The Muslim World After 911 - Prepared for the United States Air Force

Events since September 11, 2001 have dramatically altered the political environment
in the Muslim world, a vast and diverse region comprising the band of countries with
significant Muslim populations that stretches from West Africa to the southern
Philippines, as well as Muslim communities and diasporas scattered throughout the
world. In the Muslim world, as in others, religion, politics, and culture are inter-
twined in complicated ways. The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamics
that are driving changes in the religio-political landscape of the Muslim world. Our
goal is to provide policymakers and the broader academic and policy community
with a general overview of events and trends in the Muslim world that are most likely
to affect U.S. interests and security.
First, we develop a typology of ideological tendencies or orientations in the
various regions of the Muslim world. The world’s Muslims differ substantially not
only in their religious views but also in their political and social orientation, includ-
ing their conceptions of government, law, and human rights; their social agenda (in
particular, women’s rights and the content of education); and their propensity for
violence. The defining characteristics of the main tendencies in Islam are summarized
in a typology that we apply on a region-by-region basis. This methodology allows for
a more precise classification of groups and for comparisons across regions and allows
us to identify in a systematic way the sectors with which the United States and its
allies can find common ground to promote democracy and stability and counter the
influence of extremist and violent groups.
Having begun to lay the foundations for what could be called a “religio-political
map,” we explore the main cleavages in the Muslim world, primarily those between
the Sunni and Shi’a branches of Islam and between the Arab and the non-Arab Mus-
lim worlds and those deriving from membership in subnational communities, tribes,
and clans.
The majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, but a significant minority,
about 15 percent of the global Muslim population, are Shi’ites. Shi’ites are the
dominant group in Iran, and they form a politically excluded majority in Iraq (until the fall of Saddam), Bahrain, and possibly also in the eastern province of Saudi Ara-
bia, where the dominant Wahhabi ideology stigmatizes them as “polytheists.”
The expectations of Iraqi Shi’ites for a greater say in the governance of their
country presents an opportunity for the United States to align its policy with Shi’ite
aspirations for greater freedom of religious and political expression, in Iraq and else-
where. If this alignment can be brought about, it could be a powerful barrier to radi-
cal Iranian influence and a foundation for a stable U.S. position in the region. Of
course, this alignment would not come about easily. A reversal of the U.S. commit-
ment to de-Ba’athification in Iraq or a U.S. policy that is perceived as pro-Sunni
would erode trust in the U.S. commitment to democracy and drive otherwise moder-
ate Shi’ites into the arms of Iran.
The second major cleavage is between the Arab and the non-Arab worlds. Arabs
constitute only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims, yet interpretations of Islam,
political and otherwise, are often filtered through an Arab lens. A great deal of the
discourse on Muslim issues and grievances is actually discourse on Arab issues and
grievances. For reasons that have more to do with historical and cultural develop-
ment than religion, the Arab world exhibits a higher incidence of economic, social,
and political disorders than other regions of the so-called developing world.
By contrast, the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world are politically more inclu-
sive, boast the majority of the democratic or partially democratic governments, and
are more secular in outlook. Although the Arab Middle East has long been regarded
(and certainly views itself) as the core of the Muslim world, the most innovative and
sophisticated contemporary work in Islam is being done on the “periphery”—in
countries such as Indonesia and in Muslim communities in the West, leading some
scholars to ask whether Islam’s center of gravity is now shifting to more dynamic re-
gions of the Muslim world.
Ethnic communities, tribes, and clans often constitute the principal basis of in-
dividual and group identity and the primary engine of political behavior. The failure
to fully understand tribal politics was one of the underlying causes of the catastrophic
U.S. involvement in the Somali conflict in the early 1990s. Ten years later, the U.S.
government still knows little about tribal dynamics in areas where U.S. forces are or
may be operating. As the United States pursues an activist policy in disturbed areas of
the world, it will be critical to understand and to learn to manage subnational and
tribal issues.
The third goal of this study is to examine the sources of Islamic radicalism. We
break these sources into three classes: conditions, processes, and catalytic events.
Conditions are factors that have a permanent, or quasi-permanent, character. They
are the result of processes, which are developments that occur over an extended pe-
riod of time and have a particular outcome. Catalytic events are major develop-
ments—wars or revolutions—that changed the political dynamics in a region or country in a fundamental way. Table S.1 gives examples of conditions, processes, and
catalytic events relevant to our study.
The condition that perhaps more than any other has shaped the political envi-
ronment of the Muslim world, and the Arab world in particular, is the widespread
failure of the postindependence political and economic models. Arguably, many of
the ills and pathologies that afflict many countries in this part of the world and that
generate much of the extremism we are concerned about derive from—and contrib-
ute to—economic and political failure. This situation leads to the concept of struc-
tural anti-Westernism (or anti-Americanism). This concept holds that that Muslim
anger has deep roots in the political and social structures of some Muslim countries
and that opposition to certain U.S. policies merely provides the content and oppor-
tunity for the expression of this anger. It differs fundamentally from the type of anti-
Americanism that may result from objections to specific U.S. policies in that it is not
amenable to amelioration through policy or public diplomacy means. The third con-
dition discussed is the decentralization of religious authority in Sunni Islam, which
makes it vulnerable to manipulation by extremists with scant religious credentials.
Processes include the Islamic resurgence experienced by much of the Muslim
world over the past three decades. Outside the Arab Middle East, Islamization has
involved the importation of Arab-origin ideology and religious and social prac-
tices—a phenomenon that we refer to as Arabization. This process has had a polar-
izing effect outside the Middle East, creating greater distance between Muslims who
have chosen to adopt elements of the Arab religious culture as a way of manifesting
greater piety and those Muslims who continue to adhere to local customs and relig-
ious practices.