"I don't hear a voice for civilization right now."
The Saturday profile in today's New York Times is about Dr. Wafa Sultan, a prominent critic of Islamic fundamentalism. A recent interview she did for Al-Jazeera has led to her denunciation as a heretic by some Muslim extremists. She has also received numerous death threats. A few of my favorite quotes from Dr. Sultan from the Times article:
- "I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings."
"Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."
- Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."
She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."
She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."
- "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."
- "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."
She said she no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said.
The last quote in particular echoes a 2004 interview in the Independent with Dr. Vamik Volkan, a pioneer in the field of political psychology who points to the same misunderstanding of the American conception of what the "War On Terror" actually is. Dr. Volkan stated:
"We need to understand the enemy. We need to humanize the negotiations--to make them between people, not gods. You have to have a process, an open-ended process. Not only psychoanalysts. We need historians and diplomats to help... I'm talking about having maybe five to 10 thinkers who are apolitical and whose main purpose is to explain, to create a voice for civilization for when regression occurs. I don't hear a voice for civilization right now."
The conflict, then, is not between civilizations, but between civilization and fundamentalism. Americans like to overlook the influence of fundamentalist Christianity, particularly in the current administration. But the psychology of fundamentalism is the same, regardless of what you label it. Fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam are merely two sides of the same coin. What we are really seeing is an assault on reason and rationality. Events in the United States such as demanding that intelligent design be taught in science classes as some alternative to real science is a manifestation of that, as is the denial of education to girls that routinely happens in Muslim theocracies. Dr. Volkan points out how there is little difference in the psychology of Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration:
It's identical, identical--as a process, I'm talking about. It's, "I'm all good. I'm omnipotent. I'm on the side of truth and you are not. And since you are not, I should kill you." There is also a second sentence, that "by killing you, I help you, by saving you from going to hell." Napoleon, before he went to Spain, gave a speech where he said something similar. That, "You are so oppressed. Let me come in and kill you so I can give you freedom." What we need is to develop strategies--an ego--that can explain these processes.
What I find truly scary about the state of the world today is how much of the conflict is not at all rational. In the Cold War, much was made of the difference between American capitalism and Soviet communism. But in fact, there was much similarity between the two societies. Both countries were expansive quasi-federalist systems with highly centralized economies organized around industry as the primary economic engine. The world view of both countries was basically rational, scientific, and modern. In fact, a large part of the argument between the two was over who was more modern rather than who was more pious.
The conflict today is different. It is not based on reason, but on the faith of people who all believe they have a monopoly on absolute truth. When one "absolute truth" conflicts with another "absolute truth", there is little room for honest disagreement, compromise, or even co-existence. The theory of MAD--Mutually Assured Destruction--which was largely responsible for preventing an all-out nuclear war during the 40 years of the Cold War, is, in spite of its name, dependent on the presumption of rationality on the parts of both sides. Extremists, in contrast, believe that those who do not share their views must be annihilated, either through persecution or death. If they destroy themselves in the process, that is not of much concern, since they believe that their actions will deliver them to some eternal paradise in the afterlife.
Rationality is needed in order to calm the situation and provide a framework for negotiating a way for people to coexist that will last in the long term. But rational people are increasingly being persecuted, intimidated, imprisoned, or killed for speaking out. A situation such as Islamic anger over the Muhammed cartoons can very quickly escalate out of control due to the underlying volatility of the situation, much as the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand was the spark that touched off the powder keg of Europe and led to the first world war. The United States already has a huge nuclear arsenal. Israel, a state which takes increasingly hardline actions and operates more and more outside of mainstream international norms, also has nuclear weapons. The Islamic fundamentalists in Iran seem to be trying to develop nuclear weapons of their own, an event which has the potential to shift the entire global balance of power.
It is becoming more difficult to see what will work as a deterrent to the use of all of these lethal weapons. MAD depends on a certain rationality, on both sides knowing the rules of the game and the point at which they must back down to keep the situation from getting out of control. But rationality is in short supply these days--and there does not seem to be any rules at all.