Club Politique by Che Tibby

I was browsing Scoop over lunch and read this interesting article by Paul Buchanan. It grabbed my attention for a couple of reasons.

The main assertion of the article is that by singling out Muslims as ‘a danger to New Zealand’ prominent political figures are in fact pushing the Islamic community towards extremism. Now, that’s something I’ve long thought, but Paul has the facts and figures to back up his argument.

The next interesting assertion deserves a block quote.

Al-Qaeda is a loose network of Islamicist guerrilla cells, mostly but not exclusively of Wahabbist orientation, dedicated to eradicating Western influence from the Muslim Diaspora via a global campaign of terrorism.

The objective is to sow irrational fear among Western populations that is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by Islamic terrorism, and to provoke government over-reaction when attempting to safeguard their civilian populations and influence in the Muslim world

OK, so there you have Buchanan indicating that an objective of Al-Qaeda is to provoke Westerners into over-reaction. In other words, to react the same way that some of our good friends on the right in New Zealand have been doing. Good one guys, way to suppress terror…

Anyhow, the other part of that quote, where he says that another objective of Al-Qaeda is eradicating Western influence from the Muslim diaspora. I assume of course that he means countries outside of Saudi Arabia, the original home of Islam, that are historically Muslim. The classic Islamic crescent that is.

This grabbed my attention because it stands in direct contrast to some of the big statements being made in media across the globe whenever something like the London bombings comes along. Pretty much every time, you get George, Tony or Little Johnnie standing up to terror by saying “you’ll never change our way of life".

But, if what Buchanan says is true, then the ‘destruction of the West’ is not the aim of Al-Qaeda. Confused, I wrote him an email.

Readers should note, for this post I actually did a little background… how’s that for snazzy.

Che: What's your source on the aim and ambitions of Al Qaeda? I'm familiar with the argument that what they primarily seek is the West out of Islamic countries, but hear a lot of opinion that the aims of Islamic extremists are to bring their culture to the entire world.

Is there any kind of definitive statement that confirms either perspective? Or is it the case, as with many movements, that different factions have differing aims?

PB: I know of no Islamicist who advocates global domination by Muslims. I do know that they see their world being penetrated, corrupted and slowly submerged under the weight of globalised secular Western domination. Al-Qaeda's fight is mostly with moderate Islam, using attacks on Western targets as their foil. I wrote a piece on this for the Listener in late 2003 titled "The Sun Became Black." It develops the above thoughts at more length.

I use various sources when reading about Islam. Tariq Ali is great (see his 2002 book "Clash of Fundamentalisms"), and Edward Said is probably the best cultural historian to address the issue.

I downloaded and read the Listener article in my lunchtime as well, and got back to Paul with a quick email.

Che:Just another point of clarification. Did you say you aren't aware of any Islamist advocating global domination? I'm assuming you mean 'credible' Islamist organisation in the sense of being actually able to follow thru on things like terrorism.

Because there are many factions in our society who argue exactly the opposite, that Islamists are all about global domination and destroying the 'western way of life'.

PB:Contrary to those who claim that Islamicism wants to destroy the Western way of life, what they really are is a last ditch defensive gasp against encroaching western secularisation. They are going to lose in the long run, but will go down fighting… But they can never but dream of world domination and the elimination of western culture, and from what I have read, few if any of the Islamicist factions hold such views even in their dreams.

He also drew distinction between the different types of Islamic extremist, something I’ve once again been suspicious of.

PB:Given the loose cellular structure of Al-Qaeda, there are many factional views lumped into the fundamentalist (or Islamicist as opposed to Islamic) camp. Many of them have serious areas of disagreement even while universally condemning Western encroachment on their civilisation. Wahabbists dominate Saudi Arabia and some Sunni communities, but do not share they same perspective as the Indonesian jamar es-Islamiah, for example.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I actually find this stuff fairly reassuring.

One of the reason’s I’ve long been opposed to many of the actions of the US, and have been happy with the actions of place like NZ, is that I don’t see us playing into the hands of Al-Qaeda. Playing into their hands the same way Australia did by joining the invasion of Saddam’s Iraq for example, the demise of which was also a stated aim of Al-Qaeda.

So despite all the protestations of our resident pyjamahadeen over there in RWDB-O-Plenty (you people really need to get out of the house, and stop posting photos of women you’ll never actually sleep with), the total destruction of our civilisation is not the aim of the ‘Islamofascists’ (PB has a go at that term too).

My opinion is that what we really have is a lot of scared people, Bush and others included, who have absolutely no friggin’ idea who or what they’re trying to deal with. Consequently, what you end up with is a series of half-baked scare tactics and big-gun-doing-the-talking motions to make it look like they’re on top of things, while potentially making things much, much worse.

