Understanding Islam and the West: Critical Skills for Students 1786602091, 978-1786602091

Citation preview

Understanding Islam and the West

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Understanding Islam and the West Critical Skills for Students

Nathan Lean

London • New York

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Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright  2018 by Nathan Lean All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB 978-1-7866-0209-1 PB 978-1-7866-0210-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lean, Nathan Chapman, author. Title: Understanding Islam and the West: Critical Skills for Students / Nathan Lean. Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018. 兩 Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017056507 (print) 兩 LCCN 2018003485 (ebook) 兩 ISBN 9781786602114 (Electronic) 兩 ISBN 9781786602091 (cloth : alk. paper) 兩 ISBN 9781786602107 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Islam. 兩 Islamic countries—Foreign relations—Western countries. 兩 Western countries—Foreign relations—Islamic countries. 兩 Islam and politics. Classification: LCC BP50 (ebook) 兩 LCC BP50 .L43 2018 (print) 兩 DDC 303.48/ 2176701821—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056507

 ⬁ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Printed in the United States of America

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For all who fight against prejudices, champion diversity, and value a world where people of different backgrounds live together in peace.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Note on Transliterations

xi

Chronology

xiii

Introduction: A Clash of Civilizations or a Clash of Representations?

1

PART I: IDENTITY POLITICS 1 Reversing Rhetorical Foundations

23

2 From Prose to Policies: A Discourse of Dualism

43

3 Foreign Enemies, Domestic Threats, and the Media

65

PART II: RELIGION, LANGUAGE, AND SOCIETY 4 The (Mis)Appropriation of Arabic Words

79

5 The Soft Prejudice of “Western” Expectations

97

PART III: A CLASH OF REPRESENTATIONS 6 The New Ism Enemy: Islamism

119

7 The Illogical Search for “Moderate Muslims”

139

8 Understanding “the West” as an Ideological Enemy

159

Conclusion

191

Glossary

195

Selected Bibliography

201

Index

207

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Acknowledgments

There are many people who have helped make this book possible, though for reasons of space they cannot all be listed here. I’ve benefited from the unwavering support of my beautiful wife, Naima, who was often by my side as I wrote and researched, and who encouraged me to keep going when I stared down blank pages. My family, too, has always offered their kind advice and encouragement for my various projects. At Rowman & Littlefield, Anna Reeve, who has since moved onto other work, saw a glimmer of possibility in a book like this and graciously got the ball rolling to make it happen. Commissioning Editor Dhara Patel worked closely with me to ensure that benchmarks were met and that my writing was organized in the clearest possible terms. She took rough ideas and made them clearer, and ushered the manuscript through review processes and into production with finesse and much patience. Rebecca Anastasi and Michael Watson were great sources of support, too. Numerous colleagues and friends read various early chapter drafts and proposed suggestions that made them better. I’m grateful to them for that. Finally, a word of thanks to those unnamed but precious voices that have pushed me to rethink my own views and biases and to press forward with projects like this, which aim to foster greater understanding and empathy, even and especially in the face of an often overwhelming sense of despair about contemporary global relations.

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Note on Transliterations In academic writing where foreign language terminologies are rendered into English, processes of transliteration aim to capture native inflections with certain diacritic markings. Though few scholars would likely admit it, it can well be the bane of one’s existence, especially because the standardization of such transliterations is often the subject of intense debate rather than widespread agreement. My view on transliteration is an uncommon, and likely an unpopular, one: where it’s absolutely necessary for the purposes of placating the powers of the academic world, use it. Where it’s likely to cause confusion and unnecessarily exoticize words or phrases that are otherwise understood by many, avoid it. This is especially the case for writing that is intended for more general audiences. In this book, many of the Arabic words and phrases that I employ have become so commonplace in public parlance that their “proper” transliterations (e.g., “Qur’a¯n” rather than “Quran,” or “jiha¯d” rather than “jihad”) don’t add any value. In fact, the argument could well be made that they detract from the readability of the text. For this reason, and in the interest of overall clarity, I have opted to avoid using standardized transliterations. While I appreciate those who feel the need to utilize transliterations, and while I respect their revered place within scholarship that features words and phrases that originate in languages other than English, I maintain that public-facing work (as I hope this is) would benefit from an approach that sheds as much jargon and coded “scholar talk” as possible.

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Chronology

1979: The Iranian Revolution, also called the “Islamic Revolution,” overthrows the American-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and brings to power the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. 1981: Iran releases fifty-two Americans who had been held hostage for 444 days, ending the Iranian hostage crisis. 1982: American Marines are dispatched to Lebanon to aide in withdrawing Palestine Liberation Organization forces from Beirut. 1985: Saudi Arabian jet fighters, with US assistance, shoot down Iranian airplanes over the Persian Gulf. 1986: US military conducts bombing campaign on alleged terrorist facilities and installations in Libya. 1989: US Navy aircraft shoot down two Libyan jet fighters over the Mediterranean Sea. 1990: The Gulf War, a military campaign of thirty-five nations led by the United States, commences in reaction to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. 1991: The Soviet Union is dissolved and the Cold War ends. 1993: A truck bomb is detonated outside of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and injuring more than one thousand. 1998: US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, are bombed, killing 224 people and injuring more than a thousand. 2000: Al-Qaeda bombs the USS Cole, killing seventeen American sailors and injuring thirty-nine. 2001: Al-Qaeda carries out coordinated attacks, hijacking airplanes that crash into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly three thousand people were killed and more than six thousand were injured. 2001: Responding to the attacks of 9/11, the United States and four allies invade Afghanistan, commencing the “War on Terror.” xiii

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xiv

CH RO NO L O GY

2001: The US Congress signs the Patriot Act into law, which expands government surveillance, authorizes indefinite detentions, and sanctions searches and seizures of those suspected of links to terrorism. 2003: President George W. Bush announces the American invasion of Iraq and the beginning of a prolonged war to rid the country of “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” 2005: Four Muslim perpetrators carry out coordinated bombings of London’s public transit system. 2006: Al-Qaeda in Iraq is rebranded as ISIS, and the group emerges as a new threat to “the West.” 2006: After his capture and a trial, Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging for crimes against humanity. 2009: President Barack Obama delivers his “New Beginning” Speech in Cairo, hoping to reset relations with Muslim-majority nations around the world. 2009: A Swiss referendum bans the construction of mosque minarets in the country. 2010: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes the leader of ISIS. 2010: France institutes a ban on the burqa and other face-covering religious headgear. 2010: Belgium votes to ban the burqa in public spaces. 2010: The “Arab Spring” begins in Tunisia and moves to other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, resulting in the eventual ousting of longtime authoritarian leaders and spurring widespread demonstrations that center on issues of democracy and freedom. 2010: Anti-Muslim fervor grips the United States as controversy over Park51, a proposed Islamic cultural center in New York, erupts. 2011: The last combat troops leave Iraq. 2011: Navy SEAL forces kill Osama bin Laden during a raid of his Abbottabad compound. 2012: The Associated Press releases a bombshell report suggesting that the New York Police Department (NYPD) had spied on mosques and Muslimowned businesses since 2002. 2012: Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, is elected president of Egypt in the country’s first democratic elections. 2013: After sustained public demonstrations and a harsh military crackdown, Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, is overthrown in a coup d’e´tat and arrested. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is sworn in as president in June 2014.

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CHRONOLOGY

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2015: The Dutch cabinet approves a partial ban on face-covering Islamic veils in public areas. 2016: Donald J. Trump is elected president of the United States. 2017: The German Parliament votes in favor of a partial burqa ban.

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KEY TERMS: • • • • •

• • • • •

clash of civilizations discourse dualism extremist Islam

moderate “Muslim world” Orientalism paradigm “the West”

Introduction A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS OR A CLASH OF REPRESENTATIONS?

Many years ago, I stepped out of a 747 and onto the tarmac of Mohammed V International Airport in Casablanca, Morocco. Palm trees lined the distant highway, and the setting sun radiated a wave of heat that brought instant beads of sweat to my forehead. As I made my way through the crowded luggage claim area and settled into what seemed like an endless line of travelers waiting to get through passport control, I was stricken. Not by the fatigue of traveling, or the air conditioning unit that seemed to turn on and off as it desired, but by a cognitive dissonance that pervaded as I looked around and took in the sights and sounds of my new summer home. There were no wild-eyed Bedouins or angry sheikhs waiting for the first opportunity to pounce and convert me, no towering presence of the so-called green menace, a singular, virulent Islam that hovered above and governed everything. Nearby a young mother scolded her children for roughhousing. A group of teenagers stood together in silence, oblivious to the world around them as they gazed trancelike into their cell phones. Atop the police counter hung a portrait of Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, wearing a gray muscle shirt, Nike running shorts, and Ray Ban sunglasses, and in the distance the beat of Shakira’s summer hit, “Hips Don’t Lie,” bounced off the concrete walls and made its way to my familiar ears. During the hour-long ride to Rabat, a sprawling coastal city that serves as the country’s capital, the cab driver suddenly pulled off the highway, grabbed a small woven prayer mat from the trunk, and prayed alongside the road as motorists flew by us into the darkening distance. A few minutes later he returned to the car, a steadily aging 1980s Mercedes. He threw his arm over the seat divide and flashed a toothy grin. “God is great,” he said, in heavily accented 1

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English. I smiled back, remembering at that moment the friends and relatives who, meaning well, cautioned me to take great care lest I become a target of “those people over there.” For them, and many others, “over there” represented not just the physical geographic location of Morocco or North Africa, but a vague and threatening foreign locale where values thought to be antithetical to those of the United States prevailed. Similarly, the phrase those people did not refer to the specific Moroccans with whom I would live and interact, nor did it refer to Arabs or North Africans in general. Rather, it signified an amorphous group of strangers whose supposedly baleful nature was a result of their shared religious identity and their presumed collective existence beyond the familiar borders of “our” lands. In short, “they” were Islam and I was “the West,” and there was an enormous gulf between us. My experiences in Morocco that summer led me to think more critically about that supposed divide and the way in which the phrase Islam and the West has become the normative category for discussing Muslim religious expressions and global geopolitics. As a result of this linguistic construct’s salience, I argue, nuance and complexity are lost and stereotypes abound. The diversity of Muslims, in terms of their religious beliefs, ethnicities, and geographic locations, cannot be fully expressed by referring to a positivistic “Islam,” nor can an ill-defined group of people, places, and shared cultural ideals be neatly summed up in the phrase the West. Apart from the problem of assuming that these two entities actually exist as such—that there is one fixed “Islam” that governs all Muslims, and one “West,” to which all people of the United States, Western Europe, and other liberal democracies belong—their syntactical separation within the phrase Islam and the West, with the conjunction and serving as a cleavage between them, renders them immediately incompatible, or at the very least, begs us to interrogate an alleged tension that characterizes their relationship. Over the years, a multitude of research and writing has argued that such tensions do not exist, or are exaggerated, and scholars have expended much time and ink begging for a more balanced and judicious approach. Yet unfortunately, in this decades-long fixation on rebutting Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, less attention has been given to the way in which some of the very refutations that aim to dismantle it end up fortifying it by adopting the same dualistic framework. Even those voices that vociferously reject arguments of cultural essentialism and incompatibility between Islam and “the West” cannot easily escape a human binary impulse that leads them to cast the debate in those terms.1 Therefore, understanding more fully the supposedly dichotomous relationship between these two entities, and why narratives of conflict between them have persisted, requires an examination of the ways in which we, at the most basic levels of human thought and expression, may well have imagined such a division into being and perpetuated it through our linguistic choices. As the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote in his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The limits of my language define the limits of my world.”2 Moving beyond the simplistic worldview of “Islam and the West,” then, requires that we think about how to articulate human relationships in ways that acknowledge the complexity and diversity of human experiences.

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It has become somewhat conventional in the world of academic writing to explain what a book is about by first explaining what it is not about.3 So as not to depart from this curious trend put in place by scholars of a more esteemed variety than I, a few remarks to that end seem necessary here. This is not a book about religion, religious beliefs, or the moral rightness of a set of values or principles. I have no interest in advancing the theological claims of any group, nor do I feel compelled to advocate for or against various religious or political positions that are highlighted in this volume. Nonetheless, I am not under the illusion, as some scholars tend to be, that what follows stems from a place of purely disconnected and unadulterated inquiry. My experiences and study have shaped my worldview, and my thinking here is grounded in my sincere belief that the myriad of differences that seem to segregate the human species are not so significant, and that in many cases such differences are not intrinsic to our nature, but rather, are contrived. So, what is this book about? In a word: discourse. This is a book about how we think about, write about, and talk about the religion of Islam and the geographic and cultural entity that we have come to call “the West.” It is about the conceptual framework—the vocabulary, expressions, phrases, and styles of knowledge—that has given rise and meaning to a discourse of dualism, as I call it, and how people who see themselves as existing on each side of it characterize, either consciously or subconsciously, their relationship in ways that reinforce perceptions of division. My primary aim is to encourage a patient critique of language and to foster within the reader a sense of unease about categories, nomenclatures, phrases, and syntactical structures that are often taken for granted but that imply certain problematic realities. More important to me than knotty questions about the compatibility of “Islam and the West” are the questions that seek to unpack the assumptions that are built into that phrase in the first place. For example, what do we mean when we say “Islam”? What is “the West,” exactly? What does an interrogation of the relationship between the two suppose from the very outset? Scholarship that critiques the relationship between Islam and “the West” is not new. The germ of such work goes back decades, as do postmodern inquiries into discourse. Thus, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge from the outset that I am standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants whose works have become near-constant points of reference as I have thought about this topic over the years. Foremost among them is the late Edward Said, whose seminal 1978 volume Orientalism has become somewhat of a sacred text to many scholars in the humanities.4 Said, as many will know, calls into question the underlying assumptions that contribute to generalizations, stereotypes, and racial and religious prejudices of the “other,” the phenomenological being or group that is believed to be fundamentally different from, and alien to, oneself. He suggests that European assumptions about Muslims and Arabs are the result of a long tradition of caricatures and crude representations not generated from facts but rather from preconceived ideas that configure an ideal opposite. Orientalism, then, is a process whereby the multifaceted experiences and diverse cultural dynamics of “the East” are reduced to a homogenous bloc that is situated in a place of opposition and inferiority to a dominant, powerful, and defining “West.”5 The purpose of these

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representations is to configure a system of power relations between the two in which “the West,” defined in various ways over time, is eternally superior. In addition to Said, it is necessary to mention the centrality of Michel Foucault’s work, especially as it relates to discourse. Foucault’s foray into this arena began in 1969 with the publication of his book The Archaeology of Knowledge. It was his study of discourses as they related to madness, sexuality, punishment, and love that gave rise to new academic interest in the subject and laid out the theoretical foundations on which so many have built. Importantly for the purposes of our discussion here is the way in which Foucault defines discourse. It is “a group of statements which provide a language for talking about—a way of representing the knowledge about—a particular topic at a particular historical moment. . . . Discourse is about the production of knowledge through language.”6 Knowledge, then, becomes “truth” when the linguistic choices that we make are put into practice. Stuart Hall provides an instructional example of Palestinians who are fighting to regain land in the West Bank. While they are, in fact, fighting, he notes it is our characterization of that fighting in language—describing them as either “terrorists” or “freedom fighters”—that ultimately constructs knowledge that we then act upon. Describing Palestinian fighters as “terrorists” means that we adopt the vocabulary and imagery that is commonly associated with terrorism, apply it to our cognitive mapping of that group, and then, acting upon it, create a reality.7 More related to the subject at hand, when our discourse about Islam and “the West” suggests that they are civilizational foes, and we act on subsequent policies that escalate encounters that reinforce the idea of division, the two become adversaries whether they were ever inherently such to begin with or not. Part of the power of the “Islam and the West” dualism is that it has provided the mental scaffolding for a host of other similar dualisms and narratives that also remain today potent categories under which Muslims and “Westerners” are often discussed. This process usually entails drawing out further the categories of “Muslims” and “Westerners” such that they come to include a wide range of other characteristics, and supposedly normative features. For example, “the West” is not only thought to be at odds with the religion of Islam, but to maintain more parity in terms of geographic comparisons, Islam is often thought to exist primarily within the so-called Muslim world. Thus, the perceived standoff becomes one not of a global religion versus a geopolitical entity but two putatively geographic masses that are defined by their presumed cultural elements. In common parlance, the phrase Muslim world is most often used to refer to an imaginative region inhabited by Muslims that is outside of “the West,” though the specific locale is most always unclear. A quick Google search reveals a plethora of uses, many of which reduce complex political matters to religious beliefs that are thought to typify the identities of everyone who populates this amorphous space.8 In some instances, the phrase is a stand-in for the Middle East, while in others it is used as a synonym for “Muslims” in general, much like the phrase Arab street has been used to refer to Arabs living in the “Arab world,” a construct that is equally problematic.9 What is clear when it comes to the “Muslim world” is that “the West” is not included, despite the fact that the United States and Western Europe, typically thought to be a part of “the West,” are home to a combined fifty million Muslims.10

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The objective of this discourse is the configuration and entrenchment of ideological norms for both Islam and “the West.” In other words, not only does it imply that there is separation and discord between the two but also each side of the constructed divide becomes a receptacle for ideas and characteristics that are thought to typify it. These characteristics are frequently cast as the opposite of those to whom a given group compares itself. The French sociologist and philosopher E´mile Durkheim famously explained this in his theory of social control, arguing that collective identity is always formed in contrast to some other group, and that in times of social change groups may even fabricate an existential threat in order to consolidate, reshape, and strengthen their own identity and wellbeing.11 The “Islam and the West” dualism, then, gives rise to narratives that advance a certain type of Islam on the one hand, and a certain type of “West” on the other. Those who consider themselves “Westerners” define that category based on distinguishing ideological features that they believe are positive. For some, that may mean a commitment to a representative and electoral democracy, an embrace of national exceptionalism, or a pledge to uphold civil and human rights as understood in a specific way. For others, it may mean supporting imperial ambitions around the world, advocating for austere foreign policies, or uniting behind a national or continental narrative that delineates specific beliefs one must hold to be a “Westerner,” to begin with. For those whom “Islam” is posited as the primary facet of identity, a similar spectrum of ideas may emerge: a sense of duty to religious traditions and values, a commitment to moral uprightness as they see it, or an emphasis on living pious lives in the face of daily societal challenges. For others, too, religion may be a more potent tool for political or social expressions: the reinforcement of prevailing gender norms, a banner under which to expand territorial presence or rule, or in some cases a license to enact violence toward people or groups. Unfortunately, however, the discursive framework of “Islam and the West,” by the singularity of its components and the presumed division between them, engenders a climate in which variation and diversity are replaced by monoliths. Advocates of the “Islam and the West” dualism, then, represent their respective side as morally virtuous while representing the other as morally licentious. Complicating this, of course, is the undeniable reality that there are many Muslims who consider themselves “Western,” and that the values and ideas that constitute the categories of “the West” and Islam are hardly settled or agreed upon. Still, what we see in the development of the “Islam and the West” paradigm is that while “the West” evolves over time and comes to be associated with several other ideals, Islam always remains the same. A review of scholarly and other writing on Islam over the years sharpens into fuller relief the prevalence of other dualisms that pit the religion against various institutions that are intended to be synonymous with “the West.”12 Discourses such as “Islam and democracy,” “Islam and modernity,” “Islam and women’s rights,” “Islam and human rights,” “Islam and education,” “Islam and technology,” and “Islam and globalization” configure the two monolithic entities, with the second item of comparison always referring to some noble principle upheld by the so-called West.13 Thus, “the West” values democratic government, is modern, upholds women’s rights and human rights, cherishes education and technological

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advancement, while the verdict is out on whether Muslims also deem these things precious. What results is a metanarrative in which Islam is always the element that must be measured and assessed. A discourse, no matter the topic, is never powerful on its own. Its constitutive elements—words, phrases, speech, paradigms—do not possess some material force that, as a simple matter of their presence in the human mind, make the world around us what it is.14 Central to “Islam and the West,” then, is the power dynamic that exists in which humans who buy into and deploy this category give it saliency and authority. While it is the case that Muslims and “Westerners” alike deploy linguistic maneuvers that reinforce this dualism, however, they are not equal actors. The military and economic strength of “the West,” understood here as the United States and Western Europe, has meant that it is usually those two entities that are in advantageous geopolitical positions that thus makes them more able to ask questions about Islam, whereas less powerful Muslim-majority countries could never ask about “the West.” As Seval Yildirim explains, interrogating Islam is not only acceptable among the powerful but it is also expected. Inquiries about the value of Islam for the West were desirable and to be commended, as an act of generous inquiry—almost like when a grandparent approaches a child in play and asks “What are the parameters of your imaginary world?” The unthought part of this picture is that the grandparent is in a position of power as to the child and asks without fear, for it is to the grandparent’s paradigms to which the child must relate. In other words, the grandparent needs to understand because, after all, it’s the adult world that determines what the acceptable terms and methods of play are.15

Extending further the “Islam and the West” paradigm allows us to see how these methods are meted out in terms of societal power relations. Within the arena of “the West,” we have established that democracy, women’s rights, human rights, education, and technology are believed to have a central place. But it is also necessary to move beyond ideals and institutions and think about the ways in which people are affected by this discourse. After all, it is language that configures our reality, and our reality involves living and interacting with other people in the world who are affected, as we are, by these terms. The dualistic framework that birthed “Islam and the West” and later “Islam and modernity” (and its variants) is also the framework out of which the binary notion of “moderate” and “extremist” Muslims grew. While this will be discussed at greater length in chapter 7, is it worth mentioning from the outset that it is through the use of these categories that “the West” delineates the acceptable parameters of what it means to be a Muslim, and simultaneously it reinforces the ideas that “Muslim” and “Westerner” are incompatible and it is only by subscribing to a particular set of Islamic religious beliefs (as dictated by “the West”) and digesting a particular set of “Western” principles that a Muslim can become “moderate” and thus acceptable to the governing power. The danger, as we have seen in practice, is that refusing to embrace these prescribed standards may result in

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one receiving the label of “extremist”—a possibility that has immensely troubling implications for those Muslims who, whether in the United States, Western Europe, or elsewhere, choose to assert their identities in ways that are not deemed congruous with “Western” interests.16 Of course, the point here is that the categories of “moderate” and “extremist” are subjective rather than objective, and it is important to be mindful of the need to critique these ever-present labels as they are driven by precisely the same sort of divisive mechanism that has allowed the world to be carved up into the good and the bad, with the former always presumed to be the latter until they can prove that, in fact, they are not.17 As we will see in the coming chapters, being conscientious and vigilant about the language we use and the discourses in which we are active participants is especially necessary given the ease with which problematic descriptions of Islam and “West”—good and bad, moderate and extreme, and other unnecessary binaries—slip into our daily lexicon and unintentionally render the particular subjects at hand motionless monoliths that do not reflect the nuance and complexity of the world around us and, on the contrary, lead to misunderstanding, or worse. The literary theorist Ge´rard Gennette once argued that the primary purpose of a preface or introduction was to ensure that the text is read and understood properly. To accomplish this, he wrote, the author usually employs two key themes: “why” the material at hand is of importance, and “how” the reader should navigate the text and consider its limitations and authorial choices.18 Given our brief review of the why thus far—that discourse about “Islam and the West” is responsible for perceptions of conflict and division, and a more careful examination of our language may ameliorate that—a few words about the “how” are necessary. Critiques of discourse and language are admittedly challenging. Part of this results from the fact there are only so many given words in any language, and mental concepts do not always line up precisely with those words that are readily available. Even in dissecting and unpacking the problems of certain linguistic maneuvers, we are left to rely on a range of terms and expressions that are, in and of themselves, limiting and prevent us from conveying fully our ideas. This volume is not immune to such challenges, though I have aimed to overcome them as best as I can. It is quite easy to fall back on the pre-given and packaged concepts that we so routinely use to explain the world, including the use of phrases like the West in a normative way. To a certain extent, even narratives that problematize these linguistic constructs end up reifying and reinforcing them as a result of assuming that they are concepts that exist in the word to begin with. Thus, to speak of “Islam” on the one hand, and “the West” on the other, even within the context of a discussion that begs us to resist the tendency to cleave the two apart, presupposes that there are two distinct entities called “Islam” and “the West” that are already separated in some way, even if only cognitively. Readers may even note the irony in the title of this volume—Understanding Islam and the West. My intention here is not to suggest that there is an “Islam” and a “West” that we must understand independently and in terms of their apparent relationship. Rather, as I have noted, my focus is on diagnosing and deconstructing “Islam and the West” as a category,

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and understanding why it has governed the way in which Muslims, Islam, and the politics of the United States and Western Europe are framed. For the purposes of the forthcoming discussions, I have implemented a few measures that I hope will convey the nuance, complexity, and instability of the terms, expressions, and categories that I argue contribute to perceptions of conflict in the world. By now, readers will likely be aware of my use of quotation marks or italics around certain phrases. This practice has come to be quite common in texts that seek to deconstruct certain concepts and call attention to the idea that nothing is ever as natural as it appears. There is great value, I believe, in a healthy skepticism that challenges established paradigms.19 Therefore, when problematizing the phrase the West and suggesting that its use is generic and unspecific, I will employ italics when named as a phrase, and quotation marks otherwise. The same applies to other linguistic constructs that I believe are deeply problematic, including “the Arab world,” “the Muslim world,” “moderate Muslims,” “extremists,” “radicals,” and the like. These phrases, and others, are packed with assumptions about the specific places or people to whom they refer, and they are laden with subjective value judgments. Similarly, I recognize the challenges of deploying the term Islam in a general way, as well. Doing so suggests that there is understanding and agreement among all who call themselves Muslims about what it is that their religion teaches. Thus, where I feel that it is necessary to unpack a certain normative understanding of that word, I will use italics and quotation marks also. Ultimately, however, to move beyond what I have called a discourse of dualism, characterized by the use of generic phrases such as Islam and the West, I have aimed in this book to describe the precise groups of people that these terms may be taken to connote in a context. I seek to draw attention to the fact that wars and conflicts do not take place among civilizations, regions of the world, or even religions but among individuals who comprise nations, belong to religions, or advocate for certain political perspectives—that is, between specific groups of people with competing views about how the world should be. Consequently, I avoid the use of Islamic as an adjective (as in “Islamic terrorism,” “Islamic world,” “Islamic thought,” or “Islamic extremism”) as it wrongly implies that the religion of Islam—not Muslims as people—have agency to define particular things in the world.20 In a similar vein, I reject the use of phrases like Muslim countries or Western nations in exchange for phrases that are more specific and point to precise geographical and national components, or acknowledge people, not ideas, as defining actual areas of the world: “Muslim-majority countries,” which suggests a country populated predominantly by people who claim Muslim identity, rather than “Muslim countries,” which casts the country itself in terms of a particular religious identity; “France,” “the United States,” or a generally understood geoscheme like “Western Europe” instead of “the West”; and preferably “Muslim-led extremism,” which places agency on a person, rather than “Islamic extremism,” which places it on the religion, though this phrase is still fraught with problems, as we will discuss later. Painstaking as it may be to reprogram our minds when it comes to the categories that we typically use, it is this work—carefully choosing the words and phrases that we deploy and constantly engaging in a process of

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skeptical deconstruction—that I believe is so valuable for reimagining, and ultimately realizing, a world that is less conflictual. I have chosen to structure this book thematically, presenting what I believe are some of the most commonly advanced narratives that contribute to perceptions of conflict between an imagined “Islam” and “the West.” These narratives are not exhaustive by any means, though in the years that I have studied discourses on religion, particularly Islam, they have occurred repeatedly, often manifesting themselves in ways that do not ring of an obvious prejudice or deep-seated ideology but rather suggest a more passive or subconscious origin. While I do set my sights on academic literature that has proven rather unhelpful in this regard, scholars are by no means the sole culprits. Though power relations establish and govern discursive structures, there is undoubtedly a social dynamic involved that has allowed certain ways of thinking and talking about Muslims on the one hand, and the so-called West on the other, to settle and become the salient paradigm that it is today. Therefore, I attempt to address the various drivers of this discourse, which include politicians and world leaders, prominent writers and activists, the media, and the public. Importantly, though I maintain that the aforementioned power dynamics that govern discourse largely privilege one side—the so-called West—I am aware that people who see themselves as existing on opposite sides of this alleged “Islam and the West” divide deploy linguistic maneuvers that reinforce and deepen those perceptions of division, and this includes many Muslims who, under the banner of “Islam,” position themselves as necessarily oppositional and incompatible with the countries that they see as representative of “the West.” This goes beyond the more provocative and highly visible groups that garner attention through episodic wanton violence, and it stretches to more ordinary factions of “mainstream” Muslim-majority societies.21 In an effort to address this reality, I aim to remain as neutral as possible in my language so as to not suggest that the affair is one sided, and also to present material where it is available that shows how Muslims in various countries throughout the world, including the United States and Western European nations, participate in this discourse as a result of the language and imagery that they adopt. The first chapter familiarizes the reader with the various ways in which actors on each side of the perceived “Islam and the West” divide imagine the other. Introducing a range of narratives, phrases, linguistic constructs, and images, I show just how prominent and deeply embedded notions of division between Muslims and others are today, and I demonstrate, using examples from the media, just how easily they are replicated and normalized to communicate the actual existence of a civilizational clash. I suggest that rather than an actual clash between two competing sides, the clash, if there must be one, is between competing representations deployed by individual people. Similarly, I suggest that the idea that there are two sides—“Islam” and “the West”—to begin with is, in and of itself, a highly problematic idea that is little more than a fabrication stemming from incongruent power relations that breed discourses about self and “other.” Much of this, I will show, is the result of a few distinctive rhetorical moves. The first is the process of

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reification of the religion of Islam and the geopolitical spaces that are lumped into the category called the West. This process suggests that “Islam” and “the West” exist in the world as things, or in other words, that the images of them that we have in our minds have some corresponding existence in real life—some identifiable, discernable, and tangible essence that embodies all of the many characteristics that we typically associate with them.22 Next, I show how the establishment of reified entities paves the way for a process of essentialism that then assigns to each side of the “Islam and the West” divide particular defining features—a project that often pivots on reductionism. When it comes to Islam, this most always involves presumptions about intractable theological positions, while for “the West” the amassment of identifying traits usually centers on the cultural or political. This is what allows for such statements as “Islam says . . .” or “The West believes . . . ,” both of which are premised on the idea that “Islam” and “the West” can say or believe anything at all, and that what they presumably say or believe is understood as a matter of fact.23 In this vein, I also use this chapter as an occasion to call the reader’s attention to the importance of thinking critically about agency. I show how narratives that so often communicate notions of division fail to reflect the reality that “Islam” and “the West” cannot be in conflict unless we accept the logical fallacy that any given group of Muslims represents the entire mantle of “Islam”; that any group that defines itself as “Westerners” represents the entire mantle of “the West”; and that those two groups of people are, themselves, in conflict with one another. The complications here are evident, but suffice it to say for the moment that the importance of establishing the centrality of agency to discussions that are commonly “civilizational” in nature cannot be overstated. In chapter 2, I turn to what Richard Jackson has called a “second order critique,” or an investigation of the “political functions and ideological consequences” of the dualism “Islam and the West.”24 In general, discourses create images of the world that are “plausible or implausible, acceptable or unacceptable, conceivable or inconceivable, respectable or disrespectable, etc.”25 I argue that the “Islam and the West” discourse offers only one option: a divided world. Politicians and powerful actors who participate in it opt for a worldview that is premised on the notion of civilizational clash, and thus transmute their mental mappings of that clash into actual conflicts that are framed in terms of “Westerners,” “Western civilization,” and “the West” on the one hand, and “Islam,” “Islamic civilization,” and “the Muslim world” on the other. As I will show, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby a belief that the world is bifurcated into “Islam and the West,” of which the two sides are in conflict, results in actions—especially foreign policies—that bring about sustained encounters among the militaries of Muslimmajority countries, the United States, and European nations. To illustrate this, I will first focus on the narratives of war that emerged in the early 2000s in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I will show how a coterie of writers and activists in the United States and Europe became influential voices in the White House and on Downing Street, and how they and others selectively represented key concepts and events in Islamic history to confirm the suspicions of various government officials as they debated the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent policy decisions related to the so-called War on Terror. These decisions, I argue, while

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not stated explicitly in terms of “Islam and the West,” nonetheless centered on the idea of a superior “Western” civilization that was threatened by an “Islamic” enemy. Similarly, I examine subsequent rhetoric and actions that emerged from the arenas of war—primarily Afghanistan and Iraq—as well as other Muslimmajority states, which cast the conflict in civilizational terms, too, pitting a corrupt and morally decaying “West” against a spiritually triumphant “Islam.” I expand this discussion to include an analysis of policy proposals and choices made during the administrations of succeeding American presidents, including Donald Trump and Barack Obama, as well as European heads of state and leaders in the Middle East, all of whom deployed certain representations of Islam and “the West” to substantiate those policies and strengthen their respective side of a perceived global divide. In chapter 3, I turn my attention to the media and domestic policies in the United States and Europe, and I explore how fear of Muslims as “foreigners” is transformed into discourses that heighten sensitivities about the possibility of homegrown threats. What I reveal is a cycle that I call the “foreign enemy, domestic threat” phenomenon, whereby Muslim actors outside of “the West,” whether real or imagined, are constructed as dangers; this first precipitates a host of foreign policies that target those actors and represent them as enemies. It simultaneously unbridles a host of domestic policies that target people within the United States and Europe who share the “enemy’s” religious or ethnic features and represent them as threats. This cognitive process is premised on a cascading set of dualisms that reinforce the predominant “Islam and the West” discourse. Among them are: familiar and unfamiliar; good and bad; friend and enemy; foreign and domestic. The consolidation of communal identity as familiar and good not only creates a foil opposite as one might suspect, but also more importantly for the purposes of this volume, it warrants a perpetual “othering” that, in the case of Muslims, renders them eternally foreign. Birthright or naturalized French citizens of the Muslim religion, for example, may be cast as outsiders or foreigners, presumably connected in some way to the Muslim “enemies” of the so-called West. In the United States, policies like mosque surveillance, airport screenings, travel restrictions, and others often target these communities, which raise public suspicion about the degree to which they truly belong. In places like Belgium, minaret bans and restrictions on Muslim dress, including the burqa, convey the desire for a sense of homogeneity—the real citizen is thought to be one who looks and behaves like the white European majority. While it is foreign policies in Muslim-majority countries that often drive these domestic fears, I will show that it is also these domestic fears—the fear of “domestic threats”—that bolster foreign policies targeting Muslims as well. Beyond normalizing an overarching idea of an existential conflict between Islam and “the West,” it is my conviction that the words and phrases that comprise this discourse are also normalized in ways that are not helpful to overcoming perceptions of division. Nowhere is this more clearly the case than with Arabic words that trace their lineage to Islamic religious traditions. Chapter 4, then, looks at the ways in which a perceived division between Islam and “the West” is fortified linguistically by the misappropriation of these Arabic words and phrases. It is no

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secret that in today’s world, terms like jihad or Sharia have acquired meanings that are almost exclusively violent. The word taqiyya, the precautionary denial of religious belief in the face of persecution, and the often recited phrase Allahu Akbar or “God is greater” have similarly taken on meanings that suggest a nefarious motive on the part of Muslims.26 This, I argue, is the result of a few specific things: Muslims interpreting (and acting upon) these concepts in undeniably violent ways; non-Muslims witnessing those interpretations and understanding them as representative of the beliefs of all Muslims; a failure on the part of Muslims and non-Muslims alike to recognize the degree to which negative interpretations have become normalized; and a prevailing Orientalist framework that treats all foreign words and phrases with skepticism. While I show that some groups actively lobby for especially negative understandings of these terms (they are usually ideological individuals or organizations with an anti-Muslim message they hope to advance), this process is one that spans political and religious spectrums. For example, politicians who mean well in their attempts to separate violent individuals from the masses may refer to “jihadists” when discussing the former, as opposed to the many Muslims who comprise the broader religious group. Muslims, too, have distinguished themselves from the extreme interpretations espoused by some members of their faith using similar language. This, of course, situates “jihad” within a narrative that is exclusively fanatical and criminal, and it denies the possibility that other interpretations of it (namely as a pious religious struggle) could prevail. The word Sharia is treated in a similar way within the popular lexicons of American and European societies. Due in large part to groups like ISIS and AlQaeda, the concept brings hand chopping and stoning to the forefront of our imagination, while the reality is that Sharia is hardly a codified doctrine with expressly brutal teachings. Rather, it is a dynamic set of guidelines that govern everything from personal hygiene to financial interactions. Could a “jihadist” be a morally upright Muslim father who takes an extra night job to help make ends meet for his family? Or a Muslim college student whose religious principles guide her to work hard and graduate from the school of her dreams? Could Sharia be the inspirational and guiding framework for a young Muslim man who hopes to sell his home? Is it possible that an elderly Muslim woman who longs to leave her children an inheritance sum finds meaning from the standards that Sharia offers? The answer to these questions is indisputably, yes. However, these are hardly the understanding of the term that dominate news headlines and social media feeds, and as we will see, the process of disentangling Arabic expressions from especially violent contexts presents many challenges. While narratives of a supposedly civilizational divide between Islam and “the West” have traditionally found life within neoconservative circles, the situation today is more complex. Increasingly, liberals and conservatives alike have united beneath a “Western” banner, championing values that they see as innate to that ideological entity while proclaiming that Islam is deficient of them. Perhaps surprisingly, some Muslims are a part of this project, upholding the political philosophy of liberalism as it is understood by American and European powers as an ideal to which Muslims the world over must aspire. I examine this discursive maneuver in chapter 5, and call it the “soft prejudice of Western expectations.”27 I argue

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that asserting the supremacy and righteousness of liberalism can contribute to the “othering” of Muslims, their religion, and their culture, especially within discourses that suggest that Islam must be “reformed” in order to meet twenty-firstcentury norms. Within the past several years, this has manifested itself in several ways: robust debates about Muslims’ alleged aversion to free speech in the Charlie Hebdo controversies or cartoon contests depicting Muhammad; impassioned discussions about gender segregation in American mosques or a woman’s right to wear the hijab; and conversations about how best to deal with violence that stems from some Muslim communities in the United States and Europe. As I will show, issues of women’s rights, equality, and free speech are indeed worth championing, and in some cases, there are examples within the Muslim community—and other religious communities—where room for improvement in these areas exists. Without advocating complete relativism, however, I suggest that it is necessary to consider the ways in which calls for reforming certain Islamic tenets, especially when deployed by outsiders, supposes the existence of a dominant culture to which Muslims must acquiesce. These power-laden discourses are often aligned with “Western” foreign and domestic policies toward which some members of the Muslim community take umbrage. The aforementioned bans on minarets, veils, and the implementation of surveillance programs have all been deployed in the name of protecting liberalism. They situate Muslims on the opposite side of a nonnegotiable line that non-Muslims in “the West” have drawn, as if to assert that “this is how we do things here.” To this end, the “soft prejudice of Western expectations” not only reinforces hegemony and fortifies homogeneity but also legitimizes policies that contribute to anti-Muslim prejudice and deepen the perceived divide between Islam and “the West.” Thus, as I will argue, liberalism is not culturally neutral but a product by which powerful actors assert and enforce cultural or national identity. For decades, the United States and Europe have been gripped by fear over foreign ism enemies: communism, nazism, and fascism. Governments have presented them as an existential risk to “our” way of life and an ideological foil to the values that “we” hold dear. Today, it is the Muslim revival movement, characterized by political and social conservatism, literalism, and an intractable link between religion, politics, and daily life that is represented as the new beˆte noire. Chapter 6 problematizes this narrative by showing how its proponents couch their critiques of Islam and Muslims within expressly negative appraisals of Islamism. This, I argue, invariably shields these critics from accusations of targeting the religion of Islam as they claim that it is not the entire religious tradition that is of concern, per se, but rather a particular ideology that it has birthed. The underlying message, however, is clear: conservative religious beliefs are a point of departure for extremism, radicalism, and even terrorism. This idea has been called the “conveyor belt theory,” and it is premised on the notion that the process of becoming violent is akin to a multistep system where grievances lead to increased religiosity, which, in turn, spurs violent actions. As I will show, this narrative conflates several things and limits a nuanced understanding of Islamism’s multivalent interpretations around the world. It conflates religious conservatism with Islamism (there are conservative Muslims who do not subscribe to the views held by self-described

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“Islamists”); it mixes Islamism and extremism (suggesting, for example, that ISIS, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey’s AKP, Morocco’s Freedom and Justice Party, and Tunisia’s Ennahda are all cut from the same cloth); and it equates extremism with terrorism (suggesting that support for any measure that the American or European inquirer deems “extreme” is therefore an indicator of that person’s support for more violent measures). Additionally, I argue that this narrative implies that a common thread uniting all so-called Islamists is belief in the supremacy of Sharia, or Islamic law, though in reality it is the case that jurisprudence is hardly a subject of widespread agreement, with robust debates among Muslim legal scholars about its theory and its application. Finally, I propose that fixation on Islamism is an intentional way to downplay American and European foreign policies that have created pockets of violence in the Middle East. Values of liberalism are rarely considered to be the culprit of conflict, even when they are wedded to military interventions and sustained periods of war. The fact, for instance, that the United States has invaded, bombed, or occupied fourteen Muslim-majority countries since 1980 does not factor into the calculations of politicians who bemoan the rise of extremism on the one hand, and excoriate the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice on the other. Rather, responsibility is placed on an everlurking foreign ideology that is Islamic in nature and represented as antithetical to all that is “Western.” Part and parcel to the use of liberalism as a standard to which Muslim communities must measure up is the notion of “moderate Muslims.” In the epistemological terrain that emerged in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, American and European governments searched for those that ostensibly belonged to this romanticized group. Today, the quest to identify “moderates” within the Muslim community persists. Chapter 7 examines the consequences of this label, and argues that in calling for Muslims to step out of the shadows and show the world the “true” Islam, those Muslims who do not fit the preferred model are marginalized, prejudiced, or worse. The search for the “moderate Muslim,” I maintain, intimates that Muslims must only digest their religious teachings “moderately,” and that one’s degree of religiosity is a primary indicator of that person’s potential for violence. This gives credence to the idea that only those who are at the beck and call of Islam’s credential police are the peaceful ones, and that the ones posing the question—“Where are the moderate Muslims?”—are sufficient arbiters of what Islam is and is not. As I will show, the word moderate is arbitrary, and its meaning has differed widely across space and time. What one considers “moderate” another may consider “extreme.” Is praying five times a day a characteristic of a “moderate Muslim,” or do those who fit that category appear more secular? Do “moderate Muslims” visit mosques for Friday prayer? Do they wear traditionally Islamic clothing? Or do they shed religious garb and mosque visits in exchange for short skirts and shopping malls? Do they refrain from consuming alcohol or pork? Importantly, is it possible to broaden our understanding of “moderate” such that we see it not as a matter of what an individual does but rather describes how he or she is portrayed by those in positions of power who aim to present an image of the ideal Muslim? In this chapter, I will show that within popular discourses on “moderate Muslims,” the “moderate” is often represented as the one who rejects the violent aspects of his or

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her faith, supports American and European policies in the world, and otherwise embraces the ideals of liberalism. Further, I will argue that the hollowness of this label is made clearer when we see how it has been applied to other groups of people throughout history, including “moderate rebels” and opposition fighters who are armed by, and fight on behalf of, American and European interests in areas of conflict around the world but whom, in any other setting, would not be labeled “moderate.” In this chapter, I also problematize the idea of “moderate Muslims” or “moderate Islam” within Muslim-majority spaces, where such labels and descriptions are less prominent (if present at all), and where the spectrum of diversity and religiosity is discussed in other terms. I show the reader how the operational mechanism of this phrase (moderate Muslims) may also be used by Muslims themselves to point to an idealized “West” to which they hope to belong. Lastly, chapter 8 will probe the ways in which prominent and often vilified Muslim actors represent the United States and European countries, and their attending cultures and policies, to Muslim-majority audiences in various spaces. I will show how they put forth an image of “the West” that is often a mirror opposite of “Western” images of Islam, thus accentuating the idea that perceived divisions between Islam and “the West” are the result of discursive practices and representations that presume polarity and dichotomy rather than harmony, convergence, and reconciliation. This chapter highlights for the reader the ways in which negative narratives about the United States and Europe that these Muslim individuals deploy are premised upon, and indeed depend on, negative discourses and representations of Islam and Muslim cultures. Viewing the world through an ideological lens, these individuals utilize certain discursive practices that are like those of American and European policymakers, authors, and others, and which confirm their presuppositions about the quintessential nature of “the West” and an inherent division between it and Islam. Rather than a “clash of civilizations,” I show how these conflicting narratives about the world and the relationship between self and other reveal a clash of representations. I discuss why this is a problem, and how moving forward, the study of Islam and its relationship with the so-called West would benefit from more specificity, and from an approach that does not represent the religion or the geopolitical region as special subjects of inquiry that are divorced from, or pitted against, one another, but rather, that are fully integrated within the reality of a diverse and interconnected world. I hope that this book will be of interest and value to students of a variety of disciplines as well as to nonspecialist audiences. Accordingly, the topics that I have chosen are those that I believe span academic and popular discourses on Islam and “the West.” The majority of the examples that I use are contemporary, though I am well aware that the historical lineage of these topics runs deep. While there is much more to be said about the themes that comprise the chapters of this volume, I have intentionally chosen to leave out information that I believe digresses from or overly complicates its purpose. My vision is for this book to be an introductory text that helps readers think more critically about discourse, and specifically the ways in which global actors are represented as existing in conflict. In a way, it is a result of my own dissatisfaction as a student of religious studies and the Middle East over

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what I see as the uncritical use of language in articulating issues related to Islam and Muslims; it is a plea, of sorts, for a more nuanced and patient deployment of linguistic constructs, and for more awareness of the ease with which charged words or phrases slip effortlessly into our vocabulary. With each chapter I have offered a selection of further readings, case studies, and discussion questions that may stimulate thinking and engender dialogue. Of course, there are a great many more questions to be asked, and readings to recommend. In that vein, it is my hope that this book will spark conversations and generate discussions that build on the ideas I put forth, and even improve them. If that is so, it will have served its purpose.

Further Reading Ahmad, Aijaz. “Islam, Islamisms, and the West.” Socialist Register 44 (2008): 1–37. Bayat, Asef. “Islam and Democracy: The Perverse Charm of an Irrelevant Question.” In Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn, ed. Asef Bayat. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Daniel, Norman. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1993. Ernst, Carl. Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What images or values immediately come to mind when you think of Islam? How about “the West?” Do you perceive the two as distinct? Explain why or why not. 2. Do you think that “Islam” and “the West” exist in the world, or are they cognitive groupings to which people attribute belonging? What are the implications of this? 3. What other dualisms are part of our everyday language, and what challenges do they present? 4. Why have “Islam” and “the West” become the primary terms by which we discuss Muslims and their presence within various geopolitical settings? 5. What accounts for the popularity of Samuel Huntington’s narrative that the religion of Islam, “the West,” and other so-called civilizations are set to “clash” with one another?

Notes 1. See: Michael Thompson, Islam and the West: Critical Perspectives on Modernity (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Jocelyne Cesari, Why the West Fears Islam: An

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Exploration of Muslims in Liberal Democracies (New York: Palgrave, 2013); John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Ron Geaves, Theodore Gabriel, Yvonne Haddad, and Jane Idleman Smith, eds., Islam and the West Post 9/11 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004); Tamara Sonn, Is Islam an Enemy of the West? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016); Amin Saikal, Islam and the West: Conflict or Cooperation? (New York: Palgrave, 2003). 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1961), 68. 3. Ironically enough, readers will discover that is one exercise—the formation of identity by negation—that sustains problematic representations of Muslims and “Westerners.” 4. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Press, 1978). 5. It is important to note that Antonio Gramsci, an Italian writer, philosopher, and theorist who is known for developing the concept of cultural hegemony, influenced Said. 6. Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the Other,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, eds. Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans, and Sean Nixon (London: Sage, 1992), 291. 7. Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in Formations of Power: Understanding Modern Societies, an Introduction, Book 1, eds. Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 203. 8. See, for example, the following headlines by major news organizations: Robert F. Worth, “Struggle for Ideological Upper Hand in Muslim World Seen as Factor in Attacks,” New York Times, September 12, 2012; Hamid Dabashi, “The Future of Democracy in the Muslim World,” Al-Jazeera, October 26, 2016; Jon Emont, “A New Crisis in the Muslim World: Is It Too Young?” Washington Post, September 5, 2016; Ann M. Simmons, “Muslim World Sharply Divided on Koran’s Influence on Government Law, Poll Finds,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2016; Michael Oren, “How Obama Opened His Heart to the ‘Muslim World,’ ” Foreign Policy, June 19, 2015. 9. It is worth mentioning here that the Arab Street is a troubling phrase for another reason; namely, that its singular street reflects the idea that worldviews and beliefs of people who inhabit Arab-majority countries are uniform in nature. This is also seen in a variety of headlines over the years that report on what the “Muslim world” supposedly thinks about a particular issue at hand. Needless to say, it is hardly the case that all Arabs or Muslims (or “Westerners,” for that matter) hold identical views at any given time, though the linguistic constructs of “the Arab world,” “the Muslim world,” and “the West” lend themselves, as a result of their singular nature, to such singular representations. 10. This is based on 2016 estimates from Pew Research, which place the number of European Muslims at forty-six million, and 2015 estimates that place the number of American Muslims at around three million. Contrary to common assumptions, most of the world’s Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, and some three hundred million live in sub-Saharan Africa. Importantly, Muslims may use the term ummah, “the people,” to refer to the global community of Muslims that span nations and continents. 11. For a helpful discussion on Durkheim and theories of collective identity, see Gavin Brent Sullivan, ed., Understanding Collective Pride and Group Identity: New Directions in Emotion Theory, Research, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2014). 12. See, for example, Shireen Hunter, ed., Reformist Voices in Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2009); Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore, and Martin Van Bruinessen, eds., Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982);

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Katerina Dalacoura, Islam, Liberalism, and Human Rights (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Abdulaziz Sachedina, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 13. An Internet search of the phrases mentioned above yields dozens of results, many of them in book form, which speaks to the prominence of these categories and the ways in which they have become matters of fact in the world. 14. Asef Bayat, ed., “Islam and Democracy: What Is the Real Question?” ISIM Paper 8, Amsterdam University Press, 2007. 15. Seval Yildirim, “Discussing Islam in the Post 9/11 Epistemological Terrain,” Pace International Law Review 19, no. 4 (2007): 223. 16. In recent years, for example, there has been a push within the US Congress to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. This policy proposal presumes that the Muslim Brotherhood operates within the United States in an organized and institutional way that is similar to the group’s presence in Egypt. More importantly, though, it conflates religious conservatism and extremism, and it suggests that views and beliefs about the world are sufficient for labeling one an extremist or terrorist, regardless of whether those views are acted upon. This is discussed further in chapter 7. 17. For an excellent primer to the discussion of “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims,” I recommended Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Random House, 2004). 18. Ge´rard Gennette and Marie Maclean, “Introduction to the Paratext,” New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991): 261–72. 19. For an extended discussion on the use of quotation marks in deconstructive texts, see Joan Brandt, Geopolitics: The Politics of Mimesis in Poststructuralist French Poetry and Theory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 20. The use of the adjective Islamic to define scripture, doctrine, religious texts, art, and more, is, in my view, less problematic as these uses do not necessarily point to a presumably normative religious interpretation but signify that the particular object at hand bears some religious significance that is related to Islam in general; for example, the “Islamic calendar,” “Islamic sculpture,” “Islamic literature,” and others. 21. The word mainstream is complicated. Mainstream according to whom, one might ask? At a basic etymological level, it connotes a principle or dominant course—a main stream into which other secondary streams feed. “Mainstream” Muslim societies, understood as the plural majority that, despite some variances, interpret their religion in ways that are not all that dissimilar, may look quite different from one place to the other. At the outset, the idea of a “main stream” presumes a certain path—a river headed in a certain direction that is guided by certain defining features (rocks, jetties, branches, trees, etc.). The idea of “mainstream Muslims,” then, implies a similar shared destination of which the journey is shaped by the same characteristics. The reality, however, is more likely complex. Here, I use the word in quotation marks to call our attention to these complexities, while acknowledging the difficulty in speaking of a large population with shared features and goals without resorting to essentialism. 22. Readers may find Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s discussion of the reification of religion helpful. It was Cantwell Smith who was among the first to point out the problems of essentialism and assigning nouns to things that do not “really exist” in the world, chiefly among them in his view, religion. See: Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: First Fortress Press, 1962). 23. For a helpful discussion of reification and essentialism within the context of “progressive” Muslim politics and theology, see Omid Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).

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24. Richard Jackson, “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse,” Government and Opposition 42, no. 3 (2007): 394–426. 25. Albert S. Yee, “The Causal Effects of Ideas on Politics,” International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996): 97. 26. Allahu Akbar is commonly translated into English as “God is great.” This, however, is not a precise translation as the Arabic word akbar is the elative grammatical construction of the word kabir, which means “great.” Thus, akbar means greater, which suggests that the phrase Allahu Akbar means “God is greater than all others” or “God is the only supreme being.” 27. This is a play on “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” a phrase coined by former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson.

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PART I

IDENTITY POLITICS

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KEY TERMS: • • • • •

• • • • •

agency essentialism generalization ideology jahiliyya

monolithic Occidentalism reductionism reification stereotype

CHAPTER 1

Reversing Rhetorical Foundations Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth! —Richard Kipling, “The Battle of East and West,” 1889

The pedigree of the worldview that divides the globe into East and West dates back millennia. While some may trace its origins to the medieval period when the arrival of Islam in the seventh century prompted European Christians to understand the new religion using labels and categories that implied geographic partitions, others have pointed to ancient Greece and Rome as the birthplace of this divide. It was within the budding city-states of Athens, Sparta, and later the islands of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, they argue, that the cultural components of “Western civilization” were nurtured into a coherent and unified identity that would soon come to be differentiated from other emerging “civilizations.”1 Regardless of the varying historiographic accounts, however, one thing is certain: the images, narratives, and discursive elements that convey the idea of a bifurcated world within which the religion of Islam and “the West” are situated on opposite sides have persisted. I suggest that it remains today the single-most powerful paradigm for discussing Muslims and their relationship with, and actions within, various global communities. Over the past four decades, a steady stream of scholarship has addressed the alleged strengths or weaknesses of the purported Islam-West divide, beginning in 1978 with Edward Said’s Orientalism and continuing through the latter part of the twentieth century with Bernard Lewis’s 1993 volume Islam and the West and Samuel Huntington’s controversial 1996 thesis on the “clash of civilizations.” For 23

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the most part, the trend within academia has been to push back against the work of the latter two, who favor cultural explanations for conflict over other possibilities. With the attacks of 9/11 inaugurating the arrival of the twenty-first century, that project became more pronounced, and a plethora of scholarly and popular writing emerged that aimed to reject essentialist representations of Islam and answer pressing questions about its violent interpretations.2 Researchers and other specialists asked: Are Islam and “the West” in conflict? Is Islam incompatible with democracy? Are Islam and human rights irreconcilable? How about Islam and women’s rights? In the pages of dozens of books, and in conference halls of world capitals like London, Brussels, and Washington, D.C., these inquiries were addressed, and notwithstanding a few exceptions, the answer at each juncture along the way was, invariably: no—there is not an inherently conflictual relationship between these things. Despite episodic moments of violence or even prolonged wars between Europe and United States, on the one hand, and Muslimmajority countries on the other, there is no reason to believe that Islamic religious tenets pose an existential threat to the so-called West. Similarly, while authoritarianism grips many Muslim-majority countries within the Middle East, the question of the compatibility between Islam and democracy has often been addressed by acknowledging commitments to free and fair elections in places like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia.3 When it comes to issues of human rights or women’s rights, scholars have deployed analogous arguments: bad examples here or there are no reason to suggest wholesale incongruity between an entire world religion and certain ethical or moral commitments that are considered universal.4 These arguments, on their face, are quite plausible, and there is much value, I believe, in efforts to show nuances and complexities that are absent in the media or in public conversations. Yet at the same time, there is also something immensely unsatisfying about participating in discourses that presume a dualism, even if the objective is to suggest that the relationship between the two parts is not one of incompatibility and conflict. In this book, I argue that despite the good information that has resulted from aims to heal perceived fractures between Islam and “the West” or Islam and democracy, the wrong questions are being asked and answered. Buying into the notion that “Islam and the West” and its derivatives are appropriate frames of reference for discussions about the two is to accept, from the outset, that the nature of the alleged relationship between each side is worthy of inspection, scrutiny, or debate. More valuable, I suggest, is an approach that questions the governing discursive framework altogether. In other words, instead of asking about the compatibility of Islam and democracy, it is more helpful to ask: What do we mean when we say “democracy” or “the West”? How about “Islam”? What presumptions are packed into the idea that there is, indeed, any singular entity against which an entire world religion can be suspended in a state of inquiry or comparison? Might our uncritical use of phrases like the West, human rights, or women’s rights imply a normative understanding of those things that is based on a presumably American or European model? Similarly, might this discourse reveal far less about any real essence of Islam or “the West” and more about how those of us who participate in that discourse perceive those things?

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What is ultimately concerning about the uncritical use of language in this regard is the possibility that it presents for misunderstanding or worse. By failing to unpack fully the assumptions that are built into the words and phrases that we so commonly use to characterize the world and our relationships with others, we unknowingly entrench some of the very ideas upon which stereotypes and prejudices rest. In this chapter, I propose that we begin to think more carefully about discourse on Islam and “the West” by identifying and problematizing three of the key elements that constitute it. They are: reification, essentialism, and misplaced agency. While other elements exist, it is my contention that these are among the most common. Additionally, I believe that they are worthy of special consideration because of the ease with which they slip into the epistemological and discursive frames that we cannot so easily resist. Highlighting them as potential traps to avoid will, I hope, offer students and other interested parties an occasion to reflect on the ways in which their linguistic choices have a direct bearing on the world and the way that they hope to see it.

