Brass tacks

To: Retort
A Yorkshire anarcho-communist takes on Islam and bin Laden.


"Beyond the Undifferentiated Mass:
Diversity in Islam for Absolute Beginners"
Paul Bowman

Roughly 1 in 5 of the world's population is muslim - that's over a billion 
people. Yet for all the talk about a global society with the 
telecommunication revolution bringing knowledge to the masses, what most 
westerners from christian backgrounds know about Islam can be written on 
the back of a small postage stamp. So here then is a crash course.

Fundamentalism?
Islam, like christianity is an expansionist religion rather than the 
traditionalist beliefs of a closed community. Conscious of itself as a new 
initiative, it seeks to preach to and convert pagan and unbeliever. 
However, whereas christianity found itself growing within a pre-existing 
state system (the Roman empire) and made concessions to a separate 
political power, Islam, starting as a means of filling a political vacuum, 
was the creative force of a new state.

As such the tension (and eventual division) between church and state that 
marks christianity does not occur within Islam. Hence the "fundamentalist" 
label is misleading. In the modern western tradition the tension between 
church and state has come to be expressed as a belief in a "novus ordo 
seclorum" where life is separated into two spheres - a secular public 
sphere of politics and a private sphere within which the individual can 
divide his or her time to the worship of god or mammon as they see fit.
The term "fundamentalism" originated in the US from a political movement of 
anti-progressive christians who wished to abolish the secular independance 
of the state from christian beliefs. It is misleading to apply the label of 
"fundamentalist" in this sense, to muslims as it is a formal part of their 
belief that no such division between matters social, political and 
religious should exist. That doesn't mean that there aren't differences as 
to how this formal unity between religion and politics should be put into 
practice, but the label fundamentalist only obscures the issue.

Religious or Cultural conservatism?
An important feature of the spread of Islam is the way it has accomodated 
itself to the pre-existing cultures it has come into contact with. Where 
pre-existing cultural practices are not explicitly in opposition to 
codified islamic practices, they have been adopted into the newly islamised 
culture. With the passage of time many of these pre-islamic cultural 
practices have retrospectively been labelled as sanctioned by islam by 
conservative forces in society.

Consequently it is often the case that what is claimed to be islamic 
practice is more often the pre-existing cultural and social traditions of a 
given ethnic society. Many of the declaredly islamic traditions of the 
Pashtuns of Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, for example, have much more 
to do with Pashtun cultural norms than islamic law.

A Unified Ideology?
Like any ideology that emphasises unity as a primary aim, Islam has in 
practice suffered any number of splits. There is no room for a full history 
in a piece like this but we must realise that what exists today is the 
result of long dialectic histories of orthodoxy, heresy, struggle, 
repression and reform.

Sunni
The Sunni branch of Islam is the dominant one to which 90% of muslims 
belong. Although the split between the two branches that would become Sunni 
and Shia was originally a matter of who should succeed Muhammed, they later 
evolved more substantial political and philosophical differences. As 
Muhammed failed to produce a son by any of his many marriages, the muslim 
community was left with no clear successor after his death.

The main body decided that the leadership (the Caliphate) should pass to 
whoever from within Muhammed's clan the muslim establishment best felt 
represented continuity. The Shias, in contrast, supported the claim of Ali, 
the husband of the prophet's favourite daughter. They insisted that the 
legitimacy of the Caliphate came only from god, not the religious 
establishment.

In time as those who had known the prophet and remembered his sayings and 
acts began to die off, this oral tradition of guidance supplementary to the 
Koran (the sunnah) was written down into several books, six of which became 
recognised as authoritative sources of guidance - the Hadith. For Sunnism 
then, society's laws must be determined through reference to the Koran and 
the Sunnah. For Shi'ites, however, the true path can only be found through 
the divinely appointed intermediaries - the true Caliphs or Imams.

Kharawaj - too radical by far
As well as Sunni and Shia there was originally a third force, since 
eradicated, whose negative influence has profoundly shaped Sunni political 
philosophy. These were the Kharawaji, radicals who held that any 
sufficiently worthy muslim could hold the position of Imam, whether a 
descendant of Muhammed or a member of his Quraysh tribe or not. They also 
held that people were responsible for the good or evil of their acts 
personally, and that anyone who did evil was no longer a muslim, regardless 
of what they or anybody else decreed. The effects of this political 
philosophy was to challenge all authority and encourage all, especially the 
poor and dispossessed, to see the struggle against injustice as being 
divinely sanctioned.

