Eagleton forgot to mention a few things…
There is one particular, pressing problem with Eagleton’s incoherent rant: the problem is that, as in the past, he writes as if the only criticism there is to make of Islam and Islamism is ‘terrorism,’ meaning terrorism in the sense of blowing the legs off small children. That is not the only criticism there is to make of Islam and Islamism. Terrorism-as-bombing is not the only reason there is to be critical of Islam and especially of Islamism. How Eagleton can be unaware of that fact is hard to understand. Does he carefully avoid all news coverage? Does he have a special filter that excludes anything with the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Taliban’ or ‘women’ or ‘girls’ in it? If he doesn’t, I really don’t know how he manages to ignore the way Islamists and Islam treat women, not to mention gays and ‘apostates’ and ‘blasphemers’ and other rabble. It’s inexcusable, this blindness, this silence. It’s inexcusable of him to pretend to be giving a defense of Islam against the whatever-it-is of his selected bogeymen while never mentioning the plight of women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, northern Nigeria, Niger, Sudan, Ethiopia, Algeria, Palestine, Berlin, Paris, Birmingham, London, Toronto, Atlanta. It’s inexcusable of him to fail to mention ‘honour’ killings and forced marriage and FGM and beatings and purdah and blown-up schools and murdered teachers and acid thrown on girls going to school and all the rest of it.
There is no quarrel about how to treat those whose scorn for liberal values takes the form of blowing the legs off small children. They need to be locked up…Writers such as Martin Amis and Hitchens do not just want to lock terrorists away…There is also an honorable legacy of qualifying too-absolute judgments with an awareness of context: the genuine liberal is appalled by Islamist terrorism, but conscious of the national injury and humiliation that underlie it.
That’s it – that’s all he admits – ‘terrorism’ – by which he makes sure to let us know at the beginning he means only blowing legs off, he does not mean the terrorism of threatening girls with death if they keep going to school, of butchering girls who refuse a marriage or want to marry someone of their own choosing or get a job or wear jeans or refuse to wear a hijab, of yanking girls out of school and out of the country and marrying them off to a stranger. How dare he keep silent about all that? How dare he rant and rave at Hitchens and Grayling for not keeping silent about that?
Russell comments, as does Mick Hartley, as does Martin in the Margins.
And even when considering terrorism, we must be “conscious of the national injury and humiliation that underlie it.”
Another stupid thing Eagleton says:
“they are more preoccupied with freedom of expression than freedom from imperial rule”
In other words, they think individual rights are more important than nationalist movements. And Eagleton disagrees.
When did nationalism become left wing?
Eagleton works through careful choice of adjectives, by always leaving himself an escape hatch, and by inviting the reader to draw conclusions re which it is always open for Eagleton himself to disvow at any later time of his choice. Come into my parlour, I assure you there are no rotten floorboards…
This is classic pea and thimble trick: intellectual dishonesty and dissembling of a high order. All done while moving north, south, east and west in random order. Now you see him; now you don’t. Now you’re fooled; now you’re not. Now you’re not; now you’re not…
What has brought an intellectual nimble enough to score himself a university chair to this pass? What on Earth is he up to? Did someone spike his drink with methyl mercury at a literary soiree?
He alludes often enough to traditional political formations, and is only too happy to characterise his targets as traitors to the old leftist and liberal values.
That was standard procedure on the left and fairly easy until 9/11, for the bourgeois of the world had been on the wrong side of most of the battles since 1848. Then came the dilemma: citadels of capitalism – the Pentagon and the WTC – had been attacked, and GWB’s White House only narrowly saved. Retribution was swiftly organised: the so-called ‘so-called “War on Terror”‘ (SC2WoT for short.) Which side to support? The mediaevalist attackers, or the princes of modern capitalism? The likes of Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, or GWB and Blair?
Nick Cohen wrote a whole book about the floundering on the left brought on by that situation and its prequels. (Hitchens, Norman Geras and others had a bit of a say as well.) Terry Eagleton is merely the latest floundering example, unable to find a way out of this swamp he’s strayed into.
