Efforts in European countries including France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands to restrict or prohibit women from wearing burkah and nikab (face veil) are well known in Indonesia. Reports about these efforts in the Indonesian media are overwhelming negative.

There is no visible support for these efforts even among women who do not cover their hair. There is also growing concern among Muslim women who wear the hijab (headscarf) that they would not feel safe or welcome in European countries. Some students are now reluctant to consider studying in countries where headscarves have become politicized. Most Indonesian criticisms of European “veil policies” are written from Muslim perspectives and at least implicitly describe Europeans as “Islamaphobic.”

The article we discuss below is written from a different point of view. Its arguments resonate strongly with those made by Joan Scott in The Politics of the Veil. Scott suggests that  “anti-Burkahism” is deeply rooted in colonial discourse about sexuality and the control of women’s bodies. She argues that claims made by proponents of such legislation about “liberating” women are ironic, yet another example of the politicization of the female body in attempts to enforce sexual and cultural order.

On April 27th, the Jakarta daily Koran Tempo published an article entitled “Pelarangan Burqa: Membebaskan Perempuan?” (Prohibiting the Burkah: Liberating Women?). The author, Dr. Soe Tjen Marching, is a well-known feminist thinker and activist, and a staunch critic of Islamist causes. She holds a Ph.D. from Monash University in Australia and now teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She is also an award-winning composer of avante guard piano pieces. She divides her time between Jakarta and London.

In this article Marching is critical of those who would require women to cover their faces but is concerned primarily with European attempts to outlaw the practice in the name of “freeing women who are trapped by religious fundamentalists.”

This argument closely resembles Scott’s. Marching begins with the observation that on a recent trip to London she found that laws and regulations concerning women’s clothing were a frequently debated topic. She observes that some people find the sight of women wearing either the burkah or hijab disturbing and even frightening. She also states that she found it ironic that in the Netherlands she encounters nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings of bare breasted Balinese women, produced at a time when women in “Puritan” areas of Europe were required to cover their ankles. By contrast, today in Indonesia one encounters local women who cover their hair, and bikini clad European women on the beaches.

Marching notes that some European secularists want to prohibit women from covering their faces and some Islamists want to require it for the same reason, to “safeguard” their honor and dignity. Indonesian Islamists and European secularists use similar language. Both speak of safeguarding women’s dignity and human rights. Islamists use these arguments to justify making women put on the veil. Some European secularists use the same arguments to make them take it off.  She compares these claims and counter claims to a football (soccer) match: “If this was only a game and what rolled back and forth was a ball, it would not be a problem. But it is women’s bodies that are being used as a ball by male dominated cultures and political leaderships and this is NOT funny!”

Perhaps the most important points she makes are that those who would outlaw the burkah and those who would require it engage in the same type of controlling discourse, attempting to use women’s bodies for their own purposes. Her argument that there is not a fundamental difference between opposing the practice of female face covering and prohibiting it is as profound as it is simple. By prohibiting the burkah the state makes women into puppets that it can manipulate at will for its own purposes. To oppose  face veiling is to attempt persuasion and employ coercion. In an irony of Orwellian proportions, she observes that burkah bans would make criminals out of women who refused to be coerced in the name of liberating them. Her argument is libertarian –- that the state can not legitimately require women to cover their faces nor prohibit them from doing so. Many Indonesian women who would never consider wearing a burkah themselves nevertheless oppose attempts to prohibit others from doing so.

*Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Inayah Rohmaniyah is Senior Lecturer of Tafsir and Hadith at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta Indonesia.

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The following is a summary of some arguments  from my new book, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood, Ash’arism, and Political Sunnism, published by Palgrave Macmillan.  It offers an explanation of why fundamentalist literal interpretations of the Qu’ran have so much influence in contemporary Islamist extremism, and why extremists’ views about what the Qu’ran says can be so difficult to challenge.

Mohammed Arkoun has described the notion of the “unthinkable” in Islamic thought, referring to the expansive realm of the intellectually forbidden. In recent decades, this realm has been greatly fortified.  But among the pre-modern casualties of the “unthinkable,” there was a surprising fatality, the discipline of Sunni theology (‘ilm al-kalam). Through a complex confluence of events, kalam fell into steady decline during the waning of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate and into virtual extinction as an active discipline by the fifteenth century (CE), replaced by a distinctly creedal enterprise.

Theology is the systematic, rational, defensible articulation of religious beliefs about God, revelation, and the cosmos. Therefore, when I describe the demise of Sunni theology I am referring to theology in this technical sense and not the disappearance of particular axiomatic religious creeds, called ‘aqidah (“creed”). Nor am I referring to Islamic philosophy, a separate discipline known as falsafah.

Among the leading factors behind the demise of kalam was an anti-theological school of thought that opposed the classical theological enterprise as it responded to a range of sociopolitical concerns, principally from the seventh to tenth centuries (CE).  This movement, known as the Athariyya, stressed strict adherence to the literal outward meanings of the sacred texts. For the Atharis, human reason cannot be trusted in matters of religion, thus making theology a sinful (even satanic) and dangerous exercise in human arrogance. Following the demise of kalam, Athari thought has flourished and, I argue, contributed in important ways to the reformulation of Islamic political theory in the twentieth century commonly known as “Islamism.”

This new Islamic polity borrowed heavily from modern European political ideologies and centered on the so-called “Islamic state.” In this book, I propose a new definition of Islamism, articulated in great detail, as the marriage of Athari-imposed creedalism and the modern-nation state. The turmoil and bloodshed that the Muslim world endured in the early centuries, out of which the dominant schools of Sunni theology (e.g. Ash‘arism and Maturidism) eventually emerged with important resolutions, is now being forced to play out once again, with the most dangerous elements emanating from those factions opposed to theology as a satanic force and a deserving prisoner of the “unthinkable.”

For more from this title, please visit Barnes & Noble or Amazon

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Apparently I wasn’t the only one thinking about the diplomatic potential of Muslim hip-hop when I posted a blog about it for COMOPS Journal back in September of 2009. Recently we heard from Tyson Amir, one of the Muslim artists that I featured in the blog, and he had some interesting news to report. Amir is from San Jose, California, and currently performs with the Remarkable Current Musician Collective, founded by Anas Canon in 2001. As described on the group’s website, Remarkable Current is “an American artist collective consisting of musicians, writers, and producers who are bonded not only by their love for music and art, but also by their shared Islamic-American tradition.”

“Some of the artists that I work with,” wrote Amir, “have actually submitted a proposal very similar to what Jeffry Halverson articulated in [his] article to the US government.” Unfortunately, the government has thus far been unresponsive to the group’s overtures. Amir further added that: “We hoped the US government would be open to allowing us to utilize our art to try to bring about some type of change in the world.”

