Intellectual Nonsense from the NY Times: Author Knows Zero About Sharia Except That It's No Problem

Jerry [Seinfeld]: “I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley. I have a suspicion that he’s converted to Judaism just for the jokes.”

Priest: “And this offends you as a Jewish person.”
Jerry: “No, it offends me as a comedian.”
–Seinfeld, “The Dentist” episode

The New York Times has run (still another) article about how Sharia law coming to America is nothing to fear. Question: Will the New York Times ever run an op-ed opposing Sharia law in the United States? Twenty years ago I would have said: Of course, any responsible newspaper publishes one piece on each side of an issue. Today, of course, we know there is no chance of balance.

Eliyahu Stern, an assistant professor of religious studies and history at Yale, seems to be an expert on Jewish history. In fact, Stern is so ignorant of the topic on Islam that he states most Muslims in America “don’t even come from the Middle East (the majority have roots in Southeast Asia).” Really? That’s a geographical term usually applied to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Perhaps he meant Pakistan, a well-known locale of moderate Islam? If anyone on the other side said something so obviously ridiculous they would never be taken seriously.

And the fact that the Times editors left in such a glaring factual error shows professional inadequacy and ignorance. But then this is the newspaper that let Tariq Ramadan claim that the Muslim Brotherhood (then headed by his grandfather) was an anti-fascist organization when every serious historian knows that it collaborated with the Nazis in preparing to turn over Egypt to Hitler and massacre the Jews there. (The documentary proof of this is in my book –written with Wolfgang Schwanitz – Nazis, Radical Arabs, and the Making of the Modern Middle East to be published by Yale University Press in 2012.)

Why then is Stern writing that there’s no need to fear Sharia law in America? Well, he apparently has just one argument: once people warned about Jewish law being dangerous, that was wrong, and we all know where that ended up. This is not exactly a brilliant argument for many reasons. The proportion of Jews was far lower than Muslim populations in the West are quickly becoming; Jews do not expect anyone else to observe their law or change behavior; there was never any question of compulsion within the community. Most Jews were not so religious and did not view themselves governed by Jewish law, except perhaps in the matter of very narrow issues regarding marriage and divorce that had no effect on the wider society.

To cite one famous incident that sort of reveals the difference, the baseball player Hank Greenberg became an American Jewish hero for refusing to play in the World Series on Yom Kippur. No Jew would have thought of demanding the World Series be changed to another day. Or, to give another example, Jews would never think of demanding that public facilities install special equipment or rooms for their needs at taxpayer expense, nor insist that work places shut down to permit them to pray, nor that kosher food had to be provided or else, nor that publications better censor themselves or they would face legal action and perhaps violent retribution. If passengers in taxi cabs were regularly bringing pigs into the vehicles–the equivalent of Muslim cabdrivers with guide dogs and even alcohol in some cases–Jewish cabdrivers wouldn’t have refused them service — they would have found another line of employment.

And then there are those little details like Jews not periodically kidnapping and murdering women for their social behavior or coreligionists who wanted to convert to other religions. Jews didn’t demand time off in the work day to pray and sue if it weren’t granted to them. They “knew their place” instead of demanding that others yield to them. Well, over 2000 years of being a dominated people had taught them to keep a low profile and avoid trouble. In contrast, Islam really does have the sense of being a ruling religion before which others must make concessions.

Such points do not reveal some irrational fear or hatred of Islam but are merely well-known facts. I often reflect that the phrase “Politically Correct” should be contrasted to the usual democratic, Enlightenment and Western norm of being Factually Correct. Political Correctness–as opposed to just plain politeness–is an approach that advocates telling lies because that’s really “better” for us all. But that’s not true, even for Muslims themselves who are the most frequent victims of Islamic practices being imposed on them or dominated by intolerant radicals.

It’s like the extensive arguments about why “Islamophobia” exists that never mention anything about terrorist attacks. You know, sort of like the upcoming official commemorations of the tenth anniversary of September 11 that will be careful not to say anything about who did it and why. Would Stern write or the New York Times publish an article about how mosques are the institution most likely to spread antisemitism today, or the prevalent hatred of Jews that comes from even the most sophisticated circles in the Muslim-majority world? Of course not.

The simple truth is that Stern has no valid or serious argument to make on this Sharia issue. He simply felt like writing an op-ed and the Times published it because it said the “right” thing. The Times has no professionally journalistic reason to run this op-ed except that it takes the only side the newspaper deems worthy of airing and may be seen as shoring up its Jewish readership and taking advantage of any repugnance to the Holocaust and antisemitism to sell the issue stance the newspaper wants.

