Everybody Fatwa!

4/28/06


Let me start off by saying that this article is an exercise looking at the reasons radical Islamic terrorism has exploded in recent years and why so many young Middle Easterners find bin Laden's violent agenda against the West such an appealing idea. I do not lump all or even most Arabs or Muslims in with the following supposition, nor do I find anything about the religion fundamentally despicable. I am offering my opinion as to why the societies of the Middle East have fallen so far behind the West in terms of economic equality and how this has led to the upswing in violent Islamic terrorism.

Please don't send me a bomb in the mail. If you must kill me, at least make it a singing telegram suicide bomber so I could have a bit of a laugh before we redecorate the living room walls with my intestines. Thank you.

The religious fanaticism of radical Islam, practiced most notably by al-Qaeda, is doomed to failure. Were we to sit back and do nothing whatever to combat it, I posit, it would fail even sooner than it's going to. Unfortunately, that is not really an option. The reason exploding oneself with bombs in public places in the name of perfect religion is ultimately resigned to the same fate as the dinosaurs is not because we in the West have a moral superiority or because terrorism is an inherently impotent system for economic change. Radical Islamic terrorism is fatally flawed because the society which it wishes to install is itself incapable of thriving in a modern world. It could survive, and obviously so far has, but it will be left further and further behind the world as it does so.

The terrorists do not "hate our freedom," no matter how many times our Commander in Chief boils the ber-complex geopolitical issue down to a sexy sound-bite. What they do hate is the fact that their version of radical, violent Islam, purported to be the most perfect and intractable form of religion, has heretofore failed to make them the most successful and powerful region in the world. And it never will. Here's why:

One of the chief tenants of their fundamentalist belief is that the Holy Quran is an unchangeable and unchallengeable tome and Islam and the lifestyle that goes with it is therefore also perfect and unchangeable. The only sticky part about this belief is that, for any society to grow and thrive, change is not only necessary, but inevitable. This is the main reason the Middle East as a whole and the Arab and Muslim world more specifically has fallen behind the rest of the planet in terms of living standards, technology, science and power.

As Thomas L. Friedman points out in his enlightening and rather frightening book The World Is Flat (to which I owe the lions share of the ideas I'm pointing out here; read this book) most of the Arab-Muslim world does not intellectually support bin Laden and those like him, but in the same way that African-Americans felt joy over the "not guilty" verdict in the OJ trials because Simpson had given the LAPD, who many blacks felt had unfairly oppressed and humiliated them for too long, a black eye, so too did a great portion of the Arab and Muslim world feel that America got what was coming to it on 9/11. They didn't necessarily celebrate the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans, but they did feel as if finally someone struck a blow against the symbol of Western economic and political success which had, intentionally or not, oppressed and humiliated them for half a century.

Most of the upper echelon of al-Qaeda involved in driving planes into large buildings was actually recruited in Europe. Al-Qaeda uses the guise of religious fundamentalism to mask their real core, which is violent, radical politics. You come for the religion but stay for the power, in other words. The top terrorists in the 9/11 attacks were not humble, downtrodden Arabs and Muslims, but well-off, educated individuals much like bin Laden himself who had spent time in the West and were frustrated, humiliated and eventually enraged that they saw America and Europe prospering while their countries languished. They felt as if they were forced to choose either between becoming marginalized and de-Islamified (for lack of a better term) or wallowing in economic quagmire and political power-vacuum forever.

Snips and snails and humiliated frustration; that's what little terrorists are made of, made of.

In order to succeed in and increasingly smaller global village a country must have open markets of trade with not only other nations, but also actively recruit the best and brightest from around the world to bolster its technological and scientific community. America, so far, has been the forerunner in this, stretching from recruiting German rocket scientists after WWII to creating the ultimate in collegiate education so the best and brightest of China, India and the rest of the world come here to study and hopefully stay, increasing our brainpower and shoring up our economic development. But such advances cannot be accomplished without an open and free society (notice how much Chinas economy and science has boomed since they've moved to a more capitalism-friendly attitude) in which men, women, foreigners and minorities are allowed and encouraged to participate.

The Ottoman Empire collapsed because it became complacent with its power and status in the 16th and 17th century and stopped developing. Europe was busy making scientific and military advances and while the Turks absorbed this new technology, they didn't expand or advance it and were therefore doomed to be displaced because of their own stagnation. (WWI had a great deal to do with this as well, but the roots had been planted long before.)

The Arab and Muslim world of today is still suffering from the same affliction. If they were to admit that only be allowing all citizens (women, too, boys!) to be educated and contribute to the economy is the only way to truly be successful, they would be forced to admit their way of doing things is incorrect, and how can it be when their religion is perfect and superior in every way? Thus, a horrifying cyclical process of stagnation, frustration, humiliation and eventually rage circles the drain leading to people being forcibly dislocated from vital parts of their body by suicide bombs. The extremists want the impossible: All the benefits and power of a free society without the trust and equality that go along with it. As I've said, their attempts to stop globalization will fail, but I have to wonder if it's not going to get much, much worse before it starts to get any better.

Thank you for your kind attention, ladies and gentlemen.