"Try to learn instead of burn, hear what I say." ~Jimi Hendrix
The "war on terror" has been compared to the Cold War, and while I think historical comparisons can obscure important nuances, the comparison makes sense in at least two ways. First, invading a country and imposing a government on it is going to be seen as imperialist, even if it's well-intentioned. And second, both wars are fundamentally wars of ideas.
Al-Qaeda's idea is obvious: Western liberal democracy is incompatible with Islam and must be fought. Looking at our history, our idea is also obvious: Islam and liberal democracy are compatible.
There are those who would cede the first point to al-Qaeda, who believe that our idea should be, 'Yes, democracy and Islam are incompatible, but it is Islam that must be fought.' But a war of ideas can not be won by force; it can only be won by persuasion. And the more we act like we are at war with Islam, the more Muslims will be at war with us.
A war on Islam is not a war that we can win, nor should it be a war that we want to fight. No, we win the war on terror by encouraging moderate Muslims to say and say it loudly, "Al-Qaeda, you are wrong. We do not need to fight democracy but to foster it. We reject your ideas, and you are not the true face of Islam." But if we continue to lump in our moderate friends with our extremist enemies, we undermine our allies and we lose the war.
3 comments:
I really enjoy reading your blog. If I am right, you mentioned that Islam and western liberal democracy are compatible and you gave the solution of encouraging moderate Muslims to understand this point and if it hopefully happens, they will naturally push the Al-Qaeda out of their system and reject their. But at the first glance, some questions bring to mind:
1) Is the Al-Qaeda representative of Muslims? How many of even moderate Muslim accept Al-Qaeda? If the response to this question is negative, as I believe it is, your solution is meaningless. If the response is positive, do you have any estimate how much price the world should pay to behave according this solution and is it worth?
2) Why is it a debate that Islam and western liberal democracy are not compatible? Is there any believe that politics based on Islam is able to implement democracy and what is the obstacles in this way?
And many other questions.
But generally, without understanding the exact problems and challenges, we are not able to talk about a solution.
Thank you for your comments. In response to the two issues that you raised, it is absolutely correct that extremist groups like Al-Qaeda are not representative and have never been representative of anything other than a few on the fringes. However, because of such extremist groups, the vast majority of Muslims either face pressures of polarization when such groups step in to fill power vacuums or are successfully able to dominate the narrative such that the rest of Muslims suffer as a result. Then, a cooperative element of a holistic solution would be to create a much larger forum in the United States and regions like Europe, where gross misunderstanding of Islam abounds. If a larger space in the public discourse is made for groups representative of the majority of Muslims, then it will give them an option to make the statements they already do make against extremism and violence, in all its forms. This is what I believe my colleague was getting at in those three lines in the last paragraph.
In regard to your second point, I believe many Christians in the United States would argue that indeed Christianity is compatible with liberal democracy (yes, while the USA does have separation of religion and state built into its institutions, there are many examples of how this distinction gets blurred and there are a substantial number of people who would support a closer connection between the two). My guess would be that most Muslims see nothing incompatible between the tenants of Islam and those of liberal democracy; the five pillars of Islam are very focused on self-purification and service to others. If one takes liberal democracy as it is experienced and structured in the United States with de jure separation of religion and the state, then liberal democracy is compatible with any religion as it removes religion from the public sphere and placing it into the private, individual realm.
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