Reifying Islam, Muslims, and “the West” Using the simplest language possible, reification is the mental process of making something that is abstract a “thing” in the world. In other words, it involves taking an idea and thinking about it, talking about it, or acting upon it, as if it existed beyond the confines of our imaginations. This often involves assigning psychological or otherwise human characteristics to concepts as if they had the capability to possess such things to begin with. We all participate in reification. It is more common than one might believe, perhaps even so routine to basic human expressions that we do not even know that we are doing it. For example, consider the often recited phrase “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Of course, there is no such thing as “Mother Nature” in the world, only a sequence of natural events that we have totalized and personified as a single operating force. Indeed, it is impossible to “fool” those elements, yet we talk about the universe, weather, and other processes of Earth as if such a thing were plausible.5 Among the most reified of concepts, though, is religion. The esteemed Canadian scholar of Islam, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, has been credited with calling attention to this idea in his influential 1962 text The Meaning and End of Religion. Smith critiqued the notion that abstract beliefs, not the convictions and actions of people, had come to characterize religion, and he argued, in fact, that there is no such thing as “religion in general,” nor are there distinct religions such as “Islam,” “Christianity,” “Buddhism,” or the like.6 Importantly, Smith was not denying that the phenomena we so often think of as religion do not exist or are of little importance. Rather, he identified what he perceived as the problematic tendency to objectify ritual practice and other external signifiers of faith and uphold them as religion, or in specific iterations, as Islam, Christianity, or Buddhism. Another way to think of it is this: imagine a scenario in which all of the world’s

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people suddenly disappeared. Would religion, like fruit hanging from tree branches, remain in abundance on Earth? If we were to return, would we find it there waiting for us? Would we see Christianity piled up in one corner, separate from Islam in another, and still Judaism or Buddhism or other faith traditions in distinct spaces? These questions may seem rather trivial, but the underlying point is not inconsequential: when we discuss religion, it is important that we not lose sight of individual experiences of faith and spirituality, and suppose that there is something “out there” in the world called Islam, for instance, to which those people who identify as Muslims subscribe and move in lockstep. To be more precise, Islam (and indeed all religions) is a dynamic and changing subject rather than an object, an analyzable and living phenomenon rather than a staid abstraction, and ultimately a vibrant tradition of people that converge in certain areas and diverge in many others.7 As Steven A. Haggmark has noted, the process of reification is most often carried out on the basis of establishing enemies or foil opposites. The diverse and multivalent experiences of people around the world whom a given group perceives as different or threatening are compressed into and bound by a single category that defines their existence.8 In the case of “the West,” various European and North American countries are distilled into a single descriptor that presumes shared qualities between them. In the case of “Islam,” Muslim-majority populations from Morocco to Bahrain are abruptly labeled based on a predominant religion. Absent from this process is the recognition that not all of the people or places that are lumped into these categories are the same. In many cases, they are quite different. The political, religious, and social climates of Tunisia and Pakistan, for instance, are hardly identical, though both are often placed beneath the banner of “Islam.” The way that Muslims in Malaysia interpret their religion may differ from Muslims in Saudi Arabia; Bosnian Muslims may share little in common with their coreligionists in Iran. Yet the simple fact of these individuals’ shared “Muslimness” is often thought to be sufficient to describe them using the word Islam. Of course, beyond the differences in religious expression that exist between people of different nationalities, even Muslims of the same nationality do not necessarily hold identical beliefs. Within Egypt, for example, it is possible to find Muslim women who wear the veil, attend Friday prayers at the mosque, and view their familial role in ways that the outside observer may deem subservient. It is also possible, however, to find women who do not wear the veil or deem prayer as an especially important part of their daily lives yet nonetheless identify themselves as Muslims. So as not to play into a problematic secular-religious dichotomy, it is also critical that we consider the reality of a spectrum that presents the possibility for as many different religious interpretations as there are people in any given place. Likewise, it would be unhelpful to think of “the West” as a homogenous bloc of people whose worldviews are, if not identical, even similar. More accurately, it is global events, historical circumstances, and other dynamics of an ever-changing world that have given meaning to the idea of “the West” over time. Let us not forget that France and Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, marking the beginning of World War II and placing them out front as the leading

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members of the “Western Allies.” It was not until two years later, after the December 1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor, that the United States, which is often perceived today as the bastion of “the West,” entered the war. This would suggest that between 1939 and 1941, the United States was not entirely part of what was considered “the West.” Similarly, over sixty years later, when the United States was rallying support for the invasion of Iraq, France adamantly opposed the idea, formally protesting and refusing to send troops. This political move placed France (along with Canada, Belgium, New Zealand, and Sweden, who also opposed to war) outside of what was considered “the West” at that time. While it is the case that “the West” is often defined based on ostensibly shared political characteristics, it is also important to note that the idea of cultural unity among the nations and peoples that are thought to comprise it is largely a myth. Though once considered Christian, the North American and European spaces that claim the mantle of “Western civilization” are increasingly diverse in terms of their populations’ religious affiliations. With the rise of globalization, the perceived dividing line between “Islam” and “the West” has blurred as Muslim immigrants to various European countries have settled, raised families, and established progenies that have grown up fully Muslim and “Western.” Changes in the racial makeup of Europe and the United States have occurred, too. Polling data has consistently shown that white majorities in these spaces are dwindling and will soon be outnumbered by other racial or ethnic groups. According to Pew Research, for instance, by 2065, the estimated 441 million Americans will include some 78 million immigrants and nearly 81 million people born in the United States to immigrant parents.9 To see how reification plays out in news headlines and public discourse, let us examine a few examples. When columnist Roger Cohen of the New York Times proclaimed in the wake of the 2015 attacks on the Paris headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that “Islam and the West” are “at war,” several questions became incumbent: Who represents “Islam” and who represents “the West”? Is it reasonable to suggest that some Muslims who lash out against European or American targets are epitomic representatives of all of Islam, and if not, why describe them with such an all-encompassing label? Likewise, who represents the so-called West or decides that it—and all of it—is “at war” with an entire religion?10 More to the point of the fallacy of reification, though, were questions about how a world religion and an ill-defined geopolitical entity could even engage in war. After all, “Islam” and “the West” are ideas—they are abstract categories that are only as powerful as the people who believe they are useful for framing religious or political beliefs—and cannot, in and of themselves, square off against one another on a battlefield. As we will discuss in more detail below, Islam cannot act, nor can “the West”; only people—Muslims and “Westerners”—can. The idea that because some people who follow Islam and some people who consider themselves as part of “the West” see their relationship as contentious and then act accordingly, is an indictment of those particular people and their beliefs, not an indication that the imagined communities to which they claim belonging are “at war.”

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This notion of a reified “Islam” as an antagonist of “the West,” carrying out various actions as if it were human, is seen again in then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 claim that “Islam hates us.”11 In just three words, Trump established a cleavage between the world’s second-largest religion and “us,” by which he presumably meant the United States, thereby suggesting a national “we” of which Islam was not a part. Like Cohen, he took the actions of some violent Muslims and supposed that because they found inspiration for those actions within religious doctrines, the problem lay not with those particular people, but with “Islam.” Just as it cannot wage war, by now it should be clear that neither can Islam hate anyone or anything because Islam is not a human being that can possess emotions and other feelings, let alone act upon them. Examples of a reified “West” abound, too. In news media, political rhetoric, and scholarly writing, some people who see themselves as existing outside of this imagined space represent it in ways that reinforce notions of division. Consider three headlines from two Egyptian newspapers, responding to controversy that erupted in 2006 when a Norwegian newspaper republished caricatures of Muhammad that originally appeared in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005: “The Religious East and Secular West Can Never Meet” (Al-Wafid, February 15, 2006); “The West Dictates to Us How to React to the Cartoon Controversy” (Akhbar Al-Alyoum, February 11, 2006); “There Is a Western Conspiracy against the Muslims. Freedom Does Not Guarantee the Right of Blasphemy” (Akhbar Al-Alyoum, February 11, 2006).12 In language that is the mirror opposite of Cohen’s and Trump’s, these writers establish an “us”—Muslims in “the East”— whose values are considered antithetical to a perceived “West.”13 Recalling the Kipling quote featured at the beginning of this chapter, they suggest an ideological separation between the two, and also connote a physical one: the so-called East is the land of religious folks, where “the West” is that secular territory of afar, and the two are eternally disjointed. Apart from the fact that it was two European countries—Denmark and later, Norway—that prompted these proclamations about “the West,” the idea that the primary fault line between “East” and “West” is one that splits the religious from the secular fails to consider the fact that Denmark has been so shaped by religion that Evangelical Lutheran Christianity remains the state religion today. Hence, it is a nonsecular state (and like the United States, Islam is the second-largest religion). Additionally, it was not until 2012 that Norway cast off the yoke of state religion and passed legislation that would finally separate the Evangelical Lutheran Church from government affairs. The presumption on the part of the Egyptian writers, of course, was that religion involves a certain way of living and being in the world that is in accordance with Islamic values, and the principles of free speech and press that Denmark and Norway championed ran counter to that. Apart from the religious-secular divide, though, these headlines also demonstrate the pitfalls of personifying abstractions. As we have already established, there is no such thing in the world as “the West”; there are only people who believe that they possess the cultural traits or political principles that have been described over time as “Western,” and thus represent themselves as belonging to this category. The idea, then, that the “East” and “West” can never meet is irrational as it is not

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possible for ideas to converge on their own accord. If the suggestion is, more precisely, that people who consider themselves “Eastern” (in this case Muslims) and others who see themselves as “Western” (presumably Europeans) cannot encounter one another and find areas of religious or political agreement, the realities of the everyday world render that idea patently false. It is also worth noting for the sake of further emphasizing the way in which reification contributes to perceptions of division between Islam and “the West,” that “the West” cannot “dictate” anything to “Islam” or Muslims or “the East,” and the idea of a “Western conspiracy” against Muslims is as equally fraught with problems as the idea of an “Islamic” war against “the West.” There are, indeed, leaders of European countries who may aim to spread their worldview to places where Muslims comprise the majority of the population. In many instances throughout history this has been the case. Correspondingly, there are Muslim heads of state and other leaders who hope to advance their particular perspectives, religious or otherwise, in areas where Islam is less prevalent among the population. It is important that in highlighting these types of occurrences, however, we maintain specificity and describe the people and places involved with as much nuance and precision as possible. As we will see next, the supposed “essence” of these structures is not a result of something that exists internally within them and gives them meaning, but rather, it is constituted by people who see themselves as Muslims and “Westerners” and suggest that there is a fundamental character that is universal of their respective groups.

Essentializing Islam, Muslims, and “the West” Once the categories of “Islam” and “the West” are established as the primary groupings to which Muslims, and Americans and Europeans, respectively, belong, it becomes easier to suggest that each possesses certain essential values. This discursive practice is always subjective: it entails insiders or outsiders to these categories proclaiming that these values or characteristics are inherent to them, and that they should be recognized as constituting its “true” version. Most often, this involves representing oneself or the other in an idealized way. Consider the following headlines: “The True, Peaceful Face of Islam” (Time, September 23, 2001) “U.S. Muslim Group Launches Campaign to Reclaim the Meaning of ‘True Islam’ from Extremists” (Newsweek, December 30, 2015) “Islam Preaches Tolerance of Critics, No Matter What the Charlie Hebdo Attackers Believed” (Washington Post, January 8, 2015) Others, for example, may argue that literal interpretations of the religion’s holy book, the Quran, require Muslims to wage acts of war against other populations. For them, Islam’s “true” nature is something quite different:

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“Islam Is a Religion of Violence” (Foreign Policy, November 9, 2015) “Islam Is Still Rooted in the Values of the Dark Ages—and Until We Accept That, We Will Never Get Rid of Radicalism” (Telegraph, November 19, 2015) “Islam Is the Mother Lode of Bad Ideas” (Sam Harris on Real Time with Bill Maher, October 3, 2014) Likewise, some people who consider themselves “Westerners” may uphold the presence of electoral democracy, modernity, or individual freedoms as essential components of “the West” while others may argue that cultural, ethnic, or religious similarities among populations give it its essence. “Islam a Threat to Western Freedom: Wilders” (National Post, May 9, 2011) “Far Too Many Western Muslims Speak of Freedom as a Sin” (Independent, January 11, 2015) “Many Millions of Muslims ‘Fundamentally Incompatible with the Modern World,’ Says Tony Blair” (Independent, March 27, 2016) An overabundance of these types of examples has marked the rhetorical universe that emerged in the wake of 9/11. In near-badminton fashion, one group would serve up a charged stereotype about Islam’s alleged nature only to be countered by another group who would return an image that depicted exactly the opposite. What many who participated in this back and forth failed to see was that Islam and “the West” do not—and cannot—possess identities that are intrinsic or disconnected from the people who claim them as categories. Surrounded by Muslim religious leaders during a visit to a Washington, D.C., mosque in September 2001, President George W. Bush said: “The face of terror is not the true face of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”14 It was a powerful statement, and one that has been credited as bringing calm to an environment that was ripe for backlash against Muslims. Increasingly, other world leaders, religious figures, and academics did the same, advancing a normative interpretation of Islam that figured it a religion of peace. In May 2001, Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to step foot inside a mosque where he urged Christians and Muslims to forgive each other and recognize the fundamental elements of respect and understanding that epitomized the two religious traditions. (Some fifteen years later, Pope Francis stated that it is wrong to identify the religion of Islam with violence.)15 Comparably, Aaron Hughes and Herbert Berg have noted that many scholars of religion used this occasion to push back against stereotypes by arguing that Islam was a peaceful religion that had been “hijacked” by a fringe minority.16 In recent years, President Barack Obama has deployed similar rhetoric, lambasting Islam’s “perversion” by terrorists.17 There is certainly much to admire in approaches to understanding Islam that seek to differentiate a violent minority from an otherwise peaceful majority. Far too often it is the former group that dominates popular discussions on and imagery of the religion. However, what I hope to make clear for the purposes of understanding essentialism is the idea that just as it is unhelpful to broad-brush, for

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example, Islam as a religion of violence, so too is it ineffectual to counter that claim with an equally broad-brushed approach that paints it as a religion of peace. When President Bush comments on Islam’s essentially “peaceful” nature, he is making a value judgment that is based on his interpretation of the religion—one that gives premium to scriptural references of goodwill, almsgiving, and other pious acts, and that downplays instances of historical or contemporary violence, or Quranic passages that, when taken literally, are at odds with prevailing moral norms. When the pope or leading academics suggest, with good intentions, that Islam as it is understood by ISIS or related groups is not the real Islam, but rather an aberration that must be countered, they are similarly making a subjective moral statement that reflects their understanding of what religion should be: a source of, and force for, good in the world. The same is true of Muslims who writhe in disgust at especially vicious interpretations of their religion and, in an attempt to excise extremists from it, exclaim that they are “un-Islamic.”18 The premise upon which many essentialist claims about Islam’s “peaceful” essence rests is the idea that the majority rules. In other words, because most Muslims around the world do not interpret their religion in violent ways, the underlying nature, or essence, of Islam must be nonviolent. The normative-versusaberrant framework is undeniably powerful and offers a convincing rebuttal to essentialists who, pointing to episodic violence here or there, claim that Islam is not peaceful. Yet religion is not a “majority rules” phenomenon. While community is important to many believers, faith is ultimately a personal journey, and because of the absence of a single authority who decides what is Islamic or un-Islamic, Christian or un-Christian, that journey is quite often a matter of personal interpretation and reflection.19 Thus, while it may be possible to say, for example, that the violence carried out by ISIS does not align with the understandings of Islam held by most Muslims around the world, it is not possible to say, as a result of that, ISIS is “un-Islamic,” “anti-Islamic,” or otherwise non-Muslim. After all, they see themselves as Muslims, and claim the Quran and the religious history of Islam as their own. Though their interpretations of those things are markedly different from other Muslims around the world, who is to say that their particular religious experience is untrue for them? My point here is that Islam is not a religion of violence, nor is it a religion of peace. Rather, it is simply a religion. For those people who find within its doctrines the inspiration to do good in the world— admittedly the majority of its followers—its “essence” will be nonviolent. For those people who find within its doctrines the inspiration for enacting violence— admittedly the minority of its followers—Islam’s “essence” will appear quite different.20 The problem of essentialism is sharpened into fuller relief when we look at “the West” and consider the various ways that it, too, has been described as having a fundamental and defining character. Within the past several decades, scholarship that has aimed to offer a counter-view to Orientalism has emerged. Studies of Occidentalism, as it has been called, bring to the fore Muslim and Arab views of “the West” that are as equally entrenched in stereotypes and caricatures as many “Western” views of Islam. Unlike literature on Orientalism, which proliferated in the wake of Said’s pioneering book, volumes that address this issue are not as

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readily available. Little more than a dozen studies on Occidentalism have come out since Hasan Hanafi first published Introduction to the Study of Occidentalism in 1991.21 Even so, the existing body of scholarship does allow us to see examples and trends of how some people who consider themselves “non-Western” have essentialized “the West” in their rhetoric and writing. Religion scholar Hugh P. Goddard has argued that throughout history, various Muslims’ “critiques” of “the West” have tended to fall into three categories: moral, political, and religious.22 Pointing to the examples of Iranian writer Sayyid Musavi Lari and Indian author and activist Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi, he shows how “the West” is presented as a land of moral decadence and decay as a result of its perceived obsession with materialism, its commitment to individualism, and its proclivity for sexual immorality.23 Nadwi suggests, for instance, that “the West’s” arrogance and its slavery to machines, which dehumanize people, can be remedied by Muslims who live in “Western” countries if only they would look to Islam for solutions.24 Turning to the political, Goddard notes Iranian writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad as among the more prominent individuals who advanced the idea that “the West” was a curse or disease that had plagued “the East.” Its imperial dominance and economic leverage, he argued, subjected those who came under its influence to systems of governance and ways of life that were undesired. In his 1961 volume Gharbzadegi, or “Westoxification” as it has been translated, Al-eAhmad described his native Iran as being so smitten or “stricken” by “the West” such that its eventual adoption of European models of politics, education, art, and culture resulted in a loss of its own cultural identity.25 Many religious critiques that have been leveled against “the West” center on the issue of spiritual depravity. Sayyid Qutb’s excoriations of “Western jahiliyya,” or ignorance, are one such example. Equating Christianity with “the West,” he stated that its “much acclaimed religious beliefs” were little more than idolatry of the Trinity, and the notions of sin and redemption were nonsensical. As Goddard observes, the fact that Qutb deployed his criticism of “the West” in religious and cultural language is significant. For him, the two were synonymous, and thus any criticism of “the West” necessarily entailed a specific critique of Christianity.26 While these examples offer historical glimpses of essentialist representations of “the West,” more contemporary instances exist, too. Violent groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have deployed propaganda to their respective bases that depicts “the West” as a unified body that lacks a religious or moral compass, and which is epitomized by an unquenchable thirst for power. A simple Internet search reveals the extent to which civilizational rhetoric has come to characterize news headlines about “the West” written by Muslim activists or opinion writers, and similarly divisive language about “the West’s” perceived corruption or rampant materialism is present within the discourses of some Islamist groups as well. Beyond platitudes of prominent figures, ideas about “the West’s” essential nature are also seen at a more local level. While anthropologist Gabriele Marranci has described the difficulty of determining the views of ordinary Muslim citizens in various countries, his 2016 study Wars of Terror offers a possible window into the minds of an unusual group: Muslims living in a country that is a part of the so-called West. Marranci notes that respondents of focus groups of Scottish Muslims reported

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that they believe that “the West” is an expression of Christianity, that it has lost its true religious values, and that it is corrupt and inferior to a morally superior Islamic civilization.27 One young woman reported, “In the West, the majority of people are only interested in money and sex.”28 She noted high divorce rates, and loathed what she saw as the prioritization of jobs over family.29 Another pointed to the aforementioned nexus between political and cultural concerns: “What they want is oil, power, and to control the global economy. . . . Like the pagans, people in the West do not fear the Day of Judgment, so they enjoy haram [forbidden] things.”30 What does all of this mean? Simply put: “the West” does not have a singular, essential identity. Like Islam, the identities of which are constructed by Muslims at various times and in various spaces, “the West” is also a fluid concept. Where American or European leaders may posit that it is freedom, or democracy, or some other ostensibly noble idea that is “the West,” others who see themselves as existing outside of it may define it in ways that are not so flattering. (And in the case of the Scottish Muslims mentioned above, some people within “the West” may represent it this way as well.) To say “the West is immoral” is equally as problematic as saying “Islam is violent.” Conversely, just as we have established the deficiencies of saying that “Islam is peaceful,” it is also important to recognize that the same deficiencies apply to statements about “the West” that suggest a positive normativity—“the West is free,” “the West is modern,” or “the West is moral.” These statements, like their counterparts about Islam, are subjective; there is no impartial measure to determine if, indeed, freedom or modernity exist in “the West.” It is possible, of course, that some people in “the West”—“Westerners”— are corrupt and immoral, though I would argue that both corruption and morality are not value neutral but rather understood through a particular ideological lens (what is immoral to one may not be to another). Likewise, some “Westerners” are more secular oriented than their compatriots, and the reality of the separation of church and state in many places says very little about the individual religiosity of Americans and Europeans anyway.

Thinking about Agency in “Islam and the West” Discourse Another critical part of discourse, which we have tiptoed around thus far, is the issue of agency. We turn to it now with more focus, and discuss how reification and essentialism erase the possibility of human action and further entrench the idea of civilizational conflict. I also hope to encourage thinking about the ways in which attempts to discuss people (Muslims and “Westerners”) as opposed to reifications (Islam and “the West”) also present obstacles when it comes to agency. As I alluded to in the introduction, one of the most common discursive traps related to agency is the inclination to equate Islam with the “Muslim world” or the “Islamic world,” which is then positioned as a geographic other to “the West.” The phrase Muslim societies is used widely as well.31 There are problems with this

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language, some of them obvious and others less so. First, as analytical categories, these descriptions are vague.32 Which “Muslim societies”? What part of the “Islamic world”? To whom do we refer when we say “the West”? When CNN hosts asked author Reza Aslan about the alleged woes of the “Muslim countries” in a 2014 interview, he responded in the following way: Stoning and mutilation and those barbaric practices should be condemned and criticized by everyone. The actions of individuals and societies and countries like Iran, like Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia must be condemned, because they don’t belong in the 21st century. But to say “Muslim countries,” as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same, as though Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are the same, as though somehow what is happening in the most extreme forms of these repressive countries, these autocratic countries, is representative of what’s happening in every other “Muslim country,” is, frankly—and I use this word seriously—stupid. So, let’s stop doing that.33

Aslan’s response, which ricocheted across social media, struck a chord with many who were irritated by conflations of Islam and Muslims, while acknowledging that stoning, mutilation, and other gruesome acts were problems within certain countries. The broad-brush description of “Muslim” or “Islamic,” though, pointed to primarily religious explanations when, in fact, other dynamics were at play. The idea that “Muslim societies” are not identical is important. But apart from observations about the diversity of religious interpretation and experiences of Muslims, this language also presents us with another pressing question: Why is it that we use religious adjectives to describe these countries to begin with? The notion of “Muslim societies,” the “Muslim world,” or the “Islamic world” not only conflates the specific places and people that comprise these groupings, but it also suggests that their identity as Muslims is the primary driver of their human agency. In other words, before they are Pakistanis, Iranians, Malaysians, Bangladeshis, or Tunisians, they are Muslims. It is their religion that is out in front of every other identifying factor about them. They may be doctors, fathers, mothers, schoolteachers, skateboarders, musicians, politicians, gay, straight, young, old, liberal, conservative, religious, or secular. Yet by recognizing and labeling them as living in “Muslim societies” or the “Islamic world,” what we are saying is that Islam is the defining element in their lives, whether they see it that way or not. In a similar vein, the adjective Islamic is often used to describe terrorism—for example, “Islamic terrorism”—which suggests that terrorism driven by religious motives is of a different variety than terrorism driven by political, economic, or other grievances. Why do we not refer to “Christian societies” or the “Buddhist world”? Why not “Christian terrorism” or “Buddhist terrorism”? Why is it that people who follow Islam are invariably labeled based on their religious beliefs but others are not? I believe that part of the answer lies in the salience of the “clash of civilizations” narrative over the years. That narrative, and similar discourses of dualism that operate on the idea of “Islam and the West,” have not only produced the linguistic tools—the vocabularies and lexicons—that we use to describe the world, but also a catalog of mental imagery on which our language is based. Thus,

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when we think of “Muslim societies,” it is unlikely that European or American cities come to mind. Is Minneapolis, for example, which is home to the largest Somali community in the United States, a “Muslim society”? How about Russia, where Muslims comprise 10 percent of the overall population? Asef Bayat has observed that the category of “Muslim societies” is premised on an image of a “bounded geographic ‘area’ as in [the] Middle East or Asia” where the population is reduced to a common denominator, Islam.34 In much of my own writing, I have sought to avoid this by advocating for the use of the phrase Muslim-majority societies instead of Muslim societies. Initially, my reasoning for this was that the word Muslim refers to people, not to societies, countries, or other places, and Muslim majority was a way of talking about the commonalities of countries where Muslims constituted the bulk of the population. More to the point of agency, though, this discursive move was a way to shift attention away from a reified “Islam” and toward its followers, whose identities are fluid and dynamic. Omid Safi provides an incisive description of this when he writes, “ ‘Islam’ does not get up in the morning. Islam does not brush its teeth. Islam does not take a shower. Islam eats nothing . . . Islam says nothing. Muslims do. Muslims get up in the morning, Muslims brush their teeth, Muslims shower, Muslims eat, and Muslims speak.”35 This intervention is important. Its power rests, in part, in the plain language with which it distinguishes between idea and agent, and its insistence that it is the latter that brings life to the former. Increasingly, however, I have come to sense that religious labels, when used as both nouns and adjectives, are worthy of problematization. This is especially the case with the word Muslim, which has been widely politicized over the past several decades. Much like Edward Said has argued that the word Islam imputes a sense of unified strangeness, the qualifier Muslim has come to take on a rather monolithic quality that communicates that, too.36 Apart from “Muslim societies,” it is not uncommon to talk about “Muslim populations,” “Muslim groups,” “Muslim countries,” “Muslim attitudes,” “Muslim beliefs” or, as we will examine later, “Muslim extremists.”37 Though the adjectival use of Muslim in these instances seeks to differentiate individual people from their religion, it confers nonetheless a sense of sameness upon a group of people that may or may not be alike. Even in its use as a noun, the words Muslim or Muslims can present challenges. Gabriele Marranci has argued, for example, that the we must consider the noun Muslim as nothing more than a description that, like all words, derives its meaning from context. He warns against Muslims becoming reduced to their material or religious culture such that the label Muslim itself becomes a replacement for human or person. “Surely ‘Muslim’ is not a ‘person’ in the agency signifier of the term, but rather an ‘idea,’ or in other words, an abstraction,” he writes.38 Put another way, to say “I am a Muslim” is not the same as saying “I am a human,” though common language does not easily differentiate what one physically is and what one claims as their identity based on what they believe. We are not born “Muslims” or “Christians” or “Westerners” or “Americans,” but rather acquire those identities based on familial, ethnic, or national histories. Paraphrasing author Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Marranci describes this idea further, and situates it within contemporary discourses on Islam where fear is a central component:

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CH AP TE R 1 If you happen to be sitting on a train and notice a dark-complexioned man wearing a long beard and a Muslim cap sitting near you, and if his cumbersomely large rucksack makes you feel uneasy, it is logically incorrect to say that you fear the “Muslim.”39

Marranci goes on to suggest that, in fact, there are no Muslims, or even Christians, trains, or rucksacks present in our minds. Instead, there are only mental images and representations of what those nouns mean. The problem lies in confusing one’s idea, or mental representation of such things, with reality. Critically, Marranci suggests that the primary commonality among Muslims is not Islam, but rather the fact that they are human beings. He explains this theory further in The Anthropology of Islam: For people who profess credo in Islam, [the term] “Muslim” has an emotional component attached to it. They feel to be Muslims. Then, and only then, the “feeling to be” is rationalized, rhetoricized, orthodoxized, or orthopraxized. Of course, people feel to be Muslim in different ways, which are unique to each of them, and express this feeling in the form of discourse.40

Thus, while it may be common to associate Muslims or “Westerners” with specific images or conceptions, the act of reducing the individual to a set of collective representations, and deploying those representations as the reality of what individuals are, is illogical. Such maneuvers suggest that the entire identity of a given group may be summed up by an arbitrarily chosen expression. With Islam, this misconstruction commonly represents Muslims as being influenced by religion alone. Thus, in thinking critically about agency and the ways in which its misplacement contributes to perceptions of division between Islam and “the West,” it is important to decouple religion from the human experience in order to see more fully the range of factors that animate the lives of citizens around the world. Problematizing discourse on any subject is a messy endeavor, let alone one that examines the relationship between a religion and a geopolitical construct. In some senses, it is impossible to talk about the world around us in ways that completely avoid reification, essentialism, misplaced agency, or other discursive traps. The nature of the human mind is to categorize, classify, and label such that we can easily recall information or make sense of what may feel like inordinate diversity. The generalizations that stem from this may point to some truth. It has become rather common, for example, to refer to women as a marginalized group, and in fact, data shows that in many cases this is so. At the same time, of course, that does not mean that all women are marginalized, and we can imagine many examples where this is not the case. I maintain that in our efforts to avoid the stereotypes generated by reification, essentialism, and misplaced agency, we must aim to think, speak, and write as specifically as possible. This may sound naı¨ve or

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simplistic, but I am convinced that part of the solution to overcoming representations of division involves patient and deliberate self-critique on the part of everyone who would utter a statement about Islam, Muslims, or “the West.” There are some basic questions that we might ask ourselves: Is the language I am using as specific as possible? Does it generalize about a large group of people, and if so how might I avoid that? What types of assumptions about people or the world are packaged into my statements? And is it necessary to describe these people or places in terms of religion, to begin with? To say, for instance, “A Muslim terrorist targeted Western civilians” is quite different from saying “A man of Pakistani origin carried out an attack against French citizens”; to say “Islamic terrorism is a growing threat to the West” is quite different from saying “Some people who find inspiration for violence within Islam threaten American and European cities”; to say “Islam and democracy are incompatible” is quite different from saying “Authoritarianism has characterized the governments of Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria.” These examples are certainly not perfect. But they point to distinctions, gradations, and qualifications that I believe should characterize discourse on these topics. Much to the chagrin of my detractors—they replace vagueness with specificity, stereotype with nuance, and descriptions that situate religion as the primary culprit with other, less sensational, labels that given premium to human agency. In doing so, I am not unaware of the fact that in some cases, religion is cited by perpetrators of violence as their chief source of inspiration—a topic that we will examine in more detail later. However, legitimizing those claims is to buy into the idea that a reified “Islam,” as a self-contained entity with essential features, can or should be the foremost explanatory factor, and that those who follow it are merely captives to its scriptural power. Importantly, as we established in the preceding chapter, discourse itself is not self-contained or detached from structures of global power. Often, these reified entitles and narratives about a clash between them are the result of deep-seated ideologies, imperial ambitions, and competing views about the world that find life within government corridors and are eventually embedded in policies that reinforce them. In the next chapter, we turn our attention to the political function of this discourse and examine the ways in which American and European foreign policy formulations in the twenty-first century have fortified the notion of a chasm between Islam and “the West.”

Further Reading Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, and Tony McEnery. Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Eid, Mahmoud, and Karim H. Karim, eds. Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections. New York: Palgrave, 2014. Nemo, Philippe. What Is the West? Translated by Kenneth Casler. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005.

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Rippin, Andrew, ed. Defining Islam: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2014. Varisco, Daniel. Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation. New York: Palgrave, 2005.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Identify other concepts that are often reified or essentialized in public discourses, and discuss the implications. 2. Why do you think that “Islam” and “the West” have become the primary categories used to describe people who are Muslims and who inhabit North America and Europe? 3. How might we talk about “Islam” without presupposing its immutable and self-contained identity, yet recognizing that there are communal beliefs among the world’s Muslims? 4. Do the challenges posed by reification, essentialism, and misplaced agency make it impossible to ever discuss commonalities among a group of people; for example, “Americans,” “Europeans,” or others? If so, why? If not, how might we avoid generalizations and stereotypes in such discussions? 5. Are religious ideas such as scriptural calls to violence to blame when followers of a particular faith heed them? Why or why not?

Notes 1. For an illuminating discussion on the emergence of “the West” and its representation over time, especially within the context of the Middle East, see: Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For an alternative view of history that rejects more conventional narratives about the emergence of “the West” and suggests that it came about as the result of sustained engagements with a technologically and socially advanced “East,” see: John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 2. It is important to note that discussions about violence within Islam and its manifestation in political acts of terrorism did not begin here. Many have cited the 1979 Iranian Revolution as the origin of more popular narratives that connect issues of national security with Islamic religious expressions, although it is difficult in the fact of historical data to maintain that that period is an identifiable starting point. Nonetheless, my point here is to begin the discussion with contemporary references that highlight more recent tendencies within academia to counter the “clash of civilizations” narrative. 3. Additionally, some Muslim scholars have argued that Islam’s religious teachings are, at their core, democratic in nature. See: Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 4. An example of recent often-cited research that helps make this case is the 2013 Pew Research poll on the views of Muslims around the world, which interviewed more

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than thirty-eight thousand Muslims in thirty-nine countries. It found that the way in which Muslim women see their role in the world often depends on where they live. While 96 percent of Muslim women in Malaysia, for example, said that a Muslim woman must always obey her husband, only 34 percent of Muslim women in Kosovo agreed. Similarly, 94 percent of Muslim women in Bosnia reported that a wife should be able to divorce her husband, while just 8 percent of Muslim women in Malaysia agreed. See: Pew Research Center, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics, and Society,” April 30, 2013. 5. Even “weather” is a reification of sorts. We ask: “What is the weather today?” or state “The weather is terrible” as if the warmth of the sun, the fullness of clouds, or phenomena like thunder and lightning all constituted a single thing—“weather”—that, on any given day, manifested itself in different ways. 6. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: First Fortress Press, 1962). 7. Stefano Allievi, “Muslim Voices, European Ears: Exploring the Gap between the Production of Islamic Knowledge and Its Perception,” in Producing Islamic Knowledge: Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe, eds. Martin van Bruinessen and Stefano Allievi (New York: Routledge, 2011), 29. 8. Steven A. Haggmark, “Islam as an Enemy? A Study in the Social Construction of ‘Realities,’ ” World and World 28, no. 1 (2008): 38–46. 9. D’Vera Cohn, “Future Immigration Will Change the Face of America by 2065,” October 5, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/05/future-immigration -will-change-the-face-of-america-by-2065/ (accessed November 14, 2016). Also, see: Robert P. Jones, The End of White, Christian America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016). 10. Roger Cohen, “Islam and the West at War,” February 17, 2015, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opinion/roger-cohen-islam-and-the-west-at-war .html (accessed November 18, 2016). 11. Theodore Schleifer, “Donald Trump: ‘I Think Islam Hates Us,’ ” March 20, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/09/politics/donald-trump-islam-hates-us/ (accessed November 19, 2016). 12. For a more thorough discussion of the cartoon controversy and its representation in media, see: Elisabeth Eide, “Differing Standards of Free Expression: Clashes of Laws during the Cartoon Controversy?” in From Transnational Relations to Transnational Laws, eds. Anne Hellum, Shaheen Sardar Ali, and Anne Griffiths (New York: Routledge, 2016). 13. Eide, “Differing Standards of Free Expression,” 283. 14. The White House Archives, “ ‘Islam Is Peace,’ Says President,” September 17, 2011, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917 -11.html (accessed November 21, 2016). 15. Howard Schneider, “For the First Time, a Pope Steps Foot in a Mosque,” May 7, 2001, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/05/07/ for-first-time-a-pope-sets-foot-in-a-mosque/5d8e460d-3770-4b0e-89b2-7313da269a27/ ?utm_term.bf9ae1345a75 (accessed November 21, 2016). 16. See, for example, Herbert Berg, “The Essence of Essentializing: A Critical Discourse on ‘Critical Discourse in the Study of Islam,’ ” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 24 (2012): 347; and Aaron W. Hughes, Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (London: Equinox, 2008). 17. Al-Jazeera, “Obama Says US at War with Those ‘Perverting Islam,’ ” February 19, 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/obama-islam-extremism-conference-15 0218213833133.html (accessed November 22, 2016). 18. Nihad Awad, “ISIS Is Not Just Un-Islamic, It Is Anti-Islamic,” September 5, 2014, http://time.com/3273873/stop-isis-islam/ (accessed November 22, 2016).

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19. For a helpful discussion of essentialism within Islam, and questions related to ISIS and its allegedly “Islamic” nature, see: Sally Quinn, “Reza Aslan: Radical Islam Is Still Islam,” September 30, 2014, https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2014/09/30/reza-aslan-radi cal-islam-is-still-islam/34314 (accessed November 22, 2016). 20. It is important to note here that even those for whom Islam’s scriptures validate and encourage violence likely do not see the religion in a negatively violent light. In other words, the acts of violence are seen as noble gestures that are divinely sanctioned, morally righteous, and thus acceptable. 21. Robbert Woltering, Occidentalisms in the Arab World: Ideology and Images of the West in the Egyptian Media (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 3. Also, see: Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin, 2004). 22. Hugh P. Goddard, “The Muslim Critique of the West,” Anvil 4, no. 2 (1987): 113–26. The three categories Goddard presents are oversimplifications, and he admits as much. However, he argues that any attempt to provide specific examples of any groups’ views risks such a thing. For the purposes of this book, I find his historical material helpful for introducing the reader to some of the themes that have emerged and remained rather consistent over time. 23. Goddard, “The Muslim Critique of the West,” 115. 24. Goddard, “The Muslim Critique of the West.” See, Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Muslims in the West: The Message and the Mission (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1983). 25. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, trans. R. Campbell (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1984). 26. Goddard, “The Muslim Critique of the West,” 122. 27. Gabriele Marranci, Wars of Terror (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 22. 28. Marranci, Wars of Terror, 60. 29. Marranci, Wars of Terror. 30. Marranci, Wars of Terror. 31. Asef Bayat, “The Use and Abuse of ‘Muslim Societies,’ ” ISIM Newsletter 13, (December 2003): 5. 32. Bayat, “The Use and Abuse of ‘Muslim Societies.’ ” 33. CNN, “Aslan: ‘Maher Not Very Sophisticated,’ ” September 30, 2014, http:// www.cnn.com/videos/bestoftv/2014/09/30/cnn-tonight-reza-aslan-bill-maher.cnn (accessed December 3, 2016). 34. Bayat, “The Use and Abuse of ‘Muslim Societies,’ ” 5. 35. Omid Safi, “Introduction: The Times, They Are A-Changin’—A Muslim Quest for Justice, Gender Equality, and Pluralism,” in Progressive Muslims: On Justice Gender and Pluralism, ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: OneWorld, 2003), 22. 36. Edward Said, “Islam through Western Eyes,” January 2, 1998, https://www.thenation.com/article/islam-through-western-eyes/ (accessed December 27, 2016). This essay originally appeared in The Nation on April 26, 1980, and it is republished here as part of that magazine’s digital archive. The date of the original publication is worth noting. Said wrote of media and political obsession with “Islam” in advance of the end of the Cold War, and just as the United States was turning its attention to Iran and other countries in the Middle East. 37. Even poll-based studies like Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, or Pew’s 2013 report, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics, and Society,” while offering important insights about the diversity of Muslims around the world, are based on the idea that people who happen to be Muslims “think” as Muslims first, and not as people—that their ideas are animated

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primarily by their religious beliefs. Another drawback of these types of studies is that the geographic focus—most often in the Middle East—reinforces Orientalist notions of Islam as a religion that exists outside of “the West.” 38. Gabriele Marranci, “Muslims as ‘Cultural Objects,’ ” Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist’s Blog, July 5, 2009, http://marranci.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/mus lims-as-cultural-objects%C2%A0/ (accessed December 27, 2016). 39. Marranci, “Muslims as ‘Cultural Objects.’ ” Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind describes a situation similar to the one paraphrased by Marranci, using lions instead of human beings. 40. Gabriele Marranci, The Anthropology of Islam (Oxford: Berg Press, 2008), 7–8.

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KEY TERMS: • bifurcation • Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) • Hamas

• normative • Pax Britannica • War on Terror

CHAPTER 2

From Prose to Policies A DISCOURSE OF DUALISM

The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars . . . Moreover the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. —President Barack Obama What do you say when you travel to the Middle East or perhaps elsewhere in the world and you hear people say the problem is not extremism, it’s Western bombs, it’s the invasion of Iraq—which you supported—it’s bombs elsewhere, it’s policies of the West that people are opposing? —Steve Inskeep, to British prime minister Tony Blair

The revered American political scientist Kenneth Waltz once wrote, “The practice of politics is greatly influenced by the images the politicians entertain.”1 Pointing to President Woodrow Wilson, for example, Waltz argued that his deep conviction that democracies desire, above all, to avoid war, led him to adopt policies that promoted democracy in the interest of establishing and maintaining global peace. Though this entailed waging war, the exact opposite of peace, Wilson’s thinking when it came to conflict with nondemocratic states was that the domestic structure of their governments mattered the most, and like other politicians who would follow in his footsteps, his emphasis on the end result—more democracies— superseded whatever path was necessary to get there. Waltz’s view was cogent. The images to which he referred point to the centrality of discourse in shaping policy—the words and phrases that form a vocabulary 43

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on a given topic, the mental imagery that comes to be associated with it, the assumptions and conclusions that are formed from a body of knowledge that grows and eventually defines that particular topic or concept for people in power. While our worldviews can generate and shape the language that we use, and the discourse that forms around a given subject, it is also the case that our language can generate our worldviews. This chapter will focus largely on the latter case, emphasizing the degree to which the bifurcated discourse of “Islam and the West” engenders policies that treat both sides of that equation as reified entities that exist within a relationship of conflict, and which subsequently shapes a myriad of political strategies and engagements that reinforce such a notion. Once a discourse is established that presumes the existence of two ideological subjects—Islam and “the West”—narratives about them can be packaged into actionable measures. “The West” and “Western” culture become labels under which an array of political positions is established and advocated. The “Western” way of life, or to borrow a line from Samuel Huntington, “Western civilization,” become ideas that rally activists, political parties, and militaries. Whether or not something called “the West” actually exists or not, and regardless of whether or not those who speak of it can identify what it is, does not matter. What matters, as Kenneth Waltz described, is the “image” of it that comes to occupy their imaginations and which entertains their ideas about how the world is, and how it should be. Of course, the very same is true for the other side of the dualism: “Islam.” Just as normative ideas about “the West” lead to actionable measures that reinforce the idea of its existence, long-standing narratives about Islam as a singular and towering ideological foe give rise to policies that fixate on the religious tradition and its followers, animating them for the general public in a reified way that bolsters the idea of its threatening character. Protecting “the West,” then, becomes nearly synonymous with fighting “Islam.” Policies that ensue are built on that notion. The purpose of this chapter is to track the way that the dualistic discourse of “Islam and the West” influences foreign and domestic policies and feeds a range of encounters with “the Other,” especially war and conflict, that reinforce, in a circular fashion, the very narrative upon which such policies are predicated. I will examine the rhetoric of key domestic and foreign policy advisors within American and European political systems to show how their worldviews and discursive universes influence decision making when it comes to relationships with Muslimmajority countries. While much of this is made plain in the lead-up to, and during, the War in Iraq and the “War on Terror,” I also suggest that more recent political dynamics demonstrate this as well.2 Apart from the rhetorical preludes that segue into actual policies, this chapter will also examine the implications of humanitarian intervention, and the ways in which American and European decisions to engage militarily on behalf of a suffering population in a particular Muslim-majority country can contribute to a dualistic understanding of “Islam and the West,” and normalize certain stereotypes and tropes about the former that serve to buttress the power of the latter. Ultimately, underpinning the discussion that follows is the idea that when we apply our critical thinking about language

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and discourse to manifested instances of its application in the world, we can gain a fuller understanding of just how constructed the notion of conflict between “Islam and the West” is.

The “Clash of Civilizations” Discourse in the War on Terror Although there is a long and storied history of “civilizational” rhetoric influencing foreign policies, an appropriate and relevant point of departure for the purposes of thinking about contemporary discourses on Islam and “the West” is the socalled War on Terror.3 As Michael Dunn has argued, regardless of one’s position on Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” to attempt to prove or disprove it is, by now, a fool’s errand, as it overlooks the fact that, no matter its legitimacy, it has been put into practice by politicians, and that is the more important point on which to focus.4 At the very outset, the language that initially governed the “War on Terror” evidenced a “civilizational” conflict. The phrase War on Terror itself, as Gilles Kepel has pointed out, is not innocent. It resounds of an implicit “us” versus “them” stratagem whereby policymakers “heighten fear while simultaneously tapping the righteous indignation of citizens in ‘civilized nations’ against barbaric murderers who would perpetrate despicable atrocities on innocent victims.”5 It is presumed that the “good guys”—the United States and its European allies—were the one’s leading the war against the bad guys—the “terrorists,” a label that became often used and easily muddled to justify any given act of military aggression against a target. The broad theme of “terror,” and its framing as an ideological foe of “the West,” played into the dichotomous “Islam and the West” divide in ways that a hypothetically more specific branding of war—that is, “War on Al-Qaeda,” or “War on the Taliban”—did not. Thus, the discursive parameters of the conflict’s name established what President Bush spoke of in his joint address to Congress in September 2001 when he said: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”6 Being “with us” meant supporting, unequivocally, the “war” against “them,” the terrorists, whose specific identities and numbers were not known entirely but fluctuated with each new attack that the United States deemed an affront to its fight against the ideological enemy, “terror.” While President George W. Bush was cautious regarding his language in the days and weeks following September 11, 2001, and during the lead-up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, civilizational rhetoric did slip into his presentations. It characterized the worldview of those with which he surrounded himself, too, making it clear to see how views of a world divided into “Islam and the West,” for instance, could easily come to be sociopolitical realities. Though Bush stated adamantly that there was no “clash of civilizations,” he nonetheless utilized phrases like civilized people and Western civilization, and he described the response

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to the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon as a “civilization’s fight.” In one instance, he described the War on Terror as a “crusade”—an offhanded comment that nonetheless played into the hands of Muslim extremists who believed that “the West” was interested in waging a religious battle against Islam.7 In a similar vein, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a long-time advocate of military engagement with Iraq, spoke about the decision to invade in civilizational terms, suggesting that if one were to look down at the world from outer space, a few distinct “civilizations”—Western Europe and North America—would be apparent, and that these countries are similar in terms of their political and economic might, and “tend not to covet the land or property or lives of other nations.”8 In other words, across the globe there were but a few nations whose leaders and governments could be entrusted to protect and care for all others, and who, as a result of being “civilized,” would not abuse that privilege. Within the context of unfolding narratives surrounding terrorism, Muslim extremists, 9/11, the “War on Terror,” and the soon-to-be-launched War in Iraq, that meant that the United States and its “Western” allies were in a position of power from which they could—and should—engage Afghanistan, Pakistan, and later Iraq, militarily. This general worldview did not manifest itself out of thin air. Indeed, it had been nurtured in the minds of policymakers for some time. Subsequent studies and analyses of the White House’s West Wing during this time reveal that a handful of influential scholars and activists who digested the “clash of civilizations” narrative and saw Islam as an ideological foe of “the West” had labored to ensure that their ideas were reaching the ears of key decision makers. In this regard, a few key figures stand out, including the scholar Bernard Lewis and the late Fouad Ajami, both of whom provided counsel to members of the Bush administration as they crafted a path toward eventual war with Iraq. In fact, though the phrase clash of civilizations is often attributed to Samuel Huntington, who popularized it, Bernard Lewis ushered it into political discourses years earlier in a 1990 article he wrote in The Atlantic, titled “The Roots of Muslim Rage.”9 Celebrated in many academic circles, Lewis has been hailed as “the doyen of Middle Eastern Studies,” “the father of Islamic studies,” “the West’s most distinguished scholar on the Middle East,” and “a sage for the age” on topics related to Islam and its relationship with, and within, “the West.” A noted scholar of the Ottoman Empire, specifically, his work is not without criticism, especially from devotees of Edward Said, who see it as unnecessarily simplistic in its reliance on cultural explanations for conflict and an implicit bias toward Muslims and Arabs. In addition to his 1993 text, Islam and the West, which situates these two “civilizations” in opposition to one another, he has published such works as Cultures in Conflict (1994), which discuss Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in terms of a conflictual relationship; The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (1998); and three years later in 2001, his most popular work, What Went Wrong: The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, a book that gained widespread attention from the general public and within political circles. He responded to demand for that text in 2003 with The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, and throughout the early 2000s he contributed frequently to op-ed pages of newspapers where his headlines included, among others, “The Revolt of Islam,” “Time

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for Toppling,” “The Enemies of God,” “Jihad vs. Crusade,” and “Muslim AntiSemitism.” Each of these pieces depicts Islam as enraged and threatening while simultaneously depicting “the West” as benevolent and threatened.10 These titles all reinforce a common theme: a conflict between Islam and “the West” that results from the allegedly backward nature of Muslim societies. In these writings, it becomes customary for Lewis, though aware of the diverse history of Islam, to selectively situate Islamic concepts in ways that distort them. By presenting only those details of Islamic history that align with his thesis, Lewis avoids various realities of that history in his later publications. Acknowledging such realities would unravel the claim that constitutes the foundation of his thesis: a bifurcated world where two rivals, a powerful and advancing “West” (understood by Lewis as the United States, Israel, Western Europe, and secular Judeo-Christian culture) and a backward, self-loathing Islam, compete in a struggle for power. As Edward Said argued in a review of What Went Wrong, much of Lewis’s later writing confirms for “Westerners” why “ ‘Islam’ attacked them so violently and so wantonly on September 11, and why what is ‘wrong’ with Islam deserves unrelieved opprobrium and revulsion.”11 In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, this view was popular among Washington politicians. Lewis’s influence within inner policy circles of the Bush administration became more apparent. It was not only the result of his long resume or his prolific writings on Islam. Rather, it resulted from his close alliance with a network of neoconservatives that held key posts in the White House. Among them were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Lewis was also particularly close to Vice President Dick Cheney, who called him “the very ideal of the wise man.”12 The relationship between Cheney and Lewis dates back almost two decades now. Cheney, reflecting on that relationship at the 2006 World Affairs Council Luncheon in Philadelphia, said: I had the pleasure of first meeting Bernard more than 15 years ago, during my time as Secretary of Defense. It was not long after the dictator of Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and we brought in a large number of outside experts to speak about the history and the way forward in the Middle East. As you might imagine, I got a wide range of advice—some of it very good and some of it terrible. No one offered sounder analysis or better insight than Bernard Lewis. He was an absolute standout, and I decided that day that this was a man I wanted to keep in touch with, and whose work I should follow carefully in the years ahead. Since then we have met often, particularly during the last four-and-a-half years, and Bernard has always had some very good meetings with President Bush.13

David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush, confirmed those meetings, indicating that at times he saw Bush with Lewis’s marked-up articles among his daily briefing papers.14 During one such meeting with Bush, Lewis suggested that the soul-searching question of “why Muslims hate us” needed revision.

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According to Lewis, vast campaigns designed to educate Muslims about America’s virtues were misplaced. Rather, Lewis suggested a “get tough or get out” approach—one that echoes Pax Britannica, imposed by the British Empire that Lewis once served during his time in the British Army’s Royal Armored Corps and Intelligence Corps during World War II.15 In 2003, he argued, “The confrontation with a force that defines itself as Islam has given a new relevance—indeed, urgency—to the theme of the ‘clash of civilizations,’ ” and suggested that “this hatred [on the part of Muslims] goes beyond the level of hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries, and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not so much for what it does as for what it is.”16 Lewis seemed to believe that respect was a product of fear, and that fear could be established by displays of force and power. He explained how that force could be deployed in a private meeting with Vice President Cheney, saying, “I believe that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power.”17 Moreover, George Packer, journalist and author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, summarizes a memo sent to Cheney from Lewis in September 2001. A portion of it read, “The Arabs cannot pull themselves out of their historic rut. They need to be jolted out by some foreign-born shock. The overthrow of the Iraqi regime would provide one.”18 Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Cheney said, “We’ll continue to rely on Bernard Lewis’s rigorous thinking, his sound judgment, his realism, and his optimism.”19 Speaking in 2002, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, “Bernard has taught how to understand the complex and important history of the Middle East, and use it to guide us where we will go next to build a better world for generations to come.”20 In effect, the Lewis Doctrine became American foreign policy. In addition to Lewis, the Bush administration also sought the expertise of Fouad Ajami. Ajami provided an additional layer of credibility to the inner circle of policymakers who were developing strategies for responding to growing instances of terrorism, and for going to war with Iraq. Not only was Ajami a known scholar of Islam and the Middle East, but importantly, he was a Muslim. Thus, as a Muslim, Ajami was expected to have an “insider’s understanding” as to the cultural and political dynamics of Muslim-majority countries—an important dynamic of the “Islam and the West” discourse that we will explore further in chapter 5. Ajami, who was of Lebanese descent, was a professor of political science at Princeton University, and he became known for his strong support of the invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s. While many Arabs and Muslims criticized his support of the Bush administration’s policies leading up to the Iraq War, his writings and public statements expressing his approval of the policies caught the ear of Dick Cheney. In August 2003 at a reunion of Korean War veterans in San Antonio, Texas, Cheney tried to assuage skeptics who believed that a unilateral attack might cause more harm than good. He said, “As for the reaction of the Arab Street, the Middle East Expert, Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation in Basra and Baghdad, the streets are sure to erupt in joy.”21 On March 22, as bombs rained down over Baghdad, Ajami was the featured guest on a CBS News program

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where he declared, “We are coming into acquisition of Iraq. It’s an amazing performance.”22 Later in Foreign Affairs magazine, Ajami wrote, “The driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world.”23 Ajami loathed what he saw as increased antiAmericanism as a result of the Iraq War, and he regretfully admitted, “We have to live with this anti-Americanism. It’s the congenital condition of the Arab world, and we have to discount a good deal of it as we press on with the task of liberating the Iraqis.”24 The approaches of Lewis and Ajami were similar. Both deployed a discourse of dualism that situated Islam and Muslims on one side of a cultural chasm and the enlightened “West” on the other. Both men also supported rigorous military policies that would “shock” (as Lewis put it) Arabs and Muslims, and force them to accept liberalism, democratic government, basic freedoms, and other values and characteristics that were associated with the United States and its European allies. The type of intellectuals that influenced Bush indicates the existence of a preconceived idea about how events would play out, and those scholars who participated in and confirmed this side of the discourse to Bush were often touted as paradigmatic examples of intellectuals in their areas of expertise. Conversely, intellectuals who dissented or offered sharp critiques of prevailing policies were not only disregarded, but in one definitive example, they were marginalized. Secretary of State Colin Powell was often outspoken about the need to have a multilateral force for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Suggesting that he would only support an invasion by the international community, Bush asked Powell to take his case to the United Nations. Just over one month prior to the commencement of hostilities, on February 6, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council, saying that there was “no doubt in my mind” that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was working to obtain nuclear weapons. In a vivid moment of that speech, Powell held up a sealed vial of anthrax, deadly bacteria that many believed terrorists would use against the United States. He later recounted how Vice President Cheney joked with him before the speech. According to Powell, Cheney said, “You’ve got the high poll ratings. You can afford to lose a few points.”25 As it became clear that the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, Powell became increasingly outspoken. Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung wrote on October 1, 2006, that eight days after Bush’s election to a second term, Chief of Staff Andrew Card phoned Powell and said, “The president would like to make a change.”26 DeYoung writes: He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell’s resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12.27

Efforts were also made to marginalize intellectuals outside the circle of Bush’s advisors. Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim scholar, critic of American foreign

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policy, and the man Foreign Policy magazine ranked as the eighth among the world’s top one hundred public intellectuals in 2008, was refused entry into the United States shortly after accepting a position at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for International Peace. The Department of Homeland Security cited the ideological exclusion provision as the basis for the revocation of his visa. This provision states that individuals associated with terrorist groups may be banned from entering the United States. Ramadan was accused of donating money to a Palestinian humanitarian organization between 1998 and 2002. The organization allegedly supported Hamas, and as a result, it was claimed that Ramadan endorsed terrorism. He raised questions about his visa ban in a 2006 Washington Post op-ed: The U.S. Embassy claims that I “reasonably should have known” that the charities in question provided money to Hamas. But my donations were made between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United States did not blacklist the charities until 2003. How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the U.S. government itself knew?28

Ramadan’s scholarly works explore relations between the United States and Muslim-majority countries, and he rejects the bifurcation of “the West” and “the Muslim world.” Winner of the 2006 European of the Year award, the Swiss-born, self-described western Muslim calls on his coreligionists to embrace Islam in a way that harmonizes European traditions with the universal laws and values of Islam. Moreover, Ramadan has been outspoken about controversial topics such as capital punishment and religious freedoms. He wrote in a 2005 article in The Guardian: The unilateral condemnations one hears in the West will not help to move things along. On the contrary, Muslim populations are convincing themselves of the Islamic character of these practices through a rejection of the West, on the basis of a simplistic reasoning that stipulates that “the less Western, the more Islamic.”29

Advocates of Ramadan’s ban cited his speeches that are critical of the United States’ steadfast support of Israel and an American military presence in the Middle East. It appeared that his criticism cast doubt upon his loyalty to American values. While Ramadan is a Swiss-born citizen, the fact that he is a Muslim and the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founding member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, caused skepticism and fear that his views on US foreign policy would result in violence. The Middle Eastern Studies Association, the American Academy of Religion, and the American Civil Liberties Union all expressed their discontent with the decision to refuse Ramadan entry into the United States, and while various lawsuits and legal actions ensued, the ban was not reversed. Ramadan, currently living in the United Kingdom, went on to say in the 2006 op-ed: My experience reveals how U.S. authorities seek to suppress dissenting voices and—by excluding people such as me from their country—

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manipulate political debate in America. Unfortunately, the U.S. government’s paranoia has evolved far beyond a fear of particular individuals and taken on a much more insidious form: the fear of ideas.30

What emerges from this picture is the idea that people in positions of power have the ability to control what knowledge is transmitted within a particular discourse. The facts, then, that operate within a particular discourse are not always undetached from ideology; they do not stand alone as true representations of reality. Jonathan Z. Smith makes the point that people’s biases cause them to selectively employ information when he says, “There are no data as given. Data are what I choose for my argument.”31 Considering Tariq Ramadan and Fouad Ajami, both revered Muslim intellectuals with strikingly different views of US foreign policy and the relationship between the United States and Muslim-majority countries, it becomes clear that Ajami was chosen to provide the “data” used by the Bush administration for going to war with Iraq because his worldview aligned with those who made policy in the Bush administration. Ramadan, on the other hand, was not only not consulted, but he was also marginalized through a visa ban that prohibited him from entering the United States.

“Good” and “Evil” Political Discourse in the War on Terror On November 6, 2001, speaking at a joint news conference with French president Jacques Chirac, President Bush said: You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror. This [Osama bin Laden] is an evil man that we’re dealing with, and I wouldn’t put it past him to develop evil weapons to try to harm civilization as we know it. And that’s why we must prevail and that’s why we must win.32

Just one month earlier in a videotaped address, Osama bin Laden said, “I tell them that these events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidels. May God shield us and you from them.”33 These two narrative traditions imagine a dichotomous world in which the forces of good contend with the forces of evil, each side variously defined by the different parties. They define a religious dualism between good and evil that is used to signify the presence of two basic, opposed, and irreducible forces. These two opposed forces are depicted as being in competition with one another, and each side views itself as essentially good while the other is viewed as fundamentally evil. Such language has become pronounced in metanarratives about Islam and the United States.

