Al-Quds Al-Sharīf, Al-Aqsa, and the Ibn al-‘Alqamī of our Time

Throughout Islamic history, treachery in the ummah has caused more damage than any external factor. A pertinent example here is that of the Caliphate in Baghdad. The Caliph Musta’ṣim (d. 656 AH) had appointed Muwayyad al-Dīn Muhammad bin al-‘Alqamī as the prime minister. Ibn al-‘Alqamī, who had secretly allied with the Mongols, led changes that resulted in a dwindled standing army, and soldiers’ allowances and promotions withheld. Islam and the Muslims had been reduced to a token, helpless status.

When the Mongols descended, a devastation was wrought through the Islamic world the likes of which it had never experienced before. Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī records that Hulagu received the Caliph in his tent whilst Ibn al-‘Alqamī arranged for the Islamic scholars and dignitaries to be in attendance to witness a purported agreement between the two. All were put to the sword.[1]

Ibn al-‘Alqamī, along with other traitors, facilitated the destruction of the Islamic world.

History such as this is worth recalling as we observe the replete violations taking place in and around Masjid Al-Aqsa, the destruction being wrought in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing taking place in Sheikh Jarrah. At the time of writing, the death toll in the Gaza has risen to 248, including 66 children and 39 women. At least 1,948 people have been injured. The Zionist forces have violently attacked Masjid Al-Aqsa twice.

Whilst much of the focus has been the Zionist entity and its juvenile belligerency, the question we wish to focus on here is, why do the Zionists feel so emboldened that it feels it can shred the hearts over 1.8 billion Muslim repeatedly, with impunity? Why has the already arrogant Zionist state bolstered its arrogance to the extent that it can mock the Muslims using verses of the Qur’ān?

Of course, Israel has the backing of Western governments. US President Joe Biden’s administration has approved $735 million weapons sale to Israel, repeatedly blocked attempts to reach a ceasefire to prevent the killing of Palestinians, whilst making vacuous announcements to help fund redevelopment in Gaza. Meanwhile, the UK spinelessly and amorally remained silent when worshippers in Al-Aqsa were being attacked by Zionist forces and forced evictions of Palestinian families were taking place in Shaykh Jarrah, but remembered to play their broken record on loudspeaker to “condemn Hamas”, and profess the occupying forces illusory right to self-defence, when the Palestinians eventually responded with rocket fire.

However, this has always been the case. The heightened, maniacal zeal with which Al-Aqsa is attacked twice – once triggering the set of events and then again after agreeing a ceasefire – points to other treacherous actors inside the Islamic world.

To better understand what is happening in the Middle East – and indeed beyond this – one needs to understand the machinations that have taken place between the Arab rulers such as Mohammad bin Zayed (MBZ) of UAE, and the Zionist state over the past several years.

MBZ

In 2011, Mohammed Morsi became Egypt’s first democratically elected leader. Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Sisi were not happy with this development. For Israel, it was Morsi’s potential support for Hamas through the common thread of the Muslim Brotherhood. But the Muslim Brotherhood is something that, for obvious reasons, also did not sit well with the Arab leaders. MBZ had reportedly called US defence secretary Chuck Hagel and pointedly told him that the Muslim Brotherhood was “the most dangerous element afoot in the Middle East today,” backing the military takeover that occurred in 2013. UAE’s ambassador to the US, Yusuf Otaiba, posited UAE as the antidote to “extremism” and lobbied US officials to back the dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The military takeover by Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi was brutal. In response to the ensuing protests against the coup, which saw the largest sit-in in Rabaa al-Adaweya Square in the northern Cairo district of Nasr City, Egyptian security forces systematically killed more than 1500 people over multiple mass killings.

Sisi needed a PR fix. In 2014, it was reported that Tony Blair, who is close to MBZ and who shares his view on the Muslim Brotherhood as “extremists”, provided his expertise to polish Sisi’s image and reform the Egyptian economy under a plan that had been paid for by the UAE. Indeed, in this regard, the UAE formed a shadow government in Egypt, and continues to sustain it with billions of dollars of support.

