LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
October 10/09

Bible Reading of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 11:15-26. some of them said, "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons." Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that (I) drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils.Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, 'I shall return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that person is worse than the first."

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win draws praise, criticism/Reuters/ 09.10.09
INTERVIEW with Osman Bakhach is the deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of Hizbut Tahrir (HT) in Lebanon./Asia Times Online/09.10/09
Suicide Bombing as Worship/Dimensions of Jihad/by Denis MacEoin/October 09/09
In the balance/By: Lucy Fielder/Al-Ahram Weekly/ 09.10.09

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for October 09/09
Assad Calls Suleiman Confirming Damascus Summit Eagerness for Unity Government/Naharnet
Syria Reacts Warmly to Obama Peace Prize/Wall Street Journal
Lebanese Army: Security for All, Political Cover for None/Naharnet
Separate Saudi, Syrian Communiqués Await Single Achievement in Lebanon-Naharnet
Muallem: Saudi Arabia, Syria for Lebanese Stability and Unity Cabinet Despite Difference in Words-Naharnet
Jabal Mohsen-Bab Tabbaneh Tension as Mufti Accuses Foreign Sides of Involvement in Inerga Attacks-Naharnet
Saniora: Issue of Deported Lebanese Should be Solved Diplomatically-Naharnet
No Saudi Envoy Expected in Beirut, Jumblat Advises Lebanese Not to Miss Golden Opportunity-Naharnet
Large-scale Plan against Motorcyclists in the Next 48 Hours-Naharnet
Fears of More Security Incidents to Settle Political Issues-Naharnet
Suleiman: Security Apparatuses Should Coordinate to End Any Disturbance-Naharnet
Berri to Discuss Deportations on UAE Trip-Naharnet
Hariri Promises Geagea, Gemayel Better Representation for March 14 Christians-Naharnet
Zahra to Berri: Failure to Attend Wednesday's Meeting Has Nothing to do with Ain Rummaneh Incident-Naharnet
France Believes Amending Taef Accord Is Necessary-Naharnet
Berri Calls for Parliamentary Session on Sept. 20-Naharnet
Iran threatens to 'blow up heart' of Israel if attacked/Reuters
Alleged "Toronto 18" leader pleads guilty/Reuters 09/10/09
Iranian Judge Charges Converts with Apostasy and Propagation of Christian Faith/LCCC 09/10/09
Saudi Arabia, Syria urge unity cabinet in Lebanon-AFP
Berri to visit UAE to discuss deportation of Lebanese Shiites-Daily Star
Fadlallah holds talks with Iraqi delegates-Daily Star
Lebanese politicians weigh in on Damascus summit-Daily Star
Syrian-Saudi talks could spell end to Lebanon's languish-AFP
Why people only chose to see the worst in the Francophone Games-Daily Star
Insurance and finance sectors lambast Lebanese government, lack of support stifles growth-Daily Star
EU Commission: Fiscal policy in Lebanon unsustainable-Daily Star
Politicians stress Ain al-Remanneh clash nonpolitical-Daily Star
Officials tackle health in schools amid H1N1 concerns-Daily Star
Gemayel 'in good health' after heart surgery-Daily Star
Police in Nabatieh beaten by gang of youths-Daily Star
Beirut's francophone book fair celebrates 16th anniversary-Daily Star
Hundreds of Sudan refugees deported-Daily Star
UNESCO conference looks to strengthen media role in protecting environment-Daily Star
Lebanon's Armenians reject accord with Turkey-Daily Star
No quick fix from Damascus summit-Daily Star

Large-scale Plan against Motorcyclists in the Next 48 Hours
Naharnet/The army command and internal security forces leadership agreed to implement a large-scale plan in the next 48 hours to ban motorcycles during certain hours and make accurate checks on registration and identification papers. An informed judicial source told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat that the decision was made after several robberies by bikers and the killing on Tuesday of George Abou Madi outside his home in Ain el-Rummaneh by knife-yielding motorcyclists. Judicial and security sources are still investigating the incident. The judicial sources told the newspaper that only four people have been arrested in the case, adding authorities are questioning witnesses. A security source also told As Safir that all political parties have been asked not to cover up for the culprits, stressing that Hizbullah and Amal have been clear cut about putting an end to violations that harm civil peace and stability.
Beirut, 09 Oct 09, 11:47

Suleiman: Security Apparatuses Should Coordinate to End Any Disturbance
Naharnet/President Michel Suleiman stressed Thursday the "need for cooperation among the various security and military apparatuses to firmly end any security disturbances and arrest perpetrators."Suleiman's stance came during a meeting with Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud. The men discussed the general situation in the country and the latest security incidents. Beirut, 08 Oct 09, 16:12

Berri to Discuss Deportations on UAE Trip
Naharnet/Speaker Nabih Berri is to visit the United Arab Emirates next week to discuss the deportation of hundreds of Lebanese Shiites in recent months, a spokesman said on Thursday.
"The speaker will be meeting President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan and top officials to thank them for their support for Lebanon, especially in demining efforts in the south," Berri's media advisor Ali Hamdan told AFP. Berri, who heads the Shiite Amal movement which is allied with Hizbullah, will also discuss the deportations on his trip next Monday, Hamdan added.
Some of the expellees have said they were thrown out of the UAE over the past three months because they refused to spy on their compatriots and Hizbullah.
"Dozens among us were summoned by the security services in the UAE before being expelled and were asked to spy on fellow Lebanese in the Emirates, as well as Hizbullah members, or face deportation," Hassan Alayan, a spokesman for the group, said earlier this month. Alayan said the deported initially hoped to resolve the issue quietly but were publicizing their plight given the lack of action by Lebanese and UAE officials. He said the group plans to take legal action and will ask for compensation. Both the UAE embassy in Beirut and officials in Abu Dhabi have declined to comment on the case. Some 100,000 Lebanese currently live in the United Arab Emirates.(AFP) Beirut, 08 Oct 09, 16:50

Muallem: Saudi Arabia, Syria for Lebanese Stability and Unity Cabinet Despite Difference in Words
Naharnet/Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has said both Damascus and Riyadh want stability in Lebanon and formation of a national unity cabinet as a basis for stability.
"The objective of Syria and Saudi Arabia is stability in Lebanon. Both of us see that formation of a government of national unity leads to the pursued stability," Muallem told As Safir daily in remarks published Friday. Asked about the discrepancy between the Saudi and Syrian communiqués on the results of the meeting between King Abdullah and President Bashar Assad, Muallem said: "Each side released its own statement quickly. If you look closely, you find that the context of the two texts is similar on Lebanon, Iraq or Palestine even if words differ."
"We support agreement reached in Lebanon on the (formation of) a government based on the 15-10-5" formula, the minister said. "However, none of us will form Lebanon's cabinet. On the contrary, the Lebanese will form it … the ball is now in (the court of) Lebanese," Muallem added. He told As Safir that Abdullah's visit to Damascus "was successful" and agreement was reached on all topics discussed mainly Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and other Arab issues. Saudi Information Minister Abdul Aziz Khoja also stressed that the issue of government formation is for the Lebanese to solve. Hizbullah's al-Manar TV on Thursday quoted him as saying that the Abdullah-Assad summit didn't deal with the Lebanese issue in detail. Beirut, 09 Oct 09, 10:24

Separate Saudi, Syrian Communiqués Await Single Achievement in Lebanon
Naharnet/Discrepancy between the Saudi and Syrian communiqués on the results of the meeting between King Abdullah and President Bashar Assad has raised doubts about the summit's impact on Lebanon. The Saudi Press Agency said Thursday the two leaders stressed the importance of reaching unity and stability in Lebanon "through consolidating consensus between brothers in Lebanon and speeding up formation of a national unity cabinet." As for the Syrian news agency, SANA, it said in a press release that the two leaders underlined "the importance of reaching consensus among Lebanese and finding points of agreement through the formation of a national unity government as a cornerstone of stability, unity and strength."
Al-Liwaa daily said Lebanon could witness a new period of security and stability similar to the post-Taef stage in the 1990s after the two communiqués stressed on Thursday the importance of stability in Lebanon. Although Abdullah and Assad called for formation of a national unity cabinet, the discrepancy between the two texts made Lebanese officials cautious about the results of the summit. Most of them refused jumping to conclusions. Majority and opposition sources are now waiting for conclusions on the results of the summit.
Informed majority sources told Naharnet that the summit was "productive and not empty." Caretaker PM Fouad Saniora described the joint communiqué as "good" and told An Nahar that the statement includes sober words and respects Lebanon's independence and sovereignty." Opposition sources told An Nahar that the results of the summit on the Saudi-Syrian track were positive. However, they said there was no unified initiative on Lebanon, adding that cabinet formation requires local efforts and the results of the meeting between Abdullah and Assad need around 3-4 days to materialize. Beirut, 09 Oct 09, 09:40

