Following is a chapter titled "Jihadism's War on Democracies" published in the book Debating the War of Ideas edited by Eric D Patterson and John Gallagher (Palgrave Macmillan). The chapter summarizes the three wars of ideas waged by Salafists, Wahabis, Muslim Brotherhoods and Khomeinists against liberal democracies and offer strategic suggestions for future counter radicalization policies. I do argue that under the previous US Administration there was a failed attempt to reach out to democracy forces in the Arab and Muslim world, while under the current Administration there are efforts to partner with the Islamists and engage the Jihadists at the expense of the Muslim Democrats.
Debating the War of Ideas
The term "War of Ideas" began appearing in the years following al Qaeda terror attacks against the United States on 9/11. In the days following the massacres, the mainstream media displayed a stunning lack of determination in indentifying where aggression was coming from and why. In the hours following the bloodshed in Manhattan, Pennsylvania and Washington where about three thousand- mostly civilians- were killed, the main question raised by networks, publications, and commentators was, "Why do they hate us?" Incredibly revealing, this slogan told the world and public at home that America did not know who the "they" (i.e., the attackers, who they represent, and what they wanted) were. It also underlined another stunning revelation: that what mainstream intellectuals understood from 9/11 was that sheer "hate" was the reason, and worse, the roots for this so-called hatred were unknown. Al Qaeda's onslaught on American soil signaled the start of what was called the "War on Terror". But historical precision tells us that in reality the jihadi war on the United States and other democracies began several years earlier. The sudden post-Cold War rise of combat Salafists (al Qaeda and others) against American and western targets in the 1990's and the actions taken by Khomeinists (Iran and Hezbollah) since the early 1980's preceded America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq two decades later. Popular and media reactions to the 9/11 attacks in the United States revealed a dramatic reality. The public - let alone the Government did not know that the jihadists have been at war with America and other democracies for many years before the Twin Towers attacks.
During the summer of 2004, the 9/11 Commissions asked the tragic question repeatedly: "How come we were at war for years before the attacks and we did not know it? How come the U.S. government - multiple administrations - did not know it, nor did it inform the people and take action?" The Commission's hard question was warranted as al Qaeda declared war against the United States, "the infidels, Crusaders and the Jews" at least twice during the 1990's in tandem with terror attacks in 1993, 1998, and 2000. The other major question that sprung from the Commission's long and painful hearings was: How come Americans and other democracies did not know about the jihadi wars being waged for decades? These two grand lines of inquiry puzzled many citizens since 2001 as they realized that there was indeed a war waged by Jihadists and that for too long the public and most of its representatives did not realize it was happening. As a result, two types of literature expanded in the United States, and later in Europe and the West. One set of books, articles, and panels insists that terrorism is waged by segments of Arab Muslim societies frustrated with Western policies in general and U.S. foreign policy in particular (e.g., economic disenfranchisement and in some cases racism). The second type of literature links the violence performed by the terrorists directly to Islamic theology. The wedge between the two explanations was wide and has grown larger. Both literatures, though, failed to see or explain the jihadi threat as a movement with global strategies, tactics, and rational steps.
In 1979, fourteen years before Professor Samuel Huntington published his famous article (turned into a book in 1996) "The Clash of Civilizations" in Foreign Affairs (1993), I published my first book al taadudiya (Pluralism) with a second volume dedicated to the analysis of the "relationship between Civilizations," focusing in some chapters on the worldwide ramifications of historical jihad. During the 1980's I published more books and articles projecting the rise of jihadism and arguing that its ideologues were camouflaging its strategic intentions. Unluckily, perhaps, the body of my work was mainly in Arabic and went unnoticed in the West, as probably was the case with similar intellectual efforts during the Cold War. During the 1990's, this time from the United States to where I relocated, I published a few pieces, testified to and briefed Congress and nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) about the rising and forthcoming threat of jihadi terror. My warnings - as were those of other intellectuals and journalists in this field - were not heeded. Most of the arguments and points I made long before the official start of the "War on Terror", but they had not impacted the debate, let alone the decision making process back then. In my later findings I established that one major reason why neither the American public was aware of basic realities in the region nor the U.S. government was acting to counter the rising threat was a full fledged campaign waged by the jihadi forces, both financial and militant, to disable American and western abilities from perceiving, understanding and eventually countering the expanding menace. In short, what allowed the jihadist campaign to strike surprisingly at Western interest provoking incoherent debates about the so-called war on terror was in fact a "War of Ideas" unleashed by the very ideological forces standing behind the jihadi militant networks and regimes. Not only were the United States and the West targeted by a jihadi war since the 1980's (Khomeinsts) and the 1990's (Salafists), but more importantly, democracies were submitted to a War of Ideas since the 1970's at the hands of a bloc of regimes and ideological circles, whose main characteristics were and continue to be sympathizing with the jihadist ideologies and practicing authoritarianism domestically.
