In a report set for release Wednesday, the panel states that “it is vital to the national security of the United States, and to Western civilization at large, that we do what we can to empower Islam’s authentic moderates and reformers.”And what, pray tell, can we do to empower Islam’s authentic moderates and reformers? I contend that the answer is “very little.”
“Empowering the condign elements of Islam requires a candid assessment, which acknowledges the strength of Shariah - just as defeat of 20th century totalitarian ideologies required an acknowledgment of, and respect for, their malevolent capabilities.”Let us not be too quick to reflexively think that direct action is the best strategy here. Much as we have to be careful to not support Iranian dissident movements too overtly - lest we give the Iranian regime an easy narrative to discredit them (”they’re American spies”) - we have to be careful to not think that moderate Muslims want to be overtly associated with the U.S. government. The friction produced by the collision of Islam and modernity creates some dramatic tensions which have consequences for the U.S. - but this doesn’t mean that we can engineer them away, any more than the Ottoman Empire could have engineered the Protestant Reformation.
Absent some serious discussion of the tools we have at our disposal and their prospect for success, I would not follow any of these policy recommendations. Furthermore, the entire perspective overlooks one of the primary strengths of our society: its pluralism. I believe that that is a major reason why there is less tension between the American population at large and its Islamic immigrants than there is in Europe (where national identity is more tied to specific cultural, religious and ethnic characteristics). We have weathered many different waves of immigration from religious groups that were viewed at the time as posing a problem to our society. I haven’t seen any evidence yet that we have to make a radical departure from this track record.
