The attacks of September 11, 2001 have paradoxically presented the free world and the oppressed people of the Islamic world with a great and finite window of opportunity.
For many centuries, the people of the Middle East have been trapped in a quasi-Dark Age where the enlightened western concepts of secular government, individual liberty, and human rights have failed to penetrate. The principal cause of this resistance to embrace modern political innovations is a stubborn adherence to Islamic law. Its effects have been a stagnation of cultural, technological, and economic development, strained relations with the outside world, and endemic violence. The only realistic remedy to this tragic state of affairs is a radical program of secularization which explicitly marginalizes Islam and establishes representative and secular governments in place of the current crop of theocracies, monarchies, and dictatorships.
The prospects for such secularization and liberalization, however, are complicated by the peculiarities of Islam itself and by the discovery in the twentieth century of vast oil deposits in the region. The monopolization of oil wealth by corrupt Middle Eastern governments and the dependence on that commodity by the liberal nations of the West have conspired to create a stasis of sorts whereby the freedom and well-being of the people in the region were sacrificed by the West in the name of stability and easy access to oil. The entrenched rulers of the wealthy oil-producing nations use their vast wealth to provide generous social benefits to the people, creating a perpetual state of dependence and quiescence; to amass large military and security forces using imported technologies (whose main function is to brutally suppress, based on Islamic law, any domestic liberalization movements); to prevent liberalization of their economies and thus forestall the emergence of a vibrant and politically active middle class; and through state-run religious schools (madras’s) and media outlets they deflect the attention of the frustrated masses towards the West and Israel, setting them up as straw-men and blaming them for the ills that have befallen the Islamic world.
For this purpose Islam is well-suited, for among its basic precepts is a disdain for infidels, or those who refuse to recognize Allah as the one true God and Mohammad as the last of His prophets, and the concept of jihad, or holy war, which makes the spread of the house of Islam, or lands under Islamic rule (dar-al-Islam) against the house of war, or non-Muslim states (dar-al-harb) obligatory for able-bodied Muslims.i In sura 5:51 the Koran also prohibits friendship between Muslims and unbelievers: “Believers, take neither the Jews nor Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number.”ii This further complicates efforts by western nations to foment popular movements among Muslim populations against their oppressors, a tactic which was wildly successful in Eastern Europe during the cold war.
These Islamic concepts of superiority, violence, and intolerance are routinely and cynically exploited by hard-line Islamic theocrats (such as the Iranian Mullahs) and seemingly moderate monarchs (such as the Saudi royal family) alike to consolidate their power by focusing their subjects’ animus towards the West. And the West, prior to the attacks of September 11, were loathe to intervene of behalf of the masses in the Middle East for fear of losing its access to cheap oil. The result has been a perpetuation of the status-quo, with Islam serving as both the source of the lack of freedom and human rights in the region and the primary tool by which change has been precluded.
The Roots of Islamic Law
Islamic law or sharia was developed on the basis of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and the hadith, which is a collection of reliable accounts, or sunna of sayings and actions of the Prophet Mohammad. These sources, in Islamic tradition, are considered infallible as the Koran is the very word of God as revealed to His Prophet, and Mohammad is considered to be rightly guided by God, thus also infallible. A third repository of infallibility, (based on a saying of the Prophet: “My community will not agree upon an error”)iii in Islamic tradition is the ijma, or the consensus of believers. This refers to the Ulama, or the community of Muslim scholars whose opinions, or ijtihad, on matters of Islamic law are considered final and irrevocable. In the words of historian H.A.R. Gibb, “When, therefore a consensus of opinions had been attained by the scholars of the second and third centuries (by about 900 A.D.) on any given point, the promulgation of new ideas on the exposition of the relevant texts of the Koran and hadith was as good as forbidden.” Furthermore, “Any attempt to raise the question of the import of a text in such a way as to deny the validity of the solution already given and accepted by consensus became a bid’a, an act of innovation, that is to say, heresy.”iv Since all sources of sharia are considered divine and infallible, Islamic law has remained largely unchanged for more than a thousand years in spite of global trends toward secularization and political liberalization. The lack of any recognition of human law makes democracy impossible in a strictly Islamic state.
