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The Obama administration, though they would not characterize it as such nor have much desire to acknowledge it at all, have attempted  a strategic detente with the “moderate” elements of political Islam.

This policy has not been entirely consistent; Syria, for example, is a quagmire the administration has wisely refrained from wading directly into despite the best efforts of R2P advocates to drag us there.  But more importantly, under President Obama the US supported the broad-based Arab Spring popular revolt against US ally, dictator Hosni Mubarak, and pushed the subsequent ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Libyan revolution against the entirely mad Colonel Gaddafi. These appear to be geopolitical “moves” upon which the Obama administration hopes to build.

I would like to emphasize that there is one legitimate and valid strategic pro to this sub rosa policy; namely, if everything went well, it would provide the United States with powerful triangulation against revolutionary, apocalyptic, radical Islamism as expressed by al Qaida and various Salafi extremist movements. There are reasons, rooted in takfirism, strategy and the politics of lunacy that our terrorist enemies frequently hate and revile the Brotherhood as traitors, apostates or whatever. Isolating the most actively dangerous and violent revolutionary enemies from a large mass of potential allies is, at least, a good strategic goal.

It is also my view, that this “outreach” is as politically sensitive  to the Obama administration as was the China Opening was to Nixon and about which they have been equally opaque and misleading for fear of a domestic backlash. The weird, foot-dragging, dissembling, embittered, kabuki drama inside the Beltway about public statements and intelligence on whether Benghazi was caused by obscure crackpot Islamophobic film makers or a well-orchestrated terrorist attack  is in my view due to a major foreign policy strategy never having been framed in public for what it is. I’m sure people will differ strongly with me on this (which is fine), but I would characterize detente with Islamists as a strategic shift on par with the “Pivot to Asia”.

The downside here is that first, things are not likely to come out well at all, as unfinished revolutions tend to give birth to monsters; and secondly, any detente with “moderate” political Islam is an uncertain gamble based on certain exceptionally optimistic conceptions of not only what the Brotherhood might do, but about it’s very nature.

While the removal of Arab dictators resonated with American values , it was questionable realpolitik while the administration’s de facto support of  Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood faction over poorly organized secular liberal modernists was an act of realpolitik that required a compromise of the democratic values so recently invoked to justify abandoning Mubarak. This was cynical diplomatic flexibility worthy of Talleyrand.

Unfortunately, the most democratic thing – perhaps the only thing – about Mr. Morsi and his Brotherhood supporters was his election.

The Egyptian people who are subjected now to thuggery from both Morsi’s Islamist stormtroopers and from the security forces of the Egyptian military are less sanguine than are the Brotherhood’s cheerleaders inside the administration. The Egyptian people, in fact, seem to be in revolt against domination by the Muslim Brotherhood’s shadow government.

The first question to ask in assessing if the Obama administration policy here is wise would be “What is the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood?” Americans love to personalize foreign policy, but if  Morsi were to be toppled or die, the Brotherhood will remain what it currently is, the best organized political force in Egypt and one widely influential throughout the Arab world and the West itself.

I am not an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, nor am I an Arabist by education. Most of us aren’t – a group that I fear includes most of the Obama administration officials involved in shaping this policy. Almost fifty years after King Faisal determined to export Wahhabism, more than thirty years since Khomeini’s Revolution and more than ten years since 9/11 the USG still has less in-house expertise related to Islam than it did about the Soviet Union and Communism a decade after the Berlin Blockade.

Perhaps we all should begin learning more?

Here is an analysis from FPRI; it is extremely critical but it touches on organizational aspects of the Muslim Brotherhood that I have not seen elsewhere (hat tip to David Ronfeldt). Feel free to suggest others, both for and against. The Brotherhood is a very large group with a long history that includes violence , terrorism and subversion on one hand and peacefully representing expressions of pious, middle-class, social conservatism in other places and times:

Lecture Transcript: What Every American Should Know about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Delivered by Eric Trager 

….Two years ago when I was doing my dissertation fieldwork in Cairo, I sought out interviews with leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood, and I was referred to a man named Muhammad Morsi, now the President of Egypt. At the time, President Mubarak was ill and had gone off to Europe for operations amid a lot of mystery surrounding his health. I asked Muhammad Morsi whether the Muslim Brotherhood would run a presidential candidate if Mubarak died tomorrow. Here is what he said:

[From an audio file played by Trager]

Eric Trager: You don’t see the Muslim Brotherhood nominating a presidential candidate [if Mubarak dies tomorrow]?

