Memri!

[Kevin_B]

http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/03/fatwas_and_wafa.php

Responding to a comment on my sarcastic 7-step guide to becoming a Muslim reformer, it occured to me that most Westerners have no idea what constitutes a fatwa, and that Wafa Sultan has used this misconception to her advantage in the New York Times.

First, the comment about my entry:

Crooning “Oh, oh, I’m under a death sentence, oh, oh, they’re coming to chop off my head, oooooh I’m so scaaaared” is lame snotty mockery when the target of your mockery actually is under a death sentence and people actually are getting killed.

I admit my comments were flippant and not intended to trivialize the problems faced by people who are intimidated and threatened by both secular and Islamist entities in the Middle East (such as the lovely and very brave journalist, Mona Eltahawy). Still, the ensuing debate has uncovered a number of popular and dangerous misconceptions, which will be cleared up here and there as I find them.

Now, reading the NYT article:

The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail. [Emphasis mine]

Right, playing the Rushdie card for well-meaning but naive Westerners by calling statements made during a TV debate a "formal fatwa" because the immediate association is "death sentence". Fatwas are legal rulings in Islamic jurisprudence and are issued as a response to a specific legal question. A quick overview of what is and is not a fatwa can be found here:E

very Muslim may be entitled to declare an opinion on whatever he or she wishes. But a fatwa is not a point of view; it is a legal opinion. A fatwa is not personal advice given in response to a personal problem and it is not simply an answer to a question. A fatwa is a non-binding legal opinion issued in response to a legal problem. For instance, if one asks, "How many times a day do Muslims pray?" The answer to this is not a fatwa. If one asks: "Do you think it is a good idea to marry someone older than myself?" The response to this is personal advice but not a fatwa. However, if one inquires about a problem that is the proper subject of a legal inquiry, then one is asking for a fatwa. For example, if one asks, My father is opposed to my marrying this man, but legally, could I still marry him anyway?" This question solicits a fatwa. A fatwa assumes a conflict of evidence and a need to weigh and evaluate the evidence. In the language of fiqh, a fatwa is issued in response to a problematic matter (amr mushkil). The point is well-illustrated by the following incident: A man asked al-lmam Malik about a matter. Imam Malik responded by saying, "I don't know." The man retorted, "But this is a simple and easy matter." Irritated Imam Malik said: "Nothing is easy in knowledge and fatwa.

Fatwas are not religious condemnations, they are formal legal opinions. Dismissing someone in a TV debate by calling them a blasphemer does not mean you have issued a fatwa calling for their death. It is extremely important that Western readers understand this distinction, as it is obviously being glossed over in the media.

http://aqoul.com/images/wafa_sultan.pdf

[Kevin_B]

Re: Memri!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/12/worlddispatch.brianwhitaker

Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems

* Brian Whitaker
* guardian.co.uk,
* Monday August 12 2002
* Article history

About this article
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This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Monday August 12 2002. It was last updated at 11:29 on January 14 2003.
For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous institute in the United States. The gifts are high-quality translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge.

The emails also go to politicians and academics, as well as to lots of other journalists. The stories they contain are usually interesting.

Whenever I get an email from the institute, several of my Guardian colleagues receive one too and regularly forward their copies to me - sometimes with a note suggesting that I might like to check out the story and write about it.

If the note happens to come from a more senior colleague, I'm left feeling that I really ought to write about it. One example last week was a couple of paragraphs translated by the institute, in which a former doctor in the Iraqi army claimed that Saddam Hussein had personally given orders to amputate the ears of military deserters.

The organisation that makes these translations and sends them out is the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), based in Washington but with recently-opened offices in London, Berlin and Jerusalem.

Its work is subsidised by US taxpayers because as an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit" organisation, it has tax-deductible status under American law.

Memri's purpose, according to its website, is to bridge the language gap between the west - where few speak Arabic - and the Middle East, by "providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media".

Despite these high-minded statements, several things make me uneasy whenever I'm asked to look at a story circulated by Memri. First of all, it's a rather mysterious organisation. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address.

The reason for this secrecy, according to a former employee, is that "they don't want suicide bombers walking through the door on Monday morning" (Washington Times, June 20).

This strikes me as a somewhat over-the-top precaution for an institute that simply wants to break down east-west language barriers.

The second thing that makes me uneasy is that the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease.

Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Washington Times: "Memri's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."

