This is a followup to my earlier post on Stephen Schwartz. Whilst researching Schwartz, I found the site Crossroads Arabia and this very well-informed commentary on Schwarz and Wahhabism.
I’ve emailed Crossroads Arabia inquiring of the author’s background. The author appears to have a deep grasp of Saudi, Islam and the Arab world that merits a close read. As an introduction, here are the first four paragraphs:
Stephen Schwartz came back into public notice with the publication of his book “The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror in 2003. Since that time, he’s become the “go-to” guy when media wanted somene to bash Saudi Arabia or its Salafist interpretation of Islam.
There are serious problems with Schwartz’s book, primarily his limited knowledge about Islam and even less about the Arab world. He did, however, create a believable narrative which I sure he believes, and has unfortunately seduced many others. The book seems to offer an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable, the bombings of 9/11 and the involvement of Saudis in those attacks.
The first problem is with Schwartz’s understanding of the complexity of the Islamic “umma” or global community. There are many variations on the concept of what makes a “good” Muslim, ranging from dire fundamentalist views to very open, syncretic views, blending regional cultural and historical values with those of Islam. Somewhere in the mix falls Sufism, the form of Islam that Schwartz professes.
Sufism is very interesting in itself. It’s very attractive to a certain slice of the American “boomer” generations in that it seems to find a way to do the “peace, love, harmony” thing very well. As a mystical interpretation of Islam–which tends to be a very rationalist religion–it is not the mainstream of Islam in the least, though many Muslims intentionally or not use aspects of it in their daily lives.
UPDATE: Based upon author John Burgess’ comment just received, I’ve found more key links for you at Crossroads Arabia:
John is publishing important commentary at Crossroads Arabia – check it out, and send him some links! See comments below for the background he sent today.
Robert Spencer (and to a lesser extent, Hugh Fitzgerald) of Jihad Watch and Stephen Schwartz have been going at it for sometime now. Spencer’s bone to pick is about the veracity of Schwartz’s assertions of moderate strains of Islam.
Ransom, thanks for the Spencer/Fitzgerald leads. I’m reading now – definitely a useful sources to add to the input queue.
Steve
If you want to look at the ideological roots of today’s militant Islam, especially the Sunni/Wahhibi variety, Sayyid Qutb is a figure of towering importance. The best discussion of his work that I know of is by Bill of Ideofact.
Steve, I’m glad I could contribute something tangible to Stephen Schwartz’s views on Islam and the WoT. Along the way, I know you will find the FrontPage Symposiums on these topics to be just as illuminating and saddening (sad, if you’re like me and wish there was a valid vein of moderation to oppose the Jihadist theology). Just how the Muslim “intellectuals” themselves (that includes Stephen Schwartz who is a convert) react in public debate forums is all too illuminating before one even gets to the specifics. When these debates get to the wall, their diversionary tactics (Kafir’s don’t count anyway) show the weaknesses of their obfuscations.
Sayyid Qutb is a figure of towering importance. The best discussion of his work that I know of is by Bill of Ideofact.
Thanks, just started into ideofact.com. Yikes, what a resource! Where are we going to find the time…
I found your link on Crossroads Arabia and will respond here. I’m having some serious computer problems and can’t access my Crossroads e-mail.
I’m a former US Foreign Service Officer who has spent most of the last 40 years in Islamic countries, both as an FS dependent and as an FSO. In my 25 year career, I’ve been posted to Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, the UK, India, and back to Saudi Arabia, as well as a couple of Washington assignments. In all my assignments I have been dealing with the Islamic or Arab world at least part of the time.
My sole funding, for my site, my blog, and the rest of my life, is my pension. I receive no money from anyone else, for anything else. I write my blog out of the conviction that US-Saudi relations are important; too important to be destroyed by erroneous or malicious “information”.
Politically, I’m probably best classified as a “moderate Republican”. I am not a moral relativist. And having had well over 20 friends and associates killed by terrorists, I do not take that threat lightly.
While I read blogs like Spencer’s or Charles Johnson’s LGF, I find that they go too far. By focusing predominantly on the negative, they miss most of the changes and reforms that are going on within Arab populations. The changes are real. They need to be recognized. Ignoring them, or needlessly diminishing them, does great disservice not only the the vast majority of Muslims around the world, but the the American national interest. It is very much in our interest to support and applaud changes that move in directions we want. And while we should also criticize stasis and changes going in the wrong direction, we shouldn’t rely on that as the only tune we can sing.
You can find more about me in the “About” link on both the blog and main Crossroads Arabia sites.
John Burgess,
Many thanks for your background comment – wish I could help you sort out your computer problems (I’m a retired Ph.D. Computer Science).
You’ll be seeing a number of incoming links as I work through your extensive site. Thank you for your efforts – what a remarkable resource you are offering us!
PS – I didn’t find your ‘about’ because you have it as a category. It looks like you are running a rather old version of WordPress? The current WP1.5 supports normal ‘pages’ which greatly simplifies creating bits like ‘about’. For that matter you could integrate your main site and blog together under WP if you wished.
Steve
Seems to be motherboard problems, probably requiring a replacement, or a new PC!
My hosting provider isn’t quite ready to commit to WP1.5 yet, so the convenience of “paging” will have to wait for a while. But, as you, I’d sure like to get them to move on previewing comments. Doing html blind, with no chance to correct errors, is just plain nasty!
