Tag: Middle East

U.S. policy, not Islam, breeding terrorists

Mustafa Malik March 21, 2011

By Mustafa Malik

(Published in the Austin-American Statesman, March 20; Columbus Dispatch, March 16, 2011)

WASHINGTON – Rep. Peter T. King had said his congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization would investigate the causes of the problem. It didn’t.

I have long been calling, in my newspaper columns and at public forums, for a serious investigation of the causes of Muslim anti-Americanism and terrorism. Some researchers have made in-depth inquiries about it, but U.S. administrations, Congress and news media have brushed them aside.

Muslim radicalization in America and the West is a recent trend. It’s the outcome mainly of Western Muslim’ identification with their fellow Muslims overseas who are fighting U.S. and Israeli forces occupying their lands or deployed on them. As we know, 15 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudis. They apparently had been pissed off by the deployment of American troops in Saudi Arabia.

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Barhain atop democratic ‘volcano’

Mustafa Malik March 5, 2011

By Mustafa Malik

For the United States, the Bahraini uprising is more worrisome than most others now swirling in the Middle East and North Africa.

America’s stakes in Bahrain was underscored to me this past Jan. 13 by a researcher in Manama, the Bahraini capital. “The Al Khalifa rulers are sitting on a volcano,” said Numan Saleh, who was affiliated with the Bahrain Center for Studies and Research. “When the volcano erupts, would the [U.S. Navy’s] Fifth Fleet remain anchored in Juffairare [near Manama]? Would America and the West take their [Persian Gulf] oil supply for granted?” Little did I know that many of us in America would be asking on these same questions in four short weeks.

The recent Cabinet reshuffle by Bahraini regime and its gift of $2, 650 per family have been pooh-poohed by protesters; they left the monarchy with absolute power. A dialogue with the opposition, called for by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, either. Yet the Obama administration is having a hard time recognizing the reality that Al Khalifa despotism is fast becoming history. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently she hoped that “a national dialogue can produce meaningful measures that respond to the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain.”

Holy cow! How would American revolutionaries have felt if Friedrich-Wilhelm III, then king of the Prussian Empire, had told them that a dialogue with the British King George III would satisfy their “legitimate aspirations”?

More ominously for the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Shiites are about 15 percent of the Saudi population, living mostly in the kingdom’s eastern Al Hasa region. Al Hasa is soaked with the world’s largest oil fields and used to be part of historic Bahrain. The Shiites in Al Hasa, as elsewhere in Saudi Arabia, are systematically discriminated against by their Sunni government, and many of them nurture fellowship with the repressed Bahrain Shiites at the other end of a 15-mile causeway.

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, as all other west Asian states except Iran, were created artificially by British, French and local rulers less than a century ago. The citizens of these states are more deeply rooted in their old sectarian and ethnic communities than in state institutions foisted on them overnight from above. Hence the Shiites in Bahrain and the whole Arabian Peninsula feel affinity with the Shiite Iran, forming the so-called “Shiite Crescent.”

Abdul Karim al-Iryani, then Yemeni foreign minister, anticipated today’s Arab upheaval and the American dilemma two decades ago. In October 1991 al-Iryani, a Ph.D. from Yale, told me in the Yemeni capital of Saana that “when the tide of freedom and democracy comes, the current American [Gulf] security structure will become untenable.” The autocrats that were pillars of that structure would be “gone or have their wings clipped.” I asked him what the United States could do then to ensure continued supply of Gulf oil and its strategic ties to the region.

“Flow with the tide,” he replied.

The Yemeni statesman was a decade off on his prediction for the arrival of the democratic tide, but his caveat to America seems to be on target and timely for today’s U.S. policy makers. It’s perilous for the United States to be known by tomorrow’s democratic or populist Arab governments as the nation that tried to save the skin of their repressive autocrats. The administration should embrace the democratic “tide.” It should call on the Bahraini king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, to retire; unless a democratically elected government wishes to keep him as a constitutional monarch.

The United States, too, needs to reassess its pointless confrontation with Iran. It’s clear that America (or Israel) can’t stop Iran’s nuclear program through military strikes, which, on the contrary, would trigger an anti-American conflagration throughout the Middle East. That would perhaps mark the beginning of the end of the U.S. domination of the region and send oil prices through the roof, plunging industrialized societies into deeper recession. Instead, the Obama administration should engage Tehran in a meaningful strategic dialogue with Iran, which would have the best chance of preserving much of American security and economic interests in west Asia.

