Islam Issues – Page 6 – education and deconstruction.com

The Media Relations Department

The Book of the Week is “The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday” by Neil MacFarquhar, published in 2009. This is a foreign correspondent’s take on various Middle Eastern countries– countries he has covered for the New York Times and the AP in the 1980’s and later. The dictatorial leaders and secret service of Middle Eastern countries together create an oppressive combination.

Born in 1959, the American author discusses his Libyan childhood, and what happened when Qaddafi came to power in a coup. Libya had no parliament, military institutions, political parties, unions, NGOs and very few ministries. “Popular Committees” (similar to neighborhood associations in Asia– common people acting on a very local level) were supposed to govern the country.

The financial aid that the United States provided to Lebanon around 2002 appeared generous but had strings attached and seemed basically designed to recycle the money back to American businesses. For example, Lebanese farmers had prospered growing hashish and opium poppies but when those crops were outlawed, they received cows instead, only because U.S. dairy farmers wanted to sell surplus cows. So American aid engenders just as much resentment as goodwill.

According to MacFarquhar, the United States launched its war against Iraq because Iraq was seen as the strongest military threat to Israel and an alternative oil source to Saudi Arabia. Arabs opined that the war was launched to “…reestablish the Western colonial dominance of their lands.” America’s ostensible goal in invading Iraq was to cause a domino effect in the region. However, the action of the dominoes turned the opposite of the way intended. Common people living in the affected nations were made worse off, and “… they feared the possible bloody consequences of experimenting with pluralism.”

The author writes extensively on Muslim extremists who believe in killing all non-Muslims. Saudi Arabia might well be the nation that debates jihad more than all of the others because many of its citizens subscribe to the Wahhabi ideology. “Three of the four main branches of Sunni Islam reject the idea of an offensive jihad, of Muslims initiating hostilities.”

Bahrain is clearly a recipient of monetary assistance from the U.S., as the latter has a naval base there. The Khalifa government depends on such support, and could not subject a blogger critical of the ruling regime in Bahrain, to prolonged torture or imprisonment. The blogger started a forum where Web users around the world, including Bahrainis could freely express their views.

Read the book to learn additional information on the politics and cultures of the above and other nations, such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria (up until 2009) through Western eyes.

Crescent & Star – Turkey Between Two Worlds

The Book of the Week is “Crescent & Star – Turkey Between Two Worlds” by Stephen Kinzer, published in 2001. This repetitive volume recounts the recent history of Turkey. Of course the country has changed significantly since the publishing of this writing, which was prior to 9/11.

The individual was considered less important than the collective– family, village or clan, not the nation. The media were censored on topics such as the Kurds, Islam, the Armenian genocide of 1915, relations with Greece and Cyprus, etc., etc. Three major controversies in Turkish society included: the tribal conflict between Turks and Kurds, the religious conflict between Sunni Muslims and Alevis, and the hotly debated question of whether religion should be practiced in public life (such as female students’ wearing of veils at university). “The Turks are still gripped by two ancient Middle Eastern taboos. One is the taboo against change, which they equate with admitting failure. The other is the taboo against dialogue, compromise and negotiation.”

In the mid 1980’s, the Kurds formed an anti-government military organization called the PKK to try to subvert the government through violence. Excessive blood was shed with the government’s response against these separatists.

The August 1999 earthquake was a particularly trying time for the nation. There was plenty of unnecessary death and destruction. The disaster was a cluster screw-up. In years prior, unschooled, capital-poor Turks started unscrupulous home-building businesses that constructed flimsy apartment buildings. After the quake, arrogant and indifferent top officials of the government relief agency, Kizilay, who had been playing fast and loose with the organization’s checkbook, responded slowly to aiding the victims. Nevertheless, tens of countries around the world, including Greece, aided Turkey in its time of need. The disaster served as an excuse, a tipping point for the nation’s resuming diplomatic relations with Greece. Besides, the events surrounding the earthquake served as an additional impetus for younger Turks to agitate for political and cultural change.

Read the book to learn about additional factors that were affecting the people’s push for change, such as worship of Kemal Ataturk, the 1996 Susurluk scandal and the military’s role in governing the country.

