De-Radical Islam
In the end, the whole point of the liberation of Iraq was to give an opportunity - for the first time ever - to the Arab/Moslem peoples to decide for themselves what they wanted to do. When given any sort of choice, people will always choose that which makes them happy - they may be mistaken about what happiness really is and what is the best way to obtain it, but the basic human desire is to be happy. Happiness is not tradtionally bound up with killing, war, death, destruction and robbery. That some sick individuals have preferred such doesn’t change the fact that most people don’t like to do these things - they don’t make them happy. And yet, what we’ve seen out of the Arab/Moslem world over the past 60 years has been pretty much nothing but killing, war, death, etc. What gives? Are the Arabs just a different species which glories in tragedy? Hardly - they are human beings…and that means they want to be happy.
The problem is that the rulers of the Arab world (some of whom, to our shame, we backed in a short-sighted desire for “stability”) are mostly a collection of megalomaniacs who do like killing, war, death, etc., as long as doing such things can perpetuate and increase their power and wealth. Since the late 1980’s, this species of leadership has dressed itself more and more in the words and symbols of the Moslem religion as the old paradigm (the secularist-socialistic worldview of Kemal’s Turkey, sometimes crossed with Nazi and communist thinking) clearly failed to deliver the goods or hold the imagination of the Arab people. But, once again, even though th Moslem religion is held very precious by the Arab people, its not like they were happy to exchange a leaderhip which shouted nationalism for mullahs who shouted piety - because while the mullahs promised a lot, their practice involved a lot of killing, war, death etc. They stopped killing for the sake of Pan-Arabism, and started killing for the sake of Allah. Not the sort of stuff to make people happy.
Now, in Iraq, we’re keeping at bay both the old Pan-Arabists as well as the mullahs - not completely, but enough for people to start making up their minds about things. And we’re starting to see an interesting result:
BAGHDAD — After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.
In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.
“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”
Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”
Now, the news story says this is a contrast to a rising religious fervor elsewhere in the Moslem world - but I’m not buying that. its easy to fake fervor when you control all the media and can shoot people who don’t show proper fervor. Only in Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan) are Moslem people in a majority-Moslem country capable of really questioning their religious leaders and asking why their faith seems to require suicide bombers and beheadings. My bet is that if the rest of the people of the Arab world had a real choice, they’d be asking such questions, too - one can’t imagine a human being happy about, say, the religious police in Saudi Arabia who can flog people for slight violations of their version of Islam. Sure, they put up with them, because they have to - but the way to happiness is not going to be found in a place where your sister can be beaten because a little hair was visible in public.
Do we really believe that average Egyptians want religious fanatics to persecute Egypt’s Christian community? Do we really believe that the average Pakistani wants a Christian sentenced to death for allegedly vandalising a mosque? Do we really believe that Arab men would throw a universal fit if their wives, daughters and sisters went out in public not covered from head to foot? To answer that question, ask yourself: do you feel like that? If the answer is “no” for you, then it is probably “no” for the Arabs, too. Now, don’t get me wrong - Islam is a conservative society; always will be, as long as it is Moslem. We’re not about to see a gay pride parade in Baghdad any time soon, nor nude bathing on the beaches of Saudi Arabia…such nonsense the Arabs will wisely leave to us fools in the West. But as far as just wanting to be happy and generally holding to a live and let live philosophy? I’ll bet anything that most Arabs are right there with us on that.
22 comments March 5th, 2008
