As the British government considers the possibility of joining in air-strikes on Syria, it is worth reflecting on the paradoxes and contradictions that lie at the centre of Western approaches to tackling the growth of violent jihadism at home and abroad.
[/quote]
This is informative.
UK will be soon joining others in bombing Syria.
By now Muslims are well aware that the self-righteous phrases like war on terror are simply an eye wash, a white wash, a pulling wool on our eyes. In Afghanistan the conversation amongst US soldiers used to be rather casual. If they went out to have an encounter with the militants they will say they are going to kill Mooj, for Mujahid. When they felt like head hunting, killing civilians, they said they were going to kill Hajis.
Of course for the world consumption the facade was different - war on terror.
The phrase violent Jihadism too is a telling one.
The greater G!h@d, the Mujahida, of fighting against bser self has certainly reached the west and they have taken that into account.
Thus what we say sooner or later reaches them.
Thus whatever protest we make about the pain and injury inflicted upon hapless Muslims is not really in vain.
This brings us to a very critical problem.
What is our attitude towards the violence perpetrated by a miniscule of Muslims in the name of Islam?
This question can not be avoided anymore.
The finer distinctions like Greater G!h@d and Smaller G!h@d can not buy us any more time.
But someone will interject that we already condemned all types of violence.
We were never in favour of violence committed in the name of Islam.
In reality even this attitude lacks in commitment.
Somewhere we have to stand up for our rights.
If some Muslims are indulging in violence then there must be causes behind it and the collective responsibility of Ummah is to solve those problems that push youth towards voluntary steps at individual level.
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Following outrages like those in Paris on 13 November, politicians have developed a curious habit of denying that such attacks have anything to do with religion.[/quote]
Here we are really talking about a huge gap between current and desired reality.
How to move from the Clash of Civilizations to Celebration of Civilizations paradigm?
We have a responsibility here.
Unfortunately we are not giving it due weightage.
We are aware of the gravity of the situation but are simply dumbfound to take up the responsibility.
Of course the west will do all that is within its reach to thwart any attempt on part of Muslim Ummah to think on its feet.
That is life.
But when will we wake up to our responsibility?
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Home Secretary, Theresa May, asserted that the Paris attacks "have nothing to do with Islam". The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, declared that the attackers were "godless tyrants" "completely at odds with the precepts of Islam".[/quote]
It is true.
Islam does not forsee killing on innocent non-combatants.
But why are we allowing the west to play the game from both sides?
That is a clear sign of our abdication of responsibility.
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After every attack since 9/11 the governing class and other mainstream commentators invariably argue that those attacking in the name of the Prophet wilfully misinterpret his message.[/quote]
It is true that this is happening.
We can see that the west is confound.
We can not simply sit and watch the development.
Is there any agency who can talk to the west about interests of Muslims at the world stage.
If we do not have civit spokespersons of Muslims then sooner or later the west will be justified in assuming the violent people has sole speakers for Islam as well as Muslims.
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The consequence of official denial results in a strange policy paradox: a domestic policy that treats the homegrown threat as a community relations problem, while, foreign policy prosecutes al-Qaeda, or, its progeny, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) by invasion, air strikes and targeted killings. In other words, war abroad and equivocation at home.
[/quote]
When Muslim ummah does not have an organization principle then above is inevitable.
We are leaving the playing field wide open to tose people who are not our representative.
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Given that those who share the religious ideology and practice of Isil now move freely between Europe sans frontieres and the Middle East and derive support from western diaspora communities this policy appears dangerously incoherent.[/quote]
The normal question will be why should the west accomodate those who are bent upon working against western interests.
even more seriously - if Muslims do not have a view of their own then they are doomed to operate under western paradigm.
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The difficulty with the political rhetoric disclaiming a link with Islam is that it clearly denies the connection between these attacks and a literal interpretation of the Koran.[/quote]
This one can be explained.
Islam proposes a self-consistenat and complete life system.
That includes military and political components.
It is not necessarily anti-west by definition.
Amicable existence with the west is possible.
Beloved Prophet (PBUH) lived in presence of Jewish and Christian people.
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This interpretation needs to be understood because without that understanding it is impossible to comprehend Isil’s strategic thinking or devise an effective response.[/quote]
From these statements it is clear that we have not done our job of explaining our ideology to the rest of the world. Whose duty it was to clarify these issues? Are we deceiving ourselves?
Issue is simple. Islam is not all antagonism to everything that is not Islamic.
The whole spectrum of antagonism to friendship is open for us.
Yet we do not propagate that.
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Salafism on Steroids
The salafist doctrine that informs the thinking of Isil represents a distinct response to the slow-motion collision between modernity in its globalised form and an Islamic social character.
[/quote]
Honestly speaking the slow motion collision should not have been a cause for complain.
Yet the west is in a rattled state.
