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| Speaker: | Reza Aslan, author, "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam |
|---|---|
| Presider: | Steven A. Cook, Next Generation Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations |
May 12, 2005
Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
New York, N.Y.
STEVEN COOK: Good morning. Welcome this morning to the Council for a breakfast conversation with Reza Aslan. I am Steven Cook, for those of you who don’t know me, but I think everybody here does. One caveat before we begin: Reza and I did not call each other last night and discuss ties. This is truly by accident. We just met 25 minutes ago. I may move a little off the side afterwards, but this was not planned.
It gives melet me get through my caveats and then I will be happy to introduce Reza. This meeting is actually on the record, unlike most of the Council meetings, so feel free to use it, and liberally if you would like, but I do ask you to turn off your cell phones, beepers, BlackBerries, or whatever else may make noise during the meeting. Thank you very much.
It is my great pleasure to introduce a young scholar, Reza Aslan, who has recently published what I think is an extraordinary book on the history and evolution of Islam. And I was fortunate enough to be asked by his publisher, Random House, to jacket-blurb it and this was kind of, you know, you get asked to do it; say, “OK, I will do it.” And within a few pages being into it, I looked up at my wife and I said, “This is a wonderful book; I am really excited about reading it.”
It is truly extraordinary. It provides context to a lot of the things that we have been discussing here at the Council, particularly since the Middle East and the Islamic world has become a central focus of U.S. foreign policy. And I think that Reza has just done a wonderful job of, like I said, adding context to the debate about Islam. So with that, Reza is going to give a brief talk, 15 to 20 minutes or so, and then we will open up to questions.
REZA ASLAN: Thank you, Steven. I would like to just announce today that Steven will now be my publicist for the [inaudible] this book.
COOK: I have been peddling him [inaudible] [laughter].
ASLAN: Thank you very much for having this meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations. I’m absolutely humbled to be addressing you and so I am going to keep my comments very short because I am far more interested in hearing what you have to say than, I am sure, you probably are in hearing what I have to say. But we were talking earlierSteven and Ioutside about Iraq and so I thought what I would do is talk a little bit about, well, what’s happening there and then frame it in terms of what I have been talking and writing about with regards with Islamic democracy and its role and what I see as a far larger movement towards the Islamic reformation.
As most of you know, Iraq is just now getting underway and the long and incredibly grueling process of constructing a democracy, a stable democracy, on the ashes of devastation left behind by the war, and there is already a lot of speculation about whether the Shia, who now dominate the government, are going to make Islam the official state religion. I mean, I have already been hearing dire predictions coming from both inside and outside of the country that Iraq is going to somehow become the new Iran; that it’s going to be built upon Iran and thisas we were saying earlier, this fear of the Shia crescent that’s going to be stretching from Tehran to Beirut.
And I just want to sort of present a different kind of paradigm about Iraq and say that I don’t think that there is much fear, in all honesty, that Iraq is going to take Iran as its model for its attempt at building a state that is at once eminently democratic and yet distinctly Islamic. Most Iraqis, I would say, agree, as do most Muslims, that the theo-political experiment in Iran has been a devastating failure. That’s something that I think is almost unanimously agreed upon. Even the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a menacingly titled group that somewhat dominates the new government, has shown very little enthusiasm for repeating the Iranian model. I truly believe that if Iraq is looking for a model of how to form this new and dynamic and exciting Islamic democracy, it should be looking not to the East at its neighbor Iran, but to the West and its neighbor Israel. Israel is the model, I think, for the new Iraq and let me tell you why I say that. Israel, of course, is, despite the—
COOK: Are you sure you want this on the record?
ASLAN: Yes, I know. [Laughter] I get a lot ofyou know, a lot of eyebrows with this one. Well, I thought with the doors closed [laughter]. Israel, of course, despite the devastating cycle of violence that has turned into something like an apartheid state with the territorial battle for the Palestinian territory is, as I think as most people would agree, a democratic state. And yet, of course, Israel is a state that is unapologetically founded upon an exclusivist, Jewish, moral framework: one in which all the world’s Jews are considered citizens, despite their nationality; one in which the orthodox rabbinical courts have sway over all matters religious; one in which all the religious schools are funded by the state; in which marriages are religious rather than civil affairs; and in which the government is dominated by a host of religious political parties like the ultra-orthodox Shas, the Yahadut Hatorah, and of course the ruling Likud party, which is unquestionably founded upon a very religious framework.
So in other words, in every sense of the term, Israel is what we would say to be a Jewish democracy. The fact of the matter is that a great many of our modern democratic states are founded upon a very distinct religious and moral framework. The United States, as we never get tired of hearing from certain sectors, is of course founded upon a Judeo-Christianand just as so you know, anytime anyone uses the term Judeo-Christian it’s just code for Protestantmoral framework in which religion still plays a profound role not just in reflecting our social values, but in dictating our social values. It is the very heart of our national identity, in essence.
