Author: James Meikle
Publication: The Guardian
Date: February 2, 2010
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/02/soyinka-england-cesspit-islamists
England is a "cesspit" and breeding
ground for fundamentalist Muslims, the Nobel laureate and political activist
Wole Soyinka has said in an interview in which he also accused Britain of
allowing the existence of "indoctrination schools".
His extraordinary attack on what he views
as Britain's part in fuelling Islamist terrorism was published on the US news
and opinion website The Daily Beast. It was coupled with his assertion that
the 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie meant that
the assumption of power over life and death had passed "to every inconsequential
Muslim in the world".
Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel
prize for literature in 1986, made his claims in response to a question about
his homeland of Nigeria being added to the watchlist of countries deemed to
be incubating terrorists, after the failed attempts of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
to bring an airliner down over the US on Christmas Day.
"That was an irrational, knee-jerk reaction
by the Americans," the writer said. "The man did not get radicalised
in Nigeria. It happened in England, where he went to university.
"England is a cesspit. England is the
breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow
all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other
religions preach apocalyptic violence.
"And yet England allows it. Remember,
that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all
his work in libraries there …"
Soyinka added: "This is part of the character
of Great Britain. Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake
that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of
accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness."
The attempted Christmas Day bombing has helped
to raise fears that some British universities are becoming places in which
young Muslims are radicalised - Abdulmutallab attended University College,
London. But Soyinka, who splits his time between the US and Nigeria, suggested
that British Muslims were being radicalised earlier in their lives.
"I doubt you can have the kind of indoctrination
schools in America as you do in the UK," he said. "Besides, there's
a large body of American Muslims in the US - the Nation of Islam - which has
created a kind of mainstream Muslim institution. The Muslims there are open
Muslims, whereas in Europe they tend to go into ghetto schools. "The
Nation of Islam provides an antidote in the United States to fundamentalist
Islam - which is why individuals from America have to go abroad to find radical
teachings."
And, speaking about the fatwa issued by Khomeini
against Rushdie, he said: "It all began when he assumed the power of
life and death over the life of a writer. This was a watershed between doctrinaire
aggression and physical aggression. There was an escalation. The assumption
of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim
in the world - as if someone had given them a new stature.
"Al-Qaida is the descendant of this phenomenon.
The proselytisation of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi
Arabia. Madrasas were established everywhere."
