David QuinnPeace on its own is not enough, an ‘Islamic democracy’ needs to emerge, writes David Quinn
Everyone is horrified at what happened in Paris last weekend. Jihadist-inspired atrocities are happening on a constant basis, of course, but when it is closer to home, in a city that is a peak expression of Western culture, then it seems all the more shocking.
When something like this happens, first we express sympathy, then we look for solutions. But there are no easy solutions for what happened.
When the 9/11 attacks happened in America, the response was to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The first response had very widespread international support and the second ran into very widespread international opposition.
Neither response has made the world demonstrably safer and the mess the Americans made of Iraq following the overthrow of Hussein was so great, it has made things worse.
However, when Barack Obama withdrew the last American troops from Iraq two years ago, the situation become worse again.
Anarchy
Western powers helped to get rid of Gaddafi in Libya and now the country is a bloody anarchy. In Syria it doesn’t know what to do and a civil war has dragged on there for four years. People want the West to do something about it, but what?
We now have hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving in Europe from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa often using Libya as a conduit.
We also don’t know how best to deal with Muslim immigration. Should we bring it to a halt? Should we slow it down? Should we open our borders altogether?
What about the Muslim populations already in Europe? France has almost five million Muslims and has singularly failed to integrate many of them. France holds to laïcité as a core governing principle. In its present incarnation that means a form of secularism which usually translates as the marginalisation of religion from the French mainstream.
The view of religion behind this philosophy is essentially hostile. It sees religion as a chief source of social discord which is why it seeks to exclude it from public life as much as possible.
The vast majority of Muslim youth in France are taught in state schools which enforce laïcité rigorously. It clearly has not made Muslims accepting of laïcité. On the contrary, it conveys the impression that the French state is hostile to Islam in particular and to religion in general.
How, therefore, should we deal with violent expressions of religion when laïcité does not work? This is a vital question because without doubt what happened in Paris last weekend, and what is happening on a daily basis in much of the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere has a religious component.
Let’s be franker and also point out that it has an Islamic component. Simply condemning ‘religious fundamentalism’ tout court will not do.
To condemn ‘religious fundamentalism’ at a time like this without being any more specific is about as useful as condemning ‘political extremism’ in general when it is obvious that in a given case that the extremism in question is emanating from the left (as it did in the 1970s and 1980s with the likes of the Red Brigades or the Baader Meinhoff gang), or more recently from the right (think of Anders Breivik in Norway).
The great bulk of religiously-inspired violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims, mostly on other Muslims, but often disproportionately on vulnerable Christians and other religious minorities.
Saying this in no way takes away from the fact that most Muslims abhor what ISIS and other similar organisations do in the name of Islam.
By the same token, pretending that a very militant interpretation of Islam is not behind much of the religious violence in the world today serves us badly. We must diagnose a problem correctly if we are to solve it.
Solution
The truth is that the solution to violent and extreme Islam lies mostly in the hands of other Muslims. Non-violent interpretations of Islam are going to have to totally eclipse violent interpretations and those non-violent interpretations can only come from Muslims.
These interpretations are on offer, of course, but it is clear that the campaign to educate all Muslims in the wisdom of these interpretations must broaden and deepen. The long-term solution is also political. There has been so much injustice in the Middle East and for so long, that it is giving rise to one pathology after another. An earlier pathology was Baathism, which Saddam Hussein subscribed to, as did Hafez al Assad in Syria.
‘Baath’ means ‘resurrection’ and the Baath parties were secular and socialist. In practice they were dictatorial and brutal.
They did not deal with injustice. They simply caused more of it and now the latest pathology offering a ‘solution’ to the injustices found in the Middle East is Islamic fundamentalism.
Eventually what must emerge is a form of Islamic Democracy along the lines of Christian Democracy, (and in the case of Socialism, Social Democracy) namely a philosophy and a theology that will find a way for Islam and democracy to co-exist.
Militant secularism will never work in the Middle East and Islamic fundamentalism with its promise of a Caliphate is clearly not working either.
Peace on its own is not enough. Hafez al Assad and Saddam Hussein brought a measure of peace to their countries, but it was done through brute force and without justice.
What the Middle East ultimately needs is peace with justice.
Unfortunately this still seems like a distant dream and in the meantime we must do what we can to defend ourselves against the consequences of the present chaos.