Islam And The West To Remain Mired In Sporadic Fights – OpEd

By B.Z. Khasru*

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With a string of suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, which killed more than 250 people in the island nation in the Indian Ocean, an old question has resurfaced: What motivated the attackers?

Analysis of similar events in Europe, Africa, and Asia reaches contradictory conclusions. A paper on “Radicalisation and al-Shabaab recruitment in Somalia” found that people joined extremists organizations “for economic benefits.” In fact, the authors write, research from “Somalia showed that 27 percent of respondents joined al Shabab for economic reasons, 15 percent mentioned religious reasons, and 13 percent were forced to join.”

Meanwhile, a World Bank study based on leaked Islamic State records indicated no link between poverty or educational levels and radicalization. A joint study by Northwestern University and the Hebrew University concurred. “Poor economic conditions do not drive participation in ISIS,” the authors found. In fact, many of them came from wealthy countries with low inequality. Instead, the study concluded, “the flow of foreign fighters to ISIS is driven not by economic or political conditions but rather by ideology and the difficulty of assimilation into homogeneous Western countries.”

Sri Lanka bombings

None of these studies, however, can explain the motivation behind the attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter and in Bangladesh three years ago. These attackers did not fit into any one of the patterns cited in these studies.

In Bangladesh, a Muslim majority nation of 170 million people, the extremists killed 22 people in 2016, most of them foreigners, in a cafe in an upscale neighborhood in Dhaka, not far from the U.S. Embassy. All of the attackers were well-educated and most of them came from wealthy families.

In Sri Lanka, two of the suicide bombers involved in the attacks were members of a prominent and wealthy family, involved in copper mining and spice trade. Their father founded Colombo-based Ishana Exports, largest exporter of spices from the island nation since 2006. Another bomber studied in England and was a graduate student in Australia before returning to Sri Lanka. According to the Sri Lankan government, most of the attackers were “well educated” and had come from “middle-or upper middle-class” families.

In this South Asian nation of 22 million people, 70 percent are Buddhist, 13 percent Hindu, 8 percent Christian and 9 percent Muslim. They have been living together at least 1,000 years. Christian-Muslim hostility never existed in Sri Lanka. So, assimilation problems can’t explain the attacks, either.

Muslims worldwide feel aggrieved

In general, Muslims worldwide feel aggrieved, and find no mechanism to redress their grievances. They blame the West—which represents the Christians—for their plight. Since the death of Muhammad in 632 AD and for centuries, Muslims had Caliphs uniting them all over the world. The Caliphate ended in 1924 when Turkey became a secular republic. Since then, many Muslims have yearned for the restoration of the Caliphate and reunification of the Muslims under one leader as the Catholics are under the Pope.

Muslims want to be as prosperous as the Western industrialized nations, if not more, but find the West opposes their progress. With Europe and America controlling the world economically and militarily, they do not expect to recreate their lost empire. But they certainly do expect to retake their neighborhoods. If the Taliban return to power in Afghanistan, this view will be reinforced.

Current atrocities in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have made today’s Muslim youths even more convinced of the urgency to make self-sacrifices to save their people. No other issue riles up Muslims as much as Palestine. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, warned President Truman in 1947 about this danger, and urged him not to divide Palestine.

Muslims cannot fathom why Christians support Israel, since Jews do not honor Jesus, where as Muslims hold him in high regard as one of God’s prophets. Many young Muslims are motivated because of they believe that the West has been suppressing Islam to perpetuate its global domination. It is the same belief that once pushed many young people all over the world into communism.

“A feeling of marginalization as a greater community of Islamic Ummah is encouraging even socially affluent people to get involved in ‘Jihad,’ ”noted a study by the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies.

Many scholars and policy makers seem to be baffled by the fact that many of these suicide bombers are well-educated and affluent. But this should not surprise anyone. After all, many communist leaders belonged to the upper class, too, and were highly educated. W. E. B. Du Bois, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara are just a few to name. They were all driven by their earnest desire to end social injustice. Right or wrong, many Islamic extremists hold similar views.

Attacks reflect old phenomenon

There is a similarity between today’s Islamic radicalization and yesterday’s communist revolution. After Bangladesh became independent, in the early 1970s hammer and sickle graffiti were ubiquitous. Students in their teens and 20s, who had been brainwashed into romantic revolutionaries, painted these graffiti. They came from the upper echelon of society, but fancied themselves as saviors of their fellow hapless countrymen.

These romantic revolutionaries sprang up from a mainstream leftist party that preferred ballot to bullet—the National Awami Party. Exactly the same way, today’s Islamic extremists in Bangladesh splintered from a theocratic outfit that believes in electoral politics—Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

The attacks in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka represent an old phenomenon. The difference between the current wave of extremism and yesteryear’s revolution is ideology. Today’s banner is the crescent, as opposed to the hammer and sickle of the communist era. Muslim youths turn to conservative Islam because they have no other progressive ideology available to them. Democracy—as well as capitalism—has already been rejected by them as decadent.

Islamic extremists believe they are on the right side of the equation. They do not want to destroy the West, as the myth goes on in Europe and America, even through many of them consider it unfair and unjust. They want to co-exist, but refuse to be insulted by the West. Above all, they want a seat at the table of equals. Until this happens, Islam and the West will remain mired in an unending clash.

*B.Z. Khasru’s new book, “One Eleven, Minus Two: Prime Minister Hasina’s War on Yunus and America,” will be published soon. He previously authored: “Bangladesh Liberation War: How India, U.S, China and the USSR Shaped the Outcome,” and “The Bangladesh Military Coup and the CIA Link.”