Is Tommy Robinson a fascist?

No.
Part II of a series: Who is Tommy Robinson?
by Michael Isenberg.

England’s best known political prisoner was in the news again this weekend as thousands turned out in London for a Free Tommy Robinson protest on Saturday. If you watched the coverage in the mainstream media, you would have seen images of violence as groups of protesters hurled bottles, broke through police barricades, and chased Britain’s finest down the street. There’s even one video making the rounds of a member of the crowd giving a Nazi salute (in all fairness, it looks like he was trolling either counter-protesters or the police).

If you searched a little harder and looked at some of the grassroots videos, well, you’d have seen more images of violence, but you also would have seen much larger groups peacefully waving flags, chanting “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,” listening to speeches, and clowning for the cameras. Sometimes both sides' narratives are true.

In much of the coverage of Mr. Robinson and his supporters, especially in the far-left media, there seems to be a recurring theme: “Robinson and his supporters have a history of racism and Islamophobia, and have many links to fascist organisations (Searchlight Magazine).” “Fascist and racist criminal Tommy Robinson has been jailed, but we can’t be complacent (standuptoracism.org).” “Protest for Tommy Robinson in London is a warning about the threat of fascism (The Socialist Worker).” In a learned dissertation, rife with nuanced definitions, Hope not Hate assures us that “Tommy Robinson is a far-right, Islamophobic extremist,” but “We don’t consider [him] a ‘nazi’, a ‘fascist’ or a ‘white supremacist.’” It’s a cheap trick — backhandedly associating your opponent with something heinous by insisting it isn’t true. In any case, even when purportedly denying that Mr. Robinson is a fascist, our left-of-center friends can’t stay away from the f-word, usually with the r-word (racist) trotting along in its footsteps.

Following the links to these articles, you’ll find a lot of name-calling, a smattering of quotations from Mr. Robinson himself, often without context, and a copy of his rap sheet, leaving out key details that change the complexion of some of the charges. What you won’t find is any actual evidence that Tommy Robinson is a fascist.

In Part I of this series, I provided the basic biographical stuff about Mr. Robinson: his upbringing in Luton, his soccer hooligan years, and how he got involved in anti-jihadist activism. I’ll address the accusations of racism in the next installment. In this part, I’ll take on the question of whether he is a fascist.

Let me cut to the chase: No.

The idea that Tommy Robinson is a fascist is ludicrous.

In the first place, he doesn’t embrace fascist ideology. I find no record of him calling for a dictatorship, a totalitarian state, or government control of the economy (which is more than I can say for his left-of-center critics). He just doesn’t seem interested in questions of how the government or the economy should be organized. The only part of the fascist program that he might possibly accept—and this is a stretch—is nationalism. But then, what’s the difference between nationalism and garden variety patriotism?

“But what about that time he joined the British National Party (BNP)?” his critics demand.

Yes, it’s true. For one year in the mid-2000s, Tommy Robinson was a member of the BNP, whose Führer at the time, Nick Griffin, has been quoted as saying (during his trial for inciting racial hatred), “I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat.” Nevertheless, when you hear the whole story of Mr. Robinson’s involvement with the BNP, you’ll see that it brings him far more credit than shame. From his autobiography Enemy of the State:

I went along to the first meeting with my uncle and listened, mostly. They had a guest speaker, gave out loads of literature and they were talking what I thought was plain common sense about the whole range of Muslim/Islamic issues. I suppose I was reasonably impressed with it, so I signed up for a membership and decided to bring the football lads to the next meeting. These guys had become my best friends, they had become my community. I never gave a minute’s thought to their colour or background. We met up and went along to the pub, the King Harry again, which has two bars. As we walked through the door, this organiser said, ‘They’ll have to wait here,’ and he was on about the black lads — Isaac, Little Craigy and Webster. I could not believe it. I simply could not believe it…They discovered in no uncertain terms that we were about as pissed off as pissed off gets — and that was that with the BNP as far as I was concerned. After that, any time we heard about the BNP, we just told them to get fucked… You probably think that I was naïve for not realising the BNP was a racist group. I’m sure I was.

