empty rhetoric

Recent news that there have been calls for the execution of a teacher who allowed her students to name a teddy-bear “Mohammed” highlights, I think, one of the central questions in the so-called “War on Terror”: namely, that the origins of the conflict are as much cultural as they are anything else– not merely the result of a bad foreign policy or the presence of American troops in the middle east. That the political scandal directly involves the actions of militant Muslims, it translates, I think, to the War on Terror even if the Muslims in question are not of the pure ideological strain that has come to characterize the likes of Al Qaeda due to the fact that three important characteristics are present: 1)the tendency to resort to violence as a means of resolving cultural conflict, 2)a misunderstanding of Western secularist ideas of government and conduct as a means of sparking the dispute, and 3)the continued infiltration of non-Islamic sources of cultural influence around the globe.

It hardly needs to be said that Islamic extremists tend to use violence as a means of resolving their disputes– read the litany of indictments against Western society that Bin Laden penned as a justification for the 9/11 attacks to see how cultural differences inevitably are dealt with in violent terms when Islamic extremists are involved. But more to the point, it is interesting to see how a hardline Islamic society teaches its members to act in this manner. From the “flushed Qur’an” story to the Mohammed cartoon scandal to today’s topic of teddy bear execution, we see how the ideas that are spread by hardline Islamic governments encourage violence in its members. No one in the Sudanese government is, for example, calling for the execution of the British schoolteacher– instead, the religious and ideological structures that it has encouraged are promoting the use of violence. These calls for Gibbon’s execution stem from a certain kind of ideological position that sees violence as the ultimate end for cultural and interpersonal disputes.

How does this relate to Al Qaeda? Firstly, it makes it nearly impossible for Western societies that feel threatened by Islamic extremism to call for a more moderate strain precisely because modern Islamic governments invite the exact same response. Reading over Bin Laden’s treatise on the reasons why he directed the 9/11 attacks, it is clear that he is as much targeting moderate Muslim nations in the mideast as he is targeting America– not only because they have allowed U.S. troops to stage within their borders, but also because they are allowing the Westerners to continue in what Bin Laden believes to be their godless ways. The inability or unwillingness of these moderate governments to take up arms against the United States is, in the view of Bin Laden, complicity in their sins.

Thus, when politicians like Ron Paul call for the removal of U.S. troops because of some fictional “blowback”, its difficult to take them seriously. In the recent CNN/YouTube debates, Ron Paul went so far as to suggest that U.S. troops in the mideast are the sole reason that we have to deal with Islamic extremism today– completely ignoring the fact that the majority of the justifications for violence by Islamic extremism are cultural in nature, and go to the heart of Western secularism itself, rather than the actions of societies that adhere to it. As long as the United States is not part of the worldwide Islamic Caliphate that Bin Laden and his ilk are working toward, attacks remain a viable, even likely option.

The link between the teddy bear protesters and Al Qaeada is thus: both ultimately respond in the same way to cultural conflicts: with violence. While the Sudanese protesters might hate Al Qaeada or Bin Laden or Saddam or any other enemy of Western society, they nevertheless agree on one very important issue: how to enforce cultural norms. In other, more succinct terms, they both behead those with whom they disagree– enough of an ideological similarity to examine their actions as part of a wider, dangerous movement.

But the recent flair-up in Sudan also makes clear another issue that highlights the threat of Islamic extremism: a misunderstanding of, and ultimately resistance toward the notion of a secularist society. The protesters who call for the execution of Gibbons see her has a willing maligner of their most sacred traditions– a Western agent who is complicit in the spread of godlessness around the globe.

And yet many Westerners and Muslims have more in common than they realize. Indeed, a large majority of Americans are Christian, a religion that, when compared to Islam, has more in common with it than many realize. To be sure, there remain significant theological differences, however, it is surprising how often many evangelicals, for instance, might take the side of a Muslim in a debate versus, say, Richard Dawkins.

While in college, I took a course entitled “Christian Apologetics in Islam”. It was taught by one of the leading Christian figures in Muslim Apologetics, and it was enlightening precisely because it often highlighted the similarities, rather than the differences, in Muslim and Christian theologies. The instructor even once told a story that highlighted the strange kinship that Muslims and Christians often find themselves in. While debating in Speaker’s Corner in England, he was engaged in a heated debate with a hardline Islamist over the nature of the Trinity. During the exchange, and atheist approached them and said something to the effect of “see– you Christians and Muslims, always fighting. Isn’t it proof that religion and belief in God do nothing more than spark conflict? Isn’t it clear to you that you are both just hatemongers attempting to force your ideas onto the other?” Almost instantly, the hardline Muslim– who believed in the subjugation of women and the spread of Islam via violent means across the globe grabbed his Christian opponent around the shoulder, called him “brother” and proceeded to help him debate the atheist.

The point of this story is not to suggest that Americans and Muslim extremists in the mideast are necessarily the best of friends, but rather to point out that American society and its secularism are far more religious than many in the middle east give it credit for. Indeed, the constant debates that are had over domestic policy should make that clear– how often, after all, is the “religious right” demonized in today’s political rhetoric? How often are Christians called “fascists” for the belief in government-enforced social norms? Most Christians understand all-too-well what it is like to see a sacred icon defiled, and probably identify with the heated emotions that Muslims have expressed when one of their sacred icons misused.

Ultimately, the message that we should take away from this is thus: secular society is not anti-Muslim, despite claims that it is. By removing religion from the sphere of government, Americans have actually done far more to spread religion in North America than many violent Islamic extremists have in the mideast. This misunderstanding is one of the most prominent today in Iraq, and one of the main reasons why Americans are often seen as oppressors even as they try to liberate the people of Iraq from the clutches of violent extremism.

Finally, the last facet of this conflict is the globization of the Western monoculture of capitalism and a free, liberal society. This conflict has emerged in the ashes of the Soviet Union, and can be seen as cell phone towers are erected in Baghdad and McDonald’s continues to infiltrate Paris, Moscow, South Africa, and Japan. Starbucks in France is quite possibly the most poignant example in recent memory– its gleaming green logo shining in a garish celebration of profit in the shadow of the Louvre’s stolid elegance. The conflict it engenders is seen in Iranian mullahs pulling Barbie from the shelves of Tehran stores, or the Muslim backlash to a Burger King product that looked vaguely like the Arabic word for Allah.

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would love for us to pretend like capitalism and trade have spread across the globe without a violent response from traditional cultures such as Islam. They would like us to believe that the real reasons violent extremists attack the United States is due to the neoconservative principles of intervention around the globe. To suggest so is to ignore a large portion of recent contemporary history– to blithely pretend as if the root causes of terrorism have nothing to do with an Islamic culture of violence. It is, in a word, dangerous.

The Mohammed teddy-bear scandal is just one flare-up in an ideological conflict that has arisen in Huntington’s so-called “Clash of Civilizations”– it is a conflict that will not be solved by removing U.S. troops from Iraq, leaving the region to descend into a terrorist haven, giving the most hardline violent Islamists a base from which to attack the West. Rather, the solution is the gradual spread of democracy and a structure of values that deemphasizes violence a means of resolving disputes, while still respecting cultural and religious norms.