Category Archives: Analysis

Shunned by white America, how Muhammad Ali found his voice on campus tour

The Guardian reports: Time had sanitized the past. Portraits of Muhammad Ali’s activism in the wake of his death at 74 on Friday paint a picture of a fighter who helped change American culture with his refusal to be drafted into the US military but cannot explain how dire his situation actually was in 1967.

Much of America hated and feared him. He was facing five years in prison for saying no to the military. He was through as a fighter, stripped of his license by the New York State Athletic Board and facing a long court fight to overturn his conviction.

“Everyone turned on him,” fellow boxer George Foreman told CNN on Saturday. “I mean literally everyone. I hadn’t even gone into boxing yet. No one wanted to be in his presence. No one wanted to be his friend and he was dropped.”

This was one of the toughest parts of Ali’s life. As his backers in the Nation of Islam pushed him further into activism, much of white American shunned him. His passport had been taken away. He complained, at one point that: “I’m not allowed to work in America and I’m not allowed to leave America.”

And yet the three-year period – at the height of his sporting powers, from when he refused to step forward as draft officials in Houston called his name to 1971 when the supreme court overturned his conviction and five-year sentence – helped shape the Ali who would later become beloved. It became the time that he grew into his voice. [Continue reading…]

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Muhammad Ali taught me to be proud of my skin and Muslim faith

Omar Musa writes: Once, when I was a child growing up in Australia, I got teased by another kid because I had brown skin. The kid told me my skin was the same colour as shit. I went home in tears and, for the only time in my life, I said to my parents that I wished I wasn’t brown.

My parents sat me down and told me to be proud of my skin and of being Muslim, even if other people put you down for it. I don’t know if it was connected but soon afterwards my dad began to show me tapes of a charismatic, handsome black boxer from America, a proto rapper who spat rhymes and cracked jokes, who drove a pink Cadillac, who stood up for his people and his convictions, all the while dancing on the canvas like no one before and no one to come.

And he was Muslim, like us, and proud of it! And a poet! And he had even fought in Malaysia (where my dad came from) once!

I went to the Queanbeyan library and photocopied pictures of him to stick in my school diary and on my wall. I could never be a boxer but I could have that unfuckwithable attitude.

Ali taught me to be brave, to stand up for myself, to fight for the underdog and that, even if society was against you, your conviction for what was right would be vindicated by history. That there was something radical in being completely and utterly yourself. That my brown skin was not the colour of shit – it shone brighter than gold. He taught me to be proud. [Continue reading…]

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Shadi Hamid on the past and future of political Islam

William Armstrong interviews Shadi Hamid and discusses his new book, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam is Reshaping the World:

This new book follows your previous book, published in 2014, “Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East.” Back then, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, you described how Islamist participation in democracy was inevitable and should be facilitated. Obviously the landscape has changed a lot since then. What big shifts did you want to address in the new book?

I really wanted to address the question of how much religion matters. How much of this has to do with “Islam” and how much of it has to do with political or economic factors. That’s the question that I’ve gotten so much from American observers. This book is an attempt to situate the role of religion, at a time when we’re trying to understand the rise of ISIS and the region’s descent into violence and civil war.

I make an argument that I’m slightly uncomfortable with. I realize that some people will misinterpret it and some will abuse it for purposes that I’m against. I argue that Islam is in fact exceptional. Islam is fundamentally different than other major religions in important ways, primarily in how it relates to law, politics and governance. What that means in practice is that Islam – historically but also today – plays an outsize role in public life, and also that it appears to be uniquely resistant to secularization. There have been many attempts to neutralize or privatize Islam, or make it less relevant in everyday life. But those attempts have failed. This forces us to reckon with the possibility that we aren’t all the same. We don’t all necessarily want the same things.

I’m trying to challenge the liberal determinism that is implicit in so many of our conversations about Islam: That all peoples cultures and societies follow a linear trajectory toward a reformation, then an enlightenment, then secularization, then the “end of history” of liberal democracy. As an American, it is so much part of our culture to just assume that these things are inevitable. But what if they’re not? It’s hard for people to take on the prospect that in Muslim-majority populations there is a general unwillingness to push religion aside. That has major implications for how we understand not just the Middle East but also the future of Muslims in the West.

There’s a danger that this idea of “exceptionalism” plays into the hands of both the most fundamentalist Islamists and the worst Islamophobes.

