Can the United States Really Capture the Hearts and Minds of the World's Muslims?

It’s great to be in Boston, especially after a big Pats win. Wouldn’t it be great if they won the Super Bowl after the Sox won the World Series?

Sports is a bonding agent in society. It is an enclosed moral world, complete with its own language and code. Conversation about sports is casual only superficially. We may be talking about an activity usually having something to do with a ball, speed and strength. And yet, at the end of the banter we may know more about the other person’s outlook than if we had been discussing Aristotle.

We also know how much he or she is a member of our community.

Anybody can talk about Belicheck and Brady, or Big Papy and Manny. But if I talk to you about Grogan’s wobbly knees, Larry Bird’s jumpshot or Mike Torrez’s pitch to Bucky Dent, you know I’m from this town.

The U.S. Army knew what it was doing in World War II when the first thing it would ask soldiers to check if they weren’t German spies was who won the World Series. Folks know what they are doing when they gravitate to talk of sports at parties. It’s enjoyable, and also a handy way to find out much, including who’s in and who’s out.

Today we are here to talk about a large group which has been inside European societies en masse now for at least two generations, sometimes three, but whose members can still feel like outsiders.

I am referring, of course, to Muslim communities in Europe. Their presence in Europe is an issue of growing importance to our European allies as well as to us.

Now, why should the Muslim community in Europe be of any concern to you here in Boston? We have our own problems with immigration here, don’t we?

But Americans must develop a sophisticated understanding of this question for several reasons. Europe has the highest concentration of allies of any other part of the world. And we are not just talking about treaty allies, but friends. We have learned, through trial and tribulation, that security is indivisible. Anything that threatens Europe threatens us.

And make no mistake about it, extremism in Europe does pose a direct threat to us. Several of the 9/11 conspirators spent time in Europe and planned part of the attack there. Moussaoui and Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, were both Europeans born in Europe, and were radicalized in European mosques. The same is true for several of the terrorists who have planned or carried out attacks in London over the past few years. Some mosques in Europe have become veritable recruitment and training centers.

Another reason we need to capture the hearts and minds of Europe’s Muslims is that this relatively tiny population of 25 million Muslims has a disproportionately large impact on the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. The reason is obvious. They live in prosperous democracies where they can exercise rights that are routinely denied in most Muslim countries.

Finally, we Americans need to have a greater understanding of this issue because it is something your government can do something about, and as such it is something worthy of debate.

In fact, your government is doing something about it.

One of the things it’s done is appoint me to my present position, which I took up last year. As Senior Advisor for Muslim Engagement to the Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs, I monitor the state of play on all these issues and advise Assistant Secretary Dan Fried on what course to follow.

Does it help that I too am a Muslim and an immigrant? Yes it does, I think. I suppose I have an intrinsic understanding of some of the concerns of Muslim immigrants. I get the complexity facing a community of immigrants with completely different habits and traditions. I need only think of my family when I was growing up in Braintree and Milton.

I also understand the balance we all eventually perfect in this country, between the claims of the old and the new. This is something all Americans understand, whether our ancestors immigrated here aboard the Mayflower or lined up at Ellis Island centuries later or like me arrived at Logan Airport on July 4^th, 1969.

We don’t think that those who flock to Southie on March 17 for “You Know Who” Day, or to the North End for St. Anthony’s Feast at the end of August, are unpatriotic to America, or have divided loyalties. On the contrary, all of us cherish these traditions. Each wave has enriched this country.

This balance that succeeding waves of immigrants have struck has to be personal. One size does not fit all. But the balance must be acceptable to the society that surrounds the new immigrant.

Any balance implies compromise. No man is an island.

I try to share our immigrant experience with European Muslims, and in fact, some of the skills we have developed do travel well, even if we don’t always have the answer to everything.

I also strive to share the American Muslim experience with Muslims in Europe. This is very important, as part of the extremists’ propaganda is that America is at war with Islam, or that we hate Muslims. In fact, all the polling evidence suggests that we Muslims have integrated very well in this country, becoming yet another group enriching the whole and being enriched in return. We number in the millions and come from more than 80 different ethnicities.

So I work with officials in Washington and our embassies overseas to seek the best ways to engage Muslim communities in Europe – to build stronger bridges and to learn more about Muslims in Europe. In less than a year, I have been to over 40 European cities.

I also make sure I speak to domestic audiences, to enhance understanding of this issue. Thus I’m here.

