<DOC>
[109 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:36963.wais]
S. Hrg. 109-948
ISLAM AND THE WEST: SEARCHING FOR COMMON GROUND
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 18, 2006
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BARBARA BOXER, California
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire BILL NELSON, Florida
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska BARACK OBAMA, Illinois
MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Ahmed, Ambassador Akbar S., Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies,
School of International Service, American University,
Washington, DC................................................. 26
Prepared statement........................................... 30
Hoffman, Dr. Bruce, corporate chair in Counterterrorism and
Counterinsurgency, the Rand Corporation, Washington, DC........ 3
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Khan, Dr. Muqtedar, assistant professor, Political Science and
International Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Kohut, Mr. Andrew, president, Pew Research Center, Washington, DC 16
Prepared statement........................................... 20
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 1
(iii)
ISLAM AND THE WEST: SEARCHING FOR COMMON GROUND
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 18, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G.
Lugar (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Lugar and Boxer.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA
The Chairman. This hearing of the Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order. The committee meets today to
convene the second in a series of hearings on the issue of
global terrorism and our national and international efforts to
combat it.
The issue regrettably remains very much in the headlines.
Just last week commuters in Bombay experienced the spontaneous
and tragic consequences of terrorism. As tensions flare and
more lives are lost in the volatile Middle East, terrorist acts
continue to be a tactic of those wishing to achieve political
objectives.
In our first hearing we heard from both current and former
senior Government officials on the state of the terrorist
threat against the United States, and we received
recommendations for measuring success and moving forward. We
learned that while there have been unequivocal successes in our
war against terror, the root causes of terrorism, particularly
those driven by Islamic radicalism, remain very much with us.
I noted during our last hearing that military operations
alone will not win the longer war on terrorism, and this view
was validated by testimony at the hearing. Even with an al-
Qaeda organization that is scattered and on the run, its
leadership continues to provide ideological guidance to
followers worldwide. In other words, despite our operational
and tactical successes on several fronts, the root causes of
terrorism and the intense ideological motivation behind this
phenomenon persist.
We have started this inquiry from the premise that the
United States antiterrorism strategy cannot be reduced to
military terms or to a fight against existing conspirators. It
must include longer-term measures designed to prevent terrorist
cells and movements that would target Americans on our shores
and abroad from forming in the first place. In today's world,
an antiterrorist strategy cannot focus exclusively on ``capture
and kill'' or on the derailment of imminent terrorist acts.
Terrorism is a complex phenomenon that requires the application
of technological, military, law enforcement, economic,
diplomatic, and moral resources.
To evaluate the United States' antiterrorism strategy, we
have to know what causes a person to embrace an ideology that
would have them resort to terrorism as a tactic. And once
inclined toward such ideology, what is it that would dissuade a
person from committing violence toward Americans in the first
place?
Congressional oversight should ensure that we are getting
the maximum benefit out of our antiterrorism investments, that
agencies are working cooperatively and effectively with one
another, and that we are implementing a comprehensive strategy
focused on achievable short- and long-term objectives. And,
finally, we must know how we can define our success in this
effort and how we would know when we have achieved it.
The purpose of today's hearing is to perform an examination
of the historical roots of terrorism and how other nations have
dealt with the phenomenon. We will focus in particular on the
roots of Islamic-based terrorism, including the current image
of the United States in the Muslim world, how Westerners and
Muslims view each other, and the state of the struggle within
contemporary Islam between its more moderate and extreme
factions. We will also probe how the United States and its
Western allies and counterparts can move toward a more
productive, longer-term relationship with the Muslim world.
Our panel today consists of four individuals who have
unique experience to inform us on this complex and important
topic.
Dr. Bruce Hoffman is the corporate chair in
counterterrorism and counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation.
He is also director of RAND's Washington office. He has a long
history of scholarly writing on all aspects of terrorism and
counterinsurgency, and has worked as a senior advisor to many
government entities in both the United States and Great
Britain. He is the editor of ``Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism,'' the leading worldwide scholarly journal in the
field, and has written extensively on al-Qaeda's tactics,
strategies, and leadership.
Mr. Andrew Kohut is the president of the Pew Research
Center. He also acts as the director of the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press, and the Pew Global Attitudes
Project. He was president of the Gallup organization from 1979
to 1989. Mr. Kohut is widely sought after as a commentator on
public opinion and has received many awards in his profession.
He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is
``America Against the World--How We Are Different and Why We
Are Disliked.''
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is a respected scholar on
contemporary Islam. He is a former high commissioner of
Pakistan to Great Britain, and has advised many world leaders
in Islam. He holds a chair in Islamic Studies and is a
professor of international relations at American University.
The Ambassador is also a distinguished anthropologist, writer,
and filmmaker, and is the author of many books on Muslim
history and society. He has just returned from an extensive
trip throughout the Muslim world.
Dr. Muktedar Khan is a professor of political science and
international relations at the University of Delaware, and a
nonresident fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East policy
at the Brookings Institution. He is known best for his insight
relating to the role of moderate Muslims in Islamic thought.
His thoughtful post-September 11 essay to his fellow American
Muslims has been widely recognized and published. New York
Newsday noted that Dr. Khan is ``one of a growing number of
young moderate Muslim thinkers who believe themselves engaged
in a battle for the soul of Islam.''
Gentlemen, we welcome you all. We appreciate your
willingness to share your thoughts with us today. We look
forward to your testimony. Let me mention that your statements
will be made a part of the record in full, and I ask for
permission that this occur. You may as you choose present your
full material, or summarize it. We are here to hear you today,
and then hopefully you will respond to our questions.
I would like to recognize the presence of my distinguished
colleague from California, Senator Barbara Boxer. Do you have a
word of welcome for the witnesses?
Senator Boxer. I do, and I won't give an opening statement.
I'm very anxious to hear from them.
But I do welcome you. I think in light of events around the
world right now, we need understanding, we need ideas, and we
look to you for all of that and more. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Boxer.
I'll ask you to testify in this order: First of all, Dr.
Hoffman, and then Mr. Kohut, and then Mr. Ahmed, and finally
Dr. Khan. Would you please proceed, Dr. Hoffman.
STATEMENT OF DR. BRUCE HOFFMAN, CORPORATE CHAIR IN
COUNTERTERRORISM AND COUNTERINSURGENCY, THE RAND CORPORATION,
WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Hoffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate very
much the opportunity to speak before the committee today on
this very important topic.
In your opening remarks you described al-Qaeda as an
organization scattered and on the run. My testimony will argue
that while that might even recently have been the case, today
al-Qaeda has not only regrouped but is in fact on the march.
Let me begin my oral testimony with two brief quotations in
the recently cited report by the British parliamentary
committee investigating the July 7, 2005 bombings in London:
``We were working off a script which actually has been
completely discounted from what we know as reality.'' That was
by Andy Hayman, the assistant commissioner of specialist
operations at Scotland Yard, in other words, Britain's top
counterterrorism cop.
Second, ``I think the more we learned over this period of
several years, the more we began to realize the limits of what
we knew.'' This was by Tom Dowse, the chief of the United
Kingdom Intelligence Assessments Staff.
These two admissions made by persons at the apex of the
United Kingdom's counterterrorism effort encapsulate the
central challenge facing the United States today in our own
counterterrorism effort. Given the threat's dynamic and
evolutionary character and our adversaries' seeming ability to
adapt and adjust their tactics and modi operandi to overcome or
obviate even our most consequential countermeasures, how can we
best ensure that our own assessments and analyses are anchored
firmly to sound, empirical judgment and not blinded by either
conjecture, mirror-imaging, politically partisan prisms, or
wishful thinking? And equally critically, how can we ensure
that our counterterrorism policy is sufficiently comprehensive,
well-crafted, and effectively directed?
Let me first begin with a brief description of al-Qaeda
today, its evolution, adaptation, and adjustment. Al-Qaeda's
obituary has been written often since 9/11. Today it is
frequently spoken of as an organization in retreat, a broken
and beaten movement, incapable of mounting further attacks on
its own, and instead having
devolved operational authority either to its various affiliates
or associates or to entirely organically produced, homegrown
terrorist entities. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Al-Qaeda, in fact, is on the march. It has regrouped and
reorganized from the setbacks meted out by the United States
and our coalition partners and allies during the initial phases
of the global war on terrorism, and is marshalling its forces
to continue the epic struggle begun now 10 years ago this
coming August. The al-Qaeda of today combines, as it always
has, both a bottom-up approach, encouraging independent thought
and action from low- or lower-level operatives, and a top-down
one, with its remaining central command issuing orders and
still coordinating a far-flung terrorist enterprise with both
highly synchronized and autonomous moving parts.
The most salient threat continues to come from al-Qaeda
central and from its affiliates and associated terrorist
groups. However, an additional and equally challenging threat
is now posed by less discernible and more unpredictable
entities drawn from the vast Muslim diaspora and community in
Europe. This new category of terrorist adversary, moreover,
also has proven more difficult for the authorities in these
countries to track, predict, and anticipate. It is also
difficult, if not impossible, to effectively profile this
adversary.
Indeed, this was precisely the conclusion reached by the
above-mentioned parliamentary committee in their report on last
year's London bombings. Although the members of these terrorist
cells may be marginalized individuals working in menial jobs,
from the lower socioeconomic strata of society, some with long
criminal records or histories of juvenile delinquency, others
may well come from solidly middle and upper middle class
backgrounds, with university and perhaps even graduate degrees,
and prior passions for cars, sports, rock music, and other
completely secular material interests.
These new recruits are the anonymous cogs in the worldwide
al-Qaeda enterprise, and include both longstanding residents
and new immigrants found across Europe, but specifically in
countries with large Muslim populations, such as Britain,
Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
Let me now briefly turn to what I argue are the perils of
wishful thinking: al-Qaeda and the 7/7 London bombings. The
United Kingdom of course rightly prides itself on decades-long
experience and detailed knowledge of effectively countering a
variety of terrorist threats. Yet, despite Britain's formidable
counterterrorist capabilities and unrivaled expertise, its
security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, as the
quotes at the beginning of this testimony evidence, dismissed
the likelihood of an imminent attack in the United Kingdom and
moreover believed that eventually, when such an attack would
occur, it would not involve suicide tactics.
The point of this discussion is most certainly not to
criticize our principle ally in the war on terrorism, but
rather to highlight the immense difficulties and vast
uncertainties concerning countering terrorism today, that have
confounded even the enormously professional and experienced
British intelligence and security services. Moreover, the
danger of similarly cloaking ourselves in a false sense of
security based on faulty assumptions or wishful thinking is
omnipresent in so fluid and dynamic a terrorism environment as
exists today.
Indeed, our appreciation and understanding of the current
al-Qaeda threat underscores these perils. Both at the time of
the
London bombings and since, a misconception has frequently been
perpetuated that this was entirely an organic or homegrown
phenomena of self-radicalized, self-selected terrorists. Such
arguments often were cited in support of the argument that
entirely homegrown threats had superseded those posed by al-
Qaeda, that al-Qaeda itself was no longer a consequential,
active terrorist force, and accordingly that the threat had
both changed and perhaps even receded.
The evidence that has come to light since the London
attacks a year ago, however, points to the opposite conclusion:
That al-Qaeda is not only alive and kicking, but that it is
still actively planning and supporting, through the provision
of training and perhaps even directing terrorist attacks on a
global canvas. Issues of classification and sensitive
collection prevent a full description and account of this
evidence of active al-Qaeda involvement in the London attacks.
However, suffice it to say that what is publicly known and
what has been reported in numerous unclassified sources clearly
points to such involvement. Mohammed Siddique Khan, for
instance, the ringleader of the London gang, visited Pakistan
on at least two occasions, and on his second visit was
accompanied by another London bomber, Shazad Tanweer. It is
believed that they visited Pakistani jihadi terrorist training
camps, and indeed that they met with al-Qaeda operatives.
Both men made ``martyrdom'' videos while they were in
Pakistan between November 2004 and February 2005 and, like all
of Osama bin Laden's most important videotaped statements and
appearances, the Khan and Tanweer statements were both
professionally produced and released by al-Qaeda's perennially
active communications department, Al Sahab for Media
Production. Al Sahab means ``the clouds.''
Finally, in concluding my testimony, how do we move toward
a new U.S. counterterrorism policy, given the changing and
dynamic character of the terrorist threat today? This brief
discussion of the 7/7 London bombings is intended to illustrate
the dynamic, changing nature of a threat that cannot be
defeated by military means alone.
Yet our policy to date has arguably been predominantly
weighted toward the tactical ``kill and capture'' approach in
metric, assuming that a traditional center of gravity exists,
whether the target is al-Qaeda or the insurgency in Iraq, and
that this target simply needs to be destroyed so that global
terrorism or the Iraqi insurgency will end. However, both our
adversaries today and the threats that they pose are much more
elusive and complicated and, as the previous discussion of the
London attacks clearly depicts, less neatly amenable to kinetic
solutions.
Accordingly, a new strategy and a new approach is vital.
Its success will be predicated upon a strategy that effectively
combines the tactical elements of systematically destroying and
weakening enemy capabilities--the ``kill/capture'' approach--
alongside the equally critical, broader strategic imperative of
breaking the cycle of terrorist recruitment and replenishment
that have respectively sustained both al-Qaeda's continued
campaign and the ongoing conflict in Iraq.
A successful strategy will thus be one that also thinks and
plans ahead, with a view toward addressing the threats likely
to be posed by the terrorist and insurgent generation, not only
beyond the current one but beyond the one after the current
one. At the foundation of such a dynamic and adaptive strategy
must be the ineluctably maxim that effectively and successfully
countering terrorism as well as insurgency, is not exclusively
a military endeavor, but involves fundamental parallel
political, social, economic, and ideological activities.
Accordingly, rather than viewing the fundamental organizing
principle of American national defense strategy in this
unconventional realm as a global war on terrorism, it may be
more useful to reconceptualize it in terms of a global
counterinsurgency. Such an approach would, a priori, knit
together the equally critical political, economic, diplomatic,
and developmental sides inherent to the successful prosecution
of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, and contribute to
the existing dominant military side of the equation.
Greater attention to this integration of American
capabilities would provide incontrovertible recognition of the
importance of
endowing a global counterinsurgency with an overriding and
comprehensive multidimensional policy. Ideally, this policy
would embrace several elements, including a clear strategy, a
defined structure for implementing it, and a vision of
intergovernmental agency cooperation and a unified effort to
guide it. A more focused and strengthened interagency process
would also facilitate the coordination of key themes and
messages, and the development and execution of long-term
``hearts and minds'' programs.
The U.S. Government, in sum, will need to adjust and adapt
its strategy, resources, and tactics to formidable opponents
that, as we have seen, are widely dispersed and decentralized,
and whose many destructive parts are autonomous, mobile, and
themselves highly adaptive. In this respect, even the best
strategy will be proven inadequate if military and civilian
agency leaders are not prepared to engage successfully within
ambiguous environments and to reorient their organizational
culture to deal with irregular threats.
A successful global counterinsurgency transcends the need
for better tactical intelligence or new organizations. It is
fundamentally about transforming the attitudes and mindsets of
leaders so that they have the capacity to take decisive yet
thoughtful action against terrorists and insurgents in
uncertain or unclear situations, based on a common vision,
policy, and strategy.
In sum, new times, new threats, and new challenges make a
new strategy, approach, and new organizational and
institutional behaviors necessary. The effectiveness of a U.S.
strategy will be based on our capacity to think like a
networked enemy, in anticipation of how they may act in a
variety of situations, aided by different resources.
This goal requires that the American national security
structure, in turn, organize itself for maximum efficiency,
information-sharing, and the ability to function quickly and
effectively under new operational definitions. With this
understanding in mind, we need to craft an approach that
specifically takes into account the following key factors to
effectively wage a global counterinsurgency:
<bullet> One, separating the enemy from the populace that
provides its support and sustenance. This, in turn,
entails three basic missions: denial of enemy
sanctuary; elimination of enemy freedom of movement;
denial of enemy resources and support.
<bullet> Second, identification and neutralization of the
enemy.
<bullet> Third, creation of a secure environment, progressing
from local to regional to global.
<bullet> Fourth, ongoing and effective neutralization of
enemy propaganda and information operations through the
planning and execution of a comprehensive and
integrated information operations and holistic civil
affairs campaign of our own.
<bullet> Finally, interagency efforts to build effective and
responsible civil governance mechanisms that eliminate
the fundamental causes of terrorism and insurgency.
In conclusion, al-Qaeda may be compared to the archetypal
shark in the water that must keep moving forward, no matter how
slowly or incrementally, or die. In al-Qaeda's context, this
means adapting and adjusting to our countermeasures while
simultaneously searching to identify new targets and new
vulnerabilities. In this respect, al-Qaeda's capacity to
continue to prosecute this struggle is a direct reflection of
both the movement's resiliency and the continued resonance of
its ideology.
Al-Qaeda's operational durability thus has enormous
significance for United States counterterrorism strategy and
policy. Because al-Qaeda has this malleable resiliency, it
cannot be defeated or destroyed in a single military engagement
or even a series of engagements, much less ones exclusively
dependent on the application of conventional forces and
firepower. To a significant degree, our ability to carry out
such missions effectively will depend on the ability of
American strategy and policy to adjust and adapt to changes we
see in the nature and character of our adversaries. Thank you
very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hoffman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Corporate Chair in
Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency, RAND Corporation, Washington,
DC
``We were working off a script which actually has been completely
discounted from what we know as reality.''--Andy Hayman, Assistant
Commissioner of Specialist Operations, Scotland Yard
``I think the more we learned over this period of several years,
the more we began to realize the limits of what we knew . . .''--Tom
Dowse, Chief of the Assessments Staff
These two admissions, made by persons at the apex of the United
Kingdom's counterterrorism effort, encapsulate the central challenge
today facing the United States in our own counterterrorism effort.
Given the threat's dynamic and evolutionary character and our
adversaries' seeming ability to adapt and adjust their tactics and modi
operandi to overcome or obviate even our most consequential
countermeasures, how can we best ensure that our own assessments and
analyses are anchored firmly to sound, empirical judgment and not
blinded by either conjecture, mirror-imaging, politically partisan
prisms or wishful thinking? And, equally critically, how can we ensure
that our counterterrorism policy is sufficiently comprehensive, well
crafted and effectively directed?
al-qaeda today: evolution, adaptation, and adjustment
Al-Qaeda's obituary has been written often since 9/11. ``Al-
Qa'ida's Top Primed To Collapse, U.S. Says,'' trumpeted a Washington
Post headline 2 weeks after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind
behind the 9/11 attacks, was arrested in March 2003. ``I believe the
tide has turned in terms of al-Qa'ida,'' Congressmen Porter J. Goss,
then-chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence
Committee and himself a former CIA case officer who became its director
a year later, was quoted. ``We've got them nailed,'' an unidentified
intelligence expert was quoted, who still more expansively declared,
``we're close to dismantling them.'' These upbeat assessments continued
the following month with the nearly bloodless capture of Baghdad and
the failure of al-Qaeda to make good on threats of renewed attacks in
retaliation for invasion. Citing administration sources, an article in
the Washington Times on 24 April 2003 reported the prevailing view in
official Washington that al-Qaeda's ``failure to carry out a successful
strike during the United States-led military campaign to topple Saddam
Hussein has raised questions about their ability to carry out major new
attacks.'' Despite major terrorist attacks in Jakarta and Istanbul
during the latter half of that same year and the escalating insurgency
in Iraq, this optimism carried into 2004. ``The al-Qaida of the 9/11
period is under catastrophic stress,'' Ambassador Cofer Black, at the
time the U.S. State Department's Counterterrorism Coordinator,
declared. ``They are being hunted down, their days are numbered.'' Then
came the Madrid bombings 6 weeks later and the deaths of 191 persons.
The most accurate assessment, perhaps, was therefore the one offered by
al-Qaeda itself. ``The Americans,'' Thabet bin Qais, a spokesperson for
the movement said in May 2003, ``only have predications and old
intelligence left. It will take them a long time to understand the new
form of al-Qaida.'' Admittedly, while the first part of bin Qais's
assertion is not correct, there is more than a grain of truth to the
second part. More than 3 years later we are indeed still struggling to
understand the changing character and nature of al-Qaeda and the
shifting dimensions of the terrorist threat as it has evolved since 9/
11.
