The tribal politics of Islam.

Mr. Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has written an excellent article about Waziristan and the inability of Islam to come to terms with modernity. Of particular note is an aspect of great interest to me, namely, the decentralized nature of priestly authority and the complete discretion that Muslim priests have to declare something un-Islamic — or to declare someone an infidel and kill them. This can even be pulled on other Muslims. When we say Islam is a doctrine that is flexible, we're talking bungee cord flexibility.

This article's in the "must read" category in my opinion but why you should assume my tastes and interests are remotely like your own is a point that I've not yet figured out. I nonetheless recommend the article highly for its insights into the clash of Islam and the West outside of Pakistan, particularly the insight that "America and the West have been blamed [by Muslims] for world-wide Muslim decline." The well-deserved sense of inferiority bred from that persistent, if desperately denied, realization, as well as the threat that modernity poses to priestly control and absolute male dominance, combine to form the noxious, irrational and deadly brew that is today's Resplendent and Resurgent Islam.

He [the jihadinous mullah Noor Muhammad] criticized Pakistan's government for failing to adopt Islamic law, forbade the use of "un-Islamic" innovations, like the radio, and had violators of his various prohibitions beaten. . . .

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. . . Under the mullah's leadership, the Wazirs effectively declared a jihad against both the government of Pakistan and the [opposing] Mahsuds, demanding a separate tribal agency for themselves. Properly speaking, of course, a jihad can be fought only against non-Muslims. The mullah solved this problem by declaring the Mahsuds to be infidels--a tribe of toadies to an un-Islamic Pakistani regime--who had sold out their Wazir cousins for government allowances and debased modern ways. Of course, this accusation of infidelity is exactly how al Qaeda and the Taliban justify their attacks on fellow Muslims today.

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The Islamist revolution is a conscious choice--an act of cultural self-defense against the intrusions and seductions of an alien world. Although the social foundations of the traditional Muslim way of life have been shaken, they are far from broken. So long as these social foundations cohere, advancing globalization will provoke more rebellion, not less--whatever America decides to do in Iraq and beyond. The root of the problem is neither domestic poverty nor American foreign policy, but the tension between Muslim social life and globalizing modernity itself.

In a sense, we are the Mahsuds. The Wazirs ached with humiliation at the loss of their dominance. Their grudge against the Mahsuds stemmed far more from Waziri decline than from any specific complaint. Even as the Mahsuds were scapegoated for the Wazirs' diminishment, America and the West have been blamed for world-wide Muslim decline. Addressing Muslim "grievances" won't solve this problem, because the professed grievances didn't start the jihad to begin with.

Also, don't minimize the point that violence has been extremely useful in quelling resistance to central (or outside) authority and resorting to doctrines of collective family responsibility is a great way to get someone's attention. According to a story that may be apocraphyl, some Muslim kidnapped a Soviet official in Beirut some years back. The Sovs allegedly got hold of the kidnapper's brother, cut one of his ears off, and sent it to the kidnapper. Whereupon the official was released unharmed.

I count that as a great story, even if not true. But then I'm not in the category of men who think that war should be fought cell phone in hand with the archbishop on speed dial.

"Tribes of Terror. A guide to the wilds of northwest Pakistan." By Stanley Kurtz, Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, 1/2/08 (empasis added). Also published at the Claremont Review of Books. Winter 2007.