Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Social Constructivism and ‘Jihad Cool’

Last night (May 10, 2010), on the way home from class, I listened to a story on NPR’s Talk of the Nation (“Help Young Muslims Resist ‘Jihad Cool’). The story (interview) was interesting on many levels, but what I found particularly interesting—and relevant to our just-concluded discussion of social constructivism—was how some young, Western-educated, and relatively affluent and privileged Muslims, such as Faisal Shahzad, are being drawn into radicalism and “terrorism.” The speaker, Asra Nomani, argued, in essence that certain mosques and leaders in the Muslim community are constructing a reality that defines the West, and the United States in particular, as inherently dangerous and threatening to Islam. The West, as Nomani put it, “is the dark path.” She continues:

“We're hearing it in our mosques. I can tell you that in my mosque in West Virginia, I heard it every Friday from these sermons that would be spoken by PhD graduate students, by engineering professors, folks who were getting all of the advantages of our open society and yet, on Thursday night downloading from Saudi websites sermons that basically said, don't imitate the path, the disbelievers, meaning the West. And this is exactly that slippery slope that ends up with something like this Times Square bomb attack - attempt.”

In this socially constructed reality, it becomes easier to understand the type of “how-possible” questions that social constructivists, such as Roxanne Doty, speak of. Consider, for example, how it is possible for a privileged young man (Shadzad is the son of a vice marshal in the Pakistani Air Force) to load a car up with explosives and park it in Times Square with the intent of killing dozens of people. How is it possible, in other words, for individuals to come to an understanding that such actions are reasonable and justified? The answer should already be clear. To repeat: it is possible because, through an increasingly potent discourse, the West has become an almost demonic entity that must be destroyed, regardless of the personal costs.

We can also see how this discourse (seemingly) limits or narrows the type of choices available to “true believers.” On this point, Nomani notes (in an earlier article she wrote for the Daily Beast) that, for talented young Muslims, there are few nonviolent avenues for protests to lure them away from the temptations of “jihad cool.” To Neal Conan (Talk of Nation’s host) this made little sense. As he succinctly put it, “there are a million ways to express protest in this country.” Conan is certainly right, but the (social constructivist) point is that, within the reality of the anti-Western discourse, nonviolence protest is not a viable option; indeed, it is hardly an option at all.

Not surprisingly, Nomani seemed to recognize this—in responding to Conan’s remark, she emphasized the importance of constructing an alternative discourse, one that “educated” and “empowered” Muslim youth to see the world differently and to “take advantage of those non-violent ways.”

There is also a larger point here (social constructivists tell us). For it is not only a radicalized Islamic discourse that creates certain social constructed realities: the entire social world is a product of various discourses, some mainstream and some extreme. In the United States, we have created equally powerful discourses that shape our perceptions--create our "realities"--that few of us question or even think about.

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A transcript of the story, “Help Young Muslims Resist ‘Jihad Cool’” is available on the NPR website at this address: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126672350&ft=1&f=5

Asra Nomani’s original article, “The Would-Be Bomber’s Wife” is available on the Daily Beast webstie at this address: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-06/the-would-be-bombers-wife/