The ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians that nobody is talking about

By

 5Pillars

Palestinian-American journalist and author Ramzy Baroud says Palestine’s Christian population is dwindling at an alarming rate to move elsewhere. And the reason for this is Israel. 

Christian leaders from Palestine and South Africa sounded the alarm at a conference in Johannesburg on October 15. Their gathering was titled: “The Holy Land: A Palestinian Christian Perspective.”

One major issue that highlighted itself at the meetings is the rapidly declining number of Palestinian Christians in Palestine.

There are varied estimates on how many Palestinian Christians are still living in Palestine today, compared with the period before 1948 when the state of Israel was established atop Palestinian towns and villages.

Regardless of the source of the various studies, there is near consensus that the number of Christian inhabitants of Palestine has dropped by nearly ten-fold in the last 70 years.

A population census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2017 concluded that there are 47,000 Palestinian Christians living in Palestine – with reference to the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

98 percent of Palestine’s Christians live in the West Bank – concentrated mostly in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem – while the remainder, a tiny Christian community of merely 1,100 people, lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Bethlehem

The demographic crisis that had afflicted the Christian community decades ago is now brewing.

For example, 70 years ago, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, was 86 percent Christian. The demographics of the city, however, have fundamentally shifted, especially after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in June 1967, and the construction of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall, starting in 2002. Parts of the wall were meant to cut off Bethlehem from Jerusalem and to isolate the former from the rest of the West Bank.

“The Wall encircles Bethlehem by continuing south of East Jerusalem in both the east and west,” the Open Bethlehem organisation said, describing the devastating impact of the wall on the Palestinian city. “With the land isolated by the Wall, annexed for settlements, and closed under various pretexts, only 13% of the Bethlehem district is available for Palestinian use.”

Bethlehem

Increasingly beleaguered, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem have been driven out from their historic city in large numbers. According to the city’s mayor, Vera Baboun, as of 2016, the Christian population of Bethlehem has dropped to 12 percent, merely 11,000 people.

The most optimistic estimates place the overall number of Palestinian Christians in the whole of Occupied Palestine at less than two percent.

The correlation between the shrinking Christian population in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation and apartheid should be unmistakable, as it is obvious to Palestine’s Christian and Muslim population alike.

A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.

The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves.”

Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.

Gaza

Gaza is another case in point. Only 2 percent of Palestine’s Christians live in the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip. When Israel occupied Gaza along with the rest of historic Palestine in 1967, an estimated 2,300 Christians lived in the Strip. However, merely 1,100 Christians still live in Gaza today. Years of occupation, horrific wars and an unforgiving siege can do that to a community, whose historic roots date back to two millennia.

Like Gaza’s Muslims, these Christians are cut off from the rest of the world, including the holy sites in the West Bank. Every year, Gaza’s Christians apply for permits from the Israeli military to join Easter services in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Last April, only 200 Christians were granted permits, but on the condition that they must be 55 years of age or older and that they are not allowed to visit Jerusalem.

The Israeli rights group, Gisha, described the Israeli army decision as “a further violation of Palestinians’ fundamental rights to freedom of movement, religious freedom and family life”, and, rightly, accused Israel of attempting to “deepen the separation” between Gaza and the West Bank.

In fact, Israel aims at doing more than that. Separating Palestinian Christians from one another, and from their holy sites (as is the case for Muslims, as well), the Israeli government hopes to weaken the socio-cultural and spiritual connections that give Palestinians their collective identity.

Israel’s strategy is predicated on the idea that a combination of factors – immense economic hardships, permanent siege and apartheid, the severing of communal and spiritual bonds – will eventually drive all Christians out of their Palestinian homeland.

Victimisation

Israel is keen to present the conflict in Palestine as a religious one so that it could, in turn, brand itself as a beleaguered Jewish state in the midst of a massive Muslim population in the Middle East. The continued existence of Palestinian Christians does not factor nicely into this Israeli agenda.

Sadly, however, Israel has succeeded in misrepresenting the struggle in Palestine – from that of political and human rights struggle against settler colonialism – into a religious one. Equally disturbing, Israel’s most ardent supporters in the United States and elsewhere are religious Christians.

