“The counter-coup is not over yet,” said Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He said he believes that Erdogan is using the coup attempt as a “one-time window” to consolidate power and lead Turkey toward being a single-party state.
&
“But the president also made clear a couple of other things,” Earnest said. “The first is that the United States doesn’t support terrorists, the United States doesn’t support individuals who conspired to overthrow democratically elected governments. The United States follows the rule of law.”
The first paragraph has to do with a policy analyst’s prognosis for Turkey as an open democracy, the kind more familiar to Washington than to Moscow.
The second — the speaker is White House press secretary Josh Earnest — indicates Washington’s equivocal stance toward Turkish President Erdogan’s consolidation of power with Fethullah Gulen as a “chip” being played in the diplomacy.
So the United States “doesn’t support individuals who conspired to overthrow democratically elected governments”.
How “democratically” was Morsi elected in Egypt — and how democratic proved his administration?
Perhaps it was best the Egyptian people answered with their army, and the Muslim Brotherhood has been rightly purged from power in Egypt.
Similar dynamics apply to coup and countercoup in Turkey, which to BackChannels looks awfully manipulated in the state’s favor before it began, but that’s another story for exploration in a later post.
For the time being, Washington promotes “rule of law” — but look at how Turkey’s ruler has treated the same concept to effectively suppress the same throughout his nation and invest it all in . . . himself.
It appears that in Erdogan’s idea of the Turkish state, what democracy was designed to prevent it has instead enabled.
The detentions reported by Anadolu news agency come hours after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency that is expected to expand the crackdown.
Already, nearly 10,000 people have been arrested while hundreds of schools have been closed. And nearly 60,000 civil service employees have been dismissed from their posts since the failed coup Friday.
Nearly one-third of Turkey’s roughly 360 serving generals have been detained. The Defense Ministry is investigating all military judges and prosecutors and has suspended 262 of them, broadcaster NTV reported, while 900 police officers in Ankara were also suspended on July 20.
Turkey’s education system has been hit particularly hard during the ongoing crackdown. The Education Ministry on July 20 added more than 6,500 new names to the list of 15,200 school employees suspended, state media reported.
The leader of HDP, the pro-Kurdish parliamentary party that Erdogan has accused of terrorism, and the CHP – the Kemalist party traditionally closest to the military – denounced the coup.
Now, looking back, questions abound. Whose coup was it anyway and were ‘the people’ in fact organised mobs of Erdogan supporters, pre-warned and ready to take control of the streets? Why did the junta take control of the bridges and airports of Istanbul and various government institutions in Ankara while leaving the President free to call for supporters to fill the public squares to defy the tanks and defend democracy?
Our YouTube feeds respond to our Internet habits — all that Google Chrome or other mammoth machinery may capture (about us), crunch with algorithms, and throw back to us with the logic that if we clicked on it, we must have been interested in it — but let me not get distracted with computer-human interactions, social engineering, and programmers.
Regarding the above clips: Farrokh Sekaleshfar had his name made the moment Omar Mateen operationalized at least an opinion similar to his own; Nouman Ali Khan, whose online presence I found connected with the Islamic Center of Irving (Texas) appears a countervailing speaker to Sekaleshfar; and then, in the way of YouTube’s relational “other video” options, comes a voice of reason about madness — Omar Mateen’s ex-wife.
What do they look like together, these three videos?
Yet, for jihadists, the “past is not a tool of mere inspiration or for marking enemies,” Kazimi said, arguing that “history books are recipe books” giving instructions on how to “reclaim that greatness of Islam.” Since its origins in 2006 Iraq, the Islamic State in particular saw itself emulating Islam’s founding followers from seventh-century Arabia under the prophet Muhammad, a community that ultimately conquered empires. The 2014 caliphate declaration of ISIS, a group perhaps even stronger than the initial followers of Islam’s prophet, reflected how Muhammad’s “calling compelled him to strike out boldly, against incredible odds.”
I have discussed this issue with two Islamic lawyers. One man is part of an Islamic Tribunal. The second, received his law degree from Damascus. These rulings are applicable in a modern age. There was no backing down, when I pressed hard for a logical explanation. The age of nine years was also given as a legal age for men to have intercourse with little girls.
