With all respect, Cecil, you mention but don’t sufficiently emphasize the significance to this day of Britain and France toppling the the Ottoman Empire. The structure they imposed in place of Ottoman rule, engineered in the Sykes-Picot agreement, carved up the empire and elevated armed thugs to royal status over its bleeding chunks. They even conned the United States into supporting this power structure, e.g., eliminating Mossadegh in Iran. I could cite numerous other examples. Fundamentally, terrorism in the region emerged as blowback for short-sighted imperialism and interference stemming mainly from Sykes-Picot, all for the benefit of British Petroleum, etc. It appears we still haven’t learned our lessons.
Islam and Christianity have been at war ab initio. Of course, it’s as much a pretext
for various potentates over the centuries.
What we are experiencing is not a religious war but a culture war. On the one side, tribalism, paternalism, and a drive to make people obey (aka thirst for power). On the other side, globalism, “enlightened” self interest, and a thirst for a pleasant and easy life. These have also been in conflict probably since hunter-gathering gave way to agriculture and settlement.
Different western countries are facing different threats. Look how common terrorist attacks are in western Europe (especially France and Belgium) compared to the United States.
Many of these attacks are launched by people raised and often born in western Europe. The biggest attacks in the US were from terrorists born and raised outside who slipped into the country specifically to attack. I think the motivations are different, despite the supposedly similar ideologies.
Shortly after World War II, Europe needed to rebuild. France was devastated, Germany was devastated, the UK was devastated… you get the idea. Many western European nations brought in large numbers of Muslim men and paid them low wages to rebuild. They were placed into ghettos, segregating them from everyone else. Eventually they were allowed to bring in women (since they weren’t integrating enough to marry local women, also racism prevented such unions).
And then the problem got worse. Local concentrations were so high in many areas you could practically live your live without seeing anyone from another culture or religion. In Germany the majority of the immigrants were Turkish, who live there in such numbers they don’t have to interact much with other Muslims. Cities such as Birmingham in the UK basically have a Muslim center and white ring around them. The schools are officially integrated, of course, but when your school has mainly Muslim teachers and mainly Muslim parents, it’s easier to get away with nonsense such as putting girls at the back at the class, especially when the school boards deliberately pick people with the most medieval mindsets to run things. The small number of Muslim parents at mainly white schools makes it easy to sweep any accusations of racism or Islamophobia under the table as well. It’s almost like racists in the UK on both sides have agreed on a common goal to “keep the ‘other’ out of their schools and neighborhoods”.
Muslims raised in western Europe might marry someone imported from the home country rather than marrying another Muslim raised in western Europe, slowing down the process of integration. Then raise the children in an essentially Muslim-only school. Then watch as they struggle to find a fulfilling job because of the lack of integration.
You have an easily identifiable group that is being excluded by racists while simultaneously taking steps to exclude themselves. You end up with angry young men, caught between two cultures, picking up a warped version of their home culture (focusing on the sword verses, etc), combining criminality with Islam. I don’t think you can drink, do drugs and have sex with women you met a few minutes ago and call yourself a good Muslim, but ISIS is willing to work with such people.
I actually think things would not have been that different if other ethnic communities were treated as horrendously, except they don’t have the critical mass, whereas many Muslim homelands are so troubled they are packed with experienced terrorists with complex ideologies and different reasons to hate the west.
There are communities that have the “critical mass” and are treated poorly in other western countries, but they’re not going to travel to their homelands (there might not be any connection beyond DNA) and train with a whole lot of experienced terrorists.
Contrast with the US and Canada. Most Muslims there are fairly recent immigrants, or the direct descendants of these immigrants, brought into North America because of the high skills they possess. They usually have a university degree or immediately attend university in North America.
Link: Manchester attack brings Muslim integration into focus
Both Canada and the US import lower-skilled immigrants too (probably in lower numbers than western Europe) but these immigrants are drawn from a wider pool. This reduces problems with integration and even race riots. (I suspect it’s difficult to get members of different maltreated ethnic groups to riot side-by-side against the majority.)