But I won’t lie to you, I am not here just to create awareness. Frankly, we need the private sector’s help. I will speak more about this in a minute.

Many of you have been to Europe in the past few years, so I don’t need to remind you that its streets bear little resemblance to the picture post card images we have. Yes, of course, Heidi, Marianne, John Bull, Don Quixote haven’t gone away. You can still enjoy a pint in a London pub or go to an afternoon bullfight in Seville, if that’s your thing.

But in Europe today you will also find Ahmed, Fatima and Ali. Europe has changed, and we have to face up to it squarely.

Last year, the name Muhammad moved into the top 20 most popular names in the UK for the fist time, leapfrogging just ahead of both Luke and Matthew. Of the 12 Apostles, only Thomas remains more popular. Muhammad is now the 17^th most popular name for babies in Britain, and it climbs several spots every year. As recently as 2003 it was 54^th.

Statistics tell us a part of the story, which is the reason governments keep them, and indeed, I got those out of the UK Government’s National Statistics on line.

But despite their sheer size, not all Muslims feel that they are part and parcel of European society. There is some alienation, which is what led to Richard Reid and the others. So we have to ask the question, as Secretary Rice did recently, "Why are so many European Muslims turning away from their own European homeland"?

Let me give you a brief, Reader’s Digest version of why this may be. But before I even start, let me offer a very important caveat.

Most European Muslims are well integrated members of society, who pay their taxes, provide for their families and have dreams and aspirations like everyone in this room. Alienation is not the natural state of European Muslims, disaffection is not the default position, nor is it by any means terrorism.

So let’s underline that the majority of European Muslims, just like their coreligionists everywhere, love peace. This is not just an empty disclaimer. This is a reality we all need to understand.

In fact, if we don’t get this, we won’t get that the battle lines today is not between Christianity vs. Islam. That was the 12^th century.

Today we face nothing more than an extension of all the battles we fought in the last century: it is the latest iteration of freedom against those who would suppress it.

That battle line cuts across Muslim communities around the world, and some of our best allies in this fight—as we are seeing in Iraq today with the Sunni Awakening—are Muslims who reject al Qaeda and other radicals.

Our interest in those Muslims in Europe who do feel alienated, in fact, stems from our understanding that we have to reach them before others do. We have to be part of the dialogue, get in early enough so as to, at least, give people the chance of having an alternative.

This is the “the war of ideas” that you have heard about. It is as much a component of our overall strategy as the hot wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It may help us to understand why some Muslims don’t feel 100 percent members of the European country where they have been naturalized, and in many cases born.

Today I will briefly touch on three themes:

• First, I will give you an overarching explanation as to why some Muslims may be alienated.
• Then I will give you some specifics on three key countries and their particular experiences: Germany, whose Muslim population is among the most homogenous in Europe; the UK, whose laissez-faire approach is similar to ours, but which, unlike ours, does not put a primacy on integration; and finally France, whose U.S.-style belief in the ability of foreigners to integrate and develop patriotism has led it to policies that differ markedly from the way we do things.
• Lastly, I will touch briefly on what we can do to reach out to these communities.

Let’s first look at the general European experience.

A General Perspective

Why some European Muslims have not integrated is not just an academic question. We would be making a mistake if we thought that the strings of the old country are tugging too tightly. That may be so in some cases. In most cases, the reality is closer to something else: they are caught between two worlds.

Though their habits may still be provincial, the ties, mores and routines of their ancestral villages or extended family are gone. They have not entered into new compacts with the social institutions of their new societies. Their attempt to reconstruct their past traditions in a modern, urban setting can have dire consequences when these practices are shunned by society or proscribed by common decency and law.

It has not helped assimilation that immigrants all too often have little interaction with their new compatriots. Some neighborhoods in some European cities are Muslim-majority areas. Some European Muslims not only pray with their coreligionists, but also work and play only with them.

The welcome mat has not always been there. America itself is currently undergoing its own major debate over immigration, and at times it has admittedly turned ugly.

This is not the first time it has happened in our history, and it won’t be the last time. But America is largely a huge immigration success story. Europe’s anti-immigrant conservatism is much more of the blood and soil variety than ours. In some parts of Europe, immigration is not always welcomed. Shared history, religion, and culture—and let’s face it, DNA—have sometimes trumped other values. Xenophobes, as are everywhere, have seized on differences and have made matters worse.

