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in September
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Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
8, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
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Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
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Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
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Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
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Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
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What's the Score?
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August 6, 2003
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Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
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Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
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Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
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5, 2003
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The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
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Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
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McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
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My Darn Good Resumé
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Plummer
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Z.
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Jackson
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2 / 3, 2003
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Croft
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Amadi Ajamu
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August
1, 2003
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Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
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Steve
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Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
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Madsen
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Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
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July
31, 2003
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McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
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Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
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Hull
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July
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J. Nagy
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Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
8, 2003
Saudis
on the Defensive
On Terrorism, Methodism,
Saudi "Wahhabism" and the Censored 9-11 Report
By GARY LEUPP
Two scandals unfold simultaneously: the larger,
centering on administration lies concerning the threat posed
by Iraq, and concerning Baghdad's supposed connections to al-Qaeda;
the smaller (which might be a tempest in a teapot) on alleged
connections between al-Qaeda and Saudi officialdom. They may
well impact one another as Congress resumes its investigations
next month. While it seems implausible that Riyadh would deliberately
promote terrorist attacks on the U.S., the neocons running the
show in Washington have asserted propositions equally improbable,
and (so far) gotten away with it; and they would very much like
to see regime change in Saudi Arabia. Conceivably, as they feel
the heat of investigations and mounting public concern about
the results of the war on Iraq, they will feel the need to create
a distraction. What better way to do that than to whip up fears
about Saudi Arabia, which some of them consider the real "kernel
of evil" in the Middle East?
Saudis on the Defensive
These must be uneasy times for the House
of Saud. Since the meeting between King Abdul Aziz bin Abdul
Rahman al-Saud and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in February
1945, the regime in Riyadh has been closely allied to the U.S.
and extremely friendly to U.S. oil companies. The U.S. is Saudi
Arabia's leading trading partner, and a key military supplier;
it has, since the first Gulf War, and with huge political risk
to itself, hosted U.S. military bases on Saudi soil. President
Bush has referred to the "eternal friendship between the
two countries." On the other hand, powerful figures in and
around the Bush administration have made no secret of their hostility
to Riyadh, and their desire for "regime change" there
as throughout the Arab world. The royal family is under pressure,
and receiving conflicting signals from Washingon. Meanwhile the
American people are being told alternately, "These are our
friends," and "These are the real terrorists."
Last week Congress released its 9-11
report, with 27 or 28 (out of 858) blacked-out pages purporting
to damn the Arab kingdom for high-level complicity in global
terror. The study has led some in the Senate to demand anti-Saudi
sanctions. A key article covering the report, by Josh Meyer,
was published in the Los Angeles Times August 1. Its gist
is that the report implicates the Saudi regime itself in financial
support for al-Qaeda; a U.S. official quoted by Meyer says,
"not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in
9/11, but the [Saudi] Government." More on this below,
but let's place the Congressional report in context.
Although the White House has not hyped
the fact (given its politically useful if rationally indefensible
decision to impute more blame for the tragedy on Iraq than
on the Saudis), 9-11 was essentially a Saudi enterprise. The
U.S. government has identified fifteen of the nineteen hijackers
as Saudi nationals. So at the official level, although Riyadh
denied any involvement, the attacks were a terrible Saudi embarrassment.
It is, in fact, difficult to imagine
that the government of a U.S. client state, with a history of
close cooperation with U.S. foreign policy (in the joint anti-Soviet
war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, for example), and with a security
apparatus trained and equipped by the Pentagon, would willfully
involve itself in a terror attack on its longtime friend and
benefactor. It just doesn't make sense. Yet however implausible
this scenario might be, some among Washington's Straussian policy
wonks have been peddling this line for some time. (It will surely
serve their interests if a faction of those disillusioned with
the disastrous Iraq project concludes, "Iraq was the wrong
target! The real problem's those Saudis!")
They apparently intend to exploit the widespread tendency among
Americans to conflate all Arabs, to construct enemies in simple
racial terms, and to view Islam (which originated in what is
now Saudi Arabia) with suspicion or disdain, as they proceed
with their world-changing agenda.
