Amsterdam 2012 (25 page)

“I saw the fight break out.
 
Was that you?”

“No, no.
 
Some Nation of Islam blacks started fighting with some Muslim guys.”

“I’m pulling off here.”
 
I parked on one of the residential streets in Brentwood to check on Seth’s face.
 
I pushed up his scalp with my thumbs.
 
There was a gash along the hairline above his ear.
 
His eye was bruised, but not cut.
 
Cynthia held Seth’s hand tight against her chest.

“I’ll take care of your cut when I we get home,” I said.
 
“Are you all right Cynthia?”

“Yes,” she simpered.
 
“Are you mad?”

“No,” I said, and I realized it was true—my self-pitying fury had been replaced by something else that felt hot and heavy and sharp, but in a way good.
 

I felt resolve.

#

We saw on the evening news that Sinai Temple and Sephardic Temple, both within a mile of Westwood, had been vandalized, windows broken and spray-painted with enormous red swastikas.
 
Apparently marauding demonstrators had charged up Wilshire Boulevard and taken out their frustration on the synagogues.
 
Rabbi David
Witten
of Sinai Temple expressed sadness at the outrage, but extended an offer to meet with leaders of the Islamic community, “to discuss ways of creating greater understanding” between the religions in the Los Angeles area.
 

Rabbi
Witten’s
offer went unanswered.

#

I don’t think any incoming president ever had it as bad as Warren P. Mullet.
 
His first one hundred days were hell, and it went down hill from there.
 
Both Houses were strongly Democratic.
 
He tried to rally support from Republicans, and while many agreed with him about “the Muslim menace,” few were willing to speak against the Freedom of Religion.
 
None of Mullet’s initiatives passed Congress.
 
Then the country was hit with the blizzard and the oil embargo.
 
The conflicts in the Middle East and Europe were getting worse, which
The New York Times
dubbed the
Eurabian
War.
 
The name stuck.
 

Arab satellite countries in the Persian Gulf, once allies to the United States, joined the UNI rather than suffer civil war in their countries.
 
They asked United States forces to leave—the United States Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, the United States Central Command based in Qatar, and the Navy, which used docking facilities in the United Arab Emirates in the deep water port at
Jebel
Ali.

Despite the 80,000 American troops in Pakistan, and a billion dollars in U.S. military aid, Pakistan was close to falling.
 
In Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, a group of officers, mostly from the intelligence services, staged a coup, and immediately declared Pakistan a member of the United Nations of Islam.
 
The country, however, was still in civil war.
 
Salafi
military groups were dangerously close to taking control of Pakistan’s nuclear sites.
 
If that happened, India declared that it would use its own nuclear weapons to take them out.
  

In Africa, Islamic Courts now ruled in Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, and Central African Republic.
 
Islamic militias were fighting the governments in all of the North African countries, and in Uganda and Nigeria.
 
UNI troops had crossed from Morocco into Spain.
 
American embassies and installations were under attack in every African Nation.
 

It looked like the battle of civilizations would take place in Turkey.
 
CIA intelligence suggested small groups of Islamic fighters were crossing the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan into Azerbaijan, and UNI soldiers were massing on the Turkish-Iraqi border, gathering strength to enter Turkey.
 

The leaders of Europe, many who were fighting Islamic militias at home were torn between trying to defend the border into Turkey from the south—an expanse of 900 miles, which bordered Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Georgia—and drawing the line at Greece and Bulgaria, only 150 miles, with access to the Aegean Sea.
 
Sacrificing Turkey to protect Europe was inevitable without major support from the United States.
 
NATO called for troops to be sent to Greece and Bulgaria.
 
They offered airplanes and missiles to the Turkish government, but no troops.
 
Turkey was on its own.

It was an odd situation.
 
Congress, which was far more accustomed to trying to curb the president’s power to wage war, badgered the Commander in Chief.
 
Mullet capitulated, and presented at a news conference a plan to send 100 thousand troops to Greece to secure the Turkish border, and $5 billion in aid to NATO troops in Bulgaria.
 

Both Democrats and Republicans claimed it was not enough, but their hands were tied.
 
The aftermath of the 2013 blizzard, high oil prices, and the declining economic situation had shaken up the country all right, but toward isolationism, not war.

#

At the Santa Monica Library, I picked up a newly published memoir by a woman who fought in the French resistance during World War II.
 
Once I started it, I couldn’t put it down.
 

A number of things struck me.
 
First, the resistance fighters planned the dinners they shared as carefully as they planned their sabotage, gathering in advance the special ingredients they needed: a
Bresse
capon, a goat cheese, fresh peaches, a special sausage, a bottle of Beaujolais.
 
Second, the Vichy propaganda referred to the French resistance as ‘terrorists’.
 
It occurred to me this is how the Islamist radicals must view themselves—as freedom fighters.
 
Third, often the French resistance fighters had to try three, four, five times to carry out a single mission, and many of their missions failed.
 
