Muslim men encounter freedom and technology and they go through all sorts of emotions. Some feel that the solution to extremism is art classes and education for Islamists. Although a modern, scientific, secular education will go a long way in preventing the brainwashing of the next generation of Islamic militants, it can nonetheless make matters worse.

Modernity can create a reaction in a modernizing Muslim and cause them to revert to extremism. Case in point is the modern, educated Muslim who becomes a born again Muslim. A modern Muslim can revert to fundamentalism as was the case with Mohammad Atta, the September 11 terrorist, and countless other Lebanese, Iranian, Algerian, Egyptian and Iranian elites. What causes this reversion? It is both westernization and modernization. The difference between a revert terrorist like Atta and a hard core fundamentalist like Osama Bin Ladin is their interpretation of Islam. Atta thought Islam was permissive enough to allow a night of drinking before martyrdom whereas Bin Ladin is the kind who believes that praying before wreaking terror and havoc on the civilizations of the world is best.

In order for the individual Muslim to keep pace with developing world they must simultaneously westernize and modernize or they are likely to suffer from the fate of those who are impoverished despite their financial and technological superiority. Modernization and the march along the timeline of technology may lead to technological superiority or even a nuclear bomb but it does not make a nation progressive neither does it make a nation humane, nor secular nor westernized nor free. A case in point is Saudi Arabia, which may have the highest per capita income, zero poverty and comfortable, imported living, and yet it has become the breeding ground of the next generation of warmongers. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE may be technological hubs and commercial capitals but they place the rights of god over man and have a low regard for the individual. Nazi Germany and the Ottoman Empire are another example of how modernity and westernization are not the same.

However Muslim clerics often confuse the two. To most conservative Islamic minds the “modern Muslim” is one who grows long hair if he is a man or cuts her hair short if a woman. A “modern Muslim” goes out to nightclubs, plays a guitar, and sleeps with people who are outside the bonds of matrimony or Islam sanctioned concubinage. The Islamists are wrong however when they confuse the “Modern Muslim” with a “Westernized Muslim”. The free spirits who want to think for them selves and who only want to extend qualified respect to their elders are more westernized than modernized. They are more westernized because the west being the cradle of freedom, individuality and human rights has rightly become synonymous with freedom.

Westernization and freedom will most certainly lead to modernization even for Muslims, however this modernization can cause them to revert back to Islam the religion of submission and the anti thesis of western thought. We know that a Muslim becomes modernized after adopting the western values of free thought leading to creativity and great entrepreneurial energy. But what leads a Muslim to go from a modern western individual to a born again Muslim fanatic?

With modernization there is a danger that Muslims may tend to confuse the gifts of westernization as a gift of Allah and Islam forgetting that distancing themselves from Islam helped the Moorish Muslims of Spain as it does Turkish Muslims of today. It is the proximity to Islam that creates the Taliban of today and the marauding, pillaging and now glorified Arab tribes of yesterday.

With modernization also comes alienation and anomie as traditional bonds and social relations are broken amongst the upwardly mobile Muslim youth. Muslims moving through the classes can become self-conscious of their status as outsiders and Islam can provide easy answers and membership in a club of their own. If you therefore observe the graph depicted, particularly the green line. An individual Muslim may begin to westernize and be born in a liberal environment but modernization and mobility can lead the Muslim to curve back and head directly towards the fanaticism of the “Engineer” who terrorized Israeli citizens and form alliances with Communist terrorists like “Carlos the Jackal” who plagued the west and Osama Bin Ladin who terrorizes the world.

What then should we do to prevent creation of future terrorists? Muslims have to recognize as they westernize that the ideas of liberty, fraternity, and equality are not Islamic ideals. Islam segregates and discriminates against women, condones and perpetuates slavery to this day and stands for submission and obedience to God. Islam stands antithetical to western ideals and to claim that Islam does so would be an act of dishonesty akin to taking credit for things you never came up with. It would be like claiming that Salman Rushdie, a victim of Islam, reflects the greatness of Islam and Islam’s hand in making great writers. It would be like claiming that the victims of Islam like Avicenna and Averroes reflect the greatness of the Quran. It would be like taking credit for what Islam is not, never has been and never can be.

When Muslims begin to honestly assess the source of their liberty giving institutions they will understand the source of their progress. They may then wish to decide after being honest with themselves and those around them what path they wish to follow.