Two Issues: The War Within Islam & Israel and Islamism

By Barry Rubin

Two readers asked me questions well worth answering. The first asked whether Islam itself isn’t the enemy; the second, how these distinctions appear from an Israeli standpoint; .

Regarding the first question, I would stress that "Islam" as a religion functioning in the world is not at war with anyone as such. There are those who want to steer Islam toward an active war against how the majority of Muslims live at present and almost all the governments ruling them, using valid quotations and interpretations. And there are those who oppose them, including most of those governments, also using valid quotations and interpretations of Islam.

Western leaders' and media's mistake is not that they aren't "anti-Islam" or that they are "pro-Islam" but that they don’t understand fully this conflict happening among Muslims, the contending forces, the stakes, and the nature of the struggle. Thus, dire Islamist enemies are often misjudged as friends merely because they aren't violent at present or because they say soothing words to Western audiences, while genuinely moderate Muslims are shunned as "inauthentic" merely because they disagree with the radicals.

Once again, the enemy is not Islam but those Muslims who, so to speak, want to make Islam an enemy by waging war on others--including other Muslims--through propaganda, organization, violence, and most importantly the seizure of state power to install a totalitarian regime and wage war on everyone else, including non-Islamist Muslim governments. Whether or not these specific groups are violent at any particular place or moment is less important than the goals they are striving to achieve with all the strategies and tactics at their command.

The battle against the West or against Israel is generally smaller than the battle among Muslims for control over interpreting Islam and over political power. Most notably:

--Civil war in Algeria with tens of thousands of Muslims killed, injured, and tortured by Islamists and also the government side.

--A smaller civil war in Egypt, mainly in the 1990s, with hundreds dead and a president assassinated.

--A bloody civil war in Iraq in which Islamist Sunnis use terror against Shias, Kurdish Sunni Muslims, and Christians, as well as Westerners there. Sometimes Islamists among the Shia struggle for power within that community and over control of the state.

--A low-level insurrection in Saudi Arabia which has claimed scores of lives along with an internal war in Yemen.

--The post-revolutionary repression in Iran, reaching a peak with the stolen election and regime violence last year.

--The rivalry between Hamas and Fatah among Palestinians, with the former group conquering the Gaza Strip.

--The battle over Lebanon between Hizballah—backed by Iran and Syria--and non-Islamist Sunni, Christian, and Druze communities.

--The bloody fighting and conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan which has devastated large parts of both countries and causedt many deaths and much misery.

--The less visible but nonetheless important battle by Islamists to control Muslim communities in Europe and North America, sadly with the governments of those countries often ignorantly helping the Islamist side.

And more examples could be cited in terms of violence as well as heated debate and competition, extending all the way to Indonesia. How many Muslims have died in this fighting? One might even include the Iran-Iraq war as a manifestation, at least in part, of this struggle. Surely, even excluding that war, we are talking about several hundred thousand Muslim dead, a huge multiple of the number killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict and over a much shorter time period.

The imam of the "ground zero" mosque project told an audience that the West had more Muslim blood on its hands than Muslims had killed innocent Westerners. Note the use of the word "innocent" to the latter group while not to the former. In other words, if a Western soldier kills a Taliban in Afghanistan or Sunni insurgent terrorist in Iraq in self-defense that is equivalent to terrorists deliberately killing civilians on September 11 or in the London subway.

But leave that aside. If he, or others who fake their stances, were even close to being moderates they would first denounce the revolutionary Islamists murdering Muslims. If they don't take sides in their own internal struggles--and choose the non-totalitarian side in that struggle--why should one expect them to be moderate in their behavior toward the West?

What is going on, therefore, should not be defined mainly as a Muslim battle against the West (that's the revolutionary Islamists' narrative) but as a struggle among Muslims as to who should lead ad define their countries, societies, and religion. To a large extent, the real conflict with the West—or even with Israel—would only come after the Islamists have conquered the other Muslims and subordinated them to Islamist dictatorships. This is the stage we hope will never arrive.

That is why anyone who takes sides with those--moderates, nationalists, traditionalists--who oppose the revolutionary Islamists is doing something good for Muslims as a whole. And those who take sides either explicitly or objectively with the revolutionary Islamists is acting in a more "Muslimphobic" way than anyone who critiques Islam's extremist elements.

