Terrorists born out of "internal jihad"?

Trying to blog on an emotive topic, especially one that involves religion and politics is always going to be difficult. This post is to explore further the concept of 'root causes' of terrorism.

I already raised the point that assuming 'root causes' of terrorism could be a worrying because it might fail to take into account both sides of a conflict, but Anthony Daniels (AKA Theodore Dalrymple) in an article in City Journal (USA-based urban policy magazine) makes a strong case for the 'root causes' theory. He suggests that Islamic suicide bombers carry out attacks to resolve their "internal jihad". That is, they accept martydom as a way to remove very real conflicts in their psyche (at least in the case of the London bombings).

...the term "jihad" has two meanings: inner struggle and holy war. While the political meaning connotes violence, though with such supposed justifications as the defense of Islam and the spread of the faith among the heathen, the personal meaning generally suggests something peaceful and inward-looking. The struggle this kind of jihad entails is spiritual; it is the effort to overcome the internal obstacles—above all, forbidden desires—that prevent the good Muslim from achieving complete submission to God's will...

...however, these two forms of jihad have coalesced in a most murderous fashion. Those who died in the London bombings were sacrificial victims to the need of four young men to resolve a conflict deep within themselves (and within many young Muslims), and they imagined they could do so only by the most extreme possible interpretation of their ancestral religion.

Dalrymple goes on to describe this internal conflict and how it is formed when British male Muslims embrace both their traditional values and contemporary Western "popular culture" values in London. This inevitably leads to a conflict, especially concerning the role of women, as Dalrymple points out:

However similar young Muslim men might be in their tastes to young white men, they would be horrified, and indeed turn extremely violent, if their sisters comported themselves as young white women [of British ethnicity] do.

If this internal conflict is as widespread in young male British muslims as Dalrymple purports, then it gives credibility to the idea that there is a 'root cause' for the suicide-bomber mentality.

Muslims who reject the West are therefore engaged in a losing and impossible inner jihad, or struggle, to expunge everything that is not Muslim from their breasts. It can't be done: for their technological and scientific dependence is necessarily also a cultural one. You can't believe in a return to seventh-century Arabia as being all-sufficient for human requirements, and at the same time drive around in a brand-new red Mercedes, as one of the London bombers did shortly before his murderous suicide. An awareness of the contradiction must gnaw in even the dullest fundamentalist brain.

I'm interested to know what other people think of this idea. Your thoughts?

Image (top) derived from The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893, and images of the Abu Ghraib tortures from 2003-2005. Image (bottom) from Manila Indymedia
Technorati Tags: terrorism, London bombings, British muslims, suicide bomber, jihad, Theodore Dalrymple