THE VIEW FROM A CAVE: LONDON LETTER OCTOBER 2014

Though no great fan of Lenin ‘the heart on fire and the brain on ice,’ has always been a maxim to which I have aspired, though constantly fail. Watching the events unfold in Kobane I have felt more physically upset than at any time since Srebrenica and thoughts also turn to Sabra and Shatila,[1] which also made me feel physically unwell. Impotence now acerbated by receiving regular tweets from inside the besieged enclave from someone calling themselves Cahit Storm [@cahitstorm]. 
Tweeted letter from @cahitstorm 

His tweets are frequently humorous, often courageous and above all provide an insight into the courage of the YPG Kurdish fighters. The semi-autonomous Kurdish state has been one of the few success stories of the Iraq war, whilst the democratic experiments in the newly liberated Rojava region, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, give a real glimpse of what a secular democratic state in the region could look like. These forces are now under attack from a form of clerical Fascism not seen since the murderous Falange, though far exceed the Spanish sect in barbarity. It is as if the middle ages, having been frozen has suddenly come back to life in the Middle East, or perhaps more accurately, to death. Ebola and IS have become intertwined in my minds portents of a dark and bleak future unless we wake up and begin to fight against fascism, poverty and the diseases that thrive on poverty.

The bulk of those now defending Kobane are women, as indeed is the general in command. I can think of no better symbol of all that the grotesque misogynistic rapists of IS are against than this.
Kurdish YPG fighter

You might think that anyone possessed of some modicum of decency, let alone purporting to be ‘progressive,’ would be supporting the desperate fight of the Kurds. You would be wrong. Enter Malia Bouattia, the NUS Black Students’ Officer, stage left, or should that be right, now difficult to tell. The National Union of Students were offered an opportunity to pass a resolution in solidarity with the Kurds, this being what student politics being for, - you can read the resolution and a fuller account here.  This was too much for Ms Bouattia, who opposed the motion arguing that it was “Islamaphobic” and “pro USA intervention.” How deep the rot indeed. Ms B incidentally also turns out to be one of the movers and shakers behind the enforced closure of the recent Barbican exhibition, ‘The Human Zoo,’ see below.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic there has been a great furore over an episode of Bill Maher’s show on HBO in which Ben Affleck waxes indignant on behalf of the world wide Islamic community, (no shades or nuance for Ben, Muslim’s are all one great homogeneous block, needing him to come to their collective defence). In his blustering indignation he, - and why am I not surprised, - conflated religion with race, accusing Maher and his guest Sam Harris of racism.  As Kiran Opal points out in a sharply written piece ‘…the majority of the world’s Christian population is actually made up of black and brown people: 61% of the world’s Christians are those living in the Global South, i.e. Latin American, African, and Far East Asian countries.’ Now Maher has often made cracks about Christianity but I cannot remember him ever being accused of racism for making such comments.
Amongst the remarks that seems to have caused the most ire is Maher’s crack that Islam is like the Mafia, in reference to the apostasy code in Islam. Now Maher is a provocateur and incendiary and this crack was designed to provoke, however in all the reaction I seemed to have missed any reference to a widely supported code that designates the death sentence for leaving Islam.[2] You might think killing someone for making a free choice about worship or belief somewhat extreme; however the liberal left tiptoe around this one. It’s probably the fault of Western Imperialism.
One of the reasons Maher, Harris and the late great Christopher Hitchens provoke such ire is that they have broken a taboo, criticism of religion, if undertaken at all, was to take place in hushed tones wearing carpet slippers. Well Dawkins, Harris and Co have cancelled this free pass and unsurprisingly our spiritual guides don’t like it, - hence all the talk about atheist extremism or aggressive secularism.
Incidentally the remark about the Mafia seems to have particularly incensed Ms Bouattia, yes it’s that woman again. The mass slaughter, the rape and enslavement of women, the beheadings of aid workers all need to be understood as a reaction to US and British involvement in the Middle East On the other hand likening Islam to the Mafia is an insult to Islam requiring a visceral response, the strongest possible condemnation. There comes a point when further comment is unnecessary, these people condemn themselves by their own utterances.


UKIP wins one by-election and comes a close second in another. The rise of this dreary nationalist party with its racist followers is concerning and as so many have commentated can to some extent be explained by a growing alienation and sense of disengagement with the way politics is practised. I feel this sense of alienation myself. Politics needs to be re-imagined and re-structured in the age of social media if democracy is to have a future as vibrant as its recent past. Though if people are coming up with the answer UKIP they are asking the wrong question.
However it is important to keep things in perspective, over 80% of the population do not support UKIP and I am old enough to remember the SDP electoral earthquakes which were going to “change British politics forever.” Now young people say, “SDP, who they?”
I am currently living in a cave, a cave with a window on the world in the shape of a computer screen. I have periods like this, the left over residue of a breakdown in 2010. It is not really a closed world since light, information and passion both enter and exit through the computer screen, thanks to the phenomenon of social networking. This variety of alienating solipsism a product of the internet age, of Facebook and Twitter, increasingly the medium in which people interact with the world. The relationship between social media and mental health would repay further investigation. I think there would be very many positives as well as the often alluded to dark side of the net.

 Outside the cave a milk white sky promises a fine autumnal day. Who knows I might even go out?

AT 12/10/14


[1] During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1981 Christian militia under the protection of the Israeli army massacred the inhabitants of two Palestinian refugee camps.
[2] Taking the life of those who abandon Islam is most widely supported in Egypt (86%) and Jordan (82%). Roughly two-thirds who want sharia to be the law of the land also back this penalty in the Palestinian territories (66%). In the other countries surveyed in the Middle East-North Africa region, fewer than half take this view. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/

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