Thursday, January 31, 2019
Rogue Scholar Manifesto 1.0
Ted M. Coopman, MS
A Rogue by any other name would smell as sweet...
"'Rogue Scholars III' is the third in a series of panels and other forums designed to bring scholarship out of the insular academic community and into the larger community in which academic research is embedded. In other words, our goal with this panel (and other endeavors) is to make scholarship accessible to those whom we study. This particular panel will focus on defining rogue scholarship, identifying the purpose of such scholarship, and discussing issues associated with rogue scholarship. Specifically, the panel will focus on how the concepts of rogue scholarship can be theoretically framed in order to form unifying concepts for scholars and non-scholars to follow and access (Rogue, 1998)."Read the manifesto here:
http://www.roguecom.com/roguescholar/manifesto.html
The Difference Between Hearing and Listening - Pauline Oliveros - Ted Talks
The Difference Between Hearing and Listening
Pauline Oliveros
at Tedx Indianapolis
Miles Davis - Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Miles Davis
Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
from the lp Bitch's Brew
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
The Satanic Verses: Mohammad's Pagan Call to Prayer
“God is the
Greatest/I acknowledge that there is no God but Allah.” So says the
first two lines of the adhat, the
Muslim call to prayer when
translated into English. In
some Islamic traditions, however, Mohammad once offered a prayer to
three Pagan
deities in what has come to be called “Qissat al-Gharaniq”, “The
Story Of the Cranes”, or most often, “The Satanic Verses.” What
these three lines, as recited by the Islamic prophet, mean is obscure
and has been a matter of debate for centuries.
Not
only the meaning of “The Satanic Verses” is elusive; their roots
remain a matter of unknown origin as well. The
earliest know reference to the words in question are attributed to
the oral historian Mohammad Ibn Ka’b who transmitted the story to
Ibn Ishaq a full two generations after the prophet Mohammad’s
death. It is likely that the story was circulating socially before
Ibn
Ka’b incorporated it into his biographical account which was later
recited to Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Jarir ibn al-Tabari who wrote
an early biographical book
about the prophet’s life.
According
to al-Tabari’s narrative, Mohammad was overcome by a strong desire
to convert the Qurayshi tribes-people of Mecca to his newly founded
religion. When he initiated the adhat with the intention of reciting
the “Surat an-Najm”, a
voice whispered in his ear “Have you thought of al-Lat and
al-Uzza/and Manat, the third, the other?” Believing the voice to
have come from the archangel Jibreel, the messenger from Allah that
communicated with Mohammad on that god’s behalf, the prophet then
announced to the people, “These are the exalted cranes whose
intercession is hoped for.” Al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat were three
Pagan goddesses that were worshiped by the Qurayshi people in the
ancient city of Mecca and Mohammad appeared to be giving them his
honors.
As
the story goes, the archangel Jibreel later approached Mohammad and
informed him that the voice he had heard at that time did not come
from him; it had, in actuality, been the voice of the
Shaytan, the Islamic
equivakent of Satan. Feeling deceived and dejected, Mohammad went
into a state of despair and was later forgiven by Allah for having
made a mistake.
“The
Story Of the Cranes” circulated widely throughout the Islamic
community for many years. Muslim scholars commented extensively on
its significance in the tafsirs, a
collection of explanations on Islamic doctrine written by the
earliest authorities of the religious movement. The
story was, however, never officially accepted as one of the hadiths.
Then, after being passed down
from generation to generation for so many years, experts on Islam
began to question the veracity of “The Satanic Verses” during the
medieval era. Some simply dismissed the story as nonsense and slander
that originated with enemies of the Muslim community in an attempt to
sow doubt in the minds
of the pious. Others claimed that some Qurayshis, in league with the
Shaytan, had infiltrated the crowd of Muslims who had gathered to
pray and, disguising their voices to mimic Mohammad, praised the
Pagan deities in an effort to humiliate the early Muslims by making
them look hypocritical. Still
others dismissed it as misinformation since it contradicted the
ideas written in the Qur’an, and
since the Qur’an is,
according to dogma, the perfect word of Allah, anything that
contradicted it must be inherently false and heretical. And so “The
Story Of the Cranes” faded from the minds of the Islamic community,
rarely ever mentioned, and if remembered at all, thought of as little
more than a footnote for lovers of obscure and trivial information.
