Haunted by Ghosts

As well as new books, there is value in reviewing, and thus bringing to public attention, a few slightly older books which have wielded great influence and deserve to be read. King Leopold’s Ghost is one of these books.

There is a debate going on, generally split along left/right divides, about the responsibility the First world has for the state of Africa. Everyone acknowledges the impact of 18^th and 19^th century colonialism on the continent, and some feel the West still has a responsibility to help these countries into modernity and self-sustainability. The other camp tends to believe while helping African nations is nice, the responsibility lies upon the nations of Africa themselves to get their own houses in order, and deal with their internal problems rather than using the excuse of colonialism for their difficulties.

King Leopold’s Ghost is not about this debate, but the book is a must-read for anyone who takes a strong position on either side. First published in 1998, this book explores the history and legacy of the Belgian colonisation of the lands surrounding the Congo river, locally known as the Kingdom of Kongo. Under the personal control of Emperor Leopold II of Belgium after 1885, it was called the Congo Free State. It was eventually taken over by the Belgian government in 1908, largely due to the excesses described in this book, and renamed the Belgian Congo. Following Independence in 1960, it became the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

This is the tale of the Congo Free State, as administered personally by the Belgian Emperor, and the unimaginable slaughter he wrought all while maintaining his public face as a great humanitarian and a man who brought civilization to the darkest parts of Africa. Congo was one of the world’s foremost sources of rubber, a valuable commodity for export, and the people of the Congo were ruthlessly driven to harvest it from vines growing in the Jungles. Anyone resisting this directive was slaughtered; often entire villages were raped, and butchered as an example to others. There was no other economy except ivory, and everything and everyone was directed to produce rubber, resulting in massive starvation as few crops were grown. If a Congolese failed to meet his or her quota of rubber, they would have one of their hands severed. This became so frequent that contemporary writers spoke of many baskets of human hands shown to the administrators as evidence that the work force was being kept on their toes. This was done with some European troops, but mostly other natives, including natives kidnapped as children and indoctrinated to be soldiers of the Force Publique, the main arm of Leopold II’s enforcement policy. This use of tribe against tribe has caused internal strife which lingered long after the Belgians departed. Even at the time, in a world where the ‘plight’ of colonized people was still largely ignored, the excesses in the Congo garnered worldwide attention. Most famously, Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness after a trip down the Congo River at the turn of the century. King Leopold’s rule only lasted 23 years, but estimates of the indigenous death toll range between 8 and 10 million, which would roughly mean 50% of the pre-colonial population of the region.

Readers of this book should be aware going in; it is not a pleasant tale. Hochschild, while not dwelling on the horrors, does not pull and punches about what was going on, and some of the stories can be somewhat stomach-turning. The Congo Free State was essentially a national slave labour camp, in the worst imaginable form of the word. So appalling in fact, that Hitler himself used the example of the Belgian Congo as rationalization for some of his own actions.

The book was a best-seller when it was published, and was nominated for numerous awards. The writing style is approachable and fluid, and the author does not make the mistake of many authors writing about horrific stories: he does not feel the need to spend pages detailing the specifics of the atrocities. The book also points out how amazing it is that this most awful and surprisingly recent example of the horrors of colonialism has been so completely forgotten by the modern world.

To anyone who seeks to get involved in the debate on the legacy of the Colonial era, or who wishes to understand more about sub-Saharan Africa, this is a must-read.

King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild.

 

Innocence

An Innocent Man
John Grisham

I have something of a love/hate relationship with John Grisham’s books. I loved The Firm and The Partner and The Testament. Real page turners, all. But I found The Client predictable and The Street Lawyer preachy and The Last Juror mostly just dull. A Time to Kill was in a category of its own, with both love and hate. I loved the first 95% of the book, but the ending was weak.

