I often wonder if educated, Westernised, liberal Arabs or civilised conservative Arabs feel the same way nowadays when they read about the various horrors being perpetrated by other Arab Muslims in their own countries and abroad, whether it involves falsifying evidence in order to persecute a 14-year old Christian girl, or gleefully sacking foreign embassies because someone, somewhere far away may have said or done something that would strike those of us who live in free societies as entirely unexceptional, or the wholesale butchery of non-Muslim religious minorities, or the stoning to death of adulterers, or the bombing of shoppers and schoolchildren in crowded market-places, or the murder of foreign diplomats… and on and on and on, barbaric outrage following barbaric outrage, a seemingly endless series of evil acts inevitably conducted under the banner of the “religion of peace”.
I could be wrong, but I imagine hundreds of thousands of civilised Arabs groaning as they read about the latest eruption of vileness in their newspapers or on their iPads over breakfast. I can imagine the first coffee of the day turning sour in their mouths and the flaky sweetmeat sticking in their throats.
Back in the ‘90s, the temptation was to turn one’s back on the Tory Party – but the problem was that much of what the government was doing back then was actually working, especially regarding the economy. Many of us were prepared to hold our noses and carry on being loyal because we knew that no matter how civilised and sensible New Labour sounded, they’d end up wrecking the country.
But what do you do if you’re an Arab who loves your country but are sickened by the moronic savagery of many your fellow countrymen? No doubt you want to scream “Go and do some proper work for a change, you useless bastards – stop taking umbrage at every teensy-weensy imagined slight and do something useful with your crappy lives – try to build something instead of smashing and bombing everything around you – and examine what your religious leaders are telling you, because it seems to involve you constantly committing sickeningly evil acts – clean up the crap in your own back-yard before you start worrying about how people live in other countries – and leave Christians and Jews alone, because they’re the ones who’ve been doing most of the useful work for the last 600 years, and it’s about bloody time you made some kind of contribution.”
But, of course, they can’t really say any of that, can they? They have to pretend that the Arab Spring has made a difference, and that a period of liberal rule (or what passes for liberal rule in the Arab world) will turn unskilled, irrational, hysterical wreckers with hearts full of hate and a penchant for extreme violence into sensible, hard-working, tolerant, useful, productive citizens determined to leave the world a richer, happier place than they found it.
No, it really must be hell being a civilised Arab.
To answer your question, I think I would be wondering what British interest the enthusiastic support of the political elite of this country for the Arab Spring was intended to serve. I might then move on to point respectfully to the results of well-intentioned Western intervention in the region and their link to the rise of the mob. Coming from a culture which considers it an offence against good manners to criticise one's friends, I would hold back from suggesting the following Middle East policy to this Government: 'Ask yourself what Tony Blair would have done. Then do exactly the opposite.'
ReplyDeleteYour reference to Tory scandals of the past reminds me that the week that marked the end of the Olympics and Andy Murray's triumph at the US Open also saw an event no less important in its political and cultural significance. I refer of course to the publication of the second volume of the diaries of Edwina Currie.
ReplyDeleteThe serialisation in the Mail, illustrated as it was with photographs of Edwina in various glamorous poses both before and after her £7000 worth of facial enhancement surgery, merely whetted the appetite. I am sure many of your readers will be joining me in the queue outside Waterstone's, reflecting wistfully on how different this world might have been had Edwina's talents been rewarded with the highest offices of state.
"As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say, Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong."
ReplyDeleteLord Palmerston in 1850 justifying the use of British gun-boats against the Greeks after a mob had destroyed the property of a British subject, Don Pacifico, at Athens. Gone are the days....even in his own land.
Where to start?
ReplyDeleteThere is obviously some highly efficient monitoring machine operated by muslim fundamentalists worldwide which identifies the slightest criticism of Islam. They then orchestrate a response in the form of murder or rioting in the hope of triggering retaliation on an international or local level which will lead to the deaths of many innocent muslim civilians and the issue of fatwas and the propaganda victory is then measured in terms of the level of blood-shed.
So far this latest incident [the film] has cost the lives of four American diplomats, two American soldiers, nine muslims and two British soldiers "bush-whacked" by a member of the Afghan police. But any excuse will do. Asymmetrical warfare is notoriously difficult to counter - especially when it is waged on both the military and political front.
I managed to catch the first episode of the Tom Holland documentary "Islam:The Untold Story" on 4OD [I gather the follow-up episodes have been cancelled?]. There was one telling sentence uttered by an Arab scholar: "...sometimes the belief of the believer and the knowledge of the historian cannot be squared." Asymmetrical history as well? Or to quote an old Arab proverb [also from the documentary]: "Not being able to know something is not proof that it does not exist". What price Logical Positivism?
I won't go on in case I wake up to-morrow and find my head and body in separate rooms.
It is now reported that a further four American servicemen have been gunned down by our Afghan allies. The figures for "Green on Blue" [weasel expression] deaths are now estimated at between 50-55 so far this year. That is, 1 in 6 of all deaths incurred by Nato Forces this year. It would be interesting to know how many of the "murdered" soldiers were shot in the back. Joint operations will now only be conducted at battallion level and a 2-star general has to approve day-to-day joint patrols [How does that work exactly?].
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime our armed services are caught between the anti-war brigade who cannot separate out the lack of justification for the war from the role of the soldier on the ground and the ineptitude of the politicians/ MoD who have replaced strategy with tactics [fatal] and must be desperately worried about another Basra-type retreat because then they have to justify the war dead [425 on the British side so far] and all the gruesome injuries. Not a lot of votes there. I wonder if they consider the performance of the South Vietnamese Army immediately after the US withdrawel from Saigon in 1975?
Pity the Poor Bloody Infantry! And Thank God for them.