The Fallacy of the Blair Narrative and the War on Islam(ism)

The ‘Blair narrative’ is not new but dates back to the beginning of the so-called “war of terror.” It effectively shifts the blame off Western foreign policy—something for which the former British Prime Minister became detested in many quarters—and onto a foreign perverted “ideology.” After the killing of an off-duty officer in Woolwich London, Blair lay the blame firmly upon this “ideology,” making the claim that “there is a problem within Islam” though not “a problem with Islam.” Blair characterized this as the “Islamist” ideology, a “strain within Islam” (as opposed to “Saudi” Islam, among other “strains,” that he has been quite happy to endorse or remain silent about). In a nutshell, these claims form the basis of the false narrative that highly respected lawyer Gareth Pierce identified as now dominating political discourse in the West in her book Dispatches from the Dark Side, a discourse continued by current British Prime Minister David Cameron when he announced in parliament soon after Blair’s article when ordering a “crackdown” on the “conveyor belt of hate” he claimed existed in some schools and universities.

Read the full article on Foreign Policy Journal

Woolwich, “Islamism” and the “Conveyor Belt to Terrorism” Theory

In a Spectator article published less than ten days after the London bombings of July 2005, Boris Johnson wrote, when accounting for the attackers’ mindset,  that “Islam is the problem.” Almost eight years later, after the public murder of an off-duty soldier in Woolwich, the London Mayor stated unequivocally that it was wrong to blame Islam for the event, a point echoed across the British political spectrum. However, as has become apparent in the continued commentary following the murder of Lee Rigby, the government  continues to blame terrorism on normative Islam, despite the change in discourse.

In the face of criticism that the war on Iraq was the root cause for the attacks of July 2005, Tony Blair admitted in 2006 that “the majority view of a large part of western opinion, certainly in Europe” was that “the policy of America since 9/11 has been a gross overreaction; George Bush is as much if not more of a threat to world peace as Osama bin Laden; and what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else in the Middle East, is an entirely understandable consequence of US/UK imperialism or worse, of just plain stupidity.” His alternative narrative – one that he has consistently held to subsequently – was that “religious extremism” was the root cause of terrorism. Such “extremism” was explained as “their attitude to America … their concept of governance…their positions on women and other faiths.”

In 2009 the British government considered plans which would have formalized the Blair narrative and considered ideas such as a belief in the applicability of Sharia law in contemporary times, the concept of belonging to a single Muslim community internationally (the umma), the legitimacy of resisting attack and occupation through the use of force (jihad), and the aspiration of living under an Islamic caliphate as key identifiers of “extremists.” This narrative has been consistently raised in the media by a range of “counter-extremism experts” and think-tanks, who argue that it is indeed “Islamist extremism” that leads to terrorism.

In the wake of the Woolwich attacks, the same narrative has resurfaced in the media, and was mentioned in Boris Johnson’sDaily Telegraph article entitled “By standing united, we can isolate the virus of Islamism”, in which he stated that “we need to make a hard and sharp distinction between that religion [Islam] – and the virus of ‘Islamism’ ”. He mentioned in a negative manner the same four points as being characteristic of Islamism.

Each of these contentious four points that are allegedly key identifiers of “Islamism” and “extremism” have featured for centuries in normative orthodox Islamic scholarship, and are recognised as such in Western academia. The 13 volume Encyclopaedia of Islam, published by Brill, which was compiled over several years by many of the leading Western authorities on Islamic theology and history, states in reference to the idea of a singular caliphate, that “[m]ajor points in the fully developed Sunni doctrine were the following: The establishment of an imam is permanently obligatory on the community…There can be only a single imam at any time.” Regarding the concept of umma it states that “[t]he consensus has favoured a unified umma as an ideal that transcends a particular period’s limitations and divisions”, while Jihad is explained as follows: “according to general doctrine and in historical tradition, [jihad] consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam and, if need be, of its defence.”

It should surprise no one therefore that these concepts are widely supported by Muslims worldwide. The results of research carried out by University of Maryland in 2007 found that an ave­rage of 71 per cent of those interviewed across four Muslim countries (Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan) agreed with the goal of requiring “strict application of Sharia law in every Islamic country,” while also finding that 65 per cent agreed with the goal of unifying “all Islamic countries into a single state or caliphate.” Therefore, designating these aspirations as “Islamist” and “extremist” in effect categorises Muslims who are inspired by normative Islamic values (as well as those who carry such beliefs in the west) as “Islamist extremists.”

