A propagandist-in-chief's war on intellectual imperialism and pursuit of a resistance episteme

Posts Tagged: Islamism

The myth of the Syrian opposition—the latest in US psycho-ops

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2 months ago    |   Tags: Syria US Syrian opposition FSA Islamism terrorism Al-Nusra Front al-Qaeda   |   Notes: 27

Both the designation of the US citizen, Ghassan Hitto as “interim Prime Minister” by the SNC,  and Aron Lund’s myth-shattering report “The Free Syrian Army Doesn’t Exist”, make it increasingly clear that the Syrian opposition (and by Syrian opposition I mean the FSA and the Syrian National Coalition) today is little more than a PR stunt engineered by the US  & allies and sustained by corporate media and a slick social media campaign.   As detailed by Lund’s study, the FSA is nothing but a branding operation which refers to the uprising in general, or more specifically, to the non-Islamist rebel groups. Elsewhere, Lund asserts that “virtually all of the major armed groups have by now declared that they want an Islamic state,” suggesting that most of the rebels belong to Salafi and Salafi jihadi groups. In other words, the notion of a secular armed opposition is a media creation.

Add to the myth of the FSA , Hitto’s appointment as PM of Nothing Really, and one begins to understand just how much more of a psycho-ops than a pysch- ops  campaign we are dealing with, which aims to remold reality in the crudest attempt at wish fulfillment and mass-delusion. Not even language has escaped the new psycho-ops, as concepts like legitimacy have now been re-conceptualized to mean whatever- the- US-recognizes, such as when it arbitrarily decides that the SNC is “the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people”. So over and above the concepts of “popular legitimacy” and “constitutional legitimacy”, we now have the oxymoronic notion of “external legitimacy” which can seemingly exist without either of the other two types.

Just to put things in perspective: The Syrian government is not up against some fantasy Syrian “opposition” but against foreign- backed Salafis, Jihadis and al-Qaeda inspired groups who are not merely Islamists but vehemently sectarian Islamists whose modus operandi includes terrorist bombings and executions.   And there is no actual Syrian executive other than President Bashar al-Assad. And no amount of psych-ops or psycho-ops will change either of these facts.

 

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It isn’t democracy which has caused chaos in the Arab world but imperialist democratization

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5 months ago    |   Tags: democracy Arab spring Syria Muslim Brotherhood Islamism resistance Israel imperialism procedural democracy   |   Notes: 17

The Israeli commentator Ben Caspit writes “In its Middle Eastern-Islamist version, democracy comes off as a recipe for riots, trouble, extremism and instability.” I know many secular Arabs are now repeating this mantra but if we think more deeply about such sweeping Orientalist generalizations about the Arab and Islamic world, we should lay the blame for this “recipe” for chaos on the imperialist-Arab axis rather than on our political culture. It isn’t that our region is incompatible with democracy. It is just incompatible with mega doses of imperialist interventions masquerading as democratization.

This chaos is the outcome of half baked revolutions that have been overtaken by the Empire and its Arab lackeys who have turned newly created “democratic” spaces into open arenas for naked [mainly sectarian] power struggles, leaving a security void that Al-Qaeda and other extremists flourish in, and a political void that only well-organized Islamists backed by petrodollars, can fill.  

This chaos is what happens when the hegemonic liberal brand of democracy is grafted onto our societies, albeit in procedural form only.

This chaos is what happens when find ourselves still under the yoke of economic and political imperialism, despite having unseated authoritarian leaders, as our economies remain beholden to the IMF’s dictates, while  the US/NATO and  their regional allies continue to manipulate our domestic politics by propping political parties which serve their geostrategic interests.

Support for Islamists and others with sectarian agendas is not the product of political choice and pluralism, but the product of military intervention that arms and empowers these groups, granting them influence over locales they control.  Sympathy for the more extreme of these religious and/or sectarian agendas is not the natural outcome of democratic elections or popular uprisings, but of the intellectual and political colonialism that has been mediated by Arab monarchies. And they have done so by means of overtly sectarian media campaigns and narratives which aim to de-prioritize the Empire and its Zionist outpost as the Arabs’ main enemy by replacing them with the “Shi’ite threat.”

The real recipe for riots, trouble, extremism and instability is not democracy but the lack thereof. This is the product of the de-democratization of the region that has accompanied Empire-sponsored and/or Empire-hijacked, uprisings, and the ensuing military struggles and political processes whose micro-management is subcontracted to its GCC allies.

Our region and our political culture have never been averse to democracy, for what could be a greater expression of popular sovereignty than our rejection of imperialism and our resistance to Israel? This has been the cornerstone of OUR understanding of democracy as popular sovereignty and self-determination. It is precisely the undermining of this democratic, freedom and justice-seeking culture—this resistance identity— that has created this chaos and instability. And that is why we call them counter-revolutionary revolutions because they constitute a revolt against the once widespread revolutionary movement against our imperialist oppressors.

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Will Iran be willing to reconcile itself to a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood?