It looks to me that he’s settled for two bob each way, as the old gambling expression has it. (Though an open question is each way on what?) Here’s hoping he can hitch a ride on a passing hovercraft before an alligator gets him.
I’ve long thought it odd, that while a good proportion of the world’s population belong to cultures that at some point in recent history have experienced colonisation, only in the Islamic world did that experience result a sense of ‘humiliation’ so powerful that a systematic campaign of terrorism is, supposedly, the inevitable consequence. If Terry Eagleton wants a more “nuanced” view of Islamist worldview I’ll give him this: the humiliation in question is not that of the conquered but of the failed conquerors or rather of would be conquerors who believe that conquest is theirs by divine right. To see what your god has promised you in return for your submission snatched by the infidel must result in a high degree of cognitive dissonance. Where you insufficiently faithful? Did your god desert you? Is, heaven forbid, your god an illusion? None of course, are psychologically possible conclusions. Better believe that the failure of the divine was the result of your opponents treachery, a treachery that must not go unpunished and is to be punished with acts of incoherent violence.
Of course, taking the religious content of the Islamicist worldview seriously with all the nastiness that that reveals, rather than seeing Islam as a passive victim of western imperialism, is to “slander” Islam as a “blood cult”. Because attributing to non-western cultures the capacity for non-reactive violence is modern day equivalent of saying that Jews kill babies. Sinister bullshit indeed.
I’m not sure I get the outrage at the notion that we should understand the motivation of the terrorists, or at least their potential supporters.
If you look at the 20th Century, the Anglo-Irish conflict was pretty iconic – maybe not the largest, but significant nonetheless. Now the settlement, such as it is, was brought about by exactly the kind of compromise and understanding that is getting such curt dismissal here. I don’t expect you all to agree with such an approach, but you surely concede that it isn’t crazy to think that diplomacy and understanding might present a better road to peace than the alternatives?
Armando,
Understanding their motivation is important, but the likes of Eagleton offer it as an excuse. Whenever they mention the Taliban they are quick to stress how it is all the West’s fault really.
In Eagelton’s world-view, non-Westerners are entirely passive and innocent unless they have been corrupted by evil western imperialists. The reason he talks of terrorists being motivated by national injury and humiliation is because it is the only way he can make any sense of them.
Having to admit that non-Westerners are independently capable of violence would be psychologically devastating to him in the same way that admitting God’s non-existence would be to many Christians.
Is Eagleton’s error really something that can be pinned down into a political category? I read him as simply falling victim to the fallacy that goes “I hate the set of people who believe X – I hate the set of people who believe Y – therefore these two sets are identical.” As a result the categories of atheist and imperialist get confused in his mind. This is actually the same mistake that has lead people to believe that anti-war protestors supported Saddam, just with a different X and Y.
Ophelia – you ask “Does [Eagleton] have a special filter that excludes anything with the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Taliban’ or ‘women’ or ‘girls’ in it?
I think this sort of thinking is embedded in our language. To many people, especially the old fashioned religious, people mean men, and women as an afterthought. As Julian Baggini said: “By making the male the paradigm of the human, the female is inevitably relegated to second place.” …and hence invisible. (http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/badmovesprint.php?num=60)
In very mundane things, like NatgeoTV travel logs I notice that commentators like Bruce Feiler and Michael Palin talk about “the villagers”, “the people”, “the worshippers” – but the visuals show not a female in sight. My friends or family don’t even notice this until I point it out. Why? – because it is NORMAL.
Ah – but today writers are becoming sensitized, albeit with the awkward “he/she” “her/him”, or the easier neutral “they”. Progress! One small step for man, one big step for mankind.
Armando, Eagleton is saying a great deal more than just ‘that we should understand the motivation of the terrorists.’ Just for a start, what has understanding the motivation of the terrorists got to do with anathematizing Rushdie Hitchens Grayling Dawkins McEwan Amis? Have they all announced that we must not understand the motivation of the terrorists? I don’t think a single one of them has announced that.
For a bit more, as I mentioned, terrorism as blowing legs off is very far from being the only issue, yet Eagleton narrows the issue to that. This is a huge and dangerous mistake.