Unlike Christianity which suffered three centuries of persecution (before the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced it, making it the official religion of the empire), and has a doctrinal predisposition towards secular government (Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God That which are God’s. Matthew 22.17), Islam was almost immediately burdened with temporal governance due to its stunning early military successes. For this reason, Islam became very early on more than just a faith, but a comprehensive set of rules on everything from inheritance and personal hygiene to war-making. In the words of Charles Watson, “By a million roots, penetrating every phase of life, all of them with religious significance, it (Islam) is able to maintain its hold upon the life of Muslim peoples.”v This also partly accounts for Islam’s resistance to change.
Islamic Law vs. Human Rights
Under Islamic law inequality is institutionalized: women and non-Muslims are formally and legally inferior to Muslim men. Domestic violence (including death by stoning) against women is not only acceptable under sharia, but may be considered a religious duty as it was endorsed by the Prophet himself and is enshrined in the Koran; because it is believed men cannot control their carnal desires around aroused women, clitoridectomy, or female genital mutilations, are commonplace,vi and for the same reason niqab, or total body coverings, are mandatory for females in public under sharia; men may have up to four wives and several concubines (temporary wives) under Islamic law and can divorce their wives on a whim, claiming custody of their children, while the reverse does not apply; and men may marry and consummate with girls as young as nine years of age. All of these examples of injustice, and many more can be traced directly to the three infallible sources of Islamic law.
While women suffer brutally under Islamic law, atheists and converts from Islam are considered apostates and are to be summarily executed. “People of the book,” or Jews and Christians, are the subject of punishing and humiliating rules and restrictions. They are also forbidden to testify in court against a Muslim and therefore may be victimized with impunity by their Muslim neighbors without legal recourse. And in spite of their official superiority over women and religious minorities, individual liberty even among Muslim men is virtually non-existent.
Prospects for Reform
Since Islam is incompatible with democracy and human rights, and cannot be adapted to modern realities due to the concept of infallibility, the only realistic avenue for the advancement of freedom in the Middle East is for religion to be removed from the public domain entirely. In the words of Azam Kamguian, “Attempting to modernize or reform Islam will only prolong the age-old oppression and subordination of women in Islam-stricken societies. Rather than modernizing Islam, it must be caged, just as humanity caged Christianity two centuries ago. Islam must become subordinate to secularism and the secular state.”vii
How can the entrenched impediments to secularization and democratization, namely Islam and oil wealth, be overcome? The attacks of September 11, 2001 have paradoxically presented the free world and the oppressed people of the Islamic world with a great and finite window of opportunity: The United States and its Western allies have been shaken from their twentieth-century, real-politic foreign policy mindset towards the tyrants of the oil-rich Middle East. The removal of the repressive former regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of the terror attacks on the U.S. may be the beginning of a democratic domino-effect in the region to the extent that the popularly elected, democratic governments there can resist a reversion to Islamic law.
The example of secular Turkey may also serve as a guide and inspiration, and if the experiments in democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan are successful they may join Turkey in forming an axis-of-freedom of sorts in the region, giving great momentum to the democratization movement throughout the Islamic world. And in Iran, the birthplace of the modern Islamist movement, a huge and restless majority of pro-western youth exists, which if given the proper amount of support and encouragement, may effect regime change there without western military intervention. The infrastructure of republican government (elected parliament and executive) is also in place in Iran, which, though currently under the heel of the Ayatollah and his Islamic revolutionary council, could in the event of a toppling of the Mullahs prevent the sort of chaotic transition to democracy that has marred the liberation of Iraq. The latest and most dangerous variable in this complex matrix is the pending acquisition of nuclear weapons by the Iranian regime and its promise to obliterate Israel, which may fatally alter this calculus and preclude the possibility of peaceful regime change. It is entirely possible that the recent saber-rattling in Tehran is their attempt to force a pre-emptive attack by the U.S. or Israel in a desperate bid to stave off an inevitable insurrection by using a rally-round-the-flag defense of the homeland.
Two other important trends are the information revolution, which enables people trapped behind the Islamic curtain to communicate and coordinate with the outside world (often) without government censorship or monitoring; and the emergence of alternative energy sources which, over the long term, will reduce the West’s dependence on Mid-East oil, thus its tolerance for repressive regimes.
