London XVI: A Western Leader – Finally – Focuses on Political Islam

NY Times: “Text of Blair Speech to Labor Party Meeting,” July 16, 2005.

In the previous post, we laid out in some detail and length our analysis of what we feel has been the much-MIS-understood relationship between George Bush and Tony Blair.

In this context, we want to focus on what we see as a crucial speech given by Blair to a Labour Party gathering in London on Saturday, July 16.

Now we certainly wouldn’t agree with either every detail or, even, some of the main lines of argument Blair employs here – not least his use of the moronic and counter-productive Christian right buzzword “evil” Bush has done so much to popularize.

That said, we think Blair’s speech is so crucial because – barely a week after the London bombings – he has clearly and forthrightly faced up to the VALUES challenge posed by political Islam –

a challenge that, as we have mentioned many times before, his embarrassing bluster and posturing aside, the cowardly Bush has consistently run away from for nearly four years,

lest he say something about fundamentalism that might offend his Christian right mass base – Wall Street, Texas energy, and high-tech military contractors being the main components of his elite corporate base.

In this context, we think it important to make sure this critical declaration –

intelligently reprinted in full by the NY Times, something we thought the BBC, whose coverage in general has been OUTSTANDING, would have done, but didn’t … probably for fear of looking like they were pandering –

gets the attention it deserves … herewith some of the key passages …

[This] is a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it. This is the battle that must be won, a battle not just about the terrorist methods but their views. Not just their barbaric acts, but their barbaric ideas. Not only what they do but what they think and the thinking they would impose on others.

This ideology and the violence that is inherent in it did not start a few years ago in response to a particular policy. …

This is a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam, as far removed from its essential decency and truth as Protestant gunmen who kill Catholics or vice versa, are from Christianity. But do not let us underestimate it or dismiss it. ...

From the mid 1990s onwards, statements from Al Qaeda, gave very clear expression to this ideology.

At this point, Blair recapitulates some of the most egregious – and central – beliefs of political Islam, especially, although not exclusviely, in its Sunni versions:

Every Muslim, the minute he can start differentiating, carries hatred towards the Americans, Jews and Christians. This is part of our ideology.

The creation of Israel is a crime and it has to be erased. You should know that targeting Americans and Jews and killing them anywhere you find them on the earth is one of the greatest duties and one of the best acts of piety you can offer to God Almighty.

Just as great is their hatred for so-called apostate Governments in Muslim countries. This is why mainstream Muslims are also regarded as legitimate targets.

He then briefly analyzes the political sociology of extremist Islam:

Its roots are not superficial but deep, in the madrassehs of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life. This is what we are up against. It cannot be beaten except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head-on. Without compromise and without delusion.

In the nearly four years since 9/11 has George Bush – or ANYONE in the Bush administration, including Colin Powell or Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice – ever said ANYTHING about political Islam as rooted in reality as these comments ???

If so, I certainly can’t remember it – it’s all been this twaddle about “evil” and “killers” and "hating freedom" etc. If anybody can find anything, we’d be happy to see it.

And did anyone from BushCo ever actually criticize the official Wahabi dogma of the Saudi royal family ??? How could it have taken so long for a responsible leader of an English-speaking country to say something like this ???

The extremist propaganda is cleverly aimed at their target audience. It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world; as if it is our behaviour that should change; that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil; that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs. This is a misunderstanding of a catastrophic order.

Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can’t be moderated. It can’t be remedied. It has to be stood up to. And, of course, they will use any issue that is a matter of dissent within our democracy. But we should lay bare the almost-devilish logic behind such manipulation.

If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?

Of course, both the Israelis and Palestinians continue play active roles in fucking things up – the latest Islamic jihad outrage, followed by an intentional Israeli overreaction being only the latest example of their shared sickness – but the key point is the difference between excuses and causes, as we pointed out in the 7th post of this series …

If it is Afghanistan that motivates them, why blow up innocent Afghans on their way to their first ever election? If it is Iraq that motivates them, why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi Government?

What was September 11 2001 the reprisal for? Why even after the first Madrid bomb and the election of a new Spanish Government, were they planning another atrocity when caught? Why if it is the cause of Muslims that concerns them, do they kill so many with such callous indifference? We must pull this up by its roots.

Blair then moves from this analysis to a program of ACTION involving Muslim leadership and multitudes – something that Bush somehow failed to even mention, let alone follow through on, for the past four years.

Within Britain, we must join up with our Muslims community to take on the extremists. Worldwide we should confront it everywhere it exists.

Next week I and other party leaders will meet key members of the Muslim community. Out of it I hope we can get agreed action to take this common fight forward. I want also to work with other nations to promote the true face of Islam world-wide. Round the world, there are conferences already being held, numerous inter-faith dialogues in place but we need to bring all of these activities together and give them focus.

Seems so obvious, doesn’t it ??? So how come this never happened for the four years that Bush was “leading” the West ???

Maybe so Karl Rove won’t give a speech in London down the road, and accuse Blair of being a liberal who wants to actually understand the nature of the challenge –

which, as Blair notes, does NOT mean it has to be agreed with … but that it can and MUST be fought by means other than the dehumanizing violence that is its signal characteristic.

In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.

Ever hear Bush say anything like this ??? No – instead, he’s too busy trying to sucker the rest of the world into supporting pointless wars that only give credibility to the lunatic views propounded by political Islam.

Blair, on the other hand, has a conception of STRUGGLE against political Islam, one that isn't just about killing and de-stabilizing the whole world, but about IDEAS – something conspicuously lacking in the Bush repertoire for nearly half a decade.

That means not just arguing against their terrorism

which, of course, is the ONLY thing Bush ever did …

but their politics and their perversion of religious faith.

which, of course, Bush NEVER did.

It means exposing as the rubbish it is, the propaganda about America and its allies wanting to punish Muslims or eradicate Islam. It means championing our values of freedom, tolerance and respect for others.

Something of which Bush could NEVER be accused – not least because his pals in the corporate / Christian right are just as opposed to tolerance and respect for others as is political Islam.

It means explaining why the suppression of women and the disdain for democracy are wrong. The idea that elected Governments are the preserve of those of any other faith or culture is insulting and wrong. Muslims believe in democracy just as much as any other faith and, given the chance, show it.

The obligatory tip of the hat to Bush, of course … but given everything that precedes it, the meaning is completely different in this context than in the know-nothing framework in which Bush presents it.

The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values.

Gee … and all it took was a terrorist outrage in an English-speaking country to FINALLY get this sort of discourse going at a leadership level …

Let’s see how long it takes Bush and gay homophobe Rove to start muttering about how “weak” and “vacillating” Blair is …

and then, let’s hope, Blair tells him to “piss off, you wanker,”

as he probably has wanted to do every day since 9/11, but has been too responsible to actually articulate, knowing how out-of-control Bush can be …