Two schools of thought exist regarding apostasy. One school of thought is that an apostate Muslim must be killed immediately with the sword. The second school of thought allows the apostate to be secured alone for three days and given a chance to repent. If unrepentant, the individual can be clubbed to death. This clubbing, just might make the person repent before being beaten to a pulp. This ruling comes from a companion of one of the four great Islamic jurists, ash-Shafi’i.
That the religion of Islam lends itself TODAY to such criticism bodes ill yet for Muslims and others. As loud as outrage has become toward Daesh, which purports to represent the Islam presented by Muhammad, not one Muslim army has risen to crush it and crush away its barbarism (this despite some Big Talk from Jordan). Instead, the Kurdish community, which has to defend its own ethnolinguistic culture against Islamic aggressors (Turkey is the other), has proven the most effective army in the field; granted, Iraq’s Shiite militia infused with Iranian Revolutionary Guard have also gone up against their old familiar but transformed Baathist foes (become Daesh generals for the money dispersed by Baghdadi), but that is to sustain Shiite vs Sunni animus to the benefit of the career and legitimacy of Ayatollah Khamenei.
Contemporary Islamic humanists, reformers, rethinkers, revisionists, secularists have certainly emerged on the world’s sociopolitical radar (M. Zuhdi Jasser, Qanta Ahmed, Irshad Manji, Tarek Fatah, Sultan Shahin [New Age Islam]), but their names are yet young in history, and they too are in a kind of intellectual cradle within a universe of exegetical counterpoint to the al-Qaeda Typicals and the Hezbollah Viruses.
Abstract or dimensional variables associated with argument around “Islamism” or “Political Islam” may include conservatism, fascism, inflexibility, liberalism, narcissism, and religiosity, each term begging its own build-out in meaning. High intensity emotion, narcissism, obsessive focus, and rigidity — in one word: “intolerance” — begs disaster every time out as nature appear to prefer across flora, fauna, and human culture and thought abundance, adjustment, and variety.
(CNN)I am an observant Muslim. And because I am a Muslim, I believe in pluralism. I believe in tolerance. These are the beliefs that Islamist totalitarians are determined to extinguish in the world as they oppress and brutalize those they deem to be “the other.”
Guided by a false, supposedly Islamic doctrine, ISIS has enslaved and systematically raped Yazidi women and young girls. These crimes, described last week by The New York Times, are the latest example of how Islamism defiles Islam. This travesty crosses new thresholds of human depravity: holding pens for humans, busy slave markets, the bureaucratic herding, bidding and buying of Yazidi women and girls. ISIS demands that we confront these new horrors.
Condemning the move, a Save the Children official told Reuters that the Pakistan government had been stopping aid shipments entering the country, “blocking aid to millions of children and their families”. It comes after the Pakistani government announced it was tightening the rules for NGOs, revoking several of their licences. An interior ministry official said on Friday it had cancelled agreements with at least 15 foreign charities, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, on the advice of intelligence agencies that said the organisations had been “collecting sensitive data” from Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Foreign charities have complained that they have been treated with increasing hostility and suspicion in Pakistan, with obstacles to their work becoming ever more difficult especially in the last 6 months.
Others who are like you will have to fight back with you.
Gather around: the outlook is not a perspective: it is a religion, a religious obligation; and constitutionally supported.
The truth is as it is made out — The polio vaccine was fake. ” . . . Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan, said the organisations in question “are operating with support from the United States, Israel and India” (from Wilson Chowdhry’s piece).
That Christian missions and press spoil against their Islamic counterparts holds no surprise, but what presumably educated adults in Pakistan are willing to do to children, their own or others, beneath the cover of paranoid conspiracy theories and socially lauded hate, surpasses cruelty.
The greater story — what may be found as one rises above an animosity that is as medieval as it may be parochial — is that other Pakistanis, including other elements in governance, are again struggling to save children from Poliomyelitis.
