Boris eulogizes poet-jailing Qatar

[Originally posted at NOW]

No day is a good day to pen a thousand words of uncritical praise for a violently repressive theocracy, but London mayor Boris Johnson’s decision to do just that in yesterday’s Telegraph was timed even worse than it might otherwise have been. Scarcely had the ink of his parodically rose-tinted tribute dried than a Qatari court sentenced another luckless soul to medieval punishment for crimes against the Almighty; in this case 40 lashes for imbibing the illicit Dionysian harvest. One wonders whether – as with Salam Fayyad’s resignation and the Obama visit – the authorities were putting off the announcement until his plane had safely left the tarmac.

Boris, of course, has his own history of moral policing on the alcohol question, but he’s convinced there’s far more common ground to be found than that. “There is so much we can offer [to Qatar], so many ways to build on this partnership,” he tells us. “We have more friends than we sometimes imagine.”

Which is certainly more than could be said by, e.g., Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, the Qatari poet sentenced to life imprisonment last November (later reduced to 15 years) for a poem deemed an act of incitement against the regime (it expressed admiration for the Tunisian revolution), who might conceivably expect some support from a nation claiming to value democracy and free speech.

Johnson – tipped, don’t forget, as a possible future prime minister – might also consider his “partnership” (or lack thereof) with the Arab world’s liberals and secularists, who at every turn are seeing their courageous efforts at combating tyranny knocked back by the Doha-sponsored Muslim Brotherhood, if not (as in Bahrain) by the thugs of the al-Thani regime itself. Women, too, deserve better than to have the barbaric practice of (often forced) polygamy shrugged off as a mere “traditional” eccentricity, as harmless as falconing and camel racing.

Of course, Johnson’s dilemma is obvious: Britain is poor; Qatar is the richest country on earth. The man is simply in no position to lecture what is already one of his city’s largest investors. His article is ultimately, then, a testament not to the endearing qualities of the “natives” (a word he actually uses) but rather to Britain’s frightening subservience to them, and the profoundly troubling consequences of their transformation from colonial protectorate to imperial potentate.

Alcohol ban marks Egypt's further decline

[Originally posted at NOW]

It has often been said that the test of a nation’s moral stature is its treatment of the poor. An alternative, and arguably no less reliable, barometer of societal well-being is the situation of alcohol, and its enthusiasts.

In a heady moment of collective madness fuelled by ascendant Protestant fundamentalism, the USA banned drink entirely from 1920 to 1933. The resulting boost to organized crime was only one of innumerable disasters inflicted on that country by its religious right, which generally continues to “abstain” from Bacchic indulgence today. A decade later, the Nazis sternly discouraged all consumption of the “genetic poisons” of booze and tobacco, and even went so far as to sterilize full-blown alcoholics.

More recently, and closer to home, the monstrous regimes of Saudi Arabia and Iran totally proscribe the fruits of the grape and grain, and routinely sentence imbibers to death. It’s perhaps of little surprise that their proxies around the region also take a dim view of the “Satanic” potations. Indeed, whenever Islamism is preparing to menace a society, it tends to announce its arrival by ecstatically smashing up some settings of conviviality. It happened here in Beirut in the 1980s, and it’s by no means uncommon now for alcohol proprietors in “conservative” neighborhoods to be bombed. Similar pogroms heralded the rise of Tunisia’s newly liberated Salafi-jihadis, who have since moved on to assassinating political opponents.

And now comes the depressingly unsurprising news that Egypt, the birthplace of modern Arab secularism and the nahda (“awakening”) of the 19th century, has announced the beginning of the end of alcohol sales. “We cannot allow [liquor] stores spreading debauchery in our society,” was the unsmiling declaration of the vice-president of the New Urban Communities Authority.

Much like the recent efforts to ban pornography, if this initiative succeeds, I wager that it too will be remembered – to borrow a phrase from a different, though not dissimilar Egyptian – as another milestone in the road of a once-great nation’s decline.

Ennahda under pressure in Tunisia

[Originally posted at NOW, one of a six-part series looking at the Arab Spring two years later]

The second anniversary of the revolution that overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the former military officer and now convicted criminal who presided over Tunisia for 24 years, was for most citizens an occasion of resentful anger rather than joyous celebration.

In the capital on January 14th, two years to the day after Ben Ali’s exile to Saudi Arabia, some 8,000 demonstrators took to Bourguiba Avenue, the same boulevard they had filled during the revolution, to protest the perceived failures of the new government coalition, led by the Islamist Ennahda party. With riot police standing by, they chanted, “No to religious dictatorship” and “Where is the constitution? Where is democracy?” As against this, only some 2,000 turned up to voice support for the incumbents.

This, however, was but a tame reenactment of the far more heated scenes witnessed elsewhere in the country in preceding weeks. In late November, the rural town of Siliana, about 130km southwest of Tunis, saw unprecedented violence from security forces, who fired shotguns at unarmed demonstrators calling for economic and infrastructural development. Over 220 people were wounded, including journalists, and the government’s conduct earned a public rebuke from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Similar unrest was also witnessed in other impoverished towns south of the coastline, including Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the Tunisian revolution and, arguably, the entire “Arab Spring.”

Such pronounced turmoil in these interior regions has largely taken analysts by surprise. Of particular significance is the rapid decline in government support within the former Ennahda bastion. “It’s interesting, if you take the votes from the October 2011 elections, you wouldn’t think these regions would now be up in arms against Ennahda, because most of them in fact had a majority of seats go to Ennahda,” said Dr Mohamed-Salah Omri, a Tunisian professor at Oxford University’s Oriental Institute.

“If you go there now, however, Ennahda is hardly there at all anymore. It’s very significant how people have turned against their representatives there,” he told NOW.