In 2005 I wrote my first post 9/11 book, Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West, outlining what I established as past and future strategies by the global jihadist movements. In 2007 I wrote another book titled The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracies in which I demonstrated how jihadi forces were able to win their first and second Wars of Ideas against liberal opponents. Last, I followed up with a third book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad, suggesting how to defeat their totalitarian ideologies and support democratic forces in the Arab and Muslim world. This chapter is an additional contribution to the discussion as to the conditions for success against radicalization. One major condition for advancement in the confrontation is for the public of liberal democracies to understand the actual equation and the essence of the so-called War of Ideas. Indeed, eight years after 9/11 and after successive attempts by the U.S. government, by most European institutions, and by NGOs on both sides of the Atlantic, the definition of this War of Ideas is still unclear, and in many cases utterly wrong.
To most architects of the Western War of Ideas waged as of 2004, the issue has been one of public relations and "American image abroad." The U.S. government's various agencies in foreign policy and defense have invested significant time and funds to develop what they deemed "strategic communications" aimed at "swaying the hearts and minds" of Arabs and Muslims. More recent efforts in the United States and Europe focused on what they coined "counter radicalization" efforts. But the essence of both Campaigns was still short of determining the actual threat in the War of Ideas: it is the ideology that produces radicalization and thus the swaying of opinions. Therefore, I have been arguing, and continue to do so, that first we need to identify the "ideology" and what constitutes a threat within the components of this ideology. Then, we must understand the strategies used by the doctrinaires and followers of this ideology across its various streams and branches, before we design the counter-strategies. Historically, the campaigns by jihadi forces to win their own battle inside the Arab and Muslim world before taking it to the West and beyond can be categorized into three "Wars of Ideas"
The First War of Ideas (1950's-1990's)
A historical observation of systematic efforts on behalf on Islamist regimes and networked to spread their ideology shows that while their attempts to expand began with their rise in the 1920's, their strategic expansion took place during the latest parts of the Cold War. The Wahhabis, not very influential in their first stages, concentrated on rooting their doctrine inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia until oil revenues allowed them to begin the process of ideological export in the mid 1950's. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the late 1920's also attempted to spread across the region with little success. The penetration by the Ikhwan of Arab societies was slow and suppressed by authoritarian regimes. Taking advantage of the East-West confrontation fro decades, global Salafists (Wahabbis, Ikhwan, and others) focused on expanding Islamist ideology inside the Arab and Muslim world. I term these efforts as the first War of Ideas engaged by the Islamists within their own societies while the West and the Soviets were waging their mutual ideological and propaganda wars at each other. In a sense, the first War of Ideas launched by the world's jihadists - first the Salafists and followed later by the Khomeinists - profited from the capitalist - Marxist clash of ideas to score advances within Muslim societies and assert the slogan often chanted "la sharqiya, la gharbiya, umma wahda Islamiya" (No East, No West, one and unique Islamic Umma). It took the Salafists and the Khomeinists the bulk of the twentieth to organize their movements and rise to influence. Sheikh Yussuf Qardawi, leading ideologue of the modern jihadist movement and top commentator on al Jazeera for more than a decade, often asserted that "Islamist awareness" was moving forward and upwards after the collapse of the Caliphate, taking advantage of the titanic clashes taking place within the infidel world (kuffar), first during World War II and then during the long Cold War. In his estimate, the spread of the Islamist ideology - at the expense of its liberal and secular competitors - was possible partly because the powers on the same side were destroying each other: fascists versus Allies then democracies versus Communists. Khomeinism had a similar assessment of the success. Ideologues such as Sheik Hassan Fadlallah, an ideological mentor of Hezbollah, often theorized that the Islamist forces were able to surge dramatically in the Muslim and Arab world because of the failure of the West to attract youth and the public to "progressive and liberal ideals."