Peace in Islam means submission to Allah. The ultimate meaning of Islamic peace is all of us living in Dar-al-Islam—the house of submission. This is not a “radical” interpretation. Modern-day Islamic scholar, Ibrahim Sulaiman, says submission and peace can be very different concepts, even if a form of peace is often brought about through forcing others into submission. “Jihad is not inhumane, despite its necessary violence and bloodshed, its ultimate desire is peace which is protected and enhanced by the rule of law.” Armed responses are only permitted when all peaceful possibilities have failed. And once armed resistance begins it doesn’t stop “until the war lays down its burden” as Allah has mentioned in the Qur’an 47.
These ideas are foreign to us in the West. But that does not make them any less true or binding on those who believe. To shrug them off as radical is to disrespect Islam.
Subscriber loyalty x nominal affiliation creates enormous headaches.
Qanta Ahmed and numerous other vocal Muslims stand squared against “political Islam,” “Islamists”, “Islamofascism”, and so on even though the very same continue building their “Muslim Botherhood” enterprise worldwide and sending into the world a violence that compares well to lightning strikes and volcanos as a completely mindless, spiritless, vacuous force and accident of nature.
Evergreen on BackChannels in regard to this argument that is about Islam, the Qur’an, volumes of Hadith, and 1,400 years of associated literary output inseparable from the character of the enterprise has been “Shimmer“. While that post addressed the ambiguities that confront the conflict observer, it has become plain around the world, whether with Pakistan’s experience involving ISI and Taliban — who, so sources tell me, continue to roam freely in Quetta — and slow moving organizational politics, or, most recently, Turkish President Erdogan’s veiled or passive cooperation with ISIS (or he would have had his army participate in their slugging during the siege of Kobani and the fighting going on there now) that would seem linked both to his self-concept as a Sunni Muslim and his predilection for Putinesque autocracy and self-aggrandizement, White Palace and all.
Although I feel the central psychology in “malignant narcissism” well noted here, the basis for Islamist drive found in Islamic text cannot fail to address and question the attractions of the same: no one rewrote the Qur’an to disseminate “prison Islam” or seduce souls to “Islamic Jihad”.
*
“Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
Ascribed to Hillel the Elder (circa 35-BCE to 10-CE) and Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a).
“On that account We ordained for the Children of Isra`il that if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole humanity: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole humanity.”
In the concept that is “malignant narcissism”, the variable “locus of control” (although Rotter’s approach would seem to miss the dictators, the “verticals of power”) may number foremost among many features: who is being made central to the experience of the listener? Who is the controlling agent in “We decreed upon the Children of Israel . . . .”?
Humanist and modern Islam may look aghast at Boco Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, and so on but the same may have to approach either the deep misguidance and misreading of scripture or fly from both or go with the program as put on display by ISIS: the poetry would seem to leave little room for masking either its presumptions or its targets, dividing, conveniently, admirers from its intellectual competitors or, worse, its sources.
(On political locus of control, I suspect the more tender the deep or repressed personality — the narcissistically injured or mortified person — either the more manipulative and sadistic the personality encountered or, amazingly, reparative The dynamic psychology and social psychology at this nexus would be a good area for study — online, at least, the field, as of this afternoon’s quick look, looks wide open).
Paris police said the turnout was “without precedent” but too large to count. One organiser said he had indications it could be between 1.3 and 1.5 million people. Some commentators said the last street presence in the capital on this scale was at the Liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany in 1944.
Boko Haram is getting more extreme itself. This week, the group used a 10-year-old girl as a suicide bomber. “I doubt much if she actually knew what was strapped to her body,” one observer told AFP. The group has been using young women and children more and more.
Hundreds of bodies – too many to count – remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.
Fighting continued on Friday around Baga, a town on the border with Chad where insurgents seized a key military base on 3 January and attacked again on Wednesday.
Local officials this week said the attack forced at least 20,000 people from Baga and other settlements in and around Lake Chad to flee, many of them across the border.
Nearly 600 others had been stranded on an island on the lake without food, water or shelter.
Addressing a large gathering outside the kosher supermarket that was targeted, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “Today, we are all Charlie, we are all police officers, we are all Jews of France.”
One may with immediate difficulty argue that the Islamist’s perception of Islam is aberrant and untenable given what at least seems like an increase in the tempo and virulence of Islamist attacks on soft targets and Islamist efforts to establish absolute rule by divine fiat in the form of caliphate or Islamic republic globally. Not only lone wolves have launched attacks on state, business, media (and specifically Jewish) targets, but terrorist teams and assembled militia have as well.
