President Saleh’s re-election is bad news for struggling Yemen

M.S. Ahmed

That Yemen is in the grip of poverty, drought, political mismanagement and corruption is not in doubt. Nor is there any doubt that Yemen is steeped in tribal and regional tension and, at times, confrontation that might again split the country into South Yemen (a former British colony) and North Yemen.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in office for 28 years, is mainly responsible for the persistence of these problems. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) evenblames his regime (in a report issued on October 13) for exacerbating the drought by its failure to finance anti-drought projects. That Saleh has now been re-elected for another seven-year term can only bode ill for a country with such serious problems. But opposition parties and politicians must share some of the responsibility, not only because of their failure to stage an effective challenge to Saleh but also for their cooperation with the corrupt system, mostly behind the scenes but sometimes publicly. Their ready acceptance of his re-election – to the extent that some of those in exile returned almost immediately – is only one result of their capitulation to him.

One of the opposition leaders returning him after a bitter 12-year opposition to Saleh in exile is Abdulrahman al-Jaffari and his party colleagues. He returned to Sana, the capital, in mid-September after a telephone conversation with the president, who sent them his presidential aeroplane to return home in. In an interview with al-Sharq al-Awsat on October 10, he said that what persuaded him to return to Yemen after a 12-year absence “is the president’s determination to carry out extensive reforms in all areas of political, economic and social life, given the fact that he is the most capable person to carry them out and lead Yemen.”

Jaffari and his colleagues must have guessed that Saleh would win; they returned home a few days before the presidential election, which was held on September 20. They must also have agreed to vote for him, as their return was brought forward by the despatch of the presidential aircraft. Moreover, Saleh was expected to win, although his opponent, Faisal bin Shamlan of the Islah party (seen generally as Islamic in Yemen), was expected to do well and lose only by a small margin. But the final results, published on September 23, claimed that Saleh won 77.2 percent and Shalman 21.8 percent of the votes cast by six million people. At first the opposition parties protested loudly, accusing Saleh of rigging the poll and therefore rejecting the results altogether. They also promised their supporters that they would organise the expression of popular opposition by means of nationwide marches. But on September 26 they announced their acceptance of the election’s official results and their recognition of Saleh as the country’s president. In fact, Shamlan told journalists that the “announced results are accurate and that the opposition alliance will abide by them”. The reason for this change of heart was explained in a statement published by the alliance, which argued that there was “a strong need to avoid any confrontation or clashes with the authorities.”

But this did not diminish the discussion of public affairs and criticism of the president or the regime – partly because of the presence of a large number of foreign journalists in the country to cover the election. In particular, the discussion centred on Saleh’s plan to pass power to his son when he leaves in seven years, as the constitution requires. His son, 35-year-old Ahmed, already holds the post of commander of the Republican Guard and of the special forces, and plays a prominent role in Yemen’s political life. Saleh has also appointed several other members of his own family to senior public posts, thereby giving the impression that his rule is somewhat hereditary.

For instance, Saleh appointed his brother, Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, as military commander of two provinces, while appointing another brother, Muhammad Saleh al-Ahmar, as commander of the air force, and his nephew Yahya Muhammad Abdullahi as commander of the security forces. Saleh, himself a lieutenant-general who seized power in 1978, must know the high value of military and security commanders to the ruler of a country that is not prone to military coups. He must also know the protection that succession by a relative can offer to a corrupt ruler who has been in office for a long time. The son or other close relative of an outgoing despot will be unlikely to order an investigation into his kinsman’s rule, let alone put him on trial, after succeeding him. Saleh is also aware that many Yemenis consider the appointment of a son as successor normal practice in Arab countries. After all, Hafez al-Asad of Syria not long ago arranged to be succeeded by his son Bashshar, and Egypt’s president, Husni Mubarak, is openly setting the stage for his son Gamal to succeed him.

Most Yemenis are certainly aware of Saleh’s resort to corrupt economic and political practices to stay in power, but many of them also know that it is difficult to govern a country that is divided into tribal and political groups that are hostile to each other. As a Yemeni proverb famously says, ruling Yemen is like trying to dance on the head of a snake. He is given credit by many for holding together North Yemen and Southern Yemen, a former British colony, which united in 1990. Since then, the south has not only tried to secede but frequent clashes between the tribal groups of both regions have taken place. Moreover, the fact that the potential for violence is never far from the surface is underlined by the prevalence of firearms in the country, whose 20 million citizens are estimated to own some 60 million firearms between them.

In fact, last year the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace placed Yemen eighth in its index of countries most likely to disintegrate, following such countries as Somalia andAfghanistan. The fear of violence breaking out may explain the sudden decision of the five-party opposition alliance, led by the leader of Islah, Faisal bin Shalman, who is from South Yemen, to accept the election results and recognise Saleh, who is from the north, as president. Earlier, the alliance had promised to stage a strong campaign against the re-election of the president and to expose the methods he had used to rig the poll.

The ruling General People’s Congress (GPC), which had collected huge sums of money from businessmen and companies to finance its campaign, put up millions of posters across the country that praised the president and maligned his opponents. The GPC also unleashed a “whispering campaign”, as media reports described it, which hinted that Shalman was “a Trojan horse for an Islamist coup, or southern secession”. But even more outrageously “a conservative Sheikh” appeared on state television, saying that “to vote against the president was forbidden in Islam”. Clearly Saleh also uses corrupt “Islamic leaders”, although he is widely known to be completely secular and very hostile to Islamic movements.

The president’s hostility towards Islam and Islamic movements obviously disqualifies him to rule a Muslim country. But his transparent failure to solve Yemen’s economic problems and reduce the widespread poverty that is blighting the lives of many Yemenis is another good reason why he should quit now. The World Bank estimates that 42 percent of Yemenis live below the poverty line, while economic growth in recent years has not matched population growth. Moreover oil-exports, which at present supply 70 percent of state revenues, are set to decline as reserves dwindle, and may in fact run out altogether by 2012.

But as state revenues continue to dwindle, Saleh will be forced to apply public funds to protect his family, friends and principal supporters against the escalating poverty, leaving most Yemenis to face it unaided. This may lead in the end to overwhelming public resentment and anger that might rid Yemen of a corrupt and anti-Islamic despot who should not have been able to seize power in the first place.

Ali Abdullah SalehYemen

Hizbullah shocks the world by defeating the military power of the West’s regional proxy

By Nasr Salem

With their zeal, courage and discipline, Hizbullah's intrepid fighters stood off Israel's military juggernaut in the hilly, forested landscape of southernLebanon. Ensconced in villages and towns throughout southern Lebanon, Hizbullah's fighters weathered 33 days of intense Israeli air-strikes and a series of tank-led ground incursions, and emerged victorious. Not only did Hizbullah's steadfastness deprive Israel of its declared battlefield objectives; it also pushed the Israeli establishment into a political snakepit and a cacophony of mutual recriminations.

