TPM Book Club - Juan Cole : Engaging The Muslim World

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Anxiety And Engagement

By Juan Cole - TPM March 16, 2009, 2:19PM

My new book is a series of case studies in US and NATO relations with a Muslim country or movement, and I feel vindicated that I chose well. I talk about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, all of which are in the headlines as the book appears in bookstores. These areas in particular pose dilemmas for the Obama administration, and I have a lot to say about how we got where we are and how we might get out of the serial morasses bequeathed us by eight years of Bush-Cheney.

I believe that the United States and its NATO allies are destined to have more and more to do with the Muslim world over the coming decades. Some estimates of world population growth suggest that it will level off about 2050 at 9 million or so. Nearly a third of humankind at that point may well be Muslim (the proportion is more like one-sixth to one-fifth today). Muslims will be the labor pool of the 21st century. And while we all wish that we could wean ourselves from fossil fuels in only ten years, likely a majority of our energy will still be being generated by them in 2050. The deepest known reserves of petroleum and natural gas are in Muslim-majority regions such as the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. As the shallower reserves elsewhere run dry, or as the populations of those countries with limited reserves begin using these resources themselves, industrialized nations will become even more intimately intertwined with the Muslim producers. Ironically, these hydrocarbon producers may also be the ones who have the capital to partner in trying to move to solar energy, the only real solution to the crisis (and one that should be attractive to the Muslim world, which has a disproportionate amount of sunlight and deserts).

Despite this growing relationship of production and consumption, of supply and dependency, relations between the two worlds are rapidly worsening . . .

Muslim publics are forthright in saying what they want. They want the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan and they want the Palestinians to cease being stateless and oppressed by a foreign military occupation that is expropriating them and/or depriving them of basic rights of life and property. They also would like more actual civilian development aid rather than grants of F-18s to their generals. And they want more easily to be able to travel to and learn from the United States. I think the Obama administration could hope to give them a majority of the things they say they want from us, and I think doing so would lay the groundwork for progress on the other outstanding issues. We don't, in other words, have to be at war or to recreate the cold war, this time with the Muslim world instead with international communism. Muslims like democracy and private property way too much to be good stand-ins for the commisars . . .

. . . it may seem trite to insist that America Anxiety and Islam Anxiety can be overcome by better information and more intensive dialogue and negotiation, but I just want to point out that these steps are not the ones that have been being taken during the past 8 years, so we don't know how effective they could be if pursued seriously. Actually the most dramatic example of showing respect to Muslims and working to get them on the side of the US versus radicals was the Awakening Councils in Iraq, where Sunni Muslims went on the US payroll to fight what Washington calls "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia." The American Right keeps lauding the success of this program without seeming to recognize that they oppose similar policies with regard to other, much less virulent movements. They don't even want us to talk to the nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood. Why?

read: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/16/anxiety_and_engagement/#more

[msongs]

1. how's that working out in England these days? Shariah law instead of English law? ok nt

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2. our present posture and response to fundamental Islam is a self-perpetuating cycle

. . . of arbitrary military attacks and reprisals. The result has been a swelling of the ranks of individuals who are willing to identify their resistance to the U.S. presence and pressure with these objectionable and deadly organizations.

[sam sarrha]

3. probably OK for the English... but not so much for the Muslim Women

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4. but,

. . . they're still caught up in 'fighting them over there' in Afghanistan.

[sam sarrha]

5. but... they aren'i .. over there.

[LeftishBrit]

6. You have a very odd idea of life in England!

We have English law, not any other sort affecting the country in general- but that does include the fact that the bishops still have a limited role in legislation in the House of Lords. Some people do want to permit sharia courts for small claims, etc. within the Muslim community - just as there are already rabbinical courts for similar within the Jewish community. Most people don't support any such things. The Archbishop of Canterbury does, presumably because the country has got so secular, that we will soon be denying any even limited role of religion in legislation, unless he can grab the support of some other faiths.

It isn't working. Roll on church disestablishment, a ban on (the very small number of) rabbinical and sharia courts, and COMPLETE church/state separation.

But as a Brit, nobody is going to come along and force me to follow sharia law! And in most ways, we have less religious intrusion into law than the Americans seem to, despite the lack of official church/state separation.