By Roberto Savio
ROME, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

The results of a survey of what 3,500 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 – in all Arab countries except Syria – feel about the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa have just been released.

The report of the survey, which was carried out by international polling firm Penn Schoen Berland (PBS), is not a minority report given that 60 percent of the population of the Arab population is under the age of 25, which means 200 million people. Well, the outcome of the survey is that the large majority of them have no trust in democracy.

Roberto Savio

The word democracy does not exist in Arabic, being a concept totally alien to the era in which Muhammad created Islam. However, it is worth noting that the concept of democracy as it is known today is also relatively recent in the West, and we have to wait from its origins in the Greek era for it to make a comeback at the time of the French Revolution.

It became an accepted value just after the end of the Second World War, and the end of the Soviet, Nazi and Japanese regimes.

As a matter of fact, it is still not a reality in large parts of Asia (just think of China and North Korea) and Africa.

Then we have governments, as in Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is openly preaching a style of governance à la Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by several of his esteemers, including the National Front party in France, and the Northern League in Italy. But few have such a negative view of democracy as young Arabs.After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent

After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent.

According to the survey, 39 percent of young Arabs agreed with the statement “democracy will never work in the region”, 36 percent thought it would work, while the remaining 25 percent expressed many doubts.

It is clear that the Arab Spring has been betrayed by the return of the army to power as in Egypt, or by the clinging of the old guard to power regardless of the costs, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

If you add to this the fact that 41 percent of young Arabs are unemployed (out of a total unemployment figure of 25 percent), and of those 31 percent have completed higher education and 17 percent have graduated from university, it is not difficult to understand that frustration and pessimism are running high among Arab youth.

It also contributes to explaining why so many young people feel attracted to the Islamic State (ISIS) which wants to topple all Arab governments, defined as corrupt and allied to the decadent West, and create a Caliphate as in Muhammad’s times, where wealth will be distributed among all, the dignity of Islam will be enhanced, and a world of purity and vision will substitute the materialistic one of today.

This is why ISIS is attracting youth from all over. Besides, according to experts, for the terrorist to have a geographical space and run it  as a state, where hospitals and schools function and there is a daily life to prove that the dream is possible, represents a great difference with previous terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda, which could only destroy, not really build.

But the survey also reveals something extremely important. To the question “which is the biggest obstacle for the Arab world?”, 37 percent indicated the expansion of ISIS and 32 percent the threat of terrorism. The problem of unemployment was mentioned by 29 percent and that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 23 percent.

It is worth noting that the threat of a nuclear Iran was mentioned by only 8 percent (contrary to the declarations of Arab governments), while 17 percent consider that the real problem is the lack of political leaders, while only 15 percent denounce the lack of democracy.

It is important to note that no interviews were carried out in Iran, which is not an Arab country but is a Muslim country. However Iranian Muslims are Shiites and not Sunnis, as in all Arab countries, except for Iraq and Bahrein, and perhaps Yemen, where Shiites are a majority. Of the world’s total Islamic population of 1.6 billion people, Shiites make up only 10 percent.

It is within Sunnite Islam that a dramatic conflict is going on, where Wahabism, a Sunni school born in Saudi Arabia and the official religion of the Saudi reigning house, has now split into those who want to return to the purity of the early times and those are considered “petrowahabists” because they have been corrupted by the wealth created by petrol (they are also called sheikh wahabists because they accept government by sheikhs).

Saudi Arabia has been spending an average of 3 billion dollars a year to promote Wahabism. It has built over 1,500 mosques throughout the world, where radical preachers have been asking the faithful to go back to the real and uncorrupted Islam.

It was with Osama Bin Laden that the Wahabist movement escaped from the control of Saudi Arabia, very much like the radical Hamas movement, originally supported by Israel to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Yasser Arafat, turned against the Israeli state. It is not possible to ride radicalism.

The survey also reveals that young Sunnis see ISIS and terrorism as their main threat, but we are talking here of a poll which should represent 200 million people between the ages of 18 and 25. Even if just one percent of them were to succumb to the call of the jihad, we are talking of a potential two million people … and this is now being felt acutely.

The polarisation inside Sunni society (Shiites are not part of that – there are no Shiite terrorists) is felt as the most important problem for the future.

In Europe and the United States, this should be the clearest of examples that ISIS and terrorism are first and foremost an internal problem of Islam and that to intervene in that problem will only unify the Arab world against the invader. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Nov 3 2014 (IPS)

The Oct. 23 attack on the Canadian Parliament building by a Canadian who had converted to Islam just a month earlier should create some interest in why an increasing number of young people are willing to sacrifice their lives for a radical view of Islam. 

