June 02, 2017
Source: Bigstock
There is no such common ground to be found with Islamist terrorism, therefore no basis for negotiation. We cannot appease Islamism by offering concessions. Quite the contrary; any concession is seen as evidence of Western weakness, therefore a sign of victory. On the other hand, military defeat is only a setback, which alters little. Islamism, as the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, who writes in French and whose books are banned in Algeria, says, “is reborn from the ashes of defeat to re-emerge in a new form.” It’s like the Hydra; you cut off one head and another sprouts.
The war we are engaged in is a war of cultures. There is, obviously, a military dimension, but it is the less important one. We have had years of military victories and are still losing the war. Indeed, by entrenching resentment and hatred of the West and Western”democratic and liberal”culture, our armed engagements in the Muslim world”engagements speaking the language of strength and power”serve as recruiting agents for the Islamists.
In the Middle East our victories turn into defeats. We bomb Muslims there and in Pakistan, and disaffected young Muslims in the West are led another stage on the journey from radicalization to jihadism to crime and mass murder. It is futile to seek economic reasons for those who complete that journey. The Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, was well educated. Amedi Coulibaly, the perpetrator of the kosher-supermarket atrocity in Paris, was employed by Coca-Cola and was sufficiently well-off to take skiing holidays. According to research carried out on behalf of the World Bank, a majority of Western recruits to ISIS had a university education.
I repeat: It’s a war of cultures, and if it is to be won it will be won in Europe, Britain, the USA, and Canada, not in the Middle East. Meanwhile Western governments cozy up to Saudi Arabia regardless of the fact that the Saudis finance the Wahhabist mosques where the duty of jihad is preached.
