Al-Qaeda and Sacrifice: Martyrdom, War and Politics

Al-Qaeda and Sacrifice

First published 2012 by Pluto Press

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Copyright © Melissa Finn 2012

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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

Foreword

1 Introduction

Premise and Approach of Book

Ideology, Network or Franchise: What is al-Qaeda?

Breakdown of Chapters

2 From the Vantage Point of Sacrificial Violence: al-Qaeda’s Worldview in Context

Sacrifice in the Western and Islamist Traditions: A Comparison

Grappling with al-Qaeda

Putting al-Qaeda in Context

3 The Meanings of Sacrifice in Islam

Etymological Reflections on Sacrifice

Tadhiya

Fida’

Qurban

Dhabh

Ishtishhad/Shahadah

Futuwwah

Irhab

The Islamic Understanding of Sacrifice

Fee sabil’illah: Condition of Martyrdom

Tradition of Jihad

Islamic Political Theory: The Promise of Politics and the Obligations of Political Agency

Trivariate Ethical Paradigm

Just War Tradition in Islam

Conclusion

4 Comparative Political Thought on War and Sacrifices, and Politics

Introduction

Al-Qaeda’s Political Vision

Understanding Sacrificial Subjectivity

Jihadi Sacrifice in Light of Western Thought

Investigating the Parameters of Sacrficial Subjectivity

Intentionality of the Sacrifice

Duty of Sacrifice

Redemption, Retribution: An Eye for an Eye (Life for Life)

The Objects of Sacrifice: The Expendability of Victims

Sacrifice for God Alone

Martyrdom Operations as Sacrilisation, Desacrilisation and Collective Expiation

Principles of Sacrificial Subjectivity for War

The Sacrificial Subject and the Imperative of Hatred

The Sacrifice of Religion through Co-Existence and Dialogue

Eliminating the Enemy

Sacrificial Subjectivity for Politics, or the Management of Savagery for Political Ends

Conclusion

5 The Limits of Sacrificial Subjectivity for Politics

Introduction

Heedless Certainty

Rejection of Democracy

Autoimmunity Destroys Plurality

6 Conclusion: Sacrificial Subjectivity for Acephalic Politics

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface and Acknowledgements

The inspiration for this book truly began when I watched Marie Fatayi-Williams plead on 11 July, 2005, for knowledge of the whereabouts of her son Anthony, who had been missing for four days and who was ultimately found to have been killed in the Tavistock Square bus bombing on 7 July, 2005, in London. In July 2005, Anthony Fatayi-Williams (the son of a Christian mother and Muslim father) was 26 years of age and so was I. He was my peer. Marie’s impromtu speech reminded all who witnessed it of the near universal pain of mothers around the world whose children are the unwilling victims of state and non-state terrorism, but whose pain would never have such a platform to be heard. Her words, her expression, her grief and her intensity have been with me for seven years as reference points for clarity of mind on a topic that so regularly clouds it. I frequently return to that image of Marie, standing bravely before the media in the face of her immense loss, for inspiration to write on such difficult subjects as war and terrorism. She implored people provoked by political grievance to find alternative outlets to express and give voice to their anger.

Terrorism is not the way, terrorism is not the way. It doesn’t beget peace. We can’t deliver peace by terrorism, never can we deliver peace by killing people. Throughout history, those people who have changed the world have done so without violence, they have [won] people to their cause through peaceful protest. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, their discipline, their self-sacrifice, their conviction made people turn towards them, to follow them.

Marie later explained how developing an international organisation for peace in her son’s name was central to keeping Anthony’s memory alive. Marie wrote a short piece on forgiveness and an excerpt from this writing is a haunting summary of one of the main purposes behind this book: mediation and dialogue.

We need to ask the question why. Only then will we be able to start the dialogue and start to create peace. The love I may have for these people is similar to the love that the late John Paul II had for his potential assassin – Mohammed Ali Agča – correctional love. If I were to meet anyone like the bombers, I’d say, please can we talk? I am searching for a reason. If you don’t know what makes the other person tick, how can you start to heal? Islam doesn’t preach, Kill, and God will bless you, and those who say it does are distorting the word of the Holy Koran. But, even if people claim this, then rather than just condemning them, we should be asking where is this thinking coming from?