It must be understood that Palestinian Christians are neither aliens nor bystanders in Palestine. They have been victimised equally as their Muslim brethren, and have also played a major role in defining the modern Palestinian identity, through their resistance, spirituality, deep connection to the land, artistic contributions and burgeoning scholarship.

Israel must not be allowed to ostracise the world’s most ancient Christian community from their ancestral land so that it may score a few points in its deeply disturbing drive for racial supremacy.

Equally important, our understanding of the legendary Palestinian soumoud (steadfastness) and of solidarity cannot be complete without fully appreciating the centrality of Palestinian Christians to the modern Palestinian narrative and identity.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter.

Israeli election spells no change for Palestinians

Journalist Robert Inlakesh says it makes no difference who becomes the next Israeli Prime Minister, Palestinians will lose either way.

As Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a major blow to the benefit of opposition leader Benny Gantz in the Israeli snap elections, Israel is now being perceived to have voted for change.

But what sort of change will be coming to Israel, given a Benny Gantz led coalition, and will Netanyahu actually be ousted or will Israel head into a third round of elections due to the current deadlock?

Many will already know a little about the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with his corruption scandals, war-waging and racist rhetoric towards Palestinians and Africans, being just a few of the many dynamics of his infamous career.

For the Palestinian people, Netanyahu is a man who describes peoples of neigbouring countries and territories as “wild beasts”, says that Israel has to build walls to protect itself, and is evidently not a good man to see in a position of power.

But unfortunately for peace and stability in the region, the record of Benny Gantz is not very different.

Who is Benny Gantz?

Benny Gantz could be Israel’s next Prime Minister and is an ex-Chief of Staff for the IDF, having served between 2011 and 2015. He is most infamous for his roles in the killing of 167 Palestinians in 2012 and the Gaza massacre of 2014, resulting in the murder of 2,202 Palestinians.

The Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) Party front man is not in favour of a two-state solution, he does not support any Palestinian state. Rather, he believes in maintaining Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem; he believes in making Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza even tighter; he believes in complete Israeli domination of Jerusalem; and he believes that Israel must maintain its illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan region, as well as annexed Lebanese land in the North.

So Benny Gantz’s foreign policy is essentially the same as Netanyahu’s and if asked to form a coalition government, he will likely carry on exactly where the last Prime Minister left off.

In short, Gantz carries on in a similar fashion to Netanyahu, minus the pictures, diagrams and pointer pen, proclaiming that Israel must never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and that Israel must crush Hezbollah and Hamas.

Benny Gantz

Speaking at AIPAC earlier this year, his speech could have been an exact double of Netanyhau’s when it came to his rhetoric on Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

Gantz is not only a former Chief of Staff for Israel’s military – his career highlight being the 51 days of destruction in Gaza during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014 – but he used his past during his campaign in order to garner the votes necessary to challenge Netanyahu.

Gantz even released an ad campaign video in which he brags about killing thousands of Palestinians sending parts of Gaza “back to the stone age”. Interestingly, the very day of the Israeli election there was a Dutch court hearing for a war crimes case against the Israeli ex-general for his participation in the murder of 7 Palestinians killed in a specific airstrike.

Netanyahu’s downfall

Benjamin Netanyahu ran his election campaign on racism against Arabs and specifically Palestinians, inside of Israel and outside of it. He also ran his campaign on whether Israel was wishing to be a more religious or secular society.

A third notable point in his campaign was his “security” component, in which he stirred up tensions with Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Lebanon in order to make himself appear strong.

However, despite his attempt to play to the Israeli public’s racist sentiments and his attempts to divide and scare the Israeli population into submission, he failed.

His racism against Israeli Arabs produced an unprecedented 60% voter turnout from that community, making the “Arab Joint List” the third largest party inside of the Knesset. This is because roughly 20% of Israel’s citizens are Palestinian Arabs. The turnout is understood to be a reaction to Netanyahu in order to combat him.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

His promise of security to Israelis was also not good enough, in part because of his embarrassing losses and inability to deal with armed factions inside of Gaza.

But perhaps the biggest factor in Netanyahu’s downfall was his own former Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who still has the power to maintain or break the current PM. Netanyahu would have formed a coalition government earlier this year, however, the former Defence Minister prevented him from doing so by rejecting an offer to join the coalition.

