by Greg Callaghan*

The Australian: In Egypt, Islamist parties now hold about 80 per cent of the seats in parliament. Given the majority of demonstrators in Tahrir Square were liberal secularists, has Egypt’s Arab Spring been hijacked?

Daniel Pipes: No, because the liberals of Tahrir Square did not force Mubarak from power. The military took advantage of their mass demonstrations to dispatch a president it had had enough of, in large part because of his intent on handing power to his son, Gamal.

Is the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood bad news for Egypt’s Coptic Christians and secularists?

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By Barry Rubin

Iraq is in a mess. Violence continues. Factionalism leads to endless bickering. Corruption is at high levels. Christians live in fear or flee altogether. Islamism is constantly creeping forward. Yet I would suggest that with all these shortcomings the “Iraqi model” is the best that can be expected for the Middle East.

What’s the worst-case scenario? Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza, Sudan, or the permanent civil war situation in Syria, Yemen, and probably Libya.

It isn’t that democracy is theoretically impossible or incompatible in principle with Islam or Arab society. The problem is that it just isn’t going to happen at this particular point in history. What you or I or small groups of moderate democratic Arabs, or naïve Western journalists want isn’t relevant here.

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In civilized societies, most people regard youth as a time for learning, playing, exploration, creativity, music, fine arts, and independent thinking. Not so in much of the Muslim World. One only need to look at Iran, an Islamic Republic which specializes in repressing its young people. Most recently, we find a sickening wave of intolerance against young, creative kids in Iraq — an intolerance driven by the prevailing belief system based in Islamic law (”Sharia”). This intolerance is being expressed in the most brutal forms of ultra-violence — supported no less by Iraq’s interior ministry:

Young people who identify themselves as so-called Emos are being brutally killed at an alarming rate in Iraq, where militias have distributed hit lists of victims and security forces say they are unable to stop crimes against the subculture that is widely perceived in Iraq as being gay.

Officials and human rights groups estimated as many as 58 Iraqis who are either gay or believed to be gay have been killed in the last six weeks alone — forecasting what experts fear is a return to the rampant hate crimes against homosexuals in 2009. This year, eyewitnesses and human rights groups say some of the victims have been bludgeoned to death by militiamen smashing in their skulls with heavy cement blocks. …

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By Barry Rubin

The new Middle East strategic battle is heating up and this is only the start. It has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with two more serious lines of battle: Arabs versus Persians and Sunni versus Shia Muslims.

The Arab-Israeli or Israel-Palestinian dispute is increasingly unimportant, despite the hatred of increasingly powerful Islamist forces for Israel. The real struggle is over who will control each Muslim majority country and who is going to lead the Middle East. Both issues have almost nothing to do with Israel. At the same time, Israel has virtually no role to play in these struggles, except to ensure that Hamas doesn’t take over the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Since the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, one of the most frequently recurring talking points has been speculation as to whether there will be a sectarian civil war in the country. Throughout this winter, the media at large and numerous analysts have been quick to note incidents of mass casualty attacks, pointing to an upsurge in fatalities, particularly in the month of January.

In addition, there has been a tendency to tie the increase in violence to the U.S. withdrawal and the subsequent political crisis that entailed the issuing of an arrest warrant against Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni vice-president of Iraq, on allegations of involvement in terrorism, as well as a boycott of the Iraqi parliament by the main opposition bloc al-Iraqiya, which has now decided to end its boycott.

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by Oren Kessler*

One of the principal beneficiaries of the Arab uprisings has been Al Jazeera television. Viewers are praising the English and Arabic channels’ comprehensive coverage of the revolts while the Obama administration continues to court the network as part of its signature foreign policy goal of improving ties with the Arab and Muslim worlds.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

The Nigerian church bombings, in which the Islamic group Boko Haram ["Western Education Is Forbidden"] killed over 40 people celebrating Christmas mass, is just the most obvious example of anti-Christian sentiment in the Muslim world. Elsewhere in this region, Christmas time for Christians is a time of increased threats, harassment, and fear, which is not surprising, considering Muslim clerics maintain that “saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone.” A few examples:

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by Daniel Pipes*

The formal end of the U.S. war in Iraq on Dec. 15 enhanced neighboring Iran as a major, unpredictable factor in the U.S. presidential election of 2012.