Jabal Mohsen-Bab Tabbaneh Tension as Mufti Accuses Foreign Sides of Involvement in Inerga Attacks
Naharnet/Tension has returned to the rival Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhoods in the northern port city of Tripoli as Mufti Sheikh Malek al-Shaar sought to appease fears over rocket attacks. He denied on Friday media reports that several Inerga-type rocket-propelled grenades hit Jabal Mohsen, saying only one landed in the area. Speaking to Voice of Lebanon radio station, al-Shaar said investigation revealed that the rocket was not fired from a residential area in Tripoli. The Tripoli Mufti believed that the Inerga attack came as a result of Syrian-Saudi rapprochement adding some foreign parties reject improved ties between Damascus and Riyadh and don't want stability in Tripoli. Beirut media said that on Thursday three Inergas hit Jabal Mohsen targets causing material damage only. The neighborhood's residents blocked all roads leading to Jabal Mohsen with burning tires to condemn the attacks.
On Wednesday, eight people were wounded when an Inerga slammed a café in Jabal Mohsen. That attack was followed by a hand grenade blast near al-Nasseri mosque in Bab al-Tabbaneh. Beirut, 09 Oct 09, 12:31

Saniora: Issue of Deported Lebanese Should be Solved Diplomatically
Naharnet/Caretaker Prime Minister Fouad Saniora said Friday that the issue of Lebanese nationals deported from the UAE should be solved "diplomatically." Following a meeting with UAE Ambassador Rahma al-Zouabi, Saniora added that the issue should be resolved through the proper channels. More than 300 Lebanese — mostly Shiites — have been forced to leave the Emirates over the past three months. Most of those deported said UAE authorities asked them to inform on fellow Lebanese Shiites living in the country and on Hizbullah. On Thursday's summit between Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar Assad, Saniora backed efforts to improve inter-Arab ties and criticized those trying to undermine the outcome of the talks. The caretaker premier also condemned the latest security incidents in Lebanon. Beirut, 09 Oct 09, 14:14

No Saudi Envoy Expected in Beirut, Jumblat Advises Lebanese Not to Miss Golden Opportunity
Naharnet/Top Lebanese leaders had different points of views on the Saudi-Syrian summit as MP Walid Jumblat advised the Lebanese to "benefit from the golden opportunity" and form a national unity cabinet. Jumblat told As Safir daily that he and Speaker Nabih Berri had been eagerly waiting for the meeting between Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Asked if the article in the communiqué on Lebanon was enough, Jumblat said: "It is enough. It is now up to us as Lebanese not to put obstacles and benefit from the golden opportunity … and speed up our moves because some local, regional and international powers want to thwart the Syrian-Saudi gathering." Sources close to President Michel Suleiman told As Safir that the head of state was relieved over the results of the summit. Caretaker PM Fouad Saniora described the joint Saudi-Syrian communiqué as "good" and told An Nahar that the statement includes sober words and respects Lebanon's independence and sovereignty." PM-designate Saad Hariri's sources didn't make any comments on the results of the summit. However, a Lebanon First bloc MP told As Safir that cabinet formation is a "Lebanese issue."As Safir said the two regional powerhouses will now kick off consultations to hold another summit to discuss bilateral ties and other Arab issues. Diplomatic sources ruled out to An Nahar the possible visit of any Saudi envoy to Lebanon. But reports said that opposition officials could visit Damascus to be briefed on the summit's results. Beirut, 09 Oct 09, 11:03

Iran to "blow up heart" of Israel if attacked: official Module body
TEHRAN (Reuters) -09/10/09
 Iran would "blow up the heart" of Israel if it was attacked by the Jewish state or the United States, a Revolutionary Guards official was quoted Friday as saying.
"Even if one American or Zionist missile hits our country, before the dust settles, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," Mojtaba Zolnour said, according to IRNA news agency.Zolnour is a deputy representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the elite Guards force. Iranian officials have previously said Tehran would retaliate in event of an Israeli or U.S. attack. Earlier this year, a senior commander said Iranian missiles could reach Israeli nuclear sites. Israel is believed to be the only nuclear-armed Middle East state. Israel has not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to end a dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions, echoing U.S. policy, although Washington is engaged in a drive to resolve the issue through direct talks with Tehran. The West suspects the Islamic state is covertly seeking to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. "The Zionist regime and the United States cannot risk attacking Iran," Zolnour said in the holy Shi'ite city of Qom on Thursday, citing Iranian military and technological advances, IRNA reported. Iran refers to Israel as the "Zionist regime." At talks in Geneva on October 1, Iran agreed with six world powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- to give U.N. experts access to a newly-disclosed uranium enrichment plant south of Tehran. Iran and Western powers described talks as constructive and a step forward. However, underlying tension was highlighted before the meeting when Iran test-fired missiles with ranges that could put Israel and regional U.S. bases within reach. The Geneva talks are expected to win Iran a reprieve from tougher U.N. sanctions, although Western powers are likely to be wary of any attempt by Tehran to buy time to develop its nuclear program. Senior cleric Ahmad Khatami, leading Friday prayers in Tehran, said the meeting represented a "victory" for Iran. "The Geneva conference was a very successful one and amounted to a victory for the Islamic Republic," he told worshippers. "Up until the conference they were constantly talking about sanctions and suspension, but when the conference was held there was no talk of either sanctions or suspension," he said, referring to demands that Iran halt sensitive nuclear work. World powers at the next round of talks aim to press Iran for a freeze on expansion of enrichment as an interim step toward a suspension that would bring it major trade rewards. Iran has repeatedly rejected such demands.
(Reporting by Hashem Kalantari; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Samia Nakhoul)
 

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to mixed reviews
By Wojciech Moskwa
OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament, in a surprise award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism.
The decision to bestow one of the world's top accolades on a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But critics -- especially in parts of the Arab and Muslim world -- called its decision premature.
Obama's press secretary woke him with the news before dawn and the president felt "humbled" by the award, a senior administration official said.
When told in an email from Reuters that many people around the world were stunned by the announcement, Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, responded: "As are we."
The first African-American to hold his country's highest office, Obama, 48, has called for disarmament and worked to restart the stalled Middle East peace process since taking office in January.
"Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said in a citation.
While the decision won praise from statesmen like Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev, both former Nobel laureates, it was also attacked in some quarters as hasty and undeserved.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, said the award was premature at best.
"Obama has a long way to go still and lots of work to do before he can deserve a reward," said Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri. "Obama only made promises and did not contribute any substance to world peace. And he has not done anything to ensure justice for the sake of Arab and Muslim causes."
"EMBARRASSING JOKE"
Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, said: "He doesn't deserve this prize. All these problems -- Iraq, Afghanistan -- have not been solved...The man of 'change' hasn't changed anything yet."
Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing "joke."
But the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, welcomed it and expressed hope that Obama "will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East."
Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland rejected suggestions from journalists that Obama was getting the prize too early, saying it recognized what he had already done over the past year.
"We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is trying to do," he told a news conference.
The committee said it attached "special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons," saying he had "created a new climate in international politics."
Without naming Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, it highlighted the differences in America's engagement with the rest of the world since the change of administration in January.
"Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.
"Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts," it said, and the United States was playing a more constructive role in tackling climate change.
Obama laid out his vision on eliminating nuclear arms in a speech in Prague in April. But he was not the first American president to set that goal, and acknowledged it might not be reached in his lifetime.
He is negotiating arms cuts with Russia, and last month dropped plans to base elements of a U.S. anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow had seen the scheme as a threat, despite U.S. assurances it was directed against Iran.
On other pressing issues, Obama is deliberating whether to send more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and is still searching for breakthroughs on Iran's disputed nuclear program and on Middle East peace.
Israel's foreign minister said on Thursday there was no chance of a peace deal for many years. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters: "The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won 'the Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'."
At home, Obama's popularity is flagging under the pressure of rising unemployment and a divisive, sometimes bitter debate over his healthcare reform plans.
Abroad, he is still widely seen around the world as an inspirational figure.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been tipped as a favorite for the prize, told Reuters that Obama was a deserving candidate and an "extraordinary example."
Obama's uncle Said Obama told Reuters by telephone from the president's ancestral village of Kogelo in western Kenya: "It is humbling for us as a family and we share in Barack's honor... we congratulate him."
Obama is the third senior U.S. Democrat to win the prize this decade after former Vice President Al Gore won in 2007 along with the U.N. climate panel and Jimmy Carter in 2002.
The prize worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million) will be handed over in Oslo on December 10.
(Additional reporting by Oslo newsroom, Kamran Haider in Pakistan, Mohammed Assadi, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Mark Denge in Nairobi, Jason Webb in Spain; writing by Mark Trevelyan, editing by Janet McBride)

