TALABANI: You would be brave to have 640 pastors and Christians holding a meeting in front of King Abdullah’s house in Jordan—and he’s a very nice guy. You couldn’t have such a gathering in Baghdad right now. You all would have been massacred. And this is what I’m talking about—we need to create a culture of true religious freedom and tolerance.
ROSENBERG: I absolutely agree. But why are the Kurdish people and President Talabani not just tolerant of Christians but actually supportive of them and even protective of them?
TALABANI: We [as Kurds] were always an oppressed people. Now that we’re not, it’s unthinkable to us to oppress a minority.
ROSENBERG: Well, you certainly could oppress other minorities if you wanted to. Many groups throughout history have found their freedom only to turn against those who previously oppressed them.
TALABANI: Well, we simply can’t do it. That’s not who we are. It’s just not possible for us to turn against the Christians, for example. We’ve seen what the Christians have done in Kurdistan—helping grow the economy, bringing tourism, investments—and we’re grateful for that.
One thing you should note, Joel, is that we as Kurds put our ethnic identity before our religious identity. The fact that most Kurds are Sunni Muslims never protected us as a minority under the Saddam regime. He was a Sunni Muslim, as were all of his advisors. But they never treated us well just because we were Sunnis. Just the opposite. He attacked us constantly. He used weapons of mass destruction against us. He killed thousands of Kurds despite the fact that we were the same religion as him.
I want American Christians to know that Jalal Talabani is the biggest champion they have in Iraq—more than the leaders of the Christian political parties—not because he cares more than the Christian [political] leaders but because he’s able to use his authority more to ensure the rights of Christians. He’s helping to protect churches. He’s doing everything he can to protect and advance religious freedom for Christians. And he hopes that someday all of Iraq will be as safe and free for Christians as Kurdistan is today.
ROSENBERG: Qubad, do you believe Kurdistan could serve as a model for the rest of Iraq? After all, you have a sixteen-year head start, right? After the first Gulf War, the U.S. imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, keeping Saddam’s forces from being able to attack the Kurds. That newfound level of freedom led to the passage of a democratic constitution, the creation of a parliament, free and fair democratic elections. It certainly hasn’t been easy for the Kurds. There were violent battles between various Kurdish political groups, including the one headed up by your father and another headed by the Barzani family. But eventually you all seem to have figured things out.
Your father is now the first truly democratically and constitutionally elected president in the history of Iraq. Massoud Barzani is the democratically elected president of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Nechirvan Barzani is the prime minister of the KRG. You are operating as an ambassador or representative of the KRG in Washington. The Kurdish economy is growing steadily. New homes are being constructed. New office buildings are being constructed. Foreign direct investment into Kurdish businesses is rising. Americans feel safe there. Christians feel safe there. Isn’t it possible that Kurdistan looks today like what the rest of Iraq will look like in another ten to fifteen to twenty years?
TALABANI: I think Kurdistan could serve as a model. We went through the mistakes that the rest of Iraq is going through now. But we were able to figure things out eventually. We were able to set aside our political differences when we saw a larger goal—overthrowing Saddam. It did take time. And it did take the U.S. to bang our heads together and insist that we come together. But we finally saw the benefits of a united Kurdish front, and we have made an enormous amount of progress over the last sixteen years or so, and specifically over the last four or five years.
Will the rest of Iraq follow our lead? I don’t know. There’s still a lot of political immaturity in Iraq at large, much like we had in the nineties. But the fact that there is a Kurd serving as the president of the country—that, I think, is a hopeful sign.
In the winter of 2010, Iraq held a new round of national elections, as prescribed by the constitution. Violence in the country was way down. Turnout was strong at 62.4 percent. But the race for prime minister was too close to call. In fact, the vote was so close that month after month went by without the country knowing for certain whether Nouri al-Maliki and his party (the Shia religious party known as the State of Law Coalition) would once more gain control, or whether one of the rival parties (such as Iraqiya, run by Dr. Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia leader who served as an appointed prime minister of Iraq just after the liberation in 2003 and before full national elections had been held) would gain control instead.
Even as President Obama pulled U.S. combat forces out of Iraq by August 31, 2010 (due to the enormous success of the “surge” policy), it still was not clear who would lead the fledgling Iraqi democracy into the future as prime minister. After recounts and close election scrutiny from all sides, al-Maliki’s party appeared to control 89 seats. But Dr. Allawi’s party appeared to control 91 seats. However, both were vigorously asserting their right to form a new government, and neither showed any interest in compromising or forming a national unity government.
One thing was clear, though: despite Jalal Talabani’s serious health issues, he was going to receive a second term as president. He was, therefore, going to be the first democratically reelected president of Iraq. Such an accomplishment was a testament to how widely trusted and admired Talabani was throughout the country and across political, religious, and ideological lines. He was broadly perceived as a consensus builder and a man all sides could trust, in large part because of his reputation as an indefatigable Reformer. His future, and the future of Iraq, will be worth watching closely.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The King and I
Meet Mohammed VI and the Reformers of Rabat
In the spring of 2006, I received a phone call from a friend in Casablanca.
