Yoginder Sikand

America’s policy vis-à-vis Islamic movements have undergone major upheavals in the course of the last four decades. In the 1960s and 70s the American establishment saw conservative Islamic movements such as the Ikhwan ul-Muslimun in the Arab world and the Jama‘at-i Islami in South Asia as a powerful counter to leftist, anti-monarchical and nationalist forces. It is rumored that some of these movements even received generous American financial support. The close collaboration between the American establishment and Islamist organizations was best exemplified in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. The CIA pumped in millions of dollars to arm the mujahidin, whom Ronald Reagan once hailed as the ‘moral equivalents’ of the founding fathers of the United States.

Today, America’s policy on Islamic movements has turned full circle. In order to counter the radical fringe of Islamism that it had so fervently courted till recently, America is desperately scouting around for ‘liberal’ Muslim allies who can sell an alternate vision and version of Islam that fits into the American scheme of things. This explains the sudden flurry of conferences and publications on ‘liberal Islam’ and the setting up of NGOs in Muslim countries with liberal American financial assistance.

The underlying aim of these diverse activities appears to be the same: to promote an understanding of Islam that cheerfully accepts American hegemony, camouflaged as global modernity, as normative and, indeed, ‘normal’. This goal, is, of course, not stated openly. Rather, it is generally clothed in the garb of high-sounding slogans such as ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, ‘liberalism’, and ‘pluralism’. As a liberal myself I can have no problems with the promotion of such values, but that America is hardly serious about this overdose of liberal rhetoric in the Muslim world is too obvious to need any substantiation, as its ongoing imperialist venture in Iraq and its brazen support for Israeli crimes in Palestine so tragically suggest.

An illustration of the actual agenda behind the sort of ‘liberal Islam’ that America is now so feverishly seeking to promote is provided by a recent report prepared by the RAND Corporation, a conservative American think-tank. Titled Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources and Strategies, the report is authored by a certain Cheryl Benard, Director of Research at the Boltzmann Institute in Austria. She is an unknown figure in the field of Islamic Studies, and her major claim to fame may well simply be that she is the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, member of America’s National Security Council and a key adviser to President Bush.

Like other pro-establishment American policy ‘experts’, Benard locates radical Islamism as a threat to global (read ‘American’) stability, without, of course, caring to trace the roots of the phenomenon, particularly the issue of Western hegemony to which radical Islamism is, at least in part, a response. It is as if radicalism in the Muslim world operates in a sociological vacuum, or is somehow intrinsic to Islam and has no relation whatsoever to American neo-colonialism or Western support for dictatorial regimes in many Muslim countries.

Thus, Benard is able to write that ‘The Islamic world has been marked by a long period of backwardness and comparative powerlessness’, and that Islam is faced with ‘a loss of connection to the global mainstream’, without so much as even hinting that this predicament owes almost entirely to European and, today, American imperialism. Hence, rather than examine the fundamental causes of radical Islamism, which include American imperialism and Zionist expansionism, Benard sees the solution to the problem as lying simply in promoting an alternate version of Islam that is compatible with what are defined as American values, and whose proponents would be willing to work as close partners of the United States.

In this regard, Benard suggests that America take it upon itself to devise nothing less than a new ‘Islam’ carefully crafted in order to suit American interests. This onerous task of what she calls ‘religion-building’ entails the invention of what, for all practical purposes, is a completely new religious tradition, one that most Muslims would themselves probably barely recognize.

After explaining her rationale for her proposed project of ‘religion-building’, Benard sets out guidelines for America to adopt in order to develop a form of Islam that would be able to facilitate American interests. For this purpose she recognizes that the cooperation of carefully chosen Muslim allies would be indispensable. Bernard divides Muslims into four broad groups—‘fundamentalists’, ‘traditionalists’, ‘modernists’ and ‘secularists’—and suggests different policies to deal with them.

The ‘fundamentalists’, she writes, ‘reject democratic values and contemporary Western culture’. They advocate an ‘authoritarian, puritanical state that will implement their extreme view of Islamic law and morality’. Remaining silent on America’s previous support to numerous Islamic ‘fundamentalist’ groups in the past, she argues that since the ‘fundamentalists’ are ‘hostile to the West’, supporting them is not an option for the US, ‘except for transitory tactical considerations’.

