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Counter-humanistic measures
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. Reviewed by Christopher Hitchens.
Well, there certainly ought to be a word for it. "Westerners" can be easily arraigned or lampooned as imperialists or racists, or "Eurocentrics," and a surprisingly large number of them are more than ready to accept the implied guilt involved here, or at least to submit themselves to the procedure of self-criticism. Yet according to one theory of "racism," only white people can be guilty of it, since it -- "racism" -- is a power structure rather than a prejudice. Thus, one also needs a distinct term for a black person who is ethnically bigoted or race-obsessed ("racialist" might do here).

Confusion
And what about Osama bin Laden, whose expressed desire is for the restoration of a lost empire in the form of the old Muslim Caliphate? It might seem odd to describe him as an imperialist, but not at all wrong to call him a reactionary, say, or an irredentist, or a nostalgist. To say nothing of his sectarian hatred for all Jews, all Christians, most Shia Muslims, Hindus, emancipated women, homosexuals and -- the world's most important minority in my view -- secular unbelievers. Here, the rigorously accurate term might be "fascist".

I once proposed the formulation "fascism with an Islamic face" and have found this played back to me in the slightly cruder version of "Islamo-fascism." Amid all this intellectual and moral confusion, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit have deftly proposed the notion of "Occidentalism." This is a play on "Orientalism," the formulation advanced by the late Edward Said, whereby a society or its academics and intellectuals can be judged by their attitude to the "other".

Avishai Margalit is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been very much identified with the secular and internationalist wing of the Israeli peace camp. Ian Buruma is known to a large audience for his witty and profound studies of Asia, Germany and England. Both authors had in common a friendship with, and a strong admiration for, Isaiah Berlin. (Here is probably the place to disclose that I know and like Ian Buruma, liked but did not so much admire Isaiah Berlin, and was a close friend of Edward Said.)

The book is short to the point of terseness, but by no means superficial. The authors demonstrate that there is a long history of anti-Western paranoia in the intellectual tradition of the "East," but that much of this is rooted in non-Muslim and non-Oriental thinking. Indeed, insofar as the comparison with fascism can be made, it can be derived from some of the very origins and authors that inspired fascism itself.

Medieval
In many areas of German, Russian and French culture, one finds the same hatred of "decadence," the same cultish worship of the pitiless hero, the same fascination with the infallible "leader," the same fear of a mechanical civilization as opposed to the "organic" society based on tradition and allegiance.

I was struck recently by seeing Tom Cruise's appalling movie The Last Samurai, where an American adventurer takes the side of feudal and tribal chivalry in Japan, presumably because of its self-annihilating authenticity, but realizes during the course of several destructive massacres that the samurai ethos will not survive in the face of modernity.

What is needed, he concludes, is a fusion or synthesis between new weapons and old ideas. It's bad enough that an American, even a Scientologist, could actually desire to see what Japan eventually got -- in the combination of an imperial god-king with a large air force and navy, an evil empire and an absolutely calamitous war.

Even more alarming was the cultural myopia that prevented critics and audiences from seeing that precisely this combination of medieval and atavistic ideas with borrowed technology is what threatens Eastern societies no less than our own.

Elements of the same self-hatred are what preoccupy Buruma and Margalit. What is it in the Western soul that thrills to violence and authority and fanaticism? Well, to get one problem out of the way at once, there is no doubt that Jew-hatred, and a morbid suspicion of the Enlightenment, have something to do with it.

Behind the apparent self-confidence of the supposedly "organic" racial communities of Europe, there lurks an insecurity that half realizes that the Christian-based nation-state is something of a fiction, or "construct".

Weak minds
In parallel with this insecurity is the recurrent fear of a secret or invisible government that really pulls all the strings. The paranoid fantasy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is often wrongly called a "forgery" (it is in fact a whole-cloth fabrication) is the apotheosis of this mentality.

One can safely call it a fantasy because it can, to weak or disordered minds, explain everything from godless cosmopolitanism to Judeo-Bolshevism (the secret fear of the Nazi Party) to Judeo-plutocracy (the other secret fear of the Nazi Party and of some others, too, like T. S. Eliot).

In his study of the origins of the Protocols, which was entitled Warrant for Genocide, Norman Cohn also laid stress on the anti-Semite's hatred and fear of urbanization and modernity.

Counterposed to this sinister conspiracy of the idle and effeminate and intellectual -- the very word "intellectual" was coined as a term of abuse by the enemies of Dreyfus -- is the assertion of the manly, heroic warrior who fights in the open.

The classic text here is Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel, a paean to the self-sacrifice of German youth on the Western Front in the First World War, and an emotional contributor to the torch-bearing and re-nationalized "youth" movements of the right that succeeded it.

