The truth is it seems to be more taboo to criticise Islamism in Britain these days than it is here in Beirut.
Alex Rowell is a reporter for NOW Lebanon in Beirut. He tweets @disgraceofgod
Catching up last week on yet another milestone in the sorry emaciation of free expression in Britain, documented in this case by Nick Cohen (who has after all written the book on this), I took to Twitter to quote his elegant synopsis of the problem with far too many of London’s self-styled radicals and insubordinates: “We only challenge religions that won’t hurt us, and governments that won’t arrest us.”
Within seconds, a prominent Lebanese atheist blogger, Gino Raidy, had replied, pointing out the curious and conspicuous fact that the same could not be said of the average disbelieving scribbler in the Arab world.
He’s exactly right. The truth is it seems to be more taboo to criticise Islamism in Britain these days than it is here in Beirut, where it’s taken for granted in liberal circles that theocracy is the enemy (and where, incidentally, the religious bigots are Christians as often as they are Muslims). The takfiris whose “legitimate grievances” right-thinking Britons are so anxious to locate and placate are treated with open contempt by liberal and leftist Arabs, and for very good reason.
It’s not just the proximity to the daily sectarian slaughter in Syria and Iraq, or the residue of the heady Arab nationalist days when the titanic Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser urged Saudi Arabians to revolt against their “reactionary” Wahhabi-Salafist rulers and openly ridiculed the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is, crucially, that Arabs – who naturally know their own language, culture, and history best – have the least difficulty seeing the Bin Ladenists for the crackpot criminals they are, and consequently have the least inclination to respect them.
Take the recent murder in Woolwich of Private Lee Rigby by two unapologetic Islamists. British jihadism’s savviest self-promoter, the former head of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s UK franchise and founder of the now-banned al-Muhajiroun, Omar Bakri, quickly made headlines by defending one of Rigby’s killers and claiming that, “To people around here [in the Middle East] he is a hero for what he has done.”
One pictures it all too easily: the furious throngs of bearded young men, burning Union Jacks, and bellowing for the infidels to be put to the sword. But there’s a reason Bakri didn’t repeat that claim when I interviewed him for a local publication: none of it happened. There were no demonstrations, no posters plastered on the walls, no festive sweets jubilantly doled out in city squares. Even the fringe militant Islamists, who successfully torched a KFC during the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ furore, made nothing of the occasion.
There was, quite simply, no evidence to suggest anyone in Lebanon felt anything but ordinary shock and disgust.
Yet the impressionable British mujahid-in-the-making two thousand miles away wouldn’t and couldn’t know that (and, incidentally, would have been little enlightened by the BBC’s invitation of Bakri’s protégé, Anjem Choudary, on to Newsnight to explain that the real victim in Woolwich was the killer, who had only acted in self-defense).
Maajid Nawaz, the former Hizb ut-Tahrir zealot turned liberal democracy activist, writes in his memoir, Radical, of how easily enthralled he and his fellow east Londoners in the 1990s were by the mere fact of Bakri’s being an actual Arab:
“Everyone wanted to see him and hear what he had to say […] Here was someone who did have a beard, who spoke Arabic, and who had the theological authority from having studied shari’ah (Islamic jurisprudence) at Damascus University.”
Western liberals have for decades permitted themselves to be fooled by these charlatans, even while secular Arabs have consistently and vocally opposed them (some, like the Egyptian Farag Foda and the Algerian Tahar Djaout, paying with their lives for doing so).
Recall that when Salman Rushdie was being vilified by John le Carré and Germaine Greer for the malicious “insult” his novel had been to a “great religion”, no fewer than one hundred Arab literary heavyweights, from Edward Said to Mahmoud Darwish to Adonis to Amin Maalouf, jointly published a book unambiguously rejecting the pro-censorship arguments (let alone the pro-murder ones) and explicitly identifying Rushdie’s cause as their own.
Indeed, in this, they were only following a Middle Eastern tradition identifiable since at least the irreverent poetry of Omar Khayyam, and much revitalized by the intellectual nahda (“
The day can’t come soon enough that Britain’s liberals realize that, so far from extending a hand of “solidarity” to their Arab counterparts by making excuses for religious fundamentalists, they are on the contrary sharpening the daggers of those who are, and have ever been, their great adversaries.
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10 Responses to “British liberals should learn from their Arab counterparts”
Ulysses
I don’t agree with the premise that Islamism or religious terrorism isn’t criticised or condemned in the UK. When an attack like Woolwich happens the news coverage and commentary from the left is always referencing how horrendous and callous the attack is. The reason why it’s a priority for liberals in Lebanon is because it’s far more of a threat to their way of life than it is in the UK. There is a negligible possibility of the British government being overthrown by a theocratic tyranny or descending into sectarian civil war but Lebanon is always on the cusp of this happening hence the need to treat it with such importance.
For those who genuinely care about civil liberties in the UK, the focus should be on the government using terrorism as pretext to violate our privacy, liberties and human rights and for those in the Middle East ensuring neither the theocrats or the generals use religion or nationalism to do the same. They are different weapons used to attack the same freedoms.
Themadmullahofbricklane
There are several issues here. Yes there is more chance of an Islamist coup in the Lebanon than here and we should be worried about the government intruding into our emails and private lives. But it is also true that Cohen’s criticisms of the liberal elite over the Rushdie affair were and are valid. There was total cowardice from a whole range of people who are now probably ashamed of the stance that they took at the time.
There are many, if not the majority, of Muslims in this country who are profoundly unhappy with the stance taken by their self appointed leaders on a number of issues but are afraid to speak out, it would be a brave Muslim who will break ranks especially after Rushdie spending ten years in hiding. Things change however, they have to otherwise they would stay the same and nothing does.
Monkish
It’s actually quite simple: if you criticize Islamism you’re either a racist Islamophobe (Islamists consider their politics to be the organic outgrowth of the Islamic religion) or a racist “Zionist”, or both! Islamists are very adept at using the rhetoric of anti-racism, widespread hostility to Israel and the post-colonial white guilt pervasive in the middle class to cast anathemas on anyone who dares to take a public stand against their ideology and agenda.
I do not share Ulysses’ complacency. The Islamist influence on British Muslims, particularly the younger generations via university Islam societies, is strong and growing in strength. With the financial backing of foreign donors (usually Muslim Brotherhood affiliated, but Saudi Salafis also) and the UK government (funding is co-opted by means of sham interfaith schemes and, increasingly, bogus “anti-radicalization” programmes), Islamists have gained a secure foothold in the UK from which they will extend their efforts well into the 21st century.
John
Why the left started embracing Islam as the new must have thing is beyond me. Just like Christianity but contemporary worse, Islam is a fascist ideology. Liberals should never have sacrificed its reverence of liberalism and secularism for the embracment of multiculturalism. Part of living in a liberal tolerant society is NOT tolerating intolerance. The left have alienated working-class and liberal people for a long time. By ignoring the Islam problem all you do is hand to the right a huge field to dominate and reveal that you are out of touch.
Riffak Ledifni
The truth is it seems to be equally taboo to criticise Islamism in Europe these days as it is in the Arab world due to the large 5 million Arab diaspora.