Summer holidays

6Jul/074

Blogging has been erratic of late. My real job is going well. There have been a lot of recent events (London & Glasgow attacks, Yemen attacks etc) which I have strong feelings about but on which I've not had time to talk.

There is a column at The Guardian which is causing some controversy. The writer argues that to ignore British foreign policy while trying to understand Islamist fanaticism is a mistake. I sort of half agree with him. The way I see it is that our foreign policy has had an effect on a lot of the young men who have joined Islamist groups. But that doesn't mean that Islamism wouldn't exist without Western influence in the Middle East. Sayyid Qutb developed his warped ideas about us in the 1950s.

And still, understanding that Islamism exists without Western military action, it's stunning to think that people believe that our foreign policy has nothing to do with terrorism.

A world without Saddam Hussein is a better world. And yet, the way in which the war was prosecuted seems to have given both a breeding ground and fodder to the Islamists. This is, it must be admitted, a huge strategic failure. Iraq, like it or not, has become both recruiting ground and recruiting poster.

Islamism is clearly the enemy of socialism and democracy. But that doesn't qualify any and all action by Western governments as acceptable. It is right that we criticise our governments when we feel that they have made mistakes or overstepped the mark. Those commentators who try to smother criticism are missing the point. Debate is what makes us strong.

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Tagged as: Glasgow, iraq, London, Middle East, Saddam Hussein, Sayyid Qutb, the Guardian, writer, Yemen Leave a comment

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Soph
July 6th, 2007 - 11:19
Hi Tom,
"But that doesn't mean that Islamism wouldn't exist without Western influence in the Middle East. Sayyid Qutb developed his warped ideas about us in the 1950s."
Can you clarify this?
The influence of France and the UK in the middle east is enormous after the Ottoman empire, and Egypt in the 50s was resisting the British very strongly… Sayyid Qutb might have developed his ideas against the secularism of Nasser, and not against the British presence, but Nasser and secularism were very popular at the time.
Most of the secular regimes lost a lot of their credibility during the 67 war, giving much more traction to religious influence.
I agree it is impossible to tell if Islamism would exist without western influence. Western influence in the middle east is pervasive, from Knights Templar to the Iraq war.
The present situation is the results of thousands of years of human presence and conflicts in the region, there is a multitude of factors.
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Joe
July 6th, 2007 - 12:44
Hi Tom. Firstly, in reference to the above, would I be correct in thinking you are talking about current British military policy rather than the crusades and the constant exchange of ideas that goes on between east and west?
If you are talking about current British foreign policy then Iâ€™d like to say that it is certainly not the main cause, or even a significant cause, of Islamic terrorism. It does though help to explain why the UK rather than, say, Sweden is attacked. Islamism, as stated by former Islamist Hassan Butt in the Guardian, is not a response to foreign policy but a result of Islamic theology and the belief that the lives of non-Muslims, or in the case of Al-Qaeda, non Sunni Muslims, are worthless. This is not the position of mainstream Islam but it is the position of Islamism.
The fact that our foreign policy encourages the already existing Islamic terrorists to attack us should not have any influence on how we behave. One of the most bizarre and disturbing trends in modern politics is people who describe themselves as left wing going out of their way not to upset fascists, or in the case of someone like George Galloway, actively supporting fascism. As far as I know there wasnâ€™t much liberal hand wringing about why Germany wanted to attack the UK but not Sweden during WW2 (sorry Sweden, itâ€™s nothing personal). If these people didnâ€™t want us dead then we would be doing something wrong.
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Tom
July 7th, 2007 - 22:46
Hi both, I wrote a couple of long and well argued responses to your comments but then accidentally deleted all my ork. As you can guess, I made some pretty serious and salient points, and my reply was probably the best comment ever left on any blog.
Sophie – Sayyid Qutb is credited as being the father of Islamism. His ideas apparently sprang from his experiences of life in 1950s America, where he lived for a while. He considered the immorality of teenagers dancing to rock n roll music to be an abomination. If you can get hold of it, watch 'The Power Of Nightmares' – a three part BBC film which offers an interesting and precise analysis of Islamism and the way the terror threat is conveyed in the West.
Joe – yes, I was talking about 'current' military policy, though I think it's important to remember that British involvement in the Middle East in the 20th century can be identified as a major causal factor of the current geopolitical situation there.
Actually, I'm not neccesarily saying that we should change the way we behave as a result of terrorist attacks. We naturally will, of course, change our behaviour. I do think it's wise to consider whether our actions will give material advantage to the Islamists. Take Iraq, for example. The invasion of Iraq was carried out in order to remove Saddam Hussein from power. This aim was achieved quickly. But a side effect of regime change was that Islamist groups suddenly gained a lot of power there. Another side effect was that Iran rose as the preeminent regional power. It's known for a fact that the Iranian state sponsors various Islamist groups.
As to those on the left who have been seen to support fascism in the shape of Saddam Hussein, that's not really very surprising. British communists supported Stalin when he was in power. Similarly, there are many on the right who claim a love of democracy and freedom, but who are somehow able to stomach support for dictatorships. This sort of moral relativism is unfortunately common on both sides of the political spectrum. I don't think that the inability of the left to understand the nature of Saddam is a sign that the left is dead. Socialists have made many mistakes in the past but the questions about capitalism which socialism tries to address are still relevant… some arguably more than ever.
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Sophie
July 8th, 2007 - 11:53
I've seen 'The Power Of Nightmares', but the idea I constructed about Sayyid Qutb was that it was mainly the fact that his country would adopt the occidental ways that was the big problem for him.
I also thought that he became more and more extreme after being imprisoned. But I might have constructed the wrong image.
(Being someone who was first introduced to the word Jihad while reading Dune kind of warps your perception of the whole thing)
A few days ago I watched the movie 'Persepolis' from Marjane Satrapi (I have read the comics too) and they do show among other things how the wealthy Iranians lifestyles were heavily influenced by occidental culture and fashion under the shah and after. The islamisation after the revolution was the result of a democratic referendum, where the religious were elected by an overwhelming majority of citizens who found them to be the only candidates that appealed to them, being those who had pushed for the outing of the shah.
The western influence was linked to its support of the shah and its removal of Mossadegh, and the backers were as detested as the ousted autocratic king. Then of course extremist religious rule had its way… The Iraq-Iran war was also a factor of unity behind these rulers, and the time of the creation of the martyrs cult. The arab sunni countries, the Soviet Union and the west backed Iraq, and weapon merchants supplied ammunition to both sides (the most interesting being WMDs supplied to Saddam and used against Iran).
The comics or the movie are a very interesting way of discovering all this, and the fact that the current Iranian government doesn't like them at all is a kind of seal of approval…
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