Is Islamic extremism rooted in poverty, or humiliated pride?

[BrainGlutton]

Ever since 9/11 it seems to have been the conventional wisdom, on both sides of the aisle, that Islamic extremism exists mainly because so many Islamic countries are poor and undeveloped; which implies that it will all go away if we help their economies develop. But Bin Laden and many of his known followers actually come from the wealthier strata of their societies. In this op-ed, commentator Michael Lind argues that the real source of their resentment is humiliated pride – i.e., perception of the inferior power of the Islamic world relative to the Western world.

What motivates someone to join these revolutionaries, terrorists, and murderers, if not economic conditions? In a word, humiliation. Look again at Nazi Germany. While economically weak in between the world wars, what really motivated many to embrace Nazism was that they lost World War I, and the conditions of that loss. Hitler’s goal, supported by much of the German elite and the vast Prussian officer class, was to reverse the verdict of World War I and proceed to create a Eurasian empire capable of dominating the world. No concessions by the Western democracies short of acquiescence in National Socialist imperialism would have satisfied Hitler and like-minded Germans. Indeed, the outcome of World War I enraged Arab nationalists as well as German nationalists – and it still does today. Bin Laden sees the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which led to the carving up of the Ottoman Empire, as the beginning of Arab humiliation. For bin Laden, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, like the Versailles agreement for Hitler, is a humiliation that must be avenged and reversed: “We still suffer from the injuries inflicted by … the Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France which divided the Muslim world into fragments,” he said.

The central role of communal humiliation in inspiring terrorism is the key finding of University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape’s study of suicide bombers, Dying to Win. According to Pape, two factors have linked Tamil, Palestinian, Chechen, and al Qaeda suicide bombers. First, they are members of communities that feel humiliated by genuine or perceived occupation (like the perceived occupation of the sacred territory of Saudi Arabia by virtue of the presence of U.S. bases, in the eyes of bin Laden and his allies). Second, suicide bombers seek to change the policies of democratic occupying powers like Israel and the United States by influencing their public opinion – in a sense making the occupying power suffer the same level of humiliation they have felt.

The “humiliation theory” of radical violence helps explain why so many terrorists come from middle-class or wealthy backgrounds. Unlike economic deprivation, national or religious humiliation can be painful to all members of a community. In fact, communal humiliation is likely to aggrieve the affluent members the most, precisely because their freedom from a day-to-day struggle to survive liberates them to brood over slights to the community in which they are natural leaders. It may also explain why so many are willing to sacrifice innocent bystanders for their cause. They are fighting for an abstract idea of national, ethnic, or religious pride, not the masses.

Is this true? If so, what are the strategic implications for the GWOT? Lind’s conclusion:

While bin Laden and his allies must simply be defeated, their appeal to potential new recruits can be limited by policies that reduce feelings of collective humiliation in the Arab and Muslim worlds. According to a recent National Intelligence Estimate, the American occupation of Iraq is now inspiring jihadists in the way that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, Russian control of Chechnya, and Indian rule over Kashmiri Muslims long have done. Ending the humiliating occupation of Muslim populations by non-Muslim nations will remove some of the major grievances that jihadists use as a recruiting tool. Conversely, to perpetuate these deeply resented occupations in the name of fighting “Islamofascism” will only help the jihadists.

In addition, major Muslim nations that are sources of jihadist recruits must change too. Along with fighting non-Muslim occupiers, al Qaeda seeks to topple governments in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. Al Qaeda draws many of its recruits from closed societies that are intolerant of dissent; it is no coincidence that Saudis and Egyptians play such a key role in al Qaeda. If there were more open societies in the Muslim world, there might be more political space for Islamists who reject terrorism when out of power and who, if they gained power, would abide by the norms of the international system. This would likely reduce the appeal of al Qaeda as an alternative to conventional political participation.

But what are we (the West) supposed to do about that? How can we cause Islamic nations to become more open societies? We’ve already tried direct military intervention and it appears to stimulate jihadism, not suppress it. In any case, Egypt and SA are supposed to be our allies, and you don’t tell allies how to run their own country.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

This to me is reminiscent of the struggle against Communism, where direct confrontation only seemed to validate what the Communists were saying about implacable class struggle. The more we fight the jihadists directly, the easier it is to paint the West as engaged in a war on islam.

For me, the crux of the matter is the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It’s a great source of anguish in the Islamic world, for symbolic as well as practical reasons. If we want to fight Islamic extremism, we have to do something about that conflict. I strongly believe that if the United States were committed to a solution, it would happen. But we have to come down hard on the Israelis to make it happen. And ah, if we had only done it a decade ago!

That’s hardly the end of the matter, of course, but if you’re going to knock off the problems one by one, that’s the obvious place to start. We’ll never rid the world of Islamic extremism, just as we’ll never rid the world of Christian or Jewish or Hindu extremism, but we can certainly succeed in limiting its most damaging effects.

