Islam and the West: Impact of Pope's comment

Pope's Blunder
By Husain Haqqani

Ummah (community of believers) has been humiliated by non-Muslims. With over one billion Muslims around the globe, the swelling of fundamentalist ranks poses serious problems for the major western powers. If only one percent of the world’s Muslims accept radical ideology and ten percent of that one percent decide to commit themselves to a militant agenda, we are looking at a one million strong recruitment pool for terrorism.

Islamist movements see each defeat and humiliation of fellow believers as an opportunity for mobilization and recruitment of dedicated followers. They argue that the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Mughal rule in India ended for the same reasons that the Muslims had been defeated by the Mongols at Baghdad in 1258. They had gone soft, they had embraced other cultures and their approach to religion had been one of tolerance and accommodation rather than one based on seeing the world as divided between Islam and un-Islam. Defeat at the hands of the Mongols caused an evolving tolerant culture to be abandoned in favor of obscurantism and the pattern has been repeated in the Muslim world with considerable regularity.

In the interaction with the west, especially since the end of the nineteenth century, Muslim have found themselves in the midst of successive defeats and repeated humiliation. Widely publicized pronouncements about Islam’s early history, coming from leaders such as the Pope, contribute to the sense of weakness of contemporary Muslims that plays straight into the hands of religious radicals. The Islamist movements, including those that have adopted terror as their principal method, see themselves as playing the role of Mujaddids or religious revivalists. Ironically, their tactics have only brought more western power to bear against them and fellow Muslims, adding to the Ummah’s humiliation. But that has not deterred ordinary believers from joining the ranks of such movements.

Islamists are now arguing that the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. occupation of Iraq should be seen as “opportunities” to purify Muslim souls and to prepare for an ideological battle with the west. And for them, this battle has no frontline and is not limited to a few years or even decades. They think in terms of conflict spread over generations. The militant interpretation of Islam has usually failed to penetrate the thinking of over-whelming numbers of Muslims, especially in recent times. But things could change if leading personalities in the west themselves provide the grist for Islamist propaganda mills by insulting Islam’s Prophet or by suggesting that Islam is inherently flawed and violent.

Winning Muslim hearts and minds, inviting Islam’s theologians to adopt new ideas of religious tolerance, and encouraging larger numbers of the world’s Muslims to embrace modernity without seeing it as a threat to their faith are important elements in any strategy to combat the extremist streak.

Muslims have been suspicious of Christian intentions since the days of the medieval Crusades. Western motives in the Middle East have been consistently questioned since Lawrence of Arabia led the Arab rebellion against the Turkish Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Muslims see the west as bent upon dividing the Ummah and diluting its religious identity. Myriad conspiracy theories rather than hard evidence educate Muslim public opinion, making it difficult for homegrown reformists to influence the direction of their societies.

Under such circumstances, the world cannot afford comments by the Pope and other religious leaders that provide grounds for renewed religious extremist frenzy in the world of Islam.

Husain Haqqani is Director of Boston University’s Center for international Relations and Co-Chair of the Hudson Institute’s Project on Islam and Democracy. He is the author of the book "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military."