Thoughts on Islamic extremism by Thomas Friedman

Empty Pockets, Angry Minds

By Thomas L. Friedman

The New York Times

Feb. 22, 2006

MUMBAI, India

I have no doubt that the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad have caused real offense to many Muslims. I'm glad my newspaper didn't publish them. But there is something in the worldwide Muslim reaction to these cartoons that is excessive, and suggests that something else is at work in this story. It's time we talked about it.

To understand this Danish affair, you can't just read Samuel Huntington's classic, "The Clash of Civilizations." You also need to read Karl Marx, because this explosion of Muslim rage is not just about some Western insult. It's also about an Eastern failure. It is about the failure of many Muslim countries to build economies that prepare young people for modernity — and all the insult, humiliation and frustration that has produced.

Today's world has become so wired together, so flattened, that you can't avoid seeing just where you stand on the planet — just where the caravan is and just how far ahead or behind you are. In this flat world you get your humiliation fiber-optically, at 56K or via broadband, whether you're in the Muslim suburbs of Paris or Kabul. Today, Muslim youth are enraged by cartoons in Denmark. Earlier, it was a Newsweek story about a desecrated Koran. Why? When you're already feeling left behind, even the tiniest insult from afar goes to the very core of your being — because your skin is so thin.

India is the second-largest Muslim country in the world, but the cartoon protests here, unlike those in Pakistan, have been largely peaceful. One reason for the difference is surely that Indian Muslims are empowered and live in a flourishing democracy. India's richest man is a Muslim software entrepreneur. But so many young Arabs and Muslims live in nations that have deprived them of any chance to realize their full potential.

The Middle East Media Research Institute, called Memri, just published an analysis of the latest employment figures issued by the U.N.'s International Labor Office. The I.L.O. study, Memri reported, found that "the Middle East and North Africa stand out as the region with the highest rate of unemployment in the world": 13.2 percent. That is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa.

While G.D.P. in the Middle East-North Africa region registered an annual increase of 5.5 percent from 1993 to 2003, productivity, the measure of how efficiently these resources were used, increased by only about 0.1 percent annually — better than only one region, sub-Saharan Africa.

The Arab world is the only area in the world where productivity did not increase with G.D.P. growth. That's because so much of the G.D.P. growth in this region was driven by oil revenues, not by educating workers to do new things with new technologies.

Nearly 60 percent of the Arab world is under the age of 25. With limited job growth to absorb them, the I.L.O. estimates, the region is spinning out about 500,000 more unemployed people each year. At a time when India and China are focused on getting their children to be more scientific, innovative thinkers, educational standards in much of the Muslim world — particularly when it comes to science and critical inquiry — are not keeping pace.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, bluntly wrote the following in Global Agenda 2006, the journal of the recent Davos World Economic Forum:

"Pakistan's public (and all but a handful of private) universities are intellectual rubble, their degrees of little consequence. ... According to the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology, Pakistanis have succeeded in registering only eight patents internationally in 57 years. ...

"[Today] you seldom encounter a Muslim name in scientific journals. Muslim contributions to pure and applied science — measured in terms of discoveries, publications, patents and processes — are marginal. ... The harsh truth is that science and Islam parted ways many centuries ago. In a nutshell, the Muslim experience consists of a golden age of science from the ninth to the 14th centuries, subsequent collapse, modest rebirth in the 19th century, and a profound reversal from science and modernity, beginning in the last decades of the 20th century. This reversal appears, if anything, to be gaining speed."

No wonder so many young people in this part of the world are unprepared, and therefore easily enraged, as they encounter modernity. And no wonder backward religious leaders and dictators in places like Syria and Iran — who have miserably failed their youth — are so quick to turn their young people's anger against an insulting cartoon and away from themselves and the rot they have wrought.

God's Clock

By James Carroll | December 14, 2004

ONCE A WEEK or so, I come downstairs in the morning to find that the three weights of the grandfather clock in the living room have fallen to the bottom of the oaken cabinet. To keep the clock going, they must be lifted on their chains. I dutifully open the glass-fronted door and grasp each brass cylinder, pulling down on the chain as I bring the weight up -- first one, then another, then the other. I close the door carefully, waiting for its fitted snap.