In addition, there isn’t such a critical mass of Muslims in North America. This is especially true in most of urban Canada. You will find Muslims mainly in majority-minority neighborhoods (as in most people there aren’t white) but they’ll be living beside whites, Chinese, blacks, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. Their kids will be going to school and befriending people from other heritages, regardless of approval from their parents, while learning from teachers of different nationalities, reading books from authors of various ethnic groups, watching TV shows featuring actors and writers from all over the world, etc. Even though both countries have “ghettos”, you aren’t going to find Muslim ghettos.
Of course, some people in the Muslim community will try to stop this. There’s “hidden” segregation, especially in the US, but I don’t know of many areas where there are so many Muslims that would work. There’s also private schools and (in Canada and the UK) attempts to use public funds on segregated schools. In 2007, Ontario had an election where this was the big topic. Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party, wanting to win votes from some of the larger ethnic communities near Toronto, wanted to fund religious schools with public money. Upon realizing they were going to lose, they dropped the idea, but too late, and they went on to lose the election.
A developer in Montreal attempted to fix a real problem (Muslim rules on bank interest make it harder for devout Muslims to get a mortgage, so homeownership among Muslims might be lower than for other Canadians) by coming up with a horrible solution: a neighborhood just for Muslims. Autosegregation is a poor “solution”. Couldn’t he develop a Muslim credit union instead?
Link: Plan to develop 100-home ‘Muslim community’ near Montreal gets rough reception
The UK twice ran into this controversy with their “free” schools, publicly-funded schools following non-traditional or religious curricula (see the Trojan Horse scandal). The original letter was a hoax, but the resulting investigation ran into the same kinds of problems mentioned in the letter. (The UK also investigated Christian schools, and failing non-religious free schools, and many of the Muslim schools had few problems, but this drew little attention from the press.)
I think North America has fewer problems integrating Muslims, despite the ugly xenophobia displayed in the US after September the 11th. So I think attacks against the US are more “internationalist” and less personal, coming from people raised in the Middle East who hate the US for harming their countries (in various ways). Of course, there are more European-style attacks such as the Boston Marathon bomb attacks (the perpetrators were born outside the US and the elder of the two was having trouble integrating, so turned back to a warped version of his home culture, and even then failed to get any ISIS-style training).
What sort of harm does the US inflict on the Middle East?
The US props up generally secular dictatorships (including monarchies) in the Middle East, in order to get oil, oppose Russia, oppose Shia Iran and support Israel. Probably other reasons, those are just the ones that come to mind right away.
The US used to support Saddam Hussein (a brutal, semi-Communist Sunni dictatorship who would poison gas his own people, Iraqi Kurds, who are allies of the US) in a proxy war with Iran (a brutal Shia religious dictatorship best known for treating women as horribly as US ally Saudi Arabia does). The US booted the brutal, semi-Communist Sunni dictatorship that it used to support (because it had turned against the more more valuable ally of Kuwait) and after a whole lot of civilian casualties caused by American attacks and civil wars among the locals the government has been replaced by an Iran-backed quasi-dictatorship representing the majority, leaving the former Saddam Hussein regime personnel embittered and willing to team up with the brutal Sunni religious dictatorship that became ISIS (these were people that Saddam Hussein suppressed because they were a threat to his power).
Much of the opposition to the west in the Middle East couldn’t care less about democracy, they just want to impose their version of Islamic dictatorship on their home countries. Both the current governments in the Middle East in some countries and the opposition like to blame the US and Israel for their problems, whether the complaints are warranted or not. They teach their young people this, so there’s lots of conspiracy theories about the US and Israel (and western Europe) in the Middle East.
TLDR:
Western European Muslims integrate poorly due to a variety of internal and external barriers. They tend to have personal reasons to attack the west. The European-raised terrorists pick up warped religious ideologies (since they’re either cherry-picking or being given cherry-picked info). They get training and support from Muslims from the Middle East from terrorists who have less personal reasons to hate the west, but are happy to find a supply of dupes. While other ethnic and religious groups face the same problems, they usually integrate better and don’t have such a supply of terrorists angry at the west to support any revenge attacks.
North American Muslims find it easier to integrate and have fewer reasons to attack the west.
Muslims from the Middle East are taught to blame the west for their problems, some of which the west contributed to… and some of these societies are unstable with many terrorists, willing to train people raised in the west or willing to participate in attacks on the west themselves when they aren’t busy opposing their own horrible governments.
It’s not as if the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsular and the rest of the Middle East had a vast fondness for the Sublime Porte when it was about.
