27th December 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Challenge of Islamic Extremism

            The problem of Islamic Extremism (Jihadism) is surely among the most serious facing what we think of as ‘civilisation’ today.  In this blog I have returned to the subject again and again and I can think of no easy – or even difficult – solutions to it.  I am sitting comfortably and securely at home in the safety of the UK.  Elsewhere in the world innocent men, women and little children are facing torture, slavery and death at the hands of jihadists.    A regular, and very articulate, reader of the blog has written to me over Christmas to tell me of his concerns and of a possible solution.

I see in your blog you include a comment about the dreadful killing in Pakistan. Almost as bad as the gunning down of children was the special treatment of incineration meted out to the head teacher and a class teacher who tried to protect the children. The gunmen arrived with a can of petrol for that specific purpose.  The next day the Nigerian Islamists (Boku Harran) took 100 people hostage - almost a whole village, but that didn't even make it to the headlines. The BBC calculated that over 5000 people were killed by Islamic extremists during the month of November alone, from 10 counties around the world - and that was before the Pakistan incident!

However, there seems to me to be a few issues to consider in formulating a response. The first is that both the Sydney incident and the Pakistan incident were a direct response to the action taken by those governments in seeking to crush these extremists.  That has been the pattern of so many of the atrocities- like the Spanish train bomb, the attacks on Kenya and the London Tube bombs.  There is also the very obvious threat of radicalisation within the Muslim community at home. This risk is massively increased by a foreign policy which could be seen as hostile to Islam. There may well be valid reasons for our involvement overseas and for forcefully opposing these people. Making the home nation safer (the Tony Blair argument) certainly isn't one of them.

‘Western’ governments have to recognise that jihadism is a world-wide movement, not a bit like Nazi Germany, which was the vision of a deranged man with power in his hands. The U.S. / Israeli policy of assassinating extremist leaders using Drones, just doesn't work.  Innocent people are killed, there are always other leaders to replace those killed, and illegal action of this kind in another country only perpetuates the cycle of grievance and retaliation.

I think maybe it is time to acknowledge - even if we totally disagree with it - that there is popular support in some parts of the world for an extreme Islamic nation with everything which goes with that - lack of human rights, complete rejection of Western views and democracy etc. I am thinking the thing which might eventually end the bloodshed would be the allocation of land and the establishment of Islamic Governments in prescribed areas where there is already a strong belief in that sort of regime. A peace settlement should be based on a few fundamental principles - non aggression into the "less Islamic zone", free movement of disaffected citizens out of the Islamic Zone and free movement of radical Islamists from other counties into the Zone.  Frankly the Pakistan / Afghanistan border area may as well be declared as such, because neither government  has control and the act of trying to control is a cause of endless attacks on Kabul and Islamabad. Perhaps the same should be true of Northern Nigeria where it seems to me the Government is very half hearted about dealing with the situation and has allowed that area to deteriorate economically and thereby fuelled antiwestern resentment. I suspect that a part of Somalia is the same.

It’s certainly an idea and, if jihadists were guided by reason and prepared to negotiate a peace settlement, it might work.  I don’t think they are. They are, I believe, convinced that they have been chosen by God to convert the whole world to their particularly noxious brand of Islam and to enslave and/or kill any who oppose them.  The idea that they could live at peace with people who don’t share that viewpoint would be anathema to them.  I do agree with my correspondent though, that violent attacks, air-strikes and drone assassinations only produce more enthusiastic recruits for the jihadist cause. You can’t destroy an idea, even a thoroughly bad one, by violence.

I believe that the only permanent answer to Islamic extremism must come from Muslims themselves.  I think that most Muslims instinctively prefer to live in a mainly Christian, multifaith or secular society rather than in a strictly Islamic one.  Why else did Muslim refugees from Kosovo seek refuge in western Europe rather than in Albania – the Muslim country ‘next door’?     Why do Muslim refugees seek to gain access to multifaith Australia rather than Muslim Indonesia?  When the former Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that some aspects of Sharia law might be introduced in the UK, he overlooked the fact that a considerable number of people who consider themselves to be devout Muslims had come to this country for no other reason than to escape the strictures of Sharia law.