The United Kingdom, of course, is a country in which the monarch is the head of the church and in which the bishops serve in the upper house of parliament. India was, until very recently, dominated by, and very likely may be again, by partisans of an elite nationalist Hindu orthodoxy. And yet, like Israel, these are all considered democratic states not because they are secular, but because they are at least, in theory, dedicated to pluralismethnic, religious, political pluralism.
It is pluralism, I believe, that defines a democracy, not secularism. In that sense, any modern democratic stateconstitutional state can be founded upon really any normative moral framework as long as pluralism remains the fabric at its coreits essence.
Now, Islam, as it happens, has a very long history of religious and ethnic pluralism. I would love to get into that, but for that you have to read my book, otherwise [laughter]--but in one case, I mean, I can tell you that the Prophet Mohammed’s dedication to creating a single, unified community of believers that encompassed Jews, Christians, and Muslimsthe original umma or community. The Prophet’s notion that all divine scriptures are revealed from a single source in heaven called the mother of books, the Umm al-Kitab, and of course his attempts to create a protective people amongst originally Jews and Christians but then eventually Zoroastrians and Hindus, and a number of other religious traditions as well. These were startlingly revolutionary ideas in an era in which religion literally created borders between peoples.
And so, for that reason and for many others, I believe that Islam, like Protestantism in the United States, like Anglicanism in the U.K. [United Kingdom], like Hinduism in India, like Judaism in Israel, is a perfectly suitable ideological framework to create the moral centerthe moral framework, as I was saying before, for a burgeoning Islamic democracy. Now, what would that look like, particularly, in Iraq? I think it’s important to recognizeI mean, I understand that when, you know, terms like “Islamic democracy” are turned about we immediately start thinking about Afghanistan or the Taliban or perhaps the Wahhabi-dominated regime in Saudi Arabia, or even the clerical oligarchy in Iran.
But, again, while these states may be Islamic, they are certainly far from being democratic. And Islamic democracy is not a theo-democracy. It is a democratic state founded upon the principles of democracy: popular sovereignty, constitutional of the rule of law, pluralism, as I said, human rights, the separation of powersall the things that we consider to be the principal elements in defining what a democracy is in the first place, and yet one that is distinctly founded upon in Islamic moral framework, one in which the sharia, or Islamic law, is a source of law, butas the Talmud is, for instance, in Israel, which is a source of law, but more importantly, a sense of the national identity of the Israeli people, very much like the sharia is.
When I say this, particularly in a group full of Muslims or scholars, there is always a few, you know, wrinkles of the brow, but I want to clarify that this is in no way an innovation. I am not creating some sort of new kind of Islam. In the 1,400 years [of] history of Islam never, everand this includes the time of the Prophethas Islamic law been the sole source of law in any kind of Islamic policy.
Only recentlyonly since really the end of the colonialist period and the birth of the Islamic state has there been any kind of concerted effort to fuse together sacred and civil law. Islamic law, of course, is itself the marriage of a host of influencesTalmudic law and Roman law, local cultures, pre-Islamic lawand so this is something that we have to recognize. While it gets a lot of press from certain sectors in the Islamic society, particularly a lot of traditionalists who have this newfound notion that somehow this rigid vision of this [inaudible], which in fact is a historical fiction by the way: the sharia has neverit has been in a constant state of evolution as it has been adapting to the local and cultural needs of the Muslims’ community. But that some sort of fixed notion of the sharia needs to become the sole source of law in the Islamic worldI think that we need to recognize, just as the rest of the Muslim world has recognized quite clearly, that in every case in which an attempt has been madea concerted attempt has been made to make the sharia the law of the land, the source of law in the land, in every case has been an absolute disaster. It’s not as though the Muslim world is unaware of this, they are perfectly aware of that. And it’s precisely why I say over and over again that we have to recognize the vast majority of the Muslim world readily accepts the fundamentals of democracy.
One thing that the presidentour president is absolutely right in saying is that there is nothing exclusivist about democratic values despite what [Middle East expert] Bernard Lewis and that crowd says. There is nothing about Islam that eschews democratic values; quite the opposite. In fact, Islamthe Muslim communitywas very clearly founded upon what we would consider to be an egalitarian and democratic society that could become the framework, the paradigm for the future of the Islamic democracies in the regionin that particular region.
I think the sort of the last thing that I want to say before we open this up to discussion is that, in some sense, there is really no alternative here. Iraq in particular, a country in which 96 percent of the population is Muslim, 61 percent or so Shia, it is going to be a country in which Islam is going to play a very large role not just in the forming of this government but in the forming of the constitution. We have to get used to that idea whether we like it or not, but in some sense that’s not such a bad thing. I mean, certainly there will be those people who will seek to use the language of the Islam in the future constitution as a means of gaining support for what is in reality their own political and social agendas, housed of course in theological language because that is the language that holds most currency for most people, ourselves included. Let’s not forget the crusade against evildoers.
So that’s a fact, that’s going to happen. So rather than fighting that inevitability, what we need to do as a country is to encourage the democratic process to take root so that, while Islam forms the moral core, the national identity of the future Iraq it is the democratic principles embedded in this new constitution in which I think all political parties and the vast majority of the Iraqis have an enormous amount of enthusiasm forthat those are the principles that becomethat they really rise to the top and that we make sure that this process of democracyand that’s precisely what democracy is; it’s a processthat while it has simply just now begun that it can reallythrough a stable government, through one that is, that has a free market economy, that has security, has an opportunity to become what we in the United States have had 230 years to experiment upon and we’re still not doing all that well.