Since the time of the Kharawaj, the history of the rise and fall of various 
dynasties of Caliphs and different empires has lead the Sunni tradition to 
view orthodoxy as something that needs to be tempered with a pragmatism of 
tolerating differences between muslims and not being over hasty in 
determining who, of the people who identify as muslims, is or is not a 
muslim. This catholicity along with an emphasis on the established majority 
opinion as the source of religious authority has helped to mitigate some of 
the destabilising effects of radicalism while allowing economic prosperity 
to be parallelled by a flowering of cultural, scientific and philosophical 
diversity and enquiry. However, even within the Sunni mainstream, 
revivalist and puritan sects have arisen both in the past and in more 
modern times.

Sufi - It's not my Jihad if I can't dance to it
As well as the various sects of Sunnis and Shias as Islam developed, some 
came to be more interested in the personal spiritual aspect of religion. 
The struggle to achieve some kind of direct personal union with the divine. 
This tradition shows the influence of contacts with eastern traditions of 
the search for enlightenment whether Hindu, Buddhist or Daoist. The Sufi 
traditions, often seen as borderline heretical by the centres of 
authoritarian Islamic power, have historically prospered in remote and 
mountainous regions. Especially towards the east where similar mystical 
traditions have been strong.

The introspective struggle of the Sufis is, according to them, a form of 
Jihad (devout struggle), one against the false, earthly self - the Nafs. 
These strivings have produced some of Islam's most loved poetry, but is 
also most famously associated with ascetic disciplines such as physical 
exertions including music and wild dancing to induce visions and spiritual 
breakthroughs - something which has always made them unpopular with those 
who believe that music, dancing and celebration in general is the work of 
the devil.

Shia or Shi'ite
The original underdogs, the Shi'ites today make up only 10% of the muslim 
world, they are a minority in nearly all muslim countries, except for Iran, 
where they are the state religion. They have at times been linked to a 
desire by non-arab muslims (e.g. Persians) to reject the tendencies for 
arab domination over islam that are sometimes expressed in the established 
sunni tradition with its power centres in arab lands. The Shia originated 
from a split amongst Muhammed's followers after his death with no male 
heir. The "traditionalist" Sunnis decided to appoint a leader (the Caliph). 
The "legitimist" Shias thought that Ali, the husband of Muhammed's favorite 
daughter, was the legitimate heir and Muhammed's privileged role, not only 
as earthly leader but spiritual too (the Imamate) was passed down this 
line. They are divided into:
Ithna 'Ashariyah (Twelvers) or Imamis
Who believe that there were twelve legitimate Imams after Muhammed and 
son-in-law Ali. They believe the twelth Imam disappeared in 873 and is 
thought to be alive and hiding and will not reappear until judgement day. 
The Imamis became the dominant Shi'ite form in the east, particularly in 
Persia where it became the official state religion in the 16th century. The 
Iranian revolution of 1979 was taken over by the Shia clergy and their 
followers who believed in the Imamate of Khomeini. The fact that Shi'ism is 
an oppressed minority in virtually all other states in the muslim world 
helped to isolate the Iranian Islamic Republic and limit their ability to 
export their 'revolution'.

Isma'ilite
After the sixth Imam there was a dispute over whether the legitimate 
successor was his elder son Isma'il or his younger son Musa al-Kazim. The 
majority supporting the young son went on to be the mainstream leading to 
the Twelvers. Of those who stuck with Isma'il they split into those who 
decided he was the last Imam (the Sab'iyah or Seveners) and those who 
believed the Imamate carried on in that line. Of these latter, various 
splits later left groups which still follow people today they consider to 
be the legitimate successor to Muhammed - the Aga Khan is one such (via, 
obscurely, Hassan e Sabah of Assasin fame). Other schisms led groups out of 
Islam proper, such as the Druze (of Lebanon fame) and the Baha'i.

We now move on to the two modern sects who have most influence on the story 
we are today interested in Afghanistan and related networks throughout the 
world.