Their failures did not discourage them.
 
And fourth, each resistance fighter had many names, many sets of identity papers—the name their comrades called them, the names they assumed for each mission, and their real names, which they never dared use.
 
None seemed to have a problem with such fluidity of personal identity, and even seemed to enjoy it.
 
I wondered what name they were called in their dreams.
 

These observations seemed terribly important to me, but I didn’t know why, and I found myself turning them over and over again in my mind.

#

In the last week of May the United Nations of Islam held a convention in Khartoum.
 
Islamic clerics from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Islamic Republic of Holland, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Chad, Eritrea, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia attended.
 
Their purpose was to select an Assembly of Experts, which would elect a caliph.

Many in the West assumed
Qasim
bin Laden would become caliph.
 
But the conservative
Wahabi
clerics of Saudi Arabia would not waver from tradition.
 
A caliph had to be an Islamic legal authority.
 
Qasim
bin Laden and his officers were notoriously undereducated.
 
Many Muslim clerics had been furious at Osama bin Laden’s presumption over the last twenty years to speak for the Islamic
umma,
the worldwide Islamic community, and were outraged at
Qasim
bin
Laden’s
nepotistic and despotic assumption of power.
 
He was a leader for destruction, not construction.
 
He presented no social or political program other than to demand an Islamic State.
 
They scorned his intelligence, and feared his popularity, the heroic myth he had created—that of a man of princely birth, who had sacrificed his fortune and his life for the salvation of Islam.
 
They saw him as a megalomaniac and opportunist.

Other candidates were proposed: the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia;
Al
Jazeera
’s
popular resident cleric Sheik
Yusuf
al-
Qaradawi
; Ayatollah Muhammad
Husayn
Fadlallah
, the Lebanese spiritual authority recognized by Hezbollah.

Talaat
Saleh
was finally chosen, a name pretty much unknown in the West.
 
Reporters around the globe scrambled to try to find out about him.
 
They discovered
Talaat
Saleh
was an imam from Egypt, head of Al-
Azhar
, the flagship institution for Islamic studies, which was considered by many to be the highest authority on Islamic teaching.

Saleh
proposed a caliphate organized somewhat like the government of Iran.
 
Each country would run as a republic under
Sharia
law.
 
A Guardian Council of twelve experts of
Sharia
law, half appointed by the Caliph, would approve electoral candidates to the Islamic Assembly or parliament, which would run the legislative body, elect a president, and elect half of the members of the Guardian Council.
 
The Guardian Council was to review all legislation from the Islamic Assembly to consider all bills for conformity to Islamic principles.
 
Councils responsible for local governments and implementation of national policy were to be elected by public vote.

Talaat
Saleh
chose to run the caliphate out of Medina.
 
He appointed
Qasim
bin Laden as general of the New Islamic Army.
 
However, bin Laden would no longer be allowed to speak out
as the leader of jihad.

Talaat
Saleh
soon showed himself to be a brilliant leader.
 
His religious conviction checked his ego; his decisions were strategic, wise, and fair; his modesty and virtue inspired millions.
 
A Sunni moderate,
Saleh
was conciliatory to Shiites.
 
He set a priority for diplomatic negotiations with the Shiite majorities in Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and a military alliance with Hezbollah.
 
His pragmatism and virtue made him dangerous.

Oil began to flow again, but not to the West.
 
Oil money paid for public works programs, construction of highways, and ensured supplies of strategic raw materials and food, all of which instilled loyalty throughout the Caliphate.
 
Most worrisome to many experts was the Caliphate’s new alliance with China, and the steady flow of oil one way, and military weapons the other way.
 
It was clear
Saleh
was building up the New Islamic Army, demanding a two-year mandatory military service from all eighteen-year old men.
 
The young populations of the UNI countries, particularly those in Africa newly freed from violence, corruption, and starvation, were eager to serve.
 

An army of millions.
 
Eager to die for Allah.

#

I headed down to the isolation unit around midnight.
 
Teagarden and I had gotten into the routine of watching a late night talk show, laughing together at the host’s snide jokes at President Mullet’s expense.
 
I pushed open his door.
 
The television wasn’t on.
 
In the dim glow of a night light, I saw an elderly white woman in his bed.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Nurse Bertha as I raced back to the nurses’ station.

“What happened to Mr. Teagarden?”
 

“He went home this afternoon.”

“Home?
 
Dr. Temple said he wanted to watch him for at least a week to make sure he stabilized.
 
He was scheduled for a kidney transplant.”

“I know, sweetheart.
 
I tried to talk him out of it, but he said his wife couldn’t visit
no
more ’cause gas was so expensive, and he’d rather be home with her.
 
If he gets a transplant, he’ll be in the hospital two, three more weeks.
 
Didn’t want her to be so stressed out.
 
Health insurance
don’t
pay for gas.”

“But he’ll die at home,” I said.
 
“He can’t stay on dialysis much longer.”

“That’s his choice.”