In the life of a modern Islamic society we see the same elements and phenomena that one hundred years ago led to the civil war in Russia. As in Russia, a traditional community collapsed in Islamic countries, and the great masses of young people were deprived of coherent system of values.
The beginning of the global world reshuffle, which historically is going on with a fantastic speed, requires no less rapid and global understanding.
The matter, as it seems, is that in complex systems like our human world, a simple arithmetic method does not function. From the analysis of parts we are not able to understand the whole, as well as the inherent dynamics. The study of ants per se is not enough to design a picture of life in an anthill.
The reasons for current and possibly dangerous changes are multiple. To explain them in one way is impossble. Neither purely political nor purely economic or purely social or cultural reasons, for all their importance, do not explain everything what is happening in general. The answer can only lie in the understanding of the interaction of the modern world’s elements.
For example, we definitely see a significant change in political sentiments in Western Europe, a "rightward" move of a large part of voters. But it is hard to explain this only by economic problems. Though there is no rapid increase of the well-being, but anyway today we are not talking about any serious decline of living standards. Brexit is not just a consequence of the impoverishment of the masses. And such a change of sentiment can not be attributed to migration, even the massive one. It is rather clear that the case lies in combination of reasons.
It is rather difficult to understand what those reasons are. But I would like to mention one thing specifically. These are, of course, new communications. Their appearance affected all processes with human involvement, one way or another. Informational abundance, incredible amounts of information, transmitted almost with a speed of light, pulled hundreds of millions of people into political processes that previously were difficult to be reached. This drawing, in turn, has made the whole situation in the world more sensitive to the opinion of the masses than before. And the masses themselves are more easy to be manipulated. Another thing is that the number of manipulators and their abilities multiply increased.
It should be noted that before people were also simple-minded. The belief in cynocephalus and antipodes was the result of low education and the propensity to frivolity and excitement, inherent to a human being from the beginning. But the media and the Internet multiplied these typical human features. And it turned out that many were caught in a kind of cognitive dissonance, were traumatized by their inability to cope with the increasing flow of information. Exactly like in a school a lagging pupil without timely help can easily slip into a kind of nihilism, total negation of the surrounding world, depreciating it as confused, foolish and senseless. This is a fairly common phenomenon. And in the mass it can be seen, for example, in the Middle East (but not only there), when tens of millions immediately, almost simultaneously, got into the new world of information. Of course, they were confused, and - according to the old human behaviour - rushed into the arms of primarily simplified, supposedly historical traditions, began to look for support in the time-honored basics. Of course, this is not the only reason, the situation is more complicated. So once again I’d like to notice that the case is in the understanding of interaction.
There is a lot of talk about the essence of what is happening in the Middle East and possible ways of the situation development. However, with all the abundance of details and cobwebs in the explanation of various shades of obscurantism and views on the best kinds of tortures and executions of various movements in the region, there is no unified theory. In my opinion, the most appropriate model for the understanding of the ongoing processes is the interpretation of them as a kind of global civil war between various groups with their different social, cultural and economic ideas. In any case, in the life of a modern Islamic society we see the same elements and phenomena that one hundred years ago led to the civil war in Russia. As in Russia, a traditional community collapsed in Islamic countries, and the great masses of young people were deprived of coherent system of values. They left the old, archaic and largely paternalistic system, but did not come to a new, urbanistic, humanistic and open one. And these masses of young people were thrown into an unfamiliar culture, often existing in big cities like Cairo.
That's exactly what happened in Tsarist Russia where at the turn of 19-20th centuries the young people from the villages poured into cities. And nowadays the young Muslims are unable to adapt to the new society the same way. In Islamic countries, as well as in Russia a century ago, there was a fierce competition, and arriving young men could hardly find job and food. At the same time, as once in Russia, in Islamic countries there are many educated persons whose social and career development is limited. Deliberately or not, they are involved into the process of acquiring their own identity, into the process of inventing their own world, just and harmonious. It should be such a world, where they can attain self-realization in management, business, science and so on. Numerous regional movements - nomen illis legio - just reflect all the confusion in the minds of the restructuring world.
The general discontent, desire for changes give rise to one organization after another, movement after movement, sect after sect, and their increasing amount confirms the large number of dissatisfied people. Who remembers all the revolutionary organizations in the Tsarist Russia, and their fierce struggle among themselves and with the whole world around? By the way, ISIS is a real illustration how the wild-archaic forms hide a desperate, extreme modernism, the desire to rebuild the world completely.
And if we add to this huge financial resourses (there were many also in the Tsarist Russia), a deadly cocktail for a civil war appears. And it has already started. To some extent troubles of the enlightened countries are due to the fact that they have been drawn into the internal, civil strife.
Of course, the above is only one possible explanation. But in any case, I believe, the only productive approach is to analyze the interaction of various elements that make up our picture of the world.
