Pretty Talk and Ugly Realities

 

By Thomas Sowell

 

No phrase represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than the phrase "Middle East peace process." A close second might be the once-fashionable notion that Israel should "trade land for peace."

Since everybody seems to be criticizing Israel for its military response to the rockets being fired into their country from the Gaza strip, let me add my criticisms as well. The Israelis traded land for peace, but they have never gotten the peace, so they should take back the land.

Maybe a couple of generations of Palestinians in Gaza living in peace under Israeli occupation and a couple of generations of the occupation troops squelching the terrorists — "militants" for those of you who are squeamish — would set up conditions where the Palestinians would be free to vote on whether they would like to remain occupied or to have their own state — minus terrorists and their rockets.

Casualty totals alone should be enough to show that the Palestinian people are the biggest losers from the current situation, where the terrorists among them, firing rockets into Israel, can bring devastating retaliatory strikes.

Why don't the Palestinians vote for some representatives who would make a lasting peace with Israel? Because any such candidates would be killed by the terrorists long before election day, so nobody volunteers for that dangerous role.

We don't know what the Palestinians really want — and won't know as long as they are ruled by Hamas, Hezbollah and the like.

Whatever the benefits of peace for the Palestinian population, what are the terrorists going to do in peacetime? Become librarians and furniture salesmen?

So-called "world opinion" has been a largely negative factor in this situation. Nothing is easier than for people living in peace and safety in Paris or Rome to call for a "cease fire" after the Israelis retaliate against people who are firing rockets into their country.

The time to cease fire was before the rockets were fired.

What do calls for "cease fire" and "negotiations" do? They lower the price of launching attacks. This is true not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world as well.

During the Vietnam war, when American clergymen were crying out "Stop the bombing!" they paid little attention to the fact that bombing pauses made it easier for North Vietnam to move more ammunition into South Vietnam to kill both South Vietnamese and Americans.

After Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, if British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had heeded calls for a "cease fire," that would have simply lowered the price to be paid by the Argentine government for their invasion.

Go back a hundred years — before there was a United Nations and before "world opinion" was taken into account.

An Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands at that time would have risked not only a British counter-attack to retake the islands but also British attacks on Argentina itself.

Anywhere in the world, attacks such as those on Israel today would not only have risked retaliation but invasion and annihilation of the government that launched those attacks.

Today, so-called "world opinion" not only limits the price to be paid for aggression or terrorism, it has even led to the self-indulgence of third parties talking pretty talk about limiting the response of those who are attacked to what is "proportionate."

By this reasoning, we should not have declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor. We should have gone over to Japan, bombed one of their harbors — and let it go at that.

Does anyone imagine that this would have led to Japan's becoming as peaceful today as it has become after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Or is the real agenda to engage in moral preening from a safe distance and at somebody else's expense?

Those who think "negotiations" are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an "issue" that can be resolved amicably around a conference table.

 

Thomas Sowell

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Studying the Islamic Way of War

 

by Raymond Ibrahim

At the inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) back in April, presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration. Though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine — such as Clausewitz's On War, Sun Tsu's The Art of War, even the exploits of Alexander the Great as recorded in Arrian and Plutarch — Islamic war doctrine, which is just as if not more textually grounded, is totally ignored.

As recently as 2006, former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop lamented that "the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered [emphasis added]." Today, seven full years after September 11, our understanding of the Islamic way of war is little better.

This is more ironic when one considers that, while classical military theories (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, et. al.) continue to be included on war-college syllabi, the argument can be made that they have little practical value for today's far different landscape of warfare and diplomacy. Contrast this with Islam's doctrines of war: their "theological" quality — grounded as they are in a religion whose "divine" precepts transcend time and space, and are believed to be immutable — make Islam's war doctrines unlikely ever to go out of style. While one can argue that learning how Alexander maneuvered his cavalry at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC is both academic and anachronistic, the exploits and stratagems of the prophet Muhammad — his "war sunna" — still serve as an example to modern-day jihadists.

For instance, based on the words and deeds of Muhammad, most schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that the following are all legitimate during war against the infidel: the indiscriminate use of missile weaponry, even if women and children are present (catapults in Muhammad's seventh century context; hijacked planes or WMD today); the need to always deceive the enemy and even break formal treaties whenever possible (see Sahih Muslim 15: 4057); and that the only function of the peace treaty, or "hudna," is to give the Islamic armies time to regroup for a renewed offensive, and should, in theory, last no more than ten years.

