We don’t need a knee-jerk reaction to the Khashoggi murder

We need a new policy toward Saudi Arabia.
by Michael Isenberg.

Trump is under attack. (What else is new?)

This time the issue is his admittedly weak response to the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi government. The CIA believes Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (“MBS”) "probably ordered" the hit, albeit the case against him, as far as the public has been told, is circumstantial: he had close ties to some of the conspirators. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress there is no "direct evidence" against MBS. When asked at an October 11 bill signing how the case would affect his dealings with Saudi Arabia, he replied that making money off the Saudis comes first. “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country on—I know they’re talking about different kinds of sanctions, but they’re spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs, like jobs and others, for this country.”

A month and a half has passed since then and the issue hasn’t gone away. The critics have only grown louder, with particular emphasis on holding MBS personally accountable somehow. In an editorial last week, The Washington Post shredded the president’s response as a “craven abdication,” and called for private organizations to suspend their dealings with the Saudi regime and for Congress to attach “a provision to a must-pass budget bill ending military aid to Saudi Arabia until the Yemen war ends and all authors of the Khashoggi murder are identified and sanctioned.” House Speaker Ryan said, “Realpolitik is very important. But Realpolitik works if you do so from a position of moral clarity and with respect to holding people accountable,” leaving me wondering whether he knows what "realpolitik" means. The Senate has gotten into the act as well. A procedural vote on Wednesday, with bipartisan support from senators as diverse as Mike Lee (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), advanced a resolution which would cut off US support for the Saudi intervention in the Yemen civil war. A terrible idea—there is a long history of legislative branch grandstanding disrupting delicate behind the scenes negotiations by the executive branch—but it shows the depth of dissatisfaction with Trump's position.

Some of my Trump supporter friends have attempted to justify that position by pointing out that Khashoggi wasn’t the angel that the media has made him out to be. He was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth and was friendly with Osama bin Laden in the 80’s (So was the US!). More recently, in a column titled "The US is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab World is suffering for it," he argued for more political power for Islamists: “There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.” While all these accusations against Khashoggi are true, I don’t think any of them diminish the seriousness or the brutality of the murder. Yes, Khashoggi has expressed some very wrong opinions, but surely that's not a capital offense or an extenuating circumstance that should factor into the US response.

My Trumpista friends are on more solid ground when they point out that Khashoggi’s murder is just one of many atrocities routinely committed by the Saudis. In the words of the 2016 documentary Saudi Arabia Uncovered, Saudi Arabia “is a state which beheads and even crucifies its citizens. Where those who question its authority are lashed and locked up for years. A state where woman lack many basic rights.” Recent cases have included the imprisonment and whipping of blogger Raif Badawi and the 2016 execution of Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric whose sole crime was criticizing the government. And while progress in the form of drivers licenses for women has been greeted with much fanfare, the dirty secret is that many of the women activists who made that possible now rot in Saudi jail cells. The only reason the Khashoggi case has gotten more attention than these others is that Khashoggi is a member of the Western liberal media, thanks to his association with The Washington Post. Again, I don't think this excuses the Saudis in any way. But it does underscore the importance of treating the Khashoggi murder in the context of our overall relationship with Saudi Arabia, and not in isolation.

It would be foolish to engage in a knee jerk response merely because the victim is a Western journalist. Any US reaction needs to be part of a larger, coherent strategy toward the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular. It needs to be a strategy we adhere to consistently, not just when the latest victim of Saudi repression happens to be a media darling. It also needs to be a strategy which supports the interests of the United States. And our primary interest in that part of the world is defeating Islamic terror.

We've seen Donald Trump repeatedly stand up to foreign dictatorships, and rightly so. But the House of Saud hasn't been among them. Both in the Khashoggi case, and in many other instances, the Trump Administration's strategy in the Middle East has been to unquestioningly embrace the House of Saud. The rationale for this is not merely the jobs cited above. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an Oct 18 statement to reporters,

I think it's important for us all to remember, too, we have a long, since 1932, a long strategic relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They continue to be an important counterterrorism partner. They have custody of the two holy sites. They're an important strategic alliance of the United States. We need to be mindful of that as well.