But
then, repressed ideas of evil have a way of resurfacing once they
have been dismissed as irrelevant. In
the modern world, particularly as a result of colonialism, a handful
of researchers, now derisively labeled “Orientalists”, started
taking a stab at explaining the authenticity, origins, and meaning of
“The Satanic Verses”. The revival of interest in this subject
enraged the wrath of modern Islamic intellectuals, most of which
invoked the concept of Allah’s
power to discount the legend as heresy; their claim was that Allah
chose Mohammad as his prophet so Allah would have protected him from
being influenced by the Shaytan and therefore it would have been
impossible for Mohammad to take instructions from the god’s biggest
existential adversary. Another Islamist objection was that the story
was an adaptation of Christ being tempted by Satan; a story that
proved the necessity of keeping Muslims and Christians separate since
the mingling of the two faiths would cause the theological pollution
and degeneration of pure Islamic thought. Even so, the matter
remained little more than an item of curiosity. That is, an item of
curiosity until the publication of Salman Rushdie’s notorious
novel The Satanic Verses in
the mid-1980s, an event that caused a massive outcry around the world
because of its unflattering
depiction of Mohammad and his wives. The outcry led to the Iranian
dictator Ayatollah Khomeini
issuing a death threat against Rushdie due to his blasphemous
satirical book.
So
what does it all mean? From
the context of Ibn Tabari’s original biographical writing, it
appears to be a parable teaching the lesson that Mohammad was a man,
not a god, who was prone to making mistakes like all people and
because of his devotion to Allah his mistakes would be forgiven.
While this interpretation sound heretical to modern fundamentalists,
an anthropologist would be quick to point out that concepts of heresy
are products of the times that produce them; what is considered
blasphemy to one generation may not be blasphemy to another
generation. Actually it is traditional for Muslims to believe
Mohammad was a man and not a divine incarnation, hence the reason
that Muslims are forbidden from worshiping Mohammad in his tomb in
Mecca. The idea that their prophet was perfect is a relatively modern
and fundamentalist theological dogma.
Of
course, there is still one big question that needs to be asked. What
if Mohammad was not the prophet of Allah at all? What then? Is this a
question that only the Shaytan would encourage one to ask?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Verses
Fred Lane - French Toast Man
Fred Lane and His Hittite Hot Shots
French Toast Man
from the lp Car Radio Jerome
Fred Lane - I Talk to My Haircut
Fred Lane
I Talk to My Haircut
from the lp From the One That Cut You
Monday, January 28, 2019
Operation Gold and the Berlin Tunnel
World War II had just ended and the city of Berlin was divided by a wall between the West German side, back ed by the USA, and the communist East German side, backed by the USSR. As the Cold War between east and west heated up, the CIA and Britain’s SIS agreed to join forces to spy on the Soviets stationed in East Berlin. Operation Gold, also known as Operation Stopwatch, had begun. An underground tunnel joining West and East Berlin was built.
Initially at the end of the war, communications between Moscow and the puppet states on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain were transmitted by radio, making them extremely easy for Allied intelligence to intercept. Then the Soviet Union switched to telephone landlines for the purpose of exchanging information; the West was left in the dark, unable to listen in as the secret conversations took place.
The British secret service had previously used a tunnel for espionage in Vienna when the Austrian capital was in the hands of the KGB. Taking inspiration from this success, they opened negotiations with the CIA to start a similar operation. A West German spy alerted the CIA to a junction two meters below the ground and close to the border of West Berlin where three main telephone cables intersected. The British SIS and the CIA set up a joint committee to build a tunnel under the Berlin Wall so the East German/Soviet phone lines could be tapped. The British agreed to fund the construction and the Americans agreed to manage and oversee the project.
First a warehouse was built on the western side of Berlin. Unusual in design, the building had a basement 23 feet deep. The engineers proceeded to blast the tunnel with dynamite and re-enforce the sides with sand. The tunnel had been rigged with explosives set to go off in case the enemy government were to discover its existence, making any espionage operations inside the construction an anxiety producing business. Upon completion, the Berlin Tunnel extended under the border
for about 1500 feet. British Army captain and Alpine skier Peter Lunn did the significant work of actually tapping into the phone lines once they were discovered. Electric handling equipment was installed so that incoming information could be redistributed back to London for transcription and interpretation. The Berlin Tunnel opened for operations in 1953.
SIS and the CIA spent several years listening in on information flowing from the KGB station in East Berlin to Moscow and other points east. A significant portion of the intelligence was unintelligible since it was being sent using telegraph pulses in multiplexed code that agents were unable to crack. In the end it did not matter anyways; due to a British double agent named George Blake, the Soviets were informed about the tunnel long before the two espionage agencies began construction since Blake had been part of the planning committee. The Soviets kept their knowledge of Operation Gold secret so as not to reveal Blake as a mole. The KGB as well as the SIS and CIA kept the tunnel secret from the West and East German secret police because both sides knew they could not be trusted. So the tunnel was allowed to operate until 1961. Since the Soviets knew of its existence, they possibly and deliberately used the phone lines for unimportant or even misleading information. Instead they had been sending truly important communications with Moscow via telephone wires built above ground to avoid being tapped by spies in the tunnel.
In 1955, George Blake was transferred to another station and the KGB opened up the tunnel on the East Berlin side. The British and American secret service had been using the tunnel for eight years before they realized the communists knew about everything they were doing. It was a waste of US$4.5 million.