Muhammad Morsi: No… because society is not ready… Our society is not ready yet to really defend its worth. We want a society to carry on its responsibilities, and we are part of this society. Another thing, if we are rushing things, then I don’t think that leads to a real stable position.

When he made that statement, I don’t think he was lying, and I don’t think he was being coy. I think that he didn’t expect that he would be faced with this reality in a mere six months. He did not expect that Mubarak would step down six months later and, to be completely honest with you, neither did I. My dissertation was entitled “Egypt: Durable Authoritarianism”—until the revolution.

What did Morsi mean when he said that the Brotherhood was trying to build a society? Let me give you some background on the Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, who was a schoolteacher in Ismailia. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal was then—and remains now—to establish an Islamic state in Egypt. The way it pursues this goal is by trying to Islamize Egyptian society. Through social services, education, and the mosque, it sought to make Egyptians more religious and more Islamic as a grassroots strategy for building an Islamic state. That’s very, very different from a strategy that says, “We’re going to run for president, run for the Parliament, and use that power to transform society.” Rather, the Brotherhood says, in effect, “We’re going to Islamize society to build towards power.” It was a long-term strategy; it took them 84 years before they ran for and won the presidency. So Morsi told me in 2010 that the Muslim Brotherhood was not going to run for the presidency because it was not done Islamizing Egyptian society….

Read the rest here.

The Center for Combating Terrorism at West Point released a report on domestic terrorism that raised hackles for a number of reasons. Despite the dismissals of liberal political pundits, the reasons for objections to the CTC report are legitimate but they did not need to arise in the first place and might have been avoided with a slightly different editorial approach or appropriate caveats (I just finished reading the report, which is primarily focused on the usual suspects). Here’s why I think the normally well-regarded CTC stumbled into a hornet’s nest:

First, in this foray into domestic terrorism analysis, the center chose to concentrate only on the threat of violence of the Far Right while ignoring other threats coming from the Far Left, infiltration by criminal insurgent networks from Mexico, notably the ultraviolent Zetas whose reach has stirred gang violence in Chicago and Islamist terrorism, either homegrown “lone wolves” or from foreign infiltration or subversion. In itself, this is understandable if the CTC plans a series of reports with a separate focus on different domestic threats; but without that context, it is a myopic analytic perspective, particularly given the demonstrated capabilities of various AQ affiliates or just south of the border, the criminal–insurgency of  the narco-cartels. Had all of these been addressed in one omnibus report, any complaints from conservatives were likely to have been muted or nonexistent. This is not to say that the radical American Far Right does not have a violent threat potential of it’s own worth studying; it does and it is real. But available evidence indicates it to be the least organized, least operationally active and least professionally competent in terms of terrorist “tradecraft” of the three.

The second and most problematic aspect of the report is an intellectually sloppy definition of a dangerous “antifederalist movement”  where noxious concepts like “white supremacy” and wacko conspiracy theories are casually associated with very mainstream conservative (or even traditionally bipartisan !) political ideas – coincidentally, some of the same ideas that contemporary “big government” liberal elites tend to find irritating, objectionable or critical of their preferred policies. Part of the equation here is that American politics are evolvng into a very bitterly partisan, “low trust” environment, but even on the merits of critical analysis,  these two passages are ill-considered and are largely responsible for most of the recent public criticism of the CTC:

….The antifederalist rationale is multifaceted, and includes the beliefs that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a “New World Order” (NWO) in which the United States will be absorbed into the United Nations or another version of global government.  They also espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.  Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government

….In contrast to the relatively long tradition of the white supremacy racist movement, the anti-federalist movement appeared in full force only in the early to mid-1990s, with the emergence of groups such as the  Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia. Antifederalism is normally identified in the literature as the “Militia” or “Patriot” movement. Anti-federalist and anti-government sentiments were present in American society before the 1990s in diverse movements and ideological associations promoting anti-taxation, gun rights, survivalist  practices,and libertarian ideas 

This is taxonomic incoherence, or at least could have used some bright-line specifics ( like “Posse Commitatus” qualifying what was meant by “anti-taxation” activists) though in some cases, such as “libertarian ideas” and “civil activism”, I’m at a loss to know who or what violent actors they were implying, despite being fairly well informed on such matters.

By the standard used in the first paragraph, Glenn Greenwald, Ralph Nader and the ACLU would also be considered “far right antifederalists”. By the standards of the second, we might be in physical danger from Grover Norquist,  Congressman John Dingell and Penn Jillette. No one who opposed the recent increases in income tax rates, dislikes gun-control or thought the DOJ may have abused it’s power in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz or in their stubborn refusal to prosecute Bankster racketeering is likely to welcome a report under the auspices of West Point that juxtaposes such normal and perfectly valid American political beliefs with neo-Nazism. A move that is simply going to – and quite frankly, did – gratuitously irritate a large number of people, including many in the defense and national security communities who are a natural “customer base” for CTC reports.

As I said previously, this could easily have been completely avoided with more careful use of language, given that 99% the report has nothing to do with mainstream politics and is concerned with actors and orgs with often extensive track records of violence. As the CTC, despite it’s independence, is associated so strongly with an official U.S. Army institution, it needs to go the extra mile in explaining it’s analysis when examining domestic terrorism subjects that are or, appear to be, connected to perfectly legitimate participation in the political process. This is the case whether the subject is on the Left or Right – few activists on the Left, for example, have forgotten the days of COINTELPRO and are currently aggrieved by the activities of Project Vigilant.

I might make a few other criticisms of the report, such as the need for a better informed historical perspective, but that is hardly what the recent uproar was about.

[ by Charles Cameron — growth and mainstreaming of Rebuild the Temple movements in Israel, parallels with perceived slights against the Prophet of Islam, volatility of the situation ]
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You saw the New York Times headline, New Clashes at Site in Jerusalem Holy to Both Muslims and Jews? That was just a taste, here’s more of the story:
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Haaretz has posted three pieces in the last couple of days about the movement to build a Third Temple on the Temple Mount / Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem. I’ll give you the title, link and brief summaries of for the two shorter pieces, and some significant quotes from the Longer one.

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I’d also like to suggest considering the issues here as analogues of those in the recent “blasphemy” incidents.

We might think in terms of freedom of speech being akin to freedom of worship — but we should also consider the dangers inherent in what would likely be perceived as a huge provocation, in what may be the most volatile hot-spot on earth.

Consider: building the Third Temple might involve the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whether by an act of God or by human intervention. Whether it would or not is in dispute, as we shall see — but as we shall also see, attempts to destroy it have already been made…

Bearing that in mind..

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1: Temple Mount Faithful: From the fringes to the mainstream

Once consigned to messianic extremist fringes, movements fighting the ban on Jewish
prayers on Temple Mount are now endorsed by moderate rabbis. Even the Education Ministry has taken sides by encouraging pupils to visit the site.

If that’s accurate, it’s a significant shift in relation to what my American-Israeli journalist friend Gershom Gorenberg called in his book about the Mount, The End of Days, “the most contested piece of real-estate on earth” — for a quick overview of the importance of the site, see my piece of that name from July of this year.

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2: Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court: Jews should be allowed to pray on Temple Mount

Police currently enforce the Muslim ban on Jewish prayer at the site, citing security concerns.

Put those two pieces together, and you have a sense of momentum gathering for an epic clash, one which would have immense apocalyptic significance in terms of those eagerly awaiting a Coming One in each of the three Abrahamic traditions

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3: Following the dream of a Third Temple in Jerusalem

More than 90 percent of Israel’s religious public wants to be allowed to pray at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Some groups, though, wish to go even further and build a Third Temple in place of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. What fuels the dreams of these Jewish extremists?