The ostensible trigger for the fighting came on July 12, when Hizbullah fighters carried out a daring cross-border raid which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others. The purpose of the operation was to capture Israeli soldiers to use in a prisoner-exchange aimed to free Lebanese (and possibly other Arab) prisoners and captives held in Israeli jails. In a press conference immediately after the operation, Hizbullah secretary-general Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah told reporters: "No military operation will return the two soldiers. The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and an exchange." In 2004 Hizbullah won the release of 420 Lebanese and other Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, in exchange for the remains of three dead Israeli soldiers and one reserve Israeli army colonel.

By ordering Israel's largest military operation against Lebanon since the invasion in 1982, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert relied on Israel's overwhelmingly superior airpower to destroy Hizbullah, while at the same time avoid the kind of protracted low-intensity war of attrition that markedIsrael's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. However, the air campaign failed to achieve any of its declared objectives, such as wiping out Hizbullah's missile capability, decapitating its leadership and establishing a buffer zone as far north from the border as the Litani River; it succeeded only in exacting a high toll from Lebanese civilians by killing or maiming them, blasting bridges, destroying infrastructure, and shutting down Beirut's international airport.

Hizbullah's resilience on the battlefield stems partly from the fact that it was fighting on its own territory. The strong support it enjoys among the local population fits in well with Mao Tse-tung's classic analogy that likens an effective guerrilla force, fighting amid a civilian population that largely subscribes to its goals, to a fish in the sea. The nature of Hizbullah's fight against Israel as a kind of revolutionary warfare was underlined repeatedly during the fighting in a number of televised speeches by Sayyid Nasrallah, who emphasized again and again that Hizbullah does not fight like a regular army, does not aim to hold on to territory, and engages the enemy using guerrilla tactics.

Guerrilla tactics cannot be successful without painstaking military and operational planning. Since Israel retreated from most of southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hizbullah has worked secretly to construct an extensive network of underground bunkers and tunnels along Lebanon's borders with Occupied Palestine and elsewhere in southern Lebanon. The utility of these fortifications goes beyond providing the fighters with safe shelter. It has also helped them ambush and trap advancing Israeli soldiers. On numerous occasions Israeli officials announced that their forces had seized a certain territory, only to find themselves engaged in more intense fighting in that area. During the many incursions they launched, Israeli forces were surrounded by Hizbullah fighters, armed with rifles, grenades and guided missiles, and lying in ambush in houses, alleys and tunnels.

Moreover, in close-quarter combat, Hizbullah fighters made effective use of wire-guided and laser-guided anti-tank missiles, thus turning the hills and valleys of southern Lebanon into graveyards for Israel's much-touted Mirkava battle tank, with its advanced armour plating. Computerized weapons-systems have also reportedly been used by Hizbullah fighters to feed coordinates of targets to the missiles. The use of short-range anti-aircraft missiles and guns has also limited the battlefield utility of Israeli gunships. Hi-tech listening equipment enabled Hizbullah to eavesdrop on Israeli military communications.

By its calculated use of an arsenal composed of thousands of ground-to-ground missiles and rockets, Hizbullah managed to establish a balance of terror with Israel's far more powerful military machine. It is clear that the essence of Hizbullah's missile deterrence strategy is a low-intensity variation of the notion of "mutual assured destruction." Israeli air strikes against roads, bridges and residential areas in Lebanon were met with retaliatory rocket strikes against northern Israeli cities, towns and settlements. Hizbullah's retaliatory rocket attacks were conducted within the framework of a ‘graduated response' strategy which allows varying levels of engagement and requires a highly disciplined operational and organizational structure. Retaliatory attacks struck deeper into Israel in tandem with the intensity of Israel's attacks. At one point, Shaikh Nasrallah warned that if Israel were to expand its bombing campaign against areas in the suburbs of Beirut to include the Lebanese capital itself, then Hizbullah would launch rockets against the capital of the "usurping entity," i.e. Tel Aviv.

By drawing on long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Occupied Palestine, Hizbullah presented Israel with an unprecedented challenge. The use of missiles not only dented Israel's superiority in the sky, which it owes mainly to the unlimited supply of US-made fighter-jets and attack-helicopters, but also rendered less relevant the notion of large-scale ground operations that the Israeli army resorted to in the past under the rubric of establishing secure strategic depth. During the fighting, Hizbullah's missiles hit as far as Hadera, some 30 miles north of Tel Aviv. So even if Israel's forces were able to capture and hold a 10- or 20-mile deep security zone, Hizbullah would still be able to hit targets deep inside Occupied Palestine. Ballistic warfare, therefore, is poised to have far-reaching tactical and strategic implications that could redefine the military aspect of the fight against Israel. As Palestinian fighters in Ghazzah show increasing improvement in their use of missiles against Israeli settlements and other targets, more areas under Israeli occupation will become vulnerable to rocket strikes.

So Israel finds itself impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Five months ago, Olmert's Kadima party won a general election with a campaign-platform that included a promise to draw Israel's final borders by means of a partial withdrawal from the West Bank and the annexation of major Jewish settlement blocs. Kadima argued that Israel's frontiers would be protected by the recently-constructed concrete-and-steel separation barrier. Short-range missiles render this desire simply a pipe-dream. On the other hand, Hizbullah's recent use of medium-range missiles has punctured the notion of territorial depth that guided zionist expansionism.

Hizbullah's careful preparations went beyond the military domain. One example of this is Hizbullah's television-channel, al-Manar. The station stayed on air, from unidentified locations and hidden studios, throughout the fighting, despite the air-strikes that destroyed its headquarters in the early days of the war, and despite repeated bombardment of its relay towers and masts across the country.

But Hizbullah's staying power on the battlefield has as much to do with the effective use of military science as with the extraordinarily high morale of its fighters. Deep faith among Hizbullah's rank and file helped to nurture an unusual operational and battlefield discipline, instilled a culture of secrecy, and reduced the fear of death during close-combat operations and air-strikes. There were numerous reports of close-combat confrontations where, in the face of Hizbullah's deeply religious, highly-motivated and well-trained fighters, Israeli soldiers found themselves pinned down and unable even to return fire.

