Islam's Last Gasp

As witnessed by my post of June 2008, I have been intending to write about this subject for some time now. The recent events in Iran makes this issue more pressing, but I am under no illusion that this is the start of a Muslim version of the fall of the iron curtain (although that would certainly be welcomed!) I am just reminded of a disappointing time exactly 20 years ago this month that I thought we were seeing the beginning of a revolution in China. Although the Tiananmen Square protests did not result in the toppling of a repressive regime as we hoped then, China has certainly changed in the intervening years, so a gradual liberalization is hopefully possible in the Muslim world as well.

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

- CIA factbook accessed 24 June 2009

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

The real digital divide

The “digital divide” is supposedly a socio-economic division that is propelling young, rich and middle class kids into a wonderful, new, technology-based economy, while leaving behind lower classes—especially those growing up in the developing world. Earnest crusaders are bridging this gap by setting up computer labs in schools and community centers for disadvantaged youths, and even building $100 laptops for kids in the developing world. This is admirable, and I appreciate anyone giving their time and money to help disadvantaged kids, however I wonder: what is this really helping? Now these kids can create their own Facebook page and copy and paste from Wikipedia for their school projects like their more affluent peers—is this really a step in the right direction? By virtue of the fact you are sitting here reading my ramblings (and I have spent time writing them for this forum) we know that the Internet is more often just a time waster. The cynic in me (and I am probably not alone) looks at the picture below, and braces for an onslaught of even more 419-style email spam.

No, the real digital divide is a generational divide; its victims are often otherwise successful and affluent professionals, business leaders, “old-economy” corporations, and even entire sectors that just don’t get it. The most obvious example is the music and film industries; as entertainment is increasingly being distributed and delivered digitally, traditional distributors and retailers of these goods are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Instead of finding sensible ways of delivering this content to consumers (meaning cheaper and more convenient,) they have balked—either by ignoring the reality of how music is being “consumed,” or by proposing ridiculous schemes whereby consumers are locked into a particular technology, yet given no significant discount for buying this crippled product. Let’s face it, it is technologically impossible to create a format that can be played on a variety of players from different manufactures and—at the same time—be hacker-proof.

Therefore, I predict that the traditional distribution channels for music will shrivel up and eventually die, as the industry continues to push for more onerous restrictions (namely Digital Rights Management [DRM] schemes, constraints on the types and number of playback devices an individual can use, and limitations on sharing music among friends,) all of which will drive consumers to “pirating.” What will eventually replace the current “music labels,” will be an E-bay like marketplace where consumers buy music directly from the musicians—cutting out the middle man—at a fraction of the current retail price. Musicians will gladly allow consumers to freely share their music with friends, as this will grow their audience.

Likewise, the sale of movies will have to radically change as the general population will have access to ever increasing bandwidth, meaning high-resolution movies will be able to be delivered via the Internet. Certainly movie theaters/cinemas will continue thrive as they have through the advent of TV, VCR, and DVD. But if the movie studios think they can retail movies for the same prices as they do DVDs—which is what they are trying to do now—then they are kidding themselves. A downloaded movie has to priced at least half of what a DVD costs since you are providing your own storage, and no longer have access to a real, physical backup copy of the movie. [2016 Update: It looks like I didn't see the streaming revolution coming.]

I’ve actually gone out on a tangent with this rant on the entertainment industry. What I really wanted to say is that I have had the experience of helping people with their websites both at home and abroad, and I’ve noticed that otherwise successful business people of a certain age want their websites to look like a slick brochure. The result is a lot of websites with text in graphics, 100% Adobe Flash sites, and other obvious self-sabotage. On the Internet, content almost always trumps presentation: just look at the minimalist design of ultra-successful sites like Google and Craig's List.

Furthermore, what is more important nowadays is to be part of the Internet community rather than an “island” website unconnected to the rest of the net. In fact, it turns out that many individuals and small organizations simply don’t need their own website. An individual or artist/band will find that a MySpace profile is more useful and easier to create and maintain. Likewise, a professional will find LinkedIn to be more useful for networking, and even small net-based retailers would find Cafe Press, Yahoo! Store, or even Ebay to be a more efficient way to list and sell their merchandise. Hmm, Joel.Froese.com is up for renewal in May; I wonder if I really want to renew it now. [2016 Update: Indeed, I couldn't justify the $35/year price, and have let my original website expire.]