[BrainGlutton]

[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
For me, the crux of the matter is the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps, but if that were resolved, the people of the Islamic countries would still feel resentful of the West’s superior wealth and power – wouldn’t they?

Based on his published statements, Bin Laden isn’t all about justice for the Palestinians, he’s all about an Islamic resurgence through a united caliphate – which would be a Great Power, as no Muslim country is at present.

[Marley23]

Does it really have to be one or the other? That seems too simplistic. I always felt it was a confluence of factors including poverty, pride, the failings of secular Arab nationalism, world events, efforts by Islamic governments to encourage extremism, Israel-Palestine and so on.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Perhaps, but if that were resolved, the people of the Islamic countries would still feel resentful of the West’s superior wealth and power – wouldn’t they?
[/QUOTE]

Maybe, but the Islamic world has been short even on symbolic victories in recent years. And I think Israel-Palestine is the linchpin to a lot of other changes in the Middle East. There would be a ripple effect that would wash over Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and even further afield. And to some extent, I think the U.S. looks the other way on authoritarianism in the Middle East as a kind of quid pro quo for our support of Israel.

Of course, none of this even touches the question of Iraq…

[Wakinyan]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Is Islamic extremism rooted in poverty, or humiliated pride?
[/QUOTE]

Neither. It’s like American Christian extremism: rooted in dumbness. Bad thing is humiliation and poverty won’t kill it, but naturally work like gasoline on fire.
Exactly what would happen if America came under siege. You’d perhaps call it patriotism, others would not. But nothing unexpected would be happening. Nothing really, to explain. It’d be murder as usual.

[Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun]

The real problem is that there is no such thing as Islamic extremism as a unified movement. If you really look at what is called Islamic extremism you will be see so many different groups, association, and nations that are not really connected in any way. The reasons that these different groups, association, and nations have for their political religious stances are all different. Even if you were to look at two groups that ended up merging - al Qaeda and al Jihad- you will see almost completely different reasons for their extremism. And then if you look Hamas, Iran, Wahabis, The Mulsims in Chechnya, Fatah al-Islam, etc., there is nothing that really connects them other than the groups are made up of Muslims.

[Lemur866]

[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
For me, the crux of the matter is the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It’s a great source of anguish in the Islamic world, for symbolic as well as practical reasons. If we want to fight Islamic extremism, we have to do something about that conflict. I strongly believe that if the United States were committed to a solution, it would happen. But we have to come down hard on the Israelis to make it happen. And ah, if we had only done it a decade ago!
[/QUOTE]

So President Ammoniac, you’ve just been sworn into office. I suppose you get on the horn and call up Olmert and order him to remove the West Bank settlements. He tells you to go screw. You say you’re gonna stop sending Israel military aid. He still tells you to go screw. You call up Congress and stop the aid to Israel. He still tells you to go screw. And there goes America’s “influence” over Israel.

Now what?

[brazil84]

Germany was defeated in World War II, split up, and occupied for years by foreign powers. Japan was forced to surrender in WWII, and remains occupied to this day by the United States. Terrorism doesn’t seem to be much of a problem from Germans and Japanese.

Afghanistan managed to deal with the Russian occupation pretty well. And Pakistan has been independent for years. As far as I know, both of these countries have elements in them that supported terrorism to a large degree.

[FinnAgain]

[QUOTE=Lemur866]

Now what?
[/QUOTE]

And, of course, the thoroughly inadvisable strategy of stopping a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and starting a policy of figuring out what their grudes are and doing our best to appease those grudges. Any US action, in any corner of the world, should be weighed on a number of factors, from what the right thing to do is, to how various actions strengthen our alliances and project our will onto the global stage.

There’s also the major sticking point in the myopic monocausalism displayed by folks who focus on Israel. Modern ‘luminaries’ of Jihad, such as Bin Laden, certainly mention Israel, and it’s cerrtainly fuel to the fire, but their list of grievances, and ideoligical motivators, hardly starts or ends with our presence in the Middle East or our support of Israel.

Likewise, perhaps the intellectual father of modern Jihadism, Sayid Qutb, at least 18 years before there were any occupied territories, conceived of the struggle between the West and Islam as a spiritual/cultural war, and supported pan-national Islamic fundamentalism. His time spent in Greeley, Colorado, instead of showing him that there was nothing essentially horrible about the West, cemented his abhorance for the West and his belief that Western culture, which was already encroaching upon the primacy of Islamic doctrine, was a disgustring and decadent force that had to be fought. We have, of course, outfits like the ultra-rightist papers, the Guardian and BBC, who track Qutb’s ideoligical influence to such groups as the Taliban and Al Quaeda. And, of course, it can’t be overemphasized that people like Qutb and Hassan al-Banna’ wrote and formed much of their doctrine a decade or more before there were any occupied territories. To some degree, before there was a nation of Israel at all.

While events in 1967 certainly inflamed passions he’d arroused, and certainly helped him win more converts, treating Jihadism as a soap bubble that’ll pop once one factor is taken out of the equation is, simply, delusional.

