Siah
08-09-04, 08:40
The folly of 'containing' political Islam
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG
It has been said that one of the most striking innovations of Osama bin Laden's brand of international terrorism has been a vision of a holy war, or jihad, that excludes any possibility of compromise. Bin Laden and his followers do not seek political advantage in a negotiating process, affirmed Daniel Benjamin, who was formerly the director of the office of transnational threats in the Bill Clinton White House. Rather, Benjamin asserted: "They want change that is so radical as to defy any concept of negotiations. They are conducting a war, not seeking entrance into the status quo."
As the United States appears bent on containing political Islam, otherwise known as Islamic revivalism or fundamentalism, it is crucial to understand how it has come to dominate the international agenda.
What is evidently true is that since the end of Cold War, the perception of Islam as a potential threat to the West has significantly increased. Immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union, the late Manfred Wonner, as secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), openly identified Islam as a source of threat, giving an important glimpse into Western insecurity.
Among the reasons frequently offered in the scholarly community as to why political Islam is a threat, none is more salient than the assertion that neither political Islam nor Islam as a religion itself is compatible to liberal democracy. This is the argument peddled by Bernard Lewis at Princeton University, and supported by the likes of Samuel Huntington in his "clash of civilizations" thesis.
Inherent in such arguments is the belief that political Islam constitutes both an affront to and an assault against Western-dominated contemporary world order.
Nevertheless, it is one thing to affirm the incompatibility of political Islam to the world - a reasonable intellectual argument - yet quite another to conclude that all Islamists are totally "irreconcilable". The latter puts Islamists immediately out of the pale of rational discourse, almost permanently consigning them to the margin of international order.
As with any attempt to sideline a political movement, such a policy entails the risk of a possible backlash. After all, political actors who are sidelined would want their grievances heard.
Echoing Lewis and Huntington, Peter Rodman, now a senior member of the US administration of President George W Bush, has attested to the importance of containing political Islam, especially those elements bankrolled by Iran and other radical regimes.
In an article published in the Middle Eastern Policy Review in 1994, Rodman had already affirmed that "Islamic fundamentalists" should basically be confronted rather than co-opted. By this he proposed the use of similar strategy employed against the Soviets and the leftist radicals in Latin America during the Cold War: containment.
If one were to take Rodman's argument seriously, it is clear that it has immediate security implications. To begin with, adopting Rodman's strategy of containment means maintaining permanent sanctions against Iran (1979), Libya (1986), Iraq (1990) and Sudan (1998); indeed even going to war against Iraq to sever any potential links with al-Qaeda.
Yet if US foreign policy toward these countries is locked into a state of indefinite enmity, why wouldn't the level of threat increase exponentially? Indeed, if sanctions are permanently maintained or new military campaigns launched, populist fury in the Muslim world would grow more strident by the day - as, in fact, it has. This would have been what Osama bin Laden would have wanted too: a radicalization of Muslim opinion. Indeed, groups identified with bin Laden's al-Qaeda now operate in about three dozen countries; 60 countries, according to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. They could easily latch on to the billowing anger to gain more support. Al-Qaeda would be lionized.
More important, if the United States were to heed Rodman's call for total containment, the above regimes would seize on it as an excuse to train or house more Islamic fundamentalists.
Nevertheless, as had been made clear by moderate scholars such as William Graham and John Esposito, political Islam remains a complex phenomenon, with each Islamic group having a different agenda and method from the other. Not all are against compromise.
Thus, if the United States were to adopt a belligerent posture against political Islam writ large, anti-US elements in these movements would conveniently coalesce into one united front.
As such, it is only sensible that the United States try to engage with Islamic elements that are not avowedly anti-American. This is to increase mutual understanding before the conflict between political Islam and America spirals into permanent damage.
Engagement is a task that ought to be taken up by the United States with great vigor, barring which the geopolitical stability of the world will be affected: there are, after all, 52 countries that claim Islam as their official religion.
