Islamic terrorism

In April of last year Critical Quarterly inaugurated its book series with the publication of Moustapha Safouan's Why Are the Arabs Not Free? – The Politics of Writing. This book argues that a crucial factor in the political backwardness of the Arab states is the divorce between classical Arabic, the language of all educated discourse, and the various demotic Arabics. The only substantial review in English was in the New Statesman of 18 October 2007, where Samir el-Youssef portrayed Safouan as out of touch with the contemporary realities of Arab life and language. This review has not been untypical of reactions from Arab speakers teaching in Anglophone universities. The ad hominem attack is simply untrue: throughout his more than sixty years in France Safouan has maintained the closest contact with the most important currents of Egyptian and Arab thought. However, all such attacks miss the essential point of Safouan's argument: that classical Arabic remains tied to the order of the sacred. Safouan maintains that the history of Europe and the Middle East has always been the history of their economic, cultural and military relations. Far from conceiving them as civilisations that never meet, one could more accurately say that they have never been separated. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental distinction. While the development of the city states of the Greek world was accompanied by a use of writing which developed by the fourth century bc into a critical reflection which purged writing of any sacred characteristic, the archaic states of the Middle East were characterised by a use of writing dedicated to prestige, power and exploitation, which perpetuated the belief in writing's affinity with a sacred order from which the despotic regimes derived their legitimacy. The so-called Islamic state was no different. This state was founded on the Sassanid model although the Koran does not contain any indication of the principles of government. Only the grammar of the Koranic language (in fact pre-Islamic) is taught in schools, to the exclusion of the vernacular grammars. Thus the failure of the despotic regimes in the accomplishment of their tasks leads not to a revolution, but to an opposition which contests their very legitimacy in the name of a fallacious fidelity to the sacred letter of which the opposition claims to be the true guardian. With this identification with the Truth, ‘the death of the enemy’ becomes a duty which knows no limits. A difference of political philosophy runs the risk of degenerating into the bloodiest of struggles. One must hope that this important argument will become more widely recognised as the book gets translated into the European languages (a French translation was published earlier this year and Italian and German versions are forthcoming). Most important, the book will be translated into Arabic this year and published on the web. As part of the book's publication in France, Safouan showed it to his old editor, François Wahl. Wahl felt that Safouan had failed to make clear how his argument related to the new forms of Islamic terrorism that have so defined our contemporary world. Safouan therefore added a final part to his concluding chapter and an appendix on the concept of takfir. It is these new sections that we publish here – a second edition of the book, incorporating these new sections, will be published at the end of this year. COLIN MacCABE It seems to me impossible to bring terrorism to an end as long as despotic regimes remain in place in the Arab world. Let me explain. Regimes of absolute power depend on three practices, which constitute their very essence: corruption, repression and censorship. Corruption means that he who enjoys absolute power, whatever his personal honesty or dishonesty, also enjoys complete control over the wealth of the country. And this is as true today as it ever was. However we judge Nasser's motives, set out in his book-length manifesto, The Philosophy of the Revolution– and nobody doubts his personal honesty – it remains the case that the coup d'état of 1952 was an operation carried out by the army to seize the whole of the country, from the machinery of the state to its wealth. Ministers, ambassadors, diplomats, prefects, directors of banks and of nationalised industries, heads of major commercial operations, members of boards of directors whose numbers grew one knew neither how nor why – all were military officers. When the rector of a university was not an officer, he would be well aware that certain members of the teaching staff were agents of the mukhabarat (the secret services). Needless to say, the best hospitals, the best houses, the best schools, even the best clubs and the best beaches were reserved for officers. The crucial point is that, in the last instance, it is the monarch who decides who will administer the country. It follows that the bureaucracy clings to the monarch as to its very existence. A regime of absolute power can thus be defined as the rule of a bureaucratic apparatus that manufactures despots. I mean by this that even if the head of state is a child heir or an imbecile, who finds himself unexpectedly occupying the office after the assassination of his predecessor, to whom he was vice-president, even in such an extreme case, the apparatus takes it upon itself to make a monarch of him, who will often be more obtuse, spineless and cruel than an ‘authentic’ monarch who would have known how to seize power with his own hands. The people understand these distinctions perfectly. Egyptians are fond of saying that a president always chooses someone more stupid as their vice-president in order to emphasise their