September
11, 2002, 8:00 a.m. Behind
the Hate
The
enemy’s problem.
By David Pryce-Jones
he events of
September 11, you'll remember, came out of a perfect cloudless sky, as
if out of the blue, out of nowhere. The unexpectedness of this mass murdering
then seemed some new kind of doom. In fact a long historical process is
at work, involving the relationship of the West and the world of Islam.
For centuries now,
the West and its social order has challenged other civilizations. In the
face of that challenge, China, Japan, India, adopted the science and the
arts, even the music, which were both the cause and the effect of Western
creativity. Leaders and thinkers in Muslim countries also tried to match
the West. With the possible exception of Turkey, they proved unable to
do so. The reasons for this are unclear. Nobody and nothing effectively
stands in the way of education, reform, experiment in building a modern
social order with its own special characteristics like other peoples.
Islam, it is true, offers the vision of a society based upon the Prophet
Mohammed's long ago divine revelation of the will of God. This is a sort
of utopia. But other utopias and other revelations, from Christianity
to Communism, have come to terms with the contradictions and conflicts
inherent in reality.
In the Sixties I first began to travel in Arab countries. There was still
a certain courtliness of manner, a social architecture, something of a
settled life. This has all since vanished in what V. S. Naipaul calls
"the steady grinding down of the old world." Arab countries
are centralized and militarized secret police states inhabited by subjects
of a ruler and not by citizens. Injustice is everywhere. The big cities
deteriorate into slums, and the countryside into ruin. The bonus of oil
wealth ebbs away in corruption and inequality. Between them, dictators
like Gamal Abdul Nasser, Saddam Hussein, and so many more, have put an
end to settled life. The cruelty and waste are impossibly sad.
Osama bin Laden,
al Qaeda, and the hijackers have a mindset conditioned by this general
failure, and they speak for millions of Muslims from Algeria to Pakistan
and beyond. The only solution they envisage to the despair and envy from
which they are suffering is at last to build the model of the Islamic
society laid down long ago. Like all utopian hopes, this is irrational,
and cannot be programmed. Incapable of realization, the proposed solution
is only an aggravation of the condition.
That would be bad enough in itself, though still open to analysis. But
the bin Ladens and other Islamists shut off debate through the conviction
that their utopia could indeed by realized if the West did not stand in
the way. Unable to explain why the West would want to do anything so stupid
and pointless, they go on to maintain that the West consists of Christians
or Jews who have a plot to destroy Islam and occupy its lands and generally
behave like a Great Satan. However contorted or far-fetched, this alibi
serves the purpose of allowing Muslims to blame the West for their own
failures, and to present themselves as innocent and powerless victims.
What do you do to people who victimize you from a position of unmerited
strength? Of course you kill them. I have no doubt that the September
11 terrorists went to their deaths without fear and in the certainty that
they were somehow leveling a long score. Their hatred fed on the sense
of inferiority. They couldn't acquire the technological skills to make
the planes, but they could at least have revenge by learning to fly them.
I have no doubt that the Palestinian suicide bombers also believe fearlessly,
even joyfully, that they have hit upon the right way to settle a long
score with Israelis.
Terror of the kind carries the illusion of strength, while actually expressing
weakness. Years will have to pass before Muslims are able to climb out
of the political and social quagmire which they have made for themselves.
In that time, there are likely to be attempts at other mass attacks like
September 11. But the fact of Western success does not bring with it any
responsibility for Muslim failure. They have to sort that out, and they
will too, because it's a truth as old as mankind that hate ends up destroying
the hater.
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he events of
September 11, you'll remember, came out of a perfect cloudless sky, as
if out of the blue, out of nowhere. The unexpectedness of this mass murdering
then seemed some new kind of doom. In fact a long historical process is
at work, involving the relationship of the West and the world of Islam.
