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.
