Global Intifada

“In this sense it is important to point out how the ‘international community’ has been reconfigured, so that it is conceptualized in opposition to terrorism. This means that a charge of terrorism can be used to exclude states and peoples from membership of the ‘international community’ and thus from being protected by the provisions of international law (see, for example, the US decision to exclude those whom it considers to be ‘illegal combatants’ from the protection of the Geneva Convention). The articulation of an ‘international community’ in opposition to (Islamist) terrorism replays the colonial discourse of a world order that is organised in terms of the opposition between civilization and barbarism. By defining the opponents of the current world order as external to that order, the ‘war against terrorism’ can be waged with a savagery similar to that used by the colonial powers to pacify their ’savages.’ (This experience of waging savage wars of pacification is one that the United States clearly shares with more ‘conventional’ European colonial empires.) By establishing a frontier between the ‘international community’ on the one hand and terrorists (almost exclusively Islamists) and rogue states on the other, the ‘war against terrorism’ becomes close to being ‘a war without limits‘, since those who are not members of the ‘international community’ cannot be considered to be its peers, and thus they have no legitimate right to exist. No doubt the assumption in waging such a war is that Western technology and Western virtue will trump whatever counter-measures the other side might take. Reciprocity as self-denying ordinance can be abandoned since the other side is incapable of causing the United States equivalent harm (for example, the Geneva Convention can be selectively abandoned because it is not expected that American fighters will ever fall into enemy hands). The danger associated with this ‘war without limits’ is precisely that the other side will be forced into removing any self-restraints on the conduct of its activities. Thus, the escalation of violence, not only in extent but also in intensity, becomes more rather than less likely. The only obstacle to such a possibility is the belief that the superiority of American military power will be such that its enemies will be crushed before they can mount a significant response.” (p xi)

Excerpt from “A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism” by S. Sayyid

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