Instead of holding up the pillars of freedom we espouse, these types of characters are working to foment hatred of the West and bring even more bloodshed upon us all.

Sure, let’s combat terror. Let’s stop these extremists and make the world a safe place again.

But for christs sake’s understand the reality of the situation before you go off half-cocked to make wild or weird accusations about groups, ideas, and peoples you know nothing about.

So I'm looking over a bulletin board thingy at work, and decide to attend a seminar given by this guy called Michael Sandel. For those of you not 100% dedicated to the luminaries of political philosophy, Sandel is the author of a book called Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. I'll spare you the details.

The point you do need to know is this. Going into the seminar I gave myself one rule. Do. Not. Under. Any. Circumstance open your friggin' yap. At all. Say nothing. Be the quiet, thoughtful looking bloke at the back.

Naturally I screwed that up, and up popped my hand, asking the last question of the seminar.

The whole thing had been going pretty well until that stage, there were various important-looking executives and senior manager types everywhere. A couple of odd, looking potentially hippy types lurking. Someone with big hair. The whole nine yards in the seminar stakes.

Of course, I immediately assumed that the big-hair person would be the one to ask the difficult, mumbled, and potentially insane question, thereby earning themselves the distain of some and pity of others. After all, there is always one person in every seminar. And I don't know why.

I gave a paper at a conference a year or so back, and it was a guy in sharp shirts and a natty vest. His first question kind of freaked me out, and then I realised, "Oh, he's the nutter..."

But at the Sandel seminar? Yours truly.

Ah well. Despite the embarrassment of blushing, being unable to form proper sentences, talking way too fast, and having this weird out of body experience where my consciousness tried to make a run for it before the memory realised what was happening and permanently scarred the psyche sitting next to it, it all came off very well.

I'd probably better come clean and admit that really smart people just plain scare the living piss out of me. Seriously. Put me in a room full of high IQs and something about the inferiority or tall poppy thing kicks in and Che leaves the building, leaving a husk of skinny, nervous man.

Pesky damn anxiety. I'd take some kind of drugs if I didn't get paranoid someone would find out and narc on me. You'd think I'd get over it writing the thesis, but no. Cow undergrads? No problem. Talk down to workmates or shopkeepers? Try not too, but it isn't difficult. But approach someone wearing a cardy with leather patches on the sleeves, a bad beard or freaky hairdo? Gibbering mess.

Luckily my question was the last one, so not only did I not have time to redeem myself, but also got to absorb a bit of info before the big red stoplight that is my forehead lit up the room. I was half expecting a dozen German and Aussie tourists to bowl into the place thinking it was a brothel.

Anyway, catharsis over, and what Sandel had to say was pretty interesting. In a nutshell, he built upon the thought of this other smart-guy, John Rawls, and talked about the issue of knowing too much. Not too much in general, but too much about risk.

So, originally this post was going to talk details about what Sandel had to say, but I can boil it all down to the simple statement that the future does not lie in organising life around the individual to the exclusion of collective, public ventures. What he lectured on was the danger that private health care (for example) will become too risky for private companies because of advances in genetic identification of probable hereditary diseases.

This issue is potentially huge, and if you extend it out to the question of making our society cohesive, then it becomes incredibly tricky. What happens if in another scenario, people simply aren’t interested in paying taxes to support another group that has a history of poor health? This isn’t so far fetched, half the time the right refuses to pay money to beneficiaries because they see it as funding dole-bludging minorities.

The question I tried (unsuccessfully) to bring to the discussion concerned religious minorities. What happens if a minority is considered too risky to have in or near our society? Rawls’ idea is that you design your political system so that it remains ignorant of specific content like religion or race, and just provides equally and justly to all.

But what happens if this neutrality is undermined by a popular predisposition to distaining groups in our society? After all, people are starting to really hate Islam. Does this mean that in time that entire Muslim communities will be marginalized and excluded in places like Britain? Will they be forced to entirely shut down their contribution to public debate, say in opposing things like the levelling of Falluja?

It’s a worry.

Hmmm... Treaty Settlements. For those of you remember the heady days of 1996, when student loans were ascending out of control, benefits were few and hard to come by, and country was being run by ideologues, I was still an angry [and comparatively] young man.

Now, being an angry young man I was determined to do what most blokes of my ilk like to do, and that's 'stick it to the man'. And no, don't go jumping to any conclusions. Instead, realise that like all well-meaning do-gooders I took up someone else's fight and was going to change the world.

