A couple of interesting developments in Islam

One of the concepts we hear a lot about has to do with coming up with a form of Islam more comfortable to non-Muslims in the US and Europe: "European Islam," "Western Islam," or a Reformation for Islam. Such terms can have serious meaning in the context of Muslims relating religious concepts to governmental and legal standards

But they are also used in politics and Islamophobic propaganda by non-Muslims in a clash-of-civilizations sense as synonyms for "Muslims are the Others" or "Muslims are violent and uncivilized."

Meanwhile, real existing Islam is a living, vibrant, constantly evolving religious tradition producing some results more humane and constructive than others.

James Dorsey write about some of those actual developments in The battle for the soul of Islam: Will the real reformer of the faith stand up? Responsible Statecraft 09/26/2021.

Dorsey talks about how the current Saudi monarchy is currently shifting its approach the Wahhabi version of Islam for which it has been the chief sponsor for decades. The clash-of-civilization narratives often carelessly make Saudi "Wahhabism" into the chief culprit for jihadism like that practiced by the Islamic State following in the Bin Laden/Al Qaida tradition. That's a very oversimplified, lazy, and misleading approach.

Wahhabism is certainly a very conservative approach to the faith. But Dorsey writes:

“Wahhabism has refracted into three broad groups since the early 1990s: a left that has developed a discourse of civic rights, a centre occupying official posts of state (dubbed ‘ulama al-sultan’ or the ruler’s clerics) that has put up some resistance to the loosening of their powers in the social, juridical and media spheres, and a Wahhabi right sympathetic to the jihadist discourse of al-Qaeda and its focus on questions of foreign policy,” said scholar Andrew Hammond.

And this is an interesting development:

The [Saudi] crown prince [Mohammed bin Salman], since coming to office, has radically cut back on the investment of tens of billions of dollars in the propagation of religious ultra-conservatism across the globe, most effectively in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has also sought to balance Wahhabism with Saudi ultra-nationalism and shave off the rough social edges of the kingdom’s austere interpretation of the faith. His subjugation of the clergy, and incarceration of adherents of the Wahhabi left and far-right, put an end to a 73-year long power-sharing agreement between the ruling Al-Saud family and the clergy. [my emphasis]

The Western powers should have learned from the experiences in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan) over the last 40 years that trying to pick and foster a "good" version of Islam is a particularly tricky business. But Saudi investments in mosques and religious institutions abroad has been an important exercise of "soft power" on their part. And the results of the radicalizing elements in those activities has sometime produced more than "soft" results.

That's also something to keep in mind with another development that Dorsey describes, the Indonesian group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which he calls "the only non-state player in the battle for the soul of Islam," whatever that may mean. NU has been a separate political party since 1952 in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world. (Indonesians elected a woman President in 2001, Megawati Sukarnoputri, an occurrence which has not yet come to pass in the US.)

There is a very recent article by Ahmet Kuru describing the "Humanitarian Islam" advocated by the NU: How the world’s biggest Islamic organization drives religious reform in Indonesia – and seeks to influence the Muslim world The Conversation 09/23/2021.

Trump's dubious Saudi connections

This article from last year is a good reminder that Ukraine and Russia are not the only foreign powers with dubious ties to the Trump Administration: Paul Gottnger and Daniel Kelman, The Other Collusion Scandal The Progresive Apr/May 2019.

"[T]here is at least as much evidence that Trump has been purchased by the crown princes and de facto rulers of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as there is to support the idea that he’s been bought by Vladimir Putin," they write.

But they also note:

The Emirati and Saudi influence campaigns are not totally separate from the one involving Russia. During the early days of the Trump Administration, representatives of both the Emirates and Saudi Arabia pushed Trump to curtail sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia rolling back its relations with Iran.

Like Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have repressive autocratic governments with atrocious human rights records; however, unlike Russia, these two countries have enormous wealth and can operate under the cover of being U.S. allies.

The most gruesome consequence of this collusion so far is the US cooperation in Saudi Arabia war against Yemen. They quote Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch, “The Trump Administration’s cruel insistence that pro􀁾ts to the arms industry justify the unlawful killings, disease, and destruction in Yemen undoubtedly will come back to bite the American people.”

And, of course, there was the notorious assassination of US permanent resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

One key player in this entanglement is literally a convicted pedophile, George Nader. David D. Kirkpatrick and Mark Mazzetti reported on this sleazy character for the New York Times, How 2 Gulf Monarchies Sought to Influence the White House 03/21/2018. As did Creede Newton for Aljazeera, Mueller probe: Who is George Nader, convicted paedophile? 04/06/2018.

Middle East oil as US-British strategic advantage - and good business for war profiteers

Tom Stevenson reviewed a book about Britain and Saudi Arabia, AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain (2018) by David Wearing, in What are we there for? London Review of Books 05/09/2019. Stevenson some important background for understanding the involvement of both Britain and the US in the Middle East and with Saudi Arabia in particular.

A key point he makes is that US and British involvement with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and other Middle Eastern Arab powers is about oil. But it's more about the strategic advantages it provides than about the direct energy needs or even corporate profits of Britain and US oil companies.

Other parts of the world – the US, Russia, Canada – have large deposits of crude oil, and current estimates suggest Venezuela has more proven reserves than Saudi Arabia. But Gulf oil lies close to the surface, where it is easy to get at by drilling; it is cheap to extract, and is unusually ‘light’ and ‘sweet’ (industry terms for high purity and richness). It is also located near the middle of the Eurasian landmass, yet outside the territory of any global power. ...

The developed Asian economies are heavily reliant on Persian Gulf oil and Qatari natural gas. Three-quarters of Gulf oil exports go to Asian economies, and the five largest importers of gas from Qatar are Japan, South Korea, India, China and Singapore. US dominance in the Gulf gives it decisive strategic influence over any potential Asian rival. The US has a huge military presence in the region ... [my emphasis]

But he explains that the Gulf states are also very important for the profits of British and American arms exporters:

Saudi Arabia and the other five members of the Gulf Co-operation Council are collectively the world’s largest buyer of military equipment by a big margin. Most of their arms are supplied by the US, but both Britain and France make substantial contributions. In 2017, the US and Saudi Arabia signed the largest arms deal in history, estimated to be worth $350 billion. Between 1985 and 2006 Britain signed a series of contracts (the Al Yamamah deal) worth tens of billions. [my emphasis]

And that old-fashioned brand of war profiteering is a major factor in the current horror in Yemen:

Since the start of the war in Yemen in 2015 some 75,000 people have been killed, not counting those who have died of disease or starvation. In that time Britain has supplied arms worth nearly £5 billion to the Saudi coalition fighting the Yemeni Houthis. The British army has supplied and maintained aircraft throughout the campaign; British and American military personnel are stationed in the command rooms in Riyadh; British special forces have trained Saudi soldiers fighting inside Yemen; and Saudi pilots continue to be trained at RAF Valley on Anglesey. The US is even more deeply involved: the US air force has provided midair refuelling for Saudi and Emirati aircraft – at no cost, it emerged in November. Britain and the US have also funnelled weapons via the UAE to militias in Yemen. If the Western powers wished, they could stop the conflict overnight by ending their involvement. [my emphasis]

Stevenson characterizes the structure of US policy in the region this way:

The US’s inherited mastery of the Gulf has given it a degree of leverage over both rivals and allies probably unparalleled in the history of empire. Washington has established a highly conservative regional order through alliances with successive military dictatorships in Egypt and an ethno-nationalist Israel. Its overwhelming military control of the region ensures that Japan, South Korea, India and even China must deal with the US in the knowledge that it could, if it wished, cut them off from their main source of energy. It is difficult to overstate the role of the Gulf in the way the world is currently run. In recent years, under both Obama and Trump, there has been talk of plans for a US withdrawal from the Middle East and a ‘pivot’ to Asia. If there are indeed such plans, it would suggest that recent US administrations are ignorant of the way the system over which they preside works. [my emphasis]