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More reviews by John Walsh
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God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad by Charles Allen
The threat of international terrorism seems to affect every country in the world. It has become a matter of some urgency to understand the nature of those people who believe it justified to blow people up in the name of religion and, to some extent, understand why they do so.
It will come as a surprise to many that the military camps full of desperate and dedicated men ready to overthrow the imperial state date back many centuries. The British Empire in India and Afghanistan was bedeviled by the attacks of the "Hindustanis", who were groups of rebels and revolutionaries the British had almost no way of understanding, still less being able to come to terms with how to establish peace with them. Instead, a constant series of military offensives was launched against military camps and numerous rounds of arrests and prosecutions were made -- all to no avail because every triumph was matched by a disaster and the desire for freedom, however it was to be defined, was neither satisfied nor even addressed.
In GOD'S TERRORISTS: THE WAHHABI CULT AND THE HIDDEN ROOTS OF MODERN JIHAD, CHARLES ALLEN has set out to tell the story of these men and their struggle for religious purity. He observes that, for centuries, puritanical Islamists have sought to recreate a purer form of their religion, deploring the decadence of the modern age and being determined to bring back a golden age which never really existed. The Wahhabi Cult, as the author describes it, builds upon this centuries-long tradition which rejects the modern world and everything which is not part of the Koran or the collected sayings of the Prophet. In doing so, they have attempted to destroy the hundreds of year of accumulated wisdom of the Islamic jurists, scholars and thinkers who helped to bring a message aimed at very specific circumstances into a religious-philosophical system that can support complex, sophisticated societies. Instead, they create groups of men living in tinderbox situations who have nothing in their lives but religion and warfare. This is not a recipe for a sustainable or even happy society.
Charles Allen is one of the best-known and well-respected historians and authors of books on British India and related subjects. He has assembled a well-argued and researched body of material and does as well as might reasonably be hoped bringing to life the relentless stream of jihadis, mullahs and muftis who might otherwise become a blur of names. Even so, it can be difficult to have much sympathy with some of these characters, whose rejection of the world extends to denial of the roundness of the earth, the television and any technology without a strictly military application.
Allen does not shy away from the shortcomings of any of the protagonists involved in the action he describes. The imperialists from the west are revealed to be pragmatic opportunists with little understanding or sympathy for the local people -- apart from that strange band of outsiders who so often crop up on the outskirts of imperial history as wanderers, mercenaries and dreamers. But the shortcomings of the oppressed are also brought into focus, from the endless bickering over dogma to the occasional looting and pillaging of those Islamic holy sites now claimed to be too holy to be entrusted to any other than Muslim hands. This history is one of constant bloodshed and revenge. Allan is particularly good on the Pathans and their codes of vengeance and bloodletting which lead to a series of self-perpetuating vendettas which seem unlikely ever to end. In the final chapters, he brings the narrative up to the twenty first century and explains how the disparate groups of brigands and believers have been brought together as a more-or-less unified network of believers.
The disaster of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the arming of mujahadeen by international backers to resist it has caused effects which have yet fully to be felt. The continuation of failed policies by western powers in the Middle East will only continue to inspire a continuous stream of young people willing to give up their lives in the expectation of paradise in order to strike a blow against those they believe are oppressing their religion.
This book should be compulsory reading for anyone with any influence in shaping international policies and relations, as well as people who wish to understand the past and its shadow on the present and the future.
John Walsh
15/01/2007
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John Walsh is Assistant Professor at Shinawatra International University, Bangkok. |
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