T

he Islamic State (IS) didn'€™t originate in Jordan. It is not just a bunch of disaffected youths who can'€™t find employment or girls to marry. IS results from extremist psychopathic clerics, an extreme interpretation of the Koran and battle-hardened Taliban, al-Qaeda and other organizations who are so barbaric that they make the former Taliban atrocities look like a Sunday school picnic.

So the argument for IS having its origins in the economics of despotic regimes is not well-founded at all.

Don'€™t get me wrong. The despotic regimes are gruesome and engender massive disaffection; you can see that in Syria. But that is not driving ordinary Syrians into the arms of IS.

Lastly, regime-change in Jordan, as you wish it, will fail. The monarchy, while maybe not totally wonderful, is among the least evil among some evil states there.

That ordinary Muslims are silent on IS is true. The silence is deafening and allows IS to slaughter its way toward whatever it sees as its goals through sheer, literal bloody-mindedness. The Arab League attacks on IS are a bit sporadic, puny and ineffective: almost token gestures.

As a footnote, it is only a Western-centric fantasy that Muslims want an open and fair government. What most Muslims, unused to and not really interested in true Western (European) democracy, will be happy to find is a strong male leader to do all their thinking for them, tackle all the hard issues and get things done. Not for them is the issue of human rights, gender equality, fairness, open government and the like. This mostly results from centuries of cultural backwardness, patriarchal dominance, nepotism and the inevitable corruption.

That is why so-called Muslim democracies are just superficial plastic versions of the real thing. Western society leaders love to hear the word '€˜democracy'€™ associated with Indonesia, for example, but that flavor of government is just a cynical exercise in pulling the wool over Western leaders'€™ eyes, because they wish to believe. No amount of force of arms, money, logic or other means could have ever coerced Iraq, post Saddam Hussein, into becoming the type of state the US government wished it to be.

Maurice
Jakarta