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[ by Charles Cameron — importance of the ratio form (“this is to that as thus is to so”) as a bridge between domains and silos, creative leaps, the glass bead game, and finally, Chittick’s joke about camels, sex and translations from the Arabic ]
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I retweeted this tweet of Andrew Exum‘s to my friend Paul Pilkington because I know he’s working on a project to find out what “this is to that” is to some other “this is to that” — across a wide swathe of human culture.

Note particularly that Exum is using this formal device to illuminate, to give insight, in an area of importance to analysts, strategic thinkers and decision makers.

I’m also retweeting Exum to Paul because I believe Paul’s simple experiment, based as it is on his reading of Hermann Hesse‘s Glass Bead Game, has the capacity to build an architecture of thought (a) crossing all disciplines and (b) spanning the trivial with the profound.

I’m doing something similar with Cath Styles in our Sembl games project — but this time I want to concentrate on Paul’s approach, and since there are four moving parts in an a is to be as c is to d configuration, I’m calling this post Numbers by the numbers: four — number three will just have to wait a while.

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To get a sense of what Paul is up to, we can go to his Twitter Project page, which describes the fourth in a series of books he’s writing — and also follow him on Twitter, where he posts as Just Knecht.

Two of Paul’s recent tweets express his sense of the task pretty incisively:

The whole of language is the holding up of one unlike thing to compare, contrast and connect with another

Curating is a matter juxtaposition of work against work, artist against artist, place against place – A.Searle on Documenta 13, The Guardian

On his Twitter Project Page, he tells us:

Each tweet is an individual Glass Bead Game move, which is a comparison (metaphor, simile or analogy) across different areas, and may be either a statement or a question.

In question form, these are not unlike analogy questions from SAT tests with an additional dimension of general knowledge, cultural invention and intellectual playfulness. The basic challenge is to work out the relationship between two terms in one context, and apply it in another. Sometimes a tweet will extend an analogy further, which would be the beginning of forming a larger game from an individual move.

Some of the most interesting moves do not have right or wrong answers. Some have canonical or original answers, but they’re not necessarily right. In fact, very often I will post something I’ve picked up from elsewhere which I would love to see improved on, challenged, or at least better explained by others.

He then poses some of the sorts of questions that intrigue him:

Who is the J.H.Prynne of contemporary dance? Like Prynne in contemporary poetry they need to have been ‘out there’ right at the edge of theory and practice for some time, and also deeply steeped in tradition at the same time. Merce Cunningham? Suggestions welcome … And Heston Blumethal or Ferran Adrià might be the Prynne of cookery. But what about the Prynne of contemporary warfare?

What is the equivalent of sonata form in architecture? Goethe and Hegel both said ‘architecture is frozen music’ but neither really explained what they meant. If it is, then is there an architectural equivalent in Western architecture of the key structural form in Western art music? Suggestions welcome …

So, Zenpundit readers — who is the JH Prynne of contemporary warfare?

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Not so long ago, in Numbers by the numbers: one, I posted a series of self-referential tweets that I’d collected over the last month or two — here I’d like to present some of Paul’s recent tweets:

Let’s start with one that’s a foreign policy insight, arguably as significant to day as it was when Vance first said it:

16 Jul @justknecht
“The Strait of Hormuz is the jugular vein of the West” (Cyrus Vance)

If these tweets can be timeless, they can also be timely:

4 Jul @justknecht
The Higgs boson is the quantum of the Higgs field, just as the photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic field

As they accumulate over time, they can build a conceptual “mesh” that engages an entire field — in this case, recent classical music — while linking it to a variety of other areas:

16 Jul @justknecht
“Boulez’ Derive 2 sounds like birthday cakes ought to” – Philip Clark, Gramophone

22 Jun @justknecht
Wagner was a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn – Claude Debussy, quoted by Geoffrey Norris in Gramophone

30 May @justknecht
Fauré’s Theme and Variations (no. 9) is like an evening star falling slowly from the sky – Bryce Morrison cites Alfred Cortot in Gramophone

11 May @justknecht
Kraftwerk is the Warhol of pop music – The New Yorker

There’s profundity here:

9 Jun @justknecht
“Space is to place as eternity is to time.” – Joseph Joubert

This could be, as Paul says, “the beginning of forming a larger game from an individual move” — that quote in itself could plausibly be the keystone of an architecture bridging science with religion…

There are historical parallels to consider:

31 May @justknecht
Robert Burton : Oxford :: Jeremy Prynne :: Cambridge

Catty remarks by Nobel laureates:

21 May @justknecht
“Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats” (Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman)

Near-tautologies:

21 May @justknecht
Macon Telegraph: Recipes are to food as blueprints are to buildings.

And, ooh, exotic forms of slander!

