Saturday, August 22, 2026
From Ian:
Islamism and the silence of the ‘progressives’
Islamism and the silence of the ‘progressives’
The confusion concerning the right is almost amusing. Islamism is a movement of the reactionary right upon every criterion anybody has yet proposed: theocratic, restorationist, preoccupied with sexual order and the obedience of women; anti-Semitic across the greater part of its strands, and hostile to pluralism as a matter of doctrine rather than of temper. Abul A’la Maududi (1903-1979), born in what would become Pakistan, wrote that his Islamic state would bear a resemblance to the fascist and Communist states, and that no man might regard any department of his affairs as private. Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb prescribed offensive jihad in order to establish divine authority over the whole Earth. These are not caricatures assembled by enemies but published positions, argued at length by Islamism’s own principal theorists. They would be astonished to discover that European academics account them ‘progressive’ by default.Before lecturing Israel, Britain and France should look in the mirror
That so many liberals, leftists and ‘progressives’ should prove incapable of recognising a reactionary movement unless its adherents happen to be European is a parochialism so profound that it has become invisible to those it afflicts. It rests on the unexamined premise that reaction is a white speciality, and whatever that premise may be, it is not anti-racism.
We have been here before, and recently enough that novelty cannot be pleaded. In June 2020, Khairi Saadallah murdered three men in a park in Reading, 17 days after his release from prison. His defence advanced mental illness. Mr Justice Sweeney rejected it, and found the killings to be terrorism, committed for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. The men were James Furlong, David Wails and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, three friends who had gone out to enjoy a summer evening in Forbury Gardens. Ritchie-Bennett had lost his husband to cancer six years earlier, while Furlong left a long-term partner. The local Pride organisation knew all three of them. Whether their sexuality had anything to do with why they were chosen was raised at the time and then, by some quiet process of attrition, stopped being raised at all. I too had forgotten their names until the days after the Christopher Street Day attack.
One academic writing on LinkedIn, offered warmly and I am sure sincerely, claimed that when there are atrocities in the Middle East to be marched against, it is Muslims who turn out alongside gay and bisexual and women’s groups, and that all of us ought to bear this in mind. Two things are wrong with that. Firstly, there’s the flippancy of producing it at all within hours of this attack, as though the pressing question were which alliances must now be shielded from the consequences. The second and larger problem is that the claim is not true, except in a few streets in Western Europe. Muslims and gay people do march together in London and Berlin; nobody disputes it. But homosexuality remains a criminal offence across much of the Muslim world, and a capital one in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania, Brunei and the northern states of Nigeria. A fact about who attends demonstrations in two European capitals has been offered as though it were evidence about a doctrine practised, and enforced, on three continents.
There is worse in the sentence, and I doubt it was intended. Muslims stand alongside gay people, it is stated, as though these were two separate populations, drawn up in ranks against a common enemy, with nobody standing in both. The formulation has nowhere to put a gay Muslim: which is to say nowhere to put the person with more at stake here than anybody arguing about it. Berlin has a queer Muslim congregation, and a mosque founded by a woman who needs police protection in order to run it, and some of those in the Tiergarten on that Saturday night last month will have been both things at once. Nobody decided to leave them out, it is simply that the framework herein has no place for them, so it leaves them out automatically, and it will do so again the next time somebody drives a van into a crowd.
There will be another case of this kind. When it comes, nobody should have to choose between the collective indictment of Muslims and the collective acquittal of Islamism. The first is bigotry and the second is a lie. Name the dead before discussing the electoral consequences of their deaths. State what the murderer believed, who preached it to him and what the authorities already knew. Defend Muslims against reprisals, certainly; but defend also the gay, female, secular, liberal and apostate among them against the reactionaries who claim ownership of their lives. These are not competing obligations and only the dishonest have an interest in pretending that they are.
