Caveats

I should remark first on my impressions on the 9/11 commission and their recommendations. In my first reading of the report, I was struck by the banality of the recommendations. My second reading was not much more favorable.

The biggest flaw in the recommendations is that there is no attempt to deal with Islam as a description of reality, that is, the possibility that Islam correctly defines the relationship between God and man. Thus the second set of recommendations becomes little more than an appeal to Muslims' better nature and an attempt to convince the umma that we really are good people and should just be left alone. The hope then is that by abiding by a "live and let live" policy, we will ultimately convince them of the benefits of Western tolerance and consumerism. And as we do that, we will essentially buy off the extremists as they see that life is better if they do things our way.

Of course, the flaw here is that the liberalization of Islam, the Westernization of Islam, the attempt to bring the values of the Western Enlightenment to Islam, is precisely what the Islamic extremists fear. It has been stated elsewhere that Islam considers the West corrupt, lewd, and faithless. The West has spent the last half century advertising its way of life through the popular media. We can argue that the reflection of the West in the popular media isn't truly reflective of the West. And that would be true. But because "bad guys" are much more entertaining than "good guys", because the spectacular events of the small fraction of criminals makes better ratings, and because sex sells, this is the image of the West. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

And the West IS faithless. It shows in the considerations made by the 9/11 commission. They are correct in their recommendations that we need to convince the terrorists that this approach is wrong. But they fail to recognize that "wrong" does not mean merely "not pragmatic". And they fail to see that because they no longer take seriously the idea that God is really there, God is really here. God, in the West, is a psychological construct to "get you through the night", necessary only for the weak. At its most generous, the culture might concede that all religions are just different paths to the One.

Because the commissioners do not take God seriously, there is no way to dispute the interpretation of the Koran. How can you argue that they're wrong, if a) this is just another way to the One or b) God is for weaklings ? And so, we're left with convincing the Islamists that we're OK and, if they won't be convinced, we'll just have to be patient until we've made heretics of them all.