"Muslimophobic" is a good word, though I had to coin it. That means wanting to force a terrible dictatorship on Muslim people, to rationalize repressive dictatorships that already rule over them, and to rationalize revolutionary groups that engage in murder and aspire to engage in endless war and genocide. A leader who, for example, didn't condemn the stolen election and heightened repression in Iran last year is acting in a "Muslimophobic" manner since such policies injure millions of Muslims. Western governments that won't work hard to weaken and overthrow the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip are doing something "Muslimophobic" to its victims there.

The best thing one can do for Muslims and for Islam is to help win the war against revolutionary Islamism as quickly and effectively as possible, just as the best thing one could do for the Germans, Italians, and Japanese during World War Two, or those who dwelt in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, was to defeat those ruling regimes and ideologies.

Similarly, not all liberals or socialists were Communists, nor all conservatives or nationalists actual fascists. One has to define the enemy and that usually means someone who wants to kill and destroy you, to repress and enslave, whether or not they are trying to do it at this exact moment or merely waiting until they feel strong enough to win.

Thus, the enemy is not "Islam" but those particular Muslims and their supporters who want to have a monopoly on defining Islam, kill any Muslims who disagree, impose terrible dictatorships over Muslims, unite Muslims to wage war on everyone else, set back social and economic progress in Muslim majority countries by a century or more, and plunge the world into decades of horror and bloodshed.

On the second question, definitions of Islam and Islamism, the question of moderate and of traditionalist Islam are all-important from an Israeli viewpoint. Let me put it briefly and simply. There is a distinction between those who hate us and don't intend to do much about it--even if that means they will attack us with words, not make peace, and even give money sometimes to the latter group--and those who hate us and are going to try to kill us actively even if it involves a high level of risk for them.

We can manage the former; we have to fight the latter. Muslims and Arabs in general, even most Arab nationalists, and all Arab regimes except for Syria (which has cynically but cleverly joined the Islamist cause, the Gaza Strip (ruled by an Islamist regime), and wacky Libya are in the former category. So are most Arab citizens of Israel.

The latter category includes Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, Syria, Muslim Brotherhoods, and Libya. We must work to minimize their power and to ensure that revolutionary Islamists don't take over even more countries which can then be used as bases to attack Israel through a range of ways and also intimidate other Arab regimes and the West into passivity.

An Israeli, as opposed to most Jews in Galut (exile from Israel) or if you prefer Diaspora (dispersion from Israel) understands this. What's important is not whether people hate us but what are they going to do about it and whether their actions pose a direct material threat. To Jews in Galut hatred in itself is a high level of threat because they cannot defend themselves and are dependent on the good opinion and protection of non-Jewish neighbors. Hate speech is equivalent to a major threat. For Israel, talk is talk.

Or as an Israeli going to go to Morocco on business replied, when asked if she wasn't afraid to go to a country where people hate Israel, shrugged and said nonchalantly, "They hate us everywhere. So what?"

You should not get from that a disinterest in public diplomacy or hasbara (though Israelis are definitely less obsessed with that than Galut Jews and they should be), but an understanding that in any discussion between material reality and words the former must have the greater weight. Or as Golda Meir put it, "Better a bad press than a good epitaph."

So these things do matter. Revolutionary (or radical or just plain) Islamists are a threat. Ordinary Muslims or secularized Muslims or moderate Muslims or conservative traditionalist Muslims or Arab nationalists (nowadays, not in the past) are far less of a threat.

If, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt, turns it into a new Iran, act in a militantly anti-American and anti-Western way, launches massive repression, and starts a war on Israel, who cares whether they won by election or were previously nonviolent for some decades?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

On The Rick Moran Show: Do We Really Think the POTUS is a DOG???

Last night I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Rick Moran Show.  We talked about the Mid-Terms, Burning Qurans and why the President thinks we think he's a dog.  If you did not get a chance to listen yesterday, you can listen below (if you cant see a player below click here)

Listen to internet radio with Rick Moran on Blog Talk Radio

35% of Porkulus Has NOT Been Spent Yet-But POTUS Asking For More

When I was growing up, my Mom always told me that I should finish what was on my plate before I asked for more, perhaps President Obama should follow my Mother's advice.  When the stimulus bill was passed nineteen months ago, we were told that the nearly billion dollars of new federal spending would be invested in "shovel ready projects," much of it on infrastructure. That, as Congressman Wilson might say, is a lie.

