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Were it not for guest posts, November would have seemed like I went on hiatus 🙂  Normal blogging will resume in a few weeks.

I did find time to pick up a few new books to read in the late hours of the night, one of which will be the subject of a book review by a new guest poster.

The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism by Howard Bloom

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America  by Rick Perlstein

The only thing these three tomes have in common is that the authors have a penchant for contradicting conventional wisdom, at least to a degree. 

Howard Bloom is an offbeat, pop science to pop culture master of horizontal thinking whose earlier work, Global Brain, I very much enjoyed and highly recommend. Bloom’s intellectual reach is first rate and he is one of the few writers who can take very difficult concepts from wildly disparate fields and tie them together for a lay audience with comprehensible analogies and anecdotes .

I put Vali Nasr’s The Shia Revival on my list back after the high praise Thomas P.M. Barnett gave Nasr in his book, Great Powers – in my experience, Tom does not hand out comments of “brilliant” all that often ( Great Powers, BTW, is also a “must read” book for those interested in strategy and geoeconomics). I am approximately 80 pages in to The Shia Revival and I will say that as a writer, Nasr does not waste time getting to key points in explaining his subject – concise but not simplified.

Rick Perlstein, while far to the Left, has the uncommon quality among leftwingers of working very, very hard at the scholarship of attempting to understand conservatism and leading conservatives ( must be a legacy of attending the University of Chicago). Much like Orangemen in Ulster, eavesdropping on a Catholic mass, I suspect the essence of conservatism eludes Perlstein, but at least he takes the ideas seriously.  That Richard Nixon is Perlstein’s subject is an added draw, since Nixon’s foreign policy was an area of historical research for me. Very interested to see how Perlstein’s take on Richard Nixon compares to that of Robert Dallek and Richard Reeves.

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear….”

Charles Cameron has been guest blogging here in a series on radical Islamism and terrorism. A former researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, his most recent essay, an analysis of the powerpoint presentation of Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, appeared in the Small Wars Journal.

This post is a follow up to the previous Guest Post: On al-Awlaki: Constants on the Path of Jihad:

RAND Islam, and CIA Islam too…

by Charles Cameron

i

I came across a phrase today that al-Awlaki originated, and it intrigued me. The phrase was “RAND Islam” and it has a sibling, “RAND Muslims”. My source for the first term is an interview al-Awlaki gave to a California Muslim news journal, InFocus, from which I’ve extracted the following:

IF: One of your most recent lectures is titled “Battle of the Hearts & Minds,” in which you talk about lies and propaganda. Would you briefly summarize the point of this lecture for our readers?IA: There has been a plethora of reports from governmental and non-governmental sources on how to defeat what they perceive as the Islamic danger. For example RAND Corporation, which is a think tank affiliated to the Pentagon, has issued a couple of reports on this. They have openly stated that they are unhappy with the way Islam is and want to change it. They then proceed to delineate the characteristics of their version of Islam and how to promote it. They also describe the type of Muslims that they think might be willing to prescribe to this “Rand Islam.” Because they understand that the masses in the Muslim world have lost trust in the US, they state that the US hand in this effort should be hidden and that their Muslim stooges should be in the forefront.

IF: What tips would you give to Muslims living in the U.S. to win this battle of the hearts and minds?

IA: Muslims need to be able to tell the difference between the real Islam and the RAND Islam and they need to know who their enemy is. Living in the West, they also have a responsibility of refuting such attempts of changing the religion of Allah.

The second can be found in the lecture series titled “Battle of the Hearts and Minds” about which al-Awlaki was questioned in the IA
interview excerpted above, eg on p. 19:

We talked about some of the recommendations that were in the Rand report and how to deal with this issue of separating between the modernists or the Rand Muslims, and the extremists or the real Muslims, true Muslims.

and p. 25:

So it is our duty just as they are intending to change our religion and promote falsehood and to turn us to Rand Muslims, we need
to promote Al Haq.

And the phrase “RAND Islam” has a cousin,”CIA Islam” — which was applied, curiously enough, to al-Awlaki himself by a one-time rival,
Al-Faisal, as Brian Fishman noted in a post on Jihadica yesterday.

