Examining extremists like looking into the past
by George Jonas
CanWest Publications
June 4, 2008
For the benefit of those who missed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2005 threat to wipe out Israel, he repeated it this week. Israel, he said, "will soon disappear off the geographical scene." The occasion was the 19th anniversary of the death of theocratic Iran's founder, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Whatever one thinks of the sentiment, the sentence is bizarre. Threatening to wipe a country off the map is like threatening to slay all men and women and let dogs lick their blood. It's Genghis Khan stuff. Politicians don't say things like that in the 21st century -- do they?
Well, the president of Iran did.
"Are these people mad?" an acquaintance asked me a couple of years ago. He was looking at news photos of a mob torching a building in Beirut. At that time the rioters were objecting to the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
"No, only differently sane," I suggested. "They're sane in a manner suitable to their times."
"What do you mean, their times? Muslims live in the 21st century, the same as you and I."
"Some do. Others have bought a pièd-a-terre in the 21st century and commute between it and their home in the 12th century. Some maintain a 21st century address solely for e-mail."
"I hope you're wrong," said my acquaintance. "Because if you're right, we have a problem."
We do. The slick Boeings that leave Western airports for Asia and the Middle East double as time machines. They whisk travellers back to the Middle Ages.
The upheavals of the 21st century are about many things, but one of them is turning back the clock. This is the essence of militant Islam. Turning back the clock was also the essence of Nazism and Communism, the earlier totalitarian revolutions against the dominance of Western-style liberal democracies. Despite their modern façade, both were essentially neo-medieval movements. Theocracy, in turn, is totalitarianism without the façade of modernity.
Threatening an enemy with extinction sounds raving mad in our humanistic, liberal, and -- let's not forget -- nuclear age. We acquired cultural scruples about genocide, along with the means to carry it out. Militant Islam has been quicker with the means than the scruples, and seems ready to combine the destructive power of the 21st century with the 12th century's lack of inhibitions.
If there's method in Islamist militancy's madness, there's also madness in its method -- a deliberate, cultivated madness. The poet Nizar Qabbani gives expression to it in his ode to the Intifada, a panegyric to the "children of the stones."
O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness
In other words, don't mess with us, we're crazy. We'll throw stones at armoured vehicles, strap on suicide bombs, respond to cartoons with riots. We're irresistible because our kingdom is not of this world, because we cherish death more than you, our enemies, cherish life.
The Arab/Islamic awakening of the 20th century, just like the earlier (or parallel) Oriental/Asiatic awakenings, measured itself against the seemingly invincible West. However, the two awakenings took opposite turns. The Far Eastern/Asian powers of Japan, China, Russia, and India, tried to challenge the West, but then concluded that if you can't lick them, join them -- maybe try beating them at their own game. Today Japan and India are embracing liberal-capitalism with remarkable success, while Russia and China are experimenting with authoritarian-capitalism. Though a contradiction in terms, it's working better than totalitarian-socialism ever has.
The Arab/Islamic world started out by trying to join the West, but kept taking wrong turns on the road to Westernization, choosing blind alleys of fascist-style nationalism and quasi-Marxist socialism. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini of Jerusalem, and later Col. Gamel Nasser, Dr. George Habash, and Yasser Arafat were all part of this pattern. Ironically, so was Saddam Hussein.
Eventually the Arab/Muslim world concluded that Westernizing was too burdensome and probably impossible. Since joining the West wasn't in the cards, licking it seemed another option. A new generation began to eye fundamental Islam as a route to Arab/Islamic renaissance. Enter the Ayatollah Khomeini, followed by Osama bin Laden.
Today Pakistan has the bomb, and the Islamists aren't far from having Pakistan. The Islamists have Iran, and Iran isn't far from having the bomb. It already has President Ahmadinejad. The bright flash you see next may mark the fulfillment of his threat. Conversely, it may mark its end.