The Future of Islam

John L. Esposito, Joanne J. Myers

http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/0254.html

Introduction

JOANNE MYERS: Good morning. I am Joanne Myers, Director of Public
Affairs Programs, and on behalf of the Carnegie Council I'd like to
thank you for joining us.

Today the discussion we are about to listen to is on the future of
Islam. This is also the title of the newest book from one of the
world's most respected scholars of this subject, John Esposito.

In The Future of Islam Professor Esposito, who teaches religion and
international affairs at Georgetown University, draws on a lifetime of
thought and research to provide a richly nuanced and revelatory
account of the fastest-growing religion in the world.

It wasn't so long ago that Islam—or Muslims, for that matter—were not
of particular interest to many in the West. But that was before the
tragic events of 9/11. In just a few short years, the egregious acts
committed by a group of extremists triggered immense interest in this
religion.

While today Islam is a topic which is widely discussed, it is still
poorly understood. Many Western officials and commentators see only
the extremism perpetuated by a radical few and often fail to see the
diversity that lies within the Muslim world. For example, for a long
time we tended to equate Islam with Arabs, when in fact they
constitute almost 23 percent of all Muslims.

In his book Professor Esposito is seeking to understand the struggle
for reform and addresses the issues we often think about. Among them
are whether Muslims have the ability to adapt to modern notions of
democracy, rule of law, gender equality, and human rights; or when he
investigates how representative and widespread Islam fundamentalism is
and ponders how serious the threat of global terrorism is.

The book also turns a mirror on the United States and Europe when he
ponders the salient issue of whether minority Muslim communities can
be loyal citizens in America and in Europe.

As recent decades have brought extraordinary changes in the Muslim
world, we are delighted that Professor Esposito is with us to share
his expertise as he explains this complex picture of Islam and its
diversity.

With this in mind, please join me in giving a very warm welcome to our
speaker as he shines a light on the issues that face Islam and, in
turn, will most assuredly affect us in the coming years. Thank you.
Remarks
JOHN ESPOSITO: Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here.

I want to thank you very much for the introduction. One reason I don't
like book tours is people saying things like, "Why did you write the
book?" and, "What's it about?" after you've written it and you've
moved on. In a strange kind of way, it summarized why it's there.

Let me begin by saying that this is a book that I intended to write,
and I was contracted to write by Oxford, before 9/11. The reality of
it was that when 9/11 came along, I had to put that on the back
burner.

Now, what I intended to write before 9/11 is very different from what
I now have written. Before 9/11, I was writing a book that was saying
at the dawn of the 21st century Muslims had become far more integrated
in the West; unlike when I got into the field, in the late 1960s and
1970s, Islam was not only invisible, it was the second or third
largest religion in the West. I also was talking about the
institutionalization of Islam and Muslims within America and Europe
and talking internationally about the possibilities for
democratization in the Middle East and the Muslim world—not naïve
about the nature of those governments and how difficult that would be,
but in terms of the potential, the movement that existed.

Well, everything changed when 9/11 came along, and Oxford asked me to
write a post-9/11 book. So I did Unholy War. Then my wife came up with
the idea of a Q&A on Islam, and I did that. Then this book came along.

It has been a very difficult book to write for a variety of reasons.
One is the context in which we live now. It's a very fluid context. I
was talking to a friend of mine who was at the National Security
Council with Jimmy Carter. His last comment to me as I got in the car
was, "I'm going to be retiring in a few years. Forty years ago when I
got into the field I would have never thought that the situation would
look worse rather than better."

Being from Brooklyn, I used to put it differently with my students. I
would always say that when I got into the field I would think about
all those poor bastards who were retiring who were Middle East experts
and what it felt like. I knew in my lifetime a lot of these situations
were going to get better, if not resolved. When you look today, where
are we?

It's also a very difficult time to write this kind of book because,
given the nature not only of events in the region but relations
between the Muslim world and the West, there is a real problem. It's a
very hot topic. It's a very polarized situation. We live, as I say to
my students, in a world of a battle of experts. So people are torn
between experts who have similar credentials, as it were, but take
very, very different positions, whether they're experts on Islam, the
Muslim world, experts on terrorism, or pseudo-experts on terrorism, of
which there are many; or when you're dealing with policymakers.

So you've got all of those factors coming into play.

What I try to do in this book is, in a sense, pull together and
summarize and then move forward with a lot of work that I have done in
the past. But it also is greatly enhanced by a project that I've been
involved with now for quite a few years.

But the reality of it is that one of the things that has really
enhanced my excitement for where we are and where we can go in terms
of thinking about policy is the Gallup World Poll and the influence I
think that that data has and will continue to have. That is becoming
associated with Gallup—I am a Gallup senior scientist—and their world
poll, which is being done every year now, supposedly for the next 100
years, which not only looks at most of the countries in the world in
terms of well-being, but within that at some 35 to 40 Muslim countries
from across the world. As a result, Dalia Mogahed at Gallup and I
wrote a book called Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims
Really Think, and there will be a PBS show called "Inside Islam" based
on the book.

