10 Years After

anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physical finite planet is either mad or an economist we don't want to focus politics on the notion that involves the rejection of principles around which the large majority of our fellow citizens organizes love we are not as endlessly manipulable and its predictable as you would think the leading general who is strongly opposed to the bush war on terror made a very I think incisive point he said terror has been reported to in the press in the u.s. terror is not a movement it's a method and I thought that was very incisive because when you think about it it's a method that everybody uses not just the groups that are called terrorists but of course States use it all the time liberal democracies have used it we the British used terror in Malaya in the Communist counterinsurgency so the whole war on terror is basically according to this military perspective an entire complete mistake and I think that proved to be pretty accurate but there is a particular type of terrorist which I think al Qaeda embodied which employs the method in a particular way and and it's hard to imagine that the events of 9/11 which produced such an enormous impact on world opinion weren't intended to do exactly that in other words there's a type of terror which works by disrupting the world view the view of the world the perceptions of those against two words directed the goal is not simply to kill numbers of people though of course quite a few were killed in that act but to disrupt the perceptions of the countries that have been targeted by showing that it's possible to do something of that of that kind and I think the genius in a sense of that terrible act was anticipated by Conrad and in his book the secret agent there's a conversation between mr. Vladimir who's some kind of sinister Russian at that then Russian Imperial Russian embassy and verloc who's one of the agents in which Vladimir's recommends to have Verloc that he attacks what will in some spectacular way what will most terrify the people at that time and he says what he recommends is that Verloc attacks the sacred fetish of civilization at that time which is he says the science well what I'll Qaeda did was throw it into economics trade prosperity economic growth the civilizing magic of economic growth in which people in the West people had come to believe in towards the end of the 20th century at the start of the 21st strategically I think it was pretty successful because it drew the western countries led by America into counterproductive military engagements which didn't achieve anything alienated huge swathes of the world's population cost a fortune and of accelerated American bankruptcy and also eroded liberties and important protections of human beings like the prohibition against torture was it culturally disruptive this is my last point well it was of course to a large extent it it sent a tremor of doubt which has remained throughout Western societies about what they can expect of the future but I don't think it actually did disrupt totally or profoundly the central illusion of many people in the in Western countries towards the end of the 20th century which is embodied in the idea that is expressed in the perception that al-qaeda is not modern whereas I think it is what I'll kind of tried to do and was partially that's been doing was to disrupt a modern view of the world in which the whole world will be eventually pacified by a combination of rising prosperity and spreading democracy I think it did disrupt that modern idea what it didn't do was to enable people to see themselves and I don't think even they see themselves as modern and I think they are a radically modern not only in their techniques which involve using encrypted websites and global franchising operation and country but in their goals I don't find anything what I've read of this farm which suggests that the world can be transformed into a kind of anarchic utopia by spectacular acts of violence that's a modern idea not an Islamic idea so they're modern and I think that hasn't been sward yet because what we tend to think all the politicians most people who write about these matters the more modern we get the more peaceful the more liberal the more democratic the more civilized so it's quite thought-provoking to realize that this group which disrupted was itself modern I'm quite interested in the idea I think Razer hasn't mentioned it the idea that it's a it's a belief system where people prepare to die for it and I was quite struck by him and his break Vic who was prepared to kill but he wasn't prepared to die for what he did I was wondering what your thoughts were on the fact that there's does tend to be something quite unique about Al Qaeda where the people it's a cosmic Wars reza aslan said and they were prepared to die for it in a way that others have believed there is the difference you mentioned suicide bombing as a technique was developed and refined by the Tamil Tigers Gua Marxist Leninist and who believe that is nothing after death so they're prepared to die for it because suicide bombing as a technique involves the death of the perpetrator so if you see al Qaeda as a sort of a huge easy but kind of a enormous act of suicide bombing then I think they belong in in that tradition if you go back to the interwar period quite a lot of the Nazis and some of the fascists in other countries were prepared to there was the famous and slogan of the Spanish fascist long live death they wanted to die so you know I think being willing to die in your body as a weapon your life as a weapon as using her service as sort of expendable resource is its found of many traditions secular as well