MUSLIM RAGE

Ian Buruma on Bernard Lewis's claim that "muslim rage" is powering the jihadists:

Lewis identifies two mainstays of Muslim rage. One is the spectacle of infidels ruling over true believers. This, in the eyes of the believers, “is blasphemous and unnatural, since it leads to the corruption of religion and morality in society, and to the flouting or even the abrogation of God’s law.” This account may help explain the revolutionary aspirations of Al Qaeda, but it is not persuasive when Lewis applies it to Uighurs in China or to Kosovars. They rebel in response to social and political oppression, not to blasphemy.

The second mainstay identified by Lewis is a more general one: secular modernity. The war on modernity “is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.”

This certainly makes Muslim rage seem understandable, even justified. But Lewis’s analysis is marred by an odd paradox. For those same angry and humiliated masses are, in Lewis’s view, also deeply attracted to the temptations of the modern world: they all want sex, Nikes, and rock and roll. “Fundamentalist leaders are not mistaken in seeing in Western civilization the greatest challenge to the way of life that they wish to retain or restore for their people,” Lewis writes.

Buruma is obviously skeptical of Lewis's work, but in trying to refute Lewis's theories, I think Buruma somewhat misrepresents Lewis's ideas. Lewis would be one of the first to recognize the very paradox that Buruma brings up here as a "gotcha!" and to agree that there is no monolithic "Muslim mind." Many, many people in the Muslim world are attracted to the benefits and comforts which they see enjoyed in Western societies. Many, many people in the Muslim world also perceive Westernization as a very serious threat to their cultural heritage, and some react more violently to this threat than others.