Johann Hari

In five weeks, I hope to look back on this column with a wry chuckle at my paranoia. If the system works, Barack Obama will take the White House. The two issues John McCain is most closely associated with – invading Iraq, and deregulating the economy – have produced history-snatching catastrophes in the eyes of 80 per cent of Americans. In the first debate, McCain revealed he had nothing to say except more of the same: aggression abroad, market fundamentalist ideology at home. So why am I worried?

Obama is only a few jittery points ahead in the polls, and he has yet to face an October Surprise. This is an old term in US politics, invented when, on the eve of the 1968 election, Lyndon Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. It was a desperate attempt to push the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, over the finish line – and it failed. But October Surprises need not come from the opposing party. They can come from anywhere.

The first and worst would be the reappearance of Osama Bin Laden. Just five days before the 2004 election, he released a video effectively endorsing John Kerry. He told Americans to imagine corpses crying: "Call to task those who have caused our death!" and said they should "return to what is right," rather than reward "the liar in the White House".

Why would he do this? Bin Laden's long-term strategy is to "provoke and bait". He explains to his supporters: "We conducted a war of attrition against Russia with jihad fighters for 10 years until they went bankrupt. We are continuing in the same policy – to make America bleed profusely to the point of bankruptcy." To achieve this, "all we have to do is send two mujahideen [to a remote, irrelevant area] and raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qa'ida' in order to make the [US] generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses."

This is his goal, in his own words – to bleed America through irrational, wildly expensive wars that will tilt thousands more fanatical young men from Islamism to full-blown jihadism. So who would you want in the White House? The guy who will wean the US off Middle Eastern oil and the wars and tyrannies it supports to get it – or his opponent? Bin Laden is a monster, but he is not an imbecile. He knows that his endorsement is a kiss of death. The man he publicly praises is the man he wants to lose. Kerry failed to expose Bin Laden's trick; Obama must do it as soon as the tape hits the air.

Beyond this, there could be a 4 November surprise: the Republicans may try to steal the election. Again. They loudly claim to be concerned about voter fraud, even though a New York University study recently found that it "is more likely an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls". But in the name of this paltry risk, they are effectively stripping millions of people – overwhelmingly black and Democrats – of their vote.

Their first vote-stripping tactic is to require elaborate voter identification that black people disproportionately lack. For example, in Indiana – a crucial swing state – Republicans have passed a law requiring voters to bring an official government document bearing their photograph to the polling station. But a study by the University of Wisconsin found that 53 per cent of black adults didn't have a passport or driving licence, compared to 15 per cent of white people. So they can't vote unless they travel for hours (often without a car) to a sparse government registry and queue for half a day to get the correct documentation. The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, explains: "Requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 per cent to the Republican vote." Their second tactic is to strip the electoral rolls of black names. In almost all US states, criminals lose their vote for life. This is shocking in itself – it disenfranchises a quarter of all black men in Kentucky, for one. But many states have a sloppy process where they simply scrub anyone with the same name as a criminal off the list. So if there is a criminal called "Chris Wayne" in a county, every black man called "Chris Wayne" loses their vote. That's a lot of Democrats. In Florida in 2000, black voters made up 13 per cent of the electorate yet they were 26 per cent of the people wrongly disenfranchised.

When a judge ordered the release of the paperwork, he found out why. The team under Florida governor, Jeb Bush, had ordered that black criminal names had to go – but Hispanic names were not to be touched. Black Floridians overwhelmingly vote Democrat, while Hispanics lean towards the Republicans. The Bush team said this was "absolutely unintentional" and "a coincidence".

This time, the Republicans have added another group to strip from the rolls. James Carabelli, a Republican Party chairman in Michigan, says: "We have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses." These voters are supposed to register from their new addresses – but many are out of time, or too stressed to do it. So the Republicans have launched a national "voter challenge campaign" against honest people who have lost their homes. They know that 60 per cent of sub-prime mortgages went to black voters, and virtually everyone who lost their home is angry with the Republicans.

If these acts of electoral sabotage go ahead on November 4 and tilt the election to McCain, Obama needs to learn from Al Gore's mistake. As the recent HBO film Recount shows, Gore was consensual and statesmanlike – in the middle of a knife fight. He sent urbane professors to make his case, while the Republicans drummed up mobs that physically stopped the vote-counts in Palm Beach County while the clock ticked. If the need comes, Obama needs to call fraud by its real name – and fight.

