The myth of confrontation between the West and Islam

The murderous attacks of 9/11 did not just lead to the start of the 'war on terrorism'. It also started - or perhaps it is better to say inflamed - a war between professors.

Over the last year, as the causes and meaning of the terrorist attacks were debated in the US, several of the leading experts on Islam and the Middle East were called to give their appraisals. These invitations became the occasion for an academic, often vitriolic, debate that had been carried out for some years to fan out into a more public domain.

Let's call the debate "The clash of civilizations vs the myth of confrontation". Both sides summon distinguished professors to their cause.

The 'clash' side argues that Islamic civilisation is on a violent collision course with the West. This can be seen, first, from the flow of arms from Asia to the Middle East, and second, from the incompatibility of Islam with some of the values most important to the West - especially respect of human rights, gender equality, democracy and pluralism. Nuanced versions of this position are given by scholars like Samuel Huntington, a Harvard political scientist, and Bernard Lewis, one of the most distinguished historians of the Middle East of the last 50 years.

The 'myth' side argues that it is mistaken to attribute anti-West sentiments in the Middle East and the Islamic world to Islam, as such. A religion of one billion people, who between them share half a dozen major languages, and who span several continents, living in cities (old and new), mountains, plains and deserts, is not likely to have one simple unequivocal meaning for its adherents. On the contrary, it shows the diversity of interpretation (on the status of women, criminal law, democracy and pluralism) that the other major religions, like Christianity, show.

But the 'clash' view is not only mistaken; it is dangerous - because it offers a mistaken diagnosis of a 'swamp' of resentment that facilitates recruitment to terrorist groups. On this side of the argument, we find such distinguished scholars as Edward Said, a secular Palestinian-American, Noam Chomsky, a radical critic of US foreign policy, and John Esposito, editor of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Contemporary Islamic World.

Where does the debate stand a year after 9/11? At first, it seemed as though the 'clash' side had been vindicated, but a year later, its intellectual position seems much weaker.

As the world debated 9/11, Muslims joined in. We had the occasion to see some nasty or wilfully blind Muslim views expressed; but the world, especially the US and Europe, also had one of its first opportunities to hear the views of liberal Muslims - views that often pass unnoticed in the Western media.

Faced with such a plurality of Muslim views, it has become increasingly very difficult to take at face-value terrorism or anti-Western sentiments expressed in the name of Islam. If there is such a wide range of views all claiming to be Muslim, then the nature of Islam itself cannot be the explanation.

A report for the World Economic Forum on the state of the Arab economies, published this week, again suggests that the 'swamp' breeding the terrorist groups might have more secular causes. Gross mismanagement and a growth reduction rate for the last 20 years have created a sense of 'no future' for populations that are set to double, on present trends, within the next 30 years.

A second report, of the (US) Congressional Research Service, appeared this week that puts into question the other major claim of the 'clash' side. The biggest purchasers of arms in the Middle East are Israel and Egypt, both US allies.

But the argument by Huntington that arms were generally flowing from Asia to the Middle East was always dubious. In 1993, the year he first made his famous 'clash of civilisations' argument, US government data showed that the US accounted for 61 per cent of all arms transferred to the Third World, with 75 per cent of that going to the Middle East.

Looking at the terrorist groups themselves, we often find that, like al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, they often grew initially with western support. Hamas, the Palestinian group that supports suicide bombings in Israel, originally received help from the Israeli government so that the PLO could be undermined. In several countries, 'fundamentalist' groups were funded in order to undermine radical groups (the 'communist threat'), some of them pro-democracy. So much has been admitted by people as diverse as President Ben Ali of Tunisia (in a 1994 interview with the FT) and former CIA chief James Schlesinger (in a 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs).

On the first anniversary of 9/11, it is important to reaffirm that terrorism in all its forms ought to be fought with all legitimate means. But it is also worth repeating what Noam Chomsky wrote in an article this week: if the swamp is not drained, the mosquitoes won't go away.