From an article1:
This does not mean that 'Islam' is the problem. As in any religion, there are resources that can be exploited. Islam is a religion of action, not of turning the other cheek, but Muslims worldwide also practice and preach peace and tolerance. The roots of Islamic militancy and terrorism lie not in Islam itself but in the tensions generated in the Muslim world by a dominant West.
It is facile and dangerous to talk of a 'clash of civilisations'. The West and the Islamic world are not monolithic blocs where identity is based entirely around religion or secularism, tyranny or democracy, human rights or repression, as all who have travelled in the Middle East know. Even the most devout do not define themselves by Islam alone. Their identity, like yours or mine, is a complex matrix of religious feeling, ethnic allegiance, family loyalty and social influences. Gender, age and education determine personality in the Islamic world as elsewhere (
link
The article as a whole makes some provocative arguments, and good ones, but I particularly wanted to highlight this passage since some people seem to have trouble understanding that, as the author puts it, a Muslim's identity is "a complex matrix", just like any other person's.
Complete text of the article,
We must ask why, by Jason Burke
Now we know, in horrible detail, how it is done. In the case of Ken Bigley, we will soon be able to view the act in video clips on the internet. With the bombing in the Egyptian resort of Taba on Thursday night, we know, from eye witnesses, of the smiles of the suicide bombers as they blew apart several dozen Israeli holiday-makers. Trials in Casablanca, Istanbul, the Far East and elsewhere have exposed the mechanics of dozens of terrorist plots. And the 11 September inquiry in the USA has finally told us exactly how the most spectacular and successful of them all occurred.
What we are still seeking is an answer to the question 'Why?'
One reason is that we are bewildered that humans can commit such violence to each other, particularly, in the case of Ken Bigley's captors, after spending three weeks with someone. Another is that we sense that only by understanding what motivates a person to behave with such disregard for all moral and social norms can we stop them. We don't seek to excuse, but we do need to gather the intelligence that can help us combat such atrocities.
We should start with the murderer of Ken Bigley. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is 37, from a dirty, poor, industrial city in Jordan. Thuggish, politically unsophisticated and poorly educated, Zarqawi is representative of the new wave of militants filling the gap left by Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al-Qaeda whose influence on international terrorism is now limited to infrequent exhortations to violence issued from a hiding place high on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.
Like bin Laden, Zarqawi's primary tactic is 'propaganda by deed'. His aim is not to inflict damage on the West or to scare us but to radicalise and mobilise the Islamic world. Unlike bin Laden, who has used carefully calibrated violence against targets symbolic of the cultural, economic, political or military power of the West, Zarqawi's favoured tactic is to shock with widely seen brutality.
Zarqawi turns to dramatic violence to rouse the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. Though more politically conscious than at any time since the wars with Israel of 1967 and 1973, they have so far failed to answer the radicals' call to arms. Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anger at America may be widespread but, even in Iraq, that has yet to translate into broad backing for the militants.
Instead, as we have seen over the past three weeks, the reaction to the hostage taking and executions has been of horror and disgust. The second video of Bigley released by Zarqawi 10 days ago was defensive, attempting to justify what the militants knew to be universally reviled acts. The statements of bin Laden and other militants are nowadays full of frustration.
What of the bombers? What of those responsible for the dozen or so major strikes, and the hundreds of minor attacks, that have occurred over the past six years? I have interviewed around a dozen such individuals, all young men, who have decided, at the final moment, not to go ahead with their attacks. They saw their acts as 'a step on the path of jihad'. They did not expect immediate returns for those they left behind. Victory might take centuries. No single bombing had a single concrete objective. Rather, it would be the fulfilment of a personal religious obligation.
This is all relatively new. Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s had specific demands. Islamic militants in the early 1990s aimed to unseat local regimes in their homelands.
But Mohammed Atta piloted a plane into the Twin Towers because he felt that, as a believer, he had to strike at a supposed global conspiracy against Muslims. Bin Laden has internationalised the issue. Now activists from Kashmir to Morocco talk of the 'Crusader-Zionist alliance' set on crushing Islam.
