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The
Conversation
Daniel
Pipes's courteous and trenchant response to me is, as is all
his work, illuminating. He both narrows the positions between us
and, at the same time, clarifies our essential differences. His
central thesis is that "Islamic fundamentalists stand outside
of historic Islam and are already within bin Laden's extremist ranks."
Stephen
Schwartz argues more specifically that Wahhabism is as heretical
to Islam as I claim bin Laden is, and that there is no real fundamentalism
within Islam that is not of the Wahhabist type. Amir
Taheri reminds us that there are problems that go beyond the
differences between extremism and fundamentalism. Taheri states,
"The Muslim world today is full of bigotry, fanaticism, hypocrisy
and plain ignorance — all of which create a breeding ground
for criminals like bin Laden." Jonah
Goldberg observes that there is a particular religious attitude
in Islam that, at least for the present, impels its believers towards
violence. And Diana
Westcontends that Islam itself, through the Koran unsoftened
by modern exegetical analysis, commands violence.
Putting aside
our differences for the moment, what is striking is the degree of
common agreement among many of us. There is, at bottom, no difference
that I detect between Pipes, Schwartz, Goldberg, West, and me on
the moral and legal unacceptability of violations of human rights
committed by extreme partisans of the Sharia, particularly
against women and religious minorities. Further, I believe all of
us agree with the central proposition of my
earlier essay, namely, that religion is not the enemy. We stand
together against those who have claimed that it is the religious
impulse or even monotheistic faith that is the ultimate cause of
the events of September 11 — a view hostile to the role of
religion in Western life as well as in Islam.
Most importantly,
we concur, along with the president, that bin Laden is a direct
threat to Islam. That central theme to the President's worldview
and diplomacy is a ground that nearly all of us stand upon, whatever
other disagreements we may have. It is the ground that supports
our policy of isolating the extremists and containing their all
too strong influence within the Muslim world. It underlies another
significant point of agreement between my interlocutors and me:
That the cause of the crimes committed by the September 11 terrorists,
and others like the men who this past weekend murdered 16 worshippers
in a Pakistani church lies within the Muslim world.
I add one caveat.
For many years, American policy largely acquiesced when Muslim governments
acceded to extremist demands within their countries. We did not
adequately protest the violence perpetrated against religious minorities
or the resurgence of what its perpetrators claimed to be religiously
based slavery in the Sudan. We operated on a stereotype, namely,
that Islam was by nature intolerant and violent. And by so doing,
we assisted in the legitimization of radical extremists within the
Muslim world. At the same time, we incurred the resentment of moderate
Muslims who opposed both the extremists and the autocratic governments
the United States was seen to be supporting.
Whatever our
differences, the ground I share with my interlocutors ensures that
our conversations are all designed to lead to the same place —
victory over a worldwide evil.
The question
is how best to achieve it. I do not believe that making war on all
who consider themselves fundamentalists is practically or intellectually
necessary. I do not think, as apparently Daniel Pipes does, that
all fundamentalists are the same as the militant extremists who
are making war on us. Perhaps the difference between us stems from
differing definitions of fundamentalism. I take religious fundamentalism
to include the following characteristics: a reliance on the will
of God as the source of truth, typically codified in a particular
source (scripture), a relative disparagement of the role of reason,
a tendency towards literalism, a reaction against foreign or modern
elements or accretions, and a duality in one's eschatological conception
of existence (good/evil, spirit/matter, God/Satan, us/them, certainty
of triumph/imminence of defeat). Fundamentalism in Islam has its
own particular cast. It normally involves the claim that the sharia
should be part or all of state law.
In that sense,
fundamentalism has always been part of the religion since the Pietists
confronted and later fused with the legalists in early Islam. True,
much of modern Islamic fundamentalism transmogrified into the politicized
extremism we see in bin Laden and in other parts of the Islamic
world. In that, Pipes's evaluation has weight. But there is no reason
to be fatalistic that all of Islamic fundamentalism will become
the kind of extremism that we are at war with. Whatever its failings,
traditional Islamic fundamentalism has been different from the politicized
Islam that the radicals espouse. Even today, many Islamic fundamentalists
seek their goals through peaceful political processes. They include
groups in Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, and Egypt. We should note that
even modest democratic processes can blunt the extremist pull on
Islamic fundamentalism.
