A scene of movie "Timbuctu"
Is it possible to defeat Islamic fundamentalism?
Many people, when faced with the IS crimes and the endless chain of terror attacks (until the one in Jakarta) think that this phenomenon is difficult to uproot because the Arab and Muslim world proves unable to produce the antibodies necessary to change the situation. Such pessimism does not only generate indifference, but it also leaves room to those who think that the only solution is that of making our societies impermeable to all possible influence of the Islamic culture and advocate the closure of our borders in the face of immigration.
Those who, like Salvini or Ms. Le Pen, would like to raise walls against extra-European immigrants, the same way as the Hungarians and the Poles, are not only motivated by racist urges, as they start from the idea that that world is irreparably lost and only bad news can come from Iran, Afghanistan and Syria, because fundamentalism in their opinion is deeply rooted in cultures that are so deeply ingrained in mentality to prevent any possible rebellion of consciences.
Those who make such statements think that the Arab-Muslim populations live a sort of a willing servitude as regards religious fundamentalism, causing the submission of women, the rejection of other cultures and religions, the jihad against infidels, the contempt of democracy are common places in their ways of life.
Thus every hypothetical struggle for freedom and plurality, every aspiration after democracy, after moral resistance to oppression and obscurantism would have no room in those worlds.
And according to this view, . the words of such an astounding writer as Vassilij Grossman, who in the face first of the Nazi invasion and then of the Soviet crackdown of his Russia wrote in his masterpiece Life and destiny that despite all heavy defeats totalitarism would be overcome one day, as it could never succeed in changing the human nature and censor the freedom instinct deeply rooted in every human being, would not make any sense for those who live in the areas subject to IS or in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The “senseless goodness” of people is stronger than any ideology and constraint: here is the source of hope for the Russian writer who never saw his work published because of Suslov’s and the other Kremlin bureaucrats’ censorship.
Somebody who is able to dispel this pessimist view of the human condition in the Muslim world is Mauritanian film maker Abderrahmane Sissako, in his astounding movie Timbuktu, in which he tells what happens in an ancient city of Mali that was occupied by jihadists.
Like for the Russian writer who did not expect an easy way out from the totalitarian game for Russia in the Sixties, there is no happy ending for the population subject to the fundamentalists who impose a whole series of prohibitions through terror: it is prohibited to smoke, to listen to music, to dance, to play football, to choose a love relationship with a fellow human being. If you step out of line you are stoned, lashed, beaten, executed. The black flag seems to hoist forever.
And yet the film maker is able to show us the small seeds of hope, because the fundamentalists can well jail people’s bodies, but they cannot silent the spirito f people.
So we see the silent protest of the football players who decide to play an imaginary match without the ball. They run, dribble, make headers, goal, they pass on to each other a ball that exists only in their minds. Jihadists have prohibited football, but they cannot succeed in preventing young people from dreaming and loving sport.
There also many women who resist humiliation, even though they are doomed: the girl who keeps on singing even while being flogged in the open; the fish seller who does not accept to wear gloves, even though the punishment for that is the amputation of hands; there are those who do not give up loving and are thus stoned.
The film maker, through a movie that would deserve to be screened in all schools on Holocaust Memorial Day, hence succeeds in transmitting an extraordinarily powerful message: Muslim integralism is no long-term phenomenon because it is antithetical to the aspiration after freedom of every human being, be him of Arab, Muslim, Christian or Jewish descent.
As happened to the Europeans with Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism, the IS presented itself to the Muslim audience as a new Heaven on earth that would free them from humiliation by creating a kind of internationalism able to overcome the old borders stemming from decolonization. But everytime the integralist sharia law is applied, it shows the face of oppression and can be enforced only through terror and fear. It is doomed to end, albeit not tomorrow morning, maybe. But what can we do by then?
Writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in her beautiful essay Heretic: why Islam needs a Reformation now, showed two paths that can help us understand how pessimism and resignation can be defeated through the awareness of our power to act along realistic lines.
First: the cultural soft power.
Do not think that to defeat an ideology drones or bombs are enough. We must engage in a great battle on the level of ideas, as the West did during the Cold War when newspapers and radiostations like Free Europe were created. They voiced the arguments of the dissidents of Eastern Europe and made the others aware of their societal demands.
Today many countries, because of the dependence on oil, keep economic ties with such states as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates that not only imposed a medieval kind of obscurantism on their populations, but have also largely funded fundamentalist movements like the IS or Hezbollah. This is why they are silent about the violations of human rights and the role of civil society and non governmental organizations becomes so crucial. They can seek to establish ties directly with those who are struggling for freedom in those countries. In the time of Internet and the social network, information and active solidarity can work independently from the compromises of states.
Secondly: the great resource represented by the immigrants who come and live in Europe. Many people only see the cons of this and are scared of the infiltration of terrorists and the establishment of enclaves of outcasts where the Muslims can replicate obscurances life practises like the submission of women and the refusal to adapt to the values of democratic citizenship in our territory.
As a matter of facts, writes Hirsi Ali, the contamination of our world can accelerate a process of modernization and secularization of the Muslim world. It is precisely from within the world of Arab and Muslim immigrant that a cultural challenge to the IS and the worst obscurantist regimes can arise.
Galli della Loggia was right when he wrote in the Corriere della Sera that a certain kind of unethical multiculturalism has prevented a struggle of values and has certainly not helped the democratic and cultural growth of immigrants, who though, as we should remember, have settled here to seek a better place to live.
Nonetheless we need to understand that integration is a long-term process that, as observes sociologist Bauman, requires the creation of common experiences from school education to conferences, public discussions, until the personal dialogue with the immigrants who live near us.
Unless we discuss this openly, how will it ever be possible that those who have landed here after terrible journeys from Africa can understand the value of the secular state, democracy and women's rights?
It will take a long time and a strong effort. This is the only feasible way.
Muslims are people like us and want the improvement of the human condition. Religion, for the majority of people - Jews, Christians, Muslims - is a private feeling that stems, more than from a family or cultural tradition, from the frailty and powerlessness in the face of events whose meaning we can hardly grasp. This is why the debate among believers and non believers, and also among the followers of the different religions, as it started at the dawn of humanity, so it will go on until the end of humanity.
This is why the pessimism of those who depict Muslims as impermeable to progress, due to their religion, leads us to racism and fear, achieving only the result of creating insurmountable walls.