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Good and evil, light and dark, threat and threatened, tyranny and liberty, and hero and villain are binaries that orient this structure. Bush and bin Laden seem to understand these binaries in a similar way, and they deploy similar reductive language in setting forth their metaphysical and political beliefs and in encouraging popular support for their objectives. In his 2009 farewell speech to the US citizenry, President Bush said, “I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise.”34 David Loy, author of The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory, writes, “What is the difference between bin Laden’s view and Bush’s? They are opposites, of course—mirror opposites.”35 Loy suggests that bin Laden and Bush are actually participating in the same discourse. Whatever bin Laden views as good, Bush views as evil. Whatever Bush views as good, bin Laden views as evil. Loy comments, “That makes them two different versions of the same holy war between good and evil.”36 The narratives of Bush and bin Laden require the presence of an enemy; their rhetoric necessitates a perpetual struggle between one another. George Orwell’s 1949 classic Nineteen Eighty-Four provides an anecdotal yet instructive example of the need for an evil other. In the novel, Orwell depicts three nations—Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia—in a state of perpetual war with each other. The governments of these nations use war as a tool to justify the control of their populations and as an excuse for their failures. Governments of each nation create fear and hatred of the other nations, and the economic, political, and social well-being of each nation depends on it being at war with the other “enemies.” This dualistic way of understanding creates a cycle of peril that perpetually calls into existence an “other.” The “other” is not only understood as being evil but must also be battled for the good of society. As we have established, for many years that evil was communism. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan said in his famous Evil Empire speech, “There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.”37 Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” and said that communism “is the focus of evil in the modern world.”38 Following the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush spoke about the US invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the First Gulf War, proclaiming the dawn of a “new world order.”39 The war was a building block for an eventual shift in the United States’ enemy—the conception of the evil other eventually moved from communism to Islamic fundamentalism. Saddam Hussein became the “most dangerous man in the world” and America’s first post–Cold War bogeyman. The US government suggested that Iraq had plans to dominate the entire Middle East, creating a narrative to justify what would become decades of a military presence in the region.40 Shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush said, “My administration has a job to do and we’re going to do it. We will rid the world of evil-doers.”41 Addressing the multifaith prayer service following the attacks, Bush remarked, “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”42 Events such as the Soviet Union’s nuclear build-up, the feared expansion of communism, the Iranian Revolution, and the

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September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks exacerbated the perceived threat of the other, fortifying and legitimizing dualistic narratives of good versus evil. In a similar way, bin Laden evoked the dualism of good and evil, suggesting that God had attacked the United States. Bin Laden writes in a statement titled “The Winds of Faith” in October 2001: God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest buildings, praise and blessings to Him. . . . When God Almighty granted success to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them to destroy America utterly. . . . The very least you can say about these people [Americans] is that they are immoral, dissolute, apostates, who help the butcher slaughter his victim and help the oppressor against the innocent child. May God Almighty protect me against them, and may He give them what they deserve.43

The narrative of good and evil unfolds on a stage that is already set. Qualities that are good are instinctively claimed by members of an inside group. As a consequence, members of the outside group are automatically assigned the qualities of “evil.” By this, good and evil do not exist independently but only as negative projections of one another. What good is, evil is not. What evil is, good is not. Thus, each term enhances the other, by contrast making it difficult to speak of one term independently. Further, once one constructs an evil other, its annihilation becomes a pressing issue. David Loy writes, “If the world is a battleground of good and evil forces, the evil that is in the world must be fought and defeated by any means necessary.”44 Bush displays a sense of urgency to defeat this evil when he says, “We must prevail . . . we must win.”45 Though Bush does not explain the consequences of not winning, it is clear that he regards them as perilous and fearful. Winning, defined here as eradicating the presence of an evil enemy, is not something that may possibly happen as a result of good’s triumph over evil, but in fact, it is necessary for the continuation of “civilization as we know it.”46 Similarly, bin Laden suggests the urgency of defeating “the infidels” by invoking imagery of God shielding “us and you from them.”47 The invocation of God in bin Laden’s speech not only refers to a holy war where the faithful fights the infidel who has projected military power into Muslim-sanctified spaces, but also suggests the presence of an enemy so strong that only God can offer full protection. Bruce Lincoln, author of Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion after September 11th, comments on the way in which Osama bin Laden negotiates relations with those people he addresses in his speech. Lincoln writes: Two of the pronouns—“us” and “them”—are set in opposition to each other, and the third (“you”) is suspended between these two parties. The task this text takes for itself is to draw that “you” into close association with “us” and away from the enemy “them.” It does this by aligning the sole noun of the phrase and its transcendent marker unambiguously with the “us”: “May God shield us—and you—from them.”48

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Bin Laden’s suspension of “you” between “us” and “them” indicates that the group he speaks to is not fully identified as part of his inside group but as an outside group that has a choice to make in a battle where the sides have already been drawn. With no room for neutral ground, the “you” bin Laden addresses is obliged to reinforce the existing dualism of good and evil by choosing one side or the other. In a similar manner, Bush separates “you” from his inside group “us,” strengthening the dualism by limiting neutrality. He says, “You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”49 Both Bush and bin Laden are methodical in their appeal to those they label as “you.” Osama bin Laden invokes the blessing of God on potential supporters, engendering sympathy to join a cause he views as sanctified. Bush takes a similar approach, though he does not make specific religious references. Appealing to the emotions of those he addresses, Bush presents a choice grounded in logic. He warns against “evil weapons” held by an “evil man” and suggests that harm may come to “civilization as we know it” if bin Laden is allowed to continue on his path.50 Thus, for the well-being of society, Bush encourages enlistment on his side of the dualism. Perceptions of good and evil cannot be identified with one specific religious worldview, as many world religions have narratives depicting a Manichaean struggle between the two opposing forces. In fact, dualisms are common in and perhaps even borne out of monotheistic religions. Among them, the Abrahamic religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—provide clear examples. These monotheistic dualisms include: God and Satan, angels and demons, Heaven and Hell, and salvation and damnation. These religions teach their followers to resist and even fight against evil and that doing so will provide them with rewards, if not in this life then in the afterlife. A safety net, or as Peter Berger calls it, a “sacred canopy,” emerges from one’s beliefs and provides a sense of security from the “evil” forces that compete with or try to destroy those beliefs. Resisting participation in these discourses risks defeat by the “enemy.” As Loy writes, “We can feel comfortable in our own goodness only by attacking and destroying the evil outside us.”51 Loy suggests that popular fascination with war is a result of the need for a heroic identity—one that aligns “us good guys here against those bad guys there.”52 The challenges of daily life are recast into larger, more complex conflicts so that, as Loy points out, “The problems with my life and yours are now over there.” The events of September 11th bring focus to the dynamics of this dualism, as public discourses on Muslims and sociopolitical realities that affect them become intertwined.

Rhetorical Shifts and Policy Maneuvers When Barack Obama took office in January 2008, the political climate in the United States was ripe for a change in course. The Iraq War was inching into its fifth year, the War on Terror its seventh, and with little end in sight to both, a

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rookie politician who pinned his campaign on “hope” and “change” was poised to bring a fresh perspective to Washington. In his famous Cairo speech, Obama aimed to reset relations with the so-called Muslim world. His proponents heralded the historic remarks as nothing short of game changing, while his critics suggested that his intention to establish more productive relations with Muslim-majority countries was merely an act of sympathizing with leaders who supported terrorism and other policies that spelled disaster for “the West.” What was clear, however, in Obama’s Cairo speech and in subsequent speeches and policies was a rhetorical shift that deemphasized religious language and decoupled Islam from public discourses on terrorism. In his view, phrases like radical Islam, Islamic terrorism, and jihad had no place in government as they unfairly linked an entire religious tradition to episodes of violence carried out by a small fraction of the world’s Muslims. “What I have been careful about when I describe these issues is to make sure that we do not lump these murderers into the billion Muslims that exist around the world, including in this country, who are peaceful, who are responsible, who, in this country, are fellow troops and police officers and fire fighters and teachers and neighbors and friends,” he said in an interview in September 2016.53 To that end, during Obama’s tenure in office, his administration moved to scratch references to Islam from a number of law enforcement training guides and programs. In addition, the government purged documents, books, pamphlets, and other training materials that suggested explicit links between terrorism and religion, and which drew parallels between law-abiding Muslims and organizations and violent actors. Among the documents were instruction books on topics like “Islam 101,” which taught government officials that Islam “regulates most aspects of life” and aims to “transform [a] country’s culture into 7th century Arabian ways.”54 Included in its list of recommended readings were two books by American author Robert Spencer, whose sharp views of Islam and Muslims and his history of inflaming interreligious tensions led to a number of rebukes, including a permanent ban from the United Kingdom and the designation as a “hate group leader” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Though the notion of a “clash of civilizations” was rejected rhetorically, many of the policies of the Obama administration made it more difficult to argue that it was rejected in practice. The dualistic discourse of “Islam and the West” has become central to how world powers, especially the United States and its European allies, operate. Whether or not the associated language resounds of a divide between these two reified entities or not, the foreign and domestic policies that were considered and carried out over the years invariably reinforced the idea that the globe is divided into two camps, with “the West” on one side, standing guard over a nefarious “Islam” that may wreak havoc at any moment on territorial assets, interests, and security. Deepa Kumar has argued that the Obama years were characterized by a “liberal imperialism,” which reframed American engagements with the Middle East in slightly different terms but operated on the premises of Orientalist views of the region. The “Changing Course” strategy that former Secretary of State Madeleine

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Albright initiated in 2007, and which guided the Obama administration’s thinking in the subsequent years, urged “mutual respect and understanding between Americans and Muslims” (oddly implying that the two were necessarily distinct) yet insisted nonetheless that the path away from “violent extremists” and toward “world peace” was one of an essentially “Western” character: military options for curtailing the alleged threat of Iran remained; nonproliferation standards would be enforced, as would plans for a two-state solution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; the United States would clarify its long-term goals in Iraq and would keep tens of thousands of troops in the country; and Afghanistan and Pakistan would be subject to renewed international focus as centers of extremism, where nations such as Saudi Arabia, which were also founts of extremism but which provided key natural resources to “the West,” were largely ignored.55 Underlying these policies and the Cairo speech was the idea that Muslims around the world must engage in careful and meaningful self-reflection to ascertain the reasons for their woes, and that future relations with the United States would be fruitful only if, upon doing that, they agreed to go along with an agenda set forth by the American government. On occasion, as some journalists and commentators have noted, Obama’s language slipped and he revealed, momentarily, that the Orientalist “Islam-West” divide was alive in his worldview. In an interview with The Atlantic in March 2016, he commented on Southeast Asia, and compared it with the Middle East, saying: “Southeast Asia . . . still has huge problems—enormous poverty, corruption—but is filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people who are every single day scratching and clawing to build businesses and get education and find jobs and build infrastructure. The contrast [with the Middle East] is pretty stark.”56 Packed into this statement is the image of a monolithic “Middle East,” all of which is inherently “stark” and lacking when compared to a reified “Southeast Asia,” whose problems are lessened because of the “striving,” “ambitious,” “energetic” people who live there. The agency of Muslims in the Middle East is not present—they exist as a singular bloc of faceless, nameless people who do not possess the human density and complexity to overcome their pitiful state. Most importantly, Muslims remained fixed to discussions of national security, terrorism, and other conflicts, even if the “Islamic” component was stripped from the language and rhetoric of official government positions. The Obama administration’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program illustrates this. CVE aimed to replace the “War on Terror” approach of the Bush administration, and from the start its name resounded of a more balanced method: “violent extremists” rather than “Islamic terrorists” or “radical Muslims” were the target, with the underlying logic being that a fixation on one group, Muslims, would not only advance stereotypes but would also blind the government to other real threats that existed. One of the linchpins of CVE was its emphasis on community. The program partnered with community centers, private businesses, and places of worship, and encouraged them to report suspicious people and to look for signs that a person may be drifting toward extremism. Yet the bulk of the program’s focus was directed at the Muslim community. In Washington, roundtable sessions and

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workshops were held on tackling “violent extremism,” though the panels and presentations prioritized the “Muslim threat” and left dialogue surrounding white nationalists, far-right gun owners, and other violent actors by the wayside.57 Indeed, an aspect of CVE that reinforced misperceptions and misunderstanding was its community policing. Though not codified, the program played into deep-seated fears about religiosity, religious piety, conservatism, and bolstered the idea that a Muslim may be deemed “suspicious” if he or she operated in a way that ran counter to prevailing “Western,” “liberal,” or “secular” norms. At the heart of this was a sustained conversation about “radicalization” and what warning signs indicate that one is on a pathway toward violence. Often, the perceived indicators were arbitrary and had more to do with one’s appearance or religious life than some violent action or expressed desire to do harm to others. Beards, headscarves, religious expressions in Arabic, or even criticism of American foreign policy became harbingers for those who were inclined to see ghosts in every Muslim shadow. Arjun Singh Sethi, a member of the Sikh Coalition, articulated the challenges of this approach: [The CVE program] encourages a hypersensitivity to the mundane behavior of young American Muslims and demonizes acts that are protected by the First Amendment. Innocuous activities like growing a beard, attending a fiery sermon, protesting US foreign policy, or fraternizing with Muslim political groups become “warning signs” that are reported to the police under the guide of “countering violent extremism.”58

Scholar Erik Love, who studies anti-Muslim prejudice and racism in the United States, has noted, similarly, that the domestic CVE program was coupled with foreign policies that largely carried on measures and approaches that were implemented during the Bush administration, and were part and parcel to the “War on Terror.”59 For instance, the Patriot Act, which some viewed as infringing upon the civil liberties of Muslims and Arabs, remained intact; indefinite detentions and warrantless surveillance were also routine; while some troops were recalled from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the drone program was ramped up, killing scores of people in the Middle East to such a degree that some analysts and commentators remarked that Obama’s legacy would be defined by future generations as the “Drone presidency”; Guantanamo Bay Prison remained open, despite campaign promises to close it and end the torture that occurred there; and much to the chagrin of Middle East peace supporters, American policy toward Israel and Palestine changed very little. The raised expectations that many Muslims had eventually fizzled out. Polling data shows that. The Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., released a study showing that between May 2009 and May 2010, the total number of Middle Eastern Arabs who expressed optimism in Obama’s approach toward the region plummeted from 51 percent to 16 percent, while those who described themselves as “discouraged” by Obama’s approach shot upward from 15 percent to 63 percent.60 Likewise, polling data from the Pew Research Center indicated that while 41 percent of Americans expressed a favorable view of Islam in 2005, during the

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Bush administration, only 30 percent expressed favorable views five years later during the Obama administration, with more Americans reporting that they believed that Islam encouraged violence more than other religions.61 What stands out here is that discourse is far more than mere language. It is comprised of words, phrases, statements, and ways of thinking about or imagining a given topic. But discourse may also become embedded in ways of acting—in choices that we make, even subconsciously, or in the way that we live our lives based on a worldview that seems natural and normal. In the case of governing, the discourse of “Islam and the West” has, for so long, been fastened to political apparatuses and machinery that even a rhetorical purging of language cannot change the ideological pillars that are firmly in place. No matter the party or the policy, the idea of “the West,” protected by a powerful United States who upholds certain values and patrols certain quarters of the world, looms large, just as its foil opposite, “Islam,” remains a central counterpart to that geopolitical entity, providing a rationale for its policies and an ideological other with which to contend.

Islam and “the West” in the Trump Presidency Some of the Trump administration’s policies on homeland security and curtailing the threat of terrorism offer an instructive example of the way in which “civilizational” discourses that emphasize a “clash” between Islam and “the West” can eventuate in policies that reinforce the image of such a thing. Riding on a wave of populism that swept through Europe and brought nationalists and far-right leaders to key positions of political power, Trump pinned his aspirations for the Oval Office, in part, on a series of narratives about Islam and “the West” that resounded of a looming threat and of inherent conflict between the two perceived sides. Central to Trump’s worldview on Islam were a number of conservative websites, media outlets, and think tanks that have long been described as furnishing anti-Muslim views. The website Breitbart, run by Trump’s former senior advisor Steve Bannon, routinely featured frightening stories about Muslims and Islam, nearly always within the context of violence and terrorism, and it featured articles by controversial writers such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, both of whom the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled “anti-Muslim hate group” leaders. Trump’s inner circle of advisors also included Kellyanne Conway, a pollster from Washington, D.C., who had worked closely with the Center for Security Policy, a think tank whose president, Frank Gaffney, regularly floated conspiracy theories about the influence of Sharia, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran. These voices provided the impetus for proposals and policy measures that Trump embraced. Much of his campaign rhetoric decried an “Islamic” threat while simultaneously establishing the image of an ideal America that was comprised of Judeo-Christian values and which protected itself from outside intruders, whether Mexican border crossers or refugees from the Middle East. Distancing himself from his predecessor, “Islamic” religious language was reintroduced in

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major policy speeches and in legislation, especially regarding so-called Islamic terrorism. During several occasions in his early presidency, he appeared to inflame tensions by rejecting political correctness and touting fables, half-truths, and falsehoods that represented Muslims as a less-than-civilized people who did not measure up to the moral stature of “the West.”62 The discourse on Muslims and Islam that characterized Trump’s campaign and early presidency, amplified by the anti-Muslim voices who were closest to him, formed the foundation of policy measures like the so-called Muslim Ban, or immigrant halt that blocked refugees and VISA holders from a half-dozen Muslim-majority nations. (In his original announcement of the plan in December 2015, which called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” Trump cited a survey conducted by Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy as evidence for the urgency of the measure.)63 During his campaign, Trump floated the possibility of a Muslim registry, harkening back to the days of World War II when Japanese Americans were required to register with the government and were, in fact, placed in internment camps. In a speech during the summer of 2017, Trump articulated his “civilizational” worldview in explicit terms. In Warsaw, he cast the fight against terrorists as one in which “the West” must direct its focus and energy on “the south or east”—a region of the world that he said aimed to “erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.”64 He added: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”65 Curiously, the word will indicated that whether “the West” survived was not a matter of fate but rather would be based on the determination of American and European political and military forces. The threat to “the West,” in Trump’s view, was ever present, ever lurking, and thus the reason for his early policies that targeted Muslim immigrants and refugees. For him, like many before him, “the West” was also synonymous with the Judeo-Christian faith, which, as he warned, would be “erased” lest leaders stood up and fought for it. “Who we are,” for Trump, did not obviously include Muslims, and his presidency became a project of erecting proverbial borders to defend “Western” civilization, which he perceived as superior to its allegedly primary threat: Islam.

Further Reading Bonyanian, Masoud. Muslims’ Perceptions of the Bush Doctrine: Bridging the Gap with Islam. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009. Bosco, Robert M. “The United States: ‘Islam Will Police Itself.’ ” In Securing the Sacred: Religion, National Security, and the Western State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. Maira, Sunaina Marr. The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the War on Terror. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Norton, Anne. On the Muslim Question. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Rosefielde, Steven. “Islam.” In Trump’s Populist America. New Jersey: World Scientific, 2017.

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. If there is, indeed, a relationship between political discourse and political policy, is it merely causal? Why or why not? Would a change in political discourses about Muslims necessarily entail a change in policies toward them? 2. Discuss the ramifications of sustained military engagement; that is, war, against a faceless enemy, for example, terrorism. What implications are there for people or communities who are branded as “terrorists”? Does this open up the possibility for limitless, endless war? Why or why not? 3. Are “good” and “evil” objective categories in world politics? Is there a universal standard of what constitutes both (i.e., Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and if so, who determines it? 4. Discuss whether or not “Islamic terrorism” exists. Does it have distinct traits, apart from that which is shared by its perpetrators? How frequently, and where, are terms like Christian terrorism, Jewish terrorism, Hindu terrorism, or Buddhist terrorism used in public? When do we discuss acts of violence in religious terms, and when in terms of the nationality or ethnicity of its agents? 5. Do projects of “imperialism,” territorial access, or the pursuit of strategic interests naturally lend themselves to enemy “Others”? Why or why not? How might it be possible to pursue national interests without vilifying others?

Notes 1. Kenneth Waltz, Man, The State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 225. 2. Some scholars have pointed to the shift, for example, from the rhetoric of US president George W. Bush to that of his successor, Barack Obama, the latter who carefully guarded the language he used to describe Muslim-majority societies, or his framing of war and conflict in those places. Even so, it is important to remember that language—words, phrases, expressions—are only one part of discourse, and the “images” that Kenneth Waltz mentions, even if unspoken, influence policies nonetheless. In the case of the Obama administration, this is seen in a realpolitik approach, and especially his reliance on the drone program and covert military operations to protect “Western” interests all the while targeting an ideological other that was Muslim. 3. While fighting terrorism has, over the past two decades, prompted a general “War on Terror” in the sense that the United States and its European allies see terrorism writ large as a primary global concern and have positioned it atop the list of military priorities, my use of “War on Terror” here refers specifically to the US-led campaign in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001, and continuing through the Obama

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administration’s tenure in Washington, and which primarily targeted the Taliban and AlQaeda. A broader discussion about terrorism as an ideological foe will follow. 4. Michael Dunn, “The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and the ‘War on Terror,’ ” 49th Parallel 20 (2006): 2. 5. Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (London: Belknap Press, 2004), 112. 6. White House Archives, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” September 20, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920–8.html (accessed July 14, 2017). 7. Dunn, “The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and the ‘War on Terror,’ ” 2. For more context on George W. Bush’s linguistic choices during the War on Terror as they relate to religious words and phrases, see: Mark G. Toulouse, God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 96. 8. Dunn, “The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and the ‘War on Terror.’ ” 9. Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic, September 1990. 10. See: Bernard Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam,” The New Yorker, November 19, 2001; “Time for Toppling,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2002; “The Enemies of God,” New York Review of Books, March 25, 1993; “Jihad vs. Crusade,” Washington Post, September 27, 2001; “Muslim Anti-Semitism,” Middle East Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1998): 43–49. 11. Edward Said, “Impossible Histories: Why Many Islams Cannot Be Simplified,” Harpers, July 2002. 12. Richard Cheney, “Vice President’s Remarks at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia Luncheon Honoring Bernard Lewis,” available from the George W. Bush Administration White House website, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/ releases/2006/05/20060501–3.html (accessed July 14, 2017). 13. Cheney, “Vice President’s Remarks.” 14. Peter Waldman, “A Historian’s Take on Islam Steers U.S. in Terrorism Fight,” Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2004. 15. Pax Britannica refers to the period of relative peace in Europe following the Battle of Waterloo. This period, realized by vast displays of force, was typified by British political and economic dominance. 16. Bernard Lewis, “I’m Right, You’re Wrong, Go to Hell,” The Atlantic, May 2003. 17. Dick Cheney, as quoted in George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), 51. 18. Cheney in Packer, The Assassins’ Gate. 19. Cheney, “Vice President’s Remarks.” 20. Waldman, “A Historian’s Take.” 21. Adam Shatz, “The Native Informant,” The Nation, April 10, 2003, https://www .thenation.com/article/native-informant/ (accessed July 14, 2017). 22. Shatz, “The Native Informant.” 23. Shatz, “The Native Informant.” 24. Shatz, “The Native Informant.” 25. Karen DeYoung, “Falling on His Sword,” Washington Post, October 1, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092700 106.html (accessed July 14, 2017). 26. DeYoung, “Falling on His Sword.” 27. DeYoung, “Falling on His Sword.” 28. Tariq Ramadan, “Why I’m Banned in the USA,” Washington Post, October 1, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006 092901334.html (accessed July 14, 2017).

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29. Tariq Ramadan, “We Must Not Accept This Repression,” The Guardian, March 30, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/mar/30/religion.uk (accessed July 15, 2017). 30. Ramadan, “Why I’m Banned in the U.S.” 31. Jonathan Z. Smith, “Domestication of Sacrifice,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, ed. Jonathan Z. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 32. CNN, “You Are Either with Us or Against Us,” CNN.com, November 6, 2001, http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/ (accessed July 16, 2017). 33. Online Newshour, “Bin Laden Statement,” PBS.org, October 7, 2001, http:// www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/binladen_10–7.html (accessed July 16, 2017). 34. George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address,” available from the George W. Bush Administration White House webpage, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov news/releases/2009/01/20090117.html (accessed July 16, 2017). 35. David Loy, The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2003), 105. 36. Loy, The Great Awakening. 37. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks to the National Association of Evangelicals” (speech, Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, Orlando, FL, October 8, 1983), http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganevilempire.htm (accessed July 17, 2017). 38. Reagan, “Remarks to the National Association of Evangelicals.” 39. George H. W. Bush, “Address before a Joint Session of Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit” (speech, Washington, D.C., September 11, 1990), available from the George H. W. Bush Presidential Museum and Library website, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id2217&year1990& month9 (accessed July 17, 2017). 40. Leon T. Hadar, “The ‘Green Peril’: Creating the Islamic Fundamentalist Threat,” CATO Policy Analysis 177, August 27, 1992. 41. CNN, “Bush Vows to Rid the World of ‘Evil-Doers,” September 16, 2001. 42. Charles Babington, “Bush: U.S. Must ‘Rid the World of Evil,’ ” Washington Post, September 14, 2001. 43. In Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005), 208. 44. David Loy, The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2003), 106. 45. Mark Silva, “Bush: ‘America Can and Must Win,’ ” Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2008. 46. Silva, “Bush: ‘America Can and Must Win.’ ” 47. Silva, “Bush: ‘America Can and Must Win.’ ” 48. Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion After September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 20. 49. Lincoln, Holy Terrors. 50. Silva, “Bush: ‘America Can and Must Win.’ ” 51. Loy, The Great Awakening, 111. 52. Loy, The Great Awakening, 111. 53. Daniella Diaz, “Obama: Why I Won’t Say ‘Islamic Terrorism,’ ” September 29, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/politics/obama-radical-islamic-terrorism-cnn -town-hall/index.html (accessed July 23, 2017).

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54. See the following document, intercepted by journalists at Wired, which is one of dozens of documents that the FBI included in a review that led to a change in policy: https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/07/Cultural-Interviewing-In terrogation-PowerPoint1.pdf. 55. Deepa Kumar, “Obama’s Cairo Speech: A Rhetorical Shift in U.S. Imperialism,” June 13, 2009, http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/obama’s-cairo-speech-a-rhetorical-shift -in-us-imperialism/ (accessed July 23, 2017). 56. Andrew McGill, “Obama on the World,” The Atlantic, March 10, 2016. 57. Erik Love, Islamophobia and Racism in America (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 111. 58. Love, Islamophobia and Racism in America, 111. 59. Love, Islamophobia and Racism in America. 60. Stuart Gottlieb, “War on Terror: Obama Softened the Language, but Hardened Muslim Hearts,” Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 2010. 61. Gottlieb, “War on Terror.” 62. A few examples stand out: Trump’s insistence (despite evidence to the contrary) that Muslims and Arabs were “celebrating” in the streets of New Jersey following the attacks of 9/11, and his resurrection of a false story about General Pershing, commander of US forces in France during World War I, shooting Muslim extremists with bullets doused in pig’s blood to deter future acts of violence. 63. Bridge Initiative, “Trump Calls for Muslim Ban, Cites Deeply Flawed Poll,” December 8, 2015. 64. David Lauter and Brian Bennett, “Trump Frames Anti-Terrorism Fight as a Clash of Civilizations, Defending Western Culture,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2017. 65. Lauter and Bennett, “Trump Faces Anti-Terrorism Fight.”

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KEY TERMS: • framing • imperialism • “Other/Otherize”

• paradigm shift • Patriot Act • suspect community

CHAPTER 3

Foreign Enemies, Domestic Threats, and the Media One consequence of the “Islam and the West” discourse, and the political policies that it has nurtured and shaped, is the perpetuation of the idea that the religion of Islam is foreign to the United States and Europe. On the one hand, this narrative is based on statistical data about Muslims, the vast majority of whom are immigrants to these spaces. The European Union, for example, was home to about thirteen million Muslim immigrants in the year 2010—a number that is expected to grow steadily over the next decade.1 Of the United States’ more than three million Muslims, nearly 60 percent are immigrants.2 On the other hand, however, the narrative of “foreignness” operates on more than mere demographics. It operates on fear, too—an emotion that is easily exploited and manipulated in service of advancing and entrenching various political agendas. Though the fear of difference or otherness may seem like a basic human impulse, there is more involved than simply an innate and natural reaction to people whose religious traditions, skin color, or other identifying markers do not fit “ours.” Indeed, as the musical South Pacific reminds us, “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear. You’ve got to be taught from year to year. It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.” Societal narratives determine what fits and what does not, and delineate the necessary categories, vocabulary, images, and descriptions that provide a particular group of people with a sense of identity, belonging, and, importantly, the feeling that those things will be protected, often by a government or military. People or groups that are represented as posing threats to that are viewed with skepticism and scorn and as risks to security and national unity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the implications of this when it comes to American or European Muslims are many, including misconstrued or hostile views of even their language, which is perceived as foreign within predominantly 65

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English-speaking contexts. This, however, is but one symptom of a larger problem of “Otherizing.” The narrative that Islam is foreign (and thus necessarily threatening) has encouraged numerous other policies and programs that are based on a circular, self-fulfilling logic. They keep Islam and Muslims “over there,” or outside of American and European cultural spaces, while simultaneously warning that the values and principles of things like democracy and rule of law—in addition to basic human safety—are continually being encroached upon and targeted. In this way, Muslims have come to occupy a sort of liminal space within this geopolitical and culture entity that we have come to call “the West.” They are neither here nor there, not fully considered “at home” when their “homes” are American and European cities, and they are relegated in the popular and political imagination to the borderless and ill-defined “Muslim world” where they presumably fit more neatly, yet are thought to pose a threat from that far-off space nonetheless. In sum, much of the discourse on Islam and “the West” throughout history kept Islam at bay—it has ensured that the religion remains foreign to all that “the West” stands for, and that its followers, Muslims, remain outside the gate, so to speak, blocked from becoming integrated into the social milieus, economic systems, and national projects of the countries to which many immigrate and live. While it is possible to point to specific actors, groups, and others that have adopted this discourse, the reality is that it is far less a matter of populist or nationalist rhetoric taking hold over a period of years and advocating the exclusion of one group, and far more a matter of long-held political beliefs about power relations, how the world is, how it should be, and national interests that are worth securing militarily. In other words, imperialist projects are at the heart of the perceived Islam-West divide, and because Europe and the United States have enjoyed such might in that realm, it is they who determine the plot. This chapter focuses on what I have called the “foreign enemy, domestic threat phenomenon,” and argues that one of the major roadblocks to better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims today are foreign and domestic policies that work hand in hand to sustain negative images of Islam. For decades, military conflict in the Middle East, global terrorism, and other instances of violence on the part of Muslims have fed into a steady stream of media reporting and politicized rhetoric that communicates an urgent threat: violent Muslims around the world who hope to do harm to “the West.”3 Whether real or imagined, these narratives of angry, foreign Muslims in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and various North African locales reinforce the notion that Islam is foreign, and that all Muslims, even those law-abiding citizens of European countries, for instance, must be “out of place.” In effect, they are perceived as having breached the imaginary divide that separates “the West” from the “Muslim world,” bringing the foreign into close contact with the local. The result, as I will show, is a series of domestic policies that work against Muslim communities in these spaces, targeting them with surveillance, subjecting them to restricted movement, limiting their job opportunities and freedoms, and otherwise curtailing their civil liberties. These domestic policies aim to ensure that Muslims are persistently perceived as foreign, while also justifying new foreign policies that bolster new images of Muslims as fanatical, violent, and threatening to “the West.”

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The Media Gaze and Its Limits In her book Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000, Melani McAlister discusses the way that the Iranian hostage crisis galvanized Americans in the late 1970s and became a discursive turning point as “Islam” replaced oil-rich “Arabs” as the popular beˆte noir. She writes, “The story of terrorism, captivity, Iran, and Islam was also a story about television. It highlighted the centrality of the mass media, particularly television, in the public consumption of the hostage crisis.”4 Indeed, night after night, millions of Americans learned about the new threat they faced, and the people who were behind it, from evening newscasts. Removed from the heated scenes overseas, they sat comfortably in their living rooms and digested a host of images, sound bites, narratives, and other information that shaped a growing discourse about Muslims and Islam—a discourse that was premised entirely on the notion of a foreign threat. Within the context of the Iranian hostage crisis, other dynamics were at work: the captivity narrative that surrounded actual events of the hostage crisis made menacing portraits of Muslims more palpable; the changing American political climate, with a focus on the Middle East and an eye on the looming Iranian Revolution, ushered in new concerns about terrorism and Muslim-led violence; and the sheer lack of knowledge among the general public about Islam and Muslims at that time allowed the sensational events surrounding the hostage crisis and revolution to create a first—and lasting—impression. The media gaze of the late 1970s was not unlike that of recent times. Despite the fact that more than forty years have passed and brought about some changes in politics, global demographics, knowledge production, and media coverage, it remains the case today that the conflicts of our time constitute the bulk of the imagery and stories that feed into our homes from news organizations. When it comes to Muslims and Islam, that has meant a steady flow of narratives about ISIS, Al-Qaeda, conflicts with Iran and debates over its nuclear program, continued chaos between Palestinians and Israelis in the Occupied Territories, and coverage of Muslims and “their” issues “over there,” beyond the walls of “our” living rooms and in the “Islamic world” where such despair is thought to be quotidian. As Edward Said once noted, the media often covers Islam “as news.”5 Of course, the power in this type of coverage does not only lie in the fact that Islam is represented negatively “as news.” Central to our discussions on Islam and “the West” is the idea that whether explicit or implicit, there are vested interests at work that decide who and what is covered, who speaks and does not speak, what framing a particular story has, and how that information is packaged and presented to audiences. Critically, there are also decisions that must be made about what this information means to audiences. In other words, even in hearing reporting of mere world events, we might think about pausing and asking ourselves: What is this particular story about ISIS or violent Muslims overseas saying about “us” as Americans, Europeans, or others? To put a finer point on it, national unity and cultural homogeny are cultivated by stories of “others” doing bad things “over there.” They are further bolstered

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when those bad people “over there” attempt to wreak havoc on “us” in “our” home country. Thus, while news stories about a recent suicide bomber in a Pakistani market may not appear at the outset to be anything other than that—a simple instance of reporting—when it is packaged and represented within the context of a world in which American and European governments have engaged in sustained war with Middle Eastern countries, the effect may be one of galvanizing nationalist sentiment against “those people” and underpinning self-righteous notions of what it means to be on the “Western” side of a supposed Islam-West divide. In other words, “we” are not like “them” because “they” are violent and “we” are not. Complicating this is the sheer volume of negative material on Muslims that is presented in the news. Though references to Islam may not always be present, the fact that Arabs and the Middle East have come to be equated with Muslims and Islam in the minds of many is likely an indication that the religion and its followers are a part of the narrative, even if subconsciously.6 Polling data over the years has detailed the scope of this problem. A British study conducted by the University of Cardiff examined the coverage of Muslims in print media over the course of eight years, between 2000 and 2008. It found that the majority of the representations of Muslims during that time period emphasized their alleged foreignness, and reported to British audiences various violent acts carried out by Muslims overseas. This framing resulted in five adjectives that were tabulated as most commonly used. Justin Lewis noted in the study that “the five adjectives that we found most commonly used in relation to Muslims were, in order: radical, fanatical, fundamentalist, extremist, and militant. Muslim extremism is itself now a big story. Muslim moderation is not.”7 Additionally, Lewis noted that the idea of a “clash of civilizations” between British “Westerners” and Muslim outsiders, or foreigners, was rife in various publications. The ways in which Muslims are discussed or talked about in the press tend to be in a context that clearly are rather negative. So, it is terrorism, it is about the clash between Christianity and Islam; it is about Islam as an extreme religion . . . [In] 34% of stories we have found Muslims were specifically linked to the threat of terrorism, 26% of stories suggested that Islam was either dangerous, backwards or irrational. Now there were stories, I mean 17% of stories, talked about Islam as part of a multicultural society, but it is clearly a much smaller number. And you know the next biggest idea that we found in stories was the idea of the clash of civilization, between Islam and the west; 14% of stories. 9% talked about Islam as a threat to the British way of life. So, the negative stories very clearly outweigh the positive stories by some degree.8

Other studies offered similar analyses. In an investigation of more than 975,000 news stories pertaining to Islam in the United States and Europe, Media Tenor, a Swiss organization that monitors and analyzes news coverage of global events, found that in 2001, only 2 percent of those stories focused on extremism, whereas in 2011, the number increased by more than 25 percent. Additionally,

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the number of stories depicting ordinary, law-abiding Muslims remained virtually unchanged over time.9 The reasons for imbalanced reporting are the subject of many debates, and it is far from certain that there is but one explanation. Entire books have been written on the topic, and within subdisciplines of academia where topics like Orientalism are deeply rooted, hypotheses about “media malpractice” when it comes to Islam and Muslims abound. It may appear that the problem is the result of intentional framing, and to some extent that may well be the case. Edward Said, for example, has suggested that the imbalance stems from a powerful media group, comprised of producers, reporters, executives, and others, who make conscious decisions about what type of content is disseminated and how it is disseminated. He calls the media an “invisible screen” that guards some information and lets other information pass through to the public, and when Islam is the subject at hand, it is usually negative images that filter through.10 As much as we may think that there is such intentionality behind media images of Muslims—and indeed, in some cases there likely is—I suggest that it is more helpful to think about the depictions of Muslims as foreign enemies as an unintentional and unpremeditated byproduct of the political, social, and cultural contexts at hand. This is not to put forth a robust defense of the media establishment, for they do ultimately bear responsibility for the material that is presented. Yet at the same time, the media most often reports on “news” that already plays into a larger schema of how the world is—a schema that is shaped, in large part, by government policies, programs, rhetoric, conflicts, wars, and the like. Put differently, powerful world actors have established a particular discourse about Islam and Muslims, and it is difficult, though not impossible, to create a paradigm shift that allows for another more equitable and charitable discourse to emerge. Studies have shown, for example, that American views of Islam and Muslims tend to fluctuate over time, depending on dominant political narratives. When the US government was debating whether or not to invade Iraq in 2003, negative views of Muslims were quite high. Similarly, as ISIS emerged in a forceful way and lawmakers discussed whether or not to respond to the terrorist group with military force, views of Muslims also jumped.11 The media was undoubtedly responsible for the types of stories that accompanied these debates, though like the example of the Iranian hostage crisis and evening newscasts that depicted it, there was a political dynamic as well that drove a larger metanarrative about Islam, Arabs, Muslims, and citizens of the Middle East whose lives in distant territories only came up within the context of discussion about whether or not to go to war. One must wonder, given that the United States has invaded, bombed, and occupied more than fourteen Muslim-majority countries since the year 1980, what Americans would know about Muslims and Islam were that not the case. Pakistani marketplaces, Iranian mosques, Afghan neighborhoods, and Iraqi cities have largely only been relevant to Americans and Europeans because of their connection to discourses about war, international security, global terrorism, and protecting the chaos and calamity that is an everyday occurrence “over there” from coming “over here” and manifesting itself, too. The editor of the Washington Free Beacon

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articulated this idea plainly in 2015 when he wrote about fighting terrorists overseas. “There is a growing and energetic movement of radical Muslims dedicated to killing as many people as they can and imposing their will on the rest,” he said.12 “And there is really only one way America can respond to this challenge. We need to kill them first. We need to kill them on a field of battle whose contours are determined not by the terrorists but by us. We need to kill them over there—in the Middle East—before they reach the West.”13

Fighting “Them” over “Here” Before delving into a discussion about the ways in which foreign wars and their attendant imageries lead to domestic policies that target Muslims (and thus reinforce the need for such foreign wars), it is worth unpacking the statement above in a bit more detail. Doing so may shed some light on the cognitive dynamics and power relations that have allowed for such a climate of conflict to exist. The Washington Beacon’s editor states, in a near proclamation, that, indeed, a “growing” and “energetic movement” of “radical Muslims” who are “dedicated to killing as many people as they can and imposing their will on the rest” exists in the world and poses a great threat to “Westerners,” who can only truly be safe if “we” kill “them” first. He states this as a matter of fact, and then outlines exactly how a preemptive strike must happen in terms of a military battle: “we” must confront “them” on “their” territory—“we” must fight them “over there” before “they” come over “here” to fight “us.” Certainly, opinions on these issues are a dime a dozen, and one of the great challenges of the constitutional freedoms that Americans enjoy, including that of speech and press, is that there is no built-in discernment mechanism that differentiates expertise from mere feelings or ideas. Indeed, it is up to the general public to determine what is what. Still, the issue of positionality is important here, especially when it comes to the topic of Muslims (and perhaps of any racial, ethnic, or religious minority), for what often presents itself as authoritative or well-informed information is perceived by others as precisely that because of the degree to which these narratives are disseminated from certain platforms. In this case, it becomes all too easy to construct a foreign enemy in a newspaper and warn of its domestic threat when that supposed enemy is voiceless and vilified (no countervoices or examples are offered); described in a general way (“radical Muslims”); and is situated within a stream of rhetoric that is sensational and even alarming (“we can only truly be safe if we kill them first”). More than that, however, it is important to consider for a moment how this description of a foreign threat and a warning about impending domestic chaos can appear in the media with such an air of matter-of-factness. This is first predicated on the notion that Muslims are foreign, and eternally so. No matter their status of citizenship, their American or European birthplaces, their years spent living in and contributing to so-called Western societies, this discourse marks them—indeed signifies them—as other. For narratives decrying a

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foreign enemy and domestic threat to have salience, in fact, Muslims must be constantly depicted as “other.” This is because it is possible to say things about foreigners that cannot be said about natives. The “inside group” can always pass judgment on the “outside group” unless that “outside group” should eventually become a part of the “inside group.” Imagine, for example, the impossibility of a newspaper article exclaiming, authoritatively, that African Americans or Jews are violent people, and lest “we” thwart the threat that “they” pose, “our” safety and way of life will all but disappear. This kind of statement would not have been unusual decades ago, and while racism and anti-Semitism are far from over, it is usually the case that society casts great scorn on such views, designating them as wholly inappropriate and unacceptable within civil discourse. African Americans and Jews were, indeed, once “outsiders” in a way that, for the most part, they are not today, and thus their vilification is met with greater resistance.14 Muslims, however, are still very much perceived as “outsiders,” and as such, it is easier to target them with impunity. Unlike other marginalized communities, what makes Muslims especially vulnerable is the reality that their “foreignness” is wedded to military engagements overseas. Foreign policies that the United States and its European allies carry out in the Middle East have engendered a rather unbridled approach to issues of domestic security (or “homeland security” as it is sometimes called), which are invariably refracted through that lens. The War on Terror, specifically, complicated the situation as American and British governments could use the language of “terrorism” to justify measures and policies that might have otherwise not been possible. Unwarranted searches and seizures, domestic surveillance, entrapment, and other practices were—and remain today—common. With images of violence pouring in from the Middle East, Muslims in other spaces became what Paddy Hillyard called a “suspect community.”15

Targeting “Suspect Communities” The notion of “suspect communities” lies, in part, on the fact that the particular community at hand (in this case, Muslims) allegedly bears some resemblance to a “foreign enemy” (in this case, groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, among others). These perceived similarities are based on two specific things: a presumably shared ideology and a visibly shared ethnicity, race, and religion. This is to suggest that the skepticism that so often surrounds Muslim communities in the United States and Europe is based on the way they look and on ideas about, or suspicions of, their motives and actions. With every thesis of this type, there are caveats, and this one is no exception. Indeed, there are occasions in which law enforcement officials and government agencies have good reason to zero in on a particular group or individual and to enact various measures that would prevent violence and protect the interests and safety of the larger community. My point here, however, is to suggest that the line

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that divides legitimate threats and intelligence-based evidence from postulation and preemption has become blurred as a result of a long fixation on a “foreign enemy” that bears certain ethnic and racial features, particular names, dons certain dress or religious garb, and speaks certain languages. Nadine Naber has referred to these signifiers as informing a “cultural racism,” that, in turn, maps onto a “nation-based racism” by which particular immigrants (usually Arabs and Muslims) are constructed as “different than, and inferior to, whites based on the conception that ‘they’ are foreign and therefore embody a potentiality for criminality and/or immorality and must be ‘evicted, eliminated, or controlled.’ ”16 The idea that there was a “terrorist profile” led to an expansion of domestic security initiatives that localized the War on Terror at home, and rendered ordinary, law-abiding Arabs, Middle Easterners, and South Asians as potential extremists. The former US attorney general John Ashcroft spoke of the “enemy’s platoons” that would “infiltrate our borders” as a part of this “new war” and would “blend in” and “move unnoticed” through American and European cities.17 In essence, the “foreign enemy” became a “domestic threat,” with images of war and terrorism percolating in the media and discussions of Islam and Muslims featuring snapshots or repeated footage that nurtured stereotypes: veiled Muslim women, bearded Muslim men, anger and violence, brown-skinned individuals, mosques, minarets, deserts, and an overall sense of “foreignness.” The impact on Muslims in the United States was entirely negative. In the first twelve months after the 9/11 attacks, for example, the American government implemented twenty policies, fifteen of which explicitly targeted domestic communities that shared ethnic, racial, or religious features with the “foreign enemy.”18 The scope of these policies was wide, ranging from temporary holds placed on nonimmigrant visa applications to outright bans of foreign immigrants from other Muslim-majority countries. Students, professors, and foreign-dwelling family members of American citizens were affected, and in some cases even medical treatments, including chemotherapy, were discontinued.19 Additionally, the Department of Justice and the Immigrant and Naturalization Service ramped up deportations and ordered thousands of immigrants to undergo screenings and interviews, which asked them questions about their knowledge of terrorist activities, among other things. Throughout the early 2000s, mosques and Muslim-owned businesses were surveilled and wiretapped, including a massive program launched by the New York City Police Department (in conjunction with the federal government) that “mapped” Arab and Muslim neighborhoods in New York City, compiled a detailed document outlining the location of halal butcher shops and Arab bakeries, and sent “rakers,” or spies, out into various ethnic neighborhoods to gather information, take photographs, record the details of their interactions with people living in the area, and report back to the government.20 The program attracted widespread controversy, especially as it resulted in zero leads, arrests, or thwarted plots, and it was eventually shut down. Today, this profiling continues in various ways. Arabs and Muslims remain vulnerable targets at airports, and they are often subjected to special screening, pulled out of lines, or off of planes. As we saw in chapter 2, the Obama and Trump administrations advanced unhelpful stereotypes in different ways, ushering

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in new domestic policies that connected dots between foreign events and conflicts in the Middle East and Muslim citizens or immigrants in the United States. Because these policies were directed at such broad groups (“extremists,” “immigrants,” “terrorists,” etc.), the groups themselves became conflated with one another such that loathing of, and anger toward, acts of terrorism was easily projected onto nameless and faceless “terrorists” and “extremists” who were presumed to be synonymous with “immigrants.” Likewise, because the policies named specific groups of immigrants—people from, for instance, the seven countries that the Obama and Trump administrations designated as posing risks to the United States (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen)—labels of “terrorists” and “extremists” more easily mapped onto those national identities as well, making the perceived dividing line between Islam and “the West” all the more pronounced.

Further Reading Ali, Arshad Imtaz. “Citizens under Suspicion: Responsive Research with Community under Surveillance.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 47, no. 1 (2016): 78–95. Arjana, Sophia Rose. Muslims in the Western Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Grewal, Zareena. Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Chicago: Haymarket, 2012. Kundnani, Arun. The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. London: Verso, 2014.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Discuss the ways in which foreign events of news interest can be discussed without reifying, stereotyping, or “Otherizing” Muslims. 2. Similarly, discuss how governments or law enforcement may thwart extremists without creating “profiles” that are based on identity markers, whether race, ethnicity, religion, or otherwise. 3. Why do you believe that Muslims and Islam are most often discussed in the context of “news,” as Edward Said has argued? Are other communities represented this way? 4. Can you think of historical parallels in which a particular group of people was branded as “foreign” or threatening on the basis of sustained military engagement with a region? How are Muslims similar or different? 5. What types of changes would need to take place for Muslims to shed the burden of being a “suspect community”?

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Notes 1. Conrad Hackett, “5 Facts about the Muslim Population in Europe,” July 19, 2016, Pew Research Center. 2. Michael Lipka, “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and Around the World,” August 9, 2017, Pew Research Center. 3. This is not to suggest that there are not Muslims around the world who desire to enact violence toward American or European targets. Indeed, there are, and the challenges and threats of such a reality should not be dismissed or minimized. In fact, it is precisely these threats, stemming from either individuals or organized groups, that enliven the idea of a menacing “Islam” that is characterized by violence and destruction. 4. Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 200. 5. See: Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Vantage Books, 1981). 6. The late scholar and pioneer in the field of negative representations of Arabs in the media, Jack G. Shaheen, has noted the prevalence of popular conflations of Arabs and Muslims. He notes that filmmakers, especially, “repeatedly and falsely project all Arabs as Muslims and all Muslims as Arabs . . . despite the fact that only 12 percent of the world’s Muslims are Arabs.” See: Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Ithaca: Olive Branch Press, 2009), 16. 7. See: Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, “The Role of the Media,” http:// sites.cardiff.ac.uk/islamukcentre/rera/online-teaching-resources/muslims-in-britain-on line-course/module-4-contemporary-debates/the-role-of-the-media/. 8. Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, “The Role of the Media.” 9. See: “A New Era of Arab Western Relations,” in John L. Esposito, “2013 AAR Presidential Address: Islam in the Public Square,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82 (2014): 301. 10. Said, Covering Islam, 53. 11. See: The Bridge Initiative, “The Super Survey: Two Decades of Americans’ Views on Islam & Muslims,” November 19, 2015. 12. Matthew Continetti, “Fight Them over There,” Washington Free Beacon, January 16, 2015. 13. Continetti, “Fight Them over There.” 14. This is not to suggest that antiblack racism or anti-Semitism is not a problem, or that African Americans and Jews enjoy a sense of color blindness that treats them as completely equal among populations in the United States and Europe that are largely Caucasian. Certainly, there are many instances of injustice committed toward both of those groups. Jews, for instance, are among the most-targeted ethnic groups in the United States in terms of hate crimes, and one need not look any further than the institutionalization of racism within some law enforcement communities to see that the African American community suffers from deep-seated prejudices as well. 15. Paddy Hillyard, Suspect Community: People’s Experience of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in Britain (London: Pluto Books, 1993). A study by London Metropolitan University, which analyzed eight hundred policy documents and nearly three thousand new items, found that the British Terrorism Act 2000 resulted in a pronounced discourse that posited Britain as being “under attack” by outsiders; a blurring of boundaries between violent perpetrators and ordinary Muslim civilians; and ill-defined, if not nebulous, language about “allies” in the struggle against “extremists.”

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16. Nadine Naber, “ ‘Look, Mohammed the Terrorist Is Coming!’ Cultural Racism, Nation-Based Racism, and the Intersectionality of Oppressions after 9/11,” in Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects, eds. Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 281. 17. See: “Attorney General Prepared Remarks on the National Security Entry-Exist Registration System,” June 6, 2002, https://www.justice.gov/archive/ag/speeches/2002/ 060502agpreparedremarks.htm. 18. Louise Cainkar, “Post-9/11 Domestic Policies Affecting U.S. Arabs and Muslims: A Brief Review,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 24, no. 1 (2004): 245. 19. Cainkar, “Post-9/11 Domestic Policies Affecting U.S. Arabs and Muslims.” 20. For a detailed summary of this, see: Matt Apuzo and Adam Goldman, Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and Bin Laden’s Final Plot against America (New York: Touchstone, 2013).

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PART II

RELIGION, LANGUAGE, AND SOCIETY

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KEY TERMS: • • • • • • •

• • • • • •

adhan Allahu Akbar appropriation dhimmi etymology hudud In Sha Allah

kafir madrassa Masha Allah Subhan Allah surah taqiyya

CHAPTER 4

The (Mis)Appropriation of Arabic Words In April 2007, a headline in the New York Sun read, “A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn.” Its author, Daniel Pipes, warned about an Arabic-language academy that was scheduled to open that year, writing, “Arabic language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.”1 He argued that while Arabic-language instruction was an ostensibly valuable pursuit (indeed, he spent years learning it, himself ), it was, in his view, impossible to separate Arab cultural identity and Islamic religious character from simple grammatical exercises and vocabulary drills. In the end, he feared that “Arabic in and of itself promotes an Islamic outlook,” and that “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam.”2 Years have passed since the controversy over the proposed madrassa in Brooklyn, yet public anxieties over the Arabic language have not. Today, the word jihad stands out as one of the more recognized Arabic terms that is of an especially Islamic character, with Sharia likely following behind it. Words such as madrassa, taqiyya, kafir, and dhimmi are also frequently used online, especially among bloggers and authors who are critical of Islam and Muslims. It is not uncommon to hear American or European news reports about violence in the Middle East that describe attacks as episodes of “jihad” or that routinely refer to perpetrators of such violence as “jihadists.” In fact, it is almost an everyday occurrence—so woven into our public lexicon that we use the term habitually without giving thought to the way in which their meaning has become fixed. If one were to ask a stranger on the street to define jihad, it is not difficult to imagine that the response would 79

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likely reveal a negative interpretation. “Holy war,” for example, is a common translation of the word in English—a result of its use in precisely that way by terrorists like Osama bin Laden, and its normalization over the past several decades in popular discourses that describe it as such.3 In this chapter, I call attention to the misappropriation of Arabic words that have an origin within the Islamic tradition, and I argue that their uncritical popular usage (outside of specific cultural circumstances and stripped of context) contributes to misunderstandings about the religion of Islam and Muslims, and it widens the perceived gulf between Islam and “the West.” Importantly, I do not suggest that the use of words like jihad or Sharia in a negative light is always incorrect. There are occasions, in the past and present, where Muslims have interpreted the concept of jihad, for example, to mean something similar to “holy war.” While that view may differ widely from how most Muslims interpret the doctrine, to say that one view is patently incorrect is to venture into the risky waters of ignoring the truth and advocating for a onedimensional perspective. Rather, of concern here is the way in which complex, historical, and contextually specific Arabic words have been stripped out of the milieus in which their meanings have long resonated with native speakers and are splashed in news stories where such intricacies are not known, or worse, ignored in service of communicating only one view. At the heart of this phenomenon lie two basic dynamics: the exoticization of foreign terminologies and an instinctive fear of them. On the one hand, the regular use of Arabic words by non-Arabic-speaking peoples resounds of an Orientalist tenor. Knowledge of the “Other,” including their languages, was a linchpin of European colonialism, and the appropriation of words such as jihad, Sharia, kafir, and others today is not entirely different. It communicates that the “Western” powers in the world have glimpsed inside the culture of the less powerful “Other” and understood their linguistic world with such richness and completeness that the associated religious terminologies and phrases can be easily replicated for the digestion of American and European audiences in short sound bites or scrolling headlines. The politician who excoriates what he sees as the influence of Sharia in the United States is not just saying that something foreign has made an unwelcome appearance, but that he knows what, precisely, that foreign thing is and can thus assess its threat with authority. The media commentator who informs her audience that “jihadists” have carried out an attack in some location around the world is conveying specific knowledge about the attack and the identity of its perpetrators. The repeated use of Arabic terms in public spaces would seem to familiarize them. Yet their “foreignness” remains apparent. This, I will argue, is a result of careful exploitation on the part of powerful actors that control this discourse. While they use words like jihad and Sharia in a way that suggests knowledge of them, they are careful to ensure that the words maintain a foreign, frightening element. After all, if these words become too familiar and their interpretations too diverse, the component of fear then becomes dampened. The narrative must be controlled. Thus, there exists a balancing act in which Arabic words are simultaneously presented to the public as concepts that authors, activists, politicians, and

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media commentators understand and can speak about with authority, while also being represented as sufficiently outside of “Western” culture and, consequently, foreign. The persistent use of the word jihad in recent years is an example. Its presence within the public lexicon has not led to new understandings about its history or its diverse interpretations among Muslims around the world. Instead, it has endured in popular imaginations as an ever-violent concept.4 Thinking about how Arabic terms and phrases have been normalized within non-Arabic discourses involves more than an investigation of the words or concepts themselves. It requires thinking carefully about why these terms have acquired the saliency they enjoy, who is responsible for their public animations, and how this affects those for whom such concepts have religious significance. If jihad is said to have multiple meanings, why is it that one interpretation seems to persist? The same could be asked of other controversial words, too, though it is worth thinking about why Arabic terms have become branded as controversial to begin with, beyond their obvious association with violent actors. Have Arabic buzzwords become misappropriated by American and European powers? If so, what does that say about the agency of Arabic-speaking Muslims to whom the words resonate on linguistic and cultural levels? Finally, what does the debate over these Arabic words suggest about Islam’s place in “Western” societies? DENYING AGENCY, APPROPRIATING CULTURE

Why have Arabic words like jihad and Sharia acquired such saliency among the general public?5 Part of the reason is a political climate in which Muslims are contemporary adversaries. The fact that the United States and Europe have invested interests—politically and economically—in predominantly Muslimmajority corners of the globe means that the cultural intricacies of those spaces are magnified. Additionally, the violent interpretations of jihad, for example, by groups like Al-Qaeda (and more recently, ISIS) have created a decades-long buzz in media and political circles about the term, its definition, and its manifestations. Its placement in headlines and policies that react to such sensationalized violence has caused it to acquire a certain degree of normalcy, though only within a highly politicized context where understanding the term is helpful for the purposes of fighting terrorism. As we have established, violent interpretations of jihad and Sharia are not wrong, though they are not the “be-all-end-all” of interpretations, either. Critics of jihad point to its legacy of violence in Islamic history, especially where prophetic injunctions regarding the “lesser jihad” suggest physical confrontation with adversaries. It is difficult to say that contemporary manifestations of violence that invoke the notion of “lesser jihad” as a physical struggle (as opposed to “greater jihad,” which suggests a personal spiritual struggle) are operating outside of the tradition of Islam, or misinterpreting the concept entirely. In other words, we must ask: Who is in a position to tell ISIS, for example, that they are not really Muslims or that the bloodletting they carry out in the name of Islam is based on

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a misreading of scripture? No one, really, because religious interpretations are just that—interpretations, or thinking about scripture, prophetic examples, and history, and explicating religious content within modern-day circumstances. Yet for the purposes of our discussion, this is precisely where questions of agency come into play. Just as it is impossible to maintain that those who advocate for more peaceful interpretations of terms like jihad and Sharia do not have a mandate on their definitions, it follows logically that those groups like ISIS, who see these things as prescribing violence, have no such mandate, either. Yet an imbalance exists in representations of jihad and Sharia in public conversations, with the scales tipped almost entirely in the direction of violence and extremism. The result of this is that the public gets a skewed portrait of what the term means to Muslims, as it is only the violent actors whose interpretations are privileged in the media. Those Muslims for whom the term jihad signifies something beyond a physical struggle or “holy war” are at a disadvantage, as they must wrestle the term away from the coreligionists that they believe have perverted it, and also from the political and media sphere that has accepted the violent definition as normative. Headlines like this one from an August 2016 edition of the New York Times— “Once a Qaeda [Al-Qaeda] Recruiter, Now a Voice against Jihad”—or this one from the Wall Street Journal—“Jihadists Are Seeking Beachheads in Asia, U.S. Admiral Warns”—effectively mute the voices of Muslims who would balk at the concept of jihad being associated with Al-Qaeda’s violence or extremist camps staking out territory in the southern Philippines. For readers, they do not exist; they have been written out of history, their voices silenced, and in their place “jihadists” who fit a narrative of a “Western” war with an “Islamic” enemy are privileged. In the sense that “jihadist” is understood as one who engages in a personal spiritual struggle, it may be said that all practicing Muslims who rely on religion to inform and guide their lives are “jihadists.” When the word is stripped of its politicization and unidimensional representations, it is a noble label for many Muslims. Still, the term jihadist itself, as used in the Wall Street Journal headline above, is curious. It, along with the common noun (and adjective) jihadi, are based on the Arabic word jihad, but reflect a form of cultural appropriation in their English-language renderings. Mark Sedgwick has noted that the term jihadi became popular around the year 1920, and it was a word that scholars used as a translation of the Arabic term mujahid, or “one who strives or struggles.”6 That word later birthed a synonym, jihadist, which was used for the first time in 1967 by American historian John Ralph Willis to describe the Sokoto Caliphate that Usman dan Fodio established in West Africa.7 Nearly twenty years later, according to Sedgwick, the word jihadism was thrust to the fore of public discourses on jihad. Israeli historian Haggai Erlich “used the term to denote an inclination towards jihad. It was not the existence of the Sudanese Mahdists that posed a threat to Ethiopia, but the possibility that they might decide to wage a jihad against the Ethiopians. Erlich’s ‘Mahdist jihadism,’ then, had something in common with familiar terms like ‘Soviet expansionism’ or ‘Prussian militarism.’ ”8

