http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-tah eri_20edi.ART0.State.Edition1.43f677f.html What do Muslims THINK? Islam's internal tug of war between radical and moderate views is likely to have a happier ending than many Westerners suppose, says AMIR TAHERI What do Muslims think? Do most Muslims reject the radical fundamentalist interpretation of their faith peddled by Osama bin Laden and his associates, or do they increasingly embrace it? Western observers do not agree on the answer. Most do agree, however, that the question is important, for the answer ought to tell us how to fashion the political aspects of the global war on terror.If most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims oppose radical views, then U.S. (and Western) policy could usefully help organize, mobilize and in other ways support majority moderate Muslim views against minority radical ones. There would be a robust future for public diplomacy and little worry about a clash of civilizations. The short-term risks of destabilizing authoritarian Arab allies in an effort to open up political spaces within their borders could be borne confidently. On the other hand, to the extent that Muslim societies have become radicalized in recent years and if still further radicalization is to be expected, then public diplomacy will not be able to accomplish much and a civilizational clash looms. Just a dozen years ago, virtually no one debated this question. Despite the radicalizing influence of the Iranian Revolution and the Wahhabi proselytizing of an inexhaustibly wealthy Saudi Arabia, knowledgeable observers would have dismissed the possibility that radicals would ever make up a majority within the Muslim world. Now there is a plausible argument otherwise. Radicalization has advanced rapidly, runs the argument, through a combination of factors: the frustrations of living under corrupt and dysfunctional governments that have failed to congeal a focus of loyalty other than that of tribe and sect; greater literacy and urbanization, which privilege higher, formalized standards of piety over the traditional folk Islam of the countryside; reaction against the alien indignities of Western materialism, accelerated by the growing scope of post-Cold War globalization; the integration of Muslim political consciousness (and grievances) worldwide thanks to the information revolution; and an aggressive post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy that has fueled reactions against Westernization on a massive scale. As persuasive as such a narrative may be, it is mistaken. Yes, radicals have been making a lot of noise in recent years, and yes, a rise in Islamist zeal has been manifest in violent behavior on every inhabited continent. Islamist radicalism will no doubt surge in some Muslim-majority countries and in some European ones with Islamic communities. These dangers must not be ignored. Nevertheless, broad social and intellectual trends in Islam do not support a pessimistic assessment. Radical Muslim advocates today are standing on soapboxes suspended in very thin social air. There are many reasons for the intellectual effervescence in most Muslim countries today, but three are of special importance. The first is that decades of investment in mass education have borne fruit, releasing into society millions of educated men and women, thus ending the monopoly that the clergy and its allies in the government enjoyed for centuries. Urbanization, the emergence of new middle classes and growing contact with the West have also helped create mass audiences for current debates. The second is the general weakening of the state, which is faced with a crisis of legitimacy and is losing its monopoly on information. No longer enjoying the prestige of the early post-colonial era, alternative sources of moral and intellectual authority have either emerged or reasserted themselves outside state structures - universities, cultural associations and unions among them. Finally, the emergence of mass transnational media, including satellite TV, the Internet and multi-edition newspapers and magazines, have offered means of self-expression on an unprecedented scale. A decade ago, the number of people in the Middle East (excluding Israel) with access to the Internet was about 3.5 million. Since then, that number has quadrupled. In 1997, the Muslim world had two satellite television networks, both in Arabic, broadcasting only a few hours a day - and the fare they offered was mostly staid and dull. Today there are more than 50 such networks in 11 languages, often on the air around the clock, competing for viewers. Several features distinguish the current debate from other periods of tumult in Islam's recent history. The first is its predominantly this-worldly character. Some Islamists still try to win arguments by quoting the Quran or Hadith (traditions related to the Prophet's words and deeds) - but the public is fast losing its taste for such tactics. Once upon a time, a saying attributed to Muhammad would have closed a debate; today it is far more likely to re-launch it, if only because increasingly literate and educated audiences will have already read and thought for themselves about the quote. Not only is debate in the Muslim world today this-worldly, it is overtly political. Seen from the outside, Islam may look to be a monolith. In reality, it is a house of a thousand mansions. Shiites have as much in common with Sunnis as Anabaptists have with Catholics, and each of the two main schools is divided into dozens of smaller branches that often disagree. And that is one of the reasons current debate has remained predominantly political - at least until recently - because those engaged in it recognize that conducting it at a religious level would provoke murderous and self-destructive schismatic tensions. The prudent course is to avoid overt religiosity and to seek a broader Islamic consensus