Former British intelligence (MI6) agent Alastair Crooke has published another glowing tribute to Hamas and Hezbollah as well as to Islamism in general. According to the article published in the Gulf Times, Islamism is “an attempt to shape a new consciousness “:
Disorientated and demoralised, the Islamic community in the early 20th century was under siege from enforced secularism in Turkey, Iran and elsewhere. With Marxism filtering away its younger members, it began a journey of discovery. It sought a solution to its problems by finding a new ‘self’. Islamists returned to the Quran for insights. The Quran is not a blueprint for politics or a state: It is, as it states frequently, nothing new. The Quran is a ‘reminder’ of old truths, already known to us all. One of which is that for humans to live together successfully society must practice compassion, justice and equity. This insight lies at the root of political Islam. It is a principle that represents a complete inversion of the ‘Great Transformation’. Instead of the pre-eminence of the market to which other social and community objectives are subordinated, the making of a society based on compassion, equity and justice becomes the overriding objective – to which other objectives, including markets, are subordinated. It is revolutionary in another aspect: Instead of the individual being the organisational principle around which politics, economics and society are shaped, the Western paradigm again is inverted. It is the collective welfare of the community in terms of such principles – rather than the individual – that becomes the litmus of political achievement. In short, Islamists are re-opening an old debate – one that is at the root of both Western and Islamic philosophy. Posed by Plato, that debate questions the purpose of politics. Some Westerners are troubled that after 200 years of settled opinion, the Western paradigm is being questioned anew. One American conservative commented to me recently that with Descartes, the West had discovered ‘objective truth’ through science and technology. It had made ‘us’ rich and powerful and Muslims could not bear that. They knew that ultimately they would be forced to acquiesce to Western ‘truth’. But the Islamist revolution is more than politics. It is an attempt to shape a new consciousness – to escape from the most far-reaching pre-suppositions of our time. It draws on the intellectual tradition of Islam to offer a radically different understanding of the human being, and to escape from the hegemony and rigidity of the Cartesian mindset. It is a voyage of discovery to a new ‘self’ that is far from complete. It has many shortcomings, but its intellectual insights offer Muslims (and Westerners) the potential to step beyond the shortcomings of Western materialism. This is what excites and energises.
Crooke goes on to claim that Hamas and Hezbollah are part of an “intellectual tradition grounded in philosophy and reasoning and in transforming knowledge”:
As a Hezbollah leader replied to me when asked what the Iranian Revolution had signified for him, he said unhesitatingly that Muslims were free to think Islamically once again. It is not possible therefore to make sense of the Iranian or wider Islamic resistance without understanding it as a philosophic and metaphysical event, too. It is the omission of this latter understanding that helps explain repeated Western misreadings of Iran, its Revolution and events in the region. Of course, there is another side to Islamism: Islam, like Christianity, has witnessed, from the outset, a struggle between a narrow, literalist and intolerant interpretation in opposition to the intellectual tradition grounded in philosophy and reasoning and in transforming knowledge. Though not at all perceived by most Western analysts, who see them only through the prism of opposition to Israeli occupation, movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas are part of the latter, intellectual tradition.
Mr. Crooke concludes by claiming that the West continues to back Saudi Salafism in contrast to the “open intellect of religious evolution” which he says is personified by Hamas, Hezbollah, and presumably the Muslim Brotherhood:
Perversely, for the past 50 years, it is to the literalists, often called Salafi, that the West has looked to circumscribe ‘threats to its interests’ in the Middle East – emulating Cold War containment thinking. The Saudi orientation of Salafism has been used by the West to counter Nasserism, Marxism, the Soviet Union, Iran and Hezbollah; but in so using the literalist puritan orientation, the West has misunderstood the mechanism by which some Salafist movements have migrated through schism and dissidence to become the dogmatic, hate-filled and often violent movements that really do threaten Westerners, as well as other Muslims, too. Ironically, the West of the Enlightenment is situated on the wrong side of the divide – backing dogma versus the open intellect of religious evolution. It is perhaps not surprising that a literalist and dogmatic West has contributed to literalism in Islam also. But the West, by holding on to this flawed perception that it is supporting docility and ‘moderation’ against ‘extremism’, paradoxically has left the Middle East a less stable, more dangerous and violent place.
An earlier post discussed a new book by Mr. Crooke titled “Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution”that, like the above piece, treated Hamas and Hezbollah so favorably and the West so critically, it raises legitimate questions about Mr. Crooke’s religious and political loyalties. The central thesis of the work, that Hamas and Hezbollah are at the forefront of “resistance” to Western “hegemony”, places the two Islamist organizations squarely at the center of a “clash of civilizations” as opposed to the nationalist struggle so often identified by supporters as being at the core of the groups’ identity.
Alastair Crooke heads the Conflicts Forum in Beirut whose Advisory Board includes Azzam Tamimi, a leader in the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood and often described as a Hamas spokesman. The Conflicts Forum board also includes former CIA agent Milt Bearden, who played a leading role in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Graham Fuller, a former Vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. Another member of the Conflicts Forum Board is Lord John Thomas Alderdice who was one of the two organizers of a proposed April 22 video link-up in the British Parliament with Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas’ Political Bureau. A technical fault prevented the event from taking place. Another media report describes a March 2005 meeting in Beirut attended by Crooke that included the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Musa Abu Marzuq, deputy leader of Hamas, and two of his senior colleagues, leaders of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and representatives of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami party.
A New York Time report provides some background on Mr. Crooke that may, in part, explain some of his beliefs:
Mr. Crooke has spent much of his career talking to Islamists. In the 1980s, as a young undercover agent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he helped funnel weapons to jihadists fighting the Soviets. Later, he spent years working with Hamas and Fatah as a negotiator for the European Union, and helped broker a number of cease-fires with Israel between 2001 and 2003… He is a little evasive about his own life and career, perhaps by training. Born in Ireland, he grew up mostly in Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, and was educated at a Swiss boarding school and at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, obtaining a degree in economics. Before joining MI6, he worked in finance in London. “It’s a dangerous area to work in,” he said of his years as a banker, without apparent irony, “because it’s so easy to get caught up in enrichment.” He is barred by law from discussing his service with MI6, which included years of diplomatic work on the Israel-Palestine issue. As a negotiator in the Palestinian territories, he is said to have traveled alone, by taxi, eschewing the armed security convoys of many Western diplomats. Colleagues who worked with him say Yasir Arafat and the leaders of Hamas trusted Mr. Crooke completely, as did some high-level Israeli officials. Some Israelis, however, apparently complained that he was too close to Hamas. In late 2003, he was recalled to London — he had reached retirement age — and quietly ushered out of government service, with a commendation. He says he has no regrets, but some of his colleagues in Conflicts Forum say he retains some bitterness about the way he was treated. In 2005, he moved to Beirut, where he lives with his partner, Aisling Byrne, and their 1-year-old child, Amistis, in an elegant, old French mandate-era apartment, working out of a home office.