Al-Faisal’s lecture on al-Awlaki is listed as “CIA Islam – Sheikh Faisal’s Takfeer of Anwar Awlaki” on www.archive.org. On the recording, Faisal explains that his lecture is about a preacher named “Anwar” from the Masjid al-Rabat in San Diego. He then proceeds to play sections of Awlaki’s lecture for his audience before refuting its points. The voice on the tape seems to be that of Anwar al-Awlaki.

ii

I am going to concentrate on “RAND Islam” here, because al-Awlaki’s lecture series titled “The Battle of Hearts and Minds” takes off from a RAND corporation publication, “Building moderate Muslim networks”, quoting its two opening sentences run together as one, “The struggle under way throughout much of the Muslim world is essentially a war of ideas, its outcome will determine the future direction of the Muslim world” — and references another, “Civil Democratic Islam” (RAND monographs MG574 and MR1716 respectively).

To give his readers a sense of what he’s talking about, he quotes a 2005 piece from US News & World Report:

Today Washington is fighting back after repeated missteps since the 911 attacks, the US government has embarked on a campaign of political warfare unmatched, since the height of the cold war. From military psychological operations teams and CIA covert operatives to openly funded media and think tanks, Washington is plowing tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to influence not only Muslim societies but Islam itself.

That’s the overview, that’s what concerns him in this lecture –that’s his evidence that the US is attacking Islam itself, and not just two
nations that happen to be majority Islamic.

A couple of notes: Al-Awlaki seems at times to confuse the two RAND reports he’s reading, since he references RAND author, Sheryl Benard (five times mentioned and five times mis-spelled “Bernard” by al-Awlaki’s transcriber), and her report, “Civil Democratic Islam”
immediately before quoting from another RAND report (unnamed at that point) which he quotes to show the kind of Muslim that Benard herself, and presumably the RAND corporation, Department of Defense and US Government likewise, wish to encourage: “RAND Islam” in short.

And Sheryl Benard really annoys al-Awlaki — he says she’s “a Jew married to an apostate, it can’t get any worse!” And he’s prepared to
mis-quote her, as when he suggests that one of her recommendations is “We should publish and distribute the works of Rand Muslims at subsidized costs” (p. 14) — when Benard had written (under the heading “Support the modernists first”) “Publish and distribute their works at subsidized cost”. But I don’t think there was an intent to deceive there, just a quiet in-joke for his readers — he had quoted the same bullet-point correctly earlier (p. 9) .

Here’s one specific thrust in al-Awlaki’s lecture that I think would merit detailed study on its own:

From that second RAND monograph, “Building Moderate Muslim Networks” (of which Sheryl Benard is second of four co-authors) al-Awlaki extracts what is effectively a catechism for the mode of Islam he opposes. Indeed, he manages to turn the RAND listing of “Characteristics of moderate Muslims” into both a “RAND Muslim” catechism and, via his responses to the questions she posts, into a counter–catechism for his own version of Islam (RAND MG574 pp. 66 – 70).

I believe this double catechism deserves serious consideration.

iii

I would be failing in my self-imposed duty to ferret signs of end times thinking in jihadist literature if I didn’t mention that there’s at
least one passage in “Battle of the Hearts and Minds” (p. 20) where al-Awlaki not only makes use of the Qur’anic citation I’ve noted before to the effect that while those who oppose him may scheme, Allah is “the best of schemers” (Qur’an 3.54) — he also makes a quiet reference to the (Khorasan and Mahdi-related) tradition of the march of the black flags on Jerusalem:

 So they are failing, and Miss Bernard and her cronies at Rand and Pentagon should know that their plan would fail because Allah is the best of planners! And that the fundamentalists and extremists, whom they despise, are not only going to win in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they will continue their march, until they drag your people, the Jews, out of the Holy Land and plant their black banners on the roof tops of Jerusalem.

iv

The most serious issue raised by this first, hasty skimming of al-Awlaki’s “Battle of the Hearts and Minds” is that of the impact of US (“kufr”) attempts to turn Islam away from the jihadist path (to use a shortcut phrase for now) on the sort of da’wa (preaching :: da’wa or “call” :: recruitment) that al-Awlaki is doing.

