How much of a threat is militant Islam?
13 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Thursday, March 15 at Thursday, March 15, 2007.
Despite how much we all seem to have collectively learned from the Iraq disaster, it still seems to be a hallmark of the self-appointed reasonable, grown-up thinkers that in order to be serious, one must realise the epic, imminent threat represented by militant Islam.
Today, Andrew Sullivan linked approvingly to this question posed by writer Thomas Mallon:
So how big is the threat? For me, it just isn't that big. Islamic terrorists, if they are lucky, will manage a couple of medium profile bombings of tourist sites each year, and maybe something larger (New York, London, Madrid) every few years. This sucks, and our security services should relentlessly hunt down these people and take them out of the game. But is it really that much of a threat to the world?
Our societies, cultures and economies are just too strong to be even mildly shaken by this lame bullshit. Just because some gaggle of religious lunatics manages to kill a bunch of westerners once every 6 months, does anyone really believe that "everything we are accustomed to thinking, saying and creating" is under threat? I call bullshit.
We are SO going to beat these freaks. It will just take some time and some work. A bigger threat to our way of life and cultural tradition will come from the fear of an everpresent, invisible, existential enemy that has the power to destroy our entire civilisation. Believing in that kind of stuff makes people act crazy, as the rise of both neoconservatism and militant Islam have both taught us.
UPDATE: Some interesting comments on this post - my response is above...
Today, Andrew Sullivan linked approvingly to this question posed by writer Thomas Mallon:
"Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that Islamofascism is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?"This gives way to much credit to militant Islamists, and way to little credit to the human spirit and western civilisation.
So how big is the threat? For me, it just isn't that big. Islamic terrorists, if they are lucky, will manage a couple of medium profile bombings of tourist sites each year, and maybe something larger (New York, London, Madrid) every few years. This sucks, and our security services should relentlessly hunt down these people and take them out of the game. But is it really that much of a threat to the world?
Our societies, cultures and economies are just too strong to be even mildly shaken by this lame bullshit. Just because some gaggle of religious lunatics manages to kill a bunch of westerners once every 6 months, does anyone really believe that "everything we are accustomed to thinking, saying and creating" is under threat? I call bullshit.
We are SO going to beat these freaks. It will just take some time and some work. A bigger threat to our way of life and cultural tradition will come from the fear of an everpresent, invisible, existential enemy that has the power to destroy our entire civilisation. Believing in that kind of stuff makes people act crazy, as the rise of both neoconservatism and militant Islam have both taught us.
UPDATE: Some interesting comments on this post - my response is above...
I agree 100%.
Thank you for saying wha needs to be said. Every year, 43,000 of them are from Motor vehicle accidents and it is barely a yawn when reported. The "War on Terrorism" needs to be put into context. We are letting the fleas control the dog.
Listen, I'm as lefty as they come, and I agree with you that an overblown threat can create disastrous consequences (hence the war in Iraq and, though everyone seems unwillling to admit it, the war in Afghanistan as the coalition is currently losing it). But is it just me, or are there perhaps 100,000 able-bodied young men out there panting after the opportunity to help some nutjob Pakistani general load an already-existing 50-kiloton nuke in a shipping container and send it to Miami? We don't need Saddam, Iranian mullahs, etc. to be purifying uranium and plutonium to have an imminent nuclear threat to our civilization. The WMDs are out there, and they're just a weekend's coup away from Islamowingnuts. And THIS is why the Iraq war is such a hideous response to what happened on 9/11. Most of the shipping containers coming into our ports are uninspected, unscanned, unpoliced--with no funding for adequate inspection, scanning, or policing in sight (funding that would represent perhaps half of a percent what we've spent in Iraq the last four years). THIS is the kind of case the anti-Islamofascist left should be making, not the "Well, heck, nother couple thousand Americans buried in Chicago next time--what's the harm there, BillyBob?" Sorry, that's a dangerous and naive (not to mention politically perilous) position to take, however screwed up the Bush administration and neoconservatism in general might be. Nuff said.
Well put. And anyway, what ever happened to not giving in to fear? We've faced far worse existential threats without wetting ourselves and giving up liberties.
