Islamic Radicalization

Lessons from Both Sides of the Atlantic on Tackling Islamic Radicalization

Azeem Ibrahim 

I recently had the honor of being invited to the Pentagon to meet the US Assistant Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy National Security Adviser from the White House.

Although I have been to Congress and met a sitting President, I had never, until now, visited the Pentagon. I have to confess that my first impressions of it were that it was just like it is portrayed in the movies! You walk past guys looking at big screens with maps of who-knows-where, huddled round multiple computer screens in rooms with ominous-sounding names like 'Central Operations Command.'

But whereas the Pentagon of the movies is always about massive military force, we were there to talk about the less glamorous threat of homegrown radicalization in the Muslim American community, and specifically the South Asian diaspora.

I had given a briefing to Congress on the topic, because of my experience here in Scotland. Because the reality is that the challenge of Islamic radicalization is one which Europe and the US both face in common. There are important differences, of which more later, but the dynamics of radicalization are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.

What is more, over the past few years, scholars have built up an impressive array of research into how radicalization works in practice on the streets. We now know a lot more than we used to about how kids come to be radicalized.

For example, a former CIA operations officer called Marc Sageman conducted the largest ever survey of radical Muslims to date, in order to understand why kids radicalize. In a groundbreaking study, he analyzed over 500 profiles of Islamic terrorists. He concluded that radicalization normally happens in four distinct stages.

It is sparked when the individual reacts with moral outrage to stories of Muslims suffering around the world. Some move on from that to the second stage, in which that spark is inflamed by a radical Manichaean interpretation which explains such suffering in the context of a wider war between Islam and the West. A few move on to the third stage, in which that resentment is fueled by negative personal experiences in western countries (e.g., discrimination, inequality, or just an inability to get on despite good qualifications). And of those, some make it into the fourth stage, in which the individual joins a terrorist network which becomes like a second family, albeit one closed to the outside world. This situation stokes the radical worldview and prepares the initiate for action and, in some cases, martyrdom. The crucial stage is reached when a young Muslim begins to believe that Islam justifies violence and closes his or her mind to other viewpoints.

Remember, this explanation - the four stages - are not a product of speculation. They are the patterns detected in the hundreds of cases of radicalization which Sageman studied.

Another trend which has been noticed by those who study Islamic radicalization is the correlation between radical extremism and lack of Islamic education. Researchers estimate that almost 90% of violent Islamists have had no authentic religious education at all. For example, none of those who carried out the 9/11 attack on the United States or the 7/7 attack on London had received such education. Even al-Qaeda's leadership lacks credibility. Osama Bin Laden never attended a religious seminary and has no formal religious training. Most of its leaders have backgrounds in medicine, engineering, or business.

The fact that the vast majority of radicals have received no such education makes it look very much like authentic Islamic education prevents violence. So the best way to prevent such violence is to teach young Muslims what real, authentic Islam actually says.

I am pleased to say that this is the approach that the US is beginning to take. They are planning the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, which, by encouraging both economic and social entrepreneurship, will both bypass the disenfranchisement which Sageman identified as being the third step on the path to radicalization, and use social entrepreneurship as a mechanism to build capacity within Muslim communities.

But on this topic we can learn from each other. The US still has much to learn from the UK. For example, any Islamic education programs in the US will need to understand how centrally important it is to find teachers who are knowledgeable in both secular and Islamic law and who can synthesize their knowledge of both. The teachers also need to be personally credible to potential young radicals.

The best people for this are often young teachers who are a few years older than their students, who have at one time been tempted towards radicalization themselves, and so who can empathize with the pull their charges may feel, whilst also being able to explain why it is wrong. Lastly, they need to understand the inadequacy of relying solely on Mosque-based education programs.

But there is also much that we in Europe can learn from the US.

Despite a lack of formal education programs, the demographics of Muslims in the US tend to be different from European Muslims. Compared to the Muslim minorities in Europe, those in the States tend to be more educated, and to work in the professions. That means they tend to be more integrated into US society, which prevents them reaching the third stage of the process Sageman identified.

