Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

Comically Hopeless

April 28, 2011

Iam McEwan selects a number of books which have helped shape his novels. One of them, perhaps surprisingly, is Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium:

Always distrust utopian thinkers. People who believe they can deliver us to happiness for ever are bound to think, rationally enough, that the means will justify the ends. If it will bring the peaceable kingdom to pass, then break the eggs to make that everlasting omelette! And I think utopian radical Islamism or jihadism is a smaller and more scattered version of what so powerfully dominated the 20th century. The jihadi preference for instant rage, slaughter and martyrdom repels everyone, including nearly all Muslims. And the list of radical Islamist dislikes is too long, too much against the grain of human aspiration for their cause to have much appeal in the long run – sexuality, free thought, music, gays, evolutionary biology, unveiled independent women, pluralism, democracy, curiosity, fun, tolerance, fashion, humour…

I saw a demonstration along the Euston Road in London the other day – about a hundred chanting fellows in beards, with the women well to the rear, as you’d expect, head to toe in burqas, and many carrying banners demanding ‘Sharia law now’. The rush-hour traffic was edging round them; no one was paying much attention. They were a minor nuisance, like a failed traffic light. They didn’t look threatening so much as comically hopeless. How marvellous: no one was shouting or throwing stones at them, no one was much bothered. They were exercising their well-protected (I hope) right to demonstrate. A right they would surely never grant to others, if they had their way. They seemed not only puny but politically illiterate – some of their banners said ‘Hands off Gaddafi’. Well, he’s been a scourge to Islamists in his own country, so how on earth they thought he was someone they would want to support, I don’t know.

I wish I could be as sure as McEwan about "nearly all Muslims" being repelled by the jihadists. I suppose it's a necessary formulation now for a novelist entering these turbulent waters if you don't want to be accused by the likes of Terry Eagleton of being a BNP thug. But still, yes, that's surely right: in the long run radical Islam is "too much against the grain of human aspiration" to have any chance of success. It's the short term that's a worry, though.

This, from last month, may be the demonstration he's talking about (though it's Oxford Street, not Euston Road), with the women in black sacks marching separately behind. "Comically hopeless", yes. But slightly chilling, too.

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5 responses to “Comically Hopeless”

Fabian from Israel

April 28, 2011

I loved Norman Cohn’s book. I was given to read a chapter or two at Uni in Argentina long ago.
Then I searched for the book in Buenos Aires but it became too expensive after 2001, when the dollar went up.
Then, in 2007, by sheer lucky chance, I peered in the discarded books for sale from the Social Sciences Library at Tel Aviv University, and there it was, pocket edition, for only 5 shekels.
I jumped joyfully until the librarian shushed me.

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clazy8

April 28, 2011

Nice story, Fabian! I think I’m going to have to give this book a look. And Mick: I was snagged by the same statement. Almost all? I think McEwan believes it, otherwise he could have said “most” without stirring the pc police. As for human aspirations — radical Islam may run too much against the grain of human nature to achieve its own explicit objectives, but it may yet achieve the more limited goal of preventing Muslims from acknowledging the full range of “human aspirations” within themselves, in which case Islamic culture will remain locked in the Middle Ages. Hard to imagine, really. Can we hope for a second prophet and a new, more humane covenant? Otherwise I expect only blood and more blood.

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Dom

April 28, 2011

A character is reading “Pursuit” in one of his novels, I’m pretty sure.

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Martin Adamson

April 28, 2011

“And the list of radical Islamist dislikes is too long, too much against the grain of human aspiration for their cause to have much appeal in the long run”
Plainly McEwan is taking a geological view of what the long run is. Islam in various radical forms has been held by anything up to a quarter of humanity for 1000 years plus. Many of the alternative attractions he lists – free thought, gays, evolution, democracy – are barely a century old, mere children in comparison. If anything, all this tells us is how parochial McEwan’s views of human aspirations are, because even now his preferred alternatives are, on a global scale, very much minority tastes.

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Trofim

April 29, 2011

“No-one was shouting, no-one was throwing stones” – well, they should have been shouting, and mocking at the very least. When I see people not reacting to these creatures parading through the streets, I see not tolerance, but docility. Most are, surely, seething with anger, but this is Britain, and they know that in the war of ideas, only one side is allowed to loudly proclaim its beliefs in public. To contest them would be seen to be Islamophobic and the boys in blue would take an interest in you. British people seem to me more like cowed animals than anything else.
And never forget that Muslims have one big weapon in their favour – they pump out babies on an industrial scale – funded, of course, by you and me. Ultimately they will strangle us, as surely as ivy, slowly, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, throttles a tree.

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