Ali Eteraz is a Muslim blogger who is trying to figure out a way for the west to interact with the Islamic world and a way for the Islamic world to work with the west. His views defy simple explanation, but I would say that he believes in the potential of democracy in the Islamic world (kind of like Paul Wolfowitz) but he is realistic about the obstacles and complications. He’s a moderate, Westernized Muslim that is caught in a vice between the hate/idealism of the right and the tolerance/indifference of the left. His stuff is usually quite interesting to read.
For whatever reason, he likes most of what I have to say about the Middle East and he sends me email from time to time to tune me into interesting articles and developments. He wants me to address a recent study that he fears will be misused by the right. The study interviewed 9000 Muslims from many countries and divided them into moderates and radicals based on how they answered a question on 9/11. If they said it was largely justified then they were classified as radicals. If they said 9/11 was largely unjustified then they were classified as moderates.
The study shows that radicals are better educated, richer, more optimistic about the future, and less religious than moderates. This runs counter to the storyline that radicals are poor, poorly educated, lacking hope, and are brainwashed by religion. The fear, then, is that conservatives will conclude that there is no hope for Muslims and the best option is to exterminate them.
I think conservatives are beginning to entertain that solution and it is very troubling. Conservatives need a take a deep breath and start listening to people like Ali (who I quote at length, below the fold). This study did not accurately predict who the terrorists are. Thinking 9/11 was justified is just not a very good predictor of who will become a suicide bomber. Ali explains who the bombers are and how they get recruited. And, yes, the problem is an Islamic problem. It requires an Islamic solution. How can we help? First, by respecting Islam. Second, by refraining from imposing our beliefs. And, third, by providing some economic development. But if there a role for our covert arms, it should be in support of the kind of social Islam that Ali envisions. Are the Saudis listening?
That’s the thing about these ‘recruiters’ floating in and out of our communities. No matter where you are in the world, they won’t ‘impose’ or ‘order’ or ‘trick’ you into liking them, or carrying out their fantasies of murder. They won’t hold your wife at gunpoint, or threaten you with blackmail. No, they will be the sweetest little flatterers on the face of the earth. That’s why they are successful. They ameliorate loneliness and that’s a fact. Whereas the religious guys who should be giving you a community are more into setting up and defining what criteria one needs to reach Muslim legal ninja level nine on the scales of Islamic juridical reasoning and why you are still level two. Or, as it is more usually, they will just tell you that you are impious and you’ll never again feel included.
One thing about the political Salafism that makes it so effective in rolling up all the disaffected guys into itself: It might just be one of the most democratic visions of human interaction there exists today (and yet it causes so much murder). Caste, class, race, ethnicity, background are irrelevant. It has replaced Marxism in that particular sense. Not refined yet, but it’s working on it. [Yet again, I have to reference you to the making of the terrorists in Syriana. That film gets it totally right.] If you are a person who in your past has been passed over for a promotion because your degree was not from the right school, with the Salafis it doesn’t matter. If you ever got dissed for being a certain color, with the Salafis it doesn’t matter. What is the thing that so many jihadists love about Bin Laden? That he’s tall? No. That he’s got multiple wives and therefore must have a big dick? No. It’s this: “he sits with us, eats on the floor, and sleeps on a mat.” Salafism is the perfect men’s club for men who just wanted to hang out and be ‘regular.’ Political Salafism takes the method that Bin Laden uses – extreme humility (which is what made both Jesus and Muhammad so big) – and travel worldwide with it, peddling their “love” and racking up isolated guys left and right. In prisons. In suburbs. In transient worker camps. In engineering classes at universities. In East and West.
I blame social Islam because all of this wouldn’t happen if our Muslim communities organized themselves in an equally egalitarian manner. That is why I have no respect for the current visions of social Islam. They are into establishing hierarchies and more into breeding obedience than building inclusion. Someone give me a social Islam that doesn’t need a guy to regularly schedule brain-washing sessions or pass judgments on anyone (and which eschews evaluating people’s characters), and I’ll tell you that you have found a way to keep ‘regular’ guys ‘regular.’ Until then, these ‘normal’ guys are an in-house problem we have no solution for.
I’d like to know more about why you think conservatives (American? Radical right? Christian fundies?) are beginning to consider the extermination of Muslims as a solution. The word extermination is loaded with a lot of bad history. Is there evidence that you see, beyond the few freaks on the internet who advocate shit like that?
Rush Limbaugh has the biggest radio audience in America and he is advocating it.
Genocide has been on the minds of the Powers that Be for about a decade now.
As an option.
It was something like ten or fifteen years ago that the New York Times ran a large op-ed article on the World’s main cultural regions–cultural in the anthropological sense–and rated them according to their compatibility with the West (meaning US Capitalism). The analysis divided the World into some six or seven basic cultural groups.
The Islamic world was one of the groups. It was rated “least compatible.”
At the time this seemed like almost-academic anthropology. My opinion was revised when I watched the US embrace policies of thinly-disguised cultural destruction, and was revised further when, at the onset of the 21st century, we literally announced a “crusade” in the Middle East. And launched two wars there.
It is now plain that the US seeks to destroy all cultures unlike itself–by submission and conversion, fine, or else by extermination. The NYT article was the prioritized hit list. Muslims are the foremost target.
This policy comes from the very top. Above Bush and Cheney.
(No, I do not think it will work. But surely Muslims are in for a hard time before failure of the policy ensues.)
Tell your muslim friend the truth. He needs to be ready for what is coming.
Here is just a meta-comment I was thinking about this morning. I read the Washington Post every day from about 1959 to 2005. For a year now, I’ve stopped. And I really don’t miss it at all (except for the comics).
There’s just much more good content on the Internet.
Compare a blogger like BooMan to a weasel like the WaPo’s Richard Cohen. Cohen writes, what?, one crappy column a week. And probably makes $250,000 or more a year. Did he schtup his way to the top? In contrast, BooMan is churning out, on average, several good columns every DAY. The contrast in productivity is just stunning.
Eventually the compensation imbalance will be adjusted.
The importation of Islamism/Political Salafism into Chechnya is another example of how these recruiters operate. Here’s an interesting quote from this 2003 WaPo article:
This is useful example of how those peoples that do end up hanging out with the radicals and are also quite poor, may not be radicalized themselves, so much as merely responding to the incentives placed before them by the wealthier recruiters and sophisticated campaigns.
Another major reason why Jihadists and “radicals” might tend to be wealthier is the fact that recruiters are often hitting up Middle Eastern Universities or literally setting up the curriculum, as was the case with bin Laden:
That’s also the case in Egypt. Gama’a al-Isamiya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, two of the main Muslim Brotherhood splinter groups that have essentially fused with al-Qaeda, both emerged from the Islamist student groups set up in the 70’s all across Egyptian campuses. And that was done at the behest of Anwar Sadat who wanted to use these guys as a counterforce to Egypt’s Left (go here and skip down to the “Islamist renewal of the 70’s” section). and if recent news is accurate, that same kind of campus recruiting is going on in Egypt today:
While the Muslim Brotherhood’s dedication to democracy is questionable (some of their past writings indicate it’s a tool for getting into power that would be disposed of), their activities on campuses througout the country appear to be more or less tolerated by Egyptian authorities barring the occasional crack down.
So the fact that much of the opposition to the authoritarian regimes throughout the regime is channeled through a quasi-state-tolerated group like the Muslim Brotherhood, which operates primarily amongst the wealthier classes in these countries, is probably a big reason the “Jihadists” tend to be better educated.