The Popularity of Islamic Extremism
Why Everyone Loves Osama bin Laden
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Why is the radical ideology of Islamism and Islamic extremism appealing not only to people like bin Laden, but also to so many other "average" Muslims throughout the Middle East and the Arab world? Christianity has not developed similar mass movements in the West, so is the difference religious? In a sense it is, but not because one religion is more progressive and the other is more reactionary.
The difference lies, in part, in the fact that Islam makes larger, more comprehensive claims than does Christianity. For Christians, there has always been a distinction between church and state. True, they have not always remained separate - very often they have supported each other, usually to the detriment of both. Nevertheless, going all the way back to Jesus' admonition to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's," it has always been a basic part of Christian doctrine that the church and the state represent very different spheres of life.
But this is not the case in Islam. For Muslims, mosque and state have ideally always been pretty much the same thing. Muhammad did not simply found a religious movement - what he founded was a community , the ummah of believers. This included not only religious rules for one's relationship with Allah, but also social rules regulating one's relationship with the rest of the group. Muhammad was replacing tribal loyalty with a new loyalty, and it had to be all-encompassing.
Because of this, it is very easy for a Muslim - whether acting as a politcal figure or a religious one - to make all-encompassing demands on Muslims in the name of religion in a way that a Christian leader cannot easily do. Nevertheless, these demands are not monolithic - Muslims have long disagreed about the political orientations which Muslims can take.
Thus, through history we can find Muslims fighting for revolution, progressivism, and toleration, but we can also find them fighting for tradition and extremism. These latter have gained strength in recent decades because of perceived threats to tradition.
Traditionalism is certainly not unique to Islam, even in its extremist forms; but wherever you see religious traditions defended to extremes, it is because people are experiencing insecurity. It may surprise people to see such a tendency among Muslims, who rule their own countries, number in the hundreds of millions, and control much of the world's oil wealth.
Unfortunately, security is something enjoyed only by a minority of them: most Muslims live economically and socially insecure lives. Those most who have historically been most attracted to the Islamist cause are those who have the most to feel insecure about.
There are the merchants and manufacturers who are threatened by global competition. There are students from rural villages who experience the chaos and "immorality" of the big city. There are university graduates whose degrees are worth little, whose jobs pay less, and who have to get menial second jobs just to survive. And there are men who were raised to be the "head of the house," but who must now compete with women in school and on the job.
A call to tradition is a common religious response to these and the many other challenges of modernity. Tradition gives people a secure sense of identity, which is important because identity is power. Tradition gives people a cause to fight for, which is important because people need meaning in their lives. And the Islamists promulgate a version of tradition which explains why Muslims, inheritors of one of the world's great religions and classical civilizations, have fallen so far behind the Christian West economically, socially and militarily.
This, then, is why the radical traditionalism and Islamism espoused by people like bin Laden are so appealing to Muslims in the Middle East. He can tell them why they are suffering, who is responsible, what they have to do to fight against it, and finally, that all of their problems will disappear so long as they fully institute the laws of Islam. The fact that he is tapping into long-standing Islamic tradition of making such claims and demands simply adds to his authority and the acceptabilty of his statements.
In his 1996 "Declaration of War," he specifically complained about the poor economic and moral situation in Saudi Arabia, saying that "everybody talks about the deterioration of the economy, inflation, ever increasing debts and jails full of prisoners..." And he identified the cause: first was the suspension of "Islamic Shari'ah law and exchanging it with man made civil law," and second was the government's inability "to protect the country, and allowing the enemy of the Ummah - the American crusader forces - to occupy the land for the longest of years."
His solution, of course, is to attack the enemies of Islam: "hit the main enemy who divided the Ummah into small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into a state of confusion." Here again we see the common theme of how all Muslims must unite as members of the ummah , rather than remain divided as the colonizing powers made them.
We should now also see why Western Muslims are able to disassociate themselves from bin Laden. None of what he preaches appeals to them because they aren't suffering, and they aren't swayed by the idea that the West is their enemy. Moreover, they recognize that such ideology does not necessarily follow from Islam. But what they need to understand is that, while it is not necessary , it does follow and it does appeal to genuine, devout Muslims.
Only when they stop denying it, and start understanding it, will they be able to do something about it. It is unlikely that Christian and secular Westerners will be able to have much effect in reversing the course Islam has been on; we are too much identified with the enemy. Islam's best hope probably lies with Western Muslims and progressive-minded Muslims in the Middle East, because they can present themselves as Muslims who aren't militant and anti-Western, but who instead promote democracy and progress.
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