I tend to remind people who are already making dire predictions about the future theocracy in Iraq that if Islam is mentioned in the constitution then we are opening the door to theocracy, is that secularizationand I am here not referring to secularism, which is an ideology founded upon the eradication of religion from public life, but secularization, the process of transferring political authority from the hands of ecclesiastical authorities and giving them to civic authorities, which is something that Islam has a long history that in no way rejectsis a very long process. We of course, as I was mentioning, have had 230 years at it, and only now have wehave begun to a point where, you know, if the [inaudible]--of the majority leader can stand on the floor, Congress, and call down the wrath of Jesus upon judges who disagree with him. So perhaps we should give the Iraqis a single day of democracy before we start judging it as the coming theocracy of Iraq. And I’ll just end my comments there andactually, you know what? I won’t end my comments there because there is one other thing I want to say. [Laughter]
The reason I think that this is a very important process and why we need to put our full encouragement and support behind toand what I mean, is to create a truly indigenous, Islamic democracy, one that is reared from within based on indigenous values and traditions and couched in a language that is not just acceptable, but recognizable to the Iraqi citizensand this is true for the entire region, I would say, and most of the Arab and Muslim world in the Middle Eastis that in reality this move towards democracy, this move towards political reform, is truly just one aspect in a much larger movement towards the Islamic reformation that is taking place throughout the Muslim world.
This is a process that has been underway sincefor a good century, century and a half; really since the colonial enterprise, an era in which 90 percent of the Muslim world lived under colonial oppression and in which, for the first time, I think, the Muslim community was forced to confront and truly reconcile their traditions and their values with the realities of a rapidly modernizing and, I would say, aggressively secularizing and in some sense oppressively westernizing world. That experience launched an attempt, as most of you know of course, to create a truly indigenous Islamic enlightenment and really created a rift within the Muslim community that we know, sort of simplistically, referred to as the reformists or modernists and the traditionalists or what used to be called the Islamists, but is now, you know, referred to as sort of the fundamentalists.
This battle has been raging for a century and it has now sort of found its stage, and the stage upon which this battle is going to come to fruition is going to be the stage ofin the political realmof the future of the Islamic democracy because, as I say, the vast majority of Muslims who represent this move towards moderation and towards reform and towards the reconciliation of their values with the realities of the modern world want to see a stable and viable democratic Middle East, but one that is on their terms, one that is built in their language and not imported from the West.
And if that can happenif we can truly allow that to happen, then it will spread. This is sort of the great irony of the neo con project: if the Iraqiswho have, from a very early point, co-opted the agenda of the American coalition and made this process a truly indigenous movementif they can be allowed to succeed, then it will spread through the Middle East. Then the grand project for the new American century might actually have a chance, ironically, not because of this project but, in essence, in spite of it. So that’s where I will leave it.
COOK: Great. Thank you very much, Reza. I will exercise the chair’s prerogative and ask the first question then we will open up. First, I just want to say I am glad that you said there is really no alternative in Iraq and that Islam is going to play a very important role in the politics in that country. As my colleague Ray Takeyh in our Washington office and I are about to engage on co-writing an article that I have tentatively titled, “Islam: Get Over It” [laughter], you know, we’re sort of in the same vein. We’re talking about the greater Middle East, but I’m glad you pointed that out with Iraq.
I want to draw you out on this issue of the vast majority of the people in the Muslim world. They want democracy, they wanted on their own termsand you will find no quibbles from me on that issuebut what we do see very often in the Middle East and elsewhere is that people on the fringes are able to frame the terms of debate, and that’s what we seeyou sit down and spend some time watching the Al Jazeera talk programs and it inhibitswhatever term you want to usemoderates, democrats, whomeverit inhibits them from taking a strong stand against those who have a more extreme view, a fundamentalist view and they are unable to fight back because they are then accused of not beingnot being good Muslims, and this is the way that extremists have been tending to frame the terms of debate.
So why, given thatdespite being a very small minority, but a very vocal articulate one that is couching its political and social agenda in religious terms, why should we be at all optimistic that this Islamic reformation will turn out to be a democracy rather than some other new kind of authoritarianism?
ASLAN: That’s an excellent question, Steven. You are absolutely right in the sense that a lot of the dialogue right now is between the fringes, both on the conservative side and the liberal side and that is absolutely true when you look at the media at the time. Now, as I am saying this, the irony, of course, is that which country am I speaking of? Am I talking the United States or am I talking about Egypt orbecause that is sort of an inevitable and unavoidable process.
The media, whether it’s Al Jazeera or whether it’s Fox News, its purpose is to sell Coca-Cola, not to giveand the way you do that is by basically airing this very violent and occasionally entertaining dialogue, but as with the United States, as with this sort of debunked notion now that we are a country divided between red-state evangelical moralists and godless blue-state heathens, that I thinkand that, I think, in the same way that masks, of course, the wide variety of theological and political thought in this country and also does a disservice to the fact that the vast majority of Americans are very much in the center of this debate and do not take part in this dialogue of the fringes that is taking place. The same thing, I think, is true throughout the Middle East.
