Manchester Attack: The Ideology that Cannot be Mentioned.

Jeremy Corbyn a few hours ago started a speech in Watford on 'Race and Faith' in which he casually 'explained' the jihadi terrorism behind the Manchester Attack as being a partly a consequence and further cause of 'division among our communities' and 'social injustice' which out of the 'hatred' was created.

This is not a smear. Corbyn claimed the terrorist attack was an outgrowth of 'hatred' on behalf of the attackers, so Corbyn in no way directly 'justified' it. However, to explain it away as a consequence of generalised 'social injustice', is a foolish and simplistic rationalisation of terrorism worthy of the SWP.

If he is so simple minded as to believe that Manchester terror attack came out of that, as opposed to the domestic impact of the foreign policies that he rather unspecifically, but nevertheless correctly linked it to in a speech last week, then it is clear for certain that he is as unfit to be Prime Minister as Theresa May.

This would fit in with his idea that the land the Manchester suicide bomber was connected with a Libya full of 'desperate people' and the significance of ungoverned spaces created by Western foreign policy intervention. That argument would be much in tune with the reason for occupying Afghanistan after 9/11.

It is quite obvious that British foreign policy made the domestic jihadi terrorist threat worse: it made it worse across the Middle East with the invasion or Iraq in 2003 and the intervention in Libya and alignment with Gulf State policy over Syria in backing rebel militias that were, in practice full of jihadi Islamists.

However, this would locate the problem of jihadi terrorism with support for geopolitical strategies that have created failed states and allowed jihadi organisations such as Al Qaeda and IS space within which to thrive. It also points to the role of the Croesus like wealth of the Sunni Gulf States arming and funding them.

Corbyn, in this sense, is just as irresponsible as the Conservative right in obfuscating the link between the promotion of an intolerant strand of Wahhabi and Salafi Islam as a major factor in global terrorism, including the West. The Tories omit mention of it through not wanting to upset their rich clients for arms and investments.

The British left, on the other hand, have problems dealing with jihadi ideology because they too partly do not want to upset the Gulf States and also because of the politically correct idea that it's unwise to mention any form of Islam as having any connection to an ideology of terror as nothing but a perversion or corruption.

The problem with this is that Wahhabi Islam is a particular variant of Islam that is puritanical and intolerant. No amount of pretence that jihadi terrorism is unconnected to this form is going to wash and the lack of moral clarity and obfuscation about some undefined general 'extremism' is counter-productive.

Patrick Cockburn, who knows more about ISIS and the connection between foreign policy and the age of global jihad refers to the refusal to link terror with the Salafi-Islamic doctrines that propel it as hypocritical and 'pious moralising'. Corbyn is better than the Tories in this regard but not that much better and still a hypocrite.