The idea of the importance of sacrifice to martyrdom operations (and of the failure of suicide bombing to be analytically interesting or explain where this thinking is coming from) came to me one day in a mini epiphany at a University of Waterloo library in March of 2007 (it had come to others many years before). Since that day, I have spent countless hours in conversation with my husband (my sounding board) on martyrdom in the Muslim world. His insights and clarifications on many key issues improved the book significantly. I am grateful for his support of this effort and for sustaining the mental drain of writing with fabulous food that drew fabulous company.

I would never have finished this work as quickly or as efficiently without the encouragement of my family including Michael, Holly and Sandy Finn, Helen Smith, Terry Fairhurst, Debra Kelly, the Smith and Finn extended families, Kamal Mansour, and the Mansour extended family, as well as meaningful exchanges with friends Zara Haque, Mateen Rokhsefat, Noreen Kassem, Roshan Jahangeer, Diane Fereig, Mahdi Tourage, Hena Tyyebi, Sylvia and Rick Holly, Arshavez Mozafari, Ilham and Shawn Thompson, Tacita Bastien and Charlene Smith. Many thanks to Deborah Shewell and Henry and Jack Gardner for their help and support.

Al-Qaeda and Sacrifice is based on my doctoral dissertation on the sacrificial subject. My Ph.D supervisor, Elizabeth Dauphinée, was a dedicated and conscientious interlocutor. She read through the work in its many drafts with a fine-toothed comb and I am deeply indebted to her for her effort. Many of the right turns I took in writing this book were because of her unflagging direction and high standards. The spark for my direction in terrorism studies came from the mentorship of Engin F. Isin in the Fall of 2005. Engin provided the research assistantship that allowed me to dive headfirst into Islamic political philosophy. I am very grateful to Shannon Bell for her enthusiasm for my work and for dropping thought-provoking ideas at critical junctures. This book was vastly improved by my various dialogues with people – through questions that were answered, ideas that were exchanged, and clarifications that were made – including, but not limited to: Shannon Bell, Wanda Krause, Jasser Auda, Adel Fakih, Abdullah Hojaij, Jim Keeley, David Mutimer, Walid El-Khachab, Richard Jackson, Christina Hellmich, Ahmed Elewa, Chris Anzalone, Yasir Qadhi, Stefanos Kourkoulakos, and Anna Agathangelou. Ahmed Elewa, Adel Fakih and Abdullah Hojaij kindly proofread through the sections on Arabic etymology and corrected a few of my mistakes. Walid El-Khachab also proofread the etymology section and encouraged me to analyse "irhab". Thank you to Yasir Qadhi for backing this work with such a moving foreword. Christina Hellmich provided me with much food for thought and critical review in the final stages of manuscript preparation.

The substantive comments I received from anonymous reviewers during the manuscript proposal stage helped me to streamline the content and clarify my approach. I have learned a lot about the subject matter of this book from the courses I have taught at Wilfrid Laurier University and York University, and from my amazing students whom I cherish. I was nurtured throughout the 2011–12 academic year by the administrative faculty and staff in Department of Political Science and the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. In particular, I am grateful to Dejan Guzina, Sherry Palmer, Heather Vogel, Alistair Edgar, John Boye Ejobowah and Nancy Forde for their kindness.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank my editors at Pluto Press, David Shulman and Roger van Zwanenberg, for believing in the project and backing its radical – yet critically important –premises.

I have relied significantly on the innovation and scholarship of Roxanne L. Euben in constructing this work of comparative theory. All faults in this writing project, as well as the limitations in my approach are my own responsibility. Some of the inspiration to dialogically engage jihadis came from Euben’s Enemy in the Mirror, but also from my work with an MT Space theatre project in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada called The Last 15 Seconds, directed by Majdi Bou-Matar. The play constructs physical and verbal dialogue between a victim (Syrian-American filmmaker Mustapha Akkad) and perpetrator (Rawad Jassem Mohammad Abed) in the last seconds before the 2005 hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan.

I received funding for this book from the Ontario Government in the form of an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) from 2006–09 and through a research assistantship provided by Engin F. Isin, principal investigator of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded project entitled ‘Citizenship and Ottoman Awqaf’ (grant # 410-2006-2282).

Foreword

I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.