■ Mustafa Malik, host of the blog Beyond Freedom, is a columnist in Washington. He covered the Middle-East as a journalist and conducted field research on U.S.-Arab relations as a senior associate for the University of Chicago Middle East Center.

Can Jordan monarchy survive?

Mustafa Malik February 27, 2011

By Mustafa Malik

(Published in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 20, 2011)

Admiral Mike Mullen recently visited Jordan. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff assured King Abdullah II of America’s commitment to the security of his kingdom. As Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, it doesn’t really have an external security threat. A growing internal threat looms, however, to the Hashemite monarchy. The Arab revolutionary movement snowballing from Tunisia and Egypt has exacerbated that threat.

What’s likely to fuel a large-scale uprising against the Jordanian monarchy? And if that occurs, can the Pentagon help the king ride out of it?

As in other Arab states, Jordan is afflicted with a high unemployment rate (officially 13% but actually much higher), low living standards (per capita GNI $3,300) and widespread official corruption. But the biggest challenge to the throne comes from it not having local roots. The Hashemite family’s ethnic roots lie in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The British Empire planted the scion of that family, Abdullah bin al-Hussein, in 1923 as the king of what was called Transjordan. The state was carved out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire, which had been defeated and dismembered by the Allied Powers in World War I.

About 60 percent of Jordan’s population of 6.5 million is Palestinians. They’re mostly well-educated, urban and enjoy much higher income levels than the remaining 40 percent or so, made up largely of rural Bedouin tribes. The Palestinians and Bedouins have been estranged from each other since the inception of the state.

The Bedouin tribes have been the monarchy’s main support base, especially since 1970 when then King Hussein brutally suppressed a revolt by Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered or expelled from Jordan. That was the beginning of the monarchy’s secret outreach to Israel, the nemesis of the Palestinians and other Arabs. In 1973, for example, Hussein, Abdullah’s deceased father, had a clandestine meeting with then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during which he warned her of Egyptian preparations for war against Israel. Egypt would later attack Israel in what would be known as the Yom Kippur war. Hussein also began working secretly with then Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to conclude a peace agreement with Israel. The treaty was finally wrapped up and signed in 1994.

While the Palestinians resent the monarchy’s courtship of Israel, the Bedouins are being alienated by the current king, Abdullah, especially because of his efforts to placate the Palestinians. The outreach to the Palestinians is led by the king’s Palestinian wife, Rania. She is instrumental in providing Jordanian citizenship to a large number of Palestinian refugees, and helping Palestinians with jobs, business opportunities, and so forth.

On Feb. 7 the Bedouins staged a demonstration against the Abdullah government, a first in the history of the Hashemite-Bedouin relationship. They criticized Queen Rania’s meddling in government affairs and voiced other complaints against the regime. “The situation,” said their spokesman “has become unbearable. Corruption, nepotism and bureaucracy (sic) are widespread and the rich are becoming richer, while the poor – like many Bedouins – are becoming poorer.”

Meanwhile, the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings have triggered several mainstream opposition rallies in Jordan. The protesters demanded democratic reforms, curbing nepotism and official corruption. The Jordanians haven’t called for an end to the monarchy yet, but they could do so if the public discontent escalates into a full-scale uprising.

So what could the Obama administration do to help the Jordanian royalty stave off an Egyptian-style revolution? Whatever else it can do, sending the head of the U.S. armed forces to Amman was a mistake. Many Jordanians saw it as America’s threat to use its military might to defend one of its Arab cops against the repressed people of the state. Moreover, a U.S. military intervention in Jordan’s political crisis would be counterproductive. Could American soldiers be shooting Arabs in one country without provoking Arab protests against the U.S. military presence and other vital interests in others?

Americans can’t really beat the brewing pan-Arab revolution in Jordan and most other countries. They should join the revolution now to preserve their vital interests in the Middle East.

▪ Mustafa Malik, host of the blog Beyond Freedom, is a columnist in Washington. He conducted field research on U.S.-Arab relations in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as a senior associate for the University of Chicago Middle East Center.

