A thought keeps coming to me, and I can't decide whether it is crazy or eminently rational. It seems that the form of reactionary Islam that ISIL is practicing in Iraq and Syria keeps rearing its ugly head, and it also seems that there are enough enthusiasts for that kind of brutal fundamentalism that it attracts true-believers in sufficient numbers to fight wars, even Pyrrhic wars, that take significant tolls on the rest of us. The question that continually arises in my thinking is, if so many want it, why shouldn't we just let them have a swath of land sufficient to accommodate them with the understanding that they won't try to expand their reign over other lands? If that many people prefer the seventh century to this one, why not let them live in it? But before we can propose such an arrangement to them, we have to overcome a few problems.
First, all this macho head chopping and mindless killing of those who don't share that particular brand of Sunni fanaticism will be the way of the world in such a country, so we have to make sure that those who aren't up for it can get out. And who would they be? Well, first they would probably be women...millions of them. There does seem to be a significant population of women who don't mind being veiled all the time and having their male significant others rule over them absolutely, but I can't help wondering whether there are enough such submissive women to fill the needs of the men of this new ISIL country if we allow it to emerge unimpeded. Let's say there are, between ISIL, the Taliban, all of the various reactionary substrates of the movement and those living in civilized Muslim countries who would prefer the less civilized kind of Islam, 20 million men. Could they count on 20 million women to come and live with them. If not, there would be a problem because if we are to go about this in a civilized way, we can't be forcing women to accommodate these brutes, or for that matter, allow the new ISIL to force them to come along. We all know how men get when there aren't enough women around...and sometimes even when there are. Without sufficient volunteer women, how could we count on them to keep to their agreed upon borders. That problem may be the deal breaker. But even with regard to the men, the new ISIL would have to agree that it wouldn't force men to join them, and perhaps more importantly, that they would allow men and women who changed their minds to leave. ISIL doesn't seem to have much of an ethos when it comes to respecting the wishes of outsiders, and if that is part of their national creed, how could we count on them to allow free traversal of their borders by any who might, remote as the possibility might seem, become disaffected? We'd need some kind of a treaty between the world and ISIL, but who would enforce its terms? That's basically the problem now. ISIL has no intention of joining a civilized world with mutual respect as a creed. That's why we have this quasi-war now. Given the way ISIL does things, outside of being allowed to run rampant, they don't seem good prospects for citizens in a civilized world.
Then of course there is the problem of prosperity. What wealth ISIL has it has taken by force from its rightful owners, including the oil it is selling abroad to fund its ugly enterprise. But in a seventh century culture, who would generate the wealth necessary for trading with the rest of the world? There are references here and there to the advances in human social evolution brought as far as southern Europe by Muslims we refer to as Moors. There was architecture, poetry and art, not to mention algebra. But these guys today don't seem the type to be worried about the human condition...that is about anyone else's human condition. I can't forget the image of that fool from Minneapolis who went to fight with the Islamists in the horn of Africa and made a video in which he claimed that what they were doing was tantamount to Disneyland. It's obvious that free thinking isn't among the attributes of reactionary Islam's culture...except for that kind of perversion, that is, and what good will come of that: certainly not poetry and architecture...and forget about algebra. So how could we expect of them that they could sustain their new nation without something on the order of Somalian piracy on a grand scale. The treaty with them would have to specifically rule out predation as a national enterprise, and how could we count on them to abide by a provision like that? They haven't so far.
No, the idea of just letting them have a third of Iraq, and all of Syria for that matter, just wouldn't fly, unless... If the rest of us cultivate the kind of indifference to the well being of those around us, we can just stop thinking about such things and build an enormous fence around ISILland, somewhat the way the Israelis have with Gaza. And every time they tried to shoot rockets out of their country, we could just go in and mindlessly bash heads...again, like the Israelis. Which begs the question: is a two state solution really a solution for the Palestinians and Israel, or is it just a pipedream...like the two state solution of ISILland?
Your friend,
Mike
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