Churchill and Islam

As I noted in my post last week, Winston Churchill cultivated the image of himself as the prophet who warned of the threats to liberty: first Hitler's Nazism, then Stalin's Communism. Now he is also being portrayed by others as a prophet who saw the threat of Islam over 100 years before 9/11.

If you do a Google search for "Churchill Islam" you will find endless pages, all quoting comments on Islam that Churchill wrote in his 1899 book The River War:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. 

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

The general tone of these pages is "Churchill saw it coming. He tried to warn us about Islamism, just as he warned us against Nazism and Communism." If one reads some of the commentary on pages which quote these words (and I can't recommend that anyone do so), there is, not surprisingly, a lot of anti-Muslim bigotry. But there is more than that: what emerges is the fusion of two different strands of thought, a strange amalgamation of the religious mindset of the Crusades with the ideological battles of the 20th century (especially the cold war).

The Crusader imagery is overt. One video, showcasing Churchill's remarks, begins with an image of a crusader knight, and then the blood-red title "The Crusader" fades in. It states, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, "Muslims have never been able to create anything really useful." It also asserts the cultural inferiority of Islamic lands: "Compare what billions of muslims [sic] have been able to come up with against a small number of Jewish intelligentsia, a fraction of one percent of the muslim [sic] population and the gulf between the ignorant backward culture of mohammedianism [sic] and other faith based cultures is obvious."

Others go back even further and refer in reverential terms to Charles Martel, who is praised as saving the West from Islam at the battle of Portiers in France in 732. On a web site that defends Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who has called for banning the Quran (he compares it to Mein Kampf), eliminating immigration from Muslim countries, and prohibiting the construction of new mosques, there is a comment that specifically connects Wilders to Martel and Churchill: "Geert Wilders is the modern European hero fighting against evil, like Charles Martell [sic], Jan Sobieski [who was responsible for the defeat of the Turks in the Battle of Vienna in 1683] and Winston Churchill."  As the picture below shows, the phrase "Islamo-fascism" further enhances the connection to Churchill the prophet.

In this mindset, we see the blanket condemnation of all things Muslim.  There is no attempt to distinguish between radicals and violent extremists on the one hand and peaceful adherents of Islam on the other. All Muslims are guilty. The current struggle is with the religion itself, and goes back 1400 years.

Of course, in most polite political circles today, such ideas are beyond the pale. What is so insidious about the Churchill quotation is that it is used to validate ancient historical prejudices and wrap them in a cloak of modern respectability. After all, to reject Churchill's words about Islam is to make yourself into a latter-day Neville Chamberlain, foolishly appeasing evil.

These sites also show how the tropes of anti-communism are being grafted onto Islamophobia. One of the first things that struck me is the prevalence of references to "useful idiots." Students of communism will recognize that phrase--it has been attributed to Lenin, to refer to naive liberals who trusted the radical communists and then were used by them.

Today the phrase has new currency referring to anyone who resists anti-Muslim bigotry. In 2002, Cal State Fresno professor Bruce Thornton wrote: "Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam." Conservative columnist Mona Charen used the phrase as the title of her 2004 book, suggesting a line of continuity from this alleged cold war naivete to the fight against Al Qaeda. What this signifies, I suspect, is how much Islam has come to replace communism in the right-wing mind since 9/11.

If this were all relegated to the darker corners of the internet, that would be one thing. But the Churchill quotation occasionally finds its way to more "respectable" places as well. Radio host Michael Savage has read it on his show, and then proceeded to talk about "front groups for radical Islam." (The phrase "front groups" of course also has a long anti-communist lineage.)

That same mindset of infiltration that is the point of Savage's rant is also behind the recent attack by Michele Bachmann and four other members of Congress on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin. In a letter to the State Department, they charge "information has recently come to light that raises serious questions about Department of State policies and activities that appear to be a result of the influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood." Like the red-baiters of the late 1940s and 1950s, they find in any policy with which they disagree the influence of the foreign "other."

