This week’s issue of The Economist features an excellent update on Sunni-Shia sectarian strife. Aslan, one of your text authors this semester, is exceptional on the origins of the split. The article linked below is equally good on the current situation, and it contains a superb chart summarizing the positions and dogmas of the leading contenders:
The Economist, “Sunni-Shia Strife: The Sword and the Word,” May 12, 2012
Writing from Istanbul, a Turkish journalist says, “Those who hope to nurture genuine religiosity should first establish liberty.”
Mustafa Akyol, “Can Islamists Be Liberals?,” New York Times Op-Ed piece, May 14, 2012
Adel al-Tarifi wrote an opinion piece in Al-Sharq al-Awsat on May 9, 2012 entitled “Revisionists in ‘The Arab Fall.’” His main point is that as Islamists rise to power, overtaking and displacing the more secular goals of the original revolutionaries such as “civil society” and “human rights,” hope is giving way to apprehension and even fear.
Excerpts:
الآن بات بإمكانك رصد تصريحات وكتابات متشككة في نتائج «الربيع العربي» على مستقبل الحريات والحقوق في تلك البلدان. أي أن دعاة «المجتمع المدني» والحقوقيين باتوا يدركون أن المبادئ والأحلام التي تعلقوا بها، قد تحولت إلى كابوس مرعب بسبب صعود الإسلاميين المتشددين إلى سدة الحكم.
“We are at the point now where you can observe statements and writings that are skeptical about the results of the ‘Arab spring’ and skeptical about the future of freedoms and rights in those countries. This is to say that advocates of ‘civil society’ and rights have begun to realize that the principles and dreams that had become attached to them, have turned into nightmares because of the rise of radical Islamists to the gates of power…
لا شيء، الإنسان هو من يعطي القوانين أو الأنظمة قيمتها وليس العكس. قد تتمكن من عزل الرئيس ورجاله وتسمي ذلك ثورة، وقد تتمكن من تغيير الدستور والأنظمة، ولكنك لن تنجح في تغيير حياة الناس إلى الأفضل، إذا كان ذلك على حساب أمنهم ومعاشهم.
Obviously, it is mankind who bestows value or legitimacy upon laws or regulations, not the reverse. You may be able to depose a president and his men and call it a revolution, and you may be able to change the constitution and change regulations, but you will not succeed in changing people’s lives for the better if it comes at the expense of their security and their livelihoods.”
(My translation)
The red notice for al-Hashimi “represents a regional (and) international alert to all of Interpol’s 190 member countries to seek their help in locating and arresting him, following the issue of a national arrest warrant by Iraq’s Judicial Investigative Authority as part of an investigation in which security forces seized bombing materials and arrested individuals,” the international police organization said in a statement. -CNN
“Everybody knows that my case is a political case, from beginning to end, and that the charges against me are fabricated, and far from the truth,” al-Hashimi said in a statement. -CNN
A red notice is not an international arrest warrant, but is serious enough to make many Interpol member countries consider the alert to be a valid request for provisional arrest. Interpol is the Lyon-based international police agency that currently has 190 members. He is being brought to face charges for terrorism.
Al-Hashimi has been living in a Turkish government guest house in Istanbul. Turkish government officials were not immediately available for comment on whether Turkey would comply with the red notice.
The owner of a private Tunisian TV station, Nabib Karoui, has been fined for showing the award-winning American-French film, Persepolis. When the film was shown last October, militant Islamists attacked Nessema, the offices of the TV station. This case is seen as the testing of free speech, which is what sparked the Arab Spring uprisings here last year. The court accused Karoui for “broadcasting a film that disturbs public order and threatens proper morals” and he must now pay 2,400 dinars ($1,700). The film is about a young girl who recounts the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. The film includes a scene that depicts Allah, which is forbidden in Islam. Islamists demanded that Karoui be given jail time, while some Salafists demanded that the television boss be executed.
On April 24, Libya’s National Transitional Council announced a ban on parties organized along religious, regional, tribal, and ethnic lines. The NTC has recently lifted the ban on religious parties and is allowing them to take part in elections this June. Voters will be electing members of a new General National Congress. Registrations centers opened on May 1, and voters have two weeks to register. It has been said that this electoral law was created to preserve “national unity.” Islamists will now be allowed to campaign for the upcoming elections. These will be the first elections held in Libya for decades.
Raghida Dergham, a Lebanese columnist for Al-Hayat, writes about religion and democracy in the “Arab Spring”:
Thomas Friedman, writing from Beirut, says that Hizbullah’s shine is rapidly wearing off the more its ally, the Syrian regime, continues killing its own people.
Thanks to former NMH Faculty member El Johnson, herself living in Beirut, for calling our attention to this piece:
Thomas Friedman, “Words of the Prophets,” New York Times Op-Ed piece, April 29, 2012
Wendell Steavenson, who writes frequently about Egyptian political affairs, brings to light in her visit with a Salafi politician in Alexandria what many regard as the Achilles heel of theocratic politics masquerading as democracy: the question of who gets to decide what God’s will is in a society’s political life, assuming it’s even possible to agree on what God’s will is. In a culture where the concept of separation of powers and strong, credible institutions are not well established, these questions become critical. The answers remain equivocal. Steavenson writes,
“No one in Egypt has a clear idea of how Sharia law could be applied in a democracy. I asked Muslim Brotherhood politicians, Salafi preachers, Nour Party officials, and activists the same question. What is the supreme authority in a Muslim country without a dictator – man’s laws or God’s law? Who decides what constitutes Sharia and what does not? Does a parliamentary majority have the final say, or is there a higher authority that should vet legislation? Their answers were mixed with quotes from the Koran, stories of the Prophet’s mercy and tenderness, tangents, non-sequiturs, and circumlocutions. Authority, I was variously told, resided with the will of the people, with parliament, with a Higher Council, with a committee of Islamic scholars from Al Azhar University. Salafis told me that they had no problem with the mechanisms of democracy, only to qualify this with talk of limits, boundaries, and ‘the frame of Sharia.’” (p.28)
Wendell Steavenson, “Letter From Alexandria: Radicals Rising,” The New Yorker, April 30, 2012, pp. 24-30
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