In the balance
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/967/re63.htm
By: Lucy Fielder
Al-Ahram Weekly
Between optimism and caution, the Lebanese hope a government will soon be formed. Meanwhile, the ice between Riyadh and Damascus is melting. reports from Beirut
This week's expected meeting between Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Saudi King Abdullah raised hopes that a Lebanese government would soon be formed. With the former backing the opposition led by Hizbullah and the latter Saad Al-Hariri's parliamentary majority, the two powerbrokers are seen as central to breaking -- some would also say causing -- the nearly four-month impasse.
Another positive and apparently related development was a meeting between Prime Minister- designate Al-Hariri, who heads the Sunni Future Bloc, and popular Christian leader Michel Aoun, whom the majority accuses of hindering a deal on a national unity government with his tough demands vis-à-vis the number of ministries given to his Free Patriotic Movement. After that meeting, Aoun said an agreement on a government would be announced soon.
But although optimism hit a high, analysts were also cautious. "There are some positive indications, but it's impossible to bet on a time when a government will be formed," said George Alam, a columnist for the leftist As-Safir newspaper. Regional events usually decide events in Lebanon more than the local actors, so the mood can change overnight. The Lebanese were generally gloomy a few weeks ago when Al-Hariri stepped down in protest against what he viewed as the opposition's unreasonable demands.
News of the proposed visit followed a visit by Al-Assad to Jeddah last week. Syria and Saudi Arabia have long vied for regional influence, but their relationship went into deep freeze after Saudi Arabia, like its US allies, blamed Damascus for the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri. Syria, which was pressured to end its military involvement after that killing, denies the charge. The four-month vacuum in the Grand Serail has confirmed to many that Damascus remains the strongest hand in Lebanon, although Riyadh's role too is important.
US overtures to Syria seem to be behind the rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh. "King Abdullah would not go to Damascus without Washington's green light," Alam said, pointing out that former Syrian ambassador Faisal Mokdad visited Washington the week before.
Iran, Hizbullah's key ally, also appeared to witness a breakthrough with Washington last week, with chief negotiator William Burns meeting his counterpart on the sidelines of talks in Geneva -- the highest level bilateral contact between the two foes since the Iranian revolution of 1979.
In Alam's estimation, there are two main obstacles to forming a government. The primary one is security, with Hizbullah demanding behind-the-scenes guarantees that the president, prime minister and security services will protect its arms and resistance role in the south, he said. "The Americans insist on having a main role in building the army and helping the Internal Security Forces. This makes Hizbullah fear that they are preparing to make some future moves against its weapons."
Enter the drawn-out row over the Telecommunications Ministry, which has both a security and a financial aspect, he said. One of Aoun's demands, which the majority rejects, is that his son-in-law Gebran Bassil retains control of the ministry. A crackdown on Hizbullah's private telecommunications network sparked retaliation in May 2008 by the armed Shia group, which briefly took over western Beirut with its allies. "So it is important for the opposition to keep telecommunications," Alam said. "It also has to do with the international court investigation [into Al-Hariri's killing]. It's not that they want to block it, but to stop it being politicised, which it already has been." The ministry is also highly lucrative for the treasury, and therefore high-profile.
Aside from security, Al-Hariri's fraught relations with Syria are the other problem, Alam said. "Al-Hariri can't be in the Grand Serail without opening a new page with Syria," he said. "If there was a deal between the Al-Hariri family and Damascus, and security guarantees for Hizbullah on the other, forming a government would suddenly become very easy. Bassil and the issue of the portfolios would be forgotten immediately."
All sides currently agree on a 15- 10-5 formula that grants the majority 15 seats, the opposition 10 and Suleiman five ministers; the majority and the opposition would respectively be denied an absolute majority and veto power. Suleiman holds the decisive votes, but it is widely expected that one of his ministers would in fact be an opposition figure.
Although regional concerns come first, there are other local elements. Aoun, who won 27 seats in the June elections, is by far the most popular single Christian leader; as such he is demanding five ministries. But the anti-Syrian majority is keen to prove that it also represents the Christians in Lebanon's sectarian political system. Its Maronite figures, though many, are splintered. The most prominent, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, mustered five seats in the election and is a fierce opponent of Aoun.
"The loudest voice of all is that of Samir Geagea, who is now making use of all his time to restructure the Lebanese Forces and to restore their role as a semi- formal army although no weapons are apparent until now. But the doctor [Geagea] himself will not be able to halt his ally's crawl into Damascus if Saudi Arabia says so," Fidaa Al-Itani wrote in the pro-opposition Al-Akhbar newspaper this week.
"In so far there is an internal struggle, it's a Maronite-Maronite struggle," Alam said. "Those other leaders are seeing Aoun's demands and saying 'We want what he's getting.'"
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Gemayel 'in good health' after heart surgery
Friday, October 09, 2009
BEIRUT: Head of the Phalange Party Amine Gemayel underwent a minor heart surgery, the National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday. The NNA report added that Lebanon’s former president was recovering and in good health after leaving hospital Friday. – National News Agency

Politicians stress Ain al-Remanneh clash nonpolitical
By Elias Sakr /Daily Star staff
Friday, October 09, 2009
BEIRUT: While investigations into Tuesday’s Ain al-Remmaneh clashes intensified on Thursday, the security situation remained fragile in the northern city of Tripoli after a grenade was thrown for the second time in as many days at the Al-Ashkar coffee shop in Jabal al-Tabbaneh. Thursday’s attack injured 10 people, raising the the total number of wounded to 18.
Military Prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr ordered the Lebanese Army intelligence services to intensify their investigations into the Ain al-Remmaneh clashes. Four detainees suspected to be involved in the attack, which occurred late Tuesday night.
Georges Abu Madi, 31, was killed and four others wounded when violence pitted youths from the mainly Shiite district of Shiyyah against residents of the nearby Christian area of Ain al-Remmaneh. According to a judicial report, Saqr asked to bring in witnesses who might be useful to the course of investigations.
A well-informed judiciary source told The Daily Star Thursday only four people had been arrested so far and that investigations are ongoing to determine the identity of Abu Madi’s killers.
The source added that the detainees provided security forces with “insightful information” regarding the murder case.
Saqr informed Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar during a phone conversation that the Ain al-Remmaneh case was “temporarily” under the jurisdiction of the military court as the army intelligence is entitled to carry out investigations. He said the case would be transferred to the specialized courts upon the conclusion of investigations.
Meanwhile, in Tripoli, 10 people were wounded when the Al-Ashkar coffee shop in Jabal Mohsen was for the second time this week targeted by a rocket-propelled grenade.
On Wednesday night, eight people were wounded, one seriously, in a grenade explosion targeting the same coffee shop; the blast was followed shortly afterward by a second grenade explosion in the nearby district of Bab al-Tebbaneh.
Tripoli was the scene last year of deadly sectarian clashes bet­ween Sunni supporters of Leba­non’s parliamentary majority and rivals from the Alawite community supported by Syria.
The Ain al-Remmaneh killing sparked fear of incidents similar to the events of May 7, 2008, when bloody clashes broke out between pro-government and opposition gunmen in Beirut and the Chouf. For the second day in a row on Thursday, Lebanese political parties urged the Lebanese Army as well as judicial authorities to disclose the details of the Ain al-Remmaneh incident. President Michel Sleiman stressed during talks with Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud the need for coordination between security forces and the army to confront security breaches and to arrest and hand the perpetrators over to the judiciary.
Najjar stressed that no political cover would be granted to those implicated in the clash.
The minister added that the real motives behind the incident should be revealed.
“We cannot afford to delay the probe,” he said. Meanwhile, Hizbullah and the Amal Movement issued a joint statement condemning the “painful” incident and urging security forces and judicial authorities to disclose the details of the event in order to preserve Lebanon’s stability. “All parties should bear their national responsibilities, preserve coexistence and work in favor of the country’s best interests,” the statement said.
The statement also criticized all those “seeking” to provoke sectarian strife, adding that “impulsive attitudes” do not serve Lebanon’s interests. “The incident was personal rather than politically or religiously motivated,” it said. On Thursday, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said the incident would not be another Ain al-Remmaneh bus incident, referring to a 1975 attack in which gunmen from the right-wing Phalange Party killed Palestinians riding a bus in the neighborhood. The incident is considered the spark of Lebanon’s 15-year Civil War. Al-Hayat newspaper on Thursday published remarks by MPs who quoted Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri as saying during parliamentary consultations on Wednesday that the group which entered Ain al-Remmaneh “came from [the southern suburb of] Burj al-Barajneh to drink and gamble,” before fighting broke out between residents and the group.
The paper added that Berri told his visitors that “the incident was a personal one but this does not justify what happened particularly since the victim was an innocent bystander.”
Both opposition and majority Christian party leaders, including Aoun and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, had denied on Wednesday that the reasons behind the incident were political. FPM MP Ibrahim Kanaan called Thursday for “severe judicial and security actions to arrest and prosecute the assailants.” Similarly, Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt was quoted in remarks published by An-Nahar newspaper on Thursday as calling on all parties “not to jump to quick conclusions that aim to instigate sectarian tension because the clash is most probably a personal incident.” Jumblatt added that the security situation in Tripoli raised questions with regard to their timing and the reasons behind them as they coincided with Saudi King Abdullah’s visit to Syria – a visit that he said could harm many domestic and external forces.