(Š2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG
It has been said that one of the most striking innovations of Osama bin Laden's brand of international terrorism has been a vision of a holy war, or jihad, that excludes any possibility of compromise. Bin Laden and his followers do not seek political advantage in a negotiating process, affirmed Daniel Benjamin, who was formerly the director of the office of transnational threats in the Bill Clinton White House. Rather, Benjamin asserted: "They want change that is so radical as to defy any concept of negotiations. They are conducting a war, not seeking entrance into the status quo."
As the United States appears bent on containing political Islam, otherwise known as Islamic revivalism or fundamentalism, it is crucial to understand how it has come to dominate the international agenda.
What is evidently true is that since the end of Cold War, the perception of Islam as a potential threat to the West has significantly increased. Immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union, the late Manfred Wonner, as secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), openly identified Islam as a source of threat, giving an important glimpse into Western insecurity.
Among the reasons frequently offered in the scholarly community as to why political Islam is a threat, none is more salient than the assertion that neither political Islam nor Islam as a religion itself is compatible to liberal democracy. This is the argument peddled by Bernard Lewis at Princeton University, and supported by the likes of Samuel Huntington in his "clash of civilizations" thesis.
Inherent in such arguments is the belief that political Islam constitutes both an affront to and an assault against Western-dominated contemporary world order.
Nevertheless, it is one thing to affirm the incompatibility of political Islam to the world - a reasonable intellectual argument - yet quite another to conclude that all Islamists are totally "irreconcilable". The latter puts Islamists immediately out of the pale of rational discourse, almost permanently consigning them to the margin of international order.
As with any attempt to sideline a political movement, such a policy entails the risk of a possible backlash. After all, political actors who are sidelined would want their grievances heard.
Echoing Lewis and Huntington, Peter Rodman, now a senior member of the US administration of President George W Bush, has attested to the importance of containing political Islam, especially those elements bankrolled by Iran and other radical regimes.
In an article published in the Middle Eastern Policy Review in 1994, Rodman had already affirmed that "Islamic fundamentalists" should basically be confronted rather than co-opted. By this he proposed the use of similar strategy employed against the Soviets and the leftist radicals in Latin America during the Cold War: containment.
If one were to take Rodman's argument seriously, it is clear that it has immediate security implications. To begin with, adopting Rodman's strategy of containment means maintaining permanent sanctions against Iran (1979), Libya (1986), Iraq (1990) and Sudan (1998); indeed even going to war against Iraq to sever any potential links with al-Qaeda.
Yet if US foreign policy toward these countries is locked into a state of indefinite enmity, why wouldn't the level of threat increase exponentially? Indeed, if sanctions are permanently maintained or new military campaigns launched, populist fury in the Muslim world would grow more strident by the day - as, in fact, it has. This would have been what Osama bin Laden would have wanted too: a radicalization of Muslim opinion. Indeed, groups identified with bin Laden's al-Qaeda now operate in about three dozen countries; 60 countries, according to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. They could easily latch on to the billowing anger to gain more support. Al-Qaeda would be lionized.
More important, if the United States were to heed Rodman's call for total containment, the above regimes would seize on it as an excuse to train or house more Islamic fundamentalists.
Nevertheless, as had been made clear by moderate scholars such as William Graham and John Esposito, political Islam remains a complex phenomenon, with each Islamic group having a different agenda and method from the other. Not all are against compromise.
Thus, if the United States were to adopt a belligerent posture against political Islam writ large, anti-US elements in these movements would conveniently coalesce into one united front.
As such, it is only sensible that the United States try to engage with Islamic elements that are not avowedly anti-American. This is to increase mutual understanding before the conflict between political Islam and America spirals into permanent damage.
Engagement is a task that ought to be taken up by the United States with great vigor, barring which the geopolitical stability of the world will be affected: there are, after all, 52 countries that claim Islam as their official religion.
(Š2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)