 Islam doesn’t have an equivalent of the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury who can with authority, denounce this, that or the other practice as being contrary to the will of God.  Surely though there must be devout, respected and charismatic Muslim leaders who can publicly and convincingly declare that forced conversions, murder of non-believers, abduction and sale of young girls into sex slavery is not just un-Islamic  but is in blasphemous denial of the will of Allah, who is  compassionate, merciful and just. Those who carry out such practices can expect to answer for their actions in a higher than worldly court.   

            I eagerly await the emergence of such Muslim leaders.  Without them, I fear that the world will be condemned to an endless cycle of murder and vengeance.

A British Middle East Presence

            I didn’t think that I would ever agree with any pronouncement made by Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip.   However I do wholeheartedly agree with his opposition to the government’s massive reinforcement of the   forces already training Iraqi troops to fight the forces of Islamic State.  It’s ‘mission creep’ and it’s beginning to speed up.  How long will it be, I wonder, before one of those ‘training units’ is attacked by IS and compelled to defend itself – and we’ll be well on our way to involvement in ‘the third gulf war’?

            I don’t know what Mr Farage thinks of the government’s establishing a naval base in Bahrain but I think that, like the reinforcement of our ‘training mission’ in Iraq, it is expensive idiocy.  Britain, largely as a result of the present government’s and its New Labour predecessors’ activities, is regarded with deep suspicion throughout the Middle East – and with good reason.  Wherever we have interfered – in Iraq, in Libya and in Syria, we have managed to make a bad situation even worse.

            We no longer have an Empire.  We’re an average sized country on the western fringes of Europe.  The only way we can effectively make our voice heard on the global stage is as a leading and active member of a more-closely-knit European Union.  We no longer need a ‘presence’ east of Suez and we never have needed those  wildly expensive Trident submarines that have signally failed to deter a single one of the international acts of aggression that have occurred during the past half century.

            Now there’s a couple of ways in which George Osborne could reduce that deficit – without reducing the poor to starvation.

Making a bad situation worse

            There’s been plenty of bad news in the newspapers and on the tv and radio recently; atrocities committed by Islamic State, a terrible road accident in Glasgow, continuing Ebola epidemic in West Africa, thousands rendered jobless in Britain by the failure of a privately owned delivery service.  However there was one undoubted piece of good news on a BBC bulletin on Boxing Day.   An exchange of prisoners of war between the forces of the Kiev government in Ukraine and the forces of the pro-Russian rebels in the eastern provinces of that divided country.  As a former PoW myself I know how much that means to the individuals freed under the agreement and to their families.

                        It’s all part of an uneasy cease-fire brokered by the Russian Government some months ago.   It is a cease-fire peace initiative that ‘the west’ should be whole-heartedly supporting, urging both sides to be prepared to make concessions in the interests of a just and lasting peace.  Instead, we are offering unqualified support to the Kiev government and encouraging them to join NATO, which the Russians inevitably see as a hostile alliance with which they are increasingly surrounded.  Have we really forgotten, in the centenary year of the outbreak of World War I, that it was just such a system of alliances that led to the carnage of 1914/1918?

            The European Union’s latest initiative in the conflict is to inflict economic sanctions directly onto the inhabitants of the Crimea and Sebastapol.  Are they being punished for having wanted to be annexed by (they would say re-united with)   Russia?  Their position is not unlike that of the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands who wanted to remain British despite their geographical proximity to Argentina. Just as the UK has ensured that the will of the overwhelming majority of Falklanders has been fulfilled, so Russia has fulfilled the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Crimeans.  The only difference I can discern is that, unlike the British, the Russians achieved their objective without loss of blood.  The pro-Russian separatists are not like the zealots of the Islamic State.  They are prepared to negotiate.  We should encourage them, not make a bad situation worse.    

           Dear Blog readers.......

.I qu  ............I quite thought that the previous blog would be the last one for 2014, but here I am again.  I have had a wonderful Christmas break with my family and feel thoroughly refreshed. I have no idea when the next blog will appear but, in the meantime, I wish all blog readers (and all people of good will towards their fellow men, women and children, of whatever race, colour or creed) a very Happy New Year.  May 2015 be a year of peace and hope. 

  M