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Pan-Islamism challenges idea of nation state
August 13, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Here's how an early report by Reuters covered the massive terrorism bust in the United Kingdom. They started out conventionally enough just chugging along with airport closures, arrest details and quotes from bystanders, but then got to the big picture:
" 'I'm an ex-flight attendant, I'm used to delays, but this is a different kind of delay,' said Gita Saintangelo, 54, an American returning to Miami. 'We heard about it on the TV this morning. We left a little early and said a prayer,' she said at Heathrow.
"Britain has been criticised by Islamist militants for its military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prime Minister Tony Blair has also come under fire at home and abroad for following the U.S. lead and refusing to call for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas."
Is there a software program at Western news agencies that automatically inserts random segues in terrorism stories? The plot to commit mass murder by seizing up to 10 U.K.-U.S. airliners was well advanced long before the first Israeli strike against Hezbollah. Yet it's apparently axiomatic at Reuters, the BBC and many other British media outlets that Tony Blair is the root cause of jihad. He doesn't even have to invade anywhere anymore. He just has to "refuse to call for an immediate cease-fire" when some other fellows invade some other fellows over on the other side of the world.
Grant for the sake of argument that these reports are true -- that when the bloodthirsty Zionist warmongers attack all those marvelous Hezbollah social outreach programs it drives British subjects born and bred to plot mass murder against their fellow Britons. What does that mean?
Here's a clue, from a recent Pew poll that asked: What do you consider yourself first? A citizen of your country or a Muslim?
In the United Kingdom, 7 percent of Muslims consider themselves British first, 81 percent consider themselves Muslim first.
And that's where the really valid Lebanese comparison lies. Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They've got bigger fish to fry. If you're interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The "sovereign" state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.
And that indifference to the state can be contagious. Lebanon's Christians may think of themselves as "Lebanese," but most of Hezbollah's Shiite constituency don't. Western analysts talk hopefully of fierce differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, but it's interesting to note the numbers of young Sunni men in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in recent weeks who've decided that Iran's (Shiite) President Ahmadinejad and his (Shiite) Hezbo proxies are the new cool kids in town. During the '90s, we grew used to the idea that "non-state actors" meant a terrorist group, with maybe a few hundred activists, a few thousand supporters. What if entire populations are being transformed into "non-state actors"? Not terrorists, by any means, but at the very minimum entirely indifferent to the state of which they're nominally citizens.
Hence that statistic: Seven percent of British Muslims consider their primary identity to be British, 81 percent consider it to be Muslim. By comparison, in the most populous Muslim nation on the planet, 39 percent of Muslim Indonesians consider themselves Indonesian first, 36 percent consider themselves Muslim first. For more than four years now, I've been writing about a phenomenon I first encountered in the Muslim ghettoes of the Netherlands, Belgium and other European countries in the spring of 2002: Second- and third-generation European Muslims feel far more fiercely Islamic than their parents and grandparents.
That's the issue: Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood. Of course, if you say that at the average Ivy League college, you'll get a big shrug: Modern multicultural man disdains to be bound by the nation state, too; he prides himself on being un citoyen du monde. The difference is that, for Western do-gooders, it's mostly a pose: They may occasionally swing by some Third World basket-case and condescend to the natives, but for the most part the multiculti set have no wish to live anywhere but an advanced Western democracy. It's a quintessential piece of leftie humbug. They may think globally, but they don't act on it.
The pan-Islamists do act. When they hold hands and sing "We Are The World," they mean it. And we're being very complacent if we think they only take over the husks of "failed states" like Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon. The Islamists are very good at using the principal features of the modern multicultural democracy -- legalisms, victimology -- to their own advantage. The United Kingdom is, relatively speaking, a non-failed state, but at a certain level Her Majesty's government shares the same problem as their opposite numbers in Beirut: They don't quite dare to move against the pan-Islamists and they have no idea what possible strategy would enable them to do so.
So instead they tackle the symptoms. Excellent investigative work by MI-5 and Scotland Yard foiled this plot, and may foil the next one, and the one after that, and the 10 after that, and the 100 after those. And in the meantime, a thousand incremental inconveniences fall upon the citizen. If you had told an Englishman on Sept. 10, 2001, that within five years all hand luggage would be banned on flights from Britain, he'd have thought you were a kook. If you'd told an Englishwoman that all liquids would be banned except milk for newborn babies that could only be taken on board if the adult accompanying the child drinks from the bottle in front of a security guard, she'd have scoffed and said no one would ever put up with such a ludicrous imposition. But now it's here. What other changes will the Islamists have wrought in another five years?
Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world.
Muslim leaders summoned to talks with the Government on tackling extremism in their midst called for public holidays to mark their religious festivals.
The Whitehall meeting was set up in response to last week's airline bomb plot discovery.
Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly had prepared an uncompromising message on the need to tackle dangerous radicalism.
But, in what she admitted were 'sharp' exchanges, some senior Muslim figures turned the tables yesterday and made a series of demands which also included the introduction of Sharia law for family matters.
Dr Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary general of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland, said: 'We told her if you give us religious rights, we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.'
Dr Pasha said Miss Kelly had agreed to look at the proposals, though her spokesman insisted later that she did not favour any legal change which would give 'special treatment' for the Muslim community.
Some of the 30 moderate Muslim leaders at the meeting told Miss Kelly that important days in their two main religious festivals - Ramadan and Eid-ul-Adha - should be made public holidays for followers of the faith.
Sharia law, which is practised in large parts of the Middle East, should also be introduced in Britain, they argued. While it specifies stonings and amputations as routine punishments for crimes, Dr Pasha said he wanted it only for family affairs.
Under the law, a husband pays his wife a dowry on marriage, and money and assets are shared out between family members in specified amounts after someone dies.