Mags – ah yes, the assumed male. A friend and I send each other examples of that on a regular basis. Sam Harris has a really bad case of it, so much so that I find him unreadable after awhile. It’s massively irritating, that kind of thing.
What you often get in the travel writing type of thing is stuff like ‘the villagers yak yak blah but the women’ –
duh.
I don’t know what else Martin Amis has written about Islam and Islamism, but I downloaded his Age of Horrorism last night from the Guardian (2006 – how did I miss this?) and read it as I was going off to sleep. It’s such a gentle piece of work. It really is. He takes Sayyid Qutb as the centre of his piece, and reflects on his rather overheated imagination, and how this all parlayed into a confired struggle to the death with the Great Satan, who, he explains, is really the seductive attractiveness of the West.
Which explained a lot to me. Why do people come to the West from Muslim countries, where they could live their lives ‘happily’ as Muslims (of course, this is not to speak of the women, no doubt, but even some of the women, I suspect, suddenly see the point too). They come because they are attracted, and when they get here the realise they have been seduced. Even those who have escaped incredibly dangerous situations, they realise that the blandishmnets of naked women – well, if you don’t over you face or your legs or your arms, you are naked, right? – and then they see what it was all about, how terrible it really is, and how much all these horrid kaffirs really deserve to be killed if they can’t see how horrible they are to ignore the commands of the Qu’ran.
Hey, now I get the idea, just a little. and this overheated kid who went to Greeley, Colorado, and was hanged by Nasser, is, gadelpus, the martyr at the centre of this global drama, that is playing itself out inevitably, now, with nuclear weapons somewhere backstage, just waiting for the epiphany of light when they go off.
What’s this got to do with Eagleton? Well, he hasn’t even begun to understand some of the things that Amis was saying in that blindingly revealing document. And out of this Eagleton has struggled to find a kind of tawdry Western imperialism, when, as Amis points out, Western imperialism is long past, and we are trying to stave off the inevitably imperialistic demands of Islamist Islamism. The motivation has been clear from the start. The motivation is the great seducer and its destruction, or the Great Satan, call it what you will.
And there they all are in their plenitude, dreaming imperialist dreams of conquest, and Eagleton thinks it is all about Dawkins and Harris and Amis and even Rushdie, and their supremacy, because they have seen through the Islamist disguise. Give me strength! He hasn’t come near to reading the signs of the times.
Has this droned on a bit? Well, I’m just breaking in a new keyboard. Totalled my keyboard this morning with a cup of coffee, and this one, ergonomic like the last one, sinks rather than bulges, and so it’s like typing in a dream world. If it doesn’t make sense, Ophelia, just trash it.
Eric: No, OB should not trash that post of yours under any circumstances.
I have not read the Amis piece, but I must look it up. However, going by your account, he has not told half of it. In the eyes of the fanatics in the hills of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, the purging has to begin in the cities of the Muslim world, where both western influence and heresy abound. To date, most of the victims of Islamism have been Muslims.
In my view, the most unappealing aspect of the holders of extreme beliefs is their desire always to remould the external world along the lines of their own mental construct of what it should be, in order that idea and reality may at long last coincide. Social diversity and variety they find most repugnant, which I suppose at base reflects a lack of confidence in their own belief structure.
One of whose most depressing features of the war in Afghanistan is the concern of the Islamist side to destroy any infrastructure that might benefit the local people, starting with basic services and proceeding from there. Building the country thus cannot really begin before military victory.
I know of a case of a Muslim diplomat’s wife who had a close but purely platonic friendship with an Australian woman, and confided her extreme reluctance to return to her home country; because here women can come and go as they please, dress pretty well as much as they like, step out in public unaccompanied by a male relative, and even (wait for it) drive cars.
Corrupted; totally corrupted.
There is another important point about religions that Professor Eagleton does not mention: there is no reason to think anything they say is true.
Well, Ian,
I’m not sure. It was marginally comprehensible, though I’m getting the hang of this keyboard now. As Roger says, there is an important thing about religions that Eagleton doesn’t mention: there’s no reason to think that anything they say is true. But more than that. There’s plenty of reason to think that it isn’t true, and mostly dangerous.
