Karl Marx. Flickr/Montecruz Foto. Some rights reserved
The government is, apparently, concerned about
radicalisation. David Cameron told the Globsec
conference in Slovakia that the Islamist narrative about the evils
of the west is given too much credence. “[It] paves the way” he said, “for
young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent. To go from
listening to firebrand preachers online to boarding a plane to Istanbul and
travelling onward to join the jihadis.”
George Packer, writing in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo
massacre last January, put forth a similar argument. He was adamant
that the murder of twelve people in the heart of France was not the result of
France’s foreign policy, it had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, and it
certainly was not connected to Islamophobia. It was, he wrote, “only the latest
blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror
for decades.”
Ideology alone, according to this line of
thinking, creates murderers. Western actions play no part in the process. Jihadists
are created, not by war abroad or discrimination at home, but solely by hate
preachers and the YouTube videos they use to indoctrinate impressionable young
minds.
This is not, of course, an entirely false
picture. Islamism is a noxious ideology (yes, even in its most peaceful forms)
and people are manipulated by hate preachers on the Internet. But there is more
to it than this and Karl Marx can, perhaps, provide some guidance.
In an article for the Rheinische Zeitung
in 1842, Marx discussed the relationship between religion and political actors.
“In their hands” he wrote referring to politicians, “religion acquires a
polemical bitterness impregnated with political tendencies”. This is not merely
the truism that religion is exploited for political ends. Marx was also saying
that religion–and by extension all ideologies–is always infused with and
animated by objective, historical factors or, as he put it, “political
tendencies”.
This is most certainly the case with Islamist
ideology. It is steeped in the politics of the present and to deny this obvious
fact is dishonest. To explain radicalisation simply in terms of an ideology
spreading, like a disease, through Muslim communities and infecting the naive
without reference to foreign policy in the Middle East or Islamophobia is to
opt for a willful blindness to reality.
Radicalisation is about the “war on
terror”. It is about the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and the
catastrophic results of this that we are seeing today. And it is about
Islamophobia. There are other factors involved, to be sure. But to ignore these
very real, concrete issues – the “political tendencies” – is to fall dramatically
short of understanding why Islamism is able to find itself an audience and why
it is that a minority of Muslims are attracted to its “polemical bitterness”.
There is another important, and related, aspect
to this issue. Who exactly is Cameron talking to? He is happy to upbraid the
Muslim community in Britain but he is more reticent when it comes to our allies
abroad. The government was less concerned about Islamist ideology when it flew the flag
half-mast over Whitehall out of respect for the late King Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia or when it sent Prince Charles to develop our “special
relationship” with the Wahhabist kingdom. It is easier to preach to
Bradford than it is to stand up to Riyadh, and, it seems, “British interests”
trump the interests of British people.
A frequent response to any analysis of Islamism
and the attractions of jihadist violence that seeks to view them in their
correct historical and political context is one of anger. Explanation, it is
argued, is equal to justification. This is nonsense and to avoid approaching
the former in a realistic fashion out of fear of drifting towards the latter is
simply to opt for a willful blindness.
David Cameron is unlikely to read any Marx in
the near future. Perhaps, though, if he is so concerned about the spread of
Islamist ideology and the threat of jihadist terrorism, he should read, and
learn from, the recent history of the catastrophic failure of the “war on
terror”. War abroad, discrimination at home and the propping up of dictatorial
regimes have proven to be ineffective and immoral ways to fight
terrorism.