By the time I got to the end of Ed Husain's The Islamist I felt frankly ashamed of quite how uninformed I have until now been about the struggle for the soul of contemporary Islam, about the diversity of traditions of which it is constituted, about its roots and principal teachings.
Husain tells the story of how he became a radical Islamist, describes his life as a Hizb ut-Tahrir activist in east London and explains why he ultimately left, finally returning to the spiritual sufi Islam of his parents.
What surprised me most about the book is quite how much I identified with the experience - the basic appeal of radical Islam will be familiar to anyone who has been drawn to or interacted with radical socialist politics. There is the yearning for answers and the self-confidence that a rigid ideological framework can provide. There is the secure sense of identity one gains by subsuming one's life within that of a broader social movement. There is the meaning that one's life attains from being part of something bigger than oneself, an international movement whose triumph is historically inevitable. There is the status and esteem one gains by being at the head of a mass movement - vanguardism is as central to radical Islamism as it is to Marxism Leninism.
The parallels between Marxist and Islamist doctrine are really quite extraordinary - for the global ummah, read international working class, for jihad, read class struggle, for imparting 'the concepts' into the ummah, read the raising of class consciousness, for the caliphate or the coming islamic state, read socialism. The fantastic and utopian madness of these groups is all too familiar - at one point an activist confidently, but nonetheless bizarrely, asserts that 'We will deliver the Islamic state through a military coup. Very soon, God willing. Our members orchestrated coups in the 1960s and 1970s in several Arab countries, but the time was not right. Now the time is ripe. The West will shake and crumble. The flag of Islam will rise above Downing Street...'.
The book is primarily the memoir of a young man in a relentless search for meaning and a more secure sense of identity and belonging. It powerfully articulates the appeal of global Islamism to a young British Muslim, lacking the firm national roots of his Bangladeshi parents and who equally does not fully feel at home in a Britain of racist taunts in the classroom.
The book is a very honest one - and at times this shocks. The racism, sexism, rampant homophobia and anti-semitism that we find within extreme Islamist groups are startling. Even after he has abandoned his activism, Husain admits that he still feels some sense of joy at the attacks of 9/11 - that it was a victory for 'us', a defeat for 'them' - and throughout the book the prevalence of the view that the attack on the Twin Towers was all part of a US/Zionist conspiracy is not something I had really appreciated.
This search for self-understanding and belonging eventually leads the author away from political Islamism and towards the spiritual Sufi tradition that his parents had sought to impart in his childhood. In fact if I have one criticism of the book it is that by about three quarters of the way through it all feels a little bit too neat and tidy - we have come full circle - from radical islamist firebrand, rejected by his family, to working in the City, a family reconciliation and joining the Labour Party. The narrative style - of the wiser older man looking back on the wayward youth - means that we know where we are going to end up and once he leaves extremism behind the story starts to lose its impetus.
And yet just when things seem to have run their course we have an extraordinarily rich and informative two chapters on his life in Syria and Saudi Arabia learning Arabic and working for the British Council. Again I felt ashamed of my ignorance of what is really going on in the Arab world and the struggle between different Islamic traditions that is ongoing there. It is in Saudi Arabia - a profoundly dysfunctional society whose dysfunctionality has major implications for the rest of the world, and which is propped up by the West - that the author comes to feel a deeper sense of belonging to his homeland - liberal, multicultural Britain with its mixed relationships, civil liberties and live and let live ethos.
For its informative use alone this book is a gem. If you want to understand the differences between Wahhabism, Sufism, Salafism and Islamism, then you should read this book. But more than that as a search to give ones life meaning and to gain a higher level of self-understanding, it is inspirational.
Ed Husain has written a very modern, very important tale.
Friday, 31 August 2007
Friday, 17 August 2007
Zigfrid on Campbell
I've almost got to the end of the Alastair Campbell diaries, which contrary to the dodgy reviews that came out 24 hours after publication are a great (if rather extended) read. I suspect the journos went straight to the big events and scanned them for any juicy new details - and there weren't any. But in doing so they missed the narrative flow, the character development and the day to day reality of living this insane and, ultimately for AC (everyone is known by their initials in this book), unliveable life.
