As you may have guessed from the title, I'm heading off to Thanksgiving vacation for a few days with family and friends. I'll be checking back in on Tuesday, December 1st. I hope everyone has a blessed and happy holiday (despite two awful NFL games on tap!).
In the meantime, I hate to depress you over the holiday, but that's my job, right? Seriously though, this latest piece by Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post is a must read that you will want to sneak in if you can:
To borrow a computer term, if Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a US congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization.
The 1.0 version attacks those perceived as obstructing its goal of a society ruled by a global caliphate and totally regulated by Shari'a (Islamic law). Islamism's original tactics, from totalitarian rule to mega-terrorism, encompass unlimited brutality. Three thousand dead in one attack? Bin Laden's search for atomic weaponry suggests the murderous toll could be a hundred or even a thousand times larger.
However, a review of the past three decades, since Islamism became a significant political force, finds that violence alone rarely works. Survivors of terrorism rarely capitulate to radical Islam - not after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt in 1981, nor the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombings of 2002, the Madrid bombing of 2004, the Amman bombing of 2005, or the terrorist campaigns in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Terrorism does physical damage and kills and intimidates but it rarely overturns the existing order. Imagine Islamists had caused the devastation of Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 tsunami - what could these have lastingly achieved?
NON-TERRORIST violence aimed at applying Shari'a does hardly better. Revolution (meaning, a wide-scale social revolt) took Islamists to power in just one place at one time - Iran in 1978-79. Likewise, a coup d'état (a military overthrow) carried them to power just once - Sudan in 1989. Same for civil war - Afghanistan in 1996.
If the violence of Islamism 1.0 rarely succeeds in forwarding the Shari'a, the Islamism 2.0 strategy of working through the system does better. Islamists, adept at winning public opinion, represent the main opposition force in Muslim-majority countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Islamists have enjoyed electoral success in Algeria in 1992, Bangladesh in 2001, Turkey in 2002, and Iraq in 2005.
Once in power, they can move the country toward Shari'a. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the wrath of Iranian street demonstrators and bin Laden cowers in a cave, Erdogan basks in public approval, remakes the Republic of Turkey, and offers an enticing model for Islamists worldwide.
Read it all. I've interviewed Dr. Pipes several times. As this piece shows, he is a brilliant strategic thinker.