I was on Sunday watching BBC News when I heard Mr Ed Husain, adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and senior advisor at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, says exactly but in different words (and reversed similar statistics) what I have wrote in my last article : You do not kill an idea with bombs, i.e. that the Islamic State (IS) should not only be challenged at body but more at mind level if we wish to see it vanish. I do not know if Mr Husain reads the Liberal Democrat Voice, no doubt he had developed his ideas long before me, but it is interesting that similar views and solutions are independently expressed on such grave matter.
It is known that Mr Husain was (is?) a member of the Labour party but some of his views are common knowledge to be liberal such as his position on the marriage of Muslim women with non muslims. He is also a former co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation (a counter extremism think tank) together with Maajid Nawaz who is a Lib Dem. The Quilliam Foundation has been in the past under severe spotlights for having received £1 million from HM’s Government and having influenced one of Mr Cameron’s speech. I am referring to the controversial Munich 2011 conference where the latter criticised ‘state multiculturalism’…and was largely criticised for criticising it. The Quilliam Foundation, now barely privately funded but freer, is also expressing what are clearly liberal ideas and some going in the direction of what Mr Husain said and…what I wrote, i.e.:
Challenging extremism is the duty of all responsible members of society. Not least because cultural insularity and extremism are products of the failures of wider society to foster a shared sense of belonging and to advance liberal democratic values[…] [The] Quilliam [Foundation] seeks to […] generate creative, informed and inclusive discussions to counter the ideological underpinnings of terrorism, whilst simultaneously providing evidence-based recommendations to governments for related policy measures.
I could not agree more with what precedes, whether it is the Quilliam or any other institution which encourages a government policy and organised clear cut program to undermine the ideological underpinnings of the Islamic State wherever it has its ramifications, and in particular in Britain and in Europe. It is here that IS needs to be ideologically strangled so that young men do not got to join it in Syria or elsewhere. IS wants them and we must act to see that as few as possible go.
What IS also wants is that our young men, as soldiers, come on their fighting ground. They cannot fight us in the air, or on the seas, but IS militants are convinced, through faith and courage (which we should not underestimate) that on the ground they can defeat us. They will hence do anything to drag us on the battlefield – which is officially part of their ideological program – and this is why, in my opinion, for one no ground forces should be sent.
Then the alleged 100,000 strong reserve of IS fighters – from abroad – to which Mr Husain refered Sunday on BBC will only be but substitutes for underground cells on foreign terrorist missions. These can be lethal, as we saw in the Bataclan, but can be neutralized at comparatively reduced costs.
* Christian de Vartavan is an eminent scholar and now CEO of a London blockchain consulting company.
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12 Comments
It has always seemed perfectly clear to me, the response that ISIS have been trying to provoke with their disgusting images, videos etc I have been unable to avoid seeing some images in the mainstream press, and it is abhorrent that the press has shown such images. They should have been X rated.
There is no way that our forces can win what would be in effect a guerrilla war.
If we want to undermine the ideological underpinnings of groups like ISIS we need free speech.
Khusham!: the animals that join ISIS,are supposed to be arrested and put permanently in a nut house, in addition to that we need Russia&P.R/ of China to help us fightIsis and other Jihadist supported by the Idiotic West(Al Nusra front&Al Sham).
I am all in favour of ISIS’s images being shown……For the same reason that the post war images of Hitler’s death camps were shown (had they surfaced from1933 onwards perhaps the UK/US media might have been far less supportive of his regime)……..Thatcher banned IRA spokespersons and it did no good…Far better, in the wake of a bomb killing children, to hear ‘mealy mouthed’ terrorist excuses which end up damming the perpetrators….
The same with ISIS…..
They will be able to fight us in the air too if we just let them grow and they acquire anti aircraft weapons. The logic of this is basically that we run away and tell others to run away too. But there’s only so much running you can do. Eventually they have to be confronted. We should support those who stand their ground against the likes of ISIS.
@ Expats,
I am not advocating banning. I am advocating choice.
I would never dream of going on a website or whatever to watch ‘snuff’ movies or torture, but we are being faced with sickening images that confront us from new stands in supermarkets or at petrol stations.
