The administration knew about Sept 11. It was a date on the calendar and they had been alerted that our various Embassies and their staff were vulnerable and likely to be attacked.
Was Obama too busy campaigning or did he fail to attend an intelligence briefing since he only does about 1/3 of the time?
Give him four more years and he might get it right.
This is not original but I heard someone state it is odd that Obama and Ms. Fluke claim Republicans are waging a war on women yet ignore the real war on women waged by Islamist terrorists. Perhaps it is because the Obama administration has banned the word terrorist. What political hypocrisy and the pigeons applaud.
The Arab Spring is turning into a cold winter and the pigeons ignore. (See 1 below.)
Before it is too late will anyone in the sycophantic media rise to the occasion and declare the "king has no clothes?
Or would they rather attack Romney for playing politics by speaking out?(See 1a below.)
Will Obama take ownership of Amb. Chris Stevens death or will he blame it on GW? (See 1b and 1c below.)
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I have had so many face lifts I bet he does not know he is kissing my ass!
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New Yorker magazine editor accuses Netanyahu of putting his nation at risk because of his association with Romney.
As Reagan once said to Carter - "There you go again!"
A rebuttal.
You decide. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Welcome to Salafi World! Salafi not Salami! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Iran Has Obama in a Headlock
By James Lewis
Iran's Armageddon cult now has Obama at its mercy. After appeasing the sadistic regime in Tehran for almost four years Obama only has to make it through the next two months without the Middle East blowing up, and he's set for life. This is the last electoral test of his career, and maybe also the first real election he's ever had to endure.
Obama's political bind puts the mullahs in charge for the next two months, rushing to an irreversible grab for nuclear weapons. Obama will not do anything to stop them, because that would mean taking a career risk. He has never taken a risk that might endanger his political career. Never.
As a result, the United States has all the capability for destroying Iranian nuclear weapons before they break out, but we won't use our might, because Obama cares about himself more than the safety of the world. Israel is a pawn in this game, but the real stakes are the Muslim Ascendancy -- world power for the rising nuclear caliphates of the Muslim Middle East: Egypt, Turkey and Iran.
Israel is the scapegoat for a rising great power struggle, in which the left has taken sides against civilization. If that seems harsh, read Paul Johnson's life of Winston Churchill or Niall Ferguson's fine book Civilization: The West and the Rest --- and you see it happening again, right in front of our eyes. The Russians, the Muslims and the Chinese read history. Liberals don't read history, because they prefer to live in delusion. It's a choice.
I once played a chess game with an Israeli military guy, who only used his pawns to beat me in a dozen moves. I'm a middling chess player, and he put me in a Zugzwang, a double bind, where I could not use my strong pieces, the queen, bishops and knights. It was clever and fast. He had counted all the pawn moves and I was caught unawares. The mullahs practice chess moves on each other, with real human lives at stake. They are not "spiritual leaders" -- they are medieval Popes, bloody-handed thug politicians who kill in the name of God.
Thirty years ago Khomeini suckered Jimmy Carter and Zbig Brzezinski in Iran until he was ready to humiliate them. The US Embassy occupation was Khomeini's way of humiliating the United States, to show we were a paper tiger. Then Reagan took over and the US diplomats were released in record time. The mullahs are sadistic, but they backed down in the face of overwhelming power. Obama won't use the only kind of power they will recognize, so that the Saudis, who hate the mullahs, are being driven into their arms.
Today the mullahs have Obama in a Zugzwang, a double bind. He can't act against them because they've got his number by now. He can't afford not to act, because millions of sleeping US voters might finally wake up to his dangerous failures in the Middle East, not to mention our faltering economy. Rather than driving events, Obama has been cornered.
In typical Obama fashion he is blaming the victim, the people of Israel. BHO has always been on the side of Third World dictatorships. Three years after his famous speech from Al Azhar University in Cairo, swinging the United States behind the Islamist Ascendancy, the United States Embassy in Cairo has been sacked by a mob. Syria is killing its own people with the active help of Iran and Russia. All over the Muslim world hateful Islamist throwbacks are taking over. Guess who is to blame? Yes.
