Obama Doctrine: Backing Middle East Radicals After 10 Previous Western Failures

By Barry Rubin

There is a long history of Western powers believing that they could manipulate or work with radical Arabic-speaking states or movements to redo the regional order. All have ended badly.

--During the 1880s and 1890s, Germany became convinced that it could turn the forces of jihad against British, French, and Russian rivals. The kaiser presented himself as the Muslim world’s friend and German propaganda even hinted that their ruler had converted to Islam.

--In World War One, the Germans launched a jihad, complete with the Ottoman caliph’s proclamation. Wiser heads warned that the Ottoman ruler didn’t have real authority to do so or that the raising of the jihad spirit could cause massacres of Christians in the empire. They were ignored.

As a result, few responded to this jihad; Armenians were massacred at times with the at least passive complicity of the German government.

--Nevertheless, Adolf Hitler, whose close comrades included many veterans of the earlier jihad strategy, tried the same approach in World War Two. This time, the Jews in the Middle East were to be the massacred scapegoats. Yet despite close collaboration by the leader of the Palestine Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, and the Muslim Brotherhood, among others, the defeat of the German armies along with other factors (incompetence, unkept Arab promises, and German priorities) prevented this alliance from succeeding.

By the way, the Nazi collaborators were the same Muslim Brotherhood to which the United States is allied today. There are huge amounts of archival evidence, including documents showing Nazi payments to the Brotherhood and providing them with arms for a rebellion to kill Christians and Jews in Egypt.

There is no evidence that the Brotherhood has changed its positions. The story above is told in a new book, by Barry Rubin and the brilliant scholar Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East which will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. It will be an explosive rethinking of Middle Eastern history which could not be more timely.

Incidentally, might one think that the Western mass media might mention that the chief U.S. ally in the Arab world—one of whose branches is now receiving American weapons—were Nazi collaborators who have never abandoned their anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish views?

How much has the Brotherhood visibly reconsidered its ideology since the man who is still its leader, Muhammad al-Badi, explained in  October 2010 that the Egyptian regime would be overthrown and then the Brotherhood would wage jihad on a weak and retreating America?

--In 1939 the British offered to sell out the Balfour Declaration and the promise of a Jewish homeland in order to gain Arab support in the coming war. The Islamist-radical nationalist faction rejected these offers, though moderate Arabs wanted to accept them. After World War Two, the British decided to try to secure their interests in the region. Most students are probably being taught today that this was through Israel’s creation. In fact, of course, the British were opposed to this outcome. They believed, understandably, that it would be better to court the Arabs. The result was the creation of the Arab League, a body that the British thought they could control. Of course, the Arab League would become a vehicle for anti-Western radicalism.

--During the early 1950s, the United States thought that it could do something both good and in its interests. It would support the takeover by moderate elements who would modernize their countries. No more would America be held responsible for corrupt dictators but would receive gratitude from liberated people living in prosperity.

The first case was encouragement for the Egyptian coup of 1952, the one which brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power ultimately.  

The result of the British and American efforts to harness radical Arab nationalism--which led to decades of violence and war in the region is told in Barry Rubin, The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict which you can read online or download for free. A variation of this reformist as a U.S. strategy took place in Iran, which you can read in Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran which you can read online or download for free.

--Next, the Soviets tried and poured in a lot of money and weapons, believing that perhaps the radicalism of its allies would mean a long-term, beneficial partnership. That effort failed, too. Remember it was not so long ago that Egypt, Syria, and Iraq were Soviet allies. Now all that Russian investment is gone, too.

One of the forces the Soviets backed to gain influence was the PLO. While well-intentioned people initiated the "peace process" of the 1990s, arguing that power would moderate radicals and stabilize the region, that didn't work out really well either.

--French policies of helping Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (thus like decades earlier it helped the Palestine Arab Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husaini) in Paris, thinking that this was a way to extend French influence in the Middle East.

--While it was an understandable policy at the time, the United States backed a jihad in Afghanistan against the invading Soviets. It is not true that the United States backed Usama bin Ladin at any point. But after all, indirectly and unintentionally, didn't the Taliban and al-Qaida and thus the September 11 attack on America grew out of these events?

