More insurmountably, the rise of radical Islam since the late 1970s reflects the bankruptcy of the two dominant political creeds in the Arab world, nationalism and socialism, the two western movements that comprised fascism.
()Initially the ire of radical Islamists was directed against what they regarded as corrupt “apostate” rulers in Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia rather than against the far enemy in the West. The war against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan expanded these horizons. Absurdly claiming credit for defeating communism, Bin Laden and his accomplices switched their attention to the West, and America in particular, once its armies (including female soldiers) were stationed to protect Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein. After fighting the Russians, defeating the effete Americans would not amount to much.
Perhaps the biggest problem with using 20th-century political concepts to describe Islamist militants is that they want to cause the collapse of the artificial nation states that were established by tribal dynasts, or imposed by imperialists in the 1920s, into a caliphate stretching from southern Spain to northwest China. Most fascists in the 1930s were extreme nationalists, not people who wanted to abolish the nation state in favour of some larger ethnically mixed empire.
Calling Islamist terrorists “Islamofascists” gets things only about half right, even when one reincorporates into “fascism” what it adapted from the Christian (and pagan) world view, rather than regarding it as a doctrine to defend the interests of the powerful.
Since Islamist terrorism is the product of a pathological strain within a particular religious tradition, it is best to stick with terms derived from it, notably “jihadism”. Although apologists aver that jihad is akin to yoga, in fact it means fighting in the alleged interests of the Muslim community or umma. The equivalent of Jesuit casuistry enables jihadist clerics to rationalise killing innocents by labelling them infidel.
Where does all this leave us with the long war, or in terms of the wider problem of auto-radicalising jihadists among the 20m Muslims in our midst in the West? By hook or crook, leaders such as Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria or Hosni Mubarak of Egypt have forced mainstream Islamists back onto a political track, so isolating smaller numbers of fanatic jihadists, one of the least acknowledged developments of the past decade.
The shadow war with Al-Qaeda is being won: about 3,000 fighters have been killed or captured, the fate of two-thirds of its military commanders. America is gradually adjusting its military doctrines to minimise civilian casualties. US intelligence has quietly fostered useful contacts in places such as Libya, Sudan or Yemen.
In Iraq, America is belatedly endeavouring to disaggregate the insurgents by offering former Ba’athist army officers a regular pay cheque. General John Abizaid, a Lebanese-American and head of US Central Command, is diverting manpower and money to hearts and minds initiatives in places such as Djibouti, where American soldiers are building clinics and schools and sinking wells. The aim is to attenuate the backwardness that generates future jihadists. At $600,000 (£322,000) the cost is equivalent to a couple of fins on a cruise missile and a great deal less than the $1 trillion losses caused by September 11, 2001.
Home-grown Islamist radicalism is more intractable. Some European countries, such as France, which practise external appeasement, are far harsher in their treatment of domestic extremists than Britain, which has combined appeasement of so-called “community leaders” in the Muslim Council of Britain with support for adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Appeasement has not worked, not least because such leaders are ambiguous about terrorism when it is directed at Israel and America and are not in a position to halt the global flood of incitement coming through the internet or satellite television. Groups of young friends, inflamed by scenes of Muslim defeat and oppression and stuck uncomfortably between the quiescent conservatism of their parents and western street culture, auto-radicalise by joining what amounts to a “holy gang” of mujaheddin in trainers.
In so far as western Muslim leaders can contribute anything, it is to help to deglamorise and demythologise terrorists while squarely owning up to the fact that most of the problems of the Muslim world are its own fault. The West is not responsible for the corruption and moral squalor of Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan or a dozen other places.
Muslim clerics should be encouraged to issue “opinions” or fatwas calling terrorists — and their sympathisers — heretics bent on causing destruction to fellow believers, while unequivocally condemning the sin of suicide-homicide.
While the anti-terror squad and MI5 have got the hang of putting violent Islamists on the back foot, perhaps it is time for a bit of stick rather than endless carrots, particularly as all Britons may be about to be penalised if America rescinds its visa waiver scheme with the UK because of the problem of the dual nationality of our jihadists.
Let’s start by toughening up procedures for people leaving as well as entering this country, until they can demonstrate that they are going to a wedding in Baluchistan rather than advanced bomb-making with Al-Qaeda. Why not introduce bans, not just on radical imams but also on the murky foreign financing of Islam? Saudi Arabians do not permit Christian worship in their kingdom, yet they are allowed to finance Salafist/ Wahhabi mosques here.
Sophisticates claim that faith schools enable the government to monitor what is taught. That smacks of the complacency that allowed a ragtag and bobtail of Islamist radicals to set up shop in “Londonistan” on the presumption of a “pact of security” that would insulate their naive hosts. We need schools which teach respect for the culture of Shakespeare, Bach, Raphael and Rubens, not places that favour the limited horizons of a transplanted Third World village.
Instead of pandering to “the communities” that multiculturalism has incarnated, Ruth Kelly, secretary of state for communities and local government, might be better employed erasing its heavy institutional footprints in education and local government. Let’s have some “unity” officers, versed in what makes this country so attractive for those people who traverse continents to live here. Why is welfare being doled out to people who daily express their hatred of us?
If politicians do not demonstrate the necessary firmness to deal with what huge numbers of British people — white and black, Christian, Hindu, Sufi, Sikh or Jew — are terrified by, it might not be Islamofascists that we have most to worry about.
Michael Burleigh is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and author of Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al-Qaeda, to be published by Harper Press on October 16