From this general perspective let me show now, very briefly, how it plays out in the three countries I mentioned earlier. I’ll start with the UK.

The UK

Britain has a relatively disparate Muslim community, whose members come mainly from former colonies, especially Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, but also the Gulf and Africa. When they congregate, they tend to do so by ethnic origin. Taken together it is estimated that they number around 2.2 million, or around 3 percent of the UK population.

The relative isolation of some Muslim communities there means that only six percent of imams or the person that leads the prayer, speak English as a first language, and almost 45 percent have been in the UK for less than five years.

It should not surprise us that most services are in languages other than English. Britain’s imams are also a deeply conservative group, the vast majority of whom have been trained in a traditional Islamic curriculum that has changed little since medieval times.

Some, a very tiny minority, of Britain’s more than 1,600 mosques have become centers of radicalization. These were the kinds of places where Reid, Moussaoui and others were trained.

Late last year four prominent British Muslim groups formed the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, and this non-government group circulated to the mosques a draft “Good Practice Guide for Mosques and Imams in Britain.”

This guide calls for mosques to commit to several measures, including equal opportunity for women, the creation of programs to promote good citizenship and, perhaps the most controversial, random visits by trained teams to make sure those standards are being met.

The imams have stressed that this is a non-government initiative, and have encouraged comments. They hope to issue the guidelines in final form in March this year.

British leaders, Prime Minister Gordon Brown on down, have identified building a sense of British identity as a key policy aim. This is a new element in Britain, which for decades has eschewed American boosterism and overt patriotism. Brown, for example, has ordered that all government buildings fly the Union Jack all year long.

The radicalization of Muslims does not happen in a vacuum. The tenor of the debate in Britain’s left wing press can be very different from this country’s. One can sometimes find even in so-called “quality” newspapers a type of heated rhetoric that in the U.S. is relegated to the fringes. Hyperbolic accusations—that America hates Muslims or that the U.S. is at war with Islam—are given credence, abetting radicalization.

Relations between the Muslim community and the government have sometimes been strained. Some self-appointed leaders hardly helped their own community when, following a thwarted plot to blow up planes flying between the UK and the U.S., they sent a letter blaming the attack on Prime Minister Blair’s policies on Iraq and the Middle East.

There has been some attempt by Britain’s imams at self-regulation.

Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, began the recent process of discussing UK core values that Prime Minister Brown is building upon. Blair gave a speech about a year ago in which he defined tolerance as the bedrock British characteristic. He ended the speech by saying, “our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. So conform to it, or don’t come here.”

France

That gives us a good transition to France, which does feel comfortable in demanding a measure of assimilation, but which in exchange does leave open the possibility that an outsider can become French not just on paper, but also in spirit. That’s, anyway, the deal that has been offered successive waves of previous immigrants, mostly from Europe, but also from places like Armenia and Lebanon. Whether it extends to the latest wave of Muslims is a subject of debate in France.

France has by far the largest Muslim component. We only have rough estimates, as the French Constitution forbids the collection of any type of religious statistics, but it is thought that there are upwards of 5 million Muslims in France, making up perhaps between 8 and 10 percent of the population.

The majority, as in Britain, come from former colonies. The largest component comes from the Maghreb, or the North African countries of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. But there are also hundreds of thousands from Sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey.

The Muslim population in France is also of a very old pedigree. Hundreds of thousands of North Africans were drafted to fight in World War I and—after the war—to make up for gaps in the labor force. This accounts for the fact that many well-known French people have Muslim ancestry.

Who is more French than Edith Piaf or Isabelle Adjani, for example? Well, both are (or was, in the case of Edith Piaf) half Berber.

Despite these examples of obvious integration, there are tensions between some French Muslims and their mostly Catholic compatriots. Muslims can tend to concentrate in areas outside main cities called Banlieues, a word that means suburbs but which, really, translates better as “inner city.” You may have heard that these Banlieues have been rocked by riots in recent years, some of them lasting weeks.

France has also had an acrimonious debate over a law banning the wearing of headscarves in public places.

However, it is worth noting that, despite the huge numbers and the very real tension, France has not been a victim of terrorism since 1996. The reason? It is difficult to put your finger on why, but France does have a very extensive intelligence-gathering operation and very strong anti-terrorism laws. The French are romantic about many things, but security is not one of them. There is little evidence of national compunction regarding the need for these policies.

