Author: Diana West
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: May 27, 2009
URL: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/27/reversing-us-policy-in-afpak/
DEFEATING POLITICAL ISLAM: THE NEW COLD WAR
By Moorthy S. Muthuswamy
Prometheus Books, $25.98, 287 pages
As the U.S. military slogs on, confused, trying
to win the "trust" of the Afghan people; as the Obama administration,
illogically, attempts to explain its way through Pakistan's "uneven"
record of fighting jihad to a new $7.5 billion aid package (on top of $12
billion spent by the Bush administration), it is great luck to come across
a book like Moorthy S. Muthuswamy's "Defeating Political Islam: The New
Cold War." It contains all the answers to the questions looming over
our widening and deepening presence in "AfPak," and more.
In short, the United States fails to understand
Pakistan - whose army, not incidentally, sports the motto "Faith, piety,
and holy war in the path of Allah" - for what it is: a member state of
what the author calls "the axis of jihad," which also includes Saudi
Arabia and Iran. These three nations - with their arm's-length proxy armies
of the Taliban, al Qaeda and Hezbollah - are the most aggressive purveyors
of what the book describes as "political Islam," the jihadist creed
based on Islamic doctrine that is destabilizing the world, from India's Kashmir
region to Britain's old mill towns, from all of Israel to Parisian banlieues.
This destabilization is happening in plain
sight, but incredibly, few see it as clearly as Mr. Muthuswamy. Nearly eight
years after Sept. 11, 2001, such blindness marks the epic negligence of our
leadership, beginning with former President George W. Bush. On Sept. 12, 2001,
the brand-new "war president" embarked on what may be remembered
as his most successful campaign: his "Islam is peace" offensive,
which to this day confuses our policies, not to mention our people.
Mr. Muthuswamy, an Indian-born, U.S.-educated
nuclear physicist, draws the opposite inference from the "Islamic trilogy,"
including the Koran, the Hadiths (traditions of Muhammad) and the Sira (biography
of Muhammad). He instead argues that "extremism - not moderation - is
the mainstream among Islamic traditions." Such a viewpoint stands the
basis of post-Sept. 11 security policy on its head, from constructive engagement
with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission (whose
"major blunder," Mr. Muthuswamy believes, was exonerating Saudi
Arabia), to coalition-building efforts with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Working with "moderates" in Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan, he explains, hasn't weakened political Islam in these
nations. While it may have temporarily deflected jihadist attacks on the West,
he writes, "Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have continued to direct jihad
at Israel, India and others. With political Islam as their guide, these societies
have changed little since 2001." As a result, Mr. Muthuswamy argues,
it is high time to reverse the bizarre U.S. policy that, in effect, holds
political Islam in the same esteem that the Islamic world does.
This is the PC or "politically correct"
policy that informs not only our engagement with "axis of jihad"
nations but also our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Muthuswamy writes:
"As an occupying power in need of local cooperation, America could in
no way afford to totally discredit political Islam, since it represented mainstream
Muslim religious institutions. ... America's best chance of weakening political
Islam and achieving true liberation in these areas, as it did with the former
Soviet Union-based communist movement, is to function as a non-occupying power."
"True liberation"? Doubtful. But
"weakening political Islam"? You bet. Taking this paradigm of the
"non-occupying power" and other lessons from the Cold War, Mr. Muthuswamy
urges, for example, a propaganda campaign against political Islam akin to
that waged against communist ideology. It would target "educated Muslims"
in the West, he writes, who "would benefit from the local media and the
government propaganda machinery willing to discredit the theological roots
of political Islam."
That they would, but here's the rub: how first
to deprogram the "local media" and the "government propaganda
machinery" of their politically correct outlook on the world, including
Islam?
It's easier to imagine some of his other recommendations,
more compatible in a foxy way with mainstream liberal sensibilities, gaining
traction. Mr. Muthuswamy sees "a dire need to investigate whether the
axis of jihadist nations - most notably the primary axis nation or the anchor
state of the political Islamic movement, Saudi Arabia - have been involved
in jihad-related crimes that could be categorized as crimes against humanity."
These might include campaigns of non-Muslim ethnic cleansing and potential
genocide carried out from the Middle East to the South Asia.
Such human rights efforts, resulting in what
he calls a "grievance build-up" against Saudi Arabia and other perpetrators
of jihad, would serve to bind together "victimized non-Muslim populations,"
from India to Israel, in a new coalition to fight political Islam. His novel
idea to combat Islamization in Europe, for example, is to invoke what he calls
"the right of indigenous civilizations to exist as entities in their
respective homelands," a measure the European blogger Fjordman also has
proposed.
Mr. Muthuswamy's must-read chapter about India's
debilitating fight against political Islam - which includes a shockingly rational
discussion of a potential nuclear phase - makes a compelling case for the
United States to elevate India's role in fighting global jihad. If the United
States could support Muslim forces against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,
he writes, "why not back cornered Indians and other nations to fight
political Islam and its international sponsors?" Unlike the jihadists
who ultimately turned on the United States, "an India strongly backed
by the West ... is no threat to the Western civilization because it shares
with the West a secular and democratic mode of governing."
What "Defeating Political Islam"
tells us is that the United States, in fighting the so-called war on terror,
not only has allied with nations that can never be our friends - which explains
the incorrigibilities of the AfPak theater, for example - but also has effectively
shunned friends, such as India and Israel, that would love to be our allies.
It all makes perfect sense; in some ways,
it's even obvious. Survival strategy usually is. Which isn't to say that "Defeating
Political Islam" won't come as eye-popping revelation to its readers.
I only hope they won't take the book's urgent message to heart too late.
Diana West is a columnist and the author of
"The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing
Down Western Civilization."
