Spotting violence
Timothy Garton Ash gets it wrong, I think.
He gets it wrong in one rather specific way.
In the form “Islamofascism”, and with the added spice of references to “totalitarianism”, the label elides two things that need to be kept separate. One is the mentality of death-seeking and death-delivering fanatics. The other is a totalitarian political system…Now, if nuclear-armed Pakistan and oil-rich Saudi Arabia fall the wrong way, we could be there sooner than we think – but at the moment the only serious contender for the title of Islamic-fascist state is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Has he been paying enough attention to Saudi Arabia? It’s not a whole lot more benign than Iran. In some ways it has a much firmer grip. I would say it’s a contender.
But the other way is broader.
Most Islamic terrorists are, in some sense, Islamists, but most Islamists are not terrorists. They are reactionaries. They propose a profoundly conservative religious vision of society which, in its attitudes to free speech, apostasy, homosexuality and women, is generally anathema to secular liberal convictions (including, emphatically, my own). But for the most part they do so through peaceful political means, not through violence.
It’s very hard not to make a cheap point about the sentimental views of people who are so sheltered and safe themselves that they can’t even see how things are for other people. It is ludicrous to say that religious reactionaries ‘propose’ their profoundly conservative religious vision of society through peaceful political means – of course they don’t! They don’t propose it, they impose it, wherever they have the power to do that, which is of course at home. They don’t just propose that their daughters shouldn’t see the wrong boys or that their sons had better not be fags or that ‘apostasy’ is forbidden to everyone; they impose all those mandates, and if they are not submitted to, the response is indeed sometimes violence. Surely it’s not a newsflash that religious reactionaries do coerce people when they can and do sometimes resort to violence when they’re resisted? In fact violence of that kind is quite explicitly celebrated in some Christianist writing – that’s an important part of what is affectionately called ‘traditional values.’ One of those traditional values is the importance of corporal punishment of children.
Garton Ash is dreaming if he thinks that peaceful political means are compatible with reactionary religion. Reactionary religion is first and foremost about coercion; that is the essential point of it; that is what makes it reactionary. It is not liberal, it is not about choice, it is not about reasoned debate and free speech and leaving each other alone as long as we do no harm; it is about the opposite of all of those. That’s why it’s hell; that’s why we hate and fear it; that’s why theocracy is anathema. It’s a mistake to minimize it.
“Free Women Activists in Iran
Maryam Hosseinkhah, Delaram Ali, Ronak Safar Zade, Hanna Abdi, lashed and imprisoned”
I signed petition that is currently in B&W news subsection.
Well put, OB. Pretty much how I felt about the Ash piece, but you said it better. Islamism isn’t just conservative; it’s theocratic. It’s totalitarian. It may not always be violent, but it is never open to dialogue.
Thanks, Lyle.
TGA almost admits that – he is emphatic that he wants no part of what Islamists want – but he just does give far too much away with that phrase about ‘doing so through peaceful political means, not through violence.’
It’s kind of unnerving that he doesn’t see it.
Ok, I really need to think about it (for whatever my opinion is worth) but I cannot help but think of old Tingey: “all religions are …”
In that sense maybe Garton Ash is not wrong. I know it annoys me when people say : Islam needs to go through its renaissance, its reformation. The fact is: christianity never did, it was forced to. Christianity is not harmless, its teeth had been pulled out.
I think you push a little too hard against TGA here. On the first point, Saudi isn’t fascist, it’s a [very] old-fashioned religiously-authorised brutal patriarchy, only death-cultic in the sense that the Vatican once was, and might secretly like to be…
Of course, what Saudi money has paid for in the Islamic world in general is a different question, but as a regime, the Saudis aren’t endangering anyone outside their borders…
As for the implications for those inside said borders, distasteful as it might be to those of us who would like to put the world entirely to rights, TGA’s primary concern is about what is a risk to the stability of the international system, not about places where’s it’s nice to live.
As Arnaud hints above, if you always go to the extreme in your condemnations, look where you end up…
Hi Ophelia,
I disagree.
I think that this is an extremely important distinction:
“Most Islamic terrorists are, in some sense, Islamists, but most Islamists are not terrorists.
To make the distinction is not to say that Islamists are fine as long as they don’t start blowing up civilians. It doesn’t preclude activism to oppose the vicious misogyny, homophobia and general intolerance of Islamism. But it does have implications for what form action against Islamism (or any other illiberal political/religious movement) should take. Is the use of force (judicial or military) justifiable or effective? In the case of much of political Islam, I would say no. Peaceful political means via free speech are more justifiable and effective. In the end, people need to be convinced – something that force is not very effective in achieving.
To bring up the violence of individual religious reactionaries towards those in their families is a red herring. The force of the law can and should be used against them.