Once again, the weights will do their work to keep the pendulum swinging, the chimes sounding every 15 minutes and the gong striking on the hour. In this way, in concert with the force of gravity, I assure that time does not stop in our house.

I must occasionally remind myself that in fact, nothing important depends on this clock's ticking. When, through my neglect, the weights descend to the cabinet floor, the chains become twisted and askew, the pendulum drifts to a halt, and the chimes fall silent. A precious harmony is broken, but the earth stops neither its rotation nor its course around the sun. Time does not stop. Birds chirp in the morning and darkness later descends no matter what happens in the living room.

The clock is a sacrament of the passage of time, a way to note the movement of one day into the next, a method of location in the otherwise uncharted ocean whose two horizons are the past and the future. Mariners are fond of saying, especially when the ship unexpectedly runs aground, that the chart is not the sea; similarly, the clock is not time.

I propose this image for our new and urgent discussions about religion. In America, a religious divide has suddenly emerged as politically decisive, and in the world, religion is a runaway engine of violence. A fanatic fringe of Islam asserts its doctrine by joining suicide to murder in Allah's name. In Gaza and the West Bank, some hypernationalist religious Jews stake claims to land with God as guarantor -- disastrous consequences to Palestinians and Israel both be damned. Similarly, America's war in Iraq has evolved into a two-sided holy war, even if only one side explicitly defines it as such.

Meanwhile, mainstream churches waste themselves in conflicts over sexual identity, the new meanings of marriage, and mysteries of the medical frontier -- arguments in which "God's will" is invoked as if sacred texts elucidated the biology of genetics, postsexual reproduction, open-ended lifespan. The "religious right" fervently seeks to impose its definitions of the social good on the devout and the indifferent alike. "Bright" nonbelievers, in turn, match the absolutism of the zealots of faith with absolute rejection.

Such ferocity of human arguments over God, whether in affirmation or denial, reflects a terrible forgetfulness. Religion is to God what the clock is to time. Religion participates in the mystery of what it represents but does not embody that mystery. Not even Christianity, with its self-understanding as a religion of the incarnate Word, does more than enshrine that Word in symbol and sacrament. Indeed, "Word" is the clue, since all religion, however infinite the object of its worship, remains bound by the finitude of language -- and language always falls short of its purpose. That truth applies to religion and science both. Words are to what they aim to express as the clock is to time. That is why silence, too, is a mode of worship. And it is why, also, the language of science always leaves room for what is not known.

When I come down in the morning and see the weights of the clock near the bottom of the case again, my heart sinks at the evidence of the passage of time. But the clock is not the motor of such transience. Arguing over religion is like arguing over a clock, which is precisely what happens, for example, when Darwinists and creationists clash. Their great fight is less over the deep mystery of being than over which timeframe to use in measuring it.

We humans naturally reach toward transcendence, seeking symbols with which to make it present. Religion and science are ways of doing this. So are poetry and music. So, for that matter, is clockmaking. Yet transcendence, by definition, transcends. We should be modest, therefore, in the claims we make on the absolute. And equally modest in the claims we make on one another in its name.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

my weekend in the desert

With a desire to get away from the pollution and crowdedness of Cairo and a need for a little"self-time" (living with an Arab family who likes to be around you 24 hours a day and talk in very LOUD voices can be a little exhausting for a quiet independent American like me), I took off for the Bahariyya Oasis (five hours from Cairo in the Western desert) my last weekend in Egypt and spent three lovely, magical days in the desert eating and drinking with different Bedouin families.

I had visited Bahariyya twice before while I was living in Egypt, once with a friend and once with my father, mother, and sister. I was overwhelmed both times by the friendliness and hospitality of the people there, much more genuine than Cairo or any other places I've visited in Egypt. The people there seem to truly enjoy interacting with foreigners and not because they want money or sex. My family remembers the many invites for tea and how when we first got off the bus in Bahariyya, people were calling out "Saara! Saara" remembering me from my first visit.

