On the Politicization of the Holy Land, Breakdown of the Arab-Israeli Peace Process, Anti-American Waves, and Impending Violence
Few tracts of land incite the passions like Jerusalem. For the faithful, the holy land is the literal site of their religion’s defining moments, from prophets ascending to heaven to making their covenant with God. So long as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam endure, billions are viscerally attached to the land. For these reasons, contention and violence have been a constant in Jerusalem’s history. Claims to the city have been triggers for war throughout history, from the Crusades to the perpetual Arab-Israeli conflict. Against this backdrop, of religiously-inspired fervor and passion, we return to a question that has been tinged in blood since the city’s creation: Who shall have control of Jerusalem?
Both the Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their eternal capital, but the stakeholders are not restricted to the borders of Israel and Palestine alone. From the Vatican to Amman, religious and political authorities around the world have a legitimate stake in Jerusalem’s status. The fate of the holy land resonates in the East and the West. Across the Muslim world in particular, any incident in Jerusalem that touches Islamic holy sites excites Muslims populations worldwide and triggers mass protests. In the past year, dispute over prayer within al-Aqsa Mosque stoked protests from London to Ankara to Jakarta. Religious sensitivity and fervor have made the entirety of Jerusalem a powder keg, threatening to ignite rounds of violence across the globe.
It is in this environment the Trump Administration has decided to unilaterally recognize Israeli claims to Jerusalem and provocatively relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem — discarding with generations of precedent, policy, and negotiation in favor of political theater.
Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the official American policy concerning Jerusalem has for 70 years rejected unilateral claims to the holy city and instead called for negotiations to decide its fate, whether East Jerusalem will become the Palestinian capital (in an east-west division) or if the original 1947 United Nations Partition Plan would be implemented (creating an international regime for Jerusalem). The latter has been negated by dual Israeli-Palestinian claims, alongside the building of settlements, and the former will be doomed by this new American imposition that undermines a two-state solution and instead adopts a maximalist Israeli position outside the framework of negotiations. The consequences of President Trump’s unilateral decree will not be restricted to the territory of Jerusalem or even the future viability of a two-state solution.
Where Jerusalem incites and inspires those passions, conflict and violence will be an inevitability. Anti-American sentiment will explode across the Muslim world, empowering hardliners and extremists, who will find new support among millions who feel their city of God — and indeed their religion— is being defiled and stolen. To extremists, from al Qaeda to the Islamic State, the jihadi narrative of a conspiratorial ‘Zionist-American War against Islam’ will emphatically be realized and used to radicalize new souls who will perpetrate violence across the East and the West. This Anti-American wave will target both Israel and the United States, spilling innocent blood and sacrificing innocent lives for a move that is nakedly against the national interest and one that quite literally damns peace in our time.
The (Doomed) Two-State Solution and Third Intifada
Not only does the Trump Administration’s move preempt negotiations, it delegitimizes the very principles of negotiation, dialogue, and peaceful settlement. It distorts the reality on the ground, deterring future concessions and in effect perpetuating the conflict. For the Israeli, he will now question why any concessions should be made if even the most contentious issues are won outside the negotiating table. Why should Israel be made to sacrifice, to concede? Why should land swaps, free movement within the Palestinian territories, or the right of return even be up for negotiation if the power brokering these talks has adopted the Israeli position unilaterally — for nothing in return?
Conversely, Palestinian moderates will be totally marginalized, if not defeated. For decades, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas embraced the principle of negotiations and dialogue — in contrast to the militancy waged by Hamas— and now his approach has been delegitimized in the extreme. Within the Palestinian camp, hardliners will be empowered, to reject negotiation and peace in favor of violent struggle. In the face of Jerusalem’s loss, the Palestinian people will see negotiations as a futile exercise, one that has allowed Israel’s illegal settlements to progressively expand and, in the process, swallow territory claimed by Palestine, de facto ending even the viability of a two-state solution.
In the aftermath of President Trump’s declaration, the Palestinians are expected to be party to a process that disempowers them, to participate in a ‘peace process’ facilitated by a biased power in the United States, who in an instant renounced any claim to being a fair broker? To the Palestinian people and the Muslim world, the perception will be that the United States has just ‘stolen’ Jerusalem from them, that they are little more than a conduit for Israeli interests. With the land beneath their feet gone, a future Palestinian state becomes little more than an idealistic talking point, some dream in the distance that will never be realized.
Peaceful conflict resolution requires a fair process that builds trust and promotes dialogue between the parties. For over 70 years, the official policy of the United States has been to be a fair broker, an interlocutor that promotes negotiation between the two sides and, with it, peace. President Trump’s unilateral decree has doomed that proposition, poisoning the well and discrediting the United States as a neutral party, one that can facilitate and promote peace.
“It shouldn’t be moved prior to agreement by the parties to the conflict as part of a comprehensive agreement ending their conflict. Even seemingly minor changes of Jerusalem’s status quo — either in fact or in law — have historically had the impact of sparking violence.” — Dylan Williams, J Street
President Trump’s defense for the move has been the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which requires presidents to either relocate the embassy or issue a national security waiver every six months, and his campaign promise to relocate the embassy. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama issued those national security waivers throughout their tenure in office, refusing to undermine a two-state solution and abrogate our obligations as a fair broker for Israel and Palestine.
But in the 2016 election, then-candidate Trump played politics with the issue. He pledged to the move the embassy in a speech to AIPAC, an American lobbying group who is aligned with the Israeli right and hardline settler movements. As a campaign promise, designed to appeal to American evangelicals and right-wing Jews, the action is by design a politicized (if not radical) act, breaking with generations of precedent for the sake of petty politics. Herein, politics has prevailed over America’s national interest, in national security and foreign relations. Its ramifications will be felt for generations, isolating the United States within the Muslim world and fueling violence and terror worldwide.
In the absence of negotiations, there is only violence. History tells us this. In recent years, we have seen tensions over Jerusalem spurring violence and unrest, in the surge of knife and car attacks since 2014. But the Second Intifada is our guide, offering insight on the potential explosion of mass violence. In 2000, Ariel Sharon provocative visit to Temple Mount, made to assert Jewish claims to the holy site, triggered protests that turned to mass riots. Those riots were the breeding ground of mass violence, as a pernicious cycle of violence develops. Security forces suppress protesters, injuring and killing them, and protesters in turn retaliate against police and armed forces. Successive retaliation and escalation morph a single protest into an intifada, shifting from spontaneous protest to orchestrated militancy. The Second Intifada roiled Israel and Palestine for five years, killing thousands and further fracturing the Arab and Israeli peoples.
Untold death and destruction was caused by an offense that is minor by comparison to the Trump Administration’s unilateral decree. In the Palestinians’ view, the prospect for a real and lasting peace through negotiation has just been shattered. Abbas’s embrace of the peace process stands delegitimized and the Palestinian dream of East Jerusalem is no more. In this climate — following a decade of unrest, war, and terror in the Middle East — violence feels imminent, that this new development has the potential to explode into a third intifada. As the Arab-Israeli peace process breaks down, the only alternative is extremism and violence.
International Furor and Explosions of Anti-American Rage
President Trump has touted his ‘deal of the century’ for Arab-Israeli peace. For all intents and purposes, that deal is dead. The basis for this deal was regional cooperation, incorporating Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt into the peace process and in turn pressuring the Palestinians to accept American-Israeli impositions. Now, vehement opposition within the Palestinian camp will preclude any concessions and, with it, substantive negotiations. Jerusalem’s loss is a fatal blow for the Palestinians and, if a third intifada indeed breaks out, the basis for Arab-Israeli peace will shift from the negotiating table to the battlefield.
For the United States, the damage to our foreign policy and national security will be most severe in the sphere of foreign affairs. Since the 2003 war in Iraq, the Middle East’s political landscape has been radically transformed by regional trends of: Endemic sectarianism, proxy war, militant groups conquering territory (e.g. Islamic State), and the Arab Spring. The region’s sectarian alignment — following the Sunni-Shia schism per the Saudi-Iranian rivalry — has seen Sunni powers move closer to Israel in their mutual opposition to Iran. This was the basis for Trump’s peace push, to incorporate those powers in the Arab-Israeli peace process, in the process removing a historical source of antagonism and division in order to create a bloc to counter Iran’s Shia axis. That bloc will now face an enraged Muslim public, who will turn their ire on the United States and any power seen to be complicit in Jerusalem’s ‘theft.’
Going forward, the Arab Spring will trouble the minds of kings throughout the Sunni kingdoms, in particular America’s steadfast allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Although the Arab Spring’s revolutions were (mostly) unsuccessful, mired by political regression and widespread violence, the precedent of mass mobilization and protest against authoritarian regimes was established by that epochal events. Autocrats like Mubarak or Ben Ali were deposed and the region saw with its own eyes the powers of an engaged people. A precedent was set. Indeed, in 2010, protests against poverty and corruption quickly morphed into protests against the regime. In this climate, those millions of Muslims taking to the streets against Israel’s claim can in an instant morph their calls into demands for the regime’s ouster, in particular those powers who are seen as cooperators and collaborators with the Americans and Israelis.
In the near-term, we can expect relations between our Muslim partners to cool. Leaders like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his brand of political Islam will find political advantage in opposing the United States, whose ties with Turkey have been already been frayed, and defy the new American policy. Others like King Abdullah of Jordan or King Salman of Saudi Arabia will be wary of (openly) coordinating with the Trump Administration and inflaming their people’s passions, which can then be directed against their regimes.
Isolation and withdrawal by our Muslim partners is a near-certainty. American interests and assets in the region, ranging from counter-terrorism to intelligence to human rights, will be hindered. Anti-Americanism will provide a constraint on our Muslim partners, who will ultimately have to answer to their people. Alienating those powers harms the national interest. America cannot go it alone. More dangerously, provocative acts like this will erode our influence in the region, which will in turn be swallowed by Moscow and Tehran.
The proliferation of anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world will pose a direct threat to the American people. Policies like the so-called Muslim ban and now recognizing Jerusalem as a sole Israeli possession are fodder for extremists, who use these religious affronts to recruit new militants and legitimize their struggle against the ‘crusaders,’ who wage their war against Islam. If we are to combat radicalization and terrorism, a program of provocation and discrimination directed toward Muslims is not just self-defeating but self-destructive. Such policies do not exist in a void. And their progeny is waves of terror and death, creating its own cycle of violence that has mired us all since 2001.
Today, the war in Afghanistan rages on. Tens of thousands of American personnel have been deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Insider attacks are a reality for our troops. In places like Afghanistan, President Trump’s provocation will exacerbate the Taliban’s never-ending insurgency and give them new bodies to perpetrate those heinous insider attacks.
In sum, the Trump Administration’s policies are alienating our allies and emboldening our enemies. We are weakened by it. And ultimately, if things continue on their present course, we will be defeated because of it.
O Jerusalem! (In Memoriam for Peace in Our Time)
Politics over country. Politics over God. That has become the American refrain in 2017. In its short tenure, the Trump Administration has feasted on division and distraction. President Trump’s unilateral decree that dispossesses the Palestinians and bestows all of Jerusalem to the Israelis is true to that cause. But unlike any policy he has undertaken before, this move cannot easily be undone. It is a radical step, one that obliterates 70 years of precedent and, more gravely, delegitimizes the very principle of negotiations — of nonviolent conflict resolution — in Israel and Palestine. The two-state solution is now in tatters because of it.
No man can profess to be a seer, but the dynamics at play indicate violence in the extreme, history repeating itself evermore. But we are entering new territory. In the immediate aftermath of Jerusalem’s status, Days of Rage will engulf the Muslim world. Millions will take to the street, and let the world bear witness to their rage.
That city which has inspired and incited man’s passions for millennia will again incite and inspire — fueling violence and death, in the East and the West.
“If Jesus returned today we would have to crucify him quick in our own defense, to justify and preserve the civilization we have worked and suffered and died shrieking and cursing in rage and impotence and terror for two thousand years to create and perfect in man’s own image.” — The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem); Faulkner
No Man’s Land: #MeToo and The Moral Decline of the Political Class in Trump’s America
On October 15, Alyssa Milano encouraged victims of sexual harassment and assault to share their stories about sexual harassment and assault via the hashtag #MeToo, with the intention of collectively bringing about accountability, from entertainment to journalism to politics. In a period of weeks, the #MeToo movement — which evolved from activist Tarana Burke’s 2006 Me Too campaign and her “empowerment through empathy” approach to aid victims of sexual harassment and violence — has rocked entire industries and ejected powerful men from the very same positions they used to prey on women, men, and in some cases children. From Kevin Spacey to Harvey Weinstein to Charlie Rose, even the titans of their industries have been brought down by past sexual misconduct. As these men are being ejected from public life and stripped of their honors, the notable and painful exceptions to the #MeToo campaign have been the political class. The revelations over the past six weeks have tarnished public officials and yet these figures have seemingly been shielded from any real consequence or accountability. In fact, some like Roy Moore have been emboldened by the accusations and have vowed to ‘fight on,’ finding an eager public in the party loyalists who have rushed to their defense and even excused the alleged sin (in the face of mounting evidence) because of crass, amoral political calculations.
There has been a disconnect in the public’s treatment of the politician versus other powerful men accused of sexual misconduct but outside the political realm. While duly elected officials are subject to internal processes of ethics investigations and parliamentary procedures, e.g. censure or impeachment, the absence of any real consequences for these men, who in theory answer to the people (via the vote), is chilling because our partisan politics is now shielding abusers so long as they tow the party line. In today’s hyper-polarized politics, ruled by tribalist loyalties, the sins of the man can somehow be negated by loyalty to the party. Since the election of Donald Trump, a man whose own improprieties were rewarded by promotion to the highest office in the land, we have witnessed new lows and new extremes in American politics, whereby the rapist and the child sex abuser are able to wave the party banner and immunize themselves from any real consequence. Beyond the obvious moral bankruptcy, there are real-world consequences that will severely impact our democracy, first by enabling abusers and allowing them entry into our government and second by forcing Americans to compromise their own morality to make that corrupt bargain, putting party above all else. The twin effects will be depriving our government of the best and brightest, while leaving in its stead the morally (and perhaps criminally) compromised.
