My initial thought is that first one has to figure out the scope of the issue (though I will probably have other thoughts post-caffeine): just how big is the "Pious Middle" compared to the nutjobs? Is it growing, or shrinking? How much does its growth/shrinkage vary across the region(s)?

A legal question: if making the images and publishing them is wrong and defamatory, is the effort at publishing them or otherwise displaying them to inform of them and evoke outrage also not an act of desecration?

Perhaps it's useful to step back even further and examine the general beliefs/views found in the Pious Middle. As you pointed out, a Westerner's intuitive definition of "moderate" would resemble Irshad Manji (or perhaps myself, which is laughable to say the least). Figuring out what exactly constitutes moderation in MENA (or in the Euro/N. American minority) is probably quite complicated. What does the middle of the bell curve believe? What is the equivalent of a "soccer mom" or "nascar dad" in MENA?

This is likely a bad paradigm, but I've been trying to imagine where the Pious Middle would fall on the Political Compass. Unfortunately, there isnt a religious axis, which might be a useful dimension to consider (preference for secular vs. religious gov't). Western notions of Left and Right don't apply very well either (e.g. perhaps PM is socially conservative, favours extensive social services, supports protectionism or price controls, etc). It would be nice to have an index of 20 or items that could be used to differentiate the Pious Middle from the ultra-liberals and the whackjobs.

There is probably some significant regional variation in attitudes too, even if by and large the PM are what Westerners would consider religious.

Anyway, it seems to me that having a sense of the PM's values and incentives would result in more productive marketing vs. the Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt strategies practiced by extremists and governments alike. People like Qutb were wildly successful precisely because they hit the right buttons and kept their arguments simple. When they are not flailing around like psychopaths, the rhetoric offered by extremists often resonates.

Here's a piece from back before the Iraq war (part the present) that ties into a lot of this: The Barber of Beirut (from Unqualified Offerings):

It’s a conservative world. Sorry, liberals among you, but it’s true. From continent to continent and country to country, most people prefer the familiar to the strange, whether in terms of people or folkways or governance. The West did not invent ethnocentrism, we just named it. I pluck you down anywhere in the world, outside of a major metropolis, and I will be plucking you down among people who like their own tribe better than the next tribe and the next tribe better than, well, you. What bothers Mr. Nawaf about the history of US intervention in Lebanon is less that the interventions were “bloody” - Lebanon’s neighbors and its own factions far excel us there - than that we weren’t Lebanese.

The essential conservatism of the entire planet is the reef on which virtually every universalist “progressive” movement has foundered. Oh, you can find factions and individuals that warm to “foreign” causes. A certain number of Ukrainians will fight for Hitler, a certain number of Nicaraguans for Lenin.

A certain number of Afghans for Brezhnev.

When it’s all over, these are the folks that get strung up on the lampposts.

Course, that was written in the context of arguing against foreign military intervention. But there it is.

Matthew, I have been rather perplexed by the question you made for some time. Particulalrly in the instance of tv stations. Why do tv channels such as Euronews ( where I saw most of the pictures for the first time) count? I think there is an interesting distinction here that needs to be examined. If newspapers that re-published allegedly to inform (e.g France Soir) can be castigated, then why draw the line there? Is it because you can't carry a tv image around with you in your briefcase? Is it because the image on screen is temporary? I think we may have stumbled upon a legal loophole (or landmine) without noticing.

Re: the republishing of the cartoons.

I detest violence, but I am a keen fan of films that depict violence in a particularly realistic way - the more uncomfortable, the better. Why? Because the more realistic the depiction, the more clear it is why violence is not generally 'a good thing'.

In film, the suspension of disbelief plus the artifactuality of the medium mean that I can live with it. I don't like what I'm seeing, but I'm not supposed to - it's supposed to evoke that reaction. But knowing that it's an artistic expression means that I don't get offended or scared.

With the cartoons, there's no such clear dividing line. If someone republishes the cartoons, it's tainted with the (perceived) original slight to Islam. So people get het up about republication because they can't differentiate. It's as if (unlike film) daring to mention the topic is in itself a transgression - rather like the German taboo on talking about Nazism ("Whatever you do, don't mention the war!). Why that is - that's not a question I feel qualified to answer, at this point in time. I think there's a pretty simple reason, I just don't quite know enough about it to articulate it just yet.