Wahhabi - the only good innovator is a dead one
The peninsula of Arabia has since before Muhammed's time held two 
contrasting societies together. On the Red Sea coast trade routes from the 
south from Africa carrying gold, ivory, slaves and valuable crops meet 
routes from the east carrying spices and silks. Rich merchant settlements 
in Mecca and Medina have profited from the riches brought by these trade 
routes, travellers and pilgrims to holy relics such as the mysterious black 
rock of the Kaaba in Mecca. In the arabian interior harsh deserts and 
barren uplands have dictated a meagre semi-nomadic herding existence to the 
tribal peoples that inhabit the region.

A nomadic herding economy, with its main animal wealth being so easily 
carried off, lends itself to continual strife between tribes based around 
livestock rustling and struggles over access to grazing land and limited 
watering holes. This existence has formed a population where impoverishment 
sits together with a high degree of mobility and martial experience. 
Throughout history those people who have been able to unite the warring 
tribes against an external enemy have been able to mobilise a highly 
effective military force for conquest of the outside world. This was 
Muhammed's achievement, in getting the merchants of the trading cities of 
Mecca and Medina to pay taxes (zakat) to buy off the raiding tribes and 
lead them in a campaign of conquest accross the middle east and North 
Africa. Although a great and wealthy empire eventually resulted, by the 
beginning of the 20th century conditions in the Arabian interior remained 
pretty much as impoverished and undevelopped as they had in Muhammed's time.

On January 15 1902 a tribesman from the interior in his twenties, 
accompanied by 15 hand-picked men, scaled the walls of the city of Riyadh 
in the dead of night. Taking the garrison of the regional governor of the 
Ottoman empire completely by surprise, this daring band of Bedouin 
warriors, overwhelmed the garrison and their leader, who the world would 
come to know simply as Ibn Saud, was proclaimed ruler by the townsfolk. Ibn 
Saud went on to unite the tribal leaders of the interior and lead them in 
the conquest of the rich cities and holy centres of Medina and Mecca. He 
did so not only in the name of the House of Saud, but in the name of a new 
puritan brand of Sunni Islam - Wahhabism. Wahhabism is named after the 
religious reformer Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab who teamed up with the 
founder of the house of Saud for a plan of conquest back in the 18th century.

This double act had managed to cause the ruling Ottoman empire serious 
grief beforehand and had been almost wiped out several times previously. 
Now with Ibn Saud the old plan would finally be put into action again. By 
1911 Saud was putting into plan an ambitious scheme to forge the disparate 
and eternally warring Bedouin tribes of the interior into a united and 
ideologically committed force.

With the tribesmen having no common national identity beyond their tribe, 
the zeal of Wahhabism would act as the unifying glue that held the new 
state together in place of nationalism. In 1912 he founded the first Ikhwan 
(Brethren) colony with Bedouin from all tribes in new model settlements 
where they would undergo education and indoctrination by Wahhabi clerics 
along with military training. In time this would forge an unstoppable new 
military force that would sweep accross Arabia and conquer the holy cities. 
By 1921 this process was complete. However Saud now faced the usual problem 
of those who mobilise new radical forces to conquer political power - how 
to demobilise them before they started to destroy the very bases of 
political power itself.

The problems had already become apparent when the Ikhwan had taken Mecca. 
On hearing some unfortunate who had decided a welcoming blast on a trumpet 
should great the conquerors, the Wahhabis, for whom music is anti-islamic, 
rioted and mass destruction and slaughter ensued. Convinced that any 
innovation since Muhammed's time was anathema, they tore down minarets 
(developed, like much mosque architecture since Muhammed's time) and, 
believing that any worship of relics, saints, or tombs of holy men was an 
affront to the doctrine that only god can be worshipped, they went round 
smashing up many such pilgrimmage sites, much to the distress of those who 
made their living of the pilgrims that came to visit them. The wahhabi 
religious police (mutawa) led a reign of terror in the cities, crashing 
into people's homes and, if so much as sniffing the scent of tobacco, would 
thrash the unfortunates senseless. More importantly for Ibn Saud, the 
Ikhwan wanted to continue military expansion, attacking the areas to the 
north occupied by the British and French since the end of WW1 and the 
collapse of the Ottoman empire. Saud wanted to avoid war with the British, 
both to keep what he had gained and also because he was rapidly running out 
of money for the payments to the tribal chiefs he needed to keep them in 
his grand coalition. The possibility of selling an exploration concession 
to western explorers interested in looking for oil in Saudi Arabia was too 
interesting to pass up.