The continued use of the term “Islamist” along with “extremism” is symptomatic of language that the American Muslim advocacy group CAIR complained of recently.  Their communications director Ibrahim Hooper wrote in an op-ed in January 2013 that “Unfortunately, the term “Islamist” has become shorthand for “Muslims we don’t like.” It is currently used in an almost exclusively pejorative context and is often coupled with the term “extremist,” giving it an even more negative slant.”

So when Boris Johnson’s aforementioned article claims that “Islamism” is the problem “virus” that leads to terrorism, and identifies Islamism as being synonymous with these four ideas –– the caliphate, the ideal of Muslims belonging to a single community, Sharia and Jihad –– he is in fact restating in 2013 that Islam is the problem, just as he did in 2005. What has occurred in the meantime is the popularization of a discourse that labels manifestations of political Islam that are viewed as problematic, and incompatible with western secular liberalism, as “Islamism” and “Islamist extremism.”

In line with the belief that non-violent “Islamist extremism” is a conveyor belt to terrorism, on a talk show broadcast on the Sunday after the Woolwich murder, the Home Secretary Theresa May indicated that she would seek to ban “extremist groups” that do not abjure violence. Others, such as the former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, have urged caution, stating that “you have to be very careful indeed about depriving people space to utter opinions that the rest of us don’t like” and that banning extremists from TV would act as a “recruiting sergeant.”

Internal government reports leaked to the Sunday Telegraph in 2010 concluded that they “do not believe that it is accurate to regard radicalisation in this country as a linear ‘conveyor belt’ moving from grievance, through radicalisation, to violence,” and that the “thesis seems to both misread the radicalisation process and to give undue weight to ideological factors.” So according to the government’s own officials and experts, suggesting that “Islamist extremist” aspirations (which are part of normative Islam) are a gateway to terrorism is incorrect, and hence any such subsequent claims can reasonably be construed as politically disingenuous. That the perpetrators may hold these specific beliefs has not been proven to be a causal factor of violence, and such beliefs are similarly shared by millions of other Muslims globally as well as many living in the West.

While the conveyor-belt theory may offer a simplistic narrative fit for popular consumption, the issues involved in such cases seldom are. There are other more detailed models which attempt to explain and help identify radicalization, and which are used by the police and intelligence services currently, such as those developed by the NYPD and the Danish Security and Intelligence Services.  However, other academic research, such as a report by the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, argues that these models have major substantive shortcomings, are based upon post hoc studies and make the simple methodological error of “selection on the dependent variable”, among others, which invalidates their conclusions. As the report mentions, just as it is impossible to explain why books become bestsellers by examining only bestsellers, it is impossible to explain radicalisation only by cases of radicalisation.

There are obvious problems with these simplistic models, which are multiplied when considering the crude contention that “non-violent extremism” leads to “violent extremism.” Drawing conclusions based on theories that suffer from this type of selection bias is extremely risky and may inadvertently substantiate  statements such as “not every Islamist extremist is a terrorist, but all Islamist extremist terrorists are Islamist extremists,” which could be considered a politically correct way of suggesting “not every Muslim is a terrorist, but all Muslim terrorists are Muslim,” particularly when it has already been shown that the identifiers of “Islamist extremism” are actually unequivocally aspects of normative Islam.

This type of narrative was popularised after 2005, notably by Michael Gove’s Celsius 7/7 and Ed Husain’s The Islamist. Unfortunately, the waves of erroneous opinions offered in the wake of the Woolwich attack by politicians, media commentators, “counter-extremism” experts and self-professed “ex-extremists” certainly do not stand up to any academic scrutiny. While both the Blair narrative and the convenient “conveyor-belt” theory may assuage the public’s need for an explanation of what lies behind such attacks –– which politicians are loath to admit is linked to Western foreign policy –– in doing so it alienates Muslims who have legitimate foreign policy grievances , as well as sowing distrust and suspicion of Muslims among the wider population (as when the former head of MI5, Stella Rimington, recently implied people should be spying on their neighbours in order to inform the police of any signs of “extremism”).

