
“It’s a battle of ideas as much as it is a military battle.”
—General John Abizaid, January 29, 2004
So apparently we are losing the battle of ideas in the war against radical Islam. You know, the one that can’t be won with tanks and bombs and all that. And the problem goes well beyond PR disasters resulting from military misadventure, perceived or otherwise.
How can this be, you may ask? You’d think that after winning the Cold War this would be one aspect of the war the West would have down pat, right? After all, the same battle-hardened “ideas” that won then have been set to work now, so victory is in the bag.
Newt Gingrich, for one, certainly seems to think so:
“On the Sunday talk shows, former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been insisting that the White House pursue Mideast regime change and “use the kind of strategy we used” in Eastern Europe to encourage democratic revolts in terrorist states.”
The strategy used in Eastern Europe was to deploy behind enemy lines the implicitly secular ideas of individual freedom and democracy against the ideas totalitarianism and oppression. Lo-and-behold, the ultra-secular populace more than gladly capitulated and liberation was imminant. And if freedom can be measured by the number of nightclubs and shopping malls per capita, Moscow and Prague are poised to become freer than Paris and London by the end of the decade.
Apparently this is the strategy that Mr Gingrich has in mind for the White House. Ditto for President Bush, although her prefers to use subtler terms like “promoting freedom and democracy”. Thats President Bush who betrayed his absolute ignorance of Islam, let alone radical Islamism he is supposedly leading the free world against when, two month before the invasion of Iraq, he expressed curious surprise after members of the Iraqi opposition mentioned there being two kinds of Islam – Sunni and Shiite. This conversation allegedly took place when President Bush invited the Iraqis to watch the Superbowl with him, perhaps eager to show off one of the fruits of freedom and democracy and thus whet the appetite of the Iraqis for the coming liberation. (source: former US Diplomat Peter Galbraith in “Iraq: The Reckoning” documentary, nov 2005 )
Besides the folly of equating the ideological battleground of secular Eastern Europe, prostate beneath the boot of atheistic Communism, with that of the religiously conservative Islamic Middle East (and Islam in the rest of the world, for that matter), even one that is in parts beneath the boot of secular military dictarship, there are two problem with simply reapplying the Cold War approach. Both of them stem from the forces of globalisation that have reshaped the world since the Cold War ended. The first is the demographic Achilles heel the West has created for itself through irresponsible mass immigration. The second is the exponential multiplication of ideological battle fronts brought about by advances in communications technology.
As Mark Steyn wrote last week:
Our enemies understand “why we fight” and where the fight is. They know that in the greater scheme of things the mosques of Jakarta and Amsterdam and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., are more important territory than the Sunni Triangle. The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it’s not enough, it never has been, and it never will be.
That is the territory for which the battle of ideas, the famed battle “for hearts and minds” should now be waged in the West, as well as the Middle East – mosques, schools, universities, libraries, internet forums, the blogosphere and all other forms of electronic and print media. That is the battle being lost, that must be won and which has now drawn all of us in. Yet far beyond not “understanding “why we fight”, most people in the West are oblivious to the fact that there is a fight on in the first place.
Here’s a couple of examples from the weekend’s press that serve as both metaphor and example of why we may be losing.
Exhibit A: In Germany a group of Muslims have launched a new dawah initiative – a mosque on wheels. Presumably taking advantage of the current heat wave, the truck rolls around the cities of Germany, reeling kids in by playing the ice-cream truck melody familiar to children everywhere. “Would you like a Koran with that?” Ok, I am joking about the ice-cream. But the rest is true.
The “Islamobil” is touring Germany, with the goal of “informing Germans about Islam”, explains one of the tour organisers, Gülüzar Keskin. Well, it sure beats door knocking. One of the first things that comes to mind is what the response may be if a Christiamobil attempted a loop of Cairo, Tehran or Islamabad, but I won’t dwell on the obvious.
The tour has apparently going very well:
‘Many visitors have already asked us if we have addresses for mosques nearby, so that they can get more information about Islam.” Keskin said.
I am all for interfaith and intercultural dialogue and Westerners learning about Islam. But that is different from open-ended religious campaigning. A measure of a society’s instinct for cultural self-preservation must surely be also applied.
Exhibit B: Channel 4 is soon screening a program titled a “A Beginner’s Guide to Islam.” Fair enough, you may think, any education enquiry into one of the world’s great religions is welcome just about now. But wait, here are the details:
Sir Bob Geldof’s daughter, Peaches Geldof is to present a new TV series about religion for Channel 4.