Remember that was siding with the lesser of two evils—the Afghan jihadis—against the then equivalent of America’s Great Satan, the USSR. Might there be some parallels with the situation in Syria today? Get it: Iran is so bad that Sunni jihadis must be helped into power.

--And let's not forget the arguably correct policy at the time of backing Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. I supported that policy at the time but let's remember that Iraq's defeat also brought us two U.S. wars in Iraq and, ultimately, September 11.

Is there no one who remembers this recent history?

Finally, there is today’s new, bright idea of the Obama Doctrine. What will history make of this American jihad? Different from the previous situations is that it is completely clear that the United States is backing people who hate it. At least its predecessors could delude themselves easily that this would work.

I take my stand with the brilliant Dutch area expert , C. Snouck Hurgronje. In 1914—almost exactly 100 years ago, as World War One began, he was horrified by what he called this “jihad made in Germany.” Unleashing a plague of religious hatred, he warned, would bring violence and massacres  beyond anyone’s control. Once the genie was not only let out of the bottle but funded and given small arms and perhaps anti-aircraft missiles it was very dangerous.

Hurgronje, however, offered hope, explaining, in his 1915 book:

“The jihad program assumes that the Mohammedans, just as at their first appearance in the world, continuously form a compact unity….But this situation has in reality endured so short a time [in the few years after its founding], the realm of Islam has so quickly disintegrated into an increasingly large number of principalities, the supreme power of the so-called caliph, after flourishing for a short period, has become a mere word. . . .”

As we are already seeing, the Sunni-Shia conflict, increasingly a war, has divided the Muslim-majority world. There are ideological differences, ethnic ones, the ambitions of different nation-states to rule the empire, and the extremism that alienates potential Muslim and Western allies.

This is the main hope of the world at present because Western leaders have clearly not learned anything much about the Middle East in the last century

The fact is that backing radicals has never worked but only backing moderates or at least those who believe that their interests require stability and have gone through a real change of heart. Over and over again history has shown that backing radicals merely gets you more powerful radicals.

Have there been no successes? Of course there have, albeit in a different way. Containment, patience, and struggle against the radical forces. In Russia's case that took 70 years; in China's only about 50, and in Egypt (from the radical free officers to its moderation under Anwar al-Sadat) merely 25, though now Egypt has reverted since its society wasn't fundamentally changed.

Thirty-four years ago--my, time flies when you're having violent revolution, wars, and terrorism--I wrote a few months after Iran's Islamist revolution that an entire generation would pass before the United States and Iran might reconcile. So far that prediction still holds. The same might well be true for the newer Islamist states.

This article is published on PJMedia. 

Obama Doctrine: Alliance with Muslim Brotherhood to Promote Middle East “Stability”

By Barry Rubin

Here is what I wrote in October 2010. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad al-Badi, had just given a sermon calling for the overthrow of Egypt’s government, which happened four months later, and a jihad against the United States, a country he considered weak, foolish, and retreating from the Middle East. I declared that this was:

“One of those obscure Middle East events of the utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media, especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western governments, because they don’t fit their policies; and by experts, because they don’t mesh with their preconceptions."

Two and a half years ago, who would ever have thought that the United States would enter an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood? There were hints in President Barack Obama's Cairo speech, yet now it is clear that this is the new basis for regional security sought by the Obama Administration. 

For all practical purposes the closest allies to the United States are no longer Israel, Saudi Arabia, and a moderate Egypt but an Islamist Egypt, an Islamist regime in Turkey, and the Syrian rebels led by the Brotherhood.

And literally every mainstream media outlet, every expert who speaks in public, every Democrat and the majority of Republican politicians still don't realize that this is true.

There have been in American history the Truman Doctrine (help countries fight Communist takeover), the Nixon Doctrine (get local middle-sized powers to take part of the burden of the Cold War from the United States), the Carter Doctrine (defend Gulf Arab states from Iranian aggression), and the Reagan Doctrine (go on the offensive against Soviet expansionism). Now we have the Obama Doctrine:

An alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood to transform the Middle East. 

