Why I think it’s important to acknowledge that “radical Islam” exists
It’s unfortunate that we need to use language like this at all, but the consequences of not acknowledging the problem are worse.
Originally written in June 2016, but hasn’t aged a day.
This is a very long piece, but I promise that everything I say in it has been carefully considered, and as of this moment I stand by every word, so I pray it proves useful to some of those who may happen across it. There is a point I want to gently but forthrightly make in response to those observers of the contemporary political scene who think it’s racist, bad, wrong for public figures to refer openly to a threat to the United States of America, the other nations of the West, and much of the rest of the world called "radical Islam".
I honestly believe that something which might accurately be called "radical Islam" is real. I don't especially like that specific term – I think the best way to put it is to call it "Islamic supremacism", to underline its several very meaningful, non-superficial similarities to white supremacy. It aspires to put straight cis Muslim men, whatever their pigment colour, in the same privileged position that straight cis white men now occupy, and to do so not just in the West but the whole Global South as well. The votaries of this ideology aspire to subjugate the whole world – women, LGBTQ people, people who choose in conscience to apostatize from Islam, and every kind of non-Muslim and heterodox Muslim on the planet. And what's more, in places such as Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, the Maghreb, Saudi Arabia, Iran, northern Nigeria, and of course Daesh territory, among other places, such a system is already operational, and in many cases, has been for centuries.
I also acknowledge that Islamophobia is real, and it is of course possible to argue vigorously and legitimately about how best to avoid it in discussing this issue. I myself have been accused of toeing the line, and I'm open to criticism. But I also refuse to stop talking about this issue altogether – that would too seriously violate my conscience, and would constitute a meaningful dereliction of duty, a duty that I do genuinely believe is incumbent upon everyone, including white folks. I think the idea that white folks should keep silent about this robs anti-supremacist Muslims of potentially useful allies, and I am aligned with a faction of anti-supremacist Muslim activists who firmly reject that line of thinking and who welcome reasoned and thoughtful white voices of support. I intend to continue to trust them.
I understand why people are sensitive to the importance of being careful in discussing these matters. It is always important to be nuanced – really, nuance is important to one or another degree in discussing anything. But I don't think it's possible to argue that such a thing as Islamic supremacism, independently and consciously chosen by the people who believe in it as a result of the way they interpret their responsibility before God, doesn't exist. There are many versions of Islam that are noble, and it is important to humanize Muslims and make sure they know we in the West value them. But I think it's completely nonsensical to argue whether or not something called radical or political or supremacist or jihadist Islam exists. It clearly does. It's based on wholly evil, mostly very ancient, interpretations of the Muslim texts, the Qur'án and Sunnah. It is not principally a bogey invented by white people as a tool or extension of colonialism – this is something crucial that Noam Chomsky, Edward Saïd, and their fans tend to get wrong, and that their critics, such as Efraim Karsh, Bat Ye'or, and Ibn Warraq, have for decades been getting right. American and Israeli foreign policy sometimes exacerbate the problem to some degree, but they definitely didn't create it. To deny the independent choice of the Muslim supremacists to act upon various ancient and modern interpretations of their sacred texts and choose to make war upon people they consider infidels on the basis of those interpretations is, I believe, to infantilize and dehumanize them. It removes their agency, and assumes, in Eurocentric fashion, that their motivations must be exactly the things that the Leftist analysts in question believe they should be, that their animating principles must necessarily be the ones the Leftist analysts believe make sense. It is a profound failure of imagination, and in this regard the right wing of political discourse has a much more distinguished record of assessing this issue accurately than does the Left. I believe this is indisputably true. Douglas Murray, Mark Steyn, Maajid Nawaz, and others have often had good things to say about this stuff. Personally, although I know this opinion is controversial, I also have more good than bad to say about Robert Spencer. Certain aspects of his analysis are flawed or even wrongheaded. But his opposition to sharí’ah and jihad is rooted primarily in earnest anti-totalitarianism – I trust the answer he gave me when I asked him directly by email, and I think he gets a lot more right than wrong when it comes to these questions. I will not apologize for saying that. I believe it can be proven.
And oftentimes those who analyze these things by reference to longstanding Leftist anticolonial nostrums also fall prey to Occidentalist demonization of the West, which deserves a lot of the critique it receives (especially, in my opinion, as it relates to the to the genocide of the First Nations, the Middle Passage slave trade, and the systemic mistreatment of American Blacks), but has also contributed significantly more good into the world than has been typically acknowledged in standard Leftist analysis. The civilization of the white West and that of the Jews of Israel are guilty of many serious and ongoing sins and crimes. But they are better societies than the ones the jihadists have in mind, and they deserve defense against the global jihad. So do the various diverse communities who live under threat of the system of institutionalized mistreatment known as dhimmitude, which often manifests itself even in contexts where the letter of Islamic law is not strictly applied. Christians of various kinds are in real danger because of this, especially in the Middle East, but also all across the world. So are Sikhs, Bahá'ís, Hindus, Amazigh, Kalasha, Baloch, Jains, Buddhists, heterodox Muslim groups (notably Ahmadis, Alevis, Rifais, Bektashis, Mouridis, Mevlevis, and Nizari Ismailis, among others), and, crucially, the indigenous Mesopotamian ethno-religious peoples we've been watching suffer particularly cruel injustices in Iraq and Syria of late – Yezidis, Yarsanis, Mandaeans, Shabaks, and those noble fighters for liberty, whose cause I have supported since I was 10 years old, and for whose freedom I ardently long, the Kurds.
