Excellent reporting and writing. Your tweets often hint at ideas that could crystallize into full-length essays. Your Substack articles in turn seem like they could be expanded into full-length books. So when is this book coming out?
Ha, thanks for the kind words and funny you should say that as effectively these are tweets that I felt deserved a more considered explanation. Perhaps one day I will be able to organize them sufficiently to justify a book.
It was delicious I can taste the eggplant even now.
The new jihadism is strictly national and not transnational. So I suspect MBS will be fine with it as along as the Syrians and Turks agree not to promote a similar movement in his own country and I believe that they will.
That is a great answer! I have always believed that MbS is not the secularizing prince that Westerners and Arab liberals have long desired, but rather a pragmatic political agent seeking to secure his rule and a smooth transition to a post-oil economy!
Liberalizing and globalizing are tactics, they are not indicators of him being an enlightenment monarch like Frederick the Great! And, of course, Wahhabism is still alive and well in Saudi Arabia, albeit without its worst excesses!
Good article however disagree here: “The same goes for Sunni militant groups like Hamas, who, were they to ever prevail militarily over Israel, should be expected, like al-Sharaa, to declare the revolution over, before sending delegations to the World Bank to drum up foreign direct investment in Palestine, just as their Syrian fellow travelers are doing today.”
Al-Sharaa has tried to clamp down on sectarian violence since victory. Hamas is much more radical. Their September 2021 “Promised Victory” conference envisioned the mass ethnic cleansing and enslavement of the Jewish population of Israel
I think he leaves what that would mean—whether it be to survive the Gaza War intact politically or to liberate haram al sharif— in the abstract to make the larger point that their ambition is nationalistic and finite in scope.
You would also have to account for the fact that the lightning HtS offensive that toppled Assad was helped significantly by the fact that Hezbollah had been mauled in Lebanon by Israeli military forces.
While it’s true that US lost the war on terror, I am not sure about al Qaeda. Both, HTS and Taliban are not al Qaeda and not Wahabis. Salafi-Jihadis like AQ on the other hand are either tamed Wahabis or full fledged ones. Wahabis will be fighting everyone and everything for ever. AQ also is a psychotic offspring of jihadism just like ISIS. Maybe US and AQ lost somehow and paved the way for something else.
HTS is definitely a lot like the original Al Qaeda Central which Setmariam helped found. The really insane Al Qaeda branch was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which gradually splintered off into ISIS.
Thanks for the explanation. I am probably more familiar with AQ from the Iraqi context. And Hegghammer's book on Azzam somehow gave me the impression that AQ was the more extreme offshoot from the beginning.
Really sharp analysis and memorable anecdotes - has abu Qatada commented on the fall of Assad and the new Syria at all?
One thing I was not convinced by is the idea that Iran or Hezbollah are leftist. I think the overlaps in rhetoric are superficial because the US and Israel are shared enemies, but beyond that there is not much in common: both are hierarchical, ultra-conservative and fight the secular Iranian and Lebanese left. Hezbollah, regardless of representing a historically marginalised community, also barely has an economic philosophy or class analysis and viciously defends the sectarian status quo.
Good piece, but declaring the era of Jihad to be won and over, when staunch anti jihadist/ anti political Islam regimes like Sisi's Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Algeria still exist seem a too much jumping ahead.
Come back again and make the same claims if Sisi and his Junta fall in Egypt to an Islamist or Jihadist. Such an event would be the real geopolitical explosion, not Syria which was already hanging by a thread and was basically like a comatose man on life support waiting for someone to shut the machine before Sharaa.
Excellent reporting and writing. Your tweets often hint at ideas that could crystallize into full-length essays. Your Substack articles in turn seem like they could be expanded into full-length books. So when is this book coming out?
Ha, thanks for the kind words and funny you should say that as effectively these are tweets that I felt deserved a more considered explanation. Perhaps one day I will be able to organize them sufficiently to justify a book.
Yeah still waiting….😉
Excellent piece. May Allah grant Al-Sharaa the desire of his heart: Running a boring bureaucracy.