What that allows us to do is to have access to the voices of Muslims.
In other words, in this battle of the experts, whether they're
policymakers or government or academic experts, they're always talking
about "them," and the "them" often are the extremists; or they talk
about "the street."

The reality of it is often, no matter how good the expert is, you can
only be in so many countries so many times and interface with so many
people. So when we want to know what do Muslims think about democracy
or is democracy possible, in addition to our theologizing and
politicizing, et cetera, one of the questions is: What do Muslims
actually believe? Or if we want to know Muslim attitudes toward
women's rights, what do men and women across the Muslim world want?

What we discovered with the Gallup data is that often the conventional
wisdom is stood on its head when we actually look at what majorities
of Muslims want. It often is different from what we expect and often
different from what their governments would like us to believe.

So a lot of this then comes together in the book. Part of what I've
tried to do in the book is to talk about what I see as the reality of
Islam and Muslims at this juncture in history on the ground, in terms
of the religion, the struggle for reform, if you will, the struggle
for the soul of Islam.

I also look at the question of the prospects for change—who are the
reformers in Islam? What are their ideas? I've professionally studied
all of the world's religions, but four in particular, Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism, and Zen Buddhism. The reality of it is that if you're
a historian of religion, all religions, whether they seem very
traditional, or even see themselves that way or not, change over time.
And certainly, as a Roman Catholic looking at Roman Catholicism in the
20th century and its movement to reform with Vatican II and then its
swing back, I'm much more aware of that kind of dynamic.

Sam Huntington once said that there was one religion that he wasn't
sure whether or not it could handle modernity, and it was Roman
Catholicism. This was way back when. There were many Roman Catholics
who felt that way, and under this Pope we still wonder about it. But
that's another story. We don't want to go there.

Abdurrahman Wahid, who passed away recently, he and I spoke in Japan
to a group of foreign ministry people off the record in a huge
ballroom. Most of the people who were coming, a lot of them, were
Japanese diplomats. They were all saying, "Are Islam and modernity
compatible?" We were answering the question. He was answering it from
within. I was answering it, as it were, from without.

It was blowing my mind. Finally, I just said, particularly to the
Japanese questioners, "You know, when I was a kid growing up in
Brooklyn, for Christmas when I got something that was made in Japan,
that meant it was inferior, I didn't want it. Now I'm a proud owner of
a Lexus." And then the light went on.

I still have people say, "Is Islam compatible with modernity? Is Islam
compatible with democracy? Can Muslims adapt to democracy?"

So part of what I wanted to do was to take a look and say: What's
going on in Islam today? Is reform afoot? What does that mean? On the
other hand, what are the counter-forces?

The other thing I wanted to look at was: What can we say about the
nature of extremism and where it seems to be going, and its impact,
not just on the West, but within Muslim societies, if you will, its
attraction and its impact?

And then, a final question: How about the relationship between, in the
future, the Muslim world and the West, and specifically the United
States; and would an agenda for change, the kind of agenda that, let's
say, Obama put out as a vision—what would one really need to do to
begin to mend those fences, build those bridges, et cetera, and move
forward?

I'm going to make a few observations and then I'd really rather go to
questions and answers, because I find that it works a lot better if
I'm answering people.

In terms of the situation of Muslims today, the diversity in the
Muslim world is extraordinary. It took The New York Times a long time
to pick up on it. If you go back and you look at The New York Times
ten or 15 years ago, every time they had a story on women and Islam
they had, it looked like, the same woman in Saudi Arabia. Since she's
covered, who would know? But whenever they wanted to talk about women,
it was always a woman in Saudi Arabia and the way she dressed. It
wasn't a woman in Malaysia. And it was about a woman who couldn't
drive a car, rather than in Malaysia where they drive motorcycles or
scooters or whatever—the diversity in the Muslim world.

That's what comes out also in our Gallup data. There's an enormous,
not just linguistic and cultural diversity, but diversity in terms of
Muslim attitudes. And it's much different than we expect.

For example, if you ask Americans, "What do you admire about Islam and
Muslims?" 57 percent say, "Nothing" or "I don't know," and almost 54
percent, on the other hand, consistently say, "I really don't know
much about Islam and I really should." And those percentages don't
change that much. In the last two years it's gotten maybe 2 or 3
percent better. That's something to think about.

On the other hand, most of us are convinced that they really have a
problem with us, not just the extremists. And so we even use phrases
like, "Why do they hate us?" and don't just apply it to the
extremists, but it's almost like we equate it with anti-Americanism
also, as if that means hatred of America rather than having a problem
with our foreign policy.

When we actually ask Muslims, "What do you admire about the West?"
they have lots of answers. They admire our rule of law; they admire
our freedoms, our democracy. They admire our work ethic, our
technology, our economic development—and, indeed, would like them.

