David Brooks, in his NYTimes column, deflates the myth of Islamic terrorists as being medieval creatures, noting that they are instead brimming with the worst ideas of modernity. Most of them are educated, and most of them have been to the West, and most weren't really even political before they took up jihad. (In this regard they follow the founder of modern Islamic terrorism, Sayyed Qutb, who came to America, was repelled by its decadance, and went home and started scheming about how to destroy it.)

But I have to stop here and ask, how could they have been political in their antidemocratic home nations? Politics as we understand it doesn't really exist in Arabia or Egypt or Syria--you don't have, say, opposition parties or the right to express yourself freely. There's the state, a big dangerous monolith that can kill you, and the best you can do (if you don't work for it) is to keep your mouth shut and stay out of its way. And then there's religion, which these you can't avoid at all. And then, from this perspective, there's America and the Zionists, which are the conspiratorial Emmanuel Goldstein scapegoats for everything that goes wrong with this wonderful system.

Now, a smidgen of political power is something that you and I take for granted--we can write our congressman letters and lead a campaign to oust him if he's a doofus, we can start a blog or write letters to the editor, or we can even run for local or state or national office if we can shake hands and smile and speak in coherent sentences. If he plays his cards right, a well-informed individual can actually have some effect on the way things are run.

But I think growing up in an authoritarian world leaves many people politically retarded. They are in the modern world, but not of it, to paraphrase St. Paul. So when this empowering jihadist ideology comes along that sells the notion that you, young shaheed, can make a difference and have some power over these strange forces that are screwing with your world, it's like a first glimpse of a nekkid woman. And you're willing to do a lot of stupid things to follow up on that glimpse, that image, that illusion.

Maybe American-style rights based, rule-of-law democracy is just an illusion, too. A lot of leftists think it is; I think they're ill-informed and ungrateful wretches. But even pretending that's true, what a wonderful form of self-deception it is compared to the perverted and violent illusion that the jihadists are selling. One is a dream and one is a nightmare. I don't see how even a complete nihilist could seriously equate the two.

Oh, I was talking about that David Brooks piece. One of his conclusions is that he doesn't think democratizing the ME is going to change things too much--but for the reasons I give above, I think it will help. Man is a political animal, said Aristotle, but in the Middle East the political animal is chained and starved and brought up mean. I think the notion of a government where you can speak freely and make a difference (and meet chicks, too) might actually channel some of this aggression and alienation into a useful direction.

I very much agree with Brooks' third conclusion, though:

Third, terrorism is an immigration problem. Terrorists are spawned when educated, successful Muslims still have trouble sinking roots into their adopted homelands. Countries that do not encourage assimilation are not only causing themselves trouble, but endangering others around the world as well.

You either assimilate people into the state, or you leave them chained and shivering in the cold, depending on you for the scraps you throw them. England has failed to do this, failed to emphasize the decency of its people and its amazing history. France has tried in a ham-handed way, banning the hijab along with any expression of faith in their schools, but largely warehouses an unassimilated tribe of foreigners within her capital who are modern, but not French. Germany is starting to see the light, and Holland may have learned this the hard way, but it may be too late to do anything.

This story's making the rounds, but I saw it first at Galley Slaves.

Posted by: seedubya at 06:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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