What is it that radicalizes Muslims, including American Muslims? Is it American foreign policy? Israeli “occupation” of the ancient Jewish territories of Judea and Samaria? Cartoons depicting the warrior-prophet as a warrior? Korans torched by obscure Florida pastors? The life of Osama bin Laden, or, perhaps, his death? Any of a thousand claimed slights, real or imagined, that purportedly provoke young Muslims to “conflagrate” — if we may borrow from the forgiving rationalizations of Faisal Rauf, would-be imam of the would-be Ground Zero mosque?
Here is the unsettling but sedulously avoided truth: What radicalizes Muslims is Islam.
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Political correctness requires that we becloud this simple truth with a few caveats that, in most any other context, would be regarded as distractions by sensible people. So it is necessary to say that there is more than one interpretation of Islam. We must further note that the fact that Islam itself is the radicalizing catalyst does not mean that all, or even most, Muslims will become radicals. But here is another disquieting truth: Even the terms “radicalization” and “radical Islam” get things exactly backwards. The reality is that the radicals in Islam are the reformers — the Muslims who embrace Western civilization, its veneration of reason in matters of faith, and the pluralistic space it makes for civil society. What we wishfully call “radicalism” is in fact the Islamic mainstream.
These are the principal takeaways from an important study just competed by Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. As detailed in a just-published Middle East Quarterly essay, “Shari’a and Violence in American Mosques” (available here), the authors’ “Mapping Sharia” project surveyed 100 randomly selected mosques across the United States. Onsite, fully 81 percent of the mosques featured Islamic texts that advocate violence. In nearly 85 percent of the mosques, the leadership (usually an imam or prayer leader) favorably recommended this literature for study by congregants. Moreover, 58 percent of the mosques invited guest lecturers known for promoting violent jihad.
Kedar and Yerushalmi sought to study two intimately related sets of correlations. The first focused on sharia, the Islamic system of law that is based primarily on the Koran and the Sunnah (i.e., the words, deeds, and traditions of Mohammed). The authors homed in on observable sharia-compliant behaviors. These are not actions unique to terrorist groups but conduct reflective of the broad consensus of sharia jurisprudence that cuts across the Sunni/Shiite divide — for example, women wearing the hijab or niqab (respectively, the head covering or full-length covering of the entire female form), the segregation of men from women during communal prayer, and the enforcement by imams of the requirement that male worshippers form up in tight, straight lines during mosque prayer.
This is an interesting study, but lacks any detail on the content of Shari'a that calls for violence. What authority and codification is there for declaring all lands that aren't Islamic the "land of war"? Exactly what does the Shari'a say about what constitutes "corruption in the land", as cited in every Islamic resistance or insurgency? What are the precedented remedies for things of this sort?
This article makes substantive points and continues to leave us without guidance on what those points mean.
This man MUST be tapped for the next administration in the area of how to proceed to defend the U.S. against radical Islam.
Andrew McCarthy 'gets it' and understands the national security and legal issues surrounding. We NEED him in a high influence position with open door access to the new President.
DonnaDiorio, I agree with you completely. Mr. McCarthy must be put into an important national security job by the next, Republican, President. I read everything he writes, and he never fails to explain the nature of the threat we face. I only wish the MSM would wake up and explain this to the public at large.
Once again, McCarthy, you show a blind spot as large as Northern Africa regarding Islam and Islamic thought.
You clearly don't know the history of Islamic thought, you don't speak the primary language of Islam, and therefore you aren't qualified to make the pronouncements you make.
You call the reformers the radicals. But in reality you don't have the slightest numeric count of the numbers of Muslims that align along the full spectrum of thought in Islam - i.e. you don't know what the bell curve looks like.
For example, you totally ignore the fact that Muslims themselves have been debating for over 1000 years the issue of what is means to be Muslim, and that the debate continues on today.
You ignore the fact that the issue of clerical authority is very problematic in Islam, and is widely acknowledged to be.
