RUTHFULLY YOURS

Daniel Johnson, the founder and editor of the British monthly Standpoint, writes widely on politics, culture, and religion

Europe is a continent, and an idea, with an alternately heroic and ignominious past and with what seemed, until recently, to be an enviable present. But does it have a future? The November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris marked the culmination—so far—of a concerted campaign directed mainly at Europeans and orchestrated, or inspired, first by al-Qaeda (Madrid 2004, London 2005) and more recently by the self-proclaimed caliphate based in the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq. The latest round of carnage began with the 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, was stepped up in January of this past year with the Charlie Hebdo and kosher-supermarket massacres in Paris, continued with shootings at a free-speech gathering in Copenhagen and mass assaults on European tourists in Tunisia, followed by explosions in Ankara and Beirut and reaching a crescendo with the multiple attacks in Paris.

Europeans are now faced with questions they have hitherto preferred to dodge. Are Europeans ready to fight for Europe? What is the place of Islam in a post-Christian Europe? Or, to look at it from the jihadist point of view, what is the place of Europe in a fast-expanding and globalized Islam? Is 21st-century Europe still the heart of Western civilization, or is it changing out of all recognition?

However one answers those questions, a brave new world seems to be emerging in which Europe becomes the theater where the clash of civilizations is played out. So far, the signs are that this encounter will be no more peaceful than it has been in the Middle East.

Instead of wishing Palestinians a happy and prosperous New Year, both Fatah and Hamas are asking their people to prepare for increased violence and “resistance,” including suicide bombings, against Israelis.

Fatah’s armed wing used the occasion to issue yet another threat: “We will continue in the path of the martyrs until the liberation of all of Palestine.”

Masked Palestinians in Bethlehem attacked several restaurants and halls where New Year’s Eve parties were supposed to take place. The assailants, eyewitnesses reported, were affiliated with Abbas’s Fatah faction, not Hamas.

Hamas banned Gazans from celebrating New Year’s Eve, saying such parties are “in violation of Islamic teachings.” Hamas does not want young Palestinians enjoying their time in restaurants and cafes. Instead, Hamas wants them to join its forces, armed and dressed in military fatigues, preparing for jihad against Israel.

The mayor of the southern French city of Beziers is facing heavy criticism and accusations of racism after sharply denouncing a Muslim group’s offer to protect a church during a Christmas midnight mass.

Robert Menard, elected mayor of Beziers’ 72,000 inhabitants in 2014 with the support of France’s nationalist party, Front National, didn’t pull any punches when condemning the Muslim initiative. Responding on the city’s website on December 26 in an entry titled “Muslim Guard: What Is the State Doing?” he wrote:

“A Muslim guard ‘protecting’ a Catholic church. Against whom? Hordes of Buddhist monks? Siberian shamans? Who are they mocking here? And where is this country going? Since when do the arsonists protect against fires?”

Menard, the former head of the respected ‘Reporters Without Borders’ organization, later pointed out that the proposal was simply a “foretaste of the Lebanisation of France” and that the Muslim group making the offer is led by “two activists known for their fundamentalist and anti-Israeli stances.” Menard stated the Muslim group made the same offer at the city’s 13th-century cathedral, adding he will inform police about this ‘Muslim guard’.

To advance its diplomatic opening to Iran, the administration spied on both law-abiding US citizens and on US lawmakers.

It is far from clear why senior Obama administration officials told The Wall Street Journal that under President Barack Obama, the National Security Agency has been aggressively spying not only on Israeli officials but on US citizens and lawmakers who communicate with Israeli officials. Perhaps they were trying to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu look like a fool.

After all, the article concludes that the NSA intercepts of these communications “revealed one surprise.”

“Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes” in Congress to scuttle Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Ha ha. What dummies.

If their goal was simply to show that the White House has more leverage over Democratic lawmakers than the Israeli government does, then the article overshot the mark.

Beyond expressing the administration’s contempt for Netanyahu, the Journal’s article showed that Netanyahu isn’t the only one the administration sneers at.

It sneers at the American public and at members of Congress as well. And in so doing, it sneers at and deliberately breaks US law and tramples the US Constitution.

Under US law, American intelligence gathering agencies, including the NSA, are only permitted to spy on US citizens in order to protect US national security.

Under the US Constitution, the administration is arguably prohibited from spying on US lawmakers.

“Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent advocate of nonviolent dissent brought a largely nonviolent reaction among Shiites in the Middle East,” the Christian Science Monitor reported.

The CSM was describing the violent attack on Saudi embassies after the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr who had called for an Iranian invasion of Saudi Arabia, war on America and the destruction of Israel. The magazine described the following rocket attack on the Saudi embassy in Baghdad and the burning of the Saudi embassy in Tehran as a “relatively peaceful reaction” that affirmed “Islam as a religion of peace.” If this was a “relatively peaceful reaction”, what would a violent reaction look like?

The wildly dishonest claim that the Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr was “nonviolent” pervaded the media.

New York Magazine claimed that Nimr al-Nimr had “preached nonviolence”. CSM insisted that Nimr was “the voice for peaceful protests by Saudi Arabia’s minority Shiites”. In reality he was considered a fringe figure even by Saudi Shiites, many of whom were wary of being associated with him.

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr’s brand of nonviolence was surprisingly violent.

The Saudis only took the Iranian agent into custody after a car chase and a shootout. The arrest itself came after Nimr al-Nimr had called for the deaths of every member of the ruling dynasties of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and suggested Iranian intervention in Saudi Arabia.

Nimr al-Nimr had also endorsed Iranian attacks on America and Israel. He sought to build a “Righteous Opposition Front” to fight the Saudis. He cried, “We do not fear death, we long for martyrdom.”

That is a very strange definition of nonviolence.

‘Without a doubt, the unlawfully shed blood of this innocent martyr will have a rapid effect and the divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians.”

That was how Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, responded to Saudi Arabia’s execution Saturday of a Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr. Since then, Iranian protesters have — with their government’s permission — attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and Saudi Arabia has cut diplomatic relations. Further escalation is likely.

Nimr al-Nimr wasn’t just any Saudi cleric. As I explained last year, he was a transnational representative of Shiite populism against Saudi oppression. But where the cleric was a powerful political activist in life, his execution makes him a martyr: a divine embodiment of Shiite theology and politics. To Shiite observers, Nimr al-Nimr’s execution echoes that of the ultimate Shiite martyr, Husayn ibn-Ali, at the seventh-century Battle of Karbala.

But Iran isn’t alone in threatening retaliation. Former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki — who is engaged in a never-ending power struggle in Baghdad — warned that the execution would bring down the Saudi royal family. This political reaction reflects the deep scale of Shiite populist anger and illuminates the risk of unrestrained escalation. Other actors, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, are reacting with fury as well.