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[ by Charles Cameron — in which a sunni sheikh protects a yazidi family ]
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Yad Vashem:

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I seldom make comparisons that strike me as demonstrating moral equivalence as such — mostly I intend the juxtapositions I present to illustrate some parallelism or opposition that’s worthy of note as one aspect of a bigger picture, but by no means the whole. Often such an aspect will add nuance to the broader picture, sometime by contrasting with the overall impression. I relish those opportunities to see more that the first glance would tell me, to begin probing, digging deeper into a particular situation or issue.

Here though, I think I may have stumbled onto a juxtaposition that does reveal a moral equivalence — in this case, a Sunni tribal leader standing in the same relation to the Yezidis he saved as one or another of the Righteous Among the Nations does to a Jewish person, family, or group they saved.

The details of tribal anthropology in the Sunni-Yazidi case — which would be of interest no doubt to our friend David Ronfeldt — are fascinating in themselves:

Fadel was a wealthy Sunni, and a tribal leader from the Shammar tribe, one of the world’s largest and most influential Arab tribes. He was also a close friend of the family.

When Fadel found out where the family was, he rushed to the IS headquarters in Kocho, where he negotiated with the local militant leaders. “Please, let me take them with me,” he told them. “They belong with me.”

While thousands of other Yazidi women and children were transferred to other places in Iraq and Syria – and most of the Yazidi men were killed on the spot – Nadine and her children, along with dozens of their relatives, were taken to the tribal leader’s house in Ba’aj, a small town in Nineveh governorate.

Immediately, the family buried their mobile phones and Yazidi clothing. It was the beginning of a long period in hiding.

But why would the local sheikh go to such lengths to protect this Yazidi family? The families go way back and have a long history together, explained Nadine. He was their ‘krive‘ – a kind of godfather or patron. “And he had promised to protect us,” Nadine said.

Just like Muslims, Yazidis circumcise their young boys. During the ceremony, the man who holds the boy on their lap is considered his godfather, or “blood brother” – or krive.

Before 2003, the krive was often historically selected from among religious families or even influential Muslim families. Yazidis believe that this creates a special bond between two clans; they have to respect and protect each other whenever needed.

Sadly:

But the ritual shared between the two religious groups declined amid Iraq’s sectarian violence, and after the Yazidi genocide in 2014, it completely disappeared.

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Note here the role of circumcision, adding nuance to the parallel with Judaism. Ritual here is not some form of “dry as dust” repetition, but the instrument of deep, indeed life-saving human bonding.

As so often, I wish I knew more — and in the meantime, I am grateful to those such as Oscar Schindler, Fadel of the Shammar, and so many others — the righteous protectors.

Nadine Naif and family, your story brings me hope. Fadel, I salute you.

[ by Charles Cameron — a comment by Hegghammer, possibly echoing Bukhari re the Khawarij ]
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Ritual practice with greater intensity..

Very much a book to read..

Thomas Hegghammer, Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists

[ by Charles Cameron — also, the role of the True Name in intel analysis & Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea ]
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You may know that I value the documentary film Manhunt for its lucid presentation of the process by which the finest intelligence analysts “leap” to their quarry — in which Cindy Storer notes, “not the analysts doing it, but other people who didn’t have that talent referred to it as magic”.

In my post The process of associative memory I decribe this process, which I consider the root process of true creativity:

There’s the present moment .. And there’s the memory it elicits.

Compare Michael Hayden in Manhunt, at 1.19.18:

The way it works is, information come in, you catalog it, your organize it – that little nugget there could sit fallow on your shelves for four or five years until something else comes in that’s suddenly very illuminating about something that you may have had for a very long period of time. That actually happened in the work we did to hunt for Osama bin Laden by trying to track his courier.

By way of confirmation, here is Robert Frost:

The artist must value himself as he snatches a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order with not so much as a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it was organic.

And here’s Jeff Jones on piecing together puzzles —

Some pieces produce remarkable epiphanies. You grab the next piece, which appears to be just some chunk of grass – obviously no big deal. But wait … you discover this innocuous piece connects the windmill scene to the alligator scene! This innocent little new piece turned out to be the glue.

