This is the second of a four-part series of posts on foreign reactions to recent anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. In Part I we looked at the Park51 project, also known as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” and found concern over growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. There were also claims about Zionist interests, creating a double-bind situation that would cast the U.S. in a negative light whether the project proceeds or not. At the same time there was an emphasis on diversity of opinion on the subject in the U.S. and an overall more muted reaction than observers here and abroad expected.

Today we consider the coverage of ”International Burn a Qur’an Day.” Given the attention that this story has been getting — one of the stated goals of the event — we can be sure that most people have heard of Gainesville, Florida’s Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burn Qur’ans on September 11.

Compared to the other events we’re reviewing in this series, this one is of greatest concern because of its potential to inflame passions and incite violence. Yesterday, General David Petraeus, in an unusual public comment on a U.S. political issue, warned that the event:

could cause significant problems for American troops overseas. It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan.

In a Hardball interview with Jones the issue of the international reaction came up, but Pastor Jones dodged the question, focusing instead on his goal:

Matthews: What do you think the reaction will be as this goes on international television?

Jones: Well I hope it will send a very clear message.

Matthews: What would be the reaction, what would be the consequence?

Jones: Of Islam, that they should not try to do what they have done in Europe. You see in Europe as they took a lackadaisical attitude, as Europe did not move forward, you see that the Moslems in Europe, as they gained in population they also began to demand Sharia law, Sharia courts, which is a very violent form of punishment. And what we hope to accomplish by the burning of the Koran is to send a very clear–it is indeed a radical message but a clear and radical message to Moslems, to Sharia law, that that is not welcomed in America.

Jones also named former President Bush as a politician he respects, but said that he would still not stop the planned event if he were personally asked to do so by Bush.

Mainstream Reaction

Protests of the event have been organized in South Asia. The Nation Online in Pakistan reported on protests in Lahore on August 27. Earlier this week the Associated Press reported on a protest in Kabul involving “hundreds” of Afghans who condemned the planned event, burned U.S. flags, and demanded U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

On Sunday in Indonesia, there was also a protest involving 3000 people.  Here, non-Muslims and Muslim supporters of pluralism have been speaking out against the event since its announcement. Given Indonesia’s recent history of episodes of sectarian violence — in Poso, Ambon, the North Moluccas, Kupang — as well as recent church burnings and bombings, the fact that non-Muslims are on edge is understandable. Although the story is being used to make a broader condemnation of the United States, much of the communication about the proposed burning has been remarkably evenhanded, including noting the work of pluralist groups in Indonesia to head off retaliation there.

Elsewhere mainstream reaction uniformly condemned the event as reflecting religious intolerance, and many expressed concern that it would provoke violent reactions in the Muslim world. On August 24, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (an association of 56 Islamic states promoting Muslim solidarity in economic, social, and political affairs) called the event a “motivated act of hatred and religious intolerance” and expressed fear the event would provoke violence and unrest in the Muslim world. The Muslim World League, based in Saudi Arabia, also predicted the event would have an adverse impact on relations and co-existence of world nations.

Stories in Jordan from  Al-Ghad and khaberni.com incited negative reader reactions. Some readers called for God to “punish the evildoers,” “burn them as they burn His word,” and wished for “floods and earthquakes to strike Florida” on September 11. These readers saw the event as proof of anti-Muslim sentiment and America’s “war on Islam.”

An article on Ikhwan Web, the web site of the Muslim Brotherhood (there is debate about whether this website should be considered mainstream or extremist) described the reaction of Dr. Diaa Rashwan, Islamic movements’ expert at Egypt ’s Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, who:

described the intended burnings of the Quran as unreasonable and exceedingly dangerous, going beyond all reason and sensibility. He maintained that a serious crisis will arise and extremism will be initiated in the Muslim world stressing that it is imperative that the US administration and UN interfere before a vicious circle of violence and extremism is initiated.

Another post on Ikhwan Web said the event revealed the violent nature of Christian “terrorists” who fight ideas with violence rather than opposing ideas.

Finally, in August, a story in the Iranian Republic News Agency reported comments by Mehdi Mostafavi, head of Iran’s Islamic Culture and Communications Organization. He called the event “a totally Zionist gesture” and said it is a “war-seeking discourse” designed to promote religious strife:

While the world needs peace and cooperation of nations, such radical, irrational, and Zionist moves only aim to trigger chaos and seek division among followers of different religions.

Extremist Reaction

Zeb commented on a post about the event at U.S. based Revolution Muslim (the blog at the center of the recent South Park controversy) by claiming that Jones is a fire worshiper (i.e. Zoroastrian). He also linked to his own blog, Takht-e-Sulaiman. In that post, he said:

Now it seems like they’re up for another mega satanic ritual on September the 11th. As a church (as these devils are hiding behind a church this time) is gathering help to burn Muslim’s holy book. Let’s see where they take the world. I don’t know if Muslims now are this much gallant to protest against it with utmost force that it deserves, but if it happens (ALLAH forbid) then this act calls for a war. And I’d love to personally kill terry jones.

