Although we rightly worry about the potentially divisive effects of faith schools, on-campus extremism, and the hateful intolerance that some Muslims show former co-religionists who leave Islam, in actuality the battle for social cohesion will be lost or won not so much by what takes place in Britain than by what happens in the Middle East.
For it has been there where the Islamist virus currently plaguing the world was first spawned, and it has been this aggressive, intolerant and supremacist ideology that ultimately fuels all demands and forms of activity by Muslims that so currently imperil social cohesion at home.
It has been and remains a very difficult and dangerous time for the West, especially since the Bush administration after 9/11 decided to tackle the problem at root.
Being far too dependent on Saudi oil to severe its ties with it, the US was fully aware it was supplying the Saudis with the revenue with which, in a trade-off with their Wahhabi clerics that enabled them to retain power, the Saudis funded Salafist madrassas at home and abroad that have done so much to spread the Islamist virus.
Instead, therefore, the US decided to embark on another strategy to win the battle against Islamism. It is one that remains little understood and still less approved of.
By having given just cause to wage war against it, the US decided to invade Iraq and overthrow the tyrannical Saddam regime. In its place would be installed a western-friendly democracy to which the US could then turn for oil. It would thereby free itself of the need for Saudi oil whose sale to the US provided the Saudis with the revenue it used to promote Islamism.
Once no longer economically dependent on Saudi Arabia, the US would no longer have any strategic interest in preserving the Saudi-Wahhabi regime. Even were that country to fall into the hands of extremists as could well happen in the short term were the US to cease to support it, starved of its oil revenues, whoever was in power there would no longer have the wherewithal with which to win over to the cause of Islamism any Muslim hearts and minds in the Middle East and beyond.
Instead, the example of a moderate, stable, and increasingly affluent Iraq would serve as a beacon, weaning Muslims in the Middle East initially and then elsewhere away from Islamism and towards more moderate and unthreatening forms of their religion.
Were this strategic objective achieved, one could predict that there would be a huge falling away of support for jihad among young western-born Muslims.
Just as Germans have reclaimed the liberal aspects of their tradition and culture after the defeat of Nazism, so Muslims would recover the more liberal and tolerant versions of their religion from which so many have turned away of late. Without external support from those who have fanned the flames of jihad, the Palestine problem would too quickly and peacefully be resolved.
People in the West have scoffed at the neo-con strategy for waging the war against terror as mad, bad, or a mixture of the two. It strikes me, however, as both morally legitimate and well conceived in principle. Now, at last, and despite all the bad press and defeatist propaganda in the mainstream media, there are definite signs the strategy is working.
Two recent pieces set out what those signs are. One is by Amir Taheri, former Middle East editor of the Sunday Times. His piece appeared last Friday in the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat. The other is by Melanie Phillips and was posted on her website yesterday. Both are well worth reading.
If the contents of these two articles did not give enough reason for cheer, then to them we can add a report that appeared on the BBC News website yesterday to the effect that John Denham, the universities Secretary, has described as ‘misplaced’ the decision by the Universities and College lecturers’ union to refuse to adhere to the government’s guidelines in tackling on-campus extremism.
Yesterday’s guilty verdict of Mohammed Atif Siddique for terror-related crimes committed whilst attending a Glasgow further education college reinforces the need for such vigilance.
It is going to be a long haul yet until we are free of the Islamist threat, but there are glimmerings of light on the horizon that give definite cause for optimism.
Comments (6)
That is the most ingorant and gullible presentation I have ever read. Not American (try reading and thinking about the Constitution)... Congress shall regulate commerce... not citizens. Don't be outraged at the Saudis (oil prices)... be outraged at the GREED of the American Oil Corporations holding us hostage!
Posted by Anonymous | March 7, 2008 10:04 PM
Posted on March 7, 2008 22:04
My usual admiration for the lucidity of David Conway's political interpretations takes a slight wobble on reading "Some Reasons to be Cheerful" and I have to subscribe support for the post of Thomas Pellow with whose argument I entirely agree.
To further this I quote from the newly formed Muslim Council of Scotland, an umbrella group, "to safeguard and promote Muslim interests in Scotland".(These groups seem to proliferate by the day)
"In Islam there is no concept of fundamentalism.Islam is the guidance and the way of development in the various sections of human life.Prophet Mohammad, the Messenger of Allah, made it compulsory for everyone to educate themselves for life and also to educate other people".
To contain Islam, to democratise it,is an impossibility.
"ay, there's the rub;"
Posted by Alastair Har[per | September 22, 2007 12:37 PM
Posted on September 22, 2007 12:37
Was this really the grand strategy - to undermine Saudi Arabia by making the US less dependent on Saudi oil?? Don't you think that China would have been more than happy to pick up the slack? Saudi would have continued to earn money and I doubt if the Chinese would have put pressure on the Saudis to democratise.
The strategy is little understood because no one has presented it in an understandable way. Douglas Murray's book on why we need neo-conservatism lacked coherence and thus cogency on the justification for the invasion.
How was the invasion 'morally legitimate and well-conceived in principle'?
Posted by Anonymous | September 19, 2007 9:38 PM
Posted on September 19, 2007 21:38
I pray that the optimism--expressed at the close of your excellent essay--is warranted. But like Simon Newman I would take exception to the claim that oil formed any part of the cause or causes for going to war. For that claim to make sense, one would have to assume that it was U. S. policy to remain dependent on oil long into the future or even that, more broadly, 'what is good for Mobile/Exxon is good for America.' There is no evidence, to my knowledge, for either assumption, although the left has been chanting 'No blood for oil' for years and others, outside of the administration, have thought it good strategy to stay in the oil-rich region because of the oil. I would love to know two things: the full and detailed reasons and rationale for the war and how quickly the U. S., where I live, can free itself of oil.
Posted by Palladio | September 18, 2007 9:13 PM
Posted on September 18, 2007 21:13
"By having given just cause to wage war against it, the US decided to invade Iraq and overthrow the tyrannical Saddam regime. In its place would be installed a western-friendly democracy to which the US could then turn for oil. It would thereby free itself of the need for Saudi oil whose sale to the US provided the Saudis with the revenue it used to promote Islamism."
This makes no sense - the USA imports very little Saudi oil; Saudi oil is important because it keeps the *world oil price* down. What matters is total world oil output; invading Iraq could therefore lower world oil prices only if it increased world oil output (the opposite has occurred). But even if Iraqi oil output had increased, such an increase would be dwarfed by any heavy cut in Saudi oil exports (if say a hostile regime took power there). In oil terms Saudi Arabia is the '900 lb gorilla'; which cannot be compensated for by Iraq or any other nation.
Posted by Simon Newman | September 18, 2007 1:11 PM
Posted on September 18, 2007 13:11
I appreciate most of what David Conway usually writes, but today a mood of unwarranted optimism seems to have taken over him!
Islam does not have 'moderate' political wings which the West can trust and do business with. E.g, Turkey's Erdogan is offended by the phrase 'moderate' Islam.
Surely Iraq is more likely to dissolve into deeper civil war than into peace? The West's attempts to impose democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that the West's political leaders do not understand Islam: its innate dogmatism, intolerance, violence, and its hostility to infidels world-wide.
The West's leaders behave as though appeasement of Islamic jihad (or a 'kid-gloves' approach) will bring a 'Church of England' type of Islam, after some Islamic 'Reformation'. It's so ludicrously wrong.
Posted by Thomas Pellow | September 18, 2007 12:57 PM
Posted on September 18, 2007 12:57