17 February 2015

THE ISIS POVERTY PROGRAM

A goofy State Department spokeswoman said that we need to address the “underlying causes” that have created ISIS. It seems these causes consist poverty and lack of jobs. But poverty and a need for work characterizes not ISIS, but those poor Egyptian Coptic Christians they beheaded. It is really troubling when the administration is so clueless about not just Islamic radicalism, but extremism in general, which is of course the way it insists on seeing the problem. The problem with the analysis put forward is that it is completely wrong. 

Radical extremists virtually never come from the poor. The poor are too concerned with day to day survival and have little connection with causes of any kind. There are plenty of radicals claiming to represent the poor throughout history, such as the communists. But neither Lenin nor Stalin came from an impoverished background. Bin Laden was very wealthy, and his successor is an Egyptian medical doctor. There is virtually no example of a poor radical extremist throughout history. It may be too much to have expect them to have done any actual research on the problem, based even on their own understanding of it. 

If they really believe the nonsense they have expressed then it would presumably require some sort of antipoverty program to address the problem. But even the Islamic extremists themselves don’t say anything about poverty. It is all about faith, rectitude, religious order, killing infidels, displacing the Crusaders, etc. ISIS wants a caliphate, not a Marshal Plan. 

What about those western converts flocking to ISIS? They are concerned with piety, not poverty. They become alienated from the society they live in, and seek some alternative that will provide purpose, and in a strange way, fulfillment. They are the kind of people who, in a previous generation would have gravitated towards the revolutionary left. They are attracted to the Other; that which constitutes the principal opposition to existing society. From France they are seeking the nonFrance, from America the nonAmerica, etc. This also applies the existing order in many Muslim countries, which fail to conform to their idea of how society ought to be organized, but again with no mention of poverty. 


Thus it is foolish and dangerous to try and base policies upon these misconceptions. Given that these are people who have crucified children, buried them alive, beheaded many others or burned them to death, talking about a jobs program is preposterous. If this is the kind of thinking going on these days we are in real trouble. For ISIS is already has a poverty program. It consists of beheading the poor. Unless we act many more innocent people will die, and die horribly. They cannot be persuaded, they cannot be reasoned with, they cannot even be scared. There is only one solution: ISIS must be destroyed. 

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