Making Enemies, Part II
Abstract
To continue this investigation into the nature
of our enemy in the War on Terror,
my premise, again, is this: Westernization
is an endemic threat to any group wishing
to retain its non-Western and often pre-modern
corporate identity. This threat produces reactions
shaped by demography (un- or underemployed
adolescent males), by factionalism,
by political circumstances and by the cultural
predicates of religious belief. These demographic,
social, political and cultural factors are often
varyingly mistaken as causes of Islamist violence
when, more properly, they should be called enablers.
What has caused our Islamist enemies to
be what they are erupts from factional divides
we exacerbate when we push individual rights
and freedoms, live as though we privilege the
material over the spiritual, and universalize our
notions of equality.
Description
The American Interest, September/October 2006.