George Blake was tried and convicted for treason in 1961. The British and Soviet governments clandestinely agreed to keep knowledge of the tunnel out of the international media’s hands so both sides could save face. To this day, CIA documents about Operation Gold are kept classified; many believe it is because they contain information that could humiliate the agency.
Hawkwind - Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke)
Hawkwind
Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke)
from the lp Hall Of the Mountain Grill
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Democracy Deferred: The Bahrain Uprising of 2011
The tiny island of Bahrain gained independent nation status in 1973. The former British protectorate began as a parliamentary democracy but the House of Al-Khalifa turned the country into a monarchy soon after. The island is of strategic importance due its being the location of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, the branch of the military used to police the Persian Gulf so that tankers delivering oil from the refineries of the eastern Arabian Peninsula can travel safely and freely with their valued cargoes throughout the world. As a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Pearl Monument was built in the capital city of Manama to commemorate an important meeting of all the member nations in that location. Bahrain’s population is predominantly Shia Muslim but the reigning monarchy is Sunni, a demographic fact that has caused little tension throughout the island’s history. Over the years, political activists have staged pro-democracy demonstrations, calling for the abdication of the monarchy and a return to parliamentary democracy; many of these turned violent. The Bahrain Uprising of 2011 was the biggest and bloodiest of them all.
By the end of 2010, political uprisings had swept across the Middle East from Tunisia to Libya, Egypt and Syria in what was to become known of as the Arab Spring. Taking this as a cue, young activists in Bahrain began using social media platforms to call for demonstrations in Bahrain as well. On February 14, 2011 demonstrations took place throughout Manama in various locations. The crowds were mixtures of Sunni and Shia activists who all saw the cause of political freedom to be in everybody’s best interest regardless of their sect, race, gender or age and the protests were planned to be non-violent events. The police responded quickly and fiercely with tear gas and rubber bullets. One demonstrator was killed. The next day, protesters showed up to the assassinated youth’s funeral en mass and again the police fired into the crowd killing one and injuring many. The protesters marched to the Pearl Monument and set up tents and camps to occupy the area.
Two days later, several thousand people had shown up at the Pearl Monument to lend their support. The police again attacked the camp and chased them away, this time killing four more people and wounding more than 200. From then on the protesting crowds swelled to bigger and bigger sizes, sometimes drawing 40% of the entire nation’s population to the streets of Manama to call for a constitutional monarchy. Hardline activists began to agitate for regicide, calling out “Death to King Hamad” as they marched. The Bahraini media started spreading rumors that Iran was infiltrating the activist organizations in order to start a Shia uprising in the Gulf region. Fearing the spread of the movement from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia’s majority-Shia Eastern Province, they also began to perpetuate the unfounded claim. Soon mobs of Sunni pro-government fighters began confronting the young revolutionaries; mob violence and riots ensued.
By mid-March, the country was well out of control. King Hamad declared a three month state of emergency. At the monarch’s request, 2000 Saudi Arabian troops drove tanks and trucks across the King Fahd Causeway that joins Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, accompanied by 500 police sent by the United Arab Emirates. The activists were quick to call this an invasion and an occupation but King Hamad was more than happy to have the Saudis and Emiratis there. Though the activists continued to hold peaceful, non-violent demonstrations, the occupying troops continued to kill and arrest them. Sweeping mass imprisonments were made and jails overflowed with people, some who had done little more than express support for the uprising on the internet. By the end of the month, Bahraini troops had torn down the Pearl Monument and blocked off the area to prevent demonstrators from returning. During the nights, the Saudi troops prowled the country, burning down Shia mosques, one of which was over 400 years old and destined to become a UNESCO World Heritage sight. During one of the worst days of rioting, the troops seized a hospital and beat doctors and nurses who attempted to treat anybody who had been wounded during the protests; finally they surrounded the hospital and fought back any one trying to enter for the sake of having their wounds treated.
The riots in Manama began to die down and demonstrations started to be more often held in smaller villages around the country. Eventually, the military put these down as well. Other than a couple bombings, one of which was done using a Formula 1 race car, political disturbances were reduced to a minimum. Finally the royal family held a conference for the sake of opening a dialogue with the citizens about how to reform the system but it was largely seen as a joke since very few activists and human rights agitators were invited to attend. The meeting was thought of as nothing more than a cosmetic distraction. Now that many protesters have been executed, murdered, deported, disappeared, or imprisoned for life, the Bahrain Uprising can now be seen as another attempt at fighting for human dignity and freedom that failed.
Matthiesen, Toby. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring that Wasn’t. Stanford University Press, 2013.
How NASA Used Art to Shape Our Vision of the Future
In Earthrise (1968), the first color photograph of Earth captured by a human being, our planet humbly peeks through the dark expanse of outer space. Thanks to the Space Age, humanity could finally see a full picture of its home; seven years later, it was beginning to imagine a future among the stars.