Any cleric you listen to for your evidence of Islam's radicalization is your choice, not Islams, where the cleric is having just as much a problem establishing his authority as is any other cleric.
Ah, you say, but Islam's internal debate leads to violence.
Which shows that you forget that Christians spent hundreds, if not thousands of years, fighting, and killing each other (Catholic, Protestant, and even including today's faux "issue" of whether a Mormon should be president) over which interpretation of the Bible and which line of clerical authority are valid.
But you forget all that when you talk of the Muslim evolution. You don't allow Muslims the same path of discussion and even violence that you clearly allow and apparently have no problem with in the history of your own religious tradition.
Why is that, Mr. McCarthy? Why the hostility, when Christ taught to love and pray for your enemies?
You might very appropriately think about putting the quote (from John) above your columns on radical Islam:
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
Which shows that you forget that Christians spent hundreds, if not thousands of years, fighting, and killing each other (Catholic, Protestant, and even including today's faux "issue" of whether a Mormon should be president) over which interpretation of the Bible and which line of clerical authority are valid.
Christians did spend 100s of years behaving rather poorly. The difference is that Jesus’ teachings don’t condone violence, while the Qur’an explicitly endorses it against non-believers. Due to this, Christianity has the capacity to grow beyond violence, which it has largely done since the 17th C. Perhaps that’s why in the 21st Century Christianity universally condemns Holy War, while Islam continues to endorse it. Perhaps that’s why in the 21st century, the Christian nations of the West are pluralistic societies with strong protections for religious minorities, while the Islamic nations officially oppress non-believers. Islam believes that the Qur’an is literally the word of Allah, and that word calls for violence against non-believers. There’s ample evidence in the 21st C that many Muslims take this call for violent Jihad seriously, a substantial portion of so-called “Moderate” Islam approves of this violence and oppression against non believers.
Mr. McCarthy, I share your concern regarding the very real threat of Islamic extremism, but profoundly disagree on its causes.
You mention Qutb and Mawdudi (and let us not forget al-Afghani), but I think you do not fully recognize the extraordinary and profound influence they have had. These theorists were the Marx and Engels of the Islamic world, capitalizing on the deep tension caused by modernization, in promoting political theories that appealed to the classes of society that felt themselves threatened by the advance of the modern world.
And it is, fundamentally, a political movement. The notion that Islamic extremism is a religious movement is a lie; it is no more a religious movement than the Crusades were. The ideologues who fashioned modern Islamic extremism borrowed extensively from other modern theorists, including the Communists and Fascists, in building their utopian ideology. The totalitarian state they envisioned is distinguishable from the Fascist state only in the nominal faith of the elite of society who run it, Islamic versus Nationalist/Racialist.
Prior to the advent of the modern Islamic extremists, the Islamic world was a sleepy and largely accommodative place under the rule of the Ottomans, whose commitment to Islam was lukewarm at best. Traditional views held sway, but no more than in any other corner of the world outside of the reach of the Enlightenment. Much of the Islamic world was on its way to Westernization under the Ottomans and the Shahs; ironically, it was interference from the West that weakened those dynasties to the point that they were replaced with tribal, nationalist, and populist leaders more vulnerable to Islamist ideology.
As you noted, Islamic extremism has infiltrated a large number of modern mosques. But I would see the situation as analogous to the infiltration of progressivism into modern Christianity; it is not in any way a direct expression of the underlying faith, it is rather the broad encroachment of a very modern ideology that has met only limited resistance in its advance. The broad extent of its reach should not be seen as an argument that it is fundamental to the faith; that is a lie propagated by its adherents, and one that is designed to intimidate those who would stand in its way.
Umm, I don't know for sure, but it would seem to me the defenders of Vienna in 1683 didn't find the 250K Turks knocking on their door to be sleepy and largely accommodative. But hey, maybe it was a giant "welcome to the neighborhood" party and the Turks just brought gifts.
