GOING NATIVE
Briton Richard Reid joined American Talib John Walker in the ranks of Islamic militants awaiting trial in the US. Reid, who converted to Islam in Brixton prison, had attempted to down an airliner with a home-made bomb in his shoe. Press comments on the American, British and French recruits to Islamic terror groups are full of horror at the treachery of western youth, but 'going native' is a long-established tradition.
In the 1880s a revolt led by the Mahdi in Sudan demanded the conversion of British officers and even Queen Victoria herself to Islam. Though Victoria declined, many British officers did convert, as a condition of their continued command over Arab regiments in the Egyptian forces, including Gordon of Khartoum and Rudolf von Slatin. Later captured by the Mahdi, von Slatin accepted a role in his rebel army to save his life.
Later Arabists like T.E. Lawrence and St. John Philby idealised the Bedouin and Saudi forces they had recruited to fight with Britain against the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence wrote the Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his mystical experiences, while Philby resigned from the British Foreign Service, converted to Islam, and called himself Hajj Abdullah in 1930. Other demoralised imperialists adopted the cause of Irish nationalism, like the civil servant Roger Casement who was hung for treason, and the British intelligence officer Erskine Childers, who joined the hard-line Republicans, before being executed by the moderates.
The problem of 'going native' was recognised by the Colonial Office, that made sure to rotate its governors, to prevent them becoming too attached to the local populations. Romanticising indigenous culture could help to secure conservative administrations in the colonies. But a more deep-seated loss of morale in the bloated Empire meant that its best and brightest were always prone to embrace exotic cultures. These seemed to be more honest in their moral outlook than the cynical manoeuvring of imperialism. However, the Islam adopted by St. John Philby, like Childers' and Casement's nationalism, owed more to their own inner yearnings than it did to the practical beliefs of Arabs or Irishmen.
Elite treason reached a new pitch with the emergence of the Soviet Union as a competitor to the British Empire. From the 1930s the sons and daughters of the ruling classes flocked to what they imagined was the cause of the international proletariat. At Cambridge, future spies like St. John Philby's son Kim, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt were recruited. Others like poet Stephen Spender, journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and Labour MP John Strachey openly adopted the communist cause - only to later retract. Still more elite figures, like Foreign Officer and Times editorial writer EH Carr were convinced that Marxism's case against the free market was correct, even if they did not embrace the alternative. But the cause of bolshevism amongst the British elite waned as the reputation of the USSR was tarnished by the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The quality of later spies declined, being either polytechnic lecturers or simply pecuniary traitors.
Since the eclipse of the Soviet Union as an alternative faith for the disillusioned sons and daughters of the ruling elites, eastern mysticism has re-emerged - along with green anti-capitalism. To their disappointed elders it appears that 'fanaticism' has some special hold, but it is the yearning for belief in the West rather than any special qualities of Islam - or Bhuddism, or any other - that drives the converts.
THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS
In 2001 the inauguration of republican President George W Bush seemed to open up a breach between America and a Europe that had adopted the 'Third Way' politics of Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton. The divide was further emphasized when Britain re-elected its own Third Way government under Tony Blair. To Europeans the 'toxic Texan's election seemed to indicate America's reactionary commitment to militarism (the Reaganite 'Star Wars' defence system was revived) and untrammelled economic growth, as the US pulled out of the Kyoto agreement on restricting the output of Greenhouse Gases. More realistically, Bush's election only indicated that Clinton White House had failed to put down roots that would support Clinton Vice President Al Gore's campaign for the Presidency.
The Bush administration withdrew the American special envoy to the Middle East, effectively giving the Israeli government the go-ahead to suppress the Palestinian protests.
To European leaders, the more dismissive approach of the Bush administration to world affairs created anxiety and even anger. Without the US to underscore international cooperation, the prospects of a planned economic stabilisation seemed doomed. European leaders gave passive support to extensive anti-US demonstrations at economic summits in Nice and Copenhagen - only to crack down when these span out of control, killing two demonstrators.
The rapprochement between Europe and America came from an unexpected source. An old Cold War policy to recruit Islamic forces to destabilise Soviet rule had finally come to fruition in the conflicts in Chechenya and Bosnia, having successfully plunged Afghanistan into an eleven-year civil war. Now that the Islamic recruits from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that made up the backbone of the 'Afghan Arabs' were being let go, they turned their firepower on their old American sponsors, with deadly results. Two thousand deaths have been certificated from the Twin Towers collapse that followed attacks by hi-jacked planes. The orgy of anti-Americanism in Europe was turned overnight into a supportive rally, led by an ever-eager Tony Blair, adopting the role of unofficial ambassador in the War Against Terror.
European and American leaders found common ground in the promotion of a coalition of 'security states', united in clamping down on an unseen and ever-present terrorist bogey. The one thing that the Western elites had in common was a willingness to rule by terrifying their own populaces into accepting new curbs on their remaining freedoms. For the wider world operation 'Enduring Justice' meant a blank cheque to the US to take military measures against recalcitrant regimes - and most fell into line, with Yasser Arafat imprisoning Islamic militants, along with the Somali government.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org