US Muslims also tend to see themselves as much more American than European Muslims see themselves as European. I think this is because, more than Europe, many see the US as less of a nation and more of a set of ideals, like freedom, equality, and democracy. If you subscribe to them, you can have a stake in society. We, unfortunately, do not have an equivalent in Europe. Perhaps that is why many European Muslims still find themselves being treated as immigrants. In many, particularly continental European countries, the Islamic minority is treated essentially as a problem and an object of suspicion and disdain. We should perhaps not be so surprised that so many have serious identity crises.

I came away from the meeting inspired by the way that the US sought to solve its societal problems. The US, like the UK, is willing to listen and learn, make an effort to understand the problem of Islamic radicalization, and work out how to solve them. On this front, the work has begun.

Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and Chairman and CEO of Ibrahim Associates.

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/azeem-ibrahim/lessons-from-both-sides-o_b_682278.html

The Constitution and the Mosque

President Obama showed his understanding of the Constitution, and his respect for the American people, last week when he defended the right of a Muslim community group to build a mosque and Islamic center two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Obama’s words at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan were simple and forceful. “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” he said.

Republican ideologues, predictably, used his statement as one more excuse not only to attack the president but to spew more of their intolerant rhetoric.

Newt Gingrich, who has been beating this drum for weeks, accused the president of “pandering to radical Islam” and said the mosque would be a symbol of Muslim “triumphalism.” We were hesitant about repeating those comments here. But the country ignores such cynicism and ugliness at its own peril. Make no mistake, the rest of the world is listening.

Like President George W. Bush before him, President Obama warned against linking all followers of Islam to terrorists. “Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — it is a gross distortion of Islam,” he rightly said. It is our tolerance of others, he said, “that quintessentially American creed,” that stands in contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

We wish he hadn’t diluted the message the next day, telling reporters that he wasn’t commenting on “the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.”

He would have done better if he had explained the wisdom of going ahead with the project, which developers said is intended to bring Muslims and non-Muslims together. In addition to a place of worship, it would have a pool and performing arts center. They also have said they want the board to include members from other faiths — a promise they should take care to keep.

Too many Republican leaders are determined to whip up as much false controversy and anguish as they can, right through November. Some Democrats will cave. We were disturbed on Monday when a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said that Mr. Reid “thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”

Mr. Obama and all people of conscience need to push back hard. Defending all Americans’ right to worship — and their right to build places to worship — is fundamental to who we are.

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17tue2.html?_r=1&ref=global&pagewanted=print

China's Ticking Time Bomb

By SAM CHAMBERS

Sometimes statistics collide at just the right time to paint a picture. China’s growing energy needs are resulting in a surge of industrial incidents, and there is little chance that the country’s string of environmental catastrophes are likely to ebb anytime soon.

It’s been one month since the People’s Republic suffered its worst ever oil spill. The disaster on July 16 came at a sensitive time for Beijing, as news emerged that China has surpassed the United States in energy consumption.

The spill happened after two pipelines exploded at an oil storage depot at the port of Dalian run by the China National Petroleum Corp., parent of the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, PetroChina. As early as 2006, the accident site had been deemed an environmental risk by local authorities.

The incident triggered a spectacular blaze that burned for three days, sending an acrid stench across the northeastern metropolis, a regular winner in polls for China’s most livable city.

Just days after the explosion the International Energy Agency said China was now the world’s largest energy consumer, not the United States. The historic shift comes years ahead of forecasts, as China’s energy use has more than doubled in less than a decade.

The I.E.A. said China’s 2009 consumption of energy from oil and coal to wind and solar power was equal to 2.265 billion tons of oil. The United States used 2.169 billion tons last year. Per capita, though, the Americans still consume five times more energy.

