we did not engage in a brutally honest discussion of racism within our own lives and communities. The wounds created by hurricane Katrina and hurricane Bush are far too deep and far too painful for just our donations to heal.

Zahir Janmohamed admits that he too has tried, with limited success, to interject the words "Lo" and "Behold" into his sentences. For more of Zahir's commentary, read his blog falloficarus.blogspot.com or listen to his podcast Qunoot on iTunes.