The roots of terror

However, this is not a good analysis. Israel is part of the problem but claiming it is the problem is wrong. It's at best profoundly uninformed to suggest it is; at worst, well, we know what the worst you can say about this is. (I have little tolerance for Likudists who claim that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic but if you're going to fuel the fire by suggesting that Israel is responsible for every ill in the Arab world, and that if we can only get those nasty Jews to be nice, the Arabs would all be angels, well, you're giving them rope to hang you with.)

Of course, Preston is not quite saying that. He's a bad writer and a loose thinker rather than a complete idiot. At least one hopes so, although ""None of this can be tackled by my service alone," says Dame Eliza. Others "must tackle the causes". And - coded or not - we damn well know where those causes lie." seems quite unambiguous (the only out I can find for Preston is that he means to say that we know damned well where Dame Eliza thinks those causes lie, not where they actually do lie).

Naturally, the injustice of Palestine does feed Muslim anger, but the terrorists have plenty of other stuff they are angry about. The movement, if we can call it that, that they are part of is an offshoot of a push in the Muslim world for renewal. Qutb was as much concerned with the degradation of Islam as he was with Western influence (the two go hand in hand in the Qutbista worldview, and I think it's reasonable to consider that they do). AQ is a reaction to modernity more than it is to Israel. Qutb fought his fellow Muslims first and foremost, not the Jews. And AQ, quite consistently, sees Israel as a tool of Western interests, a Western, mostly secular colony in the midst of the Muslim world (after all, Israel is not a religious state even if Jews have their own peculiar religion).

I think the roots of terror are clear enough: the asymmetry of power and influence between the secular, modern West and the Muslim world, reflected somewhat in the poverty of most Muslims (where there is wealth, it is sequestered in few hands, a situation that is -- with some reason -- blamed on the West). Israel is seen as a facet of this asymmetry: it is supported by the West and funded by it, and has a populace that thrives where its neighbours do not. Arabs are, I think, more readily analysed as jealous of Israel's wealth and progress than they are as hating it.

The reform movement in Islam was born out of a recognition that the Muslim world had fallen behind. Two viewpoints clashed: that of reformers, who believed that to catch up, the Muslim world would need to modernise, taking up and Islamicising some Western concepts; and that of revisionists, who believed that the Muslim world had fallen behind because it had surrendered some of its values, and to regain its equity with the West would need to return to its roots. It's quite clear that these worldviews are incompatible, although both see the re-creation of the Muslim Golden Age as a viable goal.

Is the route to ending terror therefore also clear? I think it is. If the Muslim world thrived and the reformers "won", the grassroots support for AQ would dwindle to the point that it could not sustain itself. If young men did not see unbearable injustice, they would not want to bomb the world into oblivion. I don't doubt that a solution to the Palestinian question is part of that route (although it should be clear that the economic stability and prosperity of the Palestinians are important pieces in the puzzle) but equally important, in my view, would be to cease supporting the blocks to Muslim advancement such as the Sauds and Mubarak, and to start working to improve conditions in the Muslim world. Terror is an outcome one way or the other of inequity; the resolution of one will depend on the resolution of the other.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:36 am