It's weird how all these bloggers who worship Orwell and Churchill haven't realized that these two-bit terrorists would never have frightened their heroes into the stupidity we see in all these anxious blog posts.
And to think that people crapped all over John Kerry when he likened the hunt for al Qaeda to a beefed-up law enforcement action.
I'll go with your 5:00 PM Anonymous (and, for that matter, with John Derbyshire -- and I never thought I'd say THAT). Terrorists would have no ability to do more than incommode the West -- IF they didn't have potential access to nuclear weapons. But that, to put it extremely mildly, is a big "if".
That danger, of course, existed before 9-11. History is full of ugly ironies, and historians may yet end up regarding 9-11 as an extremely lucky wake-up call for the world to face the real threat of nuclear terrorism. Without 9-11, the first successful Megaterrorist attack might have directly killed 300,000 rather than just 3000 -- and totally brought down human civilization as a little side effect. So far, however, our nitwit government -- and the nitwits governments in the rest of the world -- have not responded even remotely appropriately to that warning, so it may all have been for naught.
In another few decades, of course, thanks to the wonders of genetic engineering, biological terrorism will also become a threat to civilization as great as the nuclear variety (and one, which, I suspect, cannot possibly be coped with by any technique). But we have a few decades' grace left before that point is reached.
Civil liberties are already under GRAVE attack in Europe. Do you read the news? French police have abandoned sections of the country to Islamist gangs who burn up to 400 cars a night- Theo Van Gogh is killed in broad daylight, any Muslim moderate or reformer is forced to go underground to avoid murder, Muslims riot at any perceived "slight" (cartoons, fake reports of Koran flushings, etc) and destroy property and kill people.
And the demographics get worse yearly. In 10 years, France, Germany, Italy, Holland and others may have large Islamist blocs controlling the government, and it will be impossible to control gangs of Muslim ruffians who seek to impose Sharia law.
Its perfectly possible Mark Steyn's "America Alone" will come true and we become surrounded by a sea of hostile Islamic fundamentalist run enemies.
If you don't think the Western democratic way of life is under attack and endangered, you aren't paying attention.
How big is the threat?? Not that big in the grand scheme of things -- as you suggest. A few hundred people a year, out of a population of a few billion.
But... Are you a Jew? Are you gay?? Can you be classified into some group or subgroup?? Because then it becomes bigger no?? What's a few hundred Jews or Gays or "whatevers" per year?? Has a different ring to it, doesn't it? Especially when it's your group.
Now make it more personal, how about if one of the few hundred is your wife, your husband, your partner, your kid?? What if it's your brother and his entire family?? That would hurt, wouldn't it??
Now that it's personal, I am sure you are still fine with me suggesting it's no big deal -- because it's not my family. What?? It was no big deal when it wasn't your family, why should it be if it is your family??
You mean now we have to give you millions in victim's benefits??
How big is the threat? When we are frisking 90 yr. old women at airports?? When every cargo container has to be checked because the Democrats think it's a threat?? A cop at every location, security checkpoints all over the place. Freedoms restricted, due to this minor Islamic threat...
How much money is this "no big deal" costing us?? Money that could be spent curing HIV/AIDS, or breast cancer...
I'm sorry, but Hitler was no big deal, until he was the ultimate big deal. Has anyone considered what Germany would have done if its population was 1.5 billion?? What was the number one name given to boys in the Islamic world after 9/11?? Maybe the majority of the 1.5 billion aren't cutthroat terrorists. However, I would argue (by worldwide Muslim inaction) that the majority of the 1.5 billion don't drop tears when western city's hear explosions. Take a good look at the Muslim world, you see any real concern there when Muslims kill Muslims?? You really want to hang onto the fantasy that they care if any of us live out the day??
The fact that people here argue "it's no big deal" because it's not affecting them personally suggests the above is likely true -- especially when this topic and "it's no big deal" is a Western liberal opinion... If white liberals don't care much that terrorists kill people they don't know it's a given that Muslims don't care if Westerners die.
Thankfully for the West, it seems that Muslims hate each other as much or more than they hate us. So for the time being more Muslims die due to Muslims than we do. But when the Muslims get the "Holy hand-grenade..."