Not sure they long for it yet.
Which side is which? 
I think you’re not allowing for the “the old, defeated enemy is one of us, now” factor. Remember the jokes in the original Star Trek about Chekhov claiming that so-and-so was invented by a Russian? Those jokes were there because there actually was a pattern in the USSR of claiming that old inventions had been made first in Russia—Tsarist Russia!—rather than in the West. The Tsar was dead, so he wasn’t an enemy anymore. Look at India. Tremendous numbers of Indians speak and write English, because all the people in India who don’t speak Hindi would rather speak English (the language of the old enemy) than let the Hindi-speakers triumph.
He mentioned all the things you said:
If you feel he didn’t go on long enough, keep in mind he’s writing a newspaper column not a history book.
And I think Cecil then went on to raise a good point that you’re ignoring. The grievances you described have been around for a hundred years. But Islamic terrorism wasn’t a global problem for most of that period. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a major factor in taking the leash off of Middle Eastern terrorists.
He seems to have forgotten Lebanon in 1980’s. And Algeria in the 1950’s.
The Soviet claim is really really pushing. And applies to only a few countries.
Before WWI - Brutal Ottoman oppression …
Interwar - Brutal Colonial oppression …
After WWII - Brutal Cold War Dictator oppression …
I get that …
Now I’m working from memory here, so citations might be a little thin … we start with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Pro-Western brutal dictatorships conviently emptying their political prisons by offering the inmates the choice of rotting in a tiny cell or fighting in Afghanistan (I’m looking at you Saudi Arabia) … the Soviets get repulsed and the Union promptly collapses …
So now we’re left with tons and bunches of disenfranchised revolutionaries all stuck in Afghanistan and rather quickly they decide to attack the World Trade Center … the first time they missed, the second time they didn’t miss … (surprisingly, 15 of the 19 hijackers in 2001 were NOT from Iran) … once the United States got what we wanted out of Afghanistan, we walked away leaving a total mess behind … twelve years later we came back to fight the longest war in US history …
Now we have ISIS as our “enemy of the day” … who’s funding this operation? … who in the region has the same religious ideology? … who has the financial where-with-all to support such a conflict? … who just got permission to buy 108 billion dollars of advanced weapons systems from the USA? … who lops the heads off of women for the crime of driving a car? … the only question in my mind is which of the past twelve Presidents swallowed and which of them spit …
<sidejack> An interesting theory The Master proposes … but we have a counter-example on the Indian Subcontinent … if anything this current conflict erupted with the rejection of Cold War politics … “The West” was chased out of the region and they’ve been fighting each other ever since … not a good fit with the usual liberal/hippy/commie McGovernik rhetoric …</sidejack>
It’s a bit of a stretch, but the conflict can be said to predate Islam by a millennium or more. In essence it could be the difference between the eastern way of doing things - the primacy of the state - and the western way of doing things - the primacy of the individual. This sci-fi story puts it rather well refering to Leonidas and the 300. (NOTE: the link is SFW but the site is known for holding NSFW stories.)
I’m not sure what you think you are refuting, but it sounds like you are referring to the Pakistan/Indian conflict. I don’t think Cecil is in any way proposing that all Muslim conflicts derive from the Cold War. The Muslim-Hindu divide in the region predates Western involvement, but it is the withdrawal of the British that led the way for partitioning, and it is the partitioning that inflamed the conflict by dispute over territory.
None of which is really connected to the current global terrorism situation.
There’s a really good book from 1961 by Werner Keller, a German rightfully pissed off at the grandiose claims the Ivans were then making,
Are The Russians Ten Feet Tall ?
It’s a big book with sly German humour, and I loved it as a child.
Nothing occurs in a vacuum, of course … what I’m refuting is a direct connection between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the increase in terrorism on the Indian Subcontinent … if the Soviet Union survived, we’d still have a total mess in Afghanistan … the region’s malcontents would still be crossing the border into Pakistan and pushing to terrorize India …
So I guess the Chicago Reader is under more threat of terrorism without the USSR, but for an MP from India, about the same …
I’ve been trying to figure stuff like this out for a long time too. Not just why certain people in the ME want to kill me and mine, but also why all the other people in the world who do horrible things to people they don’t directly know, do them.