I hope I'm being too cynical. I hope I'm wrong. But it would be wise to fasten your seatbelts: it's going to be a bumpy month.

If politics was purely a clash of ideas, David Cameron would now be facing the same fate as Lehman Brothers. The Tory leader has reversed his beliefs on many issues, from global warming to gay rights, but on one question he has shown lifelong consistency: rolling back government regulation until we have a small, small state. He is never more passionate than when condemning "the mania for regulation" and declaring that the state "does too much." It is the beating heart of his politics – and it just had an attack of angina before a watching world.

"To me," Cameron said recently, "my entry into politics was all about the individual versus the big state." In his mind, the individual invariably swells as the state recedes. You can see a case study of the flaws in this philosophy in his 2006 economic policy review. It recommended deregulating the mortgage market so sub-prime mortgages could come to Britain – just before they brought the world economy crashing down on individuals everywhere.

In response to the Great Wall Street Crash of 2008, Cameron has lashed out with real anger. Not at the banks and deregulators who made it happen. No – at the people who correctly warned that if you strip away all restraints, markets will devour themselves. He announced: "We must not let the left use this as an excuse to wreck an important part of the British and world economy."

The most senior figures in the Conservative squire-archy agree. George Osborne attacked the advocates of re-regulation for a "desperate lurch to the left", and opposed the tourniquet of nationalising Northern Rock. John Redwood – in charge of Cameron's deregulation programme – jeered at the "fashionable" conviction "that because there is a mess in the banking world there needs to be more regulation." Boris Johnson just accused the British people of "whingeing" about this crisis and succumbing to "neo-socialist claptrap". He then defended "the sub-prime sector", saying, "These products allowed millions of Americans to own their own homes." Yes – for five minutes, before having them repossessed in a landslide of bad debt.

In the middle of this global conservatism-crunch, the Tory Party is even more aggressively re-stating the dogmas that led us into the collapse. It is as if they are part of a historical re-enactment society dedicated to re-playing the Herbert Hoover years. When even Comrade George Bush has taken over half the US mortgage market, this is a position way out on the market fundamentalist fringe. They don't seem to have realised that the Cameron prism of "the individual versus the big state" has little purchase when the individual needs the big state to prevent the economy haemorraghing. We are all Goldman Sachs Socialists now.

But politics is not a pure battle of ideas: it is refracted through personalities and parties and images. This is where Labour has a problem. Gordon Brown's speech this week was much better than before. He highlighted the (too few) genuinely progressive things the government has done, in simple human terms. The doubled spending on the NHS has brought waiting lists crashing down and stopped the annual winter crises. "That's not just a statistic," Brown said. "That's a dad who lives to walk his daughter down the aisle. That's a gran who lives to see her grandson graduate." This – not the horrors of Iraq or sucking up to the CBI – is what brought Brown into politics.

But at the core of the speech was a conservative sentiment: "This is no time for a novice." When a Labour leader needs to be advocating big, bold changes to a broken world system, Brown was largely telling us to hunker down for the storm. Knowing that he has acquiesced with some of their dangerous dogmas himself, he won't even call the bankers and deregulators who caused this disaster "greedy" – despite once writing a pretty good book sarcastically called Let There Be Greed. His concrete proposals were terrific for their beneficiaries, but small: no prescription charges for cancer patients, nursery places for two year-olds.

If the centre-left is going to win, they need to explain that a recession is when you most need an active government on your side, fighting for you. Markets can only dependably work their wealth-generating power when they are part of a sturdy structure of regulations, redistribution, and unions. Knock away those pillars – as Cameron has advocated for his whole career – and the building falls down. A limp government offering at best a nudge is no use if you are stuck under fiscal rubble.

But where are the big proposals? How about a Green New Deal, employing a million people to insulate every loft and double-glaze every home in Britain – slashing our catastrophic carbon emissions, our dependence on Russian gas and Middle Eastern oil, and our soaring fuel bills? Why rule out a windfall tax on the bloated oil companies to pay for it? When you are 20 points behind in the polls, steady-as-she-goes with a surer smile is no answer. If Labour stays stuck this far behind, it will look like the Wil E. Coyote of politics: when you have run off a cliff, just keep running, and pretend not to notice when you begin to plummet.

