War on Terrorism

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Moderate 'Made in America'?
No, I won't be a 'moderate'

The hegemonisation of the 'War on Terror' discourse and President Bush's 'Crusade' for Democracy is predicated on realist assumptions that there are, after all, limits to American power. With Iraq and Afghanistan unravelling on a daily basis, it is clear US expansionism cannot succeed without the help of other stooges and surrogates, ideally Muslim ones. Therefore, efforts are being made to enlist 'moderate' Muslims who would lend a hand in attempting to fabricate a new Islam - Washington's latest folly - to fit with the neoconservative style of democracy.

A key player in this long term battle for worldwide hegemony is the lobby of think tanks in the US. For decades, think tanks and research centres have been grappling with the question of 'political Islam', which they consider the real challenge to the superpower on the global stage. Groups like the RAND corporation, Ford Foundation, Asia Foundation and others have been investing heavily in projects to carry the American message further afield.

'Political Islam' is the pejorative construct to detach from and deny Islam its holistic and legitimate social and political role and demonise at the same time those who still tried to assert that role.

At the peak of the cold war the Asia Foundation laid the foundations for the intellectual consensus that became the norm in many third world countries allied to the western bloc. In Indonesia during the term of President Suharto, many of these centres and foundations played an active role in promoting ideas like birth control (which was targeted on Muslim countries in particular) but did little to curb the violent excesses of pro-US dictators like Suharto of Indonesia and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.

Today it is the RAND Corporation that seems to be taking the lead in the battle to woo hearts and minds of Muslims. Its latest goal is to create and develop a brand of 'moderate Islam' that is neutered, domesticated and pliable to US interest.

Reading its recent report, Civil and Democratic Islam by Cheryl Benard, I felt as if I had fallen into time warp and had been transported back to the 19th century when Orientalist scholarship was at its peak. Then Orientalists and policy makers like Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) were working hand in glove with the western colonial governments, formulating strategies on how to divide and rule the Muslim world.

That the RAND report is meant to serve the needs and aspirations of US power is clear when one examines its contents. Conceived within the RAND National Security Research Division and commissioned by the Smith Richardson Foundation, this is no mere work of a poor post-graduate researcher trying to earn money to pay off his car loan. RAND's intimate links with US power is well known. It has also worked closely with the US army, as its RAND Air Force Project testifies.

The author Cheryl Benard divides the global Muslim community according to a revealing typology, or 'Islamic' categories, ranging from 'Fundamentalists' and 'Traditionalists' to 'Modernists' and 'Secularists'. She proposes a number of crude strategies to get the fundamentalists and traditionalists to slog it out against one another, while keeping the modernists at bay and the secularists close at hand. Interestingly, the report states that 'moderate' Muslims should be kept apart from 'left-wingers' and anti-globalisation activists who are opposed to US economic, military and political interests.

The overall aim, as the report Civil Democratic Islam puts it, is to 'find strategic partners' in the Muslim world to help in the promotion of 'democratic Islam', which the author hopes will be the antidote to the problem of 'militant Islam' (or, as the term is increasingly used today, 'Jihadism').

Those who are familiar with the language and discourse of the colonial powers in the 19th century should be familiar with the imperial semantics at work here. Then, as now, crude typologies such as the one being proposed here served the purpose of instrumental fictions that laid the foundations for concrete policies that were in turn applied with vigour.

It led to the colonial powers actively seeking compradore agents and clients among the subjugated Muslim masses who could be co-opted into their grand strategies, and then made to play the dubious role of cultural go-betweens and contact points between the colonial masters and their subjects. It gave a 'Muslim face' to what was really western colonial power imposed by violence and force of arms, (For a contemporary example of this sort of nefarious shadow politics at work, one only has to look at Iraq and Afghanistan.)

The author recommends a 'mixed approach' in providing 'specific types of support to those (Muslim actors or groups) who can influence the outcome in desirable ways'. Just what the 'desirable outcome' it becomes clear when the report talks about the need to pacify anti-American elements and currents in the Muslim world that threaten US hegemony and its global projection of power and force.

As expected, it offers the usual lip service and platitudes to the thorny question of the underlying causes of seemingly irrational Muslim 'anger' and not their sense of being aggressed against. Yet a close reading of the report reveals that the question of the root causes of terror is hardly addressed, any more than the role of the US and its foreign policy - most notably its blind, illegal and unjust support of Israel - in complicating matters and fuelling unrest and rebellion in the Muslim world.

Instead, the report talks about how US policy should be aimed at promoting 'moderate Islamic' currents and ideas and how moderate Muslims should be helped in their struggle to promote democracy in their respective societies.

It does not feel shy calling for direct aid, moral support and assistance to be given to these 'moderate groups'. Its fatal assumption is that such groups would jump a the chance of getting a US pay cheque and subsequently bend over backwards to do whatever their sponsors ask them to do.

Here lies the crux of the problem. While there is nothing wrong with being a 'moderate' - a Muslim is a moderate per se, one could argue that the 'moderate Islam' a la America cannot be cloned or fabricated in the political laboratories of US think tanks and policy institutes. Nor should the US or its allies be so cavalier in their issuance of 'fatwas' as to which state of government is 'moderate' and which is not, according to its own jaundiced criteria.

Thus far three Muslim states have received the much-coveted honour of being 'moderate' Islamic states: Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Yet in all three cases it is clear that the classification of 'moderate' has more to do with the needs of US foreign policy than any real commitment to moderate Islam on Islamic terms.

How, pray tell, can Pakistan be seen to be a moderate Islamic state when it remains fundamentally allied to US strategic goals and when harassment of Islamic opposition parties and peoples has become so routine?

How can Malaysia be seen to be a moderate Muslim state when repressive laws are in place, such as the Internal Security Act, that allow for detention without trial?

The most baffling of all is the classification of Indonesia as a moderate Muslim state, when its generals back in power and military hardliners like Gen. Hendropriyono - accused of the slaughter of hundreds in South Sumatra - has been appointed the head of the country's anti-terror unit.

'Moderate Islam' is very much there in the corpus of Islamic texts and thought and Islamic norms and praxis. It has, in other words, to be left to play its 'moderate' role within the natural and normal dynamics of Islamic society itself, on its own terms and at its own pace.

Yet the Muslim world today cannot, and has not be allowed, even to breathe freely and develop without constant interference and meddling in its sovereign affairs by short-sighted imperialistic powers. And these alien powers are bent on securing unfair advantage over the life and resources of the world, the Muslim world in particular, and gas, or other military-strategic interests.

A 'moderate Islam' that is Islamic shall remain rooted in the fundamentals of Islamic authenticity and the eternal values of Islam's universal worldview, not the short term demands of US oil companies, conglomerates and think tanks. Central to this is the struggle for universal justice and equity, which is at the heart of the Islamic message.

How can such a genuinely moderate Islam rest side by side with US unilateral militarism that seeks only to maintain and expand its sphere of power and interests by creating and maintaining inequality the world over? Expecting 'moderate Islam' to remain silent over US imperialism is as naïve as expecting communism to justify capitalism!

Taken in this context, the RAND report reads as clumsy, almost farcical document that attempts social engineering at its crudest. No Muslim academic, intellectual or activist worth his or her salt would want to be stained by the Midas touch of such a report, or the contaminating feelers of Washington and its neocon coterie.

For most Muslim being a 'moderate Muslim' means, first and foremost, being committed to the values of freedom and justice, popular will and public accountability the world over, and opposed to the unilateral militarism and any hegemony or world dictatorship. Contrary to what Cheryl Benard may think, genuine moderate Muslims are the last people she and the US can turn to for support and patronage.