on political issues. Mere cameos by God This politicization of debate in Islam is everywhere to be seen. In most mosques anywhere in the world, even in Brooklyn, God makes only a cameo appearance in sermons delivered to the faithful these days. Instead, worshippers hear about "Zionist conspiracies," "Islamophobia," "the corruption of Western civilization" and the U.S. "attempt at imposing its hegemony on the world." This distortion of religion is simply unsustainable, and it is increasingly unpopular. Most people seek religious affiliation for the comfort and stability it brings, for the bonds it provides to family and the solace it offers in times of sickness, disappointment and tragedy. Politicized religion cheapens and denies all this, and Muslims who understand and value their traditions will not allow themselves to be thus dispossessed. The internecine battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims is hardly over. It has barely begun. Two generations ago, two groups dominated the debate in most Muslim countries: leftist parties and organizations on the one side, nationalist ones on the other. No longer. The virtual disappearance of the left and the nationalists has allowed two new, or reshaped, forces to dominate social discourse. The first of these is broadly Islamic in character but is itself divided into three conflicting tendencies. The second is hard to name. Let's call it "secularist," even though we recognize that word as having a distinctively Western historical origin. The Islamic camp includes all who believe that Islam as a civilization is capable of self-renewal and, given favorable circumstances, could offer a universally attractive alternative to the Western model of society. This camp divides into three tendencies: holy war and conquest, which most casual Western observers presume subsumes the entire camp; reason and propagation; and traditional quietism. The current version of the "holy war and conquest" brand of Islamism finds inspiration in two 20th-century fighter-philosophers: the Pakistani journalist and propagandist Abul-Ala Maududi (1903-79) and the Egyptian educator Sayyid Qutb (1906-66). The most vocal and popular representatives of this tendency are supported by a network of often clandestine political and social organizations, including al-Qaeda. Its principal outlet in the mainstream media is the al-Jazeera satellite television network and its websites. The "reason and propagation" tendency traces its political ancestry to the Persian pamphleteer Jamaleddin Assadabadi, alias al-Afghani (1838-97), and his Egyptian disciple, Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). The backbone of this movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, a loose association of scores of formal and informal societies spread across the globe and financed by wealthy Muslims, big corporations and, from time to time, various Arab and Muslim governments. These two Islamic camps, though divided from one another by theology and temperament, are both opposed by traditionalist quietists, who believe that both camps have harmed Islam by making it excessively political. The quietist tradition is numerically larger than the others, but by its very nature is politically self-effacing. Islamists' losing battle While the three Islamic camps dominate much of the space in current Muslim debates, they are by no means alone. Outside the Islamist orbit there is a growing mass of intellectual energy that is decidedly non-religious, at times overtly secular or even atheistic. Although still capable of flexing muscle in the streets, Islamists find it increasingly difficult to defeat their enemies on the battlefield of ideas. Modern Islam generates much heat but little light. Indeed, though it will come as news to most Western readers, many secular writers and political leaders enjoy a vast and growing audience across the Muslim world. They constitute the other side of a Muslim intellectual civil war, the core issue within which is basically the same today as it was a century ago: modernity and what to do about it. Should the modern world be rejected because it is non-Islamic, not to say anti-Islamic? Radicals say "yes," secularists say "no," traditionalists say "it depends." Traditionalists by their very nature are reluctant to change, but the fact is that all traditions do change or they would not, could not, exist. The wisdom of tradition is that it knows how to preserve the essence of a culture even as outward forms evolve. If we look at the issues at play within the Muslim world today, the case is strong for the ultimate success of enlightened tradition - defined in this way and bounded by the pressures of Islamist purism on the one side and the secularizing tendencies of modernity on the other. Islamism in its various forms is a mortally wounded beast. It has lost most of the major political debates of contemporary life and is in retreat on most core issues of Islamic political, economic and social practice. But it still manages to maintain a vast audience by appealing to xenophobia. Muslims are depressed by the political impotence and manifest economic dysfunction of their states, and by the personal frustrations that trickle down to them as a consequence. There is, however, not a lot an average citizen can do. Letting off steam by associating with a "bad boy" cause becomes attractive under such circumstances. Grievance populism is the political life-support structure of Islamic radicalism today. It is not robust. Islamism is unable to offer a coherent analysis of contemporary Islam. It has no theology for a place and time where genuine religion is sought, and it has no political program to deal with real issues. It is losing ground to traditionalists and secularists nearly everywhere. It is doomed to ultimate defeat. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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