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International
The Learned Elders of Islam
2002-02-06
  • You find some interesting things on the internet, often when you're searching for something else. Christopher Johnson has an article on Islam getting a little "blowback" of its own, in the form of disgusted adherents leaving the faith and becoming Christians - at least in those countries where they don't cut your head off for doing it. In Iran, after they've shot the ayatollahs Ba'hai could even make a comeback.

    While thrashing around in Middle East Quarterly (now on my reading list), I found this article on the Ulema - The Learned Elders of Islam - that adds nicely to my previously sketchy understanding of its workings. Having one of those Western-style minds - linear thought process, believer in cause and effect, etc. - I've been thinking in terms of a "Council of Boskone" as the driving force behind militant Islam. This article lays it at the door of the Ulema, but implies that rather than having formal Protocols, the Learned Elders of Islam are subject to a flavor of Groupthink, with a healthy amount of "planning backwards" from what the movers and shakers want to do to find a Koranic justification for it - hence conflicting fatwas among different Ulemas. I can pretty much accept this; certainly the current war against the USA has lots of earmarks of Groupthink ("Hey! Let's declare war on the USA!" - "Why would we do that?" - "They're evil. Everybody knows that!" - "And how will we win it? They have the heavy artillery." - "The Faithful will rise up and smash them! Everybody knows that!") OBL's conversations on his Friends videotape reflected this way of thinking pretty closely.

    But without falling into the Second Gunman on the Grassy Knoll mode of thinking, I believe there's yet another level "over" the Ulemas, probably symbiotic with it, that actually defines what the desirable ends are. And I think that these guys aren't motivated by piety and hatred of unbelievers, but by power. Old Time Religion to them is a means to an end. And those are the guys we're really fighting against.
    The cited article "on the Ulema" in MEQtrly reads eerily like the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion:

    http://www.ptialaska.net/~swampy/illuminati/zion.html

    to whit:

    "Armed with specialist knowledge of the Qur'an and the Sunna, the ulema find themselves in the happy position of being able to voice their opinions or issue fatwas (edicts on Islamic law) on any matter at all. They can influence and mobilize public opinion for or against government policies by declaring these in (or out) of accord with Islam."
    -Gibreel


    "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes... Three hundred men, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continent, and they elect their successors from their entourage."
    -PROTOCOLS of the LEARNED ELDERS of ZION

    I don't mean to put the MEQtrly on the same level as this classic anti Semitic screed, but we need to beware the problem of oversimplification unless some OBL character gets up and says "the fatwah made me do it!" What is important, and Bush in the SOTU address kinda talked around this, is that some of these societies are stuck in the 14th century in many ways and having factionalized political institutions such as these pseudo theocracies is a reactionary impediment to social and economic liberal reform. That is an American foreign policy interest, not the question of whether the Ulema are a bunch of political Neanderthals.

    Posted by Tom Roberts 2/6/2002 1:51:45 PM
    I don't think it was the fatwas that made them do it. I think it was the Groupthink.

    The actions of the Learned Elders of Islam often suggests they got a copy of the Protocols on disk, did a search and replace to change "goyim" to "infidels" and took it from there.
    Posted by Fred 2/6/2002 2:08:02 PM
    kind of like a mafia in charge of souls instead of money but the bottom line is that is all about power and control I figure if you can get people to bow down and pray to a place 5 times a day you can easily get them to kill the infidels
    Posted by Anonymous 2/6/2002 6:08:39 PM
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

    00:00