Until now, this was dismissed as fanaticism, but when you have over 2,000 people who blow themselves up, it is time to look to this growing reality and put stereotypes to the side.

Roberto Savio

It is worth noting that there are a growing number of voices arguing that the Muslim world and its values are intrinsically against the West. Well, basic data do not support that theory, even although it is being used by all xenophobic parties which have sprung up everywhere in Europe.

Let us recall that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, with Indonesia the world’s largest Muslim country followed by India. The entire Middle East-North Africa region has 317 million, compared with 344 million in Pakistan and India alone. There are 3.4 million Muslims in the United States and 43.4 million in Europe, making perhaps one jihadist for every 100,000 Muslims.

There are four historical reasons for jihadism that are easily forgotten.“Unemployment is a great habitat for frustration with its lack of perspective on a future, especially when you have no participation and no voice in the political system ... And the fact that the Arab Spring did not bring any tangible change in economic terms has exacerbated frustration into rage or resignation”

First of all, all the Arab countries are artificial. In May 1916, Monsieur Picot for France and Lord Sykes for Britain met and agreed on a secret treaty, with the support of the Russian Empire and the Italian Kingdom, on how to carve up the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

Thus the Arab countries of today were born as the result of a division by France and Britain with no consideration for ethnic and religious realities or for history. A few of those countries, like Egypt, had an historical identity, but countries like  Iraq, Arabia Saudi, Jordan, or even the Emirates lacked even that.

It is worth remembering that the Kurdish issue of 30 million people divided among four countries was created by European powers.

As a consequence, the second reason. The colonial powers installed kings and sheiks in the countries that they created. To run these artificial countries, strong hands were required. So, from the very beginning, there was a total lack of participation of the people, with a political system which was totally out of sync with the process of democracy which was happening in Europe.

With a European blessing, these countries were frozen in feudal times.

As for the third reason, the European powers never made any investment in industrial development, or real development. The exploitation of petrol was in the hands of foreign companies and only after the end of the Second World War, and the ensuing process of decolonisation, did oil revenues really come into local hands.

When the colonial powers left, the Arab countries had no modern political system, no modern infrastructure, no local management. When Italy left Libya (it did not know that there was petrol), there were only three Libyans with university degree.

Finally, the fourth reason, which is closer to our days. In states which did not provide education and health for their citizens, Muslim piety took on the task of providing what the state was not. So large networks of religious schools and hospital were created, and when elections were finally permitted, these became the basis for legitimacy and the vote for Muslim parties.

This is why, just taking the example of two important countries, Islamist parties won in Egypt and Algeria, and how with the acquiescence of the West, military coups were the only resort to stop them.

This compression of so many decades into a few lines is of course superficial and leaves out many other issues. But this brutally abridged historical process is useful for understanding how anger and frustration is now all over the Muslim world, and how this leads to attraction to the Islamic State (IS) in poor sectors.

We should not forget that this historical background, even if remote for young people, is kept alive by Israel’s domination of the Palestinian people. The blind support of the West, especially of the United States, for Israel is seen by Arabs as a permanent humiliation. The July-August bombing of Gaza, with just some noises of protest from the West but no real action, is for the Arab world clear proof that the intention is to keep Arabs down and seek alliances only with corrupt and delegitimised rulers who should be swept away.

Not many decades ago, a modernised school system started to produce local cadres, with many at university level. But the lack of political modernisation, combined with the lack of economic development, has led to a generation of disaffected and educated young people, who made their voices heard during what was called the Arab Spring.

But that was an outburst, which did not lead to the creation of a vibrant civil society or real grassroots movements. The only grassroots movement remains the Muslim network of mosques, religious schools and assistance structures.

Besides, there are no modern political parties in Arab countries – this is the difference with the large Muslim countries of Asia, like Indonesia and Malaysia, with Pakistan half way between.

Unemployment is a great habitat for frustration with its lack of perspective on a future, especially when you have no participation and no voice in the political system. Rich countries, like Saudi Arabia, can buy people’s allegiance by offering them a generous subsidy system, but other countries cannot. And the fact that the Arab Spring did not bring any tangible change in economic terms has exacerbated frustration into rage or resignation.