as religious let's not forget also quite a lot of the Nazis in a lot of the fascists we're not religious there were disciples of a certain type of vulgarized Nietzsche nism I'm just going to read a little extract from from my book I'm just going to preface it then I had booked a trip to New York following week after 9/11 and after 9/11 happened I realized that I wanted it wasn't a good idea to to fly but what was surprising as I realized it in my own process was realizing that it wasn't because I was scared of being bombed but I was I was aware that there was going to be an awareness that I might be one of the Bombers and I found this quite a new development and it's it made me just think about my own identity in the sense that I had never really been I've been very comfortably British and Muslim and those kind of questions hadn't really come to me so I started sort of writing about it and eventually this led to this book when I was growing up that sustained the the baggage of being Muslim or British Pakistani you have that in this country so America it always felt like a Ground Zero in the sense of going then you could start again and so I always had this idea that if it didn't quite work out in Britain I could always go to America and they didn't really know anything about what Muslims were so you could start again because nobody really it was an undefined kind of quality in some ways and that was taken away by 9/11 so it was just those kind of thoughts which I was referencing in this short piece it starts with me with my mum watching the second tower falling in my home I was in the living room of my mother's house eating keema aloo which are parties when I said when the second tower collapsed in a mountain of dust my mother was crying those poor people all they were doing was going to work she said going to earn money for their families why did they deserve to die who would do such a thing I continued eating and said nothing since she didn't speak English my mum would often ask me to translate what she was seeing into or do who these idiots who are taking innocent lives she continued don't they have a conscience taking father's from children who what are they saying that they know who did this yet I looked up from my food and said they're saying it was Muslims the sama bin Laden changed my life for the first thirty years of my life I've been running away from my religion but on 9/11 my religion caught up with me there wasn't really anywhere left to hide a few days after the attacks I was having a drink with my friend a Malak in the Luton Town Centre you realize what this means don't you my friend s said he means that America isn't ours anymore I said nothing but I understood you and me we'd always thought this country if Britain doesn't want us there was always America not anymore made now we're going to have to do what you can in this country because you know the second you try and land at JFK they're gonna haul your ass into jail and they're not gonna bother with questions we're you know I'm supposed to be going to New York next week don't you I'd booked a short holiday a treat for having worked through the summer without a break you're not seriously thinking of going I am May don't go on that bloody flight are you daft canceled a flight they're not even going to get your let you on the plane looking like you it's hard enough walking through the onder without being frisked it was a year after the 11th of September that I felt confident enough to visit the United States Bruce Springsteen had revisit had reunited the E Street Band and released an album called the rising which was seen as his response to 9/11 when it was announced of Springsteen the E Street Band would be playing in New Jersey I knew I had to go I bought myself a ticket and I packed photocopies of newspaper articles that I had written because if the immigration official wanted evidence that I was a journalist I wanted to have the available in the line at JFK has sucked hard on a mint and try to remember to breathe deeply and look relaxed I hadn't done anything wrong I told myself there was no reason to be anxious but I could still see my heart pounding I was approached by an immigration officer with it he was a large man with a ruddy face and a furry moustache passport he said what's the purpose of your visit he asked it was interesting how immigration officials could ask the same questions of different people and apply varying levels of menace if you were a pretty young girl the same question would be asked but there was a sense that it was a formality but when it was directed at me if it was as if I was in a court of law fighting to stay out of the electric chair I'm here to see Bruce Springsteen I told him the man stopped what he was doing and looked at what looked up at me you're here to see Bruce you've come all the way from England to see Bruce yeah it's not the first time either I said I'm a hardcore fan I saw him in Barcelona when the tour started hey Danny this fella he's seeing Bruce at the Meadowlands said the man talking to his friend on the other booth no kidding that's great man Bruce is the best real working-class hero you know yeah I met him actually he's a really nice guy you've met him the paperwork was completed instantly well let me tell you my friend there is no better reason to come to the United States than to see Bruce Springsteen you take your passport and have a great gig you hear the biggest lie I told when I was growing up was that there was only one way to be a Muslim and that way was to be to be obedient differential and unquestioning it was to reject pleasure and embrace duty to renounce sensuality and to never ask why even as a young boy this didn't