U.K.: BRITISH MOSLEMS SHOULD BE "AMBASSADORS OF BRITAIN"

Beckett in terror plea to Muslims

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett is to call on mainstream Muslims to "stand up and be counted" in the struggle against terrorism.

The UK's 1.6 million Muslims have a "special ability" to counter extremist propaganda about a "clash of civilisations" between Islam and the West, she will say.

And she will urge them to act as "ambassadors for Britain" by speaking up about the reality of life in the UK when they visit countries with large Muslim populations.

Speaking to the foreign affairs think tank the Royal United Services Institute in London on Thursday, Mrs Beckett will warn that the threat from international Islamic terrorism "remains serious and is increasing".

And she will acknowledge that the situation in Iraq is "dangerous and volatile", with a "very real risk of even greater instability and bloodshed than we have already seen".

But she will reject claims that Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East are symptoms of a wider struggle between Islam and the West.

"It's all too easy to buy into the terrorist rhetoric of a great clash of civilisations and of a moment of crisis," she is expected to say.

"I am not underestimating the gravity of the threat we face. But let us deny the terrorists the historical importance they claim to themselves. They have no right to speak for the great and noble faith of Islam.

"This is a not a battle between civilisations but a stand-off between the whole of society on the one hand and a fairly small and particularly nasty bunch of murderers and criminals on the other."

Mrs Beckett is expected to add: "I want to ... put out a challenge to all those who reject violence to stand up and be counted."


Lee Harris in his Policy Review piece title "Jihad Then and Now" takes on the idea of the "Clash of Civilizations" and says that it is misnamed, because if it was just a clash, the armies of the West and Islam would clash, the result would be a crushing defeat by Western armies upon their opponents. What we are experiencing is much different, Islamic forces do not want to clash with the armies of the West what they want is the "destruction and dissolution of politics as we have come to understand it", Harris refers to this as the "Crash of Civilization" (take note of the singular of the word civilization)...

To get a fuller understanding of what Lee Harris is saying you may want to read the following excerpt and also read "Jihad Then and Now" in its entirety:

...

For the Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun, the conquest by the warlike Arabs of more advanced yet weak and decadent empires represented a deep historical pattern. When a civilization becomes too sedentary, too decadent, too forgetful of the struggle for existence that originally put it on top, it becomes ripe for conquest by those who are still warlike and driven by a fanatical sense of mission. Thus, he noted, superior wealth and superior civilization were no guarantee that those who possessed them could hold on to them in the face of small but determined bands of fanatics united by a sense of what he called “group feeling.” In short, for Ibn Khaldun, jihad can be devastatingly effective even when it is waged against a civilization that, in material terms, is far in advance of the jihadists.

Can the same thing happen again today — or over the course of the next few generations? Is such an idea even thinkable? Or should those who raise such questions be dismissed as alarmists and hysteria-mongers?

Here we can see again the most serious flaw in the clash-of-civilizations model. If jihad were being used simply as a means of conducting Clausewitzian warfare, it would indeed be a relic of the past about which none of us in the West would need to worry overmuch. If Muslim civilization only decided to clash with ours, we could clash back, and with overwhelming military force. If we were confronting the armies of Omar or of Tamerlane, there is little doubt which side would secure the victory. But the objective of jihad is not Clausewitzian politics continued by other means. Its objective is the destruction and dissolution of politics as we have come to understand it in the West. The jihadists are not interested in winning in our sense of the word. They can succeed simply by making the present world order unworkable, by creating conditions in which politics-as-usual is no longer an option, forcing upon the West the option either of giving in to their demands or descending into anarchy and chaos.

...

It is tempting to call this approach the crash of civilization: Those who take it want to destroy the status quo, and there is nothing those who represent and benefit from the status quo can do to bribe them or tempt them or seduce them away from pursuing their goal.

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It does not take a modern, sophisticated army to bring down a fragile and delicately balanced political order. The German army, even under the restrictions placed upon it by the Treaty of Versailles, could easily have crushed the Nazi movement if it had been a question merely of brute force. But those who controlled the army did not want to risk the perilous descent into chaos that such a move would inevitably have entailed. As for those who wished to overthrow the status quo, they were hoping for precisely such a descent into chaos — it was anarchy alone, they believed, that could give them power, although in this case, just the fear of anarchy was enough.

The chief strength of any established order is order. Order means organization, and organization is always to the advantage of those who possess it when they come into conflict with mobs and paramilitary rabble like the German sa. Therefore, it is always in the interest of the established order to avoid risking disorder — yet those who have no interest in preserving order, who are eager to destroy it, will welcome disorder for its own sake. It is by destroying order, by undermining the normal rules and regulations that preserve order, that those who wish to overthrow the status quo succeed. They do not need to achieve the same degree of force that is the monopoly of the established order. In the crash-of-civilization paradigm — contrary to Clausewitzian warfare — the enemy of a particular established order does not need to match it in organizational strength and effectiveness. It needs only to make the established order reluctant to use its great strength out of the understandable fear that by plunging into civil war it will itself be jeopardized. This fear of anarchy — the ultimate fear for those who embrace the politics of reason — can be used to paralyze the political process to the point at which the established order is helpless to control events through normal political channels and power is no longer in the hands of the establishment but lies perilously in the streets.

In short, on the clash-of-civilization model, the revival of jihad would not be threatening; on the crash-of-civilization model, however, things look quite different. The jihadists do not need to “win” in the battle against the West; it is enough if they can force the West to choose between a dreaded plunge back into the Law of the Jungle and acceding to their demands. This is a formula that has worked many times before and may work again.

...

All I can say to any of my readers, is get this article by Lee Harris and read the whole thing.

Pertinent Links:

1) Beckett in terror plea to Muslims

2) Jihad Then and Now

3) Lee Harris & Lee Harris

4) Civilization and Its Enemies, The Next Stage of History