The character development is brilliant. This book is in large part the story of a disfunctional love affair between TB and AC. It starts with TB clearly in the dependent role - he relies on AC almost by the hour for advice on the next move. Their meetings normally go something like: 'Saw TB. Fucking useless. Same old rigmarole. Round and round with circular thinking, endlessly going over the same ground until he's sure he's right.'
But as they move into office TB becomes notably the stronger character - ever more sure of his direction, less nervy, more self-confident. He seemingly copes well with the pressure of power. Of course we know as we read on that it is this hubristic self-certainty that leads directly to Iraq.
AC on the other hand does not cope with the pressure - he gets angrier, he cries, he falls out with Fiona ever more frequently, he gradually cracks up. By the end the relationship has become an abusive one - TB using emotional blackmail to keep AC in a post that is clearly playing havoc with his emotional and mental health.
There is almost a homoerotic aspect to the big relationships at the heart of the book. The cover is a picture of TB looking wistfully up at AC. There is TB's penchant for addressing AC in his underpants. The key moments in the book are the crunch meetings between four angry men with large egos, obessessed with each other, interlocked in an aggressive competition for power and influence - TB, AC, GB and PM. They fall out, they sulk, they shout at each other, they even come to blows - and yet they cannot live without each other. After every apparent break up they meet for little one on ones to re-state their respect for the other big men - AC and PM after PM's second fall, GB and AC, even PM and GB speak over the phone after GB has clearly colluded in PM's downfall and assure each other they haven't forgtten how crucial the other is to the project. Its almost sado-masochistic.
The book is also a study in clinical depression. On the eve of the 97 election victory, as Labour supporters get drunk on the scale of victory, AC declares himself completely flat - and he resents the delirious people around him. In 2001 its the same - he feels deeply depressed as Labour romps home - days later he asks himself 'why is everyone so happy while I feel like I'm swimming through shit?'. Asked by the switchboard how he feels, he says he feels 'suicidal and homicidal'. There is an ever increasing visceral hatred of the press and maybe therefore of part of himself.
Do we learn anything about the Blair years that we didn't know before? Yes. The Blair era was profoundly chaotic. TB is constantly demanding 'strategy' - but none ever emerges. They live from one day to the next. Of course we are presented here with the view of the spin doctor - and I suspect TB's or Jonathan Powell's memiors would read rather differently. But the lack of strategic thinking is so manifest one can't help thinking that this was government from the seat of their pants.
Also I had not quite appreciated how conservative TB really is. He is constantly trying to water down his government's more left-leaning edges. The minimum wage? Can't be too high, think about the impact on jobs. The unions? Just not serious people (people they don't rate are simply designated 'not serious people' or 'not professional people'). The public services? How can markets make them work better? Foreign policy? Hug them close. There is a wonderful point when TB declares to his inner circle, and I paraphrase, 'The problem with you lot is that you are too Labour - I'm different, I'm not really Labour at all'. One of AC's most appealing features is his Labour tribalism - he is clearly and pretty consistently to Blair's left, most explicitly on school choice.
Of course there are gaps. National security stuff obviously. The TB/GBs are largely edited out - which means that domestic policy is just absent. But of course the No10 and 11 turf war is clearly there, left unsaid in the background- we read of recoveries from arguments where the arguments are missing.
The one thing that nags me throughout though is what actually drives AC - I never really understand it. He is loyal to Labour - but why? Whats the agenda? Where's the ideological thread? There are glimpses of it in his opposition to selective education, there's a class loyalty there - but you never really understand why this guy gets up in the morning and busts a gut for TB. And maybe thats partly why he starts to lose it - because ultimately neither does he.