By 1927 the Ikhwan were denouncing Ibn Saud for selling out the cause and 
eventually rose in rebellion against him. The ensuing struggle was bloody, 
one ultra-zealous band nearly managing to destroy the tomb of the Prophet 
himself, but the radicals were eventually put down. Their leaders fled to 
Kuwait, only to be handed back over to Saud by the eager to please British. 
Thus ended the first phase of the Wahhabi's jihad.

Although the Ikhwan's military campaign was halted, the Wahhabis continued 
to export their religious revolution. The most successful first stop was 
across the Red Sea in Egypt, where they supported the formation of Hassan 
al Banna's Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun). The Brotherhood was 
formed to combat Egypt's secular constitution of 1923. After the defeat of 
Egypt and other Arabs trying to stop the creation of Israel in 1948, they 
rose against the government and were part of the revolution that brought 
the secular pan-arab nationalist Nasser to power. Nasser's programme was 
for an anti-imperialist struggle against the western powers (he 
nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956) combined with 'socialist' industrial 
development and modernisation.

This latter part was heatedly opposed by the Brotherhood and the ensuing 
failed assasination attempt brought about their suppression by Nasser and 
the undying opposition between militant Islamism and pan-arab nationalism 
ever since. Nasser's "socialist" rhetoric and friendliness towards the 
Soviet union, panicked the western powers, particularly the US who were 
holding the ring for western imperialism since the British bowed out of the 
region after the 1956 Suez fiasco. The US involvement with the militant 
Islamists as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Middle East dates 
from this period.

Deobandis - back to basics
The Taleban, although a modern puritan Sunni sect, are not Wahhabis. They 
are part of a separate school that has its origin in the 19th century in 
India under British Imperial rule. After the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, which the 
British blamed primarily on muslims, muslims found themselves excluded from 
all institutions, including schools, of imperial society. Being excluded 
from official schooling meant exclusion from any role in the civil service 
which ran the country. In other ways too the mutiny forced a rethink on 
Indian muslim society.

In many ways the rising had been the last attempt to go back to the 
pre-colonial social order of India under the Mughal empire. The traditional 
leaders and ruling class had demonstrated incompetence or even refused to 
back the soldier-led mutiny at all. If Indian society was to escape from 
British clutches it would have to find a new way forward, rather than 
simply looking back. Amongst muslims two main directions emerged. The 
first, intent on adopting some of the western methods, created new 
secularised schools where a similar education to the civil service schools 
could be provided to young muslims, so they would eventually be able to 
re-enter the administration of the country. The second approach was to 
create a revivalist islamic education that would return the power of their 
faith to young muslims and make them strong to reject the corrupting force 
of westernisation in preparation for throwing out the British oppressor. 
This second school took its name from the Indian town of Deoband where its 
leading religious juridical council (ulemma) was based.

Like the Wahhabis, the Deobandi's faith is a severe puritan one which bans 
music, dancing, worship of saints or holy relics and sees an external, 
physical Jihad (Jihad bis Saif) as a central pillar of the faith. They took 
part in the struggle for independance from the British and for the 
partition of Indian to create Pakistan. The Deobandis are one of the main 
Sunni communities in Pakistan and have been constantly in struggle both 
against the Shi'ite minority in Pakistan and the other main Sunni community 
the Brelvis.

These latter are more influenced by Sufi traditions that have long 
persisted in the harsh mountains of the Hindu Kush that dominate Kashmir 
and Afghanistan as well as in the mountainous Caucasus regions including 
Chechnya. Although the Sufi muslims of Chechnya and Afghanistan have 
certainly shown that the "inner" jihad for enlightenment (Jihad bin Nafs) 
is no contradiction to the external jihad of the AK47, in Pakistan the 
"Jihadis" that have fought the Indians in Kashmir and the Russians in 
Afghanistan, are almost exclusively drawn from the Deobandis. It was their 
religious schools (madrassas) set up on the frontier that took in the 
orphans of the Afghan war, that no one else would feed, and turned them 
into Taliban soldiers. Since the end of the war in 1989 hostility between 
Deobandis and Brelvis and both against Shi'ites, has resulted in a rising 
number of bomb and riot attacks on rival mosques and assasinations in 
Pakistan.