If he had read the rest of the paragraph he quoted from US News, he’d have found the words “U.S. officials say they are wary of being drawn into a theological battle” — and so they should be — imagine for a moment the response if the Saudis poured “tens of millions of dollars” into an attempt to remake Christianity or the US Constitution in a manner more to their liking… by means both overt and covert.

The analogy is not exact by any means — the US is attempting to bring acts of horrific violence to a close, the Saudis have no comparable need to change Christianity or the Constitution — but it may give one a sense of the emotion that a well-placed description of US attempts to support “RAND” — ie “moderate” — Islam might draw forth from impressionable young believer…

v

Given time, I could go on. In effect, this post is either a note to myself that further research would be profitable, or a plea for further
research on the part of others, perhaps at RAND — or CIA?

Charles Cameron has been guest blogging here in a series on radical Islamism and terrorism. A former researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, his most recent essay, an analysis of the powerpoint presentation of Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, appeared in the Small Wars Journal.

al-Awlaki: Constants on the Path of Jihad.

by Charles Cameron

i

Jarret Brachman, formerly Director of Research at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, spoke on CNN today about Anwar al-Awlaki, the Imam of a mosque in Falls Church, VA, where Major Nidal Hasan apparently prayed in 2001 (as, it seems, did several of the 9-11 hijackers at some point), with whom Hasan later had an extensive email correspondence.

The program referred in particular to a volume of al-Awlaki’s lectures titled Constants on the Path of Jihad, and Brachman commented:

 I refer to what Awlaki puts out as “Radical Islam for Dummies”. … From the Yemen, Awlaki is able to put out these “how-to” manuals, and the jihadis on the internet right now are referring to the Fort Hood shooter as al-Qaeda’s version of a predator drone — and you can say that Awlaki is perhaps the guy at the end of the remote control, at least ideologically.

I got hold of a copy of the Constants on the Path to Jihad and even given my strong sense that jihadism is in some sort of apocalyptic mode, was surprised to note that the “First Constant” in that document is “Jihad will continue until the Day of Judgment”.

That’s an eschatological statement on the face of it, and one that Awlaki links with both Jewish and Christian expectations of the Messiah in his first paragraph in that section:

The entire world is standing against one ritual of Islam and that is Jihad. Many nations, especially the powerful ones, are mobilizing on various fronts (i.e., religious, political, social, economical, media, popular mass etc.) to fight against Jihad fe Sabeelillah. In terms of religious strength, we see that the USA and Israel are working for the State of Israel for a religious purpose: the descent of the Messiah. In terms of political strength, diplomacy around the world is concerned with fighting “Islamic terrorism”. Every single government in the world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, is united at the political level to fight against Islam (specifically, Jihad). On the media front, they are doing an excellent job of deceiving the masses on what Islam really is. They are giving Islam a face in this Country which is a very deceptive one.

While linking it in his last paragraph with the return of ‘Isa / Jesus, together with an event that follows Jesus’ subsequent death, and strangely echoes the Christian dispensationalist notion of the pre-tribulation Rapture:

On a side note, Jihad will end when ‘Isa rules the world. Why’s that? Because ‘Isa will fight kufr and there will be no more disbelief whatsoever. And after ‘Isa’s death, there will be no more Jihad because Allah will take away the souls of the believers and leave all the kuffar left on earth to go through the Last Hour. In addition, there is no Jihad against Ya’juj and Ma’juj because there is no capability of fighting them; they will be destroyed by a miracle.

I am not suggesting the apocalypse is imminent here, just that it is prominently placed in al-Awlaki’s work.

ii

A further note: It appears that al-Awlaki’s lectures were posted in the form of a group of .mp3 files on the Islamic Awakening forums on 27th December 2005:

www.7cgen.com/index.php?showtopic=16411

[Zen  – Note: As this is an Islamist site, some readers might not want to casually click through on a work computer for cybersecurity reasons, so I have not embedded the link in the text.]