The fashionable target in those days was the Fiscal Envelope, that magnificent imposition on the tangata whenua by patronising, arrogant bureaucrats in Te Waha o Te Ika o Māui, and I took to dismantling it with a gusto becoming the true cracker I am.

You can imagine my bewilderment when I discovered it wasn't really all that bad.

There's no point trying to flesh out all the details of the Crown's settlement ambitions, but by the time I investigated the motivations of the overall policy, the historical facts that lead to the policy becoming necessary, and saw that the policy was flawed, at times ad hoc, a little ramshackle, and probably the best New Zealand could do in the circumstances, I mellowed considerably.

In fact, I consider the first realisation one of the moments in which I came to terms with the world (i.e. set out down the road to becoming an old fart...)

I've tracked the development of the settlement policy since then, and eventually argued during the course of the Australian study that it is something of a best-practice model for other former-Colonial liberal democracies. How times have changed, it seems.

And now here we all are, on the cusp of the beginning of the end. And probably none too soon in my estimation. In all likelihood, this sudden willingness to place a time limit on the lodging of historical claims to the Waitangi Tribunal is somewhere between a sop to the rednecks and cooption of the more abrupt versions of this same policy proclaimed by the far right, but is doubtless past due.

The current Government being what it is, there's every likelihood they won't take an extremist line in the whole 'deadline' thingy. After all, if there are extenuating circumstances preventing a Māori group from lodging a claim, circumstances that can be proven to provide reasonable justification for a moderately late submission, then I can't really see the Crown from preventing it.

After all, the entire reason for the settlement process was justice.

The main thing to consider is that the bulk of the really big and hairy settlements are completed, especially the raupatu issue (bar Tauranga Moana), and the remainder seem to mostly be complicated by multiple and overlapping claims and 'difficult' political situations.

The majority of the information about the work that needs to be done appears in be in the public domain at sites like the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Waitangi Tribunal. I thought about reading some and giving you a little run down, but, well, I'm a bit over the whole thing and can't be stuffed.

To be honest there's just not very much to be excited about in this particular area of New Zealand politics. Really, the 'gravy train' people like Peters et al like to splutter about is just a series of negotiations between local stakeholders and the Crown. And negotiations being what they are, you have to make sure you do them properly and thereby ensure that the two main issues in the settlements policy are adhered to. That the settlements are full, final and equitable.

So why screw them up just for political expediency? Peters and Hide haven't left any kind of legacy for people in 2050 to remember them by, so how the heck are we going to be able to blame these guys if a rushed settlement falls through?

All this having been said, sources inform me that a few of the local stakeholders do need to get a bit of a wiggle on. I know for certain that local politics isn't always a cut and dry affair, and can be every bit as complicated as the personality politics that dominate Wellington. But, while resolving our history the proper way is important, the settlement process was never really intended to be the panacea Māori truly need.

As much as the phrase 'all getting on with it' evokes an entirely inappropriate picture, the many stakeholders involved in the settlement process do need to reach some kind of resolution, if not only so the extraneous Crown resources invested in this area can be moved to more important activities like economic development, or reform of the more patronising legislative frameworks around Māori collective assets.

So on a final note, even though this policy seems to me to be Helen doing what Little Johnnie did to Pauline, maybe what will become of it is a more robust, deeper, Twenty-First Century Māori society of many and varied groups.

Really, there’s no way to describe the way in which New Zealanders self-identify except to say that you can’t quantify it. Naturally, the response to any claim by a New Zealander to being anything other than an ‘Anglo’ is guaranteed to meet opposition from persons who judge our culture to be nothing more than an extension of our British heritage.

And that's an interesting little conundrum, because self-definition is an important part of nationality. We have to be able to think we are something, and have it recognised as ‘true’. But having this identity denied acts to undermine us, and is bound to cause some kinds of insecurity.

But there is a way around this problem. Sure, we all know we’re New Zealanders, and we actively locate ourselves within the boundaries of this identity, but what really makes us, us? In other words, what are the boundaries that define who is, and who is not, and New Zealander?

Over the course of the past few years, when not delving into hard theory about nationalism, multiculturalism, liberalism and a plethora of other ‘isms’, I’ve enjoyed indulging in artistic expressions of what it is to simply be a member of a nation.

The difference between the academic and the artistic world is that while the academics work oh so hard to really get down to the kernel of what makes us what we think we are, artists just seem to enjoy expressing their identity in ever-changing, evolving and indirect ways.

As I’ve come to understand it, being a member of a nation is all about the recognition of a part of your own personality, likes, dislikes, and habits in not only the people around you, but the people who have been before. What this means is that yes, we are characteristically British, but that this part of our nationality is something like a foundation layer upon which our current identity is growing.