A Boys’ Club on Capitol Hill and Alabama’s Bottom
Corporate America has faced a reckoning for housing and enabling abusers, forcing boardrooms to clean house and immediately terminate even the most revered figures within their industry. America’s political class, however, has seemingly been immune to this trend. Names like Al Franken or John Conyers have been exposed for sexual misconduct, and more will certainly follow. But these officials have neither resigned nor been expelled. They have a certain staying power, one that has eluded even multi-millionaire executives and celebrities. At some point, the politician will have to answer to their constituents, but recent elections have shown allegations of even the most heinous conduct is not a fatal blow. And while a few individuals have so far been uncovered, there is a more systemic issue lurking in the halls of Congress that eclipses the misconduct of a few wrongdoers (and perhaps enabled them). On Capitol Hill, there is a culture of harassment and abuse that is seemingly embedded in the institution. Always a boys’ club, Congress has so distorted its workplace that female staffers are virtually discouraged from coming forward about harassment or sexual misconduct by a purposely intrusive and byzantine procedure that is more concerned with protecting the accused than the victim. Male-dominated and designed so the boys may police themselves, the system is inherently skewed so that the congressman may enjoy total impunity, out of the public eye.
Their arcane complaint process for sexual harassment — which forces victims into 30 days of mandatory counseling, a ‘cooling off period,’ and then into another round of mediation before a settlement is reached or a lawsuit filed, all the while protecting harassers via ‘confidentiality agreements’ that silence victims — typifies how the system disadvantages victims and shields harassers from any public scrutiny, even when settlements involve the payment of taxpayer moneys. Behind closed doors and under the cover of non-disclosure agreements, the abuse is perpetuated by men who, constitutionally, are among the most powerful in our country. With their powers comes the obligation to create a workplace that protects the subordinate from his or her superior, not allow an abuser to carry on unabated. In light of pervasive sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill, to the point female staffers have created a “Creep List” to warn of male lawmakers, this obligation has clearly been abrogated — creating an environment in favor of the powerful and not the vulnerable. It is an outrage when Capitol Hill and our politics in general become a haven for men who would have been deemed unfit in any other walk of life.
Outside the halls of Congress, the American public has been faced with a new scandal, more vulgar and heinous in that it involves the sexual abuse of children. The case of Roy Moore — whose Alabama senatorial campaign has been embroiled by allegations of child sex abuse, attempted rape, and groping — is our moral nadir. Even in the face of these allegations, in the corroborated accounts of nine accusers, Roy Moore may be elevated to the United States Senate. It is a shocking example of partisanship prevailing over base morality, when a candidate accused of sexual assault involving minors can realistically be elevated to one of our nation’s most prestigious and powerful offices, in principle representing all of Alabama. By any measure, it is a low-point for us all and something that would have been inconceivable even two years ago.
While fringe partisan media like Breitbart News spews its propaganda, viciously attacking the accusers or offering petty distractions or lobbing ‘fake news’ in debunked conspiracy theories, the American people know the truth. Nine brave women stepped forward and most have been corroborated by contemporaneous sources, from parents to high school classmates. Some have even offered documentation supporting their claims Mr. Moore was at the courthouse or Etowah County High School. There is no compelling reason — no evidence — to believe these nine women are each lying. Against a man who has staked his political life on his personal contempt for the law, choosing cheap political tricks like refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses and consequently breaching his constitutional duty, Mr. Moore had no credibility to begin with. If he does not have concrete evidence to disprove each of their nine claims, the accusers must be believed. Indeed, even the man’s denials have been half-hearted, dodging questions over his misconduct by saying he had never dated any girl “without the permission of her mother.” With the information now made public, like in any other election, voters can safely render judgment as to the candidate’s fitness for office and whether he represents their values. On December 12, Alabamans will decide whether or not they will put party over country, party over God.
Irrespective of the outcome in Alabama, the fact we have reached this bottom is something that must not be ignored. For many voters, the 2016 election centered on a compromise they made, having to choose between two candidates they felt were morally unfit. They believed that was a one-off occurrence. And yet, not even a year later, here we are. As movements like #MeToo encourage women to step forward and share their stories, more powerful figures will be exposed for their sexual misconduct. Undoubtedly, this will be a recurrent issue in our politics going forward. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be excused. The question for us all is: Where do we go from here?
A Moral Standard in the Trump Era (Somewhere between the Nihilist and the Puritan)
How we got here and how the public should respond to future revelations must be addressed, candidly. For the politician in particular, the public constitutionally has their say. Cases like Mr. Moore are not subject to the stringent burdens of parliamentary procedure or court proceedings. They are subject to the court of public opinion, in the electorate casting their vote based on the information at hand and whether or not they will represent them. Morally, our standard for election should be demanding — and perhaps unforgiving. Unlike any other position in society, the politician is elected by the people on the promise he or she will represent the people and their values. That individual is empowered by the popular will, bestowing upon them the responsibility to live up to that promise.
In our history, this promise has been broken many times over. From Thomas Jefferson to John F. Kennedy, the personal indiscretions and infidelities of our leaders has been a feature of our politics since the country’s inception. But it has been a relatively new trend that these personal failings have come to bear so publicly — and been politicized accordingly. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s (many) indiscretions roiled the nation and culminated in impeachment proceedings. It was this period, in the left’s campaign to excuse former President Clinton’s immorality by any means, that set the stage for where we are today. Efforts to minimize President Clinton’s actions and smear his accusers established a corrosive precedent, i.e. partisans ‘standing by their man’ and asking the American people to sacrifice their morality in favor of political convenience. In the two decades since, our tepid and inadequate response to pervasive sexual harassment and assault has festered underneath the surface. #MeToo, by encouraging women to tell their stories, exposed the reality we had so far refused to confront.
2016, a year prior to #MeToo, was our breaking point. With the election of Donald Trump — a man facing 16 women who accused him of sexual misconduct and whose own marital infidelities are legion — the floodgates were opened. In the backdrop of Mr. Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which we heard his bizarre and repulsive “locker room talk” that involved casual sexual assault, the American public made their compromise and elected him president (albeit a majority voted against him). As other figures are exiled and shamed, Mr. Trump’s improprieties were rewarded with a promotion to the White House — in the process shredding any moral standing we had and lowering the bar for the most powerful among us. Those 16 accusers, who were denigrated and disbelieved and ultimately dismissed, were in many ways the precursor for the #MeToo campaign. Most were without celebrity or public profiles, and yet these women tried to confront their accuser, a powerful man who was on the cusp of the presidency. Even though their voices were lost amid the nihilistic ether of the 2016 campaign, that same model was followed a year later when other women publicly confronted their accusers. This time, however, the wrongdoers were outside the political sphere and therefore vulnerable to actual consequence, e.g. Harvey Weinstein and his swift downfall. For the politician, it remains an open question whether or not the American people will offer candidates total impunity, no matter how heinous the sin, in exchange for partisan allegiance.
To move forward, we must reject our present state of amoral, nihilistic politics that erases any moral lines. As American society comes to grip with endemic issues of sexual harassment and assault, there must be some moral standard that guides us in the future. That standard must be the same for a president as it is for a bank teller. Status or position cannot be a shield. In this effort, there are two extremes we must avoid — one of nihilism and the other of austere moralism.
The first extreme is the nihilistic ether of moral relativism, whereby we draw false equivalences between intrinsically different cases so as to disperse blame and sin to ‘both sides,’ effectively negating one man’s bad behavior by drawing parallels and allowing him to escape judgment. A political tactic, it shifts scrutiny from one individual to another, conveniently located on the opposite side of the aisle. It tries to muddy the waters and obfuscate wrongdoing by deflection, in the hopes voters will relegate morality to a side issue and vote only according to the party line. In sum, this extreme prioritizes partisanship above all else, corroding our collective morality in order to create an amoral political landscape. Amoral politics enables even the most abhorrent behavior so long as it conforms to a political calculus. It is a dangerous tactic, one that is not only morally bankrupt but degenerative. As the case of Roy Moore epitomizes, it is a race to the bottom. Once a voter makes that compromise, conceivably voting for an alleged child sex abuser, where is the line thereafter?
To discard with morality through ambiguities and weakly ‘both siderism’ is a danger in its own right. American politics will decay from within if individuals who are morally unfit are thrust into positions of power, operating without any mores to restrain their natural impulses towards corruption and abuse. The #MeToo movement and its revelations about America’s elite, from the newsman to the actor to the president, underscores the need for accountability at all levels. Victims, predominately women, must be able to step forward and out their accusers without fear of retaliation by the powerful. If their abusers are literally promoted to high offices, it can only have a chilling effect on women telling their stories, especially when the voter is put into a position to dismiss the victim and reward the sin. Culturally, it erases moral boundaries and implicitly sends the message that ideology can somehow excuse even the worst of behavior — as well as be a pathway to promotion.
If moral relativism and compromise leads us to a nihilistic state, the other extreme is to become austere, puritanical, and unforgiving in our social mores. The inevitability of this construct, as we have seen throughout history, is hypocrisy. Moralism has always been prone to distortion and corruption, in effect weaponizing morality. On its face, calls for zero-tolerance and high morals are a positive development. However, in execution, we have already seen this moral standard selectively applied by partisans against their opponents, while simultaneously shielding their own allies. Steve Bannon and his propagandists at Breitbart have taken a certain glee in the revelations rocking Al Franken or Hollywood or the ‘MSM,’ and yet those very same voices have zealously defended Roy Moore by offering concocted conspiracy theories, excuses, and even stooping so low as to attack the victims. Indeed, within a partisan frame, morality can be and often is a weapon, employed to take out one side of the aisle but not the other. This brand of hypocrisy is just as corrosive as nihilistic politics. It likewise subordinates morality to hyper-partisanship but, in the process, misappropriates it as a means of attack against an opponent. If #MeToo and morality in general are debased to another political smear in the toolkit, it hollows social mores and promotes hypocrisy at all levels. And we are no closer to right.
Moral Decline in Trump’s America
The Trump era has challenged the American public’s morality, many times over. This period in our history began with moral compromise and continues to shock and unsettle what we understood about ourselves. New extremes and new lows are becoming a recurring feature of our politics. Will voters in Alabama elect a man accused of child sex abuse? Probably. Will the President openly endorse that man, who is unquestionably morally compromised? Likely. While we are distracted by the political theater and histrionics on cable news, the decline in morals is real. The arena for this decline has been elections. And once outside the ballot box, it continues to have an impact on all of us. The very same moral decline afflicting our politics is leaching onto the American public — who are now asked to elevate party over morality, to become enablers and abusers in their own right by casting their vote for the alleged child sex abuser or rapist. Things that were inconceivable only two years ago are becoming commonplace, as our politics becomes more divided and extreme, allowing the worst of us to reach new heights. Against this backdrop, campaigns like #MeToo have tried to combat this culture of abuse and to end the days of impunity for powerful men. From Harvey Weinstein to Matt Lauer, the consequences for those figures have been swift and severe. The politician, however, has evaded any real consequence by shielding himself in the party line. The political class is literally beholden to the people, and yet a culture of hyper-partisanship has so far usurped American morals. It serves a shield for men who are morally unfit to hold office and yet are enabled by party machines and their armies of partisans. At this point, amid Roy Moore’s candidacy, it has become a farce.
#MeToo and its push to end this culture of impunity is a ray of light. In a nihilistic time, characterized by “alternative facts” and incessant distortions, America’s mores have been corroded by moral compromise and excuse, abandoning morality per crass political calculations. The impetus now is to stem this moral decline. For the public and indeed ourselves, there must be some guiding morality, one that is not subordinated to a party line. It falls somewhere between those two extremes — one a relativistic void enabling immorality and the other a hypocritical oppression targeting the opposition. In this climate, partisanship has swallowed everything. It is eating away at our democracy from the inside. Now, the question for us is the same as it is for the people of Alabama: Is it party over country, party over God?
The Madness of Kings (In A Land of Blood and Sand)
Arabian royals in a line,
Of princes and thieves,
Consumed by panic,
Consumed by fear,
A new King above them now,
The son in his shadow,
Pulling the strings,
Orchestrating the Purge,
He goes down the line,
Devouring his kin,
Man by man,
In the Bedouins' way –
Cannibals All!
So the princes fall,
Gold and gem rain down,
Plundered from Saudi sands,
Stolen from the people,
Now swallowed by the King,
To fuel new aggression,
To conjure Endless War,
Lunacy his son designed,
Poisoning the Saudi mind.
The King raises his hand,
It calloused and stained,
Drenched in oil,
Drenched in blood,
He points to distant lands,
The blood drips onto the map,
Marking his claim,
All sovereign states,
From Lebanese shores to Iraqi sands,
Who will be forced to bend,
Until they break.
A Reign of Terror for all,
True to the Wahhabi creed,
By waves of extremists,
Ushering in cruelty and death,
For those labeled the nonbeliever,
Of the Shia and the Christian,
Bodies to be debased and defiled,
As all women bear the chains,
Joining the ranks of the oppressed –
Their Destiny under the King.
Every land they molest,
Forces of terror obediently follow,
Unleashed by the royal hand,
Immolating God’s lands,
Leaving mass carnage in its wake,
From generations bombed,
To children who starve.
In the eyes of a king,
The world is bought and sold,
Life and Death,
Human Dignity and Liberty,
All things foreign to a king,
Who stands as human god,
Whose rule is born of blood,
Against the Rights of Man,
Against the will of God.
His regime archaic and backward,
Clothing the savage in the royal,
Legitimizing Terror and death,
All things he will inflict,
On Lebanon,
On Syria,
On Iraq,
On Yemen –
In the Madness of Kings,
To swallow the Earth.
800,000 bodies,
800,000 souls,
The children of immigrants,
Mere infants and toddlers,
Brought to a faraway land,
By their parents’ hand,
For a hope,
For a dream,
Drawn to it,
Pulled to it,
By America’s light,
By America’s promise.
On American soil,
These families started anew,
Next to me or you,
As neighbors and friends,
In church or work or school,
And their children grew,
Generations came of age,
In the only land they ever knew,
Under the red, white, and blue,
American through and through.
For the “American Dream” they came,
But they did not just dream it,
They believed it,
They lived it,
They made it –
In spite of threat,
In spite of fear.
America’s youth and future,
Thrown to the shadows,
Where Dreamers are made to toil,
Their lives now under threat,
Of arrest,
Of deportation,
To be ripped from their homes,
To be expelled from their country –
To be left desolate.
Using 800,000 lives as pawns,
The politician plays his games,
The innocence of children,
He rejects and denies,
Their humanity,
He refuses and discards –
Breaking America’s promise,
All for which it stands.