The Neocons' Anti-Saudi
Campaign
Operation Vilify the Saudis began in
earnest last summer. As usual, official thinking was first articulated
in non-official think tanks. On June 6, 2002 the Hudson Institute
(its mission: "to be America's premier source of applied
research on enduring policy challenges"), which includes
on its Board of Trustees such well-connected figures as Richard
Perle, Max Singer, Donald Kagan, and Dan Quayle, sponsored a
seminar entitled, "Discourses on Democracy: Saudi Arabia,
Friend or Foe?" Among the participants was one Laurent Murawiec,
RAND policy analyst, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute,
and author of the (apparently forthcoming) book Taking Saudi
Out of Arabia. On June 19, the Institute hosted a discussion
of the best seller Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports
the New Global Terrorism by former Israeli ambassador to
the United Nations Dore Gold. On July 10, at the invitation of
Perle (fervent Likudist and then chair of that mysterious, unaccountable
"advisory" Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon), Murawiec
spoke to the DPB as well. Saudi Arabia, he told the illustrious
body, is the "kernel of evil" in the Middle East. In
both his presentations he averred that Saudi nationals, with
regime support, served in capacities "from planners to financiers,
from cadre to foot-solider, from ideologist to cheerleader"
in global terrorist activities. Murawiec's DPB talk, summarized
on the front page of the Washington Post August 6, produced
a political firestorm and official disclaimers. Colin Powell
(irked by the episode) told the Saudi foreign minister that Murawiec's
opinions had no bearing on U.S. policy (but of course, there
was already a big and obvious disconnect between Powell-policy
and Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz-policy.)
Also in August, Hudson Institute's co-founder
Max Singer presented a paper to the Pentagon's Office of Net
Assessment, in which ("thinking outside the box" as
Rumsfeld likes to say), he urged the dismemberment of
Saudi Arabia, in the spirit of the post-World War I reconfiguration
of what had been Ottoman Arab territory. The Eastern Province
of Saudi Arabia could, Singer argued, constitute a new "Muslim
Republic of East Arabia," peopled primarily by Shiite Muslims
unsympathetic to the dominant "Wahhabi" school of
Islam in Saudi Arabia, leaving Mecca and Medina in the hands
of the "Wahhabis" while placing the oil fields, concentrated
in the east, in the hands of western oil companies. [1] (The
Saudi regime, meanwhile, was hit that same August with a one
trillion dollar lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia by 9-11 family members, firefighters and
rescue workers.)
Not good times at all for Washington-Riyadh
ties. True, President Bush hosted Saudi Arabian ambassador Bandar
bin Sultan at an August lunch at his Texas ranch, and called
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to assure him that these recent controversial
presentations would not "affect the eternal friendship between
the two countries." But in fact the relationship was fraying.
The Saudis firmly opposed (in words) the U.S. invasion of Iraq
and refused to participate in it. They were quietly requesting
that U.S. troops be withdrawn from their country, where they'd
been stationed since 1990 as a "temporary" measure
preparatory to the Gulf War, their presence producing mounting
anger among the citizenry. (The troops are now being redeployed
to Qatar and Bahrain.) The Saudis are currently purchasing more
weaponry from France, Russia, even China, than from the U.S.
The 9-11 Report
In this context, Congress released the
above-mentioned report, with its censored pages that constitute
the chapter spookily entitled (as if to legitimate in advance
its withholding) "Certain Sensitive National Security Matters."
The content of those pages has of course been leaked; they charge
that Saudi nationals with known contacts to two of the 9-11 hijackers
are also known to have received money and had contact with Saudi
officials, and that Saudis have willfully provided al-Qaeda with
assistance through Muslim charities. Josh Meyer's piece makes
the case look really damning. He quotes an unnamed source "familiar
with the report" as alleging, "If this comes out, it
will blow the top off the relations with [the Saudi] government
because the American people will just be outraged." (Imagine
how anti-Saudi outrage would advantage the Bushites as their
Iraq policy faces further scrutiny.) But if you read way, way
down the Meyer article (paragraph 18 out of 19) you learn that
"a host of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials"
disagree with the report. Says one "official familiar
with the classified section": "There is a lot of information
in there that's inflammatory but not accurate, or inferential
or open to interpretation. Some of it is based on information
that is partial, fragmentary and wrong. It is certainly not conclusive."
