Conflict in the Caucasus
Fitna and the challenge to moderate Muslims
The suing of Ahmed Mansour
The straw that may break Egypt's back
Kosova Radical Islamists In New Political Offensive
Published in Arabic in November 12, 2016
Translated by: Ahmed Fathy
1- We have received this question via email from an Iranian person: (… Peace be with you, Dr. Mansour… You are part of the American nation, and you know that Mr. Trump has become the President-Elect of the USA… What is your advice or message that you would like to address to Mr. Trump? …Thank you…).
2- We have answered this question and published the answer in our section of fatwas; and this answer is as follows: (No one in the USA is above the law. Any American president heads the executive authorities, not as a leader of the nation, but as a public servant of the nation, and any American president is not a tyrant; he is being watched and checked all the time by the congress and the media. We recall how media caused President Nixon to tender his resignation, frightened President Clinton, and curbed some decisions and actions of President Obama. We, Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, have sent pieces of advice to President Bush Jr., begging him not to invade Iraq. We have sent pieces of advice to President Obama, begging him not to submit to the Saudi influence and the Saudi lobby. Both presidents have ignored us. The USA has lost a great deal in its invasion of Iraq; in fact the USA has lost a lot in Iraq, Syria, and Libya because of the American alliance with the Saudi royal family members. Mr. Trump is a businessman and a Reality-TV star; he does not need to flatter Wall Street and billionaires. It is expected from him that he will never submit to the embezzlement of interest groups and lobbies that usually finance campaigns of elections and expects in return full compliance of presidents. Mr. Trump financed his own campaign using his own money, as he has told everyone. Mr. Trump never assumed any post in the government before; this means that comes from outside the political elite members who live in ivory towers away from ordinary American citizens. Those elite members live off crumbs of the American capitalism and submit to it. on the contrary, Mr. Trump is in direct contact with people like the ones employed in his companies within different posts. We do believe that Mr. Trump represented the vast majority of conservative white Christian Americans (or WASPs) who fear demographic change (caused by the numbers of minorities like African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Arabs, as well as many refugees) and who have economic fears about American factories and companies fleeing to Asian countries, where there are fewer taxes, wages, and salaries, to produce products (e.g., from cars to fabrics and electronics) with little costs and then to import it to the USA to gain millions of $, whereas American industry would deteriorate and factories would go bankrupt inside American soil because of higher taxes and salaries. Hence, fears of middle-class average white persons led them to respond to the discourse addressed to them by Mr. Trump that struck a right chord with them; that is why he won this elections. Mrs. Hillary Clinton lost this elections as she represents the corrupt policies of Mr. Obama in the Middle East and the rest of the world; let us be reminded of the fact that Mr. Obama policies drove some countries to insult him on purpose when he was received in them, as was the case with the KSA and China. Our message to Mr. Trump is as follows. We advise Mr. Trump never to send any American troops outside American borders; the USA must stop playing the role of the world's policeman. The USA must focus on the intellectual war of ideas against religious terrorism, especially using Quranism, instead of huge expenditure on military adventures outside the USA. The USA must spend its money instead on human development inside America; especially to help impoverished citizens who live within despicable conditions in order to lead a better life, while educating their children and protecting them from addiction. The USA must spend money on investing American resources from ice of Alaska to deserts of Nevada and Arizona and from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Finally, we sincerely hope that Mr. Trump will have a heart open for every American citizen, not just for the white Anglo-Saxons.).
3- Yet, this answer does not appeal to many of our fellow Quranists; many of them felt surprised and said that we ''… defend Mr. Trump who is a fanatic against Muslims and other American minorities, women, refugees, etc., and there are demonstrations against him amidst fear of Muslims being deported, and during his term, sentiments of Islamophobia might increase, and even the EU anticipates the worst, and many fear that a strong wave of fanaticism would emerge, led by ultra-conservative right-wing in the USA and EU. Many fear that Mr. Trump is easily provoked and knows no diplomatic answers and a WWIII might erupt because of him…". these were words of similar email messages sent to us.
