Martin Amis on the Kulturkampf in Islam

Martin Amis

Glancing askance

at something amiss?

(Image from Wikipedia)

In light of yesterday's post, this remark by Martin Amis in an article, "The age of horrorism," published the year before last in The Observer (Sunday September 10 2006), is apropos:

Until recently it was being said that what we are confronted with, here, is 'a civil war' within Islam. That's what all this was supposed to be: not a clash of civilisations or anything like that, but a civil war within Islam. Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible. We are not hearing from moderate Islam. Whereas Islamism, as a mover and shaper of world events, is pretty well all there is.

I have at times over the past seven years felt much as does Amis, usually when I feel something amiss as I read the statements of even moderate Muslims. At least, I'm told that they're 'moderate' . . . until I read something that they actually say. London mayor and secular leftist Ken Livingstone has assured us that Yusuf al-Qaradawi is a moderate . . . but I then find myself reading some of the 'moderate' Qaradawi's 'moderate' words:

Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do.

This defense of suicide bombing, quoted in a BBC News article, "Controversial preacher with 'star status'" (July 7, 2004), was uttered by our 'moderate' Muslim, a scholar even, the eminent Yusuf al-Qaradawi, but if he's a 'moderate,' then who's an Islamist?

Yet, I also read of widespread, profound disenchantment with Al Qaeda in places that experienced their brand of Islam, such as the Anbar province of Iraq, or of large numbers within the Muslim world growing disillusioned with Islamist suicide bombings after having seen so many Muslims die in such blasts throughout the Muslim world.

And I then think that it is Amis who is amiss in his remark...