Why The West Lost The
Ideological War Vs Muslims
By Abid Mustafa
Al-Jazeerah
3-2-5
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values
or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized
violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
- Samuel P. Huntington
During his visit to Europe, George Bush emphasised to his European
hosts that spreading freedom and democracy was the only way of
defeating terrorism in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. His
remarks echo a familiar tenet of his presidency - freedom triumphing
over terrorism.
But, by coining the struggle as freedom versus terrorism, the Bush
administration has avoided answering some pertinent questions like -
What is terrorism? Who are the terrorists? Who is the enemy in the
eyes of Bush and his acolytes the neo-conservatives?
The 9/11 Commission (by no means the first) stressed that the term war
on terrorism was misleading and recommended that it should be renamed
to place greater ideological emphasis against Islam. In October 2001
US General Wesley Clark, said that the US war against terrorism "was a
war over Islam" that would define Islam "as either a peaceful or
militant" force in society [1]. Yet others have argued that it should
be appropriately labelled war against political Islam.
Whatever differences exist amongst Americaís political elite over the
naming of the war there are few to be found amongst ordinary
Americans. Thanks to the Islamaphobic corporate media, most Americans
irrespective of their political orientation view the war on terror as
a fight against Islam.
The same milieu exits in Europe. The lack of boldness on part of the
Europeís political class to confront Bush on these questions together
with the Islamaphobic media has convinced ordinary Europeans that
their new enemy is Islam and Muslims who live in their midst
Before 9/11 Muslims long held the view that American intervention in
their lands is part of the ongoing struggle between Islam and the
West. The aftermath of 9/11 only served to reinforce this view. Today
an overwhelming majority of Muslims believe unequivocally that the war
terrorism is a war against Islam and Muslims.
Hence, behind Bushís charade of fighting terrorism the clash between
Islam and the West is well and truly under way. This struggle is being
fought at several levels. The most important of all is the ideological
struggle. The winner of this battle will decide whether the future
belongs to Islam or Western secular liberalism.
So the question that now arises is who is winning the battle of ideas?
The answer is that the West long ago lost the ideological war against
Islam. This due to the following reasons:
1. The West has spent the last two hundred years combating Islamic
thoughts in the hope of dissuading Muslims from Islam. This campaign
began with the orientalists who studied Islam and attacked its beliefs
and rules.
For instance they attacked the divinity of the Quran, jihad, polygamy,
the Islamic punishment system and the Caliphate. But despite this
organised effort to alienate Muslims from Islam, the West is facing a
resurgent Islam both at home and abroad.
In the West, Islam is the fastest growing religion both amongst
immigrants and the indigenous community. Between 1989 and 1998 the
Islamic population in Europe grew by over 100 percent, to 14 million
(approximately 2 percent of the population), according to United
Nations statistics [2]. "Within the next 20 years the number of
British converts will equal or overtake the immigrant Muslim community
that brought the faith here", says Rose Kendrick the author of a
textbook guide to the Koran [3]. America is not immune from this
phenomenon. One expert estimates that 25,000 people a year become
Muslims in the US; some clerics say they have seen conversion rates
quadruple since Sept. 11[4].
Conversion figures aside, the attitudes of Muslims living in the West
towards secular liberalism is equally damning. A recent ICM poll
surveying Muslim attitudes in Britain published the following results:
81% view freedom of speech as a means of insulting Islam, 61% support
the Sharia, 88% want Islam in schools, and 60% do not think they need
to integrate.
If this is the outlook of Muslims in one of the main citadels of
enlightenment then one can only guess the stance of Muslim world
towards secular liberal values. Suffice to say that the West has
failed to convince the Muslim masses that Western culture is better
than Islam.
2.In the past the West employed the services of modernists such as
Rifaía At-Tahtawi (1801-1873), Jamal Ad-Din Al-Afghani (1838-1897),
Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), Taha Hussein (1889,1973) and Rashid Rida
(1865-1935), Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) to spear head their campaign
of introducing Western culture under the guise of Islam. The impact of
these reformists has not only been nullified but also reversed.
Todayís modernists find themselves in precarious situation. They are
despised by Muslims and are seen as instruments of the cultural
imperialism undertaking the Westís bidding to defame Islam.
In Western eyes they are viewed as being too Islamic and are no longer
entrusted with the responsibility of turning Muslims away from Islam.
Americaís decision to revoke Tariq Ramadanís visa and the media
outrage at Al-Qardawiís visit to the UK epitomises Westís mistrust of
modernists. On the whole they are discredited and have become
irrelevant in the battle of ideas between the West and Islam.
3. The biggest blow dealt by the West against the Islamic world came
on March 3rd, 1924, when Britain through her stooge Mustafa Kamal
destroyed the Caliphate. Lord Curzon speaking in the House of Commons
said, "The point at issue is that Turkey has been destroyed and shall
never rise again, because we have destroyed her spiritual power: the
Caliphate and Islam. ì Subsequently, the European powers curved up the
Islamic lands between them establishing direct colonial rule over the
Muslim people.