😂
"Taliban Militants Fed Up With Office Culture, Ready to Quiet Quit"
https://time.com/6263906/taliban-afghanistan-office-work-quiet-quit/
Waking up to attend to Excel spreadsheets is tedious especially after experiencing the thrill of a warrior lifestyle.
This was an excellent and refreshing article.
1) Lucky you, eating Maqluba in Jordan!
2) So, now that Sunni Islamists rule Turkey and Syria, how do you read MbS's reaction to this?
It was delicious I can taste the eggplant even now.
The new jihadism is strictly national and not transnational. So I suspect MBS will be fine with it as along as the Syrians and Turks agree not to promote a similar movement in his own country and I believe that they will.
That is a great answer! I have always believed that MbS is not the secularizing prince that Westerners and Arab liberals have long desired, but rather a pragmatic political agent seeking to secure his rule and a smooth transition to a post-oil economy!
Liberalizing and globalizing are tactics, they are not indicators of him being an enlightenment monarch like Frederick the Great! And, of course, Wahhabism is still alive and well in Saudi Arabia, albeit without its worst excesses!
Brilliant writing btw! Really enjoyed this, taught me a lot
Good article however disagree here: “The same goes for Sunni militant groups like Hamas, who, were they to ever prevail militarily over Israel, should be expected, like al-Sharaa, to declare the revolution over, before sending delegations to the World Bank to drum up foreign direct investment in Palestine, just as their Syrian fellow travelers are doing today.”
Al-Sharaa has tried to clamp down on sectarian violence since victory. Hamas is much more radical. Their September 2021 “Promised Victory” conference envisioned the mass ethnic cleansing and enslavement of the Jewish population of Israel
“prevail militarily over Israel”
I think he leaves what that would mean—whether it be to survive the Gaza War intact politically or to liberate haram al sharif— in the abstract to make the larger point that their ambition is nationalistic and finite in scope.
You would also have to account for the fact that the lightning HtS offensive that toppled Assad was helped significantly by the fact that Hezbollah had been mauled in Lebanon by Israeli military forces.
While it’s true that US lost the war on terror, I am not sure about al Qaeda. Both, HTS and Taliban are not al Qaeda and not Wahabis. Salafi-Jihadis like AQ on the other hand are either tamed Wahabis or full fledged ones. Wahabis will be fighting everyone and everything for ever. AQ also is a psychotic offspring of jihadism just like ISIS. Maybe US and AQ lost somehow and paved the way for something else.
HTS is definitely a lot like the original Al Qaeda Central which Setmariam helped found. The really insane Al Qaeda branch was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which gradually splintered off into ISIS.
Thanks for the explanation. I am probably more familiar with AQ from the Iraqi context. And Hegghammer's book on Azzam somehow gave me the impression that AQ was the more extreme offshoot from the beginning.
You're not wrong in a sense, AQ was a step up from Azzam. But the lines are quite permeable.
“…it’s true that US lost the war on terror”
I remember Gore Vidal’s 2002 quip about the futility of declaring a war on a noun.
Yes, no matter how coarse or fine you want to draw the lines between different jihadists. Since it is a "war on terror" in general, it is always lost.
Really sharp analysis and memorable anecdotes - has abu Qatada commented on the fall of Assad and the new Syria at all?
One thing I was not convinced by is the idea that Iran or Hezbollah are leftist. I think the overlaps in rhetoric are superficial because the US and Israel are shared enemies, but beyond that there is not much in common: both are hierarchical, ultra-conservative and fight the secular Iranian and Lebanese left. Hezbollah, regardless of representing a historically marginalised community, also barely has an economic philosophy or class analysis and viciously defends the sectarian status quo.
Good piece, but declaring the era of Jihad to be won and over, when staunch anti jihadist/ anti political Islam regimes like Sisi's Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Algeria still exist seem a too much jumping ahead.
Come back again and make the same claims if Sisi and his Junta fall in Egypt to an Islamist or Jihadist. Such an event would be the real geopolitical explosion, not Syria which was already hanging by a thread and was basically like a comatose man on life support waiting for someone to shut the machine before Sharaa.
Damascus is a big deal in a civilization sense but I actually agree about Egypt.