COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, December 14, 2006

A French view on Islam and jihad. From: Spiegel online.


"An Ideological Bulwark against the West"

Gilles Kepel, a French authority on Islam, discusses the impact of 9/11, the prospects for democracy in the Muslim world and the way Europe treats its Muslims.

Gilles Kepel, 51, teaches at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and is considered one of the world's leading Islamic scholars. His publications include Jihad, Bad Moon Rising: A Chronicle of the Middle East Today and The Roots of Radical Islam.

SPIEGEL: Professor Kepel, the U.S. war against terrorism was supposed to bring democracy to the Islamic world. Instead, we see fighting spreading like wildfire. What has gone wrong?

Kepel: We're in a terrible bind. Five years after the attacks of 9/11, the jihadists and Western proponents of the war against terror engaged in a conflict, and turned us into their hostages. It won't be easy to free ourselves, because the conflict is not exclusively political. It involves emotional blackmail as well: both sides believe they need to win universal acceptance for their notions of truth, justice and morality.

SPIEGEL: Are we looking less at the clash of civilizations envisioned by Samuel Huntington than a battle for preeminence by two brands of fundamentalism?

Kepel: They are definitely two sides of the same coin. They're mutually interdependent; they feed off and reflect one another.

SPIEGEL: What is fueling the hatred in the Islamic world?

Kepel: The umma, the community of believers, feels threatened by what it sees as a modern version of the crusades, and therefore perceives itself as the antipode of the West.
SPIEGEL: Which means that holy war has to be fought right across the globe?

Kepel: Not necessarily. Remember, we lived with the Cold War for half a century. There were crises and challenges, but no open conflicts.

SPIEGEL: So you think the Cold War has given way to a new, radically different conflict between East and West?

Kepel: It might be more appropriate to talk about a conflict between the orient and occident containing elements of the northsouth divide. The attacks of September 11, 2001, radically changed our political paradigms, the way we interpret our world. Jihad on the one hand, and the war against terror on the other, are dictating the politicians' and television audiences' perspectives.

SPIEGEL: Unlike during the Cold War, there are no rival alliances, no geographical blocs aligned against each other.

Kepel: People may find that reassuring because it reduces the risk of a worldwide confrontation. Despite the dreams of some Islamic prophets of doom, jihad simply isn't going to take the shape of an apocalyptic event, a "final solution." But this unstructured form of hostility, this political and military asymmetry, makes the situation exceptionally unstable. We no longer have a balance of terror between the two parties. Terror can strike anywhere, in New York, Madrid or London just as it can in Haifa or Tel Aviv.

SPIEGEL: Is it fair to equate jihad with terror?

Kepel: We all look at things from our own point of view. Jihad is a positive concept in the Islamic world, terrorism a negative idea in the West. The conflict is not only being fought out on the political and military fronts, but in the virtual realm of propaganda as well. Without TV and the Internet, jihad would be an alarming but marginal form of immoderation. Don't forget that European anarchists at the end of the 19th century tried to spark revolution by assassinating czars, kings and presidents. To no avail. After all, there was no Internet.

SPIEGEL: What fuels the fantasies of the Muslim masses in the virtual and very real worlds of jihad?

Kepel: A sense of identity with the suicide attackers, the martyrs. That's a completely new phenomenon for Islam. We saw the first manifestations - as both an ideal and a symbol - at the end of the 1970s with the revolution in Shiite Iran. The Shiites venerate Husayn, the son of the Caliph Ali and grandson of Mohammed. The third Imam, he was killed during an uprising in Karbala in 680 A.D. He became a symbol of the Shiites' mourning, their defeat, their resignation. The Iranian revolutionary leader Khomeini and his disciples transformed this icon of suffering into an aggressive martyr.

SPIEGEL: In order to overthrow the Shah's regime?

Kepel: Yes, and to help mobilize for the Iraq-Iran war.

SPIEGEL: Many of today's Muslims - whether they be Shiites or Sunnis - subscribe to the cult of martyrdom.

