[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10673-10674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           MUSLIM MIDDLE EAST

  Mr. KYL. Madam President, in an April 16 Wall Street Journal column, 
``Speaking Truth to Muslim Power,'' former CIA officer and Middle East 
expert Reuel Marc Gerecht writes about the fierce internal debates over 
Islam, jihadism, and modernity within the Muslim Middle East.
  As Gerecht writes, while Western countries cannot determine the 
outcome of those debates, they can help shape them and provide a boost 
to Muslim reformers. While it is fashionable to criticize President 
George W. Bush's Middle East policies, Gerecht says that Arab democracy 
activists ``have never been so hopeful as they were'' from 2002 to 
2006, during which time democracy promotion flourished. He argues that 
President Bush's pro-democracy rhetoric ``energized the discussion of 
representative government and human rights abroad.''
  I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Gerecht's column be printed in the 
Record, and I urge my colleagues to consider his thoughtful views.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 16, 2009]

                     Speaking Truth to Muslim Power

                        (By Reuel Marc Gerecht)

       ``The United States is not at war with Islam and will never 
     be. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is 
     critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all 
     faiths reject.''
       So spoke President Barack Hussein Obama in Turkey last 
     week. Following in the footsteps of the Bush administration, 
     Mr. Obama wants to avoid labeling our enemy in religious 
     terms. References to ``Islamic terrorism,'' ``Islamic 
     radicalism,'' or ``Islamic extremism'' aren't in his 
     speeches. ``Jihad,'' too, has been banished from the official 
     lexicon.
       But if one visits the religious bookstores near Istanbul's 
     Covered Bazaar, or mosque libraries of Turkish immigrants in 
     Rotterdam, Brussels or Frankfurt, one can still find a 
     cornucopia of radical Islamist literature. Go into the 
     bookstores of Arab and Pakistani immigrant communities in 
     Europe, or into the literary markets of the Arab world and 
     the Indian subcontinent, and you'll find an even richer 
     collection of militant Islamism.
       Al Qaeda is certainly not a mainstream Muslim group--if it 
     were, we would have had far more terrorist attacks since 9/
     11. But the ideology that produced al Qaeda isn't a rivulet 
     in contemporary Muslim thought. It is a wide and deep river. 
     The Obama administration does both Muslims and non-Muslims an 
     enormous disservice by pretending otherwise.
       Theologically, Muslims are neither fragile nor frivolous. 
     They have not become suicide bombers because non-Muslims have 
     said something unkind; they have not refrained from becoming 
     holy warriors because Westerners avoided the word ``Islamic'' 
     in describing Osama bin Laden and his allies. Having an 
     American president who had a Muslim father, carries the name 
     of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, and wants to engage the 
     Muslim world in a spirit of ``mutual respect'' isn't a ``game 
     changer.'' This hypothesis trivializes Islamic history and 
     the continuing appeal of religious militancy.
       Above all else, we need to understand clearly our enemies--
     to try to understand them as they see themselves, and to see 
     them as devout nonviolent Muslims do. To not talk about Islam 
     when analyzing al Qaeda is like talking about the Crusades 
     without mentioning Christianity. To devise a hearts-and-minds 
     counterterrorist policy for the Islamic world without openly 
     talking about faith is counterproductive. We--the West--are 
     the unrivalled agent of change in the Middle East. Modern 
     Islamic history--including the Bush years--ought to tell us 
     that questions non-Muslims pose can provoke healthy 
     discussions.
       The abolition of slavery, rights for religious minorities 
     and women, free speech, or the very idea of civil society--
     all of these did not advance without Western pressure and the 
     enormous seductive power that Western values have for 
     Muslims. Although Muslims in the Middle East have been 
     talking about political reform since they were first exposed 
     to Western ideas (and modern military might) in the 18th 
     century, the discussion of individual liberty and equality 
     has been more effective when Westerners have been intimately 
     involved. The Middle East's brief but impressive ``Liberal 
     Age'' grew from European imperialism and the unsustainable 
     contradiction between the progressive ideals taught by the 
     British and French--the Egyptian press has never been as free 
     as when the British ruled over the Nile valley--and the 
     inevitably illiberal and demeaning practices that come with 
     foreign occupation.
       Although it is now politically incorrect to say so, George 
     W. Bush's democratic rhetoric energized the discussion of 
     representative government and human rights abroad. Democracy 
     advocates and the anti-authoritarian voices in Arab lands 
     have never been so hopeful as they were between 2002, when 
     democracy promotion began to germinate within the White 
     House, and 2006, when the administration gave up on people 
     power in the Middle East (except in Iraq).
       The issue of jihadism is little different. It's not a 
     coincidence that the Muslim debate about holy war became most 
     vivid after 9/11, when the U.S. struck back against al Qaeda 
     in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Many may have 
     found Mr. Bush's brief use of the term ``Islamofascism'' to 
     be offensive--although it recalls well Abul Ala Maududi, a 
     Pakistani founding father of modern Islamic radicalism, who 
     openly admired European fascism as a violent, muscular 
     ideology capable of mobilizing the masses. Yet Mr. Bush's 
     flirtation with the term unquestionably pushed Muslim 
     intellectuals to debate the legitimacy of its use and the 
     cult of martyrdom that had--and may still have--a widespread 
     grip on many among the faithful.
       When Sunni Arab Muslims viewed daily on satellite TV the 
     horrors of the Sunni onslaught against the Iraqi Shiites, and 
     then