At the time of the last election, the move by Lieberman was taken due to a disagreement over mandatory conscription of the Ultra-Orthodox into the military. The bad blood however, began with a flare up between the Israeli military and armed factions in Gaza in November of 2018, when Gazan resistance factions dealt an embarrassing blow to Israel, resulting in the resignation of Lieberman after Netanyahu refused to start an all-out war.

What next for Palestinians?

If Benjamin Netanyahu wins, he may follow through with his campaign promise to annex the Jordan Valley – which officially constitutes 30% of the West Bank. However, due to the situation on the ground it’s closer to 40% – meaning that close to 100,000 Palestinians could be ethnically cleansed from their villages and towns.

Netanyahu may also want revenge on Gaza for the resistance daring to fight back, possibly initiating a new massacre of the Gazan population.

If Benny Gantz wins, he has vowed to be tougher on Gaza, which may mean more executions of unarmed demonstrators at Gaza’s Great Return March, as well as a possible tightening of the blockade and a new war. \

Gantz is also a lot less experienced as a politician and could make reckless moves in the region.

One positive to a Gantz Prime Minister win, could be a decline in Israel’s hold over Washington, as nobody has the connections of Netanyahu in the U.S. However if the ex-general is asked to form a coalition by the Israeli President, Netanyahu may try to initiate a war in order to get a third election.

Ultimately, it does not matter whether Gantz or Netanyahu wins the position of Prime Minister, the Palestinians lose either way.

Mohamed Morsi and Aung San Suu Kyi – Two democrats treated differently by the West

By 5Pillars

Left to right: Aung San Suu Kyi and Mohamed Morsi

Mohammed Morsi and Aung San Suu Kyi both believed in democracy, yet the West treated them very differently when they were oppressed, writes Jahangir Mohammed.

The death of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in court after six years of imprisonment and torture, has demonstrated the West’s double standards over democracy.  The West’s championing of democracy as a higher political value does not extend to the Muslim majority world – it is simply a stick to beat Muslims with.

The UK Government has included lack of support for democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual tolerance within its definition of “extremism” (mainly used against Muslims with dissenting views), and a fundamental British value. Yet its own behaviour (like others in the West) in other parts of the world, shows a total disregard for the very values it expects Muslim communities to embrace, and subsequently judges them by.

In six years, the West has made little to no effort to support the first fairly elected president of Egypt or its democracy. Nor has it tried to oppose the intolerance and abuse of the rule of law and human rights in Egypt. Rather, the US other Western nations embraced military dictatorship as a partner in the region.

The case of Mohamed Morsi

Mohammed Morsi and his democratically elected Freedom and Justice Party were ousted in a military coup led by General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi in July 2013. There was no moral outcry in the West. In fact, no sooner had Sisi come to power, some Western countries visited him to secure arms and trade deals.

When Morsi was charged with treason and other trumped up charges, he did not become an international symbol of a “freedom-loving democrat” trying to move his country away from military dictatorship. Nor did Western human rights groups widely champion him as a political prisoner worthy of their highest accolades and mass campaigns. Even the socialists and the left were unusually silent.

Abdel Fatah al-Sisi

When Sisi imprisoned thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and members, and sentenced many to death, there was still no outcry and no political prisoner campaigns.

Western rights groups, politicians and the media appeared to care very little about the masses of pollical prisoners, torture, lack of due process and rule of law.

Yet, when even one European is imprisoned in a country like Iran, they are deserving of the whole machinery of politics and human rights being unleashed.

You would think that the West’s army of feminists would care for the plight of the thousands of women arrested or affected by mass detention in Egypt. Here too they have been largely silent. We have of course seen this before, when 50,000 Muslim women were raped or in camps in Bosnia at the hands of the Serbs, I don’t recall a single Western feminist group taking up the issue.

In the six years that followed the detention of President Morsi, there was little concern about any of these human right abuses and torture. Instead, the West was more concerned about whether the Muslim Brotherhood and former President Morsi cared about or held the same social and political values as the West (both the political Left and Right). The message appeared to be unless you are a Muslim that is like us, you are not worthy of our support.

When sadly he died, there were no tributes from Western leaders or expressions of grief or even anger. Morsi was dead and his belief in democracy mattered not one jot. It was his belief in democracy and faith in the democratic West, that contributed towards his tragic death.

