The origins of Islamic fundamentalism

Rhazes

The Al-Qaedas and ISIS’ of the world don’t arise out of a vacuum, immaculate conception style – they are, like all fundamentalist, violent ideologies, products of social conditions.

This is the crucial point Western liberals and Islamophobes alike prefer to downplay or as is more often the case downright ignore, for if this is acknowledged it becomes rather difficult to play the oh so valuable ‘Islam/Muslims are innately prone to violence’ card, which especially post-9/11 has made so many careers with the rise of the Islamophobia Industry, and continues to do so in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity.

Muslims going against their ‘nature’

But if fundamentalist ideology is indeed innately lodged within Islam or the Muslim psyche, and it is therefore inevitably bound to lead to the rise of fundamentalist movements like Al-Qaeda and ISIS (the implication of this view is, of course, that only with the complete annihilation of Islam/Muslims this threat can be alleviated), then how to explain the vast majority of Muslims who don’t have ‘go on shooting spree’ or ‘blow self up in Iraq/Syria’ on their daily to-do lists? How to explain those Muslims distancing themselves from, and fighting against these fundamentalists, who constitute the overwhelming majority? How to explain that during the Islamic Golden Age thinkers living in the Islamic world like al-Razi and al-Rawandi could say such blasphemous things like that all prophets (yes, including Muhammad) are charlatans exploiting peoples’ ignorance without getting their heads cut off ISIS-style?

Or, for more recent examples, how to explain that in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other Middle-Eastern countries there were strong, vibrant, left-wing, liberal secular movements, in some cases able to take power (though Western powers ensured that was never to last very long)? Or how about the many prominent Iranian left-wing, secular, democratic clerics and religious leaders who were marginalized shortly after the Islamic Revolution by Khomeini’s right-wing faction, aided by the US-sanctioned and supported Iraqi invasion of the nation?

I’m sure these figures are unknown to many who are used to the image of Muslims as intrinsically backward and violent, opposed to uniquely ‘Western values’ of secularism and democracy, but they nevertheless did exists: Taleghani, Montazeri, Shariatmadari.

Obviously Islam is capable of motivating that as well. How odd, Islam, as any religion/ideology, is capable of yielding disparate motivations, like how Christianity can motivate both the Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King.

But if the answer to the riddle of fundamentalism is not to be found lodged somewhere deep within Islam or the Muslim psyche, where should we look for it?

It’s the social conditions, stupid!

As said, ideologies and the movements they bring forth do not arise in a vacuum; they are the product of social conditions. When we say this about other violent ideologies like Nazism, it is generally uncontroversial (though admittedly there are still some who try to find explanations of it buried deep inside the German psyche or culture, but there have always been racists and loons). We explain the rise of Nazism by looking at the conditions that gave birth to it. Nuance suddenly enters the picture. We look at such factors as the economic depression, the heritage of the Versailles Treaty, the use of anti-Semitism to identify a scapegoat for all these troubles, et cetera.

In light of this, the remark that ‘Muslim fundamentalists are motivated by Islam’ (read: ‘Nazis were motivated by Nazism’) then is shown for what it truly is – a vapid banality. What we are asking about is where this motivating ideology comes from, not that it actually exists and motives people to do rather nasty things.

It has to be added that it is very unfair to compare Nazism to Islamic fundamentalism; the former was far more destructive after all, but it is useful to show the contrast between how various violent ideologies are perceived based on their adherents’ respective religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Of course, the same exemption is afforded to Zionism, another highly destructive ideology. Not all violent ideologies are alike when it comes to this, it seems. Note that the empirical approach that looks at the social conditions giving rise to such ideologies does function universally, irrespective of which ideology is concerned, hence also revealing the stupidity of equating Zionism with Jews/Judaism or trying to find it innately present in Jews/Judaism (this cuts both ways; anti-Zionist Jews are sometimes denounced as ‘self-hating’ Jews by Zionist Jews based on the same kind of twisted logic, ironically playing into the hands of anti-Semites by implying there is an intrinsic connection between the two).

