Frontpage Interview’s guests today are Jalil Roshandel and Sharon Chadha.
Jalil Roshandel was recently named Associate Professor and Director of Security Studies at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He has previously held teaching or research positions at Duke University, UCLA, Stanford, the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute in Denmark, the Middle East Technical University in Turkey and he was the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Tehran in Iran.
Sharon Chadha has written for various publications, including RUSI Journal, the publication of the Royal United Services Institute, the world’s oldest security and defense think tank in London; RFE/RL Newsline, a publication produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Frontpagemag.com and the Middle East Quarterly.
They are the co-authors of the new book, Jihad and International Security.
FP: Jalil Roshandel and Sharon Chadha, welcome to Frontpage Magazine.
Roshandel: Thank you Jamie.
Chadha: A pleasure to be here.
FP: What inspired the both of you to write this book?
Roshandel: We wrote Jihad and International Security in part because I, as a professor, was unable to find any kind of primer on the global jihad movement that I thought was suitable for the undergraduate or general interest reader. Most of the available material seemed to be geared to the specialist, the partisan, or the already serious student of history. I thought we should write a book that would give the reader a general sense of how this transnational movement has evolved, what its ideological underpinnings are, how jihad is being fought and waged, who is fighting it, how these people are being recruited, what we knew about who is funding or sponsoring it, and what the various dilemmas are that nations who have to confront this face. Fortunately this task wasn’t as formidable as it could have been since I could draw upon Sharon’s skill as a writer and - and I mean this only in the most flattering way - her obsessive curiosity.
Chadha: Thanks, Jalil, for your, er, compliment. What interested me about this project was that it was a chance to address what I perceived to be a general lack of understanding on the part of my fellow Americans. Even five years after the 9/11 attacks, I’m still amazed by how few people can tell me the name of the person who masterminded the attacks - or even his national origin. Rarer still are those that know that this person, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is also the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the lead bomber in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.
And yet, thanks to people like Michael Moore, by now most Americans can tell you what President Bush was doing at the exact instant the second plane hit the World Trade Center. I still encounter college-educated people who have strong opinions on the war in Iraq but cannot define the word jihad.
While I appreciate that most people are mortified by the criminal actions of a few American soldiers, I can’t fathom how little most people know about our declared enemy even five years into this War on Terror. My personal favorite is the person who can quote by heart Richard Clarke’s internal memos to Condoleezza Rice, and yet has no such familiarity with the published statements of the jihadists. In short, though we come from different perspectives, we both saw a need for this type of book.
Roshandel: Indeed, I found that even among academics, the prevailing view of jihad was generally quite fanciful. Thus I felt there was a real need to examine the reality of jihad - how it was really being waged in the real world, and not just what the intellectual community wished it to be. And so this book was born.
FP: What do you make of jihadists using Islamic texts to wage terror?
Chadha: I think it’s a serious problem – particularly for Muslims. By using the Islamic sources to justify their actions, the jihadists have managed to raise legitimate questions as to whether or not Islam is a force for good in the world. We should point out that in our study of Islam, which was only confined to how the jihadists use the religion, we noticed that the jihadists seem to spend an awful lot of their time addressing their Muslim critics in their published statements.
After the 9/11 attacks, for example, al Qaeda was widely criticized in the Islamic world for attacking innocent civilians. Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, was also criticized for killing Muslims and for beheading hostages - and by the al Qaeda leadership no less.
So even among the jihadists, it would seem that there are many interpretations of Islam. To me this suggests that Islam may not be the problem, but only the jihadists’ interpretation of Islam. But perhaps Jalil can better answer this question, as he is a Muslim.
Roshandel: I would have to say that I believe that Islam is not the problem. I would also add that most Muslims that I know feel that they too are in the cross hairs of these jihadists. When we defeat these jihadists, I believe that the vast majority of Muslims will celebrate such a victory. But I also think that many Muslims live in mortal fear of the jihadists and that any silence on these matters comes from this bone-chilling fear. This is not a feeling that can be discounted as it makes speaking out virtually impossible in many parts of the world. So that is the challenge: to remove the threat from the extremists and allow Muslims themselves to salvage their religion -- as it is my sense that the vast majority want to live in peace along with the rest of the world.
FP: Well the contrary perspective of this view is provided by Robert Spencer in his current New York Times Bestseller The Truth About Muhammad and in the new documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know. But a debate on this issue belongs in another time and place.
Chadha: Actually, Jamie, I believe that the questions that people like Robert Spencer raise are not only fair but demand serious answers. And I hope that Muslims will address these legitimate concerns.
Roshandel: Indeed, I hope that Muslims take any negative criticism of Islam as an opportunity to really think about their faith and in particular how it has been used against them in so many instances – not just by the jihadists but also by rulers who use Islam to keep themselves in power, who hide behind the religion and cast any criticism of them as a criticism of Islam. This is how many of the rulers in the Islamic world effectively silence any genuine opposition. I hope that this current crisis of faith will in the end work to the benefit of Muslims. But this will only happen if such discussions take place and in the public domain.
FP: Fair enough. Let’s move on to Iraq.
What do you make of where we stand there?