While the American economy continues to sink into the toilet 19 months after the passage of the porkulus bill, 35% of the money from the legislation has not been spent.

Using the data from ProPublica, the chart below shows that almost $280 of the $790 billion original fiscal stimulus program is still in the system  either unspent or in progress' total 35% of the total

This $278 billion will likely be delivered by the end of 2010, and it's a huge sum for just four months. Obviously the Democrats were so sure that the first 65% would work, they gambled on the remaining dollars hitting around election day. Oops that didn't work .


Now the President wants to spend even more on infrastructure. Over the weekend he announced

he wants to borrow another $50 Billion from countries like China so we can initiate new shovel-ready projects. Even though almost 6 times that money has yet to be spent from the first stimulus. And just like the first stimulus, this money will not be spent for more than a year. Earlier this week senior presidential advisers told Fox, that despite what the president said, under even the most optimistic scenarios, no jobs would be created until next year.

Or to put another way, this latest Obama stimulus effort is designed not to stimulate the economy, but to stimulate Democratic party votes in close congressional races, this November.

Last week readers were asked to pick a name for the new stimulus program, the winner by a landslide was

Federal Deficit Enhancement Program:

Interview With Christopher Barron GOProud Chair

A month ago I had little idea what GOProud was. Then WND editor Joseph Farah decided to drop conservative pundit and author, Ann Coulter as the keynote speaker for his "Taking America Back National Conference because of her plan to be the keynote speaker at "Homocon," an event put together by GOProud the first genuinely conservative group for gay Republicans. Farah followed up by with a witch hunt,  attacking more of the program's sponsors including Conservative Political Action Conference director Lisa DePasquale; Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who sits on GOProud's board; and John Hawkins of Right Wing News among others.

Farah is ignoring one key fact,   the key to restoring America to greatness is to vote the  progressive Democrats out of office. Ann Coulter,  and John Hawkins, Lisa DePasquale along with GOProud and the rest of the program's sponsors are important parts of that effort.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News, which is sponsoring GOProud's controversial Homcon event, featuring Ann Coulter, has interviewed Christopher Barron. Barron is the chair of GOProud. Here are some excepts from the interview.

Barron on identity politics

The flip side of that is that we can't continue to lose group after group because we simply refuse to have a debate about this. We've lost African-American voters for decades because the belief is that we don't care about African-American voters -- and what's outrageous is that we support the policies that are actually good for African-American voters. But we've let the Left drown it out because we won't engage in quote unquote identity politics. I think that's unfortunate. The same thing can be said of Jewish Americans and Latino Americans.

The truth is, is that we have the conservative policies that are good for all Americans, good for conservatives, good for Jewish people, good for African-Americans, good for gays and lesbians, and good for all people. We shouldn't be afraid to say guess what? Our policies are good for you

Barron's message to liberal critics of Homocon

Now, along those lines, what would you say to liberal critics of Homocon who've been pretty scathing about the event, who are upset that Ann Coulter's headlining, or that people like me are sponsoring, because we don't agree with your group on issues like gay marriage and gays in the military. What would you say to them?

I'd tell them to get a life. Honestly, I would.

The fact is that we don't take our marching orders from the Left and we're certainly not going to be bullied by them. I'm not surprised that they're outraged that you're sponsoring it or outraged we're having Ann speak. They're outraged over everything. I mean these are the folks who wake up in the morning outraged. So, that's what I would say: I would tell them to get a life.

Barron on the Left and gays

Now, last question here. Do you find it odd that so many of these groups on the left basically say to gay Americans, "The only issues you're supposed to care about at all are gay marriage and gays in the military and everything else is irrelevant?" Do you think that's helpful for gay Americans?

No, it's not helpful at all. The fact is that gay people, like any other Americans, sit down at their table at night and what are the things that they're talking about? What are the things that they're worried about? They're worried about jobs. They're worried about healthcare. They're worried about taxes. They're worried about retirement security. On all of these issues, the gay left has no answers.

The only thing they say is, "marriage or bust." That's it

 There is so much more of this interesting interview to read.  CLICK HERE and go to Right Wing News to read the rest. You do not want to miss it.

