social distinctions against the white oppressor. In the early twentieth century,
black nationalist leaders in America, led by Elijah Muhammad and later
Malcolm X, urged African-Americans to escape their “slave mentality” by
adopting Islam, a religion allegedly closer to their African roots.
African-
Americans were already divided from the white population by
race; Elijah
Muhammad would now reinforce the struggle by seeking to promote distinctive
religious identity as well.
Meanwhile, the West itself has never shrunk
from employing anti-imperial
Islamist movements to its own ends. During the Cold War, Washington viewed
the Muslim peoples of the USSR as the “soft underbelly of Soviet power,”
potentially exploitable against Moscow.
Washington, often in collusion with pro-
US dictators, encouraged Islamists in many countries to struggle against local
communist parties.
The best-known case, of course, is US support for the
mujahideen in Afghanistan—a group famously described by President Ronald
Reagan as the “moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers”—in the
struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
In most cases, however,
Muslims have not needed a lot of external support from outsiders to push back
against outside imperial ventures.
