Political Islam has been at the heart of Middle Eastern politics since the late 1940s. For a variety of reasons, it constituted a source of political inspiration, legitimization and popular mobilization ever since. Throughout the past five decades, the US made full use of this political phenomenon and its approach toward it differed quite widely ranging from alliance to cooption to confrontation.
Throughout the Cold War era the US regarded Islam as a bulwark against communist penetration into the Middle East. Washington supplied Afghanistan’s Islamist fighters with arms and money to drive the Soviets out of the country, helped Iran in the early days of the war with Iraq and supported conservative regimes. After the end of the Cold War political Islam fell from grace but retained a role in regional politics. Washington overlooked the activities of some Islamists and provided sanctuary for their leaders. The logic behind this was to use Islamists as a leverage to extract concessions from vulnerable Middle Eastern regimes and further consolidate US hegemony in the region. In addition, and by way of applying pressure to Arab governments to secure an (Israeli) peace and also to prevent a repetition of the Iranian scenario, Washington recognized Islam as a major political force in the region and did not hide its intentions to cooperate with Islamist regimes as long as they did not pose significant threat to its two intrinsic interests: oil and Israel. The Sept. 11 attacks, however, changed the picture, changed major assumptions in US policy and set the stage for confrontation.
The Bush administration came to power looking for an enemy to justify its war-like agenda and convince the public of reasons for major increases in military expenditure. In the administration’s early days, China was a target but the Sept. 11 attacks supplied a more credible and much-needed enemy. A new policy line was established and some US scholars volunteered to provide the logic for the long-awaited crusade. Bernard Lewis became the arch ideologue of the Bush administration on Islam and Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis replaced the Cold War’s containment doctrine. With some ultraconservative figures already in top positions in the White House, those scholars gained unprecedented influence on US policy.
Bernard Lewis, a leading Western commentator on the Middle East and the world of Islam, is the ringleader of a group of US scholars and analysts whose stars rose after Sept. 11. Among others, the group includes Mortimer Zuckerman, Martin Kramer, Edward G. Shirley, Judith Miller, Daniel Pipes, Peter Rodman, Amos Perlmutter, Charles Krauthammer and Jonathan S. Paris.
For decades Lewis and like-minded scholars have been talking about a centuries-old natural antagonism between the West and Islam. They painted a picture of Islam being regarded with deep suspicion and depicted it as a monolithic political and cultural threat to the West. Hence, the Islamic revival of the late twentieth century was seen as — and Bernard Lewis wrote in 1993 — “a clash of civilizations — the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.” By way of demonstrating this flawed assumption, Lewis and his disciples overlooked the diversity of Islamic movements by placing the focus on similarities rather than differences among them. They also employed behavioral, religious and cultural approaches to present Islam as different, traditional, fanatic, authoritarian and irrational compared to the normal, modern, civilized and democratic West. For those Oreintalists, differences among Islamists have to do more with methods than ends. Political Islam with its different groups, mainstream and offshoots not only rejects the cultural, economic, social and political values of the West but also attempts to destroy them. In this view Islamists might differ in their precise arguments but in the end they all represent the same strand of thought as their programs range from the implementation of Shariah, a strict dress code for women, the elimination of all aspects of Western culture from public and private life to the call for jihad against the West and the restoration of an Islamic state. Some of Lewis’ sympathizers went as far as to see Islam as closely related to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century. “Islamic fundamentalism is an aggressive revolutionary movement as militant and violent as the Bolshevik, Fascist and Nazi movements of the past.” The aim of this “authoritarian, anti-democratic, and anti-secular” movement is the establishment of “a totalitarian Islamic state” in the Middle East, Amos Perlmutter wrote in 1992.
Lewis and his gang view any link between Islam and democracy with deepest suspicion. They explain the lack of democracy in the Islamic world by enduring cultural and religious ‘essences’ which underlie the implacability of Islam and the distant possibility of being democratized. Some have gone even further and argued that the very nature of Islam compels it to be anti-democratic. To provide substance for their argument, Orientalists revolved three key themes:
1. Islam is not only a theology but it is also an ideology — Islam is a religious and political system,
2. The source of Islamic law is divine — sovereignty belongs to God not to the people and,
3. Islam mandates obeying the ruler and prohibits revolting against existing authority.
To prove their claims, Orientalists employed a characterization of continuity and emphasized what they called the original, unchanging nature of Islam’s religious and cultural concepts. Fundamental principles of Islamic law, they argued, do not allow space for democracy to grow in Muslim societies. As a consequence, democracy “is alien to the mindset of Islam”. Since sovereignty belongs to God and since the ruler, in Islamic traditions, is God’s deputy in charge of carrying out His commandments and implementing His laws, Islam directs its followers to extend full obedience to the ruler and refrain from revolting against his authority. The duty to obey the ruler “was not simply the outcome or concomitant of a civil contract between ruler and ruled: it was grounded in religion,” Elie Kedourie wrote in 1992.