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What is important to note here is the way in which English speakers transformed native Arabic-language terms into words that fit within existing syntactical and linguistic structures. Jihadist aligned with other terms ending in ist (e.g., “anarchist,” “Zionist,” “apologist,” etc.), while jihadi was loosely based on an Arabic suffix, but it fit within a pattern of English adjectives and nouns that described people of a particular country, city, or language; for example, “Bangladeshi,” “Iraqi,” or “Hyderabadi.” The word Jihadism became linked to other such isms; namely, “communism,” “socialism,” “liberalism,” or more closely, “Islamism.” The simple fact of finding an English equivalent for words in another language is not unprecedented at all, and as Sedgwick notes, the definitions of these words in English is not a far departure from their Arabic interpretations. But at a more analytical level, there is something to be said about powerful Englishspeaking actors reaching into a proverbial language bag of others and pulling out words and phrases that are rebranded to suit a particular view. This process is akin to extracting a plant that has blossomed in one type of soil and replanting it in another—something is lost, even if the plant continues to live. In this case, the word jihad cannot be understood in its fullest sense because of linguistic and cultural differences. Put differently, the English language is not equipped to communicate the depth of cultural concepts and terminologies that are not native to English-speaking countries. Consequently, we use words like jihadi and jihadist knowing not of their complexities or their etymological deficiencies, and within a discursive milieu that limits their meaning and significance for Arabic speakers, to whom the term belongs. To see how this plays out, one need not look any further than popular culture, where examples of cultural appropriation and unidimensional representations abound. The fictional character of Jihad Joe, a spin-off of the American action figure GI Joe, is the subject of books, cartoons, children’s toys, viral YouTube clips, and comedy routines that normalize jihad as an expressly violent concept. Indeed, Jihad Joe is thought to be the Muslim foe—a “jihadist”—of GI Joe. Similarly, songs like “Jihad Bells” (a spoof of the Christmas song “Jingle Bells”) and the more popular “Hadji Girl,” written by an American solider about a fictitious encounter with an Iraqi family, offer portraits of the Middle East that are characterized by violent attacks described as “jihad,” with little attention paid to other dimensions of the word. As we will see next, the centrality of politics cannot be overstated. It drives much of this discourse and prevents terms that are deeply rooted within the cultures of various countries that are at odds with “the West” from attaining understandings that would undermine “Western” interests and ideologies. Arabic terms are one way to communicate that “our values” are under attack by something foreign. A look at recent debates over Sharia, another Arabic word with Islamic origins, sharpens this into fuller relief. “SHARIA” AND THE LOSS OF “OUR VALUES”

The singularity of Arabic words that are used within English-language discourses is an important part of their power. The fact that they operate within a linguistic

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universe as whole, codified, and easily identifiable things makes them easier to imagine and talk about. It certainly makes them easier to fear as well. Pointing to one specific thing—jihad or Sharia, for example—and decrying its threat is much easier than trying to articulate that some foreign concept, with diverse interpretations and multivalent dynamics, is looming. Put bluntly, buzzwords work: they are repeatable, marketable, and more easily disseminated than heady and theoretical explanations that, while more accurate, fall short in terms of their ease of use. Sharia is a paradigmatic example of this. Within the past decade, it has become a word that is used more frequently in non-Arabic-speaking discourses. Debates in the United States and Europe over immigration, terrorism, and measures of domestic security have given life to it, especially as some have claimed that it is encroaching on the values of “the West” and represents a menacing threat that must be dealt with. Like the word jihad, it percolates among ideologically driven activists, politicians, and media pundits, and it is used so casually that it appears as if simple mention of it immediately signifies exactly what it is. The picture is more complex than that, however. First, it is necessary to deconstruct the concept of Sharia, as its linguistic singularity (i.e., “Let’s Ban Sharia!”) tends to omit the reality of its complexity. Most commonly, the word Sharia is used interchangeably with Islamic law, ¨ zlem Sensoy notes, that translation does not fully capture the scope though as O of what Sharia actually is, and it only reinforces the fallacious notion that a comprehensive set of written regulations exists and stands in opposition to all that “the West” holds dear.9 Rather, Sharia refers to God’s will, expressed in the Quran. It also encompasses principles and values that stem from the Muslim holy book and traditions of the prophet Muhammad. The subject matter is wide ranging, including everything from personal hygiene to the more often cited punitive measures. As John L. Esposito and Sheila Lalwani have argued, Islamic law, on the other hand, “is the product of early jurists who interpreted and developed it in the early Islamic centuries.”10 Additionally, Sharia is often discussed as if its interpretations are codified and authoritative. While there is no denying the fact that many Muslim-majority nations have employed specific interpretations of Sharia and applied those interpretations in legal or legislative forms, there exists even today widespread disagreement among Muslim scholars about what should and should not be considered Sharia. Moreover, as the scholar Hamilton Gibb has suggested, it is less of a “code” that has been written down and agreed upon than it is an active “discussion” among Muslims about their religious duties and how to allow the Quranic framework that guides their lives to resonate with the realities of secular societies and contemporary issues.11 Still, the term remains a target, and on the whole, negative representations of it within the public center on a handful of egregious narratives like stoning and hand chopping, which comprise what are known as hudud (literally, “limits”) punishments.12 Indeed, in some Muslim-majority countries where interpretations of Sharia inform local laws, these punishments—usually reserved for adultery, blasphemy, and apostasy—are carried out. While American or European audiences may be rightly offended by such sentences, what is important for the purposes of our discussion is the way in which discourses on Islam and “the West”

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that operationalize Arabic words like Sharia fixate almost entirely on instances of extreme punishment or violence that occur within a few Muslim-majority societies to advance more general ideas about a wholly deficient “system” of laws that is thought to pose some danger to “our” values. The perceived gulf between Islam and “the West” is widened by the equation of Islam with simplistic and unidimensional representations of Sharia. Where detractors may point to terrorist attacks or Muslim-led episodes of violence in North America or Europe to justify their views of the supposed dangers of jihad, this is more difficult when it comes to Sharia because the immediacy of the purported threat is less clear. This invariably means two things: pointing to extreme interpretations of Sharia abroad, and warning that those interpretations may manifest in domestic spaces, too, unless strict measures are enacted to prevent their influence.13 Let us consider for a moment the workings of this discourse with a few examples. When, for instance, the French prime minister calls for a ban of the hijab in France because, in his view, it is a symbol of the “enslavement of women” that is rooted in Sharia, or when American congressmen pass laws banning the invocation of Sharia in court systems across the country, the operational logic is this: something bad is happening “over there,” that is, in Muslim-majority countries, and “we” do not want it to happen “here.” The same is true of a figure like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, in exclaiming that “Islamic law is inherently hostile to women,” points to marriage laws that inhibit the freedom of wives in some countries in the Middle East (she usually references Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan) to make a broad statement about Sharia, regardless of the loci of its interpretations. Similarly, when Donald Trump warned, following an attack in Brussels in March 2016, that European Muslims “want Sharia laws, [not the] laws that we have,” he linked the violence carried out by suicide bombers with Sharia, which he distinguished from the laws that “we have,” and he finally drew a connection between those things and all European Muslims.14 Constant references to interpretations of Sharia “over there” prompt a question: Why does this discourse rely so heavily on foreign examples to justify domestic narratives and policies? If severe interpretations of Sharia were widespread within American and European spaces, one might be inclined to suggest that public concern was reasonable, especially if revered institutions and bastions of politics and culture were being usurped. Yet the simple presence of an Islamic framework that aims to understand and implement God’s will—even if such interpretations are grim—in Muslim-majority countries around the world is alarming within a hyperpoliticized context where anything “Islamic” is viewed with suspicion. To be sure, other such frameworks where religion, ethnicity, nationality, culture, and politics inform legislative and legal decisions, and comprise bodies of thought that guide and govern local populations, exist in the world and are not represented as threatening “the West.” What animates public discourse on Sharia in such a lively and controversial way is that its negative depictions, which are the most prevalent, reinforce the notion that Islam is a violent religion while also

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buttressing the idea that it is foreign. Thus, what allegedly happens in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Pakistan—even if perfectly lawful within the legal systems of those countries—is suddenly a pressing concern to American and European politicians precisely because it is, in their view, the manifestation of a larger civilization conflict. In that sense, such foreign examples are necessary as they sustain the idea that the belief systems and ideological positions of others may be evaluated for potential dangers they pose to “the West,” and as it turns out, within a climate where Islamism has supplanted communism as the menace of liberalism, Sharia, especially in its foreign expressions, is a red flag. It is also possible to argue that just as our conversation regarding jihad suggested that its exoticization involved an intricate balance of “foreignness” and familiarity, one dynamic of the Sharia discourse is that it is ever lurking. Even in those few examples where its detractors have claimed that it has exerted influence over “Western” laws, the case is not so cut and dry, and the fact that there are only a handful of instances gives more credence to the idea that Sharia is wholly foreign but also “creeping,” as some have described it—always tiptoeing among “us” but never fully revealing itself so as to always perpetuate the feeling of fear. What emerges from this brief portrait, then, is the idea that popular discourses on Sharia are wrapped up in simplistic understandings about what Sharia actually is, and that it constitutes a reified “thing” to begin with; that comprehensive views of its multivalent dynamics are left out, and in their place are only extreme examples of its interpretations in some countries; and that it must remain sufficiently “foreign” in American and European discourses in order for it to fit within the existing discourse of “Islam as foreign,” and thus one reason for examples of its place and influence within foreign contexts; that is, Middle Eastern countries. Where Sharia is an Arabic term that connotes a division between “our” culture and “theirs,” we will now turn to a word that is most commonly used as a discursive weapon within anti-Muslim narratives to show how Islamically oriented language can be seized by a group of people, redefined entirely, and turned against Muslims, for whom it has a specific and historically centered meaning.

Taqiyya and the Weaponization of Islamic Terminology For those who seek to co-opt Arabic words and propound exclusively negative definitions, the more obscure a given word or concept is the better. After all, conventional wisdom suggests that the more familiar such concepts become the less likely it is that people will continue to fear them. (Though this is part of the reason efforts are made to deploy images of the increasingly familiar concepts of jihad and Sharia within wholly violent contexts.) In this sense, the Arabic language and its associated catalogue of Islamic expressions presents itself as a grab bag, of sorts, offering to detractors of the religion a litany of terms and expressions that are largely unfamiliar to non-Muslim and non-Arabic-speaking audiences. Where

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jihad and Sharia have been co-opted into common parlance, understood, albeit superficially, by an increasingly large segment of “Western” populations, another term has emerged in recent years that rings of an especially foreign, and therefore nefarious, nature: taqiyya.15 Taqiyya derives from the Arabic root w-q-y, which denotes fear or caution, or more specifically, protecting oneself from a present danger, and it is commonly referred to as a form of “dissimulation,” or the intentional concealment of one’s thoughts or feelings.16 In this sense, and within the Islamic tradition, its germ traces back to a Quranic revelation that permitted Muslims to conceal their faith; that is, to say, “I am not a Muslim” when under threat of persecution from outside forces for whom Islam and Muslims were an enemy.17 Thus, as Omar Suleiman and Nazir Khan have posited, “In a context where someone is trying to kill you or other because of your beliefs, it is appropriate to hide those beliefs.”18 They argue that the concept is not entirely dissimilar to the brave act of the late Dutch watchmaker and Christian Corrie ten Boom, who, during World War II, hid Jews in her attic and lied to Nazis about it in order to protect them, and herself, from persecution (Jews in Spain during the time of the Inquisition also pretended to convert to Catholicism to spare themselves scrutiny and oppression).19 Some critics have seized on this word, and within the blogosphere where antiMuslim writing tends to percolate, it has gained traction and acquired a meaning that strips it of its complexity and context, and weaponizes it such that it is used against Muslims to suggest that their religious tradition authorizes them to, simply put, lie.20 The most notable public example comes from within the context of the 2016 American presidential election. When then-candidate Ben Carson appeared on Meet the Press in September 2015 and suggested that a Muslim could not be the president of the United States because, as he put it, he “did not believe that Sharia is consistent with the Constitution,” he supported that statement by adding that he was ultimately concerned about the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya.21 He explained, “Taqiyya is a component of Sharia that allows, and even encourages, you to lie to achieve your goals.”22 The implications of this view of taqiyya are far reaching, for it practically suggests that any Muslim—at any time—may be behaving in a subversive manner or not telling the truth. The situation is, as Omid Safi has described it, a catch22. “If an American Muslim (or Muslim more generally) says that they want to kill Americans, we take them at face value. If an American Muslim (or Muslims more generally) says that they are committed to American democratic principles and pluralism, we state that they are of course lying, and hoping to achieve nefarious goals.”23 The misappropriation of the term in this way has effectively rendered Muslims helpless—nothing they say or do that is positive is seen as being genuine, except for violence or other negative acts that are thought to be a part of their identity. To the extent that Muslims publicly reject and renounce terrorism, or express their disgust at violent or immoral deeds done in the name of Islam, they are perceived as being disingenuous—the rhetorical trope of taqiyya, as Norwegian political Carl Hagen asserted, even “permits fanatical Islamists to walk around in Western attire, drink alcohol, behave like well-integrated immigrants, in short, to conceal their real aims to their surroundings and Western police.”24

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The concept of taqiyya and its use in this manner is similar to jihad and Sharia, which have been co-opted in ways that limit their understanding and marginalize Muslim communities. Beyond the details of the term’s etymology or religious interpretation, what stands out in terms of discursive maneuvers that influence the public’s understanding of these terms, especially that of taqiyya, is the dynamic of power that allows a figure like Ben Carson (or any “Western” politician who uses the term) to suggest that he—a non-Arabic speaker and a nonMuslim—understands the concept sufficiently, and even more satisfactorily than Arabic-speaking Muslims for whom it has special religious significance and cultural meaning. To be sure, this dynamic is present within the context of discourses on jihad, Sharia, and other Arabic-language concepts, too. Within the context of taqiyya, however, we can see more clearly just how those who deploy the term in a way that co-opts its meaning for Muslims—and subsequently apply the redefined concept against them—have commandeered the relationship between knowledge and power to their advantage. In effect, they have not simply misappropriated a foreign word or concept, but, in the specific case of taqiyya, have eradicated entirely the possibility of Muslims saying or doing anything other than what those who are in control of the discourse say Muslims are doing. Put more plainly, rather than furnishing a competing interpretation of the concept, they are participating in a crude form of linguistic and conceptual enslavement. Beyond the mere utterance of words, there is a component of knowledge production and dissemination that is important to focus on here. This, as Foucault has expounded on at length, is related to not only what is known—that is, the content—but who can know it, why they are in a position to be able to know it in the first place, and a more general relationship of “knower” and “known,” that is the person or people who have the power to circulate knowledge over and about another group of people. As Stuart Hall has written, “When that knowledge is exercised in practice, those who are ‘known’ in a particular way will be the subject (i.e., subjected) to it.”25 In the cases of the politicians Ben Carson and Carl Hagen, both have suggested, implicitly, that their understanding of taqiyya is authoritative. Indeed, as American and Norwegian politicians, respectively, they speak from positions of influence and authority, and thus their statements about what taqiyya is or is not resound with legitimacy for many within the general public. Discourse, though, is about more than language or practice—it is how an entire topic is constructed— and this raises questions about how it is possible for an idea like taqiyya to be talked about in a way that is meaningful outside of its original linguistic and cultural context. The production of knowledge about taqiyya stems from the broader discourse on “Islam and the West,” where two presumably competing sides of an imaginary divide advance beliefs that are thought to be at odds with one another. Taqiyya as it is understood within the Islamic context is pitted against taqiyya as it understood within a Western context. Importantly, it is “the West” that holds a military advantage, an ideological advantage (with the spread of liberalism, democracy, and

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other values that are described as “Western” throughout the world), and an economic advantage, in the world, and thus projects a greater sense of power that allows American and European politicians to survey other cultures and make normative proclamations about them. This capacity for supremacy allows powerful outsiders to assert, like Balfour once did about Egyptians, that the “Occident’s” knowledge of the “Orient” is even superior to the “Orient’s” knowledge of itself.26 Discussions of taqiyya, in this case, are governed by a set of discursive rules that give privilege to powerful voices proclaiming special knowledge of Arabiclanguage, Islamic concepts. Because of the perceived divide between Islam and “the West,” and because Muslims have been rendered as subjects by years of military engagement in the Middle East and a long history of negative tropes about the religion of Islam that have accompanied those encounters, Muslim voices are restricted. In this sense, it does not matter so much what Muslims might say about Islamic concepts like taqiyya, for the parameters that govern the conversation do not allow for the possibility of their presence. Moreover, even the mere idea that Muslims would be an active part of public discourses on topics related to their own religion does not factor into this equation, as the epistemological pillars that undergird it are most often of a North American and European, non-Muslim variety. Ben Carson and Carl Hagen, then, produce knowledge of taqiyya through the discourse that they construct and in which they participate. In a way, this can be described using the analogy of “speakers” and “listeners.” At first, Carson and Hagen “listen” to Muslim sources (or more likely the voices who relate them), and formulate a set of ideas about concepts like taqiyya, jihad, or Sharia that have no obvious meaning within the cultural contexts of which they are a part, but which necessitate some interpretation. That interpretation, rather than conveying the intricacies of the culture and tradition in which the concepts originate, reinforce prevailing assumptions about Islam, “the West,” and Muslims’ trustworthiness. This, then, takes root as the normative and authoritative interpretation of a concept like taqiyya, which is spread from American and European political platforms, bolstered by a cadre of online activists, and eventually displaces the original concept in the imagination of “Westerners.” Adding insult to injury, Arabic-speaking Muslims are confronted with words in their own language and which have specific religious and contextual meanings to them, and they are accused of “lying” or being “deceptive” regarding particular things that they say, or positions that they take, unable, in this case, to defend themselves with their own linguistic or cultural references and forced to find ways of responding that have not been usurped by detractors.

Spiritual Expressions as Indicators of Extremism? In August 2016, a photograph posted on social media by a German-based journalist, Nader Al-Sarras, made a splash. It showed a subway commuter carrying a tote

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bag with Arabic script sprawled across the front. Intended as a joke to frighten those who would see it and immediately jump to conclusions about its message, or the identity of the person holding it, its English translation read: “This text has no other purpose than to terrify those who are afraid of the Arabic language.”27 The message was clear. Increasingly, the Arabic language had been at the center of public controversies, most often in places of travel—metro stations, buses, and airports. Students with Arabic-language flashcards were pulled out of line at security checkpoints and removed from airplanes; travelers speaking to one another in Arabic were viewed with skepticism by other passengers and asked to deboard the airplane on which they were traveling. Oddly enough, instances in which Arabic speakers were forced off airplanes or out of security lines did not center around their use of buzzwords like jihad or Sharia, which could have been interpreted by non-native speakers in a threatening way. Instead, many of these cases involved the use of simple, daily phrases and pious religious expressions that Arabic-speaking Muslims say to glorify God. Most commonly among them is the phrase Allahu Akbar, which means “God is greater.” The expression In Sha Allah, meaning “God willing,” has also come under scrutiny, while phrases like Subhan Allah (or “Glory to God”) and Masha Allah (or “God has willed”) are referenced less within English discourse about Arabic words, but they are viewed with scrutiny still. In many ways, the fact that such basic expressions have triggered controversy is not surprising. Extremists have used the phrase Allahu Akbar within the context of violent attacks such that its mere mention conjures, in the minds of many, images of terrorism. Compounding this is the fact that the media and other influential voices that shape public opinion have privileged this usage of the phrase, which prevents it from taking on other, positive meanings. Without venturing too deeply into the etymology or history of these words, it is sufficient to say that the phrase Allahu Akbar or “God is greater” usually accompanies the adhan, or Muslim call to prayer, though it is an often repeated expression within the common parlance of Muslims worldwide, too. The superlative Akbar or greater is understood by Muslims as a reminder that no matter their given situation, success, or tribulation, God is always greater. The phrase is also considered as a form of applause, or praise, and it is often recited with enthusiasm or excitement in moments of joy, and even in moments of distress where recollections about God’s sovereignty are deemed necessary.28 In Sha Allah or “If God wills,” literally, expresses the idea that nothing will happen unless God wills it. It is most commonly used when referring to events in the future, reminding those who plan that it is only God who can bring such plans to fruition.29 Despite the benign nature of these expressions, some have targeted them with insinuations and mischaracterizations, rendering what are the most basic words and phrases to describe God’s nature in the Arabic language, as sinister or foreboding. As we will see in chapter 5, activists have zeroed in on the phrase In Sha Allah to suggest that its use by Muslims, along with other Arabic phrases, indicates that one is drifting in the direction of extremism. Online, anti-Muslim bloggers have argued that “Allahu Akbar” is less of an ordinary religious expression than it is a war cry—a narrative that politicians, including Senator Lindsey Graham, have

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echoed. “It’s not like ‘Hey, how you doing?’ ” he said. “I associate [it] with a war chant. It’s not exclusively owned by Al-Qaeda. I’ve seen people kill Al-Qaeda guys and yell ‘Allahu Akbar.’ ”30 Two years later, Graham remarked, “Everything that starts with ‘Al’ in the Middle East is bad news,” a comment that sparked mockery and scorn as linguists and journalists pointed out that the prefix Al in Arabic means, simply, “the.”31 Unlike the narratives that circulate about jihad and Sharia, which fixate on distinctive Islamic doctrines or theological frameworks, narratives that target more general words or phrases like Allahu Akbar or In Sha Allah are arguably even more damaging. They grow the tent, so to speak, in terms of who can and should be scrutinized, and with focus on fragments of common parlance that are as ordinary as “God is greater” or “God willing,” this means that virtually any Muslim who has uttered them is, in the eyes of critics, a potential extremist. Importantly, too, this discourse centers around religious expressions that contain the Arabic word for God—Allah (or, literally, “the God”)—meaning that something as fundamental as a religious person’s invocation of the name of God risks their being associated with unsavory actors or actions.32 This simplistic view plays into the idea that Islam is, at its core, extreme, and as we will see in chapter 5, it bolsters the unfounded notion that a Muslim’s religiosity, made apparent by the invocation of religious expressions among other things, is an indication of where they fall along an ideological spectrum that is thought to measure their propensity for extremism. Like so much of the imagery that has come to be associated with Islam over the years, the mental imagery that is often prompted by Arabic religious expressions is ominous. Thinking critically about this phenomenon, though, it is important to ask ourselves why this is the case, and think through the assumptions and logical leaps that may lead some to feel immediately a sense of threat when foreignlanguage expressions are present. This necessitates a careful understanding of more than just how such language has been used by violent actors. It also involves examining the way that particular interpretations have come to be normalized, and reflecting on the ways in which those who interpret these religious expressions in different ways have been disenfranchised. Of course, there is nothing inherently violent about words or phrases, themselves. In order for them to take on that character, they must be interpreted in such a way, and then acted upon so as to give them a manifest meaning. The power of words like jihad, Sharia, taqiyya, and others lies less in some presumably rigid and unchanging etymology and more in the ways that Muslim communities understand them and animate them in their lives. This, then, suggests that part of the challenge in thinking about the misappropriation of Arabic words also involves some consideration about the relativity of these concepts to the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims, and a comparison of those who view them, and act upon them, in extreme ways with a larger majority that does not. Lastly, for the purposes of thinking about discourse on “Islam and the West,” we may consider why it is that so-called Western leaders have latched onto especially negative interpretations of these Arabic expressions. This involves raising questions about power relations, ideological agendas, adversarial “Others,” and the

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way in which discourses on Muslims and the religion of Islam fit into a larger schema of vilifying a group of people that is represented as posing a threat to “our” interests or way of life. Where what it means to be “Western” is partly defined by a shared linguistic heritage (in addition to political, economic, and cultural commonalities), those who fall outside that group, in this specific case Arabic speakers, have often been perceived as a threat to its identity and cohesion.

Further Reading Amin, El-Sayed M. A. Reclaiming Jihad: A Qur’anic Critique of Terrorism. Markfield: The Islamic Foundation, 2015. Korteweg, Anna, and Jennifer A. Selby, eds. Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Mariuma, Yarden. “Taqiyya as Polemic, Law and Knowledge: Following an Islamic Legal Term through the Worlds of Islamic Scholars, Ethnographers, Polemicists and Military Men.” Muslim World 104 (2014): 89–108. Marranci, Gabriele. “ ‘We Speak English’: Language and Identity Processes in Northern Ireland’s Muslim Community.” Ethnologies 25, no. 2 (2003): 59–75. Mohideen, Haja, and Shamimah Mohideen. “The Language of Islamophobia in Internet Articles.” Intellectual Discourse 16, no. 1 (2008): 73–87.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What, in your view, accounts for popular understandings of jihad or Sharia that emphasize violence? Are these misinterpretations, or simply alternative ones? 2. Can you think of other words or expressions—religious or otherwise—in other cultural contexts that have acquired similarly unidimensional interpretations? 3. Discuss why minority language groups in a given locale would engage one another in their native languages. Beyond the religious significance of Arabic (the language of the Quran), what cultural significances might this reveal about immigrant communities? 4. Do you believe that there is a basic human impulse to fear foreign languages or words? Why or why not? 5. Is it possible for concepts like “jihad” or “Sharia” to acquire more multidimensional and nuanced understandings outside of Muslim-majority societies? Why or why not?

Notes 1. Daniel Pipes, “A Madrassa in Brooklyn,” New York Sun, April 24, 2007. 2. Pipes, “A Madrassa in Brooklyn.”

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3. The number of books in recent years on jihad is telling, especially those that render the subject as “holy war.” See, for example, Ahmed Rashid: Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New York: Penguin, 2002); Peter Bergen, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists (New York: Crown, 2016); Patrick Cockburn, The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East (London: Verso, 2016); Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (New York: Free Press, 2003). Even within academia, the word jihad has acquired a rather fixed, negative meaning. Take for example American political scientist Benjamin Barber’s famous 1995 essay “Jihad vs. McWorld.” The often cited thesis pits retribalization, violence, and the breakdown of civil society (cast as “jihad”) against capitalist-driven prosperity and forced economic and ecological integration (“McWorld”) to show a planet that is comprised of two dominating forces, both of which are said to undermine democracy. 4. In July 2017, Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour referenced “jihad” in a speech she delivered at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual conference. Representing “jihad” as a nonviolent struggle akin to “a word of truth in the face of a tyrant,” some conservative activists accused her of inciting violence against President Donald Trump, whom she criticized in her remarks. A controversy ensued (resulting in death threats and a campaign to raise money for her security) over the term’s meaning, with one camp claiming that it was explicitly violent and the other suggesting that it was a historical and contextual doctrine that meant different things to different people. 5. The Arabic word jihad derives from the three-letter root, j-h-d, which means “to strive” or “to struggle.” It is referenced in 28 of the Quran’s 114 surahs, or chapters. The Arabic word Sharia means “the path to the watering hole,” and it is understood as the totality of God’s commandments and exhortations that regulate human conduct and which is informed by the Quran and the Hadith, or the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. 6. Mark Sedgwick, “Jihadism, Narrow and Wide: The Dangers of Loose Use of an Important Term,” Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 2 (2015): 34. 7. Sedgwick, “Jihadism, Narrow and Wide.” Dan Fodio was a Fulani mystic and revolutionary reformer who justified attacks on the sultan of Gobir and the subsequent establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate with writings that declared that the sultan had attacked Muslims and was therefore subject to being overthrown. Though dan Fodio did not take part in military expeditions himself, he appointed commanders and oversaw what he described as a “jihad.” 8. Sedgwick, “Jihadism, Narrow and Wide.” ¨ zlem Sensoy, “Beyond Fearing the Savage: Responding to Islamophobia in the 9. O Classroom,” in The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities, Fourth Edition, ed. E. Wayne Ross (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014), 307. 10. John L. Esposito and Sheila Lalwani, “Fear of Sharia in Tennessee,” March 25, 2011, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/25/is lam-religion (accessed July 14, 2017). 11. As cited in Sensoy, “Beyond Fearing the Savage: Responding to Islamophobia in the Classroom.” Also see: Hamilton Gibb, Mohammedanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962). Despite the outdated title—Islam was occasionally referred to with the term Mohammedanism, which was presumed to be the Islamic equivalent of Christianity, the religion named after Jesus Christ—this text offers a useful summary of key religious concepts. More recent work, especially by American scholar John L. Esposito, has come to replace the aging texts of people like Gibb, Montgomery Watt, and others, and is valued widely in educational and public settings for its accessibility.

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12. For a helpful summary of Sharia and the hudud punishments, see: Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Stoning and Hand Cutting: Understanding the Hudud and the Shariah in Islam,” January 12, 2017, https://yaqeeninstitute.org/en/jonathan-brown/stoning-and -hand-cutting-understanding-the-hudud-and-the-shariah-in-islam/ (accessed July 14, 2017). 13. There is one notable exception here. In some cases, those who warn of Sharia’s alleged advance in the United States have pointed to court cases where Muslims invoked religious traditions to settle familial disputes—a practice that is not uncommon among practitioners of other religions. While the Constitution remains supreme in the case of the American legal system, in instances of divorce, marriage, child custody, inheritance, and the like, some people wish to have their faith convictions inform how they proceed within the existing judicial framework. 14. To suggest that Sharia must be banned—or to ask Muslims if they “believe in” Sharia as part of a cultural litmus test—is to accept the false premise that there is a reified “thing” to ban or believe in, to begin with. Some have compared it to asking an American whether or not they believe in the Constitution—a comparison that is inaccurate on several levels. More accurate would be to ask a Jewish individual if he or she subscribed to halakhah, or if a Christian followed the guidelines for conduct outlined in the biblical doctrine. Still not perfect comparisons, they are closer in that they point to the less-thanfixed nature of religious codes of conduct, as well as to the often overlooked but critical concept of interpretation. 15. For a few examples of its use in popular outlets, see: Glenn Kessler, “Ben Carson’s Claim That ‘Taqiyya’ Encourages Muslims ‘To Lie to Achieve Your Goals,’ ” Washington Post, September 22, 2015; Carol Brown, “The Taqiyya Factor,” American Thinker, November 12, 2015; Imam Tawhidi, “The Concept of Taqiyya: Are Muslims Allowed to Lie?” Huffington Post, May 5, 2017; Yunus Paksoy, “Army Defense Ministry Transformed Since July 15 to Prevent Further Coup Attempts,” Daily Sabah, July 15, 2017; Raymond Ibrahim, “Lies about Islamic Taqiyya (Dissimulation),” Gatestone Institute, September 28, 2015. 16. Shafique N. Virani, The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A Search for Salvation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 47. 17. Omar Suleiman and Nazir Khan, “Playing the Taqiyya Card: Evading Intelligent Debate by Calling All Muslims Liars,” April 27, 2017, Yaqeen Institute, https://yaqeenin stitute.org/en/omar-suleiman/playing-the-taqiyya-card-evading-intelligent-debate-by -calling-all-muslims-liars/ (accessed July 10, 2017). 18. Suleiman and Khan, “Playing the Taqiyya Card.” 19. Suleiman and Khan, “Playing the Taqiyya Card.” 20. There is obvious irony in the fact that within the Islamic narrative, the concept of “taqiyya” was prescribed to protect Muslims from persecution, yet today it is that very term that often subjects them to it. 21. Kessler, “Ben Carson’s Claim That ‘Taqiyya’ Encourages Muslims ‘To Lie to Achieve Your Goals.’ ” 22. Kessler, “Ben Carson’s Claim That ‘Taqiyya’ Encourages Muslims ‘To Lie to Achieve Your Goals.’ ” 23. Kessler, “Ben Carson’s Claim That ‘Taqiyya’ Encourages Muslims ‘To Lie to Achieve Your Goals.’ ” 24. Sindre Bangstad, “Re-Coding Nationalism: Islam, Muslims, and Islamophobia in Norway before and after July 22, 2001,” in Islamophobia Studies Yearbook 2016, ed. Farid Hafez (New Academic Press, 2016), 58.

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25. Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in The Indigenous Experience: Global Perspectives, eds. Roger C. A. Maaka and Chris Anderson (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2006), 169. 26. Prasad Pannian, Edward Said and the Question of Subjectivity (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 19. 27. Mark Molloy, “The Arabic Message on This Bag Is Designed to ‘Terrify’ Islamophobes,” August 18, 2016, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/18/ the-genius-arabic-message-on-this-bag-is-designed-to-terrify-isl/ (accessed July 10, 2017). 28. Lucinda Mosher, Praying: The Rituals of Faith, Volume II (New York: Seabury Books, 2006), 7. 29. This is not unlike the Yiddish proverb “Man makes plans and God laughs,” meaning that God is ultimately in control of what does and does not happen. In southern culture, the phrase “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” suggests the same idea—a planned action or event will only take place if God allows it. For more, see: John L. Esposito, “In Sha Allah,” Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 138. 30. Rebecca Shabad, “Graham: ‘Allahu Akbar’ Is a ‘War Chant,’ ” September 23, 2013, The Hill, http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/323923-graham-when -somebody-yells-allahu-akbar-in-the-middle-east-i-duck (accessed July 10, 2017). 31. Matthew Yglesias, “Lindsey Graham Sounds the Alarm about the Word ‘The,’ ” May 25, 2015, Vox, https://www.vox.com/2015/5/5/8554335/lindsey-graham-al (accessed July 10, 2017). 32. The irony, and indeed an exception for critics, is the case of Arabic-speaking Christians, who also refer to God as “Allah” and for whom Arabic-language words like jihad have significance and meaning, even if it not in a distinctively religious way.

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KEY TERMS: • • • • •

• • • • •

exceptionalism feminism hijab jihad liberalism

multiculturalism patriarchy secularism self-colonizing Muslims Sharia

CHAPTER 5

The Soft Prejudice of “Western” Expectations The question that we’re discussing is whether these liberal values we embrace . . . how prevalent they are around the world. And I would argue that the largest obstacle we have is that in the 47 Muslim-majority countries that we have in the world, they very much practice an Islam that does not embody these liberal values. —Asra Nomani Instead of letting Islam off the hook with bland cliche´s about the religion of peace, we in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought and practice. —Ayaan Hirsi Ali In short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority of the Orient. —Edward Said

One of the more curious phenomena in recent years related to discourse on Islam and its place within “Western” societies is the rise of liberal activists and selfdescribed reformers that see the secular values of Europe and the United States as a gold standard. For so long, it has seemed that the bulk of the voices critiquing Muslims and their religion has been positioned on the right side of the political spectrum. Indeed, there is no shortage of Orientalist views within neoconservative 97

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circles or among the populist bases that have given rise to groups like America’s Tea Party, Austria’s Freedom Party, or France’s National Front. The image of a sharp dividing line between Islam and “the West” has become clearer with the hostile rhetoric from many of these camps, which describe Muslims as, among other things, Trojan Horse populations awaiting an opportunity to dismantle “Western” norms.1 Multiculturalism, they argue, is but a front that allows outside views to enter American and European spaces and hold equal sway under a banner of relativism. Equally as pernicious as the ideal of multiple cultural traditions within a single country is the attendant notion that polite society demands a judicious approach when it comes to commenting on beliefs or practices in a way that may offend people’s sensibilities. Poland’s interior minister Mariusz Blaszczak summed this up succinctly in July 2016 when, responding to the Bastille Day attacks in the city of Nice, he said, “This is a consequence of the policy of multicultural politics, and political correctness.”2 The idea that “our” values are under attack from outsiders who dislike “us” is a crude way of viewing the world—one that has been unpacked, dismantled, and convincingly rebutted by many scholars and others who see in it the obvious prejudice on which it is pillared. Yet “Western” exceptionalism, whether expressed in jingoistic overtures or more tempered calls for acquiescence to European and American norms, is what ultimately drives the idea of a split between Islam and “the West.”3 It is the latter, according to this view, that occupies the preferred moral and ethical position in the world and the former that must address its various deficiencies in order to measure up. Many of those who hold fast to this position are careful not to express it with bellicosity or antipathy. Rather, as I argue in this chapter, they take an approach that is often more muted and that comes across as well polished, articulate, and furnished with the best interests of all communities in mind. Even so, the same “us” versus “them” assumptions that have long characterized Orientalism are at work, as is a deep and abiding belief that within the religion of Islam there are flaws or shortcomings that render it inadequate when compared to the prevailing “Western” paradigm. I call this idea the “soft prejudice of Western expectations,” a phrase that is a riff on the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” which George W. Bush’s speechwriter Michael Gerson coined to call attention to the idea that expecting less of disadvantaged populations presumed an inherent inability on their part to meet certain standards.4 As I see it, expecting Muslim communities around the world to adjust their religious beliefs such that they are in accordance with secular principles of liberalism as interpreted by American and European governments is also a form of prejudice. It is built on a self-righteous approach that muffles diversity, stigmatizes difference, and fails to consider the possibility that Muslim communities can be faithful citizens while also interpreting their religion in ways that may not always line up neatly with prevailing moral standards.5 As we will discuss below, this has become quite pronounced in recent years within two distinct areas: that of the alleged need for “Islamic reform” and narratives surrounding feminism and women’s rights. Looking at these areas more closely will allow us to see how the ostensibly noble narratives that are often associated with them are predicated on myriad assumptions about both Islam and “the West,” and they fail to consider the history

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of colonialism and the influence of American and European foreign policies in various Middle Eastern countries.

“Good” Muslims and “Westerners” Though the lineage of Orientalist narratives on gender and Islamic reform is a long one, the “War on Terror,” led by the United States since 2001, enlivened these themes anew. American and European military interventions in Afghanistan and later Iraq brought issues of democracy, freedom, women’s rights, and human rights to the fore of public discourse. These protracted engagements also stressed a perceived discrepancy in moral virtue between “the West” and large swaths of the Middle East where, as Sunaina Maira notes, citizens were thought to be “trapped in antidemocratic, patriarchal, and tribalistic cultures” and thus needed “to be liberated in order to achieve ‘freedom’ of individual autonomy promised to the fittest by neoliberal capitalism.”6 Central to this discourse was the often cited phrase “You’re either with us or against us,” which is usually attributed to George W. Bush.7 Though the specific context of these remarks was the unfolding arena of war that targeted Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the subtext revealed more about values than it did wartime alliances. “With us” implied a commitment to the perceived moral linchpins of “Western” democracies, most especially the United States. Chiefly among them were the values of “liberty” and “freedom” that, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq progressed, were transmuted from individual convictions to universally enforced standards. Protecting the United States and its European allies from the threat of terrorism was coupled with a project of identifying all those who interpreted Islamic religious teachings in ways that ran counter to “Western” norms. It was also coupled with a sustained effort to “liberate” Muslim women from their allegedly woeful plights and introduce an “American way of life” that would relieve them of the supposed hardships they faced.8 To be sure, many women in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries throughout the region do suffer from oppression and violence.9 The liberationist rhetoric of the War on Terror, however, diagnosed local culture—and religion—as the illness and prescribed another culture, and indeed a foreign one, as the medicine. What resulted was a framework that pitted a supposedly secular people against supposedly archaic others, and set into motion the idea that being a loyal citizen of North America or Europe required acquiescing to “imperative patriotism,” whereby dissent against state policies is deemed unpatriotic.10 This underwrote images of an idealized Islam and Muslim, and intimated that those Muslims who did not match this preferred profile were Janusfaced citizens at best, and not fully assimilated within their societies. Mahmood Mamdani has provided an instructive example of this phenomenon in his discussion of “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims” and the ways in which the “War on Terror” discourse bifurcated Muslim citizens into either one of two groups:

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CH APT ER 5 President Bush moved to distinguish between “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims.” . . . “Bad Muslims” were clearly responsible for terrorism. At the same time, the president seemed to assure Americans that “good Muslims” . . . would undoubtedly support “us” in a war against “them.” . . . But unless proved to be “good,” every Muslim was presumed to be bad.11

It is helpful to consider that the distinctions of “good” and “bad” did not only apply to Muslims in American war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan, the former of whom were thought to support the “War on Terror” while the latter opposed it. These categories also extended to Muslims living in the United States and Europe, and who considered themselves to be both fully Muslim and “Western.” Based on this, it may seem that “Western Muslims” would invariably be considered “good” on account of their being “Western,” while the characterization of those living outside of the so-called West would not be immediately clear. However, I argue that the “soft prejudice of Western expectations” has cast its gaze domestically as well. In fact, it is within the spaces that we so often call “the West” where it primarily finds resonance. In the increased climate of skepticism toward and fear of Muslims in general, it has led to the idea among some that even Muslims born in the United States and Europe, and who may consider themselves “Western,” are not fully so unless they digest a specific set of cultural values and religious beliefs that are dictated by those in positions of power or privilege. In other words, even an American-born Muslim would have to prove her “American-ness” or “Western-ness” where, for instance, an American-born Christian, Jew, or other would not bear that onus. This often means suppressing or modifying religious beliefs such that they become secondary to other cultural markers; namely, nationality: we are Americans or Canadians or Germans first; we are Muslims or Christians or Jews second. As we will see, this quest for “good” Muslims that are also “good Westerners” has generated a checklist of sorts where, among other things, those who participate in this discourse outline acceptable mosque practices, satisfactory female religious garb, and appropriate ways to interpret Islamic scripture. At the forefront of this mission to define and identify “good” and “Western” Muslims are, in fact, Muslims themselves whose first-person testimonials about the alleged woes of Islam and their unwavering support of American and European foreign policies have rendered them exemplary citizens and religious believers.

Self-Colonizers or Native Informants? Much scholarship and popular writing that have aimed to describe and characterize ethnic minorities that furnish trenchant critiques of their own communities to colonizing “Western” powers have used the label native informant.12 Simply put, these individuals are seen as experts on their race, religion, or ethnicity—most always “other” to the predominantly white, Christian ruling class—by virtue of

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nothing more than their belonging to those groups. Historically, “native informants” provided valuable information about their cultures to European colonizers who came to rely on these people as experts for such knowledge, and who used it to their advantage in constructing colonial enterprises throughout the world. Today, this type of relationship is a key component of discourse on Islam and “the West,” and especially the construction of ideal models of citizenship and religiosity. American and European governments and media have turned to the voices of preferred Muslim writers and activists whose views on their religion and its alleged relationship with prevailing secular values meet “Western” expectations. Though the phrase native informants seems to have lodged itself permanently within academic and popular discourses on Orientalism and “Islam-West” relations, I suggest that it is more accurate to describe those people who participate in this specific project using the metaphor of self-colonization. In reality, the individuals we will discuss below are outsiders only insofar as their skin color and ethnic or religious background do not match the larger population of which they are a part, though in many instances they have long held those spaces as a central and defining part of their identity. Therefore, whatever “native” status they claim on behalf of their religion also applies to their cultural entrenchment within American or European societies. In a similar vein, while “informing” may appear to be their modus operandi, they are hardly foreign subjects giving advice to intruding governments about how best to maneuver politically and socially in order to gain a better footing in some colonial venture. Instead, I argue that these actors are equal participants in a project of colonization that not only seeks to establish political control of various global terrains but intellectual control of Islam as well. Self-colonizers often rely on the discursive mechanisms discussed in chapter 1: reification, essentialism, and misplaced agency. The power of their narratives, however, stems not from repeated generalizations, tropes, or stereotypes about Islam (though they are a factor), but from deeply emotive personal stories of being rescued by, or finding refuge in, “the West” just as their indigenous cultures were about to swallow them up: Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, weaves together narratives about the grisly death of her colleague Daniel Pearl at the hands of Al-Qaeda militants with observations of patriarchy in American mosques to advocate for a new interpretation of Islam that champions feminism and excises extremism; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born author and activist, weds her experience as a victim of female genital mutilation with the murder of her friend Theo Van Gogh by a Dutch Muslim man to suggest that Islam needs a reformation and one that will bring it up to par with “Western” criterions; British activist Maajid Nawaz tells of his journey from the frontlines of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir to the cell of an Egyptian prison where he discovered that secularism was a noble idea to embrace; Canadian writer Irshad Manji relates her experiences as an openly gay Muslim woman in a series of books, films, and public lectures to encourage support for a “liberal” version of Islam that, in contrast to its asserted current iteration, would make space for diversity and difference.13 It is necessary to offer the following intervention in wake of criticism that has targeted this labeling. Notably, it is not the particular ideas put forth by these

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individuals that warrants objection here. In fact, over the course of history, Muslim thinkers have deployed many similar ideas and engaged in a range of debates over competing interpretations of Islam.14 To be sure, gender equality, nonviolence, and other positions that extol the virtues of basic human decency are, in my perspective, noble. Further, who is to say what views are acceptable or unacceptable among a diverse group of people anyway? Of concern, however, is the manner in which self-colonizers position their respective interpretation of one Islamic tenet or another as the only possible option, and themselves engage in a process of identifying acceptable or unacceptable views. For them, the diversity of Muslims’ experiences around the world is ill considered, and the prescriptive approach that they take invariably rests on the idea that “they” must alter “their” beliefs in order to be more like “us” in “the West.” Of course, self-reflection of the effects of American and European imperialism is similarly absent from this intellectual project as “the West” is situated as a righteous and unassailable ideal. The possibility that some Muslims might weigh into the debate and suggest, for example, that they like their religion just as it is and do not see the urgency of interpreting it to fit an outside model does not factor into the logic of this group, and it is precisely the absence of those voices that makes their calls for Islamic reform and the like all the more troubling.

The Problems of Calling for “Islamic Reform” The “soft prejudice of Western expectations” thrives, in part, on the idea that the religion of Islam must be reformed. Muslims, the narrative goes, should reconsider key Islamic values, tenets, and historical precedents, and either alter them such that they meet the basic moral or ethical beliefs of the group advocating reform, or excise them altogether if their religion is to remain a part of American and European social fabrics. This view is fraught with problems. The first is that calls for reform are almost invariably deployed at Muslim groups by outsiders who, while Muslims themselves (or in some cases ex-Muslims), are not fully situated within the cultural and social landscape of local Muslim communities in their respective countries, and those communities often view them in a negative light on account of their public utterances about Islam. In fact, as we will see, some of the more prominent individuals demanding “Islamic reform” have broadcast opinions of the religion that range from the subtly prejudiced to the outright hostile. Second, these calls for reform are frequently based on a handful of religious concepts that are represented in decontextualized and highly sensationalized ways. Among them are Sharia, or Islamic law, and the doctrine of jihad. Despite the multiplicity of interpretations of these principles by Muslims around the world, advocates of “Islamic reform” understand them in a way that is singular, based on a literal scriptural reading, and thus exclusively violent. Third, this urging of reform is based on a fixed and positivist understanding of what “reform” actually means. For self-colonizers that lead this discourse, reform implies a unidirectional

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march toward “Western” norms and precludes the possibility that, for example, “reform” of Islam could eventuate in Muslim individuals or groups proposing changes or adaptations to their religious interpretations that are contrary to those “Western” norms. In other words, the process of reform as it is understood in this discourse always has a predetermined outcome. The final problem of calling for “Islamic reform” is related to the first. The fact that it is predominantly outsiders who scrutinize Islam’s alleged woes from their privileged American or European perches inevitably means that the communities of people that they target are absent from the conversation. Thus, rather than an organic conversation about the need to reconsider a given religious interpretation, the views of ordinary Muslims are presumed to be understood and summarily deemed problematic. The fact that it remains a conversation about “them” and what “they” must do to effect change only heightens tensions and feelings of division between colonizer and colonized. At the vanguard of this project of reform is the aforementioned author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. For years, Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim, has urged followers of her former religion to cast off the yoke of extremism, which, as she sees it, begins by scrutinizing Islam’s “core creed,” the Quran, for “theologically sanctioned violence” and expunging it from Muslims’ religious worldview.15 It is within the pages of Islam’s holy book, she argues, that would-be violent actors find inspiration. There, she says, the justification for bloodshed is “explicitly stated” and may be meted out upon those who engage in any number of offenses, including apostasy, adultery, or blasphemy.16 Specifically, she identifies five precepts that “require amendment.” They are: Muhammad’s semidivine status and literalist readings of the Quran; the supremacy of life after death; the priority of religious law over secular human law; the right of individual Muslims to enforce Islamic law; and the alleged imperative to engage in jihad, which she interprets as “holy war.”17 On its face, this list of proposed reforms may appear rather innocuous. Yet it offers much to unpack. First, let us consider the argument that the Quran, at its core, is the culprit of Muslims’ alleged backwardness. The insistence that religious texts are the primary transmitters of violent teachings is predicated on the belief that words on a page, as a result of their consecrated nature, project a centrifugal power that would move anyone who reads them toward a particular action. Yet this is not the case. While it is true that a religious believer may be moved by a scripture from his or her religious text and act upon it, it is not the text itself that propels that individual toward action but rather the individual’s interpretation of what the text commands. In other words, religious texts have meaning and power only insofar as those who read them believe that they do. People have agency; texts do not. To see this more clearly, we might consider the following questions: If a Muslim is one who believes in the message and sanctity of the Quran, and if the scriptural text of the Quran commands Muslims to engage in violence, why is it the case that all Muslims do not engage in violence? If we hold Quranic scripture responsible for the bad acts of those who interpret it literally, should not we also give it credit for the benevolent acts carried out by many Muslims who derive inspiration for such things from it? This, of course, underscores the fundamental idea that texts without human interpretation are simply texts—holy books

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included. Only through the human process of engagement with scripture— believing in its power and deriving interpretations about its meaning—can the words on the pages translate into actions in the world. Fixating, then, on the text itself rather than critiquing particular human interpretations of the text is a knotty venture within the project of “reforming” Islam. Of the five specific areas where Hirsi Ali recommends that Muslims take up reforms, a multilevel critique is necessary. On one level, her narrative raises questions about generalization, reductionism, and even common sense. That Muhammad, for example, would come to be anything other than Prophet of God in the minds of Muslims is unlikely, and the suggestion that faithful followers of Islam should take up that view is to call into question the very legitimacy of the religion itself. After all, central to the religious identity of Muslims is the belief that Muhammad was the human instrument through which God’s message, the Quran, was delivered to mankind. Eliminating him as a locus of divine writ is to strike at the very heart of revelation. Hirsi Ali’s suggestion that Muslims place greater premium on death than they do life is similarly misguided. Apart from the fact that this argument reduces disparate views to one presumed interpretation—a penchant for martyrdom—it may well be argued that all religious people whose convictions point them toward a greater hereafter view it as ultimately more important than their worldly life. Importantly, urging Muslims to “assign a greater value to the rewards of this life than to those promised in the hereafter” is a roundabout way of suggesting that they sacrifice a religious worldview for a secular one.18 We see this again in the suggestion that the laws of man take precedent to Islamic law—a proposition that rests on the conjecture that Muslims act and believe as a single religious body, and that for them, secularism is of little import. It should go without saying that this is not the case.19 Beyond that, however, this narrative reinforces a dualism of religious versus secular, which offers only two competing options: one is either religious or they are secular. Of course, the world is more complicated than that, and it is quite often the case that religious-minded people living in secular-oriented societies are able to operate within legal frameworks that honor prevailing laws while also allowing for meaningful expressions of religious jurisprudence when and where appropriate. To propose that Muslims living in “the West” must abandon any given commitments to Sharia is akin to suggesting that Christians, Jews, or others not allow religious dicta to inform the aspects of their lives where religious sanctification is important to them. Lastly, the idea that Muslims must reject the doctrine of jihad generalizes its meaning and interpretation among the billion-plus people that follow Islam and situates it, like Sharia, in an exclusively negative light. While it may be true that some Muslims interpret it as “holy war,” calling for its expurgation from the theological bedrock of Islam amounts to redefining a 1,400-year-old world religion simply because some people throughout history have interpreted one of its many principles in a military sense. This normalized understanding of jihad also reinforces the misconception that violence carried out by Muslim individuals, even when religion is cited as the inspiration or justification, is inevitably religious in nature— that is, that there is something exceptionally violent about Islam that makes Muslims violent people. Even though he justified his attacks against the United

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States in religious language, Al-Qaeda’s former leader, Osama bin Laden, acknowledged that his motivations for such egregious acts as 9/11 were political; the same is true of the Boston Marathon bombers and countless others who, invoking Islam in name or citing specific doctrines such as jihad, carried out attacks that were motivated by grievances against “Western” foreign policy, for instance.20 This is not to place blame on American or European foreign policy for such violence (indeed, only the perpetrators are to blame), but rather to suggest that it is hardly the case that jihad or other tenets found within Islamic religious traditions are the sole geneses of the problems that Hirsi Ali and other advocates of reform aim to change. In addition to unpacking some of the specific arguments that so often comprise platforms of “Islamic reform,” it is also helpful to think about the deeper implications of this discourse overall. Who gets to make such calls in the first place? Which voices are privileged? Which voices are absent? A cursory glance at the linguistic construction of many of these narratives— Muslims must do this or Muslims should do that—reveals their imperative function. This establishes an insider/outsider relationship between the personal calling for reform and the target of their rhetoric. Even as Muslims themselves may participate in this discourse by calling for reforms within their own religion, they are nonetheless situating themselves outside of the particular group of people or ideas that they consider deficient in some way. What emerges is a power dynamic where one group of people feels authorized to identify what they perceive as necessary areas of improvement within another group. In this case, Muslim communities who are on the receiving end of critiques from Hirsi Ali or other “reformers” are at a disadvantage as they are first situated within this discourse as the targeted subjects, and subsequently disempowered by ensuing narratives that depict them as backward, hostile, emotional, and unable to meet “Western” expectations without being prodded. We might ask of such appeals for reform: What about the voices of those who should purportedly change? Where are they, and what do they have to say? The answer is quite simple: they are absent, and they say nothing because they cannot speak. This is not because they choose to be absent or because they have nothing to say. Rather, the discursive parameters of the “Islamic reform” narrative provide an image of Muslims—“them” or “they”—who are nameless and faceless actors. Hirsi Ali and others who hasten to point out “their” flaws or enumerate the many things that “they” must do to make of “their” religion something praiseworthy rarely, if ever, tell us to whom, exactly, the word they refers. In this manner, Muslims have no agency and exist solely as an imaginary mass of people who serve the purpose of providing the bad examples upon which advocates of reform establish their programs. Even if we imagine that specific examples of Muslims that should reform their religious interpretations exist, “they” are not a part of “our” conversation because it is easier to speak for them than it is to allow them to upset the power dynamic that governs this discourse. Thus, Hirsi Ali and company silence their voices because it is easier to represent a given group as backward, violent, or in need of reform when that group cannot respond and challenge the narrative. Importantly, it is the advocates of reform who are in privileged political

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and cultural positions to begin with and whom, as a result of their access to government circles, media establishment, and various public platforms are able to make their voices more widely heard. This discourse is also predicated on the notion that there is one group that understands the true or ideal Islam, and acting as credential police, they inspect the authenticity or legitimacy of the religion as it is practiced by Muslims worldwide. If reforms that follow the “Western” model are indeed enacted, it is those interpretations (and those Muslims) that are then held up as the epitome of what Islam really is. Thus, liberal Muslims may be considered more truly Muslim than conservative Muslims, for example; secular Muslims may be more truly Muslim than their religious-minded counterparts. These competing notions of what Islam really is, then, are not at all related to internal dialogues among Muslims about the believed nature of their religion but are a matter of how closely interpretations of Islam align with what “Western” advocates of reform believe it should be.

Saving Muslim Women (from Hijabs and Patriarchy) Women figure centrally within discourses on reforming Islam. For years, American and European powers have constructed war narratives that cast them as an oppressed group that suffers at the hands of their male counterparts, whether husbands, brothers, or other relatives. Lifting these societies out of despair, the story goes, involves saving Muslim women from their allegedly insufferable plights and granting them the rights and freedoms that they deserve. The anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod is chiefly among a growing group of scholars and writers that has pushed back against this discourse. In her 2013 volume Do Muslim Women Need Saving? she argues cogently that generalizations about the religion of Islam can hardly explain hardships that women face. Other factors, she notes, including authoritarianism and poverty, are among the range of things that generate suffering.21 Coupled with the project of “saving” Muslim women in various countries where Islam is the predominant religion and where conflict endures, however, is a similar venture that aims to unfetter women from their own religious interpretations that some perceive as a threat to feminism and secularism. At the forefront of this effort is the former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani. The author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam, she is also a founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, an organization that advocates for an interpretation of Islam that accords with the values of liberal democracies. Nomani argues that Muslim women should not wear the hijab because it is a symbol of oppression. She rejects the idea that the veil “is merely a symbol of modesty and dignity adopted by faithful female followers of Islam,” and instead maintains that is a mechanism for controlling women that has its roots in “political Islam.”22 In this vein, Nomani has also suggested that masjids, or mosques, are spaces that are characterized by rigid patriarchy and “gender apartheid.”23 For her, separate entrances for males and females, a partition that divides

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the sexes during prayer time, and the absence of women imams, or prayer leaders, is evidence of discrimination. This, she says, contradicts the teachings of Muhammad and “the spirit of our land.”24 Nomani highlighted these concerns in her 2009 documentary The Mosque in Morgantown, which traced her journey back to her hometown house of worship in West Virginia. There, she channeled the Protestant reformer Martin Luther and taped a list of “99 Precepts for Opening Hearts, Minds, and Doors in the Muslim World” to the mosque’s door, along with an “Islamic Bill of Rights for Women.” The latter requested, among other things, the right to mixed-gender prayer, the right to be greeted and addressed cordially, and exemption from gossip and slander.25 The following year, Nomani penned the “Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom,” which called for the right to a “respectful and pleasurable sexual experience,” “protection from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse,” and “exemption from criminalization or punishment for consensual adult sex.”26 Nomani believes that the solution to these alleged problems is an embrace of a “liberal” ethos that “we” in “the West” hold dear, and that it is the responsibility of “liberals in the West” and “liberal Muslims” alike to challenge “interpretations of Islam that belie progressive values.”27 Examples of unyielding patriarchy in mosques exist. So too do examples of compulsion regarding the hijab. Feminist advocates of reform are not the first to point them out, though they are quick to lodge instances of such abuses within their narratives as evidence of a problem. To suggest, however, that women who wear the veil are oppressed subjects is equally as misguided as the common counterargument that suggests that some women choose to wear the veil and thus it is not a symbol of domination. The latter does not sufficiently address the reality of patriarchy in various spaces and instead dismisses it in view of alternative examples, or in the interest of not falling prey to generalizations. The former is, itself, a generalization that has fueled stereotypes about Muslim women and the maledominated systems that supposedly subjugate them. It gives little credence to a world of diverse religious interpretations, and it emboldens the “soft prejudice of ‘Western’ expectations” by holding up free-flowing hair as an archetype of the modern, civilized woman. Moreover, this discourse on veiling demonstrates yet again the traps of dualism. In calling for Muslim women to remove the veil, Nomani and her fellow reformers present a world that is fractured down the middle—a world that divides the veiled from the unveiled, Islam from the West, modernity from antiquity, civilization from barbarism. Each respective side of this imagined world is homogenous. The unveiled women are all unveiled; the hijab has been erased from existence, and every woman moves in time and space as a being whose hair is fully exposed. The Muslim woman in this world is fully free from the burden of cloth that once covered her, and as such, is able to realize her full potential. Reacting to the victory of American Muslim track and field athlete Dalilah Muhammad at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Nomani described it as “an awesome sight: a Muslim woman, wind in her hair, air on her skin, free of any fatwa.”28 On the other side of the divide is a world where all Muslim women are veiled. Theirs is a life of persecution and misery. They are trapped beneath a religiously commanded shield and cannot

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understand that the freedoms of the secular world are delightful. The veiled women are all veiled in the same way, despite variances in the actual piece of fabric that covers them; the hijab, the burqa, the niqab, and the chador are one and the same. Their appearance may differ but their function is to conceal—to cover strands of hair and to suppress the inner character of the woman who exists beneath it. The project of “saving” Muslim women, then, becomes a project of making two worlds one—of enfolding the world of the veiled Muslim woman into that of the unveiled one. Embedded within this discourse is a task of epistemological emancipation in which the so-called reformer attempts to free the veiled Muslim woman from even her own knowledge and religious interpretations, showing her a world that she never imagined was possible. The self-colonizer releases the colonized, but only if she agrees to live in the world of the colonizer and play by the colonizer’s rules. Nomani’s rejection of the veil as a symbol of religious piety or modesty demonstrates this. Time and again, she returns to the idea that the hijab, at its core, is a political tool that men use to exert control over women’s bodies. (Ironically, she does not appear to see that demanding its removal is also a mode of exerting control over a woman’s body, which becomes the object of competing expressions about what they should or should not wear.) The voices of veiled women are rarely, if ever, present in her narratives, though when they do inject their voices into the debate, their interpretations in favor of wearing the veil are summarily dismissed.29 In this discourse, Muslim women who say that they choose to wear the veil often find themselves deflecting claims that, in fact, they are not really choosing anything at all but instead are subconsciously digesting patriarchal norms. Thus, the veiled Muslim woman, even when she expresses that she is acting in accordance with the inner desires of her heart, is represented as someone who cannot comprehend the rationality of the choices that she makes. Those “reformers” who encourage an “unveiled” world situate themselves in a position to speak for the veiled Muslim woman—to know what she wants and to know the logic of her choices even better than she knows them herself. In this sense, the veiled Muslim woman is perennially silenced by her veil, only able to speak with authority and influence when she removes it and enters into the unveiled world of the “Western” Muslim woman.30 Turning to issues related to women in mosques, similar complexities warrant our attention. Certainly, we can acknowledge from the outset that within some mosques, patriarchy and the mistreatment of women exist. Indeed, Nomani and other women who have experienced this speak of it in terms that communicate a deep pain that is quite real to them. Yet just as this is so, one must exercise great caution in allowing personal experiences of prejudice or mistreatment to inform a broader project that attempts to liberate others who have presumably experienced the same. The risk is that these efforts become more akin to individual quests to rectify wrongs committed against oneself than to projects of reform that are rooted within a faith community, and out of concern for its well-being. Personal pains become universalized such that one woman who experiences mistreatment in a mosque may perceive it as an indication of a widespread malaise that affects all women in precisely the same way. The victimhood of one, then, becomes the victimhood of all.