Lebanon's Armenians reject accord with Turkey
By Josie Ensor and Sam Tarling
Daily Star staff
Friday, October 09, 2009
BEIRUT: Lebanese Armenian community leaders have drawn up a petition condemning the accord to be signed Saturday between Armenia and Turkey, accusing Armenian President Serge Sarkisian of dismissing past suffering caused by the long-standing foe. Sarkisian received a frosty reception when he met with leaders of the Lebanese Armenian community this week during a whistle-stop diplomatic visit to Beirut. The president met with political and religious figures for a conference at Metropolitan Palace Hotel in east Beirut Tuesday, along with representatives from surrounding Arab countries, Iran and Cyprus, to gather support for Armenia formally warming ties with Turkey.
Sarkisian was in Lebanon on a scheduled stop as part of his “pan-Armenian” tour, which included the US, France and Russia, in a bid to persuade anxious Armenian exiles that peace with Turkey does not mean forgetting what they call a genocide in which 1.5 million perished. Lebanon’s Armenian Tashnag party and other blocs were said to be unhappy with the proposed deal set to be signed this weekend in Switzerland, a spokeswoman from the Armenian Embassy in Beirut told The Daily Star Thursday. The spokeswoman, who did not wish to be identified, referred to the reaction at the conference as “not good at all.” Sarkisian has faced an uphill task in talks with community leaders in Lebanon as all the major political parties – which wield considerable influence in the delicate political system – are against the proposed accord with Turkey. “Sarkisian was not received well,” concurred Lebanon’s Tashnag-party representative Alice Boghossian, adding that delegates from the three main Armenian political parties were united in their opposition to the president’s proposal. “All who were present were on the same level,” she added. Boghossian is one of the 5.7 million Armenians who are living abroad, outnumbering by 2 million the country’s domestic residents. She told The Daily Star Thursday that many in the diaspora saw the step as contempt for the hardship Armenians suffered in World War I.
“The massacres were an attempt to wipe out [our people]. My grandfather and grandmother were killed there. If they were still alive Armenia would still be my homeland,” said Tashnag’s Boghossian. “The diaspora is a result of Turkey’s policies and therefore [Sarkisian] has a commitment to the millions of Armenians living abroad.” Armenian political parties want the Ottoman mas­sacres to be officially referred to as genocide, a term Turkey refutes, for the return of “occupied land” and Turkey to withdraw support from Azerbaijan with regards to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. “Armenia used to cover 300,000 square kilometers, now it is only 30,000. We are not opposed to peaceful relationships with countries that neighbor Armenia, far from it, but theses issues must be resolved before anything is singed,” said Boghossian. During his brief visit, Sarkis­ian said that “the current unnatural situation” between the two states suited neither of them. He added that the establishment of diplomatic ties and the opening of the border would “create a platform, a more or less bearable environment, for continued dialogue and negotiations.”
Tashnag MP Hagop Pakra­dounian, one of six Armenian deputies in Lebanon’s Parliament told the local New TV channel Wednesday that he was opposed to the “weak political stance of the Armenian president, especially with regards to the concessions to Turkey. “This issue concerns Armenians worldwide and not just those in Armenia,” he added. “We are not talking about a simple economic accord between two countries but a historic one that concerns each Armenian family, whatever its nationality.” Lebanon is one of few places where Armenian migrants enjoy political representation with some 150,000 Armenians living in the country. Mostly concentrated in the east Beirut municipality of Burj Hammoud, they make up 4 percent of the population.
The chilled reception at the conference came a day after thousands of angry protesters demonstrated outside the president’s hotel on his arrival. Hundreds of riot police and soldiers surrounded the hotel as demonstrators swarmed the area, waving placards reading: “We will struggle,” and “We will not forget,” in reference to the killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915, which has been the main stumbling block to reconciliation. Sarkisian arrived in Russia Wednesday to conclude the weeklong tour, where he was met with a warmer reception than preceding stops in the US, France and Lebanon.

Iranian Judge Charges Converts with Apostasy and Propagation of Christian Faith
Washington, D.C. (October 08, 2009) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on October 7 an Iranian judge charged Maryam and Marzieh with ‘crimes’ of apostasy and propagation of the Christian faith. They could face life imprisonment if convicted of apostasy.
Elam ministries told ICC that Maryam and Marzieh were unexpectedly taken to appear before the court yesterday morning.
In a positive development, their case has now been transferred from the revolutionary court to the regular courts after the judge dropped the earlier charge of anti-state activities. Maryam, Marzieh and their lawyer are pleased with this development.
Maryam and Marzieh were detained on March 5, 2009. The Iranian officials accused them of ‘anti-state activities’ following their conversion from Islam to Christianity. During their appearance before the revolutionary court on August 9, they told the court that they would not recant their faith in Christ. For the report on their court appearance, see: http://www.persecution.org/suffering/pressdetail.php?presscode=325
Iranian officials sent Maryam and Marzieh to the infamous Evin prison where they have endured mistreatment, including solitary confinement and deprivation of medical attention. Both of them are in poor health. On October 4, Maryam suffered severe food poisoning and was given medical attention after much insistence.
In an interview with the Voice of America Persian News Network, Maryam and Marzieh’s lawyer said, “My clients are not prepared to lie about their faith under any condition.”
ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa and the Middle East, Jonathan Racho, said, “We welcome the move by the Iranian court to drop the charges of anti-state activities against Maryam and Marzieh. We urge Iranian officials to drop charges of apostasy and propagation of Christianity, as well. As party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran has an obligation to respect the right of Maryam and Marzieh to follow the religion of their choice.”
Please continue to pray for the release of Maryam and Marzieh. Also pray for improvement of their health.
# # #
You are free to disseminate this news story. We request that you reference ICC (International Christian Concern) and include our web address, www.persecution.org. ICC is a Washington-DC based human rights organization that exists to help persecuted Christians worldwide. ICC provides Awareness, Advocacy, and Assistance to the worldwide persecuted Church. For additional information or for an interview, contact ICC at 800-422-5441.

Alleged "Toronto 18" leader pleads guilty
TORONTO (Reuters) - A man described by prosecutors as the leader of a group that planned al Qaeda-style bombings of Toronto landmarks in 2006, pleaded guilty on Thursday to bomb charges, the fifth member of the so-called "Toronto 18" group to have admitted guilt or to have been found guilty.
Zakaria Amara, 23, of Toronto, pleaded guilty in a Brampton, Ontario, court to charges of participating in the activities of a terrorist group and planning explosions likely to cause serious bodily harm or death, Canada's public prosecutor said in a statement.
He was one of a group of 18 men and youths arrested in a police sting three years ago.
The group allegedly tried to buy three tons of explosives from undercover police officers, and planned to use truck bombs and remote detonators in a plot similar to the July 2005 London Underground bombings.
Prosecutors say members of the group had hoped the attacks -- targets included a military base, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the Toronto offices of Canada's spy agency -- would prompt Canada to pull its military out of Afghanistan.
Since the arrests, charges against seven members of the group were dropped, which initially sparked media speculation that authorities had overstretched to lay high-profile charges with little hard evidence. But five others have since either entered guilty pleas or been convicted. Two of these have received custodial sentences ranging from two to seven years, after receiving credit for time served. Reports say that Amara is expected to face a stiffer sentence due to his leadership role in the group.
The Globe and Mail newspaper said on Thursday that Amara will face life in prison, with little leniency likely to be shown.
His guilty plea came as a surprise, as he had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trials for the remaining six accused have yet to begin.
(Reporting by Cameron French; editing by Peter Galloway)
 

Suicide Bombing as Worship
Dimensions of Jihad
by Denis MacEoin
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2009, pp. 15-24
http://www.meforum.org/2478/suicide-bombing-as-worship
http://www.meforum.org/2478/suicide-bombing-as-worship
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Many motives are cited for suicide bombings, from religious sanctification to revenge for Western foreign policy to hatred of Israel, but one thing ties them together: the boast that Muslims love death, whereas their enemies love life. From killing the infidel enemy through suicide attacks, to allowing the subordinate female to participate in suicide attacks, a pattern emerges. And just as honor killings are a perversion of the most basic of human ties, so love for martyrdom takes societies into a direct relationship with the darkest side of human nature. In trying to explain this, it may be feasible to identify routes to a possible solution.
Origins