Read the full article on Artsy:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-nasa-art-shape-vision-future
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Sonic Outlaws
Sonic Outlaws
documentary film about sampling-based artists
featuring Negativland, John Oswald and The Tape Beatles
directed by Craig Baldwin (1995)
The Brabant Killings: An Unexplained Belgian Crime Spree
From the years 1982 to 1985, the small region of French-speaking Wallonia in Belgium called Brababant was hit by a series of bizarre and inexplicable crimes. The combination of brutality in the attacks, meticulous planning in their execution, and the relatively small benefits obtained from each one have left a confusing imprint on the minds of police detectives and those who have speculated on the meaning of the crimes. The spree ended about three decades ago, possibly all the members of the so-called Nijvel Gang are dead, and so few clues were left behind that whatever it is that happened at those times in Belgium stands little chance of being explained anytime soon, if ever at all.
Though the members of the gang remain mysterious, the name Brabant Killers has stuck because of where the crimes took place, although people in the Flemish half of the country refer to them as the Nijvel Gang. The number of participants in each assault varied from crime to crime but three core members seem to have been present at each one: The Giant, so named because of his height and apparent leadership role, The Killer who did most of the shooting at The Giant’s behest, and The Old Man, a middle-aged man who was always seen driving the getaway car.
The Brabant Killers started their rampage in the winter of 1982. Their first known crimes involved robberies in which they used a shotgun to rob a store and a car dealership. Then another robbery took place; this time it was a food store where they limited their theft to some inexpensive grocery items. As they were loading the loot into their getaway car, they shot two policemen and drove away. The trend from then on was mostly set to stealing food items and small amounts of money and a disproportionate amount of bloodshed in relation to the severity of their robberies. After robbing and killing a gun store owner, they finished the year by attacking a restaurant and running off with nothing more than some wine and a cup of coffee after torturing and killing the owner.
1983 saw their operations expanding. They started the year by torturing and killing a taxi driver then abandoning the car. They robbed several supermarkets, spraying the aisles with bullets as they left. Sometimes customers died, sometimes they did not. They often stole small amounts of money from these stores but seemingly never enough to justify the murder of innocent bystanders. They also robbed a textile factory and stole bullet-proof vests. In September, one of their most memorable crimes occurred. While burglarizing a convenience store, a couple in a Mercedes stopped to buy gas. They were immediately shot and the burglar alarm went off as the killers started loading a supply of coffee, tea bags and cooking oil into a car they had stolen a couple nights before. When the police arrived, they shot one and drove off. The police pursued and a gunfight began. The gang turned down a dirt road that ran behind the store they had just broken into. The abandoned the car almost immediately and made off with their groceries. In the coming months, more restaurants and grocery stores were attacked leaving several people dead; most often nothing was stolen.
Throughout 1984, nothing happened. Then in 1985 the Brabant Killers sprang back into action. Another supermarket attack left about fifteen people dead and nothing was stolen. Stores and restaurants began hiring teams of armed security guards and the police were on high alert. On November 9, they struck again at another supermarket outside, but close to, the Brabant area. This time the criminals were wearing bizarre face-paint and wore strange looking clothes. Their appearance at first drew stares from curious shoppers but they shot anyone who looked at them. Several children were shot point-blank in the face. A squadron of 22 police cars arrived and the gang ran out the door. As the members got into their getaway car, The Giant ran alongside it and engaged in a firefight with the police. He escaped and ran down a forest trail where somebody said they saw an injured man stumbling away. Later the police arrived and inspected the scene but nobody was there to be found. Evidence obtained later suggests that he had been killed and the body taken away for disposal.
The identity of the killers has never been solved. Some say the police were secretly involved since many of the fingerprints collected at crime scenes mysteriously disappeared. Others say the military was involved since the shotguns and bullets used in the attacks were rare, military-grade weapons that would have been nearly impossible for civilians to have gotten ahold of. Still others say they were a right-wing extremist paramilitary organization that secretly liaised with NATO troops and the attacks were practice drills that were part of a preparation plan in case the USSR ever decided to invade Western Europe. None of these theories makes sense in light of the number and types of victims.
One thing is certain: the Brabant Killings stopped and have not started again. Some people believe that one of the gang members killed everyone else in the group and then committed suicide. In any case, the killers could probably never be brought to trial because the statute of limitations in Belgium ran out in 2015. The investigation does, however, still remain open.
The Ikhwan: The Sect that Became the Military of Saudi Arabia
Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud lived in exile for most of his ounger years. After fleeing with his family to Kuwait to escape from the marauding Al-Rashid tribe, he returned at the turn of the twentieth century to Riyadh and regained control of the central Arabian plain called the Najd. Over the years the Wahhabi cult had survived even though their tribal protectors, the Sauds, had been away. When they returned, the Wahhabis and the House of Saud joined forces once again, this time to establish Saudi Arabia as a modern nation-state.
