Marc Lynch‘s work on how to look at Islamism is important stuff, not just because it’s thoughtful and informative but because most liberals are afraid to even touch the subject, which leaves a vacuum that gets filled with dumb political epithets like “Islamofascism.” In a debate with Paul Berman and Jeffrey Herf, Lynch explains why it’s a mistake to view Islamism as a monolithic political movement:
The attempt to draw a straight line from Hitler to today’s Islamists leads directly to the kind of overgeneralization found in Herf’s response, in which al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime are conflated despite the vast differences in their origins, ideologies, methods, beliefs, and memberships. In arguing that Islamists resemble the Nazis in their hatred of democracy, Herf is seemingly unaware that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood routinely participate in elections and that Islamists — including Qaradawi — have developed elaborate theoretical justifications in favor of democratic participation.
That sort of misreading of Islamism has very serious costs: it misinforms publics, misguides policymakers into making potentially tragic mistakes, alienates Muslims who must be integrated into Western societies, and empowers the extremists opposed to such peaceful coexistence. Preventing such unnecessary tragedies should be a top priority for scholars and policymakers alike.
My favorite example to cite is Hamas crushing pro-al Qaeda groups in the Gaza Strip. No, Hamas aren’t the good guys by any stretch. But they’re not al Qaeda either.
In a related point, Reuel Marc Gerecht‘s shift of the goal posts in TNR this week is amusing. After previously suggesting that Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf is not a moderate Muslim, and spilling 1200 words on what a moderate Muslim is, he pivots to arguing that moderate Muslims don’t matter, and that they are largely irrelevant to converting extremists–that former extremists who have rejected their former associations are a far more decisive factor. I think that’s correct, but it’s also a straw man–no one’s arguing that Khalid Sheik Mohammed would break down in tears and remorse over the 9/11 attacks if he only read What’s Right With Islam. Whatever impact Rauf has, and I agree he’s not going to personally spark a reformation, it’s going to be on the folks Lynch refers to as “the vast middle ground, the Arab and Muslim mainstream which both the Bush and Obama administrations have recognized as crucial both for defeating al-Qaeda and for achieving broad American national interests.”
But in arguing Rauf is irrelevant to the larger discourse about Islamism abroad because he’s too moderate, Gerecht is implicitly conceding that there’s little argument beyond tendentious guilt by association for opposing the proposed community center near Ground Zero, even if he never says as much. Not that this will stop his colleagues at the “Center for Defense of Democracies” from smearing Rauf as a terrorist sympathizer.