Today, al-Qaeda is also frequently spoken of as if it is in
retreat: A broken and beaten organization, incapable of mounting
further attacks on its own and instead having devolved operational
authority either to its various affiliates and associates or to
entirely organically-produced, homegrown, terrorist entities. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Al-Qaeda in fact is on the march. It
has regrouped and reorganized from the setbacks meted out to it by the
United States and our coalition partners and allies during the initial
phases of the global war on terrorism (GWOT) and is marshalling its
forces to continue the epic struggle begun now some 10 years ago. Al-
Qaeda is now functioning exactly as its founder and leader, Osama bin
Laden envisioned it. On the one hand, true to the meaning of the Arabic
word for the ``base of operation'' or ``foundation'' meaning the base
or foundation from which worldwide Islamic revolution can be waged (or,
as other translations have it, the ``precept'' or ``method'') and thus
simultaneously inspiring, motivating, and animating radicalized Muslims
to join the movement's fight. While, on the other, continuing to
exercise its core operational and command and control capabilities--
directing the implementing terrorist attacks.
The al-Qaeda of today combines, as it always has, both a ``bottom
up'' approach--encouraging independent thought and action from low- (or
lower-) level operatives--and a ``top down'' one--issuing orders and
still coordinating a far-flung terrorist enterprise with both highly
synchronized and autonomous moving parts. Mixing and matching
organizational and operational styles whether dictated by particular
missions or imposed by circumstances, the al-Qaeda movement,
accordingly, can perhaps most usefully be conceptualized as comprising
four distinct, though not mutually exclusive, dimensions. In descending
order of sophistication, they are:
<bullet> Al-Qaeda Central. This category comprises the remnants of
the pre-9/11 al-Qaeda organization. Although its core
leadership includes some of the familiar, established
commanders of the past, there are a number of new players who
have advanced through the ranks as a result of the death or
capture of key al-Qaeda senior-level managers such as Abu Atef,
KSM, and Hambali, and more recently, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Abu
Hamza Rabia. It is believed that this hardcore remains centered
in or around the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders and continues
to exert actual coordination, if not some direct command and
control capability, in terms of commissioning attacks,
directing surveillance and collating reconnaissance, planning
operations, and approving their execution.
This category comes closest to the al-Qaeda operational template or
model evident in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and 9/11
attacks. Such high value, ``spectacular'' attacks are entrusted only to
al-Qaeda's professional cadre: The most dedicated, committed, and
absolutely reliable element of the movement. Previous patterns suggest
that these ``professional'' terrorists are deployed in predetermined
and carefully selected teams. They will also have been provided with
very specific targeting instructions. In some cases, such as the East
Africa bombings, they may establish contact with, and enlist the
assistance of, local sympathizers and supporters. This will be solely
for logistical and other attack-support purposes or to enlist these
locals to actually execute the attack(s). The operation, however, will
be planned and directed by the ``professional'' element with the locals
clearly subordinate and playing strictly a supporting role (albeit a
critical one).
<bullet> Al-Qaeda Affiliates and Associates. This category embraces
formally established insurgent or terrorist groups that over
the years have benefited from bin Laden's largesse and/or
spiritual guidance and/or have received training, arms, money,
and other assistance from al-Qaeda. Among the recipients of
this assistance have been terrorist groups and insurgent forces
in Uzbekistan and Indonesia, Morocco and the Philippines,
Bosnia and Kashmir, among other places. By supporting these
groups, bin Laden's intentions were threefold. First, he sought
to co-opt these movements' mostly local agendas and channel
their efforts toward the cause of global jihad. Second, he
hoped to create a jihadi ``critical mass'' from these
geographically scattered, disparate movements that would one
day coalesce into a single, unstoppable force. And, third, he
wanted to foster a dependent relationship whereby as a quid pro
quo for prior al-Qaeda support, these movements would either
undertake attacks at al-Qaeda's behest or provide essential
local, logistical, and other support to facilitate strikes by
the al-Qaeda ``professional'' cadre noted above.
This category includes groups such as: al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI),
the late Abu Musab Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (formerly Jamaat
al Tawhid wa'l Jihad), Asbat al-Ansar, Ansar al Islam, Islamic Army of
Aden, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Jemaah Islamiya (JI),
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF), Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), and the various
Kashmiri Islamic groups based in Pakistan--e.g., Harakat ul Mujahidin
(HuM), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Laskar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), and Laskar i
Jhangvi (LiJ). Both the number and geographical diversity of these
entities is proof of al-Qaeda's continued influence and vitality.
<bullet> Al-Qaeda Locals. These are dispersed cells of al-Qaeda
adherents who have or have had some direct connection with al-
Qaeda--no matter how tenuous or evanescent. They appear to fall
into two subcategories.
One category comprises persons who have had some prior terrorism
experience--having been blooded in battle as part of some previous
jihadi campaign in Algeria, the Balkans, Chechnya, and perhaps more
recently in Iraq, and may have trained in some al-Qaeda facility
whether in Afghanistan or Yemen or the Sudan before 9/11. Specific
examples of this adversary include Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in
December 1999 at Port Angeles, Washington State, shortly after he had
entered the United States from Canada. Ressam, for instance, had a
prior background in terrorism, having belonged to Algeria's Armed
Islamic Group (GIA). After being recruited to al-Qaeda, he was provided
with a modicum of basic terrorist training in Afghanistan. In contrast
to the professional cadre detailed above, however, Ressam was given
very nonspecific, virtually open-ended targeting instructions before
being dispatched to North America. Also, unlike the well-funded
professional cadre, Ressam was given only $12,000 in ``seed money'' and
instructed to raise the rest of his operational funds from petty
thievery. He was also told by KSM to recruit members for his terrorist
cell from among the expatriate Muslim communities in Canada and the
United States. The al-Qaeda operative, Andrew Rowe, a British national
and Muslim convert, convicted for his involvement in the 2003 al-Qaeda
plot to attack London's Heathrow Airport is another example of this
category.
The other category, as is described in the detailed discussion of
the 7/7 London attacks below, conforms to the profile of the four
British Muslims responsible for the 2005 bombings of mass transit
targets in London. In contrast to Ressam and Rowe, none of the four
London bombers had previously fought in any of the contemporary, iconic
Muslim conflicts (e.g., Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia,
Afghanistan, etc.) nor is there conclusive evidence of their having
received any training in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, Yemen, or the
Sudan prior to 9/11. Rather, at least the two ringleaders of the London
cell were recruited locally, brought to Pakistan for training and then
returned to their homeland with both an attack plan and the knowledge
to implement. They recruited others locally as needed, into the cell
and undertook a relatively simple, but nonetheless sophisticated and
highly consequential attack.
In both the above categories, however, the terrorists will have
some link with al-Qaeda. Their current relationship, and communication,
with a central al-Qaeda command and control apparatus may be either
active or dormant and similarly their targeting choices may either be
specifically directed or else entirely left to the cell to decide. The
distinguishing characteristic of this category, however, is that there
is some previous direct connection of some kind with al-Qaeda.
<bullet> Al-Qaeda Network. These are home-grown Islamic radicals--
from North Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast
Asia--as well as local converts to Islam mostly living in
Europe, Africa, and perhaps Latin America and North America as
well, who have no direct connection with al-Qaeda (or any other
identifiable terrorist group), but nonetheless are prepared to
carry out attacks in solidarity with or support of al-Qaeda's
radical jihadi agenda. Like the ``al-Qaeda locals'' they too
are motivated by a shared sense of enmity and grievance felt
toward the United States and West, in general, and their host-
nations in particular. In this specific instance, however, the
relationship with al-Qaeda is more inspirational than actual,
abetted by profound rage over the United States' invasion and
occupation of Iraq and the oppression of Muslims in Palestine,
Kashmir, Chechnya, and elsewhere. Critically, these persons are
neither directly members of a known, organized terrorist group
nor necessarily even a very cohesive entity unto themselves.
Examples of this category, which comprises small collections of
like-minded locals who gravitate toward one to plan and mount terrorist
attacks completely independent of any direction provided by al-Qaeda,
include the so-called Hofstad Group in the Netherlands, a member of
whom (Mohammed Bouyeri) murdered the Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh, in
Amsterdam in November 2004.
The most salient threat posed by the above categories, however,
continues to come from al-Qaeda Central and from its affiliates and
associates. However, an additional and equally challenging threat is
now posed by less discernible and more unpredictable entities drawn
from the vast Muslim Diaspora in Europe. As far back as 2001, the
Netherlands' intelligence and security service had detected increased
terrorist recruitment efforts among Muslim youth living in the
Netherlands whom it was previously assumed had been completely
assimilated into Dutch society and culture. Thus, representatives of
Muslim extremist organizations--including, presumably, al-Qaeda had
already succeeded in embedding themselves in, and drawing new sources
of support from, receptive elements within established Diaspora
communities. In this way, new recruits could be drawn into the movement
who likely had not previously come under the scrutiny of local or
national law enforcement agencies.
This new category of terrorist adversary, moreover, also has proven
more difficult for the authorities in these countries to track,
predict, and anticipate. The director of GCHQ (Government
Communications Headquarters), Britain's equivalent of our NSA (National
Security Agency) admitted this in testimony before a Parliamentary
committee investigating the 7/7 attacks. ``We had said before July
[2005],'' Sir David Pepper noted, there are probably groups out there
that we do not know anything about, and because we do not know anything
about them we do not know how many there are. What happened in July
[the 2005 London bombings] was a demonstration that there were
[material redacted for security reasons] conspiracies going on about
which we essentially knew nothing, and that rather sharpens the
perception of how big, if I can use [Secretary of Defense Donald]
Rumsfeld's term, the unknown unknown was.
This adversary, comprising hitherto unknown cells, is difficult, if
not impossible, to effectively profile. Indeed, this was precisely the
conclusion reached by the above-mentioned Parliamentary committee in
their report on the London bombings. Although the members of these
terrorist cells may be marginalized individuals working in menial jobs
from the lower socioeconomic strata of society, some with long criminal
records or histories of juvenile delinquency; others may well come from
solidly middle and upper-middle class backgrounds with university and
perhaps even graduate degrees and prior passions for cars, sports, rock
music, and other completely secular, material interests. For example,
in the case of radicalized British Muslims, since 9/11 we have seen
terrorists of South Asian and North African descent as well as those
hailing both from the Middle East and Caribbean. They have included
life-long devout Muslims as well as recent converts. Persons from the
margins of society who made a living as thieves or from drug dealing
and students at the London School of Economics, one of the U.K.'s
premiere universities. This was not a sentence. What they will have in
common is a combination of a deep commitment to their faith--often
recently rediscovered; admiration of bin Laden for the cathartic blow
struck against America on 9/11; hatred of the United States and the
West; and, a profoundly shared sense of alienation from their host
countries. ``There appear to be a number of common features to this
grooming,'' the report of the Intelligence and Security Committee of
the U.K. House of Commons concluded.
In the early stages, group conversation may be around being a good
Muslim and staying away from drugs and crime, with no hint of an
extremist agenda. Gradually individuals may be exposed to propaganda
about perceived injustices to Muslims across the world with
international conflict involving Muslims interpreted as examples of
widespread war against Islam; leaders of the Muslim world perceived as
corrupt and non-Islamic; with some domestic policies added as
``evidence'' of a persecuted Islam; and conspiracy theories abounding.
They will then move on to what the extremists claim is religious
justification for violent jihad in the Quran and the Hadith . . . and--
if suicide attacks are the intention--the importance of martyrdom in
demonstrating commitment to Islam and the rewards in Paradise for
martyrs; before directly inviting an individual to engage in terrorism.
There is little evidence of over compulsion. The extremists appear
rather to rely on the development of individual commitment and group
bonding and solidarity [my emphasis].
These new recruits are the anonymous cogs in the world-wide al-
Qaeda enterprise and include both longstanding residents and new
immigrants found across in Europe, but specifically in countries with
large expatriate Muslim populations such as Britain, Spain, France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
the perils of wishful thinking: al-qaeda and the 7/7 london bombings
The United Kingdom, of course, rightly prides itself on decades-
long experience and detailed knowledge of effectively countering a
variety of terrorist threats. Over the past dozen years the U.K.
homeland itself has been subject to attack from a diversity of
adversaries including: the Provisional Irish Republican Army, renegade
Palestinian factions, and both before and since 9/11 by al-Qaeda as
well. Yet, despite Britain's formidable counterterrorist capabilities
and unrivaled expertise, only a month before the 7 July 2005 London
bombings, the Joint Terrorism Assessment Center (JTAC), the British
counterpart of our own NCTC (National Counter-
terrorism Center) concluded that, ``at present there is not a group
with both the current intent and the capability to attack in the U.K.''
and consequently downgraded the overall threat level for the U.K.
More astonishing perhaps was the dismissal of the prospect of
suicide terrorist attacks occurring in the United Kingdom, despite the
emerging global pattern of terrorism in this respect and the
involvement of several British nationals in both attempted and
successful suicide attacks elsewhere. Seventy-eight percent of all the
suicide terrorist incidents perpetrated between 1968 and 2004, for
instance, have occurred in the years following 9/11. And, the dominant
force behind this trend is religion--specifically groups and
individuals identifying themselves as Islamic. Indeed, of the 35
terrorist organizations currently employing suicide tactics, 86 percent
(31 of 35) are Islamic. These movements, moreover, have been
responsible for 81 percent of all suicide attacks since 9/11. Indeed,
to date, suicide attacks have taken place in at least two dozen
countries--including the United Kingdom, Israel, Sri Lanka, Russia,
Lebanon, Turkey, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Argentina,
Kenya, Tanzania, Croatia, Morocco, Singapore, the Philippines, Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. By comparison, at the dawn of the modern era
of religious terrorism some 20 years ago, this was a phenomenon
confined exclusively to two countries: Lebanon and Kuwait, and employed
by less than a half dozen groups. Yet, only 4 months before the 7/7
bombings, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), Britain's most senior
intelligence assessment and evaluation body (one roughly similar to the
American intelligence community's NIC, or National Intelligence
Center), judged that ``such attacks would not become the norm within
Europe.'' This judgment, coupled with the testimony of Dame Eliza
Manningham-Buller, the Director-General of the Security Service (MI-5),
prompted the aforementioned Parliamentary committee to conclude that
``The fact that there were suicide attacks in the U.K. on 7 July was
clearly unexpected. The Director General of the Security Service said
it was a surprise that the first big attack in the U.K. for 10 years
was a suicide attack.''
The point of this discussion is most certainly not to criticize our
principal ally in the war on terrorism but rather to highlight the
immense difficulties and vast uncertainties concerning countering
terrorism today that have confounded even the enormously professional
and experienced British intelligence and security services. Moreover,
the danger of similarly cloaking ourselves in a false sense of security
based on faulty assumptions or wishful thinking is omnipresent in so
fluid and dynamic a terrorism environment as exists today. Indeed, our
appreciation and understanding of the current al-Qaeda threat further
underscores these perils. Both at the time of the London bombing
attacks and since a misconception has frequently been perpetuated that
this was entirely an organic or homegrown phenomenon of self-
radicalized, self-selected terrorists. Such arguments often were cited
in support of the argument that entirely homegrown threats had
superseded those posed of al-Qaeda; that al-Qaeda itself was no longer
a consequential, active terrorist force; and accordingly that the
threat had both changed and perhaps even receded. The evidence that has
come to light since the London attacks a year ago, however, points to
the opposite conclusion: That al-Qaeda is not only alive and kicking,
but that it is still actively planning, supporting through the
provision of training, and perhaps even directing terrorist attacks on
a global canvas.
Issues of classification and sensitive collection prevent a full
description and account of this evidence of active al-Qaeda involvement
in the London attacks. However, suffice it to say that what is publicly
known and has been reported in unclassified sources, clearly points to
such involvement. For instance, the aforementioned report by the
Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, noted among its other
conclusions, that:
<bullet> ``Investigations since July have shown that the group [the
four London bombers] was in contact with others involved in
extremism in the U.K. . . .''
<bullet> ``Siddique Khan [the group's ringleader] is now known to
have visited Pakistan in 2003 and to have spent several months
there with Shazad Tanweer [another bomber] between November
2004 and February 2005. It has not yet been established who
they met in Pakistan, but it is assessed as likely that they
had some contact with al-Qaida figures.''
<bullet> ``The extent to which the 7 July attacks were externally
planned, directed, or controlled by contacts in Pakistan or
elsewhere remains unclear. The [British intelligence and
security] Agencies believe that some form of operational
training is likely to have taken place while Khan and Tanweer
were in Pakistan. Contacts in the run-up to the attacks suggest
they may have had advice or direction from individuals there.''
More compelling, albeit for the moment necessarily circumstantial,
evidence may be found in the ``martyrdom'' videos made by Khan and
Tanweer sometime while they were in Pakistan between November 2004 and
February 2005. Like all Osama bin Laden's most important video taped
statements and appearances, the Khan and Tanweer statements were both
professionally produced and released by al-Qaeda's perennially-active
communications department, ``Al Sahab [the Clouds] for Media
Production.''
The first of the two videos of Khan was broadcast on the Qatar-
based Arabic-language news station, al Jazeera, on 1 September 2005. It
is worth exploring the content of Khan's statement in some detail since
it accurately encapsulates the essence of European Muslim radicalism
today. Kahn's statement is especially noteworthy for the following
reasons:
<bullet> He professes his preeminent allegiance to and identification
with his religion and the umma--the worldwide Muslim community.
Hence, unlike most Western conceptions of identity and
allegiance that are rooted to the nation or state, Khan's is
exclusively to a theology.
<bullet> Like all terrorists before him, Khan frames his choice of
tactic and justifies his actions in ineluctably defensive
terms. He describes his struggle as an intrinsically defensive
one and his act as a response to the repeated depredations and
unmitigated aggression of the West that have been directed
against Muslims worldwide.
<bullet> The sense of individual empowerment and catharsis evident in
Khan's words and demeanor.
<bullet> The intense desire for vengeance and martyrdom, with the
latter regarded by him as ``supreme evidence'' of his religious
commitment.
<bullet> Khan's laudatory comments about bin Laden and his deputy,
Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The relevant portions of Khan's statement are as follows:
<bullet> I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we
believe. Our driving motivation doesn't come from tangible
commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is
Islam--obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the
footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad . . .
This is how our ethical stances are dictated.
<bullet> Your democratically elected governments continuously
perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And
your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I
am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim
brothers and sisters [my emphasis].
<bullet> Until we feel security, you will be our targets. And until
you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment, and torture of my
people we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a
soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation .
. . .
<bullet> I myself, I make du'a [calling] to Allah . . . to raise me
amongst those whom I love like the prophets, the messengers,
the martyrs, and today's heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama
Bin Laden, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and
all the other brothers and sisters that are fighting in . . .
this cause.
Al-Zawahiri in fact appears at the end of the same tape, praising
Khan for having brought the ``blessed battle . . . to the enemy's
land.'' In a subsequent video, aired on al Jazeera on 19 September, al-
Zawahiri also claimed responsibility for the attacks in the name of al-
Qaeda. Only last week, a similar martyrdom tape made by Khan's
traveling companion and fellow bomber, Shahzad Tanweer, was released by
al Sahab to mark the first anniversary of the London attacks. Titled,
``The Final Message of the Knights of the London Raid,'' it showed
Tanweer expressing similar views to those of Khan. ``To the non-Muslims
of Britain,'' he begins: You may wonder what you have done to deserve
this. You are those who have voted in your government, who in turn
have, and still continue to this day, continue to oppress our mothers,
children, brothers, and sisters from the east to the west, in
Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Chechnya. Your government has openly
supported the genocide of over 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja.
You have offered financial and military support to the United
States and Israel, in the massacre of our children in Palestine. You
are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan,
and Iraq to this day. You have openly declared war on Islam, and are
the forerunners in the crusade against the Muslims.
Al-Zawahiri then appears on screen to explain that, ``What made
Shehzad join the camps of Qaeda Al-Jihad was the oppression carried out
by the British in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine. He would often talk
about Palestine, about the British support of the Jews, and about their
clear injustice against the Muslims.'' An unidentified narrator then
continues: In order to remove this injustice, Shehzad [sic] began
training with all his might and devotion. Together with the martyr
Siddiq Khan, he received practical and intensive training in how to
produce and use explosives, in the camps of Qaeda Al-Jihad. The
recruits who join these camps do not have to achieve high averages or
to pass entrance exams. All they need is to be zealous for their
religion and nation, and to love jihad and martyrdom for the sake of
Allah.
