Adam Curtis: Creating Islamist Phantoms
[Adam Curtis wrote and produced The Power of Nightmares: the Rise of the Politics of Fear, which was broadcast on BBC2 last October.]
... Modern Islamism is a complex political movement with a history that goes back more than 50 years. Its most influential ideologist was an Egyptian school inspector, Sayyid Qutb. In the 50s he wrote a series of books that put forward a powerful critique of modern western culture and democracy, and called for a new type of utopian society in Muslim lands in which Islam would play a central political role.
Out of this has come a movement for revolutionary change in the Islamic world that includes an extraordinary range of groupings and variations on Qutb's original arguments. It is only a tiny minority in the Islamist movement who have developed these ideas into a politics that advocates terrorism against the west. Historians of Islamism have shown that this minority, grouped initially around Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri in the late 90s, turned to attacking the west only because of the failure of the wider movement to achieve its revolutionary aims in the Muslim world.
We must be aware of this distinction so as to avoid a witch-hunt against the whole Islamist movement. We may not agree with its reactionary vision of the political use of Islam and the pessimistic, anti-progressive beliefs that lie at the heart of Qutb's teachings, but it is essential to realise that there is no inherent link between these ideas and terrorism. There are worrying signs that journalists are confusing the murderous beliefs of a genuinely destructive minority with the political ideas of a much wider movement. By lumping Islamism into a frightening, violent, anti-western movement led by the "preachers of hate", they risk exaggerating and distorting the threat yet again.
The real danger is that, by suppressing Islamism, we will make its ideas more attractive to already marginalised young men. In the process we may inadvertently drive them further towards the extreme militant wings of the movement, and prove yet again the old adage that the real threat to democracy from terrorism is not the action but the reaction.
Read entire article at Guardian
... Modern Islamism is a complex political movement with a history that goes back more than 50 years. Its most influential ideologist was an Egyptian school inspector, Sayyid Qutb. In the 50s he wrote a series of books that put forward a powerful critique of modern western culture and democracy, and called for a new type of utopian society in Muslim lands in which Islam would play a central political role.
Out of this has come a movement for revolutionary change in the Islamic world that includes an extraordinary range of groupings and variations on Qutb's original arguments. It is only a tiny minority in the Islamist movement who have developed these ideas into a politics that advocates terrorism against the west. Historians of Islamism have shown that this minority, grouped initially around Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri in the late 90s, turned to attacking the west only because of the failure of the wider movement to achieve its revolutionary aims in the Muslim world.
We must be aware of this distinction so as to avoid a witch-hunt against the whole Islamist movement. We may not agree with its reactionary vision of the political use of Islam and the pessimistic, anti-progressive beliefs that lie at the heart of Qutb's teachings, but it is essential to realise that there is no inherent link between these ideas and terrorism. There are worrying signs that journalists are confusing the murderous beliefs of a genuinely destructive minority with the political ideas of a much wider movement. By lumping Islamism into a frightening, violent, anti-western movement led by the "preachers of hate", they risk exaggerating and distorting the threat yet again.
The real danger is that, by suppressing Islamism, we will make its ideas more attractive to already marginalised young men. In the process we may inadvertently drive them further towards the extreme militant wings of the movement, and prove yet again the old adage that the real threat to democracy from terrorism is not the action but the reaction.