Americans are making a huge mistake by lumping all Islamist movements together without differentiating among the purely religious, the liberal and radical factions, a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill professor says.
Sociologist Charles Kurzman says while all the groups purport to spread a "purer" way of life based on the word of the prophet Muhammed, local fundamentalist movements like the Taliban are insular with no interest in the outside world, and appeal to the poor with little education outside strict religious schools. Liberals like those in Iran and followers of former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, are secularly educated and seek to establish modern states, while and radicals, including al Qaida, Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, and the Islamic Jihad in the Mideast want to establish a new world order.
Kurzman, in an article published in the most recent issue of Contexts, the journal of the American Sociological Association, said the West may wind up fueling the more radical movements.
"In the United States, our lack of precision in distinguishing between the ... movements may end up pushing them together," Kurzman said in a telephone interview with United Press International. "The Taliban are gone but around the world there are local Islamic movements that do not have transnational goals like al Qaida. ...
"Any time any Islamic radical anywhere in world commits an act of violence, our tendency is to say al Qaida did it. That's giving them more importance than they deserve. Radicalism is bigger than al Qaida. Therefore we shouldn't focus solely on a single international conspiracy."
"I think basically what he (Kurzman) is reminding ... people of is that assuming every Islamic organization that is in some way active in advocating and affirming Islamic positions is going to be the same as assuming that (fundamentalist preachers) Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were going to agree on issues of war and peace with the Quakers," said John O. Voll.
Voll, associate director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Islamic history professor at Georgetown University, said, "What you have within the Islamic world is the same broad spectrum of social and political visions that can be identified as Muslim as you would have in the broad spectrum of views that can be identified as Christian."
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said it's not so much the inability of Americans to make the distinctions but rather the efforts by opinion leaders to "portray Islamic activism as a monolith so they can paint it all with the same brush."
"They would portray it as something bad," Hooper said. "They make no differentiation (even) where there's a great divergence in tactics, methodology and ideology between various groups. The usual litmus test is whether or not you challenge the policies of the state of Israel."
Kurzman noted the more radical movements have a lot in common with the western Left.
"Radical movements in general tend to factionalize," Kurzman said. "You have warring groups accusing each other of not being pure enough. Take, for example, Algeria. You have small radical groups killing off one another as much as they target liberals, the state and random victims."
In countries where there is at least some democratization, radical Islamists have failed to garner much political support, Kurzman noted, citing the recent Pakistani elections where fundamentalists managed to carry just a single province.
As a result, there are "huge debates within the movement between the side that says we need to take power by force as soon as possible and the side that says we need to win over the hearts and minds of the people or taking power will be futile," Kurzman said. "Some radicals are publishing, preaching, doing good works in the hope that Muslims will see the light and return to a pure version of Islam."
Despite their apparent lack of popular support, "small radical movements are capable of creating tremendous havoc and causing great damage," Kurzman noted. "The size of a movement does not determine the danger that it poses."
Additionally, there is an elitism among radicals led by well-educated and secularly educated men who embrace modern technology and reject older interpretations of the Koran and attendant texts in favor of devising their own interpretations based on their own intellectual development.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Qaida, rather than forging a commonality, actually were using each other, Kurzman said, the Taliban taking Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's money and the al Qaida accepting sanctuary.
"The Taliban were concerned (that) troublemakers in their midst were going bring down all sorts of trouble. That actually happened," he said. "They were none too happy with their guests but needed the money. They needed the prestige among radicals around the world that the presence of al Qauda lent to the Taliban. It was an unusual situation, an alliance of convenience."
Kurzman said until bin Laden's most recently issued audio statement, he and his followers have tended to disdain ordinary Muslims, criticizing their "passivity and lack of piety." The latest tape, however, "goes easy on the insults," he said.
Voll disagreed with Kurzman's interpretation, saying though the tape did not hammer at the usual themes that bin Laden more likely was trying to build opposition in the Muslim world against a likely U.S. attack on Iraq.
"In the most recent tape, what he has done is he has highlighted even more the theme of the justifiable opposition to American global dominance," Voll said.