But this global ideology of Islamism-jihadism, emerging between the two postwar giants, had its own rivalries and difficulties. Sunni-backed Salafism and Shia-rooted Khomeinism were at odds on doctrinal, theological and political levels. Wahabbis and Ikhwan framed Iran's Islamism as "unorthodox". The mullahs in turn accused the Sunni Islamists of reinstating the oppressive Muawiya Caliphate at the expense of the Shia. Jihadism's two branches did not rise to merge; that is a firm finding. But both trees developed common grounds, even though not in coordination: the culture of jihadism against all infidels, liberal and progressive Muslims, the West, Communism, Israel, India, Russia, as well as against any polytheist Asian and African cultures. Global Jihadism had more in common against the rest of humanity than differences within the ranks of the jihadists. Hence the ideological efforts by the Wahhabis, Ikhwan, Deobandis (branches of Salafism), and the Khomeinists converged into the creation of the vastest pool of indoctrinated jihadists in modern times. The radicalization within Muslim societies and its Diaspora that the international society began to discover and worry about as of 9/11 began decades ago at the hands of a long-range, patient, and relentless double network of Islamist -jihadists, backed by significant financial resources made available by oil revenues. The first War of Ideas was essentially ideological and educational. The jihadist networks concentrated most of their efforts on widening the pool of indoctrinated youth via madrassas, mosques, Hawzas, orphanage, hospitals, state propaganda, and religious policies, in addition to political movements.
The forces of radicalization differed in their strategies on confrontation with the foe. The Salafists designated Communism as their main enemy, relegating Western capitalism to the position of future enemy. Hence Wahabis and Ikhwan escalated the fight against the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes and parties, culminating in the clash in Afghanistan after 1979. For that purpose the Salafi web accepted a tactical alliance with the United States and the West to achieve the immediate goal. This attitude was explained - wrongly by western apologists - as a real long term alliance the Islamists against the Marxists. The price of such an interpretation was for America and its allies to abandon liberals, human rights activists, and minorities to the advantage of the Islamists. This abandonment was the first strategic failure of the United States to predict the future: scrambling after 9/11 to find moderates is really too late after decades of laissez-faire. However, there was another reason for this abandonment of democratic forces in the region. Indeed, the 1973 oil shock sent a strong message to Western industrialized democracies: hands off domestic affairs of the region's regimes, which also translated in forbidding the free world from assisting liberal causes under authoritarian regimes as was the case with the Kurds, Berbers, Southern Sudanese, dissidents, Arab democrats and so on. On their part, the Iranian jihadists condemned both "infidel powers" equally. Ayatollah Khomeini blasted the USSR and the United States simultaneously as "Satan" but his regime and its ally Hezbollah targeted America intensely. The slogan al mawt li amreeka (Death to America) was shouted twenty two years before the planes of the al Qaeda blasted the Twin Towers. In short, Western concessions to the Islamists during the Cold War allowed the later to expand their ideology geometrically and irreversibly.