Only time will tell if these trends, combined with the emergence of democratic governments in the heart of the Middle East, will help the reform movements in the region attain the critical mass needed to effect change. But is it at least possible that the modern spasm of Islamist violence is not, as we in the West fear, a resurgence of the aggressive Islamic conquests of the middle ages — but rather a reactionary last gasp by radicals to combat the inexorable global shift towards secularization and human rights in the post cold-war era? Can the current age of hijackings and car bombings be akin to the Nazi’s doomed and desperate offensive into the Ardennes in 1944, or Japan's last stand on bloody Okinawa? Certainly their motives are the same: to maximize American losses to force a premature peace rather than unconditional surrender when victory was already out of reach, thus chasing the U.S. out of the region and leaving her enemies free to plot further treachery. If there is to be any hope for change in the Middle East the U.S. must remain as steadfast now as in the final days of World War II.
Endnotes
i. The Koran, Translated by N.J. Dawood. London: Penguin,2003, 361
ii. The Koran, 85
iii. Lewis, Bernard. The Middle East: A Brief History of the last 2,000 Years. N.Y.: Scribner,1995, 226
iv. Gibb, H.A.R. Mohammedanism, an Historical Survey. London, Oxford University Press, 1950
http://www.answering-islam.org/books/gibb/sharia.htm
v. Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society, “The Totalitarian Nature of Islam”, 30 April, 2006 http://www.secularism.org/humanrights/totalitarianism.htm
vi. Weiner, Lauren, “Islam and Women”, Policy Review, 30 April 2006
http://www.policyreview.org/oct04/weiner_print.html
vii. Kamguian, Azam, “Islam and the Liberation of Women in the Middle East”, Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society, 30 April, 2006
http://www.secularism.org/women/liberation.html
Good article. Charity, as a theological construct, and the lack thereof, is the principal and fundamental shortcoming of Islam. Islam is Apocalypse now. It is all sword and no sympathy. It reveres the executioner but pays no mind to endowing the poor with the means to enjoy their lives. The Arab people should have the highest standard of living in the world considering they live on top of the planet's ecomonic blood bank. Instead, corrupt theocracies blame all their own ineptitudes on the assorted "satans" they perceive. A Muslim either refrains from violence, tacitly ignoring the mandates of his faith, or he goes about the day dreaming of mouthwash bombs he can hide in his shoes upon leaving Las Vegas. Moderate Muslims are silent because they know what true adherents of their faith must do. Kill in the name of a merciful God! Lord help us!
I think this is a great article!
I believe you’ve neatly summed up the problems and solutions for the middle east. It’s this type of big picture/long term view of the middle east too many people fail to see.
This is a great article; I agree. But just one thing:
“But is it at least possible that the modern spasm of Islamist violence is not, as we in the West fear, a resurgence of the aggressive Islamic conquests of the middle ages — but rather a reactionary last gasp by radicals to combat the inexorable global shift towards secularization and human rights in the post cold-war era? ”
I would love to think so, but the situation in England demonstrates that we can’t answer yes. Large numbers of Muslims born and raised there are just as vehement about the evils of the West as Muslims born and raised in Iran. Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see this as being on the way out.
Mr. Osonitsch’s analysis, on the surface, seems pretty reasonable (not least to him), but, in fact, is chock full of errors based on at least two blinding biases. Among the errors are: that political liberalization requires a secularized society to work, that the West is largely responsible for the instability and laggard economies of the mid-east, that oil-greed is behind ‘our failure’ to convert middle-eastern regimes into liberal societies prior to 9/11, that the West is responsible for having “sacrificed” mid-east stability to get cheap oil, that regime change can be effected through surrogates consisting of disaffected Iranians, that Iran’s existing political infrastructure can be retained post-theocracy, that the transition in Iraq is marred and chaotic, that the saber-rattling from Tehran is anything other than what the Iranians tell us, and that alternatives to oil are critical to changing mid-east dynamics. His biases are anti-religious and anti-West smacking of liberal demagoguery. His depiction of sharia and its part in retarding development of a liberal society is about all he got right.
