Does radical Islam pose a new and different kind of power struggle?
Let's look at the elements...
1. Leaders and figureheads like OBL, Saddam, Moktada Al Sadr, Ahmedinejad, Nasrallah and Mullah Omar among others.
2. the social aura of a struggle taking place... good and evil, Allah and the Great Satan...
3. fanatics willing to give up their lives for the benefit of the 'struggle'...
4. followers who blindly believe in what their leaders say despite evidence to the contrary....
Sort of sounds like the Macworld conference, if you know what I mean... (if you don't, watch these... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgHtKFuY3bE&mode=related&search= and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2C2gb6ws8
)
Don't get me wrong. This was written on a Mac, and I believe that the OS X is anyday a superior alternative to Win XP (haven't tasted Vista yet), and also that Microsoft does base most of its ideas on its more glam downtown neighbour. All I am saying is that most people believe in OS X for the wrong reasons (Visit www.xvsxp.com to see what I mean). The reason is just this - OS X is basic, simple, and extendable in all possible ways.
But I am deviating from the point. At the risk of oversimplifying, let me make the introduction concise...
The 4 elements that form the most recognisable element of fundamentalist Islam today - Leaders, the social aura of a righteous struggle, fanatics and blind followers. Let us concentrate on the leaders and the followers, for these are the most important. The leaders, for all they do (or appear to), do one thing. They entrench blind beliefs of followers. They do that by establishing and buttressing the social aura. Leaders would not (and cannot) do anything if the followers weren't present. The Bush is an example. Vietnam and the American society of 1970s is an example. It all depends on the society... the followers in the case of Radical Islam. So let us take a closer look at two kinds of societies...
The first consist of the well-informed and highly educated societies (primarily of the West, and increasingly, of the Asian and Middle-
Eastern middle and high classes too). An individual in such a society is well-informed, and can discern facts to form his own opinions. He typically gets a newspaper everyday, browses the internet, and forms high-level opinions and decisions, which he thinks his government (or the world in large) would be better off doing. His opinions count, as they would be going into a vote sooner or later. Their government has a large (mostly hierarchical) bureaucracy (not in the pejorative meaning) in place, to make sure the average individual is as satisfied as he can be.
The second consist of small groups of (mostly) ignorant people, mostly from the countries in Africa, Central Eurasia and the Middle-East. They do sometimes have access to news, for we are in the Information Age, but they are poor and concentrate on more worldly matters. They tend to be conformistic in their societies, and are easily influenced by their leaders and what they say. They see themselves where their leaders are now - self-made men with rags-to-riches stories or tales of courage who now have positions of power and responsibility, and use them well to serve their own people.
I am now going to drop a bomb and say that these two societies are the same. To the very minute points.
We think we are well-informed, and so do they. We believe the news channels report the truth. They see Al Jazeera and hear the news through the minarets after their evening prayers, and they believe they report the truth. Both of us form opinions - we represent them in a vote, and they align themselves with different leaders and different militia. We believe the nation-state does us some good for the taxes we pay. They believe their leaders will do them good for their service and their loyalty. We have seen instances where our capitalistic press have committed serious breaches of 'our rules' (sometimes even to the point of being voyeur), and we know instances in which 'their press' has broken them too. In Enron and Worldcom, we have seen healthy well meaning economic struggles, representive of our society, being hijacked by powermongers. We see the same happening in the political struggles of Palestine and Lebanon.
We are human and so are they. Cries of 'if only they can understand' don't stand. They do understand... different things. But how are they different? Yes? I hear the phrase free and unbiased press somewhere. Yes, but the press wasn't born free or unbiased in our society. It came with competition, and expectations. The press-man who reported things in the most honest, unbiased (and fastest) way won. (Later glamorous became the most important part, but let's not go into that.) So who is to blame for the lack of free and unbiased press, with different channels and different perspectives with enough (or too much depending on perspective) opinions to cut-and-paste and form our own? Is it ourselves, with this policy of embargoes, isolation and entrenchment of these nations? Is it a coincidence that the three nations in the Axis of evil were (are) also the nations on which we had the least information on? Iraq turned out not to have a WMD, Iran's supposed student movements amounted to nothing and NK now has the US eating out of its hand in the negotiations. If we did plot a chart of countries comparing access to information vs accuracy of facts known about the US, these three countries would probably place bottom too. We have forced these people into a situation. By making the individual on the street a part of the Axis of Evil, we have created a deep rooted sense of distrust, so that, even if the BBC does reach them, their message doesn't. And they turn towards the only alternative left - the clerics, the minarets and their power hungry leaders.
This is indeed something to think about.