In police states there are no "spontaneous" mob assaults on the embassy of a friendly power, with cops standing by and doing nothing. We pay a couple of billion per year to keep Egypt afloat, and now we have cynically pulled down the moderates in that country. This is Jimmy Carter's embassy crisis all over again, and it's no accident. Muslim Bro Morsi just went to Tehran to show common cause with the Islamic fascists over there. His fascism suits theirs, like Hitler and Mussolini, even if they are Shiites and he is a Sunni, enemies for the last thousand years.
In Egypt, Coptic Christian churches have been burned, and priests killed. Egyptian tanks -- US-made main battle tanks -- have been sent into the Sinai Desert near the Israeli border. Turkey is now run by a neo-Ottoman gang of thugs. Insanity is running amok again, and the New York Times can't see anything wrong. But that's the New York Times for you.
Obama has just publicly refused to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu while he is in our country attending the UN General Assembly. Too busy, says our hero. It's too hard to schedule.
The Democratic Convention surrendered to American Muslims with an elaborate prayer meeting, while dropping God and Jerusalem from their official platform. American Jews are fast losing power and influence, and radical Muslims are bringing Shari'a to America. You can see it happening.
Most American Jews are still brain-locked, because they are liberals. Half of American Jews will still vote for Obama rather than admit they were wrong -- disastrously wrong -- about liberalism ever since the radicals took over in 1968.
Obama's surrender signals are understood all over the world, except at home. The United States no longer stands for freedom and democracy. Those are capitalist bourgeois values, and Obama sneers at you if you hold them dear. "If you built a small business you didn't make that." You are the subject of the state, which means you're under Obama and his commissars. When Obamacare takes over, your very life will be at their mercy.
The United States now stands with the forces of destruction, the forces of women's oppression. American feminists couldn't care less, because they don't care about women, any more than Stalin cared about peasants and workers. The twenty-year genocidal Sudanese regime is sitting on the UN Human Rights Commission, along with Iran and other sadistic tyrannies. The nuclear horse is out of the barn in Asia and the Middle East, while America and Europe are being driven into bankruptcy by the same ruling elite that bashes its democratic opponents, the real enemy in their eyes. Obama leaks word that his favorite bedtime reading is "American declinism" -- a good thing, apparently, to our worst president.
If you point out those facts you're a racist, and the average American is more afraid of being accused of racism than murder. After only four years in power Obama has the ship of state rocking dangerously back and forth, with Arctic icebergs floating ever closer. The ship's captain is drunk on power and ego, and his inner circle hate the ship. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs just told the world he would not want to be "complicit" in Israel's effort to defend itself from a genocidal enemy. "Complicit." Yes, that's what he said, and in this gang you know the word is coming from the top.
The Democrats are run by leftist radicals who want to turn America upside down -- that's what the word "revolution" means. They have fielded organized Occupy mobs, with central training, slogans, and tactics and a media claque. They have shape-changed the ACORN thuggery under different guises, and our obedient media can't seem to figure it out. The Occupistas have trashed downtowns all over the country, just for practice, and in some places racist flash mobs have attacked whites and Asians. The left has raw demagogues at its disposal --- Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton. They make their living from racial blackmail.
Obama and his minions have turned this election into the first trash-talking campaign in living memory. Without a shred of evidence Mitt Romney has been called a felon, a tax-cheat, a corrupt capitalist, a hater of women. The left gets away with it, and that tells them they are in control. Nobody dares to oppose them since they control the Organs of Propaganda -- the media and the schools.
Israel is now scheduled to be the sacrificial lamb for Obama's declinist sabotage. But Japan also depends on American defense guarantees, and so do Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Korea. Europe is defenseless without us. China just grabbed millions of square kilometers of mineral-rich ocean, by turning one tiny island into a Chinese "city."
Obama said nothing.
Signals.
This is the Carter-Reagan election of 1980, where we barely escaped Jimmy Carter's "declinism" by the skin of our teeth. It's the Chamberlain-Churchill struggle that saved Britain from the Nazis, after dreadful suffering. It's the surrender of the Sudetenland to Hitler, and the Yalta surrender to Stalin.
Mind-locked ideologues like Obama always make things worse. They surrender to aggressive radicals, hoping the crocodile will swallow them last. But nuclear crocodiles don't have to play nice.
Obama wants to be historic, and he is. He will be remembered, not as the first black president of the United States, but as the worst black president of the United States. That is unfortunate, but history will judge by performance even if the voters are suckered.
