What the West is Getting Wrong about the Middle East

Why Islam is Not the Problem

Ömer Taspinar

• Editorial: I.B. Tauris
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780755607167
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Storia
• Categoría: Storia mediorientale

The West's actions in the Middle East are based on a fundamental misunderstanding: political Islam is repeatedly assumed to be the main cause of conflict and unrest in the region. The idea that we can decipher Jihadist radicalization or problems in the Middle East simply by reading the Qur'an has now become symptomatic of our age. This dangerous over-simplification and the West's obsession with Islam dominates media and policy analysis, ultimately skewing intervention and preventing long-term solutions and stability in the region. Ömer Taspinar, who has 20 years' research and policymaking experience, explains here what is really going on in the Middle East. The book is based on three of the most pressing cases currently under the spotlight: the role of Erdogan and the unrest in Turkey; the sectarian clashes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon; and the existence of the so-called Islamic State. Islam is often seen as the root cause of the challenge associated with these cases. But by unpacking the real issues, such as entrenched authoritarianism, vast energy resources, excessive defense spending, and the youth bulge, the book demystifies what is happening and cites governance and nationalism as the main drivers of conflict. The book shows the importance of treating the causes – which are economic, social and institutional – rather than the symptom – the continued and growing success of Islamist parties and jihadist movements in assessing the Middle East. In revealing exactly how Islamism is activated and by analyzing the structural challenges of the region, this unique insider's account provides a map to understanding Middle Eastern wars and conflicts and the prospects for the future.

1 OVERSTATING ISLAM

Consider the following list: the backlash against multiculturalism in Europe; the US travel ban on major Muslim countries; anti-immigration policies targeting Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic; a growing wave of burqa ban in EU countries; the potential designation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization by US congress; the failure to understand the driving factors behind jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS; and the belief that survival of Western civilization is at stake. None of these are hypothetical scenarios. They are actual challenges and concerns that shape Western policies. And most importantly, they all make alarmist assumptions that overstate Islam.

Overstating Islam is not an academic problem. It is also not confined to the analytical failure of think tanks in Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin. The belief that Islam is a security concern and a political challenge—more than just a religion—is now deeply ingrained as conventional wisdom and accepted as a fact by large majorities in the West. This state of affairs not only fuels Islamophobia in the West but perhaps more alarmingly exacerbates the resentment toward Europe and the United States in the Muslim world. Millions of average Muslims are tired of being seen as potential radicals in the eyes of average Europeans and Americans. We live in a world where relations between the West and the Muslim world are polarized and full of mutual resentment. The stakes involved in misunderstanding the Middle East by overstating Islam are therefore extremely high.

The problem has clearly gained a new sense of urgency with the arrival of the Trump administration to power. The rise of right-wing populist xenophobia in Europe is the mirror image of the same phenomenon across the Atlantic. This disturbing trend is fueled by what has come to be called “identity politics.” Identity politics is driven by superficial perceptions of who we are, rather than the deeper intellectual question of what we think. When identity politics dominates, ideology takes second seat to the primordial question of who we are. The fear of Islam is a case in point. It is not surprising that the threat perception is often focused on Islam as a religion, rather than on political Islam as an ideology. President Trump, for instance, famously asserted to CNN that “Islam hates us” as he went on saying, “I deplore the tremendous hatred that defines this religion.” Probed whether he meant to say “radical Islam,” his answer was: “it’s very difficult to separate. It is very hard to define. Because you don’t know who is who.”¹

Trump is not alone. Most polls show that growing majorities in Europe and the United States are concerned and fearful about the presence of Islam and Muslims in their vicinity.² In the eyes of large masses, the fear Islam instigates is defined by identity rather than ideology. Not surprisingly, such fear contributes to the kind of xenophobia, anti-immigration anxiety, and populist nativism that eventually finds its voice in the ballot box. There appears no end in sight to the electoral victories of racist political parties that specialize in fearmongering. Populist politicians, who used to operate on the fringes, are now defining the political center in Europe and the United States.

Today, in our age of globalization, we may be forgiven for thinking that identity politics has become exceptionally polarizing. In reality, identity politics always existed. Racism, nationalism, and ethnic hatred are not new phenomena. What is different today, however, is the new scale and scope to this problem. We are constantly bombarded by news, images, documentaries, books, movies, and expert opinion about Islam and the threat it poses to Western civilization. The alarmist perception of this faith as a dangerous religion is driven by this new domestic context coupled with the reality of international events that put Islam at the center stage. Jihadist terrorism in the West, wars in the Middle East, and Muslim immigration to Europe are all defining elements of this new context of globalization that fuels unprecedented levels of polarization in identity politics.