Actually, the real issue is less that the application of Sharia law is far more problematic for Muslims than for society in general. It would greatly restrict the freedom of Muslims and contradict American law on many points. We have already seen precedents in which Sharia law is forced on non-Muslims. But the real victim would be Muslim women who would be forced by parents and community pressure–including threats of violence–to give up rights they possess as American citizens.

The argument that Sharia law is equivalent to letting Jews mediate over a “get” (divorce decree) is pretty ridiculous, but then so are many of the arguments put forward in American public debates nowadays by the establishment. Why did I write this article? Because such nonsense should not go uncriticized. Since the Times won’t provide a balance to its op-eds, someone has to do it.

Oh, and one more thing. “Islamophobia” is not inspired by honest discussion about radical Islamism. The truth is the exact opposite: because the establishment doesn’t make a truthful distinction between revolutionary Islamism and its Muslim victims that many people generalize about all of Islam and all Muslims. The obvious contradiction between the ludicrous insistence that Islam is always a “religion of peace” and no real problems exist causes more suspicion and hatred than any actual balanced account of the civil war among Muslims would have done.

I have no position on the passing of specific legislation by states or what U.S. law should be, but–parallel to Jerry Seinfeld’s stand on the dentist–as an academic, intellectual, and expert on Islam I resent antisemitism being exploited by people who never mention Islamist antisemitism, standards being corrupted by professors saying silly things, and the mass media turning itself into a one-sided propaganda operation.

And if one day, for example, Muslim women are beaten and intimidated into accepting Sharia law mediation in which their rights as human beings and as Americans are trampled, will Professor Stern take responsibility for that?

Terrorism Returns to Egypt, Will Sanity about Islamism Arrive in the West?

By Barry Rubin

As I’ve predicted since February, a major consequence of the Egyptian revolution and the rise of radical Islamism there will be a return to the terrorism of the 1990s which destroyed the tourism industry; targeted Christians; murdered moderates and secularists; and killed government officials and bystanders.

Now a group has attacked two police stations in el-Arish. And of course CNN misses the point. Those responsible, it reports, are, “Takfir-wal Higra, a group sympathetic to al Qaeda’s goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.” Actually, the group originated in Egypt long before Usama bin-Ladin began his political activity. And in Egypt, terrorist Islamists come out of the Muslim Brotherhood, demanding faster and more extreme tactics. We will be seeing a lot of such people in the coming months and years.

Once again, this recalls to me the 1981 book of Muhammad Abd al-Salaam Faraj, The Forgotten Commandment. I read it soon after it appeared. At the time, the book seemed like the ravings of a marginal figure, one for whom even the Takfir-wal Higra group of the time was too moderate. Faraj posited that jihad had been brushed aside for centuries by those who wrongly interpreted Islam and must be restored, immediately, to be top priority.

In retrospect, Faraj did ideologically for Sunni Muslims what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did for Shias: the creation of a new and powerful revolutionary Islamist movement. In the 30 years since this book was written, the once-obscure ideas of Faraj have swept the minds of millions of people and caused many thousands of deaths. They are now in sight of hegemony in the Sunni Muslim world.

Here’s another interesting point. Faraj proves wrong both of the two major sides of the Western debate on Islam. If Islam is so innately a religion of peace then why did Faraj’s argument–based on the holiest texts–become so successful? Obviously, one is not dealing with a few extremists but with radicals who can mobilize mass support and persuade people to accept their view of Islam as the correct one. And they are winning.

But if Islam is so innately warlike and extreme, why did Faraj have to write the book and there mustbe a battle to make Muslims behave as the radical Islamists want? Why are so many of those killed or intimidated by the Islamists those who also consider themselves pious Muslims, whether reformist or, as is far more common, conservative-traditionlist?

The policy lesson, then, is neither to demonize nor apologize for Islam but to ally with the Islamists’ enemies among Muslims and to lose all naivete about the Islamists’ strength, intentions, and ability to draw on deeply held Islamic texts and beliefs.

So Islam can and is interpreted in different ways. Those who show that Muslims don’t always adhere to the texts and still consider themselves to be good Muslims are right. Yet those that show the revolutionary Islamists have strong arguments based on the holy texts and–most important of all–are winning over many others–are also correct.

Up until now the mainstream Western position has been that the Muslim Brotherhood will protect people from the “radicals,” now called Salafists. Yet even if the Brotherhood isn’t advocating violence now it is only because they are making such good progress toward seizing power and transforming Egypt in other ways. Like Hamas and Hizballah, they have no problem in running election campaigns and murdering opponents simultaneously.

The first attacks have been against the gas pipeline to Israel, which the government has been “helpless” to stop and against Christians, where the government has often acted vigoriously…by arresting the Christian victims.

