Hard Truths: The Sources Of Islamic Terrorism
Yet again fanatical murderers strike out against the innocent, spreading fear and darkness across Europe and the world. It seems every time this happens, the news channels try to build comforting narratives around senseless acts of evil, trotting expert after expert to “analyze” the situation for hours on end, yet never giving us a satisfactory answer to why the situation seems to be getting worse.
Within this vacuum of truth, we have would be leaders of men and so called think tanks trying to manipulate the public for their own benefit, often eschewing real solutions for simplistic talking points about closing borders or trying to push the country back onto a war footing. These neoconservative inspired fools would have us launch retaliatory attacks and invasions that would probably result in even worse outcomes than the last time we tried to spread “freedom and democracy” in the Middle East.
On the other hand we have the so called “liberals” and “progressives”; naïve tools who betray their own ideals because they cannot stomach the hard truth that not every culture is compatible and not all the peoples of earth can sit down and sing kumbaya around a globalized campfire.
Yes, the vast, vast majority of the adherents of Islam are good, decent human beings who like everyone else, only want to work, live life and create a better future for their children. Yet there are serious theological and political issues which need to be confronted head on, and which do emanate from certain aspects of the religion.
Those issues, such as the political and military actions of Mohamed himself, make it possible for those who want to manipulate Muslims for their own sick and twisted ends to craft a social, political and religious ideology that is at least somewhat plausible in the context of Islam itself.
Indeed, every religion has its own issues and contradictions which need to be worked out internally in order for a movement towards truth and progress to occur. The very stoic and humble nature of Jesus in the Christian faith, as well as the maxim of turning the other cheek practiced to a noble extreme by early Christians, made it perhaps too easy for the nobility to justify and enforce an oppressive class system on the peasantry of Europe for over 1000 years. The redemptive power of non-violence and forgiveness built into the fabric of Christianity had to be re-contextualized and re-imagined over time by philosophers and theologians so as to give the common folk the courage to demand a say in their destiny and a respect for individual rights as a matter of law, without feeling as if they are going against some divinely inspired order of things.
In the same way, Islam now faces a historical challenge in which its own brightest minds and spirits will have to re-contextualize some of the most fundamental aspects of the faith. It will have to find a way to firmly separate the historical actions of Mohamed and his immediate followers in the 7th and 8th centuries, from what is demanded of faithful Muslims in the 21st century. The truth is that Mohamed was not just a religious leader, he was also a political and military leader as well, a man who personally led others into combat and who participated in warfare as one of the primary means of defending and spreading his faith at the time. If Mohamed, who is seen within Islam as the pinnacle of what it means to be human, the one to be emulated as far as possible, waged war to defend Islam, then how can modern Muslims, especially Muslim men, not also be willing to wage war in the name of the religion? Disturbingly, that is exactly the question posed by radical groups such as ISIS, and unfortunately too many young Muslims have answered by heeding the call to war against the so called “infidels” and “crusaders”.
Of course, there are clear prohibitions on targeting the innocent and committing acts of brutality within Islam. Clearly the actions of historical Muslim military leaders such as Saladin show that Jihad, even if armed, was often carried out quite honorably. Yet weighing a chivalrous code of warfare against the possibility of doing nothing in the face of perceived insults and trespasses from the Western powers, is it all that surprising that many Muslims seem to at least tacitly support an armed struggle against those powers, even if they are uncomfortable with the barbaric tactics employed?
That is another uncomfortable truth, which is that many more Muslims than are actually terrorists or terrorist supporters do in fact agree that the policies of the Western powers and Israel can and should be met with some form of armed resistance. Such a narrative of resistance makes it possible for terrorist cells to recruit, organize themselves and plan their attacks inside Muslim communities that otherwise reject their methods and even most of their fundamentalism. This is why calls by those on the right for Muslim communities to “police their own” or “speak out” against radical elements will not likely result in anything significant, because there is an underlying theological assumption that even if misguided those elements are somehow fighting for the greater good of Muslims.
That does not mean however that we must cede Muslim communities in Europe and America to the diabolical machinations of Islamic terrorists, or adopt a path of fear and intolerance that would lead us to commit acts of broad discrimination against our Muslim brothers and sisters. The West, especially in Europe, needs to actively integrate and assimilate current Muslim populations into the wider cultural, economic, political and social framework of the countries in which they live.
Although it is normal for immigrant populations to stick together and in many cases romanticize their native cultures as a form of protection against the challenges they face in the new country, we cannot allow a continued ghettoization of Muslim immigrant communities such as what has occurred in the Molenbeek district of Brussels.
In that district there is a sizable radical element living in a wider fundamentalist enclave that seems to thrive among the disaffected poor Muslims cut off from the opportunities and culture of Belgium and Europe as a whole. It seems almost unimaginable that in one of the most highly developed and wealthy areas of the world, where the European Union is itself headquartered, that a poor isolated Muslim ghetto such as Molenbeek can exist.
Part of the problem is a wider European immigration policy that in the past has allowed hundreds of thousands to settle in cities such as Brussels without taking into account the actual economic need for low skilled labor in these areas. Just as gravely, officials who promoted or acquiesced to mass immigration did so without making sure that mechanisms were in place to support the integration and assimilation of immigrants into the wider society.
