New at Reason

January 11, 2007

Michael Young asks whether the troop "surge" will mean anything at all for Iraq.

Comments

Rob McMillin|1.11.07 @ 12:37PM|#

He did warn that the Iraqi government "would lose the support of the American people", but on those grounds you would have to assume the United States entered Iraq as a favor to the Iraqis. Even the most idealistic war supporter would not make that argument.

Did Young forget the "we'll be hailed as liberators" schtick that the neocon lunatics were spouting before the war? They indeed made that very argument.

|1.11.07 @ 2:02PM|#

I'd agree with Rob's assessment, but go further:

He did warn that the Iraqi government "would lose the support of the American people", but on those grounds you would have to assume the United States entered Iraq as a favor to the Iraqis. Even the most idealistic war supporter would not make that argument.

I would say that the current administration is still making that very argument. While we cannot say that we did the Iraqi government of that time any favors, there is the assumption that we did do the Iraqi people those favors. Since the current government is presumably an elected extension of those very people it takes almost no leap of faith or intuition to conclude that this administration, therefore, does believe that it did the current Iraqi government (and people) a big favor by kicking Saddam out of power.

|1.11.07 @ 2:11PM|#

Islam is quintessentially tolerant. Its adherents are hospitable to liberty, equality, and pluralism, the rudiments of modern democracy. Those committing terror in its name are heretics - a fringe which has "hijacked" a "religion of peace."

This conventional wisdom brims over the mainstream media's daily servings. It is, moreover, the not-to-be-questioned premise of U.S. policy on a host of paramount issues: everything from how the war on terror is conceptualized and prosecuted, to the wisdom of negotiations with Iran, a sovereign state for Palestinians, agitation for freedom and popular self-determination throughout the Middle East, and the assumption that our own growing Muslim population will seamlessly assimilate.

But is it true?

Emphatically, the answer is "no." So argues best-selling author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in The Truth about Muhammad - Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery, 256 pages). And he does not expect you to take his word for it.

Painstakingly, Spencer has crafted a biography Islam's Prophet from the authentic Muslim Sunnah, comprised of: the Koran, which is taken by believers to be the verbatim word of Allah, dictated to Muhammad in Arabic by the angel Gabriel; the tafsir, or Koranic commentary; the hadith, which are lengthy volumes recording the words and traditions of Muhammad (there are six different collections, dating from the eighth and ninth centuries); and, finally, the sira, authoritative biographies of the Prophet, including what remains to us of Ibn Ishaq's hagiographic account, written about 150 years after Muhammad's death in 632.

The picture that emerges is complex but not ambiguous. Muhammad was a dynamic figure - necessarily, among the most dynamic in history, having formed from scratch a movement that ultimately dominated lands from the Near East to Central Asia (to say nothing of pockets of Europe, Africa, and the Far East), a movement that today claims over a billion adherents. He was also, through and through, a product of Arabia's tribal antiquity - a fact often stressed by Islam's modern sympathizers to explain, if not smooth, the Prophet's many rough edges.

In such a life, unsurprisingly, one finds episodic acts of tolerance and benevolence. But there are episodes and then there is trajectory. The arc of Muhammad's life tends decisively to intolerance and inequality. His was, ultimately, a bellicose, us-versus-them world of conquest and booty. This cannot help but imbue the religion he founded. In it, his example is normative: the scriptures revere him as "an excellent model of conduct" (Sura 33:21), who exhibits an "exalted standard of character" (68:4) and obedience to whom is repeatedly adjured - indeed, is made equally as essential as obedience to Allah Himself (4:80). Recalling the Muslim fury over Danish Muhammad cartoons in 2005, Spencer points out that in the Koran "again and again Allah is quite solicitous of his prophet, and ready to command what will please him. To the mind of someone who accepts the [Koran] as an authentic revelation, this places Muhammad in a particularly important position."

CONTRADICTION AND AMBIGUITY
The Prophet of Islam was born in Mecca, a member of the Quraysh tribe which did a lucrative trade in pilgrimages to the local shrine, the Kabah - now the central locus of Islamic worship but then home to numerous pagan idols. Both Muhammad's parents died in his early childhood. In his twenties, he was hired as a traveling salesman by his distant cousin Khadija, an accomplished merchant woman whose wares he deftly traded in Syria. Though fifteen years his senior, Khadija proposed marriage, becoming the first of Muhammad's many wives (biographers peg the number at between eleven and thirteen, with Muhammad having claimed to be "given the power of sexual intercourse equal to forty men"). Eventually, she also became the first Muslim.