Part of the problem, however, I think with that region, particularly in some of the Arab autocracies that are our greatest allies in that region, in Egypt and in Jordan and certainly in Pakistan as well, is that because there has been this lack of a platform for legitimate religious oppositionwhat has happened when the mosque becomes the only free space in a societyis that the opposition tends to become radicalized. We have seen this throughout the history; certainly besides with the Muslim Brotherhood, which, Steven, you know certainly a lot about. We saw this with the clerical opposition in Iran before the Iranian revolution, and we are seeing this certainly in Egypt nowadays. We are seeing this in Saudi Arabia nowadays and most definitely seeing it in Pakistan.
Part of this inevitable processthis “Islam: Get Over It”is going to have to also be a recognition that religious parties in the region are going to have to be brought into the fold in order to make their voice heard as well, so that we don’t have a situation in which all we have are these radical and militant Islamists and these somewhat secular westernized democrats screaming at each other about what the future is going to look like.
The real fear, of course, when you don’t give these moderate religious voices, opposition voices, a stage is that not only do you radicalize them, but also you get to the point where really the most organized, the most well-funded, and the most ready to take over the political agenda are these radical fringes. That’s precisely what keeps someone like [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak and [Pakistani President General Pervez] Musharraf on their thrones, in essence, is what the U.N. Arab Development Report called the legitimacy of the blackmail: this notion that if it weren’t for their despotism, the fundamentalists would take over.
Whereas we know for a factin every single international and domestic poll that has been taken, we know for a fact that the vast majority of the citizens of these regions are neither from one extreme or the other. I think there was a recent poll in which it was, I think, that if there was free and open elections in Algeria, the so-called Islamist parties would receive less than 20 percent, 20-25 percent, of the vote, which is fine. They should receive that quarter of the vote.
One thing that I say all the time is that the problem with these radical groups, with fundamentalists, is that they may speak a good game, but they can’t build roads, and that’s become very obvious to the people to the Middle East. And so I am not as pessimistic or as worried about this notion that if we give Muslims the vote, then they will choose archaic and repressive theocracy over legitimate and free and liberal democracy. It’s absurd and offensive to think so. It may seem that way sometimes, because of the fact that, as you say, the dialogue is on these fringes primarily. But the reason the dialogue is on the fringes is because of the fact that this lack of democracy, this lack of freedom, has got to the point where this huge middle is not being heard because they don’tthey are not given a stage to be heard. I think we are going see in Iraq that opportunity for the first time; for that middle to be heard and you will see the results of that.
QUESTIONER: Hi. Kevin [inaudible] Finance. Even if you are right with regard to Islamic democracy, I mean, as everybody from Alexis de Tocqueville to Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, there is an inherent conflict between democracy and liberty. I am wondering if you could speak to how that would play out in the Iraqi context in particular; that is, how would the Shia minorities grow comfortable with whatever constitutional structure emerged in place that their individual rights would be protected in the follow-on government.
ASLAN: That’s an excellent question, and this is, of course, a great concern as this constitution is being made and as the provisional government, in fact, is being formed. One thing that’s wonderful about the Iraqi model is that here we have the perfect opportunity to see this notion of pluralismIslamic pluralismreally take effect, because not only is Iraq multi-religious, in many senses. Even the talking about the fact that 96 percent of the Iraqis are Muslim, that masks the wide variety of Islamic beliefs in the region, but of course it’s also multi-ethnic and you have the Kurds and Turks and the Arab Sunnis and then the Shia, who are very, in many sense, Persian-ified. Is that the term that I would use?
But in reality, the real politic of the situation there is going to always trump any kind of ideological foundation. We are seeing this now in the wrangling to create this provisional government. There is no way that the Shia, even if they wanted to create a kind of new Irana new Islamic Republic of Iraq, let’s just say, in that realmthere is no way that they can do so because of the pluralistic society in that region.
I think we have to understand that Muslims, likeand Iraqis, like all peoples, have far more concern with making sure that electricity is running, that their children are safe, that they have schools in place, than they are about the language with which a constitution is going to be framed. Again, lets give this group a day to figure out a way to do this and we will see the aspirations of Iraqis of all ethnicities, of all religious traditions come out and really trump any kind of attempt to, as I say, present an ideological framework for the constitution.
I am surely not worried and I don’t think we should be worried. This is an incredibly intelligent, very well-educated population who has made their democratic aspirations known to the world, not just to their leaders, and is not going to sit around, especially with the incredible freedom that they have now as far as speech in the press and the assemblyall those things have become actually the backbone of the future democratic state. They are not going to allow this regime, this provisional government, to create something that is going to be anything but palatable to the Iraqi populationthis multiethnic population.
