The reassertion of political Islam in contemporary Muslim societies has increased attention and scrutiny by the West of an alleged Islamic threat. It was the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979, and subsequent events, such as the kidnapping of western hostages and the blowing up of the United States marine barracks in Lebanon, and the Iran-Iraqi war that highlighted the role of Islam in international affairs. The issue of a resurgent Islam now became an urgent matter in Western foreign policy, gaining momentum with the demise of the Cold War and the communist threat to the West. Leaving a perceived threat vacuum to frustrated Cold War warriors in western capitals, especially Washington, policy makers, academics, the media, and leaders in the West and the Muslim world echo the idea of a radical, resurgent Islam threatening Western civilization.
Events in Algeria, occupied Palestinian, Chechneya, Kashmir, Egypt and Turkey reinforce the idea of political Islam as a potent force in international politics. Radical militants continue unabated to challenge secular nationalist government and society in the Muslim world. For example, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria, and the Gamaa Islamiyya in Egypt have been fighting the regime’s security forces, and suicide bombings by Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, threatens the PLO-Israeli peace accords.
Media attention in Europe and the US fuel the fear of Islamic fundamentalism, and there is increasing concern about the growth, and changing nature, of immigrant Muslim communities in Europe and the US. Among the prominent sensational headline incidents are: the hijacking of an Air France plane in Algeria and the alleged plan to blow it up over Paris; the trial and convictions of Shaykh Umar Abd al Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric, and co-conspirators accused of the 1993 bombing of the New York’s World Trade Center; the immediate accusation and responsibility of Islamic terrorism in the 1995 Oklahoma bombing; the TWA plane crash in New York, September 1996; and the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Reinforcing this fear of an Islamic menace to Western civilization, seem further confirmed by scholarly publications of Samuel Huntington’s "Clash of Civilizations" and the "Roots of Muslim Rage" by Bernard Lewis, doyen of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Congressional hearings, politicians, intelligence reports and many of the authoritative foreign policy institutions, journals and newspapers held symposiums, published articles and released studies proclaiming the threat.
Although there is a basis for a stereotype, this image of an Islamic threat is, however, misleading in many ways and rest on utterly false assumptions. Political Islam is neither a unified force, nor is it bent on confronting or clashing with the West. Most Muslims are not supporters of Islamic movements, and in spite of occasional anti-Western rhetoric, these groups are only concerned with domestic internal problems in their countries. Attempting to solve the political problems in other Muslim countries is not even on their agenda. Rather, as indicated in part I of this paper, Islamic revival is a reaction to the confusion and anxiety of modernity, challenging repressive and corrupt regimes, and not focused on confrontation with western civilization. The mythology of an Islamic threat must be seen in the context of the end of the Cold War, where the threat of global communism diminished, Cold War geostrategists in the West, especially the US, now identify Islam as the new enemy of the West. Propagating this political myth gives it "a certain reality for those whom they are designed to mobilize, but also for those against whom they are directed."
The discussion that follow is an attempt to examine the idea of an
Islamic threat to the West, to show further in what sense there is not,
and in what sense there is, a conflict between the secular Occident and
the world of Islam, particularly the Middle East. The perceived threat
is in fact rooted in a set of objective and subjective factors that include
both real and imaginary sources which is further examined and stripped
of some of its myths.
The Legacy Of Antagonism
Despite centuries of interaction and common theological roots, the relationship between the world of Islam and the Occident is marked by conflict, ignorance, stereotypes and prejudice. The rapid and aggressive expansion of Islam and the flourishing of Islamic civilization posed a great challenge and danger to Christianity, politically, theologically and ideologically. Both having similar monotheistic universal messages and struggling for the hearts and minds of the masses, inevitably put Islam and Christianity an a collision course. For centuries Islam was on the offensive, while Christianity was generally defensive and hostile.
The perception, by the West, of an Islamic threat is bolstered by the historical conflict between Christian Europe and the Muslim world stretching back a millennium. From the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the 7th century, through the Crusades which began in the 11th century, and later to the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Arab and Ottoman power, and the threat were both military and ideological. It was the Crusades which had a long lasting and shattering effect on Muslim-Christian relations. Emerging from the Dark Ages and experiencing intellectual, scientific and economic progress, Europe mounted a counteroffensive to drive out Muslims from Spain, Sicily and Italy. Leaving an enduring legacy of mistrust, prejudice and ignorance, a series of holy wars, pitting Christianity against Islam, followed from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Indeed the trauma caused by the Crusades is deeper in the West that in the East. Conflict endured with the Ottoman Empire when Christian Europe again faced the power and might of Islam. Ruling the Balkan states for four hundred years, and organizing occasional campaigns against the European empire, the Turkish threat was a constant European reality until some 250 years ago.