Bodies to the street,
Hate manifests itself,
It breathes,
It screams,
Amassed in the mob,
Of white skin,
Of black hearts,
Resurrecting the Tribes,
Division seared into skin,
Worshipping the Color,
Obsessed with it,
In love with it,
Willing to die for it,
Wanting to kill for it.
Their souls,
Black and ossified,
Their minds,
Sick and depraved,
Man turns to beast,
Hating their own,
Eating their own,
Obsessed with the Other,
Everything they hate,
The Nigger and the Spick,
The Faggot and the Muslim,
Those bodies inferior,
Those bodies unworthy,
Of their land and their love –
Not one of them.
Their white skin,
A gift God himself bestowed,
Something they can’t take away,
Something they can’t ignore,
Something they live for,
So they take to the streets,
Espousing their grace and glory,
Skin-deep like all things,
But they’re desperate,
For the world to see,
For the world to hear,
For this life to have meaning.
The extremists light their flame,
They clasp their weapons,
They ready their hate,
The bodies fall into line,
Forming the mob,
Turning into One,
Nameless,
Faceless –
Hate devouring them all.
With their hands in a fist,
With acid in their tongues,
They chant the Devil’s curses,
With such hate,
With such pride,
Reviving the fascist creed,
Of Division,
Of Hate,
Of Terror.
The madness underway,
They tear through the city,
Until new bodies join the fray,
Standing up for all people,
Standing against the fascist beasts,
They sing their hymns,
They join hands,
To defend God,
To defend Country,
From this evil –
From this sin.
The fascists raise their hands,
They raise their weapons,
Living true to their creed,
On blood they feed,
These lovers of violence and death,
They attack the women and men,
They spill the people’s blood,
In the name of their hate,
In the name of their white skin,
Against Country,
Against God.
The streets run red with blood,
American soil now a warzone,
The site of historic battles,
Where heroes lay martyred,
Those who made their stand,
Those who sacrificed,
For every color,
For every creed –
For us all.
This struggle,
It is for a nation’s soul,
To live true to our creed,
For Love to triumph over Hate,
For equality to mean something more,
For America to be reborn,
To live as God ought us to live,
Without hatred or fear,
To join hands,
All colors,
All creeds,
As One.
Dark forces take the stage,
Declaring a postmodern age,
Where truth and fact don’t exist,
They’re just ethereal things in the mist,
The people must live by emotion and spin,
They’re to chug it like a fine gin,
Until they go drunk and dumb,
When their souls entirely numb,
Only then can they be of use,
When they submit to the abuse.
(The Liar sits atop a grand pyre,
Fascists below snort the ashes,
As sloganeers peddle all fears,
His followers vying to be the Swallower,
Bowing before the user and abuser,
The president by accident,
The people’s Rat in the Hat.)
Basking in the glow of this regime,
The bastards let out a feral scream,
For their time is now,
So solemnly they vow:
“A new order will be imposed,
On the people’s skulls now deposed,
For our master’s will must be done,
So the Devil can have his fun,
On the ashes of this great land,
By virtue of His tiny hand.”
Ready to answer daddy’s call,
They beg to scream at the walls,
As master demands of his pets,
Bodies without reason to regret,
The lovers of this new world order,
Because they’re on this side of the border,
So they drum up all the hate and sin,
Saying this is how we win.
With blood on their lips and hands,
They obey his every command,
In spite of the havoc they wreak,
The bile in the words they speak,
Because their fates are bound to Him,
As though they’re his phantom limb,
So they follow master to their last breath,
Even if it means their country’s death.
This American scene,
Right out of a guillotine,
Sends Lady Liberty to her knees,
Broken by what she sees,
Everything she loves in flames,
Her child forever maimed,
So she can only weep and mourn,
For her baby’s soul ripped and torn ––
The America she once knew,
Its glory days now through.
follows Ibrahim al-Liban as he wages a savage war against the terrorists in Syria, bloodying his hands in unfathomable ways as the hells of war bear down.
After losing his fiancée and parents, murdered by bullet and by bomb, Ibrahim is maimed by his losses, breaking him down and transforming him from civilian to militant to revolutionary. Amid the barbarity of the Syrian civil war, we explore Ibrahim’s mindset, in his embrace of violence and war. Though he clothes his violence in God and nation and glory, we are confronted with the reality of his war, in the untold horrors a soul wades into when choosing to fight, the same horrors that afflict him.
After executing his fiancée’s killer in America, in a brutal act of vigilante violence, Ibrahim flees to his homeland of Lebanon.There, he meets tragedy once more. A car bomb tragically kills his mother and father. In the aftermath, Ibrahim is left alone in the world. It is then he chooses to fight, declaring war on the terrorists and forever changing his life. Reconnecting with two childhood friends, now soldiers in the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah, he creates a new militant group: The Resistance. It is founded on a nationalist creed, dedicated to the destruction of terror. Their first act is the execution of a radical cleric in Lebanon’s east, recounted in grisly detail and itself the genesis of his “movement.” Then, with the American hand (providing arms to the militia), the Resistance moves into Syria and begins their campaign in the borderlands, seizing and then occupying the territories.
In his war, Ibrahim wades into the madness and terror and horror of the Syrian civil war. An alternate history, the novel brings to life the political and moral dynamics of the conflict, in the barbarity and savagery seen in that war, all things Ibrahim succumbs to. In the story, we see the breakdown of Ibrahim’s morality and how he gives himself to the conflict – in want of victory and nothing else. His beliefs are taken to their extreme. Accordingly, everything breaks down.
Author’s Note: An anti-war piece, The Terror & The Resistance is a cautionary tale about the perils of war, how it degrades and consumes those who participate in the madness. Based on real-life battles and speeches in the Syrian civil war, it was written to deconstruct the rationalization of violence, how militancy and war demand men commit unspeakable sins in the pursuit of their victory – above all else.
Every violent act within the story is clothed in God and nation and glory, challenging how such figures ennoble the killing and somehow sanction it according to abstractions and lofty rhetoric. But we the audience see in its totality how such things can never be ennobled and instead stand as the abject sins of men who have been corrupted by power and conflict and hatred, things so fused together. Writing this, I wanted a true-to-life portrayal of war and the mindset therein – no matter how grisly and grotesque it may be.
The rise and the fall,
The boom and the bust,
The birth and the decay,
The writer and his word,
Confined to his soul,
Where Creation comes,
Where Creation goes.
In the Quiet,
The writer lays,
Maiming himself,
Breaking himself,
For his Art,
For his Life,
Cradling his word,
Cherishing it.
Against the Industry,
He stands,
In eternal war,
Against its machines –
The Executive,
The Editor,
The Agent –
These bringers of decline,
Who preach industrial design.
Creatures without a creed,
Driven only by greed,
The bastards lie and wait,
The writer’s words they will rape,
According to the Market’s trends,
In their little game of pretend,
That they are the Authority,
To impose what he ought to be,
Strangling God and Destiny,
Immune to all irony.
Mediocrity,
Shit,
It rides the rails,
In perpetual motion,
Sent by the Industry,
To crash into readers’ skulls,
A millions pages,
All the same words,
Regurgitated,
Then Imitated,
Going in circles,
Again and again –
Nothing gained,
Nothing left.
In their shadow,
The writer lives,
Alone,
Unknown,
Unread,
Untouched,
Living for his word,
And then dying by it.
Wasting away,
He murmurs his word,
Bleeding into it,
Begging for it to come,
Not for dollar,
Or for like,
But for himself,
And no one else.
Against the Industry,
Against himself,
The writer exists,
Condemned to his word,
In a new mode –
Indie lit.
Abomination,
It stands before us,
Speaking of the people,
Of those he has domain,
The land he stole from them,
And then erected great towers,
To Hell and back,
To Bankruptcy,
In finance,
In mind,
In soul.
Truthful hyperbole,
His phony doctrine of noise,
He moans it with such pride,
Of the deals to be made,
Of the Greatness to come,
But only when our country folds,
And the people fall to knee,
For a new master,
In service,
In worship,
In decline.
A tawdry and gaudy thing,
He is the master showman,
Appealing to all our vices:
Obscenity,
Filth,
Ignorance,
Hate.
Frothing at the mouth,
He then spews his Hate,
Singling out:
The Black,
The Brown,
The Crescent,
The Decent.
In great stadiums filled,
Booming applause we hear,
From the bloody hands,
Of the pathetic,
Of the weak,
They assemble,
To feed the beast,
His ego,
His celebrity,
His crime.
All his words,
They incite and ignite,
They corrupt and corrode,
They degrade and destroy,
The soul of a nation,
Taking us to the pits,
From reality TV,
Into the presidency.
Words: A Critique of Anti-Islam Critics and a Path Forward, via Structure
Politics is politics. This maxim is something to be remembered. Whether studying voter behavior in the United States or underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa, politics — in its basic structures and processes — is at play wherever human society is found. Geography, culture, religion does not obscure the political.[1] When dealing with the Middle East, this is forgotten. Commentary and analysis tends to be disconnected from the political, myopically fixating on Islam as though all Middle Eastern politics hinges on personal faith. Fatally reductionist, observers adopt a warped and distorted view of Middle Eastern politics to satisfy biases and even prejudices. Post-9/11, the Middle East and its politics are now at the forefront. State breakdowns, endemic poverty, Islamic fundamentalism, violent sectarianism, regional proxy wars, and transnational terrorism are among the myriad of political issues coming to bear. It has an immeasurable impact on our world today. In an era of regional instability and its reverberation around the globe, analysis must be engaged with the political. Only by understanding what underlie political phenomena can there be resolution to the problems we face.
In Middle Eastern politics, there is an inherent complexity. Political phenomena are interrelated and embedded in wider structures. Historical, institutional, and sociopolitical contexts provide the framework for political action. From state borders drawn under the Sykes-Picot agreement shaping group conflict to a precedence of military coups determining authoritarianism, there are a nexus of structures at play in Middle Eastern politics. Collectively, there is a linearity and progression to history, in certain epochal events triggering reactions and counter-reactions that constitute the Middle East as we know it today.[2] Its study is something that consumes academics, policy analysts, commentators, and governments alike. For the average Westerner, who tries to understand things that are having such an impact on his or her life, there is an allure for explanations that are simplistic and (seemingly) self-evident. To that individual, the Middle East is a world away. Its culture and its religion are almost alien. Herein exists the difference which consumes our discourse on the Middle East: Islam.
Over the past decade, a cottage industry of anti-Islam criticism has risen up in response to Middle Eastern politics’ prominence. Its figures tend to argue political phenomena — militancy, terrorism, underdevelopment, et al. — are caused by Islam alone, in its ‘savage’ and ‘backward’ doctrines that retard development and engender violence. Fundamentally flawed, this premise is universal to their analyses and nominally informs their objectives, to ‘combat’ terror by criticizing Islam and somehow promoting human rights by those polemics. Increasingly, these voices are monopolizing our discourse on the Middle East. They elevate fundamentalist Islam and literalist doctrines as a prime mover of politics that dictates politics in the Muslim world. Such a view of politics is misguided and wholly detrimental. Beyond its naked inaccuracy, it detracts from discussions which need to take place, which are apart from the ethereal world of faith and biases and opinion. While a dialogue within the Muslim community on radicalism and state repression is indeed vital, it is only one component that is itself bounded to targeted policy. Ultimately, banners of ‘free speech’ and ‘criticism’ are meaningless if the environment in which radicalization and repression arise go ignored. Fixating on Islam and the ethers of religious interpretation only distract from the real issues and, in the process, propagates distortion and falsehood.
In the Middle East, there are a nexus of structures underlying politics. From underdevelopment to governmental breakdowns to state competition, politics is derived from a temporal world. Ideology in the mode of fundamentalism is born of these material structures. Reactionary strains of Islam are just that — a reaction to contemporary politics and an appropriation of Islam for political ends, ranging from militancy to civic participation within the political system. Islamic interpretation occurs in an intrinsically political world, where actors vie for advantage and utilize appeals to mobilize supporters. From puritanical strains to reformism, it is in response to contemporary politics. Anti-Islam critics fundamentally misunderstand Islam and its place in the world, instead opting to fetishize fringe strains of Islam and thinking it is constitutive of all politics in the Muslim world. Even on social engagement, where they celebrate their ‘promotion’ of human rights and secularism, an industry dedicated to the criticism of a religion by means of offensive and plainly wrong depictions — so disengaged from reality — cannot seriously be considered legitimate agents of engagement. Its many conceptual defects render their analyses totally impotent. In this void, ignorance and bigotry flourishes. To counter such voices and reorient our discourse, this article will deconstruct their flawed analyses and elucidate an alternative view to Middle Eastern politics, engaged with reality and geared toward resolution via policy prescription.
A Cautionary Tale: Anti-Islam Critics and Middle Eastern Politics
Critics of Islam, these polemicists are generally scientists, journalists, philosophers, and ex-Muslims that have strayed far from their fields. Tending to be atheists and secularists, they attempt to explain politics according to their personal normative biases, against Islam. They explain politics — from the Arab spring to transnational terrorism to the persistence of authoritarianism — through a narrow lens of Islam and its supposed omnipotence in Middle Eastern politics. When dealing with radicalization, a few quotations from the Quran is a satisfactory response. If the subject is underdevelopment, they can point to the religion’s ‘backwardness’ and not even engage with domestic and international political economies. Rife with circular logic and opinion, their analyses are reductionist, myopic, inept, naïve, and conceptually bare — to the point such ‘analyses’ are totally disengaged from reality and are little more than a means for the author to relay his or her normative commitment to atheism, secular humanism, or other priorities. Deprived of objectivity and reason, these figure rely on opinion, bias, emotion, and bluster to deflect attention away from their incoherent and demonstrably false premises. Universally, their arguments are predetermined, conforming to an opinionated worldview where Islam and Muslim backwardness is somehow behind all things Middle East. En masse, these figures proceed from religious studies, assuming the literal word of the Quran and the hadith is a prime mover of politics within the Middle East. Their works are then written in reaction to this artificial political construct. Effectively, this constitutes an unsophisticated and unwieldy cultural approach to Middle Eastern politics, i.e. group peculiarities (in this case Islam) condition political action and distinguish politics in the Muslim world from the rest of the world. To counter Anti-Islam criticism, we must first deconstruct this mode of analysis and demonstrate its deficiencies as a perspective on Middle Eastern politics.