When we actually talk and do a survey that represents the voices of a
billion Muslims, we find that majorities of Muslims want these things
for themselves. We find a minority of Muslims, whom we call the
political radicals or potential radicals—this is about 7 percent of
the world's Muslims—they're not people who engage in violence, but
they are people who think for one reason or another that 9/11 was
justified—but we find that potential radicals, even more than the
mainstream, believe that democracy is the way forward and better
relations with the West the way forward. But, unlike the mainstream,
they don't believe that will ever happen. Their cynicism is fed by the
belief that the United States and some European countries—not all;
they distinguish clearly between the United States and Britain under
Bush and Blair and European countries—their belief is that Western
powers operate with a double standard when it comes to issues of
democracy and human rights. The tendency not to promote democracy—what
Richard Haass when he was with the Bush Administration described as
"democratic exceptionalism," as America's history of its relations and
the promotion of democracy in the Middle East—and the tendency to talk
about human rights but to devalue Islam and Muslim lives, to feel that
was denigrating to them.

All of that is there. It's a much more complex picture.

When we talk about women's rights, the amazing thing is there are
significant problems in a number of Muslim countries when it comes to
women's issues and women's rights.

On the other hand, what gets hidden often is that in many Muslim
countries now women are not only in universities but women are doing
much better than men do.

That's not surprising. As you know, when a lot of schools went coed 20
or 30 years ago, I remember—I went to Holy Cross the year it went
coed—quietly what people did was skew the enrollment figures, because
if they simply went by testing, the number of women admitted would
have thrown the balance of the school off. Well, that's happening in a
number of universities overseas in terms of the excellence, whether
it's in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, a number of countries.

But interestingly, on the issue of women's rights, what we discovered,
which surprises people, is that majorities in the Muslim world of men
and women, although the figures are higher for women than for men,
majorities in most countries, including a country like Saudi Arabia,
believe that women should have equal rights, equal rights to
education, equal rights to jobs, equal rights to the most senior jobs
that exist.

The fact that they don't have it raises a lot of questions about the
nature of their government and also the nature of governments that we
support. But that's what we have to think about. And also the
continued issue of the hold of patriarchy within the society. But
because all of those things are true doesn't mean that significant
numbers within a country don't hold positions that we might not see as
existing there.

When it comes to the issue of reform within Muslim societies, let me
start with the obstacles. These obstacles are not simply restricted to
Islam itself. For example, if you look at the tension between
orthodoxy in terms of Judaism in Israel vis-à-vis Reform Judaism, you
will see some of this also existing, i.e., the power and strength of,
if you will, conservatism and ultra-conservatism in many societies,
reinforced by the authoritarian regimes, which then develop a
relationship with the conservative religious forces within their
society.

The hold of the conservative religious section, and their hold on the
training of the new generations of religious leaders, and then the
role that religious leaders obviously face in training the next
generation. It's your local imam, like your local rabbi or your local
priest or your local minister, certainly years ago if not today, that
often is the person who winds up really mediating what the religion is
about to the local community, which means also not just the kids, but
the kids when they grow up who become the fathers and mothers. That's
why, for example, in societies—I saw it in Roman Catholicism; you see
it in many religions—even when education takes off, where the first
generation that may go to college or university develops an
educational level that goes like this [indicating], often their
knowledge of their religion and tradition can stay here [indicating].
You don't get the same level of critical thinking and sophistication.
So you've got that need for curriculum reform in the seminaries and
the madrasahs, et cetera.

I'm not even getting into the issue here of extremist madrasahs. I'm
just talking about the conservatism of a tradition. It is part of the
reason why even within Roman Catholicism the attitude of many clergy
at the time of Vatican II was, "Who cares what these liberal
theologians think? We're their troops. As long as we control the local
churches and we control our universities and their curriculum, they're
not going to have any impact and we can silence them." So you have
those kinds of forces that are operating.

Then you have the problems that exist also that come from the fact
that reformers are caught basically between a rock and a hard place in
many countries, between authoritarian regimes on the one hand and
between a small but deadly group of extremists on the other, when it
comes to stepping forward and articulating, taking strong reform
positions.

I remember being interviewed by a reporter with a very, very famous
magazine. It was a little unfair, his question, because he was
faulting intellectuals in some Muslim societies for not speaking out
more. I wanted to say to him, "Easy for you to do. You report on those
countries sitting in Paris on your tail. You don't even want to go
into some of the countries. You don't realize that if somebody is a
really outspoken reformer what that means: either the regime will put
you in prison or somebody will try to assassinate you." I don't want
to exaggerate the situation too much.

And then, a fourth significant factor is in some countries the whole
need for economic and educational development in order for societies
to move forward and the development of strong civil societies. Well,
how do you develop a strong civil society if you have authoritarian
regimes?

And what do people who don't want to see democracy really promoted in
the Middle East say? "Well, you know, they're really not ready for
it"—I'm sure that's what King George, or whoever it was, said about
the Americans: "and it's going to be messy. Because they're not ready
for it, there's going to be a revolution and maybe a civil war"—gee,
those are familiar phrases—"so what we really have to do is promote
civil society."

But as one of my colleagues, John Entelis, who teaches at Fordham,
said years ago—we were on a panel—he looked at the audience and said,
"What authoritarian regime is going to promote a strong civil
society?"

