Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics

by IBRAHIM M. ABU-RABI'
In a 1946 seminal essay titled "Politics and the English Language," the British novelist George Orwell bemoaned the decline of post-World War Two English prose by pointing out that what was troublesome about some major English writing then was lack of precision, sheer incompetence, and vagueness.

This insight is at the heart of Brown's discussion in this timely book on Islam and politics. The author offers the most refreshingly sober analysis of the Islamic phenomenon; a welcome addition from someone who has spent his entire career analyzing modem North African and Middle Eastern societies by using original sources and
treating the Muslim world in the most balanced of ways. Brown focuses his analytical lenses on three interrelated phenomena: first, Islam as theology; second, Islam as history; and, third, Islam as politics. As a result, he presents an overwhelmingly clear picture of the interplay between these three factors in classical and modem Islamic societies. This type of analysis is the more welcome after the tragic attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, when every Tom, Dick, and Harry has become a specialist on Islam and the so-called Islamic terrorism. In his insightful analysis of the issues at hand, Brown cuts through the thick of it all by advocating a clear method of studying the Islamic religious phenomenon.

A scholarly approach or a scientific study of religion, he correctly maintains, ought not minimize the impact of religion on life but, on the contrary, ought to shed important light on the interplay between theology and other social and historical factors. That leads him to suggest that the Muslim people must be judged by the same "rules of logic and evidence" as other people (p. 19). Brown, just like Edward Said, is disturbed by Western perceptions of Islam and the Muslim people and is anxious to make sense of the complex historical and theological relationship between the Muslim world and the West. Once and again, he affirms the notion that Islam belongs to the Abrahamic family, that is, it is akin in its theological worldview to both Judaism and Christianity and "that the more Jews or Christians know of their own religious heritage the better able they are to understand Islam" (p. 21).

Aside from its theological core, Islam grew out of an urban environment and is "marked by an urban bourgeoisie outlook" (p. 27). Brown elaborates in a subtle way on the Benedict Anderson thesis of the "imagined communities" discussed in his classic work, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1993). Because of its Abrahamic theology, its bourgeois and urban dimension, its literati class, its Sufis, the intellectual leadership of formative Islam was able to imagine a universal community of believers who could transcend ethnic, linguistic, and geographic boundaries. Although he does not refer to Anderson's major study, Brown seems to be heading in the same direction of analysis. The Muslim notions of politics, he asserts, developed mainly in the formative phase against this background of universal imagining, and hence Muslim political theory is replete with such terms as the ummah, dar al-Islam, dar al-Harb, and dar al-Sulh. However, Brown stresses that in spite of the central role of the ulama, the main intelligentsia in classical Muslim society, in providing a universal imagining to the Muslim ummah, no corporate "church" body has ever existed in the Muslim world. The ulama, especially in the Sunni world, have more or less stood with the status quo by refusing to support opposition to the political authority. The mainstream Muslim ulama, providing legitimacy, put their weight behind an Islamic tradition that was pro-status quo and pushed their notion of orthodoxy often with the support of the political authorities. Brown clarifies the important connection between the ulama and the ruling elite in Muslim societies, a relationship of cooptation or at best cooperation: "The Sunni ulama have almost never acted in an organized fashion as if they constituted an institutionally distinct, hierarchically arranged body" (p. 33). Brown provides us with the necessary conceptual tools to delve into such central questions as the education of the ulama, their relationship to the state in the classical era, and their role in the dissemination of religious
knowledge. It is crucial to examine these points in light of the modem developments in the Muslim world, especially in light of the relationship between state and religion. In the wake of independence from colonialism, many Muslim countries created Ministries of Religious and Islamic Affairs and encouraged a class of ulama to be the official spokespersons of Islam. However, opposed to that, a new class of Muslim activists and thinkers emerged in modem Muslim societies, thus giving a new voice or representation to Islam and the problems facing
the Muslim world. It is interesting to examine the dynamics of the relationship between "official Islam" and activist Islam in contemporary Muslim societies. One can take the Wahhabi case in Saudi Arabia, the Turabi case in the Sudan, and the Shiite case in Iran. In Iran the ulama have, more or less, controlled the state since 1979.

How is one to view the relationship between religion and society in the modern Muslim world? What is the role of colonialism in this relationship? Brown admits that there have been major shifts in power relations between the Muslim world and the West in the past two centuries. Brown refers to the confrontation with the West or the Western impact but never explicitly to European colonization, the single most important event in the development of modern Muslim societies. It is in this context that one can understand the interplay between three major forces in the colonial Muslim world: Islamic forces, colonialism, nationalism, and a fourth force, Communism, in the case of Indonesia.

This interplay gave rise to the modern nation-state phenomenon with various degrees of political, cultural, and economic independence from the colonial center. The heavy colonial legacy along with the need to modernize the state without the appropriate personnel and resources to do so created many challenges for the nascent nation-states. In the Gulf states, because of oil, the challenges were of a different nature. That is why, as Brown notes correctly, in the early phase of the nation-state the "Muslim discourse" was dominated by such charismatic figures as Ataturk, Sukaro, Nasser, and Bourguiba. He notes that in the past few decades this discourse has been dominated by Islamist intellectuals and activists This is true only to a limited extent. The political elite in the contemporary Muslim world are still as powerful as ever, and dissent is rarely tolerated. In addition, a large number of the political elite are pro-West, as opposed to the first generation after independence that was, more or less, anti-West or anticolonial and stressed the importance of independent political and economic development in the Muslim world.

Why, then, the rise in Islamist politics? This statement has to be qualified. Most Islamist movements in the Sunni world have had a tough relationship with the new nation-state and the current military leadership. Some have been banned from politics (Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia are examples). The only example of an almost takeover of the state by an Islamist movement took place in the Sudan, under Turabi. But this experiment has come to naught. It is against the above theoretical background that Brown takes up the issue of Islamism (Islamic fundamentalism) in the modem Muslim world. Here his analysis lacks some theoretical clarity, unlike that in the first part of the book. How is one to characterize the Islamist movement in the Muslim world? First, Brown is correct to assume that Islamism is a multilayered phenomenon in the Muslim world and that it traverses the past two centuries. However, one can delineate several classes of Islamism: precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. The Wahabbiyyah is at the heart of the first class, whereas the Muhammadiyyah; Nahdatu ul-Ulama of Indonesia; the Ikhwan of Egypt; and the Jama'at-e-Islami of India and Pakistan, all products of the colonial eras, comprise the second class. Of the third class, we have the Egyptian Jihad and the Taliban movements. Brown assumes that all Islamist movements are political and thus radical in nature and orientation.

This is far from true in the case of Muhammadiyyah, Nahdatu ul-Ulama of Indonesia, and even of the Tabligh Jama'at, the most dominant revivalist movement in contemporary South Asia. Islamism is, in large measure, the product of modern European colonialism in the Muslim world and the failure of the modem nation-state to accommodate protest movements in their political systems. I think that the weakness of Brown's analysis in this section stems from his failure to accept Western colonialism as a historical fact in the Muslim world. Nowhere does he use the term; instead, he uses such terms as "changes,"" confrontations,"and so forth. It is the fact of colonialism that gave rise to the modem nation-state in the Muslim world, often an exhausted and poor nation-state that resorted to both modernization and repression in its formative phase. In the 1950s, the Masumi Islamist party was repressed in Indonesia, as were the Ikhwan movement in Egypt and the Jama'at in Pakistan. That is why the relationship between Islamism and the state in the Muslim world has been complex. In the case of Wahabbism, Islamism and the state have been allied, whereas in other cases, Islamism and the state have been at odds. The state in the modern Muslim world is a nineteenthcentury creation prompted by European colonialism. As such, Islamism has never been a static phenomenon. It has invented a powerful religious discourse to legitimize itself in the eyes of the masses and to gain political and economic support. Islamism has been in crisis for the last four decades for many complex reasons: first, because the whole of Muslim tradition has been in crisis, and second, because the new guard of Islamism is not satisfied with the achievements or lack thereof on the part of the old guard. This is true in the case of Wahabbism, and bin Laden is an example.

In spite of some major theoretical flaws in the second part of the book, I think this work paves the way for grasping the Islamist phenomenon in its diverse forms in the contemporary Muslim world. My criticism of the second section is not intended to minimize the importance of this book and the solidity of its arguments throughout. Brown has offered us the necessary epistemological tools to come to grips with the complex theme of Islam and politics both in the classical and modern phases of the Muslim world.

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(The Nation)Kenyan gov't spends Sh40 million in deportation process

Oliver Musembi and Kenneth Ogosia

25 January 2010
The government spent more than Sh40 million to deport radical Jamaican Islamic preacher Sheikh Abdullah al Faisal.

Immigration and Registration of Persons minister Otieno Kajwang’ gave the figure on Monday as it emerged that two officers had been suspended for clearing the preacher to enter the country.

Without specifying the amount, the minister said it was “in excess of Sh40 million” but defended the expenditure as warranted.

“It is the responsibility of the State to ship back the likes of al Faisal and this was necessitated by the fact that some deportees turn violent. This makes commercial airlines uncomfortable with such travellers,” said Mr Kajwang’.

Sheikh al Faisal, whose arrest and subsequent deportation triggered fatal demonstrations by Muslim youths in Nairobi, was deported last week.

The government had to hire a private jet to fly him to Jamaica after airlines declined to transport him and various other countries denied him access.

An earlier attempt to deport him two weeks ago failed after airlines refused to take him on board from Nigeria to the Gambia.

Sheikh al Faisal entered Kenya on December 24, last year, from Tanzania through the Lunga Lunga border point. He had been to Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Swaziland and Malawi.

Sheikh al Faisal served four years in a United Kingdom prison after being convicted of calling for the murder of Jews and Hindus.

On Monday, it emerged that two Immigration officers had been suspended for sanctioning the entry of the Islamic hate preacher.

The two, the officer in charge of the border point and his junior, who stamped the preacher’s visa, are likely to face tougher action since the region’s principal immigration officer has been asked to prepare a report on the entry of Sheikh al Faisal.

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US walking a tightrope with its Yemen policy

US walking a tightrope with its Yemen policy

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Saba Mahmood interviews Talal Asad (excerpts)

full interview here.
Asad discusses modernity, religion, what agency is, Islamic reform, the difference between dependency theory and postcolonialism, and much much more. This is one of the best 'summations' of the various nature of Asad's intellectual pursuits and it maps out a great 'space' for scholars to follow up on his work in local contexts. Although its from 1996, over ten years ago, it is still a great read.

Talal Asad
modern power and the reconfiguration of religious traditions
Saba Mahmood

Contemporary politico-religious movements, such as Islamism, are often understood by social scientists as expressions of tradition hampering the progress of modernity. But given the recent intellectual challenges posed against dualistic and static conceptions of modernity/tradition, and calls for parochializing Western European experiences of modernity, do you think the religio-political movements (such as Islamism) force us to rethink our conceptions of modernity? If so, how?

Well, I think they should force us to rethink many things. There has been a certain amount of response from people in Western universities who are interested in analyzing these movements. But many of them still make assumptions that prevent them from questioning aspects of Western modernity. For example, they call these movements "reactionary" or "invented," making the assumption that Western modernity is not only the standard by which all contemporary developments must be judged, but also the only authentic trajectory for every tradition. One of the things the existence of such movements ought to bring into question is the old opposition between modernity and tradition, which is still fashionable. For example, many writers describe the movements in Iran and Egypt as only partly modern and suggest that its their mixing of tradition and modernity that accounts for their "pathological" character. This kind of description paints Islamic movements as being somehow inauthentically traditional on the assumption that "real tradition" is unchanging, repetitive, and non-rational. In this way, these movements cannot be understood on their own terms as being at once modern and traditional, both authentic and creative at the same time. The development of politico-religious movements ought to force people to rethink the uniquely Western model of secular modernity. One may want to challenge aspects of these movements, but this ought to be done on specific grounds. It won't do to measure everything by grand conceptions of authentic modernity. But that's precisely the kind of a priori thinking that many people indulge in when analyzing contemporary religious movements.

It has often been argued that the tradition of liberalism is based upon principles of pluralism and tolerance in ways that Islamic tradition is not, and that the concept of plurality remains foreign to Islam. How would you respond to that?

Well, I would say that it is certainly not a modern, liberal invention. The plurality of individual interests is what the liberal tradition has theorized best of all. On the other hand, the attempt to get some kind of representation for ethnic groups and minorities in Western countries has been difficult for liberalism to theorize. Liberalism has theories of tolerance by which spaces can be created for individuals to do what they wish, so long as they don't obstruct the ability of others to do likewise. But these aren't theories of pluralism in the sense we are beginning to understand the term today. Liberalism has theories of multiple "interests," interests which can be equalized, aggregated, and calculated through the electoral process and then negotiated in the process of formulating and applying governmental policies. But that is a very different kind of pluralism from the different ways of life which are (a) the preconditions and not the objects of individual interests, and which are, (b) in the final analysis, incommensurable.

Now the Islamic tradition, like many other non-liberal traditions, is based on the notion of plural social groupings and plural religious traditions--especially (but not only) of the Abrahamic traditions [ahl al-kitab]. And, of course, it has always accommodated a plurality of scriptural interpretations. There is a well- known dictum in the shari`a: ikhtilaf al-umma rahma [difference within the Islamic tradition is a blessing]. This is where the notions of ijtihad and ijm`a come in. As modes of developing and sustaining the Islamic tradition, they authorize the construction of coherent differences, not the imposition of homogeneity.

Of course there are always limits to difference if coherence is to be aimed at. If tolerance is not merely another name for indifference, there comes a point in every tradition beyond which difference cannot be tolerated. That simply means that there are differences which can't be accommodated within the tradition without threatening its very coherence. But there are, of course, many moments and conditions of such intolerance. One must not, therefore, equate intolerance with violence and cruelty.

On the whole, Muslim societies in the past have been much more accommodating of pluralism in the sense I have tried to outline than have European societies. It does not follow that they are therefore necessarily better. And I certainly don't wish to imply that Muslim rulers and populations were never prejudiced, that they never persecuted non-Muslims in their midst. My point is only that "the concept of plurality," as you put it, is not foreign to Islam.

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Sudan's Colonized Judiciary (Book Review)

by Alex de Waal from Making Sense of Darfur


It’s an unfortunate reality that books on Sudan by Sudanese authors—even those who have a wonderful English writing style, and who deal with their subject matter in a way that combines insight with accessibility—rarely get the attention they deserve.

We should take a close look at Abdullahi Ibrahim’s recently-published history of the Sudanese judiciary: Manichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in the Sudan, 1898-1985. Abdullahi writes as an insider to Sudan’s Islamist intellectual and political tradition, and illuminates why not only the law, but the judiciary as well, was an arena of such significant political contest in colonial and post-colonial Sudan. He places contemporary Sudan within the wider post-colonial experience, using Frantz Fanon’s paradigms of the opposition between the European/canonical and the native/deviant, using the divided judiciary as his case.

British rule in Sudan, as elsewhere, was marked by a talent for divide and rule. This has been much-remarked in the context of the ‘native administration’ system, developed in the 1920s in order to marginalize the educated ‘detribalized’ elites whom, the British feared, would challenge their rule. The rural aristocracy was empowered—within very strictly defined limits—and became tarnished as ‘collaborators’ within the dominant nationalist political discourse. Sharia judges were also allocated their tightly-defined status within the system: low.

Abdullahi documents how the colonial subjects’ experience of British rule was hierarchically ordered, from matters of dress to education to urban geography. He poses a set of dualities. The colonizers and their carefully-chosen effendi clients wore suits and polished shoes (jazma), while the rest wore jellabiyas and markubs—and could be punished for violating the dress code. Khartoum was the modern city, laid out in a grid (with diagonals, said to resemble the Union Jack), while Omdurman the ‘native’ town retained its disorderly street plan. (To this day the executive is in Khartoum and the legislature on the other side of the river.) The administration used the Gregorian calendar and collected regular taxes and dues; the traditional system used the Islamic calendar and collected the Islamic Zakat. Students destined for prestigious posts attended the secular Gordon Memorial College close to the Governor-General’s Palace in Khartoum, those relegated to local affairs went to the Mahad al Ilmi (Islamic College) in Omdurman.

Abdullahi’s account is made particularly vivid by his gift for anecdote and personal observation. He recounts a story told by an old folklorist whose life story he compiled, describing how the schoolboys of Khartoum turned out for a parade in honor of a British colonial official. After long waiting in the sun, the officer arrived on his horse, inspected the schoolboys from the government schools but wheeled away at the very point where he came to the ranks of the boys from the khalwas (Quranic schools), who went away aggrieved, ‘staring into the void drilled by the refusal of that British official, the symbol of power and legitimacy, even to take notice of our presence.’

Abdullahi’s chief concern is how this duality translated into the legal sphere, relegating Islamic Law and its courts to second class status and a domestic sphere. Instead of being a nationally unifying factor, Sharia became a divisive issue. The qadis (judges) of the Sharia Division were junior to the ‘authoritative’ Civil Division. Qadis were required to wear a version of traditional garb including a turban (a dress code that some later adopted as a defiant gesture against western mores), were not entitled to receive salutes from policemen, and were widely ridiculed as ‘women’s judges.’ This refers to how the Sharia courts were visibly ‘women’s courts’, crowded with abandoned wives and their children and dispossessed widows hoping for the near-impossible to occur. Abdullahi notes that women preferred the Sharia courts to the tribal courts because Islamic law gives them more rights.

Imperial Sudan possessed neither a unified legal code nor a single judicial system. Among the majority, the sense of moral injury generated by the distinct second-class status of their own customary legal system, generated a rage for justice, unmet in the formal courts. Post-colonial Sudan was little different: the ruling secularized elites despised the Sharia courts, insensitive to their political plight and history. From the first days of independence, the search for a unified judiciary became a central theme of Sudanese politics. Abdullahi describes how this struggle translated into a ‘rage for masculinity’ and a preoccupation with sexual morality (including especially prostitution and homosexuality) in public discourse. It is not insignificant that Hassan al Turabi is the son of a qadi. Abdullahi breaks new ground in situating Turabi’s political philosophy in his family background.

In two provocative chapters, Abdullahi provides an Islamist perspective on the politics of Nimeiri’s Islamism. He is critical of the Republican Brothers’ leader Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, for repudiating the Islamic courts—rubbing in their faces the fact of their colonial origin and their inability to implement their ruling, made in 1968, that he was an apostate. Abdullahi describes the popular support for Sharia as stemming more from people’s hostility to the (secular) courts with their slow and expensive procedures, than enthusiasm for Islam. Nimeiri’s September Laws held out the promise of a unified judiciary, but disappointed. Abdullahi concludes by noting that Sudanese political society remains in a Manichean trap, and implies that a certain madness, a ‘logic of daring,’ will be needed to escape from it.

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Book Review: A Fury for God (A Critique of Millenarian Ideology)

Although its now a bit out of date (it was written on the eve of America's invasion of Iraq), Malise Ruthven's A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America is well worth picking up for those interested in the rapproachment (or lack thereof) between the now commonly reified entities of "Islam" and the "West." This is a good reading companion to more famous books like Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, and Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld.