So why does the mainstream in the West not afford the same privilege of empirical, coherent, reasonable explanation to Muslims as they do to others when from their midst a violent ideology springs up? Because since 9/11 the specter of Islamophobia has been haunting the Western world, and it allows us to justify seeing Muslims as being less than ourselves, as fundamentally other. That kind of sick vision is valorized in the Islamophobia Industry, which is very lucrative indeed as Le Pen, Wilders and Farage know all too well.

Highly educated and wealthy Nazis

This double standard also comes to the fore in the rather imbecilic argument that supposedly proves that social conditions have nothing to do with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism (which anyone who has ever tried to reason with an Islamophobe should be familiar with): Because there are also wealthy and educated Islamic fundamentalists, it simply can’t be poverty and lack of education that lies at the root of it all!!!…as if an analysis of the social origins of ideologies precludes this and only focuses on poverty and lack of education as explanatory factors.

Yes, ‘social conditions’ encompasses more than just poverty and lack of education; it concerns the totality of a person’s identity as it is constructed through society. For example, with respect to Bin laden it includes an analysis of the causes of his anti-US turn after his fruitful alliance with them fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia.

If you’re thinking this is too convoluted, nuanced and complex, just consider how we analyze the origins and development of other violent ideologies. The above ‘argument’ is hardly ever made in relation to ‘normal’, i.e., Western-originating violent ideologies like Nazism; they are exempted from such critical scrutiny, for when it is the violent ideology of Westerners that has to be understood, nuance and complexity are par for the course. No, it can’t possibly be something that is innate to them, their way of life, culture or religion that gave rise to these violent ideologies, they’re so like us in these respects!

Let’s state the obvious because apparently it needs to be stated. There were highly educated Nazis, too, and of course quite wealthy ones as well. This does not change the fact that Nazism was not somehow deeply lodged within the German psyche or culture, just waiting to burst out. It arose out of a specific set of social conditions, the same ones that have ensured that Germany (and West-Germany before that) has been one of the most successful and civilized nations in the world over the past half century, incontrovertible proof that Germans are not innately prone to supporting or developing violent ideologies like Nazism.

On the contrary, the fact that the victorious Western powers managed to successfully adopt policies with respect to Germany that fostered the development of social conditions producing Christian and social democrats instead of Nazis shows where the answer to the riddle of Islamic fundamentalism lies, and that it is correct. If other, vindictive policies were enforced against the Germans instead, fostering social conditions conducive to giving rise to violent ideologies, as happened with Versailles, we might still have been hearing about the ‘innately violent nature of Germans and their culture’ by the likes of Annabel Nanninga.

Naturally, educated and wealthy Arabs are – somewhat shockingly perhaps – also human, like their German counterparts, and thus similarly capable of founding and supporting violent ideologies, as long as the requisite social conditions exist for it. The fact that this banal truism is employed as an excuse to discount the sensible, empirical approach to analyzing the rise of one particular form of violent ideology only tells you all you need to know about the Islamophobia Industry’s ‘logic’.

Uncomfortable conclusions

Upon diverting one’s gaze to the social conditions underlying the production of Islamic fundamentalism, one cannot help but seriously reconsider the West’s policies and the crimes they have engendered throughout the Middle-East for decades. As the American political scientist Robert Pape has demonstrated in detail, suicide attacks are overwhelmingly motivated by Western policies: ‘Overall, foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5% — and the deployment of American combat forces for 92% — of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world in the past six years [2004-2009].’ (p. 28)

This does not mean that domestic factors play no role, as if people in the Middle-East are hapless sheep with no agency – but no one denies this (there are social conditions that underlie these as well, of course, which we are all too aware of when it involves Germans). Pointing to internal causes like reactionary clerics and politicians in these nations whipping up religious, anti-Western fervor may be nice for a seminar discussion or an academic paper, but if it’s practical solutions we’re looking for we need to focus on the predictable consequences of our own actions and policies, which we can actually affect, and ask which ones we should pursue that will most likely positively contribute to changing the social conditions that have led and continue to lead to the creation and expansion of these violent ideologies. And yes, that includes those that don’t happen to affect us personally like the Saudi regime’s ideology, because they contribute to the rise of the ones that do.