So far, though, most of the violence has been in the form of criminal anarchy. (I’m tempted to write that Cairo is becoming as bad as Paris and London.)

Now even CNN figures out that terrorist groups are forming. Soon they will swing into action.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com   

Norway Terror Attack: Lessons and Illusions

 by Barry Rubin

Once one gets beyond the polemics and clichés, there is a huge amount that could be learned from an honest discussion about the mass murders in Norway. Let’s look at some of them.

An editorial in the New York Daily News contains both valid points and dangerous silliness. It begins:

In his ravings, Anders Behring Breivik, confessed to having murdered 76 people, repeats a familiar refrain: He killed to save his country, his continent and Western civilization itself from an attempted takeover by Islam.

The trouble with a 1500-page manifesto is that one can find almost anything in it. For example, people, groups, and sites who have been cited once or twice in that manifesto are now being called complicit with the murders. In the case of one group in that position, Breivik actually attacked them for being non-violent! Another author in the United Kingdom had two articles footnoted by the killer that didn’t even deal with Islam. Now people are being incited to go after her in revenge.

Of course, Breivik did see Islam as a threat, but he didn’t attack mosques, he attacked two government targets: a camp of the ruling party and a government building. Thus, the main target was not an “Islamic takeover” but his view that the country was being destroyed by left-wing policies, of which unlimited immigration is one. I have no agenda in making that point, but it is surprising that this hasn’t been a bigger focus of the discussion. Breivik was not a single-issue guy.

A second question is whether his violent action “proves” that there is no such problem regarding Islam. Radical Islamist violence is not mindless. It is a response to a problem. Many view this problem as the oppression of Muslims. My opinion is that it is a strategy for revolutionary takeover, a radical Islamist government, and the fundamental transformation of society. Of course, this is far more likely in Muslim-majority societies.

The Daily News continues:

Breivik’s belief is the photo negative of al-Qaeda’s contention that the United States and its allies are hell-bent on destroying Islam.

That’s a clever point and has some merit. But after studying Islamism for 30 years, I’d say that equally or more important — and certainly the one used more in inner and sophisticated Islamist circles — is the idea that the real crime of the West is “preventing” Islamist revolutions by supporting existing regimes. On this one, they are right generally. The first argument is propaganda; the second is programmatic.

To argue that Western governments want the Islamists to win and take over their societies is paranoid. To argue, though, that Western governments follow bad policies that make it look that way has a lot of merit. Left-wing movements — as in Norway — hope that the Islamists will benefit them. They are wrong. An analogy here is the Communist Party in Germany (at Stalin’s orders, of course) arguing that the growth of the Nazis would benefit them at a certain point. They were dead — literally — wrong. That doesn’t mean the Communists were pro-Nazi, it meant that they were disastrously stupid.

But the next contention of the editorial is more questionable:

The belief, that Islam at large conspires to triumph over all Judeo-Christian society, is a delusion.

Of course, the trick here is to say “Islam at large,” that is all the Muslims, everywhere and all the time. So yes the extremists on the Breivik channel do help the people who say that the threat is a “delusion.” But if radical Islamism gains hegemony and then largely controls the dominant devision of contemporary “Islam,” then it will be no illusion at all.

For now, we know that large elements of Muslims — especially revolutionary Islamists and notably the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the far less significant al-Qaeda — want that triumph because they say so all the time. So do Hamas and Hizballah and Iran’s government, less often perhaps but often a lot. They can quote extensively from Islamic texts — the same ones that “counter-jihadists” point out — and thus persuade Muslims a lot more easily that they represent “authentic Islam” than can moderate Muslims.

That’s one big reason why “reform” or “moderate” Islam is so weak. Others include the fact that the radicals are willing to kill and intimidate people, have more supporters, and have more money.

What most decidedly isn’t a delusion is:

• Revolutionary Islamist movements seek to take over all Muslim-majority countries.

• Where they have taken over they seek to transform those societies permanently into Islamist-run dictatorships. Iran and the Gaza Strip are the two most prominent current examples.

• Revolutionary Islamists seek to wipe Israel off the map and expel Western influence. In practice, they also seek to get rid of Christians. Their seizure of power is against Western interests.

• In Western countries, Islamists seek to gain hegemony over Muslim communities both ideologically, religiously, and through instituting Sharia.

• More speculatively, they dream of total conquest. Of course, that is more speculative, less likely, and far longer-term.

The fact that the last paragraph is pretty unlikely does not invalidate the previous four paragraphs.

