One of the ways that the American and British official ideology for war functions is to divert attention from violence-engendering policies Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other undisclosed sites globally to questioning intensely whether or not the attackers of America and Great Britain are good or, as both Prime Minister Blair and President Bush tend to put it, “true Muslims.”

Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, professing competence in Islamic theology and with Muslim partners to the debate by their side, constantly implore us to see the attackers of America and the UK as non-Muslims who falsely act in the name of Islam. “We know Islam is a religion that teaches love and peace and compassion. No, our struggle is against evil people – evil people that claim they’re religious, but are not,” Mr. Bush said after the 9/11 attacks (10/16/01). “It is an extreme and evil ideology whose roots lie in a perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of the religion of Islam,” Mr. Blair said after the London attacks (7/13).

It will take a lot of time to settle this important dispute between official Anglo-American Islam and its Muslim allies, on the one hand, and its Islamist opponents who see themselves as acting righteously, on the other. Islam is comprised, like the two other great Abrahamic traditions, of vast and internally complicated sub-traditions that are sometimes greatly at odds with each other.

While this debate goes on, one should note how the declarations of “true” Islam function publicly, like snappy emails from Karl Rove, to divert discussion away from the conditions and ongoing sources of the war that the Bush and Blair administrations call “on terror” and their opponents call “on Islam.” For the former, the problem is “evil terrorism.” For the later, the problem is “US/’Crusader/Infidel’ Aggression against Muslims.” The war might be better characterized as a horribly violent contest for control over power in mostly Muslim societies, especially the petroleum rich areas of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

The official declarations of true and false Islam, eloquently delivered by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, and then repeatedly recycled nearly everywhere by others, continuously turn the causes and stakes of the conflict into religious questions. First, they reject the attackers’ faith-based intentions to be struggling on behalf of oppressed Muslims: “This is not Islam.” Second, they declare the attacks to be evil. So heavily based in the devotional commitments of both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, this second move rhetorically rips the terror attacks out of any possible earthly political context, especially those where the attackers seem to want to direct attention, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Moreover, all the while, the political leaders officially declare that the “war on terror” is about freedom and civilization, not religion. “We don’t view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form,” Mr. Bush said on September 16, 2001, correcting his description of it the day before as a “crusade.”

Let us see the situation more clearly: The leaders of the US and UK are declaring truths about the traditions of their Muslim enemies and allies. They are declaring who is and who is not a good and un-“perverted” Muslim in a fight waged against “evil” from both sides.

The political question of the hour is not only, however, whether or not the violence is the work of evil. Rather, it is — and needs to be — also whether or not there are alternatives to the present, stress-inducing policies designed to preserve the power arrangements in political milieus where the majority population practices Islam. We don’t need to know that the “war on terror goes on,” as Mr. Bush said right after the attacks in London. We need to hear, and debate, more about specific policies governing specific parts of the world – including, but not only Iraq and Israel/Palestine – that engender so much violence and counter violence. The political demand of the present needs to be less perverted policy, not more true faith.

One dangerous consequence about the current debate over true Islam is that, as it intensifies, everyone gets increasingly self-righteous about correct religion. The political and earthly interests and stakes get further buried as the holy warriors for true faith argue and battle it out what they believe to be higher goods. The present debate over the content of Karl Rove’s advice to the media is long overdue; so, too, is one over the content of the official ideology of the “war on terrorism.”

Istanbul
July 22, 2005

Andrew Davison is associate professor of political science at Vassar College where he teaches courses in political theory and politics in the Middle East. His latest book is Conquering Hearts and Minds:The American War Ideology in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, 1990-2003. For more, see Andy Davison.

[As first published in Common Dreams, www.commondreams.org.]