Ten anticipated impacts of the fall of the modern-day Pharaoh

It would be hard to underestimate the importance and impact of the current popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The fall of Egypt's modern-day Pharaoh, Mubarak, and the establishment of a true democracy will likely shape that volatile part of the world more than anything since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

These events not only affect the entire Middle East, but will have a tremendous impact on US foreign policy as well. Decades of brutal dictators oppressing and controlling their people is coming to a forced end, and the United States’ long-standing support for these autocracies must end as well.

This change is historic because it is not driven by any specific ideology. It is not driven by nationalist, Islamic, socialist, or political motivations. It is truly a popular movement that is bringing together poor and rich, young and old, religious and non-religious, Muslim and Christian, and political and non-political. It is a movement of the masses, of people seeking freedom, rights, honor, dignity, self-determination, economic prosperity, and a recognition of their humanity.

The fall of the Egyptian government and its repressive policies would be a catalyst for many changes. Here are the top 10:

1- A stronger push for democracy, freedoms, and human rights among the people in the rest of the Arab world.

2- A self-reassessment and public challenge of the repressive practices of Arab dictators and puppet regimes. The prospect of reform is a wake-up call that it is possible to change the status quo and that the "Arab Street" is not in a coma.

3- A end to the inhumane siege on Gaza and its people.

4- A greater chance for peace when more pressure is exerted on Israel to give the Palestinians more of their rights.

5- A major blow to the US-Israel bloc of client-states and allies, leading to more popular and stable democracies. (Tunisia and Egypt were among its leading members).

6- A shift in the Palestinian Authority's current policy of shamelessly ceding the Palestinian people's moral, legal, and human rights under heavy pressure from Israel's closest Arab ally/protectorate, Egypt (US and Saudi pressure will surely remain).

7- A weakening of religious extremism and terrorism, which is greatly fueled by political repression by dictators such as Mubarak (as well as ongoing occupations in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan)

8- Improved social and economic justice for the people when corrupt and greedy government officials and their cronies lose their ability to embezzle and squander the resources of their countries.

9- An easing of the tension and polarization between the West and large Muslim populations in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, which is a result of the US and a few other Western nations imposing, supporting and funding brutal autocracies.

10- On a lighter note, this will also create new job opportunities as our intelligence agencies and State Department will have to go back to the drawing board to remap new US policies and strategies in dealing with a new democratic Arab and Muslim-majority countries and peoples.

Like all people, Egyptians have the right to live in freedom, pursue self-determination, and enjoy democracy and respect. The US needs to let go of our addiction to dictators and puppets who do our bidding in the world under the guise of protecting stability or the immoral excuse of serving our national interest at the expense of other people’s lives and freedom. The political map is changing... in Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Palestine, and many other places.

Shortly after he was elected, President Obama promised that he would support political reforms, freedom, democracy, justice, and human rights in the Middle East. Now he has a golden opportunity to put his words into action. So far, he has made it clear that he intends to do so with regard to the Egyptian uprising.

Jon Stewart: The Rule of the Nile

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New Terrorism Adviser Takes A 'Broad Tent' Approach

by Dina Temple-Raston
NPR
1/24/2011

There's a pattern to recent terror attacks in the United States: Americans — either citizens or residents — have been behind them. In the past two years, dozens of American citizens and residents have been arrested on terrorism charges.

In some cases, the suspects were young Muslims traveling overseas to train for violent jihad. In others, they're accused of actually trying to launch attacks. Attorney General Eric Holder said homegrown terrorism is one of those things that keeps U.S. officials awake at night.

Now there is someone new at the National Security Council who won't be getting much sleep: He's a former Rhodes College professor named Quintan Wiktorowicz, and he's an expert on, among other things, how some people decide to become terrorists.

"A number of years ago, before he went into government, he did some of the most path-breaking work not only on who was susceptible to being radicalized, but most importantly, who was the most resistant to being radicalized," says Christine Fair, an expert on terrorism and radicalization at Georgetown University. "And the findings that he came up with based upon his work really shattered some of the stereotypes we have about Muslims and radicalization."

As part of his research, Wiktorowicz interviewed hundreds of Islamists in the United Kingdom. After compiling his interviews he came to the conclusion that — contrary to popular belief — very religious Muslims were in fact the people who ended up being the most resistant to radicalization.