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My point here is that the board in my “game” of DoubleQuotes provides a matrix for eliciting and annotating such leaps between fact and memory — that’s its purpose, and that’s why I believe the practice and “playing” of DoubleQuotes is, in itself, an ideal training for the analytic mind in that otherwise elusive aptitude which Ms Storer says seenms like magic to those who do not possess it..

I believe my DoubleQuotes would be an invaluable tool for analysts in training.

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Note, however, that Jose Rodriguez, speaking immediately after Michael Hayden at 1.19.55, adds a reference to the “True Name” — accompanying screencaps included — something to which as a theologian I am naturally drawn:

It took years for the agency to recruit the human source that eventually gave us the true name. That’s why we were in the business the of condensing human intelligence because, in many cases, all these fancy gadgets and everything else won’t give you the information that you really need. A true name.

And we finally got his true name, which is whatever it is. Whatever. Arabic name, you know. But the true name – we were able to find out a lot about him. From then on, you know, the agency was able to do what it does so well. Track the guy and find him.

That too elicits memories, though in this case providing cultural context rather than actionable intelligence. It’s interesting to compare Rodriguez’ quote with the passages in which Ursula Le Guin describes the nature of magic in her book, Wizard of Earthsea:

He who would be Seamaster must know the true name of every drop of water in the sea.

and:

He saw that in this dusty and fathomless matter of learning the true name of every place, thing, and being, the power he wanted lay like a jewel at the bottom of a dry well. For magic consists in this, the true naming of a thing.

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See also:

Gaming the Connections: from Sherlock H to Nada B

Jeff Jonas, Nada Bakos, Cindy Storer and Puzzles

FWIW, there’s an appendix on the central spiritual significance of remembrance of the True Name in Judaism (HaShem), Christianity (Jesus Prayer), Islam (dhikr), Hinduism (nama-rupa), Buddhism (nembutsu) etc at the back of Frithjof Schuon‘s little book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions.

On which frankly mystical note, here’s a third para from Le Guin to carry you towards Lao Tzu‘s observation that “The name that can be named is not the eternal Name” —

It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.

[by Charles Cameron — whereof scholars are in disagreement, how shall generals, presidents, you, or for that matter i, be expected to get things right? ]
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Oh, wow:

National Security Threat HR McMaster, who's like Obama on Islam, is at it again, purging rational actors at the NSC https://t.co/SGzztkY6na pic.twitter.com/EAuSQSLYKk

— Bosch Fawstin (@BoschFawstin) August 3, 2017

Nah!

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Is Westboro Baptist Church a Baptist Church?

Is Westboro Baptist even Christian? Is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Islamic? Islamist? Heresy? Specoifically, Khawarij?

Surely there are senses in which the answers, both with regards to WBC and ISIS, are Yes, and senses in which the answers are No. To my way of thinking, the question of ISIS and Islam has a great deal to do with what audience a given speaker wishes to reach — and what second order consequences that speaker wishes to avoid.

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But Khawarij, specifically?

The site Millat Salaf [“Path of the Predecessors”] asks, ISIS are Khawarij or not?

So who are the Khawarij? What are their beliefs? Are they Kuffar? Should they be killed? When should they be fought? We must compare the methodology and beliefs of the ISIS before slapping the title “Khawarij” to their backs and going all Shariah on ’em.

Millat Salaf goes on to note some of the beliefs of the Khawarij of the time of the Prophet — jhere are three of a dozen examples:

They Permit the Greater Khilaafah to be a man from other than Quraish, free man or a slave, arab or a non-arab, and other groups from within them do not see having a Khilaafah as important at all, rather the people should sort out their affairs for themselves, and if they feel the need for an Imaam they may choose one.

They Abolish the ruling of stoning of the adulterer.

Some of them deny Surat Yusuf saying that it is not befitting to have a love story in the Quran.

On the basis of these and other significant details, and comparing them with ISIS doctrine and practice, Millat Salaf declares that the members of ISIS are not Khawarij.

