David Warren has a look at Jihad. Belmont Club responds. This is a "must read."
Jihad as a whole
One of the difficulties in explaining terror threats to readers in North America, is how to get around obstacles set in place by "political correction" -- by a very strange and insupportable ideology, now often backed by the power of law. Among the many (often mutually contradictory) principles of this post-modern ideology is that human cultures or "communities" are not merely equal, but interchangeable. One must write as if this preposterous assertion were true: as if, for instance, there were no significant differences between a person raised in an Arabian Muslim milieu, and one raised in a secular North American milieu. Both are assumed to share essential values. To suggest the contrary is to invite a charge of "racial discrimination" -- absurd, because this has nothing to do with race, everything to do with culture and upbringing and habits of mind and feeling.
The belief that human experience can be homogenized leads, more often than not, to very crass misjudgements about the motives of foreigners, founded in the assumption that they, at least, are "all the same". Example: as many as half of the Arabs in North America came from Christian backgrounds in the Middle East, and have little or no sympathy for Muslim aspirations. This includes almost all of the older immigration from the Levant and Egypt, most of whom migrated to get away from Islam. In turn, the subdivisions within the Muslim Arab communities are many and deep. Islam is a genuinely and profoundly unifying factor, but the difference between a Cairo Sufi and an Arabian Wahabi is at least as great as the difference between a High Anglican and a Holy Roller (though not even slightly analogous).
A principal difference is in their respective concepts of "jihad", of holy war against the infidel. The Cairo Sufi is of no possible danger to us, because he defines "jihad" as a mostly spiritual struggle, and mostly against his own lower nature. But it would be sadly true to say that most if not all the imams sent with oil money from Saudi Arabia want us, as infidels, converted or enslaved or dead.
"Wahabi" refers to the most "puritanical" and "fundamentalist" Islamic creed or sect (all these Christian terms need important qualifications when applied to Muslims). It is the sect that most directly and literally embraces "the sword of Islam", the spiritual cause of spreading Islam by violence. But those who embrace the sword cannot be restricted to Wahabis. Even less can they be restricted to members of specific terror cells.
In the course of three years' intense study of the issue, I've become convinced that there is -- well, this is a slight exaggeration -- no such thing as "Al Qaeda". It is, more precisely, only a name applied vaguely to one of several financing and logistical arms of the Wahabi branch of what could more accurately be called the "Islamic Jihad". Not an army, nor a disciplined network of underground cells, but an historical movement -- and thus more comparable to something like "the Enlightenment" in the West, than to any organized militia. Not to say the Jihad shares ideals with the Enlightenment -- far from it -- but rather, it is similar in being a vast idealistic movement, consciously advanced by men who co-operate as and where they think they can be most effective -- but taking their orders, ultimately, not from men but from "the zeitgeist", or "Allah".
This may sound a very abstract analysis, but it has practical consequences for "homeland security". For starters, it means we cannot draw neat, legalistic lines between who's in and who's out of the cabal. For instance, a journalist working for Al-Jazeera may be every bit as committed to the struggle as a man rehearsing the assembly of a mid-flight bomb. Each is advancing the Jihad by the means most available to him. And, exempting the one from prosecution while arresting the other is entirely obtuse.
Indications especially from the FBI are to expect a major terrorist hit on North America, sometime between now and the U.S. election in November. I think they are right to expect this. The political, economic, and social fallout from such a hit is unpredictably huge. But I am less and less confident that it can be prevented by anything resembling normal police methods. This is because, thanks chiefly to "political correction", we cannot look at the whole Jihad, and are in fact only looking for the pointy bits.
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The Man with No Name
David Warren is all for naming a certain branch of Islam as the enemy. He argues that common journalistic and policy references to "Al Qaeda" have misidentified the true enemy.
In the course of three years' intense study of the issue, I've become convinced that there is -- well, this is a slight exaggeration -- no such thing as "Al Qaeda". It is, more precisely, only a name applied vaguely to one of several financing and logistical arms of the Wahabi branch of what could more accurately be called the "Islamic Jihad".
And the reason this is so important, he argues, is that it allows Homeland Security to use the appropriate kind of filter in rooting out the enemy. Looking for the Jihadi enemy recalls the scene played out in B-movie science fiction plots where the deadly aliens remain invisible until the sensors are tuned to the right frequency. And then they stand out everywhere.
This may sound a very abstract analysis, but it has practical consequences for "homeland security". For starters, it means we cannot draw neat, legalistic lines between who's in and who's out of the cabal. For instance, a journalist working for Al-Jazeera may be every bit as committed to the struggle as a man rehearsing the assembly of a mid-flight bomb. Each is advancing the Jihad by the means most available to him. And, exempting the one from prosecution while arresting the other is entirely obtuse.
Indications especially from the FBI are to expect a major terrorist hit on North America, sometime between now and the U.S. election in November. I think they are right to expect this. The political, economic, and social fallout from such a hit is unpredictably huge. But I am less and less confident that it can be prevented by anything resembling normal police methods. This is because, thanks chiefly to "political correction", we cannot look at the whole Jihad, and are in fact only looking for the pointy bits.
The idea of grappling with the unnameable threat pervades the writing of Bat Y'eor who recently gave an address to French Senators. What, she asked, was the meaning of all the internal security preparation she had encountered.
One need only look at our cities, airports, and streets, at the schools with their security guards, even the systems of public transportation, not to mention the embassies, and the synagogues – to see the whole astonishing array of police and security services. The fact that the authorities everywhere refuse to name the evil does not negate that evil. Yet we know perfectly well that we have been under threat for a long time; one has only to open one’s eyes and our authorities know it better than any of us, because it is they who have ordered these very security measures. ... Today the war is everywhere. And yet the European Union and the states which comprise it, have denied that war’s reality, right up to the terrorist attack in Madrid of March 11, 2004.
But the problem with conceding the point to David Warren and Bat Y'eor is that it would cause a revolution in domestic and international politics, something neither the Democratic nor the Republican parties are prepared to do. Domestically it would mean that for the first time in American history, a major branch of a world religion would be declare a de facto enemy of the state. Not people, not a country; nothing with a capital unless it be Mecca, but a system of religious belief. It would strike at the very root of the American Constitutional system, the separation of Church and State. Internationally it would signify that the principal enemy host, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose ruling house is intimately connected and support this ideology, must be overthrown or changed. It would indicate that the Iraq campaign, which cost the Bush administration so much political capital, is not the end but the mere beginning.
One the most most important lessons of the Global War on Terror is how closely linked it is with Western domestic politics. The Madrid bombing of March 11, 2004 and the American Presidential elections are perfect examples. The reason for this is simple. Fighting the Jihadi enemy would mean overturning the 20th century political and economic foundations to their roots. It would mean disrupting the Big Tent of political correctness; putting a prosperity heavily dependent on oil supplies at risk; and replacing an entire paradigm of international relations. For that reason the act of naming Wahabi Islam as the principal enemy will evaded until it is absolutely unavoidable; until after a mushroom or biological cloud puts a period after the debate. The only exit from the madhouse that Warren and Y'eor describe is through the door we fear the most, the one which compels us to recognize the foe with no name. |