And that is due to the so called Islamic terrorism.
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Islamist ideologue, Sayyid Qutb (1903-66) argued that the political weakness of Muslim society since the nineteenth century could only be redressed by a return to the scriptural certitude practiced by the salaf al saleh (the rightly guided 7th century followers of the prophet Mohammad). This reformation further required a revolutionary recourse to apocalyptic violence.
Qutb’s key work Milestones (1964) distinguished between the properly constituted darul Islam and the condition of almost universal ignorance in which the world (both Muslim and non-Muslim) rests.
‘Everything around us’, Qutb maintained ‘is jahiliyya [ignorance]… even much of what we think of as being Islamic culture, Islamic sources, or Islamic philosophy and thought is the making of this jahiliyya’.
The way out of this ignorance requires total submission to the sovereignty and rulership of God, that is, the ‘wresting of power from the hands of its human usurpers to return it to God alone’. For Qutb and his successors the ‘correct order for the steps of the Islamic method’ was first to remove non-Islamic regimes and establish Islamic society.[/quote]
This is a summary of Syed Qutb's argument for a Muslim or Islamic rennaisance.
This view is remarkable in both ways - in its essentialization of the Islamic dictum as well as undue assertion.
These issues must be addressed and this is essential to do so.
Yet at the moment we can ignore this line of argument.
The reason is that the current push of violence is on part of the Islamic State and they are energised by the Salafi ideology and not the Ikhwani ideology.
The two are quite different.
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It is after Qutb that we can refer to Islamism not as a traditional or mainstream Moslem religion but as an ideology, or, more precisely, a political religion.[/quote]
This terminology is slightly old.
Ikhwani ideology holds some currency in Egypt where it is more vigorous. To little extent it is found in Turkey, Indian subcontinent and Indonesia.
The current boiling pot, Syria, is driven by Salafism.
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Like the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century that profoundly influenced this style of Islamist thought, it assumes a specialised knowledge ‘of the method of altering being’.[/quote]
This line or argument catches the other essential ingradient.
The west simply can not digest that Muslims should think Islamically.
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Under the influence of Qutb and contemporaries like Taquiuddin al-Nabhani, who founded Hizb-ut Tahrir in 1952, Islamism became a system that critiqued Islam’s relationship with modernity and outlined the method of transforming it via jihad if necessary.
[/quote]
My knowledge of HT is miserably inadequate hence I invite others to do the needful here.
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The failure of the nation-state in the Middle East, its kleptocratic corruption, defeat by Israel and failure to address the Palestinian problem only exacerbated the conflict within Islam.
[/quote]
These isues too need careful attention.
Unfortunately only the western view is available.
Arabs are still not thinking politically - except for Palestinians.
[quote]Isil’s strategy
It is in this politically religious context that Isil, both in its Sunni heartlands and among its diaspora, functions.
Not completely.
The Syria situation has practically nothing to do with Syed Qutb.
Then one has to talk about the encroachment of west on Muslim life space.
[quote]Its key achievement, as it evolved from al-Qaeda in Iraq after 2009, was a new caliphate declared in Mosul in June 2014. The fact that, unlike al-Qaeda, it controls territory means that it can implement an absolutist sharia order within its domain.
Whose key achievement?
For the record the west created agency, Al Qaida, took severe beating at the hands of US/NATO in Afghanistan.
A part of it separated and is now called the Islamic State.
Every one was cultivated by the US.
let us not allow the west to obfuscate the issues.
[quote]To rebuild the salafist golden age, however, requires a coherent strategy that adapts salvation to the needs of contemporary jihad.
This is so very wrong to dabble on Islamic principles.
In fourteen hundred years of its existence the west simply does not know enough about Islam.
Yet whatever she knows about Islam is very detrimental - they must oppose Islam at any cost.
Radicalism amongst a miniscule of Muslims might be a problem yet the bigger problem is the western refusal to accept the fact that Muslims would like to live according to Islam.
[quote]Abu Bakr al-Naji’s The Management of Savagery (2004) provides Isil with its playbook. Drawing on al-Naji’s analysis, securing territorial borders, establishing authority through total fear, and applying sharia justice to those who submit are the cornerstones of Isil’s strategy.
Savagery here is the necessary precursor to the final historical stage of the reformed Caliphate. Even if the Caliphate is not achieved immediately, no matter.
Al-Naji continues, ‘the more abominable the level of savagery is’, it is still less abominable than enduring stability under ‘the order of unbelief’.
Isil, following Naji, also recognises the power of the media and, in particular, the West’s belief in its own media delusions (about Isil being increasingly desperate, or that ‘lone wolves’ in Western cities are deranged lunatics).
I do read a lot about islam and Muslim issues but it is for the first time that I am hearing this al-Naji. (Notice the deceptive rhyme with Nazi.) ISIS is not a mainstream Islamic movement. Even by their standards it will be very surprising that a hideous ideology took roots amongst Muslims and we Muslims did not know about it till June 2014. It is clear that the writers of the article we are deconstructing simply picked up some obscure views and are trying to explain a phenomenon that is illuding both on ground as well as intellectual grasp. In view of these circumstances it only confirms that the authors themselves are clueless about the happenings.
[quote]
Isil’s analysis holds that the Western world order is exactly as Qutb believed jahaliyya: fragile, decadent and easily divided.
With the division of the world into righteous and infidel, Isil and its followers now seek a final apocalyptic showdown between the ‘forces of Rome’ (the West) and that of the righteous on the Syrian plains.
Anyone who has been obderving the things for last one year will conclude that ISIL does not take its ideology from Syed Qutb.
[quote]The strategy of savagery thus intends to draw the US and its allies into a real war on the ground, and pursues the doctrine of ‘paying the price’: that is: you bomb us in Raqqa and we’ll bomb you in Paris, Sydney, London, where we know you are weak.
Isil engages in a ‘political game’ where ‘rough violence in times of need’ is a necessary part of the policy of ‘paying the price’.
Islamist strategic thinking exploits the weakness in Western secularism (beginning with its attachment to life), and plays upon it to achieve utopia.
Here focus is again on the Clash of Civilizations rather than Celebration of Civilization, the best anti-dote to violent ideologies like war on terror as well as ISIS.
[quote]Western delusions and paradoxes
Paradoxically, after 9/11 it has been multicultural Western cities that have proved highly congenial to Isil’s support network. Over time – and with official government tolerance – a sui generis militancy evolved in the diaspora communities whether in the suburbs of Paris, Brussels, London and elsewhere.
Here the focus is on the west-Islam dichotomy. It does capture a part of the problem but none of the solution. But denouncing multicultural society by implication the problem is aggravated and not solved.
[quote]
Although salafism remains a minority stream within Islam, globally it appeals to an educated, but deracinated middle-class. In Europe, second and third generation, often tertiary educated, Muslims find solace not in multiculture, but in a re-Islamisation that prefers supranational Islamist organisations.
Thankfully this clarifies one point. It is not the traditional Islamic education that has put Muslims and the west face to face. It is the modern education.
Furthermore it really exposes some duplicity in western attitude because otherwise western educated youth would not turn against the west.
[quote]The nominally peaceful but transnational Hizb-ut Tahrir exemplifies this transition from a traditional to a universalist mode of Islamic identity.
Again I have little info on the attitude of this party and hence find it difficult to comment.
[quote]The tendency of much official and media commentary either to write off this evolution as having nothing to do with Islam, or to offer its more articulate spokespersons grants, or positions on commissions addressing ethnic and religious exclusion in order to build bridges where none exist, merely enhances its domestic profile.
Here we can come directly to the solution.
The west should accept that Islam is a complete way of life and it is a complete value system in itself. Just because the values happen to be different from western values it is not necessary that west unleahes a juggernaut of violence against the Muslim masses who are both helpless and hapless.
[quote]Indeed, rather than give up its liberal faith in multiculturalism, Western governments prefer to ignore the distinctly Islamist idiom of expression.
Problem in fact is not of too much multiculturalism but of too little.
The west has to let go of its attitudes that it inherited from its Christian past.
They do not have to carry on the ideological burden of crusades.
That is what they continue to do till today.
[quote]Hence, so-called Western de-radicalisation programmes in the UK, Western Europe and Australia all consider the problem of Muslim alienation in terms of ‘outreach’ programmes in order to identify those deemed to be at risk of being seduced by the path of jihad.
This misses the issue by two yards.
When modern educated Muslim will get the clear signal that the modern west is not at odds with the Islamic world then they will have lost evey single ground for antagonism.
[quote]Tolerating the intolerant?
To address the prevailing, and ultimately self-destructive paradox that toleration and accommodation must be extended to the intolerant, as current government often programmes assume, it might be worth secular liberal multiculturalists attending to the thinking of a philosopher who understood the necessary conditions for maintaining an open society against its enemies.
This does look like a tall order.
The reason being the unwarranted self-righteousness.
Western values are supreme for the west.
The west better talk to Muslims in order to sort out the problems that can be solved on the table.
[quote]
Karl Popper, an émigré from the Third Reich, observed that ‘unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance’.
In fact ‘if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them’.
Popper continued that we need not ‘suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion’.
Yet as Popper presciently foresaw, ‘it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument’, but begin as Islamism does, by denouncing all argument. They may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments with violence.
Were he alive, Popper would no doubt counsel politicians today that a pluralist democracy must ultimately assert another kind of paradox, claiming that ‘in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant’. A robust democracy that does not comprehend this paradox cannot long endure.
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