On a more general level, however, Millat Salaf described the Khawarij as both a contemporary and an end-times group:

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said “Leave him, for he has companions, and if you compare your prayers with their prayers and your fasting with theirs, you will look down upon your prayers and fasting, in comparison to theirs. A people will come at the end of time; as if he is one of them, reciting the Qur’an without it passing beyond their throats. They will go through Islam just as the arrow goes through the target. Their distinction will be shaving. They will not cease to appear until the last of them comes with Al-Maseeh Ad-Dajjaal.” Bukhari (and An-Nisaa’i with different wording)

In these terms, the Khawarij are more ostensiveloy (ostentatiously) pious than other Muslims, but their practice is hollow.

So.. I mean..

It is perfectly possible, from within the Salafi stream of Islam, to suggest as Millat Salaf does:

we cannot agree with the claims of the FSA and their allies that the ISIS are Khawaarij

It is also perfectly possible within that same Salafi stream to hold, as Sheikh Abu Basir al-Tartusi does, that ISIS is Khawarij and worse. From a page titled Conclusive scholarly opinions on ISIS:

The group known as ISIS are from the fanatical Khaw?rij, rather they have surpassed the Khaw?rij in many of their characteristics and actions, combining between fanaticism, aggression, hostility and shedding inviolable blood.” He further said: “We call upon all sincere individuals who have been fooled by them while still with this misguided group to severe their ties with it and to declare their freedom from it and its actions.”

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And what of Westboro Baptist from a Christian perspective? Christianity Today carried a piece titled The Westboro Baptist in All of Us, observing:

It’s easy to distance ourselves from Westboro Baptist Church. They’re extremists with monstrous practices that flow from a twisted theology of a deceived people. We’re not extremists. We’d never dream of protesting the funerals of American soldiers or even conceive of picketing the funerals of Sandy Hook Elementary victims in the name of God while smugly declaring via Twitter that “God sent the shooter.” We’d never indoctrinate our children as they have and call it nurture. Between most of us and those at Westboro Baptist Church, there’s a great gulf fixed.

But then..

Most of us wouldn’t go to the same lengths as those at Westboro, but collectively, we have our own prejudices, rigid rules, regulations, and zealotries. These drive us to marginalize, cast aspersions upon and exclude others within our own churches, Christian organizations and institutions who so much as dare to differ, even slightly, from our own political or theological stances.

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If Christianity is understood as the religion of love, then from a Christian perspective, WBC’s excessive and hate-fueled zeal distances them from the very Christianity they claim, and which in historical perspective gave rise to them. Mutatis mutandis, If Islam is understood as the religion of Peace, then from an Islamic perspective, ISIS’ excessive and hate-fueled zeal distances them from the very Islamic faith they claim, and which in historical perspective gave rise to them.

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Unfortunate McMaster — caught in the crossfire between the theological snipers of Is and Isn’t.

[ by Charles Cameron — and the two Muslim families who guard the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity ]
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As President Trump visits France for Bastille Day, a Foreign Policy headline reads Bastille Day Is a Military Holiday Out of Donald Trump’s Fantasies — and the sub-head “France and America are seeking rapprochement at an annual pageant that’s always been less about liberty, equality, and solidarity than tanks, drones, and guns.”

The key to an earthly hell:

A fitting symbol of Franco-American amity on Bastille Day, July 14 (Quatorze Juillet) then, would be the key to the Bastille (upper panel above), presented by the Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington in 1790, and now at Mount Vernon.

Think on it:

The so-called civilized world today is horrified by scenes of heads lopped off by angry Muslims, forgetting the savagery of its own blood-soaked forbears. France’s messy and incomplete march toward Liberty, Equality and Fraternity also needed heads — that of King Louis XVI to start, and then of anonymous thousands collected in baskets like so many fallen apples, the fruit of modern, mechanized decapitation. The picture of France desecrating churches, massacring priests and monarchist sympathizers, producing civil war, terror, chaos and confusion were indelible events stamped for decades into Europe’s collective memory, incubated in a devil’s broth of war, fear, hunger, hatred, sabotage, fantastic hopes and wild idealism.