The video continues with Tanweer warning ``all you British citizens
to stop your support to your lying British Government, and to the so-
called `war on terror,' and ask yourselves why would thousands of men
be willing to give their lives for the cause of Muslims.'' Al-Zawahiri
also again appears to emphasize how both Khan and Tanweer were
``striving for martyrdom, and were hoping to carry out a martyrdom
operation. Both of them were very resolute in this.'' Tanweer then
calls upon his fellow British Muslims to rise and fight the
``disbelievers, for it is but an obligation made on you by Allah.'' A
statement is then heard from U.S.-born, Muslim convert Adam Gadahn
(``Azzam the American'') before concluding with Tanweer threatening
that: What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a series of
attacks, which, in shallah, will intensify and continue until you pull
all your troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, until you stop all
financial and military support to the United States and Israel, and
until you release all Muslim prisoners from Belmarsh, and your other
concentration camps. And know that if you fail to comply with this,
then know that this war will never stop, and that we are ready to give
our lives, one hundred times over, for the cause of Islam. You will
never experience peace, until our children in Palestine, our mothers
and sisters in Kashmir, and our brothers in Afghanistan and Iraq feel
peace.
toward a new u.s. counterterrorism policy
``Could we, could others, could the police have done better? Could
we with greater effort, greater imagination, have stopped it? We knew
there were risks we were running. We were trying very hard and very
fast to enhance our capacity, but even with the wisdom of hindsight I
think it is unlikely that we would have done so, with the resources
available to us at the time and the other demands placed upon us. I
think that position will remain in the foreseeable future. We will
continue to stop most of them, but we will not stop all of them.''--
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director-General, U.K. Security Service
(MI-5)
As this discussion of the 7/7 London bombings has shown, al-Qaeda
and the threat it poses cannot be defeated through military means
alone. Yet, our policy to date has arguably been predominantly weighted
toward the tactical ``kill or capture'' approach and metric: Assuming
that a traditional center of gravity exists whether the target is al-
Qaeda or the insurgency in Iraq and that this target simply needs to be
destroyed so that global terrorism or the Iraqi insurgency will end.
However, both our adversaries today and the threats that they pose, are
much more elusive and complicated and, as the previous discussion of
the London attacks clearly depicts, less amenable to kinetic solutions.
As one U.S. intelligence officer with vast experience in this realm
acerbically told to me nearly 2 years ago: ``We don't have enough
bullets to kill them all.'' Accordingly, a new strategy and new
approach is vital. Its success will be predicated upon a strategy that
effectively combines the tactical elements of systematically destroying
and weakening enemy capabilities (the ``kill or capture'' approach)
alongside the equally critical, broader strategic imperative of
breaking the cycle of terrorist and insurgent recruitment and
replenishment that have respectively sustained both al-Qaeda's
continued campaign and the ongoing conflict in Iraq. A successful
strategy will thus be one that also thinks and plans ahead with a view
toward addressing the threats likely to be posed by the terrorist and
insurgent generation beyond the current one.
At the foundation of such a dynamic and adaptive strategy must be
the ineluctable axiom that effectively and successfully countering
terrorism as well as insurgency is not exclusively a military endeavor
but also involves fundamental parallel political, social, economic, and
ideological activities. This timeless principle of countering
insurgency was first defined by Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer in
Malaya more than 50 years ago. ``The shooting side of the business is
only 25 percent of the trouble and the other 75 percent lies in getting
the people of this country behind us,'' Templer famously wrote in
November 1952, responding to a terrorist directive from the previous
year that focused on increasing appreciably the ``cajolery'' of the
population. Accordingly, rather than viewing the fundamental organizing
principle of American national defense strategy in this unconventional
realm as a GWOT, it may be more useful to reconceptualize it in terms
of a global counterinsurgency (GCOIN). Such an approach would a priori
knit together the equally critical political, economic, diplomatic, and
developmental sides inherent to the successful prosecution of
counterinsurgency to the existing dominant military side of the
equation.
Such a new approach would necessarily be built upon a more
integrated, systems approach to a complex problem that is at once
operationally durable, evolutionary and elusive in character. Greater
attention to this integration of American capabilities would provide
incontrovertible recognition of the importance of endowing a GCOIN with
an overriding and comprehensive, multi-dimensional policy. Ideally,
this policy would embrace several elements including a clear strategy,
a defined structure for implementing it, and a vision of
intergovernment agency cooperation, and the unified effort to guide it.
It would have particular benefit with respect to the gathering and
exploitation of ``actionable intelligence.'' By updating and
streamlining interagency counterterrorism and counterinsurgency systems
and procedures both strategically as well as operationally between the
Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the intelligence
community, actionable intelligence could likely be acquired, analyzed,
and disseminated faster and operations mounted more quickly. A more
focused and strengthened interagency process would also facilitate the
coordination of key themes and messages and the development and
execution of long-term ``hearts and minds'' programs.
The U.S. Government, in sum, will need to adjust and adapt its
strategy, resources, and tactics to formidable opponents that, as we
have seen, are widely dispersed and decentralized and whose many
destructive parts are autonomous, mobile, and themselves highly
adaptive. In this respect, even the best strategy will be proven
inadequate if military and civilian agency leaders are not prepared to
engage successfully within ambiguous environments and reorient their
organizational culture to deal with irregular threats. A successful
GCOIN transcends the need for better tactical intelligence or new
organizations. It is fundamentally about transforming the attitudes and
mindsets of leaders so that they have the capacity to take decisive,
yet thoughtful action against terrorists and/or insurgents in uncertain
or unclear situations based on a common vision, policy, and strategy.
In addition to traditional ``hard'' military skills of ``kill or
capture'' and destruction and attrition; ``soft'' skills such as
information operations, negotiation, psychology, social and cultural
anthropology, foreign area studies, complexity theory, and systems
management will become increasingly important in the ambiguous and
dynamic environment in which irregular adversaries circulate.
Arguably, by combating irregular adversaries in a more
collaborative manner with key relevant civilian agencies, military
planners can better share critical information, track the various
moving parts in terrorist/insurgency networks, and develop a
comprehensive picture of this enemy--including their supporters, nodes
of support, organizational and operational systems, processes, and
plans. With this information in hand, the United States would then be
better prepared to systematically disrupt or defeat all of the critical
nodes that support the entire terrorist/insurgent network, thus
rendering them ineffective. Achieving this desideratum, however, will
necessitate the coordination, deconflicting, and synchronization of the
variety of programs upon which the execution of American
counterterrorist and/or counter-
insurgency planning are dependent. An equally critical dimension of
this process will be aligning the training of host nation counterparts
with GWOT/GCOIN operations: Building synergy; avoiding duplication of
effort; ensuring that training leads to operational effectiveness; and
ensuring that the U.S. interagency team and approach is in complete
harmony. In other words, aligning these training programs (among the
different government agencies) with GCOIN operations to build
indigenous capabilities in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency will
be absolutely fundamental to the success of such a strategy.
In sum, new times, new threats, and new challenges ineluctably make
a new strategy, approach, and new organizational and institutional
behaviors necessary. The threat posed by elusive and deadly irregular
adversaries emphasizes the need to anchor changes that will more
effectively close the gap between detecting irregular adversarial
activity and rapidly defeating it. The effectiveness of U.S. strategy
will be based on our capacity to think like a networked enemy, in
anticipation of how they may act in a variety of situations, aided by
different resources. This goal requires that the American national
security structure in turn organize itself for maximum efficiency,
information sharing, and the ability to function quickly and
effectively under new operational definitions. With this thorough
understanding in mind, we need to craft an approach that specifically
takes into account the following key factors to effectively wage a
GCOIN:
1. Separating the enemy from the populace that provides support and
sustenance. This, in turn, entails three basic missions: (a) Denial of
enemy sanctuary; (b) Elimination of enemy freedom of movement; and (c)
Denial of enemy resources and support;
2. Identification and neutralization of the enemy;
3. Creation of a secure environment--progressing from local to
regional to global;
4. Ongoing and effective neutralization of enemy propaganda through
the planning and execution of a comprehensive and integrated
information operations and holistic civil affairs campaign in harmony
with the first four tasks; and
5. Interagency efforts to build effective and responsible civil
governance mechanisms that eliminate the fundamental causes of
terrorism and insurgency.
In conclusion, al-Qaeda may be compared to the archetypal shark in
the water that must keep moving forward--no matter how slowly or
incrementally--or die. In al-Qaeda's context, this means adapting and
adjusting to our countermeasures while simultaneously searching to
identify new targets and vulnerabilities. In this respect, al-Qaeda's
capacity to continue to prosecute this struggle is a direct reflection
of both the movement's resiliency and the continued resonance of its
ideology. Accordingly, if the threat we face is constantly changing and
evolving, so must our policies and responses be regularly reviewed,
updated, and adjusted. In this struggle, we cannot afford to rest on
past laurels or be content with security that may have proven effective
yesterday and today, but could likely prove inadequate tomorrow given
this process of terrorist change and evolution.
Al-Qaeda's ``operational durability'' thus has enormous
significance for U.S. counterterrorism strategy and policy. Because it
has this malleable resiliency, it cannot be destroyed or defeated in a
single tactical, military engagement or series of engagements--much
less ones exclusively dependent on the application of conventional
forces and firepower. To a significant degree, our ability to carry out
such missions effectively will depend on the ability of American
strategy to adjust and adapt to changes we see in the nature and
character of our adversaries.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Hoffman, for that
remarkable paper and the insights you have presented to our
hearing.
We call now on Mr. Andrew Kohut for his testimony.
STATEMENT OF MR. ANDREW KOHUT, PRESIDENT,
PEW RESEARCH CENTER, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Kohut. Thank you for the opportunity to help the
committee understand the attitudes of people in the Muslim
world, toward the West, toward the United States, toward the
issues related to the war on terrorism.
Since 2002, the Pew Global Attitudes Project which I direct
has interviewed more than 110,000 people in 50 countries, many
of them Arab countries or predominantly Muslim countries in
Africa and in Asia. I would like to do two things today: To
update you on views toward the United States and the attitudes
toward terrorism in the Muslim countries, but also tell you
about a new survey that we conducted this year which was a
broader investigation about how people in the Muslim world and
Westerners view each other on a personal and individual level,
and I think it has great bearing on the work of this committee.
First, the Global Attitudes Project has more generally
documented the rise of anti-Americanism around the world since
its inception in 2002. We have seen this to be especially the
case in Muslim countries. Our most recent polls have found that
the American people and the United States are viewed
unfavorably in virtually all of the Muslim countries in which
we have conducted surveys.
This is even the case in countries that are closely allied
with the United States. For example, in Turkey just 12 percent
of the people that we interviewed have a favorable view of the
United States. Back in 2000 that was as high as 52 percent.
Similarly, in Jordan 15 percent hold a positive view of the
United States; in Pakistan, 27 percent hold a positive view of
the United States.
The numbers are not very good anywhere. Of all of the
countries that we have interviewed in 2 years that are
predominantly Muslim, only in Morocco have we seen close to a
majority saying anything positive about the United States. And,
unlike in much of the rest of the world, the complaints aren't
restricted just to the government, to the country at large, but
also to the American people, who are held in low regard in the
Muslim world.
Anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is driven by the
United States' policies: the war in Iraq, most recently; the
war on terrorism, generally; United States' support for Israel,
probably most fully; and the general perception that the United
States conducts its foreign policy unilaterally.
I'd like to just give you a quick overview of the important
trends that we've seen in the past 5 years. First of all, anti-
Americanism existed before the war in Iraq, in the Mideast and
in Central Asia, but with the war in Iraq it really
intensified. But the biggest impact is that with the war in
Iraq, anti-Americanism became a global phenomenon in the Muslim
world. We saw anti-Americanism, dislike of the country and the
people, grow tremendously in Africa and in Asia where
previously that had not been the case, notably in Indonesia,
notably in Nigeria.
Second, the war on terrorism, while viewed with increasing
suspicion among our European allies, has never been accepted in
the Muslim world. It's seen as the United States picking on
Muslim countries, as protecting Israel, and attempting to
control the world.
Third, there has been substantial support for terrorism and
terrorists among Muslim publics. Sizeable minorities in many
Muslim countries have said that suicide bombings that target
civilians in defense of Islam are sometimes or often
justifiable, and significant numbers of people in many of these
countries have expressed admiration and a positive view of
Osama bin Laden.
While these trends have been mostly negative, we have seen
some positive signs, too. The image of the United States
improved markedly in Indonesia and somewhat even in Pakistan in
response to the aid that we gave to victims of natural
disasters in those countries.
We have seen support for terrorism decline somewhat in a
number of countries, especially those who have had their own
experience with it, in Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan, and most
recently in Jordan. Support for suicide bombing or believing
that suicide bombing is justifiable decreased in the aftermath
of attacks in those countries.
But while there is less support for suicide bombing and a
less favorable regard for bin Laden, support for terrorism has
far from disappeared in the Muslim world. In the survey that we
conducted this year, 28, 29 percent of Jordanians and Egyptians
see suicide bombing that targets civilians as justifiable.
Finally, our polling has found Muslims consistently saying
that Western-style democracy can work in their countries, and
that's a good thing. And despite the fact that they can't say,
it's very difficult for them to say good things about the
United States, they do tell us that they think that the United
States supports democracy in their country.
These are among the broad, general trends that we have
found in the Muslim world and in the Mideast, specifically. Now
I want to turn to what we have learned in our most recent
survey about how Muslim publics and Western publics view each
other. That was the focus of our research in the current
polling.
In the Muslim world, we did surveys in Indonesia, Pakistan,
Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and also in Nigeria, the Muslim part of
Nigeria, which is about 50 percent of that country. In the
West, we polled the United States, Britain, France, Germany,
and Spain, but we also made a special effort to interview the
Muslim minorities in the four European countries: Britain,
France, Germany, and Spain.
Our overall conclusion in this survey was that a real
divide does exist between the people of both cultures. The one
thing that the Muslims and the Western respondents agreed on is
that relations aren't good. That was the view of 70 percent of
Germans, 55 percent of Americans, but it was matched by 64
percent of Turks and 58 percent of Egyptians who agree that the
West and the Muslim people are not getting along very well.
When we probed the image of each people among the other, we
saw very negative stereotyping. Westerners see Muslims as
fanatical, violent, and not tolerant. Muslims see Westerners as
selfish, immoral, greedy, as well as violent and fanatical.
There's a lot of finger-pointing clearly going on in the way
Westerners and Muslims look at each other.
And last year's controversy over the cartoons of Mohammed
in Europe really highlighted it. Muslims saw Western disrespect
for the Islamic religion. Westerners saw the Muslims as
intolerant and not respecting freedom of expression. There are
also very competing views about women. Each culture says the
other side is not respectful of the way women are treated in
their world.
Our second conclusion is that many Muslim publics have an
aggrieved view of the West. Many blame U.S. and Western
policies for the lack of prosperity in the Muslim world.
Muslims feel more embittered toward the West and its people
than vice versa. Muslim publics attribute more negative
qualities to Western people than Westerners do to Muslims. They
also rate Christians and especially Jews far less favorably
than Europeans and Americans evaluate Muslim people.
Most Muslims--one of the most shocking findings of this
survey, at least to me, was that most Muslims remain
unconvinced that a group of Arab men carried out the 9/11
attacks. In Indonesia, 65 percent said, ``No, it didn't happen
that way.'' In Jordan, 53 percent said it didn't happen that
way. Even in Turkey, 59 percent said it didn't happen that way.
This is the same question that the Gallup organization had
asked in about January or February of 2002, right after the
attacks, and basically we found the same answers that Gallup
found: Most Muslim publics in denial about who carried out
these attacks.
On the other hand, while there is this aggrieved view in
the Muslim world, Westerners are skeptical of Muslim values.
Westerners, more often than Muslims, see a conflict between
Islam and modernity. Westerners are less optimistic about the
prospects for democracy in the Muslim world than are Muslims
themselves, who, as I said earlier, have consistently told us
that they believe Western-style democracy will work there.
This may reflect, the views of Westerners may reflect that
Americans and Western Europeans are very dismayed about the
Hamas election victory in Palestine, but certainly Muslim
publics are not. They see it as good for the Palestinian
people. They see it as good for the resolution of the conflict
with Israel. Westerners also see more support for al-Qaeda in
the Muslim world than do Muslims.
This poll has a lot of negative findings. We did find some
positive things. First of all, there is not--following a bad
year of riots and the 7/7 bombings, we didn't see an outright
spike in hostility between Muslims and Westerners. The
attitudes that I'm speaking about are of a more long-lasting,
enduring nature. Majorities in France, Britain, and the United
States retain generally favorable views of Muslims.
And, as I said earlier, there has been another decline in
support for suicide bombing in a number of countries, but there
still remains considerable support. Sizeable majorities in
major Muslim countries say suicide bombing can be justified.
Even among Europe's moderate Muslims, which I'll tell you a
little bit more about, one in seven feels suicide bombings that
target civilians can be justified under certain circumstances
in defense of Islam.
I have to tell you, though, that the most troubling numbers
are the ones that we got out of Nigeria. In Nigeria, 61 percent
of the people that we interviewed, the Muslims that we
interviewed, said they had a favorable view of Osama bin Laden,
and 56 percent say most of the people that they know support
radical groups like al-Qaeda.
We haven't gone back into Africa in any great detail since
2002. I did note the change in opinion. When we do go back, we
can only hope that what we found in Nigeria isn't echoed among
other Muslim publics.
With regard to the European Muslims, they hold a more
temperate view of the West than do Muslims in the Mideast and
Asia and Africa. European Muslims have more positive views of
Westerners than those in the countries back home. They are less
likely than other Europeans to see a conflict between modernity
and Islam. They think it can work.
Most European Muslims expressed favorable opinions of
Christians, and more favorable opinions of Jews than do Muslims
in other countries. In France, in particular, there are
relatively positive views among French Muslims of Jews.
Muslims in Europe do worry about their future, but their
concern is more economic than religious or cultural. Generally,
European Muslims show signs of favoring a moderate version of
Islam.
One of the things I would like to emphasize, if you look at
our study carefully, there is no clear European point of view
about Muslims. There is not a clear European Muslim point of
view. The views of French, German, Spanish, and British Muslims
are quite distinct.
British Muslims are the most anxious about their future,
they're the most concerned about extremism, but they have the
largest minority expressing very antagonistic views toward
Westerners. French Muslims are the most integrated, eager to be
part of the French society, and most welcomed by the general
public. German Muslims are the most likely to consider
Europeans hostile, and the German public is least accepting of
Muslim immigrants of the four publics that we've questioned.
I would like to conclude that it's no secret that the
United States has an image problem in the Muslim world. Iraq
has intensified it and broadened discontent with America and
its people among Muslims in the Mideast, Africa, and Asia.
There is little sign in our surveys that this has meaningfully
changed over the past 3 years.
In some predominantly Muslim countries, things have gotten
better. In other countries, things have gotten a little worse.
But the bottom line remains the same: We are poorly regarded by
most Muslim people, and significant numbers of them express at
least tacit support for terrorist tactics and the enemies of
the United States, although the trends have been going in the
right direction on these measures.
As the events of the past year in Europe have indicated,
there is a broad divide between Westerners and Muslims around
the world. Misunderstanding, value differences, economic-based
resentment have led to suspicion and a mutually acknowledged
divide or clash of civilizations.
The good news is that Muslims in Europe are nonetheless far
more moderate and positive toward the West than Muslims living
in the Mideast, Africa, and Asia. Their attitudes and the
attitudes of the general population in the host countries
suggest that exposure might indeed lead to improved
understanding, mostly. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kohut follows:]
Prepared Statement of Andrew Kohut, President, Pew Research Center,
Washington, DC
Thank you for the opportunity to help the committee better
understand the attitudes of people in the Muslim world toward the West,
the United States in particular, and issues related to the war on
terrorism.
Since its first public opinion survey in 2002, the Pew Global
Attitudes project has conducted seven surveys totaling 110,000
interviews in 50 nations, including many Arab and majority Muslim
countries.\1\ I would like to do two things today: First, give you an
update on the image of the United States and attitudes toward terrorism
in Muslim countries and, second, tell you about the results of a
broader investigation that we made in this year's survey regarding how
Muslims and Westerners regard each other.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Full details of the surveys in this program can be found at
www.pewglobal.org.
FAVORABLE OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES
[Amounts in percent]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1999/
2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Egypt..................................................... -- -- -- -- -- 30
Jordan.................................................... -- 25 1 5 21 15
Morocco................................................... 77 -- 27 27 49 --
Lebanon*.................................................. -- 30 15 -- 22 --
Turkey.................................................... 52 30 15 30 23 12
Pakistan.................................................. 23 10 13 21 23 27
Indonesia................................................. -- 61 15 -- 38 30
Nigeria*.................................................. -- 72 38 -- -- 32
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Muslims only.
1999/2000 trends from Office of Research, U.S. Dept. of State.
First, since their inception, our surveys have documented the rise
of anti-Americanism around the world, but especially in predominately
Muslim countries. In our most recent polls, the United States and the
American people are regarded unfavorably by sizable majorities among
seven of eight Muslim publics surveyed.
