Ranting to /dev/null

Mishra responds to Amis

A week after Martin Amis essay was published in the Guardian, Indian writer Pankaj Mishra had a response published in the same space.

What is most striking to me is that though he assails Amis and those like him - I would venture to include myself in those that tend to share Amis' perspective - for being impractical, short-sighted, moral-snobs, he doesn't actually critique the conclusion that suicide-mass-murder is perhaps the most extreme anti-civilizational act possible. He spends a lot of time saying that Iraq proves we forgot the lessons of Vietnam, and explains why the rise of Venezuela and Iran are so popular in the undeveloped world, but he doesn't do anything with terrorism. This, to me, suggests moral spinelessness, but no matter.

He actually describes radical Islamism as "an ideological chimera of their own making", referring to Western thinking-types. Though "blind force" may not be the correct response to whatever Islamism is, his suggestion that it is the creation of Western paranoiacs is short-sighted at best.

Here is a link to some excerpts from Saudi Arabian children's textbooks. Any culture that deliberately teaches "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as historical fact is not the kind of culture to which the term "reasonable" should be applied. They actually teach that the Rotary and Lions clubs are secretly Masonic and that Freemasonry is secretly Jewish. This is downright bizarre.

Here's a choice bit:

This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God.

This, dear reader, is mainstream educational material in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia isn't exactly the most extreme of nations - you have to go to Iran or Pakistan for that - and this is what is taught in the major schools, not smaller, private radical enclaves.

So I'm just being paranoid, am I? 100 million rioting over a speech made in an insignificant German city thousands of miles from the Middle East is just one of those things?

The Iraq war may have been botched and the 'War on Terror' may not be pragmatically useful, but don't tell me that we don't have an enemy here.

Posted by ryan at September 19, 2006 11:31 AM | TrackBack