[lit-ideas] Koranic duels
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 07:56:36 EST
_http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2326&u=/csm/oduelingclerics&printer
=1_
(http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2326&u=/csm/oduelingclerics&printer=1)
Koranic duels ease terror
Sun Feb 6,10:20 AM ET
In Yemen, a theological contest cools Al Qaeda hotbed.
By James Brandon, Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
SANAA, YEMEN - When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other
Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological
contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble
would end in disaster.
Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa
prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the
youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his
troubled homeland.
"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we
will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed
in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."
The prisoners eagerly agreed.
Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a
relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this
experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues"
with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous
country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there
have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that
Yemen
would become terror's capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from
beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have
been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left
Yemen to fight anywhere else."
"Yemen's strategy has been unconventional certainly, but it has achieved
results that we could never have hoped for," says one European diplomat, who
did
not want to be named. "Yemen has gone from being a potential enemy to
becoming an indispensable ally in the war on terror."
To be sure, the prisoner-release program is not solely responsible for the
absence of attacks in Yemen. The government has undertaken a range of measures
to combat terrorism from closing down extreme madrassahs, the Islamic
schools sometimes accused of breeding hate, to deporting foreign militants.
Eager to spread the news of his success, Hitar welcomes foreigners into his
home, fussing over them and pouring endless cups of tea. But beyond the
otherwise nondescript house, a sense of menace lurks. Two military jeeps are
parked outside, and soldiers peer through the gathering dark at passing cars.
The
evening wind sweeps through the unpaved streets, lifting clouds of dust and
whipping up men's jackets to expose belts hung with daggers, pistols, and
mobile telephones.
Seated amid stacks of Korans and religious texts, Hitar explains that his
system is simple. He invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on
innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages
commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and
fight
only in self-defense.
For example, he quotes: "Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul, or for
corruption done in the land - it is as if he had slain all mankind entirely.
And, whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." He uses
the
passage to bolster his argument against bombing Western targets in Yemen -
attacks he says defy the Koran. And, he says, the Koran says under no
circumstances should women and children be killed.
If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released
and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs.
Hitar's belief that hardened militants trained by Osama bin Laden (news -
web sites) in Afghanistan could change their stripes was initially dismissed by
US diplomats in Sanaa as dangerously naive, but the methods of the scholarly
cleric have little in common with the other methods of fighting extremism.
Instead of lecturing or threatening the battle-hardened militants, he listens
to them.
"An important part of the dialogue is mutual respect," says Hitar. "Along
with acknowledging freedom of expression, intellect and opinion, you must
listen and show interest in what the other party is saying."
Only after winning the militants' trust does Hitar gradually begin to
correct their beliefs. He says that most militants are ordinary people who
have
been led astray. Just as they were taught Al Qaeda's doctrines, he says, so
too
can they be taught more- moderate ideas. "If you study terrorism in the
world, you will see that it has an intellectual theory behind it," says Hitar.
"And any kind of intellectual idea can be defeated by intellect."
The program's success surprised even Hitar. For years Yemen was synonymous
with violent Islamic extremism. The ancestral homeland of Mr. bin Laden, it
provided two-thirds of recruits for his Afghan camps, and was notorious for
kidnappings of foreigners and the bombing of the American warship USS Cole
(news
- web sites) in 2000 that killed 17 sailors. Resisting US pressure, Yemen
declined to meet violence with violence.
"It's only logical to tackle these people through their brains and heart,"
says Faris Sanabani, a former adviser to President Abdullah Saleh and
editor-in-chief of the Yemen Observer, a weekly English-language newspaper. "If
you
beat these people up they become more stubborn. If you hit them, they will
enjoy the pain and find something good in it - it is a part of their ideology.
Instead, what we must do is erase what they have been taught and explain to
them that terrorism will only harm Yemenis' jobs and prospects. Once they
understand this they become fighters for freedom and democracy, and fighters
for
the true Islam," he says.
Some freed militants were so transformed that they led the army to hidden
weapons caches and offered the Yemeni security services advice on tackling
Islamic militancy. A spectacular success came in 2002 when Abu Ali al Harithi,
Al
Qaeda's top commander in Yemen, was assassinated by a US air-strike
following a tip-off from one of Hitar's reformed militants.
Yet despite the apparent success in Yemen, some US diplomats have criticized
it for apparently letting Islamic militants off the hook with little
guarantee that they won't revert to their old ways once released from prison.
Yemen, however, argues that holding and punishing all militants would create
only further discontent, pointing out that the actual perpetrators of
attacks have all been prosecuted, with the bombers of the USS Cole and the
French
oil tanker, the SS Limburg. All received death sentences.
"Yemeni goals are long-term political aims whereas the American agenda
focuses on short-term prosecution of military or law enforcement objectives,"
wrote Charles Schmitz, a specialist in Yemeni affairs, in 2004 report for the
Jamestown Foundation, an influential US think tank.
"These goals are not necessarily contradictory, with each government
recognizing that compromises and accommodations must be made, but their
ambiguities
create tense moments."
Some members of the Yemeni government also hanker for a more iron-fisted
approach, and Yemen remains on high alert for further attacks. Fighter planes
regularly swoop low over the ancient mud-brick city of Sanaa to send a clear
message to any would-be militants.
An additional cause of friction with the US is that while Yemen successfully
discourages attacks within its borders on the grounds that tourism and trade
will suffer, it has done little to tackle anti-Western sentiment or the
corruption, poverty, and lack of opportunity that fuels Islamic militancy.
"Yemen still faces serious challenges, but despite the odd hiccup, we
sometimes have to admit that Yemenis know Yemen best," says the European
diplomat.
"And if their system works, who are we to complain?"
As the relative success of Yemen's unusual approach becomes apparent, Hitar
has been invited to speak to antiterrorism specialists at London's New
Scotland Yard, as well as to French and German police, hoping to defuse
growing
militancy among Muslim immigrants.
US diplomats have also approached the cleric to see if his methods can be
applied in Iraq, says Hitar.
"Before the dialogues began, there was only one way to fight terrorism, and
that was through force," he says. "Now there is another way: dialogue."
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Koranic duels
