Karina Cockrell-Fere
At one extreme there are cries that Islam is a peaceful and misunderstood religion subjected to the unfounded demonization..

We have one Globe or Let's talk about Islam without emotions

Passions are high.

At one extreme there are cries that Islam is a peaceful and misunderstood religion subjected to the unfounded demonization, accusations of Islamophobia and racism, up to the threats of reprisals against those who «demonize Islam» as well as warnings that Islamophobia will lead to the rise of fascism in Europe, not to mention a rollback of all gains of democracy – the ideas of liberty, equality and brotherhood.

At another extreme, there is a horror produced by delirious visions of the «mosque of Notre Dame» and the increasing paranoia, in comparison to which Submission, a dystopian novel by Michel Houellebecq, would seem like a children’s book. And that is to say nothing of some «suggestions» coming out of the Russian segment of the Internet, including calls for mass deportations in «cattle cars» to somewhere chillingly far away – possibly to a different globe.

And between these two extremes, there are people who anxiously try to avoid this topic at all, like talking about sex or religion at the British dinner table. And it’s also one of the reactions to fear, which is what «phobia» stands for in Greek.

The fear of something unknown, unpredictable and potentially destructive is an irrational, but ancient and powerful emotion, closely linked to the natural instinct of self-preservation inherent in every human being. It’s impossible to get rid of it. As a result, the increasing «Islamophobia» is precisely what the organizers of terrorist attacks so persistently and successfully seek to achieve.

For some time, while things are calm, the problem can be ignored. But every new terrorist act again brings with it a new tempest of emotions, candles, tears and the sense of powerlessness; unconvincing incantations «we are not afraid»; the calls for separating «bad» Muslims from the «good» ones; «comforting» observations that there are far more people dying in car accidents on the roads and from diseases in the hospitals than in the terrorist attacks so «let’s fight against roads and hospitals», etc., and these things repeat themselves, again and again, leading to the vicious circle…

There’s an obvious response to the argument about car accidents and hospitals – the loss of human life on the roads and from diseases isn’t a result of a thought-through and pre-planned aggression, basically an act of war that has been pretty much declared. Deaths in accidents aren’t aimed at the political and ideological transformation of people’s way of life and the way of life in their country in general.

Under the influence of these real and irrational fears and because the governments are believed to be unable to handle them, right-wing parties in Europe become stronger and gain more support.

In their turn left-wing parties fighting for everything good against everything evil are getting increasingly aggressive in reaction to this, declaring every attempt to discuss this topic Islamophobia and racism, and this only pushes the problem out of the public discourse, putting particular thoughts and fears into citizens’ heads. But these thoughts don’t go away, and it hasn’t been figured out yet how to prohibit the thoughts.

And the result is as follows: people keep their silence and then suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, vote for Brexit, Trump, enhance support for German, Italian and Austrian right-wing parties, UKIP.

It has been observed for a long time that the issue can’t be resolved at the same level it emerged. It can be done only by stepping up to a higher one.

This applies equally to the emotional level. So let’s try to switch to a different emotional level.

In the first place, mass European attitude to Islam lacks 1) real factual information on what the modern European Islam is and what differentiates it from its radical branch 2) logical, calm and scientific approach to this topic. And the lecture of the professor of Oriental Studies and Arabist Dina Lisnyansky taking place in July promised exactly that.

Dina was born in Ufa and then was repatriated to Israel with her parents when she was 8 years old. She speaks 8 languages – five fluently, including Russian, Hebrew, English and Arabic. She’s a professor at the Bar-Ilan University and an author of the book “Crescents and Croissants: Preaching Islam in Europe”. She’s invited to read lectures at the University of Oxford and consult the security forces in different European countries on the issues of terror and radical Islam.

The weather is fine, all multi-racial, multi-national London happily rushed to the Thames on this hot day. Pleasure boats are passing by, the laughter is heard, crowded restaurants and pubs by the river are buzzing. Everything is conducive to optimism.

I’ll tell about the main points of the lecture.