[[Page 10674]]

     the vicious Shiite revenge against their former masters, the 
     debate about jihadism, the historic Sunni-Shiite rivalry, and 
     the American occupation intensified. Unfortunately, progress 
     in the Middle East has usually happened when things have 
     gotten ugly, and Muslims debate the mess.
       Iran's former president Mohammed Khatami, whom Bill Clinton 
     unsuccessfully tried to engage, is a serious believer in the 
     ``dialogue of civilizations.'' In his books, Mr. Khatami does 
     something very rare for an Iranian cleric: He admits that 
     Western civilization can be morally superior to its Islamic 
     counterpart, and that Muslims must borrow culturally as well 
     as technologically from others. On the whole, however, he 
     finds the West--especially America--to be an amoral slippery 
     slope of sin. How should one talk to Mr. Khatami or to 
     Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the less curious but morally more 
     earnest clerical overlord of Iran; or the Saudi royal family 
     and their influential state-supported clergy, who still 
     preach hatred of the West; or to the faithful of Pakistan, 
     who are in the midst of an increasingly brutal, internecine 
     religious struggle? Messrs. Khatami and Khamenei are 
     flawlessly polite gentlemen. They do not, however, confuse 
     civility with agreement. Neither should we.
       It's obviously not for non-Muslims to decide what Islam 
     means. Only the faithful can decide whether Islam is a 
     religion of peace or war (historically it has been both). 
     Only the faithful can banish jihad as a beloved weapon 
     against infidels and unbelief. Only Muslims can decide how 
     they balance legislation by men and what the community--or at 
     least its legal guardians, the ulama--has historically seen 
     as divine commandments.
       Westerners can, however, ask probing questions and apply 
     pressure when differing views threaten us. We may not choose 
     to dispatch the U.S. Navy to protect women's rights, as the 
     British once sent men-of-war to put down the Muslim slave 
     trade, but we can underscore clearly our disdain for men who 
     see ``child brides'' as something vouchsafed by the Almighty. 
     There is probably no issue that angers militants more than 
     women's rights. Advancing this cause in traditional Muslim 
     societies caught in the merciless whirlwind of globalization 
     isn't easy, but no effort is likely to bear more fruit in the 
     long term than having American officials become public 
     champions of women's rights in Muslim lands.
       Al Qaeda's Islamic radicalism isn't a blip--a one-time 
     outgrowth of the Soviet-Afghan war--or a byproduct of the 
     Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. It's the most recent 
     violent expression of the modernization of the Muslim Middle 
     East. The West's great transformative century--the 20th--was 
     soaked in blood. We should hope, pray, and do what we can to 
     ensure that Islam's continuing embrace of modernity in the 
     21st century--undoubtedly its pivotal era--will not be 
     similarly horrific.
       We are fooling ourselves if we think we no longer have to 
     be concerned about how Muslims talk among themselves. This is 
     not an issue that we want to push the ``reset'' button on. 
     Here, at least, George W. Bush didn't go nearly far enough.

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