Muslim Extremists?

"Size of Islamist menace" read the headline on the opinion(ated) page of The Australian 9/10/08). "About 150 million Muslims worldwide are extremists, calculates Daniel Pipes," read the sub-heading. That allegedly meant that "10 to 15% of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam." Zounds! Head for the hills, NOW! How does Pipes, "director of the Middle East Forum," arrive at such a figure? Let me count the ways, says Pipes, but here's one:-

"Gauge voter intentions: Elections measure Islamist sentiment untidily, for Islamist parties erratically win support from non-Islamists," he says. "Thus, Turkey's Justice & Development Party won 47% of the vote in the 2007 elections and 34% in the 2002 elections... Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization, won 44% 0f the vote in the Palestinian authority [sic: Palestinian Legislative Council] elections in 2006. Which number does one select?"

Of course, those who swallow Dr Pipes' snake oil - and they can't get enough of it over at News Limited - take in his them & us, clash-of-civilizations worldview. With one caveat, however: although Muslims are natural born extremists, if tactics dictate, some can be deemed moderates. It goes without saying, of course, that we are natural born moderates -although again, if tactics dictate, some of us can be labelled extremists.

That's Pipes' ideological context in a nutshell. Then, to take Hamas as our example, there's his sly little syllogism: Hamas is an extremist ("terrorist") organization. 44% of Palestinians voted for Hamas. Therefore, 44% of Palestinians are extremists.

For that to work, however, you have to swallow the Hamas = extremism premise. But, if you're flexible enough to subscribe to the proposition that extremism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, you'd perhaps be interested to know what was in the eye of those Palestinian beholders back in 2006:-

"The primary reason for casting a vote in favour of Hamas was Hamas's fidelity to the Palestinian dream. Most Palestinians, including those who have at various stages expressed their readiness to settle for less, dream of seeing Palestine, all of it, completely free. They imagine the day when millions of Palestinians will return to the towns and villages from which they were driven out when Israel was created in 1948. Hamas, which believes that the State of Israel is an illegitimate political entity that will one day disappear, just as the 11th century Crusader Kingdoms in Palestine and Syria disappeared, keep the dream alive. The 1988 Fatah-dominated PLO's decision to recognise Israel's right to exist in exchange for being recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people was the turning point for many Palestinians. It was from then on that Hamas, which had been in existence for no more than a year, began to be perceived by an increasing number of Palestinians as the alternative to Fatah, which, they believed, had lost its way.

"The second reason for preferring Hamas relates to the record... of Hamas... as a provider of services to the population. Many Palestinians would scarcely be able to manage without the social, educational and medical services provided by the United Nations and an army of NGOs, the most efficient of which have been the ones set up and run by Hamas. As Israel collectively punished the Palestinians, destroying the infrastructure of their society and its organisation, it unwittingly provided Hamas with the greatest of opportunities. Many Palestinians compared the rampant corruption that had spread throughout the Palestinian Authority and amongst the rank and file of Fatah with the clean hands of Hamas's officials. The Palestinian people could not help but admire the decency, honesty and transparency with which Hamas conducted its affairs and provided its services to the public. Hamas officials channelled millions of dollars worth of aid to those in need every year, but continued to live as they had always done. They lived like ordinary Palestinians and many had their homes inside refugee camps. They were part of the people, close to their minds and hearts. Sheikh Yassin passed his whole life in a refugee camp, with a standard of living scarcely different from that of his neighbours. His way of life offered a stark contrast to the leaders of Fatah, many of whom had made fortunes and built empires in the margins of the peace process with the Israelis.

"The third reason for voting Hamas was its Islamic ideology, which, unlike Fatah's secular nationalism, was in sympathy with the powerful inclination toward Islam within Palestinian society. Since the early 1970s, Palestine has seen a massive Islamic revival that was in part a reaction to the failure of secular Arab nationalism, which Palestinians blamed for the loss of the remainder of Palestine to the Israelis in 1967...

"The fourth reason concerned the failure of the peace process. Rather than deliver the Palestinians from their misery, the apparently endless process seemed only to have aggravated their suffering. Hamas had predicted all along that Israel would not fulfil its bargain, and that it was using peace-making in order to expropriate more land. The Hamas view was that only jihad would force the occupation to come to an end. Israel proved Hamas right when it turned against its own partners in the peace process, destroying the Palestinian Authority's institutions and literally besieging Yassir Arafat, whom many Palestinians believe eventually met his death by poisoning. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza served only further to vindicate Hamas, which claimed that it was its efforts which had [forced] Sharon unconditionally to withdraw the settlers and troops." (Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, Azzam Tamimi, pp 220-221)

Now how would you have voted?