One of those who intermittently posts comments on this blog, and is at least a reasonable apologist for the Islamist position (you know who you are), argues that many who see themselves as Islamist, or even those who tend to see Sayyid Qutb is some sort of saint, are horrified by Zarqawi's beheadings and other acts of violence against Westerners recently (in Beslan, for instance). I'm inclined to ask, if this is the case why is the practice so apparently widespread? And why does one not see that same kind of extreme response from many other quarters in the "Third World," who no doubt have been similarly "provoked?" Why is it almost exclusively a Muslim response?
But I fear that if I did ask that question, the answer would simply point to the US as the culprit, because our actions apparently beg such immoral extremes. In other words, the standard Islamist view is that although such acts are immoral and corrupt, the corrupting influence is the Great Infidel, and not some failing within the Ummah itself. It's a rather exotic approach, but altogether human. My Islamist contributor suggests that if the US pulled out of the Middle East the Islamists would take additional measures to quell the actions of Al Qaeda, resolving the problem "from within," as it were. But I'm skeptical.
A survey I saw recently indicated that something like two-thirds of all Arabs in Jordan and Morocco (both considered moderate Arab states) think it's OK to suicide bomb Americans and Westerners in Iraq. (Hat tip: Rusty) That suggests that my Islamist commenter is overstating the opposition to Al Qaeda, but polls in the Arab world are notoriously inscrutable. If Zarqawi is really turning these folks off, then this "vanguard's" strategy may be backfiring rather badly. But is it? The anecdotal experiences of Michael J. Totten recently in Tunisia suggest something far more complex may be going on... something churning up the deeper waters in the Arab psyche. As a practical matter what would we need to do to build alliances with Islamists and Liberals in this fight? it's an intriguing question.
As I said, I'm not sure what polls in the Arab countries mean. There's a long history of misinterpreting polls due to an inability to account for the cultural context in which the poll is administered. For instance the Japanese just don't like to "rock the boat," so if you ask them a question about whether they're opposed to a policy you're unlikely to get very many "extremely opposed" responses. That doesn't necessarily mean that Japanese always have moderate views on these topics. They just don't express those views in a straightforward way, for cultural reasons. What really lies behind that cultural mask?
The Muslim Ummah has a thousand-year tradition of expressing contempt for infidels, which permeates their literature from academic tomes to popular entertainment, and it's even found in their personal correspondence. In this context what do "hate America" statements really mean? The status quo? The standard term for the "West," for instance, isn't morally neutral. They refer to the West as "The House of War." What sort of cultural constraints impose themselves to prevent Muslims from expressions of approval for "The House of War," I wonder? What sort of benchmark expresses genuine neutrality that would enable us to accurately interpret the extremes?
Another issue that confounds interpretation of values and intent concerns the role that America plays in deflecting discontent that Arabs have toward autocrats in the Middle East, who govern their lives with an iron hand. The US and Israel are the acceptable scapegoats, but just how aware are most Arabs of this switcheroo? In "hate America" statements are they expressing a generic discontent that can't be expressed openly toward their government, so uses America as a proxy? Black slaves in the antebellum South found a great many creative ways to "code" their discontent with the institutions of slavery that were difficult, if not impossible, for an outsider to interpret correctly, Many of these idioms found their way into the apparently innocuous language of the "Negro Spiritual." Again, how are we to peer behind the mask, especially for oppressed peoples whoes expressions are likely to be coded?
Instead of looking at the polls suggesting the radicalization of Islam against America the metric I'd be looking at very carefully, rather than "hate America" statements, is how optimistic Arabs are about their own future, and whether the rise and fall of that optimism is correlated with clear American policy initiatives and changes in direction. If Arab confidence in the future goes up when Americans act against fascists and authoritarians then I'd say that at least part of the "hate America" numbers are sort of a cultural inside joke, and should not be taken at face value. It would be hugely amusing to find that this were the case, though it's probably overly optimistic to put too much stock in it at the moment. Anyway, what one would need to test this theory is a time series with a number of data points that correspond to clear US policy shifts. Hmmm....
Posted by Demosophist at September 26, 2004 01:23 AM | TrackBack