Shany Littman, the author of this impressive magazine-length piece which is behind a paywall on the Haaretz site but has been reposted here, expresses through the voices of a diverse group of people she met and talked with, the deep-seated longing behind the movement —

I pray for it three times a day and I wanted to take seriously what I say. I say, ‘Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem.’

and the theological logic behind that —

It is the heart of Judaism. Numerically, one-third of the 613 commandments are not fulfilled today because of the absence of a Temple. The Temple is the Jewish public sphere that we lost. I want a transnational Judaism, which will encompass all the commandments.

the sacred politics —

I want to take the movements to a place that is more sensible: a Temple-based state, where the state’s entire content revolves around the Temple.

the somewhat archaic-sounding motivations involved —

the fulfillment of the three commandments the Israelite nation was given in anticipation of its imminent entry into the Land of Israel: to appoint their king and establish his kingdom, to wipe out the seed of Amalek and to build their Holy Temple.

the progress that has already been made in terms of preparation —

only two vessels that are not yet ready are the Ark of the Covenant, which cannot be reconstructed because it contained the stone tablets from Mount Sinai, and the huge external altar, on which the sacrifices were performed.

and recent trends on the part of Israeli police and politicians that seem to show an increasing willingness to allow Jews to pray in what is, after all, their holiest of holy places.

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I have been pondering these things, and I think we can helpfully, if carefully, draw a parallel between the extreme caution with which the Israelis have approached the issue of the potential for Jewish behavior — up to and including the possible removal of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and or Dome of the Rock — enraging not just Jerusalem’s Palestinians but the Islamic world, and the far smaller provocations of Charlie Hebdo, the puerile video, and the Qur’an-burning Revd. Jones.

Consider the rules and regulations invoked by the Israeli poloice on Jewish visitors to the Mount (compare also the rabbinic decree in the “traffic sign” at the top of this post):

Because this was the month of Ramadan, no food or drink was to be brought. Also forbidden were praying, bowing, kneeling, singing and anything that might disturb the public order. And have a good day.

Prayer is banned — have I heard that phrase somewhere before?

Prayer is banned because it would be blasphemous — the ironies, the echoes, the resonances and paradoxes here are endless.

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To understand the depth of feeling here — and remember, we are only examining the Judaic side of the issue here, and there are other perspectives in play — let’s peer a little deeper into the sacred / sacral motivation:

Sacrifice, not a very “contemporary” word but one with strong, archaic / archetypal meaning, is the heart of the Temple’s purpose:

Animal sacrifice was the primary ritual activity in the Temple. Rivka spoke of the practice yearningly. “Today it is hard to understand what sacrifice is,” she said. “When a person errs, makes a mistake, sins ? instead of bringing himself, he brings a substitute; he brings either an offering or an animal whose blood atones for his soul. This is something we have lost today. The media always talks about korbanot [the Hebrew word “korban” means both “sacrifice” and “victim”] ? victims of traffic accidents, victims of the peace process, victims of terrorism. And I say to myself, despairingly, that there is a place for korbanot ? and it is here. And what is the root of the word ‘korban’? It is from lehitkarev, to draw closer. To draw closer to Hashem.

Indeed, the sacrifice of a red heifer is widely believed to be necessary to purify those who would enter the Temple grounds — note in this next paragraph the reference to the return of the Messiah:

According to religious belief, until the ashes of a red heifer are obtained, access to the courtyard of the Temple is prohibited for Jews (see Numbers 19:1-22 and Mishna tractate Parah). Water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer can cleanse people of the impurity of the dead, which clings to everyone. Tradition holds that there have been only nine ritually suitable red heifers, and that the 10th will appear upon the advent of the Messiah. The absence of the ashes of a red heifer, with the concomitant inability to become ritually clean, is one of the reasons that many Jews are unwilling to visit the Temple Mount. However, the Temple movement activists claim this is only an excuse, and that there is no problem obtaining a red heifer today.

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Now back to “on the ground” realities — and risks, including the risks of terrorism and war.