You wrote:
“Garton Ash is dreaming if he thinks that peaceful political means are compatible with reactionary religion.”
The government of Turkey is, in some sense, an Islamist government, but it is hardly the Taliban. The only way to effectively oppose the Taliban was, and is, to fight. This is clearly not true of the Turkish government.
DB
as a regime, the Saudis aren’t endangering anyone outside their borders…
Not quite. Next to oil probably their biggest export has been violent jihad and jihadis, c.f. 9/11, Iraq.
Ash’s message seems to be one of so-called political realism, that is, let us distinguish between an Islamism which threatens us and one which may threaten those who are on the losing ending in Islamic societies (women, gays), but threatens no one else.
That is a valid point. I’m not saying that one should not concern oneself with the human rights of women in the Islamic world, just that it is a different issue than that of violent
Islamists who crash airplanes into towers or place bombs on underground trains.
DB,
“I think that this is an extremely important distinction:
‘Most Islamic terrorists are, in some sense, Islamists, but most Islamists are not terrorists.'”
I agree that the distinction is important, but I’m not sure I agree that it’s true, at least not altogether true. Islamism is of its nature at the very least coercive, and I’m not sure the distinction between terrorism and coercion is knife-sharp. It may be the case that most Islamists are not terrorists of the kind who plan or hope to blow up planes or trains (though do we know the statistics on that?), but most Islamists do want to forcibly convert the entire world to Islam. That is what makes them Islamists.
So it’s not just a matter of “the vicious misogyny, homophobia and general intolerance of Islamism.” You get all that with just plain garden-variety conservative Islam (and Xianity and Judaism, for that matter). It’s not just a matter of unkind thoughts – it is a matter of force. Any place where Islamists are in fact in power, the misogyny and homophobia and hatred of kafirs have real effects in the real world. I’m happy to hope that many Islamists in places where Islamists are not in fact in power are just playing with ideas and would run like deer if those ideas looked likely to become reality – but I think it’s dangerous to count on that.
“To bring up the violence of individual religious reactionaries towards those in their families is a red herring. The force of the law can and should be used against them.”
Ah no – not always – that’s the problem. The force of law can’t always be used against them – for one thing just because much of the time the law doesn’t even know what those individual religious reactionaries are doing. That’s the nature of family life, and all the more so in the case of weaker members who are terrorized by the threats and violence of stronger ones. To spell it out, schoolgirls are very often terrified of telling anyone that they are being terrorized. Catch-22, big time. Which of course is not to say all families should be invaded by the army just in case, it’s to say that we should be careful of illusions about how benign most Islamists as it were ‘must’ be (along with trying to come up with ways that terrorized people can safely excape or get help).
“The government of Turkey is, in some sense, an Islamist government, but it is hardly the Taliban. The only way to effectively oppose the Taliban was, and is, to fight. This is clearly not true of the Turkish government.”
That depends on whose point of view we’re considering. That’s certainly true for us, outside Turkey, but it’s much less certainly true for some people inside Turkey. Hrant Dink for example. And my whole point is that this is not an issue just of governments or warring states.
“The last major terrorist threat we faced in Britain.”
As Northern Ireland is (sadly) still part of Britain, I note that Gartan Ash failed to include UDA when making comparisons with ‘terrorists,’ his word not mine.’ I would prefer to call them ‘Freedom Fighters,’ but then I would, as I am after-all Irish.
“That helped us to win, after a long struggle.” Btw, who says Britain won? That is the first I have heard.
Yes Garton Ash, ‘in identifying those trying to kill us, we should choose our words carefully’.
You should practice what you preach.
B&W News: “UK Muslim women lead UK advisory groups”
I do wonder from what Muslim perception these recommended ‘advisory’ women are coming!
Wherever they are terrorists or not is largely irrelevant anyway. They are a willing part of a society which enables terrorists. They agree with the terrorists’ aims and methods, they call them “freedom fighters”, they provide support and funds and they raise their sons and daughters (in the measure that what they do to their daughters can be called raising them) in the same ideology. Terrorists just don’t appear out of thin air.
During WWII nobody would say that the RAF and the USAF were at war against the Luftwaffe, or the British army and the Red Army against the Wehrmacht. The forces were just the fighting edges of 2 whole societies engaged at war.
That last analogy was not to suggest that we are at war, just to say that you cannot voice your support for terrorist acts and then claim no responsability because you didn’t actually throw the bomb…
Which is probably why I am far more fearful of Pakistan and, especially, Saudi Arabia than of Iran. Iran still has a tradition of (kind of) democracy, a cultured middle class, a hint of opposition parties (albeit often in exile), a history of open curiosity to the outside world. There is to my knowledge very little of all this in SA whose money finance nearly every extremist mosques and maddrassas in the world.
