CHAT ROOMS AND INFIDELS
by
ROBERT J. LEWIS
___________________________________
To
add some small arch to bridge
the understanding
between East and West . . .
and carry a small lamp of understanding
across the shadowy world. . .
Not willingly would one push,
jostle or touch them roughly
so that in surprise or trepidation
their uncertain wicks snuff out.
Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia
A
recent month-long road trip in southern Morocco confirmed
a long held suspicion I had been reluctant to submit to cross
examination because hard facts are wanting and psychological
profiling is -- at best – educated guesswork. But since
terrorism is a fact of life which has undermined our most
fought for and treasured political freedoms (a terror cell
of ten can bring a nation to its meniscus), I will propose
that the great “clash of civilizations” (Islam
versus the West), the title of Samuel Huntington’s now
famous and much quoted 1993 Foreign Affairs article,
is in fact a festering inner conflict that has been unleashed
onto the world, and neither side wants to hear about it.
In
what has been correctly characterized as a dereliction of
civilizational duty, the West evasively quantifies the great
clash in terms of hijackings, explosions and body count, and
dares not speak of the explosive mix of Muslim envy and inferiority
complex as underlying causes, just as Muslims refuse to admit
that their discomfiture might be an unintended effect of the
numerous intolerance clauses tucked away in the Koran. Either
way, there is no point in not pretending (the posture adopted
by the apologist contingency) that Islam, at a very minimum,
regards the ways of the West with great suspicion, and at
the other extreme, has set up the West as a bogeyman man and
made it the object of a relentless search and destroy mission.
If
we grant that terrorism -- the Tamil Tigers’ gift to
the world -- is a recent phenomenon, Islam’s intolerance
of ‘the other’ is not. In the 1940s, when Islam
was geographically isolated from the West, in the Empty Quarter
(the Arabian desert) the presence of a single Christian (Arabophile
Wilfred
Thesiger) was enough to unsettle an area three times as large
as Portugal. The hard fact of the matter is that Islam correctly
feels threatened by the West and not the other way around,
and the reasons for this bear directly on the origins of the
clash and the terrorism it has spawned. Restating the clash
in terms of culture, we must ask why a significant number
of Muslims are attracted to western culture (its music, dress,
freedoms, secularity) and why aren’t westerners attracted
to Islam (its dress codes, gender segregation, Sharia law,
religious observances)?
In
Morocco, and almost everywhere in the Muslim world, and no
longer exclusively among the young, it is almost a matter
of course that the men are dressed in the latest style of
jeans and cover their heads with baseball caps. They enjoy
Happy Hour, the readiness-at-hand (zuhanden) of cell phones,
iPods and laptops, and last but not least the highly sociable
nature of western women. We note that without exception in
America and Europe, western men are not exchanging their jeans
for djellabas, or lobbying their representatives on behalf
of Sharia law, just as the women are not trading in their
skirts for chadors or stepping up to the plate for a late
in life circumcision (ablation of parts or all of the inner
labia and the clitoris). With the exception of its cuisine
and carpets, the Islamic brand has no purchase on the West:
the river of envy (a bit torrent) is running in one direction
only.
When
one of ours chooses a Louis Vuitton (LV) handbag over another
that is the same in every respect but without the prestigious
label, it’s because she wants to be seen with a LV bag.
In Ways of Seeing, John Berger proposes that publicity
has convinced the woman that the purchase of the LV handbag
(gilt through association) will significantly enhance her
status and 
self-esteem,
which in turn allows her to feel good about herself wearing
her ‘second’ skin. Her satisfaction, her happiness
is proportionate to the envy the product arouses.
