The Daily Clarity

Obama and the Muslim world – arrogance and strategic errors

There is a certain naivety, almost a bluntness of intellect, when it comes to US foreign policy as it relates to  Muslim nations. Evidence for  the US misunderstanding of the challenges that confront it in the world of international diplomacy, can be seen by terming Obama’s upcoming speech in Cairo as an address to the ‘Muslim World’. That is akin to saying Obama is giving a speech to Christianity. It is a lazy misuse of  linguistic contraction.  The people of Islam, not the  ‘Muslim World’, are a complex international, ethnic and tribal coalition identified under a belief set, not a monolithic singular concept. The language  of a ‘Muslim World‘ is shorthand, at best,  a lazy intellectualism, at worst, an enabler of a many recent American strategic errors  in international diplomacy.

The ‘Muslim world’, exists only as a hazy concept, in actuality it  is a complex composite.  It is a nominal empire that  includes Shia, Sunni, Sufi, Wahhabi, nationalist, secularist, globalist, African, Asian, Arab, Semite, Pashtun, Jihadist and more. There is no one message that can resonate with such a diverse audience that has widely disparate, and often conflicting agendas. It is also contradictory to plan to address the ‘Muslim World’ while at the same time pursuing an isolationist policy against a Shiite powerhouse in Iran, popular and important  nationalist groups such as  Hamas and Hezbollah, and with a country practically rolling out the carpet for US rapprochement as is Syria. The concept of a ‘Muslim World’ absent several of its major players is moot.

The West doesn’t understand the plurality of interest nor the sheer variety of the Islamist agenda. There is a widely accepted, but seriously flawed, Western ideal that a utilitarian one-size-fits-all message will suddenly cause the Muslim nations, at a collective level,  to reexamine themselves, and plot a path to religious plurality, secular governance, and modernism. This is naive, and does nothing to benefit any meaningful improvement in the dialog that the US can enjoy. Even such once credible sources as Newsweek are peddling the fallacy of a single audience for Obama’s words.

Now comes the ultimate test of autobiographical speechmaking. Obama this week speaks at Cairo University, in the hub of Muslim-Arab culture. Perhaps the results will be Philly II: a skillful blend of grandeur and grit. On one level, he isn’t risking much. After all, George W. Bush set the bar so low. All Obama has to do to be a success is elicit applause—rather than a fusillade of hurled shoes.

But he has privately told friends that his goal is far higher: nothing less than to help “reconcile Islam and modernity.” He will pay homage to the Golden Age of that culture—its glorious achievements in mathematics, science, literature and diplomacy—and note that Muslim scholars rescued from oblivion the Greek and Roman (i.e., the “Western”) canon.

Fineman: Handicapping Obama’s Egypt Speech | Newsweek Voices – Howard Fineman | Newsweek.com

There are a variety of audiences in this ‘Muslim World’ that Obama can relatively easily reconcile, or at least engage in a meaningful way. There are sovereign states that can be enticed into diplomatic dialog – Syria and Iran are examples in this category. There are nationalist movements that have strict geographical areas of interest, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that can be induced to negotiation by resolving territorial matters. There are others that will respond to monetary inducement such as the Iraq Sunni insurgents, the vast majority of the Taliban, and some, if not many, in Somalia. The parties now ostracized can be reengaged and brought into important dialog about how these nations can assist in world security. That is an achievable objective should Obama opt to pursue it.

Delaying engagement with parties that have terrorist roots does not serve the US national interest in the longer term, as shown again and again by history. The US will have to engage, at some point, with Hamas to orchestrate any possible Palestinian solution. The US will have to dialog with Hezbollah after the upcoming election in Lebanon, if it wants to have any meaningful regional influence. The US can use its wealth, influence, and cultural appeal to demilitarize the more moderate of what the West broadly terms the Taliban and the Pashtun nationalists. All of this is easily achievable; it just requires a better understanding of the regional dynamics, and a  change in the use of language,  combined with departing from the Bush-era Crusade mentality. Obama can speak to multiple Muslim audiences, only if he shows a willingness to move towards understanding and a subsequent accommodation of multiple interests in the diplomatic arena.

However, when it comes to the Jihadists, including Al Qaeda, there is nothing that the US can give them that will be of interest.  Obama’s words here will fall on infertile soil. The Jihadist agenda and desires  are poorly articulated, not of the physical world,  and in  real terms,  not practically attainable.  These groups have no national agendas, in fact they denounce borders and seek a long-lost global caliphate, as Reza Aslan terms it, an ‘anti-globalist global movement’. What the Jihadists want is not achievable, and there can be no accommodation or reconciliation with a party you cannot even negotiate with.  There is no reconciliation as there is no  ground that can be traded with  an agenda that is an historical ideal, not an achievable actuality. It would be akin to accommodating the Luddites, where technology is out of the bag and there is no way to put it back. Despite  the Jihadist worldview, nationalism, secularism and plurality exist, and cannot vanish into obscurity.

