"Europe only talks about radical Islam"

January 27th 2015 - In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, I interviewed Mustafa Ceric for ZEIT ONLINE. Ceric is the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia & Herzegovina and one of the most important Muslim scholars in Europe. A German version of this interview was published on January, 14th. 




DIE ZEIT: Mr Ceric, you have condemned the Paris attack in strong terms. You have also called it an attack on innocent journalists. There are a lot of people in the Muslim world who believe these journalists were not innocent, but guilty, because they ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed. What do you say to that?


Mustafa Ceric: I would like to postpone the question of innocence for now. We know from the Sira, the recorded history of his life, that whenever the Prophet was attacked and offended, these offences were not only more hurtful than the ones by Charlie Hebdo – but the Prophet did not issue any death sentences. As Muslims, if we want to express our love for him, we do this in our hearts. Of course, the caricatures are not OK. All Muslims feel embarrassed and uncomfortable about them. If Charlie Hebdo wanted to hurt Muslims, the magazine succeeded. If the magazine wanted to offer some kind of social criticism, if it wanted to make clear, that some Muslims have shortcomings – yes, of course, that is true, too. But my point is: You don't love the prophet and show it with a gun.


DIE ZEIT: Al-Qaida, to give just one example, has always argued that cartoonists have to die, when they ridicule the Prophet, because the Prophet himself set an example when he had Ka'ab bin al-Ashraf killed, who had ridiculed him. Is that wrong?


Mustafa Ceric: I don't accept this argument. These terrorists first decide to do something and then seek for arguments. You know what bothers Muslims more? Charlie Hebdo also ridiculed the Jewish faith, and at least one journalist was ousted for Antisemtitism. We want to know: How are we going to solve this puzzle? Or take Anders Breivik, for example. He killed over 70 people. He said he did it as a Christian. Did the media call him a Christian terrorist?


DIE ZEIT: Nobody denied that Breivik believed he was on a Christian mission.


Mustafa Ceric: Perhaps. But it did not lead to hysteria about Christian terrorism in Europe. Why, for God's sake, are the media always talking about „Islamic terrorism“? This is a double standard. What happened in Paris, is not „Islamic terrorism“. I would like to ask the media in Europa to apologize for using the term „Islamic terrorism“.


DIE ZEIT: So the perpetrators have nothing to do with Islam?


Mustafa Ceric: No, this has nothing to with Islam.


DIE ZEIT: If that is so, why did you sign a letter to the head of the „Islamic state“ terror group together with over 120 Muslim scholars, in which you tried to convince Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that his religious arguments were wrong? Clearly you addressed him as a Muslim!


Mustafa Ceric: There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world! When you talk about Islamic terrorism, you are including all of them. That is a verbal crime. Why do you not do the same with Christian terrorists? Or with Jewish terrorists, like the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin? Did anyone blame Moses for what that man did?


DIE ZEIT: But who is blaming the Prophet Mohammed for what the Paris killers did?


Mustafa Ceric: Everybody is blaming Islam!


DIE ZEIT: I find it confusing that you say the Paris attack has nothing to do with Islam, but argue about Muslim theology with the leader of the IS. So let me ask you: Does Paris have anything to do with Islam or not?


Mustafa Ceric: Does al-Baghdadi have to do with Paris?


DIE ZEIT: We don't know yet, but his school of thought is similar.


Mustafa Ceric: We don't know anything about the school of thought of the Paris attackers. I will put it this way: What happened in Paris is against Islam. And against Muslims! It is not acceptable. It is against the values of freedom, against the European values we all hold.


DIE ZEIT: Across Europe, there is a growing problem with young Muslims who are influenced by Jihadists. If you were to speak to a 17-year-old who is in the process of radicalizing and tells you he wants to kill cartoonists because they have ridiculed the Prophet and because the Prophet himself ordered the killing of Kaa'b bin al-Ashraf – what is your argument against that?


Mustafa Ceric: I would tell him that the Prophet has never killed for revenge or for any offence that he suffered. When the Prophet came to Mecca, he forgave the killers of his uncle Hamza. I would tell him: If you love the Prophet, the Prophet will love you for not killing anyone in his defence. The Prophet doesn't need revenge.


DIE ZEIT: According to the Quran, blasphemy will be punished by Allah after you die. There is no prescribed worldly punishment for blasphemy, correct?


Mustafa Ceric: Correct. And if Islam was the way these terrorists represent it, I don't think I would be a Muslim.