Analytically, proceeding from culture alone is a precarious path. Ideology and group characteristics are born of historical, institutional, and sociopolitical contexts, i.e. structure. Take, for example, Wahabbism. Wahabbism is the 18th Century creation of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an ultraconservative cleric who constructed a reactionary, revivalist strain of Islam. Its prominence — and indeed place in history — is derived from a political alliance with House Saud to conquer competing tribes in the Nejd (within modern-day Saudi Arabia), utilizing religion as a means to mobilize supporters for intrinsically temporal ends. Throughout history, Islamic interpretation and its place in the world evolves and adapts to contemporary politics. Therefore, the temporal world and its contemporary politics must precondition our analysis. Anti-Islam criticism does not align with history, or even basic political processes. Within structure, politics is embedded. From the caliphate to the Ottoman Empire to post-colonial statehood, the premise that religious doctrines have alone motivated politics over the centuries is laughable.
Moreover, this type of analysis where observers proceed from Islam alone — a religion of 1.6 billion spanning Muslims communities in radically different contexts throughout the East and the West — is at best clumsy and at worst totally disengaged from reality. The collectivization of such a diverse religion, according to sect or community or fiqh (i.e. Islamic jurisprudence), necessarily requires the creation of a monolith. That monolith assumes Islam is constituted by a static and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that is constitutive of the religion itself. Demonstrably false, the polemicists implicitly accept fundamentalist Islam as the one ‘true’ strain of Islam and, by extension, the only religious interpretation of ‘true’ Muslims. Adopting this flawed view of Islam and Muslims, New Atheist Sam Harris writes, “[T]he only thing that defines the class of All Muslims … is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire. My condemnation applies to the doctrines of Islam and to the ways in which they reliably produce these ‘bad acts’ [of violent jihadism and repression].”[3] On moderate Muslims, in a telling moment for him, Harris identifies those Muslims that reject extremism as ‘nominal Muslims’, saying, “Hundreds of millions of Muslims are nominal Muslims, who don’t take their faith seriously, who don’t want to kill apostates, who are horrified by ISIS.”[4]
Herein, we see the explicit collectivization of Islam — of ‘All Muslims’ being defined by a set of beliefs Harris imposes on that group, in the adherence to a rigid and reactionary mode of Islam. If they reject his interpretation of Islam, they are not ‘true’ Muslims. Such a view ignores the diversity of religious interpretation throughout Islamic history, ranging from populist reactionaries to Islamic modernists to Islamic reformers.[5] Anti-Islam critics’ collectivization of Islam creates a false monolith, in the existence of one type of Muslim that demands all Muslims conform to the their construct in order to be considered ‘true Muslims who take their faith seriously.’ Beyond being outrageous and offensive, this is plainly inept analysis, speaking to a basic misunderstanding of religion and its role in the temporal world. Religion is inherently subjective. Its only constant throughout history has been static core beliefs which interpretation cannot alter, e.g. monotheism. Beyond these static core beliefs, interpretations correspond to contemporary sociopolitical contexts, in the reaction of clerical figures theologically as well as politically. The very nature of religion is based in the construction of a political community, in the unification of a population according to a shared identity and placing them within the temporal world. History tells us there is not one strain of Islam nor is there one type of ‘true’ Muslim. That is an intellectually bankrupt proposition and aids only in phony analyses that react against something which simply does not exist.
If we divorce ourselves from the ethers of spirituality (i.e. whether or not we believe, which is irrelevant) and adopt a materialist analysis, religion is a means of alignment, orienting groups in the political sphere. Clerical and non-clerical elites utilize religion as a means to mobilize populations and appeal to them through a shared language and belief, e.g. Islamist voices of al-Azhar in Egypt legitimizing state policies and even Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s rule post-Muslim Brotherhood via Islamist appeals.[6] This materialist dimension to religion, in how it conforms to a temporal world, is a basic concept that is totally warped and distorted in anti-Islam critics’ analysis. Instead of religion being a means to political action, through political community and mobilization thereof, Islam is constitutive of politics in and of itself. Disengaged from temporal ends, e.g. expelling the occupiers or creating a polity where clerical elites wield power, the resultant myopia on Islam and its warped conception in the world is a major theoretical flaw and one that damns their analyses to distortion, falsehood, and irrelevancy.
When one critiques anti-Islam figures’ analyses, that individual is usually met with hostility, and accusations are lobbed of being an ‘apologist’ and refusing to ‘confront’ Islam. Such accusations are revealing considering an observer should be impartial, i.e. not working toward personal biases and distorting their analyses to fit that mold. Aside from their overly sensitive cries, anti-Islam figures’ personal response to impartial and conceptually sound analysis — engaged with the real world — offers almost comical reactions and evidences the dearth of competency and skill. Taking a dismissive tone, these self-proclaimed ‘free thinkers’ reject analysis which does not conform to their worldview. Writing on academics’ refusal to accept some fictitious and omnipresent “religious motive” Harris constructs, he targets anthropologist Scott Atran and his study on militants’ motivations.[7] In the process, he collectivizes and denigrates academics for not validating his biases and the hopelessly naïve worldview that accompanies it. Unsurprisingly, he goes on to undertake his grossly reductionist, normatively corrupted, and incredibly superficial mode of ‘analysis.’ He writes, “[T]hey always look for the ‘deeper’ reasons — economic, political, or personal — behind it. However, when given economic, political, or personal motives (e.g. ‘I did it because they stole my family’s land, and I felt totally hopeless.’), these researchers always seem to take a person at his word. They never dig for the religious motive behind apparently terrestrial concerns.”[8]
This farcical criticism typifies the divide between engaged, serious analysis and the anti-Islam critics’ fluff. A researcher — whether in academia or not — does not manipulate his or her study by ‘digging’ to reach a predetermined conclusion. He or she consults with the literature, develops an (educated) hypothesis, and conducts research to prove or disprove that hypothesis. The objective is to inform — not to validate biases. In his or her study, a researcher is detached, guided only by his or her desire to discover why political phenomena come about, i.e. uncover its causal factors. It is from this standpoint, in pursuit of fact and not opinion, we proceed. Validation of biases, bigotries, and flawed worldviews is antithetical to this end and a marker of bad analysis. Anti-Islam critics’ wholesale dismissal of academia — ironically populated by its own class of atheists, agnostics, and secularists — in favor of unqualified and ill-informed observers is absurd.[9] It is little more than a desperate attempt justify incompetent and incoherent analyses predicated on a general ignorance of politics, history, and religion. The entry of outsiders — with no discernable background in political analysis, much less Middle Eastern politics — engenders analysis disengaged with from reality, which is feebly covered up by obnoxious bluster.[10] In this arena, however, reputation and bluster cannot obscure demonstrably false and inferior work. Analysis stands alone.
In all, the abandonment of objectivity, the embrace of normative biases, and the commercialization of ‘Islamic criticism’ has bred a conceptual wasteland. Analysis has been reduced to opinion, designed to validate rather than to inform. Religious studies is somehow salient to all matters of Middle Eastern politics, to the point we disregard the structural and material factors underlying politics in favor of uninformed opinion. Anti-Islam figures proceed from a warped and distorted view of the world — and of themselves. Detractors of Islam, they conceive of Middle Eastern politics as being rooted in some omnipresent ‘religious motive’ festering inside of 1.6 billion Muslims (unless they are ‘nominal Muslims,’ of course) due to this select class deciding certain literalist creeds are constitutive of the religion and thus all politics. Their theoretical constructs rely on the existence of a fictitious Muslim monolith, owing to those literalist interpretations they impose on ‘true’ Muslims. And, because Islam is deemed a prime mover of Middle Eastern politics, they go round and round until they reach that fatally flawed premise. Then, they carry on with their tired denigrations of Islam — ultimately coming to nothing, contributing nothing. There is no real policy relevance, pathway for social engagement, or even insights into our world today. Deconstructed, their arguments are painfully incoherent, foolishly reductionist, and totally divorced from reality. These figures do not even scratch the surface of what truly underlies Middle Eastern politics. And yet, by appealing to biases against Islamic ‘other,’ these voices gain traction, perpetuating our plight by feeding into ignorance and the abhorrent policies it engenders. And so we go in circles.
Whereas anti-Islam critics will go on to profit, it is you — the reader — who suffers. Voices so privileged as to be heard in the public sphere should be dedicated to something more than themselves. Whether an academic or a journalist or a writer, the mission is the same: Inform, enlighten, and empower the public. To abrogate this responsibility is to bloody our hands and become complicit with what follows next. In an era of instability and violence, we have a moral obligation to counter distortion, falsehood, bigotry, and fear. Responsible voices should devote themselves against these things and, in turn, attempt to illuminate a path forward. Some figures, however, have chosen to exploit the present instability and violence for their own personal benefit, endeavoring to raise their public profiles so as to hawk mediocre prose and dubious think tanks/organizations.[11] A cadre of scientists, journalists, ex-radicals, and ex-Muslims are among these figures. They constitute a cottage industry that, immune to irony, adopts the same narratives as religious extremists. Both groups proceed from difference to construct a world where East and West cannot be reconciled, implying one must be degraded for the other to survive. They embrace a mythical clash of East v. West. They engage in the repugnant collectivization of a people, dehumanizing them and degrading them. And they propagate a savage and unbridled ignorance. This comprises anti-Islam critics’ ‘contribution’ and is to everyone’s detriment, both in the East and the West.
To turn inward, to incite division and fear is wholly destructive. And it will be self-defeating. If we embrace the same narratives as extremists — of East v. West — then we ourselves succumb to that same vile ignorance and preclude any engagement with Muslim communities. In the process, we debase ourselves and do nothing to resolve the problems we all face. Fundamentally, if we are disengaged from why militancy and terrorism comes about — in the sociopolitical environment that engenders violence, e.g. addressing structures like postcolonial institutions, state capacity, underdevelopment, et al. — then there is not a conceivable path forward, beyond the empty and offensive rhetoric that currently pollutes our discourse on the Middle East. For this reason, our objective is something different, something consequential: Policy prescription. To do this, we must first understand the causes of political phenomena. Whether discussing militancy or state repression or civil war, political phenomena are embedded in broader historical, institutional, and sociopolitical structures. Only by addressing these structures through sound policy can there be resolution to the instability and violence that plagues the Middle East and indeed the world.
A Structural Perspective: The Modern Middle East and the Sovereign State
15 years have passed since 9/11. In that span, we have witnessed two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ascent of drone warfare across the Middle East and North Africa, an explosion of violent sectarianism, the breakdown of state authority, the outbreak of civil war, and a global reach to terrorism that that threatens us all. These issues are not trivial. They are not abstract. They are real. They are of life and death. For this reason, one must view anti-Islam critics harshly. A group of unqualified, uninformed, undisciplined, and unserious figures are speaking so loudly and so obnoxiously that they are polluting our discourse on the Middle East. By disengaging Middle Eastern politics from the real world, we are thrown into the ethers of opinion, emotion, and bias — with nothing to show for it. They are distracting from the real issues and, in turn, detracting from our discussions as to what can be done about it. Anti-Islam critics’ self-serving and self-aggrandizing rhetoric on the glories of atheism or some vague ‘war for the soul of Islam’ are not serious policy proposals engaged with the issues and certainly are not aimed at resolving the problems we face. Altogether, the critics’ spiel comes to nothing. In the void that follows, ignorance and bigotry flourishes. And with it, bad policy.
Our discourse on the Middle East and the policies it engenders will resonate around the globe and throughout history. If we are to confront the challenges that lie ahead, our discourse must be reoriented to the temporal world, in the real things underlying Middle Eastern politics. Our framework for this is structure. Political phenomena are shaped by structure: The historical, sociopolitical, and institutional. By adopting a structural perspective, we can parse out causation and devise policies that target the environment in which political phenomena come about. Herein, we will see a divide in analysis. If a decline in state capacity in Syria and Yemen allows militant groups to garner territory and create a haven for militancy, criticizing the literal word of the Quran accomplishes nothing. If the grievances of youth in Molenbeek are centered on the absence of economic opportunity and rising anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, droning on about secularism is utterly beside the point. To get passed the ethers of opinion and confront these challenges, we must understand all the forces underlying Middle Eastern politics.
And so we return to that maxim: Politics is politics. Whether we are dealing with Basque separatism or Kurdish nationalism, geography and cultural peculiarities do not negate this. The formation of political communities and their conforming to the politics world (i.e. group competition) is a constant. In the Middle East, the political world underwent an epochal shift in the early 20th Century with the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I. The partitioning of territory and, ultimately, the construction of the modern sovereign state ushered in modernity. Herein, politics shifted from the decentralized rule of an empire to the centralized structures of the sovereign state. Thereafter, resources were contested between groups within these borders — demarcating distinct and separate state governments, each with their own internal politics. The objective for vying groups has been control of that state apparatus and, with it, the distribution of state resources to its constituencies. Ideologies and their progeny are derived from this group competition, in mobilizing supporters for political ends. Its character is shaped by the contemporary structures in which they come about, e.g. Arab socialism and nationalist ideologies in the mid-20th Century v. reactionary Islamism in the early 21st Century. If we are to address contemporary political questions, we must first understand the modern Middle East and its structures, namely the sovereign state and how it impacted Middle Eastern politics from there on.
Politics is embedded within structure. Regime type, economic system, elite composition, and ideology occur therein. Its mechanism is competition, between domestic groups vying for power within the state apparatus and competition between sovereign states. The feasibility of Arab socialism and its social programs during the mid-20th Century were bounded to economic, sociopolitical, and historical structures. In this era, politics was characterized by the capitalism v. communism dichotomy, states’ Cold War alignment and corresponding foreign support, and the predominance of statist economic policy (of the Keynesian welfare state and centrally planned economies). In the Middle East, ideology and regimes types of this period — tending to be statist, nationalist, and authoritarian — were embedded in broader structures that dictated state politics, constituting a path dependent relationship to statehood and development governed by the era’s sociopolitical contexts. The established order of the mid-20th Century shaped Middle Eastern regimes, in which governments adopted the policies and institutional designs commonplace to this period. Statist and socialistic, Middle Eastern social policy programs were a part of modernization-led development strategies that were necessary during this transitional postcolonial period. Over time, this order would become antithetical to the globalized, liberalized, and integrated political economy of the 21st Century. Inefficiencies and economic crisis forced states to retreat from their social obligations and undergo radical changes to their political economy. During this wave of economic liberalization and integration worldwide, the Middle Eastern state was likewise transformed by these drastic structural changes to the global political economy, reacting to the pressures it imposed onto states.
