Religion and Politics

The violent situation in the Philippines continues. However, the most recent news is somewhat encouraging. Ruben Pestano Lavilla Jr., who was wanted for the Philippines’ worst militant attack has been arrested in Bahrain and returned to Manila. He was allegedly involved in the 2004 bombing of a ferry that killed 116 people. He was also allegedly the brains behind the Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM), which has been linked to two other al-Qaeda connected organizations (Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf). It was only a couple of months ago that the UN Security Council added the RSM to the “UN 1267 Committee’s Consolidated List of Individuals and Entities Affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or Usama bin Ladin.” On June 16, 2008, the U.S. Department of State then designated the group and its leader as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Meanwhile, some high estimates are that as many as 360,000 people have been displaced in the Philippines, particularly as a result of the collapse of the peace deal on August 5. The peace negotiations began 11 years ago and a ceasefire has actually been in place since 2003. Agence France Presse this past week reported that government troops overran at least 15 camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and reminds readers the peace deal “would have granted Muslims their own separate state across more than 700 villages in Mindanao, but the Supreme Court on August 4 halted the pact, triggering the latest bout of fighting.” Over the course of the 40-year conflict, more than 120,000 people have died. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has been waging a rebellion since 1978. Last Friday, the Muslim leaders of the country called for peace and justice in Mindanao and 43 religious leaders and scholars signed a statement that appealed to the parties to honor the agreement on mutual cessation of hostilities. Meanwhile, tonight is the first night of the holy month of Ramadan, and apparently Philippine troops will continue their battles against Muslim rebels in the south – albeit with a bit more deference.

Map from the following source

According to an interview with a Chinese security official in Xinhua news, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement is “one of the main security worries to the Olympics.” The fear of this organization was highlighted on Monday when two Uighur men in the city of Kashi (in Xinjiang) killed 16 policemen. The Uighur population in northwest China is predominantly Muslim, and the Chinese authorities have claimed that it poses a serious terrorist threat. In March, there was an attempt by the East Turkestan Movement to sabotage a Southern Airlines flight. In recent weeks, there have been “a spate of smaller bombings or attempted bombings elsewhere in China.” The New York Times article on the issue (Ambush in China Raises Concerns as Olympics Near) reminds readers that this attack could be “the worst eruption of ethnic violence on Chinese soil since the early 1990s, when China blamed Muslim separatists for a spate of violent attacks.” Apparently, 82 people (through a crackdown on Uighur separatists) have been arrested this year on allegations of terror plots connected to the Olympics. On July 29, this blog discussed briefly the Turkestan Islamic Party and their threats to the Olympics. The Turkestan Islamic Party is another Uighur Muslim separatist group that claimed responsibility for recent explosions. In contrast to the NYT, the Globe and Mail/Reuters featured the article, “China Suspects Bent on Jihad.” This article, in contrast to the NYT, looks at the image of the Uighurs as religious extremists and discusses the attack on the police officers from the more stereotypical perspective that the movement is religiously motivated rather than politically desperate. A top official is quoted in the news piece as saying that “religion is more important to them than their own life or peace for their mothers, and so they set out to perform Jihad.”The U.S. State Department has listed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda and “the international jihadist movement.”

The past few days have seen terrible acts of violence (terrorism) in Iraq, Turkey, and India – and threats in China. On Saturday, according to news reports, 17 explosions went off one after another in Ahmedabad, India – with two further blasts at hospitals. 49 people were killed. The attacks were probably “attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims,” and the NYT also reminds readers that the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington has concluded that from January 2004 to January 2007 India had a death toll of 3,674 to acts of terrorism – second only to Iraq. Questions have been raised about the involvement of the “Students’ Islamic Movement of India” and the Indian Mujahedeen that warned about the attacks in advance. On Sunday evening in Istanbul, 17 people were killed in two bomb blasts. Der Spiegel reports that the bombings could play a part in the decision of the Constitutional Court in Ankara, which has met to “deliberate the case seeking to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).” The article also points out that “even though a majority of the judges are opposed to the AKP, they will not want to see the country descend into chaos.” Yesterday, three female suicide bombers killed 32 people in Baghdad. They were all Shiite pilgrims. Ethnic violence also erupted in Kirkuk between Kurds and Turkmens. In total, 61 people were killed and “by the end of the day, the riot and violence by Kurds against Turkmens had become one of the most severe ethnic skirmishes in Kirkuk since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.” Now, the world community is wondering about the Beijing Olympics and what significance videotaped messages from the Turkistan Islamic Party have for the security of the Games. News reports have conveyed the terrorist message that the group intends to target the most important points of the Olympics and Chinese central cities. Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s spokesman has said that “the human rights situation in China has deteriorated in the run-up to its hosting of the Olympic Games” and the reports say that Beijing is getting rid of political critics and “underground Christian organizers.” China has denied that bombings on July 21 were terrorist attacks. Even more discouraging, attacks in Afghanistan are up by 50% in the first half of 2008.

