I laid Sacred Rage aside for a time, partly to read the New Political Religions book (which turned out to be disappointing, of which more later), and partly because the author's commitment to explaining Islamism as basically just Shiism was getting on my nerves. As I mentioned in the previous entry on this, the book was written in the mid-80s when the to-do was all about Iran and Hizbollah. And the thing is, Wright's a journalist, so she's just reporting what the experts are telling her. She does provide all the quotes and everything, including extensive quotes from Islamist sources and eyewitnesses in Lebanon and so forth, so it will be well worth reading at some point. But I got to the part where someone tells her that Shiism somehow wasn't causing a violent revolutionary movement for the previous 1400 years because it was busy "simmering," and that was just about enough for a little while.
So, on to a rare title (from 1994) focusing on the often overlooked Jama'at-I Islami of Pakistan that I found remaindered at Powell's a few weeks ago. The introduction states: "The study of Islamic revivalism has until now concentrated primarily on Iran and the Arab world and has, as a result, been somewhat restricted in its outlook. A comprehensive theoretical approach will need to consider revivalist activity elsewhere." Oh, you don't say. The book is entitled The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, of course. And actually the JI will be so indeed if they ever manage to assassinate Musharraf. Fun follows when, etc. (It's kind of hair-raising to imagine what it would have been like if 9/11 had had to be called off for some reason and never happened, and Jama'at sympathizers managing a coup in nuclear Pakistan became the thing that finally and suddenly got our attention instead. Apart from the whole riveting Islamists with nukes thing, everyone would be obsessing about these guys and totally ignoring al Qaeda, which would nonetheless still be very much al Qaeda.)
But 9/11 did happen, and Jama'at must soldier on in obscurity yet a little while longer. Remember Muslim Brotherhood-obsessed ex-CIA man Robert Baer? His colleague, "Anonymous," praises him effusively in the preface to his own book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, and then never mentions the MB again in the entire book. That's because in his book (published in 2004), Islamism is al Qaeda. Jama'at is also mentioned about a dozen times, in a detailed summary of all Islamist terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11, although the name is spelled 3or 4 different ways (apparently English transliteration of Arabic and Urdu is not very standardized), and it is sometimes only referred to as "a Pakistani group." (Although in fairness there are several Pakistani Islamist groups that could be the group being referenced; I haven't gone through and looked up the specific instances. JI is just the most active on average). I don't know if the different spellings have been left in the text because "Anonymous" doesn't actually know that they all refer to the same entity, or if he presumes that his readers don't, and doesn't want them to get all distracted from his thesis by noticing anybody other than Osama bin Laden.
Well, it's all beginning to look a bit like carelessness, if you ask me.
