dry grass singing

the end of innocence

"[Radical Muslims are] determined to destroy our way of life and substitute for it a fanatical vision of dictatorial and theocratic rule... At its root, the struggle is an ideological contest, a war of ideas that engages all of us..."

by Stephen Hadley, Frances Fragos Townsend
writing for The New York Times


The recent terrorist bombings in London affected me in a fundamental, visceral way. Firstly, of course, there was the grand cosmic irony that the first wave of attacks took place just a day after London's jubilant victory in the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. But more than that, the list of bomb-targets were to me a litany of places which had made up the urban Arcadia of my university days. Tavistock Square, Russell Square, King's Cross, Warren Street: all these were places where, in a very real sense, i grew up. Watching the news footage of the aftermath of the attacks, i could not help but feel a surreal sense of familiarity: there on the TV screen were the same plane trees, cracked pavements, walls of concrete, granite and sandstone that i had lived with, walked amidst, for three happy years. Yet there was an air of unnatural stillness about the scenes featured onscreen – even the frenzied activity of the emergency workers seemed at odds with the lucidity of the still summer air. The whole incident, like so many other terrorist incidents, felt unreal, a nightmare from which all feelings of fear and horror had drained away, like blood from a pale thin face.

As terrorist incidents go, though, the London attacks were nowhere as unexpected or as devastating as the others that the world has had to grapple with in recent years. That London was a prime target was as good as fact after Tony Blair's decision to lead the UK into a preemptive strike on Iraq based on highly dubious claims about weapons of mass destruction that have now been all-but-proven to be non-existent. The swift, concerted response to the July 7th bombings shows that the British government has long been steeling itself for precisely such an eventuality. Far be it from me to trivialise the pain and suffering caused by any kind of violence, no matter what the scale. But, to be absolutely objective, the London attacks seemed designed to warn and intimidate rather than to cause any harm on the same scale as the September 11 attacks, or even the Bali bombing.

The response of ordinary Londoners to the attempt to intimidate has been nothing short of stunning. I'm not sure if I could muster the same mixture of resilience and wry humour if I were ever to face a similar situation. The British government's response, though, has not been as easily laudable. What, for example, can we possibly make of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes? Innocent posterboy for the London Met's deadly incompetence, Menezes has unfortunately become a symbol of all that's wrong with the world's current approach to the terrorist threat: shoot first, ask later, and never mind if you kill a few innocent bystanders along the way. But no matter what the response, one thing has remained constant ever since the first plane crashed into the World Trade Centre on that autumn morning in September 2001: the world has chosen to cast the story in epic terms, as a clash of civilisations between the rational West and the fanatical Middle East. This has resulted in a stark dialectic that has divided the world along the lines of reason and madness, moderation and fanaticism, good and evil. And in this battle of mighty opposites, every salvo fired serves only to further entrench the conflict and deny any possibility of resolution.

There can be no doubt that terrorists are mad, fanatical people doing mad, fanatical things. Yet, to attribute that madness to a simple desire to propagate "a fanatical vision of dictatorial and theocratic rule' is at best reductionist, at worst hypocritical, and above all, counter-productive. Firstly, it would take a grand leap of the imagination, as well as a good dose of condescension, to believe that these terrorist organisations really wish to take over the world and impose some warped vision of religious purity on the whole of civilisation. Such a claim fails to take into account the fact that most of the masterminds behind these terrorist organisations are highly-educated, intelligent and worldly-wise individuals who know enough about the systems they are fighting against to be aware that these systems are not going to collapse as a result of a whole series of well-timed terrorist attacks at a whole series of well-chosen, symbolic venues. These terrorist masterminds may be mad, but they are not stupid. Let us not lower ourselves to the level of lackey suicide-bombers who allow themselves to be tricked into thinking that leaders of organisations like Al-Qaeda actually believe their own rhetoric. And rhetoric it is, as anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with human nature will be able to discern.

Attributing the problem of terrorism to an ideological clash of civilisations is not only misguided, it is fundamentally dishonest. An interesting counterpoint can be seen in the way the IRA's terror campaign against England was never really attributed to the religious differences between Protestants and Catholics. Instead, it was widely acknowledged that these religious differences were simply used by the IRA to promote its political agenda, which had far more to do with a history of perceived dispossession and injustice than with any real quarrels over the nature of the Eucharist or the conditions for salvation. Of course, the religious differences could be conveniently exploited to fan the conflict, but by and large the world seemed extraordinarily clear-eyed about the true nature of the Troubles in Northen Ireland.

It is therefore puzzling that this same world appears intent on couching what is essentially a political and economic issue in cultural and religious terms. Or is it? The answer lies in the expected response to both types of problems. Telling ourselves that the issue is cultural or religious absolves us of all responsibility for the problem. After all, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. It's not our fault that we just happen to have different value systems. We can't help it if we believe in freedom and democracy, while you believe in goodness-knows-what because your system of societal organisation is backward and unenlightened. We can't help it if our skin colours are different. We call our Gods by different names - and because only our God is the one true God, we will fight to the death in defence of the only Truth we know, never mind if that same Truth also commands us to love our fellow man.

Political problems and economic issues, on the other hand, are man-made, and thus demand human responsibility. Did our forefathers forcibly take away your forefathers' land, leaving you aliens in your own country? Do the economic policies pursued by our country cause you to be unfairly disadvantaged, and do they widen and perpetuate the existing gulfs between the haves in our homeland, and the have-nots in yours? And if some of this is our doing, are we then accountable for providing solutions? What if the kinds of solutions you seek are not in our interest?

It is far easier to get on the moral high horse by attributing what we don't want to deal with to fanaticism and irrationality, even evil, in other people. However, honesty requires us to admit that this is no ideological battle, no cosmic struggle between the Forces of Good and Evil, no matter how much American spindoctors may wish us to think so. Undeniably, the average suicide bomber may see his mission in such terms. Any other motivation would render his actions purely irrational. Policy-makers and decision-makers who drive world affairs, however, must not mistake political rhetoric for reality. And the truth is that terrorism is a problem rooted in the absence of global political, economic and social justice, and in the subsequent resentment created by this lack. Any viable solution must therefore entail a full look at the worst of the glaring inequalities and injustices perpetuated by our complacent assumptions about the globalised world that we make our home.

posted by eothen @ 10:53 AM