own intelligence. Thus Nasser chose Sadat, Sadat chose Mubarak ... who can't find anyone to choose. Nevertheless, Egyptians know that if this is so, it is because Mubarak, just like the first lady, is determined that it is his beloved son who will succeed him. It is not ruled out that a different method will arrive at the same result. Besides, as far as Nasser is concerned, opinion is divided between those who believe the call for him to return to office after the defeat of the Six Day War was spontaneous and those who believe it was from beginning to end an operation mounted by the apparatus; that is to say, in the last analysis, by the police. The odds are that the two were not exclusive: the police, having caught wind of Nasser's intention to announce his resignation by radio, had prepared their men to take to the streets when the time came; and people followed them. This omnipotence of the apparatus at work in regimes of absolute power enables us to understand an event much closer to us. When, after elections imposed by the West, Hamas won the majority in Palestine, it was inevitable that this victory would degenerate into civil war – a war that the very same West has fuelled. After all, there was no question of the kind of structurally corrupt apparatus the Palestinian Authority had become giving up the wealth of this unhappy country to newcomers (even if that wealth was nothing but aid and subsidies).1 Without a doubt Arafat was a man devoted to the cause, and the most ascetic of all; this did not alter the fact that he had no other model of leadership than the one in front of his eyes, Nasser first of all. In a state of blindness which he couldn't have avoided without stepping outside the limits of language – that's to say, without jumping on his own shadow – he had become a monarch. All this also explains the extreme ferocity with which the apparatus represses any attempt to gain a share of its spoils. This ferocity will be all the less inhibited because the apparatus, in defending its booty, believes it is defending nizam (a word one can translate equally as ‘system’, ‘order’ or ‘discipline’); in short, it believes that it is defending the country against anarchy. Moreover, the apparatus doesn't have to worry about factors that the monarch must take into account. We know that the important militant Shohdy Attiya was tortured to death in a Cairo prison. At that moment Nasser was at a conference in Yugoslavia. One can imagine his embarrassment when this news was announced by a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party. But the important thing to recognise, here again, is that, in regimes of absolute power, repression is not simply in reaction to this or that threat: it is constant and omnipresent. Everybody knows that nothing will be done – for example, to drain a canal – if the request is not first made to the adminstration, which decides. We know that there are villages in Upper Egypt that no longer have drinking water and we have seen television reports in which a woman points a finger at a canal and shouts, ‘There's the water where we and our animals all piss, where we throw our filth, where we wash our clothes and bathe, and now we've got to drink it as well’. A man complains, ‘There's nothing left for us but the air we breathe’, and another adds, ‘for the moment’. Crucially, one phrase may be heard again and again across the land: ‘What can we do?’ And it is true, they can do absolutely nothing. First because they don't have the means – water and electricity are the business of the state. But furthermore, even if they could do something together, their action would be considered as a serious delinquency – because undertaken without the authorisation of the state – and they would have to answer for that in the courts. It is evident that nothing is more dangerous for regimes of absolute power than the ‘Western’ idea of civil society. And this danger becomes all the more menacing as the state fails to carry out its allotted tasks. But the state dare not cast off the mask behind which it conceals its terrorist face. And this ‘dare not’ is not an act of hypocrisy. Or rather this hypocrisy represents the slender thread which continues to tie this state to a discourse of consensus, or the discourse of reason, as it is called. The ‘solution’ is to promulgate laws that authorise civil societies while ensuring that it is nigh on impossible to make them a reality. This pathetic solution, a synthesis floundering between madness and reason, is, alas, impractical at the political level. The state is generally defined as an institution that has a monopoly of the legal use of violence. In fact, the monarchical state should be defined, despite the contradiction in terms, as a legalised terrorism. From this perspective the greatest danger for totalitarian regimes is democracy, with all that it entails of a separation of powers, a separation that manifests itself concretely in the multiplicity of political parties. Certainly the monarchical regime can seek a synthesis analogous to that for civil societies by authorising the creation of parties; provided there is no chance at all that they will threaten the majority enjoyed by the party of the monarch and thus the monarch himself – a majority that is jealously guarded by the apparatus. Only one party is outlawed in Egypt: the party of Muslim Brothers. Anyone who says that this is because we are talking about a terrorist party or a party that advocates terrorism simply reveals his or her ignorance of the life of this country. The Muslim Brothers seek, and have always sought, to become a political force in Egypt, but it has never attempted to seize power by violence. It