Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2000

CIAO DATE: 05/02

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Volume 1, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2000

Rethinking U.S. Foreign Policy and Islam after Kosovo
by John Esposito & Vali R. Nasr

Islam has been the single most persistent foreign policy concern of the United States for the past two decades. No other issue has preoccupied American foreign policymakers during this period for as long, nor evoked as consistent a response. This response shows the influence of entrenched attitudes and civilizational posturing in what has developed as an “informal policy” aimed at containing Islam. The official position in Washington, however, embodies more flexibility, espousing no hostility toward Islam in particular, only concern with Islamism or political Islam (commonly referred to as Islamic fundamentalism).

In the aftermath of recent events in Kosovo, it is time to redefine American policy on Islam, reevaluate its basic assumptions, assess its validity and usefulness, and consider the possibility of new approaches. Kosovo was a European crisis which elicited first a humanitarian and ultimately a strategic response from the United States. Religion at the outset was not a decisive factor. Still, insofar as Kosovo emerged as a unique case of U.S. support for a Muslim population against an avowed Christian state and led to an alliance with a Muslim guerilla army, it is something of a watershed event. The breakthrough in Kosovo also came about at the tail–end of major changes in the international and domestic politics of Muslim societies over the course of the preceding decade. Policymakers are challenged to respond to those changes in order to bring American foreign policy in line with the reality of Islam’s place in domeste, regional and international politics Given the importance of Islam to international affairs and the sheer number of Muslims who live in areas that affect Western and U.S. interests, rethinking America’s foreign policy on Islam may be a welcome development.

The current policy was first developed during the Bush administration in a 1992 statement by then Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and North African Affairs, Edward Djerejian. The spirit of the statement was reiterated and expanded upon by his successor, Robert Pelletreau, during the Clinton Administration. Djerejian emphasized that the United States did not regard Islam or Islamic movements as the enemy. It recognized the right of movements to participate in the political process, provided that they do not use democratic elections to seize power–that is, come to power motivated by the belief in “one man, one vote, one time.” Pelletreau observed that the “image of Islam in the minds of the average newspaper reader is often one of an undifferentiated movement hostile to the West and ready to use violence and terrorism to achieve its ends.”

Pelletreau distinguished the many “legitimate, socially responsible Muslim groups with political goals from Islamists who operate outside the bounds of law.” The latter “are properly called extremists,” and like other extremists they “can be secular or religious.” Pelletreau acknowledged that some Islamic groups participate within their countries’ systems and others use violence against existing governments and their citizens. Like Djerejian, he noted: “We’re suspicious of those who would use the democratic process to come to power only to destroy that process in order to retain power and political dominance.”

Djerejian’s 1992 statement and subsequent policy statements by American foreign–policy makers suggest that the contours of American policy are changing, becoming more nuanced as they make the distinction between Islam and Islamism, moderates and radicals. U.S. policy itself, however, in contrast to policy statements, seldom has shown the kind of nuance and discernment that it claims. For example, since 1992 the United States has not identified a moderate Islamist force deserving of participation in the political process and has not defended the right of parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Hizb al–Wasat (Party of the Middle) in Egypt to participate in elections. And the United States has not approved a visa for Tunisian Islamist Leader Rachid Ghanouchi, whose views on Islam and democracy fit the Djerejian and Pelletreau criteria, and whom Pelletreau identified as an acceptable Islamist.

The Long Shadow of Iran. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Islamic radicalism has been a persistent problem for American foreign policy. A long line of hard–hitting anti–Western ideologues and militant activists, from Ayatollah Khomeini to Osama Bin Laden, and from Hizbollah to Islamic Jihad, have clearly demonstrated the nature and scope of the Islamist challenge to American interests. In the process, they have seemed to formalize a single “Islamic” policy toward the United States. Responses to such activists reflect a circling of the wagons in the West–the intellectual culmination of which is Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis and his assertion that “Islam has bloody borders.” Huntington’s approach soon found a foreign policy corollary, which the historian Ali Mazrui characterized as the “Islamization of American foreign policy.” Mazrui maintains that postulating a “West versus the rest” attitude toward Islam and Islamism greatly resembles the old Muslim division of the world into the Abode of Islam (Dar al–Islam) versus the Abode of the Unbeliever (Dar al–Harb).