Three years later, Otaiba was selling both Sisi and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to Project for the New American Century signatory Elliot Abrams, again, as the solution to terrorism.

The aligning interests on the Muslim Brotherhood were bolstered with long posited alignment on Iran. According to a 2009 Wikileaks cable from Israeli Foreign Ministry official Yacov Hadas to the Gulf States (including UAE), the “Gulf Arabs believe in Israel’s role because of their perception of Israel’s close relationship with the U.S. but also due to their sense that they can count on Israel against Iran”. Iran’s nuclear programme was required to centre the discussion when considering a trilateral US-Israel-GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) partnership.

Interestingly, according to the cable, it was suggested that the Palestine-Israel issue should not be the sole consideration: “it should not be the sum total of Israel’s relations with the Arab World.” This latter aspect is particularly relevant when we come to shine a light MBZ and Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) view of Palestine.

Pertinent at this point is that the UAE was already engaged in “under the table” trade and security deals with Israel, including the implementation of an Israeli “internet of things”-based mass surveillance system in Abu Dhabi which was approved by MBZ. The diversification of interests governing relations with Israel was already happening under MBZ.

Trump and Kushner

With the ascendancy of Donald Trump as US President and the introduction of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, what was occurring behind the scenes was formalised through what is now known as the “Abraham Accords” (discussed further below). Whilst much has been made by Trump as the man behind the wheeling and dealing, it appears Trump has been simply regurgitating MBZ’s view of the Middle East.

According to Hubbard, MBZ had already spelled out his position to several American officials at his mansion in McLean, Viginia, in 2015.[2] Otaiba met with Kushner and “struck up a friendship that allowed Otaiba to pass along the Emirati view of the Middle East”. This view saw Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood as the key threats.[3]

Kushner, it should be noted, is close (perhaps a little too close) to both Israel and the Netanyahus:

“Kushner had little experience with the broader Middle East, but knew a lot about Israel. His relatives had donated to Jewish causes, and when he was young, his father had paid Benjamin Netanyahu tospeak in New Jersey a number of times. The long time Israeli prime minister was so close with the Kushners, in fact, that Jared once gave up his bedroom so Netanyahu could sleep in his bed.”[4]

By late 2015, MBZ had posited the “outside-in-plan” on Palestine to American diplomats: UAE, combined with a “new Saudi leadership” could bring the Palestinians around to some new agreement.  This, as it turns, would become Trump’s “deal of the century”, which we will turn to later.

Following closely to what Hadas had stated in the 2009 Wikileaks cable in terms of multiplying the planes of relations with Israel, UAE deepened its ties with Israel.

In 2017, Otaiba’s hacked emails showed that UAE was growing its relationship with the pro-Israel, neoconservative think tank called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). The FDD’s positions have “closely tracked those of the Likud party and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—not just on the Iran deal, but on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the desirability of a two-state solution.”

The think tank has also been funded by Sheldon Adelson, a friend of Netanyahu, AIPAC financier, and someone who has organised the suppression of pro-Palestinian activism.  The emails showed scheduled meetings between the FDD and UAE officials, including MBZ, to discuss UAE policies on Iran and associated policies including, “political, economic, military, intelligence, and cyber tools.”

The Sell-Out of the Century

MBZ’s outside-in-approach to Palestine emerged fully in January 2020, with the Trump administration touting their Middle East “peace plan” as the “deal of the century”. The deal, which only demonstrated Kushner’s Likudnik thinking, was roundly rejected as a farce.

The disarmed “Palestinian state” consisted of separated enclaves connected by tunnels and bridges operated under Israeli oversight, with airspace and Palestinian border security controlled by the Zionists. This was to be conditional on Palestinians accepting Israel’s right to conduct “security operations” in purported Palestinian State territories. Meanwhile, 87% of the West Bank territory currently stolen by the Israelis would be annexed to the Zionist state and Palestinian communities living in Israel would be transferred into the Palestinian State territories. Palestinian refugees would have to abdicate their right of return.

