Rageh Omaar, writing in the New Statesman, makes an interesting observation:
Each time I return [to Somaliland] I am struck by the increasing influence of puritanical interpretations of Islam. […] Generations of young Somali men have attended seminaries and Koranic schools, but they never used to wear turbans or red and white keffiyehs, increasingly a symbol of Sunni sectarian identity.
Somalis have been guest workers in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, for decades, giving Saudi Arabia considerable economic and cultural influence over the people and institutions of the as yet unrecognised Republic of Somaliland. One influence has been the financing of schools based on the puritanical Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Western governments seem unperturbed. They are more worried, in the case of Somalia, by the emergence of a loose alliance of home-grown Islamists who came to power because they got rid of hated warlords, than with the large sums of money being spent by Saudi institutions to spread an austere version of Islam.
It was ever thus. I know some in the commentariat will dismiss anything Omaar says because he’s an ex-BBC journalist writing in a lefty publication. But his point, supported by these facts, boils down to a simple one, with which I concur: Islamism won’t weaken in the rest of the world while it continues to be spread from Riyadh.
You would not want to start from here, but the West must find ways to stop sucking up to the Saudis and, more, to begin to counter their theological export industry. 30 years late is better than never. Killing people is beside the point. Offering cultural alternatives is not.
It’s not either/ or. It’s both/ and. We need to destroy the safe havens for training camps and so on. We also need to defeat them ideologically, a task in which destroying training camps, gaining intelligence, and attacking funding helps.
During the Cold War, we needed to engage in ideological struggle. We came close to losing a few of our continental neighbours and did lose a bunch of friendly third world regimes. We also needed to engage in material struggles. Even if we had more effectively cut off external support from the Chinese, we’d have needed to fight in Korea. The Cold War would have been less easily won ideologically without the boots on the ground, the 258 dead, the 777 wounded, and so on.
If we handed over Iraq, the Wahabbis would find their money went a lot further. If the Sharia Courts in Somalia had succeeded in an offensive against the Somali government, rather than the other way round, Islam would have spread a lot more quickly than even the most charismatic preacher could manage. If the British government continues to hand over villages to the Taliban, it does more harm than when it grants visas to individual ghastly people. All fronts necessary.
We don’t dismiss Rageh because he works for the BBC. We dismiss him because he talks lefty pro-Islam rubbish.
Yes, he has a point that the Wahhabi missionaries are a problem. But in doing so he is still pushing the “tiny minority of extremists” line, abeit with a somewhat larger tiny minority than usual. He starts his article with a positive line on the popular support the Islamists held (among Islamists, he fails to mention) although to be fair he balances this with a negative line on the unpopularity of the Ethiopians (among the Islamists, he fails to mention). (No mention of any of the more ‘controversial’ of the Islamists’ activities, you’ll note.) There’s a little dig at the US, where apparently Oxfam say they bombed the wrong guys again. And again where “some” Ethiopian politicians are concerned at being seen allied with the US.
The bit in the middle on the rise of veils and hard-liners is reasonable, although nothing that we hadn’t heard years ago from other sources. (Has the BBC only just now noticed? And why are they sending a guy to Somalia to report on it, when it would burn far less tellytaxpayers money to report on it happening in London or Manchester?) Quite frankly, I suspect a lot more could be said about their practices and beliefs than that they had recently changed clothes, but we must be thankful for whatever small crumbs of truth fall from the table.
Lest his readers think he’s gone all right-wing on them, he rounds it all off with the obligatory attack on Blair and Bush. This is like a sort of reflex. In this case I think he has a point, although I suspect it is accidentally so, in that Saudi Arabia are indeed not our friends and we really ought to be doing something about those missionaries. (Although quite what “wilfully blind” is supposed to mean, I’m not quite sure. That in the totalitarian theocratic Magic Kingdom the Islamists are stirring up trouble and conducting multi-million dollar operations abroad without the government’s explicit permission?)