It is highly instructive to read David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times in Tunisia ( from where the majority of jihadists come), Steven Erlanger, also of the New York Times, in London (on the phenomenon of women joining the ranks of IS as fighters or as the wives of fighters) or Ana Carbajasa from Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco (onIslam in Melilla and the radicalisation of women). Few newspapers have given a voice to young Arabs, despite the need to understand them.

Kirkpatrick, Erlanger and Carbajasa found that, for many, the Islamic State has an image of historical revenge against the past, a place free from corruption, It is a beacon for the many young people who  have no way to study or find a job, and have nothing to lose.

Those interviewed declared that to join the radical movement – in the Middle East, in Paris or in Manchester – is to become part of an international moral elite, of a global and magnetic movement. It means having a life project and passing from frustrated anonymity to glorious recognition.

What is creating this mobilisation is that IS is a state, not a secret organisation like Al-Qaeda. And its unprecedented use of social media is attracting hundreds of new recruits every week, who feel that they can escape from their daily frustrations to enter a world of dignity and fairness.

Ahmed, a young Tunisian supporter of the Islamic State who did not want to give his family name for fear of the police, told the New York Times: ”The Islamic State is a true caliphate, a system that is fair and just, where you don’t have to follow somebody orders because he is rich or powerful. It is action, not theory, and it will topple the whole game”.

Another Tunisian, 28-year-old Mourad, with a master’s degree in technology but unemployed, called the Islamic State the only hope for “social justice”, because it would absorb the oil rich monarchies and redistribute their wealth. He said: “It is the only way to give people back their true rights, by giving the natural resources back to the people. It is an obligation for every Muslim.

This dream of a different Muslim world of identifying with the fight to get there finds an easy echo in the European ghettos where a large proportion of the young unemployed is Arab.  We should not forget the Parisian banlieu violence of 2005 or the riots in Birmingham, England, in the same year.

Meanwhile, the French police estimate that there are now at least 1,200 French citizens in the IS, and the British police estimate an equivalent number of British citizens. Those numbers will grow, as long ISIS can show in its efficient social media campaign that it is a successful reality.

So now we have the phenomenon of disaffected Westerners who have drifted away because they feel rejected by the society they live in and are joining Islam, as a radical change to their lives, and the armed struggle as a way to be part of a tidal change.

In their time, European anarchists were not drifters – they were convinced that to have a new world of social justice and human dignity, it was necessary to destroy the present one – and they were part of a very large political movement.

If some in Europe were able to a dream with violence as a necessary instrument, why can the Muslim world not have a similar dream, with much more justification? The attraction of radical Islam is destined to continue, especially if the Islamic State is destroyed by the West. (END/IPS COUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Johan Galtung
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 2014 (IPS)

More senseless bombing of Muslims, more defeats for the United States-West, more ISIS-type movements, more West-Islam polarisation. Any way out?

“ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq-Syria] Appeals to a Longing for the Caliphate”, writes Farhang Jahanpour in an IPS column. For the Ottoman Caliphate with the Sultan as Caliph – the Shadow of God on Earth – after the 1516-17 victories all over until the collapse of both Empire and Caliphate in 1922, at the hands of the allies England-France-Russia.

Johan Galtung

Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A centre in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone.

And imagine that they who had brought about the collapse had a tendency to bomb, invade,  conquer, dominate Catholic countries, one after the other, like after the two [George] Bush wars in Afghanistan-Iraq, five Obama wars in Pakistan-Yemen-Somalia-Libya-Syria and “special operations”.

Would we not predict a longing for the Vatican, and an extreme hatred of the perpetrators? Fortunately, it did not happen.

But it happened in the Middle East, leaving a trauma fuelled by killing hundreds of thousands. The Sykes-Picot_Agreement between Britain and France of 16 May 1916 led to the collapse, with their four well-known colonies, the less known promise of Istanbul to Russia, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration offering parts of Arab lands as “national home for the Jewish people”. Jahanpour cites Winston Churchill as “selling one piece of real estate, not theirs, to two peoples at the same time”.“Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A centre in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone”

The Middle East colonies fought the West through military coups for independence; Turkish leader Kemal Atatürk was a model. The second liberation is militant Islam-Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algiers and so on against secular military dictatorships.

The West prefers military order against history.

The longing cannot be stopped. ISIS is only one expression, and exceedingly brutal. But, damage and destruction by U.S. President Barack Obama and allies will be followed by a dozen ISIS from 1.6 billion Muslims in 57 countries.