Indeed, the structural adjustments to this new neoliberal economic order exposed the inherent inefficiencies in Middle Eastern states’ institutional designs, namely centralized economic planning and the social programs bounded to it. Amid the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s, the international political economy imposed on states external pressures that altered countries’ domestic policy programs. It forces states to undergo some liberalization programs in order to compete in an increasingly global economy and generate enough domestic revenue to fund its obligations. The ramifications of that economic liberalization ushered in profound political changes that disrupted the makeup of the modern Middle East. Its progeny has been a shift from postcolonial nationalism to ethno-religious mobilization. From Egypt to Iran, the retreat of the state from its social obligations created a void that was filled by civil society actors, notably Islamist groups, in reaction to secular authoritarian nationalism. Amid the pressures of neoliberalism and the economic crises of the late-20th Century, such counter-movements founded on Islamism found success by reacting against the endemic corruption, economic stagnation, and repressive institutions of these regimes. Being in opposition to authoritarian secular-nationalist regimes, Islamist actors positioned themselves as an alternative to the postcolonial authoritarian status quo.
During the Arab Spring, the region’s most recent democratic moment, Islamist actors found an opening and were able to mount an effective challenge to that postcolonial order. The advantage of Islamist groups over other civil society actors during the first round of elections was a staple of the Arab Spring’s (mostly transitory) democratic transitions. Political Islamist groups’ initial electoral gains — divorced from issues of good governance or conspiring military elites — were predicated on Islamist groups’ standing in society and the respective advantages in mobilization peculiar to them. Already embedded in civil society, via mosques and religious organizations, the universality of Islam enabled political Islamist groups to engage in mass mobilization. Moreover, it afforded these groups some degree of resiliency to state repression, because Islam is a potent and omnipresent force in Middle Eastern society that cannot be totally repressed by state authorities. Political Islam has been assurgent in the 21st Century, owing to the breakdown of old regimes and new strategies of mobilization.[12] From the AKP in Turkey to Ennahda in Tunisia, political Islamist parties conform to the political system, opting to participate within the political system. Therein, these groups use religion as a means to mobilize supporters and achieve temporal political objectives.
An analog to this dynamic of religious mobilization can be found in the American political system. The Republican Party and its embrace of social conservatives (or evangelicals/the ‘Christian right’) is certainly in this mode of religious mobilization. Like political Islamist groups, social conservatives appeal to religion in order to mobilize their supporters and achieve political objectives. Often operating via churches and religious organizations, they mobilize supporters via religious appeals, explicitly based on so-called ‘Judeo-Christian’ values and aligned policy. Their stances on social issues are peculiar to religious texts, e.g. opposition to gay marriage derived entirely from Scripture. Some figures within this movement even go as far as to claim they would nullify Supreme Court decisions that contradicted the Bible, by implication melding civil and religious law while rejecting secular authority.[13] Despite the existence of this fringe, few would argue social conservatives are constitutive of the whole Republican Party or that the party itself is agitating for a revolutionary theocratic republic as its core policy objective. They are but a faction and one operating within the political system. Outside of salient social issues, the party operates according to its own logic – in the constituencies it represents – and utilizes its evangelical base as a potent tool for mobilization, particularly during election time. Its motives are rationally self-interested, and the party adopts the means that allow it to achieve those ends.
Political Islamist groups likewise operate according to this logic. Crucially, they participate in the political system, operating according to its logic and conforming to the political realities of competitive electoral politics. Clothed in Islam, these groups instrumentalized faith for temporal ends. Amid the Arab Spring, democratic transitions in the Arab world were characterized by political Islamist parties’ assurgency within nascent democracies and these groups building coalitions to win elections. Therein, they utilized Islamist appeals to mobilize their supporters and achieve electoral gains. Apart from some mythical ‘religious motive’ peculiar to Islam, there were material and rational motives to both the objectives and tactics of political Islamist groups – the same type of dynamics found in any other democratic political system.
Across the region, the Arab Spring was the apex for political Islamist parties. During countries’ first round of elections, when issues of good or bad governance were unknowns, the advantages available to political Islamist parties in organization and mobilization produced electoral victories throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Later, when performance became the determinant of popular support, political Islamist parties suffered setbacks and tended to lose power. In Tunisia, the ebb and flow of its political Islamist party Ennahda demonstrating how initial electoral victories could be swept away by governmental failures once in power. Ennahda was subject to the same dynamics of any other political party, because the party conformed to a democratic political system, inherently responsive to the people via the vote. During its rule, the party operated accordingly, politicking between the extremes (of Salafists and secularists) in order to further its political objectives. Eventually, bad governance and the party’s subsequent unpopularity resulted in its electoral defeat and the transfer of power to the opposition. In effect, political Islam was subordinated to the political system. Herein, there exists a dichotomy between political Islam and extremism: Participation within the political system v. opposition to the state. This dichotomy hinges on the sovereign state and how actors respond to this omnipresent structure.
Whereas political Islam conforms to and is subordinated to the political system, extremist actors find themselves in violent contention with the state and indeed modernity. Rather than trying to conform to the political system, extremist groups form in opposition to that state apparatus. They aim to deconstruct the modern Middle East and create a new entity distinct from the sovereign state, e.g. ISIL seizing territory from sovereign states and constructing a caliphate composed by ‘sharia’ institutions that consolidate the group’s power therein. There is an element of violent reaction inherent to these groups, thus its interchange with militancy. Militancy occurs during the revolutionary phase of groups’ existences, when such actors wage total war on the state.[14] Forming in opposition to the state, extremist groups aim to dismantle the old order and install their own. The phenomena of extremism and militancy are defined by this political dimension to actors’ motivations, in reaction against the state. Moreover, extremist groups find are in opposition to the modern Middle East, i.e. the state and its machinations that conform to the temporal world. They adopt rationales grounded in fundamentalist Islam to mount insurgencies against the state and seek to dismantle it. Their ultimate aim is to install so-called ‘Islamic’ institutions that allow groups to dominate their constructed polities. Through fundamentalism, extremist groups derive legitimacy and, ultimately, power.
In the Middle East, religion — conceived as a means of community and mobilization — is a potent force that creates an ‘other,’ whether in expelling the occupier or delegitimizing political opponents by labeling them as ‘infidels’ and/or ‘apostates.’ Such rhetoric is born of religion and yet itself is rooted in temporal politics, i.e. group competition. It is rooted in the structural forces engendering ideologies and conflict. In the vein of political Islamist parties, extremists’ appeals to fundamentalist Islam are another mode of mobilization. Intrinsically oppositional, groups’ religious appeals provide the pretext to wage war against the state. Their objective is a temporal one: The construction of a polity where they wield ultimate power. To tackle militant groups in the Middle East, we must first recognize how they come about.
Going beyond extremist actors’ normative commitments to ‘purifying’ Muslim lands, the precondition for militant group formation is weak/failed states, in the central authority’s failure to wield control over its territory and combat militant groups. Breakdowns in state capacity presuppose militancy and large-scale violence, e.g. AQAP in Yemen or Boko Haram in Nigeria. It is in the void of state authority extremism and militancy are bred. Clothed in the language of fundamentalist Islam, extremist actors’ ambitions are essentially materialist — defined by that opposition to the sovereign state. ‘Islamic’ polities are carved from the territory of existing states. The state’s institutions are deconstructed and, in its place, so-called Islamic institutions are installed. Effectively, fundamentalism is a means for these groups to consolidate power and perpetuate their rule. Self-proclaimed caliphs or a class of mullahs are at the helm and disperse the polity’s resources to its supporters, e.g. the reign of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph in ISIL’s polity. Demystified, Islamic extremism is a violent counter-reaction to Middle Eastern statehood and manifests itself from actors’ desire to subvert the old political order, employing reactionary ideologies to mount insurgencies against the state and to install an Islamic entity that allows the group to dominate. Two Islamic actors, political Islamist parties and extremist actors both appropriate Islam for intrinsically political ends, operating within a temporal world.
Since the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, modern Middle Eastern politics has been embedded within one preeminent structure: The sovereign state. Within the confines of that state apparatus, politics occurs. Domestic interest groups vie for influence and power, in a competition for control over state resources. Sociopolitical, institutional, and historical contexts frame politics therein. Internationally, states compete vis-à-vis one another and thus respond to those pressures internally, in the policies adopted domestically. Statehood and states’ integration into the international system ushered in the modern Middle East. Herein, national and international politics are intertwined , creating dynamics that resonate across the levels of politics.[15] It is within these structures Middle Eastern politics is embedded. If we proceed from this structural framework — bridging the historical, institutional, and sociopolitical (along with some aspects of identity and community) — we can make sense of the apparent chaos in contemporary Middle Eastern politics and understand what forces underlie politics. Below, a brief case study of the Syrian civil war will demonstrate the utility of this approach and its potential for policy prescription.
A Case Study: The Syrian Civil War
The Syrian civil war and its trajectory evidence the nexus of structures at play in the Middle East today. Multi-layered, the Syrian conflict is at the intersection of global, regional, and domestic dynamics that have governed the conflict since its degeneration from civil protest into civil war. Within the conflict, these dynamics entail: Global state competition (United States v. Russia), regional proxy war (Iran v. Saudi Arabia), ethnic conflict (Kurds v. Turks), sectarian conflict (Shia v. Sunni), and the emergence of nonstate actors (ISIL and other militant groups). Each dynamic is embedded in wider political structures that has aligned belligerents vis-à-vis one another. In contention, they operate according to their respective political realities and the objectives it imposes upon them. From the threat of Kurdish separation in eastern Turkey to the weakening of Iran’s sphere of influence, actor behavior is derived from actors’ material and rational self-interests. Outside of myopic theological conflicts, belligerents are reacting to the structures of the international system (i.e. interstate competition) and how it aligns actors therein. The Syrian civil war began in 2011 with a domestic challenge to the Assad regime’s rule — against its authoritarian mode of governance — and escalated into international conflict. Thus, we must begin with the domestic and then move onto the regional and then the global to understand the conflict. From this framework, we can understand how domestic structures collide with international structures and how that transformed the Syrian conflict.
Domestically, the Syrian civil war is rooted in the country’s demography and its postcolonial history of authoritarianism. Ethno-religious divisions and the military’s consolidation of power have constituted Syria’s institutional structures and, with it, modes of political organization. As a heterogeneous society — being multi-faith and multi-ethnic — societal fragmentation has characterized modern Syria. Political communities are aligned by identity, in ethno-religious affiliation. At nearly 75% of the population, a majority of the population is Sunni Arab. Under the Assad regime, this population has been marginalized. The Assad family are members of the ruling Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam and a minority in Syria with Alawites composing only 10–12% of the population. Other minority groups include Druze, Christians, and Kurds. Each group presents ethnic, religious, and historical dimensions to social cohesion and conflict. It is upon this mosaic of distinct and competing political communities the Syrian state is composed.
Syria’s postcolonial history of authoritarianism emanates from Syrian society’s fragmentation. In the 1960s, military coups and the ascendance of the Ba’ath Party reflected the weakening of civil society under Ottoman and later French control (under the mandate system), allowing the military to challenge and ultimately overthrow the civilian government. In 1970, after intra-party struggle within the Ba’ath Party, Hafez al-Assad consolidated power and became president. Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000, perpetuating the regime along familial lines. The Assad regime institutionalizes its rule by implementing three strategies: Sectarian domination that exploits communal divisions, patron-client relationships that foster dependencies, and state repression that cracks down on dissent. Collectively, the Assad regime has implemented a mode of authoritarian governance characterized by personalist minority rule and extensive patronage networks that incorporate potential challengers into the regime and pacify potential opponents.
Institutionally, the authoritarian rule of the Assad regime is predicated on the Alawite sect’s domination of the military and intelligence classes. Despite Sunni soldiers being a majority of the Syrian Armed Forces’ rank-and-file (pre-civil war), the leadership structures and sectarian composition to integral army divisions act to subordinate the Sunni population and secure the regime’s rule. A senior Sunni officer, who defected in 2011, described Syria’s security services as being dominated by Alawites, mentioning in particular a system where Sunni officials holding senior posts are appointed ‘symbolically’ and are in reality overseen by an Alawite deputy that wields tremendous power. The defector remarked, “Decisions in the army and security services are always made by Alawites — Sunnis have no influence.”[16] While an oversimplification, it reflects widespread Sunni discontent with the Assad regime’s mode of minority rule, constituted exclusionary policies that elevate a core of loyalists determined by sect and/or family ties.
To ensure the military does not pose a threat the regime, in a repeat of Syria’s initial postcolonial experience of coups and countercoups, Bashar al-Assad adopts some familial and personalist structures in order to safeguard his rule. The vital Republican Guard and the 4th Armored Division are headed by the president’s brother Maher al-Assad and is almost totally composed by Alawite career soldiers, concentrating power along familial and sectarian lines. Its leadership structures provide a direct line to Bashar al-Assad via family ties. Moreover, there are material benefits extended to higher-ranking officers — Sunni and Alawite alike — spanning employment, land ownership (e.g. military housing in the Dahiet al-Assad suburb of Damascus), and upward social mobility that create a series of dependencies between military personnel and the regime. Consequently, there are real material inducements for officers’ obedience, i.e. military personnel have a personal stake in the regime’s survival.[17] To create dependencies within the military, the Assad regime redistributes state resources to military elites in order to pacify potential opponents and embeds — institutionally — sectarian division in its security forces so as to consolidate its rule.
Outside of the state’s security services, the Assad regime has utilized extensive patronage networks to build coalitions and incorporate segments of the population into the regime, producing dependencies among the general population that create stakeholders in the regime. Traditionally, authoritarian regimes appropriate two state resources — the bureaucracy and the party — for dispersal to its supporters, constituting patron-client relationships that make those regime loyalists beholden to the regime. Paralleling the military and high-ranking officials’ stake in the regime, formal incorporation into the regime is one means of capturing public support and a lynchpin of the Assad regime’s rule. Another strategy has been subsidies, price supports, and social welfare spending — measures dating back to the statist economic policies commonplace in the mid-20th Century and a part of the Ba’ath Party’s socialist policy program — that targeted the rural peasantry and urban working classes, making those populations economically reliant on the regime. Later, in response to successive economic crises and an increasingly neoliberal political economic order, Hafez al-Assad initiated a program of limited economic liberalization that revived Syria’s private sector. It incorporated a burgeoning bourgeoisie (i.e. capitalist industrialists and businessmen) into the regime. Whereas authoritarian regimes typically rely on formal political structures, in the state bureaucracy and ruling party, the Assad regime has extended dependencies into the private sector, owing to the state’s control over economic resources and endemic corruption therein.[18] Via the appropriation of state resources, the Assad regime has bolstered its rule by incorporating some segments of the population into the regime and engendering dependencies that force the Syrian people to rely on its structures, due to the extensiveness of patronage networks and official corruption.