DISLIKE OF AMERICANS TOO--2005/2006
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Favorable Unfavorable DK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Egypt............................ 36 63 1=100
Jordan........................... 38 61 1=100
Morocco.......................... 62 30 7=99
Lebanon*......................... 22 47 1=100
Turkey........................... 17 69 14=100
Pakistan......................... 27 52 20=99
Indonesia........................ 36 60 5=101
Nigeria*......................... 23 75 3=101
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Muslims only.
Figures for Morocco and Lebanon are from 2005.
Most troubling is the extent of anti-Americanism in countries that
are important allies of the United States. In Turkey, just 12 percent
hold a positive opinion of the United States, down from as high as 52
percent in 2000. Similarly, only 15 percent in Jordan and 27 percent in
Pakistan rate the United States positively. Views of the American
people are only somewhat more favorable than opinions of the United
States generally in the Mideast and among Muslims in Asia and Africa.
SUPPORT FOR SUICIDE BOMBING*
[Amounts in percent]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Violence against civilian targets justified
---------------------------------------------------
Often/
Sometimes Rarely Never DK
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan...................................................... 29 28 43 *=100
Spring 2005............................................. 57 31 11 1=100
Summer 2002............................................. 43 22 26 8=99
Egypt....................................................... 28 25 45 3=101
Turkey...................................................... 17 9 61 14=101
Spring 2005............................................. 14 6 66 13=99
March 2004.............................................. 15 9 67 9=100
Summer 2002............................................. 13 7 64 14=98
Pakistan.................................................... 14 8 69 8=99
Spring 2005............................................. 25 19 46 10=100
March 2004.............................................. 41 8 35 16=100
Summer 2002............................................. 33 5 38 23=99
Indonesia................................................... 10 18 71 1=100
Spring 2005............................................. 15 18 66 1=100
Summer 2002............................................. 27 16 54 3=100
Nigeria..................................................... 46 23 28 3=100
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Asked of Muslims only.
Anti-Americanism is largely driven by aversion to United States
policies, such as the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and United
States support for Israel, in addition to the general perception that
the United States fails to consider the interests of other countries
when it acts in the international arena. Here are some important trends
that we have seen over the past 5 years:
<bullet> Anti-Americanism worsened in the Mideast in response to the
war in Iraq--but it soared among Muslims in other parts of the
world that previously did not view the United States poorly--
notably in Indonesia and Nigeria.
<bullet> The war on terrorism, while viewed with increasing suspicion
among our European allies, has never been accepted as
legitimate by Muslims. It has been seen as the United States
picking on Muslim countries, protecting Israel, and attempting
to control the world.
<bullet> There has been substantial support for terrorism and
terrorists among Muslim publics. Sizable minorities in many
Muslim countries have said that suicide bombings that target
civilians can often or sometimes be justified in defense of
Islam and appreciable numbers have expressed support for Osama
bin Laden.
But while the trends have been mostly negative, we have seen some
positive signs too:
<bullet> The image of the United States improved markedly in
Indonesia in 2004 and slightly in Pakistan in 2005 in response
to United States aid to victims of natural disasters in these
countries.
<bullet> Support for terrorism has declined somewhat in a number of
countries, especially those that have had their own experience
with it. We have seen this in Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan,
and, most recently and dramatically, Jordan, following last
year's attack in Amman.
It is important to note, however, that while we see less support
for suicide bombing and less favorable regard for bin Laden, support
for terrorism has far from disappeared in the Muslim world.
<bullet> Finally, our polling has found Muslims consistently saying
that Western-style democracy can work in their countries and,
despite their dislike of the United States, many believe that
the United States supports increased democracy in their
countries.
These are among the most important findings among Muslims in our
recent surveys, specifically about the United States and American
policies. Our polling this year looked at a broader question that is
pertinent to the work of this committee--how do Western and Muslim
publics view each other?
In the Muslim world we polled in Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan,
Egypt, and Turkey. In the West, the survey included the United States,
Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. We interviewed the Muslim
minorities in the four European countries, as well, to get some insight
into the views of this rapidly growing segment of the population.
Our overall conclusion is that a real divide exists between Western
and Muslim people, reflected by a year marked by riots over cartoon
portrayals of Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and
continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The rare point of consensus in the survey was that both Muslims and
Westerners are convinced that relations between the peoples are
generally bad. In the West, 70 percent of Germans and 55 percent of
Americans think so. This is matched by 64 percent of Turks and 58
percent of Egyptians who believe this, too. Large majorities of Muslims
blame Westerners for the problem. Many Europeans and Americans point
their fingers at the Muslims, but many in the West also accept some
responsibility for the problem.
ARE MUSLIMS RESPECTFUL OF WOMEN?
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes* No
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Non-Muslims in:
Great Britain....................................... 26 59
France.............................................. 23 77
United States....................................... 19 69
Germany............................................. 17 80
Spain............................................... 12 83
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Percentage who associate characteristic with Muslims/people in Western
countries.
ARE WESTERNERS RESPECTFUL OF WOMEN?
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes* No
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Muslims in:
Spain............................................... 82 13
France.............................................. 77 23
Germany............................................. 73 22
Great Britain....................................... 49 44
Turkey.............................................. 42 39
Egypt............................................... 40 52
Indonesia........................................... 38 50
Jordan.............................................. 38 53
Pakistan............................................ 22 52
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Percentage who associate characteristic with Muslims/people in Western
countries.
Each side has a mostly negative image of the other people.
Westerners see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and not tolerant. Muslims
see Westerners as selfish, immoral, and greedy, as well as violent and
fanatical.
Last year's controversy over cartoons of Muhammad highlights the
divide between Muslims and the West. Most people in Jordan, Egypt,
Indonesia, and Turkey blame the controversy on Western nations'
disrespect for the Islamic religion. In contrast, majorities of
Americans and Western Europeans who have heard of the controversy say
Muslims' intolerance to different points of view is more to blame.
The chasm between Muslims and the West is also seen in judgments
about how the other civilization treats women. Western publics, by
lopsided margins, do not think of Muslims as ``respectful of women.''
But half or more in four of the five Muslim publics surveyed say the
same thing about people in the West.
A second conclusion of the poll is that Muslims have an aggrieved
view of the West. Many blame United States and Western policies for
their lack of prosperity. For example, this is the opinion of 66
percent of Jordanians and 59 percent of Egyptians who think that their
country should be more prosperous than it is. Westerners most often
point to government corruption and Muslim fundamentalism as the cause
of the problem.
DID ARABS CARRY OUT 9/11 ATTACKS?*
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes No
------------------------------------------------------------------------
British Muslims....................................... 17 56
French Muslims........................................ 48 46
German Muslims....................................... 35 44
Spanish Muslims....................................... 33 35
Indonesia............................................. 16 65
Egypt................................................. 32 59
Turkey................................................ 16 59
Jordan................................................ 39 53
Pakistan.............................................. 15 41
Nigerian Muslims...................................... 42 47
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Asked of Muslims only.
A number of measures in these surveys show Muslims feeling more
embittered toward the West and its people than vice versa. They
attribute more negative qualities to Western people than Westerners do
to Muslims. They also rate Christians and Jews less favorably than
Europeans and Americans rate Muslims. One of the startling findings of
the survey is that most Muslims remain unconvinced that Arabs carried
out the September 11 attacks. In Indonesia, 65 percent, in Jordan 53
percent, and in Turkey 59 percent deny that the attacks were carried
out by Arab men.
While Muslims feel aggrieved, Westerners are skeptical and wary of
Muslim values. For example, Western Europeans and Americans see a
conflict between Islam and modernity more often than do Muslims
themselves. Westerners also see somewhat more support for al-Qaeda in
the Muslim world than do Muslims. The current poll finds Europeans are
less optimistic about prospects for democracy in Muslim countries than
Muslims are. This may reflect our finding that Americans and Western
Europeans are dismayed over the Hamas election victory. Muslims in the
Mideast, Asia, and Africa see this as a positive development for the
Palestinian people.
In this regard, this year's poll also finds increasing sympathy for
Israel in Western Europe. Europeans do not match American public
opinion--where the percentage sympathetic to Israelis is more than
three times greater than that sympathetic to Palestinians--but it is
moving in that direction.
The good news in this poll is that even after a bad year, there was
not a spike in outright hostility toward Muslims among Westerners or
vice versa. These negative perceptions are of a more long-standing
nature. And, as noted above, this poll shows a decline in support for
terrorism in important Muslim countries. However, having said that,
sizable minorities in major Muslim countries say suicide bombing can be
justified. Even among Europe's Muslims, one-in-seven feel suicide
bombings against civilian targets can be justified.
Osama bin Laden is viewed positively by one-in-three in Pakistan
and Indonesia and one-in-four in Egypt and Jordan. The most troublesome
numbers are out of Nigeria, where 61 percent of Muslims in that
religiously divided country express confidence in bin Laden. Muslims
there are highly critical of Westerners and no fewer than 56 percent
say that most or many of their countrymen support extremist groups like
al-Qaeda--by far the highest in the poll.
In sharp contrast, the survey found that European Muslims hold more
temperate views of the West than do Muslims in the Mideast, Africa, and
Asia. Muslims in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain have more
positive views of Westerners than do Muslims in the Mideast and Asia.
They largely hold positive views toward Christians and have less
negative views of Jews than do Muslims in the Mideast and Asia. This is
especially true in France.
The survey did find that Muslims in Europe worry about their
future, but their concern is more economic than religious or cultural.
And while there are some signs of tension between Europe's majority
populations and its Muslim minorities, Muslims there do not generally
believe that most Europeans are hostile toward people of their faith.
MUSLIMS MORE CONCERNED ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT THAN RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL
ISSUES
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Muslims in
---------------------------------------
Great
Britain France Germany Spain
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Very worried about:
Unemployment.................. 46 52 56 55
Islamic extremism............. 44 30 23 22
Decline of religion........... 45 21 18 18
Influence of pop culture...... 44 17 18 17
Modern roles for women........ 22 16 9 10
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite some tension, there is little evidence of a widespread
backlash against Muslim immigrants among the general publics in Great
Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. Majorities continue to express
concerns about rising Islamic identity and extremism, but those worries
have not intensified in most of the countries surveyed over the past 12
turbulent months. Still, over a third of Muslims in France and one-in-
four in Spain say they have had a bad experience as a result of their
religion or ethnicity.
EXPERIENCES OF MUSLIMS IN EUROPE
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Europeans Had a bad
hostile to personal
Muslims? experience?
---------------------------
Yes* Yes
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Muslims in:
Germany................................... 51 19
Great Britain............................. 42 28
France.................................... 39 37
Spain..................................... 31 25
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Percent saying most or many Europeans are hostile toward Muslims.
Opinions held by Muslims in Europe--as well as opinions about
Muslims among Europe's majority populations--vary significantly by
country. No clear European point of view emerges with regard to the
Muslim experience, either among Muslims or in the majority populations,
on many issues. British Muslims are the most anxious about their future
and most concerned about extremism.
French Muslims are the most integrated and are less likely than
others to primarily identify as Muslims and more often see themselves
as French first. They are more likely to say they want to adopt
European customs than are Muslims in other European countries. German
Muslims are the most likely to consider Europeans hostile, although
many fewer report a bad personal experience.
Generally, European Muslims show signs of favoring a moderate
version of Islam. With the exception of Spanish Muslims, they tend to
see a struggle being waged between moderates and Islamic
fundamentalists. Among those who see an ongoing conflict, substantial
majorities in all four countries say they generally side with the
moderates.
MOST SEEING STRUGGLE SIDE WITH MODERATES
[Amounts in percent]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And identify with--
See a ------------------------------
struggle* Moderates Fundamentalists
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Muslims in:
Great Britain.................................................... 58 38 15
France........................................................... 56 50 6
Germany.......................................................... 49 36 7
Spain............................................................ 21 14 4
Nigeria.......................................................... 36 18 17
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Think there is a struggle in (survey country) between moderate Muslims and Islamic fundamentalists.
Most French and British Muslims think women are better off in their
countries than in most Muslim countries. About half of German and
Spanish Muslims agree, and very few think women actually have it better
in most Muslim countries. Moreover, most are not concerned about Muslim
women in Europe taking on modern roles in society (although substantial
minorities worry about this).
Muslims in Europe are most sharply distinguished from the majority
populations on opinions about external issues--America, the war on
terrorism, Iran, and the Middle East. European Muslims give the United
States lower favorability ratings than do general publics in Europe
and, in particular, they give the American people lower ratings. The
war on terror is extremely unpopular among minority Muslim populations.
CONTRASTING OPINIONS IN EUROPE OF AMERICANS
[Amounts in percent]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Favorable
opinion
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Among general population in:
Great Britain........................................... 69
Germany................................................. 66
France.................................................. 65
Spain................................................... 37
Among Muslims in:
Great Britain........................................... 39
Germany................................................. 44
France.................................................. 48
Spain................................................... 33
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To conclude, it is no secret that the United States has an image
problem in the Muslim world. The war in Iraq intensified and broadened
discontent with America and its people among Muslims in the Mideast,
Africa, and Asia. There is little sign from our surveys that this has
meaningfully changed over the past 3 years. In some predominately
Muslim countries there has been improvement, while in others a
worsening of attitudes.
But the bottom line remains the same. We are poorly regarded by
most Muslims and significant numbers of them express at least tacit
support for terrorist tactics and enemies of the United States, such as
Osama bin Laden.
As events of the past year in Europe have indicated, there is a
broad divide between Westerners and Muslims around the world. Our
latest surveys have detailed the nature of the complaints from both
sides. Misunderstanding, value differences, and economics-based
resentment have led to suspicion and created a mutually acknowledged
divide. The good news is that Muslims in Europe, despite their concerns
about their future are nonetheless far more moderate and positive
toward the West than are Muslims living in the Mideast, Africa, and
Asia. Their attitudes and the general populations in the host countries
suggest that exposure may lead to improved understanding, mostly.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Kohut.
We would like to hear now from Mr. Ahmed, if you would
proceed.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR AKBAR S. AHMED, IBN KHALDUN CHAIR OF
ISLAMIC STUDIES, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL SERVICE, AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC
Ambassador Ahmed. Thank you, sir. A great honor to be
speaking to this committee. I am especially thankful to
Chairman Lugar for inviting me.
I have been arguing since 9/11 that terrorism, the war on
terror, cannot be understood without looking at the big
picture, and this is what I'll do this morning. Terrorism is
one small piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and that has been the
limitation of the strategy thus far.
Let us remind ourselves why relations between the United
States and Muslim world are so important. Islam is a world
civilization of 1.4 billion people and growing, 57 states, one
of which is nuclear for the time being, and there are some 7
million Muslims living in the United States. Besides, the
United States has troops fighting and losing lives in two
Muslim nations, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Neither the war on terror nor a serious tackling of the
global crises facing all of us on this planet, crises like
global warming, poverty, the population explosion, the
religious and ethnic conflicts, none of these can be resolved
unless the vast and highly significant world of Islam is
brought into a mutually respectful partnership with the rest of
the world, especially with the United States, the sole
superpower and leader of the world.
As a Muslim scholar living in Washington, DC, I felt on 9/
11 that I had to do whatever little I could to create
understanding between the two. I also knew that my extensive
field experiences in charge of some of the most inaccessible
areas of the Muslim world, such as South Waziristan Agency
where Osama bin Laden is supposed to be hiding, would be an
added advantage.
This urge took me on travels in the Muslim world, to nine
countries in the three major regions of the Muslim world--the
Middle East, South Asia, and Far East Asia--from February to
April 2006. I was accompanied by a small but enthusiastic group
of American research assistants.
We were able to discuss these issues with a whole range of
people, from President Musharraf to prime ministers, princes,
sheikhs, professors, students, taxi drivers, the whole gamut of
society. We visited mosques, madrassas, university campuses,
and classrooms. And the project was sponsored by three leading
institutions in Washington: American University, the Brookings
Institution, and the Pew Forum.
Now, at the conclusion of the trip, my team and I felt that
there was bad news and there was good news, so the bad news
first. Throughout the travels we encountered very high levels
of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. I have never encountered
such intensity of emotion.
The Muslim world, in the years of the cold war when the
United States was so obviously the moral power, admired and
respected the United States. Today we found that many Muslims
do not see the United States as the moral power it once used to
be. In fact, many of the people we surveyed throughout the nine
countries said that they would prefer Saddam Hussein, the most
ruthless and vile of dictators, to the Americans in Iraq.
In Turkey, the most popular film ever made is called
``Valley of the Wolves: Iraq.'' It's in theaters everywhere,
and it is a crudely anti-American film which shows a group of
``Rambo'' Turkish soldiers fighting against the evil United
States soldiers.
Even in the moderate country of Indonesia--and I have bad
news for my colleague who referred to Nigeria in hope that
Osama bin Laden would only be restricted as a role model
there--on university campuses we found that bin Laden was the
number one role model. He is now referred to as ``Sheikh''
Osama bin Laden. That is bad news. Perhaps you don't understand
the nuance, but for a Muslim like me it is bad news. Anyone
trying to preach and promote moderation will find this a major
hurdle, because ``Sheikh'' means he has been elevated to a
religious status.
The Muslim world focuses on action rather than rhetoric,
and right now they are seeing cold-blooded rapes in Iraq by
United States soldiers, the encouragement of torture, and they
feel they are not seeing the ideals of the United States, of
democracy, human rights, and acceptance of diversity, that it
once so proudly and clearly stood for. One affluent woman who
used to live in the United States even told my team that she
was scared to bring her grandchildren back to the United States
because of the way they treat Muslims. That is the bad news.
Furthermore, there is a widespread perception in the Muslim
world that Islam is under attack from the United States. As we
saw with the Danish cartoon controversy and the desecration of
the Quran story, Muslims all over the world are very passionate
about their religion and their Prophet. It is a culture with
high reverence for and sensitivity to these religious symbols
and traditions.
Now let me explain what's going on in the Muslim world.
There is a common belief here in the West that all this begins
on 9/11. In fact, the story goes back almost two centuries.
There has been a struggle within Islam, not so much for the
soul of Islam but for the politics and the culture of Islam,
between three broad interpretations of Islam: Between an
orthodox, literalist interpretation, between one that advocates
synthesis and receptivity to the West, and third the
universalist or mystic response to the world. Three defined but
distinct responses. So some of the labels that we are seeing
after 9/11 cause nothing but confusing, and if you get your
labeling wrong, you're going to run into problems later on
because all your strategy is going to be wrong.
Right now the warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
perceived attacks on Islam, and the insensitivity to culture
are all reinforcing the strong orthodox, literalist
interpretation of Islam, and this is now spreading throughout
the Muslim world. So remember the formula: The more you push
the Muslim world, the greater the support for the literalist,
orthodox, the more you marginalize the moderates, the more you
wipe out the mystics and the humanists. This is the simple
formula we need to appreciate.
There is cause and effect here. I refer to anti-Americanism
and anti-Semitism but would like to introduce another word,
related, perhaps not directly, but related to the concept of
hatred, which is Islamophobia, the hatred of all things
Islamic, although these concepts are different, but
Islamophobia after 9/11 has gained momentum.
The reasons are obvious. The 19 hijackers on 9/11 were all
Muslim. Some of the most wanted people on the planet, Osama bin
Laden and so on, are Muslim. So people generally and too easily
equate Muslims to terrorists and extremists.
The result of this Islamophobia has been attacks on Islam
and on Muslims. Muslims then find there is little hope of
getting justice in this climate, and are sometimes pushed
toward acts of violence. I do not wish to condone these acts by
any means, and have condemned them, but I want to put the
discussion in some context.
Now for the good news. This ignorance and hatred can be
challenged and can change. Just as Muslims are sensitive to
attacks on Islam, Muslims are also very receptive to the
positive messages from within Islam. I encourage, Chairman
Lugar, you and your colleagues, and indeed the American people,
to learn about Islam and find the common bonds between the two
civilizations.
Indeed, American values of equality, justice, knowledge,
and compassion, as seen in the respect for human rights, are
shared explicitly with Islam. Remind the leaders in the Muslim
world and the people there of these common values, without
giving lectures to them. Remind them of the context.
Remind them that beheadings, suicide bombings, are not part
of Islam, and that two of the greatest attributes of God in
Islam are the ``merciful'' and the ``compassionate.'' These two
words are repeated by Muslims throughout the day all over the
planet. Speaking about the common values shared by the Founding
Fathers of the United States and the ideals of Islam will make
a powerful and long-lasting impact on the hearts and minds of
Muslims.
