What use is history? Here's a little fable to answer that question.
Once upon a time there was a civilisation. It controlled the world, and its citizens were wealthy and had considerable freedom, protected by laws and customs built up over centuries. This civilisation had survived assaults by great war machines, had survived, just, the creation of a weapon that could have destroyed the very planet on which it stood; it faced a world with no serious military threat. But then a few men got together and decided to destroy the civilisation. And they trumpeted this plan to the world. And they killed a few of its citizens. And their very resolution led the leaders of the safe, comfortable and all-powerful civilisation to decide that they were under threat. They were small men, of little history, and they'd forgotten, or didn't want to remember, that the civilisation had endured far greater threats - that its very existence inevitably caused some to push and flail against it. And so all that the civilisation stood for - all of the freedoms and rights its people had achieved - was destroyed from within, cut away, sometimes in small steps, sometimes in big - all for the want of a bit of history and a little perspective.
Sound familiar? If George Bush and Tony Blair were even slightly better men, better thinkers, then my prescription for the current state of affairs would be for them to read Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism, by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit.
Failing that, everyone else should. It is as its says on the cover short, and its is accessible, and it makes the obvious but curiously little understood point that there is absolutely nothing historically unique, or even unusual, about the intellectual framework, or personnel, or aims, of al-Qa'ida.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Does the West need no change? When you stare at the abyss, does it not stare back at you?
Further, is the complicity of the Western regimes in building up these 'men in their caves' irrelevant to the problem?
At the same time, your point that the revolutionaries are from within the system is valid - malheuresement
2 - Natalie Bennett
What abyss? I simply don't accept that we're facing a danger anything evern vaguely like on the same scale as we have faced down in the past.
Al-Qa'ida is not a serious military threat; nor indeed, is it a serious threat (compared to car accidents, global warming, general "acts of god") to any of our lives.
And the danger that it does present would be best tackled not by cutting freedoms, but expanding opportunities and choices to those now denied them, in our societies and in repressive societies across the globe.
3 - Alethinos
Natalie... Nice post. However I don't think the book's assertions are anything novel in themselves. Al-Qa-ida's dreams of the Golden Age are nothing new and that seems to be what these authors are contending. What's more though - THIS information isn't unknown in the West. It might be unknown to the great UNREAD here in the US but anyone with a descent education in history knows this aspect of Islam. There isn't a whole lot of difference between these men and the ultra-conservative Christians here in the US - they to hanker after a "golden age" that never really existed.
Good review! Thanks!
Alethinos
4 - Natalie Bennett
No, but TOny Blair, George Bush et al keep running around saying "this is a unique challenge", "we've never faced anything like this before" and no one seems to challenge them on the premise underlying the radical things they are trying to do like abolish basic rights. This is my small attempt to challenge not just the actions, but the underlying premise.
5 - Nicolas
Blair and Bush's only hopes are the short memory of their own people. And according to what I have witnessed and read, they can both sleep tight !
6 - Alethinos
Natalie... I agree with you there - Bush & Co., are using this as if it were a wholly unique human phenom. It isn't. My point to all this was that the rise of religious fantaticism is very troubling. And it isn't just Islam, or to a "slightly" lesser extent Christianity. We have Hindu fanatics and in certain areas Buddhist ones too...
Alethinos
7 - Natalie
But at least as big a phenomenon is the rise of religious apathy, if not outright atheism. Only about 2 per cent of Britons regularly go to church - isn't that a brilliant figure to celebrate? And Ireland, Spain, Italy et al are running away from the church at a great rate. But partly because it is good news, and doesn't have an obvious dramatic effect, this gets little reported and commented on.
8 - Alethinos
But that's just it Natalie... This phenom happens - a majority becoming disillusioned while a minority go to the opposite extreme. Its happened at least as far back as Greek and Roman times. Indeed if you look at the conditions of Judea at the time of Jesus' manifestation you see a good number of Jews becoming disillusioned with the "old" ways while another sizable minority (including the Essenes) preparing for "the End of Days".
What we are seeing now is the message of Christ unable to meet the spiritual needs of a population, a world now removed by 2000 years. It isn't that the Message doesn't carry Truth, but it was the truth suited for a population thousands of years ago - and for a "period" of time.
But there are those who's ego structures INSIST that THEY and THEY ALONE know what God wants for the rest of us. And, unfortunately, there is virtually nothing that can quench the fires of religious fanaticism...
Alethinos
9 - Natalie Bennett
But while they are a tiny minority it is a managable problem; things are only at risk of getting out of control when the majority is forced to support the religious-nutter minority - by repression, by economic hopelessness, by being left to feel that they have no rational hope left. And everything B&B are doing, from invading Iraq to trying to lock up possibly entirely innocent people for 90 days without trial, is producing those conditions.
10 - Alethinos
Agreed!