Strong faith also protected Hizbullah from penetration by Israel's intelligence services. The war has shown up how little detailed information Israel's famed intelligence services had on Hizbullah's forces, tactics, equipment and weaponry. Israeli military planners had no adequate knowledge of Hizbullah's military resources, of the organisational structure of its fighting force, or of what it was capable of. This reality was underlined repeatedly during the fighting, with such remarkable achievements as when Hizbullah deployed surface-to-sea missiles to cripple two Israeli warships, shot down two Israeli helicopters, and sent up drones on reconnaissance missions over Occupied Palestine.

That combination of faith, discipline, preparedness and tactical skills increased Hizbullah's characteristic advantage as a guerrilla force fighting on its home ground. But Hizbullah's victory has not only humiliated the zionists. The Arab regimes, who have long been convinced that there is no point in going to war with Israel, have been embarrassed by Hizbullah's battlefield success. In the Arab world the main question on most people's minds now is: If Hizbullah's small militia can hold their own against Israeli soldiers on the ground, even with Israeli control of the air, why are the Arab armies incapable of pulling off a similar feat, despite the vast military and other resources at their disposal?

The challenges facing Iran, the world’s only Revolutionary Islamic state

Muzaffar Iqbal

Last month, the people of Iran went to the polls to elect a new president, the ninth presidential elections since the Revolution. In the first of two articles, MUZAFFAR IQBAL discusses the situation faced by the new president and challenges facing the world’s first and only modern Islamic State twenty-six years after the Islamic Revolution.

Even before the first vote was cast in Iran’s ninth presidential election since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, US president George W. Bush had passed his verdict: “Iran’s electoral process ignores the basic requirements of democracy.” He did not have the moral courage to make the statement himself; instead, it was issued by the White House. It was so absurd that within hours Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, had to explain to the press his administration’s “logic” in condemning Iran’s electoral process while it had praised the sham elections in Egypt: “Egypt has not had an election for 7,000 years. They are trying to start one up, and it won’t be perfect,” Hadley said, “[Iran and Egypt] couldn’t be more different cases. Iran is the No. 1 state sponsor of terror. Egypt is fighting terror. Iran’s policy is to get rid of Israel. Egypt is fostering the peace process.” This statement exposes the reality of the White House’s black logic: judgments on Iran’s presidential elections are not based on electoral process, but on its policies toward Israel.

This criterion is not surprising, as US foreign policy has always been based on safeguarding Israeli interests. What is morally and ethically reprehensible in Hadley’s statement is the fact that it was issued on behalf of a president who came to power by stealing an election, and who has shown complete disregard for the views of an overwhelming majority of the world’s citizens against his invasion and continuous occupation of Iraq. There is, however, much more to be said on the matter. Iran’s presidential elections have been held under a constitution approved and adopted by the people of the Islamic Republic through an open and unprecedented process in which millions of men and women decided how they wished to run their affairs. Instead of acknowledging and respecting the decision of the Iranian people, Bush and his administration demand that Iranians follow what the US prescribes for them. This is their vision of democracy: all nations must adopt this model of democracy and freedom, otherwise their system is not democratic.

A month earlier, Counselor Philip Zelikow of the State Department had articulated this arrogant view unabashedly while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies inWashington. Referring to a previous statement by Bush about the lack of democracy in Iran, he said: “What the president is arguing is that there are universal ideals—and they are definable –we urge all countries to find the way to express the ideals which we believe their own citizens hold dear—and we believe that assertion is no more true than in Iran.”

What is apparent from all this is a continuous disregard for international agreements and policies that is rooted in arrogance. Commenting on Bush’s statement, Iran’s foreign minister,Kamal Kharrazi, stated diplomatically that the statement was issued “due to [Bush’s] lack of knowledge about Iran”. It is not merely lack of knowledge but ignorance of and hatred for the ideals upon which the Islamic Republic is established.

The American attitude toward Iran is not new and there is no reason to believe that it is going to change in the near future. Expressed more openly on the eve of Iranian elections by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, this view declares one of the most remarkable developments in the modern history of the Muslim world as being backward: “the sad thing about Iran is it’s moving backward, not forward. I think everyone would say that the Iranian system, political system, was more open a few years ago than it is now.” By “a few years ago” she presumably meant the time of the Shah, when the CIA had its headquarters for the Middle East in Iran and the Shah’s police and secret service were kidnapping, torturing and killing people.

Regardless of the US’s attitude, the ninth presidential elections in Iran are historic in many ways. With close to 70 percent voter turnout in the first round of elections on June 17, they may very well prove to be a landmark for the future of the Islamic Republic, and not merely because this was the first election since 1979 to require a second round of polls. The importance of these elections lies elsewhere: in the nature of the electorate. A vast majority of those who voted in these elections are young people who have no personal experience of the events of a quarter century ago, when the Islamic Revolution established a unique system of governance in Iran. Twenty-five years after that major restructuring of Iran, the Islamic Republic’s present demographic, social, economic and political realities pose two kinds of challenge for the new leadership: internal and external. This section focuses on some aspects of the internal challenges; the next will, insha’Allah, discuss some of the most significant external challenges.

Twenty-five years after the Islamic Revolution, the men and women who took part in that epoch-making event are now in their fifties and sixties. That generation of Iranians is now on its way out. The most significant event for the generation that followed the Revolution was the Iraq-Iran war. This was a heroic generation that sacrificed everything for the defense of their land and its ideals and, though a large number of them are now in important positions in economic, political, and cultural fields, they do not really make up the demographic landscape of contemporary Iran; it is the new generation of men and women in their late teens and early twenties that is now the most important asset of Iran.

This generation participated in neither the Revolution nor the defensive war. Raised in relative comfort and stability in a country that was making significant advances in education, health and economic growth during their childhood, these men and women are more interested in careers, jobs, comfort, and “life” as they conceive it through the prism of their own immediate past, which is the product a profound social transformation. This tremendous remaking of Iranian society during the past quarter century has taken place through the following significant routes.

Firstly, Iran’s population doubled between 1979 and 2004, to 70 million. This increase has been unevenly distributed demographically: Iranians are now increasingly city-dwellers, with the urban population approaching 70 per cent, at least half of them living in the capital, Tehran. This is a very significant aspect of contemporary Iran, not merely because previously the vast majority of people historically lived outside the cities, but also because the move to cities in such large numbers brings with it a tremendous amount of social and economic pressure for the entire system.

Secondly, thanks to huge investment in the country’s education system, Iran has achieved near-complete literacy for the first time in its history: around 92 per cent of young Iranians are now literate. There has also been a corresponding expansion of higher education, with the significant indicator that more than 61 percent of all university students are women. This means that the current generation of young educated men and women expect jobs and career opportunities commensurate with their education, but the economic sector has not evolved in sync with this increased educational attainment, so there is a certain amount of disillusionment and discontent in this sector of the population.

