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COMMENTARY
August 3, 2005
Jihad politics
In case you didn't know, Muslims are not a racial group. Like Christians, they come in a great variety of skin colours and nose lengths. Islam is a religion, and what distinguishes the Muslim from the non-Muslim is his greater or lesser adherence to that religion.So that when Hazel Blair, the British Home Office minister, promised Muslim leaders at Oldham yesterday there would be no "racial profiling" of Muslims, she was talking complete bosh. That her words, meant to assuage, clearly angered the Muslim leaders can be easily explained. No one likes to be lectured by visitors from Mars. The British prime minister, Tony Blair, has struck a much different tone, recently. He is intelligent enough to realize he is cornered by events. His increasingly short-tempered remarks are harbinger of an increasingly nasty "Jihad politics" in Britain, that will put "multiculturalism" to a test it can't survive. Mr. Blair has said recently that the problem of Islamist terrorism cannot be solved "using the law alone". Rumours being fed by his own long-serving election agent, John Burton, that Mr. Blair is looking to retirement, seem to say the same thing another way. I think he has begun to realize the truth of what I wrote in the last paragraph. It is not just the law that is useless against Islamist terrorism. Various nonce expressions about "fighting racism" and "creating diversity" open umbrellas against a hurricane. Rather than say this myself, let me quote Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, the "traditionalist" Anglican who directs the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity in London. He found himself recently trying to explain the crazy truth to a journalist who asked him about violent passages in the Koran, which Islamists quote constantly. "Is there no part of the Koran which modifies these violent texts in the way that we would say our New Testament modifies the Old Testament?" Dr. Sookhdeo: "In fact the reverse is true. ... All the peaceful passages that are enjoined on Muslims occur in the chapters written at Mecca. They are tolerant toward Jews and Christians. But when Muhammad gets to Medina and sets up his city/religious state, the tone towards other groups changes rapidly. The statements about slaying the pagans and killing the Jews and others occur there. Now in Islamic interpretation, all passages that are revealed later take precedence over those revealed earlier. This is known as the 'law of abrogation'." I quote this because it succinctly presents the one intractable fact that has prevented me from completing my own book manuscript, on "Wrestling with Islam". I am myself stuck, like Mr. Blair, in that modern Western headspace, delineated by President Bush when he said, "Islam is a religion of peace." Well, yes, that is true: but only if you concede that the word "peace" means radically different things in the Islamic and Christian (or, "Western") traditions. Each tradition is internally consistent. But the two start from nearly contrary premises about the nature of God, or Allah, and this leads to often opposite views on what is right and good and true. These are differences that have absolutely nothing to do with "racial profiling", and everything to do with "what makes us tick". The Muslim conception of Allah is, in fact, much closer to classical Greek ideas of an omnipotent deity, than to ours of one who can agree to be crucified. Every notion of compassion turns on that point -- and ditto, "tolerance", "forgiveness", "generosity" and the like. "Multiculturalism" and "cultural relativism" are themselves perversions of an essentially Christian message; just as the gratuitous slaughter of civilians is a perversion of the Islamic message. From Messrs Bush and Blair down to the lowliest pundit, we are blinded by the notion that the whole world shares our values; that everyone means what we mean, even by such words as "peace" and "violence". It is a testimony to the centuries-long work of Christian evangelism that we can have such illusions, today. The rest of the world emphatically does not share our unspoken presuppositions. And in particular, the Muslims not only do not share, but explicitly reject, what we take as obvious. Through 14 centuries, in all schools of Islamic thought, Muslims have been taught that Christendom (now, "the West") is in the Dar al-Harb -- the "domain of war". They have been taught that "peace" will not come before that West has been conquered, and Islamicized. Which is why, not since Sept. 11th, 2001, but for 14 centuries, we've been at each other's throats. I can hardly hold against Muslims, that they believe as they are taught. And I know that few are incendiaries. This is not my point. My point is that to confront this huge obstacle to the peaceful assimilation of Muslim immigrants in the West by promising to eschew "racial profiling", does not make sense. Indeed, it makes so little sense as to be insane. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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