| |
|
1)
On suicide bombing. All should read Lenin's Tomb's suicide boming dossier - in fact I'd say it's required reading - some of which I will quote here:
The old strategies for explaining suicide bombers range from the idiotic to the inadequate: they hate our freedom, they're just jealous, they hate us for being infidels, they are fascists, they have a perverted ideology, they are Muslims, they are desperate, poor and ignorant, they are anti-globalisation, they are psychophaths, they are brainwashed etc etc. Of these, you can probably surmise which ones are inadequate and which are foolish.
Religion.
Take religion. One way of conceiving religion as a causal factor is to see it as part of a 'clash of civilisations', pace Huntington and Scheuer, in which most Muslims either support, accept or acquiesce in suicidal attacks on civilian targets on the West (the 'West' is a poorly defined concept, but let's say for now that it includes Europe, the US, Israel, Australia and some non-Western capitalist powers). This has, I have noted, involved some rather ludicrous distortions of evidence as well as grand extrapolations from limited bases of data. As far as we know, while most Saudi citizens agree with the pre-eminent political goal of Al Qaeda, and while most Palestinians appear to support suicide attacks on Israel, there isn't a great deal of support among Muslims for Al Qaeda or any of its confederates. A tiny fraction of Muslims have actually been involved in terrorism of any kind, and a much smaller number have been involved in suicide attacks. This is ABC stuff, and it leads us directly to the next conception: the Bush-Blair explanation...
Also:
Fascism, perverted ideology, brainwashing.
One comical aspect of some of the pro-war Left's attempts to efface Blair's co-responsibility for the terror in London has been the ridiculous idea of privileging a 'fascist' ideology as the leading causal factor. Those who debase the word fascist in this way are neither good anti-fascists, nor good analysts of the movements which are under consideration. But leaving aside the academic (though not scholastic) distinctions about precisely what counts as fascism, what we are interested in here is the idea that an ideology of some description is the chief causal factor in the readiness to kill civilians, particularly in the ways that we have seen in New York, Bali, Turkey, Madrid and now London. It is already fairly well established that the tactic of suicide bombing has been used by a variety of groups, with distinct ideologies. There have been different Marxisms, different secularisms, different Islams involved (Al Qaeda appear to be Sunni, but Hizbollah are Shi'ite). The fact is that in each case the ideology does not seem to have been decisive in the decision to use suicide missions. Similarly, no suicide bombers have come from Iran as yet, which is the scene of a particularly reactionary brand of Islamist rule.
Ultimately, suicide bombing is just a millitary tactic; one that specifically can be used by your weaker fighting force against stronger ones if you don't have tanks and helicopters. And it works. It's not a nice or happy thing, but it acheives millitary objectives. People who say that suicide bombing is particularly unreasonable/ideological compared to all other forms of warfare seem not to be considering all the people who join the army, and put themselves in danger of death, to fight for such abstract nouns as "The West", "America", "Our Freedom", etc.
And why would someone want to construct an enemy as "unreasonable"/"mad"/"out of touch with reality"/"perverted by ideology"? Well, usually it's because the people with the power to construct such images want an excuse to take over the places where the "enemy" lives, and if they can prove themselves reasonable/in touch with reality/bringing freedom and so on, the job will be much easier.
2)
On talking about Islam, and who gets to do so, and related issues. Lots of people and entities claim the "free speech" to talk about Islam these days - yet the majority of these have no qualifications to do so. Take the British tabloid press for example. I doubt that many of the News of the World's staff read Arabic or have Religious Studies degrees - not because they're stupid, but because they're journalists rather than theologians.
To my mind, there are certain basic requirements to any analysis of a religion. These are:
1)Extensive, objective knowledge of the Text, or Texts, of the religion; so in this case the Ko'ran, and the pillars, but also other things such as important commentaries, hagiographies, artworks and so on - all the things which the adherents of the religion refer to. The "what" of the religion.
2)Extensive, objectve knowledge of the relations between the the Text and the adherents' Practice; which is to say, supposing there is some obscure law buried away in the Text about it being okay to shoot your neighbour if he sings too loudly, how many people actually follow this or consider it as useful? Do people treat the Text as scientific fact, or law, or history, or simply philosophy, or moral guidelines - or any combination of these things? What different sects are there and how do they differ? The "who" and "how" of the religion.
3)Finally, extensive, objective knowledge of the economic, political and cultural factors affecting the Adherents' relation to the Text; such as, who is at war, who is at peace, which groups suffer poverty, which are richer, and to what extent does all this affect the actions of a given adherent or group. The "why" of the religion (and any serious "why" will involve economic rather than spurious claims of racial or cucltural pre-determination).
By this standard alone, most of the discourse on Islam in the American-European media is woefully lacking. And these days, I'm almost coming to the opinion that the only good places to get useful, accurate opinions about Islam and Islamic affairs from are places like Al-Jazeera and the MCB and persons like Tariq Ali and Imran Khan - that is to say, from Muslims themselves. |
|
|