DIE ZEIT: As a scholar and a former grand Mufti, are you in competition with radical preachers in Europe?


Mustafa Ceric: Yes. And we need a broader approach to re-socializing and re-educating those who decide to go and fight in Syria and then come back. They need to understand that they are wrong. But the Muslim institutions are weak, they have little resources and many Imams have little knowledge. We need help by Europe's states to establish strong structures.


DIE ZEIT: Why is the radical theology of the IS and al-Qaeda so attractive?


Mustafa Ceric: Young people tend to be rebellious against established systems, that's one reason. But they are also giving them arguments without telling them about their responsibilities. They turn it into an adventure.


DIE ZEIT: What can be done?


Mustafa Ceric: For one, I believe Europe needs a Grand Mufti. We need a voice to calm down things. Not everybody will accept this office, but it will have an effect. But the European states are hesitant to support this.


DIE ZEIT: Muslims could do something themselves to establish that office...


Mustafa Ceric: But we are weak.


DIE ZEIT: In Germany, Muslim groups often find it very difficult to even agree with one another on a local level and on local issues.


Mustafa Ceric: This process is not easy. We need to structure Islam as an official institution. We need better teachers, better Imams, who are from here and not imported.


DIE ZEIT: But who is doing something about that?


Mustafa Ceric: I am fighting radical Imams every day. But even those who are trying to help are sometimes accused of being radicals. Who is an acceptable Muslim for Europeans? It seems like there is almost no acceptable Muslims for the governments or the media. We can't solve this problem alone. Europe complains about political Islam all the time. But Europe also only talks about political Islam.


DIE ZEIT: Should we distinguish between Islam and Islamism?


Mustafa Ceric: I think these distinctions cause a lot of confusion. The Paris attackers should be called neither. They are rebellious murderers. They don't know anything about Islam.


DIE ZEIT: But radical Muslims are often louder than moderate Muslims. They shape the image of Islam.


Mustafa Ceric: But they are not doing this on behalf of Islam! For me, they are destroyers of civilization.

It's Terrorism, Stupid!

April 14th, 2014 - "Heil Hitler", the man shouted when he was done. By then, he had shot to death three people: a 14 year old boy, his grandfather, and an unidentified woman. All three were Jews. All three had been killed at a Jewish community center near Kansas City. The killer, Frazier Glen Miller, is the founder and leader of the "Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" as well as the "White Patriot Party".

There can be no doubt that this deed, which occurred on Sunday, was motivated by antisemitism  and that the perpetrator is a rightwing extremist and a racist. Yet no-one seems to be willing to call this an act of terrorism. Instead, the NYT, The Washington Post and CNN are calling it a "shooting" or a "shooting spree".

Why?

Why does this attack not qualify as an act of terrorism? There are many definitions of terrorism, but most combine two elements: The victims are civilians, and the motif is political and/or ideological. Is that not true in this case? Of course it is.

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the Boston bombing, which was perpetrated by two brothers of Chechen background and of Muslim faith. In their case, there never was any doubt that they had perpetrated an act of terrorism. When Mohamed Merah killed seven people in Southern France in March 2012, among them soldiers as well as members of the Jewish community, everybody called it terrorism.

To be sure, the Boston attackers had used explosives against people - what other than terrorism could that possibly be? And Merah claimed he was a member of al-Qaida (which could never be substantiated).

But I still don't see why the Kansas City attack would be something entirely different.

I am not talking about judicial terms that may be applicable here. I am talking about journalistic reflexes. Because there is a hidden pattern behind this not calling the attack an act of terrorism. An Islamist who commits an act of violence and is being called a terrorist is being made and interpreted as a part of something larger - a group, a scene, a movement - by this very designation. By the same token, failing to call the Kansas City attack an act of terrorism will let Frazier Glen Miller and his deed appear unconnected to anything larger or broader.

The Boston bombers were not connected to other militant extremists in any meaningful way. They planned their attack by themselves. Of course there is still a connection between what they did and what other Islamist extremists did elsewhere in the world. But that connection is not factual; it is a connection in the sphere of phenomenology.

Is that any different in the case of the Kansas City attack? I believe not.

I believe that Miller's attack is, for example, as connected to the Nazi-Terrorist series of ten murders committed by the NSU in Germany as the Boston Bombing is connected to, say, the Jihadist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Or to put it differently: If we (and not unrightly so) connect militant Islamists with one another because they shout "Allahu Akbar" while they are killing people, we should also see the connection between people shouting "Heil Hitler" while murdering Jews. We talk about the "Global Jihadist Movement" all the time. There also is a global anti-semitic, far-right movement that resorts to violence against civilians.

