Change Leads To Fear--And Fear Leads To Jihad

Any number of scholarly commentators have noted that religious fundamentalists be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim are united in motivation.  The consensus is all fundamentalists, particularly those willing to employ violence in pursuit of their political or social goals, are driven by a pervasive fear of change.  The unifying desire is to reclaim the stability of the past.

There is much value in this understanding, providing it is used with caution.  It may well be that many, perhaps even most, adherents of the hazy world called "fundamentalism" are uncomfortable with both the pace and degree of change in their lives.  This does not mean that most of these people are irrational or so unhinged by fear of inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary change in the political, social, and cultural environment where they live.  Indeed, the fundamentalist response is rational in its origins even when the ultimate expression is violent.

It is critical to understand that most humans for most of their history have lived in static environments.  Change in the basic characteristics of political organization, social structures, economic institutions, cultural norms, and ethical values typically has been very slow or even nonexistent.  We forget today in the US where rapid change is not only normative but widely celebrated that the defining American experience for most of our ancestors right down to World War II has been the changeless rhythm of the seasons, the cycle of days in which every one was nearly identical to its predecessor and its successor.

Change of rapid and pervasive nature is of recent vintage in the US.  Changes in the basic fabric of society, politics, economics, culture have been normative only for the past fifty years.  True, the rapidity of change in American society and culture over the past half century has been remarkable--and quite dislocative.  As recently as the Seventies, the words of a Springsteen tune were totally applicable not only in our rural areas but in the largest of our cities, "They bring you up to do just what your daddy did."  In a major way life was cyclical, an endless wheel of generations with only marginal changes like the height of tail fins on the new model car.

Few, if any, Americans in 1970 would have accepted the proposition that before the end of the century the vast industrial infrastructure of this country would have become an endless belt of abandoned, rusting mills and factories.  Few, if any, Americans in 1985 would have believed you if you said, "In five years the Cold War will be over and the Soviet Union will be no more--without a war."

The rapidity and universality of basic change in the US has made more than a few very uncomfortable.  The pace and extent of change has resulted in a sense of rootlessness, a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger in a strange land.  It is rational for a person under assault by change to seek stability, to need points of unchanging certainty, to demand that change be slowed.

Members of the American hoi ollogoi may be quite unconcerned by systemic change as they are insulated from ill effects or even the anxiety about the unknowable consequences of change by wealth, status, position or power, but not all Americans are so protected.  Thus it is possible for a member of the "elite" such as Barack Obama to characterize Americans from the second, unprotected category as "clingers," holding on to symbols of the past such as Bibles, guns, and Republicans.  It is possible for the elite to see the unprotected and apprehensive majority as irrationally fear ridden regardless of how divorced from reality this smug view might be.

American religious fundamentalists, be they Protestant or Catholic, may be apprehensive regarding the pace and extent of change.  They may find some of the changes totally unacceptable and impossible to justify.  They may "cling" to facets of the past both religious and secular which they believe to be desirable, beneficial, or down right necessary.  None of this makes their motives irrational.  None make their goal of conserving the best of the past while adapting and adopting desirable aspects of the new somehow unworthy of respect or meriting condemnation as fear driven clinging.

Chew over this a bit.  If, here in the US where buildings may be torn down almost before the cement on the cornerstone has dried, change can be disturbing to well educated, established citizens of a mature democracy with a well ordered economic base and a long tradition of embracing the new, what is the effect of change on a traditional society with a unresponsive government and a history of stasis?

Changes of many sorts and degrees have assaulted traditional societies, inflexible polities, and rudimentary economic structures with a series of megaton blows over the past fifty years.   The awesome footprint of the West has hit the very static Arab and Muslim world repeatedly.  It is no shock that many resident where the great Western boot has landed have reacted with fear and loathing.

The West, and the US, by their very existence in effect have demanded that traditional societies and polities throughout the Arab and Muslim world toss out each and every feature which have defined and conditioned life for centuries and replace these instantly with virtually incomprehensible foreign implants.  In essence the Western challenge has been, "You must not only do as we do, you must be as we are if you are to survive let alone prosper in the world we Westerners have created."

Consider just a couple of consequences of this Western challenge.

It has been necessary,  we Westerners believe, that the traditional patterns of social and political relations which have provided a very satisfactory life for most Arabs and Muslims for centuries be discarded.  This has meant that the old reliance on family, tribe, locality, relations which were personal and up close must be replaced by impersonal mechanisms of the market and the bureaucracy.  This has meant the replacement of customary laws and traditions of the responsibility of local or tribal leaders with remotely imposed and enforced written codes of law.  It has, in short, ripped out the face to face features of traditional societies and polities with the faceless one-size-fits-all approach of the West.  (A faceless way of governing which has fried off any number of us who have lived under it all of our lives.)

The Western creature, the "Market," has no resemblance to the up close and personal bazaar.  The Market has no human face, no human sensibility beyond getting the highest possible bottom line.  It rips the human heart out of commercial intercourse offering presumed efficiency in place of person-to-person search for advantage, even mutual advantage.

We in the West have fought long, hard, and bloody wars over the basic questions of the relation of state and community of faith.  We have done the same with respect to the establishment and expansion of "human rights."  It has taken us centuries to get answers in these areas which are even rough approximations of "right."  The same is true regarding democracy,  The same applies to transparency of government and business.  It is applicable as well to matters of social, political, and economic equity and justice.  And, even after centuries of effort, no one can honestly say that the job has been finished.

Yet the Western challenge has demanded that the Muslim majority societies do the same instantly and without the bloodshed which has marked Western changes over the past thousand years and more.  Even if a plausible case can be made for the superiority of the Western paradigm (which the Geek thinks can be made) the demand that the Muslim majority societies do the same in a matter of mere years is both unreasonable and quite contrary to the inertia filled nature of humans and their social or political constructs.

Faced with the Western challenge and its collateral imperatives, it is small wonder that a percentage of Muslims have reacted with fear and loathing which now expresses itself as violent political Islam rooted in an austere interpretation of the religion based on the foundations of the faith.  Any other response would be nearly impossible.

The Muslim, particularly the Muslim man, has been faced repeatedly with a severe challenge to all aspects of his identity as well as his world view.  Quite literally, he has been cut off from his roots by the impact of the changes demanded by the Western challenge.  With this degree of internal alienation in play, the appeal of political Islam, including that of the armed sort, has grown high and fast.

It is quite easy for the Muslim man to conclude that only by seizing power, by bringing Islam to power, can he regain control of his environment, of his life.  Even if he does not personally pull a trigger or push the clicker on a bomb, it is to be expected that many Muslim men will support and agree with those who do wage the good war against not simply infidels or apostates but on change itself.  Better to die on ones own terms than to survive on the terms dictated by another.

As the global Muslim insurgency grows, the new task for Western decision makers, well, really for all of us in the West, is to create ways in which the Muslim guy in a traditional society can effectively accept and assimilate necessary change.  This implies that we in the West have to lighten up on our demands that the Muslim in Afghanistan or Yemen or North Africa become just like us in his views and attitudes.  This is necessary but not sufficient in and of itself to counter the Muslim insurgency effectively.

We cannot do even this minimal task unless and until we understand the relation between the changes demanded by the Western challenge and the fear it produces.  Ultimately, the enemy facing both us and the Muslims we are fighting is the same--the fierce engine of change.  Change may be both desirable and necessary, but it can also be our worse enemy.

Well, no one ever said life was easy.