# Posted 6:47 AM by Patrick Porter  

OXBLOG INTERVIEWS NICK COHEN (PART 2): Nick also argues more broadly about the need not to see Muslims as simply reacting to what happens around them. There are liberal and moderate Muslims actively struggling against extremism who deserve our support. At the same time, the militant forms of jihad are not just bi-products of our foreign policy. If the twentieth century has taught us anything, it is that totalitarian movements (such as militant Islam today) and their ideologies have a life of their own. He refers to the recent comments of ex-jihadist Hassan Butt, who said:

‘When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology…
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombings, and I were both part of the BJN - I met him on two occasions - and though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.’

Cohen agrees that even as some are keen to blame every act of terror only on Western foreign policy, this actually reflects a narcissistic mentality, that ‘we’ are the prime agents in the world, when in fact there are forces in the world beyond our control.

We talk a bit about the nature of anti-Americanism. Cohen is careful to distinguish legitimate criticism of specific American policies and Presidents, from a more indiscriminate political hostility. I suggest that the main dividing line in foreign policy today is the difference between those who see America as primarily the problem, and those who see the US as primarily the solution.

Nick agrees generally, but says that attitudes towards America are not just reflections of foreign policy debates. There is a general leftist/postmodernist European revulsion at the perceived crudity of the USA, its mass market, its consumerism, its aggressive capitalist economics – tendencies they also fear in their own populations. At the same time, he agrees that anti-Americanism in Britain also has a strong conservative strain, arising from the Revolutionary war of Independence and running through the decline of British global power, linked to the rise of American power.

We also talk about the impact of the blogosphere. Nick agrees that the debate within the left about the war in Iraq took place much more within the blog world than the world outside it. It was on sites like ‘Harry’s Place’ and ‘normblog’ where one was able to hear a pro-war left that saw itself as the true voice of a democratic anti-totalitarian movement, and in turn, where one saw the most strident criticism of it.

Nick reflects that there is an important difference between the conventional and blog media: a conformism descends upon the liberal press and centralised media, whereas the web enables scattered people who might have thought they were isolated or unusual in their beliefs to find each other. Nick researched his book partly by going through all of the posts and fierce battles in the ‘comments’ section.

Finally, I ask Nick about the state of play now. He thinks that we are in a strange position, where enough people have been killed to fuel a movement towards misguided appeasement, but not enough to convince people that there is a deadly threat. Paradoxically, I suggest that even as we hope it won’t happen, al Qaeda might be far more damaged by a successful large-scale strike on Britain, as like the Omagh bombings undermined sympathy for the IRA. It would serve to alienate opinion and mobilise far more resistance at the grass roots level. But Cohen thinks that the usual suspects would still make similar noises, blaming everyone but the killers.

By this point I had taken up far too much of Nick’s time and thanked him. Nick headed out of the pub and back into the fray. (17) opinions -- Add your opinion