To cap off the stupidity, the plan further proposed that Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel, and Palestinians could make up their own capital in the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, 1.6km east of the Old City of Jerusalem, and name it “Al-Quds”.

This was no peace plan. This was religious, territorial, and cultural cleansing. To borrow David Fromkin’s book title, it was a “peace” to end all peace.

And the UAE has been on the ground doing what it can to surreptitiously facilitate Kushner’s plan.

In 2018, the veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Ereket said that the so-called “deal” was already being implemented. This seemed to be affirmed by a 2019 Al-Jazeera investigation. Jewish settlers are feverishly trying to buy their way into ethnic cleaning East Jerusalem, with staunch resistance from Palestinians. Al-Jazeera, however found that the UAE, with help from corrupt Palestinian Authority officials, was circumventing this Palestinian resistance by acting as a middleman to sell Palestinians homes to Jewish settlers.

If this is not betrayal of the highest order, then nothing is.

At this point, it is worth pointing out that Kushner’s proposal did not only receive full financial support and backing from MBZ. This support and backing also came from MBS.

“Israelis are not killing Saudis”

Anyone even remotely keeping an eye on developments in Saudi Arabia will know that MBS is not exactly divergent from what has been thus far outlined about MBZ. His modernisation programme closely imitates what MBZ is doing.

This is not surprising at all given MBS is MBZ’s protégé, with the former absorbing the latter’s view of the Middle East.[5]

In 2015, when MBZ had invited American officials to a lunch at his mansion in Virginia, he made it clear he was backing MBS against MBS’s cousin and then Saudi crown-prince, Mohammed bin Nayef. As Hubbard says, “MBZ was personally taking MBS under his wing as the future of Saudi Arabia”.[6]

During 2015/6, when Otaiba was proposing the UAE view on the Middle East and the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, he also promoted MBS “as the future of Saudi Arabia”, stating to Kushner that he was “incredibly impressive”.[7] MBZ flew into New York in December 2016 for talks with Kushner about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. According to Hubbard, MBZ also put in a good word for MBS.

Palestine, quite simply, is not on the list of concerns for MBS. If it is, then it is because he views the issue as a hindrance for his broader objectives. There is no “emotional attachment” with Palestine, here. According to Hubbard, Rob Malley, a senior White House official in the Obama administration said that MBS considered the Palestine issue an “annoying irritant—a problem to be overcome rather than a conflict to be fairly resolved.”[8]

In contrast, for MBS, “Israel is not our enemy” because “Israelis are not killing Saudis”.[9] Rather, the Zionist entity is seen by MBS as an opportunity that can only be fully realised if there is some type of “peace plan” devised. Asked about how he viewed Israel in terms of interests in 2018, MBS stated quite bluntly:

“Israel is a big economy compared to their size and it’s a growing economy, and of course there are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and countries like Egypt and Jordan.”

“Peace”, would be vehicle for more open economic and security relationships with Israel, driving the Zionist stake deeper into the heart of Islam. And it seems the disgraceful “deal of the century” was the “peace” pitch.

In 2019, it was reported by the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar that MBS had explained the details of the Kushner “peace plan” to President Abbas and proceeded to offer him $10 billion over ten years to accept it.

Abbas reportedly refused.

Abraham Accords

The 2020 Abraham Accords formalised the tight relationship that had been groomed by Israel and secretly delivered by MBZ. Soon after the Accord’s signing before the White House, it was ratified by the Zionist government.

The Accord has been largely promoted as “normalisation” of relations, and in the words of UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, a “Peace Accord”. However, for Muslims, the situation is an abnormal cover to further private interests and protect despotic rule, all at the treacherous expense of the Palestinians.

When Abdullah bin Zayed gave his speech about the Accord, he gave his thanks to Netanyahu for “halting the annexation of the Palestinian territories”. This was used in an attempt to placate concerns that deals were being made whilst the Palestinian issue remained.

Indeed, this was confirmed by Joel C. Rosenberg, the editor-in-chief of http://www.allarab.news. Rosenberg said MBZ had told him in 2018 that the “normalisation” with Israel was closer than expected and stopping the annexation was nothing but a reason “for presenting this agreement to the Arab people”.