Memri might, of course, argue that it is seeking to encourage moderation by highlighting the blatant examples of intolerance and extremism. But if so, one would expect it - for the sake of non-partisanship - t o publicise extremist articles in the Hebrew media too.

Although Memri claims that it does provide translations from Hebrew media, I can't recall receiving any.

Evidence from Memri's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status. Besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises "the continuing relevance of Zionism to the xxxish people and to the state of Israel".

That is what its website used to say, but the words about Zionism have now been deleted. The original page, however, can still be found in internet archives.

The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.

Among the other three, one served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps, one has an academic background, and the sixth is a former stand-up comedian.

Col Carmon's co-founder at Memri is Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, which bills itself as "America's premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges".

The ubiquitous Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's defence policy board, recently joined Hudson's board of trustees.

Ms Wurmser is the author of an academic paper entitled Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism? in which she argues that leftwing Israeli intellectuals pose "more than a passing threat" to the state of Israel, undermining its soul and reducing its will for self-defence.

In addition, Ms Wurmser is a highly qualified, internationally recognised, inspiring and knowledgeable speaker on the Middle East whose presence would make any "event, radio or television show a unique one" - according to Benador Associates, a public relations company which touts her services.

Nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations but there are other reasons to be concerned about its output.

The email it circulated last week about Saddam Hussein ordering people's ears to be cut off was an extract from a longer article in the pan-Arab newspaper, al-Hayat, by Adil Awadh who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of it.

It was the sort of tale about Iraqi brutality that newspapers would happily reprint without checking, especially in the current atmosphere of war fever. It may well be true, but it needs to be treated with a little circumspection.

Mr Awadh is not exactly an independent figure. He is, or at least was, a member of the Iraqi National Accord, an exiled Iraqi opposition group backed by the US - and neither al-Hayat nor Memri mentioned this.

Also, Mr Awadh's allegation first came to light some four years ago, when he had a strong personal reason for making it. According to a Washington Post report in 1998, the amputation claim formed part of his application for political asylum in the United States.

At the time, he was one of six Iraqis under arrest in the US as suspected terrorists or Iraqi intelligence agents, and he was trying to show that the Americans had made a mistake.

Earlier this year, Memri scored two significant propaganda successes against Saudi Arabia. The first was its translation of an article from al-Riyadh newspaper in which a columnist wrote that xxxs use the blood of Christian or Muslim children in pastries for the Purim religious festival.

The writer, a university teacher, was apparently relying on an anti-semitic myth that dates back to the middle ages. What this demonstrated, more than anything, was the ignorance of many Arabs - even those highly educated - about Judaism and Israel, and their readiness to believe such ridiculous stories.

But Memri claimed al-Riyadh was a Saudi "government newspaper" - in fact it's privately owned - implying that the article had some form of official approval.

Al-Riyadh's editor said he had not seen the article before publication because he had been abroad. He apologised without hesitation and sacked his columnist, but by then the damage had been done.

Memri's next success came a month later when Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London wrote a poem entitled The Martyrs - about a young woman suicide bomber - which was published in al-Hayat newspaper.

Memri sent out translated extracts from the poem, which it described as "praising suicide bombers". Whether that was the poem's real message is a matter of interpretation. It could, perhaps more plausibly, be read as condemning the political ineffectiveness of Arab leaders, but Memri's interpretation was reported, almost without question, by the western media.

These incidents involving Saudi Arabia should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of building a case against the kingdom and persuading the United States to treat it as an enemy, rather than an ally.

It's a campaign that the Israeli government and American neo-conservatives have been pushing since early this year - one aspect of which was the bizarre anti-Saudi briefing at the Pentagon, hosted last month by Richard Perle.

To anyone who reads Arabic newspapers regularly, it should be obvious that the items highlighted by Memri are those that suit its agenda and are not representative of the newspapers' content as a whole.

The danger is that many of the senators, congressmen and "opinion formers" who don't read Arabic but receive Memri's emails may get the idea that these extreme examples are not only truly representative but also reflect the policies of Arab governments.

Memri's Col Carmon seems eager to encourage them in that belief. In Washington last April, in testimony to the House committee on international relations, he portrayed the Arab media as part of a wide-scale system of government-sponsored indoctrination.

"The controlled media of the Arab governments conveys hatred of the west, and in particular, of the United States," he said. "Prior to September 11, one could frequently find articles which openly supported, or even called for, terrorist attacks against the United States ...