The Second War of Ideas (1990-2001)
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the rapid democratization of central and Eastern Europe, the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the crumbling of the last militarist regimes in Latin America and with the signal sent by the Tiananmen Square protest, the earthquake produced by the explosion of democratic revolutions at he end of the Cold War shifted priorities for the global jihadist web. On the one hand, the examples of huge marches in the streets of downtowns formerly ruled by secret polices were too menacing for sister regimes in the Arab and Muslim world. Khomeinists, Wahabbis, Baathists, and other dictatorships in the region felt compelled to preempt potential democratic copycats in their own midst, costing power and wealth of the ruling elites. On the other hand, the Islamist networks, particularly those turned violent jihadists during the war in Afghanistan, realized their calling to replace the discredited authoritarian establishment in the Arab Muslim world. Hence a convergence of strategic interests came to life between traditional Islamists in power and surging Jihadists across the region. The new direction of the global wed targeted the West and its liberal democracies, but each stream had a different interest. The Wahabbis and other Islamists in power in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Sudan and other countries, the Iranian regime and the vast network of Muslim Brotherhoods with branches within Europe, North America poured sizeable funds, diplomatic influence, media and cadres into the most powerful battle of ideas in modern history. Their aim was to block the rise of awareness in the West regarding the necessity of backing the spread of democracy in the Greater Middle East and beyond. The main thrust of the second War of Ideas took place mostly in Europe's western democracies, the United States, Canada, and within other democracies. It was embodied by an immense investment of hundreds of millions of petro dollars in the educational, media, and intellectual institutions in the West specializing in foreign policy, national security, and other related academic fields. The goal was to delay the rise of a consciousness vis a vis the rise of jihadi ideologies and the severe problem of human rights in the region. After the West intervened on three continents to "back democracy," towards the end of the Cold War, many of the Muslim World's regimes feared a similar repeat in their countries. The best strategy employed by the elites was to take refuge under "religious legitimacy," and the best defense of this legitimacy was to create a barrage within the West obstructing any criticism of jihadism and its derivatives.
Accordingly, the chain of financial and lobbying moves in most influential liberal democracies was very successful. The petro dollar regimes, forming a consortium closer to cultural imperialism, targeted departments of Middle East studies, international relations, history and other political entities on American, European, and other Western campuses seizing control of setting the curriculum, determining the issues to research and teach and in many cases selecting the instructors and scholars. Oil funding practically eliminated the study of human rights, democratization, minorities, feminism, and jihadist ideologies from Western academia. Graduates of corrupted Middle East studies and its related fields populated the realms of the Foreign Service, mainstream media, and teaching. The 1990's witnessed the eradication of Western capacity to produce an independent knowledge of the region's multiple dramas and threats. The Second War of Ideas, mostly via soft power, subverted national security expertise in America and other democracies and took out its ability of lending support to civil societies south and east of the Mediterranean. While NATO intervened twice in Yugoslavia and the United States exclusively in Panama and Haiti, and East Timor was miraculously saved, the oppressed peoples of Southern Sudan and Lebanon, as well as ethnic communities in jeopardy such as in Darfur, the Kurds, the Berbers of North Africa, and many more were left to their fates. Women were abandoned to gender apartheid in Afghanistan and Iran and students and intellectuals were facing suppression across the region with little interest in Western capitals. The reason behind this general abandonment of the underdogs in the Arab and Muslim world was none other than the victories scored by authoritarian petro powers in America and Europe. Since the only "Middle East conflict" recognized by the public debate in the international arena was the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, all other "tragedies" were dismissed at interference in the region's affairs. Equally lethal to international investigation into the region's ideological debate was the more dangerous dismissal by petro lobbying of the nature of jihadism. The latter was framed as a spiritual enterprise, a theological question, and in best conditions, a mere reaction to U.S. policy and past European colonialism. The western public was deprived of a scientific - even - basic understanding of the jihadi doctrines, movements, and aims. The most efficient success of the second War of Ideas was to take out Western abilities to see the strategic expansion of the ideology at the roots of many terrorist movements and regimes.