This is precisely why when Kushner was asked how long Israel would cease its annexations, he replied:

“Somewhere between a long time and a short time. That’s what temporary means”.

The US ambassador to Israel David Melech Friedman also further clarified that the issue “could be revisited”. From the outset then, this condition was a ruse to sell the abnormalisation of relations with Israel to the wider Muslim populace, whilst protecting Netanyahu’s reputation in the Zionist entity.

The effects of the deal became manifest in the same year, with MBZ following Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw all funding of UNRWA – the agency supporting Palestinian refugees who were displaced by Zionists during the 1948 war – and massively reducing its funding.

The Israelis knew full well what such a deal would mean for them. Netanyahu boasted on Twitter saying, “This is the approach I have driven for years: making peace is possible without turning over territories, without dividing Jerusalem, without endangering our future.”

The abnormalisation sends a message of Zionist impunity, which has only been demonstrated to maximum effect in recent weeks. At the same time, the Accord establishes a portal for Zionist influence into the rest of the Arab world and beyond.

In all of this, the Palestinian position is drastically weakened, leaving the beleaguered Palestinians without any political leverage.

MBS and Abnormalisation?

Whilst other treacherous Arab states (Sudan, Oman, Bahrain, and Morocco) have allowed their countries to be prostituted to Israel’s agenda, MBS’s Saudi Arabia remains the exception. For the likes of Kushner (see video of Kushner, here), Saudi is the golden prize for Israel, as the country is the “custodian of the two holy sites”. Abnormalisation between Israel and Saudi, the theory appears to go, would mean broader acceptance across the Muslim world. But thus far, such a formal tie has not been forthcoming, mainly due to MBS’s fear of fatal backlash.

The reality, however, is that MBS, like MBZ, has furtively fostered close ties with Israel.

Security cooperation (and hiring Israeli hackers to spy on dissidents) with Israel, courtesy of MBZ, is already an open secret. However, this is not the only type of underhanded cooperation taking place.

MBS’s Vision 2030 seeks to reduce economic dependency on oil through diversification, economic reform and the building of a tech hub city called Neom (Tabuk province, near Egypt/Israel). As part of these initiatives, Saudi has been working with Israelis through its private sector on “all kinds of cooperation on water, energy, ag-tech, foodtech”. As already outlined above, for MBS, these are just some of the interests he shares with the Zionist entity at the expense of the Palestinians.

Diplomatic relations between Saudis and Israelis have also continued under the radar.

In late 2020, the Israelis leaked information about a meeting between MBS and Netanyahu in Neom city, much to Saudi irritation. In the same year, MBS reportedly told Haim Saban that if he were to establish formal relations with Israel, he would be “killed by Iran, Qatar and my own people.” Whilst much of the reporting focused on this, the real question to be asked is why MBS was meeting someone like Saban in the first place.

As covered elsewhere, Saban, whose sole focus is Israel, has funded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (now renamed Tony Blair – Institute for Global Change), which advocates draconian, anti-Islam counter-extremism policies. In the past, Saban effectively argued for a suspension of civil liberties when he called for the profiling of Muslim immigrants (he later claimed he “misspoke”). He has also previously joined with Sheldon Adelson (financier of the neocon FDD think-tank courted by Otaiba in 2017) on pro-Israel causes.  Adelson has declared that Palestinians are “an invented people.”

Quite the individual to be having a banter with.

Formal recognition or not, MBS is doing in private what MBZ is now doing in public.

A Global Attack on the Ummah

The situation briefly sketched out above is bad enough, but it is certainly not the only attack vector against Muslim ummah emerging from MBZ.

Despite MBS fronting the war in Yemen – a human catastrophe which has cost 233,000 lives, 3000 of which are children – it was MBZ who first sought to sell the war to Washington. MBZ’s hand has startlingly been behind Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal crackdown in Syria: in 2012, MBZ agreed to provide $3 million to the Syrian regime to recommence fighting in Idlib which was the subject of a ceasefire at the time. In 2020, it was reported that the UAE was not only financing the Syrian dictator but providing logistical support and training to the Syrian regime’s intelligence officers who are thought to be behind the torture and murder of more than 100,000 detainees.