This approach reached its apogee during the early part of the Reagan administration. Reeling from the wave of anti–American attacks, in particular the slaughter of Marines in a suicide bombing in Lebanon, an “us versus them” approach became politically effective. The new enemy, Islamic fundamentalism, was now placed alongside the dominant Cold War foreign policy paradigm of the “Evil Empire.” This position was reiterated during the Bush administration by Vice President Dan Quayle, as well as the media and a host of political analysts, who equated Islamic fundamentalism with earlier threats of nazism and communism.

The clarity of this binary vision in the face of what appeared to be a direct and concerted challenge did not always compensate for its costs. The American position was premised on accepting all of the claims of Islamist radicals at face value. Radical Islamism claimed to speak for Islam and to postulate a single Muslim and Islamic position on the West. The United States proved willing to endorse these positions as constituting the “Islamic” position. This was especially the case during Ayatollah Khomeini’s reign in Iran. The West anointed him as the sole spokesman for Islam, reflected in the New York Times headline during the Rushdie affair: “Islam led by Khomeini.”

Regarding Islam through the Iran–Khomeini prism has led many to reduce all expressions of Islam to the threat of Iranian–style fundamentalism. Whether in Sunni states like Egypt or Algeria, Islamist opposition was equated with the desire to promote Iranian–style revolutions and governments. Algeria found pundits warning that Abbasi Madani might be another Khomeini; Sudan’s Hasan Turabi was called the “Ayatollah of Africa.” Thus, often unwittingly, policymakers and Western media directly contributed to the dominant perception of a monolithic radical Islamism and in the process supported the claims of the radical few to speak for the majority of the Muslim population.

Radical Islamists were not, however, the only beneficiaries of the emerging American reaction to radicalism. Authoritarian rulers across the Muslim world quickly learned that real or fictional threats from Islamists translated into American support and aid, reduction of pressure for democratization, and greater latitude in human rights violations. Ironically, this occurred at a time when U.S. policy on support for authoritarianism was undergoing radical change as it pursued democratization in Latin America and East Asia. Since many Muslim dictators had already squeezed the United States for aid and support by using the bogey of communism in the 1970s, they were well acquainted with the ways in which Washington could be manipulated. From Algeria to Egypt, Turkey, the West Bank, Gaza, and Uzbekistan, claims of an impending Islamic threat have been used to justify violation of human rights, suspension of civil liberties and civil disorder, and to further legitimate and entrench dictatorship. More often than not, as during Tunisian and Egyptian elections, democratic forces rather than Islamists alone have been the target of the ruling regimes.

In Algeria, where the United States and France were all too quick to support a brutal military regime, the knee–jerk reaction to the Islamist threat proved catastrophic for the country, perhaps dooming its prospects for stability and development for a whole generation. Some Muslim leaders, such as Kings Hussein of Jordan and Hasan of Morocco concluded that the cost of rejectionism was too high, and that in Algeria the usefulness of the black–and–white vision had reached its limits. Even President Abdelaziz Boutaflika in Algeria seems to have drawn the same conclusion, as he has endorsed some degree of participation for Islamist forces. Still, the shadow of Algeria looms long. Turkey seems determined to traverse the same course, although at a more deliberate pace.

Ironically, it was also in Algeria that Islamism witnessed the limits of uncompromising assault against the secular state. In the words of Rachid Ghanouchi, a Tunisian Islamist, Algerian Islamist conclusions–that secular regimes, as in Iran will fall to a resolute call to Islamism–were wrong. Thus, in many countries–Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, and even Algeria–Islamists were willing to participate in the system. Although the inclusion of Islamists is not free from contention and risk, it requires a much more sophisticated understanding of and approach to Islamism in the West. Inclusion will, per force, make Islamism a more complex phenomenon, one whose fate and fortune will be determined in diverse local arenas. While there are Islamist movements that are likely to disrupt the political process, there are also those that may follow the example of Eurocommunism, provided that, as in Europe, sociopolitical conditions that support ideological politics and give radical forces the upper hand are removed, and institutions that support pluralism are strengthened.

