Home truths

Perhaps with over fifty more dead in London to add to the thousands dead in Iraq and in other terrorist attacks around the world, it is time at long last to try to say the unsayable in hopes of coming to some kind of insight into where things stand.

The thinking in the west after such attacks always revolves around what needs to be done, specifically what needs to be done by Muslims. British PM Tony Blair has recently made a speech urging British Muslims to confront the "perverted and poisonous" doctrines of Islamic extremism in their midst and to "pull up this evil ideology by its roots."

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This sentiment echoes those already made by many Muslims, who see the terrorists for the murderous extremists that they are, and understand that as long as mainstream Muslims do not confront them that they will continue their campaign of terror.

But the simple and unpalatable truth of the matter is that mainstream Muslims are not standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush and Blair in their war against Islamic extremism (also known as the war on terror).

The question Bush and Blair should be asking is why this is and what can be done about it.

One would expect mainstream Muslims to be natural allies in the war on terror, after all. Mainstream Muslims do not want to see the extremists come to power. Mainstream Muslims know that they would be the first to suffer if the terrorists attain their ultimate goal. And all mainstream Muslims abhor the killing of the innocent.

But the fact remains that most mainstream Muslims have not signed onto the war on terror, not in their hearts. If they did, then the war would be over tomorrow. If the Muslim communities around the world decided that they would no longer tolerate extremists in their midst, then the extremists would be either dead or in jail.

I know this is not a politic thing to say, as it seems to feed into the intemperate belief held in some quarters that all Muslims are somehow to blame for the terrorists in their midst, but this is not what I am trying to suggest. The truth is more complicated.

But the fact of the matter is that Thomas Friedman's piece "Run, Osama, run" printed in the New York Times some months after 9/11 still rings true today.

Friedman wrote: "We have to admit that bin Laden touches something deep in the Arab-Muslim soul, even among those who condemn his murders. They still root for him as the one man who was not intimidated by America's overweening power, as the one man who dared to tell certain Arab rulers that they had no clothes, and as the one man who did something about it. Quietly today, many in the Arab-Muslim world are rooting for bin Laden to get away. They are whispering in their hearts, 'Run, Osama, run!' That's what's really going on out there. I just wish we knew how to change it."

Friedman is right. This is the crux of the matter. Even those Muslims who are horrified by the killing of the innocent and who have the most to lose from the expansion of the doctrine of the terrorists cannot bring themselves to fully support the war against them.

The same analysis holds true for the Iraq war. No one can take pleasure in the plight of the Iraqis in the nightmarish civil war that their country has been plunged into. Few truly support the insurgents who murder innocent Iraqis with impunity and are determined to ensure that Iraq remains mired in death and misery.

But at the same time there is a certain satisfaction taken in the fact that the insurgents are showing Bush and Blair that they were wrong to invade Iraq and are standing up to the occupation. Until Bush and Blair acknowledge these unsettling truths, the war on terror and the war in Iraq will never be won.

The question Bush and Blair must ask themselves is why the Muslim world has reacted the way it has, and what can be done to turn things around. Exhortations to Muslims to "pull up this evil ideology by its roots" will continue to fall on deaf ears until the architects of the war on terror change the way in which the war is being waged, and indeed, perhaps until Bush and Blair are gone from the scene.

Why is the Muslim world for the most part sitting on its hands and doing so little to help the war against Islamic extremism?

There are a couple of simple reasons for this. The first is the well-founded fear that a war on Islamic extremism today could morph into a war on all of Islam tomorrow. There is no shortage of people in the west who feel that the world would be a better place if Islam was simply wiped off the face of the Earth. This being the case, it would be suicidal for mainstream Muslims to give their whole-hearted support to a war against Islamic extremism, even if this is a war that they have been waging quietly in their own communities for decades.

The second reason is the equally well-founded fear that as dangerous as Islamic extremism is to the world today (and no one understands its dangers better than mainstream Muslims), that the messianic and unilateral foreign policy of the Bush administration is even more so.

I recall a conversation I had on the eve of the Iraq war with a distinguished human rights lawyer who has held senior positions in organisations such as Amnesty International for decades. He said what at the time many only dared to think but not express out loud: "I hope it goes badly, because if it doesn't then the US will think that they can do this again and again, whenever they want to."

The fact is that many do not relish the thought of living in a unipolar world where the Bush administration gets to do exactly what it wants when it wants. Many feel that an administration that has demonstrated such open contempt for world opinion and whose stated foreign policy makes no bones about the fact that it will use its power solely in the advancement of its own narrow self-interest, is ultimately more dangerous even than the murderous extremists that it wages war against.

Many feel that in this war between the Bush administration (and Tony Blair) on the one hand and the terrorists on the other, that the only tenable course of action is to sit on their hands until either a change of leadership or a change of strategy permits them to give the war on terror their full support.

The saddest part is that this stale-mate could easily have been avoided. It was the Iraq war that fractured the unity of the war on terror. This is the one calculation that Bush and Blair have never made about Iraq. Not so much that it has created more terrorists, but that it has fatally weakened the commitment of the very people they need in their corner to win the war on terror.

Had John Kerry been elected president last November, things might have changed. The Muslim world is waiting, even eager to sign up for the war against Islamic extremism, which ultimately concerns it far more than the west. But the fact is that mainstream Muslims are not going to sign up as long as the war is fought the way it is being fought, and specially while it is being fought under President Bush's stewardship.

In this sense, the terrorists are even more short-sighted than Bush and Blair. If anything is going to make mainstream Muslims throw their lot in with two leaders they detest, it is the murder of innocents by the other side. But I suspect it will not be enough.

By my calculation, this foot-dragging will continue either until the Bush administration revises its strategy in the war on terror (in other words when Hell freezes over) or in three years time when the war will no longer be led by President Bush.

This might sound suicidal and senseless, but there is a precedent for such thinking. The very people the war on terror is being waged against are the ones the US supported during the Cold War because they believed that it was worth it in order to defeat what they saw as the greater threat of the Soviet Union.

Unlike the Reagan administration did in the 1980s, mainstream Muslims are not supporting Islamic extremists, but there is a poignant similarity to the logic being employed. Many have quietly decided (even if they dare not say so openly) that they will simply sit this one out until Bush is gone.

I do not know if this is a smart strategy, or even a moral one, or how long mainstream Muslims can afford not to confront the extremists in their midst due to their distrust of those who are leading the war on terror. But this is the truth that the architects of the war on terror need to face up to if they ever wish to win it.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.