avari | haroon moghul

Islam in India: My Lecture, This Wednesday (10/28) at Camden Community College

This Wednesday, Oct. 28th, I will be giving an introductory lecture, open to the public at no-cost, on the roots and present realities of the Muslim communities of India.  This lecture will take place at the Blackwood, NJ, campus of Camden Community College, Camden, New Jersey. (Campus map; directions; event location: Civic Center, Connector Building).

The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m.; all interested must register in advance.    For more information on the lecture series, here is an intro, and here is the official flier with full details and directions (.pdf).

The lecture summary, as advertised:

From Roots to Realities: India’s Muslim Communities Today / India Lecture Series
Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: Civic Hall, Connector Building, Blackwood Campus
Description: Haroon S. Moghul, doctoral candidate at Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will discuss the history, ideological/theological and social roots of India’s Muslim community.

We ask that all participants register in advance to guarantee seating is available and in order to prepare sufficient materials to be given out at the door. If you are unable to do so, please call the office the day of the event to register by phone or online to register via our Web site: www.camdencc.edu/civiccenter

All lectures will be held in the Civic Hall located inside the Connector Building on the Blackwood Campus of the College.

View Lecture Series Brochure and Registration Form

Leaving Afghanistan

Sharing a number of links with you for the weekend.  

I am pretty convinced that there is no military solution to this conflict, and that we will have to engage the Taliban; as distasteful as it is, we must distinguish between al Qaeda and the Taliban's ambitions.  But more than matters of morality and even issues of legacy, there are two deeper national security questions at work: We are not the global power some neocons thought (or think) we are.  We cannot sustain this war, financially or politically, without massive infusions from allied forces, and those will not be forthcoming, which is the lead-in to the second question: Why fight a war that could destroy NATO, when the chances of "winning" are so slim?  

Some people ask how it is a power declines and another power rises.  It's because of bad decisions at extremely crucial moments.  There are transitional periods in world history, and often time those transitional moments are made still more crucial because one power made a very bad choice and found itself paying the consequences of that choice for years down the road, while the other power(s) made smarter choices.  (Note: Intention doesn't have to count.)  You cannot always go back and change a choice, and pretend nothing happened.  When we embarked on our two most recent wars in the last eight years, we were not given a clear strategy, nor did we bother to realize that we are no longer in the colonial era.  As we went on into two wars that, although they did not cost the number of lives Vietnam did, ended up costing us probably $1 trillion, future competitors of the United States were putting massive sums of money into more relevant causes.  

Iran and its Nuclear Program: Ron Paul and Juan Cole on our Media and our Strategy

Many common things said about Iran simply aren't true.  Pepe Escobar at TomDispatch goes into the oil relationships that shape our Iran policy.

Juan Cole also links to the following Ron Paul interview, in which he argues that, in the end, our Iran strategy (like our Afghanistan strategy) only benefits China:

Americans Are Scarcely Prepared for a Middle East and South Asia Firestorm

There is a firestorm ahead in the Middle East for which neither the U.S. government nor the U.S. public is prepared. They seem scarcely aware how close it is on the horizon or how ferocious it will be. The U.S. government (and therefore almost inevitably the U.S. public) is deluding itself massively about its capacity to handle the situation in terms of its stated objectives. The storm will go from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Israel/Palestine, and in the classic expression "it will spread like wildfire."

Let us start with Iraq. The United States has signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq, which went into effect on July 1. It provided for turning over internal security to the Iraqi government and, in theory, essentially restricting U.S. forces to their bases and to some limited role in training Iraqi troops. Some of the wording of this agreement is ambiguous. Deliberately so, since that was the only way both sides would sign it.

Even the first months of operation show how poorly this agreement is operating. The Iraqi forces have been interpreting it very strictly, formally forbidding both joint patrols and also any unilateral U.S. military actions without prior detailed clearance with the government. It has gotten to the point that Iraqi forces are stopping U.S. forces from passing checkpoints with supplies during daytime hours.