So one of the things we see today is the kind of "fig leaf" democracy,
i.e., they had to have elections ten years ago. As soon as there was
minimal opposition, as soon as Ben Ali in Tunisia could not win by
99.91 percent of the vote and his vote plummeted to, I think, 94
percent in the next elections, they suddenly discovered the danger of
radicalism was really widespread, shut it down, or you look at
Mubarak.

But what do you do? I remember this at the World Economic Forum.
Democracy is in. So suddenly, we're in a big session with foreign
ministers, and representatives from Egypt and Jordan got up and in
effect said, "Civil society is the way to go. Let me tell you about my
country. We have burgeoning civil societies."

What they didn't mention was in Jordan they're called "royal civil
societies" by those who have problems with it, and in Egypt they're
called "government-regulated nongovernment organizations," a
contradiction in terms. But it looks like a broadening. Then you hold
elections, but you control the whole electoral process.

And then, the final issue is the relationship between the United
States and the Muslim world. This gets into a number of areas. I'd be
happy to tease this out in specifics.

But it does seem to me as if we have had an issue. The day after 9/11,
I received an email from a woman in Cairo. She is very well educated
both in Egypt and in the West. One of her areas is democracy. She's a
political scientist. She is the mother of four. She is also
Islamically oriented. She dresses like a Catholic nun, roughly
speaking, in terms of her outfit. If she were here, she wouldn't like
this phrase—she is a Muslim feminist. She's very strong on women's
rights and women's issues. And she's very critical at times of U.S.
foreign policy, but she's part of the legion that are.

She said, "This is terrible. I hope you and your family are okay. I
know you're going to go after bin Laden, as one would expect. But we
wonder whether this is the beginning or the end."

I had a good sense of what she said, but I wrote back and said, "What
do you mean by that?"

She wrote back: "Will this become an excuse for America to attempt to
redraw the map of the Middle East?"

Well, if you actually look at our post-9/11 policy, for many people in
the Muslim world that's what it looked like, and it looked like many
of the architects, who had drawn up a document called "New American
Century" almost a decade before, were out to do that, whether we agree
or not.

The net result was we saw anti-Americanism skyrocket. So we saw a
contradictory situation. On the one hand, we were engaging in a war
against global terrorism, and in the Muslim world this was being
perceived as a war against Islam and Muslims—and not just by "the
street."

I've spoke in Bahrain in a huge ballroom. I was supposed to speak
about American foreign policy. This was about a year and a half after
9/11. So I get up. The guy introduces me. He studied in America, got
his Ph.D. in Economics at a place like the University of North
Carolina. He says, "We have Professor Esposito to talk about America's
war against Islam and the Muslim world."

I thought, that's a great introduction. That frames the whole thing in
terms of the audience.

So at dinner after the event—and I was sitting at a table with very
prominent businesspeople, all of whom had studied in the States, and
they were all doing the requisite stuff, which is to talk about the
basketball teams—Duke and UNC, their alma maters—and expect that I
follow this and know what's going on—I finally said, "Why did you
frame it the way you did?"

He just looked at me and said, "Because that's the way we perceive
it." He wasn't anti-American.

I think if you look at Obama's inaugural speech, if you look at his
comments in Turkey when he was in Ankara, if you look at his comments
in Cairo, we see an Obama who is clearly aware of the realities today
and wants to mend the fences.

On the one hand, he distances himself from the legacy of Bush, which
in reality one can argue whether or not he really has thus far, but he
says he's going to. He talks about and acknowledges what we see in our
book, Who Speaks for Islam?, a book which I presented to him.

He distinguishes between extremist Islam and mainstream Muslims and
what they represent. He talks about diplomacy rather than military
intervention. He talks about moving away from unilateralism, more
towards partnership. All of that is put out there. He even shows
"sensitivity" when he says, in effect, "We're not out to occupy in
Iraq or Afghanistan," but also shows the smart sensitivity or insight
in talking about economic and educational development, et cetera. But
at the end of the day, those are all the important things that need to
be done.

The question is whether or not we live in a world in which that is
going to be done, i.e., whether or not, not only the practical
realities on the ground, but whether or not we will find that our
administration has not just the vision, but is willing to engage in
the kind of leadership that is necessary, and that means as part of
the leadership that you not only reach out to those who have an iron
fist, or a clenched fist as he talked about, and try to work with them
diplomatically, but it also means that you realize you have to deal
with those who have what I call an iron fist and a velvet glove—i.e.,
many of our authoritarian allies that we support—and come up with a
program that has both short- and long-term perceptions and
consequences.

And finally, whether or not one is willing to bite the bullet on—and
this will set off a discussion—on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
and whether or not we can have an American president who is willing to
be fully independent in the decisions that he makes on that conflict,
and is willing to really be outspoken and not be steamrolled by, for
example, Mr. Netanyahu in terms of what's going on today. Unless those
things happen, it's going nowhere.

