Piers Akerman, Salman Rushdie, Islamics, political correctness and a ham sandwich

You have to hand it to Piers Akerman. He's suddenly discovered the torture suffered by Salman Rushdie and he's mad as hell.

Fatwa by any other name is still murder, his header shrieks, ignoring the notion that a fatwā in the Islamic faith is a religious opinion concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar (Wikipedia the term here). And depending on the schismatic tendency of the believer , it might be non-binding or binding, and as with Christians, you can shop around and get the kind of opinion you're looking for, from moderate to raving ratbag loony party.

Words matter and when you start off by shouting out that a fatwā  is murder by another name, it's as dumb as shouting out that a doctor performing abortions is a baby killer who should be shot (especially as there are people inclined to follow that kind of advice).

In the matter of war, there's a fairly straightforward idea of what it means. Let me rip off the Wikipedia entry here:

War is a reciprocated, armed conflict, between two or more non-congruous entities, aimed at reorganising a subjectively designed, geo-politically desired result.

Now could you consider the recent bombing in Indonesia an act of war? Hardly. It's a bunch of mindless loons, a small minority in a very large population, made up of religious cranks and zealots, who somehow think blowing up themselves and innocent people is a legitimate way of making a religious and political point.

Terrorism of this kind has been around a long time - the most spectacular surely being the contribution the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria made to the start of World War 1. It wasn't the sole, or even the main reason war broke out, but if ever you wanted a clear distinction between an act of terrorism, and a real war, the Serbian conspirators give a first class example by bringing the real ratbag warriors into the show.

Which is why the so-called "war on terror" was a fatuous demonization of a marginal bunch of loons, giving them extra-state status and a prestige they never deserved. Sure enough, once granted that status, they turned up in some force for the regular war in Iraq - earning the status of a bunch of marauders acting like Qantrill's Raiders - and just as predictably they've turned up in Afghanistan to take on a guerilla role. So long as fundies are allowed to get away with framing this kind of battle as a 'death to the unbelievers' routine of cosmic religious significance, a war on unbelievers in the way others call for a war on terror, they will continue be given an enhanced epic role as war warriors.

So let's not conflate war and terror and religious fundamentalism and other abused terms, or the next thing you know we'll be talking about crusades and Christians, and wondering why some Islamics might take a view.

Naturally our very own Billy Bunter of excess is outraged by this kind of wishy washy liberal thinking.

... on July 6, Attorney-General Robert McClelland welcomed the roll-out of a new program to engineer terrorism-related language including describing attempts to combat terrorism as "war’" and the use of words such as "jihad’" to depict the Islamic struggle with other religions or values.

"We need to use language that does not inadvertently glorify terrorism, but rather describes it in terms of base criminal behaviour of the most reprehensible kind. We should also be conscious of not alienating broad ethnic and religious groups by labelling them in a way that causes prejudice or leads to misunderstanding," he said.

Well yes war is usually conducted on a state basis, and glorifying a bunch of dickheads as proud warriors for a new world is counter-productive, as is the frequent mis-use of words like fatwā and jihad (another slippery word, much like the Christian notion of a just war can send a thousand scholars spinning for a thousand years).

But the fat owl is indignant. He wants them called warriors in a war:

Worse, the project was "inspired’" by a similar linguistic sleight-of-hand conducted by the British Home Office to help public officials talk about terrorism without making an explicit link between Islam and terrorism.

They should tell Abu Bakar Bashir quickly. His pupils will want their money back. They think they are Islamic warriors, they don’t want to hear they are suiciding for a nameless  

nothingness.

Eer, I'm not actually following this. Wouldn't it be a good thing for his pupils to want their money back? Wouldn't it be good for them to realize that killing people randomly - Islamic, Christian, Jew or atheist - isn't the act of Islamic warriors but of dumb irrational serial killing criminals? Wouldn't it be great if they heard they're suiciding on the basis of pie in a never never sky when in fact it's for a nameless nothingness? Wouldn't it be even better if they understood that there are rational moderate Islamics out there who think that kind of extremism is just as dumb as a bunch of crusading Christians wanting to die for the cross?

Well I guess I'll never know the answers, because at that moment Akkers hares off to recount the story of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses controversy, barely pausing to consider that it's both the diabolical BBC (which produced it) and the socialistic ABC (which is screening it) that are involved.

Funnily enough, in his list of outrages involving the book, Akkers notes that two moderate Muslim clerics who opposed the Ayatollah Khomeini fatwā were killed, and 37 Muslims were killed in riots in Turkey.

Would it have helped if the British authorities had tiptoed around using the world Islamic to describe Khomeini? Hardly.

Ah well, I guess there's no point in suggesting there might be a shred of difference between moderate Muslims and hardline Islamic extremist nutters. In much the same way as I tend to think of all Christians as members of the Westboro Baptist Church, or at least fellow travellers in name, followers of Christ always willing to carry out daily picketing of those they hate - and they hate in abundance (Wikipedia here). Yep, would it do me any good to tiptoe around eccentric baptist loons as my image of Christianity? Hardly. 

Yep, let's just make sure the anger and hatred keeps on rising. How about this from Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro:

So what if our guys flushed copies of the Quran down the toilet? We hope they did. They probably did; We hope they flush more. Mohammed was a demon-possessed whoremonger and pedophile who contrived a 300-page work of Satanic fiction: The Quran! Like America's own whoremonger and pedophile wangled his own hokey Book of Mormon!