Iranian Hossein Fahmideh was the first suicide bomber. He threw himself under an Iraqi tank with a grenade in his hand during the Iran-Iraq war. In this poster, Ayatollah Khomeini looks down on the 13-year-old suicide bomber. Fahmideh was made a national hero, and following his death, thousands of young Iranians carrying "keys to paradise" walked and ran across minefields, killing themselves for God and the Islamic regime.
Since the 1980s, killing oneself deliberately has become the most popular method of attacking and killing one's enemies in countries including Iraq and Afghanistan, in territories such as Chechnya or the West Bank and Gaza, and even in Western countries such as the United States and Great Britain. It was a real-life Shi'i fanatic, a thirteen-year-old boy called Hossein Fahmideh, who set things moving in 1981 when he died with a grenade in his hand, throwing himself under a tank during the Iran-Iraq war. He was followed by thousands of young Iranians carrying "keys to paradise," who walked and ran across minefields, ripping their bodies apart for God and the Islamic regime.[1] Two years later, the first suicide attack occurred against a Western target when a bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the lobby of the American embassy in Beirut. Apart from himself, he killed 63 people: 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans, and 14 visitors. Iran denied all involvement in the attack, but its protégé, Hezbollah, soon claimed responsibility, and it was subsequently established that the killings had been approved and financed by senior Iranian officials. The Iranian role in many subsequent suicide bombings has been crucial, given the existence of a clerical elite that inherited a deeply-embedded Shi'i cult of martyrdom, whose traditions of flagellation, public weeping, passion plays, martyrdom sermons, and hagiographies of martyrs were pushed into overdrive after the revolution of 1979.
An Islamic Paradox
By 2008, 1,121 suicide bombers had carried out attacks in Iraq, killing on a massive scale. With the exception of Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers used the tactic, suicide bombing has become an almost exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Whether religiously observant or driven by other motives, the bombers have been Muslims, regardless of their country of origin. Even Muslims raised and educated in non-Muslim countries (like Britain's 7/7 bombers) and exposed to cultures without overt jihadi propaganda have put on explosive belts and gone to their deaths in order to kill nonbelievers. Apart from their Islamic roots, these terrorists display a wide range of characteristics. Many have been young men, some of whom were mentally disabled, while others were very bright, some uneducated, others university graduates; a growing number are women, mostly young, some old, some virgins, others pregnant or mothers. Many have belonged to terrorist groups such as Hamas and have been indoctrinated in Islamist thought, anti-Semitism, or general hatred of the West. Others have been volunteers seeking to expiate sins or retrieve the honor of their families.
Yet suicide bombing involves a paradox within Islam. On the one hand, laws relating to jihad unambiguously state that fighters must not take the lives of noncombatants, such as women, children, the sick, or the elderly. At the same time, anyone who dies while fighting non-Muslims is considered a martyr and guaranteed the highest rank in paradise. How do Islamists get round this problem? Some may shut their eyes and get on with it, but others come face to face with the paradox by dividing the problem into bite-size pieces. Clerics sanctify the bombers in their sermons, organizations including Hamas and Islamic Jihad identify and celebrate them as fighters in the jihad, and foreign donors provide aid that is siphoned off to the families of the martyrs.[2]
Whatever the private motivation of the suicide bomber, his or her action is rooted in much broader national, communal or, above all, religious demands, pressures, and desires. These range from religious convictions and edicts to concepts of holy war and martyrdom to conflicts over issues of shame and honor to social constructs of sexuality. Most importantly, the bombings have nothing to do with suicide. Nor are they described as such by those who send the bombers out and those who immolate themselves. To make it easier to understand what modern Islamist suicide bombing is about, we need to examine its historical background, its religious/nationalist role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its psychological and cultural roots in the Arab and Islamic interpretation of women, sexuality, shame, and honor.
World of the Martyr
In a speech at his headquarters in Ramallah on December 18, 2001, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat proclaimed he was willing to sacrifice seventy martyrs to bring about the death of a single Israeli. [3] His audience replied "Millions of martyrs are already marching to Jerusalem." They meant suicide bombers, of course. But nobody present used the term, since that is not how Arabic speakers refer to them.
Preeminently, the bombers are referred to as "martyrs" (shuhada', sing. shahid) or "those who sacrifice themselves" (fida'iyun, sing. fida'i). These men and women—most in their teens and early twenties[4]—"die a martyr's death" or "blow themselves up" or carry out "martyrdom operations" ('amaliyat istishhadiya). They do not commit suicide for suicide is a sin.[5] But killing oneself in order to harm non-Muslims is an act of deep piety. This seeming contradiction has been examined by Daniel Pipes. "The Qur'an," he writes, "does tell Muslims, 'Do not kill yourselves' and warns that those who disobey will be 'cast into the fire.' The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said that a suicide cannot go to paradise. Islamic laws oppose the practice." [6] He then points out that the prohibition against killing oneself has, in fact, been very effective, as is evidenced by the rarity of suicide in Muslim countries. There is, however, another side to this story, in that the same action, when performed as a means of furthering jihad, elevates the individual to the rank of martyr.
There have been such martyrs in Islam almost from the founding of the religion. Whereas Christian and Jewish martyrs without exception passively accepted death for their faith, most Muslim martyrs have given up their lives fighting as combatants in the holy war.[7] Even Sufis, members of the mystical fraternities in Islam, have embarked on jihad as individuals and groups. The warrior monk is a common figure in pre-modern Islam, and jihad scholar Michael Bonner has drawn attention to the important role played in war by religious leaders and scholars as preachers and as fighters.[8]