This reversal is fuelled primarily by the lack of economic and corruption-related reforms, says Omri. “The main grievance here is that promises were not fulfilled, and some of the old practices were continuing in terms of appointments of people close to the party, and so on.”

While economic frustration is felt all over the country, in Tunis and other more cosmopolitan areas nearer the coast there are further concerns about threats to human rights and individual liberties emanating from an increasingly muscular Islamist contingent to which the Ennahda party is accused of turning a blind or even quietly approving eye. Recent months have seen a series of moves to prosecute artists, actors, TV producers and journalists for such crimes as “harming public order and morals” following protests, some of them violent, by Salafist activists.

Salafists have also notably attacked Sufi shrines, hotels serving alcohol, and the US embassy, where four were killed in riots against the allegedly blasphemous “Innocence of Muslims” film.

Wafa Ben Hassine, a Tunisian writer, law student and former editor-in-chief of Tunisia Live, believes the ruling coalition is not doing enough to guard against the Salafists’ rise.

“[They] cannot become a threat if the state establishes well-developed institutions that ensure the rule of law. Given that the government isn’t doing the best job at facilitating this process of institution building, the spread of violent narratives may become more commonplace,” she told NOW.

Omri, however, is somewhat more sanguine. “I’m personally not pessimistic because I think so far a certain balance has been kept. Tunisia has a strong civil society and an emboldened and independent media that have been successful in getting the government and the Islamists to climb down on a number of key issues.”

As an example, Omri points to recent amendments to the draft constitution, where Ennahda’s demand to recognize Islamic Sharia as the “source” of legislation was dropped after negotiations.

A Human Rights Watch report issued Wednesday, however, said the new draft constitution continues to “threaten human rights.”

And indeed, the country may soon face an altogether more serious danger from religious extremism. On Monday, security forces arrested 16 suspected members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in the town of Kasserine, near the Algerian border, seizing explosives among other materiel. This followed a statement last week by President Moncef Marzouki that “Tunisia is becoming a corridor [for jihadists] between Libya and Mali.”

Omri is inclined to agree. “The news that 11 of the attackers of the gas plant in Algeria [last Wednesday] are from Tunisia, that’s a very high number. Tunisia is a corridor for militants, in the sense that I don’t think they ever managed to control the border with Libya. In fact, I think Tunisia may be the most vulnerable of the nearby countries - in terms of security and the army, it is the weakest link.”

Ben Hassine concurs, emphasizing the “Libyan weaponry that is all over the country,” adding that “security is definitely something that the Tunisian media need to report on more often and on a consistent, more regular basis.”

The AQIM threat aside, however, the average citizen’s primary concerns will continue to be economic, says Omri. As far as Salafist influence goes, he says “the ‘street’ is not with them. And certainly the media and elites aren’t either. So there will be a new re-alignment, I think.”

Remembering Muhammad Bouazizi

[Originally posted at NOW]

“O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant, bloody-scepter’d,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again[?]”

– Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III

Two years ago today, a penniless and powerless 26-year-old street vendor from the central Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid took a decision that – though he never lived to see it – would lead to the overthrow of four of the most despotic dictatorships in the Middle East, as well as over half a dozen uprisings that continue to chip away at the region’s remaining tyrannies to this day.

Repeatedly rebuffed from a series of job applications, Muhammad Bouazizi was forced to sell fruit and vegetables from a wheelbarrow to provide for his extended family. This made him easy prey for a vulturine police establishment, who would routinely invent “fees” and other dues to be extracted at their pleasure, sometimes confiscating his produce altogether. On December 17th, 2010, they went further; reportedly slapping him and knocking over his cart when he declined to cough up for yet another bribe. Within an hour, a furious Bouazizi had got hold of a can of petrol and a match, and we all know what happened next.

So unrecognizable is the Arab world today from two years ago that it’s still difficult to believe that the following things actually happened:

In Tunisia, the man who had ruled for 23 years fled ignominiously to Saudi Arabia along with his detestable wife after a month of peaceful demonstrations. Free democratic elections followed, resulting in a human rights activist assuming the presidency.

In Egypt, the tyrant of 30 years was toppled after just 18 days of popular protests. In June 2012, Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in the killing of some 850 demonstrators during the uprising.

In Libya, the “Colonel” who had 42 years of dictatorship under his belt was hunted down and eventually killed in a drain pipe by rebels who had taken up arms, with NATO assistance, after initially peaceful protests had met with brutal repression by Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.

In Bahrain, large peaceful demonstrations against the institutionalized sectarian bigotry of the Sunni ruling minority against the Shia majority were countered with tear gas and shotguns by state authorities (bolstered by a 5,000-strong “Peninsula Shield” coalition of Saudi, Qatari and Emirati forces) who have killed over 90 civilians to date. Despite a professed commitment to reform by Sheikh Khalifa, unrest continues to this day.

In Yemen, protestors calling for the overthrow of President Saleh, who had ruled North and then united Yemen for 34 years, were fiercely repressed. After a full year of negotiated half-measures and quasi-resignations, Saleh eventually stepped down in February 2012, some 2,000 civilian deaths later.

And then, of course, there is Syria, where Bouazizi’s match lit not a fire but an explosion. As in Libya, what started as a peaceful campaign turned into a full-blown armed rebellion as the ruling Assad regime turned on demonstrators with pitiless violence. 21 months on, a civil war has sucked in every monster the region has to offer, with the Free Syrian Army competing with Sunni jihadists to gain ground on the depleted but still fearsome regime, assisted in turn by Shia jihadists – a gruesome contest that has already claimed over 40,000 lives, with no end presently in sight.

These are in addition to smaller (but still unprecedented) convulsions in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Saudi, Sudan, the UAE and the West Bank.

