Discontent in `Eurabia'

[FishForLunch]

Feb. 11, 2006. 09:27 AM
LYNDA HURST

The Islamic world is on fire and before you sits Fouad Ajami, one of America's most influential, if controversial, Arab intellectuals.

Where to even begin?

This week's frenzied riots ignited, seemingly, by the mocking Danish cartoons of Muhammad? Iran's banging on the nuclear door? The state of democracy in Iraq?

Ajami, the director of Middle Eastern studies at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, sometime adviser to the Pentagon, oft-time media commentator and author of several politically significant books, including The Dream Palace of the Arabs, has an hour to spare before speaking at the sold-out Grano Speakers Series dinner.

"I am your slave," he smiles. "Any subject you like."

The ferocious reaction to the cartoons, then. It has horrified Westerners, rousing the ever-lurking fear that the clash of values and beliefs between the Islamic world and the West may truly be insurmountable.

Gratuitously provocative the caricatures may have been, but nothing excuses the disproportionate retaliation, says Ajami, the "planned spontaneity" of the protests: "It has done enormous harm."

He's been flooded with emails from Muslim friends, asking how the political extremists who pull the rioters' strings can be stopped from hijacking the faith again and again, hurting not themselves but the young they incite.

"We've seen this film before," he says dryly, referring to the furor in 1989 over Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

"The book-burning started in Bradford, England, then the turmoil spread to the Islamic world, to Iran, where the Ayatollah Khomeini hitched a ride on the coattails of the activists in England and issued the fatwa (demanding Rushdie's execution)."

The same trajectory occurred with the cartoons, he says. This week's rioting originated with Muslims in Denmark, who dispatched agitators to the Arab world to whip up a response when the drawings first appeared last fall.

When other European newspapers reprinted them, the manipulated anger was at full throttle and ready to hit the streets: "There was no spontaneity to what happened, definitely not in Syria and Lebanon."

But it started in Europe, he adds emphatically.

The Islamic concept of bilad al-kufr, or "lands of unbelief," means that radical Islamist clerics living in the "unbelieving" West feel no compunction about agitating against non-Muslims.

"These clerics have fled the fire in Islamic lands and set up shop in Europe. But they brought the fire with them."

Many live off the generosity of the welfare state because they believe it's okay to pilfer from infidels, he says. "They prey on the gullibility of young Muslims, the `nowhere men,' as I call them, children of Islam who often can't even speak Arabic."

Ajami has watched thousands of hours of Al-Jazeera TV, particularly its call-in shows, and says most of the militant calls come from Muslims in Europe — "Eurabia," as he's called it — not the Middle East.

"Let's be honest with ourselves. There has been a lot of running room for these people in liberal, multicultural states, where there is the post-modern idea that all forms of expression are permissible. Not for nothing is London called Londonistan. Britain's tolerance has been tailor-made for these people."

One challenge of living in a liberal society is the "willingness to be offended," says Ajami, a 60-year-old Lebanese-born, secularized Muslim who immigrated to the United States at 18. Looking to be offended is different.

"These communities have raw nerves," he says. "They are in the West, but not of the West. They're not part of the Arab world either. There are no life chances for them there. You can see that in the diligence with which they fight deportation."

The tragic irony, he adds, is that the mostly young cartoon rioters attacked the embassies and consulates where they'd normally be seeking visas to get out of the Mideast and into the West.

For Ajami, the protests, coming on top of November's riots by disaffected young Muslims in France, July's bombings in London by born-in-Britain terrorists, and the murder the year before, of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Islamist, all point to one bleak conclusion: "The dream of assimilation, of multiculturalism, is dead."

Another lost vision to place beside the "modernist dream" that flourished among intellectuals in the Arab world in the 1920s and '30s, he says. It was pushed aside after the Iranian revolution in 1979, when huge numbers of people began flooding into the cities.

"They were newly lettered, half-educated, newly urbanized. Their numbers overwhelmed any possibility of modernity, and out of the suburbs they lived in came the militants. At the heart of everything has been this crisis of demography." Europe has to understand the similar "tyranny of demography" now rising within its borders, he says. European birthrates are going down, Muslim rates rising up: "There is the recipe for an explosion."

Is there any solution? He pauses for a moment, then says: "Countries have to have cultural integrity. Immigration is fine, but newcomers have to accept the rules of the host society. You cannot be Lebanese and go to Australia and dictate what the rules of the beach should be, as recently happened. You have to accept the norms and doctrines that define the West."

Those with raw nerves who politicize everything somehow have to be taught "the world doesn't bend to their will."

Ajami's blunt talk, coupled with his controversial support of the Iraq war — he actively advised the Pentagon — has appalled many Arab Americans and not a few of his fellow academics.

