Clash Of Fundamentalisms Review. Modern Society.

Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

The Clash of Fundamentalisms Crusades, Jihads and Modernity Tariq Ali 1. Tariq Ali has been a prominent figure in the anti-war movement and ‘The Clash of Fundamentalisms’ gives vent to his anti-imperialism. Targeting particularly "the most dangerous fundamentalism today, the ‘mother of all fundamentalisms’, “The US empire” as his argument. Tariq explains how it has used the tragedy of attacks on America on the 11th of September 2001 to continue to pursue their own agenda. In his Introduction, the author sites that, politically, the United States decided early on to use the tragedy as a moral lever to re-map the world. Militarily, its bases now cover every continent. There is a US military presence in 120 of the 189 member states of the United Nations. (Introduction, Page xiii. Ali, 2002) In his acknowledgements, Tariq Ali explains that this book is an attempt to explain why much of the world doesn’t see the American Empire as ‘good’. In the clash between a religious fundamentalism – itself the product of modernity – and an imperial fundamentalism determined to ‘discipline the world’, it is necessary to oppose both and create a space in the world of Islam and the West in which freedom of thought and imagination can be defended without fear of persecution or death’. Tariq wanted to write of the setting, of the history that preceeded the 9/11 attacks, of a world that is treated virtually as a forbidden subject in an increasingly parochial that celebrates the virtues of ignorance, promotes a culture of stupidity and extols the present as a process without an alternative, implying that we all live in a consumerist paradise (Page 1, Ali, 2002) He wants to ask and explain why so many people in non-Islamic parts of the world were unmoved by the attacks, and why so many celebrated? He is careful to ensure that the necessity to explain these reactions does not mean justifying the atrocity of 11 September. “It is an attempt to move beyond the simplistic argument that ‘they hate us because they are jealous of our freedoms and our wealth’. This is simply not the case” (Page 3, Ali, 2002) He puts US propaganda into perspective by questioning why the

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

attacks gained the most Media attention of any bombing or attack in history, why the 3,000 fatalities as a result of that day are more important than the 250,000 casulty rate the US State Department deemed acceptable before launching what the Pentagon boasted as the “greastest percision bombing aerial assault in history” (Weinberger, 2005. Page 65) on Iraq. (Introduction, Page xiv. Ali, 2002) Ali rhetorically questions why there is never any danger of any US politician or military commander being charged with war crimes, and answers that the “Empire situates itself above International law.” (Introduction, Page xiv. Ali, 2002) Written before the recent bloody assault on Iraq, Tariq’s book attacks Bush and Blair’s justifications for the war; and, anticipating current arguments over weapons of mass destruction, Tariq mockingly declares that all "the talk of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ consists of fairy tales designed to frighten the children/citizens at home". Ali claims that few in Europe believe that Iraq poses a threat to any other country. “As the world now knows, Iraq had no such arsenal, and posed no threat to the US” (Weber, 2006) Ali cleverly puts things into perspective by citing that the last time Iraq used chemical weapons was against Iran in the 1980s and they had been supplied by the United States. Ronald Reagan, former President, has “despatched a special convoy to Baghdad to signal the approval of the White House.” (Introduction, Page xvi. Ali, 2002) This book is not primarily about 9/11 and its consequences, however, rather it surveys the history proceeding those events, what Tariq describes as a virtually "forbidden subject". Tariq refers to the "dead-end of market-fundamentalism", and warns: "If Western politicians remain ignorant of the causes and carry on as before, there will be repetitions". Central to the book is an analysis of Islam, "its founding myths, its origins, its history, its culture, its riches, its divisions" (Page 4. Ali, 2002). Ali states that he wants to investigate why it has not undergone a Reformation? How did it become so petrified? He explores different stems that have evolved from the Islamic faith such as Ottomanism and Wahhabism and what Islamist politics represents today. Tariq deals proficiently with a range of issues vital to an understanding of the world today. Tariq combines a historical analysis with his personal reminiscences, which creates reader empathy. In the first half of Part1, Tariq Ali gives a genealogy of the heritage of 2

Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

Islamic civilization. Taking us from his personal introduction of an atheist childhood, to Islamic learning, through the days of the Prophet Muhammad and his early conquests to the Crusades and the Ottoman Empire. These are followed by two other chapters on the roles of believers within the Islamic faith and the role of women and sexuality. In Part II of the book Ali explains the way a puritanical strand of Islam ends up making common cause with the imperialistic designs of the West. He titles Part II “One Hundred Years of Servitude” and quotes Abdelrahman Munifs’s ‘Cities of Salt’ to describe his feelings of the time. “ By God, Your Excellency, we were as happy as we could be before those devils came along. Every day it gets worse. You know, Your excellency, that the Americans aren’t doing it for God.”Once again Ali makes sure to instill in the minds of his readers America’s continual agenda throughout history and into the future. The author details the emergence of Zionism and Britain’s encouragement of it, the experiments with socialism in Arab countries such as Egypt and Syria, the trauma caused by the 1967 war, the rise and fall of Anwar Sadat and the Shah. The result was that during the last decades of the twentieth century virtually the whole Middle East was submerged in an 'Ocean of Terror'. He entitles a chapter ‘The Kingdom of Corruption’ which explains western take-over of Saudi-Arabia. In it he describes how the United States, determined not to permit Britain the entirety of riches beneath the sand, sent US oil prospectors to establish contact and they merged Standard Oil, Texaco and Mobil to form the American Arabian Oil Company and in 1938, the production of oil began. (Page 85, Ali, 2002) In Part III, Tariq Ali shifts his attention back to his region of origin: South Asia. He explains how the tensions between India and Pakistan can be traced back to the partition of the formerly British India. During the run-up to independence the leaders of the Congress Party and Muslim League did not envisage the horror and atrocities to which they would expose the people they were suppose to represent. Later on it lead to a bloody war in Bangladesh, Ali qualifies the Kashmir issue as the “unfinished business of partition” (Page 232. Ali, 2002) Continued interference by the post World War II superpowers did nothing to improve the situation. Pakistani and Indian politics

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

became hopelessly corrupt, even before the situation in Afghanistan was to become completely out of hand. While in the previous parts the author has tried to give an explanation for the rage that is holding large parts of the Islamic world in its grip, his final section starts with a chapter entitled `A Short-Course History of US Imperialism'. In many instances Ali hits the nail on the head - the doctrine of Neo-Liberalism is just as fundamentalist in character as Islamic radicalism. In this chapter he talks of US imperialism from the very beginning. He notes that what is now the United States, was, for two and a half centuries, remained a self-sufficient world. He notes the rise of US power as a comination of internal imperialism (the genocide of the native population) and the armed trading of slaves on the African coast. Ali quotes President Conant of Harvard Universitys interview with the New York Tribune in Herald in 1948 “This nation, unlike most others, has not evolved from a state founded on military conquest. We have developed our greatness in a period in which a fluid society overran a rich and empty continent” (Warde, 1949) Ali questions in whose eyes was the continent empty. “Were the Indian wars not real? Were they phantom struggles?”( Page 284, Ali, 2002) He implies that perhaps Protestant fundamentalism provided a moral justification for large-scale land theft as well as the mass murder of the different native tribes that held the land in common. At the end of his book he concludes “Here lies the challenge. We are in desperate need of an Islamic Reformation that sweeps away the crazed conservatism and backwardness of the fundamentalists but, more than that, opens up the world of Islam to new ideas which are seen to be more advanced than what is currently on offer form the West. This would necessitate a rigid separation of state and mosque; the dissolution of the clergy; the assertion by Muslim intellectuals of their right to interpret the texts that are collective property of Islamic culture as a whole; the freedom to think freely and rationally and the freedom of imagination. Unless we move in this direction we will be doomed to re-living old battles, and thinking not of a richer and humane future, but of how we can more from the present to the past. It is an unacceptable vision”