The final component of the Assad regime’s rule is state repression. The Mukhabarat (or Syrian intelligence) and other state security forces ensure compliance by engaging in the systematic violations of human rights. From severe restrictions on civil society groups to gratuitously violent crackdowns on dissent, state coercion has been a means to perpetuating the regime’s rule. Before the outbreak of civil war, the Hama massacre in 1982 ranked as the worst human rights abuse in Syrian history. Suppressing an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, which utilized religious mobilization to rebel against the ‘infidel’ Hafez al-Assad, the regime dispatched its security forces and massacred the rebels — along with thousands upon thousands of civilians. Decades later, the Arab Spring and civil protests in Daraa triggered a state crackdown that exacerbated civil strife and eventually escalated into civil war.
Defections from the military, the influx of militant groups into Syria, and the subsequent loss of territory severely weakened Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Despite this, the regime has proved remarkably resilient due to the aforementioned strategies. Alawite domination of the security forces, the regime’s patron-client relationships with the citizenry, and the government’s consolidation of its remaining territory have allowed the regime to persist. Moreover, the devolution into sectarian civil war has allowed the regime to exploit communal divisions and solidify its hold on Alawite and other minority areas, feeding into narratives (or realities) of impending genocide and/or Sunni extremist rule. Proceeding from these domestic dynamics, regional and global powers have attempted changed the course of the war by altering the domestic status quo in their favor — introducing external forces that are drastically altering the conflict’s trajectory.
The Sunni-Shia schism resonates throughout the Middle East. In the Syrian civil war, this dynamic has drawn in regional powers and aligned them according to that sectarian dimension. Its contemporary political salience — to the point of internecine regional war — emanates from competing political communities and interstate competition. Elites have aligned themselves to sectarian-aligned actors and created alliances along that Sunni-Shia divide. In consequence, there has been the formation of two competing blocs. Such behavior is a byproduct of the international system and state actors’ competition for regional hegemony. The blocs are spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and Iran, pitting Shia-dominated powers versus Sunni-dominated powers. This alignment is grounded in the dominance of clerical elites within these states and elites’ appropriation of religion for intrinsically political ends. International alliances and foreign proxies have been driven by this rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Powers have adopted interventionist policies in other states’ affairs, providing direct and/or indirect support for belligerents in the conflict. Before analyzing regional powers’ intervention in the conflict, the Saudi-Iranian antagonism and its impact on sectarianism in the 21st Century should be deconstructed. It is from this dynamic foreign intervention in Syria is based.
The Saudi-Iranian rivalry is at the confluence of international, institutional, and historical contexts that have thrust the powers into open conflict for regional dominance. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the ascendancy of Shia clerical authorities has transformed Iranian foreign policy and imbued a sectarian component. Elites’ support for Shia communities and the export of its ‘revolutionary’ theology poses a direct threat to Sunni powers. In Saudi Arabia, the subordination of Shia populations in its eastern territory and bordering states (notably Yemen and Bahrain) necessitates an international response to rising Iranian influence and power. Beyond this international rivalry, the sectarian component to Saudi and Iranian foreign policy stems less from their differences than their striking similarities. Two rentier states, Saudi Arabia and Iran are characterized by the incorporation of clerical classes into the polity and institutional development hampered by national economies dependent on commodities (in the export of oil) that has eroded governmental accountability to the citizenry and subsidized bad policy.[19] Herein, the sectarian component originates. External rents subsidize inefficient and backward policies at home, while simultaneously funding regional adventurism abroad. Fueled by oil wealth, the regimes’ domestic appropriation of religion informs their foreign policy and resonates throughout the region. As Saudi Arabia and Iran vie for regional hegemony, the Syrian civil war has become the frontline for this contention via the use of proxy and even direct military intervention. Materially, states are attempting to alter/defend the balance of power in their favor.
In Iran, the melding of clerical and state authorities constitute the Islamic Republic and its orientation to the world. Its revolutionary ideology of velayat-e faqih, where governance is placed in the hands of a ‘guardian’ Islamic jurist, has altered conventional state politics by merging the political with the religious. From wielding ultimate clerical authority to having final say over foreign policy, the Supreme Leader of Iran and his Islamic Republic are institutional arrangements that typify this merger of the political and religious, complicating policymaking by bounding clerical and civil interests. Internationally, this unique institutional structure engenders an activist Iranian foreign policy that aligns political communities according to sect, unifying disparate populations together in opposition to an extant ‘other’ (in the case of Sunni powers) by utilizing religious mobilization. In the 21st Century, foreign support and the use of proxy has constituted an axis of Shia powers — notably Iran, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and (increasingly) the Iraqi government — that vie for regional dominance, i.e. a regional balance of power against Sunni states. Outside of this sectarian element, there is another aspect of Iranian foreign policy that is peculiar to the country’s history. Dating to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the reaction against American support for the Pahlavi regime has created a persistent antagonism between Iran and the West. Iranian regional aspirations have thus been opposed by the United States and its Sunni allies, dictating actors’ foreign policy in reaction to that perceived threat — be it defensive or offensive. In response, Iranian foreign policy has increasingly relied on Shia populations across the region to create a bulwark against its opponents, utilizing its oil wealth to fund such endeavors.
Like Iran, Saudi Arabia is characterized by the incorporation of clerical authorities in its institutional structures. Clerics, however, are subordinated to the House Saud monarchy and decision-making is vested in the monarch. However, religious authorities inform and, in many ways, dictate Saudi policy. From the Council of Senior Scholars to the Mutaween (or religious police), there are public and semi-public institutions that allow the clerical class to participate in governmental affairs. The incorporation of religious authority in the Saudi state is rooted in the country’s history, namely the 18th Century alliance between the ruler Muhammad ibn Saud and the cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is in a privileged position within the Muslim world due to it housing Islamic holy sites, its embrace of reactionary and revivalist strains of Islam, and a prominent religious-industrial complex that exports puritanical Sunni Islam. Funded by petrodollars, Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy consists of the sponsorship and material support for Islamist groups throughout the world — alongside its propagation of Wahhabism — that serves as a means to transmit influence, increasing Saudi power abroad. The consequence of such policies is necessarily sectarianism, rooted in theological rejections of Shias as ‘apostates’ and ‘infidels’ in accordance with the kingdom’s domestic policies subordinating Shia populations. Abroad, the ideological foundation of extremist groups is grounded in that austere and fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, which is embedded within the kingdom and its inner politics. Some of these groups receive Saudi support, e.g. Ahrar al-Sham in Syria. Regionally, Saudi Arabia and its appropriation of religion in its foreign policy has exacerbated competition between two competing political communities — Sunnis and Shias — in the Middle East.
As the Syrian state fissures, regional powers wage proxy war within its borders. Iran and its Shia axis has supported the Assad regime, while Saudi Arabia and its Sunni bloc has backed the rebels. Intervention has spanned finance, armaments, training, and direct military involvement on behalf of the belligerents. The Assad regime has been propped up by Iranian financial and military support. Along with the militia group Hezbollah, the dispatching of Iranian Revolutionary Guards has augmented the regime’s military capabilities and allowed it to persist. Conversely, the sponsorship of rebel groups and transfer of sophisticated weaponry (e.g. anti-tank missiles) by the Sunni bloc has buttressed the opposition’s resistance to the regime. Its consequence has been a bloody stalemate. With the introduction of outside support for belligerents, there has not been definitive military outcomes and distorted actors’ perception of what can and cannot be achieved, artificially prolonging the conflict and hindering any resolution. In consequence, the Syrian conflict has been transformed from a civil war into a proxy war, drawing in outside powers and severely impacting the trajectory of the conflict. As the war stubbornly goes on and its global ramifications become clear, it has encouraged the world’s great powers to intervene.
The Syrian conflict has resonated to the uppermost level of the international system: World politics. Globally, it is expressed by the competition between Russia and the United States. The present antagonism between these two powers has motivated competing interventions in Syria. The Russo-American conflict has been interposed onto the conflict’s regional and domestic dynamics. The United States has joined Sunni powers in calling for Bashar al-Assad’s ouster and supporting factions among the rebels, in addition to backing Kurdish militias. From providing training, weaponry (e.g. covert operations transferring arms from Libya to Syrian rebels), and diplomatic support, American action has been in marked opposition to the Assad regime and its backers. Even when the United States’ objective shifted from regime change to counter-terrorism, American intervention has summarily bypassed the Syrian state and acted unilaterally, notably in the sponsorship of the Kurdish-anchored Syrian Democratic Forces and American airstrikes against ISIL. Russia, contrarily, is aligned with Shia powers in its open support for the Assad regime, both on the battlefield and in the United Nations. Russian support has intensified to the point of direct airstrikes and artillery barrages that are conducted in joint operations with the Syrian armed forces, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah, and other militias supporting the regime. While Russia does indeed have legitimate geostrategic interests in Syria (e.g. Tartus and Latakia), its intervention in Syria is more so motivated by that Russo-American rivalry and Russia’s desire for a regional balance, against the prospect of American domination in the Middle East and its negative impact on Russian national interests.
The interplay between regional and global dynamics has drastically altered the trajectory of the Syrian civil war, intensifying and perpetuating the conflict due to outside powers’ intervention. A manifestation of state competition, Syria has become an arena for states to vie for power. From regional rivalries to domestic repression to transnational refugee flows, there are a plethora of dynamics at play that resonate throughout the levels of the international system. Each dynamic presents a new dimension to the Syrian civil war and must be addressed in order resolve the conflict. Piecemeal solutions ignore how each aspect of the conflict is intertwined with another, e.g. American support for Kurdish militias conflicting with Turkey’s opposition to Kurdish separatism. Furthermore, the conflict is constantly evolving as its ramifications become clear. The shift in Western powers’ objectives from ousting the Assad regime to confronting ISIL evidences this evolution. Over time, Western interests in the Middle East — fixated on weakening the Shia axis — became subordinated to the immediate threat of ISIL, in its targeting of Western countries and inspiring home-grown radicals to perpetrate attacks. Additionally, the influx of refugees from Iraq and Syria fleeing the violence are putting a strain on Western societies and disrupting their domestic politics.[20] In all, the breakdown in state capacity, outbreak of civil war, proliferation of militancy, and ensuing humanitarian crises have been a dire progression of the Syrian civil war and one that has taken an increasingly international character. Because of this, resolution to the Syrian conflict is a global interest, and yet obstacles to end remain.
Actors’ clashing interests in Syria present a number of constraints for policymaking that have undermined and inhibited resolution. The domestic, regional, and global dynamics underlying the Syrian civil war are intertwined. Therefore, policy responses must address all the dimensions to the conflict and reconcile actors’ competing interests under one political agreement. Resolution to the Syrian civil war must proceed from the Syrian state, in it reasserting control over its territory (i.e. addressing state capacity) and thereafter suppressing militancy. Internationally, external powers in the region would have to be restrained by Russian and American pressure, enforcing an internationally-brokered agreement that restores Syrian sovereignty and puts an end to foreign intervention by the Sunni and Shia blocs. Politically, the Assad regime and its institutions (e.g. familial control of the Republican Guard) would have to be dismantled and subordinated to a transitional government. Nevertheless, a political transition must avoid the calamity of de-Ba’athification, as witnessed in Iraq post-invasion, which destabilized the state and fostered the Iraqi insurgency.[21] The track for Syria should be reconciliation, in legitimate parties within the opposition being incorporated into a transitional government and a part of the reconstruction alongside regime loyalists. Reconciliation is the only avenue to end a sectarian civil war. The ultimate aim should be an inclusive mode of governance — be it confessional democracy, regional semi-autonomy within a federation, or any other design that addresses ethno-religious division and institutionalizes inclusion. The Lebanese Civil War and the Taif Agreement provide a precedent for resolving a civil war via inclusive political reform and national reconciliation.
Conclusion: A Divide in Analysis
To understand the Middle East and indeed the world today, we must recognize the structures governing all politics. Within structure, politics is embedded. Historical, institutional, and sociopolitical contexts shape political phenomena. Whether in the East or the West, structure is universal. It is for this reason that maxim — Politics is politics — is true. Geography, religion, or culture does not negate the structures at play. The Middle East, Islam, or some imaginary character peculiar to Muslims does not negate reality. And it certainly does not justify gross and stubborn ignorance. That cottage industry of ‘Islamic criticism’ embodies this ignorance. Its figures disseminate intellectually and morally bankrupt fiction, belying even the most basic understanding of Middle Eastern politics. Blindly reductionist, they assert all political phenomena in the Middle East is derived from literalist interpretations of Islam, beliefs they then impose on ‘true’ Muslims. This warped and distorted worldview is born of ignorance. But it also speaks to an absence of integrity. These figures have an obligation to inform the public and contribute to our discourse, and yet they choose to exploit peoples’ anxieties for their own selfish benefit. The mediocrity endemic to their work is a testament to their instrumentalization of Middle Eastern politics. It is nothing more than a means for them to profit. Anti-Islam critics’ fluff is in stark contrast to serious and engaged analysis, carried out by those devoted to something more than themselves. Voices in the public sphere are obliged to inform, enlighten, and empower the public. They appeal to reason and not emotion, to fact and not opinion. For all of us, only when we are engaged with the issues — in the structures underlying politics — can there be any resolution to the problems we face, i.e. policy prescription.
To end this piece, let me address social engagement, for it is under this pretext that anti-Islam critics justify their work. And it is under this pretext those figures believe they have free reign to spew ignorance. Engagement with Muslim communities is indeed a vital component to any policy response. But engagement must be preconditioned by addressing the structures that underlie militancy, radicalization, and terrorism. If we do not address the environment in which these things come about, engagement will accomplish nothing. To do this, our policies must be targeted to structures engendering such behavior. The radicalization of Molenbeek youth demands a different policy response than the militarization of Iraqi sects. One is motivated by economic disillusionment and feelings — rightly or wrongly — of a community under threat while another is rooted in political marginalization by the state government. Therefore, social engagement and policy must go hand-in-hand. Universally, engagement with Muslim communities must be tied to something consequential, to something real. Cries of ‘free speech’ and ‘criticism’ ring hollow in the real world. It does not address what is causing these issues and does nothing more than distract from the discussions which need to take place. Legitimate engagement is founded upon us recognizing the base humanity of Muslims, bringing these communities into the fold, and working together to solve the problems we all face — not degrading and debasing an entire community for our own personal benefit. That is beneath us. And it will be self-defeating.
