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Fighting & Winning The Global War on Terror (WW IV)

Cdn Blackshirt said:
In all seriousness, just as Martin made a good choice with Hillier to reengineer the CF, he needs to find someone else to reengineer the CBC....they do so much damage to this country with their apologist outlook, it's sickening....
Matthew.    :salute:

Given what CBS and MDH have said about the CBC I think that the CDS himself would be perfect for the position. I, personally, would love to see someone like the CDS let loose on those baby-boomer asshats. i would also pay good money to be there when it happens!
 
COMMENT: The madrassa industry

Ishtiaq Ahmed / Daily Times (Pakistan) / July 27, 2005

The international jihad recruited idealist young Muslim men from all over the world for the Afghan war. Some of them went to the madrassas. This industry has now gone bust. Those who needed its products for fighting Communism are now selling off their shares. The Pakistani investors should watch out

The bomb blasts of July 7, 2005 have been connected to religious schools known as madrassas in Pakistan which, according to the British police, three of the four suicide bombers visited recently. Their families have also confirmed that the visits did take place. For once the market for conspiracy theories about a Jewish-Hindu-Christian diabolical plot to defame Islam and Muslims may have a short life-span, although I have already received a barrage of emails, denying with amazing bull-headed obstinacy that the suicide bombers were British Muslims of Pakistani origin. Some totally wacky theories suggest that the three men of Pakistani-origin worked for the British intelligence which orchestrated the attacks to create a scare of Muslim terrorism.

One of the suicide bombers, Muhammad Siddiq Khan, left behind a 14-month old daughter and a young wife. There is little doubt in my mind that Siddiq and his three younger comrades were idealists who had been brainwashed to believe that their faith and the ummah needed their supreme sacrifice. Whereas their mentors have yet not been traced and the entire network has not been uncovered, the fact remains that the jihadi factories (called madrassas) churning out a nihilistic worldview are still in business in Pakistan.

We were told by no less than President Pervez Musharraf in January 2002 when he first publicly announced his about-turn on jihad that the madrassas had been doing useful work, providing shelter, food and religious education to children from poor families who had no means of supporting themselves. Consequently he did not plan to dismantle them, but that those which preached extremism and terrorism would be closed down.

On the surface, such a description sounded sympathetic. Of course the general and his buddies never thought that it is not written in the stars that millions of Pakistani families should continue to remain poor and destitute so that they can only turn to the madrassas for help.

Neither did he mention that until the Afghan jihad was taken up by Pakistan, there were few madrassas in Pakistan and they took in only as many pupils as were needed by the mosques. Caring for the poor was not their agenda. The madrassas corresponded roughly to the number of mosques under the control of different sub-sects of Deobandis, Barelwis, Ahl-e-Hadith, Shia and so on. In 1956 there were only 244 madrassas in Pakistan. Recent estimates range from 13,000 to 15,000 with an enrolment of 1.5 to two million (unpublished report by Dr Saleem Ali, Islamic Education and Conflict: Understanding the Madrassahs of Pakistan).

The syllabi taught in those traditional madrassas was woefully archaic since much of it was based on assumptions that the earth was flat and the sun and moon rotated around it, while the stars were fixed lights in the seven-tier heaven. The laws and moral values taught also corresponded to a static worldview that made any notion of progress beyond the severely segregated societies of the 7th to 12th centuries impossible to grasp, much less accept.

But in all honesty such madrassas produced generally decent, hardworking and frugal prayer leaders and minor and major scholars of Islam. I remember that the Maulvi Sahib in our immediate Deobandi mosque was a thorough gentleman and a good human being. The Barelwi maulvi a little further down the road was also a wonderful man. Their silly rivalries provided much amusement and both had a sense of humour.

But things were never the same once the Afghan jihad started. The joint CIA-Saudi initiative resulted in a proliferation of madrassas, regardless of the genuine need for maulvis. Thanks to the CIA's 51 million US dollar grant to the University of Nebraska to produce pictorial textbooks glorifying jihad, killing, maiming and bombing other human beings was made sufficiently entertaining. Sadism could now be cultivated as a virtue. That was when madrassa doors were opened to the mass of the poor.

The new "educationâ ? they received was to hate the Russians, later generalised to include any non-Muslim. Jews, Hindus and Christians figured prominently and out of it came the expression of a Yahud-Hunud-Nasara conspiracy against Islam. The phrase had never existed previously but because of its Arabic sounds, it went readily to the hearts and minds of the Islamists. The Buddhists did not fit into the Yahud-Hunud-Nasara formula. But the Taliban by destroying the Buddha statues at Bamiyan indicated that even Buddhists were against Islam and therefore their symbolic presence in Islamic Afghanistan had to be annihilated.

Until then, the children of the poor were deliberately kept poor so landlords had a regular supply of rural workers whose labour and sweat could be exploited for a pittance. That's why establishing regular secular schools in the rural areas was strongly resisted. The urban poor also never got to school, ending up either as cheap industrial workers or as lumpen elements doing odd tasks in the informal sector of urban economies.

The need for warriors against the Soviets in Afghanistan meant that a portion of the cheap but plentiful labour force of young men could easily be converted into fodder for jihad in Afghanistan or, later in the Indian-administered Kashmir or used against other targets in India and against religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan.

The poor are fodder for war and jihad anywhere in the world though they need leadership and education, technical and otherwise. So, the international jihad also recruited idealist young Muslim men from all over the world for the Afghan war. Some of them went to the madrassas and were trained to hate anyone who did not fit into a narrow and regimented worldview. This industry has now gone bust. Those who needed its products for fighting Communism are now selling off their shares. The Pakistani investors should also watch out.

Some naïve scholars believe that dismantling the madrassas is undemocratic since it violates the freedoms of association and speech and expression. I wonder if the Ku Klux Klan cannot invoke this democratic right to propagate its ideology all over the USA and establish racist madrassas. The absurdity of such arguments need not be stressed.

