One Hand Clapping - Close, but no cigar
Christopher Kremmer, writing on Australia's SMH.com.au almost gets the root causes argument about terrorism right. He correctly discounts the Islamist cause as "fantasy hogwash," which seems to align pretty well with Lee Harris' exposition of Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology. Says Chris,
Like a lot of hogwash, this fantasy has its roots in reality. The Islamic world is a once great civilisation that has fallen prey to the West. We do manipulate its politics and demand the free flow of its principal resource, oil. But the people who enfeebled the Islamic world were the mullahs who by the 12th century had equated science, art and literature with the devil's work. Their contemporary counterparts advocate that it remain in the Dark Ages.
So far, so good. But here he starts to veer off course:
Endemic violence in their homelands, lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement, diaspora and foreign occupation are the engines driving it. The cycle of violence may last for generations.
The current Western responses to fundamentalist violence are failing to take into account how our actions are perceived in the regions where youth holds the key to the future. From Indonesia to Iran, and Pakistan to Iraq, our actions are bolstering fundamentalist thinking.
(hat tip: Brendan Slattery) Now, I don't actually disagree very much with anything I've cited so far - except that Kremmer apparently thinks that "lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement" exist for no reason. They just are, all on their own. But instead of asking just why these conditions prevail in the terrorism-spawning lands, Kremmer puts on the brakes and falls back into the safe territory of blaming the West:
The war on terrorism, as our leaders have configured it, is a dead end. One could hope our leaders would admit their mistakes and pledge a new direction, but it seems unlikely. It might require a change of leadership to achieve that.
Bin Laden and his ilk are symptoms of a much deeper pathology. We need to address the root causes of terrorism, and acknowledge that the way the West plays politics is a significant element in the equation.
What Kremmer cites as "root causes" of terrorism are actually the symptoms of deeper pathologies, as he hints. So why didn't he name them? They are not hard to identify:
Political oppression and lack of liberty: except for Iraq, every Arab country is an authoritarian state ruled by an oligarchy, monarchy or dictator. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, explained it just this week:
Contrasting western democracy with Islamic societies, he said: "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces.
"Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege."
Lack of economic opportunity: free-market capitalism does not exist on a macro level. All economies are controlled by the central government.
Intellectual stagnation (which Kremmer does mention): Last fall in the opening speech of the Islamic Summit' in Malaysia, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad stated the Islamic world's intellectual status thus:
The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practising their own religion of Islam. ... The Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage. ...
But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged.
Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilisation would have disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492.
The early successes of the Ottomans were not accompanied by an intellectual renaissance. Instead they became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims.
Indeed. Now, all of these pathologies will be alleviated if the political and social structures of the countries can be liberalized. That doesn't mean there will be no murderous Islamist fanatics. It does mean that the soil from which they grow will be much less fertile.
I invite you also to read my essay about the problems of science and Islam.
Update: What about patriarchy?
Update 2: Glittering Eye makes the excellent point that another analysis to peruse along these lines is Ralph Peters' article in Paramters, the journal of the US Army Watr College, "Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States." He's right.
Peters characterizes the problems of non-competitive states:
* Restrictions on the free flow of information.
* The subjugation of women.
* Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
* The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
* Domination by a restrictive religion.
* A low valuation of education.
* Low prestige assigned to work.
So go read Peters' article, too!
donaldsensing.com |
