Canada Attacked- Arab Opinion Divided

My thoughts today are with my Canadian friends, who yesterday saw a Jihadist gunman attack their Parliament, killing a soldier.

It’s clear from the reaction on Twitter that the debate we have in the West, whether Jihadism is the essence of Islam, or an aberration of a few extremists, is mirrored in the Arab world.

@ALE2756 clearly takes the latter view,

while @mazennino thinks Canada deserved what it got.

@NouredineHicham had a unique take, also unsympathetic to the Canadians:

@MarcoDentoo seemed to be on the fence; perhaps that’s why he used the hashtag #Islamic_Schizophrenia

@ElsayedWalid shares my own sympathy for the victim, and sadness at the effect this will have on the Canadian Nation.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Arab Tweet: What’s in Kerry’s Bag?

Photo Source: http://en.alalam.ir/

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was seen in Cairo last week carrying around a rather undignified white plastic shopping bag. Many in the Arab world had fun speculating what was in it, and soon “What’s in Kerry’s Bag?” was trending on Twitter. Some guesses were stereotypically Middle Eastern:

Others were more creative:

“Diapers” could alternately be translated “feminine hygiene products.”

Many tweets played on the similarity between Kerry’s name and a popular type of cheese:

Photo Source: https://www.karouncheese.com

@Tallouza went straight to the source:

So far there’s no response from the State Department.

(Thanks go out to D.K., K.H., and M.A. for helpful discussions.)

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Arab Tweet: Proud of Malala

Despite cartoon Muslims on Family Guy flying into a rage at the sight of a girl reading, Arabs responded with pride to Friday’s announcement that girls’ education activist Malala Yusuf will share the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Some typical tweets:

No Twitter conversation would be complete without the obligatory conspiracy theorist, albeit this one may be joking.

And of course there’s always that one tiresome person who, regardless of the topic of conversation, must make it about something else.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Arab Tweet: Girls on Motorcycles

#Youth_seen_with_girls_in_Jeddah is trending in Saudi Arabia in the wake of sightings of young women riding on the backs of motorcycles. Mz-mz.net reports,

Young women seen on motorcycles in Jeddah October 9, 2014 A number of drivers were surprised at the South King Abdulazziz Road roundabout in the city of Jeddah at three o’clock Thursday morning by more than ten sports motorcycles going at high speed with young women riding on the back.

The reaction on Twitter has been generally negative. Some blame decaying values:

Others blame immigration:

@mamdohmohamad finds the practice unhygienic,

while @mohmd_5173 doesn’t believe they’re women at all:

@alqhtani_omar merely writes,

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

ISIS and Ghazali: the Smoking Gun

In a recent talk, The Islamic in Islamic State, I argued that to understand ISIS, you need to understand the 11th Century Muslim scholar Abu Hamid Ghazali. Ghazali is revered in the Muslim world; some have called him the greatest Muslim after Muhammad. During my talk, I cited examples of Ghazali’s disdain for science, and hatred of Jews and Christians. I then showed the resemblance to statements made by ISIS.

But it turns out the evidence for Ghazali’s influence on ISIS runs deeper than mere resemblance. Last week ISIS released a propaganda pamphlet in which it argued for the legitimacy of its leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi’s claim to rule the Muslim world as caliph. In the pamphlet, which was titled Extend your Hands and Pledge Loyalty to Baghdadi, I found the following quotation about the ascension of the first caliph, who not coincidentally was also named Abu Bakr:

The Imam Ghazali, the mercy of Allah upon him, said, “If Umar had been the only one who swore allegiance to [Abu Bakr] as caliph, and the rest of the world remained opposed, or were divided into equal factions, with no distinct majority among them, then [his bid for the caliphate] would have been defeated. For the primary prerequisite for the caliphate is unity: when it is unified, [the caliph’s] influence rises and hearts turn away from partisanship.

The quotation is from Ghazali’s book Exposing the Batinites. In an age when regime change was common, the question of the legitimacy of a ruler was of great interest to medieval Muslim intellectuals. Ghazali set out to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Sunni caliph of his time against the claims of the rival Shiite sect known to Muslims as the Batinites and in the West as the Assassins.

ISIS uses the quotation to argue that Abu Bakr Baghdadi, like his seventh century namesake, is qualified to be caliph because his people have overwhelmingly sworn allegiance to him. The argument is firmly in line with the medieval Muslim tradition, and demonstrates that the ISIS propagandists are familiar with even the minor works of Ghazali, and that they hold him in high enough regard to cite him as an authority for their own legitimacy.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Islamic in the Islamic State

Last week I gave a talk to the Holbrook, MA Tea Party. In it I addressed the comment Mr. Obama made in a recent speech that “ISIL is not Islamic.”

I said, “The approach to take to this question is to look in the history of Islam. What are the great currents? What are the great intellectual trends? What were the key, pivotal moments, and so on? And once you understand those, see how ISIS fits into that.”

Here’s how my talk started,

And here it is in its entirety,

BTW, The book I'm holding is The Incoherence of the Philosophers, by the 11th Century scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. Its publication was one of those key, pivotal moments; I talk about it in the video.