appeal so I spent my life thinking that I was a bad Muslim but the irony was that for all the temptations I never actually did anything too bad I never even drank I did not become what involved with any extremist groups and I kept believing in an Islam which was more tolerant which didn't take itself too seriously which didn't burn the books of those who did not approve of I wanted to be a Muslim like Phillip Roth was a Jew with Bruce Springsteen with the Catholic when I was young that didn't seem possible so I ran away from my religion but on 9/11 acquired with me I'm absolutely unqualified to ask this question but my own perception is that in New York in particular actually anti-muslim feeling I mean in particular in United States has been remarkably muted possibly with the exception of the contentious debate about the siting of a mosque close to Ground Zero but in in general terms there's been a relatively high level of tolerance I've gone back quite a lot I mean I think the interesting thing is in the same way that you know you can't define America by the actions of its government you can't you know you can't judge America by the actions of the people who work at the airport but in a sense the airport's become kind of the first place where you initially get your impressions from it and they do they can sort of set the mood in terms of later of how you feel but the New York is you know is an amalgam of many many nations but it's when you first go in and that's that message that you that you immediately get which can put a lot of people off it still does the whole tragedy of 9/11 began well before that date as well as being if you like made iconic and globally televised on that date on the 7th of September two days before 9/11 literary editor of the independent Boyd Tonkin published an article Salman Rushdie abhorring the venomous response to his much maligned novel fury a book which it turns out was oddly prophetic in the way it signaled the terror of the times about to come the whole world was burning says his hero on a shorter fuse there was a knife twisting in every got a scourge for every back we were all grievously provoked explosions were heard on every side human life was now lived in the moment before the fury when the anger grew or the moment during or in the runed aftermath of a great violence when the fury and chaos abated until the tide began once again to turn craters in cities and deserts and nations in the heart had become commonplace people snarled and cowered in the rubble of their own misdeeds I think fury became an emotion it became permissible to express not only in private at home when he go you know you wake up to the grungy but in the public sphere and certainly in that burgeoning liminal sphere of the World Wide Web religion both the fury it awoke in people who didn't want it there and the fury didn't woken those who practiced and believed when they felt offended became a key part of political discourse politicized religion it was now an everyday part of public life and despite what we might have thought was its strength because it had God after all at its helm religions seem to feel insulted and offended at every turn cartoons plays books redeemed in assaulting provoked riots and deaths Islam was the soul under assault not only in the West but also felt strengthened by the attack on the Twin Towers and it that provoked Muslim leaders here not Muslim leaders that many of us approved us and not many but writers Muslim writers have proved up but but leaders like it Bostick Ronnie led by the mudbath burg Muslim council a lobbying umbrella group which claimed to represent some 200 was them grassroots organizations stepped up their campaign for protections of their faith the very same protections that they felt Blacks and Jews had under the racial hatred act what they had long wanted was an extension of our very dusty blasphemy laws which were then still in place and of course have now gone as a result of all of this as a result of much campaigning they wanted those blasphemy laws to include Islam and by 2004 the Labour government decided to give with one hand what they have taken away with another and badly drafted and far too broadly drafted law to criminalize incitement of religious hatred made its way through the Commons writers and all the ones included in this volume hit which was very broad in its reach stood up included comedians artists theatre directors and they all fought back in a campaign which was called free expression is no offence for the first time in the British statute books we actually now have and I think many of you may not know this a firm commitment not only in the Human Rights Act that comes from that other place Europe but in our own statute books a protection of free expression a free speech amendment which is extremely strong and provides a rigorous defense of irreverence of satire of heated debate and of the imagination and clearly separates out incitement to violence in other words to harm of the person from any irreverence or discussion of something that people might call offensive when talking about religion so did 9/11 damage free expression and has it recovered is one of the questions I was asked and I would say that the Furies attending 9/11 and it's after math have made many more cautious more wary of causing offence they've also put religious leaders often sales staff styled into the public arena for more prominent way they get more airtime even if they're representing only ten people but at the same time and opposed to that I think the last decade has also made many of us far more aware of the importance of upholding the value of free expression religious political authorities and that includes