Despite its ominous sounding title, A Fury For God is far from a scurrilous screed against Islam. Ruthven demonstrates how similar ideologically are the Islamism of al-Qaeda and the neo-conservative foreign policy outlook which characterized the Bush years. Ruthven uncovers their common ideological roots and shows how both al-Qaeda and the US response to its actions as an organization are characterized by their millenarian and Manichean content. His insights into the US-Saudi relationship are particularly incisive. Ruthven argues that despite its virulently anti-Western ideology, al-Qaeda has in fact been profoundly shaped by a Western understanding of millenarian revivalism.

Al-Qaeda is both organization and ideology. Bin Laden’s participation, along with other Arabs in the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion laid the foundation for the modern al-Qaeda, a point Ruthven makes, along with emphasizing how crucial American funding was to their victory over the Soviets. As the Soviet threat diminished, the American-funded fighters—the so-called “Afghan Arabs” who made up the mujahhidin, dispersed, but many followed bin Laden to Sudan, where they participated in his various construction projects, such as building a road from Port Sudan to Khartoum. Here bin Laden was able to help finance the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. It was through these actions that he first came to the attention of US leadership.

Post-9/11, al-Qaeda’s popularity led to a rapid export of its message and tactics; local versions of the organization sprang up in Iraq, for example. Although the core of al-Qaeda was damaged by the 9/11 attacks, its message proved resonant for a variety of these “copycat” organizations. Thus al-Qaeda as an ideology was much more exportable than al-Qaeda as an organization; this feature is what gives al-Qaeda a truly trans-national character. The primary architect of this ideology was Professor Abdullah Azzam, one of bin Laden’s primary influences, who used Salafi interpretations to argue for an activist form of “global jihad” against the enemies of Islam. Much like other millenarian revival movements, al-Qaeda promised eternal riches and glory in paradise, and asked its fighters to give up everything in the world for an eternal reward. This radical vision of a break with temporal and worldly reality was shared by other millenarian resistance movements like Maji Maji or Kimbanguism, as well as movements based more on purely spiritual revival. Ironically this idea of revitalization and millenarian redemption also share a great deal of ideological linkage with secularist projects like communism. They all believed in some ideal vision of the future, if only certain sacrifices could be endured in the present.

John Gray has an excellent passage on this idea in Al-Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern:

“In contemporary western societies, repressed religion returned in secular cults. When Saint-Simon and Comte founded the Religion of Humanity they devised the prototype of every subsequent political religion. The eschatological hopes that animated these intermittently sane nineteenth-century savants shaped Marxian ‘scientific socialism’ and neo-liberal ‘free-market economics’. In dilute and timorous form, they sustain liberal humanists today.”

The ideology of al-Qaeda is built on similar structural foundations. There are no demands for talks or release of prisoners as conditions of negotiation. Al-Qaeda speaks the language of people whose faith in the power of redemptive violence is unshaken. Adds Gray:

“Self-evidently, the belief that terror can remake the world is not a result of any kind of scientific inquiry. It is faith, pure and simple. No less incontrovertibly, the faith is uniquely western,”

The planners of 9/11 were strategists first and foremost. They recognized both the power of symbolism and the roots of Western dominance. They struck in such a way that their blow would impact financially and symbolically. The Twin Towers, as one of the major “nerve-centers” of capitalism, represented the hegemony of international capital. Furthermore, their height, their physical dominance of the surrounding landscape, their iconic status in the New York skyline, ensured that their destruction would guarantee maximum media coverage. For al-Qaeda, whose earlier efforts did not attract near the amount of coverage, the attack on the World Trade Center was a media blitz, designed to thrust them into a direct confrontation with their enemy, a confrontation that would exacerbate the Manichean dimensions of the conflict. It was the “propaganda of the deed” that was important to them, not the loss of life itself.

Those who piloted the planes that hit the Twin Towers on September 11 were not alienated radicals. They were disciplined operatives, true believers, and obviously possessed the courage of their convictions, whatever the evil dimensions of their deed. Ruthven explains their motivations in terms of: “the perception of spiritual emptiness” in the West. “The emigrant becomes obsessed with the materialistic and hedonistic aspects of Western culture because he does not know how to gain access to its spiritual and aesthetic goods.”

