My response to the question, “Is Jihad driven by an all-pervasive sense of inferiority in the Muslim world?”

I am not convinced that “inferiority” is the problem within the Muslim world, or even that it exists en masse. The sweeping tide of modernity and globalization pushed by a Western ideal should not (and did not, necessarily) create a feeling of inferiority. It highlighted the dissimilarities between two very different cultures, and perhaps emphasized the absurdity of forcing an incompatible construct onto a society with its own history, philosophy, manners, dress, and traditions. Western modernization may have caused the Islamic nations to discern, more clearly than ever, the validity of their own familiar way of life that was being leached from them and replaced with bland Americanism.

It must have been disconcerting to be an older person living in Iran during the Shah’s regime, having been raised with values and customs that were considered outdated and unpopular. Though to our television-framed perception, in the West, the 1979 Iranian revolution looked like a chilling return to medieval religiosity, it must have felt like a reclamation of Islamic identity and nationality to some who remembered the time before the American-loving Shah came to power.

Therefore, I don’t feel that inferiority comes into play. It isn’t surprising to watch Western style governmental institutions fail in a part of the world that has a much longer history and has sustained very different concepts of government than we understand fully. Perhaps a large part of the conflict is our (the West’s) interference and unwelcome application of inappropriate constructs. When did democracy become “right” and everything else “wrong”? It rather seems that a number of throwback colonialist tendencies go unexamined within the foreign policies of even the most visible and globally influential Western nations. We seek to change what we don’t understand, and we are threatened by any entity that won’t absorb our capitalist franchise, and in doing so, of course, become part of our income base.

I’m happy to see a fledgling movement towards responsible, sustainable development that is sensitive to the indigenous cultural environment. It shouldn’t shock us that the entire world doesn’t want to be assimilated into our monopoly; glued to their televisions for the latest oblique instructions on how to live, who to become, while leaving their history, religion, values, and identity in the dust. Who are we to think that we know how to run the world at the expense of the individuals who inhabit it?