Why a great deal has been revealed by the differing reactions of the British Prime Minister and the US Secretary of State to the Paris attacks.
The real clash of civilisation is in the West’s attitude to terror
A great deal was revealed by the different reactions to Paris of our PM and the US Secretary of State
A woman prays close to the Bataclan theatre in Paris Photo: Getty Images
By Charles Moore
20 Nov 2015
The Telegraph
1713 Comments
On Monday, David Cameron said that “it is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists”. The following day, the US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Paris, was asked about the murderous attacks in that city the previous Friday. Mr Kerry said: “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo (the slaughter of the staff of the “blasphemous” French satirical magazine in January), and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularised focus (to the Charlie Hebdo attack) and perhaps even a legitimacy – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that.”
In these two remarks are contained differing beliefs about our civilisation. The argument about how the West should deal with Islamist terror and extremism turns on the difference. If Mr Kerry’s side wins, our civilisation will lose.
Mr Cameron was trying to state that membership of our civilisation has a price which every citizen must pay. Mr Kerry was saying (though he half-realised he shouldn’t be saying it) that grievance and anger against Western society felt by a group can sort of justify violence. The Friday night attacks, he went on, had “nothing to do with Islam”, but were just “criminality” and “psychopathism”. His Charlie Hebdo comparison implied that, if they had been to do with Islam, they would have had near-legitimacy.
Mr Kerry is factually wrong, of course, in stating that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. I discussed it at lunch in London with a friend who knows a lot about terrorism. “Look,” he said, “If you now stand up in this crowded restaurant and shout 'Allahu Akbhar’, everyone will dive under the table.” We agreed, and added, that if I were to jump up and shout “Jesus Christ is Lord”, people would merely pause, look embarrassed and then go on eating. In the current state of the two religions (both of which have pasts stained by extreme violence), one is dramatically more belligerent than the other. Muslims shouted “Allahu Akbhar!” as they ran, firing their guns, into the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali.
John Kerry and David Cameron have differing views of Islamism
But the key point for political leaders is not to debate theology which they may not (and need not) understand. It is to defend effectively the civilisation of which they are an important part.
In our Western politics, there is plenty of common ground about what our civilisation consists in – freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, accountable institutions, independent universities, habits of tolerance. No one could win a general election in most Western countries who did not, more or less, think along these lines. The Left would put more emphasis on equality and the Right on opportunity, but there is not a massive difference between the mainstream on either side about what, day to day, our civilisation should look like.
Where there is a massive difference is about how civilisation can be sustained. This arises from a difference about what where it starts. On the one hand are those who think it rests on universal values, often as proclaimed in written declarations of rights. On the other hand are those who think it arises from history, and is developed by particular people in particular ways at particular times.
If you are on the universalist side, you feel guilty about any bad deed done in the Western past and you get terribly worried by anything which deviates from the general rule. If civilisation is built on innate, global human rights, those rights must be upheld for all people at all times, almost regardless of circumstances. So if, for example, an Islamist extremist might conceivably face torture if deported to his country of origin, he must not be deported, whatever the expense of keeping him here and whatever his danger to our public good.
The particularists think differently. They are equally opposed to torture, but they are prouder of their history and have a much stronger sense that the freedoms and rights they value do not exist in a vacuum, but because of their countries’ past achievements. Those freedoms and rights flow from citizenship and are protected by an enforceable judicial and political authority, usually a national one. So if a case arises in which the liberty and security of the particularist’s fellow citizens are threatened by the rights of a non-citizen, the particularist sides heavily with his fellow citizens. And if some of his fellow citizens choose to spit on their common citizenship – for example, by attacking people who serve in the armed forces, or by demanding their own courts – his patience will not be endless.
If you ask the universalists why Britain became a parliamentary democracy with the rule of law, they will say that it was because enlightened people spread the right ideas. The particularist won’t disagree, but he would add that other, tougher things played a role – the Royal Navy, for instance, and a minimum of 22 miles of sea between us and any other country (bar Republic of Ireland). He knows that nothing worth having can survive undefended.
"It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by the Paris attacks"
In the current debate about migration, the universalists will say that an end to the Schengen agreement or a limitation of the rights of refugees would be an appalling affront to our values and “just what the terrorists want”. The particularists will say: “If Europe lets in millions of people unvetted, several thousand of them will be Islamists who will try to kill us, so we shouldn’t.”
My children’s generation have a phrase which I like. “That’s a First World problem,” they will say, meaning a problem which it is a luxury to have – “Oh dear, we haven’t got room to build a second garage” or “I have to go ten miles to find organic sun-dried tomatoes.”
There is a sense in which universalists, though they think they speak for all mankind, suffer from First World problems. It is reported, for instance, that Mr Speaker Bercow wants transgender lavatories in the House of Commons. It is increasingly common in government buildings for prayer-rooms to be provided for the benefit (though this is not stated) of Muslim staff. These are not exactly bad developments – a place where everyone can pray could help stressed workers – but there is something wrong with a rights-based culture much more obsessed with catering for difference than with bolstering our common freedoms which really matter.
For the past 200 years and more, our country has not (with the exception of IRA supporters) contained significant numbers of people dedicated to preaching hatred of its way of life and violence against its people. Today, it does, and so does almost every country in the Western world. It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by this change.
Unless that pretence is dropped, peaceful citizens of all Western countries will – to steal Mr Kerry’s phrase about extremists – “be really angry because of this and that”.