has always attempted to play the game in the framework of existing institutions. As long as Nasser introduced reforms which responded to the aspiration of the people – such as agrarian reform, industrialisation, even when accompanied by ill-considered nationalisations, or the promotion of the rights of women to participate in social and political life – he could inflict on the Muslim Brothers the most varied and ferocious repressions (death, prison, torture, arbitrary arrest followed by disappearance, exile in the desert, etc.) without, as is now the case, violently upsetting public opinion. In fact, the force of the Muslim Brothers comes from the simple formula they offered, which represented the only possible way out for a people who had just suffered the failure of both socialism and capitalism: Islam is the solution– what else is left? But the most important reason for the popularity of the Muslim Brothers is certainly their dedication in organising popular educational and medical initiatives in the face of a state whose failure has become evident at every level: education, health, transportation and other public services, not to mention economic and political bankruptcy. This bankruptcy shows that the lesson of Mossadegh and Nasser has been well learned: more than one head of state in the Middle East has understood that the time of heroism is over and that his survival is linked to his ‘friendship’ with the United States. But nobody is in any doubt that the reality of this friendship is submission. Given the cultural backwardness mentioned at the beginning of this book and to which I will return, it is not surprising that the third way, between dogged hostility and grovelling realism, has been completely lost sight of. What beggars the imagination is that everything happens from the West's point of view as if all that is necessary is for a regime to declare itself ‘a friend’ and the West shuts its eyes to its greed, its corruption, its injustices, even its terrorism, its crimes and its contempt for all the most elementary rights of the human being. Doubtless the West believes that a friendly regime, even a terrorist one, protects it and the whole world from an even more horrible terrorism. One thinks of al-Qaida. But one forgets that the masterminds of this organisation which, in an unprecedented logic, glories in its crimes, are in large part Egyptians, former members of the Muslim Brothers who broke with that organisation over their advocacy of violence and the use of arms against the infidel2 state. They call themselves ‘Takfirists’. This name comes from the word takfir, which means ‘to declare such and such a physical or moral person an infidel’. The Muslim Brothers have never adopted this ideology and have always condemned crimes against tourists, crimes committed with the declared goal of destroying the country's economy. The Takfirists have declared the Muslim Brothers ‘infidel’ because of their determination to play the game, to play it in the framework of a regime which calls itself democratic. And I imagine that if the game were played, the Muslim Brothers would obtain a majority, even if it is less certain that they would have an absolute majority. What is sure is that the different currents of economic and social life in Egypt could find expression in movements and parties capable of forming a solid opposition. As for the literal application of the Sharia, à la Taliban, it would provoke resistance rooted in the customs of the country, customs which sometimes date back thousands of years: Egyptian peasant women have worked barefaced in the for and it is to imagine how that would from one to the In the Muslim Brothers themselves do not call for such a literal them the chance of of the game, is the only way to judge their is the in a that is to say by its Far from the game, is an organisation which advocates the both of states which when they call themselves Islamic and of their whose the of What this is not its nor even the that it to them. we to we could even do its members the of them as resistance against the most that history has ever known – that of the United States. this point of alas, is large sections of the Arab is an Arab saying that can be as the in order to off the It is not the first time that this has with the One can even if it is the of political history is in of from both East and In any case, the of the Arab is not in the Let me explain. As long as the can his people an of as long as he in the of the country and as long as he the of the with important both and the people have no to become aware of the despotic of the regime to which they are this regime seems to them part of the order of to is to be the only one who much so that when the fails a or even a for does make itself but as the not The of an here democracy, can to a new but this is to the of The and back to this when I have been to up if of to the man in the and I have of they will for or they will simply it as an The is in all their by the one I say the word because an Islamic party has never been the to us in what a social and economic would be in the contemporary world. that the of is made up of from the Muslim Brothers. They had to not simply because of the ferocity of the state apparatus, but also because the people condemned their at destroying which represents an important of for them. I have heard on more than one a peasant only they the and left the They themselves the name of ‘Takfirists’. What does that All in the three they be or that the between man and between and is the between the and the It follows that identification with the very of is not a but an of themselves are of the order of and not that of This is all the more