Kepel: That's right. The common link was their resistance to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. That was the first time that holy war clearly emerged as the potential successor to the Cold War. In Afghanistan, a new identity was forged for the Islamic world - by religious ideologists seeking to create a homogeneous universe. Or, it might be argued, a bipolar universe with an Islamic bloc confronting the unbelievers in the West.

SPIEGEL: Back then, the United States supported the Mujahideen, hailing the Red Army's withdrawal as the beginning of the end of communist imperialism.
Kepel: That was indeed true. But the United States didn't understand it was walking into a trap. To militant Islamists, the expulsion of the Soviets was just the prelude to purging the entire Islamic world of infidels.

SPIEGEL: Today the United States is trying to remake the Islamic world in the West's image. Is the creation of democracies in these countries a realistic endeavor?

Kepel: The Americans view the democratization of the Middle East as the route to peace. They regarded the invasion of Iraq as a necessary first step. Many Muslims believed them, but the results haven't matched the expectations. As a result, the countries and factions that sided with the Americans have lost much of their credibility. We're currently trapped in a vicious circle with no hope of escape.

SPIEGEL: Do Muslims simply see the Western concept of democracy as a pretext for outside interference and intervention?

Kepel: In the Arab mindset, democratization may not be an exclusively negative term today. But it's associated closely with American policies and the occupation of Iraq. For radical Islamic movements, democracy means absolutely nothing. Similarly, they can't relate to the issue of human rights at all. From their perspective, there is no such thing as personal self-determination entailing inalienable rights and human dignity: there is only a divine law that divides humankind into believers and unbelievers.

SPIEGEL: In many Arab countries, radical Islamic parties would win any reasonably free and democratic elections. Won't the West have to recognize these results?

Kepel: The age of colonialism is over. Countries now control their own destinies, and the Europeans and Americans will have to work with elected governments - regardless of whether they like them. After all, the West has been very amenable to authoritarian rulers of a modern or secular cast, even those who have trampled human rights underfoot.

SPIEGEL: Is there a danger that the socalled moderate Islamists - the political mainstream, you might say - will be the main victims in our conflict with the extremists?

Kepel: When the jihadists of the Muslim world demand support because of events in Palestine and Iraq, they set the standards of truth, justice and morality. They capture the diffuse feelings of Muslims in words. According to their interpretation, the umma is under threat from the evil forces of the "crusaders." This enables them to erect an ideological bulwark against the West.

SPIEGEL: But that won't make the moderates follow the extremists' example and turn to jihad.

Kepel: Not necessarily. But since September 11, 2001, the logic underlying jihad - i.e. resistance against the unbelievers - has produced a mindset that compels everyone to subscribe to standards that are becoming increasingly crude, less and less differentiated. In some ways, the fundamentalists have secured a semantic preeminence, not least through their adept exploitation of the Internet. The more traditional imams and Koran scholars are being continuously forced to take a stand vis-à-vis the radicals - sometimes being more accepting of their standards, sometimes rejecting them. There is, of course, a real danger that the two sides will try to outdo each other, and that the situation will spiral out of control.

SPIEGEL: So the moderates are struggling to keep pace in a game whose rules are being set by the extremists?

Kepel: Unfortunately, that is often the case. The Muslim world is divided into two camps. The moderate forces present themselves to the West as mediators who can help reach compromises and avoid violence. At the same time, they offer their support to the fundamentalists by - for example - asserting that only they, the forces of moderation, are capable of driving the Islamization of society and implementing Islamic law.

SPIEGEL: Does that rule them out as political and diplomatic partners for the West?

Kepel: At the very least, any strategy of rapprochement through dialogue is a double-edged sword.

SPIEGEL: Does that apply to dialogue with the Muslims who live in our midst? The "Islamists" aren't just "over there." They are part of our society, too.