This situation of contesting claims to one of the world’s most sacred sites the has been simmering for quite some time, and I think the gist of the three Haaretz articles could be read as “the stew’s beginning the bubble”.

For another glimpse of the potential volatility of the situation, we can turn to a decade-old piece by Jeffrey Goldberg in the NYT — though if the situation is as significant as I take it to be, you’d also be well-advised to read Gershom Gorenberg’s book The End of Days.

Back in 1999, Goldberg wrote a piece which carried the sub-head:

There are Jews who want to seize the Temple Mount by any means necessary. And Christians who want to see the Jewish Temple rebuilt — and destroyed to bring on Armageddon. And Muslims who will never give up the Dome of the Rock. Will the peace process be stalled by the apocalypse?

It’s a long magazine piece, and like Littman’s piece for Haaretz, well worth pondering. Here I’ll just pull a couple of excerpts that touch on how Temple movement participants view the possible repercussions of their actions. Gershon Salomon is the leader of one such movement, and not infrequently raises funds addressing Christian audiences.

“The mountain is within reach,” Salomon told me. “God is waiting for us to move the mosques and rebuild. The Jews may not be ready, but the Christians are.”

In Casselbery, I saw Salomon work the Christian congregants into a flag-waving — Israeli flag waving — frenzy. After, as the congregants lined up to give Salomon checks and even their jewelry to pay for rebuilding the Temple, I asked him, “Do you think these people believe that God will remove the Dome of the Rock, or that man must remove it?”
He smiled beatifically.
“They know that God will make this miracle happen.”
By the hand of man?
“Only God knows.”

[ … ]

I ask him how he would feel if someone blew up the Dome of the Rock.
“The question is, Why did they build their mosque on our holy mountain, anyway? Who gave them permission? God didn’t.”
Would you be saddened if the destruction of the Dome of the Rock led to war?
“I don’t think it will come to that. The Muslims know in their heart that this belongs to us.”
“But what if it did lead to war?”
Salomon smiled. “The Temple will be a reality. God has promised it.”
But what about war?
“O.K.,” he said impatiently, “so we’ll have a war.”

Returning to the Haaretz magazine piece, we can perhaps temper that last remark with a word of moderation.

Journalist Arnon Segal is the activist son of a member of the Jewish Underground of the 1980s — one of whose leaders, Yehuda Etzion, plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock. His views are accordingly of considerable interest.

Contrary to the usual image of those who are involved with the Temple, they are a great deal more soul-searching and hesitant than people think. People did not want to join with Yehuda Etzion, who was the one who raised the idea [of blowing up the mosque].

“I think it is nonsensical to blow up [Al-Aqsa Mosque]. We would not have achieved anything by doing that. That is not how to solve issues. The Arabs are against the Jewish presence on the Temple Mount as such. If the State of Israel were to permit sacrifices to be made, that would already be enough to make me jump for joy. Obviously my inspiration is from home, but not from a fanatic place. I was not brought up to hate Arabs. But an as-yet unattained Jewish national purpose and the concept of the Temple Mount? those are definitely notions I got at home.”

Segal insists that the debate over the Temple Mount is basically an internal Jewish issue and is not related to the conflict with the Arabs. “I am not an enemy of the Arabs. I do not say that I don’t want Arabs on the Mount. Even Rabbi Dov Lior said that all nations are permitted to pray on the Mount. We will not tell others not to pray to God on the Mount, even though the Muslims do not respect our right to pray there. I am ready to leave them Al-Aqsa. But Al-Aqsa is not the whole Mount.”

And here is Segal’s pragmatic evaluation of the risk:

I don’t think the Arab states are lovers of Zion, even now; if they could destroy us, they would already have done it. The Temple Mount will not irk them more than other things.

Would you want to test that hypothesis in “real life”?

[ by Charles Cameron — Ansar al-Din destruction of shrines in Timbuktu expands to include elimination of mosque door and haram eschatological belief ]
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@tweetsintheME This was the Door of al-Qiyama (aka “all hell will break loose if you open it door”). Guess it has. twitter.com/vatyma/status/…

— vatyma (@vatyma) July 2, 2012

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Various positions can be taken, with significantly different emphases, concerning the destruction of the shrines and mausoleums of Timbuctu.

