Islam 2003: "It's the Hate, Stupid!"

by Joe Katzman at October 29, 2003 7:19 AM

(Originally posted Oct 29, 2003; updated Nov 2, 2005)

Daniel Drezner recently looked at the current state of Islam in light of Mahathir's speech, and the widespread agreement it generated from all Muslim leaders present. As Robi Sen notes, Mahathir's speech made quite an impression. I'll grant that it was certainly attention-getting. In truth, however, it was neither new nor surprising. At best, it was a clarifying moment within the current situation.

If you're interested in my personal view of that situation, it goes something like this. To paraphrase Clinton's election strategist James Carville:

"It's the hate, stupid!"

That may sound flip or trivial to you. The past 70 years offer us abundant lessons that underline why recognition and understanding of that hate are anything but trivial.

Rwanda reminded us that organized hate is a weapon of mass destruction, even if its only arms are guns and machetes. Alas, the level of organized hate in the Muslim ummah (trans. "community of Islamic believers") is reaching levels that have few precedents in modern times. When coupled with a mentality of thwarted supremacism and conspiracy theory unreason, history shows that it becomes the most toxic - and dangerous - sort of idolatry.

At present, this precise witches' brew is being carefully-fostered throughout the ummah, and deliberately organized by a variety of religious and secular actors at both governmental and non-governmental levels. 9/11 was the demonstration that no place was safe from this hate, and that no scale of human destruction was too large to contemplate for jihadi haters. For those who had not already made the connection beforehand, 9/11 was the final piece of the puzzle that both clarified the full implications, and made them much more attentive to the presence, depth and nature of this hatred and supremacism.

Malaysian PM Mahathir's speech and the reaction it got teaches us that even among many Islamic "moderates," what varies is not the presence of these elements but rather their comparative intensity.

As Drezner notes, it's a depressing reminder - but it is not the final word. As the saying goes: I have good news, and I have bad news.

First, the good news: this mentality is not universal.

Many decent individuals and organizations in the Muslim ummah are taking real risks and fighting this tide, or just walking another path. It need not necessarily be a secular Western path, as long as it is healthy within itself, and thus free of the key pathologies described above. This, and not the blurry "moderate vs. radical" dichotomy, is where we need to set the bar. Winds of Change.NET pays attention to such people because they're the reason we can hope for a better future together, as opposed to an inevitable future of genocidal wars.

Which brings me to the bad news: hoping doesn't make it so.

Are the Muslims walking a path that is healthy within itself numerous or powerful enough to suppress, control and make significant ideological gains against their co-religioinists who DO preach organized hate and act on it? At present, the answer is clearly no.

By itself, this situation more than suffices to ensure that Islam will be unable to live peacefully with its neighbours - and the arc of conflict, bloodshed, and repression from Algeria to Nigeria to Sudan to Israel to Central Asia to Indonesia and beyond bears this out. That is certainly a tragedy, but it's a low-level tragedy on the global human scale of things: a force stifling economic and human development in various regions, and producing global bloodshed in the tens or hundreds of thousands each year.

Which brings me to the really bad news. When current rates of technological change and diffusion of knowledge are added to this phenomenon, they create the potential for major tragedies on a global human scale.

Nuclear proliferation is increasing the odds of weapons falling into the hands of suicidal haters who will use them - either governments, or "jihadi freakazoids" (to use Charles' charming term) who gain access to them through political upheavals, or the aftermath of "broken arrow" accidents, or betrayal. When coupled with the "zone of conflict" around many Muslim states and the tested insights of game theory, it doesn't take a genius to predict that the probability of multiple nuclear weapons being used within the next 20 years is rising significantly. Biological terrorism is a lesser but real possibility, esp. if lethal, contagious diseases with weeks-long incubation periods are coupled with an ideology of suicide murder.

We focus on these weapons because thwarting attempts by such people to gain the means of global-scale catastrophe is a worthy activity in and of itself. Ultimately, however, the real problem is organized, religiously motivated hate and supremacism, and the deliberate way in which they are being fomented within Islam by influential individuals, organizations... and by nation-states, many of whom are also bent on acquiring the means to match the desired ideological ends of the hatreds they foment.

If we can agree that supremacist hate is the problem, we will have taken the most important step toward understanding our enemy.

One important benefit is that our sense of hatred's importance will focus our discussions and attention in new ways (q.v. the Counterrevolutionary's series on the dynamics of organized hate: Part I | Part II | Part III), and sensitize us to the process whereby this phenomenon is linking up with other strains of organized hate worldwide. The other key benefit is that this common recognition will also allow our seperate discussions re: the nature of that hate and what to do about it to become much more productive. Different questions are a good thing. Different realities are not.

What's beyond question to me is the fact that the reality and scale of this supremacist hatred must be faced. The alternatives are denial or collusion, both of which are often on display within the West. The wages of their indulgence are the continued growth of that hate, and global-scale death on a scale not seen in decades.

"It's the hate, stupid!" It needs to be confronted, strongly. It needs to end.

UPDATES:

For more concept-related background....

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