Furthermore, Muslims, Christians, and Jews share deep bonds
between them. Muslims are asked in the Quran to recognize the
Jews and the Christians as ``people of the book,'' and they
hold a special place in our theology. A common figure who
inspires us and who we share as a common patriarch and ancestor
is Abraham. And as for the love of Jesus in Islam, I urge you
to read the ``Jesus poems'' of Rumi, who is such a popular poet
in the United States. We share the notion of an omnipotent,
universal God, the Ten Commandments, many of the central
values. While political and historical events have divided the
two, examples of peaceful coexistence also exist.
So during these travels in the Muslim world, I would use
these ideas, and I believe that the first, most important step
was to talk about dialog, understanding, and friendship. So
dialog, No. 1, understanding, No. 2, friendship, No. 3. You
cannot have simple dialog and leave it there.
One of the ways I would deal with the anti-Americanism and
anti-Semitism was to talk of the dialogs I am having and the
friendships that have been created here in Washington, DC. I
mentioned my friends like Jean and Steve Case, Ambassador Doug
and Ann Holladay, Bishop John and Karen Chane, Senior Rabbi
Bruce Lustig and his wife Amy, and Dr. Lachland Reed, and many
other friends like this. In my travels I mentioned these
wonderful Americans who became my friends and who reached out
to me after 9/11, seeing a lonely stranger in their midst.
I mentioned how I am personally inspired by the example of
my friend, Judea Pearl, who lost his only son, Danny Pearl, in
a brutal, savage, and senseless killing in Karachi. Having
gotten to know Judea as a friend over the years because of our
dialogs conducted nationally and internationally in promoting
Jewish-Muslim understanding, I have seen the heroic
transformation of a personal tragedy into building a bridge to
reach out and understand the very civilization that produced
the killers who took his son's life. I would point out that
these friendships have also helped to transform the
relationship between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the
United States.
And please keep the context in mind. I was quoting these
names in a mosque in Damascus, where I was asked to deliver the
post-sermon talk on a Friday, very significant for Muslims; in
madrassas in Deoband and Delhi, in speeches in Islamabad, at
the Royal Institute in Amman.
I would finally ask my team of young Americans to speak,
and I would introduce them as the best ambassadors we have
between the United States and the Muslim world, as intrepid
Americans who represented the best ideals of America. And for
commentary on our travels, please see Beliefnet.com for
articles by Dilshad Ali and the young Americans who accompanied
me, Hailey Woldt and Jonathan Hayden. And I am grateful,
Chairman Lugar, for giving permission to bring them here. They
are here with me this morning.
As a professor on campus I would also recommend some books,
and this is what I would urge for you to do. This is an
instinct, I suspect a genetic instinct in all professors. We
can't restrain from doing this.
My first book is by my friend, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, the
Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, and it is called ``The
Dignity of Difference.'' It is a powerful plea for Abrahamic
understanding in the age of globalization.
The second book I would recommend to my Muslim audiences
and to my American audience this morning is also by a friend,
Karen Armstrong, and her book is ``The Battle for God.'' In
this book Karen illustrates how the three different faiths,
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are all going through a
period of intense internal debate in what she calls the
``fundamentalist'' mode.
And, third, to keep a balance--you've got a Jewish, a
Christian, a Muslim author--I would recommend my own book,
``Islam Under Siege,'' which argues that we are living in a
world in which societies are feeling under siege, whether
American societies, Israeli societies, or Muslim societies. And
when societies feel under siege, they tend to be defensive and
there is limited scope for wisdom or compassion.
Essentially, this boils down to one recommendation, and
perhaps you may dismiss it as too idealistic, but that is the
only way to make lasting peace for the United States and the
Muslim world. It is to create bonds of friendship across
religion, race, and tradition. I have discovered in a very
personal sense, not only as a scholar on campus but as someone
involved in a very realistic, pragmatic way in dealing with
real life situations, that once friendship develops, everything
can change. Without these friendships, dialog itself remains a
restricted exchange of ideas and leads to little else.
This suggestion may be unlikely, particularly with the
growing situation in the Middle East, but without genuine
friendships we cannot expect any major changes in how we are
dealing with the political situations on the ground. Take the
example of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Too often the two
view each other as enemies and are not prepared to concede
anything except in terms of an advantage to themselves.
The result is that even if there are concessions, they are
seen to be a result of bitter negotiations which continue to
leave acrimony on both sides. But if both parties are able to
create friendships and then meet as friends, the situation will
be very different, and the peace process itself may take a new
momentum and a new meaning.
In conclusion, this is a great leap of imagination I am
asking you to make, but the exercise to understand the Muslim
world is not a luxury for the United States. It is an absolute
imperative. It is the first step, allowing you to confront the
looming series of world crises which we face in the 21st
century. And as you on the panel are those who this great
Nation looks to for wisdom and guidance, I plead with you this
morning to set aside the partisan and parochial issues and
focus on the challenges of providing justice, compassion, and
friendship in this dangerous, uncertain, and violent time.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Ahmed follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of
Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University,
Washington, DC
On that catastrophic day of September 11, 2001, I was acutely aware
that the sole superpower of the world, the United States, which had the
capacity to show the way to solving the global challenges that faced
us, could be diverted in an endless war of revenge and anger. This
event set the United States directly in confrontation with the world of
Islam as it launched its ``war on terror.'' The complicated
confrontation is bleeding the energies and resources of both
civilizations. It is diverting the United States from its greater
mission of showing the way to solve the problems that face the planet
and concerns every human on earth. Whether the United States accepts
the role as the moral leader for the 21st century willingly or not, the
United States is the sole superpower and leader.
Let us remind ourselves why a dialog between the United States and
the Muslim world is important. Islam is a world civilization of 1.4
billion people, 57 states--one of which is nuclear for the time-being--
and there are 7 million Muslims living in the United States. Besides,
the United States has troops fighting and losing lives in two Muslim
nations--Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither the war on terror nor a serious
tackling of the global crises facing us can be resolved unless the vast
and highly significant world of Islam is brought into a mutually
respectful partnership with the rest of the world--especially the
United States.
As a Muslim scholar living in Washington, DC, I felt I had to do
whatever little I could to create understanding between the two. I also
knew that my extensive field experiences in charge of some of the most
inaccessible areas of the Muslim world--such as South Waziristan Agency
where Osama bin Laden is supposed to be hiding--would be an added
advantage for both sides. This urge took me on travels in the Muslim
world to nine countries in the three major regions of the Muslim
world--the Middle East, South Asia, and Far East Asia, from February to
April, 2006. I was accompanied by a small but enthusiastic group of
American research assistants. We were able to discuss these issues with
a whole range of people from President Musharraf to prime ministers,
princes, sheikhs, professors, and students. We visited mosques,
madrassahs, university campuses, and classrooms. The project was
sponsored by three leading institutions in Washington DC--American
University, the Brookings Institution, and the Pew Forum.
bad news
Throughout the travels we encountered very high levels of anti-
Americanism and anti-Semitism. I have never encountered such intensity
of emotion. The Muslim world, in the years of the cold war when the
United States was so obviously the moral power, admired and respected
the United States. Today, we found that many Muslims do not see the
United States as the moral power it once used to be; in fact, many of
the people we surveyed throughout the nine countries said that they
would prefer Saddam Hussein, the most ruthless and vile of dictators,
to the Americans in Iraq. In Turkey, the most popular film ever made
called ``Valley of the Wolves: Iraq'' was in theaters when we were
there. It is crudely anti-American and it shows a group of ``Rambo''
Turkish soldiers fighting against the ``evil'' United States soldiers.
Even in the moderate country of Indonesia, the No. 1 role model for
young Indonesians is Osama bin Laden--who is now widely called
``Sheikh'' as a mark of religious respect. The Muslim world focuses on
action rather than rhetoric and right now they are seeing cold-blooded
rapes in Iraq by United States soldiers, the encouragement of torture,
and they feel they are not seeing the ideals of the United States of
democracy, human rights, and acceptance of diversity that it once so
proudly and clearly stood for. One affluent woman who used to live in
the United States even told my team that she was ``scared'' to bring
her grandchildren to the United States now because of the way they
treat Muslims. That is the bad news.
Furthermore, there is a widespread perception in the Muslim world
that Islam is under attack from the United States and the West. As we
saw with the Danish cartoon controversy and the desecration of the
Quran, Muslims all over the world are very passionate about their
religion and their Prophet. It is a culture with high reverence for and
sensitivity to these religious symbols and traditions.
There is a struggle within Islam which has been in play for
centuries but is now erupting, between the more literalist interpreters
of Islam and the more receptive and mystic forms. Right now, the
warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, perceived attacks on Islam, and
insensitivity to culture are all reinforcing the strong, literalist
interpretations of Islam. More outward signs of orthodoxy are spreading
throughout the Muslim world, even to Indonesia. The greater the
perception that Islam is under attack, then, the greater the support
for those Muslims who stand up as champions of Islam. There is clearly
cause and effect here.
I am referring to anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism but we need to
keep in mind Islamophobia which means a hatred of Islam and prejudice
against Muslims. Although they are different to each other, I suggest
we need to understand their impact on each other. Islamophobia after 9/
11 has gained momentum. The reason is obvious: The 19 hijackers on 9/11
were all Muslim. Some of the most wanted people in the world like Osama
bin Laden are Muslim. People too readily equated all Muslims to
terrorists and extremists. The result of this Islamophobia has been
attacks on Islam and on Muslims. Muslims find that there is little hope
of getting justice in this climate and are sometimes pushed toward acts
of violence. I do not wish to condone these acts by any means and have
condemned them, but I want to put the discussion in some context.
good news
But there is good news. This ignorance and hatred can be challenged
and can change. Just as Muslims are sensitive to ``attacks'' on Islam,
Muslims are also very receptive to the positive messages from within
Islam. I encourage all of the Senators and American people to learn
about Islam and find the common bonds between the two civilizations.
Indeed, American values of equality, justice, knowledge, and
compassion (as seen in the respect for human rights) are shared
explicitly with Islam. Remind the leaders and the people there of these
common values without giving a lecture--remind them of this especially
in their own context as well. Beheadings and suicide bombings are not
part of Islam--remind them of that and that two of the greatest
attributes of God in Islam are the ``merciful'' and the
``compassionate.'' Speaking about the common values shared by the
Founding Fathers of the United States and the ideals of Islam will make
a powerful and long-lasting impact on the hearts and minds of Muslims.
Furthermore, Muslims, Christians, and Jews share deep bonds between
them. Muslims are asked in the Quran to recognize the Jews and the
Christians as ``people of the book'' and they hold a special place in
our theology. A common figure who inspires us and who we share as a
common patriarch and ancestor is Abraham. As for the love of Jesus in
Islam, I urge you to read the ``Jesus Poems'' of Rumi who is such a
popular poet in the United States. The notions of an omnipotent,
universal God, the Ten Commandments, many of the central values, are
shared by the religions. Political and historical events have divided
us, but examples of peaceful coexistence between the three religions
can also be seen in history and contemporary society.
I also used this idea to encourage understanding during my travels.
The first and most important steps were to encourage dialog,
understanding, and friendship. One of the ways I would deal with the
anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism was to talk of the dialogs I am
having and the friendships that have been created between Jews,
Christians, and Muslims and give my own personal example. I mentioned
my friends like Jean and Steve Case, Doug and Ann Holladay, Bishop John
and Karen Chane, Rabbi Bruce Lustig and his wife Amy, and Dr. Lachland
Reed. In my travels and talks, I mentioned these wonderful Americans
who became my friends and who reached out to me after 9/11 seeing a
lonely stranger in their midst.
I mentioned how I am personally inspired by the example of my
friend, Judea Pearl, who lost his only son, Danny Pearl, in a brutal,
savage, and senseless killing in Karachi. Having gotten to know him as
a friend over the years, because of our dialogs conducted nationally
and internationally in promoting Jewish Muslim understanding, I have
seen the heroic transformation of a personal tragedy into building a
bridge to reach out and understand the very civilization that produced
the killers who took his son's life. I would point out that these
friendships have also helped to transform the relationship between
Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the United States.
Please keep the context in mind: I was quoting these names in a
mosque in Damascus where I was asked to deliver the post-sermon talk on
a Friday, in madrassahs in Deoband and Delhi, and in speeches in
Islamabad, as well as the Royal Institute in Amman.
I would finally ask my team of young Americans to speak and I would
introduce them as the best ambassadors we have between the United
States and the Muslim world as intrepid Americans who represented the
best ideals of America (for commentary on our travels see Beliefnet.com
for articles by Dilshad Ali, and the young Americans who accompanied
me, Hailey Woldt and Jonathan Hayden).
As a professor on campus, I would recommend essential reading to
Muslims during our travels and now to you all to help us understand
each other: The first book is by my friend, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, the
Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, and it is called ``The Dignity of
Difference.'' It is a powerful plea for Abrahmic understanding in the
age of globalization. The second book I would like to recommend is also
by a friend, Karen Armstrong, and her book is ``The Battle for God.''
In this book, Karen illustrates how the three different faiths Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, are all going through a period of intense
internal debate in which what she calls the ``fundamentalists'' who are
in opposition to the more ``moderate'' or ``liberal'' versions of
faith. The third is my own book, ``Islam Under Siege,'' which argues
that we are living in a world in which societies are all feeling under
siege. When societies are under siege they tend to be defensive and
there is little scope for wisdom and compassion.
Essentially, I have one recommendation, one that can easily be
dismissed as too idealistic, but that is the only way to making a
lasting peace for the United States and the Muslim world: It is to
create friendships across religion, race, and tradition. I have
discovered that once friendship develops then everything can change.
Without these friendships, dialog itself remains a restricted exchange
of ideas and leads to little else. This suggestion may be unlikely, but
without genuine friendships forming, we cannot expect any major changes
in how we are dealing with the political situations on the ground. Take
the example of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Too often the two
view each other as enemies and are not prepared to concede anything
except in terms of an advantage to themselves. The result is that even
if there are concessions there are seen to be a result of bitter
negotiations which continue to leave acrimony on both sides. But if
both parties are able to create friendships and then meet as friends,
the situation will be very different and the peace process itself may
take on a new momentum and a new meaning.
In conclusion, this will not be easy, but the exercise to
understand the Muslim world is not a luxury for the United States--it
is an imperative. It is the first step to confronting the looming
series of world crises, and as you on the panel are those who this
great Nation looks to for wisdom and guidance, I plead with you to set
aside the partisan and parochial issues to focus on the challenges of
providing justice, compassion, and friendship in this dangerous,
uncertain, and violent time.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very, very much, Mr. Ahmed.
And now we call upon Dr. Khan for his testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. MUQTEDAR KHAN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, POLITICAL
SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE,
NEWARK, DE
Dr. Khan. In the name of God, most merciful, most
benevolent. Distinguished chairman, Senator Lugar, and Senator
Boxer, it is indeed an honor to share my expertise with this
august body. As I was sitting here, I was thinking of an
important Islamic ritual called shura, and I think we practice
shura with great nobility and distinction here in the United
States and in any Muslim society, unfortunately. Shura means
the process of consultation and deliberation.
Islam is structurally a dynamic religion that is
systemologically pluralistic from the very beginning. What I
mean by structurally dynamic isn't bad, that it has internal
mechanisms that allow it to be continuously evolving, to be
reinterpreted, and as a result of its internal dynamic
structure Islam continues to remain relevant to Muslim life
regardless of time and place. It is not a coincidence or an
accident that Islam is more meaningful to Muslims, whether they
live in the West or whether they live in the East, than other
religions in other societies.
But what is also interesting about Islam is its internal
pluralism. From the very beginning there have been many
interpretations of Islam. It is safe to say that there have
been many Islams. There have been the Shia and Sunni, rational
and traditional, mystical, philosophical, cultural, and
juristic. So in the last 1,400 years we have seen several
interpretations of Islam. They have coexisted across time and
space.
Lately, for the purposes of U.S. foreign policy, since 9/11
we have been trying to imagine a specific interpretation of
Islam as perhaps the designated enemy. Conservative Americans,
particularly, and Israelis, try to believe that there is a
discrete ideological and institutionalized actor called
``radical Islam'' and sometimes ``radical fundamentalist
Islam.'' That is essentially the problem.
I submit to you that it is a mistake to assume that this is
a discrete and coherent entity. For example, increasingly in
the last few days as the Lebanon crisis has precipitated,
people have equated Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda as
representative of the same phenomenon.
Al-Qaeda and Hamas are Sunni organizations; Hezbollah is a
Shia organization. Hamas is very close to Islamic Brotherhood
in its theology and its ideology, whereas Zawahiri, the No. 2
person of al-Qaeda, has written books chastising the Muslim
Brotherhood. There is enormous enmity between the Muslim
Brotherhood and the Jihadis, and therefore there is no sympathy
that al-Qaeda has for Hamas. This is why until now we have not
seen al-Qaeda target Israel. What is also interesting is that
we have never seen Hamas target the United States.
So it's very important for us to not club everything under
the rubric of radical Islam, but that does not mean that there
is no such tendency of radical Islam. There are many
manifestations of Islam today, but for the purposes of American
foreign policy it is important to recognize that there is, yes,
a very vicious, very violent, very intolerant interpretation
which is out there. But in order to understand that, I submit
to you that it is better to look at these various
manifestations of Islam in the Muslim world as options.
Today there is a near universal consensus in the Muslim
world on three issues: No. 1, that there must be political,
social, normative, cultural, economic, and structural change.
Nobody wants the Muslim world to remain as it is. Everybody
wants change. Muslims are struggling to respond to these
challenges of modernity and post-modernity, to the challenges
of globalization, and particularly to the challenges, the
structural challenges that have emerged as a result of the
decolonization process.
No. 2, most Muslims agree that there is no security in
Muslim societies. They are victims of terrorism and war. As I
heard President Bush repeatedly repeat that Israel has a right
to defend itself, I kept amazingly wondering as to how nobody
has ever said that even the Lebanese have a right to defend
themselves. Muslim insecurity is taken for granted.
There is also a strong consensus that Islam must play a
role in the resurgence, the reconstitution, revival of the
Muslim world, and therefore you see many different options. The
point I am trying to make is this: That Muslims are trying
through many ways to cope with modernization and globalization.
Radical Islam is one option, and it is not an ideological
issue.
If moderate Muslims cannot deliver, then Muslims will
abandon that option and seek another option. If our moderate
allies in the Middle East will not provide Muslims security,
dignity, respect, and freedom, then they will turn to the next
option. So the United States, when it chooses partners, it is
not important to choose partners on the basis of what they say
or what they believe, but it is important for us to actually
shape the outcomes on the ground in the Muslim world.
There is, however, an alternative interpretation of Islam
which is a direct challenger of radical Islam. We sometimes
call it moderate Islam, or sometimes we call it liberal Islam.
Liberal Islam has three or four important strategic merits for
the United States and the West, and I will list them for you.
No. 1, liberal Islam is providing an alternative
understanding of world political and global reality in order to
prevent the perception that war on terror is a war on Islam.
No. 2, liberal Muslims have an interpretation of Islam which
places Itjihad over jihad. Itjihad is an intellectual exercise
for reviving society, the privilege, education, and
development, over violence and conflict.
No. 3, the liberal interpretation of Islam advances an
idiom that explains the compatibility of liberal values such as
tolerance, democracy, and pluralism. Finally, liberal Islam
deconstructs the jihadi discourse to expose the extremist
tendencies behind their interpretation of Islam, and
underscores the more compassionate and rational dimensions of
Islam.
It is important for us to understand who is a moderate
Muslim. One of the jokes in the Muslim world is that all
moderate Muslims have been ``Karzai'd'' in the sense that they
have become like Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan,
who has no respect in his own people. And this is very
important for us. When we work with moderate Muslims, we ensure
that we do not undermine their own legitimacy in the very
constituency that they seek to reform and address.
I would also like to talk to you about American Muslims.
The
9/11 Commission, to a great extent, exonerated the American
Muslims of any direct involvement in the attacks of September
11. American Muslims are very unique because they are very rich
in terms of per capita income, perhaps the richest Muslim
community in the world. They are also the highest literacy
levels.
The American Muslim community, in my opinion, manifests
more of liberal Islamic values and has institutionalized them
more than any other community anywhere in the rest of the
Muslim world. As a result of that, the American Muslim
community becomes a natural ally of the United States.
What role can American Muslims play in this war on terror?
American Muslims have enormous potential to become an important
ally in America's war against extremism. They can discuss
threat assessments and threat identification. This is a role
that we can play to a great deal.
American Muslims would have provided the administration
with a more accurate picture of the potential for threats from
within the United States and outside. It is possible that the
American Government is unnecessarily spending vast amounts of
resources in surveillance of groups and individuals who may not
constitute a threat, and may actually be overlooking those who
could be problematic. American Muslim input on this subject can
be immensely useful. Many U.S. policy makers continue to err in
understanding and predicting the behavior of Muslim groups, and
the chaos in Iraq is a case in point.
