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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 27, 2002
The gale force
Even without plutonium rods in North Korea (a useful reminder that not all our mortal enemies share the same religion) we see fresh signs of conflict almost anywhere we look. Bali Moscow Yemen Kuwait Manila -- all recent terrorist incidents have "Islam" in common; so that for the general public the constantly repeated maxim that "Islam isn't the problem" has begun to wear thin. When a sniper suspect is arrested in suburban Washington D.C. he just happens to have adopted the surname "Muhammad". Don't pretend less than half of North America wasn't expecting this. Notwithstanding I maintain that the enemy is what is called "Islamism" -- a particular fanatic ideological and thus essentially political manifestation of Islam. Not Islam itself. The question whether there is "something in Islam" that makes it especially prone to such a manifestation I continue to consider moot. It is Muslims now it was others in the past. In order to be susceptible to political fanaticism you need only belong to a human group. Through personal experience I have some idea of the protean nature of this once-and-perhaps-future great religion. From a childhood in Lahore Pakistan to adult travels in many parts of the Islamic world I know at first hand that the world itself looks much different from Lahore Kabul Tehran Cairo Nablus Baghdad Djakarta. And that from any of these places it can also look much different from one generation to another. Example: the Lahore of my childhood where Protestant I along with many Muslim Pakistanis including most of the country's recent prime ministers attended a Catholic school. The city as all others in Pakistan was easy-going and tolerant towards its significant mostly Catholic religious minority; and I think a Jew would have been of no interest except as a curiosity. Hindus and Sikhs had to be discreet about themselves -- the few who had not joined the exodus to India at Partition. But that was the fallout of Partition. If there was tension it was more likely to be between Sunni Muslim Lahoris by birth and Sunni Muslims who had arrived from various parts of India in the counter-exodus -- a cultural even an economic even communal but not essnetially a religious squabble. Christians and Muslims had mutually accommodated as Jews and Christians have sometimes done in the West. Christian worship was certainly quite public. Whereas the Lahore of the last few years -- I have seen and felt this at first hand -- is a different place especially for Christians. They feel and are made to feel the pinch as one would say in Lahori English. Pakistani Christians I spoke with were haunted by fear of mobs by fear of terror strikes against their homes or churches by fear of sudden arrest on trumped-up charges of "blasphemy against Islam" from some anonymous neighbour bearing a grudge. I was myself stopped in the street several times and asked rudely intrusive questions by official-looking persons who would not in turn identify themselves. This was once inconceivable. And yet in another part of the city within the ancient city walls I felt back in the Lahore of my childhood a place where strangers are not interrogated where for instance women may shop without male "minders" and without covering themselves from head to toe in the subtropical heat. A place where the real traditions of the city were still alive its native "atmosphere" and one felt free and secure in this. What made the difference over the intervening generation? In a word Islamism both in its so-called moderate form (Islamicization of the laws and bureaucracy) and in the so-called radical form (the growth of a terrorist underground feeding on trouble in Afghanistan and Kashmir). By both means the same very international ideology was being imposed overlaid on a traditional and very particular society. And the same has been happening elsewhere -- not an evolutionary but a revolutionary development. In e-mail I've exchanged similar observations about other cities in the Muslim world and am inclined to generalize that paradoxically the safest place for a foreigner or for a member of some religious minority is now probably in the winding lanes of the oldest part of each city. The unsafest place is on a wide boulevard. Another example is Cairo where I gather the most unpleasant place for the foreigner to be is in Tahrir Square or east towards al-Azbakiya -- unfortunately the traditional hotel districts in the "middle of town". And if there's going to be a terrorist strike that's where it is going to be (or has been in the case of the Egyptian Museum). Yet I am fairly sure from what I hear that one may still walk the miles of Cairo's mediaeval streets and visit its ancient mosques and markets without fear of molestation. The crookeder the streets the straighter the people. Supposing this generalization to be largely true (and I don't want any tourist to stake his life on it) what does it say about the great event -- Islamism -- that is sweeping the Muslim world? The plausible explanation is that of course terrorists strike where the foreigners are or where the local Christians or other minorities live. But the latter proposition remains mostly untrue: the Christians stick to their own neighbourhoods for the very purpose of keeping their heads down. And the plausible explanation doesn't account for that "atmosphere" of which I wrote above. Where the foreigners stay tends also to be where the government is its palaces and ministries. It is the most "official" part of any "third world" capital. It is the best policed. It is where the troops can most easily be dispatched against any trouble. Like attracts like and the political fanatic gravitates naturally to the political part of town: that is not really a paradox. Nor is what lies beneath it that traditional Islamic society in all the extraordinary variety of its manifestations provides no natural home for the terrorist. When we speak of the "Arab Street" we are speaking of the boulevards and the students. Even in Nablus I am persuaded the people of the back streets and the winding lanes want no part of it. Yet the roil spreads and eventually no part of the city is safe. Or rather the only safety is in the crowd is in becoming one of the mob not one of the victims; it is in conforming absolutely to surroundings and drawing no attention to yourself. The cowards live and the heroes die. By small increments people set their sails to the prevailing breeze. And if it begins to blow at gale force they are carried by the wind where it listeth. Few people in any society have the personal strength and character and weight to lean into such a wind. What strength they have collectively comes from the old city not the new; comes in this case from the old Islam for as long as it can withstand the gale. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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