I am not trying to allocate blame here. I am just concerned that some of us journalists have not been able to insulate themselves fully from the impression that since 9/11 terrorism is an exclusively Islamist phenomenon. Whereas in fact, as we all know, the majority of terrorist attacks world wide are not committed by Islamists.

PS: In the interest of full disclosure, I was inspired by Thomas Hegghammer's tweet when blogging this. Here is how his tweet went: "@Hegghammer Convicted white supremacist massacres Jews, shouts Heil Hitler, but is still not a "terrorist" to CNN and KS police: cnn.it/RhMmZf" 

PPS: Also see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dangerous-minds/201404/why-isn-t-anyone-calling-terrorism for a similar take. 

PPS: This is a slightly edited version of a German blog post that I published earlier today at DIE ZEIT's website, the paper that I work for. 

Intelligence, foreign and domestic

March 13, 2013 - This is just a brief post about two articles I have in this week's edition of DIE ZEIT where I work. Unfortunately we don't run our stuff in English (yet?), so I am going to provide summaries for those of you interested in intelligence issues.

First item is a brief news bite: According to my information Germany's domestic intelligence agency "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" or BfV will shut down a unit they founded in 2009 whose task it was to provide background (academic and scientific) on Islamist ideology for the purpose of sharpening analysis of Islamist movements. It was comprised of roughly a half dozen experts, all of whom had studied Islamic Studies. In fact, most of these officials have already been moved to other departments weeks or even months ago. The agency states that they need their expertise in departments that are more pragmatically oriented, so in the end they apparently figured it is more honest to just close the shop. I found the idea behind the original founding of the unit very interesting and I know that internally some of their inout was highly valued; for example, these people seem to have made solid contributions towards a better understanding of Salafism. But be that as it may, they will from know on be working elsewhere inside the agency. Maybe some of them will even enjoy that, we will see. But it is interesting to note that other countries still maintain similar units and deem them important.

Second item is a bigger story I wrote about a case concerning the "Bundesnachrichtendienst", Germany's foreign intelligence agency. It is a bit complicated, but very interesting. So here are some bullet points:

* In late 2011 the agency received complaints about one of their officials who was at the time running a liaison office in the German city of Mainz. According to these complaints, the man, among other things, made right wing populist statements on a regular basis.

* The agency started an internal investigation, seeking disciplinary matters, that would focus on what the agency described as "right wing populist statements". In hearings, witnesses said that they had heard the official in question making numerous statements that would be hostile towards Muslims and Islam as well as black people and foreigner.

* However, in the course of that internal investigations other members of the agency were heard and some of what they said alarmed the agency. There had apparently been talk about the need to train for when things would get ugly, and some witnesses said they overheard the man speaking about how he had already buried a crate of weapons and was having preparatory meetings with high standing, like minded people.

* These bits and pieces led the agency to formally turn the investigation over to a prosecutor. They filed charges, suggesting the official had broken laws regulating weapons. The agency made it clear they believed it possible he was thinking about starting his own militia.

* Police investigated the charges, including measures like wire tapping the agency official, raiding his home and even tailing him. Nothing came of it: they closed the file because they couldn't produce evidence he had broken any gun laws (he does have weapons, but they are all legal and legally stored) or made attempts at starting his own militia.

* After the file was shut, however, the agency took up the internal investigation again (which had to be stopped during the external investigation). The BND is still seeking disciplinary matters because they believe that his alleged islamophobic statements are not in keeping with his obligations as a state official (who by law in Germany have to be balanced or at least can't be extreme in their publicized views).

* The lawyer of the official says it is all mobbing, misunderstandings and misportrayal. He says his client is neither a racist (witnesses claim he had called black people less intelligent) or an islamophob (other witnesses say he said Islam doesn't belong to Germany, and that there was reason to believe Muslims would undermine our society).

* The lawyer also filed charges against another official of the BND, claiming he lied about his client.

It is going to be interesting to see whether the BND will be able to discipline the man and in what ways. This process may take weeks or even months. The argument is now not about weapons anymore, it is about words -- and the question of what things you can say as an intelligence official. Of course there also the question of what things the man actually said - as the lawyer is disputing most of that. In any case, it is the first case of this kind that I am aware of.

Here are links to short German summaries of the stories. 1 & 2.

Alright, good night,

Y.