ENDNOTES
1. The question we must now ask ourselves is: What is politics? Dating back to ancient times, thinkers have grappled with this question. Modern day, we turn to academia and those devoted to that question. The field of political science is dedicated to the study of politics and the production of knowledge therein. Within the field, a definition proposed by political scientists Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann define politics as “the constrained use of social power.” Herein, contemporary sociopolitical contexts determines what is constituted by the political and, by extension, how individuals or groups act in pursuit of their interests. From institutional arrangements to strategies of collective action, politics is holistic, i.e. it entails all dimensions of the political.
2. A cursory list of ‘epochal events’ in Middle Eastern history: [570–632] The life of the Prophet Muhammad, the birth of Islam, and the construction of the caliphate. Obviously, this is the genesis for Islam and early political organization, via the caliphate. [1517–1924] The Ottoman Empire conquered huge swaths of the Middle East. Its defeat in World War I and partitioning by the Allied powers laid the seeds for modern Middle Eastern statehood. It is from this partitioning and subsequent colonial institutions (in the Levant and Mesopotamia) that different trajectories for states like Syria or Iraq were set forth. [1979- ] The Iranian Revolution presented a (debatable) ‘third way’ for Middle Eastern governance via the ‘Islamic Republic.’ The Islamic Republic was an alternative to traditional state-making in the Middle East, distinct from the prevailing arrangements of populist/bureaucratic authoritarianism, rentier monarchy, and consociational democracy. The melding of religious and civil authority via the Islamic Republic is a recent innovation in Middle Eastern statehood and one that has presented new dimensions to domestic and regional politics.
3. “Response to Controversy” by Sam Harris showcases the collectivization of Islam by its critics. Proceeding from literalist doctrines and conceiving a ‘true’ interpretation of Islam, he goes on to criticize all Muslims, dismissing any other causal factors and fetishizing his conception of Islam.
4. From the Ben Affleck-Sam Harris exchange; a transcript is available here. The notion of ‘nominal’ Muslims — as defined Harris and imposed on Muslims — is the epitome of moral and intellectual bankruptcy. Harris counters facts that clash with his warped and distorted view of the world, in the billion-plus Muslims who reject extremism, by excluding those Muslims from the religion itself. If ignorance has a voice, then we have found it.
5. Islamic jurisprudence encompasses over a millennium of human history. Therein, we see dynamic and competing traditions that evolve over time. To draw contrasts, I would suggest examining the works of Islamic modernist Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) v. reactionary fundamentalist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) v. Ayatollah Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini (1902–1989). Each religious scholar approaches Islam and, with it, politics from radically different perspectives rooted in their contemporary political context.
6. “The Muslim Brotherhood and the Future of Political Islam in Egypt” by Ashraf El-Sherif and his excellent research on the trajectory of Egypt’s democratic transition and the status of political Islamist groups therein. The military’s consolidation of power under Sisi, continuing its history of authoritarianism, demonstrates a secular authority’s appropriation of religion — for political ends.
7. “Here He Goes Again: Sam Harris’s Falsehoods” by Scott Atran is his response to that criticism. The mischaracterization of Atran’s work by Harris is disturbing. And, yet again, Harris’s reductionist logic comes to bear. In light of this assault on academia, it is worth noting Harris’s lack of expertise and training in the relevant fields: Of political science, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, et al. It is
8. “Response to Controversy” by Sam Harris.
9. On academia, it is wonderfully ironic that those diametrically opposed to anti-Islam critics — academics — tend to be atheists, agnostics, and/or secularists in their own right. According to a 2007 study by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, American academia is composed by individuals that tend to be much less religious than compared to the general U.S. population. In the hard sciences and social sciences, the number of self-described atheists and agnostics (or ‘irreligious’ individuals) is substantial, e.g. the fields of psychology and mechanical engineering had 61% of those professors surveyed identifying as irreligious. The distinction between an anti-Islam critic and academic is this: Detachment. Anti-Islam critics are corrupted by normative biases, abandoning objectivity to validate biases and prejudices. An academic engages in objective analysis to discover what causes phenomena. He or she is not in the business of validation, i.e. personal opinion and emotion and belief are irrelevant. The objective is contribution, to add some insight or perspective. It comes from serious study and thought, not emotional and opinionated Islam. For this reason, anti-Islam critics fail this litmus test. That cottage industry is predicated on commercialization, in figures exploiting biases and bigotries for profit. It has ceased to be legitimate and now serves only to further mediocre careers.
10. Sam Harris typifies what can be termed an ‘outsider’ dimension to Islamic criticism, i.e. an individual with no discernible qualifications writing on subjects totally outside his or her expertise. The results are as expected: Remarkably bad. With a background in philosophy and neuroscience, Harris is at an inherent disadvantage when writing on issues that are derived from history, political science, sociology, psychology, et al. While academic experience/specialization is certainly not a prerequisite for writing on Middle Eastern politics (and insularity is something to be avoided), the impetus is on the outsider to inform themselves by engaging in research, taking into consideration different perspectives, and creating well-reasoned and thought-out analyses that contribute to our discourse. Otherwise, the discourse is polluted by ill-informed and ill-equipped commentators who work to validate biases and raise their own profiles rather than inform the public. Outsiders’ noise detracts from meaningful and consequential discussions on policy and social engagement/reform. That is to everyone’s detriment.
11. Maajid Nawaz is an interesting figure. He argues for reforms within Islam, grassroots engagement with Muslim populations in the East and the West, and the adoption of secular politics in the Middle East. An ex-radical, his depictions of radicalization and its processes are indeed valuable. Nevertheless, they are limited. Beyond first-person accounts and some insights into the processes of alienation/radicalization, there is some limitation when turning away from micro-level phenomena (i.e. individual radicalization) onto macro-level causation. And there is some concern with Nawaz’s work. Through his ‘anti-extremism’ think tank the Quilliam Foundation, there have been serious questions as to its activities. Beyond ‘grassroots’ advocacy in the Muslim world to counter extremism, Nawaz and company seems to fetishize Islamic criticism and secularism at the expense of sound analysis, grounded in addressing the individual and structural causes underlying extremism. Moreover, the case of Tommy Robinson — in which a member of the extremist anti-Muslim group EDL was allegedly bribed to leave the organization (that was met with much fanfare in the press, as publicized by Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation) — and its contemptable stance on religiously-motivated surveillance is something disturbing and unbecoming of a think tank. Self-promotion and furthering the organization’s aims above all else seem to be warping and distorting their analyses and activities, which are (at best) dubious, and contribute very little to analyses on Middle Eastern politics.
12. Political Islam have been assurgent in the Middle East since the 1970s, when Middle Eastern states began to retreat from their social obligations. Authoritarian regimes were founded on the exchange of citizens’ liberty in return for stability/economic growth (which are entwined). The Arab Spring emerged in reaction to endemic poverty and unemployment. A ‘youth bulge,’ or high number of young adult males (likely to engender social unrest, via protests or militancy), and new avenues of mobilization via social media spawned economic protests throughout the Middle East and North Africa. It soon escalated to demands for democratization. Its ultimate success in countries allowed for elections to be held. During the region’s fleeting democratic moment, Islamist actors exploited religion’s embedment in civil society. This gave Islamist groups an inherent advantage politically due to their resiliency to state repression, unlike secular liberals or other actors that were far more vulnerable to state crackdowns and relatively deficient in mobilizing their supporters. Their success in nascent democracies was a staple of the Arab Spring and reflected such advantages. It would prove to be short-lived however. Bad governance and/or military coups would oust ruling political Islamist parties.
13. The curious case of Kim Davies, a U.S. elected county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses due to her religious beliefs, and social conservatives’ open rejection of laws that contradict ‘Judeo-Christian’ religious doctrines present an American parallel to Islamist politics. In this extreme circumstance, in which a public official refuses to carry out her duty due to a religious objection in defiance of a Supreme Court decision, there is an implicit denial of secular authority along with that decision. Nevertheless, this case reflected only a fringe of the Republican Party and is not wholly constitutive of the party itself. Moreover, its prominence was predicated on elites’ exploitation of that divisive issue during a presidential election, with candidates utilizing religious appeals to mobilize voters (e.g. Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz notably).
14. The ‘revolutionary phase’ is in the context of extremist groups’ formation in opposition to the state, in contention with the sociopolitical order. Militancy is a manifestation of such groups waging war on the state itself. Attempting to dismantle the old order, extremist groups like ISIL aim to transform society and consolidate power via institutional arrangements e.g. the imposition of sharia law and the respective ‘Islamic’ institutions it engenders. An analog to this can be found in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Bolsheviks’ contention with the tsarist order, leading to civil war. Their victory over the White Movement (or anti-Communist coalition) ushered in the transformation of Russia politically and socially, i.e. restructuring political and economic authority (typically to the victor’s benefit).
15a. Within the state apparatus, there is a marked separation between domestic institutional arrangements (e.g. regime type) and the autonomous interests of the state. Proceeding from scholar Theda Skocpol’s conceptualization (in Social Revolutions), state autonomy is characterized by the state’s distinct interests in preserving its survival and the actions state organization undertakes separate from that of the dominant class/societal groups. External crises can disrupt existing class relations and impose upon states new pressures that can arise in revolution, e.g. the economic crises of the 1970s and it mobilizing the Iranian working classes against the regime. State autonomy is a byproduct of international structures, in state competition and it imposing external pressures onto states. Herein, the very survival of the state itself is at stake and thus necessitates policies that state organizations (unbounded to domestic interest groups and/or dominant classes) undertake in spite of ‘normal’ domestic politics. Regime type, in this case of clerical authorities or hereditary monarchy, yields to the state’s autonomous interests, demanding the state conforms to the international system and adopts the policies necessary for its survival. The case of Iran and its ‘revolutionary’ Islamic Republic — characterized by the slogan “Na Sharq, Na Gharb, Faqat Jumhuri-ye” which translates to “Neither East, Nor West, only the Islamic Republic” — evidences how states of any regime type must conform to international pressures imposed on it by broader structures, e.g. integration in the global economy and the neoliberal policies it demands (in spite of ideological or elite opposition).
15b. Identity and community are dimensions to politics founded on a social construction to group belonging. Nevertheless, identity and community are still bounded to structure. Traditionally, a structural approach to politics elevates the material causal factors in politics (namely socioeconomic forces and/or institutional structures), implicitly dismissing the impact of nonmaterial dimensions of politics like culture or identity. Classical Marxism, class analysis (circa Barrington Moore in Social Origins), institutionalism, and other structural perspectives emphasize the socioeconomic, institutional, and/or system-level aspects of politics. In the Middle East, its dynamics encompass material and ethereal phenomena — in ethnic-religious contention, reactionary ideology in opposition to modernity, individual radicalization, and the emergence of nonstate actors. This demands an integrated and holistic lens to view Middle Eastern politics. The structural perspective articulated herein is but a framework to understand politics. Its value — and indeed how we should judge any theoretical approach — is its ability to explain phenomena coherently throughout history. Proceeding from the premise that politics is embedded in structure, identity and community are a means to explain political organization therein. By unifying a population in opposition to an extant ‘other,’ identity and community presuppose political organization and align groups vis-à-vis one another within the polity. Its basis is group competition and operates within the dynamics structure presents, e.g. domestic groups vying for influence within the state apparatus and/or interstate competition. Although group competition was intensified by the sovereign state, it has been a potent force throughout history, e.g. the 16th Century tensions between the Shia Safavid Empire and the Sunni Ottoman Empire that presented itself in the pro-Shia Şahkulu Rebellion within Anatolia (present-day Turkey). From empire to statehood, there has been an internalization of politics — occurring within the demarcated borders of state authority, within and between states.
16. Within international relations (IR) theory, the three dominant approaches to IR is realism, liberalism, and Marxism. Each is constituted by theoretical assumptions on the international system. Realism is founded on an assumption of anarchy in the international system and states’ amoral pursuit of power, i.e. there is no authority above that of state and states are in competition with other states. As unitary actors, realism deemphasizes domestic politics in deference to the international system and its structures. Liberalism is based on a normative commitment to peace, in an assumption that multilateral cooperation and ‘liberal’ international orders may engender peace and stability. It focuses on domestic state politics and its interrelation with international politics, e.g. democratic peace theory and its assertion of democracies engendering peace (in their reluctance, due to domestic pressures, to engage in armed conflict). Marxism hinges on the assumption that the international system is zero-sum and exploitative, according to capital political economy and omnipresent class conflict. It constructs the international system along the lines of a developed core versus an underdeveloped periphery. Other theoretical perspectives like constructivism proceed from a ‘social construction’ to international politics, in perceived meanings and identity and community. Outside of abstract theoretical discourses, the real-world application of IR theory demands some flexibility, in incorporating different theoretical perspectives for a holistic and integrated view. Herein, we see a blurring of the lines between theoretical perspectives and, substantively, the domestic and the international. In this paper, this is evidenced by the emphasis on domestic politics and the interrelation between the domestic and international, e.g. the Shia-Sunni alignment and regime type influencing international politics. A dimension of state autonomy is present in external pressure forcing states to adjust their domestic policy programs according to the present international political economy, i.e. the shift from mid-20th Century statist economic policy to limited economic liberalization and integration in the global economy during the early 21st century.
17. Conducted by Le Monde, an interview with a senior Sunni officer (who defected in 2011) offers some insight into the inner workings of the Syrian Armed Forces and Sunni soldiers’ perceptions therein.
18. The Resilience of Authoritarian Rule in Syria under Hafez and Bashar Al-Asad by Annette Büchs, written in 2009, is a structural view on authoritarianism in Syria. It proceeds from the state and examines the socioeconomic and institutional forces composing the Assad regime’s rule. Also drawing from a cultural perspective, it goes into tremendous depth on the structures of the Assad regime. It is a prime example of scholarly and engaged analysis — detached from the author’s opinions and biases — and is in stark contract with anti-Islam critics’ fluff.
