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Daniel Pipes points out in FrontPage what I have been saying for quite some time: "The global war on terror cannot be won through counterterrorism alone; it also requires convincing the terrorists and their sympathizers that their goals and methods are faulty and failing. But how is this to be done? By focusing on the ideological and religious sources of the violence." (Thanks to EPG.)
The global war on terror cannot be won through counterterrorism alone; it also requires convincing the terrorists and their sympathizers that their goals and methods are faulty and failing. But how is this to be done?By focusing on the ideological and religious sources of the violence, say I: “the immediate war goal must be to destroy militant Islam and the ultimate war goal the modernization of Islam.” I have not worked out the detailed implications of this policy, however.
Which explains my delight on finding that the RAND Corporation’s Cheryl Benard has done just this, publishing her results in a small book titled Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies (available in full on the Internet at the RAND website, www.rand.org).
Benard recognizes the awesome ambition of the effort to modernize Islam: If nation-building is a daunting task, she notes, religion-building “is immeasurably more perilous and complex.” This is something never tried before; we enter uncharted territory here.
Civil Democratic Islam covers three topics: rival Muslim approaches to Islam; which approach contributes most to a moderate version of Islam; and policy recommendations for Western governments.
Like other analysts, Benard finds that in relation to their religion, Muslims divide into four groups:
• Fundamentalists, who in turn split into two. Radicals (like the Taliban) are ready to resort to violence in an attempt to create a totalitarian order. Scripturalists (like the Saudi monarchy) are more rooted in a religious establishment and less prone to rely on violence.
• Traditionalists, who also split into two. Conservatives (like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq) seek to preserve orthodox norms and old-fashioned behavior as best they can. Reformists (like the Kuwaiti rulers) have the same traditional goals but are more flexible in details and more innovative in achieving them.
• Modernists (like Muammar Qaddafi of Libya) assume that Islam is compatible with modernity and then work backwards to prove this point.
• Secularists again split into two. The mainstream (like Atatürkists in Turkey) respects religion as a private affair but permits it no role in the public arena. Radicals (like communists) see religion as bogus and reject it entirely.
The author brings these viewpoints to life in a smart, convincing presentation, showing their differences on everything from establishing the pure Islamic state to husbands having rights to beat their wives. She rightly dwells on values and lifestyles, finding dissimulation about polygamy far less commonplace than about the use of violence.
Which of these groups is most suitable to ally with? Modernists, says Benard, are “most congenial to the values and the spirit of modern democratic society.” Fundamentalists are the enemy, for they “oppose us and we oppose them.” Traditionalists have potentially useful democratic elements but generally share too much with the fundamentalists to be relied upon. Secularists are too often hostile to the West to fix Islam.
Benard then proposes a strategy for religion-building with several prongs:
• Delegitimize the immorality and hypocrisy of fundamentalists. Encourage investigative reporting into the corruption of their leaders. Criticize the flaws of traditionalism, especially its promoting backwardness.
• Support the modernists first. Support secularists on a case-by-case basis. Back the traditionalists tactically against the fundamentalists. Consistently oppose the fundamentalists.
• Assertively promote the values of Western democratic modernity. Encourage secular civic and cultural institutions. Focus on the next generation. Provide aid to states, groups, and individuals with the right attitudes.
I agree with Benard’s general approach, doubting only her enthusiasm for Muslim modernists, a group that through two centuries of effort has failed to help reconcile Islam with current realities. H.A.R. Gibb, the great orientalist, condemned modernist thinking in 1947 as mired in “intellectual confusions and paralyzing romanticism.” Writing in 1983, I dismissed modernism as “a tired movement, locked in place by the unsoundness of its premises and arguments.” Nothing has changed for the better since then.
Instead of modernists, I propose mainstream secularists as the forward-looking Muslims who uniquely can wrench their co-religionists out of their current slough of despair and radicalism. Secularists start with the proven premise of disentangling religion from politics; not only has this served the Western world well, but it has also worked in Turkey, the Muslim success story of our time.
Only when Muslims turn to secularism will this terrible era of their history come to an end.
Posted by Robert at April 7, 2004 9:08 AM
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Don't get this. The problem we have with Islam is the (real) threat of agression. But not external agression, sometimes called "war". If that were the problem, then Islamic military impotence could be ignored, or "enhanced" so to speak.
But the Islamic threat is internal to the west and growing. The solution to the problem is to deal with it in the west:- by firmly shutting doors, and making the exit signs very clear. "Sorry, were just going to have to let you go", would be a better start than a feeble exegesis on the theology of "real" Islam.
Posted by: sam roony at April 7, 2004 10:12 AMPipes continues to think that is such a thing as moderate Islam. I vigorously disagree and have told him so. Islam's world view is one of conflict between the BELIEVERS and the INFIDEL. This is built into its 'theology' and an Islam without this (and is counterpart, jihad) is no longer Islam.
Pipes therefore also thinks that there are moderate Muslims. If their faith is so important to them, why do we not hear from this 85% (according to Pipes) about how wrong the 'radical' 15% are. Why do they not resist?
One would think that the Iraqi Shiites would be thankful for the US getting rid of Sadaam. But no! Why? Because now they are free to practice their religion, which is built on hating and killing the INFIDEL. How many times have we heard that the 'real' Islam is benign, peaceful, loving and compassionate (the last adjective from Karen Armstrong.) WHERE IS THE 'REAL' ISLAM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD?
Pipes is saying that we should be able to change 'hearts and minds'. But what we will be saying is that, "Islam is really screwed up and it must remove these hateful bits." I can almost guarantee that the response from these heretofore 'moderates' will one of insult, accusing us of humiliating them, etc. and will not end up as any kind of dialogue. Islam is a 'perfect, complete way of life' remember.
