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Sunday, September 1, 2002
04:59 p.m.
UK diplomats to get indoctrination sessions on Islam
Politics is not an activity for the squeamish: the unspeakable, unpleasant, or downright embarrassing may be essential for the greater good: Hitler cosying up to Stalin in '39, Nixon to Chou in '72, Blair's essay in head-tennis with Kevin Keegan...
So, in these times when Western powers, in the cause of the war against terrorism, Sadaam and God knows who else, must ingratiate themselves with rulers of the head-, hand- and clitoris-lopping persuasion, the apparently enthusiastic adoption of the Big Lie should be no surprise.
The better to carry off this Islamic kow-tow, British diplomats are to be 'offered'
"courses consist[ing] of a lecture on the basic tenets of Islam followed by a speech by a visiting expert on contemporary Muslim issues and a visit to a mosque."
Quite how so perfunctory an exposure to so ancient a religion is meant to help, I cannot guess. No doubt the test is one of ideological soundness on the Big Lie, rather the development of actual knowledge of the subject.
Because, so far as I can tell, the differences in interpretation of Islamic texts from sect to sect, from scholar to scholar is no less than that which pertains in Christianity.
[On the opening of Genesis, to take one example, the difference between most Christians and the creationists (the latter recently at work in a suburb of Atlanta).]
On the Big Lie itself, white man (as well as those of other shades) speaks with forked tongue (some of them): in her Time article shortly after 9/11, Karen Armstrong (a sort of religious Jimmy Carter or David Owen) denied that Islam ever sanctioned aggressive war. Having chided others for selectively quoting from the Koran, she duly selectively quotes herself to 'prove' her point.
"In the Koran, therefore, the only permissible war is one of self-defense. Muslims may not begin hostilities (2: 190)."
In an FT article this summer, though, James Turner Johnson says that, under Islam,
"warfare could take two forms: that of the dar al-Islam [Islamic lands] as a body under the authority of its legitimate ruler, the caliph for the Sunni tradition, the imam for the Shiite - a conception that encompassed offensive war against the general threat and organized collective defense against attack - and an emergency form of defensive jihad against a direct attack on the dar al-Islam by a force from some part of the dar al-harb [non-Islamic lands]."
He goes on to suggest that, since there is no longer a caliph (since the last one was deposed by Ataturk - we're scarcely talking medieval history) nor an imam, the first kind of warfare is now no longer possible. Only self-defence is a reason for taking up arms.
Which is fine - but clearly diametrically opposed to Armstrong's bromides. The seemingly eternal wars fought by the Arabs under Mohammed and in the following centuries to conquer Persia, Iraq, Egypt etc for Islam; and the further centuries of Turkish aggression are not denied. The bloody history that Islam shares with Hinduism and Christianity (to name but two ) is not wished away into some fairy-tale Never Never Land.
Of the two, Johnson's version seems to fit the facts. Even if (as is almost certainly the case) he can be challenged on details, he raises a good deal more than a 'reasonable doubt': to aver, without the slightest caveat, that 'Islam is a Peaceful Religion' is, on that basis, clearly a lie.
Now, diplomats (from East and West) are notoriously sent abroad to lie for their country. The mauvais quart d'heure is their stock-in-trade. If the lives of British soldiers are to be saved by some Carlton-Browne giving the Sultan of Wherever a first-class theological rimming, that is OK by me.
Just so long as we're all clear what's going on.
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