There is the military assessment:

The international community fears the vast desert area will become a new haven for terrorist activity and the Islamists have threatened any country that joins a possible military intervention force in Mali.

The legal opinion:

International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Sunday warned that the destruction could amount to a war crime. “My message to those involved in these criminal acts is clear: stop the destruction of the religious buildings now,” Bensouda told AFP in an interview in Dakar. “This is a war crime which my office has authority to fully investigate.”

The attacks come just days after UNESCO declared Timbuktu an endangered world heritage site, so there is the cultural preservation argument:

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon deplored the destruction of tombs, with his spokesman Martin Nesirky quoting him as saying: “Such attacks against cultural heritage sites are totally unjustified.”

There is the condemnation from much of the Islamic world:

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemned the destruction, saying in a statement the sites were “part of the rich Islamic heritage of Mali and should not be allowed to be destroyed by … bigoted extremist elements.”

and:

Algeria condemned the destruction of tombs which “constitute a homage and a recognition by the local people to the saints and scholars who contributed to the flourishing of Islam in the region and to the spread of the values of tolerance and spirituality.”

And then there is the reason given by the Ansar al-Din themselves:

“God is unique. All of this is haram (forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what?” spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama said on Saturday. He said the group was acting in the name of God and would “destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception”.

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Here’s how the locals saw the destruction of one specific door into the Mosque of Sidi Yahia in Timbuktu:

Islamist militants in northern Mali on Monday destroyed the ‘sacred’ door of one of Timbuktu’s three ancient mosques after smashing seven tombs of muslim saints over the weekend, witnesses said. “The Islamists have just destroyed the door to the entrance of the Sidi Yahya mosque… they tore the sacred door off which we never open,” said a resident of the town. A former tour guide in the once-popular tourist destination said: “They came with pick-axes, they cried ‘Allah’ and broke the door. It is very serious. Some of the people watching began crying.”

Another man, a relative of a local imam (religious leader), said he had spoken to Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) who have gone on a rampage destroying cultural treasures after occupying the town for three months. “Some said that the day this door is opened it will be the end of the world and they wanted to show that it is not the end of the world.” The door on the south end of the mosque has been closed for centuries due to local beliefs that to open it will bring misfortune.

All quotes above from various versions of Serge Daniel’s AFP reporting, see eg: Islamists smash Timbuktu relics, plant mines in north Mali.

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Did you catch that?

Some said that the day this door is opened it will be the end of the world and they wanted to show that it is not the end of the world.

There’s irony for you: the Ansar destroyed the ancient door to demonstrate that it wouldn’t bring on the Yawm al-Qiyamah, the Day of Judgment and Resurrection — they’re demythologizing the legend that has it that it will open only on the Day — in the stilted translation offered by Google:

The Abu Turab; who is a member of Ansar al-Din, he emphasized that what happened is the kind of “Aspects of the elimination of superstition and heresy, and the excuse they may reach a trap,” adding: “We have heard our ears that there is a door in the courtyard of the Mosque of Sidi Yahia old if open The Resurrection, and verified what we learned from it that he canceled the door in the courtyard of the mosque is the door has been canceled accumulation Vtm filled soil on it.

Indeed, the photo in the tweet at the head of this post — which is subtitled The process of opening the door of the Holy Sepulchre in Tinbactu — actually downloads under the title “bab alqyama” — door of the Day of Resurrection.

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Belief in the Last Day, the Yawm al-Qiyamah, is mandatory of Muslims in accordance with the revelation of Qur’an 4.136:

O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and the scripture which He hath sent to His Messenger and the scripture which He sent to those before (him). Any who denieth Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and the Day of Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.

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Here’s an image of one of the beautiful doors from the same mosque:

photo credit: Jean-Luc Dighaye, EurAstro visit to Mali

I am not clear whether this is a photo of the same door which was destroyed, however, and would appreciate any further info.

