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Dear Friends and Colleagues:
The CSID Weekly E-mail Bulletin is sent once a week to 27,500 activists, scholars, experts, politicians, and religious leaders all over the world. Please forward it to all your friends, and ask them to subscribe. It is FREE, and it will keep them informed of major developments in the struggle for freedom, human rights, and democracy.
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CENTER
FOR THE STUDY OF ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY
11th
Annual Conference
U.S.-Relations with the Muslim
World:
One Year After
Cairo
Wednesday, April
28, 2010
Ronald Reagan
Building Amphitheater
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC, 20004 CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Co-sponsored by:
The Muslim World
Initiative
United States
Institute of Peace
The Ali
Vural Ak Center for Islamic Studies
George Mason
University |
Obama Mideast Policy Sabotaged by Netanyahu
Abbas Reported to have Withdrawn from Israeli-Palestinian talks
By Juan Cole
Juan Cole  | Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, announced Wednesday that he had been informed by Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the latter has pulled out of indirect talks with Israel. Late Wednesday, the Arab League itself reversed its earlier cautious endorsement of the proximity talks, recommending that support be dropped.
The talks were likely deliberately sabotaged by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had his Interior Minister announce the construction of 1600 new households in Occupied East Jerusalem the day before they were scheduled to begin. In fact, Israel is actively planning 50,000 further housing units on occupied Palestinian territory. US Vice President Joe Biden had come to kick off the process with visits to Netanyahu and Abbas, but he has now been sent home empty-handed by Netanyahu's sheer effrontery.
Biden took small bits of revenge on Netanyahu, such as going on Aljazeera English from the Occupied West Bank and denouncing the Netanyahu government's plans to expand its colonies on Palestinian territory as "destabilizing."
Obama is in real danger of seeing his allies lose respect for the United States once they see that Israel can treat him in this humiliating way with impunity. The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington's coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating. Moreover, many leaders may be emboldened to treat Obama and Biden just as Netanyahu did, if the latter faces no consequences for his impudence.
Read full article Back to top
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Scholar backs democracy in Middle East
Reza Aslan: Not much has changed on the war on terror
By Ryan Sheine
Reza Aslan  | During his first night in Fort Collins Tuesday, Aslan spoke to a crowd of about 200 people in the Lory Student Center Theatre to discuss his book, "How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the end of the War on Terror."
"I wanted to write a book about how to properly deal with the rise of religious extremism both at home and abroad," Aslan said. His lecture covered Middle East and Western political topics ranging from former Vice President Dick Cheney's narrow interpretation of federal arrest laws to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The author said he wrote his book because he thought the United States has adopted the same kind of rhetoric and the same framework for understanding global conflicts as groups like Al-Qaeda.
"I mean, the language is the same, the mentality is the same, and the argument is as long as we can continue to legitimize the world view of these religious fanatics with our own religious fanaticism we're going to be locked in a war that will never end," he said.
His criticism of Obama's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was met with applause from the audience when he described it as "horrific" and "catastrophic."
"Obama's administration has done a really good job at taking away the appeal of radical movements by lessening the impression around the world that this isn't a war on terrorism but actually a war on Islam," Aslan said.
He said democracy is still the answer for progress in the Middle East.
Read full article Back to top
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Egypt's Chance for Change
By Washington Post Editorial
Mohamed Elbaradei  | Mr. Elbaradei got a lot done during a week-long trip to the country. He united most of the opposition behind him, including both the banned Muslim Brotherhood and liberal democrat Ayman Nour, who was imprisoned for challenging Mr. Mubarak in the 2005 presidential election. Mr. Elbaradei formed a movement called the National Front for Change, which will campaign for the constitutional amendments necessary for Egypt to hold truly free elections for parliament this year and for president in 2011. In a series of media interviews, he delivered a message that the 81-year-old Mr. Mubarak should have heeded long ago. "Change is inevitable," he said, "and the regime should be ready to accept it in order to avoid a confrontation with the people".
The State Department delivered a carefully worded statement this month saying that it "would like to see the emergence of a more inclusive political process in Egypt," but that "these ultimately are decisions that have to be made by Egypt."
Less caution would be more sensible. Mr. Elbaradei's movement represents a rare opportunity to liberalize Egypt's political system. Mr. Mubarak changed the constitution in 2005 to allow a multicandidate presidential election, thanks mostly to pressure from the Bush administration. It is defeatist to suppose that he cannot be induced to accept the reasonable reforms that Mr. Elbaradei is proposing, and it is dangerous to go on assuming that in the absence of such reform, Egypt will remain unchanged.
Read full article Back to Top
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New Saban Center's Working Paper
The Myth of Excluding Moderate Islamists in the Arab World
by
Khalil Al-Anani
Khalil Al-Anani  | Although the Obama administration has promoted engagement as a critical component of its foreign policy strategy, it has so far excluded from this approach Islamist parties in the Middle East. The administration's reluctance to engage or support Islamist groups comes at a time when many of the region's autocratic governments have redoubled their efforts to reduce these groups' influence within their countries.
