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October 21, 2001
Donald
Rumsfeld
The
al-Jazeera Interview
Mark
Scaramella
Nuclear
Anxiety
October 19, 2001
Mohammed
Sid-Ahmed
Bush's
Palestinian State
Michael
Colby
A
Mailroom Manifesto
October 18, 2001
Mahajan
and Jensen
Avoiding
a New Cold War
Patrick
Cockburn
US
Planes Pound Taliban
Jamey Hecht
Gerald Ford
and the CIA
Mokhiber
and Weisman
3
Arguments
Against This War
October 17, 2001
Ballinger
and Marsh
Music
and War Resistance
Steve
Perry
The
Anthrax Chronicles
Chris
Kromm
Operation
Infinite Disaster
Susan
Block
Sex
Not Bombs
David Vest
Osama Speaks
October 16, 2001
Steve
Perry
War
Without Frontiers
Douglas
Valentine
The
CIA and Anthrax
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif
John
Troyer
Return
to Normal?
Moji Agha
A
Jihad Against Ignorance
October
15, 2001
Tariq
Ali
Alternatives
to War
John
Pilger
War
American Style
Umberto
Eco
The
Roots of Conflict
Marwan
Bishara
Clash
of Civilizations? Hardly
Patrick
Cockburn
Modern
War in
A Medieval Village
October
13, 2001
Carl
Estabrook
Letters
to Editors
Molly
Secours
War:
The Procter and Gamble Perspective
Alexander
Cockburn
War
Can't Save the Economy
October
10, 2001
Cockburn/St.
Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
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October
21, 2001
Capital Strikes Back
By Hani Shukrallah
Berlusconi apologised; Bush forswore a Crusade
(even in "the broad sense of the word"); the war in
defence of "Western civilisation" was toned down to
a war in defence of freedom for everybody; and Infinite Justice
became Enduring Freedom. Sensible Muslim leaders applauded expressions
of Western sensitivity to Muslim sensitivities, and such were
the prerequisites of political expedience that Western political
leaders began to sound like Azharite sheikhs, preaching to all
and sundry the true meaning of Islam.
It's not working. Bombs, after all, will
be bombs. They kill and devastate; people die; families are shattered;
homes are destroyed; lives and livelihoods, just as sure as limbs
and bodies, are broken beyond repair -- all of which is brutally,
heartlessly concrete ("the proof of the pudding").
And let's not fool each other or ourselves.
Nobody really believes the sudden sensitisation, in New York
and London or in Islamabad and Cairo. Muslim rage is all the
rage in the Western media. Meanwhile, every two-bit academic
who has, with career- minded farsightedness and, often (overt
and/ or covert) governmental connections, plagiarised other two-bit
career-minded, etc. academics to write a PhD thesis, monograph
or book on Islam, has become an "expert" in high demand.
It is a clear case of "white man
speak with forked tongue," sad to say. The leaders speak
in easily decipherable code, at once swearing themselves blue
in the face that the West is not at war with Islam -- "Islam
is a religion of peace", etc. -- while continuing to use
the "trigger words" that incite the very feelings of
cultural, religious and racial superiority, bigotry and hatred
they claim to refute.
Huntington, all but consigned to well-
deserved oblivion during the past few years, has been revived
with a vengeance. Commentators vie to expound their particular
take on the essential attributes of Islamic civilisation, culture,
and contemporary world, and the "Clash of Civilizations"
is back in fashion. Royalties are rolling in. Even Francis Fukuyama,
a rival and equally prosaic prophet of post-Cold War capitalist
triumphalism (and US policy-making circles), has jumped on the
bandwagon of anti- Islamic rhetoric. His "end of history"
thesis (all world societies have no option but to adopt Western
democracy and market-based economy, proven to be the summit of
human progress) has not been proven wrong, he asserted in an
article in the Wall Street Journal. He goes on to concede, however,
that "there does seem to be something about Islam, or at
least the fundamentalist versions of Islam that have been dominant
in recent years, that makes Muslim societies particularly resistant
to modernity."
For a fairly short piece, Fukuyama's
is a veritable mine of precious gems. "Of all contemporary
cultural systems, the Islamic world has the fewest democracies,"
he informs his readers. In fact, he goes on to clarify, only
one Islamic country qualifies (as a democracy): Turkey. This
latter assertion (apparently so self- evident it is made in parenthesis)
is so fantastic as to lead one to the conclusion that Mr Fukuyama
must base his writing on one of two assumptions: either his readers
are utter ignoramuses or they are fully complicit in an entirely
cynical and arbitrary definition of democracy. A democracy is
simply what we say is a democracy -- and let the Devil take care
of the rest (including thousands of killed, tortured and imprisoned
Kurds, banned political movements and parties, gagged journalists
and writers and a state and society made hostage to the generals'
goodwill).
Fukuyama's fundamental dilemma, however,
lies elsewhere. Other non-Western people may be having problems
in their progression towards the Western ideal (and, hence, history's
peak), but "there are no insuperable cultural barriers to
prevent them from getting there." It does seem, however,
that such barriers may exist in the case of Muslims, suggests
a troubled Fukuyama. After all, "Islam... is the only cultural
system that seems regularly to produce people like Osama Bin
Laden or the Taliban who reject modernity lock, stock and barrel."
The well-connected Washington ideologue
approves the Western leaders' change of tone. Their assertions
"that those sympathetic with the terrorists are a 'tiny
minority' of Muslims [are] important... to prevent all Muslims
from becoming targets of hatred" -- and, we might add, to
draw friendly Islamic states into the war- against-terrorism
alliance, while maintaining as far as possible their fragile
political stability. He readily admits, however, that such assertions
are merely expedient. The real issue, Fukuyama tells us, is that
"if the [Muslim] rejectionists are more than a lunatic fringe,
then Huntington is right that we are in for a protracted conflict
made dangerous by virtue of their technological empowerment."
But what if it is? This, after all, is
not a struggle between "equal cultures fighting amongst
one another like the great powers of 19th- century Europe."
The West, and in particular, America, Fukuyama is confident,
will ultimately prevail.
Fukuyama meets Huntington courtesy of
Bin Laden -- a synthesis of nonsense has been achieved.
There is tremendous irony in all of this.
The expedient and transparent hypocrisy visible in the Western
leaders' change of tone provides inadequate tactical cover for
the bigger (strategic) lie of the confrontation between the West
and Islam, but in lying twice they actually point to the truth.
The secret buried beneath all the rubbish,
both tactical and strategic, can be found in the shifting fortunes
of Huntington and Fukuyama themselves. Their initial renown was
a product of the "winds of change" that swept across
Eastern Europe a little over a decade ago. Against the drumbeats
of Western capitalist triumphalism, the US-led Gulf War slipped
into the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was over.
That did not last. In less than 10 years,
the tunes of global capital's victory march had dimmed to a distant
murmur. Democracy was no longer a malleable propaganda instrument
to be manipulated cynically by the US and its Western allies.
Rather, it had become the battle cry of a growing resistance
movement against capitalist globalisation. World Bank and IMF
officials were scavenging for capitalism's human face; spin had
all but replaced politics; the WTO was in the process of replacing
parliaments; America had an elected president who had lost the
election and the global economy was slowly but surely sinking
into recession. Fukuyama and Huntington were silent.
Now they're back.
At its heart, the war of civilisations
(or merely the West versus Islam) is no more than the fantastically
fetishised expression of global capital's battle against genuine
(rather than Turkish-style) democracy -- everywhere. Things,
as everybody knows, are rarely ever what they seem.
Hani Shukrallah
writes a weekly column for the Cairo-based al-Ahram
newspaper.
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