Instead, people should demand that all Pakistani children should receive free and compulsory education based on human rights and all the literary and technical skills needed to create a humane, just and progressive Pakistan. Reformed syllabi based on both rationalist and sacred sciences monitored by the state should be taught in a reasonable number of religious seminaries. It would be best to bring all mosques and madrassas under direct state supervision.

The author is an associate professor of political science at Stockholm University. He is the author of two books.


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on the topic of the use of 'terrorist by the media and partially, if not mostly, in response to mdh's excellently cogent post on the nature of the media in canada, I'd submit the following defense.

to me, the 7/7 event is best described this way: islamic militants carried out a terrorist attack against the citizens of london. now, that may well make the 7/7 bombers terrorists, but in order to make these terms equivalent you have to conflate the group (islamic militants) with their tactic (terrorism). maybe this would be appropriate if such a relationship held true always and everywhere, but it doesn't.

there are groups using terrorist tactics that aren't predominantly motivated by islam (baathists, nepali communists, some kashmiri groups, turkish kurds, etc) and there are even groups using terrorist tactics that claim (some agree, some don't) to be anti-occupation 'insurgents' (baathists again, chechens, taliban). there are also islamic militant groups that sometimes attack military targets, which falls outside most standard definitions of the term terrorism. so, using the term 'terrorists' to describe the perpetrators of all of these varied activities is just imprecise. what purpose does using the term serve?

now, of course, there are emotional reasons for using the term terrorist, and that's how some of us operate, but our enemy isn't the tactic of terrorism, it's the stupid insanity of the people who carry out the attacks and, more than that, it's the ideological badlands that these islamic militant monkies inhabit which is our real enemy.

it's this conspiratorial anti-liberal ideology, deeply if not widely supported among the foreign islamic community, that is the fundamental enemy. gwot, in the sense that it exists, isn't a war against terrorists, it's a war against ideas. but then wars of ideology aren't entirely new ('the germans weren't so bad, it's just their ideas i wanted to kill'). however, an asymmetrical global campaign against networked, non-state militants representing the extremist wing of one of the world's most influential religions is actually kinda new. 

on the other hand, back to the discussion about terrorism, for as long as there's been war, there's been attacks on civilian populations. justifications for the tactic vary, but any rationalization that works for us can also be used by our enemies.

and here's where there is perhaps a significant departure from, say, mdh's perspective. from my exposure to the dreaded 'pleasure den' dwellers (who am i kidding, if the pleasure den serves guinness, i'm there) there is among them a significant sense of doubt or critical distrust. whether inculcated by education, by experience or by a gift of temperament is perhaps irrelevant, but it's this sense of doubt that typifies the breed for me. among the things doubted are, for example, the assumption that our nation is always doing the right and the good thing. strangely, i believe you can hold this position of national self-doubt and still be patriotic, though some would possibly disagree. though perhaps controversial, I'd argue that critical dissent is indispensable for the maintenance of group sanity. a cursory examination of history will provide multiple examples of groups, nations and even civilizations going completely off the rails and heading collectively into a delusional death spiral. this is certainly something to be avoided.

in this sense perhaps the greatest danger to forward progress is to be convinced that you know the absolute truth and that you are doing the absolute good. this is not just the path to injustice and barbarism, it's also the path to fundamentalism and insanity. this very trait then, of critical doubt, is arguably what makes us different than the islamic militants, our current enemy.

and so while the military are the able guardians of our national security, the liberally educated relativists are in fact the guardians of something equally important: clarity.

conflating terms to artificially create a monolithic, comprehensible enemy doesn't serve any real purpose, all it really does is create confusion about the nature of the conflict.

or at least that's something the pleasure seeking narcissists might say to defend their non-use of the phrase terrorist to describe islamic militants. damn hedonists.

disclosure: though I am a member of the media, I do use the term terrorist occasionally, just because i dislike the suicidal bastards so damn much. :cdn:
 
amcd said:
on the topic of the use of 'terrorist by the media and partially, if not mostly, in response to mdh's excellently cogent post on the nature of the media in canada, I'd submit the following defense...disclosure: though I am a member of the media, I do use the term terrorist occasionally, just because i dislike the suicidal bastards so darn much. /quote]well said. Now, I have no problem with self-examination. Further, I certainly agree that we need starry-eyed idealists, to keep guys like me in check.
My problem is the automatic assumption the media appears to hold, that the very nations which have given them a voice, are the bad guys.
News flash: we are not.


p.s. If you truly are a reporter, please kick Eric Margolis in the arse for me. Unless you are him. Then please ask someone else to do it for you.
 
paracowboy said:
amcd said:
My problem is the automatic assumption the media appears to hold, that the very nations which have given them a voice, are the bad guys.
News flash: we are not.
p.s. If you truly are a reporter, please kick Eric Margolis in the arse for me. Unless you are him. Then please ask someone else to do it for you.

yeah i hear what you're saying. much like any large group, the CF for example, among the media there is a wild range in perspectives, purpose and professionalism. but i can't speak for anyone but myself and my sense of the situation.

on that note, i haven't met anyone in the professional media who actively believes that we (the Canadian nation) are the bad guys in this conflict. however, many people i've met, including myself, do not hold the opinion that Canada is necessarily, automatically, right. that is to say: i don't assume that we are right now and will continue to be right forever.

i'm pretty sure that sentiment alone wouldn't sit well with a lot of people. it's certainly arguable.

p.s. i don't know eric margolis, but i did like his book: 'war at the top of the world.'
 
however, many people i've met, including myself, do not hold the opinion that Canada is necessarily, automatically, right. that is to say: i don't assume that we are right now and will continue to be right forever.
well that makes several of us. I don't believe Canada has been right for a very long time. And with the lunatics running the asylum, the future doesn't look too rosy, either.

i don't know eric margolis, but i did like his book
hmm, that doesn't speak highly of your taste in reading material.
 
pretty good article (with one caveat) that says something similar:

And Then They Came After Us
We're at war. How about acting like it?
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.
Yasser Arafat, replete with holster and rants at the U.N., had become a â Å“moderateâ ? and was thus free to steal millions of his good-behavior money. If Hamas got European cash, it would become reasonable, ostracize its â Å“military wing,â ? and cease its lynching and vigilantism.
When some tried to explain that Wars 1-3 (1947, 1956, 1967) had nothing to do with the West Bank, such bothersome details fell on deaf ears.
When it was pointed out that Germans were not blowing up Poles to get back lost parts of East Prussia nor were Tibetans sending suicide bombers into Chinese cities to recover their country, such analogies were caricatured.
When the call for a â Å“Right of Returnâ ? was making the rounds, few cared to listen that over a half-million forgotten Jews had been cleansed from Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and lost billions in property.
When the U.N. and the EU talked about â Å“refugee camps,â ? none asked why for a half-century the Arab world could not build decent housing for its victimized brethren, or why 1 million Arabs voted in Israel, but not one freely in any Arab country.
The security fence became â Å“The Wall,â ? and evoked slurs that it was analogous to barriers in Korea or Berlin that more often kept people in than out. Few wondered why Arabs who wished to destroy Israel would mind not being able to live or visit Israel.
In any case, anti-Semitism, oil, fear of terrorism â ” all that and more fooled us into believing that Israel's problems were confined to Israel. So we ended up with a utopian Europe favoring a pre-modern, terrorist-run, Palestinian thugocracy over the liberal democracy in Israel. The Jews, it was thought, stirred up a hornet's nest, and so let them get stung on their own.
We in the United States preened that we were the â Å“honest broker.â ? After the Camp David accords we tried to be an intermediary to both sides, ignoring that one party had created a liberal and democratic society, while the other remained under the thrall of a tribal gang.
Billions of dollars poured into frontline states like Jordan and Egypt. Arafat himself got tens of millions, though none of it ever seemed to show up in good housing, roads, or power plants for his people. The terror continued, enhanced rather than arrested, by Western largess and Israeli concessions.
Then the Islamists declared war on the United States. A quarter century of mass murdering of Americans followed in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, the first effort to topple the World Trade Center, and the attack on the USS Cole.
We gave billions to Jordan, the Palestinians, and the Egyptians. Afghanistan was saved from the Soviets through U.S. aid. Kuwait was restored after Saddam's annexation, and the holocaust of Bosnians and Kosovars halted by the American Air Force. Americans welcomed thousands of Arabs to our shores and allowed hundreds of madrassas and mosques to preach zealotry, anti-Semitism, and jihad without much scrutiny.
Then came September 11 and the almost instant canonization of bin Laden.
Suddenly, the prior cheap shots at Israel under siege weren't so cheap. It proved easy to castigate Israelis who went into Jenin, but not so when we needed to do the same in Fallujah.
It was easy to slander the Israelis' scrutiny of Arabs in their midst, but then suddenly a few residents in our own country were found to be engaging in bomb making, taking up jihadist pilgrimages to Afghanistan, and mapping out terrorist operations.

Apparently, the hatred of radical Islam was not just predicated on the â Å“occupationâ ? of the West Bank. Instead it involved the pretexts of Americans protecting Saudi Arabia from another Iraqi attack, the United Nations boycott of Iraq, the removal of the Taliban and Saddam, and always as well as the Crusades and the Reconquista.
But Europe was supposedly different. Unlike the United States, it was correct on the Middle East, and disarmed after the Cold War. Indeed, the European Union was pacifistic, socialist, and guilt-ridden about former colonialism.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims were left alone in unassimilated European ghettoes and allowed to preach or promulgate any particular hatred of the day they wished. Conspire to kill a Salmon Rushdie, talk of liquidating the â Å“apes and pigs,â ? distribute Mein Kampf and the Protocols, or plot in the cities of France and Germany to blow up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center â ” all that was about things â Å“over thereâ ? and in a strange way was thought to ensure that Europe got a pass at home.
But the trump card was always triangulation against the United States. Most recently anti-Americanism was good street theater in Rome, Paris, London, and the capitals of the â Å“goodâ ? West.

But then came Madrid â ” and the disturbing fact that after the shameful appeasement of its withdrawal from Iraq, further plots were hatched against Spanish justices and passenger trains.

Surely a Holland would be exempt â ” Holland of wide-open Amsterdam fame where anything goes and Muslim radicals could hate in peace. Then came the butchering of Theo Van Gogh and the death threats against parliamentarian Hirsi Ali â ” and always defiance and promises of more to come rather than apologies for their hatred.

Yet was not Britain different? After all, its capital was dubbed Londonistan for its hospitality to Muslims across the globe. Radical imams openly preached jihad against the United States to their flock as thanks for being given generous welfare subsidies from her majesty's government. But it was the United States, not liberal Britain, that evoked such understandable hatred.

But now?

After Holland, Madrid, and London, European operatives go to Israel not to harangue Jews about the West Bank, but to receive tips about preventing suicide bombings. And the cowboy Patriot Act to now-panicked European parliaments perhaps seems not so illiberal after all.

So it is was becoming clear that butchery by radical Muslims in Bali, Darfur, Iraq, the Philippines Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, and Iraq was not so tied to particular and â Å“understandableâ ? Islamic grievances.

Perhaps the jihadist killing was not over the West Bank or U.S. hegemony after all, but rather symptoms of a global pathology of young male Islamic radicals blaming all others for their own self-inflicted miseries, convinced that attacks on the infidel would win political concessions, restore pride, and prove to Israelis, Europeans, Americans â ” and about everybody else on the globe â ” that Middle Eastern warriors were full of confidence and pride after all.

Meanwhile an odd thing happened. It turns out that the jihadists were cowards and bullies, and thus selective in their targets of hatred. A billion Chinese were left alone by radical Islam â ” even though the Chinese were secularists and mostly godless, as well as ruthless to their own Uighur Muslim minorities. Had bin Laden issued a fatwa against Beijing and slammed an airliner into a skyscraper in Shanghai, there is no telling what a nuclear China might have done.

