China and terror

Economics professor M. Shahid Alam of Northeastern University draws an interesting parallel between Chinese resistance during the Second Opium War and modern-day Islamic “terrorists”. His historical point of reference is an article written by Friedrich Engels, co-author with Karl Marx of the Communist Manifesto. (Counterpunch: “Islam Now, China Then”)

Muslims are accused of insanity, brutal indiscriminate violence and suicide attacks against innocent civilians. Well, argues Alam, “a little history is connecting Islam today to China in the middle of the nineteenth century”. In May 1857 during the Second Opium War, Engels had an article published in the New York Daily Tribune. The Chinese, he describes, were fighting back with every possible means at their disposal against the colonial invaders, poisoning the bread of Europeans in Hong Kong, massacring crews and passengers on trading vessels, coolies fighting till the end in a show of “fanaticism”.

“European statesmen and newspapers fulminated endlessly about Chinese barbarity, calling their attacks “cowardly, barbarous, atrocious”. The Europeans too called for more wars, endless wars, till China could be subdued, totally.” Engels quickly unearthed the root cause of this barbarism: the source of this “universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners was the piratical policy of the British government.” The Chinese could not match the military power of the Western countries, so they used asymmetrical warfare, targeting the West's weak points – just like today's Islamic “terrorists” are doing. The Muslims are also waging a popular war “for dignity and sovereignty”. Ultimately the West didn't succeed in splintering China into a hundred fiefdoms. Today, China is a peaceful, rising power. The West today is indeed still succeeding in splintering the Muslim world into a hundred fiefdoms – and the Muslim peoples are fighting back, with everything they have, including terror.

How to win the war on terror? Eliminate the root cause: the foreign policy of American imperialism and its followers.

Shahid Alam has also published a new book: “Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on the "War Against Islam".