The Muslims Are Coming!

by Arun Kundnani

  But Islamophobic campaigning only has the effect it does because its message resonates with the culturalist and reformist Muslim problem narratives that infuse the discourse of US government agencies. The view that there is a deep, internal struggle taking place within Muslim communities, between our values and Islamist extremism, that the wars the US is fighting are a necessary response to a violence-prone Islamist ideology, and that American Muslim political leadership needs to be pressed to demonstrate its loyalty to American values—all this is not confined to a far Right fringe but is official analysis as well, and is supported by liberals in the Obama administration as much as by conservatives. Domestically liberals tend to maintain a rhetorical defense of First Amendment rights and pursue a cultural policy of assimilating moderate Islam into the mainstream of America. Obama’s Department of Justice makes some limited efforts to prosecute hate crimes and defend the rights of Muslims to build mosques. But such efforts are ultimately undermined by the deeper structures of official thinking on extremism. Government counterterrorism officials hold there to be a domestic ideological threat of Muslim extremism that is serious enough to warrant the extrajudicial killing of US citizens who advocate extremist ideologies. That threat is, under Obama, usually understood in terms of a reformist narrative that distinguishes between good Muslims and bad Muslims—the former defined by their embrace of American values, the latter by their support for an extremist ideology that causes terrorism. But that still leaves in place the misguided assumptions of a Muslim problem and the militarized identity politics of a war between the West and radical Islam. It is no surprise, then, that a survey of likely voters in May 2012 found that 63 percent believed there was a conflict in the world today between Western civilization and Islamic nations.56 The basic assumptions of the war on terror have remained largely in place throughout the Obama years.

  Terrorism in Oslo

  On July 22, 2011, as news emerged of a major terrorist attack taking place in Norway, the Wall Street Journal went to press while the identity of the perpetrator was still unknown. On the presumption that only a Muslim could be responsible, the newspaper’s editorial claimed Norway had been targeted because it is “a liberal nation committed to freedom of speech and conscience, equality between the sexes, representative democracy and every other freedom that still defines the West.”57 The reflexes entrenched by nearly ten years of war on terror thinking had led the editorial writer to feel confident that the attacker’s motivation could already be known. As it turned out, the car bomb in Oslo, followed by a shooting spree on the island of Utøya that left seventy-seven dead—the worst terrorist attack in Europe since the Madrid bombings of 2004—had been carried out in the name of a “counterjihadist” rather than a jihadist ideology. Anders Behring Breivik, whose fifteen-hundred-page manifesto, 2083—A European Declaration of Independence, was published online on the day of the attacks, believed that European elites were pandering to multiculturalism and enabling an “Islamic colonisation of Europe.” Like the Wall Street Journal editorial writer, he believed Norway’s values were under threat from radical Islam.58

  Breivik wrote his manifesto in English, presumably to attract British and American readers. Much of the document consists of advice to fellow far Right terrorists on weapons, bomb making, body armor, physical training, rituals to maintain ideological commitment, music to listen to, political marketing, and the potential use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. He claims to be a member of a secret group of new crusaders founded in London in 2002 by representatives from eight European countries “for the purpose of serving the interests of the free indigenous peoples of Europe and to fight against the ongoing European Jihad.” One section of 2083 describes the ranks, organizational structure, initiation rites, uniforms, awards, and medals being used by this secret Knights Templar group. These parts of the manifesto—and a section in which he interviews himself, narcissistically listing his favorite music, clothes, and drinks—appear to be its only original content. The bulk of the document is a compilation of texts copied from Breivik’s favorite Web sites. Its opening chapters, a long section on “cultural Marxism” and political correctness, are plagiarized from Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology, a book published online in 2004 by the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington-based lobby group founded by Paul Weyrich, one of the most influential activists of the US Christian Right and architect of the evangelical movement’s entry into US politics during the 1980s. In this section, Breivik has replaced references to “America” in the original text with “Western Europe.” The writers Breivik cites most often are Robert Spencer, Ba’et Yor, and “Fjordman,” a Norwegian who has written for the US-based Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch Web sites.

