Paris Attacks - The knell that will finally awaken?

Paris, as one of the wellspring of modern Liberalism, is also the place where the secular trinity of Liberté, égalité, fraternité was articulated. Few perhaps know of the earlier formulation of this motto where the codicil ou la mort (or death) was added to the end to affirm the resolution of this ideal. Tragically, the stench of death offends the Parisian sky once more where the principles on which the great city has thrived is being callously challenged by barbarians who love death more than they love life. While more than 120 people now lay slain and hundreds more wounded, many critically, and while the IS gloats at the carnage left by its suicidal acolytes, the ‘why’ inevitably pops into the heads of anyone contemplating this pointless massacre. But we really should already know the ‘why’. Shows of solidarity is all very well, it will not rouse the innocent dead and it certainly will not stop another attack occurring. 

Ever since the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, which many now see as the first symptom of the rabid malady of Islamism, the response from government leaders have largely been reactive and wrong-headed. Everyone is or should be at least cognizant of 9/11, Madrid, 7/7 and Charlie Hebdo. One central message repeated by both Western leaders and apologists after each and every of these horrific attacks so far is that these atrocities have nothing to do with Islam. (Obama fatuously said, matching any Bush-ism, after the IS beheading of an American aid worker, ‘least of all with Islam’.) This refusal to see the elephant in the room is a modern thought disease. After Charlie Hebdo, almost everyone was Charlie. But in reality no one was Charlie. That's why they died, because the journalistic trade all failed to share the burden due to the fear of Islam that they can't even admit. That's why no major news outlet showed the cartoons that were at the centre of the murders. That's why everyone at the rallies carried pencils and 'Je suis Charlie' placards instead of their cartoons, which would have been a real act of defiance. And then even Charlie Hebdo wasn't Charlie anymore as the intense stress and grief and fear saw that the remaining staff will cease from drawing Mohammad. So now France, in the 21st century, lives under de facto Islamic blasphemy law. After yet another horrible butchery where 10 times the number of people have been killed, I hope the world leaders can finally muster the courage and admit that the root of Islamism is the worst parts of Islam before it too fades from the news until the next attack. 

While it is certain that the vast majority of Muslims abhor these vile and inexcusable deeds as much as the next person, when people shouting Allahu akbar kills innocents, as witnesses confirm in the Parisian concert hall and cafes did before blowing themselves up, it takes a very high degree of self-delusion to divorce these acts from Islamic ideology. Anyone taking five minutes to read up on the proclamations of IS will know that their aim is to create (or recrudesce) an Islamic Caliphate, a theocratic one-world government run by Islamic laws of the most unsophisticated and literal form. The IS leader, Bakr al-Baghdadi is a key promoter of this ideology. Some small l liberals and what Maajid Nawaz termed ‘regressive leftists’ and certainly Muslim apologists like the disingenuous Reza Aslan, Mehdi Hassan and Glenn Greenwald always try to do is to dodge this link by stating that these people are a tiny minority and that ‘you don’t judge all Christians by the conduct of the KKK do you?’ While those who would blow themselves up and shoot wildly into a restaurant is few, they are the tail that wags the whole dog. Many reputable polls show (in the countries that allowed them) that even in relatively peaceable countries such as Egypt and Morocco, over 70% of Muslims favour the idea of making sharia the official law of their country. Among sharia supporters, over 70% in South Asia and over 50% Middle-East and North Africa favour executing apostates. In Palestinian territories, 40% of people polled thought suicide bombing in defence of Islam is often/sometimes justified. This poses as a great problem because while those fanatic enough to perform terrible acts of evil are few, they are the tip of the iceberg with a vast group of Muslims agreeing, at least in principle, with their aims.