Islam and the Roots of Fear

Fallacies and fantasies in the Western perception of the Middle East have deep historical roots. The tendency to overstate the role of Islam as the central driver of all political, social, economic, and security problems in the “Near East” is part of a Western scholarly tradition, going all the way back to the age of imperialism and colonialism.³ What is different today, however, is that the fascination with Islam goes well beyond “Orientalist” intellectual tradition and scholarship. Because of globalization and the presence of large Muslim minorities in the West, there is now a mounting sense of anxiety about Islam and Muslims.

The Western obsession with Islam is partly understandable. For large majorities in the West the fear of Islam goes hand in hand with the fear of terrorism. Islam turned from an exotic religion into a growing security threat in a relatively recent political context. During most of the Cold War, the West paid hardly any attention to Islam. The focus was on communism and geostrategic rivalry with the Soviet Union. Most analysts understandably see the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as the definitive turning point in the transformation of Islam from religion to security threat for the West. Yet, there were prior pivotal moments, most remarkably in the late 1970s. In fact, anyone who wants to understand the roots of the current “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Islamic world needs to go back forty years in history in order to understand how 1979 turned into a fateful year when seemingly unrelated events in the greater Middle East paved the road for where we are today.

The year started with Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran after fourteen years in exile. The country was in revolutionary turmoil and sensing that his survival was far from certain, the Shah had already left Iran. As he entered the city, five million Iranians lined up the streets of Tehran to greet the homecoming of the Shiite Imam. What was taking place in Iran in 1979 was the closest the Middle East ever came to a paradigm-changing political revolution similar to what happened in Europe in the wake of the French Revolution in 1789. Today, there are different narratives and interpretations of how the Shiite clergy ended up in power. What is not open to debate, however, is the fact that the Shah had alienated almost all segments of Iranian society, ranging from students and the Communist Party to the merchants in the Bazaar; everyone had an axe to grind with the old regime. And of all the social classes involved in massive demonstrations that rocked Iran, it was the best organized and most disciplined one that managed to hijack the revolution. By April 1979 Khomeini declared that he founded the Islamic Republic in the holy city of Qum. About forty years later Iran, the Middle East, and the West are still grappling with the legacy of this critical turning point.

The same year in Saudi Arabia a seismic event was also to have lasting consequences for both the world and the region. November 20, 1979 began as a regular day in the Grand Mosque of Mecca. It was Haj season in the holiest place of worship of the Islamic world. Thousands flocking to the inner sanctum of the mosque were getting ready for the holiest prayer of their lives, unaware that what was soon to unfold would change the Kingdom forever. In a matter of hours, a group of heavily armed fundamentalists gained control of the whole complex. The attackers were not Shiites bent on spreading Iran’s Islamic Revolution as Saudi authorities initially claimed. They were hardline members of Saudi Arabia’s very own fundamentalist sect, Wahhabism, taking a stand against growing Western influence on the Kingdom.⁴

The event traumatized the Kingdom and proved to be a turning point. The embarrassment for the Kingdom was made even worse by the fact that it took more than two weeks for the regime to regain control of the mosque, only after the intervention of French special forces. Close to a thousand worshippers were killed. The siege of the Grand Mosque was nothing short of an existential threat to the very foundations of the Kingdom built on an alliance between the House of Saud and Wahhabi puritanism. The House of Saud now had a choice: it could either enter a new stage of confrontation with its own puritanical sect by crushing all radical elements within or make peace with them with a strategy of co-optation. The regime decided to pursue the latter, for the sake of peace and stability at home. Soon, Wahhabism was to become the second most important export of the Saudi regime after its oil.

In order to restore its domestic political and religious legitimacy, the Kingdom not only warmly embraced Wahhabism. It also decided to channel the radical energy of its most zealous adherents outside the Kingdom to places like Afghanistan, where the Soviet army that same fateful year, in 1979, embarked on an ill-advised journey. When Soviet tanks rolled into the country in December 1979 they probably had no clue that this quagmire was going to play such a major role in bringing the end of the whole communist system. Soon after the Soviet invasion a jihadist resistance movement financed by Saudi Arabia and the United States emerged. The seeds of Al Qaeda were planted among such Mujahideen groups in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, originally from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, became a prominent organizer and financier in funneling money, arms, and Muslim fighters into the country.