The second group of Muslim actors that Benard identifies are what she calls the ‘traditionalists’. These are Muslims who ‘want a conservative society’, being ‘suspicious of modernity, innovation and change’. She sees them as somewhat more moderate than the ‘fundamentalists’, but not enthusiastic about ‘modernity’. Hence, she suggests, the US can ‘at best […] only make an uneasy peace with them’.

Two other groups that Benard defines share a broad vision of the world with which Benard herself identifies. She describes ‘modernists’ as those Muslims who ‘want the Islamic world to become part of global modernity’. They are said to be uneasy with Islam as they find it. Instead, they want to ‘modernize and reform’ it in order to ‘bring it in line with the age’. They believe that some parts of Islam are just a historical curiosity and should be hurriedly abandoned. They are said to identify a certain ethical core in Islam, which they regard as the essence of the faith, while they consider much of the legal dimension of the Islamic tradition, including certain specific injunctions in the Qur’an itself, as no longer relevant. Put in plain words, they propose a new version of Islam that willingly accepts global capitalism and its values. Related to them are the ‘secularists’, who want to impose a strict division between religion and state in the Muslim world in the manner of Western countries, relegating Islam to the private realm.

Benard sees elements among both groups as possible allies of the US, but notes that the usefulness of allying with them can be limited, given that they enjoy but little support among the Muslim masses. Furthermore, caution is advised, she says, in relating to some secularists whose ‘ideological affiliation’ might make them ‘unacceptable’ as possible allies. Presumably, this is a reference to leftist secularists who, while at loggerheads with the Islamists, are also opposed to American imperialism.

Although she recognizes that the ‘modernists’ and ‘secularists’ are numerically weak, Benard sees them as a valuable support base that American must cultivate. This the US should do, she says, by publishing and distributing their writings at subsidized cost, encouraging them to write for a mass audience and introducing their views into the curriculum of Islamic education in Muslim communities. Related to this, she adds, the US must also help ‘position secularism and modernism as a counterculture for disaffected Islamic youth’, and ‘facilitate and encourage an awareness of their pre- and non-Islamic history and culture’ through the mass media and the educational system.

In league with selected and reliable ‘modernists’ and ‘secularists’, America, Benard advises, should help build up a ‘moderate’ Muslim leadership in order to counter the fundamentalists’ and the ‘traditionalists’, offering a version of Islam that fits in with what Benard sees as ‘modern’ or American values and interests. In pursuing this policy, she says, care must be taken to ‘avoid artificially over-Islamizing the Muslims’. Rather, she advises, the point should be constantly stressed that Islam is ‘just one part of their identity’. Linked to this is Benard’s advocacy of multiple Islams, in order probably to counter the appeal of the notion of a single global Muslim ummah. She suggests that efforts be made to develop a ‘German Islam’, a ‘US Islam’, and so on, and that these be then codified. The end result that she probably wishes to see is the emergence of separate Islamic ‘churches’ and denominations in each country following the Christian model.

The ambitious plan that Benard sets before the US of reconstructing the Muslim world and indeed of building a new ‘Islam’ curiously echoes the tactics laid out by the putative authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. ‘Divide and Rule’ is a basic principle that must guide America’s policy on Islam, Benard seems to suggest. America, she appears to argue, must play Muslims against each other, supporting the ‘traditionalists’ to take on the ‘fundamentalists’, ‘encourag[ing] disagreements’, and ‘discourag[ing] alliances’ between them.

Although she believes that the ‘traditionalists’ are hostile to ‘modernity’, she sees them as useful allies in that they can be used to negate the influence of the ‘fundamentalists’, whom she sees as an even more potent threat to the US. For this purpose, she argues for the need for US to help ‘publicize traditionalist criticism’ of the ‘fundamentalists’, particularly of their violence and extremism. Where necessary, arrangements should be made for ‘traditionalists’ to be better educated in Islam so as to take on their ‘fundamentalist’ rivals.

To further facilitate this, America should, she says, help ‘increase the presence and profile’ of ‘modernists’ in ‘traditionalist’ educational institutions, as well as ‘encourage the popularity and acceptance of Sufism’, presumably in order to counter groups like the Wahhabis as well as radical Islamists who see Sufism as heretical.


Copyright©2004 Yoginder Sikand. About the author