The character development is brilliant. This book is in large part the story of a disfunctional love affair between TB and AC. It starts with TB clearly in the dependent role - he relies on AC almost by the hour for advice on the next move. Their meetings normally go something like: 'Saw TB. Fucking useless. Same old rigmarole. Round and round with circular thinking, endlessly going over the same ground until he's sure he's right.'
But as they move into office TB becomes notably the stronger character - ever more sure of his direction, less nervy, more self-confident. He seemingly copes well with the pressure of power. Of course we know as we read on that it is this hubristic self-certainty that leads directly to Iraq.
AC on the other hand does not cope with the pressure - he gets angrier, he cries, he falls out with Fiona ever more frequently, he gradually cracks up. By the end the relationship has become an abusive one - TB using emotional blackmail to keep AC in a post that is clearly playing havoc with his emotional and mental health.
There is almost a homoerotic aspect to the big relationships at the heart of the book. The cover is a picture of TB looking wistfully up at AC. There is TB's penchant for addressing AC in his underpants. The key moments in the book are the crunch meetings between four angry men with large egos, obessessed with each other, interlocked in an aggressive competition for power and influence - TB, AC, GB and PM. They fall out, they sulk, they shout at each other, they even come to blows - and yet they cannot live without each other. After every apparent break up they meet for little one on ones to re-state their respect for the other big men - AC and PM after PM's second fall, GB and AC, even PM and GB speak over the phone after GB has clearly colluded in PM's downfall and assure each other they haven't forgtten how crucial the other is to the project. Its almost sado-masochistic.
The book is also a study in clinical depression. On the eve of the 97 election victory, as Labour supporters get drunk on the scale of victory, AC declares himself completely flat - and he resents the delirious people around him. In 2001 its the same - he feels deeply depressed as Labour romps home - days later he asks himself 'why is everyone so happy while I feel like I'm swimming through shit?'. Asked by the switchboard how he feels, he says he feels 'suicidal and homicidal'. There is an ever increasing visceral hatred of the press and maybe therefore of part of himself.
Do we learn anything about the Blair years that we didn't know before? Yes. The Blair era was profoundly chaotic. TB is constantly demanding 'strategy' - but none ever emerges. They live from one day to the next. Of course we are presented here with the view of the spin doctor - and I suspect TB's or Jonathan Powell's memiors would read rather differently. But the lack of strategic thinking is so manifest one can't help thinking that this was government from the seat of their pants.
Also I had not quite appreciated how conservative TB really is. He is constantly trying to water down his government's more left-leaning edges. The minimum wage? Can't be too high, think about the impact on jobs. The unions? Just not serious people (people they don't rate are simply designated 'not serious people' or 'not professional people'). The public services? How can markets make them work better? Foreign policy? Hug them close. There is a wonderful point when TB declares to his inner circle, and I paraphrase, 'The problem with you lot is that you are too Labour - I'm different, I'm not really Labour at all'. One of AC's most appealing features is his Labour tribalism - he is clearly and pretty consistently to Blair's left, most explicitly on school choice.
Of course there are gaps. National security stuff obviously. The TB/GBs are largely edited out - which means that domestic policy is just absent. But of course the No10 and 11 turf war is clearly there, left unsaid in the background- we read of recoveries from arguments where the arguments are missing.
The one thing that nags me throughout though is what actually drives AC - I never really understand it. He is loyal to Labour - but why? Whats the agenda? Where's the ideological thread? There are glimpses of it in his opposition to selective education, there's a class loyalty there - but you never really understand why this guy gets up in the morning and busts a gut for TB. And maybe thats partly why he starts to lose it - because ultimately neither does he.
Thursday, 9 August 2007
Heroin and utility
There is no issue of public policy about which the political class, the media and society as a whole are in as much of a state of denial as Britain's drugs laws.
Apparently we are waging a war on drugs. But if this is a war, then it is being comprehensively lost. The truth is that people fairly obviously like taking drugs and millions of British citizens will continue to take them regularly regardless of the law. You can't effectively prohibit something this widely consumed - in fact if the government really wanted to win the war through law enforcement it would suspend our liberties, stop and search on every street and impose life imprisonment for possession and capital punishment for supply. I believe this has worked successfully in Singapore.