Going through the dream sequence of Amis’s article, The Age of Horrorism – and it is like a dream, because he weaves in the plot of a novella that he was writingat the time – one gets the distinct sensation that one has been through the dream before, and it was a nightmare: and yet, for people like Sayyid Qutb, who encountered America for all of six months, complaining about lawns and nurses who tried to seduce him, and who went to a ‘chapel hop’, at a church in Greeley, Colorado, in 1949 – and Greeley was dry! – and found it all so unbearably lustful and soaked in sex and sin – and who shrank from the seductiveness of the Devil that was only too apparent, and rushed back to Egypt, wrote the (or at least a) founding document of Islamism (I’m taking Amis’s word here, so far, though I think he had a precursor in India), locked in an Eyptian gaol, and was finally hanged by the secularist Nasser.
But that’s when the programme was all laid out, the war against the West, the condemnation of the half-hearted Islam of Muslims, the proxy of evil America (Israel, of course) planted at the heart of Muslim holy land, and so on.
I guess the point I wanted to make is that where has Eagleton been all these years that he hasn’t noticed? He hasn’t only failed to notice that it’s not only about suicide bombers, as Ophelia says, it’s about striking terror into the hearts of ordinary people, just like the Nazis, and about oppression of women, the war against ordinary human relationships, the glorification of death and violence, hatred of the other, a narrow sense of idiotic self-righteousness – and Eagleton attacks people who try to talk about things reasonably and with sense, one of whom was even condemned to death by the Islamist idiots that Eagleton defends.
That’s why Amis’s word is so poignant and appropriate: HORRORISM. It’s not just terrorism. It’s horrorism. And it’s time we called it that, and stopped (dare I say) ‘pussyfooting’ around, as though we have worlds enough and time. We don’t, and for those who are living under the horror, we should be deeply concerned.
A man is on jihad, and he text messages a divorce to his wife. That’s bad enough, because now she’s a very vulnerable person in a patriarchal society. But the man’s on jihad! Get that Terry? That’s what he’s doing. He didn’t write a book. He didn’t even give reasons. He texted his divorce. She couldn’t have got one had she gone to court, but he can divorce her with a Blackberry. But he’s on jihad, holy war. And Eagleton is concerned about some rational people and their arguments, and how supremecist they are! HORRORISM’S twin.
Eric: Eagleton is a thoughtless idiot. Just to make sure, I read several more articles of his online, and while he can be clever and witty, he’s confused. However, what would you call the invasions of Iraq and the continued NATO presence in Afghanistan (the original purpose of the invasion, to capture Osama Bin Ladin, could be justified), if not imperialism?
Interventionism, which is a different thing. Interventionism with perhaps some colonialist overtones in the sense that the goal was to change certain things (much for the better, in my view, and that of many people there), but not real imperialism; nobody wanted or wants to run Iraq or Afghanistan.
Eric: Update. I have now read the excellent Amis piece, and my last post requires a bit of revision.
“Two years ago I came across a striking photograph in a news magazine: it looked like a crudely cross-sectioned watermelon, but you could make out one or two humanoid features half-submerged in the crimson pulp. It was in fact the bravely circularised photograph of the face of a Saudi newscaster who had been beaten by her husband. In an attempted murder, it seems: at the time of his arrest he had her in the trunk of his car, and was evidently taking her into the desert for interment. What had she done to bring this on herself? In the marital home, that night, the telephone rang and the newscaster, a prosperous celebrity in her own right, answered it. She had answered the telephone. Male Westerners will be struck, here, by a dramatic cultural contrast. I know that I, for one, would be far more likely to beat my wife to death if she hadn’t answered the telephone. But customs and mores vary from country to country, and you cannot reasonably claim that one ethos is ‘better’ than any other.”
Also: “We may wonder how the Islamists feel when they compare India to Pakistan, one a burgeoning democratic superpower, the other barely distinguishable from a failed state. [Editorial blue pencil needed through 3 words there.] What Went Wrong? asked Bernard Lewis, at book length. The broad answer would be institutionalised irrationalism; and the particular focus would be the obscure logic that denies the Islamic world the talent and energy of half its people. No doubt the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male. But we can dwell on the memory of those images from Afghanistan: the great waves of women hurrying to school.”