fundamentalists all faiths are ever quick to stamp out disagreement and label it defamation or blasphemy and I have to say that I'd rather not live under a ayatollahs whether they're called Sarah Palin or her meny and if the Arab Spring bears fruit it's quite clear that we won't have to and many of the others who object to it won't you talk about religion moving into the public sphere and a politicized religion why do you think that became the dominant strain of Islam both post Rushdie and post 9/11 I think it's because the leaves the more orthodox or also the more fundamentalist parts of the Muslim very different and varying communicate kitschy communities both here in the round the world actually took it over in some way I mean it was quite clear that bin Laden's dog was stood for a kind of purity within Islam which is which certainly many of my Muslim friends don't adhere to nor do they adhere to the jeddak jihadist wing of that but purity it was always something which was very attractive and can be very noisy in the public sphere many people were in some way radicalized by the war on terror in a religious way but also because suddenly our own government decided that religion had to have the kind of pride of place in being protected where you know many other I mean you know writers weren't protected I mean I don't know where supermarkets weren't protected except by money but you know what I mean I mean they actually chose up and people were lobbying for it because they felt that their religion was an ID and it didn't used to be the case that religion was an identity it used to be that if you like you know race was an identity but somehow the focus of things moved into there and and because religions have on the whole being rather intolerant in their in a more orthodox vein of writing and debate I think it was quite clear that you know this had to be fought and if it had gone on to the statute books I can promise you that a great many books like The Reluctant Fundamentalist I mean a great many of the very good post 9/11 books would have actually been taken to court ten years afterwards as we approach this anniversary or to talk about our reaction to 9/11 itself our political security military reaction or what I would call an overreaction because I think the real story of 9/11 are not the attacks themselves I think the real story of 9/11 as historians would judge it is our reaction our overreaction to those attacks because I think it was our response our excessive over-the-top response which allowed bin Laden a victory which he probably never dreamt of on a scale he could never have imagined what changed our life our way of life our culture our country our economy was it the attack of 9/11 or was it our response to it no one's saying there shouldn't have been a response of course there should have been a response it was a crime against humanity 3,000 innocent people were murdered live on television but was it the right response to declare war on terror this phrase war on terror and thereby give the terrorists those criminals those murderers the status they so desperately craved the status of holy warriors we gave them that status they didn't get that on their own we declared a war on terror we invaded two countries one of which was totally unrelated to the events of 9/11 we squandered four trillion dollars you cannot even begin to envisage a number that big and what could have been done with that money over the last 10 years fighting a war which led to the deaths of hundreds thousands of more people than died on that original Tuesday morning in Manhattan and in Washington DC along the way we abandoned our values torture waterboarding targeted killings extraordinary renditions all that we've done with our reaction our overreaction this war on terror over ten years is we've had more war and more terror terrorism is all about inducing fear it is the fear of the next attack and we have had a natural and inevitable and understandable fear with a terrorist attacks in London we've a terrace death in New York in Madrid in Bali and then we've had the fear that's been ramped up by some of our more irresponsible and cynical leaders and so you have this false sense of insecurity to quote John Weller where we think we're going to die we think we're going to be attacked we think planes are unsafe and yet we have very few leaders and politicians who in the last 10 years have treated us like adults rather than like children who haven't scared the bejesus out of us and we've had very few people who can step forward and say 10 years on actually it's not just about whether you're safer actually you were always safe it may not have felt like that but the facts are the facts I don't want to trivialize those deaths that have occurred from terrorism over the last 10 years but the fact of the matter is whether it was 2001 or 2011 the statistics show here is likely to be killed by a terrorist as you are by a wayward meteor or asteroid in every year since 9/11 fewer Americans have been killed in acts of international terrorism than drowned in their bathtubs on 9/11 Muslims were in the unique position of being both perpetrators and victims we were perpetrators in the sense that those 19 men were part of a Muslim terrorist group al-qaeda based in a Muslim part of the world that Muslims are also the victims of 9/11 I don't just mean that in a literal sense that Muslims died on September the 11th last giant evident the mother of a Muslim New York paramedic who was on his way to work and rushed to lower Manhattan when he saw the smoke never came back but also Muslims were the it was in two other ways one is that the majority of the world's victims of international terrorism of