[A-List] Islam Now, China Then

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.counterpunch.org/shahid07242007.html>
July 24, 2007
Any Parallels?
Islam Now, China Then

By M. SHAHID ALAM

   "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want
tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that
is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today."

   -- Henry Ford, 1916

On some days, a glance at the leading stories in the Western media
strongly suggests that Muslims everywhere, of all stripes, have gone
berserk. It appears that Muslims have lost their minds.

In any week, we are confronted with reports of Islamic suicide attacks
against Western targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Western
countries themselves; terrorists foiled before they could act;
terrorist attacks gone awry; terrorists indicted; terrorists
convicted; terrorists tortured; terrorist suspects kidnapped by CIA;
or warnings of new terrorist attacks against Western targets.

Unprovoked, without cause--we are repeatedly told--Muslims everywhere,
even those living in the West, are lashing out against the civilized
West. Many in the Western world--especially in the US--are beginning
to believe that the entire Islamic world is on the warpath against
Civilization itself.

Expert commentators in Western media want us to believe that the
Muslims have lost their minds. They tell us that Muslims are
inherently, innately, perverse; that never before has violence been
used in this way, against innocent civilians. It is always 'innocent'
civilians.

Other peoples too have endured colonization, slavery, expulsions,
extermination at the hands of Western powers: but none have responded
with violence on this scale against the West. Certainly not with
violence against civilians. Never have Aborigines, Africans,
indigenous Americans, Hindus, Jews, or the Chinese targeted civilians.
They never attacked Westerners indiscriminately. They never targeted
'innocent Western civilians.'

Is this 'insanity' slowly raising its head across the Islamic world
really unique? Is this 'insanity' a uniquely Islamic phenomenon? Is
this a uniquely contemporary phenomenon? Is this 'insanity'
unprovoked?

We cannot of course expect any history from the corporate US media on
this Islamic 'insanity.' In order to take the moral high ground, to
claim innocence, the rich and powerful--the oppressor classes--prefer
not to talk about history, or invent the history that serves their
interest.

What is surprising, however, is that few writers even on the left
bring much history to their analysis of unfolding events. Not being a
historian--of Islam, China or Britain--I can only thank serendipity
for the little bit of history that I will invoke to provide some
background to the 'malaise' unfolding in the Islamic world. A little
history to connect Islam today to China in the middle of the
nineteenth century.

Implausibly--perhaps for some--the history I invoke comes from
Friedrich Engels--yes, he of the Communist Manifesto, friend of Karl
Marx, revolutionary--writing in May 1857 when the British were waging
war against China, known to history as the Second Opium War.

More implausibly, this history comes from an article published in a
leading US newspaper: The New York Daily Tribune (available in Marx
and Engels Internet Archive). Yes, in some remote past, a leading US
newspaper routinely published commentaries by the likes of Marx and
Engels. Today, the publishers of NYT, the Washington Post or LA Times
would become apoplectic just thinking about it.

During the First Opium War of 1840-42, when the British waged war to
defend their 'right' to smuggle opium into China--Friedrich Engels
writes -- "the people were quiet; they left the Emperor's soldiers to
fight the invaders, and submitted after defeat with Eastern fatalism
to the power of the enemy." Yes, in those times, even enlightened
Westerners spoke habitually of Oriental fatalism, fanaticism, sloth,
backwardness, and--not to forget their favorite--despotism.

However, something strange had overtaken the Chinese some fifteen
years later. For, during the Second Opium War, writes Friedrich
Engels, "the mass of people take an active, nay fanatical part in the
struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European
community at Hongkong by wholesale, and with the coolest
premeditation.  They go with hidden arms on board trading steamers,
and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers
and seize the boat. They kill and kidnap every foreigner within their
reach."

Had the Chinese decided to trade one Oriental disease for another:
fatalism for fanaticism? Ah, these Orientals! Why can't they just
stick to their fatalism? If only the Orientals could stick to their
fatalism, all our conquests would have been such cakewalks!

It was no ordinary fanaticism either. Outside the borders of their
country, the Chinese were mounting suicide attacks against Westerners.
"The very coolies," writes Friedrich Engels, "emigrating to foreign
countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every
emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than
surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames.
Even out of China, the Chinese colonists conspire and suddenly rise in
nightly insurrection"

Why do the Chinese hate us?

No doubt the Europeans then were asking this question. And, like the
democracy-mongers in the United States today, unwilling to examine the
root causes, the history of their own atrocities, unwilling to
acknowledge how they "throw hot shell on a defenseless city and add
rape to murder," the Europeans then too were outraged. European
statesmen and newspapers fulminated endlessly about Chinese barbarity,
calling their attacks "cowardly, barbarous, atrocious" The Europeans
too called for more wars, endless wars, till China could be subdued,
totally.