The case of Aung San Suu Kyi

Compare the treatment of Mohammed Morsi to another former political prisoner fighting for democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the uprisings in Myanmar against military rule in 1988.  She then became the President of the National League for Democracy (NLD).  In the 1990 elections, the NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament. The military refused to hand over power and she remained in house detention for 15 of the following 21 years until 2010.

Suu Kyi became the world’s most prominent political prisoner thanks to international Western support. In 1990, she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, in 1991 the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2012 she received the United States Congressional Gold Medal. She became an iconic figurehead for democracy and human rights organisations, and was championed by politicians and movements on both the left and the right of the western political spectrum.

Rohingya refugees in a camp in Cox Bazaar, Bangladesh.

Her “bravery and struggle for non-violent commitment to democracy” were saluted across the Western world. She was seen in the West as “one of us” with little concern to consider her own Buddhist values and political views. Only since her party came to power in 2015 have her Buddhist and political views been criticised, especially in light of her attitude towards the minority Rohingya Muslim community (whose persecution she has denied).

Western imperialism and supremacy

The West’s approach and policies towards Muslims, and the Muslim majority world (irrespective of Left or Right) is still rooted in its pre-colonial relationship and interaction with Islam. This was, and largely still is, infected by ignorance, stereotypes, anti-Islamic propaganda with an attitude of Rudyard Kipling’s supremacist civilising mission.

Muslim social, moral and political beliefs and values have to be just like the West’s to be deemed worthy of their support. Hinduism and Buddhism on the other hand have tended to be viewed in the West in a romantic way as some exotic religion Westerners can study and gain some spiritual benefits from. Islam and Muslims have always been seen as a rival to Western religious, and now secular values, and its global power.

At the time of colonialism, European countries entered Muslim lands saying they were there for trade which would make us prosperous too. Sadly, most Muslim leaders at the time believed this. After the 9/11 attacks, the West told us they were invading our countries to install democracy in the Muslim world. Many believed them. On both occasions, the only thing Muslims got was death, destruction and impoverishment. It is time for Muslims to learn that if we are going to bring an end to tyranny and oppression in the Muslim world, we are going to have to do it all by ourselves within our own traditions and struggle’s.

In a real sense, the Egyptian people’s revolution died at the hands of democracy and the belief that the West would support those Muslims who embraced it.

References to the “West” and “Western” are at the political level, and not directed at ordinary people in the West.

Yemen peace talks are destined to fail because of Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

By

 Yousef Mawry

5Pillars

More than 10,000 people have been killed since the war started in 2015.

Any meaningful peace talks in Yemen are destined to fail due to the wider agenda of regional and international powers, namely Saudi Arabia and the United States, writes journalist Yousef Mawry.

The ideal of journalistic objectivity is a mere joke when trying to accurately report about the war in Yemen; an insult to human intelligence and the lives of millions of Yemenis who are suffering in the conflict.

Objective journalism has become the total opposite of what it was intended to be. Most “journalists” who are actively covering the war in Yemen, are merely repeating the opinions of the global elite without taking any moral position to check powers, provide context and perspective and pursue the hard truth.

Not adhering to these core morals and principles when reporting the war in Yemen will result in journalists becoming a mouthpiece for the hegemonic powers and a conduit for deception. This is why the world today remains in a state of dilemma trying to decipher who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is bad when it comes to the players on the ground in Yemen.

The issue is when reporters are desperately trying to maintain the “objective position” they eventually stop telling the truth in fear of being accused of taking sides and being labeled pro-Houthi or pro-Saudi.

One of the main reasons why the war in Yemen is entering into year five is because of the recycling of misinformation spewed by reporters on the ground and abroad who care more about gaining social media followers then telling the Truth, with a capital T. If your argument is “well no-one really knows what the truth is” then you haven’t done your job as a reporter.

To try and shed some light on the overall conflict, here is my assessment of the balance of power in Yemen and why negotiations will ultimately fail. This is based on my research, analysis, opinion and years of experience reporting in Yemen.

Why peace negotiations in Yemen will fail

Any UN-backed peace deal between Houthis and the government of President Abdrebo Mansour Hadi can and will be used against the Houthi movement to justify military actions against them now or in the future.