India too got mostly a pass, other than the occasional murdering by Pakistani zealots. Yet India makes no effort to apologize to Muslims. When extremists occasionally riot and kill, they usually cease quickly before the response of a much more unpredictable angry populace.

What can we learn from all this?

Jihadists hardly target particular countries for their â Å“unfairâ ? foreign policies, since nations on five continents suffer jihadist attacks and thus all apparently must embrace an unfair foreign policy of some sort.

Typical after the London bombing is the ubiquitous Muslim spokesman who when asked to condemn terrorism, starts out by deploring such killing, assuring that it has nothing to do with Islam, yet then ending by inserting the infamous â Å“butâ ? â ” as he closes with references about the West Bank, Israel, and all sorts of mitigating factors. Almost no secular Middle Easterners or religious officials write or state flatly, â Å“Islamic terrorism is murder, pure and simple evil. End of story, no ifs or buts about it.â ?

Second, thinking that the jihadists will target only Israel eventually leads to emboldened attacks on the United States. Assuming America is the only target assures terrorism against Europe. Civilizations will either hang separately or triumph over barbarism together. It is that simple â ” and past time for Europe and the United States to rediscover their common heritage and shared aims in eradicating this plague of Islamic fascism.

Third, Islamicists are selective in their attacks and hatred. So far global jihad avoids two billion Indians and Chinese, despite the fact that their countries are far tougher on Muslims than is the United States or Europe. In other words, the Islamicists target those whom they think they can intimidate and blackmail.

Unfettered immigration, billions in cash grants to Arab autocracies, alliances of convenience with dictatorships, triangulation with Middle Eastern patrons of terror, blaming the Jews â ” civilization has tried all that.

It is time to relearn the lessons from the Cold War, when we saw millions of noble Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Czechs as enslaved under autocracy and a hateful ideology, and in need of democracy before they could confront the Communist terror in their midst.

But until the Wall fell, we did not send billions in aid to their Eastern European dictatorships nor travel freely to Prague or Warsaw nor admit millions of Communist-ruled Bulgarians and Albanians onto our shores.

- I have one quibble with the article: Hanson seems to be saying that being ruthless against the Islamo-loonies will prevent attacks, and cites India and China as examples of countries that have been ruthless against their Muslim radicals and who have not been seriously attacked.
But (actually, let's make that: BUT, duhn duhn duhnnn!) he ignores Russia. Russia has been more ruthless than even the Chinese have been in Tibet, and it doesn't seem to have bought them much peace, at least in Chechnya and Dagestan. Or, for that matter, in Moscow, where Chechen's have struck (twice) although not for quite a while.
 
yeah i hear what you're saying. much like any large group, the CF for example, among the media there is a wild range in perspectives, purpose and professionalism. but i can't speak for anyone but myself and my sense of the situation.

Hi amcd,

This is a good point and one that we need to keep in mind.  There are plenty of active (and potential) supporters of the CF in the media and we need always remind ourselves that not every reporter is out to get the army.

The National Post, for example, has been pretty fair in its coverage, and its editorial stance has been exemplary (from a CF point of view).

I think we need to regard the media as another dimension of the battlefield - like assessing terrain, supply or enemy strength -it's a reality that commanders need to deal with - whether they like it or not.

In sum, I think we need understand how the media operates and use that knowledge to our advantage.

cheers, mdh

 
Well this guy obviously knows very little about China. The ethnic based strife amongst the Uigurs and Khazaks are just that, ethnic, despite OBL's efforts to radicalize the movement, which was never particularly popular or prevalent anyway.  There are just as many ethnic Chinese(Hui) Muslims (who's communities have existed since the 7th century) in China as there are Khazak and Uigur Muslims, (who in any case are ethnically Turco-Mongolian, and have very little in comon with Wahhabi Arabs), but we haven't seen too many Chinese jihadis or fatwas, now, have we?

As for India, well last time I checked they were still in a SHOOTING war in Kashmir and have been for what, 20 years now?

Note to Neo-con dimwits: Muslims all over the world are NOT the same and do NOT share the same goals as OBL. Get over it already.
 
Infanteer said:
Ok, sure.   Again, I question the use of the term "terrorist ideology" as it relegates this movement to the fringe, which I don't believe it is.   As well, "terrorist ideology" seems to imply that random violence is the main focus and the endstate of such a pattern of thought, which it isn't. ...

I'd rather refer to it as an "Islamist ideology", and we can put it on the pedestel with our "Liberal Democratic ideology".   Just as when "Liberal Democratic ideology" faced off against "Communism/Bolshevism", in the end it will be conviction, will, and resilency that will show us which one is stronger.
I feel that terrorism, while not the endstate, is thoroughly engrained in the ideology as the means to achieve its Islamic nationalist end-state (much as violent uprising was part of communist ideology).   As I see it, we are at war with the terrorists while the insurgencies are just the enemy's reaction to us brining the fight to him. (If we stayed behind our boarders the only enemies we would encounter would be the terrorists bringing the fight to us).  I don't like "Islamist ideology" as it is not sufficiently specific as to link it with the ideology of the terrorists as opposed to some pacifist or less violent sort of Islamic nationalism.

Infanteer said:
Ahh...the illusion (hubris?) of the notion of progress.   We didn't know better in 1944 when we levelled cities with bombers, so now we have nuclear weapons that can do the job with the press of a button.
As I've stated, further analyses of WW II bombing campaigns would overwhelm this discussion.   Some targets were legitimate & others were morally suspect (though not illegal at the time).   Much of it depends on the objectives of the mission planners and an examination of proportionality.   Regardless, using these horrors of our past is inappropriate to legitimise terror tactics today.   A nation's civilian population is not a legitimate military target. (but that is not to say that a civilian should be safe if standing in the beaten zone when a legitimate target is hit)

Infanteer said:
... if one COA simply inflames the enemy, then is it the right thing to do?   I have the feeling that we earn scorn by retaliating to an attack by sicking the New York 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on them.   It is plainly obvious what language the enemy understands, so lets give him his full measure and leave the rest until after the game.