This was allowed partly due to the mistaken idea that a respect for the human rights of immigrants meant that the receiving society should not try to force them to adopt its cultural norms. While it would indeed be a grave violation to force newly arrived immigrants to adopt the religion of a country or force them to dress and speak a certain way as a matter of law, programs can be implemented to teach new arrivals about the culture and language and make it easier for them to integrate. This would allow them to add to their new communities rather than create divisions that will lead to the very problems we are seeing today.
Diversity is a great thing in general, different ideas and experiences can strengthen a democracy and make communities more vibrant, but there will be cases in which the immigrant will bring with them ideas and practices that are fundamentally incompatible with the local culture. Asking immigrants to leave those ideas and practices in their home countries when they immigrate is not unreasonable at all; after all they are making the voluntary choice to leave in the first place. If they are not comfortable with say, how women are treated and allowed to express themselves in the West, or the fact that people are allowed to listen to music or drink alcohol, then they have every right to stay in their countries and live in accordance with that they feel is right.
Making things worse, we have what can only be described as a systematic and concerted effort on the part of wealthy and influential leaders in Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf States, to massively fund the spread of Salafi ideas and practices among Muslim communites around the world, even in the West. The building of mosques and religious schools as well as support to radical imams identifying as Salafi or Wahhabi in the case of Saudi sources creates a situation in which other, more moderate Muslim ideas tend to drowned out.
A good example can again be found in Molenbeek, here most of the Muslim residents originate from the Maghreb in terms of ethnicity. The dominant forms of Islam in that area of the world were Sufism and syncretism which in general are less fundamentalist and literalist than Salafism and tilts much more towards the mystical aspects of the faith. This would tend to inoculate Muslims in Molenbeek from the totalitarian and barbaric ideology of groups like ISIS, yet due to the powerful influence of Saudi backed mosques, many have now embraced the Salafi traditions that make them receptive to what ISIS stands for.
We see the same phenomenon all over the Muslim world, especially in areas of extreme poverty, where the only chance for an education for local youth is provided by radical Wahhabi madrassas. These indoctrination camps forge innocent minds into the literal cannon fodder for groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS and even when they do not churn out actual terrorists, the ideas and practices they instill create a kind of community camouflage where terrorists are able to hide among populations that fear them and don’t like their methods yet as mentioned still support the concept of armed jihad against the West and local secular leaders.
The only sane conclusion that can be reached from this troubling reality is that the main aim of our efforts in this asymmetric, fourth generation war against Islamic terrorism should be to prevent Saudi Arabia and other Gulf powers from continuing to fund Wahhabi madrassas and mosques all over the world and especially in Western cities. The issue was chillingly illustrated in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe, when Saudi King Salman offered to build 200 mosques in Germany for the newly arrived refugees. It is truly shocking that such a multi-million or even billion dollar commitment to build radical mosques did not come with any similar commitment to house, feed or relocate the refugees themselves. It seems the Saudi royal family thinks feeding hatred and division is more important to feeding actual mouths. We can see in that what their real purpose is and we must resolve to stop them before it is too late.
Any momentary tactical victory in this fight involving the killing or capture of a top terrorist leader or the disruption of some locally planned attack, will amount to absolutely nothing so long as uncontrolled immigration from Muslim countries continues in Europe and so long as those Muslims who are already living in the West are not properly integrated into the wider society. It is important to note though that a total ban on Muslims entering Western countries would be absurd and would further alienate local Muslim communities, the problem is more about permanent mass immigration rather than smaller amounts of immigrants or temporary visitors. In any case, the main spiritual and intellectual source of Islamic terrorism has been, and will continue to be; those wealthy members of the Saudi Royal family and other elites in the oil rich Gulf states that push Salafi religious doctrine all over the world. That’s what we really need to focus on.
It is ironic that these same men are well known to be more debauched and debased in their conduct than our own celebrities when they vacation and party in the West, yet they nonetheless support imams who hatefully condemn our culture with every ounce of passion they have. Perhaps they are trying to assuage their guilt from living in royal splendor while too many of their fellow Muslims suffer in poverty and ignorance. Maybe they think they can buy penance for their sins by supporting the most fundamental and radical among them, or maybe they are just trying to keep control of an unstable country that tries to have luxury shopping malls alongside medieval forms of punishment, or brutal inhuman slavery alongside high tech high rises.
Whatever the reason, these corrupt and criminal men are waging an ideological war against our most fundamental values and undermining the security and stability of our societies in the process. We have to do something and we have to do it soon. Maybe that means placing a moratorium on any further defense sales to Saudi Arabia and company. Maybe it means denying them and their gilded 747 private jets visas to wine and dine in New York and Paris until which time they stop exporting their toxic ideology to the rest of the world.
If that doesn’t work, maybe we need to put an embargo on their oil and see how the Arabian Peninsula withers and fades back into the nomadism and banditry of a century ago. Ideally, we become 100% energy independent through a combination of drilling and renewables and new nuclear power plants so we can pull out of the region entirely and leave them to figure out their future without our interference.
Our liberties, our economy, our democracy, our open culture cannot long endure repeated attacks of the nature experienced in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels; not to mention London, New York or Madrid. Given enough wounding, the people will demand strength over virtue, and those who emerge to provide that strength will plunge the West into an abyss from which it may never recover.