Thirdly, the increase in literacy and higher education also comes with an increasing awareness of the world outside Iran. Because of the peculiar isolation imposed upon the Islamic Republic, this desire to know and communicate with the outside world has become a pronounced need of young Iranians, who are among the highest users of the internet in the Middle East. Estimates of the number of Iranian internet-users vary between 3 and 5 million, and there are approximately 60,000 to 70,000 weblogs run by Iranians, most of them in Persian, making it the fourth most-used weblog language. Another aspect of this new social revolution in Iran is the presence of over 3 million satellite connections with access to all the major Western channels—from CNN and BBC World to 700 other media outlets. A recent statistical survey suggests that BBC radio has more than 7.5 million listeners in Iran, and the BBC’s website has more than 250,000 Iranian visitors every day. This tremendous growth in the literate population requires a corresponding increase in the internal production of reading and viewing material, but this need has not been met, despite significant developments in the production of films by the private sector. This means that a very large number of Iranian youth are now directly exposed to the Western media, without a significant and credible counterbalance. Although there is a very large readership of Persian-language newspapers (the most popular newspaper in Iran has a circulation of around 450,000), the print media are not a substitute for the electronic media. The ideals of the new generation of Iranians are thus being shaped, to a large extent, by the West; this brings them into direct conflict with the centuries-old social and religious norms of their society.

Travel has also opened new doors of perception for Iranians. Today, there are around 2 million Iranians who live outside Iran, mostly in Western Europe, Canada and the US, with significant numbers in Japan too. Most of these expatriates have kept their links to Iran, and every year about 200,000 Iranians travel abroad to visit relatives or for business. This has made a significant impact on social awareness in Iran.

All of this has produced a new mini social and intellectual revolution in Iran. Men and women who are part of this mini-revolution have a tendency to view the Islamic Revolution without a proper historical consciousness. They lack knowledge of the nature of life in the country before the Revolution that brought them the fruits of education, distribution of national wealth unlike any previous era, and the very freedom to be part of this new mini-revolution. Shaped by the new intellectual forces that came into existence during the late 1990s, this mini-revolution is based on discontent and disillusion, and is fired by the undefined, yet powerful, ideas of “reform” and “freedom”.

Covertly and overtly supported by hundreds of foundations, the so-called “pro-democracy” and “pro-change” organizations funded by the US, this new social and political force within Iran is doubly handicapped: firstly, most of its young members have little or no knowledge of the vast historical process that shaped their own society in the post-World War II period; and secondly, they have an unrealistic, idealized and often erroneous understanding of the West.

Yet, regardless of the limited historical understanding of this generation, the leadership in Iran has to face the fact of this social and political revolution that has taken place in Iranian society caused by lapses in the guidance of the Revolutionary process especially after the death of Imam Khomeini. Needless to say, what is being called as “lapses” were mostly the direct result of the conditions imposed on Iran shortly after the Revolution that amounted to a battle for survival of the country itself. Nonetheless, the newly elected president of the Islamic Republic, along with the Parliament and the Guardian Council, face a challenge that needs a thorough and well-planned strategy. There are various aspects of this challenge, including social, political and economic, but perhaps none is as important as the intellectual challenge that has re-opened the question of the role of Islam in Iranian society.

The young populace of Iran has access to the works of many secular thinkers who advocate separation of religion and state. These young people are not always rooted in their own tradition, and this one-sided exposure to ideas of men like Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt has created confusion in young minds. They have also seen some of the religious people involved in corruption, and this has added fuel to their desire for change.

A characteristic peculiar to the Iranian situation is that most of these young men and women are not abandoning religion; rather they are viewing Islam from the Western perspective, which construes it as a private affair. This view is not only in direct conflict with the founding principles of the Islamic Revolution, it is a concept foreign to Islam itself. Yet, for something as serious as this, there seems to be a lack of proper intellectual response to this challenge that has many other aspects, in addition to its political aspect. In fact, it comes with a bag full of some of the most vicious attacks on Islam by the West—a bag especially prepared for the discontented and disillusioned Muslim youth in all the traditional lands of Islam. This bag includes questions about women’s rights, personal freedom and autonomy; it questions the nature of traditional social interactions in Muslim societies, and it attempts to create illusions of unrestrained freedom for the youth. All of this is packaged in attractive wrappings and high-sounding words: human rights, liberalism, democracy, pluralism, and the like.

Acceptance of this package actually means a complete secularization of society and adoption of Western norms of social and personal behaviour. The so-called women’s rights are a disguise to make women a commodity in the market place; the so-called pluralism and manifestos of human rights declare that all truths are relative, and hence each person’s religious, moral and ethical beliefs should be respected and considered equal to the rest. In other words, it advocates that there is no such thing as true or false, Haqq and Batil, because one person’s truth is his or her own truth. It proposes that there is no such thing as Absolute Truth, and hence it makes each person an autonomous source of truth. The embodiment of this concept in a polity makes revelation and revealed truth a thing of the past, and effectively reduces a people to a society without a center, without any orientation toward the One Who sent the Glorious and Discerning Qur’an with a Truth, a Truth that comes from the One Who Himself is al-Haqq (The Truth).

This subjective belief system is in direct conflict with the vision of Islam. For Iran, it is doubly dangerous because the Islamic State is based on a foundation that takes Islam’s revealed Truth to be the supreme principle. Thus one of the most important internal challenges faced by the new leadership in Iran is to address this intellectual crisis faced by the new generation of Iranians. Preaching and sermonizing alone will not solve the problem; these men and women require subtle and delicate handling. How well the new leadership in Iran meets this challenge may very well determine the course of future events in Iran.

 

Muzaffar Iqbal

The importance of recognising and identifying the enemies of Islam and Muslims

Abu Dharr

That the Islamic movement has venomous and ruthless enemies appears to be among the most difficult lessons for Muslims to learn. In all the Islamic movement literature that we are familiar with, from that of the docile tablighis to that of the revolutionary jihadis, we have never seen a book (or even a booklet) called “Know Your Enemy”.

That the Islamic movement has venomous and ruthless enemies appears to be among the most difficult lessons for Muslims to learn. In all the Islamic movement literature that we are familiar with, from that of the docile tablighis to that of the revolutionary jihadis, we have never seen a book (or even a booklet) called “Know Your Enemy”. That unfortunate but inescapable reality is that Muslims have numerous enemies, both working together and competing to be the most effective in attacking us. The antagonism and revulsion now seen towards the Islamic movement (which is basically the attempts of Muslims to implement Islam) have become the headlines of newspapers, the talking-points of commentaries, and the breaking news of our times. And still large parts of the Muslim Ummah carry on as if the world around is friendly, congenial and – in the particularly fabulous fantasies of some day-dreamers – “sympathetic” to Islam and Muslims. This maladroit inability to recognize and publicize our obvious enemies is perhaps the most disabling shortcoming in all the programmes of the Islamic movement.