Quranic verses 3:28 and 16:106, as well as Muhammad's famous assertion, "War is deceit," have all led to the formulation of a number of doctrines of dissimulation — the most notorious among them being the doctrine of "Taqiyya," which permits Muslims to lie and dissemble whenever they are under the authority of the infidel. Deception has such a prominent role that renowned Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi declares: "[I]n the Hadith, practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than [the need for] courage."

In addition to ignoring these well documented Islamist strategies, more troubling still is the Defense Department's continuing failure to appreciate the pertinent "eternal" doctrines of Islam — such as the Abode of War versus the Abode of Islam dichotomy, which maintains that Islam must always be in a state of animosity vis-à-vis the infidel world and, whenever possible, must wage wars until all infidel territory has been brought under Islamic rule. In fact, this dichotomy of hostility is unambiguously codified under Islam's worldview and is deemed a fard kifaya — that is, an obligation on the entire Muslim body that can only be fulfilled as long as some Muslims, say, "jihadists," actively uphold it.

Despite these problematic — but revealing — doctrines, despite the fact that a quick perusal of Islamist websites and books demonstrate time and again that current and would-be jihadists constantly quote, and thus take seriously, these doctrinal aspects of war, senior U.S. government officials charged with defending America do not.

Why? Because the "Whisperers" — Walid Phares's apt epithet for the majority of Middle East/Islamic scholars and their willing apologists in the press — have made anathema anyone who dares to point out a connection between Islamic doctrine and modern-day Islamist terrorism — as witness, the Steven Coughlin debacle. This is an all too familiar tale for those in the field (see Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America).

While there exists today many Middle East studies departments, one would be sorely pressed (especially in the more "prestigious" universities) to find any courses dealing with the most pivotal and relevant topics of today — such as Islamic jurisprudence and what it says about jihad or the concept of the Abode of Islam versus the Abode of War. These topics, we are assured, have troubling international implications and are best buried. Instead, the would-be student is inundated with courses dealing with the evils of "Orientalism" and colonialism, gender studies, and civil society.

The greater irony — when one talks about Islam and the West, ironies often abound — is that, on the very same day of the ASMEA conference, which also contained a forthright address by premiere Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis ("It seems to me a dangerous situation in which any kind of scholarly discussion of Islam is, to say the least, dangerous"), the State Department announced that it would not call al-Qaeda type radicals "jihadis," "mujahadin," nor incorporate any other Arabic word of Islamic connotation ("caliphate," "Islamo-fascism," "Salafi," "Wahhabi," and "Ummah" are also out).

Alas, far from taking the most basic and simple advice regarding warfare — Sun Tzu's ancient dictum, "Know thy enemy" — the U.S. government is having difficulties even acknowledging its enemy.

Raymond Ibrahim is Associate Director of the Middle East Forum and editor of The Al-Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Islamists Approach Europe - Turkey's Islamist Danger Part I

 

by Bassam Tibi

1^st part of 2

Since their electoral landslide victory in November 2002, Islamists within Turkey's Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have camouflaged themselves as "democratic Islamic conservatives."[1] The AKP claims to be the Muslim equivalent of the Christian-Democratic parties of Western Europe. Such an analogy is false, however. What the AKP seeks is not "Islam without fear," to borrow the phrase of Trinity College professor Raymond Baker,[2] but rather a strategy for a creeping Islamization that culminates in a Shari'a (Islamic law) state not compatible with a secular, democratic order. The AKP does not advertise this agenda and often denies it. This did not convince the chief prosecutor of Turkey who, because of AKP efforts to Islamize Turkey, sought to ban the party and seventy-one of its leaders. While the AKP survived a ban, the majority of justices found that the AKP had worked to advance an Islamist agenda and undermine secularism.[3] Nevertheless, the AKP enjoys the backing of the United States and the European Union as well. Through its support for institutional Islamism in Turkey, the West loses its true friends: liberal Muslims.