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Like that of the hijab, this approach is rooted in an erasure of Muslim women’s voices and a privileging of those voices that call for reform inside mosques. Importantly, it is also predicated on the monopolization and appropriation of “rights.” Asserting that women’s rights are being denied in houses of worship is to make a basic claim about what those rights actually are—the “right” to pray in front of, or alongside, men, or the “right” to enter the mosque through the same door as men, for example. This is not to suggest that these things are not rights, but rather to problematize one’s ability to advocate for the “rights” of another, especially when it is unclear if that person claims these things as rights for themselves. It may be the case that scores of women inside mosques throughout the United States and Europe believe that they are being denied basic gender equality. But if we begin from that point of departure and develop a discourse that presumes that this view is true, we blind ourselves to the real possibility that scores of women in American and European mosques do not believe that they are treated unequally. To insist that they are wrong, or that they simply cannot see the problem, is to seize their agency much like the examples above regarding the veil. To flesh this out further, it may be helpful to consider a few questions: Is it the case that all Muslim women desire to enter mosques through the front door, or to pray alongside men? Is it possible that some Muslim women may not consider these things to be the critical missing elements of fair-minded society? Might it be the case that some Muslim women may prefer these religious practices as they find meaning and value in the religious traditions and history out of which they arise? Are less-than-pleasurable sexual experiences or episodes of physical abuse quotidian affairs between Muslim couples? Does claiming the right to protection from those things within the mosque suggest that they are “Muslim” problems as opposed to simply human ones? The “soft prejudice of ‘Western’ expectations” deepens the perception of division between Islam and “the West” by situating all who answer these questions in the affirmative on one side of an imagined line, and all who answer them in the negative on the other. Like the veiled Muslim woman who only becomes legitimate in her own voice when she removes her hijab and crosses over into the world of the unveiled, the Muslim woman who prays in the back of the mosque or enters it through a designated door only gains full agency when she resists those practices and joins the movement against them. She is seen as more truly Muslim on account of this resistance because in this discursive terrain what is truly Muslim is also that which is truly “Western.” It is not difficult, then, to see how anyone who would take a position that is counter to the “Western” narrative would be subjected to persistent scrutiny and stigma. The hijabi woman who prays behind a partition or who does not aspire to deliver the adhan (call to prayer) or the khutba (sermon) is deemed deficient at best and dangerous at worst. Where conforming to the “Western” narrative is admirable, rejecting it is not only seen as an indication of personal preference or difference. It is also represented as an embodiment of the allegedly pernicious forces that are said to subjugate women. This, as we will see below, gives rise to narratives targeted at non-Muslim audiences, and which depict veiled Muslim women and those who interpret their religion in more traditional ways as threats to very existence of “the West.”

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Targeting “Western” Audiences with Anti-Muslim Narratives Central to discussions about reforming Islam, whether by addressing perceived scriptural failings or the social behaviors of Muslims, is the issue of audience. Who is participating in this discourse, and to whom are calls for reform addressed? At the very least, it would seem that any project involving a fundamental reshaping of religious narratives would claim the religious community at hand as a principal constituent. Indeed, one may even expect that concerns over the need to reform, and subsequent measures to enact it, would arise within religious communities themselves. While it is not always the case that religious reform is an organic affair (history gives us many examples of outside stimuli effecting change), I am of the opinion that there is something to be desired about a natural process that involves members of a religious group having internal conversations and debates about their tradition and pushing forward together in the interest of preserving or improving it. Under the auspices of the aforementioned discourses on Islamic reform, it is too often the case that the conversation targets Muslim communities but does not involve them. This is so, in part, because of the degree to which actors like Hirsi Ali and Nomani advance rhetoric and adopt political positions that vilify and alienate Muslims. To simultaneously claim that Islam needs to be reformed while advocating policies that impinge on the civil rights of Muslims creates tension between the reformers and the communities that they target. However, it opens up space within the broader public for conversations about Islam and its incompatibility with “the West.” Hirsi Ali, for example, has stated plainly that Islam is “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death” that represents “the new fascism,” and whose prophet, Muhammad, was a “pedophile.”31 Similarly, she has said, “We [presumably ‘the West’] are at war with Islam, and there’s no middle ground in wars. . . . Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re [Muslims] not interested in peace. . . . there comes a moment when you crush your enemy.”32 Likewise, Nomani has intimated that the increased use of Arabic phrases like In Sha Allah (the equivalent of “God willing”) is a “red flag” that indicates a drift toward extremism.33 She has also pledged her support of surveillance programs that spy on American Muslim mosques, businesses, and neighborhoods, and served as a witness for Representative Peter King’s 2011 House Hearings on the “radicalization” of Muslims groups in the United States.34 What we see from these examples are self-colonizers situating themselves squarely within “Western” political and media spaces, and using these platforms to call attention to interpretations of the Islamic faith that they find problematic. Indeed, their narratives, which line the pages of popular books and figure into evening newscasts and nightly talk shows, are intended to expose the ills of Islam, and to project onto Muslim communities the onus of reconfiguring their transcendental worldviews. It is viewers of programs like Real Time with Bill Maher or radio broadcasts like The Diane Rehm Show that learn of Islam’s allegedly pitiful

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state—a reality that rings of a certain voyeurism. These audiences digest the laundry list of things that Muslims must purportedly do to reinvigorate their traditions with “modernity” and secular liberalism. They come to see in these presentations the same urgency for change that Hirsi Ali and Nomani advocate. The general public, not local mosques or Muslim communities, are the sounding board for these ideas. Islam is not only a Muslim matter. In today’s world, it has become the concern of everyone to scrutinize it, theorize about it, and comment on it in various ways. Intricate topics related to the manners in which Muslims worship, what they believe, what they wear, and how they carry themselves in public are subjects of open debate—the most intimate details of one’s personal religious journey litigated by people who, in many cases, hold Islam in negative regard. This approach splits Muslim communities off from the broader population and creates a dynamic where the notion of reform within Islam is deliberated and discussed among the masses, and Muslims, like defendants on trial, stand before a jury of their peers who decides for them—after reading the books of people like Hirsi Ali and Nomani—how they are allowed to move about within the borders of “the West.” What Muslims in London, New York, Rabat, or Riyadh have to say is only considered important insofar as it lines up neatly with the dominant narrative. Within this context, anti-Muslim prejudice is of particular concern as it both enlivens narratives about what Muslims “must” or “should” do when it comes to practicing their religion, and results from those instances where Muslims reject such prescriptions and are subsequently excoriated, stigmatized, or worse. It is hard to imagine, then, that within this discursive arena Muslims would be inclined to enact the measures set forth by these so-called reformers. Though they may share their concerns about the need for modifying interpretations here or there, it is precisely an approach that posits a “Western” model as the be-all-endall of human piety that has tended to sow discord. The fact that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani remain today isolated from mainstream Muslim communities in Europe and the United States underscores that, as does their rise to fame within right-of-center spaces and other assemblages that have long cast a suspicious gaze toward Muslims and the religion of Islam. Perhaps the greatest irony of the “soft prejudice of ‘Western’ expectations” is that it advances a worldview that is as equally as intractable as the one it hopes to reform. Just as these advocates of change paint Islam with a broad brush, the image of “the West” that they put forth is similarly unidimensional. There is little room for variance or diversity, little patience for disagreement or divergence. This, in and of itself, should be an indicator of something gone wrong. It is incorrect, then, to even say that “Islam” needs “reform,” since that statement presumes from the very beginning that there is a singular “Islam” that we can identify and improve in its entire being. Where does one begin such an impossible task? What do we do with those scriptural elements that are deemed outdated or irrelevant? Without religious authority to govern what, in fact, is acceptable and unacceptable, how are religious practitioners held accountable for their beliefs and actions? I am not suggesting in this chapter that various interpretations of Islam cannot or

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should not be reformed. Rather, my concern is the overarching structure of knowledge and power relations that facilitate calls for reform, and that establish a set of expectations to which Muslims must measure up. If, as it turns out, reform is a project that Muslim communities hope to take up, it must be precisely because they see it as necessary to begin with, and nurture an internal conversation that considers the diversity of religious experiences, includes a wide range of voices, and allows for a multiplicity of views. The religious path that emerges out of this conversation will, I believe, be ultimately more meaningful than that which is littered with prejudice and that leads only to a predetermined secular destination.

Further Reading Ahmed, Leila. A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence from the Middle East to America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Cady, Linell E., and Tracy Fessenden. Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, Jane I. Smith, and Kathleen M. Moore. Muslim Women in America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity Today. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Hammer, Juliane. American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. Mahmood, Saba. “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War on Terror.” In Gendering Religion and Politics: Untangling Modernities, eds. Hanna Herzog and Ann Braude. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Are there universal moral norms that should govern religious interpretations? If so, what are they, and who determines them? 2. Is it possible, in your view, for outsiders of a religious tradition to instigate reforms within it, or is reform solely a matter for members of a particular religion to consider? Why? In order for reform efforts to be effective, what are some of the qualifications that the people advo` -vis the cating reform must possess? How must they be positioned vis-a community and the tradition? 3. Does calling for Muslims, or any group, to adopt positions that are considered “Western” a project that is invariably imbued with prejudice? Why or why not? 4. Why, in your view, has the hijab become equated with the oppression of Muslim women, even as veiled women increasingly assert that they choose to wear it? 5. How can conversations about religious reforms take place without invoking stereotypes or generalizations?

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Notes 1. Here, the 2014 “Operation Trojan Horse” case in the UK comes to mind. This refers to the alleged attempts, described by various members of the British government, including then–Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove, of Muslim parents to infiltrate local schools in Birmingham and covertly enforce strict religious values. For a fairly detailed summary and analysis, see: Chris Allen, “Operation Trojan Horse: Examining the ‘Islamic Takeover’ of Birmingham Schools,” April 18, 2014, http://theconversa tion.com/operation-trojan-horse-examining-the-islamic-takeover-of-birmingham-schools -25764 (accessed December 28, 2016). 2. Adam Taylor, “What France Thinks of Multiculturalism and Islam,” July 16, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/16/what-france -thinks-of-multiculturalism-and-islam/?utm_term.721bb0b0a93b (accessed December 28, 2016). 3. For an excellent discussion of exceptionalism in the case of France, a country that has been a hotbed of European Islamophobia, see: Ahmet T. Kuru, “Secularism, State Policies, and Muslims in Europe: Analyzing French Exceptionalism,” Comparative Politics 41, no. 3 (2008): 1–19. 4. See, for instance, Martin A. Levin, Daniel DiSalvo, and Martin M. Shapiro, eds., Building Coalitions, Making Policy: The Politics of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Presidencies (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012), 44. 5. It is important, of course, to consider the idea that the prevailing moral standards of any given nation are not themselves monolithic, and that they can ebb and flow with time. In the United States, for example, many Christian communities remain opposed to the idea of gay marriage, though the Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal, thereby enforcing a standard that, regardless of one’s belief, must be followed. 6. Sunaina Maira, “ ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Muslim Citizens: Feminists, Terrorists, and U.S. Orientalisms,” Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (2009): 631. 7. More precisely, Bush stated in his address to the US Congress on September 21, 2001, that “you’re either with us, or with the terrorists.” Variations of this line percolated in political discourses at the time, often with slight variations or adaptations. 8. Maira, “ ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Muslim Citizens,” 632. 9. See, for example, Zahia Smail Salhi, ed., Gender and Violence in Islamic Societies: Patriarchy, Islamism, and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). Despite its unfortunate title, this text provides a broad account of gender-based violence in various countries that span North Africa and the Middle East, and it addresses the role that religion plays in sanctioning and condemning it. 10. Salhi, Gender and Violence in Islamic Societies, 634. 11. Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 2004), 15. 12. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313. 13. For more on the arguments of these individuals, see: Nathan Lean, “Bill Maher and Fox News’s Muslim Feminism: How Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani Embrace the Soft Islamophobia of Western Expectations,” July 13, 2015, http://www.salon.com/2015/ 07/13/bill_mahers_favorite_muslims_how_aayan_hirsi_ali_and_asra_nomani_embraced _the_soft_islamophobia_of_western_expectations/ (accessed January 2, 2017); Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 (New York:

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New York University Press, 2012); Todd Green, The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015); and Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber, eds., Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011). 14. See Safdar Ahmed, Reform and Modernity in Islam: The Philosophical, Cultural, and Political Discourses among Muslim Reformers (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). 15. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Why Islam Needs a Reformation,” March 20, 2015, http:// www.wsj.com/articles/a-reformation-for-islam-1426859626 (accessed January 4, 2017); Also, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (New York: Harper, 2016). 16. Hirsi Ali, “Why Islam Needs a Reformation” and Hirsi Ali, Heretic. 17. Hirsi Ali, “Why Islam Needs a Reformation” and Hirsi Ali, Heretic. 18. Hirsi Ali, “Why Islam Needs a Reformation” and Hirsi Ali, Heretic. 19. While various polls over the years have measured Muslims’ support for secularism in European countries, it is important to recognize that the simple act of stating that one believes that religious laws are more important than secular ones, for example, says very little at all. This is especially so when, in practice, Muslim citizens of the United States or European nations live under and abide by laws that are secular, even if they believe that religious commandments are more important. It is quite easy to identify Christian communities, for instance, that prefer biblical values over secular ones, or that have even sought to implement religiously inspired positions within an existing jurisprudential framework that is secular. That does not mean, however, that they do not support the idea of secularism or acquiesce to its institutionalization. Rather, it points to an internal preference for religious order that is common in many religious people, Muslims included. 20. See Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2002); Glenn Greenwald, “The Same Motive for Anti-US ‘Terrorism’ Is Cited Over and Over,” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/bos ton-terrorism-motives-us-violence (accessed January 4, 2017). 21. Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). 22. Asra Nomani and Hala Arafa, “As Muslim Women, We Actually Ask You Not to Wear the Hijab in the Name of Interfaith Solidarity,” December 21, 2015, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/21/as-muslim-women-we -actually-ask-you-not-to-wear-the-hijab-in-the-name-of-interfaith-solidarity/?utm_ term.839fb6d50ccb (accessed January 6, 2017); Asra Nomani, “End Gender Apartheid in U.S. Mosques,” July 10, 2011, https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/ 2011-07-10-muslim-women-mosques_n.htm (accessed January 6, 2017). 23. Nomani and Arafa, “As Muslim Women”; Nomani, “End Gender Apartheid.” 24. Nomani, “End Gender Apartheid.” 25. “Islamic Bill of Rights for Women,” http://peprimer.com/islam-women-rights .html (accessed January 7, 2017). 26. “Islamic Bill of Rights for Women.” 27. “Islam and Liberalism,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 41 (Summer 2016), http:// democracyjournal.org/magazine/41/islam-and-liberalism/ (accessed January 7, 2017). 28. Asra Nomani, Twitter Post, August 19, 2016, 1:20AM, https://twitter.com/Asra Nomani/status/766505176312090625 (accessed January 8, 2017). 29. See, for example, “Politics and Clothing: The Hijab,” June 8, 2006, https://www .youtube.com/watch?vtwqAwtUV2D0 (accessed January 9, 2017). 30. For a rich discussion of the veil and issues related to gender and women’s rights in Islam, I recommend Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

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31. Kustaw Bessems, “Rechter Waarschuwt Tevreden Hirsi Ali,” March 16, 2005, http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4324/Nieuws/article/detail/1731675/2005/03/16/Rechter -waarschuwt-tevreden-Hirsi-Ali.dhtml (accessed January 8, 2017). 32. Rogier Van Bakel, “The Trouble Is the West,” November 2007, Reason Magazine, http://reason.com/archives/2007/10/10/the-trouble-is-the-west/2 (accessed January 8, 2017). 33. Asra Nomani, “Muslims Have a Problem. Uncle Ruslan May Have the Answer,” Washington Post, April 23, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/ muslims-have-a-problem-uncle-ruslan-may-have-the-answer/2013/04/23/d8975c18-ab 68-11e2-b6fd-ba6f5f26d70e_story.html?utm_term.02cea7e334d7 (accessed January 9, 2017). 34. Asra Nomani, “Why NYPD Monitoring Should Be Welcome News to Muslims,” Daily Beast, March 5, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/05/why -nypd-monitoring-should-be-welcome-news-to-us-muslims.html (accessed January 9, 2017); Asra Nomani, “In Defense of Peter King’s Muslim Hearings,” On Faith, March 8, 2011, https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2011/03/08/in-defense-of-peter-kings-muslim -hearings/5576 (accessed January 9, 2017).

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PART III

A CLASH OF REPRESENTATIONS

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KEY TERMS: • conveyor belt theory • fundamentalism • ideology

• Islamism • New Atheism • political Islam

CHAPTER 6

The New Ism Enemy: Islamism Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it. —Margaret Thatcher The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics. —Maajid Nawaz

One reality of the world in which we live today is that ideology is a driving force of geopolitics. This is nothing new, of course. For centuries, political and economic worldviews have steered policymakers and others toward various courses of action, at times so enlivening their pursuits that wars and contentious global standoffs were the result. Over time, we have come to describe these disparate belief systems in ways that suggest some overarching plan or grand design, as if they loom largely in the world and guide people to whom they are a defining credo in the direction of a particular destination. As all encompassing as they seem to be, it is but a three-letter affix that situates them in our imaginations as a potent vision for the organization of the world: ism. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to socioeconomic systems— socialism and Marxism among them—that proponents of modern capitalism, which became the dominant global economic model the century prior found troubling. The rise of liberalism in Europe, with its focus on the autonomy of the individual, was complicated as nazism was thrust to the fore of German politics in 1933, just eleven years after Italian fascism won the day when the infamous March on Rome led to the rise of Benito Mussolini. Perhaps more immediate in the minds of many is the Cold War. The powers of the so-called Eastern bloc, 119

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hoping to export Soviet-style communism, stood in opposition to the NATOaligned “Western bloc,” and each viewed the other’s political project as a threat to global stability. The very notion of a threat is worth probing. It points to a critical element of many isms in the world; namely, that their proponents often perceive them as universal while their opponents, wedded to their own ideological agendas, paint them as menacing and not only worthy of critique but also of defeat. Fascism fell in World War II as the Allied forces squashed Germany, Japan, and Italy. As the twentieth century marched forward, the defeat of one ideology birthed a protracted struggle against the next. The aforementioned Cold War pitted a monolithic capitalism against a monolithic communism, the latter of which crumbled with the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union two years later.1 Ideologies, though, are curious things. The apparent end of one invariably seems to produce the rise of another as if global powers need an ever-lurking enemy that is thought to threaten the values and way of life that a given nation holds dear. As the dust of the Cold War settled, the United States and Western European countries cast their attention to a new region of the world, the Middle East, where the religion of Islam became the language through which political ambitions were expressed. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, in which the Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the American-backed shah, is most commonly cited as the point of departure for this new global engagement. Fawaz Gerges has traced some of the narratives that parallel the threat of communism with a resurgence of Muslim politics. He notes that “confrontationists” like Daniel Pipes, Mortimer Zuckerman, and officials within the administration of President Ronald Reagan filled the void left by communism’s demise with a “new threat” that they claimed was “as evil as the old Evil Empire.”2 Some referred to it at the time in plain religious language. “Americans know an opponent when they see him,” Pipes wrote, and “like communism during the Cold War, Islam is a threat to the West.”3 Others qualified their words a bit in an apparent effort to point to something more specific. “Like leftist radicalism, Islamic rage is directed not only at the West but against the moderate, pro-Western elite in its own societies,” said Peter Rodman, a former White House and State Department official.4 Eventually, “Islamic fundamentalism” or “political Islam” became common buzzwords—descriptors that later morphed into what we generally speak of today as “Islamism,” understood as a revival movement that is characterized by political and social conservatism, literalism, and an intractable link between religion, politics, and daily life. This chapter examines Islamism’s emergence as the new beˆte noire within popular discourses on Islam. I argue that while it is valuable to discuss the fusion of religion and politics within various Muslim-majority spaces and call attention the violent expressions that such a synthesis may generate, focusing on Islamism as an ideological foe of “the West” is an intellectual endeavor that is invariably fraught with problems. Chiefly among them is the fact that Islamism has become a receptacle of sorts for an array of negative views of Islam and Muslims. To that end, some of Islam’s fiercest detractors shield themselves from accusations of prejudice by couching their antipathy within language that targets Islamism and

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purported Islamists. It is not the religion overall, per se, that they take issue with, but rather its political expressions around the world. As we will see, this involves a number of discursive maneuvers. Participants in this discourse paint Islamism with a broad brush and represent it as an exclusively dangerous and threating ideology that is characterized by extreme interpretations of religion, unthinkable acts of violence, and other actions or beliefs that are widely considered to be immoral. Lost in these sensationalized presentations are the nuances and complexities of the groups and peoples that identify in one way or another with Islamism, and render it a diverse phenomenon. Next, and as we touched on in chapter 5, some of Islamism’s detractors articulate their opposition to it by relying on a “conveyor belt” theory. This suggests that the path from pious religiosity toward extreme belief is a straight line—one along which Muslims travel only to embrace more austere views and practices the further down the conduit they go. According to this narrative, religious garb may lead to daily prayers, which may lead to regular mosque attendance, which may lead to an increased use of Islamic vocabulary, which may lead to societal isolation, all of which may eventually spill over into in a “radicalized” worldview. As I will argue, the danger of this logic is that it suggests that any Muslim, by the simple virtue of being a Muslim, is susceptible to extremism, and that extremism is directly related to one’s personal religiosity. To begin this discussion, though, it will be helpful to unpack some of the terms that animate this discourse, and that are likely to generate misunderstanding from the very beginning. Indeed, a complicating factor of public conversations about Islamism is that they too often rely on a catalogue of sloppy words and phrases that are unquestioned and deployed interchangeably. Thus, a corrective measure necessarily involves reorienting the discussion toward a vocabulary that is as accurate and impartial as possible, and which fully problematizes the assumptions and normative understandings that leads us to speak of “Islamism” as if it has an essential character.

Unpacking the Term Islamism and Its Variants Scholars have argued that the term Islamism, despite its rather recent ascendancy within popular political discourses, is actually not new. In fact, it dates back to the late seventeenth century when French writers began to use the word. The single-volume French dictionary, Le Petit Robert, dates the term to 1697 and suggests that the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire was among the first to use it in his Ancient and Modern History.5 “This religion is called Islamism, which signifies resignation to the will of God . . . and we may observe that Islamism has not established itself throughout one-half of our hemisphere by dint of arms only, but by enthusiasm, the art of persuasion, and, above all, by the example of the conquerors themselves, which always has the most powerful effect on the conquered.”6

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In an 1883 volume, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of “the root of Islamism in Judaism,” while Ernest Renan, Comte de Gobineau, Caussin de Perceval, and other nineteenth-century French luminaries used the word in a way that similarly described the religion of “Mahomet” with an ism affix.7 For these early writers, Islam and Islamism were one and the same—the latter was thought to be Islam’s equivalent of “Christianism.”8 Despite discussions of Islam that were overtly political (and polemical), the notion of Islamism as an ideology that is distinct from the broader religious tradition in which is it grounded did not exist at that time. It was not until the advent of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 that “Islamism” became used in common parlance. The rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a new theocratic republic forced world leaders to rethink the available vocabulary that they used to describe religion and its political expressions, for it was clear that the Islam of news headlines during that time was quite distinct from personal religious beliefs held by the world’s Muslim populations.9 It was related to the Islamic religion, but how? What terminologies could fully capture the phenomenon that was unfolding as Iranian clerics ushered in a new system of government that preached a mixed message of religion and politics? Was this seemingly new version of Islam actually a version of Islam at all, or was it a specifically political movement with religious overtures? Out of this climate emerged a number of descriptions that aimed to define precisely what was happening in Iran. The sheer magnitude of the revolution, and the fact that it caught many by surprise, signaled that it was not just a blip on the radar but that it was significant enough to warrant a new way of thinking; the Cold War, too, was pillared on the existence of such a large ideological enemy, that whatever came along next had to be equally as enduring and menacing. Some described the revolution as an “Islamic revival,” while others used phrases like radical Islam.10 Still, “political Islam” became a salient descriptor that qualified an entire world religion with an adjective that distinguished the ordinary faithful from the zealous expansionists. “Islamic fundamentalism” also became a common word to describe the worldview of those Muslims whose religious beliefs formed the basis of their aspirations for global governance. Yet these descriptions, all of which remain alive in contemporary discourses on Islamism today, were—and are— ambiguous. Most unfortunately, despite efforts to separate the Khomeinis of the world from other Muslims, the loose nature in which these phrases have been used, and their linguistic fixation on religion—with “Islam” as either a noun or an adjective that points to something nefarious—has only advanced stereotypes and generalizations, and has done very little to articulate the exactitudes of those who see their faith tradition as an all-encompassing ideology. What is Islamism, then? Part of the reason that the descriptions of what Islamism actually is have been so vague and varying is that, in contrast to the ease with which these labels are tossed around in public conversations, the phenomenon that they describe cannot be easily pinned down. In a general sense, when politicians and scholars of religion speak of “Islamism,” they are referring to a worldview among some Muslims that situates the religion of Islam at the center of public life. Its principles and values should, in their view, shape political and legal spheres,

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as well as provide the moral framework for the ways in which people should conduct themselves in a given society. It has been described at various times as a social or political movement, though that does not seem to capture fully the essential characteristic, if indeed there is one, of Islamism. The difficulty, in part, results from the fact that unlike other “isms” that have been cast at one point or another in history as the enemy or foe of “the West,” the category of Islamism is so broad and its spectrum of the types of behaviors and beliefs that constitute it is so wide that it can apply to virtually anyone who professes credence in a link between Islam and politics. Additionally, more often than not, it is a description that is commonly used by “Western” onlookers to describe particular types of Muslims rather than a term that is deployed by Muslims themselves to differentiate one worldview from another. This is not to suggest that Muslims eschew this category altogether. Indeed, Hasan Al-Turabi, the former leader of Sudan’s Popular Congress Party (PCP), uses the term when he writes about “political Muslims for whom Islam is the solution, Islam is religion and government, and Islam is the Constitution and the law.”11 As Mehdi Mozaffari has noted, the term has also gained traction in recent years among a cadre of Muslim lay authors and activists, though as he points out, there remains a tendency to construct neologisms that distort more than they clarify.12 The fact that this label gained ascendancy (at least in the American and European political discourses) following a particular moment in Iranian history also raises questions about whether the phenomenon is actually as monolithic in nature as it is often presented. In other words, did Khomeini’s rise to power in the late 1970s, and the sudden burst of Islamic narratives on the scene, indicate the arrival of a new ism, or has this ideology been pieced together by “Western” onlookers who point to that historic event, and other events that they perceive as similar, to suggest that, in fact, there was such a thing as “Islamism” and it posed a unique challenge to American and European interests and values? Martin Kramer has argued that “there was no need for any other term, until the rise of an ideological and political interpretation of Islam challenged scholars and commentators to come up with an alternative, to distinguish Islam as modern ideology from Islam as a faith.”13 For him, the reality of the phenomenon itself prompted the word. Certainly, few scholars would disagree that interpretations of Islam that are fastened to the banner of politics exist in the world, and often in ways that are quite organized and explicit with regard to the worldviews that they espouse and advocate. It is difficult to observe groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Ennahda Movement (or Renaissance Party) in Tunisia, or the Justice and Development Party in Morocco and conclude that they are not led by a similar set of beliefs. These groups, and others described as “Islamists,” place a premium on fortifying the relationship between the religion of Islam and apparatuses of state governments; they share the view that the secular world is corrupt and has been led astray from moral principles found in the Islamic faith, which can and should be deployed as corrective measures; and many of these groups do interpret the Islamic faith in a totalizing way; that is, that it should inform and guide virtually every aspect of public and private life.

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Still, as American anthropologists Robert Redfield and Clifford Geertz have shown us, a close inspection of particular groups themselves often reveals great divergences within them. Inside any seemingly closed system there exist a multitude of interpretations, opinions, and even contradictory doctrines such that it becomes challenging to suggest that a single strand of thought is animating them.14 In that vein, then, the insistence among some contemporary politicians, activists, and scholars that Islamism represents an “ideology” suggests a coherence and homogeneity that may not actually exist. It becomes all too easy to deploy the singular “ideology” as a way of capturing disparate movements in one quick description—an intellectual maneuver that lumps nonviolent Muslim organizations into the same pot as the violent ones. Ideology, then, becomes the analytical category through which Muslims and the religion of Islam are situated and understood. This distorts the variances that exist among and within so-called Islamist groups and, importantly, plays into the idea of Islam as a singular and monolithic faith that is animated primarily by a desire on the part of its practitioners to impose their beliefs upon other societies around the world, especially those that consider themselves “Western.” As Elizabeth Nugent writes, “Islamism’s definition as an ideology that locates political legitimacy in the application of the Sharia (often translated as Islamic law) and in Islamic tradition pegs it to complicated and unfixed concepts that are diversely interpreted in different manners by different practitioners.”15 Moreover, the fact that Islamism is at once posited as a singularly identifiable phenomenon but described with a myriad of terms points to instability of the concept on the whole. How are “totalitarianism,” “fascism,” “fundamentalism,” “extremism,” and “radicalism,” all of which have been used to describe Islamists or Islamism, related to each other? Are they merely synonyms, or have we, in an attempt to grasp conceptually a nebulous phenomenon, pinned upon it a range of expressions that point to something nefarious but without explaining precisely what that nefarious thing is? Additionally, contemporary discourses on Islamism have reified it such that discussions of Muslims and politics can veer off in the direction of a broader conversation about Islamists. While Islamism as a category has come to have clear political overtones, it is not a sine qua non in Muslim-majority societies and, indeed, Muslims participate in a wide range of political activities that span the ideological spectrum. “Muslim politics,” as Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori call it, is as much a matter of that phrase’s plural noun (politics) as it is its singular adjective (Muslim), and is not solely grounded in any ideological position.16 It is possible, for example, for a Muslim to promote principles of Islamic finance or banking and not be affiliated with an organized Islamist group, or claim Islamism as the mantle of his or her identity. Similarly, it is possible to hold views that converge with those of designated Islamist groups without necessarily supporting their broader agenda or the imposition of particular political platforms in society. As we will discuss in more detail below, Islam can be the determining factor in one’s worldview, or in this case their political views, but it is important to problematize the way in which many discourses on Muslims automatically take that to mean that Islamism is somehow a part of their mental landscape. In other

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words, at some level, the religious views of religiously minded people often inform their choices about worldly matters, be they politics or other things. Christians may vote according to how a particular candidate or position aligns with their view of God, just as Jews may make conscious decisions in public that reflect the commandments of the Torah. These realities do not suggest that a looming ism is present, or that expressions of religion in the secular public square are intended to enforce a particular religious character upon society at large. Rather, we often recognize that we are animated by a variety of factors that shape our identity, and assertions of a particular religious view are, to that extent, somewhat natural. As we will see next, however, it has become challenging within contemporary discourses on Muslims, Islam, and “the West” to see these gradations and nuances. Many view the religion of Islam itself as essentially political, which makes disentangling it from Islamism all the more difficult.

Disentangling Islam and Islamism As Arun Kundnani writes, “A great deal hangs on three letters separating Islam from Islamism, and the two can easily be conflated or linked together structurally.”17 Indeed, it is not uncommon to find that many popular critiques of Islamism point not simply to the political realm but rather to the religious, couching perceived shortcomings or threats within the tradition of Islam itself. Kundnani notes the ease with which the British novelist Martin Amis conflates Islam and Islamism. In an essay that comprises Amis’s 2008 volume The Second Plane: September 11: 2001–2007, he quickly asserts that Islamism “won” a war with the larger “Islamic world,” an unevidenced proposition that allows him to proceed with empirical representations of Muslim-majority countries as consequently “Islamist.”18 This, as Kundnani argues, leads to other slippery descriptions, including a reference to a demographic increase in “Islamists” (where he presumably means Muslims) and a call for collective punishment. “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order,” Amis writes.19 The conflation of Islam and Islamism is not new. It has persisted over time, and today it remains quite present in discourses about the religion of Islam and its followers, especially as discussions of terrorist groups like ISIS percolate in the media. While the work of determining precisely why this conflation continues to plague the possibility of more nuanced dialogue is challenging, I propose that there are two streams of thought that contribute to misunderstandings: a neoconservative position that suggests that Islam and Islamism are linked in terms of a shared religious lineage; and a liberal, or progressive, position that suggests that Islamism is wholly separate from Islam, yet characterizes it discursively in ways that reinforce a close link. Before proceeding with a discussion of these two groups, it may be helpful to offer a few preliminary, or guiding, thoughts. To say unequivocally that Islam has

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nothing to do with Islamism is equally as incorrect as stating that Islam has everything to do with Islamism. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, though in preserving the intent of this book, it is not my aim to determine exactly what the connection between the two looks like, or whether it is more religious, less religious, or not religious at all. Rather, I argue that we must pay close attention to the discourses that have arisen around this topic, especially as they make normative claims, and that unpacking them will allow us to see some of the logical flaws that lead to misrepresentation, misunderstanding, and even prejudice. Additionally, I am aware that the situation is more complex than simply two discursive streams that contribute to the conflation of Islam and Islamism. Still, I maintain that we can gain much from examining them, for they are macrocosms of a sort that point to similar issues at a micro level. The idea that Islamism is a natural derivative of Islam is a potent one within neoconservative policy circles. On its face, the argument seems fairly straightforward. Etymologically, Islamism shares a root with the religion that presumably guides it (Islam), and its expressions in the world are obviously carried out by Muslims. It seems silly, even, to suggest that any group other than Muslims would be involved in Islamist projects, and if one were to strip Islamist movements of their religious language and influence, it is certain that they would appear as empty, unrecognizable shells of their former selves. Put simply, Islam has something to do with Islamism. What that something is, though, is not always so clear, and the explanations that have abounded in recent history are unsatisfying in their simplicity and rush to formulaic answers. Neoconservative and right-of-center political discourses typically emphasize a causal relationship between Islamism and Islam. The former is a symptom of the latter—a logical move that suggests that the religion of Islam is ill and must be treated lest the unwelcome symptom, Islamism, continues to manifest. Despite the fact that so much rhetorical premium is given to Islamism, it is actually Islam that appears to be of greatest concern to those who advance this narrative. Their focus on Islamism is but a way to maintain special scrutiny on the religious tradition that they believe is responsible for producing it. Let us consider, for a moment, the following two examples. Arizona-based physician and Muslim political activist M. Zhudi Jasser has argued that “Islamism is a disease that only we [Muslims] can treat. We desperately need a solutionsbased approach from within Islam, a solution involving a long-term strategy to both defeat jihad and promote liberty.”20 In a more explicit statement, former national security advisor to President Donald Trump, General Michael T. Flynn, once remarked that Islamism is a “malignant cancer” that has “metastasized” and spread into the minds “of 1.7 billion people [the world’s Muslim population].”21 These two declarations are striking for a few reasons. The first is that the medical language used to describe Islamism intimates that it is less of a selfinflicted ailment than one that arose on its own within the proverbial Muslim “body.” In other words, this view suggests that there is something about Muslims as religious people that needs to be diagnosed; Islamism is not something they imagined or labored into being, but rather an inherent and ever-present risk that comes with simply being a Muslim. Religious teachings, including key Islamic

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tenets of jihad and various interpretations of Sharia, or Islamic law, may be a part of the problem, according to this narrative, and without changing them Islamist movements will continue to pose problems. Yet the fact that Jasser suggests that it is Muslims who must tend to these issues, and the fact that Flynn sees Islamism as existing within the entire Muslim community worldwide, reinforces the idea that Islam itself is doctrinally deficient and by virtue of adhering to the religion, Muslims are fundamentally flawed as well. Suggesting that Islamism is foreboding necessarily entails offering a solution to it. As Jasser’s remark above hints at (and which we will see in more detail below), the typical antidote that is proposed is often one of “Western” liberalism; that is, a robust program of secularism, individual liberty, gender equality, democratic elections, and capitalism. By this view, Islamism is set off in opposition to liberalism as an adversarial ideology. To be sure, Flynn states this plainly when he argues that “we are facing another ‘ism,’ just like we faced Nazism, and fascism, and imperialism and communism.”22 This argument is a civilizational one, and it is governed by the larger “Islam and the West” dichotomy that distinguishes “us” from “them” and “good” from “bad,” with the former of those two groupings— “us” and “good”—always being claimed by the group deploying such labels. Because of the way that Islamism has been presented as a looming ideology that threatens “the West,” military engagements, including war, are often seen as a necessary remedy. Importantly, the language of “us” versus “them,” “Islamism” versus “liberalism,” and “Islam” versus “the West” is not limited to one side of the political divide, even if it appears to be more apparent on the right. A central dynamic of contemporary discussions about Islamism on the political left is the tendency to establish a clear division between Islamists and ordinary Muslims, and to suggest that Islamism has very little, if anything at all, to do with the religion of Islam. These intellectual maneuvers are undertaken with perceived benevolence, though the result of painstakingly teasing apart one group of people from another is, in the end, not unlike that of the far right, which aims to connect every Muslim to Islamism. First, the act of establishing difference presumes that one group (in this case Islamists) is worthy of such skepticism, distance, or contempt. Certainly, as we have established, there are violent and extreme factions of Muslims around the world, many of whom belong to groups that are classified as “Islamists,” or whom self-identify as such. Thus, it is understandable in that vein to establish space between the multitudes of law-abiding Muslims and those who would espouse violence or participate in extreme activities. Yet at the same time, participating in an intellectual endeavor that situates “Muslims” as a general group on one side of the divide, and “Islamists” on the other side of it, is no more helpful than the hackneyed “Islam and the West” dichotomy that has pitted those two groupings, and the people who claim to be affiliated with each, against one another. The diversity of Islamism as a movement is overlooked when politicians, activists, and others rush to point out that “Muslims”—“the ones we know share our values”—are not like “those” Islamists, who presumably do not. A 2016 statement by former US Secretary of State and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

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exemplifies this. Hoping to avoid generalizations about Muslims that she felt characterized the description “radical Islam,” Clinton responded to accusations that she was being too politically correct in her language by saying, “It mattered [that] we got bin Laden, not what name we called him. I have clearly said—whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I’m happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing.”23 The result of that statement was an equation of Islamism with jihadism, and the equation of jihadism with extremism. This feeds into the idea that Islam, on account of jihad being a concept that exists within the religious tradition, is prone to the type of violence and extremism that Clinton rejected. Variances in understandings of jihad and of Islamism were blurred by her remark. Today, it is quite common to hear politicians and members of the news media discuss Islamism as though it has a normative definition and an easily identifiable set of characteristics. It is precisely this sort of generalized approach that contributes to public misunderstandings about the connection between Islam and extremism, and it casts unnecessary suspicion on Muslims who are thought to exist along an ideological line that makes them always susceptible to violence.

Islamism as a “Conveyor Belt” to Extremism In a report that the Quilliam Foundation’s codirector Maajid Nawaz sent to the British government in 2010, he equated “non-violent Islamists” and “Islamists,” saying that when it came to differences between the two, they were related to strategy, simply.24 “Whilst only a small proportion will agree with al-Qaeda’s tactics,” the report read, “many will agree with their overall goal of creating a single ‘Islamic state’ which would bring together all Muslims around the world under a single government and then impose on them a single interpretation of Sharia as state law.”25 The report’s operating idea was based on the “conveyor belt” theory, which suggests that the entire world’s Muslim population exists along an imaginary linear strip, with nonviolent Muslims at one end and violent groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS at the other. The problem, as the narrative goes, is that Muslims can easily move further down the belt simply by adopting any number of beliefs, expressions, or performing any number of actions, and thus become closer to the extreme end. What those beliefs or actions are is determined only by the people who adopt this “conveyor belt” theory, though they usually involve increased religiosity and a perceived rejection of “Western” liberalism. The unspoken idea is that because all Muslims exist along the belt and can inch toward extremism at any moment, all Muslims are therefore potential extremists and should be viewed with special scrutiny and increased skepticism. When it comes to Islamists, the situation is direr. It is believed that they are already indistinguishable from violent actors in terms of their beliefs, and that for them, ISIS-like attacks are only a matter of time. As scholar March Lynch has

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noted, those who push the “conveyor belt” theory suggest, for example, that “[Muslim Brotherhood] activism creates stronger Islamic identities and potentially a pool of recruits on which more radical groups can draw. It creates a more Islamically oriented public sphere, establishing the space for Al-Qaeda’s mode of argument and strategy. It radicalizes opinions against the West, which can offer plausibility to Al-Qaeda’s calls for violent action even if the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] does not itself support such acts.”26 This theory has become popular in recent years, especially as counterterrorism efforts in North America and Europe have sought to do more than simply counteract extremism but understand its causes as well. However, despite its popularity, the theory has been roundly critiqued as biased toward Islamism as a movement, deficient in its analysis of Islamism’s diversity, and dangerous in its tendency to stigmatize law-abiding Muslims by casting them into the same lot as people who aspire toward acts of terrorism. At the heart of the “conveyor belt” theory is the notion that one’s degree of religiosity is an indication of extremism. Thus, secular Muslims who appear to embrace “Western” separations of church and state are said to pose little or no threat, while Muslims who don religious garb, pepper their daily conversations with Arabic or Islamic expressions, attend mosque prayer sessions, and otherwise present themselves to the public as Muslims are a different matter. This latter group, the theory goes, exhibit signs that may point toward a sort of religious fundamentalism, and that, according to the “conveyor belt” discourse, is alarming. There is no doubt that in a world of heightened violence carried out by many different types of groups and people, Muslims included, it has become necessary to identify potential threats before they arise. This theory, though, situates such threats as merely part of one’s identity. It deals less with the types of things that, for example, a young Muslim extremist would say or do that indicate, explicitly, that he or she presents a security risk. Rather, it relies on appearances and religious acts, and it supposes that those things are suitable indicators of some danger that is ever lurking but never fully manifest, and thus must always be guarded against. Beyond the individual level, these generalizations about Islamism have lumped broad movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, political parties like Morocco’s Justice and Development Party, or Tunisia’s Ennahda (Renaissance Party) into the same group as Hizb ut-Tahrir, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda, despite the fact that the diversity among and between each of these groups is quite stark. While violence has undoubtedly characterized Muslim Brotherhood factions in places like Egypt and Tunisia over the years, these groups have carved out space within the political landscape of their respective countries and participated in democratic elections where citizen voting blocs can determine the trajectory of their country with ballots, not bullets. In 2016, Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda, even went so far as to declare that his party was “leaving political Islam and entering democratic Islam,” a statement that blunted the religious edge of his involvement in politics, and he expressed support for a secular system in which religious points of reference would still have a place at the table, but only insofar as they operated within the country’s constitutional framework. In the end, this departure matters very little, though. While it was perceived as a principled political move, the predominant

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discourse on Islamism, bolstered by the “conveyor belt” theory, would situate it, nonetheless, as a simple matter of convenience that appears outwardly altruistic but was driven by a veiled desire to gain more political leverage. It is possible to conclude that the precedent the move set played directly into the dichotomous “Islam and the West” narrative by indicating that Muslim politics can only be successful and legitimate when it sheds its religious character and embraces secularism. This discourse limits, and indeed prevents, law-abiding groups described as “Islamists” from participating in electoral politics not only on account of their expressed religious beliefs but also on account of conjectures about what those beliefs, if put into action, might result in.

Islamism as a Veneer for Advancing Anti-Muslim Prejudice Though Islamism has been discussed within academic and political circles for many years, more recently it has acquired salience within popular spheres as well. Prominent voices that have long been accused of unfairly criticizing Islam and maligning Muslims have turned their attention to the phenomenon of Islamism, and they have repackaged their claims such that they come across as objective critiques of this ideological trend, not of religion on the whole. Because of the epistemological terrain that emerged after 9/11, which created fertile ground in which Islamism came to stand out as a foe of “the West,” these critiques of it were welcomed and indeed lauded. It is important today, however, to examine this rhetoric critically and observe the ways in which invectives targeting Islamism as a category often mask a host of strident statements and policies that are not directed as Islamism or Islamists, but Muslims and their religious tradition, Islam. Much of this rhetoric presents itself as rational and objective commentary on world affairs. With every terrorist attack carried out by groups like ISIS, the narrative grows and the voices claiming that Islamism poses a threat and must be stopped present themselves as thoughtful analysts that have identified an ideological gene shared by violent and nonviolent Muslims, and which must be targeted and excised. The fact that it is usually groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda carrying out such attacks—not movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, or other such “Islamist” groups—matters little to those who see them all as one and the same. It is this type of sweeping generalization, though, that is important to recognize, for within many of the statements of those who today claim to be opposed to Islamism, we see nearly identical broad-brushing of Muslims—a fact that underscores the way in which “Islamism” has become a new front for projecting anti-Muslim views. Not every critique of Islamism is undergirded with animus toward Islam or Muslims. That point should not be forgotten. The tendency to use Islamism as a proverbial whipping boy upon which problematic views about Islam are meted

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out is, however, worthy of inspection and analysis. While examples of this abound, we may unpack a handful of them to see the type of intellectual and discursive maneuvers that are at work. Today, many of these examples come from a similar group of activists—“native informants,” as they have been called by some, or “selfcolonizers” as I referred to them in chapter 5. Others that have advanced these views in recent years also included a vocal cadre of so-called New Atheists, a strident group of modern atheist thinkers who have adopted a militant tone that was characteristic of the late Christopher Hitchens. The aforementioned activist and author Maajid Nawaz has been outspoken over the past decade on the issue of Islamism. He has called it “the great struggle of our age” and warned against “Western” nations falling victim to the allegedly theocratic impulses of Islamists. Where he labors to distinguish Islam from Islamism, he argues nonetheless that though Islamism is not always violent, it should always be challenged.27 Unlike some of his colleagues, Nawaz is careful regarding his language, and notwithstanding a few provocative tweets, has avoided pejorative comments directed at Islam or Muslims. Even so, his fixation on Islamism has led him and his organization to adopt positions and issue statements that have been criticized as anti-Muslim: disseminating crude caricatures of the prophet Muhammad on social media; advocating spying on British Muslims and their organizations; sending the British security and terror chief a secret list of Muslim groups that he believed the government should be wary of; and working with a software company to develop a computer program that would monitor the online activities of Muslim school kids and flag Internet searches of keywords for investigation. Recently, Nawaz has aligned himself with public figures whose views of Islamism are not packaged into policy measures but intermingled with a litany of derogatory statements about Islam. Prominent “New Atheist” writer Sam Harris is one such figure. Placing himself on the front line of public debate about Islamism, Harris coauthored a 2015 book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, with Nawaz, which codified an apparent public shift away from invectives and toward reasoned debate. Yet despite this new approach, moments of antipathy toward Islam—not Islamism—creep through his public conversations, evidencing, in some cases, extreme bias and prejudice. One memorable moment came in October 2014 when he appeared alongside actor Ben Affleck on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. In a testy exchange about extremism, Maher remarked, “We have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas.”28 Elsewhere, Harris has suggested that Islam is “especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse” and excoriated “the Muslim world” for being “utterly deranged by its religious tribalism.”29 In one particularly charged essay about the proposed Park51 Islamic community center in Manhattan, Harris suggested that there was no distinction between extremists and ordinary Muslims. If they [Al-Qaeda and the Taliban] are “extremists” who have deformed an ancient faith into a death cult, they haven’t deformed it by much. When one reads the Koran and the hadith, and consults the opinions of Muslim jurists over the centuries, one discovers that killing apostates, treating women like livestock, and waging jihad—not merely as an

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In light of Harris’s expressed views of Islamism as the most pressing public challenge, this view stands out as not simply a conflation of terrorism with Islamism, but more particularly, of terrorism with Islam. In addition to figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani, whose “soft prejudice of Western exceptionalism” we discussed earlier, this trend of formulating anti-Islamic views within denunciations of Islamism has reached a wider variety of writers and commentators. On the left side of the political spectrum, especially, self-described “progressives” or “liberals” have zeroed in on Islamism as the culprit of extremism and terrorism. Maryam Namazie, an Iranian secularist and activist, routinely criticizes Islamism in public speeches and writings, using the terms Islam and Islamism interchangeably, bemoaning, in one example, the case of “Islam-stricken societies” where women wear veils, are “bound and gagged,” and do not have any rights.31 Ali A. Rizvi and Raheel Raza, both Canadian authors and commentators, have offered similar ideas. For his part, Rizvi maintains that Islamism constitutes an important concern, though his ire toward the Muslim religion is apparent in such statements as “Most Muslims are moderate, but whoever wrote the Quran, that’s not a moderate person,” and his suggestion that Islam—not Islamism—poses a unique threat to the world today.32 Raza, a Toronto-based journalist, places gender issues at the front of her critiques of Islamism, and has suggested that the niqab and burqa should be banned in public, and blasted the Canadian government’s support for allowing them, claiming that they had “caved to Islamists” who have contempt for gender equality.33 How might these views of Islamism contribute to prejudice? One of the most common arguments in support of strident critiques of Islamism (and of Islam, for that matter) is that the criticisms that are leveled are not directed toward individual Muslims, but toward their “ideas.” Thus, the argument goes, it is impossible for someone to be prejudiced toward people if they simply condemn the viewpoints, philosophies, or opinions that they hold. By this view, criticizing the doctrine of jihad or the canonical teachings of Sharia should be encouraged, as should criticism of religious practices that are based on scripture or tradition, and which are perceived as feeding into a broader program of increased Islamic religiosity in the public square. The worldviews of conservative Muslims in various countries around the world are commonly cited, especially when it comes to issues like free speech, blasphemy, apostasy, and gender. The unfolding narrative is one that not only warns of the horrors of inequality and violence but also suggests that the religious teachings upon which Islamist groups justify various offensive practices are to blame, and must be held accountable through a process of reformation. On the surface, the notion that it is acceptable to criticize bad ideas appears reasonable. The idea, for example, that it is okay to kill your neighbor is, by most people’s standards, worthy of sharp rebuke. Moral relativism aside, there are guiding ethical values and legal principles in place in most locales around the world that delineate what people should and should not do, and they are generally the

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same. But let us consider, for a moment, a few less flagrant examples before returning to some of the more blatant ones. The idea, held by some Muslim women, that veiling is religiously sanctioned and noble is often debated. Critics attack the religious teachings from the Quran and hadith, and point to instances of forced veiling to make the case that the practice is unscrupulous and at odds with modernity. Similarly, gender-segregated prayer in some mosques (where the women traditionally sit behind the men, or on the opposite side of a concealed divide where they are not visible) is perceived by many critics as a bad idea, one that harkens back to a more institutionalized time of American gender inequality. Likewise, critics of Islamism have targeted marriages, divorces, and other legal procedures that invoke aspects of the Islamic tradition, and suggested that these things evidence the creeping advance of Sharia, or Islamic law, and an erosion of “Western” secular law. To propose impunity from accusations of prejudice because one is merely attacking “ideas” is to overlook the relationship between personal expressions of religiosity and identity. Religious views on veiling are not informed by disconnected sets of thoughts that merely float above the heads of Muslim women who grasp on to the ones that suit them in an arbitrary and uninformed fashion. The relationship between men and women in mosques, and the attendant behaviors and practices associated with prayer spaces, are also not simply matters of random ideas that religious practitioners extract from their sacred tomes and apply haphazardly. When it comes to aspects of public life where religion would typically have some say, Muslims, like all people, do not simply reach for a scriptural chapter or historical precedent that fits the situation, but instead rely on those parts of their faith tradition that help them make sense of who they are, and that have provided a sense of meaning and purpose to their lives. To say, “I am a Muslim” is a statement, then, that is far less about what ideas exist inside one’s head than it is about the ways in which tradition, history, and scripture have shaped personal identities. The challenge with arguing that attacks on Islamism are simply directed at specific doctrines or “ideas” is that it fails to recognize the fact that ideas are as intricately connected to one’s sense of identity as biological factors like race or ethnicity. Certainly, as we have established, some ideas are worthy of criticism, though it is important to exercise care when appraising the beliefs of any group of people that comprise an entire religious tradition. Acts of violence, whether meted out in the name of punishments for blasphemy, adultery, apostasy, or other perceived offenses, are never warranted, and it is always acceptable to call attention to specific instances where these types of things arise. The challenge, however, when it comes to Islamism is that many of those who criticize it tend to fixate on the most extreme examples while avoiding more nuanced discussions. This renders the bad “ideas” of fringe factions as normative—as the bad ideas of all Islamists—and because they are “ideas” (and thus can presumably permeate the minds of all Muslims) this bleeds over into general statements about, and perceptions of, Muslims as an entire group, and Islam as a religion. Another important dynamic of this debate is the notion of “policing” ideas. It has become common for activists and authors who are known for their criticism

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of Islamism to deploy various statistics and studies about the percentages of a given country’s Muslim population that purportedly believes in any given extreme measure. Take, for instance, a 2015 article by Maajid Nawaz where he expressed his displeasure at the “British left’s hypocritical embrace of Islamism.” He wrote, in part: A quarter of British Muslims sympathised with the Charlie Hebdo shootings. 0% have expressed tolerance for homosexuality. A third have claimed that killing for religion can be justified, while 36% have thought apostates should be killed. 40% have wanted the introduction of Sharia as law in the UK and 33% have expressed a desire to see the return of a worldwide theocratic Caliphate.34

Implicit within this kind of statistics-driven argument is the notion that the ideas held by the populations (in this case, Muslims in the UK) are loathsome if not alarming. Indeed, few people would likely suggest otherwise. But let us move beyond the obviously controversial positions, briefly. First, as provocative as they are, the beliefs are not, in and of themselves, illegal—it is perfectly permissible to think noxious thoughts. Additionally, there is no proof that people who hold these views will—or can—act upon them, though part and parcel to such narratives about Islamism is the warning that they might. Of course, it is not uncommon for conservative Christian communities to express, similarly, a lack of support for homosexuality. Likewise, one only need to look at the example of the United States to see movements like the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and some evangelical wings of the Tea Party advocating for Christian influence in the federal government. Some of those groups have expressed their desire in the past for a “Christian nation”—a topic that, despite the United States’ commitment to separation of church and state, rages in contemporary political debates about gay marriage, abortion, capital punishment, and other matters where religiously motivated politicians and members of the general public hope to insert their influence. The suggestion that the “ideas” of Islamists are nefarious creates an environment in which the government, law enforcement, activists, authors, and others feel entitled to scrutinize the beliefs that people hold, and advocate Orwellian policies based on those beliefs. Expressing support for an extreme measure in a poll, however socially unacceptable, becomes for some critics of Islamism akin to a thought crime. To state publicly one’s support for overthrowing a government, executing apostates, or imposing religious law may smack of extremism, and for some it may warrant calls for censure. Yet oddly, Islamism’s fiercest critics have positioned liberalism as its ideological counter, and within liberal societies of “the West,” speech and ideas are constitutionally protected—a reality that makes the work of the aforementioned detractors all the more challenging when it comes to waging a war of “ideas” against an ideological foe. Lest the discussion thus far feel encumbered by a hypercritical view of language, let us consider, in light of the examples given, the following questions: How might discourses on Islamism more accurately describe groups that claim such mantles

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without conflating the fringe extremists from center-of-the-road individuals? Is it possible to speak critically of Islamism as a phenomenon without unnecessarily drawing Muslims or the religion of Islam into the conversation in a way that maligns them? Like much of what has been mentioned in earlier chapters, one of the keys is specificity with language. Just as there is a tendency to use broad brush strokes when it comes to Islam—“Islamic fundamentalism” or the “Islamic world”—so too is there a tendency to deploy sweeping characterizations of Islamism that represent it as a monolithic movement. One of the consequences of this is that it may reinforce the unsubstantiated claim that Islamism is primarily informed and animated by religious doctrine, when, in fact, such intrinsic links are less clear. It is inaccurate to claim that Islam is responsible for the ideological movement that we call Islamism, and emphasizing religious tenets, Quranic verses, and other creedal elements that are a part of the Islamic tradition only gives the impression that religion is the primary driver. For example, the tendency to fixate on the concepts of jihad or Sharia when it comes to critiques of Islamism blurs reality by suggesting that these concepts, which are important to Muslims all around the world, are principally related to Islamism, when in fact, they are not. While Islamists and their respective groups may subscribe to particular interpretations of these things, jihad and Sharia have a long and storied history within the Islamic religious tradition and have been interpreted in a myriad of ways. Despite some extreme examples that exist today, the overwhelming majority of Muslims understand jihad in a contextualized and nonviolent way, and Sharia as a complex and intricate guide for how to integrate religious principles into their understanding of, and dealings in, the world. Equally as helpful as avoiding a negative normalization of these words and their association with Islamism is the need to look critically at Islamism’s multiple layers. The groups that are typically classified as “Islamists” give the religion of Islam much premium in their public discourse. That is unquestionable. But the other factor that drives Islamism is politics, and it seems that in public debates today, that side of the equation is often less discussed despite its centrality. As Susan Buck-Morss notes, “Islamism is not a religious discourse, but a political one. It is a debate about modernity, expressed in multiple voices, encompassing varied and conflicting theoretical positions that are meant to have practical, political effects.”35 Yet as a result of anti-Muslim prejudice and a general political climate that has fixated on Islam, a religious tenor resounds in public discussions of Islamism. Debates about things like the marginalization of Muslim communities within political bodies, the dominance of one political system at the expense of individual liberties, the relationship between minority constituencies and government representatives, and how to recognize and codify moral convictions at the individual level (marriage, childbirth, divorce, inheritance, etc.), are lost. To state it differently, “political Islam” (which Islamism is sometimes called) is not the same thing as “Muslim politics.” The former supposes an imposing religious framework while the latter points to citizens who happen to be Muslims engaging their political system, like all people, to ensure that it represents them, too. To put an even

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sharper point on it, “Muslim politics” is different, still, than “people who happen to be Muslims participating in politics.” In other words, the presumption that one’s Muslim identity is that which is always at the forefront of their every thought and action is misleading, just as Christians, Jews, and nonreligious people take into account a multiplicity of factors when they vote or participate in politics. A more balanced approach to discourses on Islamism involves eschewing the usual trap of generalization and ensuring that the language used to describe the phenomenon is as precise as possible, avoids simplistic accounts that situate religion as the only explanatory factor, and resists inclinations to fortify a dichotomous relationship between “the West” and a new ideological adversary.