The debates will continue for decades as to what all these uprisings were “really” about (Democracy? Economics? Religious/ethnic/tribal sectarianism? Corruption? Imperialism?). Whatever the case, let December 17th be remembered as the day that the untitled tyrants were challenged, and there followed at least a hope of wholesome days ahead.

Game's up, Ghannouchi

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

It’s not every day one gets to savor the galvanic, visceral bliss of vindication, so I hope Tunisia’s secularists are making full use of the occasion today. Having argued from the moment of Rachid Ghannouchi’s return from exile that the leader of Ennahda was a sinister fanatic with a deeply illiberal vision for the country – and having been denounced as reactionaries, Zionists and Ben Ali agents for doing so – their fears may finally have proven accurate.

A video uploaded yesterday apparently shows Ghannouchi sitting down with a group of Salafists and recommending ways for them to safeguard and build on the political successes they’ve had so far. An AFP report quotes Ghannouchi telling them “to be patient… Why hurry? Take your time, to consolidate what you have gained […] create television channels, radio stations, schools and universities”. He also urged them to be on guard against the secularists, who “could make a comeback after their failure” in the October elections.

These Salafists are the ideological brethren, don’t forget, of those who assaulted the US embassy in Tunis last month, killing 4 and injuring 46; who smashed up a hotel in Sidi Bouzid chanting “al-sharab haram” (“drinking is a sin”) earlier in the same month; and who Ghannouchi himself outwardly affects to decry as a “[danger] to public freedom”.

Can we at last dispense with the fatuous notion of “moderate Islamism”? As I’ve long argued, the very phrase is an oxymoron; Islamism being extremism by definition. Entrusting the task of warding off theocracy to a man who is himself a theocrat is, one would have thought, an obviously problematic idea. Sadly, however, with almost the entire region now clenched in the hands of exactly such theocrats, it seems we’re doomed to find this out the hard way.

The counter-Islamist: Talking to Maajid Nawaz

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

Maajid Nawaz is not your typical democracy activist. For more than 12 years, he was a member of the UK branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a hardline Islamist party that calls for a global Islamic state that would invade and conquer infidel nations, forcibly veil women, and stone apostates and adulterers to death. After serving the cause in Pakistan and Palestine, he was incarcerated for five years in Egypt, where he began to question the ideology.

Upon returning to London, he abandoned Islamism and started the Quilliam Foundation, a think tank countering extremism and promoting liberal democracy, named after the first Englishman to build a mosque in Great Britain. NOW Lebanon spoke to Nawaz, who has just released a memoir, Radical: My Journey From Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening.

The first half of your book tells the story of your transition in the 1990s from an essentially secular, girl-chasing hip-hop fan to a Hizb ut-Tahrir zealot. How did that happen?

Nawaz: The journey involved me suffering from a severe level of violent racism in Essex [in England]; both on the street from groups like Combat 18 and at the institutional level. In those days before the murder of Stephen Lawrence [in 1993], the level of racism in the British establishment was quite entrenched. That led me to feel very disenfranchised from society.

On top of that there was Bosnia unfolding right before our eyes. A few countries away, on the European continent, there was a genocide committed against Muslims. These combined to produce an acute identity crisis within me, which is where these ideological groups step in and push solutions that are black-and-white, which to a teenage mind can seem to make a lot of sense.

You spent five years in prison in Egypt in the 2000s, during which you began to have serious doubts about Islamist ideology. What made you change your mind?

Nawaz: There were two main factors, although I must emphasize it was a process, it wasn’t a sudden light-bulb moment.

First, Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience. I saw people fighting for justice on my behalf who weren’t Muslims, and that had a profound impact on me.

Second were the discussions I had in prison with the “Who’s Who” of political prisoners, from the assassins of Anwar Sadat through the entire Islamist spectrum to liberal political prisoners.

After leaving Hizb ut-Tahrir, you co-founded the Quilliam Foundation, which aims to counter extremist ideology and promote democratic pluralism. How, in practical terms, can that be done?

Nawaz: There’s a grass-roots approach and a policy approach, as I described in my TED talk. We work on both sides. Governments have a role—for instance in choosing their partners and interlocutors—who they engage with. They have to make sure they aren’t unwittingly encouraging extremism. Media, too, have a role to be sure [in making sure] they are not furthering the Islamist narrative through their reporting.

On the other end we try to build up a grass-roots allegiance for democratic values in countries such as Pakistan. To directly compete with groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Lashkar-e-Taiba who are working to recruit young Pakistanis. That is a long-term solution. The Muslim Brotherhood was established in 1928 and it took them until 2012 to win elections in Egypt. You have to start somewhere.

You’ve founded a similar organization, Khudi, in Pakistan. What sort of obstacles do you face there?

Nawaz: Security is a big one. We’re talking about an environment where “secularism” has become an insult and a swear word; where democracy is viewed with suspicion and a synonym for corruption. An environment where people are killed by mobs upon the mere accusation of blasphemy. So we have to be very careful what we say and how we say it. But there are large chunks of the country, especially the youth, who are increasingly disillusioned with the status quo and are turning to our organization.

Turning to the Arab Spring, as someone who was tortured by President Mubarak’s infamous state security, what did the Egyptian revolution mean to you?

Nawaz: It was a cathartic moment, because the ideas of non-violent uprising that led to Tahrir Square were the sort of ideas that were being debated by us in prison all those years before. And in fact some of those involved in starting the intellectual input were my cell-mates—people like Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the famous Egyptian sociologist, and Ayman Nour. So it was a vindication, especially because Mubarak is now in the very same prison we were.

Have the recent electoral victories of Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia been a disappointment to you?