This “important strategic alliance” with our “important counterterrorism partner” is problematic. Cozying up to dictators is a double-edged sword under the best of circumstances. There are advantages in terms of intelligence, resources, military bases, and so on, but at the cost of creating resentment against the United States that induces recruits to join our enemies. The (possibly exaggerated) CIA role in the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh in 1953, and the US’s subsequent support for the Shah is still a sticking point between us and the Iranians—forty years after the Shah’s downfall. Arguably, we had the excuse that we were in the midst of the Cold War and we did what we had to do in the context of the larger struggle against the Soviet Union. We should never apologize for that. But we should recognize that it came with consequences.

There was some logic to allying with the Shah’s Iran in 1953 against a higher priority enemy. But there is no logic to allying with MBS’s Saudi Arabia in 2018: Saudi Arabia is the higher priority enemy. As I wrote in my review of Saudi Arabia Uncovered,

The Saudi regime is not content merely to subject its own citizens to the terrors of Islamism. It exports them. The ties between Saudi-funded Islamic charities and terror groups are well-known and reviewed in the documentary (which also notes there is no evidence that senior Saudi officials were complicit in them). However, thoughtful observers consider that the kingdom’s embrace of the Wahhabi form of Islam—the country has spent $70 billion promoting it worldwide—is even more insidious than direct support of terror. In the words of former CIA officer Emile Nakhleh, “The ideology of ISIS is not much different from the ideology that Wahhabi Salafi Islam in Saudi Arabia adheres to. Unless the Saudis deal with this issue, we are going to constantly fight yesterday’s war and even if we defeat ISIS, there’ll be another terrorist organization, perhaps with a different name, as long as they have this ideology that emanates from Saudi Arabia.”

Or as Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy put it,

For over 50 years the Saudis have also financed and helped spread the establishment of Muslim Brotherhood legacy thinkers and groups in the West. The Wahhabis and the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] share both a hate of Western liberal democracies and a dream of wanting to establish Islamic states and the caliphate. Their essential difference lies in that Wahhabis are simply corporate, top-down, “elitist” Islamists, while the Brotherhood are grassroots, populist Islamists. Both their interpretations of Islam are supremacist and theocratic.

I don't mean to single out President Trump here. President Obama’s policy of unquestionably embracing Iran—another exporter of jihad—was just as bad, for the same reasons.

Another argument I tend to hear, especially from libertarians, is that the US should not take any action at all with regard to Khashoggi. He was not a US citizen, his murder took place in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which is technically Saudi sovereign territory. It's an internal matter in which the US has no vested interest.

There is some merit to this, but I part company with my libertarian friends when they frame it as part of an overall policy of disengagement from the Middle East. My disagreement with them stems from a fundamentally different view of the cause of Islamic terror. They see it as a reaction to past injustices that the Western powers committed against the Muslim world, such as the previously mentioned overthrow of Mossadegh. And while I agree that these injustices feature prominently in jihadist recruitment propaganda, the real origin of Islamic terror is not to be found in anything the West has done, but rather in Islam itself. The terrorists will come for us regardless of our level of engagement in the Middle East, and we need to be proactive in addressing that problem. Princeton historian Bernard Lewis called it the "Clash of Civilizations," which I discussed in more detail in "Fighting for God," one of the tributes to Professor Lewis that I posted in the wake of his passing earlier this year.

So if neither disengagement, nor a knee jerk response to the atrocity of the week, nor Obama's stint as Iran's bitch, nor Trump’s strategy of hopping to the tune of the "beautiful" Saudi sword dance is the right policy in the War on Islamic Terror, then what is? There are many lessons from the Cold War we can draw on to formulate one. I’ll address that in my next installment.

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

Did the Golden Age of Muslim Spain really happen? A Debate.

Part III—Who’s right?

From 711 to 1492, Muslim conquerors ruled parts of Spain, which they called al-Andalus.

As with everything about Islam, what sort of rulers they were is a matter of controversy.