18 May @justknecht
“[Your daughter] has lovers as numerous as the striking of tablas on Palm Sunday” – Arabic satire by Abu Nawas, 756 – 813 AD

Once again, it’s form that generates insight, not content. Get used to form, play around with it, and content will leap out at you from the page, from the screen.

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I’m no Arabist myself, but ah! that last quote reminds me irresistibly of the difficulties faced by translators from the Arabic, as recounted by William Chittick in The Self-disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn Al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology (SUNY Press, 1998, pp. xxxv-xxvi.)

An old joke among orientalists tells us that every Arabic word has four meanings: It means what it means, then it means the opposite of what it means, then it has something to do with sex, and finally it designates something to do with a camel …. The rational mind tends to push the meaning of a word away from experience to ‘what it means’ but the imaginal mind finds the self-disclosure of the Real in the sex and the camel … it is in the world’s concrete realities that God is found, not in its abstractions.

I’d been looking for an excuse to post that quote on Zenpundit — now I’ve found it!

[ by Charles Cameron — bin Laden on oath breaking, translation issues, failure of secular viewpoint to comprehend importance of Islam to jihadists, mild countering violent extremism issues, etc etc ]

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This para from bin Laden writing as “Your brother, Zamray” to “Shaykh Mahmud, may God protect him” (ie Abu Abd al-Rahman Atiyyat Allah) on 21 October 2010 looks to me like an astounding windfall:

Perhaps you monitored the trial of brother Faysal Shahzad. In it he was asked about the oath that he took when he got American citizenship. And he responded by saying that he lied. You should know that it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant. Perhaps the brother was not aware of this. Please ask the brothers in Taliban Pakistan to explain this point to their members. In one of the pictures, brother Faysal Shahzad was with commander Mahsud; please find out if Mahsud knows that getting the American citizenship requires talking an oath to not harm America. This is a very important matter because we do not want al-Mujahidn to be accused of breaking a covenant.

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This raises a whole number of issues for me. But first, let’s read another translation:

You have perhaps followed the media trial of brother Faisal Shahzad, may God release him, during which the brother was asked to explain his attack [against the United States] in view of having taken an oath [not to harm it] when he was awarded his American citizenship. He responded that he lied [when he took the oath]. It does not escape you [Shaykh `Atiyya] that [Shahzad’s lie] amounts to betrayal (ghadr) and does not fall under permissible lying to [evade] the enemy [during times of war]…please request from our Pakistani Taliban brothers to redress this matter…also draw their attention to the fact that brother Faisal Shahzad appeared in a photograph alongside Commander Mahsud. I would like to verify whether Mahsud knew that when a person acquires an American citizenship, this involves taking an oath, swearing not to harm America. If he is unaware of this matter, he should be informed of it. Unless this matter is addressed, its negative consequences are known to you. [We must therefore act swiftly] to remove the suspicion that jihadis violate their oath and engage in
ghadr.

That one is almost half as long again as the first, at 182 vs 122 words — and even with the bracketed words removed, runs to 156.

Both versions come from West Point’s CTC, the first from page 7 of SOCOM-2012-0000015 [link to single letter] in the folder of documents released [link opens .zip file], and the second, longer version from p. 36 of CTC’s accompanying report titled Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined? [link opens .pdf]

It seems to me that the second is far more informative than the first — essentially the first is a stepped down, pop version of the second, more easily reader-digested. All of which makes me wish I had ten additional years orthogonal to the time-stream in which to immerse myself in Arabic, but no dice.

Here’s the explanation, from page 10, footnote 3 of the CTC commentary:

The quality of the English translation provided to the CTC is not adequate throughout. When the translation was deemed inadequate, quotations cited in this report have either been amended or translated anew by Nelly Lahoud.

which leaves me wondering what a Nelly Lahoud translation of the entire batch would look like? — indeed, very much wishing I could read it — and who depends on the pop versions for their understanding of documents such as these? — myself all too often sadly included.

When in any case, as AP’s Matt Apuzzo tweeted (h/t Daveed G-R):

Drawing conclusions about Al Qaeda from these docs is like letting your ex-girlfriend go thru all your emails and choose 17 to release.

No complaints about the CTC from me, incidentally — their entire Harmony Program is nonpareil.

Okay, onward to the content (& contextual) issues.

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The first has to do with the significance of religion to bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and the jihadist current more generally.

Leah Farrall gets succinctly to two readings that can be taken from this paragraph by western analysts:

It is very clear [that bin Laden was] trying to control acts of violence that fall outside of what he views as morally acceptable, but also that are counterproductive to Al Qaeda’s strategic agenda

There’s a public relations issue here for bin Ladin, in other words — but there’s also a moral issue from the standpoint of Islamic theology. Theology — not just any old ideology borrowed from Marx or whoever, but theology<, the logos pertaining to theos, and thus in Islamic terms transmitted and revealed Word of God, “an Arabic Qur’an that you might understand” (Q 12.2).