Waiting for an Ordinary Day

The Book of the Week is “Waiting for an Ordinary Day” by Farnaz Fassihi, published in 2008. This is the personal account of an Iranian-born American journalist employed by the Wall Street Journal who witnessed the American occupation of Iraq starting in 2003.

Sadly, after launching the war on false pretenses, in a bungled attempt to bring democracy to Iraq through forming a new government, the Americans inadvertently generated religious hatred within the country and hatred against themselves for various actions, such as: committing home invasions in Baghdad, war crimes at Abu Ghraib, and their exhibiting bigotry, ignorance and arrogance in the execution of the operation overall.

Among the many Iraqis with whom the author talked, was a military general and shopkeepers in Tikrit–Saddam Hussein’s hometown. They were still loyal to Saddam; they thought the Americans were imperialists, and that there would be intifada, jihad and resistance in Iraq. They were right. Iraq is sought after because it has oil and a prime location near the Persian Gulf. Religious strife has obstructed the United States from achieving its political, military and economic goals in Iraq.

Prior to the ousting of Saddam– a Sunni Muslim– and his Baath political party, Iraq was comprised of about 24 million people, 60% of whom were Shiite Muslims. After the start of the war in spring 2003, more-than-usual violence erupted between Sunnis and Shiites. There was looting of shops, schools, hospitals, gas stations, museums, etc. “Weeks after Baghdad’s fall, the city’s basic urban infrastructure– electricity, clean water, and sanitation services– is dysfunctional, and fuel and phone lines remain unrepaired.”

After Saddam’s death, the tables turned and the Americans allied with the Shiites and Kurds (rather than Sunnis), who became politically powerful. In the election for a one-year interim government, Shiites, who voted because they believed Allah wanted them to vote, were easily influenced and blindly obeyed their local clerics. The clerics, perceived as Allah’s representatives on earth, told the voters for whom to vote. Mercifully, fewer than one hundred people died in election-day violence.

Fassihi spoke with people from all walks of life, including a Sunni sheikh, and chief of the Bu-Issa tribe in Anbar province, 1 of 150 tribes in Iraq. He had eight sisters, nine brothers and three wives. The author also formed acquaintanceships and friendships with people who lost their lives, livelihoods and equanimity amidst the war. Iraqis told her that the atmosphere of fear and repression in American-occupied Iraq was just as oppressive as it was living under Saddam.

Read the book to learn of: Iraqi war stories heard or seen by the author, including kidnappings and torture (with the aim of monetary extortion), car bombings, mortar and suicide attacks, raids, ambushes, sniper shootings by the insurgents (Iraqis fighting against the Americans) and Iranian mercenaries (who were inciting religious violence); what New York City would be like if it were militarily occupied the same way Baghdad was in the fall of 2004; the dispute between the women arguing in favor of secular women’s rights and those arguing for women’s rights via traditional interpretation of sharia law; the author’s and many others’ fears and anguish at the war’s effects on their daily lives; and why Fassihi left Iraq.

Milosevic, Portrait of a Tyrant

The Book of the Week is “Milosevic, Portrait of a Tyrant” by Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, published in 1999. This lengthy volume contains the history of the six Slav Republics– Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia– from WWII through the late 1990’s, and the biography of a fascist, supremacist, genocidal terrorist– Slobodan Milosevic. His wife, Mira chimed in at specific moments. They had the usual traits of all tyrannical couples– extreme narcissism, hubris syndrome, refusal to face reality and vengefulness. You can see where this is going, if you’ve read your history. “Western leaders were loath to get involved in the Yugoslav mess.” They got involved insofar as to reap economic benefits and public relations kudos for negotiating peace plans.

Milosevic was born in August 1941 in suburban Belgrade, the capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia. His parents, at different times, died via suicide. During his decade-long reign, he was an undiplomatic megalomanaical micromanager, pursuing his goals through conspiracy, deception and force. He demanded mindless loyalty, discarding those who worked for him when their assignments were done. There was high turnover among his staff.