But I'm guessing even the most ardent supporters of the war on drugs would flinch at the measures required to secure victory - living in a democracy with millions of recreational drug users and tens of thousands of drug addicts is better than living under martial law without them.
But of course beneath the military rhetoric the government recognises it cannot eliminate all illegal drug use - instead it seeks to reduce harm by focusing law enforcement on the most dangerous drugs. So this is an avowedly utilitarian approach - reduce harm, increase happiness. And there can only ever be a consequentialist approach to the ethics of drug use - no one is saying that 'taking x is inherently wrong' - its not like murder. It is wrong because its consequences are thought to be harmful - to the health of the individual and to society as whole.
Of course it's when one really starts to apply a utilitarian calculus to these things that the true absurdity of the current position reveals itself. Look at the classification system - any reasonable system oriented towards reducing harm would rate alcohol as far more harmful both to health and social order than cannabis or ecstacy. But of course the system is not really rational - it is based on the legacy of prohibition, itself the legacy of moral panic.
But the utilitarian would not simply re-jig the classification system. If Bentham or Mill applied their minds to this they would surely end prohibition, decriminalise drugs and prescribe heroin on the NHS.
'Prescribe heroin?!' It has to be the least worse option. Most young people sleeping rough on our streets, most people begging, most people selling their bodies for sex, a massive proportion of burglars and small time thieves are addicted to heroin. They do these apparently irrational things because they have no alternative - or at least the alternative, to go without heroin, is so awful it is not really an option at all - the stomach cramps, the flu, the sensation of worms crawling under your the whole of your skin - the withdrawl symptoms from heroin are so truly dreadful that people are forced to steal, to have sex with strangers, to beg on the streets - it is an addiction so intense that, once addicted, most people will not stop taking it. They don't take it because they like it, they take it because its the only way they feel normal. We know this - but what do we do in the name of reducing harm? We prohibit the substance on which they depend and force them into a life of misery and crime.
It is unquestionably the case that less harm would be caused by prescribing it - people could take it when they need it, in safe conditions, they wouldn't need to steal to do so, they could live pretty standard lives. And evidence from Switzerland shows that when you start prescribing it, people eventually reduce their prescription, crime falls dramatically and fewer people start taking it in the first place. But even for those addicts who stick with it their whole lives - surely this is better than sleeping on the streets, begging, stealing and all the rest of the misery that thousands of our fellow citizens, addicted to heroin for all sorts of dreadful reasons, suffer today?
Nothing would do more to transform our social fabric so quickly, nothing would do more to reduce harm, and nothing is less likely to happen.
Apparently we are waging a war on drugs. But if this is a war, then it is being comprehensively lost. The truth is that people fairly obviously like taking drugs and millions of British citizens will continue to take them regularly regardless of the law. You can't effectively prohibit something this widely consumed - in fact if the government really wanted to win the war through law enforcement it would suspend our liberties, stop and search on every street and impose life imprisonment for possession and capital punishment for supply. I believe this has worked successfully in Singapore.
But I'm guessing even the most ardent supporters of the war on drugs would flinch at the measures required to secure victory - living in a democracy with millions of recreational drug users and tens of thousands of drug addicts is better than living under martial law without them.
But of course beneath the military rhetoric the government recognises it cannot eliminate all illegal drug use - instead it seeks to reduce harm by focusing law enforcement on the most dangerous drugs. So this is an avowedly utilitarian approach - reduce harm, increase happiness. And there can only ever be a consequentialist approach to the ethics of drug use - no one is saying that 'taking x is inherently wrong' - its not like murder. It is wrong because its consequences are thought to be harmful - to the health of the individual and to society as whole.