First, let’s look at his assumption secularization is a historical foundation of, necessary to, or significant contributor to the type of liberalization he describes. If anything, the liberalization of the 18th and 19th centuries can better be said to have survived secularization, and is in no way dependent on it. Secularization attempts to retain all the moral and philosophical force developed by religious societies over several millennia; particularly the system of morality and philosophy fine-tuned in England and France in the 17th through early 19th centuries. This is ground conservatives have gone over at length, so I will forego a recitation. Suffice it to say, classic-liberalism grew directly out of the fusion of English particularism with Protestant radicalism, with contributions by others. Religion was a critical element in the theory of liberalism, and not until 19th century socialism is there much mention of secularization. From this point on, classic-liberalism was under attack by socialists until the latter half of the 19th century, after which socialists blurred the distinction and pilfered the ‘liberal’ label.
Our modern Western states are, indeed, secularized. However, that is not what makes them liberal, nor particularly to their credit. They were already liberal (perhaps more so) when the code of behavior and social interaction was driven by a sense of accountability to something greater than human society. All the great liberal achievements (limited self-governance, abolition, suffrage, civil rights, human dignity, equal protection, &c) are sprung from movements in which religiously motivated people demanded their government or society return to or toward behaviors deemed ‘Christian’. Socialists believe their moral code as good or better than the Jewish and Christian codes upon which theirs rests, without ever acknowledging the debt. The recounting of socialist innovations gives us a sad picture of socialist morality, rather than one of improvement. This suggests secularism substitutes that higher calling with a moribund counterfeit and slow return to a dog-eat-dog mentality.
Having dispensed with the notion liberalization is secularist dependent, and concurring Islam is far too illiberal to tolerate for long any hint of home-grown liberalism, we are forced to ask “Just what will bring about such a change of heart, and reliably?” Mr. Osonitsch has recommended Islam be eradicated, and this is one possible solution; perhaps even an ideal one. It would be ideal given you can carry it out without monstrous harm. The problem with that is, no power on Earth is capable of doing it short of killing every Muslim unwilling to convert and oppressing those who do convert for generations until certain the change is irreversible. Then we will have become the very thing we seek to eradicate, an intolerant, oppressive and murderous ideology. There is no magic wand we can wave over 1.3-billion people making them forget they were ever Muslim. A lovely picture, but hardly practical.
Moreover, Mr. Osonitsch either forgets or ignores his solution has been tried and failed. The Soviet Union for three-quarters of a century labored to secularize the Muslim territories it conquered in its original expansion. The communists used every method at their disposal to convince, seduce, coerce, or deprive Muslims of their religion. In the end, they couldn’t even prevent a rebirth of religion in their stronghold, Moscow. There is something ingrained in all human-beings informing us there is a creator and we have a relation with him; which Mr. Osonitsch’s desire for secularization can do nothing to eradicate. He also seems to have forgotten Saddam’s Iraq was run as a secularist regime and tried to eradicate religion for decades. Syria, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, and Pakistan have likewise made attempts at secularization, only to repent.
The source of Osonitsch’s bias (as with Kamguian, source for his ideas, see http://humanists.net/avijit/article/Azam/religion_is_lethal.htm), is his assumption the problem is with all religion and not with a particular religion or abuse of religion. Both gentlemen regard all religions equally evil, murderous, rapacious, and delusional. They can see no benefit to religion and dismiss it as dangerous superstition. In Mr. Kamguian’s case, he can be forgiven for thinking all religion evil. As an apostate Muslim, he will only have Islam’s example from which to extrapolate. Osonitsch, on the other hand, is a product of a culture that taught him to charitably assume all other cultures have an equal moral basis; or, if one is depraved then, ipso facto, all others must be equally depraved. He has bought into the fiction Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are equally aggressive because all have participated (or rather their devotees have) to some degree in aggression. Probably, he has even bought into the fiction the Crusaders were much worse than the Jihadist they attacked and ‘provoked’. He lacks sufficient historical perspective to properly distinguish initiating and reacting aggression, scope and intent, and the role played in fomenting violence by each religion.
