Comments on: Madrid and Islam in Europe

By: P. John

P. John — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:05:54 +0000

Dan Simon: Exactly. Reminds me of what happened on campus here (Montreal) after 9/11. Some American students organized a candlelight vigil. It got a small photo in the student newspaper. The banner headline over the lead story however read: “Groups Fear Violent Backlash”. To date that “backlash” has consisted of one incident of ambiguous graffiti (“Go Home!”; it might even have been expressing an anti-American sentiment) on a car windshield.

By: anderson

anderson — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 01:36:48 +0000

Europe needs to start importing Asian and Latin AMerican immigrants. It was profoundly stupid to import so many Muslims.

By: krv

krv — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 01:25:36 +0000

I wonder how good Mr Niall Ferguson’s scholarship really is lately. He wrote a most odious book of “history” glorifying the British Empire and giving advice to the U.S to follow the example they set. In my eyes, it is enough to discredit him as a serious scholar. As for a backlash in Europe, if there is one against muslims and immigrants in Europe, I am afraid that would be precisely one of the desired goals of such terrorist attacks. They have attempted this sort of model elsewhere, where terrorist attacks have been used as an attempt to incite sectarian violence (in India in 1993, where they bombed the Bombay Business district killing about 800 people, with a hope to induce riots between muslims and hindus, and which did not happen.). I would not be surprised if they tried these sorts of things elsewhere in Europe as well. John Halasz, The Indians arrested were not muslim. They were both hindu (at least from their names). Also, they are likely to be released.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:50:31 +0000

But Henry, the backlash you fear is an abstract problem. It hasn’t happened yet. There is no particular reason to believe that it will exceed reasonable and appropriate security measures. You have cited precisely no evidence to indicate that it is even a cause for concern—let alone produced 200-odd dead bodies in support of your fears. On the other hand, let us suppose—for the sake of argument—that there were a backlash against immigrants in Europe. Suppose further, then, that as part of this backlash, a violent clash between rightist thugs and innocent immigrants were to leave some 200 of the latter dead, and hundreds more injured. Suppose, then, that I were to post to my blog on the subject, expressing my primary fear: that this terrible tragedy might lead the police to become more lax on immigrant crime, and to let up on their crackdown against European-based supporters of Islamist terrorism. What would you think of me? Please, be honest—I can take it.

By: Henry

Henry — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 19:27:38 +0000

Dan – that’s a pretty cheap and insulting comment. As I understand you (correct me if I’m wrong), you’re insinuating that I don’t care about the fiery deaths of Jews or Spaniards, when they’re weighed in the balance against abstract philsophical questions (as it happens, I’d already written a post describing the Madrid bombings as probably the worst terrorist atrocities in Western Europe). If you care to read the post again, I make it quite clear that I wanted to talk about something other than the direct implications of the bombings themselves. And what I’m talking about isn’t a philosophical problem, it’s a very real one. Try think a little bit about what it’s like living as an immigrant in Antwerp, or in one of the National Front strongholds in the South of France at the moment, and imagine how much worse that could be if there’s a serious anti-immigrant backlash. That this seems to you to be an abstract problem, which isn’t worth discussing, speaks to your own insularity, narrowmindedness and prejudices – it doesn’t speak to mine.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 19:00:36 +0000

I’m afraid I can’t help asking: just how many Europeans have to die in terrorist attacks before their deaths actually become a problem in itself, worthy of general concern for the, you know, lives of the (past and future) victims, as opposed to the philosophical comforts of the civil libertarians? Would a nuke in Paris do it? Or have Spaniards now joined Jews as a group whose fiery deaths are just not of serious concern to the politically sensitive, compared to the frightful danger of people getting altogether far too upset about them?

By: Maria

Maria — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 07:43:09 +0000

Overall, an AQ attack in Europe won’t help us on human rights, but there is still some good news. Aznar’s government has been probably the single greatest sponsor in the European Council of Justice Ministers of anti-immigrant measures disguised as anti-terrorism ones. Followed and supported by the UK of course. This Council is in the Third Pillar and up to now has NO transparency and almost no accountability. It’s a convenient mechanism for countries to policy launder – and they have. It’s no coincidence that the biggest supporters of the war in Iraq have also been the most opportunistic users of the Council of Justice Ministers to agree measures in closed session abroad that the public would never have accepted in open debate at home. With a Socialist Spanish member of the Council, a lot changes. You now have one less member of the Council pushing the US agenda hard (i.e. on traffic data retention, European arrest warrant, airline passenger data). It’s not a revolution, but it could be an important shift. Then again, looking at the UK, justice ministers have a tendency to go native once appointed, no matter how much their leftist parties espoused human rights while in opposition.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 07:24:58 +0000

I agree with John’s points about why it didn’t look like familiar ETA ‘work’, but at the time I thought the most plausible analogy was to the Omagh bombiing, which was also much larger and more indiscriminate than anything republican groups had carried out before, and was of course perpetrated by a dissident group within the IRA. The complexity of the bombing (10 going off at once) told against this, but it seemed to me perfectly reasonable to think ETA or some group connected to it was making a ‘desperation play’. I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but then terrorism rarely makes a lot of sense. Of course the simultaneous bombs should be a reminder of Bali, so that was some evidence it was Al-Qaeda linked. But I’d be surprised if there was more than a tenuous connections between the actual Bali bombers and the actual Madrid bombers, even if each are in some loose sense part of Al-Qaeda.

