Globalization for losers

Jonah Goldberg:

OSAMA BIN LADEN'S ratings are falling. His latest pronouncement was a yawn. His scripts could use a rewrite. "Infidels" this, "crusaders" that. Blah, blah, blah. We've heard it all before.

However, one new wrinkle in Bin Laden's diatribe deserves more attention, as it illuminates the nature of the West's struggle against radical Islam. "I call on the mujahedin and their supporters in Sudan … and the Arabian Peninsula to prepare all that is necessary to wage a long-term war against the crusaders in western Sudan," Bin Laden declared. The crusaders in question are United Nations peacekeepers, who aren't even in Sudan yet but who are going to stop genocide there — we hope. Bin Laden suspects a Western plot to install U.S. bases and destroy Islam in Sudan, and he wants to fend off the U.N., which he calls an "infidel body" and "a tool of crusader-Zionist resolutions." If he thinks the U.N. is a tool of the Zionists, clearly, he needs to get out of his cave more.

Nonetheless, Bin Laden's call to open a new front in Sudan highlights some underappreciated aspects of the jihadist mission. First, most people being slaughtered by Sudan's Arab-controlled government are Muslims. Bin Laden wants his holy warriors to fight for a Sudanese right to exterminate indigenous Muslim tribes. In this, Bin Ladenism represents a perverse form of globalization.

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Radical Islam is globalization for losers. It appeals to those left out of modernization, industrialization and prosperity, particularly to young men desperate for order, meaning and pride amid the chaos of globalization. Radical Islam provides it, but at a terrible price.

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Although Western-style globalization may force certain technological and economic changes on indigenous cultures, it also provides those cultures with the tools and flexibility to keep much of their culture. The hard Islam coming out of Riyadh and Tehran offers no such freedom. Recall that Afghanistan was a Muslim country for centuries, but it wasn't until the jihadi thugs of the Taliban took over that the historic Bamiyan Buddhas were deemed an offense to Islam and destroyed.

Bin Laden's call to kill U.N. peacekeepers is consistent with the Islamist desire to impose a harsh, "one true Islam" across the Muslim world (and, someday, they hope, the non-Muslim world too.)

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