Two above-ground Islamist groups in Indonesia have spoken out against the Qur’an burning. Habib Rizieq, the leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), vowed retaliation in Indonesia against non-Muslims if the burning is carried out (in an English-language Jakarta Post story). He later “softened” his stance, arguing that those not involved in the burning should not be punished, that it is permissible (halal) to kill those who are directly involved, and that President Obama should step in to stop the act. These stories have been reported in Indonesian-language media as well.

Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, an organization that calls for a global caliphate, similarly condemned the proposed burning, calling Jones crazy. The announcement likened the event to igniting spilled oil with a cigarette lighter, and noted the unease with which non-Muslims in Indonesia are viewing the event. It also links the event to the controversy over the proposed Park51 project in New York City. Calling the United States “hypocritical,” it noted that this act is consistent with the actions of crusaders, and that former President George W. Bush himself has invoked the term “crusade.” It also asks why the Pope has not stepped in, perhaps showing as much ignorance about sects of Christianity as Westerners often show about Islam. (An Egyptian blog similarly missed this distinction, arguing that the event was to draw attention away from the Catholic Church’s ongoing sex scandals.) On the 27th of August, some 300 HTI protesters demonstrated in front of the American embassy, demanding that the burning must be stopped. Other branches of HTI continue to hold protests throughout Indonesia in the hope that the burning will not take place.

HTI-sympathizing site Syabab similarly invokes George Bush’s use of the term “crusade” to describe the actions of the US and the West. The article enumerates past and recent perceived transgressions toward Islam, and accuses the United States of racism against Muslims. Interestingly, it appears as though Jones and some of the Islamists share some common ground. Jones argues that Islam is not compatible with democracy, the West, and human rights, and that Muslims do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior. The latter is not surprising, but the other three points are themselves made by Muslim extremists who condemn U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although it is a view not shared by a majority of the world’s Muslims, many extremists argue that since democracy formulates laws based on human opinion it is a form of shirk (idolatry), in contrast to divinely revealed Islamic law. Similar arguments are made about the West in general and human rights.

Although it is impossible to locate the original source of this rumor, a simple Google search for “Terry Jones arrested” shows a multitude of stories alleging that the pastor was arrested on child molestation charges, charges that are not true.

Selective Attention

One pattern we see in these stories is selective attention to the worst aspects of the controversy, perhaps in an effort to sensationalize it. For example, a couple of weeks ago reports surfaced that an armed Christian militia group, called Right Wing Extreme, offered to provide security at the Quran burning event. This story was reported in Al-Ghad on August 24. However, the group withdrew its planned support for the event because “after much thought and prayer the organization’s leadership determined this event does not glorify GOD in way that lead the lost to Jesus Christ.” We can find no evidence that this change of heart was reported in Al-Ghad or other foreign outlets.

Also receiving little coverage is the condemnation of the event by a prominent Christian organization in the U.S. As Jennifer Bryson noted, there has not been a groundswell of opposition. However, the National Association of Evangelicals, the largest evangelical group in the country, urged cancellation of the event, saying it would “show disrespect for our Muslim neighbors and would exacerbate tensions between Christians and Muslims throughout the world.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center has also condemned the event.  The Veterans of Foreign Wars also denounced the event this week, saying extremists would exploit it.

Yet, unlike the case of the Park51 project, there is little mention of this alternate stance in the foreign media.  This is ironic given that the congregation of the Dove World Outreach Center is reported to include about 50 people, a number that is dwarfed by the membership of the organizations that have registered opposition.

Conclusion

As might be expected, reaction to the Qur’an burning event was more negative and less balanced than coverage of the Park51 project. Mainstream sources uniformly condemned the act and said it reflected religious intolerance, especially toward Islam. These sources also expressed concern that the event, if it goes forward, would provoke violence, as the protests that have already occurred indicate. Though we could not find as many attempts to link the event with Jewish or Zionist interests as we found in the Park51 case, the Iranian government did attempt to make this connection.

Extremists are using the event to stoke tension and provoke violence. They are calling for war and death to those involved in the event. The extremists have also made efforts to tar all Christians with the actions of this group, arguing that it is somehow related to problems in the Catholic Church (even though the group involved is Protestant). They also frame the event with the Crusader narrative, implying that it is more evidence that the United States wants to destroy Islam.

Finally, we note that, unlike the Park51 case, there is little coverage of facts that contradict the basic negative storyline. The decision of the militia group to support the event was reported, but their later decision to withdraw for religious reasons was not. There has been no coverage of the condemnation of the event by prominent Christian, Jewish or Veterans’ groups, either.

Tomorrow, in Part III of this series, we examine foreign reaction to an assortment of “smaller” recent events involving attacks on Muslims and Muslim groups in the United States.

Related posts:

1. Foreign Reaction to US Anti-Muslim Events, Part I: Ground-Zero Mosque by Steven R. Corman, Jeffry R. Halverson, and Chris Lundry...
2. Recent Events in Indonesia and the Philippines Having recently returned from a brief (four-day!) trip to Indonesia...
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Recent weeks have seen an uptick in anti-Muslim events and associated rhetoric in the U.S.  Controversies include:

• The Park51 project in New York, popularly known as the “Ground Zero Mosque”
• The International Burn a Quran Day being planned for 9/11 by the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida
• Various other incidents, such as the stabbing of cab driver Ahmed Sharif in New York, a man urinating in the prayer room of a New York mosque, the punching of a man wearing a turban in Seattle, and arson of construction equipment being used to build a new Islamic community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Analysts have warned of the negative consequences that these controversies could have as they played out in foreign Muslim audiences. Jeff Halverson, writing in this blog, concluded that they would widen the say-do gap of the United States. Other analysts warn that the rhetoric surrounding these controversies is a boon to extremist groups like al Qaeda. Evan Kohlmann, quoted in a Wall Street Journal piece, warned: “We are handing al Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup.”

In a Daily Show bit on August 25, John Stewart poked fun at such warnings, comparing extremists to a crazy ex-girlfriend. Referring to the Park51 project he said:

Apparently the jihadists are the only ones in this whole [expletive] thing that can’t lose. It doesn’t matter what we do… See one side says our weakness emboldens jihadis. The other side says our strength embitters jihadis. How about we try a new system where we don’t give a [expletive] about what they think?

While it’s true that there is little profit in worrying about what the extremists think, the same is not true of mainstream Muslims.

Estimates are that about one-quarter of the world’s population is Muslim. The vast majority of these people are peaceful. Were that not true the world would have been a smoking ruin long ago. These average Muslims, both in the U.S. and abroad, are the “territory” in the  much talked about “battle for hearts and minds,” and it matters–a lot–whether or not they think the U.S. is in a clash of civilizations with the Muslim world.

This is a fact that we think has received too little attention in the current controversies. It’s not so much about how extremists view them; that is predicable. But how are they playing with mainstream Muslims?

We decided to have a look. In this, the first of a four-part series, we see how the Park51 project is playing in the media of the Muslim world. In part two, we do the same for the Qur’an burning controversy. In part three we look at various other recent anti-Muslim incidents, including those mentioned above. We conclude in part four by looking at some generalities across the cases, and drawing some conclusions about how we could communicate about such issues in ways that better serve our national interests.

Park51

As it has in the American media, the Park51 Project (formerly Cordoba House) has received significant attention from media outlets aimed at predominantly Muslim audiences. The media sources examined below range from online message boards and blogs to major news outlets, such as al-Jazeera. In many cases, an interaction between these different media sources is also evident. Three themes we discovered include the notion that the controversy stems from hatred of Muslims, that it is somehow linked to Zionist interests, and that not all Americans agree with the anti-Mosque/Muslim sentiments.

Hatred of Muslims

A significant theme in the stories and posts we reviewed is that the controversy over the Park51 project reflects negative attitudes toward Muslims, ranging from distrust to hate. A thread on an Arabic message board from the website Muslim.net criticizes the “Swine director” of al-Arabiya news organization, Abdel-Rahman al-Rashed (a photo of him smiling with George W. Bush is shown), for his opposition to the Park51 project and his criticism of Obama’s tacit support for the project. The post is a response to materials carried by mainstream media sources, likely Western in origin. The e-signature in the message board post emphasizes the extremist orientation of the user, it includes a statement declaring that America will meet its end between 2011-2012, “God willing.”

On another Arabic language message board, this one focused on Salafi Islam, a post quotes the “leader of the Tea Party movement (Hizb al-Shay)” Mark Williams, as saying that Muslims are “animals of Allah” and “the [Park51] mosque is for the terrorists to worship a monkey god.” The same post further explains that the Tea Party is a conservative right-wing movement, mostly of white religious people, associated with the Republican Party, and that it has also been involved in racism scandals. The post also notes that some believe the group is a reaction to America’s first black president. The source for this information is not given, but it appears that it is largely derived from a mainstream news source.

In a panel discussion aired on al-Jazeera on August 24,  As’ad Abu-Khalil, Professor of Political Science at the California State University, said the controversy is part of a widespread hatred of Muslims in the U.S.:  “We must admit that there is a hate ideology against Islam in this country, which is no different from other hate campaigns such as the anti-Jewish Nazi hostility.”

Writing in Dawn Online, Tariq Fatemi argues that the Park51 controversy is a worrying sign of larger anti-Muslims sentiment in the U.S.:

These efforts cannot be dismissed as the actions of a fringe group, as confirmed by a recent Time magazine poll which found that 61 per cent of Americans oppose the project. The poll also found that 43 per cent of Americans hold unfavourable views of Muslims, while 21 per cent were convinced that most Muslims in the US are not patriotic Americans. Further confirmation of this alarming tendency has come in the growing opposition to mosque construction in other American cities, notably Nashville.

Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia posted a story noting plans by the FBI to monitor mosques in America, and linked it to the Park51 project. The story notes that 51 percent of Americans “still view Muslims in a negative light.” In a subsequent post, HTI links the attack of taxi driver Ahmed Sharif to the project: “After all of the anti-Muslim rhetoric surrounding the debate about Park51… it’s not surprising that many people, the opponents, act in other ways: attacking a taxi driver.” The story notes other recent acts against Islam as well, including a man urinating in a mosque in Queens and the vandalism of a mosque in Fresno (these events will be covered in parts 2 and 3 of this blog post).

Links to Zionism

Some outlets linked the controversy to Jewish or Zionist interests. One large outlet, the Arabic language al-Jazeera, had a news story that appears to be a standard mainstream news report. However, it explicitly identifies a Democratic state legislator who opposes the Park51 project as Jewish. The story does not mention the fact that Mayor Bloomberg, a leading supporter of the project, is also Jewish. Bloomberg’s religion is not identified in the article, even though his position on the project is mentioned.

An additional article from the major Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masri Al-Yom, relates that a group of ulama (religious scholars) from al-Azhar in Cairo responded to endorsements of the Park51 project from the New York Times and columnist Thomas Friedman (both perceived as pro-Israel) by stating that the mosque project is actually a sinister plot to forever link the 9-11 terrorist attacks to Islam. Another scholar quoted in the article adds that Islam is innocent of the 9-11 attacks and the Park51 matter is part of a Zionist conspiracy.

Similarly, in Indonesia the Gencar Alhulbait Nusantara posted a blog with the title “The Tragedy of 911 a Failure of the Zionists.” Although the title is inflammatory, and there is an image of a monkey with a star of David on its face, the post itself notes the interfaith coalition of Jews, Muslims and Christians who have come together to support the project.

Finally, an editorial from Karachi, Pakistan, similarly notes: “It is truly unfortunate that the Cordoba project [i.e. Park51] has provided an opportunity to the neo-con media abetted by the Anti-Defamation League and the cowardly Democrats to uncork national hysteria to gain short-term advantage by pandering to fears.” The editorial continues by noting recent poll numbers from Time magazine to claim that “these [anti-Islam] efforts cannot be dismissed as the actions of a fringe group” and cites the growing opposition to mosque projects throughout the U.S., not simply near Ground Zero.

Diversity in U.S. Opinion

Other media outlets have been far less negative about the controversy, however, and seemingly at pains to acknowledge the diversity of opinion about the matter in the United states. A Saudi Arabian news site, Jedda Arab News Online, carries an editorial that states:

It is not in the Middle East or Afghanistan that the struggle for hearts and minds needs to be won, it is in the US and Europe. There is a real danger of Islamophobia becoming mainstream in the US, as is happening in Europe. Islam is being used by the right in the US as the midterm elections approach to frighten  voters into line.

But the editorial does conclude on a positive note, stating: “We must remember, too, that there are many Americans who are not ignorant or bigoted, with them we need to work.”  The same source sent a similar message in an August 27 editorial:

If ever there was a need for interfaith and intercultural dialogue, it is now. While the furor over plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York continues, there comes yet another poll about Islam in the US. The latest suggests that Americans do not believe Islam encourages violence and that they think Muslims should have the right to build mosques wherever they want.

That the proposed site has become a campaign issue is echoed in Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia’s coverage. It notes that Democrats, including Harry Reid, have spoken out against the project, and that President Obama has backtracked on his statement of support.

The leftist-nationalist Cumhuriyet in Turkey also reported diversity of U.S. opinion about the project, saying:

Despite growing opposition to the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero, the New York Neighbors for American Values, a coalition of the families of 9/11 victims, voiced support for a Muslim community center and mosque near the site of the Sept 11 attacks in Manhattan.

Conclusion

Overall, the Park51 controversy has generated a good deal of negative coverage in Muslim foreign media. Most of the opinions we found suggest that the controversy indexes distrust or hatred of Muslims, and worries that the controversy may only be the tip of a looming iceberg. Other discussion links the controversy in one way or another to Jewish or Zionist interests. Taken together, these opinions suggest a double bind: If the project is allowed to continue it will be because it serves Jewish interests in aggravating tensions between Muslims and Christians. If it does not proceed, it will be an indication of U.S. hostility to Muslims.

At the same time, the coverage has not been uniformly bad. Many outlets emphasize that the opponents of the project are not representative of the U.S. as a whole, and/or attribute the controversy to conservative election-year politics.

Overall it is safe to say that the controversy has not created a firestorm in the Muslim world, as some worried it might. Speaking in an interview on National Public Radio last Thursday, Ramez Maluf, professor of journalism at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, said of the controversy:

Surprisingly, there hasn’t been the amount of coverage that one would expect. There has been quite a few opinion pieces written in newspapers and so forth, but not really to the extent that I think most of us would have expected.

Tomorrow, in Part II of this series, we’ll examine foreign reaction to the “International Burn a Qur’an Day.”

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Indonesian police have charged Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Basyir with supporting terrorism for his role in the the Jemaah Islamiyah training camp in Aceh. He has been accused of participating in planning and funding the project and ordering others to commit terrorist acts, and police reported finding progress reports and videos from the camp.

The training camp, led by Javanese who came to Aceh thinking they would find support, was broken up in February 2010. Its members were either arrested or killed by police (CSC blog post on the camp here).