Does anyone care about the effect on relatives when the terror of the last moments of their loved ones is splashed to the general population? And for what reason are these images printed? In my opinion to enrage people so that there is a , wholly understandable , clamour for something to be done, no matter how ill thought through in terms of effective outcome. Just what ISIS want.
If we haven’t got the message that there is no level of inhumanity that ISIS will not sink to by now in its determination to shock and provoke, what more do you think it takes?
Christian de Vartavan | Tue 22nd December 2015 – 8:10 am ” … no ground forces should be sent. ” Does this mean no UK ground forces> or no French ground forces? or no ground forces at all?
Not sure about the word “strangled”. Does this mean burning books? Works by Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler are available, albeit turgid, and may be needed to understnd what happened.
In the 1979-89 Soviet war in Afghanistan the Mujahideen’s torture/killing of captured Soviet service personnel, especially downed pilots, was not reported in the Western media; after all, the Mujahideen were ‘plucky resistance
fighters’…
Perhaps, had it been, we’d have seen what their interpretation of Islam meant…
Dear Richard, by ‘ideologically strangled’ I in fact referred to what I said in my first article, i.e. that IS’ ideology must be weakened if not neutralized by informing this class of persons susceptible to join IS of the mistake of doing so at theological, moral and even legal levels (since people returning from Syria will now be under tight UK control). This is clearly a communication campaign to counter that which IS is developing at great length and which I have suggested in my former article to be backed for a start by high muslim authorities such as the Grand Mufti of Al Azhar. As to burning books certainly not whatever they are (if not because we saw what followed the bond-fires lit during the early hours of the National Socialism – we do not want to go down that path) and you are right any literature published, particularly the controversial one, must be kept for future reference. Finally by ‘no ground forces should be sent’, I mean from any country and I am refering to regular troops. Special forces are already on the ground and can oppose to IS exactly the same type of tactics which IS would like to apply to us should we land. Considerable damages can be done by these forces and even more so from the air as once upon a time during the Battle of Normandy where the very capable Wehrmacht and its panzers was decimated by the RAF or the US Air Force. IS is not the Wehrmacht or at least not yet.
Dear Eddie, and there I bounce from my reply to Richard, yes you are right let the Islamic State grow and we will face air force, balistic missiles, if not worse. It is now that IS must be stopped by the destruction of these infrastructures, such as oil refineries, which bring to it the cash it needs to grow. But this is well understood by all allied forces and hardly needs mentioning.
Dear Jayne, Yes you are right about what IS attempts to do to us through its violent communication campaign. A method to counter it is indeed is not diffuse these images in the same way as images of the ‹result› of the Bataclan massacre are not, as far as I know diffused – which IS would too happy to see done. On another hand the freedom of the press is essential so it is to the press to decide and understand if it is in effect not only manipulated by IS but also contributes to the latter’s cause. This is where being a responsible citizen works and in fact precedes being an intelligent professional.
@ Expats,
It suited the Russians not to let their population know, too.
According to the media, we in the west know of only the death of one pilot. In fact if you check Sky News, there is a cover up of the number of Russian military who have lost their lives in this conflict. Western reporters trying to get to the truth are being prevented from entering the villages and abused if they try to check out the funerals of Russian military personnel that are taking place.
Look we have not defeated one of theses organisation, Not Al Qaeda, not the Taliban and none of those from further back either. We actually just make things worse by ruining infra structure, destabilising governments and then being too penny pinching to rebuild anything or commit to long term military involvement that does not just consist of dropping meaningless fire work, We need to pull out and concentrate on homeland security rather than pretending that our dismal record of interference will come right in the end. The last people who we should be listening to is former advisors of Tony Blair, They were not successful and have nothing to contribute except more failure.
Also the numbers of youngsters joining IS is a few here and there. Quite, frankly were letting latent xenophobia and supressed racism paint the threat as bigger than it is. Far too weight is being given to combating a threat of radicalisation that barely appeals to anyone. Much better to lump IS supporters in with neo Nazis and treat them as nothing but a bunch of morons.