John Kiser, Commander of the Faithful

The Keys to the Kingdom:

By way of contrast with the physical keys of the Bastille, I have set the spiritual “Keys of the Kingdom” (lower panel, above), which Christ passed to Peter and the Church:

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matthew 16.19

These keys, commanding heaven — unlike the key to the Bastille — are nowadays being turned to peaceable ends. This is from Pope Francis‘ message for the 50th World Day of Peace, December 2016, titled Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace:

At the beginning of this New Year, I offer heartfelt wishes of peace to the world’s peoples and nations, to heads of state and government, and to religious, civic and community leaders. I wish peace to every man, woman and child, and I pray that the image and likeness of God in each person will enable us to acknowledge one another as sacred gifts endowed with immense dignity. Especially in situations of conflict, let us respect this, our “deepest dignity”, and make active nonviolence our way of life.

This is the fiftieth Message for the World Day of Peace. In the first, Blessed Pope Paul VI addressed all peoples, not simply Catholics, with utter clarity. “Peace is the only true direction of human progress – and not the tensions caused by ambitious nationalisms, nor conquests by violence, nor repressions which serve as mainstay for a false civil order”. He warned of “the danger of believing that international controversies cannot be resolved by the ways of reason, that is, by negotiations founded on law, justice, and equity, but only by means of deterrent and murderous forces.” Instead, citing the encyclical Pacem in Terris of his predecessor Saint John XXIII, he extolled “the sense and love of peace founded upon truth, justice, freedom and love”. In the intervening fifty years, these words have lost none of their significance or urgency.

On this occasion, I would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics for peace. I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.

I note here that the eminently public figure of Francis, successor of Peter as Bishop of Rome focuses first on the most private and intimate form of peace — the peace-making mind of the human individual:

I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values.

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The key to the Holy Sepulchre:

In the spirit of peace, it is notable that two Muslim families have for centuries been the custodians of the keys to Christianity’s greatest shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:

Two Muslim families entrusted with care of holy Christian site for centuries

Adeeb Joudeh holds the keys to Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

This task fell to Joudeh’s ancestors as a way of maintaining a neutral guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, since the church is split between multiple Christian denominations, including Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Franciscans, and more. He learned the obligations and responsibilities of guarding the key from his father, just as he will pass it on to his son.

“What we pass to the next generations is not only the key, but also the way you respect other religions.”

This agreement between Joudeh’s Muslim ancestors and the Christians has helped build cooperation between the religions, Joudeh says.

“For me, the source of coexistence for Islamic and Christian religions is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that was when Umar ibn Khattab took the keys of Jerusalem from Patriarch Sophronius and gave security and safety to Christians in the region. We coexist and pass peace and love, which is the real Islamic religion.” He references history from 1,400 years ago, when Umar ibn Khattab, a Muslim, made an agreement with Sophronius, a Christian, to grant the Christians right of free worship in Jerusalem. To Joudeh, this history is still alive today, and it is his obligation to carry it on.Joudeh does not carry this obligation alone. Although he is in charge of protecting and holding the key, another Muslim family is in charge of opening the door and allowing the faithful to enter the church. That responsibility now falls to Wajeeh Nuseibeh.

When Nuseibeh arrives at the church early in the morning, he takes the key from Joudeh, and climbs a small wooden ladder to unlock the top lock. Then he steps off the ladder to unlock the lower lock. He swings the church doors ajar, and the church is open to visitors. The entire process is repeated each evening, when the church is locked.

The two Muslim families have shared this responsibility for centuries, protecting the holy site and keeping it open to the Christian faithful. It is a model of coexistence in a city filled with tension, leading the way in interfaith cooperation, as it has been for hundreds of years.

and:

And How Muslims Hold the Key to Christ:

If doors are emblems of ownership, keys are symbols of custodianship. “Since 1187 till today, we hold the keys,” Joudeh says. “My whole family stands with me at this door. This is home, my second home.” [ .. ]

The two Muslim families got to keep the keys and the door because of quarrels within the Church. “Like brothers, we sometimes fight,” confesses the Very Reverend Father Samuel Aghoyan, Armenian Superior of the Holy Sepulchre. “The Churches wouldn’t go along with each other, so the key was taken away from the dominant Church and entrusted to a neutral monotheistic faith that embraces the Christ as a prophet – Islam.”

This is Christianity’s most sacred site, where Jesus was believed to have been resurrected – for many pilgrims, their most important destination. The belief is that the Church was erected on the Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion, and on the grotto where he was interred.

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Happy Bastille Day!

Peace!