Roshandel: Things are still messy at this point, which is not surprising for a people who lived under a dictatorship for so long. But I believe that ultimately, Iraqis will be able to settle their differences and be able to live in peace under some kind of democratic rule, though perhaps not in the time frame most Americans would like. I am optimistic about Iraq’s future if only because I don’t see any kind of ethnic or religious impediment to their being able to live in freedom or hold a government accountable. So while I am optimistic for the vast majority of Iraqis at this point, we should note what may well indicate a future problem for the region.
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Nawaf Obaid of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project in a study released in 2005 found that Algerians comprised the largest contingent (20 percent) of the foreign jihadists in Iraq. Conspicuously absent from their findings were significant numbers of Afghans, Bosnians, Chechnyans, Palestinians, or Kashmiris – namely, veterans of other large-scale jihads on the home front. Marc Sagemen, a former CI A psychologist, who conducted an earlier study of the global jihadists also reached a similar conclusion - that Algerians were the only global jihadists who had experienced their own large-scale jihad at home. Now why would this be so?
Chadha: We think that this may be related to the way the Algerians conducted themselves during their jihad at home. Specifically, the legacy they created for themselves with their massive slaughters of ordinary Muslims who they deemed to be insufficiently helpful in their jihad against the regime. Would the villagers who are still grieving the loss of the loved ones whose throats the jihadists slit be perhaps resistant to the idea of rehabilitating them now that major hostilities have died down? That doesn’t seem implausible to us.
Roshandel: Are the Iraqi people going to forgive these jihadists for all the hell they have unleashed? For all the mosque and market bombings? For the killing of so many innocent civilians? Will they really have any kind of real future in Iraq? Or will the Iraqi jihad veterans find themselves in the same situation as the Algerians? Apparently rejected by their own people.
If this is the case, where will the Iraqis go who have participated in these war crimes? To the neighboring countries who may have sponsored them? And do these sponsors believe that if this happens, the jihadists who they employed in Iraq will just lay down their arms and live in peace? Or will they be like the Algerians, doomed to fight perpetual jihad? Perhaps these Iraqis and their sponsors should study this Algerian exception.
FP: One can find in this phenomenon a strong reason for the U.S. to stay the course, for it suggests that the jihadists are far more unpopular than those trying to help the process of democratization.
So why do you think that the hard Left has reached out in solidarity to the jihadists in this terror war?
Chadha: I think the hard Left sees radical Islam as Carlos the Jackal does, as the only transnational force strong enough at this point to confront what they see as the evils of capitalism and imperialism. Carlos the Jackal, you will recall, was the Venezuelan Marxist-Leninist who admitted to killing some 1,500 people on behalf of the Palestinian liberation movement. While serving a life sentence in French prison, he converted to Islam and now advocates that his fellow travelers, even if they are atheists, should join hands with the jihadists in order to bring about their revolutionary goals.
Roshandel: I think today’s leftists may be making the same mistake that the Iranian leftists made when they rallied behind the Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1970s. They saw in the Ayatollah a figure who would help them unite the Iranian masses against the Shah. They thought they could make a temporary bargain with him to advance their cause. Never did it occur to them that some twenty-seven years later they would find themselves still living under a theocracy – that is, if the new regime allowed them to go on living. Many Iranian leftists, it bears remembering, were executed by the Islamic regime - and for their leftist politics, of course.
FP: So what advice would you have for the U.S. administration in the terror war in general and in Iraq in particular?
Roshandel: Being Iranian, I would naturally like to see Iran brought into the picture as a constructive force here. But frankly, I’m not sure how this can be done given the current leadership in Tehran. I wish I could say that I miss the so-called reform era, the era of President Khatami that ended in 2005 but nothing really happened during that time except perhaps that press freedom deteriorated even further. The Islamic regime has had a constitutional mandate to export Islamic revolution for over a quarter-century now. And the rhetoric coming from Iran doesn’t seem to be moderating now, does it?
What to do about the role Tehran played during what happened in Lebanon this summer? How to get comfort on Iran’s nuclear intentions? How to get Iran to be helpful in Iraq? These are serious questions that merit long and probably painful discussions. I have to say that deep in my heart I believe – or perhaps hope is the better word - that engagement with Iran is the answer. But I recognize that in order for this to work there have to be two parties who want such a rapprochement to happen.
Chadha: Perhaps Iran’s increasing belligerency will work to finally force the other regimes in the region to play their part in solving the region’s problems - and sooner rather than later. Everyone, in my view, needs to get past thinking that it is the United States that must resolve this situation. Because I don’t think that’s a realistic view any more. So my advice to the Bush administration would be to try and get the other countries in the region to see that they have to assume some responsibility here.
The U.S. and its coalition partners did the heavy lifting by getting rid of a genuine menace and helping Iraqis install elected government. Now the other players in the region should do their part to help stabilize Iraq, and the other trouble spots in the region. On the domestic front, they should begin delivering reasonable levels of human rights protections, accountability, and transparency in governance. They need to be part of the solution as opposed to just sitting back and focusing on our failings as if somehow that’s a position they can take comfort in.
FP: Jalil Roshandel and Sharon Chadha, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview. It was a pleasure to speak with you.
Roshandel: Thank you for having us. It’s such a pleasure – a relief, really - to be able to discuss these things in a public forum.
Chadha: Yes, thank you, Jamie – and thanks to all of you at Frontpage, for all the work you do to stimulate public debate on these and other important issues.