"The United States is sometimes compared to Nazi Germany, President Bush to Hitler, Guantanamo to Auschwitz," he said.

In the case of the al-Jazeera satellite channel, he added, "the overwhelming majority of guests and callers are typically anti-American and anti-semitic".

Unfortunately, it is on the basis of such sweeping generalisations that much of American foreign policy is built these days.

As far as relations between the west and the Arab world are concerned, language is a barrier that perpetuates ignorance and can easily foster misunderstanding.

All it takes is a small but active group of Israelis to exploit that barrier for their own ends and start changing western perceptions of Arabs for the worse.

It is not difficult to see what Arabs might do to counter that. A group of Arab media companies could get together and publish translations of articles that more accurately reflect the content of their newspapers.

It would certainly not be beyond their means. But, as usual, they may prefer to sit back and grumble about the machinations of Israeli intelligence veterans.

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Wednesday August 21 2002

In an article headed Atrocity stories regain currency, page 13, August 8, and in an article headed Selective Memri on the Guardian website, we referred to Dr Adil Awadh, an Iraqi doctor who alleged that Saddam Hussein had ordered doctors to amputate the ears of soldiers who deserted. Dr Awadh has asked us to make it clear that he has no connection with Memri (Middle East Media Research Institute), and that he did not authorise its translation of parts of an article by him. He is no longer a member of the Iraqi National Accord (INA). He is an independent member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). His reference to orders by Saddam Hussein to cut off the ears of deserters has been supported by evidence from other sources.

[Kevin_B]

Re: Memri!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12949.htm

Ahmadinejad: Lost in translation

By Little Red Email

05/04/06 "Peace Palestine" -- -- It was October last year when we came home, flicked on the radio and listened aghast to the news that the Iranian president denied the Holocaust had happened and said the state of Israel should be wiped off the map. ‘Christ,’ we thought, ‘this nut job’s playing into their hands with this kind of rhetoric.’ Since then “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion” as one US academic has described the Iran/US imbroglio has ratcheted up to high alert with Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker reporting that the White House is all prepared for nuclear strikes. It would take just 12 hours to deploy nuclear weapons for a bunker busting strike that would kill a million Iranians according to conservative estimates commissioned by the Pentagon. Nuclear armed planes are now on constant alert and public opinion has been framed around those mad, mad statements on Israel by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But what if the pronouncements by Ahmadinejad that cast him as this season’s baddie incarnate had been a) mistranslated and b) taken out of context?

When properly translated the Iranian president actually calls for the removal of the regimes that are in power in Israel and in the USA as a goal for the future. Nowhere does he demand the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He called for greater governance for Palestine. The word map does not even feature. And the president makes plain that the Holocaust happened, but, he argues western powers have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialistic purposes. What the mainstream ran with is complete deception.

The deception has been aided by the fact that much of the media use an ‘independent’ company called Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) for translating Middle Eastern languages. Memri just happens to be owned by two right-wing neo-con Israelis: Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of xxxx Cheney’s aides (and ex-special assistant to ‘Strap-on’ John Bolton), David Wurmser and former(?) Israeli Military Intelligence officer, Colonel Yigal Carmon. Indeed a look at Wikipedia’ s incomplete staff list seems to suggest a heavy Israeli bias in staffing and at least two more ex-Israeli Military Intelligence people. Still the little red email is sure that’s just a coincidence, as is the fact that the Israeli army (presumably military intelligence) has also used this mistranslation tactic in the past.

And once Ahmadinejad had been brushed with the wacko xxx destroyer tag, it was a short hop, skip and ein Sprung before he was alongside Adolf Hitler in the pantheon of baddies. Like Milosevic and Hussein before him, Ahmadinejad’s Hitler comparison is as sure a sign war is imminent.

Unlike Hitler though Ahmadinejad doesn’t rule Iran, nor does he control its foreign or military policy. The man in charge of all that is Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is a theocracy, and Khamenei is the theocrat-in-chief. To give you an idea of where Ahmadinejad lies in Iran’s political hierarchy, note that no one can even run for the presidency in the first place without the approval of Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a group of six clerics and six conservative jurists that are selected by Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad serves the purpose of being a believable bogeyman. He’ll find his Ph.D. in civil engineering and being a founding member of the Iran Tunnel Society useful if Seymour Hersch’s bunker-busting nuke allegations come true