It is hard to imagine Brown now advocating the populist programme Labour needs: his book on "Courage" looks like a tragic study of a quality he doesn't possess. But if Labour is going to ditch Brown, it is important to establish now the narrative of what went wrong with his premiership. The Milburn Tendency argues that the past year proves you can't ever have a successful Labour Party to the left of Tony Blair. But Brown has barely offered a programme of any kind, left or right: he has been trapped in the political headlights, failing the X-Factor. People haven't rejected his ideas, because they don't know what they are. "Moving to the left" is always presented as if it would be a disaster by glib commentators, but on all the big issues of our time, the left has been proven right: deregulation, global warming, Iraq.

Whoever leads Labour against the 1929-nostalgists has only one way of winning. Go big. Go bold. Go radical. Or you may as well go home.

Debo confesar que me encantan dos géneros musicales despreciados: el heavy metal y el country. No sólo eso: estoy convencido de que ambos tienen una fuerte carga política que no se ha reconocido.

En el caso del heavy metal, lo descubrí en el campo de refugiados de Jaballya, en Gaza, cuando, al entrevistarlos, me describieron sus sentimientos con palabras sacadas de letras de Metallica y Slipknot. “Me muero por vivir,/ estoy atrapado en el hielo”, dijo uno. Me mostraron sus cedés y playeras, que guardan cuidadosamente por el peligro de que se los decomisen los milicianos de Hamas.

Ya de vuelta en mi país, descubrí que el mayor mercado del heavy metal fuera de Estados Unidos es el mundo musulmán. En estacionamientos subterráneos de Teherán, en graneros de Peshawar, en tumbas en El Cairo, surgen hoyos donde se reúnen los metaleros.

Constantemente nos dicen que los musulmanes son una masa homogénea representada por cuatro mullahs. Pero Alan LeVine, en su estudio Heavy metal Islam, nos presenta una sorprendente estadística: en Marruecos, sólo dos fuerzas han congregado multitudes de más de 200 mil almas: la oposición islámica, y las bandas de heavy metal que truenan contra la religión. Azotar la cabeza al compás de una banda llamada Deicidio puede ser diversión en Londres, pero en Irán o Egipto es un acto político de impactante valentía.

A primera vista parece extraño. ¿Cómo esta música, nacida en la ciudad industrial inglesa de Birmingham a mediados de los sesentas, ha llegado a ser enemiga del jihaidismo? En una región controlada por el fundamentalismo, los jóvenes desempleados que forman 65 por ciento de la población tienen muy pocas salidas para gritar su furia. El metal se las brinda. La música les permite estallar contra “los vampiros de la intolerancia y la superstición”, señala Reda Zine, uno de los fundadores de la onda metalera en Marruecos. “Llevamos el metal en la sangre –coincide el guitarrista de Tarantist, la banda más prendida de Irán–. Es nuestro dolor, y un antídoto contra la hipocresía de la religión que nos inyectan desde que nacemos.”

Los estados policiacos responden a los fanáticos del metal pesado golpeándolos con barras de metal pesado. En Egipto, la dictadura de Hosni Mubarak –financiada por Estados Unidos y la UE– ha ordenado arrestos en masa de metaleros por “socavar la fe musulmana” y Mahmoud Ahmadinejad no le va a la zaga en Irán. Aun así, millones de jóvenes musulmanes y ateos entonan desafiantes, junto con Metálica: “No necesito oír lo que dicen./ La vida es para vivirla como yo quiera”.

Recordemos esto la próxima vez que un mullah afirme hablar por todos ellos, o que la derecha dé a entender que todos los musulmanes están representados por los fundamentalistas.

Al otro lado del mundo, el country ha llegado a ser visto como el coro de los partidarios de Bush, los “traileros”, la “basura blanca”. Lo que pocos saben es que este género nació al principio del siglo XX como la música de los estadunidenses pobres; fue la más izquierdista que se haya producido en Estados Unidos. “Había mucha conciencia de clase en ella –comenta el historiador Bill C. Malone–, mucho resentimiento contra los ricos y privilegiados.” Las canciones hablaban del horror de los talleres de costura y los campos de algodón. De hecho, en ese tiempo el estado de Kansas eligió candidatos socialistas.

¿Cómo fue que el sur se volvió republicano? Los demócratas dejaron de hablar por los pobres y se volvieron adictos a las donaciones de los ricos, igual que los republicanos. Dos partidos y una sola política económica. Y como ya no quedaba quien hablara de la ruina económica del sur, comenzó la obsesión por las diferencias culturales. Los llamados a rebelarse contra los ricos fueron sustituidos por himnos de odio a los jipis, como Okie from Muskogee: “No fumamos mariguana en Muskogee/ No hacemos viajes de LSD./ Vivimos como se debe y somos libres”. (Lo irónico es que el autor estaba pasadísimo cuando lo escribió.)