If we luck out, we might be able to elect future presidents based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
1a)Obama in the Buff
By Jeffrey Folks
"The emperor has no clothes!" That was the cry of a small child in the Hans Christian Andersen tale as the emperor made his way past, entirely unclothed, while no one had the nerve to speak up.
That's pretty much the situation today. With the recent exception of Maureen Dowd's scathing critique of Obama's convention acceptance speech ("My fellow citizens, you were the change...We were the change?"), there hasn't been much media criticism of the president. Liberal commentators continue to gloss over the mistakes of the most partisan and inept administration in our history.
There is a great deal that is embarrassing about this administration, just as there was about the emperor in Andersen's tale, even when he had his clothes on. Because he had no real interest in governing -- he was all for show -- the emperor was easily swayed by charlatans. Because he was arrogant, he refused to accept criticism. And because he was by nature immoderate and extreme, he engaged in foolish and excessive spending. More than anything, he cared about his appearance, and all his efforts went into propping up his approval ratings.
No one around the emperor spoke up, even when he made the most outlandish mistakes. They were all afraid of this haughty ruler, afraid of being charged with disloyalty or of seeming old-fashioned. After all, the emperor's new clothes were the product of an entirely new technology that no one understood but everyone was supposed to believe in -- a bit like solar, wind, and biofuel today. It was not politically correct to suggest that there might actually be nothing there.
Like the emperor of yore, Obama continues to parade around in his magical clothes, isolated from reality by left-wing advisers and shielded from criticism by a weak and acquiescent media. Not many in the Washington press corps are going to point out that, figuratively speaking, the president isn't wearing any clothes. His promises to create 5 million green energy jobs have come to nothing, as has his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, but who in the national media is pointing that out? Certainly nobody in the mainstream media covering the Democratic Party convention last week in Charlotte.
Even so, everyone in America knows that the last four years have been a bust. Obama's health care reform bill is wildly unpopular. His attacks on American business are a disgrace. American families are earning $4,000 less than they were four years ago. And Obama, who plays the race card at every turn, is the most racially divisive figure in American politics since George Wallace. So why isn't anyone pointing it out?
The answer is right there in the Andersen tale. The two swindlers manage to convince the emperor's court that those who cannot see the invisible cloth they are weaving are either unfit for their office or stupid. Fearing that they actually are unfit or stupid, one adviser after another heaps praise on the swindlers' workmanship. Fearing that he is unfit or stupid, the emperor also falls for the ruse. No one wants to admit that he is unfit for office and that things are just not working.
No one in the liberal press wants to be the first to speak out, because he will automatically be accused of being unfit and stupid, and disloyal to boot. Everyone recalls the treatment of ABC news anchor Charles Gibson when, in a June 2008 televised debate between Obama and Hillary Clinton, he had the nerve to ask candidate Obama a probing question. His question pointed out that raising capital gains taxes historically results in lower, not higher, revenues for government. So why would Obama want to raise capital gains taxes? Answer: "Well, Charlie, what I said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for the purpose of fairness."
That lame and illogical answer should have sounded a warning that something was amiss. Right then and there, the media should have pointed out that Obama was so far to the left that he would demand higher taxes on the rich even if doing so imperiled the economy. They should have recognized that Obama's view of reality had not evolved beyond that of a teenaged radical encountering Karl Marx for the first time. And they, the media, should have had the integrity to point out how truly childish Obama's travesty of sixties activism actually is. Instead, they closed ranks against Charles Gibson. And Gibson ("Mr. Look Down Your Glasses") performed the required ablution with his shamefully condescending interview with Sarah Palin.
So as one disaster follows another -- the implosion of "green energy jobs," the Fast and Furious scandal, the "you didn't build that" speech -- it becomes clear that Obama really is just what he seemed: a radical leftist who is incapable of governing because of his unwillingness to compromise. Asked about job-creation in the private sector, the president responds that everything is "just fine." Well, four years of 8%-plus unemployment is not "just fine." Not unless you're living in the same fantasyland as Andersen's emperor.
Like that foolish monarch with his "new clothes," Obama continues to parade around like everything is just fine. Gas prices have doubled since Obama took office, but that's just fine. There is five trillion in new debt, but that's just fine. ObamaCare has been shoved down the throat of a public that doesn't want it, but that's just fine. Don't you just adore my new clothes?