Now I'll end with this. This is where the danger is. When President
Bush a second time talked about jump-starting—it happened twice, but
in his second term—when he talked about jump-starting Middle East
negotiations, as well as promoting democracy, all of which were fine,
one of the points I made then, and a lot of people made, was you don't
make that statement, given past history, unless you really know what
you have to do and you're going to do it. Among the reasons, why did I
say that?

In the first term of President Bush, Colin Powell called a meeting at
the State Department for American Arab and Muslim leaders. I was
invited to it because I run a center that's relevant to the area. I'm
neither Arab nor Muslim.

It was very interesting because at the last minute Powell's assistant
secretary had to chair it because, he said, Powell was on the phone
doing exactly what he was now communicating to these Arab and Muslim
leaders. Now let me characterize what happened at the meeting.

He began the meeting by looking at everybody and saying, "Now I know
that you're probably not going to want to believe this, but this is
true," and then in the middle of it he stopped and said the same
thing, and said it again at the end. Now, what was he talking about?

He said: "The Secretary of State recognizes that public diplomacy is
not just about public relations, it's about policy, one."

"Number two, the Secretary of State as we speak," he said, "is calling
Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat and telling each of them that, whatever
their perception and however one may believe that the other side is
more responsible, that they both have to acknowledge that they're both
part of the problem in order for them then both to be part of the
solution. And he's doing the same thing with regard to Pakistan and
India, et cetera."

At the end of the meeting, he again said to people: "So what that
really means is, on Palestine and Israel, despite the fact that you've
heard people say it before, we are going to be bolder in our
approach."

Now, when Obama set out his vision in his Cairo talk, for example, the
problem is he is repeating that kind of process. That's all okay, as
long as, if you're going to do that, you're going to then back it up
and deliver. The fact is, whatever the reasons and excuses one might
want to give, that hasn't happened.

I spoke at Tufts—and I'll end with this—in a meeting that had senior
military and others. When I talked about what I thought needed to be
done and how I didn't think any American president had done it and I
didn't have a sense that any American president might be willing to do
it given the cost, someone said to me: "Well, having said that, then
what?"

I said, "People will think it's naïve because of the way in which we
are willing to be conditioned by the politics of the past. What we
need is a president—we need Obama, on the issue like Palestine and
Israel and other issues related to the region, to say exactly what he
said on the economy, that he was going to do what he thought was best
and the American people would have an opportunity to pass their
judgment on it." I said, "That means politically that he will do his
best knowing that that could affect his reelection." I said, "Now,
that's a big sacrifice to make, but if you don't make it, then when
are you going to do it?"

I briefed very senior Democratic leaders, a member of Congress, staff.
Immediately, and in other circles also within the administration
itself, you have people now saying, "Well, how could you expect to
really get any traction on Palestine and Israel? Really, you can't
expect anything. Nothing's really going to be done about it until the
second term." Well, if you really believed that was the case, then you
should have said it up front. If you don't, there's a problem.

So what is the future? I don't know. I'm still cautiously optimistic.
But I think that, as far as I can see, unless this administration
responds more forcefully and dramatically on these issues, we're going
to have a problem.

One of the things I would ask you to do for a short list in terms of
the problems is when you get a chance rattle off quickly to yourself
five significant appointments in this administration in terms of
handling the Middle East and the Muslim world. When you do, take a
look at their background and history and see how many of them bring
new and fresh ideas and diversity.

Thank you.
Questions and Answers
QUESTION: You mentioned the Gallup Poll several times. How convinced
are you that the Gallup Poll really is accurate in representing the
various people?

JOHN ESPOSITO: I think that there are two criteria on this from my
point of view. One, I look at Gallup's history and reputation. I note
that it has, in terms of its methodology and its accuracy across the
board on a lot of the work that it does, Gallup has an incredible
record there.

If you go to the Gallup website, they have a Muslim Studies Center
where you will see the methodology.

This is a poll that occurred over a prolonged period of time. Most
people believed—I would have felt this way if they had asked me, and
they didn't—I wasn't in on the beginning—that you wouldn't have access
to many of these countries to be able to do what you want to do. They
did to the countries.

It's a poll that was done very systematically. First of all, you have
people who are local people, who were trained in the local languages.
Not only in the questions put together, but even the way in which the
questions are worded in the languages, are run by, first of all, two
experts on language and then a third that's an expert on how the
average person would understand things linguistically.

Then they go out, and the poll took place. If we had a map of the
country here, you would see spots all over the country. So that means
that they not only go to urban areas, they go to rural areas, they go
to remote areas. There's data on what that means. Some places it took
hours on foot to get to in certain kinds of countries. The interviews
are across educational levels, age levels, social class levels.

Within plus or minus 3 percent, that is a measure of accuracy. Where I
also see it confirmed is that when you actually look at subsequent
data by outfits like Pew—and Pew has extended this—on a lot of the
critical areas of topics, they wind up coming down.

But from my point of view it's the comprehensiveness, the systematic
approach, and I think that data has held up.

And certainly I would say this. It certainly is going to be as
informative as simply having groups of individuals who, however much
they travel throughout the region and however long they've been
operating, speak for the people of the region.

