Who Are We?
NOV. 15, 2014
Thomas L. Friedman
Why? Because the Islamic State, or ISIS, is homegrown; its aim is not to strike at enemies far away, but to spread and impose its vision of an Islamic society right here and right now; it’s attracting Muslim youths from all over, including the West; its ideology is a violent mutation of the puritanical, nonpluralistic, Wahhabi Islam, the dominant trend in Saudi Arabia, and it is being beamed via Twitter and Facebook — parents here know — directly to their kids. That’s why it’s forcing an inescapable and painful look in the mirror.
“We can’t avoid this fight any longer — we’re on a train heading for a cliff,” said Abdullah Hamidaddin, an adviser to the Dubai-based Al-Mesbar Studies & Research Center, which tracks Islamist movements and works to promote a more pluralistic culture. What is most striking, though, is how much Al-Mesbar sees ISIS not as just a religious problem that has to be combated with a more inclusive Islamic narrative but as the product of all the problems ailing this region at once: underdevelopment, sectarianism, lagging education, sexual repression, lack of respect for women and lack of pluralism in all intellectual thought.
Rasha al-Aqeedi is an Iraqi editor from Mosul working at Al-Mesbar. She has stayed in touch with people in Mosul since ISIS took over. “What is happening,” she told me, is that the Sunni Muslim population of Mosul “has now awakened from the shock. Before, people would say, ‘Islam is perfect and [the outside world] is after us and hates us.’ Now people are starting to read the books that ISIS is based on. I hear from people in Mosul who say, ‘I am considering becoming an atheist.’ ”
She added: When a young man who has not passed the sixth grade joins ISIS and then “comes and tells a teacher at the university what he must teach and that he must wear a long gown, you can imagine the shock. I hear people saying: ‘I am not going to the mosque and pray as long as they are here. They don’t represent Islam. They represent the old Islam that never changed.’ ”
Besides the religious zealots in ISIS, you also find many adventurers and impoverished youths attracted to ISIS simply to be able to lord it over others. Many of the Sunnis who rushed to join ISIS in Mosul came from the much poorer town nearby, Tel Afar, whose citizens were always looked down upon by Mosul Sunnis.
“You see these boys [from Tel Afar]. They smoke. They drink. They have tattoos,” said Aqeedi. One of them who joined ISIS came up to someone I know who already covers her head with a hijab — but not her face — and he told her to put on a burqa and cover everything. He told her, ‘If you don’t wear a burqa, I will make sure one of the rural women, who people like you ridiculed your whole life, will come and give you a beating.’ ” This was about who has power — radical Islam was just the cover.
“People are attracted to moderate religion because they are moderates to begin with,” argues Hamidaddin. “People are attracted to extreme black-and-white religious ideologies” because the warped social and economic context they live in produces an attraction to holistic black-and-white solutions.” (It is one reason Pakistani Muslims tend to be more radical than Indian Muslims.)
Yes, religious reform would help, added Hamidaddin. But “it was the complete deterioration of the economic, security and political situation [in Iraq and Syria] that demanded a clear black-and-white interpretation of the world. It takes the right [government] policies to counteract that.”
Maqsoud Kruse runs the Hedayah International Center to counter violent extremism, which is hosted by the United Arab Emirates. He’s concluded that beating back “ISIS-ism” will require a long-term investment to empower and educate Arab citizens to compete and thrive in modernity. Only people here can do that because it’s a challenge of governing, educating and parenting.
“That suicide bomber can decide not to push the button, and our job is to understand how we can help him decide not to push the button, to make him or her aware, conscious and rational, rather than be swept along,” said Kruse. “It is all about how we equip and support our youth and prevent them from being someone who says, ‘I have the truth.’ ” We need them to have “the ability to deconstruct ideas and be immune and self-resilient” to extremism. It is all about, “how we get them to pause and think” — before they act.
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