The poisonous political cycle that harms us all
September 9, 2006
There is something frightening about two sides fighting a war each claims the other started., writes Waleed Aly.
ON THE first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Britain’s most vile terror-loving organisation, al-Muhajiroun, held a celebratory conference. Members gathered to recall how “magnificently” the twin towers were reduced to rubble.
Conference excerpts were replayed on radio after the London bombings last year. A spokesman said it was perfectly acceptable in Islam to kill civilians. Naturally, this sickened me as a person and insulted me as a Muslim. But it did not disturb me as much as I expected: his ranting was so maniacal it didn’t quite seem real.
But then he said something that jolted me rudely back to reality. Islam does not permit one to start wars, he said, but September 11 was not the start. It was a response to decades of aggression. He insisted that he didn’t start this war, but he was intent on supporting those who would finish it.
This statement was so disturbing because it was so familiar. It is precisely what we hear from our political leaders every time a terrorist atrocity occurs, precisely the sort of justification put forth before, and relentlessly repeated since, the disaster of Iraq. There is something frightening about two sides fighting a war each claims the other started, and each claims it now must finish.
Initial Western political responses to September 11 were staggeringly reductionist, triumphalist, even self-congratulatory. George Bush spoke like a comic book superhero by framing the world in terms of good and evil. Western societies were terror targets because they were so thoroughly good. We are despised because we are so virtuous.
In fairness, these responses are understandable in the emotional whirlwinds of tragedy. They give reassurance at a time of raw pain. But eventually, they must give way to more introspective nuance. And indeed, here, the Australian Government should be given credit: it has belatedly incorporated job, recreation and education initiatives into its security strategy, which at least shows a recognition that terrorism has important social dimensions.
But still, five years on, Western governments have, at least publicly, exhibited a stubborn blind spot when it comes to the impact of their own foreign policy. They have held fast to the implausible proposition that however many innocent people we kill as “collateral damage”, whether by invasion, or as was the case earlier in Iraq, via sanctions that saw 500,000 children die, this in no way aids the terrorists’ cause.
This ignores that Western foreign policy has always been a central plank in terrorists’ discourse. Typical were the words of al-Qaeda spokesman Sulayman Abu Ghaith following the September 11 attacks: “The number killed in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon … is only a tiny number of those killed in Palestine, Somalia, the Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan. We have not yet arrived at equivalency with them; thus we have the right to kill 4 million Americans, among them 1 million children.” Morally repugnant indeed. Historically nonsensical. But driven by vengeance for suffering perceived to be inflicted by, or through, the West. The 9/11 Commission Report in the US explained as much. Western polities choose to ignore it.
Thus, the circle of blame completes itself. If terrorist ideologues are so concerned about oppression of Muslims, they might begin with the fact that most of their victims have been Muslims. They might turn attention to Sudan, where Muslims are killing and raping each other in numbers that make all else fade into insignificance. Yet until Western forces intervene, this slaughter is of little consequence to terrorists. Apparently, what matters is not who is killed, but who does the killing. So much for being vanguards of justice.
This deep terrorist hypocrisy does reveal a strong ideological element. But our politicians’ tendency to pretend that past colonisation of Muslim lands and the present invasion and occupation of Iraq is irrelevant, is wilfully oblivious to the obvious. The Australian public intuit this. Well over two years ago, an opinion poll found two-thirds thought our role in Iraq would make a terrorist attack here more likely. And that was before Iraq’s descent into radicalising catastrophe. It seems public wisdom trumps political rhetoric.
Five years after it all began, can we please end the poisonous political cycle? Can we admit the damage we have done and still do in the Muslim world? Can we realise that while this can never justify terrorism, it aids terrorist recruitment? Can Muslims admit that terrorism does not restore balance or return honour, but inflicts continuing oppression on innocent Muslims?
I suspect, deep down, we all recognise these contradictions, but cannot find the political courage to admit them. How catastrophic that humanity uses the suffering of innocents not to reflect inwardly but to rage outwardly, to justify its next moral transgression. What an insult to those slaughtered. What a disaster for all of us if history repeats.