Esta tendencia llegó al clímax en 2003, cuando las Dixie Chicks fueron vetadas en las radiodifusoras y quemaron sus discos porque dijeron sentir vergüenza de ser del mismo estado que Bush.

Hoy, sin embargo, el country comienza a reaccionar al engaño. Las Dixie Chicks están de nuevo a la cabeza de las listas de éxitos. Una de las mejores rolas del género en años recientes, de Robbie Flux, ataca a Bush por ser “más country que tú”: “Tiene un rancho, usa sombrero Stetson,/ es un ex rey del petróleo que dispara desde el cinto,/ pero ¿alguien puede explicar/ cómo se puede tener un sheriff campirano/ con mentalidad de niño fresa?”

Cantantes country como Darryl Whorley, que escribieron loas a Bush luego del 9/11, hoy tienen éxito con rolas de protesta contra la guerra. Hasta Toby Keith ha elogiado a Obama, quien entró en escena en la convención con un tema country: Only in America. El sur podría dar un giro… si tan sólo los demócratas le ofrecieran economía country.

Si uno escucha suficiente heavy metal y country, descubre que ni los musulmanes ni los sureños estadunidenses son como los pintan: son seres humanos que buscan una tonada que cantar. Quién sabe, el camino hacia un mundo mejor podría pasar por un hoyo metalero musulmán, o por una loa de Nashville a un presidente negro.

* Periodista galardonado, colaborador de The Independent y una veintena de periódicos y revistas de GB, EU, Francia, Canadá y otros países. Amnistía Internacional lo nombró Periodista del Año 2007 por sus reportajes sobre el Congo.

© The Independent
Traducción: Jorge Anaya

This is the story of two debates that have been unfolding in rival nations, in rival tongues, on a skinny patch of land in the Levant. In Israel, Kadima – the main governing party – has been deciding who should be its new leader. In Palestine, the population has been mooting a dramatic shift in their struggle for liberation. Soon, these debates are destined to collide – in either blood or peace.

The Israeli debate had an air of willed evasion. The military's blockade of Gaza – reducing it to rubble just a short drive from hi-tech Tel Aviv – was barely discussed. The candidates seemed to be carefully avoiding taking a position on anything. One Israeli newspaper noted: "Ask Tzipi Livni what time it is, and she will reply, after carefully examining Israel's position in relation to the global time issue and the international date line, she has a very definite position, but isn't willing to specify it to the media."

It's a sign of how desensitised Israel has become to the violence committed in its name that the potential indictment for war crimes of Livni's main rival, Shaul Mofaz, was barely an issue. It is alleged that when he was the military chief of staff in 2001, he ordered his troops to fulfil a "daily quota" of killing 70 Palestinians a day, and there are calls for him to face prosecution. He came within 431 votes of winning the election.

From the wispy clouds of this contest, what has emerged? In theory, the winner Livni should be in a strong position to understand nationalist "terrorists" who have planted bombs on buses and in cafés – because she was raised by them. Her father was the Military Director of the Irgun, the underground Jewish militia that spent the 1930s and 40s targeting the British occupying forces and Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel. Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels; she proudly defends them to this day.

How would Livni's parents have responded to mass punishment – blockades, checkpoints, bullets? Would they shrug and surrender? The leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, wrote that every British attempt to "break our backs... only made us stronger and more determined". The same is happening with Palestinian nationalists today. Stripped of a state, they are fighting for one – and every Israeli attack makes them more radical and enraged.

But does Livni see the parallel? In the abstract, she advocates a two-state solution – but in Israel she has been dubbed "Ms. Not-Right-Now" because she always says she believes in compromising for peace but "not right now." Her husband said she decided to become a politician because of her "scathing" disapproval of the Oslo accords, signed exactly 15 years ago. She reiterated this during the campaign.

But Oslo was rigged in Israel's favour: while it lasted, the number of Jewish fundamentalist settlers on Palestinian land nearly doubled, and Palestinian movement was harshly curtailed. It is a myth that the Palestinians were offered a real two-state solution and rejected it. Even Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Foreign Minister at the time, says: "If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well." If even this was too much for Livni, what practical peace can she achieve? This is the debate too many Israelis dodged this summer; they chose instead to block their ears, and ascribe the thud of rockets hitting their outskirts to raw evil.