If anyone who wasn’t an anti-jihadist activist brought a group of black men to a meeting of white supremacists, our left-of-center friends would hail him as a hero. But instead, the incident is twisted — without the details of course — to lay bogus accusations of fascism at Tommy Robinson’s doorstep. (BTW, the incident was supposedly corroborated at the time by an article in Searchlight Magazine of all places. Unfortunately, as of press time, Searchlight has not responded to my request for information.)

From the beginning, neo-Nazis and other assorted fascists attempted to infiltrate and co-opt the English Defense League (EDL), the organization that Mr. Robinson co-founded. In a recent video, Brian John Thomas, of Israellycool fame, following Douglas Murray, places the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the Left. “If you keep calling something far right,” he said, “then the far right want to join it. If you keep saying that they’re neo-Nazis, then the neo-Nazis want to join it.”

Also from the beginning, Robinson fought to keep these “wankers” out. Mr. Thomas followed the story as it was unfolding:

They had a forum [online] and I used to read that forum from Israel, and that’s actually how I got to understand what the EDL was and what it wasn’t—and it wasn’t a neo-Nazi far right organization, because I could see what happened when people came into their forums trying to come with what today the alt-right calls the JQ—the Jewish Question. They were not treated well and it didn’t have a safe home at the EDL.

But the message that fascists were not welcome was not limited to the online forum. In Part I of this series, I mentioned Mr. Robinson’s confrontation with Paul Ray and “Nazi Nick,” but there were many other examples as well. At an early EDL March in Birmingham, Mr. Robinson writes,

[T]he police brought in double decker buses to ship us out and apparently some geezer in a green bomber jacket who was getting on one of the buses gave a Hitler salute towards a group of journalists. To this day I reckon it was a plant. The Unite Against Fascism lot used that image against us for years. I didn’t see it, others did—Sappy was going berserk, because his daughter is mixed race. They got a slapping and kicked off the bus. We weren’t having that.

At a September 2012 rally in Walsall, he had an unambiguous message for the BNP: the EDL didn’t want them—and the crowd had his back:

Throughout his career, Mr. Robinson has had a flair for the sensational—it’s part of the secret of his success. He once donned a burqa to sneak into a talk by a hostile journalist. After the speaker spent his entire presentation trashing him, Robinson stood up during the question period and threw off the burqa for a dramatic reveal. In another such stunt, members of the EDL—both black and white—burned a fricking Nazi flag. The Telegraph reported the story at the time, albeit with the somewhat illogical headline, “Will the flames of hatred spread?”

Unfortunately, Mr. Robinson lost control of the EDL while he served a ten month prison sentence for entering the United States with someone else’s passport (although how that’s a violation of British law mystifies me). And yet, even after this gave the fascists an opportunity to infiltrate his organization, Mr. Robinson kept trying to keep them out:

It was March 2013 when I got out and I was asking myself why I continued putting up with all the aggravation…Regional organisations should have been keeping the extremists out, but while I was inside they’d opened the doors again to any idiot who wanted to create strife. In Manchester and Liverpool the regional leadership had basically welcomed the North West Infidels with open arms…One of the first things I did was get rid of the North West regional leadership. It was zero tolerance where right-wing idiots were concerned, if I was going to be back involved.

Sadly, with another prison term on the horizon, this time for a completely inane mortgage fraud charge, Mr. Robinson had to throw in the towel. He couldn’t keep the fascists out. And so he quit—left the organization (I’ll cover the mortgage fraud business, as well as some additional reasons he left the EDL in a future installment).

Of course, his critics have a pat answer for all this: It’s a trick! Writing in The Guardian, Alex Andreou warned, “Don’t be fooled by Tommy Robinson’s political sleight-of-hand. The former EDL leader may have left his party, but this is just an old far-right trick to attract the media and shift the debate.” Mr. Andreou provides a catalog of right-wing (and a few left-wing) figures who have done just that, but the only evidence he offers that this is actually the case with Mr. Robinson’s departure from the EDL was that there were “inconsistencies in his account.” I’ll have grounds more relative than this.