If there is a lesson to take away here, it is that waiting for or expecting perfect market infrastructure means waiting on the sidelines and merely hoping that somehow, magically, an infrastructure develops. It also means never rolling-up one's sleaves and learning how the specificities of each country/culture impact the ideal "market infrastructures". Abstract theories don't work in full, everywhere all the time. One can make ad hoc compromises by recognizing that different structures, while far from ideal, work better in some cultural settings while the ideal structure just ends up being a bloody white elephant.

I am in full agreement here. My first degree was in law, which I detested, quite simply because it didn't (as I was taught it) take into account the more liminal 'legal' situations in which you have agreements and customary ways of doing things that *worked* but yet fell outside the 'law' and were thus excluded from the great big system.

I look at property law in Egypt, for example, and I see a system, as de Soto pointed out, that is completely dependent on wasta as simply the only way to break out of the interminable bureaucracy. But the poor, being excluded from that bureaucracy, came up with their own rules, and therefore there is functioning system of property rights that exist outside Egyptian law but that in all these communities have validity adn are acted upon.

Tailoring investment to these particularities works - micro-credit for the illegal homeowners, payment on delivery for internet commerce in a cash-based society, etc - and it makes more money. Trying to transplant preconceptions from other markets rarely works.

Reaching the "pious middle," nice phrase!

I’d like to set out a couple of propositions for discussion. These are a couple of ideas I’ve been kicking around for a while but have had neither the time to develop nor a relevant post to append them to.

Islamic Fundamentalism is, essentially, an admission of defeat.

Given the current popularity of Islamic Fundamentalism, it’s easy to forget that this popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the fifties, sixties and into the seventies, secular "westernism" was all the rage. Secular, and, ostensibly, progressive governments ruled throughout the Middle East and North Africa. They promised modernity and a brighter future and most people were happy to go along.

But, for the most part, these governments didn’t deliver. Not only did MENA not catch up with the West, it got farther behind. People got Western-style university educations but then got no jobs. Governments delivered repression instead of prosperity. Promised basic services never materialized, etc., etc. In short, the Western experiment was a humiliating failure.

Islamic Fundamentalism rejects modernity in favor of a mythical Islamic past. Islamic Fundamentalism suggests that modernity is not the cure but the disease itself. Piety, not progress, is the way forward. The decadent West is everything that Islam must never be. The failure of the Western experiment is actually Allah’s blessing and if we turn back to His path, Muslims will be rewarded by Him as they were in the days of the Caliphate.

This is, of course, bollocks. There is no utopia at the end of the neo-salafi rainbow. But, being a spiritual movement in opposition, they have not yet failed to deliver so they can continue to insist that people accept their message on faith.

Iran is an interesting case study. Under the Shah, Iran had one of the most secular and westernized governments in the region. The 1979 revolution installed an odd mix of theocracy and democracy. But popular enthusiasm for a fundamentalist Islamic republic faded as, once again, the government didn’t deliver on its original promise. Were it not for the theocratic overlay, Iran would now be the most democratic and reformist country in the region. To put it another way, after finding the promise of Islamic fundamentalism empty, Iran has swung back toward reform and pragmatism.

It some ways, Iran is a special case. Iran has 2500 years of experience as a serious player in world history. This gives Iranians a certain confidence in their dealings with the West that many in the region lack. But this just makes rejecting Western ideals all that much more attractive in countries that do have an inferiority complex about the West.

The West cannot end Islamic terrorism. Only the "pious middle" can end Islamic terrorism.

Islamic Fundamentalism and the terrorism it breeds is not a thing, it is a condition. Killing off terrorists, therefore, merely treats the symptom of an underlying problem. The symptoms will continue to return so long as the underlying condition persists.

There is only so much the West can do to address Islamic Fundamentalism. Its instruments of power are so blunt that direct efforts often create the opposite of the effect intended. Nor is there any philosophical discourse or moral suasion the West can use to convince Islamic Fundamentalists that Islamic Fundamentalism -- or even terrorism -- is wrong. Ethical discourse in the West has its roots in the enlightenment and in natural law. Ethical discourse in Islam has its roots in an entirely different tradition. Because Islamic Fundamentalists and the West do not share a common intellectual history, they do not agree on the basic premises that must undergird any discussion. Philosophical discussion with Islamic Fundamentalists is, therefore, useless. In the words of the proverb, "I speak in the East. You answer in the West."

