Engaging the Mosque

[Tom OC]

OK, a naive comment on my last post. I have zero experience in engaging a mosque. There probably is no accreditation authority, but maybe there's some way to put pressure on them from above. I dunno. However, I do find the cultural sensitivity issue interesting, or perhaps the "taboos in the mosque" issue fascinating. In hopes of redeeming myself, let me quote Shusta et. al. (2005). Multicultural Law Enforcement, 3e. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall -- p. 232 "Officer safety, of course, comes before consideration of differences."

[SWJED]

OK, a naive comment on my last post. I have zero experience in engaging a mosque. There probably is no accreditation authority, but maybe there's some way to put pressure on them from above. I dunno. However, I do find the cultural sensitivity issue interesting, or perhaps the "taboos in the mosque" issue fascinating. In hopes of redeeming myself, let me quote Shusta et. al. (2005). Multicultural Law Enforcement, 3e. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall -- p. 232 "Officer safety, of course, comes before consideration of differences."

I guess many of us are naive about this issue - hopefully a discussion here will, at the very least, turn on some lightbulbs in our brain-housing-groups...

[Tom Odom]

I guess many of us are naive about this issue - hopefully a discussion here will, at the very least, turn on some lightbulbs in our brain-housing-groups...

In this matter I strongly recommend that best approaches are through host nation government, local, and military figures rather than direct, regardless of relative depth in Islam and local culture. I would also say that this is not something that we turn to the Chaplains--who do great work regardless of faith--as they will be judged by their uniforms and their faiths. Indeed this is a subject of great debate within Chaplain circles as a possible conflict with their mission of religious support. The last thing I would ever recommend to a commander is to send military envoys/patrols into the mosques as an entree for engagement. I have been in mosques in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. All were famous and the mosques were used to seeing non-Muslim visitors. We were, however, always escorted.

Back to the indirect approach, the best way if you seek to engage the mosque leaders is to draw them into discussions outside the mosques and again that means with local contacts, tribal, government, security, etc.

Best

Tom

[skiguy]

There are several reasons for religion’s ability to shape
the battlefield:
• Religion answers the big questions in life, death and
war. It is germane to all conflict.
• Religion adds a higher intensity, severity, brutality and
lethality to conflict than do other factors.
• Religion offers a stronger identity to participants in
conflicts than other forms of identity, such as nationality,
ethnicity, politics or language.
• Religion can motivate the masses quickly and cheaply,
and it often remains outside the view of nation-state
security forces.
• Religion offers an ideology — or a platform for a political
ideology — that resonates stronger than other forms
of propaganda.
• Religious leaders are often the last leaders left when
states fail, and they offer a voice to the disempowered
or oppressed.
• Religious leaders are often the first to seek peace and
reconciliation after conflict.
• Religious factors are fundamental to conflict resolution
and conflict management.
• Religious nongovernmental organizations supply a major
portion of support to humanitarian efforts in military
missions.1
Given the nature of SOF missions, understanding religious
factors is critical to predicting the human response
to ARSOF operations. One definition of religion is “the
human response to the perceived sacred.” As a human
response, it can be negative or positive. Understanding
the positive and negative aspects is critical to explaining
the human response. Trying to win the hearts and
minds of local populations without understanding their
souls deprives our efforts of one of the greatest avenues
of approach. Combatting religious insurgents without
understanding religious factors limits ARSOF’s abilities.
While we are not engaged in a religious war, we must
understand religious factors if we are to gain a clear view
of the battlefield.

http://www.usafa.edu/isme/ISME07/Bedsole07.pdf

[VirgilAlbert]

This could become a very interesting and fruitful discussion thread....

[Bob's World]

Religious leadership is fundamental to the governance of the populaces of the middle east, and also to the interpretation of events and information in general. To ignore or avoid these men is clearly not the way to go.

We are hamstrung by both our current interpretation of what "Separation of Church and State" has come to mean in our own Constitution; as well as by the spin that our own ideologues have placed on the current conflicts in the Middle East as being caused by "Extremist Muslim Ideology."

Once you can separate the causes of insurgency (poor governance) from the tools of insurgency (ideology, leadership, external powers conducting unconventional warfare, networked operations, etc) you can begin to effect solutions tailored to the proper problems.

Instead of working to keep religion out of the changes of governance that the U.S. has enabled in Iraq and Afghanistan most recently, but throughout the Middle East over the past 65 years; we might want to consider a different interpretation:

For example, so long as Jerusalem, or at least the holy core of Jerusalem, belongs to any one state, it will remain a justification for conflict. Would a Vatican City model be appropriate to help reduce this tension? A council led by three equal governors representing Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths, and secured by a neutral force?

Similarly, Saudi Arabia has little hope of ever evolving its own horribly flawed system of governace that is giving rise to so much of the violence, both in the region and directed at the U.S., so long as they are also burdened with being the keepers of Islams holiest sites? A Muslim city-state encompassing Mecca and Medina led by equal Shia and Sunni leadership would, I believe, open a floodgate of Muslim governmental reformation.

We fear substantive change so much, or at least change that we know we cannot control, that we end up inserting ourselves in questionable ways to either stem or cause change that we believe we can control. Control comes with some nasty burdens and secondary effects. My vote is for a complete reassessment of policy and approach to the region, with the going in position being to simply attempt to create conditions to enable and stabilize the changes that the local populaces want. Ultimately this will happen anyway, I just prefer to do it on terms of our choosing, as opposed to those forced upon us.

[Rex Brynen]

For example, so long as Jerusalem, or at least the holy core of Jerusalem, belongs to any one state, it will remain a justification for conflict. Would a Vatican City model be appropriate to help reduce this tension? A council led by three equal governors representing Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths, and secured by a neutral force?

This was not only envisaged in the original 1947 UN partition plan (under which Jerusalem would become a corpus separatum under international control), but was also discussed with regard to the Jerusalem holy places (although not the broader city) in final status negotiations in 2000-01 and 2007-08. My own personal favourite was the serious proposal to declare the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount under the sovereignty of God, with a "caretaker" international committee to administer it in his/her absence. Clever politics, that.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia has little hope of ever evolving its own horribly flawed system of governace that is giving rise to so much of the violence, both in the region and directed at the U.S., so long as they are also burdened with being the keepers of Islams holiest sites? A Muslim city-state encompassing Mecca and Medina led by equal Shia and Sunni leadership would, I believe, open a floodgate of Muslim governmental reformation.

The Saudis certainly don't see the holy cities as a "burden," and would regard any effort to end their control as a fundamental, and indeed near-existential, security threat. I'm also not clear on how this would promote reform in Saudi Arabia (I can actually see it strengthening Wahhabi Salafism within the kingdom), or the broader Muslim world. It is hard to imagine Sunnis as a whole agreeing to any Shi'ite role in administering the cities—its rather like proposing that the Vatican share St. Peter's with the Mormons.

On the challenges of multi-religious administration of a holy site, it is both informative and amusing to look at the problems associated in the sharing of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity between Christian denominations. Squabbles at the former regularly involve the Muslim caretakers or Israeli police being called out to separate battling monks, while disputes at the latter helped spark the Crimean War.