This is where the parallel Palestinian debate needs to be heard above the Separation Wall. For decades, the demands of the Palestinian leadership – and the Israeli peace camp – have focused on the division of the land between Israeli and Palestinian states. There is still in principle a slender majority supporting this on both sides. But after 15 years of stillborn promises, that vision is rotting. Unless there is a swift shift, the two-state vision will be supplanted – by a vision of a "binational" one-state solution.

Several leading Palestinians – including the late Edward Said, the former Prime Minister Ahmed Queri, and Sari Nusseibeh – have begun to outline this idea. In one of those strange whirls on the roundabout of history, they are actually reviving an old idea pioneered by Zionist left-wingers. Back in the 1920s, a small number of Jewish socialists and liberals like Martin Buber tried to negotiate one big shared state with the Palestinians. Although they found some Palestinian interlocutors, these early binationalists were slapped down by both communities. Today their idea is being dug out of its ditch of despair.

The Palestinians would stop asking for a free enclave of their own, and start demanding full legal equality in one state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Equipped with this demand, they would no longer appear to the world as a fragmented minority, but – all added together – as a majority in Israel/Palestine ruled over by a racially-defined minority. It would look even more like South Africa Redux. Israel would then be incapable of marshalling international coalitions against possible threats from Iran or elsewhere: it would be alone, and anathemised.

The Middle East conflict would shift from being a tricky-but-soluble crisis to an insoluble civil war. Michael Neumann – the author of The Case Against Israel – warns: "One-staters apparently believe that Israel will give up the reason for its existence and at the same time expose itself not to the risk but to the certainty of being 'swamped by Arabs'. This in turn would indicate a willingness to accede to anything an 'Arab' majority might enact. Can anyone seriously imagine this? Will millions of Jews just leave if the majority says it should? Will they agree to crushing compensation payments?" No. They will fight – and this time, there will be no space for compromise between the competing visions.

The window of opportunity for a two-state peace is closing. Before it jams shut, the Israelis need to hear the plea coming through the checkpoints. Divide the land. Divide it now. Divide it properly. Or we will all end up battling forever – over nothing but soil soaked in blood and cordite.

Is it possible to empty a presidential election of all political content? The economy is crashing, the climate is unravelling, Iraq and Afghanistan are haemorraghing – and the debate in the mainstream US media about who should be the most powerful man in the world was fixated for weeks on burbling trivia. Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig! (No, he didn't.) Obama wanted to tell toddlers about sex! (No, he wanted to warn them about paedophiles). The critics of Palin are sexist! (McCain voted against the Equal Pay Act. That's sexism.)

Can the collapse of Lehman Brothers ram a rare taste of reality into the campaign? The facts are plain. John McCain enthusiastically backed every one of George Bush's moves to deregulate the banks and the mortgage industry that caused this collapse, while Barack Obama opposed them. This isn't just a credit crunch; it's a conservatism crunch. The right got their dream of a totally unregulated "shadow" banking sector – and it swiftly imploded, bringing the world economy down with it.

Yet McCain's indignant promises to "close this casino" are being reported straight, without even bothering to look at this record – or noticing that he is cashing cheques from Wall Street lobbyists as fast as they can be written. They know their man: McCain's mantra even after this collapse began was: "I am always for less regulation." Indeed, McCain's current adverts saying he will not let the "recklessness" that led to Lehman Brothers' demise happen again are in part funded by left-over donations from... Lehman Brothers.

McCain knows his stances on the economy and foreign policy are opposed by 80 per cent of the population as barely-trimmed Bush. So he needs to toss up a confetti of distraction-issues instead – and Palin was the biggest distraction of all. This attempt to run down the clock was working with slick efficiency until the stock exchange's opening bell started to sound like a death-knell. He is gathering fistfuls more of confetti as we speak.

The best key to unlocking these tactics may lie in a story that might seem at first glance a yellowing old scandal, but it is actually as fresh as tomorrow's Google News. By 1920, the oil age had revved into first gear. Cars were being bought all over America, so the petrol price was at an all-time high. The bosses of Big Oil were desperate for new oilfields – and there was one in particular they coveted. In Wyoming, there was a vast oilfield called the Teapot Dome reserve, shaped like a teapot and containing more oil than the whole of California. But the oilmen were shut out: it had been set aside to supply the navy with oil if there was ever a national emergency.

