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Death and Destruction
As New Civilisation was going to press, news broke out of the bombs in London, which currently have resulted in the deaths of 52 and the injuries of hundreds more. Though the deaths of innocents should always be condemned, the immediate statements from western political leaders and right wing commentators was indicative of a failure to understand the underlying causes of the new international paradigm we currently live in. It is clear and has been for some time, that the unprecedented offensive war in Iraq would make the world a more volatile place, this was not just the view of the opponents of the war but was cited in pre-war assessments by the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee and the CIA. Indeed The CIA in a classified report in May warned that Iraq since 2003 had become a training ground in which terrorists were being schooled in assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other terror techniques. The report said Iraq could prove to be more effective than Afghanistan in the early days of Al Qaeda as a place to train terrorists who could then disperse to other parts of the world, including the United States.
Yet opponents cite 9-11 as a counter point to the view that Iraq has caused events such as Bali, Madrid and now London stating that Iraq could not by definition have been a cause of 9-11 but was a consequence. President Bush stated in his Fort Bragg speech echoing the now familiar line of the attack on civilisation when he said ‘Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war in a global war on terror. Many terrorists who kill ... on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of citizens in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.’ However in examining 9-11 many conveniently ignore the context of US foreign policy preceding 2001. US foreign policy has for decades supported dictators in the Muslim world, it has backed with billions Israeli’s illegitimate occupation of Palestine and the provocative presence of numerous US bases in the Muslim world (conveniently based in oil rich states) should also not be overlooked. There is a significant causal link between western foreign policy and an arc of instability, that spans from Riyadh, to Baghdad, from Algiers to Kabul, from Jerusalem to Somalia. Yet despite this somewhat obvious political context many commentators have the notion that people they term Islamic fascists are merely motivated by a desire to commit mass murder.
This is not the view of Robert Pape (cited in an article by the American conservative Pat Buchanan) the author of "Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism." Pape’s book is drawn from an immense database on every suicide-bomb attack from 1980 to early 2004. Pape‘s conclusion is that ‘Suicide-terrorist attacks are not so much driven by religion as by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide terrorist campaign - over 95 percent of all incidents - has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.‘ Pape goes on to say the following ‘Iraq never had a suicide attack in its history. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly, with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004 and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005.The history of the last 20 years shows that once the troops of the occupying democracies withdraw from the homeland of the terrorists, they often stop - and stop on a dime. According to Buchanan ‘Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide-bomb attacks on US, French, and Israeli targets in Lebanon. When US and French troops withdrew and Israel pulled back to a six-mile buffer zone, suicide-bombings virtually ceased. When the Israelis left Lebanon, the Lebanese suicide-bombers did not follow them to Tel Aviv.’ Pape therefore disagrees with the Bush and Blair doctrine in Iraq which he believes is creating more terrorists, he states ‘Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.’
What both Pape and Buchanan clearly demonstrate is that the idea that western foreign policy can be divorced from the debate about the London bombings is facile. Putting events into their right political context is not to justify the acts on 7th July where 52 people have lost their life, this would be wrong. However what would be equally wrong is the avoidance of any debate surrounding western foreign policy and its contribution to the chronic violence and carnage in the world today It is also poignant to think about the year we are living in, 2005 is the tenth anniversary of Srebrenica where 8000 Muslims were massacred by European Serbs, while Dutch troops assigned to the UN watched. 2005 is also the sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where 250,000 innocent civilians were wiped out by a nuclear bomb launched from Washington. By remembering these events as well as the brutality of Nazi Germany, another product of European civilisation this should put to rest the idea that any one civilisation has a monopoly on indiscriminate violence
Iran Election- A vote for continued pragmatism
The reaction to the recent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new President of Iran has bordered on the hysterical. To believe thepronouncements coming out of Washington and European capitals, you would have thought that Ahmadinejad had already declared a holy Jihad on the infidel west and Israel and was preparing to use Iran’s covertly developed arsenal of nuclear bombs in a conflict to end all conflicts. Michael Gove a newly elected British MP writing in the London times newspaper stated ‘The longer our leaders remain silent in the battle for democracy in Iran, the more likely we are to see a far more ominous conflict escalate between Iran and the democracies.’ However as with most things emanating from Tehran, appearances of hardline behaviour are not all they seem.
