It's no surprise, perhaps, to see another piece of the usual from Faisal Bodi:
The resort to indiscriminate violence against the homeland is often a reaction to a national disconnect, a lack of identification with a country that is persecuting fellow Muslims abroad and whose institutions remain pregnant with Islamophobic attitudes cultivated by orientalists over centuries.There you go: national disconnect, lack of identification; and, as you'd expect, there's also alienation when you read on. What there isn't is responsibility. Well, actually there is. Bodi is critical of the report of the Muslim task force set up by the government to advise it on extremism. He writes:
In appealing to the government for help, it [the report] is guilty of unfounded trust in the authorities. Many Muslims think the setting up of the working groups was part of an attempt to shift the burden of responsibility away from the government. Since then Tony Blair has continued to misrepresent the nature of the threat as a fight against adherents of a warped ideology bent on dragging us all back to a medieval caliphate.So, you see, the government for its part can be seen as responsible; but indiscriminate violence is resorted to (by someone) because of national disconnect and so forth. And it turns out that national disconnect and its cognates aren't just a background, a context, against or in which other things (like delusional beliefs, for example) come into play, deadly play. No, to speak of the threat 'as a fight against adherents of a warped ideology [etc.]' is, according to Bodi, to misrepresent its nature. Tony Blair and the British government are responsible - and disconnects and lacks and alienation. And that's it.
As it happens, the aforesaid Tony Blair spoke at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in London on Monday. Amongst the things he said was this:
There is a real danger that the institutions of global politics lag seriously behind the challenges they are called upon to resolve.You could give a more complete list than Blair gives. You could say, for example:These challenges are pressing. The most obvious is global terrorism. Barely a week goes by without another country being added to the grieving list of victims. Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, India and of course here in London. Recently, in Australia, it appears an attack was foiled. We have disrupted two groups planning attacks here in the UK since 7 July alone. What is obvious now to all is that this is a global movement and requires global action in response, of which the successful completion of a democratic process in Afghanistan and Iraq is a major component. So is the push for peace between Israel and Palestine. In all of these conflicts, the only successful solution is based on democratic consent; and success would have a tremendous persuasive effect far beyond the frontiers of the countries concerned.
New York and Washington, Tunisia, Bali, Kenya, Riyadh, Casablanca, Jakarta; and Baghdad, Hilla, Kirkuk, Musayyib, Najaf, Baquba...; and Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Netanya, Hadera...; Istanbul, Beslan, Madrid, London, Sharm el-Sheikh, Bali... and Amman.And you could make the list longer still. But for Bodi, despite this global spread, it's the (British) government and national disconnect. And a warped ideology? Not at all. (Hat tip: AJ.)