Radical Islam and the West: It’s Time to Give Women a Chance to Lead and Make Peace
The San Bernardino terrorist attack makes this a good time for us to stop and think about the way America and the West have been dealing with radical Islam for the past several decades. Reflection suggests it’s time for a sharp change of course. We need to give women on both sides of the conflict a chance to lead and make peace.
To begin, though, we need to be clear: the terminology that everyone is so sensitive about doesn’t really matter here. Whether you call it “radical Islam,” as Senator Marco Rubio does, or “jihadism,” as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does, it comes to the same thing. Today, many people like the San Bernardino killers think that they’re entirely justified in killing innocent people because of their superior ideology. It is futile to dismiss this deep ideological problem by saying they’re just “criminals.” We can call their terrorism criminal if we want, but that means we’re completely missing the point that ultimately we have no choice but to defeat the ideology that supposedly justifies it. [1] “Radical Islam” as used here is a theological view that justifies killing anyone, including innocent noncombatants, who opposes the spread of Islam or its domination of those subject to its idea of religious law. Many people–especially young people–espouse it. It may well be a perversion of Islamic thought, but it’s what we need to address.
How has the conflict between radical Islam and the West been going? The answer is pretty easy to find if we’re realistic with ourselves: we’ve spent trillions of dollars to fight Islamic terrorism and its allies, lost thousands of lives and permanently shattered thousands of others, and gained almost no real ground. If we had, we wouldn’t be facing ISIS today. But the news for the Islamic radicals is no better: although they’ve forced us out of a couple of countries, they’ve done nothing that wouldn’t have happened anyway, because the West has at least in theory given up being colonial occupiers. So what should the West do now? I recommend that we put women—on both sides—in charge of peace talks. Men on both sides have had their chance, and they’ve failed.
Men have been running the conflict between Islam and the West for the past several decades (ok, forever). Their conflict model is strictly military–use violence to crush opponents. What are the limits of that model? You can take territory with it–but you cannot win hearts and minds with it. That’s what the lives of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King prove. American Founder John Adams thought that the same thing was true about the American Revolution. Adams believed that the Revolution did not begin with (or even consist of) America’s war against Great Britain. Instead, he wrote, it “was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people…” What this shows us is that even if the West takes territory in today’s war, we will lose it again. Civilian populations that hate westerners will aid terrorists. The West’s citizens are simply unwilling to support or pay for the only alternative that can hold territory in that situation–large, expensive permanent military garrisons to impose a form of long-term colonial rule over Islamic countries whose citizens hate us. So the military model for this conflict has no real future, because it is demonstrably losing—not winning—hearts and minds.[2] This is realism, not defeatism. And that’s where women come in.
The war between radical Islam and the west is doubtless sometimes a geopolitical or natural resources conflict—Afghans want to run Afghanistan (and drug traffic), everyone wants to own oil resources, etc. But just as was true in the Cold War, it seems clear that an important part of today’s conflict is ideological—fundamental political, religious, and moral principles are at stake. And just as was true in the Cold War, that is where the most important fight is today. And it is a fight the West can win, if it puts women in charge. Need I say it? Radical Islam’s brutal, repressive, and utterly deplorable treatment of women is its Achilles’ heel. How can it survive a challenge that requires it to treat its women as equals by making them peace negotiators without making peace in a way that gives Islamic women rights that women in the West today often take for granted but that Islamic women are told by their extremist male leaders they will never receive? The resulting permanent alteration of Islamic societies should lay the groundwork for an end to radical Islam.
In theory, women in the West are supposed to be equals with men in every way. This means that they should be equally capable of finding ways to make peace, using a non-military model to win hearts and minds. NATO can consult with its members and appoint a peace delegation led by women–and it can challenge Islamic countries to do the same. I personally doubt that it’s a challenge they’ll take, but we’ll never know unless we put women in charge of the West’s efforts. If we’re trying to find the basis for a lasting peace, it has to be in the hearts and minds of people who mostly see us as enemies today–and this is where women are far better equipped than, let’s face it, the guys’ club that has been running this conflict for decades. Almost to a man, they have no real comprehension of the political and religious culture they’re opposing, or any real ideological strategy to combat it except spreading “democracy,” which means far too many different things to many different people to be useful. If we put women in charge, and the Islamic radicals and their allies won’t, the West can then best spend its resources making sure that every Islamic woman knows they refused. That will be a good place to start the next round of the cold war we are now fighting and losing.
[1] On terminology, see the thoughtful column by Ramesh Ponnuru, December 2, 2015, in http://www.thestate.com/opinion/op-ed/article47629395.html.
[2] For a former ISIS prisoner’s view that hearts and minds are the key issue, see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nicolas-henin-the-man-who-was-held-captive-by-isis-for-10-months-says-how-they-can-be-defeated-a6757336.html.
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