Is this really an improvement on a situation based on alliances with pro-Western dictators? Now they are still dictators but are also anti-American and even more oppressive than their predecessors. After all, the old dictators, as horrible as they were, were content with the status quo (except for Iraq where the overthrow came without a new extremist regime taking power) . The Islamist ones want the fundamental transformation of their societies. By our times, the old dictators were resigned to the regional situation. The Islamist ones want a wave of new revolutions, terrorism, wars against Israel. And sooner or later they will strike out against America, just as they give their Salafist allies a free rein to do so.

The occasion for declaring that an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups is the new Obama Doctrine is, of course, the decision to supply arms to the Syrian rebels. As recently as April 28—a mere six weeks ago!—the New York Times was talking of an imminent rebel victory! Now, however, panic has set in about a total rebel collapse. This has prompted a rush to give weapons to the rebels even as they seem to have stopped the government advance. In some parts of the country the rebels are the ones advancing. 

The weapons will be given to the Supreme Military Council which runs the Free Syrian Army (FSA). But while the FSA is nominally led by defected military officers, in fact  most of its soldiers hold views close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, the fig leaf will be that these guns are being given to “moderates”—like the people Senator John McCain met with—while actually they will be given to people whose politics encompass hatred for Jews, Christians, the West generally, and ready to engage in what in American politics has come to be known as Homophobia and a War on Women.

If the rebels were to win, this would mean imposing a Muslim Brotherhood government on Syria. Let’s remember that the political opposition organization the United States recognizes and has financially supported is overwhelmingly run by the Brotherhood and it refuses to admit real moderates and Kurds on a serious level.

Note that this is the second Muslim Brotherhood entity the U.S. government has provided with weapons. The first was the Egyptian government, to which despite its questionable human rights record the Obama Administration has no objection to helping. The shipment of weapons is not even postponed as a gesture.

Thus, Egypt is an anti-American client state of America. And so is Tunisia. So, too, is Turkey, which is sort of a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Turkish style. The Turkish regime, it should be remembered, is the chief adviser to the Obama Administration on Syrian affairs and its favorite government in the region.

Why did Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt endorse an American no-fly zone in Syria? In Islamic terms to invite in an infidel power to "invade" an Arab land cannot be justified by any Islamist in contrast to a non-Islamist Muslim-majority state. The Muslim Brotherhood can justify this support because the goal of this action will be to install a Muslim Brotherhood government, that's why.

There are four places where U.S. policy is not (not yet?) backing the Brotherhood.

First, because of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States, the Obama Administration is still anti-Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood group which rules the Gaza Strip. Hamas has also committed too many terrorist attacks and is in revolt against the U.S.-backed nationalist Palestinian Authority.

In an unguarded moment, Obama’s then counterterrorism advisor let slip that he would engage Hamas if he thought he could get away with it. But this would be too big a step for even pro-Obama Democrats to accept. And besides right now Hamas is in a conflict with Egypt so that doesn’t have to be faced right now.

The second problem is with Jordan, where the Obama Administration still supports the monarchy though it often seems only absent-mindedly to do so. The Brotherhood, which is the chief opposition group, wants to overthrow the king but is afraid—precisely because the regime is so tough--to try violence. Who knows what will happen, though, if Syria is ever taken over by the rebels?

The third case is in Lebanon. The leadership of the Sunni Muslims there is pro-Western and moderate. Radical Islamists are in a small minority.  Both Sunni groups hate Hizballah, which is of course the ally and now co-belligerent of Iran and the Syrian regime. Still, there is no sign that the United States is going to do anything on Hizballah’s home court. It is somewhat ironic that the one place where the Sunni Muslim leadership is most moderate is where Obama isn’t acting even though Hizballah (another force Brennan declared moderate not long ago) is now a proven enemy beyond denial.

And fourth, the Obama Administration has not yet supported the Muslim Brotherhood against Israel. The strategy on this point is to get a two-state peace agreement and thus defuse the issue. Of course, the Islamists will not be satisfied with that result even if it happens, which it won't.