  The key argument of the manifesto is that Europe has been taken over by a pro-multiculturalist elite, which is imposing its ideology of cultural Marxism in order to undermine native European culture. Endorsing the Eurabia thesis, Breivik sees multiculturalism as facilitating the “Islamic colonisation of Europe [through] demographic warfare.” And the clock is ticking: “We have only a few decades to consolidate a sufficient level of resistance before our major cities are completely demographically overwhelmed by Muslims.” Through its control of the media, universities, and mainstream political parties, the multiculturalist elite has prevented the possibility of democratic opposition, claims Breivik. While individual Muslims do not necessarily follow its precepts, Islam is “a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilisations, cultures, and individuals,” which means that the more Muslims there are in Europe, the more Islam’s inherent violence manifests itself. If this trend is not reversed, he predicts, a European civil war will break out between nationalists and Muslims allied with multiculturalists. Finally, Breivik justifies his violence by arguing for “a pre-emptive war, waged in order to repel, defeat or weaken an ongoing Islamic invasion/colonisation, to gain a strategic advantage in an unavoidable war before that threat materialises.”

  The formal structure of the manifesto’s argument corresponds to the conventional neo-Nazi doctrine of race war, in which, before it is too late, whites rise up against governments that have tried to dilute their racial purity. The standard strategy of neo-Nazism has been to actively encourage such a war by launching attacks on minorities—to provoke a violent reaction that would awaken the white majorities to the necessity of racial struggle, sending thousands of recruits into the ranks of the nationalist movement. This was what David Copeland was hoping for when, in 1999, he planted nail bombs in London’s black and Asian neighborhoods and in a gay bar, killing three people and injuring over a hundred. There are elements of this provocation strategy in Breivik’s manifesto too. He argues for attacks on Muslim cultural events to incite “violent riots and various forms of Jihadi activities”; these, he hopes, will in turn “radicalise more Europeans” and spiral, until more Europeans “come to learn the ‘true face of Islam’ and multiculturalism.” But he singles out the multiculturalist elites as the primary targets for violence, hoping that terrorism will “penetrate the strict censorship regime” and damage the multicultural ideology. “In order to wake up the masses, the only rational approach will be to make sure the current system implodes.” Hence the mass murder at Utøya of the next generation of Labor Party leaders.

  While Breivik’s narrative formally resembles the race war of neo-Nazism, he reframes this doctrine by substituting culture for race, Muslims for blacks, and multiculturalists for Jews. He explicitly rejects the race war concept and calls instead for a cultural war in which “absolutely everyone will have the opportunity to show their loyalty to our cause, including nationalist European Jews, non-European Christians or Hindu/Buddhist Asians.” Like the EDL, he uses a culturalist framework to forge new alliances. Yet he also speaks of his “opposition to race-mixing” and wants “to prevent the extinction of the Nordic genotypes.” Of Jews, he writes:

  So, are the current Jews i
n Europe and US disloyal? The multiculturalist (nation-wrecking) Jews ARE while the conservative Jews ARE NOT. Approx. 75% of European/US Jews support multiculturalism while approx. 50% of Israeli Jews does the same. This shows very clearly that we must embrace the remaining loyal Jews as brothers … There is no Jewish problem in Western Europe (with the exception of the UK and France) as we only have 1 million in Western Europe, whereas 800 000 out of these 1 million live in France and the UK. The US on the other hand, with more than 6 million Jews (600% more than Europe) actually has a considerable Jewish problem.

  Casting Jews as both potential allies (if they join in fighting Islam) and a demographic threat (if there are too many), Breivik is simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Zionist. The picture that emerges is far from consistent, with old far Right ideas of race war being reworked with newer culturalist notions.