Tyson Amir in Morocco

In the meantime, Tyson Amir and his colleagues have been going forward without government support. They were on tour in Turkey in 2009, where they recorded a music video for a song entitled “Granada Rap,” a reference to the Andalusian city where Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted together in southern Spain before its downfall in 1492. And if you’d like to see the way American hip-hop can appeal to Muslim youths, just take a look at the Turkish kids in Amir’s video: LINK.

“The entire proposal,” Amir further explained, “was based on the State Department’s usage of Jazz musicians in the late 1950s for the purpose of diplomacy; the first artist they sent was Dizzy Gillespie.”

In 1956, the State Department under the Eisenhower administration sent Gillespie to bring the uniquely American art form of jazz to the Middle East, Southern Europe, and South Asia during the height of the Cold War. Other Jazz ambassadors soon followed, including Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis. As Dr. Curtis Sandberg of the Meridian International Center has noted: “In this battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the world’s peoples, the United States developed an unlikely but remarkably effective response to Soviet initiatives: building international friendships through jazz.”

As Tyson Amir sees it: “In the 1950s we used Jazz ambassadors, today we need hip-hop ambassadors.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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In recent months, Indonesian security forces, including the US-trained Detachment 88, have proven to be increasingly effective in locating, capturing or killing suspected terrorists. But police power alone will never defeat a deeply entrenched extremist sub-culture.  Soft power is a crucial component as well, perhaps even more important than enforcement.

The deaths of Noordin Top on September 17, 2009 and Dulmatin on March 9 of this year, raids on a training camp in Aceh on February 23rd, and continuing operations in that province are examples of the Indonesian authorities increasing operational capabilities. Reuters described Dulmatin’s death as a “fresh blow to Indonesian militants.” Western media reports have focused largely on his role in the 2002 Bali bombings and have suggested that his death may have crippled Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other Indonesian militant groups because of the entirely unsubstantiated claim that he was the sole remaining operative with the skill to construct large bombs.

It is undoubtedly true that militant groups have suffered significant losses over the past few months. But it is also true that “decapitating” militant organizations and breaking up training centers will not solve the problem of Islamist violence in Indonesia or elsewhere. Some terrorism experts have expressed concern that the existence of the Aceh camp is a sign that radical Islamists are regrouping and that evidence points to the continued existence of Indonesian and trans-national networks providing weapons, funding and ideological-religious support.

These concerns are probably well founded. At the same time they are myopic and rooted in the naive assumption that “taking out” critical nodes in radical networks will resolve the problem of extremist political violence. Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, who is the foremost authority on Indonesian Islamist militant groups, has warned against over estimating the significance of Dulmatin’s death. She is almost certainly correct.

Almost every time a leading terrorist operative is killed or captured the media, government officials and some terrorism experts proclaim that the movement has been crippled or its capacity to conduct operations diminished. This has not proven to be the case. Despite the apprehension or killing of several leaders, Indonesian extremists have proven to be remarkably resilient. The source of this resilience is not international links or financing. It is that fact that JI, Negara Islam Indonesia (NII) and other extremist groups have very small, but highly dedicated and well organized support bases.

Most of these supporters have never engaged in terrorist or other criminal activities. They live seemingly normal lives and include people who are everything from farmers and petty traders to business executives. Even if they could be indentified, only a government that aggressively pursued repressive security measures unacceptable in a democratic society such as Indonesia could detain them. NII and other extremist groups also have centralized leadership structures that make replacing “fallen comrades” relatively easy. They are based on bureaucratic not charismatic authority.

The cell structure of Indonesian militant organizations isolates both the leadership and rank and file members. Structurally it is similar to the segmentary lineage systems well known to anthropologists and multilevel marketing schemes. Typically rank and file and mid-level militants know only members of their own groups and their immediate superiors. They also swear oaths of eternal loyalty and obedience. The structure of these networks is such that not even high-ranking leaders are not fully aware of their size or structure.

Some Indonesian extremist organizations are of relatively recent origin and have ideological ties to Middle Eastern Jihadi organizations including al-Qaeda. Others, especially NII, have deep historical roots. The fact that some Indonesian groups appropriate the name al-Qaeda and a handful of leaders may have once met with bin Laden or his associates does not imply anything like a centralized command and control system or that Indonesian and other Southeast Asian organizations are “al-Qaeda franchises.”

Indonesian extremist groups have received funds from Middle Eastern extremists. The Saudi government spends a lot of money in efforts to promote an exclusivist, intolerant version of Islam that contributes to the development of extremist sub-cultures. There is a shared perception that Muslims the world over face a common threat from an aggressive Western alliance. Many non-violent and even entirely non-political groups and individuals share this view.

NII is the largest underground Islamic extremist movement in Indonesia. It is the grandfather of JI and the “splinter groups” led by Noordin Top and Dulmatin. There are probably others of which authorities are not yet aware. NII has always been a nationalist Islamic movement concerned only tangentially with affairs outside Indonesia.

Kartosuwirjo and other Islamic leaders who rejected the secular orientation of mainstream Indonesian nationalism founded NII in the 1940s. Their goal was the establishment an Islamic state based on Shari’ah. During the Indonesian Revolution (1945-1949), NII rejected negotiations with the Dutch and the Indonesian Republic. It proclaimed an Islamic state (Darul Islam; DI) on August 7, 1949. The movement was instrumental in fomenting ethic and Islamic separatist movements in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid 1950s it controlled much of West Java, South Sulawesi and Aceh. Indonesian forces broke its military strength after the declaration of martial law in 1957. The movement went underground and has persisted for generations.

A 2005 report by the International Crisis Group stated that:

Every time the older generation seems on the verge of passing into irrelevance, a new generation of young militants, inspired by DI’s history and the mystique of an Islamic state, emerges to give the movement a new lease on life. If the pattern outlined in this report holds, Indonesia will not be able to eradicate JI or its jihadist partners, even if it arrests every member of the central command but, with more attention to a few key measures, it ought to be able to contain them.

The measures ICG suggested included the resolution of ethnic conflict, better control of the arms trade, improved law enforcement capability and recognition that prison terms do not lessen the commitment of DI militants. The fact that all but one of the Bali Bombers was completely unrepentant even facing execution supports this view. The Indonesian government might well have spared their lives had they expressed remorse and regret for their actions. They preferred death and martyrdom.

The Indonesian government has had a fair measure of success in attaining the first three objectives. The fact that the US-trained counter-terrorism unit Detachment 88 seems to be inclined to kill – rather than capture – terrorist suspects may indicate that they are taking this last recommendation seriously. Some Indonesian human rights advocates are concerned that the police are now taking the law into their own hands, killing suspects who should be and could be captured and brought to trial. Some understand this as resurgence of the brutal and oppressive policies of the military regime of former President Suharto (1965-1998).