Germany

Finally, let me discuss Germany, or at least a few aspects of it.

It has the most homogenous population of the countries I have described, perhaps in Europe. 90 percent of German Muslims are Turkish, and many others are Bosnian, Albanian or Kosovar—which means that Germany’s Muslims are more European ethnically. The community as a whole is also smaller than France’s at 3 million, or 3.5 percent of the population.

The issues and concerns of Germany’s Muslim communities are therefore very different from those in France and the UK. For starters, Turks and Muslims from former Yugoslavia tend to be much more secular. Germany does not have the riots that France has or the level of terrorism that the UK has, though we should note that there was an important Hamburg Cell among the 9/11 attackers.

There is one issue worth discussing, as it is the subject of some debate in Germany. The Lutheran and Catholic Churches in Germany—the two majority religions—have a status known as “corporation under public law”, which allows the state to collect the tithe for them.

This is an arrangement very alien to our ears, given our constitutional injunctions against the establishment of religion, and the tithe is voluntary (but you must have paid it if you want to be baptized, married or buried by your church).

Islam, by far Germany’s biggest religion, does not have this status, though this is a matter being reviewed today.

What to do?

Now, I’ve given you this explanation to give you some sense of how difficult it is to tailor a message to Muslim communities in Europe. And I’ve only discussed three countries, and skimmed them very quickly. There are over 40 countries in Europe today, and many, many divisions and subdivisions. Clearly one size does not fit all here.

There are some general problems we can combat—like alienation. Al Qaeda uses this overarching problem to target Muslims all over Europe, offering them a common, pan-Muslim, radicalized home that promises to cover the cultural fissures I have described here today.

In Europe, al Qaeda has an advantage. In the pockets of Iraq, Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan where al Qaeda has been able to establish temporary beachheads, al Qaeda has turned off the population with its brutal tactics. Showing up with the severed heads of children of those who dare question its methods, or forcing their daughters to marry Al Qaeda chieftains, is no way to win hearts and minds.

This is what we are seeing in Iraq today with the Sunni awakening. In Afghanistan, too, though you may have heard criticism of the conduct of that war, some of it deserved, the population is by and large very happy al Qaeda and the Taliban are gone. I was in Afghanistan in 2004 and saw this for myself. Millions of Afghan refugees have returned home after a quarter century overseas. People vote with their feet.

In Europe, al Qaeda’s sympathizers do not see first hand the result of al Qaeda’s rule. Also, al Qaeda wins by recruiting an infinitesimally small percentage of the population. All it needs to create havoc is a few dozen recruits.

For the alienated, the radicals offer a sense of belonging; for the bored, meaning and excitement; for the unemployed, a new means of sustenance; for those with a limited knowledge of Islam, salvation.

The ideology of intolerance, violence and religious chauvinism can be tempting to the uprooted. The promise that you will belong to something greater than yourself, that you will never be alone again, that no one will victimize you again, is a powerful elixir. Think about it: it has been a formula used over and over again, the preferred message of totalitarians from Hitler through Stalin to Milosevic.

How many Muslims in Europe have drunk from this elixir? Current estimates are that 1 to 2 percent of Western Europe’s 25 million Muslims are involved in extremist activity; a fraction of that small percentage has the potential to commit terrorist acts. While this represents just a small percentage of overall population, in raw numbers it is still an alarming figure.

We must fight back. With knowledge of the different needs of the different Muslim communities throughout Europe we can hope to counter al Qaeda’s propaganda. But we need to get on the Internet, where much of the recruiting takes place. We need to go to the neighborhoods where Muslims live, to the Banlieues, and create hope.

We need to seed programs where they don’t exist and promote them where they already do.

Within government, we have to make sure that our exchange programs are not reinforcing old patterns. When we invite people here we must make sure that they are representative of the new Europe. We can’t allow our programs to become hostage to the politics of exclusion.

And let me tell you, these are new concepts, and our government is not well organized for this yet. We are getting there, but you don’t turn an ocean liner on a dime. Our federal government hasn’t had a major overhaul since the end of World War II.

We need help from the private sector, not just in terms of support for programs. We need your innovation as well, your "can-do" spirit and your flexibility.

We’re a country of immigrants, we have some history and knowledge on this here. We’re also a world power whose security depends on how well we manage this new enterprise. This is completely new, I promise you.

I’d be very happy to take your questions, now. Thank you for being so attentive.