The misapplied ideology of “an eye for an eye” mentioned by one of the Woolwich killers as a justification for their act is alien to normative Islam, a misplaced reaction to legitimate grievances against Western foreign policy, something I have discussed in more detail elsewhere. Two days after the Woolwich murder, a British High Court ruled that up to 161 allegedly unlawful killings by the British military in Iraq should be the subject of  hearings by coroners. The previous day, President Barack Obama had outlined in a major speech his policy regarding drone strikes and Guantanamo Bay detention centre, two of the most frequently discussed grievances regarding America’s foreign policy of the moment. Such policies are what lead commentators such as Glenn Greenwald continuously to point out that “the proximate cause of these attacks are plainly political grievances: namely, the belief that engaging in violence against aggressive western nations is the only way to deter and/or avenge western violence that kills Muslim civilians.”

As highlighted in numerous polls and obvious to any observer, grievances regarding western foreign policy in the Middle East and other Muslim countries are widespread. The recent uprisings in the region have all been against former allies in America’s “war on terror,”: Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia, Gaddafi in Libya, Saleh in Yemen and now al-Assad in Syria, all of whom were formerly collaborating with America in intelligence-sharing, renditions and torture. Belief in an idealized global Islamic brotherhood is still cherished by Muslims despite their internal differences while aspirations for Islamic governance under Sharia law and the unification of Muslim countries are also popular and mainstream in several parts of the Muslim world.

Demonizing such grievances and aspirations may be understandable in the context of secular, liberal western democracies, though it is hardly conducive to community cohesion whether in a national or international context. It  might prudent and principled to instead begin making truly concerted efforts to understand what such grievances and aspirations really mean to their advocates, rather than simply inaccurately labelling them as security concerns.

Originally published on the Hurst Website

The Inevitable Caliphate? A History of the Struggle for Global Islamic Union, 1924 to the Present, is published by Hurst and available now.

Caliphate, Sharia law and “Islamist Extremism”

In the wake of the Woolwich murder in the UK on 22 May, an assortment of various British politicians, commentators, “counter-extremism experts” and self-described “ex-extremists” have stated that holding certain ideas are indications of what they have termed as “Islamist extremism.” Among those mentioned is the belief that Muslims are obliged by their religion to establish a single unified caliphate (Islamic state) which would rule over them in accordance with Islamic law, commonly referred to as Sharia law. This belief is labelled as “Islamism,” which the public is told is a perverted understanding of Islam, and part of the extremist mindset.

There are a number of questions and contentions that can be raised with such statements, ranging from the fact that all the “conveyor belt” type theories used as the basis for such assertions have been proven as academically incorrect due to several methodological and substantive shortcomings, the downplaying of the role of foreign policy as a primary causal factor of attacks carried out in the West by those inspired by Islamic belief and the use of discourse to exclude others from participation in society by labelling them with pejorative terms such as “extremism” and “Islamist.”

This article will focus upon whether the belief in the necessity of a universal caliphate is a perverted version of normative Islam tradition or not. It will be shown that far from being a modern anomaly referred to as “Islamism” or “Islamist extremism,” the belief in the obligation of establishing a caliphate is part of an overwhelming consensus in traditional Islam. Ironically, denying the obligation is in fact considered to be a perversion of Islam, a historical position limited to a small number of heretical sects.

What is meant by normative Islam are those opinions and views based upon an understanding of the Qur’an and those Prophetic traditions (sunna) which are widely held to be authentically traced back to the Prophet, supported by the opinions of historical traditional scholars whom the majority of Muslims would consider as representative of Muslim orthodoxy. If belief in the caliphate which would implement Sharia law is part of such a consensus, then obviously labelling it as “Islamist extremist” would naturally mean the labelling of any Muslim who believed in normative Islamic tradition as an “Islamist extremist.”

There are numerous verses from the Qur’an which have been used historically by Muslims as evidence that revelation is the basis of legislation, and that it is the law as ordained by God that should be used to judge between men (to give but one example among many – “But no, by your Lord, they can have no Faith, until they make you (O Muhammad) judge in all disputes between them). This led to the consensus of understanding among Muslims that in Islamic law the legislator is God, meaning that His revelation, as represented in the Qur’an and the words of His Prophet, form the basis for legislation.

For this reason, in the traditional books of the Islamic jurists who authored the science of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) there is agreement that God is the legislator (al-Hakim) and that legislation is for God alone. The difference between a system that adopts this legislation as its basis and what would be termed a theocracy in the Western sense, is that in normative Islam it is the role of scholars and rulers to discern the law from the sources of revelation, and to implement it while being held to account upon that basis by the public.