I’m not in the business of supporting fascists (albeit I am in the business of supporting their freedom of speech). So before I took up Tommy Robinson’s cause, I researched him carefully. And what did I find? No ideological smoking gun, the incident with the BNP, the flag burning stunt, the epic struggle to keep fascists out of the EDL, and when that was ultimately unsuccessful, his departure from that organization. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the snowflakes who shoot off their mouths about punching Nazis can only dream about the sort of genuine anti-fascist cred that Tommy Robinson has built over the course of his career.

Next up: Part III—But he IS racist, right?

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

Who is Tommy Robinson?

“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” – Mark Twain (attributed)

Ten days ago, some guy named Tommy Robinson got arrested outside a courthouse in England. “He deserved it!” our left-of-center friends exclaimed, having suddenly become champions of law and order. “Islamaphobe! Racist! Fascist!” From the way they carried on, I imagined this Robinson chap was something like a cross between Paddy Tanninger from Family Guy…

…and P.G. Wodehouse’s buffoonish wannabe dictator Roderick Spode.

Robinson certainly looks the part of a British Neo-Nazi. With his flattened nose, lily-white skin, and military haircut (despite never having served in any military), he seems straight out of central casting.

But one can't judge by looks, and so I did my own research. While the lies zipped around the world, I listened to Mr. Robinson’s Oxford Union Speech, read his autobiography Enemy of the State, and searched the web for any corroborating materials I could find, all in an effort to come to grips with who is Tommy Robinson. And now that he has been nearly forgotten in his jail cell, and the public has turned its attention to Roseanne Barr’s Twitter feed and the Philadelphia Eagles White House disinvitation, I finally have my boots on, and am ready to share what I found:

Tommy Robinson was born Stephen Yaxley in Luton, Bedfordshire (1982). Other names he’s been known by over the years are Stephen Lennon and Paul Harris. His opponents have made much ado about these multiple aliases, implying there’s something sinister in it, but they mainly stem from his attempts to keep his identity a secret in order to protect his wife and children during his early years as an activist. His real identity was eventually revealed by Paul Ray, who Robinson calls “a 100 per cent, bona fide, right wing fruitcake.” Ray, together with a character called “Nazi Nick” demanded that Robinson turn over to them control of the organization he founded, the English Defense League (EDL). When Robinson refused, Ray posted a video online revealing his real identity, as well as accusing Robinson of kidnapping Ray’s mother.

Robinson’s hometown of Luton is a mixed race community, with large black and south Asian populations. Robinson wrote in Enemy of the State that as a young child he “wasn’t really aware of race or religion being any kind of issue. Sure, their colour identified people, but it never registered as being a barrier to anything. Not at first, at least…Things changed quickly though, and the problems started once we got into high school.” The turning point was a schoolyard fight between his friend Dean and a Pakistani student names Majid. “Boys had playground scraps and all that,” he wrote. “Except this was different. All the Muslim lads rushed Dean, younger ones, older ones—Dean was in year nine with me and even boys from year 11 attacked him, which never happened. They jumped him down on the school service road and they put him in the hospital. There were about 20 of them.”

On another occasion, while walking with five or six friends to a swimming pool, “we came across a group of around 15 to 20 Pakistanis just hanging out…They mugged us, spitting in our faces, calling us white boys, white pigs, knocking us about and then searching us, taking our money.”

After graduation, Robinson won an internship at Britannia Airways to learn aircraft engineering—one of six positions for which there were 600 applicants. However, his future in engineering ended abruptly when he was sentenced to twelve months in prison for beating up an off-duty policeman who had attempted to intervene in an argument Robinson was having with his then-girlfriend, now wife. “I was no angel,” he freely acknowledges. After his release he made his living taking odd jobs in construction and opening a tanning salon. His free time was for soccer. “My social life pretty much revolved round being out with the lads on Friday nights, then the big day out on Saturday and all that involved—from boozing and chanting all the way to a good old ruck with the opposition as often as not. A football hooligan? I suppose so.” At 5'6", he admits his penchant for getting into fights "may or may not be a bit of the 'little man' syndrome."

In the meantime, he was watching his hometown go to hell.

