[update by nadezhda] Several months ago, MCMasterChef shared with us a paper he wrote during his final semester at Boston University. The paper, which is an overview of the history and challenges facing Europe and European Muslim communities, has unfortunately become all too relevant to debates in the wake of the London bombings.

It seemed to me a reprise of the Chef's paper is in order. First, it's a good review of recent writings by some of the more thoughtful scholars and commentators working on the topic of Islam in Europe. The paper is also a useful corrective for some of the more sweeping claims about "Europe" -- the Chef highlights important differences among European countries, especially Britain and France, in the distinctive histories and demographics of their Muslim populations, and consequently some major differences among countries in the issues each faces. He also distinguishes among a variety of strategies European countries have adopted over the years. Finally, and especially important in light of the London bombings, the Chef doesn't restrict himself to the heated debates on the politics of immigration. He stresses the problems being presented by failure to integrate a second and third generation and the attendant radicalization of many young Muslims who are European-born citizens.

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[originally posted May 16 2005]
Clash of Identities
Integration, Islamism, and the Question of Europe’s Muslims

Historian and Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis provoked an outcry recently when he suggested in a July 2004 interview with the German paper Die Welt that Europe will become a part of the Muslim world by the end of the 21st century. Citing demographic and immigration trends, Lewis claimed that Muslims would comprise a majority of Europe’s population by 2100, resulting in its becoming “part of the Arab West or the Maghreb” (Vinocur). Lewis is not the only one making such claims: Bat Ye’or, an Egyptian-born British writer living in Switzerland, has been embraced by conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic for her coinage of the term “Eurabia” to describe the Islamization of Old Europe. A menacing fusion of two civilizations deemed hostile towards the United States, Ye’or’s Eurabia is “fundamentally anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-American, and antisemitic”, and its development ultimately entails the subordination of Europe to the status of “a cultural and political appendage of the Arab/Muslim world” (Ye’or). Many American conservatives have endorsed the idea, interpreting the tense cross-Atlantic relations of the past several years as the outgrowth of European impotence in the face of the “Islamic challenge”. Lewis echoes this analysis in his comments, suggesting that the European Union “could rename itself the community of envy”, and that European-Muslim sympathies can be explained by their mutual jealousy of American strength (Vinocur).

Not surprisingly, these comments have been provocative in Europe, where right-wing politicians and parties across the Continent have seized upon the perceived threat to their identities, advocating stricter immigration controls and other measures in an effort to limit the influence of European Muslims. The 9/11 attacks and, to an even greater extent, the Madrid bombings of March 2004 and the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh half a year later, have further polarized the debate. The presence of a cell of 9/11 operatives led by Egyptian engineering student Mohammed Atta in Hamburg, Germany, raised fears that radical jihadists were using Europe as a staging ground for their violent attacks abroad, but the Madrid bombings and the Van Gogh murder heightened those fears further by making it clear that Europe itself could be a target. Differentiating between the religion of Islam, political Islamism, and its violent jihadi offshoots is extremely difficult. The marginalized economic and social status of Europe’s Muslim population; colonial legacies of racism and communalist strategies for dealing with minority groups; and the outright resistance by many European Muslims to the process of cultural assimilation does not make dispassionate consideration of European-Muslim relations any easier.

This paper attempts to examine those relations and trace their development, from the arrival of large groups of Muslim immigrants following World War II to the spread of political Islamism through those communities in the 1970s to the current tensions born out of 9/11 and other recent attacks by terrorists proclaiming an Islamic jihad against the West. Contrary to — or perhaps partly in reaction to — Ye’or and Lewis’ assertions, political bifurcation and division, not convergence, appears to best summarize the relationship between European Muslim subcommunities and the larger societies they inhabit.

As Timothy Savage carefully admonishes, it is worth remembering that

To talk of a single Muslim community in Europe ... is misleading. Even within individual countries, ethnic diversity, sectarian differences, cleavages within communities arising from sociopolitical and generational splits, and the nonhierarchical nature of Islam itself mean that Europe’s Muslims will be more divided than united for decades to come. Like European Christians and Jews, European Muslims are not a monolithic group.