The Sauds and Wahhabis had a long history of partnership. Originally the Wahhabis agreed to sanctify the royal family as long as they were allowed free reign to practice their austere and severe form of Islam. It was a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship since the Sauds used them to control their subject population. When Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud returned, they teamed up once again in order to reign with strength over the lawless deserts of the Arabian peninsula, Ibn Saud needed to pacify the Beduin tribes that relied on raiding parties and warfare to feed their families and survive. The Wahhabis closest to him took on the name Ikhwan, meaning “brethren”, to act as missionaries, giving the Pagan Beduin a choice of either converting to Islam and submitting to Ibn Saud or having their throats slit. As many tribes became converts and learned the extremely conservative doctrines of Wahhabi Islam, they abandoned their nomadic lifestyle, learned farming, and settled in towns near oases and wells.
The Ikhwan and Ibn Saud’s next plan was to build an army and re-conquer the Hejaz and once again take control of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Hejaz was, at that time, ruled by the Ottoman caliph Sharif Hussayn, a king of the Hashemite dynasty who claimed direct descent from the prophet Muhammad. Sharif Hussayn was unpopular in the Islamic world. As pilgrims made the journey to the cities of Mecca and Medina, it was common for bandits to raid their caravans and take whatever valuables they could get; rather than policing the Hejaz and punishing the predatory criminals, Sharif Hussayn allowed them to operate freely as long as they gave him a cut of their spoils in return. Upon reaching the holy cities of Islam, the hajjis were further harassed by tax collectors who worked for him as well. So when the Ikhwan built up a massive enough army to raid the Hejaz, there were very few Muslims who did not wish them success in the conquest.
Armed with curved swords and spears, the Ikhwan rode to the mountain town of Taif on camels and horses, where they were welcomed as liberators and saviors. For some unexplained reason, the Ikhwan went on a rampage and killed most of the people who lived there, burned their houses and mosques, and looted whatever possessions they could find that they did not deem to be offenses to the Wahhabi version of Islam. After the siege of Taif, they used the town as a military fortress and camp from which they marched on Mecca and repeated the same same types of atrocities they had just finished. After the military assault, Sharif Hussayn abdicated his throne and his politically inept son Ali took over but soon departed. Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud now reigned over the Hejaz. After demarcating the borders of Transjordan, Iraq, and Kuwait in agreement with the British colonial administrators, the nation of Saudi Arabia was officially born and Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud was crowned by the Ikhwan as its first king.
But King ibn Saud’s plan to pacify the Beduin failed. Now convinced that they were warriors on a mission from Allah, they started organizing raiding parties that crossed over the border into Iraq where they slaughtered the impoverished shepherds who were grazing their flocks. Although the Ikhwan sometimes spared the lives of females, they used their swords to slice open the throats of any male children they captured and all the adult men were put to death. After one raiding party attacked a British police fort just over the border of Iraq, the British retaliated by using low flying airplanes equipped with bombs and machine guns to scatter and kill the bloodthirsty Ikhwan.
The Ikhwan started growing in confidence and eventually decided that King ibn Saud had started to abandon the practice of Wahhabism. When the king called a council with the Ikhwan leaders in Riyadh to discuss the problem of their cross-border raids, the narrow-minded fanatics accused him of such in-Islamic crimes as using infidel technologies like cars and radios. They were angry that he had allowed two of his sons to leave Saudi Arabia and travel overseas and they were furious, most of all, that he had consorted with British Christians for the purpose of political matters and the purchase of military supplies. King ibn Saud eventually convinced them that maintaining good relations with other governments was necessary for the stability of Saudi Arabia. He also agreed that he would give up his Western luxury items if the Ikhwan likewise agreed to give up their rifles which were also tools made for them by the Christian infidels. They agreed to a truce. But while the Najdi Ikhwan who lived close to Riyadh were satisfied with the new understanding, the Ikhwan from the eastern towns returned home and devised a plot to overthrow the House of Saud.
In 1927, the Ikhwan in Mutair and Ajman defied the king’s orders and continued to cross the borders into neighboring countries to slaughter their people. King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud called up his troops and drove in cars and trucks to the eastern towns where the rebellion had been instigated by the tribal leaders al-Duwish and ibn Hithlain. The Battle of Sibilla had begun. King ibn Saud’s Ikhwan troops outnumbered and out-gunned the tribal rebels. With British-supplied machine guns mounted on the king’s vehicles, the eastern Ikhwan’s swords and rifles were a weak defense. The massacre ended almost as quickly as it started. The two tribal rebel leaders, al-Duwish and ibn Hithlain were taken to a rather luxurious prison in Riyadh; their wives and daughters were given to King ibn Saud and his sons for marriage. Eventually the rebel leaders died in jail.
King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud consolidated his control over the Ikhwan. The more warlike members of the sect went on to enlist as soldiers in the Saudi Nation Guard, the army sworn to defend the royal family if the Saudi military ever tried to lead a coup against them. Others went on to become religious scholars and imams. Another faction morphed into the feared and hated Mutawwa, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice otherwise known as the religious police. Their job, to this day, is to patrol the public spaces of Saudi Arabia with sticks used to beat anyone they think is behaving contrary to the laws of Wahhabi Islam.