A little military politicking today, some “training” here, fighting there, bombing all over, are only ripples on a groundswell. This will end with a Sunni caliphate sooner or later. And, the lost caliphate they are longing for had no Israel, only a “national home”. This is behind some of the U.S.-West despair. Any solution?

The way out is cease-fire and negotiation, under United Nations auspices, with full Security Council backing. To gain time, switch to a defensive military strategy, defending Baghdad, the Kurds, the Shia and others in Syria and Iraq.

The historical-cultural-political position of ISIS and its successors is strong.

The West cannot offer withdrawal in return for anything because it has already officially withdrawn. The West, however, can offer reconciliation, both in the sense of clearing the past and opening the future.

Known in the United States as “apologism”, a difficult policy to pursue. But for once the onus of Sykes-Picot is not on the United States, but on Britain and France.

Russia dropped out after the 1917 revolution, but revealed the plot.

Bombing, an atrocity, will lead to more ISIS atrocities. A conciliatory West might change that. An international commission could work on Sykes-Picot and its aftermath, and open the book with compensation on it.

Above all, future cooperation. The West, and here the United States enters, could make Israel return the West Bank, except for small cantons, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital – or else! – sparing the horrible long-lasting Arab-Israeli warfare.

This would be decency, sanity, rationality; the question is whether the West possesses these qualities. The prognosis is dim.

There is the Anglo-American self-image as infallible, a gift to humanity, a little rough at times civilising the die-hards, but not weak.

If not an apology, at least they could wish to undo their own policies in the region since, say, 1967. No sign of that.

So much for the willingness. Does the West have the ability? Does it know how to reconcile?

After Portugal and England conquering the East China-East Africa sea lane around 1500, ultimately establishing themselves in Macao and Hong Kong, after the First and Second Opium wars of 1839-1860 in China, ending with Anglo-French forces burning the Imperial Palace in Beijing, did Britain use the “hand over” of Hong Kong to reflect on the past?

Not a word from Prince Charles.

China could have flattened those two colonies – but did not. Given that Islam has retaliation among its values, the West may be in for a lot.

Le Nouvel Observateur lists “groupes terroristes islamistes” in the world: Iraq-Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Uzbekistan, Chechenya.

The groups, named, grew out of similar local circumstances. Imagine that they increasingly share that longing for a caliphate; the Ottoman Empire covered much more than the Middle East, way into Africa and Asia. And more groups are coming. Invincible.

Imagine that Turkey itself shares that dream, maybe hoping to play a major role (in the past, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu a superb academic, a specialist on the Empire.)

Could that be the reason for Turkey not really joining, as it seems, this anti-ISIS crusade?

The West should be realistic, not “realist”. Switch to rationality. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Oct 21 2014 (IPS)

When Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai adopted the name of Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Quraishi and revealed himself to the world as the Amir al-Mu’minin (the Commander of the Faithful) Caliph Ibrahim of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the whole world had to sit up and take notice of him. 

The choice of the long title that he has chosen for himself is most interesting and symbolic. The title Abu-Bakr clearly refers to the first caliph after Prophet Muhammad’s death, the first of the four “Orthodox Caliphs”.

Farhang Jahanpour

The term Husseini presumably refers to Imam Hussein, the Prophet’s grandson and Imam Ali’s son, who was martyred in Karbala on 13 October 680. His martyrdom is seen as a turning point in the history of Islam and is mourned in elaborate ceremonies by the Shi’ites.

Both Sunnis and Shi’ites regard Imam Hussein as a great martyr, and as someone who gave up his life in order to defend Islam and to stand up against tyranny.

Finally, al-Quraishi refers to Quraish, the tribe to which the Prophet of Islam belonged.

Therefore, his chosen title is full of Islamic symbolism.

According to an alleged biography posted on jihadi Internet forums, al-Baghdadi is a direct descendant of the Prophet, but curiously enough his ancestors come from the Shi’a line of the Imams who descended from the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah.

Despite his great hostility towards the Shi’ites, is this genealogy a way of portraying himself as the true son of the descendants of the Prophet, thus appealing to both Shi’ites and Sunnis?“The decision of some Western governments, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to topple the regime of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by training and funding Syrian insurgents provided al-Baghdadi with an opportunity to engage in jihad and to widen the circle of his followers, until he suddenly emerged at the head of thousands of jihadi fighters, again attacking Iraq from Syria”

According to the same biography, al-Baghdadi was born near Samarra, in Iraq, in 1971. It is alleged that he received BA, MA and PhD degrees in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad. It is also suggested that he was a cleric at the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque in Samarra at around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

According to a senior Afghan security official, al-Baghdadi went to Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where he received his early jihadi training. He lived with the Jordanian militant fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Kabul from 1996-2000.

It is likely that al-Baghdadi fled Afghanistan with leading Taliban fighters after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Zarqawi and other militants, perhaps including al-Baghdadi, formed al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In September 2005, Zarqawi declared an all-out war on the Shi’ites in Iraq, after the Iraqi and U.S. offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar. Zarqawi was killed in a targeted killing by U.S. forces on Jun. 7, 2006.

According to U.S. Department of Defense records, al-Baghdadi was held at Camp Bucca from February until December 2004, but some sources claim that he was interned from 2005 to 2009.

In any case, his history of militancy in both Afghanistan and Iraq and fighting against U.S. forces goes back a long way. He was battle-hardened in the jihad against U.S. forces, and being detained by U.S. forces further strengthened his ambitions and credentials as a militant jihadi fighter.

In the wake of the Arab Spring and anti-government protests in Syria, some Western governments, Saudi Arabia and Turkey decided to topple the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by training and funding Syrian insurgents.

The upheaval in Syria provided al-Baghdadi with an opportunity to engage in jihad and to widen the circle of his followers, until he suddenly emerged at the head of thousands of jihadi fighters, again attacking Iraq from Syria.

His forces conquered vast swaths of territory in both Syria and Iraq, and he set up his so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (or greater Syria), ISIS.

On the first Friday in the Muslim month of fasting or Ramadan on Jul, 4, 2014 (American Independence Day), al-Baghdadi suddenly emerged out of the shadows and delivered the sermon at the Great Mosque in Mosul, which had been recently conquered by ISIS.

His sermon showed not only his command of Koranic verses, but also his ability to speak clearly and eloquently. He is certainly more steeped in radical Sunni theology than any of the al-Qaeda leaders, past and present, ever were.

His biographer says that Al-Baghdadi “purged vast areas in Iraq and Syria from the filth of the Safavids [a term referring to the 16^th century Iranian Shi’ite dynasty of the Safavids], the Nusayris [a derogatory term referring to the Syrian Alawite Shi’ites], and the apostate [Sunni] Awakening Councils. He established the rule of Islam.”

In his short sermon, al-Baghdadi denounced those who did not follow his strict interpretation of Islam as being guilty of bid’a or heresy. He quoted many verses from the Koran about the need to mobilise and to fight against non-believers, and to remain steadfast in God’s path.

He also stressed some key concepts, such as piety and performing religious rituals, obeying God’s commandments, and God’s promise to bring victory to the downtrodden and the oppressed. Finally, he talked about the need for establishing a caliphate.

In the Koranic context, these terms have broad meanings. However, in the hands of al-Baghdadi and other militant jihadis, these terms are given completely different and menacing meanings, calling for jihad and the subjugation of the non-believers.

The views and actions of al-Baghdadi and his followers are almost an exact copy of the Wahhabi revivalist movement instigated by an 18^th century theologian from Najd in the Arabian Peninsula, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792).

Indeed, what we are seeing in Iraq now is almost the exact repetition of the violent Sunni uprising in Arabian deserts that led to the establishment of the Wahhabi state founded by the Al Saud clan almost exactly 200 years ago.

In 1802, after having seized control of most of Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi warlord Abdulaziz attacked Karbala in Iraq, killed the majority of its inhabitants, destroyed the shrine of Imam Hussein, where Prophet Muhammad’s grandson is buried, and his followers plundered everything that they could lay their hands on.

The establishment of that dynasty has resulted in the propagation of the most fundamentalist form of Islam in its long history, which eventually gave rise to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and now to ISIS and al-Baghdadi.

The jihadis reduce the entire rich and varied scope of Islamic civilisation, Islamic philosophy, Islamic literature, Islamic mysticism, jurisprudence, Kalam and tafsir (hermeneutics) to the Shari’a, and even at that, they present a very narrow and dogmatic view of the Shari’a that is rejected by the greatest minds in Islam, putting it above everything else, including their rationality.