The figure of the martyr as a holy warrior (mujahid) who dies in battle and goes on to reap a heavenly reward above that of ordinary mortals is of central importance in the earliest period of Islam. Its ideal type is the fighter who engages in an action called inghimas, throwing himself recklessly at the enemy, even if he should be one man against a thousand. Doing this was seen as legitimate because the mujahid was seeking martyrdom and did not need permission from the leader of his army or unit.[9] Its legitimacy, even today, is derived from the fact that Muhammad himself often sent out individual fighters as "military expeditions" in and of themselves.[10] In the modern period, some scholars have argued that there is a close connection between inghimas and suicide bombing: "If, by immersing himself into enemy ranks, a fighter brings about his own death, such self-sacrifice is legally [in terms of Shari'a law] the same as bringing about his own death by his own hand. In this respect there is no legal difference between the direct hand of the self-detonating suicide fighter and the proxy hand of the outnumbered fighter entering the fray alone."[11] Gibril Haddad, a hard-line Wahhabi sheikh, writes that inghimas "must not be viewed as reckless self-destruction but as the highest valor and courage. More than that, as Abu Ayyub [a companion of Muhammad] indicated with his tafsir [interpretation] of al-Baqara 195 [Qur'an 2:195] before entering the fray at Constantinople and fighting to the death, they viewed inghimas as life itself."[12]
This again is a clear echo of the Islamist saying that Muslims "love death" whereas non-Muslims love life. This conceit seems to have begun during the great Arab conquests of the seventh century. In 633, just one year after the death of Muhammad, the Muslim general Khalid ibn al-Walid had entered Iraq in the first phase of the conquest of the Iranian Sassanid empire. Writing to Hormuz, the Persian governor of a frontier district, Dast Maysan, Walid proclaimed: "Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the jizya [tax], and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life."[13]
It is a long journey from 633 to the modern era, but Walid's boast still resonates in Islamist circles today. On May 25, 2001, the mufti of Jerusalem and "Palestine," Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, stated: "We tell [our enemies]: As much as you love life—the Muslim loves death and martyrdom. There is a great difference between him who loves the hereafter and him who loves this world. The Muslim loves death and [strives for] martyrdom."[14] Sabri is not alone. Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, has spoken in similar terms. In 2004, he said: "We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life, and we love death."[15] Others have spoken in much the same vein.[16] It is clear that the distinction is always religiously based and that Jewish love of life is transformed from a healthy and spiritual thing to an attitude to be disparaged.
This fixation with death as a state superior to life combines with martyrdom ideation to create the suicide bomber as someone who passes beyond traditional themes of death at the hands of the enemy to bring death to himself and the enemy in a single moment. In this unconventional form of fighting, the bomber no longer respects legal rulings that commit the mujahid to killing only enemy troops but makes death itself the arbiter of who should die or not. The innocent are not innocent; Muslim radicals are on record stating that non-Muslims are, by definition, not innocent.[17] The self-immolation of the martyr makes death universal. Yet the modern martyr is still deeply rooted in traditional typology.
Muhammad's Sayings and Actions
The Qur'an contains numerous exhortations to violent action[18] and promises a divine reward for those who die fighting in God's path, but it does not make martyrdom into the religious goal it soon became. It is in the literature of Muhammad's sayings and doings that warfare and martyrdom are emphasized together.
Both the Hadith—the vast corpus of "eyewitness" statements about what Muhammad did or said, second in holiness only to the Qur'an—and the earliest writings featuring the biography of Muhammad and his companions display a significant concern with fighting. The Hadith compilations invariably have a section entitled "The Book of Jihad," in which snippets from actual combat with non-Muslims jostle with instructions on how to wage war. The books of biography are originally called Kitab al-Maghazi,[19] the Book of Raids, meaning the raids and battles in which Muhammad was personally involved or which he ordered carried out. In other words, we are in a realm far less abstract than that of the Qur'an, on a landscape in which real men fought in real encounters with real enemies.
This is the world of the martyr, the ever-present battlefield in Muhammad's lifetime and in the years that followed when Arab armies clashed with their Byzantine, Persian, and other foes across North Africa, the Middle East, and far beyond. The warrior-martyr is born on these battlefields and in the martial deeds of Muhammad, not in the text of the Qur'an. The Qur'an prescribes violence against nonbelievers and sets jihad in motion, providing a context for the holy warrior; but that warrior only becomes flesh when riding out to battle beside Muhammad, and only takes on the mantle of martyrdom in death at the hands of the infidel and in the words of the prophet that confer that status on him and those that come in his train.
We read in the Sahih Muslim, one of the two most sacred texts after the Qur'an, of fighters picking up their swords and wading into battle:
The tradition has been narrated on the authority of 'Abdullah b. Qais. He heard it from his father who, while facing the enemy, reported that the Messenger of Allah said: Surely, the gates of Paradise are under the shadows of the swords. A man in a shabby condition got up and said; Abu Musa, did you hear the Messenger of Allah say this? He said: Yes. (The narrator said): He returned to his friends and said his farewells. Then he broke the sheath of his sword, threw it away, advanced with his sword towards the enemy and fought with it until he was slain.[20]
This behavior is very different from that of the Norse berserkers,[21] who entered battle in a rage, foaming at the mouth and laying waste everyone in their path. The mujahid in this and other hadith reaches a decision based on confirmation of Muhammad's promise of paradise. This echoes the cool, almost detached manner with which the modern suicide bomber goes to work. He or she may make a video in advance, in which a reasoned statement of justification and intent is provided for posterity. The sword has become a suicide belt, but the fighter is still a martyr. A famous hadith proclaims that "Paradise lies beneath the shades of swords" (al-Bukhari 4:73). Today, it lies beneath the shades of suicide belts.
Religion in the Jihad against Israel
Suicide bombers from Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades cannot be understood as creatures of Palestinian nationalism, as the spawn of the Palestine Liberation Organization or Black September. The religious war against Israel best explains the deep impulses that propel so many young Muslims to choose death for this cause. No other conflict engages international Islamic opinion like this one. "Palestine" has become a rallying cry for Muslims everywhere.
Benny Morris, a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict, correctly argues that it was religion rather than nationalism that inspired the 1948 invasion of Israel. He considers it a mistake to ignore the religious rhetoric that accompanied the 1948 assault by Arab armies. "The 1948 War, from the Arabs' perspective," he writes, "was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory."[22] The Muslim Brotherhood, the mufti of Egypt, [23] Egypt's King Farouk, King 'Abdullah of Transjordan, and many others spoke of a holy war, a jihad against the Jews. It was not a purely nationalist struggle then, nor is it today. The "[violence] did not emerge only from 'modern' nationalist passions; it also drew on powerful religious wellsprings. Nothing, it seemed, could mobilize the Palestinian Arab masses for action more readily than Muslim religious rhetoric and symbols."[24]
Little has changed since the 1940s. With the rise of radical Islam and the expansion of violent recourse, Arab irredentism has continued to have a religious focus, sometimes on "Palestine" and sometimes on the umma, the abstract nation of all Muslims. And it is as Muslims more than as Arabs (or Iranians or Afghans) that today's leading enemies of Israel view the conflict.
Palestinian violence against Israelis is one of the earliest expressions of Islamic rage against modernity. Its most recent manifestation, Hamas, is, according to its 1988 Covenant, "an Islamic resistance movement."[25] Hamas is, in fact, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, still one of the leading forces of Islamic radicalism on the planet. Article one of the covenant starts as follows: "The Movement's program is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgment in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps." [26]
Female Suicide Bombers
In hard-line versions of the Islamic faith, unrelated men and women never meet, never so much as exchange glances. Islamic society is patriarchal and, like other patriarchal societies, it diminishes the energies and abilities of its women. Palestinian society links the repression of women to a male need for honor. The "core of gender inequality in [Palestinian] society resides in patriarchal control and repression of female sexuality. … The control of female sexuality maintains male power, privileges and prerogatives. … Control of women is the most important, if not the only, component of the honor code left to men."[27] Sexuality and the honor code have played a major part in the recruitment of suicide bombers; but it is the emergence of the female bomber that is most intriguing, given that such women represent a challenge to conventional Islamic notions of female inferiority and Arab cultural demands for women to be restricted to their homes or dressed by Islamic standards.
A tiny number of women took part in jihad in the early years of Islam, but this practice seems to have been abandoned by the second generation or so. Nevertheless, some hadith do permit it, and Shari'a law rules that women may engage in jihad when, for example, the Muslim state comes under attack. In recent years, women have volunteered for membership in a range of terrorist outfits from the "black widow" bombers of Chechnya[28] to Kurdish rebels[29] to the "martyrs" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.[30]
Every suicide attack by women from 1985 to 2000 was motivated by secular goals. Since 2000, however, as Hamas has grown in importance, religiously-motivated female terrorists have carried out more than two-thirds of the suicide attacks by women.[31]
The religious leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, had originally restricted or denied women the right to take part in jihad operations:
In our Palestinian society, there is a flow of women towards jihad and martyrdom, exactly like the young men. But the woman has uniqueness. Islam sets some restrictions for her, and if she goes out to wage Jihad and fight, she must be accompanied by a male chaperon. We have no need for suicide operations by women now because preserving the nation's survival is more important.[32]
By 2004, however, Yasin had reversed his theological understanding of the matter, and stated: "Exactly when there is an invasion to the holy land, a Muslim woman is permitted to wage jihad and struggle against the enemy ... the Prophet would draw lots among the women who wanted to go out with him to make jihad. The Prophet always emphasized the woman's right to wage jihad."[33]
Yasin was, in part, motivated by existing notions of honor and shame, according to which a woman who is deemed to have done something shameful (in the sexual sense) may be killed by members of her family in order to expunge that shame.[34] Even though issues of shame and honor may have their roots in communal psychology rather than faith, it is a constant justification of "honor" killings and related crimes that the Qur'an and Shari'a legislation already demand punishments such as flogging or stoning for sexual crimes. At some point it seems to have dawned on Yasin that a dishonored woman might be cleansed of her "wrongdoing" and at the same time be employed as a living bomb capable of passing unsearched through male-controlled checkpoints in order to detonate herself in the midst of as many Jews as possible. According to Mira Tzoreff, a Middle East history specialist at Tel Aviv University:
An intensification of the shahidat [female martyrs] phenomenon is represented by the [2004] suicide of Rim Riashi at the Erez check post, not only as the married mother of two small children, but also because of the sanction she received by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Indeed, it was not long before it became clear that Rim Riashi had requested Yassin's sanction only after her relationship with a lover had … become a known matter. Thus, the act of istishhad [dying as a martyr] was the only way to remove the stain of dishonor from both herself and her family.[35]
How was the "stain of dishonor" manipulated to wear a religious stamp through the expiation of martyrdom?
Shame, Honor, and Martyrdom
Religious idealism cannot fully explain this desperation, this intense craving for a martyr's death among so many young Palestinians. But without a religious framework, it is highly unlikely that any of these women would seek to kill others through their own deaths. There might be "honor" killings and beatings, and some women would run away from their families, but there would be no suicide bombings. There seems to be an affinity here with two related drives in the Arab psyche that not only puts female suicide bombers into perspective but demonstrates important links between them and their male equivalents. One of these drives is the acute awareness of shame mentioned above, an emotion sharply contrasted with honor. Muslim societies are shame societies. This is noticeable in Arab countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh and several other places where honor resides in the family above all, and, in particular, in the women of the family or, more accurately, their sexual probity.
This is not to say that men do not suffer dishonor, but for them this is projected outwards, towards rivals or enemies and, of course, towards the women and sometimes towards the men they believe have compromised their honor.[36] The honor/shame dichotomy is responsible for the widespread practice of "honor" killings, something found in many parts of the Islamic world from Morocco to Pakistan, and always committed against women. Though these killings form no part of Islamic law and are not exclusive to the Muslim world, the vast majority do take place in Muslim countries where killers are seldom prosecuted.[37] That the Islamic clergy rarely condemn these practices as anti-Islamic provides them with a religious cover. Should a girl become pregnant outside marriage, or a wife commit adultery, or a daughter refuse an arranged marriage or even be seen outdoors with an unrelated boy, it becomes the inescapable duty of her father, husband, brothers, or cousins to kill her in order to restore the family's honor in the eyes of the local community. According to UNICEF, in 1999 more than two-thirds of all murders in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were "honor" killings.[38]
By transcending ordinary emotional ties and by putting on a cloak of religiosity, the female suicide bomber sets out to expunge the shame she feels on behalf of family, community, or nation, both by accepting death as a martyr and by inflicting death on others as a holy warrior. The bomber's victims may be non-Muslims who, by definition, have been "brought low" by Islam yet who persist in their arrogance by asserting equal status with Muslims or who surpass Muslims in one way or another. This humiliates the Muslim community, making it imperative that the non-Muslims be put back in their place or extinguished. In the past, this was done in conventional ways, through imprisonment, flogging, or decapitation. Similar punishments were used on deviant Muslims, apostates, and those who transgressed Shari'a law. But the use of suicide killing as a means of control is less easy to explain.
The idealization of sexual honor and sexual shame carries heavy symbolic weight outside the sphere of family relations. Jehoeda Sofer, author of Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies, quotes a Palestinian Arab as follows: "If the Arabs would have had war with the Israelis using [their] ***s, we would have defeated them easily. The Israelis are a bunch of feminine males who want to be and should be *** by the Arabs."[39]
Several years ago, Malise Ruthven, a British authority on Islam, pointed out that much Muslim outrage about The Satanic Verses was expressed in sexual language. Zaki Badawi, the late principal of the Muslim College and a moderate British Muslim, for example, wrote: "What [Rushdie] has written is far worse to Muslims than if he had raped one's own daughter. … It's like a knife being dug into you—or being raped yourself."[40] Ruthven suggests that Rushdie's crime was to enter the sacral space occupied by the Prophet: "That entry is perceived as a violation, as a kind of rape."[41]
When first the Christians and later the Jews ventured to turn their status as protected but inferior peoples upside-down, Muslim societies felt shame at their own weakness, at the possibility that the old world had disintegrated, never to return. It is a shame akin to what is felt when a woman "gets above herself" and rejects the "protection" of father, husband, or brother. Beyond that, it is a shame akin to being raped, in this case by Jews and Christians, deemed "women" in relation to "masculine" Islam. In all cases, the only restitution is death.
The suicide bomber enters this sphere of shame like a rapist and in doing so invades sacral territory. The Jews, as protected people, constitute a sphere that should be inviolate to Muslims; instead, the fida'i goes directly into Jewish space and there commits an ultimate act of rape, thereby restoring the masculinity of Muslim people. Even the female martyr, by throwing off her inferiority as a weak-bodied woman and exercising the courage of a man, rapes the Jews she slaughters.
Conclusion
Since the Qur'an commends violence and the Hadith literature is steeped in the blood of martyrs, killing and dying violently are not breaches of the moral code or infringements of divine law. They are, on the contrary, regarded as some of the highest achievements of Islamic spirituality. Asked who was the best of people, Muhammad replied, the "believer who fights in the path of God with his self and his property."[42] The martyr enjoys double the pleasure of paradise and dwells there in an abode superior to its other denizens.[43]
What can be done about this? For most Western countries, the Israeli option, to build a defensive barrier between us and the homes of the bombers, will not work. We can profile; we can infiltrate; we can discover and share intelligence; we can carry out targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders, trainers, and motivators; we can pinpoint and destroy terrorist training camps. Like the Israeli fence, constant vigilance will reduce the numbers of bombers, sometimes dramatically. But engaging the problem at the grassroots level is clearly more difficult because the phenomenon is so deeply entrenched in the cultures that produce the bombers, in the religious values, the sexual practices, and the shame and honor systems they inculcate. If we are to modify those cultures in a positive way, perhaps we have to introduce sanctions that punish countries dependent on Western aid every time a terrorist or suicide bomber from that country is identified. We have to make suicide bombing an affront to religion and a matter of great dishonor. Set beside a system of rewards for identifiable counterterrorism initiatives, above all, education programs designed to reject religious and social propaganda, this may set in motion new ways of altering the suicide mindset. But until such measures begin to bite and societies prone to this malaise start to shift toward moderation across the board, it is the intelligence and security services who will have to shoulder the burden of defense. There are no quick fixes, but there are long-term goals that we need to plan for now.
**Denis MacEoin is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
[1] "Children in the Service of Terror," Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch 2455, July 2009.
[2] The New York Times, Mar. 20, 2006.
[3] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, 2001.
[4] Vamik D. Volkan, "Suicide Bombers," Virginia University, accessed July 17, 2009.
[5] "Committing Suicide Is Not a Way Out," Islam Online, June 24, 2002.
[6] Daniel Pipes, "The [Suicide] Jihad Menace," The Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2001.
[7] Michael Bonner, "Martyrdom," Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton: Woodstock Publishers, 2006), chap 5.
[8] Ibid., chap. 7.
[9] Sheikh Gibril Fouad Haddad, "Inghimas In 'Suicide' Warfare," citing Mansur al-Buhuti, Kashshaf al-Qina, 2007, p. 1.
[10] Ibid., p. 3.
[11] Ibid., p. 12.
[12] Ibid., pp. 12-3.
[13] Abu Ja'far Muhammad al-Tabari, G. H. A. Juynboll, trans., The History of al-Tabari: The Conquest of Iraq, Southwestern Persia, and Egypt, vol. 2, p. 554.
[14] "The Highest Ranking Palestinian Authority Cleric: In Praise of Martyrdom Operations," Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch, no. 226, June 11, 2001.
[15] Marvin Hier, Abraham Cooper, and Leo Adler, "Waving the Flag of Hatred," Calgary (Can.) Herald, Aug. 16, 2006.
[16] Steven Stalinsky, "Dealing in Death," National Review Online, May 24, 2004.
[17] Daniel Pipes, "Can Infidels Be Innocents?" Daniel Pipes Blog, Aug. 7, 2005.
[18] "What Does the Religion of Peace Teach about … Violence," accessed July 17, 2009; Bonner, "The Quran and Arabia," Jihad in Islamic History, chap. 2.
[19] See, for example, Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, A. Guillaume, trans. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad "al-Waqidi," ed., Kitab al-ta'rikh wa 'l-maghazi (London: Marsden Jones, 1966).
[20] Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Misri, n.d.), chap. 41, hadith 4681.
[21] Benjamin Blaney, "The Berserker: His Origin and Development in Old Norse Literature," Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1972.
[22] Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 394.
[23] Ibid., pp. 394-5.
[24] Ibid., p. 12.
[25] The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Aug. 18, 1988, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, accessed July 6, 2009.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Cheryl Rubenberg, Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), p. 253.
[28] Lorenzo Vidino, "How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for Terror," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005, pp. 57-66.
[29] EU-Digest, July 17, 2005.
[30] Debra D. Zedalis, "Female Suicide Bombers," Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, June 2004; Yoram Schweitzer, "Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?" Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, 2006.
[31] Paige Whaley Eager, From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence (Aldershot, U.K. and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), p. 172.
[32] Maria Alvanou, "Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers: The Interplaying Effects of Islam, Nationalism and Culture," Strategic Research and Policy Center, National Defense College, Israel Defense Forces, Working Papers Series, paper no. 3, May 2007, pp. 26-7.
[33] Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers (Emmaeus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2003), p. 113.
[34] James Brandon and Salam Hafez, Crimes of the Community: Honor-based Violence in the UK (London: Centre for Social Cohesion, 2008), p. 41; Phyllis Chesler, "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?" Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 61-9.
[35] Mira Tzoreff, "The Palestinian Shahida," in Schweitzer, Female Suicide Bombers, p. 21.
[36] Daniel Pipes, "'Honor Killings' of Muslim Males in the West," Daniel Pipes Blog, updated July 25, 2009.
[37] "Case Study: 'Honour Killings' and Blood Feuds," Gendercide Watch, accessed July 17, 2009; Chesler, "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?"
[38] "UNICEF Executive Director targets violence against women," Information Newsline, Mar. 7, 2000.
[39] Arno Schmidt and Jehoeda Sofer, eds., Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies (Binghampton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 1992), p. 109.
[40] Malise Ruthven, A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam (London: The Hogarth Press, 1991), p. 29.
[41] Ibid., p. 31.
[42] Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), hadith 2578; Al-Islam.com, Mawsu'a al-hadith ash-sharif, accessed July 17, 2009.
[43] Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, book 52, hadith 48.