I believe that when prominent members of marginalized communities and/or popular white Leftist commentators deny the reality of this problem, they're guilty of throwing under the bus many, many more innocent people than they remotely understand themselves to be hurting. I don't believe the fact that I am (at least arguably) white, and that some of the people I'm criticizing by saying this are not, invalidates the truth of this critique in the least. Indeed, I think anyone who believes that discourse ought to be conducted according to so simplistic and reductive a rubric is making a very basic mistake with several truly terrible consequences. Even if their motive is earnest work toward social justice and the righting of white supremacist wrongs. I believe it's absolutely important to be saying the things I'm saying, and those who believe the discourse would be better served if I and the people who agree with me shut our faces are very very very deeply mistaken.
To get back to the initial point. In view of all this, it actually raises rather than lowers my estimation of a politician when they use terms like "radical Islam", as long as they're also careful to draw fine distinctions and to ensure that ordinary Muslim citizens know they're welcome in the West. It makes me even happier when they attack supremacist groups which are not always necessarily violent, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not an Orientalist lie or an exaggeration to say that supremacist Muslims have in mind to conquer, subjugate, and destroy not just the West, but all of wider non-Muslim civilization. I make no apology for standing with those who want to defeat and destroy the global jihad.
It's important to me to make sure everyone reading this understands that I want every non-supremacist Muslim around the world to be safe, happy, and well. I am happy to stand in defense of Muslims and Islam, and to speak angrily against right-wing Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and atheist elements who want to demonize every form of Islam and to deny ordinary Muslims equality of rights and dignity under the law. It is particularly important to me to be of service to the cause of the oppressed Rohingya, Cham, and Uyghur Muslims of Myanmar, Cambodia, and China respectively. I ain’t here for the mosque-burners either, those people can go die.
I also want to carefully note that I reject the great majority of the activities of the American military-industrial complex in the Muslim world – I think the kinds of societies I'd like to see develop there closely resemble the Natan Sharansky vision, but war is not the way to get there. I think the West should be energetically propagandizing on behalf of, and funding, organizations like Khudi, Quilliam, Muslims Facing Tomorrow, the Islam-Israel Fellowship, the Muslim Network for Bahá'í Rights, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the Reform Party of Syria, and other liberal, humane, and reformist Muslim organizations, but should absolutely avoid dropping bombs at virtually all costs. Being someone whose bloodline would have been exterminated if the British, Americans, Russians, and others hadn't defeated Hitler, I can't forswear war completely. But I'm not in favour of bombing the hell out of Muslim nations for not doing the things the West wants them to do. There should be ways that the sensible centre and moderate left in the West, a faction with which I identify, can help government and civil society to oppose fanatics like Daesh, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Khomeinists, Al-Muhajiroun, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hamas, and others without resorting to military aggression, and I'm down to work with others to figure out what they are. I ain’t confident that I yet know. And above all, I want it understood that I will always stand against blanket demonization of Muslims and Islam. Always!
But some of those, people of colour and whites alike, who are considered "house Muslims", "native informants", neoliberals, mendacious Bush-style conservatives, neocolonialists, and sellouts are just tellers of the plain fucking truth. And some of what is considered demonization is transparently no such thing. It's awareness of the seriousness of the global jihadist problem, and frustration that so little is being done about it.
I know perfectly well that there exist people of goodwill, including potential interlocutors of mine, who will disagree with the conclusions I’ve drawn in this piece earnestly and in good conscience. Fair enough, I guess. But I also think that the number of prominent, powerful people who know the things I'm saying to be true – all of them, every word – but who insist upon lying about it because it serves their own agendas or their preconceived anticolonial worldviews, what have you, is very large, and I would like to gently but vociferously register my contempt for the horrible choices being made by such people, and my insistence instead upon standing with Zuhdi Jasser, Tahir Aslam Gora, Raheel Raza, Raquel Evita Saraswati, Salim Mansur, and the various other commentators, including many Muslims, who have refused to be silent about the real nature of this problem. It is a responsibility we will all have before us for the rest of our lives. My advice to any of those of you who, in defending Islam from every form of criticism at all costs, have ended up on the very real "regressive Left", and insisted upon lying about the real nature of this inhumane, supremacist, totalitarian movement, a movement which seriously and obviously threatens the life and livelihood of every innocent person of every kind on the planet, is to either join us on the right side of history, or fuck off.