The rising visibility of Muslims in America

Mustafa Malik October 22, 1996

THE BALTIMORE SUN
October 22, 1996

My friend Tom Neumann complains that American news media are distorting the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. Tom is the head of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Other supporters of the Israeli prime minister have also assailed American reporters for suggesting that he is trying to sidestep those agreements.

Usually, Muslims have blamed parts of American media for being insensitive toward them. I can vouch for some of it.

During the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon I worked for the wire desk of a very good American newspaper. Frequently, we would receive stories about an Israeli soldier or two getting killed by Lebanese snipers, and we would run them on Page One. More than 12,000 innocent Lebanese were killed during that invasion, but no story was published by us on that tragedy.

Later I wrote a piece calling for peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization and had it published by the paper’s Palestinian op-ed editor. The PLO was then anathema to many Americans. Our newspaper was deluged with letters protesting the publication of the article, and I received a hate phone call. I now knew part of the reason we had not run a news story on the Lebanese plight even though some other papers did.

My Muslim identity attracted interesting inquiries. At another newspaper, a colleague wanted to know how many wives I could have back in Pakistan. At yet another newspaper, a colleague one day saw me cruising the street for a parking space as the newspaper parking lot had filled up. When I arrived in the newsroom, he asked where I had parked my camel.

A heartening change has now been occurring in the U.S. media and public perception of Muslims, Islam and Arabs. A whole bombing episode has passed off in Atlanta without anybody speculating about a Muslim connection. So has, more or less, the blast that blew up TWA Flight 800 in New York. Contrast these with the Oklahoma City and New York Trade Center bombings or the Persian Gulf war. Each of those incidents was followed by unwarranted innuendoes about Muslims, leading to their harassment.

Muslim perspectives

More and more, newspapers and television are giving Muslim perspectives in stories about Muslims or Islam. Some have covered such Islamic events as Ramadan, the month-long, dawn-to-dusk fasting; and the two ld festivals, one marking the end of Ramadan and the other commemorating Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son for God.

The trend is noticeable on the social and political planes as well. Muslims are invited to White House social events and mentioned by the president and lawmakers in their public statements about American faiths. Head-covered women are now an accepted feature of the American scene. In Detroit and Dearborn, Mich.; in Trenton and Williamsboro, N.J.; and in other places some schools observe the Ids. Many other schools across the nation allow Muslim students to stay home on Islamic holidays.

Some communities are more hospitable to Muslims than others. After South Jersey’s first snowstorm in 1994, several Muslims went to shovel snow from the sidewalks of their new mosque at Pal Myra. They saw Christian neighbors had done it for them. The same thing happened after several other snowstorms. Some of the South Asian Muslims, nurturing memories of vicious Hindu-Muslim conflicts, were surprised by the broad-mindedness of these Americans. Mohammed Osman Khan, a Pakistani native, was not. His Jewish boss at the state Treasury Department had promoted him over several Jewish and Christian co-workers.

Know one another

Many Americans’ anti-Muslim bias and anti-Americanism among many Muslims stem mainly from their never really getting to know one another. The influx of nearly 4 million Muslims into America during the last four decades and America’s growing contacts with the Muslim world, while generating some culture clashes, are promoting understanding among the three Abrahamic faiths here.

American Muslims have, however, some ways to go to become part of American society. More than two-thirds of them have immigrated from cultures whose values often don’t agree with those of the American mainstream. Many Muslims resist socialization with non-Muslims, prefer keeping women indoors, marry girls young to grooms chosen by the family, not by the bride. Most Americans frown at these practices. But things are changing with the coming of age of the first and second generation Muslims who disdain these practices.

Muslims, on the other hand, resent American support for some repressive Muslim governments and, especially, a high level of American tolerance for Israeli excesses against Palestinians. A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio would not only help restore peace in the Holy Land, but improve interfaith relations in America. If hard-nosed American reporters can help nudge Netanyahu toward the peace track, they would help nudge Tom Neumann and me even closer to each other.

Mustafa Malik, the host and editor of the blog ‘After the Clash,’ worked for more than three decades as a reporter, editor and columnist for American, British and Pakistani newspapers and as a researcher for two American think tanks. He also conducted fieldwork in Western Europe, the Middle East and South Asia on U.S. foreign policy options, the “crisis of liberalism” and Islamic movements. He wrote continually for major U.S. and overseas newspapers and journals.