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

2. This study has thought me a great deal about the world we live in. First and foremostly – the prelude to the September 11 attacks. I now know that the attacks were for a reason. They were a long awaited taste for the US of their own medicine. “There is a universal truth that pundit and politician need to acknowledge: Slaves and peasants do not always obey their masters.”(Page 4. Ali, 2002). I was startled to discover that, the world over, celebrations insued following the attacks. Ali cites examples from all continents of the world of muslims and non-muslims celebrating what so many had long been waiting for. Tariq quotes a conversation he had with a New York taxi driver who was originally from Central America after the attacks: “Ali: I just wondered whether you were near the Twin Towers that day. Taxi driver : No, I wasn’t but I wouldn’t have cared if I was. Ali: What do you mean? Taxi driver: It wouldn’t have mattered if I had got killed. The important thing is that they were hit. I was happy. You know why? Ali: No. Taxi driver: You know how many people they’ve killed in Central America? Ali: Tell me. Taxi driver: Hundreds of thousands. Yes, really. They’re still killing us. I’m really happy they were hit. We got our revenge. I feel sorry for the ones who died. That’s more than they feel for us. Ali: Why do you live here? Taxi driver: My son is at school here. I’m working to pay his education. We had to come here because they left nothing back home. Nothing. No schools. No universities. You think I’d rather be here than in my own country?” (Page 318. Ali, 2002)

This conversation startled me. I had no idea people felt this way. Ali notes that Chalmers Johnson did, he had done so a whole year before the attackers hit. “ ‘Blowback’ is shorthand for saying a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully understand what it has sown. Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks” (Johnson, 2000)

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

Drawing toward the conclusion of the book Ali informs the reader that “what lies behind the bicarious pleasure is not a feeling of strength, but a terrible weakness. The people of Indo-China suffered more than any Muslim country at the hands of the American government. They were bombed for fifteen years and lost millions of their people. Did they even think of bombing America? Nor did the Cubans or the Chileans or the Brazilians. Today, people feel powerless. And so when America is hit they celebrate. They don’t ask what such an act will achieve, what its consequences will be and who will benefit. Their response, like the event itself, is purely symbolic”( Page 330. Ali, 2002) I of course knew that the US has been heavily critisised for invading Iraq for reasons other than revenge of the 9/11 attacks, especially when one takes into account that “in political, economic or military terms, 9/11 was barely a pinprick” (Page 330. Ali, 2002). However, I did not realise that “for the west, democracy means believing in exactly the same things as they believe” (Page 332. Ali, 2002) and that that Empires act in their own self-interests. Ali proves this when he reveals that not a single US intelligency agency has managed to prove that Iraq had any links to the September 11 attacks. I also never realised what a huge theme oil has been throughout the history of the ‘America versus the World’ power struggle. Similarly, oil is a consistent theme throughout this work. The first mention occurs in Ali’s introduction when attempting to explain why the United States was so determined to wage the Iraqi war. He cited that there were three main considerations: The first is that Iraq, a rich oil producer, remained outside the control of the US. The second was that it was the only force in the region that could threaten Greater Israel. Thirdly, there was a domestic agenda to wean the pro-Zionist Jews away from the Democrats. The second mention of oil comes as a quote from an article by Thomas Friedman for the New York Times in 2003, “Is the war that the Bush team is preparing to launch in Iraq really a war for oil? My short answer is yes.” Nearly two entire chapters in Part II are dedicated to the beginnings of the US oil perogatives of the last century. Firstly the formation of the Arabian American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, as I discussed in Part 1, where Ali stated that “Unsuprisingly, the United States safeguarded its own economic and imperial 6

Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

interests and chose to ignore what took place within the borders of the kingdom.” (Page 85. Ali, 2002) The next chapter is about Zionism and the first Oil War. In this chapter Ali remembers a teacher of his asking: ‘You know why the West needs Israel?’ and answering himself ‘Oil. Oil. Oil.’(Page 88. Ali, 2002) Even in 1924 it was understood by Leon Trotsky the importance of the future of oil to America, and what they would be prepared to do if necessary. He explained this in an address to conference delegates: “Oil, in the United States, totals two-thirds of the world output, and in 1923 it had even reached 72 percent. Geologists actually do confirm that American oil at the current rate of consumption will last twenty-five years and according to others, forty years. But in twenty-five or forty years, America with her industry and fleet will be able to take away the oil from all the others ten times over again.”(Trotsky, 1924) Ali concludes his short-course history of US imperialism with: “This is the world in which we live – out of tune with the lucid humanity and the social compassion demanded by anti-globalisation protestors – and beyond which, write the intellectual apologists of this system, no substantial improvement can be imagined. It reminds me of the title of a poem written seventy years ago by Bertolt Brecht: ‘700 intellectuals bow before an oil tanker’.” (Page 315. Ali, 2002) Leaving out all to do with the US empires and the effect the ‘superpowers’ of the world have had on less powerful countries, I learned a lot I did not know about the history of Islam and how it came about, I was intrigued to learn that it started as somewhat of a political party and of how it spread throughout the world.

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

3. I found this book to have many strengths, most of which I have listed and explained in the previous parts of this review. Including the way he looks at the world not through the eyes of someone from the West and puts the 9/11 attacks into historical perspective and enlightens the members of the western world and the consumers of this western world’s media and agenda that perhaps the ‘terrorists’ of 9/11 were not without motive. I throughly enjoyed the first part, relating his childhod to the history of Islam whilst making sure to instill in the readers’ minds the importance of religion and the strictness of Islam in the life of a Muslim. I was fascinated to learn of the traditions, the different sects, the women and society. I felt this part read almost like a fiction novel as he, as the central character as a chold was easily relatable. Those chapters flowed easily for me. However, I felt that the next two parts of the book were written for someone with an extensive knowledge of the history of Islamic politics. I had to research many names and much of the political jargon used. I felt these sections took on a completely different tone than the first two parts and were not as enjoyable to read nor as easy to comprehend. Another weakness I found was that the book seemed to follow no timeline. In one chapter alone Ali could reference an event in 1621, 1432, 2001, 1984 and 1939. I found this extremely hard to follow and for me, ruined the flow of events. Also, it is unfair not to mention that perhaps Ali’s memories of events as a young Pakistani boy were biased and through his eyes only. In Ali’s defence though, he makes no attempt to hide this. I throughly enjoyed the introduction, Prologue, Part 1, Part 4 and the Epilogue of this work. The rest to me, was somewhat lost and became unnecessarily complicated in a whirlwind of dates, political jargon and unexplained names unrecognisable to me. Overall, I found The Clash of Fundamentalisms to be a highly valuable book for those who want to look beyond the scare mongering of myopic politicians and sensationalist media. In addition to that, Tariq Ali is an intelligent, vivid, entertaining and highly persuasive writer.

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

Bibliography Ali, Tariq (2002) “The Clash of Fundamentalisms – Crusades, Jihads and Modernity” Verso (2002,2003) Friedman, L. Thomas (2003) “A War for Oil?” The New York Times Published: January 5, 2003 Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/opinion/a-war-for-oil.html [Accessed on 13/12/2010] Johnson, Chalmers. (2000) “Blowback – The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” Henry Holt, 2000. Warde, F. William. (1949) “A Suppressed Chapter in History of American Capitalism- The conquest of The Indians” Fourth International, Vol.10 No.1, January 1949, pp.17-22. Available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/1949/01/indians.htm [Accessed on 12/11/2010] Weber, Mark (2006) “Familiar Lies for a New War: Fighting for Truth in an Age of Deceit” An address by Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, delivered at an IHR meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on July 8, 2006. Available at: http://www.ihr.org/news/060708_arlington_meeting.shtml

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Katie Archer

Critical Book Review 15/11/2010

[Accessed on 12/11/2010] Weinberger, Eliot (2005) “What happened here: Bush Chronicles” New Directions (2005) Trotsky, Leon (1924) “Perspectives of World Development” Delivered: 28 July, 1924. First Published: Izvestia August 5, 1924, No.177 as The Premises for the Proletarian Revolution Available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/07/world.htm [Accessed on 14/11/2010]

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