The difference between Pakistan’s flooding and Hurricane Katrina is that Pakistan, unlike New Orleans, has an efficient social service provider that offers immediate, tangible and effective relief to nature’s victims. That service provider is radical Islam.
Faster than the U.S. government ever responded to the crisis among its own impoverished citizens in a sinking city, reports are coming out of Pakistan that the charitable arms of Islamic terrorist groups are offering food, shelter and support to the victims of the worst flooding in Pakistan in 80 years.
This isn’t unusual. One of the reasons radical Islam has taken hold around the world is its willingness to provide social services for the destitute. The nations radical Islam flourishes in are often ruled by corrupt oligarchs who have no interest in feeding the poor or improving the lives of their citizens. On the other hand, organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah were offering food and supplies before they were asking recruits to pick up guns.
Many of what are now hard-line Islamic terrorist organizations started out as social service networks filling a void in corrupt and collapsing societies without a safety net. Is it any wonder that people turned to them? When you’re starving, the good guys are the people who give you food. There is no bigger picture.
So I wonder, now that market capitalism in America is pushing much of the middle class into the ranks of poverty; now that Americans are seeing their unemployment insurance run out and there are no jobs; now that cities are letting the lights go out at night, and schools close, and public transportation fail; I wonder what kind of organization will emerge to pick up hundreds of thousands of Americans falling through the cracks?
It won’t be radical Islam; that has no real foothold here. But some group will emerge. They always have. During the Industrial Revolution it was militant unions; during the Great Depression it was Communists — both of which were stymied by American presidents who told big business directly, if you don’t give people some of what you have, they’ll take it all away. Improved opportunities for ordinary people and a better social safety net made civic participation a better option than radicalism.
If the American government can’t help people effectively after a natural disaster; if it can’t run an economy where there are good jobs for those willing to work; if it can’t run buses or even keep the lights on at night who will pick up the slack this time?
