Fareed Zakaria on radical Islam

Fareed Zakaria has recently become one of my favorite columnists.

...[B]orn in India, has a B.A. from Yale (in history) and a Ph.D. from Harvard (in international relations). In 1992, at the age of 28, Zakaria became managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the leading journal of international politics and economics—a position he held through 2000.

Not bad.

His views on the Islamic world and international affairs are always very in-depth and insightful. His latest column in Newsweek is worth taking a look at. In it he examines the rise of "barbaric ideologies" and how the West can help battle their spread.

Suicide bombing cannot be explained by poverty and disadvantage. The London bombers were not the wretched of the earth. They came from working-class but comfortable backgrounds, living in one of the world's most prosperous countries. For all the talk of their being marginalized, none were living in hellish ghettos. Britain today does a decent job of assimilating its immigrants, certainly better than any other European country. If anyone had cause for rage, it was not the bombers but their parents.

But their parents did not choose to blow up train stations. So what's going on here? Zakaria continues:

Nor can foreign policy really explain such rage... There is something deeper at work here. Last week Egypt, which sent no troops to Iraq and condemned the invasion, was targeted. Turkey and Indonesia—which are both opponents of the war—have also been attacked. (Besides, the demands keep changing. Osama bin Laden's primary one was that American troops leave Saudi Arabia, which they have done. Bin Laden seems not to have noticed.)

No, he hasn't. I think it's safe to say that he's just winging it at this point.

What Zakaria is getting at, though, is the idea of fanatacism, something that has always been there since the beginning of political movements. Impressionable young men have been sucked into it for centuries. There is no rational behind it; there is only chaos. And both the Muslim world and the West have a duty to battle it not only with bullets, but with counter-ideas.

We...have to discredit, delegitimize and dismantle barbaric ideas. After the London bombings, Arab commentators pointed out that for years Britain has granted asylum to noxious preachers and scholars who praise suicide bombings, argue for the overthrow of Western regimes and celebrate Al Qaeda's victories.

After 7/7, there will be no more of that, I hope.