Islamic Terrorism, Cause and Effect
Bret Stephens opined recently in the Wall Street Journal that the cause of Islamic terrorism is not so much Israeli settlements or the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine as it is… Lady Gaga. Specifically, Stephens points to Said Qutb, widely regarded as the intellectual father of modern Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups:
In his 1951 essay “The America I Have Seen,” Qutb gave his account of the U.S. “in the scale of human values.” “I fear,” he wrote, “that a balance may not exist between America’s material greatness and the quality of her people.” Qutb was particularly exercised by what he saw as the “primitiveness” of American values, not least in matters of sex.
He goes on:
Bear in mind, too, that the America Qutb found so offensive had yet to discover Elvis, Playboy, the pill, women’s lib, acid tabs, gay rights, Studio 54, Jersey Shore and, of course, Lady Gaga. In other words, even in some dystopic hypothetical world in which hyper-conservatives were to seize power in the U.S. and turn the cultural clock back to 1948, America would still remain a swamp of degeneracy in the eyes of Qutb’s latter-day disciples.
This, then, is the core complaint that the Islamists from Waziristan to Tehran to Gaza have lodged against the West. It explains why jihadists remain aggrieved even after the U.S. addressed their previous casus belli by removing troops from Saudi Arabia, and why they will continue to remain aggrieved long after we’ve decamped from Iraq, Afghanistan and even the Persian Gulf. As for Israel, its offenses are literally inextricable: as a democracy, as a Jewish homeland, as a country in which liberalism in all its forms, including cultural, prevails… If the [Obama] administration’s aim is to appease our enemies, it will get more mileage out of banning Lady Gaga than by applying the screws on Israel.
Naturally, an individual for whom defense of Israel is a reflex reaction will see any anti-terror measures that have a modicum of connection to reality as “appeasement of our enemies.”
Stephens’ position is a tragically common one in conservative and pro-Israel circles. It can be relatively easily disarmed by asking a few very simple questions. If the violent Islamists were primarily concerned with liberal and open cultures that tolerate fun, why have they not targeted societies containing cultures much more libertine than America’s, such as Japan, Brazil, Sweden or Germany? These are societies where the late-night and even some day-time TV programming wouldn’t have a prayer of passing the censors in the US. Why didn’t the Islamists fly a plane into the Tokyo Imperial Palace, instead of the World Trade Center? Why do they not set their sights on the Brandenburg Gate, located in a country for which public nudity is something of a national hobby?
Rio Carnaval: Not exactly Al Qaeda-friendly attire
If Al Qaeda and their ilk were driven mainly by hatred for societies that let women drive, open a bank account or hold a job, why do they not hate countries like China, Russia or Canada to the degree they hate America?
If they are motivated mainly by a hatred for democracy, then why have they not focused their violence on countries like Italy, Greece, India, Thailand or South Africa, all of which would be abundantly easier for them to attack than the US?
It is obvious that, unlike what the “They Hate us for our Freedom” crowd would have us believe, Al Qaeda and their compatriots have chosen to focus on America and Israel for a reason. What is that reason? What is it that, despite similarly liberal cultures, legal frameworks that treat women as humans, democratic forms of government, press freedom and religious pluralism, sets America apart from dozens of other countries around the world? Botched military intervention, blind support for Israel, hypocritical backing of dictatorships from Saddam Hussein to Hafez al-Assad to Pervez Musharraf, to name a few. In short, the net effect of American foreign policy in the Arab and Muslim world over the last 60 years.
There is no question that the violent Islamists hate everyone and everything that does not conform their narrow-minded, backward and psychotic vision of life. But the short term spark that has motivated the vast majority of Islamist fighters around the world for years is the foreign policy decisions of the US and Israeli governments. Only this can explain why these movements enjoy the amount of popular support they do. There will always be violent radicals and religious extremists, in every culture (there are still Nazis in Germany, for example). But what allows those fanatics to attain mainstream support and to enter the lives of average people is the economic and political misfortune that those average people experience at the hands of their “enemy.” Until the US affirms this reality and implements the necessary changes, harsh to the national ego though it may be, it will continue to be in the crosshairs of broad-based Islamic militancy.
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