“IF YOU do not initiate your young men into the tribe, they will come back and burn down the village just to feel the heat.”
This African proverb sums up much of what I learned in my work in Al Qalam in preventing violent extremism. Out of countless possible reasons for the radicalization of young people toward violent extremism, the question of identity remains to be the most common.
In the modern world where quest for identities intensifies amid displacement due to territory struggles, consumerism-driven-crowd mentality, global connectivity where individuality could easily drown and other relative global phenomena; groups who take advantage of people looking for a sense of belongingness and purpose on top of identity search gain massive traction that allows them to expand their causes. This could not be any truer in the Mindanao and Bangsamoro contexts as it is in many areas in Asia and the Middle East.
Yet, the present scenario is not self-explanatory on its own. When we started organizing the Al Qalam Institute of Ateneo de Davao University, we recognized that because of various reasons, our world today is undergoing drastic change in our communities and environment.
In order to understand the present condition of the Mindanao and the Bangsamoro people, we need to study the history of the world and also the international policies after World War II that led to development programs that affected the lives of the people in Asia, Middle East, and Africa.
One notable shift in history was the quashing of culture to make way for economic progress. Take for example the United Nations view of development in 1950s. It says, "There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress." (United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs, 1951)
This framework follows the United States Marshall Plan in reconstructing Europe, a European Recovery Program (ERP) named after Military General George Marshall who later on became Secretary of State. In his inaugural speech he stated, "The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.... It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."
The Marshall Plan as Marshall describes it was intended to only benefit the world, especially Europe, in returning to its former self. There were obviously other consequences but the intentions to help the world rebuild were there. This change in the world economic order made major alterations to Asian and Middle Eastern society and culture. It formed a new process of identity formation called "Americanisation," although I prefer to call it "modernisation."
American popular culture even reached the land of Mindanao.
According to one Muslim scholar, the initial emergence of the concepts of tradition, modern and modernity had nothing to do with Islamic scholarship and the world of Islam. However, since one of the most important features of the early European modern period was its globalized character, the Islamic world, which never ceased its close cultural, social and military interactions with the West, was quickly affected by the large-scale changes that were sweeping across Europe.
In reaction to the rise of Western civilization, secularism, and modernity, the world witnessed the global rise of religious political movements as early as 1900s to 1960s as highlighted by the groups like the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and the ideas propagated by Sayyed Qutub, Ibn Tamiya, Ibn Khaldun, and Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahab were a reaction to the Western influence of modernization and the later part, Americanisation.
Moving forward, globalization in the eyes of some Muslims is the new process of colonization. The challenges of globalization includes the breaking down boundaries, altering the composition of whole communities, even countries and creating circumstances in which new challenges arise, and if not properly handled, individuals and communities resist and isolate themselves from the global world. The strong impact of globalization is the erosion of Muslim identities.
From the concept of Americanisation or Western identity, we now have a Muslim identity that mainly reflects the traditions of one particular school of thought of Islam, Wahabbism.
According to Galina Yemelianova, Senior Lecturer in Eurasian Studies, University of Birmingham, "Wahhabism is an Arabian form of Salafism, the movement within Islam aimed at its 'purification' and the return to the Islam of the Prophet Mohammed and the three successive generations of followers.”
The word Salafism refers to an ideology of the fundamentalists who believe in a return to the original ways of Islam. This is also where Islamic extremism and Islamic political thoughts traces its roots.
We need to deconstruct the whole notion of Islamic extremism by understanding their history in order to get a grip on phenomenon like ISIS, Al Qaeda, and similar groups like the Abu Sayaf Group and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. Global economic and cultural erosion are pieces of the puzzle that are interconnected to one another.