Posted on 03/26/2006 9:54:25 AM PST by LurkedLongEnough
Knowing one's adversary, according to Sun Tzu, the author of "The Art of War," is a prerequisite for victory. Costly missteps in the war on terror, especially the invasion of Iraq, suggest that the Bush administration doesn't grasp al-Qaida's ideology.
As a result, the United States, though scoring short-term tactical victories against the jihadists, all too frequently furthers Osama bin Laden's long-term strategic aims.
A deeper understanding of al-Qaida's philosophy would help the United States gain the initiative in the war of ideas.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration settled on a simple narrative to explain why a relatively small group of religious zealots hated America enough to kill nearly 3,000 innocent civilians.
According to the standard script, al-Qaida despises the West for its freedoms. There is some truth in this, but it is a caricature that conceals a more complex attitude.
Al-Qaida's ideology has an entirely different conception of freedom than the one that prevails in the West.
The jihadists, for instance, conceptualize human freedom as fidelity to God's will as laid down in the strict Islamic code known as Sharia.
Here most Americans will probably think of the punitive edicts requiring beards for men and burkas for women.
However, there is a deeper dimension within the idea of Sharia, namely, that true freedom involves surrendering to God's will.
Thus, living according to Sharia is thought to be the path to social justice, where no man lords over another, vast disparities in wealth are dissolved, and man lives in harmony with the natural world as its steward.
Concomitantly, many Muslims share a deep aversion to the practice of usury, economic injustices and the ecological degradations associated with capitalism.
Understanding the jihadists' view of social justice can help explain why they view Western society as an affront to God.
Jihadists are highly selective when quoting scripture to support their views, but they are undeniably adept at exploiting themes that resonate with Muslims, particularly regarding the causes of Islam's woes, which are seen to stem from the malicious intentions of external enemies (particularly the United States and Israel).
Defeating the enemies of Islam, as prophesied in the timeless tales of the Quran, so the thinking goes, will usher in a new Golden Age of Islam.
The evidence suggests that the vast majority of moderate Muslims do not subscribe to bin Laden's rigid fundamentalism or his eschatological vision.
Nevertheless, bin Laden has managed to strike a chord with a considerable portion of dispossessed Muslims, at least to the extent that he is seen as a defender of the faithful against a secular (and hence valueless and inhumane) West that is attempting to destroy Islam.
The notion that the West is perceived as an aggressor trying to destroy Islam will likely strike many Americans as misguided.
Nevertheless, many Muslims do feel their faith is under assault on a variety of fronts: physical, economic and cultural.
The carnage in Iraq, the fact that oil wealth benefits Saudi elites but not the Arab masses, and the gratuitous sex and violence in Western media fare are often cited as proof that the West suffers from a "hideous schizophrenia" (that it possesses fantastic technological powers but is spiritually and morally empty).
So long as the fundamentalists can convince ordinary Muslims that contact with Western secularism will corrode Islamic culture, they will continue to garner recruits for an ideology that enshrines violence.
Terrorism experts agree that it is essential to marginalize the jihadists. To this end, the international community needs to do a better job of convincing ordinary Muslims that the West represents values ordinary Muslims care deeply about.
Along these lines, a concerted effort to improve America's energy efficiency could help rehabilitate America's image as a poor steward of the world's natural resources.
Bin Laden has cited the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto accord as proof of America's ecological irresponsibility, thereby exploiting ecological concerns among Muslims.
Reforming America's energy habits also would encourage reform among the regimes that rely on petrodollars to maintain their autocratic rule, regimes the jihadist cite as inimical to Muslim interests.
Other factors that are likely to defuse sympathy for Islamic radicals are a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and a greater role for women in civic and economic life within the Muslim world.
Indeed, sociologists cite gender inequality as the single most important variable in predicting which societies succeed economically and which export violence.
Even if one gives the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, that the invasion of Iraq could serve as a catalyst for engendering democratic and economic transformation within the Middle East, many Muslims have interpreted it as an act of aggression aimed at crushing Islam.
To this extent, invading Iraq has played into bin Laden's hands. Not surprisingly, any external imposition that is seen as being alien to Islam is likely to be resisted by the Muslim world.
Defusing terrorism, at least in part, means winning over the vast majority of moderate Muslims who recognize they have nothing to gain by casting their lot with apocalyptic fanatics.
The jihadists err when they claim that Islam will only revive its Golden Age when it extinguishes external influences; on the contrary, Islam flourished during its Golden Age (8th-9th centuries A.D.) precisely because it was an open society that assimilated the best the world had to offer.
To encourage greater openness in the Muslim world, America must return to being a beacon rather than a bully.
A huge problem is that the Muslims are RIGHT about this. Slimeywood creates this huge problem for us all around the world. If you live in a foreign country, and your sources of info. about the U.S. are few and far between, what are you going to believe about this country if you see movies? Not to mention the cultural slop that is rightly resented by Muslims when it is imported into their societies. I don't like it HERE; and at least I understand that it doesn't represent what most of this country is really like.
Thanks Hollywood! You will never be honest about this, let alone stop.
Oooops. Showed his hand!
Well put.
The reason that newspapers are dying is because they let thinking like this on their pages.
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