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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
It seemed to me that what's different about Islamism is that there isn't a country really leading this fight. There's Osama bin Laden, but that's quite different from Hitler.
That's true and it's not true. Islamism did come to power in Iran in 1979, and the Islamic revolution in Iran was a real world force. Then Islamism came to power in the Sudan and Afghanistan, so for a while it was looking like it was advancing quite well. The Iranians are Shi'ite and the other countries are Sunni, so these are different denominations of Islam. But, still, this was a movement that until recently looked like it was advancing in a traditional way -- that is, capturing states.
What's happened with al-Qaida is a complicated situation in which Islamism as a political force capturing states is on the decline because the Taliban was defeated militarily. Also, we can see the beginnings of a liberal revolution hopefully taking root in Iran. Islamism in the Sudan fell. But in spite of that, al-Qaida represents an extremely powerful institution with multiple social bases and banks and charities and great intellectuals behind it, although it doesn't control a state anymore. Still, it's become obvious that al-Qaida's been supported or semi-supported by a variety of states and ruling elites.
And you see the same desire to rule the world in the way that Hitler or Stalin wanted to?
The desire is absolutely to rule the world. That's not a great secret. A great philosopher of Islamist radicalism, Sayyid Qutb, who was hanged by [Egyptian president] Nasser in 1966, said that all plainly. The goal of Islamism is to recreate what Muhammad did in the seventh century, which was to found an Islamic state and bring that state to the entire world. The goal of Islamism is not to resolve some particular social problem here or there, it's not to straighten out some border conflict between Israel and Palestine or between Pakistan and India or Chechnya and Russia, although those are genuine issues. The goal is absolutely grandiose and global.
Do you see that same goal in Baathism?
No. Baathism is a little more modest because Baathism is explicitly an Arab nationalism. So Baathism wants to recreate the Arab empire of the seventh century in some modern version but it's not quite so global and grandiose as Islamism. Also, Baathism is in a state of deep decay. It doesn't make Saddam Hussein any less scary because a state in deep decay can be extremely dangerous, but it's hard to imagine that Baathism has inspired enthusiastic idealism, although it used to.
But you did say in your book that after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, he captured the imagination of the Arab world.
When it looked like he was winning, he had a lot of support. That's probably the danger with him now. If he does get his weapons, if he got the atom bomb, if he was able to fend off the U.S. and Britain, he would certainly gain a lot of followers. It's just that the doctrine of a radical pan-Arabism has become a little tired. Islamism is more of a happening thing.
You argue that secularism is the most terrifying issue to the Islamists.
The Islamist doctrine is that Islam is the answer to the world's problems, but that Islam has been the victim of a giant cosmic conspiracy to destroy it, by Crusaders and Zionists. (Zionism in Qutb's doctrine is not a modern political movement, it's a cosmic doctrine extending over the centuries.) Islam is the victim of this conspiracy, which is also aided by false or hypocritical Muslims, who pretend to be Muslims but are actually the friends of Islam's enemies. From an Islamist point of view, then, the most heinous conspiracy of all is the one led by the Muslim hypocrites to annihilate Islam from within. These people are, above all, the Muslim liberals who want to establish a liberal society, which means separation of church and state.
The first and most grievous step toward the annihilation of Islam is taken by the Turks in 1924, when Kemal Ataturk created a secular Turkey and abolished the institutional remnants of the ancient Caliphate. This was a devastating blow and the whole goal of the Islamist movement has been to undo that.
What does it mean to Islamists to see Turkey as a Western ally?
From their point of view, to see the Turks line up with the U.S. now must be enraging. And the fact that Turkey is led by an Islamist party which appears to have become a liberal party in its principal instincts, this fact must be enraging beyond words.
Well, these passages in your book about anti-secularism in the Arab world really struck me. It seems that this whole neoconservative theory -- the democracy domino theory, arguing that if we bring down Saddam we're going to bring democracy to the entire Middle East -- is countered by the firm-rooted hatred of secularism. Why would we think anyone in the Muslim world would welcome democracy or this liberal secularism that you're talking about?
I don't think that that idea is so preposterous, necessarily. Bush is not proceeding in a way that instills any confidence in me that he's going to pull it off. But the notion of overthrowing Baathism -- a rival/cousin totalitarian movement of Islamism -- and being able to help the Iraqis replace it with some aspect of a liberal society would hearten liberals, people with rationalist ideas and the notion of liberal rights and separation of church and state, throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. If a liberal Iraq could be made a success, that would be hugely encouraging. Whether it could be a success is contingent on what a lot of people do. And I fear that the people who ought to be doing what they can for this are not. Bush is hugely at fault here.