Last year China became the world’s largest car market. In August 2009 alone Beijingers bought more new cars than the whole American population. And yet China has just one-twentieth as many cars per person as the United States, with Mckinsey, the management consulting firm, estimating the number of automobiles on China’s roads will more than triple by 2020.

Beijing quibbled over the I.E.A. numbers. Nevertheless, the statistical haze was brought into sharp clarity days later with figures from China’s own environmental protection ministry.

The number of environmental accidents rose 98 percent in the first six months of the year, according to the ministry, as demand for energy and minerals lead to poisoned rivers and oil spills in the country that is now the world’s largest polluter.

“Fast economic development is leading to increasing conflicts with the capacity of the environment to absorb” demands, the ministry said in a statement late last month. It added that air quality deteriorated for the first time in five years in the first six months of this year.

The last two decades have seen oil supplies become a top national security priority. In January 2009, China’s dependence on imported foreign oil reached 50 percent for the first time. This dependency will only grow — neither China, nor India for that matter, have significant untapped oil reserves to call upon; their economic growth will continue to vastly outstrip their ability to increase domestic oil production. Importing the bulk of their energy requirements is now a fact of life for the world’s two most populous nations.

Between 2004 and 2009 China accounted for fully 40 percent of the total increase in world oil consumption, a key factor in the rising oil prices seen during that period. Beijing knows that any long-term interruption to oil supplies would leave the country hostage to foreign interests, cause chaos in its manufacturing industry and throw millions out of work.

Thus, China has embarked on an effort to build up its shipyards and merchant fleet, and is increasing strategic investment in certain port areas, predominantly in the Indian Ocean. Beijing wants China to be the world’s largest shipbuilder by 2015, and to have 40 percent of all the country’s oil imports carried on Chinese vessels by that date.

A decade ago there was just one shipyard in China capable of building the largest tankers. Now, the country has a dozen yards easily capable of building mammoth ships.

In the year 2000, China’s fleet carried only 6.7 percent of the country’s crude oil imports; that share surged to 20 percent in 2005. The 40 percent goal is likely to be reached in 2011, four years ahead of schedule, as almost fortnightly deliveries of new tankers currently are made to Chinese owners. Yet quality remains an issue — shoddy workmanship makes many Chinese-built ships environmental time bombs.

China also has dramatically sped up the construction of large oil terminals above 200,000 dead weight tons. In the year 2000, there were still only three large oil terminals for the entire country. By the end of 2009, China had built 13 oil terminals of 200,000 dead weight tons and above, with a capacity to handle 282 million tons of oil.

In the space of decade China has built up an incredible array of infrastructure to handle its seaborne oil trade. No one has ever assembled a tanker fleet or string of terminals of such scale in a similar time frame. But such speed does bring problems — as the Dalian disaster shows.

Sam Chambers is co-author of “Oil On Water,” a study of how China is shifting global oil trading patterns. 

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17iht-edchambers.html?ref=global&pagewanted=print

The Muslims in the Middle

By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

New Delhi

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.

We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.

Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”

The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.

While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.

This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.

Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”

THEN, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.

“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”

Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.

The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.

Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.

“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”

There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”

Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.

William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17dalrymple.html?ref=global&pagewanted=print

Ground Zero Mosque

Religious tolerance, then and now

By Dana Milbank

Washington Post Staff Writer 
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

"To bigotry no sanction."

n      George Washington

"Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate."

-- Sarah Palin

Two hundred twenty years ago today, the Jews of Newport, R.I., wrote a proclamation for President George Washington on his visit to their synagogue the next day.

"Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens," the Jews wrote to their famous visitor, we now "behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People . . . generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine."

Washington's reply the next day, a simple letter titled "To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport," set a standard for religious tolerance that guided the nation through two centuries. Here is that message in its entirety -- along with some alternative thoughts on the topic occasioned by the proposed mosque near Ground Zero:

Gentlemen,

While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.

"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over. . . . Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington."

-- Newt Gingrich

* * *

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and happy people.

