Skip to content or view screen version

Careerists of the desert

Sofia Zackary | 26.08.2014 12:49 | Analysis | Iraq

The government, seconded by most news networks are sure to have found the solution to the effects of religious fundamentalism as it has recently stricken British society: surveillance, stricter control through stricter legislation, supplemented by the practice of traditional ruffianism (or else the giving of information from members of the public to the authorities).

The government, seconded by most news networks are sure to have found the solution to the effects of religious fundamentalism as it has recently stricken British society: surveillance, stricter control through stricter legislation, supplemented by the practice of traditional ruffianism (or else the giving of information from members of the public to the authorities). For it is clear what the Telegraph means when it ends its August 23rd article with: “Somebody in the local community had tipped police off about his activities” and “the need to collect information is ever more pressing … the fear is other returning jihadists will have slipped the net, wandering Britain’s streets with murderous intent”. A melodramatic, badly phrased, Jack-the-ripper-on-the-loose urge to report anything suspicious (to the police, the authorities etc). Let’s not forget the news articles and the vans with enlarged CCTV pictures asking the public to identify and report rioters during and after the August 2011 unrest. Let’s begin pondering the meaning of posters at bus and tube stops urging: “reporting anything unusual won’t hurt you”. The long-used and favourite habit of reporting doesn’t seem to have brought us any closer to solutions for the pathologies of this society.

The voice of reason recently poured out of “respected and educated” mouths to express the mainstream sentiment: the former archbishop of Canterbury and the mayor of London spoke out against multiculturalism and “those brats who despite benefiting from all the spoils of the open/tolerant/all-embracing British society, dare to turn against it”. Fragments of truthful utterances such as the responsibility of the Muslim communities and the failure of multiculturalism are awkwardly combined with loads of national arrogance and the belligerent air of the master of the world chess-board. In a rare attempt at approaching the core of the matter, the Independent, published the obvious: it is society as a whole which creates the monster. The deed itself was monstrous and any attempt by the Left to dissipate its significance by blaming it on european/western brutality at home or abroad falls short of its target. First, because they resort to crudely anachronistic comparisons (i.e. that murderous excursions such as the Christian crusades occurred not last year but several hundred years ago is not taken into account in their reports); moreover, they insist on an antiquated ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric, which may seem self-evident (hasn’t the West – the US and Britain mainly – started the wars in the middle East after all?) but is inadequate and blind to other factors such as Islamic fundamentalism (where are the equivalent, contemporary movements by Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians etc, leftists never seem to ask themselves, lest they will be accused of Islamophobia) and the deep decomposition of western institutions and values to which they have no alternative to propose.

British society as a whole does not wish and, moreover, is unable to see its own face reflected in the face of its jihadists. Yes, multiculturalism in its present form has failed [1] (albeit for very different reasons than those that can cross the mind of an arch-priest); yes, religious fundamentalism is a sine qua non of the problem and religious communities are to be held accountable for it; but the fact remains that these British bred and born, who have been shaped by the British values and education system seem to have incorporated the worst of it. To take a closer look at these values (or, more accurately, wider social characteristics) is imperative: careerist and consumerist culture, suppression of individuality, omnipresence of surveillance, lack of essential communication between different cultural groups and within these groups, bureaucratic omnipotence, nationalist hubris, stark economic and political inequality. In a word, insignificance; a post-modern porridge of highly competitive, neo-yuppie emptiness which when it does not bring young people to suicide or death [2], steels in them a hard core of individualism, indifference and apathy. It is beyond doubt that apart from the accent, these men and women have adopted the British or western, if you like, ideal; they are cold careerists of a different kind, not of the City but of the desert.

I’m not trying to find humanity in the psyche of fanatics, or justify the unjustifiable. I’m looking for democratic solutions instead of badly-stitched patches on the body of a profoundly problematic society, which cannot be improved by cabinet legislations and dictations from above. Unfortunately, the dominant paradigm, which is not only promoted by the elites but is also widely accepted by the majority, is disciplinary action, punishment and not prevention, isolation and not communication, the preservation of hierarchical cynicism and the rejection of critical thinking and truly democratic, horizontal institutions and values. The tolerant face of Britain is being distorted and lost by its ugly combination with increasingly suppressing policies and social practices, which make every aspect of social and even private life increasingly suffocating and intolerable.
Notes
[1] For a brief explanation of the failure of western multiculturalism and possible alternatives see the article The Society of Intercultural Relations (p.32-40) on Democracy Street
[2] Let’s not forget the 31-year-old PhD graduate who committed suicide by falling from his Kensington home in January 2013, after only being able to find a job at a call centre, or the 21-year-old Bank of America intern who died of exhaustion from work in November 2013.

 http://eagainst.com/articles/careerists-of-the-desert/

Sofia Zackary

Comments

Hide 1 hidden comment or hide all comments

Hidden Comment

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

They're not glamorous rebels; they're narcissistic saddoes"

26.08.2014 14:58

The experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey."

