Racial Commercial Profiling of Dubai Ports

Some members of Congress, exhibiting post-9/11 jingoism and paranoia, are pressuring the Bush administration to reconsider its decision to allow Dubai Ports World, an Arab company, to take over operations at six U.S. ports. The approval should stand.

Congressman Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and, more importantly, a Congressman from an area near two of the ports that will be operated by Dubai Ports World, expressed this xenophobic view about Dubai's acquisition of the British company that is currently operating the ports: "In the post-9/11 world, there should have been a presumption against this company."

Why? Because two of the 9/11 hijackers happened to be from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the country in which the company is based. Yet the British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, was allowed to operate the ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, and New Orleans despite Richard Reid's (the infamous "shoe bomber") British citizenship. And American companies are permitted to operate some U.S. ports despite the fact that Timothy McVeigh, Jose Padilla, and other U.S. citizens are convicted or accused terrorists. For that matter, how do we know that even an American company running the ports would be immune from terrorist infiltration?

In fact, since two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE, Dubai Ports World might even have a stronger interest in operating safe and secure ports than companies from other nations. Dubai has a worldwide presence, an extensive history of operating ports, and a reputation to uphold. If a terrorist incident occurred in one of its ports, the company would probably lose more business worldwide than a non-Arabic company would under the same circumstances.

The company should be evaluated on its qualifications to operate the ports, not on McCarthy-like litmus tests for Arabs or the UAE. Besides, although Dubai Ports World will operate the ports, U.S. federal and local authorities will remain in charge of security.

Members of Congress such as Congressman King and New York Senator Charles E. Schumer certainly get points with their New York constituents for defending the nation against the onslaught by "Arab terrorists," and perhaps trying to protect U.S. companies from foreign competition as well.

But if Arab companies truly cannot be trusted to operate U.S. ports, then shouldn't they be banned from all involvement with U.S. airports, farming, electrical generation, water works, nuclear power plants, chemical, biomedical, and pharmaceutical production, and tunnel, bridge, stadium, and skyscraper construction? Extending this flawed logic further, perhaps even airlines from Arab countries should be banned from landing at U.S. airports because they might be used in terrorism or bring terrorists into the United States-in spite of the fact that the planes used on 9/11 were U.S. airliners.

After 9/11, U.S. authorities incarcerated and questioned people based on their Arabic nationalities and Islamic religion. The vast majority of them had no connection to terrorism or the 9/11 attacks. This was widely perceived to have been an overreaction. Yet more than four years after 9/11, this racial and ethnic profiling has now moved from individuals to businesses. The Bush administration was right to insist that no security threat emanated from a routine business purchase of a British firm by an Arab company. The politicians should quit posturing and move on to more important issues.

Cartoon crisis?

History and geo-politics are feeding fear and mutual hostility ..

We like making sweeping declarations about freedom of speech but that right is fettered by laws of libel and hate, and other factors.

In newspapers, cartoons are routinely rejected for reasons of taste or because they may be unfair or unnecessarily hurtful. A good editor errs on the side of pushing the limits of freedom. But on occasion, she says no.

The artist may not like the call but must live with it. The drawing is his but the space in which it is to run is the newspaper's.

The Danish paper that invoked freedom of speech to justify caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad is, thus, only half right. But let's say that it did have an absolute right. Equally, though, Muslims had a right to be offended. Defenders of the first principle have had difficulty acknowledging the second.

"Why the fuss? These are only cartoons," many said of the Arab boycott of Danish products.

The peaceful consumer revolt was a legitimate response (until overtaken by gun-toting hotheads issuing dire warnings).

Yet many Europeans derided the boycott, with the unmistakable underlying message: "We can treat you the way we want and thou shall shut up."

Those days are gone. Still, why do Muslims react so strongly?

By now, readers know that Islam forbids depictions of the Prophet. Non-Muslims can no more mock that than Muslims can deride some aspect of the Christian or Jewish faith.

Imagery was not the only problem with the Danish cartoons. They were insulting, which is, of course, the point of a cartoon. But they also portrayed the Prophet as a terrorist and, by extension, all Muslims, thereby engendering hate against them.

The drawings were hurtful to a people who are, arguably, more attached to their prophet than others may be to theirs.

