Step Across This Line (37 page)
DECEMBER 1999: ISLAM AND THE WEST
The relationship between the Islamic world and the West seems to be living through one of the famous “interregnums” defined by Antonio Gramsci, in which the old refuses to die, so that the new cannot be born, and all manner of “morbid symptoms” arise. Both between Muslim and Western countries and inside Muslim communities living in the West, the old, deep mistrusts abide, frustrating attempts to build new, better relations, and creating much bad blood. For example, the general suspicion felt by many ordinary Egyptians about America’s motives has created a heightened, almost paranoiac atmosphere around the investigation of the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990. Now, all information pointing to the pilot Gameel al-Batouty’s responsibility for the aircraft’s fatal dive is believed to be tainted, in spite of indications that (a) he pulled rank to take over the controls from the co-pilot, even though it wasn’t his shift, and (b) the now-notorious religious mutterings immediately preceded the aircraft’s steep downward plunge. Meanwhile, theories exonerating the pilot are being propounded in Egypt almost daily—it was the Boeing malfunctioning, it was a bomb in the tail, it was a missile, and in any case it was America’s fault. The many proponents of these “anti-American” theories see no contradiction in believing with great fervor notions for which there is as yet no shred of proof, while vilifying the FBI for seeking to draw premature conclusions from such evidence as there is.
A more dispassionate version of events is needed. The FBI is perhaps excessively prone to seeing air disasters as crimes rather than accidents. That was certainly a problem after the TWA 800 crash. On that occasion it was the National Transportation Safety Board that eventually made the case for a systems failure causing an explosion in a fuel tank. But this time it’s the NTSB’s preliminary examination of the data that has thrown up the possibility of a pilot suicide.
The much-criticized leakiness of the investigating bodies can also be seen as reassuring: with so many loose tongues around, in the end the truth will out. By contrast, the state-controlled press in Mubarak’s Egypt is likely to reflect that government’s nationalistic unwillingness to concede Egyptian responsibility for the crash, which could further damage the tourist trade.
Unreason and emotion have by now thoroughly politicized this investigation. Let us hope that those who fear a U.S. cover-up do not create an atmosphere in which American and Egyptian politicians and diplomats do in fact seek to cover up the truth in the interest of their bilateral relations.
Muslims living in the West also continue to feel defensive, suspicious, and persecuted. Hard on the heels of the dispute about the EgyptAir tragedy comes a demand in “multi-faith Britain” that all religious beliefs, not just the established Church of England, be protected from criticism. The West’s alleged “Islamophobia” means that Islamic demands for the new law are by far the loudest.
It is true that in many Western quarters there is a knee-jerk reflex that leads to anti-Islamic rushes to judgment, so that British Muslims’ sense of injury is frequently justified. But the proposed solution is the wrong cure, one that would make matters even worse than they are.
For the point is to defend people but not their ideas.
It is absolutely right that Muslims—that everyone—should enjoy freedom of religious belief in any free society. It is absolutely right that they should protest against discrimination whenever and wherever they experience it. It is also absolutely wrong of them to demand that their belief system—that any system of belief or thought—should be immunized against criticism, irreverence, satire, even scornful disparagement. This distinction between the individual and his creed is a foundation truth of democracy, and any community that seeks to blur it will not do itself any favors. The British blasphemy law is an outdated relic of the past, has fallen into disuse, and ought to be abolished. To extend it would be an anachronistic move quite against the spirit of a country whose leadership likes to prefix everything with the word “new.”
Democracy can only advance through the clash of ideas, can only flourish in the rough-and-tumble bazaar of disagreement. The law must never be used to stifle such disagreements, no matter how profound. The new cannot die so that the old can be reborn. That would indeed be a morbid symptom.
Once again, a clearer form of discourse is needed. Western societies urgently need to find effective ways of defending Muslims against blind prejudice. And Islamic spokesmen must likewise stop giving the impression that the way to better relations—the path to the new—requires the creation of new forms of censorship, of legal blindfolds and gags.
JANUARY 2000: TERROR VERSUS SECURITY
Now that the big Y2K party’s over, think for a moment about the covert, worldwide battle that took place on and around Millennium Night. Behind the images of a world lit up by pyrotechnics, united for one evanescent instant by gaiety and goodwill, the new dialectic of history was taking shape. We already knew that capitalism versus communism was no longer the name of the game. Now we saw, as clearly as the fireworks in the sky, that the defining struggle of the new age would be between Terrorism and Security.