Which brings me to An Innocent Man, Grisham’s 20^th book and the 12^th of his that I’ve read (a fact I’m slightly embarrassed to admit publicly). This is the true story of Ron Williamson, an Oklahoma man who was convicted of raping and murdering a local teen in a galling travesty of justice. He was sentenced to die for these crimes that he did not commit. All of this information is available on the back cover of the book. It is also a summary of the book’s first 200 pages. And this is the problem with the book. Grisham wrote the first 200 pages as though the reader does not already know that Williamson would be convicted and sentenced to death. As if the reader would be in suspense. I found it excruciating! Probably the author was trying to establish in the readers’ minds just how terrible was the miscarriage of justice, but he could have done so in half the pages.

Then in the middle of the book there are a few pages of photographs of the people involved in the book. These photos are captioned, and some of them give away the answer to the pressing question of the second half of the book, whether Williamson would ever be released. Although it would seem that this should have made the second half of the book as bad as the first, that actually isn’t the case. While not exactly gripping, there are some fascinating subplots and human interest angles that make the second half a worthwhile read. The book finishes well.

So to whom would I recommend this book? Diehard Grisham fans – it is, after all, still John Grisham, even if it isn’t his best effort. Also, if you have a bleeding heart, An Innocent Man will warm its cockles. But I might also recommend it to staunch advocates of the death penalty. The way the Williamson case progressed was so perverse that a fiction work using the same facts would be implausible and probably never published. As the author no doubt intended, this book effectively raises the spectre of a ‘perfect storm’ of police corruption, prosecutorial zeal and judicial incompetence converging to deprive an innocent person of liberty and possibly life. That should be disturbing to anyone.

 

Islam and Human Rights, Oh (my)

I recently finished reading Irene Oh’s The Rights of God: Islam, Human Rights, and Comparative Ethics. The thrust of the argument is that Islam deserves a voice in human rights dialogue. And my initial response was: well of course it does.

Then I recalled how the Muslim world took issue with the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) because it granted freedom of conscience in matters of religion. Why? Muslims are willing to allow anyone but Muslims the right to abandon or change their religion, but according to Islam apostasy from Islam is not permissible and even punishable by death.

Now, I don’t really like the UN. I don’t even like everything I read in the UDHR. Its insistence on the right to economic prosperity and health care stink too much like social egalitarianism (which, if you ask me, is the greatest enemy of liberty). That Muslims took issue with it isn’t a big issue for me. What they took issue with is.

So when I read the first sentence of Oh’s book, “Promoting Islam as a defender of human rights is fraught with difficulties,” I almost chuckled. Talk about stating the obvious! But as I read the book my laughter was replaced with vitriolic grunts and groans.

Here’s why. Oh does a good job of outlining the thought of ‘Abdolkarim Soroush, a progressive Iranian Muslim, who like other moderate Muslims is heroically attempting to separate mosque from state. From what Oh says, he is a pious Muslim, but he is willing to put aside his theology when it comes to ethics, politics, and other temporal things. All this is good, and I’m glad Muslims like Soroush are finally making a splash. What absolutely irritated me was Oh’s suggestion that the thought of the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and Indian Abul ‘Ala Maudidi might also contribute to global ethical discourse.

For those who aren’t familiar with these two Muslim thinkers you ought to be—Qutb in particular. These are the ideological fathers of the global jihadists out there. In fact, there is evidence that Sayyid’s brother Muhammad (who is still living and just as austere as his brother) tutored Osama bin Laden when he was in a Saudi Arabian university.

Oh claims that the only reason these two thinkers were so hostile to non-Muslims was because they were reacting to western imperialism. If we could just get past their calls to global jihad against the jahiliyya governments in classic Islamic lands and then the rest of the world, we would see they, too, were concerned with promoting tolerance, democracy, and freedom of conscience.

Here is what Oh is essentially arguing. Qutb and Maududi (and contemporary jihadis) aren’t hostile to non-Muslims because they thought (and think) that was (is) what the Quran and Sunna taught (teach). They are hostile to western non-Muslims because we, through our mingling into their affairs, pushed them to hate us.