... until most of the Islamic world takes to the streets to oppose nailing a school with a bomb, than customary international law does nothing.   If we have to bend our message of disapproval into their rules, than so be it.
Perhaps the New York 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals is not the appropriate arena to try a war criminal.   But, I do not think the enemy becomes enflamed by our persecuting the perpetrators of these crimes.   Some may not pay it any attention, if they have no regard for international customary law . . . but that is a far cry from being enflamed.   At the same time, many potential terrorists were born & raised in the west.   Their understanding of cultural institutions & norms will be different than that of potential terrorists raised in the middle east.   These western terrorists may understand the legal message sent by convictions of terrorists & their supporters.

. . . and, at the very least, holding terrorists responsible as the criminals they are will give us one more tool to lock them away and keep the public safe.
 
From this mornings Globe and Mail:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050729/IMAMS/TPNational

The most frustrating part is the views is who I would view as a moderate (Tarek Fatah) only has a following of approximately 100 whilst Hindy can draw 2,000 per week.




Matthew. 


LEADERS CLASH OVER WHO SPEAKS FOR MUSLIMS IN CANADA
By COLIN FREEZE

Friday, July 29, 2005 Page A4

As a small group of conciliatory Muslim leaders met with Prime Minister Paul Martin last night, a war of words broke out between two other leaders whose irreconcilable world views stand as bookends to the diverse opinions of nearly 600,000 Canadian Muslims.

"Imams like Aly Hindy are holding the entire Muslim community as a hostage. A vast number of Muslim Canadians don't want to have their leadership from almost medieval imams," Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress told the CBC yesterday.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hindy -- who has given more than 20 news media interviews this week urging Muslims not to co-operate with Canadian security agencies -- once again took to the airwaves to say that people like him, and not Westernized Muslims like Mr. Fatah, are the true voice of Islam in Canada.

The controversial imam defended his decision not to put his name on the recent sheaf of signed statements from Islamic leaders condemning recent terrorist strikes in the United Kingdom. "We've already condemned terrorism, this is obvious," Mr. Hindy said. "Why don't the churches, for example, condemn terrorism done by George Bush and Tony Blair?"

So, while the Prime Minister held a meeting that organizers called historic, crucial conversations are taking place in mosques, basements and banquet halls as Muslims in Canada debate what it means to be Muslim in Canada.

In Islam, as in all religions, factions wage a perpetual battle for souls. Within Canada's burgeoning community, debate rages as to how the seventh century's Prophet Mohammed would have wanted his followers to live today.

Dozens of Muslim groups have formed, and often they feud. Young men and women use Internet forums to seek guidance from leaders on issues important to them -- for example, whether it's halal (proper) or haram (forbidden) to use chat rooms to arrange dates.

Conferences devoted to Islam fill the SkyDome -- even though last year a fundamentalist imam issued a pre-emptive legal opinion, or fatwa, condemning such a conference for content that was bida, or too innovative to be supported by Islamic tradition.

Many Muslims find it difficult to say what is mainstream.

"Who speaks for Canadian Muslims? I would say any Muslim in the sense that there is no Vatican in Islam," said Salim Mansur, a newspaper columnist based in Southern Ontario.

He added that the differences are so great that "any organization that claims that they are the legitimate spokesman for a body of people that are so diverse as Muslims -- for that very claim they should be dismissed as a buffoon."

Nader Hashemi, a political scientist who teaches Middle Eastern studies at the University of Toronto, said the dominant strain of Islam in Canada is a harder-line version of the religion than most people realize.

"The imams who have been preaching in Canadian mosques have been imports, people not born and raised in Canada, and their training tends to be in the theological seminaries of the Muslim world," he said.

"When they come here, there is an intellectual chasm between the training they've received in the Muslim world and the reality of secular modernity here in Canada," Mr. Hashemi said. "It's not changing yet but it's going to have to change."

He said that younger Muslims who were born in Canada are seeking a newer generation of leaders whose opinions are more in keeping with their own. In fact, he said, young people cringe at the "often embarrassing" remarks of older leaders.

Historically, the Canadian Islamic Congress, which claims to represent the majority of Canadian Muslims, has probably been the most quoted Muslim group.

Lately, however, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations has been generating a lot of attention. Last week, it organized a statement signed by 120 imams condemning terrorism, and it arranged last night's meeting with Mr. Martin.

Other groups are coming to the fore. "I think they [young Muslims] are searching," said Shelina Merani, the 35-year-old spokeswoman for a group called Muslim-Presence Canada. "Sometimes when you go into a mosque you hear stuff you may not agree with." Other groups too, such as the Ihya Foundation, have denounced the U.K. attacks and have organized peace concerts.

What's constant among Muslims is a certain amount of infighting. Last night, for example, the Muslim Canadian Congress denounced what it called the "photo-op" with the Prime Minister, saying that Mr. Martin ought to know better than to associate with "a group of imams who are better known for their support of segregation, misogyny and homophobia."

Contrary to his earlier remarks to the CBC, Mr. Fatah of the MCC said in an interview that he prefers the likes of the "medieval" Mr. Hindy to other imams, whom he said present themselves as moderates when they are actually hard-liners.

"Aly Hindy, at least, is consistent," he said.

Disparate voices

When Prime Minister Paul Martin met with a group of Muslim leaders last night, he actually met only a small sampling of the Islamic leaders in Canada. With a Muslim population of 600,000 and new groups popping up daily, there is no shortage of conflicting Islamic opinions. Some prominent leaders who did not attend last night's meeting include:

TAREK FATAH

Group: Muslim Canadian Congress.

Claimed membership: 100.

Leaning: Outspokenly liberal.

Positions: Religion and state must be separate; women can lead prayers; Sharia religious tribunals in Ontario will cause more harm than good.

Representative quote: "We believe in Islam as a progressive, liberal, pluralistic and democratic religion."

Controversies: Too "modernist and reformist" to speak for Islam, rival groups say.