"9/11 mosque=act of fitna [Arabic for scandal], 'equivalent to bldg Serbian Orthodox church@Srebrenica killing fields where Muslims were slaughtered.' "

-- Sarah Palin

* * *

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

"President Obama's support of building the mosque at Ground Zero is a slap in the face to the American people. . . . In fact, the majority of the country is strongly opposed to building a mosque at the site of the most tragic terrorist attack on America. I will continue to demmand [sic] President Obama to reverse his support on this."

-- Sen. David Vitter (R-La).

* * *

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

"The Ground Zero Mosque is not about freedom of religion, as President Obama claims. It's about the murderous ideology behind the attacks on our country and the fanatics our troops are fighting every day in the Middle East."

-- Carl Paladino, Republican candidate for governor of New York

* * *

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.

"President Obama has this all wrong and I strongly oppose his support for building a mosque near Ground Zero, especially since Islamic terrorists have bragged and celebrated destroying the Twin Towers and killing nearly 3,000 Americans."

-- Jeff Greene, Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida

* * *

May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

G. Washington

"Come on, we're going to allow that at Ground Zero?"

-- Rudy Giuliani

Source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/16/AR2010081604681.html

Soft Drinks Support Terrorism

May 2nd, 2010 - MadHacktress

Okay, so I’m paraphrasing a bit, but two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, writing in the Washington Post, are claiming that America’s youth are, by and large, “too fat to fight“.


I honestly can’t think of a better way to get Coke and Pepsi, Kraft Foods and Kellogg to start looking more closely at high-fructose corn syrup and other ingredients that they’re pushing in their wares than be linking them to terrorism – the number one, go-to scare-tactic-that-works.  I bet that you could even sell that line in Iowa (hell, they’d rather grow corn for Ethanol anyhow).


The fact that these retired Generals can, straight-faced (as straight-faced as one can be in print) claim that obesity is a threat to national security cracks me up.  I mean, obviously obesity is bad.  But isn’t the fact that this generation is going to be the first generation in history whose life span is shorter than their parents reason enough to want to act?  Do they really want the raison d’etre of child nutrition legislation to be so that  Lieutenant Lardass (Corporal Corndog, Major Manboobs, I’ve got a million of ‘em) doesn’t get winded while chasing Osama and his cohorts?  I know that Big Mac Sauce can be a bitch to get out of cockpit controls, but, really?


If this thing gets legs I can honestly see some Rupert-Murdoch-owned paper running a political cartoon depicting Ronald McDonald and Barack Obama as Godzilla-sized monsters attacking the Twin Towers – Obama, of course, would be wearing a turban and a name-tag reading “B. Hussein Obama”.


All in all the fight against obesity is a worthy one and it needs all the allies it can get.  So, perhaps, amongst the Coalition of the Willing Fighting for Better Health (read: fewer fatties) among young people  we can welcome the Generals and their ilk, no matter their motive for joining the fight.


Remember: eat a Twinkie and the terrorists win!

Sources :  http://www.politicopinion.net/

Ground Zero Mosque

Democrat Breaks Ranks Over Mosque Row

In New York plans to build a Muslim cultural centre and Mosque near the ground zero site of the September 11th attacks have come under further political scrutiny.

A senior democrat has for the first time broken ranks with President Obama challenging the proposals.

“Our constitution gives us freedom of religion. I think that it is very obvious that the mosque should be built some place else,” said Senator Harry Reid

President Obama backed the constitutional right to build the centre when speaking at a dinner five days ago.

“As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” he said.

The President has not just sparked a political debate but an emotional one. Nearly 60 per cent of Americans oppose the plan while supporters believe it is a chance to begin a healing process.

Copyright © 2010 euronews

World Bank in Multi-Million Euro Loan to Pakistan

Across Pakistan people are being treated in makeshift medical centres as the country is still reeling from the devastating floods, still waiting for vital life saving aid. Now the World Bank has responded announcing it will make available immediately a loan of almost 700 million euros. 

