November 7, 2007:
One thing
that keeps the Islamic world favorably disposed towards Islamic terrorism is
widespread fear and hatred of the Western world. Opinion surveys continue to
show that Moslems hate and fear the West, more than Westerns hate and fear
Moslems (despite the growth of Islamic terrorism.)
The fear comes largely from
the poor economic, political and scientific performance of the Moslem,
especially the Arab, world when compared to the West. It's a perverse
expression of jealousy and resentment. There are practical reasons for this
lack of progress. For example, the Arab world didn't adopt printing until two
centuries after it became common in the West. This was partly due to the
complexities of written Arabic. There are thousands of rules governing how
Arabic letters are joined, and it was difficult for typographers to make it
work. A further complication was resistance from the Islamic religious
establishment. Printed Arabic had to be very much like written Arabic,
otherwise one was defaming the language of the Koran, which is God's word. This
is one of the reasons the Arab world publishes books at a tenth the rate of the
rest of the world. The lack of books leads to knowledge being transmitted more
slowly.
That brings up another
obstacle. For a thousand years, there has been a struggle between a large
segment of the Islamic clergy, and Moslem scientists and engineers. In a
pattern that persists to the present, Islamic conservatives condemned many
things that are "new" as "un-Islamic." Thus the al Qaeda enthusiasm for this
attitude is nothing new. The price paid for this attitude has been enormous.
Moslem countries contain a disproportionate number of the illiterates on the
planet. Arab college students are much less likely to study science and
engineering than are non-Moslem students. The West produces more than a hundred
times as many Nobel prizes in science, per million people, than does the
Islamic world.
The education shortage results
in less wealth. GDP of all Islamic countries is a fifth of the European Union
and the United States (which contain half as many people.) Unemployment rates
are much higher in Islamic countries, and most are ruled by dictators or
monarchs. Without science, education and democracy, you find that science and
economic progress cannot flourish.
It's only recently become
fashionable among Moslems to attribute this to internal conditions. The Arab
Reform Movement tries, with limited success, to overcome this "blame the
outsider" attitude. Even the Saudi royal family is behind the Arab Reform
Movement, and the need for the Islamic world to invest more in education and
economic freedom. But thousand year old habits are difficult to erase quickly.
This is why Westerners can speak with educated Moslems and come away thinking
that friendly relations between the Western and Islamic world are more likely
than not. But among the vast majority of poorly educated, and often illiterate,
Moslems, the West is feared and hated. Moslem tyrants play on this, as they
have for centuries, to blame the misery the tyrants have created on infidel
(non-Moslem) foreigners.
This instinctive Islamic
ill-will towards the West changes very slowly, and until it changes a lot,
easily recruited Islamic terrorists will feel compelled to kill Westerners.