Despite these measures, NII, JI and other militant groups have not vanished. It is naive to expect that Dulmatin’s death will diminish their conviction and capacity. There may be no further incidents for a year – or five – but there is no reason to believe that they will not strike again where and when they feel ready. The suggestion that eliminating one or even a group of key figures can cripple the movement is wishful thinking.

So is the idea that neutralizing one explosives expert seriously diminishes the operational capacity of militant groups. Hundreds if not thousands of Indonesians were trained in the use of weapons ranging form small arms and improvised explosive devises to surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the war against Soviet occupation forces. While they have not had the opportunity to use sophisticated weaponry on the home front, knowledge of simpler but no less deadly technologies has been passed on to younger generations in camps such as the one recently discovered in Aceh.

These operations do not require extensive foreign or domestic funding. Indonesian government sources state that the Aceh camp had a funding stream of approximately $50,000 (US). It was a remarkably cost effective operation. Firearms are difficult to obtain in Indonesia, but the Philippines is awash with them, many stolen or purchased illegally from the armed forces. The Philippine-Indonesia boundary is porous and unsealable because it is open seas.

Religious Extremism or Culture of Radicalism?

Hendropriyono (many Indonesians have only one name), the former chief of Badan Intelijen Negara (BIN; the Indonesian state intelligence agency) recently stated that:

Terrorism is analogous to the stem and the leaves while the fundamentalism is the root, which should be removed.

Former militants we have spoken with over the past several months share this view. They often say that if the authorities capture or kill one terrorist anywhere from three to a hundred will take his place.

Hendropriyono’s statement that the government should act against fundamentalism and “inflammatory sermons” is more problematic because these concepts are extremely difficult to define in ways that do not infringe on freedom of speech and religion. Political violence cannot be unambiguously linked with any theological position. His suggestion that people who hate people of other religions is the root of the terrorist problem is equally naive because Islamist militants are as concerned with other professed Muslims as they are with people of other faiths.

JI is linked to the extremist Salafi understandings of Islam characteristic of most other contemporary Sunni Islamist groups; NII is not and never has been. Its goal is the establishment of an Islamic state, not the promotion of a particular theological agenda. Some leaders and supporters of the movement do hold religious views similar to those of Saudi Wahhabis. Others have more traditional views and engage in religious practices including pilgrimage to holy graves that many contemporary Islamist and other Indonesian Muslim organizations, including the modernist Muhammadiyah, that are not linked to violence in any way, consider to be “unbelief.”

The defining characteristics of the ideologies of NII, Majlis Mujahidin Indonesia and other extremist groups are commitment to the idea of the Islamic State. They denounce  those who do not share this commitment as kafir (unbelievers) and regard the taking of their blood and property as halal (permissible). This is a critical point because there is an increasing tendency in Indonesia and elsewhere to link Muslim political violence to Wahhabi understandings of monotheism and ritual practice. As is stated in a previous posting, this is a serious and potentially dangerous mistake.  NII’s position is that Muslims who embrace the teachings of al-Wahab on religious matters, but who reject jihad and accept the legitimacy of the Indonesian state, are also kafir.

While political violence cannot be linked directly to a single variant of Islam, there is what can be called a subculture of extremism. It defining characteristics are principled opposition to secularism and the secular state along with the belief that violent jihad is a legitimate form of political action. This is often coupled with belief that only those who share these views are truly Muslims and stand for the glorification of martyrdom. This subculture is now several generations old.

Militant groups are usually endogamous. That is, young members are only allowed to marry others committed to the cause or at least to “bring in” their spouses. Marriages are often arranged without the knowledge or consent of young couples’ families. These practices build in-group cohesion at the cost of cutting family ties that are of central importance in Indonesian societies. Children from NII and other militant families are raised with the belief that they are different from others and quickly learn to be suspicious of political and religious authorities. Many are sent to camps for “basic training” and formally initiated into extremist organizations as adolescents.

Others are recruited in secular secondary schools, colleges and universities or in local mosques, including campus mosques at secular universities, and undergo similar training and indoctrination, with or without a para-military component. Some recruits live double lives, keeping their membership in extremist associations secret even from close friends and family members. It is not possible to say how large this subculture of extremism is. Most members of these communities are not currently engaged in terrorist activities. They are, however, a pool from which violent activists can be readily recruited.

Dulmatin’s funeral provides insight into the characteristics if not the extent of this culture of radicalism. Dulmatin was buried in his native village of Loning in Central Java on March 12. Several hundred mourners had gathered, not only from his home town, but from as far away as Bayuwangi in East Java and Banten in the west, both hundreds of miles away.  Some came as soon as they learned of Dulmatin’s death. His supporters, including Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, maintain that he is a martyr not a “terrorist.”

Ba’asyir is generally considered to be the spiritual leader of JI. In his sermons he denounces Indonesian leaders and most other Indonesian Muslims as kafir. In a sermon delivered in a Yogyakarta mosque during Ramadan last year, he stated that more than 90 percent of the Indonesians who call themselves Muslims actually are not. He calls for jihad against the United States and its western allies but publicly rejects violence in Indonesia, always referring to it as “mistaken” or “misguided.”

In a statement reminiscent of his eulogies for the Bali Bombers executed last year, Ba’asyir stated that Dulmatin was a martyr who had died in the struggle for Islam, but that he may have erred by conducting violent operations inside Indonesia. As proof of Dulmatin’s martyrdom Ba’asyir stated that at the time of his burial Dulmatin looked as if he was still alive, his body smelled sweet and blood continued to flow in his veins. Rumors spread throughout the country that as he was carried to his grave the words “Allah Akbar” (God is Great) appeared in the sky, confirming the chants of the mourners. A banner erected in front of his family home stated that he was not a terrorist but a mujahid (freedom fighter).

Counter-Exclusivism as Counter-Extremism

Indonesia’s security forces have proven that they are capable of locating, killing or capturing known terrorists. This alone will not bring an end to Islamist political violence. Given the fact that there is a well established and well organized subculture of violent extremism it is to reasonable to conclude that there are no quick fixes. This does not mean that the country must or should resign itself to the institutionalization of violence of the type that has occurred in India and Pakistan, where Muslim on Muslim, Hindu on Muslim, Hindu on Christian and Muslim on Hindu violence have become almost politics as normal.

