Purity and Corruption
A few more salient comments. From the Iranian commentator Amir Taheri:
But sorry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you.
Specific enough.
With the advent of Islam all previous religions were “abrogated” (mansukh), and their followers regarded as “infidel” (kuffar). The aim of all good Muslims, therefore, is to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates Man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.
That’s it, you see. The part about regulating all our moves in every department to the last detail. We know that from the Taliban. No music, no kites, no Bamiyan Buddhas; for women, no leaving the house, no school, no work, no medical care, no nothing. Puritanism, in fact. Life as nightmare.
But what if non-Muslims refuse to take the right path?…Some believe that the answer is dialogue and argument until followers of the “abrogated faiths” recognise their error and agree to be saved by converting to Islam. This is the view of most of the imams preaching in the mosques in the West. But others, including Osama bin Laden…believe that the Western-dominated world is too mired in corruption to hear any argument, and must be shocked into conversion through spectacular ghazavat (raids) of the kind we saw in New York and Washington in 2001, in Madrid last year, and now in London.
Well, we just won’t be converted, that’s all. We’ll stay mired in our corruption. Lovely beautiful wonderful corruption. We will not give it up.
Johann Hari in the Independent:
There is an awareness here – although not yet in the rest of the country – that the Bin Ladenists who planned these massacres despise democratic, non-violent Muslims who choose to live in the West as much as they despise the rest of us. Anybody who tells you these bombers are fighting for the rights of Muslims in Iraq, occupied Palestine or Chechnya should look at the places they chose to bomb. Aldgate? The poorest and most Muslim part of the country. Edgware Road? The centre of Muslim and Arab life in London and, arguably, Europe.
Which is why Tariq Ali’s assertion that ‘The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world’ is sheer cant.
This is not a fight between Muslims and the rest of us. It is a civil war within Islam, between democratic Muslims and Wahhabi fundamentalists who want to enslave or kill them.
Victory to democratic corruption.
“Which is why Tariq Ali’s assertion that ‘The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world’ is sheer cant.”
I don’t completely agree with Ali’s statement, but it doesn’t seem inconsistent with Hari’s point. If al-Qaeda believes they’re being occupied by Western crusaders bent on destroying their religion (which is the line they use to recruit potential terorists), Muslims living in Western countries would be supporting that occupation through taxes and whatnot (that logic was used by Hezbollah to justify killing Israelis and I think has been used by other Palestinian groups). In this case, those Muslims would be considered traitors, arguably a worse offense to al-Qaeda than what they perceive Westerners as doing to them. Since attacking them specifically doesn’t lessen the impact of such attacks from our point of view, they don’t lose anything. So, it seems completely consistent to me.
Well, except that that’s not what that sentence of Ali’s says. My point was a fairly narrow one about that particular sentence. He doesn’t say, for instance, ‘the violence being inflicted on the religion of the people of the Muslim world’ – just the people of the Muslim world. I think that is inconsistent with what Hari says. But your interpretation is plausible, and interesting.
I don’t think your objection is relevant, but that’s probably my fault for not being clear about my point. It doesn’t matter if al Qaeda sees us as attacking their religion or as attacking them directly, the logic is the same: Western Muslims are supporting it and are traitors because of that.
“There are two appropriate words here, that are re-emerging into use …
The first, was used by Salman Rushdie, and is:
Appeasement.”
Although one would hope that fear of appearing to engage in appeasment wouldn’t stop people from doing things that should be done, even though the terrorists would also like them done. Palestine comes to mind.