Still hey? No worries, we share common values…
Peak oil cannot come fast enough…
S**t, I don’t even know what I believe in any more…
Marie – I think when Garton-Ash said ‘we’ won, what he meant was – those – on either side – who thought that the question of which democratic state controlled Northern Ireland was not so important that it was worth killing for. Maybe I’m misinterpreting him, I don’t know.
Whether they have won, in the long term, remains to be seen. In the mean time, the sight of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley in government together provides me with one of the stranger sights I’ve seen in my life.
(As an aside, I understand from conversations with people in the security services that in private, both the UK and Irish governments were desperate to be rid of the place – and the Irish Government was particularly concerned by the thought they might have to take control of a fractious Northern Ireland on the brink of civil war).
“Terrorists just don’t appear out of thin air.” Yes, that is right. They are (mostly) born from mothers called – ‘oppression’. Freedom Fighters of the Irish Roman Catholic variety are ‘Some Mother’s Sons, (and daughters). They were not only ‘in bondage’ with deference to its provincial ‘green field’ but with that too of its doctrinaire unbending inhibited rigid religion. So what can one anticipate when ‘Religion is the opium of the people?
“The sight of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley in government together provides me with one of the stranger sights I’ve seen in my life.”
Me too! Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in ‘Time for Peace’ say it all. I never thought I would live to see the day when the two of them would shake hands with each other.
I hope that ‘his side’ of ‘The Troubles’ divide in the near future fully cooperates with both the British/Irish governments and hand over once and for all, ‘all’ their armaments. (The other side has done its bit (as far as I know, anyway.). Therefore, it too should get its little sticky fingers out the triggers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBh_AZLZW9Y
“In private, both the UK and Irish governments were desperate to be rid of the place”
It depends on which Irish government they meant, I doubt very much that the above would have been the public thinking of the Fianna Fail, (Soldiers of Destiny) Party – whose aim it is/was to achieve (by peaceful means only) a united Ireland. “From the time of its foundation in 1926, Fianna Fáil has debated the prospect of organising on an All-Ireland basis. Speaking as early as November 1926, the founding father, Eamon de Valera, stated that Fianna Fáil was “intended to be an All-Ireland organisation”.”
I lived for many years in an Irish border town area/and in Victoria London at the height of the tube bombings and I habitually heard in the latter, explosions going off and suffered thereafter the ire of the British. The consequences/penalties of being Irish in London at the time were so bad that I personally changed my Irish brogue. I have an ear for music so it helped immensely. I was also in Enniskillen (at the same time, lucky for me but not the others who sadly died and were wretchedly and piteously maimed) a day later when the bomb went off.
I am on the side of peace.
It is funny that those on the left (e.g. the ANL) have often been criticised for using the word ‘fascist’ far to freely, yet here we’re criticising Garton Ash for making that objection to the use of the word on the right.
To call the Saudis fascist you really need to have adopted the student radical definition. They aren’t Nazis either.
“Wherever they are terrorists or not is largely irrelevant anyway. They are a willing part of a society which enables terrorists. They agree with the terrorists’ aims and methods, they call them “freedom fighters”, they provide support and funds and they raise their sons and daughters (in the measure that what they do to their daughters can be called raising them) in the same ideology. Terrorists just don’t appear out of thin air. “
Given that 51% of the electorate AGREED with actions that have led to the death of tens of thousands, your definition would certainly apply to the United States. After all, State-sponosored terrorism is still terrorism. Especially given that THIS State is actively sponsoring, directly, terrorism in Iran right this moment. (Not that I like the Mullah’s regime, but the friendly terrorists we are using are pretty nasty, too).
That’s where I am bothered by arguments like this. Our State (be it the United States…or even the UK) can get away with murderous policies, which are all justified by reasons of “forign policy” or even filthy lucre (“economic growth”). I know there are “Third Way” groups out there, but there still seems to be too much of the “look at how bad THEY are” argument when our comfortable Western states arguably have done far worse than anything the mad mullahs of Al Qaeda have ever dreamed of.
I don’t have an “answer” to this question, and I know I am repeating myself (and Richard, I do not believe the American State has necessarily been, on balance, a force for “good” in the world. No empire can be-virtue is incompatible with Empire).
Brian,
It IS said that a terrorist is somebody who has a bomb but cannot afford a plane…
I tend myself to think that there is no good answer to the question because it’s the fucking wrong question! And I think that’s what TGA was driving at. When he said “we won in Northern Ireland”, I am pretty much sure he meant peace won and not Britain. Marie-Therese was on the winning side after all.
I know that ideas like collective responsability have bad overtones, but we do pay our taxes, we do insist on no taxation without representation, we keep lecturing others on democracy. It’s very hard after that to shout “Not in my name!”, carry on voting for the same F###### and actually stay convincing…
This is why I like to say (and I know I am also repeating myself) that the vote is the least important thing in a democracy.