Other Orientalists emphasized the absence of secularism and focused on the inseparability of politics and religion in Islamic tradition. The argument here was that Islam is a comprehensive ideology and makes no distinction between what is sacred and what is secular. For Muslims “God was Caesar, and the sovereign — caliph or sultan — was merely His vicegerent on earth.” As a consequence – and from “the lifetime of its founder — Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped of the memories and awareness of the faithful.” Furthermore, the Qur’an is the only source of Shariah and the Islamic state is a theocratic state governed by a ruler whose legitimacy is derived from God, not from the people. Accordingly, secularization, which is considered a prerequisite for democratization, has never taken root in Muslim societies. Secularism is an alien concept imported from outside by Western-educated elites and has been introduced at the behest of some rulers. This made it limited in scope and shallow in depth. Muslim societies have never been secularized at a grass-roots level. People maintain deep religious loyalty whereby modern nationalism, secularism and nationalism are superficial covers for Islamic identities, so Lewis wrote in 1993. Samuel Huntington went as far as to claim that Islam is intrinsically non-democratic. The only Arab country to have experienced a sustainable form of democracy was Christian Lebanon. “Once Muslims became a majority,” Huntington claimed, “Lebanese democracy collapsed.”
When it comes to policies, the Lewis gang differs on how to deal with Islam. One group suggested an isolation approach. Judith Miller, for instance, opposed opening a dialogue with Islamists and argued that such a dialogue was a waste of time because there was no way of persuading Islamists to alter their ideological dispositions which are essentially anti-American. Edward G. Shirley espoused a similar argument and believed that there was no point in initiating a dialogue with moderate Islamists simply because there were no moderates in the Islamic camp. The US must not tolerate Islamist movements since “Neither dialogue nor containment is likely to work”.
In addition to a total break, another group in the Lewis gang suggested a repressive approach in dealing with Islamism. Daniel Pipes warned of a hasty and reckless promotion of democracy in the Arab world that might result in bringing Islamists to power. The Arab world, Pipes argued, is not ready yet for democratization. As a consequence, the US must refrain from pressing for democracy in Muslim countries until their societies are ripe enough to understand it. Bernard Lewis joined the chorus and asked the US not to allow Islamists to rule in Muslim societies. He argued that Islamists’ calls for free elections are only a tactical weapon. Once they are in power, democracy will be hijacked and a theocratic state installed.
Still, others warned of a domino effect if Islamists succeeded in attaining power in any Middle Eastern country. Though Jonathan S. Paris believed that Islamic movements might not be a real threat to the West at present, he nevertheless argued, “militant Islamists are the wild card in the Middle East… a success or two could transform” them “into a revolutionary snowball that might reach across borders toward a greater ‘Ummah,’ through Jihad.”
Another group suggested going beyond isolation and containment and advised the US government to act swiftly and decisively to put down the Islamist movement at its inception even if this required direct involvement “This protest movement….. should be stifled at birth.” The “Western world …cannot permit the replacement of one form of totalitarianism with another; the Soviet model with an Islamic one,” Amos Perlmutter argued. Similarly, Charles Krauthammer believed that dealing with Islamism “with anything less than a pure ‘stick approach’” would be a mistake. He advised the US government to employ a confrontational policy of “severe containment, isolating Iran as much as we can and dealing severely with its allies in Algeria, the occupied territories, Egypt and elsewhere.” Any sign of weakness, any inclination toward compromise or appeasement “would be a terrible mistake in dealing with a threat as serious as this one.”
Lewis and his sympathizers have been pressing their case for some time but the Sept. 11 attacks presented them with a golden opportunity to see theory translated into policy. Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems to have lent them all ears, adopted much of Lewis’ argument and is acting accordingly. Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has declared a war on Islam disguised as “war on terrorism.” By doing this, the US is, in fact, running the risk of bringing the fallacy of the clash of civilizations into reality. This could carry dire consequences not only for the US and the Islamic world but also for the entire world.
(Marwan Al-Kabalan is a scholar in international relations and freelance writer based in UK).
Arab News Features 9 February 2003