With this caveat in mind, some level of generalization must necessarily take place in order to study the experience of Muslims within the unique context of Europe. This paper focuses generally on Muslims in Western Europe (which skews the issue by omitting discussion of the historical Muslim presence in Southeastern Europe and the Balkans), and most particularly in the United Kingdom and France. Broadly speaking, their experience has been one of social marginalization. Full blame for this situation can be ascribed to neither group entirely. While the native European population’s reaction to the growing number of Muslims living next door can hardly be described as welcoming, influential theories of Islamist communalism that emphasize social and political isolation from the corrupting influence of the kuffr (infidels) have further set back the integration process. Attempts at reconciliation will require an understanding of the historical and political factors that have produced the current standoff, but the multiple layers of separation between native Europeans and their Muslim counterparts and the aggravating factor of jihadi terrorism make prospects of future rapprochement daunting.
more below the fold   more »

Awkward responses from the US, including at a State Dep't press briefing, re Musharraf's decision to retain his military position along with his presidential duties. From the view of democratic symbolism, certainly not a very positive step, and many are understandably suspicious. The following comment from an Outlook India Online recent thread is not atypical.

Musharraf, like Zia and other khakis who ruled Pakistan; is no better than any other tin pot dictator. He has perfecetd the art of attire according to the occassion. His military dress with all those "tamgas" when talking to Pkaistani public, and hand crafted suits -when abroad, makes for a topic in itself. This man can never be trusted.

Our friends at The Acorn put the matter a bit more elegantly in commenting on Dan Darling's recent Winds of Change.NET report on a conference he attended on Al Qaeda .

Dan does not cover Musharraf’s dealings with Pakistan’s jihadi outfits in detail — if he did, he would have found out that the jihadi groups are just one of the variables Musharraf controls to stay in power. In this context, Musharraf is not actually trying to distinguish between good and bad jihadis (for that distinction is invalid) but manoeuvering to do the barest minimum to keep that other variable (United States) from knocking him down. Pakistan’s military establishment has effective control over all al-Qaeda related jihadi groups as well as on their spiritual leaders, patrons and mentors.

The Waziristan operation was a wild-goose chase — the tribesmen did support al-Qaeda and bin Laden, but only slightly more passionately than millions of their compatriots. The most dangerous jihadi leaders, those who can shed the most light on al-Qaeda and its global operations, remain in Pakistan, free to go about their business as long as they keep their head down.

Osama bin Laden is Musharraf’s golden egg laying gander (to invoke the avian reference again), and the General knows all about that fable. As for those jihadi groups, they cannot even hope to subvert the Pakistani state. Musharraf is far more secure and is in far greater control of the situation that he would like the United States to believe.

And then there's the Pakistani domestic opposition to Musarraf. The circus of Benazir Bhutto's husband's release, rearrest and re-release over the past two days has underlined how tricky the "reconciliation process" may be. The rearrest followed Musharraf's announcement about going back on his promise to relinquish his military leadership post on December 31, which flies in the face of the position Bhutto's group has vigorously supported.

Zardari's re-arrest appeared to dim hopes of reconciliation between former Prime Minister Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and Musharraf, a key ally of Washington in the war on terror.

However, some analysts said it might have been orchestrated by figures in the military government worried about losing influence should the reconciliation process move forward, rather than by Musharraf himself.

"It's to do with local ambitions and local politics," said newspaper editor and political commentator Najam Sethi. "I don't think Musharraf had a hand in that."

Bhutto herself appears to have taken a rather low-key and non-confrontational approach to the goings-on regarding her husband and re-emphasized the need for dialogue with Musharraf to achieve sustainable reconciliation.

Islamist opposition leaders, on the other hand, have called for nation-wide protests on January 1. From the FT and Reuters:

“Musharraf has become a security risk for the country,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal ( MMA), the coalition of Islamic parties, speaking before a crowd of about 5,000 supporters who braved heavy rain to attend a protest gathering in Rawalpindi, a suburb of Islamabad. “The military dictatorship is the root of all our evils.”

Mr Ahmed announced a nationwide “black day” on January 1, when a series of protest meetings would be held in different cities. MMA officials said the coalition then planned to hold more frequent protests. Opinion was divided over how big a threat yesterday's announcement was to Gen Musharraf[...]

A focus on Musharraf's presidential role, however, while certainly merited, fails to look at the other side of Musharraf's equation. Syed Saleem Shahzad, bureau chief for AsiaTimesOnline, looks at what's going on within the Pakistani army. His report suggests why Musharraf believes he must retain titular as well as de facto control of the "only organized institution" in Pakistan -- and it's not just to ensure his personal safety from further assassination attempts. Shahzad may share The Acorn's view that Musharraf has more control over things than is conventional wisdom, but it's a control that remains vulnerable and will take quite a bit more time and initiatives by Musharraf to consolidate.