On the day of the Great Procession, Andersen's emperor marches through the streets under a royal canopy, haughty and proud of his superior taste in attire, assured that he is fit to continue governing and wearing absolutely nothing. Once again, every observer fears that he may be unfit or stupid, so no one dares to say a word. Not until a small child sees the emperor in the buff and points it out.
"But he has nothing on at all!" cries the child. At first everyone balks, not wanting to admit the evidence of his own senses. "But he has nothing on at all!" cries the child again, unwilling to be silenced. So, finally, everyone looks with his own eyes, and soon everyone realizes that it is true. Despite all his talk of "smart" governance, this arrogant and foolish leader really understood nothing of how to govern. He has spent enormous sums of taxpayer money on an "investment" that came to nothing, and now, quite literally, he has nothing to show for it.
The day of reckoning is approaching when the American people will recognize that Obama, too, has spent lavishly and has nothing to show for it. Perhaps the voice of Maureen Dowd will begin to wake them up. Probably it will require others. But sooner or later, the public will realize that this president's efforts have come to naught. And after that, the emperor's reign will come to an ignominious end.
1b) Al Zawahri personally ordered Al Qaeda to murder US Ambassador Stevens
Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three staff members at the US consulate in Benghazi were deliberately murdered Tuesday night Sept 11 just after memorial ceremonies were held in America for the victims of the 9/11 outrage. Counter-terror sources report exclusively that far from being a spontaneous raid by angry Islamists, it was a professionally executed terrorist operation by a professional Al Qaeda assassination team, whose 20 members acted under the orders of their leader Ayman al Zawahri after special training.
Allegedly they were all Libyans, freed last year from prisons where they were serving sentences for terrorism passed during the late Muammar Qaddafi’s rule.
In a video tape released a few hours before the attack, Zawahri called on the faithful to take revenge on the United States for liquidating one of the organization’s top operatives, Libyan-born Abu Yahya al-Libi in June by a US drone in northwestern Pakistan.
Its release was the “go” signal for the hit team to attack the US diplomats in Benghazi.
To mask their mission, they stormed the consulate on the back of a violent protest by hundreds of Islamists against a film said to insult Prophet Muhammed produced by a Florida real estate agent called Sam Bacile, who has been described as of Israeli origin.
The operation is rated by terror experts as the most ambitious outrage al Qaeda has pulled off in the last decade. Apparently, the gunmen split into two groups of 10 each and struck in two stages:
1. They first fired rockets at the consulate building on the assumption that the ambassador’s bodyguards would grab him, race him out of the building and drive him to a safe place under the protection of the US secret service;
2. The second group was able to identify the getaway vehicle and the ambassador’s armed escort and lay in wait to ambush them. The gunmen then closed in and killed the ambassador and his bodyguards at point blank range.
The investigation launched by US counter-terror and clandestine services is focusing on finding out why no clue was picked up of the coming attack by any intelligence body and how al Qaeda’s preparations for the attack which took place inside Libya went unnoticed by any surveillance authority.
1c)The Day The Roof Fell In
Sometimes trouble blows up out of a clear blue sky. That’s what happened to the White House yesterday.
Coming out of the Democratic Convention, despite an uninspiring speech, President Obama had a united party and a comfortable bounce. While the economy was no great shakes, the President’s stewardship of foreign affairs helped give his administration an air of competence and professionalism. At a time when war-weary and terror-wary Americans, buffeted by storms at home and upheavals abroad, want nothing more than a quiet life, “no drama” Obama was ready to campaign as a safe and experienced steward of the national interest against a gaffe-prone challenger.
But that was before 9/11/12, the day the roof fell in. The Chicago teacher strike raised doubts about the President’s domestic leadership, the publication of Bob Woodward’s new book raised questions about his economic management and political skills, and 11 years to the day after the 9/11 attack, radical America-hating Islamists stormed the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, assassinated the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others even as U.S. and Israeli relations sank to another low point.
“No drama” Obama is in it now: his ex-chief of staff is locked in a high profile cage fight with one of the most important unions and donors in the Democratic stable in his home town; his humanitarian intervention in Libya has created yet another bloody Middle East imbroglio for the United States; his efforts to reconcile the U.S. and moderate Islamism—in part by distancing the U.S. from Israel—have angered Israel without reducing Islamist bitterness against the United States.