In the South Asian region, MBZ has been extending and deepening his tentacles of support to the supremacist Hindutva Modi government with pacts and oil deals – the same government that continues to subjugate the Muslims of Kashmir and fosters a climate in which Muslims are lynched on mere accusations of eating cow meat.

The same seems to be happening with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in Bangladesh. Earlier this year, Al-Jazeera’s Investigative Unit revealed that Bangladesh had purchased Israeli surveillance equipment in 2018, whilst Bangladeshi military intelligence officers were trained in Hungary by Israeli intelligence experts. Then, in 2019, reports surfaced that $10 billion worth of investment had been pledged by UAE investors to help fuel the economic growth of Bangladesh.

The effect is the materialisation of what Fluer Hassan-Nahoum – Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and co-founder of the of the UAE – Israel Business Council – stated when the Abraham Accords were announced in October 2020:

“On the Israeli side… the UAE can be a gateway to the East…”

Soon after this year’s destruction of Gaza, Bangladesh lifted the ban on travel to Israel.

Recent reports indicate a similar pattern occurring in Indonesia.

Turning to the US and Europe, both MBZ and MBS have taken advantage of the neocon War on Terror language of “fighting terrorism” to fuel the “normalisation” of anti-Muslim policies in the West. This ultimately helps justify, or at least deflect their own domestic repression, murdering and torture.  

UAE, Saudi and Egypt all have made it their central strategic plank to blame “ideology” (be it Sunni or Shi’i) and promote deformation of Islam (as was the case with Sisi in 2015) much to the affection of the far right and warmongering US neoconservatives who posit Islam as the problem.

As a Foreign Policy article notes,

“Arab propagandists claim there is an inherent connection between so-called political correctness and a tendency to downplay ideologies that lead to terrorism—claims that are seized on by Western conservatives to legitimize their own arguments.”

This chimes with the neocon playbook. Douglas Murray, for example, wrote over a decade and half ago:

“Cowed by political correctness, Dutch reporters stated not that the groups were Islamists, but that they were “Moroccans” as if their nationality and not their religion was the nub of the matter.”[10]

A response focussing on national identity was linked by Murray to political correctness, whilst focusing on the Islamic identity was the solution in the finest Clash of Civilisations tradition. What this narrative has enabled, of course, is a legitimisation of anti-Muslim discrimination through securitisation.

However, consorting with neocons and promoting neocon narratives on Muslims is only the beginning.

Whilst UAE’s fingerprints are all over the rejuvenation of Marine LePenn’s far-right party in France, MBS has been courting the far-right bloc of the European Parliament.

In the UK context, it is worth recalling that the UAE was behind the 2015/6 Muslim Brotherhood “review” declaring them “extremists”. In 2016, it was also revealed that the UAE paid a London-based public relations firm connected to an associate of David Cameron millions of pounds to lead attacks in the UK against Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other opponents of the Gulf state. Those connected to the PR firm who were hell-bent on portraying the Brotherhood as “extremists”, were passing information to the discredited Islamophobic journalist, Andrew Gilligan, who duly churned them out into his propaganda articles.

The image that comes into focus shows MBZ, and his ventriloquised props in the form of MBS et al, are not only granting Israel a pass at the expense of Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa, but also have a repressive hand in the constricting state of Muslims globally.

Concluding Remarks

“Peace deals” are meant to establish some semblance of stability in the region. However, how can stability in a region be maintained when you covet and nurture a state that behaves likes a psychotic murderer hell-bent on destruction who has been handed a stash of high-powered weapons?

Whether it is lobbing stun grenades and firing rubber bullets at worshippers inside the Al-Aqsa masjid, or dropping bombs onto one of the most densely populated pieces of land on earth. Israel, in every sense, is a terrorist state.

But what if such a terrorist state now also appears to be growing its nuclear arsenal?