Musharraf has forced Pakistan's military into an abrupt and wrenching U-turn. If Pakistan is to modernize and moderate its internal politics, and become less of a disruptive force externally, remaking Pakistian's military certainly must be at the top of the list of critical tasks. And let's be realistic about the process. It's going to be difficult and often violent. If the military in Turkey was the, frequently brutal, force for secularization and internal modernization, Pakistan's military has been built for leadership in "Muslim renaissance and pan-Islamism" as part of a strategy of "political hegemony" in South-Central Asia.

Shahzad sees it as a matter of "Purging Pakistan's jihadi legacy:"   more »

Islam in Jail: Europe's Neglect Breeds Angry Radicals

By CRAIG S. SMITH (NYT)
New York Time, December 8, 2004

Abdullah, tall and muscular, with a shaved head and closely cropped goatee, sat on a metal bunk in the cramped cell here and described how he got religion.
''When I was in La Santé, I read books about the Prophet,'' he said, referring to a notorious Parisian detention center, the third of five jails where he has spent time during the past two years for dealing drugs and stealing cars.

When he arrived at the fourth, Fleury-Merogis, Europe's largest, another inmate gave him a DVD about the life of Muhammad and later, while enduring a three-week stint in solitary confinement, he vowed to devote himself to Islam.

''People here find God,'' he said.

In less than a decade, there has been a radical shift in France's prison population, a shift that officials and experts say poses a monumental challenge.

Despite making up only 10 percent of the population, Muslims account for most of the country's inmates and a growing percentage of the prison populations in many other European countries.

With radical strains of Islam percolating through Europe, authorities are unsure how to address the spiritual needs of the prisoners while guarding against the potentially toxic mix of extremist ideology and a criminal past. One result is often neglect, which officials say can be a still greater force for radicalization.

Prison populations have been expanding across Europe in recent years, partly because of stricteranticrime regimens influenced by the sort of zero tolerance on quality-of-life crimes that was epitomized by the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

France's prison population has risen by 20 percent in the past three years, largely because of aggressive pursuit of lower-level crimes.

The proportion of Muslims in prison has been growing even faster, reflecting the relative youth of Europe's largely Muslim immigrants.

While there are no official data on issues of race and ethnicity in much of Europe -- it is in fact illegal to keep such data in many places -- experts on prison populations agree on the new disproportion of Muslims.

Two months ago Pierre Raffin, the director of La Santé detention center, warned officials looking into the role of religion in France that extremist proselytizing in prisons was growing.

Other countries are facing the same problem. Spain's chief counterterrorism magistrate, Baltazar Garzón, said recently that the men accused of plotting to blow up the country's main counterterrorism court were recruited from among fellow inmates by an Islamic militant serving time for credit card fraud.

Those who are detained or convicted for terrorist-related crimes are not always separated from the larger prison population and are often ready to act as spiritual guides at a time when Muslim chaplains are in severely short supply.

Abdullah (prison rules prevented him from giving his last name) said that while he was at Fleury-Merogis, militants were active in the prison yard, preaching that Christians and Jews are enemy infidels. In May, the militants defied prison rules by organizing a prayer meeting during an exercise break. Several prisoners were disciplined as a result.

''Islam is becoming in Europe, especially France, the religion of the repressed, what Marxism was in Europe at one time,'' said Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian-French scholar who has written a book on Islam in prisons. He says the growing Muslim prison population is evidence of an Islamic underclass that is developing across Europe and, at its margins, is increasingly sympathetic to the ideology of political Islam.

Europe has been slow to adjust to the changing ethnic and religious makeup of its prison inmates. France, in particular, has resisted approving Muslim prison chaplains, worried that inadequate screening could unleash potential militants into the system.

Missoum Abdelmadjid Chaoui, the imam responsible for the Nanterre institution here west of Paris, says there are only eight Muslim chaplains for the nearly 20,000 Muslim inmates in the Paris region. He handles 9 of the 25 prisons himself.

There are several efforts in France and elsewhere in Europe to train moderate clerics who are sensitive to the Continent's secular ideals, but progress is slow and Mr. Chaoui said it would take years before there were enough chaplains to meet the needs of France's prison population, which he estimates is already 60 percent Muslim.

Many people warn that neglecting the needs of Muslim prisoners breeds resentment and leaves them open for more radical interpretations of Islam.