Those funds for the relief operation come 48 hours after the UN Secretary General’s appeal and will be raised as the bank re-directs monies and changes its funding priorities. International agencies are continuing to stress the risk of disease.

Swimming in the waters which have already claimed the lives of an estimated 1600 people is one of the latest threats. The UN fear up to three and a half million children are at risk from disease infected waters.

“People are swimming in floodwater, water that’s picked up all the dirt and germs that were in the ground and in places where sanitation standards were lacking, people are bathing in contaminated water. Obviously that carries a health risk for the people,” explained Thomas Batardy from Medecins Sans Frontiers

The World Bank’s loan is a boost. Questions still remain over the long term stability of Pakistan one of the poorest countries in Asia with a government under fire for its response to the tragedy.

Copyright © 2010 euronews

Source : http://www.euronews.net/2010/08/17/world-bank-in-multi-million-euro-loan-to-pakistan/

Israeli – Saudi Interests

By Jerusalem Post Editorial

15-08-10

Jerusalem is not thrilled with a huge arms deal materializing between the US and Saudi Arabia. As part of the $60 billion 10-year package, the Saudis will reportedly be receiving 70 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 60 Longbow Apache attack helicopters, 84 Boeing F-15s and upgrades for older combat planes, as well as flight simulators, spare parts and long-term support for the planes. In addition, Kuwait wants the latest Patriot missile defense system, and Oman might be buying 18 F-16 fighter jets.
From an Israeli perspective, the deals are highly problematic. Washington’s intention is to build up the Gulf states’ confidence in the face of an increasingly belligerent Iran. But these fighter planes can just as soon be used against the Jewish state as against the Islamic Republic. The present Saudi regime seems stable. But what would happen in the event of a coup d’etat or if a rogue pilot went wild? 
Still, Israel is not expected to oppose the deal, for a variety of reasons. The F-15s being sold to the Saudis will not be equipped with standoff systems – long-range missiles to be used against land and sea targets. Also, the US and Israel may clinch a deal for the sale of about 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, which would help us maintain an uncontested military edge. In addition, US lawmakers can always hold up parts of the deal or seek assurances that Israel’s core military interests will be protected when all the details of the sale are presented to Congress next month. And if the US does not sell to the Gulf states, EU countries or even Russia, which are much less receptive to Israeli interests, might fill the vacuum.
It is also worth noting that military cooperation between the US and Israel is at its peak. This month, for instance, the two countries conducted their largest-ever joint infantry exercise in Israel. Since his appointment in 2007, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen has visited Israel four times. US military aid is expected to reach a new high of $3b. in 2011, and the Obama administration has already committed itself to the $205 million Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system to protect cities neighboring Hamas-controlled Gaza.
But there is one further reason Israel will most likely not oppose the deal. Riyadh and Jerusalem, while hardly allies, share a common enemy in Teheran. The Islamic Republic is threatening to tip the delicate balance of power in the region by attaining nuclear capability. Differences between the Gulf states and Israel, however acute, pale in comparison.

TO FULLY appreciate the change in relations between Israel and the Saudis, it is instructive to revisit the 1981 AWAC surveillance planes deal. It was only through the sheer force of his personality that the newly elected US president Ronald Reagan managed to push the deal through Congress. The Saudis were a central supporter of the PLO and other terror organizations. US assurances that the deal would not hurt Israel’s military edge were rejected by prime minister Menachem Begin, who had just presided over the air strike against Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. The Jewish lobby, which fought the AWACs deal, was accused of putting Israeli interests before the US Cold War imperative of blocking Soviet expansion in Afghanistan, Yemen and Ethiopia and protecting American oil interests in the Gulf after the fall of the shah in Iran.
In contrast, today, the US, Israel and the Saudis are on the same page as far as Iran is concerned. In fact, the Gulf states seem the most gung-ho about stopping Iran. The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, estimated publicly a few weeks ago (before he backtracked under pressure) that bombing Iran was preferable to an Iranian bomb. A few months ago, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said sanctions were not enough.
Nonetheless, while the mooted arms deal might reflect geopolitical changes in the area, it is no substitute for the determined action necessary to thwart an intransigent, saber-rattling Iran.
The question remains whether, if the current sanctions effort does not quickly bear fruit, America will take more concrete moves to stop Iran or ultimately remain passive. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a challenge to this region – as the US evidently recognizes, and the latest arms packages underline – and to the free world. It should not have to fall to Israel to act alone on behalf of Saudi-US-Israeli interests.