Fair, who has done a great deal of work on radicalization in Pakistan, said Wiktorowicz's work stayed with her forever. "It really was revelatory for me," she says.

Revelatory because, as it turns out, Wiktorowicz found that it was people who did not have a good grounding in the religion who were the most likely to be attracted by radical Islam.

Peter Neumann is the director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College, London. He got to know Wiktorowicz in London three years ago. Wiktorowicz was at the U.S. Embassy there, studying how the British dealt with radical Islamists and then finding ways to apply those lessons to the United States.

While in the U.K., Wiktorowicz reached out to a wide range of Muslim leaders — from moderates to extremists — and that set him apart from scholars who had preceded him, Neumann says. "He very successfully mobilized a broad coalition of very different people in London that all came together in order to oppose extremism and terrorism. No one else before has accomplished that."

It is also on this point that Wiktorowicz apparently ran into trouble. His coalition of Muslims was controversial because it included people some conservatives in Britain found too extreme. As Neumann sees it, that was part of the strategy: "Wiktorowicz's approach has quite deliberately been: 'I want the tent to be as broad as possible. ... As long as they are opposed to extremism and terrorism, I want everyone to be part of the coalition.' "

At the White House, Wiktorowicz's title will be senior director for global engagement at the National Security Council. He's seen by terrorism experts as bringing so much to his new job that he could fundamentally change the way the Obama administration deals with Muslims in America.

Right now, counterradicalization in the U.S. largely depends on law enforcement — on things like FBI outreach to Muslim communities. The sheer volume of homegrown terrorism cases in the U.S. over the past two years makes clear that isn't enough, Neumann says.

"One of the important things about counterradicalization is that about perhaps 10 percent of it is law enforcement and intelligence, 90 percent of it are things that have relatively little to do with that," he says. "Counterradicalization also has to include things like politicians visiting Muslim communities, messaging" and beefing up education about Islam among Muslims themselves, so they can better resist radical recruiters.

How Wiktorowitz will apply what he learned in Britain here is unclear. His first official day of work at the White House is Monday.

'Jewish-Muslim ties in Maghreb were good despite Nazis'

By GIL SHEFLER
01/24/2011
Jerusalem Post


When Nazi Germany’s Afrika Korps invaded Tunisia in 1942, panic quickly spread among members of the local Jewish community, many of whom packed their belongings and fled to the countryside, fearing persecution.

Dr. Haim Saadon of the Hebrew University recalled, in an interview with the The Jerusalem Post last week, how his parents had to live in hiding until the French colony was liberated by the allies.

“They remember exactly how they left their houses and lived in a little village with Muslims in the country,” Saadon said.

“They had to pay for their accommodation but they were well treated there.”

Relatively good ties between Jews and Muslims in North Africa during World War II stand in stark contrast to the treatment of their coreligionists by gentiles in Europe at the same time and is the central theme of the English-language lecture Saadon is scheduled to deliver at the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem on Tuesday, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Whereas in Europe Jews were hunted down by locals – in Lithuania the Jewish community was almost annihilated by nationalist militias without the Nazis lifting a finger – the Jews of North Africa were for the most part left unharmed by Muslims.

“There was no violence towards Jews during the war from Muslims,” he said.

“Even between 1911 when Libya was occupied by the Italians, until 1943, there was a lot of tension between the Italians and the Jews, but the Jews were relatively on good terms with the Muslims...

Ayloush Discusses Radicalization & Rep. King's Hearings on NPR

Are American Muslims being Radicalized?
 CAIR-LA Executive Director Discusses Rep. King's Hearings with NPR's Patt Morrison

 

CLICK TO LISTEN

The hearing has caused a major stir, without even being formally scheduled. Congressman Peter King, a New York Republican who is known for speaking bluntly on matters of national security, is planning on holding a hearing, in his new role as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, on the threat posed by radical Islam in America. Rep. King plans to focus on the shootings at Ft. Hood and the bombing attempt in Times Square, both of which were perpetrated by American Muslims.

Just the announcement alone has caused controversy on both sides of the issue - security hawks are disappointed that more aggressive advocates against radical Islam are not being called as witnesses, while Muslim American groups are very weary that they will all be characterized as terrorists in waiting. There does seem to be anecdotal evidence of more terrorism attempts carried out by American citizens of Muslims descent, but there's also a sizable Muslim population in the U.S. that is well-educated and very successful. Is radicalization really a threat?