Advance of Secularism

The processes of secularization predate the Kemalist revolution and trace back to the Tanzimat reforms, which Ottoman sultans began in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it was the Kemalist revolution that established real secularism in Turkey. Today, Turkey is the only one of fifty-seven majority Muslim states in which secularism is constitutionally enshrined. After establishing the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the caliphate, Shari'a courts, and other aspects of the Islamic legal system and religious order. The problem remains, however, that while the state is secular in terms of its full adoption of the Swiss legal code, such secularism does not extend to civil society, at least in terms of "open society."[4]

Constitutionally, Turkey is a secular state but, in reality, both Turkish civil society and its institutions are weak. In this sense, Turkey does not meet the democratic standards prevailing in the member states of the European Union. Turkish law guarantees neither freedom of religion nor freedom of speech. In 2005, Turkish authorities sought to prosecute prominent Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for his remarks regarding the World War I-era deaths of Armenians.[5] The AKP has legislated a variety of reforms, but these remain more cosmetic than real.[6] Şerif Mardin, a political science professor at Sabancı University who is sympathetic to the AKP, argues that "Civil society is a Western dream … [It] does not translate into Islamic terms."[7]

Still, Turkey is democratic. Despite coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, Turkey has had thirteen competitive, national elections in the past half-century and more than twenty changes of ruling party. Next to Mali and Senegal, Freedom House ranks Turkey the freest majority Muslim country.[8] But, even if it compares favorably to other majority Muslim countries, Turkey is not a fully democratic state. Its national security council, Milli Güvenlik Kurulu (MGK), was long run by the military and is still dominated by the military.[9] While not the most democratic institution—the MGK could, in practice, overrule parliament—the organization has secured the secular character of Turkey much as Iran's Council of Guardians intervenes to ensure that country's Islamist character. Ironically, even as European officials applauded reforms that, in August 2004, bestowed a civilian head and civilian majority upon the MGK, Turkey has become less democratic.

Today, the AKP party with almost a two-thirds majority in parliament, rules Turkey like a one-party state. The party ignores the opposition and has abandoned efforts to reach out to any constituency beyond Anatolian Islamists. It awards state positions, for example, almost exclusively to Islamists.[10] Still, even as Ankara backslides away from democracy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül leverage the European Union accession process to create an illusion of tolerance and reform.

Turkey's Approach to Europe

In a sense, the AKP's Islamism and European outreach illustrate a paradox in the way Muslims approach Europe: Either they favor Europeanization of Islam or Islamization of Europe.[11] With reform and accommodation, Islam can be compatible with democracy, but Islamism cannot. In the world of Islam, Islamism aims at reversing the process of cultural modernization. Today, acculturation and secularization are reversed into re-traditionalization, de-acculturation, and de-secularization. The ongoing de-Westernization in Turkish society is clear. There have been three Islamist parties since the 1970s with a real chance of acquiring power. All three were judicially invalidated—the Milli Selamet Partisi in 1980, the Refah Partisi in 1998, and the Fizelet Partisi in 2001—for the threat they posed to secularity in Turkey.[12]

Each of the Islamist leaders pursued different strategies. Neçmetten Erbakan who, as Refah leader, became Turkey's first Islamist prime minister, combined Islamism with neo-Ottomanism—an ideological revival of Ottoman glory—and pan-Turkish outlooks. The Erdoğan generation of Islamists, in contrast, presents itself in European terms, but its commitment to both Europe and democracy is instrumental. As Hudson Institute scholar Zeyno Baran explains, the AKP's commitment to democracy rests not on philosophical agreement with its principles but rather because "democratic elections … [have] proven to be the easiest and most legitimate path to power."[13]

Europeanized Islam embraces the values of cultural modernity, pluralism, and secular tolerance. Secularism and religious tolerance have, in many ways, provided the basis of European cultural development. Despite its Christian roots, Europe has been secular since the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Polemics that insist that the European Union is reluctant to accept an Islamic country into its fold are false. Europe was Europeanized through "the spread of one particular culture."[14] There is no reason why Turkish assimilation into Europe could not Europeanize Turkey just as the EU has Europeanized Spain, Greece, Poland, and in part, Romania. Turkey, after all, is contiguous with Europe and shares a common Byzantine heritage with much of southern Europe, including not only the Balkan states but also much of Greece.

