RUTHFULLY YOURS

Washington has stopped trying to figure out the “Arab Street.” From what I can tell it happened somewhere around Nov. 9, 2016. America is probably better off for it.

I’m not saying we should ignore public opinion in the Arab world. Nor should we ignore its politics. The Middle East, and what happens there, is of crucial concern to American policy makers and interests.

But at least since I arrived in Washington in 2002, the foreign-policy establishment has been on a quixotic quest to tap into the thoughts of an estimated 365 million people. Armed with language lessons, history books and advanced degrees, America’s Middle East analysts labored to understand why Arab populations cheered the 9/11 attacks, jeered the 2003 Iraq invasion, and brought down dictators during the Arab Spring. I was among them, taking trips to dangerous places in the hope that I could acquire “ground truth” that would help in America’s battle for hearts and minds.

The only “ground truth” I could ever discern was that the Arab world is a complex patchwork of national identities that are influenced heavily by clan, family, tribe and—of course—religion. The people speak different dialects and embrace different cultures. Sure, there are commonalities among Arabs, but the more you travel the region, the more you find yourself focusing on the differences.

There is not one Arab Street, in the same way that there is not one Main Street in America (consider the differences among New York City, Biloxi, Miss., Des Moines, Iowa, and Los Angeles). Numerous ideological currents run through our 50 states and 320 million residents. Just ask the pollsters who got it wrong in November.

In a rather poetic twist of fate, the Arabs are now sending delegations to Washington in their own quest to glean ground truth. Some have come to visit me. Others have popped in on other policy shops around town. The conversations vary, but the questions are basically the same. With the political sands shifting dramatically in Washington, the Arabs are desperately trying to understand the thinking of the new leadership, but also the thinking of Main Street Americans who were instrumental in bringing about this change.

Can I explain what’s happening in America right now? Probably about as well as the Arab intellectuals who tried to explain things to me over the years. Shifting demographics, economics and religion all play a role. But I have yet to read a compelling narrative that explains the changes that have taken place across diverse populations nationwide. There is no ground truth here, either.CONTINUE AT SITE

Danish Minister of Justice Søren Pape hopes to solve the issue by prosecuting the imam. However, Danish politicians appear to miss the critical fact that there is clearly a thirsty audience for sermons like this.

This sermon is a call to violence against Jews.

As the Quran cannot be changed, it is crucial to make more broadly known what is in it, so at least people can see the facts confronting them, to help them determine what choices they might care to make for their own future and that of their children.

In 2015, Omar El-Hussein listened to the imam Hajj Saeed, at the Hizb-ut-Tahrir- linked Al-Faruq-mosque in Copenhagen, decry interfaith dialogue as a “malignant” idea and explain that the right way, according to Mohammed, is to wage war on the Jews. The next day, El-Hussein went out and murdered Dan Uzan, the volunteer Jewish guard of the Jewish community, as he was standing in front of the Copenhagen synagogue. El-Hussein had also just murdered Finn Nørgaard, a film director, outside a meeting about freedom of speech.

Two years later, nothing has changed. A visiting imam from Lebanon at the Al-Faruq mosque, Mundhir Abdallah, is preaching to murder Jews:

“[Soon there will be] a Caliphate, which will instate the shari’a of Allah and revive the Sunna of His Prophet, which will wage Jihad for the sake of Allah, which will unite the Islamic nation after it disintegrated, and which will liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Zionists, so that the words of the Prophet Muhammad will be fulfilled: ‘Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. The Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees, but the rocks and the trees will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ …”

The “words of the Prophet” are from a well-known hadith, number 6985.

Far from hiding this incitement, the mosque posted the sermon, delivered on March 31, on the YouTube page of Al-Faruq Mosque on May 7. The invaluable research organization, MEMRI, translated it.

A reporter from Danish TV channel TV2 news, who recently spent two hours around the Al-Faruq mosque, could not find a single Muslim willing to condemn the imam. “I don’t think he meant anything bad by it,” said Bayan Hasan, a female student. Another Danish Muslim, Mohammed Hussein, incorrectly replied, “According to Islam, Muslims are not allowed to kill”. The Quran verse 8:12, to mention one of many examples, says otherwise: “…I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.”

Denmark’s Minister of Integration, Inger Støjberg, called on the mosque and all Muslims in Denmark to condemn the sermon. “If this had happened in a Danish church, it would not have been necessary to ask people to condemn it. It would have been automatic”, she said.

On April 19, the campaign of Jakarta’s radicals chanting, “We want a Muslim governor!” paid off, as Ahok was defeated in the gubernatorial election. Exit polls on election day indicated that religion was the main factor behind the voting.

On May 10, Indonesia’s radicals scored a second victory, when Ahok was found guilty of blaspheming Islam and sentenced to two years in prison.

The verdict came as a surprise even to the prosecutors of the case — they had requested only a suspended sentence for the offense of “inciting hatred”.

In the two decades since the fall of Indonesian President Suharto’s 32-year reign in 1998, the use of the accusation of “treason” as a governmental tool to quash political opposition gradually reemerged in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.

Today, however, those trying to overthrow the leadership are Islamists intent on unraveling the fabric of a pluralistic society.

This situation has led to the debate over freedom of speech and the separation of church and state — or, here, mosque and state.

Four recent rallies in the capital city of Jakarta illustrate the nature of what has become a full-blown controversy. In each case, protesters gathered outside mosques after Friday prayers for what they claim are “spontaneous” demonstrations made necessary by their clerics’ lack of financial resources to plan and stage such events. But evidence collected by Indonesian authorities indicates otherwise.

The first such protest took place on October 14, 2016. Its purpose was to demand that criminal proceedings be launched against Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama — familiarly known as Ahok — for “blasphemy.”

Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent, was appointed to his position in 2014, when Joko Widodo became president of Indonesia. Hardline Muslim groups argued that a Christian should not be allowed to govern a Muslim-majority city. To back up their claim, they cited the Quran.

Their fury grew even greater when Ahok was running for reelection: he asked fishermen in Pulau Seribu not to be “deceived” by politicians using the Quranic verse, al-Maidah 51 (“…do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies”), to dissuade them from supporting him.