Any investigation of either the mass human rights abused of the peoples inside the realm of the "Muslim world" or the nature of jihadism was met by a campaign of demonization and guilt imposition via concepts such as "Islamophobia," "Zionism", or "legacy of colonialism". The push by the petro regimes and their supporters during the 1990's was the shield under which pools of radicalization continued to grow in the East and public opinion was neutralized in the West. However, there were other, even more lethal, consequences of the second War of Ideas. The more radical jihadists, including al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Salafists, and Hezbollah found the most fertile grounds in their own recruitment not only in the region but also within the West. The short ten years separating the end of the Cold war from the War on Terror were very dense in ideological warfare waged by the global jihadist web. But the latter has morphed into three large creatures, two of Salafi nature and one Khomeinist. The classical Salafi mainstream continued to include the Wahabbis, Muslim Brotherhood, and the Deobandis. Their strategy was to resume the thrust of the first War of Idea into the post-Soviet era. Their efforts doubled inside the Muslim world, creating more media networks such as al Jazeera and expanding the madrassas, and also accelerated throughout the West by widening the funding of Middle East studies and backing the apologist lobbies. The essence of this group's war plans was to delay western awareness of the ideological threat while seizing the political culture in the regions as a permanent fact. However, the classical Salafists had no intentions on clashing openly and violently with liberal democracies, but on taking it from the inside, or at least paralyzing its counter-action for a long as needed until the war was won by ideological penetration. But the second generation of Salafists, led by the rise of al Qaeda, broke away from the stealth War managed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabbis. Bin Laden and his ilk shattered the camouflage by issuing two major declarations of jihad in 1996 and 1998 and by disseminating the corresponding fatwas throughout the radicalized pools. Al Qaeda's priority in the 1990's and beyond was to recruit for the military war and engage in it, not to expand jihadism silently among followers within the West. Hence 9/11 the changed the equation.
The Third War of Ideas (2001-2009)
By striking hard and at the heart of American society, al Qaeda shattered the "silent strategies" of the classical Salafists. The U.S. public rose to question the existence of a threat and thus demanded to know who that "enemy" is and what it wanted? Hence the debate about the existence of a foe was wide open in America leading to a debate about what to do about it. The Western War of Ideas began as a result of the shock of 9/11 but that war was not really won in eight years. Across the Atlantic the jihadists shook off the European public opinions by striking in Madrid and London and rising in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. The third War of Ideas was in fact triggered by sensational jihadi actions in the West prompting two schools to clash: on the one hand, scholars claiming U.S. foreign policy is the trigger of terrorism. Gradually, more citizens were convinced that there was a threat coming from the Arab and Muslim worlds that they did not know enough about but there was a debate about its nature. Some literature focused mostly on the idea of the Islamic religion attempting to link violence to theology. Other research determined that the issue had more to do with ideology rather than strict religion. That is the debate inside the West. But the most dramatic dynamics of this third War of Ideas was the explosion of dissidence inside the Arab and Muslim world. Gradually since 2001 and increasingly since the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, counter-jihadi forces and democracy voices expanded. Profiting from western debates, seizing opportunities on the battlefield to organize their own democratic agenda, and maximizing the use of alternative media such as Internet chat rooms and blogging, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim dissidents and human rights activists shattered their side of the wall by bringing the story of oppression to the international arena. Former slaves from Sudan, ex-political prisoners, reformists, opposition leaders, exiles and other figures from democracy activism in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other parts of the region entered the discussion as to the battle of ideas. The issue was not reduced to being "Extremist" in the Arab and Muslim world or not; it became about being active in the struggle for democracy or being against it. Unlike its two predecessors, the Third War of Ideas widened in multiple directions:
First, by mean of a campaign by the classical jihadi powers (backed by oil producing regimes) to suppress two narratives in the West - one that jihadism is behind terrorism, and the second that democratic dissidence in the Middle East is the response to radicalization. Wahabbi and Khoeminist funding and influence have been fiercely attempting to counter the rise of consciousness about these two issues in liberal democracies. One of the main tools used by classical jihadi lobbying is the so called charge of "Islamophobia". Any investigation of Islamism - even as an ideology - is being met by attacks accusing the counter-jihadists and the democracy dissidents as anti-Islamic.
Second, a campaign by the international jihadists, al Qaeda, and its nebulous allies to further mobilize the body of militants into terror: This campaign runs parallel to the classical jihadi efforts to block the debate about jihadism. Hence, the combat jihadis are profiting from the shield provided by their competitors. In this third War of Idea, al Qaeda and Hezbollah recruit and radicalize using a lethal ideology, while the Wahabbis, Muslim Brotherhood, and the Iranian Khomeinists secure the protection of this ideology.
