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.

Francis Fukuyama - A Year of Living Dangerously