There are at least three factors that can lead to the diminution of violence:

• Islamic Education. The more people know about Islam, the less attractive they find extremist ideologies. Extremists rely on simplistic religious ‘proofs’ for their political positions. Muslims with more than rudimentary understanding of the Qur’an and Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet Muhammad and his companions) recognize the simplicity and banality of these ‘proofs.’ This is not conjecture; former NII recruiters have told us that people with little religious education are the easiest targets and those from pesantren (traditional Islamic boarding schools) the most difficult.
• War Weariness. Violent Islamist ideologies offer the promise of “victory or martyrdom.” Indonesian Islamists have engaged in what they think of as jihad for nearly seventy years. They are no closer to victory than they were in the 1940s and much further than they were at the height of their power in the mid-1950s. Some have come to see the Islamic State as a lost cause and have turned to peaceful strategies to bring about political and religious change. Aceh, in North Sumatra, was once a rallying point because the Acehnese waged jihad against first the Dutch, then the Japanese and finally the Indonesian government for more than a century.  The Acehnese provided a heroic example for others in much the same way that the Palestinians do on a global scale. Aceh now shows that there is an alternative to violent struggle and that peace and reconciliation are possible. A 2005 peace accord between Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM; the Acehnese independence movement) and the Indonesian government granted the province a high level of self-government. In return, the Acehnese stopped the jihad. Today, peace has returned to the province for the first time in a century. When you travel to Aceh, people speak of two things: their sorrow about loved ones lost in the 2004 Tsunami and how overjoyed they are to be able to do simple things such as going out to dinner or to a coffee shop or to a fruit market in the evening. Those things were not possible during the long years of war. This is not to say that all is well in Aceh. In a rush to establish its Islamic credentials and assert its independence the provincial government has implemented draconian Shari’ah legislation that negatively impacts women. The equation of Islam with gender-based discrimination is an alarming tendency not only in Indonesia but in other regions of Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia that have used the concept of local autonomy to promote Islamic identity.
• Takfiraphobia. Takfir is the practice of declaring professed Muslims to be kafir. It is a common element in Islamist ideologies. In the abstract it is not difficult to refer to people with whom one strong disagrees as kafir, especially if they are geographically and socially distant. It is an entirely different matter to accept the fact that your relatives and friends are kafir who are going to hell. This is one of the things that violent Islamist organizations demand of recruits. It is very hard to accept the fact that your mother is going to hell, if you believe in it – and most Indonesians do. This limits the ability of extremist groups to recruit new members. Takfiri rhetoric may strengthen solidarity and collective identity in instances where there are clearly discernable lines of conflict. This is not the case in contemporary Indonesia.

The Case for Soft Power

No reasonable person would deny that it is necessary to use police power to combat violent extremists who believe that they have religious obligations to kill other people. Police power is a necessary but not sufficient component of an ongoing effort to counter violent extremists. But as long as they are ideologically and socially intact and are able to reproduce themselves, these networks will endure. In Indonesia, some have endured for generations.

The use of police power confronts extremists where, culturally and ideologically speaking, they are least vulnerable. Jihad and martyrdom are among the key organizing principles of the extremist sub-culture. Dead extremists become heroes and martyrs for surviving members. It is entirely possible that Dulmatin and other JI fighters who have been killed or executed are more influential dead than they were alive. This is certainly true of the Bali Bombers who were unknown to most Indonesians prior to the 2002 attacks but whose funerals attracted sympathetic media coverage despite the horrendous nature of their crimes. They are now the posthumous authors of best sellers that can be found in bookstores throughout Indonesia.

Building strategies rooted in Islamic education, and concepts such as war weariness and takfiraphobia has an important role to play in the struggle against extremism. Such efforts strike extremists where they are sociologically, psychologically and theologically most vulnerable. Properly implemented, they can expose the banality of Islamist theologies, offer hope of life without fear and escape from the psychic trauma of imagining loved ones enduring the torments of hell.

____________________________

* Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Ali Amin is Academic Director at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta Indonesia. Inayah Rohmaniyah is Senior Lecturer of Tafsir and Hadith at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta Indonesia.

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Thai-Buddhist colonialism? That is a strange concept, but it is reality as far as the Malay-Muslims of the “Deep South” of Thailand are concerned.

Edward Said noted that the representation of political- and military-subject people as less than fully human is among the basic elements of the culture and ideology of colonialism. He also observed that despite other differences, in this respect all colonialisms are the same. In the introduction to Culture and Imperialism he wrote:

Each great metropolitan center that aspired to global dominance has said, and alas done, many of the same things. There is always the appeal to power and national interest in running the affairs of lesser peoples. There is always the same destructive zeal when the going gets a little rough, or when the natives rise up and reject a compliant and unpopular ruler who is ensnared and kept in place by the imperial power; there is the horrifically predictable disclaimer that “we” are exceptional, not imperial. (p. xxviii)

Today, we generally think of colonialism as a Euro-American phenomenon. It took less than a day in Pattani in far south Thailand to learn that this is not the case, and that almost everything that has written about the insidious nature of colonialism applies to Thailand as much as it does to Britain, France and the United States.

Thailand is generally known as a Buddhist kingdom, but the south part of the country – which consists of three provinces—Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala—has an overwhelmingly Malay Muslim population. Every day they struggle to preserve and assert their cultural and religious identities in the face of more than a century of domination and marginalization by the Thai state.

Approaching a roadblock.

On a recent trip to the three provinces we realized that we had come to a strange and dangerous place as soon as we arrived in Narathiwat from Bangkok. Our cell phones showed “no network” and soldiers with AK-47 automatic rifles lined the airport entrance and exit. We did not learn until later that one could not activate a cell phone without approval from the Thai military and roadblocks every 5 km or so are rather common.

When we arrived at the only 4-star hotel in Narathiwat, the atmosphere was almost eerie and dense with silence. We found that we were the only guests and that the staff was vaguely uncomfortable to see three obvious foreigners, two Malays (who are Muslim) and one white person.

In a region that is predominantly Muslim, there are portraits of the Thai royal family everywhere. Most road signs are in Thai and the Malays are expected to adapt the language in their daily lives. They are expected to accept the royal family as benevolent patrons.

During the span of four days, we spoke with local Muslim religious leaders and academics and quickly learned that the insurgencies that have plagued the provinces have little to do with “global jihadism” and everything to do with Thai political and cultural imperialism.

The Imam of the Al Furqan Mosque. His father, the previous Imam, was killed in the attack of June 8 attack while leading prayers.

On a visit to the Al Furqan mosque where close to thirty people were gunned down mafia-style during prayers on 8 June 2009, the air was thick with humidity and anxiety. Will there be masked men attacking us from the surrounding forests or will the imam of the mosque who carried a pistol underneath his sarong sprint into action? Questions like these flashed through our minds.

It is not clear who carried out the attack, though most villagers around the mosque suspected Buddhist paramilitaries financed and armed by the Queen Sirikit of Thailand—who the Thai government portrays as a model of Buddhist virtue—had something to do with it.

The Thai military informed us that most of the Buddhist populations of the region are people who have been resettled from poverty-stricken regions in Northeast Thailand to bring Buddhism and Thai culture to the south. Buddhist temples are nestled in the midst of army camps and some monks carry automatic weapons to protect Buddhism.