How to avoid another Charlie Hebdo?

A nice start would be to treat the autocratic Saudi regime and other such Gulf states like Bahrain in the manner the US has treated Cuba for the past few decades, with the difference that this will actually have positive effects: Cut all diplomatic ties and enforce an embargo until they agree to accept basic human rights (for women, homosexuals, religious and ethnic minorities and others who are now marginalized), stop their ongoing crackdown on pro-democracy movements and allow them to develop freely (curious how Islam is capable of motivating these as well…).

Also, give the Palestinians their rightful due as defined under international law rather than uncritically supporting the Israeli illegal occupation whichengenders anti-Western sentiments throughout the region. And it wouldn’t hurt to remove the sanctions on Iran, which have been enforced under false pretenses, and reestablish diplomatic relations with it, thereby removing the ability of the conservatives there to employ the ‘blame the West’ card and further inspiring the already Westward looking youth of the country to do so ever more fervently.

If you’re not a member of the Islamophobia Industry, don’t profit from it and therefore won’t weep over its dismantling, and want to make sure atrocities like Charlie Hebdo won’t happen again, these are kinds of policies you must look toward and support.

If this sounds like ‘giving in to the terrorists’ to you, your enemy is Islam and Muslims tout court, not Islamic fundamentalism.

The Islamophobia Industry’s ‘solutions’

Where are the solutions offered by highly esteemed members of the Islamophobia Industry, aside from pompous declarations of war (against whom? For what purpose? How? No one knows…)? The complete absence of any kind of constructive, coherent solution makes perfect sense. The laser-like focus on Islam and the Muslim psyche as the wellspring of fundamentalism is a lucrative career move to make in the post-9/11 era, after all, and it is essential to keep it going. One of the founding members of the Islamophobia Industry, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, now married to a well-known right-wing bigot and homophobe, knows this all too well.

As do ‘New Atheists’ like Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Their policy suggestions? Hirsi Ali wants to hand a Nobel peace prize to the genocidal maniac Netanyahu, while Harris believes ethnic profiling and keeping open the option of a nuclear-first strike on the Islamic world is the way to go.

Closer to home, GeenStijl calls for dropping more bombs! bomb! bombs! on the Middle-East, which had such a wonderful track record of success. Hans Jansen, member of the social democratic left who took on the sensible, empirical approach to analyzing the rise of Islamic fundamentalism before he realized there was more money to be made in the Islamophobia Industry with its peculiar ‘logic’, thus becoming a known academic fraud, uses his vast expertise on Islam to suggest that we see all Muslims as probable liars and enemy combatants. Instead of forcing them to wear a yellow star as a means of identification, just ask them about Israel. If they express dismay, all bets are off. Presumably one is then allowed to kill them, for rules of war apply.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the information we now have suggests that the brothers responsible for the atrocity were radicalized by the greatest atrocity of the 21st century, the US war on Iraq, and more specifically the horrors of Abu Ghraib, while a tape of the hostage-taker at the kosher supermarket records him justifying his actions by referring to Western interventions in the Middle-East and Palestine. In light of this, what if the sensible policies suggested by the ‘multiculti’, ‘burka-hugging’, ‘tea drinking’ left were pursued instead of the retrograde, jingoistic policies and empty rhetoric of the right?

Those are the kind of uncomfortable questions we aren’t allowed to ask by members of the Islamophobia Industry and its supporters, but should.

Rhazes (follow him on Twitter) feels compelled to write under a pseudonym because the Islamophobia Industry has gained so much influence and support in this country — which will probably increase dramatically in the coming period — that any opposition voiced against it will likely to lead to real life consequences, as the editor of this site has firsthand experience of.