It's all about pluralism

Editorial

A decade ago, the United States was the world's unchallenged superpower. Then, fewer than two dozen men with boxcutters, following the orders of a caveman, brought the United States to its knees.

In response, the Bush administration entered into an asymmetrical war it cannot win – asymmetrical because, although it has by far the superior firepower, conventional warfare cannot defeat an endless queue of suicidal zealots.
Meanwhile, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad promises his nuclear program is progressing full steam ahead.

Yet the more immediate threat of nuclear aggression may come from nearby Pakistan, where the situation is fluid and potentially cataclysmic. Recently, military dictator Pervez Musharraf essentially disempowered the Supreme Court of that country and suspended what existed of the rule of law. Without drawing too fine a point, there is some irony that the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre is co-sponsoring a month of reflection on the rights of lawyers under the Third Reich, just as Pakistan's military leader is delegitimizing the legal profession in his country.

As distasteful an ally as Musharraf may be, however, if he were to fall to Islamist insurgents, we would face the catastrophic prospect of the world's most hateful and medieval theocrats controlling a nuclear arsenal. Yet, as the Middle East situation becomes graver by the day, there remain those in the West who subscribe to a deeply flawed interpretation of reality.

The apologists' case is that the terrorists are motivated by legitimate grievances. Leftists, primarily, and others in the West with ideological motivations, contend that America and/or Israel are the causes of the conflict. It is the incessant mantra of the apologists that, in order to stanch the rage swirling throughout the Muslim world, we must address the underlying causes of the rage. But it is those who most determinedly insist that the only way to resolve the conflict is to address the underlying causes, who misperceive precisely what those underlying causes actually are.

The problem is an awkward one, because there are legitimate grievances against the West from developing world peoples. How could there not be, when we observe the gross inequalities in the world? But the grievances of economic inequality, while fuel certainly, are not the primary motivators for the conflict.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban – these forces all have arguably genuine grievances against the West: American foreign policy in Arab and Muslim regions or perceived Israeli affronts to Palestinians are legitimate reasons for Arab rage. But we mislead ourselves if we think these are the real root causes. Ultimately, American interventionism or Zionist existence is an excuse for the rage, not its cause. The genesis of the rage is not the American and Western invasion of Iraq or American foreign policy more generally, or Zionist oppression or Christian evangelicalism or Western expansionism, though these are arguably contributing causes, depending on one's viewpoint and interpretations. The real cause of the conflict is the insoluble divide between pluralism and its discontents.

The West is struggling, no mistake about it, to delineate the limits of pluralism. But the enemies of the West – whether in the guise of violent extremists like al Qaeda, the more moderate dictatorships of the Middle East or the proverbial Arab street – are motivated primarily by their opposition to pluralism. From the most extremist elements in the Muslim world across the spectrum to the prospective partners for peace in Fatah, from the strict enforcers of Sharia law in Iran to the relatively liberal societies of Jordan and the West Bank, the underlying principle is the inerrancy of the majority ideology. Whether interpreted as Islamic law or as a form of exclusivist nationalism that would see (and, across the Muslim world since 1948, has seen) the evacuation of Jews and other minorities from those societies, whether religious or nationalist, a form of anti-pluralism exists across the Muslim world. It is most clearly evident in the most relevant schism of all: that between Shiite and Sunni.

Apologists can make the case that Arab rage is driven by foreign policy disagreements, but this is to miss the most salient features of the rage. The rage is a xenophobic phenomenon resulting from fanatical adherence to either religion or nationalism or both. It is fed from the top down and exacerbated by economic inequality (often purposefully imposed on a citizenry by their rulers). At root, it is less about what the West does than about what the West is: a pluralist civilization that runs contrary to the religious and political ideology that drives the Muslim extremists.

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