Not so with Islamic Iran; or at least not until recently. Imam Khomeini and his followers were never too shy or apprehensive to call an enemy an enemy. But who is this enemy, and how can he be identified? And the answer is simple. Imam Khomeini – as is the case with the Islamic movement in the world at large – stood for freedom from imperialism, liberation from zionism, and the independence of thought and action of Muslims and oppressed peoples everywhere. He took this position a step forward by rallying the Muslims in Iran around these Islamic principles, and then by ending the rule of self-defeatism represented by the Shah and his underlings, by terminating American intrusion in the affairs of Muslims in Iran, and ultimately by expelling Israel and its agents, who provided a crucial element in the relationship between the Shah’s regime and the US. Imam Khomeini and the clear-sighted Muslims around him did not send their military on a mission to conquer America, nor did they formulate a national liberation movement to overthrow the Shah; they did not throw even one grenade in occupied Palestine. All they did was to cleanse Iran of all traces of imperialism, zionism, and authoritarianism.

OVERVIEW

The Islamic Uprising in Iran a quarter of a century ago is too important and too special for Muslims to simply watch it wander from its original and true course. We remember all too clearly the impact this breakthrough had on Muslims everywhere. For the first time in modern history, Muslims had risen against a corrupt government and its imperialist and zionist sponsors, and were able to take control of their own country, and begin to show the rest of us how things should be done.

Of course, the road forward was not likely to be smooth. The sponsors of the Pahlavi regime could not be expected to sit and watch a people shape their own future on the basis of their Islamic faith and commitment. Throughout the last 25 years, America and Israel have been working to bring the Islamic government in Iran to its knees, with the support of their Western allies, Iran’s pro-Western neighbours and even supporters within Iran. Iran’s borders amount to some 8,000 kilometers; American troops are now based across six thousand kilometers of this border. This grim scenario has been gradually built over 25 years, and has passed almost unnoticed by most Muslims, and even most Iranians. There has never been any cessation of hostilities between the followers of the line of Imam Khomeini (r.a.), who refuse to compromise when it comes to the independence and sovereignty of the Islamic state, and the numerous other interests wanting to shape the state on their terms.

Part of our object in this new column is to look at some of the gaps that have developed since the passing of Imam Khomeini (r.a.), many of which are rooted in earlier events, and how these gaps have caused serious problems about which we can no longer remain silent. But before we walk into this sensitive area, one point needs to be made absolutely clear. This is that none of the points we make are intended to express any criticism of Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the successor to Imam Khomeini (r.a.) as Rahbar of the Islamic State. Many of the points we make will be highlighting natural processes in the evolution of post-Revolutionary state and society. Others will indeed involve criticism of errors and failures in Iran, mainly on the part of those who have been responsible for aspects of Iranian government and policy at the executive level. It was inevitable that such errors and failures should emerge over a quarter of a century in an unprecedented and highly-pressured historical situation; unfortunately they have contributed greatly to what many now see as the Islamic experiment’s current stagnation.

Sometimes frank statements of truth can be bitter pills to swallow; we hope no-one will consider this column to be too bitter a pill. We say what we say only to express our honest understanding of the issues. If we are correct, we appeal earnestly to Allah to accept our humble words to our humble readers. If not, we request Allah’s forgiveness and correction from anyone able to do so; without, we hope, descending into personal issues or hidden agendas. Ameen.

It was at this point that the enemies emerged and began to reveal their true colors; and it was at this point that Imam Khomeini did not hesitate to stand firm and identify those enemies in clear, unequivocal terms: the governments of the the United States and the Soviet Union, the Ba’athists and Saddam, the munafiqeen inside Iran, those who opposed the Islamic Revolution and Islamic State, and Israel. This is a long and daunting list of enemies, but it is also a true expression of the reality Islamic Iran faced. With several enemies to confront, it is not wise to launch into war with all of them; the war must be against those who pose the most immediate threat. For Iran, the immediate aggressor was Saddam Hussein, the Ba’ath regime, and their military, which was of course backed also by other enemies. The war imposed on the Islamic State by Iraq ground on for eight long years, and still the Imam showed no sign of accommodating or compromising with the enemy. Iran’s Muslims fought with courage, commitment and strategies that shocked the technologically superior Iraqis and their backers, and tens of thousands of Iranian Muslims gave their lives for unwavering principles and firm belief in the justness of their cause.

And yet, even then, there were constant whisperings of doubt from diplomats, obfuscation from opportunists, even murmurs from committed “revolutionaries” asking ‘is there any end to this senseless war? The Iranians are out of their minds sending ‘children’ to the warfront’ ; and mata nasr Allah? – when shall God’s victory come? At that time no one could understand the mystical dimension of this pursuit of justice, but as the years went by the answer began to unfold. There were two attitudes in Islamic Iran to the enemy. One attitude was that of the late Imam and the fearless and death-conquering mujahideen, many of whom achieved shahada (martyrdom); the other attitude was that of quietist scholars, careerist diplomats, and the ever-present holier-than-thou traditionalists. (The last of whom are the most formidable obstacle of the three; we will have more to say about them in future, insha’Allah.)

There was no decisive victory at the warfront because a large infusion of disingenuousness had permeated the decision-making body in Islamic Iran, from the lower ranks of government to the highest places in the religious institutions. At the same time that Imam Khomeini was saying, in effect, that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia formed a core of enmity towards the Muslims and the oppressed, others inside Iran’s governmental departments, religious circles and commercial interests refused to accept that to be the case. They did not say so at the time; but now they feel it is safe to express themselves, and they say such things as: “Khomeini miscalculated”; or “Khomeini made mistakes”, or even “Khomeini was a disaster”! These are the same people who just a decade and a half ago were beating their chests and acclaiming the Imam. Today you look at them and they are “revolutionary ghosts.” These were the zealous followers of the Imam; now they have joined the elitists. They are content with paper-shuffling jobs, and some of them have filed their “revolutionary” pasts as a history to be recalled occasionally perhaps, but certainly not repeated. To them, Imam Khomeini’s days were a close call. And their behavior speaks volumes; they are no longer to be found at public gatherings; they are satisfied with an abridged ‘Shi’i’ version of Islam, one that throws off the ‘idealistic’ and ‘impractical’ issue of Islamic unity and the impossible identification with the affairs of the oppressed.