Ottoman modernity, however, never accepted the spirit of Europe. It was based on the adoption of European instruments and technology but the rejection of European values. Such instrumental Europeanization did not stabilize the Islamic-Ottoman rule but rather contributed to its downfall. The Kemalist revolution arose from the failure of the Young Ottomans and Young Turks. Atatürk's agenda was the Europeanization of Turkey, not only technologically but also with the adoption of cultural outlooks based on modern values and norms. The Kemalist revolution sought to give Turkey a civilizational identity defined not by religion but rather by cultural values shared with Europe: secularism, individual human rights, civil society, and the rule of law. The problem with Atatürk's Europeanization of Turkey was that the process was a revolution from above, imposing innovations on society without providing the necessary cultural underpinning. By focusing on urban centers, it left the countryside barely affected. The result was a bifurcation of society: a European, urban culture in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, and a rural society deeply rooted in Islamic tradition.[15]

The AKP, however, does not accept Europeanization. Rather, AKP leaders pursue a double strategy: They verbally dissociate their party—and themselves—from political Islam while simultaneously embracing Islamic identity politics and, like many Islamist parties across the globe, also engaging in anti-Christian polemics.[16] The AKP uses education as its major instrument to further Islamist identity politics, introduce reinvented Islamic values, and de-Westernize society. And while the AKP claims secular credit for pursuing Turkey's EU membership, it defames Europe as an exclusionary "club of Christians."[17] Since its November 2002 accession, the AKP has engaged in a "creeping Islamization."[18] The AKP has sought to further this through politics of cultural Islamization, especially in education and media. Erdoğan has worked to expand Anatolian culture in the cities, helped by internal migration. The slums and shanty towns have become the AKP's chief base of support.

Bassam Tibi

                                                                                                                                      ./..

Islamists Approach Europe - Turkey's Islamist Danger. Part II

 

by Bassam Tibi

2^st part of 2

 

Needed: Islam's Europeanization

The problem of both Turkey's entry into the European Union and the Turkish diaspora in Europe is not Islam itself but rather how to encourage the Turkish diaspora's Europeanization. If Turkey were to become a secular, European-style democracy, it would face no obstacles to European Union accession, nor would such a strong boundary exist between Turkey and Europe if Turkey's religion were a more civil Islam.[19]

What Turkey needs is not simply a laundry list of civil reforms but Europeanization of Islam. There is nothing European about the ghettos of Turkish migrants living in Islamic enclaves in Berlin suburbs such Neuköln and Kreuzberg. These "Muslim enclaves"—including the Turkish ones—are "in the West, but not of it."[20] The AKP encourages such a division, though. In February 2008, Erdoğan labeled assimilation of Turks a "crime against humanity."[21] The Turkish diaspora in Europe remains antagonistic to their new home. The two major Turkish mosques in Germany—in Pforzheim and Bremen—are named Fatih (conqueror) after Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror who, in 1453, captured the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, modern day Istanbul.

Most Turks in Germany are not integrated into civil society. If Turkey, as the AKP sees it, enters the European Union, it would resemble more the Kreuzberg and Neuköln enclaves than the European parts of Istanbul or Ankara. While Erdoğan says his decision to guide Turkey toward Europe is firm, declaring, for example, that "Turkey has no other alternative than the full membership of the EU,"[22] it is less certain whether Europe could absorb a country ruled by Islamists.

The question of whether Turks can or will adopt a Europeanized Islam is crucial because demography and migration suggest that Europe will be dealing with Turkey for years to come. Turkish migration westward is not simply a twentieth and twenty-first century phenomenon but part of a larger pattern that began almost a millennium ago.[23] Many Turks joined Ottoman incursions into southeast Europe for opportunity and adventure.[24] Turkey's European Union accession would lead to a similar movement of population. The European Union's living standard and generous welfare system will attract Turkey's rural population, which suffers from an unemployment rate between 20 and 30 percent, and where many do not receive welfare benefits.[25] Indeed, some Turkish politicians have suggested that this migration should make Turkey more attractive to Europe arguing that Turkey can offer Europe, with its aging and declining populations, a young Turkish population. There is something to this. Turkish population figures have doubled since 1970 while Western European states have a shrinking population due to low birth rates and an aging population.[26] No doubt, migration would be an advantage for Europe, as much as it has been for the United States, provided that Europe, like the United States, assimilates its immigrants.