Such supposed inspiration breathes contempt for the ideas of comfort, security and democracy, which are the consolations of the mediocre. Buruma and Margalit say that "some of the rhetoric now coming from the United States, specifically in neo-conservative circles, comes close to this vision." If they are willing to say "specifically," it would be nice if they could or would specify, which they do not.

Self-defeating
A central chapter focuses on the macabre question of suicide, or the belief that death should be loved more than life. This is not a pathology unique to al-Qaeda, and even less is it unique to Islam. The most famous devotees of suicide in antiquity were indeed the Assassins, but they in turn were vanquished by Muslim regimes.

The so-called Kamikaze warriors of Imperial Japan were also very frightening until they were defeated, and nearer to our own time the tactic of suicide-murder was further evolved by the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, another non-Islamic group and incidentally another faction whose tactics have proved self-defeating.

The method here is not the important thing. The ideology is what counts. Those who are eager to die are expressing a hatred for the everyday, banal achievements of human society. This may be less scary than it looks: Every second-rate volunteer in a democratic army must in the last resort be just as much prepared to die as to kill, and such forces also have their overwhelming and awe-inspiring victories. (Incidentally, in a book so preoccupied with the suicide question, and with the relationship of the West to Judaism and to Israel, it would have been interesting to know what the authors made of Masada.)

Occidentalism repays study because it reminds us of how much the suicide of our own society has been advocated from within its own citadel, and of how reactionary and counter-humanistic such advocacy has been. The ideas of liberal pluralism are newer in "the West" than we suppose, and could in fact use some ruthless warriors of their own. The author is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq. -Courtesy Globe and Mail (Canada)

Chandri Peris talks to Daisy Abey of her autobiographical novel Like the Wind
Two countries united by prose
"Like the Wind" is a book that deals with extremes. Written by Daisy Abey, its storyline takes us through the laidback existence of village life in southern Sri Lanka and contrasts it with the hardships of surviving in the cold and unwelcoming atmosphere of urban council housing in Britain.

The story is about a girl called Rupa who escapes the pressures of an arranged marriage by choosing her own partner and migrating to Britain. Subsequently, her marriage fails and she has to survive as a single mother who by going through the day-to-day struggles of existence in the West, finds and begins to value herself.

The ease of living within a traditional eastern community is contrasted with the harsh realities of coping with the loneliness of life in the west. The transition from a sheltered life where everything is done for you, to one that leaves you as the one and only person who can make decisions about the future you face, is laid bare in this story, during which Rupa gradually exchanges east for west and shuns her dependence to find her independence.

Talking to Daisy Abey, I discovered that this book is essentially about herself. Abey is a pseudonym, a shortened version of her married name, Abeygunesekera. She was born Daisy Wimalaguneratne in Mirissa, near Matara and studied at the University of Peradeniya from 1960 to 1963, leaving Sri Lanka in 1965.

It was during her days as an undergraduate that she was exposed to issues of caste and the position of women in Sinhalese society and thus, began to question the value system ingrained in our traditions. Her questioning nature and desire for further education weaves like a thread throughout this autobiographical novel that she has coloured with experiences of people and places that have touched her existence.

Several episodes in the book are events that relate to the uncomfortable positioning of a Sinhala Buddhist girl surviving in Britain and adapting to its language and culture.

Daisy Abey exudes a particular love for nature. This becomes apparent in most of her writing, which is heavy with descriptions of the land and sky in the two countries that she unites with her prose. Daisy Abey began writing in Sinhala but her first story "Gimhana Ahase Tharaka" (Stars in the Summer Sky) still remains unpublished. After this she launched into what seems to be her first love, writing poetry. Her poetry has a strange resonance that flirts between that which is essentially English, joining it with her Sinhalese roots.

This unique quality, which is very much her 'style' has proved to be her point of recognition. Benjamin Zephaniah (British Poet of the Year 2003) says, "Daisy Abey's Under the Sky reminds me that we live in a very small world". The Journal of British Poetry recommends her work saying that it is "a sensuous appreciation of the exotic meeting of East and West."

Several of her poetry books including Silent Protest, On Pennine Heights, In Exile and Under The Sky have been published by the Sixties Press, London. Her poetry has also been included in the European Minority Literatures In Translation Project (EMLIT) 2003, which is published by Brunel University Press and the Redbeck Anthology of British South Asian Poetry.

The mingling of the two cultures that she draws from is visible in her writing. She cites Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' and Ediriweera Sarachchandra's 'Maname' as sources of her inspiration. And these give us an indication of the two opposite ends of the spectrum that influence her writing. However, both her novel and her poetry give us the feeling that she yearns for the ease of her past whilst being unable to tear herself from the choices she made and the freedom she has given herself by living in the West. Daisy Abey is working on her second novel, which is a sequel to her first book. She lives in London and has a son and a daughter.

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