A lot of the discussion among “anti-jihadists” is based on quoting from Muslim religious texts, clerical interpretations, and political statements by Islamist groups. The mass media simply refuses to deal with this evidence. That’s why the arguments can easily be labeled fantasies. Yet if you can provide dozens of quotes and hundreds of actions as examples, who is it engaged in “paranoid and poisonous fantasies”?

I partly agree with the editorial’s statement that:

Demonizing a religion rather than those who pervert it is destructive and only wins sympathies to radical fanatics.

I wouldn’t use the word “pervert,” which implies the Islamists are lying. They are using material that actually is in Islam and if one doesn’t understand that then one is powerless to deal with it. But there’s also a nice irony in the quote: which “radical fanatics” are we talking about? The editorial no doubt wants to refer to radical fanatics like Breivik. It is also true, however, that it wins sympathies for the “radical fanatics” who deny that there’s a problem. And those people are far more powerful than the murderous Breiviks, a group that one can count so far on the fingers of one hand.

In fact, the editorial then proves my point:

Counterjihadists are fighting an imaginary enemy. In the United States Muslims constitute less than 1% of the population. In Europe, it is about 7%….[Muslim immigrants]…seek to practice their faith and to assimilate.

The editorial — and the mass media generally — defuses a serious discussion by making the only issue as to whether Muslims will take over. But the immediate dangers are different.

First, will the pool of potential terrorists and their supporters grow? We can add up attacks that total far more than the one in Norway. When, for example, a convert is inspired to murder a military recruiter in Arkansas or a radicalized Muslim opens fire at Fort Hood, this should be a warning bell. Will the number of attacks steadily increase?

Second, will Muslim communities be taken over — or at least the most energetic activists in them — by radical Islamists? There is real reason to believe this has been happening in many places. While one can show to a far more limited extent that “creeping Sharia law” in the West is affecting non-Muslims, it is certainly affecting Muslims.

And when, to cite just two examples, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a leading judge support the imposition of Sharia law on Muslims in Great Britain, can anyone call that a delusion?

Third, Muslims who want to “assimilate” may be targeted or even killed by Islamists, who might be receiving state subsidies. Virtually every “honor killing” is against a woman who wants to assimilate. And since moderate Muslims are few, subject to intimidation, and receive little or no support from the Western establishments, those who often control these communities inhibit assimilation and teach people not to do so.

Any Muslims who are secular in their behavior, want to stop being Muslims, or who believe themselves properly religious but disagree with the extremists are being victimized.

When a woman is murdered in an “honor killing” or has her rights trampled on by Sharia as radically interpreted, she is also a Muslim. Often, governments have turned these people over to control by the radicals. They also finance the radicals, either because of the looseness of Western laws, misguided “multiculturalism,” or a conscious belief that helping radicals who aren’t committing terrorism this week will ensure there won’t be terrorism in future.

Fourth, there are real decisions to be made: Should public schools allow prayer (only, in the US) for Muslims? Can women wearing a veil have that picture on their driver’s license? Are cab drivers going to be allowed to refuse seeing-eye dogs? Will governments register polygamous marriages and give social welfare benefits on that basis? What is the definition of practicing their faith?

And then non-Muslims are being affected by being forced to observe Sharia law in an increasing number of cases, small in the overall extent of society, yet narrowing the freedom of those who experience it.

The final sentence of the editorial says:

Those who see “Muslim domination” and “creeping Sharia law” around every corner are imagining things. Their fictions only feed extremism.

True enough. Nobody should see anything “around every corner.” But saying that the problem is only imaginary and ignoring the real problems is also a fiction that will “only feed extremism,” including Islamist extremism, the triumph of the most radical interpretations of Islam, and extremists who want their own societies to decline.

Egypt’s Religious Establishment Takes On the Muslim Brotherhood

By Barry Rubin



In a major new development, an Islamic force has arisen to challenge the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and support a more moderate regime in that country. This is a surprising opponent but the only one that could be of significance: al-Azhar University. Why is Egypt’s Islamic establishment taking on Egypt’s Islamists? Simple: survival and self-interest.

The prestigious al-Azhar is a conservative traditionalist institution that has been dominated by Egypt’s regime and used to oppose revolutionary Islamists. The Egyptian government decided who would run al-Azhar, who would be the country’s chief mufti (authority on Islamic law), who would preach in the mosques, who could build a mosque, and what clerics could appear on television and other media. If you wanted to build a career as an important Islamic cleric in Egypt you needed to get the rulers to like you. Their Islamist critics called them “parrots,” not only because they repeated the government line but also because a parrot is used like the English word, “bird-brained.”

