Contextualizing the Threat of Radical Islam
By Richard Greeman

'Islamism' in the Western Imagination

'There is no more important issue facing the West than Islamism, Islamofascism or - to use another label - radical Islam. And there is no more necessary precondition to countering that threat than understanding it, where it springs from, how it is expressed, and the ways in which it is spreading. But before we do any of that, we have to agree that the threat exists. Thus writes Stephen Pollard, in a recent issue of the N.Y. Times Book Review under the headline 'Appeasers,' his review of Bruce Bower's Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom. But does 'the threat' indeed exist? And is it really 'more important' than catastrophic climate change, proliferating WMDs, or the world economic crisis?

Before beginning our attempt to analyze the social forces which express themselves under the various banners of what Westerners have lumped together under the heading of 'Islamism,' I think we first need to deconstruct the concept and to situate it in the context of the Orientalist ideology of Western colonialism/imperialism. And what better place to start than the moderate, middlebrow Sunday Times Book Review, which has reviewed one or more of the proliferating new books on 'political Islam' almost every week over the past decade and which is generally a good barometer of middle-of-the-road opinion in the U.S.? According to Pollard's 'Appeasers' piece, the 'insidious problem' is that 'many liberals and others on the European left are making common cause with radical Islam and then brazenly and bizarrely denying both the existence of that alliance and in fact the existence of any Islamic threat whatsoever.' Bower's book, Surrender, supports Pollard's thesis by rounding up the usual suspects: the insidiously charming Islamic theologian Tariq Ramadan, the left-wing former Mayor of London Ken Livingston, and the unnamed 'Western leaders' who allegedly failed to defend the publisher of the anti-Moslem Danish cartoons. The Times' Pollard concludes: 'Bower is unquestionably correct, and that fact is quite simply terrifying.'

To be sure the silver-tongued scholar Ramadan does send different messages to the Faithful and to the goyim; and Livingston was an unprincipled, opportunistic Left politician looking for votes among England's fast-growing Moslem population (along with the British Socialist Workers' Party and its erstwhile ally, Respect). But this is old news. Neither has much influence any more, and although 'insidious' they were hardly 'terrifying.' On the other hand, equating Western leaders' alleged 'appeasement' of political Islam with the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930's is sheer hysterical (and historical) lunacy, as those of us who actually live in Europe can testify.

Far from 'appeasing' Islam, the Swiss, after a virulently anti-Moslem right-wing campaign, have just voted by referendum to ban the construction of minarets. Meanwhile, at the time of writing, the right-wing Sarkozy government is orchestrating a summit-level discussion of 'French national identity' while simultaneously demonizing and expelling non-white immigrants, including long-time residents and human rights activists. Nor is there a dearth of French anti-Moslem books denouncing the 'appeasement' of Islamicism with titles like Conquering the West: the Secret Project of the Islamists and France Infected with Islamism: Terrorist Threats within the Hexagon.

Ironically, in the U.S. the domestic War on Terror seems to be aimed exclusively at hunting largely imaginary conspiracies among American Moslems and peace activists - not at interdicting actually-existing white racist militias and violent rightwing Christian terrorist networks. There was no investigation or round up of suspects when Tim McVeigh, an avowed member of a network of right-wing Christian militias, bombed the Oklahoma City Federal building, killing 168 people and seriously injuring 800 more. And although Christian anti-abortionist organizations post the names and addresses of 'Murderers' (abortion providers) and their families on the Internet and openly terrorize women's health clinics, there are no investigations of 'terrorist conspiracies' - even when a saintly Dr. Tiller is gunned down in his church on Sunday by a member of a fanatical Christian organization.

What we are dealing with here turns out to be not so much a Clash of Civilizations as an ideological Clash of Fundamentalisms. While hyping the threat of 'Islamism,' U.S. media and politicians conveniently fail to point out that their own 'Political Christianism' is based on the same kind of reactionary hard-shell fundamentalism as 'Political Islam.' The Christian right in the U.S. aspires to the same kind of theocratic domination over government and peoples' private lives as the Ayatollahs. Its members speak with the same hysterical absolutist certainty, believe the ends justify the means, and are willing resort to violent means - like murdering abortion-providers and bombing women's health centers. Both fundamentalisms offer identity and community to the disaffected masses while silencing opposition and bullying the hesitant through fear. The Zionists and the Jewish Religious Right are equally ruthless, and recently the U.S. Christian right has overcome its traditional anti-Semitism to form a reactionary pro-Israel, pro-U.S. alliance with the right-wing Jewish organizations and leaders like Senator Lieberman - much to the dismay of the vast majority of liberal, secular U.S. Jews.

In any case, writers representing the 'Appeasers' school of anti-Islamism (not to mention the Times' fact-checkers) can hardly be unaware that the U.S. and Britain (not to mention Israel) have been systematically boycotting, bombing, invading and assassinating Islamic leaders and the countries that back them for at least a decade. They call that 'appeasement?' The ongoing wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have already lasted much longer than WWII, with concomitant waste of lives and treasure and no end in sight. Can Messrs. Pollard, Bower and the Book Review editors who commissioned, headlined and ran this hysterical propaganda piece really believe that the feeble, phony left-liberal voices of Ramadan, Livingston and the like threaten to prevail over negative stereotypes with which CNN, Fox News, the N.Y. Times and Western leaders have been bombarding us for years as justification for hugely expensive oil-wars in the Middle-East? What we read in their texts is not empirical argument but ideology which, like religion itself, is supremely indifferent to fact and logic. It is easy for us Westerners to laugh at the Ayatollahs' depiction of dear old Uncle Sam as the 'Great Satan,' but harder to see the ideological demonization of Moslems and Arabs in our own 'liberal' media.

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