Given the AKP's instrumental approach to EU accession, it is ironic that while the European public largely opposes Turkey's accession, European diplomats still push the Turks to undermine the three pillars of the secular republic—the military, judiciary, and educational system—purportedly to make Turkey fit into the European Union. While European officials couch their prescribed reforms in the language of transformational diplomacy and democracy promotions, they ignore that Islamists only accept democracy as the rule of the majority, not as a culture of pluralism. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1999, the late prime minister Bülent Ecevet responded to European criticism of the imbalance of power between the parliament and the MGK by explaining, "In your countries, the political culture [of] secularity is well established, and therefore, there is no need for a guardian to protect it. In my country, Turkey, secularism still lacks firm foundations and can always be threatened, therefore the need to protect it."[27]

The Turkish writer Murat Çakır described the Islamists as "pseudo-democrats," who use democracy as a cover for the promotion of Islamization whether in Turkey itself or among the Turkish diaspora in Europe.[28] He observes that Ankara does not contribute to Europeanizing the Turkish Muslim diaspora. Mosques, built and administered by the Turkish state through the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (directorate of religious affairs), are not European even if they are moderate in comparison to the more militant Milli Görüş mosques.[29] The difference between the Diyanet and Milli Görüş mosques, however, has eroded since AKP accession led to its control of the Diyanet.

The secular commitment to democracy and to its values does not register in the Islamist model of an Islamic state (din-ü-devlet), which the AKP's actions show it accepts. Why then have Western policies toward Turkey not changed under AKP rule? Part of the problem is that Europe does not have a clear awareness of its civilizational identity. In contrast, migrants and Turkey itself strongly cultivate civilizational awareness in their own identity politics. The Islamist challenge and the potential of Islamization are based on facts, but they are not well understood in Europe. The Turkish diaspora in Europe, as well as the population in Turkey itself, is caught between Europeanization and Islamization. The European decision-makers have proven in the past to be incapable of designing policies to address challenges arising from ethnic-cultural diversification of the population. European officials neglect or simply ignore cultural issues such as the identity of Europe and Europeanization.

The AKP Abandons Compromise

Compromising and power sharing are an essential part of democratic politics. Repeated experience with Islamists show that they go to the ballots but fail to compromise when they win. The AKP is no exception. Erdoğan wanted to promote his foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, to the presidency in 2007, and he did so at the expense of a traditional process of consensus-building among opposition parties and so sparked a political crisis. While the AKP won subsequent parliamentary elections, its victory had as much to do with the weakness of the secularist parties as with satisfaction with the AKP. The 2007 election win enabled the AKP to retrench, sending Gül to Çankaya palace as the first non-secular president of Turkey.

With its majority solidified and no longer fearing the veto of a secular president, the AKP accelerated its de-secularization of Turkish society. Here, the head scarf is especially important. Among Islamists, the head scarf is not just an article of clothing but an icon of civilizational divide. Islamists view the head scarf as a provision of the Shari'a.[30] It has become symbolic of the tension between Europeanization and Islamization. In a 2004 ruling, the European Court of Human Rights found the right to a head scarf not to be a human right, thus dismissing an Islamist lawsuit.[31] Upon their reelection, though, the AKP decided to provoke secular elites with legislation enabling female university students to wear a head scarf on campus and in classes. On June 5, 2008, the Turkish Supreme Court deemed the AKP's law to be unconstitutional on the grounds that it eroded Turkey's secular character.[32] Soon after, the London-based pan-Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted Erdoğan as stating, "We are going to shut down the constitutional court."[33] Many Europeans have cheered Erdoğan and condemned court actions in Turkey. AKP partisans in the Turkish press and proponents of Turkey as a model of moderate Islam in the United States and Europe labeled Turkish secularists as "fascists" and accused them of undermining "democratic" Islamists.[34] Zeyno Baran observed that such an artificial dichotomy "inadvertently strengthens hard-line Islamists."[35] As the West sides with the Islamists, the opposition, feeling abandoned, has become more anti-Western. Again, Baran explains, "The opposition's anti-Western stand is more like that of a lover with a broken heart … [they] fear that Europeans push them to undertake reforms that will make Turkey more Islamic, and then will tell them that they are too Islamic to join a Western club."[36]

