Lessons from the Sri Lanka Massacre

I was surprised.  Maybe you were too.  When I learned that most of the suicide bombers who perpetrated the attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka were well educated, it took me aback.  Several actually came from very wealthy families. What kinds of grievances could these folks possibly have that would justify such viciousness?

Nonetheless, I shouldn’t have been shocked.  After all, Bin Laden also came from a wealthy family. Likewise many of the 9/11 bombers were well educated.  How often do we hear that a Muslim with an engineering degree was involved with some atrocity?

Why is this so?  Isn’t poverty supposed to be at the root of Islamic complaints about the West?  If only we help lift tens of millions of poverty-stricken Middle Easterners out of their desperate conditions, they will cease trying to murder Christians.  Christians, after all, are a proxy for Westerners.

By now we should realize that affluence will not change the mind-set of those who hate us.  They don’t hate us because we are richer than they are.  They hate us because we are more powerful.  These folks know that in a one-on-one showdown we will beat them every time.

Well-educated Islamists are leading the charge against us precisely because they are the ones most familiar with the disparities between their culture and ours.  They have read the books, seen the media, and often experienced these differences first hand. For them, their geo-political inferiority is galling.

It was not long ago when the Islamic world was richer and more powerful than the West.  In places like Egypt, Iraq and Iran, a sense of superiority prevailed.  From the rulers down to the peasantry, this preeminence was associated with their religion.  It provided the edge over the non-believers.

Then, quite unexpectedly, Europeans rose to dominance.  Ever since Napoleon it has been clear that these parvenus could defeat any followers of Mohammad who attempted to challenge them. Although it took time for this to sink in, when it did it was painful.

For most Muslims, however, this was not the case.  They were poorly educated provincials who did not realize there had been a historic reversal of fortune.  As a result, they remained docile in the face of European colonization. For peasants, one ruler was the same as another.

Not so for the increasing number of urbanites.  The more they learned, the more disgruntled they became. As a result, they sought to copy Western technology in the hope of fighting back.  This was why socialism was so attractive.  It promised a short cut to parity with the invaders.

Now that this optimism has faded, the dissatisfaction has intensified. Today millions of Islamists want revenge against their erstwhile oppressors.  Having few options, they revert to terrorism.  The goal is now to intimidate people into submitting to their worldview.

The irony is that this cannot work.  It cannot because the very mindset they wish to promulgate is what keeps them behind their enemies.  After all, the technology that has underwritten the dominance of the West is available to the Islamists too.  Why hasn’t it allowed them to prevail?

The Israelis provided the answer.  These mostly European transplants have beaten the odds.  They obtained military victories when the forces arrayed against them were ten to one.  This was possible because they think like Westerners.  Committed to science, progress, and rational organization, they come out ahead each time.

In other words, the Islamists cannot win on a large scale unless they change the ways they think and feel.  And yet, they are fighting so that they do not have to change these patterns. This puts them in a bind, which only increases their frustration.  Now furious, they become violently destructive.

Will this change?  Not any time soon.  Cultures can be intractable.  They shape people’s lives and provide a reason for living.  As a result, it can take centuries before they evolve into something new.

In the meantime, we must be prepared for additional attacks.  Sri Lanka was chosen, not because it is the most Westernized place, but because it was vulnerable.  If we want to escape a similar fate, we have to be relatively impregnable.  This includes being willing to intimidate those who would harm us.

We must be ready to defend our culture, however much we prefer to be pacifists.  Why? Because fate favors those who intelligently favor themselves.  

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University