The Violent Islamic Extremism Problem

In the wake of yet another horrific attack, the United States and the rest of the Western world is wrestling with how to address the growing threat of ISIS and other terrorist groups rooted in a violent and fundamental expression of the world's second largest religion. However, there is little agreement on how to even describe the issue, let alone deal with it in an effective manner.

On the right, top Republicans have promoted a dangerously-aggressive approach that includes everything from rounding up and detaining Muslims in camps to shutting down mosques, forcing them to wear identification and employing a religious test to all immigrants and refugees in order to only take in those who could prove themselves Christians.

On the left, top Democrats–including President Obama–have stubbornly refused to even use terms like Islamic extremists or radical Islam, insisting on identifying perpetrators only as terrorists, under the notion that it would be a mistake to alienate peaceful Muslims, while possibly aiding the extremist groups in their efforts to radicalize potential recruits.

As is the case with most hot-button issues, the realities are much more complicated than the rhetoric. I've already written extensively on the dangers of targeting a single religion with such a broad brush. I've also talked about the obvious bias we have when describing violent acts in religious terms; i.e. we rarely if ever use the term Christian terrorist–even when someone goes into a legal abortion clinic and commits mass murder in the name of their Christian religious beliefs or a Christian minister shows up at the U.S. Capitol brandishing a gun while claiming to be a "prophet of God." The latter instance received surprisingly little media attention or political bombast. I feel certain that had the man instead yelled, "Allahu Akbar," and claimed himself to have been a prophet of Allah, that would not have been the case.

That being said, I do not agree with the notion that it serves a useful purpose to ignore the reality that Western culture is fundamentally at war with a growing faction of somewhat stateless Muslims throughout the Middle East–even if the framework for such a war was largely self-created. It is also worth noting that Islamic extremists alone are organized into standing armies capable of highly sophisticated and coordinated attacks. It is, without question, a unique threat. Let's take a look at the issue through several lenses.

Complicated History

Islam certainly has no monopoly on the use of violence for religious means. From the Inquisition to the Crusades, to the Roman Catholic Church's abetting of the Holocaust, Christianity, the world's largest religion, cannot lay claim to hands that are any cleaner. Throughout history, many religions–and very specifically Christianity and Islam–have made war to increase their realm and done so under a veil of divine rights.

What we are seeing today, however, is very much a product of the reshuffling of the global deck since World War I. Prior to ISIS, the last religious faction to actively pursue the limitless expansion of a religious state was the Ottoman Empire, which, like ISIS, claimed an Islamic caliphate. As it collapsed during the First World War, many Muslim majority territories were colonized by Western countries. Syria, which became a de facto colony of France, is an instructive example.

The Middle East continued to evolve in the two decades between world wars, and the late 1940s saw many new boundaries drawn, including parts of ancient Mesopotamia by the U.S. and U.K. into modern day Iraq, as well as the creation of the State of Israel in the region known as Palestine. Much of the modern conflict in the Middle East is rooted in Western-imposed borders that did not consider or respect cultural, historical and religious factors. Many states (including Syria and Iraq) were ruled by dictators who came from minority elements within the country. A major factor in today's conflicts are the somewhat predictable instances of majority forces seeking to realign power structures that were imposed on them in a less than equitable fashion.

Western Meddling

The period that followed did not occur in a vacuum. The West continued to meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, seeking to protect their national interests in the oil reserves that were relied upon by their heavily-industrialized economies. The United States and the U.K. overthrew a democratically-elected government in Iran to install a puppet dictator, which ultimately led to the theocracy we deal with today. We backed Iraq in their war against Iran, only to later decide that their leader too must go, invading that country, which ultimately led to today’s chaotic and violent state.

During the so-called Arab Spring, President Obama (like many others in Washington) began to believe that the U.S. could–despite all historical evidence otherwise–nudge the region toward a democratic transition. What we largely ended up with was a series of failed states with large power vacuums, filled by whatever faction was willing to most brutally exert its will. Throughout the region, that has been Islamic extremist groups seeking to expel Western influence and impose Sharia Law.

Radicalized Muslims or Islamified Criminals?

Increasingly, we are learning that the terrorists associated with attacks by ISIS and other groups are not devout Muslims with radical beliefs who are inclined toward jihad, as much as they are criminals and gangsters who are aligning themselves with the violent groups. While the emphasis has been on refugees and immigrants, most of them, including France, Belgium and here in the U.S., have been home grown; disaffected Muslims who were eager to commit violence with or without the umbrella of a group.

In this way, they are no different than the Christian terrorists I mentioned earlier. Only we identify them as part of greater threat, and because there exists a framework for a level of coordination and support, I think there is validity in doing so. When you have a group that openly advocates for global Islam and the implementation of death to all non-believers and universal Sharia law, the idea of them becoming a nuclear force, or acquiring dirty bombs, etc. is much more frightening.

Islamic extremism is a threat to all cultures, whether they be peaceful Muslim communities that do not wish to be under the brutal theocracy to which these groups subscribe, or Western-style democracies, to which the religion, if strictly adhered to, does not support or even tolerate–though the same can be said of fundamental Christianity.

The question then becomes how do we parse all of the elements of a culture and a religion that is still very unfamiliar to most in the Western world. The President tells us that these groups represent an infinitesimal portion of the religion as a whole, that "99.9 percent" of Muslims are peace-loving and do not share the beliefs of these groups. However, the data tells us something very different.

What Do Most Muslims Believe?