Of course it's when one really starts to apply a utilitarian calculus to these things that the true absurdity of the current position reveals itself. Look at the classification system - any reasonable system oriented towards reducing harm would rate alcohol as far more harmful both to health and social order than cannabis or ecstacy. But of course the system is not really rational - it is based on the legacy of prohibition, itself the legacy of moral panic.
But the utilitarian would not simply re-jig the classification system. If Bentham or Mill applied their minds to this they would surely end prohibition, decriminalise drugs and prescribe heroin on the NHS.
'Prescribe heroin?!' It has to be the least worse option. Most young people sleeping rough on our streets, most people begging, most people selling their bodies for sex, a massive proportion of burglars and small time thieves are addicted to heroin. They do these apparently irrational things because they have no alternative - or at least the alternative, to go without heroin, is so awful it is not really an option at all - the stomach cramps, the flu, the sensation of worms crawling under your the whole of your skin - the withdrawl symptoms from heroin are so truly dreadful that people are forced to steal, to have sex with strangers, to beg on the streets - it is an addiction so intense that, once addicted, most people will not stop taking it. They don't take it because they like it, they take it because its the only way they feel normal. We know this - but what do we do in the name of reducing harm? We prohibit the substance on which they depend and force them into a life of misery and crime.
It is unquestionably the case that less harm would be caused by prescribing it - people could take it when they need it, in safe conditions, they wouldn't need to steal to do so, they could live pretty standard lives. And evidence from Switzerland shows that when you start prescribing it, people eventually reduce their prescription, crime falls dramatically and fewer people start taking it in the first place. But even for those addicts who stick with it their whole lives - surely this is better than sleeping on the streets, begging, stealing and all the rest of the misery that thousands of our fellow citizens, addicted to heroin for all sorts of dreadful reasons, suffer today?
Nothing would do more to transform our social fabric so quickly, nothing would do more to reduce harm, and nothing is less likely to happen.
Saturday, 4 August 2007
Healey on Owen
When he was born all the good fairies gave him every virtue: 'You'll be beautiful, you'll be intelligent, you'll have charm and charisma.' And the bad fairy came along and tapped him on the shoulder and said, ''But you'll be a shit'. That was his trouble.
The Guardian, 4th August 2007.
Wonderful.
The Guardian, 4th August 2007.
Wonderful.
Healey on Blair
Blair's great skill was personal charisma - what used to be called bullshit. Merde de beouf. Whereas with Brown, there's nothing of that whatsoever. He's got a very good brain - better than Blair's - and a very good sense of direction, which I think Blair didn't really have. Blair, in the end, was rather like Wilson: bullshit and nothing else, whereas Brown has a very solid understanding of what he's up to.
The Guardian, 4th August 2007.
The Guardian, 4th August 2007.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Gordon Brown - philosopher king
I have been embarrassingly effusive in my praise of Gordon Brown in recent weeks. If you find me drunk in a bar or at a party at any point this summer I will probably be saying things like 'but he's so strong', 'he's got gravitas', 'he's solid', 'he's so strong', 'he's serious', 'he's recently written two books', 'he's so strong'.
My sycophancy is frankly nauseous. I object to it. Its cringe worthy. But, reader, I can't help it. I love Gordon Brown.
Whereas Blair bent with the wind, he is long term; whereas Blair hated the party, Brown is of the party and has a profound respect for it; whereas Blair chased millionaires and went on stupid holidays with right wing crooks and b list pop stars, Brown is going on a walking holiday in Scotland and travels economy class; whereas Blair was the first to reach for the authoritarian gimmick, Brown takes our liberties seriously. Don't get me wrong Blair had his good points - but I feel happier under this leader than I ever did under Tony. It just feels like a Labour government in a way that it never did before. We have a leader whose intuitive response to a sudden crisis or a straight policy choice would be the same as mine - which I just never felt was the case with Blair.
The man's a socialist god damn it - a gradualist, pragmatic, moderate one of course - but its written like Blackpool rock all the way through him.
