I’ve been thinking for some time about Stephen Taylor’s brief post at Outside the Beltway on the utility of the phrase “radical Islam”. The post consists largely of a quote from a Vox.com post that in turns quotes Emile Nakhleh, formerly the director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program. The gist of Dr. Nakhleh’s view is that the term “radical Islam” is counter-productive because it raise Muslims’ hackles. Stephen concludes with a backhanded swipe at those who criticize President Obama for his avoidance of the term:
Because it ends up that governing is complicated and simplistic declarations are not helpful. (And the silly bickering over this term underscores a profound lack of understanding of the world and how it has to be navigated).
I’m not highly invested as some are in the centrality of the president’s saying “radical Islam” and I think a better phraseology would be “radical Islamism” (“Islamism” defined as political Islam) than “radical Islam”. It’s a subtle but important distinction. However, I think this topic provides an opportunity for digging into some issues I find interesting.
First, is appealing to Dr. Nakhleh a useful or fallacious appeal to authority? Second, can we gain more support in Muslim communities by eschewing the phrase “radical Islam”? Third, what’s the right policy?
Let me give my answers first and then explore them in a little more detail.
- We can’t tell.
- No.
- Use the phrase “radical Islamists” to describe radical Islamists, e.g. DAESH, Al Qaeda, and, probably, the Saudi government.
In researching Dr. Nakhleh I discovered that he worked for the CIA, that he’s a venerable scholar on Middle Eastern politics, and that he’s been pushing the goal of increased “engagement” of the United States with Muslims in the Middle East for decades. Merely having worked for the CIA not only is not a credential it may be an anti-credential. The CIA is capable of being wrong. It was wrong over a period of 40 years on the Soviet Union, consistently overestimating its strength and mistaking its motives. Most relevantly it has utterly bungled its findings on the Middle East for decades, viz. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda. Was this bungling going on during Dr. Nakhleh’s tenure at CIA? It seems likely.
Dr. Nakleh’s doctorate is in political science and modern scholars are specialists. His doctorate does not make him an all-purpose expert on the Middle East. He has some narrow area of expertise in which I would acknowledge him as an expert. But I am reluctant to grant him the status of expertise on all things Muslim or all things Middle Eastern.
As a human being Dr. Nakhleh has preferences and an agenda. What’s his agenda? It’s relevant to judging his authority. His personal agenda may be overwhelming his judgment. There’s no way for us to tell.
It’s possible that Dr. Nakhleh’s pronouncements on this subject are authoritative; it’s possible that they aren’t. We simply can’t tell.
I think that asserting that we can cultivate a healthier relationship or even gain the support either of Muslims in the Middle East or in the United States by eschewing the phrase “radical Islam” is as ill-conceived as a claim that using the term will solve all of our strategic problems in dealing with violence perpetrated by radical Islamists. Both claims are naive and simplistic. Use of the term is not dispositive. It’s not enough to sway a reasonable person one way or the other and the notion that we can sway unreasonable people by changing our diction is absurd.
Furthermore, we can’t control the message. There will always be some American somewhere who uses the phrase “radical Islam” and, since we can’t control the message, that American will become the type of all Americans on the part of those who are predisposed to see Americans in that light. There’s nothing we can do about it.
I also wonder if avoiding the phrase “radical Islam” does not have the opposite effect to the one that is presumably intended. I think that Muslims, like most other people, generally just want to be left alone to live their lives. If they are led to believe that the fight has nothing to do with Islam, they’ll be inclined to stand to one side under the mistaken idea that it doesn’t involve them.
The truth is almost the diametric opposite—the war is going on within Islam and non-Muslims are merely caught in the crossfire. We are not the intended recipients of the messages that are being sent by terrorist attacks. Other Muslims are the audience.
Organizations like DAESH and Al Qaeda express what motivates them very clearly: it’s their radical interpretation of Islam. Saying so is merely a statement of fact. Clear and accurate speech facilitates clear thought and clear thought facilitates clear and effective policy. Can you imagine having tried to fight World War II without mentioning the Japanese or Nazis? It boggles the mind.
Yes, governing is complicated. It’s made more complicated by fuzzy thinking, imprecise modes of expression, and relying on experts of indeterminate authority.
This is a two part question. First, the notion that the phrase upsets and incites is absurd on its face. If that’s how fragile the little snowflakes are all is lost.
I’m in Hawaii, so the second part later.
Only a lawyer has the professional training and licensing to know what is authority and what is not . . ..
I just made an appeal to authority, and a fallacious one at that. I’ve not heard the distinction between “useful or fallacious appeal to authority” before, but it is a good one.
If it is a means to shut-down or refuse to recognize other points of view, citing authority is not useful in public discourse. Citing authority can piss people off. (Re-read first paragraph)
It’s also damaging to public discourse when those who agree with the authority stop wrestling with the issue. They can become complacent and detached.
I believe there is an association fallacy at work here also. Nakhleh is not simply making claims for himself, but for the Bush administration, and thus implicitly asserting that that those Republicans who disagree with him are marginal or bad-faith actors. They are radical Republicans.
Meh. Right wing PC. They have no central authority. Are Muslims offended when you suggest all of Islam is radical? I don’t know. Why don’t you ask some.
Steve
I prefer militant Islamism over radical Islamism. As non-Muslims, who are we to judge what is radical or not? Militant Islamists such as the Islamic State believe that they are the real Muslims, that they’re the ones who are following the correct doctrine. And it’s really beside the point. We are in a war against an ideology whose adherents are willing to take up arms and kill unbelievers, hence the “militant” part. We’re not at war with Islamists such as Hizb ut-Tahrir because, even though they would prefer sharia law under an Islamic state, their goal is to achieve it through non-violent, democratic means.
Using the term “Islamist” or “Islamism” is much more preferable than “Islam” because we’re not opposing a religion but a political ideology.
I take your point but I strongly suspect that the president and others who support his position would object just as strenuously to “militant Islamism” as they would to “radical Islamism”. It’s the Islam part they object to rather than the qualifying adjective.
Note that I have no objection to Muslims preferring Sharia law under an Islamic state. I merely object to their having it here.
Playing word games is just for obfuscation. What next, “mechanized military action” instead of war. Tennis shoes issued to avoid “boots on the ground?” This is all politics.