The Churchill quotation shows up in the "comments" section of the website of Daniel Pipes, who has a doctorate in history from Harvard. After 9/11, Pipes created Islamist Watch, to track attempts to impose Islamic law on the U.S. His most recent post on his blog is fulsome in its praise of Mitt Romney's speech in Jerusalem. Pipes pays no attention to the most controversial part of the speech, in which Romney suggested that the reason that Israel's economy outpaces that of the Palestinians is culture: "if you could learn anything from the economic history of the world it’s this: culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference."

It is hard not to notice that Churchill's words associate Islam with poverty. I do not believe Romney was in any way referencing the Churchill quotation or trying to appeal to people familiar with it. (David Frum had an interesting post recently suggesting that Fox News often does engage in conscious appeals to this dark underside of our political discourse--he calls it the "Fox News Wink.")

My point is that once reasonable ideas can be bastardized by fringe elements, and then these more unseemly underground manifestations have a way of bubbling back up to mainstream discourse, even in ways that the speaker may not realize--but the listeners certainly do.

This Churchill quotation serves as a rhetorical bridge for extremists--it connects the modern struggle against radical Islamists such as Al Qaeda and its offshoots with both the historical defense of Christian Europe from the Muslim invaders and the liberal democratic capitalist resistance to the radical ideologies of the 20th century. That is a potent combination. It is also a toxic one. In neither case is it fueled by any sophisticated understanding of those historical episodes. Instead, it taps into the worst aspects--the fear and hatred and tribalism--that emerged from both.

Going back to the original incident that prompted this discussion--Romney's pander about returning the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office--I think the lesson is this: Words have historical baggage. When politicians are tempted to use certain forms of cultural shorthand to score quick and easy political points, they would be well-advised to tread carefully--you never know what kind of message you may be sending.

"Burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes."

As a new fall semester begins, I sadly find some interesting parallels between the news and one of my courses. My humanities class for first-year students is called "Ban it! Censorship in Literature and Film." In it, we read books that someone, somewhere has tried to ban, or have removed from a library and/or curriculum, and we discuss what inspires the impulse to censor.

The first novel we read is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, in which the job of firemen is not to put out fires but to burn books. And, until earlier this evening, Terry Jones, the leader of a small, radical group in Florida was planning to burn 1,000 Qurans on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. This is what they call a teachable moment.

By coincidence, I also recently read Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, a novel which begins with a real historical event: the burning of thousands of Arabic manuscripts by Ximenes de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo, shortly after the Spanish Reconquest. The desire to destroy the unfamiliar is an old human impulse. Where there have been books, there has been book burning. It is the tribute the ignorant pay to the power of words.

I am awfully close to a free speech absolutist, and I would object to any governmental attempt to prevent this or any book burning. As abhorrent and ignorant as I find the impulse, it is still speech and thus a constitutionally protected right, and there can be no compromising that. My problem is with the hateful mindset that lies behind it, and the way that mindset has been aided and abetted by people who should know better.

The planned Quran burning was conceived before the recent upsurge of Islamophobia that has grown exponentially since reckless politicians began normalizing it with the politicization of the planned Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, but the attention it has garnered is clearly related to that other controversy. The Quran burning has inspired a wide variety of responses, but the one that has gotten the most attention this week is Brian Williams' interview with General David Petraeus, who said the event "puts our soldiers in jeopardy very likely."

While I think Petraeus is probably correct, I am disturbed by the idea of a military leader declaiming on whether or not American citizens should exercise their constitutional rights. I certainly would not think it appropriate if he were to say that opponents of the war in Afghanistan should not protest, and used the same justification. This is the proper role of political leaders, not generals.

But I do understand why Petraeus spoke up. In part, he was filling a leadership void. What the Florida fanatics were planning to do is despicable, and our political leaders (of all parties) should have spoken out and condemned it so that the world would hear loud and clear that the American people as a whole do not approve of the desecration of anyone's holy book. But there was little leadership of that type earlier this week, particularly from conservatives.