Exactly. But I have to be faithful to my findings. What I’m saying is that the “difference” of Islam isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Whenever we hear that Islam is different and it can’t be extracted from politics, we assume it means that Islam is backwards, bad or problematic. But we have to move beyond this presumption that religion always plays a negative role in politics and that the solution is always to move to secularism. That’s why I self-consciously chose the word “exceptionalism.” For me that is a word that should be value-neutral. Exceptionalism can be good and it can be bad. We also talk about American exceptionalism – which can be seen in a negative or positive light. So I hope people will resist the temptation to just say “Islam is different and that is definitely a bad thing.” I argue that difference isn’t necessarily a bad thing. [Continue reading…]

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Assad’s media adviser might be even more evil than the man burning Syria

David Blair writes: If there is a Marie Antoinette of our age, it must be Bouthaina Shaaban, the odious “media adviser” to Syria’s regime. When asked about the medieval sieges currently being imposed on a million Syrians in rebel-held enclaves by her master, Bashar al-Assad, she did not actually say “let them eat cake” – but she might as well have done.

There was “no need” for food aid in Syria, declared Ms Shaaban during a press briefing last Thursday, and the inhabitants of the towns and refugee camps blockaded by her regime could do without “macaroni” and “tin fruits” from the United Nations.

One suburb of Damascus, known as Daraya, has been subjected to a particularly pitiless siege since November 2012: during the whole of that time, the regime has allowed only one aid convoy into the area – and even that was prevented from carrying any food.

But the well-nourished Ms Shaaban blithely described Daraya as the “food basket of Damascus”, adding: “There’s nobody starving in Daraya.” [Continue reading…]

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How ISIS is winning the media war

Mohammed A. Salih writes: Faced with what has been often described as the world’s most resourceful and sophisticated terror organization, Iraq’s news media outlets have stumbled in how to cover the Islamic State (IS). The country’s news media appear to have unwillingly assisted IS in disseminating some of its gruesome propaganda releases, thus enabling it to achieve broader reach and possibly even impact.

IS brutality and its dramatic expansion in Iraq over the last couple of years has posed a major challenge for Iraqi media outlets. Is covering the group’s activities a legitimate public service or an extension of its own jihadi propaganda?

While media editors and managers at major Iraqi news outlets are aware of the ethical debate surrounding the use of propaganda materials by terrorist groups, and especially graphic content, a combination of political agendas and lack of rigorous editorial oversight appear to hamper the translation of that knowledge into practice. [Continue reading…]

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Is Ennahda following in AKP footsteps?

Mustafa Akyol writes: It is no secret that in the midst of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East, Tunisia has emerged as the brightest spot. It is also no secret that Tunisia’s success has been made possible in part by the moderate stance of its main Islamist party, Ennahda, which on May 21 at its party congress announced that it was officially abandoning political Islam. The longtime leader of the party, Rachid Ghannouchi, who was re-elected at the event, vowed to “keep religion far from political struggles” and announced that Ennahda would abandon all its religious activities, including preaching in mosques.

Naturally, this news reminded some of the founding of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) 15 years ago. At that time, the AKP, which came from an “Islamist” political tradition, had also declared a major change in perspective. Similar to Ennahda’s new self-identification as “Muslim democrats,” the AKP’s founders called themselves “conservative democrats.” The term “conservative” in Turkey is often another way of saying “practicing Muslim.” Moreover, Ghannouchi had in the past spoken about the “Turkish experience” and pointed to it as a positive frame of reference.

It is also no secret, however, that the so-called Turkish experience has not been going well lately. The AKP of today, heavily criticized for authoritarianism, is a far cry from the AKP of the early 2000s that was widely praised for its reforms. The common perception of the party, especially its iron-willed leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is that it was “moderate” when weak but turned autocratic after consolidating power. One could therefore argue that if Ennahda is really following in the footsteps of the AKP, it is not a reassuring step. [Continue reading…]

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Trump and the fear of sinister forces inside America

Theo Anderson writes: Donald Trump is deeply divisive among the Republican base of white evangelical Christians in the U.S. In a recent story on NPR, one evangelical called the billionaire New Yorker a “reprehensible” and “wicked” man. A popular evangelical novelist, Joel Rosenberg, has said Trump “would be an absolute catastrophe as president.” Even so, Trump has done well enough among conservative Christians to become the GOP’s presumptive nominee. In May’s decisive primary in Indiana, where about half of Republican voters were white evangelicals, exit polls showed Trump winning their votes by a margin of six points over Texas Senator Ted Cruz. They preferred a man who has been married three times, and who has been pro-choice much of his life, to the most outspoken evangelical Republican in the race. Why?

