Fertile Ground for Extremism
Terrorism, extremism, and unspeakable carnage -- these all too familiar headlines have once again dominated the front pages of newspapers, websites and social media feeds alike.
It’s a raging fire fuelled by fear and hate, a self-perpetuating machine of violence. The terrorist attacks in Paris in November, followed three weeks later by the attacks in San Bernardino California have once again ignited the flames of fear, and set the world in motion towards an ideological confrontation.
These events, as if played-out in a Shakespearean tragedy, create the vicious circle of death, destruction and isolation that's essential for the perception of an “us and them” society to permeate throughout our communities. These heinous and unspeakable events will certainly to be followed by reports of racism, bigotry and Islamophobia, creating the landscape for fear, animosity and mistrust.
“These extremists, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and even some conservative countries like to create this binary situation with us versus them, with us being the Muslims, and them being the whole rest of the world,” says Dr. Abdie Kazemipur, a professor of sociology and the university scholar research chair in social sciences at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.
“The main thing that would push the Muslim population towards more extremist types of views, or a more exclusionary type of view is whether what they see in their daily experiences, matches the kind of vision those extremists are providing to them,” says Kazemipur.
Kazemipur, a winner of the 2015 John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award for his most recent book The Muslim Question in Canada, has conducted extensive socio-economic research on the subject of immigration, and the integration of immigrants into Canadian society.
The “Muslim Question” that Kazemipur is referring to, is based upon the host nation’s perceptions of Muslim immigrants in their societies. His findings state that western societies have the perception that Muslims are unwilling to live peacefully within foreign cultures because of their religious teachings.
“What I have referred to as the Muslim question was a combination of a couple of things, two things specifically. One is, that Muslims are not good at living peacefully with other non-Muslim populations, and that they have difficulty developing normal relationships with others. They are only comfortable in their own neighbourhoods. Second is, the reason for this perceived lack of willingness on the part of Muslims to integrate with others is because of Islam,” said Kazemipur.
Kazemipur believes this binary focus on religion overly simplifies the situation and fails to grasp the true complexity of the situation.
Religion, Kazemipur says, “is a repository of a whole bunch of teachings that have been developed historically over a long period of time.”
Kazemipur says that within the Koran and Islam itself, there are many different teachings, both violent and peaceful. He says that if someone were to include or exclude any of these individual teachings this would create a simplistic view of Islam and potentially provide the narrative someone desires to justify their actions.
“It’s up to the Muslim community and Muslim individuals to decide which of the scenarios they want to go for,” says Kazemipur.
The question facing Muslims and non-Muslims today is, how do we prevent the wrong narrative, the extremist narrative from percolating and taking root in western society?
“Muslim leaders have to play a very responsible role here in order to understand and appreciate the needs of our time, the needs of the Muslim community, and the needs of the broader society that they are living in. They have to draw on those elements in their faith and in the history of Islam that would help with that situation and help everybody to ameliorate this situation,” says Kazemipur.
Kazemipur’s research shows, that of all the different types of immigrants who come to Canada including atheists, statistically, Muslims have the most difficult time integrating into Canadian society. He believes Muslims must learn to adapt to a society that isn’t governed by the rules of any particular religion. He says Muslims need to realize they’re now living in countries that are culturally and religiously diverse.
“For Muslim and Muslim leaders, I would say that they have to stop living only in their own communities and try to engage with the broader community, to open up to the non-Muslim population, friends, colleagues, classmates and try to develop that relationship,” says Kazemipur.
However, Kazemipur says that the entire weight of this integration issue doesn’t solely lie with Muslims. Canadians must learn to reach out to the Muslim population and engage them in dialog. He says the entire Canadian Muslim population is only about two percent of Canada’s entire population, as such it’s important for Muslims to feel welcome.
Kazemipur says, “there’s a perception, certainly in Canadian society but maybe to varying degrees in other societies as well, that all we need to do is basically have a politically correct face out, and that will solve all the problems.”
The problem that he’s describing is the illusion, or façade within society that states as long as you don’t act in a manner that is socially unacceptable, such as insulting or hurting someone’s feelings, the problem of social integration in our society will solve itself.
“We have to go beyond this, and we have to realise that the politically correct language and images that we use are just the first step in order to improve the overall environment, so that the actual interactions may happen,” says Kazemipur.
In 2013, Kamemipur gave a lecture at the Harris Centre in Newfoundland on Canadian immigration. His lecture was focused on the socio-economic data he’d compiled from Stats Canada and other sources on Muslim integration in Canadian society.
Kazemipur’s research showed that Muslims typically have the most difficult time finding their first job. His data showed that a typical Muslim immigrant took nine months to find employment, whereas those of Eastern religions were the quickest, finding employment in four-and-a-half months.
The difficulties in finding employment for any section of society can lead to a whole host of issues for both the immigrant as well as the host nation. His data also showed that as a result of these employment issues, the poverty rate for Muslim immigrants to Canada in 2001 was 45 per cent.
The Social Affairs Division of the Parliament of Canada defines poverty as, the “inability to obtain the necessities of life – or in relative terms – ‘being worse off than average.’”
The problems of poverty and unemployment are not unique to Canadian Muslims. According to The Economist, the unemployment level of young Muslims in the suburbs of Paris France exceed 40 per cent in some areas. These disenfranchised youths are precisely the type of people Jihadist’s look to recruit for their ideological war.
“If the socio-economic isolation of Muslims is there and it doesn’t get better, then that is exactly the favourable and fertile ground for extremism,” says Kazemipur.
“My worry is that if we are not proactive enough about these things in Canada, then maybe two, three decades down the road we might see what France is seeing.”
Unfortunately, as we discovered in San Bernardino, being poor and unemployed is not a perquisite for becoming a disenfranchised Jihadist. Syed Rizwan Farook, the male half of the terrorist couple in San Bernardino was born in the U.S. and worked as an environmental health specialist for the San Bernardino County’s public health department.