The Afghan War 1979 - 1989
The current situation is above all the result of the Soviet invasion of 
Afghanistan and the subsequent US proxy war fought there. This was fought 
both through Afghan factions and an international network of ideologically 
committed islamists ready to fight the Soviet forces in the name of Islam. 
The US State Department, wary of Iran's Shi'ite Islamic revolution, were 
more than happy to find their Saudi allies were able to mobilise, through 
Wahhabi networks, militant islamists who were as hostile to Iran as they 
were to the Russians. This would allow them, to fund the creation of a 
fighting force that would be strong enough to take on the Russians, yet 
were not in any danger of spreading the Iranian model, especially given the 
seeming loyalty many of the young radicals showed to the royal families of 
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

In this way the US and Britain helped build up a veritable International 
Brigade of Islamist fighters, funded by the proceeds of Gulf oil, sheltered 
and trained by the Pakistani intelligence services of General Zia ul Haq's 
regime and Western special forces. It was this network that brought 
together Wahhabis and Deobandis to create an international Jihadi movement 
of which Al Qaeda and its brother organisations like Egyptian Jihad (formed 
from the Muslim Brotherhood mentioned above). So what motivates this network?

The Al Qa'eda Programme
Al Qa'eda's activities may be illegal, immoral and indefensible but they 
are neither motiveless nor mindless. They have a programme and this is it:

The demands are:
1. Troops Out Now - that is, US troops out of Saudi Arabia
2. End Israeli oppression of Palestinians
3. End sanctions against Iraq
4. End western support for corrupt regimes in muslim/arab countries - 
control of oil wealth
(5. Anti-Communism and Statism)


The fifth demand is not stated but it is the foundation of the campaign 
against the Russians in Afghanistan that gave the movement its birth.

The defence of private property is part of the sayings of the Prophet and 
the subsequent Caliphs. Anti-communism is a matter of doctrine for orthodox 
islamists. Secondly, the creation of a state to enforce islamic law - 
Sharia - is the defining demand of modern islamism and has, as we saw at 
the very beginning, always been central to islam as a whole. It follows 
then, that despite the seeming radicalism of the demand to stop western 
powers propping up corrupt despotic regimes in the muslim world (or more 
particularly, the arab world, because for all its islamic internationalism 
this particular network remains very much in the tradition of arab-centric 
sunni thought), this network has no agenda for the destruction of 
capitalism and the extraction of profit. Indeed of all the demands number 4 
is most suspect. Osama bin Laden was friendly with his family's traditional 
patrons, the Saudi royal family, right up until they invited the US forces 
into Saudi during the Gulf war. These demands are framed as a religious 
struggle to "free the holy places of islam", pretty much the same slogan 
that Ibn Saud used to rally the original Wahhabi Ikhwan fighters for the 
conquest of Arabia. However, much as bin Laden would no doubt like to refer 
back to such historical precedents, we must not let the surface 
similarities blind us to the significant differences. The original Ikhwan, 
coming from a world which had, not only religiously but technologically 
remained almost unchanged since the time of Muhammed, were fighting against 
modern technology and industry. Ibn Saud's allowing telephones into the 
country was one of the grievances for their revolt.

Bin Laden, by contrast has his own satellite phones, a modern education in 
civil engineering and no aversion to setting up modern factories, 
construction businesses or making millions on the international financial 
markets. Of course these modern means are all justified by the ends of 
jihad. But whichever way you look at it, bin Laden is a member of the local 
industrialist bourgeoisie chafeing at the bit to build up commodity 
production in the Middle East, not knock it down.

For all the pre-modern language of his movement, the content is for more 
technological and industrial development, not less. The military airbases 
and command posts that the US troops moved into in 1990 were built by bin 
Laden for the Saudis to use to build an independant military force against 
the threat of Saddam's Iraq (for much as the current Al Qa'eda demands 
include the dropping of sanctions against Iraq, we must remember that bin 
Laden was warning against Hussain's aggressive intentions from the late 80s 
onwards). Bin Laden wishes to see an independantly powerful islamic Middle 
East, and if that requires technological and economic development then he 
is all for it. Beyond Al Qa'eda and Osama bin Laden's clothing of a 
industrialising developmental agenda in pre-modern clothing, we need to 
look at the social recruiting base and background of the footsoldiers of 
today's militant movements. In the time of Ibn Saud they were desert nomads 
from an essentially pre-capitalist existence. No more.