That is the case here in the United States, of course. It is the case in all of the various non-secular democracies that I referred to. Israelyou know, even as I talked about the very distinctive and sometimes orthodox Jewish framework of that country, that has not in anyway precluded a very vibrant and sometimes rabid dialogue about the reality of the political situation in Israel over any kind of biblical or ideological framework and that same thing is going to happen in Iraq and we are going to see the results of that quite soon. Indeed, we are seeing the results of that now in the wrangling of this provisional government.
I was sort of, I have to say, a little bit annoyed with the criticisms about how long it was taking Iraq to form this government. My goodness, it has been three months since the election. Really? This is a war-torn country withoutyou know, with barely indoor plumbing trying to scrape together some kind of coalition out of these warring factions that were put together by a Western power almost arbitrarily. Three months? I think that’s pretty good.
COOK: In fact, [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld, in fielding questions about that, he said, “Hey, this is democracy.”
ASLAN: This is democracy. This is democracy. Precisely.
COOK: Tricia, please.
QUESTIONER: I have a question about next-generation leaders and young leaders. You mentioned the split between reformers and traditionalists, or Islamists. Does it break down in Iraq along generational lines? If you would comment to those divisionssplit, youth/older. And if you wanted to comment on any other country thatI would be very interested.
ASLAN: That’s a really fascinating question, because one of the things that I talk about is that, with this general disappointmentI mean, when the end of colonialism came about and suddenly you had these independent states and this opportunity to create a truly indigenous identity, it really split into a couple of different ways. There was this notion of creating an Arab identity or creating a Muslim identity, both of which, as we have seen, have been complete failures. And that generation, in particular, that was so instrumental in forming the ideological backbones for those burgeoning Islamic states has either come and gone or has recognized that the experiment they began 50 years ago has not worked and it has really become the prerogative of a new generation of people across the Muslim world, not just to define the future of the Islamic state and the future of democracy, but the future of Islam.
In Iraq, I think the situation is perhaps a little bit less clear because of their situation of living under this horrific oppression for so many years and being hungry and open to really implementing some other democratic aspirations upon the state.
On a wider sense, and I think what you were saying is sort of in a more general sense: Where does this new generation come from? I think that you are going to see this new generation that is in the process of defining modern Islam and reform within Islam not so much perhaps in the Middle East, but you are seeing it in Europe and in North America. You are seeing it in this first and second generation of Muslim immigrants. You are seeing it in this very rapidly expanding movement of Muslim converts in this region and part of that, I think, is not just because we in ourselves, in our very identity, represent this reconciliation of traditional Islamic values and the values of our homelands and modern constitutional democratic values, but also because we have an opportunity to give voice to this vast majority, the silent majority that I was referring to before, that has become in some sense unvoicedthat has had their voice taken away from them either out of fear for the extremists in their region or simply because, as I have mentioned, there is no stage for that.
When I say this, of course, a lot of people say, “Well, how are we to say that those of us in the United States who are fashioning the language for this reform movementhow are we in any way going to be talking to Muslims in the region? Because we are going to be seen as this Westernyou know, Western stooges in some sense.” Yes and no. On the one hand, that certainly is a fear and it would be silly for me to discount that, but we have to also know that, historically speaking, it has always been the outside Muslims that have fashioned the language for political reform either one way or another. In the time of the colonialist period, it was the Ottomans who were not under colonial control who were in essence the ones who created the language for Islamic modernism and then spread that language, in essence, throughout the Middle East.
That same thing is happening now. This is what [Muslim scholar] Tariq Ramadan refers to as the mobilizing force for the Islamic reformation, so that argument is taking place again not just within this new generation in Iraq and in Iran especially, but in other parts of Middle East. It is taking place in the new generation of Muslims in Europe and the United States and that’s, I think, where the language and ideology is going to be formed and disseminated throughout the rest of the Muslim world.
QUESTIONER: I [inaudible]. Reza, if I could focus your attention on Saudi Arabia for one second. I think theand how I see Saudi Arabia is that you have hard conservatives who are quite unwilling to give up any of the ideological territory and, on the other hand, you have what we call liberals, who are usually Western-oriented and either have studied in the West or have some sort of connections with the West. But in the middle, the vast majorityand I agree the vast majority, I think, are as yet undecided or are somewhere in between.
Now, if you look at the elections that just happened Saudi Arabia, you find that the Islamists wonand from my discussions and conversations with Saudis, it occurred to me that the liberals did not have much of a platform and had less in common with the majority in the middle than those who were conservative. If you are moderate like myself, what language do you use and how do you touch base with these people in the middle?
ASLAN: Thank you, [inaudible]. That’s a fantastic question and certainly, I mean, you are far more adept at Saudi politics than I am, but I think what you see in Saudi Arabia, in essence, is part of what I was saying before, is that de-legitimizing of democratic opportunities; again, going back to this U.N. Arab Development Report that stated unequivocally that the underlying cause of extremism in this region is precisely the lack of peaceful avenues for liberals and moderates to make them heard. I think that has a lot to do with it because, again, the best-organized groups are these so-called Islamists, who by the very fact that they have been able to tap into some of the grievances of Muslim Saudis in this particular case and have managed to frame those grievances in a very distinct language of Islam, which has become recognizable and appreciated by the population, have had an enormous advantage over these so-called Westernized liberals and Muslims, who in essence, perhaps, on speaking a language that is recognizablethat is truly palatable to do the people that they are trying to reach.
