I suppose the deeper question is why does Arab nationalism reward the romantic loser? Utterly against all principles of self-preservation.
I saw an Israeli documentary on TV a couple of months ago in which were interviewed some unsuccessful suicide bombers - they got caught, or the bomb did not go off "successfully" and the bomber survived. Some of these young men and boys were unrepentent. They believed, still, in the after death reward - 72 virgins, yada yada - and there was something in it for their families - money and that the rest of family would go to heaven, also.
I drew some conclusions.
The question you ask is too abstract, I think. Or perhaps at the wrong level of abstraction. Perhaps a more rewarding avenue is to ask two questions, 1) how does an individual get so attached to a set of ideas he will kill himself for them? And then, 2) what are the objective conditions which lead to the attachment?
Regarding 1): It's been said, correctly, I think, reason is servant of the emotions. What is meant here is that ideas have power when emotions are attached to them.
Many (not all) young men and boys in Palestine live in a violent environment, are often desperately poor, and are full of surging hormones and washed through and through with strong emotion: love, hate, lust, despair, etc. Get enough of these firmly attached to an idea or set of ideas, no matter how abjectly stupid, and these ideas have power - the thinker is committed to them; and an idea or set of ideas, no matter how admirable, which do not have these strong emotions attached have no power - the thinker has no 'room' for them, so to speak. These weak ideas do not 'illuminate' his life. This is analogous to falling very heavily in love. When we do that, how much 'room' do we have for other people? They do not light up our lives like the beloved.
2): The above is the 'internal', abstract description. These boys' and young mens' environment is deficient: it's authoritarian, and unjust; they are often (but not always) poor and uneducated, and when they get to and beyond puperty are often separated from female company which in itself is is an incitement to anger and violence. The only men who seem to be in control of things is the mullah or the Hamas or Hizbolla man. They are admirable, and often distribute comfort and largesse. The movie illustrated this also.
The documentary maker also interviewed a man who makes the bombs and straps them on the boys and young men. He said they look for sucide bomb candidates in the mosque. He said they look for the thoughtful ones who are devout, serious and although I don't remember him saying it, I expect they look for ones who don't have very many friends. But of course the quiet, thoughtful, devout boys and young men have all the emotional storms the louder ones do but they haven't committed to others and a wider realm of ideas in the way their more outgoing fellows have. These boys and men these recruiters bring along - they pay attention to them, take an interest, encourage and guide them in their devotional committment and eventually, in effect, seduce them and have them place all their emotional treasure - hate, love etc - in one set of ideas.
The above is the extreme example. More generally, people in groups tend to talk about, read, and listen to the same things, especially if they have a common culture. Totalitarian recruitment generally has a leader standing in front telling the story and recruiters trolling the gathering looking for those who appear receptive. If the movement, whatever it be, gets access to public media, or the schools, or both, and even gets to be the social service organization, it's on a roll and can expand recruitment rapidly.
The reason these movements fail eventually, lies in the poverty of their ideas, which really in the end boil down to two. The stronger one is that there is only one way to live - theirs. The weaker is that their misfortunes are caused by those folk who are not like them. Insofar as most of the leaders have attached their emotions to these ideas, other ideas lack power for them and, in effect, they become stupid: Declare war on the rest of the world, open a second front in in Russia, etc.
In the end, they meet a stronger, determined, slightly more flexible adversary, which does not want to be like them and which carries the fight until the totalitarians are no longer able to wage war.
An even more desirable outcome is that the totalitarian leadership is eliminated and the followers so exhausted they no longer can attach emotions to foolish ideas and can think of alternatives.
I don't think things run exactly the way Pipes and Ajami describe them. Ajami is right that intellectual classes in the near east world have a large part of their membership devoted to expressing inadequate ideas. But I also think that in many of these countries expressing adequate ideas will probably lead to unemployment, jail, or an early death.
I make no judgements about that because I'm not in their shoes and there is another factor: Most of them love their country and people and these haven't done very well in comparison with the West the last while and many of these intellectuals, like their compatriots value pride more than we do these days - the West will appropriate anything. Our Renaissance gained much of its start from contact with ideas from Arabia, German generals studied Sherman, every one took guff and good things as well, from the British in the 19th century and from the Americans in the 20th, etc A lot of the time we didn't like it but we tried to take the good stuff. Many middle east intellectuals write against appropriating western ideas and ways, I suspect, because they'd like their countries to achieve in their own ways. It's often pride and patriotism these intellectuals attach to the anti-western idea collection.They can write in this fashion and survive in the very repressive regimes they live under because it isn't fundamentally subversive. But it's also mostly irrelevant.
Most of these intellectuals live in repressive kleptocracies where the only outlet is religion and religion in most of these places has been hijacked by extremists who have taken on many functions an uncorrupt government would run - good education and even justice, and because these are kleptocracies, feeding hungry people.
In Egypt, which is not actually a kleptocracy, these extremists often directly challenge the government, particularly with respect to education, publishing, and freedom of religion, and, of course, even murdered a president. The government is chary of them and gives in on what appear to be little things.
Criticizing the government or the extremist is a risky business compared to attacking the west. And the extremists in many places find it more secure to crticize the west than the local government - until they can replace it. Consequently, there is a lot of anti-western rhetoric coming from many Arab and middle eastern parts from people who who hate each other but are joined in this one activity.
If the Israelis do destroy Hamas and Hizbolla in their own country and repress/kill the extremist mullahs, and find some reasonable Palestinians to talk to, they then will have to deal with their own extremists right away. They are every bit as narrow and nasty as the Arab ones. |