In short, 1979 turned out to be a fateful year for the future of relations between the Middle East and the West. Turning points like the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan changed the world. These regional developments also paved the road for a new paradigm in relations between the West and Islam much before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The perception that Islam is an exceptional force, with tremendous political power to shape the fate of individual countries, an entire region, and eventually the whole world emerged that year. Popular journalists such as Thomas Friedman, to this day, argue the world has never been the same after the events set in motion that year.⁵

There is no doubt that 1979 is a turning point. Yet, it is also clear that until 2001 there was still resistance to the idea of an immutable, deeply rooted religious clash between Islam and the West. Samuel Huntington wrote his alarmist essay and subsequent book on the “Clash of Civilizations,” shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War came to an end.⁶ Events that started in 1979 were well underway by the early 1990s, yet most analysts vehemently disagreed with the notion that the new global conflicts would be fueled by religion.⁷ The dominant view was that national, economic, or geostrategic interests, rather than civilizational belonging based on religion, would continue to shape world politics. The neat and oversimplified groupings in Huntington’s categorization of civilizations failed to explain the hybrid, multifaceted nature of globalization and presented a monolithic version of complex identities.

And then 9/11 happened. This tragedy turned the clash into a self-fulfilling prophecy with astonishing speed. Jihadist Islam, represented by Al Qaeda, had declared war against the West. The very symbols of American financial and military power were hit with unprecedented lethality. In a few hours, more than three thousand innocent civilians were killed. The perpetrators claimed they acted in the name of Islam, jihad, and revenge. Soon after the dust settled, a Western debate began about what all this meant. The Bush administration quickly launched a global war against terrorism. Unavoidably, in the eyes of millions of traumatized Americans, the problem was Islam and Muslims. The fateful question became: “Why do they hate us?” People rushed to bookstores to buy copies of the Quran—the sacred text of Islam believed to be the very word of God by Muslims—to find answers. An industry of analysts and pundits were more than ready to provide their views.

Something had gone awfully wrong in the Muslim world and Islamic theology and radical fundamentalism were in great part to blame for fueling hatred of the West. The assertion of Islam as the main problem was of course simplistic. Yet, it is also abundantly clear that terrorism compounded the stigmatization of Islam since 9/11. Those who wish to challenge Islamophobia have to recognize this simple reality and think harder about the connections between Islam and extremist violence. Jihadist terrorism is not a Western fantasy nor a perception problem in the eyes of racists. Such politically and religiously motivated acts targeting civilians in Europe and the United States are all too real and still occur with disturbing frequency. The argument that jihadist terrorist attacks have nothing to do with Islam lacks credibility in the eyes of Western majorities. It is critically important to understand this point before engaging in a futile defense of the Muslim faith as a peaceful and tolerant religion.

The Need for Balance and Context

There is, of course, nothing wrong with pious Muslims who want to defend their religion from defamation and demonization. But when terrorist masterminds evoke theology and use the language of religious resistance, there needs to be a less defensive reaction from Muslim communities and more willingness to look at all the causes, including religious ones, of radicalization. In rejecting the essentialist view that Islam is an immutable, timeless, all-powerful force behind everything Muslims think and do, we should not engage in reverse essentialism by arguing that Islam is a force for good. The view that religion has nothing to do with human behavior is simplistic. We need to approach the roots of the Western fear of Islam with an open mind and a flexible methodology. Instead of an exclusive focus on Islamic doctrine, the intersection of politics, sociology, culture, psychology, and foreign policy will certainly prove more fertile ground. Rather than outright rejection of any connection between Islam and violence, we should therefore expand the field of analysis.

The current Western debate about jihadist terrorism, however, goes well beyond a necessary and balanced discussion about the role of religion in fueling extremist violence. There is now an alarming tendency among growing numbers of analysts, politicians, scholars, and citizens to see “radical Islam” as the sole ideological factor behind terrorism. Perhaps more worrisome is the growing sense that Islam as a religion is also the main obstacle to freedom, prosperity, and modernization in the Middle East. In short, Islam is now to blame for everything that goes wrong, from terrorism to the failure of democratization, secularism, and economic development in the Muslim world. That’s where reality meets fantasy.

Given the polarizing nature of this debate, it is important to challenge this fantasy in a rational way, without minimizing the role Islam plays in the politics of Muslim countries. In the following pages, my goal is not to defend Islam or to argue that it is irrelevant. Many books try to absolve Islam of any connection to violence, with the argument that Islam is a religion of peace. This book is not one of them. I believe trying to prove the peaceful nature of Islam is as pointless as the argument that Islam is a violent religion. Such discussions on the “essence” of Islam are count...