How it all began

Dina tells us that radical Islam and Islamism originated in the 1920s, but especially gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. The end of the colonial era had lead to the awakening of the previously restrained forces. The fall under the blows of the West of the last Islamic empire – Ottoman – and its secularization were perceived by many as the end of Islam’s influence in general.

More than that, the West began to clearly dominate in terms of technology and social progress and many countries, including traditionally Islamic, such as Iran or even Afghanistan, willingly or unwillingly fell under its influence and started to embrace its way of life. Let’s remember the photographs of 60s and 70s unthinkable today: female students of Tehran and Kabul universities with European hairstyles and in mini-skirts.

And then ideologues appeared who started to explain that this westernization is the root of all evil and the reason why these countries lag behind.

For them, the way forward, towards the prosperity and universal happiness, was to go back to the «Golden» age when Islam was a powerful, dominating force, including the 700 years Muslim rule of Spain. They advocated going back to the basics, «the bonds», to the Shariah as a fundamental truth – therefore, fundamentalism.

The main concept that underpins the Islamist worldview is quite simple: the world is divided into the world of Islam (the world of peace) and the world of war (jihad).

All jihadists, of course, seek to establish world peace as their main goal: in other words, they want «the world of war» (non-Islamic countries) to be triumphed over by the «right», fundamental Islam, the benefit of which is obvious to everyone except the unenlightened, and peace, happiness and a bright future are sure to follow. Minus the Islamist phraseology and metaphorics, it’s nothing more than… That’s right, Bolshevism! The radicals of all countries unite.

In fundamentalists’ opinion, it’s erroneous to think that all Islam has the right to exist. Not at all. There are Muslims «on the right path» («Salafi») and those against whom it’s necessary to fight against even more persistently than against infidels because they take others off from «the right path». The idea of moderate or secular Islam is anathema to them.

However, Dina tells us, it’s wrong to see Salafi as a monolithic, united movement: there are «quiet» Salafi occupied with theology, there are political Salafi and there are «violent» Salafi.

Their origins are in Egypt where an organization «Muslim Brotherhood» was founded by Hassan al-Banna in July of 1928. Hassan al-Banna was gunned down in 1949 and since that Sayyid Qutb became the leading theorist of the moment.

Dina says that the Egyptian president Nasser considered him a dangerous radical: «Muslim Brotherhood» made an attempt on his life, tried to overthrow his regime. In the end, Qutb was prosecuted and hanged.
However, while in prison Qutb wrote his book «Milestones» which is now the second main book for every jihadist after Quran.

Qutb wrote that Islam is «a universal declaration of human liberation on earth from bondage to other men». Sounds familiar, right? We know well where this road paved with all these good intentions leads…
That was the beginning of «the Renaissance» of Islamism and fundamentalism. The establishment of Israel only added fuel to the fire of these frantic passions.

In the 80s Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden together create «Al-Qaeda». The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan served as yet another confirmation of the Salafi’s concept that «the West» (meaning «infidels») seeks to establish its colonies of influence inside Islam, and it must be fought by all means and to the last. All this gave birth to an even more radical movement called Taliban. In Arabic «tali» means only «student».

Nowadays Taliban considers itself to be a winner of the war in Afghanistan, still controls a considerable part of its territory and doesn’t intend to stop there.

Tectonic social upheavals in the Middle East and Arabic Africa of the XXI century, regime changes lead to the gaping power vacuum and instability in the whole region, and radical forces gain confidence during wars and feel very uncertain in peaceful times.

For example, in Egypt «Muslim Brotherhood» finally came to long-awaited power, but didn’t manage to retain it. As Dina says, the only places where they remain in power for many years are the territories of Palestine and Gaza Strip, areas under control of one of the «branches» of «Muslim Brotherhood» - Hamas.

The so-called Islamic state

This organization emerged in Iraq in 1999 and aims at creating «the World caliphate» and a total victory of its «most true» version of Islam in the whole world. In 2014 this quasi-state controlled a territory with a population of 8 million people. The theorists of the organization linked Islam to the radical politics, which is essentially the most extreme form of political extremism, and declared that their struggle is the struggle for Islam against everyone who oppresses it.