Part of that, again, is, I think, because it is fault of the regime. This is true in Egypt and in Pakistan and throughout lot of these despotic sections of that region. Part of it, I think, is a lack of a unified message from the reformists and these liberals or moderates, however you want to put them. This is not unusual, of course. I mean, part of the message of liberalism and reform is a distinctly individualistic message and, as such, it is open to far more interpretation than I would say what we would consider to be a traditionalist or a conservative message, which is somewhat very fixed and very clear cut. But, again, I believe that it is up to us to provide that language, to be able to frame this discussion about democracy and liberalism, to tap into the aspirations of the vast majority, and yet to frame that dialogthat discussionin a language in whichthat holds courtesy with these groups. It is not that difficult to do. I mean, this tradition of modernism is 100 years old. I mean, the language is there. We can talk about shura [consultation]. We can talk about [inaudible]. We can talk about [inaudible]. And we can put these terms in such a way as to really strike a chord with this middle group.
But, again, I think they were going to see as we start transitioning, hopefully, Inshaallah [God willing], from these despotic routines to more democratic routines. We are going to see a natural and almost inevitable spike in extremism within these political movements not only because they are better organized, not only because they have a much stronger and much more uniform language for their agendas, but because, in some sense, it is almost natural to expect that swinging of the pendulum one way or the other. But, again, as the process of democracy comes about and as people’s aspirations are in some sense either satisfied or disappointed by the people that they put in charge of the day-to-day decision-making, we are going to see that voice of moderation start to rise and become more and more dominant. It is going to be a process, but I think it is going to be a process that we are going to see within our lifetimes, and I think that is why I am a little more optimistic about it.
QUESTIONER: A quick follow-up to that would be, is it OK, then, to be backed by the West as you go about dialoguing with—
ASLAN: Yeah, this is a—
QUESTIONER: And I am sure, Steven, I stole one of your questions, but this is something thatcan you be affiliated with Western organizations? Can you be assisted by individuals in the West or not, in your opinion?
ASLAN: Yeah, I mean, of course we have to be incredibly careful of this because, as I said before, we tend to sort of, in the United States, think of the colonialist enterprise is something that we read about in history books, but it is still very much alive, very much a part of the consciousness of that region, and there is an enormous amount of sensitivity about anything that sort of smacks about Western cultural hegemony that is so prevalent in the region. And that’s precisely why I was saying before that I think our rolethe United Statesis to encourage this process, encourage it in a very indigenous way, but not dictate it. And anything that smacks of that dictating is going to be responded to in a very, very negative light. I think we saw some about that in Lebanon: this groundswell of indigenous support for an anti-Syrian and much more pro-democratic movement which suddenly halted when the West, and particularly the United States, began to take a much more public role, in essence dictating the framework of that.
And then, of course, I think, again, the pendulum swung once again towards the democratic aspirations, so we have to be careful in that sense. We have to know our audience who we’re speaking to and to, as I say, make sure that we are speaking in the language of Islam, not the language of the West. But also, in a much more pragmatic sense, I think, we have to come to a realization as a country that what we can do in order to encourage this process it is to put our weight behind the organizations, both political and economic and charitable, that already exist in the Muslim world. They are far better at defining the principles of a future democracy, defining the aspirations of their fellow citizens, than we are, and all you have to do is look at that incredible failure of [U.S.-funded television station] Al Hurra or the Voice of America in that region to know. Britney Spears is not going to bring democracy to that region and we have to recognize that, and rather than trying to create our own sort of ideological standpoint to sort of say, well, “Here is the Western ideological agenda as opposed to some of the more radical ideological agenda”we need to rid ourselves with that and invest not just financially, but politically in the huge moderate movement. Give them the opportunity to give theirmake their voices heard.
So, yeah, it is something that we must be wary of, but it’s notit’s not a sort of obstacle standing in the way, necessarily, and it is something that can be overcome.
COOK: Alex, I know you have a question, but I have a follow up to what Reza was just talking about. From a practical policy standpoint, how do you do the kinds of things that you are advocating? Upon leaving Egypt after his tour, the now-assistant secretary of state for Near East policy, David Wells, announced that the United States was going to provide financial support to a number of organizations that were deemed worthy of U.S. support, which subsequently created an uproar in Cairoa special session of the People’s Assembly to discuss a new law to outlaw nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] that were already in existence from receiving money from the United States, in particular. I think policy-makers are stymied beyond the president’s lofty rhetoric about democracy and freedom, about exactly how to go about supporting this process. We asfrom a policy perspective, we have so many interests in that region we couldn’t step back.
ASLAN: Right.
COOK: But we can help create an environment more conducive to change, but I think what people are struggling for is something they can put their hands on that they can do.
ASLAN: Right.
COOK: So I am wondering, from your perspective, what would be helpful?
