Security Fears, Political Ties Cloud U.S. View of Islam’s Rise

In a little-noticed speech last June, Assistant Secretary of State Edward P. Djerejian made what may rank as the first formal U.S. policy statement on a specific religion. “The U.S. government does not view Islam as the next ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace,” he told a packed audience at Washington’s ornate Meridian House conference center.

“Americans recognize Islam as one of the world’s great faiths. . . . As Westerners, we acknowledge Islam as a historic civilizing force among the many that have influenced and enriched our culture.”

Yet, because of recent attacks at home as well as a changing balance of political power in the Islamic world, the United States finds itself trying to cope with a phenomenon that seems to challenge both the nation’s security at home and its alliances and perceived interests around the world.

In terms of domestic safety, the linking of Muslim activists to the World Trade Center explosion and the recent murderous shootings at the CIA is raising the prospect of a new conflict with Islamic extremist cells that have mounted attacks in the past only overseas.

In political terms, U.S. policy-makers are just as concerned by the goals of the largely peaceful fundamentalist movements that are growing in size and influence around the globe. The fundamentalists’ plan: to reorder society.

With both challenges becoming more urgent, the United States finds itself trying to fashion an effective approach, with only a web of contradictions and conflicting impulses to draw on.

Western governments do not, in principle, oppose the disparate Islamic groups’ diverse attempts to achieve greater political, economic and social equality in troubled and poor Third World countries.

“Like us, they seek a peaceful, better future,” Djerejian said. “They aspire to work productively in peace and safety (in which) to feed, house and clothe their families; in which their children can be educated and find avenues to success; in which they can have a say and can be consulted in how they will be governed; and in which they can find personal fulfillment and justice.”

The potential for collision arises because that campaign involves changing or replacing secular regimes that, even if undemocratic, are important U.S. allies.

Various Islamic fundamentalists are active, for example, in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Kuwait.

Already, many parts of the Muslim world, which stretches across more than 75 countries from Morocco on the Atlantic to Indonesia on the Indian Ocean, are ripe for change. In the Arab bloc alone, the governments include at least seven dictatorships and eight monarchies.

So strong is the conflict that change poses for the United States that the rise of political Islam is one of the main reasons why the United States and its Western allies have not pushed harder for democratic reforms in a number of areas. That is particularly the case in Muslim regions of North Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the South Asian subcontinent.

“In places where the electoral process has been allowed to proceed, Islamic movements have won overwhelming support from the public,” said As’ad AbuKhalil, a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Thus, while ostensibly championing democracy worldwide, the United States finds that the consequences or potential changes are sometimes too sweeping when it accommodates Islam.

“For leaders in the West, democracy raises the prospect of old and reliable friends or client states being transformed into more independent and less predictable nations, which might make Western access to their oil less secure,” said John L. Esposito, professor at Holy Cross College and author of “The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?”

“Thus, stability in the Middle East has often been defined in terms of preservation of the status quo,” he said.

Also, Western governments fear that new Islamic governments might not tolerate political diversity or honor the pluralistic systems that allowed their victories.

Although prevalent, that suspicion is so far unproven. The limited record of Islamic parties that reach power--as in Pakistan, Sudan and Iran--is mixed, according to a 1992 study by the conservative Cato Institute in Washington.

“Those governments have used power to discriminate against minorities and women and to repress dissidents. But their record has not been worse--and in some cases it has been better--than that of secular regimes or more traditional monarchies,” the report concluded.

While acknowledging the U.S. strategic investment in some secular governments now being challenged by Islamic movements, some experts see danger in the nation’s failure to at least pressure them to make reforms.

Standing behind the currently undemocratic, inept and corrupt practices of some governments only fosters opposition among Muslim activists and creates a confrontational cycle from which it will be harder for the West to break, they argue.

“I worry about increasing polarization within the Muslim world. A growing number of governments are cracking down on Islamic movements, both extremist and moderate, that is contributing to radicalization,” Esposito said.

“Often these countries are associated with the United States, and to that extent their actions reinforce an anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism.”

In addition to the practical concerns about the loss of important strategic or economic allies, Islamic fundamentalism confronts the United States with a very basic conflict on the role of state and religion.

The United States is a constitutionally secular nation. The civilian government establishes the rules by which citizens live their daily lives, while religion is relegated to the personal domain.

In contrast, political Islam says that the state must conform to religious tenets. The faith sets the guiding principles that govern a Muslim citizen’s life. Islam is the world’s only monotheistic religion that provides a rule of laws by which to govern a state as well as a set of spiritual beliefs.

The gap in perspectives is so wide that many U.S. experts believe that understanding, much less dealing with, the many forms and varied branches of political Islam will be one of the major U.S. foreign policy challenges of the 1990s.

The presence of extremist factions using violence against those who appear to be impeding the movement make finding a solution all the more difficult.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a variety of groups, whether in coordination with one another or spontaneously on their own, striking at the United States to protest what they perceive as injustices against Muslims. That includes more aimless violence, like the attacks at the CIA and the World Trade Center,” AbuKhalil said.

Indeed, many analyst believe that the most effective means of undermining extremists would be finding some formula for coexistence with Islam’s aims.

“When we talk about Islam versus the West, we may be erroneously assuming there are certain inherent cultural or civilizational or religious factors that will always inevitably divide Muslims and Westerners,” AbuKhalil said. “In reality, the underlying causes of this conflict are purely political, and that’s why they could be remedied.”