Threatening, conquering territories, and ruling its subjects for centuries, Islam not only represented a formidable competitor, but also a late coming challenge to Christianity. Islam was seen by Christian Europe as aggressive and warlike. The conflict with Islam, interestingly, contributed to the development of unity and bond within European Christendom falling apart by its own conflicts, such as the Reformation. In the Middle Ages the Crusaders and the Ottoman threat gave Europe its unique identity through unity against the common enemy: Islam.
Within the context of the Crusades, therefore, in the shadow of plundering and conquering wars of medieval Europe, oriental studies originated to study Islam. But the studies were negative, distorted and had little concern for accuracy. As Orientalist thought developed, its general basis divided the world into two polarized geographic regions, different and unequal, one called the Orient (the East) and the other called the Occident or the West. Aided by Orientalism, simplified, negative and prejudiced thinking and images dominated Western thinking and discourse about Islam and the Muslim world. Always seen as belonging to the Orient, Said asserts:
Islam’s particular fate within the general structure of Orientalism has been to be looked at first of all as it were one monolithic thing, and then with a very special hostility and fear. These are of course many religious, psychological and political reasons for this, but all of these reasons derive from a sense that so far as the West is concerned , Islam represents not only a formidable competitor, but also a late coming challenge to Christianity.
Orientalists, further perpetuated the belief that Islam was a demonic religion of apostasy, blasphemy, inventing the legend that Islam spread in the past, and will always spread "through fire and the sword." This idea is very much alive even today even today, despite the fact that this legend has successfully been disapproved. Orientalist thought, moreover, defamed the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, labeling him a false prophet, an agent of the devil, sex maniac and suffering from fits. These negative images unfortunately continue into the modern period, where the young Orientalists learn from the old. Writing about the European images of Islam, John Esposito observes that stereotypes of a "static, irrational retrogressive, anti-modern religious tradition" was to be perpetuated by scholars of development theory in the 20th century.
European colonial expansion extended the Orientalist thought, having the idea of civilizing Muslim heathens. European colonialism witnessed a shift in the balance of power between the Muslim world and Christian Europe. Muslim’s lands, intellect, and psyche would now be dominated by the West, and Islamic power, which for centuries held sway in international affairs, threatening the West, would be reversed by colonialism, dependency and imperialism. The Muslim world, especially the Middle East, now experienced the political cultural and economic onslaught and hegemony of Europe. Islam found itself on the defensive as Europe’s military, economic and intellectual power grew, and by the 19th century there was a shift in power in favor of the former. Western expansion and power now, constituted a singular challenge to Islam politically, economically morally and culturally. European colonialism and imperialism threatened Muslim political and religio-cultural identity and history.
Response to Western hegemony varied, ranging from rejection to confrontation, and even admiration. However, reaction by Muslims was marked more by conflict and resistance, manifested in a number of military expeditions and uprising against colonialism and imperialism. Muslims viewed European aims and schemes as devious and confrontational; an extension of the Crusades, bent on weakening, and even destroying Islamic civilization and power.
Decline of Islamic power meant that the international society dominated by the West, as it exists today, came at the expense of Muslim power and people. When Europeans expanded commercially their main rivals on the sea routes, the Mediterranean and Indian seaports, were Muslim merchants. Similarly, Muslim rulers were their main antagonists when they tried to establish colonies in Africa and Asia. Because of this competition and rivalry Hashemi contends:
Beginning with the Crusaders and continuing with European commercial and imperial expansion, Islam has been the subject of European concern. For Europe, Islam was the only undisguised and formidable antagonist of Christianity.
Even when the Muslim world entered a period of decay and European civilization a period of ascendancy, the fear of "Mohammedanism" and the "Turk" persisted. Other civilizations like the Chinese and the Mongols challenged Europe, but were distant and hence not a constant worry. Since the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Christian Europe had a moving, and often hostile frontier with the world of Islam. This geographic proximity made a big difference in relations between these two civilizations, because as Edward Said observes: Closer to Europe than any of the non-Christian religions, the Islamic world by its very adjacency, evoked memories of its encroachment on Europe, and always of its latent power again and again to disturb the West."
It was the Iranian revolution which in the modern world, dominated by the West, demonstrated the latent power of Islam. Stunning the developed world, particularly the US, the revolution focused western - which still faced the communist threat - attention on the power of resurgent political Islam, which had the potential to challenge their hegemony in the Middle East. But the demise of the communist threat, meant it is only Islam, with its vitality as an assertive political force in the world, which is the only major culture to rebel and challenge Western dominated international society. Still fixated in an Orientalist paradigm when dealing with Islam and the non -western world, many influential individuals and vested interests in the West reacted to a resurgent Islam by demonizing this culture and its people. In the forefront of this Crusade is the media, academic experts, policy makers, politicians and journalists fanning the threat of Islam as the new bogeyman, to be feared after communism.