Friday, August 19, 2005
Understanding "Salafism"
For a blink of an eyelid after the London bombings, a popular goal was to form a realistic picture of Islamofascist incubation.
Many heard that the whackjob assembly line is often fed by extremist interpretations of Islam lumped generically - by other Muslims - under the banner of "Salafism".
Salafists perceive themselves, above all else, as part of a global Muslim community, the "ummah". They are enabled by global telecommunications. They direct their ire and "revenge" wheresoever on the planet against whomseoever has "attacked" the ummah.
A very large number of Iraqi civilians, as well as American soldiers, have been murdered by non-Iraqi "mujahideen".
These mujahideen may be born in London, trained in Pakistan, financed from Riyadh, equipped in Bosnia, organised from Tehran , and then murderously dispatched to Iraq or New York or Bali - before being finally swamped by grateful virgins in heaven.
Oil money pumps in to support the cause, secured by charismatic fundraisers like Osama Bin Laden and the Hezbollah and Hamas honchos.
Arabic television carries children's programs in which cute kiddies loudly welcome death as martyrs. While standing next to a Big Bird or perhaps a Mickey Mouse.
When they're old enough, the kids are shipped off to summer camps where they can march in formations wearing suicide bomb belts, or burn effigies of Israeli buses.
All the while dreaming of the day when they themselves may carry out some such Allah-sanctioned "operation". After which they might be similarly lionized as "avenging" heros at summer camps, in the history books, from minarets and in commercials on Arab TV.
Salafist definitions of "revenge" and "attack" are key elements in this construction and, of course, appear to be somewhat embellished.
In the Salaf imagination the world is dominated by "crusaders" and a "world Jewish government" hell-bent - secretly and openly - on wiping out Islam. And on humiliating Muslims, continuously and sadistically.
Therefore those enemies must be destroyed. It is the will of Allah.
Further, says Middle East Forum's Daniel Pipes, Salafists ultimately want "the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth and restoring the caliphate" (sic: that quote being attributed to Abdullah Azzam, a guiding intellectual light for Osama Bin Laden).
In that overall context, as London's Daily Telegraph puts it, problems in Iraq and Afghanistan each added but "a new pebble to the mountain of grievances that militant fanatics have erected."
This argument, and the preceding description of international Salafism, runs akimbo to the to-ing and froing in western public affairs about legitimate grievances, economic hardships, American imperialism, evil Israel and so forth.
Navel-gazers ignore the fact that terrorist attacks since 9/11 haven't been followed up with demands.
We - and most notably the bellyaching leftists in the media and "the international community" - have speculatively thrown out tags and explanations, without making a fist of understanding the perpetrators on their own terms.
Witness, recently:
- Van Gogh's murderer declaring (to an Gogh's mother and to the world) that he acted out of belief, and not in reprisal to insult;
- Israel bombarded with, within a matter of weeks, over a hundred missile attacks aimed from Gaza as it prepared to cede that very territory. This while the leader of Hamas declared that his followers won't rest until the whole of Israel is destroyed.
Nobody even blinked - and the Pope forgot to mention it in his blanket condemnation of recent terrorism - when two 16-year old girls were immolated by a human Islamissile at an Israeli shopping mall just after the London bombings.
That post-London moment of an enlightened search for understanding seemed to pass so quickly.
(Photo found at RHOG)
