Once More on the Enemy of My Enemy

For those who may not know, Lynne Stewart is an American attorney who was sentenced to 28 months in prison in 2003 for being a conduit for a press release by her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. In 2000, Sheik Rahman was convicted of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning further attacks. This press release was his only means of communicating with his followers in Egypt, whom he wished to advise to rethink their cease-fire with the government. This week, the district judge in charge of Lynne Stewart’s case, under pressure from his superiors in the federal circuit court, increased her sentence to ten years, citing her lack of remorse. The new sentence has prompted widespread concern in the left and among those in the legal community who represent people nobody else will defend.

Unfortunately, this reasonable concern is accompanied by a lot of political obfuscation. It is probably inevitable that defense attorneys will bond with their clients to some extent, but when this goes as far as characterizing Islamic fundamentalists as fighters against US imperialism—and only as fighters against US imperialism—we are in the land of looney tunes. Michael Steven Smith, a friend of Stewart’s and a board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote a piece in which he seems to confuse Sheik Abdel Rahman with Che Guevera. Since I am doomed to keep addressing this kind of error, I have written a response, as follows:

I agree with Michael Steven Smith that the extension of Lynne Stewart’s sentence from 18 months to 10 years is a reprehensible show of government vengeance. That being said, his article shows a willful obtuseness about world politics that is characteristic of certain parts of the US and European left, who fail to distinguish between right wing and left wing nationalism and see Islamic jihadis as freedom-fighters.

Smith says, “Nationalist opposition to U.S. economic and foreign policy in parts of the Arab world is no longer led by communists but by fundamentalist Muslims.” His implication seems to be that, since Islamic fundamentalists oppose US imperialism, we should support them on the grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This simplistic analysis overlooks the fact that salafi-jihadi Muslims are not fighting for freedom but for domination of other Muslims. In fact, Muslims are the main ones who suffer under fundamentalist rule—ask the people of Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia. The fact that these people also suffer from US imperialism does not mean that they embrace the Islamists—they want to be free of both.

Surely any thinking person can recognize that freedom has more than one enemy, and that it is possible—indeed, necessary—to oppose both US imperialism and fundamentalist political movements that use the cover of religion to oppress their own people. But Smith’s analysis can admit the existence of only one enemy. He says:

“Lynne Stewart represented … Sheik Abdel Rahman, who was the leading oppositionist to the U.S. sponsored Murbarak dictatorship in Egypt, which gets more money from America than any other country in the world except Israel. In 1993, at the behest of the Egyptian government, Sheik Rahman was criminally indicted and later convicted of the crime of ‘sedition’ for suggesting to a government informer that rather than blow up New York City landmarks he choose ‘a military target.’"

This description leaves out a few things; Sheik Rahman was accused, with one of his followers, of planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and convicted of planning to bomb a number of NYC landmarks, including the UN. He is also the acknowledged leader of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (also known as "The Islamic Group"), which engaged in a number of attacks on civilians in Egypt in the 90s; the most notorious was the massacre of tourists at Luxor in 1997, in which 4 Egyptians and 58 tourists were either shot or hacked to death, including four honeymooning Japanese couples and a five year old child.

It is one thing for lawyers to defend the legal and human rights of their clients, including Islamic fundamentalists. It is quite another to buy into their analysis and present them as freedom fighters. Not everyone who opposes US imperialism is on the side of the people and only the most deluded parts of the left could see Sheik Rahman as an ally.

Comments

Tue, 07/27/2010 - 14:56 — Stephanie

Dear Meredith, Thanks for

Dear Meredith,

Thanks for this. It is really unfortunate that Stewart's sentence was extended into such a harsh one, particularly as I believe she is ill. But your piece made me reflect more on Amilcar Cabral who I am currently re-reading as part of my writing, and his clarity on who the enemy is, and what targets to aim at. The anti-colonial Portuguese movements could have very easily targeted civilians in Portugal as part of their struggle, but they did not. They chose to stay with military targets, to fight the army that was the arm of such brutal oppression. And they won, not only their own liberation, but caused the downfall of fascism in Portugal. They were absolutely clear about the nature of their enemy. I believe we learned a lot from them during those years of the solidarity in the US in the 70's, but now that it is often harder to identify the enemy, the waters get muddy. Thanks for helping to un-muddy them.