The crisis continued into the summer as the Constitutional Court heard arguments that the AKP had violated the principles of a democratic and secular Turkish republic.[37] Had the court dissolved the party, it would have toppled the government and plunged the country into political turmoil.[38] The court wanted to avoid this outcome as it would have ended the AKP but not the Islamist challenge. The AKP could simply have transferred its assets to another party and reemerged under a new name, just as the AKP had emerged from the ashes of Fezilet. The court did not acquit the AKP, however, but instead gave it a strong warning to stop steering Turkey away from the secular order that the constitution mandates towards an Islamic one. Court president Haşim Kiliç stated, "There is no verdict on closure … However, in this ruling a serious warning has been issued to the party [AKP], and I hope this conclusion will be elevated and will be taken accordingly."[39]

Secularism Abandoned

Western politicians, scholars, and opinion leaders barely understand what is going on in Turkey. Too many Western pundits depict Turkey's increasing Islamism as fortuitous. The Rand Corporation's Stephen Larrabee, for example, wrote, "Under the AKP, Turkey has emerged as an important diplomatic actor in the region … without the AKP … the United States would lose an important partner in trying to stabilize this volatile region … At the same time, banning the party could undercut efforts to promote reform and democracy in the Middle East."[40] Such views infuriate secular Turks. It is ironic that the intra-Turkish debate on the pernicious nature of Islamism has been more open than the Western one.

In the name of democratic reforms, as European diplomats have observed, the AKP has reduced the secular impact of the army, defamed judicial defense of the constitution as a "judicial coup," expanded the Imam Hatip religious schools and equated them to secular schools, and fired university presidents. Too many in the West praise the AKP as "moderate Islamic." The only difference, however, between moderate and jihadist Islamists is the use of the ballot box instead of violence to come to power. It may be important to include Islamists in democracy but certainly not with the Western naive notion that inclusion will tame Islamism. This is the lesson that should be drawn from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and certain Islamist parties in Iraq.

Hamas and Hezbollah may be represented in parliaments, but they have kept their militias that represent the antithesis of democracy. They show how their embrace of the democratic game is only a tactical step. The AKP may be better than Hamas and Hezbollah since it has no militia although its dominance and use of the police force and secret services have become nearly as abusive.

The proper solution for crisis-ridden Turkey is neither the tacit Islamic law of the AKP nor a coup by the Turkish secularists. Rather, the European Union and the United States should encourage the strengthening of civil society by making the weak institutions of Turkish democracy stronger. Moderate Islamists want to Islamize, not democratize.[41] They are committed to the procedure of democracy but not to its pluralistic and peaceful political culture. Political Islam in Turkey is an important issue for Europe. Turkey not only has close relations to the West, but it also has a diaspora of more than four million in the European Union.[42] While many moderate Muslims seek to Europeanize Islam, the Islamism practiced by the AKP is an ideology of cultural divide, tension, and conflict, despite all of the pro-Europe rhetoric in which Islamists in Turkey engage in their pursuit to exploit the European Union for their agenda of Islamization.

Bassam Tibi is a professor of international relations at Göttingen University in Germany and A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. His most recent book is Political Islam, World Politics and Europe (New York: Routledge 2008).