Nathan Hale (1776)

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god I’m glad I’m dead because death is always better than dishonor? Did they say I’m glad I died to make the world safe for democracy? Did they say I like death better than losing liberty? Did any of them ever say it’s good to think I got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? Did any of them ever say look at me I’m dead but I died for decency and that’s better than being alive? Did any of them ever say here I am I’ve been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it’s wonderful to die for your native land?

Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (1939)

In the Hollywood blockbuster movie I Am Legend, a man-made virus has mutated the human race, turning human beings into zombie-like predators. Robert Neville, a virologist played by actor Will Smith, discovers a cure for the virus, crucial to the survival of the human species. Despite encountering only two other human beings during the course of the story, Neville is optimistic that others can be found. The predators eventually discover Neville’s home and attack it. In the final scene, Neville and his companions are surrounded by a group of predators bent on killing them. He determines that the only way to save the cure is to allow his two companions a chance to flee with the vial while he acts as bait in order to kill the predators. Neville is able to protect the cure and kill the predators by blowing himself up with a grenade.

The movie is generally recognised as one of Hollywood’s most successful action movies, earning more than half a billion dollars at the box office. The main character earns sympathy from his viewers because he sacrificed himself in order to ensure that the antidote was protected. And while most viewers would not hesitate to call the character played by Will Smith a hero, or to describe him as brave, courageous and noble, a phrase that would in all likelihood be absent from their descriptions is suicide bomber, even though, in essence, that is what his character becomes.

RELIGIOUS SUICIDE BOMBER OR POLITICALLY MOTIVATED MARTYR?

The term suicide bomber has become a by-phrase to denote the crazed act of a deranged religious fanatic (almost always Muslim) whose sole purpose seems to be to kill for the sake of killing. While such inaccurate generalisations might appease our own sense of justifiable outrage, they do little to help us effectively understand what motivates such actors, much less curb instances of terrorism.

A militant jihadi¹ who is willing to inflict great injury on segments of humanity, even at the cost of his own life (I say his because the overwhelming majority of such people are young males), is not motivated by mere religious sentiment. If one conducted a study, in a vacuum separated from political context, of all of the religious texts that are invoked by jihadi groups – texts that have been around for over a millennia – one would fail to produce a single suicide-bomber, even if read through the lens of militant jihadi interpretations. It is the political context that allows, or maybe even forces, some readers of the Qur’an to take on such interpretations. This context also explains why martyrdom operations are a new phenomenon in the Islamic world, despite the fact that the religion has been around for more than 14 centuries.

It does not require a great deal of research to unearth the causes of Islamist terrorism. It is only a self-serving ego and sophomoric intelligence that allows one to repeat the mantra of they hate us for our freedoms. Even bin Laden himself scoffed at this suggestion, and gave the rather water-tight response, [i]f it’s freedom we hate, why didn’t we attack Sweden? Every single speech that any al-Qaeda leader or sympathiser has given is rife with references to the issues that motivate them. Each one of these issues is political. Primary amongst them are: the plight of the Palestinians, the support of brutal apartheid Zionist policies, the proliferation of American military bases and influence in the region, and the propping up of tyrannical puppet dictators in the Middle East (although this last point will have to be modified in light of the recent Arab Spring!). In the words of Michael Scheuer, the CIA’s top analyst for bin Laden during the 1990s, [b]in Laden and most militant Islamists, therefore, can be said to be motivated by their love for Allah and their hatred for a few, specific U. S. policies and actions that they believe are damaging – and threatening to destroy – the things they love. Theirs is a war against a specific target and for specific, limited purposes.²

While political oppression is the casus belli of martyrdom operations, the religion of Islam does play a vital role for militant jihadis. For starters, religion provides a context which explains why an ethnic Yemeni multi-millionaire with Saudi citizenship living in a cave in Afghanistan after having been expelled from Sudan would seem to care so much about a country and people he’s never actually visited: Palestine and the Palestinians. Observant Muslims feel the religious bonds with their co-religionists in a manner that would put to shame the patriotism in which most jingoistic Tea Party members revel. These vicarious connections within the Islamic community cause the sufferings of one people (for example, the Palestinians or Afghanis) to take on a very personal and intimate role in the life of another (for example, American or Saudi). For observant Muslims, the narrow bonds of the nation-state and loyalty to it are, if not imaginary, at least inconsequential when compared to the bonds with the ummah, the world polity of Muslims.

