LESSON # 1
HERE NOW ENDS YOUR LESSON
Posted on 04/05/2007 6:56:56 AM PDT by Valin
Just as it fought the spread of Communism during the Cold War, the United States must do more to develop and support networks of moderate Muslims who are too often silenced by violent radical Islamists, according to a RAND Corporation report issued today.
“The struggle in much of the Muslim world today is a war of ideas,” said Angel Rabasa, a RAND senior policy analyst and the lead author of the report. “This is not a war of civilizations; it’s not Islam versus the West. It’s a struggle within Islam to define the character of Islam.”
“We cannot come in as outsiders, as a non-Muslim country, and discredit the radicals’ ideology,” Rabasa said. “Muslims have to do that themselves. What we can do is level the playing field by empowering the moderates.”
Rather than an afterthought, the building of moderate Muslim networks needs to become an explicit goal of U.S. government policy, with an international database of partners, a well-designed plan and “feedback loops” to keep it on track, according to the study.
The report by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, is intended to serve as a “road map” to build these networks and to serve as a practical guide for policymakers to implement.
Rabasa said the United States has a critical role to play in aiding moderate Muslims, and can learn much from the way it addressed the spread of Communism during the Cold War. The efforts of the United States and its allies to build free and democratic networks and institutions provided an organizational and ideological counter force to Communist groups seeking to come to power through political groups, labor unions, youth and student organizations and other groups.
Broad parallels stand out between the Cold War environment and the situation in the Muslim world today.
“At the beginning of the Cold War, the threat was a global Communist movement led by a nuclear-armed Soviet Union; today it is a global jihadist movement striking against the West with acts of mass-casualty terrorism,” the report notes. In both cases, policymakers recognized that the United States and its allies were engaged in an ideological conflict that had to be contested across diplomatic, economic, military and psychological dimensions.
But unlike the Cold War, this battle involves shadowy groups rather than a single entity. These radical Islamic groups control no territory, reject the norms of the international system and are not subject to normal means of deterrence. Many of these groups have been organizing for decades and have access to vast amounts of money, Rabasa said.
The radical groups are fighting to create religious states based on Shari’a, or Islamic law. They typically reject liberal Western values such as democracy, gender equality and the right of religious minorities to publicly practice their faith.
Many Muslim countries are ruled by authoritarian political structures and the mosque is one of the few places people can protest harsh political, economic and social conditions, the study says. Radical Islamists have seized the opportunity to promote their interpretation of Islam as a solution to those problems, aggressively spreading their views in the mass media and via the Internet.
“Moderates by definition are not aggressive,” Rabasa said. “These radicals are much more willing to go the extra mile and use violent means to enforce their views. Moderates are in the majority, but the radicals tend to intimidate the moderates by accusing them of being agents of the West or not true Muslims. Radicals have also threatened physical violence and have forced many people into silence, hiding or fleeing their countries.”
One of the challenges for the United States will be identifying genuine moderates from those who may appear to be moderate, but in fact advocate ideas that are inconsistent with democratic values, the report states.
Characterisics of moderate Muslims include: support for democracy, internationally recognized human rights including gender equality and freedom of worship; acceptance of nonsectarian sources of law; and opposition to terrorism.
Instead of focusing on the Middle East, where most of the radical Islamic thought originates and is firmly entrenched, the report recommends reaching out to activists, leaders and intellectuals in Turkey, Southeast Asia, Europe and other open societies. The goal of this outreach would be to reverse the flow of ideas and have more democratic ideas flow back to the less fertile ground for moderate network-building of the Middle East.
Partners in this network-building effort should be those who share key dimensions of democratic culture, the study says. The report recommends targeting five groups as potential building blocks for networks: liberal and secular Muslim academics and intellectuals; young moderate religious scholars; community activists; womens’groups engaged in gender equality campaigns; and moderate journalists and scholars.
As America learned during the Cold War, moderate groups can lose credibility – and therefore, effectiveness – if U.S. support is too obvious. Effective tactics that worked during the Cold War include having the groups led by credible individuals and having the United States maintain some distance from the organizations it supports.
“This was done by not micro-managing the groups, but by giving them enough autonomy,” Rabasa said. “As long as certain guidelines were met, they were free to pursue their own activities.”
To help start this initiative, the report recommends working toward an international conference modeled in the Cold War-era Congress of Cultural Freedom, and then developing a standing organization to combat radical Islamism.