Kepel: That's what makes integration such a thorny issue. In my view, European Muslims need to enjoy the same rights as members of other religions. If Muslims here don't face ostracism, attacks and other dangers, religion will generally serve to further their social integration.

SPIEGEL: Really? We see a lot of conscious social isolation.

Kepel: Muslim citizens should never be classified according to their creed, origin, ancestry or culture. After all, I don't define my political or social position by reference to the Christian faith.

SPIEGEL: The multicultural society - in which ethnic and religious communities evolve in parallel - has fallen into disrepute. Rightly so?


Kepel: Following the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and the attacks in London last year, questions about the multicultural model of society are undoubtedly valid. In truth, it is tantamount to apartheid. Initially it was seen as positive and well-meant; today we see its downside - distrust and even open hostility. The multiculturalism in "Londonistan" has strengthened the feeling among British Muslims that they aren't fully-fledged UK citizens.
SPIEGEL: But the French social model - a republican equality for everyone and a state that doesn't differentiate between religions and ethnic groups - isn't working either.

Kepel: You are referring to the suburban riots in France last November. In my view, these outbursts - paradoxically - were less a rejection of French society and more a demand for increased integration.

SPIEGEL: Could Europe become the birthplace of a modern and enlightened European breed of Islam, a model for the Muslim world beyond our borders?

Kepel: We don't need to give up hope yet. As I see it, a Post-Islamist period in Europe can only come about if Islamic and Western values prove compatible. But there's little evidence of that yet. We have to give "our" Muslims the opportunity to embrace the modern world - without any constraints. Young people of Muslim heritage who enjoy success in our society today - whether in culture, commerce or politics - will have no need to apply Islamic criteria when defining their identities.

INTERVIEW: ROMAIN LEICK, STEFAN SIMONS Spiegel


34 comments:

  1. "You are referring to the suburban riots in France last November. In my view, these outbursts - paradoxically - were less a rejection of French society and more a demand for increased integration."

    Bolshevik! You can't demand or bomb your way into integration with a society that extols reason over brute force.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "We have to give "our" Muslims the opportunity to embrace the modern world - without any constraints."

    "We have to give "our" Muslims the opportunity to embrace the modern world - without any constraints."

    "We have to give "our" Muslims the opportunity to embrace the modern world - without any constraints."

    "We have to give "our" Muslims the opportunity to embrace the modern world - without any constraints."

    ReplyDelete
  3. That was the money line for you, aye?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Like some literally god-forsaken comedy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. All kinds of people find him only marginally better, in his repeated misunderstanding, over at least a decade or two, of the nature of Islam and the menace of French Islam, than that other pontificating sociologist, Gilles "Always Wrong" Kepel.
    Kepel Always Wrong

    know your sources

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not to change the subject, but this just in:

    UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - South Korea's Ban Ki-moon was sworn in as the next UN secretary general at a General Assembly ceremony during which he vowed to be "a harmonizer and bridge-builder" and build on the legacy of the incumbent, Kofi Annan

    In the immortal words of Mary Matalin, "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kepel, like Olivier Roy, the other great French "expert" on Islam who for years has failed to understand Islam, is fighting for his professional life. He has a record of absurdities, including constantly poohpoohing any problem with Islam.

    Kepel absurdities

    ReplyDelete
  8. "One way to become a Famous Intellectual in France is to take a nonsensical thesis and be the first write a whole book advancing it. By this standard, Kepel excels, for he adopts the preposterous idea that militant Islam is in decline."

    Nonsensical thesis

    ReplyDelete
  9. "Bernard Lewis asks what went wrong with Islam and finds centuries of victimhood; Gilles Kepel considers Islamism a utopian project whose moment has passed. Together, their books depict the passionate debate over politics in the Muslim world."
    Bernard Lewis is considered the foremost authority on Islam in the world.
    Read Foreign Affairs
    Foreign Affairs on Kepel

    ReplyDelete
  10. REID: 'He looked very good'...