This faulty equating (combined with power to effect changes in other people’s ponds) is at the root of Osonitsch’s assumption the West is to blame for the atrocities of others, the lack of mid-east economic development, and the resilience of oppressive regimes he thinks should have succumbed by now to the force of secularist logic. It is also the basis on which he accepts and propagates the silly notion the West is plundering the Middle-east for its oil and conspiring with oil-sheiks to keep their people oppressed. The conditions he complains of have existed in the Middle-east since Mohammed first sent his hooligans marauding out of Arabia, and are the natural byproducts of any system that depends on oppression and falsification to sustain itself. In this, it is no different than communism where every facet is controlled down to what is acceptable to say, think or remember. Wherever Islam has conquered, it has oppressed. Where it has oppressed, the land lays despoiled and neglected, industry and commerce languish, and society stands dumbstruck and frustrated. The West’s part in this consists of buying oil from sheiks and helping them develop their product. We had no say in how they’d use their wealth or abuse their trust. They had it in their power to liberate their people and make them prosperous. They chose to use their religious authority to oppress and incite, not we. Yes, our governments and oil companies could have done more to help them; but that is a very different proposition from making us responsible for what they have done to themselves. For that you must look to Islam and the masters of Muslim society. Where Western governments have meddled in the internal affairs of these countries, it has been to enhance our interests but also to do some good. Even Clinton tried to influence Sudan to stop its enslavement and Saddam his tortures.
The suggestion regime change can be achieved in Iran through surrogates consisting of dissident Iranians is ludicrous, and shows how little appreciation Osonitsch has for conditions inside Iran and the disorganization and disunity of Iranian expatriates in the West. It also ignores the disconnect between what passes for ‘liberal’ in the West and in Iran. Iran’s liberals are mainly socialists calling for the redistribution of oil-wealth and a suppression of religion. The rest of Iranian society is fragmented into competing religious sects, commercial pragmatists, Kurdish separatists, communists, socialists, and a handful of milder liberals of the type Osonitsch sees liberating Iran. Supposing for a moment, these various groups can overcome mutual-suspicion and muster the courage it takes to confront a well-armed and well-disciplined regime, how does he propose they topple the army, rally support from a population that only wants better living conditions and none of their ideological novelties, and come to terms with each other in a post-overthrow coalition. More likely the Kurds, as the only disciplined faction (and the only one with recent fighting experience), will take retribution on Muslims for centuries of abuse and plunging Iran into civil war.
Let’s allow for the moment the Iranian dissidents succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs and can keep themselves from hacking at each other, Osonitsch next suggests they keep most of Iran’s present government in tact because “it is already republican”. Calling a thing republican does not make it such. Iran initially had a republican government, and might have held onto that except for the greater demand for theocracy. The ayatollahs have had 25-years to turn Iran’s government into a rubber-stamp for its policies and, in that time, it has never functioned as a republic. It is only its compartmentalization that is suggestive of a Western republic; with legislators, executives, judges and bureaucrats in place to make for a smooth transition (if only we can get rid of those pesky ayatollahs). However, unlike western governments, Iran has a theocratic shadow element for each republican function, and these shadow elements are used to bypass the front organizations. These shadow elements make all the real decisions, dispense favors, influence opinion, and do the work of government; and are composed of doctrinal purists who are unlikely to accept or adopt a secularized reorganization. Regardless, no successful overthrow is complete without a thorough purge that satisfies the new owners and their supporters a real change has taken place. Much of the bureaucracy will survive and maybe some legislators, but none of the leaders and judges who will be too associated with the old regime. Sorry, that’s just the nature of overthrows, and, in Iran’s case, wouldn’t work.
Osonitsch’s contention the transition effected in Iraq is marred and chaotic is part and parcel with his liberalism. Although more moderate than some, it is no more than a dig at the current administration whom liberals are convince can do nothing right. The transition in Iraq has, if anything, been much smoother and more effectively than any of us expected. This subtext has no relevance in a discussion of Iran other than as a device for dismissing the Bush successes as failures.
Osonitsch’s suggestion Tehran is rattling its saber to provoke us into attacking is, again, ludicrous. Iran has the example of Afghanistan and Iraq to tell it this president means what he says and will go in if he thinks Tehran is about to rollout nukes. Tehran also knows that if we do attack, Iran’s regime does not stand all that much more chance than did Iraq’s. Iran’s army is somewhat larger than was Iraq’s and its troops may be a little more supportive of Iran’s regime than were Iraqi soldiers of Saddam. That is the sum total of their differences. No, Tehran is banking on Europe, the Japanese, and Western media to keep the U.S. at bay. As with Saddam, the saber-rattling is for internal consumption only.