Allah’s victory comes at a high price. Many people were not willing to pay it. So victory was suspended at the warfront a decade and a half ago. To drive the point home, Saudi Arabia, the United States and (embedded in them) Israel – clearly identified as enemies in Imam Khomeini’s dictionary – have become numbers in the diplomatic directories of those who began this whole process by clamoring for a ‘dialogue of civilizations.’ You can almost hear them in Tehran’s Foggy Bottom, saying: “Let us begin to normalize our relations with Saudi Arabia. Later we can begin normalizing our relations with the United States. We cannot think about normalizing our relations with Israel, but if the Palestinians, one day in the future, reach an accommodation with the Israelis, then who are we to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians?”

Where is Islam in all this? Where are the Islamic principles for which Islamic Iran and the ‘Khomeini generation’ gave their precious sons, their best and brightest? We, the sons of the Islamic movement, are like a family. Some of us turn out to be obedient and others stray from the principles we hold. The weak and rebellious among us are those who railed against Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel yesterday, yet today are buddy-buddy with the Saudis, so-so with the Americans, and “can’t figure it out” with the Israelis. The temptations to deviate are obvious; our enemies offer attractive and seductive faces alongside their hostile ones, and tempt with promises of sweet rewards, even as they also issue dire threats. Many of their inducements and sweet words are proffered by Muslims who, however sincerely, are in effect working for our enemies rather than for Islam and Muslims. The oppressed of the world have little to offer but the promise of righteous struggles ahead, which can look very like problems and troubles to those whose eyes are clouded by pragmatism and dazzled by the mirages offered by our enemies.

But Muslims and Islamic movements of the world: take heed. You cannot have an enemy and a friend in the same entity at the same time. It is either your enemy or your friend. And if you cannot distinguish an enemy from a friend, how can you expect Allah to grant you victory?

Wahhabism and the Illusion of a Golden Age

By Sadik H. Kassim

Thu 14 Oct 2004

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'Wahhabis are often described in clichéd terms as being the “Puritans” of the Muslim world. An analogy I have never liked. True the Puritans espoused a literal interpretation of scriptural texts; beyond that, however the similarities are minimal. The Puritans were intellectual heavyweights coupling Renaissance humanism with knowledge of scriptures and divinity. They complemented their religious readings with the Greek classics of Cicero, Virgil, Terence and Ovid. In addition to writing the first children books, they emphasized public schooling for all and founded Harvard, the first American university. For them, religion provided a stimulus and prelude for scientific thought. Among their members, they could count numerous fellows of the Royal Society of London. Most importantly, the Puritans were political and religious outcasts.

The Wahhabis certainly are not Puritans in any true sense of the word. The more apt comparison, I believe, is the evangelical Christian movement in modern times. Both the Wahhabis and the Evangelicals champion an ultra-literalist interpretation of the holy texts, casting them both at odds with the precedents set by their ancestors and with their co-religionists in modern times. Both Evangelicals and Wahhabis shun scientific/rational thought and treat the idea of a renewed interpretation of religious texts as anathema. Both groups have tremendous financial resources enabling the rapid spread of their beliefs. Most importantly, both have disproportionate access to the corridors of power—the Evangelicals and their incestuous relationship with the Bush administration, the Wahhabis and the Saudi royal family, although the latter is in a state of flux.'

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In recent years, much has been written about Wahhabism in the mainstream press. Just to see how much newsprint has been expended on the subject, I did a Lexis Nexis database search covering the archives of hundreds of major international newspapers, magazines and journals, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Newsweek, Time, and The Economist. The results of the search are depicted graphically below. As can be seen, Wahhabism was barely a blip on the screen during the late 70’s, the entirety of the 80’s and most of the 90’s.

This period, it will be recalled, was the height of American government support for the reactionary Wahhabi-inspired Islamist movements of Afghanistan, whose members Ronald Reagan dubbed “freedom fighters”. These were America’s guys. Critical analysis of their specific beliefs, methods, or financial backing by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and America were off limits to the sycophantic press. In fact, of the 305 articles that turned up, 241 of them or 79% of total articles were written post 9/11. After September 11, when their utility had expired, the Wahhabists and the offshoots they produced were discarded into history’s waste bin of American allies gone bad (see Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, etc.). It was now proper to write about them. Even the fashion magazine Interior Design got into the game, scoring a hit for a December 1, 2001 article making a snide reference to Wahhabism.

Despite the upsurge in the number of articles, the topic is still treated very superficially. Wahhabis are often described in clichéd terms as being the “Puritans” of the Muslim world. An analogy I have never liked. True the Puritans espoused a literal interpretation of scriptural texts; beyond that, however the similarities are minimal. The Puritans were intellectual heavyweights coupling Renaissance humanism with knowledge of scriptures and divinity. They complemented their religious readings with the Greek classics of Cicero, Virgil, Terence and Ovid. In addition to writing the first children books, they emphasized public schooling for all and founded Harvard, the first American university. For them, religion provided a stimulus and prelude for scientific thought. Among their members, they could count numerous fellows of the Royal Society of London. Most importantly, the Puritans were political and religious outcasts.

The Wahhabis certainly are not Puritans in any true sense of the word. The more apt comparison, I believe, is the evangelical Christian movement in modern times. Both the Wahhabis and the Evangelicals champion an ultra-literalist interpretation of the holy texts, casting them both at odds with the precedents set by their ancestors and with their co-religionists in modern times. Both Evangelicals and Wahhabis shun scientific/rational thought and treat the idea of a renewed interpretation of religious texts as anathema. Both groups have tremendous financial resources enabling the rapid spread of their beliefs. Most importantly, both have disproportionate access to the corridors of power—the Evangelicals and their incestuous relationship with the Bush administration, the Wahhabis and the Saudi royal family, although the latter is in a state of flux.

Another problem with the recent spate of articles is the lack of mention of the West’s implicit support for Wahhabism via its alliance with the Saudis. This was one of the problems with Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 as well, which depicts strong support for Saudi Arabia as being characteristic of the Bush family dynasty only.

The relationship in fact had its genesis in 1915 with the successful signing of the Anglo-Saudi treaty. Upon signing the treaty, Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa’ud, the founder of the modern nation of Saudi Arabia, received 1,000 rifles, a £20,000 signing bonus, a monthly subsidy of £5,000 and regular shipment of machine guns and rifles. The deferential treatment given to Ibn Sa’ud by the British helped the Sa’ud family defeat the other tribes of Arabia and consolidate their rule in the Peninsula. In return, Ibn Sa’ud agreed not to “enter into any correspondence, agreement or treaty with any foreign nation or power” and to refrain from aggression in the British held areas of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman. The relationship continued until 1924.

