"What honour have we got left, when nobody is listening to us?"
About this Quote
Honor only “counts” when it’s witnessed; that’s the cynical hinge of Abu Bakar Bashir’s line. The sentence sounds like wounded pride, but it’s really a recruitment pitch disguised as lament. By tying honor to an audience, Bashir shifts dignity from an inner code to a public performance: if “nobody is listening,” then the community’s status has been stripped, and something must be done to force attention.
The phrasing is collective and coercive. “We” collapses individual moral agency into a single injured body, inviting listeners to borrow a grievance they may not have personally lived. “Left” frames honor as a finite resource that can be stolen, which makes compromise feel like surrender. Most telling is “listening,” not “agreeing.” He’s not asking for persuasion on the merits; he’s indicting disrespect. In that frame, any spectacle that compels attention can be recast as restoring honor, even if it violates ethical norms.
Context matters because Bashir is associated with militant Islamist networks in Southeast Asia and the broader post-9/11 ecosystem where “humiliation” narratives circulate as political fuel. The line echoes a familiar radicalizing move: convert marginalization into moral emergency, then imply that visibility equals legitimacy. It’s grievance politics sharpened into a simple emotional equation: unheard equals dishonored.
Its power is rhetorical economy. One question, no policy, no details, just a wound and an implied cure: make them listen.
The phrasing is collective and coercive. “We” collapses individual moral agency into a single injured body, inviting listeners to borrow a grievance they may not have personally lived. “Left” frames honor as a finite resource that can be stolen, which makes compromise feel like surrender. Most telling is “listening,” not “agreeing.” He’s not asking for persuasion on the merits; he’s indicting disrespect. In that frame, any spectacle that compels attention can be recast as restoring honor, even if it violates ethical norms.
Context matters because Bashir is associated with militant Islamist networks in Southeast Asia and the broader post-9/11 ecosystem where “humiliation” narratives circulate as political fuel. The line echoes a familiar radicalizing move: convert marginalization into moral emergency, then imply that visibility equals legitimacy. It’s grievance politics sharpened into a simple emotional equation: unheard equals dishonored.
Its power is rhetorical economy. One question, no policy, no details, just a wound and an implied cure: make them listen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
|---|
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