Muslim inmates in France, which has Europe's largest Islamic community, complain that they are ignored in a system devised for a Christian population. Few prisons provide halal meat, butchered according to Islamic dietary laws, and fewer still hold regular religious services for Muslims. Catholic inmates can attend Mass once a week.

''This feeds back into the community of Muslims outside the prisons, who hear what goes on and are disturbed by it,'' said James Beckford, a sociology professor at Warwick University in Britain, who has studied the problems of Muslims in jail. ''It feeds their sense of alienation.''

Abdullah said that since Sept. 11, 2001, many prisoners of his generation have grown interested in understanding the religion of their birth.

But he and one of his two cellmates, Bandjougou, complained that they got little spiritual guidance. Both men were born and raised in the working-class suburb of St. Denis, north of Paris. The neighborhood, once a village surrounding a 13th-century cathedral where France buried its kings, is a sprawl of public housing peopled largely by Arab and African immigrants.

''In 30 months, I've seen the chaplain twice,'' said Bandjougou, a tall, clear-eyed man of West African descent. ''Maybe it would go in one ear and out the other, but at least it would be an alternative vision of life.''

A Catholic priest visits the block almost daily, but Bandjougou says he provides little solace for the vast majority of inmates, who are Muslim.

In the absence of an official spiritual guide, he said, the prisoners counsel one another. Prison officials say they are quick to spot serious proselytizing and regularly move prisoners deemed too influential on their fellow inmates.

''Every time we see detainees grouping in the yards to pray or proselytize, the group is broken up,'' said Géraud Delorme, deputy director of the Nanterre detention center. ''Everything is organized to prevent extensive contacts and such exchanges of ideas.''

In France, many prisoners spend up to 21 hours a day locked behind windowless steel doors in their small cells. Meals are delivered to the cells and there is little opportunity to socialize with anyone but cellmates, except during the twice-daily exercise breaks in the small concrete prison yard.

Drugs are prevalent, passed from cell to cell by strings hung through holes cut in the mesh covering each cell's small window. The ''yo-yos'' are tolerated at some prisons but the mesh has recently been replaced in Nanterre.

The prisons' shifting demographics are engraved in the small brick- walled exercise yard in Fresnes, a hub in transferring inmates around the national system. Names carved into the bricks a century ago are all French. ''Maurice Barbes, 1909,'' reads one. But those carved by the young men filling the yard these days are predominantly North African names like Oulmana, Chebbabi and Karim.

Professor Beckford says many countries are making adjustments for their sizable Muslim prison populations. Britain now has more than 20 full-time, salaried chaplains and hundreds of volunteer imams who go into the prisons every week, while prisons in England and Wales hold regular Friday Prayer and provide halal food in the daily diet.

But at Nanterre, a model compared with many other French prisons, halal food is available only through the prison commissary. Bandjougou pointed to boxes of dates, halal ravioli and chicken sausage piled on a shelf in the cramped cell. ''We have family that gives us money so that we can buy food,'' he said in the fading light from the cell's small window, ''but if you have no money, you're out of luck.''

The men cook the food over homemade stoves, illegal but widely tolerated, that they cobble together from tin cans, tissue paper and cooking oil. Muslims have the option of ordering vegetarian meals from the regular food service, but they say that the diet, like the missing imams, leaves them hungry.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Revised December 6, primarily illustrations and format

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Uyghur Separatism and the Politics of Islam in China's Western Frontier

Colin Cookman

From its earliest inception, the modern Islamic terrorist movement has been transnational and pan-Islamic in character. Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network had its origins in the corps of volunteers known as the "Islamic Internationale", or "Arab Afghans": young men hailing from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the whole breadth of the Middle East who flocked under the banner of jihad to the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the training camps of Peshawar. There they gathered to wage guerrilla war in the name of Islam against the godless Soviet Communists, while the American government looked on with grim satisfaction as it covertly supported efforts to bleed the Russians in their own "Soviet Vietnam".

Following the United States' campaign to topple the Taliban and disrupt Al Qaeda's base in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, news reports tracking captured fighters and key figures in the Al Qaeda leadership regularly reiterated, either explicitly or through non-commental labels of ethnicity, the multinational character of the terrorists' network: U.S. President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" was facing off against a stateless, loosely affiliated coalition of the dispossessed, the globally marginalized, and the violently revivalist. Although the biggest names and largest percentage of captured Al Qaeda members continue to be primarily of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, every now and then reports mention other, more exotic figures in the mix of captured and killed: Chechens from the Caucuses, Uzbeks, Filipino Moros, and, infrequently but not unnoticed, Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang province.