QUESTION: I wanted to draw you out on Muslim attitudes toward
martyrdom and blowing up airplanes or other terrorist acts and
becoming a martyr. Tom Friedman had a piece a few weeks ago with
regard to the father of this fellow who tried to blow up a plane in
Detroit. He made the point that this man knew this was going to be
murder and not martyrdom. He then said that he thought the change in
the Muslim world would come when more leaders, whether religious or
political leaders, would speak out very clearly and not endorse this
concept of martyrdom. I wonder if you could comment on what you see,
this dynamic. You were talking earlier about attitudes on women's
rights and democracy and so on. But could you take that on?

JOHN ESPOSITO: Let me begin by subtly and modestly saying that one of
the things that I often say to people—they'll ask me did I read this
book or that book and I always say I'm too busy writing to read—I
think Tom has become that way when it comes to the Middle East. I
think he had a good track record when he worked in the Middle East.

Tom has written, for example, a column twice, one five years ago and
one about two months ago, in which Tom said, yet again, that Muslims
and Muslim leaders have not spoken out with regard to terrorism, et
cetera. That's simply false.

In both cases, I and a colleague wrote a letter to the editor, which
never got published. In fact, we wrote a letter and gave all the
websites so Tom could look them up or have his researcher look them
up. The letter was never published, and Tom certainly didn't see it,
but he continues to say that, and there are significant statements
that have been made.

The same thing is true on the martyrdom issue. Again, if you read my
book, I talk about positions taken by the leaders.

So let me be really clear. You have extremist preachers—what I call
preachers of hate—who advocate the kind of carnage that takes place
between Sunni and Shia in Iraq and call that martyrdom. I'm not
denying that.

But if you look at the issue of martyrdom as it's being debated
currently in the Muslim world, I would break it out in another way.
Putting aside those extremists, you then have two camps of thought:
one represented by senior religious leaders, some senior religious
leaders in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and other parts of the world, that
see martyrdom, what's called martyrdom, as suicide, plain and simple,
and as condemned by Islam. That would denounce, as one of them did,
somebody like bin Laden and Zawahiri as vigilantes, et cetera. So
you've got those leaders.

But where it gets complicated is on Palestine and Israel. Then you get
some leaders who will say that acts of terrorism involving suicide
bombing cannot be seen as anything but an act of terrorism and against
Islam. But on Israel and Palestine they will have their rationale for
saying that this is a different situation, that when you're dealing in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, you're not dealing with the killing
of noncombatants.

So that becomes the difference between, for example, on the one hand,
the leadership in Saudi Arabia, which says any form of suicide bombing
is suicide, and Qaradawi, who denounced, for example, the 9/11 attacks
within a week after they occurred, but when it comes to Israel and
Palestine, and then more recently when it came to Iraq, frames it
differently.

The other thing that you have to factor in here is to then look and
say: What do the vast majority of believers think? I'm a Roman
Catholic. Most people would say that they know that significant
numbers of Catholics, the majority of Catholics, even if they identify
themselves as Catholics, on some issues of sexual ethics would
disagree with the Pope. Now, in the old days it would simply be you
would define what Catholics are about by what the Vatican preached.

Certainly in Islam we see that. The way in which you can see it is we
sometimes say that the down-side of Islam is that it has no pope.
Well, wake up, folks. Only Catholics and Coptic Christians—maybe one
other group—have a pope or the equivalent. Jews don't. Protestants
don't. That's why we Catholics are so strong—no.

The plus side is, that it means that Muslim believers can hold
diversities of opinions. In fact, when we actually look at extremists,
for example—or, if you will, the terrorists—their first line of
argument is usually citing something political rather than something
Quranic. The Muslims who are against the killing of civilians, for
majorities of them, the first thing they argue from is the Quran.

I think this is where we have a problem. It's not that there aren't
the bin Ladens out there, it's not that there aren't the sheikh
preachers who support the bin Ladens out there. But we can't let those
visible voices that often are the voices that we hear predominate for
the vast majority of Muslims and where they're coming from.

QUESTION: What can you tell us about divisions or possible divisions
within the clergy in Iran and what that may tell us about the future
of the country and our relations with it?

JOHN ESPOSITO: It's an excellent question.

I go to Iran fairly often. I think I was the first American academic
into Iran after the revolution, during the Khomeini period, and I'm
back and forth.

What we need to realize is that there is a significant division within
Iran. We saw it during the Khatami days, in terms of the electorate
and how it turned out, and we certainly have seen it recently in the
streets of Iran.

That kind of division also exists within the clergy in Iran. The fact
is in my experience—and again, I don't meet every clergy person, but I
can tell you for example, to give you an example, of Qom.

We did the first exchange during the Khatami years in which we ran
programs both in Tehran for the foreign ministry but also in Qom, and
I also got to spend a fair amount of time in Qom. What you discover
is—everyone always talks about the, if you will, militant side of Qom.
The fact is you also have madrasahs there that represent a very
progressive, liberal social science. I would visit and they would
immediately show me that they had The Oxford Encyclopedia and want to
discuss these modern ideas. Of course they had Xeroxed The Oxford
Encyclopedia, the copy they had they hadn't paid for. But that's okay.