Nawaz: Not really; they were expected. What’s more important in these countries is to have what I call a democratic trinity in place: a firm entrenchment of democratic values, democratic institutions and the democratic process. If those three can be rooted in society it’s more important than any one party or who wins the election.

In “Radical” you write that “If the West […] had intervened earlier and harder” in Bosnia, it might have limited “the spread of Islamism and [Hizb ut-Tahrir].” Does this suggest a reason to intervene in Syria?

Nawaz: It suggested a reason for Libya, because Libya was a very uncontroversial and legal intervention. The problem with Syria is we have to try and be consistent. As Muslims, sometimes we like to have our cake and eat it too. So when we disagreed with the Iraq war, we were the first to shout that this was an illegal intervention and it was Western colonialism, and yet in Syria we are frustrated that intervention hasn’t been possible. I am frustrated about that. The problem without a coalition is that now if states do intervene, it gives other governments like Iran and Russia the perfect excuse to say, “Well this is illegal, we’re backing the Syrian regime.” And that leads to a potential regional war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

I’m sure a lot more can and must be done to help the rebels, but I’m saying it’s simply not analogous to Libya or Bosnia. It’s very complicated—Lebanon is there and suffering from sectarian fallout—so it’s one of these ones that’s genuinely stumped me, because I’m very keen to see the back of the Assads, but I’m not very keen to further entrench Iran, Hezbollah and Russia in the region. I don’t think anyone really has a solution to this.

Do you worry that just as Bosnia turned you to Islamism, today some young Muslims are doing the same because of Syria?

Nawaz: Of course, absolutely. In fact we know that a minority of the fighters in Syria are foreign jihadists. However, I think that those groups would capitalize on it with or without intervention.

Turning to Lebanon, your former Hizb ut-Tahrir leader, Omar Bakri Muhammad, currently resides here. Do you think the Lebanese government should ban him and other Salafist-Jihadists from the country, as the UK has done?

Nawaz: I have absolutely no doubt that he’s involved in ratcheting up sectarianism in the Syrian conflict right now. But he’s a Syrian national, so I don’t think it’s possible to extradite him at the moment.

In general we have to distinguish between extremist thought and calling for violence. Hizb ut-Tahrir is not banned in the UK, and I’ve argued for them to remain legal, while organizations like al-Muhajiroun, which was Omar Bakri’s in London, are banned and I’ve argued for them to be banned. The distinction I make is that groups that directly call for terrorism need to be outlawed, whereas groups that call for extremist thought need to be challenged by civil society.

Finally, might you ever consider extending your activism to Lebanon?

Nawaz: I would love to, but capacity is one of the issues. We are working very hard to build up and expand the Khudi model into other countries. We’ve already started training people in three other countries. It’s a matter of time.

More "moderate" Islamists in Tunisia

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

“Even the Islamists are highly civilized!” Edward Said is said to have once told Christopher Hitchens in recommending Tunisia. It’s a refrain we’ve often heard since the Islamist “Ennahda” (“Awakening”) party won the parliamentary elections last October. Relax, we’re told. Islamists these days are just liberals with a twist of spirituality. Dreamers, who recite the Quran for the ecstasy of the poetry, and wisely steer clear of the “militant” and “blinkered” secularism of the West.

A fine example of this “high civilization” arrived this week in the form of a good old-fashioned puritanical mob rampage, in which “bearded men burst into” Sidi Bouzid’s Hotel Horchani, “smashing bottles” of alcohol “and chasing away customers, before raiding the reception and the upstairs rooms, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Al-Sharab haram’ [drinking is a sin],” in the words of the AFP report.

The report added that a group of self-described “Salafi jihadis” proudly claimed responsibility for the attack, boasting that “it was done in response to the demands of the people.”

A few bad apples, you may say. Nothing to do with the tree-huggers over at Ennahda. Except that Wael Amami, the spokesperson for the attackers, had his life sentence amnestied following the overthrow of ex-President Ben Ali, an act that wouldn’t have been possible without Ennahda’s blessing. What’s more, Amami further bragged that “police don’t interfere” when he and his friends take vigilante action against illegal alcohol vendors elsewhere. AFP’s report ends by saying “the Islamist-led coalition government” has been accused of “not doing enough to rein [Salafists] in.”

Well I’ll be damned.

Interview with Sultan al-Qassemi

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

A favorite topic of contemporary political punditry concerns the role of social media in facilitating the revolutions of the Arab Spring. At the front line of this pioneering activism is Sultan al-Qassemi, the Emirati columnist, blogger and royal family member whose Twitter feed —read by over 100,000 followers—was named by Time Magazine as one of last year’s top 140. Qassemi spoke to NOW Lebanon about his part in the historic upheavals in the region, and where he thinks we are heading.

How did you get involved in political writing?

Sultan al-Qassemi: I started off in 2007 writing for a few publications in the UAE—mainly financial op-eds but usually with a political twist. Then, of course, there was this movement that started in December 2010 in Tunisia and since I understand French I was able to keep up with the news—at first it wasn’t being reported in the English or Arabic blogospheres so much as in the French one, so I was able to follow it and tweet about it, and the story kept growing, and then suddenly an entrenched Arab dictator had fled. And then I think it was only 11 days later we had Egypt, so it was just a rollercoaster. And I think it was only really then that I began to get noticed regionally.

Were there any early experiences that drove you to politics? 

Qassemi: I was always interested in it, but when I was about 12 my cousins fled to the UAE from Kuwait, and they were telling me about this Iraqi invasion, that there were tanks in the streets, and it affected me.

What have been the successes of the Arab Spring in your opinion?