Source : http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=184868

Ground Zero Mosque - America - Israel

Our World: Standing on a landmine

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque should signal to Israel that the president is so wed to his ideology that he will push it regardless of political conditions.

             

US President Barack Obama’s warm endorsement of the plan to build a mosque by the ruins of the World Trade Center tells Israel – and its enemies – everything we need to know about the president of the United States of America.

Speaking during a Ramadan fast breaking meal at the White House to an audience of people affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood- related groups in the US, Obama couched his support for the mosque at Ground Zero in constitutional terms.

In his words, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.”

Of course, none of those who have voiced opposition to the mosque project at Ground Zero have claimed that the Islamic group behind the mosque project is acting unlawfully in seeking to construct a mosque. The nearly 70 percent of Americans who oppose building a mosque at Ground Zero oppose the mosque because they believe it is wrong to build a mosque at the site where less than a decade ago Muslims acting in the name of Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people in an act of war against the US and an act of terror against the American people.

Obama has been pilloried by his opponents for his position. And his fellow Democrats, facing the likelihood of massive defeats in the Congressional elections in three months, are reportedly deeply frustrated by his statements. Indeed, the uproar Obama’s pro-mosque remarks has unleashed has been so harsh it raises the question of why he made it.

THERE ARE two possible explanations for Obama’s move. Either he was motivated by politics or he was motivated by ideology. The view that Obama was motivated by politics is easily dismissed. With more than two-thirds of Americans telling pollsters they oppose the Ground Zero mosque project, it makes no political sense for a politician to strike out a position in favor of the mosque. Indeed, major Democrats have either refused to state a position on the issue or, like New York Governor David Paterson, they have recommended that the mosque builders construct their mosque elsewhere.

Perhaps Obama thought he could he could get away with making his statement. However, with his polling numbers consistently eroding, it is hard to imagine Obama’s advisers would have told him that was a realistic view.

This leaves ideology. But what ideology motivates Obama to embrace such an unpopular initiative at such an explosive political juncture? Obama and his supporters would like us to believe this is a civil rights issue. In his defense of the Ground Zero mosque, Obama claimed his position was based on the American values such as, “The laws that we apply without regard to race, or religion, or wealth, or status. Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us.”

But if Obama is motivated by a belief in civil rights that is so strong it propels him to take on deeply unpopular causes in an election season, then one could reasonably expect that his support for civil rights would be absolute. That is, one could expect him to use the same yardstick for all groups, in all places and at all times.

But for Obama, there are some groups who must be denied the same civil rights he upholds as absolute in his defense of the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero. As Obama has made clear since his first days in office, he believes that Jews should be denied the right to their property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply because they are Jews.

OBAMA IS so firm in his belief that Jews should be denied civil rights in Israel’s capital and in the heartland of Jewish history that he has provoked multiple crises in his relations with Israel to advance this bigoted view. Almost from his first day in office Obama has struck out a radical position in which he has insisted that Jews must be prohibited from building anything – synagogues, homes, nurseries, schools – in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria on land they own. Jews – Israeli and non-Israeli – should be barred from exercising their property rights even if their construction plans have already been approved “in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

At the same time, Obama has insisted that Israel take no action to enforce its “local laws and ordinances” against illegal structures built by Arabs in Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria.

