Tom Holland, ISIS and a Search for Answers

A few nights ago, Channel Four screened a documentary made by the historian Tom Holland: “ISIS – The Origins of Violence”. It was a sobering, sombre film which pointed towards answers to the question all sane thinking people ask : why do ISIS/Daesh carry out the hideous atrocities for which they are notorious? The usual explanations are either limited and/or superficial. Either Daesh are dismissed as “Islamofascists” (by people like me), as the product of the invasion of Iraq (by Stop the War Coalition and their ilk), or they carry out their atrocities to terrify all opposition (by ISIS/Daesh prisoners).
Whatever the merits of these arguments, they fail to explain the ideological justification for the evil behaviour of ISIS. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said: “Men can only commit great acts of evil if they believe they are doing good”. Thus, the driving idea of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen was their belief that they were creating a better world by slaughtering Jews and Communists. The Soviet secret police state apparatchiki saw their brutal regime as a necessary step towards creating a socialist state. Holland takes the courageous step of identifying the tenets of ISIS beliefs which drive their fanatical urges to commit crimes against humanity.
At the start of the film, like a good historian, Holland links the past to the present by visiting Paris and showing harrowing film of the 2015 massacres and the Charlie Hebdo murders. Holland says: “Isis have a thing about Paris". The “thing” is that ISIS regard France in general as the place where the Crusades began and Paris in particular as a city of vice and prostitution. He further explains that ISIS see themselves as re-establishing the caliphate ended by Kemal Attaturk in Istanbul, 1924. He also, interestingly, describes the impact that Napoleon’s impact upon Islam following his invasion and occupation of Egypt in1798, which led to a subtle change in the way Muslims regard Mohammed – as a neo- Napoleonic warrior leader, rather than a mystical force. The concept of Jihad, says Holland, changed from the struggle of the soul on a spiritual journey to an active war against unbelievers, following two failed attempts by Muslim armies to capture Constantinople in the 14th and 15th centuries.
It is to Holland’s credit that he highlights these matters which most commentators tend to pass over. These historical events might not figure large in our world view, but they do for ISIS. Where Holland is at his best, however, is where he locates the central tenets of ISIS thinking in the Koran itself. As Rosamund Urwin says in the Evening Standard:
“He (Holland) argues that Isis “self-consciously draws on Islamic scriptures, texts and episodes from Mohammed’s life to justify what they’re doing”.
Besides this, Holland asserts that ISIS/Daesh regard themselves as returning to the essential scriptures and following the true path of Islam. This gives me an eerie feeling of Deja vu – evangelical Christians said something similar to my younger self when they talked of “getting back to the Bible”. The Muslim equivalent is known as “Salafism”, aka "Wahabism". As Holland says in the “New Statesman”:
“Salafism today is probably the fastest-growing Islamic movement in the world. The interpretation that Isis applies to Muslim scripture may be exceptional for its savagery – but not for its literalism. Islamic State, in its conceit that it has trampled down the weeds and briars of tradition and penetrated to the truth of God’s dictates, is recognisably Salafist”
In short, Holland sees ISIS as having brought about an internal crisis in Islam itself. He acknowledges that most Muslims deplore what ISIS do, but he argues that mainstream Muslims need to take more assertive action. A “firewall”, as he calls it, is needed if ISIS can truly be described as UnIslamic. Holland continues:  
“Such behaviour (ie, ISIS violence) is certainly not synonymous with Islam; but if not Islamic, then it is hard to know what else it is.”
It is not for me to prescribe the next step, but, overall, Holland has raised some interesting questions and provided a penetrating analysisof ISIS thinking (if that’s the right word). I was impressed, also, with his reporting of the plight of the Yazidis under ISIS, and the world’s indifference to their persecution. As he told the ES:
“Holland is angry that the Yazidis have been so overlooked. “The massacres and enslavement was going on while Israel was attacking Gaza. There was talk about ‘Israeli genocide’. Israel was not committing genocide. It was not engaging in a deliberate attempt to kill civilians. All the world’s press was in Gaza, writing this, while at the same time an authentic genocide was going on, and no one paid it any attention. What happened to the Yazidis was authentically Nazi.”
This was no surprise to me, but it helps that a historian of Holland’s stature chooses to highlight the matter. He also reported on another story that never makes the headlines: the persecution of Christians by ISIS. He visited a monastery where the only worshippers are two resident monks and looked out over what were once Christian lands, but are now occupied by Daesh. If anything, Holland understates the persecution of Christians by ISIS. He says that ISIS tolerate Jews and Christians under their rule, as long as they pay a tax called the Jizya. This gives a misleading impression, as “The Spectator” says:
“Isis has stopped pretending. A 2016 issue of Dabiq blew cover, outing Christians repeatedly as ‘pagans’ and encouraging followers to ‘break crosses’ while boasting of having murdered scores of priests since their last publication. All pretence that Christians were afforded special treatment has evaporated. So why does the international community keep trotting out this lie?"
Why indeed?