First a look back: Iran’s mullahs already has had one opportunity to affect American politics, in 1980. Their seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran for 444 days haunted President Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign and — thanks to such developments as yellow ribbons, a “Rose Garden” strategy, a failed rescue operation, and ABC’s America Held Hostage program — contributed to his defeat. Ayatollah Khomeini rebuffed Carter’s hopes for an “October surprise” release of the hostages and twisted the knife one final time by freeing them exactly as Ronald Reagan took the presidential oath.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

According to a report by the French daily Le Figaro, Bashar al-Assad is apparently aiming to destabilize Turkey, which has been supporting the predominantly Sunni Islamist leadership of opposition groups to the Syrian regime, by seeking to grant greater autonomy to the Kurdish population that primarily lives in the north and north-east of Syria.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

As the U.S. troop presence in Iraq continues to diminish, it is worth examining what sort of political system has been left behind. Is Iraq really a democracy as many officials in the Bush administration hoped it would be? Sadly, the answer to this question cannot be in the affirmative.

It is of course true that in March 2010, Iraq conducted elections recognized as free and fair by the UN. However, as Osama al-Nujayfi, the Sunni speaker for the Iraqi parliament, astutely observed, democracy is more than just about holding elections. In many of the other essential aspects of a truly democratic society, Iraq’s status is far from satisfactory.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Since Nouri al-Maliki first became prime minister of Iraq in April 2006, a recurring talking point about his time in office has been that his days are numbered. Indeed, in a paper I wrote for the Middle East Review of International Affairs quarterly journal in the summer of this year, I cast severe doubt on whether the Iraqi premier would remain in power until the expiry of his second term in 2014.

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September 11: A Decade Later

by Dov S. Zakheim*

Everyday American images of the war on terror — the legacy of 9/11: Government buildings surrounded by ugly concrete blocks. Pennsylvania Avenue, the street that the White House — once known as the “people’s house” — faces, no longer open to traffic. ID cards required everywhere. Airline passengers waiting patiently in line to take off their shoes, belts, jewelry — and to have their bags searched and perhaps their bodies as well. Fans searched as they enter football stadiums. People on the watch for suspicious characters — including those who might take photos of bridges and tunnels. People fearing to retrieve lost bags in case they are booby trapped. Increased government surveillance of individual Americans, including their telephone calls overseas.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Amid widespread protests during this so-called “Arab Spring,” one place that has received relatively little media coverage is Iraqi Kurdistan. How does the response of the Kurdish authorities to discontent there, a region long held up by foreign observers as a freer political exception in Iraq, compare with that of other governments in the Middle East?

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by Sterling Jensen*

The Middle East political storm of early 2011 has had an interesting impact on Iraq. Though the government was confronted with almost daily demonstrations, which led to a number of high profile resignations and the use of force to suppress political dissent, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki felt sufficiently confident to boast that “Iraq has become the most stable country in the region.”[1] While this may seem a bold claim given the recent past, Maliki is not alone in showing confidence in Iraq’s prospects. The Sadrists, Kurds, and leaders of the primarily Sunni Iraqiya bloc have been equally upbeat about the country’s prospects while many Iraqi insiders believe that their battle-torn country will not only weather the instability but will also serve as a model for democracy.

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by Daniel Pipes*

“Do the Democrats have a double-standard for Obama?” My reply to this roundtable question follows below. For replies by Bernard A. Weisberger, Michael Lind, Kenneth W. Mack, Rick Shenkman, and Gil Troy, please go to http://hnn.us/

While it is certainly true that Democrats cut Obama slack on policies where they would slam Bush or McCain, as a fair-minded Republican I note that the reverse holds true as well: Republicans slam Obama and go easy on Bush. I will establish both points in my areas of expertise, the Middle East and Islam.

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