Indeed, it is a travesty that such barbaric terrorist acts are attributed to Islam. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

President Obama’s speech at the United Nations on Sep. 23 offered a rhetorically eloquent roadmap on how to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

He called on Muslim youth to reject the extremist ideology of ISIL (as ISIS is also known) and al-Qa’ida and work towards a more promising future.  President Obama repeated the mantra, which we heard from President George Bush before him, that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

There is no argument but that the Islamic State must be defeated.  But is the counter-terrorism roadmap, which President Obama set out in his U.N. speech, sufficient to defeat the extremist ideology of ISIS, Boko Haram, or al-Qa’ida?  Despite U.S. and Western efforts to degrade, decapitate, dismember and defeat these deadly and blood-thirsty groups for almost two decades, radical groups continue to sprout in Sunni Muslim societies."As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians. It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control"

The President also urged the Arab Muslim world to reject sectarian proxy wars, promote human rights and empower their people, including women, to help move their societies forward. He again stated that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is unsustainable and urged the international community to strive for the implementation of the two-state solution.

The President did not address Muslim youth in Western societies who could be susceptible to recruitment by ISIS, al-Qa’ida, or other terrorist organisations.

Arab publics will likely see glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in the President’s speech between his captivating rhetoric and actual policies. They most likely would view much of what he said, especially his global counter-terrorism strategy against the Islamic State, as another version of America’s war on Islam.  Arabs will also see much hypocrisy in the President’s speech on the issue of human rights and civil society.

Although fighting a perceived common enemy, it is a sad spectacle to see the United States, a champion of human rights, liberty and justice, cosy up to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain, serial violators of human rights and infamous practitioners of repression. It is even more hypocritical when Arab citizens realise that some of these so-called partners have often spread an ideology not much different from what ISIS preaches.

These three regimes in particular have emasculated their civil society and engaged in illegal imprisonment, sham trials and groundless convictions.  They have banned political parties, both Islamic and secular, silenced civil society institutions and prohibited peaceful protests.

The President praised the role of free press, yet Al-Jazeera journalists are languishing in Egyptian jails without any justification whatsoever. The regime continues to hold thousands of political prisoners without indictments or trials.

In addressing the youth in Muslim countries, the President told them: “Where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish, then you can dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”

What implications should Arab Muslim youth draw from the President’s invocation of the virtues of civil society when they see that genuine civil society is not “allowed to flourish” in their societies? Do Arab Muslim youth see real “alternatives to terror” when their regimes deny them the most basic human rights and freedoms?

The Sisi regime in Egypt has illegally destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have used the spectre of ugly sectarianism to destroy the opposition.  They openly and viciously engage in sectarian conflicts even though the President stated that religious sectarianism underpins regional instability.

In his U.N. speech, Field Marshall Sisi hoped the United States would tolerate his atrocious human rights record in the name of fighting ISIS.

Human Rights Watch and other distinguished experts sent a letter to President Obama asking him to raise the egregious human rights violations in Egypt when he met with Sisi in New York.  He should not give Sisi and other Arab autocrats a pass when it comes to their repression and human rights violations just because they joined the U.S.-engineered “coalition of the willing” against ISIS.

Regardless of how the air campaign against the Islamic State goes, U.S. policymakers will have to begin a serious review of a different Middle East than the one President Barak Obama inherited when he took office.  Many of the articles that have been written about ISIS have warned about the outcome of this war once the dust settles.

Critics correctly wondered whether opinion writers and experts could go beyond “warning” and suggest a course of policy that could be debated and possibly implemented. If the United States “breaks” the Arab world by forming an anti-ISIS ephemeral coalition of Sunni Arab autocrats, Washington will have to “own” what it had broken.

A road map is imperative if a serious conversation is to commence about the future of the Arab Middle East – but not one deeply steeped in counter-terrorism.  The Sunni coalition is a picture-perfect graphic for the evening news, especially in the West, but how should the United States deal with individual Sunni states in the coalition after the bombings stop and ISIS melts into the population?

As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians.  It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control.

Above all, ISIS represents a view of Islam that is not dissimilar to other strict Sunni interpretations of the Muslim faith that could be found across many Muslim countries, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. In fact, this narrow-minded, intolerant view of Islam is at the heart of the Wahhabi-Salafi Hanbali doctrine, which Saudi teachers and preachers have spread across the Muslim world for decades.

Nor is this phenomenon unique in the ideological history of Sunni millenarian thinking.  From Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century to Bin Ladin and Zawahiri in the past two decades, different Sunni groups have emerged on the Islamic landscape preaching ISIS-like ideological variations on the theme of resurrecting the “Caliphate” and re-establishing “Dar al-Islam.”