After the Communist Marshal Josip Broz Tito, leader of Yugoslavia died in 1980, Milosevic stepped into the power vacuum. Tito had tried to foster the unity of different ethnic groups. To keep the peace, he allowed them to freely practice their religions. Serb nationalists didn’t like that. They wanted to be dominant.

In the early 1980’s, Milosevic was appointed Communist Chief of Belgrade by his friend, whose family was party-entrenched into the 1980’s. Then in January 1986, he was promoted to Communist party chief of Serbia. His friend became president of Serbia. Milosevic was largely responsible for installing his cronies to strictly enforce Marxism.

Different ethnic groups hated each other. For instance, the Albanians were sworn enemies of the Serbians and the Turks. Milosevic deviously was able to convince each side that he agreed with them. He used a divide and conquer strategy in addressing them, sowing seeds of hatred among them. He would eventually betray his aforementioned friend. Since he didn’t control the army or the police, all he could do was spread propaganda and incite crowds.

Milosevic had the newspaper Politika secretly launch propaganda attacks on his political enemies. He also secured the support of military and party chiefs. Only two groups opposed his usurping of power: the Communist Albanians and his wife’s father’s old-line Communist politicians. Milosevic’s wife disowned her father for that. His secret enemies also included ethnic Albanians, Bosnians, Muslims and Croats. He pushed for Serb nationalism, regardless of whether different ethnic groups supported Communism.

By the fall of 1989, Milosevic had seized political control of Kosovo and a part of Serbia with a high Hungarian population, and Montenegro too. In 1990, he rigged the presidential election for himself, with 53 parties as candidates for Parliament, most run by his operatives.

In spring 1991, there was serious opposition to Milosevic’s desire to take over all of Yugoslavia. In March, he and the dictator of Croatia met secretly to plan how to carve it up. In June 1991, he had no objection to Slovenia’s secession from Yugoslavia because it had virtually no Serb citizens. Croatia, also mostly Catholic, followed suit with its own secession. The Serb dictator had previously been able to eliminate democratic leaders through arrests, intimidation or corruption. Both he and the Croatian dictator incited violence and hatred against the peoples of other Balkan territories.

The Bosnian leader knew his nation was doomed because he saw how ruthless the Serb and Croat dictators were. Bosnia was 44% Muslim, 31% Serb and 17% Croat. By summer 1991, the Serbs were warring against the Croatians. It was mostly independent military groups and not the Yugoslav army. The Serb men who had been drafted didn’t even want to fight. Men were forced to fight against their will. “The regime vigorously suppressed all news about malcontents and desertions. There were political killings of dissenters by the police and paramilitary members.”

A rumor had it that there were 83 different armed groups in Bosnia, some mercenaries, in the secret pay of Milosevic. A group would go to a village and do ethnic cleansing of Muslims. The Croatian army did this too, demolishing mosques in Bosnia. The Serb dictator denied the existence of the paramilitary groups. There was lots of looting. He was careful to act as though he delegated authority for people on his staff so it would appear that he had less power than he actually had. He left no paper trail.

In autumn of 1991, Milosevic insisted that the nationalists and not the republics were the legitimate constituent units of the Yugoslav Federation. In January 1992, the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their own republic, separating themselves from the rest of Bosnia. The different territories voted on whether to go to war. The lands Milosevic had under his thumb voted yes: Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia voted no.

In spring 1992, the United States finally intervened by extending diplomatic recognition (recognizing a country as a sovereignty (independent nation)) to the Muslim government in Sarajevo in Bosnia. The Saudi Arabians had pushed the Americans to do so.

By summer 1992, villages were on fire; Muslims fled. There were detention camps. The Serbs were like Nazis. There had been torture and executions. Student protesters blamed Milosevic for the Siege of Sarajevo. In November 1994, a show-trial was held to judge war criminals. Milosevic’s government controlled the media. The idea of a Greater Serbia was dead in the face of diplomatic recognition of Croatia and Bosnia by the United States, Germany and other European nations. Disaffected nationals held secret meetings planning to overthrow the Serbian dictator. There was palace intrigue.