Finally, the only alternative energy source with any real potential for replacing oil and making us less dependent on the middle-east is nuclear. Of course, nuclear will make us almost as dependent on Africa and Russia for uranium as we are now for oil, so it’s not much of a change. Moreover, we are not as politically dependent on oil as Osonitsch would have us. OPEC made one bid, and only one bid, at using oil as a political weapon. We responded by diversifying our sources, and it wound up being OPEC who yielded. Iran’s withholding of oil ends up with someone else making up the difference, which only hurts Iran. Iran is already staggering from a retrenched economy, making it suicidal for the regime to try it. Everyone in the oil supply-chain understands these dynamics, not least George Bush. It is Bush, with his talk of “energy independence” who is the real threat, a threat that is not lost on oil-producing, Islamic regimes dependant on the West for what little stability their regimes retain (a lot of their wealth is being used to propagandize and give them legitimacy). It is not enough to topple them, but it would certainly weaken their hold. The reality is that oil is slowly drying up (or, seems to be), and this is making OPEC’s influence less and less with each passing year. The world ‘is’ developing other energy sources and, with each step, Islam’s chance at world domination shrinks; and that is driving fundamentalists crazy.
Mr. Osonitsch’s analysis, on the surface, seems pretty reasonable (not least to him), but, in fact, is chock full of errors based on at least two blinding biases. Among the errors are: that political liberalization requires a secularized society to work, that the West is largely responsible for the instability and laggard economies of the mid-east, that oil-greed is behind ‘our failure’ to convert middle-eastern regimes into liberal societies prior to 9/11, that the West is responsible for having “sacrificed” mid-east stability to get cheap oil, that regime change can be effected through surrogates consisting of disaffected Iranians, that Iran’s existing political infrastructure can be retained post-theocracy, that the transition in Iraq is marred and chaotic, that the saber-rattling from Tehran is anything other than what the Iranians tell us, and that alternatives to oil are critical to changing mid-east dynamics. His biases are anti-religious and anti-West smacking of liberal demagoguery. His depiction of sharia and its part in retarding development of a liberal society is about all he got right.
First, let’s look at his assumption secularization is a historical foundation of, necessary to, or significant contributor to the type of liberalization he describes. If anything, the liberalization of the 18th and 19th centuries can better be said to have survived secularization, and is in no way dependent on it. Secularization attempts to retain all the moral and philosophical force developed by religious societies over several millennia; particularly the system of morality and philosophy fine-tuned in England and France in the 17th through early 19th centuries. This is ground conservatives have gone over at length, so I will forego a recitation. Suffice it to say, classic-liberalism grew directly out of the fusion of English particularism with Protestant radicalism, with contributions by others. Religion was a critical element in the theory of liberalism, and not until 19th century socialism is there much mention of secularization. From this point on, classic-liberalism was under attack by socialists until the latter half of the 19th century, after which socialists blurred the distinction and pilfered the ‘liberal’ label.
Our modern Western states are, indeed, secularized. However, that is not what makes them liberal, nor particularly to their credit. They were already liberal (perhaps more so) when the code of behavior and social interaction was driven by a sense of accountability to something greater than human society. All the great liberal achievements (limited self-governance, abolition, suffrage, civil rights, human dignity, equal protection, &c) are sprung from movements in which religiously motivated people demanded their government or society return to or toward behaviors deemed ‘Christian’. Socialists believe their moral code as good or better than the Jewish and Christian codes upon which theirs rests, without ever acknowledging the debt. The recounting of socialist innovations gives us a sad picture of socialist morality, rather than one of improvement. This suggests secularism substitutes that higher calling with a moribund counterfeit and slow return to a dog-eat-dog mentality.