The conflict in Yemen is not between the Houthis and the “Yemeni government.” Realistically, there is no Yemeni government. The internationally recognized government led by embattled President Abdrebo Mansour Hadi is nothing more than a Saudi political entity that was put in power to maintain and preserve the interests of Saudi Arabia and the western powers just like the previous government of former ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The Houthi takeover of the Yemeni capital in 2014 was a direct overthrow of the Saudi backed government. Saudi Arabia reacted the same way it would have if a major Saudi city was taken over by a foreign country. There is no new information here. It is common knowledge that President Abdrebo Mansour Hadi is in the pocket of the Saudi royal family. The war started because the Houthi movement removed a Saudi puppet from power not because they overthrew a legitimate Yemeni government. If that was the case, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have got involved in the first place since it had no horse in the race. There are those who believe that the Houthi takeover of Sana’a is an Iranian takeover which forced Saudi Arabia to get involved militarily, but for now, let’s just stick to what we do know and not dwell in parroting the allegations by Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi-led coalition’s agenda is to eventually get the Houthis to withdraw their forces from Hodeidah, Taiz, and Sana’a so that the coalition forces can then launch a military offensive by land, air and sea to try and pin the Houthis to the north of the country.

The international community recognizes the government of President Mansour Hadi as the legit authority in Yemen. They view the Houthis as an armed rebel movement that took power by force. They also claim the Houthis are an Iranian backed group that takes its orders from Tehran. The United Nations does, however, recognize the Houthis as a political group who have the right to participate in the formation of a new Yemeni government but they should not have their own military that could tip the scale of power.

The fact is, the United Nations and the Western-backed Arab states know very well that true power lies with the group who has the military power. The UN and Saudi Arabia are hell-bent on getting that power transformed to a “friendly government” – one that will maintain Saudi and US interests in Yemen.

The war is heading into its fifth year because the Houthis don’t seem to play by their rules. The Houthis are defying world powers by sticking to their guns and declaring from day one they will not lay their arms down until Saudi Arabia and its allies accept the new reality in Yemen. And that is the reality of an independent Yemeni nation that calls its own shots, make its own deals and trades and doesn’t answer to the US or Saudi Arabia.

You know, kind of like the right of every free nation. But reversing the decades of colonial servitude comes with a hefty price, and the Yemenis seem to be paying for it with their lives as the war continues.

Whoever controls Hodeidah province will have the upper hand in the war

If the Houthis withdraw their forces from Hodeida, it will then be used as another base for coalition forces to advance towards the Yemeni capital and try eliminating the Houthis.

The seaport of Hodediah is the economic lifeline for Yemen. Whoever manages the port controls 90 percent of the country’s food and medical supplies. Its closure could lead to starvation and famine. The “World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis” in Yemen is a direct result of the imposed blockade on the port by the Royal Family. They did this with the aim of destabilising the economy and starving the people so the Houthis can be blamed for this and eventually lose creditably among the Yemeni population in the north. If the Houthis withdraw their forces from Hodeidah, as stipulated in the new peace agreement, the siege will be lifted. But there is a card being played here. This is an insidious plan by the coalition forces and their allies to 1. Get the Houthis out of Hodeidah, and 2: Alleviate the humanitarian crisis so that when they launch an all-out military operation against the Houthis there will still be a route for humanitarian aid to enter the country. If this happens the coalition forces will have the green light to continue military offensive without having to worry about the international community condemning them for starving millions of Yemenis.

The Houthis will not relinquish control of the Yemeni capital

The Houthis are prepared for war if negotiations fail. With that in mind, should they compromise military power and control over strategic areas if everything seems to be threading towards a fallout in negotiations?  Withdrawing their military forces from Sana’a would be like putting a gun to their head.

The Houthis know that Saudi Arabia and its allies will not hesitate for an instant to remove them from power by force if the opportunity grants itself. No matter what happens during negotiations, the Houthis will not hand over their weapons or withdraw from the Yemeni capital.  In point blank, unless Saudi Arabia is willing to accept losing control of Yemen the war will continue one way or the other.

