The mountebanks & the apostates.

• Author: Gerges, Fawaz A.
• Position: 'How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror', 'Engaging the Muslim World' and 'A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World' - Book review

Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2009), 256 pp., $26.00.

Juan Cole, Engaging the Muslim World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 288 pp., $26.95.

Emile Nakhleh, A Necessary Engagement." Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 184 pp., $26.95.

America's bloody encounter with Islam is a failure. At heart there is an inability to understand the context and dynamics of Arab and Muslim politics; the conceptual differences and boundaries between moderate Islamists, nonviolent radical activists, local jihadists and global jihadists like al-Qaeda. For eight years, the dominant U.S. narrative blurred the lines between "Islamist," "radical," "militant," "extremist," "jihadist" and "terrorist." The United States equated Islamists' offensive speech with jihadists' violent action. But there are stark differences between locally and regionally based political groups like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah and borderless, transnational and globalized jihadist groups like al-Qaeda that have been waging war against the United States and its close allies since the mid-1990s.

Scholars of the Greater Middle East like Georgetown's John Esposito and Michael Hudson, Harvard's Roger Owen, Richard Norton at Boston University, Richard Bulliet and Rashid Khalidi at Columbia, along with Mohammed Ayoob of Michigan State and many others were systematically marginalized from decision making, replaced by a motley gang of irresponsible ideologues, security types and other mountebanks.

Terrorism experts and crusading commentators--including Rohan Gunaratna, best-selling author of Inside Al Qaeda; counterterrorism consultant Evan F. Kohlmann; investigative journalist Steven Emerson; academic Daniel Pipes and others--are partly to blame. Instead of adopting a more constructive approach--one that draws distinctions between the many faces of political Islam--they took the easier, reductionist approach of lumping all Islamists together. They looked backward and pigeonholed mainstream and militant Islamists through the prism of al-Qaeda. These observers, wittingly or unwittingly, endorsed the official agenda by portraying Islamism not just as jihadism, a borderless, transnational violent fringe, but also as a mortal threat to the West, an aggressive and totalitarian ideology dedicated to random destruction and global subjugation. Still others advocated an all-out war against any manifestations of political Islam.

Building on this consensus of uninformed pundits and social engineers, President Bush ratcheted up the rhetoric, grouping all mainstream and militant Islamists together under the phrase "Islamofascists." He called on Americans to be prepared for a global war on terror, the "inescapable calling of our generation."

The global war on terror, Bush said, would eradicate the threat of Islamic-radical terrorism (again, a loose and incoherent term) and target rogue states that sponsored terrorism or offered lodging to terrorists. With sweeping, ideological language, Bush and Cheney's crusade set the stage for the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was costly in blood and treasure and damaging to America's moral standing in the world.

According to multiple surveys and studies, the expansion of the war on terror outside Afghanistan alienated Muslims and provided ideological motivation to al-Qaeda and global jihadists. They portray their fight against the United States as a defense of the Muslim ummah, or community, worldwide. And so, in the eyes of many Muslims, America's war on terror is a war against their religion. A war designed to subjugate their countries. Few buy the Washington narrative regarding the promotion of democracy and liberty in the Middle East, viewing it instead as a mask to perpetuate U.S. dominance.

There is no denying that America's global war on terror has been a disaster and that there is an urgent need to rethink the country's relations with the Muslim world. In an informative and revealing book, A Necessary Engagement, Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, says that although midlevel U.S. officials knew better than to frame the war in black-and-white terms, ever-expanding the territory of the enemy, they had little say and input in decision making. A disconnect existed between the first and second tiers of the Bush foreign-policy team in terms of access to intelligence and scholarly knowledge. Nakhleh's insider account puts to rest the claim by Bush and Cheney that they, like the policy establishment, were misled and...