After Woolwich

Michael Adebolajo, we learn, was a reasonably normal sociable youth, but at the age of 15 or so he converted to Islam. Never has Richard Dawkins' "meme" seemed more appropriate. It's as though some strange virus seized control of his mind, like those parasitic wasps that infest other insects and make them behave in bizarre ways, destroying their own survival in order to propagate the life of the parasite.

Which may seem all very offensive - but then we're dealing with an offensive subject. Two men hack another man to death with knives and machetes in broad daylight, in London, and then hang around, hands covered in blood, talking nonsense to whoever will listen about "our lands" and "Almighty Allah" and other such predigested garbage from the world of radical Islam, of the kind that we've become all too familiar with. And they're not mad. They're not random nutters. Infection by a poisonous meme seems about as good a description as you're going to get of what drove these men.

So what now? Well, we've been here before, and we'll almost certainly be here again. The guest post by Mehrdad Amanpour at Harry's Place is a good starting point. His later comment is even more to the point:

I’ve heard it said that Islam requires a Reformation. The unfortunate fact is that it has been experiencing one for the last few decades. Billions of petro-dollars are being invested by Iran and Saudi Arabia to promote their competing versions of fundamentalist Shia and Salafist Islam.

In Britain today, Muslims live in communities where criticism of Islam, Mohammad's actions or even the suggestion that parts of the Koran or hadiths may be false, can result in an accusation of ‘murtad’ (apostate), which can subsequently attract threats and extreme hostility by some within the community who feel that it is their religious duty to silence such debate with whatever force is necessary. This happens in Britain! Imagine how the church would look if people were frightened to criticise or challenge any aspect of Christianity?

That’s why we need non-Muslim politicians and the media to acknowledge and publically condemn some of the awful views held by some British Muslims.

In our universities, openly Islamist students freely strut around campuses, supporting illiberal and fascistic Islamist governments and political movements in the middle east and promoting a Utopian Khalifa whilst intimidating and threatening Muslims who disagree with them, or don’t dress of behave ‘Islamically’ enough.

Indeed, up and down the country, we have groups of people who gather and peddle hatred, homophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny and supermacism under the banner of 'Islam'.

And always they are unchallenged by those whose stated aim is to oppose fascism.

What are the chances, though? He's right about the reformation. The form a reformation takes will depend both on the intrinsic nature of the religion, and on the world it finds itself in at the time. The Christian reformation led to the growth of secularism and of science, partly because those forces were unstoppable, but also because Christianity had that emphasis on personal conscience and freedom ("love the sinner, hate the sin") that enabled that revolution to happen. Islam - "submission" - is different. It now finds itself an impotent onlooker in the new post-industrial world whose benefits it's happy to enjoy but whose achievements it played no part in. Its reformation is based on a toxic mixture of grievance culture  and a return to "purity". It is wholly reactionary. And it's ongoing. Even five years ago, to give a very rough indication, the sight of a woman in a niqab - covered in black, with a slit for the eyes - was a rare sight around my part of London. Now it's commonplace.

Can the likes of Mehrdad Amanpour "reclaim" their religion from the extremists. Good luck to him, but I have my doubts. In a debate between the fundamentalists and the modernisers, if the only permitted evidence is going to be the words of the Prophet as set down in the Koran and the hadiths - and that seems to pretty much define Islam - then frankly there's likely only going to be one winner. 

And yes, there's that unwillingness to confront Islamism from, particularly, the left. We know how that works. For years the worst, the most unforgiveable sin, has been racism. Quite right too. Back in the last decades of the last century it was a crucial struggle. But it reached the point where anything that might be construed as racism was construed as racism; where anyone who offered any criticism of a culture practiced largely by people with darker skin - such as Islam - would be swiftly outflanked by someone else going for their fix of self-righteousness,  claiming that the motivation for that criticism must be racism. I've seen that very comment at- where else? - the Guardian's CiF, where it was stated as self-evident that the only reason people said mean things about Islam was because they were racist; thus revealing himself to be a much better and more moral person than said critics, but also a fool.

The debate crystallises around the absurd concept of "Islamophobia". Let me quote myself:

A fundamental principle of Western thought is the separation between a person and their beliefs. This is not a fundamental principle of Islamic thought. Quite the contrary: born a Muslim, you die a Muslim. The notion that you might change your mind is so alien that the punishment for apostasy - in theory, if not necessarily in practice - is death.