And do this before the usual people arrive to explain that candour will assist the far right. Nothing has assisted the far right more reliably than the surrender to it of facts that everybody else is too frightened to mention. The next atrocity will be followed by the same liturgy: grief, warning, euphemism, evasion and, finally, amnesia. It need not be. Refuse the first euphemism. Ask the forbidden question before the fanatic supplies the only answer. And when reaction comes disguised as religion, extend it neither the courtesy of silence nor the compliment of lowered expectations. One is not obliged to choose which eye to close. Next time, keep both open.
France and Britain like to lecture Israel in the name of Western values. That is precisely why it is time to hold up a mirror to them: Both countries are undergoing profound demographic, cultural and political changes, while political Islam and radical movements are exerting growing influence on public and political discourse. A group does not need to become a majority to influence political parties, elections and foreign policy.Beware Turkish tanks on the Golan
The beginnings of this process can already be seen today, including in the debate over Israel and the Middle East. This does not mean, of course, that every Muslim is an extremist, nor that an Islamist government will take power in London or Paris tomorrow morning. The argument is different: No one can guarantee who will govern either country 30 or 50 years from now, or what values those governments will uphold. Governments change. Nuclear arsenals remain.
Europe, in fact, is currently moving in the opposite direction. France is strengthening its nuclear deterrent and seeking to expand its role in the continent's security. Britain and France are deepening their cooperation, while Germany is moving toward closer strategic cooperation with the French deterrent. But serious security policy does not consider only who controls a weapon today. It must also ask who could inherit it tomorrow.
France and Britain should therefore begin, now, a long, responsible and controlled process that would ultimately lead them to voluntarily relinquish their national nuclear arsenals. Not tomorrow morning, not unilaterally and not at the cost of abandoning Europe's security.
Precisely because such disarmament could take many years, the decision should be made while these countries are still governed by leaders seeking to preserve the liberal and democratic values of the West. Those who wish to defend Western values must also protect the West's most dangerous weapons against the possibility that, one day, they could fall under the control of governments that do not share those values.
Germany bears a particular responsibility in this regard. Germany's commitment to "Never Again" cannot be merely a remembrance of the past. It must also mean an enduring responsibility for the security of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Exactly because Berlin is now deepening its nuclear-deterrence dialogue with Paris, it should lead Europe in asking the question no one wants to confront: Is it wise to build the continent's security for the coming decades around national nuclear arsenals when we cannot know the future political character of the countries that will control them?
At the moment, NATO cannot afford a complete rupture with a country that controls the Turkish Straits and hosts US nuclear weapons. But at the very least, a "reciprocity standard" should be applied to Turkey. Contracts with that country must be tied to its foreign policy and military conduct.
Human rights standards should pertain to Turkey too. Erdoğan has jailed more journalists, judges, generals, and academics than any other country in the world, including China. He is building 40,000 new jail cells to handle the overload. He is creating an authoritarian system to suit his imperial purposes.
So, Erdoğan needs to be cut down to size, and his madly ferocious foreign and military policies put in a box. American and European leaders who prioritize stability in the region ought to weigh in against Erdoğan's overly ambitious and aggressive schemes.
They should not be censuring Israel when it necessarily acts to drive Erdoğan back from the brink.
Remember: The past three years of devastating enemy attacks on Israel taught Israelis an important lesson – which is the need to maintain a proactive defense posture including strategic ascendancy against enemies near and far.
Consequently, Israel will not return to the containment policies of recent decades that prioritized restraint and diplomacy over enemy degradation and military triumph. This approach allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly called periods of "stability."
That approach blew up in Israel's face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran's nuclear bomb program to near completion and Iran's ballistic missile array to near-annihilation-of-Israel potential.
The lessons Israel has learned apply to Turkey too. From Idlib to Erbil, Israel will attack, if necessary, not defend. It will insist on jihadist-free buffer zones along its borders with Lebanon and Syria. It will not tolerate the placement on its doorstep of equilibrium-breaking strategic weapon systems nor abide the advance of threatening foreign armies and navies.
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