WASHINGTON, 7 August 2004 — British historian Norman Daniels in his 1960 book, “Islam and the West: The Making of an Image” introduced the term “knowledgeable ignorance” and described it as what Europe thought of Islam and the Muslims more generally. Sardar and Davies in their more recent book, “Why Do People Hate America,” go on to point out that “knowledgeable ignorance” is now a generally accepted anthropological term described as “knowing a people, ideas, civilizations, religions or histories as something they are not, and could not possibly be and maintaining these ideas even when the means exist to know differently.” The Sept. 11 Commission might very well be guilty of “knowledgeable ignorance” with some of their main assumptions and subsequent conclusions and recommendations in their recently issued report.
This writer wrote in a Feb. 7, 2004, article in the Arab News that the use of the term “Islamist” by scholars and journalists, often in a negative context, usually lacked definition. It is most often currently used to mean a form of “political Islam” but even in that context, it lacks clarity. The Sept. 11 Commission made a giant leap in their use of the term, “Islamist” when they issued their final report on July 22, 2004. They rewrote the global war on terrorism and turned it into a global war on “Islamist terrorism” alone.
In the commission report’s chapter entitled “What To Do: A Global Strategy” they concluded that the “enemy is not just terrorism..... It is the threat posed by ‘Islamist’ terrorism.” However nowhere in this chapter are either the term “Islamist” or the term “terrorism” specifically defined. A footnote to the chapter states that “Islamist terrorism is an immediate derivative of Islamism” and goes on to quote articles and books by three individuals, a Dane and two Frenchmen, as sources for the commission’s use of the terms “Islamists” and Islamism.
In the Feb. 7 Arab News article, we discussed the use of terms referring to Muslims such as “Islamists” and we compared this to using terms such as “Chrisianist” or “Judaismist” and the outcry that this would create amongst those groups. Yet the Sept. 11 Commission not only freely used this term, it apparently did this without consulting any American Muslim groups or their representatives. Al Felzenberg, the Sept. 11 Commission press spokesman said that the panel did not meet with any “advocacy groups,” but stated it privately interviewed academics who specialize in the Muslim community, apparently referring to the Dane and Frenchmen quoted in the footnote.
The commission continued with recommendations on how to “prevent the continued growth of Islamist terrorism” in their report. This section will likely be studied for years by “cultural relativists” and anthropologists and criticized for its lack of cultural sensitivity and understanding. These recommendations go on for pages and state, for example, that the United States should work to spread a message of freedom and opportunity in the Arab and Muslim worlds so terror groups cannot find sanctuary in “lawless places” such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Though many of the recommendations are noble and have merit, there is no allowance for Islam itself, without Western influence, to be a modernizing factor in the Muslim world. And nowhere in the report is there one word about educating Americans about Islam.
Immediately after the commission report was issued, author Daniel Pipes was writing articles praising the commission for finally “naming the enemy.” The influential Pipes, well known for his anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and pro-Israeli activities, stated in the Jerusalem Post, “The great failing in the US war effort since September 2001 has been the reluctance to name the enemy. So long as the anodyne, euphemistic and inaccurate term ‘war on terror’ remains the official nomenclature, that war will not be won. Better to call it a ‘war on Islamist terrorism.’ Better yet would be a ‘war on Islamism,’ looking beyond terror to the totalitarian ideology that lies behind it.”
The American Pipes and Israeli writer Yossef Bodansky have long been advocates for using the terms “Islamists” and “Islamism” to define many of the world’s problems. Bodansky has served until very recently as the long-time director of the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, a group of Republican congressmen, currently chaired by Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia. And Bodansky’s office was listed in the office of Congressman Cantor even though Bodansky apparently is an Israeli. The conclusions of the 9/11 Commission about “Islamists” closely parallel the historical writings of Pipes and Bodansky. One wonders whether they had either official or unofficial input into the commission’s activities. No attribution by individual staff or commission members is given to specific sections of the report.
The Sept. 11 report, however, does include a positive note, “Islam is not the enemy. It is not synonymous with terror. Nor does Islam teach terror.... Lives guided by religious faith, including literal beliefs in holy scriptures are common to every religion, and represent no threat to us... With so many diverse adherents, every major religion will spawn violent zealots. Yet understanding and tolerance among people of different faiths can and must prevail.”
Hopefully, that perspective and not “knowledgeable ignorance” will prevail.
— Dr. Michael Saba is an international relations consultant.