In Part I of this series I reviewed The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by the late Yale University professor María Rose Menocal. According to her, Muslim Spain was “the chapter of Europe’s culture when Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side and, despite their intractable differences and enduring hostilities, nourished a complex culture of tolerance.” She paints a Spain where caliphs like Abd ar-Rahman III built spectacular palaces and populated them with scholars and poets. Jews like Samuel ibn Nagrillah rose to lead armies and rule at the side of kings. Christian youth were so eager to assimilate into this shimmering culture that old fogeys like Alvarus of Cordoba complained Arabic was all the rage among them. Kids today. They completely neglect Latin. Philosophers like Averroes and social scientists like ibn Khaldun pushed the boundaries of scholarship. And absolutely everyone was a poet, churning out ingenious new forms of verse to celebrate the charms of their lady loves, forms that would go on to lay the foundation for Christian Europe’s troubadour culture.

Part II covered The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Darío Fernández-Morera of Northwestern University, and that book paints a very different portrait. The conquest of the peninsula was bloody. Captured women were sold into slavery, to be raped in the harem. The shari’a imposed severe restrictions on non-Muslims. In Cordoba, between 850 and 860, some four dozen Christians were murdered for the “crime” of declaring the divinity of Christ. And anti-Jewish riots killed many, including Samuel ibn Nagrillah’s son Joseph.

Interestingly, Menocal and Fernández-Morera don’t disagree about facts. Their differences are over interpretation.

Menocal acknowledges episodes of intolerance like the anti-Jewish riots and the Martyrs of Cordoba. But she dismisses them. “It would be foolish,” she writes, “to suggest that this was a world devoid of all manner of intolerance and darkness. What age, no matter how golden, is?”

Similarly, Fernández-Morera acknowledges the spectacular courts of the caliphs existed. But he dismisses them. They weren’t typical of the life of the common people.

Thus, the two authors mirror each other in their confirmation bias: both are quick to grasp the smallest factoid that supports their hypotheses. But inconvenient bits of data that contradict them are dismissed as the sort of thing that can happen in any society. Of no importance whatsoever.

So who’s right?

In my humble opinion, both. Fernández-Morera was right that Muslim Spain was far from a paradise. And yet Menocal was right that its remarkable achievements really did make it the Ornament of the World.

The glittering courts, with their vast libraries and spectacular gardens, really weren’t typical of the life of the average Andalusian—but they still glittered.

The women who enflamed the romantic ardor of poets really were sex slaves—but the verses they inspired were no less heartfelt or influential.

Averroes really was exiled by his fellow Muslims, and ibn Khaldun ignored—but their accomplishments in philosophy and social science were no less remarkable.

Non-Muslims really were second class citizens under the shari’a—but many of them nevertheless rose to the stratosphere of Muslim society.

Jews really were persecuted because they were so successful—but they were successful.

Muslims really did murder Christians who insisted on broadcasting their faith—but to the chagrin of Alvarus of Cordoba, the pageant of Islamic culture enticed legions of others to assimilate.

In short, Muslim Spain was a case study in Dr. Zuhdi Jasser’s “Two Islams” hypothesis, which he explained in his book A Battle for the Soul of Islam. There’s the Islam he grew up with, which taught him that “Christians and Jews were my brothers and sisters, ‘People of the Book.’” And there’s political Islam or Islamism, which he first encountered during his college years. That pernicious doctrine preaches that “Islam comes before all else, and everything should be done to make this religion the dominant one in the world and for laws to based not on secular agreement but purely on shariah.”

Just as both of these two Islams exist today, so they existed side-by-side in Muslim Spain. To insist it was all one or all the other, besides being far less interesting, is to cling to only half a truth.

 

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: Michael Isenberg

So what DOES jihad mean?

Part I: What the Quran says.
By Michael Isenberg.

I confess I’m not very fond of Linda Sarsour. The Brooklyn-born activist, former head of the Arab-American Association of New York and co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March, makes me think of Delores Umbridge in a hijab. In my humble opinion, her speeches have as many laughs in them as a dictionary. Or maybe it just bugs me that despite her dearth of humor, she’s actually a rather gifted speaker, but she's chosen to put those gifts in the service of causes with which I disagree.