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You might like to drink a cool glass of water at this point, to cleanse your palate…

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Here’s my preferred quote on opening doors into sacred space:

When you have grown still on purpose while everything around you is asking for chaos, you will find the doors between every room of the interior castle thrown open, the path home to your true love unobstructed after all.

St. Teresa of Avila

h/t kathe izzo, who tweeted this today for reasons unconnected with Timbuctu as far as i can tell…

[ by Charles Cameron — Hammami, Awlaki, RAND, Marisa Urgo and a theology of risk ]
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Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, is a young American from Alabama who joined Al-Shabaab in Somalia around 2007. Blogfriend JM Berger of Intelwire recently commented:

Omar Hammami would like you to think he’s the next Anwar Awlaki.

Among the reasons Berger gives: Hammami, like al-Awlaki, seems to like quoting RAND analyses of jihadist thinking. Case in point: in his most recent video, Hammami quotes the RAND report, Beyond al-Qaeda: Part 1, The Global Jihadist Movement MG-429.

I want to take a look at what Hammami chooses to quote, what he has to say about it, and what conclusions we may derive.
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Hammami quotes RAND:

Hammami goes directly to the Conclusion: New Approaches to Combating the Global Jihadist Movement, which begins on page 159, and zeroes straight in:

From the analysis in this report, it is clear that ideology is the center of gravity of the global jihadist phenomenon.

Hammami’s primary concern is with this idea, which he specifically couples with the “decapitation” of those who can propagate the ideology — bin Laden and al-Awlaki are his examples here. Having made this point, and spoken briefly about the connection between global and local jihads, he continues with his RAND quotation, again focusing on the centrality of ideology:

The war on terror at its most fundamental level goes to the war of ideas. The goal is to deny extremists the high ground of Islamic politico-religious discourse, which has been adroitly exploited by al-Qaeda to further the appeal of its own radical and absolutist rhetoric.

He goes on to quote:

Although it is inherently difficult for outsiders to attack an ideology, the ideological approach has weaknesses that are susceptible to exploitation.

And again — I’ve skipped some more detail — he quotes:

Some analysts also note that the jihadist movement is sensitive to religious ideology to the point of vulnerability. Combatants are replaceable, but theologically trained sheikhs are not. Decapitation strategies should be expanded from operational leaders to ideologues. These ideologues are often asked to provide sanction for terrorist operations and are therefore a key part of terrorists’ decision making process. Preventing al-Qaeda’s ideological mentors from continuing to provide theological justification for terrorism could expedite the movement’s ideological deterioration.

Okay, those are the parts of the RAND analysis that Hammami wants to emphasize, and to sum up, he’s concerned with the centrality of the AQ “ideology” (RAND’s term) and with the “theologically trained sheikhs” who are its irreplaceable transmitters.
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Hammami comments:

Hammami’s own comments deserve some notice, too — he clearly thinks the RAND authors are onto some key points, and his endorsement adds to the credibility of the RAND analysis.

He says:

I believe that these kuffar, despite being from amongst the most misguided of creation, have actually put their finger on something that is extremely beneficial for us to ponder. This important idea that I am referring to here is found in the beginning of the long quote I just read to you all … The authors of this RAND research stated that the ideology of al-Qaida is in reality its center of gravity…

He goes on to say:

Now from my perspective, I’d like to say that irrespective of what these kuffar have to say, from my own personal deductions, I believe that this conclusion is absolutely correct. … Let me just restate that conclusion in my own words, to make things clear. As Muslims, I think it’s pretty much a no-brainer that the most important element which brings about the cohesion and thereby the strength of our entire Muslim ummah is no other than our aqeeda and our manhaj, i.e. our methodology for how we propose to bring about productive changes. Now, I’m fairly certain after using these native terms from our religion, that no-one will disagree with the fore-stated conclusion…

And from there he goes on to discuss the significance of Islam as he sees it:

The pinnacle of our religion is not merely to establish the individual rights of Islam within the sphere of our personal, everyday lives, but rather, worshiping Allah is much bigger than that. The reality of worship actually extends to all ways in which we please Allah (swt) and make his word uppermost in this earth. The true pinnacle of our religion is to establish tawhid in the earth and to eradicate shirk — and this must be done collectively, as an ummah.