What Petraeus said put conservatives in an awkward position. Many of them, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin in particular, have been whipping up Islamophobia for weeks over the New York Islamic center. Those same people have held to a knee-jerk "do what the generals say" policy throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for a couple of days they seemed puzzled as to how to respond. They believe Islamophobia is a winning political issue, but don't want to contradict Petraeus. What to do?

Yesterday, they found their talking point. Minority leader John Boehner said: "To Pastor Jones and those who want to build the mosque: Just because you have a right to do something in America doesn't mean it is the right thing to do." [emphasis added] Palin chimed in today with the same sentiment: "People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation--much like building a mosque at Ground Zero." (This last phrase--"mosque AT Ground Zero"--is simply a lie. Anyone paying any attention knows the proposed Islamic center--which will include a prayer room--is 2-3 blocks away. To continue to use that false phrase at this point is a deliberate lie.)

This is clever politics, but it is absurd logic. They cannot have their Islamophobic cake and eat it too. There is no equivalence here at all. The true equivalence is between Jones and the demagogues who are opposed to the Islamic center. What connects them is their shared belief in collective Islamic guilt.

The only way one can reach the conclusion that an Islamic center in the neighborhood of the World Trade Center site is "insensitive" is if one first concludes that Islam as a religion, and Muslims as a group, are responsible for the attacks of 9/11. There is no other way it can be "insensitive." The only thing connecting the sponsors of the project with the 9/11 hijackers is that they are all, along with 1.5 billion others worldwide, Muslims. That is collective guilt. (One sign at the New York protest read "Everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11." This is the same as Muslims or Jews saying "Everything I need to know about Christianity I learned from the Spanish Inquisition.")

The book burning plan was motivated by the same collective guilt mentality. Jones is quite upfront about it. "Islam is of the Devil," he forthrightly says. While he and his assistant have lately taken to using the phrase "radical Islam," they are not planning to burn books by radical Islamists. There is a book, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, which they could burn. If they wanted to get really sophisticated, they could burn the works of Sayyid Qutb, the man widely considered to be the founding philosopher of Al Qaeda. They could burn an effigy of Osama bin Laden. Would there be any serious objection in this country to any of those acts? I doubt it. But they did not propose doing that, because they blame Islam as a religion for 9/11.

By burning the holy book of Islam, the Quran, on 9/11, they meant to make a clear symbolic statement: what happened on 9/11 is inherent to Islam. They blame not the individuals involved, or the organization to which they belonged, but the religion to which they belonged. And in that, they are doing the same thing as the opponents of the Islamic center.

I began writing this post late this afternoon, before hearing the news early this evening that Jones had linked his decision to cancel the burning to an alleged commitment to move the Islamic center in New York (Imam Rauf has denied making any such deal with Jones). But when I heard the news, it made perfect sense. Because of the growing criticism, Jones was looking for a face-saving way out, and Boehner and Palin gave him the formula: tie your hateful event to the New York Islamic center. He seized upon that, and declared that he had a deal and had achieved his goal (though he had never before today stated that as a "goal" of the Quran burning). It may work. It may allow them all to avoid the potential disaster this planned event threatened--this time.

But unless they stop fanning the flames, there will be another such incident. The demagogues have been riding the tiger of Islamophobia, and this threatened book burning hinted at the problem with that strategy: it may begin to turn and devour them. What ostensibly responsible leaders on the right have been doing for weeks now is normalizing bigotry. Their mentality, even if they won't admit it, is the same one that was behind the book burning. They may scramble now to disown this manifestation of their cynical political maneuvering, but they own it. They have given permission for people to indulge their most base and hateful impulses. They have made collective guilt directed at a religious minority in the U.S. a mainstream idea. They have abandoned their responsibility to lead. And they are responsible for the consequences.

That is how we came to the point today where the Secretary of Defense placed a personal telephone call to a crazy fanatic. That is how we got to the point where that fanatic could use religious blackmail to hold a nation hostage, to the point where the commanding general in Afghanistan felt he had to speak out so as to fulfill his duty to protect his soldiers. This is what happens when the blind ambition of reckless politicians leads them to forsake principle for personal political gain.