RajeshA wrote:
Good Article, but there is a serious flaw with Obama's model about Islam. It is based on quarterly earnings, short-term equations.
Too many wrong assumptions:
Not at all clear to me where these wrong assumptions are.
1) Reformation of Islam is inevitable because reformation of Christianity, another religion, also happened.
2) There is a constituency among empowered Muslims willing and capable to undertake this reformation of Islam and make it compatible with modernity.
Quote: If anything,
his pessimism on matters related to the dysfunctions of Muslim states, and to
the inability of the umma—the worldwide community of Muslims—to contain and ultimately neutralize the extremist elements in its midst, has, at times, an almost paralyzing effect on him.
3) Any gains in entrenching Muslims into a tolerant pluralistic society are permanent and multi-generational.
4) Islam can be convincingly divided into a tolerant religion and an ideology of war against the Kufr.
....that the underlying problems afflicting Islam are too deep, and too resistant to American intervention, to warrant implementation of the sort of policies that his critics, including his critics in foreign-policy think tanks, demand.
5) Western Liberal view of a progressive Islam is more attractive to Muslims than the preaching of extremist Islamists.
6) Basically both Liberals and Islamists end up telling the Muslims the same thing - that their religion is good and they should remain within it, forgetting that Muslims would be guided how to become good members of a good religion by the preaching of the Mullah, and not by them.
And during this tussle among 'moderate' Muslims, as if such a group exists, and 'radical' Muslims, the rest of the world is supposed to give the 'moderate' Muslim an axe and put his own head on the guillotine, just to prove again and again that the other is convinced that the general Muslim is not bad, giving a non-existing constituency of 'moderate' Muslims, the impossible power to tackle 'radical' Islam.
Quote:
...He sees the problems affecting parts of the Muslim world as largely outside American control.
At one point, he suggested, to my surprise (I’m not immune to the power of these caricatures) that far too many Arab Muslims, in particular, have given themselves over to hatred and violence.
...
Obama went on to say that if America is not engaging these young Asians “because if the only thing we’re doing is figuring out how to destroy or cordon off or control the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity, then we’re missing the boat.”
...
However, given the realities of the battlefield—that most of the fighting against ISIS is done by Muslim-majority states, and Muslim organizations, and that the leaders of these entities would rather not see the U.S. overgeneralize its description of the fight—then it seems to me, at least, that Obama’s semantic prudence is justifiable.
...
In one conversation, parts of which I’ve previously recounted, Obama talked about the decades-long confrontation between the U.S. and communism, and compared it to the current crisis. “You have some on the Republican side who will insist that what we need is the same moral clarity with respect to radical Islam” that Ronald Reagan had with communism, he said. “Except, of course, communism was not embedded in a whole bunch of cultures, communism wasn’t a millennium-old religion that was embraced by a whole host of good, decent, hard-working people who are our allies. Communism for the most part was a foreign, abstract ideology that had been adopted by some nationalist figures, or those who were concerned about poverty and inequality in their countries but wasn’t organic to these cultures.”
He went on to say, “Establishing some moral clarity about what communism was and wasn’t, and being able to say to the people of Latin America or the people of Eastern Europe, ‘There’s a better way for you to achieve your goals,’ that was something that could be useful to do.” But, he said, “to analogize it to one of the world’s foremost religions that is the center of people’s lives all around the world, and to potentially paint that as a broad brush, isn’t providing moral clarity. What it’s doing is alienating a whole host of people who we need to work with us in order to succeed.”
....
“There is ... the need for Islam as a whole to challenge that interpretation of Islam, to isolate it, and to undergo a vigorous discussion within their community about how Islam works as part of a peaceful, modern society,” Obama told me.
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From which I deduce Obama's view is that:
1. American intervention cannot change Islam.
2. Islam is not like communism. Communism was a recent overlay on some other culture. Islam is deeply embedded in the culture of its peoples. So anti-communism approach cannot work with Islam.
3. The current fight against ISIS, etc., is largely being conducted by Muslims - they are mostly the people in the battlefield. America cannot afford to alienate them.
4. America cannot do it; templating the struggle as a clash of civilizations cannot do it; only Muslims can change Islam (if at all such a thing is possible, note his pessimism).
5. The young people of Asia who are contributing to civilization are as large or a larger priority for America than cordoning off or destroying "the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity" (guess who those unnamed parts of humanity are?)
