How do we fight Jihadi Islamist terror?

How do we fight Jihadi Islamist terror?

Some people want to hold vigils and to come together and to say we're not going to allow division or racism in our communities; some people insist that this kind of horror is a routine horror, like car accidents, which devastate some people, but only a very few; a risk which most of us just learn to live with. We carry on as normal, with the blitz spirit.

Others are sick and nauseous with the banality of that response. They want action against the murderers and their whole disgusting global project.

The way Nazism was defeated is not a bad model for the struggle against this totalitarian movement. Yes, the blitz spirit, yes, a bit of stiff upper lip, yes, we won't be corrupted by this foe; *and also* yes we're angry, yes we're going to fight it fiercely and remorselessly both here and across the globe.

Which still leaves the question of what we're going to fight. This is not a fight against Islam, it is a fight against a specific political movement which claims to be the sole authentic practice of Islam. It is not the sole authentic Islam; but it is one iteration of Islam. Historically and globally it is a minority movement within Islam. I'll leave it to the liberal Muslim theologists to fight over what is authentic; but I'll side with those who embrace a liberal politics over those who embrace the politic of hatred and death. Jihadi totalitarianism is a form of Islam, but it is only one form; there are other traditions, there are better ones; and they are much more widespread. Most Muslims hate and fear the Jihadis.

The first victims of the Jihadis are Muslims: gay Muslims, women Muslims, secular Muslims, liberal Muslims, Nigerian Muslims, British Muslims, ordinary Muslims who just want to get on with their lives. Anti-Jihadi Muslims must be central to the anti-Jihadi coalition.

Some people are saying: "Enough with human rights and political correctness, we have to fight them with all we've got". But they're not thinking through what they mean by "them".

What are we fighting for? We're fighting for the democratic state, freedom, liberty and equality, we're fighting for freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom of sexuality; we're fighting for the state to guarantee our fundamental rights but after that to leave us alone to live as we please; we're fighting for a state which looks after us if we are in real trouble but which doesn't stifle us when we're not.

We fight the Jihadis in the name of this notion of democratic politics. It is the Jihadis who see the world divided by race, who hate the Jews, who hate people with women leaders and with daughters who dance to women singers; who hate anybody who doesn't share their view. It is not us who hate liberty.

So we don't put democracy on hold while we deal with the threat to democracy, we mobilize democracy against what threatens it.

The notion of the legitimate monopoly of violence isn't just something dry and dusty out of a textbook. The democratic state has armed men and women; police; security services; it has machine guns, cruise missiles and air forces. The violence of the democratic state is legitimate because it is fundamentally defensive; it is legitimate because it is in the name of the people and it is under the control of democratic institutions and it follows the rule of law. And, above all, it is mobilized to defend democracy against those who would threaten it.

One of the key problems is that many of us are used to thinking of the state as the enemy and we are used to thinking of violent anti-democratic movements as the bearers of liberation of the oppressed. We have to take ownership of our democratic republics, first in our own heads. We have to understand that what we have is worth defending. We have to learn to recognise the threat of the kind of politics which tells us things could get no worse and we need to start by tearing everything down.

The Jihadi totalitarian movement is not the only threat to democracy. There are also the radical intellectual critiques, which cynically de-value the state and which get a vicarious thrill out of anti-hegemonic violence. There is the form of cynicism which becomes conspiracy theory, satisfying itself with a completely twisted view of reality.

The democratic world needs to re-find some confidence and some clarity. The vulgar adolescent worship of ignorance and resentment which won the Presidential election in America is not going to help; Theresa May's plan to launch a war of words and trade within the democratic community of Europe is not going to help; calls for internment and repression against Muslims are not going to help. The Jihadis love Trump, they love Brexit, they love Le Pen and Wilders, they love the EDL.  They love what makes the democratic world of liberty and equality weaker and less united. 

Instead of carping at the Islamophobia of the state we need to support the state, join it, help it, make sure it isn't islamophobic, support those who educate against democracy-hatred and those who hunt those who support the global totalitarian movement.

We defeated Nazism in the name of democracy and using largely democratic means. We replaced Nazism with democracy. We didn't adopt the Nazi view of the world and launch a global fight against "Aryans" - we refused the term "Aryan" and we launched a global fight for democracy; which also brought a wave of decolonisation and equality in its wake throughout the world; the fight for democracy was by no means finished; but it was gaining momentum.

By David Hirsh