I was one of the ten thousand gathered in London’s Millennium Dome, that same dome off which James Bond bounces while fighting the forces of terror in the latest 007 film. The audience knew—after hours of waiting to be frisked on a cold railway platform, how could it not?—that a mammoth security operation had been launched to safeguard the showpiece event. What few of us knew was that a bomb threat had been made, using an IRA code word, and that the dome came within an inch of being evacuated.
For days, the world had been hearing about nothing but terrorism. The United States had spoken the current bogeyman’s name—Osama bin Laden—to frighten us children. There were arrests: a man with bomb-making equipment found at the U.S.-Canada border, a group in Jordan. Seattle canceled its celebrations. One of the leaders of the Aum Shinrikyo cult was released, and Japan feared a terrorist atrocity. President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka made history by surviving a suicide bomber’s attack. There were bomb hoaxes at a British racetrack and at a soccer stadium. The FBI feared the worst from apocalyptic groups and lunatic-fringers. But in the end—apart from poor George Harrison, wounded by one such lunatic—we got off relatively lightly.
Almost all of us, that is, because there was also the Indian Airlines hijack. The events at Kandahar airport have left no fewer than four governments looking pretty bad. Nepal, proving that Kathmandu deserves its terrorist-friendly reputation, allowed men with guns and grenades to board a plane. The Indian government’s capitulation to the terrorists was the first such surrender to hijackers in years; what will they do when the next aircraft is seized? And, finally, terrorists trained in Taliban camps and holding Pakistani passports disappeared from Afghanistan into, very probably, Pakistan. Thus was a largely defunct form of terrorism given a new lease on life.
Some knees jerked predictably. An Islamist journalist, writing in a liberal British paper of the sort that would be banned in Islamist countries, complained that the “terrorist” tag demonizes members of freedom movements struggling against violent, oppressive regimes. But terrorism isn’t justice-seeking in disguise. In Sri Lanka it’s the voices of peace and conciliation who are getting murdered. And the brutal Indian Airlines hijackers do not speak for the people of peaceable, vandalized Kashmir.
The security establishment rightly regards the non-explosive Millennium as a triumph. Security is, after all, the art of making sure certain things don’t happen: a thankless task, because when they don’t happen, there will always be someone to say the security was excessive and unnecessary. In London on New Year’s Eve the security operation was on a scale that would have made citizens of many less fortunate nations convinced that a coup was in progress. But none of us thought so for an instant. This was security in the service of merrymaking, and that is something we can be impressed by and grateful for. And yet there is cause for concern. If the ideology of terrorism is that terror works, then the ideology of security is based on assuming the truth of the “worst-case scenario.” The trouble is that worst-case scenarism, if I may call it that, plays right into the hands of the fear creators. The worst-case scenario of crossing the road, after all, is that you’ll be hit by a truck and killed. Yet we all do cross roads every day, and could hardly function if we did not. To live by the worst-case scenario is to grant the terrorists their victory, without a shot having been fired.
It is also alarming to think that the real battles of the new century may be fought in secret, between adversaries accountable to few of us, the one claiming to act on our behalf, the other hoping to scare us into submission. Democracy requires openness and light. Must we really surrender our future into the hands of the shadow warriors? That most of the Millennial threats turned out to be hoaxes only underlines the problem; nobody wants to run from imaginary enemies. But how, in the absence of information, are we, the public, to evaluate such threats? How can we prevent terrorists and their antagonists from setting the boundaries within which we live?
Security saved President Kumaratunga, but many others died. The security at George Harrison’s fortress-home didn’t stop the would-be assassin’s knife; it was his wife’s well-swung table lamp that saved him. In the past, security didn’t save President Reagan, or the pope. Luck did that. So we need to understand that even maximum security guarantees nobody’s safety. The point is to decide—as the Queen decided on New Year’s Eve—not to let fear rule our lives. To tell those bullies who would terrorize us that we aren’t scared of them. And to thank our secret protectors, but to remind them, too, that in a choice between security and liberty, it is liberty that must always come out on top.
