Francis Fukuyama checks in on radical Islam. Before diving into the quotes, here is your question of the day: Is Francis Fukuyama a NeoCon? Why?

There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In addition to Bouyeri and the London bombers, the March 11 Madrid bombers and ringleaders of the September 11 attacks such as Mohamed Atta were radicalized in Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.

We profoundly misunderstand contemporary Islamist ideology when we see it as an assertion of traditional Muslim values or culture. In a traditional Muslim country, your religious identity is not a matter of choice; you receive it, along with your social status, customs and habits, even your future marriage partner, from your social environment. In such a society there is no confusion as to who you are, since your identity is given to you and sanctioned by all of the society's institutions, from the family to the mosque to the state.

It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions. Radical Islamism tells them exactly who they are--respected members of a global Muslim umma to which they can belong despite their lives in lands of unbelief. Religion is no longer supported, as in a true Muslim society, through conformity to a host of external social customs and observances; rather it is more a question of inward belief. Hence Mr. Roy's comparison of modern Islamism to the Protestant Reformation, which similarly turned religion inward and stripped it of its external rituals and social supports.

Further, radical Islamism is as much a product of modernization and globalization as it is a religious phenomenon; it would not be nearly as intense if Muslims could not travel, surf the Web, or become otherwise disconnected from their culture. This means that "fixing" the Middle East by bringing modernization and democracy to countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia will not solve the terrorism problem, but may in the short run make the problem worse. Democracy and modernization in the Muslim world are desirable for their own sake, but we will continue to have a big problem with terrorism in Europe regardless of what happens there.

Read the whole article.

A key property of ideologies is that after they have taken root and become accepted, they don't go away. They can't really be changed either. They can only be augmented, causing the weaker portions to erode out of their active belief. If they have deep histories, they can be recast to be things they never were, just using the whole upon which they are built. The size of the base determines the actual level of power the ideology possesses. I'm pretty sure that al-Qaeda gets this, just based on their name.

I've made the argument in several discussions lately that the only way to attack radical Islam is to pull what amounts to an "embrace and extend" strategy, and of course it must happen from within, hence the "embrace" part. If there is a key to that strategy, Fukuyama lays it out here. The degree to which society creates the person is usually a role of the state. The inner belief that caries the rest of the person, is the role of modern religion or other belief systems, some more organized than others, but all of them complex. The same thing that has made globalized Islam possible, must be used to kill radical Islam.

It's a battle of revisions.

Since van Gogh's murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness.

Messy. As recently as 1995 it was the predominate view of the U.S. Embassy to Canada that Canada would break into multiple separate countries within 20 years. Today that outcome is no longer considered likely. The reason is that from the 50's through the 90's the Canadian government engaged in a serious effort to make its various constituants feel as if their national identity represented them. Canada is a lesson in both how to succeed at this, and how difficult it is. This is why I don't have great hopes for Isreal. The jewish identity of Isreal as a state cannot provide a meaningful identity to it's muslim citizens. This will inevitably and perpetually cause tension, unless all of the muslims move out, or the state changes it's identity to become more inclusive, or the state is destroyed. Unfortunately, I don't think Isreal has the cultural maturity to choose the middle path, and I think the other outcomes are terrible in terms of their human costs, and I don't find the status quo acceptable either. I see problems in every direction there.

Can Holland create an inclusive national identity like the United States? I think so. I think England can too. I'm more worried about France.

On the other hand, I bristle at the thought of people being exhiled for preaching. If they advocate violence, then yes, but to attack tolerance as the issue is to invite the requirement that a national identity requires that 3rd generation Englishmen have the same culture as 50th generation Englishmen. This is impossible, and it will create more strife, not less. At the same time I don't think that people who are citizens of a country should operate their own "cultural" legal system. Democratic states should not allow communities to practice Sharia. It is the legal system of the country, and the people's equal footing before it, that makes a binding national identity meaningful. This is the lesson of American history. The constant accumulation of federal power in American history happen precisely because one nation could not exist with radically different legal systems in different regions. There is a balance. Its important for states to be laboratories of democracy, and to reflect slight regional differences, but American history has consistently shown that erring on the side of too much "legal diversity" results in significant tension and perhaps war.

The result must be that what it means to be English must be defined by who England's citizens actually are today. Not who they were 200 years ago, and not who they would like to be, but who they actually are. That identity must be one which every citizen can accept as his or her own identity.

It took Canada 5 decades to get French and English people to live together as a single nation and the project is far from complete. I fear getting Islamic fundamentalists to feel French is a far more daunting task.

We have tended to see jihadist terrorism as something produced in dysfunctional parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, and exported to Western countries. Protecting ourselves is a matter either of walling ourselves off, or, for the Bush administration, going "over there" and trying to fix the problem at its source by promoting democracy.

There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.

Who likes a contrarian? Especially when he's right?

Fukuyama dismantles the logic of GWOT like a house of cards.

We have tended to see jihadist terrorism as something produced in dysfunctional parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, and exported to Western countries. Protecting ourselves is a matter either of walling ourselves off, or, for the Bush administration, going "over there" and trying to fix the problem at its source by promoting democracy.

There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In addition to Bouyeri and the London bombers, the March 11 Madrid bombers and ringleaders of the September 11 attacks such as Mohamed Atta were radicalized in Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.

A piece that makes some interesting points about Islamic radicalism, viewing it more as a domestic problem. It would be interesting to see some data on the social class of various participants in Islamic terrorism and possibly comparison to domestic organizations like the KKK, the ALF, and (in Canada) the FLQ.