Darlow, Michael and Bray, Barbara. Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Skyhorse Publishing, 2012.
Friday, January 25, 2019
The Rise of Wahhabi Islam and the Conquest of the Arabian Peninsula
In the early years of the 18th century, the impoverished region of the central Arabian peninsula called the Najd was a veritable backwater. Dominated by the northern Arabian Rashid tribe with support from the Ottoman Empire, the Najdi people were suffering from poverty due to agricultural difficulties. The practice of Islam had faded away and given rise to superstitious rites and the worship of saints in its place. Violence, lawlessness, and constant raiding by Bedouin tribes were seemingly never-ending problems. Out of the chaos came a young student of Islamic law named Muhammed ibn Abd-al Wahhab who promised to alleviate their distress if they returned to the way of life set out by the first adherents to the Muslim religion. His teachings transformed the Arabian lands and set the course of the region on the path to fundamentalist militant Islam.
Born sometime in the first decade of the 1700’s, Abd al-Wahhab came from a family of judges. Raised in the Sunni Hanbali school of Muslim jurisprudence, he chose his devotion to the practice of law at an early age. After going on pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina, Adb-al Wahhab returned to his native village of Uyayna, convinced after what he saw there that Muslims had abandoned the true and pure form of Islam as it was originally planned out by the prophet Mohammad. He began preaching about the purification of Islamic teachings and soon began attracting adherents to his revivalist style of militancy and literalism. Male followers were made to wear a plain white thobe and turban on their heads rather than the traditional Bedouin iqal, the black rope used to hold their headscarves in place. Female disciples were commanded to dress with extreme modesty in the full black burqa covering all parts of their bodies except for their eyes.
Aside from the memorization of the Qur’an, the early Wahhabis believed that every aspect of their lives had to be done in strict obedience to Allah without any influence from anything else. Thus, praying to saints, a practice that had gained in popularity in those times, was strictly forbidden. Even the intervention of doctors in illnesses or injuries was banned because the patient in such situations did not seek out guidance from Allah instead. Women were to be highly regarded just as long as they married and did their wifely duties. Social interaction between members of the opposite sex was outlawed to prevent extra-marital affairs; this social taboo, if broken, was punishable by public whippings and beatings. Followers of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion were regarded as sorcerers and agents of evil and Muslims who practiced or believed anything other than the Wahhabi cult’s doctrine were thought of as heretics and enemies of the true faith of Islam.
Muhammad ibn Abd-al Wahhab starting gaining notoriety when he and his followers set out on a campaign to clean up their society. They began their rampage by destroying a coffin containing the remains of a revered saint, said to have healing powers. The people of the Najd also had taken to worshiping sacred trees which they believed to have supernatural powers; Abd-al Wahhab and his followers cut these down. They also found a woman who had been known for speaking publicly about cheating on her husband; when they commanded that she repent, she reacted with defiance and claimed to be proud of her infidelity. Her punishment was that they buried her up to the neck in sand and threw rocks at her head until she died. Public beheadings were another common punishment for other transgressions. To top it all off, the Bani Khalid tribal chief Sulaiman ibn Muhammad ibn Ghurayr forced the Wahhabis to leave the eastern Najdi region because they declared taxation to be against the teachings of Islam, something that did not impress a chief whose main source of income was tax revenues.
Abd-al Wahhab moved on. Upon arriving at the town of Dhiriya, he was welcomed in and soon struck up a friendship with Muhammad ibn Saud, the grandfather of Abdul-aziz ibn Saud, the first king of the modern nation of Saudi Arabia. Muhammad ibn Saud was impressed by the strictly disciplined followers of Abd-al Wahhab and the two agreed that by combining the Wahhabi teachings with militant tribal politics, they could conquer the Arabian peninsula. After forming this alliance, they built up an army and seized the town of Riyadh. Whipped up into a frenzy of religious zeal, the Wahhab-Saud alliance’s army began raiding nearby tribes, forcing them to convert as they conquered each one. They marched on the eastern towns of Hasa and Qatif, down to the peninsula of Qatar, south to Oman and Yemen, then north to the Rashid fortress in Ha’il and the Shi’ite-dominated city of Karbala. All along the way they gave the conquered people the choice of peacefully converting to the Wahhabi creed or being slaughtered. They all chose to convert and the first Saudi emirate of Dhiriya was born.
Next they turned their attentions to the Hejaz, the western strip of the Arabian peninsula where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were under the control of the Ottoman Empire. They seized these cities too and ruled them for years, refusing to allow any Muslims other than Sunni Wahhabis to perform the Hajj pilgrimage. But as time went on, the insular Wahhab-Saud alliance had no contact with the outside world. The Industrial Revolution produced new technologies for killing and new strategies for warfare and the Wahhabis, smug in their fanatical conceit, knew nothing of them. The Ottoman Empire built up a proxy army of Egyptian soldiers who marched on the Hejaz, decimating the Wahhabis and taking control, once again, of the cities of Mecca and Medina. Meanwhile, the Ottomans also supplied the Rashids with war materiel and assisted them when they attacked Riyadh, forcing the House of Saud to flee to Kuwait where they lived in exile until their return in the 20thcentury.
