Will The Coming Oil-Shale Revolution Lead To Decline Of Radical Islam?

The Arabs are getting it that the new oil technology will make the West much less dependent on the Middle East for oil:

The issue of global energy security seems changing nexus now, resulting in uncertain call on Saudi and OPEC oil in medium term. Large new, conventional and unconventional reserves in North America, and elsewhere, are questioning the dominant role of OPEC in meeting the global oil thirst. These new developments have also sapped the urgency to develop the Kingdom’s own reserves — further — at this stage.

The transition has been in air for some time now — yet it has just been officially conceded — from the top. “The abundance of resources and the more ‘balanced’ geographical distribution of unconventionals have reduced the much-hyped concerns over ‘energy security’ which once served as the undercurrent driving energy policies and dominated the global energy debate,” Khalid Al-Falih, the Aramco CEO, said last week at the Energy Dialogue organized by the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center.

...Good, old, uncle Cheney, the former US Vice president once said: “The problem is that the Good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas reserves in places where there are more democratic governments.”

His prayers seem to have been answered — finally!

That is all well and good--the West will not be as tied to the whims of OPEC.
The question is: Will The Coming Oil-Shale Revolution Lead To Decline Of Radical Islam?


Probably not--according to Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi of the Middle East Forum:

Nonetheless, Islamism is ultimately a problem rooted in questions of "identity and circumstance" (as Pipes puts it), and in the age of mass communication, it is much easier for those who draw on broad elements of traditional Islamic theology to justify doctrines of jihad as offensive warfare and imposing Islamic law to attain success in winning over peaceful Muslims to their causes.

Moreover, we see that in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan with its numerous Islamist movements, Tunisia with its an-Nahda movement, Yemen with al-Qa'ida, Somalia with ash-Shabaab, and Sudan with its regime under Omar al-Bashir (to name just a few), Islamism enjoys success without dependence on financial boosts from petroleum profits.

As Pipes noted back in 2002: "Oil revenues helped give militant Islam a start; but once up and running… it [militant Islam] no longer depends on this financial boost as shown by oil revenues having several times in the intervening years gone down without a noticeable reduction in militant Islam's steady gains."

In short, therefore, growing energy independence for the West via oil shale (a pleasing development in its own right) seems unlikely to hamper significantly the problem of Islamist ideology.

There will be no easy answers to combating radical Islamists--which is unfortunate, considering the signals we are getting from Egypt's election.

Technorati Tag: Islamists and Oil.