So Big Oil thought of a solution. They decided to buy the presidency. A consortium led by Jake Hamon – a JR Ewing for the Jazz Age – started to buy the delegates to the 1920 Republican Convention with brown-envelope bribes, one by one. Once they owned a hefty block, they approached the initial front-runner – General Leonard Wood – and said they would make him the Republican nominee if in return he promised to make Hamon Secretary of the Interior – and therefore boss of Teapot Dome. Wood yelled: "I am an American soldier. I'll be damned if I'll betray my country! Get the hell out of here."

So Big Oil picked a different candidate instead: an obscure, bumbling Senator called Warren G Harding, who had been a 40-1 shot at the start of the convention. He had barely been out of Ohio and had only fuzzy ideas about politics – but he could be marketed as Mr Normal, the 1920s equivalent of a hockey mom. Big Oil lavishly funded a PR campaign selling him to ordinary Americans as One of You. He was pictured at baseball games eating hot dogs with his sweet family – while his opponent was presented as arid and "elitist".

As soon as he won, Harding began the payback to the real elite. Teapot Dome was handed over to Big Oil. He even sent in the marines to clear the land. Eventually, the scandal broke, and Harding only stayed ahead of the investigators by dying.

There's a consequential coda to this story. Not long after the scandal, Big Oil shifted tactics – but only by a few inches. They decided that instead of under-the-table bribes, they would start giving "campaign donations". This time, they would give to all sides, Democrat or Republican, and they would make their demands through "lobbyists." A scandal suddenly turned into standard practice: almost the entire American political class became an oil-igarchy. The other big interests – especially Wall Street – followed close behind with an open cheque-book.

Until now. Barack Obama is the first major presidential candidate since Teapot Dome to refuse to take money from Big Oil or lobbyists, with 93 percent of his funding coming from small donors giving $200 or less. Every other leading candidate (even Al Gore) took their cash and saw the world through the bottom of an oil-barrel. Not him.

Most of the recent disasters of US policy are due not to the will of its unfairly-maligned people, but to this oil-slick over Capitol Hill. What has been the price of Big Oil owning American politicians? The US government has vandalised all attempts to stop global warming, even censoring its own scientists' reports. It invaded Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people because, as Dick Cheney put it in 1990: "We're there because... that part of the world controls the world supply of oil." And it fawns over the House of Saud, which exports a toxic brand of Wahhabism – all the way to the Twin Towers. What has been the cost of Big Banks owning American politicians? Watch the front pages for daily updates.

Obama offers a rare chance to begin to dismantle the petrol pump and the Wall Street cash-dispenser in the Oval Office. Yes, he would still have to work with an oil-and-bank-funded Congress, but public interest would at least be able to get a few lungfuls of air.

Yet the people who brought us Warren Harding and George Bush are now expertly packaging McCain-Palin as defenders of Main Street – and they are outspending Obama's small donors for the first time. They are even paying for adverts which claim McCain and Palin "stand up to Big Oil". True, McCain did once flirt with campaign finance reform, but only after being caught taking money from a fraudster and in return lobbying on his behalf. Today, he's back to his gut instincts, with the Republican convention breaking into a chant of "drill, baby, drill!" led by McCain's men, and the delegates whooping and hollering for the men who caused this deregulation-crash. He is even committed to giving his Big Oil donors a $4bn tax cut – at a time of record profits.

Jake Hamon couldn't have asked for more – and he would be delighted to see us revert to distraction-blather about Palin's cute kids and her ability to shoot moose for the next 50 days. Unless Obama and his army of citizen-donors can break through this wall of white noise, it would appear we all live in Teapot Dome now.

Diese Kolumne klagt die Feigheit an – darunter meine eigene. Sie beginnt mit der Geschichte eines Romans, den Sie nicht lesen können. Der Juwel von Medina wurde von einer Journalistin namens Sherry Jones geschrieben. Er berichtet vom Leben Aischas, einem Mädchen, das im Alter von sechs Jahren mit einem 50 Jahre alten Mann namens Mohammed ibn Abdallah verheiratet wurde. An ihrem Heiratstag spielte Aischa auf einer Schaukel außerhalb des Hauses. Innen wurde sie verlobt. Sie erfuhr zum ersten Mal davon, als man ihr verbot, draußen mit den anderen Kindern zu spielen. Als sie neun Jahre alt war, nahm man sie fort, damit sie mit ihrem Ehemann, nun 53, leben konnte. Er hatte Sex mit ihr. Als sie 14 Jahre alt war, bezichtigte man sie des Ehebruchs mit einem Mann, der ihrem Alter ein wenig mehr entsprach. Nicht lange danach verfügte Mohammed, dass seine Ehefrauen ihre Gesichter und Körper verhüllen mussten, obwohl dies keine andere Frau in Arabien tat.