4- We beg to differ; we give below our predicted vision of the near future, that might be right or wrong.
Firstly:
We were at first against Mr. Trump, and we voted for Mrs. Clinton along with our wife and sons; we did not love her, but we voted for her as a stance against Mr. Trump and according to the motto of choosing the lesser of two evils. As a family, we expected a landslide victory of Mrs. Clinton, and we stayed up to watch elections results on TV until before dawn. The victory of Mr. Trump was somehow shocking and disheartening to us. Next day, we, Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, have analyzed this result in the following points.
1- The white race is the majority of American citizens, especially among the ones controlling and monopolizing power and wealth. It is the race with the highest degree of awareness; the one that have discovered the two continents, North America and Latin America, and the one to establish the USA and made it the biggest power in the world. At one point, the white race formed the vast majority of citizens. Yet, demographic change emerged gradually when many Asians immigrated to the USA from countries such as India and China, as well as Hispanics immigrated to the USA from Central America and Latin America, and later on people of Arab origin and Muslim origin. The American white race has lost its vast majority; it has become only a majority. Electing Mr. Obama was a slap to the WASPs; it hammered a message home that the sons of immigrants have come to control the USA, especially that rates of immigration to the USA have increased recently. This is shown in the fact that in the conservative WASPs party, the Republican Party, we find that Mr. Trump's wife was an immigrant from Eastern Europe; the wife of Jeb Bush was an immigrant from Mexico. Two of major rivals of Mr. Trump in the Republican Party have fathers who were immigrants from Latin America. The father of one rival of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Bernie Sanders, was an immigrant from Poland. This dominant presence of immigrants was a danger signal that frightened WASPs, especially the threat posed by the lesser of these minorities: American citizens of Arab and Muslim origins. Sadly, since 9/11 and other terrorist attacks inside the USA, American citizens of Arab and Muslim origins are suspected of terrorism and extremism, especially when ISIS emerged with its brutality, and all American citizens of Arab and Muslim origins are now suspected of not really belonging to and feeling grateful toward the USA, but also suspected of hating and trying to destroy the USA. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sentiments of suspicion and animosity toward American citizens of Arab and Muslim origins have increased because of President Obama's policies. It is not only that Barack Hussein Obama is an African-American and the son of a Kenyan African Muslim man, but his policies have driven the WASPs to think that Obama is an agent working for the KSA (the reputation of the KSA is so bad in the American society, of course), and they felt insulted seeing Mr. Obama bowing in a degrading manner as he shook hands with the late Saudi King Abdullah; what rubbed salt to the injury was that Mr. Obama was received in a Saudi airport by an employee, as if Mr. Obama was a mere president of any African poor country, not of the superpower of the planet. Worse still, President Obama's policies have created a vacuum that encouraged the emergence of ISIS, the terrorist organization that spread in Iraq and the Levant and has posed a veritable threat inside American soil now. WASPs know that President Obama's policies in the Middle East have served the KSA very well; they assume also that Mr. Obama has helped terrorist Wahabis against Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, as per Saudi policies that aim at destroying Syria. Moreover, they accuse Mr. Obama of allowing the KSA to spread terrorism in Iraq, resulting in destruction of Syria and Iraq as well as increasing the Iranian infiltration in the Middle East that has undermined American influence there.
