One of the most unfortunate legacies of primitive religious thinking is the belief that everything in the world has a single cause. Either the Jews are responsible for everything, or Putin, or “free market interference,” or whatever happens to be fashionable at the moment. In this view, there is always one master explanation from which everything else supposedly follows.
I emphasize the word primitive, because most religious traditions are capable of producing far more complex systems of thought. Systems that recognize that the world contains many different problems and conflicts that are often unrelated and only occasionally erupt at the same time. Systems that acknowledge the existence of multiple forces and interests, sometimes reinforcing one another, sometimes pulling in opposite directions.
Thus, the fact that political opposition in some countries is funded, organized, or at least encouraged by the West does not mean that every instance of popular resentment against rulers in non-Western societies must have been manufactured in Washington, London, or Brussels.
Still less does it mean that everyone who opposes America is automatically a good person.
Consider Iran. I regard the idea of a military attack on Iran as reckless and irrational. That said, this does nothing to change the basic fact that the rule of the ayatollahs belongs among the most repulsive regimes in the contemporary world. It is an inhuman despotism—a Shiite version of the Islamic State, or of what currently governs Syria.
It is a system built on terror: the murder of opponents, daily harassment over real or imagined religious offenses, constant intimidation. This is not terror merely to maintain power. It is terror for the sake of terror itself. To portray those who tyrannize the Iranian majority as “defenders of national independence” is both a moral and an intellectual failure.
Yet Iran is also a fascinating case.
Before the rise of the ayatollahs, it possessed a relatively modern society, at least in its urban centers. In many respects, it remains modern today—resembling Europe or America in the twentieth century. The proportion of women among university students is higher than anywhere in the West. Iran’s technology startup scene appears thoroughly contemporary. Only about two percent of the population regularly attends Friday prayers—the Islamic equivalent of Sunday church services.
In other words, this is a society that resembles something like Paris without large Muslim enclaves, forced to coexist with a political elite whose mentality belongs to the eighth century. Under such conditions, permanent conflict is hardly surprising.
And this is not merely an Iranian problem.
It is entirely conceivable that within a few years, some European countries will face the same combination: an advanced, yet internally fragile modern society governed by Muslim fundamentalists.