(Thank you TR for the videography!)

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Bloomberg News: Suspect in Chicago ATC fire says US deserves retribution from terrorists

Bloomberg News reported on Saturday that Brian Howard, who is suspected of starting last week’s fire at the Aurora, IL air traffic control hub, posted a private Facebook message ranting against the US Government, calling government employees “lazy,” and citing their “immoral and unethical acts” as the reason “why terrorists and 3rd world nations hate us.” He added that the US deserves “retribution.”

The fire caused shutdowns at O’Hare and Midway airports, and disrupted air travel nationwide.

Regarding the message, Bloomberg said,

It was posted on the account of Brian Howard, 36, at about 5:36 a.m. local time yesterday, minutes before firefighters were called to the Federal Aviation Administration center in Aurora, Illinois. The Federal Bureau of Investigation in a search-warrant affidavit yesterday quoted from the post, which it attributed to Howard, without mentioning the anti-government content. Bloomberg News received the complete message from a family member of one of Howard’s Facebook friends. The person who provided it asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to release it… “WAKE UP!” said the message to those authorized to read what’s been identified as Howard’s Facebook page. “This is a gov’t by the people, for the people and of the people which right now equates to immoral and unethical acts. That’s why terrorists and 3rd world nations hate us, because our tax dollars go to more unrest than rest.” “So we deserve the retribution from people who do not have the same ability for education, work and way of life,” the writer said.

In a related story, ABC News reported that Aurora police chief Greg Thomas informed the media, "It appears to be a fire set by a contract employee. There was no terrorist act."

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

ISIS murders human rights activist for critical Facebook posts

The tragic murder of an Iraqi rights activist puts yet another human face on the victims of the Islamic State. In a press release today, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG), Nickolay Mladenov, condemned the murder of Samira Naimi by the terrorist group ISIS. According to the release,

Ms. Al-Nuaimy was seized from her home by the ISIL group on 17 September 2014, reportedly following posts on her Facebook page that were critical of their destruction of places of religious and cultural significance. She was convicted by a so-called “Shari’a court” for apostasy. She was then held for a further five days during which she was subjected to torture in an attempt to force her to ‘repent’, before she was executed in public. “By torturing and executing a female human rights’ lawyer and activist, defending in particular the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul, ISIL continues to attest to its infamous nature, combining hatred, nihilism and savagery, as well as its total disregard of human decency”, Mr. Mladenov underlined. “ISIL has repeatedly targeted the weak and defenseless in acts of brutality and cowardice that are beyond description, bringing about unfathomable suffering to all Iraqis regardless of their gender, age, religion, faith or ethnicity”, the SRSG continued. “I call on the Government of Iraq and the international community to resolutely face the life-threatening danger to peace, safety and security of Iraq and the Iraqis from the ISIL and to do all they can to ensure the perpetrators of such crimes are held to account”, Mr. Mladenov concluded.

I join many in the Muslim world in grieving for Ms. Naimi.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Arab Tweet: Because Hezbollah entered Syria

The Lebanese militia group Hezbollah is one of the key combatants in the Syrian Civil War (on Assad’s side). Many problems are blamed on them – civilian deaths, car bombs, economic disloation; it’s gotten so that #Because_Hezbollah_entered_Syria is now trending in Lebanon. And while many of the tweets are quite serious, some Lebanese are having fun with it, in a darkly humorous way:

This last one is from a Saudi furniture store:

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Arab Tweet: US Bombing of Syria

Last night the United States and its coalition partners expanded their war against ISIS from Iraq into neighboring Syria, with an aerial attack that targeted both ISIS and the al-Qaeda-linked group Khorasan. The reaction from the Arab world is overwhelmingly negative, in spite of, or perhaps because of, participation by the governments of Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. Here’s a sampling:

A number of tweeters observed that these attacks help a guy who we say we oppose. This tweet from “Urgent Arabia,” a news service that promises credible accounts of the Arab Street, is typical:

Abd ur-Rahman responds to Urgent Arabia,

There are many attacks on the rulers of the coalition nations, such as this one from Qasim Yahya Khairuddin, whose about.me profile identifies him as a newscaster with the Palestinian al-Quds satellite channel in Beirut:

Dalaa al-Mufti, from Kuwait, is no friend of ISIS, but…

Finally, Joelle Achkar has this message for the coalition:

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

The Arab Tweet: Saudi National Day

Judging from today’s Twitter feed, the big story today in the Arab world is not the 130,000 refugees who crossed from Syria into Turkey over the weekend, the fall of the Yemeni prime minister in the wake of the occupation of government buildings by Shiite Houthi rebels, or even the Reuters story about the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, advertising for spies on its website.

Instead, today is a day of celebration: Saudi National Day, the anniversary of the day in 1932 when Hejaz and Nejd merged to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This tweet from @abdulrahmanoham is typical:

Note the hashtags. This is quite common: when I searched on the Arabic acronym for ISIS, I got a flood of National Day tweets. I’m not sure if the intent is to express solidarity with ISIS and al-Nusra, or defiance. The generally patriotic tone of the photos makes me suspect the latter.

@M__eh86 is dubious about the holiday. He writes.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com