INTERVIEW with Osman Bakhach is the deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of Hizbut Tahrir (HT) in Lebanon.
Asia Times Online
Hizbut Tahrir's view on Lebanese politics
By Mahan Abedin
Osman Bakhach is the deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of Hizbut Tahrir (HT) in Lebanon. Prior to 2007 he was in the media office of HT Lebanon. He was born in 1960 in Tripoli, north Lebanon. He joined HT in 1977 when he was at high school. Bakhach completed his university studies in medical engineering and is currently the head of the biomedical engineering department at a major hospital in Beirut.
Hizbut Tahrir was founded in 1953 in Palestine by Sheikh Taqieddin Nabhani. Since then the party has spread all over the Muslim world and amongst Muslim communities in the West and according to conservative estimates it has hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. As a trans-national and Pan-Islamic party
HT is committed to re-establishing the Islamic Caliphate and as such it regards all the nation-states and regimes in the Muslim world to be illegitimate.
Mahan Abedin: What is HT's analysis of the recent Lebanese elections (June 2009) and its aftermath?
Osman Bakhach: Lebanese politics is intermixed with the regional politics of the Middle East, which, in turn, reflects the chess game of international politics and the major power's quest for domination and influence in the region. The June 2009 election was the latest episode which showed that Lebanon has never been a viable independent state since its creation by the colonial French in 1920. Lebanon is the place where conflicting political interests in the Middle East clash. Lebanese politics has always been shaped by regional and international players, and the latest election merely confirmed this fact.
Although the so-called 14 March coalition [led by Saad Hariri's Future Movement] won the elections they have been unable to form the government while the losers, the so-called March 8 coalition [led by Hezbollah] continue to wield their veto power, which is the continuation of the status quo forged by the Doha Agreement of May 2008. This balance of power - which flies in the face of notions of a national unity government - reflects competing geopolitical interests in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Lebanese people continue to put up with tough economic conditions and in fact their living conditions are steadily deteriorating.
MA: Conventional wisdom in the West regards the March 14 coalition as pro-Western and conversely views the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition as anti-Western. Does HT subscribe to this analysis?
OB: No, we don't. We consider both camps to be aligned with the West. On the surface the opposition is regarded as anti-Western because of its regional backers, namely Iran and Syria. Notwithstanding Syria's role as a major power-broker in Lebanon, we need to bear in mind that when Syria moved into Lebanon in 1975 it did so with the full backing of the United States government. Since then the Syrian role in Lebanon has been coordinated with that of the United States, and has fully served American interests.
MA: There has never been a conflict of interests between Syria and the United States in Lebanon throughout this period?
OB: Not a bit!
MA: What about Iran's strategic and ideological relationship with Hezbollah?
OB: Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran has striven to become the dominant player in the region. Iran has given full support to Hezbollah and recently even to Hamas. The question that we have for the Iranian regime, which claims to be Islamic and supportive of Islamic interests on a global scale, is where they stand vis-a-vis the American presence in the Middle East. Our position is that without active Iranian complicity, the United States would not have been able to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, and on that basis we don't see any conflict between Iran and America.
MA: Does that mean that you don't see a deep rift between Hezbollah's role in Lebanon and American interests in this country?
OB: We don't say that Hezbollah is fully aware of the grand games being played out in the Middle Eastern setting. Hezbollah has heroically resisted Israeli aggression in Lebanon. No one can deny the sincerity of their sacrifice. But at the end of the day Hezbollah is no more than an instrument in the hands of the Iranian and Syrian regimes in their complex strategic positioning and deal making with the Americans.
MA: But surely you can't deny the fact that the Americans wish nothing but ill-will towards Hezbollah. They would like nothing better than to see the group disarmed and, better still, disbanded altogether.
OB: The Americans will have no problem in disarming Hezbollah when the group's mission expires. For now and until further notice, Hezbollah is a useful instrument in the hands of the Iranian and Syrian regimes and ultimately the Americans' requirement to balance Israeli hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East.
MA: Most experts believe that American and Israeli interests in the Middle East are virtually indistinguishable and your analysis flies in the face of all conventional wisdom.
OB: Indeed! Israel is useful as a springboard for the Western colonial project. Let's not forget that Israel was created by the British to serve a distinct colonial agenda. With the eclipse of British colonial interests in the Middle East, the Israelis served US colonial interests. But we need to bear in mind that the US has vast interests stretching from North Africa to Central Asia, in the so-called Greater Middle East. In this vast geo-strategic space Israel is merely a small player and American interests go far and beyond securing the Zionist entity. This point has been underlined more brazenly in recent years by senior American politicians and strategists who are concerned that unconditional American support for Israel is damaging long-term American interests in the so-called Greater Middle East region. The bi-partisan Baker-Hamilton report (also known as The Iraq Study Group Report) of December 2006 was a case in point. Indeed, none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski [1] has openly called for the US Air Force to shoot down any Israeli planes crossing Iraqi air space to attack Iran.
MA: There is broad international support - in the form of United Nations resolutions - for the disarmament of Hezbollah. Where does HT stand on this issue?
OB: We place Hezbollah's weapons within the greater context of fighting the Israeli aggression. We maintain that Israel is an illegal and usurping entity and must be eliminated. In this regard any and every force that counters the Israeli threat is legitimate and we are against their disarmament. In short, we are against the disarmament of Hezbollah.
MA: But Hezbollah has shown a propensity to use its weapons against internal political actors in Lebanon. Where does HT stand on the armed conflict that erupted in Beirut and elsewhere in May 2008?
OB: Sadly, the events of May 2008 exposed the Achilles' heel of Hezbollah. Hezbollah suffers from myopic strategic vision. The events of May 2008 exposed Hezbollah's weakness and brought its dependence on Iranian and Syrian strategic maneuvering into sharp relief. We hope that Hezbollah learns from its mistakes and develops a more comprehensive long-term strategy. A strategy based upon the reversal of the colonial legacy of the Sykes-Picot mutilation of the Muslim nation. We maintain that any other vision is doomed to fail, and is no more than knee-jerk reaction to the rules imposed by the Western colonial order. From the Islamic perspective, nothing can justify Hezbollah sitting idle during the last Israeli aggression against Gaza in December-January 2009.
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MA: To what extent did the events of May 2008 heighten sectarian tensions in Lebanon?
OB: Not surprisingly, Hezbollah's blunder re-opened old wounds and divisions. We at Hizbut Tahrir completely reject sectarian notions of Shi'ite and Sunni, especially insofar as they militate against Islamic unity.
MA: How can you call it a blunder when you consider the fact that Hezbollah's armed intervention achieved the movement's goals, at least in the short-term? They managed to annul two
controversial government decisions and more importantly won the veto concession at Doha. Most people would say that is a resounding success.
OB: On the surface your analysis is trenchant. However, when you look at the reality and dynamics of Lebanese politics, the [Fouad] Siniora government did not have the ability to enforce the two decisions. They were just ink on paper. Hezbollah committed a strategic blunder to secure an empty tactical victory. It traded its reputation as a fearless and heroic anti-Israeli movement for a pyrrhic tactical victory. Even the Doha agreement did not give anything substantial to Hezbollah since Hezbollah has had a veto power all along.
MA: You mentioned earlier that HT rejects sectarianism in Lebanese politics. But does HT reject sectarianism on wider religious and ideological levels as well?
OB: HT categorically rejects any sectarian and nationalistic categories and descriptions. We refuse any such distinctions between Muslims. Our position is that such categorizations serve the interests of the enemies of Islam and the Muslim Umma [community]. It is no secret that the colonial West has used the "divide and conquer" strategy to split the Muslim nation into dozens of feuding mini-nations. The recent catastrophes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Palestine are vivid examples of this strategy.
MA: How does HT propose to bridge the deep religious divide between Shi'ite Muslims and Sunni Muslims?
OB: We have successfully bridged this gap within our organization. We have Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in our ranks. Indeed, the chairman of HT's Executive Committee in Lebanon (the effective leader of the organization in Lebanon), Dr Mohammad Jaber is a Shi'ite Muslim.
MA: But HT is widely regarded as a predominantly - if not exclusively - Sunni organization.
OB: It depends where you are; in Iraq that may not be the case.
MA: But take Lebanon where Shi'ites and Sunnis are evenly balanced; what percentage of your members in Lebanon are Shi'ite Muslims?
OB: We don't base our statistics on such categories.
MA: HT was born in Palestine, which is in the Sham [Levant] region; would you say that more than 50 years later this region remains your center of gravity?
OB: In a way you could say so, without at the same time belittling the impact and strength of our mission throughout the Muslim Umma. We have a strong presence throughout the Muslim Umma, from Indonesia to Morocco. To give you an example, we planned for a major conference in Turkey on July 26, yet two days before that the Turkish government launched a massive crackdown on HT members and arrested more than 200 members of the party in 23 Turkish provinces.
MA: Why has the Turkish government been harsh to HT lately?
OB: The Turkish police made a childish allegation when they arrested some HT members on weapons charges. This was a childish gimmick, especially since everyone knows that since day one HT has been recognized as a completely non-violent party. In the atmosphere created by the so-called war on terror, the Turkish government has tried to present HT as a security threat in order to justify a crackdown. However, it has only succeeded in relinquishing its last fig leaf of legitimacy by claiming to be a democratic state led by a supposedly "Islamic" party.
MA: Would you agree that the project to re-create the caliphate is further away than ever?
OB: You should review HT's last global conference, held on July 21, 2009, in Indonesia [2] where 5,000 scholars and Ulama [legal scholars of Islam] from all corners of the Umma issued a call to Muslims everywhere to work for the re-creation of the caliphate. This is strong evidence that the party's work is strengthening and day by day we are getting closer to achieving our goal.
MA: It is one thing to hold a conference in Jakarta, but what resonance does that have on national politics in different Muslim countries?
OB: Islam supersedes any national reference. The conference in Indonesia gathered scholars from most countries in the Muslim world. It is part of the party's annual global drive to commemorate the collapse of the caliphate in 1924. In 2007, the conference in Jakarta attracted over 100,000 participants, with many not able to participate due to the stadium reaching full capacity. Other conferences were held in Lebanon, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sudan. In Turkey, the conference was scheduled to be held on July 26 but the Turkish government aborted it by the massive crackdown it unleashed on July 24, 2009. Hizbut Tahrir also held an international conference in February 2009 in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to address the international financial and economic crisis.
MA: There is a growing academic discourse in the West that Islamism and Islamist groups are in crisis and decline. How do you counter this argument?
OB: The fact that local regimes in Syria, Saudi Arabia and even Turkey, which is supposed to be a democratic state, resort to harsh crackdowns to stem the appeal of the Islamic message, clearly demonstrates the growing appeal of this message. If Islamist groups were really in decline then there would be no need for these brutal and costly police and security tactics.
MA: HT has been known to have a dogmatic and unfavorable attitude towards other Islamist groups. Have you revised your opinions and are you now willing to consider some of these groups as equal partners in the grand project of re-establishing the Islamic caliphate?
OB: The project to re-establish the caliphate is not a monopoly of HT; this is the mission of the Muslim Umma. As such we call on every Muslim, at an individual and group level, to join in the effort. We believe that recent geopolitical events, namely the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and the on-going Israeli occupation of Palestine, have strengthened the unity of the Umma and driven home the urgency to create a global state that can protect Muslims from their enemies. Surely we would have preferred for the Muslim nation to accept our vision decades ago, without going through the endless suffering and humiliations. Events over the past few decades have proven both the correctness of our diagnosis of the ills besetting the Muslim Umma and our vision to restore her dignity and pride. Once the idea of Muslim unity is deeply entrenched nothing can prevent its manifestation in reality.
Notes
1. See How Obama Flubbed His Missile Message
2. For more details see Conference of the Ulema - Indonesia
Mahan Abedin is a senior researcher in terrorism studies and a consultant to independent media in Iran. He is currently based in northern Iraq, where he is helping to develop local media capacity.
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