MOHAMED ELMASRY

Group: Canadian Islamic Congress.

Claimed membership: More than 50,000 individuals.

Leaning: Conservative mainstream.

Positions: Male speakers should lead prayers; Canadian Forces should get out of Afghanistan; Ottawa has been "targeting a religious minority -- with devastating consequences."

Representative quote: "You have to be a caring citizen of this country; at the same time you have to practise your religion."

ALY HINDY

Group: Salaheddin Islamic Centre.

Claimed membership: More than 2,000 weekly congregants.

Leaning: Sunni fundamentalist.

Positions: Muslims should not co-operate with Canadian security agencies; Shia Islam is an "invention;" President George W. Bush is stoking a firestorm of Muslim fury.

Representative quote: "We believe CSIS should stop terrorizing us."

Controversies: Claims Ottawa spies on him, his mosque, his family, his acquaintances and has blocked some of his bank accounts.
 
Britney Spears said:
...
Note to Neo-con dimwits: Muslims all over the world are NOT the same and do NOT share the same goals as OBL. Get over it already.

I Agree.  We need to recognize, identify and understand our enemy - starting with acknowledging that we have real enemies - and stop worrying about the other, neutral and even friendly, folks.  Three Principles of War apply:

"¢ Selection and maintenance of the aim (the master principle),

"¢ Economy of effort, and

"¢ Concentration of force.

Those who want a war on Islam, or a war on terror in my opinion, ignore all three principles and, worse they ignore all three without understanding what they are doing.*  We need to keep focused on the aim: the defeat of the (loosely allied) Arab extremist, fundamentalist Islamic movements which are making war on us.  When we accomplish that war aim we can get on with winning the peace by promoting or provoking a new Arab-Islamic enlightenment which ought to address the famous 'root causes.'  We need to use the right forces - intelligence, political military, economic, security - in the right way and in the right places: at home and abroad.

----------

* It is always OK to ignore or violate rules and principles and the like so long as you understand that you are doing so and have considered the consequences.  It is a major error to fail to understand rules and principles.
 
mdh: though clearly improving, the CF's method of dealing with the media still kind of baffles me. it seems to me that, especially in a time of rising support among Canadians, the media is perhaps the single best way for the CF to help create a more accurate representation of itself among the public.

(now, surely the media plays some role in the public's lack of awareness, but if you'd ever tried to report on the CF you'd know why -- it's a secret kingdom full of arcane bureaucracy and useless factionalism, where the best interests of the soldiers, the CF, or even of Canada, are often overcome by numb self-interest and epic unresponsiveness. hmm, that made me feel better!)

as a result, even among the people paying attention there are still bucketloads of misconceptions about the capabilities, professionalism and purpose of the CF and its missions like afghanistan. witness c.parrish's most recent dumbness for a good example. commendably, hillier seems to understand this, though he may be a little high profile to start playing 'PAFO army of one.'  a lot of senior officers seem to understand this as well, but somehow understanding doesn't translate into action. who knows though, maybe it will soon. i do think things are improving.

ps. i'm a little let down that you didn't take a run at my defense of liberal relativism and cbc policy. i had my helmet strapped on and was prepared for some serious incoming. 

vigilant: if you ever want to get a pafo going, call him/her a 'commando' or, if you're really daring, use 'PR commando.' slip it into casual conversation for best effect. be careful though, they give those guys guns too.  :skull:


 
ps. i'm a little let down that you didn't take a run at my defense of liberal relativism and cbc policy. i had my helmet strapped on and was prepared for some serious incoming. 

The day's not over yet  ;)

As a former media guy myself (with a little bit of PAFO experience at the reserve level) I have a few comments, but work is keeping me busy - stand by,

cheers, mdh

 
a_majoor said:
A good summation of the enemy forces in WW IV; not just terrorists, and not just governments either. You might think of this as "outsourcing" warfare, Iranian strategic goals, Saudi finance and Syrian logistical support is being contracted out to radical Jihadi groups (with AQ being the best known) to do the actual "trigger work".

Not recognizing the dimensions of the problem is a big part of it, another is building support for the war on the back of 30 second sound bites. Although libertarians, Neo and Paleo Cons (among others) know this isn't the whole story, declaring a "War on Terror" is easier to say and for the general public to "understand" than explaining how a shifting coalition of disparate states with conflicting goals have managed to push this far.

Of course, there are real opportunities here for us to exploit. The Iranian goals of regional hegemony, backed by nuclear arms and control over the oil reserves are exclusive to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism by the Saudis (who view the Iranians as "Persians", and who feel the Iranians are apostates anyway), or the secular dictatorship model favored by the Ba'ath party. The common fear of the Americans and the West, and the realization that America stands between them and their goals (and the desire for popular American culture threatens the social norms which prop up their regimes) unites them to the extent of providing money, training and safe haven for the Jihadis. 

In addition to all the other things we have to do (read Infanteer and Edward Campbell's posts in particular), our intelligence agencies should be sowing the seeds of mutual suspicion between the sponsoring states, and trying to fan the premature breakdown of the alliance of convenience which exists today. (If National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan had won WWII, how long would it have been before they started fighting each other?). This is a difficult goal to achieve, so long as fear and hatred of the American is the overriding imperative, Iran might not be as concerned with the number of madrasas Saudi Arabia is placing in an arc around Iran.

The other weapons the Coalition needs to wield are economic and cultural stressors against the brittle structures of these authoritarian societies. Given enough stress, popular discontent against the regimes will be strengthened, giving local "Cedar Revolutions" more chances to take root and collapse the State from within. Once again, this has to be handled with a delicate hand, to make sure the resulting anger is directed inwards (i.e. manipulating the price of cooking oil vs broad economic sanctions).

This is a 4GW war, with the enemy attempting to weaken our will to resist by using semi random terror attacks. We have the tools, but not yet the unified means of weilding them effectively. It is going to be a long war for all of us.


