The other preliminary issue that must be addressed is the frenetic Internet activity regarding Iran’s recent elections, which—by too many people—is being used as evidence that the protests in Tehran represent the majority of Iranian public opinion. While “citizen journalism” (blogging, twittering, posting pictures & video) is a valuable supplement to traditional media and intelligence sources, especially when those are restricted, we must remember that we are hearing from a self-selected group. By virtue of the fact that these people speak English, have Internet access, Twitter accounts, camera phones, etc. we must assume that they are richer, better educated, and more western-oriented than the average Iranian. I don’t want to discount the suffering evident from some of the gruesome photos and videos we have recently seen from Tehran, but there seems too much incestuous (think “re-tweeting”) and unverifiable hysteria circulating around the Internet lately, contributing nothing, just decreasing the “signal-to-noise ratio” of any intelligent discussion. And don't get me started on the useless, feel-good actions of changing your avatar to green and setting your time zone to GMT +3.5. Jack Shafer of Slate agrees.
Bogeymen
I must first address America’s perception of the Muslim world. Especially since 2001, we have been led to believe that radical Islam is a cancer spreading over the world much in the same way as the supposed scourge of Soviet-style communism was in the previous century. It seems we must always have a bogeyman—an enemy to unite us. With the fall of the iron curtain in 1989, we—especially as Americans—were somewhat confused regarding our place in the world; we were the proverbial dog who finally caught the automobile he had always been barking at. There was no longer the clear division between countries, leaders, and movements that were pro-communism (our enemies) and those that were anti-communist and therefore our friends (which had, incidentally made us strange bedfellows with some really questionable characters!) Thankfully—and of course I say this tongue in cheek—a new enemy arrived just in time: Islamo-fascism. Ironically our first major enemy, Saddam Hussein, was actually quite secular and we actually climbed in bed with the strictest Muslims around—Saudi Arabia—to fight him. But our worldview was not sufficiently polarized until that fateful day in September 2001. Then we were bombarded from all sides: political leaders, religious leaders, military friends and elderly aunts were all wringing their hands over the danger posed by radical Islam. Terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, refugee unrest in and around Israel, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the rise of Islamic parties in Egypt and Turkey, and even riots in France and England all seemed to be conclusive proof of the grave threat we were under (besides, of course, the 3000 countrymen we lost on American soil that day.) A population already growing faster through natural means (greater birthrate) now was proselytizing and radicalizing moderate/cultural Muslims from Europe to Africa and even Southeast Asia! And best of all, we now had a man—with a very distinctive visage—to pin our fears and anger on: Osama Bin Laden.
A Power Shift
Despite the fact there are some young men falling under the influence of radical clerics and running off to madrasas and training camps to become terrorists—a few of which then actually will commit acts of terrorism—they represent a minuscule percentage of young Muslims in the world. In fact, I predict that the saber rattling and actual terrorist attacks we have witnessed in the last decade or so, are in fact the death-throes fundamentalist Islam. We generally don’t hear much about the vast majority of young people—and this is important because the median age of most predominately Muslim countries is in the teens to twenties—who actually yearn for, if not devour, western pop culture and all its accoutrements. It seems only natural then that as older religious and political leaders die off, we will see liberalism sweep over—or at least creep into—these young nations. Of course power being what it is, I am not naïve enough to think that anyone is going to willingly give up their control regardless of their age; these leaders still want to groom their young, like-minded lieutenants to eventually take the reigns of power and carry on the status quo. But with the advent of modern communications, health care, and education, combined with family structure intended for a bygone era (i.e. numerous children,) it will continuously become more difficult for them to retain this power. I really do believe that we will see a change in our lifetime…and certainly this not limited to the Muslim world; it has happened and will continue to happen all over the world; young people in even the remotest corners of the world are being exposed to most exciting aspects of what the west has to offer via satellite TV and the Internet (granted, often an unrealistic view.) The grip of their elders and their culture/traditions naturally weakens in this onslaught.
Response
I trust that I have stated my case sufficiently to demonstrate that we don’t need to send troops to instill freedom and democracy in these lands; in fact, it is quite evident from our failures over the last seven years in Iraq and Afghanistan that this cannot work, and is a terrible waste of billions of dollars and thousands of lives. It should be obvious that we needn’t do anything but foster social engagement; if we really want to spend billions to conquer al-Qaeda, the Taliban, et. al, let’s just distribute free satellite dishes, TVs, Internet routers, computers, and license MTV programming for Voice of America and similar propaganda outlets—we can just let Hollywood “degenerate” the young people of the Muslim world to our liking! I say this half-jokingly, but also half-serious; we really need to look at the long-term cost/benefit of any strategy. In the July 19-25, 2008 of The Economist, I found a perceptive article titled “How to win the war within Islam” that summarized the situation thusly: “In the long run, al-Qaeda will be defeated by Muslims, not foreigners.”
References
Below is a chart listing the median age (meaning half of the population is younger than this age) in selected, predominately Muslim countries (by comparison, the US is 36.7 and EU countries are all within a couple of years of 40!)
| Country | Median Age |
|---|---|
| Afghanistan | 17.6 |
| Egypt | 24.8 |
| Gaza Strip | 17.4 |
| Iran | 27.0 |
| Iraq | 20.4 |
| Jordan | 24.3 |
| Libya | 23.9 |
| Morocco | 25.0 |
| Pakistan | 20.8 |
| Saudi Arabia | 21.6 |
| Syria | 21.7 |
| Turkey | 27.7 |
Further Reading
Interesting books about young Muslims:
- Muhajababes 25-year old author Allegra Stratton talks to other her age across Middle East
- Heavy Metal Islam by Mark LeVine; youth embracing western music in failed societies
- Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni; teenagers being teenagers even under the watchful eye of morality police