Muhammad's prophetic career spanned about 23 years after he received, at age 40, what he came to believe was his first revelation. Initially, the call to Islam was a straightforward summons to monotheism - to worship only "Allah," who, Spencer explains, may have been the tribal god of the Quraysh (and thus one of the many local deities).

As further revelations fleshed out nascent Islam, there was transparent borrowing from the Bible, the Torah, other Jewish and Christian sources (including heterodox strains of Christianity then abundant in Arabia), Zoroastrian writings from Persia, and local pagan ritual. The resulting similarities discomfit Muslims, who often insist that they represent not emulation but happenstance, the Koran having been recited to Muhammad (who was illiterate) by Allah in His original language of Arabic. Beyond that, any seeming Judeo-Christian influence is attributed to Jews and Christians being fellow "People of the Book," whose God Muslims share and whose heritage they claim to supersede. It is, in fact, an enduring tenet that Jews and Christians are, as Spencer puts it, "sinful renegades from the truth of Islam," who corruptly altered their scriptures to elide foreshadowings of Muhammad's coming.

One of the seeming contradictions of Muhammad's life is the contrast of his early hospitality toward Jews (and Christians) with his final position of unremitting enmity. Contradictions, of course, create ambiguity. This is useful for Islam's modern apologists, who incessantly underline a few isolated episodes of tolerance and even kindness as if they could bleach away Muhammad's legacy of arch hostility toward non-Muslims - a legacy built, for example, on the Koran's admonition that Muslims "take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors" (5:51); on Muhammad's vision of the end of the world: marked by Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, "Muslim, … there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him"); and on the Prophet's deathbed call for the total expulsion of unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula - a desire the Saudi government honors to this day, particularly in Mecca and Medina, cities closed to non-Muslims.

Spencer cogently explains, however, that there is no real contradiction or ambiguity. Especially in the early phase of his prophesying - the Meccan period before Hijra, when the Muslims were forced to flee to Medina - Muhammad had great reason to be solicitous: He was building a movement. Arabia's powerful Jewish tribes (the Qaynuqa, Auf and Qurayzah, among others) were among those the Prophet most energetically called to Islam. Thus we find Muhammad "situating himself within the roster of Jewish prophets, forbidding pork for his followers, and adapting for the Muslims the practice of several daily prayers and other aspects of Jewish ritual." Muhammad, moreover, struck a treaty with Medina's Jewish tribes - grandiosely regarded by Muslims as "the world's first constitution" - which described them as "one community with the believers" (though tellingly, even in this amicable period, the pact drew sharp distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims).
In fact, this adaptability, when exhibited in Muhammad's similarly earnest efforts to convert his native Quraysh to Islam, resulted in the nearly ruinous "Satanic verses" incident (made infamous in modern times by Salman Rushdie's book and the consequent murder fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). Desperate to be reconciled with his own people, Muhammad convinced himself that he'd received a revelation allowing Muslims to pray to three pagan goddesses favored by the Quraysh as intercessors for Allah. The Quraysh were thrilled, but the Prophet, upon a countermanding revelation from an angry Gabriel, soon realized he had not only contradicted the core of his monotheistic preaching but potentially undermined the entire Islamic enterprise by raising the possibility that his revelations were not authentic. Allah forgave Muhammad, observing that Satan's interference had been an occupational hazard for all His beleaguered prophets through the ages. Still, the incident is sufficiently embarrassing that Muslim scholars and apologists continue ferociously to discredit it, although, Spencer concludes, the evidence preponderates against them.

BRUTAL CONQUEST
In any event, good will between Muslims and non-Muslims proved fleeting. Muhammad's overriding aim was Islamic hegemony not ecumenical coexistence. Upon resettling in Medina, Muhammad became as much a political and military leader as the apocalyptic preacher of his first 13 years of prophesying. The Jews, like the Quraysh, many Christian communities, and other non-Muslims declined to heed his call. Rejection of Islam was construed as attack upon Islam, for which the prescription was jihad.

Incontestably, jihad is a central imperative (in fact, the highest obligation) of Islam. Muhammad's career as a fierce and, at times, brutal warrior illustrates the futility of efforts to render congenial to modern sensibilities this command to struggle against perceived enemies. Yes, the Koran famously asserts that there shall be "no compulsion in religion" (2:256). But however hortatory this injunction may be, it is ahistorical. Islam was spread by the sword.