I do not have access to the .mp3s, but the .pdf version carries an epigraph that includes the phrase, “The shaheed is granted seven gifts from Allah: 1) He is forgiven at the first drop of his blood…” This is the same hadith which I noted in my commentary might in part explain Hasan’s willingness to attend lapdancing clubs, shortly before the shootings at Fort Hood.

Hasan might therefore been aware of this hadith at any point after 2005 via this web posting (someone would need to find, download and play the .mp3s to be sure) or from whenever the text version first became available — the point being that these lectures, in English, were in circulation by the end of 2005.

Charles Cameron has been guest blogging here on radical Islamism and his last post was a preliminary look at the powerpoint presentation of Major. Nidal Malik Hasan, the shooter in the Ft. Hood massacre.  Charles promised a follow-up here but his next “post” that he submitted was a scholarly, 10,000 word, magnum opus!  We quickly decided that SWJ was a better venue for a doc of such a magnitude and Dave Dilegge took care of the rest.

I’ve read the paper twice. It’s a tour de force.

The Hasan Slide Presentation

Download the full article: The Hasan Slide Presentation (PDF)

There is no place as private as the interior of a human skull: the mind remains inviolate.

Words can reveal some of what goes on inside us, actions can speak some of our intents and passions forcefully, at times explosively. And yet there is no place more secret — and what a hint, a phrase, a gesture, a speech or an explosion cannot reveal, what even the best forensic examination can only label a probability, is the complex interweaving of thoughts half thought, doubts entertained, emotions pushing on through, and clashing, building at times to a perfect storm perhaps, with all doubts and constraints cast aside and the emotions unleashed in a blind and defining moment.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan MD MPH, a psychiatrist in the U.S. Army, has now been charged with multiple specifications of premeditated murder in the mass shooting at Fort Hood, under Article 188 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Assuming that Major Hasan was in fact the shooter at Fort Hood and that, as alleged, he shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the event, the main question of fact and interpretation now would be whether Hasan was more an introvert under pressure whose “break” took the jihadist cry “Allahu Akbar” as its outlet, or a patient and long-standing lone wolf jihadist of the sort abu Musab al-Suri calls for (Jim Lacey, A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, p. 19), or a wannabe with failed or actual al Qaeda connections, or an al Qaeda or related “soldier” under orders.

This analysis attempts to provide some leads in that inquiry, by a careful reading of the only substantial documentation we have from Major Hasan himself, which may throw light on his trajectory.

Charles Cameron, an expert on forensic theology, is doing a series of guest posts here on Islamist extremism. His prior posts can be found here, here and here:

Breaking News on the Mystery of Maj. Hasan’s Powerpoint

by Charles Cameron 

I am in the middle of writing up an extended, contextualized commentary on the 50-slide PowerPoint presentation that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan made to his colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a senior-year psychiatric resident in June 2007, but wanted to make one data point available to other analysts right away.

In the final bullet point of slide 11 he writes in quotes, “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.”

This last phrase is a direct quotation from a statement made by Jeff Hammad, a Muslim in the Marines, reported by the SF Chronicle religion writer Don Lattin in an article in SFGate, the Chronicle website, titled “Muslims in the military walk fine line: War tensions put pressure on rising minority“. A quick search suggests that this is the original source for this particular phrase, which Hasan’s own use of quote marks suggests he was drawing from some source other than himself, although this saying of Hammad’s was also quoted from Lattin’s article in a 2006 Maxwell AFB Research Report by Timothy E. Stenmark, “Language, Cultural Awareness, and the Fourth Generation Warrior“.

The rest of Don Lattin’s article, and the contents of Stenmark’s paper, should therefore be subject to careful scrutiny.

Jeff Hammad’s opening comment in Lattin’s article: “The military has a tendency to demonize the enemy, and Muslims are on the receiving end of that hostility.”

ADDENDUM:

Zen here. Charles alerted me that readers can view the Hasan PPT presentation over at The Washington Post website. No embed option, sorry.