Sir,
With all due respect relying on others to do the
hard work of ideological battle will not work. It was Westeners, Winston
Churchill and FDR, who waged the ideological battle against Nazism
during World War II and not Germans.
Current
U.S. leadership is ill-equipped for the task of articulating the
superiority of what in "Civilization" historian Niall Ferguson describes
as the Western package.
"This Western package
still seems to offer human societies the best available set of
economic, social and political institutions--the ones most likely to
unleash the individual human creativity capable of solving the problems
the twenty-first century world faces . . . . The big question is whether
or not we are still able to recognize the superiority of that package"
(p. 324).
“The biggest threat to Western
civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own
pusillanimity — and by the historical ignorance that feeds it” (p. 325).
Ferguson calls for a return to traditional education, since “at its
core, a civilization is the texts that are taught in its schools,
learned by its students and recollected in times of tribulation” (p.
324). The greatest dangers facing us are probably not “the rise of
China, Islam or CO2 emissions,” he writes, but “our own loss of faith in
the civilization we inherited from our ancestors” (p. 325).
Islamic
authorities are a considerable part of the problem. "For Muslims the
Qur'an is the immediate and complete revelation of God's message to
mankind through Mohammed. . . . Islam has rarely experienced tensions
analogous to those between church and state in medieval Western
Christendom because the Muslim community has been founded on the
principle of theocracy, and a distinct ecclesiastical body powerful
enough to challenge secular authorities has never existed" (The
Encyclopedia of Religion, ed., Eliade, 2:4-5).
For
Islam to progress beyond the primitive text of the Qur'an and
acknowledge religious pluralism, it would be necessary for the
equivalent of a Protestant Reformation, a Scientific Revolution, and the
Enlightenment to occur within Islamism. This is not likely and even if
possible it would take centuries to mature as these movements did in the
Western Judeo-Christian civilization.
Indeed,
the issue is even more pressing in light of San Bernardino and Orlando.
Formerly, the fight was overseas and involved American military troops;
today, it is the average American in the homeland who is a target.
American
leaders need to step up to the plate and point out the inability of the
Qur'an to be a guide for modern, civilized life in a pluralistic
society.
The quotation you highlighted is specifically about the religious ideological debate within Islam. A slightly expanded quotation follows:
"Importantly, non-Muslim states, including the U.S. must avoid any overt appearance or actual entry into the ideological debate. Arguments that counter the takfiri message will only resonate with true believers and followers if those arguments are advanced by Muslim scholars and spiritual leaders. Spiritual authorities in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt may be best positioned to successfully engage ISIS in the ideological sphere."
The full paper is available at: goo.gl/KsDkf5
Blog Smith
I would take issue with an otherwise excellent article about one aspect of the study:
"Importantly, non-Muslim states, including the U.S. must avoid any overt appearance or actual entry into the ideological debate."
An American ideology of Common Sense, The Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Letter from Birmingham Jail, and related documents is unbeatable.
It is not that America does not have a superior ideology to the Islamic State the difficulty is that our leaders do not appreciate our ideological advantage; and, perhaps more importantly, they can not communicate it effectively using the technological tools that Islamists exploit to their advantage.
"Importantly, non-Muslim states, including the U.S. must avoid any overt appearance or actual entry into the ideological debate."
An American ideology of Common Sense, The Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Letter from Birmingham Jail, and related documents is unbeatable.
It is not that America does not have a superior ideology to the Islamic State the difficulty is that our leaders do not appreciate our ideological advantage; and, perhaps more importantly, they can not communicate it effectively using the technological tools that Islamists exploit to their advantage.
David Kobs
"Spiritual authorities in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt may be best
positioned to successfully engage ISIS in the ideological sphere."
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