It’s nothing new – long before them, Irish extremists in Britain did the exact same thing, declaring that their struggle is the protection of Catholic faith.

In 2017 «The Islamic state» lost 90 % of the seized territories, although there are still pockets of resistance. More than that, «Daesh (or Isis) fighters» have spread to different countries and, according to various sources of data, around 1200 radicalized women and men have already returned or could return to Europe alone (according to Dina Lisnyansky’s sources, referring to the European security organizations, there are around 43,000 of them). It’s interesting that the main reason for Isis’s fall is rather linked to the loss of financial support from the Sunni Saudi Arabia, Emirates and Qatar than to the outcome of the military action. Ex-officers from Saddam Hussein’s army who were Sunni as well formed the backbone of «Daesh»’s army. But then, since around 2013 all these countries abandoned sponsoring «Daesh», having seen the growing danger in it. For some time «Daesh» sustained itself by the revenues from the captured oil refineries, the Central Bank of Iraq in Mosul and slave trade (they have sold into slavery women from the captured populated areas), but these revenues soon dried up, and the conduct of the modern war is expensive. As the result of this, recruiters of new fighters in Europe face more hurdles, even though they are very experienced, use every opportunity to «capture souls» and changed their strategy, using mentally unstable people (and mentally healthy as well) in order to turn them into the living murder weapons with the help of the Internet. Europeans prisons are increasingly becoming the centres of radicalization.

Stubborn British facts

But let’s go back to our little island. According to the most recent data (August 14th, 2018), the total population of the United Kingdom is 64 799 671 people. It includes 2 834 939 Muslims which means that one out of twenty Britons is a Muslim (and not one out of six as British respondents, trusting their intuition, mistakenly responded to a survey).

According to the data of the authoritative British market research company Ipsos MORI, 88 % of British Muslims «moderately and strongly identify as British». More than that, many respondents identified themselves as secular Muslims and said that they put up Christmas trees and give Christmas presents. This is particularly common among those who have a British university degree.

That’s not news to me. Over the 28 years of my life and work in Britain, I’ve changed many careers – from a financial consultant to a computer science teacher. And I can tell a lot about people identifying as Muslims whom I’ve met during these years – colleagues, neighbours, friends. A bearded taxi driver with a Quran quotes cube on his windscreen who didn’t take a penny for a ride to where one of my nearest and dearest had an accident on the road. In a state of shock I had jumped out of the house without a bag and money (it was before Uber): «May everything be fine. Allah help you!».

Things like that you don’t forget.

However, this is not about the normality of human nature. It’s about an abnormal phenomenon – Islamism.
As Dina tells us, there are 500 working mosques and Islamic centres and 55 Islamic charity organizations in Britain. The majority of them belong to moderate schools of Islam, and the good news is that there are three moderate schools in Islam and there is only one radical school that is the reason for all troubles.
After all their losses many members of «Muslim Brotherhood» eventually moved to Britain and made it its European headquarters. Now a magazine «Daesh» is published in Britain (there was a time when «Iskra» was published in London, too).

Westminster and Manchester arena terrorist attacks last year were organized by British citizens, radicals and loners who had been led to believe that the main purpose of «Daesh» is a destruction of the centres of a Western civilization’s «sin» - nightclubs, stadiums where concerts take place, the locations of Western political power , etc…

Dina Lisnyansky says that Britain has more adequate antiterrorist legislation than, for example, France. Here it’s possible to deport a convicted terrorist, to conduct a search in situations when it’s prohibited in France. French legislation has begun to gradually change only after the tragedy in the nightclub Bataclan when terrorists gunned down 130 people.

Also, in Lisnyansky’s opinion, French deradicalisation programme failed. 22 special centres had been opened where potential terrorists were taught the French language, the history of France, while the religious topics were completely avoided. I assume Islamists weren’t very much impressed with the stories about Versailles shenanigans of the «Sun King», and three years later almost all of the centres turned out to be closed. Not a single French Muslim changed his beliefs with their help.

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