Author: David Rohde
Publication: The New York Times
Date: October 26, 2003
American officials scolded Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia last week for declaring to the world's
largest Muslim organization that Jews control the world and that frustrated
Muslims should try to learn from them. President Bush privately told the
Malaysian leader that his comments were "wrong and divisive," presidential
aides said. The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said, "I don't
think they are emblematic of the Muslim world."
By many accounts, though, Ms. Rice
is voicing wishful thinking.
After Mr. Mahathir spoke, the Muslim
heads of state gathered at the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference
gave him a standing ovation for his speech, which ultimately criticized
the Islamic world for failing to modernize.
The acceptance of such conspiratorial
views may strike Americans as despicable or even laughable, but they reflect
the influence of Islamic radicals on the worldviews of millions of Muslims.
Conveyed with ease and authority via the Internet and satellite television,
anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories abound, not only in
Muslim countries but across the world.
Many of these theories are spread
by radical groups that adhere to an ideology loosely known as political
Islam. Stridently anti-Western and antimodern, political Islam portrays
itself as the strongest ideological counter to democracy and capitalism.
Radical Islamists do far more than
simply declare that President Bush and Israel, for example, are evil. Political
Islam is a sophisticated mixture of fundamentalism and nationalism that
can foment acts of violence against Western targets. But for its followers,
it is a romantic liberation movement - a militant ideology with Marxist
echoes that combines Islam's powerful call for social equality with a critique
of Western corporate imperialism and the corrupt Muslim elites who benefit
from it.
The growing voice of political Islam
suggests that the United States faces a much more nebulous enemy in its
war on terrorism than a movement of religious zealots. It is an ideology
that persuades some alienated young Muslims, whether deeply religious or
not, to join what they see as an epic struggle against an evil empire.
Pollsters emphasize that popular
support for radical Islamists remains relatively low in the Muslim world,
a vast amalgam of 1.5 billion people that is by no means monolithic. But
by taking advantage of overwhelming Muslim public disapproval of American
policies in Israel and Iraq, political Islam appears to be gaining traction
in some regions.
Growing numbers of Muslims surveyed
after the invasion of Iraq say they see the American war on terrorism as
a campaign to weaken Muslims - a charge long made by radical Islamists.
Majorities in seven of eight predominantly Muslim countries say they worry
that the United States might threaten their countries.
At the same time, statements by
Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders perceived to be offensive are instantly
transmitted around the world on satellite TV or on the Internet, fueling
polarization on all sides. Recent comments made at a church breakfast by
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, a top Pentagon official, likening America's
war against Muslim extremists to a battle against Satan, are a case in
point.
Statements like that, analysts say,
play into Islamist conspiracy theories, which blame the United States and
Jews for the Muslim world's oppressive rulers, stagnant economies and sense
of powerlessness.
"You are explaining events that
are painful to the public, for which the public has no other explanation
that is available, and over which the public has no power," said Shibley
Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and a member of a Bush
administration panel that recently surveyed Muslim attitudes and found
"shocking levels of hostility" toward the United States. "They put forth
a theory that explains that the responsibility lies with someone else."
The Islamist groups are keenly political,
often with excellent organizational and public relations skills. In Pakistan,
for example, a coalition of religious parties that received only 11 percent
of the popular vote in parliamentary elections last year has turned itself
into the country's main opposition group.
The organizations vary widely, ranging
from Algeria's ultra-conservative and ultra-violent Armed Islamic Group
to Jamaat-e-Islami, a decades-old political movement in Pakistan, Bangladesh
and India that calls for establishing Islamic rule through nonviolent,
democratic means. The goal, like that of any political organization, is
gaining power. At times, they blame their enemies for their most reprehensible
acts. They try to turn their own weakness, as well as their opponents'
overwhelming strength, into an asset.
After a car bombing on Oct. 12 at
an American complex in Baghdad, crowds of Iraqis began chanting that the
United States had set off the explosion itself. Two years after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks, many Pakistanis still believe the United States invaded
Afghanistan solely for its natural gas reserves, which are, by global standards,
comparatively small.
Last week, President Bush appeared
to be surprised by the depth of suspicion that moderate religious leaders
expressed to him in Indonesia. "Do they really believe that we think all
Muslims are terrorists?" he asked his aides, shaking his head.
Robert Jackall, a sociology professor
at Williams College, said the Islamists' voice was far larger than their
numbers. "There is a fanatical group, a fringe element," he said, "that
have been able to command the media and have been able to propagate a series
of fantastic world images and a series of fantastic conspiracy theories."
From Iraq to Afghanistan, the number
of people who join the guerrilla wars being waged against American forces
may not be large, but as past attacks have shown, even a small number can
do huge damage.
In an Oct. 16 memo published by
USA Today last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked whether
the United States was losing the effort to halt the creation of a next
generation of terrorists. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading
more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are
recruiting, training and deploying against us?" Mr. Rumsfeld wrote, referring
to Islamic religious schools. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our
cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."
For American policymakers, countering
political Islam and its conspiracy theories can seem baffling. After his
meeting with Muslim leaders in Indonesia, Mr. Bush seemed particularly
perplexed by their belief that the United States was uninterested in the
creation of a Palestinian state, something the president has repeatedly
said he supports. It was unclear whether the Muslim leaders had not heard
Mr. Bush's prior statements or considered them a subterfuge.
Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle
Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University, said part of political Islam's
antimodern approach was a rejection of the Western scientific method. So
when some Islamists declared, for instance, that al Qaeda caused this summer's
blackout on the East Coast, that could be accepted without any proof.
"When there is a break in cause
and effect," Mr. Ajami said, "it's easy to sell these views of the world."
Supporters of an aggressive military
campaign against terrorism say the United States, as the world's lone superpower,
will be distrusted no matter what it does. But members of the Bush administration
panel that surveyed Muslim attitudes say American public diplomacy efforts
must be redoubled.
Professor Jackall said the problem
was more difficult in some ways than battling Communism. Sweeping efforts
to counter political Islam could confirm its conspiracy theories and demonstrate
its suppleness as an ideology. After Mr. Mahathir's statements were harshly
criticized, for example, the Malaysian prime minister said the outcry his
speech provoked had proved him right. "The reaction of the world shows
that they control the world," he said, referring to the Jews.