2- Le us talk here about a painful personal experience; we were working in 2002 at National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is a foundation that gives pieces of advice to the White House, Foreign Office, and the Congress. We have opposed the American invasion of Iraq before it occurred, explaining how it would cause more crises in comparison to the Viet Nam war; we at the time have written that the Bush administration knew a lot about Iraqi oil and very little of the Iraqi nation with its religious and racial fabric and that the USA should not trip into this Iraqi quagmire. No one listened to us, of course; yet, we have sensed an understanding of our project of intellectual peaceful war of ideas against Wahabism. We have met with high-rank persons of the Congress and with Dick Cheney at the time. Sadly, our efforts were in vain once President Obama took office; our project of intellectual peaceful war of ideas against Wahabism was totally ignored. The Obama administration, along with his conservative Sunnite consultants, rejected our project of intellectual peaceful war of ideas against Wahabism. During the years of President Obama, we have worked for some time as a visiting professor in two of the Washington centers that influence American policies: 1) in The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), we have submitted a research paper on the contradiction between the absolute religious freedom in Islam (i.e., the Quran alone) and restriction of this freedom in Wahabism. In this research paper, we have concluded that it is of vital importance to wage a peaceful intellectual war of ideas from within Islam (i.e., the Quran) to refute, debunk, and eliminate the Wahabi threat that is growing inside the USA and worldwide. This research paper is published in Arabic and in English on our website ahl-alquran.com, and 2) in Woodrow Wilson Center, where we have submitted a research paper on the rules of intellectual, peaceful war against Wahabi terrorism, also published in Arabic and in English on our website. We have beseeched high-rank American officials everywhere to activate and adopt this intellectual, peaceful war of ideas to avoid further bloodshed of both sides (Wahabis and Americans) using Quranism as real Islam advocated by the Quranist trend in the USA, showing that this true Islam (the Quran as read by Quranists) is nearer to the American values of justice, freedom, human rights, and human dignity. We have sent messages to that effect to the White House as well as other bodies and people to whom it may concern; we have attended conferences and met with many personalities; and we have attended a hearing session in the Congress, where we addressed congressmen and congresswomen about the Wahabi threat and how Quranism is the solution to diffuse Wahabi terrorism. All this has been to no avail; we realized eventually that we must lose hope in the Obama administration. Feeling frustrated, we kept to our house in VA, devoting our time to Quranist writings and religious and historical researches. If this has been the case with a Muslim American thinker like us, what about WASPs who hate the Obama administration?
Secondly:
1- As far as his discourse and declarations are concerned, in our opinion, Mr. Trump may present the best foreign policies for the USA until now.
1/1: This is apparent in his way of talking about Russia and seeking to reach sort of agreement with it; Russian-American relations worsened recently; even words spread about confrontations and a possible WWIII. Mr. Trump's words have eased tensions between the two poles, Russia and the USA, and this serves international peace and economic interests of the Russian and American nations. Seeking mutual agreement with Russia will ease polarized stances dominant in the Middle East now; it is no longer important that a country would side with either Russia or the USA; a country may be friends with both Russia and the USA at the same time. The myth of ''the West is conspiring against us!'' will cease in the Middle East; nations of the Middle East countries will realize that its real enemies are tyrants who rule.
1/2: In light of achieving mutual agreement with Russia, Mr. Trump's view of the Middle East as just a source of oil will make him never sending any American troops to the Middle East that will cost so much money and dead American soldiers; he might politically siege tyrants there to get as much oil and money from them as possible.
1/3: Speaking of tyrants, the royal family members of the KSA have already reached the final stage before the imminent collapse despite what President Obama has offered to them. The views of Mr. Trump of Al-Saud royal family may be the last nail in the coffin of the KSA. With instinct of a tradesman, Mr. Trump can confiscate all Saudi assets in the USA using JASTA law passed by the Republican-dominated Congress, despite attempts of President Obama to stop that. Applying JASTA means that the USA will get compensations for losses caused by terrorist operations inside the USA committed by Saudis. Such compensations will eat up all overt and covert wealth of the KSA inside the USA, if the KSA will not collapse yet; if it does, all Saudi possessions inside the USA will be confiscated by the USA. We hope so, and may God grant us this wish to witness the collapse of the KSA, the source of terror and evil. It will be for the benefit of human beings on earth that KSA will vanish from the map.