The pious middle, however, does have both the intellectual tools and the credibility with which to engage Islamic Fundamentalists. Moreover, it is from the ranks of the pious middle that Islamic Fundamentalists arise. Ultimately, that’s where the real debate about the future of Islam is taking place. Should Fundamentalism fall out of fashion with the pious middle, Fundamentalism and the terrorism it engenders, will disappear. Radical Mujahideen are recruited, not born.

In sum, terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism arise out of the attitudes and discontent of the pious middle. That is, I believe, one of the reasons (another being an understandable element of fear) why there is less outcry about the antics of neo-salafis than the West would like to see. While neither Fundamentalists not terrorists, the pious middle does not completely reject them, either. While they condemn the action, they sympathize with the underlying emotion. "Of course attacking the World Trade Center was wrong -- a terrible, terrible thing. ObL is a terrible person, an evil man. But, you know, I understand what drove him to it."

Why is this significant? While we should, perhaps, first establish whether these propositions are correct, they do suggest a way forward for dealing with the problems posed by Islamic Fundamentalism. If the "pious middle" are attracted to Islamic Fundamentalism out of a sense of defeat, give them victory. The West can do nothing to convince Fundamentalists that they are wrong. The West cannot even, really, do anything to convince the pious middle that Fundamentalists are "wrong." All they can do is alleviate the conditions that give rise to fundamentalism in the first place. Fortunately, however, the pious middle can be had. They, like the vast majority of people everywhere, are primarily interested in getting on with their own lives. Any system that delivers economic growth, stability and freedom from repression will win their allegiance. On past form, this is a tall order in the MENA region.

I was going to write on how this ties in with Muslims in the West and how the lack of Muslim integration (where that is a problem) can be partially tied to external influences but I think this is long enough already.

Returning a bit, as my narcotics make work ineffectual. I see a number of very interesting thoughts, and perhaps my addled ones can add something.

First, I am not sure how to create a taxonomy of the "pious middle" - the idea is somewhat lifted from Gilles Keppel's own somewhat loose use of the 'the pious middle class' in his work, middle class in his usage being rather vague and not in the common North American sense. Or how I as an economist might look at it.

Generically, I am thinking of everyone from the stable working class through to the lower-to-middle layers of white-collar employment and shopkeepers. Largely urban, if not fully urbanised in outlook, all economically stressed as the old economic systems across the region are forced to change. Enjoy their satellite TV, in the Maghreb they like to watch as much Euro TV as Arab TV. In the Mashreq, they like the Western film heavy MBC channels, as well as the Arab Sats. But their cultural and identity referants are "Muslim" and not secular.

I would say that this vast group I just traced could be said to be (now) largely unattracted by secularism as such, the secular regimes of the 60s and 70s were clear failures and I challenge anyone to tell me that it is easy to find honest support for them even among today's liberal, secular fringe.

I would go further and say that the majority of this vast sociological grab basket have some "Islamist" sympathies, rooted in the sense that the whole post-colonial state development in the region, secular as it was, produced little positive (speaking here to feelings, not an obj. analysis).

The key factors in this pious middle that I see, in my addled narcotised state, are:
(i) strong importance of Islamic identity as root in time of stress and as counter to Western influence which are
(ii) simultaneously attractive and interesting, but hard to get a handle on, frightening. Pious middle is not, ultimately, hostile to integrating Western innovations, it is hostile to the sense of lacking contol over that integration, of the sense of losing control (again).
(iii) Generally pious middle also feels that they have not gotten fair shakes, lack real wasta, and that their piety is their one wasta. They want good order, pious order (although not in a ideological or strictly theological manner) and a sense of fair shakes. A socioeconomic issue. With most of the job / small-finance markets across the region reflecting gross unfairness, a retreat into piety provides solace.

Where that somewhat vague sketch falls in the political compass falls I would suppose depends on the country. In Egypt probably it falls to the Left. In the Maghreb, it probably falls inbetween. I think the key thought I am getting at is that the moderate pious middle, which is the majority of what we might call moderates in the MENA region, have their social identity and their moderation anchored in their religious identity.