This is key. Atta, Zarqawi and the young men who die in Egypt or Israel or Iraq believe that when the Islamic world is under attack, it is the duty of all Muslims to resist - even if that retaliation involves 'collateral damage'.
Suicide is an integral part of this strategy because it shows that the bombers, and the militants more generally, possess the weapon that will, ensure their eventual victory: faith. The example of the young 'martyrs' supposedly shames those who do not have the courage to act. Again this is propaganda by deed.
Zarqawi and the suicide bombers see their decisions to kill and maim and die as a tactical choice - part of a strategy conceived by committed men. And the basis of that strategy is the belief that a belligerent West is set on dividing, humiliating and dominating the Islamic world.
This does not mean that 'Islam' is the problem. As in any religion, there are resources that can be exploited. Islam is a religion of action, not of turning the other cheek, but Muslims worldwide also practice and preach peace and tolerance. The roots of Islamic militancy and terrorism lie not in Islam itself but in the tensions generated in the Muslim world by a dominant West.
It is facile and dangerous to talk of a 'clash of civilisations'. The West and the Islamic world are not monolithic blocs where identity is based entirely around religion or secularism, tyranny or democracy, human rights or repression, as all who have travelled in the Middle East know. Even the most devout do not define themselves by Islam alone. Their identity, like yours or mine, is a complex matrix of religious feeling, ethnic allegiance, family loyalty and social influences. Gender, age and education determine personality in the Islamic world as elsewhere.
The feeling that the Middle East is under attack goes back centuries - to the Western colonial project, the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon, the centuries-long conflict between the Ottoman Empire and nascent Western nation states, even back to the Crusades. What is new is the immediacy of the challenge posed to traditional values and structures by the post-Cold War dominance of America and of 'Western' culture in general, piped directly into the front rooms of homes throughout the Islamic world through the internet and satellite television.
The unprecedented exposure to Western lifestyles and apparent wealth, so attractive to so many has raised aspirations throughout the Islamic world. People question the right of autocratic regimes to rule, of husbands to discipline wives, of mullahs to pronounce on how to wash hands and who to hate.
For many this is liberating and exciting. But others are frightened. Some feel marginalised in the new world. Some turn to force, the last weapon left, in a bid to hold on to what is passing. In the western Afghan city of Herat, where women are voting in an unprecedented election this weekend, domestic violence has surged since the demise of the Taliban. Those who had power over their wives and daughters are fighting, literally, to keep it. A very high proportion of older militants, including Zarqawi and bin Laden, come from families who moved from rural environments to the cities. They are men who have lost the certainties of childhood.
The physical invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have reinforced this view that everything that was secure and known is under threat. Scared, angry people often respond with violence.
This does not make Islamic terrorism the fault of the West. Comprehending the causes of terrorism does not mean condoning barbaric, morally abhorrent acts. But we need to understand the historic changes underway in the Muslim world and tailor our policies.
For example, the religious schools - medressas - in Pakistan have for decades been factories for tens of thousands of militants. They were, in many ways, the source of the Taliban. In them, young Afghan refugees whose only experience of the modern world was the destruction of their farms, homes or families, were drawn to the clear, empowering certainties of radical Islam. Haphazard efforts to reform the schools have failed - largely because for the poor of Pakistan the medressas are the only option for education. Shutting them is only possible if a push is made to develop a secular substitute. Similarly, we may deal with militants like Zarqawi, but it has to be part of a broader project to stop new militants taking their place.
We are already engaged in 'nation building', unwittingly, through the transfer of Western values to the Islamic world. But we must be sensitive to the impact of the undeniable attraction of our way of life. We must listen to moderate voices in the Islamic world. Above all, we must continually bear in mind how our acts are perceived by those who fear their way of life is being irreversibly changed - and not for the better.
In so doing we will strengthen our greatest allies in the war on terror, the majority in the Islamic world who share our horror at the murder of Ken Bigley.
reference=http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1323829,00.html?gusrc=rss
The Clipboard: We must ask why