So wrote Thomas Babbington Macaulay, the Whig MP, historian and poet, in 1848; and, as usual, he was spot on. A leaked MI5 report on the profile of British jihadis made the same observation in more pedestrian prose. "Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly."

Mehdi Hassan has a fascinating piece in the Huffington Post, in which he reveals the books that two Brummie Muslims had ordered from Amazon before heading out to join the insurgents in Syria. Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, who pleaded guilty to terrorism offences last month, had not bought works on politics or advanced theology, but Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. Dummies indeed.

An alarming number of our young men – boys born and brought up in the United Kingdom – are involved with extremist paramilitaries in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. There are credible estimates that more British Muslims are fighting with Islamic State (formerly ISIS) than serving in the Armed Forces. As Douglas Murray writes in the current Spectator, this isn't even the first time that a British Muslim has arranged for the beheading of an American journalist.

What is pushing these youths into violence? Is it something in their religion, something in their socio-economic circumstances, something in their character, or something else entirely?

There are evidently several factors at work, and we should be wary of oversimplifying, but one observation made by almost all the experts who have studied Western-born Islamic militants is that they fit the classic profile of the terrorist down the ages: male, typically in their twenties or early thirties, with some education, narcissistic, lacking in empathy, lonely, unsuccessful with women, often with a history of petty crime.

What makes a terrorist different from other bellicose young men is that he has found a cause that validates his anti-social tendencies – a doctrine that teaches him that he is angry, not because there's something wrong with him, but because there's something wrong with everyone else. Islamic State thugs, like Baader-Meinhof gangsters, IRA gunmen, Red Brigaders or nineteenth century anarchists, are convinced that they can see things more keenly than others, and that this clarity of vision elevates and ennobles their aggression.

Consider Michael Adebolajo, who carried out the sickening murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich. He matched the profile in almost every respect: a history of petty crime, drug abuse and anti-social behaviour, a conviction that he was better than everyone else, an obsession with violent video games, a streak of raw belligerence (neighbours recall that he once punched a girl in the face when she came to retrieve a ball). Whatever else we call such a lifestyle, it's hardly pious.

What seems to have drawn Adebolajo to murder is not religious dogma, but glamour. Like the British nationals in Syria calling for more volunteers, he had constructed a mental picture of himself as a soldier engaged in radical cause.

When critics describe the jihadis as "mediaeval" they have things the wrong way round. Mediaeval Islam was, by the standards of its day, tolerant and enlightened. The extreme form of Wahhabism embraced by the jihadis is, by contrast, a modernist philosophy. Like communism, fascism and every other -ism that promises a new dawn, it makes no concessions, either to past tradition or to human nature. It holds out a vision of something so pure that it can, in practice, never be achieved. This purity is precisely what appeals to a certain type of youngster.

Am I saying the violence has nothing to do with Islam? No, of course not. Western jihadis may be drawn by what one expert calls "a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends", but al-Baghdadi, the self-styled Caliph, is motivated by more traditional religious enthusiasm, as are his local recruits. Such enthusiasm is rarer in non-Muslim communities: you won't find many Anglicans, say, going out to fight for their coreligionists in Nigeria. Still, it's critically important to understand the precise nature of the link. We must get our diagnosis right before we start prescribing treatment.

You often hear the argument that the solution lies in moderate Muslims speaking out more loudly against the terrorists. In fact, this is already happening: Islamic State is condemned in mosques up and down the country, and Muslim organisations routinely urge young men to join the police and Army. Several imams, indeed, have gone as far as to declare that any British Muslim who dies in the Queen's uniform, regardless of whether or not he was fighting Muslim enemies, is a martyr. But mainstream Muslims are virtually the last people the fanatics listen to. The jihadis regard them, rather as urban guerrillas regarded Social Democrats, not as allies but as traitors.

What, then, can we do? Well, for a start, we can stop taking these losers at their own estimation. Let's treat them, not as soldiers, but as common criminals. Instead of making documentaries about powerful, shadowy terrorist networks, let's laugh at the pitiable numpties who end up in our courts. Let's mock their underpants bombs and their half Jafaican slang and their attempts to set fire to glass and steel airports by driving into them and their tendency to blow themselves up in error. Let's scour away any sense that they represent a threat to the state – the illicit thrill of which is what attracts alienated young men trawling the web from their bedrooms.

At the same time, let's stop teaching the children of immigrants to despise the British state. Let's stop deriding and traducing our values. Let's stop presenting our history as a hateful chronicle of racism and exploitation. Let's be proud of our achievements – not least the defence of liberty in two world wars in which, respectively, 400,000 and nearly a million Muslims served in British uniforms.

The best way to defeat a bad idea is with a better one. Few ideas are as wretched as the theocracy favoured by IS; few as attractive as Anglosphere freedom.

I'm not saying that patriotism alone will finish the jihadis. Like the urban guerrillas in the 1970s, they must be treated primarily as a security problem rather than a political one. But what ultimately did for the Red Army Faction and all the rest was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the almost universal realisation that revolutionary socialism was no alternative to Western democracy. It comes down, in the end, to self-belief. Not theirs; ours.

DH


Hide 1 hidden comment or hide all comments