Two photographs that need no explanation.

Diane Abbott - Pots and Kettles

After the disastrous Dieppe Raid of 19 August, 1942, the German and pro-Nazi media exploded with a protracted period of gloating. This seemingly unrelated event came to mind when I saw the outbreaks of mirth from the right-wing press over Diane Abbott's "car crash" interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC. Quentin Letts, in yesterday's Daily Mail said:

"..the BBC forced her to listen – while a TV camera was focused on her face – to her bloopers on the Ferrari show."

With what seems to be purely malevolent relish, Letts goes on to say:
"The poor pudding just sat there and her mouth alternated between flickers of a smile and something more sad, possibly close to tears."

Even the irritating Michael Gove, whose tenure as Minister for Education was a standing joke, seized upon the opportunity to attack an opponent in trouble:

“... it would be uniquely dangerous if we were to allow them (i.e. Labour) to come to power because not enough people had voted Conservative at this election, and they were able to preside over some ramshackle chaotic coalition which would pitch this country into danger.”

Mr Gove knows a lot about chaotic coalitions - he used to belong to one.

I cannot deny that Ms Abbott's performance on LBC was substandard and she needs to learn from her mistakes, but the malicious glee with which she has been attacked is disgusting. This is all part and parcel of the right-wing media's campaign to smear the Labour Party leadership and their policies. The personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn are well enough known - he has been labelled everything from a supporter of terrorism to a Wurzel Gummidge lookalike. What is less well known is the vilification of Diane Abbott on social media, in phone calls, emails and letters. Anyone who doubts this can type her name into YouTube and see some of the vile stuff that surfaces. She is abused for her ethnicity and for being a woman. She is regularly subjected to racist abuse and threats of rape and murder. Since the killing of Jo Cox, such threats cannot be taken lightly. Quentin Letts, patronisingly, concludes his triumphalist article by saying:

"Politics, like farce, is a hard game. You trifle with it at your peril."

Really, Mr Letts? The pressures faced by Diane Abbott and all female and ethnic minority MPs are no laughing matter. And since when did a hard game have to be dangerous to life and limb?

Nor is Diane Abbott the only politician or public figure ever to make foolish gaffes when facing the questions of the press. There was the famous occasion when the Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, was interviewed by Nick Ferrari before the 2015 Election. Ferrari asked Ms Bennett how her party would pay for an additional 500,000 new social homes. Ms Bennett's reply was a masterpiece of vagueness:

Ms Bennett said:
“Well, what we want to do is fund that particularly by removing tax relief on mortgage interests for private landlords. We have a situation where…”
Mr Ferrari asked how much that would raise, to which Ms Bennett stumbled: "Erm... well... it's... that's part of the whole costing."
OOOPs!
Then there was Gordon Brown's blunder in describing a constituent, Gillian Duffy, as "a bigoted woman" - for which he later apologised. But perhaps the car crash interview that resonates the most is that of Margaret Thatcher in 1983. As The Mirror says:
"...Margaret Thatcher was floored by a member of the public who asked her about the sinking of the Belgrano.Appearing on Nationwide during the 1983 election campaign Mrs Thatcher was grilled by a voter, Diana Gould, on the sinking of the Argentine warship the General Belgrano during the previous year's Falklands war."
Nor are car crash interviews exclusive to Britain:
 Sarah Palin of Alaska enlivened the 2008 US presidential race when first nominated — until her lack of knowledge of current affairs became an embarrassment. Just before the election, she could not name a single newspaper or magazine she read daily:
. “All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years. I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.”
Then, in 2011, there was the awful interview given by Tony Abbott (no relation to Diane). When Abbott was leader of the Australian parliamentary opposition, a TV interviewer asked him about an appallingly tactless remark he  made about the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan -"Shit happens". During the interview, Abbott did not speak at all. He simply stared at the interviewer and nodded his head.
To conclude, Diane Abbott does need to take stock of her blunder and make sure she never again gives the malicious Tory press such an easy propaganda victory. However, she is not the first politician to make a mess of things on air and she won't be the last.