And in the middle of all this, a misguided U.S. embassy employee in Egypt issued a groveling “apology tweet” condemning a privately made film whose unflattering portrayal of the Prophet of Islam was stoking mob violence. Even as pictures of the U.S. flag being torn down at the Cairo embassy flashed across the world, Secretary Clinton was disavowing the ill-conceived tweet—and critics were jumping on the incident as a sign of confusion and appeasement in the administration’s approach to Middle East radicalism.
The Middle East mess calls President Obama’s policy of engagement with democratic forces in the region (much more similar to his predecessor’s approach than either President Obama or anybody else is willing to acknowledge) into question. The events in Libya and Egypt—combined with the bloody chaos in Syria—make Americans more eager to wash their hands of this tormented region. They don’t want to bomb, they don’t want to build; they want to get out. Getting out of Iraq was popular; getting in to Libya was not—and going in to Syria looks, politically, about as smart as sticking your hand into a wood chipper.
The politics of this are at one level quite tricky for Republicans. It is not as if there was some magically effective Middle Eastern policy that the Obama administration is obstinately refusing to employ. Many American voters are likely to support whichever candidate they think will be less likely to get the country more deeply embroiled in the Middle East. “Apology tours” are unpopular, but after eleven years of unsatisfactory results, so are wars. Denouncing President Obama for insufficient hawkishness will stir some people up, but it may quietly reinforce the determination of many others to keep executive power out of the hands of a party which looks to be just a little bit too quick on the draw.
The order and competence dimension of a presidential election should not be underestimated. Voters generally don’t want presidents who drive the U.S. government like it was a Ferrari. They want a comfortable, safe ride; their kids are in the back seat of the car. Yesterday’s events damage President Obama because they call into question the story the campaign wants to tell—that President Obama is a calm and laid-back, though ultimately decisive person who brings order to a dangerous world and can be trusted with the car keys. But if Republicans respond by looking wild eyed and excitable (remember John McCain’s response to the financial crisis in 2008?), bad times will actually rally people to stick with the devil they know.
Yesterday rocked President Obama’s world and gave Governor Romney’s campaign some new openings. But one day in a long campaign is just one day. We still don’t know how these events will reverberate across the Middle East or how the U.S. response will develop. In some ways, trouble overseas distracts attention from the White House’s current domestic problems—the Woodward book and the Chicago strike. And the President can thank his stars that the German Constitutional Court decided not to plunge the world economy into crisis this morning and allowed the German government to complete the ratification of the most recent European bailout agreements.
As the dust settles, there will be more to say — about the politics of Egypt, the chaos in Libya, the President’s leadership, the strike in Chicago, the nature of blasphemy, the pitfalls of public diplomacy in the age of social media, the Israeli-Iranian confrontation and the state of the campaign. And there will be time to remind readers again about the courage and patriotism of so many American diplomats around the world like Christopher Stevens, the ambassador we are mourning today. But yesterday’s events should remind us that all the models and all the “laws” of politics that political scientists labor to uncover are really just rules of thumb and probability calculations. Presidential elections are driven by events as well as by “forces”, and many of the most important events are inherently unpredictable until, quite suddenly, they occur.
November is still a very long way off, and the world remains a radically unpredictable place.
2)New Yorker: Netanyahu places Israel's future at risk
Prestigious publication's editor David Remnick levels harsh criticism at Israeli premier; says he is taking unreasonable risks
By Yitzhak Benhorin
Washington – "It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country," David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker magazine, states in his recent article.
Remnick leveled harsh criticism at the prime minister, accusing him of blatantly trying to intervene in the US presidential campaign.
Foolish decisions?
As prime minister, Remnick said, Netanyahu "Has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage."
Plagues by mistrust. Netanyahu and Obama (Photo: AFP)
2a)Weekly Commentary: Netanyahu Red Line Deadline Campaign Not A Ploy To Support Romney
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign to convince President Obama to
draw deadlines and red lines is anything but a ploy to advance the election
prospects of the Republican candidate.
The purpose of the campaign is not to show the American electorate that
President Obama rejects Israel’s desperate call.
It is a move genuinely geared to convince Mr. Obama to publicly draw such
red lines and deadlines – making it clear what the consequences will be
should these red lines be crossed and/or deadlines not met by Iran.