19. Rentier states are states whose national revenues are primarily reliant on the rent of its natural resources (i.e. the sale of commodities) to external clients. This has severe ramifications for institutional development within these states, because the dependence on external rents removes any governmental accountability to the people. Unlike a state reliant on the domestic taxation of its citizens, there is not an active exchange between the people and their government, i.e. citizens paying their taxes and then demanding good governance (in a ‘bang for your buck’ dynamic that encourages accountability). The external orientation of the economy hinders the development of productive sectors and allows the state — the primary recipient of rents — to dominate. Crucially, a rentier state is able to subsidize inefficient policies (e.g. the economic exclusion of women) and effectively ‘buy’ citizens’ compliance. In the Middle East, oil-exporters like Iran and Saudi Arabia are among the most prominent rentier states in the world. This economic and institutional arrangement underlies politics, notably in the persistence of authoritarianism and elite politics being disconnected from the citizenry.
20. Security vulnerabilities accompanying refugee populations are a legitimate security concern. On November 13, 2015, the Paris attacks were perpetrated by militants with dual-citizenship in addition to an assailant that utilized a forged Syrian passport to pose as a refugee and go undetected (in spite of having European citizenship due to being on a terror watch list). Lebanon was a warning sign. In Arsal, Lebanon, there were repeated clashes between the Lebanese army and Syrian militants. Utilizing the Lebanese-Syrian border, there has been repeated incidents of crossover, where militants blend in with refugees to go undetected. Due to Europe’s proximity to the Middle East and its status as a refugee destination, its regional political arrangement — the EU — will have to control refugee flows while accommodating existing populations. Anti-Islam backlash and xenophobic movements across Europe are another security concern. European Muslims are vulnerable to radicalization if state governments and non-Muslim populations engage in persecution. The ‘strain’ placed on European society does not justify discrimination, harassment, oppression, or any other targeted policies that persons based on faith alone. That will be self-defeating and incite violent responses. The mythical clash of East v. West should not become a reality — in spite of proclamations by neo-fascist/far right parties.
21. De-Ba’athification refers to a series of purges undertaken by Iraq’s 2003 transitional government and later Iraqi governments, according to a policy that barred Iraqis affiliated with the Ba’ath Party from employment in the state bureaucracy and other institutions. Along with disbanding the Iraqi military, the policy removed then-employed Iraqis in the bureaucracy from their positions and left them jobless. This policy contributed to Sunni discontent and, ultimately, the outbreak of civil war. In the void of reconciliation, security in Iraq broke down and the society fissured. It was catastrophic for Iraqi reconstruction and is something that must be avoided in Syria.
Bloodstreams in the Levant is a collection of prose and poetry that explores terrorism, radicalization, war, authority, and savage violence.
The novella "A Militant Downfall: Souls in Terror" (28,900+ Words) follows the journey of an Arab-American boy named Khalil Najem, who joins a militant Islamist group in an Arab country mired in civil war. Opening with his torture and interrogation, Khalil is first interrogated by the brutal Arab officer Said Zabih. Then, he is interrogated by an American named Jon de Maistre, who has been sent there to recover him. Because of his father, Khalil must be retrieved – or terminated. To make that determination, de Maistre deconstructs his mindset, why he would willingly come to a war. In the process, the process of radicalization, alienation, jihadism, self-delusion, and the narratives that constitute it all are explored. Throughout it all, the father Ishmael Najem, a powerful arms dealer, looms over them. The relationship between the father and the son lies at the heart of it all.
In the poems, the human costs of war are observed through the lens of our base humanity and morality. "Savagery" is a commentary on the savage violence that mars us all. "Radical" is an examination of another type of jihadist, in a man gripped by tragedy, which triggers his radicalization and embrace of violence. This brings about a one-sided conversation with his God. "Aftermath" looks at what is left behind in war and one man's condition therein.
–Quotes from "A Militant Downfall: Souls in Terror"–
On war and our contradictions:
[...] "They said war was the last vestige of man’s glory, that Homeric ideal of old which revives only when the corpses pile" [...] That mindset has faded, however. Nowadays, we’re never so bold. We will say even prettier words against war, giving our lip-service to how it must be avoided while miring ourselves into the filth over and over again." [...] “Clearly, there is a divide between rhetoric and action!"
On alienation:
The anger in Khalil’s voice escalated as he went on. “Then, when they see a tyrant massacring an entire people, they meet it with a shrug. Some even stand and applaud Muslims killing Muslims, calling it ‘progress.’ Like the devil himself, they watch with glee as the corpses mount, and the blood pours. They take satisfaction in every drop of bled shed … Well, that blood stained me. You say I came to a war, but that’s not true. The war came to me.”
On God and His love for the jihadist:
“God? You believe in nothing.” [...] “What God is there for you? What God could love you? The things you’ve done … No God could forgive it, much less love it.” He paused for a moment, entertaining such a Lord. And then he rejected it. “If this is God, then I don’t want this God. It is no God that I could love, that I could worship.”
An arms dealer's vision of regret:
"In that instant, every crime and every death flashed before his eyes. He saw a hundred hands clasps – his own and the hands of tyrants and presidents and kings, all soaked in blood. Then, he saw a million guns fire and the flesh of men, women, and children explode. In unison, the bodies fell and piled upon one another. And then his vision went to blackness, in a frightening void that mirrored his soul."
On war and the loss of humanity:
"The fighting objectified them all, erasing their humanity and leaving only the faceless composites of the soldier, the rebel, and the victim. For Khalil, the war subsumed him like any other man, woman, and child within the country’s borders. There was no escaping it."
A poem on radicalism. In three parts – Alienation, Submission, and Absolution – “Radical” is a narrative poem that explores a radical mind, acts of violence, and its toll on the soul.
III. Absolution
There he stands,
In his massacre,
The corpses laying,
Prostrate in the dirt,
Their screams still sound,
Banging in his brain,
Clawing at his soul.
Their blood stains him,
His face,
His hands,
His soul,
The sin drips down,
To the Hell he made.
His hand is still on the gun,
His body trembles,
His legs go weak,
His breaths run shallow,
His heart sinks.
He looks down,
To see the eyes,
To see the souls,
That is no more,
That he destroyed,
With his Hate,
With his gun.
Regret comes crashing down,
It breaks his heart and his throat,
He questions everything,
His every memory replays,
All that they did to him,
All that he had done,
And so he relives that Hell –
One last time.
His deed takes its toll,
His mind corrodes,
His sanity breaks,
And so the corpses rise,
From the dirt and the blood,
Begging for reasons,
Just wanting to know,
Why he did what he did,
Why he ended everything –
He has no answers.
He turns away from his deed,
In his sorrow and his grief,
Looking to the Heavens above,
Demanding his God to speak,
For his Lord to wash o’er him.
In the Black,
Blazing White engulfs him,
His body burns in His warmth,
The Lord finally comes,
His body and soul separate,
There he stands,
Against his Lord.
And so He speaks:
‘A bastard son stands before Me,
He who turned away from Me,
He who betrayed Me,
He who now make demands of Me.
‘I have come to your sin,
Where blood has been shed,
How Man has fallen,
How my children disappoint.
‘Against my words,
Against my creation,
You cower behind my Name,
You betray everything.
‘No matter what befell you,
What Man did to you,
My religion was eternal,
My religion was there.
His words came to an end,
The White returned to Black,
The radical lay there,
Abandoned by all those he betrayed.
A poem on radicalism. In three parts – Alienation, Submission, and Absolution – “Radical” is a narrative poem that explores a radical mind, acts of violence, and its toll on the soul.
Radical
II. Submission
All things degrade,
Man’s body in pain,
His soul under strain,
The faith he feigns.
Man will fall,
Man will break.
His Destiny,
His Fate,
He cannot escape,
It will take him,
It will break him,
It will destroy him.
A boy in his Suffering,
A man in his Hate,
Here, the Radical is born,
By the Black of his heart,
The Black of his soul,
It consuming all,
It killing all.
Never to forgive,
Never to forget,
Every abuse he obsesses,
Every trauma he revives,
Again and again –
This was his resolve.
And so he breaks,
And so he falls.
A soul corrupts,
His Innocence lost,
Savagery owns him,
In his Pain,
In his Hate,
In his Decay.
Condemned by cruel Fate,
The Radical is first Victim,
A body molested by bloody hands,
An object thrown to Hell,
A life that is no more.
His loss tortures him,
His grief maims him.
Then, the Black binds to him,
His soul,
Like a cancer it spreads,
Killing the Victim,
His Innocence,
His life,
Turning him,
Degrading him,
To the Radical.
Against Man,
Against God,
He submits to Violence,
Its hands that touched him,
Those hands he will use,
Against All,
With blind eyes,
With bloody hands.
And so the cycle begins again,
Until there is nothing left.
A poem on radicalism. In three parts – Alienation, Submission, and Absolution – "Radical" is a narrative poem that explores a radical mind, acts of violence, and its toll on the soul.
Radical
I. Alienation
Alone,
A boy stands,
Alone,
A boy falls.
There he lays,
In his grief,
In his pain,
His body writhes,
His soul screams,
As every memory descends,
As every trauma revives,
For his Love murdered.
For his Blood massacred.
The boy prays to his God,
Begging for his pain to end,
Begging for his soul to numb,
It never comes,
It never comes! ,
His soul is marred,
His soul goes dark,
There he lays,
There he crawls.
Time passes,
The boy grows,
The boy dies,
His pain never leaves him,
His pain defines him,
He is now of age,
He is now a man,
In the ashes he lives,
In the ashes he will die.
Against the world he stands,
Its hatred for his Life,
Its hatred for his God,
It alienating his mind,
It alienating his soul,
As if he is not a man,
As if he is nothing,
A radical he becomes,
A radical he will die.
Man,
He fights,
God,
He betrays.
A fun poem on poetry and what would happen if it met its demise!
The Day the Poetry Died
On the day the poetry died,
The Sun lost its light,
The Moon fell,
The Tides lost control,
The Fates collapsed,
The Prophets’ blood left the Earth,
The Gods abandoned the ether.
On the day the poetry died,
Men fell to their knees,
Women left their beds,
Children went insane,
Souls turned to black,
Murder took to streets,
Life found its end.
On the day the poetry died,
The Earth bled,
The Earth quaked,
The Devil rose from black,
The Devil bloodied all hands,
The Lord cried,
The Lord left.
On the day the poetry died,
Fear consumed me,
Madness divided me,
Love abandoned me,
Hope resurrected me,
Hate ended me,
Life left me.
On the day the poetry died,
My Desperation came,
My Breaths went shallow,
My Hands shook,
My Blood spilled,
My Body fell –
Death came.
From Desire & Loss: Love Stories and Poems, this excerpt is from the short story Taxi Driver & Girl: A Love Story. Available on Amazon
Taxi Driver & Girl: A Love Story
The City
The city was defined by its extremes. By day, it was composed by the mundane – commuters, couriers, and tourists acting as they do. But at night, the city came alive as the people tried to escape themselves, their situation and all the games they had to play. It was only at night they felt released. From sleeping suburbanites to wandering tourists, people from all over would channel into the city to join its residents in shaking off the monotony of their day-to-day lives. In clubs and bars and bistros, there was an electricity the people generated, just by their own disillusionment with it all. The city ebbed and flowed by their feelings – for better or for worse.
Anxiety and fear resonated in the city. From desperate thieves to recently-unemployed drunks, the people’s emotions were expressed by their excesses. The city’s nightlife was the means for all their happiness and their frustration to be borne out. There was an intensity and a violence that accompanied the night in that city. Though outsiders condemned this, there was an implicit acceptance by its residents. It was an unavoidable outlet, needed for all their souls. In that city – defined by its instability – the people lived. No matter their affection for it, each person was bound to it, until the end.
Taxi Drive & Girl
The street was dimly lit. Its lamps flickered in the night. Passersby walked aimlessly along. The lights casted their shadows, creating silhouettes of anything that passed. Mirroring their souls, those shadows moved without reason or direction. Outside a nightclub called Verse, the lines were still impressive at 3 in the morning. Inspired by a few B-list celebrity visits and the descending horde of paparazzi, masses of people descended onto the club, desperate to be chic and literally one of the crowd. They stood there in the January cold, wasting away.
Amelie Leasure and four ‘friends’ were leaving Verse. Her drunken friends murmured about yet another club that they had to visit, but Amelie was in no mood. As she feigned her happiness to see them and her regret that she had to leave, they walked away and – within earshot – obnoxiously gave their views as to why she was so “weird” and such a “dour bitch.” Amelie laughed at their noise. It meant nothing to her. Her real concern was why she had wasted her night with bitches whose every dream centered on fucking their way into socialite status. That seemed beneath her, and she wondered why.
A bit tipsy, Amelie dug her phone out of her purse and opened an app to book a taxi. As a matter of fate, the taxi she booked that night was being driven by Ibrahim al-Liban. Ibrahim was 24 years old. His features were Mediterranean, with a tanned complexion and pitch-black hair. His body was angular; his face was long. With his sharp features, he was an imposing yet handsome figure. A Lebanese import, brought to the United States when he was 2 years old, he felt without home in that city. His soul was torn between Lebanon and America, not sure of where he truly belonged. Because of this, his perspective was that of an outsider, different from anyone else in that city. For Amelie, that would be the most important thing, to not be like all the rest.
A poem against savagery, in remembrance for the victims of the Chapel Hill executions, ISIL's conquest, the assaults on Gaza, and all other acts of savagery that offend human dignity.
Savagery
A savagery comes,
Cities of Man burn,
Cities of God fall,
The Black consumes all,
In blood and in soul,
Violence touches all,
It cannot be denied,
The screams and the cries,
Of innocence left to die.
The men in the grave,
The women in the cage,
The children left alone,
In their suffering,
In their pain,
There they lay,
Victims to the dark,
Victims to the Black.
Without name,
Without face,
Without God,
Souls erode,
Souls corrupt,
The savage walks,
Leaving ash,
Leaving blood.
Innocence begs to live,
Innocence begs to die,
Innocence cut down,
By a savage hand,
By a savage heart,
Closed and scarred,
Broken and marred,
Against Man,
Against God.
Creation degrades and then decays,
There innocence now lays,
Awaiting a most terrible fate,
Condemned to it,
By idle hands,
By idle hearts,
All were complicit,
When innocence died,
And savagery came alive.