Why is the United States backing the Brotherhood in Syria? Most immediately it is being done in order to prevent an Iranian bloc victory in Syria, even though the Brotherhood and al-Qaida are on the same side there. Except in Iraq, U.S. policy is backing the Sunnis over the Shia.

Beyond that, however, the Obama Administration has argued that the Brotherhood is the best way to defeat al-Qaida, which wants to attack America directly. It has also claimed that the Brotherhood will inevitably moderate, the same argument that was once heard about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Yasir Arafat, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Saddam Hussein.

Are the Sunnis the lesser of two evils compared to Iran? Arguably, yes. But that doesn’t mean that the Sunni Islamists are better than the non-Islamists who range from nationalist army officers to traditionalist conservatives, and pro-democratic liberals.

At any rate, the new policy is in place. America has had many unlikely allies in its history—including Stalin and a number of Third World dictators. But have any been such strange partners as those who would like to kill all the Jews, wipe out Christianity, reduce women to permanent second-class citizens, and murder gays? Indeed, these are not only strange but unnecessary and mistaken allies.

An interesting MEMRI piece gives an example of Sunni closing of ranks. Muslim Brotherhood and chief Sunni Islamist guide Yusuf al-Qaradawi attacks Hizballah (Islamist but on the Shia side) and extols his friendship with King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia (anti-Islamist but on the Sunni side). 

And here's another Sunni Islamist, a Kuwaiti, wishing in a MEMRI video that  he could personally slit the throats of Hizballah soldiers. Why is this significant? Because Kuwait has a lot of Shia with whom the Sunni Islamists have worked pretty well. The new Sunni-Shia conflict may also bitterly divide Kuwait. What this all means is that the Sunni Islamist war against the Shia supersedes the Islamist war against the non-Islamists.

And on demonstrations in Turkey see this source: On Turkish demonstrations for English-speakers.

This article is published on PJMedia.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Breaking: Reformist Candidate Wins Big in Iran's Election

By Barry Rubin

Hasan Rowhani, the only reformist candidate allowed in Iran’s presidential election, has won a landslide victory. There won’t even need to be a second, run-off round since he won over 50 percent of the vote.

If this was a regime maneuver to portray Iran as suddenly moderate, it seems to be working. Around the globe, mass media outlets are  claiming that Iran has been transformed and now is the time for the West to show patience or make concessions.'

Consider this: A stronger man and a more dedicated reformer and moderate than Rowhani, Muhammad Khatami, was president for eight years and did not accomplish a single reform under this regime. Khatami, according to what is being claimed now, broke the power of the radical regime in 1997. That was 16 years ago. And yet the radical regime is still there.

Did the Tehran regime put in a seemingly moderate but actually helpless or compliant front so it could claim moderation and thus stall for time to build nuclear weapons? Or did he masses simply overwhelmed the regime so that his victory was undeniable? Perhaps the regime figured that a second straight election stolen by the regime from the reformists--the previous one was in 2009--would set off a revolt.

New York Times correspondent Thomas Erdbrink  reported that Tehran has turned into a massive street celebration. The police and militia vigilantes stayed off the streets where pop songs ruled instead of regime dress standards. People chanted, Erdbrink tweeted, “We are celebrating that we are free after 8 years of Ahmadinejad."

Since supreme guide Ali Khamenei congratulated Rowhani it appears that the rulers have accepted his victory and he will not be denied office.

No matter what the regime's intentions or acceptance, the outcome will be this:

1. Rowhani will have little power. Remember that a moderate already served eight years as president and accomplished nothing. Rowhani is clearly loyal to the regime or he wouldn't have been the only reformist candidate who was approved for the election by the regime.

2. A lot of Iranians will be very happy. One big thing they will hope for is better management of the economy.

3. There will be many analysts and politicians and government officials saying that since Iran has now turned in a moderate direction, it must be given a chance to show whether this is true. Rowhani is a very articulate and glib man. He will know how to make things look good in Washington especially compared to Ahmadinejad's outrageously radical style.

