Is political Islam a threat to the West?
What worries the West about political Islam is not its ideology, but its unpredictability, writes Nabil Shawkat
In the popular mythology of East-West politics, 9/11 was the opening shot in a global war against terrorism. The proponents of this view consider Islamic-motivated terror to be a crime that must be stopped by everyone in the East and West, an egalitarian viewpoint, and one that has cost us two or three wars so far. But who's counting?
A less comforting thought is that various attacks involving Muslims riding and flying, wearing and mailing any number of explosive contraptions are but tragic evidence of a deep-seated mistrust between East and West. This view, genteel as it is, has spawned dozens of conferences and numerous books and research papers. But who's counting?
I disagree with both views.
I would argue that 9/11 and attacks of a similar nature are but postcards from the militant wing of political Islam, telling us about the joy ride they are on, and speaking of the turf they are claiming. This turf, the picture on the postcard suggests, is in the West. But the writing on the back of the postcard tells us otherwise. By terrorising the West, political Islam is declaring its authority over the lands back home, in the cities and deserts of the Middle East.
So let's flip these postcards around and pay attention to the writing on the back.
I would argue that the writing on the back of the postcard is not about the domination of the West, but of the East. Once this is accomplished, political Islam will have achieved its goals, and will have settled into a pattern that has the approval of the West, but evokes horror and indignation from most people in the East.
For 10 or 20 years, the West has been asking: "Why do they hate us?"
Here is the answer; they don't hate you, they want to be you, albeit in a twisted manner. Other nations have gone straight to imitating and outdoing the West, the Asians for example. But this brand of political Islam doesn't want to emulate immediately, it wants to draw the lines of battle first. Once it has gained as much ground as possible in its home turf, it will begin to emulate — in its own way and on its own terms. To elaborate, let me back up a little.
How long have we been living with political Islam? Some would say since the 1940s, when at least some of the liberation movements of the Muslim world acquired an Islamic flavour. But in fact, political Islam has been a recurring theme in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the good old Ottoman Empire that everyone loved doing business with.
Once the Ottoman Empire failed to conquer Vienna in 1683, it settled into a comfortable pattern of ageing, slowly but surely. When it finally died (after WWI), the Ottoman Empire was scavenged to the bone. And the resulting colonialist feeding frenzy (producing WWII) failed to totally digest its dismembered organs.
But for the duration of its life, the Ottoman Empire served a purpose. It was a responsible and predictable player on the global scene, and, in spite of condescension and occasional bullying, it took relatively good care of its various ethnic and religious components. None of this is true with today's political Islam, the gyrations and shiftiness of which boggles the minds of friends and foe alike.
In the West, there are two main reactions to political Islam. One favours war (costly and ultimately unpopular) and the other favours diplomacy (befriend the moderates and they'll take care of the extremists).
I'm not going to address the first reaction (war), seeing that even in the West it is becoming unfashionable, as the recent handling of Syria shows. Instead, I will discuss the second attitude (diplomacy), seeing that is turning into an article of faith in the West.
Western diplomacy, forever more sensible than well-informed, is poised to create a major rift in East-West politics. If the current attitude continues, the next global cultural clash is not going to be between the West and Islam. It is going to be between Western liberals (friendly to the Islamists) and Eastern liberals (unfriendly to the Islamists).
The recent rise — and perhaps only temporary fall — of Islamists in Egypt has shed some light on the nature of political Islam. But its intricacies and awkward layers of power are still opaque even to the most seasoned observers.
At the risk of over simplification, I like to think of political Islam as coming in three basic colours: green, red and black.
The black you all know, its flags having made recent appearances in various parts of North Africa, and now, disturbingly, in Cairo and Sinai. These flags are the avant-garde of political Islam. They are the trademark of Al-Qaeda. And scary and insane as they may seem, they are not the worst part of political Islam, only the ugliest.
The next colour of political Islam is green, the colour of money, and it has been hard at work for many years. I'm not talking about the charities and the Islamic centres that deserve some tolerance despite their occasional hardline affiliations. I'm talking about the banking sector and big business.
The Islamic banking sector is mostly a mirror image of its counterpart in the West — the only difference being Western banking relies mostly on interest rates and derivatives, while Islamic banking relies on speculation and derivatives masked as profit sharing. The financial backers of political Islam who inhabit the colour green are dying to do business with their capitalist peers, and already have extensive interests in the West. What they don't have is the political clout back home to match their expanding financial empire.
The third colour, white, symbolises the white-washing politics of the presumably moderate proponents of political Islam. The practice of politics by the Islamists, as the Egyptian experience shows, is underhanded in ways that are not yet fully understood. But what is clear so far is that Islamist politicians (white) cannot rule without the support of their overseas financial backers (green) and the implicit complicity of the underworld of terror (black).
The malleability of political Islam is truly breathtaking.
Once Egypt came up for grabs, the three colours of political Islam merged in ways no one could have foreseen. Suddenly, people who had inhabited separate realms of existence began operating on the same wavelength.
The moderates of the Muslim Brotherhood, the financiers of the Gulf, and the loose-footed terrorists of North Africa, with their friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan, (white, green and black respectively) gravitated to one another as if their lives depended on it.
For example, about a month or two before Mohamed Morsi was deposed, some people in the far-right wing of Egyptian Islamists called for the triumphant return to the country of Ayman Al-Zawahri. This was terrifying for many people who live in Egypt. But it went unnoticed by European diplomats, American officials, and a host of writers in the West. And I will tell you why: because the West is not afraid of political Islam.
What scares the West is unpredictability, not ideological content.
Imagine this: an international Muslim Brotherhood outfit (white) coordinating policy from Egypt to Turkey, with Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen toeing the line.
Imagine this: international Islamic businesses (green) financed by a growing Islamist banking industry hiring top Islamist scholars, such as Youssef Al-Qaradawi, to add theological gravitas to their otherwise mundane ventures.
Imagine this: a military outfit (black) that defends all of the above, comprising not only regular, potentially invincible armies, but also an invincible network of death-seeking operatives who sleep with a picture of Osama Bin Laden under their proverbial pillows.
None of this bothers the West, which can deal with any empire — however evil — if it plays by the rules. But what rules are those?
The West is hoping for political Islam to coalesce into a stable shape that can be negotiated with, and hopefully held responsible for its actions. It dreams of the Ottoman Empire all over again, where business as usual, with an occasional streak of hostility, can go hand in hand.
This is why ultimately political Islam is not a threat to the West, but to the East and all the secularists, intellectuals, women and minorities who live there.
The author is a freelance writer and author of Breakfast with the Infidels.
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