"Prior to the advent of the modern Islamic extremists, the Islamic world was a sleepy and largely accommodative place under the rule of the Ottomans, whose commitment to Islam was lukewarm at best."
Islam IS the problem. Those whom we label "moderate" Muslims are actually apostate to their faith.
Humanity hungers for a relationship with the divine. We instinctively know that faith comes at a cost - there is no cheap grace. It is free, but not cheap. Men and women will seek God.
How ironic that the very people who have relentlessly persecuted religious beliefs here in the US (e.g., the ACLU) also protect and thereby promote radical Islam.
Arabs behaved in the same wretched, violent fashion prior to Mohammed, living by banditry and theft, using vendetta to settle disputes, with oppression of women not merely common but universal.
Mohammed merely focused their attention on a single goal: kill people unlike themselves, and steal their property: the thief gets 80%, Mohammed gets 20%.
Not sure? Ask a moderate Muslim about the division of stolen property - it's in the Koran.
If Islam is the problem, how do Christian Arabs behave? Ask Helen Thomas. Google "Phalangist".
A number of commentators here seem to be missing the point...
The point, as I see it at least, isn't whether or not the violent strain of Islam, is "true Islam" or not. I'm not qualified to make that distinction, and I doubt any non-Muslim is. Unless you are a Muslim, however, it doesn't matter. From an outsider's perspective, all that matters is, how prevalent this strain is and how do we wipe it out?
On the first question, Mr. McCarthy gives the information to let us deduce that the answer seems to be "pretty prevalent, at least among the Mosque-going population," with the caveat that this does not include all Muslims.
On the second question, Mr. McCarthy doesn't give us an answer, but does give us data that suggests that "moderate Islam" may not be what's needed to get rid of the violent strain.
I'm about a third of the way through the Koran right now, and while I wouldn't claim to be an expert on the subject by any means I can certainly say that Islam does not strike me as a "religion of peace." There are simply too many passages in the book which either condone or promote violence. Now I suppose that all of those passages are subject to interpretation, and although I would be interested to go to various mosques to see how the different imams use these passages in sermons to the faithful, I think I'll pass on that avenue of research because I'm not too keen on being decapitated.
I suspect that many Muslims in America came here to escape the brutality and tyranny of their homelands. By demanding that sharia be tolerated in the name of "sensitivity" we betray those very Muslims that want to enjoy the protections and benefits of American Law. Our sensitivity should be to those Muslims who want to be both Americans and faithful, not to the Jihadists that even here would tyrrannize them.
PV wrote: But I would see the situation as analogous to the infiltration of progressivism into modern Christianity; it is not in any way a direct expression of the underlying faith, it is rather the broad encroachment of a very modern ideology...
I too am concerned about the threat of radical Islam. For the purposes of this article however, PV states a distinction without a difference. Radicalism *IS* being preached frequently in a broad cross section of mosques. How it got there or whether it is truly representative of the faith is of relatively little importance from the perspective of potential targets, that is, all of us. It is clear that radicalism is being promoted in an entirely Islamic environment, the local mosque. Mr. McCarthy proposes that we stop pretending otherwise.
I read the Koran twice and was struck by the number of times I read "kill the unbelievers".
The dissemblers tell me I have to read such phrases in historical context (well, of course, it was to Mohammed's advantage to get his followers to eliminate the competition...)
But the debate over what is or izznt "true" Islam seems quite beside the point, given the worldwide carnage committed in its name over decades now.
I'd been thinking for some time about some fantastic Cabinet secretaries and key appointments, such as: Mark Levin for DoJ; John Bolton for SoS; Labor, possibly Chris Christie. Andy McCarthy? CIA Director or National Security Advisor or possibly SecDef. And, Press Secretary Michelle Malkin! Thomas Sowell as Chief Economic Advisor! Now these all would all move America/Americans in the right direction, and quickly!