They would actually in public during the Khatami years—and this I
couldn't believe because it was in public—they would raise questions
about Velayat-e Faqih, the ruler of the Faqih, and in fact the way
they raised the question was actually to say that this was not a
legitimate institution.

The divisions are there, but you have a hard-core minority that
controls the levers of power. This analogy is not good, but it's like
a number of countries. If you said, "Where are most Egyptians coming
from?" then the next question becomes "Well, gee, if they're coming
from there, then why do they have these people at the top?"

Well, you know, they're security states. That's what Iran is. The only
difference between Egypt and Iran is we support the Egyptian security
state and we don't support the Iranian. So I would say that those
divisions exist.

On the other hand, whether it's Iran or Pakistan, the thing we always
have to be careful about is our rhetoric in terms of things like:
"Well, why not bomb Iran to teach them a lesson?" That's going to
mobilize everybody; everybody will become an Iranian nationalist—which
is understandable. You know, I mean how would we, if we were in their
shoes?

But the divisions are certainly deep there. How to break that power
grip is another question. And these people at the top are desperate.
Khamenei knows he's got a problem. But what we know from Khamenei's
record is that this is a very bright person, and he's a very bright
person who's willing to do anything. The same thing of course is true
of Ahmadinejad.

QUESTION: Thank you for your very insightful remarks. But I'm a little
surprised that there was such a predominant emphasis on the
Palestinian-Israeli contest, which is somewhat emotional, and when it
comes to practical politics, often the Saudis and other nations that
are concerned about Iran's power don't mind the fact that the Israelis
represent a strong counter-force.

So I would like you to develop further the possibilities for reform,
because one of the prime tenets of growing democracy is to encourage
economic development, which you only touched on briefly, and the
strengthening of a middle class that could develop independent views
and so on. So where do you see the greatest potential for this middle
class, and how can we support them?

JOHN ESPOSITO: Just to preface it, I didn't think that I spent a lot
of time on the Arab-Israeli conflict. I just mentioned it at the end
as one point, because I'm interested in the broader issues that you
raise in terms of change.

The fact is that we do have in many societies now, many Muslim
societies in Malaysia, Indonesia, and increasingly in Gulf countries,
and certainly in Egypt, a developing middle class. But the problem
that you have in countries like Egypt and in Syria, in a number of
countries, is—well, in Egypt you have the problems of lack of
resources, but also the nature of the governments.

The majority of Muslims, and this, by the way, is what majorities in
the Gallup data show, basically admire our technology and economic
development, and particularly the United States, rather than Japan, on
the technology side, and say that what they would really like—they
don't word it this way—rather than our drone attacks, what they would
like is assistance. That's I think our challenge, far more the
magnitude of that.

One of the disappointing things from my point of view in the first
eight years of the Bush-Blair period was that both Bush and Blair,
quite rightly, early on promised significant economic aid, and then it
was never really developed, to rebuild infrastructures in the way that
it could have been rebuilt. We have the same problem with regard to
Afghanistan. I think that that's what we really need to invest in.

The problem I think we're going to run into is that, given the world
economy now, given the budgetary problems, are we going to do it? And
also, are we really in our psyche totally prepared to do it? I'll just
give you one example.

I have a number of people who I know who are Afghan-Americans. They
basically spent most of their lives, or were born, here, but they go
back to Afghanistan. One of them was telling me—this was about two or
three years ago—talking to the American ambassador there, who's really
good—she prefaced this. But she was saying, "You know, you have to
think about the next generation. So not only do you have to be doing
what you're doing, but we need educational and economic aid here, and
particularly," she said, "even where some schools are built, they're
so shoddily built that a strong wind comes and it disappears." The
ambassador honestly answered her and, in effect, said, "You know, what
my directives are concerned about are not these kinds of issues."

So to what extent can we actually realize what needs to be done, and
then to what extent can we get that aid to actually do what we want it
to do? I can remember ten years ago at a closed meeting at the Defense
Department, we had senior Egyptian military as well as a couple of
retired senior Egyptian military. We were talking about aid—not just
military aid, but other forms of aid. At one point—it had to be a
retired general, not a sitting one, who would say this—he said, "Let
me just tell you what my president would say with regard to the aid.
He would say that we welcome economic and educational aid. But he
would say that that aid would be welcomed if it were given to us and
then we decide what we're going to do with it." Then he smiled, as if
to say "and it's not going to be used for those."

How do we somehow simultaneously in the short-term support some of
these governments but back off a lot of our excessive
military-security-type aid and put it into economic and educational
aid? Unless that happens, and use a carrot-and-stick approach to open
up the society—Egypt has become more oppressive when it comes to
non-governmental organizations and elections, and so, even where
you've got an educated middle class, that educated middle class, much
of it, is totally frustrated.

I can think of, for example—and this is one of many examples—a young
man who's invited often, or a fair number of times, to Washington and
New York to speak and now is not allowed to leave the country because
he writes pieces in the newspaper that are very well informed, but the
regime doesn't approve of it.

