"Don't Mention the War". posted by john game

Tariq Ramadan is a hate figure for the pro-war liberals who accuse him of being an Islamist radical, but he's actually a lot closer to them politically than they would like to admit. Look at this comment piece in today's Independent.

The title of that piece ought to have been 'don't mention the war'. The notion that 'victimology' in the Muslim community is a key issue to be addressed, or even 'literalism' in the teaching of texts, is an approach which Tony Blair would feel quite comfortable with. There are all sorts of debates it is possible to have about 'social reform' in Muslim countries but quite what this has to do with the problem of 'terrorism' is unclear. Political Islam as a movement is closely linked to traditions of Islamic reform which can be seen emerging in the Indian context as early as the late 18th century and which took a variety of forms. There is interesting material available on the close connection between colonial modernisation projects campaigning against superstition and Islamic campaigns against the same. Similar processes can be seen in any serious account of Hindu reform movements. This process cuts across earlier much more syncretic approaches (see for example Mufazir Alam's The Languages of Political Islam, which, despite the title is an account of political theory of rule in the Mughal Empire).

There is no evidence whatsoever that what Olivier Roy (see The Failure of Political Islam) has called 'combat fundementalism' (its present incarnation is a relatively recent phenomenon) is in any sense connected to the problem of either literalism or the more hidebound traditional ulema not being able to speak English. The notion that questions concerning dress in schools, appropriate arrangements for marriage, or a failure to learn English, or even be 'integrated' (whatever this means) has anything to do with the rise of 'combat fundamentalism' is a fallacy. Liberal Islamists like Ramadan (blacklisted in the US for his pains and referred to with mindless hysteria as a 'fundementalist' and 'terrorist sympathiser') are effectively trying to utilize the present crisis in order to push for liberal reform inside the immigrant community in Europe. Good luck to them (although they will recieve no reward from the governments of Europe, as Blair's recent declaration makes plain). The danger is however that in pursuing this campaign they are linking issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the problem, and in doing so they are unwittingly providing fuel for those who want to turn the issue of terrorism into a populist war against immigrants (understandable from the governments point of view given that their war, the real cause of these problems in British society, is proving to be so unpopular).

When a small group of Jihadists, loosely connected to Osama Bin Laden's very incohate grouping, carried out its spectacular attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September of 2001 one journalist pointed towards the problem of inflating those who carried out this attack to the level of the crime they had committed. Its doubtful if anyone could have predicted the extent to which this has in fact occured. Not only have two countries been invaded in the Islamic world with, as we can now see, long term and possibly catastrophic consequences both for their peoples, their regions, and indeed the rest of the world, but in the United States we have seen the progressive erosion of the rule of law and the resuscitation of Cold War ideologies which have transformed the political relationship of the State to its citizens as well as the relationship between the great powers, spreading fear and despair around much of the world (not least in Palestine where the consequences have been utterly catastrophic). The linkages continue with this issue being used in an unsuccessful attempt to strangle rising opposition to the economic policies pursued by the great powers in the rest of the world by utilizing the new cold war rhetoric.

In Europe, the revival of a long tradition of xenophobic anti-immigrant populism, combined with tendencies in Western societies previously most clearly demonstrated by modern anti-semitism, have been the most visible result of the 'war on terror' (as Ramadan correctly notes). In the case of the tradition of xenophobic anti-immigrant populism one only has to look at the way in which what is purportedly a discussion about terrorism becomes a discussion about strange and ungrateful foreigners who refuse to learn our language, have unpleasent customs (and probably smelly food) and refuse to 'adapt' (and above all else dare to whinge!). In the case of the history of modern anti-semitism as a social phenomenon we have bizarre panics about the idea that people might be more loyal to their religion then their state (which genuinely religous person would ever say that they were more loyal to their state then their god?), as if being religously devout has anything whatsoever to do with the rise of these combat fundamentalism movements (here, for the terminally stupid, it is neccessary to mention that whilst it might be true that some terrorists claim to be motivated by religion this does not mean that anyone motivated by religion, even a Muslim, is more susceptible to becoming a terrorist). Behind all this there is the classic syndrome of piling onto the shoulders of one section of the national community all of the insecurities, paradoxes and problems which in reality are the property of the host society, as evidenced in often tedious, hysterical, and confused debates about cultural relativism and multi-culturalism. The 'Muslim' in 'Europe' is now the symbol of all the ills of modern capitalist society, in precisely the same way that Jews came to symbolise these ills (the best account of this is still Arendt's section on antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism which is essentially a development of Marx's thought on the matter). It should be compulsory reading in the academia these days whatever the ideologically bizarre trajectory of the book itself.

In this cultivated atmosphere of derangement in which the collective punishment of relatives of 'terrorist suspects' has just been proposed, in which muslims as a community are tasked with 'rooting out terrorism', and in which we are told there is a vital connection between fighting terrorism and Muslim backwardness, how strange is the complaint about victimology?

I suspect it is not only Muslims who, listening to this bizarre rhetoric, must feel like spectators to an alien parrallel universe. I think many of us who are not Muslims (I won't use the term 'secular' with its implication that secularism and being a Muslim are somehow incompatible) must feel just as alienated. We too of course are frequently accused outlandishly of responsibility for the consequences of the governments own actions. But despite the fact that its now quite possible to be arrested for reading the Independent in this country, there is no doubt that Muslim's have much more to fear given both the general record of European politics in relation to these questions, and in Britain, a government keen to whip up tabloid press campaigns on anything from paedophilia to crime to immigrants to Islam (there was a kind of genius to the BNP's linkage of these dogwhistle issues a few years back: the behaviour of Blair's government demonstrates that they merely anticipated more general trends on the right).

A debate about secularism and religous reform is simply not possible to have without referring to this overarching context. This is not to say that secularism and religous reform are not important issues. Its simply to say that these issues have nothing whatsoever to do with the real reasons why Muslim's have been designated a special problem. This displacement runs right across discussions of history (apparently our current problems have something to do with developments in the 17th century Islamic world) through to Ramadan's argument about the neccessity of campaigning against literalism and 'victimology'. If you don't want people to suffer from victimology stop victimising them. That would help, wouldn't it? Sadly even Ramadan's misdirected arguments will be used to further victimise innocent people (quite against his intentions I'm sure) and the state will not even repay him with funded schemes for implementing his unremarkable liberal proposals. This is why more and more I am reminded of Arendt. She discusses the naivity of Bourgeois German Jews who tried to forge an alliance with German Liberals in an organisation called 'the state party'. This was of course simply used as further evidence that the Jews were involved in a conspiracy to take over the state, in a situation where Nazi ideology counterposed the 'nation' to the alien liberal state. Today if you talk about Islamic reform you will be held up as an example to a demonised wider community (but demonised yourself if you once step out of line).

On the other hand if you don't talk about Islamic reform you will be held up as an example of someone with the inevitable double standards of a benighted community whose very existence poses a special kind of problem for the rest of Britain's citizens (how threatening it is to hear people speaking in a foreign language as I walk past them in the street? What might they be discussing? Why don't they love us in the way we so clearly love them? What are they doing here? Why are they complaining? What are they UP to? Why must we hear about them? Why don't we hear about them? So many questions. So few answers).