Iran will support any regime change that is not controlled by Saudi Arabia

Iran supported the revolution against Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011 and supported the Houthi revolution against President Abdrebo-Mansour Hadi that began in 2014. But this support was political and through media coverage. There is no evidence to prove that Iran has in any way directly supported the Houthis militarily. One frequently hears that Iran is sending weapons and money to the Houthis, but that is physically impossible considering the Saudi-imposed blockade from land, air, and sea. Before the blockade, the coalition government was in power and it would have foiled or seized any armed shipments from Iran to the Houthis.

The only thing Iran could benefit from with a regime change is economic gains. Iran wants to boost its economy and it needs to open trade with countries in the region who don’t take their orders from Saudi Arabia. If a pro-Houthi government is in power you can expect the two countries to trade with one another which could improve the economy for both nations. This would really anger Saudi Arabia.

In the four years of war, the Houthi movement has only gotten stronger and has gained more popularity across the country. Hate them or love them, the new reality in Yemen is the Zaydi group are the most dominant force on the ground and will most likely run the political affairs of the country. They have won the fight on the ground and now the negotiations table is set for a precarious game of chess.

Yousef Mawry is a Yemeni-American journalist who was formerly based in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a. He has nearly 10 years of professional experience and has his own media office where he produces, edits and directs short films and documentaries.

Why has Donald Trump decided to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria?

By 5Pillars

US President Donald Trump

Veteran Arab journalist Abdel Bari Atwan says President Trump may have cut a deal with Turkish President Erdogan so that he could withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

There is a military rule that says: if you are facing defeat and want to cut your losses, the shortest way out is to declare victory and promptly retreat.

U.S. President Donald Trump may not be familiar with this dictum, as his expertise is confined to business deals and property brokering. But some of his advisors are most definitely aware of it, as they are of the facts on the ground on the battlefronts where U.S. forces are deployed, especially in the Middle East.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders announced on Wednesday that all US forces in Syria – comprising some 2,000 Special Forces troops – would be withdrawn within two or three months, while another American official said that all State Department personnel would be pulled out of Syria within 48 hours.

Trump justified this move in a tweet explaining that the war against terrorist groups, which was the only reason for the U.S. forces’ presence in the first place, had achieved its aim with the defeat of the ISIS, so he had decided to bring them all home from Syria.

There is much that is unclear about this decision, in addition to the element of surprise. Just one week ago, the U.S. envoy to the international anti-terror coalition in Syria, Brett McGurk, declared that US forces would be remaining in the country for while.

His boss, Secretary of State James Mattis (who has just resigned) has repeatedly warned over the past month against any premature U.S. withdrawal from Syria, on the grounds that this would leave a vacuum which President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies would fill. This has also been reiterated by Trump’s ally Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

Has ISIS been defeated? 

The claim that US forces have eliminated ISIS, which maintains bases and a military presence in northeastern Syria, is false. The group remains strong, and it poses a threat to the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which the U.S. has been supporting and arming. Two days ago it retook villages it had lost in earlier confrontations between the two sides. So it is hard to accept this explanation.

To understand why Trump took this decision to withdraw from Syria, and to vacate the Middle East conflict zone generally, a number of points need to be considered:

First: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repeated warnings over the past ten days to attack the SDF and wipe it out completely in north-eastern Syria, on the grounds that it is an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — which Turkey designates as a terrorist organisation — and threatens the country’s national security.

Turkish president Recep Tayyib Erdogan

Second: Trump may have taken this decision after reaching a deal with Erdogan aimed at avoiding a military confrontation between their countries and reviving their previous strategic partnership. This is plausible. The two presidents have been in regular contact over the past few days, and Sanders indicated that Trump was considering Erdogan’s demand for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, the U.S.-based preacher accused of masterminding the failed coup in Turkey.

Third: The Trump administration may be preparing to ignite a war with Iran, and is pulling its forces out of Syria so they do not become a target for retaliatory attacks by pro-Iranian Iraqi groups. The 5,200 American soldiers in Iraq may also be withdrawn for the same reason. Moreover, talks were held on Wednesday between the U.S. and the Taliban in Abu Dhabi (not Doha), attended by the Pakistanis, Saudis, and Emiratis, about a prospective withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Fourth: Trump may have agreed with his allies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE – and perhaps Qatar too – to send forces from these countries to replace the U.S. troops, prevent a vacuum from occurring, and bankroll and arm the SDF. News reports have revealed that military experts from these countries have visited the Eastern Euphrates in recent weeks. Saudi Minister of State Tamer as-Sabhan went there several months ago to prepare for the arrival and basing of these forces. Reports in the past few days have suggested that Sudanese troops may be deployed there as well, also in coordination with the U.S. administration.

