Email |  Print | RSS | Comment |  

 Email |  Print

Tue, Dec 13, 2011 | Rubin Reports | By Barry Rubin

Yusuf al-Qaradawi (source: almasryalyoum.com)

Middle East: We’re Going to Have a Revolution and We Can Do it the Hard Way or the Easy Way

“Along the Paris streets the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the…Guillotine.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Do I have to draw you a picture of how Islamism is just pretending to be moderate and plans to fundamentally transform the society in countries like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey? Well, I’ll let the most respected Muslim Brotherhood theologian, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, do it for me.

Let me underline that when Qaradawi answers a query, millions of people listen. Egyptian military officers and their families watch his show raptly and so do many others. And Qaradawi isn’t just talking for the sake of talking — he is teaching the revolutionary strategy of seizing all power for all time and imposing all of the Sharia on all of the people. Qaradawi is Lenin in a turban, as was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who did a little number on Iranian politics after the same people who are telling us now that the Brotherhood is moderate were telling us then that the Iranian Islamists were moderate.

If only government officials, journalists, and “experts” would read and comprehend things like this, they might understand what’s happening in the Middle East and how their policy is headed for disaster.

Qaradawi explains:

Gradualism is one of the laws of nature that Allah Almighty has created. It is also needed in applying the rulings of the Sharia to make a change in people’s life.

When used by Communists decades ago this approach was called the “salami tactic” — you go step by step to consolidate your power and go all the way. This is precisely what the “Turkish model” means. And, of course, the point of the exercise is to fool the dummy observers into thinking you are just great guys and very moderate. Incidentally, in this case the salami will be halal.

You invite them to dinner, butter them up, and then have them for dinner. If I were a cartoonist, I’d draw a picture of a man standing in front of a crowd, some of whom had their hands up. The caption would be: “Ok, that’s 23 votes for killing all the Jews first, and 17 for destroying America first.”

Qaradawi gives scriptural reasons for the gradualist approach:

The Prophet … stayed in Mecca for thirteen years struggling to shake the false beliefs the Meccan people had adopted. Then, for another ten years, Allah Almighty revealed to him … the laws that the Muslims would live by. Gradualism played an effective role in that regard. That was shown, for example, in prohibiting alcohol, riba (interest), and other vices [only gradually].

Of course, going step by step “does not mean that we are to be sluggish and delay achieving that aim for too long.” You have to maneuver strategically. That’s what the Muslim Brotherhood does so well and the one-track terrorist minds of al-Qaeda are incapable of doing.

Qaradawi explains:

Abolishing slavery then would have led to economic and social uprising, so, it was wise then to deal with such a problem in an indirect way (by, for instance, regarding setting a slave free as a good deed and making it an expiation for some sins). This implied a gradual abolishing of slavery.

So does imposing slavery.

You see, “Muslims have been socially, legislatively, and culturally invaded.” In other words, they have been influenced by Western notions such as nationalism, equality of religions and women, human-made laws, and so on, so they won’t abandon everything but Islamist-interpreted Islam overnight. They will resist. And so they must be lulled to sleep. And the same applies to the “invaders,” that is, the West so it doesn’t cause any trouble either.

And you need to build a mass base:

If we want to establish a real Muslim society, we should not imagine that such an end can be achieved by a mere decision issued to that effect by a king or a president or a council of leaders or a parliament.

To win that mass base the vanguard party — and here I deliberately use Marxist-Leninist terminology because the strategies are parallel — must be “preparing people ideologically, psychologically, morally, and socially to accept and adopt the application of the Sharia in all aspects of life. … Step by step, and through wise planning, organizing and determination, we can reach the last and long-awaited stage of applying all the teachings of Islam heart and soul.”

To get the point across, Qaradawi ends with a story:

Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz’s son, Abdul-Malik, who was a firm pious young man, said to his father one day, “O father! Why you do not implement the rulings firmly and immediately? By Allah, I would not care if all the world would furiously oppose us so long as we seek to establish the right [that Allah Almighty has enjoined].”

But the wise father said to his son, “Do not deal with matters hastily, son. Allah Almighty despised drinking alcohol twice in the Quran and did not declare it forbidden [until] the third time. I am afraid that if I enjoined the right on people at one stroke, they would give it up all at once, which might lead to sedition.” (See Al-Muafaqat by Ash-Shatibi, vol. 2, p. 94.)

Here, he is also preaching to the Salafists who he regards as “firm pious” people but too headstrong in their youthful zeal. Qaradawi is the Lenin of Sunni Islam and there is no shortage of Stalins in the wing.