The Saudi government, naturally, was
deeply upset by the allegations. On July 26, the Arab News,
which reflects Riyadh's views, editorialized that the censored
report was "nothing less than a charter for Saudi-bashing
an invitation to the U.S. and other media to speculate It will
be open season on Saudi Arabia." Riyadh urged transparency;
Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, who charged that the report
"wrongfully and morbidly accused" the kingdom, made
an emergency trip to Washington July 29 to urge the censored
pages be released so that his government could make a detailed
reply. In a statement issued after meeting Bush, he declared,
"We have nothing to hide. And we do not seek nor do we
need to be shielded. We believe that releasing the missing 28
pages will allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear
and credible manner; and remove any doubts about the Kingdom's
true role in the war against terrorism and its commitment to
fight it." But his plaint was rejected; Bush declared it
would make "no sense to declassify [the censored pages]because
it would help the enemy." Instead we have instead more secrecy,
more scary leaks.
Sound familiar? Again, it looks
like a split between the mainstream, the traditional "host
of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials" to
whom Meyer alludes, and the cutting-edge proponents of deception-as-policy,
in this case operating through a Congressional investigation.
(I don't mean to suggest that those steering the investigation
at the time of the joint inquiry, Florida Democrat Bob Graham
and Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, are full participants
in the neocon cabal, but it's quite likely that the intelligence
they credit passed through the same hands that provided us with
evidence that Saddam and bin Laden have been buddies for a long
time. The new chairman and vice-chairman of the committee are
Kansas Republican Pat Roberts and West Virginia Democrat Jay
Rockefeller. Roberts is a Bush loyalist, Rockefeller a somewhat
timid critic of the war.)
The mainstream intelligence community
must recognize that for various reasons (principally the presence
of U.S. bases in the homeland of the Prophet, land of the holy
places of Medina and Mecca; unconditional, limitless U.S. support
for Israel; and the cruel sanctions against Iraq) there is in
fact much opposition to U.S. policy among the Saudis. They understand
that such sentiment is encouraged by the religiously based Saudi
educational system. But (perhaps increasingly indignant at the
neocons' distortion of intelligence to serve their world-transforming
goals) they resist the effort to depict the Riyadh regime as
a terror-sponsoring operation.
The neocons for their part will likely
from this point play the religious card, since it's all
they really have to go on. They will probably focus on the national
education and legal systems in Saudi Arabia, both rooted in "Wahhabism,"
and on the charities issue. (Islam requires contributing to charity;
it is one of the Five Pillars of the faith. So Saudis, like Muslims
everywhere, contribute billions to charities every year, and
such contributions, according to Muslim thinking, might as legitimately
go to the support of righteous jihad in defense of Islam
as to the building of a school or hospital. Anyone wanting
to build a case against Saudi Arabia could easily find some
funds, from some charity, going to someone associated with al-Qaeda,
and purporting to pursue jihad,
and since Riyadh to some extent oversees the charities, voila!
there's your official terrorist connection.)
Saudi religious practices and institutions
were not problems when the Carter and Reagan administrations
were promoting jihad against the Soviet-backed regime
in Afghanistan in the 1980s, exploiting Muslim fundamentalism
for all it was worth and leaning on Riyadh to contribute thousands
of mujahadeen to confront the pro-Soviet, secular Afghan
state. But now, since it (temporarily) dovetails with myriad
anti-imperialist forces in the region and world, "Wahhabism"
has become a major concern. This is where the so-called "War
on Terror" really does threaten to become a war on
Islam.