  The overwhelming majority of Breivik’s source material comes from Web sites of the US far Right Islamophobia network. Europe has repeatedly been presented on these sites as on the verge of cultural extinction as a result of Muslim immigration. A 2007 blog post by Fjordman gives Breivik the title of his manifesto and his core argument:

  We are being subject to a foreign invasion, and aiding and abetting a foreign invasion in any way constitutes treason. If non-Europeans have the right to resist colonisation and desire self-determination then Europeans have that right, too. And we intend to exercise it.59

  In a section discussing the EDL, Breivik praises the organization for being the first youth movement to transcend the old-fashioned race hate and authoritarianism of the far Right. He urges “conservative intellectuals” to help ensure the EDL continues to reject “criminal, racist and totalitarian doctrines.” But he also considers them “dangerously naïve” in thinking their objectives can be achieved by means of street protests.

  Certainly, Breivik’s manifesto shares much of the culturalist politics of the EDL and the US Islamophobia network and strongly reflects their far Right themes: the view of Islam as an extremist political ideology; the emphasis on multiculturalism as enabling Islamification; conspiracy theories about Islamic infiltration; the rejection of old-style racism; and support for right-wing Zionism. For bloggers such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, the references to their writings in his manifesto must have been unnerving. Even so, Geller responded to the Oslo massacre with characteristic gusto. Less than two weeks afterward, she wrote:

  Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole … all done without the consent of the Norwegians.

  The left-wing youth camp on the island of Utøya was, she added, an “antisemitic indoctrination training center.” She did not think Breivik’s actions were justified, but, she added, there was “also no justification for Norway’s antisemitism and demonization of Israel.”60

  We should be wary of drawing straight lines of causality between far Right ideology and individual acts of violence—such claims are as weak with regard to far Right terrorism as with so-called jihadist terrorism. It is nevertheless possible to say what kinds of political circumstances make terrorist attacks such as Breivik’s more likely. The key factor is ten years of war on terror rhetoric that has entrenched a militarized identity politics as the default way of understanding our place in the world. The major theme of Breivik’s manifesto was the argument that political correctness and multiculturalism had weakened national identity and encouraged Islamic extremism, bringing European nations to a crisis point. As Breivik himself correctly noted in the first week of his trial, this view was held by “the three most powerful politicians in Europe”—Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and David Cameron.61 The uncomfortable truth is that a central plank of a terrorist’s narrative was shared by heads of Western governments.

  CHAPTER 9

  Dream Not of Other Worlds

  The less the orthodox political sphere seems responsive to the demands of those it excludes, the more those demands can assume a pathological form, blowing apart the very public arena in which they had previously sought a hearing. Terrorism is among other things a reaction to a politics which has grown vacuously managerial.

  —Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror

  Mainstream popular culture in the period since 9/11 has remained slavishly faithful to the official narratives of the war on terror. While at the margins—for example, in underground hip-hop—a radical critique can be found, a narrow and limited consensus has suffused the cultural center ground of the US and the UK. Spaces for questioning have been made available only on entirely pragmatic matters—for example, on whether torture and war actually work as means for preventing terrorism or whether they end up making the problem worse. Films such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Britain’s Channel 4 production Complicit (2013) consider the use of torture an acceptable topic of discussion—an indication that the terror war has permanently broken the earlier consensus that torture is an absolute wrong. The limits of acceptable discourse are illustrated even more starkly by considering what passes for a “liberal” take in popular cultural depictions. If 24 was the quintessential television drama of the war’s early phase—with its ticking-time-bomb scenarios glorifying torture, its mass killings of US civilians by weapons of mass destruction, and its constant stream of one-dimensional terrorist enemies—Homeland is hailed as a liberal alternative, more appropriate to the Obama era, and its focus on the psychology of radicalization. Indeed, the show—broadcast on Showtime in the US and on Channel 4 in the UK—is said to be the president’s favorite program.