For instance it is recognised that though Ahmadinejad will become the new President, the foreign policy remit will remain within the strategic realm of Ayatollah Khamenei and his close circle. Yet a review of Iran’s foreign policy would conclude that this is more shaped by nationalism and pragmatism than any sort of theological values or norms. For example Iran favours India in the Kashmir dispute, it supports Armenia over Azerbaijan, it supports the Russian occupation in Chechnya and China’s policy in Xinjiang. In the Afghanistan war, Iran actively supported the US in removing the Taliban and remains key in ensuring the Shia do not revolt in Iraq. Indeed on most litmus tests, Iranian foreign policy consistently prioritises pragmatism over a pan Islamic foreign policy. Indeed in the 1980’s while the Iranian regime was repeatedly declaring ‘Death to America’ their leaders were secretly buying arms from the Great Satan as revealed in the Iran Contra scandal. Iran’s track record since 1979 thus far poses no strategic threat to the west, indeed as some commentators cheekily asserted there was more discussion of religion in the last US election then there was in the recent Iranian campaign. The election of Ahmadinejad will therefore continue the path of strategic pragmatism that Iran has followed since 1979 much to the disappointment of millions of Muslims.
Iran elections as flawed as the ones in Britain and America
Another criticism made about the Iranian election was that it did not adhere to democratic norms. Key criticism centred around the pre-selection and approval of candidates by the state’s Guardian Council which barred thousands of presidential candidates from even being able to run for the presidential office. However western commentators should not throw stones especially when living in glass houses. Pre-selection of candidates is the virtual norm in most western countries. Candidates may not be vetted by in Michael Gove’s words by ‘bearded sixty something clerics called Ali who enjoy wielding supreme power within theocratic republics.’ However if you want to be a Conservative MP in Britain, you are normally vetted by unbearded, sixty something pensioners called Lucinda or Alexander who enjoy wielding anti European and elitist views within British society. Or what about if you want to be a Labour MP, where in most parts of Wales, Scotland and the North you are either vetted by bearded, left wing, ex Marxist trade unionists/activists called Reg or alternatively you are selected (and therefore imposed on the local constituency) by clean shaven, Armani suited spin doctors who have an obsession with power sitting in Labour party HQ, usually named Alistair. Indeed some may argue that despite the Guardian Council vetting presidential candidates, at least the Iranians get a vote, the British head of state is decided by an accident of birth. Even Tony Blair the current head of government was not elected to his position by the voters (apart from those in Sedgfield who elected him as their local MP), his authority as Prime Minister (PM) largely emanates from his position as head of the Labour party. In other words trade union barons and activists in the constituencies (most of them from the far left) pre-selected the leader that would be offered as a potential PM to the British public. Of course independents can seek entry to the British parliament as long they accept Britain’s unwritten constitution, the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament and the Monarch’s absolute decree. However this remains a moot point, as the number of independents elected in Britain’s election in 2005 numbered a whopping 2.
In any constitutional based society or one where there are political parties, candidates are normally pre-selected by some process of screening (in the US it is done via partisan primaries and access to money). Iran can and should be condemned for its hybrid and flawed constitution, as can the largely oligarchic systems in Britain and the US. However all so called ‘democratic’ countries ensure that screening processes and controls are in place to prevent constitutional disruption. Indeed institutions such as the Supreme Court, the Electoral College historically and in Britain the House of Lords and the Monarch provide these necessary constitutional safeguards. The Iranian arrangements should therefore be seen within this context
Why Democracies may not necessarily deliver a better economy.
According to a revealing article in the May 14th issue of the Economist, embarrassing questions now arise for those who believe as an article of faith that democracies generate better economic growth. The article cites a series of essays published by the World Bank which makes some interesting observations. Firstly it cites the fact that the Chinese economy outperformed the Indian economy in the last two decades of the 20th century. Whereas India dropped the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 70m, China delivered a reduction of 400m. Yet India remains in theory a vibrant democracy, where the poor also vote proportionately more than the rich while Chinese elections are confined to the central communist party. In another chapter of the book Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at the University of Michigan suggests that some of the reasons India and other democracies have not done better are related to the very structure of democratic politics itself.