Trashing a School of Islam
Influential voices in this country argue
that "Wahhabism" itself runs fundamentally counter
to U.S. values and goals, motivating believers to join "terrorist"
groups and to donate funds to terrorists. (Neocon ideologue Francis
Fukuyama even before 9-11 declared that "Wahhabi ideology
easily qualifies as Islamo-fascism" Sen. Charles Schumer,
New York Democrat, targets "Wahhabi"-style education:
"Saudi Arabia is the foremost sponsor of malicious madrassa
schools that spew anti-American hatred all over the Middle East
and inspire terror." Some suggest that Riyadh will have
to either undertake major religious reform to expunge the "anti-American"
aspects of "Wahhabi" rhetoric in the madrassa and mosque,
or risk serious consequences.
The demonization of Saudi Arabia, if
it occurs according to the neocons' plan and is not muffled by
cooler heads, will thus not involve, as it has elsewhere, charges
of possession of weapons of mass destruction, or even emphasize
dubious ties between government and terrorism. Rather, we'll
be told that since Riyadh's intrinsically and incorrigibly "anti-American"
religious ideology motivates wealthy Saudis to abet terrorism,
Washington (in self-defense) must act to remove the oil
fields that generate Saudi wealth, and are vital to the world
economy, from "Wahhabi"/terrorist control. Anticipating
that possible campaign of disinformation, we should acquaint
ourselves a bit with the targeted ideology.
The "Wahhabi" movement was
a reform effort within Islam founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab
(1703-87). It emerged before the west was a major issue in the
region (and before there even was a United States of America),
as an effort to purge Islam of what al-Wahhab viewed as heretical
and polytheistic aspects of contemporary religious practice.
At its inception the movement targeted magical practices, the
veneration or worship of saints it associated with Shiism, and
the pantheism sometimes advocated by Sufi Muslim devotees. It
banned tobacco, gambling, music and dancing. In its intrinsic
doctrine, it is about as threatening to you and me as the doctrine
of al-Wahhab's close contemporary, the British theologian John
Wesley (1703-91), founder of Methodism, also a "back-to-basics"
kind of guy who promoted a Christian fundamentalism, and
frowned upon dancing, card-playing, theater-going, intoxicants
and cosmetics. (I do not mean to suggest an exact parallel, but
they did have a lot in common. Both insisted upon absolute belief
in a Book, authored by the Creator of the cosmos Himself, who,
should anyone resist its teachings, would consign the nonbeliever
to everlasting hellfire. Utter submission to the Book and its
Author would on the other hand guarantee eternal life.)
In 1744, al-Wahhab forged an alliance
with Muhammad ibn Saud, ancestor of the present ruling family
in Saudi Arabia; by his death in 1792 the Saudis had conquered
much of the peninsula, gaining control over Mecca and imposing
"Wahhabist" practice. In 1801 they attacked and sacked
the Shiite center of Karbala, in today's Iraq. (Note: the Bushites
on occasion imply close cooperation between al-Qaeda and Iranian
Shiites in terrorist plots. But there being no love lost between
"Wahhabists"and Shiites, the charge is highly implausible.)
Thereafter the Ottoman Turks colonized the region, but in 1902
the above-mentioned Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman al-Saud captured
Riyadh, and in 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was officially
proclaimed. It has always been wedded to "Wahhabist"
fundamentalism, and the oil companies engaged with Riyadh since
the discovery of petroleum in 1938, and the governments soliciting
Saudi friendship, have accommodated themselves easily enough
to that faith. Funded by Riyadh and private Saudi charities,
"Wahhabist" missions have spread especially since the
1990s to southeast Asia, the Balkans, even the U.S., where according
to Stephen Schwartz (director, Islam and Democracy Program at
the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, speaking before
the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland
Security June 26), it has "come to dominate" the Islamic
community. Others disagree, contending that "Wahhabism"
is very much a minority trend.
Really a Threat?
In Saudi Arabia itself, is "Wahhabism"
really the threat posited by some neocons? John Esposito, director
of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown
University, suggests otherwise. Schwartz, he says, "fails
to make" distinctions among "Wahhabi" adherents.
