Author:
Publication: Los Angeles Times
Date: April 27, 2006
URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg27apr27,0,5513404.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Osama Bin Laden's ratings are falling. His
latest pronouncement was a yawn. His scripts could use a rewrite. "Infidels"
this, "crusaders" that. Blah, blah, blah. We've heard it all before.
However, one new wrinkle in Bin Laden's diatribe
deserves more attention, as it illuminates the nature of the West's struggle
against radical Islam. "I call on the mujahedin and their supporters
in Sudan … and the Arabian Peninsula to prepare all that is necessary
to wage a long-term war against the crusaders in western Sudan," Bin
Laden declared. The crusaders in question are United Nations peacekeepers,
who aren't even in Sudan yet but who are going to stop genocide there - we
hope. Bin Laden suspects a Western plot to install U.S. bases and destroy
Islam in Sudan, and he wants to fend off the U.N., which he calls an "infidel
body" and "a tool of crusader-Zionist resolutions." If he thinks
the U.N. is a tool of the Zionists, clearly, he needs to get out of his cave
more.
Nonetheless, Bin Laden's call to open a new
front in Sudan highlights some underappreciated aspects of the jihadist mission.
First, most people being slaughtered by Sudan's Arab-controlled government
are Muslims. Bin Laden wants his holy warriors to fight for a Sudanese right
to exterminate indigenous Muslim tribes. In this, Bin Ladenism represents
a perverse form of globalization.
In the West, we tend to talk about globalization
as if it's a euphemism for Americanization. But there are many competing forms
of globalization. Even anti-globalization activists favor the "right"
kind of globalization, one driven by the U.N. and "progressives"
instead of corporations and markets.
Radical Islam is globalization for losers.
It appeals to those left out of modernization, industrialization and prosperity,
particularly to young men desperate for order, meaning and pride amid the
chaos of globalization. Radical Islam provides it, but at a terrible price.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported
the sad tale of the demise of Mak Yong, an ancient form of dance and theater
in Southeast Asia drawn from pre-Islamic faiths, including Hinduism. But such
traditional cultural influences are now considered "un-Islamic."
"Many Southeast Asian Muslims now navigate
by guideposts from the Arab world," the Journal reported. "Young
men in Indonesia are starting to wear turbans and grow beards. In Malaysia,
Malays have adopted the Arab word for prayer, salat, to replace the Malay
word, sembahyang, which literally means 'offer homage to the primal ancestor.'
"
This is merely an extension of trends that
have already transformed the Middle East. As Fareed Zakaria writes in "The
Future of Freedom," until the 1970s most Middle Easterners "practiced
a kind of village Islam that adapted itself to local cultures and to normal
human desires. Pluralistic and tolerant, these villages often worshipped saints,
went to shrines, sang religious hymns and cherished art - all technically
disallowed in Islam." This indigenous form of Islam was bulldozed by
urbanization and radicalization. The Iranian Revolution was a harbinger of
the transformation toward a more "universal" Islam that was also
more doctrinaire; "Islam of the high church as opposed to Islam of the
street fair," Zakaria writes.
Reihan Salam, a coauthor of one of the smartest
blogs going right now - theamericanscene.com - is an American of Bengali descent
who argues that the death of Mak Yong represents "globalization at its
worst." He rightly notes that if the choice is between the globalization
of "crass Arabization" and the globalization of "crass Westernization,"
then it's no choice at all.
Although Western-style globalization may force
certain technological and economic changes on indigenous cultures, it also
provides those cultures with the tools and flexibility to keep much of their
culture. The hard Islam coming out of Riyadh and Tehran offers no such freedom.
Recall that Afghanistan was a Muslim country for centuries, but it wasn't
until the jihadi thugs of the Taliban took over that the historic Bamiyan
Buddhas were deemed an offense to Islam and destroyed.
Bin Laden's call to kill U.N. peacekeepers
is consistent with the Islamist desire to impose a harsh, "one true Islam"
across the Muslim world (and, someday, they hope, the non-Muslim world too.)
Too many intellectuals and commentators take
the ignorant and condescending view that because jihadism is exotic, it is
also "authentic." On the right, this often translates into the view
that all strains of Islam are alike - and equally dangerous. And on the left,
we get the usual knee-jerk defense of any seemingly "indigenous"
foreign movement that casts America as a global villain. The reality is that
in the war on terrorism, America is on the side of freedom and diversity.
Bin Laden & Co. are the real crusaders.