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5 months ago    |   Tags: Iran Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Sectarian War sectarianism islamism  

A friend on Facebook just asked me how tolerant Iran was of the Syrian MB given  Iran’s 6 point plan solution. I answered this: The Iranians have to accept the Syrian Brotherhood just as they did in Egypt. Iran’s biggest threat today comes from the sectarian scourge. As I keep repeating, sectarianism is the new Israel for the Resistance axis. When we consider the amount of popular support the MB enjoys—as much we may dislike this fact—and the fact that the other option are the Salafis and Salafi Takfiris, Iran has to build bridges with the less intolerant and violent of the two. For all its “Islamic awakening”” rhetoric with regard to the Arab uprisings, Iran is of course much more secure with the type of secularism represented by Assad than the Sunni Islamism represented by these increasingly sectarian mainstream trends. But if Iran hopes to neutralize some of these sectarian tensions, it has to embrace the inevitable ascent of Islamism in the region, just as the Americans and NATO countries have. Islamic unity is not merely desirable on the doctrinal or ideological levels, it has now become a strategic necessity to thwart Empire’s divide-and-rule tactics. Israel was an easier enemy to defeat than sectarianism.

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7 months ago    |   Tags: Hamas Syria resistance Islamism Hizbullah   |   Notes: 1

Outgoing leader says Hamas has failed in efforts to 'combine resistance and governance' | The Times of Israel

“At a conference in the Qatari capital Doha on Islamism and democratic rule Monday, Mashaal said that Hamas had tried “to combine resistance [against Israel] and governance” but its experience has largely failed and “should not be taken as a model unless for learning a lesson,” Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported. He did not make clear whether he thought Hamas would have been better off choosing to focus solely on resistance, or solely on governance.” Full story here.

Actually, the moment Hamas left Syria for Qatar and Egypt, and chose to capitalize on Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendance in the region, they effectively chose governance over resistance. Despite the frequent political sacrifices Hizbullah has made to protect its resistance, it has proven that a resistance movement can do resistance and governance simultaneously even if the former takes precedence over the latter. Hamas didn’t fail in reconciling resistance with governance, it simply failed to maintain its resistance priority.

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An analysis of Nasrallah’s speech on the anti-Islamic movie

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8 months ago    |   Tags: Nasrallah Hizbullah movie moderate Arabs Islamism   |   Notes: 10

I wrote a couple of days ago that cultural and ideological imperialism must be confronted but only when situated within the wider framework of justice and the rejection of oppression, and when guided by a specific political position. Hizbullah’s response to the “Innocence of Muslims” movie and its planned protests for the coming week  are situated within this framework. In his  speech this evening, Nasrallah used the short movie clip as a tool for mobilizing the Arab masses against US imperialism and an opportunity to unite Muslims at a time when Sunni-Shi’ite tensions are at an all time high. Such ecumenical steps must also be viewed in the context of accusations by some [Wahhabi and Salafi] Sunni clerics who allege that the Shi’ites revere Imams Ali and Hussein far more than the Prophet Mohammad.  

Although Nasrallah echoed the Salafists’ concern with the sacrilegious aspect of the offense, he emphasized the political implications and motives behind the movie. While acknowledging the use of Christians like Terry Jones and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula as front men, Nasrallah held Israel responsible for the film, and saw in it a dangerous attempt to incite strife between Christians and Muslims:    “Those who stand behind such offenses are the Zionists, yet these are being attributed to Muslim or Christian apostates, such as the Christian pastor Terry Jones who had burned the Holy Quran, or the Coptic Priest who is said to be behind the anti-Islam film, those who made the movie knew that Muslims would be enraged by it, therefore attributing it to the Christians to cause conflict between Muslims and Christians. “Israel” wants to see Muslims attack Christians, kill them and burn their churches.” As these excerpts suggest, Nasrallah sought to direct Muslim anger towards Israel and to politicize the  the nature of the protestors’ grievances against the movie, from a purely religious or ideological outcry into a politically charged outrage against Zionism and those who support it.

Nasrallah viewed the movie as even more dangerous than all previous offenses against Islam including Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran burning incidents because it was posted on the internet  where it can be much more widely disseminated.  The other danger was that Israel could set fire or destroy the Aqsa Mosque as it did in 1969:  “if we remain silent, we would convey a wrong message to the Israelis that they can destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that we are a dormant Ummah.”

While not explicitly blaming the Obama administration for the movie, Nasrallah expressed Muslims’ demand for “the US government to withdraw the video from circulation and refrain from publishing the whole video and punish those who insulted the dignity of the Islamic Ummah,” and to hold those behind it to account.

Nasrallah focused a large part of his speech on exposing the double standards practiced by the US in granting the right to freedom of expression. While the US invokes the right to freedom of speech in the case of a movie which insults 1.4 billion Muslims, it penalizes those who take stands against Zionism or question the holocaust. Such double standards are especially evident in its criminalization of anti-Semitism. Nasrallah was referring here to the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004 which George Bush signed. The Congressional bill requires the State Department to monitor global anti-Semitism and rate countries annually on their treatment of Jews. Not only does the bill penalize violence against all symbols of Judaism, but anti-Jewish propaganda in media and school curricula is carefully monitored as well. In light of this criminalization of anti-Semitism  Nasrallah pondered “why doesn’t it issue a law that criminalizes offenses against other religions?  The US elections are approaching, and it is the responsibility of Muslim expatriates in the US to work for the issuance of such a law”.