 
Incoming...

to me, the 7/7 event is best described this way: islamic militants carried out a terrorist attack against the citizens of london. now, that may well make the 7/7 bombers terrorists, but in order to make these terms equivalent you have to conflate the group (islamic militants) with their tactic (terrorism). maybe this would be appropriate if such a relationship held true always and everywhere, but it doesn't.

In other words "terrorists" are "swarthy opponents of US foreign policy" - as Christopher Hitchens used to say before he switched sides. It seems to me that you're being jesuitical here. Not all Islamic militants are terrorists - but there is no doubt that the London bombers used terror as a tactic - and they were all Islamic militants. Is that a meaningful distinction? Or mere tautology.

there are groups using terrorist tactics that aren't predominantly motivated by islam (baathists, nepali communists, some kashmiri groups, turkish kurds, etc) and there are even groups using terrorist tactics that claim (some agree, some don't) to be anti-occupation 'insurgents' (baathists again, chechens, taliban). there are also islamic militant groups that sometimes attack military targets, which falls outside most standard definitions of the term terrorism. so, using the term 'terrorists' to describe the perpetrators of all of these varied activities is just imprecise. what purpose does using the term serve?

This is a restatement of the first point, isn't it? "One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist." I really don't have any problem describing the Baathists/Chechens/Nepalese Communists as terrorists when they employ tactics designed to kill the innocent. A suicide bomber targeting children is a terrorist whatever cause he or she espouses. How much precision do you really need?

now, of course, there are emotional reasons for using the term terrorist, and that's how some of us operate, but our enemy isn't the tactic of terrorism, it's the stupid insanity of the people who carry out the attacks and, more than that, it's the ideological badlands that these islamic militant monkies inhabit which is our real enemy.

Once again - a distinction without a difference. If we are going to assign an unacceptable cost to Islamic radicalism and its attendant terrorism, we need to target the "ideological badlands" and discredit the ideas that animates the insurgency. There must be a cost to Wahabism and the states which support it - including Saudi Arabia.   That cost is already apparent - there are more Crusaders now in the Middle East and Afghanistan then ever before. But I do agree, fundamentally. We need to be very clear about who the enemy really is. The CBC has concluded that it's the Bush Administration.

it's this conspiratorial anti-liberal ideology, deeply if not widely supported among the foreign islamic community, that is the fundamental enemy. gwot, in the sense that it exists, isn't a war against terrorists, it's a war against ideas. but then wars of ideology aren't entirely new ('the germans weren't so bad, it's just their ideas i wanted to kill'). however, an asymmetrical global campaign against networked, non-state militants representing the extremist wing of one of the world's most influential religions is actually kinda new.  

Britain's chattering classes have been shocked by the "kinda new" features of this version of terrorism - namely that Britain as an idea has been rejected by a significant portion of its Islamic immigrant population - while radical Islam as an idea inspired four UK-born muslims to kill scores of their fellow citizens. You are right though - this is a war of ideology and ideas. Unfortunately the CBC refuses to see the value of western ideas in combating and discrediting radical Islam. One man's freedom fighter....

on the other hand, back to the discussion about terrorism, for as long as there's been war, there's been attacks on civilian populations. justifications for the tactic vary, but any rationalization that works for us can also be used by our enemies.

Yes there have been attacks on civilian populations in the past -- Guernica, Dresden. But so what? Our enemies will always make rationalizations to justify the use of terrorism.   We need to be firm in our conviction that we are better then they are because we live in a liberal democratic society -- and they are opposed to it. Otherwise, why bother?

and here's where there is perhaps a significant departure from, say, mdh's perspective. from my exposure to the dreaded 'pleasure den' dwellers (who am i kidding, if the pleasure den serves guinness, i'm there) there is among them a significant sense of doubt or critical distrust. whether inculcated by education, by experience or by a gift of temperament is perhaps irrelevant, but it's this sense of doubt that typifies the breed for me. among the things doubted are, for example, the assumption that our nation is always doing the right and the good thing. strangely, i believe you can hold this position of national self-doubt and still be patriotic, though some would possibly disagree. though perhaps controversial, I'd argue that critical dissent is indispensable for the maintenance of group sanity. a cursory examination of history will provide multiple examples of groups, nations and even civilizations going completely off the rails and heading collectively into a delusional death spiral. this is certainly something to be avoided.

Orwell struggled with this question as well. His conclusion was that the left of his age was incapable of recognizing evil when it was staring them in the face. As a patriot he was willing to take a stand - for Britain not the working class. I would suggest that our national self-doubt has morphed in civilizational self-loathing - see today's National Post for an excellent piece on this very notion. However I agree that the CBC has put a premium on critical dissent - mostly of the Chomsky-ite variety and re-reading my post on the CBC I realize I should have added that every good CBCer has a copy of "Manufacturing Consent" on his or her bedside table. Chomsky has had an enormous influence on the CBC - in fact I would go further and suggest that the corporation is broadly Chomsky-ite in orientation (more so than Marx, Lenin, Mao, or even Larry Zolf.)

in this sense perhaps the greatest danger to forward progress is to be convinced that you know the absolute truth and that you are doing the absolute good. this is not just the path to injustice and barbarism, it's also the path to fundamentalism and insanity. this very trait then, of critical doubt, is arguably what makes us different than the islamic militants, our current enemy.

Are there not absolute truths we must defend against Islamic extremism? Such as the emancipation of women? That one example makes us very different from the Islamic militants -- and rather progressive, no?

and so while the military are the able guardians of our national security, the liberally educated relativists are in fact the guardians of something equally important: clarity.

Here you reveal yourself as the old-fashioned liberal you really are. Is there an H.L. Mencken in the house?   :D Liberal relativism - which connotes a tradition of open-mindedness - should also admit that some western values and achievements are a good thing relative to other cultures. You would never know that watching Newsworld's conveyor belt of anti-western, anti-Bush propaganda on shows like the Passionate Eye. Again Chomsky rules the CBC's view of the world. This is not liberal relativism - it's a form of nihilism (and it's one of the main reasons why Hitchens - one of the great journos of our time - broke with his comrades. And why he despites Chomsky.)

conflating terms to artificially create a monolithic, comprehensible enemy doesn't serve any real purpose, all it really does is create confusion about the nature of the conflict.