What motivates those small handfuls of anonymous young men to cross the Pamir mountains into Afghanistan and fight alongside the militants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban? In order to attempt an answer, we must examine the origins of Xinjiang's oasis peoples, the Uyghurs, and their aspirations for nationhood; the nature of Chinese rule over them today, and its effects on those aspirations; and the extent to which militant Islamic revivalism may have infiltrated China's western hinterlands, and what implications that holds for the Uyghurs and their region. This paper argues that China's discriminatory policies have, more than any other factor, served to alienate the Uyghurs and increase the appeal of militant Islam, in effect making Beijing's worst fears a reality.
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[UPDATE] The conference was terrific -- very rich with observations and fasinating anecdotes. And quite a collection of speakers. There was no "wrap-up" -- either of the individual panels or the day as a whole. I'm working through my notes and trying to digest it. Hope to have a few broad comments pulled together soon. In the meantime, CSPAN is showing various panels throughout the weekend. And for the whole show, the CSPAN site has it broken into two parts. This is the link to their archives.

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On CSPAN-2 all day today, a conference on Al Qaeda, sponsored by NYU's Center on Law and Security and New America Foundation. Here's Steve Clemons' description of the conference -- they've got everybody who's anybody in the US on the topic. I'll be blogging some of this, trying to catch some of the more interesting observations.

Matthew Yglesias' recent post, A Different Kind of Hack Gap, which praktike pointed to in Checking In, is well worth highlighting further, not just for his post but for the comment thread.

First his post, which has a good collection of links to some thoughtful pieces on alternatives to the Bush approach to combatting terrorism.

I've recommended it before, but now that they're advertising with me, let me recommend once again The Century Foundation's report Defeating The Jihadists. ... Let me also recommend Winning The War On Terror from the minority staff of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security along with the HSC minority staff's other reports. There's also good stuff on the New American Strategies website, and in the DLC's Progressive Internationalism document. I also like the Truman Project from Oxblog's better half (quarter?) Rachel Belton.

People out there are thinking and writing about this stuff, but it's not hitting the radar screen, even of Democrats who are political junkies.   more »

This started as a post about religious fundamentalism and shifted into something else. I'll come back to the fundamentalism stuff in a different post when I get the chance, but since I'm celebrating Veteran's Day with marathon paper-writing (like Trickster the past week has been extremely busy for me on the school and Habitat fronts, hence the skimming and lurking on my part) it may have to wait a while. In any case, here's the something else part:

Praktike has just recently registered the domain Liberals Against Terrorism, in what I think is probably a long-overdue step. He says he's not sure what to do with it yet, though I suspect he has something in mind... but I'll toss in my idea on the subject anyhow.

The fact that "liberals" broadly speaking, spend less of their time commenting on the serious threats that radical fundamentalism poses to the secular, pluralistic liberal society that we cherish — as seen in the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh for his controversial statements on Islam's treatment of women, among other offenses — than we do the many failings of the Bush administration's attempts at tackling this threat has in effect ceded the initiative in the debate. Rather than being the first ones to say "this is awful" and explain why from the liberal perspective, we end up being the ones adding "yes, but.." This isn't good from a political standpoint and probably not for our sense of perspective either.

As much as I don't like to admit it, there are members of the political left (and a few of them are even Democrats) who really do consider the U.S. a bigger threat to world peace than what they see as the comparatively minor threat of terrorism. I do think they are a minority within the Democratic community, but that the relative silence of the middle -- not at all helped by a media that rewards sensationalism over substance -- has allowed them a larger share of our collective voice than they deserve. This colors the rest of us in a negative light.    more »

But I thought we weren't supposed to do that ...

I'm a little hesitant in writing this because it's pretty inflammatory, but what's the web for, eh?

So here goes.

Osama Bin Laden's has garnered an enormous propaganda coup in the reelection of George Bush as president of the United States.

Why, you ask?

Because now he will make the argument that it is Islamically permissible to kill American civilians because, in his view, they are morally culpable for the actions of their government abroad. They have ratified George Bush and his policy, in Bin Laden's view, of killing Muslims and invading their lands. The reason this matters is because more Muslims will hear Bin Laden's arguments, sign up to be suicide bombers, and kill Americans. I see that as bad. I hope that instead, these dubious rumors are true and we are about to nail him before he is able to release another tape making that case.

Let me return to Bin Laden's 1998 interview with John Miller:

We however, differentiate between the western government and the people of the West. If the people have elected those governments in the latest elections, it is because they have fallen prey to the Western media which portray things contrary to what they really are. And while the slogans raised by those regimes call for humanity, justice, and peace, the behavior of their governments is completely the opposite. It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. Those feelings of animosity have produced a change in the behavior of some crushed and subdued groups who, instead of fighting the Americans inside the Muslim countries, went on to fight them inside the United States of America itself.

The Western regimes and the government of the United States of America bear the blame for what might happen. If their people do not wish to be harmed inside their very own countries, they should seek to elect governments that are truly representative of them and that can protect their interests. ...

The enmity between us and the Jews goes far back in time and is deep rooted. There is no question that war between the two of us is inevitable. For this reason it is not in the interest of Western governments to expose the interests of their people to all kinds of retaliation for almost nothing. It is hoped that people of those countries will initiate a positive move and force their governments not to act on behalf of other states and other sects. This is what we have to say and we pray to Allah to preserve the nation of Islam and to help them drive their enemies out of their land.

Well, the American people have spoken. Here and here is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that this message will resonate. Chris Allbriton writes:

I'm in Beirut now, and I've had a couple of people -- Lebanese and British -- tell me that the American people have validated the last three years, years which are seen as universally disastrous. Before, there was a distinction drawn between the American government and the American people. A few nights ago, one cabbie told me that he thinks American people are very nice, but the American government is “very bad.” Now, as one of my friends said, “The American people are the problem.”

This will translate into increased hostility against Americans, especially in the Middle East. (I'm in Beirut at the moment.) The American government is seen as hopelessly biased against Arabs and Palestinians, but now the American people are culpable as well. I long thought America's European allies would welcome her back into the family of nations if Kerry won. Instead, they will hold the American people in even greater contempt than they already do.

I'm not sure that a propaganda coup for Bin Laden was avoidable; he cleverly structured his recent statement so as to allow him to claim victory no matter who won. Had Kerry won, no doubt he would have taken credit for it, and like I said, the ability to impose change on one's enemies is a key element of 4th generation warfare. I'm honestly not trying to be partisan here; it's too late for that now. Nor am I suggesting that we abandon Israel or pull up stakes in the Middle East as Bin Laden wants, although we really need to stop hooding Iraqi prisoners and it would probably be a good idea to convince the Israelis to bulldoze slightly fewer Palestinian homes, commandeer slightly fewer Palestinian olive groves, and rein in the far-right settlers generally. (None of which are politically possible for Sharon right now given the Gaza pullout, of course. But it is very dangerous to have the image of America so deeply intertwined with the image of Israel.)

So I'm not suggesting any grand change in policies along the lines of Bin Laden. No appeasement here. I'm simply calling it like I see it, and again, the best way to deal with this issue is to capture or kill him before things get worse. In the meantime, we should avoid the kinds of images that reinforce his exploitative message. See, he'll say, the American people really do want to kill Muslims, steal their oil, and take their land. That's what they voted to do, and that's what you seem them doing every day on Al Jazeera. Never mind that Bin Laden's theocratic aspirations are deeply unpopular. He's a brilliant rhetorical tactician. Anyone who says that Bin Laden is irrelevant because he may not be exercising operational control over the jihad is either spinning, stupid, or both. As long as he has an audience, he matters.

Let's get him.

Major provincial conflicts involving Muslims and majority ethnic or religious groups are hitting the news once again in Asia. This time in China. Martial law has been imposed in a rural portion of the central province of Henan after four days of ethnic clashes.

The fighting was between farmers of the country's ethnic Han majority and the Muslim Hui minority living in neighboring villages, as well as thousands of military police sent in to restore order. It appeared to be among the worst incidents of ethnic violence known to have taken place in China in recent years.

The latest unrest followed a clash this summer in a nearby village in which police fired rubber bullets at farmers protesting land seizures and anti-government rioting two weeks ago in the western city of Chongqing. The Henan fighting served as a stark reminder of the varied tensions tearing at this vast nation as it undergoes rapid social and economic change.

The situation in Thailand is becoming increasingly tense. As David Fulbrook writes in the Asia Times:

Thailand's own September 11 may be moving closer, accelerated by the government's tough but inept policy that is alienating moderate Muslims in the deep south, possibly opening the door to foreign hands. A brutal response by disgruntled Muslims to last week's carnage [the death of 78 Muslims detained in connection with riots] would severely test relations with Buddhist Thailand and Muslim-majority neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia, potentially fracturing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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