My friend explained that he was coming to Washington with Dr. Ahmed Abaddi, who works for Moroccan king Mohammed VI who had read my novel The Ezekiel Option and was interested in meeting me. Moreover, they were wondering if Lynn and I would be willing to put on a small dinner party at our home with some journalists and key policy makers to discuss Morocco’s efforts to fight Islamic Radicalism, promote democracy, and build bridges of friendship and cooperation with Jews and evangelical Christians.
We certainly were, I told him. Indeed, it would be an honor.
To say the resulting evening was fascinating would be putting it mildly.
Dr. Abaddi was not simply a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered professor of comparative religion who had been a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of Chicago and DePaul University and learned excellent English. As Morocco’s director of Islamic affairs, he was also a man of considerable influence, responsible for overseeing more than thirty-three thousand Sunni mosques throughout his country.536 His wife, Fatiha, was also impressive—a gracious, well-read, devoutly religious wife and mother who, like Lynn, had devoted herself to raising four sons (though the Abaddi boys were a little older than the Rosenberg boys, ranging in age from seven to seventeen).
In their late forties, the Abaddis were warm and engaging, and from the moment they entered our home, Lynn and I immediately felt a real affection for them both.
We encountered only one small problem: Fatiha spoke far more Arabic and French than English, and we spoke no Arabic and bad high school French. Fortunately, Lynn had invited some dear friends who could translate, and that made all the difference.
Also joining us were about two dozen other friends and acquaintances, including writers for the Washington Times, National Review, Weekly Standard, and National Public Radio; several administration officials, including Fred Schwien, senior advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Jack and Kathy Rusenko, who founded the George Wash
ington Academy, Morocco’s foremost K–12 private school, and who had first suggested the evening; a diplomat from the Moroccan Embassy helping coordinate the trip; and the board of the Joshua Fund, the nonprofit educational and charitable organization Lynn and I founded “to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, according to Genesis 12:1-3.”
Once we were all properly introduced, Lynn served her famous (and my favorite) “chicken puffs,” asparagus, and salad, and we settled in for an intimate yet on-the-record discussion.
A Monarch on the Move
At a time when Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were breathing their murderous threats against Christians and Jews and attempting to incite Muslims around the world to annihilate the U.S. and Israel, Dr. Abaddi was a welcome and wonderful breath of fresh air. He reminded us that in 1777, Morocco was the first country in the world to officially recognize the United States as an independent nation. Ever since, he said, Morocco has not only been the most western Muslim nation geographically; it has also been among the most pro-Western ideologically and operationally.537 And in Abaddi’s view, King Mohammed VI was quietly emerging as one of the boldest Reformers in the Muslim world.
The story of Morocco’s king was not one the American mainstream media was reporting, but it was one Abaddi felt they should be. After all, he explained, ever since ascending to the throne in July 1999—just hours after the death of his father, King Hassan II—the young monarch had been on the move, steadily and systematically transforming Morocco into a model of moderation.
After 9/11 the king could have shown sympathy to the terrorists and the plight of the Muslim people, as many in the Islamic world had done. He was, after all, a direct descendant of Islam’s founder. Instead, the king immediately ordered his security forces to work closely with the U.S. to round up al Qaeda operatives, with tremendous success. On June 16, 2002, Moroccan intelligence and the CIA intercepted a sleeper cell of bin Laden agents who were in the advanced stages of planning major terrorist attacks against U.S. and British warships and commercial container ships in the Strait of Gibraltar.538 A few days later, Moroccan police rounded up still more al Qaeda operatives, and the arrests have continued every few months ever since.539 By 2006, Moroccan authorities had arrested nearly three thousand terror suspects—some homegrown, some from Saudi Arabia and other Islamist countries—and busted up at least fifty terror cells.540
Simultaneously, His Majesty dispatched Abaddi and his colleagues in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to embark upon a public information campaign of speeches, sermons, and interviews in the Moroccan media condemning al Qaeda’s teachings and tactics and laying out the theology of the Reformers. The king ordered this campaign to be accelerated and intensified after a series of suicide bombings ripped through several Muslim- and Jewish-owned restaurants and a Jewish community center in Casablanca on May 16, 2003, leaving forty-five dead (including twelve of fourteen bombers) and more than a hundred wounded.
It was clear that the Radicals posed a clear and present danger to the safety and security of the 34 million citizens of the kingdom, as well as to the stability of the regime itself. And as the eighteenth heir to the Alaouite dynasty, which has ruled Morocco since 1649—as well as the “Commander of the Faithful,” guardian of all Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Morocco—the king was not about to let the Radicals succeed.
Nor, for that matter, were the Moroccan people, the majority of whom were outraged by the attacks. That month, Abaddi and his team helped mobilize more than one million Moroccans who took to the streets of Casablanca to denounce radical Islamic terrorism, a march in which more than a thousand Moroccan Jews openly participated and were warmly embraced by the Muslim community as kindred spirits against a common enemy.
