Date Posted: Monday, December 09, 2002

America Must Revise Stance Towards Islamic World
By Ismail Royer, MAS Communications Director, 12/9/02

In an unfortunate demarcation of acceptable debate, Congress and the media puzzle obsessively over the "failure of American intelligence" that enabled the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In yet another squandering of international goodwill towards America, the Bush administration has appointed cover-up expert Henry Kissinger to lead a probe into alleged intelligence failures that preceded the attacks. Far more significant than intelligence failures, however, and yet completely overlooked, is the colossal failure of American diplomacy that enabled 9/11.

While the attacks absolutely violated both universal and Islamic rules of warfare, their perpetrators gained legitimacy in the Muslim world by tapping into the widespread view of many that they were not launching the opening salvo of a new world war, but retaliating for years of American support for injustice against Muslims.

The US Department of State's Office of Protocol expends much effort on issues like whether the placement of the salad fork in relation to the oyster fork at a place setting will disturb a foreign dignitary. Perhaps the State Department could also have paid some attention to foreign policy decisions, themselves of dubious value, that had the side effect of enraging the population of the region where some of America's most important economic and political interests lie.

US policy-makers have consistently ignored the advice of academics, American Muslim leaders, and those in their own diplomatic corps who called for dialogue and peaceful coexistence with the world's moderate Islamic movements, and a distancing from dictatorships and neocolonial occupation. Instead, our government has chosen-in the name of the American people-to stumble and bumble its way around the Muslim world like a bull in a china shop.

The crux of the failure has been in the de facto US policy that the worldwide return of Muslims to their religion is a dangerous phenomenon that must be blocked, subverted, or crushed. This position is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a recipe for the permanent war that we see emerging.

Islam as a way of life is not going away, anymore than democracy is going away. Civilizations inevitably draw upon their traditions and cultural capital as they look for paths to liberty and prosperity. In the West, the human desire for self-determination took the form of secular democracy. The Muslim world is turning to Islam. It's an outcome as inevitable as tomorrow's sunrise, and our government knows it.

A December 2000 report by the CIA's National Foreign Intelligence Board predicts that by the year 2015, "political Islam in various forms will be an attractive alternative for millions of Muslims throughout the region... Islamists could come to power in states that are beginning to become pluralist and in which entrenched secular elites have lost their appeal."

Islamic activism does not equal violence or anti-Americanism. Most of the countless local reform organizations and movements in various corners of the globe focus on their local conditions and environment, not on the US as "the great Satan." Drawing upon Islam, they work for reform, security, and freedom under the oppressive political and economic conditions that have come to pervade the Muslim world. These moderate groups might object vociferously to US policies, but they view that neutral relations with the West serve their cause of reforming their local situations; their real concerns are more immediate, and unrelated to America.

At least, most did take this view, until US policymakers began acting on their tendency to see all these groups as aspects of a single threatening phenomenon. American troops are marching around Yemen, the Philippines, and the Caucasus, making enemies of the local populations for the sake of capturing a handful of people, and declaring war on groups in China, Kashmir, and elsewhere that heretofore had no interest in taking on the US. Some reports even say that behind the scenes, US officials are up in arms about the recent election victory of an exceedingly mild Islamic party in Turkey. Such actions and policies succeed only in aggravating those whom, in many cases, are the most significant forces for long-term stability and reform in these nations.

"In the United States, our lack of precision in distinguishing between the...movements may end up pushing them together," says Dr. Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. And indeed that is what is happening; forced at the barrel of a gun to choose between "America or the terrorists," we should not be surprised if these local movements decide to abandon their neutrality and take up sides in this clash of civilizations.

America must adopt a nuanced approach to the Islamic world, refraining from targeting groups under the assumption that their Islamic character automatically makes them the enemy. It must lend an ear to the concerns of those affected by its policy choices that have exacerbated instability-its support for dictatorial regimes and military occupation in the Holy Land-and then begin to consider revising those policies. All this could be accomplished without sacrificing national interest; indeed, US national interests would be served by reform and greater political stability in the region.

If we do not do this, then the "War on Terrorism" will be a rerun of the failed "War on Drugs"-ineffective, self-perpetuating, and unending.