FIGHTING THE FIRES OF ISLAM : Can the U.S. develop a policy for a religion whose reach seems limitless?

Fifteen years ago this month, an obscure religious figure, in exile in Iraq’s southern city of Najaf, declared that the ideology, goals and leadership of the bubbling unrest in neighboring Iran was, and would remain, exclusively Islamic.

His bold pronouncement went largely unnoticed by the outside world, in no small part because the idea of an Islamic state in the 20th Century seemed so ludicrous. Even many marching in opposition to the shah back home took little heed of what, at the time, appeared largely political bravado.

But within seven months, Tehran’s monarchy imploded. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was no longer obscure. And the world was captivated--then literally held captive--as the first modern theocracy took root in the renamed Islamic Republic of Iran.

Now, 15 years later, Islam is the most energetic and dynamic political idiom in the Mideast and beyond:

* More Islamic republics--Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan--have been born or reborn. Other states now ensure that new laws don’t violate Muslim codes or customs. Most of the 75 countries with large Muslim populations are far more sensitive about everything Islamic, from holidays to dietary traditions.

* Islamists have won elections in most Muslim states now experimenting with political pluralism--in places as disparate as socialist Algeria, the monarchies of Jordan and Kuwait, and quasi-democratic Egypt.

* Hundreds of Islamic political movements have emerged in countries from Morocco to the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, and from China’s western Xinjiang province to Indonesia.

Yet, the United States is basically still watching events unfold from afar, disengaged, often as surprised as it was by Iran’s revolution--and as it was last week when a plot by Islamic extremists to blow up several New York landmarks was aborted.

For all these reasons, it’s time, finally, for the United States to stop skirting the issue of Islam, to stop equating political Islam with what’s happened in Persian Iran or Arab Lebanon or African Sudan, and to stop treating Islam as a cultural adjunct of a state.

For the first time in its history, the United States should develop a tangible and realistic foreign policy on a religion. Engaging Islam is the only way to undermine the extremism that, with the World Trade Center bombing and aborted conspiracy plot to blow up the United Nations and other New York City spots, has now arrived on American shores.

Failure to act such a policy will almost certainly generate greater alienation and polarization; more attempts to lash out or terrorize, and feed the political backlash that can stir up opposition to unrelated events like the U.S. missile strike on Baghdad.

The policy need not necessarily cover religion generically. Nor all religions, even though political activism has grown among most faiths. As the world’s only religion that offers rules by which to govern a state, as well as a set of spiritual beliefs, Islam is unique.

So far, the United States has taken steps either too tepid and tentative or totally shortsighted.

In its last year, the Bush Administration backed into a position by pronouncing that Islam was not the next “ism” threatening either the West or the world and by acknowledging the differences between political and extremist Islam. But U.S. officials usually tied the surge of political Islam to economic decline and desperation. But this link implies that righting economic injustices would return Islam to the personal domain and politics to the secular.

That tact might have worked in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it’s no longer enough. The Islamic agenda--and appeal--now goes too deep.

In its first six months, the Clinton Administration picked up where its predecessor left off, but added a new twist with a new “dual-containment” policy aimed at Iraq and Iran. Tehran’s program to produce weapons of mass destruction, its opposition to the peace process and its support of terrorism are the chief reasons. While each is a legitimate reason not to resume relations, this approach is flawed and, to a certain degree, dishonest.

The current U.S. approach is still largely based on the traumatic U.S.-Iranian encounters in the early years after the 1979 revolution, when Tehran’s Islamic rule was the only visible symbol of the Muslim revival and dealing with Iran was the most viable means of dealing with political Islam.

But a strategy designed to contain Islam by containing Iran no longer applies, because the overwhelming majority of Islamists--from underground cells and political parties to new Islamist officials--no longer look to Iran, if they ever did, as a model or even a primary resource. With the initiative and momentum having moved far beyond Iran, the United States and its Western allies should take a series of dramatic steps to engage Islam--always in the context of broader goals globally--over the next few years.

* Economically, the United States must reduce its dependency on foreign oil, whether by expanding exploration at home, by accelerating development of alternative energy sources, or both. As long as America is dependent on imports, the U.S. agenda in the Mideast and adjacent regions will be shaped by economic exigencies rather than political priorities or principles. If oil were less vital to U.S. industry, many Gulf states, for example, would probably not be deemed such good friends.

While some of these countries would remain important for strategic reasons, establishing relationships on a more realistic footing would free the United States from the pressures of countries--like Saudi Arabia--that use Islam to support un-democratic regimes. Just last week, Amnesty International reported executions in the kingdom had reached “shocking proportions,” with a fourfold increase in people beheaded.

The U.S.-Saudi relationship has particularly shaped American policy on Islam, setting the standard for what and how Muslim states are dealt with, often in erratic and uneven ways--such as providing advanced arms to Afghanistan’s holy warriors while firing at Lebanon’s Muslim militias in the mid-1980s.

* Politically, Washington must use the same standards applied elsewhere in determining allies and trade partners.

Democracy has made the fewest inroads in countries in the Muslim world. And among the most egregious violators of human rights are authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world. Yet, too often the United States backs away from endorsing or helping countries in which pluralism could lead to the election of Islamists. There seems to be an almost automatic prejudgment that political Islam or Islamist states are bad for U.S. interests--a trend evident in negligible U.S. action on repression in places as disparate as Algeria, Bosnia and Kazakhstan.

Yet, the success in Jordan, where the boldest experiment with democracy in the Arab world resulted in the election of Islamists as the largest bloc in the revived Parliament, coupled with attempts by Islamists in Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere to work within the system, should finally put to rest the argument that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

* Militarily, Washington must diminish or cut off access to the arms, intelligence data and training programs that facilitate repression by undemocratic governments.

All the arms sales in the world will not ensure the survival of an unjust system, a lesson powerfully taught (if not learned) in Iran, when the sixth largest army in the world, trained and armed largely by the United States, could not hold off change.

Furthermore, any containment policy should be directed first and foremost at undemocratic regimes and states violating human rights. No religion can be contained. There’s a double standard in ordering Iraq to take meaningful steps toward democracy as a precondition for lifting sanctions and improving relations, while hosting officials of the Algerian junta who aborted the first democratic elections for Parliament on the eve of a clear-cut Islamic victory.

There’s also a double standard in holding Iran accountable for its death edict against Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” while saying nothing publicly about the beheading in Saudi Arabia last year of Sadiq Abdil-Karim Mal-Allah, a 22-year-old student, for apostasy and “slandering God and the Prophet Mohammed.”

Overall, the policy goal must be not only to allow but actively encourage Islamists to come to power by democratic means and to experiment with ways that blend political pluralism and Islam. Change that is gradual and evolutionary musty be rewarded.

To isolate extremism, which can thrive only when Islam is totally excluded, the best tact is to bring political Islam into the world system: Make it accountable both at home and to the international community. Put it to the test by asking it to find means to implement its often grandiose and utopian promises. And let it share the burdens facing other Third World states.

Denying Islamists access to the system by ex-clusion or repression will only ensure instability in strategic countries and almost certainly lead to conflict that targets both un-democratic regimes and, as the United States has now witnessed twice this year, also their supporters.

Dealing with political Islam foursquare as an ideology--and holding it to the same standards as other systems of government--will be far easier. Should Islamist regimes then violate human-rights standards or accepted international norms, the outside world can hold them accountable without appearing anti-Islamic and without endangering a full-scale cultural clash.

DR, MATT MAHURIN / For The Times