In the Saban Center's new Working Paper, The Myth of Excluding Moderate Islamists in the Arab World, the center's 2008 Todd G. Patkin Visiting Fellow in Arab Democracy and Development, Khalil al-Anani, analyzes the implications of excluding Islamists from political processes and revisits the question of whether the United States should advocate bringing them in. By reviewing the impact of political repression across the Middle East, paying particular attention to Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan, al-Anani draws lessons for U.S. policymakers regarding long-term American interests in the region and the place of moderate Islamist groups. Al-Anani refutes many of the assumptions Washington has made regarding Islamists, and argues in favor of engaging Islamist groups, contending that doing so is critical to promoting not just the United States' democratic ideals, but security and stability across the Middle East.
Conclusion:
"The United States has not exerted much effort to understand the real changes in the Islamist spectrum that have taken place over the past decade. It is now time for U.S. policymakers to revisit their strategies toward Islamist groups and realize that democracy promotion in the Arab world means engaging with moderate Islamists. The United States should question and rethink any number of myths surrounding the exclusion of moderate Islamists and then begin to engage with them in a strategic dialogue. The Obama administration should deal with them as partners rather than threats, not only to restore U.S. credibility in the Arab world, but also to preserve American strategic interests in the region."
You can access the paper (PDF) here. Back to top
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The Influence Industry
Armenia-Turkey dispute over genocide label sets off lobbying frenzy
By Dan Eggen | Washington Post
The resolution has prompted an aggressive push by the government of Turkey and its lobbying firm led by former House majority leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), who had urged recognition of the Armenian genocide when he was in Congress. Public-relations firm Fleishman-Hillard also has a contract with Turkey worth more than $100,000 a month, records show.
The Turkish government has spent millions on Washington lobbying over the past decade, much of it focused on the Armenian genocide issue. The country's current lobbyist, the Gephardt Group, collects about $70,000 a month for lobbying services from the government in Ankara, according to federal disclosure records.
The Armenian government, which previously enlisted BKSH & Associates and Burson-Marsteller, does not currently have a U.S. representative on file, according to Justice Department records of foreign lobbyists. But several well-organized Armenian American groups are active in attempting to influence Congress, including the Armenian National Committee and the Armenian Assembly of America, which together spent about $380,000 on lobbying last year.
Armenian American communities in California, Massachusetts and New York have also provided crucial political support to Democrats in recent years, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Armenian-related political action committees have given members of Congress about $83,000 in campaign contributions since 2007, most of that to Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission records. The Turkish Coalition PAC, meanwhile, has doled out $173,000 in donations during the same period, with a slight preference for Republicans.
Read full article Back to top
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Promoting Democracy to Stop Terrorism, Revisited
The real perils of an undemocratic Middle East
By Shadi Hamid and Steven Brooke | Policy Review
Shadi Hamid  | U.S. democracy promotion in the Middle East has suffered a series of crippling defeats. Despite occasionally paying lip service to the idea, few politicians on either the left or right appear committed to supporting democratic reform as a central component of American policy in the region. Who can really blame them, given that democracy promotion has become toxic to a public with little patience left for various "missions" abroad? But as the Obama administration struggles to renew ties with the Muslim world, particularly in light of the June 2009 Cairo speech, it should resist the urge to abandon its predecessor's focus on promoting democracy in what remains the most undemocratic region in the world.
For its part, the Obama administration has made a strategic decision to shift the focus to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which it sees, correctly, as a major source of Arab grievance. This, in turn, has led the administration to strengthen ties with autocratic regimes, such as Egypt and Jordan, which it sees as critical to the peace process.
After the attacks of September 11th, a basic, intuitive proposition surfaced - that without basic democratic freedoms, citizens lack peaceful, constructive means to express their grievances and are thus more likely to resort to violence. Accordingly, 9/11 did not happen because the terrorists hated our freedom, but, rather, because the Middle East's stifling political environment had bred frustration, anger, and, ultimately, violence. Many in the region saw us as complicit, in large part because we were actively supporting - to the tune of billions of dollars in economic and military aid - the region's most repressive regimes. The realization that our longstanding support of dictatorships had backfired, producing a Middle East rife with instability and political violence, was a sobering one, and grounded the policy debate in a way that has since been lost. The unfolding debate was interesting to watch, if only because it contradicted the popular perception that Republicans were uninterested in the "root causes" of terrorism. In fact, they were. And their somewhat novel ideas on how to address them would begin to figure prominently in the rhetoric and policies of the Bush administration.
It is safe to say that the Bush administration's project to promote Middle East democracy failed. It failed because it was never really tried. With the exception of a brief period in 2004 and 2005 when significant pressure was put on Arab regimes, democracy promotion was little more than a rhetorical device. But lost in the shuffle is the fact that one of the strongest rationales for the "freedom agenda" - that the way to defeat terrorism in the long run is by supporting the growth of democratic institutions - hasn't necessarily been proven wrong, nor should it be so readily discarded due to its unfortunate association with the wrong methods and messengers. But this is precisely what seems to have happened.