Further Reading Bayat, Asef, ed. Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Martin, Richard C., and Abbas Barzegar, eds. Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Massad, Joseph A. Islam in Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Sayyid, Bobby S. A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism. London: Zed Books, 1997. Shavit, Uriya. Islamism and the West: From “Cultural Attack” to “Missionary Migrant.” New York: Routledge, 2014.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Do you believe that Islamism has certain distinctive features that are characteristic of all so-called Islamist groups? If so, what are they? 2. How are the terms Islamism, radicalism, extremism, terrorism, and jihadism distinguished? 3. Are “Islamism” and “Muslim politics” different categories? How about “Islamism” and “political Islam”? What is it that distinguishes one group from the other? 4. What role do you think the religion of Islam plays when it comes to Islamism? Is it an influential driver, or manipulated by ideologically driven individuals? 5. Give some examples of ways that you believe it is possible to be critical of a movement like Islamism without slipping into a monolithic representation of it, or advancing generalizations about Muslims.

Notes 1. It is important to note here that for the purposes of political discourses in the United States that communism as a political project of the Soviet Union was defeated.

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However, communism as a more general ideology was not, and it remains alive today in various forms. This speaks to the difficulty—and indeed the impossibility—of defeating worldviews. 2. Fawaz Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Culture or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 23. 3. As quoted in Gerges, America and Political Islam, 24. 4. Gerges, America and Political Islam. 5. Mehdi Mozaffari, ‘‘What Is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept,’’ Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 1 (2007): 17. 6. Voltaire, John Morley, William F. Fleming, Oliver Herbrand, and Gordon Leigh, The Works of Voltaire (Paris: E. R. DuMont, 1901), 209. 7. Mozaffari, ‘‘What Is Islamism?’’ 18. 8. Mozaffari, ‘‘What Is Islamism?’’ 9. Mozaffari, ‘‘What Is Islamism?’’ 10. Mozaffari, ‘‘What Is Islamism?’’ 11. Hasan Al-Turabi, AI-Islam wal Hukm (London: Al-Saqi, 2003), 49. 12. Mozaffari, ‘‘What Is Islamism?’’ 20. 13. Martin Kramer, ‘‘Coming to Terms: Fundamentalists or Islamists?’’ Middle East Quarterly 10, no. 2 (2003): 66. 14. See: Robert Redfield, The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); and Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 15. Elizabeth R. Nugent, ‘‘What Do We Mean By ‘Islamist’?’’ June 23, 2014, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/06/23/whatdo-we-mean-by-islamist/?utm_term.06ec9359df53 (accessed February 17, 2017). 16. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 17. Arun Kundnani, ‘‘Islamism and the Roots of Liberal Rage,’’ Race and Class 50, no. 2 (2008): 43. 18. Kundnani, ‘‘Islamism and the Roots of Liberal Rage.’’ 19. Kundnani, ‘‘Islamism and the Roots of Liberal Rage.’’ For information regarding the controversy of these comments, see: Richard Lea, ‘‘Amis Returns Fire in Islam Row,’’ October 12, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/12/religion.news (accessed March 14, 2017). 20. National Review, ‘‘Muslims against Islamism,’’ Interview, February 20, 2015, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414160/muslims-against-islamism-interview (accessed June 13, 2017). 21. Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman, ‘‘Michael Flynn, Anti-Islamist ExGeneral, Offered Security Post, Trump Aide Says,’’ New York Times, November 17, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/michael-flynn-national-security-ad viser-donald-trump.html?_r0 (accessed June 13, 2017). 22. Rosenberg and Haberman, ‘‘Michael Flynn.’’ 23. David Wright, ‘‘Hillary Clinton: I’ll Say the Words ‘Radical Islamism,’ ’’ CNN, June 14, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump -orlando-attacks-reaction/index.html (accessed June 13, 2017). 24. Duncan Gardham, ‘‘Mainstream Islamic Organisations ‘Share Al-Qaeda Ideology,’ ’’ August 5, 2010, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7928377 /Mainstream-Islamic-organisations-share-al-Qaeda-ideology.html (accessed June 14, 2017). 25. Gardham, ‘‘Mainstream Islamic Organisations.’’

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26. Marc Lynch, ‘‘Islam Divided between Salafi-jihad and the Ikhwan,’’ in Studies and Conflict and Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 480. 27. Maajid Nawaz, ‘‘I Was Radicalised. So I Understand How Extremists Exploit Grievances,’’ The Guardian, February 26, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/comment isfree/2015/feb/26/tackle-extremism-understand-racism-islamism (accessed June 16, 2017). 28. Nicholas Kristof, ‘‘The Diversity of Islam,’’ New York Times, October 8, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/opinion/nicholas-kristof-the-diversity-of-islam .html?_r0 (accessed June 16, 2017). 29. Sam Harris, ‘‘Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam,’’ TruthDig, February 7, 2006, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060207_reality_islam (accessed June 16, 2017). 30. Michelle Boorstein, ‘‘Chapel Hill Killings Shine Light on Particular Tensions between Atheism and Islam,’’ Washington Post, February 11, 2015, https://www.washing tonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/02/11/chapel-hill-killings-shine-light-on-particular -tensions-between-islam-and-atheism/?utm_term.f8180cdc4271 (accessed June 16, 2017). 31. Maryam Namazie, ‘‘Political Islam in the Heart of Secular Europe,’’ July 11, 2005, Press Release of speech given at the International Humanist and Ethical Union Congress on July 6, 2005, in Paris, France. 32. Simon Coteee, ‘‘The Dilemma Facing Ex-Muslims in Trump’s America,’’ The Atlantic, July 11, 2005, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/di lemma-facing-ex-muslim-atheists-in-trumps-america/518553/ (accessed June 16, 2017). 33. Raheel Raza, ‘‘As a Muslim, I Think Canada Should Ban the Niqab and Burka in Public,’’ Huffington Post, September 24, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/raheel -raza/niqab-burka-ban-canada_b_8189112.html (accessed June 16, 2017). 34. Maajid Nawaz, ‘‘The British Left’s Hypocritical Embrace of Islamism,’’ The Daily Beast, August 8, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-british-lefts-hypocritical-em brace-of-islamism (accessed June 19, 2017). 35. Susan Buck-Morss, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (London: Verso, 2003), 44.

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KEY TERMS: • fundamentalism • mujahideen • nationalism

• radical • scriptural literalism • ummah

CHAPTER 7

The Illogical Search for “Moderate Muslims” Where are the moderate Muslims in America who are stepping up and becoming more forceful in the fight against jihad? —Eric Bolling, Fox News Host “Moderate Muslims Reclaim Their Faith.” —Boston Globe “Moderate Muslims under Siege.” —New York Times I mean, where are all these moderates I always hear about? They say, “Oh, Bill Maher, you’re so hard on the Muslims. What about the moderates?” —Bill Maher

The category of “Muslim” today is perhaps one of the more complex when it comes to communal groupings of identity. This is undoubtedly a result of the political overtones that category has acquired, on account of violent political expressions carried out by some Muslim individuals and groups and the subsequent response of world governments that have politicized their approaches to identity when it comes to combating such violence. Apart from that, though, the category of “Muslim” is unusual because, unlike other markers of identity, it has become splintered such that to describe someone as a “Muslim” nowadays is to say very little at all, actually. Contemporary discourses on Islam have fragmented that grouping outside of its national, ethnic, or denominational (Sunni vs. Shia) distinctions and imposed a new taxonomy of sorts that carves followers of Islam up 139

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based on how their views about religion and politics square up against a “Western” standard. They are seen as either “moderates” or “extremists,” and to state “I am a Muslim” is to invariably invite the following question: “Yes, but what kind of Muslim are you?” Much of this stems from a debate about multiculturalism that has become more pronounced within the past two decades. The attacks of 9/11, the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued violence meted out by Muslim extremists, and deliberations over immigration policies regarding refugees have given life to new questions about national identity and the purported distinguishing features and credos of North America and Europe. Anxieties over security have prompted some to wonder if Muslims can be good citizens of these spaces, and whether or not Islam’s followers share “Western” values. As Tariq Modood and Fauzia Ahmed have argued, one troubling aspect of this discourse is that, in the case of 1990s Britain (and the example applied elsewhere), newfound assertions of identity by marginalized communities in the name of “multiculturalism” often fell along racial and ethnic lines, but not religious ones. The attending focus on racism that was jolted into action by a new era of public awareness of diversity similarly framed prejudice in terms that were largely biological; because Muslims were seen as essentially religious individuals, discrimination of them was lawful until the end of 2003.1 “In theory and in practice, then, while minority racial and ethnic assertiveness (not to mention women’s movements and gay pride) were encouraged by egalitarians, religious assertiveness, especially on the part of Muslims—when it occurred—was seen as a problem: not as a strand within equality struggles but as a threat to multiculturalism,” Modood and Ahmed write.2 As I will show in this chapter, this public discourse on Muslims, which concerns itself primarily with the degree to which a Muslim asserts his or her religiosity, is fundamentally flawed. It is based on the notion of an “ideal other,” and it carries with it a set of expectations about how Muslims should behave, the ideas that they should hold, and the positions that they should support, all of which are determined by the group of people (usually in positions of power) who are making such demands. Additionally, the “moderate Muslim” discourse is inherently relational, and it is only understood when so-called moderate Muslims are situated as the preferred counterpart to another group. The result is usually a handful of terms that are used to describe Muslims and Islam, among them “extremists,” “fundamentalists,” “radicals,” “militants,” and as we will see in the next chapter, “Islamists.” The dualistic framework that we problematized in the introduction and chapter 1 is present here, as populations are asked to decipher the “good Muslims,” or “moderates,” from the “bad ones”; that is, the “extremists,” and other terms. While it may seem perfectly normal to desire a distinction between bad actors and good ones within any given group, here the issue is not that distinction, per se, but the presumptions on which it rests. The term moderate is not value neutral, but rather imbued with meanings that are sometimes politically charged. The same is true of “extremists,” “radicals,” and more. Because there is not a normative framework for those terms, their meanings can—and have—changed over time,

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such that what constitutes “moderation” today may not tomorrow. This discourse also fuses religion and politics in a way that is unconstructive by intimating that Islam is the independent variable that determines where a Muslim falls along a theoretical spectrum of moderation. Usually, less “Islam”—rejecting certain religious tenets and digesting secular narratives of the United States and Europe—is thought to signal moderation, where more “Islam”—daily prayers, religious garb, and overall religious conservatism—is thought to signal fundamentalism. A consequence of this is that some Muslims, too, are participants in this discourse. Because of the degree to which the “moderate Muslim” has been championed as the ideal religious believer, followers of the Islamic faith themselves have sought to make a distinction between the “moderates” and “extremists,” as if to prove, painstakingly, that they should not be viewed with the suspicion that ought to be reserved for the more fringe factions. This reinforces the dualism between “moderates” and others, and it bolsters the idea that the right type of Muslim follows a “Western” prescription regarding personal religiosity, patriotism, and political engagement. To sharpen this into fuller relief, let us examine the epistemological history and usage of some of this discourse’s animating language, and think about the implications that the often repeated phrase moderate Muslims, and the seemingly everlasting search for them, has had on Muslim communities over the years.

The Political Manipulation of “Moderate” in Recent History The use of the word moderate to refer to Muslims and their religion generally brings to mind a few defining characteristics: “moderate Muslims” are thought to be antiterrorism, especially in the name of Islam, and they are adamant about routing it out. “Moderate Islam” suggests a tempered version of the religion that blunts the ferocity of violent Quranic passages and fits neatly within a dominant cultural system that is mostly secular. The use of the word moderate in this capacity—that is, in the literal sense of “moderating” or lessening the severity of something—has a fairly long history within the arena of American and European politics. While Islam is the most recent target of this language, there are many instances where the label of moderates has been applied to religious and nonreligious groups and is used in partisan politics, too. A few examples of this will underscore the flimsy nature of that word, shedding further light on the complexities of applying it to Muslims today. Several lesser-discussed examples of this come from the waning years of the Cold War, before the American government turned its attention away from communism and toward a new “Islamic” adversary in the Middle East. During the mid to late 1980s, Central America became a region of increasing concern for Washington, and countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua became proxy battlegrounds for a larger ideological fight against communism. In these spaces, a Manichean struggle between “good” and “evil,” “democracy” and “communism”

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emerged in the form of raucous revolutions, and US president Ronald Reagan was unconvinced that negotiated solutions were sufficient to thwart what he saw as lingering, albeit dangerous, remnants of the Communist ideology. Instead, financial support was sent to friendly governments to aide in the project of resistance, and arms were provided to guerilla groups who were described as “moderates” and who were thought capable of bolstering a strong militant defense against leftist regimes.3 In El Salvador, civil war raged between the country’s military-led government and the Farabundo Martı´ National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was a coalition of left-wing militias. In response to the brewing chaos, the Reagan administration (operating largely on a set of ideas put into place by the preceding administration of Jimmy Carter) sided with the Salvadoran military government, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the country along with ammunition and military supplies. Though they were later urged to institute reforms, the fact that the United States had cast its support for a government that, comparatively speaking, was deemed “moderate” in the face of Communist insurgents, sparked ire as Salvadoran security forces, armed with US weapons and money, carried out widespread human rights abuses. Amnesty International reported that it had received “regular, often daily, reports identifying El Salvador’s regular security and military units as responsible for the torture, ‘disappearance’ and killing of civilians. Types of torture reported by those who have survived arrest and interrogation included beatings, sexual abuse, use of chemicals to disorient, mock executions, and the burning of flesh with sulphuric acid.”4 During the course of the civil war, some seventy-five thousand people lost their lives, and while the guerilla groups were responsible for a portion of those deaths, the United Nations Truth Commission reported that “more than 85 percent of the killings, kidnappings, and torture had been the work of government forces, which included paramilitaries, death squads, and army units trained by the United States.”5 American interventions of this type were certainly not new, and the following years would witness other such occasions where the United States backed governments or paramilitary groups that were presented as “moderate” in one way or another, especially when fighting an enemy that Washington policymakers believed presented an ideological threat to “the West,” democracy, and liberalism. The case of Nicaragua is also relevant to our discussion. During the 1980s, the leftist revolutionary Sandinista government was involved in an extended war with Contra rebels. The potential for future turmoil, and an intense feeling that another Central American country was on the verge of collapsing in a proxy war aimed at advancing communism, led Reagan and the US government to react. Responding to the crisis, Washington sent millions of dollars in weapons to the Contra guerilla group fighting the government—a move that led to one of the most complex and intrigue-filled scandals in recent political history, the IranContra Affair (Israel and various European states provided weapons as well). Selling weapons to Iran, a country that needed arms support for its war with Iraq, was intended to leverage influence for the release of an American hostage in Lebanon. Because of the high price of the weapons, profits were diverted and used to fund the Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government. As the Washington

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Post reported, “It was a grand scheme that violated American law and policy all around: Arms sales to Iran were prohibited; the U.S. government had long forbidden ransom of any sort for hostages; and it was illegal to fund the contras above the limits set by Congress.”6 As author and scholar Noam Chomsky has written, the purpose of the weapons supply was to locate the “moderates,” and thus the Los Angeles Times reported that their shipment from Israel to Iran in 1979 (after a failed military coup) was designed to “help keep channels open to moderate or pragmatic elements in Iran, particularly in the military, who would one day overthrow or at least inherit the power.”7 Though political descriptions of “moderate” usually do not spell out precisely what that means (it is usually deployed with an implicit understanding that “moderate” is the equivalent of “good guys,” i.e., “us”), in this case the former de facto Israeli ambassador to Iran under the shah, Un Lubrani, was forthcoming in his description. “I very strongly believe that Tehran can be taken over by a very relatively small force, determined, ruthless, cruel,” he said. “I mean the men who would lead that force will have to be emotionally geared to the possibility that they’d have to kill ten thousand people.”8 Reagan’s assessment of the Contra rebels is particularly important. In his view, they were “moderates,” despite being a guerilla group that relied on ammunition and other artillery from the United States to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. In some cases, they carried out assassinations of government members, and worked with the CIA to plant mines in Nicaraguan harbors to blow up ships that were transporting weapons. In a quote that is often mistakenly associated with the mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan (to whom we will turn momentarily), Reagan praised the rebels, and compared them to the architects of American democracy. They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help. I’ve spoken recently of the freedom fighters of Nicaragua. You know the truth about them. You know who they’re fighting and why. They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong.9

The comparison was rhetorically emotive, and not at all literal. It was intended to rally popular support for the Contra group in a moment of political tension and anxiety. The rebels did not share American values in any discernible way, and the idea that the commissioned attacks placed them on a parallel plane with the visionaries behind the American constitution was a reach. This is the point, though. Their presentation as “moderate” forces that were on the side of the United States was a matter of political convenience in a moment where a larger perceived threat—a Communist Central America—was present. Earlier in American history, and outside of the political context of Central America, yet another example of this discursive trend exists. Indonesia offers a similar portrait of how “moderate” is used as a label to describe a country and its leaders who do not necessarily exhibit “moderate” political qualities by any reasonable measure, but who nonetheless are touted as such on account of their willingness to meet the demands of political powerhouses. With hostile relations between

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the United States and Indonesia mounting in the 1950s, the American government, at the direction of President Dwight Eisenhower, sponsored an invasion and attempted coup of the Sukarno regime in 1958. It ultimately failed, though the United States continued to supply the weaponry that had aimed to ignite the political uprooting. Years later, in 1965, the pro-American general Suharto succeeded in executing a military coup—an event that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people (some estimates have even suggested up to one million people dead) and resulted in Suharto’s three-decades-long tenure as the country’s second president. The coup also destroyed the Indonesian Communist Party, which was welcomed news in the United States and Western Europe and regarded as “a vindication of U.S. aggression against South Vietnam, which provided a ‘shield’ that encouraged the generals to carry out the necessary purge of their society.”10 Suharto, dubbed a “butcher” in some political quarters, was hailed as a hero. The London Economist described him as having a “benign heart,” while the Christian Science Monitor noted that the mass murders he carried out in service of advancing the political interests of Indonesia (and its allies) were apparently of little interest to “many in the West” who were “keen to cultivate Jakarta’s new moderate leader.”11 Additionally, the New York Times referred to Suharto as a “reforming autocrat” whose “accomplishments were remarkable,” while Time magazine remarked on Suharto’s “almost innocent face” and described his government as “scrupulously constitutional and commanding vociferous popular support.”12 What these examples make plain is that there is no objective rubric for what constitutes a “moderate” within the political world, and such labels are quite often deployed as a matter of political convenience. It is also important to recognize that the discursive environment in which these descriptions—“moderate,” “extremist,” “fundamentalists,” etc.—abound is not a level playing field of individuals and governments deploying such terms. As we have established, discourses invariably involve an intricate set of power relations; exactly who is able to use these terms and have them stick within the public lexicon says as much about the words as anything. To put it more explicitly, the United States and its Western European allies, which constitute the bulk of the world’s military might and political influence, are positioned, as a result of those things, in a place that allows them to determine what characteristics and qualities constitute “moderates,” and there is little reason to think that they would not define those words in a way that reinforced their own values and positions on various issues. Turning now to the case of “moderate Muslims” specifically, we will see that this category is not only used in service of delineating groups of religious people (as opposed to “religious groups”) that are supportive of American and European policies around the world, but also employed to deliver a message that is more intricately woven to personal identity: there are types of people—“moderate Muslims”—that are acceptable within “Western” societies, and types of people— anyone outside of that label—that are not. Because individual Muslim citizens are not in positions to influence the ideological direction of, for example, foreign policy, being a “moderate Muslim” at a societal level usually involves acquiescing to a preferred list of beliefs and religious expressions determined by those in positions of power.

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Contemporary Representations of “Moderate Muslims” When it comes to American and European military engagements in the Middle East, the process of identifying “moderates” is no different than in the above examples from Central America. Political capital and influence remains the primary motivator for determining what factions the government will depend on and deploy, not the particular beliefs that the associated individuals hold regarding politics or religion. The irony of this has been that with the emergence of the “moderate Muslim” category as both an overseas political tool and an ideological standard to which Muslim communities in “Western” countries are held, two different types of “moderate” emerge, and they are starkly different. On the one hand, “moderate Muslims” who are working on behalf of American interests overseas often espouse violence and exhibit hardline beliefs—things that are overlooked as focus remains on combatting a larger adversary (in recent history, this adversary has been ISIS). On the other hand, American and European governments seek “moderate Muslims” within domestic spaces that reject violence and hardline views, and which display an overall sense of balance between religiosity, political engagement, and commitment secularism and liberalism. What both “moderate” groups have in common, however, is that they support the “Western” narrative, whatever it is and no matter its fluctuations. The case of Syria and its fight against ISIS—and the subsequent narratives about Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS for the shores of the United States and Western Europe—is a classic example of this. The use of Muslim “rebel” groups is not a new phenomenon, and one only needs to think back to the fight against communism in Afghanistan, when the American government armed the mujahideen fighters, to know that. As the Syrian civil war wreaked havoc on that country and displaced hundreds of thousands of its citizens, “Western” governments sought to intervene, though without committing to a sustained war in the traditional sense.13 This intervention involved arming “moderate rebels,” one hundred or more nebulous groups of nationalist-minded Syrian fighters who were committed to fighting the Assad regime and local pockets of terrorists, too. The groups, despite being branded as homogenously “moderate,” were actually quite disparate, and in some cases even included blocs that American and European governments would typically oppose. Charles Lister has noted that within the tens of thousands of “moderate rebels” dispatched to various missions in Syria were formations from groups like Ahrar alSham, which vehemently opposed ISIS (and fought it successfully) but were not natural “Western” allies in any sense (the group’s relationship with UN-designated terrorist organizations has been a contentious area of concern, for instance).14 Just as American and European governments were arming and supporting “moderate rebels” that, by many standards, were not “moderate” but violent, some in these “Western” spaces turned their attention to refugees who were fleeing the civil war, Bashar Al-Assad’s bloodletting, and terrorism meted out by groups like ISIS. In Washington, a debate raged about whether or not to admit such refugees, and in the context of President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim Ban, politicians

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and others made the case that allowing refugees to enter the United States was a bad idea because it was impossible to know if they were “moderate.” Senator Ted Cruz, for instance, suggested that immigrants to the United States should undergo a religious test, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush supported American refugee assistance that prioritized Christians over Muslims, intimating that the former group exhibited acceptable beliefs while the latter group was questionable. Latenight television host Bill Maher issued a blanket criticism of Syrian refugees, saying, “their values are at odds with our values.”15 Maher continued, “If you are in this religion [Islam], you probably do have values that are at odds [with those of ‘the West’]. This is what liberals do not want to recognize. You may be from a country—as there are many, many Muslim countries—that either have Sharia law or want Sharia law. Those values are not our values.”16 The portrait that emerges here is one of a double standard. Muslims who espouse violence on behalf of the US government or its allies are summarily described as “moderates,” while Muslims who do not espouse violence and who are, in many cases, attempting to flee it as refugees are viewed with suspicion of being violent. This reinforces the idea that one is not simply a “moderate” or “extremist” on their own, but rather becomes such when the powerful voices that dominate discourse about Islam, Muslims, and politics render them that way. To be a “moderate” in the eyes of “the West” is to accept the fact that it is the people who control that geopolitical entity that generate such designations and grant them according to how they view the world. While it is usually the case that the label of moderate is one that exists within a top-down system (governments used it to describe populations or groups, for instance), the way in which the word has been normalized over the years and situated as an ideal identity marker has resulted in some Muslim communities themselves adopting the label, and in bottom-up fashion, suggesting proudly that they are “moderate Muslims.” Though it would seem that Muslims are in a better position than non-Muslims to make such determinations about their own religious community (and indeed they are entitled to describe themselves in any way they like), their use of that phrase in the noncritical way that it has traditionally been used has contributed to its further entrenchment in the world of ideologically driven politics. Part of this has to do with the way in which the word moderate is morphed into a marker of patriotism and associated with being a good citizen and championing the values and principles of a particular country. Where governments deploy the label to justify dubious associations that are formed to achieve political ends, some Muslims have internalized the power dynamics that are packed into that description and use it in a way that fuses “moderation” to everything that is “Western,” and in the case of Muslims living in the United States, ideals that are perceived as quintessentially “American.” This discursive exercise reinforces a dichotomous relationship between Islam and “the West,” and it also creates an environment in which anything other than vocal patriotism is seen as an indication that one is not “moderate.” There are many examples of this maneuver, though one stands out in terms of the explicitness with which it links moderation to national identity. In Zeyno

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Baran’s 2010 edited volume The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular, American physician M. Zuhdi Jasser describes his upbringing as an American Muslim, and his views of “moderate Muslims,” in a chapter titled “Americanism versus Islamism.”17 Curiously, in his attempt to position himself (and those who share his views) within an easily identifiable camp of “moderates,” he constructs a table that includes two columns. One column is labeled “Americanism”; the other is labeled “Islamism.” He describes this table as representative of the “clash of cultures” or “clash of civilizations,” and proceeds to list traits that are ostensibly associated with each group, placing the positive traits like “truth,” “sanctity of life,” and “gender and racial equality” on the side of “Americanism,” and their opposites, “corruption,” “lack of respect for life,” and “misogyny and racism” on the side of “Islamism.”18 By this view, being moderate means aspiring toward “Americanism,” an imagined ideology that is akin to patriotism or even nationalism. Yet Jasser’s example is limiting in that it presumes and preserves noble traits for one side of the equation while denying that a possibility apart from the dualistic presentation he offers exists. It is unclear how he comes to the conclusion that “truth,” for example, endures on the “American” side of the equation and is a value that invariably imbues the character of every “moderate.” It is also unclear how, for example, the dichotomies that he constructs (“individualism” versus “tribalism”; “democracy” versus “autocracy”; and “cognitive reactions” versus “visceral reactions,” to name a few) are representative of moderation on the one hand, and its opposite— extremism—on the other. Individualism, for instance, may be a characteristic of liberalism insofar as classical liberalism is understood to be a political philosophy that upholds individual rights and values the person over the group. But that does not necessarily mean that individualism is innately “moderate,” just as “tribalism” is not innately extreme. There are a litany of examples to disprove that. Curiously, the juxtaposition of “cognitive reactions” and “visceral reactions” seems to indicate that “moderates” who uphold “Americanism” consistently employ rational faculties where extremists, in this case branded as “Islamists,” are only capable of responding to the world around them with emotion.19 A further problem with this type of thinking is that the two camps on which Jasser’s model is predicated—“Americanists” and “Islamists”—masks the more general category of “Muslims” from the equation. Thus, one is given only two choices: embrace the traits of “Americanism” or risk being lumped in with the “Islamists,” or reject the traits of “Islamists” and one presumably becomes an “Americanist.” This simplicity and ethnocentrism of this setup intimates that Islamists cannot be Americans (a topic we will look at in the next chapter), and “moderate Muslims” must be Americans (or at least “Americanists,” i.e., European Muslims who support supposedly American principles). Moderation, then, becomes akin to national identity—an intellectual maneuver that reinforces the supremacy of “the West” and its affiliated countries, and in Hungtingtonian fashion establishes a mental map that represents all Muslims who fall outside of the preferred American (and European) boundaries as potential threats to not only national security but also to a broader “Western” identity.

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Krista Melanie Riley has explored how some Muslims represent themselves as “moderate” in an effort to increase claims to national belonging as they, too, like Jasser, see moderation, religiosity, and statehood intertwined. Examining the Canadian context, Riley shows how national identity is manufactured by a state apparatus that, while presenting itself as “unequally accessible to those who attempt to claim it,” has nonetheless been marked by the presence of an excluded group.20 In Canada, she argues, national identity has always been defined by those people who go to great lengths to present themselves to the public as “ordinary Canadians or Canadian-Canadians,” as opposed to immigrants, naturalized citizens, or others who may technically be citizens but whose ethnic and racial markings stand out from the white majority.21 Muslims, she argues, have become that “Other,” and constantly negotiate their identity as Canadians and as Muslims, often responding to larger narratives about belonging and patriotism. Though Muslims as a religious group are not limited to races or ethnicities, the word Muslim is used as an identity marker in a way that segregates populations much like racism has. Examining a collection of news stories that were published in the National Post between November 2007 and March 2009, Riley identified three major themes that drive public discourse on “moderate” Muslims, and which contribute to Muslims themselves adopting this discourse: the creation of a “good,” or “moderate,” Muslim identity through fervent and unquestioning displays of national loyalty; representations of an “Islamist threat” that “moderate” Muslims must fight; and a charged use of gender relations to distinguish the “good” Muslims from the “bad” ones (i.e., issues related to the veil, prayers in mosques, marriage, etc.).22 Riley shows how race language (which operates on the idea that “blood traitors” who share the same “ethnic” markings as terrorists have spoken out against violence, and should be commended) is pervasive and undergirds popular discourses on “moderate Muslims.” Thus, self-styled “moderate Muslims” such as Irshad Manji, Tarek Fatah, Zuhdi Jasser, Asra Nomani, and Maajid Nawaz are praised for diverging from their cultural or religious communities to vocally identify themselves as the “good guys,” the “liberals,” or the “moderates,” though the underlying insinuation is that extreme views within their particular racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural communities is the norm.23 Because it is often the case that Muslim communities in North America and Europe are largely comprised of immigrants (or the children of immigrants), racial markers do exist.24 Therefore, where white Canadians, for example, are able to demonstrate their patriotism and national loyalty simply by being themselves— existing in society as working, taxpaying, voting citizens for whom such questions of allegiance are not often posed—Muslims, “like many immigrants and people of colour in Canada, must express their loyalty and allegiance explicitly and visibly.”25 As Riley points out, this fosters a social climate in which “Muslims as racialized immigrants are being compelled to act as virtuous citizens, reproducing the dominant ways of being a citizen rather than issuing a fundamental challenge to the racial and Orientalist foundations of citizenship.”26 Questioning that power dynamic is not an option for Muslims, and doing so may quickly result in one being rendered anything other than “moderate.” This may explain why some of

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the aforementioned Muslim activists not only adopt popular lexicons of patriotism and nationalism but also have expressed their support for unpopular government policies in the Middle East—such as the Iraq War and a variety of measures that make the lives of Muslims, domestically and internationally, more difficult—such as surveillance, immigration bans, and more. Unconditional defense of the nation, and of its secular foundations, becomes important in expressing belonging and patriotism. Relatedly, a central feature of the “moderate Muslim” discourse is the narrative that suggests that “moderates” are more than merely distinguishable from “extremists” in terms of their religious and political views, but that they are constantly under threat, too. In some cases, this may well be true, though the degree to which some of the aforementioned self-described “moderates” have cast danger as an ever-present feature of their public stories points, nonetheless, to its importance within the discursive landscape they paint. Of course, from a simple linguistic standpoint, “moderate” always suggests something more extreme, and the fact that “native informants,” as they have been called, claim some special knowledge of, and proximity to, severe interpretations of their faith both reinforces the urgency of the alleged threat and the importance of the “moderate Muslims” who claim to know how to fight it. “Moderate Muslims” become a part of a national “us” that is in need of collective protection, and the recommendations that they deploy fortify the links between them and the “Western” governments that are represented as being similarly threatened.27 The results often appear as moments of cooperation and collaboration between these “moderate Muslims” and the government, especially regarding issues of national security, homeland security, foreign affairs, and counterterrorism. Thus, figures such as Asra Nomani and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both of whom are lauded as “moderates” by the Washington establishment, testified before Congress about the allegedly looming threat of Islamism, and warned about gender inequality and anti-American views in American mosques. Similarly, Maajid Nawaz’s organization advocated spying on British Muslim citizens, and he sent the British government a list of Muslim groups that he hoped officials would view with further suspicion. In Canada, Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah routinely use ominous language related to “Hamas and Hezbollah,” and they point to a litany of extreme examples in “Saudi Arabia and Iran,” including references to Sharia, jihad, and other Arabic words, which reinforce notions of Islamic foreignness all the while reasserting their own Canadian-ness. By constructing this narrative in which they—and their North American and European homelands—are under threat, “moderate Muslims” align themselves with the state, and on the opposite side of a dividing line between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Their status as either former victims of extremisms in the past or current targets of it today is powerful, and it has elicited much support from politicians and journalists who, in saluting their “courage,” “bravery,” “eloquence,” and the like, consolidate national support for their cause and affirm a unified approach to countering Muslims who are not like them. As Krista Riley notes, Raheel Raza, in identifying herself as “a proud recipient of a fatwa” and fifth on a list of “most hated Muslims in the world,” rallies nationalistic support,

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and spurs jingoistic narratives that divide Muslims into “moderates” and “extremists.”28 As Sherene Razack has argued, this creates “shared pleasure in one’s own superiority and the other’s abjection.”29 Here, there is a sense of pride that accompanies such fatwas, condemnations, and derogatory descriptions by conservative Muslims. It is as if these things allow “moderate Muslims” to say to their “Western” compatriots, “Don’t you see? I am not like those Muslims. I am one of the good ones, and like you, I am also targeted.” This expressed unity creates the discursive space for “moderate Muslims” to not just parrot a “Western” narrative, but to own it—to lay claim to it and maintain that it is, in part, theirs. Importantly, as such, they are able to position themselves alongside powerful voices in society that then determine which Muslims are appropriate and acceptable and which Muslims are not. The power relations that are asserted through this process are apparent. When Hirsi Ali arbitrarily divides the worldwide Muslim community into different types—“Medina Muslim,” “Meccan Muslims,” and “modifying Muslims”—and states, before Congress, that, in fact, these categories exist and all Muslims should belong to the latter of them, the potential for subsequent political measures that carve up identities and enforce obedience to certain prescriptions related to religiosity does not seem far-fetched.30 Turning now to a parallel discussion, it is helpful to think about how other similar categories of Muslims that are so commonly represented and discussed in public operate in ways that are much akin to the discourse on “moderate Muslims.” As we have established, the notion of “moderate” itself is a comparative one, and it suggests a linear spectrum with two extremes and a comfortable middle point that is ideal. “Moderates” are thought to be not so unreligious and disconnected from their faith tradition that they dilute religious diversity, nor are they so extreme in their commitments that they are thought to pose a risk to secular liberalism. Yet built into this discourse is a presumption that “extreme,” “radical,” and “fundamental”—all words that have been used to describe Muslim individuals and groups—have a normative meaning, and one that is generally understood. Is that really so? While it seems that this discourse has imbued many of its associated terms with specific meanings, some of them (especially “radical” and “fundamental”) can be unpacked and problematized in service of showing just how constructed they are, and how they, too, have been used within popular narratives on Islam and Muslims (and religious groups in general) to control ideas about who the less-than-ideal practitioners are.

The Problem with “Fundamentalists” and “Radicals” As it is most commonly used today, the word fundamentalist has a negative ring to it. We speak of religious “fundamentalists” in several senses. In the case of Christianity the word has become tied to the conservative evangelical community who espouses biblical literalism and holds particularly strong views on topics like

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gay marriage, abortion, and people of other religions (not to mention religious denominations). In the case of Judaism, the term is used less frequently, though it operates in much the same way. In umbrella-like fashion, it canopies a variety of different views that range from militant Religious Zionism to Sephardic Haredi Judaism or Hasidism. As it relates to Islam, “fundamentalism” has long history, yet contemporary understandings of it came to the fore with the Iranian hostage crisis and revolution in the late 1970s, when popular media outlets, politicians, and analysts sought to make sense of the politico-religious ideology driving the Ayatollah Khomeini. Despite the fact that “fundamentalism” is, definitionally speaking, a term steeped in nuance, context, and even history, to say that someone is a “fundamentalist Christian” or a “fundamentalist Muslim” today is to say much less about what the people being described actually believe than how those people actually are.31 In other words, it has become a pejorative phrase that immediately signifies rigidity, self-righteousness, and strict adherence to an in-group/outgroup mentality. In fact, the word fundamentalism is used interchangeably with radicalism and extremism. Consider, for example, this May 2013 headline from the BBC: “Viewpoint: What Do Radical Islamists Actually Believe In?” The article begins by discussing the views of “Islamist” and “fundamentalist” Muslims in the UK, without any attempt to distinguish between the two.32 A 2014 article that appeared in the Huffington Post inquired about the links between “Fundamentalist Islam and the Roots of Terrorism,” while nearly three decades earlier the New York Times warned of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s political accomplishments and advances in a headline that stated “Islamic Fundamentalism Gains in Egypt.”33 What analytical value does “fundamentalism” as a description of Muslims or Islam offer? Is “fundamentalism” useful as a category overall? How, for instance, would we go about classifying Muslims or others than fit into such a grouping? Indeed, many of the challenges that afflict the word moderate are also present in these descriptions. Without diving too deeply into religious discussions (this is a book about discourse, after all), it is worth mentioning a few points raised by scholar William Shepard for the purposes of thinking critically about how this phrase is used, and what its implication are. In an essay that he wrote for Christian Century in January 1987, Shepard critiqued the category of “Islamic fundamentalism.” In doing so, he presented five areas that, in his view, required serious reflection: scripturalism; social and political orientation; distinctiveness; modernity; and oppositional stance.34 Of scripture, he noted that beyond the pale generalization that “fundamentalism” connotes going “back to the basics” or the “fundamentals” of one’s religious faith, often meaning a return to the most essential elements of the Bible or, in the case of Muslims, the Quran, that does not explain much, especially in the case of Muslims. Why? Because, as he notes, the criterion of returning to scripture for Muslims is irrelevant given that Muslims believe that the Quran is the word of God, delivered and preserved verbatim, to begin with. In that sense of the word fundamentalist, all Muslims would be such, which is not the message conveyed by the category in its contemporary usage.35

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Related to social and political orientation, questions arise, too. “Fundamentalist” Muslims are often distinguished from their counterparts, “moderates,” in that the former group is said to desire an Islamic character to the entirety of public life while the latter are said the see the Quran and Sunnah (the example set by the Prophet Muhammad) as pertaining to social personal matters, and yielding to secular governments and policies that regulate the public sphere. But where is the dividing line between these two proverbial worlds? At what specific point does the personal or private become the public and secular? It is not an easy question to answer, and when it is answered, it is usually people in privileged positions of power that establish the acceptable parameters. Additionally, as Shepard points out, many “fundamentalists” within the tradition of Christianity may actually “be called ‘secularists’ as that term is used in discussions of the Islamic world, insofar as these Christians claim to accept politically and morally like-minded adherents of other religious persuasions.”36 In a similar vein, the distinctiveness of “Islamic fundamentalism” is difficult to pin down. Not entirely unlike fundamentalism within the Christian context, Muslim “fundamentalists” are said to emphasize the uniqueness and distinctness of their religion, rejecting allegedly “Western” categories like “democracy” and maintaining that truths found within Islam are sufficient for all aspects of life, including governance, and there is thus no need to rely on other systems, philosophies, ideologies, and more. One question that emerges from this thought progression, then, is this: What distinguishes “Islamic fundamentalism” from “Christian fundamentalism” apart from the very obvious fact that one relates to the religion of Islam, the other to the religion of Christianity? Is there something especially nefarious about the Islamic brand of fundamentalism that makes it a greater threat? Does Christian fundamentalism not possess some essential characteristic that would render it threatening in the same way that Islamic fundamentalism is depicted in popular representations of it?37 Two last points regard the problematization of the term fundamentalism: First, because of the word’s association with backwardness and views that may be perceived as antiscience and antireason, the concept is often conflated with antimodernity. This is especially so in the case of Islam, where age-old stereotypes about barbaric men and uncivilized communities of Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula pervade today. Oddly enough, within the scope of “Christian fundamentalism,” the image of backwardness and a wholesale rejection of modernity is not usually present. Put differently, Christian “fundamentalist’s” views are presented as conservative and even austere, but they are not represented as existing in another time. Muslim “fundamentalists,” on the other hand, are thought to not only hold religious views that are stridently conservative but are also archaic and out of touch with the concerns of the twenty-first century. As Shepard notes, it is, in fact, the “electronic church” that has become so associated with groups of people that might be considered Christian “fundamentalists,” and they have embraced technology and methods of mass communication, including social media, to spread their messages far and wide.38 The “megachurch” phenomenon (Christian worship services held in large stadiums that hold tens of

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thousands of people) is anything but antimodern, though whether or not “fundamentalist” is a label that can be pinned on people or groups who utilize this platform is a matter of one’s perspective. Similarly, within Muslim communities, “fundamentalism” is not necessarily a position that indicates views that are anathema to modernity; one must be careful not to confuse it with “traditionalism,” which implies reaching back to an earlier time to bring forth cultural views that are deemed unadulterated or uncorrupted by contemporary conventions. Indeed, emphasizing views that are “fundamental” to a particular religious tradition and upholding doctrinal purity and literalist interpretations does not mean that one must be disconnected from modern technologies, and because “fundamentalists” are often quite concerned about resisting religious interpretations that are more widespread than their own, it may well be those very technologies that are so essential for broadcasting their positions and soliciting support. It is their “oppositional stance” in society, as Shepard calls it, that warrants this rethinking about how to position oneself in relation to “the masses,” all the while reacting to, and rejecting, views other than their own. Where fundamentalist is deployed to describe a certain type of Muslim that is not a “moderate Muslim,” the word radical is, too. “Radical Islam” is a phrase that has become quite popular in political discourses within recent years as a way of pointing to a perceived problem—acts of violence carried out by Muslims or groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS—while distinguishing these acts from “Islam” on the whole. Like “fundamentalism” within the case of Islam, “radical,” too, became a world that was popularized during the late 1970s (though in its more general usage, the term dates back to the early 1800s). As Timothy McCarthy has noted, the term radical in a social context refers to “a more far-reaching vision for what society should be like,” though, of course, the contours change based on who is using the term.39 It means different things to different people, and in many cases it is held up as a badge of honor. To be a “radical Christian” may not mean that one is a “fundamentalist” or “traditionalist” or even conservative follower of that faith, but rather that one lives out their religion in a way that aims to transform it through, for instance, impassioned social action.40 Contemporary political contexts make it difficult to imagine a scenario in which Muslims would similarly brand themselves as “radical Muslims” without repercussions. For Islam, “radical” has an almost entirely negative connotation, where the meaning for Christian communities appears less fixed. Moreover, “radical Islam” as a label with which to categorize and classify violent Muslims is fraught with problems. Beyond the more obvious problems of discernment—Who, exactly, is a “radical,” and who is not?—the attachment of the adjective radical to the noun, Islam, practically suggests that the religious tradition can be neatly carved up into two camps that are distinct not only in terms of doctrine but also in terms of followers. Just as we established in chapter 1 that there is no “Islamic world” or “Muslim world” that is insulated and exists independently, neither is there a “radical Islam” that can be identified and delineated. Yet the use of this phrase risks precisely that belief—that it is possible, and even necessary, to examine the religion of Islam, its attending doctrines and beliefs, and Muslims, all in service of rooting out the “radicals.” This is not to suggest

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that efforts ought not be made to identify troublemakers in the bunch, so to speak. Indeed, they should. However, buying into the notion that there are certain sets of beliefs—doctrines, scriptural verses, religious traditions, and others—that are, in and of themselves, “radical” and must be excised entirely from the Islamic religious tradition (while enforcing conformity to a “moderate” Islam) is unhelpful in its sweeping approach, particularly given the range of interpretations and lived expressions of religion that exist within the Islamic tradition today. While some Muslims participate in the “moderate Muslim” discourse, describing themselves as such in an effort to isolate extremists from the larger ummah, this rhetoric remains a product of powerful state leaders, establishment politicians, and well-positioned media voices. As we have seen, it is a useful political category, and one that aims to identify those Muslims who are “with us,” as President George W. Bush once said shortly after 9/11, versus those others who are presumably “against us.” This power dynamic cannot be escaped, nor can it be overstated. Its entrenchment within the common language we use to speak about Muslims and Islam influences how we think about them and act toward them, and it ultimately defines our reality. In that sense, it is a social construction, not a statement about how things actually are in the world. “Moderate Muslims,” “fundamentalists,” “extremists,” and “radicals” are products of human thinking, categorizing, classifying, and labeling, all of which is based on social relationships, political norms, and national ideology, among other things. The question of the “moderate Muslims”—Where are the moderate Muslims?—appears frequently today, and it is routinely asked by scholars, activists, politicians, and media pundits alike. There is not necessarily ill intent at work with such questioning, particularly because the label has become so common and so entrenched in common parlance that we simply presume there are such things as “moderate Muslims” walking around on Earth without ever really thinking twice about the assumptions and power dynamics that are packed into that phrase. Still, lest we believe its sheer preponderance is entirely innocuous, some reflection on the implications of answering—or not answering—the question is helpful. Calling on “moderate Muslims” to condemn the latest act of violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam—something that inevitably occurs each time an attack takes place—leaves Muslims two options: answer the call and identify themselves as “moderates,” or refrain from buying into the false choice that is presented and risk being labeled as “extremists.” The identity of Muslims, in this case, is not based on their own views about the world and how they see and position themselves within it. Instead, it is based solely on how they answer a question that is posed to them by outsiders who, by deploying such inquiries, present themselves as “credential police”; authoritative arbiters of what Islam is and is not, and what Muslims should and should not be. This is gives credence to the notion that only those who respond affirmatively to the questions asked of them are sufficiently “Western,” “American,” “European,” “moderate,” or otherwise acceptable. In some cases Muslims may feel the need to reject the question entirely. While they abhor and renounce violence, responding to the search for “moderate Muslims” plays into the idea that Muslims on the whole do not detest violence in a

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discernible way, and the only means of knowing whether or not they do is to ask them. As one Muslim author asked, “Why should I have to apologize for violence that I have no connection to?”41 Yet because of the way in which this discourse operates, the result is often that those who are not at the beck and call of inquirers are branded as potential extremists, or worse, as supporters of a given act of violence simply on account of their refusal to participate in an imbalanced exchange.

Further Reading Esposito, John L. “Moderate Muslims: A Mainstream of Modernists, Islamists, Conservatives, and Traditionalists.” In Debating Moderate Islam: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West, ed. M. A. Muqtedar Khan. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, and Tyler Golson. “Overhauling Islam: Representation, Construction, and Cooption of ‘Moderate Islam’ in Western Europe.” Journal of Church and State 49, no. 3 (2007): 487–515. Jackson, Richard. “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse.” Government and Opposition 42, no. 3 (2007): 394–426. Marranci, Gabriele. Understanding Muslim Identity: Rethinking Fundamentalism. London: Palgrave, 2009. Sonn, Tamara. “Preface.” In Islam: A Brief History, Second Edition. West Sussex: Wiley and Blackwell, 2010.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Can the process of categorizing Muslims (or any religious group) into “moderate” and “extreme” camps yield meaningful analyses? Why or why not? 2. How is it possible to talk about religious groups that espouse violence and those that do not without resorting to the basic human impulse of categorization and grouping? Is the language of “moderates” versus “extremists” inevitable, or are there more precise ways to discuss these labels? Explain. 3. Why, in your view, have these categories become so embedded in public discourse? What has allowed for their persistence? 4. Beyond the political examples mentioned above, can you think of instances where the category of “moderate” has been applied to other groups of people, religious or otherwise? What were the reasons for this, and what, if any, were the consequences? 5. Must “fundamentalists,” “radicals,” or “extremists” be “conservative” in their political or religious views, or can these descriptions apply to a wider spectrum of views? Why are “moderates” typically associated with “progressive” views, and similarly, might that label be applied more widely as well? Provide examples to support your position.

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Notes 1. Tariq Modood and Fauzia Ahmed, “British Muslim Perspectives on Multiculturalism,” Theory, Culture & Society 24, no. 2 (2003): 187–213. 2. Mohood and Ahmed, “British Muslim Perspectives on Multiculturalism,” 189. 3. William M. Leogrande, “From Reagan to Bush: The Transition in US Policy towards Central America,” Journal of Latin American Studies 22, no. 3 (1990): 595–621. 4. Amnesty International, “Torture in the Eighties: An Amnesty International Report,” 1984, 155. 5. Raymond Bonner, “Time for a US Apology to El Salvador,” The Nation, April 15, 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/time-for-a-us-apology-to-el-salvador/ (accessed June 22, 2017). 6. Washington Post, “The Iran-Contra Affair, 1986–1987,” http://www.washington post.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/iran.htm (accessed June 24, 2017). 7. Noam Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 180. 8. Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism. 9. Edward A. Lynch, The Cold War’s Last Battlefield: Reagan, the Soviets, and Central America (Albany: State University New York, 2011), 173. 10. Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism, 180. 11. Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism, 181. To see how the change of time affects this discourse, consider the descriptions above of General Suharto as a “moderate” in light of a 2004 article in the Chicago Tribune, with the headline “Moderate Islam Faces Challenges in Indonesia.” The piece describes Suharto and his government as “repressive” and a “military dictator,” while referencing religious interpretations of Islam in Indonesia as either “fundamentalist” or “moderate.” This underscores the simple point behind this discussion, which is that the label of “moderate” fluctuates depending on the political needs and positions of the people, organizations, or, most often, governments that are deploying the term. Today Indonesia stands out as a Muslim-majority country that is typically described as “moderate.” The following headlines offer a glimpse of that: “Pence Praises Moderate Islam in Indonesia” (CNN, April 2017); “Indonesia’s Moderate Islam Is Slowly Crumbling” (Foreign Policy, February 2017); “Rise of Hard-Line Islamist Groups Alarms Indonesia’s Moderate Muslims” (Washington Post, May 2017); and “Moderate Muslims Get Vocal in Indonesia” (BBC, 2011). 12. Steven Erlanger, “The Fall of Suharto: The Legacy; Suharto Fostered Rapid Economic Growth, and Staggering Graft,” New York Times, May 22, 1998; “Indonesia: Vengeance with a Smile,” Time, July 15, 1966. 13. The thinking at the time in American and European political circles was that the prolonged war in Iraq, which began in 2003 and lingered well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, had zapped not only the military strength and capacity of deployed units overseas but also the support of populations at home who had grown weary of extended combat, rising death tolls, and no sight of the war’s end in the distance. 14. In a June 2014 article in the New Yorker, humorist Andy Borowitz poked fun at the “moderate rebel” discourse regarding the Syrian civil war, penning a questionnaire that read as a “Moderate Syrian Rebel Application Form.” Among the inquiries it posed were: “I became a Syrian rebel because I believe in: A) Truth; B) Justice; C) the American way; D) Creating an Islamic Caliphate.” Another question read: “As a Syrian rebel, I think the word or phrase that describes me best is: A) Moderate; B) Very Moderate; C) Crazy Moderate; D) Other.” 15. Marlow Stern, “Bill Maher Criticizes Syrian Refugees: ‘Their Values Are at Odds with Our Values,’ ” Daily Beast, November 20, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/bill

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-maher-criticizes-syrian-refugees-their-values-are-at-odds-with-our-values (accessed June 24, 2017). 16. Stern, “Bill Maher Criticizes Syrian Refugees.” 17. M. Zuhdi Jasser, “Americanism versus Islamism,” in Zeyno Baran, ed., The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 175. Baran’s volume, overall, is indicative of the problematic dichotomy that we discussed in the introduction and chapter 1; that is, framing “moderate” and “secular” on one side of a perceived divide, suggesting that the “other Muslims” (as opposed to those who are presumably violent and hyper-religious) should be upheld as the preferred, or ideal, Muslim. 18. Jasser, “Americanism versus Islamism,” in Baran, ed., The Other Muslims, 183. 19. This narrative—that Muslims are a “visceral” people who are incapable of employing cognitive critical-thinking skills to assess the world—has long been deployed within anti-Muslim diatribes, dating back centuries, in fact. During the Barbary Wars, for instance, European writers used this description for Muslim men who engaged in piracy in the Mediterranean Sea, claiming that, among other things, they were brutelike creatures for whom intellectualism was not present, and which yielded to emotion-driven, reactionary, and “barbaric” responses. 20. Krista Melanie Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital: The Case of the ‘Good Muslim,’ ” Global Media Journal 2, no. 2 (2009): 57–71. 21. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital,” 58. 22. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital,” 62. 23. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital.” 24. Certainly this is not a general trend, and as demographic studies and other analyses have shown, the racial and ethnic landscape of Muslim communities is growing and changing. Still, data shows that today, Muslims constitute racial and ethnic minority groups in North America and Europe. 25. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital.” 26. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital,” 63. 27. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital,” 65. 28. Riley, “How to Accumulate National Capital.” 29. Sherene H. Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 150. 30. Hirsi Ali presents these categories in her most recent book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (New York: HarperCollins, 2015). Perhaps more than any other Muslim activist today, Hirsi Ali is upheld by politicians and pundits as an ideal “moderate Muslim.” This is despite many pejorative statements about Islam and Muslims that she has made over the years. Since the release of her latest book, her approach has changed from one of vitriolic attack to pleading reform, and much to the pleasure of American and European onlookers. Related to the discussion that accompanies this note, reviewers of her book noted, for example, that notwithstanding her “overblown rhetoric,” American “liberals” should take her message to heart and applaud her “bravery”; Andrew Anthony of The Guardian wrote, “Even her fiercest detractors would struggle to deny much of what Hirsi Ali states about the current predicament within Islam,” a comment that underscores the way in which championing liberalism, nationalism, and representing oneself as threatened by Muslim extremists that allegedly threaten “the West” overall results in normalized views of an ideal Islam and ideal Muslims. 31. Most scholars have pinpointed the emergence of the word fundamentalism to the early 1920s, and until the late 1970s it was almost never used to describe groups other than Protestant Christians. The fact that it has a negative connotation today is a direct result of the term’s early usage. Fundamentalism was associated with antiscience views,

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and especially with views that were perceived as rejecting “modernity.” Thus, “fundamentalists” were represented as backward, anti-intellectual, and obscurantists who preferred to live their lives based on the literal words of the Bible rather than contextualized understandings and interpretations that resonated with, and responded to, the changing world around them. For an excellent discussion on the emergence of this term and its historical evolution, see: George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 32. BBC, “Viewpoint: What Do Radical Islamists Actually Believe In?” May 24, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22640614 (accessed July 5, 2017). 33. Janet Tavakoli, “Fundamentalist Islam and the Roots of Terrorism,” Huffington Post, November 11, 2014; John Kifner, “Islamic Fundamentalism Gains in Egypt,” New York Times, July 12, 1987. 34. William Shepard, “Is There an Islamic Fundamentalism?” Christian Century, January 28, 1987, 85. 35. Shepard, “Is There an Islamic Fundamentalism?” 36. Shepard, “Is There an Islamic Fundamentalism?” 37. These questions take us back to the late 1970s when the term fundamentalism became more closely associated with the religion of Islam. The religion of Islam is often described as “political” in one way or another, and including the Iranian Revolution or contemporary acts of political violence, including terrorism, it is a challenge to argue that politics is absent from the religious picture, on the whole. Even so, the saliency of the term fundamentalism within the Islamic context—and the fact that it is so often deployed as a way of indicating a looming threat—places the onus of responsibility on the people who use the phrase to explain precisely why it is that the Islamic brand of fundamentalism is distinct in and of itself. A parallel example may be terrorism, though I am aware of the risk in associating two disparate concepts. Still, the question may be asked: Is there something especially violent about so-called Islamic terrorism that is not present, and thus not especially menacing, in other forms of terrorism? Is it, perhaps, the total number of people killed in terrorist attacks, the motives of the terrorists, or something else? If it is the ideology that is thought to be behind it—an Islamic religious ideology—then just as it is important for those who participate in the “fundamentalism” discourse to explain why the Islamic brand is more potent than others, so too is it imperative that such distinctions be teased out. My sense is that when these concepts are stripped of their moral and valueladen rhetoric (which supposes that Islam is threatening, and Christianity is not), the instability of the terms becomes clearer. 38. Shepard, “Is There an Islamic Fundamentalism?” 85. 39. Timothy Patrick McCarthy, The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition (New York: New Press, 2003). 40. In recent years, as progressive Christians have voiced support for members of the LGBTQ community, “radical love” has become a slogan under which Christians that come from numerous denominations unite in a shared belief that their religion calls them to be vocal and unyielding in support of marginalized communities. 41. Omar Alnatour, “Why Muslims Should Never Have to Apologize for Terrorism,” Huffington Post, no date, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omar-alnatour/why-muslims -should-never-have-to-apologize_b_9526296.html (accessed July 7, 2017).