Note that the CTC analysis, unlike Leah’s, is focused entirely on the secular, PR side of things and fails to address the religious. Immediately before quoting the paragraph in question (the second version above) in their commentary, the authors write:

Bin Ladin was following Shahzad’s trial in the news and was disappointed by his performance, which he thought distorted the image of jihadis.

Immediately following it, we find:

This is not the only instance that Bin Ladin worried about jihadis violating their oaths. The letter addressed to Abu Basir in which he is asked to focus on operations inside the United States (instead of Yemen) alerted him to focus on Yemenis “who hold either visas or U.S. citizenships to carry out operations inside America as long as they did not take an oath not to harm America.” Underlying Bin Ladin’s thinking is a distinction between a visa (ishara), acquired citizenship — which involves taking an oath (`ahd) — and citizenship by birth — which does not entail taking an oath. From an Islamic law perspective, it is not lawful to violate one’s oath (naqd al-`ahd or naqd al-mithaq).

Bin Ladin wanted to promote the image that jihadis are disciplined and conform to Islamic Law. Faisal Shahzad’s boasting that he lied during his oath not to harm the United States, therefore, is antithetical to the image of jihadis that Bin Ladin wanted the world to see.

Bin Laden wants “to promote the image that jihadis are disciplined and conform to Islamic Law” — but doesn’t he also perhaps want them to “conform to Islamic Law” for the sake of Allah, who commanded that law, and in whose path they are fighting?

What is the Caliphate, if it makes Islamic law the law of the Islamic world, or of the world entire, and obedience to that law is a matter purely of appearances?

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The second issue that this paragraph beings up for me is that of taqiyya or religiously sanctioned dissembling.

Shariah: The Threat to America (An Exercise in Competitive Analysis—Report of Team ‘B’ II) [link to .pdf], which I take to be the closest thing yet to an indepth, scholarly presentation of the Boykin-Gaffney-Woolsey-Yerushalmi view of Islam, makes a big deal of taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine that permits dissembling under certain circumstances, quoting the Qur’an (3:28):

Let not the believers take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers, and whoever does that, will never be helped by Allah in any way, unless you indeed fear a danger from them. And Allah warns you against Himself, and to Allah is the final return.

and commenting:

it is imperative that those whose duty it is to protect the United States. from shariah grasp the centrality of taqiyya in the arsenal of its adherents. This is critical because the consequences of taqiyya extend to real world issues related, for example, to Muslim overtures for interfaith dialogue, peace and mutual tolerance – all of which must be viewed in the light of Islamic doctrine on lying.

Bin Laden, in his letter to Mahmud / ‘Atiyya, is not writing to a an audience of non-Muslims to deceive them, he is writing to a comrade in faith and in arms. And he clearly does not believe that either taqiyya or the necessities of war (which often involves deceit) give jihadists the option to lie under oath — even for purposes of jihad, even within the enemy camp. Taqiyya, in bin Laden’s mind, appears to be a far more restricted doctrine than Gaffney and cohort take it for…

As Juan Cole puts it, taqiyya is “not a license to just lie about anything at all, or to commit perfidy. It is just a permission to avoid dying uselessly because of sectarian prejudice.” Corrie ten Boom lying to the Gestapo to protect the Jews hiding in her house might be a somewhat similar situation — as an analogy worth considering, though, not an equation.

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Then there’s the question of oaths. CTC not surprisingly is interested in exactly what oaths, pledges, promises or words of honor exactly are covered by this sort of restriction, noting:

Bin Ladin may also have had in mind the debate between Ayman al-Zawahiri and his former mentor, Dr. Fadl. The latter reneged on his jihadi views and among the accusations he made was that the 9/11 hijackers violated the terms of their visa, interpreting it as a form of aman (safe passage) from an Islamic law of war perspective. Thus, from Bin Ladin’s perspective, it is only when a Muslim takes an oath that he must be bound by it; a visa and citizenship by birth do not qualify as an oath.

It’s an intriguing question. Murad Batal Shishani @muradbatal tweeted yesterday:

#OBL against using ppl 2 attack US if they paid oath of allegiances 2 it. (what would some “experts” & “intel” say if u said that earlier?)

And what, I wonder, would Anwar al-Awlaki have said to Nidal Hasan if he’d read that particular paragraph?

Thinking about Nidal Hasan puts me in mind of at least two oaths that Hasan, an officer and a physician, presumably took — the US Army Oath of Commissioned Officers, which interestingly enough contains the phrasing:

I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion … So help me God

— and the Hippocratic Oath required of all physicians.

What would their status be, I wonder? And would al-Balawi, the Jordanian physician and triple agent, have taken the Hippocratic Oath?