4. Therefore, the Obama Administration will spend the rest of 2013 in exploratory negotiations as Iran moves forward toward nuclear weapons. People will talk about gestures toward Iran like reducing sanctions and certainly not increasing them. Russia, Turkey, and China will continue to get waivers on sanctions.

5.  This will have no effect on U.S. policy in Syria, giving weapons to rebels.

6. What will this mean for the Green Movement, the reformist forces some of whom have been put under house arrest? These were the people from whom the 2009 election was stolen? Would Rowhani be like the sincerely reformist president Muhammad Khatami who, despite real efforts, had no successes in his eight years in office? 

Many analysts--including myself--cynically suggested that the election would be once again fixed so a regime candidate would win. In retrospect, of course, this was wrong. In hindsight, perhaps it was a tip-off (if the regime wanted Rowhani to win--that it let in several regime supporters who took votes from each other. In the end, though, it didn't matter. The key decision was to allow an honest tally of votes.

At any rate, while the Iran regime has not changed policy really, many will think it has done so. If the regime really wanted to change its aggressive and nuclear-oriented policy, it would have put into power a regime supporter who would announce a new set of positions. At any rate, all of these questions about Iranian politics and foreign policy will have to be seriously evaluated now.  

This article is published on PJMedia.

Panic in Washington: Is Iran and Syria's Regime Winning and What to Do?

By Barry Rubin

Introduction:
A case can be made that the Syrian rebels must not be defeated because it would be an Iranian victory. But what is disturbing is that even if one could argue that the rebels must be helped it is a policy being conducted dishonestly. People do not know that the weapons given by the United States will almost all end up in the hands of pro-Muslim Brotherhood units. How would the American people feel if they knew that truth? At this point, almost 100 percent of the fighters on the front lines--are radical Islamists. The exiled political leadership is overwhelmingly Muslim Brotherhood. This is a choice of Sunni anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and antisemites rather than Shia anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and antisemites.  The United States--after Egypt and Tunisia--is now promoting the Muslim Brotherhood as regional hegemon. This is not a good idea and certainly not one to be made by honestly debating whether the United States wants to do this.

A new, important development has taken place in the Syrian civil war: Western panic that the rebels are losing has replaced optimism. This has spurred a desire to do something about the war. But how can the West do enough to prevent the feared rebel defeat? It isn’t going to intervene directly, nor with a big enough effort to save off a defeat. Anyway, is a defeat imminent?

This has been a war in which every week somebody different is proclaimed the victor. I don’t believe that the Syrian regime is poised for a victory but a lot of people in Washington and other world capitals do.

What this round has done, however, is to raise alarms, both in the West and in the Sunni Muslim world, that the Shia Muslim side is winning, that is Iran is emerging triumphant over the United States. What are the implications?

Remember some important points. Iran is not going to take over the Middle East nor is it about to win a lot of Sunni followers. Iran’s limit of influence is mainly in Lebanon and Syria (where its ally only controls half the country) and to a lesser extent Iraq. Tehran can fool around in Yemen, Bahrain, and southwest Afghanistan a bit, too. But that’s about it. There are real limits.

Why, though, has the Iran bloc seemed to have been winning?

First, Iran’s proxies are better organized than the Syrian rebels. They are unified, with Hizballah and the Syrian government coherent forces and a new People’s Army as a single militia. In contrast, the rebels are divided into a dozen groups which may cooperate but also battle among themselves and don’t coordinate very well.

Second, the Iran bloc gives more support to its proxies than the Sunni bloc or the West. Among the Sunnis, they are also divided into Islamists (Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, and al-Qaida) and what might be called non- or anti-Islamists. The United States will not intervene in a big way. Remember that in Libya, NATO had to hand the rebels’ victory by destroying their regime enemies. Nothing like this will happen in Syria. The Obama Administration will face a defeat rather than do so.

Third, this also means that the United States has worse and weaker proxies than the other side. In part, this is because the Obama Administration accepted their destruction, as in the dismantlement of the Turkish army’s power, the overthrow of the Egyptian regime, the subverting of Israel’s leverage, and the failure to support moderates or non-Islamist conservatives all over the region. Iraq has also been turned into a Shia power. In short, Obama helped dismantle the old strategic order and replaced it with one where enemies of America rejoiced.