Diese Geschichte können Sie heute nicht mehr lesen – außer im Koran und im Hadith. Der Mann namens Mohammed ibn Abdallah wurde Muslimen als „Der Prophet Mohammed“ bekannt, also ist unsere Möglichkeit, diese Geschichte zu untersuchen, verkümmert. Das Juwel von Medina wurde von Random House gekauft und als Bestseller vermarktet – bis eine Lehrkraft der Universität von Texas Druckfahnen erkannte und es zur „Gefahr für die nationale Sicherheit“ erklärte. Sherry Jones Herausgeber hat das Buch eingestampft. Es ist verschwunden.

In Europa heben wir endlich die verbliebenen Blasphemiegesetze auf, die eine Kritik des Christentums unterdrücken*. Doch werden sie fortgesetzt durch ein neues Blasphemiegesetz, das eine Kritik des Islams verhindert – vollstreckt nicht durch den Staat, sondern von Jihadisten. Ich habe ernsthaft in Betracht gezogen, diese Kolumne nicht zu schreiben, aber das Recht, die Religion zu kritisieren, ist so wertvoll – und hart erkämpft – wie das Recht, die Regierung zu kritisieren. Wir müssen davon Gebrauch machen, oder es verlieren.

Einige Menschen werden sofort fragen: Warum sollte man die Religion kritisieren, wenn das so viel Ärger auslöst? Die Antwort lautet: Sehen Sie sich unsere Geschichte an. Wie hat das Christentum seine Fähigkeit verloren, Menschen mit Fantasmen um Sünde und Hölle zu terrorisieren? Wie kam es dazu, dass es die Verbreitung von Scham für natürliche Triebe eingestellt hat – vorehelicher Sex, Selbstbefriedigung oder Homosexualität? Weil Kritiker über die religiösen Geschichten nachgegrübelt haben und große Löcher in Logik und Moral darin entdeckten. Sie stellten Fragen. Wie konnte ein Engel eine Jungfrau befruchten? Warum befiehlt der Gott des Alten Testaments seinen Anhängern, Selbstmord zu begehen? Wie kann ein Mann in einem Wal überleben?

Neuinterpretation und Spott haben das vergitterte Christentum geöffnet. Stelle genügend Fragen und der Glaube wird unausweichlich immer weiter und weiter in die neblige Sphäre der Metapher zurückgedrängt – wo er mit geringerer Wahrscheinlichkeit Menschen dazu bringen wird, dafür zu töten und zu sterben. Aber zweifelnde Muslime und die Atheisten, die sie unterstützen, werden davon abgehalten, diesen Weg zu gehen. Sie können nicht fragen: Was sagt es über Mohammed aus, dass er ein kleines Mädchen heiratete, oder dass er ein jüdisches Dorf zerstörte, weil sich die Bewohner weigerten, ihm zu folgen? Man muss nicht viele Theo Van Goghs ermorden oder viele Sherry Jones einstampfen, um den Rest einzuschüchtern. Die größte Zensur ist die innere Zensur: Sie ist in all den Büchern, die niemals geschrieben werden, und in all den Filmen, die niemals gedreht werden, weil wir uns fürchten.

Wir müssen diese Doppelmoral eingestehen – und dass sie am Ende Muslimen schaden wird. Eine Religion von der Kritik zu isolieren – sie mit einem Elektrozaun namens „Respekt“ zu umgeben – lässt sie in ihrem kindischsten und fundamentalistischsten Entwicklungsschritt verkümmern. Die schlauen, fragenden und instinktiv moralischsten Muslime – die Mehrheit – lernen, leise zu sein, oder sie werden gemieden (bestenfalls). Wie würde das Christentum heute aussehen, wenn man George Eliot, Mark Twain und Bertrand Russel eingestampft hätte? Nehmen Sie die abstoßenste ländliche Kirche in Alabama und multiplizieren sie sie mit dem Faktor 100.

