Civilizations clashing? (part 3)

Over the last quarter-century, Saudi Arabia has spent its petrodollars on spreading the Wahhabi version of Islam all around the globe, first for altruistic reasons and later for reasons of survival. At the same time, the Saudis have spent much time and effort supporting efforts in Afghanistan and then al-Qaeda. In the former case, they wanted to defeat godless communists and the in the latter case, they wanted to save themselves from a coup d'etat.

Since September 11th and the rising tide of terrorism that has taken place on Saudi Arabian soil, the Saudi royal family has slowly come around to the fact that buying off the likes of ibn Laden and his supporters will no longer serve their purposes. Since then, they've moved to clamp down as best they can and at the same time initiate reforms that have been promised for decades but never carried out. But for the Saudis and the rest of the world, it is too late to undo the damage wrought.

Is there a clash of civilizations? For the moment, let us suppose that yes, there is a clash. Who are the principal actors. On the one hand, there is al-Qaeda, the world-wide network of terrorist cells founded and sustained by the Wahhabi form of Islam. On the other hand, there is the so-called Coalition of the Willing led by the United States and its allies around the world. It is an assymetrical war, with the vast military resources of the US confronting al-Qaeda abroad while security, intelligence and law enforcement organs work both at home and abroad as well to stop terrorist attacks before they occur.

In the second tier of actors could be included the entire Muslim world. As it has been noted, the Saudis did their work too well in disseminating the Wahhabi doctrines of Islam. As various sources point out time and again, there are very few mosques even in the West that can validly claim to not display or have on hand literature or information on Wahhabi Islam. Despite so many claims that Islam is a religion of peace (which is a valid debate for scholars), imams may proclaim their disgust at terrorism and hatred, but in the reading rooms and libraries of their mosques, young men may easily access the very literature that proclaims just the oppose. The Saudis did their work too well.

We have the first tier of actors in the form of committed hard-core jihadists of al-Qaeda. Associated with with this first tier are the imams and others who make no secret of their hatred for the West and who actively recruit new members, even in the heart of Western cities such as London and elsewhere. In the second tier lies a good majority of the Muslim world who give tacit consent to the works of the first tier by continuing to tolerate the distributed literature and active recruitment under their very noses of those hard-core believers of the first tier.

The question of Western civilization and the actors on its behalf is a question that is perhaps beyond the scope of this essay. Western civilization is not dying, by any means. But it has been so completely diffused around the world that it is difficult identify any specific actors. There are so many traditions and successors to Western civilization that identifying any one as 'Western civilization' would be pointless and inaccurate. Instead, it is simple enough to identify 'globalization' as the counterpart of an Islam that would turn back the clock from the 21st century back to the 7th.