Tootsie in the Red Mosque

One of the more delightful movies of the 80s was Tootsie in which Dustin Hoffman played a woman in order to get an acting job on a soap opera. His stumbling and fumbling to appear womanly made audiences laugh worldwide. Tootsie immediately came to mind when Mohammed Aziz, co-leader of the Red Mosque, was captured trying to escape the compound in a burqa and high heels. But, beyond the laughter, the entire Red Mosque story is insightful, illustrative and important if one wants to understand the Islamic fundamentalist challenge and the use of a mosque as a military outpost.

For years it has been our insight here at Java Jag that the term to describe the Muslim fundamentalist (Sunni or Shiite) place of worship is not mosque but fort. It becomes clear if you change mosque to fort. From Toronto to Rabat, from London to Ramallah, from Brooklyn to Yemen, the same series of battle cries are issued from the pulpits of clerics and broadcast from their minarets. The battle orders are always one and the same; practice jihad and use the proper tool to accomplish this—violence. It is no surprise that one of Abbas’s first emergency government decrees was to order clerics in the West Bank to stop issuing battle orders and inciting violence from their mosques.

In Islamabad, a Muslim government tolerates, if not supports the madrasahs and their Taliban in the giant Red Mosque complex. In return for this tolerance and support, the Aziz brothers turned on their patrons and declared war on Musharraf. This is what happened in Saudi Arabia, which co-opted the Salafi preachers into a deal, i.e. export fundamentalist violence, but leave us to our camel races. Wrong. The Islamic clerics are as outraged at a Saudi prince’s stash of scotch as they are at a Londoner’s miniskirt. Religious fanaticism is a mind set that easily turns on any institution or person that thwarts it. Its very success in brainwashing leaves it blind to compromise and tolerance.

The Red Mosque fiasco and the subsequent two week old campaign of suicide bombing of people all over Pakistan by these cleric/warriors will prove to be a watershed in the jihad movement. First it will be clear to all Muslim countries that allowing Saudi money to fund madrasahs teaching the Wahhabi branch of Islam is akin to allowing Saudi troops on their soil. This is no small realization. The Wahhabi brand of zero tolerance has hijacked the mosques in all Muslim countries. From the islands of Indonesia to the streets of downtown Toronto and everywhere in between religious military reconnaissance parties have been sent out on patrol. Either out of ignorance, as in the West, or complicity as in the East, this has been allowed to happen. The Red Mosque however, showed one and all what really happens in these mosques/bunkers: stockpiling of weapons; harboring of skilled foreign instructors in war; and a kind of Jonestown “we are ready to die for the cause” propaganda outreach program.

These Salafi forts used their minarets not only as places to call the faithful but as elevated sniper positions. They have done this in the West Bank and Gaza for years. Hamas-allied Islamic clerics have directed fire, rallied worshipers/soldiers and used their mosques as forts to store arms. No one paid close attention even when they used ambulances to deliver suicide bombers closer to Israel, or when Hezbollah used ambulances to deliver rocket replacements to Southern Lebanese towns. Salafi clerics have learned to export the concept of mosque-as-fort exactly as they did suicide bombing which is now taking place globally. In only a few short years these forts have produced jihad warriors in Asia, India, Russia, Europe and North America.

The West had better learn something else from the Red Mosque attack—the use of the burqa as disguise. Dressed in the head-to-toe covering, supposedly reserved to illustrate a woman’s modesty, an Aziz brother used one in an escape attempt. The high heels (if it is true and not a Pakistani counter intelligence story) were an especially nice touch. But the deeper meaning is here for all to see. Let’s state it clearly. One day soon an Islamic warrior in London or Paris or Turin or Chicago or Istanbul will wear one to conceal a suicide belt and kill as many people as possible. Amidst the subsequent carnage it will be revealed that he was a man and an operative in a Wahhabi mosque. Then the West will really have to grapple with the “rights” of its Muslim population. The burqa warning is just that, to these Salafi clerics the burqa is a tool to fool fools.

Now Musharraf must roll up his secular welcome mat and try to undo the Salafi network of Islamic clerics who want to topple his government and introduce Sharia law. To learn the lesson never learned, ask Abbas to show you the results of allowing the Hamas clerics their pulpits. Ask the relatives of the London subway dead. It is, “Islamic clerical fundamentalism cannot be tolerated, not at one mosque (fort), not by one cleric, not for one day.” For at its heart is the desire to kill and topple its host. It’s them or us.