I regret that
Stephen Schwartz saw me as in a "rush to exculpate Islamic
extremists who would impose sharia as the exclusive form
of law in every Muslim society." Whatever public-policy record
I have, it has been invariably to castigate the human-rights violations
of those fundamentalists who would impose the entire sharia
on society, and those extremists who go beyond even the sharia
in their vile objectives. Legally and rhetorically, I have campaigned
against the intolerable human-rights abuses permitted or committed
by the governments of Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
And I have not withheld my ire from American policymakers who have
patronizingly assumed that intolerant Islam was the genuine article.
Schwartz is
right to condemn the baleful influence of Wahhabism on modern Islam.
He also asserts that it is as much a heresy as bin Laden's "faith"
that equates Islam with wanton terrorism. But Wahhabism has a different
provenance from modern Islamic radicalism. It of course has its
own record of human-rights abuse, for which it is responsible.
I too long
for the day when Islam discards Wahhabism. But as much as I believe
Wahhabism's practices are contrary to the spiritual core of Islam,
it has, nonetheless, been a prominent and influential movement in
Islam for over two centuries. And so we must deal with it before
abandoning its adherents to the bin Ladens of the world. We must
deal with its human-rights abuses, its sponsorship of schools of
hate. But let us remember that we are in a war, and the Saudis are
not yet in bin Laden's trenches and that, in fact, Bin Laden wants
to do the Saudis in. There is a difference between religious imperialism
and intolerance, on the one hand, and flying planes into the World
Trade Center and perhaps unleashing a plague upon our people on
the other. And on that difference lies a sufficient basis for American
policy.
Drawing
Lines
I draw a line
between Islam and bin Laden and his extremist allies not only to
affirm the validity of traditional Islam, but to prevent him and
his like-minded extremists from gaining further inroads into Islam.
Pipes and Schwartz seem to think that this has already happened,
and so do not distinguish bin Laden from Muslim fundamentalism.
In my view, contemporary Muslim fundamentalism has its own problems
both for Islam and for the exercise of human rights. But if we cede
that realm of Islam to the extremists, it will become a self-fulfilling
prophecy. We shall have granted bin Laden and his ilk the alliances
they seek to forge. Better to isolate the extremists and defeat
them, while developing an effective strategy to confront and contain
the problems of Muslim fundamentalism within Islam. I believe that
this principle can best provide the grounding upon which American
foreign policy can define itself and allow a context in which Islam
can reclaim itself.
If we examine
the West's own experience with totalitarian tyranny, we can better
discern the distinctions that should be made and the appropriate
policies that flow from them.
Soviet Communism
was a primary source of evil and challenge to Western civilization.
Its destruction of its own people, of nations and cultures, of the
environment and the family, of religion and civil liberty was the
antithesis of the religious, humanitarian, legal, and liberal tradition
of the West. That was an evil that, to its great credit, the West
confronted for half a century.
There were,
however, in the West intellectuals and others who were not themselves
Communists but were nonetheless allies, ideological friends, and
political supporters. They were Communism's fellow travelers, and
they bear the moral responsibility for their assistance and succoring
of the evil.
There were,
and are, in the West still others who were neither Communists nor
fellow travelers. They were genuine socialists. Their policies,
many of us believe, failed both economically and socially. And their
policies weakened the fiber of the West. But they were not evil.
They were not accessories to evil. The worst that could be said
of them is that they were badly mistaken.
When President
Bush refers to the terrorists as "evil doers," his expression
is morally precise and politically accurate. Bin Laden and other
Muslim extremists engage in a political program that is as evil
as were the totalitarian rule of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union,
and Communist China. And, just as Communism was the antithesis of
the West's moral and philosophical tradition, so too is contemporary
Muslim radicalism the antithesis of Islam.
As in the West,
there are traditions and institutions within Islam that are flawed,
some seriously. But they should not be equated with the kind of
evil that revealed itself in full on September 11. Anti-Semitic
culture in Europe may have helped Hitler to rise, but anti-Semitic
Europe was not Hitler, and Hitler did all he could to destroy European
culture. Christian bigots, including some church leaders, may have
created the Inquisition, but the Inquisition was not Christianity.
