President Obama commented a few weeks ago that Muslims in America must do more to stop Muslim violence and many have suggested that the Muslim community has not been doing enough to stop it.(1 ) That struck me as very false, given my own contacts in the Muslim community. So I reached out to learn what is happening in the Muslim community.
All communities have their share of nut-jobs and criminals but that is no more true of Muslims than the rest of us. Several white self-styled Christian groups have been much more dangerous to Americans. Muslims point out that the much larger phenomenon of non-Muslim violence has not been treated as reason for shame by members of other religious groups.(2)
Muslims repeatedly point out that the ideology of ISIS, ISIL, DAESH or whatever we call it, is out of step with Islamic practice and preaching here and around the globe, un-Islamic and fundamentally heretical. There are always exceptions, but generally fighters are not being nurtured in the mosques. In fact ISIS recruits typically do not start with any strong Muslim or other religious faith – they are empty inside looking for a cause.(3)
Muslims warn that nationalism fuels violence. We talk about reaction to “boots on the /ground.” Muslim scholars make a broader point, here in Arun Kundnani’s words:
“We all know the ‘war on terrorism’ kills more civilians than terrorism does; but we tolerate this because it is ‘their’ civilians being killed in places we imagine to be far away. Yet colonial history teaches us that violence always ‘comes home’ in some form: … as refugees seeking sanctuary … the re-importing of authoritarian practices first practised in colonial settings, or indeed as terrorism. The same patterns repeat today in new forms.”(4)
Moreover we are confused about who the enemy is. There is considerable evidence that Saudi Arabia was behind the development of ISIS as an effective fighting force precisely to draw America into support of Middle Eastern dictatorships and to quash the Arab Spring. I think there are many factors that gave rise to ISIS and plenty of blame to go around, but they did quash the Arab Spring, whatever chance that awakening might have had, and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states did help bring ISIS into being.(5)
Muslim scholars and commentators argue that revolution and revolutionaries are spawned by failure to adhere to western ideals, support for authoritarian rulers, bombing by planes, drones and other military attacks that kill civilians and leave communities in shambles, and by trading arrangements that support slave labor in many parts of the globe.
As Chris Giannou, former chief surgeon for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the Alternative Radio audience, Muslims, Arabs, Asians, Africans “love [Americans] for your values. They hate you for your hypocrisy, because you do not live up to your values. The vast majority of the American public has absolutely no idea of what their government does in their names around the world.”(6)
Telling us what they think we want to hear is an occupational hazard of politicians – that’s how they get elected. But Americans need to see through self-congratulatory claims about how good America is and how bad everybody else is, and resist the call to solve every problem by killing ever more people. It’s not good for our security, our country or our the world. It is crucial to resist the urge to enlarge this conflict, crucial to keep it as small as possible. That’s the best way to put it out with the least damage.
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[1] See President Obama, Address to the Nation, December 6, 2015,https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/06/address-nation-president.
[2] http://www.salon.com/2015/12/09/my_daughter_is_not_tashfeen_malik/.
[3] See Murtaza Hussain, Why the Islamic State is Not Really Islamic, The Intercept, Sep. 26 2014, 12:38 p.m., https://theintercept.com/2014/09/26/isis-islamic/.
[4] Violence comes home: an interview with Arun Kundnani, OPENDEMOCRACY 22 November 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/arun-kundnani-opendemocracy/violence-comes-home-interview-with-arun-kundnain.
[5] See the remarks of Vice-president Joe Biden at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25aDP7io30U; Ron Paul, , Are We in a Clash of Civilizations? [RonPaulLibertyReport] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opYwBt9x64k&t=2m28s; Khaled Abou El Fadl, The End of the Arab Spring, the Rise of ISIS and the Future of Political Islam, ABC Religion and Ethics 23 Apr 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/04/23/4221874.htm.
[6] See Chris Giannou, Understanding the Middle East, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado 4 April 2014, Alternative Radio, http://www.alternativeradio.org/products/giac002.
Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.