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A Cynical Plan
to Rebuild Islam Page 26 George W. Bush’s recent use of
“Islamofascism” - mimicked excitedly by Muslim-bashing pundits on
either side of the Atlantic - reveals the extent to which the once
marginal outbursts of the far right fringe now pass for respectable
political analysis in Washington and beyond. Islam itself is the
problem - either we change it, they conclude, or we dump it. Louay Safi delves into the political
laboratories of the neo-con think tanks to understand their plan for
“religion-building” a new Islam. To ensure that their views are not challenged by the academic community, neoconservatives are working hard to undermine academic freedom by intimidating scholars that present a balanced view of the Middle East. Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, a diatribe against Middle East Studies in U.S. universities, and Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch, an organization devoted to smearing professors critical of U.S. foreign policy and Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians, are two such examples. This campaign is one that aims to intimidate free thinking on Middle East politics and silence voices that challenge their perspective. Although many of the anti-Islam writers and neoconservative pundits play on the fear of the general public by publishing books for a general audience, others have been done for policymakers under the cover of respected institutions and think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the RAND Corporation. Readers should note that this activity began in 1992 when Defense Department staffers Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz drafted the “Defense Policy Guidance”, followed more discretely and in more depth by Rebuilding America’s Defenses, published in 2000 by the Project for the New American Century. How should the United States deal with Islam? How should it reconstruct Islam to make it more compatible with dominant social preferences and tastes? Which Muslim groups should be supported and which should be marginalized and suppressed? These are some of the questions raised by a 2003 report commissioned by the RAND Corporation under the title Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies authored by Cheryl Bernard - the emblematic poster-child of the neoconservative approach to Islam. Islam and Muslims are separated out from the citizenry and increasingly presented as a problem to be addressed and a question to be tackled. The last time a world religion was considered a problem and a question was in late-nineteenth-century Europe. Then, the “Jewish Question” was widely debated by both the enlightened and bigots among European thinkers. Therefore, the recent efforts that aim at presenting Islam as a challenge and Muslims who practice their faith as a problem are both disheartening and disquieting. They represent a dangerous move to reverse human progress and return to the age of outright racism and intolerance. This renewed focus on Islam as a problem has been justified by invoking security concerns. Many voices, particularly within the policy community decided, either out of ignorance or prejudice, to place the blame for terrorism squarely at the door of Islam. The decision to ignore complex and painful realities that give rise to discord and tension between Western and Muslim countries, and to blame it all on a major world religion and its practitioners, will only exacerbate an already dire situation. This exercise in self-delusion can only distract us from confronting the real sources of the concerns on both sides and delay the efforts to bring forth a permanent and lasting solution. The failure to understand the profound changes taking place in the Muslim world is not simply a matter of ignorance and lack of insight into Muslim cultures, but a reflection of the bewildering stubbornness of neoconservative analysts in the United States and Europe, and their comfort in employing the archaic Orientalist attitudes and tools to analyse relationships between the West and the Muslim world. Muslims are not awarded the dignity of equal human beings with intrinsic values and legitimate concerns, but are often presented as thoughtless and violent masses incapable of articulating their conditions and solving their problems. Consequently, no effort is made to initiate dialogue and exchange, and all energy is focused on devising strategies for the manipulation and control of the Muslim world. Many self-proclaimed experts on Islam continue to behave as if Islam and Muslims are a distant part of reality and an external problem to address, rather than partners for dealing with common problems and challenges. An increasing number of Muslims are proud Americans, serving American society as professors, businessmen, medical doctors, engineers, lawyers, sports stars, fire fighters, police officers, and teachers. Many experts in Middle East and Islamic Studies departments have their ancestral roots in Middle Eastern and Muslim cultures. Many American Muslims are active in the debate on how best to bridge the divide, or at least change the perceptions of a divide, between the Muslim world and the West. Yet Civil Democratic Islam makes no efforts to seriously engage authentic Arab and Muslim voices for more accurate information on Islam and American Muslims. Civil Democratic Islam is not exceptional - the same attitude permeates other think tanks and policy formation groups. In a recent study, the Freedom House made sweeping and largely inaccurate generalizations about American Muslims. After collecting copies of Saudi publications their researchers alleged were found on the library shelves of fifteen mosques, they accused mosques across the nation of promoting hate. The Freedom House found it quite permissible to smear every mosque in the United States without conducting a single interview, or inquiring about the reasons and