Waleed Aly is an Islamic Council of Victoria director.
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The ‘M’ word and how to breed alienation
September 9, 2006
The stereotyping of Muslims living in the West has become nothing short of an art form, writes Hanifa Deen.
I’M AN Australian Muslim, of Pakistani ancestry, whose family ties with Australia stretch back to the time when my grandfathers came here in the 1890s. This was before we, as a nation, celebrated our independence by introducing the White Australia policy in 1901 as our first experiment in border protection. We now count five generations in our family who are Australian.
A strong belief in my “Australianness” has always given me the confidence (or the excuse) to be outspoken. In 2003 I wrote a book that emphasised the human face of Australia’s 300,000 Muslims. It subverted the stereotype that Muslims were frozen in perpetual prayer and spent their lives wandering from one ritual, or pillar of Islam, to the next. Not everyone was cut from the same cloth although this “secret” was hidden by most orthodox Muslims and ignored by the media in their ongoing search for the representative Muslim.
Where were the Muslims who mowed their lawns, went on diets, swapped jokes, worried about mortgages, fell in and out of love and told their children bedtime stories? There seemed to be one “pop” rendition in circulation that defined a Muslim identity and this was expressed solely in religious terms; Islamic religious leaders were comfortable with this version. Since September 11 and the July 7 London blasts, this depiction has hardened into a stereotype that only recently is being seriously challenged by Muslim organisations.
The year 2001 was a defining time in the lives of many Australians, for after September 11, relations between Muslim and non-Muslim populations changed — indifference was replaced by fear. Western societies worry about their Muslim minorities; the “M” word makes them nervous. Non-Muslims have reason to be worried, not because Muslims are terrorists in the making, but because, since September 11, Muslims find themselves under scrutiny as risks to national security and because this type of civic investigation breeds alienation.
“Explain yourselves,” the media demanded. “Do you condemn these attacks?” “Why do you hate Americans?”
Wherever Muslims were a minority, men and women did their best to “explain Islam” to their frightened fellow citizens. They fell into the trap of defending Islam when the root cause was politics, not religion. An ideology based on twisted interpretations of jihad took centre stage and has become impossible to shift.
Muslim leaders in Europe and the US still struggle to prove their communities’ loyalties, bent on demonstrating that Islam and terrorism do not walk hand in hand. One-third of the world’s Muslims, who number 1 billion, now live as minority members of secular countries. As part of their daily lives they must contend with a prevailing narrative that prophesises a clash of civilisations: the medieval grand narrative of Islam versus Christendom is alive and well — just a few nips and tucks needed in the style of cosmetic history.
In a post-September 11 world, typecasting has become an art form. US political scientist Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations” theory accommodates stereotyping and political agendas on both sides of the barricades: violent Islam and suicidal jihadists on one side confront the wicked, decadent West waiting to corrupt Islam’s sons and daughters.
The US has always interpreted September 11 as an attack on Western civilisation. The European Union, on the other hand, interprets it as a response to particular problems: Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq. Muslims in Australia tried to explain this, but after the Bali blasts it sounded like a callous justification for murder, although, it was nothing of the kind.
Intense feelings of solidarity exist for fellow Muslims suffering in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay; speaking out against injustice is a strong Islamic tenet for all Muslims, and extremists know how to use this to recruit a new generation of young terrorists.
It is no use telling “moderate” Muslim leaders to confront extremists and reason with young Muslims; the young are not listening to the older first generation of Muslim leaders in Australia and, as I have recently found, neither are young British-born Pakistani Muslims listening to their elders.
Currently, I’m in London trying to understand why some young “home-grown” British Muslims are attracted to extremism. I talk to young men from different backgrounds: some are Oxford graduates, some work in pizza parlours, most are British born, although a few live here illegally.
They all distrust the police and cultivate a victim mentality because of the debate around racial profiling and their own experiences of racism. Recent events in London make their pessimism, and the fears of other Londoners, all too easy to understand.
Hanifa Deen is a senior research fellow with the Centre for Muslim Minorities and Islamic Policy at Monash University.
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