Kurds betrayed

As usual, it is the Kurds – who banked on American protection, fought under the U.S. banner against Syrian forces and then against ISIS, defeating the latter and capturing its capital city al-Raqqa – who stand to be the main victims of this American move. They have the most to lose, just like their counterparts in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Kurds’ problem, especially in Syria, is that they failed to learn from the lessons of history and of their own previous experiences and put all their eggs in the American basket. They are separatists when they have U.S. backing, and Syrians when the Americans let them down or the Turks attack them.

Bashar al Assad welcomed the American pullout

This has happened more than once, most recently last week when they appealed for support from the Syrian army in the face of Turkish threats and accused it of betraying them when it did not immediately comply – as though Damascus is at their beck and call.

It was no surprise to hear Kurdish spokeswoman Ilham Ahmad describe the U.S. decision to withdraw form Syria as a stab in the back. It was a stab with a poisoned dagger, but it was not the first and will not be the last.

The approaching new year will be replete with violent bumps and tremors. We should brace ourselves, and try to read the Middle Eastern scene differently this time, for there is more to come.

Traitors in our midst: The scholars of colonisation

By 5Pillars

Hamza Yusuf (r) and his teacher Abdullah bin Bayyah

American Muslim writer and lecturer, Daniel Haqiqatjou, says scholars like Hamza Yusuf and Abdullah bin Bayyah follow in a long line of ulama who have betrayed the Ummah in favour of supporting tyrant rulers.

What’s wrong with scholars like Hamza Yusuf, Abdallah bin Bayyah, Habib Ali Jifri, et al., supporting Arab dictators and legitimising their regimes?

There has been lots of analysis on the 2018 UAE forum for “promoting peace,” but some of this analysis misses the mark.

For example, what I keep reading over and over again is that Saudi and the UAE are not truly tolerant and they are not truly democracies, therefore it is a major violation for scholars to support them. This is silly. When did democratic secularism and liberal tolerance become the standard for determining legitimate vs. illegitimate governments as far as Islamic morality is concerned? This makes no sense.

Another criticism is that these are brutal regimes that have shed the blood of many innocent Muslims and oppressed many more. This is a good criticism. It boggles the mind how any informed person could excuse, much less defend, a scholar who has made a career out of praising clear oppressors and their regimes. (And to be fair, there are uninformed individuals who need to be shown the exact implications of their excuses and defenses of such scholars.)

It doesn’t matter if you think the scholar is a wali. What about the hundreds of thousands of people being killed and oppressed by the tyrants your “wali” is praising? You don’t think there were any awliya buried in the rubble or gunned down in Yemen, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, etc.?

Only your favorite scholar is a wali, but not any of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims killed and oppressed by these dictators? What about the scholars that these tyrants have jailed or executed? Is it not possible that those scholars were awliya? This whole “wali card” is ludicrously incoherent and, when you think about it, quite despicable.

Scholars on the payroll

Now the further point here is that these scholars are the successors of a long line of co-opted ulama who, historically, would use religious arguments to support the colonisers.

Since the beginning of the colonisation of the Muslim world over 200 years ago, the colonisers figured out that the best way to avoid backlash from the native Muslim population was to get traditional scholars on the payroll.

These scholars would then go around teaching about the virtues of loyalty to the new colonial masters and the values of peace and co-existence with them, the “wisdom” of their culture and religious traditions, etc.

These scholars would teach the community to disavow Islamic governance, to disavow khilafa, to disavow jihad, to disavow the Sharia, to eschew religious exclusivism, etc. They would emphasize this idea of الإنسانية قبل التدين (humanity before religiosity), essentially promoting the central tenet of liberal humanism.

Abdullah bin Bayyah has close connections with the UAE

In the end, anything that could possibly threaten colonial power was denounced as “backwards” and, ultimately, “un-Islamic.” This was to ensure that the Muslim community would not violently resist the new political order that had been brutally imposed upon them and would, instead, become docile, accepting subjects of the invading colonial force and its systematic domination.