[Magiver]

I don’t think it’s a single spark of insanity. To gain a fanatic stance requires a serious level of indoctrination. By default, praying 5 times a day enforces religious doctrine. What that doctrine is depends on multiple factors. If a child is raised in a “school” where the only thing taught is the Quaran and a deep seated hatred of Western Civilization then it’s possible to breed terrorists from a very early age. Poverty certainly adds to the mix if the message preached is one of hatred. And the idea that God is not powerful enough to exact vengeance is further compounded by a belief He will pimp them 72 unbroken hymens for their service to the cause. So maybe sexual frustration enters into the equation. It might explain the misogyny.

The religion, as practiced in the Mid East, is in many ways the same as it was hundreds of years ago. What has changed is the ability to travel and the technology to enforce dogma.

[JRDelirious]

But still, that itself feeds an element of wounded pride, along the lines of: How is it possible that we, who have THE superior and best religion and are THE superior and best followers of God, are stuck playing second fiddle to these amoral decadent heathens?
…then again, fundamentalists of the dominant religion in the WEST seem to feel that way about their own cultural elites…

[ralph124c]

I ask because we never hear from those muslims who are peaceful. I have an indian-american friend, who told me of an incident n India , a few years back. An Indian muslim wrote a novel, about the life of a mentally retarded boy (named Muhammed). the first sentence of the book was “Muhammed was an idiot.”
The local Muslims went nuts, and burned down a bookstore that sold the book. So why doesn’t sokme moderat imam or sheik speak out against this kind of idiocy?
The silence is deafening.

[Argent_Towers]

It’s probably a combination of factors, as Marley said, but it’s hard to imagine a bigger embarrassment to the Arab nations than getting beaten in a war by Israel. That’s like the Yankees losing to a Little League team.

[elucidator]

I see another factor, but can’t really gauge its importance, but its “Arab Puritanism”, (for want of a better term). The killjoy instinct is strong amongst us, it emerges in (most? all?) relligious/ethnic identities. For the Arabs, it touches on their shared myth as stern desert people, fiercely independent and, well, just plain fierce. They see themselves, ideally, as being hammered and tempered into a disciplined self-denial that makes them superior. (Everybody’s superior, there’s always a reason, this is theirs).

This sort of Muslilm (and the Wahabbists are, I think, the most obvious example) is angry not so much for the political humiliation or the economic humiliation as a “cultural” one. Sensuality is sweetly oozing into their world, and they hate it. Whether the western world is intentionally committing some sort of aggression by exposing his sons to Angelina’s celebrated titties, it hardly matters, he fears Achmed will soon be eyeing a zoot suit with a reet pleat and a drape shape, his daughter might ask him what an “orgasm” is.

(Cue the music, The Clash, Rock the Casbah)

In this view, they hate us not so much because of anything we’ve done to them, but just for being what we are. And in this regard the Sunni fanatics are in perfect alignment with the Shia fanatics: they both despise what they view as the corrution and depravity of the “Great Satan”.

[user_hostile]

[QUOTE=brazil84]
Japan was forced to surrender in WWII, and remains occupied to this day by the United States.
[/QUOTE]
.

Japan is “occupied” by the US? That seems to imply that we’re there whether the Japanese government likes it or not. My understanding is that the Japanese want us to be there. There are obvious benefits to having someone else fight your battles.

[elucidator]

Keeps Korea from invading.

[user_hostile]

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]

Likewise, perhaps the intellectual father of modern Jihadism, Sayid Qutb, at least 18 years before there were any occupied territories, conceived of the struggle between the West and Islam as a spiritual/cultural war, and supported pan-national Islamic fundamentalism. His time spent in Greeley, Colorado, instead of showing him that there was nothing essentially horrible about the West, cemented his abhorance for the West and his belief that Western culture, which was already encroaching upon the primacy of Islamic doctrine, was a disgustring and decadent force that had to be fought.
[/QUOTE]

Sayid Qutb’s explainations as called out in his book Milestones, is not for the logically minded. For someone this enlightened, you can pretty much sum his fear of things unislamic with this quote about Americans in general during the late 40’s (from Amreica that I Saw):

“Jazz is his preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires.”

Too bad Sayid never saw Soul Train.

[furt]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Ever since 9/11 it seems to have been the conventional wisdom, on both sides of the aisle, that Islamic extremism exists mainly because so many Islamic countries are poor and undeveloped;
[/QUOTE]
No, it has not. Plenty of people – the majority of conservatives, in fact – have been saying this all along that economic deprivation was neither excuse nor even explantion for terrorism.

[dropzone]

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
Likewise, perhaps the intellectual father of modern Jihadism, Sayid Qutb, at least 18 years before there were any occupied territories, conceived of the struggle between the West and Islam as a spiritual/cultural war, and supported pan-national Islamic fundamentalism. His time spent in Greeley, Colorado…
[/QUOTE]
HAH! And back in the early 70s you liberals were calling my demands for the immediate nuking of Colorado, based on the screeds of John Denver, were insane!