The Vision Thing

Britain: homegrown terror By Olivier Roy

These radicals are not fighting for a specific national cause. They are part of the contemporary global jihad: Bosnia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir and now Iraq. Their enemy is the US and the West in general. They are not fighting to establish an Islamic state in Iraq or Palestine. They are not concerned with solidarity networks or fundraising; nor are they involved in the conflicts and practical problems of Muslim populations in Europe. None of them is known to have been active in Muslim trade union, political or communal organisations. Those who have attended mosques have often done so under the patronage of fundamentalist organisations, such as Jama’at ut-Tabligh, which do not advocate political action. So the London terrorists of Pakistani origin did not go to Kashmir or Waziristan to fight the (nationalist) enemy.

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More than ever, al-Qaida militants have a global, non-territorial vision of jihad. Their goal is not to liberate the Middle East but to combat the world order as they see it. The young second-generation Muslims radicalised in the run-down suburbs and inner-city slums of Europe are motivated by their own situation, not Iraq. They have not been sent to fight somewhere: they fight where they live and where most of them were born. Nor are they particularly guided by political strategy: there were other attempted bomb attacks in Madrid after the withdrawal of Spanish troops.

Ordinary Muslims undoubtedly see the Middle East conflicts as western aggression and proof of the West’s double standards. But the Muslim population in the West has been concerned to express its opposition in political terms, and has joined together with a European public strongly opposed to the war in Iraq. The joint anti-war demonstrations are tangible proof of the integration of Muslims in the political life of Europe. The protests of Europe’s Muslim communities are not couched in terms of religion. They are founded on respect for international law and the rejection of imperialism.

By invoking these conflicts, al-Qaida seeks to acquire legitimacy among Muslims and pose as its avant-garde, whereas it actually recruits on the margins of Muslim society (and on its most westernised fringes at that). Most of all, al-Qaida is concerned to smash the political common front and confine Muslims to a purely religious or ethnic identity that most of them want nothing to do with. It is deliberately out to provoke a clash of cultures, perhaps because, at bottom, the real problem of the radicalised youth is their relation to culture of any kind.

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There may have been good reasons for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and the issue of democracy in the Middle East cannot be ignored by the nationalist left, moderate Islamists or European opponents of the war. But to justify the war in Iraq as part of the fight against terrorism is just as nonsensical as to justify terrorism by the war in Iraq. The issues in the Iraq war are the structure of the Iraqi state, the respect of Iraqi nationalism, the constitutional and legal status of Islam, and the meaning of democracy.

The terrorists have no interest in any of these issues, all of which are becoming increasingly confused in the context of a US policy devoid of overall vision.

via Norm