The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality.

"The Muslims AreComing! The Mu slims Are Coming!"; "Iran Resurgent"; "Iran's Lethal Secret." These headlines have a tabloid flavor, but they appear in some of America's leading newspapers and magazines. Nothing is simpler in American political culture than hyping alarm over Islam. Headline writers and book editors find it profitable to press the Islamic button, and national security bureaucracies do, too. At a time when old threats have waned, the "Green Peril" of Islam can give new purpose to well-worn and lavishly equipped strategies of containment.

Yet the alarmists are shouting fire in a combustible theater--one in which exits have not been marked. America's foreign policy architects offer no strategy for escaping the heralded danger; no way of telling whether the alarm is false or exaggerated. One billion Muslims inhabit the earth, comprising majorities in forty-five countries. Birthrates in Islamic societies are the world's highest, while the bulk of the globe's oil reserves sit beneath their territories. Clearly, Islamic societies will profoundly affect all aspects of international life through the twenty-first century. But the nations that have led the world through the twentieth century have little idea how to engage with these societies in anything but frightened, befuddled, and adversarial terms.

To develop a strategy for dealing with Islamic societies individual nation-states as well as the collective religio-culture of Islam--we must first understand "the problem." This is the purpose of The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? And in it John Esposito, an accomplished Middle Eastern specialist from Holy Cross College, has explored a major foreign policy problem confronting American society and leadership today accessibly and with

"In the 1990s," Esposito writes, "it is important that the vacuum created by the end of the cold war not be filled by exaggerated fears of Islam as a resurgent 'evil empire' at war with the new world order and a challenge to global stability." Instead of threat-mongering, the operative question should be: "How can U.S. policy transform the specter of an Islamic threat into the pursuit of a common global future?"

Esposito never completely answers this question. Instead, in a work that provides enough historical background for non-specialists to follow easily, he deconstructs the myth and image of raging monolithic "Islamic fundamentalism." Readers will learn to discard inimical cliches. Esposito eschews the pop term "fundamentalism," which he regards "as too laden with Christian presuppositions and Western stereotypes, as well as implying a monolithic threat that does not exist." Instead, he speaks of "Islamic revivalism" or "Islamic activism," which are "less value-laden and have roots within Islamic tradition."

Esposito judiciously distinguishes among Islamic movements in various societies and nation-states. He points out the ways in which Islamic leaders--Qaddafi, Khomeni, Sadat---differ markedly from one another, and in the cases of Qaddafi and Sudan's Gaafar Muhammed Nimeiri, an American ally, how they cynically use the Islamic mantle to obscure practices that have little to do with religion, faith, or the well-being of the community." More often than not, rulers and governments have used Islam, as they have used other ideologies, to solidify power rather than to promote political participation. Heads of state (kings, generals, former military officers) have found it a useful tool...to enhance their authority, buttress nationalism, legitimate policies and programs, and increase popular support."

Conversely, popular-based Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt fulfill real socioeconomic needs. Distinct from the small terrorist groups which have become synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism to many Americans, the much more numerous Islamic movements represent mainstream reactions to the oppression, corruption, exclusiveness, and inequality of their current governmental and economic orders, and a resentment over the West's role in creating and sustaining these for the last several centuries. "Their goal is the transformation of society through the Islamic formation of individuals at the grassroots level," by operating hospitals, clinics, legal-aid societies, schools, child-care centers, youth camps, newspapers, radio stations, etc. Typically urban-based and attractive to educated members of the middle and lower classes, these movements lead the call for political reform and human rights.

If they were not tainted with Muslimness, many Islamic activists would be the "good guys" from an American perspective. In the language of the 1992 American presidential election, the Islamic activists have recognized that the people want change and they have demonstrated that they are the agents of that change. However, Esposito acknowledges that Islamic activists will probably stop short of full-fledged democracy and tolerance. "An ideologically oriented Islamic state would be at best a limited democracy with a weak pluralistic profile; its ideological orientation would restrict the participation of non-Muslims in key government positions, and the existence of political parties representing a competing ideology or orientation." This issue deserves fuller treatment than Esposito gives it.

In determining the American interest vis-a-vis Islamic nation-states, citizens and leaders must focus on these nations' foreign policies. How do Islamic states seek to influence us? And here the chimera of an Islamic monolith evaporates in a nanosecond. The Islamic community is riven by conflict and competing interests, above and beyond the Shiite-Sunni division. Qaddafi was an enemy of Sadat and Nimeiri; Saddam Hussein waged war on Iran and Kuwait; Khomeini's Iran sought to subvert Saudi Arabia; Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia compete for influence in the central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Globally, Libya and Iran struggle against the United States, while Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Turkey, etc., have been formal or informal American allies. "National interest and regional politics rather than ideology or religion remain the major determinants in the formulation of foreign policy," Esposito rightly summarizes.

One reason it has been hard for Americans to identify our national interest in dealing with Islamic societies is that the media, academia, and policymakers collectively have failed to explain "the 'who' and the 'why' of history, the specific causes or reasons behind the headlines." Like McCarthy-era anti-communism, Islam-baiting inhibits academics and government advisors from questioning orthodox portrayals of an unswerving fundamentalist threat. Esposito decries the tendency to dismiss "the reasons given by activists (and indeed by many Arabs and Muslims) for their criticism of the West." Among these motivations are: "imperialism, America's tilt toward Israel, and its support of oppressive regimes (the Shah's Iran, Nimeiri's Sudan.)" More recently, many Muslims perceive the American-led new world order as fundamentally anti-Islam, citing, for example, the alacrity with which the U.S. attacked Iraq, contrasted to passivity before Serb slaughter of Bosnia's Muslims. (This neglects American leadership in saving Muslim Somali lives while Islamic nations contribute nearly nothing.)

Although Esposito stops short of offering an explicit strategy for transforming the specter of an Islamic threat into a partner in building a common future, he does say that such a strategy must recognize the reasonableness of many of the Islamic activists' beliefs and goals. Their societies do need fundamental reform. While Islamic activists may be better at opposition than in government--they tend to lack adequate training and experience in political, economic, and legal management to run effective governments-they will increasingly win the allegiance of their fellow citizens. As in Algeria recently, this allegiance may be expressed at the ballot box. How hypocritical and counterproductive, then, for the United States to look the other way and bless with silence the denial of democracy in Algeria and elsewhere. When the authoritarian Algerian government cried "fundamentalists!" and effected a coup, the U.S. jettisoned its principles and, by inaction, sided with the junta.

"The United States must be willing to demonstrate by word and action its belief that the right of self-determination and representative government includes acceptance of an Islamically oriented state and society, if that reflects the popular will and does not directly threaten U.S. interests," Esposito concludes. Primacy must be attached to supporting tendencies toward human rights and political participation, something which President Bill Clinton has stated as a pillar of his foreign policy. This strategy will fail, however, if it is heavyhanded and self-righteous. It requires nuance, pragmatism, and an empathetic tolerance of context. These are precisely the attributes vitiated by our current portrayal of the fundamentalist threat.