Author: Anatole Kaletsky
Publication: The Times
Date: October 11, 2001
Who says that the war against terror
is a war against Islam? Not George Bush, despite his characteristically
inept use of the word "crusade" in the early days of the conflict. And
certainly not Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac or any other Western leader. Media
commentators, scholars and religious leaders across America and Europe
have also gone to enormous lengths to visit mosques, express their respect
for the Muslim religion and emphasise that Islam is no more responsible
for the bin Laden terror network than Christianity was responsible for
the murderous activities of the Ku Klux Klan.
Who, then, apart from Osama bin
Laden, is to blame for the widespread impression that America is at war
with the Islamic world? There can be only one honest answer. It is the
Muslim countries themselves. Many Muslim governments, which ought to be
thanking America for trying to make the world a safer place, have denounced
the bombing of Afghanistan as a war against Islam. It is therefore these
countries - or at least their governments - that promote the war of civilisations
and besmirch their own religion by publicly associating Islam with the
al-Qaeda killers and the monstrous fanatics of the Taleban.
The Taleban are a rabble of sadistic
torturers and drug-pushers. They have never been recognised by the UN as
the legal government of Afghanistan. They deserve no moral sympathy and
cannot claim the privileges of an internationally recognised sovereign
state. Among their many crimes, the Taleban have enslaved all the women
and millions of the men in Afghanistan in an unprecedented reign of terror
that could not have been sustained without the support of bin Laden's military
and financial network. Indeed, the few Western diplomats who have taken
much interest in the region have for years viewed the Taleban as the first
example of what can happen when contempt for morality and international
law is taken to its logical conclusion - state-sponsored terrorism mutates
into the terrorist-sponsored state.
Under these circumstances, there
was only one reasonable criticism that any humane, law-abiding nation could
have levelled at the US-led campaign to overthrow the Taleban. Why did
America initially support the Taleban and why did it wait until September
11 before trying to liberate the people of Afghanistan? That has, in fact,
been precisely the criticism of American policy heard in many parts of
the world, including a few moderate Muslim countries such as Jordan and
Morocco. Pakistan's decision to lock up terrorists who masquerade as religious
clerics, and to dismiss senior army officers who were openly in league
with the Taleban, suggests that this pivotal Islamic country may be about
to rejoin the civilised camp.
Such moderation has not, however,
been the predominant reaction of the Muslim world. Instead, America's belated
effort to free Afghanistan and the world of the Taleban/al-Qaeda nightmare
has been condemned as "an attack on a Muslim nation" - and not only by
such outlaw states as Iraq and Iran, but also by supposedly pro-Western
governments in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Malaysia. The real shock is
that the Saudis in particular should have the temerity to deny America
the use of their military bases, on the ground that any attack on the Taleban
and bin Laden would be an attack on fellow Muslims. Curiously, this argument
does not seem to apply to US bombing of the equally Islamic Iraqi people,
whose ruler just happens to be a mortal enemy of the Saudi regime.
The first question raised by this
squeamishness about supporting America's war aims is whether there is any
outrage so heinous that it would justify the Western world defending itself
against the Saudis' "fellow Muslims". A second and bigger question relates
to the next phase of the war against terrorism, after the overthrow of
the Taleban.How will the United States and other Western nations protect
themselves from future atrocities if they succeed in ending the terrorist
state in Afghanistan? The Bush Administration has offered a very clear
answer. The US will follow the chain of international terrorism all the
way back to its two primary sources: state protection and state funding.
This chain will then be cut, either by persuasion (as in Pakistan and perhaps
Sudan) or by military action (as in Iraq and perhaps Iran).
But the question that people in
Washington are now beginning to ask is what happens if the chain of money
and state support does not lead to such pariah states as Iraq, Iran or
Syria. What if a great deal of the money, training, and religious and political
inspiration comes from Saudi Arabia, America's main "strategic ally" in
the Gulf? Israel has for years been warning of Saudi involvement with the
suicide bombers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now there are numerous circumstantial
links with September 11. Many of the US hijackers were Saudis, as is bin
Laden. In several cases, their terrorist indoctrination began at fundamentalist
Islamic colleges, funded by Saudi money. Their political attitudes reflected
an anti-Western religious zeal that is widely promoted in the Saudi media,
even though these media are subject to some of the strictest censorship
in the world. Saudi Arabia, it should also be remembered, is the source
of the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Islam that inspired the Taleban
regime. Saudi Arabia is also the only country apart from Afghanistan that
practises the medieval version of Sharia in all its horror. And the head
of the Saudi intelligence service, believed to be the Royal Family's main
link with the Taleban, resigned abruptly within 24 hours of the horror
in New York. When you put these facts together, there is surely a risk
that the trail of money and blood that started at the World Trade Centre
could ultimately lead to Riyadh.
What could the West do if evidence
emerged of active Saudi involvement with bin Laden? Military action and
economic embargoes would be out of the question. Even in a global recession,
the world couldn't live without eight million barrels a day of Saudi oil.
Moreover, the Saudi financing of anti-Israeli terror has always been through
private "charitable and religious foundations" with no direct links to
the State. But public opinion would find it hard to understand why US forces
continue to defend a Saudi Royal Family that rules with an iron rod over
every corner of civil society but seems unable or unwilling to control
the monstrous behaviour of its religious extremists. Americans might even
start to wonder why they are protecting Saudi religious zealots, with their
anti-American blood lust, against an ordinary secular dictator such as
Saddam Hussein, whose lust is for Saudi oil.
If the Saudi rulers want to stay
in power, they may have to think about whether US protection is a more
reliable defence against their numerous enemies than literal implementation
of the Koran. The Saudi elite would in effect be forced to confront the
moral and political choice that sooner or later presents itself to every
fundamentalist theocracy: render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's;
and unto God the things that are God's.
Religion may inspire. It may even
contain the ultimate truth. But - whether by God's will or in consequence
of the laws of biology and physics - religion has never been a sufficient
principle for running a successful state.
That is surely the real issue in
the anti-terrorist campaign. This is not a war against Islam, still less
a Christian crusade. But it is a war against fanatical Islam - and against
fanatical blind faith of every other kind. The killers of September 11
are not fundamentally very different from the Jewish zealot who murdered
Yitzhak Rabin, the Branch Davidians of Waco, the medieval crusaders who
joyfully slaughtered the women and children of 12th-century Jersualem and
the butchers of Pol Pot.
Islam is no more a threat to world
peace than Christianity, Buddhism or communism have been in the past. But
slaughter disguised as religion is no more acceptable than slaughter motivated
by racial hatred, political ideology or a naked lust for power. Religion
can offer neither excuses nor sanctuaries for terror. After the Taleban
are toppled, this lesson must be firmly impressed on every nation - in
the Islamic world and outside.
