A Responsible Anti-Jihadism?

April 23, 2009 by Joshua Treviño | Filed Under Islam, Islam and the West 

Better late than never:

“I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore,” Johnson said. “It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watch some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts.”

Charles Johnson’s disenchantment with a movement he did much to create is more likely a function of his contrary nature than his active conscience, but it would be ungracious to pry overmuch. The sad truth is that the self-proclaimed anti-jihadists, as a group, have done a great deal to discredit themselves in the past decade.

The list of major sins looks something like this:

Enthusiastic and uncritical identification with right-wing politics and policies.

Inability to distinguish critiques of Islam from critiques of Muslims.

Willingness to associate with racists.

Credulity in subscribing to conspiracy theories. (Viz.)

Inability to formulate and advocate meaningful public policy.

In this light, the anti-jihad movement is something far less than a considered intellectual tendency. Instead, it is an attitude of inchoate belligerence, with its only consistent focal point being hatred of the Muslim. “The Muslim,” depending on what that means, may give one much to hate; but to hate him (and her) per se is to commit a grave error. The first and most compelling reason for this is, of course, that each individual (of any stripe) deserves to be judged as such. On a broader level, post-9/11 rhetoric and sentiment may be as they are — and I’ve indulged in both in full measure — but we are not in fact at actual war with Islam or Muslims at large. As such, to adopt a stance of conscious and deliberate hate is to indulge in the mental precursor of genuine and terrible crimes.

Whether we are at metaphorical war with Islam is a different question, and even an arguable one; but the effect of the war metaphor is, I believe, generally toxic — and even causative of the basic frivolity of the anti-jihadists. It should be enough to acknowledge that Islam in nearly every form contains within it certain doctrines and traditions inimical to our classical liberal traditions, our concepts of rights, and our assumed freedoms. (Indeed, I have reported on this threat firsthand.) This said, there are a number of things that do not follow from this understanding, including:

That any given Muslim is inimical to the same.

That Islam cannot exist within the context of the same.

That Islam must necessarily threaten the same.

That only Islam poses this manner of threat.

The anti-jihadist movement generally believes all of these propositions, and it is difficult to see that belief as anything but a lazy intellectual shortcut. From a plain movement standpoint, this is understandable: who wants to rally to the banner of, “Islam is deeply problematic, but not necessarily fatal?” Far better to guard the gates of Vienna, or shrug like Atlas, or stoke the fires of 9/12, or whatever last-stand-of-the-West rhetoric strikes one’s inner Charles Martel. This is the stuff of a short-term movement, and perhaps a stirring read, but it is not, to borrow a phrase, reality-based.

Lost in the shrill din of the anti-jihadists is the woeful truth that there is such a thing as jihad, and it does demand a policy response. What would responsible anti-jihadism look like? The wish list flows from the indictments:

It would embrace the whole of the political mainstream, as anti-Communism once did.

It would hold no animus for the individual Muslim.

It would reject all trafficking with racists.

It would reject conspiracy theories and anything too easily sliced by Occam’s razor.

It would seek the implementation of meaningful and realistic public policy.

The last point is perhaps the most important, from the pragmatic (though not the moral) standpoint. As a rule of thumb, the policy preferences of the anti-jihadists range from thoughtless support of neoconservatism at best, to strange and unworkable schemes of Muslim exclusion at worst. A basket of responsible anti-jihadist policy preferences might encompass human-rights advocacy in the Muslim world, support for liberal education, support for religious minorities, and similar measures. (I personally favor the conceptual approach of Georgetown’s Thomas Farr.) My intent here is not to imagine or present a full list of idealized preferences, but to illustrate possible alternatives, and to make a point: that responsible anti-jihadism requires more engagement with the Muslim world, not less.

If and when this responsible alternative emerges, it almost certainly won’t be called an anti-jihad movement. For now, that label is sullied by the “bunch of kooks” who took the notion and ran it into the ground. The irony is that in seeking to defend the West — or their idea of it — they have managed to discredit, with their immoderation and insensibility, what should be a given in our politics. That’s real damage that will be difficult to fix, and impossible to forgive.

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