Next month the deeply discriminatory and legally dubious 10-month moratorium on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria that Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into instituting is set to end. So now Obama is putting the full weight of the White House on Israel to again coerce Netanyahu into prolonging the discriminatory ban that denies the civil rights and property rights of Jews simply because they are Jewish.

Obama claims to be embracing the nullification of Jewish civil right in the interests of peace. In his stated view, to forge peace in the Middle East it is necessary for the Palestinians to achieve statehood. But it hard to see how the establishment of a Palestinian state squares with Obama’s purported dedication to civil rights.

In a briefing with the Egyptian media last week Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told reporters that no Jews will be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state. He also said that while he would agree to allow NATO forces to deploy in the future Palestinian state, he would not permit any Jewish soldiers to serve in the NATO units stationed on the territory of such a state. As he put it, “I will not agree that there will be Jews among NATO forces and I will not allow even one Israeli to live amongst us on the Palestinian soil.”

The notion that an inherently anti-Semitic Palestinian state, predicated on Jew hatred that strong, could possibly live at peace with Israel is simply ridiculous. But tellingly, in all the American pressure that has been placed on Abbas to begin direct negotiations with Israel, at no time has the administration been reported to have insisted that Abbas abandon his anti-Semitism. Obama has made no statement addressing the fact that the Palestinians demand that Jews be barred from living in the future Palestinian state. He has certainly not objected to this position although it squares with none of the American values of tolerance and property rights he upheld so strongly in his remarks on the Ground Zero mosque.

SO THE ideology Obama holds so strongly that it provokes him to take positions antithetical to the political interests of his party during an election season is not civil rights. Rather it has to do with his commitment to advancing the interests of a specific group or groups over the interests of other specific groups. In the case of the Ground Zero mosque he prefers the rights of Muslims over the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans. In the case of the Palestinians, he prefers their anti-Semitic nationalism over the civil rights of Jews.

Obama’s behavior tells Israel’s leaders something very important about how they should think about their relations with the Obama administration. It tells them that Obama is so wed to his ideology that he will push it regardless of political conditions. This means that for Israel, dealing with Obama is like standing on a landmine. Just as a landmine can explode at any minute, Obama can attack Israel at any moment. He is so ideologically bound to the Palestinian cause against Israel that he is liable to provoke a crisis when it is least politically advantageous – from his perspective – for him to do so.

This lesson is particularly urgent on the eve of yet another round of direct negotiations with the Palestinians and as the freeze on Jewish property rights is about to expire. Obama’s ideological fanaticism means that nothing Israel does in the upcoming talks will help us.

As Obama’s media surrogates like Tony Karon at Time magazine have made clear in recent weeks, the anti-Israel narrative has already coalesced. Everything that happens regarding those negotiations is Israel’s fault. It is Israel’s fault that they haven’t begun. It will be Israel’s fault when they falter. It will be Israel’s fault when they fail. And if they succeed, Israel will still be blameworthy.

Facing this US President and his radical ideology, Netanyahu and his deputies must understand that they cannot appease him. They cannot convince him of Israel’s good intentions.

The US leader who has rejected the expressed views of 68 percent of his fellow citizens in favor of the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero is not going to be moved by reason. The American president who defends the Ground Zero mosque builders even though their leader refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization and has claimed that the US had the Sept. 11 attacks coming to it; and the American president who upholds the Palestinian cause even though it is virulently, and often genocidally anti-Semitic is not going to be appeased by Israeli building freezes and other confidence building gestures.

What this means is that Netanyahu and his deputies must concentrate on defending Israel and advancing its national interests. It is in Israel’s national interests to guarantee the civil rights and property rights of Jews. It is in Israel’s national interests to forthrightly set out and defend Israel’s legal rights in Judea and Samaria and its sovereignty in united Jerusalem. It is in Israel’s national interest to enforce its laws without prejudice towards all its citizens and expect all its citizens to respect its laws.

We are dealing with a self-consciously radical President who intends to remake the US relationship with the Muslim world. We will find no understanding from him.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Source : http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=184987