Islam’s Way to Freedom

Thomas Farr says radical Islam poses a threar to America. Well...this is not really news, at least to me. He further says that military power with good intelligence, efficient laws, and sound diplomacy will not be enough to adequately curb the threat of Islam. This idea is not completely new either, though it is spoken less often.


What he does say that is less often spoken is...our foreign diplomacy needs a "new religious realism."


He adds the George Bush's foreign diplomacy was devoid of this realism and treated the religion like it is a peripheral to the activity of governming. Farr admits that the U.S. policy may well find and remove radical Islamist leaders and their communication cadres. Yet, it will not be sufficient because radical Islam is driven by a deeply rooted and practiced theology which believes Allah wants to violently overthrow the inidels.


Then he insightfully adds...


Unfortunately, policymakers in the United States remain tempted by the argument that radical ideas and movements can be suppressed by our authoritarian allies in the region. But when despots like Egypt’s Mubarak or Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah crack down on extremists, usually by arbitrary arrest, torture, and execution, they are in fact encouraging extremism, ensuring its survival and its export. Decades of American support for tyrants in the Middle East have helped retard the growth of moderate political Islam. History strongly suggests that political and religious repression, while not the root cause of Islamist extremism, blocks its most effective remedy—the development of liberal democratic political theologies.


He points out that to President Bush's credit he has understood how democratic policies pave the way to a more moderate understanding of religion. But what the President has failed to understand is that democratic structures alone will not bring this moderation about unless it is accompanied with economic progress is economic progress and the embrace of law and culture in human right and civil liberties.


Then Farr gets to the central point...


And here’s what the Bush strategists never fully understood: In highly religious societies—which is to say, in most countries in the world—the linchpin of liberties is religious liberty. Without it, democracy withers or implodes.


What we must then do is encourage Muslim groups toward a theology of religion freedom. But this is a tall, in fact daunting, order. For this reason some political thinkers believe the way out of the problem is to encourage Islamic regimes to take on secularist's governments. But this is unrealistic to think that of the hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world that they will simply allow their beliefs to be marginalized. It is vital, according to Farr, that we engage the religion of Islam in this struggle for freedom.


How do we do this??? Farr answers...


First, by adopting an overarching principle: Religion is normative, not epiphenomenal, in human affairs. Policymakers should approach it much as they do economics and politics—as something that drives the behavior of people and governments in important ways. Like political and economic motives, religion can act as a multiplier of both destructive and constructive behaviors, often with more-intense results.



He goes on to give a practical suggestion...



American diplomacy, accordingly, should work to empower such religious leaders as the influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his Sunni counterparts.



He further suggests that Iran has strong elements of democracy that can be encouraged with Iranian jurists. Pakistan has strong religious elements that tend toward moderation, and Egypt has the strongest elements. Also, "the Catholic University of America’s Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion has held substantive exchanges with Iranian jurists on topics from family law to weapons of mass destruction. By judicious support for such efforts, the United States can encourage internal reform that rejects both theocracy and terrorism as inimical to Shiism."

Farr lays out a number of possibilities and options for American diplomacy. Yet, he drives back to the thesis of his article that the heart of radical Islam comes from the voice of its religious belief system, and it is there that its influence must be greatly curbed if there is to be any long lasting change.

Then he adds...

Training at the Foreign Service Institute should be revamped. The self-defeating instruction to U.S. diplomats in the 2007 Public Diplomacy strategy—“avoid using religious language”—should be reversed. Washington should support the development of Islamist feminism, a potentially fruitful skirmish in the Muslim war of ideas. A privately funded Islamic Institute of American Studies on U.S. soil could bring the best jurists and religious leaders from across the Muslim world to study United States history, society, politics, and—most important—religion.


Then he tellingly quotes the Economist...

“The strange thing is that when America has tried to tackle religious politics abroad—especially jihadist violence—it has drawn no lessons from its domestic success. Why has a country so rooted in pluralism made so little of religious freedom?”

In my own modest assessment, this seems like a long range goal that is worth pursuing, if we hope to drive a stake into the heart of this great evil. Yet, I'm sure there are many forceful arguments as to why Farr's suggestions would not work. Here are some questions:

1) Is religious theology the heart of Islamic radicalism?
2) How do we change the heart of Islamic theology?