Friedrich Engels was not deceived by the moralizing of the British
press. Yes, the Chinese are still 'barbarians,' but the source of this
"universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners" was "the
piratical policy of the British government." Piratical policy? No,
never! We are on a civilizing mission; la mission civilizatrice
Européenne. It was not a message that the West has been ready to heed:
then or now.

Why had the Chinese chosen this form of warfare? What had gone wrong?
Was this rage born of envy; was it integral to the Chinese ethos; was
this rage aimed only at destroying the West? Westerners claim "their
kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres" are cowardly; but,
Friedrich Engels answers, the "civilization-mongers should not forget
that according to their own showing they [the Chinese] could not stand
against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of
warfare." In other words, this was asymmetric warfare. If the weaker
party in a combat possesses cunning, it will probe and fight the
enemy's weaknesses: not its strengths.

Then as now, this asymmetric warfare caused consternation in the West.
How can the Europeans win when the enemy neutralizes the West's
enormous advantage in technology, when the enemy refuses to offer
itself as a fixed target, when it deploys merely its human assets, its
daring, cunning, its readiness to sacrifice bodies?

"What is an army to do," asks Engels, "against a people resorting to
such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the
enemy's country, how to maintain itself there?" The West again
confronts that question in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The West
has 'penetrated into the enemy's country,' but is having considerable
trouble maintaining itself there. Increasingly, Western statesmen are
asking: Can they maintain this presence without inviting more attacks?

Friedrich Engels asked the British to give up "moralizing on the
horrible atrocities of the Chinese." Instead, he advises them to
recognize that "this is a war pro aris et focis ["for altars and
hearth"], a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality,
with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and
pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war." If we can
ignore the stench of Western prejudice in this instance, there is a
message here that the West might heed. Is it possible that the Muslims
too are waging a "popular war," a war for the dignity, sovereignty of
Islamic peoples?

In 1857, the Chinese war against Westerners too was confined to
Southern China. However, "it would be a very dangerous war for the
English if the fanaticism extends to the people of the interior." The
British might destroy Canton, attack the coastal areas, but could they
carry their attacks into the interior? Even if the British threw their
entire might into the war, it "would not suffice to conquer and hold
the two provinces of Kwangtung and Kwang-si. What, then, can they do
further?"

The United States and Israel now hold Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.
How strong, how firm is their hold? On the one hand, they appear to be
in a much stronger position than the British in China. They have the
'rulers'--the Mubaraks, Musharrafs and Malikis--in their back pockets.
But how long can these 'rulers' stand against their people?

What if the insurgency that now appears like a distant cloud on the
horizon--no larger than a man's fist--is really the precursor of a
popular war? What if the "extremists," "militants," "terrorists," are
the advance guard of a popular war to restore sovereignty to Islamic
peoples? Can the US and Israel win this war against close to a quarter
of the world's population? Will this be a war worth fighting: worth
winning?

Shouldn't these great powers heed the words of Friedrich Engels?
Shouldn't they heed history itself. After nearly a century of hard
struggle, the Chinese gained their sovereignty in 1948, driving out
every imperialist power from its shores? Today, China is the world's
most powerful engine of capitalist development. It threatens no
neighbor. Its secret service is not busy destabilizing any country in
the world. At least not yet.

Imagine a world today--and over the past sixty years--if the West and
Japan had succeeded in fragmenting China, splintering the unity of
this great and ancient civilization, and persisted in rubbing China's
face in the dirt? How many millions of troops would the West have to
deploy to defends its client states in what is now China--the Chinese
equivalents of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq?
If Vietnam bled the United States, imagine the consequences of a
quagmire in China?

Would the United States prefer this turbulent but splintered
China--held down at massive costs in blood and treasure, with bases,
client states, wars, and unending terrorist attacks on American
interests everywhere in the world--to the China that it has today,
united, prosperous, at peace; a competitor but also one of its largest
trading partners?

At what cost, and for how long, will the United States, Europe and
Israel continue to support the splintering, occupation and
exploitation of the Islamic heartland they had imposed during World
War I? At what cost--to themselves and the peoples of the Islamic
world? There are times when it is smarter to retrench than to hold on
to past gains.

That time is now: and that time may be running out.

Another turn of the screw--another attack by the United States or
Israel--and this window may close irrevocably. If wars, civil
conflicts or revolutions sweep across the Islamic world--unlike the
Chinese revolution, most likely this turbulence will not be confined
to one segment of Asia. In one way or another, this violence will draw
the whole world into its vortex. One cannot even begin to imagine all
the ramifications, all the human costs of such a conflagration.

The most vital question before the world today is: Can the United
States, Israel or both be prevented from starting this conflagration?

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University,
and author of Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on
America's 'War Against Islam' (IPI Publications: 2007). He may be
reached at alqalam02760@xxxxxxxxxx

(c) M. Shahid Alam

--
Yoshie