al-qaeda inspire terrorism are Muslims that is the great tragedy of the Islamic world today and the second point here in the West is that Muslims have been the victim of being this other this minority within this fifth column this enemy that could strike at us at any time you could be a bomber I could be a bomber if we get on a plane and we have a bunch of people and it's not just the herman canes and the michele bachmann's of the united states but you look here in the UK we have a media which has used and abused a memory of 9/11 to say things about Muslims that you could not say about any other minority group today and you have a level of Islamophobia today that I don't think non-muslims have quite yet caught on to I'm not quite yet recognized if anything this 10th anniversary should be used to call time on the whole on the whole terrorism industry which has emerged from those attacks and I've said this in print I said this before I'll say it again the only way to defeat terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized you talked about the overreaction and that it wasn't by accident was it in a sense I mean you know if you think about the Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine idea in a sense it sounds to me especially for the states that there was there was an ideological imperative there anyway and in some ways my level was quite useful to bring some of the things that they wanted anyway clearly the American public we're not going to sit back and have politicians who do nothing and I have this conversation with Americans all the time about even liberal left the Americans say look we had to go into Afghanistan we had to take action we couldn't sit back and do nothing when we were attacked when our towers came down as the first terrorist attack on US soil ever the first attack on the US mainland and of course there was that that intense and you could argue just a desire for vengeance and retaliation but as you say there was also along the way a doctrine an ideology that said you know Condoleezza Rice told Nicholas Lehman of The New Yorker a few months after 9/11 that she had called her team the National Security Adviser and say how do we quote capitalize on this opportunity we know we know there been a raft of books over the years the Woodward's and all this other books that we know that the bushes and the Rumsfeld's and co were waiting to hit that we know that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz sat around the table with George Bush in - why don't we attack Iraq because it's got more targets than Afghanistan there's more things to hit it wasn't about getting justice or trying bin Laden in a court of law even the anti-bush President Barack Obama didn't want to try them in a court of law he had him executed so it was never about justice in that sense yes I agree with you on that and we sadly went along with it the great $64,000 question is why Tony Blair went along with it to that great extent with the blood price and everything else - came to a point in a way is the fact that it happened on live TV as opposed to the 30,000 who got who've been killed in Pakistan which doesn't happen on rolling TV isn't it so I think the fact that we're having the legacy questions the impact is the way it was the way it was done and because it was an remember Natasha Walter wrote a piece in the independent about a month after the bombing of Afghanistan began and she made a very important stuck with me for ten years that one of the reasons we went to war is because we saw those images because we how could you not be human if you didn't feel anger and vengeance and upset no matter what your positions on American politics or America is but we also saw all those documentaries we read the transcript we heard those phone calls those voicemail messages left for husbands wives daughters parents in Manhattan from people on the planes in those towers and you cried we couldn't do anything else turn cry and yet yes the people who died under the bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't we didn't hear their voice no messages the people and I've got many phones to leave voicemail messages on and that is one of the other legacies of 9/11 now ten years later our media in particular television broadcasting I think there's still this issue where we value one set of lives in the world more than other rightly or wrongly and our media play a huge role in that in saying these people have died we will tell you about these people these people have died too we either don't have time or we're not bothered just harder to humanize I don't agree it's harder to humanize to humanize somebody who lives in New York than it is somebody in the Hall isn't it because you can't it takes more effort he needs to have reporters in you say that you say that but then where does where does for example something we haven't mentioned is going away is Israel fit into that because my great objection I'm a former Sky News producer my great objection I work two skies we always rolled when someone blew something up in Tel Aviv we did not roll with just a little ticker when 17 Palestinian dead in air strike we don't see that but we see the streets in Tel Aviv and we identify because it looks like the streets of London or berming or Manchester you

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Keywords: the rsa, rsa, royal society of arts, rsa events, 21st century enlightenment, talk, debate, discussion, 10 years after, Penguin, penguin books, John Gray, Mehdi Hasan, Sarfraz Manzoor, Lisa Appignanesi, new statesman, 911, war on terror, terrorism, 9/11

Id: fbZ8L1UZZMg

Length: 29min 1sec (1741 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 05 2011