As such calls to secularisation, the tendancy in European and American writing to identify the non-practising Muslim as "Moderate" and other such hints, make the West's vision of Moderation look rather like a demand that they commit Apostasy, and renounce their values. Or to put it another way, to the somewhat provincial, moderate pious Muslim, the moderation the West describes can easily sound like a demand to give up his or her religion.

And I would note, that in coming from certain kinds of quarters, in some cases that is effectively what some Western commentators mean by "moderate." Or pehraps put less pejoratively, the frequent rhetorical benchmark for the moderate believer rather sounds like taking an agnostic, libertine and libertarian New Yorker to be held up as a "moderate Christian" to the Bible Belt.

A communication loser.

My infrastructure comment that waterboy so kindly agreed with, I mean to use metaphorically. What I mean by knowing how to work with the infrastructure in place, and not insisting on the end result - on perfect conditions is quite simply a response to a certain throwing up of hands regarding a perceived gulf between Western values in communication, and values in region.

I am asserting that, as in business where one can work with the real problems by, as waterboy said, tailoring to particularities.

The question remains, how to win over.

Well, Anon has a nice passage:
If the "pious middle" are attracted to Islamic Fundamentalism out of a sense of defeat, give them victory. The West can do nothing to convince Fundamentalists that they are wrong. The West cannot even, really, do anything to convince the pious middle that Fundamentalists are "wrong." All they can do is alleviate the conditions that give rise to fundamentalism in the first place. Fortunately, however, the pious middle can be had. They, like the vast majority of people everywhere, are primarily interested in getting on with their own lives. Any system that delivers economic growth, stability and freedom from repression will win their allegiance. On past form, this is a tall order in the MENA region.

Help them get fair shakes, as I said. Mind you, fair shakes is not the same as the rentier systems the Gulf produced.

There is also the question of engaging the religious domain. Imposed secularism, from the outside, in a manner as I clumsily described above, wins no points for secularism.

I think I might be moved to reflext on my own pious middle

I think I might be moved to reflext on my own pious middle

Nice to see the new drugs are getting some traction!

Ahem, yes.

Well, I seem not to have touched off the conversation I was hoping to (not to complain I should say about the convo so far, but only they're the only ones).

Effectively I continue to be most fascinated by the dialogue between "the pious middle" and others. In part because they are the majority, in part because they're the only game relevant, and in part by very personal connexions I know talking to the pious middle means using a language and points of reference meaningful to them.

Every time a dispute or conflict occurs between East and West, Muslims and Christians, a new term is coined to label Muslims. If you have a beard and complain about anything fundamentally Western you’re an ‘Fanatic’. If you complain with reference to Islam you’re an ‘Extremist’. If you hang with Muslims, pray 5 times a day and refer to the Shariah in public you’re a ‘Fundamentalist’. If you protest against the Iraq war or the occupation of Palestine you’re an ‘Islamist’. If you attended a Mosque and unknowingly prayed next to anybody that had links to fighters from Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan you’re ‘Al-Qaeda’.

There is now a new kid on the block, a ‘Moderate Muslim’. If you accept the war on terror but condemn Muslim retaliation you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you pledge support for Bush and Blair you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you support distorters of Islam you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you sympathise with Salman Rushdie you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you tolerate cartoons slandering Islam but are intolerate to reactionary boycotts/protests you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you think the cartoons were correct you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you acknowledge those that claim to be Muslim and Gay you’re a ‘Moderate’.

Some say Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi and Ayatollah Ali Sistani are ‘Moderates, others say only those that condemn 9/11 are ‘Moderates’, in conjunction with those that apologise for the cartoon protest. Then I learn that ‘none of the above’ is relevant as a ‘Moderate’ is the opposite of a Salafist, while others consider them to be gutless Muslims that are ineffective against ‘Islamists’.

Those most rational explanation I’ve read is that “Wahhabis and Islamists need to be called ‘extremist Muslims’ or ‘violent Muslims’ and the moderate Muslims need to be called Muslim”. But please can somebody tell me who makes up these terms? As I said earlier, Muslims differ from generation to generation, culture to culture, some are more devout, others Muslim by name only. Nevertheless, most of us condemn violence, terror, injustice and oppression, and we are just called Muslims.

What Is A Moderate Muslim?