A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

War, Resistance, Jihad, and Terrorism
Probably no other region of the world has endured such intense and sustained
intervention from the West than the Middle East. There are several major
reasons: its immediate proximity to the West—a West that later developed
powerful expansionist impulses; the attraction of the Middle East’s huge energy
resources and its related massive financial influence; and its strategic location
for millennia as an East-West crossroads in international geopolitics. We saw in
the last chapter the impact of colonialism, imperialism, and neo-imperialism
over several centuries and the intensification of US interventionism in the
present.
The cumulative anger, frustration, and radicalism that this history of
intervention has produced are abundantly evident. The question perhaps is not
how 9/11 could have happened, but instead, why didn’t it happen sooner? As
radical Middle East groups articulate their grievances in our globalized age, why
should we be surprised that they ultimately carry their struggle to the heart of the
West? It takes little brilliance, then, to have anticipated some kind of pushback,
resistance, a sharp or even violent response to long-term Western actions. It is
particularly disingenuous for the West at this point to turn around and speculate
on what is wrong with the Muslim world, or with Islam, that the West should be
witnessing a violent response from the Muslim world. It borders on obtuseness
or willful ignorance not to acknowledge any impact or role of its own policies
over the last two centuries or more in stimulating the range of current responses
from the Muslim world.
Nor should the use of violence be surprising. When situations deteriorate, is it
moderates, or radicals, who tend to respond first? In this sense Usama bin Ladin
is the canary in the cage of the Middle East mineshaft—his early violent actions
suggest that conditions are going badly awry in the Middle East. If real radicals
are taking up cudgels for the first time, how far behind are the more moderate
forces, who share the same environment and misgivings? We already know that

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there is much tacit public sympathy, if not support, for bin Ladin in the Middle
East, even while his methods are not fully condoned.
So it becomes analytically shaky to suggest that somehow Islam, madrasas,
or radical ideology is the ultimate cause of the resistance. It is beyond doubt that
religious or ideological factors play some role in helping crystallize and
galvanize resistance and violent response, but they are not the actual source of
the problem. Can we afford to confuse the vehicle for the problem? Or would we
rather posit that the experiences of Muslims at the hands of the West over
centuries wouldn’t really have mattered all that much to its citizens if they hadn’t
happened to be Muslims?
Indeed, if Middle East resentments seek a vehicle by which to express them,
why would they not settle upon religion, Islam? Religion and heresy are time-
honored banners for the politics of resistance in the Middle East, going back to
early Christianity, as we have already seen. Islam commands respect and
authority, and provides a sense of righteousness to those who believe their cause
is just—in this case, the self-defense of the nation or umma against outside
intervention.
If not through Islam, how else might the Middle East formulate its resistance
to the West? What would be the rallying cry? We have seen how Arab
nationalism under Nasser’s Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s was one such vehicle,
but it was ultimately unsuccessful and a joint Anglo-French-Israeli military task
force actually tried to overthrow him in the Suez crisis of 1956. Marxism-
Leninism, too, enjoyed a heyday as an ideological vehicle but effected little
change in the end. So Islamism, with its deep roots in the regional culture and
the ability to stir up popular support in the name of the regional cause, is the
most recent and most powerful ideological vehicle for action, at least for the
foreseeable future.
When Russians object to the policies of the outside world against Russia,
what is the vehicle of response to rally public support? When Stalin found
himself under assault from the army of the Third Reich in World War II, he
certainly knew that Marxism-Leninism could not stir the hearts of the people to
resistance. He turned to Russian nationalism, and later, in desperation, ended up
embracing the Orthodox Church itself as a rallying point, the symbol of Holy
Mother Russia. The Japanese Empire prior to World War II sought a vehicle to
gain Japanese public support for its expansionist and imperial policies in Asia;
the sacred character of the Shinto religion and even forms of Buddhism were
invoked to stir the Japanese soul. In Sri Lanka, the dominant Buddhist Sinhalese,
in their struggle against the Hindu Tamil separatists, employed Buddhist monks

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to strengthen Sinhalese public support for the civil war. Hitler worked to gain
church support for the German war effort. Even in the United States in times of
war, most mainstream churches and clergy—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—
are impressed into service to lend religious legitimacy to the national struggle.
In this context, then, it would seem exceptional if Islam would not be
invoked in the struggle of Muslim peoples against Western dominance—along
with local nationalisms. These forces complement each other in the face of
foreign threat.
Washington is understandably concerned that Islam is being used as a
powerful source of resistance and violent response to US military actions. But
could the United States realistically expect the Middle East not to resist, to
instead acquiesce to American strategic goals? That is simply not going to
happen; any expectation that it might suggests that policy makers are out of
touch with reality. (Empire is often out of touch with reality because it believes it
creates reality.) Thus, to examine the vehicle—in this case, Islam—for flaws and
problems, as if it were itself somehow the source of the resistance problem, is to
utterly miss the point. Or is it a convenient way to deny the reality that others
might have a serious issue with what you are doing? This is again what the
Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan calls “Islamizing the problem.”
Robert Kaplan offers a slightly different take on this, arguing that the Muslim
component does bear some relevance to the issue. His argument is worth
hearing:
The American ethnologist and orientalist Carleton Stevens Coon wrote
in 1951 that Islam “has made possible the optimum survival and
happiness of millions of human beings in an increasingly impoverished
environment over a fourteen-hundred-year period.” Beyond its stark,
clearly articulated message, Islam’s very militancy makes it attractive to
the downtrodden. It is the one religion that is prepared to fight. A political
era driven by environmental stress, increased cultural sensitivity,
unregulated urbanization, and refugee migrations is an era divinely
created for the spread and intensification of Islam, already the world’s
fastest-growing religion. (Though Islam is spreading in West Africa, it is
being hobbled by syncretization with animism: this makes new converts
less apt to become anti-Western extremists, but it also makes for a
weakened version of the faith, which is less effective as an antidote to
crime.)

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Kaplan’s point indeed emphasizes that Islam is an effective rallying cry
against foreign intervention. But even without Islam, we would expect violent
reaction from most cultures under similarly stressful or violent conditions.
THE TELEVISION FOOTAGE of 9/11 produced iconic images for all time: the
scale and daring of the operation, its ferocity, level of death, and the black smoke
of destruction against a blue sky are riveting and shocking. But those images
also tell different stories to different viewers.
For many Americans and some other Western viewers, the narrative is
straightforward: the United States has been doing its best to try to preserve peace
in the world, when it was savagely attacked out of the blue by fanatic killers.
The event deserved swift punishment and the rooting out of all who might ever
contemplate a similar act. Indeed, what is wrong with Muslim culture—some of
them even allies—that it could produce such horrific actions? In short, history
begins with 9/11.
But large numbers of others around the world, including some in the West
itself, have come to read the events slightly differently. The attack was indeed
shocking, outrageous, and a tragedy for the innocent civilians that died. But it
should not have been a surprise. Given US policies in the Middle East and rising
Muslim anger over such a long period of time over so many issues, it was
inevitable that sooner or later some Muslims would strike back. History does not
begin with 9/11, but has a very long prelude. The United States courts further
such attacks as long as it maintains the same policies of global dominance and
political and military intervention, and builds reservoirs of anti-American
feeling. As terrible as the events were, hopefully they may serve as a wake-up
call to Washington to the seriousness of the situation and the need for
reconsideration. This view is probably most common in the world anywhere
outside the United States.

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