Including Islamism in the political process only becomes a challenge when political institutions are too weak to contain illegitimate challenges to state authority and security. Yet such institutions are weak because of the abuse of power by dictatorial regimes, which often receive support from Washington. Hence, American policy is caught in a “Catch 22” situation. It supports dictators in order to contain Islamists. Those dictators, in turn, guarantee that Muslim polities remain institutionally weak, thus making Islamism a perpetual challenge. The problem facing Muslim societies is not Islamism, but dictatorship. The solution for Washington should not be more dictatorship, but strengthening institution–building and civil society. The United States followed this course in Europe, leading to the inclusion of Eurocommunist parties in the political process.

American policy on Islam has been in large measure influenced by the most strident Islamist rhetoric rather than by more mainstream voices. It has also been unduly affected by the vested interests of Muslim dictators rather than being directed first and foremost at discerning, and then promoting, those factors that foster and sustain viable stability. In the long run, this is a better protection for American interests and those of the U.S. regional allies, most notably, Israel.

Rethinking U.S. Policy. In rethinking foreign policy, it is important to look more broadly beyond the Middle East, which has dominated Washington’s thinking about Islam and Islamism. It is instructive to look at Islam’s political role in Southeast Asia and at its role in the Afghan war. The United States has long enjoyed close relations with Southeast Asia’s most Islam–oriented state leaders. The extent of this rapport became clear when B.J. Habibie took over Indonesia and Anwar Ibrahim fell victim to the autocratic tendencies of Mahathir Mohammad in Malaysia.

Habibie was much maligned for his efforts to “Islamize” the Suharto regime by combining economic nationalism and Islamic reformism, and was feared by the Christian minority in Indonesia and its allies in the West. Whatever his failings, he oversaw the movement to elections and the referendum on East Timor. As witnessed in national and presidential elections in 1999, a democratic future for Indonesia is in fact impossible without some form of inclusion of Islam in the political process. The election of Abdurrahman Wahid as President, Megawati Sukarnuputri as Vice President, and Amien Rais as Speaker of Parliament is reflective of this trend toward a more open political system in which Islam plays a participatory role. Wahid and Rais have had a long association with Indonesia’s two largest Islamic social and educational organizations. Wahid is the leader of the Nahdatul Ulama (The Renaissance of Religious Scholars) and Rais is the former head of the Muhammadiya. The rise of these leaders belies the Islam–versus–democracy conception that is prevalent in the West. U.S. interests in Indonesia are better served by continuing to support forces of change– including Islamic movements–rather than relying on violent, albeit secular, factions in the Indonesian military.

Similarly, the United States and the IMF openly supported the former Islamist leader in Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, in the face of the increasingly anti–Western rhetoric and rejectionist policies of Mahathir Mohammad. Anwar fell from power not because he was too Islamic or too anti–Western, but because he was too pro–Western. Anwar Ibrahim proved to have been far more modern, and indeed post–modern than Mahathir, whose anti–IMF rhetoric and jabs at George Soros and a so–called international Jewish conspiracy against Malaysia fueled the fecund imagination of radical anti–Western forces across the Muslim world.

In Southeast Asia, secular nationalist leaders and institutions, from Prime Minister Mahathir to the Indonesian military, have proven to be the most troublesome and unruly parts of the equation. As these examples show, Southeast Asia is different from the Middle East; thus, one Islam policy does not fit all. The United States may gain more in the Middle East by displaying the kind of flexibility that it has unintentionally shown in Southeast Asia.

Afghanistan is the other notable case. Since 1989 the United States has sought to distance itself from the Afghan Jihad. Attention has been focused on the unintended consequences of the war–namely, Ahmed Ramzi Yusuf, Osama Bin Laden, and some 25,000 activists from across the Muslim world who fought in Afghanistan, some of whom are at the forefront of anti–regime activism in their own countries. Whatever the cost of the Afghan Jihad is for the United States today, it is difficult to deny the fact that Islamism–and indeed militant and radical Islamism–contributed directly to ending the most significant foreign policy concern of the United States since WW II: the Cold War. Afghanistan should have elicited new approaches to contending with Islamism and the role of Islam in politics from American foreign policymakers. Instead, the United States was all too eager to wash its hands of the entire experience, which in part explains why one–time allies so quickly became intractable enemies. While it was not a mistake for the United States to support the Afghan Jihad, it was undoubtedly short–sighted to walk away from Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1989 and to continue the “West versus the rest” posture in policymaking with regard to Islam.