His critics say he's bought wholesale into the current administration's neo-conservative, might-is-right mindset, so bedazzled is he by his friendships with the likes of U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and former defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz. It was Ajami who Cheney infamously quoted before the invasion, saying U.S. troops would be greeted with cheers of joy when their tanks rolled into Baghdad. Not quite.

In 2003, the left-wing journal, The Nation, described him thus: "A leftist in the 1970s, a Shiite nationalist in the 1980s, an apologist for the Saudis in the 1990s, a critic-turned-lover of Israel, a skeptic-turned-enthusiast of American empire, he has observed no consistent principle in his career other than deference to power."

Ajami considers himself a pragmatist and realist. In 2004, however, he appeared to regret his high-profile stance on the war, writing that Iraq was not going to be "America's showcase" in the Arab-Muslim world: "In its modern history, Iraq has not been kind or gentle to its people. Perhaps it was folly to think that it was under any obligation to be kinder to strangers."

But now, newly returned from his sixth trip to Iraq since the invasion, he is once again convinced that, despite the unceasing insurgent attacks, deep down, the Iraqis are grateful to the United States, "but the gratitude will take 10 years to come to the surface."

To Ajami, the only folly of the U.S. was to leave Saddam Hussein in place after the first Persian Gulf War, a monumental mistake that led to the "cruel and pathetic" sanctions of the 1990s. But George H.W. Bush and then-defence secretary Cheney genuinely "believed a palace coup would take him out. I know that was the case," he says vehemently.

The recent visit to Iraq renewed his optimism and gave him the final touches to his new book, due out in August. Shia Muslims and Kurds are happy with the recent elections, the first small step toward democracy, he says. What's more, Iraq's Sunni insurgents are beginning to split apart from outside agitators, or so it appeared to him.

Most Iraqis realize they've been given "the great gift of liberty," he says. "A new dawn, albeit a painful one."

Any more "new dawns" on Washington's horizons? "Nobody is going to sack any other regimes," he says laughing, as though the idea is preposterous.

What about Iran? It was put on notice in 2001 in U.S. President George W. Bush's famous "axis of evil" speech, but continues to push ahead, it's now widely accepted, on the development of prohibited nuclear weapons.

He is unexpectedly sanguine: "At the end of this dance, we'll end up with a nuclear-armed Iran. Room will be made for it in the nuclear club. Israel is in, Pakistan is in — which was the big mistake — so why not Iran?"

But now it's time to leave for Grano, which is just as well, as a table lamp has shorted-out and before an electrician arrives to sort things out, the hotel room fills with smoke.

But it doesn't catch on fire. And it doesn't faze Ajami, not for a moment.

Look for Ajami's remarks in the Sunday Star's Ideas section, also a podcast of speech on http://www.thestar.ca. For more on Grano series see http://www.granoseries.com.

[dude1394]

I always enjoy Ajami's common-sense comments. Thanks for the post. Another one..

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=968867495754
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Islam's shattered pact with modernity
The city's intellectual and business elite can be found once every few months at a small Davisville restaurant called Grano.
Feb. 12, 2006. 08:32 AM
FOUAD AJAMI
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

The following is an edited transcript of Fouad Ajami's talk at the Grano Lecture series last Tuesday. Ajami is the director of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University and an author of a number of books about the Arab world. He has also been an advisor to the Pentagon.

The real precursor to what is happening in Denmark today happened a generation ago, when Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses. The issues are exactly what we are witnessing today.

Hear the Podcast
With Satanic Verses, the troubles began in Bradford, England. The book burning began in England. The activists who got hold of this issue and wanted to stay with it were in England. Ayatollah Khomeini, when he wrote his famous fatwa, came in on this issue a good month or two after. He happened onto it. He sensed its importance. He understood that this is really what you need to do, that this is a meaningful issue, and that if you are trying to walk away from the wreckage of the Iran/Iraq war and the defeat of Iran in this long war, if you want to give your revolutionary children, as he called them, something to think about, and if you want to situate Iran as the centre of the Islamic world, then why not turn to The Satanic Verses?

You would have expected European Islam to be more tolerant, but it was the other way around. The troubles migrated from England and made their way through the Islamic world, and we saw what happened.

In the case of these cartoons, this is exactly what happened. The Muslim activists in Denmark took their cause to the Islamic world. As they worked their way through the Islamic world, there was this exquisite little irony: They went into regimes that oppress Islamists, which kill Islamists, but which were more than willing to lend a helping hand, because such is what you have to do.

There is a great role played in this crisis by the Egyptian ambassador to Denmark. He became deeply engaged in this question. I find it ironic that the Egyptian regime, completely secular and completely merciless in its treatment of its own Islamists, suddenly offers tremendous support and finds that it has a lot of time and a lot of patience with the Danish activists and their concerns.

I think reasonable people can disagree about whether these cartoons are sensible or not, whether they are in good taste or not, but the issue — the question of freedom of expression — is vital. And I think what Europe is seeing in the case of the cartoons is its awakening to the danger within.