Besides Rabasa, the authors of the report include Cheryl Benard and Lowell H. Schwartz, both of RAND, and Peter Sickle, a Ph.D. candidate at George Washington University, who served as a summer associate at RAND. The report, titled “Building Moderate Muslim Networks,” is available on the RAND Web site at www.rand.org
The report was funded by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation and was conducted within the Center for Middle East Public Policy within International Programs at the RAND National Security Research Division.
The RAND National Security Research Division conducts research and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the Department of the Navy, the U.S. intelligence community, allied foreign governments and foundations.
Paralysis by analysis.
LESSON # 1
HERE NOW ENDS YOUR LESSON
We should be broadcasting like crazy about those bomber who left children in the back seat of their car bomb to be able to get through checkpoints and then blew them up. The Muslims of the Mideast should be so fired up about it that they want to rip apart the nearest Jihadist rather than cower before them.
We should be slipping in secular humanist ideas to make Muslims doubt their religion. People doubting whether Allah exists aren't as likely to strap on explosives and walk into a market.
I hope we are starting to do all of these, but I really doubt that the CIA or State Department has the capability or will to work on a 50 year project like these would require to pacify the Mideast.
Totally incorrect, but usual liberal double-speak. What will work is to let "moderate" Muslims know that we will hold their feet to the fire until and unless they stand up to THEIR OWN evil, Islamofacists (which would face sure reprisal but more certainly, deny the rantings of that idiot Prophet Muhammad in his "Mein Kampf" Koran, for it is that "religion" claims that beheading infidels is honorable and the only way to Paradise!)
Well as plans go that is one. A stupid one to be sure, and one guaranteed to appeal to the slack jawed mouth breathers among us, but it is one.
This is exactly the strategy that will lead to our destruction. The goal of both radical and "moderate" Muslim's is world domination. Some moderates believe that it can be accomplished with minimal violence. Great.
I guess for those FReepers w/o a sense of humer I should have added /sarc.
Or, even a sense of humor
For way to many people here nukeing Mecca is not a joke, but a good idea.
The goal of both radical and “moderate” Muslim’s is world domination.
You might tell that to the Iraqi soldiers dying right now fighting the terrorists.
The radical loser (Long Read)
Der Spiegel ^ | 1/12/05 | Hans Magnus Enzensberger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1694568/posts
(snip)
There is also no mistaking other similarities, such as the fixation with written authorities. The place of Marx and Lenin is taken by the Koran, references are made not to Gramsci but to Sayyid Qutb. Instead of the international proletariat, it takes as its revolutionary subject the Umma, and as its avant-garde and self-appointed representative of the masses it takes not The Party but the widely branching conspiratorial network of Islamist fighters. Although the movement can draw on older rhetorical forms which to outsiders may sound high-flown or big-mouthed, it owes many of its idées fixes to its Communist enemy: history obeys rigid laws, victory is inevitable, deviationists and traitors are to be exposed and then, in fine Leninist tradition, bombarded with ritual insults.
The movement’s list of favourite foes is also short on surprises: America, the decadent West, international capital, Zionism. The list is completed by the unbelievers, that is to say the remaining 5.2 billion people on the planet. Not forgetting apostate Muslims who may be found among the Shiites, Ibadhis, Alawites, Zaidites, Ahmadiyyas, Wahhabis, Druze, Sufis, Kharijites, Ishmaelites or other religious communities.
(snip)
Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of “collateral damage”. In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.
The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.
(snip)
Leninism is the political bible that preludes offensive action against the enemy unless the 'correalation of forces' is in their favor.
Mutally Assured Destruction rested on the assumption that the communist bloc would be consistent to their philosophy and not initiate a suicidal war.
Radical Islam is built on doing Allah's work to convert the whole world or die trying, in which case eternal paradise awaits the martyrs.
Treating Radical Islam as we treated communism would be suicidal for us.
“It’s a struggle within Islam to define the character of Islam.”
Yeah, it’s that 95% of Muslims that give the other 5% a bad name.
Very interesting post. Thanks.
MAD will only work when the Muslim world knows that the western world is willing to destroy Mecca and Medina.
Islam’s Ground Zero:
http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=1021&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=21.42262,39.826126&z=18
The Islamic fascists are not rational and see a global nuclear war as bringing about a new era of Muslim dominance. Any one who is willing to use children as a means to deliver a homicide bomb is not rational.
You might ask them. Most, I believe, consider Christian's and Jews to be infidels and envision a world Caliphate. I agree, there are competing visions and violent disagreements as regards the methods of achieving that end.
The Soviets were convinced that we could and would annihilate them.
We need to convince the jihadists that we can and will do the same to them.
Wonder how many petro-dollars paid for this hog-wash?
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