Taking stock of the Afghan experience is important, for it may be of relevance in India, Russia, and China–the three powers that are forming an anti–U.S. global axis in the aftermath of Kosovo–in the years to come. Kashmiri, Chechen and Daghestani separatists have already seen much benefit in the Afghan model and have fashioned their struggles as Jihads–characterizations that Indians, Russians, and the Western media have proved all too eager to endorse. It is important not to be blindsided by reducing the Kashmiri, Chechen, and Daghestani conflicts to Islamic militancy. In the years to come, these may be repeated more ubiquitously in India, in other Russian Turkic republics, and among the Kyghurs of Western China. As the proceedings of the recent Chinese–Russian Kyrgiz Summit show, these two states are quite concerned about unrest among their Muslim populations and are eager to characterize their problems in terms that elicit sympathy for Moscow and Beijing in Washington; namely, as terrorist Islam. Should the United States see this unrest in terms that the Indians, Russians, and Chinese would prefer? Or will Washington look to these Muslim minorities as potential allies in the larger struggles of domination between the United States, India, Russia, and China that will define geopolitics in the new century? In each of these great powers, the Muslim minority question within their borders and a potential conflict with Muslim populations in adjoining states will be significant to their global position. It is also important to note that the Indian–Chinese–Russian axis forms an arc abutting the heartland of the Muslim world, which makes the latter geostrategically significant to the United States.

Samuel Huntington may have been wrong in assuming the inevitability of an Islamic–Confucian alliance against the West. The future may witness many a Western–Islamic alliance against Confucian and Hindu coalitions in Asia or a Slavic–Orthodox bloc in Europe. Bosnia, and more so Kosovo, may have already provided a preview of the shape of the alliances to come. During the past five years, while the United States has continued to posture against Islamism in Muslim lands in Europe, it has found itself unwittingly in alliance with Muslims, whom it has defended in order to maintain its influence in Europe and expand its power westward at the expense of Russia.

Insofar as there has been a civilizational conflict in Europe, it has not been between Islam and the West. Rather, it occurred first between Catholicism (in Croatia) and Serbian Orthodoxy, and now more generally between the Western alliance (the United States and Western Europe) and the cultural–civilizational resistance of the Moscow–Belgrade axis that also commands support among Eastern Orthodox populations in Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. The main animus behind geostrategic changes in Central and Southern Europe is not a reenactment of the battles of the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, but the opening of the fourth–century rift between the Eastern and Western church. There are those who see reflections of Afghanistan in Bosnia and especially in Kosovo. The Serbian propaganda machine, and some like California State Senator Tom Hayden, who parroted its message, chastised the United States for bombing Christians to defend Muslims in Kosovo. Hayden charged that the KLA was “beholden to the doctrines of Osama Bin Laden.” The fact remains that the United States did save Muslims from extinction in Eastern Europe. The United States was the only Western power that accepted Bosnian and Albanian claims to be Europeans and to have a right to exist in Europe. Herein lies the difference with Afghanistan. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the United States’ role was not surreptitious, and as a result the links that it forged are not as tenuous.

Kosovo also offers another valuable perspective. The United States and Albania crossed civilizational lines to forge an alliance, designed to guarantee the existence of Muslims in Eastern Europe. In the case of Kosovo, it was not Muslims who were guided by civilizational fidelities, as Huntington would have suggested, nor was the civilizational conflict between Islam and the West. Muslim countries did not raise the banner of Islam to come to the aid of the Kosovars. In fact, Slobodan Milosevic, initially at least, received far more public statements of support in Muslim capitals (especially in Baghdad and Tripoli) than did the KLA.

Even Iran, the flag–bearer of Islamist causes, shied away from openly supporting the Kosovars. In fact, Iran has more often than not supported Christian ruling orders in confrontations with separatist Muslim forces. Iran was among the last Muslim countries to support the independence of Azerbaijan and Central Asian states, preferring instead to support Gorbachev’s vision for the future of the Soviet Union. More recently, Iran has alternately supported the Russian position on Chechnya and Daghestan or has remained quiet in the face of Russian atrocities. During the recent Russian–Chechen conflict in the fall of 1999, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi assured Russia of Iran’s full support and cooperation in Russia’s campaign to reign in Chechnya. Iran has also supported Armenians against its fellow Azeri Shias in the Nagorno–Karabagh conflict, proving that the Islamic Republic of Iran is primarily motivated by national interests, not civilizational allegiances.