Qassemi: Firstly, I don’t like to call it the Arab Spring; I prefer the Arab Uprising. I think the biggest success has been the people saying “enough is enough.” This is a huge step compared to many decades in which people wanted to speak up but either didn’t or couldn’t. The Arab world will never be the same again. Specifically, Tunisia has been a great success. Most Arab leaders are military men, many of them brutal dictators, but in Tunisia we now have a civilian president—a human rights activist, in fact—in a country that used to be one of the very worst police states. This is an example that puts other Arab countries to shame.

What about the other side of Tunisia—the rise of the Salafists, for example?

Qassemi: There are Salafists in the UK. They are all over the world. They are part of society, and as soon as they enter the political game—as in Egypt—they will be almost neutralized. The only fear is if Salafists don’t enter the political game. Then they become a big risk.

What have been the failures of the Arab Uprising?

Qassemi: The very slow progress Egypt has made in handing over power to civilian rule. Egyptians are very intelligent, educated and capable of governing themselves without military interference. The other disappointment is dictators who believe they can stay in power through repression, like Bashar al-Assad.
But for me the lack of reform in the Gulf is the biggest disappointment. The fact that two Gulf countries actually saw a regression—Bahrain and the UAE—and the fact that Saudi Arabia has not seen any kind of reform.

What is the significance to you of the arrests of many of your fellow bloggers, from Alaa Abd al-Fattah to Ahmad Mansoor to, most recently, Hamza Kashgari?

Qassemi: I think the significance is two-fold. First of all, it shows you the Arab countries are still using outdated laws, sometimes from the colonial era, to prosecute people in the 21st century, so it shows you how slow the Arab countries are to adapt. Secondly, it’s very clear that when bloggers are arrested this is a message to other bloggers.

On that note, you live and do most of your work in Sharjah, perhaps the most conservative emirate in the UAE. Have you faced opposition from the establishment for things you have written or tweeted?

Qassemi: I wrote an article in defense of mixed marriages [Emiratis with non-Emiratis] and people in senior circles, tribal chiefs, were very unhappy with me. And I’m the only person in history to have received an official rebuke from the UAE parliament. I wrote a piece questioning if the parliament actually existed at all, and I got this critical letter saying shame on me. And I was very proud of that, to have instigated a debate on the parliament. And there have been several other examples, but they haven’t changed the way I write or tweet.

Has being a member of the royal family affected your freedom to write?

Qassemi: I don’t know. I hope not. I hope the law is applied equally to everybody. I’m not naïve enough to say that it is, but if I had a choice, I would rather that that be the case.

Your critics argue there is a double standard in you supporting democratic uprisings elsewhere while appearing to look favorably upon your own country’s Islamist monarchy. How would you respond?

Qassemi: I make a point of tweeting any articles or press releases that people would consider critical of the UAE. In fact I “favorite” the negative tweets about the UAE so that people can see I don’t shy away from criticizing my own country.

You once said, “I’m only interested in two countries in the region now: Egypt and Saudi Arabia.” Could you elaborate?

Qassemi: I am! I’m only interested in Egypt and Saudi Arabia—people try to stuff other countries down my throat, it doesn’t work. Listen, I sympathize, and I am so saddened by what’s happening in Syria, in Yemen, in Palestine. But I’m interested in these two for two reasons: firstly, because these are the countries I’m most knowledgeable about. And secondly, I believe that if Egypt and Saudi Arabia change, then everywhere else will change, because of Egypt’s demographic weight and Saudi’s religious and financial weight.

What, in your opinion, is the solution to the Syrian crisis?

Qassemi: I feel as helpless as tens of millions of other Arabs. I want to say there is a diplomatic solution, but I’m honestly hoping for a palace coup; that some honorable person will come and depose Assad and his ruthless brother, and then immediately open up the door for reconciliation and elections, because I fear it could get very ugly if it continues in this way.

What about foreign intervention?

Qassemi: I think every time we’ve seen foreign military intervention the country has descended into chaos.

Finally, what do you see for the future of Lebanon?

Qassemi: I’m very hopeful about Lebanon. It’s always been a beacon of freedom for us. We all want Lebanon to prosper, to turn the pages of civil war and sectarianism. I remember being there a few months ago, you could be in a leftist bar one minute and then walk down the road and you’re in an Islamic gathering. The Arab world needs Lebanon more than people understand.

No, we absolutely must not 'embrace' Islamism

"[The] general enemy, of course, is extremism. What has extremism ever done for anyone? Where are its gifts to humanity? Where are its works?" – Martin Amis¹

"Question to several white, secular liberal friends in the West: why are you so keen on a #MuslimBrotherhood victory in #Egypt?" – Mohammed ‘Ed’ Husain, author of The Islamist, on twitter

Last Thursday, Reuters ran the headline, ‘West should embrace “Arab Spring” Islamists – Qatar’, citing a Financial Times interview with the Qatari Prime Minister Hamad al-Thani in which he voiced this opinion. As suggested by the above quote of Ed Husain’s, al-Thani may have been pushing an open door. So now that the ‘Arab Spring’ (if we’re still calling it that) has brought us the incredible spectacle of secular Westerners applauding the electoral successes of Islamist parties from Casablanca to Cairo, it might be worth recalling what we all knew, or ought to have known, twelve months ago.

Which is that Islamism – the politicisation of Islam, or, if you prefer, the Islamisation of politics – is extremism by definition. As much as the phrase has been allowed to infiltrate our language, there is no such thing as a ‘moderate Islamist’. From the outset, Islamism says that the practice of religion may not be left to the private domain; that the relationship between man and God is not allowed to be a merely personal one. Instead, you, the citizen, are to be given no say in your spiritual and metaphysical beliefs: the state has made up your mind for you, and is going to make certain that you obey the compulsory pieties and strictures while it’s at it. All questions of interpretation, nuance, allegory, etc., are out: the state knows best, and there is no court of appeal. By this intrusion into the innermost realm of the individual, Islamism combines totalitarianism and tyranny with the basest insult to the intelligence – the manifestation of Orwell’s Big Brother who can tell you that two plus two makes five, and make you very sorry if you dare to disagree.

