models

The September 2008 issue of Commentary magazine has an excellent article by Bret Stephens: How to Manage Savagery. In it, Stephens examines developments in the world of Islamic terrorism and how that relates to the Muslim world at large. He considers the Huntington "clash of civilizations" paradigm against the realities of the past 15 years since it was first published and concludes:

Contrary to Huntington’s forecast, much of world conflict is now overwhelmingly characterized by fighting and competition not between or among civilizations but within them. And nowhere is this truer than in the Muslim world.

Stephens draws a dramatic parallel between al Qaeda's fate and that of the larger Islamic civilization:

Still, al Qaeda’s decline offers a kind of portrait-in-miniature of a civilization that seems perpetually to be collapsing in on itself. Here is a movement in which suicide—that is, self-destruction—is treated as the ultimate act of self-assertion. A movement that sees itself as an Islamic vanguard, leading the way toward a genuine Muslim umma, but is permanently at war with the Muslim communities it inhabits. A movement whose attacks beyond the Islamic world have mainly had the effect of accelerating the very forces by which it is sealing its own fate. To use an inexact astronomical analogy, this is a movement with the quality of a supernova: even as an envelope of superheated gas rapidly expands outward, its core is compressing and ultimately implodes.

He then considers the policy implications of this reality and identifies three broad approaches that have been considered. Below is my attempt to illustrate these three as models of relationship between the Muslim world and the Christian West:



The first model I've called "separation" and is described by Stephens as follows [my emphasis]:

As for how the United States and its allies should attempt to deal with this new reality, one temptation is simply to stay away, on the theory that no good can come from putting our hands in such a mess. This is roughly the view of the libertarian and paleoconservative Right, and perhaps a majority of the Left. But the view hardly bears discussion: all mention of Israel aside, access to Middle Eastern energy resources is a vital American interest and will almost certainly remain so for decades. The Muslim world is also inextricably a part of the Western one, particularly in Europe. Nor is the global terrorist threat likely to go away even if al Qaeda does. The possibility that a regime that sponsors or supports terrorists might be in a position to supply them with weapons of mass destruction is a direct threat to us.

The second model I've called "diplomacy" and Stephens elaborates thus:

A second option, associated with the so-called realist school, contends that with rare exceptions, the U.S. should deal with the Muslim world more or less as it is, without seeking to change it. This is a view that has much to recommend it—at least in the hands of a master diplomatic practitioner. But Metternichs are hard to come by, and in the hands of lesser statesmen, realism easily slides into passive acquiescence in an intolerable status quo—or into intolerable changes to it. Witness the readiness of Colin Powell, as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during the first Bush administration, to accept Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 as a fait accompli.

Finally, I have called the third model "one-way influence" and Stephens explains:

A third view, shared to varying degrees by neoconservatives and liberal internationalists, is that the U.S. and the West have no choice but actively to seek domestic reforms in Muslim countries. Needless to say, such a course is fraught with risks and often prone to mishandling, overreaching, and failure. But some version of it is the only approach that can, if not heal the pathologies of the Muslim world, then at least ameliorate and contain them so that they do not end up arriving unbidden on our doorstep, as they did one morning in September 2001.

fine words

Salim Mansur has some fine words to say about the American people today:

Folks in Middle America are realists. Middle America, besides geography, also refers to the American character -- irrespective of ethnic origin -- of being proud of a country built by the love and sacrifice of previous generations into the greatest power in history.

Middle Americans uncomplainingly run the daily routines of keeping America free, prosperous and strong. Theirs is a story of unfailing optimism, generosity, courage and romance.

from Salim Mansur: Kerry, too, was the media darling

if the truth be told

Two different world views
Reader comment on article: The Enemy Has a Name

Submitted by Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai (India), Jun 20, 2008 at 00:44

Dr. Pipes could be trying to pinpoint the enemy, Islamism, but would be missing the wood for the trees.

Radicals are acting like an army committed the protect the civilians, the moderates.

Both have their roles cut out. And still both are part of one society.

When the chips are down, Muslim world unites at different levels with remarkable speed and unity of mind and purpose. The more Muslim world is subjected to stress and trauma, the more it reacts out of a sense of self-preservation.

Bush's war on terror was more of an imperialist campaign to conquer the world that remained to be conquered. So there was no reason to restrict its focus to one face. For Bush, the enemy has many faces. Under the circumstance, Dr. Pipes' analysis is reduced to a narrow selfserving proposition.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

source

Thank you, Ghulam
Reader comment on article: The Enemy Has a Name
in response to reader comment: Two different world views

Submitted by Anne Julienne (Australia), Jun 20, 2008 at 18:12

You've expressed the truth as seen by a Muslim in a few well chosen words.

To me, as a non-Muslim, your view fails to explain sep 11 and fails to acknowledge that Bush's wars were a response to that unprovoked attack. Through incidents like the Rushdie novel and the Danish cartoons, we now know that Muslims feel threatened or "subjected to stress and trauma" at the very slightest of slights.

We in the West will not continue to tread carefully as if on egg shells. We in the West might be more capable of uniting against Islam than you give us credit for. Good clear statements disclosing the Muslim mentality are useful to us.

So, thank you for your comment.

source

style and clarity

I like the writing style and analytical clarity of this op-ed piece in the NY Times.

Extremist movements have been growing bigger and wilder for more than three decades now, during that period, America has tried pretty much everything from a policy point of view. Our presidents have been satanic (Richard Nixon), angelic (Jimmy Carter), a sleepy idiot savant (Ronald Reagan), a cagey realist (George H. W. Bush), wonderfully charming (Bill Clinton) and famously otherwise (George W. Bush). And each president’s Middle Eastern policy has conformed to his character.

[...]

Even in the Western countries, quite a few Muslim liberals, the outspoken ones, live today under a threat of assassination, not to mention a reality of character assassination. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch legislator and writer, is merely an exceptionally valiant example. But instead of enjoying the unstinting support of their non-Muslim colleagues, the Muslim liberals find themselves routinely berated in the highbrow magazines and the universities as deracinated nonentities, alienated from the Muslim world. Or they find themselves pilloried as stooges of the neoconservative conspiracy — quite as if any writer from a Muslim background who fails to adhere to at least a few anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist tenets of the Islamist doctrine must be incapable of thinking his or her own thoughts.

A dismaying development. One more sign of the power of the extremist ideologies — one more surprising turn of events, on top of all the other dreadful and gut-wrenching surprises.

source: Paul Berman: Why Radical Islam Just Won’t Die