I think there’s two parts to the ME situation. One part is why the hostility, but the other part is why that hostility gets expressed the particular way it does these days.
After all, lots of people hate or despise each other. Most of them DON’T sacrifice everything, especially including their own lives, to make the point clear.
As for the history part, despite, or perhaps because history has always been my main approach to things, I’ve come to suspect that there’s actually less of a direct connection between offenses from the distant past and now, than I was taught. More and more, I’ve come to suspect that although lots of people might explain their hostilities, by recalling past slights, the reason why they rage, is usually for something much more immediate, and is or isn’t moderated by how generally well off they are.
In short, when I look at all the various people who have joined revolutions and other violent movements, although they talked a good game about injustices by their opponents in the past, they don’t react violently unless there is a much more immediate threat that they see. I don’t know of any true middle class people who rose up in serious rebellion. And it’s not just a matter of financial stimulations either. If people are certain that only rebellion and sacrifice will work in their lives, then they will commit to it.
As someone above pointed out, Muslims haven’t ALWAYS attacked anyone and everyone from the so-called West. Most of them don’t now. So why do SOME of them do it now?
I don’t know myself, but I suspect that the way that some Muslims have been persuaded to virulently hate the rest of us to the point where they will blindly cause their own deaths to get at us, must be similar to why some other people have been known to vote terrible dictators into supreme power, or vote to make the laws of their own land WORSE for themselves. I figure it’s because somehow, someone has convinced them that going insane will fulfill that part of them that hungers the most.
Then again one has people like Patrick Pearse, regarded as a Schlageter-like patriot martyr than a half-in-love-with-easeful-death fascist nutter…
He believed in the regeneration of the nation through blood, and the redemptive power of death. It is fair to say that most peoples will have excitable people like this, and none more so than in the 2nd decade of the 20th century.
One gets rather more sceptical with age, but people like that self-ensure they die young.
Of the Great War, he wrote: “The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.” which would have made Hitler snigger disbelievingly.
watchwolf49, I grant that the situation in the Indian subcontinent is complex, and owes much to Western Imperialism. Afghanistan was neutral in WWII, though it did gain a lot of infrastructure due to investment from other countries, especially the USSR.
In the early 20 th Century, Afghanistan actually formed a Constitution and enacted reforms to get rid of the burqa and provide education to women.
What drew in the Soviets in 1978 was an uprising by a communist party, which they then supported with arms and “advisors”. It was the mujahadeen fighting the Soviets that brought about the Taliban in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal and collapse. The US via the Pakistani ISI supported them under the “enemy of my enemy” philosophy. Oops.
You’re probably right that Islamic malcontents would still have contributed to terrorism in the region. But the column wasn’t really addressing India per se. That seems to fall under the limited cases Cecil acknowledges existed.
igor frankensteen, I suspect you are right. Ancient grievances are an easy justification for a more contemporary stress fueling the drive to act.
I agree, and that’s why I jumped in to comment on The Master’s wide brush stroke … he’s only really talking about Jihadist’s activity in Western Europe … terrorism in the United States has been waning over this time period and I’m not seeing anything about the fall of the Soviet Union that increased domestic terrorism … that “Jim Crow” mentality is dying a slow painful death whither commies or not … at least I hope so …
It’s lawful in the United States for an Islamic woman to wear a burka in almost all circumstances … whereas it’s outlawed in France … I think that’s very provocative, but Jihadist hostility comes from within that particular subset of Islam … anything The West does makes for their lame excuse to be cold-blooded murderers …
The question itself was based on an assumption that a provocation was necessary, it isn’t. Cecil discussed the many possible acts to consider and pointed out that we’re seeing a change in intensity rather than a reversal of some peaceful period of time but it still is not a matter of provocation. These are hostile nations and we have failed in attempts to play their game of ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’. That phrase isn’t meant literally, it’s merely an excuse to collude with your enemy for a while, no friendship is ever created. These countries played us, they are willing to accept our help for their own needs while at the same time planning how they will screw us over at the next opportunity, and we naively believed that somehow we were forming a bond. Instead we simply increased the resentment just as the prideful in need are insulted by offers of assistance. We continue to lose this game in the international arena, now arming Sunnis against Shia Iran when our only goal should be the destruction of these political forces that both continue to seek our own demise. We continue to repeat our mistakes, our ideals are not theirs.