In Zurich last week, on my way to Davos, I read an interview with Milton Friedman in the Wall Street Journal. It was one of the last interviews the Nobel prize-winning economist gave before his death last November. One of the questions he was asked was — what did he consider to be the biggest threat to the world economy. His answer: “Islamofascism, with terrorism as its weapon.” This answer made an impression on me because it was devoid of the politically correct pussyfooting that is usually the essence of any comment on terrorism these days. Sadly, of the discussions on terrorism and Islam in snowy Davos the opposite is true. One of the first sessions I attended at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum was called “The Comprehensive Response to Terrorism”, and there could not be a better panel to discuss the subject. There was Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Britain’s Leader of Opposition David Cameron, US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, Gijs M. deVries. A dream panel, you would say. Yet, what a disappointment it turned out to be. Pakistan has been in recent years the country most associated with the promotion of terrorism as a tool of foreign policy. It is the country of Abdul Qadeer Khan, who ran a vast black market in nuclear weapons technology and who cannot be punished because he remains a national hero. It is the country that we associate with the sponsorship of terrorist groups in Kashmir, and Afghanistan charges with reinventing the Taliban. And yet, Shaukat Aziz got away with talking about the need to understand the “root causes” and even with saying that poverty and deprivation were why it was so easy to recruit suicide bombers in the Islamic world. Poverty and deprivation? Were the 9/11 hijackers poor or deprived? No. They were, as Shaukat Aziz must know, engineers and architects and students who had benefited from studying in western universities. And, in our own country, is it not educated, middle-class Muslims who join terrorist groups like SIMI? Do Hezbollah fanatics who are trying to hijack Lebanon look poor and deprived? David Cameron tried pointing out that the terrorist threat we face today is different from any other because young Muslims are being radicalised by “false prophets” and we need to acknowledge this. But his was a small voice compared to those who wanted “root causes” understood. In a session on making the “Rules for a Global Neighbourhood in a Multicultural World”, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and a Saudi princess carried on the theme of understanding root causes and it was only some direct talk from an Israeli rabbi, David Rosen, that brought a measure of balance. Rosen said that everything was blamed on Israel’s dispute with Palestine, but this had gone on too far. What did this dispute have to do with Darfur, or what is happening in Somalia? What does it have to do with killing 200 commuters on Mumbai’s trains or blowing up Hindu temples? Besides, Israel’s dispute with Palestine has been around a long, long time and it is only now that you see ‘Islamofascism’ spreading its cult of murder and death across the world. What has happened to make peaceful Muslim communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and in our own country suddenly become defensive about “root causes” and Islam? American foreign policy since 9/11 has done much to make things worse. The war on Iraq was a stupid mistake from the start. The world would have been a very different place today if Afghanistan had been chosen instead for the imposition of American style democracy. But nothing justifies terrorism, and if we are too politically correct to state this clearly, we are doomed to be destroyed by ‘Islamofascism’. When we are looking for root causes we need to remember that Osama bin Laden’s stated goal is to destroy western civilisation. Is this a demand that can be discussed over a negotiating table? The ‘Islamofascists’ who operate in our country make it clear with every one of their evil deeds that their aim is to destroy India’s economy and its secular democracy. Is this something that we can discuss over a negotiating table? If we want to win the global war on terrorism we have to begin by acknowledging that ‘Islamofascism’ is as evil an ideology as Nazism once was and those of us who are its victims must fight back with everything we have. What is worrying is that instead of doing this our political leaders seem more concerned about heightening the Muslim sense of grievance by giving us nonsense like the Sachar Committee report. Can we at least hope for a report on ‘Islamofascism’ as well?