The Prophet's military feats began with attacks, many of which he led personally, on Quraysh caravans. These raids, Spencer explains, were not merely acts of vengeance against those who had rejected Islam; they further "served a key economic purpose, keeping the Muslim movement solvent." Booty would be central to Muslim militancy, and thus grew rules for its division (such as one-fifth of the haul set aside for the Prophet, and the propriety of using female slaves as concubines). Asked by a follower about the legitimacy of nighttime attacks given the probability of endangering women and children, Muhammad indicated these were permissible because such noncombatants "are from them" (i.e., the unbelievers).

It is due to this and other lessons that the battles of early Islam resonate today - creating a major hurdle (I fear, an insuperable one) for reformers hopeful of convincing the ummah (i.e., the worldwide Muslim community) that it's the terrorists, not the reformers themselves, who are doctrinally wayward.

The Prophet, for example, directed "martyrdom" operations. Martyrdom, Spencer elaborates, was understood exactly as it is by today's jihadists: "referring to one who (in the words of a revelation that came to Muhammad much later) 'slays and is slain' for Allah (Qur'an 9:111), rather than in the Christian sense of suffering unto death at the hands of the unjust for the sake of the faith."

Muslims were authorized by another revelation to break treaties - particularly with the Jews - when there appeared advantage in doing so (8:58). And in the tone-setting "Nakhla Raid" against the Quraysh, a timely revelation helped Muhammad overcome his initial reluctance to accept booty derived from killings committed by his followers during the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting was forbidden. Those murdered had disbelieved Allah. This, the Prophet learned, was the greater evil. Of course, the collateral lesson, as Spencer relates, was that "[m]oral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency."

Believers were instructed to fight and behead non-believers (47:4), and did so mercilessly. After the out-numbered Muslims decisively triumphed over the Quraysh in the "Battle of Badr," for example, one captured Quraysh leader pled for his life, asking, "But who will look after my children?" "Hell," replied Muhammad, ordering the man killed. Another leader's head was brought as a trophy to the Prophet, who expressed delight and gave thanks to Allah. (No wonder then, Spencer interjects, that when al Qaeda's strongman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, decapitated American hostage Nicholas Berg, he declared, "The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in Badr and to kill them…. And he set a good example for us.") (Brackets in original.) Allah, in fact, expressed anger at Muhammad after Badr because the Prophet agreed to take ransom from some captured Quraysh leaders rather than beheading them as his companion, Umar, had urged.

In Medina, the Muslims were pitted against an alliance of the Quraysh and the Qurayzah Jews in the "Battle of the Trench." During the Muslims' building of the defensive trench, Muhammad's pick blows are said to have emitted lightening flashes, which drew cries of "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is greatest" - the "Islamic cry of victory" for Spencer) and were interpreted by the Prophet as a sign that Allah would eventually make Islam triumphant beyond Arabia in the east and west. Opining that "war is deceit," Muhammad directed one of his followers to appear as a sympathizer to the enemy factions, while sowing discord between them. It worked: the Quraysh abandoned the field and the Muslims laid siege to the Jews, whom Muhammad called "brothers of monkeys." (Spencer notes three places - 2:62-65, 5:59-60 and 7:166 - where the Koran records that "Allah transformed the Sabbath-breaking Jews into pigs and monkeys.") When the Qurayzah surrendered and sought mercy, Muhammad agreed with the assessment of his follower Sad bin Muadh that "their warriors should be killed and their children and women should be taken as captives." In the execution, Muhammad personally participated in the beheading of between 600 and 900 captives - including all males who had reached puberty.

This incident was not unique. Spencer recounts that Muhammad ordered a Jewish poet, Kab bin al-Ashraf, killed because the Prophet took offense at "amatory verses of an insulting nature about Muslim women." After the murder, he commanded the Muslims: "Kill any Jew that falls into your power." When Muhammad ordered the expulsion of the Nadir Jews with whom area Muslims had a treaty, Muhammad's emissary declared, "Hearts have changed, and Islam has wiped out the old covenants." When the Jews declined to leave, Muhammad construed this to mean that "[t]he Jews have declared war" - another reminder that whether Islam is "under attack," the trigger of jihad, is ever in the eyes of the beholder. In the ensuing siege, the Prophet ordered the earth scorched, refuting his own prohibition against the wanton destruction of property so often cited by Islamic apologists. And in the "Raid at Khaybar," Muhammad directed that a Jewish leader, Kinana bin al-Rabi, be tortured to extract the location of tribal treasure; when al-Rabi stood fast, Muhammad had him beheaded, and later, when more hidden treasure was located, the incensed Prophet - as he had done with the Qurayzah Jews - directed that warriors among the Khaybar Jews be killed and the women and children taken as slaves.