And what, indeed, has Islamism ever done for anyone? Where are its gifts to humanity? Where are its works? Are they perhaps to be found in Yemen, ranked dead last in the World Economic Forum’s 2011 Gender Gap report, where more than a quarter of the female child population is sold into marriage (and therefore rape) by the age of fifteen? Or how about the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which came in third-last on the same index, while topping the Committee to Protect Journalists’ ‘Deadliest Countries in 2011’ list? The sterile world of statistics cannot adequately capture the pure hell of this failed state, unforgettably described by Christopher Hitchens as follows:

Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame—which is the noble word “honor”—becomes most commonly associated with the word “killing.” Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter.

Nor is the picture much brighter in Saudi Arabia or Iran – the powerhouses of Sunni and Shia theocracy, respectively – where all social and cultural development is vetoed, and the people are harassed and humiliated daily by the secret police. Things are rapidly tending this way in the ‘Holy Land’, where the most admirable political cause of the modern era – the liberation of Palestine – has been hijacked by the fanatics of Hamas and Hizbullah, who want to kick out the Zionist empire only to install their own Islamic one in its place. True, life is bearable enough in comparatively relaxed Gulf dictatorships such as the UAE, so long as one is mindful not to ‘insult Islam’ by, say, criticising the Taliban. And then there is the purported ‘model’ of Turkey, where the advances made by Prime Minister Erdoğan’s party in economic and other respects have come at the price of an encroaching muscular reactionism in which a growing list of ‘vices’ from adultery to alcohol are falling under the stifling scrutiny of the state.

And now we suddenly have Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Egypt to add to the list. Only time will tell how fascistic each turns out to be, although the Tunisian ‘Ennahda’ party may have given us an early indication last month when its secretary-general, Hamadi Jbeli, proclaimed that, “We are in the sixth caliphate, God willing”. That as many as a quarter of Egyptians appear to have voted for the Salafi 'al-Nour' party – a spawn of the same sewage that nearly murdered the greatest novelist of the Arab world, Naguib Mahfouz – is also less than comforting. Of course, one must presume innocence until guilt is proven, and democratic nations should at least tolerate Islamists to the extent that they adhere to international law. But to ‘embrace’ them would be to abandon every principle – and every friend within each of these countries – to which the secular world owes its unconditional allegiance. Over. My. Dead. Body.

¹ Amis, M., The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007 (2008), Author’s Note

Istanbul, graveyard of empires

That the description of being ‘where east meets west’ is applied to so many cities – ranging as vastly in look and location as from Sarajevo to Singapore – is of course an indictment of its essential vapidity. But to the extent that it's true of any city, it is surely truest of Istanbul, that ancient imperial capital with its spinal Bosphorus river across which the lands of Europe and Asia are quite literally ‘bridged’. In this distinction – of being a single city adjoining two continents – Istanbul is unique. Less trivially, and not coincidentally, it has the further unique distinction of being the former seat of four epochal empires – Roman; Byzantine; Latin; and Ottoman – making it in effect the global centre of power for more than 1,500 consecutive years. That these empires (as we sometimes forget) were officially faith-based gives the city the additional distinction of being the only former capital of both Christendom and the Islamic caliphate. And finally, in its latest form within the borders of modern Turkey, its people were the first in history to have thrown out the Islamic shari’a in favour of a secular constitution. 

The city today bears the stamp of each of these origins, if in different ways and to uncertain extents. To take them broadly in order, the ‘European’ cloth of the tapestry is evident from the moment one steps into Atatürk International, which flexes the bulk and polish of a Schiphol or a Gatwick without the gilded glitz of, say, a Dubai. On the roads, the restraint and consideration shown to fellow drivers are truly foreign to anyone accustomed to the Middle East, as is the thoughtfully built and efficiently run public transportation system. The food, on the other hand, is unmistakeably ‘Asian’, as the faintest whiff of the Eminönü Spice Bazaar will confirm. Indeed, much of what is now eaten in the Arab world descends from traditional Ottoman cuisine: from the döner (shawarma in Arabic) and the şiş kebap (shish kabab) to the baklava sweets (baqlawa) and more (the Arabs were able to return the favour with their lahm b’ajin, the meat pastry now rendered in Turkish as lahmacun). In terms of dress, there’s been a good deal of cross-pollination, with about as many heels and skirts as headscarves and skull caps (on which more later). Perhaps above all else, it’s in the language that the cultural DNA is most nakedly revealed: distinctly Balkan to the ear, the vocabulary is nevertheless replete with loanwords not only from Arabic and Persian (including the most basic of all, merhaba, from the Arabic marhaba) but also from the West (one purchases a jeton to ride the tram, for instance). These adopted words persist despite attempts since the formation of the Republic in the 1920s to replace them with ‘purer’ Turkish equivalents – an initiative that also brought about the enforced Latinisation of the old Ottoman script. As we shall see, this is not the only way in which the Turks have not entirely taken to the ‘Reforms’ imposed by Atatürk. 

In the 4^th century AD, around the same time that Constantine ‘The Great’ was making Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire, the need was felt for a new capital east of Rome to address the vast territorial gains made in that direction. It was decided that the strategically-located city then known as Byzantion best met the requirements, and what was to become Constantinople was in fact briefly named Nea Roma, or ‘New Rome’. Much of the city as it was then remains visible in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul today, from the Hippodrome with the surviving section of the Serpent Column to the Basilica Cistern now lying beneath Yerebatan Street. But the most striking creation of what became the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, empire was the Hagia Sophia cathedral completed in the 6^th century during the reign of the emperor Justinian. 