I decided to try a new environmentally friendly camp"Nature Camp" that was built in the desert (17 km fromthe small town) in 2004 and is owned by Ashruf Lotfe,a famous desert trekker and safari guide. When the packed, run-down bus to Bahariyya arrived an hour later than scheduled, no one from the Nature Camp was waiting for me and after ridding myself of the pesky local boys trying to sell off hotels for commission, I found a driver willing to take me to the camp for 25 pounds. When I arrived, the camp was empty except for one staff boy named Tamer. I was told the owner Ashraf was out of town for the weekend, and apparently there just aren't that many tourists that want to be in the middle of the desert in the Egyptian summer! Crazy me! So I spent the next morning and afternoon sitting in the shade drinking tea, readings books from the small camp library (they actually had a good selection--not just trashy romance novels in French and German) and playing towla (backgammon) with Tamer. Tamer was a sweet boy of 24 who showed off his stained teeth(typical of Egyptians who spend the majority of their time smoking and drinking tea) in a shy grin every time he beat me in a game of Towla! With no other tourists and nothing but the desert around me, the place was peaceful and beautiful but a little TOO quiet. Just was I was thinking I might switch to a hotel near the town for a little more action, two men pulled up in a Toyota Jeep.They immediately pulled out a mat and invited me to sit down for Bedouin tea and introductions. Hany, a smily talkative sort was a local safari guide and he proudly told me his wife was expecting a baby in three months. The other man, Ahmed, was the brother of the owner Ashraf, and according to Hany was newly engaged. As Hany told me this, Ahmed gave a shy smile and as I told him "Alf Mabrouk"--"a thousand blessings on you." I told them about Hamdy and that he used to work at a hotel in the Siwa Oasis, and they said his name sounded familiar and that Ashraf might know him.

That evening Hany and Ahmed said they would take me into town since it was boring for me to stay at the camp by myself. We stopped in the town center first where they bought me some fresh sugar cane juice and then before I knew what was happening, I found myself at Hany's house and he was escorting me into a room where six plump women were seated cross-legged on the floor in a circle. Since it was Friday, there was some sort of Sheika (a female minister of Islam) visiting and she was reciting hadith and the women were discussing it. I awkwardly said "Asalam Alaykum" and sat down in the circle, not sure if Hany always brought foreigners home and how they felt about the fact that my hair was not covered while they were praying and discussing hadith. They seemed not to be bothered, and the religious meeting broke up for a few minutes as they asked me where I was from, what I was doing in Egypt, if I liked Bahariyya, if I was married, if I had children, if my husband was Muslim, if he prayed, if I was Muslim, if I prayed, what I knew about Islam, if I thought I might convert. To the last question, I stuttered "yimkin"-"maybe" only to be polite and because I didn't feel like my Arabic was good enough to explain in a polite and respectful way why I didn't plan to become a Muslim. I should note that these people are Bedouin and speak a different dialect than Cairenes, adding to some of the language difficulty. They seemed pleased with me though, particularly with what I was wearing. (I was dressed fairly conservatively and they are used to seeing foreigners wearing tank tops and shorts which is a big NO-NO in the countryside) Soon, the Sheikha and her mother left, and Hany's sister "Naa'ma" took me into her bedroom and started playing some local music and dancing. She urged me to dance with her and although I've actually been taking belly dance classes for a year, I knew that I wasn't near as good as her. I started to move a little until the rest of the family came in to watch and then I was WAY too embarrassed. Fortunately, Hany came back in around this time and saved me from making a greater fool of myself.

I spent much of the next two days hanging out with Hany's family. I got dragged on a hike with all the male cousins under 12 years old, embarrassed myself with more belly dancing, and chatted for hours with Na'ama like we were sisters at heart. She was funny, smily and outgoing--20 years old, not yet married, and worked in the local Museum. She was also not very attractive-round and plump as a turkey--which, according to her, Bahariyyan men have no problem with--"skinny or fat, a woman is a woman." We spent Saturday evening sitting on the roof (more air up there in the summer) and talked about love and marriage. She told me in confidence about her secret "relationship" with a police man from Alexandria that works in the Museum. Apparently he has only seen her eyes (she wears the black Naqab while outside the house) but that was enough for him. They stole glances and quick flirtations with each other at the museum and she secretly talked to him on her mobile. When I asked her if she would marry him, she said her father would never approve since he lived outside of Bahariyya. "And what if he moved to Bahariyya?" I asked. "I don't know, maybe, it's complicated" she responded. She joked that she preferred to marry a foreigner and would marry my brother, since he was single. She preceded to practice saying "Nay t-th-an"over and over. I couldn't help but laugh as I imagined my shorter, slender, intellectual brother with this plump, talkative Bedouin girl. She was sure my brother was very handsome, and I promised to send her a picture of him.