Look at what happened to Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and Saad is just the tip
of the iceberg. On my last trip to Egypt, I went over to interview one
of the people who's one of the leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood,
who's seen within Egypt and other places, and used to be celebrated by
Mubarak as the mainstream person you could deal with, and people kept
wondering is Mubarak trying to undermine his credibility. Well, I'm
having breakfast in the morning in the hotel. I'm going to interview
him at night. Front page: the man has been arrested, held for months.
All part of a pattern there.

Now, we've got to figure out a way that we invest more in
infrastructure development, education, as well as a way to put
pressure on movement toward stronger civil societies. If we don't,
we're going to have a problem. And if Mubarak's son is brought in
through the back door and we just accept it, we're going to have a
problem.

The way many people view it is as follows.

President Bush was quite right at one point when he was critical of
both the Egyptians and the Saudis. And indeed, Condoleezza Rice made
some strong statements in Egypt. But when the elections come in Egypt
and when we're concerned about that ally, we then go silent. And the
same thing could be true when it comes to Saudi Arabia, and that's
where we need, it seems to me, a fresher approach.

I think Aaron Miller's book is very interesting if you just take what
he says when he talks about Palestine and Israel, but more broadly on
Middle East policy. Whether one agrees with everything Aaron says is
beside the point. But one of the things that Aaron kind of says is we
have to recognize, for example, in Palestine-Israel, but I would say
even more broadly in our Middle East policy, is that our paradigms
have failed. If that's the case, we need to develop new paradigms. In
doing that we can't have the same old players. Even if they say, after
having done it for 20 years, they're now ready to think fresh
thoughts, we can't risk that. We've got to really be looking for new
and fresh thoughts.

QUESTION: Hamas and Hezbollah succeed because they are able to deliver
social services better than their legitimate governments. Is that
correct?

JOHN ESPOSITO: Yes. Let me tell you something interesting that happened.

About five years ago, I was speaking at the Foreign Service Institute
and we were talking about the future of Palestine and Israel and the
issues of leadership, that both sides did not seem to be able to
produce the leadership that really was going to be forward-looking,
but also that there were all kinds of issues of credibility. I was
absolutely stunned when a member of the Foreign Service said, "Why
don't we try some of the leaders of Hamas?" I said, "Excuse me?"

But the reality of it is you look at, after the Hezbollah-Israel war—I
mean this was reported widely even in our own press—who were the first
people in the streets, who were the first people delivering the social
services, beginning the rebuilding, et cetera? I mean that is an
issue.

If you look at Egypt—and it also happened in Turkey, but certainly in
Egypt over the years—you got to a point where after tragedies the
Egyptian government, in the name of assuring security, that things
didn't get chaotic, said, "We're going to control what comes in." Why?
Because the first people in were the Muslim Brotherhood and others
delivering social services.

Unless we realize that and figure out ways in which to respond, many
of these governments are incapable of providing some of those
services.

The other thing related to this is that we have to realize that it's
not just Hamas and Hezbollah, that indeed there are more mainstream
Islamist groups that work within the system and also deliver those
services. So now we've got two paradigms for delivering services. And
then you have to say: What is the government doing for these people?

Now, the Egyptians are aware of this. I'll give you two examples.

One is I took a group around the world because I did a book with
National Geographic on world religions. When we came into Cairo, what
amazed me—these are people who were world travelers all the time. I
mean they're an amazing group of people. Many of them are retired and
they go on these trips—people who didn't even know the area
immediately were coming up to me on the bus and saying, "My God, look
at the people's faces on the street. They look so depressed and
downtrodden."

Now, I've been going to Egypt for years, and the extent of it—but what
does our tour guide do? We go by and the tour guide says, "There's a
hospital and the government offers free medical." The fact is
historically mainstream groups in Egypt—you talk about
extremists—mainstream groups that do not engage in violence had been
offering the services that the government cannot provide, tutoring
students, et cetera. So now the government is aware of this so it
needs to do that for its propaganda.

And then the final example from this young man, and to show you how
sensitive they were, we went by Al-Azhar University, the great
religious university—he never even referred to it as we went by. This
is supposed to be a tour of Islamic monuments.

When we went to a mosque, it was a museum, not a living mosque. When
we went to one of the great mosques of the Muslim world in Cairo, I
thought he was going to show it to people. Instead, he said, "There's
this mosque and the bus will be parked right across. So after you have
lunch and do your shopping, get back on the bus." He didn't even say
"visit the mosque."

But to show you how the government is sensitive, he also gave us this
insight, and you should keep this in mind. He said to us, "You often
ask me, you wonder why women cover their heads, so many of them." He
said, "You know, a little-known fact is it's not just piety. Egyptian
women have very bad hair." I'm not kidding. This is an AUC [American
University in Cairo] graduate, very bright and articulate. "Their hair
is so bad"—it was like a joke, "How bad is their hair?"—"their hair is
so bad that they have to go to the beauty parlor every week. Many of
them can't afford it. So that's why they cover their hair."

Thanks very much.

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