The most exhaustive study on the subject was done by the Pew Institute in 2013. It revealed that there are large numbers of Muslims throughout the world who agree on varying levels with the beliefs of groups like ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram. Raheel Raza is an Islamic activist who has spent her life fighting such groups and their calls for the advancement of that brand of fundamental Islam. Raza has taken the very uncommon position of loudly advocating for frank and open discussion about the dangerous threat of Islamic extremism. Raza’s position is that she does not need protection from Westerners hurting her feelings by the way they describe the problem, but rather against the members of her own religion who would have her stoned to death for speaking her mind.

Raza points to the Pew research numbers to show that despite liberal dogma, there are "hundreds of millions" of Muslims throughout the world that hold beliefs that most Westerners would find to be justifiably frightening. Indeed, according to Pew’s study, overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want Sharia Law to be the official law of their country. This includes stoning adulterers to death, chopping of the hands of those who steal and other violent punishments like public whippings.

Pew’s study, which involved more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews and covered Muslims in 39 countries, also showed that such feelings are highly-varied by region, and that those who live in countries where Islam is the official religion had much higher percentages of citizens who held radical beliefs. For example, 27 percent overall (or 237 million Muslims) believe that those who leave the religion should be executed in accordance with Sharia law. In Egypt, Jordan and Afghanistan, that number was between 79 and 86 percent. Overall, 39 percent of those surveyed, believed that honor killings could be justified, including for things like a woman who has had premarital sex. Again, the numbers are much higher in Muslim majority countries and higher still when it is the official religion.

As one continues to parse the data, there is much more blurring of the lines. Some believe that only parts of Sharia law, such as matters related to marriage and property disputes should be made official in their country. Again, in this way, there are many similarities to other religions including Christianity. Many Christians would advocate for the Bible being law of the land, though I suspect that a good deal of them would not want to follow all of them, as Leviticus has many of the same barbaric laws regarding who is to be put to death and how that Sharia imposes.

As such, Raza, a practicing Sunni Muslim, does not believe that the problems her religion faces are inherent, but rather the result of dangerous degrees of fundamentalism and that the perception of women in the Islamic world follows 14 centuries of the Quran being interpreted solely by men. It should be no surprise then, that more and more moderate Muslims are seeking refuge in countries that protect them from fundamentalists. Raza herself is a Pakastani who immigrated to Canada for sanctuary from such beliefs.

Muslim Migration

Many Muslims have escaped to the United States, a country that protects citizens' rights to practice their religion but, more importantly, separates religion from the courts and laws governing the country. Clearly, such potential for flight is threatened when radical Islamists commit acts of terror in Western countries. Americans are also clearly concerned that the events in Europe could be a harbinger of things to come in the U.S.

There are many differences between the Muslim populations of the two places, starting with the fact that many European countries are receiving refugees from former European colonies and Muslim immigrants from neighboring countries. North Africa might be considered Europe’s Mexico, in the sense that many impoverished residents of that region head north for employment opportunities and access to a better social safety net.

The migration has been occurring long enough that there is a distinct second generation that has been born in Europe. In countries like France, Great Britain and Brussels, many live in Muslim ghettos where the unemployment rate often exceeds 40 percent. These densely-populated neighborhoods are ideal recruiting grounds for groups seeking to lure disenfranchised Muslim youth toward a violent cause that is often portrayed as vengeance against their oppressors.

America’s Muslim population represents very different demographics. There are 2.75 million Muslims in the U.S., making them a very small minority (Egypt alone took in about half as many Syrian refugees). Some are immigrants from Muslim majority countries, most are not. About a third report their race as "white," according to Pew surveys. African American Muslims make up about a quarter of the American Muslim population, a tradition that is linked to the founding of the Nation of Islam, in Detroit in the 1930’s.

America’s Position

Without Muslim ghettos, large waves of Muslim immigration, and/or millions of Muslim refugees pouring across shared borders, the U.S. simply doesn’t face the same sort of challenges as Europe when it comes to radical Islam. We also have a much more sophisticated intelligence community, especially post 9/11. The instances of terrorism we’ve experienced have often involved homegrown Muslim terrorists, acting alone, and are in essence more like the Christian terrorist attacks I mentioned earlier than the incidents in Paris, Brussels and Pakistan.

However, while we can and should separate the two, failing to acknowledge that the West–including the United States–is at war with radical Islam seems like a mistake. If saying the obvious out loud is all that separates our moderate, law-abiding Muslim population from being radicalized at the hands of groups like ISIS, then they are not as moderate or law abiding as we give them credit for.

What most Americans do seem to agree upon is that the Middle East is a historically-unstable region that probably has, at the very least, decades of violent realignment in its future that no amount of American influence is going to change. We seem rather comfortable with the idea of that reality in other regions of the world where the U.S. does not hold a vital interest–most notably Africa.

The most pragmatic solution would seem to be to divorce ourselves from that reality by eliminating our interests in the region, which are almost exclusively tied to oil markets. By implementing strict protocols to curb energy use, most notably through a reduction in oil use for automotive transport, the United States could easily (and relatively painlessly) achieve such a goal.

Regulation has forced auto manufacturers to be much more responsive to fuel efficiency over the last six years, but we’ve only begin to scratch the surface in terms of what is possible were we to entirely shift our focus away from building larger and more powerful vehicles and solely toward more fuel efficient ones. Within two decades the U.S. could also shift toward a driverless grid of hybrid/electric vehicles that would have more of an impact than any other technology in terms of reducing our reliance on oil.

It seems unlikely that regime change or even diplomacy are going to cure the ills of the Middle East, and a historical look at U.S. involvement would suggest that we have hampered the region far more than we’ve helped via intervention. The desire of ISIS and other militant groups to attack the U.S. and other Western countries is directly linked to our involvement in conflicts on their soil. They don’t hate us for our freedom. They hate us for the bombs we drop on their land.