So what happens if U.S. policy exaggerates a Sunni defeat, intensified by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—those who backed the Syrian rebels--begging it to do more?

Let me point out that once again this shows that the Arab-Israeli conflict is unimportant in the contemporary Middle East. This idea simply doesn’t seem to penetrate the brains of Western leaders. Perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry has turned into a full-time “peacemaker” because he thinks that defusing the conflict will shore up the Sunni Muslim side,

That’s ridiculous. There’s not going to be any progress on peace—if for no other reason the Palestinian Authority is terrified of either Islamist or Shia Islamist conquest of the region. Even if they wanted to make a deal—and they don’t—they’d be scared off by thinking peacemaking is suicidal.

But the wider issue could convince policymakers to enter an open alliance with Sunnis—including the Muslim Brotherhood—to counter the Shias. The Saudis and others would be pressured to get along with the Muslim Brotherhood; Israel would be pushed not to do anything to disrupt the grand alliance. Again, this could happen but it won’t work if it does.

There is, however, an alternative: the United States would understand that only Israel is just about the only reliable ally in the Middle East. It might take another president to do that.

What other implications does an apparent Syrian government victory have?

--It again reminds us that we are in an era characterized by two phenomena: the battle in each country between Islamists and non-Islamists, and the battle between Sunni and Shias. The old Arab nationalist era, extending from 1952 to 2011, is over.

--The United States should recognize that the increasingly repressive Erdogan regime has led it into a mess in Syria. The White House, however, won’t do that though there are many in the State Department who understand.

--Both Sunni and Shia Islamists are against U.S. interests but U.S. policymakers don’t quite get this and if they do what are they going to do about it?

--U.S. policy will probably become more favorable to the Muslim Brothers ruling Egypt (lots more military aid) and those wanting to rule Syria. They are becoming increasingly designated as “good guys” by the United States even though they are becoming more repressive and unpopular.

--The violence is growing in Iraq, where Sunnis are looking at Syria and saying, “We thought we couldn’t win but maybe we were wrong.” That country might also be destabilized. Ironically, the United States and Iran are both on the same side there, for a Shia regime against al-Qaida.

--The (Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese) Christians, (Iraqi and Syrian) Kurds, and Syrian Druze are going to look for a protector increasingly. But the United States will probably ignore them.

--Internal violence is growing also in Lebanon along Sunni-Shia lines. Perhaps the United States should reconsider a strategy which has indirectly supported Hizballah. Indeed, maybe it should consider covert operations to work with the Christians and mainly moderate Sunni Muslims to subvert Hizballah. But it won’t do that either.

Note: To my knowledge despite massive coverage of this Syria story, there has not been one article or even quote in any mass media outlet questioning whether the United States should arm Syrian rebels who are 95 percent either Muslim Brotherhood, Salafist Islamists, or al-Qaida. There was never any coverage of the idea that the United States should, before the civil war began, try to punish Syria and after the civil war began to support the non-Islamist moderates and Kurds, not the Muslim Brotherhood.This is the way foreign policy debates are conducted in the United States today. If one raises questions like this, or whether there really is a live Israel-Palestinian peace process, or whether U.S. policy should support the overthrow of the Egyptian government, or whether the Turkish regime's policy is bad for the United States, or that there were an astonishing number of pro-terrorist American Muslims being consulted and courted by the U.S. government, etc.,  you will be blacklisted and never before appear in the mass media. Incredible but it is really pretty much true.  We are not talking about outrageous, crackpot positions here but about well-documented arguments and about the most basic policy choices that have to be made. These are not really even innately partisan issues since, for instance, Senator John McCain is a leader in calling for arming the rebels. Can one say that there is a real foreign policy debate in America any more, at least over the Middle East?

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.





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How to Understand Islamism: Read What its Leaders Really Say

By Barry Rubin

To read Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s 1984 book, Islamic Education and Hasan al-Bana, is to get an Islamic education. Nobody should be allowed to talk about Islam or political Islamism without having read this or similar texts. Just as Marx claimed in the “Communist Manifesto” for his movement, the Islamists, too, disdain to conceal their aims. Yet those who don’t read their actual texts, speeches, and debates but only their public relations' disinformation know nothing.