Material Foundations
Most of the islamic societies across North Africa and the Middle East were 
subjected to European colonialism or Ottoman rule at some stage from the 
19th to the 20th centuries. Socially these regions, although containing 
some of histories great urban centres of civilisation, remained primarily 
subsistence economies for the majority of the inhabitants, whether settled 
farmers or nomadic herders. While colonial rule started the process of 
forcing the population off the land, this social transformation really got 
into gear under the rule of the post-colonial regimes after WW1 and, even 
more so after WW2. The new post colonial regimes modelled themselves on 
their erstwhile colonizers, introducing a secular state and institutions, 
and often promoting western dress and culture. But many of the trappings of 
the new states, whether transport infrastructure, motor cars, telephones, 
etc. had to be bought from overseas. In the gulf states this could all be 
paid for by oil wealth without any need for the development of local 
industry or production. In the oil-less states the balance of payments 
pressure produced a need to go into commodity production in return, in 
order to pay for the imported materiel. But starting from a level of 
industrial development unable to compete with the west, the only industry 
ready for conversion to commodity production was agriculture. Combined with 
strong tariff barriers protecting western food crop production, the 
"balance of payments" cash crop has played the major role in throwing the 
peasantry off the land.

This mass of newly landless peasants, drifting towards the shanty towns 
surrounding the urban centres, looking for wage work, is the sleeping giant 
of politics in the Islamic world. Any rising by this new proletariat would 
be an earthquake strong enough to shake the foundations of all the 
established powers, mostly despotic as they are, in the region. It is 
amongst this multitude that the islamists have worked hard to establish a 
base.

They have done so by setting up a religious based welfare system. Most of 
the post colonial states are too concerned about paying their debts to 
western banks and the IMF to spend any of their meagre tax revenues on 
social welfare. Further the standard IMF "structural adjustment" terms 
prohibit any such social spending, even were any of the regimes farsighted 
enough to consider them. Islam has a redistributive "social democratic" 
taxation system built into its foundations as zakat, one of the five 
obligations of the religion. Islamists are able to lean on the 
benificiaries of trade with the west, or oil rights, for money. In return 
they promise to keep a lid on popular revolt, particularly any socialistic 
or class war elements.

The current regimes, mostly being founded by people who themselves dallied 
with socialistic or national liberation politics in their struggle to 
depose colonial power, are all to aware of the destabilising potential of 
such politics, not too mention the interests of the local capitalists. So 
they are happy for the islamists to hold ideological sway over the urban 
proletariat, so long as their anger is diverted to handy external 
scapegoats, such as Israel or America.

This welfare system though is dependant upon attending the mosque and being 
integrated into the whole islamist system of ideological formation. The 
system provides not only material aid, but also meeting places, places to 
hear news from co-religionists from afar and abroad. In a sense the 
islamist mission amongst the urban poor corresponds to the institutions 
that workers across the world have built for themselves (friendly 
societies, meeting houses, public speaking and international 
correspondance, etc.), except that in this instance these institutions and 
spaces are not the autonomous products of workers activity. Rather they are 
funded by the bosses and the rich and controlled by a power that mediates 
between the two, usually antagonist classes and the state. This state of 
affairs is not due to some innate failing of political consciousness 
amongst the urban proletariat, rather it is a product of the economic 
enviroment of mass unemployment and regime of accumulation that has not yet 
reached the stage of accumulating through relative surplus value, but 
remains founded on the absolute exploitation of those in work. The mass of 
the urban proletariat in many islamic countries does not have enough spare 
cash to set up their own autonomous spaces and aid projects, compared to 
the resources the islamists can access, especially for comparitively 
expensive services like modern health care.

But the creation of autonomous spaces in the islamic world is what is 
desparately needed by local workers and radicals. It is in this area that 
international solidarity can play the most important role in the future. 
Solidarity can help build up the spaces for the proletariat of North Africa 
and the Middle East to find a libertory path between the devil of rotten 
despotic regimes and the deep blue sea of militant islamic capitalism.