The sources of Islamism's strength include the fact that it is a

Host:
The night was a quiet battlefield of lights and shadows. In the dim glow of a desert café, the air hung thick with the scent of tobacco and dust. Outside, the wind whispered across the empty streets — carrying both memory and warning.

The city beyond was ancient, layered in time: crumbling mosques, flickering neon signs, the ghost of empires rising from the sand. The radio in the corner hummed softly, half a song, half a lament — a foreign voice speaking of power, faith, and revolt.

At a small table near the window sat Jack and Jeeny — two strangers bound by a long, unfinished conversation. The lamp between them flickered over their faces — his sharp, reflective, carved by doubt; hers calm, but burning with conviction.

A folded newspaper lay open before them. Printed across its center in bold letters were the words that had sparked the night’s debate:
“The sources of Islamism’s strength include the fact that it is a response to the oppression of the Third World as a whole.” — Rene Girard

Jack:
(speaking slowly)
You know, Girard wasn’t wrong. Islamism didn’t just rise out of faith — it rose out of humiliation. Out of colonies, wars, borders drawn by men who never lived there. It’s not a religion — it’s a reaction.

Jeeny:
And reactions are born of wounds, Jack. Deep ones. When you strip people of their dignity, when you steal their language, their land, their history, what do you expect them to do? Pray quietly? Or fight loudly?

Host:
The light from passing cars streaked across the window, momentarily dividing their faces — two halves of the same truth, each framed by a different kind of fire.

Jack:
But at what cost, Jeeny? The “fight” you’re talking about — it turns spiritual pain into political fury. It burns everything — the oppressor and the oppressed alike.

Jeeny:
Because pain ignored becomes violence, Jack. When the world calls you backward, barbaric, poor, and then sells you the same weapons it condemns you for using — what choice do you have left?

Jack:
You have the choice to think, Jeeny. To build something different. You don’t heal oppression by recreating it in another form.

Jeeny:
But people don’t choose ideology in a vacuum, Jack. They choose it when they’ve been starved of every other language of power.

Host:
The fan above them spun slowly, groaning with each turn. The café owner, an old man with a white beard, wiped the counter, listening without interruption. The smell of cardamom and smoke wrapped around the room like a memory.

Jack:
You sound like you’re defending it.

Jeeny:
I’m not defending violence — I’m defending context. The West loves to analyze the fire but never the spark. It calls the symptom evil but refuses to name the disease — oppression.

Jack:
(opens his palms)
Fine. Let’s call it oppression. But tell me, Jeeny — how long before revenge replaces justice? How long before “liberation” becomes another cage?

Jeeny:
That depends on whether anyone listens before it gets that far. You can’t expect a people to be peaceful when they’ve been silenced for centuries.

Jack:
So the answer is always to fight?

Jeeny:
No. The answer is to be heard. But when the only language the world responds to is force, even faith starts speaking in bullets.

Host:
A moment of silence. Only the radio remained, crackling through its static — a voice reading the news of another explosion, another uprising, another cycle of pain disguised as purpose.

Jack:
You know, Girard called it a “response.” Not a “solution.” There’s something tragic about that — like the scream of a child who doesn’t even know what language he’s crying in anymore.

Jeeny:
That’s exactly what it is, Jack. A cry. But instead of listening, the world calls it terror.

Jack:
Because it is terror when it kills the innocent.

Jeeny:
And wasn’t colonialism terror? Weren’t sanctions, bombings, dictatorships funded by foreign hands — all terror too? The difference is who gets to name it.

Jack:
(nods slowly)
Fair. The West has its own blood on the ground. But don’t you think religion was supposed to rise above revenge?

Jeeny:
Religion was supposed to heal, yes. But when the world wounds, faith becomes the last bandage.

Host:
The lamp above them flickered — dimming, then returning. It was as if even the light hesitated to take sides.

Jack:
Girard saw this coming — he said violence feeds on imitation. We become the thing we hate most. Maybe that’s the curse of civilization — every victim dreams of being the next victor.

Jeeny:
Or maybe it’s the curse of injustice — to repeat itself until someone finally breaks the pattern.

Jack:
And you think that “someone” could come from within the same fire that birthed the pain?

Jeeny:
Of course. Because no one understands oppression like the oppressed. They’re the only ones who can transform it.

Jack:
(skeptical)
Into what? A new theology of anger?

Jeeny:
Into a theology of memory, Jack. Into a reminder. Every ideology begins as a wound trying to become a voice.

Host:
The old man poured them fresh tea, his hands steady despite the age. Steam rose, curling between them like incense. The world outside carried on — cars, markets, children — as if the debate inside were too heavy for its fragile rhythm.

Jack:
You think there’s a difference between Islamism and Islam then?

Jeeny:
Of course. Islam is faith. Islamism is faith under siege. One is a prayer. The other, a protest.

Jack:
And yet the protest has teeth.

Jeeny:
Because the prayer wasn’t heard.

Jack:
So the strength Girard spoke of — it comes not from belief, but from pain.

Jeeny:
Exactly. It’s not the Qur’an that fuels it, Jack — it’s the memory of empire, the scar of subjugation. Every oppressed people eventually writes scripture from their own suffering.

Host:
A stray gust of wind rattled the window. The lamp swayed gently, throwing their shadows across the wall — two figures blurred, fused, inseparable.

Jack:
You know what I fear most, Jeeny? That maybe there’s no end to it. That oppression creates extremism, and extremism justifies oppression. A perfect, endless loop.

Jeeny:
(softly)
Then someone has to step out of the loop.

Jack:
And who will do that? The powerful, who benefit from it? Or the broken, who bleed from it?

Jeeny:
Maybe both — when they finally see that the loop burns them the same way.

Host:
The café fell silent again. The radio clicked off. The air was thick — not with smoke or heat, but with the weight of realization.

Jack:
Girard said violence was contagious — that it spreads like faith, like myth. Maybe that’s why even the innocent become its carriers.

Jeeny:
Then maybe our only hope is to make understanding just as contagious.

Host:
The clock ticked. Outside, the call to prayer rose from a distant minaret, weaving through the night air. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t defiant. It was... human.

Jeeny turned toward the sound, her eyes soft.

Jeeny:
You hear that, Jack? That’s what faith sounds like before it’s politicized — before the world twists it into fear.

Jack:
(nods)
And maybe that’s what Girard wanted us to see — that behind every war, there’s a prayer that never got an answer.

Host:
The lamplight shimmered once more — and then, quietly, it went out.

Only the call to prayer remained, echoing through the darkness — the sound of a world not asking for power, but for mercy.

In that moment, Jack and Jeeny said nothing. For once, silence was not a void — it was an understanding.

Host:
Perhaps that is where Girard’s insight lives — not in faith, not in politics, but in the fragile space between suffering and response, between oppression and the longing to rise.

Outside, the wind carried the sound into the desert — the sound of a humanity still trying to find its voice beneath the rubble of its own history.

Fade out.