 

GUESTS:  

Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles

Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President at the RAND Corporation

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW

ALSO SEE:

Huffington Post: Muslim 'Radicalization' Hearings are Wrong & Misguided

Mother Jones: Peter King's Terrorism Problem

NPR: New Terrorism Adviser Takes a 'Broad Tent' Approach

TIME: The Myth of Homegrown Islamic Terrorism

Washington Post: Hearings on Muslims Trigger Panic

The Myth of Homegrown Islamic Terrorism

Monday, Jan. 24, 2011

By Romesh Ratnesar
Time and CNN

There is a specter haunting the U.S. It is "one of the things that keeps me up at night," Attorney General Eric Holder said last month. North Carolina Representative Sue Myrick, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has warned President Obama that "there is no doubt" the problem has become "a global threat." The incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, plans to convene hearings next month on the danger "that threatens the security of us all."

In the wake of the Tucson, Ariz., tragedy, you might think that such high-profile alarm would center on the shortcomings of America's mental-health system or the inadequacy of the country's gun laws. You would be mistaken. Instead, some members of the political class remain fixated on what they regard as a greater national emergency: the purported rise of "homegrown" Islamic terrorists. They point to a string of examples of jihadist activity by U.S. citizens of Muslim faith: the Somali-born Portland, Ore., man who tried to detonate a dud car bomb planted by the FBI at a December tree-lighting ceremony; last summer's failed Times Square bombing by a naturalized Pakistani; the 14 men charged last August with providing support to Islamist militants in Somalia. (See more about Portland's Christmas-tree-bombing plot.)

And then there's Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based Internet imam late of Falls Church, Va., who intelligence officials say now acts as a regional commander for al-Qaeda, with the charge of recruiting impressionable American Muslims to take up arms against their country. In the eyes of some, al-Awlaki and his ilk represent the vanguard of an even more sinister trend: the growing "radicalization" of the estimated 5 million Muslims living in the U.S. "Radicalization is taking place inside America," Myrick wrote in her letter to Obama. "The strikingly accelerated rate of American Muslims arrested for involvement in terrorist activities since May 2009 makes this fact self-evident."

Actually, it doesn't. Though acts of violent extremism by U.S. Muslims appear to have grown, their potency has not. American Muslims remain more moderate, diverse and integrated than the Muslim populations in any other Western society. Despite the efforts of al-Qaeda propagandists like al-Awlaki, the evidence of even modest sympathy for the enemy existing inside the U.S. is minuscule. The paranoia about homegrown terrorism thus vastly overstates al-Qaeda's strength and reflects our leaders' inability to make honest assessments about the true threats to America's security.

Those who beat the drums about the homegrown terrorism threat often gloss over one salient fact: for all the publicity that surrounds cases of domestic jihad, not a single civilian has been killed by an Islamic terrorist on U.S. soil since Sept. 11. (The killing spree by Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 doesn't fit the standard definition of terrorism: his motives were not wholly ideological, nor did he deliberately target civilians.) That's due to a number of factors, including the military's assault on al-Qaeda's leadership, tougher homeland-security measures, smart policing and some degree of luck. But the fact that every homegrown terrorism plot has been foiled before it could be carried out also demonstrates the fecklessness of the terrorists themselves. In nearly every case — including that of Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, who came closest to succeeding — homegrown terrorists have been found to have acted almost entirely alone. There has been no vast conspiracy. Terrorist attacks may not require much money or ingenuity, but a lone wolf has little chance of pulling off the kind of mass-casualty strike that counterterrorism experts worry about most. (See more about the Broadway Bomber, Faisal Shahzad.)

Of course, violent individuals — from Hasan to Jared Loughner — are still capable of causing mayhem. But there's no evidence that large numbers of American Muslims are inclined to do so. Though alarmists point to the alienation of young Muslims in Western Europe as a sign of things to come for the U.S., the likelihood of that happening there is remote. A Gallup survey conducted in 2009 found that American Muslims report vastly higher rates of life satisfaction than do their counterparts in other Western countries — and higher rates than the populations in every Muslim-majority country except one, Saudi Arabia. In the past 10 years, fewer than 200 people in the U.S. have been indicted on suspicion of jihadist activities. A comprehensive report by the Rand Corporation last year concluded that just one out of every 30,000 American Muslims could be said to have joined jihad, "suggesting an American Muslim population that remains hostile to jihadist ideology and its exhortations to violence." (Comment on this story.)