Surprisingly, this pursuit of state interests has not raised as many eyebrows among Muslim populations as one might expect. The levels of private aid for Kosovar refugees in Muslim countries lagged behind those provided by Europeans and Americans. Kosovo at all times remained a European humanitarian tragedy, not an Islamic one. The experience of Kosovo demonstrates that it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions about Muslim political attitudes solely in terms of civilizational allegiances. The West is often guided by the myth of what Muslim attitudes are rather than by their reality.

Recent developments in East Timor further underscore this point. Muslims have shown far less concern for the secessionism in the most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, than expected. In contrast, Catholicism has displayed far more civilizational posturing in its support for East Timorese, whose cause, advocated since 1975 through a broad–based international network, stretches from the Vatican to the U.S. House of Representatives to Catholic colleges and universities in the United States. Far more bishops have been involved in East Timor’s quest for independence, both in East Timor and abroad, than mullas were involved in Kosovo. In Kosovo, it was rather the Slavs that were guided by a civilizational vision, inspired by Slav myths and an ambition for a pan–Orthodox (Serbian, Greek, and Russian) arc stretching from Athens to Moscow via Belgrade.

Kosovo is a foreign policy breakthrough. At the conceptual level, it belies many of the assumptions that have undergirded the “Islam versus the West” foreign policy conception dominant in Washington since 1979. At the practical level, it underscores the fact that Islamism and the relation between Muslims and the West is too complex to be satisfactorily managed by the deterministic directives of that binary vision of the world.

The Sectarian Dimension of Islamism. In thinking about America’s Islam policy in years to come, it is important to take stock of and revise some of the assumptions that frame that policy. Containment of Islamism meant, at first and then for a long time, containing Shi’ism. The Islamic threat was, at the outset, a Shi’i threat. Iran for long posed the greatest single threat to the United States and continues to be singled out by Israel for its support of Hizbollah and Hamas. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres called Tehran “the capital of terrorism” in Sharm al–Shaykh when the group responsible for Tel Aviv bombings had an office in Damascus. Similarly, in Lebanon the Shi’i Hizbollah forced both the United States and Israel to withdraw and now poses as the only effective Arab fighting force against Israel.

As a result, Shi’ism has been viewed as the most revolutionary and militant force in Islam, contributing to America’s lack of support for the Shi’is in Iraq after the Gulf War. As the Iraqi Republican Guards passed before American troops to quell the Shia uprising in southern Iraq in 1991, the United States remained unmoved by Shia pleas for help. Policymaking in Washington appeared to be captured by what Time magazine called “the Shia’s historical opposition to the United States.” U.S. and European silence–in the government as well as the media–regarding the repression of Shi’i opposition in Bahrain seems to be motivated by the same perspective.

Sunni fundamentalism or Islamism has in effect been treated as the “lesser evil.” In many instances, lacking Iran’s hegemonic ambitions, Islamism has been primarily preoccupied with internal matters. Its ebbs and flows often appeared to be controlled by governments in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Malaysia. Even in the worst cases, it was no match for the mukhabarat (security) states in the Arab world, as became evident in Syria in 1982 (when Hafiz al–Asad leveled the city of Hama, killing in excess of 100,000 people to quell a Muslim Brotherhood uprising), and then in Ben Ali’s Tunisia, Eradicateur’s Algeria, and Mubarak’s Egypt. In fact, the United States has not had so much a Sunni problem as a public relations problem among many Muslims who charge that the United States practices a double standard in its promotion of democracy. While advocating democratization in Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa, it has often been seen as ambivalent, if not silent, with regard to the mukhabarat states that suppress democratization in the name of containing radicalism.