During a meeting with the Thai military, Lieutenant-General Keresri (who is in charge of civil, military and police affairs in the region) told us that the people of the region were not Malays, but Thai Muslims. He described majority of the residents are “simple people who do not know much about civilization and only want to pray in the mosque five times a day and sit in the village.” He described the Thai army’s mission as being to “win their hearts and minds.”

We could not take photos of the military base camp. It seemed like something from Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War story. The meeting with the General was a revelation. He insisted on using an official interpreter, though he speaks English well. It seemed not to occur to him that the conversation could just as well have been conducted in Malay.  Even if he did, he chose to use English. Language use is an element of domination.

Teaching Malay Muslims to raise chickens.

He then “invited” us to visit a training and re-education camp. An aide took us across the road and showed classes being conducted about raising chickens and farming fish. Malays domesticated chickens thousands of years ago and have been raising fish in ponds for centuries. He explained that the classes were intended to teach people about domestic production. When asked if these techniques could be used for commercial purposes the answer was: “These people are not interested in that. They just want to live in the village, if they have enough to eat, that is good enough for them.”

The general’s statement echoes the “the myth of the lazy native,” a phrase coined by Malaysian scholar Syed Hussein Alatas. It was one of the cornerstones of British colonial ideology in Malaysia. The Thais made the British myth their own when they annexed the Malay territory that is now the “Deep South”.

The real purpose of the camp soon became clear. Army officials would “visit” graduates and ask them about the activities of “criminal gangs.” When asked if the “criminal gangs” are jihadis, he said: “No, just criminals.” Thailand would not like to be associated with jihadism or to be known as a center of Islamist activism. Few of the people at the training camp asked to be there. Most were “invited” from villages nearby in which insurgents are known to be active.

Colonialism at its worst is a systematic attempt to colonize the ordinary residents and to devalue their culture, religion and language. This seems to be exactly what is happening in these three provinces.

The Malays, who have a long tradition of sophisticated Islamic scholarship, refuse to send their children to Thai government schools. They continue to send them to traditional “pondok” or small religious schools, many of which teach a combination of Islamic and “modern” subjects.  As Thailand emerged as a nation state in the early decades of the twentieth century, it has consistently attempted to impose Bangkok-centered religion, language and culture onto its border regions. The Malay Muslims of the Deep South have consistently resisted these efforts.

There are 3,400 mosques in Thailand and out of this, 2,300 of them are located in Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani. Because of this, Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva recently tried his best to back a suggestion by his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak to grant autonomy in the region. However, when Mr Najib raised the sensitive issue in a recent interview with a Thai daily, he was countered by strong opposition from the hawks in the Thai establishment and armed forces.

The Malaysian government is doing its best to work together with the Bangkok administration to make the autonomy concept materialize in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. The shadowy insurgency, which operates in scattered semi-autonomous cells with no visible centralized leadership, wants the restoration of the old Pattani state.

The Islamic Sultanate of Pattani, which included Malaysia’s Kelantan and Kedah states, was once a thriving commercial and cultural hub. In 1902 all three provinces, Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, were annexed by mainly Buddhist Thais. This sparked decades of tension that spiraled into a full-blown insurgency five years ago that has killed close to 4,000 people.

According to a Thai-based Wikipedia page, most Thais describe resistance fighters in the South as violent Muslim extremists but they are known as freedom fighters or jihadists by the Malay Muslims. With more than 60,000 Thai army troops now stationed in the three provinces, it is apparent that Said was quite right about colonialism, but failed to consider how his observations might apply to colonial states other than those in Europe and America.

________________________________________
*Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University and Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at Gadjah Madah University and Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, both in Yogyakarta Indonesia. Mariani Yahya is a Journalism Lecturer at the Management Development Institute of Singapore. She holds a Master in Science Degree in International Relations.

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One of the important challenges of President Obama’s administration is to sell the continuation of our “overseas contingency operation” (or perhaps FATAVE) in Afghanistan to an increasingly disenchanted audience at home and abroad. But there is a worrisome absence of a good narrative–a coherent collection of stories–about why we are there and what we hope to accomplish.

In recent press conferences and briefings, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates have maintained a consistent posture of support for a continued U.S. military presence, despite polls showing a growing lack of popularity for that posture. In a recent (September 22. 2009) Pew Research Center poll, the results were striking:

The poll shows that even though 76 percent of Americans see a Taliban takeover of the country as a major threat to U.S. security, 43 percent favor pulling out all U.S. and NATO troops as soon as possible. The number of those advocating withdrawal has increased five percent in just three months (from 38 percent in June), while the ranks of those set on ‘staying the course’ shrank by seven percent during the same period.

Since that poll was released there has been an upturn in debate over direction and policy in the White House, including a plea from General Stanley McChrystal for an additional 40,000 troops. As a Washington Post story about the apparent disagreement between McChrystal and the White House put it yesterday:

Obama may take weeks to decide whether to add more troops, but the idea of pulling out isn’t on the table as a way to deal with a war nearing its ninth year, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “‘I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear,” Gibbs said.

With due respect to Mr. Gibbs, I think nothing about this decision is yet “very clear” and much of the storyline is simply “missing.”

What is missing from reports about the ongoing debate over the future of our military mission in Afghanistan? From a strategic communication perspective, it is any mention of narrative. As Scott Ruston pointed out in a previous post:

A narrative is a system of stories that hang together and provide a coherent view of the world. People use narratives to understand how their world works. Narratives contain patterns that fit the data of everyday life (events, people, actions, sequences of actions, messages, and so on), explaining how events unfold over time and how one thing causes another.

In other words, what the Obama administration is missing is a collection of stories that provides a clear explanation of our military mission in Afghanistan. We don’t have a well-imagined view of the future of the world with our troops active in Afghanistan, or absent from it. We lack a firm (or better yet passionate) resolve among our leaders not only to accomplish our mission, but also to enact a particular storyline.

Without such a coherent system of stories to provide a clear and credible narrative storyline, American and overseas audiences are left with what narrative scholars call “the presence of an absence, and the absence of a presence.” That is, what we lack is the knowledge that there is, in fact, a believable, credible storyline guiding the trajectory of political decisions and military actions in Afghanistan.

What fills this gap for audiences is increasingly made up of competing narratives, which further fragment the issues and divide citizens and politicians from each other. Our public discourse about Afghanistan is a disconnected series of conflicting news accounts and press statements, daily political opinion polls, the (often inflamed) rhetoric of commentators on the left and right, and the rantings of our opponents overseas. The gap is also filled by widespread public and political anxiety. We fear what we do not know, and in this case, what we do not know is the narrative guiding vital decisions and actions.

Meanwhile, are left with one consistent pattern, one coherent, credible and disturbing storyline. Our leadership seems impotent as an undeclared war goes on, Americans continue to die, the leadership in Afghanistan remains corrupt, the Taliban grow stronger, and our treasury is drained of resources.