The U.S. forces have been chafing. They have tried to interpret the clause guaranteeing them the right of self-defense far more loosely than the Iraqi forces want. They are pointing to the upturn in violence in Iraq and therefore implicitly to the incapacity of Iraqi forces to guarantee order.

The general commanding the U.S. forces, Ray Odierno, is obviously extremely unhappy and is patently scheming to find excuses to reestablish a direct U.S. role. Recently, he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq and President Masoud Barzani of the Kurdish Regional Government. Odierno sought to persuade them to permit tripartite (Iraqi/Kurdish/American) joint patrols in Mosul and other areas of northern Iraq, in order to prevent or minimize violence. They politely agreed to consider his proposal. Unfortunately for Odierno, his plan would require a formal revision of the SOFA agreement.

Originally, there was supposed to be a referendum in the beginning of July on popular approval of the SOFA agreement. The United States was afraid of losing the vote, which would have meant that all U.S. forces would have had to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2010, one full year earlier than the theoretical date in the SOFA agreement.

The United States thought it was very clever in persuading al-Maliki to postpone this referendum to January 2010. Now it will be held in conjunction with the national elections. In the national elections, everyone will be seeking to obtain votes. No one is going to be campaigning in favor of a "yes" vote on the referendum. Lest this be in any doubt, al-Maliki is submitting a project to the Iraqi parliament that will permit a simple majority of "no" votes to annul the agreement. There will be a majority of "no" votes. There may even be an overwhelming majority of "no" votes. Odierno should be packing his bags now. I'll bet he still has the illusion that he can avoid the onset of the firestorm. He can't.

What will happen next? At the present, but this may change between now and January, it looks like al-Maliki will win the election. He will do this by becoming the number one champion of Iraqi nationalism. He will make deals with all and sundry on this basis. Iraqi nationalism at the moment doesn't have much to do with Iran or Saudi Arabia or Israel or Russia. It means first of all liberating Iraq from the last vestiges of U.S. colonial rule, which is how almost all Iraqis define what they have been living under since 2003.

Will there be internal violence in Iraq? Probably, though possibly less than Odierno and others expect. But so what? Iraqi "liberation" - which is what the entire Middle East will interpret a "no" vote on the referendum to be - will immediately have a great impact on Afghanistan. There people will say, if the Iraqis can do it, so can we.

Of course, the situation in Afghanistan is different, very different, from that of Iraq. But look at what is going on now with the elections in Afghanistan. We have a government put into power to contain and destroy the Taliban. The Taliban have turned out to be more tenacious and militarily effective than any one seemed ever to anticipate. Even the tough U.S. commander there, Stanley McChrystal, has recognized that. The U.S. military is now talking of "succeeding" in perhaps a decade. Soldiers who think they have a decade to win a war against insurgents have clearly not been reading military history.

Notice the Afghan politicians themselves. Three leading candidates for the presidency, including President Hamid Karzai, debated on television the current internal war. They agreed on one thing. There must be some kind of political negotiations with the Taliban. They differed on the details. The U.S. (and NATO) forces are there ostensibly to destroy the Taliban. And the leading Afghan politicians are debating how to come to political terms with them. There is a serious disjuncture here of appreciation of realities, or perhaps of political objectives.

The polls - for what they are worth - are showing that the majority of Afghans want the NATO forces to leave and the majority of U.S. voters want the same thing. Now look ahead to January 2010, when the Iraqis vote the United States out of Iraq. Remember that, before the Taliban came to power, the country was the site of fierce and ruthless fighting among competing warlords, each with different ethnic bases, to control the country.

The United States was actually relieved when the Pakistani-backed Taliban took power. Order at last. There turned out to be a minor problem. The Taliban were serious about sharia and friendly to the emergent al-Qaeda. So, after 9/11, the United States, with west European approval and United Nations sanction, invaded. The Taliban were ousted from power - for a little while.

What will happen now? The Afghans will probably revert to the nasty continuing inter-ethnic wars of the warlords, with the Taliban just one more faction. The U.S. public's tolerance for that war will evaporate entirely. All the internal factions and many of the neighbors (Russia, Iran, India, and Pakistan) will remain to fight over the pieces.

