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This article was first published in February 2015, following President Obama’s summit on “violent extremism” to combat ISIS.
This week, the White House hosts an international summit to combat “violent extremism.”[i] In advance of the summit, President Obama articulated the problem as follows: “groups like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today’s youth something better.”[ii] This, however, is a Western understanding of a problem that has its roots elsewhere. Time and again, this Western mentality has failed us in dealing with this non-Western problem, from President Bush’s insistence on a democratic election in Gaza that resulted in the election and rule of Hamas in 2006[iii], to the Arab spring that resulted in Muslim Brotherhood taking control of Egypt in 2011, to Libya where we ousted Gaddafi but can now see footsteps of ISIS. We cannot solve a problem until we correctly and clearly identify it.
President Obama’s articulation of “violent extremism” can be summarized as follows: a few outlier members of the society with twisted understanding of Islam perform acts of barbarism that are rejected by the overwhelming population of Muslims.[iv] This understanding may be correct for the modern Western societies and “violent extremisms” initiated there. Examples would be the Oklahoma city bombing, or random acts of violence against abortion clinics. Such random and outlier violence can be reduced, but not completely eliminated because there will always be that statistically deviant or mentally troubled member in any society. This approach and understanding also explain President Obama’s solution in dealing with ISIS by trying to essentially manage ISIS and terrorism in general.
The problem with Islamic terror, however, is not that some random outliers occasionally highjack an otherwise non-violent religion. Nor is the problem poverty or lack of jobs. In fact, many Middle Eastern countries enjoy a wealth of natural resources that, for example, Europe lacks. Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of oil in the world. Iran, in addition to oil, has the world’s second largest natural gas resources. Similarly, Qatar and other gulf countries have substantial oil and gas resources, and so does Iraq.
The heart of the problem is much simpler: unlike religions such as Christianity, Islam never went through the Renascence and continues today to be practiced as it was 1400 years ago. Country after country and society after society in the Middle East and elsewhere continue to raise generations with hatred and backwards beliefs. The “moderate” Muslim population in the Middle East is still extremist by Western standards, even if it may not compare to the likes of ISIS. It is just a natural result that an already extreme society is more likely to produce even more extreme elements. Saudi Arabia, the birth place of many of the 9/11 terrorists, may be an obvious example. Iran can be a less obvious example. Many people may not know that children in Iran are brainwashed from an early age with the concepts of martyrdom and the like. A nine year old in Iran will learn to praise the “hero” who at the age of thirteen, became a child soldier, went under a tank and blew himself up.[v] Many may also not know that, to date, a quasi-governmental entity in Iran offers millions of dollars in reward for the assassination of Salman Rushdi for writing a critical book on Islam.[vi] In more tangible terms, had the Charlie Hebdu terrorists in Paris instead killed Salman Rushdi in England, they would have received millions of dollars in reward from Iran. It is also not a secret that many Arab countries in fact originally financed ISIS. As yet another example, after the “Arab spring,” the Egyptians, who are by many considered as one of the more liberal Arab states, elected the Muslim Brotherhood for government.[vii]
We cannot solve this problem by eliminating a few outlier extremists without also fundamentally changing the “moderate” societies that produce them, just as Abraham Lincoln would not have been able to abolish slavery had he approached the problem as “a few slave owners with deviant beliefs.” Extremist deviants from the mainstream will always exist in all societies and in all issues, be it religion or politics. The problem in the Middle East is that the “main stream” is already extremist by today’s standards. The problem is the main stream Islam as it is generally practiced and taught today in the vast majority of Muslim countries. It is not a coincidence that a vast majority of terrorist attacks, from South East Asia to Paris, to London identify with one religion. Despite President Obama’s affirmative statement to the contrary, this is a clash of civilizations—one that has gone through the Renascence and one that has not. And Islam as practiced and taught in the Middle East today is what has to change and modernized, not a few random “violent extremists.”
Sources:
[i] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-obama-terrorism-conference-20150218-story.html
[ii] Id.
[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
[iv] http://bit.ly/1G4gvih
[v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Hossein_Fahmideh
[vi] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy
[vii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood_in_post-Mubarak_electoral_politics_of_Egypt
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