Now that's more like it. No pussy footing around there. Right into it. None of that political correctness or English politeness that Akkers so courageously deplores:

The British government was doing so much to appease its Muslim constituents and Islamic nations (10 of which in Africa and Asia cut diplomatic ties with the UK) that it sent then Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, out to say that he, too, found the novel deeply offensive, after skim-reading it.

Needless to say, Khomeini dismissed Sir Geoffrey’s attempt at mollification, and the incredible statements of a number of British authors, among them John le Carre and Hugh Trevor-Roper, who apparently decided it was better to curry favour with the mumbling ayatollahs of Iran than uphold the principle of freedom of expression, a bedrock of the democratic ideal.

Not that it cut much ice with the Muslim world. Rushdie proved to be a proxy target for an increased outpouring of hatred of the West that girdled the globe, from the Gulf, to Bali, to Jakarta, New York, Washington and Mumbai.

Those who pursue Islamic fanaticism, or even shariah law as practised in many Muslim countries around the world, will probably be pleased the Australian government is entering a new phase of political correctness in the hope some Muslims will be less offended by Western thought.

Yes, that's it, let's have an outpouring of hate all over again, all around the globe. Bugger politeness, let alone political correctness.

Right about now I think it's time to turn feminist, perhaps even a proud supporter of gay folk, to make a point about western values (we can get back to kicking the feminist can and poofter bashing in the next column):

Even Afghans, who we are sending our young men to die for, would be disgusted if their women were permitted the equalities and liberties we take for granted. But then again, we are told we are sacrificing young Australian lives in Afghanistan to halt the spread of terrorism.

Teeth gnashing time. Damn you John Howard for getting us involved, it'd be so much easier if we could just blame St. Kevin for joining the multi nation task force while blathering on about how we need to halt the spread of terrorism, as if he'd been reading Akkers and taking him seriously. An astonishing idea even for Akkers to contemplate.

Luckily the recent bombing in Jakarta is still a good way to kick the St. Kevin can:

If this is so, shouldn’t we be asking the Indonesians to take some action against pesantrens such as that presided over by the face of terror in our near neighbour, and shouldn’t we be speaking clearly and plainly about the nature of the terrorism that killed three Australians a fortnight ago in Jakarta? 

Kevin Rudd:

"Any terrorist attack is an act of cowardice. It is an act of murder, It is a barbaric act that violates the fundamental principles of human decency."

Stephen Smith:

Mr Smith said he would hold talks with Indonesian Foreign Minister Dr Hassan Wirajuda "to condemn these terrible terrorist attacks, to express our condolences to the family members of those people who have been killed in this terrible atrocity, but also to indicate that we stand shoulder to shoulder with Indonesia at this terrible time".

Okey dokey, that's so opaque, so unclear, so much like mud, I can't work out what on earth they're saying. A veritable, a palpable hit to Piers. So what else have you got in the sporting goods bag Piers?

It would seem that much of what passes for diplomatic discourse in Australia is based on second-rate academic thinking that owes more to 19th century gentleman-adventurers than to the realities of the 21st century.

The handbook on China talks about "losing face’", when it is obvious from the case involving Rio executive Hu Stern that the mandarins of today are more concerned with losing money, and the handbook on Indonesia might have been written in Bung Sukarno’s era.

Oh so close to a trifecta, but we'll have to allow the quite convoluted reverse double flip with pike that allows us to shift from Indonesian terrorism to China and Hu Stern.

Attorney-General McClelland may believe a softly-softly politically correct approach will soften hard-liners or prevent more young men and women from becoming radicalised, but nowhere is there any evidence for this.

Soothing words and another bureaucracy chasing those who call Islamic terrorists for what they are and what they do will not halt the flow of suicidal graduates from the schools in Solo and other parts of Indonesia, let along those waiting for places in the madrassahs of Pakistan.
As for following the UK Home Office guidelines, forget it. If anyone is any doubt they should ask Salman Rushdie.

Yes, let's bring back the war on terror. It worked so well under George Bush, and let's make sure we offend any Islamic we can find by calling them hard edged crazed terrorist fundamentalist ratbags. That should help enormously, really ease civic tensions, especially in the west of Sydney. Let's make them feel like total losers and dropkicks for having a second rate kind of religion. Let's get them mad as hell, just like Akkers.

All I ask is that they then be locked in a room with Akkers so they can sort it out amongst themselves, and leave the rest of us alone for the quiet life. Then I can get on with eating a ham sandwich and watching Wallace and Gromit:

To put it as simply as possible: I am not a Muslim ... I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that 'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth, and that a person who freely chose not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death. (Salman Rushdie, In Good Faith, 1990)

God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith ... and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down ... From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person. (Salman Rushdie, In God We Trust, 1985)

Dammit Rushdie, stick to the script! We don't want rationality, consideration and insight. We want war mongering. Dammit man, we're at war. It's a war on terror. You know, on the state of Terror, the 193rd country seeking membership of the United Nations.

Meantime, go eat a bacon and egg sandwich Akkers, and stop frothing and foaming at the mouth ...

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

As Salman, Homer and me all testify, a little swine will fix whatever it is that ails ya ...