Fifteen million Muslims make their home in Europe; in fact the demography of Islam is the great story of the Islamic world today. Put side to side, the demography of Europe, the declining populations of Europe, 1.1 children per childbearing woman in Germany, or 1.2 in Spain, or 1.3 somewhere else, you can see the dilemma of Europe.

Europe is awakening to this danger. Europe has to understand that this is not a battle between America and the Islamic world, with Europe as an innocent bystander. Europe is a battleground in this fight.

Every European country has had its moment of awakening. In the case of the Danes, this is their moment.

The July 7 bombings were England's. Kids who worked in a fish and chips restaurant — how more British could you be — were involved in deeds of terror. That was the moment of truth for Britain.

Look at what has happened, as well, in the case of the Dutch. Here is the quintessentially politically correct society. It awakens to the horror with the murder of the filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh, when a young Dutchman of Moroccan descent walks up and kills Van Gogh and then sticks a knife in him and leaves a message on him.

During his trial the killer said he had no remorse. He said, "I slaughtered him" — the language again coming from some other deep tradition and some other frightening world.

So I think, in the case of these cartoons, they are a window into what is happening in the Islamic world, and what is happening in Europe in particular.

If you want to live in a liberal society, you have to be willing to be offended. And these people are not willing to be offended. They don't understand the nature of life in a modern society. They are in the West, as I always have said about them, but they are not of the West.

You are going to see more Salman Rushdie affairs. You are going to see more of these cartoons
I feel like a total dinosaur. My generation of Arabs and Muslims, when we left we understood the meaning of our departure. We understood that we were leaving the failing lands of the Arab world. We understood that we couldn't take our beliefs on the road with us to foreign lands. We knew that we had to adjust.

And even as we came out of darkness, we could see the lodestar. The lodestar was modernity; you just follow that path toward the modern world.

That pact with modernity has been shattered in the Islamic world today. And people ask, "Well, what does one see for the future of the Islamic world?"

I really don't know. You are dealing with a world all the way from Indonesia and the east to Morocco in the west, 1.2 billion people; 20 per cent of the world's population are Muslims. What can we say about them? They are an enormous variety. What can you say about a religion that has the Malays and the Saudis?

Not much, on some level. But you could make some generalizations. You can say, by and large, this population tends to be overwhelmingly young. They are urban. They are poor. And it's not so much they are illiterate — they are half educated. They are newly lettered. They now have access to the Koran, direct access to the text. They are literalists.

They read the text. And from the text, they can pronounce on the modern world. They can pronounce on politics. They can pronounce on my faith and yours. They can pronounce on the condition of women. They can decide for themselves and for their neighbours, and for the government.

That dilemma for the Islamic world will endure. These cartoons are just a window on the unease of modern Islam — on the inability of modern Muslims to live in their own lands, where they can't really make a living, but then when they take the faith abroad and try to manipulate it, they find themselves unable to live with others, and unable to accept the rules of the modern life. You are going to see more Salman Rushdie affairs. You are going to see more of these cartoons.

The city I grew up in, Beirut, has played a part. We watched the attack on the Danish consulate in Beirut. The people who assaulted the consulate came into a Christian area of Beirut, a city that is divided in the old-fashioned Ottoman way. There are Christian neighbourhoods and Muslim neighbourhoods. And the Lebanese know better than to go into a neighbourhood that is not their own. They know the rules of the road. But nevertheless, they stormed this consulate and they attacked a Mennonite church in east Beirut.

When the police rounded up some of these suspects, we learned something about them. The largest number of people who were rounded up were Syrians. The second largest were Palestinians. And the third, finally, bringing up the rear, were the Lebanese themselves.

Now, the Syrian regime orchestrating all this is hardly a pious regime, right? They themselves have had a terrible war with the Islamists in their midst. In 1982, the ruler, the father of this young ruler today, Assad himself, gunned down no fewer than 20,000 people in the city of Hamma, and they were principally Sunni Muslims. They were Muslim brothers who had risen against the "godless" regime of Assad.

So the spectacle of a tyrannical Syrian regime — secular, really considered by the pious to be an un-Islamic, ungodly regime — suddenly awakening to this great violation that befell the Islamic world is a scam. It's a scam, and people know that it's a scam.

Fortunately, there are now people who are awakening to the fact that they are fouling their own nest, that they are destroying their own world. And there are Islamic jurists of some moral calibre, and some substance, and some spine, who are trying to recover the tradition and trying to take Islam back from these hooligans.

You can at least draw some measure of hope that the battle is joined, and that maybe some Muslims will reclaim their tradition.

They have to take it back from the likes of bin Laden. They have to take it back from the likes of these preachers in Denmark. They have to take it back from the preachers in London.