There is nothing stopping the president from heeding Netanyahu's call.
Such a move by President Obama would have no significant negative impact on
the voting of the supporters he already has.
If anything, if Mr. Obama embraces Netanyahu’s initiative he will earn the
support of some now in the “undecided” column.
So rather than a ploy to help Romney’s election prospects, Netanyahu’s
request provides President Obama the opportunity to weaken potential support
for his rival.
Again: Israel’s call for Mr. Obama to publicly draw such red lines and
deadlines – making it clear what the consequences will be should these red
lines be crossed and/or deadlines not met by Iran, is genuine.
Israel has no interest in President Obama rebuffing this very critical
initiative.
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign to convince President Obama to
draw deadlines and red lines is anything but a ploy to advance the election
prospects of the Republican candidate.
The purpose of the campaign is not to show the American electorate that
President Obama rejects Israel’s desperate call.
It is a move genuinely geared to convince Mr. Obama to publicly draw such
red lines and deadlines – making it clear what the consequences will be
should these red lines be crossed and/or deadlines not met by Iran.
There is nothing stopping the president from heeding Netanyahu's call.
Such a move by President Obama would have no significant negative impact on
the voting of the supporters he already has.
If anything, if Mr. Obama embraces Netanyahu’s initiative he will earn the
support of some now in the “undecided” column.
So rather than a ploy to help Romney’s election prospects, Netanyahu’s
request provides President Obama the opportunity to weaken potential support
for his rival.
Again: Israel’s call for Mr. Obama to publicly draw such red lines and
deadlines – making it clear what the consequences will be should these red
lines be crossed and/or deadlines not met by Iran, is genuine.
Israel has no interest in President Obama rebuffing this very critical
initiative.
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As the death of a U.S. ambassador in Libya demonstrates, the ultraconservative Salafi movement is pushing to the forefront in the politics of the Middle East. The West should be careful how it reacts.
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL
By now you've probably heard. Just a few hours after an angry mob of ultraconservative Muslimsstormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed during a protest in the city of Benghazi. Both riots were provoked by the news that an anti-Muslim group in the United States has released a film that insults the Prophet Mohammed. In Egypt, the protestors hauled down the U.S. flag and replaced it with the same black banner sometimes used by Al Qaeda. Shades of Iran, 1979. Scary stuff.
Both attacks are utterly outrageous. But perhaps the United States shouldn't have been caught completely off guard. The rioters in both cases come from the region's burgeoning Salafi movement, and the Salafis have been in the headlines a lot lately. In Libya, over the past few months, they've been challenging the recently elected government by demolishing ancient Sufi shrines, which they deem to be insufficiently Islamic. In Tunisia, they've been attacking businesses that sell alcohol and instigating nasty social media campaigns about the country's female competitors in the Olympics. In Syria's civil war, there are increasing reports that the opposition's wealthy Gulf financiers have been channeling cash to Salafi groups, whose strict interpretation of Islam is considered close to the puritanical Wahhabism of the Saudis and others. Lately Salafi groups have been gaining fresh prominence in parts of the Islamic world -- from Mali to Lebanon, fromKashmir to Russia's North Caucasus.
Some -- like journalist Robin Wright, who recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on the subject -- say that this means we should be really, really worried. Painting a picture of a new "Salafi crescent" ranging from the Persian Gulf to North Africa, she worries that this bodes ill for newly won freedoms after the revolutions of 2011. Calling the rise of the new Salafi groups "one of the most underappreciated and disturbing byproducts of the Arab revolts," Wright says that they're now "moving into the political space once occupied by jihadi militants, who are now less in vogue." "[S]ome Islamists are more hazardous to Western interests and values than others," she writes. "The Salafis are most averse to minority and women's rights."[[LATEST]]
Others, like Egyptian journalist Mustafa Salama, dismiss this as hysteria. "The reality of the movement is that it is fragmented, not uniform, within Salafis there are various ideologies and discourses," Salama writes. "Furthermore being a Salafi does not boil down to a set of specific political preferences." The only thing that unites them, he argues, is their interest in returning to the beliefs and practices of the original Islamic community founded by the Prophet Mohammed -- a desire that, in itself, is shared by quite a few mainstream Muslims. (The Arabic word salaf, meaning "predecessors" or "ancestors," refers to the original companions of the Prophet.) This doesn't mean that they're necessarily opposed to freedom and democracy. During the revolution in Egypt, he says, some Salafis were "protecting Churches in Sinai and elsewhere from vandalism and theft" at considerable risk to themselves, though the fact wasn't reported in the Western media.
