It may have been random coincidence or it may have been the
effect of a phenomenon known as synchronicity that on the same day – August 27,
2014 – the American television networks were showing images of a deadly
accident caused by a young girl that was being trained to shoot a gun, and an
article appeared online discussing violent events that were unfolding in the
Middle East.
Yes, the gun culture in America is such that proud parents –
who swear by the Second Amendment of their Bill of Rights which gives them the
right to “bear arms,” and who swear by their allegiance to the gun lobby never
to let go of that right – do not hesitate to display to the world images of
their infant children being taught to handle not a toy gun but a real one. What
is special about that day, however, is that it brought something full circle;
something that ought to change the perception Americans have of the ongoing
struggle in the Middle East .
Long before they were born – those who today consider
themselves experts on the Middle East because they can tell how good the Jews
are and how bad the Arabs are – many of us who knew otherwise could see that
America's gun culture was being transplanted into the once peaceful Middle
East, and that the future did not bode well as a consequence … but we could not
tell how it will look like.
Well, things have come full circle in that the online
article discusses the unfolding events in the Middle East
not in the way that it has been discussed for half a century but in a way that
suggests some soul searching on the part of a number of people. The article has
the title: “The Profile of a Jihadist” and the subtitle: “The degree of his
brutality is a function of his misdirected zeal to transcend the human
condition.” It was written by Ian Tuttle who quotes a number of other authors,
and thus could be construed as a kind of anthology on the subject.
Tuttle draws the profile of two men, one British and one
Australian, undoubtedly steeped in the American culture, who left a comfortable
life behind and went to the Middle East
looking for a higher meaning in a jihadism that is mounted on behalf of a
caliphate. Beginning with the question: “The caliphate's conquest is regional,
but its draw is global. Why?” the author tackles the subject of Western
liberalism of which Brendan Dougherty of The Week has written: “It demands of
most men that they be mere citizens.” He went on to say that barred from
“ascending to heavenly heights” the system was “not for everyone.”
Ross Douthat of the New York Times takes it from there and
observes that the history of liberal democracy “is also the history of
reactions to liberal democracy.” And what would that be? It would be the
“yearning for a cause that societies have trouble satisfying.” And this is why,
as Daniel Hannan of the Telegraph observes, young Westerners turn to jihadism
which “holds out a vision of something pure … precisely what appeals to a certain
type of youngster.” Tuttle goes on to discuss the philosophy of Pascal, more
analysis by Hannan, and a recent film called Cavalry … in a quest to shed more
light on why young Westerners are attracted to jihadism.
Is that what many of us
knew long before these writers were born? Or did we know something they still
have not put their finger on? To be fair, they may have touched on a few
realities concerning the human condition, but what we knew then was a little
less abstract and a little more practical.
Life in the English
speaking world was not as politically correct as it is today, and those who
bore the brunt of discrimination – aside form the “Pakis” and the Blacks – were
the Jews. The young among them responded not by going West or North or Down Under;
they went East to occupied Palestine where they were allowed to carry guns and
to patrol the Arab villages. They could shoot any Palestinian, male or female,
Christian or Muslim on the mere suspicion that they may have the intention to
throw a stone at them.
To us, living in North America ,
that was the American Wild West transplanted into the Arab Garden of Eden –
carried out not by rednecks but by the “cowardly” Jews we have known them to be
here. And we never dreamed that the day will come when other Westerners,
steeped in the American culture, would someday go there and fight on the side
of one Arab faction or another.