That is of course a truism, and just me acknowledging the past, but I used the term foundation for a reason. Try to imagine nationality as a house. The foundation of the house is the older identities we each brought with us during the Colonial period, the pre-Colonial period, the pre- and post-World War Two periods. You know they’re there, and you walk upon them every day, but they do little but hold up the really important stuff, the everyday stuff that determine our lives.

All the stuff in the house that you use, talk about, see, ignore, hide away and surround yourself with is your ‘real’ nationality. The real world things like money, the national flag, the familiar faces on TV, the kinds of cars people drive, the way people speak, the streets you ignore the details of. All these things contribute to making up the small facets of our nationality.

Where an academic will try to tie down the entire content of that house, and explain the how and why, the artist will write about the things they see there, or paint a view of how the house feels, or sing about just being in there and the people they’re nearest to.

What this means is that when you claim to be a member of a nation, what you’re really doing is tying yourself to the kinds of things the artist would see around them, and staking a claim in the ongoing evolution of those things.

And what all that reading of fancy books and ivory tower argumentation really taught me is that the true definition of identity, and the best way to assume you place within a national society, is to simply act like a member.

Naturally, the exceptions to this statement as are broad and sweeping as the identity itself, but the thing that is most important to my mind are the kinds of tethers we each form to the objects and space within our ‘national house’, and the way we use them to underwrite our daily interaction with others.

But of course, these tethers are never permanent, and all too often fall away as new things become important. Old stereotypes are challenged and defeated by new generations, traditional norms are gradually relegated to obsolescence, long-forgotten objects are brought again into the public imagination, and new expressions make their way from the minority into the general tongue.

And when it all comes down to it, you know you’re a national when at least some of these activities, and some of the tethers, make a kind of sense to you that they may not to, say, an Australian.

Isn’t it weird how family works its way under your skin without you ever knowing? Some people I’ve heard put it down to some kind of ‘genetic imperative’, or ‘resonance’, but maybe being around family is just a good thing. Usually. I should of course add a disclaimer that being around family is sometimes like having your nails ripped out. But often that’s only when you’re dealing with an insane Great Aunt or something.

Anyhow. Later in the week I’ll write about hearing Michael Sandel speak at a seminar at The Treasury, despite making the obvious blunder of actually getting up the courage to ask a question. Note to self: never, ever, speak in public unless you’ve already put away a few drinks. It must be the tall poppy thing, because public speaking has always been a major anxiety of mine.

But for now I mention the public speaking thing on account of having attended a huge family reunion this past week. I took off on Wednesday and drove up, through the rain, to the Bay of Plenty and a few days where I didn’t have to wear wool virtually 24-7. It was bliss. Sitting in the heated pools at the Serviced Apartments, drinking beers till 4am almost every day, hauling my backside out of bed at 9am every morning for endless family meals. Not eating a single flatmate-murdered pasta. This list goes on.

Christ I’m knackered though. I actually had to stop the car for a power-nap on the shores of Lake Taupo on the drive back down yesterday. Safety first, after all. Tell you what, there are worse things than waking up and seeing the unspoilt splendour of that Lake. I was also home in time to watch Top Gear, which is always a bonus.

Like I say, family. In common with many families, the Tibbys have taken to globalisation with a passion, and my immediate Uncles all live on various continents the world over. With the Grandfather becoming increasingly elderly, one Uncle proposed that we try to get everyone in the same room for the first time in something like 30 years, and naturally I couldn’t miss out on the potential fireworks.

Much to my surprise, it worked a treat, and all of my mother’s father’s sons put aside various commitments to bring themselves to the Mecca that is Tauranga. Talk about an occasion, as it was the only full-time representatives of my generation were myself and two cousins, but we did our best to remember everything seen and heard in the interests of transmitting the proceedings to the future.

And there was free beer.

In fact, thank goodness there was free beer, one of the things about family is that you just can’t shake them, even when they piss you off. But on the other hand, that’s never really a bad thing. The details of the potential fireworks are something best left for another place and maybe not the public, but let’s say that brothers and sisters the world over have fallings out as a matter of course, and my family is no exception.

It’s rewarding then, and restores my faith in the human condition, to see people restoring ties long since broken, in the name of an unquantifiable link. All those years, and all that distance fell away when the family came together for the Grandfather’s 78th birthday party on Friday, and the representatives of the generation above me stood to pay tribute, to speak about the place in the world they each occupy, and to state the things they had learned from a grumpy old bloke with a passion for golf.

As it happens that anxiety thing kept me away from saying anything, and this isn’t the place to say what I would liked to have said, but I did learn how easy it is to put aside all the things we hold against our family for reasons unspoken.

And what did I learn? Too much to ever easily put into words.