Although the historical lines separating Muslim regions (“Dar al-Islam” or “Abode of Peace”) from non-Muslim regions (“Dar al-Harb” or “Abode of War”) have almost disappeared in recent decades, ISIS, much like al-Qa’ida, is calling for re-erecting those lines.  Many Salafis in Saudi Arabia are in tune with such thinking.

This is a regressive, backward view, which cannot possibly exist today.  Millions of Muslims have emigrated to non-Muslim societies and integrated into those societies.

If President Obama plans to dedicate the remainder of his term in office to fighting and defeating the Islamic State, he cannot do it by military means alone.  He should:

1.  Tell Al Saud to stop preaching its intolerant doctrine of Islam in Saudi Arabia and revise its textbooks to reflect a new thinking. Saudi and other Muslim scholars should instruct their youth that “jihad” applies to the soul, not to the battlefield.

2.  Tell Sisi to stop his massive human rights violations in Egypt and allow his youth – men and women – the freedom to pursue their economic and political future without state control.  Sisi should also empty his jails of the thousands of political prisoners and invite the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the political process.

3.  Tell Al Khalifa to end its sectarian war in Bahrain against the Shia majority and invite opposition parties – secular and Islamic – including al-Wifaq, to participate in the upcoming elections freely and without harassment.  Opposition parties should also participate in redrawing the electoral districts before the Nov. 22 elections, which King Hamad has just announced.  International observers should be invited to monitor those elections.

4.  Tell the Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel that the situation in Gaza and the Occupied Territories is untenable.  Prime Minister Netanyahu should stop building new settlements and work with the Palestinian National Government for a settlement of the conflict. If President Obama concludes, like many scholars in the region, that the two-state solution is no longer workable, he should communicate his view to Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas and strongly encourage them to explore other modalities for the two peoples to live together between the River and the Sea.

If President Obama does not pursue these tangible policies and use his political capital in this endeavour, his U.N. speech will soon be forgotten.  Decapitating and degrading ISIS is possible, but unless Arab regimes move away from autocracy and invest in their peoples’ future, other terrorist groups will emerge.

Over the years, President Obama has delivered memorable speeches on Muslim world engagement, but unless he pushes for new policies in the region, the Arab Middle East will likely implode. Washington would be left holding the bag.  This is not the legacy the President would want to leave behind.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

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By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

When, all of a sudden, ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) emerged on the scene and in a matter of days occupied large swathes of mainly Sunni-inhabited parts of Iraq and Syria, including Iraq’s second city Mosul and Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein, and called itself the Islamic State, many people, not least Western politicians and intelligence services, were taken by surprise.

Farhang Jahanpour

Unlike in the Western world, religion still plays a dominant role in people’s lives in the Middle East region. When talking about Sunni and Shia divisions we should not be thinking of the differences between Catholics and Protestants in the contemporary West, but should throw our mind back to Europe’s wars of religion (1524-1648) that proved to be among the most vicious and deadly wars in history.

Just as the Hundred Years’ War in Europe was not based only on religion, the Sunni-Shia conflicts in the Middle East too have diverse causes, but are often intensified by religious differences. At least, various groups use religion as an excuse and as a rallying call to mobilise their forces against their opponents.

Ever since U.S. encouragement of Saudi and Pakistani authorities to organise and use jihadi fighters following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, to the rise of Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks on Sep. 11, 2001, followed by the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and military involvement in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, it seems that the United States has had the reverse effect of the Midas touch, in the sense that whichever crisis the United States has touched has turned to dust.“Now, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organisations, the entire Middle East is on fire. It would be the height of folly to dismiss or underestimate this movement as a local uprising that will disappear by itself, and to ignore its appeal to a large number of marginalised and disillusioned Sunni militants”

Now, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organisations, the entire Middle East is on fire. It would be the height of folly to dismiss or underestimate this movement as a local uprising that will disappear by itself, and to ignore its appeal to a large number of marginalised and disillusioned Sunni militants.

In view of its ideology, fanaticism, ruthlessness, the territories that it has already occupied, and its regional and perhaps even global ambitions, ISIS can be regarded as the greatest threat since the Second World War and one that could change the map of the Middle East and the post-First World War geography of the entire region, and challenge Western interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

When Islam appeared in the deserts of Arabia some 1400 years ago, with an uncompromising message of monotheism and the slogan “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God”, it changed the plight of the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula and formed a religion and a civilisation that even now claims upward of 1.5 billion adherents in all parts of the world, and forms the majority faith in 57 countries that are members of the Islamic Cooperation Organization.