Police arrested Basyir on August 9, but after seven days — the time allowed by Indonesian law for detention without charges — they requested and were granted a 40-day extension. Now that charges have been filed, the police are weighing whether to release him or continue to detain him until the trial begins. Baysir is old and frail, and police may assume that he would pose a minimal risk for flight.

Basyir served two brief jail terms for his involvement in the bombings of Christian churches in 2000 and for his role in the 2002 Bali bombing and the 2003 attack on the Marriott hotel. In these trials, police were unable to make the most serious charges stick, and Basyir served relatively brief jail sentences. Indonesian media reports over the new charges, however, give detailed information regarding, for example, money transfers from Basyir to the Aceh group (such as this English language story in the Jakarta Post), which may indicate that the police have enough evidence to convict Basyir on more serious charges this time.

As is to be expected, extremist blogs and web sites jumped to his defense. Some argued that his arrest was engineered by the US government. A hacker calling himself Ashaburayatisud posted a defense of Abu Bakar Basyir and Mohammad Jibriel,  disrupting several web sites (including the official government site for the province of East Kalimantan; a list is included here). As of this writing, about half of the sites have returned to normal. Mohammad Jibriel was sentenced to five years in prison for supporting the July 2009 Marriott and Ritz-Carlton bombings.

The hacked web pages demand: “Free them, hey you enemies of Allah!” Followers of “human law” such as democracy, the Indonesian Constitution, and Pancasila – Indonesia’s state ideology — are condemned to hell as non-believers, polytheists, and godless. In an oddly polite twist, the hacker also promised that he did not damage any of the sites’ important information.

A “Free ABB” website has also emerged (http://freeabb.com/), as well as a facebook page (http://facebook.com/free.abb), which is ironic considering Islamists’ condemnations of Facebook for promoting “free sex.” Leaders of other Islamist groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front and Jamaat Ansharut Tawhid (a group Basyir co-founded), have also made statements condemning the arrest. Basyir’s pesantren (Islamic boarding school) al Mukmin posted a statement lamenting the arrest, and promised that it will not disrupt the pesantren’s activities.

Islamists claimed a minor victory, however, by declaring that their prayers had been answered and that Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri fell ill because of the arrest of Basyir.

Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, issued a statement supporting the arrest.

The announcement of charges and the early indications of evidence bode well for the police and Indonesian governmnet’s case. Indonesia was embarassed by the inability to make charges against Basyir stick in his earlier trials, and was criticized by other governments, notably Australia and the United States. It would be another embarassment should Basyir be able to elude these latest charges. If convicted, however, it would be a significant victory for Indonesia’s anti-terrorism efforts.

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While in Singapore for the ICA conference with colleagues from the CSC, interesting news kept coming in from Indonesia concerning its ongoing fight against terrorism. It was quite a contrast to what appeared to be the biggest story in Singapore: the conviction of a foreigner who spray-painted a train, a story that took up several pages of coverage and included a detailed step-by-step illustration recreating the crime. Such news seemed to drown out some of the more important regional goings-on (and brought back memories of the caning of American Michael Fay).

In Indonesia, the media continued its coverage of the trial of Mohammed Jibril, the continuing arrests and trials of Noordin Top’s accomplices and associates, and the arrest of terrorist Sunata.

Jibril was accused of seeking financial support for the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorists who bombed the Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott hotels in Jakarta last summer. He runs the jihadist Ar Rahmah website, where he has publicly denied wrongdoing. A court in Jakarta disagreed, and he was given a 5-year sentence.  Ar Rahmah continues to publish jihadist commentary and news.

The web of arrests connected to Noordin Top’s demise continues to expand, with police charging his father-in-law Baharudin Latif, Baharudin’s son Ata Sabiq Alim, and Noordin’s wife Arina Rahmah with knowingly giving refuge to a wanted terrorist. Last week, Putri Munawaroh, a survivor of the 17 September raid last year during which Noordin Top was killed, was sentenced to eight years for harboring him. Finally, this week brought an eight-year sentence to Saefudin Zuhri, also accused of aiding Noordin Top.

The arrest of Sunata continues to make headlines in Indonesia. He joined KOMPAK to fight Christians in Maluku in 1999, but was first arrested in 2005 for weapons possession and hiding Noordin Top. He was released after being considered a shining example of Indonesia’s deradicalization program, but returned to his old ways, plotting a Mumbai-style attack on Jakarta as well as the assassination of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He was also linked to the recent arrests and killings of militants who created a training camp in Aceh, partly in an attempt to forge common ground between different militant groups. He will join Amir Abdillah in prison, sentenced earlier in June for his connection to the assassination plot.

The arrest of Sunata raises some important questions about Indonesia’s deradicalization program. The English-language broadsheet the Jakarta Globe interviewed Agus Nahrowi, the Senior Program Officer for Search for Common Ground, an NGO aimed at deradicalization in Jakarta’s prison following the arrest. Curiously, the interview doesn’t mention Sunata’s arrest, but rather paints a somewhat sunny picture of deradicalization. Sunata’s arrest raises serious doubts about its effectiveness. Both the CSC and the ICG have posted criticisms of the deradicalization program (here and here); this story should focus greater attention on the need for better efforts in this direction.

In Surabaya, police arrested three housemaids who were accused of stealing from their employers in order to support terrorism activities. While common theft is not a new tactic for JI, using maids to steal apparently is (and of course it raises questions about the judgment of people who let them into their homes in the first place).

And in above-ground political maneuvering, the Islamist PKS party is making some interesting moves. In Eastern Indonesia, it has been fielding Christian candidates in local elections, which some see as a sign of sell out. One of its Islamist competitors, the PBB, is hoping to capitalize on what it sees as the potential flight of supporters as the PKS tries to broaden its base. Yet at the same time, PKS-backed Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring recently compared the sex tape scandal of boy band Peter Pan’s vocalist Nazril Ariel Irham to the crucifixion of Jesus, infuriating Indonesian Christians. Ariel stated that it might be someone else on the tape, and some Muslims believe that Judas Iscariot — or someone else, or an angel – replaced Jesus before the crucifixion. Many have called for the minister’s resignation.

On a lighter note, I viewed the film “Obama, Anak Menteng” (“Obama, Menteng Kid”) on its opening day in Bandung. It’s a children’s movie, so one can’t read too much into it. It’s full of the usual positive messages (accept diversity, play fair, work and study hard) that are about as subtle as a Mack truck, but it also has some typically ugly stereotypes. Obama’s childhood nemesis is darker skinned than he is — he’s from eastern Indonesia — reinforcing the light-skinned-is-better bias. There is a money-grubbing ethnic Chinese bookie, a particularly ugly stereotype. One of Obama’s family’s helpers is a flamboyantly gay, overwrought, cross-dressing diva with a heart of gold; this role is so overacted as to be a caricature. The character wins acceptance, which is a positive message, but I wonder when homosexuals will play regular roles where they don’t have to act in over-the-top stereotypes. The film avoided discussion of some of the serious issues of the time — Obama’s stepfather was recalled to Indonesia in the wake of a massacre of hundreds of thousands, if not more, suspected communists, and was sent to West Papua, where a separatist insurgency was gaining steam — but I suppose that’s to be expected from a children’s film. Trailer here.

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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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Facebook has been gaining ground in Indonesia, and in terms of absolute number of users, Indonesia is now ranked third in the world after the US and the UK. This is remarkable given the low rate of internet penetration in the country, but is explained by the high number of users of hand-held, internet accessible devices.  Facebook has been in the news in Indonesia lately, and there are two interesting examples. The first is a Facebook group with over 55,000 members that was formed to oppose the recently installed statue of US President Barack Obama in a public park in Menteng, Jakarta. The statue portrays Obama as a young boy, reflecting the years he spent living in Indonesia (1967-71). The Facebook users opposed the statue because they felt as though Obama had not done anything for Indonesia (although others point to his example that someone from modest means can achieve greatness). Eventually the government in Jakarta acquiesed to the demands of the Facebook group, and the statue was moved from the park to the elementary school that Obama attended. Obama will be visiting Indonesia in mid-March for the first time since his election.

The other Facebook-related phenomenon has to do with recent cases of rape, abduction and disappearances of young girls by predatory Facebook users. I drove past a large demonstration in Bandung protesting Facebook, organized by Muslim students. Of course this raises several questions. Is Facebook  itself somehow responsible for these criminal cases? Is there something inherently un-Islamic about Facebook, as the groups seem to claim? (Beyond the criminal behavior, some critics argue that Facebook allows un-Islamic behavior in the form of “hooking up” or no-strings sexual liaisons). Do these cases simply reflect the processes by which knowledge about online predation is disseminated and naive users eventually become more aware of the dangers of online behavior? Finally, it points to the presence of alternatives to Facebook, perhaps more Islam-friendly, by which these students must have organized the protest… because surely they couldn’t have used Facebook to organize the protest.

In the legal realm, Indonesia is considering repealing its very restrictive blasphemy law in the name of free speech, consistent with its more open press and newly embraced democratic ideals. Resistance to this 1965 law has come, not surprisingly, from Islamist sources, including political parties and civil society groups. What is somewhat surprising, however, is who the Minister of Religious Affairs Suryadharma Ali decided to meet with in order to discuss the judicial review: representatives from the Islamic Defenders Front and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia. The former is a group of thugs with ties to the Suharto-era quasi-legal, extrajudicial “enforcement” group Pemuda Pancasila, that currently operates territorial “protection” rackets in the name of Islam and frequently runs afoul of the law; the latter is the Indonesian branch of a worldwide Islamist organization whose goal is a global caliphate. Although Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia doesn’t openly advocate violence to achieve its goals, it is banned in some countries, but not in Indonesia — perhaps ironically based on the same freedom of speech doctrine cited by those wishing to overthrow the blasphemy law. In a letter to the Jakarta Post, one writer compared this meeting to a government official in the US meeting on race relations with members of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-nazi groups.

Another legal case is moving through the courts as well. I wrote about it previously in another post a few months ago, and now the case of Mohammad Jibriel is going to trial. He is being tried on charges of providing material support to those responsible for the July 17 bombing in Jakarta of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. Prosecutors claim he visited the Middle East where he asked for and received funding for the operation.

And in other news… the Islamist Indonesian Mujahadeen Council (MMI) elected a new leader, Syawal Yasin, who is the son-in-law of terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah co-founder Abdullah Sungkar. The MMI was founded by JI’s other co-founder, Abu Bakar Bashir, although he has since left the Council. Completing the incestuous circle of jihad, the MMI’s deputy chairman is Abu Jibriel, Mohammad Jibriel’s father. The move by the MMI is viewed as move toward a more hardline approach, with the goal of implementing shariah throughout Indonesia. Syawal’s credentials are cemented by his experience training in Afghanistan to wage jihad on the Soviets, credentials shared with many — living and dead – from the top tier of Jemaah Islamiyah.

In brighter news in Indonesia, pluralism carried the day at Jogjakarta’s Islamic University of Indonesia, where two 1,100-year-old Hindu temples were uncovered by a construction crew building a library. The temples are well preserved, thought to be the result of layers of ash covering them after a volcanic eruption, and contain a statue of Ganesha as well as linga and yoni, objects that represent male and female, and the Hindu deities Shiva and Shakti, respectively. As with pre-Islamic religious symbols most everywhere else in the Islamic world, the temples are to be restored and will remain on the universities campus.

Finally, the Philippine government is preparing for more retributive attacks from al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf after the Armed Forces of the Philippines killed six members of the group in a raid, including a senior rebel leader Albader Parad, in February on the island of Jolo. Parad was suspected of playing a major role in recent kidnappings carried out by AS, and his death is considered a serious blow to the organization. On February 27th, suspected AS members surrounded a village and killed 11 and and wounded around 20 people in Basilan. The attack was viewed as revenge for Parad’s death, as well as retribution for the rescue of two Chinese citizens earlier that day in Basilan.

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In the war of ideas for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world, cultural diplomacy can go a long way. The US government may not be very popular abroad, but our cultural products certainly are. Many Muslims hate our policies, but they still love our movies, listen to our pop music, and cheer for our athletes. Extremists, on the other hand, actively try to disseminate monolithic images of “the other” to their audiences. Al-Qaeda loves to reduce Americans to the archetypal “Crusader” with a singular malevolent purpose. Our films, music, arts, and athletes, can profoundly disrupt and subvert such efforts.

In the age of twenty-four hour news networks, websites, blogs and YouTube, there is no shortage of information out there for inquiring minds to consume. To command a sizable audience amidst such a saturated media landscape (mediascape), many outlets have resorted to promoting outrageous opinions and personalities to garner public attention (i.e. ratings and readers). Thus, the outrageous polarized voices of inflammatory right-wing pundits and snarky left-wing cynics have become a daily fixture of our mediascape and the “old school” journalism of Walter Cronkite has been relegated to the News Hour on PBS.

Even a casual glance through the headlines of the major news sites and magazine stands reveals a disturbing preoccupation with stories about people with names like “Snookie” or “J-Lo.”  Judging by these sorts of headlines, one might not think there’s much going on in the world. But according to UNICEF, some 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes (1 every 6 seconds). The world spends well over $1 trillion dollars each year on military expenditures.  Every twenty minutes another species goes extinct. And despite the recent attention, people were suffering and struggling in Haiti long before the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010. So why is the vapid cast of “Jersey Shore” still getting front page attention when the world has no shortage of urgent and horrific matters to report?

People love (even worship) celebrities.

This is nothing new, of course. Some celebrities have even used their cultural deification for good in the world and lent their names and images to important causes. Some of them might adopt causes for publicity or to fix a sullied public image (e.g. Paris Hilton), but I like to believe that most do it out of real compassion for their fellow human beings and the environment they live in. I guess I have “faith” in a few of these “gods.”

Last month, I was part of a planning committee for a grant proposal that would create a major conference on our campus featuring keynote speakers from academia, government, journalism, and the wild world of celebrity-activism. The core idea behind the conference was making specialized academic expertise about Islam accessible to public policymakers and the public-at-large. The inclusion of a celebrity-activist in our proposal was a response to the public’s preoccupation with celebrity-culture and how “ivory tower” intellectuals struggle to get their ideas and perspectives out into the crowded mediascape. After all, how many Americans would even know where Darfur is located if George Clooney hadn’t traveled to see Sudanese refugees with a film crew following him? The “bread and circuses” of the first world are too distracting for most people.

Communicating to a large public audience seems to require the aid of a celebrity spokesperson, ideally one with some credentials and intellectual clout who cannot simply be dismissed for adopting a “pet project.” A lot of NGOs and charities understand this concept. So why doesn’t our government?

No matter how hard they try to be “stars,” congressmen, senators, governors, and other politicians, are not “real” celebrities – although some admittedly exist in both worlds (e.g. Schwarzenegger, Franken, Reagan). President Obama certainly has celebrity status. But if the United States is truly interested in reaching out to the everyday people of the Muslim world and subverting the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric of Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Awlaki, we need to bring out the big guns of celebrity firepower through cultural diplomacy.