He adds that "even conforming to an ultra-conservative,
anti-pluralistic faith does not necessarily make you a violent
individual." (There are of course millions of peaceable
if ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic Christians.)
Islam scholar and professor of political science at the University
of Vermont, F. Gregory Gause III, cautioned the House Subcommittee
on Middle East and South Asia last May about conflating "Wahhabists"
and terrorism. The "dangerous trend," he argued, "is
not Saudi or 'Wahhabi' in any exclusive sense. It is part of
the zeitgeist of the whole Muslim world right now It is undoubtedly
true that the al-Qa'ida network was able to recruit many Saudis.
But it would be a mistake to attribute this simply to some purported
affinity between 'Wahhabism' and al-Qa'ida's message of jihad.
Some Saudi clerics and intellectuals have supported al-Qa'ida's
message, but the vast majority have condemned it. Moreover,
al-Qa'ida has been able to recruit both fighters and intellectual
supporters from many countries---Egypt and Pakistan , to name
but two---where 'Wahhabism' is not a prominent intellectual current."
Those who charge that Saudi Arabia officially
promotes "terrorism" focus on the kingdom's education
system, which is unapologetically based on the Qur'an. Last year
the Middle East Media Research Institute, a non-profit organization
much-praised by the neocons that translates documents from Arabic,
Hebrew and Farsi, released a much-discussed preliminary report
on the content of Saudi textbooks. The most widely cited passage
from the report claims that an 8th-grade textbook says Jews and
Christians have been cursed by Allah for "accepting polytheism
and turned into apes and pigs." It's apparently exegesis
on Surat Al-Ma'idah (The Feast), verse 60:
Say: shall I inform you
Who will receive the worst chastisement from God?
They who were condemned by God,
And on whom fell His wrath,
And those who were turned to apes and swine,
And those who worship the powers of evil.
They are in the worst gradation,
The furthest away from the right path.
[Ahmed Ali translation].
(Further down the text---verse 69---one
reads "All those who believe, and the Jews and the Sabians
and the Christians, in fact anyone who believes in God and the
Last Day, and performs good deeds, will have nothing to regret"
Presumably the school kids read this too.) The report also cited
a 9th-grade textbook citing the Prophet's declaration that the
Day of Judgment "will not come until the Muslims fight the
Jews and kill them." Questions for class discussion include
"Who will be victorious on the Day of Judgment?"
Who's Really Intolerant?
Troubling, perhaps, but no more than
a Bible class, in a Christian parochial school, which might offer
for discussion passages from the New Testament such as these:
Matthew 8:10 (Jesus, to a Roman centurion,
comparing the Roman's faith to the unbelief of the Jews): "[In
the last days] the subjects of the kingdom [i.e., Jews] will
be turned out into the dark, where there will be weeping and
grinding of teeth." (Discuss: why will the Jews be weeping?)
John 8:42-44 (Jesus, addressing Jews):
"If God were your father, you would love me The devil is
your father, and you prefer to do what your father wants."
(Discuss: why did the Son of God tell the Jews that the devil
was their father?)
1 Thessalonians 2:14 (Paul, to the Christian
congregation): "[You are] suffering the same treatment from
your own countrymen as [Christians in Judaea] have suffered from
the Jews, the people who put the Lord Jesus to death, and the
prophets too. And now they have been persecuting us, and acting
in a way that cannot please God and makes them the enemy of the
whole human racebut retribution is overtaking them at last."
(Discuss what this means for Christians today.)
Revelation 2:9 (Jesus, to the Christians
in Smyrna): "I know the slanderous accusations that have
been made against you by the people who profess to be Jews but
are really members of the synagogue of Satan." (The only
"real" Jews now are those accepting Christ. Discuss.)
