{"id":2462,"date":"2010-08-07T15:22:14","date_gmt":"2010-08-07T19:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2010-08-07T15:28:23","modified_gmt":"2010-08-07T19:28:23","slug":"america-needs-a-new-plan-for-engaging-islam-that-doesnt-involve-boots-on-the-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/08\/07\/america-needs-a-new-plan-for-engaging-islam-that-doesnt-involve-boots-on-the-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"America needs a new plan for engaging Islam that doesn’t involve boots on the ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The most recent issue of Time magazine features the image of an Afghan woman whose nose has been cut off by the Taliban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The question — What happens if we leave Afghanistan? — posed by Time’s editors and reporters is really only one piece of a much larger question.<\/p>\n

How does the United States begin to engage differently with the Islamic world?<\/p>\n

First a bit of thumbnail history.<\/p>\n

Over much of the last century, Islam posed no serious threat or concern to the United States, our interests or our values.<\/p>\n

Our main “opponents” were entirely European and Western in origin, primarily in the form of Fascism and Communism.<\/p>\n

But in the aftermath of World War 2, a confluence of factors gave rise to a new confrontationalism between our largely Christian society and that of Islam.<\/p>\n

The first great factor was the collapse of European empires, which left nation-states from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Indonesia to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

The second complication was the growing realization that Muslim countries possessed in large quantities something that the United States desperately wanted:\u00a0 Oil.<\/p>\n

The third tectonic shift was the Western-imposed creation of Israel — a Jewish state — in the midst of a largely Islamic near-Eastern region.<\/p>\n

Finally, there was the increasingly disastrous engagement of Islam itself with the modern world.<\/p>\n

Faced with declining economies and limited opportunity, many Muslims have fallen back on a version of faith which is very nearly Medieval in its fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to that woman and her horribly scarred face.<\/p>\n

Also this week, we have word that the Taliban have murdered eight Western doctors<\/a> and four Afghani aid workers.<\/p>\n

And there’s more depressing news out of Iran, where senior clerics stormed out of a reconciliation session<\/a> with expatriates because female musicians didn’t wear their headscarves properly.<\/p>\n

What’s clear is that the United States needs to develop a practical, fair and tough-minded strategy for engaging the Islamic world<\/p>\n

That strategy needs to de-emphasize full-scale military conflict, which isn’t working very well and is no longer affordable.<\/p>\n

But it also needs to redouble efforts to protect the United States from Islamic militants, a tiny minority within the larger Muslim culture — who will certainly continue to view us and our interests as a priority target.<\/p>\n

We need to acknowledge frankly that many aspects of global Islam — the lack of democratic and legal protections and the barbaric treatment of women to name two — are deeply, morally troubling.<\/p>\n

To that end, we also need to consider deeply our own moral responsibility in the Muslim world.\u00a0 What will it mean for women and minorities in Islamic countries if we pull back and don’t engage?<\/p>\n

Surely there must be better strategies for nurturing human rights in places such as Somalia and the Sudan.<\/p>\n

Another question:\u00a0 What can we do to disentangle our interests — energy, primarily, but also geopolitics — from those of the Islamic world?<\/p>\n

I for one am sick and tired of knowing that our economy is deeply intertwined in that part of the world.<\/p>\n

One more question:\u00a0 What can we learn from countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the most populous Muslim countries which are also largely tolerant and have engaged successfully with the modern world?<\/p>\n

To have this discussion won’t be easy.<\/p>\n

The current debate over the proposed mosque near the ground zero site shows just how reactionary our political discussion has become.<\/p>\n

And there are certain to be raw wounds for years to follow, following the ambiguous wind-down of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

We will also struggle to build a post-Middle-Eastern oil energy policy, because that goal has become intertwined with the culture war debate over climate change and conservation.<\/p>\n

Lastly, of course, we go forward in this relationship in the shadow of the Twin Towers, in the knowledge that we now share some of the blood-sorrow that has long crippled the Near East.<\/p>\n

Despite all those potential tripwires, the conversation has to begin.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen what happens — in Israel and Palestine, in India and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq — when these grievances aren’t addressed.<\/p>\n

Your thoughts?\u00a0 Comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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