A Rosh HaShanah Story: I Always Walked To Shul with My Father

I have re-posted this story every year on Erev Rosh HaShanah. It is the story of how I went from a Yid--to a Yid with Lid, it called, I Always Walked to Shul With My Father

My face felt flushed, I tried to retain my composure “This is volunteer work. I don’t need the fights, the name calling.” The Rabbi sat across from me quietly. I was telling him why I felt it necessary to resign from the board of trustees. When I ran out of reasons (and breath) there was a moment of silence as he studied me. He leaned backwards into the chair and began to spoke very softly, which in itself had a very calming effect on me. The Rabbi had his own checklist of reasons why I should remain in my position… the last item stopped me dead in my tracks. He said I was an observant Jew who encouraged other people to embrace Judaism.

Observant Jew? Wow! That was the first time in my life anyone had called me that. I never thought of myself as “observant.” Until recently, I was a three-day a year Jew who practically had a booth named after him at the local McDonalds. I stopped there weekly on the way to my 7:25 tee off at the golf course every Saturday morning. My Rabbi’s very generous use of those words made me suddenly realize how much has changed over such a short period of time.

I didn’t grow up very observant. Sure, we would go to services two or three times a year on a Friday night, we always went on the High Holidays, had a big meal on Passover (no Seder though) , and lit an electric Chanukah Menorah every year.

My parents worked very worked hard to instill in me strong feelings for being Jewish; they encouraged me to hang out with Jewish kids, allowed me to continue my religious studies after my Bar Mitzvah; and drove me to countless meetings of Jewish organizations. And of course, I was told if I ever brought home a “shiksa,” a non-Jewish girl, my Mom would put her head in the oven (it was an idle threat, our oven was electric not gas).

The most vivid thing I remember about growing up is walking with my Dad, all 26 blocks between my house and the Shul on the High Holidays, both ways. It was such a special time, just my father and me. I would see most everyone else drive their cars, park two blocks away from the locked synagogue parking lot, and walk the rest of the way. It was strange that my Dad felt the need to walk. Maybe he knew that those walks would light an ember inside me, because as I got as I got older and drifted away from Judaism, the remembrances of those walks kept me from moving completely away.

For some reason I always felt comfortable hanging around people who were more religious than me. I worked at the Hebrew Academy Day Camp; many of the girls I dated in high school kept kosher and were Sabbath observant. I admired my observant friends for their willpower and wished that I could join them in their observance, but I couldn’t do it. I believed very strongly in God, but I felt that becoming more observant was too high a mountain to scale,especially all at once. And if you couldn’t do it all, you were a hypocrite to do just some if it.

So I went the other direction and became a kind of a “social” Jew. I wrapped myself in the blanket of Jewish causes and organizations, using them to protect myself from the guilt I felt as I drifted further and further away from the few Mitzvot that I did keep. I still took off for the High Holidays and I wouldn’t drive on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but I stopped going to Shul.

Once Lois and I got married (she is Jewish, so my mom was spared that slow suicide via electric oven), I started driving on the High Holidays so we could attend services at my in-law’s shul, an hour's drive away. After they retired to Florida, I would sneak into my sister’s Temple for an hour on the Holidays, I told myself that it was really for my daughter, I wanted her to have some Judaism in her life. But somewhere inside I knew it was for me, I wanted to be in a Synagoge.

We moved to a bigger house after our second child was born. The house met all my requirements: big backyard, cable TV in each bedroom, and a reasonable walking distance to the nearest shul, which we promptly joined. I had no intention of doing anything more than sending my kids to religious school and of course, walking to synagogue three days a year.

In the spring, just eight months after the first High Holiday walk to my new shul, Lois’s mom, of blessed memory, succumbed to a long illness. Even though we were not active in the shul or observant, the Rabbi and the congregation immediately embraced us with warmth. During the shiva (the seven day mourning period), the Rabbi visited or called every day and the daily minyan came to our home. This was a new experience for me; when I was growing up, the minyan only came to the big donors homes or to the regular shul attendees. My new shul they didn’t care about my level of observance, or how much I gave; they just cared to provide comfort to mourners.