According to the Guardian, the Zionist entity is expanding its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear arsenal. Maintaining the trend of hypocrisy, there are zero demands by the West for Israel to open its nuclear programme for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This situation only adds to the threat posed to the Muslim world from whom Al-Quds is being stolen. Due to the conniving conspiracies of Mohammed Bin Zayed that have thus far only reinforced Israel, Palestine, Al-Aqsa, and Muslims generally are more vulnerable than they have ever been in recent history.

UAE’s collusion with the US and the Zionist entity under the guise of “normalisation” has resulted in a chain of further “normalisations” by Bahrain, Sudan, Oman, and Morocco.

Whilst the aims of these Arab states are materialistic, Israel has got what it has always pined for.

As Gaza was being bombarded; as the Palestinians resisted their own ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah; as Al-Aqsa was being violated by Zionist gangs; as Palestinian children were being arrested; these Arab states remained muzzled. Au contraire, in what appeared to be a state-backed response according to the Guardian, the hashtag “Palestine is not my cause” circulated in the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait during the attacks in Gaza.

Yet the Sacred Sanctuary continues to be attacked post-ceasefire, underwriting the view that the Kushner “peace plan” is already being implemented on the ground.

The duplicitous treachery reaches its pinnacle with MBZ’s latest hypocrisy-laden performance.  The man who was co-conspiring to hand Al-Aqsa on a platter to the Zionists and eject the Palestinians from their own land, is now offering to play a role in peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. As Allah says,

“When it is said to them, “Do not spread disorder on the earth”, they say, “We are only putting things right.” Beware, it is, in fact, they who spread disorder, but they are not aware of it.” (Al-Qur’ān, 2:12)

However, there is a hidden wisdom in how the situation in Palestine has reached its zenith in the month of Ramadan, for nothing occurs without Divine Decree. These schemes are well within the Plan of Allah.

Muslim globally are placing aside their squabbles aside and asserting their spiritual link to Masjid Al-Aqsa. A loud message is being sent to both the Zionists and their collaborators that Al-Quds is not just a piece of land that can be traded or colonised, but an embedded part of the hearts of over a billion Muslims.

Those who have embarked on the Emirati ship will find it sinking at the first sight of a Palestinian Intifada (in shā’Allah). Until then, the Muslim world needs to know who is at the centre of the conspiracy to harm the Muslim world.

The turmoil around Al-Aqsa has revealed the ropes that tie down a tent constituted of connected agendas and events. Palestinian men, women and children, and the broader ummah that is facing “counter-extremism” agendas and deformation of Islam projects that ultimately seek to separate the centrality Al-Quds from our hearts, are being led into this tent by the Ibn al-‘Alqamī of our time: Mohammed bin Zayed.

“O you who believe, do not take My enemies and your enemies for friends, expressing love with them, while they have rejected the Truth that has come to you, expelling the Messenger and your selves (from Makkah) merely because you have faith in Allah who is your Lord, if you have set out to do Jihād (struggle) in My way, and to seek My pleasure. You express love with them secretly, while I know what you have concealed and what you have revealed. Any of you who does this has missed the straight path.” (Al-Qur’ān, 60:1)

“Allah does not forbid you as regards those who did not fight you on account of faith, and did not expel you from your homes, that you do good to them, and deal justly with them. Surely Allah loves those who maintain justice. Allah forbids you only about those who fought you on account of faith, and expelled you from your homes, and helped (others) in expelling you, that you have friendship with them. Those who develop friendship with them are the wrongdoers.” (Al-Qur’ān, 60:8-9)

And they had planned their plan, but with Allah is [recorded] their plan, even if their plan had been [sufficient] to do away with the mountains. (Al-Qur’ān, 14:46)

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Footnotes

[1] Nadwī, H. A., Saviours of Islamic spirit, 1:248-256

[2] Hubbard, B., MBS – The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman, p.101

[3] Ibid., p.131.

[4] Ibid. p.130.

[5] Ibid., p.148.

[6] Ibid., p.101.

[7] Ibid., p.131.

[8] Ibid., p.254.

[9] Ibid., p.103.

[10] Murray, D., Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, p.205.