The fact is, both Christian and Muslim
scriptures have harsh words for Jews (and other non-believers),
while one finds in the Jewish scriptures passages in which Yahweh
orders the wholesale slaughter (men, women and children) of any
peoples "stubborn enough to fight against Israel" (Joshua
11:20). Abrahamic monotheism tends to divide humanity into two
categories: those on the side of God, and those on the other
side. (John Wesley, confidant that he was on God's side, saw
the Pope as the Antichrist, the "Man of Sin" and "Son
of Perdition.") Secular humanist that I am, I find this
whole worldview irrational, and potentially dangerous. (Wesley's
rhetoric contributed to the anti-Catholic riots in London in
1780, led by his follower Lord George Gordon, which resulted
in the deaths of over 450 people.). But I also believe in tolerance,
and agree with Esposito that those conforming to such faiths
aren't necessarily threatening.
Religions, "Wahhabism" and
Methodism included, pass over centuries from parents to children.
People usually don't choose them, in a process of careful study
and reflection; rather, religious precepts work into our brains
at an early age, often providing enormous comfort, although they
can have unhealthy effects too. We inherit them, embracing them
with varying degrees of enthusiasm, more rarely discarding them
as we mature. Or we submit to them to better relate to our believing
neighbors; virtually all U.S. politicians profess belief
in an Absolute Being and most make it a point to attend religious
services. Normal, decent, literate people even now in the 21st
century believe in all kinds of dubious phenomena: elephant-headed
gods, divinely-inspired prophecy, talking donkeys, the visit
of Jesus to recite the Sermon on the Mount in the sky over upstate
New York 2000 years ago. Surely "Wahhabism" posits
nothing any more outrageous than any of these beliefs. Some well-intentioned
people of my acquaintance see non-Christian faiths as "the
enemy" and believe it incumbent upon them to---"marching
as to war, with the Cross of Jesus going on before"---spread
the Holy Word (which they just know is the Truth)
before the Rapture comes. Some upstanding youth in my community,
driving past antiwar vigils in their SUVs festooned with oversize
U.S. flags, righteously bark, "Nuke 'em all!" "Wahhabism"
poses no greater threat to world peace than the mindset of such
blissfully air-headed, self-assured enthusiasts.
A "Methodist
Moment"?
Nor a greater threat to peace than the
mix of religieux in the U.S. administration now planning
its next moves. There are the Jewish Likudists like Wolfowitz
and Douglas Feith, undersecretary for political affairs at the
Defense Department. (Feith, whom the British government has reportedly
requested be dismissed, purports to know that Iraq transported
WMDs to Syria. He has drawn up a plan for attacking Damascus,
and looks very dangerous to me.) In higher positions, we find
fundamentalist Christians (who rival the Feiths in their Zionist
fervor), like the born-again U.S. president and vice-president.
Both men, by the way, are members of the United Methodist Church,
as are White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Commerce Secretary
Don Evans, and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. Condoleeza
Rice is a graduate of Southern Methodist University. The rightwing
Institute on Religion and Democracy has proclaimed: "the
Bush era is a 'Methodist moment' in the nation's capital."
But that doesn't mean that the invasion of Iraq was a specifically
Methodist project, and by the same token, 9-11 was not
a "Wahhabi" event. We can leave Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Wahhab, and his contemporary John Wesley, out of this.
Hermann Goering once declared that "the
people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders All
you have to do is tell them they are being attacked"
The neocons, who've been banking on the manipulation of fear
for almost two years, and who are still midway through their
fear-based empire-building program, probably believe that. They've
yet to exploit the full potential of racism and Islamophobia
at their disposal, but they may in the wake of the putatively
explosive censored report. But religion should not be
the issue. Islam (including "Wahhabism"), is not
the enemy and need not frighten us. The issue's imperialism,
and the unholy lies and distortions always deployed to get people
to rally around its banner. May we prove Goering wrong, and reject
the leaders' bidding, as they turn their attention to further
aggression in the Arab world and beyond.
Note:
[1]. The proper term for the "Wahhabi"
school is Muwahhadin; adherents dislike the former term, but
since it is widely used in journalism, I employ it in this article,
surrounded by quotation marks.
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor in the Department of History at
Tufts University and coordinator of the Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
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Francis
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My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
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Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
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The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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