    Lawyer From Hell:
    "She looks really good,
    She has her Teddy Bear,
    Beautiful flowers,
    and, of course,
    Terminal Dehydration is a Euphoric Experience Unto Itself!
    "

    ReplyDelete
  11. CHRONOLOGY OF THE EXPANSION AND DECLINE OF POLITICAL ISLAMISM.

    1960s: Postcolonial secular nationalists take power. Qutb, Mawdudi, and Khomeini write the theories of the Islamist movement.

    1973: Israel defeats Arabs, discrediting nationalist leadership.

    1970s: Young urban poor, intellectuals and devout middle classes unite in support of Islamist political objectives and tactics.

    1979: Khomeini revolution succeeds in Iran, climaxing the rise of political Islam.

    1980: Iraq invades Iran supported by Saudi-Arabia and US, aiming to prevent spread of Iranian revolution.

    1980s: Saudis concede moral and cultural domains to Islamists in order to keep control of government.

    1989: To distract attention from the revolution's failure to satisfy human needs, Khomeini issues fatwah against British citizen Salman Rushdie.

    1990: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait causes Islamist solidarity to unravel. Extremists like bin Laden turn against Saudi-Arabia and the US.

    1992: Islamist jihadists (mujahedeen) bring about fall of communists in Kabul, Afghanistan.

    1992ff: Mujahedeen fighters who assembled in the 1980s disperse from Afghanistan to other Muslim countries, prepared to conduct jihad wherever opportunity presents itself.

    1996: Taliban seize power in Kabul and install completely repressive Islamist regime.

    1996: From Aghanistan, bin Laden publishes his first jihad against US for occupying holy places.

    1990s: Muhahedeen from Afghanistan fail to take over Algeria, Bosnia, and Egypt, signaling the decline of jihad. Moderates rise up in Iran and elsewhere, opposing extremist violence.

    Outline is based on Gilles Kepel. JIHAD: THE TRAIL OF POLITICAL ISLAM. Translated by Anthony F. Roberts. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Trish,
    Why couldn't we have had limited bombing raids in Syria w/o provoking WWIII?
    It's not as if Baby was riding the Strong Horse, as he is now,
    unfortunately.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "He's looking rather well."

    Headline
    'Blind Sheikh' Near Death; FBI Issues Terror Warning...

    "But of course he doesn't see it that way, if you get my drift."

    - Huckster Harry Reid

    ReplyDelete
  14. So Trish FRD gave his hekhsher(seal of approval) to Stalin. So what's about Kepel you like?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous said...
    ""One way to become a Famous Intellectual in France is to take a nonsensical thesis "

    Anonymous,
    Another way is to give really good head, and we ain't talkin Cheese,
    although that can't hurt as an entree.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Person 2164 Kepel is mishegas. List all you want.Bernard Lewis thinks he's tsedreyt.

    ReplyDelete
  17. "Heather Bancroft of the George Washington University Hospital marketing and public relations..."
    ---
    "We give really good chemo, balloon angioplasty, renal filtration, and many other attractive therapeutic options."
    "If all else fails, don't forget our Slogan:
    Die Me!"

    ReplyDelete
  18. "anonymous" person says...

    "Person 2164" !

    ReplyDelete
  19. I've missed BC:
    What's the Zeitgeist"
    Any active MeMes?

    ReplyDelete
  20. Joe Buzz said, "The logic lost me about half way around the pretzel but alas as an Appalachian American, I am easily confused."

    As a Gyno-American I second that.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I, Sen(i)or American, third that.
    Viva!
    (at least for a while)

    ReplyDelete
  22. Mr. 2164 your chronology ends in the 1990's. This is 2006. If it was 1990 that's 16 years, not exactly current scholarship. Kepel is a crank. Bernard Lewis is the expert.

    Your chronology doesn't even make it to 9-11. What type of credible list is that? Like things haven't changed since 9-11, like the entire world? Oy !