It’s easy to see why al-Qaradawi is the leading Sunni Islamist thinker in the world today, the spiritual guide behind Egypt's Islamist revolution. He knows how to express his ideas clearly and persuasively. Here is his depiction of the Muslim world before the rise of revolutionary Islamism to power and prominence:

‘’Just imagine a waste land which has no sign of leaf or tulip or hyacinth far and wide, but which blossoms forth immediately with the first sprinkle of the rains of blessing, and fields of flowers begin to bloom. Lifeblood starts circulating in its lifeless body…..

"The condition of the Muslim nation was like a wasteland in the middle of the fourteenth century Hijri (mid-nineteenth century). The pillars of caliphate had broken which was the last display of unity under the flag of Islamic belief. Islamic countries were breathing their last under the talons of capitalist countries like Britain, France and others, so much so that Holland, whose population was [small] dominating over the ten million strong population of Indonesia with the help of force and weapon. It had spoilt the face of Islamic decrees and putting Quran behind was busily engaged in its disrespect. Blind imitation of self-made Western laws and appreciation of foreign values had set over the lives of Muslims. The youths and lovers of new culture who were bearers of the so-called modern culture were particular victims of this. Western domination upon the field of education and means of communication was producing heaps of Westernized `Khan Bahadur" (honorable people) whose names were no doubt Islamic but brains were West-bred.’”

There is a huge amount to analyze in this passage. Notice his different angle on what for the Western author would be a tale of Western imperialism and on the technological and organizational backwardness of Muslim peoples. Al-Qaradawi does not put the emphasis on Western strength or even injustice but on Muslim weakness. He does not flinch from facing the humiliations of the situation. He promises--as the Arab nationalists did sixty years ago--that his doctrine will bring rapid development and tremendous power. Like Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once said, al-Qaradawi pledges to the West, ""We will bury you."

Islamism is a formula to turn inferiority into superiority, to make the Muslim world number one in the world. It uses religion and is formed by key themes in Islam but ultimately it has nothing to do with religion as such. This is a political movement.

Al-Qaradawi is not upset by recent U.S. policy but by Western policy for well over a century. This bitterness is not going to be conciliated. The problem is not in Western actions—which any way cannot be undone—but with the interpretation of these actions. They are seen as rooted in a desire to destroy Islam, as being based on a permanent enmity, and no gesture by contemporary Western leaders can lead to the end of this view. On the contrary, such things will be interpreted through the prism of this view, as a trick or a sign of retreat and weakness.

Moreover, al-Qaradawi does not talk about the need for urbanization, the equality of women, modern education, and greater freedom as the solution. Indeed, his view is totally contrary to a leftist or liberal or nationalist Muslim who would stress the need to borrow any ideas and methods other than purely technological ones, from the West in order to gain equality and even superiority. Think of how Asia has succeeded--Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and now even China--through eagerness to blend borrowings, adaptation, and its own historic culture. No, for al-Qaradawi the issue is completely one of the abandonment of Islam.

Equally, while defeat in World War Two taught Japan to forget about military conquest and China's decades of relative failure taught it to change course, al-Qaradawi favors blood and violence, revolution and totalitarianism.

Note, too, that al-Qaradawi is far more sophisticated than a demagogic firebrand. He does not criticize the Muslims who wanted to become Westernized. Rather he feels sorry for them, calling them “victims.” That’s how one builds a movement with a wider base of support, though the actual Islamists in the field rarely show such a tolerant pity.

Moreover, as a man of religion, al-Qaradawi feels no need—at least consciously so—to create a new ideology. Indeed, human action is not at all the fountainhead of their view of history: Nevertheless, al-Qaradawi refers to the movement as revolutionary. He knows that its goal is to seize state power and then use that position and the compulsion it offers to transform the society.

“When circumstances reached this limit, God's will came into action. He took over the responsibility for the protection of Islam….To revive Islam, to put life in the dead spirit of the nation, and to carry it to the climax of success and development He chose Hasan-al-Banna who laid the foundation of the [Muslim Brotherhood] movement.”

