My Own Favorite Islamic Socialist
My Own Favorite Islamic Socialist
I learned about the Biden pick while watching Al-Jazeera. “Biden considered foreign policy heavyweight,” read the English scrolling at the bottom of the screen in what I took to be an Al-Jazeera endorsement. (You’re welcome, Schmidt.) I would rather have been watching another news outlet that day, but the reception in Merka, Somalia, wasn’t good enough to access Barbara West of Orlando’s WFTV. A National Geographic photographer and I were stranded in Merka, hiding out from Islamic kidnappers who had just apprehended the only other Western journalists in Somalia. (Two months later, freelancers Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan remain held, their captors demanding $2.5 million and warning that they will otherwise be killed. Pray for their safe return.) A week later, I found myself out of Somalia and on the floor of the GOP convention, wearing a New York Times press badge and surrounded by hollering Republicans. Thinking: You’re never really safe.
I digress, but not altogether. Because thanks to mounting story deadlines, Somalia and Barack Obama are simultaneously on my mind.
Perhaps you’ve heard Obama’s a socialist. You’ve heard he’s a Muslim, too. You wonder if there’s such a thing as a socialist Muslim. There is! I give you Mohamed Siad Barre, the somewhat-lamented former dictator of Somalia, whose unceremonious departure from Mogadishu in 1991 marks the last time that country has had a free-standing government. Major General Barre conceived something called Scientific Socialism, a political principle meant to address the country’s economic decline. ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION NOW??? Barre discouraged tribalism, embarked on an ambitious literacy program among the nomadic population (a.k.a. Real Somalia) and sat down with Soviets and Americans alike, without preconditions. As the great scholar I.M. Lewis points out, the dictator also maintained that socialism “expressed the essential communal spirit of Islam.”
Take a look at our future, America.
(My editors worry—how they worry!—that you might think I'm being serious here in peddling some new Red-crypto-terrorist talking point. But you know I'm winkin' as I'm writin', don't cha?)
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You may be winkin,' but you're not helpin.' If you have to explain the ironic subtlety of your post to GQ readers, you must know it will be completely lost on the "low information voters" who simply see a headline on Fox News that screams "GQ Confirms Obama a Socialist Muslim." Given current circumstances, it seems reasonable to expect an intelligent journalist like yourself to be a little more circumspect.
mmanion
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perhaps that's his point...to further muddying the waters...
rbell
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Technically you are correct Mohamed Siad Barre flirted with socialism but he was not a socialist. Socialism was a political sell for him. He was not an educated man who understood or appreciated ideas like socialism. Earlier in his reign he heavily relied on the support of intellectuals who were all socialists they pushed those ideas, nurtured it and sold it with popular songs, poetry and radio propaganda. Mr. Barre utilised that until it served his purpose when it no longer served him he ditched that idea and jailed all of its champions.
Sanaag
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