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KEY TERMS: • fatwa • halal • haram

• shahada • Westoxification

CHAPTER 8

Understanding “the West” as an Ideological Enemy In “The Myth of Westerness in Medieval Literary Historiography,” Maria Rosa Menocal writes, “The entity we have dubbed ‘Western’ is clearly a comparative title.”1 According to her, those who describe themselves as “Western” see their identity as deriving from a distinctive culture and history, and they suppose that it is in “necessary and fundamental opposition to non-Western culture and cultural history.”2 Discourses on Islam where such bifurcations as “Islam and the West” suggest the existence of two separate, reified, and competing identities or two clashing forces reveal this. As we have discussed, over time, the phrase the West has generally come to mean Europe and the United States, though with a few caveats.3 Some in the United States who represented this imagined “West” to Muslimmajority countries in the wake of September 11, 2001, reflected on it with pride and affection, proclaiming freedom and democracy as its distinctive values and declaring them to be beneficial to all people. Senior officials in the government promoted these values as the antidote to terrorism. That has continued today, especially as terrorists continue to wreak havoc on American and European targets and as rising populism in these spaces has brought to the fore nationalistic and cultural narratives. President George W. Bush, speaking before Arab and Muslim-American leaders at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington in September 2002, provided a clear example of this—one that has been echoed by many world leaders since: Prosperity and freedom and dignity are not just American hopes, or Western hopes. They are universal, human hopes. And even in the violence and turmoil of the Middle East, America believes those hopes have the power to transform lives and nations.4

Bush, in expressing what he believed to be the deep-seated values of the United States, “the West,” and even the world, committed himself to the idea that 159

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these values are universal principles that have the ability to “transform lives and nations.” For American and European leaders, the values of prosperity, freedom, and dignity are indeed real, and they form the very essence of their identities. As the Declaration of Independence states, these values are even “self-evident.” In an earlier draft of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”5 It may be said that in addition to considering the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as especially American, they are also seen as being universal. This possibility raises the question: Are values of prosperity, freedom, and dignity American values because they are universal, or are they universal values because they are American values? While some Americans may represent “the West” as they believe it to be, others do not always view those representations as the reality of what “the West” actually is. As poet T. S. Eliot notes in The Hollow Men, “Between the idea and the reality, the motion and the act, falls the shadow.”6 In other words, the way that the United States is represented—the “idea” of the United States—conflicts with the way that the United States is sometimes perceived. Many in Muslimmajority countries, though aware of the “American narrative” that lauds democracy, freedom, and “inalienable rights,” understand the United States in a different way; they see it through the lens of their own experiences with it, its people, or, more explicitly, its military. In 2006, as the Iraq War churned into its third year, Pew Research Center asked citizens of Muslim-majority countries what they believed the goal of the United States was in terms of its presence in the Middle East. The results showed that 63 percent of Moroccans believed that the United States desires to control oil; 61 percent of Jordanians believed the United States wants to dominate the world; 51 percent of Pakistanis polled said that the United States wants to target unfriendly Muslim governments; and 54 percent of Turkish citizens believed the ultimate goal of the United States is to protect Israel’s interests.7 Five years later, things were not very different. A 2011 Pew survey of Muslims around the world asked them about their views of “Westerners.” Sixty-eight percent said they were “selfish”; 66 percent described them as “violent”; 64 percent said they were “greedy”; 61 percent indicated that they viewed “Westerners” as “immoral”; and nearly 57 percent said that they were “arrogant.”8 Polling data also indicated, by and large, Muslims reject groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and, more generally, say that suicide bombings and other forms of violence targeting innocent civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified.9 After September 11, 2001, some Muslims, outraged at the attacks on the United States in the name of Islam, began to express more publicly their beliefs that Islam was not a violent religion at all, but rather, one that promotes peace, pluralism, and understanding. Abdul Aziz bin-Abdullah Al Shaikh, a leading Islamic scholar in Saudi Arabia, said: You must know Islam’s firm position against all these terrible crimes. The world must know that Islam is a religion of peace and mercy and goodness; it is a religion of justice and guidance. . . . Islam has forbidden violence in all its forms. It forbids the hijacking [of] airplanes, ships and

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other means of transport, and it forbids all acts that undermine the security of the innocent.10

The group Muslims against Terrorism, a global antiterrorism NGO whose main goal is to promote Muslim perspectives on terrorism in American and European media, denounced the attacks in strong language, saying, “As Muslims, we condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Ours is a religion of peace. We are sick and tired of extremists dictating the public face of Islam.”11 More than five hundred British Muslim scholars and clerics signed a fatwa (legal opinion) following the violent 2005 London train bombings. It read in part: Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives. There is neither place nor justification in Islam for extremism, fanaticism or terrorism. Suicide bombings, which killed and injured innocent people in London, are haram— vehemently prohibited in Islam, and those who committed these barbaric acts in London [on July 7, 2005] are criminals not martyrs. Such acts, as perpetrated in London, are crimes against all of humanity and contrary to the teachings of Islam.12

In the past decade, more Muslim individuals and groups have forcefully rejected terrorism in the name of Islam, spurring websites, social media campaigns, and activist demonstrations, all responding to the latest episodes of violence by extremists—this, despite the fact that the act of questioning Muslims, writ large, to renounce violence that they had nothing to do with suggests an underlying prejudice based on generalizations. (Polling data has also consistently shown steady, and in some years, rising, anti-Muslim views among Americans and Europeans over the last fifteen years.) While so-called Western views of Islam and Muslims are more widely known, Muslim perceptions of “the West,” particularly the United States, are less well known to people living in Europe and North America. Just as American scholars, authors, and politicians have come to create a particular representation of Islam, Muslim scholars, intellectuals, political leaders, and media outlets have constructed an image of the United States that encapsulates feelings and emotions that are evoked by their experiences or understandings of Americans. Recently, American and European inquiries about the presence of Islam in these spaces have abounded. An atmosphere of suspicion has persisted that seems to invariably prompt the question: What does Islam mean to “us”? However, it is helpful to examine an inverse question: What does “the West” mean to Muslims? How have Muslims imagined and understood this geopolitical entity, and is the perceived divide between Islam and “the West” a result of how both groups, Muslims and those who consider themselves “Westerners,” view one another? Jacques Waardenburg writes in an article titled “Reflections on the West”: It is taken for granted that Muslim views and judgments of the West developed largely in terms of internal exchanges and debates in Muslim

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On the whole, the rich threads of Islamic history that animate Muslim discourses on “the West” are less discussed. In what follows, we will explore some of these various orientations as they have played out in the history of Muslim ideologues and leaders. Certainly, discourse on “Islam and the West” is not a one-way street, and thus it is important to think about the ways in which this dichotomy has been nurtured and propagated by those who see themselves on the “Islam” side of the divide, as well. Additionally, the significance of these discourses in Islamic history will be discussed in light of their more contemporary applications by various Muslims engaged in discourses on “Islam and the West” today, especially those who have actively advocated civilizational conflict between the two. Among these individuals are the late Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—men who have occupied a central place in the minds of American and European foreign policymakers, and who have, often for good reason, been depicted as monstrous boogeymen of “the West.” Bin Laden and alZawahiri follow in the path of other influential Muslim leaders, particularly Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, and while these views are hardly representative of “Muslims” (just as views of American or European leaders or individuals do not represent the broad-brushed “West”), they do point to the ways in which images of “the West” have been constructed and deployed to further political and ideological gain.

“Why Do They Hate Us?” Perhaps one of the most-asked questions when it comes to the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is: Why do they hate us? In the aftermath of 9/11, the question ricocheted through political and media circles, and it continues today, to some degree. Most often, it is “Westerners” who ask the question, directing it at Muslims who they see as a civilizational foe. Of course, the question can be reversed, too, with Muslims in various places around the world asking the same question of American or European governments and people. Interestingly, the answers that emerged from within Muslim communities to that question—“Why do they hate us?”—were often drowned out by the various speculations that some government officials and neoconservatives in the United States were advancing. Many Americans proudly proclaimed that the attacks of 9/11, and subsequent attacks, stemmed from a deep-seated hatred of freedom, liberty, democracy, and American values. President Bush, speaking before Congress on September 21, 2001, said: Americans are asking, “Why do they hate us?” They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their

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leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.14

This claim rejects the notion of self-blame; it is clear that “they hate us” because of “who we are,” and nothing else. This response became quite popular as Americans who felt threatened by the events of September 11th and who believed that “Islam” was responsible wanted a quick answer that confirmed their suspicions. It was rarely considered that the reason for the terrorist attacks and for general feelings of animosity toward the United States had anything to do with American foreign policy or the relationship between the US government and Muslim-majority countries. The emotionally charged atmosphere in the wake of September 11th did not permit suggestions that the United States was partially responsible for feelings of hatred. Thus, the question, “Why do they hate us?” continued to gain popularity. No one could know, however, that one year later, the question would be answered in detail by the very mastermind of the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon—Osama bin Laden—rendered as an almost mythical evil villain. However, by the time that bin Laden’s speech reached the airways of American television and radio, minds were already settled on the idea that this “hatred” resulted from a difference in inherent qualities—an inherent goodness of the United States and an inherent jealousy of that goodness among many Muslims. Thus, Osama bin Laden’s statement on October 6, 2002, fell on deaf ears, even though he explicitly responded to that pressing question, outlining in detail the reasons for his strong feelings of hostility toward the United States. Bin Laden remarked: Why are we fighting and opposing you? . . . Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. . . . you attacked us in Somalia; you supported Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. Under your supervision, consent, and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your collaborators, attack us on a daily basis. . . . you steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. . . . your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them.15

It is doubtful that these explanations would have mollified the anger and resentment that many Americans felt after each new terrorist attack in Al-Qaeda’s name. Yet bin Laden’s narrative does provide a clearer picture of the state of mind of this revolutionary figure. Detailed analyses of his rhetoric were not available to the general public. Rather, bin Laden’s speeches came in fragmented passages that were translated for American newscasts. However, the publication of Bruce Lawrence’s Messages to the World: Statements of Osama bin Laden changed that lack of information, offering translations of bin Laden’s speeches with contextual analysis.

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Even today, knowledge in the United States of figures like bin Laden, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, or even Muslim state leaders seldom goes beyond their representations in the media. Perhaps this absence of detail results from a lack of interest in acknowledging adversarial and controversial voices. Indeed, who and what is heard in the media could well be (and is) the subject of countless volumes about the relationship between power and discourse, privilege and money, and the might of national states that determine the normative ideological trajectory of global affairs. Still, it is helpful to understand that discourses on “Islam and the West” are certainly not one-sided. Examining how controversial Muslim figures that propagate division participate in this discourse will illustrate how constructions of a “Western” enemy are in many ways similar to American constructions of an “Islamic” one. In this way, the relationship between Islam and “the West” may be considered as an intellectual, ethical, and representational conflict for Muslims and Americans, not a real problem that is caused by some innate incompatibility of these reified and constructed entities. Even since his death, Osama bin Laden stands out as one of the more prominent extremists who believed in a civilizational clash between Islam and “the West,” and under his guidance, Al-Qaeda actively sought to bring about such apocalyptic conflict. He remains today a somewhat legendary figure—an enigmatic cipher on whom a range of identities are still projected. Despite his remote environment, he was aware of the latest proclamations and policies of the US government, frequently referencing the most current American political stories in his statements. Yet bin Laden was not the first person to explore this territory of Islamism. In fact, as Bruce Lawrence notes, “His views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought.”16 Thus, in an attempt to understand bin Laden’s participation in contemporary discourses on “Islam and the West,” it will be instructive to examine some of the historical influences that have shaped his controversial worldview. In contrast to the image of the United States as the paradigmatic model of how all societies should be—democratic, technologically advanced, and characterized by overall modernity—disparate representations of America were deployed by some Muslim scholars, intellectuals, and political leaders beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. Some of these images depicted it as an irreverent wasteland, obsessed with material possessions, sexual promiscuity, and “abysmally primitive in the world of senses, feelings, and behavior.”17 Among the voices making such claims, none has been more influential than that of Sayyid Qutb (1906– 1966). Qutb has been called the “father of modern Islamist fundamentalism,” and he is described by his biographer as “the most famous personality of the Muslim world in the second half of the 20th century.”18 In fact, he is increasingly cited as the single figure that most influenced Osama bin Laden, and was among the first to distill feelings of hostility toward a vague and imagined “West.” He focused his anger specifically toward the United States. Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a close college friend of bin Laden’s, recalls the influence of Qutb, saying, “We [Khalifa and bin Laden] were trying to understand what Islam has to say about how we

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eat, who we marry, how we talk. We read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation.”19 Sayyid Qutb was born in the town of Musha in Egypt in 1906. The eldest of five children, his siblings were steeped in the intellectual traditions of Islam and wrote on Islamic topics for various periodicals and newspapers. Attending local schools in Egypt, Qutb exhibited a thirst for knowledge of Islam, and by the age of ten, he was able to recite the entire Quran from memory. From an early age, Qutb was exposed to a mixture of religion and politics. His mother wanted him to attend the revered Al-Azhar University in Cairo, considered to this day to be the center of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in the world. Qutb’s father, Al-Hajj Qutb Ibrahim, was a member of Mustafa Kamil’s Nationalist Party and held frequent political meetings in his home; those meetings were often tinged with “anti-British Egyptian nationalism.”20 After moving to Cairo, Qutb attended Dar al-Ulum Teacher College and received his BA in education in 1933. Hassan al-Banna, an Arab-Islamic leader who Qutb would later join in the Egyptian Brotherhood, also attended Dar al-Ulum.21 Between 1940 and 1948, Qutb worked for the Ministry of Public Instruction in Cairo while honing his skills as a journalist. Qutb wrote short stories and novels during that period, but after 1945 his interests in writing shifted in the direction of politics, social problems, and Egyptian nationalism. The turning point of Qutb’s life came in 1948, when the Egyptian Ministry of Education sent him to the United States to observe American systems of education. In 1948, Qutb studied at Wilson Teacher’s College in Washington, D.C., later at Stanford University, and he eventually moved to Greeley, Colorado, where he attended the Colorado State College of Education, receiving his MA in education in 1950. Prior to his arrival in the United States, Qutb finished the manuscript for his first major theoretical work, Social Justice in Islam. Expanding on his newfound interests in social justice, politics, and Egyptian nationalism, Qutb’s strong convictions that Islam was superior to all other religions was clarified. Additionally, Qutb believed that Islam was the remedy to what he viewed as social illnesses—homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, materialism, and secularism. It is widely asserted that his trip to the United States confirmed his suspicions of a decadent “West” as he witnessed what he perceived as worship of the dollar and “a drought of sentimental sympathy.”22 David von Drehle, a writer for Smithsonian magazine, comments on this in his article “A Lesson in Hate: How an Egyptian Student Came to Study 1950s America and Left Determined to Wage Holy War”: Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut.23

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Qutb, upon hearing America’s music—jazz—said, “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming. It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.”24 Qutb’s perceived distaste for all things American, combined with a heightened sense of nationalism and concern for social injustices, led him toward a more radical agenda. However, it was not only the United States that Qutb despised. Rather, it was modernity, which he saw as being characterized by the values of secularism, rationality, democracy, individualism, mixing of the sexes, tolerance, and materialism. Qutb believed that these values had infiltrated and infected Islam as a result of European colonialism. While his time in the United States reinforced his belief that Islam and modernity were incompatible, the germ of his worldview developed prior to his arrival. On a passenger ship bound for New York from Alexandria, Qutb reflected on the end of World War II. The support that the US government showed to the Zionist cause angered him. At that time, Egypt, along with several other Arab-majority countries, was losing the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Arabs were stunned by the strength of the Israeli forces and dismayed by the disastrous decisions of their own leaders. That event led Qutb to say, “I hate those Westerners and despise them. All of them, without any exception: the English, the French, the Dutch, and finally the Americans, who have been trusted by many.”25 Qutb’s hatred of the United States was reinforced at every juncture. One evening while still aboard the ship, Qutb went to his room to pray. As he prayed, he felt a great moral dilemma. He was unsure whether he should cling tightly to his Islamic beliefs or abandon them for the materialism and spiritual depravity of secular America; he wanted to know if he should indulge in “Western” temptations or resist them.26 His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his cabin door. Standing outside his room was a young woman Qutb described as “half naked.”27 She asked him if she could be his guest for the night. When Qutb explained that he had one single bed, she indicated that it was capable of holding two people. Appalled by her candor, he slammed the door. He reflected on this event, saying, “I heard her fall on the wooden floor outside and realized she was drunk. I instantly thanked God for defeating my temptation and allowing me to stick to my morals.”28 These events, combined with his experiences in the United States, reinforced his belief that Islam was the solution to “Western” decadence. For Qutb, the separation of the sacred and secular, science and theology, and state and religion, all defied his belief in the oneness of God; he believed that Islam was the final and unyielding word of God. Qutb believed that the world was divided into the camps of Islam and jahiliyya, and a complete rejection of secular values was the only hope for returning to a pure state of Islam.29 Seeking an outlet through which to express this new worldview, Qutb returned to Egypt in 1951 and began attending meetings of the Society of Muslim Brothers. It was in the Society, later known as the Muslim Brotherhood, that Qutb found a haven for his beliefs. The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, a prominent Egyptian political activist and reformer who was disturbed by what he perceived as increased secularism and a breakdown of traditional moral values in Egypt; al-Banna considered Westernization as the cause of the decline.

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Reacting to that Westernization, the Brotherhood served as a vehicle for what its members saw as the solution: the return to a pure, unaltered Islam. As Albert Bergesen notes in The Sayyid Qutb Reader, for Qutb, human political and social structures “whose authority relations center on human submission to other humans” was a usurpation of God’s sovereignty on Earth. Bergesen writes, “To submit to anyone other than God is to violate the Oneness of God’s sovereignty. In Qutb’s words, it creates a ‘servitude of servants.’ ”30 Qutb believed that this usurpation of power from God to man stood in the way of realizing God’s plan for mankind and characterizes this by use of the term jahiliyyah, or ignorance of God. The term jahiliyyah has been primarily used to describe societies of preIslamic Arabia who, unlike monotheistic Muslims, worshipped a variety of gods and other idols. While the advent of Islam in seventh-century Arabia ushered in a new era of monotheism, Qutb’s interpretation of the oneness of God seems to have extended beyond the mere belief in one supreme being. Rather, Qutb emphasized that God’s oneness encompassed every dimension of life, including political sovereignty. Oneness according to Qutb is “the Muslim’s way of life and the kind of system established by this way of life.”31 The social and political ills that Qutb observed while in the United States led him to suggest that, based on this disengagement from Islam, an era of jahiliyya had returned. Qutb comments: It [jahiliyya] is now not in that simple and primitive form of the ancient jahiliyya, but takes the form of claiming that the right to create values, to legislate rules of collective behavior, and to choose any way of life rests with men, without regard to what God has prescribed. The result of this rebellion against the authority of God is the oppression of his creatures.32

Qutb’s reflections on jahiliyya and his observations of the United States during his time there seem to suggest a strong sense of despair. Coupled with this despair is an inspiration to correct the shortcomings of society—to put these ideas about jahiliyya and the oneness of God to work in a revolutionary way. Qutb wondered how he could overcome these jahili (ignorant) societies, obsessed with the acquisition of power, material goods, and in moral decline. He acknowledges, “To fight for Islam is to fight for the implementation of this way of life and its systems. . . . When we understand the nature of Islam, as it has already been explained, we realize the inevitability of jihad, or striving for God’s cause, taking military form in addition to its advocacy form.”33 Qutb’s message is clear: a return to a “pure” Islam means that “God’s authority would prevail in the heart and conscience . . . and in the affairs of life such as business, the distribution of wealth and the dispensation of justice.”34 Thus, as Albert Bergesen notes, “Qutbian religion, then, is a direct challenge to the established political order.”35 This belief was challenging for the ruling Egyptian monarchy. It became clear that al-Banna—who was advancing these views through the Muslim Brotherhood—was reaching a wide audience. Robin Hallet, author of Africa since 1875, writes, “By the late 1940s the Brotherhood was reckoned to have as many as 2 million members, while its strong Pan-Islamic ideas had gained it supporters

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in other Arab lands.”36 Consequently, the monarchy banned the group in December 1948, which led to their eventual disbandment. In the weeks following their split, Abdul Majid Ahmad Hassan, a member of the group, assassinated the Egyptian prime minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha. Al-Banna released a public statement condemning the assassination, saying that terrorism and violence were not acceptable within Islam. In 1949, while waiting for a cab with his brotherin-law, al-Banna was assassinated. At that time, Qutb became the editor of the Brotherhood’s newspaper and was soon the most prominent voice for their cause. He briefly joined forces with Abdul Nasser—Egypt’s second president who led a nationalist movement against the monarchy. Before he became president, Nasser was the deputy prime minister under President Mohammad Naguib. Nasser and Naguib were constantly at odds over how to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. In a struggle to gain political power, Nasser accused Naguib of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. On October 26, 1954, while giving a speech in Alexandria, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood fired eight shots at Nasser. Though panic erupted in the audience, Nasser remained calm and continued to speak, energizing the audience. This event was advantageous for Nasser, as his public support soared. He suggested that Naguib was behind the attack, galvanizing a base of support for his takeover of the government. This event marked the beginning of a government crackdown of the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters.37 Naguib was deposed and sentenced to house arrest in 1954, and many members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Sayyid Qutb, were arrested as well. Qutb was sentenced to prison for plotting against Nasser. Though released shortly after his initial arrest, Qutb was rearrested and spent over ten years in prison. During this time, he wrote some of his most influential works, including In the Shade of the Quran, in which Qutb offers personal commentary on the Quran. In addition, Qutb wrote a series of “prison letters” that comprise the latter half of his seminal work, Milestones. In this work, Qutb advocates a reconfiguration of Muslim-majority countries, suggesting that they abandon secularism and look to the teachings of Islam as the authority on all matters. Eventually, in 1964, Qutb was released from prison just as Milestones began to gain widespread attention and popularity. In this book, Qutb expresses the belief that he held all along: that all sovereignty on Earth belongs to God alone. The book threatened the legitimacy of Nasser’s government, and as a result, Qutb was rearrested in 1965 and eventually sentenced to death.38 In 1966, Qutb was hanged, and though his voice was silenced, many Muslims considered him a martyr. The nature of Qutb’s life and death sparked a surge of interest in his writings. In fact, in the introduction to Milestones it is noted that many students, influenced by the work of Qutb, copied the entire book by hand. Qutb’s criticisms of the United States found voices of support over time among other prominent Muslim leaders. Ayatollah Khomeini’s rejection of Western influence expressed in the Iranian Revolution is one prominent example. Additionally, founders of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, were influenced by the Brotherhood, initially calling their group “The Palestinian Wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Most recently, Osama bin Laden has expressed similar views of “Western” decadence and the abandonment of supreme divine sovereignty. Significantly, bin Laden was

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friends with Qutb’s brother, Muhammad Qutb, who was a professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden regularly attended his lectures, which promoted the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, and Qutb’s influence is seen in bin Laden’s writings and rhetoric. In October 2003, bin Laden released a statement to the people of Iraq. Referring to Muslim-majority countries that called for peaceful democratic solutions to violence through the cooperation with the US government, bin Laden said: These are people who sapped the energies of the umma from neighbors from the righteous men and followed human desires instead; these are the ones who followed democracy, the religion of ignorance [jahiliyya]. By entering the legislative councils these men have strayed far from the truth, as well as leading many others astray. How can these men enter the council of polytheism, the legislative council of representatives, which Islam has destroyed? Such an action destroys the head of faith, and what else do they have? . . . Islam is the religion of God, and the legislative councils of representatives are the religion of ignorance [jahiliyya].39

Bin Laden’s critique of human government is nearly identical to Qutb’s earlier critiques. Both bin Laden and Qutb suggest that the implementation of systems of government that assign humans to positions of power in some ways delegitimizes the power from God. In other words, because Islam itself is capable of providing solutions to worldly problems, there is not a need to overstep the boundaries of divine rule and employ human systems of political and social order. In an earlier, more direct statement in October 2002, bin Laden said: The first thing that we [bin Laden and his followers] are calling you [the United States] to is Islam . . . you are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Sharia of God in its Constitution and laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.40

Osama bin Laden views the world in terms of two polarized spheres: “us” and “them,” with his “us” being defined as those Muslims who subscribe to his particular ideology and his “them” being lumped under the broad rubric of the United States of America. It would seem that the grievances bin Laden has with the United States are actually grievances with policies of the US government and military, not with the three hundred million individuals that make up the entire population. Yet as bin Laden himself admits, individual American citizens “have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their government, and even to change it if they want.”41 He goes on to say that the American people make up the military that has long had a footprint in the Middle East, and for these reasons, “The American people cannot be innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.”42 In short, the American population according to bin Laden is guilty by association. Representing the United States in any other way would not fit the mold of

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“us and them” that drives much of bin Laden’s discourse. The singular nature of the word them demands a singular representation—the “them” that bin Laden refers to are all seen to be part of the same group and exists as a group, not as individuals. To suggest hostile feelings only toward one particular portion of that group (i.e., the American military or government) would require an exception to the simplistic “us and them” dichotomy. Nonetheless, this specificity is unlikely as it is easier to generalize the “other” based on their group identity. In this case, Americans—simply by being American—were grouped into the category of “them,” though few can deny that bin Laden’s grievances were likely directed at specific policies of the US government. Conflating the US government with the citizens is nothing new. Sayyid Qutb’s “The America I Have Seen: In the Scale of Human Values” exhibits this same tendency. Returning to Egypt in 1951, Qutb published this account of his time in the United States in the Egyptian magazine al-Risala (The Message). In it, he writes, “America will have added nothing, or next to nothing, to the account of morals that distinguishes man from object, and indeed mankind from animals.”43 It is ironic that Qutb himself, in loathing what he sees as the moral decadence of “America,” fails to distinguish “man from object” in his own writings. Qutb objectifies the United States in a way that separates it from the American people. Through this reification, Qutb is able to describe “America” as capable of acting. Qutb speaks of “America’s role in the world,” “America’s values,” “America’s productivity,” and “America’s emergence from isolation.” Yet despite Qutb’s reification of the United States, in reality, “America” can have no role in the world, no values, no productivity, and cannot “emerge” from anywhere. Rather, Americans—people—can do these things. In addition to his reified representation of “America,” Qutb addresses qualities of Americans as well. He discusses “the deformed American character,” “the American primitiveness,” “the American view on death,” “American girls,” “the American dream boy,” and “the Americans’ nerves.” What results is a representation of the entire American populous that is based merely on his observation of some particular cross section. Examining a few of these passages in detail will reveal the ways in which Qutb generalizes American citizens. Qutb writes: Despite his advanced knowledge and superlative work, the American appears to be so primitive in his outlook on life and its humanitarian aspects that it is puzzling to the observer.44 It seems the American is primitive in his appreciation of muscular strength and the strength of matter in general.45 Indeed, the American is by his very nature a warrior who loves combat. The American is very primitive in his sexual life, and in his material and familial relationships.46

While the recurring theme above is “the American,” it is certain that Qutb is not speaking of any one individual in particular. Yet his representation gives that

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impression. In addition to use of the singular the, Qutb also applies a male genderspecific description to his representation, using his as a pronoun referring to “the American.” These clues make it possible to suggest that Qutb had some typical model, some paradigmatic representation in mind, and deployed that representation in a way that encompasses all Americans. Thus, “the American” may refer to both the singular, paradigmatic model as well as the larger, collective identity. These representations that Qutb acknowledges depict “the America I have seen” only stem from three years in the United States and in areas that are different from one another: Washington, D.C., Greeley, Colorado, and Stanford, California. Nonetheless, Qutb takes his unique experiences with people in these areas as normative of the entire American population. The America Qutb has seen ignores the diversity of identities that comprise the American population. Additionally, this maneuver situates a nationality—American—in the forefront of his descriptions, thereby advancing the idea that primitiveness and fascination with war are simply the result of being an American. Moreover—and as Gabriele Marranci pointed out earlier with regard to use of the term Muslim—the term American is not used in the agency signifier of the term. That is, it does not refer to the American people who are capable of acting, but rather to the reified “America” that is an abstraction. The physical makeup of a person cannot be described as “American.” There is nothing about the essence of an American citizen that makes them “American” beyond the fact that they “feel” to be American as a result of their citizenship, shared values, and sentiments of allegiance to the United States. This is the case with all nationalities. People themselves are not “Americans,” “Canadians,” or “Mexicans.” Rather, they are human beings who happen to have one particular nationality or another and use that nationality to describe a particular portion of their identity. It is possible to imagine how this process of describing people as their nationalities may become unraveled by considering two cases: those with dual citizenships and a child born to American parents overseas. In the case of dual citizenship, an individual’s identity as a citizen of one particular country or another is fluid and transcends geographic boundaries. While in their country of birth, a particular person may describe themselves by their birth origin, yet while in the country in which they reside, they may describe themselves based on that particular nationality. In some cases, people with dual citizenships may refer to themselves in split identities. Some examples include: Irish American, Afghani American, Palestinian American, and others. Additionally, a child born to American diplomats while stationed overseas would be considered an American citizen and may grow up without ever entering the United States. It is clear that nationality is only one fluid part of an identity that is difficult to box in by descriptions. These representations are not unlike Bernard Lewis’s representation of “the classical Islamic view,” Raphael Patai’s “the Arab mind,” and Karen Hughes’s “the American values,” which reify a religion, an ethnicity, and a nationality respectively and situate them as the agency identifier by which an entire group is defined. Just as Huntington and Lewis generalize Muslims, both Sayyid Qutb and Osama bin Laden participate in generalizing Americans. Yet while Qutb’s representations refer to Americans in the third person detailing “the American” this or

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that and are based on his observations of individuals, Osama bin Laden’s October 2002 speech titled “To the Americans” took a slightly different approach. Still generalizing Americans in much the same way as Qutb, bin Laden employed a more direct tone, speaking to the citizens of the United States directly, describing them as “you.” In effect, the traditional dichotomy of “us and them” becomes “us and you” with “us” being Muslims and “you” being Americans. Some of bin Laden’s comments illustrate this point. He said: You attacked us and continue to attack us.47 You have supported Jews and their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and have agreed to move your embassy there.48 You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day.49

While Qutb’s representations of all Americans were based on observations that he viewed as paradigmatic, here bin Laden employs the same strategy in his language. The “you” of which bin Laden speaks is not any one individual in particular. Rather, it is a collective “you”—a reified collective American. But what experiences did bin Laden have with Americans that could lead to his belief that they are worthy of blame for continued attacks on Muslims, the long-term support of Israel, and the starvation of Muslims in Iraq? There must be a point of reference from which bin Laden is able to make such an assessment. It is obvious from his representations that his understanding of Americans is based on his observations of the American military and policies of the US government. It appears that bin Laden is unable to separate military action and government policy from the larger American population as he indicates that the American people, by electing the leaders that carry out these actions, are guilty themselves. Unlike Qutb, who spent close to three years in the United States during the late 1940s, bin Laden visited the United States for only two weeks in 1979. The details of bin Laden’s time in the United States remained fairly elusive until the publication of Growing Up bin Laden, a recollection of life within the bin Laden family written by bin Laden’s wife, Najwa, and son Omar. In the book, Najwa bin Laden provides an account of the bin Laden family’s visit to Indiana. She writes: One evening he [Osama] arrived home with a surprise announcement: “Najwa, we are going to travel to the United States. Our boys are going with us.” . . . I [Najwa] am sometimes questioned about my personal opinion of the country and its people. . . . I came to believe that Americans were gentle and nice, people easy to deal with. As far as the country goes, my husband and I did not hate America, yet we did not love it. There was one incident that reminded me that some Americans are unaware of other cultures. When the time came for us to leave America, Osama and I, along with out two boys waited for our departure at the airport in Indiana. I saw an American man gawking at me. I knew without asking that his unwelcome attention had been snagged by my black Saudi costume.50

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The Bin Ladens traveled to the United States in order for Osama to meet with his mentor, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. Najwa bin Laden’s account of her family’s brief time in America and their sentiment toward American citizens during that time do not align with the generalizations and hostile words that saturate her husband’s later discourse on the United States. While Qutb observed the East, Middle, and West coasts of the United States, bin Laden’s experiences were less diverse; he witnessed a small cross section of a much larger American population. Surely bin Laden was aware that the men and women he and his family interacted with during that time were not attacking him or his fellow Muslims in Afghanistan; surely bin Laden was aware that many Americans had no say in whether an American embassy was moved to Jerusalem. Bin Laden must be aware that the Americans he interacted with bore no direct responsibility for starving Muslims in Iraq or elsewhere; he must know that the Saudi government does not represent the views of all Saudis. Yet bin Laden still lumps Americans into a broad rubric of aggressors and justifies attacks on the American people, saying, “God, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to avenge this oppression. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to strike back.”51 In this brief review, bin Laden situates his discourse on the United States in terms of a religious confrontation that results from his perceptions of American citizens supporting Israel through their tax dollars and elected officials. Even so, discourse of this type seems not to concern itself with particular political parties, democracy, or even power. Rather, bin Laden appears to focus on a deeper issue that is at the root of all of this: Islam versus jahiliyya. That is, bin Laden—much like Qutb—appears to believe that military attacks on Muslim-majority countries, financial and military support of Israel, the establishment of American embassies in Jerusalem, and the “starvation” of Muslims in Iraq are all merely disguises for an ideological and religiously driven conflict. Sayyid Qutb articulates this point: The enemies of the Believers may wish to change this struggle into an economic or political or racial struggle, so that the Believers become confused concerning the true nature of the struggle and the flame of belief in their hearts becomes extinguished.52

As Albert Bergesen comments in The Sayyid Qutb Reader, political power and rule seem less about which particular economic class will predominate than whether God’s law will rule, and “political struggle seems less and less about tensions between positions defined with the economic divisions of labor (class struggle) and more and more about tensions between believers and unbelievers.”53 By noticing the way that bin Laden situates his rhetoric of “you” versus “us,” this point becomes clearer. Bin Laden seems to present three main actors: “you,” the Americans; “us,” the Muslims; and “them,” the Jews. Of these three actors, the only one not described in terms of religion are the Americans. Further, bin Laden’s elaborations on each grouping explains some action that Americans have committed either against Muslims directly (starvation and attacks) or indirectly through

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the support of Israel. At any rate, the end result is a conflict that pits Americans against Muslims. It may be said that from a European perspective, the Crusades, though perceived as a religious war, were actually fought on the grounds of political and economic gain.54 That is, while the wars were religiously sanctioned, the reality was the political and economic aspirations of Europe and a quest to reclaim the Holy Land; the idea that this conflict was marked by two opposing world religions, vying for global dominance, was the illusion. As Bergesen notes, however, Qutb did not see things that way.55 Qutb says, “We see an example of this [illusion] today in the attempts of Christendom to try to deceive us by distorting history and saying that the Crusades were a form of imperialism.”56 To some Europeans, seeing the Crusades as not essentially religious, but rather as economic and political, is to move beyond the fac¸ade and reveal potential underlying truths. But to Qutb, the opposite is true: political and economic factors are themselves the fac¸ade, while the real conflict exists between religions—between belief and unbelief, Islam and jahiliyya. Qutb observes, “The truth of the matter is that the latter-day imperialism is but a mask for the crusading spirit, since it is not possible for it to appear in its true form as it was possible in the Middle Ages.”57 To some leaders in Western Europe and the United States who wish to avoid a dialogue that focuses on religious differences, there appears a tendency to frame discussions on religious violence as “political.” Appearing to prevent the appearance of a Manichaean struggle where sons of light fight sons of darkness in an eternal battle, bipartisan leaders in Washington jumped at nearly every opportunity to declare that the United States was not at war with Islam. Shortly after September 11, 2001, members of the Bush administration made it clear that Islam itself was not the enemy—political Islam, however, was. Speaking before Congress in September 2001, President Bush said, “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends . . . our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.”58 Later, Bush made it clear that various manifestations of terrorism were politically—not religiously—inspired. He said, “This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”59 In 2006, the National Security Council released a statement titled “Today’s Terrorist Enemy,” which reported, “Our terrorist enemies exploit Islam to serve a violent political vision.”60 In fact, the US government has even described terrorism as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”61 Even Pat Robertson, chairman of the Christian Broadcast Network and former Republican presidential candidate, said in a broadcast of The 700 Club on November 9: Islam is a violent—I was going to say religion—but it’s not a religion. It’s a political system. It’s a violent political system bent on the overthrow of governments of the world and world domination. You’re dealing with not [sic] a religion. You’re dealing with a political system. And

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I think you should treat it as such and treat its adherents as such—as we would member of the Communist party and members of some Fascist group.62

Thus, the motive behind terrorist attacks is represented as a desire to realize some political vision. Also, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, as well as the response to the events of September 11, 2001, by way of military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was considered to be political in nature. The United States was not deploying a religiously charged message. Rather, the military campaign was political in that it sought to protect the interests of the United States by eradicating terrorism.

Cosmic Battles and Perceptions of Heroic “Struggle” While the main target of the American government was bin Laden, another voice in the War on Terror proclaiming the need to engage in jihad against Americans emerged from the radical network of Muslim youth influenced by Sayyid Qutb. Ayman Zawahiri, a student of Qutb and the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement, is recognized by some as “the real brains of the [Al-Qaeda] outfit.”63 Together, bin Laden and Zawahiri, the figurehead and the main theoretician of al-Qaeda, respectively, have transcended their roles as leaders of this militant group to be revered by their followers as mythic agents of God’s plan on earth. Yet as journalist Scott Bauldaf notes in a 2001 article in The Christian Science Monitor, those who perceive bin Laden as the chief ringleader behind al-Qaeda’s battle with the United States may be mistaken. Interviewing Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who was invited to speak with bin Laden in his secret hideout in the late 1990s, Bauldaf reports that Mir said: Osama is a person who says, “If I have to fight, I’ll fight in the mountains like I fought against the Soviets.” He’ll pack an AK-47, a kilogram of grenades, a kilogram of explosives, and a donkey to carry them all to a cave. Zawahiri has a different kind of experience. He is not interested in fighting in the mountains. He is thinking more internationally, involved in militancy inside Egypt. He was behind the terrorist attacks on tourists [the 1997 attack in Luxor left 58 dead]. He is the person who can do the things that happened on Sept. 11.64

In short, though Zawahiri was commonly referred to as bin Laden’s deputy or lieutenant, he was a guiding figure whose leadership and organizational skills create the backbone of the organization. Both the CIA and the FBI linked Zawahiri to the assault on American soldiers in Somalia in 1993, the bombings of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000, as well as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.65 While bin Laden has emerged as a modern-day Khomeini-like figure in American

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representations of Islam, Zawahiri’s image is less well known. Aside from an occasional speech announcing a violent attack on the United States or a televised proclamation reacting to some political event in the United States, his image is rarely seen. Even so, the American government is aware of the effectiveness of his skills as an organizer. Those organizational skills, when combined with bin Laden’s ability to inspire followers around a common religious message, created a mobilized force powerful enough to destroy the towering symbols of America’s economy in midtown Manhattan. Essam Deraz, an Egyptian filmmaker credited with several documentaries about the Soviet-Afghan war, recalls bin Laden’s relationship with Zawahiri: Bin Laden had followers, but they weren’t organized. The people with Zawahiri had extraordinary capabilities—doctors, engineers, soldiers. They had experience in secret work. They knew how to organize themselves and create cells. And they became the leaders.66

In many ways, bin Laden and Zawahiri needed one another. Their plans for a cosmic battle between a divinely sanctioned Islam and a corrupt and godless United States required a mix of vision and organization. Shortly after the dust and smoke had settled in New York and Washington, a videotape emerged showing bin Laden and Zawahiri sitting together on a hill near a river, ruminating over the attacks that took place some seven thousand miles away. They hoped that the marriage of bin Laden’s rhetorical propaganda and Zawahiri’s methodology would ignite a revolution. Ayman Zawahiri was born to a highly regarded family in the suburbs of Cairo on June 19, 1950, the same year that Sayyid Qutb returned home to Egypt after spending over two years in the United States. Zawahiri’s father, Rabie, was a professor of pharmacology, and his brother was regarded as an expert on venereal diseases and dermatology. A 1995 obituary published on one of their relatives lists thirty-one doctors, chemists, and pharmacists in the extended family; among the other relatives listed were an ambassador, a judge, and a member of parliament.67 Though the Zawahiri family’s reputation centered largely on medicine, they were even better known for their religious convictions; Ayman’s great uncle, Mohammed al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri, was the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the leading institution of Islamic learning in Cairo. Lawrence Wright notes, “The leader of that institution enjoys a kind of papal status in the Muslim world, and Imam Mohammed is still remembered as one of the university’s great modernizers.”68 Though the Zawahiri family was relatively prominent, young Ayman grew up in a modest environment. He attended public secondary school, and despite the cosmopolitan environment of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Zawahiri stood out. His family never seemed to integrate fully into the sophisticated lifestyle of the Egyptian elite. In 1966, at the young age of sixteen, Zawahiri’s life drastically changed course. That year, Sayyid Qutb was sentenced to death. On August 29th of that year, Qutb was hanged. Zawahiri described Qutb in his memoir titled

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Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, saying, “Qutb was the most prominent theoretician of the fundamentalist movements. [He] said, ‘Brother push ahead, for your path is soaked in blood. Do not turn your head right or left but look only up to Heaven.’”69 The day after Qutb’s hanging, Zawahiri joined a clandestine cell of the Muslim Brotherhood, determined to carry out Qutb’s vision of freeing Egypt from political leaders influenced by Europe and the United States and restoring a purely Islamic government in its place. Eventually, Zawahiri became the leader of the group, which would grow to forty members by 1974. During that time, Zawahiri attended medical school, specializing in surgery. The Brotherhood was a secret part of his life, concealed by his non-Egyptian attire and intense devotion to his studies.70 Dr. Essam El-Erian, a colleague of Zawahiri’s and the current leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, says, “Ayman never joined political activities during this period. He was a witness from the outside.”71 In 1980, Zawahiri was asked to travel to Pakistan and serve as a doctor in support of Afghan troops fighting the Soviet army by the director of a medical clinic in the region. If the events of 1966 marked the first major turning point of Zawahiri’s life, his travels to Peshawar and into Afghanistan during the early 1980s certainly marked the second. Zawahiri writes: My connection with Afghanistan began in the summer of 1980 by a twist of fate. One night the clinic director, A Muslim Brother asked me if I would like to travel to Pakistan to contribute, through my work as a surgeon to the medical relief effort among the Afghan refugees. I immediately agreed because I saw this as an opportunity to get to know one of the arenas of jihad that might be a tributary and a base for jihad in Egypt and the Arab region, the heart of the Islamic world, where the basic battle of Islam was being fought [sic].72

When Zawahiri arrived in Peshawar, he found a region teeming with young Muslim men who were eager to join the cause of jihad. Lawrence Wright notes, “Young men from other Muslim countries were beginning to hear the call of jihad, and they came to Peshawar, often with nothing more than a phone number in their pockets, and sometimes without even that.”73 Shortly after he returned home, Zawahiri reflected on his experiences and was so inspired by the potential he saw in the region that he returned for another visit. He writes, “I understood the importance of benefiting from this arena. Hence, after I stayed for four months there on my first visit, I returned in March 1981 and spent another two months there.”74 Returning to Egypt inspired by the potential for spreading his particular ideology within Pakistan, Zawahiri was further provoked by the news that Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel. Motivated by this news, Zawahiri became involved with members of the Brotherhood, recruiting Egyptian military officers to attempt an assassination of Sadat. With the plan for a coup d’e´tat derailed, Sadat ordered the military to round up some 1,500 people he suspected to be involved in the attempt. However, not everyone involved was arrested, and on October 6, 1981, Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli assassinated Sadat. Zawahiri, along with countless members of the Brotherhood, however, were

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among those arrested and indicted. During his trial, Zawahiri shouted, “We are here—the real Islamic front and the real Islamic opposition against Zionism, Communism, and imperialism!”75 His outcry prompted his fellow Brotherhood members to respond, “We will not sacrifice the blood of Muslims for the Americans and the Jews!”76 During imprisonment, Zawahiri was tortured and beaten endlessly. He described this treatment to the court: We suffered the severest inhuman treatment. They kicked us, they beat us, they whipped up with electric cables, they shocked us with electricity! They shocked us with electricity! And they used the wild dogs! And they hung us over the edges of doors with our hands tied at the back. They arrested the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters, and the sons!77

Montasser al-Zayat, an attorney who was imprisoned with Zawahiri, said, “Ayman was beaten all the time—every day. They sensed he had a lot of significant information.”78 It was clear that Zawahiri suffered both physical and mental abuse during his imprisonment. Beaten by prison guards, he was pressured to give the whereabouts of Isam al-Qamari, Zawahiri’s close friend and the man thought to be the mastermind behind Sadat’s assassination. Reluctant to disclose the information at first, Zawahiri yielded to the pressure as the physical torment became too much too bear. He provided officials with the information only to learn a few short days later that Qamari was found and executed. These experiences heightened Zawahiri’s anti-European and anti-American sentiment; he viewed Sadat’s government as an invasion of European and American influence and power and thereby ultimately responsible for his mistreatment. During his trial, Zawahiri called out the names of fellow members of the Brotherhood who were killed as a result of torture. Denouncing Sadat in the very terms the president used to express his admiration of “Western” values, Zawahiri shouted, “So where is the democracy? Where is the freedom? Where is [sic] the human rights? Where is the justice? Where is the justice? We will never forget! We will never forget!”79 In the Cairo prison, Zawahiri came into contact with a network of young men who, like him, came from privileged backgrounds. The group of young men often included sons of bankers, lawyers, bureaucrats, government officials, and doctors. They were highly educated and motivated individuals who were inclined to the areas of science and mathematics.80 Eddin Ibrahim, a sociologist at the American University in Cairo, notes that the men were “model young Egyptians.”81 Zawahiri was surrounded by men much like himself. In addition to their similar backgrounds, they also shared the common experiences of torture and the belief that the repulsive “Western world,” dominated by materialism and hedonism, could be healed by implementing a purely Islamic system. Zawahiri, thirty-four, emerged from prison in 1984 as a “hardened radical.”82 Leaving Egypt, he traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1985 in search of a twenty-eightyear-old multimillionaire who had developed a reputation as the chief financial backer for mujahideen resistance groups. Eddin Ibrahim comments on the common thread that linked Zawahri and bin Laden:

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They were both politically disenfranchised, despite their backgrounds. There was something that resonated between these two youngsters on the neutral ground of faraway Afghanistan. There they tried to build the heavenly kingdom that they could not build in their home countries.83

Yet in order for Zawahiri to establish a permanent relationship with bin Laden, he needed to sway bin Laden’s allegiance away from Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden’s teacher. Initially, Zawahiri strategically placed confidants in key positions around bin Laden. Eventually this influence proved to be effective as bin Laden provided the largest share of his financial support to Zawahiri. This created a rift between bin Laden and Azzam, who unlike Zawahiri, opposed acts of war against Muslim leaders. Still, Zawahiri moved even closer to bin Laden, eventually becoming his medical provider. With the relationship between Zawahiri and bin Laden evolving, Azzam became increasingly frustrated, often engaging in disputes with the two men over the scope of jihad. On November 24, 1989, Azzam was killed by the blast from a car bomb, sealing the bond between bin Laden and Zawahiri.84 Over the course of the next decade bin Laden and Zawahiri worked in concert, organizing various acts of terrorism as the Islamic Jihad organization was incorporated into bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. While Zawahiri revered bin Laden’s abilities to finance attacks, he largely viewed the marriage of the two organizations as a necessity. While bin Laden had vision and plenty of money to realize his plans, he did not have the organizational skills of Zawahiri. Additionally, many remaining members of the Islamic Jihad were wary of bin Laden and did not have any interests in organizing attacks outside of Egypt. Nonetheless, the lure of bin Laden’s financial backing proved too strong to resist. Zawahiri said, “Joining with bin-Laden [was] the only solution to keeping the Jihad organization alive.”85 With this new merger intact, Zawahiri had to concede his efforts to wage jihad against local, Egyptian authorities. Bin Laden believed that the attacks on local governments were too expensive and ineffective. As a result, the time had come to “turn their guns” on the United States.86 In February 1991, Najjar, Zawahiri’s assistant, described bin Laden’s rhetoric: I heard bin Laden say that our main objective is now limited to one state only, the United States, and involves waging a guerilla war against all U.S. interests, not only in the Arab region but also throughout the world.87

The objective of that message was seen clearly in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the 2000 attacks on the USS Cole, and the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001. These attacks were wrapped in a discourse that divided the world into two unequal spheres: divinely inspired Islam and a United States that is ignorant to that divine plan. Without specific reference to the United States, Sayyid Qutb foretells this division. Qutb writes in Milestones:

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CH APT ER 8 Islam knows only two kinds of societies, the Islamic and the jahili. The Islamic society is that which follows Islam in belief and ways of worship, in law and organization, in morals and manners. The jahili society is that which does not follow Islam and in which neither the Islamic belief and concepts, nor Islamic values or standards, Islamic laws and regulations, or Islamic morals and manners are cared for.88

In effect, the United States became the single “jahili society” Qutb described. On February 3, 2010, the US director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said, “The chances of an attempted attack are certain. They’re going to try. We assess that at least until Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are dead or captured, al-Qaeda will retain its resolute intent to strike the Homeland.”89 Zawahiri’s admiration of Sayyid Qutb and his experiences with a Westernized Egyptian government that tortured him formed a specific image of the United States in his mind; his experiences shaped the way he envisioned the United States. The representations that Zawahiri deploys of the United States may be viewed as reactionary. They are responses to the United States as he imagines it to be. Unlike bin Laden, whose face has become a permanent symbol of terrorism and whose words are regularly transmitted through American media, less is known of the writings and representations of Zawahiri. Yet as Anne Aly writes in “Lessons from the Past: The Historical Roots of Militant Islamic Ideology and Its Influence on Contemporary Jihadist Movements,” Zawahiri is the driving force behind AlQaeda’s discourse. Aly writes: Zawahiri’s major contribution to the current jihadi movement, and in particular to the ideology espoused by al-Qaeda, is discourse—a discourse which has gained legitimacy among the Muslim umma, galvanized mass support, and which has regenerative capacity.90

The core message of this discourse is that Islam is under attack. Muslims have become victims of an international conspiracy to undermine Islam as a global religion. At one time it was necessary to conquer the near enemy—local governments delivering an essentially American message. However, the new parameters of battle are defined by the need to conquer the far enemy: the United States itself. As Aly writes, “It is therefore no longer enough to stop the messenger: attentions must also focus on diffusing the message.”91 Exploring Zawahiri’s discourse in some detail will reveal the way in which his representations of the United States and the various acts of violence that he organizes against it are deployed as a response to the particular mental image of the United States that he has constructed. Additionally, examining Zawahiri’s language will reveal how his representations of the United States are also responses to the way that he perceives himself and the image that he constructs of the Muslim community. In his 2001 memoir, Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, Zawahiri outlines what he calls an “epic battle” between believers and “disbelievers.”92 His title evokes Crusade-like imagery, and he himself confirms that image, saying, “I hope to spend whatever is left of my life in serving the cause of Islam in its ferocious war against the tyrants of the new Crusade.”93 His account is a self-described

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warning to the “forces of evil,” alerting them that “the nation [of Islam] is drawing closer every day to its victory over you and is about to inflict its rightful punishment on you step by step.”94 It is a call to arms and a plea to Muslim youth, galvanizing their support and outlining the parameters for a cosmic war. Within his writings, Zawahiri offers young radicals five principles to guide their fight against America. He suggests that the battle is global, that the only solution is jihad, that patience and perseverance are required, that the community of Muslim fighters must be mobilized like an army, and that every person has a role to play in implementing heaven’s kingdom on earth.95 Zawahiri describes the global nature of this new conflict and the purpose of his memoir: This book was written in an attempt to revive the Muslim nation’s awareness of its role and duty, its importance, and the duties that it needs to perform. The book also explains the extent of the new Crusaders’ enmity to the Muslim nation and this nation’s need to see the dividing line between its enemies and loyal subjects. . . . The battle today cannot be fought on a regional level without taking into account the global hostility towards us.96

It may be gathered from Zawahiri’s description above that a paradigm shift has taken place. That is, there appears to be a fundamental change in the way that the narrative of a battle between believers and “disbelievers” is understood and deployed. Initially, Al-Qaeda, which in Arabic means “the base,” operated as just that—a base, or small project of opposition that launched attacks on regional targets. While its vision was grand, its focus was limited. Yet Zawahiri’s language suggests a more expansive effort—one that unites “the Muslim nation” through the marriage of grand vision and grand focus. Zawahiri situates his narrative around a shared Islamic identity whereby Muslims would come to see themselves as one seamless community, uniting under the banner of jihad, and defending themselves from a foreign enemy: the United States. Aly comments on this maneuver: In this narrative, the imagined nation of Islam is under attack from the West—constructed as the US and Israel—which seeks to destroy it by infiltrating the Muslim world both politically and ideologically. It is a powerful narrative for unifying the masses.97

One of the ways in which Zawahiri reinforces unity is by referring to Muslims as “the Muslim nation.” This description is unlike the term umma, which denotes a community of Muslims all across the globe linked by common belief. An individual who self-identifies as a Muslim becomes a part of the umma as a result of their personal convictions of faith; their membership in this community is the result of expressing the shahada, or profession of faith. The umma is apolitical and may be understood as simply a religious diaspora. Zawahiri’s construction of “the Muslim nation,” however, is different. Rather than a community of believers, Zawahiri seems to envision a community of believers with a specific role and duty.

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He represents all Muslims as oppressed victims whose purpose as a faith community is to restore justice to a broken society. By this discourse, Muslim faith identity is only secondary to their victim identity—Muslims are united by their victimhood, not necessarily their faith. This narrative of victim identity seemed to resonate within communities of Muslims, particularly youth, as their perceptions of hostility against Islam confirmed their preconceptions that they were victims. Discrimination, vilification, staunch US support of Israel, and a history of military conflict between the United States and Muslim-majority countries caused this narrative to become deeply embedded into the identities of those Muslims who eventually took up Zawahiri’s cause. By reconfiguring the Muslim umma as a monolithic nation of victims, Zawahiri struck an emotional chord in his followers. As they came to believe that they were victims, their destiny became clear: fight the victimizer. For Zawahiri, the advantage of this new approach was that al-Qaeda became less concentrated and more dispersed. It could no longer be viewed as a central group with branches extending out into various territories. In fact, al-Qaeda was no longer a group at all. Rather, it was an idea—an ideology that was capable of inspiring people to violence. The group’s constituents, often young Muslim men with hostilities toward the United States, did not necessarily have a relationship with one another. They came from different parts of the world and were united in “the Muslim nation” by their common belief that jihad, represented in a violent way, could restore the world to a pure state of Islam. Jason Burke, author of Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, comments on the transformation of al-Qaeda from a small network of radicals to a global ideology: People are looking for something that is not there. There is no organization with its terrorist operative cells, sleeper cells, so on and so forth. What there is, is an idea, prevalent among young angry Muslim males throughout the Islamic world. That idea is what poses a threat.98

Without a centralized, coherent organization or established rules for membership, anyone could become a “member” of al-Qaeda, simply by adopting the ideology of Zawahiri and bin Laden. This allows Zawahiri to expand the reach of al-Qaeda as the structure of the group became more fluid. However, President Bush did not seem to understand the new nature of the group and continued to speak about al-Qaeda as if they were a centralized organization with tentacles spreading out into various sleeper cells around the word. In an address to Congress on September 21, 2001, Bush said, “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated . . . freedom and fear are at war.”99 This statement indicates that Bush may have been focused on eradicating specific groups rather than an ideology, which is more difficult to identify. To those subscribing to the new global parameters of this conflict, the message from Zawahiri was clear: violent jihad is the only option. Zawahiri writes, “And in this, the greatest battle, the men of thought and command must be united for the national interest under the flag of jihad for Allah.”100

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The representations that Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Ayman Zawahiri, and Osama bin Laden deploy comprise an important but overlooked counterdiscourse to the Orientalist representations of Raphael Patai, Samuel Huntington, and Bernard Lewis. Al-Banna, Qutb, Zawahiri, and bin Laden engage in the reification, generalization, and selective representation of “the West.” Similar to their Orientalist counterparts, they present the image of a monolithic “West” and exaggerate particular elements of “Western” society, representing them as normative of the entire population. This process has been called Occidentalism. Hassan Hanafi, professor of philosophy at Cairo University, comments, “The object of study in Orientalism becomes the studying subject in Occidentalism, and the studying subject in Orientalism becomes an object of study in Occidentalism.”101 Hanafi is known for his writings on Occidentalism. His work, Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism, begins by suggesting that Arabs and Muslims must make a critical study of Orientalism rather than using it as a means for deriving self-knowledge. However, Hanafi goes on to suggest that it is the purpose of Occidentalism to “reinforce its [the Occident’s] own positive self-image,” and that this is achieved by reversing the negative Orientalist stereotypes and generalizations and apply them to “the West.”102 Therefore, just as “the West” defines “the East” as hostile, backward, autocratic, and barbaric, Occidentalist discourses represent “the West” as materialistic, aggressive, sexually promiscuous, and spiritually disconnected. Through these representations, “the West” becomes the “soulless other” to “the East.” The dominated seek to reassert their identity through the subjection of the dominant.103 To Hanafi, the germ of Occidentalism is the resistance of Westernization. He comments that the marks of Westernization are seen everywhere: culture, lifestyles, art, music, architecture, and language. Hanafi’s view is similar to that of al-Afghani, who loathed what he viewed as “Westoxification.” Both Hanafi and al-Afghani perceive Westernization as an identity crisis to Arab and Muslim societies. Hanafi says that taghrib, or Westernization, “threaten[s] our civilizational autonomy.”104 The hybridity of architectural styles of Arab cities, Hanafi notes, are paradigmatic examples of taghrib. He calls these cities “identity-less,” saying, “They are neither traditional . . . nor are they modern . . . and nor are they practical, resulting from environmental requirements.”105 Hanafi comments on how this lack of identity intensifies the struggle for cultural autonomy: [As] the national costume became [almost] absent . . . reaction [to its absence] began with the Islamic dress, the beard and the jilbab (a long garment donned by males) as forms of reclaiming [Arab-Islamic] identity the more Westernization took hold in lifestyles, the more attachment to national or Islamic dress increased as a reaction [against it] as has happened in the Islamic revolution in Iran and in the contemporary Islamic groups in Egypt; so did attachment to the Prophet’s [natural] medicine as a reaction to modern medicine, and to Quranic sciences in response to modern sciences.106

Despite the rejection of Westernization and the reversal of negative stereotypes, Hanafi maintains that it is not the purpose of Occidentalism to assert dominance, hegemony, or control in the way that Orientalism has been deployed. Even

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in the face of Islamists like bin Laden, Zawahiri, or the actors involved in the Iranian Revolution, Hanafi notes that Occidentalism is defensive—it is a reaction to a long history of Westernization and European and American dominance. He says, “The counter-attack is the best form of defense.”107 The significant difference between Occidentalism and Orientalism is that Occidentalists’ representations of “the West” derive from the long European presence in Arab-majority and Muslim-majority countries: colonialism. Unlike Orientalism, which constructs the Orient from images and representations in art, literature, and now other media, Occidentalism is grounded in nationalism and identity preservation that results from centuries of European rule and influence. That influence is still perceived today. The ascendancy of European and American products in Arab and Muslim-majority countries may be perceived as an extension of a historical and political presence. While European political systems were represented as being the preferred (and perhaps even the only legitimate) framework for government by colonizers, European products were regarded by the colonized as symbols of cultural hegemony. It is against this representation that Occidentalists deploy their characterization of “the West.” Fahmi Huwaidi, a well-known Egyptian intellectual and journalist, comments on this theme: Is the aim for Coca-Cola to become the human race’s preferred drink, topping the list [of items] imposed on humans, from hamburgers to jeans and Madonna and Michael Jackson’s songs? In other words, is this the meaning of globalization, [that is] to impose the West’s taste and lifestyle on [the rest of] the world?108

The aversion to “Western” influences is evident in Huwaydi’s writing. As a counter discourse, Occidentalism aims to break down dominant political, economic, social, and cultural structures in order to change the dynamics of power relations to favor the indigenous group. However, some Islamists have adopted Hanafi’s view of Occidentalism, which seeks to redeploy negative stereotypes and generalizations at Europeans and Americans. Diana Lary, author of “Edward Said: Orientalism and Occidentalism,” comments on the dangers of this projection: Occidentalism at its worst is damaging, even virulent, and would probably dismay Said as much as any other closed, prejudiced view of the world would. It shows itself in the militant, angry rhetoric against the West, the most prominent contemporary proponent of whom is Osama bin Laden. It contains a hatred of the secular, materialist West, especially America, and a passion for the soulful, rooted, native culture, usually based on religion.109

Though some Occidentalists like Hanafi suggest that the purpose of Occidentalism is to resist “the West,” others like bin Laden and Zawahiri aim to not only resist it but also to assert power over it. By representing the Occident, or “the West,” as materialistic, spiritually depraved, and sexually promiscuous, bin Laden and his cohorts seek to foster support for their positions and advance their particular interpretations of Islam. They seek to establish what they view as the purity of

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God’s rule across not only Muslim-majority countries but also the entire world. For them, this is the only option.

