I am continuously reading articles in major newspapers trying to understand why Americans and Europeans would leave the comfort of the West to risk one's life an limb by joining the Islamic State. The most recent such article came this week as CNN interviewed the sister of one of the bombers in Paris. The article quotes the sister as saying: "He was generous, someone who loved to laugh and joke, a cheeky little boy," she said. That cheeky little boy turned into a mass murderer after traveling to Syria to join ISIS, where he's thought to have spent the past several years. She then asserts that he was brainwashed after connecting online with Syrian individuals loyal to the Islamic State. Of course, the article fails to discuss why someone in Europe would even be attracted to a murderous regime.
An article on Vox also discusses this problem. The author there writes that some people travel thousands of miles to join the Islamic State because they are "excited about religious ideas of a coming end times or about joining in the revival of what they imagine will be a glorious caliphate or they buy into ISIS's prolific internet propaganda portraying it as ever victorious."
The Vox article further quotes an exile democracy activist who asserts that ISIS members are often joining for "heroism, meaning, belonging, forgiveness, feeling like they have a purpose, feeling like they belong to something bigger than themselves." The article further states, "the fact is that rules give structure, and they give meaning. In the midst of all this chaos around you, there are these rules, and they're defined rules and they make sense."
The article also discusses the role of feeling that one is "belonging to a marginalize community, especially if that community is overpoliced or treated as a suspect, or if your society expresses hostility towards Islam or religion generally."
The article also discusses the message "if your greatest wish is to commit murder and do it gruesomely, then join up with ISIS an you can do it," not to mention that some are attracted to participate in rape an violent adventure.
These articles paint a very clear picture to me of men and women who, other than murderous psychopaths,might not have left the West if they found what they were looking for in the West, without having to look elsewhere.
In other words, we need to promote ourselves! We in the West need to show ourselves and others that the answers being sought can be found in the world of liberal democracy rather than in theocratic totalitarianism.
Our Constitution assures that individuals are free to voice their opinions about society in other areas of society as well, not just in the voting arena. The Constitution's First Amendment provides for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government to redress grievances.
Our Constitution's Article VI specifically prohibits any religious test as a qualification for any office of public trust under the United States.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits an employer with 15 or more employees from failing or refusing to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate, on the basis of religion, including religious observance, practice, and belief.
The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion for landlords an real estate companies.
It is my opinion that these laws, among others, reveal a legal structure well situated to protect all sorts of religious practices.
Societies that fit in the category of being liberal republics are societies where individuals may chose their behavioral practices. Unlike in repressive regimes, in the United States, one can find churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious institutions strong and vibrant, strengthened by volunteers and donations, all possible due to personal liberty.
The notion that one should feel the need to leave the United States to live according to one's belief system is a sad state of affairs. The fact that one can find communities almost exclusively of Amish in Pennsylvania and Haredi Jews in New York reflect that if one feels the desire and need to live in a word of religious purity, one should not feel the need to leave the United States, but should instead take advantage of one's liberties and create the community one desires. Indeed the United States even has a few communes and collectivist communities, although they are not as popular these days.
In writing this, I am not blind to the serious challenges that exist within the United States with respect to the level of respect being afforded various minority beliefs. Almost every few days, I see a news story of an individual or group who feels bullied due to their expressed viewpoint on a topic of communal importance. Some of this bullying rises to the level of illegality and some of it is not illegal but makes individuals fear for revealing their true viewpoints.
With regard to this last point, it suggest that the moral case for western-style democratic republicanism must be made not only to those who might choose to leave our way of life, but also to ourselves. Viewpoint-based bullying is totally inconsistent with the values reflected in the governing documents of the United States. When our society tolerates viewpoint based bullying, our society embarrasses its values and fails to represent a worldview that is more valuable for human dignity than the world of ISIS.
Anyone who is considering joining ISIS or another similar regime on the basis of opportunity to live in a state of religious purity should strongly consider the above described Constitutional rights one has here. One should consider that the world of ISIS is one that constitutally endorses bullying those who question and consider viewpoints contrary to ISIS. In the United States, any bullying that exists is inconsistent with the essence of what the United States stands for.
Anyone who is considering joining ISIS because of a desire to stand for a purpose should consider that it is in the United States where one has the freedom to advocate for one's viewpoint. In the word of ISIS, one has the opportunity only to stand as a slave to their viewpoint. It has been said that some join ISIS because of the excitement of fighting for a cause, but in this country, the number of charities and organizations advocating on this or that issue means that one can devote themselves to socially-responsible fighting for issues they really care about.
Of course, there are also individuals traveling to ISIS because of sociopathic and violent tendencies. If one is desirous of being in a society where one can bully all to observe Islam in a particular manner, it is hard to imagine an argument that would encourage that person to chose the life of liberty over ISIS. For those folks, we must redirect their mindset to the appreciate the value of life and liberty, and for those where that is not possible, we sadly might need to find them in the words of prisons and mental institutions.
In writing this article, in no way did I intend to raise all the arguments or principles that justify favoring democracy over totalitarianism. I mean to start a discussion that is fairly absent in th discussion about ISIS. Although many discuss moral cases for defeating ISIS, we should also discus moral cases for advancing liberal democratic society.
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