Opinion | Columnists
Lessons for the US from September 11
Washington must heed the advice from academics who argue that it cannot afford to lump all Muslims into one basket
- By Marwan Al Kabalan, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:57 September 10, 2009
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
As the US remembers the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Western experts on political Islam are still debating the best way to deal with this tragedy and the challenge it presents. They seem as poles apart as they have ever been, however. Hawks still believe that confrontation is the only option. Doves think that accommodation would probably pay more dividends for both Islam and the West.
For most of the past decade, especially under the George W. Bush administration, Washington adopted a one-size-fits-all policy towards the Muslims in the Middle East. The scale of the attacks and the sense of disbelief created an atmosphere that made it almost impossible for US officials to distinguish between terrorism and Islamism. Hawks in US academia took advantage of the new environment to undermine the position of the doves, who have always viewed Islam as a diverse cluster of political, cultural and intellectual currents.
For years, conciliators in US academia have advised their government not to put all Islamists in one basket. Scholars such as John Esposito and Leon Hadar have persistently argued that Islam is a key component of popular culture in the Middle East that cannot be ignored merely because some in the West do not like this fact. These academics and others have, to some extent, influenced US policy towards Middle Eastern Muslims for most of the 1990s and hence served American interests in the region.
They did this by proposing four strategies to deal with political Islam. First, they called for a clear distinction between radical and moderate Muslims. Although there are violent groups in the Islamic camp, such groups represent only the fringes of political Islam. Other groups characterised as fundamentalist are not extreme militants and it is in the interest of the US that those groups not be treated as if they were. Radicalism may have affected mainstream Islam, but it nevertheless produced a new class of modern, educated elites. These people are not violent and thus they should not be treated as pariahs. Overall, they represent the views of a significant portion of many Muslim societies. Alienating mainstream Islam could lead to a confrontation with the vast majority of Muslims, with the US being seen as the arch-enemy of Islam.
Second, they argued in support of integrating moderate Muslims into their political systems. Graham Fuller, for example, advised the US government to pay close attention to the nature of political Islam. "It is in the interest of the US to co-opt the moderates among Islamic movements. Co-opting moderates would result, on one hand, in reinforcing their position vis-à-vis the radicals and help integrate them into the political process. On the other hand, it would help isolate the radicals, who constitute a small segment of the Islamic camp, and ultimately bring them into the political process, pragmatise their positions and moderate their expectations".
Third, they argued in support of opening a dialogue with moderate Islamists. Leon Hadar argued for the promotion of political reform and to cooperate with Muslims so that should they "come to power, they would not direct their wrath against Washington".
Finally, they advised the US government to ignore cultural and religious issues in dealing with the Islamic world and focus instead on political issues. Ira M. Lapidus argued that the nature of the problems between the US and some Middle Eastern countries is political: "We have good relations with many conservative, but strongly Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Pakistan & we have conflict with Iran and Syria, but were these conflicts to be resolved we should not have any interest in the religious convictions of their populations." A more traditional, Islamic Arab world does not have to be a more anti-American one, unless the United States helps make that happen.
Under the influence of academic and political hawks, these recommendations were completely ignored by the Bush administration. For approximately eight full years, the US launched an all-out war against Islam regardless of its different trends and currents. Today, as Americans mark the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Washington seems to have realised that it is too dangerous to continue with this disastrous policy. America cannot afford to antagonise the Islamic world and should not enter into a war with Islam. Clearly, the doves of US academia are gaining ground inside the Obama administration. The question is: will their four key recommendations be translated into policy?
Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations at the faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.
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