Having dispensed with the notion liberalization is secularist dependent, and concurring Islam is far too illiberal to tolerate for long any hint of home-grown liberalism, we are forced to ask “Just what will bring about such a change of heart, and reliably?” Mr. Osonitsch has recommended Islam be eradicated, and this is one possible solution; perhaps even an ideal one. It would be ideal given you can carry it out without monstrous harm. The problem with that is, no power on Earth is capable of doing it short of killing every Muslim unwilling to convert and oppressing those who do convert for generations until certain the change is irreversible. Then we will have become the very thing we seek to eradicate, an intolerant, oppressive and murderous ideology. There is no magic wand we can wave over 1.3-billion people making them forget they were ever Muslim. A lovely picture, but hardly practical.
Moreover, Mr. Osonitsch either forgets or ignores his solution has been tried and failed. The Soviet Union for three-quarters of a century labored to secularize the Muslim territories it conquered in its original expansion. The communists used every method at their disposal to convince, seduce, coerce, or deprive Muslims of their religion. In the end, they couldn’t even prevent a rebirth of religion in their stronghold, Moscow. There is something ingrained in all human-beings informing us there is a creator and we have a relation with him; which Mr. Osonitsch’s desire for secularization can do nothing to eradicate. He also seems to have forgotten Saddam’s Iraq was run as a secularist regime and tried to eradicate religion for decades. Syria, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, and Pakistan have likewise made attempts at secularization, only to repent.
The source of Osonitsch’s bias (as with Kamguian, source for his ideas, see http://humanists.net/avijit/article/Azam/religion_is_lethal.htm), is his assumption the problem is with all religion and not with a particular religion or abuse of religion. Both gentlemen regard all religions equally evil, murderous, rapacious, and delusional. They can see no benefit to religion and dismiss it as dangerous superstition. In Mr. Kamguian’s case, he can be forgiven for thinking all religion evil. As an apostate Muslim, he will only have Islam’s example from which to extrapolate. Osonitsch, on the other hand, is a product of a culture that taught him to charitably assume all other cultures have an equal moral basis; or, if one is depraved then, ipso facto, all others must be equally depraved. He has bought into the fiction Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are equally aggressive because all have participated (or rather their devotees have) to some degree in aggression. Probably, he has even bought into the fiction the Crusaders were much worse than the Jihadist they attacked and ‘provoked’. He lacks sufficient historical perspective to properly distinguish initiating and reacting aggression, scope and intent, and the role played in fomenting violence by each religion.
This faulty equating (combined with power to effect changes in other people’s ponds) is at the root of Osonitsch’s assumption the West is to blame for the atrocities of others, the lack of mid-east economic development, and the resilience of oppressive regimes he thinks should have succumbed by now to the force of secularist logic. It is also the basis on which he accepts and propagates the silly notion the West is plundering the Middle-east for its oil and conspiring with oil-sheiks to keep their people oppressed. The conditions he complains of have existed in the Middle-east since Mohammed first sent his hooligans marauding out of Arabia, and are the natural byproducts of any system that depends on oppression and falsification to sustain itself. In this, it is no different than communism where every facet is controlled down to what is acceptable to say, think or remember. Wherever Islam has conquered, it has oppressed. Where it has oppressed, the land lays despoiled and neglected, industry and commerce languish, and society stands dumbstruck and frustrated. The West’s part in this consists of buying oil from sheiks and helping them develop their resource. We had no say in how they’d use their wealth or how they’d abused their people. They had it in their power to liberate their people and make them prosperous. They chose instead to use their religious authority to oppress and incite. Yes, our governments and oil companies could have done more to help them; but that is a very different proposition from making us responsible for what they have done to themselves. For that you must look to Islam and the masters of Muslim society. Where Western governments have meddled in the internal affairs of these countries, it has been to enhance our interests but also to do some good. Even Clinton tried to influence Sudan to stop its enslavement and Saddam his tortures.
The suggestion regime change can be achieved in Iran through surrogates consisting of dissident Iranians is ludicrous, and shows how little appreciation Osonitsch has for conditions inside Iran and the disorganization and disunity of Iranian expatriates in the West. It also ignores the disconnect between what passes for ‘liberal’ in the West and in Iran. Iran’s liberals are mainly socialists calling for the redistribution of oil-wealth and a suppression of religion. The rest of Iranian society is fragmented into competing religious sects, commercial pragmatists, Kurdish separatists, communists, socialists, and a handful of milder liberals of the type Osonitsch sees liberating Iran. Supposing for a moment, these various groups can overcome mutual-suspicion and muster the courage it takes to confront a well-armed and well-disciplined regime, how does he propose they topple the army, rally support from a population that only wants better living conditions and none of their ideological novelties, and come to terms with each other in a post-overthrow coalition. More likely the Kurds, as the only disciplined faction (and the only one with recent fighting experience), will take retribution on Muslims for centuries of abuse and plunging Iran into civil war.