Given al-Qaeda’s millenarian tendencies, it would seem that the US would present a vision that refuted the crude Manichean tendencies of its opponent. But this was not the case. Instead the appellation “war on terror”, which merely flipped the Manichean coin on which al-Qaeda’s ideology rested, was used by the Bush administration introduced to justify its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The sacrifices demanded by the Bush regime, its calls to patriotism and its framing of the conflict as “good” versus “evil” and its willingness to justify any and all of its actions based on that belief—these ideas all have a millenarian ring, albeit watered down by secular nationalism.

To be at battle with a known enemy, a physical group is one thing. To be at war with violence itself is a cultural presumption that, whatever their other differences, links Bin Laden and Bush. Their millenarian expectations of the cosmic dimensions of eternal judgment are the same, and remarkably they both saw (and see) themselves as representing the actualization of the good on earth, fighting to bring an eternal vision to reality, consequences be damned. The ends justify the means is an old adage, and remarkably, the antecedents of Bin Laden’s theology and Bush’s articulation of US policy are not only religious but secular. Nazism and Socialism had similar beliefs about the elimination of evil from the world.

In this respect, the attempted distinction of terrorism as comprising essentially non-state actors is a dangerous move, as it implicitly places states outside of the moral judgment implied by the word “terror.” States as well as organizations can be millenarian in their thinking. The ideology of the war on terror is the latest incarnation of the US myth of eternal progress, in which it exports its model of “democracy” to the entire world. Thus the war on terror is really the West at war with itself, at war with the groups it has helped bring into existence through its machinations to accomplish this.

It is worth noting that the strategy undertaken by the Bush administration to respond played into the Manichean designs of the al-Qaeda. For in designating not al-Qaeda but “Islamofascists” as the enemy, the US overplayed its hand and involved itself in the invasion of a sovereign country where a notion of “victory” seems increasingly unlikely with each passing day, Obama notwithstanding. If the last eight years of the Bush administration have taught the US government anything, it is that its own version of a universal millenarian ideology failed miserably by allowing it (and its allies) to justify nearly any action in the name of the “war on terror.” The danger of such millenarianism ought to be clear: it can start fires, but those fires can easily become uncontrollable conflagrations.

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Somalia's President Calls for Ramadan Ceasefire

President calls for Ramadan ceasefire

Somalia's government has called on warring parties in the conflict-torn horn of Africa nation to stop fighting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a spokesman for the presidency said yesterday.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a former Islamist rebel, said the ceasefire call was motivated by the need for peace during the religiously significant month.

"The president made this call since it is necessary to not stop people going to Islamic centres, worship Allah any time without fear, and we hope the opposition will accept it without condition," Abdulkadir Osman told Reuters by telephone.

Opposition groups said they would discuss the ceasefire call.

The President's U.N. -backed government has been facing a stubborn insurgency from the al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam rebels, dashing hopes of an end to 18 years of instability.

Western intelligence says the fighting and chaos is exploited by al Qaeda linked groups, exposing the entire region.

On Saturday clashes continued, as insurgents attacked a government-controlled Mogadishu checkpoint in the early hours.

"Al Shabaab men have attacked our positions in Ex-Control Afgoye (checkpoint). We repulsed the attackers and killed more than 10 men," Abdifatah Shaweye, deputy mayor of Banadir, told Reuters by telephone

Al Shabaab's information office denied the claim and said they took control of the base and killed nearly 10 soldiers from the government side.

Al Shabaab also said they had agreed to work together with Hizbul Islam fighters in the South Western region of Gedo.

"We had agreed to join all our forces and take orders from one command. The number of Hizbul Islam fighters (who) joined us are in the hundreds," Commander Bare Adan Khooje told Reuters.

About 100 people died last week in different parts of the country as pro-government militias and insurgents engaged in various battles.

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