After World War I and with the discovery of oil in the Arabian Peninsula, both the British and Americans started courting Ibn Sa’ud. The oil concession was signed over to American Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) in 1933. In 1943, the American-Saudi alliance was further solidified with Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration of the kingdom as being “vital for the defense of the USA,” qualifying it to receive American aid under the Lend-Lease Act. The final nail in the Saudi-British alliance came in 1945 when Ibn Sa’ud personally met with Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy and guaranteed American access to the Peninsula’s vast oil resources. The rest of the western relationship with the family of Sa’ud is well-documented in the public record, and will not be detailed here.

With all of this in mind, I was very excited to receive Hamid Algar’s new book, actually pamphlet, entitled Wahhabism; A Critical Essay for review. I had high expectations that Algar would blast away the clichés and superficialities and get to the essence of Wahhabism. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Although well written, the work suffers from several major flaws. Algar omits or barely covers key historical events in the development of Wahhabism, does little to put the subject within a relevant modern context, and most importantly, underestimates the ubiquity of Wahhabi thoughts and practices in the Muslim world today.

Hamid Algar, a Cambridge trained professor of Islamic Studies at Berkley, starts his essay with a brief biographical sketch of the founder and namesake of Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a man whom the British explorer/Standard Oil agent, Harry St. John Philby, dubbed the “co-founder” of Saudi Arabia.

Born in the small town of al-Uyaynah in the eastern part of modern day Saudi Arabia in 1703 to a family of religious scholars, Abd al-Wahhab spent most of his early years traveling in the pursuit of a religious education. He was particularly fond of the works of Ibn Taymiyya, a medieval Syrian scholar who delighted in writing polemics against Christianity, Shi’ism and Sufism. Yet unlike Abd al-Wahhab, Ibn Taymiyya was in the words of Algar “a notable figure in the history of Islam…a far more rigorous and careful thinker and an infinitely more prolific scholar.” Abd al-Wahhab’s scholarly output was scant and simple. His masterpiece, a slim collection of hadiths with no original analysis or commentary entitled Kitab al-Tawhid, has “the appearance of a student’s notes.”

Eventually Abd al-Wahhab made his way back to Uyaynah where he joined his father, a notable religious judge at the time, and began to preach against the religiously aberrant practices he had seen during his travels. Among other things, Abd al-Wahhab inveighed against smoking tobacco and declared trees to be Haram (religiously objectionable), as an appreciation of their beauty could lead to kufr (unbelief).

Particularly galling to Abd al-Wahhab was the visitation of tombs, especially those of sacred personages. Although initially sympathetic to the ideas of Abd al-Wahhab, the leader of Uyaynah was eventually compelled to expel him out of the village because his teachings and behavior began to antagonize the people of the town. Specifically, Abd al-Wahhab’s public stoning of a local woman accused of adultery angered many of the villagers. The expulsion however would prove to be fortuitous.

Abd al-Wahhab arrived in Dir’iyyah, a village forty miles away from Uyaynah, where the tribal chief Muhammad ibn Sa’ud welcomed him. This was a major turning point in the history of Wahhabism, yet Algar brushes over the events at Dir’iyyah. As Madawi Al-Rasheed reminds us in her excellent A History of Saudi Arabia, it was here that Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Sa’ud formed an alliance. Specifically, Ibn Sau’d pledged to protect Abd al-Wahhab if he paid allegiance to the tribe of Ibn Sa’ud. Abd al-Wahhab agreed, and with that the scene was set for the emergence of a religious emirate in central Arabia. Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings "impregnated the Saudi leadership with a new force, which proved to be crucial for the consolidation and expansion of Saudi rule." Wahhabism promised the Saudi leadership clear benefits in the form of “political and religious authority and material rewards, without which the conquest of Arabia would not have been possible.”

Under the banner of religious purification, the nascent Wahhabi-Saudi alliance formally declared jihad against the “nonbelievers” in 1746: the “nonbelievers” being all who did not adhere to the precise doctrines of Wahhabism, including Muslims.

Prof. Hamid Algar, a Cambridge trained professor of
Islamic Studies at Berkley

Those who accepted Wahhabism were "expected to swear allegiance to its religio-political leadership and demonstrate their loyalty by agreeing to fight for its cause and pay zakat to its representatives." Those who resisted the Wahhabi-Saudi encroachment were “subjected to raids that threatened their livelihoods.” Using such tactics, the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance was able to create a quasi-tribal confederation enabling them to conquer and consolidate vast regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad ibn Sa’ud died in 1791 and 1766 respectively leaving behind them a legacy of greed, ruthlessness and intolerance.

The Wahhabi-Saudi state waxed and waned for years before being officially declared in 1932. Each periodic re-emergence was more ruthless than the one before it. Algar notes that the second Wahhabi-Saudi conquest for example, which lasted between 1824 and 1891, “came at a cost of 400,000 killed and wounded.” Furthermore, it is said that the governors of the various provinces appointed by Ibn Sa’ud “carried out 40,000 public executions and 350,000 amputations in the course of subduing the peninsula.”

Although Algar gives a good overview of the Wahhabi/Saudi alliance in the 19 century, he brushes over key historical events that have affected the nature of the alliance since. The 1902 oath of allegiance is one such example. Through the pledge of 1902, Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa’ud extracted loyalty from the Wahhabi religious specialists (mutawwa’a), who were independent up until this time, by paying them a salary. Abd al-Wahhab, to his credit, had always refused monetary compensation for religious service, considering such transactions as bribes compromising the impartiality of the mutawwa’a. The 1902 allegiance, however, transformed the mutawwa’a from full time religious specialists to vassals loyal to Ibn Sa’ud and the al–Sa’ud family and dependent on their resources. In return, Ibn Sa’ud was guaranteed religious legitimacy and a loyal police force that could subdue the population and collect Zakat for the royal family, thereby allowing the consolidation of Sa’udi authority in Arabia. This relationship however has suffered periodic setbacks.

Take, for example, the 1979 Mecca uprising led by Juhayman ibn Muhammad al-Utayabi to which Algar devotes only one paragraph. Juhayman, an active preacher, protested against the relations of the Saudis with the ‘infidel powers,’ the materialism and corruption of the monarchy, and the relationship between the ulama and the Saudi royal family. He attracted a following of nearly 200, declared the movement’s spiritual leader, Muhammad al-Qahtani, to be the Mahdi and demanded the removal of the royal family.

In response, the Saudi state’s well-compensated “ulama,” lead by Shaykh ibn Baz, issued a fatwa supporting the Saudi royal family and authorizing military intervention in the sacred precincts of the Ka’ba. The fatwa justified the brutal suppression that followed, which culminated in the shedding of blood inside the holy mosque.