circumstances of carrying questionable Saudi publications. Civil Democratic Islam interprets all criticism by Muslims of modern secularist culture as anti-Western and anti-democratic, dismisses Muslim women’s choice of dress as a political provocation, and views Muslim religious practices as signs of extremism and radicalism. Bernard can hardly say the same thing about similar practices among Christians and Jews. Civil Democratic Islam would neither use the same terms to describe Joe Lieberman, the U.S. senator from Connecticut, who is also a practicing orthodox Jew, nor demand to reshape Christianity. This attitude toward Islam and Muslims, and the policy recommendations that stem from it, have so far led to continuous radicalization of Muslim societies and have strengthened the very divisive forces that desire to marginalize and eliminate Islam and Muslims in the West. Many of the complex challenges the United States faces are the outcome of a faulty or unbalanced foreign policy, formulated from information supplied by ill-informed, Islamophobic experts. These policies are the result of defining adversaries on the ground of ethnic and religious identities, rather than universal ethical principles and actions, which include respect for the religious sensibilities of others. Sadly, the Civil Democratic Islam continues a very divisive tradition, and ultimately adversaries are defined by lifestyle and religious criteria. “It is no easy matter to transform a major world religion. If ‘nation-building’ is a daunting task, ‘religion-building’ is immeasurably more perilous and complex.” Despite this remarkable statement, Cheryl Bernard proceeds to do the most foolish thing: she advocates “religion building”, while the author remains oblivious to the political reality in Muslim societies and the impact of the foreign policy of the U.S. and European countries on shaping the Middle Eastern reality. Aside of the fact that ‘religion building’ is perilous, complex, and practically untenable, it is in the first place a distraction, a blatant attempt to avoid any serious evaluation of the responsibility of world powers for the radicalization of Muslim politics. The rise of radical groups is a recent experience in Muslim society, and it cannot be explained purely on the level of religious doctrine. Radicalization of Muslim politics is directly connected with the rise of authoritarian regimes in Muslim societies. Authoritarian regimes that suppressed open debate and silenced opposition have long enjoyed the support of successive U.S. administrations. Further, the idea of religion building is counterproductive, and is bound to strengthen the very forces the ‘religion building’ advocates want to defeat. Any direct support given by a foreign power to one group of the competing political forces against its competitors is bound to weaken it, particularly when such support requires it to reciprocate by favouring foreign interest over the legitimate interests of the population to which it belongs. “Support the modernists first… Support the traditionalists against the fundamentalists… Confront and oppose the fundamentalists… Selectively support secularists.” This formula proposed by Civil Democratic Islam is at the heart of the recommendations offered for dealing with Muslims, even with American Muslims. Apart from the cynical nature of the proposal, and the lack of clarity in separating one group from the other, it is worthwhile to examine the practicality and usefulness of such an approach. The author of the report is completely oblivious to the connection of the various ideological groups to the larger population in Muslim societies and to one another. The United States as an external political actor, which is increasingly perceived as biased and uneven-handed, cannot positively affect political development by rendering support on the basis of artificial religious preferences, but on the basis of intrinsic values and political positions. Civil Democratic Islam’s recommendations are, in actuality, nothing but a recycling of the very old foreign policies that got us where we are today and that have led to the radicalization of the Middle East. The United States has tried to put its weight with Muslim secularists in the past, and the result has been the aggravation of the internal political balance and the radicalization of the societies that the U.S. sided with on the basis of superficial criteria and short-term interests. It was the very approach of siding with modernists against socialists and traditionalists that got us into trouble with the Iranians. The United States Central Intelligence Agency was directly involved in engineering the coup d’état that removed the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, and installed the Shah regime in Iran in 1954. Despite his abuse of his people’s civil liberties and his extensive use of state security forces to suppress critics and opposition forces, the Shah continued to receive American support. President Jimmy Carter, who insisted that the United States foreign policy must be based on the United States’ commitment to human rights, praised the Shah during a visit shortly before the latter was ousted by the Islamic Revolution. The United States later took an active part in arming Saddam Hussein in a bid to topple the revolutionary government in Tehran. To ensure the cooperation of the Iraqi government, the Reagan Administration kept silent when Saddam used chemical weapons against Iranians as well as against the Kurdish opposition in Northern Iraq. It was only when the belligerent Saddam turned his newly acquired military strength against the oil-rich Gulf countries that he was declared a renegade. It took two costly wars to unseat Saddam, and the ramifications of the most recent intervention are still unclear and the likely future fallout is still unknown. The emerging government in Iraq is, evidently, more in sync with Iran than the United States. The Shah received