The victims of Muslim violence—the innocent people murdered by jihadists, the young girls turned into sex slaves by the grooming gangs—are, for most of us, merely statistics that we read about on the Internet. For Tommy Robinson, living in Luton where everyone seems to know everyone else, they are living, breathing human beings. One of his cousins “was stabbed in a confrontation with some Muslim blokes in the town centre” and almost lost a hand. Mark Sharp, who, in an infamous case was brutally murdered by a gang of Muslims, was the friend of someone Tommy knew. Sharp had gotten into some sort of traffic incident and “flipped a vee-sign at them…It was a something and nothing moment in a car. It happens in every town, every day. But these characters still had to call more of their mates and murder a bloke in cold blood.” To add insult to injury, “the judge felt he had to find a way to let them off easy, by inviting a jury to find an excuse for their behaviour.” Robinson’s cousin Jeanette, meanwhile, was groomed—the despicable practice of prepping girls as young as eleven years old for service as sex slaves, often by getting them addicted to drugs so they become dependent on their captors: “She started going out with a Pakistani bloke and the next thing we knew she was strung out on heroin, addicted. She woke up one occasion in a house being gang-raped by half a dozen Muslim men…the police just remarked that she was a drug addict and basically shrugged their shoulders. Everyone did all they could to help her, but it was useless. They’d lock her in the house and she’d climb out of a window to go back to the Muslims and get her fix.”

And yet, it was not these crimes which drew Mr. Robinson into activism. Rather it was the spectacle of a Muslim mob disrespecting British soldiers. On March 10, 2009, the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment marched through Luton, an honor to celebrate their homecoming from Afghanistan. A standoff developed between patriotic Lutonians who had come out to cheer on the troops and a Muslim group. The Muslims “had placards calling our troops ‘Butchers of Basra’ and saying ‘Anglian soldiers go to hell’. And the police had simply guided them to a vantage position where they could hurl insults, while guarding them from people who were understandably pissed off by it all.”

An outraged Robinson decided to do something about it. He had been organizing the soccer outings for years, so it seemed natural to turn his organizational skills toward forming the United Peoples of Luton (UPL; later, when it went national, it was rechristened the EDL). UPL planned a march to Luton’s war memorial for two minutes of silence in early May. About 300 people showed up, but the police stopped them from reaching the memorial. “They kettled everyone in the square and wouldn’t allow anyone to move, in or out. They kept people there for three hours. Women—including my auntie—pleaded to be allowed to go to the toilet but the police wouldn’t let them. Men had to stand guard and screen their wives while they crouched and pissed in the street. It was a total disgrace.”

But Mr. Robinson is nothing if not persistent. “There was always going to have to be another march because things simply couldn’t end like that. We planned the second one for the next Bank Holiday at the end of May. I rang the police myself…I told the police in no uncertain terms that unless they let us get to the memorial, the whole town was going to go up. People were raging.

“Do you know what their answer was?...They went round swooping on the houses of the lads they’d identified from the first UPL demo, arresting them…They came after me, went to my mum’s, but luckily I wasn’t in at the time. I ended up effectively going into hiding, to make sure they couldn’t hit me with one of their restraining orders.”

But the people of Luton gathered anyway. “On the day of the second UPL demo, something happened I couldn’t have imagined. Rival factions and gangs, lads who hate each other, all came together under this one banner. Blokes I’ve had major dramas with put their rivalries, put everything aside…today we were all Luton, we were all England.” Once again the police tried to box in the demonstrators. But, “it was a completely different atmosphere from the first march, because this was just men and there was a sense that the police weren’t stopping us today.

“There were probably 500 lads and we assembled at the far end of Park Street. From there however, things went differently, because instead of meeting the police head on, everyone charged the other way—went round the town centre and came in from the far side of Luton. It turned basically into a sprint to get to the war memorial. Once we got there, we stood and held our two minute silence for our soldiers. We’d won our little personal battle.”

Alas, much as in the seventeenth century, when the likes of Edward Coke, John Selden, and Oliver Cromwell faced off against the Stuart kings to protest the Stuarts’ trampling of British liberty, the Crown did not take defiance lying down. The government’s attempt to arrest Tommy Robinson before the second march was merely the first chapter in its shameful vendetta against a man who just wanted to honor the troops. How the Empire struck back will be the subject of a later installment of this series. But first, Part II: Is Tommy Robinson a fascist?