Posted by: Budd at April 7, 2004 12:09 PMI know I'm not the only reader who feels frustration at the experts talking about strengthening "moderate" Islam. What they need to talk about is destroying Islam by strengthening Christians. How can this be done? For starters, how about by protecting them, like governments are supposed to do. How many hundreds of thousands of Christians have been slaughtered in Indonesia, Sudan, Nigeria, etc., basically because governments are loath to fight Muslim militias and mobs and destroy them. Now I read that Arafat is teaming up with Islamic Jihad and Hamas to run the Gazan Strip. Has he just signed his death warrant? With appeasing leaders like we have, he'll probably get away with this, too. Meanwhile, the Christians in Palestine and Gaza whither away down to zero.
Posted by: Will Smythe at April 7, 2004 12:50 PMPostmodern thinking prevents governments from wanting to protect Christianity because many, if not most, see Christians as not progressive and as fools. They are so busy putting down Christianity that they are unaware of the stealth with which Islam has penetrated.
Yeah, right, anything is better than those self-righteous Christians that for years tried to tell us how to live our lives. Guess what, they are in for a nasty surprise when Islam takes over.
Posted by: epg at April 7, 2004 2:15 PMSurely the key passage to an understanding of Pipes's thought here is to be found on page 251 of MIRA:
"If the earth-shaking clash of our time is not between two civilizations, it is and must be a clash among the members of *one* civilization - specifically, between Islamists and those who, for want of a better term, we may call moderate Muslims (understanding that "moderate" does not mean liberal or democratic but only anti-Islamist). Just as the deviant Western ideologies of fascism and communism challenged and then had to be expelled from the West, so it is with militant Islam and the Muslim world. The battle for the soul of Islam will undoubtedly last many years and take many lives, and is likely to be the greatest ideological battle of post-Cold War era."
From this I infer that Pipes sees Islamism as standing in the same dynamic relation to the views of moderate Muslims in the 1990s and 2000s as Nazism and Communism did to the views of socially concerned but ideologically uncommitted Western leftists, liberals and conservatives in the 1920s and 1930s.
Posted by: halldor at April 7, 2004 3:04 PM"Only when Muslims turn to secularism will this terrible era of their history come to an end."
Pipes misses the boat entirely. Secularism will not fill the void in the human soul. Islam fills it poorly which is why it must resort to violence as a way of seeing God's work done -- because it cannot trust in the invisible and seeks purification of strictly outward forms. Give the people something real. Secularism ain't it.
Posted by: nomore at April 7, 2004 3:23 PM"But the real battle for Europe’s governments will be to win the hearts and minds of the wider Muslim community"
From "The Economist", published today. Says it all: the target of mass islamic immigration must make itself more personable. Bit like asking the whore for money.
Posted by: sam roony at April 7, 2004 4:31 PMGood comment will smyth, how about christians, jews, hindus, and all other religions delaring a jihad against islam?
Posted by: christian at April 7, 2004 9:26 PMA good way to fight jihad is to support indigenous
Christian missionaries where Christianity is banned or restricted. These evangelists have been persecuted and tortured for their faith and they have a powerful witness. For only $25.00 a month you can support a Christian worker or pastor and his family. For example, you can support a Christian worker in Nigeria, where sharia law is taking over. You can also write letters to encourage Christians who are in prison for their faith. (See www.persecution.com)
Armageddon is coming!!! At least that is one interpretation of upcoming events!
Many Christians believe that the anti-Christ and Beast are already on the threshold of this event and will be ushered-in by a holocaust of "nuclear" proportions within the very near future against a Western "Christian" Crusader-nation. Maybe they're wrong, but again...
Then if this WERE to occur, the differnces between all factions of Islam will be "moot" because they ALL will bear the wrath of the non-Islamic world "hell-bent" on extinguishing their duplicitous nature (in competition with their own, of course).
Once this is done and Islam is extinguished - or at least, bombed back to the stone age (almost as far back as they already are), the rest of the world will get back to the business of business.
And any religion - to include Christianity, all the Hinduisms, and any other philosophy that looks at the "nature" between man and a "higher source" as mystical & non-scientific will be outlawed - because a non-scientific philosophy of existance leads to a justifications that "believers" of that philosophy are "better" and deserve either to change or deny the existance of "non-believers." This is the basic premise of all belief systems...even scientific ones. They are all exclusive vice inclusive in nature - nature is selective - excluding the weak by letting the survivor exist.
Since this world's physical barriers no longer protect any group from another, and until it develops a transportation system that allows people to escape to another planet, dimension or form of existance - then, it will continue to kill each other in a tribal, animalistic and natural manner. Because to deny this is to deny our very real nature...unless we are more than human?
But, again, I could be wrong! ; )
Posted by: Terry Z at April 8, 2004 5:24 AMTerry Z, you claimed, "...i could be wrong".
Well i do think you are wrong because you make the mistake of conflating absolute beliefs with absolute truths. Science is a method not a philosophy as you seem to assume, it is a way of approximating the truth by successive and varifiable tests, the conclusions of which can be rejected or changed in the light of subsequent evidence. You may believe something is the case but that does not make it so, such adherence to the supernatural makes for no distinction between your co-religionists and the Muslims, your all part of the problem. In my view we don't need to rid ourselves of muslims but of Islam and any other religion because they are all predatory in their message, which at its most basic is " we need to change you", well you can all bugger off because i'm alright as i am thank you.
Posted by: Hlæfdige at April 8, 2004 11:34 AM
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