    ReplyDelete
  23. Good points anon as far as you took it. Kepel in no "Johnny come lately" to having watched the Islamists and been forcesating their demise. This is an AP report from late September:

    Al-Qaida in Iraq: 4,000 Insurgents Dead
    Sep 28 10:53 AM US/Eastern

    "The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq said in an audio message posted on a Web site Thursday that more than 4,000 foreign insurgent fighters have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It was believed to be the first major statement from insurgents in Iraq about their losses.
    "The blood has been spilled in Iraq of more than 4,000 foreigners who came to fight," said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al- Muhajir _ also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri _ the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. The voice could not be independently identified.

    The Arabic word he used indicated he was speaking about foreigners who joined the insurgency in Iraq, not coalition troops.

    Al-Masri is believed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who died in a U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad in June."

    The current cry made here and most everywhere else is that the war in Iraq is faltering. Many are saying it is already lost. What if they are wrong? What if we are seeing the last gasp of Islamist terrorism and we leave Iraq and hand them a victory that they did not earn but will take credit for?

    I do not have the answer to that. I have often wondered if 911 wasn't a collossal sucker punch, a one off lucky hit. That has implications that may not be known for a long time.

    My theory at posting here is to put up interesting points of view, many of which I agree with and others not. Some I am not sure about .

    ReplyDelete
  24. "I do not have the answer to that. I have often wondered if 911 wasn't a collossal sucker punch, a one off lucky hit. That has implications that may not be known for a long time."
    ---
    I don't buy that one, except that it was a sopisticated and very well carried out attack.
    ...but it don't take an Atta to become the first Nuke Suicide Bomber.
    ...or "merely" WMD Bomber.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Then there's the Dual WMD Demo Bombs in America:
    Islamist and Turd World.

    ReplyDelete
  26. (Islamists a small growing minority, FILLED with haters)

    ReplyDelete
  27. Happy, Healthy, Harry.
    (ain't he the cutest thing?)

    Photo

    Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., discusses the condition of Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006. Johnson was in critical but stable condition Thursday after late-night emergency brain surgery, creating political drama about which party will control the Senate next month if he is unable to continue in office.

    ReplyDelete
  28. We better hope we are winning the WOT, because someone is determined not to be helpful:

    Pelosi Calls for New Oversight of Intelligence

    By CARL HULSE, NYT
    Published: December 14, 2006
    WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 — Representative Nancy Pelosi, soon to be speaker of the House, said today that she will create a new panel to oversee spending on intelligence and enable lawmakers to better determine whether the money is being spent wisely.

    Ms. Pelosi said the formation of the panel, which would work within the House Appropriations Committee, is in response to recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and is part of an effort to make spending on intelligence more transparent."

    ReplyDelete
  29. There's a Point Reyes in CA w/a lighthouse:

    Like his Namesake, Sen Reyes is a tower of brilliance.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous said, "Your chronology doesn't even make it to 9-11. What type of credible list is that? Like things haven't changed since 9-11, like the entire world? Oy !"

    Yes, but the list purports to show the DECLINE of terrorism prior to 9-11-2001, so it makes a very grim point.

    ReplyDelete
  31. "SPIEGEL: Are we looking less at the clash of civilizations envisioned by Samuel Huntington than a battle for preeminence by two brands of fundamentalism?

    What the heck?"


    It is their attempt to draw moral equivalence between the Christian fundamentalist United States and Al Qaeda.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Michael Ledeen, a confidant of Vice President Cheney, laments that the most powerful people in the White House are the women who are in love with George W. Bush—Condi, Karen, Harriet, and Laura. In the neocons’ heyday, he formulated what Jonah Goldberg admiringly called the “Ledeen Doctrine”:

    Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.
    ---
    Doug said...

    Trish, Why couldn't we have had limited bombing raids in Syria w/o provoking WWIII?

    Thu Dec 14, 04:47:43 PM EST
    ---
    I mean, if we can't threaten, and occasionally *actually* bomb Tin Horned Dictators of third rate powers, what's the point of having an Air Force/

    ReplyDelete