The food in Hany's house was absolutely amazing--the best food I have eaten in Egypt. A typical meal consisted of overflowing shared plates of dark rice, grilled chicken, potatoes in tomato sauce, salad with lots of spicy watercress, a slimy delicious okra soup, mulakheyya (another slimy vegetable known in English as "Jew's mellow") and a thick wheaty homemade bread that I haven't eaten anywhere else in Egypt. Delicious! That's not to mention the endless rounds of fruits and drinks offered to me--dates, figs, grapes, mint tea, nescafe, fresh lemon and strawberry juice...

My last evening in Bahariyya Hany and Ahmed took me out into the desert with their jeep and we lay some mats down and talked and star gazed for over two hours. I soaked in the silence of the desert and gazed in wonder at the countless white specks in the sky(not visible from the lights and cloud of pollution inCairo). Hany asked me if I could count the stars and when I said no, he joked that his Asian tourists always try to count the stars "won, too, threee, foor"and then he made a very comical gesture of them bowing and taking pictures. I laughed despite the ridiculous stereotyping. The fresh night desert air was too refreshing, too relaxing, to be anything but overwhelmingly happy. On Sunday, Ashraf (the owner of Nature Camp) had returned and insisted that I have lunch with his family before taking off for Cairo. Before we arrived at his house, Hany told me how Ashraf was famous in the area and everyone knew him and respected him because even though he worked with foreigners, he was very religious and never strayed from the straight and narrow. And at the same time, he loved to laugh and treated his kids well. A handsome rugged man in his 40s wearing a long white and gold galibayya (robe) opened the door and I knew this must be Ashraf. He spoke English very well and I realized it was the first time I had heard or spoken English all weekend.(points for me!) I had another amazing meal and spent some time playing with his children "SaraaH"-5 yearsold, and "Ziad" 1 1/2 years old---the CUTEST kids ever.

My last conversation with Hany before getting on the bus included him telling me that if their expected child turned out to be girl, he would name her Sara, after me. I told him jokingly that he was a liar, and he swore that he would. "After all", he said, "I can't name my girl Cindy or Katherine, but Sara is a common name around here--no problem." I told him I would call him in three months and check up on it. I should add that I also had a conversation with Hany about what is happening in Israel and Lebanon, and he commented about how the people in Bahariyya like peace and are more interested in drinking, eating, laughing, enjoying their children and family, making new friends, than making war. He said that Bahariyyans love everyone, even Israel. My ears perked up at that last statement. It was the first time I had heard "I love Israel" from the lips of an Arab. I asked him for clarification. "You love Israel?" And in simple words that hold more wisdom than any of our leaders today, he went on to say that there are good and bad people everywhere and we can't just say Israel is evil or Iran is evil. A country is not one leader or one entity, but many, and the world would be a better place if we viewed countries more as many individuals than collective identities. I nodded in agreement, and thought, Listen up George Bush! Listen up Tony Blair!

As my bus finally rolled back into Cairo, and the exhaust fumes hit my nose and the blaring of car horns filled my years, I longed to go back to the desert,but I knew Hamdy's family would be waiting for me. The bus driver, not wanting to waste time by bringing us back to the bus station as he was supposed to do, dropped us all off on a random street. I had no idea where I was, but thank God for the hundreds of black and white 1970s taxis that wiz by every two seconds. I made my way through the mass of people to the edge of the street, stuck out my hand, yelled "Medinet Nasr"as a taxi drove up, and jumped in. For a moment, as I watched the other tourists that were on the bus flounder about, wondering where they were and what to do, I felt proud that I could speak Arabic and knew how to survive in this city of millions.

Before I fell asleep that night I got a phone call from Hany, asking if I made it to Cairo all right. I thanked him for the weekend and told him to say hello to his family and Ahmed. So far, he or one of his family members has called me every night this week.

My weekend in the desert reminded me about why I fell in love with the Arab world in the first place. And maybe it is what made me fall in love with Hamdy too!:-) (we met in an even more remote desert Oasis) It is a magical place where strangers quickly become friends and where a night of star gazing is certain to heal a tired, stressed out soul...