As if all this were not enough, the king also began advancing a series of significant legislative reforms designed to open up the democratic process and allow all Moroccans—including women—the right to participate. The reforms sought to protect the rights of women and children and rectify a number of human rights abuses for which the king’s father had been widely blamed. Moreover, His Majesty ordered Abaddi and his colleagues to launch an aggressive new theological training program to ensure that all new Imams coming out of Moroccan seminaries would be prepared to promote a moderate, peaceful, progressive version of Islam, not turn mosques into hotbeds of Radical recruitment and incitement as in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
“We need our people to know the real West . . . to understand that the West ain’t no angel, but it ain’t no demon, either,” Abaddi, attempting a Western accent, told those gathered at our home for dinner that night. “This effort is not a luxury. We are trying to train responsible people to live in dangerous times.”541
He went on to say he was worried about the apocalyptic rhetoric coming out of Tehran, Iran’s nuclear program, radical Islamic terrorism, AIDS, and severe global poverty. “Morocco can help bring about peace. I think the Moroccan model is practical and helpful. It communicates an entirely different concept of Islam to the rest of the world. . . . I personally can’t sit back and do nothing. There is an Arab proverb that says, ‘Don’t be a mute Satan.’ I feel compelled to do everything I can to make a better world.”
An Invitation to the Kingdom
In the years that followed that first meeting, Dr. Abaddi and I developed a friendship that I have grown to appreciate a great deal. Among other things, he has helped me to go inside the minds of the Reformers and better understand who they are, what they want, when they started, where they are going, and how they plan to get there. We keep in contact by phone. We e-mail each other. He has been back to our home for more chicken puffs and more in-depth conversations. Along the way, he graciously invited me to visit his country and see the Moroccan model for myself. In January of 2008 I accepted.
I had been to Morocco before, as a tourist with Lynn and the boys in 2001 and 2002, and again in 2005 as I was researching and writing Epicenter. I had already come to love Morocco, with its beauty and rich history and wonderfully hospitable people. But this was a particularly special visit as it afforded me the opportunity to meet with men and women who worked for King Mohammed VI, knew him well, advised him, and understood what made him tick.
Abaddi himself had been promoted since I had seen him last. He was no longer responsible for overseeing the day-to-day affairs of the nation’s mosques. He now had been personally appointed by His Majesty to head up a strategic studies center whose explicit mission was to engage all of the top Islamic scholars in the country in a sweeping effort to map out and passionately advance a Reformer agenda for the twenty-first century. What’s more, Abaddi was teaching the Qur’an to an estimated audience of 6 million Muslims every night in a television program broadcast on Moroccan television and on an Arabic satellite network throughout North Africa and the Middle East. He had essentially become the Dr. James Dobson or the Chuck Swindoll of the moderate Muslim world, one of the most thoughtful and most listened-to religious teachers in the region.
It was a remarkable trip, to say the least. Joining me as part of our delegation were several dear friends, including John Moser, executive director of the Joshua Fund; Fred Schwien from Homeland Security (traveling as a private citizen); and Chip and Larissa Lusko, producers of the Epicenter documentary film who again had a film crew with them as we compiled material for a future Inside the Revolution documentary.
Together, we visited the palace, met with members of parliament, and were briefed by a top security official at the Interior Ministry. We talked with Islamic scholars, spent several days with Dr. Abaddi, and were invited to a wonderful dinner party in our honor at the Abaddis’ home in the capital city of Rabat. We also spent an engaging (though off-the-record) afternoon with U.S. Ambassador Thomas Riley and his wife at their home and visited Jack and Kathy Rusenko in Casablanca at the George Washington Academy, where they and their staff have the privilege and responsibility of helping to prepare some five hundred students from Morocco, the U.S., an
d two dozen other countries to become future leaders of their respective nations, most of them in North Africa or the Middle East.
My Impressions of the King
What I saw and heard and learned during that visit to Morocco, together with my observations from the last eight years of closely watching the country, could fill a book in its own right. But I would have to say that what has impressed me most has been the character and vision of King Mohammed VI. We have not met personally. He was hosting a summit with King Abdullah II of Jordan while we were there, and rarely gives interviews, particularly to foreigners. Nevertheless, I have come to believe that he is someone to keep a close eye on.
Born on August 21, 1963, His Majesty is one of the youngest leaders in the Muslim world. Though he began moving slowly and cautiously upon first becoming king, over time he has put his own peers into positions of power to replace his father’s generation. He has consolidated his support within the military and the ruling class, and he has impressed the citizens as a ruler who truly cares for the poor and is determined to improve their lives. In the process, he has seemed to gain confidence, become more assertive, and become more willing to take Moroccans toward a future in which they have more freedom to make their own choices about how to live their lives, raise their children, build their businesses, and interact with the outside world. Indeed, in many ways, His Majesty has come to exemplify a new generation of regional leaders.
The king is religious, having begun memorizing the entire Qur’an at the age of four, but he is by no means a Radical. He is a monarch but not a megalomaniac, harboring no delusional visions of grandeur and all-encompassing power as some leaders in the region do. He is authoritative but not an authoritarian, as some have criticized his father for being. He is clearly open to expanding democracy, but he is deeply (and wisely) opposed to allowing extremists to hijack the electoral process and seize power once and for all.
Inside the Revolution Page 37