But its not just that, its also that the man is a thinker, an intellectual. Not a professional intellectual in the sense of a university academic nor an intellectual in the school of Jean Paul Satre or Jacques Derrida - public preachers, whose role is to test the boundaries, provoke and stir up debate.
But, as John Lloyd put it in the last issue of Prospect, Brown is an intellectual in the sense of a thinker who thinks in order to act - praxis as Marxists used to put it, interpreting the world in order to change it. Brown reads voraciously and writes his own speeches, he thinks carefully about the great forces changing our world and considers how the social democrat in power can respond. He has strategy - he knows where he wants to get and he thinks carefully and innovatively about how to get there. After ten years of Blair's often impulsive and erratic efforts to push the party into policies it intuitively opposed, on the spurious grounds of 'modernisation', this is the sort of serious mainstream leadership the left needs.
And its true that he has written two books recently - one on courageous political figures like Mandela and another on ordinary folk who make a difference in their communities. I'm told by sources with a good claim to know that he had a strong hand in writing them - its quite extraordinary.
Its strange isn't it? The British don't really go in for intellectuals - unlike the French, we tend to resent people 'who are too clever by half', we don't tend to vote for politicians who make high falutin speeches, we are suspiscious of grand ideology. And yet we appear to be warming to the man - his status as thinker shows his depth, his beef, his substance. Cameron looks weak and lightweight in contrast - an old Etonian who seems to want to rule like most of his class for the game, for the crack, because they're 'worth it'. Gordon Brown is a serious leader for serious times.
So, now you've read this - try to avoid me at parties this summer.
My sycophancy is frankly nauseous. I object to it. Its cringe worthy. But, reader, I can't help it. I love Gordon Brown.
Whereas Blair bent with the wind, he is long term; whereas Blair hated the party, Brown is of the party and has a profound respect for it; whereas Blair chased millionaires and went on stupid holidays with right wing crooks and b list pop stars, Brown is going on a walking holiday in Scotland and travels economy class; whereas Blair was the first to reach for the authoritarian gimmick, Brown takes our liberties seriously. Don't get me wrong Blair had his good points - but I feel happier under this leader than I ever did under Tony. It just feels like a Labour government in a way that it never did before. We have a leader whose intuitive response to a sudden crisis or a straight policy choice would be the same as mine - which I just never felt was the case with Blair.
The man's a socialist god damn it - a gradualist, pragmatic, moderate one of course - but its written like Blackpool rock all the way through him.
But its not just that, its also that the man is a thinker, an intellectual. Not a professional intellectual in the sense of a university academic nor an intellectual in the school of Jean Paul Satre or Jacques Derrida - public preachers, whose role is to test the boundaries, provoke and stir up debate.
But, as John Lloyd put it in the last issue of Prospect, Brown is an intellectual in the sense of a thinker who thinks in order to act - praxis as Marxists used to put it, interpreting the world in order to change it. Brown reads voraciously and writes his own speeches, he thinks carefully about the great forces changing our world and considers how the social democrat in power can respond. He has strategy - he knows where he wants to get and he thinks carefully and innovatively about how to get there. After ten years of Blair's often impulsive and erratic efforts to push the party into policies it intuitively opposed, on the spurious grounds of 'modernisation', this is the sort of serious mainstream leadership the left needs.
And its true that he has written two books recently - one on courageous political figures like Mandela and another on ordinary folk who make a difference in their communities. I'm told by sources with a good claim to know that he had a strong hand in writing them - its quite extraordinary.
Its strange isn't it? The British don't really go in for intellectuals - unlike the French, we tend to resent people 'who are too clever by half', we don't tend to vote for politicians who make high falutin speeches, we are suspiscious of grand ideology. And yet we appear to be warming to the man - his status as thinker shows his depth, his beef, his substance. Cameron looks weak and lightweight in contrast - an old Etonian who seems to want to rule like most of his class for the game, for the crack, because they're 'worth it'. Gordon Brown is a serious leader for serious times.
So, now you've read this - try to avoid me at parties this summer.
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