This aim, he concludes, can only be achieved under the leadership of a renewed Caliphate,
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Worship:

All this — the preaching and practice of jihad — is an act of worship.
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What counts?

It was apparently a namesake of mine, William Bruce Cameron, whose 1963 book Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking included a quote now frequently attributed to Albert Einstein:

It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Einstein is usually credited with the second sentence there, but it’s a pleasure to read the context in which the quote in question was originally uttered.

It is, for instance, easier to count guns, or even “all military-age males in a strike zone“, than it is to account for zeal, religious and otherwise. As a result, we devote far more intellectual firepower (think about that metaphor for a moment) to tracking people and materiel than we do to tracking ideas and passions. And when we do try to think about ideas, we often leave out the passions that empower them.

Which is why I’m grateful for the notion that Al-Qaida has an “ideology”, but don’t think it quite cuts it.

An ideology is propositional. It refers to a system of ideas, but says nothing about the fervor with which those ideas are held and acted upon. Specifically, it doesn’t address worship.

Which is where I think Marisa Urgo gets things right.
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Marisa gets it right:

Marisa Urgo gets it right, I’d suggest, when she says:

there’s a gap in our understanding that simply can’t be described using the discourse of psychological dysfunction or earthly geopolitical ends.

That quote is from a recent post in which Marisa is commenting on Ayman al-Zawahiri‘s Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet (2d ed).

And that — in a nutshell — is why Hammami “translated” from RAND’s use of the word “ideology” to the “native terms” of his religion, aqeeda and our manhaj. That’s why he mentioned worship.

For Hammami, as for al-Zawahiri, jihad is sacramental. It is an act of worship.

In his book The Qur’anic Concept of War, the Pakistani Brigadier SK Malik writes, with emphasis:

In war, our main objective is the opponent’s heart or soul, our main weapon of offence against this objective is the strength of our own souls…

I’d like to take that one step further.

We speak of our own troops being “in harm’s way” in war — and this is no less true of those who are targeted by drone strikes. War is a risky business for all concerned. But how much risk are jihadists taking — and how much risk do they perceive themselves to be taking?

Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden, Omar Hammami and other jihadists take risks, but they calculate their risk-taking in terms of the soul — and in this way their risk-assessment notably diverges from our assessment of their risk. We in the West tend to take the Napoleonic position that “God is on the side of the big battalions” — but the jihadists prefer to believe that invisible, which is also to say, unaccountable, help may be at hand, in line with Qur’an 8.9:

When ye sought help of your Lord and He answered you (saying): I will help you with a thousand of the angels, rank on rank.

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A theology of risk:

Back to Marisa, who raises an interesting point in this regard: She suggests, specifically with respect to Zawahiri, but with application to all those for whom jihad is a sacramental act, that the jihadists are essentially calculating according to a theology of risk:

What may be at work here is what some theologians call a personal theology of risk. It’s an idea common enough in Christian traditions; however, I’m uncertain of its presence in Islam. It would be interesting to find out if such an idea exists, because few, if any, analyst have attempted to interpret al-Qaeda’s decision-making as a function of theologically-informed risk. And yet given his life choices, theologically-informed risk-taking makes more sense than any realpolitik explanation for Zawahiri’s decision-making.

If Zawahiri has a theology of risk, it would require bold moves at the worst times, constantly pushing the envelope in order to see for a moment (without worldly obstructions) God’ will. It’s the very essence of counter-intuitive, because, to put it bluntly, God’s wisdom is not man’s, and a person guided by a theology of risk will take seemingly irrational risks at incredibly inopportune times in order to seek out that personal knowledge of Godly wisdom.

For “a person guided by a theology of risk” in Islam, in fact, the only risk is a lack of trust in God. As al-Awlaki notes, for many westernized Muslims, “the concept of Jihad is one in where it is ‘dangerous’ to practice. Their trust in Allah is not there…”

For he who entrusts himself to God in jihad, there are only two outcomes, frequently described as such: martyrdom — or victory.

From the jihadist’s point of view, it’s a win-win situation.