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Weekly UpdatesAt-taqiyah, which in the Muslim world means to deceive or lie and many other things, is being used extensively in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. Even the US is using its own version of it among the rival forces in Iraq and elsewhere in the Greater Middle East (GME) - a huge energy-rich part of the world stretching from Russia to Pakistan and from the Central Asian part of China to Morocco in the southern Mediterranean and to the Horn of Africa, i.e., including most of the Muslim world.
Taqiyah is the key to power in the Muslim world. This is part of a phrase uttered by the Prophet Muhammad to justify making pacts with the Jews and Christians of Arabia in the early period of a religion he established: Islam. Taqiyah has since become a formula allowing Muslims to deceive or make temporary truce arrangements, etc. After 'Ali ibn Abi-Taleb, his cousin and son-in-law, rebelled against the Sunni caliph and established Shi'ism and thus became the first of the Ja'fari (Twelver) Shi'ites' 12th holiest and partly "divine" imams, his followers used taqiyah to escape persecution at the hands of very oppressive Sunni caliphs.
Taqiyah was used in the 15th century AD by a conqueror originating from a Bysantine aristocracy - the Comneni of Italian origin (from Comnenus) - who took the Prophet Muhammad's mantle, took Constantinople, proclaimed himself caliph - as Muhammad-II The Conqueror - and built-up the Ottoman Empire further, using Anatolia's Islamic Osmanli Tribe (founded by Osman - in Arabic 'Uthman; in the West Ottoman). This caliphate fell as the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War-I.
Then a modern republic of Turkey was set up by Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who became known as Ataturk (the father of the Turks) and imposed a Western-influenced secular ideology known as Kemalism and the concept of a nation-state called etatism - as opposed to the Islamic concept of "the Umma" (God's nation under a theocracy or caliphate). But originally Kemal had tried but failed to proclaim himself a caliph.
Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire. That was part of a post-World War-I arrangement dividing a part of the GME among the British and French Empires under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Syria and Lebanon fell to a French mandate; the rest - including Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine - was under a British mandate. The Russian Empire took Central Asia and the Caucasus and part of Persia.
Most Ottoman sultans were blue-eyed and fair-skinned, which exposed their origin - one of the reasons al-Azhar of Egypt (the highest seat of Sunni religious authority) refused to proclaim Kemal a caliph. Kemal's family originated from Salonika which were "dolma Jews" - i.e., Jews disguised as Sunni Muslim. He used taqiyah in his effort to become caliph which was to control the Muslim world in the first phase and the rest of the world later on (see news26EgyptGME-Dec22-31-08).
Taqiyah was used extensively in the Turkoman/Persian era, during which a Ja'fari Shi'ite empire under the Safawid dynasty established an empire in the 16th century AD. That controlled a major part of the GME and was at war with the Ottoman Empire, the latter expanding to Europe and North Africa. The 1979 Khomeini revolution in Iran led to a Ja'fari theocracy with the aim of establishing a modern version of the Turkoman/Persian Empire. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's Christmas letter to the British in late 2008 was full of taqiyahs, saying had Jesus Christ been present now he would have prevented all the wars, implying that the Christian-controlled West was stupid. Now the Iranian theocracy is in alliance with the Neo-Salafi movement, an offshoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (MB) of Egypt, and Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), with both wanting to revive the Sunni Caliphate. All these elements use taqiyah in pursuing their objectives.
The motive for the alliance of the Ja'fari theocracy and the Neo-Salifis and their allies is to bring about the collapse of all the current Sunni regimes. But the moment this is realised, the alliance will be followed by an endless cycle of enmity - a Sunni-Shi'ite war until one of the two sides controls the world.
To those wondering how these two extreme poles of rival Islamic ideologies have an alliance only for them to end up becoming enemies (once again in Islam's 14-century history) there is one answer: the taqiyah. It is a Machiavellian/Nazi-like gamble both have agreed to play, with one taqiyah to out-smart the other for the end-game. Their critics say both are using God as the arbiter for the end-game.
Now Pakistan is the most dangerous part of the GME. The US and a Saudi-Turkish partnership are trying to avert war between India and Pakistan - both being nuclear armed. Indian military experts have been in Israel observing the latter's offensive against Hamas - a Gaza-based offshoot of Egypt's MB - which began on Dec. 27. Cairo says Hamas is planning a Sunni emirate to be part of the MB's planned caliphate for Egypt. This war is being studied carefully by the militaries of the NATO member-states, including Turkey's which is a main arm of the Kemalist movement. Whatever happens to Gaza and Hamas will decide the future events in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and the rest of the GME (see news1S.AsiaTerrorWarJan1-09).