Trump has promised to seal off the nation’s borders from perceived “outside” threats, namely Mexicans and Muslims. His signature policy proposal is to build a wall along the entire southern border, and he has called for a moratorium on allowing Muslims into the U.S. These proposals, and his habit of stirring up fears related to nationality and religion, no doubt speak powerfully to many his supporters. But that animus isn’t the primary source of Trump’s appeal among white conservative Christians.

For more than a century, white evangelicals have been unsettled and infuriated by what they view as the nation’s subversion — not by forces outside the nation’s borders, but those within its most powerful institutions. These actors have corrupted and secularized one sector after another, evangelicals argue, especially universities, public schools, and the federal government. [Continue reading…]

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Deadly hatred fractures anti-ISIS alliance in Iraq

Christoph Reuter reports: For over a year, the US has been pushing for the launch of an offensive on IS-held Mosul and has been bombing the city almost daily. But despite repeated announcements that an attack was imminent, very little has happened on the ground aside from the recapture of a handful of surrounding towns and villages. Nevertheless, Iraqi commanders have already made competing claims on the expected spoils.

“Nothing and nobody will stop us from marching into Mosul,” says Hadi al-Ameri, the top commander of a conglomerate of Shiite militias that are officially called the Popular Mobilization Units but which are widely known as Hashd.

“All areas of Mosul east of the Tigris belong to Kurdistan,” counters Brigadier Halgord Hikmat, spokesman of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, which controls the Kurdish fighting force. “We aren’t demanding any more than that, and the river is a clear border.”

What’s more, the Sunni ex-governor of Mosul — together with several thousand fighters and the support of 1,200 Turkish troops whose presence in Iraq is tolerated by the Kurds — is planning to invade the city from the north. Under Sunni leadership.

The government in Baghdad, under the leadership of the respectable yet weak Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, has mostly stayed out of it — despite the fact that the Iraqi army would seem best positioned to prevent a fight among the allies over the spoils of Mosul. But Abadi has been fighting for political survival ever since followers of the Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr stormed the government quarter in Baghdad a short time ago, the second such incident in a month. Instead of recapturing Mosul, once Iraq’s second-largest city, the military has now been tasked with first liberating Fallujah, the much smaller IS stronghold west of Baghdad.

Right in the middle, located at the halfway point between Baghdad and Mosul, is Tuz Khurmatu — the harbinger of Iraq’s future. It is a place where those groups fighting together to defeat IS are killing each other away from the front lines. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. falters in campaign to revive Iraqi army, officials say

Reuters reports: A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq’s regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials.

Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town.

The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shi’ite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi’ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. gives Egypt free armored vehicles while Egyptian military sees U.S. as its enemy

Jackson Diehl writes: This month, the United States delivered the first batch of 762 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to Egypt free of charge. That’s on top of the $1.3 billion in military aid the Obama administration has allocated to the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sissi this year. The White House refuses to condition these gifts on an improvement in Egypt’s horrendous human rights record. So herewith a more modest proposal: Obama should ask Sissi to publicly explain how the MRAPs fit into the “fourth-generation war.”

Most people are unfamiliar with that esoteric term — unless they have been following the rhetoric of Egypt’s military leaders since the coup of 2013. Fourth-generation warfare, Sissi once explained to cadets at Egypt’s military academy, occurs when “modern communication channels, psychology and the media are . . . deployed to create divisions and harm Egypt from within,” according to the website Mada Masr.

Who is the enemy in this war? According to the Egyptian military, that would be the United States — the same country providing the army with those free armored vehicles and billions in aid. In March, the Defense Ministry’s Nasser Military Academy briefed the parliament about fourth-generation warfare. According to the outline, reported by Mada Masr, the subjects included “Egypt’s defense strategy and Western plans to divide the Middle East.” [Continue reading…]

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America’s secret engagement with Khomeini

Kambiz Fattahi writes: On 27 January, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic, the man who called the United States “the Great Satan” – sent a secret message to Washington.