Third, western governments have been deploying efforts to de-radicalize the jihadists "after" they have been indoctrinated, which presents tremendous difficulties. The results have been meager and rarely show success, for short of responding to the ideological claims and delegitimizing them, western efforts are useless and costly.
Fourth, counter-jihadist NGOs and intellectuals in the West are attempting to awaken their own societies regarding the mounting threat. They hope to provoke a mass awareness of the menace leading to strategic measures. But the community of experts, commentators, and activists is divided as to the arguments and strategies. While some narrow their focus on theological debates, others concentrate on single issues. No global strategies in the War of Ideas have been duly set up.
Finally, democratic dissidents have continued to be active, but as for the counter-jihadi community, it is very divided and often focused on particular local causes.
The State of the War of Ideas 2009-
Under the Bush administration, the War of Ideas witnessed mutations and changes. While discourse at the level of the president, his main spokespersons and Congressional leaders from both parties regarding jihadism and democracy was moving in the direction of encouraging pluralism and isolating radicalism, the trickling down within the bureaucracy was not followed through. While the directives from the top levels aimed at encouraging an intellectual confrontation with the jihadist ideology and backing the pro-democracy forces, the body of experts tasked with the mission acted against the aforementioned goals leading to the collapse of U.S. backed efforts. Most projects, including media production, funded by the American taxpayer deviated from their original aim by pressure groups sympathetic to either Salafi or Khomeinist lobbies. Eight years after 9/11, government expertise in the domain of strategic communications was unable to define the ideology behind the threat and in many cases framed it as a socio-economical or political reaction to U.S. policy, not a sui generis doctrinal construct. The Bush administration's push to wage a campaign against the radicals was not followed by its own bureaucracy. Across the layers of the executive branch and agencies, including defense, intelligence, homeland security, and diplomacy, a compromised expertise halted the process of support to democracy forces, blocked public intellectual awareness of the jihadi threat, and moved to partner with Islamist movements at the expense of Muslim democrats. But the Bush administration's declarations in support of democracy in the region encouraged many NGOs, dissidents, and democracy activists to become bolder and engage in their own struggle on the frontlines against terror and extremism. Even if the Third War of Ideas from 2001 to 2009 did not produce strategic successes due to the influence of the oil producing regimes and their influence inside the West, the most successful results were ironically achieved by non supported segments of Middle East societies. In Lebanon, the Cedar Revolution took advantage of Franco-American pressure to engage in a democracy uprising. In Iran, the Green Movement, against all expectations in Western chanceries, showed tremendous popular representation particularly among youth and women in 2009. In Sudan, the Darfur human rights activist pushed for the cause of genocide to be heard. Iraq's democratic parties, although coming second after the traditional parties in elections (in 2010 elections they actually scored the highest numbers), rose again. In Afghanistan, women made strident advances in political integration. Minorities across the region became louder in their quest for cultural rights as the Berbers, Kurds, Assyrian-Chaldeans, and Liberals at large from the Peninsula to the Maghreb organized. The War of Ideas waged by the U.S. government was stymied by the combined efforts of international jihadi lobbies and hostile bureaucratic circles within the administration. But oddly the "freed" civil society forces in the region moved up and consolidated their gains.
In response to the rise of democratic and human rights elements in the Greater Middle East, jihadists and militant Islamists in the region and the Diaspora reverted to deterrence against liberal democracies to preempt the most dangerous menace against terror ideologies: an alliance between progressive forces in international society and liberal forces in the Muslim world. Hence a multi-pronged strategy was developed by regimes affiliated with the OIC and OPEC (mainly Iran, the Wahabbis, Muslim Brotherhoods, Qatar, Syria, Sudan, etc.) to block the realization of the alliance between the West and democrats in the Muslim world. The gist of this campaign is to deter the United States and its allies from backing the liberal forces in the region under the charge of "unilateral intervention in the affairs of other countries" while simultaneously blocking the democracy forces in the Muslim world from reaching out to the international community under the accusation of "serving the interests of imperialism and colonialism." The ultimate objective of the authoritarian and jihadi forces it to preemptively break the alliance between the free world and the suppressed civil societies in the region.