Each time they say his name, Muslims invoke "peace and blessings" on Muhammad. Nearly 4 million visit his grave in Saudi Arabia every year.

But more than religion, it is geo-politics, past and present, that hangs over the controversy.

• A cartoon Thursday in the al-Quds newspaper showed an artist at work at Jyllands-Posten. In the first panel, he rejects a grotesque drawing of a black person: "This is racism." He rejects the second, which equated the Cross of David with the swastika: "This is anti-Semitism." He keeps the longer third panel, of the Prophet's cartoons: "This is freedom of speech."

When Muhammad appeared 600 years after Christ, Europe saw him as an impostor and a false prophet. Pope Innocent III called him the Antichrist. Dante consigned him to the ninth of the 10 ditches of the Inferno. Voltaire, Gibbon, Bacon and others demonized him as the Prince of Darkness or the Beast of the Apocalypse or Mahound.

Such characterizations were used in more muted forms by European colonialists occupying Muslim lands. The bigoted imagery had begun to subside during our contemporary era, only to be resurrected after 9/11.

Go to any bookstore in a European city and you will see anti-Muslim tracts selling well.

Europe's 20 million Muslims have borne the brunt of this Islamophobia, from rightwing anti-immigrant parties and conservative media. Here's a sample from the Danish People's Party: "Muslims who come here reject our culture. Muslim immigration is a way for Muslims to conquer us, just as they have done for the past 1,400 years."

Add to all this some contemporary realities affecting Muslims.

Iraq was illegally and unjustly invaded and remains occupied, with contemptuous disregard for Iraqi lives. Palestinians have just been warned they may be starved because they dared to elect Hamas. Iran is being isolated over its nuclear intentions, even though it has not violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed, while non-signatories Israel and India enjoy full American backing.

The arguments for and against those policies aside, there's no doubt that they have left Arabs/Muslims feeling under siege.

They see double standards in the Danish affair as well.

A cartoon Thursday in the al-Quds newspaper showed an artist at work at Jyllands-Posten. In the first panel, he rejects a grotesque drawing of a black person: "This is racism." He rejects the second, which equated the Cross of David with the swastika: "This is anti-Semitism." He keeps the longer third panel, of the Prophet's cartoons: "This is freedom of speech."

Conversely, the criticism from Arabs/Muslims has sounded hypocritical, given their own intolerance and an ongoing anti-Israeli polemic. Much of that is encouraged by unelected, despotic governments keen on diverting domestic anger abroad.

This context shows there is a great deal of mutual ignorance. However, it does not prove any inherent incompatibility between Muslims and non-Muslims, as extremists on both sides would have us believe.

No Talks With Hamas?

No Talks With Hamas? This Was Said About PLO Too ..


If Ariel Sharon had not been in a deep coma, he would have jumped out of his bed for joy.

The Hamas victory fulfills his most ardent hopes.

For a whole year now, he did everything possible to undermine Mahmoud Abbas. His logic was quite obvious: The Americans wanted him to negotiate with Abbas. Such negotiations would inevitably have led to a situation that would have compelled him to give up almost all of the West Bank. Sharon had no intention of doing so. He wanted to annex about half of the territory. So he had to get rid of Abbas and his moderate image.

During the last year, the situation of the Palestinians got worse from day to day. The actions of the occupation made normal life and commerce impossible. The West Bank settlements were continuously enlarging. The Wall which cuts off about 10 percent of the West Bank was nearing completion. No important prisoners were released. The aim was to impress on the Palestinians that Abbas is weak ("a chicken without feathers", as Sharon put it), that he cannot achieve anything, that offering peace and observing a cease-fire leads nowhere.

The message to the Palestinians was clear: "Israel understands only the language of force." Now the Palestinians have put in power a party that speaks this language.

Why did Hamas win?

Palestinian elections, like German ones, consist of two parts. Half the members of Parliament are elected on straight party lists (like in Israel), the other half are elected individually in their districts. This gave Hamas a huge advantage.

But as far as the general political line is concerned, the majority is not far from Fatah - two states, peace with Israel.

Many of the votes given to Hamas had nothing to do with peace, religion and fundamentalism, but with protest. The Palestinian administration, run almost exclusively by Fatah, is tainted with corruption. The "man in the street" felt that the people on top don't care about him. Fatah was also blamed for the terrible situation created by the occupation.

Also, the glory of the martyrs and the indomitable fight against the immensely superior Israeli Army added to the popularity of Hamas.

In the personal-regional elections, the situation of Hamas was even better. Hamas had more creditable candidates, untainted by corruption. Its party machine was far superior, its members far more disciplined. In every district, there were several Fatah candidates competing with each other. After the death of Yasser Arafat, there is no strong leader capable of imposing unity. Marwan Barghouti, who could perhaps have done the job, is held in an Israeli prison - another big Israeli gift for Hamas.

People who believe in conspiracy theories can assert that it is all part of a devious Israeli plan.

Some people even believe that Hamas was an Israeli invention right from the beginning. That is, of course, a wild exaggeration. But it is indeed the case that in the years before the first intifada, the Islamic organization was the only Palestinian group that had practically a free run in the occupied territories.

Moreover, while all political institutions were banned, and even Palestinians who worked for peace were arrested for carrying out illegal political activity, no one could control what was happening in the mosques. "As long as they are praying, they are not shooting," was the innocent opinion in the Israeli military government.

When the first intifada broke out at the end of 1987, this was proved wrong. Hamas was formed, partly in order to compete with the Islamic Jihad fighters. Within a short time, Hamas became the core of the armed uprising. But for almost a year, the Israeli Security Service did not act against them. Then policy changed and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader, was arrested. All this happened more through stupidity than design. Now the Israeli government is faced with a Hamas leadership that was democratically elected by the people.

What now? Well, a strong feeling of deja vu.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Israeli government declared that it would never ever negotiate with the PLO. They are terrorists. They have a charter that calls for the destruction of Israel. Arafat is a monster, a second Hitler. So, never, never, never.

In the end, after much bloodshed, Israel and the PLO recognized each other and the Oslo agreement was signed.

Now we are hearing the same tune again. Terrorists. Murderers. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel. We shall never never never negotiate with them.

All this is very welcome to Sharon's Kadima party, which openly calls for the unilateral annexation of territory ("Fixing the borders of Israel unilaterally"). It will help the Likud and the Labor party hawks whose mantra is "We have no partner for peace", meaning - to hell with peace.

Gradually, the tone will change. Both sides, and the Americans, too, will climb down from the tall tree. Hamas will state that it is ready for negotiations and find some religious basis for this. The Israeli government (probably headed by Ehud Olmert) will bow to reality and American pressure. Europe will forget its ridiculous slogans.

In the end, everybody will agree that a peace, in which Hamas is a partner, is better than a peace with Fatah alone.

Let's pray that not too much blood is spilled before that point is reached.

Creating more Terrorists

The CIA's recent botched attempt to kill al Qaeda's number two man, Ayman Zawahiri, in Pakistan illustrates why the Bush administration's overly aggressive "war on terror" actually motivates terrorists to attack the United States. Certainly, capturing or killing the brains behind al Qaeda is an important goal. Unfortunately, in the U.S. method of warfare- which unduly emphasizes attrition, heavy firepower and sophisticated weaponry, even against guerrillas and terrorists - the technology of killing has outstripped the quality of human intelligence needed to hit the correct targets. The CIA's unmanned Predator drone fired missiles that killed many Pakistani civilians, including women and children, but apparently not Zawahiri.

Making things even worse, the killing of women and children continues to spark public outrage all across Pakistan, leading to mass protests in all of Pakistan's major cities and the trashing and burning of a U.S. - supported aid organization. Such public ire will make it even less likely that the United States will receive accurate future intelligence about where Zawahiri and his boss, Osama bin Laden, are hiding, even though the prices on their heads are substantial.

And to shore up the popularity of his war on terror at home, which has been dragged down by an incongruous, unnecessary, now unpopular war in Iraq, President Bush has combined these reckless military actions with cowboy rhetoric, which only further stoke the flames of anti -U.S. hatred among radical Islamists. Bringing back the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric used during the Cold War against the "godless Communists," the administration is now implying that those with "too much god of an alien kind" are trying to build a worldwide empire that could again threaten the United States. The president has cast the war on Islamic terrorism as a contest between the men in white hats who advocate freedom and those with black headgear who want to create "a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia."