For similar reasons, the United States turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s significant investment in Sunni militancy, designed to create a wall around Iran extending from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. As Iran’s revolution begins to show signs of exhaustion, and the country takes steps toward normalization of its domestic and international politics, Sunni militancy now stands ready to take over where Iran is leaving off. The phenomenon of the Taliban, Harakatul Mujahedin in Kashmir, the Osama Bin Laden and Ahmed Ramzi Yusuf network, and their fellow militants in many parts of the Muslim world represent a new phase in militancy that is highly sectarian in character. It is often rooted in a Sunni militancy that is anti–Shi’i and is gradually turning its attention toward the West. In Pakistan, for example, the same Sunni militant forces that until recently remained focused on domestic issues, now directly threatens American interests if the United States is to pursue Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

This new brand of Sunni militancy, in whose creation the United States and its regional allies have had a hand, is rapidly replacing Shi’ism in shaping radical Islamist politics. Still, the United States should look beyond the “Islamic threat” paradigm to consider broader regional implications that are afoot. As Sunni militancy surfaces in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya (where it is referred to as Wahhabism on account of its Saudi financial backing), Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf, the United States and its regional allies may face a new dynamic–a conflict between Shi’is and Sunnis. The opening phase of this conflict occurred with the massacre of Shi’is in Mazar Sharif and Bamiyam by the Taliban and the military standoff on the Iran–Afghanistan border.

Where will U.S. interests stand in this conflict? What do the changes in the perceived threat from Shi’ism and Sunnism mean? These questions are important in thinking about an Islam policy as well as whether there should be a “single” Islam policy. The complexity of this issue is reflected in the manner in which Sunni militancy has become intertwined with Pakistan’s regional and domestic politics. In the summer of 1999, the Pakistan military used Sunni militant forces as a cover for incursion into the Kargil region of Kashmir. This precipitated a serious standoff between the two South Asian nuclear powers and damaged a year of diplomacy and trust–building between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The direct role that Sunni militancy now plays in Pakistan–India relations will no doubt complicate negotiations between the two states. The same militant forces that were involved in Kargil were used by General Parvez Musharraf, who masterminded Kargil, to precipitate a law and order crisis in Pakistan in order to undermine the democratically elected government of Sharif. In the ten days leading to the military coup of October 1999, some forty–five Shi’i religious and communal leaders were assassinated throughout Pakistan by Sunni sectarian gangs which included fighters from Kashmir. The political change in Pakistan is of great significance to the U.S. national interest. The issues involved here cannot be adequately addressed by the Islam–versus–secularism paradigm of American foreign policy. It requires a genuinely nuanced approach that is cognizant of the many dimensions of Islam in regional and domestic politics.

Accounting for Official Islam. In recent years, many rulers continue to find it useful to appeal to Islam. Hussein of Jordan donned a beard, as has his son Abdullah II. Hassan of Morocco built a grand mosque to his own honor, as has Haidar Aliyev of Azerbaijan who also erected a museum celebrating his contributions to religion. One–time secular dictators have repackaged themselves as “believer presidents”: Algeria’s Boutaflika speaks of Islam, as does Hafiz al–Asad and Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian ruling elite are seen at mosque and in prayer more frequently as are Turkish politicians, and most recently, the President of the Kemalist state, Sulayman Demirel. The pace of state mandated by Islamic policymaking has increased as well. The public arena across the Muslim world has become more Islamic, and the state itself has assumed the role of chief Islamic legislator and implementer. In Egypt, for instance, there is little difference between the social program of the Mubarak–backed al–Azhar and that of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition. As secular regimes become more Islamic in their rhetoric and promise to push through programs demanded by their Islamist oppositions, it becomes increasingly clear that Islam is not the issue. The issue is authoritarianism versus democratization and pluralism. As the state and its opposition in diverse contexts speak in the political and cultural language of Islam, Islam ceases to be the guide in understanding and explaining multifaceted struggles for power.

Where to from Here? Today much of the Muslim world is still suffering under dictatorship and languishes in economic stagnation. This can ultimately produce many more challenges for the West, not all of which will be ideological nor necessarily Islamist in character. In response to such challenges, it is better to have policies that are designed to serve interests rather than underscore civilizational chasms; policies that, as was the case in Kosovo, respond to events, not religions. Muslims live too close to the commercial and geostrategic pathways that matter to the West. It does not serve U.S. interests to construct all–encompassing characterizations of Islamism and Muslims or to respond in kind to ideological posturing of Islamist radicals, a distinct, albeit dangerous, minority among Islamists and in their societies. The United States does not need a position on Islam, so much as one on political, social, and economic change where Muslims live. The threat to the United States will not come from civilizational directives, but from the socioeconomic and political reality that breeds radicalism. This is what requires U.S. attention and where policymaking on Islam, Islamism, and Muslims should begin.