As part of ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Islam’ Peaches will be moving in with a devout Muslim girl from Morocco and her family.
The house [sic] long programme intends to find out what the Islamic world makes of someone like mardy Peaches and disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation.
During the show Peaches will be witnessing the sacrificing of a sheep and attend a ‘taking the veil’ party…rocking.
A programme spokeswoman said to MSN: “The contributors will come face to face with three of the worlds most talked about religions, exploring their unfamiliar rituals and testing regimes.”
Other programmes in the series will feature Paul Nichols taking a look at Hinduism in India and comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli trying to find out what Scientology really is all about.
More details here:
Geldof sets out to prove that Islam does not deserve its “bad reputation”.
The hour-long program will find out “what the Islamic world makes of this precocious London party girl”, according to Channel 4.
17 year old Peaches Geldof (full name Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof), whom I wish the best of luck in her experience, is pictured top right.
Now, I understand that “the battle of ideas” is the furthest thing from the minds of the shows producers and that for them it is all about the battle of the ratings. Channel 4 is not the global Embassy of Western Secularism (perhaps that honour can be reserved for the culturally sensitive organisers of Kabul’s first fashion show). My point is rather that their attitudes and the recruitment of Peaches Geldof to present a “Beginner’s guide to Islam”, is representative of a misguided and naive championining of certain aspects of Western culture, beneath the banner of “freedom”, that have become the de facto frontline deployment in the aforementioned battle of ideas. A battle, that, as mentioned previously, has been globalised into a universality. ( Meaning that, by the way, whether they like it or not, Channel 4 ARE involved in the battle. And in that context, can you think of anything more idiotic than sending an over-sexualised teenager in a mini-skirt, accompanies by soft porn promo shots to “learn [and thus teach her viewers] about Islam”? Is the cult of youth, beauty and ratings obsession of the West so far gone that it is completely oblivious to the moral irresponsibility of this undertaking?) The aspects I am talking about are liberated sexuallity, adolescent self-determination, the cult of youth etc. – all of which, in this context, are examples of a degraded understanding of a great and noble idea of individual freedom.
The show will present yet another opportunity for Muslims to point out the moral depravity of the West, the lack of modesty in Western women, to lecture about parental irresponsibility, chastity, alcohol and drug use etc etc. Is it not mundanely predictable yet, “what the Islamic world will make of this precocious London party girl”? Is there a better vehicle for dawah? (Well, yes, probably the Islamobil, you might think). Peaches may be a perfectly innocent and intelligent young woman, but what matters here is comparative perception and reputation, which may or or may not have been caricatured by the gossip press.
Of course this would be at least in part a result of a deliberate baiting of controversy, a sure ratings winner. Perhaps for their next sensation they can send Tommy Lee to do a semester at Al-Azhar University. That sure fire hit would really be a service to Western civilisation.
In the Cold War years youth, beauty and mini-skirts may have screamed “freedom” to repressed masses stuck in the bland greyness of Communist totalitarianism. But for most of the deeply conservative and often bitterly alienated Muslims that radical Islam targets for its recruitment these same things only scream about Western depravity and godlessness. For many Muslims rather than being the personafication of freedom, Peaches will be a mini-skirt inch away from being a sign of the pending apocalypse.
A “Beginner’s Guide” may well do with dictionary and for that purpose I recommend Wolfgang Bruno’s Islamic Dictionary for Infidels”, which should perhaps be required reading for all our esteemed leaders:
Andrew G. Bostom, author of “The Legacy of Jihad,” notes that President Bush has repeatedly stressed the paramount importance of promoting freedom in the Middle East. However, Bostom points out that Hurriyya, the Arabic for “freedom,” and the uniquely Western concept of freedom “are completely at odds.” Hurriyya – “freedom” – is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master,” expressed it -“perfect slavery” under the will of Allah. Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Encyclopedia of Islam, maintains that:
“…there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West.”
Meanwhile, the German- Syrian scholar Bassam Tibi, a Muslim reformist, is warning the West against wishful thinking in its “dialogue” with Muslims. “The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other.”
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(The whole essay is highly recommended reading)
It is wishful thinking indeed that Cold War strategies can work against an enemy ideologically alien to the previous one, on a ubiquitously redefined battlefield. And what could possibly examplify the “gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists” better than Peaches Geldof being sent to “find out what the Islamic world makes of her” and “disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation”.
We are taking damage in this “battle of ideas” and the source of the damage is friendly fire.