Over the years, however, the establishment has made concessions to the new wave of radical interpretations. For the last few months, following Mubarak’s downfall, the al-Azhar leadership appeared ready to cut its own deal with the Brotherhood.

But the Brotherhood pushed too hard, demanding a totally new leadership for Egypt’s religious institutions. Facing a choice between resistance and total surrender (getting fired and perhaps facing a firing squad), al-Azhar’s heads decided to oppose the fundamental transformation of Egyptian society by the Brotherhood.

Thus, al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib, whose resignation the Brotherhood had demanded, has issued a declaration on Egypt’s future favoring a “modern” and “democratic nation-state” based on a constitution including rights for women, checks and balances among governmental institutions, freedom of speech, and other such things.

Tayyib is allied with Egypt’s other leading official cleric, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. Both men were closely associated with the Mubarak regime, so a sweeping change in religious institutions would get them fired and possibly even facing legal charges under a Brotherhood-dominated government.

There are lots of subtleties in the statement that hint at opposition to an Islamist state, total Sharia law, and a caliphate. It puts al-Azhar into an alliance with democratic reformers and nationalists against the Brotherhood and its even more extreme allies.

Obviously, one shouldn’t romanticize an Islamic establishment that served the dictatorship and is not exactly liberal. This is merely an alliance of convenience for senior clerics acting out of self-interest. For example, one of the main provisions of al-Azhar’s political declaration is to maintain the university’s independence rather than, as the Brotherhood proposes, subordinate it to a president and parliament in which the Brotherhood will be very powerful.

Another element here is the conflict between the credentialed Muslim clerics and the self-taught preachers who often play a leading role in the revolutionary groups. The al-Azhar statement says that only licensed clerics can produce religious rulings.

The Muslim establishment is preferable to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists. Al-Azhar has thrown down the gauntlet. If the Brotherhood and its allies win parliament there will definitely be a thorough purge of the religious hierarchy. If not, the anti-Islamists will have to make concessions to the official clerics to “prove” their pious credentials by making Egypt somewhat more Islamic than it has been for the last 60 years.

To read more about these issues and their historic background, Noha el-Hennawy has written a really excellent survey.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Progress? Now Even Egypt's Religious Establishment Hates America

By Barry Rubin


This is the kind of serious development that everyone better pay close attention to if they want to understand what’s going on in the Middle East and how the West doesn’t get it.

The Grand Shaykh of al-Azhar, Ahmad al-Tayyeb, gave an interview to al-Jazira. Al-Azhar is the most important religious center in the Sunni Muslim world. Up until now, its leadership has been controlled by the Egyptian government, which meant the government of President Husni Mubarak until earlier this year.

That regime was a dictatorship. It appointed the head of al-Azhar and the mufti of Egypt. It controlled mosque sermons and which preachers went on television. Consequently, it limited their extremism and, knowing their careers were at stake, the clerics complied. They weren’t real moderate but, for example, wouldn’t think of passionately attacking the United States or calling for the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel.

Now everything is different. The people are the same as those who radicals once derided as Mubarak’s “parrots,” but to survive they must please different masters. The Muslim Brotherhood has publicly announced that it would seek to replace those deemed to be too pro-Mubarak among clerics and especially in al-Azhar. In future, it proposes that the top clerics be appointed by parliament, where they expect to have a very large number of seats.

So instead of pleasing Mubarak, people like Tayyeb have to please the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the leadership of al-Azhar just held their first official meeting ever with the Brotherhood in order to make some kind of deal.

Therefore, while it is shocking it isn’t surprising that Tayyeb now sounds like a radical jihadist. Responding to Usama bin Laden’s death, he made the following points:

--The killing of bin Laden by the Americans was an act of “piracy.”

--His burial at sea (supposedly done to please Muslims) was against Islamic law and is a “moral crime,” the “mutilation of a corpse.”

--The main cause of terrorism is Israel’s existence and actions.

--The other big cause of terrorism is that Western countries seek to dominate the Arab world.

Key forces in Egypt no longer consider America as an ally or bin Ladin as an enemy. Moreover, the highest Egyptian establishment and non-Islamist political authorities are now authorizing revenge attacks on America for the "crime" of killing bin Ladin. That’s what the change in Egyptian politics has brought.

Now, consider in contrast a relatively moderate—on such international issues—countries that are still dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A leading Saudi cleric praised the killing of bin Ladin on al-Arabiya, the television network controlled by the United Arab Emirates.

Al-Jazira, praised by American leaders and journalists, hates America. Al-Arabiya, which is ignored by them, is friendlier. What next? The U.S. government calls for the overthrow of al-Arabiya and its replacement by al-Jazira?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist for PajamasMedia at http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org/. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.