Quite a deal of time diverted. But well worth it.
And consider, if nothing else, the utter gulf between the two samples of writing – the extreme muddiness of the one and the extreme clarity of the other. Amis isn’t futzing around or showing off; Amis wants you to see what he’s saying.
At this point, I entirely agree that no one wants to run Iraq. Rather, they want to run from Iraq. But remember the good old days of Rumsfeld and Paul Bremmer? They planned to run Iraq, but their plans didn’t function. Whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq bettered or tried to better the lives of the people of Iraq is irrelevant to whether the invasion was an act of imperialism or not. Imperialism often betters the lives of conquered people. In the specific case of Iraq, the results of the invasion are so disastrous that I doubt that the lives of anyone have been bettered, but surely, British imperialism in India or U.S. imperialism in Puerto Rico bettered the lives of those who were colonized.
If you doubt that the lives of anyone have been bettered by the removal of Saddam Hussain you must have a rather rosy view of life under Saddam. Here is something about what Iraqis think about their situation:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/03_march/16/iraq.shtml
Bob: I assure you that I don’t have a rosy view of life under Saddam Hussein. However, if one calculates, first, the amount of Iraqi dead since the invasion, the U.S. and U.K. troops killed or wounded, the growth of radical Islamism in Iraq, the possibility that Iraq will degenerate into a failed state or break up into three mini-states, one under the control of Iran after the U.S. withdraws its troops, then the invasion appears to have been a mistake. I will look at the link. Thank you.
“But remember the good old days of Rumsfeld and Paul Bremmer? They planned to run Iraq”
I said nobody wants to. They planned to run it once they found, to their idiot surprise, that they couldn’t just boot Saddam and then leave – but they didn’t want to. What they wanted to do was just basically work magic, which is presumably why they did such a fuckawful job of planning.
Neither of us know what Rumsfeld or whoever was in charge wanted and Rumsfeld himself may not have known what he wanted, given the way they messed up, but we can agree, I hope, that planning and anticipating possible outcomes was not their forte nor was knowledge of Iraqi culture and society. Perhaps, as you say, their thinking or lack of thinking had something to do with a faith in magic.
Well your question was what is all this if not imperialism. I think it’s much more of a clusterfuck than imperialism. No we don’t know what they wanted in the sense of knowing what was in their minds (if anything) but there is plenty of reason to think that imperialism is not what they were even attempting. They were attempting some kind of hey-presto cheap quick and easy transformation. It was in no sense in their interest to attempt to establish an empire in Iraq.
But I can certainly agree that the world has seldom seen such a stellar example of incompetent planning and anticipation. Clusterfuck of epic proportions.
‘Imperialism’ would if anything be too flattering a label for them.
Having looked up the term “clusterfuck” in Google, I agree. Thank you for adding such a colorful expression to my staid English vocabulary.
Amos this blogger from Iraq would probably disagree with your view of Iraq,s future prospects as would most of the bloggers from Iraq that I read, they all seem to be saying that the situation is improving.
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/ or http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/
Amos, OB: We now know the result of US-led intervention in Iraq. We can also say that the overwhelming bulk of Iraqi casualties are down to Iraqi vs Iraqi (Sunni vs Shia) violence, mainly due to use of human and roadside bombs. The removal of Saddam allowed the old Iraqi civil war to resume; he had kept the lid on it by siding with the Sunnis and holding the Shias off them.
What we do not and cannot ever know is the result of non-intervention. It’s a counterfactual.
For those wishing ‘we’ or alternatively ‘they’ had stayed out, one possible scenario under that condition is fairly straight forward. Iran builds WMD to counter both the Israelis and assumed Iraqi WMD, which Saddam was behaving as if he had. Iraq gets its WMD own anyway, to make parity with its old foe Iran and maintain its supremacy in the Arab world. (Both Iraq and Iran have oil revenues enough to pay for them and face no serious threat of coalition invasion.)
