March | 2011 | Islam and the West

U.S. liberals adrift in the Middle East

By Mustafa Malik

President Obama always makes good speeches, and he gave an excellent one defending his administration’s participation in NATO’s military intervention in Libya.

The coalition bombing has averted, as the president pointed out, a “brutal repression and looming humanitarian crisis” brought on by Muammar Qadhafi’s forces. Even though the Qadhafi forces have halted the rebels’ advance toward his eastern strongholds, the United States and its allies aren’t going to let the dictator prevail.

I’m concerned about the resistance to the mission that the administration is facing from America’s political and intellectual establishments. Republican and Tea Party opposition to the operation was predictable. I’m disappointed, though not surprised, by the Democratic and, especially, liberal resistance to it. It’s hard to imagine more liberal Americans than Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Post columnist Mark Shields and Rep. Denis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio. They’re leading a range of American liberals and progressives who oppose the U.S. role in the U.N.-sponsored military action. I’m not surprised by their stance because I have known conservative and liberal Americans who profess support for “universal” human rights and freedoms, but view their “universe” to be the West. (The neocons’ “democratization” propaganda about the Iraq war meant to camouflage a clumsy imperial project.)

U.S. policy, not Islam, breeding terrorists

By Mustafa Malik

(Published in the Austin-American Statesman, March 20; Columbus Dispatch, March 16, 2011)

WASHINGTON – Rep. Peter T. King had said his congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization would investigate the causes of the problem. It didn’t.

I have long been calling, in my newspaper columns and at public forums, for a serious investigation of the causes of Muslim anti-Americanism and terrorism. Some researchers have made in-depth inquiries about it, but U.S. administrations, Congress and news media have brushed them aside.

Muslim radicalization in America and the West is a recent trend. It’s the outcome mainly of Western Muslim’ identification with their fellow Muslims overseas who are fighting U.S. and Israeli forces occupying their lands or deployed on them. As we know, 15 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudis. They apparently had been pissed off by the deployment of American troops in Saudi Arabia. (more…)

Iran holds America hostage in Bahrain

By Mustafa Malik

For the United States, the Bahraini uprising is more worrisome than most others now swirling in the Middle East and North Africa.

America’s stakes in Bahrain was underscored to me this past Jan. 13 by a researcher in Manama, the Bahraini capital. “The Al Khalifa rulers are sitting on a volcano,” said Numan Saleh, who was affiliated with the Bahrain Center for Studies and Research. “When the volcano erupts, would the [U.S. Navy’s] Fifth Fleet remain anchored in Juffairare [near Manama]? Would America and the West take their [Persian Gulf] oil supply for granted?” Little did I know that many of us in America would be asking on these same questions in four short weeks.

The recent Cabinet reshuffle by Bahraini regime and its gift of $2, 650 per family have been pooh-poohed by protesters; they left the monarchy with absolute power. A dialogue with the opposition, called for by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, either. Yet the Obama administration is having a hard time recognizing the reality that Al Khalifa despotism is fast becoming history. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently she hoped that “a national dialogue can produce meaningful measures that respond to the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain.”

Holy cow! How would American revolutionaries have felt if Friedrich-Wilhelm III, then king of the Prussian Empire, had told them that a dialogue with the British King George III would satisfy their “legitimate aspirations”? (more…)