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Michael Totten rides again… Michael Totten has written a couple very interesting articles called Hezbollah’s Putsch and Hezbollah’s Christian Allies.
Well worth checking out as you just do not see stuff like this in the mainstream media all too often. Also consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal donations button to support his excellent international reportage.
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I remember being mildly shocked when I first heard of the Christian allies of Hez. I like to think of myself as cynical, but it seems I am just a country boy at heart.
The point that the President is in bed with Syria is ture – but so is Hez. It is the Prime Minister of Lebanon who is in favour of keeping some distance from Syria.
Of course the Hez are not really under the control of the Syrian government (whether or not President Assad is in control of this government) – their supplies come from Iran, and the Syrian government is the junior partner in the relationship with Iran.
The Baath party government in Syria know that they are not loved by many of Syria’s Sunni majority – Papa Assad killed vast numbers of Muslim Brotherhood people (and allied civilians) in his day (a whole city of them I seem to recall) as they were a threat to his regime – both because it was too secular (by Muslim Brothood standards) and because of the influence in it of people from the Assad family’s sect of Shiaism. The conflict with Saddam was not just over who was the biggest Baathist – it was also because Saddam was a Sunni (although not a very observant one – at least till his last years) and the Assads were and are Shia (of a sort).
The Iranians (and Hez) tolerate the Assad family (and their hangers on) because they are Shia (of a sort), even if they are not running a truly Islamic regime (at least by the standards of the Iranian regime and Hez).
As for the Christians – it is an old tactic.
The Patriarch-Governor of Egypt (for the Byzantine-East Roman Empire) handed over his province to the Muslims in 641 – saying “they love death more than we love life” so resistance was futile.
It is a favourate story of O.B.L – he, and his followers, often quote the line.
In the Lebanese case I suspect that the tactic will turn out badly. If Hez takes power the best the Christians can hope for is a quick death. Certainly journalists are led to pro Hez Christian villages in the south of Lebanon where everyone says “death to the Zionists” and talks about how nice the Hez are, however the great majority of Christian villages in Hez controlled land were destroyed long ago – and it was not Jews who destroyed them.
I can remember a time when Hez did not exist (it was an Iranian creation) I think the name of the leading Shia Muslim militia in Lebanon was “Amal” (or something like that) – it was not particually devout (social democratic in its politics I seem to remember).
The Sunni in Lebanon were the least observant Muslims in the Middle East – cultured businessmen with a taste for wine (some of them still are).
I suspect that the militant Sunni (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and the militant Shia (such as Hez) will eventually join up – they both want to eat our eyeballs far more than they hate each other.
The oil money is the key. As long as the most militant Shia get oil money from Iran and the most militant Sunni get oil money from Saudi Arabia (Wahhabism has been a terrorist cult since the 1700’s) and others, then things will go from bad to worse.
It is not so much a cynical “we will be militant because they pay us to be”, it is more the schools and religious foundations and the charities. And the seeking out of people who are already devout and giving them the financial means to build a power base.
Also it is difficult to beat something with nothing. A cultured Muslim businessman with a taste for wine has no philosophy (what you might call a “meta context”) to defend himself with. So when his son denounces his “corruption” he has nothing to say in his own defence (other than cynical stuff about “we have to trade with the infidels, because this is the way of the world….”).
This is why Islam is at best like an unexploded bomb. As you know when Gordon first went to the Sudan (only a couple of centuries after the last Christian kingdoms there fell) the people, even in the north, were not devout – there were lots of bare breasted women and so on. But on his return (only a few years later) the “Mahdi” (so called) had by a mixture of terror and dedicated preaching transformed the situation.
Basically “if you call yourself a Muslim you should do………”
And many people in Lebanon (the great majority of people now – due to the high Muslim, particularly Shia Muslim, birth rate) did “call themselves Muslim” so the bomb was sitting there – waiting to be set off.
I fully accept that I have not dealt with the Sufi tradition in Islam (basically a mystical approach to religion, rather than one based on the strict word of the holy texts), but that is partly because it is a very complex matter (for example the exact relationship, if any, between the various types of Sufi and the various schools of Islamic law) and I am not competant to write about it.
However, the main reason is (to be blunt and not wishing to course offence) is that modern young men (and the young fighting are modern men in many ways) do not tend to be very interested in dancing in circles (and so on) hopeing to achieve personal communication with God. They want something more like a contract.
“You follow these rules [the one God, the doctrine that Mohammed is the last prophet – and his teachings as a law code], doing so will produce the best society on Earth and eternal life for you and your families after death”.
The rules must be simple and (to appeal to young men) be enforced with savage violence and cruelity.
It is no surprise that street gangs in much of the West are taking up Islam and practicing conversions (on the principle of once in never out – of course), they are in a long tradition.
Ancient Persia may have been a great enemy of the West (and using the term “the West” is not a mistake – the Greek city states, especially the ones of Ionia [which fell to the Persions] developed much of what we think of us as the philosophy of the West), but Cyrus did not send out a vast missionary effort to convert people to Zoroastrianism. Indeed in all the Persian Empire’s history (and with all the various forms of Zorastrianism) this was never the threat from this eastern despotism.
Even Ancient Egypt (an enemy of the element of the Western thought that comes, via Christianity, from the Jews in times long before the Persian Empire existed) never claimed that its Gods were the only Gods – or that the whole world should be enforced to accept their overlordship.
Islam (at least in its radical forms) is both a more fundemental (fundemental because it attacks the philosophy – not just the physical bodies of human beings) enemy to the Classical (Greek-Roman) element of the West than Persia ever was. And it is also a more fundemental enemy to the Jewish-Christian element of the West than Egypt was.
Of course it is also a fundemental enemy to the third element that makes up the West – the individualist spirit of the Northern peoples (the Celtic peoples, the Germanic peoples and Norse – with the Germanic and the Norse being closer together in many ways).
Of this third element it is difficult to write much of now. For whilst it may be true that as Tolkien said “the Nazis do not represent the Nordic spirit any more than the distortion you see in a funhouse mirror represents your face” the shadow of the National Socialists is cast all over notions of the individual honour and loyality. Although “my honour is loyality” shows a fatal misunderstanding of both honour and loyality.
Ionian philosophy (and the freedom, commercial [this commercial freedom can also be seen in the Phoenician cities of the Levant and in their child – Carthage, it is not confined to the IndoEuropean language groups] and political of the Ionian city states). Leading into the best part of the Classical tradition.
The Jewish-Christian notion that religion is something separate to the state. And that there are principles of conduct that are not laid down by the State. Islam takes the notion of one God – but rejects the idea not of “separation of Church and State” (that is too simple a statement – many Christian lands have had “Christian governments”) but that there is a separate area of operation for religion and politics – i.e. that there are some principles of conduct that are NOT political (“sins but not crimes”) and some aspects of state policy that are not religious.
And the Northern (and Western) belief in the individual honour and enterprise. A system of believe that (at its best) despised those who robbed and killed the weak and helpless (although many warriors did just that) and came to praise man who desired to find out new things (whether a land beyond the sea, or a new method for creating a physical object) above even the strongest fighter. As long as his means were honourable and his personal conscience his stickest guide – a man who would not give a penny under the threat of force (even if the odds against him were hopeless), but would walk a hundred miles to pay back a debt to someone who was too weak to having hope of enforcing a contract.
These three elements make up the spirit of the West – although all three are largely forgotten now.