This notion of loyalty also explains the fact that, while large segments of the Muslim world do not sympathise with the tactics of militant jihadis, they do sympathise with their call and struggle: viz., to free the Muslim world from what they see as the oppression and tyranny of Western powers.

Another crucial element that Islam plays in the formation of such groups is the doctrine of jihad. Early Islam developed, and continued to modify a nuanced just-war theory called jihad. Over a millennia ago, and far before any such equivalents existed in Western lands, Muslim scholars derived laws governing relations between the Muslim state and non-Muslim ones, and extrapolated from the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet detailed regulations on the rules of war, the treatment of prisoners of war, and permissible and impermissible tactics of engagement with enemy forces.

Adapting these complex laws to a new and changed world is a central challenge for modern Muslims. This is no easy feat, and Muslim theologians, as in other faith-based legal systems, have scattered around an entire spectrum of opinions with regards to how best to modernise their religious laws. Mainstream Muslims, taking into account Islamic ethical values and understanding that Islamic law requires contextualising one’s circumstances and weighing the proposed benefits against the expected harms, have overwhelmingly rejected extremist interpretations of militancy, and stated that jihad in the modern world needs to follow guidelines and principles that would be in accordance with acceptable international laws. However, other Muslims, and in particular the militant jihadis, feel qualified to cherry-pick from amongst these complex laws, modifying some to cater to their needs while re-interpreting yet others. What truly sets many jihadi groups apart, however, is their outright rejection of any contextualization in application of these laws in the modern world vis-à-vis the context of Qur’anic revelation and sayings of the Prophet and his closest companions. Therefore, from one perspective, it is correct to state that militant jihadis are deriving their rulings from a scholarly tradition and can indeed find justification for their actions. Such an assertion does not legitimise these interpretations. Instead, what is being stressed is that the only way to delegitimise these interpretations is to acknowledge their origins and offer more authoritative interpretations from the paradigm from which they emanate.

THE ORIGINS OF MARTYRDOM OPERATIONS

The dawn of the twentieth century saw Muslim intellectuals responding to the reality of a colonialist invasion of their lands. The Islamic Caliphate was almost in ruins, and would disappear from the face of the Earth in another two decades. The entire Muslim world, with the exception of a few countries (such as Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran) was under the direct or indirect jurisdiction of Western powers. Shari’ah-based laws, the paradigm of Muslim rule for centuries, were replaced with composites of British, French and pseudo-Islamic regulations.

In this rather dismal climate, Muslim intellectuals attempted to make sense of all that was occurring. Some did so by embracing a more isolationist and fundamentalist Islam (the Deobandi school of India is one example). Others strove to reconcile modernity with Islam. Primary amongst them were figures such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897), Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) and Rashid Rida (d. 1935). In the Arab and Indian world, Hasan al-Banna (d. 1948) and Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi (d. 1979) became central figures advocating for a governance structure for modern Muslim nation-states based entirely on Shari’ah. The parties that they founded, the Ikhwan al-Muslimīn and the Jamat-e-Islami, are by far the largest and most popular fundamentalist movements in the Muslim world. For the most part, these movements have remained pacifist and attempted to work from within the system to bring about reform.

However, such groups showed little success at actual change (though the recent election of Mohamed Morsi as President of Egypt may signal transformations in this regard). Hindered by government legislations aimed at curbing extremism (and frequently banned from participating in elections), ineffective in solving international crises, and petering out in their popularity amongst the masses, these groups were viewed as effete by a more radical trend. The genesis of this radical ideology began in the 1970s in Egypt, and all modern militant jihadi groups can be traced to this era. The issue of takfir (declaring other Muslims as apostates) was extrapolated and applied against mainstream Muslims, since they were seen as somehow compliant with the current status quo. Additionally, the notion of waging an actual war, or jihad, against the ‘near-enemy’ (which meant corrupt local regimes), and eventually the ‘far-enemy’ (primarily America, since it supported these regimes) were introduced and became vogue.