  Homeland’s key plot themes are the infiltration of the US administration by Muslim extremists (a nod to Islamophobic conspiracy theories), suspicion of ordinary Muslim Americans, especially converts, and the psychological turmoil of the leading Muslim character, who is caught between his all-American family and the pull of extremist indoctrination. Nick Brody, a white American marine, is captured and held prisoner by al-Qaeda in Iraq (later this becomes the Taliban in Afghanistan—the two are apparently interchangeable) until he is freed eight years later. Returning to the US as a war hero, Brody tries to maintain a normal family life while hiding the fact that he has converted to Islam. The CIA’s Carrie Mathison, whose character is reportedly based on an actual CIA analyst (who also inspired the lead in Zero Dark Thirty), suspects Brody has been won over to the terrorist cause and begins a rogue surveillance operation to prove her theory; she also has an affair with her subject. His suicide mission to kill the vice president and a host of other government officials is abandoned after a last-minute conversation with his daughter. He then plots to get elected to Congress and take a senior role in the administration in order to subvert US foreign policy. Mathison induces Brody to confess during an interrogation, and he agrees to work as a double agent. Meanwhile, Abu Nazir, the al-Qaeda leader who recruited him, enters into an implausible alliance with Hezbollah to avenge an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility by attacking the US. Nazir somehow manages to enter the US with teams of heavily armed commandoes, which engage in various confrontations before kidnapping Mathison and forcing Brody to kill the vice president. Season two ends with a car bombing at the CIA’s headquarters.

  Brody’s character has more emotional depth than any other terrorist on US television. And there is a strand to the plot that tries to acknowledge the ways foreign policy decisions made in Washington can end up being counterproductive. Brody’s indoctrination is presented as bound up with his anger at a US drone strike on a school that resulted in the death of Issa, Nazir’s son, whom Brody had taken under his wing. These aspects of the show—which point to terrorism as not a pure evil but rooted in psychological processes—are the basis for its liberal credentials. They are also consistent with the discourse of radicalization that shapes the current phase of the war on terror. Like official accounts, Homeland presents radicalization as
closely tied to Islamic culture and identity. All of the major Muslim characters are terrorists: from convert Brody to Roya Hammad, a Palestinian television journalist based in Washington who has easy access to the corridors of power and secretly plots on behalf of al-Qaeda, to Professor Raqim Faisel and his blond American wife, Aileen, who converted to Islam while living in Saudi Arabia as a teenager. The series’ lack of concern for the differences between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, or between Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with its ridiculous portrayal of Beirut as a terrorist enclave give an impression of terrorism as a general cultural problem in the Middle East disconnected from specific political contexts. On multiple occasions in Homeland, terrorists struggle between an attraction to Western culture and their commitment to terrorism. A source of intelligence on Hezbollah shares information because of her love of American films. A Saudi diplomat working for al-Qaeda agrees to share intelligence so that his daughter can receive the benefits of Western culture. Brody’s inner conflict between his love for his children and the pull of his indoctrination is depicted as an identity crisis, a battle between American values (symbolized by his family life) and Islamic values (presented as implying terrorism). Implicitly, Homeland is suggesting that the more culturally Muslim you are, the more likely you are to be a terrorist.

  Brody is the only significant Muslim character on any US television drama program. He also happens to be a terrorist. Aspects of Muslim life, such as praying and reading the Qur’an, receive one of their only portrayals in US television drama in a storyline that is all about whether a convert to Islam should be suspected of terrorism. Brody’s wife, Jessica, for a while embodies traditional American family values in the series: upon Brody’s unexpected return from captivity, she abandons her relationship with his friend Mike for the sake of her marriage vows and thereafter struggles against the odds to hold the family together. She reacts angrily when she discovers Brody is a Muslim, not because of the deception but because “these are the people who tortured you” and who would “stone” his daughter “to death in a soccer stadium.”1