Yet bringing back the caliphate - the political and spiritual leader of Sunni Islam who ruled a united Islamic world - is a long-term objective of even moderate Muslims. As a result, to the Muslim world, the president's war on terror looks much like a war on Islam that threatens to make the clash of civilizations a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yet even the unlikely uniting of the Islamic world would not necessarily create a severe threat to the United States. Arab countries, only a subset of the Islamic world, have not even been able to unite against Israel, their mortal enemy. It would be even harder for the more geographically and ethnically diverse global Islamic community to unite under one ruler. Even if the entire Sunni Islamic world coalesced rapidly into one empire, any threat to the United States - which would not be inevitable - would be tempered by the fact that many of the countries uniting are economic basket cases.

In addition to shoring up flagging public opinion at home, the president's talk of an Islamic empire is designed to mask the real reasons that al Qaeda attacks the United States. The core of al Qaeda's gripe with the United States is its military presence in the Persian Gulf to guard U.S. oil supplies and support for corrupt Gulf leaders who sell that oil. In a recent videotape, Zawahiri warned Americans: "...Your calamity will not end, unless you leave our lands and stop stealing our resources and stop supporting the bad rulers in our countries."

But because the Gulf countries are heavily dependent on petroleum sales for their revenues (oil deals make up between 65 percent and 90 percent of their export income, depending upon the country), they have every incentive to sell oil to the world market, regardless of whether the U.S. stations military forces on their lands or props up their despotic rulers. In short, U.S. forces are not needed to defend Persian Gulf oil. Even if they were necessary, the job could be done with no permanent U.S. military presence on Muslim lands. In Gulf War I, Persian Gulf oil was successfully defended without a prior land presence in the Gulf. Land forces were brought in only when a threat arose. And since then, the threat to oil has decreased.

President Bush should ratchet down the war on terror to make it more effective. The United States should improve human intelligence and strike al Qaeda only when the information is bulletproof. More importantly, to reduce terrorists' motive for attacking the United States in the first place, the administration should quietly withdraw the unneeded land forces from Persian Gulf countries and its support for their authoritarian, venal rulers.

Muslim conspiracy

Muslim conspiracy to rule world just nonsense


We had Wahhabism. We had the madrassas. We had the houris of Heaven. Now we have the caliphate.

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al have been raising the spectre of a worldwide Islamic rule by a caliph, as envisaged by Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Zarqawi and other terrorists.

The chances of a caliphate coming are zero. But raising its spectre helps keep Americans scared. Never mind that, just as the reasons given for the Iraq war proved false, the explanations offered for terrorism have not met the test of time either.

When 15 of the 19 terrorists of 9/11 turned out to have been Saudis, Washington and its apologists blamed Wahhabism, the essentialist Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. The problem with that theory was that the Saudi ruling family, the guardians of Wahhabism, was and remains the staunchest ally of the U.S. and guarantor of its energy needs.

We were also told that terrorists were hatched primarily in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in religious schools. But we know now that most of those who bombed Bali, Jakarta, Istanbul, Amman, etc. were not graduates of those schools. Nor were those responsible for the train bombings in Madrid and London. They were Muslims born or raised in Europe.

So were the two Britons who went to Israel in 2003 to be suicide bombers. So was the man who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. So have been some of those turning up in Iraq to join the insurgency.

The third theory was that suicide bombers were inspired by Islam's promise of a Paradise full of virgins. That may have motivated the religiously inclined but not others, certainly not women bombers, who had no such sexual favors to look forward to in Heaven.

Now comes the caliphate - from the Arabic word, khil'afah, rule by a khaleefah, successor to the Prophet Muhammad, who died in 632 A.D.

A caliphate is an ideal Islamic polity governed by God's law. But a debate has raged for 1,400 years over whether it's a religious requirement or just a tool to regulate social order and public welfare. Is it local or worldwide? There's no consensus.

The first caliphate lasted until 661 A.D. Others followed, the last one being the Ottoman Empire that ended in 1924.

Since then, debate has turned to how best to combine religion and state. There's no agreement. States labeling themselves Islamic have offered varying models - Afghanistan of the Taliban, Iran of the mullahs, the semi-dictatorships of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and the moderate Malaysia. Iraq now calls itself an Islamic democracy, ‡ la Israel's Jewish democracy.

The dream of a caliphate is confined to the marginalized: a rallying cry by the bin Laden-Zarqawi crowd, and, among others, by a Central Asian group battling the dictatorships there.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov invokes the caliphate to justify his brutality. Who would have thought he would be echoed by Washington?

Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. commander in the Middle East, says Islamists "will try to re-establish a caliphate throughout the entire Muslim world." Rumsfeld magnifies the danger, saying "Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia."

George W. Bush talks about "a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain."

Exaggerating the power of the enemy is a standard war tactic (used against Saddam Hussein by both George H.W. Bush in the 1991 Gulf War and by George W. Bush in 2003). But this caliphate business takes the cake. One can laugh it off but for its possible long-term consequences.

One of the biggest mistakes of the war on terrorism was the misreading of bin Laden's initial popularity among Muslims.

He always had two constituencies; the few who joined his terrorist campaigns and the many who identified only with his articulation of Muslim grievances, albeit in religious terms.

America analyzed his theology and ignored his political message, while Muslim masses tuned out his religious claptrap but identified with his political message. He has since lost even that lure but America remains hobbled by its fixation with his religious pronouncements.

In being so, the Bush administration makes him and other terrorists sound more important than they are, thereby playing into their hands.

They no doubt love their own caliphate talk getting such worldwide amplification from Washington.

Letter to the Editor

Here is a picture of a recent letter to the editor that my local newspaper published.

Revisiting U.S.-Pakistan Relations in Light of Earthquake Relief

U.S. soldiers visit children injured in the October earthquake in Pakistan.

So much for the popularly peddled view that anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is so pervasive and deep-rooted it might take generations to alter. A new poll from Pakistan, a critical front-line in the war on terror, paints a very different picture -- by revealing a sea-change in public opinion in recent months.

Long a stronghold for Islamic extremists and the world's second-most populous Muslim nation, Pakistanis now hold a more favorable opinion of the U.S. than at any time since 9/11, while support for al Qaeda in its home base has dropped to its lowest level since then. The direct cause for this dramatic shift in Muslim opinion is clear: American humanitarian assistance for Pakistani victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed 87,000. The U.S. pledged $510 million for earthquake relief in Pakistan and American soldiers are playing a prominent role in rescuing victims from remote mountainous villages.

Released today, the poll commissioned by the nonprofit organization Terror Free Tomorrow and conducted by Pakistan's foremost pollsters ACNielsen Pakistan shows that the number of Pakistanis with a favorable opinion of the U.S. doubled to more than 46% at the end of November from 23% in May 2005. Those with very unfavorable views declined to 28% from 48% over the same period. Nor is this swing in public opinion confined to Pakistan. A similar picture is evident in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Again that's largely because of American generosity in the wake of a natural disaster. A February 2005 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow showed that 65% of Indonesians had a more favorable opinion of the U.S. as a result of American relief to the victims of last December's tsunami. If these changes in Pakistan and Indonesia influence thinking in other countries, then we could be looking at a broader shift in public sentiment across the Muslim world.

While support for the U.S. has surged, there's also been a dramatic drop in support for Osama bin Laden and terrorism. Since May, the percentage of Pakistanis who feel terrorist attacks against civilians are never justified has more than doubled to 73% from less than half, while the minority who still support terrorist attacks has also shrunk significantly. There's been a similar increase in the number of Pakistanis disapproving of bin Laden, which rose to 41% in November up from only 23% in May.

The important point is that direct contact with Americans on a humanitarian mission, including military personnel, has a positive impact on how Muslims view America. In Pakistan, 78% of those surveyed said that American assistance has made them feel more favorable to the U.S. America also fared much better in the opinion of ordinary Pakistanis than the other Western countries that also provided aid, or even local radical Islamist groups that made a much-publicized effort to provide earthquake relief.

That doesn't mean there isn't still more work to be done. The Muslim "street" is still not sold on specific American policies, with the poll finding the Pakistani public now opposes current U.S. policy in the war on terror by a larger margin than in May. But the overall message from Pakistan, pointing towards a potential trend in the Muslim world in general, is a positive one. By cutting out the middlemen who all too often portray a poisonous image of the U.S., direct American engagement in humanitarian assistance not only ensures its aid reaches those in need, but can also play a powerful role in marginalizing the foot-soldiers for bin Laden and other supporters of extremist Islamic causes.