This passage is notable for claiming that al-Banna was divinely inspired, literally a prophet. If Muslim Brotherhood supporters honestly believe that they certainly cannot deviate from diamond-hard hatred of Christians, Jews, and the West. Yet there is an important clue here, too. To say that al-Banna was divinely inspired implies that he altered Islam, moved it in a different direction. This would be an admission of heresy since Muhammad is supposed to be the last of the divinely-inspired prophets.

Here is a weakness of the movement. For a long time, conservative, traditional Muslims did view Islamism as heresy, but as it gains hegemony there are fewer and fewer such people. In Syria, for example, non-Islamist pious traditionalists in rural areas were transformed into Islamists. The combination of Westerners saying that Islam is merely plagued by a few extremists and those who say that Islam is inevitably radical keeps people from understanding this all-important reality.

Western observers often take for granted or discount the seriousness of a movement claiming that it is a direct instrument of God’s will. They are used to subverting far weaker contemporary Western religious impulses or look at those from the past that crumbled in a test of wills with rationalism, modernism, material interests, and personal hypocrisy.

Yet if it is sincerely and profoundly believed that one’s worldview is a product of divine will—an attitude that not a single leader or party in any industrialized state does—has profound implications. It means that you don’t sell out, get seduced  by materialistic lusts, or moderate your ideas and goals, except as a conscious, short-term tactical expedient that you reverse at the first possible opportunity.

The West has not dealt with such a situation of a sincerely held, radical ideology that motivates people  for a long time. Our contemporary memory of Communism is as a decayed, cynical movement. The favorite media story about Western religious figures is the expose of their sexual or financial deeds that betray their public beliefs. Even in regard to the Nazis, there were many Germans who didn’t back the movement, even if they never resisted it, and fascism, while rooted in Germany’s political culture, was also so shallowly hegemonic that it totally disappeared after 1945. Islamism doesn't disappear after defeat, though perhaps it will do so after decades of Muslims experiencing Islamism in power.

Perhaps the last such true confrontation was with Japan in World War Two, a culture where almost everyone deeply believed in the ideology and was willing to give his life for it.  I am not saying here that all Muslims support Islamism or that Islamism is the “proper” interpretation of Islam. One can see how in Iran the fact of life under a Sharia regime for three decades plus has eroded the base of support there for that doctrine. Rather, my point is that Islamism must be taken seriously as a sincere movement and not just some rhetoric that nobody believes and is not led by people who are just looking for a bribe or a prostitute.

The suicide bomber has become the symbol of that characteristic which used to be called “fanaticism” and can now merely be summarized as people who really believe what they say and intend to do what they declare even unto death. Al-Qaradawi recognizes this point and writes, “If discourse is but verbal and the characters of such persons are free from those principles which he is propagating, then such invitations [to support these ideas] dash against the ears and become empty echoes.”(p. 4).

In other words, people will not follow leaders who prove to be corrupt hypocrites. And part of being a corrupt hypocrite is to compromise on such goals as creating a Shariah state, driving Western influence out of the region, and wiping Israel off the map. Of course, a leader is still free to set his course, pulling back at times when conditions are unfavorable, avoiding battles that would obviously be lost (though the Islamist might be too confident of winning despite the objective balance of forces), not antagonizing the masses unnecessarily, and forming alliances with others when necessary.

As with Lenin, the question is how well Islamist politicians carry out this strategy. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has pushed too hard, too fast, though still it has come a long way. What is remarkable is that unlike the opponents of Communism, the opponents of Islamism have barely begun their attempt to understand and educate others on this ideology.

It should be stressed that the key challenge is not to cite passages from original Muslim theology to “prove” that Islam is always unchanging and inflexible—though understanding the roots of the radicals’ ideological appeal is important—or to ignore Islam as a factor completely but to look at the movement’s modern strategy and tactics. Almost thirty years after al-Qaradawi explained the movement's ideas clearly the opponents of Islamism have barely begun their attempt to understand and educate others on this ideology.

This article is published in PJMedia.