ASLAN: Well, I would say three thingsthree general things. The first is political: We have to make sure that, as we go about with this wonderful and lofty rhetoric of spreading freedom and democracy in a region, we have to understand that the region is actually listening to us; that this isn’t just a domestic message. And so when, for instance, the president in his previous State of the Union address almost in the same breath condemned Syria and Iran and praised Saudi Arabia and Egypt, we have to recognize that that kind of message is heard quite clearly throughout the Muslim and particularly throughout the Arab world.
And most of us who hear this sort of scratch our heads and say, well, “What in the world is the difference between Saudi Arabia and Iran?” If anything, I would say Iran is a far more open country as far as politically speaking than Saudi Arabia. What is the difference between Syria and Egypt? These are both despotic regions thatwith presidents for life who are functioning under a permanent application of emergency laws. And so, if we are not going toif our policy of, quote, spreading democracy in the region, is framed upon spreading democracy to those areas that do not agree with American foreign policy, then it’s dead on arrival, of course. I mean, this is obvious. It doesn’t need to be explained any further. If we are unable to truly effect change in those countries that we actually have some influence in like, for instance, Egypt, like in Saudi Arabia, then that kind of hypocrisy, I think, is going to be very [inaudible]. We need to really grab people like Mubarak by the scruff and say, “This is how it’s going to be,” not [Syrian President] Bashar Assad and say, “This is how it’s going to be,” or the clerical regime, which are not going to listen to us regardless. So oneat that sense of political uniformity in that sense.
The secondI actually applauded the State Department’s decision to take a far more economic role inan active role economically in investing in theseand, by the way, not just these political movements, but these charitable organizations. You know, we have a situation, for instance in the Palestinian territories and particularly in Gaza, in which [the Muslim fundamentalist group] Hamas has become really the sole source of any kind of charity in that region. And then we sort of scratch our heads and say, “Huh, why they are so popular?” They are the only one who is feeding the people. We are not really doing much in that sense. I mean, we’re certainly pouring some money into [the Palestinian political party] Fatah, but it’s hard to say what’s happening with those funds besides going to feed [former Palestinian Authority President Yasir] Arafat’s widow.
So that kind of influx of cash, really hard currency, into these movements that are themselves doing a far better job in creating social and political mobility and reformthat, I think, is very important; coupled with that, political influence will do a lot more to buttress some of the immediate reaction from the, quote, parliament in Egypt.
Thirdly, I think we need to begin a much better hearts-and-minds mission toyou know, for lack of a better term, and that is, again, not by plugging the region with American pop culture, but by doing a better job of explaining the American values in the sense of what it is that makes what we call this sort of American vision of liberalism and democracy so successful and so satisfying to, again, the vast majority of Muslims who’ve seen it and want it, but of course want it within a very strict parameter.
I am curious why we are not starting a movementand this is something that, you know, I think, should be the first thing on [newly appointed Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy] Karen Hughes’s agenda when she starts her job in the fall; and that is, bringing 1,000 high school students, juniors, every year from Egypt and 1,000 high school juniors every year from Iraq to the United States on an exchange programbringing them here to study in the U.S., to study in our universities, to be a part of our NGOs and our political and social organizations, to create this movement within this generation that is going to lead this region into the future of understanding what it is about the United States that makes us the country that we are. Not just this overwhelming cultural hegemony that attempts to sort of Americanize the region, but in essence, giving them the understanding to create this framework, this language themselves; not to adopt American values, but to, in essence, translate the best parts of those values into the Muslim world and make it in such a way as to create this ideological foundation, this language that is so sorely missing.
So those are three veryyou know, I think very practical ways of creating the movement, the foundation for the future regimes in that region.
COOK: Of course, the 1,000 high school students would probably be 60 before they get visas to come to the United States. [Laughter] That’s a different story. I’ve got five minutes left.
ASLAN: And probably only six of them will return.
COOK: [Laughter] And six will be approved. But I have two questions, I believe. Alex Nacht and Elizabeth [inaudible]. Go ahead.
QUESTIONER: Alex Nacht, Bear Stearns. Reza, back on the models from the historical context you raised, there is nothing in Islam where you couldn’t have an Islamic democracylike you’ve got U.S., Judeo-Christian, Israel, some other models. Are thereI mean, if you look today in the Islamic world outside of Iraq, is there anywhereany sort of shining light, any positive models that you see who sort of madeyou just sort of made a comment about Iran being sort of further along, say, than Saudi today.
And if not, historically within Islam, are there any sort of positive models to point to of an Islamic democracy? And from other models’ standpointI mean, are there things from the Soviet experience and their transition to democracy or other things that we can learn from that might be sort of more relevant, as opposed to sort of the ultimate optimistic of, you know, it could be like the U.S. or Britain?
COOK: Thank you.
QUESTIONER: Because I would sort of argue the debate is not sort of like Fox channel. I mean, you know, the moderates in the U.S. have tremendous influence and, at the end of the day, they drive the vast majority of decisions, and it’s sort of the converse.
ASLAN: And I truly believe that that’s going to be the model that we are going to see.
COOK: Reza, let mejust because we have such a shortlet me take the second question.