However, I do make allowances for real politik, diplomacy, and not cutting your own economic and strategic throat for the sake of a pointless and totally ineffective gesture. I’d rather we just declared war on the buggers and got on with it, but given that we’re not going to, we had might as well get as much out of them as we can by being polite.
In short, not bad for a BBC reporter; but not exactly impartial when it comes to the having equally many nice things to say of both the Islamic fundamentalists and the US, is it?
As for whether it was the wrong war, I’d say it was all the same war. The one that started back in 630 with the Tabuk Crusade.
My solution to Saudi malevolence that will not impare our energy supply involves a lot of gunboats, but I’ve noticed that these sort of solutions generally fail to elicit a positive response from libertarians.
One day there is going to be a revolution in Saudi Arabia. It will be as bloody and traumatic as the French revolution. The worst thing the West can do is continue to support the tyranny that is going to be deposed.
You give trillions of dollars to a vicious totalitarian theocratic monarchy and complain that they’re using it to spread their culture over the world? Ye shall reap . . .
Pa,
And why are they sending a guy to Somalia to report on it, when it would burn far less tellytaxpayers money to report on it happening in London or Manchester?
They are not. Though they should. Having reporters in places where things are happening, wherever they are happening is the job of news organisations. I’d rather the BBC did that than burn £2M an hour making miserable soap operas.
As I said he’s ex-BBC, having parlayed good looks and worldwide exposure reporting on the Iraq war into a successful freelance career. He goes regularly to the Republic of Somaliland (former British Somalia) because that’s where his family is from, as the article does make clear.
He’s better than your usual BBC-man on Islam ‘cos he is from a Muslim background, and therefore doesn’t do multicultural cringe.
You know I don’t agree it is “the same war”, or that Islam, or even Islamists, form a monolithic entity, let alone one with a continuing policy over centuries. That view is about as plausible to my mind as categorising any Western response as “a crusader attack”. I’m much more inclined to see Islamism as a political phenomenon of internal struggle for legitimacy and power in the Islamic world of the kind that has happened repeatedly from, indeed, the 7th century CE on, bolstered by the modern anti-modern ideas that have given rise to western fundamentalisms and romanticisms.
It is much more a muddle of many civil wars than it is the same war: the West’s problem is where, if anywhere, to get involved. It is hard to see what “victory” in a fight not yours might be, but balance of power is a well-tested way of minimising a threat.
My initial support for the Iraq war was based on a misapprehension that the grand strategy was to make an alternative main ally in the region for the US and UK, one whose influence was secularising. Either that was grossly botched, or it was never the plan, but either way the effect has been to boost Saudi power.
ResidentAlien,
Quite. The worrying thing is that the revolution in Arabia is likely to be a conservative one, because Saudi repression, aided by the West forever, has made hyper-religion the only effective form of dissent. That might not be as bad as it sounds – for us: it would be horrid over there – but it is very unpredictable. Any regime would end up selling oil again, but it could be disruptive.
K,
Who’s “you”? Not me. Perhaps the US – but recall western countries got oil for the money, it wasn’t “given”. Then they sold things back.
The mistake was to worry too much about neighbouring Arab nationalists and to forget that any regime in the desert would end up selling oil and buying stuff, so political kowtow for concessions wasn’t necessary. Quite a lot of kowtow has historically come from near-to-government corporations getting some of the same trillions back by selling sell arms and construction projects. Nationalist pseudo-economics poisons enlightened self-interest.
“One day there is going to be a revolution in Saudi Arabia. It will be as bloody and traumatic as the French revolution. The worst thing the West can do is continue to support the tyranny that is going to be deposed.”
Lets see now. We could have:-
Tsar –> Stalin
or
Shah –>Mullah
Something to look forward to!
When the house of Saud is toppled obviously it’ll be Islamists who come out on top.
And it will be bad for the rest of us because we supported the previous regime. They’ll hate us as much (and for the same reasons) that the ayatollahs in Iran hate us.
Big question: would we continue to support all the military hardware they bought from us if the Arabian Taliban were in charge?
They wont just be spending their oodles of cash on wahabbi madrasses and gin palaces – they’ll want nukes to protect the holy places from Crusaders/Zionists and those Shia heretics in Iran and Iraq (which by now let’s assume is mainly an Iranian fiefdom following the religious cleansing of Sunnis). Sunni vs Shia apocalypse.
Of course, it might not happen.
Before WWII the British Council and the World Service were set up to combat nationalism in the empire. They reasoned that if they were to teach kids in english about British values they would ‘think’ more British.
It seems that this is what the madras funded by the Saudis are doing, except they are providing funds to teach hard line Islam all over the world (including the UK). If you lived in some dirt poor country and the only chance of schooling your children was in one of these schools you would jump at the chance it may give to improve their future prospects.
I think that we need to fund or help fund schools in these countrys which offer an alternative education, one that is not full of hate.
Now i know many of you would not support this on principle, but i think rather than classing this as state interference in the education market it should be regarded as the state helping to protect its citizens, which is seen as an exceptable role for the state round here.
I compared the Saudi revolution to the French one because it is likely to result in the decapitation of monarchs.
I don’t think that the post revolutionary order will necessarily be more “conservative”. It is hard to imagine a regime that is more resistant to change and grounded in traditions then the current Saudi monarchy. What really counts for us in the West is how hostile the new regime is to us. Providing support to the current regime is about the best way you could imagine to make the new regime hate the West.
We should stop selling the Saudis weapons and generally stay well clear.
Guy,
Point taken about him being ex-BBC.
On the question of whether Islam is monolithic, I agree that they’re certainly not, and on many policies and details they have had many conflicts and changes; but there are some aspects to the religion that are core, and in orthodox Islam the basic principle of Jihaad is one of them. It is a single continuous war with at most temporary and strictly limited truces allowed. All four Sunni madhab, the Sufi and the Shia schools are all agreed. While you can watch the decline of the Hanafi school in the change in dress (Hanafi say the veil is not obligatory, Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali say it is), to claim that only the Saudi’s Hanbali beliefs are a problem is deceptive.
That’s what I mean about it pushing the same “minority of extremists” line. He is correct that we have far more to worry about than a few terrorists – the Wahhabi infiltration being a serious danger – where he perpetuates the problem is in suggesting that orthodox Islam is otherwise benign.
(Incidentally, I am distinguishing here between Muslims and Islam, and between Westernised Islam and orthodox Islam – unorthodox Muslims I don’t mind, it’s orthodox Islam I have a problem with.)
Yes it is complicated, but I can’t put in all the subtleties I need to in such a short comment.
Pa has it right. Islam, itself, is the real problem. Wahabbiism is just a rather garish flower off the main branch. Go to the source texts — the hadith and the Koran. The last verse recorded chronologically in the Koran is the verse of the sword. According to orthodox Islamic textual analysis, that means that verse is to be considered the final word. The verse of the sword is the infamous edict to “slay them wherever you find them”. In the sense that all jihadis get their marching orders from the same body of thought, from the same texts, from the same worldview, it is the same war.
Islam is comparable to any totalitarianism of the previous century. It is as bloody, as false, as centrally-commanded as any of them, with the central command coming from good ol’ Mo, thousands of years in his grave.
Finally, we will never be able to influence another culture for any extensive period of time as long as a large minority of our own country believes that we have nothing to offer. Our lack of unity at home cripples our outreach.
Pa, I think, has it partly right. But agreed it is complicated. One of the complicated things is that it is really very hard to talk about “orthodox Islam”. Pa’s “orthodox Islam” is an abstraction: he himself alludes to the shifting balance between schools, but should also be noted that the authority of those traditions is neither internally stable nor secure against new viewpoints. That’s how Islam in different places becomes suffused with local custom treated as part of religious doctrine. That’s how eloquent or passionate cultists can gain huge influence on the slimmest learning. That’s how the history of Islam is punctuated with Khariji uprisings of puritanical (in the strict sense) groups claiming direct insight and inherent authority outside the traditional schools.
InRussetShadows takes the part of Pa’s case that I think is wrong, and makes it the whole of the case. That viewpoint, though very mildly stated in this case, is very common, sad to say, on the “right” of the argument. It is rather akin to that of climate change zealots: here is a massive problem responsible for nearly everything bad happening in the world, and it has this one clear cause, which cause we should fight by means that are (if the original premise is correct) guaranteed useless.
This sort of Islamic essentialism in the West says Islam is not capable of change or reform, it is always and everywhere a threat, and that those Muslims who say they are “moderates” are kidding themselves. It is remarkably similar to the Islamist contention, and I submit reinforces it.
But if Islam is essentially ‘like that’, and ‘that’ controls how Muslims will behave for ever, then there is very little that can be done, unless you are an adherent of the genocidal victimology that would murder a quarter of the world’s population and erase all cultural and historical refernces. Another mirror image.
Those (of whom we get fewer round here, than we used to, I’m glad to say) who at any mention of Islam spew forth bile about particular crimes in the recent past, or alleged personal failings of the prophet by their standards, are playing a cruder version of the same game, cognate with populist Islamist stories of crusader atrocities and an insistence that a seventh century figure and his sayings are completely knowable immutably perfect and define everything about how we should live now…
Neither Pa Annoyed nor InRussetShadows is of that brutal shared mindset, I know. But an insistence that there is some irreducible <core in Islam that condemns it and us to eternal war, and no equilibrium is possible, potentially leads to the same conclusions.
My point is
…not exactly impartial when it comes to the having equally many nice things to say of both the Islamic fundamentalists and the US
Well, when they behave equally nicely, then why not? That’s what impartiality means – not giving credit for status. If one were betting through a veil of ignorance, one would of course support the US of the two, though current tendencies mean the gap is narrowing.
What a bunch of unmitigated cock. If the west ends up thoroughly ravaged and subordinated to Islam, it might at least be just about worth it to see that you get your karmic just dessert for this comment.
Ironic, indeed, for samizdata’s no. 1 “Christians are teh evil statists!!!” commentator to take such a postion, although the irony is somewhat mooted by how depressingly commonplace that sort of junk is among the far right and left.
Get a clue.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24315_Blood_Libel_on_Lebanese_TV&only
Right now I think you’re marginally more contemptible than that guy.
The Russian Revolution is probably a closer analogy, i.e. the amplification of all that is wost about the Saudi monarchy tied to the destruction of any mitigating features that sheer ennui and sloth has built into it.
“This sort of Islamic essentialism in the West says Islam is not capable of change or reform, it is always and everywhere a threat, and that those Muslims who say they are “moderates” are kidding themselves. It is remarkably similar to the Islamist contention, and I submit reinforces it.”
It is exactly the Islamic contention, which is my point. Orthodox Islam is not capable of reform since the orthodoxy is that the gates of Ijtihad are closed and all change is irrevocably bi’dah – innovation – and a sin.
But this is where I distinguish Islam and Muslims. Many, dare I say, most Muslims are not orthodox. It is much the same as how most people who call themselves Christians fall short of the ideals of their faith. Beliefs like “Love thine enemy” and “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute it to the poor…, and follow me” are core to Christianity, and yet not one in a hundred Christians I know would actually do so. You could not conceivably “reform” Christianity to remove them, but history has reformed Christians.
There is hope, but it requires that Muslims either put up or shut up. They must either provide solid theological cases to prove that Islam does not demand war (which they can’t, because it does), or they should admit that such beliefs are a part of Islam that has to be abandoned; driven out. This business of pretending it isn’t there, that only a tiny group of misguided fools say so, and that it is perfectly safe to wheel this Islamic horse into Troy, it just has to stop. Lies breed more lies. Show us the horse is empty, or it’s Not Coming In.
The people are welcome. The religion is not.
At least, not without some serious and clearly acknowledged changes.
One thing we could do is to support the Somalilander’s legitimate desire for Independence, that way they could earn more revenue and trade freely, leaving them less dependent on Wahibi, Salafist funding.
Just for starters they could be invited to become observers to the Commonwealth.