Egyptian obelisk in the Hippodrome

Basilica Cistern

Hagia Sophia/Ayasofya 'Museum'

This magnificent building - whose signature dome would inspire the Sultanahmet and Süleymaniye mosques a thousand years later, and which was in fact itself later converted into a mosque by Sultan Mehmet II - was by far the largest of its kind worldwide; a record it held for nine centuries until the building of the Saint Mary cathedral in Seville. After five hundred years as the ‘Ayasofya’ mosque, it was eventually stripped of its religious status by Atatürk and is today strictly referred to as a ‘museum’, much to the fury of fundamentalist Christians and Muslims alike.

Indeed, the ‘museum’ is nothing if not a damning testament to religious hatred and tyranny. Repeatedly sacked and pillaged throughout its existence – by the Islamic invaders but more devastatingly by the Catholic Crusaders (whose loathing of the Orthodox Church is still very much alive in eastern Europe today) – it’s a wonder the thing still stands at all. In addition to the four minarets added to the exterior by the Ottomans, inside one finds Islamic calligraphy on great black discs crudely affixed like cheap stickers to the walls, in places just metres from the original Christian mosaics. And the mosaics themselves tell a sordid story of their own; many of them depicting Christ and Mary shoulder to shoulder with Constantine and Justinian – brazen attempts to deify the emperors and thus render themselves, and their authority, infallible. That the Byzantine empire turned out to be very much fallible, and that it was an orgy of violence and despotism while it lasted, is a lesson in humility that far too few religions appear to have learned (not least of them Catholicism, which actually does still use the word ‘infallible’ in official descriptions of the pope).

Inside the Hagia Sophia/Ayasofya

Christian mosaics behind Islamic calligraphy

From left to right: Constantine, Mary, Jesus, Justinian

Of course, Atatürk couldn’t convert every house of worship into a museum, and the two most marvellous mosques still in use – the Sultanahmet, or ‘Blue’ one to the east of the Hippodrome; and the Süleymaniye one further to the west – have generously been made open to the public free of charge (entrance to the Hagia Sophia/Ayasofya costs 20 TL, or $11). These skyline-defining structures, exquisitely sculpted of marble and granite, are examples not only of the egos of the Sultans Ahmet and Süleyman (‘The Magnificent’) but also of the genius of the architect Mimar Sinan, the ‘Michelangelo of the East’, whose legacy extends from the Tekkiye Mosque in Damascus to the Sokolović Bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet perhaps the most interesting relic of the Islamic period is the colossal Topkapi Palace, personal residence of the Sultan and seat of the Ottoman government from the 15^th to the 19^th centuries. 

Sultanahmet Mosque

Süleymaniye Mosque

Entrance to Topkapi Palace

Built on the ruins of the ancient Great Palace of Constantinople, the grounds of what we now call the Topkapi Palace Museum - which effectively comprise an entire borough of the city – are the very height of Ottoman glory and greed; containing not just the old living quarters of the Sultan and his 4,000-strong support staff, but a mosque, a Byzantine church, a library, a treasury, a hospital, a mint, and over a hundred acres of gardens and courtyards. Within these walls can be found an 86-carat diamond; thrones made of solid gold and ebony; emeralds and rubies the size of golf balls; and the most exquisite porcelain of China. One can also find several purported belongings of the Prophet Muhammad, including his swords; his cloak; a tooth and even the individual hairs of his beard (why anyone should want to see these, I couldn’t say). Most famously, one can also find the Harem; the private quarters where the Sultan lived in the company of his hundreds of concubines. These often very young women were bought, donated or simply stolen into slavery and put to whatever use the Sultan desired. A New York Times article elucidates the grotesque way in which the girls were forced to feign interest in their owner and master:

At times up to 300 young women lived here, most of them in tiny cubicles, including four wives, the favorite concubines, the young up-and-coming odalisques. Harem girls were captured in wars or bought as slaves; some were offered by their parents. Russian and Georgian girls were considered great beauties and much in demand. [The Sultan’s] Mother apparently had the first choice and alloted the girls different tasks so that they might or might not be noticed. If you were an odalisque you could try to catch the sultan's eye when you served his coffee or when he called for the girls to parade and perform dances for him. If he offered you his handkerchief, you knew.

One must never forget that this monstrous combination of slavery and rape is wholly licensed by the tenets of Islam. The Qur’an makes repeated reference to slaves as ma malakat aymankum, or ‘what your right hands possess’, e.g., Suras 4:24; 23:5-6; 70:29-35:

And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.

[The believers are those] who guard their modesty, save from their wives or the (slaves) that their right hands possess, for then they are not blameworthy.

And those who preserve their chastity, save with their wives and those whom their right hands possess [...] These will dwell in Gardens, honoured.

Muhammad himself had a number of concubines – indeed, the canonical tafsir, or exegesis, of Ibn Kathir tells the illuminating tale of Maria the Copt, the concubine whom Muhammad swore never again to see after his wife Hafsa found the pair of them in bed. “Why bannest thou that which Allah hath made lawful for thee, seeking to please thy wives”? was the Almighty’s contemptuous response (Sura 66:1). Thus the Ottoman Sultans, in consigning thousands of girls to lives of abuse and abjection, were in fact only following the example of their moral and spiritual tutor. 