Further Reading Bakhshandeh, Ehsan. Occidentalism in Iran: Representations of the West in the Iranian Media. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015. Bayoumi, Moustafa. This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. New York: New York University Press, 2015. McAlister, Melanie. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Mohamed, Eid. Arab Orientalism: Images of America in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015. Venn, Couze. Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity. London: Sage Publications, 2000.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Discuss the question of “Why do they hate us?” What assumptions are packaged into it from each side of the perceived Islam-West divide? 2. While Occidentalism is often discussed in relationship with its opposite, Orientalism, are the two merely mirror images of one another? Why or why not? 3. Did Bin Laden articulate a view of “the West” and the United States that is rooted in the “clash of civilizations” worldview, or did his emphasis on American-led military campaigns point to a different animus? Explain. How about Qutb? Was his antipathy provoked by politics or culture? 4. While terrorism has come to occupy the primary focus of American and European government’s efforts dealing with foreign and domestic security, can it be “defeated” in the traditional sense? Why or why not? 5. Does the Islamic concept of ummah contribute to the reified notion of a singular Islam whose adherents, or in this case, “community,” think and act in lockstep? How does the discussion of Islam versus the West make room or erase the lives of different groups of Muslims, specifically African American Muslims? How do they complicate this bifurcation?

Notes 1. Maria Rosa Menocal, “The Myth of Westerness in Medieval Literary Historiography,” in The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, ed. by Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 249.

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2. Menocal, “The Myth of Westerness in Medieval Literary Historiography.” 3. Not all of Europe is included in this categorization, but rather countries that form “Western Europe.” Additionally, Canada is generally thought of as a “Western” country, though its relatively small political, economic, and military influence in the world (when compared to the United States, especially) tend to dampen that label a bit. 4. White House, “President George W. Bush Holds Roundtable with Arab and Muslim-American Leaders” (press release, September 10, 2002), http://www.georgew bush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/ramadan/islam.html. 5. Princeton University, “Jefferson’s Original Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence,” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson [n.d.], http://www.princeton.edu/ ⬃tjpapers/declaration/declaration.html. 6. T. S. Eliot, as quoted in Martin Scofield, T. S. Eliot: The Poems (New York: Cambridge Press, 1988), 145. 7. The Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Europe’s Muslims More Moderate; The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” Report, June 22, 2006, http:// pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/253.pdf. 8. Michael Lipka, “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and Around the World,” Pew Research Center, August 9, 2017. 9. Lipka, “Muslims and Islam.” 10. Abdul Aziz bin-Abdullah al-Sheikh, “Public Statements by Senior Saudi Officials Condemning Extremism and Promoting Moderation,” February 2, 2004, in “Statements against Terror,” Charles Kurzman, http://www.unc.edu/⬃kurzman/terror.htm. 11. http://www.muslimsagainstterror.com. 12. Muslim scholars, as quoted in Kurzman, “Statements against Terror.” 13. Jacques Waardenburg, “Reflections on the West,” in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 261. 14. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” 15. Osama bin Laden, as quoted in Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005), 162. 16. Lawrence, Messages. 17. Kamal Abdel Malek, ed., America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature (New York: St. Martins, 2005), 9. 18. Robert Irwin, “Is This the Man Who Inspired Bin Laden?” The Guardian, November 1, 2001. 19. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 71. 20. Albert J. Bergese, ed., The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008), 3. 21. Bergese, ed., The Sayyid Qutb Reader. 22. Bergese, ed., The Sayyid Qutb Reader, 3. 23. David Von Drehle, “A Lesson in Hate: How an Egyptian Student Came to Study in 1950s America and Left Determined to Wage Holy War,” Smithsonian, February 2006, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/presence-feb06.html. 24. Kamal Abdel-Malek, ed., America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature (New York: St. Martins, 2005), 12. 25. Sayyid Qutb, as quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower, 11. 26. Sayyid Qutb, as quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower. 27. Sayyid Qutb, as quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower.

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28. Sayyid Qutb, as quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower, 12. 29. Sayyid Qutb, as quoted in Wright, The Looming Tower, 35. 30. Albert J. Bergese, ed., The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008), 4. 31. Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (1964; reprint, Damascus: Kazi Publishers, 1993), 23. 32. Qutb, Milestones, 9. 33. Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, ed. and trans. Adil Salahi (Leicestershire: The Islamic Foundation, 2003), 24. 34. Qutb, Milestones, 24. 35. Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader, 24. 36. Robin Hallett, Africa since 1875 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 41. 37. This issue is considered highly contentious in the Nasser historiography. Some suggest the assassination was staged while others suggest it was real. Still, others suggest that the Supreme Guide sponsored it, while some say it was just lower-level brothers acting on their own. 38. Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader, i. 39. Lawrence, Messages, 208. 40. Lawrence, Messages, 166. 41. Lawrence, Messages, 165. 42. Lawrence, Messages. 43. Malek, America in an Arab Mirror, 10. 44. Malek, America in an Arab Mirror. 45. Malek, America in an Arab Mirror. 46. Malek, America in an Arab Mirror. 47. Lawrence, Messages, 162. 48. Lawrence, Messages, 164. 49. Lawrence, Messages. 50. Najwa bin Laden, Osama bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing up Bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us inside Their Secret World (New York: St. Martins Press, 2009), 26. 51. Lawrence, Messages, 165. 52. Qutb, Milestones, 29. 53. Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader, 29. 54. Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader. 55. Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader, 30. 56. Qutb, Milestones, 160. 57. Qutb, Milestones. 58. Bush, “Address to Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” 59. George W. Bush, “President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy” (speech, Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, D.C., October, 6, 2005), transcript available from the George W. Bush Administration White House website, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/ 2005/10/20051006-3.html. 60. National Security Council, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, Report, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, September 2006, 5, http://www.cbsnews .com/htdocs/pdf/ NSCT0906.pdf. 61. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, “Terrorism,” http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary. 62. Jillian Rayfield, “Pat Robertson: Islam Is Not a Religion but ‘A Violent Political System,’ ” TPMLiveWire.com, November 10, 2009, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ pat-robertson-islam-is-not-a-religion-but-a-violent-political-system.

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63. Scott Baldauf, “The ‘Cave Man’ and Al Qaeda,” The Christian Science Monitor, October 31, 2001, http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1031/p6s1-wosc.html. 64. Baldauf, “The ‘Cave Man’ and Al Qaeda.” 65. Ibid. 66. Essam Deraz, as quoted in Lawrence Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden,” The New Yorker, September 16, 2002. 67. Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 68. Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 69. Laura Mansfield, His Own Words: Translations and Analysis of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al- Zawahiri (New York: TLG Publications, 2006), 137. 70. Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden,” 5. 71. Essam El-Erian, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 72. Mansfield, His Own Words, 28. 73. Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 74. Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 75. Ayman Zawahiri, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden,” 14. 76. Zawahiri, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 77. Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 78. Ayman Zawahiri, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden,” 12. 79. Zawahiri, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 80. Eddin Ibrahim, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden,” 15. 81. Eddin Ibrahim, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 82. Eddin Ibrahim, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden.” 83. Eddin Ibrahim, as quoted in Wright, “The Man behind Bin Laden, 16. 84. Wright, The Looming Tower, 130. 85. Wright, The Looming Tower, 85. 86. Wright, The Looming Tower, 261. 87. Wright, The Looming Tower. 88. Qutb, Milestones, 93. 89. Associated Press, “Al-Qaeda to Attempt US Attack Soon,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 3, 2010. 90. Anne Mahmoud Aly, “Lessons from the Past: The Historical Roots of Militant Islamic Ideology and Its Influences on Contemporary Jihadist Movements,” in Doomed to Repeat?: Terrorism and the Lessons of History, edited by Sean Brawley (Washington, DC, New Academia Publishing, 2009), 124. 91. Aly, “Lessons from the Past,” 116. 92. Mansfield, His Own Words, 21. 93. Mansfield, His Own Words, 19. 94. Mansfield, His Own Words, 20. 95. Aly, “Lessons from the Past,” 124. 96. Mansfield, His Own Words, 120. 97. Aly, “Lessons from the Past,” 125. 98. Jason Burke, as quoted in Adam Curtis, “The Power of Nightmares, Episode Three,” Documentary, http://youtube.com/watch?v2sSpXakQ8fM. 99. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” 100. Mansfield, His Own Words, 243. 101. Hassan Hanafi, “From Orientalism to Occidentalism,” Der Begriff Fortschritt in Unterschiedlichen Kulturen, The Goethe Institute, http://www.fortschritt-weltweit.de/ dokumente/aegypten/fortschritt_aegypten_hanafi.pdf.

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102. Carl Ernst, “The West and Islam: Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism,” Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook 1 (2010): 8. 103. Larbi Sadiki, The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter Discourses (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 102. 104. Hassan Hanafi, Muqaddimah fi ‘ilm’l-istighrab [Introduction to Occidentalism] (Cairo: al-Dar al-Fanniyyah, n.d.), 22. 105. Hanafi, Muqaddimah fi ‘ilm’l-istighrab, 23. 106. Hanafi, Muqaddimah fi ‘ilm’l-istighrab. 107. Hanafi, Muqaddimah fi ‘ilm’l-istighrab, 30. 108. Fahmi Huwaydi, “Didd Kawkaltu’l-‘alam” [Against “Coca Cola-isation” of the World], Al- Ahram, October 10, 1995, 11. 109. Diana Lary, “Edward Said: Orientalism and Occidentalism,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 17, no. 2 (2006): 9.

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Conclusion In many ways, this book ends precisely where it began: with a plea to reject the artificial constructions of Self and Other that have, for too long, dominated the way we think about the religion of Islam and the geopolitical entity we call “the West.” It is my hope that the themes we have discussed have shed some light on just how artificial and constructed the discursive elements that animate perceptions of division between these two things are. As is usually the case with such colossal challenges, it is always easier to show what is wrong than it is to offer prescriptions that may actually prove themselves to be successful remedies. To say, “We ought to think about the world differently,” does not appear to be much of a remedy at all at the outset, and even betrays a sense of naivete´ about what it may take to actually create a paradigm shift in terms of this nagging issue of an inherent and unavoidable conflict between Muslims and others. Even so, I am convinced that it is not only a necessary first step but also the single most important one, for if I have argued anything at all, it is that the underlying discourses associated with Islam and “the West” have ushered into being a world in which these two categories exist in a relationship of contention and opposition. Freeing ourselves from that, then, must involve reshaping and restructuring that discourse, and reimagining a world in which such dualisms are seen as precisely what they are: a perception of reality willed into being by those who have a stake in perpetuating conflict. One avenue that has seemed to enjoy some success (at least in academia) in recent years is a relational approach that emphasizes co-constitutive interactions between Muslims and “Westerners” and proposes that we redirect our focus to “Islam in the West” rather than “Islam and the West.” The guiding idea is that by situating one’s understanding of the rich and integrated history of Muslims in traditionally “Western” spaces, the fault lines of division that have kept these two camps apart will disappear, or perhaps shrink.1 I am inclined to see some value in this approach, though in my estimation its shortcomings outweigh its benefits. To begin with, highlighting Islam in “the West” does nothing to erode these faulty categories—a static and monolithic “Islam” that exists as a unified whole and now stands not on the other side of a gap that separates it from the storied and towering “West” but rather exists within it, an “outsider within” rather than an “outsider without.” It remains, by this view, the responsibility of Muslims to integrate, assimilate, and otherwise show that, indeed, they have proven themselves to be integral parts of a powerful cultural and geopolitical grouping that, for good or bad, wields its influence across the globe. At the same time, it is thought to be “the West’s” responsibility to recognize 191

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and appreciate Muslims’ presence—a premise that sounds perfectly noble but which is nonetheless imbued with the idea that an “outsider” has established its presence among “us” and “we” must make an effort to understand “them.” Despite the good intentions of this approach, it is difficult to maintain that it fully alleviates the insider-outsider dynamic, and it may best be described as neoOrientalist for its seeming inability to recognize and dismantle the discursive colonization that perpetuates systems of bias and inequity. Additionally, the plethora of polls and studies that show that Muslims’ views are “compatible” with “the West,” and that, around the world, “they” value things like democracy, free speech, gender equality, and the like are fraught with a fundamental problem that is often masked by the widespread praise that they receive for pointing to data that disproves narratives of a civilizational “clash.” Here again, the discursive pillars of “Islam” and “the West” (or “Western”) remain intact, and the acclaim and adulation of these studies rests squarely on a sense of satisfaction and relief that “those” Muslims are more like “us” than perhaps “we” initially believed—“they” accept ideas that, if not “ours,” are presumed to have originated in “the West” only to become the universal standard.2 So as not to slip into my own trap and unpack the problems without offering a word or two about what I see as a corrective approach, I suggest that, in the vein of Mahmoud Eid and Karim H. Karim, one way of freeing ourselves from the dualism of “Islam and the West” is to foster self-knowledge through a process that necessarily involves reflection on how the Self imagines the Other.3 As they write, “The imagined Other is not an expression of reality but a reflection of one’s own projection—an extension of the Self. Therefore, in gazing at its construction of the Other, the Self sees itself.”4 This process involves a bit of mental rearranging—of shuffling presumptions, categories, and images such that the thoughts we have about the world are understood not as our looking outward and perceiving reality as it is, but rather our looking outward and understanding that, just perhaps, the state of affairs that surround us is not as natural as we think it is. This is not to suggest that we ought to question everything, for that would render the entirety of our existence as one big thought project. But it is to suggest that questions are where we can often discover that the world does not have to be exactly as it appears to us. What is it about you, the reader of this text, that gives you the identity that you claim? If you identify as a “Westerner,” why is that, and what about you, specifically, is “Western”? If you identify as a Muslim, is it the religion of Islam that claims the foremost expressed part of your personhood? Why is it that we, as humans, feel the need to categorize ourselves based on identity groupings that we then present to others: “I am American” or “I am European,” or “I am a Muslim,” as if these labels themselves say something about us, as people—people who, when stripped of such brandings, are actually quite similar? Without waxing too philosophical, what I am suggesting is the need for establishing critical distance between our human selves and the version of ourselves that we present to the world, the latter of which begs for distinction, difference, and categorization. At its most basic level, this involves thinking carefully about language, and as I have argued in this book, language is not such an innocent form

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of communication. To understand that, then, allows us to critique more willingly the packaged ideas and assumptions that we have about the world, and the vocabulary and imagery to which we may reflexively conjure when certain topics come up. The late Algerian scholar Mohammed Arkoun, who is known for his work on issues of contemporary reform within the Islamic tradition, articulated this in his volume Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought. He wrote that “any proposition is an act of power whether followed by a result or not; for a proposition implies selection from the range of significations in any tradition, thus an orienting of meaning in a particular direction from all the possible horizons of expectation of any given speaker.”5 To put it differently, every statement that we make is a selective process that entails reaching for this word instead of that word, this phrase instead of that phrase, this tone instead of that tone, or producing one certain mental image over another. While Arkoun is speaking primarily about “Islamic thought”— theological and philosophical traditions engaged by Muslim thinkers—his words resonate on a broader level. As Seval Yildirim notes, “Because every proposition is an act of power, how we choose to articulate ourselves, our questions, and our linguistic choices in determining the way we ask these questions are all acts of power, and as parts of a more general discourse, they determine what is thought and thinkable.”6 Islam and “the West” are not useless categories, though in the spirit of Arkoun, we might situate them in our minds in such a way that they are not so fixed. What does it mean to reimagine Islam, not necessarily in theological terms, but rather, discursively? When we hear the word Islam, what images and ideas immediately populate our minds? Perhaps veiled Muslim women, minarets towering up from mosques in the Middle East, or Arabic script? Do we imagine our neighbors, American or European converts, maybe our local doctors, family friends, relatives, or fasting that occurs during the month of Ramadan? Are Muslims like “us” or are “they” different, and why is that? What does it mean to reimagine “the West”? Where does it start and where does it stop? Who populates it, and why? Who decides if “we” are “Western”? Is it a label that one applies to themselves, or is it one that is projected onto them? Why, for instance, in the face of such undeniable religious diversity, is the phrase Judeo-Christian still deployed as a synonym of “the West,” and what impact does this have on how we think about it? It is possible to imagine hundreds of other such questions that could be asked of both Islam and “the West” as categories that we use to compartmentalize and represent the world and its people. Some of these questions may be uncomfortable, especially to those for whom these categories have significance, though I would argue that when such discomforts arise, one has usually reached a point where their assumptions have been unpacked and disrupted—a healthy exercise if we are ever to imagine the world differently. In fact, if students and others could gain one thing from this book, I would hope that it is a sense of confidence and clarity about the need to ask such questions, and to do so of our own categories, groupings, and descriptions, as well as those of the “Other.”

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This process must also involve a comparison of the real with the real, not the real with the ideal. In other words, far too often “we” compare “our” ideal (e.g., democratic governments, individual liberties, rule of law, etc.) with what we perceive as the “real” of others (e.g., authoritarianism, wanton violence, moral decay, etc.). A more balanced and just comparison would employ the use of the aforementioned “critical distance,” and acknowledge positive and negative traits of each group without privileging one from the outset. Of course, projects of comparison are inevitably fraught with such tensions to begin with as their modus operandi is usually one of making a particular point about “the other” that affirms the view of oneself. Ultimately, it is time to move beyond the rhetorical universe embedded in “Islam and the West” and embrace a framework for understanding our relationships with our global neighbors that is based on commonalities, not differences. The Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan has referred to this as the quest for a “new ‘we,’ ” and writes that these categories do little more than “play upon deep-seated apprehensions, perpetuate confusion over the terms of debate, and promote a binary approach to socio-political issues.”7 It is my hope that this book has provided a modest offering of ways that we can avoid such needless contention and imagine into being a world that is ultimately more peaceful for all people.

Notes 1. One does not need to look very far within academia to find such examples. A quick survey of journal articles, university institutions and programs, and books reveal this schema of “Islam in the West,” a theme that has become a somewhat cliche´d response to “Islam and the West.” 2. Here, I am referring to any number of polls conducted by Pew, Gallup, or other organizations that measure the views of both American and European Muslims, and Muslims who live in other spaces around the globe. For their many benefits, the discursive framework that nonetheless shapes these polls is one of an Islam-West divide, and the data that is often revealed, even when indicating that such a perceived division may not be so apparent (e.g., Muslims in Indonesia prefer democratic systems of government to authoritarian ones), an implicit “othering” remains such that “the West” must always ask these questions of Muslims to determine whether or not they indeed meet “our” expectations. 3. Mahmoud Eid and Karim H. Karim, eds., Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 219. 4. Eid and Karim, Re-Imagining the Other. 5. Mohammed Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi Books, 2002), 20. 6. Seval Yildirim, “Discussing Islam in the Post-9/11 Epistemological Terrain,” Pace International Law Review 19, no. 4 (2007): 224. 7. Tariq Ramadan, “Manifesto for a New ‘We,’ ” Tariq Ramadan Official Website, https://tariqramadan.com/arabic/2006/07/07/manifesto-for-a-new-we/.

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Glossary adhan:

In the Islamic religious tradition, the call to prayer, usually recited by a muezzin, five times daily.

agency:

The capacity of individuals to act and make their own choices, free from the interference or influence of others.

Allahu Akbar:

An Arabic phrase in the Islamic religious tradition, meaning literally “God is greater.” Recited by Muslims and Arabic-speaking Christians as a reminder that God is greater than any given situation or circumstance.

appropriation:

The act of taking cultural expressions of one group by another.

bifurcation:

The division of something into two parts. In this case, imagining that the world is divided into Occident and Orient, or Islam and “the West.”

clash of civilizations:

A hypothesis advanced by Bernard Lewis and made popular by Samuel Huntington that suggests that the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world will be a result of differences in people’s religious and cultural identities.

conveyor belt theory:

A hypothesis deployed by critics of Islamism that suggests that Muslims exist along a linear ideological spectrum, and the further they drift in the direction of religiosity the more likely they are to become extremists.

Countering Violent Extremism (CVE):

A US government program established under the Obama administration that aimed to counter violent ideologies and combat the causes of extremism. Muslim Americans and others criticized the program for its focus on Islam.

dhimmi:

An Arabic word that means “protected person.” Used historically, it refers to non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic state who were protected upon paying taxes. Today, critics of Islam use it pejoratively to mock those non-Muslims who they see as “appeasing” Muslim-majority states or individuals.

discourse:

A group of statements, and the attending vocabulary and mental images, that form a particular way of thinking about, talking about, and representing a topic.

dualism:

The division of something into two parts that generally exist in binary opposition to one another; for example, “good and bad,” “light and dark,” “Occident and Orient.” 195

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essentialism:

The view that things have intrinsic attributes and characteristics that make them what they are; for example, “Islam is violent,” which suggests that violence is an innate part of Islamic theology and an inborn characteristic of Muslims.

etymology:

The origin of a word, its meanings, and how it has evolved through history.

exceptionalism:

The perception that a group of people, a country, or a species possesses special characteristics or traits that make it unique and superior to others. “American exceptionalism,” for instance, is an ideology pillared on the belief that the United States is ordained with moral righteousness and is thus an exception in the world.

extremist:

Someone who holds a fanatical position, whether political, religious, or otherwise, and who is uncompromising in their advocacy of it.

fatwa:

In the Islamic tradition, a nonbinding legal opinion issued by a jurist or religious authority, usually a mufti.

feminism:

Ideas and organized actions based on a belief in gender equality and improved political, economic, and social opportunities for women.

framing:

The way in which a subject or concept and its associated meanings are represented by one group to another such that the group perceiving the particular subject or concept does so in a particularly intended way.

fundamentalism:

The unwavering attachment to a set of beliefs. In the religious sense, this often implies textual literalism. The term’s origins date back to the late nineteenth century when American Protestants reacted to “modernist” theology, biblical criticisms, and changes in the political and social scene.

generalization:

To make a judgment about an entire group based on an action or characteristic of one individual or a few individuals.

halal:

That which is permissible according to traditional Islamic jurisprudence. Most often, this is applied to food and drinks.

Hamas:

An armed Palestinian resistance group that serves as one of the territories’ two major political parties. Literally “zeal” or “enthusiasm” in Arabic, it is primarily focused on the issue of Israeli occupation.

haram:

The opposite of halal, or that which is not permissible according to traditional Islamic jurisprudence. Most often, this is applied to food and drinks.

hijab:

A veil, or headscarf, that is worn by some Muslim women outside of the home, or in the immediate presence of unrelated males or immediate family members. While it is most often donned as a voluntary form of modesty, critics perceive it as an enforced garment that signifies patriarchy and oppression.

hudud:

Literally, “limits” (Had, sing.). The term refers to punishments or prohibitions delineated in the Qur’an and hadith for six crimes

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that are considered violations of God’s rights: theft; illicit sexual activities; false accusations of illicit sex; drinking intoxicants; apostasy; and robbery. Punishments for these crimes are strict— lashings, hand amputation, and death—but are rarely applied. ideology:

A closely held set of values, beliefs, and opinions that affects how one views the world.

imperialism:

A series of policies by which a country expands its territory and influence in the world.

In Sha Allah:

An Arabic phrase that means, literally, “If God wills.” It is commonly used to refer to the uncertainty of future events; that is, that one may plan something but that God ultimately determines if it will happen.

Islam:

The Abrahamic, monotheistic religion of Muslims, which teaches that there is one God and Muhammad is His prophet. Islam is the world’s second-largest, and fastest-growing, religion.

Islamism:

An Islamic revival movement that is based on the idea that Islamic religious values and laws should inform, or even have a central role in, public life.

jahiliyya:

An Arabic term often translated as “ignorance” or “age of ignorance.” It refers to the period of time in the Arabian Peninsula that predates the rise of Islam in the 630s.

jihad:

An Arabic term that means “to struggle” or “to strive.” The concept is highly debated, though its meaning depends on context. Muslims have described it as an inner struggle (“greater jihad”) against impious inclinations and for personal betterment. It is also understood as a physical struggle (“lesser jihad”) and is invoked by a variety of actors to justify various aggressions, including violence when used in defense of the ummah.

kafir:

An Arabic term meaning “disbeliever” or “unbeliever”; that is, someone who rejects God and the teachings of Muhammad. Though it has been applied to Jews and Christians, they are generally treated as “People of the Book”—descendants of Abraham. Some Muslims have also applied the term to other Muslims who do not fit their strict interpretations of the Qur’an.

liberalism:

A broad spectrum of beliefs that situate individual liberty as a paramount value.

madrassa:

An Arabic term for a type of educational institution that is often a part of a mosque, and which emphasizes Islamic religious education as a central part of its curricula.

Masha Allah:

An Arabic phrase that means “What God has willed.” It is used as an expression of joy for a particular person, object, or event and is a reminder that Muslims consider all good things as coming from God.

moderate:

Not violent or severe, but within reasonable limits. What is “reasonable” depends on one’s view, and thus the term can be applied in ways that limit diversity or stigmatize difference.

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monolith:

The representation of an impersonal, immaterial idea as a largerthan-life, concrete, and uniform object; for example, “Islam threatens Western Europe.”

mujahideen:

In Arabic, the plural of mujahid, or one who engages in jihad, or struggle. Most often the term mujahideen refers to the militant Afghan fighters that were armed and dispatched on behalf of the United States during the Soviet-Afghan War.

multiculturalism:

A view that emphasizes the importance of minority races, religions, and cultures within a society where one dominant culture is present.

“Muslim world”:

An imagined space that usually refers the Middle East or South Asia, where the majority of the world’s Muslim population presumably lives. It is often juxtaposed as the opposite of “the West.”

nationalism:

A worldview in which one nation—its government, culture, and interests—are exalted as superior to others.

New Atheism:

A brand of atheism that is staunch in its defense of secular humanism and whose adherents actively counter and criticize religious peoples. It has been described as “militant” in its approach, and among its popular proponents are Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens.

normative:

The idea that there is a common standard to which people or ideas must measure up and that, morally speaking, should govern or guide them.

Occidentalism:

The counterpart of Orientalism. A way of viewing the Occident, or “West,” that is based on dehumanizing stereotypes, reifications, generalizations, and otherwise crude representations.

Orientalism:

A worldview that refers to patronizing, decontextualized, and exaggerated images of and ideas about the Orient, or Arab and Muslim culture, and which often depicts it as backward, uncivilized, and violent. Edward Said popularized it, and argued that the European colonization of North Africa and the Middle East spurred self-serving narratives of cultural “others.”

“Other/Otherize”:

Another human being that is represented as the opposite of oneself and is usually depicted in a negative manner.

paradigm:

An archetype or typical example; a set of concepts or practices that constitute an accepted way of thinking about a particular subject.

paradigm shift:

A fundamental change in the way that a particular subject is thought about.

patriarchy:

A social structure in which males hold disproportionate power and influence and that is characterized by the absence of female influence.

Patriot Act:

A law signed by President George W. Bush following the attacks of 9/11 that expanded the ability of the federal government to investigate potential acts of terrorism, and which included drastic

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surveillance measures that advocates of privacy and civil liberties found unsettling. Pax Britannica:

“British peace,” or the period of relative calm from 1815 to 1914 during which the British Empire’s hegemonic influence in the world rose.

political Islam:

A phrase that is used to describe a variety of phenomena related to Islamism, and which points to the political aspirations of some Muslims and the religious ideologies they use to support those aspirations. The phrase’s loose definition, and its often multifarious applications, have garnered criticism from those who advocate for a more nuanced description of the relationship between Islam and politics.

radical:

Extreme, or departing from a reasonable or moderate position. The term can have both positive and negative connotations, though within the context of Islam “radical Muslims,” for instance, are portrayed as violent fundamentalists who stand in stark contrast to “moderate Muslims.”

reductionism:

Simplifying a complex and nuanced subject or idea and issuing judgments about the whole, based on a fixation with and obscuration of one or more of its parts; for example, to suggest that Islam is Sharia, or that Christianity is the Crusades.

reification:

Treating something that is immaterial as a material thing; for example, suggesting that Islam (an organized set of religious ideas that form a tradition) poses a threat to “the West.”

scriptural literalism:

A strict adherence to the words of a sacred religious text and employing an understanding and interpretation of them that is void of context and nuance.

secularism:

The separation of government institutions and religious beliefs.

self-colonizing Muslims:

A group of Muslims who advocate for policies and positions that stigmatize their coreligionists and subject them to unwarranted scrutiny and skepticism by “Western” governments.

Shahada:

The Muslim profession of faith, stating, “There is no God but God and Muhammad is His messenger.”

Sharia:

Often mistranslated as “Islamic law.” Literally, “the path” or “the way,” which refers to God’s will for humanity as expressed in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example, and which has come to constitute Islamic legal discourse.

stereotype:

An oversimplified idea or image of someone or something that is based on generalizations, caricatures, or exaggerations, and which represents a whole group based on the behaviors of a few of its members.

Subhan Allah:

An Arabic phrase that is roughly translated as “Glory be to God.” It is used during prayers or religious services and is cited to express awe at God’s creations.

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surah:

An Arabic term for a chapter in the Qur’an. There are 114 chapters in the Qur’an, each of which is divided into verses, or ayat.

suspect community:

A concept coined by Paddy Hillyard that signifies one group perceiving signs of threats or abnormalities from another group, which is then represented as wholly “Other” and subjected to scrutiny and stigmatization.

taqiyya:

An Arabic term for the Islamic concept of dissimulation, or denial of religious beliefs in the face of persecution. The term has been co-opted by critics who use it to warn that Muslims have religious justification to lie about anything.

“the West”:

A borderless and imagined socio- and geopolitical entity that refers to the United States and countries in Western Europe. Used interchangeably with the “Western world” or “Western civilization,” it is thought to be the opposite of “the East.”

ummah:

An Arabic word that refers to the worldwide, supranational Muslim “community.”

War on Terror:

A metaphor of war that refers to the ongoing campaign on military engagements that the United States and its European allies launched following the attacks of 9/11.

Westoxification:

A sarcastic term that describes a fascination with, and history of borrowing from, “the West” and its political systems and cultures. Some Muslim thinkers blame this for what they see as the degradation of Muslim societies and cultures.

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Sachedina, Abdulaziz. Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Safi, Omid, ed. Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. Oxford: Oneworld, 2003. Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vantage Books, 1981. ———. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Press, 1978. Saikal, Amin. Islam and the West: Conflict or Cooperation? New York: Palgrave, 2003. Salhi, Zahia Smail, ed. Gender and Violence in Islamic Societies: Patriarchy, Islamism, and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa. London: I. B. Tauris, 2013. Sayyid, Bobby S. A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism. London: Zed Books, 1997. Sedgwick, Mark. “Jihadism, Narrow and Wide: The Dangers of Loose Use of an Important Term.” Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 2 (2015): 34. ¨ zlem. “Beyond Fearing the Savage: Responding to Islamophobia in the ClassSensoy, O room.” In The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities, Fourth Edition, ed. E. Wayne Ross. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014. Shaheen, Jack G. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Ithaca: Olive Branch Press, 2009. Shavit, Uriya. Islamism and the West: From “Cultural Attack” to “Missionary Migrant.” New York: Routledge, 2014. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis: First Fortress Press, 1962. Sonn, Tamara. Is Islam an Enemy of the West? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. ———. “Preface.” In Islam: A Brief History, Second Edition. West Sussex: Wiley and Blackwell, 2010. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Sullivan, Gavin Brent, ed. Understanding Collective Pride and Group Identity: New Directions in Emotion Theory, Research, and Practice. London: Routledge, 2014. Thompson, Michael. Islam and the West: Critical Perspectives on Modernity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Van Bruinessen, Martin, and Stefano Allievi, eds. Producing Islamic Knowledge: Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe. New York: Routledge, 2011. Varisco, Daniel. Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation. New York: Palgrave, 2005. Virani, Shafique N. The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A Search for Salvation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Voltaire, John Morley, William F. Fleming, Oliver Herbrand, and Gordon Leigh. The Works of Voltaire. Paris: E. R. DuMont, 1901. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge, 1961. Woltering, Robbert. Occidentalisms in the Arab World: Ideology and Images of the West in the Egyptian Media. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011. Yee, Albert S. “The Causal Effects of Ideas on Politics.” International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996): 97. Yildirim, Seval. “Discussing Islam in the Post 9/11 Epistemological Terrain.” Pace International Law Review 19, no. 4 (2007): 223.

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Index Abu-Lughod, Lila, 106 adhan (Muslim prayer): Allahu Akbar accompanying, 90; Muslim women delivering, 109 Afghanistan: US aid to mujahideen of, 145; War on Terror referencing, 61n3; Zawahiri supporting soldiers of, 177 African Americans, 74n14 agency misplacement: absent voices and Islamic reform as, 105; communicating specifics to counter, 36–37; cultural objects as, 41n39; as denial, 81–83; on Islam and West, 33–37; polls on Muslim as, 40n37; reification shifted by attention on, 35; religion and experience in, 34, 36; self-colonizers utilizing, 101 Ahmed, Leila, 114n30 Ajami, Fouad: Arab Street influence from, 48–49; Bush counselor as, 46, 51 “Allah,” 95n32 Allahu Akbar, 11; adhan accompanied by, 90; as call to prayer, 90; as God is greater than all others, 19n26; unsavory associations assigned to, 91 appropriation: Arabic words and, 79–95; of culture, 81–83; by Europe colonialism of language, 80; taqiyya weaponized as, 87 Arabic language: Allahu Akbar as striking fear, 90; divisive utilization of, 10–11; English and subtleties of, 83; evil “other” fostered from, 59–60; examination as ameliorative, 7; media misappropriation of words in, 80; misappropriation of words in, 79–95; political utilizing extremes of, 84–86, 91–92; Westerners terrorized by, 89–90; Western simplification of terms in, 83

Arabs: as Christian using “Allah,” 95n32; Muslims stereotyped as, 74n6 Arab Street, 17n9, 48–49 Aslan, Reza, 34 authoritarianism: ideal compared with real, 194; Muslim women suffering from, 106 Bateson, Gregory, 41n39 bifurcation: bin Laden on world, 51; Islam and West discourse as, 44, 47, 50; Ramadan on Islam and West, 50; of world view, 23 bin Laden, Osama: and Bush in same discourse, 52; defeating evil urgency from, 53–54; God’s rule as only option, 184–85; jahiliyya as justification by, 173; Lawrence translating, 163; Qutb influencing, 164–65, 168–69; religion justifying attack by, 173; on US as “them,” 169–70; US experience by, 172–73; US reification by, 170, 172; on world as two camps, 51; Zawahiri and, 176, 178–79 British Terrorism Act 2000, 74n15 Bush, George W.: advisors on Lewis, 47; bin Laden in same discourse with, 52; civilization terminology of, 45–46; defeating evil urgency from, 53–54; dissent marginalized by, 49; on harm to Western civilization, 51; War on Terror linguistic choices by, 61n7; “with us” or terrorists, 113n7 Cantwell Smith, Wilfred, 19n22, 25 capitalism, 93n3 chapter. See surah Charlie Hebdo, 39n12

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Christianity: agency as neither Muslim nor, 35; Arabs and “Allah” usage in, 95n32; dualism inherent in, 54; fundamentalism in, 152–53; “Islamic” terrorism versus, 34; “radical love” in, 158n40; religion preferences for, 114n19; scriptural literalism and, 150; taqiyya utilized by, 87; in US, 134, 193; as variable, 113n5; West critique including, 32 “clash of civilizations”: clash of representations or, 1–19, 117–85; discourse in War on Terror, 45–51; Obama rejecting, 54–55; Trump administration on, 58–59; violence beginnings within, 38n2 colonialism: by Europe with language appropriation, 80; native informants for, 100–101; Occidentalism reaction against, 184 communism, 86, 120, 136n1 community. See ummah conflict: Islam and West as constructed, 44–45, 59; only between people, 27, 191 conveyor belt theory, 14; Islamism to extremism in, 128–30; religiosity to extremes in, 121 Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), 56–57 cultural racism, 72 CVE. See Countering Violent Extremism dan Fodio, Usman, 82, 93n7 democracy: ideal compared with real, 194; Islam teachings as, 38n3; jihad and capitalism undermining, 93n3; Lewis and Ajami on shock to force, 49 dhimmi (protected person), 79 discourse: Allahu Akbar as unsavory, 91; Bush and bin Laden in same, 52; Foucault on, 4, 88; on “good” and “evil,” 51–54, 127; Islam and West bifurcating, 44, 47, 50; Islamism as political, 120–21, 135; Muslim backwardness in, 47; policies shaping and shaped by, 43–63; as questioned and critiqued, 192–93 dissimulation. See taqiyya

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drones, 57 dualism: evil “other” needed in, 12, 52–53; extremism resulting in, 7; incongruent power relations and, 9; Islam, Christianity, Judaism and, 54; Islam and West in, 24, 47; Lewis and Ajami discourse as, 47, 49; media normalizing, 9; policies shaping and shaped by, 43–63; Ramadan rejecting Islam and West, 50; stereotypes perpetuated by, 25; tensions perpetuated by, 2; West versus Islam in, 5–6, 9 “East”: Orientalism as homogenizing, 3; West technology from, 38n1 Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood banned by, 167–68; Zawahiri in prison of, 177–78 “enemy”: West and Islam construction of, 164; West as ideological, 159–85 equality, 13 Esposito, John L., 84, 93n11 essentialism: broad-brush categories as, 30; within Islam, 40n19; Islam as extreme in, 91; Islam excoriations of Western jahiliyya, 32; normative-versus-aberrant and, 30, 31; reductionism as pivot for, 10; on religions and people, 29–33; selfcolonizers utilizing, 101; specifics to counter, 36–37; as view through subjective lens, 33; West subject to, 31–32 Europe: colonialism on language, 80; “moderate” defined by, 141, 143–44; Muslim percentages in, 65; West of, 186n3 exceptionalism: France and, 113n2; of Western norms over Islam, 98 extremism: appearances and religiosity for, 129; fundamentalism as radical and, 151, 153; Hirsi Ali view of Quran and, 103; Islam as essentially, 91; Islamism as conveyor to, 14, 121, 128–30; jihad equated with, 128; “moderate” Muslims choice on, 154–55; Quran with benevolence and, 103; spiritual expression or, 89–92; ummah excluding, 154; West defining Islam, 6–7

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INDEX fatwa (legal opinion): British Muslim scholars writing, 161; Raza receiving derogatory, 149 feminism: hijab as oppression for, 107–8; women and Islam unfettered by, 106 Foucault, Michel, 4, 88 France: exceptionalism and, 113n2; on hijab and women, 85 free speech, 13 fundamentalism: Christian evangelicals as, 150, 152–53; history of, 157n31; in Islam description, 152; Islamic global governance in, 122; Islamic premises of, 151; Judaism with, 151; and moderate difference, 152; “moderate” Muslims and, 129; as pejorative, 151; Qutb Islamism and, 164–65; radicals and, 150–55; terrorism and, 158n37 Ghannouchi, Rachid, 129 Gibb, Hamilton, 84, 93n11 Glory to God. See Subhan Allah Goddard, Hugh P., 40n22 God has willed. See Masha Allah God’s will. See Sharia God willing. See In Sha Allah Gramsci, Antonio, 17n4 Great Britain: British Terrorism Act 2000 and, 74n15; Islam concepts in, 134; Muslim percentages in, 134; Muslim scholars on fatwa, 161; “Operation Trojan Horse” in, 113n1; Pax Britannica after Waterloo as, 61n15; religious discrimination in, 140 Greece and Rome, 23 Haggmark, Steven A., 26, 82 Hall, Stuart, 4, 88 Hamas, 50 Hanafi, Hasan, 32, 183, 184 haram (not permissible), 161; Muslim women on West preferences, 33 Harris, Sam, 131–32 hijab (headscarf ), 106–9; feminism oppressed by, 107–8; France and women with, 85; Muslim women choice on, 108

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Hirsi Ali, Ayaan: Islamic law and women view by, 85; Muslims alienated by, 110; Quran extremism view of, 103; response to proposals of, 104–5; as “soft prejudice,” 132; as threatened, 157n30 hudud (limits), 84; summary of, 94n12 identity politics: Muslims and Westerners in negative, 17n3; West considering Islam in, 21–75 ideology, 14; data chosen by, 51; geopolitics driven by, 119; government power struggles and, 37; Islamism and status of, 124; Islamism as new adversary in, 120, 136; as not value neutral, 33; physical separation in addition to, 28; al-Qaeda as, 182; West as enemy of, 159–85 ignorance. See jahiliyya imperialism: Islam-West divide from Western, 66; Obama years as liberal, 55; Qutb on religious crusades as, 174 In Sha Allah (God willing), 90–91; Yiddish proverb as like, 95n29 Iran: Islam violence beginning within, 38n2, 122; media in hostage crisis of, 67 Iraq: Muslim country posing risk as, 73; Syria response after war in, 156n13; War on Terror referencing, 61n3 Islam: heroic struggle of, 175–85. See also specific topics “Islam 101,” 63n54 “Islam and modernity,” 18n13 Islamic, 18n20 Islamic reform: absent voices against, 105; anti-Muslim prejudice and, 111; media advancing, 110–11; from Muslims, 111–12; response to proposals of, 104–6; “soft prejudice” and, 102; as unlikely by Muslims, 111; Western values as goal of, 102–3 “Islam in the West”: as cliche´d response, 194n1; Muslims and integration for, 191 Islamism: anti-Muslim prejudice as, 111, 130–36; as conveyor to extremism, 14, 121, 128–30; historical usage of, 121–22; ideology status and, 124;

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Iranian Revolution and, 38n2, 67, 122; Islam as ill from, 126–27; Islam disentangled from, 125–28; liberalism as antidote for, 127; liberalism protecting, 134; Muslims opinions on, 132; as new communism, 86, 120; as new ideological adversary, 120, 136; as political discourse, 120–21, 135; public life center as, 122–23; Qutb as fundamentalism father of, 164–65; self-colonizer opinions on, 132; specifics in describing, 135, 136; terminology in, 121–25; variances as dominate in, 124; as violent gene, 130–31; Western creation of, 5, 123 jahiliyya (ignorance), 32; bin Laden justification with, 173; Qutb on West and, 167 jihad (struggle): dan Fodio overseeing, 82, 93n7; definition as strive or, 93n5; democracy and capitalism in, 93n3; extremism equated with, 128; holy war as not always incorrect, 80; Muslim using term as incendiary, 93n4; promoted as fearful foreign term, 80–81; storied interpretations of, 135; Western usage of, 82–83 Judaism: dualism inherent in, 54; fundamentalists in, 151; prejudice against, 74n14; Qutb on support for, 166; scriptural literalism and, 150; taqiyya utilized by, 87; West as Christian and, 193 kafir (unbeliever), 79, 80 Lawrence, Bruce, 163 legal opinion. See fatwa Lewis, Bernard: Bush advisors on, 47; “clash of civilizations” from, 46–47; Lewis Doctrine as US foreign policy, 48; Pax Britannica as suggestion from, 48; on shock to force democracy, 49 liberalism: domestic “moderate Muslims” as, 145; as Islamism antidote, 127; Islamism as communism on, 86, 120; Islamism protected by, 134; Lewis and Ajami on shock to force, 49; Muslim

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women and, 107; as not culturally neutral, 13; West imposing, 99 Libya, 73 limits. See hudud madrassa (school in mosque), 79 mainstream, 18n21 Marranci, Gabriele, 32, 36 Masha Allah (God has willed), 90 media, 9; Arabic words misappropriated by, 80; Charlie Hebdo controversies in, 39n12; common adjectives as framing by, 68; in Iran hostage crisis, 38n2, 67, 122; Islam covered as “news” by, 67–69; Islamic reform advanced by, 110–11; nationalism from reporting by, 68; news coverage framed by, 67–70; policies framing decisions by, 69, 164 Middle East: Obama and, 56, 57; West emerging from, 38n1 “moderate” Muslims, 13–14; domestic as liberal, 145; fundamentalism and, 129; fundamentalism difference from, 152; as less Islam, 141; Muslims adopting term of, 146–48; nationalism aspiration of, 147, 149; as preferred Muslim, 157n17; radical contrasted with, 140; reification and politics of, 19n23; representations of, 145–50; search for, 139–55; secular public sphere as, 152; Syria questionnaire on, 156n14; violence and, 145, 150; West forcing agreement by, 154–55 moderates: fluctuating meaning of, 144, 156n11; lost terminology as agency, 81–82; politics manipulating, 141–44; Reagan giving arms to, 142–43; US and Europe on, 141–44 monoliths, 5, 7; Middle East as, 35, 56 mujahideen (one who engages in jihad), 143, 145, 178 multiculturalism, 98, 140 Muslim Brotherhood: Egypt banning, 167–68; potential radicalizing via, 129; Qutb and, 166–67; US assumption on extremism and, 18n16 Muslim prayer. See adhan Muslim Reform Movement, 106

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INDEX Muslims: agency as not Christian or, 35; alienation of, 110; Americanists and Islamists excluding, 147; Arabs as stereotype of, 74n6; British Terrorism Act 2000 and, 74n15; conveyed to extremism, 14, 121, 128–30; CVE focusing on, 56–57; depicted as “other,” 65–66, 70–71, 148–49; as “good” or “bad,” 99–100; historical view of, 157n19; human agency ignored with term of, 33–35; identity by negation and, 17n3; Iran and Iraq as, 73; Islamic reform and prejudice on, 111, 130–36; Islamic reform from, 111–12; Islamism according to, 123, 132; as minority groups, 157n24; “moderate” and Western equated by, 146–48; monolithic qualifier as, 35, 56; native informants and self-benefit, 149–50; no inherent conflict with, 27, 191; Occidentalism as “the West” views by, 31–32; Occidentalism preserving society of, 184; “other” fear and expectations of, 12, 140; politics as diverse for, 124; primer on good and bad, 18n17; religion preferences for, 114n19; as religions and agency, 40n37; as selfcolonizers, 100–102; self-reflection on woes by, 56; Sharia and US court cases with, 94n13; terrorism condemned by, 160–61; tradition and scripture creating, 133; US and Europe percentages of, 65; in US as targeted, 72; US impressions by, 160; using jihad as incendiary, 93n4; US military and, 160; US policies and “hate” by, 162–63; violence by individual, 74n3; violent gene and, 130–31; War on Terror targeting, 71; West and relationships for, 23; on West as gold-standard, 97; Westerners and narratives against, 110–12; Western “hate” questioned by, 162–75; Westernization as identity crisis for, 183; West opinion by, 161–62; women views and location, 38n4 Muslim women: Abu-Lughod on, 106; Ahmed on Islam and, 114n30; authoritarianism and poverty on, 106;

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feminism unfettering Islam and, 106; hijab choice silenced for, 108; liberalism and, 107; mosque choices silenced for, 108–9; patriarchy and, 106–9 “Muslim world”: amorphous description as, 4–5; Aslan on using term, 34; discourse on backwardness of, 47; as eternally foreigners, 12; liberalism ideal adopted by some in, 13; mainstream and, 18n21; Obama on risk from, 73; West and leaders of, 15; West similar with, 1–2, 3; world encompassing, 17n10; Zawahiri on one, 181–82 Nasser, Abdul: assassination attempt controversy, 187n37; Muslim Brotherhood and, 168 nationalism: as fluid, 171; from media reporting, 68; moderate Muslims aspiring to, 147, 149; from “other” as violent, 67–68 native informants: colonizing depending on, 100–101; Islamism opinions by, 132; self-benefit by Muslim, 149–50; violent gene theory from, 130–31; Western alignments by, 149 Nawaz, Maajid: Islamism arguments by, 131; UK Muslim percentages from, 134 New Atheism, 130–31 Nomani, Asra: Muslim Reform Movement and, 106; Muslims alienated by, 110; as “soft prejudice,” 132 normative: Islam post-2001 as, 30, 31; media and dualism as, 9; positive “West” as, 33, 44 not permissible. See haram Obama, Barack: Arab approval dropping on, 57; “clash of civilizations” rejected by, 54–55; drone killings of, 57; “liberal imperialism” during, 55; Middle East as problematic by, 56; Muslim countries posing risk by, 73; Orientalism as central to, 55–56; realpolitik against evil “other,” 61n2; US views of Islam during, 57–58; “world peace” as Western and, 56

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Occidentalism: colonialism reaction from, 184; Islam views of West, 31–32; Muslim society preserved with, 184; not intent on Orientalism control, 183–84; as West reified, 183 one who engages in jihad. See mujahideen Orientalism: “East” diversity homogenized as, 3; Obama working within, 55–56; Occidentalism and control of, 183–84 “other”: Arabic language for fostering evil, 59–60; dualism needing evil, 12, 52–54; expectations of Muslim, 140; “good” enhancing term of, 53; misrepresented authority as vilifying, 70; Muslims as eternally, 12; Muslims depicted as, 70–71, 148–49; Obama realpolitik against, 61n2; “them” as, 191; West as soulless, 183; West considering Islam as, 65–66 Pakistan, 61n3, 160, 177 Palestinians, 4, 67 paradigms: creators of current, 9; healthy skepticism for challenging, 8; possibility of shifting, 69; West versus Islam, 5 patriarchy: in American mosques, 101; Muslim women and, 106–9 Patriot Act, 57 Pax Britannica: British influence after Waterloo as, 61n15; Lewis suggested approach as, 48 political aims: Arabic language utilized for, 84–86, 91–92; discourse shaped by, 43–63; ideology and, 37, 51, 119; Islam and West conflict from, 44–45, 59; Islam as negative from Western, 65–66; media decisions framed by, 69, 164; “moderate” manipulation in, 141–44; rhetoric shifts supporting, 54–58; taqiyya as co-opted by, 89; “us” and “them” for, 191; US Muslim populations targeted by, 72; West and Islam terms for, 10–11; of West creating Islamism, 5, 123; Western simplification of Arabic as, 83 political Islam: as discourse shield, 120–21, 135; faithful from expansionists in, 122;

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as foe to West, 120; as not politics by Muslims, 136 poverty, 106 profession of faith. See Shahada protected person. See dhimmi al-Qaeda: as ideology inspiring violence, 182; US conquered as goal of, 180; Zawahiri as driving force of, 180 Quran: extremism and benevolence in, 103; surah as chapter in, 93, 93n5 Qutb, Sayyid: on believers and unbelievers, 173–74; bin Laden influenced by, 164–65; as executed martyr, 168; on Islam as solution, 166–67; Islamist fundamentalism father as, 164–65; on Israel support, 166; Muslim Brotherhood and, 166–67; prison writings of, 168; on religious crusades, 174; secularism rejected by, 165, 166, 168; on US and citizens, 170; US reification by, 170–71; on West and decadent jahiliyya, 165–67; Zawahiri as student of, 175, 176–77 radicalization: beliefs and Islam, 154; CVE definition and guidelines on, 57; fundamentalism problem with, 150–55; Islam in no delineated group, 153; “moderate” Muslims contrasted with, 140; Muslim Brotherhood and, 129 Ramadan, Tariq: dualism in Islam and West rejected by, 50–51; Hamas and US visa denial to, 50; on Islam and West bifurcation, 50 Raza, Raheel, 149 Reagan, Ronald, 142–43 reductionism, 10 reification: agency shifting attention from, 35; by bin Laden of US, 28, 170, 172; Cantwell Smith on religion and, 19n22, 25; for establishing opposites, 26; by leaders, 29; Occidentalism as West in, 183; “progressive” Muslim politics and, 19n23; al-Qaeda on West as, 183; by Qutb of US, 28, 170–71; religion assumptions for, 10, 25, 28; of religions and people, 25–29; self-colonizers

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INDEX utilizing, 101; specifics for countering, 36–37; weather subjected to, 39n5 religions: agency and character in, 34; agency as decoupling from, 36; ambiguity and reification among, 10, 25; believers and unbelievers as, 173; bin Laden justifying attack with, 173; Christianity and Muslims on, 114n19; conflict between people and not, 27, 191; essentialism on people and, 29–33; as experience, 27; extremism and appearance of, 129; Great Britain discrimination in, 140; as identifying character, 34; of Islam under attack, 180; language, society and, 77–115; license for violence and, 5, 113n9; Muslims and agency as, 40n37; Muslims preferences on, 114n19; politics and reification of, 25–29; as spectrum of experience, 25–26 representations, clash of, 1–19, 117–85 rhetoric: Islam and West influenced by, 23–41; shifts in policy maneuvers, 54–58; War on Terror as civilizational, 45 Said, Edward: Gramsci as influencing, 17n4; on Islam before US focus, 40n36; on Islam caricatures, 3 school in mosque. See madrassa scriptural literalism, 150 secularism: feminism and, 106; Islamism antidote as, 127, 130, 145; “moderate” Muslims as, 152; Qutb rejecting, 165, 166, 168 self-colonizers: essentialism utilized by, 101; Hirsi Ali and Nomani as, 110; Islam intellectual control by, 101; Islamism opinions by, 132; Muslim diversity not valued by, 102; Muslim native informants as, 100–102; reification, essentialism, agency and, 101; violent gene theory from, 130–31 Shahada (profession of faith), 181 Sharia (God’s will): banning as false premise, 94n14; as foreign as Islam, 86; hudud as limits or punishment, 84; interpretations as not codified, 84; loss

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of “our values” and, 83–86; Muslims and US court cases with, 94n13; negative as not always incorrect, 80; “path to watering hole” as, 93n5; promoted as fearful foreign term, 80–81; storied interpretations of, 135; summary of, 94n12; utilization and realities of, 11–12; West hyperbolizing term of, 85–86 Shepard, William, 151 “soft prejudice”: Hirsi Ali and Nomani as, 132; Islamic reform and, 102; “soft bigotry” and, 19n27; Western expectations and, 97–100 Somalia, 73 spiritual expression, 89–92 stereotypes: dualism language perpetuating, 25, 30; Muslims and Arabs as, 74n6; power buttressed by, 44, 59, 72, 107, 183 struggle. See jihad Subhan Allah (Glory to God), 90 Sudan, 73 surah (chapter), 93, 93n5 suspect communities, 71–73 Syria: Iraq war and response to, 156n13; “moderate” questionnaire, 156n14; Muslim country posing risk as, 73; Muslim “rebel” groups and, 145; US rejecting refugees of, 145–46 taqiyya (dissimulation), 79; concealment of thoughts or feelings, 87; Islam versus Western understandings of, 88–89; Jews and Christians utilizing practice of, 87; meaning weaponized, 87–88; persecution and, 94n20; political co-opting of, 89 terrorism: as broader theme, 45; fundamentalism and, 158n37; “Islamic” versus “Christian,” 34; Muslims condemning, 160–61; Palestinians for freedom or, 4, 67 Trojan Horse, 98, 113n1 Trump, Donald J.: “clash of civilizations” and, 58–59; inflammatory statement examples of, 63n62; influencers of, 58;

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Islam and administration of, 58–59; Muslim countries posing risk by, 73 Tunisia, 129 ummah (community), 154; extremists excluded from, 154; Zawahiri as victims versus, 182 unbeliever. See kafir United Kingdom (UK). See Great Britain United States (US): Afghanistan mujahideen and aid from, 145; bin Laden and Zawahiri targeting, 179; bin Laden experience of, 172–73; bin Laden on “them” as, 169–70; Christianity in, 134, 193; on extremism and Muslim Brotherhood, 18n16; “Islam 101” as lawenforcement document of, 63n54; before Islam as focus of, 40n36; Islam presentation on, 164; Lewis Doctrine as foreign policy for, 48; “moderate” pursued by, 141–44; Muslim and military of, 160; Muslim Brotherhood assumption by, 18n16; Muslim percentages in, 65; Muslims excluded by Islamists and, 147; Muslims impressions of, 160; policies and Muslim “hate,” 162–63; on political war, 174–75; alQaeda goal to conquer, 180; Qutb reification of, 170–71; Ramadan and fear of ideas by, 50–51; reification, 170–72; representation and perception of, 160; Sharia and Muslims in court cases in, 94n13; Syria refugees rejected by, 145–46; “us” and “them” as Islam and, 191; US Muslims targeted by, 72; views of Islam during Obama, 57–58; West protected by, 58; Zawahiri and bin Laden targeting, 179 “us” and “them”: bin Laden using, 169; Bush on terrorists as, 113n7; commonalities countering, 194; “good” and “evil” discourse as, 51–54, 127; political aims for, 191; poll questions based on, 194n2; questions needed for, 193; as self and “other,” 191; self reflection to counter, 192; US and Islam as, 191 violence: Islam and peace or, 30–31; in Islam beginning in Iran, 38n2, 67, 122;

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Islam views on, 40n20; “moderate Muslims” as targeted by, 150; by Muslim individuals, 74n3; Muslim “rebel” groups in Syria as, 145; national unity and, 67–68; as never warranted, 133; al-Qaeda inspiring, 182; religion and license for, 5, 113n9; self-colonizers gene theory on, 130–31; West branding Islam on, 85–86; Western policies creating Islam, 15. See also Countering Violent Extremism War on Terror: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, 61n3; Bush linguistic choices on, 61n7; “clash of civilizations” discourse in, 45–51; CVE coupled with, 57; Muslim-targeting enabled by, 71 “West”: anti-Muslim narratives targeting, 110–12; Arabic terms simplified by, 83; Arabic terrorizing, 89–90; Bush on harm to, 51; Bush terminology of, 45–46; changing nature of, 27; discourse as bifurcating Islam and, 44, 47, 50; dualism as Islam and, 5–6, 9, 24; “enemy” construction by, 164; essentialism practiced on, 31–32; exceptionalism over Islam, 98; as goldstandard, 97, 98; Greece and Rome creating, 23; identity by negation and, 17n3; as ideological enemy, 159–85; imperialism on Islam, 66; on Islam and agency, 33–37; Islam as constructed conflict, 23–24, 44–45; Islam as not fixed with, 193; Islam branded as violent by, 15, 85–86; Islam civilization class and, 10; Islam deconstructed by, 7–8; Islam excoriations of jahiliyya of, 32; Islam extremist defined by, 6–7; Islamic reform toward values of, 102–3; Islamic terms and, 8, 10–11; Islamism as creation of, 15, 123; jihad usage by, 82–83; as Judeo-Christian, 32, 193; liberalism imposed by, 99; as materialistic, 183, 184; Middle East as source of, 38n1; military might interrogating Islam, 6; moderate Muslims in, 100, 146–48, 154–55; Muslim “hate” questioned by, 162–75; Muslims opinion of,

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INDEX 161–62; Muslim world and, 1–2, 3, 15, 23; native informants aligning with, 149; policies and Islam, 59, 65–66; political Islam as foe to, 120; Qutb on decadent, 165–67; as rallying politics, activists, militaries, 44; reification by leaders of, 29; as reified by Islam, 28, 183; rhetoric influencing, 23–41; Sharia hyperbolized by, 85–86; “soft prejudice” and, 97–100; as soulless “other,” 183; taqiyya defined by, 88–89; “universal” principles of, 159–60; US as protector from Islam, 58; War on Terror presuming good as, 45; Western Europe as, 186n3 Westernization, 183 Westoxification, 183 women’s rights: Muslim women and location, 38n4; Muslim women choices

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on mosque, 108–9; as worth championing, 13 Yemen, 73 Yildirim, Seval, 6, 193 Zawahiri, Ayman: Afghan soldiers support by, 177; believers and “disbelievers” battle of, 180–81; bin Laden as money source for, 178–79; with bin Laden for cosmic battle, 176; bin Laden targeting US with, 179; early life of, 176; Egypt prison and resistance by, 177–78; military assaults by, 175; one “Muslim nation” by, 181–82; al-Qaeda and violence as, 182; al-Qaeda driving force as, 175, 180; Qutb student as, 175–77; reach as expanded, 182; soldiers and global war by, 181; victims and ummah by, 182

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