People, often of the modern leftist ilk, must stop conflating criticism of Islamist ideology to racism (Islam is not a race). Or use the absurd term Islamophobia as if criticism of an ideology, even the most backward, demagogic, extreme and absolutist factions of it, is a prejudice akin to race hatred. Whereas state subsidised madrasas, funded by Saudi Arabia that teaches antisemitism, hatred of Shia Muslims, Hindus and Christians and promulgating misogyny, are allowed to go on polluting the minds of children without a squeak of protest from these self-appointed ‘defenders’ of multiculturalism and liberalism. But if anyone dare to suggest, in the most polite and reasoned fashion that maybe the state should stop giving money to these schools or that they are against such precepts being taught to children, these liberals and leftists pounce like wolves with their moral outrage and sinister brandings. They are the people that opened the gates and allowed the barbarians in by taking away people’s right to have a civil conversation about ideas. They are the self-appointed thought-police and they feel morally superior doing the incredible easy thing of finding the lowest possible motives of their opponents. Instead, people must muster the courage to, like the little boy in that old Andersen tale, point to the obviously naked monarch, that is, the morally bankrupt  ideology of the Islamists, and say ‘the emperor has no clothes’ without having their reputation ripped apart and name branded with racism. Or worse, like Charlie Hebdo, be singled out as the only people brave enough to satirize Islam like any other creed or ideology and be killed for it. However extreme, backward, unsophisticated and literal a reading these Islamists’ take of the Koran and Hadith are, they are derived from these texts. I hope this tragic affair in Paris, in its magnitude and with its proximity to Charlie Hebdo, will deter President Allende and others, including moderate Muslims, from denying the inescapable link between IS and Islam like they did after the Charlie Hebdo murders. This is vital because this is the first step towards exposing the fallacious, regressive and fundamentally wrong thinking the enemies employ to corrupt youth and to regress the Islamic theology and philosophy. What is needed is to expose it to the sunlight of reason and present to the world fully its ugly, twisted and repressive face as we have done to Stalinism and Fascism. Only then can the ideology be snuffed out. Until then another attack on the scale of Paris is inevitable as more and more young people, often second or third generation immigrants (the people actually trying to immigrate into Europe to escape Islamic theocracies aren't the type to fall for IS propaganda) are recruited by extremist schools and mosques, sheltered by this suicidal culture of 'respect'. 

  

To change this, extra onus falls on the shoulders of secular, moderate Muslims. The change in the zeitgeist of Islam has to come from within. When the Danish cartoons were published (cartoons for goodness sake), there were hordes of angry protesters across the Muslim world (in countries where protests are usually not allowed and fanned by incendiary fake cartoons added by the Imams themselves), attacking Westerners and burning down embassies. People were killed after Salman Rushdie’s book was published, a fatwa was pronounced, and bookstores were raided and burned down by crowds who never even read the book. But after 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Charlie Hebdo and the recent Paris attacks, where were the angry crowds of Muslims condemning these people doing these abhorrent things in the name of their faith? Where is the unanimous denouncement from the Grand muftis and Ayatollahs and other major Islamic religious leaders? Where are the excommunications and fatwas? While there are many heartening grass root condemnation by Muslims around the world through social media on the Paris atrocities, the attitudes of the various heads of Islam is by no means unanimous or unambiguous. This is the heart of the problem. While there are many injunctions in the Islamic holy texts calling for corporal punishments, execution of adulterers, apostates and heretics, as there are in the Old Testament and most ancient documents of law, the majority of Muslims reject them and do not live by them. In that choice is the future of Islam as a peaceful religion that can and will coexist peacefully within any society. Unfortunately, like in most religions, the religious leaders are the most backwards and reactionary. For the millions of Muslims who love peace and embrace liberty and enjoy the safety to worship without fear of death guaranteed by a secular state where all religions are given their due protection and freedom, they must advocate the leadership of Islam, whatever sect, whatever denomination, to utter with absolute no ambiguity, their denunciation of people who would kill innocent men, women and children in restaurants, theatres and hotels in the name of their religion, blowing themselves up for virgins in heaven. Because that is surely the biggest insult possible to Islam. What serious and brave thinkers like Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali term a reformation of Islam is required. It will be painful for many but it is necessary. The first step is to call a spade a spade and, as Nawaz says, to be brave enough to stand up and name Voldemort and in naming him reject him. Or will it take another massacre? Perhaps in Belgium this time?