Which seems as good a reason as any to celebrate the day in 1924 when the inaugural President of the Republic of Turkey put a stop to all that forever, abolishing the caliphate and establishing the first secular country of the former Muslim world. That state would quickly go on to grant equal rights to women in things like education and marriage; outlaw the degrading practice of polygamy; and give its female population the vote long before supposedly enlightened nations such as France and Canada would do the same. The social and economic dividends of these revolutionary steps were suggested by Turkey’s joining of NATO in 1952 (it remains the only Muslim-majority country in the organisation) and its candidacy – recognised in 1999 - for membership of the European Union. 

Today, however, these hard-won gains face a threat that cannot easily be exaggerated. Never entirely accepted by the Turks from the start, over the years Atatürk’s constitution has had to be upheld by a powerful military establishment that can be as ruthless as it needs to be against its enemies, perceived or actual. Or at least that was the case until July of this year, when in an event that went largely unnoticed outside the country – and is still not nearly well enough appreciated - the entire leadership of the armed forces simultaneously resigned. This major and unprecedented move, described by the Milliyet columnist Asli Aydintasbas as “the symbolic moment when the first Turkish republic ends and the second republic begins”, was in response to the arrests of dozens of generals on what may or may not be fabricated charges of plotting to overthrow the government. The man behind all this, of course, is the Prime Minister and top Atatürk-despiser, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

An incredible amount of loose talk has it that Turkey strikes the ideal balance between the secular and the Islamic (when Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda party won last month’s elections in Tunisia, for example, he cited the Turkish “reconciliation between Islam and modernity” as though to negate fears about his own non-secular proclivities). Yet Erdoğan’s entire political career, from the day he joined the now-banned Islamist ‘National Salvation Party’ as a teenager, has been focused on advancing the former at the expense of the latter. 

As the Mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s, elected on the Islamist ‘Welfare Party’ ticket (also now banned), Erdoğan illegalised the sale of alcohol in city-owned establishments. Having presumably been on the military’s hit list for some time, the man describing himself as a “servant of the shari’a” was eventually arrested and imprisoned in 1998 for the somewhat ridiculous crime of ‘inciting religious hatred’ for reading a poem at a rally that contained the lines:

The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the believers our soldiers.

Since coming to high office in 2003, Erdoğan has, to borrow a phrase used by Patrick Cockburn in another context, done as much harm as he can and as much good as he must. His ‘Justice and Development’ party attempted to criminalise adultery in 2004, a blatantly Islamist move defended by Erdoğan as a question of “human honour”. At a NATO summit in 2009, the Turkish delegation made enemies of everyone in the room when it threatened to veto the appointment of the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Rasmussen, to the post of Secretary-General, on the preposterous and fascistic grounds that he had not censored the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in the Danish media – something the Danish constitution would not have allowed him to do even if he had wanted to. This sinister piece of galling impertinence led the French Foreign Minister to publicly withdraw his support for Turkey’s EU bid. And while Erdoğan has become something of a hero in the Arab world for (rightly) standing up to the Israelis, his defence of Palestine rests on the insulting notion of it as an ‘Islamic’ territory. Certainly, he seems to mind much less about slaughter and military occupation when the subjects of Armenia, Cyprus or Kurdistan are brought up – not to mention that he’s happy enough in the company of mass-murderers such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (“my good friend”) and Omar al-Bashir, whom he defended from the charges brought against him by the International Criminal Court by saying it was “not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide”. 

And then of course there is the drink question. Happily, the ban from the ‘90s has been repealed, but Erdoğan has never been one to give up easily on the imperatives of moral policing. Indeed, for the fruits of the grape and grain he appears to reserve especial distaste. After yet again raising taxes on alcohol in October, his advice for disgruntled drinkers was to “consume less alcohol”, echoing the call he made last year for Turks to eat grapes rather than drink wine. The courts had to get involved in 2007 to block a proposal to create designated “red zones” outside the cities in which alcoholic venues could be quarantined. While I was able to get a glass of raki easily enough in the famously convivial Beyoğlu district, the atmosphere was slightly but perceptibly diminished by the brand new law banning outdoor seating. This of course came after a series of restrictions introduced in January on things like advertising alcohol and the way in which it may be served at events (not for free, and not to anyone younger than 24). That package was to spark one of the most heartening sights of the year: crowds of protesters gathered in city centres across the country, each man and woman equipped with a brimming tumbler of tipple, in what they called a “drinking action” demonstration. To irk the forces of clerical fascism and get jolly drunk in the process is as fine a day’s work as any. 

There are still a lot of Turks, in other words, for whom secularism and individual liberties mean a great deal (there had, after all, been a number of rather larger rallies in 2007, when over a million people took to the streets to protest the presidential nomination of Erdoğan’s ally, Abdullah Gül). Whether they outnumber their more pious compatriots, however, is unclear. Peter Hitchens – a man with whom I very often disagree – made the interesting observation that while in the seriously Islamist country of Iran, the young women have a healthy contempt for the veil, in Turkey a very ugly kind of zealous conservatism appears to have become the fashion:

The Iranian women mock the headscarf as they wear it, pushed as far back as possible on the head, revealing as much bleached-blonde, teased hair as the piety police will allow. 

Their message is: 'The law can make me wear this, but it cannot make me look as if I want to.' The young Turks, by contrast, are saying: 'This is how I want to look, even if the law says I cannot.' For the scarf is banned by law in many universities and in government offices, and they view this ban as a challenge they must defy. 

There is no simpler way of making the point that, while Iran is a secular country with a Muslim government, Turkey is a Muslim country with a secular government. 

If Turkey truly hopes to be a First World nation, it would do well to start taking large strides away from, rather than toward the ideals that have turned life in the great Persian nation into a waking nightmare. And unless it wishes to lose its few remaining secular friends, it will have to come to terms with being the graveyard of the Islamic empire, and not the soil of its rebirth.