投稿者 ドメル将軍 日時 2001 年 11 月 11 日 13:26:53:
回答先: 在英イスラム教徒移民が続々タリバン義勇兵に 英に戸惑い 投稿者 倉田佳典 日時 2001 年 11 月 09 日 20:27:09:
Why Brits fight for the Taliban
British Muslims owe allegiance to the British state - but they must win the argument at home against an imperialist war
Faisal Bodi
Observer
Sunday November 4, 2001
While we stand around the pyres tomorrow night waiting for the potatoes to soften and watching Guy Fawkes being toasted to a cinder, most of us will, if only fleetingly, recall the fabled 17th century episode we are supposed to be commemorating.
Bonfire night, rag effigies and nursery rhymes have made the 5th of November synonymous with treason. In the popular mind the Gunpowder Plot, with its dramatic aim of blowing up the Houses of Parliament, has become the archetypal anti-state conspiracy and its main executor the personification of treachery. Paintings of the day portray Fawkes' gang of eight as a whispering clique, scheming to do away with the government of the day.
This cloak and dagger image of treachery is very different from the sight of British Muslims jetting off to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban. Perhaps here is something refreshingly honest about the scores (rather than the hundreds of volunteers claimed by some groups), who have made their way to Afghanistan to join what they see as a war of resistance, a defensive jihad, against the US and Britain. As reports claimed last week that some of them have already been killed in action, some MPs called for the 1351 High Treason Act to be applied to those who survive to return.
More than a whiff of Islamophobia can be detected in these accusations. The acid test of prejudice is consistency and the hang 'em high brigade have been less than vocal in the past of other British subjects wearing foreign uniforms, British Jews in the Israeli army being a good case in point. But we should not let the jingoistic climate bog us down in polemics about divided loyalties. The proper terrain for this debate is the area of identity and citizenship. What exactly does it mean in this day and age to be a British subject?
Few of us have thought this question through, probably because for us citizenship has been a matter of inheritance. We take it for granted that we are British. Our nationality is a quirk of fate, an accident of birth. Since we have never had any choice in the matter, nor been confronted with a situation where the received certainty was seriously challenged, we have never felt the need to give it any more thought.
Yet the issue seems different for the second and third generation Muslims now turning Taliban. For them there is the contending pull of faith. What is to be done when being British conflicts with being a Muslim? Does being a citizen oblige them never to raise arms against Albion or do they have the option of buying out of that identity when the actions of the state become unconscionable? The upshot of this deeply felt competing tug is that Muslims, like British Catholics of Irish descent, have a very real choice to make.
Thankfully we are not without guidance. Our learned forebears have tackled these dilemmas head on. Muslims, they agree, should not rise or plot against the government of the day. The rationale is not expediency but the requirement to give the state its due. The physical security and freedom of worship a hospitable state grants to Muslims imposes a reciprocal obligation upon them not to rebel. Today Britain may be at war with Muslims overseas but at home it affords them a reasonable degree of liberty and security.
Rather than view Muslim identity in terms of concentric circles then, it would be more helpful to use a model of overlapping circles, for where the demands of state and faith collide it is often the former that prevails. The distress this might cause the devout is mitigated by the Islamic rule that no soul is accountable for something that lies outside its power. So if the state forbids the community from building mosques or burying their dead, it's tough. Part and parcel of being a Muslim is to sometimes grin and bear injustice, drawing comfort from the fact that surrendering your body to the state not the same as giving up your soul.
There is no room for fifth columnists in the orthodox Sunni conception of the Muslim citizen. Those whose consciences will not let them abide in peace are free to leave. They should emigrate being aware that they thereby relinquish their rights as Britons and become traitors in the process. Any Islamic state would consider renegades in much the same way.
But one man's traitor can be another's man of conscience. Those courting martyrdom in Afghanistan would consider the tag of treachery a small price to pay for following their consciences; indeed ever since the first caveman carried off his neighbour's womenfolk men have paid with their lives for upholding and protecting the things they cherish.
So should we see these men no differently to the brave idealists who made up the international brigades which fought Franco's fascists in Spain? Behind the demonised portrait of the Taliban and their allies lie some important principles they are fighting to protect.
That is why I find talk of treason charges diversionary. It betrays the same concern for the symptoms of this international crisis, and little for the disease itself. The idealism that turns students and trainee accountants into would-be warriors has its roots in the same injustices - deprival of freedom, self-determination, and dignity - out of which Al-Qaeda was born. This "war on terrorism" is a continuation of the old world order, the opening salvo of a much bigger campaign to eliminate all those Islamic movements which pose a physical threat to the west's brutal hegemony over the Muslim world.
This wicked war makes my blood curdle too. But would I go and fight? I am no friend of the Taliban and a few months ago I would have scoffed at the mere suggestion. How things change. From being an embarrassing caricature of Islam, in my eyes the Taliban have suddenly become the west's latest victims.
But we British Muslims need to focus on our own battle on the domestic front. We must show the British people how the government has cynically exploited September 11 to lead the country into a dangerous imperialist war. If it cannot be made to see the error of its ways soon, it risks sowing the seeds of a much bigger conflict with Muslims.
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