There are also numerous texts found amongst the Prophetic narrations in the books considered the most authentic in traditional Islam (the two most authentic collections considered to be Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim) which articulate that the role of the ruler is to rule by Islam. Amongst them is a well-known long narration that ends with the words “and then there will be caliphate (once again) upon the Prophetic method.” Yet another is the shorter narration “If the pledge of allegiance is given to two caliphs kill the latter of them,” one of the most common evidences used as a basis for unitary leadership being obligatory.

There are several other examples of Islamic evidences that have traditionally been used, to the point that it is considered that there is a consensus of orthodox opinion that the Muslim nation must have a single ruler who is responsible for the running of their affairs in accordance with Islamic law, something articulated in detail in books specifically on Islamic governance.

The most famous exposition of the Islamic theory of State was by Abul-Hasan al-Mawardi, who claimed that the establishment of the caliphate was an Islamic obligation which was universally agreed upon. His 11th century treatise, al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya (The Rules of Governance), remains one of the major classical references for Islamic political theory. These ideas were not articulated by al-Mawardi alone. His claim of a consensus upon the obligation of the caliphate is mirrored by everyone else who wrote on the subject, including prominent authorities well known within Islamic scholarly tradition such as Mohammad bin al-Hussain al-Fara Abu Ya‘la, Abdul Qadir al-Baghdadi, Ali bin Ahmad bin Said bin Hazm al-Dhahari and Abu Abdullah Al-Qurtubi, amongst others.

This point of Islamic law is confirmed in practically every single book written on Islamic governance up until the twentieth century, all of which narrate an agreement on the obligation to establish the caliphate which goes beyond that even of orthodox scholarship, which also includes practically all of the minority sects. This is summarized by al-Dhahari – an 11th century scholar born in Cordoba – who stated “all of ahl al-Sunna, all of the murji’a, all of the Shia, and all of the Khawarij have agreed on the obligation of Imama [another term used for the caliphate], and that the Umma is obliged to appoint an Imam who will apply the rules of Allah and look after their affairs with the rules of the Shari‘a which the Messenger of Allah brought, except for some of the Khawarij [who did not agree upon the obligation of the caliphate].” Ironically, the Khawarij sect – some of whom  denied the obligation of the caliphate but were all fervent believers in ruling by Sharia law – are considered to be among the most heretical groups responsible for much of the bloodshed in the early Islamic era.

In conclusion, there is such an overwhelming consensus on the issue of the obligation of a single leadership who is responsible to rule by the law of God that any opposition has historically been rejected as an anomaly and in contradiction to normative Islam and traditional scholarship. This is something recognised in Western academia – for example in the 13 volume Encyclopaedia of Islam published by Brill compiled over several years by a number of leading Western authorities on Islamic theology and history, it states regarding the idea of a singular caliphate that “[m]ajor points in the fully developed Sunni doctrine were the following: The establishment of an imam is permanently obligatory on the community…There can be only a single imam at any time.”

Therefore it is clearly inaccurate to state the obligation to establish a caliphate is not a part of orthodox Islamic belief. Rather, according to Islamic tradition, a denial of that obligation would actually be considered a perversion of the religion.

Originally posted on There is Power in the Blog

The Inevitable Caliphate - Update

Many apologies for the continued delay in the final publication. The good news is that the final proofs and indexing are completed and so the book should be ready soon. 

Malala Yousufzai and Noor-Syed – Who is responsible?

The neglect of the Pakistan government and military towards its own people allows groups like TTP to operate, yet the same military and government will cynically exploit their violent actions while American drones fly overhead.

Recently the tragic story of the shooting of the 14 year old Malala Yousufzai  by two armed men has dominated the media in Pakistan and elsewhere. Malala, who was well known as a campaigner for the education of young females, survived the shooting and is currently in hospital. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan called media from an undisclosed location to accept the responsibility of the attack, apparently due to Malala’s anti-Taliban activism and spreading of “secular” thoughts among her peers.

Noor-Syed is another young Pakistani girl who suffered an attack – though in her case she was killed by an American drone strike back in 2009. Her story was not covered by any of the media, and wider knowledge of her death only came to light as a result of the publication in 2011 of pictures by Noor Behram, a 39 year old photographer from the North Waziristan Agency (NWA) who has been documenting civilian victims of CIA drones since 2007.

Read full article at New Civilisation and Foreign Policy Journal