Inside the Arab and Muslim Diaspora in the West, the jihadists - both Salafists and Khomeinists - have been winning the battle of political socialization, simply because governments have been seeking the expert advice of an academia sympathetic to the Islamists. Both in Europe and in North America, jihadophiles do not exceed 12 percent of the communities but they control the "microphone" and relationship with authorities. Hence the representation of the silent majority is hijacked by the radicals. While the counter-jihadists, progressives, liberals, and human rights activists reach around 15 percent, their outreach to the majority is limited because of the failed policies of western governments, themselves relying heavily on an expertise compromised by the jihadi financial power.
With the Obama administration taking over, chances for going either direction are equal. The first African American presidency should be inclined to assist minorities in jeopardy worldwide and particularly in the Arab world. In principle, an Obama presidency cannot avoid coming to the rescue of Darfur, Mauritania's slaves, Algeria's Berbers, as well as assist the Kurds, the Lebanese, women, students, and other suppressed segments of Middle Eastern societies. But the Obama administration's engagement in dialogue with the Iranian and Syrian regimes and potentially with the Taliban and other jihadists can have significant consequences on the state of democracy forces in the region. In addition, the adoption of a lexicon by the U.S. and European bureaucracies calling for a ban on the use of terms indicting the jihadists will also strengthen the influence of the radicals instead of curbing their appeal. The next few years will better show in which direction the U.S. government and the West will go in terms of the War of Ideas. Most evidence indicated that the authorities will withdraw from this ideological confrontation, leaving the arena to the jihadi lobbies. But there is evidence that democracy forces in the region, even if abandoned by the west, will continue to struggle in their own War of Ideas against the jihadists and authoritarians.
Conclusion
If the U.S. government (both the administration and Congress) would change course from engagement with the authoritarian regimes to engagement with civil societies, and if other liberal democracies would come together in shaping a joint strategy of confronting radicals by allying themselves with the democrats in the Greater Middle East, I would make the following policy recommendations to win the third War of Ideas.
First, identify the counter-jihadi and liberal activists and intellectuals within the Muslim, Arab and Middle Eastern communities in the West and empower them so that they can present an alternative to their communities in the battle of ideas and let the debate take place naturally. If given equal opportunities, the democratic will win these debates.
Second, identify the progressive, liberal and democratic forces as well as human rights activists in the Muslim and Arab world and across the Greater Middle East and extend enough help to enable them to engage in their own battle of arguments and ideas. The most powerful response to radicalization is democratization, not in terms of political progress only (election and vote) but in terms of political culture. When individuals choose democratic political culture, they opt for pluralism and the respect of human rights as recognized universally. And when they do so, they reject Salafism and Khomeinism and the latter's interpretation of conflicts and international relations.
Third, engage in mass public education and information of civil societies in the West and throughout liberal democracies about the threat of jihadism as an ideology and the challenge faced by the region's democrats. Without a full understanding of the confrontation by the public in the United States, Europe and other democracies, no international support can be sustained to win the War of Ideas.
Fourth, address the ideological roots of terror as a prelude to addressing its political grounds. One needs to remove jihadi terrorism from the equation to allow Palestinians and Israelis to reach peace, the Lebanese to reach security, and the Iranians, Syrians, Sudanese, and other societies achieve social peace.
But above all, regardless of where government policies will head and the choices to be made by leaders and politicians in the years to com, it is crucial to continue the debate and develop platforms for an ongoing discussion of the problem. The ideologically rooted threat cannot be dismissed as a side effect of politic as usual. It has and will continue to have a profound and dramatic effect on human history. The goal of any War of Ideas must be to advance freedom and equality as solid for stability and peace.
Professor Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an advisor to the Counter Terrorism Caucus of the US House of Representatives. He is the author of the The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy