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

Tales of Medieval Islam: A Psychological Cure

In my new novel, The Thread of Reason, there’s a scene where the hero, Omar Khayyam, and his assistant, Muhammad Baghdadi, are discussing the case of a young man who had been jilted by his bride-to-be. “For weeks he moped around,” the former fiancé tells them. “He didn’t leave the house at all, except to go to mosque, which he started doing every day. He hardly ate anything, just picked at his food. At night I’d hear him knocking around the apartment, unable to sleep.”

“Clearly a case of melancholia,” Baghdadi said. “Too much black bile produced by excessive heat in the liver. You should have served him a steady diet of cooling foods, like celery.” Omar rolled his eyes. “After we get done with Aristotle,” he said, “I’m going to start you on a steady diet of Avicenna. There are other ways to restore the humors than food. His psychological treatments were quite ingenious—especially where young men in love were concerned.”

Avicenna (980–1037), or Abu Ali ibn Sina as he’s known in the Muslim world, was a real-life figure, the epitome of a Renaissance man, centuries before the Renaissance. Arguably the most prominent philosopher in Islam, he was also a physician, poet, naturalist, vizier to the Emir of Hamadan, and occasional fugitive. His Canon of Medicine was the handbook for doctors for centuries, both in the Muslim world and in Europe. As for his psychological treatments for young men in love, here’s an account of one of them by Nizami Arudi:

Some time elapsed thus, until an illness befell one of the relatives of Qabus ibn Washmgir, who was the King of Gurgan. The physicians set themselves to treat him, striving and exerting themselves to the utmost, but the disease was not cured. Now Qabus was greatly concerned about this, till one of his servants said to him, “Into such-and-such a caravanserai a young man hath entered who is a great physician, and whose efforts are singularly blessed, so that several persons have been cured at his hands.” So Qabus bade them seek him out and bring him to the patient, that he might treat him, seeing that the effort of one may be more blessed than that of another. So they sought out Abu Ali and brought him to the patient, whom he beheld to be a youth of comely countenance, whereon the hair had scarcely begun to shew itself, and of symmetrical proportions, but now laid low. He sat down, felt his pulse, asked to see his urine, inspected it, and said, “I want a man who knows all the houses and districts of Gurgan.” So they brought one, saying, “Here you are”; and Abu Ali placed his hand on the patients pulse, and bade the other mention the names of the different districts of Gurgan. So the man began, and continued to name the districts until he reached one at the mention of which the patient’s pulse gave a strange flutter. Then Abu Ali said, “Now give the streets in this quarter.” The man gave them, until he arrived at the name of a street whereat that strange flutter recurred. Then Abu Ali said, “We need someone who knows all the houses in this street.” They brought such a one, who proceeded to give out the houses till he reached a house the mention of which the patient’s pulse gave some flutter. “Now,” said Abu Ali, “I want someone who knows the names of all the household and can repeat them.” They brought such a one, and he began to repeat them until he reached a name at the mention of which that same flutter was apparent. Then said Abu Ali, “It is finished.” Thereupon he turned to the confidential advisers of Qabus, and said, “This lad is in love with such-and-such a girl, so-and-so by name, in such-and-such a house, in such-and-such a street, in such-and-such a quarter: union with that girl is his remedy, and the sight of her his cure.” The patient, who was listening, and heard all that Abu Ali said, hid his face in shame beneath the bed-clothes. When they made enquiries, it was even as Abu Ali had said. Then they reported this matter to Qabus, who was mightily amazed thereat and said, “Bring him before me.” So Abu Ali ibn Sina was brought before Qabus… Then Qabus came down from his throne, advanced several paces to meet Abu Ali, embraced him, sat beside him on a cushion before the throne, [and] heaped favours upon him... “O most glorious, eminent and excellent one,” said he, “both the lover and the beloved are the children of my sisters, and are cousins to one another. Choose, then, an auspicious moment that I may unite them in marriage.” So Master Abu Ali chose a fortunate hour, and in it the marriage-knot was tied, and lover and beloved were united, and that handsome young prince was delivered from an ailment which had brought him to death’s door.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

The quotation from Nizami come from Chahar Maqala (The Four Discourses), Edward G. Browne, tr., Mirza Muhammad, ed., London:Luzac & Co., 1921, Anecdote XXXVI, pp. 88-89.

Photo credit: Subtilties of Truth, 1271

Mideast Week in Review

by Michael Isenberg.

Syria war end game.

Israel sentences slap video teen to eight months in prison.

The war in Syria dominated the news from the Middle East this week. Government forces continued to make gains in the Eastern Ghouta region. 70% of the district, on the outskirts of Damascus, has now fallen into the hands of the Assad regime. The area had been under rebel control since 2013.

The operation by the Assad regime and its Russian ally has been brutal. The BBC reports more than 1,400 civilians have been killed. Among these, fifteen children and two women died in an underground school that was struck by Russian missiles.

With the capture of Eastern Ghouta, the Syria War is in its end game and, sadly, it's an Assad victory. Not that the other options were great. But at least the destruction will stop soon.

Separately, in the north of the country, Free Syrian Army forces, backed by Turkey, have taken control the Kurdish town of Afrin. The Turkish government claims that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which controlled the area, is part of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a rebel group within Turkey which the government considers a terrorist organization. The US disputes the claim that the groups are in cahoots. Turkish president Recep Erdogan intends to create a buffer zone in northern Syria along the Turkish border. “The military operation will go on until the terror corridor through Manbij, Ain al-Arab, Tal Abyad, Ras al-Ain, Qamishli has been wiped out,” he said.

The Trump Administration has done little to protect the Kurds from Turkish aggression. Given that the Kurds allied with the United States in the battle against ISIS, and fought in the front lines, it is shameful that we are not doing more to help them. That may change, however, as American troops are stationed in some of the towns threatened by Erdogan.

There were reports of looting by the rebel forces. According to the BBC, “AFP news agency journalists in Afrin also saw rebels break into shops, restaurants, and houses, and leave with food, electronic equipment, blankets and other goods.” And we thought the Free Syrian Army were the good guys.

Also related to Syria, the Israeli government this week declassified video and other documents concerning its bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. This is the first public admission by the Jewish state that it was behind the destruction of the facility. Pundits believe the timing of the release is intended as a warning to Iran that Israel will respond similarly to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Indeed a tweet from Prime Minister Netanyahu, that “Israel's policy was and remains consistent - to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons,” seems to confirm that interpretation.

Read more—

Syria war: Rebel evacuations from Eastern Ghouta gather pace (BBC)

Syria war: Air strike 'kills children in Eastern Ghouta school’

Syria war: Turkish-led forces oust Kurdish fighters from heart of Afrin (BBC)

Syria war: Afrin looted by Turkish-backed rebels (BBC)

Israel admits striking suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 (BBC)

 

In a plea deal, an Israeli military court sentenced 17-year old Ahed Tamimi to eight months in prison. You may recall Ms. Tamimi as the Palestinian teen who was pictured in a viral video slapping an Israel soldier.

In my humble opinion, Israel made a mistake in prosecuting Tamimi. The video was a propaganda victory for the Jewish state, showing Israeli restraint in the face of Palestinian provocation. By imprisoning Tamimi, Israel is turning victory into defeat by creating a martyr for the Palestinian cause.

Read more—

Ahed Tamimi: Palestinian slap video teen gets eight months in plea deal (BBC)

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Photo credits: IHS Conflict Monitor, Twitter

The Murder that Started it All

The History behind The Thread of Reason

Let me start by expressing my appreciation to everyone who participated in yesterday’s launch of my novel, The Thread of Reason. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The Thread of Reason is a mystery concerning the assassination of Nizam al-Mulk, who was the vizier (prime minister) of the Seljuq Empire, which stretched from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. He served the sultans Alp Arslan and Malik-shah. According to some accounts, Malik-shah had little interest in anything other than hunting and war, which left Nizam al-Mulk with the power and responsibility of day-to-day governing. His assassination was widely reported in the chronicles of the time (or near the time, anyway). For example, here’s what Al-Kamil fi’l-Tarikh (The Complete History) by Izz ad-Din ibn al-Athir (1160-1232/33) had to say,

On 10 Ramadan of this year [15 October 1092] the Vizier Nizam al-Mulk Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Ishaq was killed near Nihavand. He and the sultan had been in Isfahan and had set out to return to Baghdad. After having arrived at this place and having finished his fast-breaking meal, he left in his litter to go to the womenfolk’s tent, when a Daylami youth, one of the Assassins, came to him in the guise of a suppliant or petitioner. He struck him with a dagger he had with him, and fled, leaving him dead. He stumbled over a tent guy-rope, which allowed men to catch up with him and kill him.

The killing of the assassin on the spot is what makes the murder such a ripe subject for a mystery novel: no one had the opportunity to question him and learn who, if anyone, he was working for. Historians have pondered this mystery for centuries, but as far as I know, the solution I came up with in The Thread of Reason is completely original. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam.

The quotation from ibn al-Athir comes from The Annals of the Seljuq Turks: Selections from al-Kamil fi’l-Tarikh of ‘Izz al-Din ibn al-Athir, London: RoutledgeCurzon (2002), tr. D.S.Richards, p. 253.

Photo credit: “The Assassination of Nizam al-Mulk” in Rashid ad-Din Tabib, Jami al-tavarikh, Topkapi Museum, Istanbul, Hazine Library Manuscript #1653, folio 360b (14th/15th century).

Nowruz Peeruz!

Prosperous New Year!

Tomorrow marks Nowruz, the Persian New Year, so it seemed like a good time to put together a few notes on the history of the holiday. Its celebration goes back some 3,000 years, its origins lost in the mists of time.

I suppose the version which attributes it to the mythical king Jamshid is as good as any. A Promethean figure, legend tells us Jamshid blessed humankind with metalworking, textiles, bricklaying, mining, perfume, medicine, shipbuilding, and (on the downside) the caste system. Then, according to Abu’l-Qasim Ferdowsi’s epic poem, the Shah-nameh (The Book of Kings, ca. 1000 AD),

Although Jamshid had accomplished all these things, he strove to climb even higher. With his royal farr* he constructed a throne studded with gems, and had demons raise him aloft from the earth into the heavens; there he sat on his throne like the sun shining in the sky. The world’s creatures gathered in wonder about him and scattered jewels on him, and called this day the New Day, or No-Ruz. This was the first day of the month of Farvardin, at the beginning of the year, when Jamshid rested from his labors and put aside all rancor. His nobles made a great feast, calling for wine and musicians, and this splendid festival has been passed down to us, as a memorial to Jamshid.

(The Shah-nameh is a fascinating work in its own right. One of these days I’ll have to post an entry about it).

In any case, over time the Persian calendar drifted out of synch with the seasons, just like the Julian calendar that was used in the west. There was need of someone like Pope Gregory to institute reforms. In his Al-Kamil fi’l-Tarikh (Complete History), the historian ibn al-Athir (1160-1232/33) tells us,

In this year [467 AH/1074-75 AD] Nizam al-Mulk and Sultan Malikshah assembled several leading astronomers, who fixed the start of the new year (Nayruz) at the starting point of (the House of) Aries (i.e. the vernal equinox). Previously the new year had been when the sun was halfway through Pisces. This initiative of the sultan provided the starting point for yearly calendars. At the same time astronomical observations were undertaken for Sultan Malikshah. A group of astronomers gathered to carry this out, including Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyami, Abu’l-Muzaffar al-Asfizari, Maymun ibn al-Najib al-Wasiti and others. A large sum of money was expended and observations lasted until the sultan died.

The leader of the team, “Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyami,” is of course Omar Khayyam, known in the west as the poet who composed the Rubaiyat (And who’s also the hero of my new novel, The Thread of Reason, which, in honor of his calendar, launches tomorrow on Amazon.com!) Omar’s calendar, called the Jalali calendar, after one of the titles of Malikshah, is, with some modifications, still in use in Iran today. It is accurate to one day every 5,000 years—beating out the Gregorian calendar, which is “only” accurate to one day every 3,000 years.

