[Mb-civic] Something Happened Between "I Love You" and the Click of the Phone

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

This thoughtful essay by British veteran Middle East  reporter Robert Fisk 
provides a new level of depth and insight.....


CounterPunch - July 23/24, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk07232005.html

Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq Turn It Incendiary

Something Happened Between "I Love You" and the Click of the Phone

By ROBERT FISK

That fine French historian of the 1914-18 world conflict, Stéphane
Audoin-Rouzeau, suggested not long ago that the West was the inheritor of
a type of warfare of very great violence. "Then, after 1945," he wrote,
"... the West externalised it, in Korea, in Algeria, in Vietnam, in
Iraq... we stopped thinking about the experience of war and we do not
understand its return (to us) in different forms like that of terrorism...
We do not want to admit that there is now occurring a different type of
confrontation..."

He might have added that politicians - and here I'm referring to Lord
Blair of Kut al-Amara - would deliberately refuse to acknowledge this. We
are fighting evil. Nothing to do with the occupation of Palestinian land,
the occupation of Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the torture at Abu
Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo. Oh no, indeed. "An evil ideology", a
nebulous, unspecified, dark force. That's the problem.

There are two things wrong with this. The first is that once you start
talking about "evil", you are talking about religion. Good and evil, God
and the Devil. The London suicide bombers were Muslims (or thought they
were) so the entire Muslim community in Britain must stand to attention
and - as Muslims - condemn them. We "Christians" were not required to do
that because we are not Muslims - nor were we required as "Christians" to
condemn the Christian Serb slaughter of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica just
over 10 years ago. All we had to do was say sorry for doing nothing at the
time. But Muslims, because they are Muslims, must ritually condemn
something they had nothing to do with.

But that, I suspect, is the point. Deep down, I wonder if we do not
think that their religion does have something to do with all this, that
Islam is a backward religion, un-renaissanced, potentially violent. It's
not true, but our heritage of orientalism suggests otherwise.

It's weird the way we both despise and envy the "other". Many of those
early orientalists showed both disgust and fascination with the East. They
loathed the punishments and the pashas, but they rather liked the women;
they were obsessed with harems. Westerners found the idea of having more
than one wife quite appealing. Similarly, I rather think there are aspects
of our Western "decadence" which are of interest to Muslims, even if they
ritually condemn them.

I was very struck some years ago when the son of a Lebanese friend of mine
went off to study for three years at a university in the south of England.
When I passed through London from Beirut, I would sometimes bring audio
tapes or letters from his parents - these were the glorious days before
the internet - and the student would usually meet me in a pub in
Bloomsbury. He would invariably turn up with a girl and would drink
several beers before setting off to her flat for the night. Then in his
last term at college, he called home and asked his mother to find him a
bride. The days of fun and games were over. He wanted Mummy to find him a
virgin to marry.

I thought about this a lot at the time. He was - and is - a most
respectful, honourable man who has passed up much wealthier job
opportunities abroad to teach college kids in Beirut. But had he been a
weaker man, I can imagine he might have quite a few problems with his
life. What was he doing in Britain? Why was he enjoying himself like "us",
only to turn his back on that enjoyment for a more conservative life?

Take another example - though the two men have nothing in common - that of
Ziad Jarrah. He lived in Germany with a Turkish girlfriend - not just
dating but living with her - and then on 11 September 2001, he called up
the girl to say "I love you". What's wrong, the young woman asked. "I love
you," he said simply again and hung up the phone. And then he went off to
board an airliner and slash the throats of its passengers and fly it into
the ground in Pennsylvania. What happened in his brain as he heard the
voice of the girlfriend he said he loved? His father, whom I know quite
well, was as stunned as the parents of the London suicide bombers. To this
day, he still cannot believe what Ziad Jarrah did. He is even waiting for
him to come home.

It's not difficult to be cynical about the way in which Arabs can both
hate the West and love it. In Arab capitals, I can read the anti-Bush fury
expressed in the pages of local newspapers and then drive past the
American embassy where sometimes hundreds of Arabs are standing round 
the
walls in the hope of acquiring visas to the US. The Koran is a document of
inestimable value. So is a green card.

But from the many letters I receive from Muslims, especially in Britain, I
think I can understand some of the anger generated among them. They come,
many of them, from countries of great repression and from lands where the
strictest family and religious rules govern their lives. You know the
rest.

So in Britain - and even the Muslims who were born in the country often
grow up in traditional families - there can be a fierce dichotomy between
their lives and that of the society around them. The freedoms of Britain -
social as well as political - can be very attractive. Knowing that its
elected government sends its soldiers to invade Iraq and kill quite a lot
of Muslims at the same time might turn the "dichotomy" into something far
more dangerous.

Here is a land - Britain - in which you could live a good life. Pretty
girls to go out with (note, we are talking about men), or marry or just
live with. Movies to watch - no snipping of the nude scenes in our films -
and, if you like, a beer or two at the local. These things are haram, of
course, wrong, but enjoyable, part of "our" life. Most British Muslim men
I know don't actually drink alcohol and they behave honourably to women of
every religion (so please, no angry letters). Others enjoy our freedoms
with complete ease.

But those who cannot, those who have enjoyed our freedoms but feel
guilty for doing so - who can be appalled by the pleasure they have
taken in "our" society but equally appalled by the way in which they
themselves feel corrupted (especially after a trip to Pakistan for a
dose of old-fashioned ritualised religion) have a special problem.

Palestine or Afghanistan or Iraq turn it incendiary. They want both to
break out of this world and to express their moral fury and political
impotence as they do so. They want, I think, to destroy themselves for
their own feelings of guilt and others for the crime of "corrupting" them.
Even if that means murdering a few co-religionists and dozens of other
innocents. So on go the backpacks - whoever supplied them is a different
matter - and off go the bombs. Something happens, something that takes
only a second, between saying "I love you" and then hanging up the phone.

[Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book, The Conquest of the Middle
East, will be released this fall.]

***

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