Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Islamic State and the politics of panic

Before we start amending our security laws, sending CSIS agents scurrying to disrupt terrorist plots, and extend our existing military mission against Islamic State, let’s get real.

Although both the Canadian victims of terrorism — one near Parliament Hill and the other in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu — were soldiers, the tragic truth is that serving soldiers are much more likely to die by their own hand or in a training accident.

As for the rest of us, we should be more worried — much more worried — about slipping in the bathtub or falling off a ladder clearing the eavestroughs than about fending off Islamic State.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been significant IS-inspired radicalization here in Canada. The number of Canadians who have gone abroad to join terrorist groups may be as high as 200 to 300, according to a CBC estimate (which greatly exceeds the official government numbers).

It’s quite clear, however, that these recruits are now more likely to be on their way to join Islamic State — and not al Qaida and its affiliates. This is much more significant than is generally understood.

Al Qaida was created specifically to re-direct the energies of fundamentalist Muslims away from battling indigenous Arab regimes towards the infidel West and Israel. It was a secretive underground movement bent on external terrorism, reaching its height with the September 11 attacks.

IS, in contrast, aims to create a contemporary caliphate on the territory it has conquered in Syria and Iraq. According to experts on its ideology, such as Princeton’s Bernard Haykel, the movement’s belief system requires adherents to move to the territorial “caliphate” it has created. The ritual burning of passports by foreign recruits makes it clear that the plan is for no return. Indeed those who do drift back “home” are more likely to be considered apostates by Islamic State — and worthy of execution — than missionaries for the cause.

This may be why the IS-inspired attackers we are seeing in the West, such as those in Canada, France and in recent days Denmark, show relatively low levels of organization and often a diffuse and incoherent ideology. If not always exactly lone wolves, they tend to come in small, loosely organized packs.

Ironically, the greatest danger to us in the West from Islamic State recruitment of so-called home-grown terrorists might be if the IS caliphate were defeated decisively on the battlefield by the U.S.-led coalition of which Canada is a part. That likely would create a stream of radicalized refugees banging on our doors to return to Canada — a problem for a future day.

So what of the now-rampant Islamic State threat to the Arab world?

In the tinderbox that is the Middle East, IS is a blowtorch. Barack Obama may have declared that “(Islamic State) is not Islamic” and that IS is “betraying” Islam. But Islam has no pope — and if it did, Obama would not be it.

Islamic State has a radical interpretation of Islam, yes, but it derives much of its ideological power from the resonance it has with original Muslim texts. In his long and thoughtful article in the Atlantic, “What ISIS Really Wants”, Graeme Wood quotes a scholarly debate among the movement’s adherents about whether members of the Yazidi religious majority — who follow a syncretic faith influenced by Islam — are pagans, and therefore should be enslaved, or apostates, and should thus be put to death.

Horrifying to us, yes. But compelling to others, in part because of its reliance on revered, ancient and familiar words. It’s not the first death cult to wield such power; some have been marginal (Charles Manson) and some have been monstrously large (Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao).

For us, for Canadians, the question is: What does Islamic State have to do with us? Why does it, or should it, command our attention in a way that, say, the second Congo war (1998-2003) did not, even as it claimed close to six million lives? For Canadians, that devastating slaughter was, to quote Neville Chamberlain, “a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing”.

The answer is not, as Stephen Harper suggests, that Islamic State is evil, and we must therefore confront it.

We do have legitimate reasons to fear that IS has the power to rise up and strike us in a way that no one in the Congo — or for that matter Pol Pot’s Cambodia — had the potential to do. Our fears are probably exaggerated. That’s how terrorism works: by creating fears entirely disproportionate to its ability to do harm. It is exactly the same principle — only in reverse — that gives a $500 million Powerball jackpot the ability to create hope utterly incommensurate with our individual likelihood of winning.

But even if I am mistaken, and the terrorist threat from Islamic State is much more significant than I have supposed, it’s clearly not an existential threat to us in the way that, say, Hitler was to Europe or the nuclear weapons of the Cold War were to humankind. Not to put too fine a point on it, but IS’s threat to humanity pales in comparison with that of climate change.

The real threat Islamic State poses to us here in Canada is that it could further destabilize a region from which the global economy derives important resources, particularly oil. It also presents dangers (as well as opportunities) to our ally Israel.

IS has contributed already to a refugee crisis in the region. And refugee camps may themselves be incubators for all kinds of anguishes and “isms”. That’s worth worrying about, too.

But look where our outsized fears of Islamic State have got us.

The prime minister may fancy himself in a battle with evil. But we are in league with the woman-hating, head-chopping Saudis, among others — which surely complicates our moral struggle.

Truth be told, we are now also in a covert alliance with the Assad regime in Syria. It’s complicated. Boy, it’s complicated.

Assad’s Syria was at one point a junior member of Bush’s Axis of Evil (based on its support for Hezbollah) but was later pressed into service by Washington’s war on terror to imprison and torture, among others, Canada’s Maher Arar. Then, when a civil war broke out in Syria during the Arab Spring, Assad became the leader of a pariah state. Now, it seems, there may be a degree of coordination between Assad’s fight with IS and ours (though the White House has denied it).

We are now part of imperial America’s outsized political and military presence in the Middle East, which may present large risks as well as potential rewards and moral ambiguities aplenty.

Before the Harper government extends our participation in the war with Islamic State, and before we curb more of our liberties here at home (with the parliamentary connivance of the Liberals, if not the NDP), we need to get a grip. What are the real dangers Canadians face and what is the best way of addressing them?

Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author:  Paul Adams

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