The Unavoidable Question
How should we now consider Islam?

By NR Editors
From the December 17, 2001, issue of National Review.

he West is not at war with Islam. President Bush has said as much, by now, a dozen times. He is surely right to do so. Most of the Muslims of Indonesia, or of Detroit, pose no threat to Americans. Their mass conversion to Christianity is not one of our war aims. But Bush, joined by untold numbers of politicians, clerics, and journalists, has said more than this. Islam is said to be "a religion of peace," at least at its core. The vast majority of Muslims around the world, we are told, have little in common with Osama bin Laden and his band of killers.

Perhaps these claims are true. But it is at least imaginable that they are not — that a sizable proportion of the world's Muslims, if not willing to take up arms against us, cheer on those who do. Moreover, the people who are making these claims have generally made no deep study of the Islamic world. Bush says what he says mainly for reasons of state (and again, he is quite right to do so). Others seem to harbor a misguided fear that Americans would lash out at innocent Muslims if not reassured that Islam is incidental to the attacks on us.

But formulaic cant does not reassure. It is a naïveté typical of American liberals to assume that everyone is just like us under the skin — wanting the same things we want as soon as satellite TV becomes available. It is a tempting and even, in its generosity of spirit, admirable conceit; but it is not true. As the rejoicing in Afghanistan has made clear, the human spirit subjected to Islamist totalitarianism rebels against it. That doesn't mean that the Taliban's doctrines do not appeal to Muslims who know them only in theory, or that Afghans would establish a parliament left to their own devices.

Nor should we consider Islam an abstraction unconnected with the actual beliefs and practices of those who claim to believe it. Whether Islam, rightly understood, countenances violence against innocents who do not follow it is an important question; but for practical purposes, it is less important than whether Islam does so as understood, rightly or wrongly, by millions of people who consider themselves its adherents. In the days when Christians killed Jews, it would not have done the victims much good to be told that their killers were acting as bad Christians.

It may be urged that we not apply contemporary Christian standards since Christians had a six-century head start over Muslims, and gave up religious wars only 350 years ago. Islam has not — yet? — had the chastening experience of a Reformation, Counter Reformation, and Enlightenment to temper its temporal ambitions. For that matter, it was not until the 1980s that most countries with Catholic majorities became democratic. Perhaps there are historical accidents that caused the Middle East, the home of the Muslim imagination, to develop in such a stunted way. The region is home to secular tyrannies — Iraq, Syria — no less repressive than Islamism (although even these regimes exploit Muslims' religious sentiments). Perhaps it is not impossible that Islam, as practiced by societies, will evolve in the direction of peace and freedom. But Americans can be forgiven for not taking the long view at the moment.

Most religions have been able to inspire nobility and cruelty, glory as well as madness, and Islam is no exception. But that does not preclude the possibility that something in Islam lends itself, more than other religions, to exterminationist and totalitarian politics. The Islamists who have interpreted their religion in that manner are our enemies. They are not the entire Muslim world, but they are not a tiny and isolated minority of it either. Since they claim to speak for all Muslims, it is up to those Muslims who reject the Islamists' views — including, yes, Muslim immigrants to America — to repudiate them in word and deed. And it is up to the rest of us to demand that they do so. This would not be an unprecedented demand: Especially in recent years, both Christian churches and the secular culture have held Christians accountable for the enormities committed in the name of their religion.

The extent to which Islam has contributed to this war — as also to the poverty, illiberalism, and general backwardness of the Muslim world — is an open question. It is a question that Americans will necessarily debate, under the circumstances, and it was arrogant folly of American political elites to believe that incantations and intimidation could stop them from debating. They would be wiser to make constructive contributions, so that the debate is as humane and intelligent as possible.