One interesting distinction that I would like to make is
the confusion over Hiz-ut-Tahrir and al-Qaeda. For the last 2
years I've been watching experts in Washington, DC, attribute
al-Qaeda's tactics to Hiz-ut-Tahrir, which is essentially a
nonviolent organization, and attribute Hiz-ut-Tahrir's ideology
to al-Qaeda, thereby committing gross errors. These are things
that American Muslims, called on to study these movements, can
help the administration in understanding.
American Muslims can provide a Muslim face to American
foreign policy, and the administration has already realized the
enormous benefits of having somebody like Zalmay Khalilzad as
Ambassador to Afghanistan and then as Ambassador to Iraq. But
only one. I once confronted Under Secretary Karen Hughes and
asked her to name the Muslims in her department, and she said
there are 22, but she could not name one. That means they were
not sufficiently high up for her to be consulting them for
policy making.
It is important that American Muslims be part of this
administration. The Bush administration could have appointed a
number of prominent American Muslim sportsmen who have respect
worldwide, such as Hakeem Olajuwon, or even Imams, local
indigenous Imams like Imam Hamza Yusuf, to become spokespersons
for America and American Muslims.
Another area in which American Muslims can provide
assistance is in human intelligence and also in undercover
operations. The recent operation in Canada which arrested 18
was essentially because of the work of a moderate Canadian
Muslim called Mubin Sheikh.
And, finally, American Muslims can play an important role
in counseling the radical Islamic discourse. One important
arena where the United States needs its Muslim citizens is in
countering the anti-U.S. propaganda. Both Islamists and
governmental media have launched a propaganda war against the
United States in response to its war on terror. This anti-U.S.
media offensive is determined to focus on U.S. foreign policy
excesses and failures.
The enormous success of Islam and Muslims within American
borders is an asset to America. It is a wonderful story that
needs to be told. The very fact that American Muslims are
thriving in America is proof positive that America is not
against Islam. If America was waging war against Islam, then
Muslims in America would have been its first victims. This is
an important message which we need.
Finally, I think American Muslims can restore balance to
America's foreign policy. To put it bluntly, American foreign
policy in the contemporary era has been a colossal failure, and
I think even a potential danger to America's security
interests. This administration would do well to listen to some
moderate Muslim voices in shaping its foreign policy.
And finally, I want to address what the United States can
do. The United States must deliberate seriously on what kind of
relations it wishes to have with a religion whose adherents
constitute nearly 25 percent of the world population and
include over 55 countries. Islam is also the fastest growing
religion in all sectors of the West--in the United States, in
Canada, in Europe, and Australia. Islam is outside and Islam is
inside.
The United States and the West must find a way to coexist
with Islam without constantly demanding Muslims to abandon
Islam. This is a very important issue for Muslims, since many
see the United States as waging a war against Islam. This has
to be done at every level, including government, media, and
education. One statement by the President saying that Islam is
a peaceful religion is not enough. It has to be repeated often,
again and again.
The United States must not undermine the important role of
maintaining positive United States-Muslim relations for short-
term goals or for immediate expediencies.
The United States must improve its credibility. It must
practice what it preaches, fulfill its promises, and certainly
abstain from betraying those who take risks at our behest. If
you look at the situation in Lebanon today, the way we have
abandoned Lebanon, I am not very sure if in the near future any
moderate Muslim will be able to trust the United States and
take risks for democracy at the behest of the United States.
Muslims in Lebanon and Christians in Lebanon believe that the
United States, after marching them down the path toward
democracy, has betrayed them.
American Muslims are America's natural allies and the best
community when it comes to institutionalization of liberal
values. The United States must embrace it and treat it as an
asset rather than as a suspect.
The United States has to make goodwill gestures toward the
Muslim world, and that does not mean supporting dictators or
selling more arms. Cooperation in areas of development,
education, and economic empowerment will go a long way.
Evenhandedness in its approach to the Muslim world is
absolutely necessary. Abandoning it, especially in moments of
crisis, is extremely detrimental.
The United States must also rethink its relations with
Islamists, and find ways and means to work with the more
moderate Islamists who are pro-democracy, in order to empower
them and to isolate the radicals. The United States must find a
way to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict that does not undo
years of diplomacy and good work on the United States-Islamic
relations every time there is a crisis over Israel.
Muslims think that the United States and the West does not
value Muslim life and that we do not care for their human
rights. The changing of this perception will take a long time,
but the United States can begin with Guantanamo, and by
recognizing that Muslims too have a right to defend their
lives, their property, their territory, and their sovereignty.
U.S. foreign policy since 9/11 has sought security for
America and its ally Israel by deliberately undermining the
security of the Muslim world through bellicose rhetoric,
irresponsible aggressions, and astonishing disregard for Muslim
lives. We must realize that we cannot be more secure by making
others feel insecure.
There needs to be a paradigm shift in how we think of
security. We live in a highly globalized and interdependent
world. Islam is outside, Islam is inside. It is important that
we think of security for all, including Muslim nations, Muslim
societies. This is imperative.
I leave you with this comment: The United States and Muslim
relations will remain a critical component of global politics
for a long time. They must be repaired and nurtured. There is
no other alternative.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Khan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Muqtedar Khan, Assistant Professor, Political
Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, DE
In the name of God, most merciful, most benevolent.
Distinguished Chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar, and eminent
members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it is indeed an
honor to share my expertise with this august body. We are engaged today
in a highly noble Islamic and democratic ritual--Shura--consultation
and I thank you for this opportunity.
Islam is structurally a dynamic religion and has always been
epistemologically pluralistic. In simple terms Islam has a built-in
mechanism for continuous evolution, reform, and self-rejuvenation
through the engine of Ijtihad. Ijtihad is a legal tool that enables
Muslim jurists to think independently on issues where scriptures are
either silent or ambiguous. It is also a divine invitation to all
Muslims and all human beings to think, reflect, and deliberate on God's
message and global realities in order to act in the most gracious, most
compassionate, and most just fashion. Ijtihad will always keep Islam
relevant and meaningful to Muslims and others who are fortunate to be
blessed with its grace.
Muslims have from the earliest period, after the death of the
Prophet of Islam [pbuh], interpreted Islam in many ways. There have
been many interpretations of what the Islamic Shariah--the essence of
Islamic message--constitutes, some even contradictory, but Muslims have
recognized difference and diversity as a consequence of divine purpose
and developed a culture of tolerance for different manifestations and
interpretations of Islam.
So from the very beginning there have been different
interpretations of Islam, Shia and Sunni, rational and traditional,
mystical and philosophical, cultural and juristic. So it is more
accurate to talk about Islams rather than Islam. For academic as well
as strategic purposes, it is absolutely necessary to distinguish
between different Islams and not paint with a broad brush for it will
inevitably lead to bad analysis and bad policy.
For the purposes of U.S. foreign policy however, it is important to
distinguish between two broad competing historical tendencies within
Islamic history. These two tendencies can be captured as a defensive
mechanism that seeks to conserve, preserve, and defend ``Islam,'' and
eventually leads to narrow, combative, and often intolerant
interpretations of Islam and who a good Muslim is. In our times we
associate this tendency very strongly with Salafi and Wahhabi groups.
But we must be careful to recognize that religious intolerance does not
necessarily lead to political confrontation, violence, terrorism, and
anti-Americanism. While al-Qaeda is definitely Salafi-Wahhabi and is
our enemy, the Saudi royal family and the Qataris and the Kuwaitis are
also mostly Salafi-Wahhabis, but they are our friends and allies. Most
jihadis are theologically Salafi-Wahhabis, but very few Salafi-Wahhabis
are jihadis.
The alternative is a more liberal and compassionate, even mystical
interpretation of Islam, which is highly accommodating of difference
within Islam and between religions. It is compatible with democracy,
religious pluralism, and is often referred to as liberal Islam and or
moderate Islam.
what is radical islam?
Since September 11, there has been a strong tendency among
conservative Americans and Israelis to construct the enemy as a
discrete, ideological, and institutionalized actor called radical
Islam, and sometimes radical fundamentalist fascist Islam. Radical
Islam is imagined as a manifestation of Islam that is narrow,
intolerant, authoritarian, violent, anti-west, anti-democracy, anti-
American and anti-Israel. I too have been guilty of this generalization
in an article for current History in 2006. However, since then I have
noticed anomalies. Secular, progressive Muslims also often share
several of these characteristics with radical Islamists and there is no
definitive relationship between conservative and traditional Islam,
anti-Americanism, and violence.
There is no doubt that there is at present a very angry and viscous
and growing tendency within the Muslim world, but it may be a mistake
to put it in a box called radical Islam. For example, Hezbollah and
Hams are very different from each other, the former is Shiite, the
later is Sunni, the former is motivated by geopolitics, the latter is
struggling for independence. Neither shares theological or political
goals with al-Qaeda. For example, Hamas has never targeted the United
States. Also consider the Wahhabis and Salafis, while al-Qaeda sure is
anti-America, not all Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Qataris, who share the same
theology, are anti-America or even violent.
My humble suggestion is to consider the various trends--political
and theological--as options. Today there is nearly a universal
consensus in the Muslim world on three issues: (1) That there must be
political, social, normative, cultural, economic, and structural
change. Muslims are struggling to respond to the challenges of
modernity and postmodernity, not to mention the global geopolitical
realities of the postcolonial world. (2) Most Muslims agree that there
is no security in Muslim societies; they are victims of terrorism and
war. (3) There is also a strong consensus that Islam must play a role
in the resurgence, reconstitution, revival, development, and
transformation of the Muslim world.
I submit to you that all these movements in the Muslim world--
secular bathism, Islamism, resurgent Sufism, the calls for Islamic
democracy, for liberal democracy and revolution--are all attempts to
cope with the relative backwardness of the Muslim world, its tensions
with modernity which is driven by western culture, and its inability to
secure itself. Islamists like secular and moderate elites have a vision
to offer.
The battle of competing visions will not be won through rhetoric
and discourse--it must come through delivery. The vision that delivers
reform, change, empowerment, and security will win. So far Islamists
have done a better job than most in the Arab world, unlike in South
Asia and East Asia. Moderate and liberal Muslims can win the battle for
the soul of Islam only if they are able to deliver. So far they have
failed. So far everyone has failed except for the radical who at least
hit back against those whom Muslims perceive as enemies.
Radical Islam is an option that Muslims have turned to, due to the
failure of all other ideas and movements to deliver a stable,
prosperous, and peaceful state and society for average Muslims.
Radical Muslims also offer an explanation of global politics and
recent history that glorifies Islam, privileges Muslim tradition, and
sometimes is consistent with a simplistic view of reality. For example,
the current crisis in Lebanon goes a long way to convince Muslims that
radical Islamists are right when they say that Israel, with the help of
the United States, is out to destroy their nations.
Political, military, economic, and intellectual independence from
the West has always been the overriding goal of political Islam.
However, the failure of Islamists to achieve these goals in nearly a
century, in combination with real and perceived injustices committed by
America and its allies against Muslims, has engendered an extremely
vitriolic hatred of America in the hearts of some Islamists giving
birth to radical Islam. I like to refer to these radicals as rogue
Islamists, who are willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to
destroy America and its power and will to prevent the realization of
Islamist goals. Rogue Islamists and their hateful discourses are
globalizing anti-Americanism, and in the process undermining the moral
fabric of the Muslim world and corrupting the Islam's message of
justice, mercy, submission, compassion, and enlightenment, not of war,
hatred, and killing.
Radical Islamists are a threat to both America and Islam. Their
discourses are corrupting Islam and generating hatred against the West,
modernity, America, and other Muslims who disagree with them. Their
most powerful weapons are their ideas and their ability to convince
Muslims to even give up their lives in order to hurt America,
Americans, and American interests. While America seeks security from
the attacks by rogue Muslims and needs to reduce anti-Americanism,
moderate Muslims who do not subscribe to the Islamists discourse seek
to rescue Islam and innocent Muslims from the corrupting influence of
rogue Islamist.
A response to rogue Islamists requires a complex strategy that
above all must counter and delegitimize the Islamists worldview and
discourses and expose their fallacies and the devastating consequences
they could bring to Muslims and the world by triggering a long and
bloody global conflict between America and the Muslim world.
liberal islam and its strategic merits
It is my contention that the best antidote to radical Islam is
liberal Islam. Liberal Islam cannot only challenge radical Islamist
worldview using Islam as the foundational idiom and also provide an
alternate interpretation of Muslim reality and a more positive vision
of the future.
Moderate Muslims have a very idealistic view of the Islamic duty of
jihad. They argue, based on a tradition of Prophet Muhammad, that jihad
is essentially a struggle to purify the self and to establish social
justice. The highest form of jihad, Jihad-e-Akbar (the superior jihad)
is struggle against the self to improve and excel in moral and
spiritual realm. The lowest form of jihad is the military jihad that is
essentially defensive and constrained by strict ethics of engagement.
They correctly point out that terrorism, or Hirabah (war against
society), is strictly forbidden by Islamic scholars. They, however, do
maintain that Muslims can and must struggle for justice and freedom
while strictly obeying Islamic and international norms of just warfare.
For Muslim moderates, Islam is a religion of peace without being
pacifist.
Moderate Muslims are critical of American foreign policy in the
Muslim world. They are also critical of the prejudiced view of Islam in
the West and, in particular, among the policy elite who are also quite
ignorant about Islam and the Muslim world. But Muslim moderates do not
blame the United States or the West or modernity for all the problems
in the Muslim world. They recognize that the decline of the Islamic
civilization preceded colonialism. They are aware that the decay of
free and creative thinking in the Muslim world was not caused by
Western powers but came about as a result of internal dynamics.
Moderate Muslims are critical of the polemics against the West, the
rising anti-Semitism and the tendency to blame Israel for everything
problematic in the Muslim world and the growing intolerance,
sectarianism, and authoritarianism in Muslim societies. Above all, they
lament the intellectual decline of the Muslim world.
Moderate Muslims are also engaged in what is now referred to as the
``battle for the soul of Islam.'' They argue that Islam is a message of
compassion and peace sent by God in order to civilize humanity and give
human existence a transcendent and divine purpose. They are aghast and
reject the use of Islam to incite terror, to justify bigotry and to
discriminate on the basis of faith, or gender, or ethnicity. They
recognize that Islam has been appropriated by political and extremist
groups who are using Islam as an ideology to pursue a counter hegemonic
agenda, both with the Muslim world and against the rest, especially
against the United States. Moderate Muslims acknowledge the global
problem created by ``rogue Islamists.'' They insist that the false
interpretations of Islam by the jihadis and their crusades are not only
creating a global fitna (crisis) but are also corrupting the essence of
Islam and worsening the socio-political, economic, and cultural crisis
in the Muslim world.
It is in the battle for the soul of Islam that America and liberal
Islam share a common strategic goal and that is the systematic
dismantling and delegitimization of the discourse coming from rogue
Islamists that projects America as an anti-Islam crusader power and
Islam as an ideology of hate and violence. It is in the arena
interpretation and reinterpretation of global political realities and
religious texts and their contemporaneous meanings that the war on
terror will be won or lost. It is also in this contested realm that the
hearts and minds of Muslims can be won or lost. So far, while moderate
Muslims are beginning to have an impact in this battle in America, they
are not even an important player in the Muslim world. American policy
makers must recognize the strategic value of liberal Islam and promote
and protect it.
The interpretive battle the liberal Islam wages is in three arenas:
<bullet> Providing an alternative understanding of world political
and global realities in order to prevent the perception that
the war on terror is a war on Islam.
<bullet> Advance a liberal understanding of Islam within the Islamic
idiom that explains the compatibility of Islam and liberal
values such as tolerance, democracy, and pluralism.
<bullet> Deconstruct the jihadi discourse to expose the extremist
tendencies behind their interpretation of Islam and underscore
the more compassionate and rational dimensions of Islam.
who is a moderate muslim?
As one who identifies himself strongly with the idea of a liberal
Islam and also advocates moderation in the manifestation and expression
of Islamic politics, I believe it is important that we flush out this
``religio-political identity.''
Muslims, in general, do not like using the term--moderate,
progressive, or liberal Muslim, understanding it to indicate an
individual who has politically sold out to the ``other'' side. Others
insist that there is no such thing as moderate Islam, or radical Islam;
there is ``only one Islam''--the true Islam and all other expressions
are falsehoods espoused by the munafiqeen (the hypocrites) or the
murtads (the apostates). Of course the unstated politics behind this
position is, ``my interpretation of Islam is obviously the true Islam
and anybody who diverges from my position is risking their faith.''
In some internal intellectual debates, the term moderate Muslim is
used pejoratively to indicate a Muslim who is more secular and less
Islamic than the norm, which varies across communities. In America, a
moderate Muslim is one who peddles a softer form of Islam, is willing
to coexist peacefully with peoples of other faiths and is comfortable
with democracy and the separation of politics and religion.
Both Western media and Muslims do a disservice by branding some
Muslims as moderate on the basis of their politics. These people should
generally be understood as opportunists and self-serving. Most of the
moderate regimes in the Muslim world are neither democratic nor
manifest the softer side of Islam. That leaves intellectual positions
as the criteria for determining who is a moderate Muslim, and
especially in comparison to whom, since moderate is a relative term.
I see moderate Muslims as reflective, self-critical, pro-democracy
and human rights, and closet secularists. Their secularism is American
in nature. That is, they believe in the separation of church and state,
but not French; they oppose the exile of religion from the public
sphere. But who are they different from and how?
I believe that moderate Muslims are different from militant Muslims
even though both of them advocate the establishment of societies whose
organizing principle is Islam. The difference between moderate and
militant Muslims is in their methodological orientation and in the
primordial normative preferences that shape their interpretation of
Islam.
For moderate Muslims, Ijtihad is the preferred method of choice for
social and political change, and military jihad the last option. For
militant Muslims, military jihad is the first option and Ijtihad is not
an option at all.
Ijtihad, narrowly understood, is a juristic tool that allows
independent reasoning to articulate Islamic law on issues where textual
sources are silent. The unstated assumption being when texts have
spoken, reason must be silent. But increasingly moderate Muslim
intellectuals see Ijtihad as the spirit of Islamic thought that is
necessary for the vitality of Islamic ideas and Islamic civilization.
Without Ijtihad, Islamic thought and Islamic civilization fall into
decay.
For moderate Muslims, Ijtihad is a way of life, which
simultaneously allows Islam to reign supreme in the heart and the mind
to experience unfettered freedom of thought. A moderate Muslim is
therefore one who cherishes freedom of thought while recognizing the
existential necessity of faith. She aspires for change, but through the
power of mind and not through planting mines.
Moderate Muslims aspire for a society--a city of virtue--that will
treat all people with dignity and respect [Quran 17:70]. There will be
no room for political or normative intimidation [Quran 2:256].
Individuals will aspire to live an ethical life because they recognize
its desirability. Communities will compete in doing good and politics
will seek to encourage good and forbid evil [Quran 5:48 and 3:110].
They believe that the internalization of the message of Islam can bring
about the social transformation necessary for the establishment of the
virtuous city. The only arena in which moderate Muslims permit excess
is in idealism.
The Quran advocates moderation [2:143] and extols the virtues of
the straight path [1:1-7]. For moderate Muslims the middle ground, the
common humanity of all, is the straightest path.
It is my contention that the mainstream American Muslim community
broadly qualifies as an example of liberal and moderate Islam. They
believe in democracy, human rights, respect women's roles in the public
sphere, and most importantly believe, practice, and advocate religious
pluralism.
what role can american muslims play in the war on terror?
American Muslims have an enormous potential to become an important
ally in America's war against extremism. If consulted and brought into
counterterrorism planning they can help America become more effective,
more focused, and more cost-effective. These are the following areas in
which they can and could have played a major role:
Threat assessments and threat identification
American Muslims would have provided the administration with a more
accurate picture of the potential for threats from within the United
States. Their analysis would have helped in making the Department of
Homeland Security a vastly smaller and more effective institution.
It is possible that the American Government is unnecessarily
spending vast amounts of resources in surveillance of groups and
individuals who may not constitute threat and may actually be
overlooking those who could be problematic. American Muslim input on
this subject can be immensely useful.
Many United States policy makers continue to err in understanding
and predicting the behavior of Muslim groups and the chaos in Iraq is a
case in point. If American Muslims were involved in the management of
Iraq after the war, it would have been easier for Washington to
establish better communications and perhaps gain more cooperation from
various groups.
Provide a Muslim face to America
American Muslims could have given a Muslim face to America's
response to September 11, and the feeling in the Muslim world that this
is a Christian-Zionist crusade against Islam would have been averted.