This narrative–constructed out of the noise of media stories and images–is eerily similar to the one that corroded support for the White House during the Vietnam War. It eventually led to political defeat, military withdrawal, and a resulting genocide as insurgents sought revenge on those who had assisted U.S. efforts.

It does not have to be this way. The American people expect a believable, credible narrative from this White House. We have learned to expect it. We want a story that closes the gap and provides us with a hopeful view of the future, whatever policies that future must embrace. More importantly, we want to have confidence in the resulting storyline. We want to understand where and how this story ends and have some way of accurately assessing the effectiveness of the steps taken to accomplish those ends.

We will not be satisfied by “a never-ending story.” Notice how short-lived was Secretary Rumsfeld’s rhetoric of “a long war.” Nor will we be content to support characters who don’t demonstrate what we expect from our national leaders/heroes. Bravery, honesty, and justice are all qualities that depend on connecting the narrative to desired ends.

Finally, there is an important principle from narrative theory that ought to guide the reinvention of America’s role in Afghanistan: The story determines the content, not the other way around. Translated into political language this simply means that until our leadership has settled on the narrative, there should be little discussion of specific policies (those smaller stories that make up the system) in the public sphere. A narrow focus on policy absent a compelling narrative will only confuse the popular audience and anger the pundits, leading to a further division of citizens from whatever the resulting storyline might be.

So, to fill the dangerous narrative gap, our leadership must first get the story straight. Then they should keep to it, measure success against it, and demonstrate those qualities of leadership, and leadership communication, that we associate with stories worth living, fighting, and/or, even dying for.

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In the run-up to today’s Afghan elections, the Taliban have been asserting that participation is un-Islamic.  But this infidel thinks these students (Talib translates as “student”) deserve an F.

A recent New York Times Op-Ed by Mirwais Ahmadzai, a program manager with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, reports the appearance of ominous “night letters” warning Afghan civilians not to participate in national elections. The letters reportedly give the following argument, as paraphrased by Ahmadzai, against voting:

The theological claim is that good Muslims are not allowed to seek any state position for themselves, and it is “haram” — forbidden — to cast a vote for anyone who chooses to do so.

The use of the term “theological” here is actually misleading, or at least inaccurate. Theology, or ilm al-kalam, involves the rational investigation and defensible articulation of the articles of belief (click here to see an example of real Sunni theology). The Taliban most certainly have religious convictions and espouse a certain dogmatic creed (aqidah). But  like most Islamists they adhere to school of thought in matters of belief that considers theology, as a rational project, to be blasphemous.

The peak of theological discourse in Islam occurred in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when Asharite scholars like al-Juwayni, al-Ghazali, and Ibn al-Khatib, were producing classic Sunni treatises (e.g. ar-Risala al-Qudsiyyah) and “refuting heretics.” In Sunni Islamic thought, the differences between theology (kalam), creed (aqidah), philosophy (falsafah), and jurisprudence (fiqh), are important.

I make this point not to be pedantic.  Rather, it is important to understand the Taliban’s claims not as “theology” (which the NY Times chose to do), but as jurisprudence.  Accordingly, let’s take a closer look at the Taliban’s explanation from a juridical standpoint.

Declaring an action, like seeking state office or voting, as haram (“forbidden”) is the function of a jurist (alim or faqih) who issues legal opinions. Sunni Islam standardized a methodology for such opinions (fatawa) in the 9^th century. This achievement is traditionally credited to Imam Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi’i, who died in Cairo in 820. This legal methodology is known as usul al-fiqh.

The process a jurist would undertake to formulate a ruling involves the following four steps:

1. Consult the Qur’an – what does God’s Speech have to say on the subject?
2. Consult the Hadith – If the Qur’an does not provide a conclusive answer, what do the traditions of God’s Messenger tell us?
3. Assess Ijma (“consensus”) – Okay, I still don’t know the answer; do the ulama (scholars) or the community agree on an answer? Maybe the sahaba agreed?
4. Undertake Qiyas (“analogical reasoning”) – Still no luck. Some folks disapprove of this step (e.g. Ibn Hazm), but since we can’t find a clear cut answer to the question, is there an analogous problem that has an answer we can look at?

Only if these four procedures fail to determine a definitive answer can the mujtahid be allowed to formulate an opinion to the best of his ability. Now that’s a simplified version of course, but it gives you an idea of what I’m about to do.

Step 1: Consult the Qur’an

The foundational postulate of the the Taliban argument is: “Good Muslims are not allowed to seek any state position for themselves.” The Qur’an has little guidance to offer on this issue. Islam had no explicit political role in society for the first thirteen years of its existence under Muhammad in Mecca (610-622 CE), so we won’t find much in the way of political content in the Meccan surahs (“chapters”). That means we can eliminate 85 of 114 surahs from the equation.

So now we’re left with 29. From those 29 Medinan surahs, these are two verses that seem relevant.  The first is:

If any do fail to judge by what God has revealed, then they are disbelievers. (5:44)

This verse was preceded by the passage: “It was We who revealed the Torah, therein was guidance and light; by its stand have been judged the Jews.” Verse 5:44 is followed later by this passage: “Let the People of the Gospel judge by what God has revealed therein; if any do fail to judge by what God has revealed they are rebels.” Clearly these passages deal with matters of orthopraxy, which are a major concern to Islam, just as they are to Orthodox Judaism. But they don’t have anything to do with “good Muslims” not seeking state positions.

What about this second Medinan surah?

Oh you who believe! Obey God, and obey the Messenger (Muhammad), and those charged with authority among you. If you differ in anything among yourselves, refer to God and His Messenger. (4:59)

This verse reiterates the role that Muhammad played as a judge in Medina, and the fact that he judged matters according to the content of the revelations (e.g. the Qur’an for the Muslims, the Torah for the Jews). But there is still nothing prohibiting good Muslims from seeking state office.

Indeed a “state” didn’t really exist during the time of Muhammad. It was more like a loose tribal confederacy centered around a city-state. In fact, if Muhammad is the perfect example of how Muslims should live their lives, and he was a judge and a “head of state” in Medina (as Islamists maintain), then shouldn’t Muslims also seek positions of authority to rule with justice and piety as the Messenger did? Isn’t that the Sunnah? But I’m getting ahead of myself.  On to…

Step 2:  Consult the Hadith

Sunni Muslims recognize six authentic or sahih collections of Hadith which were written and compiled in the 9^th and 10^th centuries (Muhammad died in the 7^th c.). Each of these six collections consist of literally thousands of (previously) oral traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and his closest companions. These books are the basis of what Muslims call the “Sunnah” (Muhammad’s exemplary behavior).