2- Indeed, Mr. Trump reminds us of President Yeltsin in Russia, but the difference is that Mr. Trump carries all the culture of the WASPs, and he finds no qualms in expressing this culture. Mr. Trump is not as eloquent and equivocating as Mrs. Clinton and President Obama; he does not love to play on words. Mr. Trump is frank and sincere, very different from typically hypocritical politicians. Indeed, frankness of Mr. Trump has frightened many of those who got used to lies and falsehoods of politicians in Washington who submit to lobbies and interest groups inside and outside the USA. It is very insulting to WASPs to see how the Saudi lobby from outside exerting so much influence over Washington.
3- It is important to note the following points.
3/1: There is a difference between what a presidential candidate says in the presidential campaign and promises he would keep once in office as President. Fox News media figure Bill O'Reilly, who represented the WASPs, felt annoyed with views of Mr. Trump when he interviewed him earlier after the start of his presidential campaign, but he asserted to viewers that there is a difference between words uttered by a presidential candidate to undermined his rival and what he will actually do once in office as President.
3/2: Mr. Trump's declarations invoked the fury of so many; anti-Trump demonstrations began before he would take office. Some people in CA call for being separated from the USA; CA is the richest American state and has a big influence in voting. Yet, eventually, there are American policies staples that no president can possibly overlook. The American society might condone overlooked promises by candidates about foreign policies but can never tolerate reneging on promises related to internal affairs. An American president is a public servant of the nation after all, the nation that has voted for him and disregarded Mrs. Clinton.
3/3: Mrs. Clinton is not popular among youths of the Democratic Party because of her authoritarian manner and her corruption; yet, those young democrats would rather have had Mr. Bernie Sanders as their candidate instead of her, but Mrs. Clinton rose as the candidate of her party instead of Mr. Sanders using a plot conspired from within the party itself. Mr. Trump knows quite well that he has defeated Mrs. Clinton with difficulty and that a large portion of American citizens do not approve of him. As a former businessman, Mr. Trump knows the art of making customers feel satisfied: his customers now are the American people. If he would like to have two presidential terms as he said in his victory speech, he must change his policies to appeal to All American citizens, especially minorities. We have no doubt that Mr. Trump knows that quite well.
3/4: Those minorities – so far – have less degree of awareness in comparison to WASPs who mobilized themselves to vote for Mr. Trump in states of the north and in the middle of the USA. Minorities are expected to learn this valuable lesson and respond to calls made by Mr. Bernie Sanders about the fact that positive change in the USA must occur via participating actively in the American political life, especially as far as voting is concerned. We have no doubt that Mr. Trump knows that quite well. These anti-Trump demonstrations will certainly make him modify or correct some of his stances to allay fears and to avoid dire consequences. American Muslims will benefit of such stance modifications. We have no doubt that Mr. Trump knows that quite well.
3/5: Fears of American Muslims are groundless; Mr. Trump has talked about illegal immigrations to the USA, especially Muslim illegal immigrants that he will ban from ever entering the USA. Mr. Trump seems to eat his words about this topic even before he won the elections as President-elect. Let us not forget that there are many strong Muslim organizations inside the USA. American citizenship rights can never be breached, regardless of color and religion of citizens. The American laws make officials respect the law as no one should be regarded as above the law. Of course, Mr. Trump as president may use his legal authorities to investigate issues related to facing terrorism, but we are not to forget that legal mechanisms control such matters quite well, with no room for violations. Mr. Trump will certainly avoid any blamable measures with dire consequences if he hopes to get a second presidential term. We have no doubt that Mr. Trump knows that quite well.
3/6: Foes of Mr. Trump in most media and in human-rights organizations as well as the democrats will be watching him carefully to reproach him whenever he would cross the limits, and he would not do that if he desires a second presidential term. There is a difference between being in the opposition side, free to say whatever one has to say, and being held responsible for every move and every word with others watching one closely, eager to criticize. We have no doubt that Mr. Trump knows that quite well.
Let us not forget that despite terrorist attacks inside the USA, the American authorities never took exceptional measures at all. In Middle-East tyrannical regimes, when a tyrant suffers constipation or diarrhea, he would readily impose emergency laws. Luckily, this never happens in the USA, Europe, or Israel, right?