Has anyone here been to Europe lately?? Large parts of English and European cities look a lot like Islamabad... Has anyone noticed that in Canada there is a movement to have Muslims become exempt from Canadian civil law?? To have that replaced with Muslim laws and traditions?? That too is happening in Europe. Has anyone noticed what wonderful things Islam is doing in Asia?? In Africa?? And no it's not just poorly fed, poorly educated and isolated Muslims that strap bombs to themselves. Actually, it's been well fed, well educated non-poor Muslims who have hit the West. And no, they aren't always from some dark hole in some unheard of location. Now, they kill where they were born, like in London...
Just what is it that is making so many people blind to Islam, and what it represents? And what makes so many ignore what its stated goals are?
Its treatment of women, even in "enlightened Islam" is an affront to even reformed feminists. But show me a noted feminist that hates Islam more than she hates Condi Rice... Its treatment of almost every issue is an affront to liberal-left leaning views, and yet the liberal to left crowd still finds more issue with the West than it does with Islam.
Is it a glitch in the thought process?? Is it because Islam is a religion of "people of color" that it has to be embraced and held up in admiration? Does the left think Islam is the way it is because of the ills of white males??
Could it be that if Islam was the creation of 8 white guys from Alabama that the UN would already have thousands of Euro troops out hunting down Muslims and eliminating them??
Or is it that in many ways the initial goals of the left and Islam are similar. Elimination of the West, that the left is willing to ignore the remaining agenda of Islam?? Which is, BTW, to kill of the self-loathing white liberals to leftists...
This post generally reminds me why I think it will take losing a major metropolitan area to a nuke or a dirty bomb before people will take jihadist seriously. It is almost as if some folks think its "no big deal" to lose a trillion dollars of worth and the lives of 3,000 Americans. I mean,statistically, more people die in wiffle ball accidents every year, right????
Docweasel's particular panic ine unjustified. As Johann Hari points out, Steyn's book is crammed with fuzzy anecdotal evidence and includes virtually no actual demographic or statistical data -- while Daniel Pipes (whose credentials as an Islamophobe are unquestionable) says that by 2020 (assuming no further restrictions on immigration), Moslems will comprise only 10% of the population of Europe -- by which time God knows what changes will have occurred in the Moslem world as a whole, even if Europe doesn't dig in its heels by then, choke off further Moslem immigration and tax people for having large numbers of children. (By the way, women in the more enlightened sections of the Moslem world -- including most of Saharan Africa -- apparently use birth control quite enthusiastically. According to the WHO, Tunisia's and Lebanon's birthrates had actually dropped below the 2-per-couple figure by 2003.)
So much, I think, for Steyn's campfire spook stories. If Europe is actually going to be forced to "cull" (nice euphemism) the Moslem population under these circumstances, we might as well all give up everywhere right now and start wearing burkhas. So let's start worrying about the things we really SHOULD be worrying about, hm?
One thing that troubles me about this post is the idea that a terrorist attack every six months or so is sad but trifling in the grand scheme of things necessarily implies that the death of U.S. troops in Iraq should be placed in the same category of relative unconcern. The problem with these body-count comparisons is that they fail to factor in the social effects. Echoing those who minimize the importance of American casualties in Iraq (or Iraqi casualties in comparison to those under Saddam) one commenter notes that there are 43,000 traffic fatalities a year. But, if we could in some way trade 40,000 of those annual traffic deaths for an additional 39,000 murders per year (a 1,000 casualty "improvement"), those 39,000 additional murders would have a far more profound effect on our way of life than the deaths under the higher-casualty status quo.
The damage from terrorism is not the loss of life or property per se, it is the consequences to the social fabric. That's why it is called "terrorism." And that is why it is a threat to "our way of life." Remember, over-reaction itself is a goal of terrorism. That is part of the threat. Terrorism attempts to provoke the very things the Bush administration has so blithely embraced: ill-advised attacks on third-parties, erosion of civil liberties, and indiscriminate detentions and torture. As Lenin once said, for the would-be revolutionary, "Worse is better."
