Frustration and alienation alone cannot explain the allure of jihad

Dismissing those who fight jihad as alienated young men is both misleading and dangerous, writes Faisal Al Yafai. Theirs is an ideology we must understand if we intend to defeat it.

The FBI is hunting this ISIL fighter, who appears in a propaganda video speaking in an unmistakeable American accent. The idea that young men join ISIL and other militant groups out of alienation and frustration is mistaken, argues Faisal Al Yafai. AFPShow less

Those who follow the discussion about radical Islam and the threat of jihadism have become used to a disappointingly low level of debate.

Intellectual dishonesty masquerading as free thinking, bigotry masquerading as liberalism. Such are the flawed, inaccurate and sometimes outright biased views expressed on the topic. Such views are especially acute at the moment in the United States, where public discussion around religion has always been polarised.

The furious debates in the US about abortion and guns have always been influenced by, and justified with reference to, Christianity. In the case of a discussion of Islam, too often has the debate been skewed by an assumed superiority of one faith over the other.

That has been especially obvious in the past few days with a car-crash interview with Reza Aslan, a scholar of religion, who unpicked the, perhaps unconscious, biases behind the questions of his interviewer. It was followed by the actor Ben Affleck calling out a TV host for making bigoted statements about a faith of more than a billion people. The generalisations that have been too often made about African-Americans, and, before that, Jews, are now too easily transferred to Muslims.

Such frivolous discussion, though shared widely on social networking sites and rightly condemned, is merely bigoted.

But another aspect is downright dangerous. This is the view that jihadis are in some way merely alienated young men, unable to find their way in the world. Such simplistic thinking was exemplified by a column this week by – who else? – Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist whose views appear not to have developed further than a trip he took to the Middle East in the 1980s.

The barbarism of jihadis, he wrote, “comes from a dark place, where radical Islam gives a sense of community to humiliated, drifting young men, who have never held a job or a girl’s hand”.

It’s a neat and indeed comforting argument, but deeply flawed. It is neat because it conflates all of the complex historical, societal and political reasons for this particular jihad in this particular part of the world at this particular moment in history fought by these particular people into one easy phrase. No need to think too hard, to understand too deeply, to read too widely to seek the causes of this war: it is all reducible to young, alien­ated drifters. To some degree, of course, this alienation theory tallies with the experience of criminal young men in the West and the Arab world, which makes it easily digestible.

The comforting aspect of the glib explanation is that jihad attracts young men who have never had a girlfriend. It is comforting because it allows western analysts to strike a superior – even liberal – pose. Never mind that there is little to no evidence that such desires fuel jihad – that would be an extreme reaction to not getting a date for the weekend – such an explanation is more about drawing some assumed distinction between the Arab world and the West.

But alienation and sexual frustration do not explain jihadis. Those may well be part of the “push” factors away from mainstream society – although economics usually explains that push better. But what pulls young men and women into jihad is far more complex.

Jihadis believe in a radically different conception of history. Their understanding of historical events and their meaning is very different to mainstream Arab and western society.

Jihadis genuinely believe they are living through a historical moment, a moment of great importance in the history of Islam and the history of the world, where their actions can have huge ramifications far beyond their small orbit of action. They are energised and motivated by that narrative and want to take part.

It is understandably difficult to grasp what they believe. Indeed, one of the reasons that both the Arab world and the West has continued to view jihad in this way is simply out of our own frustration. We cannot easily defeat their ideology because we cannot easily understand it. And because we can’t understand it, we try to explain it away as something inexplicable.

Again, that’s why military might is so popular: those are the tools at our disposal. But whether in France or Pakistan or Yemen, the problem of jihad cannot be destroyed by force alone, because the problem is an idea. The problem is a historical narrative. The more we see jihadis as simply alienated young men, the more we misunderstand what is animating them and therefore we miss the root causes.

Jihadis don’t simply want to watch the world burn. They want to remake the world in their own image. And while it is hard enough to fight an ideology we understand, it is impossible to fight one we don’t even realise is an ideology at all.

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai