America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests?

Gerges, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, has written the first full-length account of perhaps the most ideological and exciting foreign policy debate of our time - how the United States should respond to Islamism. He does so in a clear and well-informed way, reporting first on the intellectual debate (between sides he calls the "confrontationists" and the "accommodationists"), then showing how the U.S. government draws on the two sides to formulate its positions. Confrontationists are those like Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer, and Charles Krauthammer who, Gerges writes, hold that the Islamists are "intrinsically antidemocratic and deeply anti-Western." Accommodationists like John Esposito, Graham Fuller, and Leon Hadar reply that these attributes are limited to a "small violent fringe," and that the much larger numbers who adhere to moderate forms of Islamism are pro-democratic and ambivalent about the West, accepting some of its features while rejecting others.

Turning to U.S. policy, especially in the Clinton era, Gerges finds a paradox: When giving speeches, American spokesmen unanimously since 1992 have enunciated the accommodationist approach and have shown themselves to be "culturally sensitive and politically correct." But when actually formulating policies toward specific countries and problems, Gerges sees the confrontationist approach in the drivers' seat, inspired by "a deep residue of ambivalence, skepticism, and mistrust." Whether it be Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, or Afghanistan, Washington shows reluctance to engage the Islamists in "meaningful dialogue" and instead backs the efforts of other Middle Easterners (governments in power, opposition groups) intent on overthrowing those Islamists already in power and repressing those who are not.

Some might be cheered by this conclusion, relieved to know that the U.S. government is not as naïve as its pronouncements would suggest - but not the author, who sees in this inconsistency a "beating [of] the drums of a cultural and civilizational war."

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