The Bush administration should have appointed a number of prominent
American Muslim sportsmen, such as Hakeem Olajuwon, and some Imams such
as Imam Hamza Yusuf (American convert to Islam who is well respected in
the Muslim world) as special envoys of goodwill to the Muslim world.
The State Department is now attempting this in a less prominent way.
Prominent Muslim presence in America's diplomatic and counterterrorism
endeavors would have gone a long way in not only preempting the rise of
anti-Americanism, but also in building trust between America and the
Muslim world.
Human intelligence
The most important assets that American Muslims can bring to the
war on terror is human intelligence, cultural insights, linguistic
skills, and experience and awareness of the diversity within Islamic
groups and movements. It is possible that FBI, CIA, and the NSA can
access this resource through recruitment. But voluntary support in this
area from the community can be priceless.
Many American Muslim scholars have argued that Islam and democracy
are compatible. The Bush administration could have recruited several of
them to make this case in Iraq and help design the Iraqi democracy and
write its constitution. Without a significant input from respectable
Muslim scholars, the Iraqi constitution may not stand up to accusations
that it is un-Islamic and written to make Iraq subservient to American
interests.
Moderate Muslims opposed to extremism can also play a role in
undercover operations like that played by Mubin Sheikh in Canada and in
the Showtime serial, Sleeper Cell.
Counter-Islamic discourse
One important arena where the United States needs its Muslim
citizens is in countering the anti-U.S. propaganda. Both Islamists and
governmental media have launched a propaganda war against the United
States in response to its war on terror. This anti-U.S. media offensive
is determined to focus on U.S. foreign policy excesses and failures. It
also seeks to explain every aspect of American policy as if it is
serving only Israeli interests. With American Muslims as spokespersons
surfing the media and the airwaves in the Muslim world, the United
States could have a better chance of getting a more balanced view of
its policies.
American Muslims can also counter the abuse of Islam by rogue
Islamists and undermine their legitimacy. American Muslim scholars have
consistently maintained that Hirabah (terrorism) is not jihad and is
strictly prohibited by Islamic principles. They have also demonstrated
how suicide bombings violate Islamic ethics of self-defense and are not
legitimate instruments of jihad. If the voice of American Muslim
scholars was given more attention, say through a White House-sponsored
conference on jihad, many of the moderate and liberal elements in the
Muslim world would recognize the fallacies in the Islamic edicts of
rogue Islamists and the scholars who support and justify their cause.
Restore balance to America's foreign policy
To put it bluntly, American foreign policy lately has been a
colossal failure and even potentially dangerous to America's interests.
This administration would do well to listen to some moderate Muslim
voices in shaping its foreign policy objectives and in determining
tactics. Except in the case of Israel, American Muslims have the same
vision for the Muslim world as claimed by this administration. American
Muslims, too, want wholesale regime changes and establishment of
democracy in the entire Muslim world. They, too, want to see the
general human rights environment improving and wish that prosperity and
freedom would take root in the Muslim world. The difference is that
American Muslims would recommend strategies that are more humane and
involve less bombing and killing. This administration needs American
Muslims and it is time it acted on this need and included them in its
policy deliberations.
what can the united states do?
The United States must deliberate seriously on what kind of
relations it wishes to have with a religion whose adherents constitute
nearly 25 percent of the world's population and include over 55
countries. Islam is also the fastest growing religion in all sectors of
the West, United States and Canada, Europe and Australia. Islam is
outside and inside, the United States and the West must find a way to
coexist with Islam without constantly demanding Muslims to abandon
Islam. This is a very important issue for Muslims since many see the
United States as waging a war against Islam itself. This has to be done
at every level including government, media, and education.
The United States must not undermine the important goal of
maintaining positive United States-Muslim relations for short-term
goals or for immediate expediencies.
The United States must improve its credibility. It must practice
what it preaches, fulfill its promises, and certainly abstain from
betraying those who take risks at its behest and when motivated by it
to pursue democratization or social liberalization. After watching the
way we have handled the crisis in Lebanon and repeated requests for
help from the Lebanese Prime Minister, I am not sure anyone will be
eager to trust the United States in the near future.
American Muslims are America's natural allies and the best
community when it comes to institutionalization of liberal Islamic
values. The United States must embrace it and treat it as an asset
rather than as a suspect.
The United States has to make goodwill gestures toward the Muslim
world, and that does not mean support dictators or sell more arms.
Cooperation in areas of development, education, and economic
empowerment will go a long way.
Evenhandedness in its approach to the Muslim world is absolutely
necessary. Abandoning it, especially in moments of crisis, is extremely
detrimental.
The United States must rethink its relations with the Islamists and
find ways and means to work with moderate Islamists in order to empower
them and isolate the radicals.
The United States must find a way to deal with the Arab-Israeli
conflict that does not undo years of diplomacy and good work on the
United States-Islamic relations every time there is a crisis with
Israel.
Muslims think that the United States and the West does not value
Muslim life and do not care for their human rights. The changing of
this perception will take a long time but the United States can begin
with Guantanamo and by recognizing that Muslims, too, have a right to
defend their lives, property, and territory.
United States foreign policy since 9/11 has sought security for
America and its ally, Israel, by deliberately undermining the security
of the Muslim world through bellicose rhetoric, irresponsible
aggressions, and astonishing disregard for Muslim lives. The United
States must realize that they cannot feel more secure by making others
feel insecure. It is important that the United States work for the
security of all, including Muslim nations. This is imperative.
United States-Muslim relations will remain a critical component of
global politics for a long time. They must be repaired and nurtured.
There is no other alternative.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Khan. Let me say we
really appreciate the comprehensive testimony of all four of
you, and I know that Senator Boxer and I both have a number of
questions. I would like to call upon Senator Boxer first of
all, in case she has a time requirement, if you would proceed.
Senator Boxer. Thank you. I do, and I so appreciate that,
Mr. Chairman. I found all of you very interesting, and I want
to make a few comments here and ask a few questions. How much
time would I have?
The Chairman. Take the time that you require.
Senator Boxer. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll try to
keep it succinct.
First of all I want to say, Dr. Khan, I really liked your
idea of having Muslim Americans playing a large role in our
foreign policy, especially these days. It just makes sense, and
I think we all need to pay attention to that.
The beauty of our country is that we are so diverse, and
you're right, the American dream is there for everyone. That's
why we are here, to make sure that stays that way, and everyone
who has had the opportunity I think could be a great voice for
our country. So that I really like.
The place I really disagree with you is your comment about
how America has abandoned Lebanon, and I know this is a very
hot topic right now, but I feel I must say that as I look at
the situation, it isn't America who has abandoned Lebanon, but
in fact it is Syria and Hezbollah and the fact that the
Lebanese don't have the ability, the wherewithal, to police
their own southern border. This is a crisis of major
proportions, and if everyone paid attention to U.N. Resolution
1559 and Lebanon could in fact be free of this militia in the
south and free of foreign influence, the world would be a far
safer place.
Now, I know this is a hot topic. I'm not going to get in an
argument with you, but I don't believe in any way that America
has abandoned Lebanon. Now, the one way I think America could
have done better all these years is to pay more attention to
that whole situation, to be pushing so that in fact U.N.
Resolution 1559 was listened to, and to play a bigger role in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For sure I agree on that, but
I don't think in this case you can point to America as the
culprit for what is happening there.
And I want to say to His Excellency Ahmed that I so
appreciate your insights on religion. For myself, in my youth,
I will never forget this because when you're a child and your
parents are everything to you, my parents bought me a book. It
was called ``One God.'' ``One God.'' And I never forgot it
because it was so interesting to me, because the point of the
book--it's written for children--was that in essence,
regardless of what religion we follow, there is one God at the
end of the day.
And that very simple point really unites all people, and I
think that unfortunately what has happened with religions, with
organized religion over the years is, instead of all of us
working on that concept, somehow the differences have come to
the fore. And that's a way bigger question than we have time to
go into, but I just really think that simple message has to get
to children and get to all of us because it will in fact bring
us together.
I need to get a few things off my mind here. When I
listened to Mr. Kohut and his exceptional work out in the
field, he is a bearer of bad news. He doesn't relish telling us
this news, but the fact is that the opinion of this country in
the world, and frankly if you even look beyond the Middle East,
but in the Middle East, is dismal, and I think it is making us
less safe. Anti-Americanism, to quote you, Mr. Kohut, is a
global phenomenon.
This news is a blow to the American people. When I remember
back--again, you know, we all bring our own experience to the
table here--when we were so beloved in the world, and rightly
so, I mean, we had a clear sense of what we were about and what
our role was in the world. And I think we have lost our way and
made a lot of mistakes, and rage toward America makes us less
safe and anger makes us less safe.
I personally believe that, you know, you take President
Bush's urge for democracy and elections, but you couple it with
this anger, and what you get is Hamas winning in the
Palestinian Territories, and Ahmadinejad being elected in Iran.
Even in Iraq the Bush administration favorites lost, and one
didn't even get any votes. In other regions of the world the
same thing is happening, sadly in our own hemisphere.
So while democracy as a goal is laudable, we have got a lot
of homework to do to make sure that we are seen as a success
and a beautiful model of what the world should all be like, and
it's just not happening out there. I want to talk about why I
think that's so, and I don't want to be simplistic about it
because it's not simple. Just listening to you, Dr. Hoffman, I
mean, it's complicated.
But I think after 9/11 we had the whole world with us, Mr.
Chairman. You remember. The whole world. In France the headline
was, ``We are all Americans.'' And we blew it by going into
Iraq. There wasn't one al-Qaeda cell there on 9/11. I have
shown this booklet on many occasions, as has Senator Feingold.
This is a State Department document that came out right after
9/11, showed where al-Qaeda was. Not in Iraq, no way, not one
cell. Not one cell in Iraq.
But instead of going after Osama bin Laden who attacked us,
keeping it clear, keeping the world together, going after
terrorism, we turn around on a dime and we go into a place
where our own State Department said there wasn't one al-Qaeda
cell. And the President still said Iraq is part of the war on
terror, and he said it at the time, and the fact is, the
terrorists moved in there after we went in there, because we
became real fuel for the insurgency.
We are sitting ducks. We're losing. I read today that
yesterday we lost another five Americans, Mr. Chairman. About
23 to 25 percent of the people we've lost over there, of our
military are either from California or based in California.
It's extremely painful. I think the war in Iraq is a gift to
Osama bin Laden, and it's a gift that keeps on giving every day
that we are there. It's fueling the recruitment of terror
groups, the more we get bogged down. And as I said, now al-
Qaeda in Iraq is there, and they're responsible for 10 percent
of the violence there, the most heinous violence.
So I have a question here about a comment by Peter Bergen,
and I'm going to address it to Dr. Hoffman. Peter Bergen, as
you all know, I think most of you know, is an expert on
terrorism. He said, ``What we've done in Iraq is what bin Laden
could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams.'' This is all
his quote. ``We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart
of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure bin
Laden has long predicted was the United States' long-term goal
in the region.''
Dr. Hoffman, do you agree with Peter Bergen that the war in
Iraq played right into the hands of Osama bin Laden and those
who are twisting the Muslim religion to benefit the war on
terror?
Dr. Hoffman. Yes, I do. Certainly in bin Laden's seminal
thoughts, which I referred to in my testimony, that was issued
in August 1996, in fact in the last pages he predicted that the
United States and the United Kingdom would use Saudi Arabia as
a base to wage a predatory and aggressive campaign against
Islam, with the intention of taking over the Muslims' most
precious natural resource, the oil in the region. So in some
respects he was cuing this up long before it occurred.
The reason though I agree with Peter is that there was an
enormous change in al-Qaeda's propaganda in February and early
March 2003, where the more ideological statements that appeared
on alneda.com, its principal Internet organ then, were replaced
by actual clarion calls to battle, calling upon jihadis to
converge on Iraq to resist this latest instance of Western
aggression; not to prop up Saddam Hussein but rather to use
this as an opportunity, I think an opportunity that they had
lost because of their defeat in Afghanistan, to confront United
States forces and to use suicide terrorist tactics and other
means. So certainly I think it did play into his hands, that
this was one of the battlefields that he sought to create.
By the same token, though, I think today we are in an
enormously difficult situation where immediate withdrawal is
not a solution, because this would indeed also play into his
hands, in the sense that this would be trumpeted, much like the
withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989, as yet
another victory for the jihadi terrorists, and indeed perhaps
even add more fuel to the fire in their aggressive intentions.
Senator Boxer. Well, you have said it well. The worst
leadership--you didn't say this--to me the worst leadership is
when you have no good choices. You know, as a mom I always
learned from the child psychologists that you give your kids
three good choices before--you know, you say, ``You can either
go to bed at 8:00, 8:15, or 8:30.'' You know, they are all good
choices.
Well, we don't have a good choice. Either we leave and cut
our losses, or we stay, continue our losses, because we're not
sure what's going to happen. It could be used as propaganda and
the rest. That's a debate that we're having here every single
day and every single minute, really, within the parties and
across party lines. But to me the fact is, you never can forget
why you're in this situation if you're going to be able to have
better policies in the future.
I have one last question, if I might. You have been so kind
and generous, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate it.
You know, again on the dilemma that you pose, get out or
stay, I was thinking the other day, if each of us picture
ourselves in a room with a swarm of bees, and the door is shut
and we're in the room, and we have insecticide to spray that
doesn't work too well but it helps a little bit, we have a
newspaper to swat, and then we have the door we could open and
get out, I think that reminds me of where we are. However, I do
think closing the door is the best option. You could figure out
how to deal with the situation once you're safely out of the
room.
But again, I'm not asking about that because you
fortunately don't have to vote on those kind of issues. I do.
And you don't have to write the letters that I write every
day--every day--the condolences. So that's where we are.
So I want to go back to public opinion, Mr. Kohut. You
found, in a global opinion poll released last month, that
favorable views of the United States continue to drop
throughout the world--throughout the world. According to your
report, ``America's global image has again slipped, and support
for the war on terror has declined even among close United
States allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag
on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly
Muslim countries but in Europe and in Asia as well.''
I want to ask you first, do you think--you mentioned the
war in Iraq. If you were to--I know it's hard for you to do
this--put a percentage as to how much of a role the war in Iraq
has played in that opinion, and while you're thinking about
this, also, do the people in the world know that Americans
don't really agree with this administration on Iraq?
Because in March, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll
of Americans in which respondents were asked to give a one-word
impression of the situation in Iraq. This is in our own
country. According to the poll, the words ``mess,'' ``bad,''
``chaos,'' ``terrible,'' and ``disaster'' were offered most
frequently, along with such variants as ``hopeless,''
``pitiful,'' ``Vietnam,'' and ``out of control.''
So do you think the people throughout the world are
distinguishing between the American Government's policy in Iraq
and the American people and their views? Hard questions, I
know.
Mr. Kohut. Well, I think that probably in the Muslim world
that distinction is not being made. There is more convergence
between anti-Americanism toward the government and not liking
the American people in the Muslim world than elsewhere. Perhaps
in Europe there is a greater sense, or among our allies more
generally there is a greater sense that there is discontent
with the war, although attitudes toward the war in the United
States, as you know, remain highly partisan. There is not
discontent with the war among Republicans. It's mostly among
Democrats and Independents.
So I think the answer is a mixed one to your second
question. As to your first question, I would give you the two
headlines. In 2002, before the war in Iraq, our headline was
that there is growing dislike of the United States around the
world and discontent with the United States, but there's still
a reserve of goodwill toward the United States all around the
world, outside of the Muslim world. A headline in May of 2003,
when things were really going pretty well in Iraq, was that the
U.S. image has plummeted all around the world, and it pretty
much hasn't recovered. There have been some ups and downs.
A lot of what we were writing about this year was the fact
that the progress we had seen in some places last year had
slipped back, in Indonesia, in India, in Russia, for example.
But, you know, the war in Iraq is the 800-pound gorilla with
respect to the image of the United States around the world, but
perceptions of America's policies with respect to Israel and
Palestine, the Israeli-Palestine dispute is the 800-pound
gorilla in that realm of the world.
And I wanted to react to the comment you made with respect
to Dr. Khan's comment. I think whether the United States has
abandoned Lebanon or not, that is probably the perception in
the Muslim world today, because in the Muslim world so many
people think, even in places like Kuwait where the United
States still has a good image, that we unfairly support Israel.
So I would think that in that dispute, I would think that
what's bad for Israel, what makes Israel look bad in that world
among the public, makes us, the United States, look bad.
Senator Boxer. Well, I was heartened to hear some Lebanese
saying that it's time Hezbollah got out, and when you look back
at the assassination of Hariri, maybe that was a turning point,
too. So I think it's a little more complex than just as simply
as you lay it out there.
But, Mr. Chairman, I so appreciate this hearing. I know
it's not well-attended because of so many competing things
going on, but I just have learned a lot, and I so appreciate
this panel and your indulgence. Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Boxer. I
share your enthusiasm for this panel and the timeliness of the
hearing. I appreciate so much your presence.
Senator Boxer. It would have been a little more lonely for
you, I know.
The Chairman. Exactly, and we're grateful. And I would just
say that Senator Boxer is a regular attendee at our hearings,
but nevertheless has, as I do, an intense interest in the
issues that we have before us this morning.
Let me begin my questioning by noting that the Aspen
Institute, among other good things that it does, has a
congressional program, and a study program following 9/11
proceeded to try to bring some instruction to Members of
Congress, Senate and House, about Islam. This is sort of basic
training for many of us, and this is achieved through breakfast
meetings here in the Capitol and likewise through conferences
in other countries. So recently we had, at least several of us,
17 as I recall, were in Istanbul for a conference that brought
together people from the area as well as scholars from the
United States and our own resources.
Now, during these conferences, you mentioned, as I recall,
Dr. Ahmed, Karen Armstrong as one of the authors whom you were
recommending, and she has participated in our conferences, as
have other scholars that you would recognize, and that has been
helpful. Whenever any of their books arise, we are alert
because we have heard the persons, have had some dialog, in the
presence of people who had a variety of Muslim experiences, and
that has been important. That's a point that you have made, Dr.
Khan, as well as you, Dr. Ahmed.
Let me just say that having said that, one of the themes of
the early conferences came down to this thought, whether it's a
200-year separation and problem or whatever the time frame,
that the Industrial Revolution proceeded in Europe and did not
proceed, at least in the same form, in the Muslim world; that
essentially Europeans, because of the modernity or what have
you that came from the Industrial Revolution, gained wealth,
gained substantial capital, and that did not occur in many
states in the Middle East.
And, furthermore, there were different developments in
attitudes toward women. In the most stark sense, Europeans
would say we utilized the total work force, and in some Arab
and Muslim states people would say we used half of the work
force; women were not a part of this. Now, that overgeneralizes
the situation, but nevertheless there were very stark
differences in attitude.
So, as a result, at the end of the day, whether this is for
good or for bad, a number of countries that appear to be in the
West, in Europe, leaving aside the United States, appear to be
doing reasonably well, and a lot of young people coming up in
the Middle East do not appear to be doing very well, and they
don't have very much hope of doing very well under the current
circumstances.
Now, whether that is the basis for problems or not, the
fact is that into this picture about 60 years ago--we have
learned in other hearings in this committee in which we have
discussed energy to a fair-the-well--the United States and
Saudi Arabia got together during the Franklin Roosevelt
administration. We had mutual interests, and among them,
perhaps paramount, was oil and the possibilities that that had
for us and for Europe, and ultimately for Japan and for others
who were in industrial situations.
There was not necessarily a pact between the two countries,
the United States and Saudi Arabia, or any other particular
country, but nevertheless it was fairly well understood that
those lines of oil were vital to us, as well as the income to
the rulers of Saudi Arabia, and as a result we began to take
steps to make certain that that continued. One could make a
case that when we became heavily involved with the Shahs of
Iran we had similar thoughts, but in any event we were
involved.
Now, this maybe, for many in Congress became more acute as
Iraq invaded Kuwait, and there were prospects that that
invasion might proceed right on into Saudi Arabia, into the oil
fields there, quite apart from what was occurring in Kuwait.
And President Bush, the first President Bush, talked about
pushing back aggression. We sought United Nations support to do
that.
We also sent as many as 500,000 American troops into the
area. We were the only country that could do that, and it was
one of the first manifestations of that essential point in
world politics, that the United States alone really had that
transporting quality, that mobility to tackle difficult
problems, and that was one we decided to tackle. The Saudis,
after some deliberation, decided that they would like for us to
come to their defense and we, in fact, began to put a good
number of troops in Saudi Arabia.