FEBRUARY 2000: JÖRG HAIDER
In April 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of Austria’s liberation from Nazism, an extraordinary rally took place on the Heldenplatz in central Vienna. Beneath the balcony from which Adolf Hitler had once harangued his roaring gang, Austrian artists, intellectuals, and politicians, as well as their friends and supporters from elsewhere, united to celebrate Hitler’s downfall, and by doing so to cleanse the old square of its association with evil. It was my privilege to be one of the speakers that night, and it was clear to me that the event’s more contemporary purpose was to give shape and voice to the “good Austria,” that passionate and substantial anti-Haider constituency of which surprisingly little is heard outside Austria itself. Jörg Haider’s supporters understood this too, and the rally accordingly became the focus of much ultra-rightist derision. Then, unfortunately, it began to rain.
It rained heavily, incessantly, relentlessly. This was neo-Nazi rain, absolutist, intolerant, determined to have its way. The rally’s organizers were worried. A poor turnout would be celebrated by the Haiderites, and the whole event could backfire terribly. In a week’s time, nobody would remember the weather, but nobody would be allowed to forget the sparse attendance. But there was nothing for it. The rally had to go ahead, and the rain kept bucketing down. When I came out onto the stage, however, I saw an unforgettable sight. The Heldenplatz was packed, as full as Times Square on Millennium Eve. The crowd was soaked to the skin, joyous, cheering, youthful. The rain crashed down on those young people all night and they didn’t care. They had come in numbers to make a statement they cared greatly about, and they weren’t going to let a little water get in the way. It was perhaps the most moving crowd I’d ever seen. The purpose of such rallies is to strengthen people’s hope. It certainly strengthened mine.
These memories of the Heldenplatz rally make the news of Jörg Haider’s surge toward power—eerily reminiscent of the career of the Hitlerish central figure in Brecht’s
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
—all the more unpalatable. In his growing popularity I see the defeat of those idealistic young people standing shoulder to shoulder in the pouring rain.
But it won’t do to describe Haider’s triumph simply as a victory of evil over good. The success of extremist leaders is invariably linked to failures in the system they supplant. The tyranny of the shah of Iran created the tyranny of the ayatollahs. The lazy corruption of the old, secularist Algeria gave birth to the GIA and the FIS. In Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif’s abuses of power have made possible the new abuses being perpetrated by his successor, General Musharraf. The incompetence and corruption of the Congress Party in India enabled the Hindu nationalist BJP and its sidekick, the Shiv Sena, to seize power. The failures of the old British Labour Party were the making of Thatcher’s radical Conservatism. And the long-running Austrian “grand coalition,” that backslapping, jobs-for-the-boys Establishment fix, has disillusioned the voters enough to make them turn toward Haider.
The papers are full of tales of fat-cat corruption these days, and the revelations are a gift to a populist demagogue of the Haider type. (When the heirs of the late Bettino Craxi shrug their shoulders and call the Kohl-Mitterrand-Craxi slush-fund story an irrelevance, they make things much worse. The more Europe looks like a “grand coalition” of arrogant leaders for whom ends easily justify means, the more ammunition the Haiders of Europe will have.)
Like Bombay’s boss Bal Thackeray, Haider has said he will not himself enter the government—so much easier to run things through proxies and stooges, so much less, well, exposed. But Thackeray’s support comes mainly from the ignored, disenfranchised urban poor. Haider, according to the political theorist Karl-Markus Gauss, has pulled off a more European trick. Like Le Pen in France or Bossi in Italy, he has won the support of the wealthy, successful bourgeoisie. What these people hate about immigrants, Gauss believes, is not their race but their poverty. (Credit where credit’s due. The politician who invented this trick, who remained in power throughout the 1980s by persuading the employed to vote against the unemployed, is none other than General Pinochet’s best friend, Margaret Thatcher.)
This system is corrupt,
say the placards of the German anti-Kohl protesters. They’re right, and the fight against that corruption and the fight against Jörg Haider are one and the same. The EU must devote as much energy to rooting out the slush-fund artists in its own ranks as to closing ranks against Haider and his Freedom Party.
At the end of Brecht’s play, the actor playing Arturo Ui steps forward and addresses the audience directly, warning it against complacency. Ui-Hitler may have fallen, he reminds us, but “the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” The European Union must set its house in order quickly, unless it wishes history to remember it as the latest incarnation of that sleazy, promiscuous canine.