So best wishes for a happy Nowruz. Celebrate with wine and musicians. I’ll leave you with some of the latter—some traditional Persian music. This is a recording I made on Saturday, at the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s annual Nowruz celebration. The violin-like instrument that Mr. Dehghan is playing is called a kamancheh. Descriptions of them are found as early as the il-Khanid (Mongol) dynasty (13th-14th century).

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092.

*-The royal farr is the power that God bestows upon a king, provided he’s worthy. It’s something like a cross between magic, glory, luck, and the Mandate of Heaven.

The quotation from Ferdowsi comes from Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, New York: Penguin Books (2006), tr. Dick Davis, p. 7.

The quotation from ibn al-Athir comes from The Annals of the Seljuq Turks: Selections from al-Kamil fi’l-Tarikh of ‘Izz al-Din ibn al-Athir, London: RoutledgeCurzon (2002), tr. D.S.Richards, p. 189.

Photo credit: “Jamshid’s throne borne by divs,” illustration from the Shah-nameh, 15th century, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 22-1948, fol. 11v.

Mideast Week in Review

by Michael Isenberg.

The news from the Middle East this week was dominated by the war in Syria.

Fighting raged in the Eastern Ghouta region, in the suburbs of Damascus. The BBC reported over 200 civilians were killed. The Assad regime has kept rebel-occupied Eastern Ghouta under siege, cut off from the outside world, since 2013. Four hundred thousand people are trapped there, starving, freezing, and desperate for medical supplies. Now, with many troops freed up by successes in Aleppo and other parts of the country, the government is attempting to retake the region. In a characteristically impotent gesture, the United States and the United Nations have, according to the BBC, “called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.” Such demands are ultimately fruitless, since Assad has no motive to cut off hostilities while he’s winning, unless it's to provide himself with a temporary tactical advantage.

Meanwhile, monitors on the ground accuse the Syrian government of conducting six chemical weapon attacks with chlorine gas during the past month. @SyriaCivilDef reported that one of these attacks, in Saraqeb (northwest part of the country), injured nine, including three of their volunteers, called “White Hats.” The BBC reported that in response to the allegations, which the Syrian government denies, Israeli warplanes struck a Scientific Studies and Research Centre site near Damascus. The site is believed to be used for the manufacture of chemical weapons, in violation of the Russian-brokered agreement that Syria concluded with the Obama Administration after a 2013 chemical attack. In my humble opinion, the Syrian government is stupid to engage in these attacks. Crossing that line is one of the few things guaranteed to bring a military response from either the United States or Israel.

But not the only thing.

On Wednesday night, US forces launched artillery and airborne attacks against forces allied with the Syrian government near the Euphrates River, killing 100. The US said the attack was in retaliation for a raid by government forces against the headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—the coalition of Arabs and Kurds that has been in the forefront of the fight against ISIS. I’m glad to see the US standing by the SDF—we owe them. It is a pleasant change from our weak response to Turkish attacks against the Kurds in the north of the country last week.

On Saturday an Iranian drone infiltrated Israeli airspace from Syria. An Israeli helicopter shot it down. The Israeli Air Force then retaliated against Syrian military targets. One Israeli jet was hit by antiaircraft fire but was able to crash in Israel. The pilots ejected safely. According to the BBC, Israel then “launched a second wave of strikes” and “inflicted huge damage on Syrian air defences.”

Original footage showing #Iranian UAV infiltrating and then shot down over Israel, and #IDF strike on Iranian command vehicle in #Syria pic.twitter.com/Sz6poAOdjc

— Jonathan Conricus (@LTCJonathan) February 10, 2018

Read more—

Israeli air strikes against Syria 'biggest since 1982' (BBC)

Syria war: Assault on besieged Eastern Ghouta kills 200 in four days (BBC)

Syria war: Israel 'strikes Damascus military complex' (BBC)

Syria war: Assad's government accuses US of massacre (BBC)

 

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092 and will be the first in a series that depicts how the Muslim world committed cultural suicide during the Middle Ages.

Photo credit: BBC