American support not because he embraced American political values of freedom, equality, democracy, and the rule of law, but because he cooperated with and supported U.S. policies in the region, while he alienated a large number of Iranians with his reckless spending and repressive policies. And, of course, his lifestyle was more in line with that of European royalties than traditional Iranian society. The short-term gains from the cooperative Shah regime are far out-weighed by the messy and explosive situation the United States confronts today. Choosing sides based on Bernard’s criteria did not strengthen the modernists and secularists, but empowered the fundamentalists and traditionalists, and further made them more hostile to, and less cooperative with, the United States. Civil Democratic Islam’s recommendations also fail to apprehend the dynamic relations between the various groups and the negative consequences that follow from supporting one group on the arbitrary and superficial criteria of lifestyle. The same spectrum of ideological variation is natural to all free political societies, and, in most cases, serves important social functions: it ensures competition among political groups in the service of the larger society, provides different perspectives on social and political issues, and guarantees that no single ideological point of view dominates the entire society and suppresses dissent. The external support received by certain groups because they are considered useful to advancing the economic and strategic interests of the United States has historically upset the internal political balance and dynamics, and has contributed to the radicalization of internal politics and the rise of global terrorism. The support the Egyptian secularists currently receive from the United States in the form of $2 billion has allowed them to marginalize both the modernists and reformist traditionalists by relying on the repressive power of the state. To ensure minimal public support, secularists in Egypt allied themselves with conservative traditionalists who have gained more influence in shaping public opinion and perception. The views advanced by the conservative traditionalists are neither controlled by the secularist elites, nor are they challenged by reformist traditionalists or other social groups. Consequently, the conservative traditionalist point of view dominates public discourse on social and religious issues. The policy of supporting the groups that seem willing to advance the immediate interests of the United States and comply with its instant demands has created political imbalances in several Gulf countries. U.S. support of the conservative traditionalists in Saudi Arabia has led to the marginalization of modernists and reformist traditionalists, while strengthening the hand of scriptural radical fundamentalists. Today, the latter are the avowed enemies of the United States. If democratic countries really want to avoid the radicalisation of the Middle East, they should support and cooperate with Middle Eastern political forces that uphold the values of freedom, equality, and tolerance of ethnic and religious diversity, and should embrace those who display commitment to democracy and the rule of the law, regardless of their religion, religious doctrines, and their “lifestyle.” Rather than using religious association to assign guilt, democratic governments need to extend its founding principles to followers of all religions, and ensure that it does not use different standards for dealing with different religions. These governments must be consistent in pursuing support for democracy and human rights, and must ensure that the principles of right and justice that guide the internal politics of the United States are brought to bear on relations with Muslim societies. The United States played a crucial role in supporting democracy in Europe, and made sure that it was consistent in dealing with Europe on the basis of clear democratic principles, and not on the basis of religious affiliations. It showed respect to the national traditions and debates, and did not resort to subversive politics to advance its interests. It is about time that this attitude and treatment is extended to the Muslim world. The American people are uniquely situated to expand the values of freedom, equality, and rule of law from the national to the international domain. Not only is the United States an unrivalled superpower, but Americans constitute a microcosm of the world population. The United States is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society consisting of groups that represent the major ethnic and religious communities that form the modern world. Africans, Arabs, Chinese, Europeans, Indians, Japanese, Irish, Koreans, Latinos, and Slavs live peacefully in the United States; work together in pursuit of their individual and collective dreams; and confess and practice freely different religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with a host of other religions. American Muslims have deep understanding of both Muslim and American cultures, and are well-positioned to help reconcile Islam and the West. American Muslims have already made remarkable achievements in reconciling Islamic values with the founding principles of the United States, and have managed to develop good and important experiences as to how Islamic values can impact modern living. They can be instrumental in sharing their experiences of aligning Islamic values and education with democratic institutions and practices with their counterparts Muslim countries. But, for that to happen in more effective ways, American Muslims need to be involved in policy making and implementation, rather than being marginalized and chastised. Dr Louay M. Safi serves as the executive director of ISNA Leadership Development Center. He writes and lectures on issues relating to Islam, American Muslims, democracy, human rights, leadership, and world peace. |