In late May 1992, the UN imposed a total economic embargo against Yugoslavia. Milosevic used the sanctions as an excuse to say the Serbs were a victim of worldwide conspiracy. From 1991 to January 1993, the Yugoslav citizen’s average monthly salary fell 97%. In a scheme of appearing to be conciliatory, Milosevic got an American business leader of Slavic origin appointed as prime minister. Against the Serb dictator’s secret wishes, the new prime minister wanted to democratize, Westernize and unite Yugoslavia, give it capitalism, and recognize the different nations’ sovereignties. But he knew he had to remove Milosevic from office first.

Prime Minister Milan Panic proposed that Milosevic resign and take a job as a drug company executive in California. Panic got high praise from Yugoslavians. The Serb dictator was hated. Even the media criticized Milosevic. However, the U.S. State Department did not support Panic because the UN sanctions were a delicate matter that the U.S. said needed to be discussed through the UN. Panic wanted the sanctions lifted. The U.S. didn’t want to get involved in the war in Bosnia. Panic pressured Milosevic to resign but he refused. “Panic was in charge of the federal police and secret police but Milosevic controlled the Serb police.”

In October 1992 the Serb police took over the building of the federal police. Panic, fearing civil war, attempted to get the conflict resolved through political rather than military means. His cowardliness prompted the American government to throw its support behind Milosevic. A little later, Panic was a candidate in the Yugoslav presidential election. He lost because Milosevic rigged the election. Shocking.

The Serb dictator’s wife Mira wrote libelous columns in the newspaper. In summer 1994, desperate to hold onto his power, Milosevic attacked the Bosnian Serbs in a propaganda campaign; he had used them to acquire his power just five years earlier.

By 1995, the Serb economy had recovered from a steep currency devaluation of the dinar and its conversion to the Deutschmark imposed in 1993 by Milosevic. The dictator’s wife had welcomed large financial contributions from the newly rich, corrupt businessmen who manipulated the closed Yugoslav market. The state-run media made her book on economics a best seller in 1994. In 1995, she was elected to Russia’s Academy of Sciences. This was as much of a joke as Yasser Arafat’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Read the book to learn what happened in the rest of the 1990’s. Or this blogger could just tell you: more of same. And a boatload of refugees.

Joseph Anton

The Book of the Week is “Joseph Anton: A Memoir” by Salman Rushdie, published in 2012. This ebook describes an author’s life, and the furor created by his controversial novel, “Satanic Verses.”

Rushdie grew up in India and England in the 1950’s and 60’s. His parents identified with Islam but did not provide him with a religious education. He became fascinated with the subject at university. In the late 1980’s, he wrote Satanic Verses, which was extremely critical of Islam. Some powerful people became offended by it; over the course of the next decade, serious repercussions– not hilarity– ensued.

Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a “fatwa,” or death threat, against Rushdie. Scotland Yard learned that Muslim groups were plotting to kill the author. There were protests by Islamic fanatics. A price was put on his head.

Rushdie’s publisher, Viking Penguin received threatening phone calls, and over time, a few actual bombs exploded at bookstores that carried the book. In international incidents– injuries and sometimes death befell bombing victims, the book’s translators and a publishing executive. The government of the United Kingdom pressured Rushdie and his family to go into hiding, and endure 24/7 police protection. He changed his name to Joseph Anton.

India became the first nation in the world to prohibit importation of Rushdie’s book. For years, India also denied him a travel visa. However, “India was surrounded by unfree societies– Pakistan, China, Burma– but remained an open democracy; flawed, certainly, perhaps even deeply flawed, but free.” He was deeply hurt. Many other Muslim countries later followed suit.

At one point, he met with a political Muslim organization to negotiate an end to the fatwa. He ended up regretting signing a statement acknowledging that his book was offensive to some Muslims, and also saying that he himself was of Islamic persuasion.

“British Muslim attempts to indict him [Rushdie] for blasphemy and under the public order act were heard in court.” New York Times bestseller status bestowed upon Satanic Verses was probably not due to true likability by the public, but rather, due to all the hullabaloo. Rushdie wrote, “I conclude that my difficulties are not with You, God, but with Your servants and followers on Earth.”