Prominent scholars who played this role for colonizers over the past 150 years include figures like Muhammad Abduh, Uthman bin Yahya, Mohammad al-Hajwi, Mustafa al-Maraghi, Syed Ahmad Khan, and many more.

Of course, there were other scholars who fought the colonisers and considered resisting colonial invasion necessary jihad in defense of the Umma. These included figures like Omar Mukhtar, Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi, Imam Shamil, Imam Bonjol, and Muhammad `Abd Allah al-Hasan.

These brave Muslim leaders were denounced as barbarians (what would be called “extremists” or “Islamists” in today’s nomenclature) by those religious scholars who had been bought by the colonisers. Thankfully, most of our ulama today are in the mold of these brave figures who fought on behalf of the Umma instead of the minority who betrayed it.

Betraying the Ummah

So, in a nutshell, that is what is so wrong with scholars legitimising secular Arab tyrants. They are endorsing the current day neocolonial project of secularising and subduing the Muslim world via brutal Western-backed puppet tyrants, who are themselves agents of Western imperialism.

This is precisely how these scholars are contributing to bringing the Ummah under the control of Western (and Israeli) powers economically, politically, socially, culturally, and, of course, religiously. (And notice how these “peace” initiatives always have Zionist representatives and representatives from Western security and anti-extremism agencies.)

This is the “peace” that they are promoting: Be peaceful while the West continues to rape you. Be peaceful while the oppressors continue to slaughter you. Be peaceful while the missionaries and the Zionists indoctrinate you and turn you away from your deen.

This is a huge betrayal of the Ummah and should be denounced in the strongest terms, lest this behavior become normalised in and acceptable to the community at large.

But let’s not forget the social justice imams in the West who are also legitimating tyranny. Instead of praising MBS, MBZ, et al., they praised Hillary Clinton, campaigned for her, endorsed her, etc.

Omar Mukhtar, the hero of the Libyan independence struggle

They went far beyond merely picking Clinton over Trump as the “lesser of two evils,” but instead expressed enthusiastic support and even giddy joy at the thought of electing her as president, and told the Muslim community that it is a religious obligation (fard) to vote for her, even though she was directly responsible for the destruction of at least one Muslim country and had threatened war against others. So, what makes these scholars for Hillary any different from the tyrant endorsers?

Abu Dharr related, “I was walking with the Prophet ﷺ and I heard him saying: “There is something I fear for my Ummah more than the Dajjal.” He repeated it three times. So I said: “O Messenger of Allah, what is it other than the Dajjal which you fear most for your Ummah?” He said: “Misguided Imams.” [Musnad Ahmad]

And as far as advancing the secularising, liberalising colonial project, a scholar doesn’t have to attend a UAE sponsored peace forum to do that. There are some imams who are doing that without even leaving the country. They simply endorse liberal political platforms and, in effect, if not intent, promote perennialism (the view that all “sacred” religions are acceptable to Allah), LGBT, radical feminism, abortion rights, dissolution of family, dissolution of marriage, etc., etc. s

Their vocal support of these left-wing political factions and policies colonises the Muslim minds in the West and furthers the colonial project in the Muslim world as well. They are providing the veneer of religious legitimacy to views that are deeply antithetical to Islam and are harmful to the interests of the Ummah writ large.

Furthermore, they are benefiting financially from these liberal connections and are granted access to many circles of power and influence within governmental and non-governmental organisations as well as think tanks, media, “charitable” funds and foundations, and billion-dollar companies. So, there is nothing more hypocritical than such social justice imams and activists acting indignant and holier-than-thou with respect to Hamza Yusuf, et al. They’re just the other side of the same coin.

Of course, the vast majority of imams and scholars in the West and the East have nothing to do with such evil, alhamdulillah. We need to support these ulama for their bravery and principled stance against the tide. These are the Omar Mukhtars of our times. May Allah bless these scholars of haqq and us with them, and protect the Umma from every evil tyrant and every traitorous scholar.

Daniel Haqiqatjou was born in Houston, Texas, and has studied Islam traditionally with respected ulama. He has written and lectured on contemporary issues surrounding Muslims and modernity over the past ten years, and has spoken at universities and mosques around the world.