its concrete particulars is too alien and threatening to liberal Westerners for them to acknowledge its existence as it really is. So they keep putting Islam into this or that Western-centric conceptual box in order to make Islam seem familiar and assimilable. But because these non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism are all false or inadequate, new theories, or new variations on old theories, must keep being invented. The never-ending compulsion of Western intellectuals to
expresses the very essence of liberalism, which is to deny the existence of human differences that really matter. Listed below are the blog articles I've written on this subject.
NON-ISLAM THEORIES OF ISLAMIC EXTREMISM
Early Islamic conquests were driven by politics, not Islam
[Karen Armstrong adds that Westerners' projection of their inner violence onto Islam led to Western fantasy that Islam is a violent religion.]
Modernity produces alienation which leads to radicalism
[Fukuyama following Olivier Roy.]
The cause of jihadism is alienation
[And Fukuyama says the cure is a new Western national identity based on ... liberalism.]
Extremism caused by living in wrong "context"
[BBC's contribution to the debate: UK Muslims become suicide bombers because of disorientation resulting from living in a culture different from the one they grew up in.]
Extremism is motivated by the need of young Muslim men to prove their masculinity
[... in a consumerist, welfare-state society that undercuts masculinity. A variation on the Olivier Roy thesis by British criminologist Antony Whitehead.]
Extremism caused by humiliation and envy
[A rare strike-out by Thomas Sowell.]
The cause of Islamic extremism is sexual frustration
[Pierre Rehov: "... kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex.... Suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido.... Since Islam promises 72 virgins in heaven to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution."]
People become terrorists as result of being beat up
[Liberal Hollywood screenwriter's explanation of terrorism (seen in Syriana).]
Cause of Islamic extremism is that non-Muslim world enables Muslim temper tantrums
["Captain Ed" Morrissey's typically brilliant contribution to the debate.]
The latest theory of Islamic extremism: it's a pastiche
[David Warren says Islamism is merely the detritus of totalitarian ideologies.]
Islamic extremism results from loss of Western confidence
[David Warren's sequel.]
Depraved Mideast Arab culture, not Islam, is cause of Islamic extremism
[Ralph Peters's contribution to the debate.]
Cause of Islamic aggression is generic civilizational clash
[Archbishop of Canterbury echoes Samuel Huntington, who is correct on clash of civilizations, but wrong on its cause when it comes to Islam.]
Islamic extremism is caused by Muslims' false belief that the West seeks to attack and destroy Islamic world
[Melanie Phillips says the extremism can be cured by showing the Muslims that this belief is false. Meanwhile, leftists say that Islamic extremism is caused by Muslims' true belief that West is attacking and destroying the Islamic world, and that the extremism can be cured by the West ceasing to attack and destroy Islamic world.]
An exchange with Melanie Phillips about Islam
[I argue that the cause of Islamic extremism is Islam; she says my approach is crude and that we must look to a variety of factors.]
Muslims hate us for our secularism
[Muslim says that if West becomes more Christian again, the Islam-Western clash would end.]
Islamic extremism is a Christian-style moral sin
[And therefore, says George Weigel, the cure is for Muslims to stop sinning. He has it exactly backward: Islamic extremists are devoutly following their religion.]
Islamists are violating liberal morality
[And therefore, says Melanie Phillips, Islamism can be ended through majority moral outrage, firm standards, and moral reform.]
Everyone listen: Islam is the cause
[Lawrence Auster: The fact that young white Englishmen who had converted to Islam became suicide terrorists refutes all the Western-centric theories of Islamic extremism that are fashionable on the Left.]
The essence of Islam revealed
[A Muslim explains that Muslims believe what they believe because it is what Islam requires them to believe. Good summary of the false theories.]
List of non-Islamic theories of Islamic extremism
[Another good summary.]
Why liberals MUST have their non-Islam theories of Muslim extremism
[Lawrence Auster: Liberals can't admit the existence of something so large and so incompatible with liberalism, because that would mean the end of liberalism. See passage starting at "I think both your points are correct."]
An exchange with Paul Gottfried on Islamo-fascism and Islam
[There are many non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism, and Paul Gottfried has his. It is this: "Neocons say that Islamic extremism is a threat; therefore it's not a threat."]