Good day everyone, I am Patrick Frost, the FPA blogger for Central Asia, and Karin has been kind enough to let me do a post on this site from time to time. Please feel free to send me comments, critiques, and questions at patfrost1@gmail.com or just post them on this site.

Today, I would like to talk about a book I read about six months ago that challenged the way I saw the West’s political society based on secularization, other societies, civilizations, and political systems throughout the world, especially in Muslim dominated lands, and the current ‘war on terror.’ It is Mark Lilla’s, professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, The Stillborn God; Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. At its most basic, it is a philosophical history of Europe/US advancement from a society ruled by political theology to one ruled by secularization. But the book is about much more, in fact it is a warning against complacency of this type of political/societal system in the West.

Here is Lilla’s dramatic message;
‘Intellectual complacency, nursed by implicit faith in the inevitability of secularization, has blinded us to the persistence of political theology and its manifest power to shape human life at any moment.’

Lilla warns us in the West to not feel so safe and cozy with our secular system, for he argues that we are the ‘exception’, not the rest of the world, and that we are in fact still living in an ‘experiment.’ These are strong words and statements, but they are important for all to ponder. This is a pertinent book because it is based on a question not often asked; ‘Why don’t we understand the ‘enduring attraction of political theology?’ Instead of ‘why don’t they understand our (and copy) our political system and way of life?’

Lilla strongly believes that the argument over politics and religion will not end, and in fact ‘could not end,’ because it concerns the enduring question that all societies must answer and face, whether ‘to order their political affairs in light of a divine revelation, or to make their way alone.’

Somalia has now faced 17 years of bloodshed and chaos. This past week news agencies have been reporting on and questioning the ongoing power struggle (between the Western-backed government and armed “Islamist militias”) and the effects of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys’ proclamation that he is the leader of the country’s opposition. Aweys is designated a terrorist by Washington, and according to Agence France Press, on July 22, the head of the opposition ARS or “Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia,” dismissed Aweys’ move. This official head of the ARS, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, was chosen as the leader in September 2007. Ahmed and Aweys “fell out after Ahmed decided to participate in UN-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti.” In other major newspapers, reports have come out this past week about “Islamic insurgents” targeting foreign aid workers. This means, according to the sources, that the country is being pushed even closer towards a “full-scale famine” - the number of people needing assistance soon reaching 3.5 million. The Christian Science Monitor has reported that the attacks on aid workers are now part of “a deliberate terror campaign.” For example, on July 7, as reported by Al Jazeera, the head of the UNDP in Somalia was shot dead in Mogadishu as he was leaving a mosque. The Djibouti Agreements were signed at UN-sponsored talks on June 9 and should have come into force on July 9. The signatories to the agreement were Ahmed, the head of the ARS and the Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein. On July 19, Agence France Press reported that Ahmed said the ARS wanted “the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from the Horn of Africa nation and a deployment of UN forces before implementing the Djibouti agreement.” The majority of the ARS appears to back the agreement, while hardliners have rejected the peace deal. The AFP article reminds readers that “Ethiopian forces came to the rescue of an embattled Somali government in late 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that controlled much of southern and central Somalia” and was accused of being connected to Al Qaeda. The New York Times on July 20 estimated that seventeen aid workers have been kidnapped this year and reported that workers are leaving Mogadishu after leaflets were found in the city calling them infidels and threatening their lives. In this NYT article, by Jeffrey Gettleman, there is an excellent analysis of the source of such warnings and the theories behind the “violent murkiness” which has overtaken the country.

This blog discussed briefly the situation in Somalia on June 28 after it was listed as the world’s most unstable country by Foreign Policy magazine.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) issued a statement last Thursday about the Department of Justice’s aim to update the Attorney General Guidelines. MPAC reported that besides for its own organization, other groups, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the Arab American Institute (AAI), are concerned by developments in the drafting of the new DoJ guidelines, which hope to transform the FBI into an intelligence gathering center for the U.S. in the War on Terror. According to the article, “Terror Profiling without Evidence Considered in US,” in USA Today, “The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims.” MPAC quoted the President of AAI, who is worried that millions of Americans would be the targets of “arbitary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling.” This might lead, therefore, to further alienation of certain religious communities, particularly Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans. The main dilemma for creating the terrorist profile is the process itself – that is, which people (and with what foundational biases) could possibly develop an effective list of traits that describe a “suspicious” person, whom the government should rightly subject to further investigation and interrogation. Excellent material and research on the topic of profiling can be found on the website of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the NYU School of Law. Two reports are particularly interesting:  The first is titled, “Americans on Hold: Profiling, Citizenship, and the War on  Terror” and the  second, from 2006, is “Irreversible Consequences: Racial Profiling and Lethal Force in the War on Terror.”

This past Thursday, there was a deadly bomb attack in the Philippines. Three people were killed outside an Air Force base. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – the largest Muslim rebel group in the Philippines – denied any involvement in the attack but was accused by the regional police chief. There are other Muslim armed groups like the Abu Sayyaf, which could have been involved in the bombing. Peace monitors arrived in 2004, which “reduced the level of violence to nearly zero.” Conversely, rebel negotiators walked away in December from a meeting that was part of peace talks that began in 1997. One of the main questions is finding a joint “determination of the scope of the Muslim homeland” in the Philippines, while there has been fighting for a separate Islamic state since the 1970s. Carlos H. Conde points out in the New York Times that a peace deal might be difficult to reach when the state cannot constitutionally hand over sovereign rights to territory.

This past week, the former top Muslim insurgent – Nur Misuari – said that the Muslim National Liberation Front (MNLF) should abide by a 1996 agreement with the national government. Agence France Press reported that Misuari said that if the government failed to give the full autonomy the group was seeking, then they would march for peace. Misuari said he would work for a federal form of government with four states. To date, approximately 120,000 people have been killed, and about 2 million people were displaced in the Philippines. Despite these statistics, President Arroyo has spoken extensively about peace building and the role of dialogue. She has said, “I have personally advanced the process of peace in Muslim and Christian Mindanao to a new level of engagement, focused on interfaith dialogue, economic development and mutual security.”

In March 2007, Europol published its first annual report on terrorism in the EU. The “EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report” is also known as TE-SAT. With respect to the subject matter of this blog, what useful information about supposedly “religiously motivated” terrorism can we find in the TE-SAT?

• “Islamist terrorists aim at mass casualties.”
• The radicalization process of the suspects in European bomb plots was “reported to have been rapid.”
• The weapon of choice of “Islamist terrorists are Improvised Explosive Devices made with home-made explosives.”
• “Half of all terrorism arrests were related to Islamist terrorism.”
• “France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands had the highest number of arrests of Islamist terrorist suspects.”
• There were cases in the UK and Denmark involving converts to Islam.
• “The majority of the arrested suspects were born in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor, in an article on the TE-SAT, points out that Europol has reported that the “increase in homegrown terrorists is partly the result of an increase in quantity and a “new quality” in jihadi propaganda in Europe.”  What we might find the most interesting about the TE-SAT is the persistent use of the term “Islamist.” Europol seems to have accepted this term as a proper adjective to describe terrorist acts carried out by groups that base their agendas and targets, at least to some degree, on their view of Islam. However, as Karen Armstrong has written, “These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles.”  Regardless of such deficiencies in terminology, the TE-SAT understands “Islamist terrorism” to be “motivated either in whole or in part by an extreme interpretation of Islam and the use of violence is regarded by its practitioners as a divine duty or sacramental act.”