'We are willing to co-operate but there should be a partnership,' Dr Pasha said. 'They should understand our problems then we will understand their problems.'
A recent poll suggested that a third of British Muslims would rather live under Sharia law, while a similar number said they also hope Britain will one day become an Islamic state. But Dr Pasha claimed the legal changes he proposed would help convince young Muslims to integrate better into British society.
The Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland claims to be a widely representative umbrella group. However, it does not include more influential and high-profile bodies such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the MCB, also attended the meeting but distanced his group from the calls for Sharia law.
He said: 'We believe one legal code should apply for all citizens of the UK. There is no place for multiple legal systems for people of different religious or ethnic backgrounds.
'If people object to a certain law they should campaign peacefully and democratically for a change - but only so that it applies to all people, not just Muslims.' The Government has accused Muslim leaders of a 'dreadful misjudgment' for claiming its foreign policy has fuelled the threat of extremism. An open letter, signed by three Muslim MPs, three peers and 38 community groups, said the 'debacle' of Iraq, combined with the recent failure to do more to bring about an immediate end to the Middle East conflict, had encouraged extremists who threaten Britain.
After more than three hours of talks with the senior Muslims, Miss Kelly insisted foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East was not the 'root cause' of fundamentalism.
But she acknowledged there were 'different views' over aspects of Government policy and there had been a series of 'sharp and challenging exchanges'.
'There is a battle of hearts and minds to be won within the Muslim community, working with the Muslim community to take on the terrorist and extremist elements that are sometimes found within it, not just in the Muslim community, but elsewhere as well.'
Muslims must feel that if there was frustration on particular issue, there were ' democratic channels for that to be vented', she added. 'What I do accept is that there is a lot of anger and frustration out there in the community that needs to be properly expressed and vented through the democratic process.'
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Communities Minister Meg Munn also attended the meeting. Moves being discussed include 'de-radicalisation forums' to help young Muslims engage with Government policy, improved spiritual guidance for Muslim university students and support for training of imams. Haras Rafiq, of the Sufi Muslim Council, said: 'The first thing that we need to do as a community is admit there is a problem.
'It is like being an alcoholic - we need to stand up and say these things and have an open and honest debate.'
Kharshid Ahmed, chairman of the British Muslim Forum, said: 'We believe that the threat is still external - it is people coming from outside and leading the radicalisation.
'We need to deal with that before people inside our communities are leading the radicalisation.'
There are currently eight permanent bank and public holidays in Britain. Three fall on religious days - Christmas Day, Good Friday and Easter Monday. The latter two are common law holidays - not specified by law as bank holidays as they were traditionally days of rest and to go to Church.
The other bank holidays were made law in 1871, to give their workers time off - causing other businesses dependent on the banks to follow suit.
No Jewish or Hindu holidays of course... and in Arab countries, no Christian holidays... of course they have driven out most Christians and Jews.
One analysts, Richard Haass, has said the first, biggest step has to be open, loud shaming of terrorist violence by religious, social, and political leaders in Muslim communities. Stop ignoring it, stop tacitly or openly endorsing 'resistance' which is just a codeword for terrorism. Stop excusing and minimizing and rationalizing it, as was done in this British meeting. Just Condemn It.
__________________
oderint dum metuant (Latin for 'let them hate, so long as they fear').
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
No Jewish or Hindu holidays of course... and in Arab countries, no Christian holidays... of course they have driven out most Christians and Jews.
One analysts, Richard Haass, has said the first, biggest step has to be open, loud shaming of terrorist violence by religious, social, and political leaders in Muslim communities. Stop ignoring it, stop tacitly or openly endorsing 'resistance' which is just a codeword for terrorism. Stop excusing and minimizing and rationalizing it, as was done in this British meeting. Just Condemn It.
As I have said many times over on this board, that is "part" of what Islam needs ("part" because that is a component of the broader idea of progressivism). The Middle East lives and exists in ages past and the confluence of modern technology with old age thinking has made the ME such a dangerous place. Either they continue their way of living/thinking and we leave them alone with no technology so they can continue to live in the middle ages, or the can attempt progressivism to become a part of the global community. It has to be a conscious choice and the ME needs their MLK, their Ghandi, their leader....
No Jewish or Hindu holidays of course... and in Arab countries, no Christian holidays... of course they have driven out most Christians and Jews.
One analysts, Richard Haass, has said the first, biggest step has to be open, loud shaming of terrorist violence by religious, social, and political leaders in Muslim communities. Stop ignoring it, stop tacitly or openly endorsing 'resistance' which is just a codeword for terrorism. Stop excusing and minimizing and rationalizing it, as was done in this British meeting. Just Condemn It.
Good points. Responsible parties should be most critical of those closest to them.
I don't find it particularly galling that Muslims consider themselves to be Muslims first and foremost. Growing up Southern Baptist I was taught to put God/Jesus before myself, my family, and my country. Never could, even as a child I always loved Mom and Dad more than the old ghost in the sky.
Still, keep in mind when dealing with religious fundamentalists that they do care about faith above all else. Islamist's are a problem because they do have influence in certain capitals. The doomsday cult bit (despite hidden Imam talk) is a bit hard to swallow, but they don't have to be out to destroy the world to be able to threaten my children.
One analysts, Richard Haass, has said the first, biggest step has to be open, loud shaming of terrorist violence by religious, social, and political leaders in Muslim communities. Stop ignoring it, stop tacitly or openly endorsing 'resistance' which is just a codeword for terrorism. Stop excusing and minimizing and rationalizing it, as was done in this British meeting. Just Condemn It.
I agree 100%. Until I start seeing this, I have a real hard time feeling sorry for muslims who are profiled, ect...
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