Numerous explanations have been offered to explain the etiology of political violence and terrorism, particularly the terrorism that has its roots in the fundamentalist Islamic groups from the Middle East. Telhami (2004) advances an argument that prioritizes a political-economic perspective in which the phenomenon of terrorism is explained by a simple supply and demand equation. Said (1997), meanwhile, posits a more abstract social explanation, contending that “the difficulty of perception” has both complicated an easy understanding of the motivations for terrorism as well as served to instigate more frequent and more intense terrorist acts (p. 138). Still another perspective is that of Ali, who insists that a “clash of fundamentalisms” is responsible for terrorism and violence. While all three arguments have their merits, it is Ali’s perspective that is ultimately the most convincing. Although economic conditions and perceptions are contributing factors to terrorism and violence in the Middle East, it seems clear that there is a clash of fundamentalisms at work in the world, from the Islamist extremists in the Middle East to the fundamental conservatives in the United States.
Telhami does offer valuable insights about the ways in which the United States has largely failed to understand the rational explanations for terror and violence from the Middle East. As he notes, Americans find it difficult to accept the possibility that the kind of acts committed on September 11, 2001 can be explained rationally, for “it is often feared that to explain is to justify” (p. 13). While Telhami acknowledges the fear is understandable, it is ultimately, he argues, “self-defeating” (p. 13). In light of their terror, which prompts Americans to project their anxieties about what they perceive to be the ambiguity of terror onto religious fundamentalist groups, Telhami rightly argues that there is a far more logical and unambiguous explanation of terrorism in terms of the Middle East, and that explanation can be understood by applying the theoretical framework of supply and demand derived from economic theory. If American policy makers fail to understand the dynamics of supply and demand, he contends, “the terrorism phenomenon [will be] unlikely to be contained” (p. 14). As he concludes, there are real reasons for the “despair and humiliation” that prompt the demand for terrorists (p. 14).
It Telhami’s last point about “despair and humiliation” that squares nicely with Said’s argument regarding the clash of perceptions that he believes explains terrorism and extreme violence. The negative “image of Islam in the West generally and in the United States in particular” has, in Said’s estimation, spurred violence. The Middle East world has long been “uniformly…considered [by the United States] an inferior part of the world,” which has, to the West’s discredit, fostered at least three dangerous and erroneous assumptions: first, that the East in general and Islamic countries in particular have long been cast by the Western world as “formidable [if inferior] competitor[s]”; second, that Islam is a “latecoming challenge to Christianity”; and third, that the Middle East, as inferior, is less capable of participating meaningfully in world affairs (pp. 4-5). Said exposes the irrationality of the three assumptions, noting that the Middle East “has always been endowed with greater size and with a greater [if unrealized] potential for power” (p. 4), that Islam is hardly a late-coming religious phenomenon, and that the East will insist upon its right to participate in world affairs, if not through legitimate means, then through the instruments of violence and terrorism.
Telhami’s and Said’s arguments certainly provide a solid background against which Tariq’s (2002) theoretical proposition can best be understood. While Telhami and Said offer convincing and complementary arguments, it is Tariq’s argument which provides the most immediate relevance and greatest accessibility for understanding the phenomenon of terror as it is unfolding presently. Tariq’s argument is also the most convincing of the three because it is the most plainly articulated, the most urgent, and the most accessible. Tariq argues that it is fundamentalism—or fundamentalisms, plural—that are responsible for and perpetuate the dynamics of terrorist violence. Yet Tariq speaks plainly—and perhaps, for Americans, painfully—when he asserts that Islamist terrorists are not the only fundamental group in the world. In fact, Tariq argues that the “‘the mother of all fundamentalisms’ is American imperialism” (p. 1), and he criticizes American foreign policy, which has “decided…to use tragedy as a moral level to re-map the world” (p. 1) and has crafted all actions around the notion that Islamists are “evil, the threat is global, and for that reason, bombs have to be dropped wherever and whenever necessary” (p. 1), resulting in a “brave new world of infinite war” (p. 2).
At the same time, though, Tariq does not absolve Islamist fundamentalists of the responsibility they bear for the acts of terrorism that they perpetrate. He despairs that the failure of both sides to attempt to understand “despair and… lethal exaltation” has resulted in a clash of fundamentalisms (p. 3) that will not be easily resolved, if at all. Tariq’s argument about what inevitably occurs when the clash of fundamentalisms comes to a head includes ideas similar to those articulated by Telhami and Said. As “[a]nger, frustration, and despair multiply,” desperate fundamentalists—whether American or Islamist—“begin to live by their own laws” (p. 3). The “willing recruits” to carry out the policies of each fundamentalist group will never, Tariq observes, “be in short supply,” an idea that reflects Telhami’s argument (p. 3). Ultimately, while Telhami and Said offer thoughtful and incisive analyses that enrich our understanding of terrorism and fundamentalism, it is Tariq’s argument that is most convincing and effective for explaining terrorism and violence. Tariq’s argument is the most nuanced and expansive of the three positions, for it takes into account the main ideas articulated by Telhami and Said while expressing a more decisive and assertive position about the accountability that rests on all extremists, regardless of ethnicity.
References
Said, E.W. (1997). Covering Islam: How the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world. New York: Vintage.
Tariq, A. (2002). The clash of fundamentalisms: Crusades, jihad, and modernity. New York: Verso.
Telhami, S. (2004). The stakes: America in the Middle East: The consequences of power and the choice for peace. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