in Islam in that the of by is – which the even to of or In short, is the for whom is that identification is an identification with a The Takfirists have thus and in this force in which its they have with the most of all, while at the same time they this identification to for themselves a power which is that of the final judge of the or of In other they have made their to the will of – as if the will of had become to them – the reason to set themselves up as of themselves the of life and death over has there been a more of the blindness of man to the of his The question of what we have here is what is a against or it is a attempt to on to the thread that them to the of even to the death is not of to us What is important is to understand the that the of from everything we have seen as human crimes, or In his question also be I were to to for the of understood to someone what of should I have to on with him about our I will this in these can this question if one to language in order to bring about with to what kind of would the one and the other be From which I the that language is reason, that without which there is no whatever in to the madness of crimes, generally seek to themselves behind the of having committed them who those without of the are not without of their as by their determination to make sure their crimes are from public we are here talking of which are not only to with any order of as I have which them from the very order of language. In fact with the Takfirists we are for the first with people who not only their crimes in and seek to make them as widely known as succeed in themselves as and in the eyes of large numbers of the whose only from the that is imposed on them is which, as far as I are not made in classical All this doesn't us any I because these crimes are not made in the name of such and such a as as but in the name of the who is and We know that the United and the European Hamas and to be terrorist on the same as al-Qaida. This is Hamas and are not they do not themselves the of life and death over these two and there is a as there is between the two with The best on this can be in an by in an of the published the beginning of The Italian reports a that he had with the head of after the of himself was in the same way, after his was a for his to his and at the of where he had taught of him how a man like him could a method as as the of to in every we our our and our to us by on us from the by Not without reason, the After all, a to use the to not to he his life and one who for his We say in this case that he was not that he the other a person who be into a a death which he or only as the to a where they will their as a This is not only an It is not just by the members of Hamas but also by a large of who have seen themselves of of their it was in In this belief is not I even if life and death were by human his What can be to the over the last on the is that the on for part of a more attempt to a certain to which all of limits in its with the of What is important for the in is the fact that I share a belief with another person doesn't mean that I must to their for less them to take this thus them as to the complete they have for this This is an a if considered with to its and be by an to the of even that of and The of and is even less if there is for an even more than the United it is the and this for that itself against the this its organisation into that which is the the of that I have Islam is as a state whose are to those of the only that the does not his but them to the whom he himself The from the the legitimacy of the state. the was from its the This is in this to the they – and despite their in the to which they the name of to constitute that of which in political power in It is impossible to imagine such a by the of the In political power has always been between and The a were from This state of has been by the fact of a that had to be in the of in a way to what has in because of the in of the to the Far from an of which is a political party with in the is rather the of this in the of the different which make up the is a of their The fact that in the where it is in the majority it of the state the question of the state has ever had an a question which becomes the more when one knows about the of the of and the part they played, with the of in the of and As to with over the question of they call rather for a that will the recognised of the state of as well as those of and not to mention the Palestinian in to states that call themselves (a word that no one as to their as or and by the Muslim parties to play the game the framework of in Egypt or the West runs the risk of the Arab Muslim and them to who will thus be an ever of one it or only the Muslim political parties who do not violence as a method of power are capable of a in the of political power in our the of our they will never to their own I touch here on the final in our censorship. The of the French the in which had left the country and by the repression imposed by the of the has the idea that out when the state fails in its essential But this is to that this would never have without the and the Without back over what I have about the of the very idea of civil because of the and not just of the the fact is that our have never a in the of their as an that is an part of the apparatus has in such a – in other an – of that they that a language limits to They of the rights of of democracy, of and so without that they are they have no part in as one a a a television or other As long as the

Islam · Political science · Terrorism · Theology · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy

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