From his home in exile outside Paris, the defiant leader of the Iranian revolution effectively offered the Carter administration a deal: Iranian military leaders listen to you, he said, but the Iranian people follow my orders.

If President Jimmy Carter could use his influence on the military to clear the way for his takeover, Khomeini suggested, he would calm the nation. Stability could be restored, America’s interests and citizens in Iran would be protected.

At the time, the Iranian scene was chaotic. Protesters clashed with troops, shops were closed, public services suspended. Meanwhile, labour strikes had all but halted the flow of oil, jeopardising a vital Western interest.

Persuaded by Carter, Iran’s autocratic ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, known as the Shah, had finally departed on a “vacation” abroad, leaving behind an unpopular prime minister and a military in disarray – a force of 400,000 men with heavy dependence on American arms and advice.

Khomeini feared the nervous military: its royalist top brass hated him. Even more worrying, they were having daily meetings with a US Air Force General by the name of Robert E Huyser, whom President Carter had sent on a mysterious mission to Tehran.

The ayatollah was determined to return to Iran after 15 years in exile and make the Shah’s “vacation” permanent. So he made a personal appeal.

In a first-person message, Khomeini told the White House not to panic at the prospect of losing a strategic ally of 37 years and assured them that he, too, would be a friend.

“You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans,” said Khomeini, pledging his Islamic Republic will be “a humanitarian one, which will benefit the cause of peace and tranquillity for all mankind”. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump could threaten U.S. rule of law, scholars say

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The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump’s blustery attacks on the press, complaints about the judicial system and bold claims of presidential power collectively sketch out a constitutional worldview that shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law, legal experts across the political spectrum say.

Even as much of the Republican political establishment lines up behind its presumptive nominee, many conservative and libertarian legal scholars warn that electing Mr. Trump is a recipe for a constitutional crisis.

“Who knows what Donald Trump with a pen and phone would do?” asked Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the libertarian Cato Institute.

With five months to go before Election Day, Mr. Trump has already said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations. He has threatened to sic federal regulators on his critics. He has encouraged rough treatment of demonstrators.

His proposal to bar Muslims from entry into the country tests the Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom, due process and equal protection.

And, in what was a tipping point for some, he attacked Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the Federal District Court in San Diego, who is overseeing two class actions against Trump University. [Continue reading…]

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Trump University: It’s worse than you think

John Cassidy writes: Following the release, earlier this week, of testimony filed in a federal lawsuit against Trump University, the United States is facing a high-stakes social-science experiment. Will one of the world’s leading democracies elect as its President a businessman who founded and operated a for-profit learning annex that some of its own employees regarded as a giant rip-off, and that the highest legal officer in New York State has described as a classic bait-and-switch scheme?

If anyone still has any doubt about the troubling nature of Donald Trump’s record, he or she should be obliged to read the affidavit of Ronald Schnackenberg, a former salesman for Trump University. Schnackenberg’s testimony was one of the documents unsealed by a judge in the class-action suit, which was brought in California by some of Trump University’s disgruntled former attendees.

Schnackenberg, who worked in Trump’s office at 40 Wall Street, testified that “while Trump University claimed it wanted to help consumers make money in real estate, in fact Trump University was only interested in selling every person the most expensive seminars they possibly could.” The affidavit concludes, “Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.” [Continue reading…]

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One hundred years of British solitude: Magical thinking about Brexit and security

European Council on Foreign Relations: A British exit from the EU would make it harder to fight crime and terrorism, reduce Britain’s ability to lead and influence its partners, and weaken NATO – putting future generations of Britons at risk, according to a paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations.

After recent warnings from David Cameron and former NATO chiefs that “Brexit” would make Britain less secure, ECFR draws on interviews with top ex-security officials, regional experts, and five years of data on European foreign policy to weigh the arguments on each side.

“One Hundred Years of British Solitude: Magical thinking about Brexit and security” finds that, as the US steps back from its role as global police officer and the world splits into rival power centres, Britain will need its allies in Europe more than ever. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS at real risk of losing much of the territory it holds

The Guardian reports: For the first time in the two years since the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed the existence of an “Islamic caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq, the jihadi group is at real risk of losing much of the territory it holds.

Four Isis strongholds – two in Syria and two in Iraq – are now under concerted attack, and in all cases the militants defending them are struggling to contain well-organised and resourced assaults planned over many months.