So
when a Moroccan bottom drawers his djellaba
and invests in stylish jeans and a baseball cap it’s
because he, no less than the LV wearer, wants to feel good
about himself. It could be argued that he is getting a much
bigger bang for his buck than the LV purchaser because he
has bought into an entire culture. Since he will have been
previously exposed through television and cinema to the world’s
catalogue of sartorial modes, his preference for jeans and
baseball cap is his confession to the world that western modes
of dress -- and not those from China or Indian or Mexico --
best facilitate his feeling good about himself. Even in his
home territory, where the muezzin’s call to prayer can
be heard five times a day, he will parade his jeans (risking
public censure) because he can’t refuse the high that
comes from being perceived as someone who is in and hip and
at home with western values.
If
we are courageous enough to fess up to what is revealed to
us in our fantasy life, there isn’t a person alive who
wouldn’t rather be a somebody than a nobody. This longing
resides deep within us all and it cannot be stilled, finessed
or wished away. Despite its ever-changing content, the fantasy,
as an autonomous impulse, tells the same story each and every
time with the same happy ending: I’m a somebody. So
if the Moroccan male imagines himself in jeans and not a djellaba,
and his female counterpart fancies herself in a skirt and
not a burqa, it’s because they believe the West, its
freedoms and opportunities, is the best answer to their hopes
and dreams. Since most Muslims, constrained by tradition and
punishing immigration quotas, will never set foot in the promised
land and be that somebody, the next best thing is the vicarious
experience, which is why jeans and baseball caps are winning
the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere.
But
despite the preference for most things western, there can
be no denying the effects of being torn apart by two irreconcilable
narratives. On the one hand, the Muslim is fascinated by his
cowboy opposite, but on the other hand, he has been raised
to believe that the West is heathen and awash in alcohol,
drugs and immoral women. Unable to say ‘no’ to
the latter -- if not in the flesh then the virtual world --
it’s only natural he emerges deeply, if not chillingly,
pathologically conflicted.
And
while the overwhelming majority of Muslims find a way to accommodate
their divided selves (they learn to pick and choose from both
worlds), there will always be those (men) who, hostage to
the perfidious ways of the West, come to loath themselves
on that account, a loathing that is exacerbated by the user-friendliness
of western women and the hurt and humiliation that comes with
losing control over their own over whom they once exercised
absolute dominion. Is it any wonder they end up self-hating,
and easy prey to the ‘paradise now’ politics whose
track record no torment can walk away from.
It
is in this schizophrenic state of mind that the distraught
Muslim-cum-martyr, desperate to be relieved of his self-hatred,
allows his resentment of the West to be stoked until it exceeds
the sum of his temptations.
Of
the millions of Muslims that have been destabilized by exposure
to the West, it only requires a handful of malcontents to
create global havoc. If we hypothesize one in fifty thousand
is vulnerable to radicalization, and there are one billion
followers of Islam worldwide, that means there are 2,000 free
radicals in our midst, which represents 200 independent, highly
lethal, self-governing terrorist cells. The global cost in
human life and loss of peace of mind speaks to the terrorists'
extraordinary powers and the ineffectiveness of the extraordinary
means used to combat them. On our watch, terrorism has successfully
diverted billions of dollars to fund security initiatives
(at airports, train stations, public events) that could have
been used to fight poverty and disease.
With
the Internet -- a lawless, unholy land where everything is
permitted – now making inroads into even the most isolated
tribal areas, more and more of Islam’s best will be
exposed to the contamination of western culture, which means
terrorism is not likely to disappear gently into the contrite.
If Islam is to survive as a viable religion, it must, with
dispatch, begin to call into question its most sacred precepts
and pronouncements. Islam is fighting a war (against itself,
against human nature) it cannot win, and if it loses the world
loses because diversity has always been the most effective
means of identifying and managing adversity.
In
a post-clash world, I cannot pretend to know how the modern
Muslim should comport himself and do honour to an Islam that
is at peace with itself in the 21st century, but I do know
that I don’t want to hear hip-hop coming out of a Berber
tent, and I don’t want to see a Holiday Inn where once
an 800 year old Kasbah stood proud.
* * * * * * * * *
Between
the great clash of civilizations and homogenization of the
planet falls the shadow.
Between
the shadow and the apocalypse arrives the new day. And deuces
are wild.
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