WHY MUHAMMAD MATTERS
Why rehash these and other chilling episodes in the meteoric, militaristic rise of early Islam? Because, Spencer maintains, they are crucial to appreciating the dual challenge faced by Westerners and Islamic reformers.

Americans, told incessantly by their elites that Islam is a "religion of peace," watch in bewilderment when, for example, a Muslim convert to Christianity is subjected to a death penalty trial in the "new" Afghanistan, liberated from the Taliban due to great American sacrifice. How, they rightly wonder, could the "moderates' now in charge abide such a thing? The answer is as simple: Islam's prophet made death the penalty for apostasy. ("Whoever changed his Islamic religion," said Muhammad, "then kill him.") There is a crying need, Spencer observes, "for Westerners to become informed about the words and deeds of Muhammad - which make the actions of Islamic states much more intelligible than do the words of Islamic apologists in the West."

The foundation of American policy, furthermore, is the conceit that moderates represent the Islamic mainstream, that they reflect the authentic image of a Muhammad - the "highest example of human behavior" - who championed the values of democracy and equality. "But," as Spencer cautions, "if the jihad terrorists are correct in invoking his example to justify their deeds, then Islamic reformers will need to initiate a respectful but searching re-evaluation of the place Muhammad occupies within Islam - a vastly more difficult undertaking."

And this must be said not just of jihad terrorists. Spencer, for example, is understanding about the actions of Muhammad, then aged 50, in taking Aisha as a wife when she was six and consummating the marriage when she was nine. This was, after all, in the spirit of the times. Nevertheless, for believers, the Prophet's example transcends its time, and thus child-brides are a commonplace in the Islamic world. Muhammad's Islam, moreover, still confines women to a subordinate status - the Koran likens a woman to a "tilth" to be used as a man wills (2:223); a man may take four wives and have sex with slave girls (4:3); a woman's testimony is valued at half that of a man (2:282); and so on. There is, moreover, simply no credibly denying the denigrated status of non-Muslims, reduced by Muhammad and his successors to humiliating dhimmitude and, as we have seen, brutalized.

Individually, countless Muslims have evolved past these notions. But Islam has not - certainly not in a dominant or convincing way. If anything, atavism is at least as strong a current as reform. Is it realistic to believe the tens of millions (more likely, hundreds of millions) of Muslims whose compass is Muhammad's belligerent, hegemonic vision of Islam - a vision that has endured for 14 centuries - will abandon it in favor of an Islam that embraces liberty, self-determination, and equality based on our common humanity? Anything, one imagines, is possible … but such a seismic shift is not going to happen any time soon.

Robert Spencer graphically illustrates the depth of our folly in thinking - or, rather, blithely assuming - otherwise. An alarming book, and a necessary one.

|1.11.07 @ 2:16PM|#

My eye happened upon "Regnery" and I knew I didn't have to read a freaking word of John's comment.

|1.11.07 @ 2:51PM|#

"My eye happened upon "Regnery" and I knew I didn't have to read a freaking word of John's comment."

I believe that's what's known as being gleefully ignorant.

|1.11.07 @ 3:18PM|#

Don't let the troll-hawk hijack the thread into a navel-gazing exercize about comparative religion.

If were on the President's side, I'd want to change the subject, too.

|1.11.07 @ 3:23PM|#

In spite of the suspect credibility of the John's post, I read it and found it interesting and thought-provoking, though ultimately too biased to be of any real use.

ASIDE: In spite of my natural reaction toward tolerance of other religions and beliefs( as long as I'm accorded same) I hope I don't come across wrong when I say that at this point in my life, I don't give two shits about anthing Muslim. I'm so sick of hearing about Islam, Muhammed and so forth that I don't care that moderate Muslims exists.

What I care about - that potentially affects me and my family and my country - are the large number of Muslims who are either decidedly NOT moderate and the even larger number of Muslims who claim to be moderate but fall miserably and insultingly short of MY notion of tolerance.

It is already clear that tolerance, as the western mind understands it, is a long way off from any region of the Middle East.

That said, it was interesting to (finally) read a Michael Young piece that wasn't completely worthless...