In any case, her recent address to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) set off a firestorm of controversy because of her call for “jihad” against the Trump administration. While writing this post, I subjected myself to the torture of listening to her speech in its entirety so that you, my dear reader, wouldn’t have to, and could focus merely on the relevant section:

There was a man who once asked our beloved prophet Muhammad, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam [May the prayer and peace of Allah be upon him], he said to him, “What is the best form of jihad or struggle?” And our beloved prophet Muhammad, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said to him, “A word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler or leader, that is the best form of jihad,” and I hope that we, when we stand up to those who oppress our communities, that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad that we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or in the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House.

Since this is a blog about Islam, I’ll leave aside the questionable proposition that the White House is crawling with fascists, white supremacists, and Islamophobes, and whether they “reign” over us, and confine myself to the stuff about jihad.

In response to conservative critics who accused her of inciting violence, Ms. Sarsour claimed that her remarks were taken out of context. “I sent not a call to violence,” she wrote in the Washington Post, “but a call to speak truth to power and to commit to the struggle for racial and economic justice.” In all fairness, the text of the speech seems to back her up. But conservatives remain skeptical. During an appearance on Fox Business last week, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said in no uncertain terms that “jihad” means “armed struggle.” He called Ms. Sarsour “dishonest” for saying otherwise.

This debate—what does “jihad” really mean?—flares up from time to time; Ms. Sarsour merely set off the latest round. Often translated “holy war,” "jihad" is an Arabic word whose literal meaning is “struggle.” But whether that is necessarily an armed struggle against an enemy, or could be a struggle to speak truth to power, or even an internal struggle against our own personal demons, well…it’s complicated.

As with everything in Islam, the jumping off point is the Quran.

It’s well known that there are many verses in the Quran which command Muslims to make war on unbelievers. But these verses generally use the word “qatl” rather than “jihad.” “Qatl” means to battle or fight, and is related to the word for “kill.”

So where does “jihad” appear in the Quran? According to the online concordance at corpus.quran.com, it appears forty-one times in various forms (jihad, jahid, tujahidun, etc.). The majority of these are ambiguous as to what jihad actually is. Verse 61:11 is typical: “Believe in Allah and His Messenger and struggle (tujahidun) in the Way of Allah with your wealth and your soul.” The verse doesn’t actually say what the “Way of Allah” is. I suppose you could make the argument that since other verses say to fight the unbeliever, that’s the Way of Allah. Armed conflict. But you could equally say that fasting, or the haj, or abstaining from wine, or any of the other privations Islam imposes on its adherents is the Way of Allah, and therefore what jihad is all about. Or all of the above.

In another half a dozen verses, jihad is clearly a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, 25:52, “And do not obey the unbelievers, and struggle (jahid) against them with a Great Jihad.” But the text doesn’t specify whether it requires armed conflict, or whether a vigorous debate would suffice.

However, there are two passages, 2:216-218 and 9:14-16, which bring the words “qatl” and “jihad” together. The passages are similar in how they use the two terms; in the interest of space I'll just quote the second one:

Fight them [qatiluhum] and Allah will torment them at your hands and disgrace them and make you victorious over them and soothe the breasts of the believers, and take away wrath from their hearts. And Allah turns away from sin those whom he wants. And Allah is knowing and wise. Do you reckon that Allah would leave you when he doesn’t yet know who among you would struggle (jahadu) and who would not take anyone for a friend besides Allah, and His Messenger, and the faithful.

It would seem here that we finally have a passage that uses the word “jihad” in terms of all out sword-clanging, blood-flowing, kill-or-be-killed holy war. Albeit if someone really wanted to be stubborn about it and continue to insist that “jihad” means struggle with oneself, they could claim that the second half of the passage is a different topic from the first half.

The bottom line then, is the Quran is not a lot of help in understanding jihad. There are a couple places where it definitely seems to mean a clash of arms, but most of the time, it’s ambiguous, leaving the door open to other interpretations.

Despite pride of place, however, the Quran is not the only source of authority in Islam. There’s also the Hadith, the collected sayings of Muhammad. I cover what they have to say about jihad in Part II of this series.

 

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 depicts the battle for the Muslim soul between those who embrace science and tolerance, and those who would throw in their lot with mysticism and persecution instead.

Photo credit: AP