The Muslim masses for the first time were exposed to Western solutions
ranging from economic solutions which plundered their wealth to an
educational syllabus which disconnected them from their history,
reduced Islam to a mere set of rituals and taught them how to think
like Westerners.
Moreover, Islam was effaced from temporal life only to be replaced by
a secular rule. Later the West granted pseudo independence to the
Muslim countries they had invented and appointed loyal servants to
safeguard Western interests and to rule over Muslim people on their
behalf.
If the West had thought that eight years of subjugation to secularism
would have been enough to deter the Muslim masses from political Islam
then they were gravely mistaken. The ferocity and direction of todayís
Islamic revival has seized the attention of Western leaders. Vladimir
Putin, Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld have joined a long chorus of
Western leaders in 2004 warning about the dangers of a resurgent
Caliphate. This was aptly summed up by Kissinger who said,îÖwhat we
call terrorism in the United States, but which is really the uprising
of radical Islam against the secular world, and against the democratic
world, on behalf of re-establishing a sort of Caliphate [5]î.
4. There is an inherent flaw in the ideology of secularism, which has
led to its predictable rejection by the Muslim world. This is because
secularism insists on restricting the role of Islam in society to
personal worships only. Political decisions about running the society
are left to human beings. This directly contradicts the doctrine of
Muslims, which considers politics an indivisible part of Islam i.e. to
Muslims Islam is politics. Bernard Lewis gave a similar assessment and
said, ìThe absence of native secularism in Islam and the wide spread
rejection of an imported secularism inspired by Christian example, may
be attributed to certain profound differences of belief and experience
in the two religious cultures [6]î.
Furthermore, secularism always leaves a spiritual void, especially
when human beings are confronted by problems, which they are unable to
solve. Separating God from temporal matters only accentuates this
feeling
It is this intellectual weakness that has contributed to the dramatic
rise of political Islam under the secular autocratic rule, which
pervades much of the Muslim world.
The West should take heed from the inability of communism to dissuade
Muslims from Islam. Communism a far deeper ideology than secularism
also failed to convince the Muslim masses of materialism and man made
laws.
5. The duplicity of the West in promoting Western values across the
Muslim world has greatly undermined its credibility. Especially, after
September 11, when Western doubles standards reached new heights. It
was the episode of Abu Ghraib that revealed the true extent of the
Western hypocrisy and hatred towards Muslims.
Western ideas such as freedom, democracy, human rights were given a
devastating blow not by Muslims, but by America the so-called defender
of liberty. Even the agent rulers in the Muslim world were left
gasping and could not shield America from the evil crimes she had
committed.
In one swoop, America by its own handiwork had permanently damaged its
standing in the Muslim world and had gravely weakened the very ideas
that represent the cornerstone of Western civilisation. So much so,
that many non-Muslims are questioning the validity of these ideas and
the deceitful role played by their governments abroad.
Hence for the very first time, Western governments are faced with the
challenge of convincing their own citizens why these values have to be
curbed at home, while these values are forcibly thrust upon the Muslim
world. Perhaps Westerners should seek solace in the words of Oscar
Wilde who said, ìDemocracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people
by the people for the people.î
These are some of the reasons, which have contributed to the Muslim
worldís rejection of Western culture and its secular liberal
philosophy.
The stark reality facing Western governments today is that the Muslim
ummah (Muslim nation) has won the battle of ideas. The chapter of
ideological struggle between the Muslim ummah and the West is more or
less closed. But the chapter of political struggle between the ummah
and the West is still open- albeit for limited period. This is because
the West and their surrogates have no political legitimacy left in the
Muslim world. These surrogates only survive because of dogged support
from Western powers.
Therefore the West and their puppets stand alone in coercing the ummah
to accept Western values. While the ummah stands firm rejecting
Western culture and calling for the return of a global Islamic state.
The two positions are irreconcilable and polarisation in viewpoints
between the regimes and its people cannot continue indefinitely.
It is only a matter of time before Muslims overthrow the secular
order, which has been unjustly imposed upon them. Sensing the failure
of its surrogates to contain political Islam, the West under the
pretext of fighting terrorism has sought to re-occupy the Muslim lands
in a desperate bid to reinforce its values and to safeguard its
material interests.
Westís behaviour towards the Muslim world can be likened to that of a
failed schoolteacher. A failed schoolteacher is a person who continues
to beat his pupils in the vain hope of imbuing them with the values of
the school. Instead, the teacher not only loses control of the class
but also brings down the very establishment he is trying to protect.
Indeed Westerners have got far less to fear from the Islamists and
more to fear from their own governments who in the name of freedom and
democracy are slowly but surely ebbing away at the very foundations of
their civilisation.
1. Wesley K. Clarke speaking on BBC World's Hardtalk programme,
October 29 2001
2. Muslims in Europe, The Economist, October 18, 2001.
3. The Spread of a World Creed, The Times, November 9 1993
4. Islam Attracts Converts by the Thousands, The New York Times,
October 22 2001
5. Henry Kissinger, Hindustan Times, Nov 2004
6. What went wrong?, Bernard Lewis, 2003
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