Let’s allow for the moment the Iranian dissidents succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs and can keep themselves from hacking at each other, Osonitsch next suggests they keep most of Iran’s present government in tact because “it is already republican”. Calling a thing republican does not make it such. Iran initially had a republican government, and might have held onto that except for the greater demand for theocracy. The ayatollahs have had 25-years to turn Iran’s government into a rubber-stamp for its policies and, in that time, it has never functioned as a republic. It is only its compartmentalization that is suggestive of a Western republic; with legislators, executives, judges and bureaucrats in place to make for a smooth transition (if only we can get rid of those pesky ayatollahs). However, unlike western governments, Iran has a theocratic shadow element for each republican function, and these shadow elements are used to bypass the front organizations. These shadow elements make all the real decisions, dispense favors, influence opinion, and do the work of government; and are composed of doctrinal purists who are unlikely to accept or adopt a secularized reorganization. Regardless, no successful overthrow is complete without a thorough purge that satisfies the new owners and their supporters a real change has taken place. Much of the bureaucracy will survive and maybe some legislators, but none of the leaders and judges who will be too associated with the old regime. Sorry, that’s just the nature of overthrows, and, in Iran’s case, wouldn’t work.
Osonitsch’s contention the transition effected in Iraq is marred and chaotic is part and parcel with his liberalism. Although more moderate than some, it is no more than a dig at the current administration whom liberals are convince can do nothing right. The transition in Iraq has, if anything, been much smoother and more effectively than any of us expected. This subtext has no relevance in a discussion of Iran other than as a device for dismissing the Bush successes as failures.
Osonitsch’s suggestion Tehran is rattling its saber to provoke us into attacking is, again, ludicrous. Iran has the example of Afghanistan and Iraq to tell it this president means what he says and will go in if he thinks Tehran is about to rollout nukes. Tehran also knows that if we do attack, Iran’s regime does not stand all that much more chance than did Iraq’s. Iran’s army is somewhat larger than was Iraq’s and its troops may be a little more supportive of Iran’s regime than were Iraqi soldiers of Saddam. That is the sum total of their differences. No, Tehran is banking on Europe, the Japanese, and Western media to keep the U.S. at bay. As with Saddam, the saber-rattling is for internal consumption only.
Finally, the only alternative energy source with any real potential for replacing oil and making us less dependent on the middle-east is nuclear. Of course, nuclear will make us almost as dependent on Africa and Russia for uranium as we are now for oil, so it’s not much of a change. Moreover, we are not as politically dependent on oil as Osonitsch would have us. OPEC made one bid, and only one bid, at using oil as a political weapon. We responded by diversifying our sources, and it wound up being OPEC who yielded. Iran’s withholding of oil ends up with someone else making up the difference, which only hurts Iran. Iran is already staggering from a retrenched economy, making it suicidal for the regime to try it. Everyone in the oil supply-chain understands these dynamics, not least George Bush. It is Bush right now, with his talk of “energy independence”, who is shaking up the Muslims and not the other way around. Islamic regimes dependant on the West for what little stability their regimes retain (a lot of their wealth is used to give them legitimacy). It is something that would topple them, but it certainly must be worrying them. The reality is that oil is slowly drying up (or, appears to be), and this is making OPEC’s influence less and less with each passing year. The world ‘is’ developing other energy sources and, with each step, Islam’s chance at pushing to the forefront withers; and that is driving fundamentalists crazy.
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2006/issue2/jv10no2a5.html 3 possible scenarios in Iran
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1997/issue3/jv1n3a4.html complexity of Iranian political system
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2000/issue3/jv4n3a4.html importance of civil society to democracy
http://www.ghandchi.com/303-SocialismEng.htm possible reason why left has much traction in Iran