Bolstering Moderate Muslims
By Daniel Pipes
CNSNews.com Commentary
April 18, 2007
"What moderate Muslims?" is the near-inevitable retort to my
stating that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the
solution. Where are the anti-Islamists' demonstrations against terror,
their combating of Islamists, their reassessments of Islamic law?
Moderate
Muslims do exist, I reply. Admittedly, they do not constitute a
movement but represent mere wisps in the face of the Islamist
onslaught. This means, I argue, that the U.S. government and other
powerful institutions should give priority to locating, meeting with,
funding, forwarding, empowering, and celebrating those brave Muslims
who, at personal risk, stand up and confront the totalitarians.
A
just-published study from the RAND Corporation, Building Moderate
Muslim Networks, methodically takes up and thinks through this concept.
Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell H. Schwartz, and Peter Sickle
grapple intelligently with the innovative issue of helping moderate
Muslims to grow and prosper.
They start with the argument that
"structural reasons play a large part" in the rise of radical and
dogmatic interpretations of Islam in recent years -one of those reasons
being the Saudi government's generous funding over the last three
decades for the export of the Wahhabi version of Islam.
Saudi
efforts have promoted "the growth of religious extremism throughout the
Muslim world," permitting the Islamists to develop powerful
intellectual, political, and other networks. "This asymmetry in
organization and resources explains why radicals, a small minority in
almost all Muslim countries, have influence disproportionate to their
numbers."
The study posits a key role for Western countries
here: "moderates will not be able to successfully challenge radicals
until the playing field is leveled, which the West can help accomplish
by promoting the creation of moderate Muslim networks."
Does
this sound familiar? It resembles the late 1940s, when Soviet-backed
organizations threatened Europe. The four authors provide a helpful
potted history of American network-building in the early Cold War
years, in part to show that such an effort can succeed against a
totalitarian enemy, in part to glean ideas for use at present. (One
example: "a left hook to the Kremlin is the best blow," implying that
Muslims can most effectively batter Islamism.)
Reviewing
American efforts to fight Islamism, the authors find these lacking, at
least with regard to strengthening moderates. Washington, they find,
"does not have a consistent view on who the moderates are, where the
opportunities for building networks among them lie, and how best to
build the networks."
They are only too right. The U.S.
government has a disastrously poor record in this regard, with an
embarrassing history of twin delusions: either thinking Islamists are
moderates or hoping to win them over. Such government figures as FBI
director Robert S. Mueller III, State Department undersecretary Karen
Hughes, and National Endowment for Democracy head Carl Gershman
wrong-headedly insist on consorting with the enemy.
Instead, the
RAND study promotes four partners: secularists, liberal Muslims,
moderate traditionalists, and some Sufis. It particularly emphasizes
the "emerging transnational network of laicist and secularist
individuals, groups, and movements," and correctly urges cooperation
with these neglected friends.
In contrast, the study proposes
de-emphasizing the Middle East, and particularly the Arab world.
Because this area "offers less fertile ground for moderate network and
institution building than other regions of the Muslim world," it wants
Western governments to focus on Muslims in Southeast Asia, the Balkans,
and in the Western diaspora, and to help make available their ideas in
Arabic. This novel stratagem defies a centuries' old pattern of
influence emanating from the Middle East, but it is well worth a try.
Even
the generally hard-headed RAND study sometimes lets down its guard.
Dismayingly, the quartet refrains from condemning Washington for
dialoguing with lawful Islamists even as it cautiously endorses
European governments treating some Islamists as partners. It mistakenly
characterizes the U.S.-based "Progressive Muslim Union" as promoting
secular Islam, when it was really another Islamist organization, but
with a hip tone. (No other Islamists dared host a feature called "Sex
and the Umma.")
Building Moderate Muslim Networks is not the
final word on its subject but it marks a major step toward the
systematic reconfiguring of how to implement Washington's policy to
combat Islamism. The study's meaty contents, clear analysis, and bold
recommendations usefully move the debate forward, offering precisely
the in-depth strategizing Westerners urgently need.
Recent Comments