The Middle East then faces the possibility of a three cornered dogfight of local WMD toting powers, with the additional likelihood of Saudi Arabia becoming a client state of Saddam’s, and the latter the Stalin of the Middle East and in control of abou 60% of the world’s oil. Israel is forked on the chessboard between the WMD of Iraq and the WMD of Iran, with a strong temptation to take both out in pre-emptive action, if necessarily together.
But we will never know now.
Ian I think a far more likely senario is that Iraq would have sunk into a sort of Zimbabwe like state. Although the santions were extremely imperfect they were having a devestating effect on the Iraqi economy. I think that eventualy had it been left alone it would have probably fallen apart with a far more bloody outcome than the post invasion one.
Richard: Maybe. But the French and the Chinese were making their own arrangements on the side with Saddam. The sanctions setup was falling apart.
The present quiet situation in Iraq is only courtesy of the Iranians, who look like coming out overall winners.
Richard – are you suggesting that Zimbabwe’s present mess is attributable to sanctions?
I genuinely confused about Iraq. Maybe you could do a post on the subject, OB, so we could get different opinions. I was opposed to the invasion, but on the other hand, from what I know, a U.S. troop withdrawal will plunge the country into a bloody civil war and chaos. So, should the U.S. pull its troops out? Does the U.S. have a responsibility to keep order in a land where the people who live there can’t keep order? The results of a U.S. pullout would be worse than Viet Nam because in effect, by withdrawing its troops from Viet Nam, the U.S. handed the country over to a dictatorial, but orderly government, that of the Communists, who proceeded to develop the economy of the country, without political freedom to be sure. However, I’m Hobbesian enough to prefer order and a stable economy without political freedom to endless civil war and sectarian terrorism.
What we do not and cannot ever know is the result of non-intervention. It’s a counterfactual.
This is quite a bit like saying we cannot ever know if there’s a God. It’s true, but irrelevant. We can amass enough information and analyze it to come up with a well-supported and functionally useful answer. Plenty of experts do have informed opinions of what would have happened in Iraq. And most of those who have studied the region in any depth are vehemently of the view that we should never have invaded.
amos, god no, I wouldn’t dream of doing a post on Iraq. I’m far too confused about it myself, and besides there are 87 million places where one can discuss Iraq, I don’t think this needs to be one of them.
Oh and don’t thank me for clusterfuck, that’s the Daily Show. I first heard it from Sam (Samantha) Dornfeld, an administrator at CFI – she had worked for Colbert before the CFI job. Then later I heard Stewart saying it (with bleep, that is) and said ‘Oh, that’s where Sam got that!’ Most amusing. Sam’s way hip. I’m not.
Jenavir: That’s very interesting. I wouldn’t mind reading what those experts have to say, if you could supply me with a reference or two to what you think are the best of them. Preferably links to online ones.
Actually, a discussion with other confused people about Iraq would be far more profitable than the usual discussion between hawks and doves, but I respect your discussion.
Jenavir and Amos this makes intresting reading, it is written by a young Iraqi who would probably disagree with that expert opinion. http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/search?q=days+I+shall+never+forget
The Colonel has a far better understanding of the so-called existential threat that Islam poses to the west.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/04/policy-in-afghanistan.html#more
Richard: there are always natives who are happy with a new colonial regime. Especially those being paid by the Iranian secret service. On the whole, though, do you really believe that Iraq is better off now? Come on.
You all know my skepticism about interventionism, which almost always leads to horrific pain and suffering. And to claim that Britain’s colonial rule BENEFITED India-there’s quite a few knowledgeable people who would dispute that.
Brian M: Just out of interest, do you think outside intervention (by say South Africa) in Zimbabwe would be justified in order to get rid of Mugabe?
(And of course do you think non-intervention worked out well in Rwanda and is working out well now in Darfur – but we’ve been round and round this. BrianM has a formula and he doesn’t let difficulties interfere with it.)
Brian there are several hundred bloggers in Iraq are they all agents of Iran or the C.I.A ? Do I think Iraq is better off now? absoloutly yes I do, the people now have the chance to shape their own destiny.
Also you could email your thoughts to the blogger I linked to, he will answer you although you wouldnt like his answer.