QUESTIONER: Well, yes. Liz Andrews, United Nation’s Development Program, UNDP, Arab Human Development. And I just wanted toI was in this room yesterday, I believe, listening to a very wonderful woman who worked in Baghdad in a program called Women for Women and working very hard on their constitutional work and with marginalized women’s groups, and it struck me while you were talking that the issue of women, which I see is addressed in the index of your book quite a lotit seems to me that it is a really fragile and difficult thing in Iraq at the moment. And because it sort of bridgesthere is the political aspect, but then there is the aspect that’s so sensitive that you were talking about beforethe religious aspect and the whole of that.
So, I am wondering how you see protection of women’s rights in the new Iraq because, at the moment, things seems to going the other way.
ASLAN: Thank you. Alex, as a clarification, are you referring to other models in the region? Because, of course, the Arab world makes up something like 12 [percent] to 13 percent of the Muslim world and that region itself makes up about a quarter of the Muslim world, and so there are regionsyou know, we are seeing far more stability and cooperation and democratic ideas in places like Indonesia, of course, and outside of that region, which again I think should bring our focus to the fact that this is not necessarily a religious issue in the sense of that part of the reason that we have such conflict and instability there is not because of Islam, but because of the historical and political situations that the conflicts that have been taking place there.
And also, I think that, while it is difficult to point to a shining example in the Middle East of true Islamic democracy, this is a region that has, in essence, been free, has had an opportunity to create a state identity for some 50 years or so. That said, I think that Iran in many ways does serve as a shining example of what an Islamic democracy can be, because, of course, the Islamic constitution in Iran is an exceedingly modern constitution that, in very clear and unequivocal language, has the freedoms of speech and assembly and press. It enshrines the legal equality between men and women in that constitution. It provides enormous opportunity for amendment and even provides for a referendum, which a number of Iranians now are trying to sort of do to define the future of the state.
The problem in Iran is not the constitution. The problem in Iran is that nobody is paying any attention to the constitution and that the clerical oligarchy that managed to wrest control over the political experiment there, particularly during the Iran-Iraq War, which really put a halt, an absolute stop to the evolution of the revolution, has in essence stymied any attempt to really bring out those democratic values, but in essence, that is really the example. And we are going to see, I believe, not just a same eventhopefully successfullydone in Iraq, because in this case, rather than isolating the country as we did with Iran, we have enormous amounts of investment. And we are going to see changes taking place in Iran as well where, at the same time that Iraq begins the process of creating a truly indigenous liberal Islamic democracy, Iran is going to go back to what the original purpose wasthe original intention was behind the revolution.
And again, Elizabeth I think it’s so importantI’m so glad that we are going to end this discussion on the role of women for two reasons: one, because the treatment of women is essentially going to be the litmus test for democracy in this region. You have a country like Iran, for instance, where in most of our imaginings is a country that is horrifically oppressive to its female population for a number of reasons, but particularly with regard to the fact that you have this mandatory veil, but of course, those of us who know the region know that Iran is a country in whichthat boasts the most vibrant and largest, most politically active women’s rights movement in the whole of the Middle East; whose female literary populationwhat am I trying to say?
QUESTIONER: Literacy.
ASLAN: Literacy, thank you. This is not my native language. [Laughter] That’s always my excuse. You know, literacy is akin to the United States, whose women have such a very important and active role in defining not just the present political situation there, but what will become, you know, the future of democracy there. We have an opportunity in Iraq to make sure that women don’t have to climb out of a hole as they have beenas they have been so successfully doing in Iran. And the way to do that, of course, is to make sure that, first of all, you have the rule of lawthat that enshrines this equality between men and women. But as we see with the Iran example, that’s not enough. And weI mean, part of our attemptour encouragement of the democratic process there has to be, again financially, this commitment to making sure that women’s groups in that region are given the opportunity to make their agendaand again, it must be their agenda. We cannot allow our vision of feminism to become sort of the umbrella idea in that regionto have that debate be done by women themselves.
Part of sort of the uncomfortable process in Iraq, of course, is that as large and as active as this reform-minded modernist liberal women’s movement is, there is an equally active traditionalist women’s movement. There are just as many, you know, [inaudible] women who are advocating a return to traditional Islamic family law as there are women who are advocating a much more modernist understanding a bit. This is a debate that’s going to take place within the country and it’s going to take place within that realm. What we can make sure happens is that the language for that debate is one that is framed within a legal and equality framework thereto make sure that is, excuse mein essence, the platform in which this debate is going to take place, because if the debate is going to take place amongst the bunch of 60-year-old male clerics in Najaf, then that is not the kind of democracy that the Iraqis themselves envisioned or in essence that we can really allow to take part there, but it is, I think, the foundational issue and we need to put all of our attention upon it.
COOK: We’ve run out of time, but I want to thank you, Reza, for a very, very interesting morning, and I appreciate your taking the time to come to the Council. And you will be back in June for the national conference I understand, so—
ASLAN: Me and Hank Kissinger.
COOK: Well, we’ll be able to get another bite at the apple. Thank you very, very much.
ASLAN: Thank you. [Applause]
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