It is in this context that what is called suicide bombing was imported into Islamic militant circles. It has now been demonstrated that martyrdom operations are used as a specific strategy of resistance groups in an asymmetric war to achieve political goals. Almost always, the goal is to compel invading nations to withdraw military forces from territories that the actors deem their homeland.³ One of the first times a martyrdom operation was employed by Islamist groups was the 1983 bombing of the US Marines barracks in Lebanon, which killed almost three hundred American and French servicemen. Eventually, and as a direct result of the public reaction to this killing, the Americans withdrew all of their personnel from Lebanon. With the apparent success of this operation, accommodation had to be made to make the tactic de jure acceptable.

JIHAD VS. WAR

Militant jihadism and martyrdom operations might seem completely alien to many people in the Western world. Yet, when one examines the values underpinning this system, and then substitutes them for Western ones, the concept might not seem so alien anymore. People generally believe that sacrificing for the causes that one believes in is a noble endeavour, and the mindset of a suicide bomber is no different. When one compares and contrasts motives of jihadis who are recruited for religious causes with soldiers who are recruited for nationalist causes, one finds that what unites them is actually more than what divides them. In fact, from the perspective of religious militants, their endeavors are far more appealing, by virtue of the fact that religion can offer metaphysical meaning and Divine privileges that no non-religious endeavor could possibly compete with.

To illustrate this, Western and jihadi groups must aggrandise a cause which becomes the central thesis of the fight, worth sacrificing and even dying for. For most armies around the world, that cause is the defense of the homeland, which itself takes on a semi-mythical status and is accorded a respect and reverence that is akin to religious deference. For religious soldiers, the cause is the religion itself, via the defense of one’s co-religionists and the attainment of God’s pleasure.

Nation-state armies and jihadis employ a mythology of valour, glorifying fighting itself. Military servicemen are regaled with stories of past encounters that were victorious, or reminded of courageous men who engaged in praiseworthy acts. Advertisements that encourage young men to sign up for the military show soldiers in combat, engaged in skillful maneuvers and displaying a savvy discipline that can only draw admiration from most viewers. Similarly, religious fighters are prepped with Qur’anic quotations and prophetic sayings that exhort the believers to fight for the defense of the faith. Past religious figures who may be taken as role-model warriors are mentioned, and key religious battles are a staple of any jihadi’s reading.

This mythology of valour is also propagated via a rhetoric that is implanted, at times consciously and at times subconsciously, by the society or religion that that advocates this cause. Such rhetoric uses phrases or sentences that have taken the status of sacred and unchallenged axioms. Phrases such as for God and for country or, support our troops became shibboleths sacred to those who utter them; to challenge them is tantamount to challenging Scripture.

This rhetoric is typically accompanied by specific songs (or, in the jihadi context, Islamic poems known as nashids). These songs are usually combined with videos and images that evoke powerful emotions, and stoke feelings of pride for the cause, and anger at those who have harmed the cause. All jihadi videos have such nashids as backdrops, with images of tragedies caused by Western aggression, and interspersed with videos of great leaders who stand up against this aggression.

Commemorating those who have lost their lives for the cause leads to a mythology of sacrifice, where martyrs, having demonstrated the requisite valour, must be acknowledged as more meritorious than those who have not achieved this status. The dead are thus immortalised, either, as in the case of nation-state armies, by being given posthumous honors (perhaps having their names engraved in plaques or by being awarded medals), or, as in the case of religious armies, by believing that their souls have achieved meta-corporeal experiences and the ultimate pleasures of God’s paradise.

Obviously, the honor due to this sacrifice must also be physically demonstrated by distinct funeral rites for the bodies of the martyrs. The coffins of soldiers killed in the line of duty must be draped with a flag at all times and accompanied with solemn processions. In America, a specific number of guns will be fired as the body is laid to rest, and a bugle will sound. For Muslims who die as martyrs, Islamic legal law requires distinct shrouding and funeral rites as well. In all cases, unique rites will be performed that are not performed for those who have not demonstrated this sacrifice.

Lastly, no war can be fought successfully without a dehumanisation of one’s opponents. It is simply not possible for an average person to kill another human without diminishing or even destroying his perception of the humanity of that opponent. To this end, armies are routinely prepped before a battle about how evil the bad guys are. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s descriptions of Guantanamo prisoners distinctly used phrases that made them seem like rats. Similarly, militant jihadi literature and videos regularly cherry-pick Scriptural references that refer to non-Muslim kuffar (non-believers) in a manner that would remove any sympathy that they might otherwise have.