So why does the myth of homegrown terrorism persist? In part because, like every hardy political meme, it serves the interests of loudmouths on both ends of the ideological spectrum. To the right, the threat of homegrown terrorism helps to perpetuate the notion of a ceaseless, civilization-wide struggle against Islamic extremism. To the left, the prospect of American Muslims taking up jihad fits with the idea that the U.S.'s foreign policy is creating a new generation of terrorists. (See photos of a jihadist's journey.)

And yet al-Qaeda is weaker and less capable today than it was before Sept. 11; its appeal to mainstream Muslims around the world is shrinking, rather than increasing. The fact that Osama bin Laden wannabes like al-Awlaki have risen to such prominence is testament to the evisceration of al-Qaeda's leadership. The U.S. faces far bigger and immediate challenges to the welfare and security of its citizens, not least from the ease with which unstable individuals can legally obtain and use deadly firearms. Addressing that danger will do more to protect Americans than obsessing about the phantom threat of homegrown terrorism ever will.

Ratnesar, a TIME contributing editor-at-large, is a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech That Ended the Cold War. His column on global affairs appears every Monday on TIME.com.

Va. teen detained in Kuwait returns to U.S., reunites with family

By Kafia A. Hosh and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 21, 2011; 10:02 AM

A Virginia teenager who was placed on the no-fly list and barred from returning home to the United States from Kuwait arrived at Dulles International Airport on Friday morning for an emotional reunion with his family...

Mohamed was detained in Kuwait last month at the behest of the United States, according to his attorneys. They allege that Mohamed was beaten by Kuwaiti officials who questioned him about his travels in Yemen and Somalia after he left the United States in March 2009...

Gadeir Abbas, a staff attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is representing Mohamed along with Nadhira al-Khalili, said FBI agents in Kuwait also tried to question the teenager despite the fact that he told them he wanted his American attorneys present for any interrogation.

Civil liberties groups allege that Mohamed's case is part of a pattern in which American citizens are barred from flying to the United States so they can be questioned by U.S. agents while overseas and without counsel.

Mohamed's attorneys sued Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Terrorist Screening Center Director Timothy Healy and their respective agencies in federal court in Alexandria. They alleged that Mohamed's 14th Amendment right to reside in the United States and to reenter the country from abroad was being violated. And they asked U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga to order the government to allow Mohamed to return home...

Read full story

Mother Jones: Gulet Mohamed Returns to America

Peter King's Terrorism Problem (Mother Jones)

Tim Murphy - Editorial fellow at Mother Jones
Wed Jan. 19, 2011
Mother Jones

When it comes to matters of national security, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) has never been accused of holding back. So when the political world suffered a collective freak-out over leaked diplomatic cables late last year, King, the top Republican on the House homeland security committee, naturally led the charge. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, King warned that WikiLeaks' release of the classified documents amounted to supporting terrorism.

But according to experts in counterterrorism law, if the tough-on-terror policies King trumpets today had taken effect a few decades earlier, King himself might have been subject to prosecution. Over parts of three decades, from his days as an aspiring politician in Long Island through his early years in Congress, King was one of the nation's most outspoken supporters of the Irish Republican Army and a prolific fundraiser for the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NorAid), allegedly the IRA's American fundraising arm. The IRA waged a paramilitary campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland for decades before peace accords were signed in 1998. Part of that effort included bombings and shootings that resulted in civilian deaths in England and Northern Ireland. During the period of King's involvement, the US government accused both NorAid and the IRA of links to terrorism...

King isn't the only conservative who says one thing and does another when it comes to material support. Last month, a panel of Bush-era luminaries—Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey—traveled to Paris to speak at a conference in support of Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian Marxist group that's opposed to the Ahmadinejad regime but has landed on the State Department terror list (the designation cannot be challenged in court). Because the event's organizer, the French Committee for a Democratic Iran, was formed to build support for the MEK, Cole says the trio's advocacy constituted a clear breach of federal law...

Ayloush Khutba/sermon at ISOC: Change and action require ability and will

A khutba that i gave on 10/30/2009 at the Islamic Society of Orange County.  It just got posted by ISOC.