Now, after the war, the troops stayed in Saudi Arabia. Some
who have testified before our committee, perhaps in less
comprehensive form, have indicated that this is not necessarily
when we caught the attention of Osama bin Laden. His own
history has been a source of considerable interest to the
committee from time to time, his earlier beginnings, his work
in African states, his work moving through many states, and his
relationship with family in Saudi Arabia, for that matter.
The question that I have for all four of you to begin with
is a major part of the American predicament, leaving aside any
other country, the fact that there is considerable strategic
resentment--not simply overall public relations problems but
strategic resentment--of American military forces in the area
who appear to be there, if not on a permanent basis, at least
readily available to get there, given the mobility of modern
means, and who have in fact been there on a permanent basis in
one form or another, despite destruction of barracks in Saudi
Arabia, movement of troops to more secure locations in the
course of time, all sorts of allegations as to who really was
responsible, whether Iranians were involved, quite apart from
persons in the al-Qaeda movement, or indigenous Saudi forces,
whoever. This has been a part of our predicament, if not a
major part. The United States has a reliance upon oil in that
area, as does the rest of the world, and the rest of the world
depends upon us to maintain the flow.
As a matter of fact, when for example, 2 months or so ago
there was a rumor that terrorist forces, whoever they were,
were coming down the road toward a refinery in Saudi Arabia
that reportedly produces 13 percent of refined oil in any one
day, in which the world has maybe a 2 percent discrepancy
between supply and demand, so the knocking out of that sent
chaos into the Western world, the good news was, the terrorists
were stopped, whoever they were. The Saudis indicated they had
security there, but there was a shakeup. Prices of oil spiked.
In other words, there was a recognition by the rest of the
world that life as we know it in industrial Europe, Japan, and
the United States wouldn't come to an end but it would be
severely dislocated.
So, as a result, armed forces are required to try to
maintain these supply lines. Is there any hope for the
reconciliation we're talking about today, or movement, so long
as this energy need remains and the United States finds it
incumbent to be present to protect our interests and those of
others?
I would just add that the first George Bush financed the
Kuwait/Desert Storm situation through a vast international
United Way campaign. I happened to be with the President of the
United States at that time when he got a call which was vital
from the Prime Minister of Japan, informing the President of
the first very generous contribution of Japan to this effort,
which was followed by several more generous contributions. I
really saw diplomacy at work in that way.
Is there, I ask first of you, Dr. Hoffman, a way for
reconciliation, goodwill, a better opinion of everybody, quite
apart from al-Qaeda being on the march or not on the march,
while we are there and while there are vital interests that we
feel we need to protect, as well as, for example, Saudi
friends?
Dr. Hoffman. Well, you know, your question is an excellent
one and it's obviously a very complex one. I think you're
right, though, that at least historically--we've been examining
early al-Qaeda documents at RAND now for the better part of a
year--it seems quite clear that bin Laden was no friend of the
United States from his formative period in Afghanistan, but it
was really the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that was something
of a fulminate.
But I think it remained in the back of his mind until
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and we had the massive build-up,
which on the one hand he thought the United States would never
leave the region. On the other hand he also thought, as you
were zeroing in on, that this was part of a United States
policy to extract from Muslims undervalued oil resources and
energy resources, and this became one of his points of
contention against the United States.
I think the flash point for his turn to international or
global terrorism was the influence of Ayman al-Zawahiri, his
No. 2, who is an Egyptian, head of an Egyptian Islamic jihad
terrorist group, where he at least began to formulate this
concept of a far and a near enemy. And I think it was the
failure of al-Zawahiri's group to overthrow the Mubarak regime
in Egypt in the early 1990s that influenced bin Laden: Let's
not deal with the near enemy, the local powers that the United
States props up and supports, but let's move to the puppet
master in the back, and that focused on the United States.
In responding to your question, I'm not an energy
specialist at all, but I think you're hitting an important nail
on the head. And that is, we tend to look at all of these
movements as monolithic, and we indeed buy, I think, the
terrorist propaganda that they have a united, undivided front
directed against us, when in fact I think very much the
opposite is the truth, that they are subject to the same
divisions, especially the same very acute personality
rivalries. I believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's rivalry with bin
Laden and al-Zawahiri is an example of this.
And I think that we're not as sensitive as we should be,
largely as my colleagues on the panel have argued, that because
there is, I think, a large amount of our attitude toward the
Middle East and toward the Muslim world that's based on
conjecture rather than on a deep knowledge, and therefore
without this deep knowledge, this understanding, not just in
detail, of our adversary, which I think in this conflict is
amongst the poorest we have ever faced.
In Vietnam, for example, we encountered many frustrations,
but one thing, it cannot be said of the United States effort
that we did not understand our adversary in the National
Liberation Front, the Vietcong. There were detailed studies and
interviews with thousands of Vietcong detainees, so we built up
a very clear picture, not just of how they operated and
functioned and recruited but of the divisions within their
ranks, and then we could direct very, I think, finely
calibrated and effective information operations and propaganda
to drive even a wider wedge.
So I think on the one hand we haven't taken advantage of
this same opportunity with many of the detainees we have in the
war on terrorism and in Iraq to really understand our
adversary. And I think, as we've heard from my three colleagues
on the panel, we fundamentally don't understand the
constituency in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, who we
need to appeal to, who we need to enlist in the struggle, and
rather in recent years we have inadvertently, perhaps,
alienated.
The Chairman. Let me just pick up with Dr. Khan for a
moment this point from Dr. Hoffman's testimony. You made a very
valid point, for instance with the Karen Hughes operation, that
she was not able to identify the Muslims on the staff. Perhaps
they were not conspicuous or high up enough.
But it's a more basic problem than that that Karen Hughes
has. We, it seems to me, are hamstrung, as we have heard in
these hearings, by our own problems of trying to identify
people of any of the Muslim situations who are seen as reliable
by our Government, to the point for example that if Osama bin
Laden were intercepted by the United States on a tape, on cell
phone, it is always a question of who would be able to
translate what he had to say. Would we know really what the
conversation was? Is the data mining sufficient finally, and
are there enough people with language ability, interpreters, to
try to fathom through this?
Now, we get conflicting testimony. People say, ``Well, you
have to understand, we do background checks for people involved
in intelligence or public relations and so forth, and there are
difficult aspects to these background checks. We find unusual
people coming into the lives of these people, and therefore
what kind of reliance can you put on this sort of thing?'' It's
a circular thing that goes round and round, through perhaps an
ignorance of all the nuances here.
As somebody who has studied this perhaps more carefully
than most, how do we begin to get some basis for enlisting
people of Muslim faith, moderate or not, who are eager to play
a role in the United States Government, to be able to assist us
in whatever we are doing now?
Dr. Khan. Thank you very much. There is a very interesting
dilemma that intelligence agencies and the U.S. Government has,
and that dilemma is that the most interesting people that will
be most useful for the government are people who have
interesting contacts back home.
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Khan. And they are the people that the government
suspects the most.
The Chairman. Interesting histories.
Dr. Khan. Yes, so we need people who know radical
Islamists, who know people who can call up Lebanon and find out
whether the Lebanese army is supporting Hezbollah or not. The
kind of person who can find that thing out for us is also the
kind of person we would like to send to Guantanamo.
Now, that is the whole dilemma for the U.S. Government as
to how to resolve this, and I heard that there are going to be
changes at the Central Intelligence Agency on recruitment. It's
coming down the pipeline. Unfortunately, we have bureaucratic
and legal issues which take a long time to come.
But there are also several other issues. I think that U.S.-
Muslim relationships have been corrupted by oil to a great
extent. It is like dating an exceptionally beautiful person,
and what happens is that the physical beauty distracts from all
the other qualities of the person. So when we started dating
the Middle East, we only focused on oil. We have never seen
them as human beings.
The United States has had more closer diplomatic relations
with Saudi Arabia than with Israel, but there are no people-to-
people relations between the people of Saudi Arabia and the
American people. And this whole idea of looking at Islam and
even American Muslims through the lens of the Middle East has
created invisible barriers.
American Muslims, too, made a big mistake when they became
politically active in this country and started trying to
participate in this policy. They made the goal of reducing the
influence of the Israeli lobby as one of their most important
goals, and making the Palestinian cause as their No. 1 goal.
It's like a flyweight boxer taking on a heavyweight boxer in
their first bout. And as a result of that, the American Muslim
community has not been able to approach the government, and has
remained a challenge and a critique and not a participant.
And these are the two reasons why, when Karen Hughes comes
into this position, she does not know whom to hire and whom not
to. I took her with me to the Islamic Society of North America,
and there she made this very interesting comment. She said,
``You have more credibility than I have in the Muslim world.''
And then she proceeded to travel to the Muslim world without
any Muslims with her on the whole tour. And so I went on radio
and I said, ``Madam, you left your credibility behind.'' And
this is----
The Chairman. She left you behind, Dr. Khan.
Dr. Khan. No. There are two other comments that I wanted to
add about your previous question to Dr. Hoffman. I think beyond
the Iraq issue there are two or three very clear issues which
alienate Muslims from America.
Muslims and Third World countries have always admired
America because America in their mind is a colony that made it
big, a British colony that made it big. So can India, so can
Egypt. So everybody looked up to the United States as a role
model for development. But what has happened beyond Iraq, and
keeping the Iraq issue aside, is there are three things which
have created a lot of resentment against America.
No. 1, Muslims tried in two different ways to develop in
the last 50 years. One model was socialism, and it led to
dictators like Nassir and Saddam Hussein, and so socialism
failed them. The other alternative was Islamization, which
never really got going because Muslims have seen the United
States as a barrier to Islamization and therefore a barrier to
development and modernization.
No. 2 is the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab-Israeli
conflict has been a source of pain, misery, and humiliation to
Muslims all over the place, and that is really important to
Muslims. While I was coming for this hearing, a Somalian cab
driver was lecturing me on how I would be betraying Islam if I
did not raise the Arab-Israeli issue in this Senate hearing,
and so I am not betraying Islam. [Laughter.]
No. 3, there is this perception in the Muslim world that
the United States now is determined to keep the Muslim world
weak, and therefore, while it looks the other way when Israel
has nuclear weapons, it's determined to go after Iran which
does not have nuclear weapons and prevent it.
So these three perceptions--and it has not to do much with
oil, actually--these three perceptions have created a sense of
resentment, and I think that there are two things that America
can do to reverse this. One is to have a just solution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict just now, as quickly as possible. The
other is to develop a respect. We need to develop human-to-
human contact. People have to know.
When I travel through the Muslim world and listen to a lot
of anti-Americanism, I start by saying this. I say, ``Did you
know that last year Americans gave over $250 billion in
charity, in sadaqah, which is nearly twice the annual income of
Saudi Arabia?'' That stuns them. It completely deconstructs
their perception of Americans as immoral, because giving
charity is a great, great value in Islam. It changes the way
they think. They need to know the softer side of America, and
so does America need to know the softer side of Muslims. Oil
and Israel prevent us from doing that.
The Chairman. Well, maybe they do, and I suppose my first
question was a suggestion that they do, but for the moment it's
not really clear to me how we get away from the oil. This is
sort of a passionate cause of my own, and I will not bedraggle
the hearing with this, because I think without a very sharp
diminishment of the use of oil in this country, we are fated to
have the sort of problems we're talking about today
indefinitely, and this is simply a fact of life.
As a matter of fact, we have been through the process of
talking about Ukraine and Russia and European business with
natural gas, but the facts of life increasingly are the
strategic use of oil. As Iran becomes more wealthy, leaving
aside the Saudis or anybody else, it creates very grave
dilemmas for us.
Now, on the other hand, we have a strategic alliance with
Israel, an affinity there that is important to most Americans
and is not going to go away, not going to diminish. So we make
the case again, and perhaps we will have the wisdom for a peace
process, for cease-fires, for some diminishment of this, and we
all pray that that's the case almost every day, but how,
factually, that comes about is hard to come by.
We started our day in the committee hosting the Egyptian
Foreign Minister and other ministers that are here for talks on
strategy with the United States, and they were tremendously
interesting with their insights on the cease-fire or how you
begin to separate the parties in Lebanon, quite apart from
Syria, quite apart from anyplace else. We always are eager to
get advice, but I came away from that meeting not sure if these
are problems with regard to public opinion. Beyond that there
are simply the emotions; we separate ourselves very rapidly.
Now maybe, as you have suggested, Dr. Khan, if our
generosity to countries was more apparent it would have a
greater effect. Mr. Kohut has mentioned Indonesia looking a
little better, at least those parts of it, I suppose, that were
helped after the tsunami, and that would be true in Pakistan,
where relief came to people up in the mountains. Clearly, if we
were more adept at our public diplomacy--as you have suggested,
our generosity to other places in the Middle East has been
profound, and so the word needs to get out. We need to be
better at this.
But I keep circling around sort of basic problems that are
in the way of all of this resolving itself very rapidly.
Dr. Khan. Let me give you a small suggestion, like for
example, who is going to rebuild Lebanon? Do we wait until Iran
provides some funding to reconstruct Lebanon? A decision by the
United States now to say that once there is cease-fire and
Hezbollah is either dismantled or moved away, further away, so
they cannot threaten northern Israel, the United States will be
willing to reconstruct the damage that Israel made in Lebanon--
--
The Chairman. That's probably a good idea, but let me just
ask as a matter of practical politics, to any of you, who in
the world is governing Lebanon at this point? Even if we were
to make these pledges, where is there a government that has
enough profound influence throughout all of the precincts of
Lebanon that any American statesperson, contractor, soldier, or
what have you would be safe in the place?
In other words, as I listened to the Egyptians talking
today about rockets in the houses of people in Lebanon, up and
down the street and so forth, being utilized by the powers that
be that are firing at the Israelis and so forth, I'm not sure,
who are the Lebanese? Where is the governance, and where do the
Syrians come into this? Are they out of it? Are they into it?
Should they be back into it?
In other words, I think your point is well taken, but
trying to separate all of the parties here so that we have at
least some possibility of doing good is not really clear in my
mind. Can anybody else offer some clarity as to how?
Ambassador Ahmed. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to make a
comment related to the discussion.
You not only have Lebanon. Turkey has issued a statement
that it is now looking at the Kurdish incursions into Turkey
and seriously considering going in. India and Pakistan are once
again heating up in terms of the rhetoric between the two
countries, the two giants, both nuclear, three wars between
them.
What Iraq has established is a precedent, and that is so
dangerous. The United States in this situation, as the sole
superpower, needs to be acting, needs to be thinking three
steps before something takes place, rather than reacting. It
just cannot afford, it is too big. It is the oil tanker in a
small pond.
Now, the situation is that you have got Iraq, you have
Iran, Syria being involved, Iran being involved. And in my
travels I discovered that a lot of Sunnis--and this is an
important nuance in the Muslim world, the Shia-Sunni nuance--a
lot of Sunnis were referring to Ahmadinejad as the role model.
Now, why? Osama bin Laden, who is a Sunni, is understandable.
Simply because he is standing up to the United States.
So the United States needs to be aware of the trend and
move ahead of the trend, the graph itself. It cannot wait for
events. It cannot say, ``Let us see what is happening in
Lebanon.'' Because Turkey may be involved soon. Suppose India
now says, ``All right, cross-border terrorism, we are crossing
into Pakistan.'' Pakistan is 165 million people, it's nuclear.
It will tilt everything that you're doing in that part of the
world.
So putting it in the context of the Middle East, and I know
that this is a major concern, the oil and the oil links, and
Central Asia, both major oil producing zones where the United
States does not have the option of cutting and running, it just
doesn't, but it does have the option of changing strategy, of
playing the game by the rules as they are played in that part
of the world, what the British, if you recall, called the
``great game.''
That part of the world has seen all the great conquerors
coming and going, from Alexander to Genghis Khan. We have now
the United States Army there, the most powerful army in the
world today. What are the rules there? You need to make allies
who respect you. You need to have a word which is respected.
Right now there is a feeling, even in the close allies that
you have, apart from the governments who may be allies, and I
don't know how loyalty would be if aid stopped, but the people
certainly feel that the United States is a fair weather friend,
that when policy changes they'll just dump you and walk away,
as the Afghans felt.
In the 1980s, the Afghans were the most loyal allies of the
United States. They fought the war with the United States
against the Soviets. One-third of the Afghan population has
lost a limb. They were the freedom fighters. In the 1990s, they
became the Taliban. Bin Laden is of that generation and from
that school, if you like. So the need to keep allies and
friends and recognize them, to play a long-term game, these are
the rules of the great game.
And, third, to learn to play the game through the culture
of honor and respect and tradition, because if we don't honor
people, they have the stories of rape. That is crossing the
border. And then this talk of jihadists, Osama bin Laden, al-
Qaeda, is meaningless. Every Muslim, whether he is orthodox or
secular or mystic, is horrified, as indeed is every good
Christian or every good Jew, every good secularist even, when
rape is committed of the kind that you are hearing emerging
from these horror stories.
So if we are conscious of the great game, if our soldiers
abroad, diplomats abroad are realizing that this is a long-term
game strategy, we cannot opt out of it, because if we pull out,
there is a huge vacuum in the Middle East, Central Asia. Think
about it, Mr. Chairman. You have two other local superpowers
waiting to emerge, Russia and China, both who have played the
game for the last two centuries, imperial Russia, imperial
China.
And in the 21st century, two decades, three decades down
the road, if America is not aware of the game, playing by its
strange rules there--they are playing cricket, you are playing
baseball, different kinds of rules--and if you cut and run, you
may have a situation where in this vacuum you will get powers
that may not be friendly to interests that the United States
represents. And to me, ultimately what the United States does
represent is human rights, democracy, the ideals of the
Founding Fathers. That is the vision and the dream we
constantly need to come back to and share with the Muslim
world. That message, that bridge is not coming across, and that
needs to be reinforced.
The Chairman. I appreciate that statement because it
certainly is important in terms of the debate we're having in
this country, which you witnessed. We have a fairly large
percentage of the public and a fair number of Members of
Congress who, as a matter of fact, wouldn't call it cutting and
running, but they want to get out.
They would say despite all the obligations you have
suggested, even the possibilities of a vacuum being created
with Russia and China and all the rest, that as far as they're
concerned we have had enough. People don't like us. They are
attempting to subvert whatever we have to do, distorting what
we believe we are, and they ought to just proceed, do the best
they can.
Now, I don't think that side will prevail but I'm not
overconfident. In part, a number of our congressional
elections, in which all of us will be involved in 16 weeks, are
on these sorts of issues in which things are polarized just
around those points, so that what we're talking about today
does have long-run circumstances, but it also has some short-
term volatility in our own politics, leaving aside whatever is
happening in the Middle East.
Let me just ask you, Mr. Kohut, you've been pondering over
all of this argument for a while, but we would like your
counsel as to what you have heard.
Mr. Kohut. Well, one thing that's clear is that of all the
things that you mentioned in your set of questions, that the
war in Iraq has made all of this worse. It has poisoned the
well. I don't think that, while Osama bin Laden and his ilk had
issues with Americans on the ground in Saudi Arabia through the
1990s, that certainly--I shouldn't say certainly--probably
wasn't the case in the Muslim world at large. It wasn't the
case in Turkey, where we had a very positive image. It wasn't
the case in Jordan and in other places.
I think, though, that the presence of American troops in
Iraq raises the issue of Americans in the Middle East, and that
makes the American presence there more broadly more of an
issue. Similarly, while as Dr. Khan said we were seen as dating
for purposes of oil, oil is even more--there is even more
skepticism about our motives and intentions because of the war
in Iraq.
All of these things have just become worse, and
increasingly what we see in, I'm not saying the Arab world, the
Muslim world, is an us-versus-them phenomenon. And one of the
ways that came through is when we did our poll earlier this
year about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, there was tremendous
opposition to that idea in the West and most parts of the
world, but not really tremendous opposition among Iran's Sunni
neighbors. In Egypt, in Jordan, there was mixed opinion, in
some respects, for it.
It's a very, very negative situation that will require some
dramatic success for the United States in the eyes of the
Muslim publics, and what that is I don't know.
The Chairman. Well, we very much appreciate your testimony
and your response to our questions, and we will try to make as
complete a committee record of this hearing as we can, because
you have said things that are important for all of our
colleagues, and perhaps the public as a whole that takes a look
at these hearings through the benefit of C-SPAN or however.
These are important moments for us, to try to concentrate on
what you have to say and to reread it, and to try to think
about some of the other sources that you have cited.
So this will not be our concluding hearing on this subject.
This is an education process, as I have indicated, for each one
of us who needs to know more, needs to be visiting with people
such as yourselves, as you are able to give us this time. We
certainly thank you for your generosity this morning.
So saying, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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