New York – Cataclysmic destruction of the Twin Towers Washington – Attempt to demolish the Pentagon London – Coordinated attack on the public transport system; the beheading of an off duty soldier in broad daylight in full public view Madrid – Bombing of crowded commuter trains at rush hour Nairobi – Seizure of Westgate shopping mall and murder of scores of innocents Burgas, Bulgaria – Bombing of a tourist bus Mumbai – Murderous attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel, Chabad House and other sites Boston – Bombing of the city’s annual marathon Bali – Bombing of crowded tourist locations Buenos Aires – Deadly attacks on Jewish institutions and the Israeli Embassy Ottawa – Assault on the Canadian Parliament Sydney – Recent seizure of a downtown café and murder of two customers In-Amenas, Algeria – Seizure of a gas facility and murder of dozens of civilians Chibock, Nigeria – Abduction of almost 300 schoolgirls, reportedly to serve as sex slaves This bloodcurdling list is in no way complete, and numerous other incidents could be added. It certainly does not include all the attempted attacks that were foiled by security services in various countries, preventing the commission of even more gruesome atrocities by adherents of Islam.
* * *
The reality is that there is a problem with Islam. To say that is not to deny Islam’s immense diversity, impugn the millions of Muslims who abhor the horrors being wreaked in their name, or dispute the enduring value of religious faith in a secular age.
But it is undeniable that Islam’s distinctive features make it especially vulnerable to being used to incite religiously motivated violence.
Al-Baghdadi is emulating the Prophet Muhammad – the ultimate Islamic role model.[“Al-Baghdadi also claims to share the Prophet’s lineage when he calls himself Al-Qurayshi, a member of the Quraysh tribe, to which the Prophet belonged.”] The Prophet, while displaying cruelty in battle – cruelty mirrored by the IS – put off battles with his enemies and integrated compromises and tactical agreements in his policy, in order to gather strength prior to renewing action to obtain his ultimate goals.
As with other mirage, as one in fact draws closer to the object sought, the shimmering stops and more solid details maintain their appearance with solidity.
Update – October 15, 2014
The most striking as well as encouraging finding is that ISIS has almost no popular support in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Lebanon – even among Sunnis. Among Egyptians, a mere 3 percent express a favorable opinion of ISIS. In Saudi Arabia, the figure is slightly higher: 5 percent rate ISIS positively. In Lebanon, not a single Christian, Shiite, or Druze respondent viewed ISIS favorably; and even among Lebanon’s Sunnis, that figure is almost equally low at 1 percent.
http://fikraforum.org/?p=5608 – Distributed 10/14/2014 by The Washington Institute. The web page summary has attached to it the full PDF report.
The BackChannel’s page “Shimmer” launched to suggest that factual data should exist somewhere between the apologist’s “ISIS does not represent Islam” and the strident anti-Jihadist’s “Islam is represented by ISIS”.
It should be noted that Islam-defending apologist and the strident Jihad watcher share the same abhorrence as regards what ISIS represents. In contest, however, one argues that Muhammad the Messenger and the Qur’an are okey dokey and some Muslims are nutty (and need to be dealt with) and the other’s analysis suggests Muhammad’s battlefield history — with the Banu Qurayza signal to what was to come — plus the contradictions within the Qur’an plus patently vicious Hadith, including the counsel to deceive the infidel, are just plain ugly all the way through.
Now we’re starting to see numbers.
From a dimensional perspective, fog floats with them: the reduction “ISIS bad : Brotherhood good : Hamas very good” (suggested by facets of the Fikra Forum report) is a head scratcher: what central beliefs and tenets and related attitudes constitute irreducible surveyed objects of interest?
While the “Islamic Small Wars” burn everywhere beneath the surface or on it, the want to address those “beliefs, tenets, and related attitudes” as candidly, completely and specifically as possible remains compelling.
Related and Recommended Reading
One woman gestured to her hijab, her face flushed, shouting: “Who are you to talk about these victims, when you aren’t even visibly Muslim?” For good measure, she added that I was personally responsible for the post 9/11 escalation in the harassment of veiled Muslim women.
BackChannels 