Is the problem blowing up in the Middle East Islam or something else? On the one hand it is fully dressed up as Islam. It wears turbans, speaks Arabic quotes the Koran and the Hadith, issues Fatwas. Is seems fully Islamic and sounds like religious fanaticism. But, oddly, if you strip away the religious trappings, it looks a lot like Nazism and Communism, the obscene 20th Century Totalitarian movements we fought for a century.
There is the desire for a single omnipotent leader, for everyone to be forced to believe the same things as everyone else. The belief that glorious ends justify any conceivable means. The blood lust and focus on terror and random violence. Hatred and scapegoats and the language of genocide and class warfare and now sectarian warfare. Maybe this isn't an excess of religious passion, but a rather more base desire in a new hat. Is this just a phase very traditional societies, with rigid hierarchies and sharp sex role divisions, go through as they modernize? As they modernize, they look at the West and see decadence and weakness and calculate that, instead of modernizing, they can just conquer the West and subordinate it. Instead of relaxing their hierarchies, they can make the more extreme and rigid on their way to world domination. The goal seems more and more unworkable, but the process seems to be playing out yet again. -Mike Oliker ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