After shiva, my wife went to shul every day to say Kaddish (its done for 11 months minus one day). I joined her when I could, which usually didn’t include Shabbat -- my golf day. The more I went, the more those old feelings began to seep out that locked box stored in the back of my mind, that desire to do more.

Around the same time, The United Synagogue (an organization of Conservative shuls in the US) started a home study program. Each day we read one chapter of the Tanach (the Jewish bible) and discussed it via an e-mailing list. Being a commuter I thought it might be fun so I joined. The more I read, the more I wanted to read, and within a few months I was on every Jewish study e-mail list that I could find. I began to attend Shabbat afternoon services just to be able to be able to participate in the Torah discussion that we would have between afternoon and evening services.

Those old feeling of wanting to become more observant became strong again, but this time it was different. My Rabbi encouraged the congregation to become more observant but it was O.K. to do it gradually. Judaism isn’t all or nothing; any step toward Torah is positive. This felt like a new religion -- “No-Guilt Judaism.” The more I studied the more I learned that the approach is not unique.

I began to do little things (for the kids of course) like lighting candles Friday night. We went as a family to services every Friday night too. Since golf season was over, I would go Saturday mornings. Even built my first Succah, fooling myself into thinking that it was not for religions reasons, it was a good project for the children and they love eating outside anyway. Of course the kids were asleep every morning when I went into the Succah before going to work to say the blessings over the lulav and the etrog.

Almost a year into my journey I took the most difficult step of all. I gave up my prime real estate, my 7:25 Saturday morning tee off. Even though my only Saturday observance was going to shul, I didn’t want to give up the few hours of Shabbat that I did keep, and the more I went, the more I felt that I was connecting with God and with myself. So I gave it up and eventually found a time on Sundays. (my golf game got a lot worse, which just goes to prove the Lord works in mysterious ways).

Over the next two years, slowly, more mitzvot began to sneak into my routine, never by design. Every once in a while I would wake up wanting to do more: first I decided to stop eating meat from non-kosher animals, and mixing dairy with meat, and began to go to shul for all the Festivals (Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot). I started to eat only dairy or fish when Lois and I went out to restaurants. Eventually my freezer at home was stocked with kosher meat even though my house is not at all kosher, and a few months ago I started wearing a Kippah all the time. I have learned much about the spirit of practicing Judaism . Jewish rituals are not purely the solemn rites as I had always thought they were. God is smarter than that. They are a chance to have joy, to relish your time with family, community and God. Serve God With Joy became my "Mantra"

Have you ever sat in front of a dish of peanuts at a party? You try one peanut, wait a while and soon you have another. The more you have, the faster you want them. Eventually you're jealously guarding your spot on the couch by the dish. That’s what adding mitzvot to your life is like. The key is you don’t have to eat the whole bowl in one sitting, nor do you have to feel bad when there are leftovers.

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, a great scholar and former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America once defined a good Jew as someone who was trying to become a better Jew. That is the key, you don’t have to do it all at once, but if you do one mitzvah regularly, something as easy as lighting candles every Friday night, eventually you will want to do another and another.

I once read that when God created the world, sparks of his holiness were spread across the earth. Every time that a Jew performs one of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah one of those sparks are purified and sent back to heaven. I don’t know if sparks have anything to do with but each time I add an observance, I feel a little closer to God, and it is that bit of closeness makes me want more. The guilt that I used to feel for not being observant has been replaced with joy that I am on the right road. My friend Faith, a Conservative Rabbi, put it well. She said that its not that I don’t observe a particular commandment…its that I don’t observe it…yet.

My Dad called me today; he asked me if I changed my mind about quitting the board. I told him that I had. He said, “Good because that’s where you belong.” What he doesn’t realize is that I would have never gotten there if he drove to Shul on Rosh Hashanah, it was clinging to that one mitzvah that put me on the road to observance.

I still walk to shul on the High Holidays. Its not 26 blocks; its a mile and a quarter over two big hills and a valley.This year will be the first Rosh Hashanah since my my mom passed away last October. But  my Dad will be sleeping our house because he still doesn’t like to drive on the High Holidays. So I get to walk to shul with my Dad again, and my Kids walk with us. Some day when they look back at these walks, I hope that will be as important for them as it has been for my Dad and me.

To all of my readers L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu. May God grant you and your families health, happiness, laughter and  the Love of Family and Friends in the coming year.