Second, seeing terrorism as being the only danger of militant Islam is one-dimensional. Militant Islam is a proselytizing ideology that peddles a repressive and totalitarian organization of society (see, e.g., the Taliban) with the express goal of world conquest. Will this ideology sputter out before it reaches the level of danger presented by fascism and communism in their respective heydays? I don't know, but the goal of militant Islam is not some level of intermittent attacks that may or may not damage Western societies. What is the basis for assuming that this will forever be the best they can up with?
The adherents of militant Islam appear to be highly committed and well-funded. I see no reason to believe that they will not strive mightily to commit WMD attacks, and take over Middle Eastern governments that may have access to nuclear weapons.
So, is the threat real? I think so. When someone announces that they want to kill us and destroy our way of life, that is a threat. When that someone kills some of us, the sincerity of the threat is demonstrated. I guess the question is whether it is imminent. Since it appears that they have the will, it turns on how close they are to having the means to make the threat existential. Who has definitive knowledge on this subject? I don't. Therefore, prudence dictates that I take the threat seriously.
The issue is what policies are most effective at combating the threat. It is understandable that when the right waves the threat as a rationale for despicable and counter-productive strategies there is an impetus to attack the premise as overblown. But as the anonymous "lefty as they come" pointed out, minimizing the level of the threat is both an analytic and political error.
Reading Ken Whiteside comment i made three observations:
1) I think the discussion here was focused on a macro country level. And in that case personalizing victims is not a correct thing to do. For a country, not an individual, having a few hundred or thousand people die is not a threat. It's sad, terrible, it needs some preventative actions but i wouldn't go as far as putting it as a threat.
2) Do you seriously think that the billions spent on the war of terror have actually made things better? Is the US less of a target today than it was before or right after 9/11?
Contrary to your beliefs, terrorists and extremists are a minority in the Muslim population, a big minority, but still a minority. People here in the Arab world were truly shocked by 9/11 and felt a great deal of injustice. I, a Muslim Arab, shed more than a few tears for those innocent people, and i have never even been to the US. The general sentiment on the street did not deny that this was a horrible atrocity and DID condemn these acts of violence. And the attack on Afghanistan was to a certain extent tolerated, not well received, but tolerated - it's with Iraq that people started feeling that the reaction is a little too much.
3) Finally, Ken Whiteside, have you ever been to a Muslim country? Have you ever lived in it like tom did? and interacted with everyone, and i mean everyone - not like in an expat kind of way?
Because your comment shows a really ill understanding of Islam as a religion, Islamic extremism as an activity/phenomenon, and the Muslim country as a culture.
Terrorism is just the tip of the iceberg and is not what the writers and thinkers are sounding the alarm about in regards to militant Islam. Already, people living in Western nations are not allowed to express criticisms of Islam. Honor killings and killing of apostates are growing as are demands for special privileges for Muslims. Riots sweep France every summer like clockwork and European politicians and artists are under police protection for the crime of insulting Islam. Journalists are being beaten and intimidated across the planet in rich and poor countries. Thailand is a mostly Buddhist nation where over 2,000 people have been killed in three years by jihadis. Self censorship is becoming status quo. In nearly every nation where Islamic and non Islamic people coexist there is violence and in virtually every nation where there are few non-Islamic people, being an apostate is illegal, extremism is tolerated to distract people from the lack of government accountability and minority rights are nearly nonexistent.
What Western values are you willing to compromise on in order to ignore militant Islam? Traditionally, Islamic societies have, at best allowed Christians, Jews and Muslims to follow separate legal systems with Islam being king of the hill (pagans and nonreligious people are out of luck). Are you okay with some people being arrested for working on Friday while being able to beat their wives "reasonably" while others are not?
Your ability to discern moderate from extreme and mainstream is distorted. I recommend both reading the Koran and some biographical information about Mohamed. I also would ask whether you all feel that Islamic organizations and individuals who refuse to renounce specific terrorist organizations, call for all women (not just Muslim) to wear veils and demand that critics of their religion be coerced into silence by law or by threats should continue to be described as "moderates" in the public sphere. In my view, there is more to being an extremist than just killing someone.