Juhayman’s legacy however was not as easily quashed. His accusations resonated through a significant swath of Saudi society and “highlighted the contradiction between the Islamic rhetoric and credentials of the Saudi state and its prolonged relationship with the West.” This was the first major challenge to the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy since the founding of the kingdom. The Royal family heeded the warning bells and acted quickly to maintain their authority. Mohammed al-Obaidi, Secretary General of the tourism board in the Asir province of Saudi Arabia, summed up the significance of the episode best when he stated that ''The royal family cut off Juhayman's head, but implemented his entire agenda. They said what the hell: it won't mess with our power. Let the society have what it wants. ''

After providing a brief sketch of Abd al-Wahhab’s life, Algar delves into an exposition of Abd al-Wahhab’s scant teachings. Algar pins the cornerstones of Wahhabi ideology as being the concepts of tawhid al-ibada (directing all worship to Allah alone) and bid’a (innovation in religious matters).

Tawhid al-ibada in its proper sense attempts to demarcate acts of worship appropriate for a Muslim. Violations of these rather arbitrary limits take place whenever an act of devotion involves an intermediary between the worshipper and Allah. It is within this context that petitionary prayers (du’aa) which mention the Prophet or visitations to the tombs of sacred personages (ziyara) are deemed religiously unacceptable. Violations of tawhid al-ibada are grave sins casting the violator as a mushrik (polytheist). Because the Wahhabi formulation of Tawhid al-ibada can be defined only negatively, in terms of the avoidance of certain practices, it leads to a “fear of perceived deviation at the very heart of Wahhabism and helps to explain its intrinsically censorious nature.”

Deviations from the fundamentals of tawhid al ibada are categorized as bid’a, which in the strictest sense is defined as an innovation in religious matters-specifically, any religious practice or concept that had its genesis after the third century of the Islamic era. Acts of bi’da were rife in society, according to Abd al-Wahhab, and included practices ranging from the rituals of the Sufi orders, to the commemoration of the birthday of the Prophet, to the recitation of religious poetry (qasida). Because bid’a was ubiquitously manifest in Muslim society, the Umma needed to be periodically purified-through force if necessary. Abd al-Wahhab was therefore at war with both his ancestors and his contemporaries. This was all justified, in Abd al-Wahhab’s view, by certain hadiths, which allude to the appearance of a mujaddid (“renewer”) once every hundred years, a title that Abd al-Wahhab proudly claimed.

Algar notes that in modern times, the Wahhabis have used Saudi petrodollars rather than force to spread their beliefs. Using various front organizations such as the Muslim World League, and at one time the Muslim Students Association of North America and ISNA in the United States, Wahhabi-esque ideas have permeated the philosophies of certain groups, such as the Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Jama’at-I Islami of Pakistan. Yet this does not mean that Wahhabism has been universally accepted. Algar points out that “in many parts of the Middle East, the Sufi orders have shown a resilience and vitality that have confounded Western scholars alike.” Although Algar does not elaborate on this point, it is a story that needs to be told, as it shows that the Wahhabi influence on Islam is amenable to defeat, that there are antidotes to its metastatic spread. The case of the Yihewanis in China is one such example, which will have to be saved for another day.

In the book’s final chapter, Algar writes that it is “inaccurate, irresponsible, and dangerous to paint a picture of American Muslims as being in their majority Wahhabi,” which contrary to the poisonous writings of Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson and others is absolutely correct. However, Algar continues by writing that it is equally dangerous to conflate “Salafi” with “Wahhabi” making a distinction between the two, identifying Salafis as being more diplomatic in approach, choosing “persuasion rather than coercion in order to rally other Muslims to their cause.”

This may have been true when the ideals of Salafism were first formulated by Muhammad Abduh, Jamal al Deen al Afghani and others, but as the eminent Khalid Abou El Fadl correctly observes, “Wahhabi thought exercised its greatest influence not under its own label, but under the rubric of Salafism.” The distinction between the two in modern times is null. This is an important point, because if we are to combat the crippling influence of Wahhabism on Islam today, we must recognize how ubiquitous many of its calcified tenets are in the Muslim world today and not engage in exercises of semantic gymnastics trying to differentiate Wahhabism from Salafism from Deobandism, etc…We must recognize that all of these movements, suffused with Abdul Wahhab’s spirit, have contributed to a virulent and parochial Islam that has gained currency with many throughout the world.

As Khalid Abou El Fadl reminds us, “Even a cursory examination of predominant ideas and practices reveals the widespread influence of Wahhabi thought on the Muslim world today.” The success of Wahhabi/Salafi ideas lie in their appeal to a very basic concept in Islam, “that Muslims ought to follow the precedent of the Prophet and his companions (al salaf al-salih)” only. This was the Golden Age of Islam. Yet such thinking is intrinisically flawed because, as Abou El Fadl notes, by emphasizing a presumed golden age in Islam, the adherents of Salafism (Wahhabism) effectively idealize the time of the Prophet and his companions, and ignore or demonize the balance of Islamic history. Critical historical inquiry effectively gets thrown out and the challenges of modernity are responded to by escaping to “the secure haven of the text.” By underrating the achievements of the past, the Wahhabis/Salafis devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.

The problem with Wahhabism as with any movement that attempts to distill historical insights into an ideology or strategy is that the movement risks becoming a caricature of its own best instincts. History should be a guide, not the objective. There is not historical panacea. Better to put our collective shoulder to the wheel rather than pine for phantom Golden Ages, which can easily be manipulated by people with questionable motives. I have always liked Rousseau’s take on the matter. In his Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss cites Rousseau as writing:

“If men have always been concerned with only one task -- how to create a society fit to live in -- the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done but turned out wrong, can be done again. The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is in us.”

The golden age of Islam does not lie in the Prophet’s Medina, nor as some people have suggested Cordoba between the 8 to 14 century, or Baghdad during the reign of Harun Al-Rashid. The golden age is in us! We must learn from the wisdom of the ancients, but not try to implement their mode, lifestyle, and cultural beliefs in toto in the modern age. Just look at the example of the Prophet. He was the continuation and seal of the message of Islam. His was not a new message, but the message that all the Prophets before him preached. Yet Prophet Muhammad did not try to preach the message as Adam or Abraham or Jesus did. He did not speak of “salaf al salih” and adopt the mannerisms and cultural beliefs of Noah or Lot. The Prophet realized that the times were different, that the people were different, and that the message needed to connect with the people and be relevant to their needs. The divine oneness of Allah supercedes cultural and historical constraints.