The acts of the assassin who shot Yitzhak Rabin were not Jewish
in any authentic religious sense. Likewise, the moral and cultural
failings of the Muslim world are not to be equated with bin Laden's
wanton terrorism. Tellingly, bin Laden's prime ally — the one
leader he mentioned by name after the air attacks began in Afghanistan
— is Saddam Hussein, by far the most secular, non-practicing
Muslim head of a Muslim state.
All agree that
the danger of Muslim extremism is real and that al Qaeda is not
the only extremist faction that seeks to overwhelm Islam and make
war on the West. There is Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sudanese
government, the Taliban, elements of the Iranian government and
groups in other countries such as Lebanon, Pakistan and Syria.
Muslim extremists
who terrorize are no less antithetical to the spiritual message
of Islam than were and are those who commit similar acts in the
name of Judaism or Christianity. That they come out of a religion
does not make them representative of the religion. That they use
religious symbols gives them no authenticity. When Daniel Pipes
notes that the extremist elements in Islamic radicalism extends
far beyond bin Laden and the Taliban, he is, of course, right. But
that leaves the central practical question: How can we prevent them
from gaining any greater legitimacy within Islam?
The task is
complicated because even within the religion, the extremists' have
their fellow travelers. These enablers are not directly at war with
us, but they aid and abet the enemy. In many ways, the Wahhabis
have been the enablers and it is good that, at long last, they are
now being called to account for their material and ideological assistance
to extremists like bin Laden. Such fellow travelers also include
Egyptian and Pakistani leaders who made concessions to extremists
within their own borders and bigoted religious leaders who have
issued intolerant fatwas. Those who strengthen monsters are
of course morally culpable for their assistance, but they are not
themselves necessarily monsters. Here too is our practical problem:
What is the best way to contain these fellow travelers? How do we
prevent them from increasing or even joining the ranks of the terrorists?
Within any
religion, one may accuse fundamentalists as being too literal, too
unspiritual, or too intolerant. We can say that they are badly mistaken.
We can even say that they have laid the ground in which extremism
can grow. But that does not make them extremists themselves, nor
does it necessarily make them fellow travelers with the extremists.
Some think Jerry Falwell is too fundamentalist and too intolerant.
But he is within the Christian tradition. Few think the Ku Klux
Klan is. No matter how just it may be to criticize his ideas and
words, Falwell is not the Klan, except for those who cannot make
principled distinctions between a religion and a perversion of it.
Similarly, we should not treat "they-had-it-coming" anti-American
reactions to September 11 from the Muslim world any differently
from similar reactions that took place throughout much of Europe.
The latter reactions are of course indefensible and reprehensible,
but we need to decide whether to going to war with all of Islam's
fundamentalists makes any more sense than declaring war on Europe's
Left. Similarly, we should distinguish between those jealous of
America's wealth and power, and troubled by our exported culture,
and those who share bin Laden's inhuman agenda.
What
Is to be Done?
Defining bin
Laden outside of any authentic Islamic tradition provides the principle
by which Muslims can reject those within Islam whose sectarian radicalism
gives birth to Islam's antithesis. It provides the very basis by
which the peaceful traditions of classical Islam can reject those
legalistic avatars that have, wittingly or no, produced a greater
threat to Islam than Western imperialism has ever been. It gives
heart to the millions of Muslims who have no place for either extremism
or intolerant fundamentalism within their religion. It empowers
us, even in the midst of this war, to condemn coalition members
who restrict or persecute religious minorities.
We are in a
war for civilization (not between civilizations). No one said, or
should have said, that this would be easy. Of course Islamic extremism
has deep roots in the Muslim world. Of course Islamic fundamentalism
brings in its train its own problems. Yes, we are battling decades
of anti-Western propaganda, the detritus from autocratic regimes,
generations of ignorance, and centuries of tribalism — and
we deal as well with the harsh effects of a decade's worth of appeasement
of Islamist radicals and neglect and even betrayal of democratic
movements. But this only means that our task is complex. It does
not mean it is unwinnable. We are only at the beginning. Bin Laden
does not rule one-third of the earth as the Communists did. He does
not rule one-third of Islam. And we need to keep it that way, and
not make it easier for him to satisfy his malevolent design to achieve
influence and reign over Islam.
It is for these
reason that I commend to Daniel Pipes and my other interlocutors
the historic, political, and strategic wisdom of the approach taken
by President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Mayor Giuliani. They
know that despite all the problematic elements in Muslim culture,
it is bin Laden and the extremists who are our enemy — and
Islam's as well.
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