[lit-ideas] Fukuyama's view of the Islamist threat
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 07:49:17 -0700
In rereading The End of History and the Last Man, I came upon the following
paragraph and wonder if this early view of Fukuyama's might have predisposed
him to accept the views of Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel as to the Jihadist
threat being overrated:
[page 45] "It is true that Islam constitutes a systematic and coherent
ideology, just like liberalism and communism, with its own code of morality
and doctrine of political and social justice. The appeal of Islam is
potentially universal, reaching out to all men as men, and not just to
members of a particular ethnic or national group. And Islam has indeed
defeated liberal democracy in many parts of the Islamic world, posing a
grave threat to liberal practices even in countries where it has not
achieved political power directly. The end of the Cold war in Europe was
followed immediately by a challenge to the West from Iraq, in which Islam
was arguably a factor.
"Despite the power demonstrated by Islam in its current revival, however, it
remains the case that this religion has virtually no appeal outside those
areas that were culturally Islamic to begin with. The days of Islam's
cultural conquests, it would seem are over: it can win back lapsed
adherents, but has no resonance for young people in Berlin, Tokyo, or
Moscow. And while nearly a billion people are culturally Islamic -
one-fifth of the world's population - they cannot challenge liberal
democracy on its own territory on the level of ideas. Indeed, the Islamic
world would seem more vulnerable to liberal ideas in the long run than the
reverse, since such liberalism has attracted numerous and powerful Muslim
adherents over the past century and a half. Part of the reason for the
current, fundamentalist revival is the strength of the perceived threat from
liberal, Western values to traditional Islamic societies."
Fukuyama is extremely smart; so why does he ignore the experts who argue
that Militant Islam is a serious threat and that it is making inroads in
places that Fukuyama didn't expect? It is natural (as Collingwood and
Gadamer argue) to accept arguments that coincide with ones predispositions.
In the case of the quoted argument, Kepel and Roy do present arguments
consistent with Fukuyama's earlier belief, so [perhaps Fukuyama though as he
wrote America at the Crossroads] why look further?
I'm not insisting on what I have argued, merely that it is plausible, and it
would explain what in my view is Fukuyama's strange lapse in understanding
the nature of the Militant Islamic threat.
Lawrence
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