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

[1] Ihsan Dagi, "Turkey's AKP in Power," Journal of Democracy, July 2008, pp. 25-30.
[2] Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
[3] BBC News, July 28, 2008; Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2008.
[4] Fatma Müge Goçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire, Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Niazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst, 1998).
[5] Tagesanzeiger (Zurich), Feb. 5, 2005; Spiegel Online (Hamburg), Dec. 16, 2005.
[6] Turkey 2006 Progress Report (Geneva: European Union: European Commission, Nov. 8, 2006), pp. 25-8.
[7] Şerif Mardin, "Civil Society and Islam," in John Hall, ed., Civil Society (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1995), pp. 278-9.
[8] "Combined Average Ratings: Independent Countries 2008," Freedom in the World (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2008), accessed Sept. 11, 2008.
[9] Turkey 2007 Progress Report (Geneva: European Union: European Commission, Nov. 6, 2007), p. 9.
[10] See Turkish Daily News (Ankara), Aug. 7, 2008.
[11] Bassam Tibi, "Europeanizing Islam, or the Islamization of Europe," in Timothy Byrnes and Peter Katzenstein, eds., Religion in an Expanding Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 204-24.
[12] Marvine Howe, Turkey Today. A Nation Divided over Islam's Revival (Boulder: Westview, 2000), pp. 1-10, 179-94; Sueddeutsche Online (Munich), July 31, 2008.
[13] Zeyno Baran, "Divided Turkey," The Journal of Democracy, Jan. 2008, pp. 56-7.
[14] Robert Barlett, The Making of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 269.
[15] Ellen K. Trimberger, Revolution from Above (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1978), p. 112.
[16] Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, ed., "Introduction," Feindbild Christentum im Islam (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), pp. 7-11.
[17] Agence France-Presse, Jan. 26, 2008.
[18] Baran, "Divided Turkey," p. 69.
[19] Bassam Tibi, "The Quest of Islamic Migrants and of Turkey to Become European," Turkish Policy Quarterly, Spring 2004, pp. 13-28.
[20] John Kelsay, Islam and War (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), p. 118.
[21] FAZ.net (Frankfurt), Feb. 10, 2008.
[22] Welt Online (Berlin), Feb. 11, 2008.
[23] Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries. The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York: Morrow Quill, 1977), pp. 15-7.
[24] Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, Süleyman the Magnificant and his Age. The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Langman, 1995), p. 10.
[25] Serhat Salihoğlu, "Welfare State Policies in Turkey," South-East Europe Review for Labour and Social Affairs, Oct. 2002, pp. 21-6.
[26] Daten, Fakten, Trends zum demographischen Wandel in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung und statistisches Bundesamt, Bevölkerung, 2008), p. 31.
[27] World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, Feb. 1999.
[28] Murat Çakır, Die Pseudodemokraten. Türkische Lobbyisten und Islamisten (Düsseldorf: GDF Publikation, 2000), pp. 101-76.
[29] For more on the Milli Görüş, see Lorenzo Vidino, "The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 25-34.
[30] Nilüfer Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
[31] "Case of Leyla Şahin vs. Turkey," European Court of Human Rights, application no. 44774/98, Nov. 10, 2004; "Grand Chamber Judgment: Leyla Şahin v. Turkey," European Court of Human Rights, press release, Nov. 10, 2005.
[32] The New York Times, June 6, 2008.
[33] Al-Hayat, June 11, 2008.
[34] See, for example, Mustafa Akyol, "The Threat Is Secular Fundamentalism," The International Herald Tribune, May 4, 2007.
[35] Zeyno Baran, "Illiberal Democracy? Fighting for Turkey's Soul," The International Herald Tribune (Paris), June 11, 2008.
[36] Ibid.
[37] BBC News, July 28, 2008; Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2008.
[38] The International Herald Tribune, July 30, 2008.
[39] The International Herald Tribune, July 30, 2008.
[40] Stephen Larrabee, "Turkey's Broadening Crisis," The International Herald Tribune, July 25, 2008.
[41] Bassam Tibi, "Islamist Parties. Why They Can't Be Democratic," Journal of Democracy, July 2008, pp. 43-8.
[42] Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit. Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund. Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2006 (Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt, 2008), pp. 5-13, 60; Internationales Statistisches Jahrbuch (Wiesbaden: Statisitisches Bundesamt, 2006), p. 241.

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Ceasefire in Gaza.

 

by Denis MacEoin

Today everyone's talking about a ceasefire in Gaza. With the UN proposing one and Israel demurring, the public, unaware of anything much about Gaza, Hamas, or Israel, blithely puts Israel in the dock. Yet during the last "ceasefire," when rockets continued to land in Israeli civilian centers, there was a noticeable silence on the part of the international community. It seems it's okay to drag Israel back from an attack on a massively financed and armed terrorist entity (and if Hamas isn't a terrorist entity, it's hard to know what it is), but just not right on to demand the same sort of action on the part of the terrorists. Don't forget, Israel isn't the only one refusing a ceasefire at this point: Hamas is rejecting one too, and for dishonest reasons.

