Understanding Islam
Even the best academics can't decide which parts of Islam give rise to terror, let alone what the proper American response should be.
by David Brooks
01/21/2002 12:01:00 AM
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David Brooks, senior editor
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THE ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER has undertaken a heroic and important task: getting reporters to think about religion. A few years ago a bunch of journalists and I were flown up to Maine to learn about evangelical Christianity from a group of academics. It was an intriguing and coherent lesson on the roots and nature of evangelism from scholars such as Grant Wacker of Duke.
Then, last week, another bunch of us were flown down to Florida to learn about Islam. This conference was fascinating, but the scholars--who are tops in their fields--presented three quite different versions of Islam and the threat the West now faces in the war on terror. And I would guess that none of their descriptions fully satisfied the journalists in the audience.
This is really quite remarkable. We are four months into a conflict with some sort of foe, but there is no clear conception, amongst elite opinion at least, about the nature of our enemy or the stakes of the fight.
First we heard from Harvard's Samuel Huntington, who argued that the al Qaeda terrorists are motivated primarily by religion. They have no coherent ideological or political program, Huntington claimed. What we are seeing, he said with characteristic sweep, is the decline of political ideology and the return of religion as a historical driving force. First-generation urbanites in the Arab world, he said, sometimes turn to religious creeds that sacralize purity and modesty as a response to the problems of modern life and to what is
perceived as America's global cultural offensive. Religion becomes the justification for extreme violence.
Then came Roy Mottahedeh, also from Harvard, a celebrated scholar of Islamic history--though no Muslim himself. Mottahedeh argued that the al Qaeda terrorists cannot be understood as a religious threat, and do not reflect modern Islam, which he said was trending moderate and reformist. The Islamic learned men, he said, have very limited interest in the political world of nations, power politics, and constitutionalism. They are quietists, who neither oppose regimes nor endorse them. "Better 60 years of oppression than one day of disorder," is a common sentiment among such leaders, representing their desire for spiritual accomplishment over worldly pursuits.
During the 18th century, Mottahedeh said, European economic and political superiority became obvious to all, and proud Muslims reacted in one of two ways: either by searching for the secrets of European success or by veering toward an allegedly purer and more zealous form of Islamic militancy. But, the professor argued, the zealots inevitably drove themselves to the edge of society and to oblivion. In the Islamic world today (only about a fifth of which is Arab), he argued, the moderates have the upper hand. Books by moderate reformers, many of whom now live in the Islamic diaspora, are popular across the Muslim world, though the authors are sometimes oppressed by autocratic governments. What's needed, Mottahedeh concluded, is a new Fulbright plan that would bring Islamic and non-Islamic people together to build understandings and a commitment on the part of the United States to champion democracy in this region, through Radio Liberty-style broadcasts and Civic Forum-type activist organizations.
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