And then stage three - Pakistan. Pakistan is another complicated situation. But none of the players there trust the United States. And the polls there show that the Pakistani public thinks that the greatest danger to Pakistan is the United States, and that by an overwhelming vote. The traditional enemy, India, is far behind the United States in the polls. When Afghanistan crumbles into a full-fledged civil war, the Pakistani army will be very busy supporting the Taliban. They cannot support the Taliban in Afghanistan while fighting them in Pakistan. They will no longer be able to accept U.S. drones bombing in Pakistan.

So then comes stage four of the firestorm - Israel/Palestine. The Arab world will observe the collapse of U.S. projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The U.S. project in Israel/Palestine is a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Israelis are not going to budge an inch. But neither now, and especially after the rest of the firestorm, are the Palestinians. The one consequence will be the enormous pressure that other Arab states will put upon Fatah and Hamas to join forces. This will be over Mahmoud Abbas's dead body - which might literally be the case.

The whole Obama program will have gone up in flames. And the Republicans will make hay with it. They will call U.S. defeat in the Middle East "betrayal" and it is obvious now that there is a large group inside the United States very receptive to such a theme.

One either anticipates firestorms and does something useful, or one gets swept up in them.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

Job Opening and Uighur Discontent (Related, But Only Sort of)

EurasiaNet has a position open for web manager in New York City, and that same site also features a decent commentary on the sources of Uighur discontent.  Thanks to Faraz for linking to a Boston.com photo feature on the ethnic clashes in Urumqi.  The Times reports that China is banning mosque meetings.  In other words, public spaces are being closed off; the clampdown on mosques is brutal, but I am sure it will succeed.  The Uighur simply do not have the numbers to create a no-win situation for China.  Keep them, at least, in your prayers; add something this Friday to your sermons.  Your prayers will reach them -- trust me.  They will give them strength and solace and comfort.  It's the least we can do (and the most powerful thing we can do, if we are sincere).

This is what Urumqi has become (from Boston.com: Uighur woman carries a metal rod as she walks down a main road in Urumqi on July 8, 2009. Urumqui's Uighur and Han residents have taken to carrying metal rods and sticks for protection against attacks. (REUTERS/David Gray)):

Iran protests continue, with thousands on the street.  Insh'allah they are able to find a peaceful means of establishing a more democratic and accountable Islamic Republic, which is guided by the principles and ideals of the religion and respects all citizens as human beings, creations of God; as 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (r) said, and I paraphrase for fear of misquote, our souls are worth paradise, so they should not be sold for less than that.  Every government should respect that value and honor that destiny.

al-Qaeda is stepping up operations in the Maghrib.  Great.  They're always looking for new Muslim-killing markets.  Can't they all just blow up alone, in the desert?  That way everyone's happy.

Ongoing clashes in Kashmir, over an alleged incident of molestation.

Follow me on Twitter.  I post even more links so Avari doesn't make me look crazy.

Pakistan, Bollywood, Mumbai, Nationalism, Gay Marriage, Muslims

"It seems quite certain that the terrorists who attacked the financial capital were trained in Pakistan. The outrages have sparked a wave of indignation among the middle class. Demonstrations have been held in the major cities, calling for revenge, in particular for strikes against training camps in Pakistan. The models held up here are Israel and the United States; if they can "take out" individual terrorists and invade whole countries, ask some Indians, why not we?" [link]

Militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, in the biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line, officials said.  Terminal manager Kifayatullah Khan said armed men flattened the gate before dawn with a rocket-propelled grenade, shot dead a guard and set fire to a total of 106 vehicles, including about 70 Humvees.  [link]

Just three years ago, the central government still controlled the provinces near Kabul. But years of mismanagement, rampant criminality, and mounting civilian casualties have led to a spectacular resurgence of the Taliban and other related groups. Today, the Islamic Emirate enjoys de facto control in large parts of the country's south and east. According to ACBAR, an umbrella organization representing more than 100 aid agencies, insurgent attacks have increased by 50% over the past year. Foreign soldiers are now dying at a higher rate here than in Iraq.  [link, adding: The Taliban have changed: "Last year, for instance, Mullah Omar issued an edict declaring music and parties -- banned in the Taliban's previous incarnation -- permissible."]