The real clash of civilisation is in*the West’s attitude to terror - Telegraph
The real clash of civilisation is in the West’s attitude to terror
A great deal was revealed by the different reactions to Paris of our PM and the US Secretary of State
A woman prays close to the Bataclan theatre in Paris Photo: Getty Images
By Charles Moore
20 Nov 2015
The Telegraph
On Monday, David Cameron said that “it is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists”. The following day, the US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Paris, was asked about the murderous attacks in that city the previous Friday. Mr Kerry said: “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo (the slaughter of the staff of the “blasphemous” French satirical magazine in January), and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularised focus (to the Charlie Hebdo attack) and perhaps even a legitimacy – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that.”
In these two remarks are contained differing beliefs about our civilisation. The argument about how the West should deal with Islamist terror and extremism turns on the difference. If Mr Kerry’s side wins, our civilisation will lose.
Mr Cameron was trying to state that membership of our civilisation has a price which every citizen must pay. Mr Kerry was saying (though he half-realised he shouldn’t be saying it) that grievance and anger against Western society felt by a group can sort of justify violence. The Friday night attacks, he went on, had “nothing to do with Islam”, but were just “criminality” and “psychopathism”. His Charlie Hebdo comparison implied that, if they had been to do with Islam, they would have had near-legitimacy.
Mr Kerry is factually wrong, of course, in stating that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. I discussed it at lunch in London with a friend who knows a lot about terrorism. “Look,” he said, “If you now stand up in this crowded restaurant and shout 'Allahu Akbhar’, everyone will dive under the table.” We agreed, and added, that if I were to jump up and shout “Jesus Christ is Lord”, people would merely pause, look embarrassed and then go on eating. In the current state of the two religions (both of which have pasts stained by extreme violence), one is dramatically more belligerent than the other. Muslims shouted “Allahu Akbhar!” as they ran, firing their guns, into the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali.
John Kerry and David Cameron have differing views of Islamism
But the key point for political leaders is not to debate theology which they may not (and need not) understand. It is to defend effectively the civilisation of which they are an important part.
In our Western politics, there is plenty of common ground about what our civilisation consists in – freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, accountable institutions, independent universities, habits of tolerance. No one could win a general election in most Western countries who did not, more or less, think along these lines. The Left would put more emphasis on equality and the Right on opportunity, but there is not a massive difference between the mainstream on either side about what, day to day, our civilisation should look like.
Where there is a massive difference is about how civilisation can be sustained. This arises from a difference about what where it starts. On the one hand are those who think it rests on universal values, often as proclaimed in written declarations of rights. On the other hand are those who think it arises from history, and is developed by particular people in particular ways at particular times.
If you are on the universalist side, you feel guilty about any bad deed done in the Western past and you get terribly worried by anything which deviates from the general rule. If civilisation is built on innate, global human rights, those rights must be upheld for all people at all times, almost regardless of circumstances. So if, for example, an Islamist extremist might conceivably face torture if deported to his country of origin, he must not be deported, whatever the expense of keeping him here and whatever his danger to our public good.
The particularists think differently. They are equally opposed to torture, but they are prouder of their history and have a much stronger sense that the freedoms and rights they value do not exist in a vacuum, but because of their countries’ past achievements. Those freedoms and rights flow from citizenship and are protected by an enforceable judicial and political authority, usually a national one. So if a case arises in which the liberty and security of the particularist’s fellow citizens are threatened by the rights of a non-citizen, the particularist sides heavily with his fellow citizens. And if some of his fellow citizens choose to spit on their common citizenship – for example, by attacking people who serve in the armed forces, or by demanding their own courts – his patience will not be endless.
If you ask the universalists why Britain became a parliamentary democracy with the rule of law, they will say that it was because enlightened people spread the right ideas. The particularist won’t disagree, but he would add that other, tougher things played a role – the Royal Navy, for instance, and a minimum of 22 miles of sea between us and any other country (bar Republic of Ireland). He knows that nothing worth having can survive undefended.
"It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by the Paris attacks"
In the current debate about migration, the universalists will say that an end to the Schengen agreement or a limitation of the rights of refugees would be an appalling affront to our values and “just what the terrorists want”. The particularists will say: “If Europe lets in millions of people unvetted, several thousand of them will be Islamists who will try to kill us, so we shouldn’t.”
My children’s generation have a phrase which I like. “That’s a First World problem,” they will say, meaning a problem which it is a luxury to have – “Oh dear, we haven’t got room to build a second garage” or “I have to go ten miles to find organic sun-dried tomatoes.”
There is a sense in which universalists, though they think they speak for all mankind, suffer from First World problems. It is reported, for instance, that Mr Speaker Bercow wants transgender lavatories in the House of Commons. It is increasingly common in government buildings for prayer-rooms to be provided for the benefit (though this is not stated) of Muslim staff. These are not exactly bad developments – a place where everyone can pray could help stressed workers – but there is something wrong with a rights-based culture much more obsessed with catering for difference than with bolstering our common freedoms which really matter.
For the past 200 years and more, our country has not (with the exception of IRA supporters) contained significant numbers of people dedicated to preaching hatred of its way of life and violence against its people. Today, it does, and so does almost every country in the Western world. It is an unfeasibly expensive First World luxury to pretend that the entire baroque panoply of European Human Rights can be completely unaffected by this change.
Unless that pretence is dropped, peaceful citizens of all Western countries will – to steal Mr Kerry’s phrase about extremists – “be really angry because of this and that”.
The real clash of civilisation is in*the West’s attitude to terror - Telegraph
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