Blaming Islamism First
David Aaronovitch recently posted this typically excellent article in the TimesOnline. In it he describes one young British man’s journey into the depths of militant Islam, starting with the Young Muslim Organisation UK, and ending up with Hizb ut-Tahrir. The young man is Ed Husain, who has recently published his story in a new book, the Islamist. Aaronvitch quotes Husain, who relates that the jihadists would link Muslim grievances to British foreign policy:
“In years to come the Hizb would argue that every British Muslim difficulty, from terrorism to poor community relations, was the result of British foreign policy. And to this drumbeat other Islamists would march.”
It is, of course, a (depressingly) common belief that somehow Muslims have been driven mad with the horrors of Western intervention in the Middle East; such that they have become easy pray for radicalist factions. But such a formula only holds true if we believe the Islamist’s propaganda. The West has done a variety of things in the Middle East, some of them good, some of them bad, and some of them neither. For instance, France’s consistently shameful behaviour with regards to Iraq, and its complete support of Saddam Hussain. Should Muslims be aggrieved or pleased with this support? Should Islamists? How does this reflect on the United States?
These claims (that Islamic Terror is caused by abusive Western foreign policy), which see the left - and others who should know better - merely repeating jihadist lies, rest not on any serious analysis, but on a kind of folk wisdom. “Everybody knows that America causes terrorism, and that 9/11 was its comeuppance. It is self-evident.” However, there is no reason for anyone to believe the paranoid rantings of extremist Muslim clerics and ideologues. The Middle East has many problems, but to ascribe them all to the West is to absolutely miss the point. It’s also a neat excuse for the failings of one’s own society, and for one’s own self. Blame everybody else first, normally starting with the Jews, the freemasons or the Great Satan. That’s why you feel lonely, that’s why you’re unemployed, disenfranchised, annoyed. That’s why you have to start throwing bombs.
Far from being anti-imperialist freedom fighters, jihadists are actually just the political equivalents of stroppy children having temper tantrums, “it’s not fair, I want it my way!” They are looking for attention and looking for an excuse for their violence. America fills that role admirably. If it were not America, it would be somebody else, because the factors which give rise to Islamic radicalism are not caused by American actions. The factors which give rise to Islamic radicalism are internal to Islamic society itself. Chief among those factors is the religio-political ideology which justifies this violence to the rest of the Islamic community, the terrorists themselves, and to the world in general. Look beyond the proximate causes to those that lie deeper, yes, but when apportioning culpability, remember to blame Islamism first.