For more than a decade, because the author’s life was thought to be endangered, his ability to live like the citizen of a modern nation was severely curtailed. Read the book to learn about the people who helped him through all of the unanticipated trouble stemming from his writings; the ideology behind his various literary works; and the difficult family situations unrelated to his career, of which he was admittedly the cause.

Between Two Worlds

The Book of the Week is “Between Two Worlds” by Zainab Salbi and Laurie Becklund, published in 2005. This ebook tells Salbi’s life story, whose themes include women, war, family and religion. During her childhood in 1970’s Iraq, her mother was a teacher and her father, an airline pilot. In the early 1980’s, since they were government workers, her parents were forced to join Saddam Hussein’s Baath political party.

Iraq had a liberal, Westernized culture because it had previously had close ties with the United States. Nevertheless, Hussein and his followers committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against the populace. Life was unbearably scary and stressful, even for the upper classes; especially those who were sucked into “friendship” with Hussein, as was Salbi’s family. Hussein derived power from his political party, army, the war with Iran, and oil but “he found time to keep meticulous accounts of our emotional peonage.”

Hussein initiated a witchhunt in order to deport people who were deemed to be of “Iranian origin” as indicated by their citizenship papers, to Iran. His military then looted their homes. He incited hostility between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims, and encouraged male dominance through raping of females of all ages an act whose perpetrators went unpunished.

The Iraqi people were powerless to protest when they found themselves living under a brutal dictatorship. “Boys and girls joined the Vanguards, the tala’a, and wore… uniforms… as they practiced marching and singing at school…” Teenagers were pressured to enter endless poetry, art and marching contests to exhibit their love for Hussein. His birthday was a national holiday. He built new palaces every few months. You get the picture.

Read the book to learn more about the emotional traumas Salbi experienced that led her to find her life’s work.

The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

The Book of the Week is “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky” by Jennifer Steil, published in 2010. This is the personal account of an American journalist who went to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, to lead a 3-week training program for Yemeni journalists at an English-language newspaper in 2005.

She fell in love with the country. The Yemeni publisher, with whom she had attended high school in the United States, invited her to become the editor of the paper for a year. She took him up on his offer.

However, because she was an American moving to a third-world country in the Middle East, she experienced culture shock. For Ms. Steil, one of the most frustrating aspects of the culture, is that it is mostly Muslim, and therefore, male-dominated.

Although she was required to wear the prescribed head-to-foot clothing, and could not have her name on the newspaper’s masthead with the official title of Editor (reserved only for men), as a foreigner she was considered a special, third categorization of person, and was treated almost as well as the men.

The newspaper, the Yemen Observer, was very liberal in that it employed female journalists. The females’ families were very liberal in allowing their daughters to pursue a career. However, the females were paid a fraction of the males’ wages, were looked down upon and subjected to a host of societal restrictions.

Unlike the men, the women were punctual, did not take smoking breaks, did not chew qat (a mild narcotic chewed like tobaccco that is the national drug and the center of all social life), and submitted their stories by deadline time, even though they had to leave the office earlier than the men, as they were not allowed on the street after sunset.

Ms. Steil had to teach the group not only journalism, but how to form coherent sentences in the English language. In the early going, she spent many, many hours re-writing and editing. She was extremely dedicated in that she worked around the clock, despite the various, serious problems hindering the publishing of the paper.

She quickly realized that disseminating print news whose quality met Western standards was out of the question. The publisher was unwilling to contribute resources to important areas, such as paying the workers competitively, reimbursing journalists for story-gathering related expenses and supplying them with press passes.

Ms. Steil was forced to engage in a power struggle with a male journalist who had been working there before she arrived. Her standing by her principles of journalistic integrity caused friction with the marketing and advertising department. She would not let her staff write “news” stories pushing goods or services, even if it brought more revenue to the paper.

Despite all of the problems, living in Yemen, with its other-worldly, frustrating culture (for an American such as she), was a life-changing experience for her. She was in love with the people, the food, the architecture and many other aspects of the country.

This book is a good primer on Yemeni culture and engagingly recounts one woman’s adventures in living and running a newspaper there.