Iran leads an axis of anti-US/anti-Israel forces in the GME which include the 'Alawite/Ba'thist regime of Syria. Against this, the US and its Western allies back a Sunni/Arab alliance which has cash-rich states led by Saudi Arabia and including fellow members of the Arab Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). Rulers of the six GCC states met in Muscat for their 29th summit on Dec. 29-30 (see news24GCC-Dec8-08) and discussed Iran's nuclear and regional ambitions. The US/NATO, Saudi Arabia and Turkey want to bring into this China, Russia and other members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) in a global anti-terror coalition. Among its objectives is a de-nuclearisation of Iran's military (see rim6IraqObamaDec15-08).
It is the US under the Republican administration of George W. Bush which has formed the Sunni Arab alliance of the six GCC states, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq (6+2+1) as the core of a broader coalition. The latter includes Lebanon (March 14 Forces), the Fatah/PLO-led Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud 'Abbas, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. US experts say the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, to take office from Bush on Jan. 20, will follow the same course, though the new president will lean more on America's soft-power resources in dealing with Iran over its ambitions.
At the extreme, should Tehran reject a new US-led diplomacy, Obama could use a mix of America's soft- and hard-power resources by enforcing a full blockade on Iran's crude oil exports and imports of badly needed motor fuels. Now and through most of 2009 and 2010, world markets will be awash with surplus oil enabling the US to take such a course, if necessary (see omt1AbuD-GlblProspJan1-09). But in the event of such a move, Hizbullah of Lebanon might launch a proxy war on Israel.
Hizbullah is a branch of Iran's theocracy in Lebanon, being part of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC, a huge conglomerate of military forces and organisations spanning most sectors in Iran including commercial enterprises, controls the theocracy since the June 24, 2005 election of Ahmadi-Nejad as president. The IRGC is controlled by the supremacist wing of the theocracy, whose patrons are such intolerant figures as Ayatullah Muhammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi.
Described by critics as a combination of Machiavelli and Hitler, Mesbah-Yazdi and like-minded ayatullahs consider their theocracy universal to rule the world and subjugate the Sunnis and force them to follow its Twelver order. The supremacists believe the world in 2009/10 will reach a turning point - with the US to be in terminal decline - and that they will push their order against the UNSC.
In parallel, the Wahhabi religious movement - which is Sunni/Salafi having been moderated since 9/11 - is leading a campaign for Shari'a-compliant finance in a subtle move to undermine confidence in the viability of the Ja'fari order. Iran calls this campaign a "Western conspiracy" (see down25IslmcBankngDec15-08). For its part, Libya is spear-heading a transformation of national oil companies (NOCs) to international oil companies (IOCs) through a process of cross-acquisitions (see omt25LibyaIOCsDec15-08). These two trends are seen as favouring efforts to curb Tehran's regional ambitions, with the theocracy having caused Iran's petroleum sector to face serious structural problems which the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) is unable to fix without extensive IOC assistance.
Efforts towards all these objectives will be tested in 2009 in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and other countries were elections are to be held during the year. But the test in Lebanon will be the most important as the elections there are planned to be a crucial contest between the representatives of the Iran-led axis (the March 8 Forces) and those of the order recognised by the UNSC (the March 14 Forces).
It is assumed in Lebanon that, if the Hizbullah-led March 8 Forces become convinced they will lose in the elections planned to be held in late May or early June, the Iran-headed axis may have them cancelled through violence. In that case the March 14 Forces could face civil war - yet another in Lebanon - which might be more devastating than that of 1975-90 (see news16Leb09Polls-SyrIranOct13-08).
The March 14 Forces are determined that the elections be held as planned. But Syria's 'Alawite/Ba'thist regime has set up an electoral unit in Damascus and warned it will blockade Lebanon if the March 8 Forces fail to win the polls and control the country. Yet even Russia wants the elections to be held and is awaiting a global entente with Washington. The test next to Lebanon's will be Iran's presidential elections due on June 12. The supremacists want Ahmadi-Nejad to win a second term; but they may be countered by the conservative wing of the theocracy which could field a more suitable candidate to deal with the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the GME - as well as with Tehran's nuclear programme.
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