Some Stupidity Beggars Belief

My last posts drew what is, for this blog, a high number of comments (like, 9 total yaar), some of which were intriguing and offered more resources, and two of which were astonishingly dim.  One commentator noted,

"I find it amusing that people think India cannot contain a fragmented Pakistan as they don't see history. Pakistani WAS divided once before - 1971 - and India had no resulting spike in violence or whatever."

First off, Pakistan's split, after its military practiced ethnic cleansing and engaged in widespread human rights violations, led to the emergence of another nation-state.  (Take that, man-who-sees-up-his-rear-end.)  Nation-states are good at dealing with other nation-states; India's challenge, like Pakistan's and America's, is dealing with non-state actors with increased mobility, more global ambition and more ruthless tactics and technology. 

I'm not predicting Pakistan breaks into two or three independent countries; I'm forewarning of the danger however remote of Pakistan fragmenting in the manner of Somalia, Iraq or Afghanistan, with the attendant violence likely to erupt and seep and ruin.  Not to mention that an independent Bangladesh, grateful to India, is very different than a destabilized, ungoverned Pakistan with an open border from Kashmir to Kabul.  That is a security and political nightmare.

Secondly, this confidence is absurd: India's security forces took days to respond to the attacks in Mumbai and contain them, implying that India is as lost in the face of non-state actors' violence as Pakistan is.  Recent news confirms Indian security forces' inadequacy.

The better comment was by a man whose head has apparently long ago abandoned his body, who did to his higher faculties what Iranians did to the Shah, when he actually had the courage to type for all electronic time, "No community ever resorted to killing innocent passer-bys."  Except, apparently, Muslims.  This comment is so stupid as to merit no response from me except to draw your attention, and the commentators, to the stupidness of the comment's stupidity.  Really, if I have to draw out the fact that explanation, strategy and justification are not one word in the English language, I will scream.  You cannot hear it.  But it will happen. 

Elsewhere:

Wajahat Ali, a fixture in the internet media, now takes on the case of the Holy Land Foundation.  This is brave stuff, published by The Guardian.

The Episcopal Church is splitting over, in part, the issues surrounding homosexuality.

Ex-U.S. official argues that Pakistan's military was responsible for the attacks in Mumbai.  How this has all been confirmed, I am not sure.  Because the Indian government said so!  I do not doubt that it is likely, but I do wonder about the ease with which a full narrative has been constructed, especially when this is backed up by American intelligence agencies that recently seem to miss the obvious and end up making one bad choice after another -- why are Indian agencies any different?  How can the operation still be under investigation and yet concluded?

The challenge here is not to draw a narrative that brings us to a dead-end, too: If Pakistan is responsible, then Pakistan must be punished. (Note: It doesn't matter if Pakistan is responsible. It just matters if that's what the right people say at the right time.) And that will only further increase violence in the region, and empower extremist elements in the country against that country's limited ability to fight monsters in part born of its own, well, stupidity. 

Pakistan's foreign policy has alternated quite often between unthinking bombast and cruel and unusual means of shooting oneself in the foot (along with many others.)  The country needs to rethink itself, but its government is to weak to begin the process in a hostile climate.  That is the Pakistani tragedy, alongside a Mumbai tragedy, a broken Subcontinent that requires will, patience, endurance and sacrifice to fix.  Indian aggressiveness right now is the worst possible outcome, not only because it is the outcome that the attackers wanted, though that should be enough to give some pause.

What Mumbai Means for Pakistan

India has demanded that Pakistan hand over 20 fugitives.  Or else.  Or else what, exactly?  War?  If India's government accepts that Pakistan's government was not responsible for the attack (that is after all not the same thing as saying that the attackers came from, or were trained in, a "foreign country"), then this is to say the least unhelpful.  Pakistan is facing a terrorism problem more severe than India's and more complicated; this kind of rhetoric handicaps the Pakistani government -- just as Obama's rhetoric, during the campaign -- when it needs a full spectrum strategy to deal with a terrible and tremendous threat to its stability and sovereignty. 

