What America Must Do: Reza Aslan

Related to this article: What America Must Do Holy Orders
By Reza AslanAuthor Interviews:
Kenneth Rogoff
Yang Jianli Dmitri Trenin Jessica T. Mathews For additional Web extras from the January/February 2008 issue of FP, click here.

Foreign Policy: You recommend that the U.S. president strip the war on terror of its religious rhetoric. Do you feel theres still an opportunity to reach moderate Muslims and convince them that this is not a war on Islam?

Reza Aslan: I think Americans would be shocked at how sophisticated the Arab street is. You have 13-year-old Egyptian kids who read two or three newspapers a day, mainly because they have nothing else to do, and they know exactly how our system works. They understand that our government changes and that our policies change, sometimes quite drastically. By no means have we lost this generation for good.

And America is still recognized in the Arab world as the only power that can get things done. I believe quite strongly that a re-engagement with that region, not based on this clash-of-civilizations mentality, but one in which religious connotations are stripped away, would make a huge difference.

FP: There are millions of evangelical Christian Americans who consider the war on terror a religious issue. How does the next U.S. president handle that fact?

RA: Although it is true that there are 100 million evangelicals in the United States and that many of them do see the war on terror through the lens of apocalypticism and carry this conception of a grand cosmic war, the fact of the matter is that this group takes its cues from the president of the United States.

Two days after September 11, the very first words that [President George W. Bush] used to talk about what we were going to dounscripted and without any mediation from his advisorswas to refer to this war as a crusade. Immediately afterward, his advisors jumped all over themselves to say thats not really what he meant. And since then, [Bush] has tried hard to not have that religiously polarizing rhetoric, though he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2003 that God had told him to strike at al Qaeda. Rhetoric matters a lot. When the most powerful man on Earth, at the most pivotal moment in modern American history, chooses a word [like crusade], it means something specific. It is war between Christianity and Islam. Thats what it means.

Religious language is the language that holds the most currency for the masses. In every culture, its not unusual to boil down the most complex sociopolitical issues and conflicts to their most basic level: good vs. evil. Any child can make that choice. We are using the same rhetoric and the same religious rhetoric that bin Laden is using to promote his agenda. While bin Laden believes his rhetoric as much as Bush believes his, neither is appropriate for what is in effect a sociopolitical issue. We shouldnt sit around waiting for bin Laden to change his rhetoric. But were not al Qaeda. Were supposed to be the reasonable, moderate force for liberalism and rationalism in this conflict, and were not acting like it.

FP: Youve written before that the real jihad being waged right now is not Islam versus the West, but a struggle within Islam itself. Who is winning at this point? Is it the literalists or the reformists?

RA: The way you find out who is winning a struggle of ideas is by the language that you hear and how loud one side is as opposed to the other side. Thats why you can see with confidence that were losing. And so are the reformists. The way that weve responded to September 11 has validated the ideology of the jihadists and made most Muslims agree, if not with their principles or tactics, then with the view that colonialism and the crusades never ended. Theyve just taken on new forms. Islam is as much under siege today as it has always been. The only people who are willing to stand up against this overwhelming American cultural, political, and economic hegemony over the Muslim world are the jihadists themselves.

So, even if you dont follow them, you are still, in a sense, on their side. The choice was made for Muslims. Youre either on the side of the United States or on the side of the terrorists. If you do not support the United States, according to [Bush], youre a terrorist. Thats exactly what bin Laden has been saying for years: Its time to choose. And theres a reason why his principal audience is Muslims in the West. He understands quite clearly that this is where the fight is going to take placenot in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, but in London and Paris and Berlin and New York. Muslims in those places have spent the better part of the last half-century struggling to assimilate into American or Western European culture. In many cases, they have done a great job, but especially in the second generation and especially in Europe, there is an identity crisis. Bin Laden has been telling these Muslims for a decade that its time to choose. Youre either with us or with them. And the president just gave them the same ultimatum.

FP: What do you think this means for Islamic reformists?

RA: Its absolutely a disaster. In many parts of the Muslim world, the robust, exciting conversation taking place about how to reconcile traditional Islamic values and customs with the realities of the modern world, particularly about issues like Islamic democracy and Islamic feminism, is all now stigmatized with America. If you argue for the reconciliation of Islam and democracy, youre an American stooge. If you talk about Islamic feminism, youre a stooge. All of these things have been tied to the disaster of the war on terror and it has silenced a lot of reformers.

FP: Do you foresee a renaissance for Islamic reformists soon?

RA: The reformation of Islam has been under way for 100 years, and this isnt going to stop it. Itll slow things down, but by no means is this the end of that argument. Youre talking about the population of the greater Middle East, and three quarters of them are under the age of 35. Demographically speaking, things are going to change regardless. But it is difficult to imagine that the voices of reform are going to be ascendant any time in the next couple years, at least not until there is a genuine attempt by a new American administration to engage in this internal conflict as a force for change and a force for good. There is a reason why reformists in the Muslim world keep begging the [Bush] administration not to reach out to them. This administration has been repeatedly saying they want to help the reformers, but the reformers are saying, Leave us alone! Youre only making it worse for us.

FP: You have a great anecdote in your piece about speaking with young Iranians and one of them asks you what its like to live in the United States, which she refers to as a theocratic state. When you travel around the Middle East, what is the impression you get of what young people think about the United States and average Americans?

RA: The fascination and obsession with all things American hasnt changed, particularly with the youth of the Middle East. What has changed is the way that they think of America. Theyve always been angry at American foreign policy, but there used to be this idea that if you come to America, you live in a land of total freedom. But all the horror stories, many of them exaggerated, about the curtailment of civil liberties, the treatment of Muslim Americans, the idea that the president believes himself to be some kind of messianic herald, have changed things. In the same way we think of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, thats how most of the Muslim world thinks of Bushas somebody who believes that hes been put into power to bring about the apocalypse. The anger about American foreign policy has always been there, but the impression of America as a land of freedom, rights, and law is something that I think Muslims all over the world believed. They especially considered America the only country in the world where they could have unfettered rights to worship as they see fit. That impression has been immensely damaged.

Reza Aslan is the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (New York: Random House, 2005) and the forthcoming How to Win a Cosmic War (New York: Random House, 2008).