Well, I’ve read Qutb and Maududi. They pulled all their vitriol out of the Quran and Sunna. In fact, they both wrote multi-volume commentaries on the Quran, which are read the Muslim world over today. Go into any Islamic bookstore and you will most assuredly find their material ready for consumption. Sure, western imperialism ticked these guys off. But it ticked them off because it was not Islam. To resurrect pure Islam they then went ad fontes—to the Quran and Sunna—and what they found was their political vision of purifying Islam and expanding its influence.

Although irritated, I did finish the book, and am glad to have learned of Soroush. But I’m mad as heck that such superficial politically-biased crud passes for scholarship.

 

Steyn’s America Alone

If you haven’t picked up Mark Steyn’s America Alone yet, make it the next book you purchase. Don’t just buy it and let it collect dust alongside your sappy romance novels and wacky pop psychology self-help texts, though. Read it! The future of America, if not all of what’s left of western civilization, may depend on it.

I use such a seemingly exaggerated claim because according to Steyn’s argument–encapsulated in the subtitle, The End of the World as We Know It–the future looks grim. His central thesis is that, if things don’t change, by about 2050 and certainly by 2100 western geopolitics will be radically altered. Europe, formerly an integral part of western civilization, will continue on its present course into becoming what some analysts have termed (most notably Bat Ye’or) Eurabia (or an Islamified Europe), and America—if it can muster up enough courage—will be left to stand alone in defense of political, economical, religious, and personal liberty.

America Alone argues further that this nation can no longer count on Europe as an ally in defending classic western values. In fact, Steyn alleges that the Old World (and even his native Canada) has long since turned its back on classic liberal (not leftist) ideals and wholly swallowed the enticing yet empty politico-economics of socialism. The result is the bloated welfare or “nanny state.” The problem is that European nations have far too many pensioners, too many state-subsidized agencies, and, to make matters worse, too few European workers to tax (from which they obtain the funds to support social welfare). Why? They fail and will probably continue to fail, analysts predict, to produce enough children (i.e., potential workers). Rather than responding by encouraging the rearing of more children, Europe has in recent times opted to open the floodgates to immigrants to help fill what Europeans consider undesirable jobs. The taxes they pay then get funneled through the nanny state to its dependent citizens. Here’s the problem: a majority of these immigrants are Muslims, who also, Steyn observes, happen to be breeding like jack rabbits. As a result the Muslim population in much of urban Europe is approaching 30%, and by 2050—or shortly thereafter—it will be in the majority.

Steyn is not alone in his pessimism. America’s premier Islamic historian, Princeton University’s Bernard Lewis, recently noted in Germany’s Die Welt that Europe will be Islamic by the end of the twenty-first century “at the very latest.” Why? In addition to the demographic crisis, Europe has evolved from a civilization rooted in Judeo-Christian values into—after the Enlightenment—a valueless, impotent, and flaccid civilization. Consider, for example, the European Union’s Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini’s recent display of cowardice when he recommended that the press censor itself when addressing Islam. “The press will give the Muslim world the message: we are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression, we can and we are ready to self-regulate our right.” Steyn alleges that, when what is supposed to be a free and open society easily succumbs (or submits) to the threat of violence, this (and other compelling evidence) suggests western ideals and European civilization is in decline and will soon be replaced by Islam.

Despite his depressing prognostications, however, Steyn does offer some very helpful advice for America (including its truly moderate, assimilated Muslim community). “In the years ahead,” he writes, “America has to take the American moment seriously–in part, to ensure that the allies of tomorrow don’t make the mistakes Western Europe did. That means at the very minimum something beyond cheeseburger imperialism. In the end, the world can do without American rap and American cheeseburgers. American ideas on individual liberty, federalism, capitalism, and freedom of speech would be far more helpful.” In other words, America and its citizens need to counter the global ideology of Islam not by dropping bombs but by continuing to globalize and proliferate its own ideology.

Some will find Steyn’s assessment of Europe’s depravity too self-assured and imperialistic. Others will find his perception of Islam too one-sided and perhaps even bigoted. Nevertheless, you will certainly not be left wondering just what it is Mark Steyn believes is worth fighting for. Nor will you be bored. His wit and outrageous humor will surely make up for any deficiencies the book may contain.