Rightfully, India and Indians are angry at the vile attacks in Mumbai, but a response must consider the long-term consequences of further destabilizing Pakistan -- not only for the Pakistani population, which has also been savaged by this disgusting violence, but for the chaos it would unleash on India and Indians.

India's exaggerated claims aside, India cannot militarily, financially or politically contain a fragmented Pakistan, and would face, potentially, a serious wave of violence that would try the state and perhaps handicap it severely.  This is a worst-case scenario, but when dealing with two nuclear powers, side by side, with a history of violence internally and externally, it is good to consider worst-case scenarios.

Simultaneously, Pankaj Mishra has chimed in, speaking of a Kashmir connection.  He also notes the rhetorical side of the militants' attacks:

MIDWAY through last week’s murderous rampage in Mumbai, one of the suspected gunmen at the besieged Jewish center called a popular Indian TV channel. Speaking in Urdu (the primary language of Pakistan and many Indian Muslims), he ranted against the recent visit of an Israeli general to the Indian-ruled section of the Kashmir Valley. Referring to the Pakistan-backed insurgency in the valley, and the Indian military response to it, he asked, “Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?”

In a separate phone call, another gunman invoked the oppression of Muslims by Hindu nationalists and the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. Such calls were the only occasions on which the militants, whom initial reports have tied to the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, offered a likely motive for their indiscriminate slaughter. Their rhetoric seems all too familiar. Nevertheless, it shows how older political conflicts in South Asia have been rendered more noxious by the fallout from the “war on terror” and the rise of international jihadism.

We should, at the least, now what is being said, and about what, and why.  This especially is key:

Pakistan’s new civilian government is too weak to control either the extremist groups within the country or the various rogue elements within its military and intelligence. The American military was reported to have started bombing supposed terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan’s borders even as General Musharraf stumbled to the exit. As its increasingly desperate pleas to the Bush administration to stop the attacks go unheeded, Pakistan’s government appears pathetically helpless to its own citizens.

Juan Cole cites reports that Mumbai's Muslim community has refused to bury the militants responsible.  There's a short but interesting debate in the comments section.

On Naming Before Ending: Reflections on Mumbai

First off, as I must say, this was disgusting.  No question.  But closely following and importantly, how did it happen, and just as much, how were we told it happened?  The latter concerns me.

I found out about the attacks while waiting in Columbia's student center, hearing that the violence seemed sporadic, random and terrible, in all senses of the term.  By the time I got to a television, which was due to travel not till the next day, it was already India's 9/11.  Really?  It was 26/11, but that's about that.  There's no way what happened happened without local collaboration, never mind the very real possibility that the attackers were themselves Indians who, even if trained in militant camps outside the country, were in part shaped by an unfortunate climate of fear, violence, deprivation and depression amongst their 130-million plus community -- which, historically, should be understood as a reason in part for the Pakistan movement, the economic and political liberation of a huge and hugely deprived minority -- sitting at the bottom of the over-populated Indian barrel.  Hurt, then radicalized, turned inane and insane.  9/11 was an attack on America from outside America; American Muslims are not the bottom tier of American society, and certainly do not exist in a situation comparable to untouchables -- we were not often described as the fifth column before 9/11, either.  So it is amusing that the American media, which is always careful never to break a sweat thinking, dreaming or researching, found itself on the side of the Indian State within a matter of hours.  Not India's people, but the wider and broader purposes of the State, which are usually articulated incompletely.