The purpose of such a comparison is to demonstrate that the paradigm from within which these religious actors operate is not too distinct from our own. If we substitute or modify these factors, the two paradigms are seen to be not too dissimilar, and in fact from a religious perspective, the religious paradigm presents a stronger case because its causes are more ennobling (religion has always had a stronger hold over its followers than nationalism), and its rewards are more palpable (for those who believe in an afterlife, an actual Paradise with its requisite delights would likely be preferred over a 21-gun salute and a posthumously awarded ribbon!).

THE LURE OF MILITANT ISLAM AMONGST WESTERN MUSLIMS

There are two sets of factors that one needs to examine to understand the lure of militancy amongst Muslims who, for the most part, appear at home with their upbringing in the West. There are external and internal factors at stake.⁴

The External Factor

The issues and concerns that are fogging the minds of many Muslims (and all those who turn to radicalism) centre around the present state of the ummah, and in particular the political and social struggles that many Muslims around the world are facing. These struggles are viewed as having been caused, directly or indirectly, by American foreign policy (and, to a lesser extent, other Western countries). Radicalisation and militant tendencies among Western Muslims were almost entirely non-existent before 9/11 because most of the grievances at that time were solely linked to the Palestinian question, and Western Muslims did not view their governments as being anti-Muslim. It is not a coincidence that all those who planned and aided in the 9/11 attacks were not American citizens.

Infinitely more fuel has been added to the fire post-9/11 because of the reaction of the American government in particular, and other Western countries in general, to this event. These developments made many Muslims feel as if their own governments were becoming Islamophobic. In light of this, there has been increased radicalism among Western youth, partly as a reaction to measures ranging from the illegal invasion of Iraq to the foolish military endeavors in Afghanistan, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, from Aafia Siddiqui to Ali al-Timimi, from Anwar al-Awlaki to Tarek Mehanna, from the War on Terror to the Patriot Act, and the list goes on.

After these miscalculations, it became easier to convince an impressionable mind that the West was engaged in an all-out war against Islam. While most people would realise that the West and Islam are not two separate and distinct entities that can surgically and neatly be delineated and defined, in light of all of these policies, some minds inevitably began viewing the world according to this false dichotomy. And Bush’s doctrine of you’re either with us or against us did not help in dispelling this Manichean outlook. (Ironically, the same sentiment was echoed by Anwar al-Awlaki, who became the first American citizen to be publically assassinated by his own government.)

And instead of such incidents abating with time, every few days a new headline in some newspaper conveys yet another story proving the false paradigm: an American drone missile strike kills a few dozen anonymous, faceless tribe-members in Pakistan, or ever-expanding Israeli settlements steal more land from Palestinians, or a new torture scandal involving Muslim prisoners is leaked, or another military scandal involving the killing of innocent Muslim civilians is exposed.

As if such misguided foreign action was not sufficient to enrage a proud young Muslim man, he must also face the constant media onslaught that seeks to portray him and his faith as inherently evil and dangerous. He hears of his friends and families or other Muslims being routinely harassed, humiliated and intimidated at airports and border-crossings, and randomly selected for additional screening and questioning. Of course, he too has his own first-hand discriminatory experiences.

His faith is attacked on national airwaves, his religiosity is treated with suspicion, his co-religionists around the world are killed, and his activist brothers and sisters in Western lands are jailed, it is no surprise that our young and impressionable Muslim teenager struggles to make sense of this situation.

He wants someone to defend his faith and speak up on behalf of the oppressed. He wishes to hear fiery and angry rhetoric, charging the free and democratic nations with hypocrisy, double standards, and the flouting of human rights. It is obvious to him that his government is primarily concerned with acquisition of oil and the control of natural resources, even if that results in the loss of Muslim blood. He clearly sees the politicians of his land pander more to the interests of corporate sponsors and special-interest donors than to the interests of their own fellow citizens. So, naturally, as a lay-Muslim, he looks to the scholars of his religion, seeking to find solace in angry tirades and verbal lashings against our politicians, leaders, media pundits and law enforcement agencies who are, in his view, the root cause of all of this anger and terror in the first place.

Instead, all he hears at his