Hugh Fitzgerald

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently cited Turkey as a model showing that "Islam, the Muslim world and democracy" do not contradict each other. And in a speech to the members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Rice said: "I think Islam, the Muslim world, is indeed going through an evolution, and as with any evolution there are both potential negative outcomes and potential positive outcomes. The negative outcome would be the continued rise of extremism and those who would hijack the great world religion to a cause that clearly has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a peaceful religion..."

If Rice means what she said, she is a grave disappointment. And neither she, nor anyone else who thinks in the same vein, is likely to be able to comprehend how much vaster is the problem than anything bringing "democracy to Iraq" will solve. Let us stick only to Turkey, since Rice raises it as an example. Indeed, Turkey is an example. But of what? The historical record shows the following:

1) Kemal Ataturk was a war hero and strongman who took full control of Turkey -- which was not a democracy at the time -- in order to save his country from what he regarded as further disaster and possible dismemberment (it had already lost its possessions) in 1924.

He instituted a series of measures designed to limit the power of Islam in political and social matters. These included:

a) the Hat Act. This abolished the wearing of the brimless fez which made praying easier and insisted on Western caps to go with such Western, non-Islamic dress as coats and ties.

b) giving women the right to vote.

c) having the Qur'an translated into Turkish -- to break the cultural hold of Arabic -- and even supplying a special tafsir, or commentary in Turkish.

d) ending the use of Arabic script and adopting the Western alphabet.

e) monitoring the mosques and creating a Ministry of Religious Affairs entrusted with composing the khutbas delivered at Friday Prayers -- carefuly vetted by government officials so that they would not contain any dangerous material.

f) forbidding conscripts in the army from rising in the ranks if they demonstrated any detectable signs of religious fervor, such as reading the Qur'an too much.

g) forbidding the wearing of the hijab in any government office or at any official function.

h) cracking down on any newspapers that offered articles deemed "pro-Islamic."

i) making the army the bastion and protector of Kemalism.

And much more.

Note that Ataturk did not try to change the text of Qur'an. Nor did he try to de-authenticate dangerous hadith. Nor did he try to re-write the life of Muhammad. (In some ways the cult of Ataturk, now the national cult of Turkey, was a kind of replacement for Muhammad.) He realized that this was impossible, but that in order to bring Turkey kicking and screaming into the modern world (Turkey was poor, Turkey was on the ropes, Turkey needed a Strong Man and as a war hero he fit the bill perfectly), he and those who supported him had to force through all these constraints on Islam.

2) Turkey offers another lesson; Kemalism requires constant vigilance for it to be maintained. Even though a secular class has been created in Turkey, that class has been insufficiently aware of how tenuous its position is, and of how it is constantly in danger of being chipped away at, and undermined, by the determined "Islamic" element in Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is not an example of someone admirable, but of someone exceedingly cunning. He is able to use the E.U.'s requirements to hobble the army, the sole guarantor of Kemalism

The undermining of Kemalism in Turkey offers a salutary lesson: that Islam is a powerful force, and cannot be changed, only constrained. And to the degree that any country becomes more Muslim, to that same degree that country will -- no matter how long or close its seemingly heartfelt alliance with the United States has been -- pull away from that alliance, forget all that was done for it, and become hostile to the United States, as it would be to any Infidel power practicing muscular self-defense. The same is true of Pakistan. Neither country can be trusted to be on America's side, no matter how plausible some Turkish generals in Ankara may seem (or may be) to their American counterparts, or how many ramrod-straight Sandhurst graduates in Karachi manage to impress, or at least try to make us overlook, how Pakistani generals were in up to their neck in supporting the Taliban and the extracurricular activities of that remarkable man, A. Q. Khan.

3) The example of Turkey shows that Islam can only be constrained by a strong man rather than by "democracy" -- for a "democratic" state where the people are almost entirely Muslim will inevitably redefine everything in terms of Islam. Whatever is bad -- i.e., corruption -- will simply be defined as "Infidel" and therefore to be opposed. Whatever is desirable will simply be labeled in the spirit of Islam -- and this will happen everywhere that head-counting is the accepted definition of democracy, and not head-counting plus the rights enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Condoleeza Rice has been misled. That is not her fault. Many people have been misled about Islam. But at some point they must realize that the evidence of their senses suggests that they have been fed an incorrect analysis, a "theory" or "model" of Islam that does not explain all the data we have collected over 1350 years, nor seems to have much explanatory value for what is happening now, not only in Iraq and with Israel, but in the Sudan, in Nigeria, in Pakistan, in the Philippines, in Indonesia, in Bangladesh.

Perhaps the entire political class in this country is guilty -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- of failing to learn about Islam, and failing to offer imaginative and intelligent means to resist it. These means do not require vast invasion forces on the ground. Nor do they require the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and tens of billions more, apparently, in Afghanistan -- not to mention the continuation of American aid, for no good reason, to Egypt, to Jordan, to Pakistan, and of course to the shock-troops of the relentless Arab Jihad against Israel, the local Arabs renamed the "Palestinian people."

Never before have we so needed leaders willing to take the time to study, to return to their books, to be willing to jettison prefabricated phrases about "tolerance" and "peace" and to be willing to understand some very unpleasant truths. It is not asking too much of our leaders to ask them not to dismiss the dangers of Islam, and to request that they study not the apologists but the real scholars (a book or article on Islam written in 1920 or 1930 does not lose value, and because it was written at a time of much less inhibition, in a less guarded and fearful language, it is likely to be of far greater value than what is written today.) Intelligence and imagination will allow them to come up, very easily, with a dozen ideas that will help to weaken Islam, to exploit its natural fissures, to visibly limit its present and future economic power, and to support, within Europe, those who are now thoroughly alarmed and intent on stopping the spread of a belief-system that is totalitarian in its Total Regulation and Total Explanation of the Universe.

Surely that is something that can be understood by some in the army and in the civilian administration -- and can percolate not downwards, but upwards -- from those who still have the time to do their own studying, and do not have to rely on 2-5 page summaries prepared by aides.
Long live the colonels who educate the generals. Long live the staff aides who educate the Senators and Congressmen. And long live all those who take the time to read, study, and think.
It is they who will rescue us.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to Outpost. This article was originally writte for Jihadwatch.com.