To this day, the Sauds have maintained their alliance with the Wahhabis who act as the official governing body of religious clerics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabi doctrine not only acts as the founding principle of national and religious identity for Saudis but it also provides the belief system for fundamentalist terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Their goal of dominating the world through a radical, draconian interpretation of Islam is the modern ancestor of the fanatical teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd-al Wahhab.
Darlow, Michael and Bray, Barbara. Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior Who Created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Skyhorse Publishing, 2012
The Residents - 13th Anniversary Show
The Residents
13th Anniversary Show
Den Norske Opera
Oslo, Norway 1986
The Qarmatians: The Islamic Sect that Stole the Black Stone from the Ka’ba
In the 9th century AD, the Islamic holy city of Mecca was controlled by the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire’s body of ruling Muslim clerics. At the time, long before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the hajj pilgrimage in which Muslims traveled from all over the world to the Hejaz, was long and treacherous, mostly done on foot or on the backs of camels. Caravans of pilgrims crossed the Arabian desert peninsula once a year to pay their respects to Allah by circling seven times around the ka’ba, the veiled house that holds the Black Stone, a meteorite that Muslims believe was a rock that fell from their paradise in the sky. By the end of the 9th century, an obscure utopian sect called the Qarmatians arose, becoming rich by robbing the pilgrims as they made their way to Mecca.
The origins of the Qarmatian cult are not know. What is know is that they were a Sevener sect of Isma’ili Muslims. In the world of Shi’a Muslims, a cabal existed of secret sects who were opposed to rule by the Abbasid Caliphate. One such sect, called the Mubarakkiyah had an imam who named his son as successor to his position as ruler of the religious group; his son, named Isma’il ibn Jafar died before his father did, and so the imam passed the inherited title on to his other son. This created a schism in which the Mubarakkhiya, on one side called the Seveners, decided Isma’il was the Mahdi, the messiah who would appear at the end of the world; these people believed that Isma’il had not died but rather gone into hiding to await the time of Judgment Day when he would re-emerge and take all the true believers to paradise. The other group of Mubarakkhiya accepted Ismai’l as dead but still believed he was the Mahdi who would return to announce the end of all time.
A group of Sevener Isma’ili missionaries began traveling around the Middle East and picked up a lot of converts in what is now Iraq, the western coast of Iran, in Transoxiana, and the eastern and southern coast of the Arabian peninsula. The island of Bahrain was, for a long time their stronghold and center of power until eventually they built a settlement on the Hofuf oasis around the village of Al-Hasa in what is now Saudi Arabia. These were the Qarmatians, a messianic and utopian sect who believed the pilgrimage to Mecca to be a superstitious practice that was offensive to Allah. They were a syncretistic cult that absorbed elements of Zoroastrianism into their practices and followed a strict vegetarian diet that also excluded any vegetables from the onion family. They minted their own currency, were successful at farming, held slaves, banned taxation and eventually built up their own military.
As the Qarmatians became more powerful under their militant ruler Abu Sa’id al-Jannabi, they instigated a reign of terror that began with the sacking of Baghdad and the eventual conquest of Mecca and Medina in 930 AD. They destroyed the city of Mecca, slaughterered thousands of people during their hajj pilgrimage and dumped their bodies into the sacred Zamzam well, poisoning the water in the desert region where moisture was a scarce and necessary commodity. They demolished the ka’ba and stole the Black Stone which hajjis kiss as part of their rites. They carried the Black Stone back to their fortress in Al-Hasa and held it for ransom for more than twenty years.
Thinking of the hajj as a heretical practice, the Qarmatians set up posts along the route to Mecca and terrorized, pillaged and robbed the caravans as they made their way to the Hejaz for almost a hundred years. Eventually, the Abbasid Caliphate payed a huge sum of money to the Qarmatians in exchange for the Black Stone which had gotten cracked and broken during the raid.
Eventually, the Qarmatians settled down but continued to grow richer by charging taxes from hajj pilgrims and exacting tributes from the Abbasids and other tribes in the surrounding areas. For a long time, they were the dominant Muslim power of the Middle East. Then in 976, the Abbasids built up an army of Iraqi and Egyptian soldiers to seize the city of Al-Hasa; the Qarmatians held their ground for several months but the war of attrition finally wore them down and they submitted to Ottoman rule.
The Qarmatians lasted as a rather insular secting less and less with other Muslims over the course of several years. Finally, they were overcome by the Uyunid tribe and absorbed into their shaikhdom. Weakened and lacking in military prowess, they eventually got absorbed into the mainstream Shi’a communities.
Yihetuan: The Boxer Rebellion and the Failure Of a Militant Religious Cult’s Rebellion
The 1890s were a miserable decade for China. Droughts caused famine and several colonial wars resulted in the occupation of the country. After losing several battles in a row, the Chinese government agreed to allow the colonial powers to do business within China’s borders; part of this agreement meant Christian missionaries would be free to proselytize amongst the population. For many rural Chinese, deeply religious and uneducated, this situation resulted in financial ruin and the blame for all their troubles was laid at the feet of the invading foreigners.
And so arose the Yihetuan, the translation meaning The Militia United in Righteousness. The colonialists called them the Boxers. The Yihetuan were a millenarian cult devoted to ancestor worship. They practiced trances that involved sword dancing and spirit possession. They believed their faith made them invincible to the bullets and cannonballs used in colonial warfare. They also believed that when entering into combat, an army of ancestral spirits would descend from heaven to help them defeat their enemies. They also engaged in a form of competitive kickboxing and so the missionaries referred to them as the Boxers.
The Boxers had a particular dislike for Christian missionaries. Being ancestor worshipers, they did not take kindly to Christians telling the local populace that they were possessed by Satan. The missionaries had gained some ground in their time. They attracted a small number of converts, most likely by offering food and shelter to the starving peasantry. Thereby, the missionaries started disrupting the social fabric of the clan-oriented Chinese society and weakening the family ties that had once been a social safety-net for the community. The missionaries also engaged in the offensive practice of seizing Chinese temples and turning them into churches. The dry weather and droughts did not help matters either. The superstitious agricultural community firmly believed that bad weather was caused by the moral weakness of the emperor. The conservative and reactionary sector of the population traditionally vowed to overthrow the Qing dynasty, who they saw as a cabal of evil invaders, and wished to restore of Ming dynasty who they regarded as the only true Chinese people. So the political agreements made between the Qing emperor and the colonialists was believed by the Boxers to be the cause of their agricultural failures.
The Yihetuan built up a lynch mob of vigilantes and began attacking, burning, and looting Christian monasteries. This chaos went on for some time until the government, fearful of losing their colonial oppressor’s protection, intervened with the military to put down the rebellion. Things stayed quiet for a while and then in 1899, the Boxers destroyed the railway line connecting Tianjin and Beijing, effectively isolating the capitol city, the seat of the government, and the throne of the Qing emperor. Then one day, a teenage boy left the Yihetuan monastery in full Boxer regalia; he was seized by two German soldiers and executed. This event set off a wave of riots, a buildup of militias, and the peasant army of Boxers began marching on Beijing. By this time the conservative empress dowager Tzu Shi started expressing open support for the Boxers and sent the Qing military to march along with them.
The British navy then called up 2000 soldiers from other colonial outposts in the region. They marched into Beijing and stopped in the embassy quarter to protect the missionaries and Chinese Christian converts who had moved there seeking shelter from the lynch mobs. Once there, the Chinese military erected barricades around the legations and set up troops so that no one could leave. Empress dowager Tzu Shi offered to let them leave with the assistance of the military but the colonial powers did not trust her, fearing it was a set up so that the Boxers could ambush and massacre them on the way out. The Boxers and the military commenced attacking the colonial prisoners but their military was too weak to fight them off. The worst damage they did was setting some embassies on fire and burning one of their own libraries which was filled with ancient Chinese manuscripts. They also killed lots of missionaries and Chinese converts. As the imprisoned foreigners fought them off, the Boxers soon realized that their magic could not stop bullets and their religious faith did not bring an army of ancestral spirits to help lead them to victory. But still they were strong enough to keep the foreigners from escaping.
By April 1900, the battle had reaches a stalemate and the colonialist invaders were sick, hungry, and weak. The British led a coalition of eight nations made up of Italian, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, British, American, Russian, and Japanese soldiers to intervene and end the war. The ill-prepared troops had an arduous journey to Beijing, suffering from dehydration, heat stroke, malnutrition, and the constant ambushes of the Boxer and Qing militias. The British were the first to reach the legations under siege and quickly ended the war.
Many of the Qing conservative politicians were forced out of office by the colonial powers. The empress dowager Tzu Shi herself escaped in an oxcart, under a pile of blankets, disappearing into the western Muslim-dominated regions of China, never to be seen again. A gruesome period of retaliatory atrocities ensued with soldiers mostly from Russia, Germany, and Japan raping and slaughtering civilian supporters of the Boxers. Many Christian missionaries went on a looting campaign to acquire reparations. Foreign domination of China became more severe until the rise of the nationalist Kuomintag party led by Sun Yat-sen began the severe march toward independence and the eventual take-over by Mao Zetung and the Chinese Communist Party.
The Boxer rebellion was yet another one of those wars in which no one came out looking good.
Booth, Martin. The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon Of the Triads. Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 2000.
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