I agree that we need to have some level of sophistication when it comes to analysing our enemies - but not to the point where we paralyze ourselves into inaction by over-analysing our enemies and erecting an anti-monolithic legitimacy to them they don't deserve. In short let's not deflate to avoid a conflate.

or at least that's something the pleasure seeking narcissists might say to defend their non-use of the phrase terrorist to describe islamic militants. darn hedonists.

Al Quaeda, OBL and the boyz in the cave could probably use a bit of hedonism in this world -- instead of being fixated on getting laid in the next world by scores of vestal virgins in the palm groves of Paradise.

Great points all,   ;)
Cheers, mdh    
 
amcd said:
(now, surely the media plays some role in the public's lack of awareness, but if you'd ever tried to report on the CF you'd know why -- it's a secret kingdom full of arcane bureaucracy and useless factionalism, where the best interests of the soldiers, the CF, or even of Canada, are often overcome by numb self-interest and epic unresponsiveness. hmm, that made me feel better!)
This idea is very closely related to the argument I've been making: intentionally selecting language to sugar coat our job has actually hurt the CF by imparing the publics understanding of who we are, what we do, and how we do it.

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/32840/post-245434.html#msg245434
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/32944/post-244648.html#msg244648
 
Freedman: Our ticking bomb is political correctness

By Ilana Freedman / Local Columnist

Friday, July 29, 2005

July has been a cruel month. A shocking attack by suicide terrorists left 56 morning commuters in London dead. Scarcely two weeks later, three car bombs in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, killed 88 tourists and locals. And the next day, an early morning bomb under a train in Dagestan, Russia, left a woman passenger dead.

    In one week alone, the city of Baghdad witnessed 22 car bombs, including 10 in one day that killed nearly 100 people.

    It has been a busy and bloody month for terrorists. Their mission has been to kill as many people as possible. As I have pointed out before in this column, the victims were not innocent "bystanders." They were the terrorists' intended targets. Their only crime was happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Did I say "terrorists?" What was I thinking! Britain's BBC and Canada's CBC have made it policy to avoid using the "T" word, which they call "judgmental." When referring to the four men who blew up 56 people in London, they prefer to conjecture that they "may have been radicalized." These men, who packed nails into the explosives they carried in order to inflict the greatest suffering possible, were only "attackers." And the man whose rented car was found in a densely populated area containing 16, "ready-made" bombs set to deploy, was merely "a would-be bomber."

    Get real, people! This is not a game. The first rule of war is: know your enemy. And we'd better start calling it what it is, because like it or not, we are at war. Our enemy is a global network of radical Islamist groups who have declared war on America and on our democratic way of life.

    They have made no secret about their plans to turn our own country into a Muslim society governed by "sharia" law. They have extended their war to include our allies. And beyond that, they have targeted their historic enemies (Europeans), whom they call "crusaders." They also include the lands where they once held the reigns of power and then lost it (Spain), and those whom they consider "apostates" (other Muslims whose Islam is not sufficiently radical to please them).

    Radical Islam is at the center of nearly every conflict in this deeply troubled world, from the Sudan to Indonesia, from the Philippines to Nigeria, from Pakistan to Lebanon, from Israel to the UK, from the Ivory Coast to the United States.

    These terrorists justify their violence against civilians by shifting the blame onto others -- the Americans, the Jews, the British, and in fact, all dhimmis (non-Muslims). For example, terrorists frequently blame their need for brutal attacks against the West on the existence of Israel. It's a nice story, but it's a lie. In reality, Islam's hatred of Jews goes back nearly 1,400 years.

    In 627, Muhammad ordered the massacre of 900 Jewish men in Medina and then sent their widows and children into slavery. A millennium later, Muslims were still murdering Jews in Palestine, long before the state of Israel was established in 1948. The existence of Israel may be a convenient excuse for terrorism that many are willing to accept without examination, but it is a perversion of historical fact.

    Osama bin Laden took the lie one step further. When he threw down the gauntlet with his now famous fatwah, issued in February 1998, he blamed the United States for the misery of Muslims worldwide. He accused Americans of "occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." He therefore called on Muslims everywhere to "kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military."

    It is easy for others to blame us for their own shortcomings, to accuse us of interfering when we come to their aid. But for us to accept that blame, and by doing so become the victim, is the depth of folly. When our overriding need for political correctness prevents us from addressing the danger that faces us, we put ourselves at great risk.

    Our need for absolution for crimes we did not commit makes us weak in the face of a violent and cruel enemy. We bend over backwards to avoid giving offense to those who have offended us and flagellate ourselves for breaches of manners. But people who murder other people with whom they disagree and then blame it on their victims, do not have sensitivities that should be catered to.

    The truth remains that man is accountable for his actions. He who murders is responsible for his crime. Our enemies has made it clear that their goal is to destroy us. They will neither negotiate nor accept compromise, which they view as weakness. It is therefore time for us to rethink our posture and the manner in which we deal with the threat that confronts us.

    As long as terrorists confined their activities to the Middle East, we felt safe. When they struck in Madrid, we were shaken, but we still felt reasonably secure. The longer nothing happened in the United States, the safer we felt. Now they have struck in London, a city not unlike New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

    Are we listening? The threat will not be going away any time soon. On the contrary, the attacks are coming more frequently and they are getting closer. Do we remember 9/11? Are we naive enough to think it can not happen here again?

    As long as we refuse to acknowledge that there is danger, we will not be safe at all. The first step that we must take is to recognize that we are at war and to stop the insanity of a culture of political correctness that is putting us all at risk.

Ilana Freedman is a specialist in counter-terrorism and Managing Partner of Gerard Group International LLC. She welcomes your comments and questions at ilana@gerardgroup.com                     

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=104859   

Why can't we find stuff like this in our newspapers? ::)
 
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