Young Muslims see political Islam as form of rebellion: Ian Buruma

Ian Buruma, writes for The New Yorker and Granta, speaks to DNA about his new book — Murder in Amsterdam — that is making people sit up and take notice of the radicalisation of the world’s fastest growing religion — Islam

WASHINGTON DC: You could blame it on Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ theory, but the Harvard political scientist was perhaps prescient in his article in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1993 in which he said that the primary source of conflict in the future would be culture and religion. The same year, the World Trade Centre in New York was bombed, and radical Islam was staring down at America.

Eight years later, the US would come face to face with the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century – the attack on New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia – events that forced the country to wage a war against terror and radical Islam.

In many ways, therefore, America has been the centrepoint of this war. But writer Ian Buruma says that is not the whole story.

In his latest book, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, Buruma, a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College in New York, examines the killing of Theo van Gogh, a rebel writer and film director from the Netherlands whose film Submission, which looked at atrocities on Muslim women, and other controversial statements on Islam led to his death on the streets of Amsterdam in 2004 by a young, well-educated Dutch Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri.

To really understand radical Islam, says Buruma, it is important to study its dynamics in Europe, where most of the seeds of terror were sown – the 9/11 hijackers were led by a German student; journalist Daniel Pearl’s killers studied in London; and the masterminds of the conspiracy to blow up mid-air planes flying to the US were from Britain.

Buruma takes the journalistic route in his book, an expanded version of his 2005 New Yorker magazine article on the same subject – he asks questions, but the answers are hard to find.

He spoke to DNA on his views on radicalisation of religion, the growth of Islam, and how Europe, not America, should be the centrepoint for the war on terror.

Among other things, your book speaks about how second generation, educated Muslims in their adopted countries are taking to religious radicalism and working against the state.

Fundamentalism is not necessarily against the nation. Radical Islam should actually be called political Islam since the word radical connotes a purely religious undertone. Young, educated Muslims see political Islam as a form of rebellion. There are serious signs of rebellion against humiliation in the messages and images they see. You could also call it revolutionary Islam, but it is another form of rebellion.

What kind of rebellion?
Muslims have been feeling two kinds of humiliation – the humiliation of immigration and the failure to integrate into their adopted societies, and the humiliation they face under secular dictatorships in the Middle East. Political Islam in the modern age has mainly been a problem of integration. You see that in Europe a lot, especially in the Netherlands. My book speaks mainly about this problem of integration.

There has been a lot of negativity about Islam, especially after 9/11. Besides, you also mention that Muslims have never really integrated into European society. Why then is Islam the fastest growing religion in the world. Isn’t that a paradox?

The images that you and I see about political Islam are not necessarily negative to everybody. They look good, for instance, to the people in the Middle East. To a people who are already feeling humiliated under a secular dictatorship, these images are extremely appealing. Then, you also have the obvious failure of Christian church which has lost most of its appeal, especially among the youth.

Its wishy-washy views on issues of modern importance have left a lot of Christians dissatisfied. So you really see two kinds of conversion – one from Islam to political Islam, and two, from other religions to Islam.

Are political and military actions by the West a direct cause in the rise of political Islam?

It is a chicken and egg situation, really. We don’t really know what came first. The history of the conflict between Islam and the West goes beyond recent history. There are various kinds of Muslim anger. Military action is just one of them. A bigger problem, like I said earlier, is integration. You cannot really generalise Muslim anger.

The West has always had a strained relationship with Islam. And as the war against terror intensifies, do you see further problems with this relationship? Will there be a solution or a common ground?

It would be wrong to generalise a billion Muslims and what they feel about the West under the common banner of political Islam. Most Muslims want to lead normal lives and get their children great education. But once people are radicalised, there is no solution. I really don’t know whether there will be a solution or even a common ground.