Before the attackers were even gunned down or captured, the Indian government had leaked that they were Pakistanis.  How, pray tell, did they know?  Do the have databases of all Pakistani citizens?  Can they still be fighting off an attack and already know where it came from and who was involved in it?The numbers involved fluctuates, but the origins are certain.  While it is extremely doubtful, to the point of conspiracy-theory-mindedness, that the attackers were anything but Muslim, at least in self-identification, consider the way the media buys into narratives.  Pakistan's ISI has rogue elements, and finances terrorist attacks, but India's RAW cannot, because India is a democracy.  News flash: Democracies attack each other (who overthrew Mossadegh?), and other types of states.  Democracies can also finance violence and encourage human rights violations.  The continued laziness that runs through our public discourse, refusing to define what is "terrorism" -- this certainly was -- and what isn't -- Gujurat, maybe?  On NBC news, they called it the most brazen attack on India short of war.  Certainly 200 dead is a tragedy, a massacre, an outrage, and deserves condemnation as such.  But what about when armed gangs storm through Muslim villages, raping and killing hundreds, or when Christians are killed and their churches burned in Orissa -- why is it that those are not attacks on India, but attacks in India?  It makes sense for the State to blame the foreign, to draw attention away from its own failings -- just as official discourse in the Arab world focuses nauseatingly and endlessly on Israel -- to draw attention away from their own failings.

It is amazing how much difference one word makes, and how little difference our media makes, except in calcifying narratives that already exist, and encouraging unthought.  Terrorism is too often, and disturbingly, defined not only by who kills, and for what "reasons," but just as much if not more so by who is killed.  The "how" -- protests of the MSM aside -- is rarely nearly as important.  Explosions are explosions.  But who's exploding, and who's exploded?  We need to condemn, but we need to ask questions, too.

May God give peace to those who were killed, and serenity to those who gave their lives, health or wealth to help others under fire, and may He bring peace and calm and security to India, and may He stop all those who seek to harm.  May He grant us the wisdom to fight the ideas and beliefs that lead to such violence, and may He help us to never become content in our understanding of the world, but always eager to hear from the other, and better understand, rather than turn away in anger.

Diary of al-Qaeda: How the Explosions Moved on/to Pakistan

The diary below was published by London Review of Books; the author, Owen Bennett-Jones, has published (see below) on Pakistan previously.  A fascinating account of al-Qaeda's entry into Iraq (after the U.S. invasion), subsequent retreat and shifting focus on/to Pakistan.  Thanks to Ali for forwarding this on to me.  Enjoy.

...

The College of Art and Design in Lahore is one of the most cultured institutions in Pakistan's most cultured city. When I visited a couple of months ago, it was surrounded by sandbags: a department for traditional music had been opened and al-Qaida, which considers music un-Islamic, had threatened to blow it up. Despite this, both teachers and students told me that the real problem they faced was America. 'It's true there are some misguided boys,' the principal said, 'and they may be the ones threatening us, but it is America that has bombed their homes.'

The list of grievances against America is long: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, the civilian death toll in Iraq, Afghanistan and increasingly in Pakistan itself. I am writing this in Islamabad, where the papers this week have reported four US attacks on targets in Pakistan, resulting in the deaths of 41 civilians. But ever larger numbers of Muslims nevertheless see al-Qaida as malign and barbaric. It is in a trap: to win followers it needs media coverage, but to secure headlines it has to mount ever more spectacular attacks which almost invariably involve civilian casualties and undermine its support, especially when the victims are Muslims. Al-Qaida's popularity in Jordan, for example, plummeted after it blew up a wedding party in a big hotel in Amman late in 2005.

At the US military academy at West Point, researchers are studying thousands of captured al-Qaida documents, CDs and hard drives and putting them on a publicly available online database. One of their prized possessions is a letter written in 2005 by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the then leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. 'Among the things which the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable,' Zawahiri wrote, 'are the scenes of hostages being slaughtered. You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men who describe you as the sheikh of the slaughterers etc. They do not express the views of most people who admire and support the resistance in Iraq.'

Earlier this year al-Qaida supporters in Jordan told me that not only were they finding it more difficult to get recruits for Iraq but that some of the fighters already there were so sickened by the number of Muslims being killed that they were heading for home. Zawahiri tried to confront this problem in April when he participated in a webcast in which he took questions online. More than 2000 were submitted and many raised this issue. Zawahiri answered: 'If any innocents were killed in the mujahedin's operations then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity.' It's the same reply the Pentagon gives.