Da Jones das Thema eröffnet hat, lassen Sie uns, als ein Modell, wie wir diese Diskussion führen können, einen Blick auf Mohammeds Heirat mit Aisha werfen. Es ist wahr, dass das andere Zeiten waren und es normal für erwachsene Männer gewesen sein mag, mit vorpupertierenden Mädchen Sex zu haben. Die Quellen sind unklar, was diese Sache betrifft. Jedoch, gleich welcher Kultur man angehört, kann Sex mit einem unvollständig entwickelten Körper eine äußerst schmerzhafte Erfahrung sein. Unter Wikingern war es gewöhnlicher als heute, dass einem der Arm abgeschlagen wurde, aber das heißt nicht, dass es keine Qual war. Wenn überhaupt, dann wäscht Jones Buch diesen Umstand weiß und legt nahe, dass Mohammeds „Behutsamkeit“ meint, dass Aisha es genossen hat.

Die Geschichte von Aisha fördert eine andere Diskussion, die Fundamentalisten zu Gute kommt. Man kann nicht sagen, dass Mohammeds Entscheidung, ein junges Mädchen zu heiraten, den Gegebenheiten seiner Zeit gemäß behandelt werden muss, und dann verlangen, dass wir seinen moralischen Vorstellungen aufs Wort folgen. Entweder sollten wir seinem Beispiel im wörtlichen Sinne folgen, oder wir sollten es kritisch untersuchen und für uns selbst entscheiden. Die Diskussion dieses Widerspruchs impft unausweichlich Zweifel ein – den Todfeind des Fanatismus.

Warum bejubeln also viele Menschen „Das Leben des Brian“ und „Jerry Springer: The Opera“ und fangen dann wie Mary Whitehouse an zu gackern, wenn es um den Islam geht? Wenn ein Buch über Jesus eingestampft würde, weil sich Fanatiker in Mississippi darüber beschweren könnten, dann wären wir wütend. Ich kann das nachvollziehen. Ich schäme mich zu sagen, dass ich gehässiger wäre, wenn ich über das Christentum schreiben würde. Ein Grund ist Furcht: Das Bild von Theo Van Gogh, der auf dem Bürgersteig liegt und schreit „Können wir nicht einfach darüber reden?“ Natürlich rationalisieren wir das, indem wir fragen: Macht ein Witz, eine Kolumne, ein Roman einen so großen Unterschied? Nein. Aber in ihrer Gesamtheit? Absolut.

Der andere Grund ist ehrenwerter, wenn auch fehlerhaft. Es gibt sehr reale und sich weiter ausbreitende Vorurteile über Muslime im Westen. Die BBC hat vor kurzem gleichermaßen qualifizierte Reporter ausgesandt, um hunderte von Angestellten zu interviewen. Diejenigen mit muslimischen Namen bekamen mit einer 50% geringeren Wahrscheinlichkeit ein Interview. Kritiken von islamischen Texten werden manchmal benutzt, um US-amerikanische oder israelische Militärgrausamkeiten zu rechtfertigen. Einige Kritiker von Muslimen – wie Geert Wilders oder Martin Amis – stellen massenhafte Menschenrechtsverletzungen hier in Europa zur Diskussion. Also folgern einige Säkularisten: Ich habe viel am Judentum zu kritisieren, doch würde ich das nicht im Deutschland von 1933 tun. Warum den Islam jetzt kritisieren, wenn Muslime von Eiferern angegriffen werden?

Doch ich lebe im mehrheitlich muslimischen East End von London und das hier ist nicht Weimar Deutschland. Muslime sind sicher genug, um sich mit einigen harten Fragen auseinandersetzen zu können. Es ist herablassend, Muslime wie leicht erregbare Kinder zu behandeln, die mit der forschenden und veralbernden Behandlung nicht zurecht kommen, die wir auf Christentum, Judentum und Buddhismus anwenden. Es ist vollkommen stimmig, Muslime vor Fanatismus zu beschützen und gleichzeitig den Fanatismus und die Absurditäten innerhalb ihrer heiligen Texte herauszufordern.

Es gibt nun eine Zensurbewegung, die versucht, eine kritische Diskussion des Islam zum Schweigen zu bringen. Auf der einen Seite stehen Fanatiker, die drohen, Sie umzubringen, auf der anderen Kritiker, die Sie „islamophob“ nennen. Aber konsequenter Atheismus ist kein Rassismus. Im Gegenteil: Er behandelt alle Menschen wie reife Erwachsene, die mit rationalen Fragen zurechtkommen. Wenn wir Bücher aus Furcht vor Fundamentalismus einstampfen, dann enthaupten wir die wertvollste Freiheit, die wir besitzen.

*Leider hat Deutschland noch nichts davon mitbekommen. (Anm. des Übers.)

Übersetzung: Andreas Müller

Quelle: Hari, Johann: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam. Independent. 14. August 2008.