Nasrallah further called on Islamic and Arab organizations to help prevent a reoccurrence of such an offense by exerting their efforts towards   “an international resolution that criminalizes attacks against monotheist religions and Prophets Moses, Abraham, Mohammad and Jesus.”

Another interesting thread of Nasrallah’s speech was his call on the Arab people to move beyond the protests against US embassies and pressure their regimes (read GCC countries and Egypt which either restricted or banned protests). Nasrallah is clearly using the protests as a means of embarrassing “moderate” Arab regimes. Particularly scathing was his  observation that  “many Arab leaders did not do anything regarding this movie. I swear had the movie been against the personality of one of the Arab kings, they would have been more enraged than they were after the spread of this movie.”

Although Nasrallah didn’t cite any examples,  one need only recall how the Saudi monarchy raised hell when the British-American drama-documentary “Death of a Princess” ( a movie about the execution of a Saudi princess) was released. The movie didn’t even mention Saudi Arabia or the princess by name, yet still resulted in the breakdown of relations between the UK and Saudi Arabia. The US managed to escape a similar disruption in relations by banning the movie in many states. Such is the nature of Arab and western hypocrisy that Nasrallah sought to highlight in his speech.

Without belittling Hizbullah’s genuine outrage at the vile movie, the movement is clearly also trying to position itself as the protector of Muslim rights and sanctities and in the process, injecting this Islamic campaign with a virulently anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist political discourse as opposed to a purely anti-Western civilizational one.  




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The US’ policy on Jihadism

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9 months ago    |   Tags: US foreign policy Al-Qaeda jihad Islamism Islam resistance salafi Wahabbism   |   Notes: 4

Confused about the US policy on Islamic jihadis? Maybe this will help clarify a little: the more jihadism overlaps with the secular concept of Moqawama (resistance) and pursues irredentist and liberationist goals (i.e. Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kashmir), which are essentially DEFENSIVE and driven by a rejection of oppression, with no ambitions to cleanse the nation of “infidels”, then jihad

 is terrorism. All other types (save the global jihad against the US and the West) are more than welcome, particularly the Salafi Takfiri and Wahhabi variants of jihad as well as the Qutbist variety, when they shift focus away from fighting the external enemy to the “enemy within”, i.e. fellow Muslims and minorities, as well as Arab/Muslim regimes on account of their perceived apostasy rather than their inherent injustice. While not entirely comfortable with jihadism, the US has learned to exploit it and hence favours offensive rather than defensive jihad, which strives to re-establish the “golden age” of Islam by forceful imposition because US policy works under the [sometimes erroneous] assumption that while Moqawama cannot be co-opted, Islamic rule can be.

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Neoliberal Islam: “Mursi to Consider Egypt IMF Loan”

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10 months ago    |   Tags: neoliberalism Egypt Muslim Brotherhood Islamism   |   Notes: 2

Mursi to consider Egypt IMF loan

Al-Akhbar

Published Monday, July 2, 2012

Egypt will approach the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other financial institutions to help get its economy back on track once new President Mohammed Mursi appoints a government, a presidential financial adviser told Reuters.

The decision represents a reversal of position for the new premier, who had previously been hesitant to back the loan.

Speaking in March, Mursi – then the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing – said: “The loan will be a burden on the shoulders of Egyptian people, who have the right to know how it will be spent and how it will be paid off.”

A popular uprising last year plunged the economy into crisis, chasing away tourists and foreign investors and prompting government employees to strike for higher wages.

Mursi was sworn in on Saturday as Egypt’s first Islamist, civilian and freely elected president and will begin working to form a new government in the coming days.

“We intend to approach the IMF again,” said Amr Abu-Zeid, development finance adviser to Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

“Give him one week or two weeks, so at least he has a cabinet…I believe these issues will not go further until they have a cabinet at least.”

The country’s army-backed interim government kept the economy under the cosh since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 through a series of short-term measures.

The ruling military financed a burgeoning budget deficit by borrowing short term from local banks at high interest rates, draining the country’s foreign reserves.

The military council that took power from Mubarak rejected an agreement that Egypt negotiated with the IMF in mid-2011, then resumed talks for a $3.2 billion loan early this year.

The economy contracted by 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2011 and stagnated in the following three quarters.

IMF loans are often criticized for coming with conditions that determine the country’s economic policies, undermining the power of sovereign governments.

Egyptians are also wary that the IMF could be a new method to constrain Egypt’s new found freedom at the behest of the IMF’s largest contributor, the United States.

Abu-Zeid dismissed the criticism, saying the country’s financial woes meant that they would accept support from all potential sources.

“We will negotiate with the IMF, with the World Bank, with the Islamic Development Bank, with anybody who wants to help. We are very open to this,” Abu-Zeid said.

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