Come to that, would the Pledge of Allegiance bind those who — “under God” and with their hands on their hearts — recite it to refrain from attacking the United Sates?

I don’t know, but these are questions whose answers have significance in terms of what can and cannot be considered permitted or even obligatory within Islam — which is surely why both bin Laden and Dr. Fadl take the time to address the issue of visas. Such things are important to them.

They are what I’d call “mild” or “light touch” CVE issues — meaning issues to be aware of, not challenges to be shouted from rooftops or forced down anyone’s throat.

And I too would appreciate some answers, pointers, appropriate corrections, clarifications and further insight…

[ by Charles Cameron — no extremism in religion, did Muhammad say that? ]
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1.

Illustrated above is the banner of the Khudi blog from Pakistan, offering a hadith in support of its vision, which it describes as follows:

As a movement Khudi stands against all forms of extremism, including those that use religion to justify a certain agenda. But simply saying ‘no’ to extremism isn’t good enough – it’s essential to challenge and undermine the arguments used by extremists and to refute the religious justifications they put forward.

However, challenging extremism in this way doesn’t mean that Khudi is eligible to comment on religious matters or issue fatwas about the length of the beard or the hijaab. At Khudi we believe religious beliefs are a personal matter that each individual may take guidance on from their respective religious authorities. Thus, our volunteers and friends belong to a variety of faiths and sects and span the religious spectrum, from conservative to liberal. The important thing is that we stand firmly by the principle of respecting each other’s difference.

2.

I’m intersted in Khudi, not least because it seems to be a brainchild of Maajid Nawaz, one of the ex-jihadists who founded the Qulliam Foundation in London:

Quilliam is the world’s first counter-extremism think tank set up to address the unique challenges of citizenship, identity and belonging in a globalised world. Quilliam stands for religious freedom, equality, human rights and democracy.

Khudi appears to be Quilliam’s Pakistan equivalent, more or less.

3.

Here’s the deal. The Khudi blog website header illustrated above cites Bukhari 9.582 as saying:

Beware of extremism in religion, for extremism destroyed those who went before you.

I would like to be able to point to that hadith with confidence in my own writings, and I’d be happy to give appropriate attribution to the Khudi blog. but first I need help in clearing up some questions I have about it.

Specifically, when I went to verify the hadith for scholarly accuracy before quoting it — not being a reader of Arabic, and thus being dependent on what resources in English I can muster — I found to my surprise that the
hadith-search function for MulsimOnline gave the following result for Bukhari 9.582:

Narrated Ibn `Abbas:

(regarding the Verse):– ‘Neither say your prayer aloud, nor say it in a low tone.’ (17.110) This Verse was revealed while Allah’s Apostle was hiding himself in Mecca, and when he raised his voice while reciting the Qur’an, the pagans would hear him and abuse the Qur’an and its Revealer and to the one who brought it. So Allah said:– ‘Neither say your prayer aloud, nor say it in a low tone.’ (17.110) That is, ‘Do not say your prayer so loudly that the pagans can hear you, nor say it in such a low tone that your companions do not hear you.’ But seek a middle course between those (extremes), i.e., let your companions hear, but do not relate the Qur’an loudly, so that they may learn it from you.

“Not too soft, not too loud” bears a kind of family resemblance to “nothing in excess” — but it’s not the same thing, and I rather doubt that the words in Bukhari rendered by one translator as “Neither say your prayer aloud, nor say it in a low tone” would be rendered by another as “Beware of extremism in religion” — and I don’t see anything there that would correspond with the phrase “for extremism destroyed those who went before you”.

4.

Okay, all this set me digging a little further, and I next found a hadith reported at the ProphetEducation site, which reads as follows:

On the authority of Ibn Abbas (May Allah be pleased with him):

“Very early in the morning on the day of ‘Aqabah, the messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) while riding on his camel said to me: ‘pick some pebbles for me’. I then picked seven hurling pebbles for him. While dusting them of his hands he said: thou shall not cast except with such pebbles. Then he said: O mankind! Beware of extremism in religion for those before you were destroyed as a result of extremism in religion”

Related by Ibn Majah, Hadith no.(3029).

5.

So.

Did the folks putting the Khudi site together just get the hadith citation wrong — or is there more here than meets my eye? I would very much appreciate any help in explaining what at present seems to me a somewhat confusing picture.

If the hadith is authentic and can be found as stated in Sahih Bukhari, the pre-eminent source for hadith, and can be referenced from the English translation of Bukhari on the USC site, that would itself be a help. If so, it would also be of interest to know what kind of hermeneutic AQ deploys to get around it.

And if it is always found in the original sources, Bukhari or otherwise, in association with the comments about small “hurling pebbles” — why, that raises yet other questions.

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TIA — in this case meaning thanks in advance, not transient ischemic attack!