The charge of Islamophobia deliberately obscures that separation between a person and their beliefs. It accepts the Islamic vision of an immutable union of person and religion. We should refuse to accept those terms. A person's ethnic origins may be Pakistani, Arab, Kurd, European, whatever, and to criticise or abuse them for that is racist and unacceptable. Their beliefs, whether in Islam, Scientology, UFOs, or any other ideology, creed or cult, is an entirely different matter, and should be open to criticism, debate, scepticism, up to and including ridicule. That's the way we do it, and that's what we should be defending. Worship who or what you want, wear what you want, think what you want, but don't expect to be spared from being offended by the opinions and beliefs of others. The charge of Islamophobia is, precisely, an attempt to make criticism of Islam illegitimate - and that attempt should be resisted. We should be free to criticise Islam just as we criticise Christianity, socialism, capitalism, or any other system of beliefs.

We still retain this feeling, as Alan Johnson notes, that it's somehow rude or unacceptable to talk about Islam. Except Johnson refers to "Islamism". Commentators, myself included (see above), tend to use "Islamism" when we wish to say something rude about Islam without seeming to condemn Muslims in general - as though we can distinguish good Islam from bad Islamism. I'm not sure we can. The answer, if we're worried about coming across as EDL supporters, is to make the clear distinction between the people and the belief. Many Britains are Muslim, and that's not about to change. I'm happy with that. I don't mind. That's the way it is. I like living in an ethnically and culturally diverse city like London. But that doesn't mean we can't criticise their belief. Because it desperately needs criticising.

For centuries, around the time of what we call the Dark Ages, Islam was the most dynamic cultural force in the world. Times have changed, but Islam hasn't. Now it's being left behind. Now it's rotting - and the stink is deeply unpleasant.

Comments

[Bob-B]

It is right to distinguish Islamism and Islam but wrong to suggest that they have nothing to do with each other. Islamism is a product of Islam in the much the same way as the Spanish Inquisition and the Anabaptists of Münster were a product of Christianity.

[Argie]

"Commentators, myself included (see above), tend to use "Islamism" when we wish to say something rude about Islam without seeming to condemn Muslims in general - as though we can distinguish good Islam from bad Islamism. I'm not sure we can. The answer, if we're worried about coming across as EDL supporters, is to make the clear distinction between the people and the belief. "
Excellent.

[LibertyPhile]

We badly need someone, a respected public figure, entertainer, churchman, even a senior politician, to say "there is something seriously wrong with Islam, it produces too many people like Michael Adebolajo".

Of course, the great majority probably think this, but such is the long dark shadow of persecutions from our not too distant European past, we have gone from one extreme to the other, and no one is brave enough to say it.

[LibertyPhile]

Here is another very good piece:

http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/woolwich-slaughter-sorry-mcb-but-this.html

But when are we going to get figures of greater national recognition (and I say this with all due respect) than Mick Hartley, Mehrdad Amanpour, and Archbishop Cranmer, speaking out?!

[Brian]

I'm a bit uneasy with your conclusion that we can't tell between "good Islam and bad Islamism". There are, surely, many hundreds of thousands of apolitical Muslims. I have met many and my experience in London must extrapolate.

What do these people think about the Woolwich murder and what would they prefer if they were given a choice between their Islam and the hard-line alternative? They would choose the former, I think.

This leads me to think that while Islamism is to be feared and combatted, it will not be so potent as to politicise the "moderate" Muslim people.

[Mick H]

I don't disagree. Yes, most Muslims are on the whole apolitical, and I'm sure are horrified by Woolwich. Most Muslims are decent people, just as most of everyone are decent people.

I just don't think there's such a clear-cut distinction between Islam and Islamism as people like to make out. And I think the decent apolitical Muslims are always going to lose out if they get arguing with the hard-liners, because that's the nature of Islam - especially the "post-reformation" Islam of the Salafists and the Wahhabists and so on. It isn't a religion that can naturally or easily be incorporated into a secular state. I don't think that applies just to Islamism; I think it applies to Islam.

[Dom]

The Boston marathon bombers once attended a mosque where it was said that Martin Luther King was doing God's work. The brothers rather angrily argued that this could not be true since MLK was a Christian. Not only that, but his name should not even be mentioned in a mosque. What struck me about the story is that there was only a half-hearted attempt to stop them. Apparently, they had the best of the argument.

There is nothing similar in other religions. A fundamentalist Jew or christian would never say something like that about MLK, unless you went way down to the Westboro idiots.

What bothers me is that I think the situation with Islam is going to get worse.

[Recruiting Animal]

Dom has made some errors in the last comment.

"Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of the mosque -- the Islamic Society of Boston, in Cambridge -- about three months ago, after he stood up and shouted at the imam during a Friday prayer service, they said. The imam had held up slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of a man to emulate, recalled one worshiper who would give his name only as Muhammad."

http://lat.ms/1asi5t0

[Dom]

He was told to remain quiet. That is not an argument that is going to win the day, and apparently it didn't change his mind. Tsarnaev's point, that a non Muslim should not be emulated, is fully supported by the Koran.

I suppose I was wrong to call it half-hearted.