The attacks are heavily backed by the US, which since April has stepped up its campaign to “destroy and degrade” the terrorist organisation in its self-declared heartland of eastern Syria and western Iraq. A two-year project that had been derided by allies and proxies alike as being too limited and cautious now has military momentum. [Continue reading…]

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The Falluja offensive risks handing a propaganda victory to ISIS

Janine di Giovanni writes: My memory of Falluja is of roads leading to the city, of fields of swaying date palm trees, which my Iraqi friend Thaier once told me represented the souls of the country’s people. “They are symbols of our hopes and dreams,” he said, pointing to the lush fields along the Euphrates, on a trip we took crossing Iraq east to west and north to south, in the late winter of 2003. It was shortly before the invasion that crushed all those hopes and dreams.

Today, more than a week into the US-backed Iraqi forces offensive on Falluja, that trip seems very long ago, in the distant land that once was Iraq. The road north of Falluja is a road of bleak war – of mortars, rockets and bullets. It is brown and gutted and veined in places with tunnels built by Islamic State during their occupation there for the past two years. An Australian farmer who came to Baghdad in 2010 told me, as he sifted the dirt in his hands, that the land was so “traumatised” by war it would take generations for nutritious food to grow.

While the US-backed Iraqi forces, aided by Shia militias (backed by Iran), are now pushing back Isis in Falluja, farming or any form of ordinary life has vanished. Along with Isis, there are also 50,000 civilians trapped in the centre of the city who might become (that horrible phrase) collateral damage.

They are vulnerable to mortar and rocket attacks, and terror: reports of Shia death squads roaming the streets conjure up memories of another heavy-handed military “clearing operation” – in Tikrit in 2015, when many civilians fled their homes as Isis positions were encircled and pounded. [Continue reading…]

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Israel-Palestinian peace initiatives are suddenly popping up everywhere

The Washington Post reports: Until a week ago, it seemed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was a flat-liner.

President Obama thought so. In March, he said he wouldn’t seek to jump-start talks — the two sides were too far apart; it was not in the cards.

Now Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives are popping up all over.

On Friday, the French will host a meeting of about 25 foreign ministers, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, to seek international consensus on a way to move talks forward.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Kerry was going to Paris to learn and listen — not to lead.

“It’s about being there, being part of the discussion, exploring ideas and options that might get us closer to a two-state solution,” Kirby said.

But Kerry’s presence in Paris worries Israelis who fear that the international community is going to press them to end the 49-year military occupation of the West Bank and the partial trade and travel blockage of Gaza, and to stop ongoing construction of Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

The Israelis also have their eyes on the calendar. They are concerned that the Obama ­administration will, before leaving office, enshrine a two-state ­solution in a speech or a U.N. resolution, in effect laying out the final status ahead of negotiations.

Kerry spent nine months trying to bring the two sides together in 2014. The talks ended in recriminations about who was to blame for their failure.

Across the political spectrum in Ramallah and Jerusalem, nobody holds out much hope for the French effort.

French diplomats shrug and say in briefings with journalists, “We have to do something.”

In Israel, there is a feeling that something is happening.

Just this week, the once-moribund Arab Peace Initiative is back in the game after years on the sidelines.

Proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002, the deal offers the idea that the Arab states will normalize relations with Israel after Israel withdraws from the occupied territories — including East Jerusalem — and begins the process of allowing for a Palestinian state.

Former Israeli governments have been hostile or lukewarm to the Arab proposal.

Former prime minister Ariel Sharon called the Arab Peace Initiative a “nonstarter” when it was proposed.

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Arab peace offer intriguing. But Netanyahu also suggested that the Arab states recognize Israel first as Israel makes moves toward giving the Palestinians a state.

That will be a tough sell in the Arab League.

Into this mix comes former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has been shuttling between Egypt, the Arab Gulf states and the Israelis, trying to broker a way to get the sides talking.

Also intriguing, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi said in a recent speech that he thinks the time is ripe to revisit a deal between Israel and the ­Palestinians.

The French seem ready to press ahead with what they see as a solution to the conflict — including what borders should look like for a Palestinian state and whether Palestinians should have a capital in Jerusalem.

The French also may try to set deadlines for future talks. If their efforts fail, French diplomats have warned that they may unilaterally recognize a ­Palestinian state. [Continue reading…]

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