In addition to those six, there are other collections, such as the 8^th century collection of Imam Malik called al-Muwatta (“the beaten path”), but they don’t carry juridical weight the way the authentic books do. There’s a lot to consider here (thus the existence of scholars trained in the science of Hadith). Regarding our juridical investigation, here are a few Hadiths related to politics:

From Sahih Muslim:

It has been narrated on the authority of Ibn Abbas that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upoh him) said: One who dislikes a thing done by his ruler (amir) should be patient over it, for anyone from the people who withdraws (his obedience) from the government, even to the extent of a handspan and died in that conditions, would die the death of one belonging to the days of jahilliyya.

The above tradition from the revered collection of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj doesn’t say anything about “good Muslims” not seeking state offices. But it does say that Muslims who rebel against their governments will die like pagans. Well, aren’t the Taliban fighting against the Karzai government? Perhaps their ”scholars” don’t have this book in their collection.

We also find this in Sahih Muslim:

‘Urwa b. Zubair reported that Hisham b. Hakim found a person (the ruler of Hims) who had been detaining some Nabateans in connection with the dues of Jizya. He said: What is this? I heard Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Allah would torment those persons who torment people in the world.

Again, there’s nothing here prohibiting people from holding political office. But this Hadith does admonish rulers who do not treat their subjects well. Has anyone else seen the video footage of Taliban “police” beating women with clubs for showing too much ankle beneath their tent-like burqas? Let’s keeping going.

From Sunan Abu Dawud:

Narrated Al-Miqdam ibn Ma’dikarib: The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) struck him on his shoulders and then said: You will attain success, Qudaym, if you die without having been a ruler, a secretary, or a chief.

Could this be the smoking gun? This tradition has the Prophet telling a man named Qudaym that he’ll have success if he stays out of politics (at least that’s how I read it). But he’s addressing a particular individual – was he giving some personal advice based on his own experiences? Or was he making a prophetic premonition of some kind? Or was he politely telling Qudaym that he’d be a terrible ruler? The Hadith doesn’t provide enough contextual material for us to know for sure.

Let’s look at another Hadith to try and clarify things, Book 19, Number 2966, Narrated Umar ibn AbdulAziz:

When Abu Bakr was made ruler he administered it as the Prophet (peace be upon him) had done in his lifetime till he passed on. Then when Umar ibn al-Khattab was made ruler he administered it as they had done till he passed on…

This Hadith, which actually discusses inheriting a plot of land, reminds us that the Prophet’s closest companions, Abu Bakr and Umar, were both selected as rulers, specifically caliphs, over the “Islamic state.” Both are revered as sahaba among Sunni Muslims making them essentially beyond reproach. Even if we understand the previous Hadith to mean that holding political office dooms one to failure (which probably means Hellfire), then obviously such a mistake cannot apply to the honored sahaba of the Messenger. In fact, Abu Bakr accepted the position of caliph (khalifah) after a council (shura) of community elders selected him. Was he doing something forbidden when he accepted? And the council of elders? Certainly not. As I said, Abu Bakr is beyond reproach in Sunni Islam (it’s a different story in Shi’ite Islam).

Step 3: Assess Ijma

There are so many Hadiths to examine and so little time. So let us be conservative and conclude that they provide conflicting advice.  In that case we examine the principle of consensus. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world, including ulama (scholars), who see no problem with seeking state office and participating in elections. Even many Islamists accept this, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, or even Hamas in Gaza, among many others.  The Taliban themselves were rulers of the Afghan state a few years back.  So I think we can conclusively acknowledge a consensus among Muslims that seeking state positions is permissible.  And anyway, aren’t military coups and armed insurgencies examples of “seeking state positions”? I think I’m jumping to step four again, so let’s just get right to it.

Step 4: Undertake Qiyas

Qiyas is analogical reasoning. I’m going to approach this in an unconventional way. Traditionally, one would use qiyas to look for an analogous precedent in other legal rulings. But I want to take a look at Islamic history instead because it will be far more fruitful. Islam has never been known to embrace monasticism and reject the world of politics and material goods. On the contrary, the Qur’an explicitly forbids monasticism and calls on Muslims to strive to establish a social order based on justice and equity rooted in the “revealed law.”

Muhammad’s closest followers seemed to take this to heart, because after he died in 632 C.E. they went to war with each other over who would rule the Islamic empire. For example, at the “Battle of the Camel” in 656 C.E., Muhammad’s wife Aisha (the daughter of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr) led an army with Talha and al-Zubayr (two of the Prophet’s best companions) against Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet and the fourth Caliph according to the traditional Sunni formula of the “Four Rightly Guided Caliphs.” When Ali won, he later went to war with Mu’awiyyah of the Umayyad clan. Then in 680 C.E. Muhammad’s grandson Husayn (the son of Ali) rallied his supporters and claimed his right to rule only to be killed in a lopsided battle at Karbala against the army of Mu’awiyyah’s son, Yazid. I’ve only scratched the surface here, but needless to say, the companions (sahaba) of Muhammad seemed to be very interested in seeking state office. Were they sinners? No, they were sahaba!

In conclusion, a proper application of usul al-fiqh shows that there is nothing un-Islamic about seeking office or participating in the election of rulers.  These Taliban “rulings” are al-bida (innovations) of  uneducated tribesmen who seem to know less about Islam than an American kafir.

*Jeffry Halverson is a CSC Postdoctoral Research Associate who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies.  His book, entitled Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam , will be published in 2010.

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by James Joyner, outsidethebeltway.com

At last, the AP is reporting, someone is finally going to review our moronic “terror alert system” (TAS).

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to appoint a panel to reevaluate the system and determine whether it should be changed, or possibly eliminated.

Good for her.  The existing system, put in place shortly after the 9/11 attacks, have five levels of “threat” of terrorist attacks.  The AP story reports:

Currently, the alert level is at orange for the aviation sector, and yellow for the rest of the country. The nation has never been below yellow since 2001, although Hawaii put itself at blue for a year after the national system was adopted. It has since raised the level to yellow.

I believe the aviation sector has been at orange since the beginning, also.

The problem with the current system is that it runs afoul of something called the “information model of variance,”  developed by astronomers in the late 1800s and generalized by Shannon and Weaver in their 1949 Mathematical Theory of Communication.  The principle is simple:  Variability in a measure carries information about the thing being measured.  A correlary is that no variance in a measure means it carries no information.  Since the Terror Alert System never varies, it carries no information.  And because information conveys meaning, the system is– literally– meaningless.

Besides the fact that the TAS carries no information, there is an issue of what  people would do with the information, if it did carry any.   From the outset, it has never been clear how anyone was supposed to react if the alert went from one level to another.