Why could democracies be so poor at alleviating poverty, Varshney has two suggestions. Firstly he believes that democracies tend to bias towards specific policies that may benefit key voter constituencies such as farmers (e.g. subsidies), as opposed to investing in longer term infrastructure, such as roads, railways, schools and hospitals. Though populations want these longer term things and are often promised by politicians, it is the removal of policies such as subsidies which carries real political costs. Indeed the underlying rationale behind the EU’s CAP and the US’s subsidy regimes are that these would be politically too costly for any leader to remove. Hence democracies tend to invest too many valuable resources into ineffective programmes. The second reason given by Varshney is that the poor do not constitute a homogenous group. In a democratic system, they may organise themselves along lines of caste, ethnicity or religion rather than their economic class. Hence democratic governments find it more effective to deal with these specific voter constituencies rather than to address the poor across the spectrum. Indeed in India affirmative-action schemes giving jobs to specified castes are a dime a dozen.
Of course societies which allow vibrant debate and promote accountability should do better than closed dictatorial societies. However when we review the Chinese political model, the East Asian societies (largely oligarchic) where growth rates have risen faster than those in the west or the Caliphate (see main article), other political models are now being actively promoted as alternatives. Some of these models though not democratic, claim that while remaining representative they are more likely to take more painful longer term decisions rather than continuously being held to hostage by vested interests. These new political models do not fit easily into the existing and largely superficial paradigm of democracy vs despotism. Democrats cannot continue with the romantic notion that only their political models can guarantee the best results. The structural weaknesses at the heart of democratic politics are too big and overt and the data too clear for this notion to now be seriously entertained.
What’s in a name?
Support in the Islamic world for the application for Shariah law in the political system has become widespread, as is attested to by a multitude of different sources. One of the related features of this resurgence is that attention has returned to the Islamic legislative sources. 'Prophetic Traditions', 'traditions of the Prophet', 'narrations of the Prophet' and the like are some of the expressions that refer to the term hadith in Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic literature rarely goes without a mention of some hadith and references to them feature in numerous articles in New Civilisation. What do these expressions refer to however, and what function do hadith serve?
Hadith (pl. ahadith) refer to accounts of the Prophet Muhammad during his lifetime, specifically to his actions, his words and his silence on matters of which he was cognisant. These witness accounts were extensively recorded, and committed to memory, during his lifetime by those closest to him and transmitted to subsequent generations. Following the death of the Prophet they were collated by numerous hadith specialists (muhaddithun), painstakingly verified and compiled in voluminous books of indexed hadith. The process of verification formed part of the elaborate sciences of hadith, ulum al-hadith, a hugely detailed science which required detailed knowledge of narrator profiles, establishing criteria for the attestation and rejection of accounts, rules of cross-referencing, and grading of historical accounts amongst its many branches. There are numerous collections of hadith, but the highest in regard is that of the Central Asian muhaddith Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Ismaeel known as Imam al-Bukhari (d. 265AH), due to the rigour of his critical approach to hadith.
The importance of hadith lies in the fact that the Prophet Muhammad is a source of emulation for every Muslim. His life is part of the divine revelation and free from error (ma'soom) in representing the Islamic way of life, being a divinely appointed Messenger in the Islamic belief system; accounts of his life are therefore pivotal to accurately emulating him. In the context of Islamic jurisprudence, emulation has a very specific meaning however: the corpus of hadith represents one of the sources of Islamic law (Shariah). They are used, amongst other Islamic legal sources, to attest the legality of an Islamic opinion, verdict or rule, and when deriving law for new situations through the process of ijithad (see previous edition). Reference to hadith is therefore a pivotal part of Islamic jurisprudence and to its entire legal framework. As with legal practice under any organised legal system, detailed knowledge of hadith cases, accompanied explanations and legal discourse by other legal experts are pre-requisite competencies for the Islamic jurist. The reference to hadith in Islamic literature is therefore to verify the Islamic credentials of a particular opinion, view or rule, to demonstrate that it is firmly rooted in the Islamic sources of law and would have likely been approved by the Prophet himself. The hadith also elaborate the character of Islam itself for they cover matters of family life, ritual worship, social and economic issues, and ruling, politics and temporal law, in all a comprehensive spiritual and political system.
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