Terrorism's Fuel

It seems all al-Qaida recruits share something in common - they are all failures in the Western world in which they had hopes of succeeding. Unfortunately, their failed governments, artificially propped up by oil revenues - something they never had to work for - failed them with the dysfunctional societies they created.

With free wealth, the oil-rich governments of the Middle East have no need for functioning economies or a free, educated middle class workforce to fuel them. Consequently, when these citizens (the Qaida recruits) venture out of their isolated societies seeking success in the education-centric Western world, they find themselves woefully unprepared. This, however, is not the entire story - there are many angry people in the world, and while the looniest of the bunch have indeed lashed out with random acts of violence, no other modern group of people responds by blowing up scores of innocent civilians with hundreds of suicide attackers.

To keep their relatively uneducated, unemployed populations placated, Middle East governments pump propaganda out of their state-owned media blaming their societies' ills on the West while also exploiting one of the oldest tools of government control - religion - by funding the mullahs who actually control their societies. Many of these mullahs preach a strict interpretation of Islam that has not been updated for over 1,000 years due to its teachings that it is The Superior Religion and the Koran is the direct word of God that should be strictly adhered to and never altered or interpreted. These teachings have had a profound impact on Muslim societies and people strictly obeying them - trying to sustain an eight-century society really stifles innovation, in everything from technology to language.

So when these young 'Muslims' (it is an insult to true Muslims to call these terrorists followers of Islam) are taught their religion and society is Superior to all others, yet they find Western countries more successful, wealthy, and powerful than their own, and then fail trying to share in this success, we begin to have a clearer understanding of why these young men want so badly to destroy the West; especially when their sheiks pervert their religion's teachings and provide Divine endorsement of holy war and 'martyrdom' (despite the fact that the Koran specifically and explicitly prohibits taking the life of innocent civilians, as well as the taking of one's own life).

Christians and Jews rely on many of the same holy texts as Islam, yet both of these religions have acknowledged antediluvian writings need interpretation in the context of the world in which they live. Passages in the Bible and Torah endorse executions by stoning and owning slaves, among countless other atrocities, yet no mainstream practitioner of those faiths accept any of these passages as tenets of their religions.

Clearly by design, radical Islamist terrorists and the strain of Islam they have hijacked is not something the Western world can combat with surgical precision. After 9/11 President Bush rightly observed this war started at the time and choosing of the terrorists, but it will be finished on ours'. If the Muslim world wants to stamp out Islamist terrorism on its own terms, change is going to have to come from within.

Update - July 15, 2005: Thomas Friedman published an excellent column along these same lines in the New York Times today called, "A Poverty of Dignity and a Wealth of Rage"