There are things going on here that half the world just doesn't get. All those clamoring for a ceasefire think all other parties understand the word just like they do. They'd be wrong. The secular Arabic press, such as the international newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, uses the standard Arabic term for a cessation of fire: waqf al-nar or waqf itlaq al-nar. That is a literal translation, and it means exactly what ceasefire means in English and other languages. But Hamas don't talk about a cessation of fire, because that would be to introduce a term from the Western political vocabulary into their discourse, and they can't do that.

Why not? Because Hamas is a deeply-grounded Islamist movement that follows the principle that Muslims must never do anything that resembles what the non-believers do. That's why many Muslims here will only wear Muslim clothes and refuse to join in Christmas, birthday or other celebrations with their Christian neighbors.

Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement, and, unlike Fatah, it prioritizes religious values and aims. A Hamas council has just introduced the implementation of severe punishments, such as amputations and crucifixions for breaches of Islamic law in matters like theft or adultery. Read their 1988 Covenant (al-Mithaq) and you will grasp the fact that their struggle against Israel has nothing to do with land in the sense that is understood in international law. Their gripe is that the whole of what they anachronistically term "Palestine" (the old Southern Syria) was conquered by Islam in the 7th century and not an inch of it must pass out of Muslim hands forever.

As their Covenant makes clear, they are fighting a Jihad, and the rules they observe are Jihad rules, based on centuries of legislation about the waging of war against unbelievers. The problem with Jihad rules is that they simply don't recognize all the elements of international law that modern states base their treaties and international conventions on. Jihad law includes rules on how and when to deceive the foe, and envisages no outcome other than the death or submission of non-Muslims.

When Hamas announces a temporary cease-fire (a hudna or, recently, a tahdiyya or lull), it does so, not to have an opportunity to talk peace, but to regroup and re-arm. "Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement." The only solution to the Middle East problem is war: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Numerous times in the past, Israel has shown itself willing to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, on conditions similar to those propounded by the Quartet, first and foremost recognition of Israel's right to exist, followed by a guarantee that there will be no further resort to violence, including terrorist attacks on civilians (and that includes firing rockets at them). As time has passed, especially since the death of Yasser Arafat, a degree of pragmatism has entered the Palestinian mind, but not the thinking of Hamas. Not only will Hamas not make peace with Israel in order to create a viable Palestinian state, they are as ready to kill Palestinian Muslims in order to gain total control of Gaza and the West Bank.

A recent Hamas pronouncement boasted that the Palestinians (for which read Hamas) have made an industry of death and that everyone plays a part: "...the women exceed at this, and so too do the mujahideen [fighters in jihad] and the children. That's why they have formed human shields of the women the children the elderly and the mujahideen in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine."

This is the only fighting force in history to boast that they have made human shields of their own people. There are films of "brave" Hamas gunmen dragging screaming children along to serve as shields, and of civilians sent onto the roofs of rocket launching sites, where, ironically, they know the Israelis will not fire on them. It is a mockery of military ethics, yet it goes barely noticed in the Western media.

Israel is not along in fighting terrorism. Even now, this country fights al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan. If we ever gave up the fight against Islamist terror in Britain, we would reap the whirlwind in bombings on land and in the air. Why then do so many of us scorn what Israel does? A combination of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran could one day bring Israel down and result in the deaths of millions of Jews. Is there any good reason why Israel should acquiesce in this? Is our grass roots anti-Semitism still so ferocious that we cannot bear the thought of a Jewish state in the Middle East, even if that state was brought into being by a majority vote of the UN?

This war is not a pretty war, but, truth be told, no wars are pretty. If Hamas cannot be fought to a standstill or until it is a spent force, lulls in the fighting will be of absolutely no use. Beaten to a ceasefire, Hamas will return. They will return and they will fight to a standstill again, then they will regroup and attack once more. More deaths, of Israelis and Palestinians both. Ever-postponed statehood for the Palestinians, unending vituperation of Israel, which is only a democracy trying to defend its civilians from crimes this country would not bear for a week.

It's not a time for a ceasefire. When it comes, let the Palestinian Authority make it and keep to it, and let the PA police its own territories and rein in the madmen who cannot accept anything but their own right to rule everybody else, and their self-proclaimed right to kill Jews wherever they may be found. For Hamas has now announced that they will do exactly that: kill Jews, not just Israeli Jews, but Jews in any country where they may be found. And these are the people the UN and others would have Israel make a ceasefire with today.

Denis MacEoin
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.