Contrary to many previous prophets who did not see the success of their mission during their own lifetime, in the case of Islam not only did Muhammad manage to unite the Arabs in the name of Islam in the entire Arabian Peninsula, but he even managed to form a state and ruled over the converted Muslims both as their prophet and ruler. The creation of the Islamic umma or community during Muhammad’s lifetime in Medina and later on in the whole of Arabia is a unique occurrence in the history of religion.

Consequently, while most religions look forward to an ideal state or to the “Kingdom of God” as a future aspiration, Muslims look back at the period of Muhammad’s rule in Arabia as the ideal state. Therefore, what a pious Muslim wishes to do is to look back at the life and teachings of the Prophet, and especially his rule in Arabia, and take it as the highest standard of an ideal religious government.

This is why the Salafis, namely those who turn to salaf or the early fathers and ancestors, have always proved so attractive to many fundamentalist Muslims. Being a Salafi is a call to Muslims to reject the modern world and to follow the example of the Prophet and the early caliphs.

When, in 1516-17, the armies of Ottoman Sultan Selim I captured Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Muslim holy places in Arabia, the sultan assumed the title of caliph, and therefore the Ottoman Empire was also regarded a Sunni caliphate.

Although not all Muslims, especially many Arabs, recognise Ottoman rule as a caliphate, the caliphate nevertheless continued in name until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War when the caliphate was officially abolished in 1922.

The fall of the last powerful Islamic empire was not only traumatic from a political and military point of view but, with the end of the caliphate, the Sunnis lost a unifying religious authority as well.

It is very difficult for many Westerners to understand the feeling of hurt and humiliation that many Sunni Muslims feel as the result of what they have suffered in the past century. To have an idea, they should imagine that a mighty Christian empire that had lasted for many centuries had fallen as the result of Muslim conquest and that, in addition to the loss of the empire, the papacy had also been abolished at the same time.

With the end of the caliphate, Sunni countries were left rudderless, to be divided among various foreign powers which imposed their economic, military and cultural domination, as well as their beliefs and their way of life, on them. The feeling of hurt and humiliation that many Muslims have felt since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the strong longing for its reinstatement, still continues.

To add insult to injury, before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Western powers, especially Great Britain, had promised the Arabs that if they would rise up against the Ottomans, after the war they would be allowed to form an Islamic caliphate in the area comprising all the Arab lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Not only were these promises not fulfilled, but as part of the Sykes-Picot_Agreement on 16 May 1916, Britain and France secretly plotted to divide the Arab lands between them and they even promised Istanbul to Russia. Not only was a unified Arab caliphate not formed, but the Balfour_Declaration generously offered a part of Arab territory that Britain did not possess to the Zionists, to form a “national home for the Jewish people”.

In Winston Churchill’s words, Britain sold one piece of real estate (to which it had no claim in the first place) to two people at the same time.

The age of colonialism came to an end almost uniformly through military coups involving officers who had the ability to fight against foreign occupation. From the campaigns of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, to the rise of Reza Khan in Iran, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the military coups in Iraq and Syria that later led to the establishment of the Baâthist governments of Hafiz al-Assad in Syria and Abd al-Karim Qasim, Abdul Salam Arif and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and so on, practically all Middle Eastern countries achieved their independence as the result of military coups.

While the new military leaders managed to establish some order through the barrel of the gun, they were completely ignorant of the historical, religious and cultural backgrounds of their nations and totally alien to any concept of democracy and human rights.

In the absence of any civil society, democratic traditions and social freedom, the only path that was open to the masses that wished to mobilise against the rule of their military dictators was to turn to religion and use the mosques as their headquarters.

The rise of religious movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ennahda Movement in Tunisia, FIS in Algeria and Al-Dawah in Iraq, were seen as a major threat by the military rulers and were ruthlessly suppressed.

The main tragedy of modern Middle Eastern regimes has been that they have been unable not only to involve the Islamist movements in government, but they have even failed to involve them in the society in any meaningful way.

This is why after repeated defeats, divisions and humiliation, there has always been a longing among militant Sunni Muslims, especially Arabs whose countries were artificially divided and dominated by Western colonialism and later by military dictators, for the revival of the caliphate. Even mere utterance of ‘Islamic caliphate’ brings a burst of adrenaline to many secular Sunnis.

The failure of military dictatorships and the marginalisation and even the elimination of religiously-oriented groups have led to the rise of vicious extremism and terrorism. The terrorist group ISIS is making use of this situation and is basing its appeal on the reinstatement of the caliphate. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

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