De-emphasizing support for democracy, on the other hand, will have significant consequences at a time when Arabs and Muslims are looking to us for moral leadership and holding out great expectations for an American president who many continue to see as sympathetic to their concerns. Obama's Cairo speech, hailed throughout the Middle East, was a step in the right direction, but disappointment has since grown as the administration has failed to follow up with tangible policy changes on the ground.
Turning away from the Arabs and Muslims who overwhelmingly support greater freedom and democracy will rob us of perhaps our strongest weapon in the broader struggle of ideas. For decades, the people of the region have been denied the ability to chart their own course, ask their own questions, and form their own governments. Lack of democratic outlets has pushed people towards extreme methods of opposition and made the resort to terrorist acts more likely. Recognizing this is a crucial step toward a sustained effort to promote Middle East democracy and represents our best chance at a durable and effective counter-terrorism policy that protects our vital interests while remaining true to our ideals.
Read full article Back to top
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Fatwa declares Muslim terrorists as disbelievers
Shaykh Tahir-ul-Qadri  | Eminent Muslim scholar and founder of the Minhaj-ul-Quran International, Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri declared a fatwa against suicide bombings and terrorism and announced such acts as out of fold of Islam and those carrying out these despicable activities as disbelievers.
Pointing out that terrorists commit acts of self and mass murder with the firm conviction that they will be rewarded by God and that they are heaven bound, Dr.Qadri's fatwa convincingly advances scriptural evidence to demonstrate that the perpetrators of suicide bombings are destined for hell, not heaven.
Dr. Qadri enlisted in this fatwa classical sources to illustrate that the vast majority of Muslim scholars, past and present, consider the Khawarij, the founders of terrorism, to be totally un-Islamic." The terrorists are the Khawarij of our time, based on direct evidence from the Qur'an and Sunnah." He said Islam is not a religion of seclusion or detachment. "Those who are committing terroristic acts from Pakistan and Afghanistan and claiming it is jihad, they do not know what jihad is. It is forbidden. There will not be janna (paradise) for them."
Dr. Qadri who now lives in Canada said Islam supports democracy and formation of alliances with other religious groups for the betterment and prosperity of the mankind. He urged the Ummah to stand up to the enemies of mankind and Islam and promote moderation, peace, inclusion and understanding.
The British Justice Minister Shahid Malik appreciated the efforts of Dr.Qadri in promoting moderate Islam and his fatwa against the misguided Muslims. He urged other Muslim scholars to come out and speak against radicalization and attempts to divide the society through negative impression about Islam.
Read 60-page summary of the fatwa in English
Read full article Back to top
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Rashad Hussain, a Muslim and new U.S. envoy, is bridge between two worlds
By Scott Wilson | The Washington Post
Rashad Hussain  | In his new position, Hussain, who is both a Koran scholar and an ardent North Carolina Tar Heels basketball fan, will be responsible for helping to bridge another cultural divide -- the one in U.S. relations with Muslims inside and outside the nation's borders.
Hussain, 31, will be the face of that policy in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where the Islamic Conference has it headquarters, and in the other capitals of its 56 member countries. His is an appropriately young face for an American representative to the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, the majority of whom are younger than he is.
At a time when the United States is fighting two wars in Muslim nations and defending itself against an enduring terrorist threat, changing perceptions will take time. "The challenge is to continue to communicate that this is a long-term process," Hussain said. "Sometimes the challenge becomes that people want to focus exclusively on the political issues, issues that this administration is working very diligently to solve."
"My extensive writings on this topic make it clear that I condemn terrorism unequivocally in all its forms," Hussain said. "I'd be happy to put that against one sentence from 2004 that I believe was taken out of context."
After the 2008 election, Hussain was recruited to the White House counsel's office by Cassandra Butts, a fellow Tar Heel and Obama's former Harvard Law classmate. He has worked there on national security and new-media issues and helped inform the administration's Muslim outreach efforts.
Read full Article Back to top
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About CSID
By supporting CSID, you help to: - Create a better future for our children so they can have more opportunities for improving their lives and realizing their dreams.
- Educate and inform Americans about Islam's true values of tolerance, peace, and good will towards mankind, including peoples of other faiths.
- Improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world by supporting popular movements rather than oppressive tyrannies and corrupt regimes.
- Replace the feelings of hopelessness, despair, and anger in many parts of the Muslim world, especially among the youth, with a more positive and hopeful outlook for the future.
- Encourage young Muslim Americans, and Muslims everywhere, to participate in the political process and to reject calls for destructive violence and extremism.
- Build a network of Muslim democrats around the globe who can share knowledge and experience about how to build and strengthen democratic institutions and traditions in the Muslim countries.
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The Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy is a non-profit think tank, based in Washington DC - dedicated to promoting a better understanding of democracy in the Muslim world, and a better understanding of Islam in America. To achieve its objectives, the Center organizes meetings, conferences, and publishes several reports and periodicals. CSID engages Muslim groups, parties, and governments - both secularist and moderate Islamist - in public debates on how to reconcile Muslims' interpretation of Islam and democracy. CSID is committed to providing democracy education to ordinary citizens, civil society, religious and political leaders in the Muslim world, and has organized meetings, workshops, and conferences in over 25 countries, including Nigeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Iran, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, etc.
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