Quotable: Matthew Bryza on U.S. policymakers “ceding the ideological field to extremists”

publicdiplomacycouncil.org

Friday, January 22nd 2016

“Western governments face a dilemma in responding to this, the most important ideological struggle in the world today. On the one hand, Western societies have a profound interest in the outcome of this “battle of ideas” among Muslims; on the other hand, Americans and Europeans lack credibility among Muslims and thus cannot use direct action to shape this crucial debate,” wrote Matthew Bryza, former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, now a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.   His article, “Western Options in a Muslim Battle of Ideas,” was posted on the website of  The Atlantic Council on January 14, 2016.  He began with some clarifying definitions, and he then described a strategy of “indirect intervention.”

• Islamism is the ideology of ISIS. Islamism differs crucially from Islam: it constitutes distortion of a religion—whose very name derives from the Arabic word for “peace”—into a political credo that aims to establish a new world order, even by force if necessary.  

• The core concept of Islamism is that a narrow interpretation of God's divine law, sharia, must be established everywhere to govern all aspects of life, including public and private law, ethics, politics, economics, business, and warfare. From the Islamist perspective, secular law, even if formulated democratically, is less legitimate than God’s own law. Thus, secular law must eventually yield to sharia until a single religious state, or Caliphate, replaces all the countries of today.  

• While Islamists all share these utopian goals, they differ significantly in terms of patience and tolerance. By far, most of the world’s Islamists are at peace with the present world and hold moderate views. They blend personal piety and conservative norms into their everyday lives, confident that divine law will ultimately triumph, but perhaps centuries from now.  

• More eager Islamists, such as members of the Muslim Brotherhood, want change to begin now and seek political power—including via democratic elections—to clear the way for the eventual Caliphate based on a narrower and less tolerant version of sharia.
• The least patient turn Islamism into fundamentalist extremism. They want the Caliphate immediately and are willing to use violence to pursue it. ISIS members, in fact, believe they have already established their Caliphate in portions of Iraq and Syria, where laws are now based on an interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence that predominated centuries ago in the Arabian Peninsula.  

• Western governments face a dilemma in responding to this, the most important ideological struggle in the world today. On the one hand, Western societies have a profound interest in the outcome of this “battle of ideas” among Muslims; on the other hand, Americans and Europeans lack credibility among Muslims and thus cannot use direct action to shape this crucial debate.  

• The West’s key to resolving this dilemma is indirect intervention. By working with like-minded governments and citizens in Muslim-majority countries, Western governments can help empower scholars, imams, and non-governmental organizations in much of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia who embrace their indigenous traditions of tolerant faith and scientific learning. These Muslims believe in the compatibility of Islam and democracy and reject the hatred and intolerance of Islamist extremists.  

• Unfortunately, in my professional experience at the State Department and White House, US policymakers have difficulty confronting Islamist ideology even in these indirect ways. They fear that if they oppose a movement whose name contains the word “Islam,” they could face accusations of Islamophobia or of violating the separation of church and state as enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  

• US officials minimize Islamist ideology as the main driver pulling devout Muslims toward jihadi radicalization; instead, they blame prejudice and deprivation in Western societies for pushing some Muslims toward violent extremism.  

• Their counterterrorist policy prescriptions are thus incomplete, focusing primarily on education and employment opportunities and on security operations to prevent extremists from resorting to violence, while ceding the ideological field to extremists who use their political credo couched in religious phraseology as a potent recruiting tool.  
• Indeed, some of the most prominent Islamist terrorists benefited from good educations and decent jobs in the United States and Europe, but nevertheless found Islamist ideology irresistible. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . . . Sami Amimour . . . Syed Farook . . . . had in common was not a lack of economic opportunity or even an innate penchant for violence, but rather, a shared journey from soul-searching to a hateful political philosophy and ultimately to a violent battle of ideas.  

• The United States and Europe cannot afford to remain on the sidelines of this critical ideological battle, even if their policy tools are limited. If the West remains ideologically passive, our societies will face continuous waves of subversion and violence from within, even after both ISIS and the Assad regime are defeated in Syria.

Author: Donald M. Bishop