Last week, it was John McCain saying the US needed a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism

Jonathan Power

FIRST it was Mitt Romney who wrote in Foreign Affairs that “radical Islam’s threat is just as real as that posed before by the Nazis and the Soviet Union” And now, last week, it was John McCain saying the US needed a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”.

To realise what poisonous nonsense this is you only have to turn back a page to the time of the Palestinian liberation movement, whose daring terrorism at the Munich Olympics and constant plane hijackings kept the world as jittery as it is now with Al Qaeda. The IRA managed, together with its Protestant opposite numbers, to hold hostage to violence a whole province of the United Kingdom, beside murdering the queen’s uncle and nearly succeeding in murdering the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. These were very disturbing events, and if the terrorists had had just a tiny bit more success, with a lucky hit like 9/11 — and it wasn’t for lack of trying — they really would have rocked Western societies. But to my recollection no one, neither politician nor commentator, said this was “the transcendent challenge of our time” or likened these minority movements to the threat of the biggest military powers of the 1940s and 50s.

If anyone had it would have been considered over the top, clearly non comparable to the threat of Nazi conquest or, later, world wide atheistic communism whose creed was permanent revolution. Likewise, it was non comparable to the economic angst of the 1980s or to the oppression in southern Africa or to the maliciousness of dictatorship in South America.
Hold on, wait a moment will say my critics. Romney and McCain said “radical Islam”. They were not tarring the whole of the Muslim religion. But context is everything. Those in the Islamic world who follow the Western debate know their texts and how it all began. First with the academic scholarship of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington. Huntington’s words in his world-famous book, “The Clash of Civilisations” still chill the bone: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, IT IS ISLAM, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power”.

If McCain wants to continue like this in the campaign to come I would ask him first to reflect on the recent remarks of Zbigniew Brzezinski who observed in response to Romney’s statement, “A candidate who says that kind of stuff either thinks, probably correctly, that the American people are not well informed — in which case he’s demagoguing — or he’s stupid enough to believe it himself. In either case it offers a compelling argument as to why such a candidate should not be president.”
This in a nutshell is what is wrong with McCain’s talk. The recent election in Pakistan should give him pause. One good reason given by the anti-Musharraf voices for having an open election was that with the parties competing in the Western border areas, where the Taleban are active and the Al Qaeda leadership may be hiding, was that it would make it more difficult for the Islamic fundamentalist parties, then in power, to win another election. The Americans and the British refused to buy this argument, preferring Musharraf to kill off the militants. But this indeed is what happened. The militant religious parties were roundly defeated in the North-West Frontier Province by a moderate regional party, the Awami National Party. Although Pathan-based they want to end the violence not by military might but by sustained dialogue and reviving the neglected economic development of the province.

The conclusion is obvious. Even in the most desperate of situations if the Islamic masses are given the vote and open choice they will often enough vote for moderates who shun violence. In recent years they have they done so consistently in Indonesia and Turkey, Islam’s two most populous states . So have they done in Malaysia and Nigeria.

Every time some outrageous act is committed by the fundamentalist supporters of an extreme version of Sharia law the Western press, and now some of its politicians, highlight it. What they should do instead is to highlight the last 1,400 years of Islamic behaviour. When confronted with Islam the Christian nations have persecuted it. But the Islamic world when confronted with Christians in their midst preferred tolerance.

Islamic terrorism is a marginal force still. Its adherents and sympathisers have grown because of the crudity and violence of the policies of George W Bush and Tony Blair. McCain seems to be heading to stir the pot even more. Then the chickens really will come home to roost.

US presidential hopeful John McCain says he understands Israel’s response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militant groups. Mr McCain was speaking in the Israeli town of Sderot, which has often been hit by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

“No nation in the world can be attacked without responding,” he told reporters. Mr McCain, a Republican senator who looks set to become the party’s presidential candidate this autumn, also called for progress towards peace.

The Arizona senator, who is on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East, expressed sympathy for the people of Sderot.
“The fact is I come from a border state and if people were rocketing my state, I think that the citizens from my state would advocate a very vigorous response,” he said.

Israel launched a military offensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza three weeks ago in response it said to Palestinian militant attacks.

More than 120 people were killed in the violence, most of them Palestinians.

Abbas call

The security situation along the border between Gaza and Israel lent urgency to US involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, said Mr McCain.

But he said he was not sure that a peace deal could be reached this year, despite the US administration’s best efforts.
Mr McCain earlier had talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. After talks with Ms Livni, he reaffirmed his commitment to Israel and attacked the Islamist militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

“If Hamas and Hezbollah succeed here, they are going to succeed everywhere,” Mr McCain told reporters.

Mr McCain also spoke on the telephone with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, afterwards telling the media that Mr Abbas “wants to get this [peace] process started”.

He added that Mr Abbas did “not support the kind of activity that is taking place in Gaza” - a reference to the rocket attacks on southern Israel.

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