Compare this to other common altert systems.  I live in Phoenix, where we occasionally have air polution alterts.   When we have a high particulate polution day, particular restrictions go into effect.  Leaf blowers can’t be used on commercial property.  People can’t burn wood in fireplaces or have open fires outside.  Use of off-road vehicles is banned.   Or take the place I used to live, central Illinois.  When we had a tornado warning, people were supposed to go to the basement.

So my humble advice to Secretary Napolitano comes in two parts.  First, if we are going to have an alert system that presumes to measure a level of risk, design it so the risk level does in fact vary.  This may just be a matter of making it more fine grained, so as to take into account “smaller” events and conditions that come and go.  Without variance, the system carries no information and has no communication value.

Second, make sure that the changes in level correspond to definite courses of action.  Like a pollution advisory system or tornado warning, when the level increases people should be expected to do things, and when it goes down they should be expected to stop doing them. Those who are expected to respond should know what the courses of action are, and they should be reminded when the changes occur.

The most ideal situation would be if the actions people take when the levels go up would have an impact on bringing the levels back down.   This creates a deviation-counteracting control system (the intent behind the pollution warning system), and would give the people using the alert a sense of efficacy.

If these two goals can’t be accomplished, then just scrap TAS.  Rely on ad hoc government advisories through the news media, etc., to inform people when there are terrorism problems and what they should do.

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Last week, while I was recovering from a long stretch of foreign travel, GAO released its latest report on public diplomacy.  Matt thinks it is “interesting and worth reading,”  while Kim says not so much. My own view is that the report is interesting (in a disturbing way) because it clings to a failed model of strategic communication effectiveness.  Like past GAO reports, it insists that if we only apply that model more diligently, then everything will be alright.

The main conclusion of the report is that the State Department has not been paying enough attention to earlier GAO reports and that it has failed to clearly enough define its purposes/goals, assess and manage risks, measure outcomes, and coordinate activities.

GAO Campaign Style Approach

In particular it faults State for lacking country-level plans that implement best practices from the “campaign-style approach” to strategic communication.  The ideal process as diagrammed in their report is shown in the figure at right.  Among the  assumptions underlying the diagram are:

• It presumes you can define your core messages independent of the people you will be communicating with, then launch the messages at them, like so many artillery shells.
• It assumes you can target particular audiences and deliver messages narrowly to them, without those messages leaking to other audiences.
• It assumes you can pre-plan your communication efforts and that if you do a good job things will probably go more or less according to plan.
• It assumes you can unambiguously assess the results of communication efforts in a short time frame and use this information to make minor adjustments that “fine tune” your communication efforts.

However, as we have argued, repeatedly, the diagram and its assumptions are derived from an outdated model of communication, and following it better will only make matters worse.  Communication is not a process of transmission of messages but of dialogue with an audience.  Modern media systems make exclusively targeting narrow audiences difficult or impossible.  Communication systems are so complex that planning is of limited use.  You can’t straightforwardly assess results and tweak your tactics, as if you were a strategic communication version of a forward artillery spotter.

The fourth section of the report says our problem is that U.S. strategic communication efforts are not coordinated enough.  This is a theme that has been repeated ad nauseum in reports over the last eight or nine years, and was the subject of multiple abortive attempts by the Bush administration to create coordinating offices at the executive level.

There is little doubt that presenting incoherent and contradictory messages is a bad idea. But on the other hand having everyone hammering on a few talking points in a “campaign style” effort is a bad idea too, and this is what I think the GAO has in mind.  The problem with that approach is that it presumes you already have the right messages and you can predict how your audience is going to react.  In other words, it presumes a simple strategic communication landscape.

In reality, the United States operates on a rugged landscape where things extremely complex and unpredictable.  In that situation we a more evolutionary approach, based on variation, selection, and retention.  Trying too hard to coordinate things only works against that goal by inhibiting variation.

The GAO also faults the State Department for not engaging the private sector more effectively.  This is another recurring theme in their reports (as they themselves note).  The presumption is that we have the best marketing and advertising minds in the world, and if we can only get them involved in public diplomacy things will improve.

But there is reason to question whether the knowledge of our admittedly first-rate marketing and advertising minds maps straightforwardly to public diplomacy.  Charlotte Beers was regarded as one of the brightest stars in the advertising business, but failed in applying her ideas to public diplomacy.  Karen Hughes made use of Disney’s production savvy in developing a video to be shown in embassies, customs control points, etc., but it’s not clear this had any impact on views of the U.S.  While the private sector has ideas to contribute, it is possible to take the analogy between business and public diplomacy too far.

There are some things to agree with in the report:  State is underfunded and understaffed with respect to its responsibilities, security concerns at its outposts has limited engagement with foreign publics, and efforts have begun to engage new media.  But on the whole, if you took the dates and references to the Obama admininstration out of this report, it would be pretty hard to distinguish from those from 2003 and 2005.

This leads me to suggest that maybe the GAO should reconsider its own communication strategy in preparing these reports.  The recommendations they are making are not sticking; they document this themselves.  Maybe this is because they are not really offering anything fresh or compelling in terms of perspective and recommendations.

The GAO would have more interesting things to say if they abandoned the old “command and control” framework for criticism that they have been applying all these years, and made recommendations that are better suited to the complex systems in which public diplomacy actually operates.

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I just ran across this “Washington whisper” item in USNWR:

President Obama has nominated longtime national security expert Philip J. “P. J.” Crowley as assistant secretary of state for public affairs, a move that suggests that the department’s public diplomacy with foreign nations will be stepped up. Crowley, currently a senior fellow and director of homeland security at the Center for American Progress, is expected to play more of a background role, explaining U.S. diplomatic moves to the foreign media and nations rather than handling the daily briefings. He is widely respected in the press and among military and diplomatic officials for his past government service and his steady advocacy while at the progressive think tank. During the Clinton administration, he was the spokesman for the National Security Council and a Defense Department communicator. He is a retired Air Force colonel who has also worked with NATO. If he is confirmed, as expected, it will help Secretary Hillary Clinton build on her public diplomacy program, say State Department officials. As one source put it, the goal is to “narrow the perception gap between what we say and what we do.

This is confusing.  I know definitions in this domain are kind of fuzzy, but I always thought public affairs was targeted primarily at domestic audiences.

To wit, publicdiplomacy.org says that public diplomacy

seeks to promote the national interest of the United States through understanding, informing and influencing foreign audiences.

Public affairs, on the other hand:

seeks to foster understanding of these goals through dialogue with individual citizens and other groups and institutions, and domestic and international media. However, the thrust of public affairs is to inform the domestic audience.

(my emphasis in both quotes).

Yet the announcement above says Crowley will be “explaining U.S. diplomatic moves to the foreign media and nations” and that he is going to “help Secretary Hillary Clinton build on her public diplomacy program.”

So is this a PA post or a PD post?  If Crowley will be doing PD, what will McHale be doing?  And who will be doing PA?

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