THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 213, October 5, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DUELING FATWAS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
A GLIMPSE OF WARFARE IN THE INTERNET AGE: RECIPROCAL DEATH SENTENCES RAGING BETWEEN YEMEN & THE
U.S.A. -- THE BOUNDARIES OF WARFARE ARE BEING STRETCHED IN NOVEL, STRANGE, & FRIGHTENING WAYS.
FULL STORY:
Reciprocal death sentences raging between Yemen and the United States offer a glimpse of warfare in the Internet Age.
The topic opens with South Park, an iconoclastic adult cartoon program on Comedy Central, which in April, 2010,
mocked the prohibition on depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. An obscure website, RevolutionMuslim.com
(whose proprietor was subsequently arrested on terrorism-related charges), responded by threatening the show's writers,
Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Panicked, Comedy Central censored further mention of Muhammad.
Enter Molly Norris, a cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, who showed solidarity with Parker and Stone by posting a
facetious "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day" appeal on Facebook, hoping that a host of caricaturists would
"counter Comedy Central's message about feeling afraid." To Norris' surprise, dismay and confusion, others took her
idea seriously, prompting Facebook campaigns for and against her "day" and the Pakistani government
temporarily to block Facebook. Norris disowned her initiative, apologized for it, and even befriended the local
Council on American-Islamic Relations representative, to little avail.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist leader in Yemen, responded in July by issuing a death sentence on Norris, inaccurately but
pungently called a fatwa. On consulting with the police, Norris in September not only went underground, but "went
ghost" and disappeared entirely, including her name and her profession.
Awlaki's "fatwa" on Norris, however, is only half the story. The other half concerns a U.S. government "fatwa" on
Awlaki.
Awlaki was born in New Mexico in 1971 to well-connected Muslim Yemeni parents. His father, Nasser, studied and
worked in the United States until 1978, when the family returned to Yemen. Anwar went to the United States as a
student in 1991 and spent the next decade in various degree programs (engineering, education), only to emerge as an
Al-Qa'ida-style Islamist figure, comparable to Osama bin Laden both in his ideological fanaticism and his operational
involvement in terrorism. Arrested in connection with the 9/11 attacks, he was inexplicably released and allowed to
move to a remote region of Yemen, beyond government control, where he currently lives.
U.S. law enforcement connects Awlaki to several violent attacks on Americans, including the Ft. Hood shootings, the
attempted bombing of a Northwest flight approaching Detroit, and the Times Square bomber. Awlaki's terrorist record
earned him a unique distinction: in April, for the first time in the nearly 250-year history of the United States, the
government placed him on a "kill list," making him the only U.S. citizen to be condemned to death by his own
government without benefit of a legal process. Both the military and the intelligence services are targeting him; as one
unnamed official puts it, "he's in everybody's sights."
In response, his father initiated in August, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for
Constitutional Rights, a lawsuit against the U.S. government that challenges the targeting of Awlaki as illegal.
This extraordinary trading of fatwas prompts several observations.
First, Norris and all Americans currently live under the "Rushdie Rules," which punish whoever disrespects Islam,
Muhammad, or the Koran. Make fun of Muhammad and you're on your own. Local and national politicians had
nothing to say about her plight. Journalists, usually keen to protect one of their own, went silent. No organization
sprung up to raise money for her protection.
Second, the Internet stands at the heart of this entire episode. It turned Norris' jokey idea into an international incident,
brought news of it to Awlaki in remote Yemen, and allowed him to direct his American operatives. A mere twenty years
ago, none of this could have taken place.
Third, the Internet and Islamism have together privatized war. At will, an American living in Yemen can disrupt the life
of an American in Washington State. The U.S. government has declared war on a citizen.
Fourth, Awlaki is a plain terrorist, sowing death and disruption, whereas the U.S. government's "kill list" is defensive.
One is evil, the other is moral.
Fifth, why the inconsistency, whereby the U.S. government permits itself "targeted killings," but denies this tool to
Israel?
Finally, Awlaki stands at an unprecedented crossroads of death declarations, with his targeting Norris, even as the U.S.
government targets him. This is as startling in an Islamic context, as it is in an American one. The boundaries of warfare
are being stretched in novel, strange, and frightening ways.
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Originally Published in the Washington Times, October 5, 2010
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, October 5, 2010
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/8942/dueling-fatwas
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- Political & Psychological Warfare
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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