Speaking of the Salafists, how do they talk? Somewhat less subtly. Among the remarks made by party leaders at a rally in Giza, near the Sphinx and Pyramids:

— Democracy is heresy because it contradicts the principle of allegiance to the caliph to make the decisions. Gives a whole new meeting to “One man, one vote, one time,” doesn’t it?

— The Egyptian Bloc, the most truly liberal Egyptian party which has a lot of Christian support, is a nest of “Zionism” and “Freemasonry.” Uh-oh, they’re on the death list. Note: these are the two “covert” forces held responsible for abolishing the caliphate in 1924, the inspiration for the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood four years later. To say the least, Islamists have long memories as well as vivid imaginations.

— “We must obliterate the liberalism that was introduced by Sadat and Mubarak and reinstate the rule of Islam,” said Shaaban Darwish, a member of the party’s supreme committee. (Note: Sadat and Mubarak aren’t hated by Islamists because they were dictators; they were merely the wrong sort of dictator.)

— Darwish continued: “The liberals have corrupted political life in the last 60 years. All they want is to protect their interests with the Americans and the Arabs.” (When someone implies you are American puppet that’s equivalent to a “license to kill.”)

— “When we rule, we’ll bring in a lot of money,” so economic problems will disappear. Where will the money come from? Making the rich pay their “fair share” or just confiscating a lot of stuff. Islamism nowadays has its Bolshevist side.

— Party candidate Adel Azazy said Islamic laws in Saudi Arabia helped reduce the crime rate substantially. I guess having various parts chopped off really is a deterrent.

Qaradawi and the Brotherhood will try to be a restraining force not because they’re moderate, but because they’re smart. But the Salafists will make up the mobs that will attack embassies, kill secularists, burn down churches, and make sure that women dress like they want them to or else.

Will the Brotherhood crack down on these people, vigorously have them arrested, and defend those victims whom they despise? Of course not.

And so when the Tunisian government begins and the Egyptian parliament takes shape, we will be told that the lack of immediate head-chopping will mean that there is nothing to fear. But there will be enough violence, terrorism, and intimidation to show the contrary is true.

Incidentally, Senator John Kerry has just met with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo. They told him that they were moderate. He no doubt believed them. I seem to recall he also believed Syrian leaders when they told him the same thing, and if not for a revolt there Kerry would no doubt still be engaging the Syrian regime as it happily went about its work of torturing dissidents, subverting their neighbors, promoting anti-Americanism, and sponsoring terrorism.

And the New York Times tells us that the Muslim Brotherhood is really moderate because a columnist had dinner with a few of them and that we shouldn’t take the Salafist vote seriously because it is just a protest vote against the government. And if that isn’t enough, we get AP telling us that Hamas in the Gaza Strip is learning from the Brotherhood and is now becoming moderate, too!

There is no limit on the number of times people will fall for this “moderation trick.” It makes them feel better: There’s nothing to worry about and no need to do anything.

The New York Times, in its latest outpouring of praise for the moderates in the Muslim Brotherhood, states:

The Freedom and Justice Party has sought a middle approach. Its platform calls for Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court to rule on compliance with Shariah. But that stance is essentially without consequence because the court already had that power under Mr. Mubarak, and the judiciary is a bastion of liberalism whose views of Islamic law are highly flexible, to say the least.

What’s wrong with this?

Once you have an Islamist president, parliament, and Constitution they will be naming the judges!

And then the court will rule the way they want. Also the new Constitution might well give additional power to religious courts to make rulings.

This is the intellectual level of most reporting on Egypt. The Islamists say they will only go so far, and we are told not to worry. But of course after they get to that point they will keep going.

Here’s Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, the man I think is just about the best political analyst in the Arab world, on this topic:

The Islamist party leaders hastened to embellish their image for the Western countries. … Of course, these speeches are public relations acts, and could only be believed by someone ignorant about the region or by the logic of the religious parties. [At most, these claims of moderation] expresses the opinion of few leaders only, because the majority of leaders and cadres of these groups consider cleansing the society as their first duty, and it would not be long before they topple the tolerant leaders.

There are thousands of examples of Western credulity toward dictators and extremists. Here’s one: the famous American liberal Lincoln Steffens interviewed Lenin in 1919:

[Lenin] had shown himself a liberal by instinct. He had defended liberty of speech, assembly, and the Russian press for some five to seven months after the October revolution which put him in power. … But the plottings of the Whites [counterrevolutionaries], the distracting debates and criticisms of the various shades of reds, the wild conspiracies and the violence of the anarchists against Bolshevik socialism, developed an extreme left in Lenin’s party which proposed to proceed directly to the terror which the people were ready for.

No doubt, when Muslim Brotherhood regimes become repressive and impose their program, we will be told: It’s the fault of the remnants of the Mubarak regime, Saudis, United States, Zionists, and the pressure from the Salafists to get tougher.