Glad I can provide a service. As I said, the issue is too important to leave to emotionally attractive, but factually wrong “information”..
John,
As I said, the issue is too important to leave to emotionally attractive, but factually wrong “informationâ€.
Indeed. As to wrong information, it would be a treat if you had time to review my post on the Stratfor book: America’s Secret War. It has been a challenge to find anyone with both knowledge and willingness to critique Friedman’s work.
Re; WordPress, I mentioned in a prior comment that I have Live Preview working now for comments. My testing says, “so far so good”. Let me know if you want the details. This can also be installed in the admin posting function, but I’ve not gotten to that (I compose in Dreamweaver so I don’t need it).
No doubt you noticed that seekerblog has RSS feeds for both content and comments (links in the page footer), as well as for any specific post. I mention that because of your email outage.
Steve, while I haven’t read the STRATFOR book, I did post on it, based on a review given by Professor Bainbridge (of the eponymous blog). You can read my entry here: http://xrdarabia.org/blog/archives/2004/11/27/a-war-against-the-saudis/
[Preview doesn’t seem to want to take a link, so it may be appearing twice in the final post. Thanks for the tip on Live Preview. I’ll be watching it.
John,
Many thanks – I had not found your post on America’s Secret War yet – definitely illuminating. I will do an update to my post to reference your "A War Against the Saudis".
Your point on STRATFOR analysts’ mind-set is most interesting – not a characteristic I would look for when recruiting an intelligence analyst. You summarized the review in part:
The reviewer didn’t summarize Friedman accurately. I have excerpts from the book posted – you can hop directly into the “Saudi Dilemma” part of the post. With appropriate modesty I think my post does a better job of reflecting the content of the book than the reviewer. That said, to keep it short, I snipped quite a lot of nuance from the Friedman paragraphs myself.
My take is that the short form of the STRATFOR assertion was this: the US needed the cooperation of the Saudi government to severe the AQ funding channels, to identify and isolate the parts of AQ infrastructure based in KSA, and the help of Saudi intelligence to understand AQ. But KSA was unwilling to pursue these goals aggressively because the fear of the internal radical segments was greater than the fear of US consequences. The USG "did not want to displace the House of Saud. It wanted to change the government’s behavior".
From that asserted framework, Friedman moves to claim that "the United States had to follow an indirect path, using Iraq as a platform from which to coerce Saudi Arabia".
Like all the other un-sourced assertions, when I read that I ask "how could Friedman know that?" Wouldn’t such a policy be tightly-held at the NSC level?
Still with IE6.x I wasn’t comfortable with my first installation of Firefox, but it’s clear I’m going to have to give it another try.
The info that Stratfor comments upon wouldn’t be restricted, necessarily, to NSA levels only. Within the US Embassy, it was clear what the USG was trying to accomplish with the Saudis; it was our jobs to make that happen.
Stratfor’s analyis is not supported by what actions the USG actually took.
At first, pre-9/11 and post-9/11 to a large extent, the Saudi gov’t simply didn’t believe that there was a problem. They thought they had strings on all the Islamic radicals. That denial continued until 5/12/03, when the bombs went off in Riyadh. For the Saudis, that was their 9/11, their Pearl Harbor.
Denial wasn’t the only factor at play, of course. Some of the senior Al-Saud with positions in gov’t actually relied on their mutual allegiances with the religious conservative corps. A few of these princes were, at heart, fundamentalists, though not terrorists. Others needed to play up to the religious right to provide cover for the sins they’d committed earlier in their lives. They needed to show that they’d reformed and were all palsy-walsy with the fundamentalists. That was venal, but it was also critical to their individual political survival, not the survival of the Al-Saud or the government as a whole. Those guys took some serious shaking by the shoulders to wake up. Shaking is exactly what the Ambassador and high-level USG visitors did.
There weren’t any direct threats, just grave warnings of the consequences of what would happen if the problems were left unresolved.Again, not consequences coming from the US, but from the fundamentalists turning into terrorists. The way the Saudi gov’t has been fighting its own war against terror suggests that these guys did wake up. Over 200 Saudi police and security people have been killed and injured since their war began on 5/12. The most recent attacks within the KSA have been poorly coordinated and conducted. It seems that the terrorists have been attrited seriously. No final verdict yet, though.
John,
Re: Firefox – I’m on the 1.0 release PC/Mac – it is stable and a vast improvement over IE6 (at least for us tabbed interface cultists).
Stratfor’s analyis is not supported by what actions the USG actually took.
I really appreciate your time to map out the recent history. You answered a question I hadn’t yet asked, which was when & why did the KSA gov’t start getting serious about the terrorists. I thought 5/12 was the logical answer.
Presumably once the security forces began arresting & interrogating, what they learned about the infestation reinforced the priority to act.
Regarding the madrassas (Pakistan, Indonesia, …) what is the answer to that problem? I presume the Saudi charity funding continues. I would guess the KSA gov’t doesn’t have much leverage with respect to weeding out all the extremists teaching in the madrassas.
I think it was Tom Friedman who wrote that as of year 2000 there were about 30,000 of these madrassas in Pakistan alone – turning out illiterate young men with no job hopes, but having a good indoctrination in intolerance, in the concept of muslim victimhood, and in many cases small arms training.
So much to learn…
I wrote some comments in response to the defense of “Saudi reality” on Crossroads Arabia.