Politics Of Denial

[NewCivilisation]

Following the London bombs, the word on most commentators lips has been denial. The bombings have thrown a merciless spotlight on the Muslim community, with all and sundry seeking not just an immediate apology (as if all doctors were asked to apologise for Harold Shipman) but for Muslims to engage in a battle to confront the extremists and in Tony Blair’s words their ’evil ideology‘ Of course the Muslim community faces its challenges, for more than forty years it has been living in a largely localised cocoon, only venturing out to the host society when trade or receiving social benefits was involved. The first generation of Muslims had come to Britain for one reason, to make money and go back to the motherland. For them opening up their mosques, promoting Islam to Non Muslims and ensuring Islam could be made relevant to succeeding generations was not on their immediate agenda. These challenges remain key ones for the Muslim community to engage in irrespective of what happened on the 7th July.

However denial as a charge should not be merely confined to the Muslim community. For example take western intervention in the Muslim world. Tony Blair criticises those who link foreign policy to the London bombings as justifying the ’terrorists perverted logic’ and their ever changing and opportunistic reasons for attacks. Yet no one questions the ever changing reasons for western intervention in the Muslim world. During the period of colonialism it was about protecting trade routes, in 1956 it was about the nationalisation of the Suez canal, in the post war period it was about defeating communism, after 1991 it was about containing Saddam, and currently it is about winning the War on Terror. No matter what decade or century we are in, the western governments always seem to find a new reason for interfering in the Muslim world. Over Iraq, Tony Blair has constantly changed his rationale for the war, citing WMD, enforcing UN resolutions, removing a tyrant and promoting democracy at various times. Opportunism and perverted logic by the Prime Minister, surely not!

Of course denial is not confined to the Prime Minister, it has spread to the whole of the body politic. In their reporting of the allegations of war crimes made against British soldiers, many UK newspapers sought numerous justifications for their plight citing the difficult terrain they were operating in, the heat of the battle (as if war was ever tranquil) and the difficult political context. Yet these same newspapers metaphorically lynched anyone from the Muslim community who attempted to provide any such political context when explaining the 7 July bombings. Denial about soldiers committing abuse has led us to not joining the dots about this serious problem in places ranging from Deepcut in the UK, to Bagram in Afghanistan, to Guantanomo Bay in Cuba, to Abu Ghraib in Baghdad and to British jurisdiction in Basra. These are not cases of a few rotten apples but a more structural problem involving dehumanisation and barbarisation, denial merely overlooks the mounting evidence of a sick and degenerate culture that has been engendered by western leaders and which has now become ubiquitous. Of course there are no calls to examine some of the secular military ‘madrassahs’ these American and British soldiers have graduated from, or any investigations in trying to understand what causes some western soldiers to mete out such degrading, brutal and often lethal abuse.

Denial is not confined to foreign policy, a few days after the London bombings a 14 year old boy in Manchester was charged with 7 rapes of four young girls aged between 7 and 10 in a local park. Britain’s rapists are getting younger and younger, yet the liberal consensus still believes society’s permissive attitude to sex and its ubiquitous nature in popular culture have nothing to do with the increasing rise of sexual crime. Denial I think so! Or what links the pensions time bomb, the fertility time bomb, an ageing population, increasing divorce rates, yobbish behaviour and binge drinking. If you believe the liberal consensus, then nothing. They are individual problems with individual solutions all disconnected from one another, another case of complete denial. Yet the collapse of the family unit, the breakdown of the institution of marriage, the prioritisation of wealth and materialism over having children, a culture of lost respect for elders, growing levels of adultery and a hedonistic attitude towards sex, consumerism and alcohol are symptoms of a more worrying degradation and depredation of the glue that should hold societies together. As Melanie Philips a prominent British commentator recently wrote ‘our hedonistic culture appears to have lost any sense of its collective and long-term interests. Instead too many young women and men live in this affluent consumer society as if there is no tomorrow- and by doing so are helping ensure that that is precisely what is increasingly coming to pass.’

In this latest issue we try to avoid the politics of denial in our attempt to open up new horizons and instigate new debates. On the front cover we lead with New Caliphate New era, a timely article on what the Caliphate is really all about and more importantly what it is not. Many including Tony Blair recently have done a huge disservice to western society in their discussions surrounding the Caliphate, preferring to cite the usual stereotypes of a medieval women hating Taliban type state. Akmal Asghar attacks these myths head on articulating a 21st century vision for the Caliphate, and though we do not expect all to agree, our hope is that as a result of this article we may at least progress to having a more informed debate. In other articles we concentrate on key topics of how citizenship is understood in an Islamic society and a renewed look at globalisation or in Barry Stills view ‘globalisations’.

The key point surrounding denial is that sometimes the people most close to the issue are the least able to see what is wrong. In that sense the Muslim community should accept the many challenges it has head on, most of them pre-dating 7th July. However is western society ready to re-examine sincerely the suitability of its own core secular values and their failure in building a strong and stable society. Or will it continue in its current state of denial, a path that will inevitably lead to continued chaos, violence, hedonism and instability?

As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German poet and novelist stated ‘Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.’ Translated this means ‘I am the spirit that always denies‘, an apt comment for our current plight.

New Civilisation

[abbey]

Oops nodded off for a minute, i cant think why

that post was riveting! :yh_hypno

[BabyRider]

Wow. That was the longest intro post I've ever seen!

What? That wasn't an intro post?

[abbey]

I have an awfully short attention span, i cant for the life of me follow

the thread, and so dont get it.

I always thought denial was in Egypt!

[minks]

abbey wrote: I have an awfully short attention span, i cant for the life of me follow

the thread, and so dont get it.

I always thought denial was in Egypt!


the above brought to you by none other than the "queen of de Nile" hehehehe

[Accountable]

Don't mind them, New. They don't understand like you and me.



By the way, you're not selling anything, are you?

[Clint]

Help me...help me...I need air. Sorry New Civilization but it was way too intense for me. I don't have a short attention span...but then I could be in denial.