But as for this little charmer, "American plans are chiefly designed to influence the mood on the home front," Young appears completely ignorant of how Bush & Co. have actually gone about things.

Bush has repeatedly shown little interest in the mood on the home front to the point that he had to let his party get its ass beat to finally wake up and pay attention. That he still wants to ramp up the folly only conirms this.

|1.11.07 @ 3:42PM|#

Whatever John posted that, was not me. I will defend the president and have no desire to change the subject.

I don't know enough about what is going on on the ground right now to know if this is enough or will work. I do think it is telling that Bush finally got rid of Abasaid and brought in new people. One of the great untold stories of this war is how Generals have never been held accountable for anything. This is where the press and its jihad against Bush really does a disservice to the country. It fit the media's agenda to blame everything on Bush and Rumsfeld and hold the Generels out as perfect. First, that leads to the whole, we lost because the military was sold out mentality, which is really dangerous. Second, it ignore's reality. Bush needs to be taken to task for not changing military leadership before now and not taking a fresh approach. The generals are not innocents just obeying orders. Whatever failure have gone on, the top military leadership bears at least some of the responsibility. A new leadership team is over due and will help.

It is interesting they are putting Kurds into Bahgdad. Anyone who has been in Iraq for two minutes knows the implications of doing that. It is not like the people who thought it up don't know that the Kurds and the Arabs Shia or Sunni hate each other. I don't know if it will work, but I would definitely bet on the Kurds kicking ass and bringing some order to wherever they go.

Time will tell. I sincerely hope it works and think it at least can work. More importantly, it has to work. I don't want to comtemplate the consiquences of it not working.

|1.11.07 @ 3:49PM|#

One other thing,if there is one piece of unqualified good news, it is the raid on the Iranian consulate. We have been standing around letting the Iranians get way with literally murder in Iraq for too long. Not that we should escalate into a wider war against them, but we cannot fail to act against their agents within Iraq.

|1.11.07 @ 4:31PM|#

I'm glad that Michael Young has finally figured out that America's "foreign policy" has everything to do with domestic politics and relatively little to do with foreigners, except as objects.

But, in fact, many on the antiwar left and right disputed the notion that the US would be welcomed in Iraq or that there was any really viable option to some kind of repressive government to be found in Iraq. John's argument that "no one expected the insurgency" is simply wrong. Lots of people predicted it. Lots of people predicted civil war that would draw in neighboring states.

John, when you have a problem with a nation's diplomatic mission, the usual drill is to make your complaint and expel the diplomats. But the US could not do this: only the Iraqi government could because they are, remember, "sovereign." That the US did not follow international norms you might be happy to put down as a new toughness, but I think it's more emblematic of Mr Young's argument that the US and the Maliki government aren't following the same script anymore.

I wouldn't pin my hopes on the Kurds if I were you. The Kurds are not a "professional" army, but a nationalist one. They have little to motivate them in Baghdad. It's quite common for new armies to be tigers on their own turf and timid on someone else's. American soldiers never fought especially well in Canada, for example. The only way they'll end the fighting between the Shia and the Sunni is if they drop everything to fight the Kurds, which is quite likely.

|1.11.07 @ 4:42PM|#

James,

The U.S. says that the consuluate in Irbil was not a consulate and not entitled to diplomatic protection. Of course the U.S. could have done it Irania style and just help eveyrone there captive for a year or two and paraded them in front of jeering mobs when the mood struck them. Further, I believe they had Iraqi permission to launch the raid. Maliki may want to kill Sunnis but I don't think he wants Iran runnning his country either. Also, we know that Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shia militia groups. Providing support for their sworn enemies, isn't going to buy Iran a lot of friends in Shia Iraq.

As far as the Kurds, I understand what you are saying, it is the obvious answer. The U.S. doesn't need kurds to run the operation. Why are they using Kurds? I don't know. but I think the answer is more complex than just "Kurds will cause everyone to drop everythign and fight them". If only life were that simple.

|1.11.07 @ 9:46PM|#

John
Indeed, things are more complex. The Kurds
have condemned the raid on the Iranian consulate,not as a violation of Iranian, but of Kurdish sovereignty. I don't have a link but I think there was a stand-off between Kurdish and American troops.

|1.12.07 @ 12:22PM|#

Now Bush has sunk to deliberately provoking attacks on America in an effort to save his legacy.

It's getting close to the point where impeachment would be insufficient.