Al Qaeda also cannot in  practical terms be contained;  their influence is trans-national,  and increasingly fermenting into permanence in Europe and Africa.  A recent report, one of several to reach the same conclusion, indicates that the recruits for the Jihadists are not the poor and dispossessed. It is not economic pressure, national interests, or even religiosity in any real sense that creates a Jihadist.  Jihadists are the educated in search of a naive idealist paradigm, that is a concept, not a physicality. If one studies the research sources (beyond the thin generalisms of the mainstream media) one can find evidence of the trans-national spread and education of the Jihad recruits. Evidence of such data is  recorded in the Sinjar Records (captured Al Qaeda documents maintained in the Defense Department’s data base). The global Jihadists entering Iraq as analysed by Clint Watts are but one example of data that leads one to the same conclusion:

Most fighters in the Sinjar Records did not indicate their profession, but 157 of the 606 did. Of those that did, 42.6% (67) were students. The remainder varied widely. Five teachers were recorded, as well as three doctors, and four engineers. The remaining responses varied widely, from the useful (military: 5) to the bizarre (massage therapist: 1)

Student includes high school and university, secondary school, and includes religious schools. Teacher includes high school, university, and religious schools. Military includes veterans. Professional includes businessman, NGO, lawyers, and engineers. Administrative includes clerks, judges assistants, and doctor’s assistant. Business includes business merchant and weapons merchant. Other includes free jobs, employee, artist, painter, fitness trainer, massage therapist, bombmaker, and farmer. Skilled worker includes carpenter, electrician, furniture maker, and welder. Unskilled worker includes guard and driver;Laborer  includes work, work in a factory.

Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records

Al Qaeda plays to an idealism in a sector of the Islamist diaspora, particularly in Europe. Jihad recruiters achieve their objective by agitating around a vague concept of an idealized caliphate.  They desire, but cannot,  replace the  global march of capitalism, plurality, and secularism. The fact that this is a still-born dream in our modern age does not detract from the passion of the idealists. This fire of misplaced and malformed religiosity is twisted into violent opposition and placed in the belly of the muhadjeen fighters, and sadly into the existential belief set of  the suicide bomber volunteers.

Obama is an orator of  quality, a thinker of note,  capable of allegorical imagery that inspires. However, no unclenching of the fist is required for much of the Muslim world. Taking examples of Turkey and Jordan, their palms are already extended to receive gifts, and to pull up a seat at the global power tables. Certainly pluralism and secularism could be pursued in places such as  Egypt,  to stop persecution of Coptic Christians and to offer more freedom to any voices of opposition to the current regime. Certainly the unclenched fist should replace the whip and blade of Wahhabi extremism in Saudi Arabia, but that change will be brought in time  by engagement,  not threat or rhetoric. Hamas and Hezbollah can be brought into the globalist big tent, and will be in the future  as diplomatic rapprochement occurs organically.  This process always happens, such as when the once illegal  now ruling party of  Turkey, the  Justice and Development Party, was moderated into democratic governance. Years ago this party was deemed illegal terrorist pariahs, but now they are neighbors and friends. Once terrorists,  they are now quite possibly to join the European Union,  and serve as the semi-official bridge between East and West. The model of reengagement, governance, and resultant moderation of extreme agendas  are evidenced over and over in world history.

This process of mutual engagement is inevitable, Obama can speed it along, but it will happen regardless in time. However, in relation to the Jihadists the approach must be vastly different. They must be contained militarily as much as practical, engaged when identified,  and made irrelevant to the dialog  by changing the language and agenda of Western interaction with this nebulous ‘Muslim World’.  Obama could do well to bear all of this complexity in  mind as he delivers the much-hyped monumental speech to an entity that exists only as a concept. A ‘World’ of western perception that includes  different languages, continents, ethnicities, nations, interests, agendas, customs,  and factions. The ‘Muslim World‘ wants different things based on their specific factional or national interests,  and the Jihadists want what no one has the earthly power to grant them. If Obama understands this,  then he will have the keys to effective engagement with the people of Islamic faith. However,  if he uses a lazy conceptualism of the ‘Muslim World’ as his language of approach, he may well miss the point his words portend, and more importantly, so might they.