By: Edward Hugh

Edward Hugh — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 06:47:45 +0000

“It’s now almost certain that I was wrong when I suggested a couple of days ago that Al Qaeda was unlikely to be responsible for the horrible bombings in Madrid.” Glad to learn that for once you and I got it wrong together Henry. “My worry is that the bombings are going to give succor to the far right, and make anti-immigrant arguments more respectable in mainstream political debate.” In Spain this is unlikely, at least in the short term. In other parts of Europe you may be right. In Spain I think virtually everyone is aware that if they don’t have immigrants they don’t have pensions and it’s as simple as that.

By: mandarin

mandarin — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 05:26:07 +0000

I got hit by a truck the other day. It just flattened me—broke every bone in my body; and now I’m lying in a hospital bed, plastered from head to toe, all four limbs in traction. And I can’t help but worry: What will happen to my career as a hand model? Inside the bandages, my fingernails will grow long and horny. My hands will be so unattractive! No one will ever hire me again!

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 04:12:15 +0000

Well, I don’t think we can say as yet that the facts are in, certainly not a predonderance of evidence. But, given my political biases and my lack of any continuous awareness of ETA and the state of the Basque issue, I thought it unlikely that it was ETA, to begin with. (Since I work night shift in the U.S.A., I first read of the news in the afternoon, after others had already been processing it.) Hard as it is to attempt to “understand” the terrorist mentality and the schemas and rationales by which it operates, some differentiation between terrorist groups still has to be allowed for, and I didn’t see how it could be in ETA’s “interests”- if that is the right word for the matter- to perpetrate a massacre on such a large and indiscriminate scale. Fanatical and brutal though they may be, groups such as ETA, the IRA or even Hamas are nonetheless attached to some sort of cause with an agenda, sketchy as this may appear to outsiders, and, no matter how filtered through their malignant lunacy, there is still some weight and weave of attachment to a real history and a real world determining these, such that they are subject to some strategic, if not tactical, constraint, and terrorism is not just an end in itself, for all that it consumes the passions and resources of such organizations. This mouthful can not exactly be said of Al Qaida. And the rush of the Spanish government to pin the atrocity forthwith on ETA, running immediately all the way to the UN SC, did raise my suspicions, given the political stakes involved. The news that some Indian Muslims have been arrested, though to what extent for direct involvement is unclear, is ominous. I think- correct me, if I’m wrong- India is the second largest Muslim nation on earth and hitherto Indian Muslims have displayed a tolerant and moderate mind-set. If Hindu extremism in India is pushing them into Islamicist extremism, then there is much to be afraid for. The EU’s aging demographics are stark and immigration will almost inevitably be required to staff the depleted work force. For southern European countries especially, given demographics and geography, North African Muslims are the most likely group. If any one thinks that launching invasions of the Mid-East will modernize Islam, perhaps they should think again. The new Islamic presence in Europe will likely play a large role in developing more tolerant, cosmopolitan, even syncretic forms of Islam, though there are rough seas and choppy waters to be gotten through in the meantime.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 03:43:08 +0000

The PP’s 1st response to the train bombings wasn’t to blame the Arabs, it was to blame the Basques. The news on the Madrid bombings that we received in the US may have been attenuated, so apologies if my knowledge is incomplete, but the statements that I saw from the Spanish government seemed quite specific in blaming the ETA, and not the Basque people in general. Henry, it’s worth noting that you were hardly alone in your early opinion. The UN, after all, formally condemned the ETA, thus providing multilateral legitimacy for that point of view.

By: P O'Neill

P O'Neill — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 00:58:11 +0000

>> We’re also likely to see more policy >> measures that purport to combat terrorism, >> but are really aimed at making life >> tougher for illegal immigrants. But also making life tougher for within-country national/cultural groups. The PP’s 1st response to the train bombings wasn’t to blame the Arabs, it was to blame the Basques. There are plenty of other similar scapegoats throughout the EU, especially with the 10 new members coming in.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 00:50:38 +0000

And then ran onto Harvard, right? Funny that his name never comes up when one hears about how much discrimination there is against conservatives in academia. By the way, I think you’re too hard on yourself Henry. You were right on Thursday to say that it was unlikely to be Al Qaeda. Sometimes the world just turns out to have unlikely features.

By: nick

nick — Sun, 14 Mar 2004 22:41:44 +0000

Witness, for example, Niall Ferguson channeling Oswald Spengler two weeks ago, in his sub-Huntingtonian ruminations about European cultural decadence and the minarets being raised amid the dreaming spires of Oxford. Even as he took the money and ran to NYU and the Washington right-wing speaker-circle. Funny, that. (And economic historians should stick to economic history, in my view.) Note also that he didn’t point out the cultural meaning of the ziggurat raised up in west Oxford on the bankroll of Wafic Said.