If the first death of a U.S. ambassador in two decades is any indication, it's probably time that the world starts paying attention to this debate. I think there are several points worth mentioning.
First of all, however we define them, these new "populist puritans" (as Wright aptly refers to them) are enjoying an extraordinary boom. Though solid numbers are hard to come by, they're routinely described as the fastest-growing movement in modern-day Islam. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's Salafis barely figured in the political landscape during the Mubarak years -- then stormed onto the scene to capture a quarter of the vote in the country's first democratic election last year. Their share of the vote could well increase, given that the new Brotherhood-led government is likely to have problems making good on the ambitious promises it's made to Egyptian voters over the past year. Their rapid risein Tunisia is especially startling, given that country's relatively relaxed atmosphere toward religion.
Indeed, if the history of revolutions shows us anything, it's that transformative social upheavals of the kind we've seen in the Arab Spring don't necessarily favor the moderates. On the day that the Shah left Iran in 1979, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the radical forces around Ayatollah Khomeini, who followed his innovative theory of clerical rule, would end up running the country. Secular socialists, communists, liberal democrats, democratic nationalists, moderate Islamists, and even other rival Shiite clerics were all vying for power. But Khomeini ultimately triumphed because he offered forceful, uncorrupted leadership with a simple message -- "Islamic government" -- that cut through the mayhem with the authority of faith. Lenin understood the same political dynamic: Hence his ruthlessly straightforward slogan "Bread, Peace, Land," which was perfectly calculated to appeal to Russians wearied by anarchy, war, and social injustice.
The Salafi notion of returning to the purity of 7th-century Islam can have the same kind of draw for some Muslims exasperated by everyday corruption and abusive rule. Syria offers a good example. If you're going up against Bashar al-Assad's helicopter gunships armed with an antique rifle and a few rusty bullets, you'll probably prefer to go into battle with a simple slogan on your lips. "Power sharing for all ethnic groups in a liberal parliamentary democracy" might not cut it -- especially if you happen to be a Sunni who's seen your relatives cut down by Assad's murderous militias. This isn't to say that the opposition is now dominated by Salafis; far from it. But it's safe to assume that the longer the war goes on, the more pronounced the extremes will become.
At the same time, the Sunni Salafis are a major factor in the growing global polarization of the Islamic community between Shiites and Sunnis. (The French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy argues that the intra-Muslim rivalry between the two groups has now become even more important than the presumed confrontation between Islam and the West.) The fact that many Salafis in various parts of the world get their financing from similarly conservative elements in Saudi Arabia doesn't help. Perversely enough, Iranian propaganda is already trying to portray the West as backers of Salafi extremism in order to destabilize Tehran and its allies. We'll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in the future, I'm afraid.
In short, no one should count on the Salafis to go away any time soon. So how should the outside worlddeal with them -- especially if they're going to go around storming foreign embassies?
I think the answer is two-pronged. First, don't generalize. Not all Salafis should be treated as beyond the pale. Salafis who are willing to stand by the rules of democracy and acknowledge the rights of religious and cultural minorities should be encouraged to participate in the system. With time, voters in the new democracies of the region will discriminate between the demagogues and the people who can actually deliver a better society.
Second, don't allow radicals to dictate the rules for everyone else. This is why the outcome of the current political conflicts in Tunisia and Libya are extremely important for the region as a whole. In both countries, voters have now had the opportunity to declare their political preferences in free elections, and they have delivered pretty clear messages. Libyans voted overwhelmingly for secular politicians, while Tunisianschose a mix of moderate Islamists and secularists. But the Salafis in both places don't seem content to leave it at that, and are trying to foment instability by instigating a culture war.
What's encouraging is that we're beginning to see some pushback from ordinary Libyans and Tunisianswho don't want to submit to the logic of radicalization -- not to mention scholars at the Arab world's most prestigious university, also in Cairo. Don't be fooled by the rabble-rousers. The story in the Middle East is still more interesting than the stereotypes.
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