Even people who hate the U.S. government and its policies love American cultural products, including our movies, music, and athletes. It’s easy for Bin Laden to talk about waging holy war on the land of the “Crusaders” George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but it’s another thing to convince a kid in Cairo or Riyadh to wage jihad on Leonardo Dicaprio, LeBron James, Will Smith, and Johnny Depp. People in the Muslim world, many of which remain under authoritarian regimes, are understandably distrustful of governments and politicians. It’s easy for the Arab and Muslim street to dismiss the promises and claims of a Secretary of State or U.S. Ambassador reading a speech off of a teleprompter beside representatives of an unelected regime. An American movie star visiting a Muslim city with a charming smile and polite handshake would probably do a better job at disrupting the “Crusader” image constructed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates than a thousand government speeches and photo-ops. In 1971, we used table tennis or “ping-pong diplomacy” to improve U.S.-Chinese relations; what are we doing in the Muslim world today?

I propose a large-scale U.S. cultural ambassador program to university campuses and cities throughout the Muslim world. In 2007, the State Department conducted a program in China that featured Cal Ripken Jr. and organized youth baseball clinics in four cities. This was too brief to be truly effective. And as much as I love baseball, it is not a popular U.S. export to the Muslim world. So an extension of this program to a country like Syria or Jordan would likely be ill-advised. In terms of athletes, we’d be better off sending stars from the NBA – maybe the kids in Amman would enjoy seeing a dunk contest. Basketball is much easier to set-up and play than baseball – especially in crowded, impoverished and arid cities. Movie stars also need to be enlisted. American movies are everywhere. When I lived in Cairo, there were American movies on broadcast television a couple of times a week. The biggest obstacle might be convincing American movie stars to participate between awards ceremonies.

It is equally important to point out that this sort of cultural diplomacy needs to go both ways. There are a lot of people in the United States who – out of fear, ignorance, or anger – carry disturbing attitudes about Muslims that influence our public discourse and the conduct of our elected government (for the worse). These folks likely won’t listen to an informed professor down at the local university or pick up a copy of his or her over-priced academic hardcover at the bookstore, but they might show up to hear Natalie Portman talk about these issues and share her personal insights as someone who has worked and lived in the Middle East (Portman is Co-Chair of a village banking program with Queen Rania of Jordan). People might also sit down in a theater together to watch a play performed by American and Muslim actors, like the brilliant Ghassan Massoud of Syria. American audiences would undoubtedly find it hard to see the zealous jihadi of their fears in an actor creating a work of art on stage beside their fellow countrymen.

In all, the last thing America needs to do is allow U.S.-Muslim relations to be dictated by or restricted to the events on the battlefield when we are all a part of so much more than the characters imagined by both sides of the “War on Terror.”

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The terminology used in English and other European languages to discuss Islam, and especially Muslim political movements, shifts constantly. There is a general consensus, shared by many in the Muslim world, that “radical” and “extremist” are appropriately characterize individuals and movements that advocate and/or employ violence to accomplish their political ends.

Beyond this the waters are much murkier. What language should we use to refer to the huge majority of the world”s Muslims who oppose radical extremist violence? What terms should be used to distinguish this group from others who advocate values including democracy, human and women”s rights, cultural and religious pluralism?

These are especially vexing questions in light of the fact that terminology used in the “Western” press is instantly globalized. Today’s Op-Ed in the New York Times is known and talked about in villages here in Indonesia, and everywhere else in the Muslim World within hours. When pundits make misleading statements about Islam or call for an “Islamic Reformation” they are heard on the streets of Cairo and Jakarta at least as clearly as they are in Washington and New York.

Western commentators often use “Moderate” and “Liberal” to refer to Muslims and Muslim organizations that oppose violence and who, they think, share “Western” values. These are the worst possible choices. In many Muslim circles “Moderate” and “Liberal” are terms of derision, especially when used in conjunction with the word Islam.

“Islam” refers to various understandings of belief, practices and life ways rooted ultimately in the Qur’an which Muslims believe–no not believe, know–to be the word of God. To say that someone is a “moderate” Muslim is to suggest that she or he is insufficiently pious and does not take God”s word seriously.

“Liberal” is even worse. The term has been captured by extremists in the Muslim world as much as it has been in the United States. It suggests not only impiety but also moral laxity. For many here it means accepting, if not actively promoting, things like drinking alcohol, “free sex” and even “gay marriage.”

Secular Muslim? Don”t even think about it. To call a Muslim “secular” is almost the same as to call him or her an apostate. That means she or he is going to Hell. Religious Muslims take this very seriously. A more appropriate usage would be “Secular people from Muslim backgrounds.”

Using the term “fundamentalist” to refer to “extremists” is equally unwise. Translated into Arabic, Indonesian, Urdu or any other Muslim language, the word means something like: “one who adheres to the basic principles of Islam.” I know many people who not only embrace the concepts of democracy, human and women”s rights and religious tolerance who are proud to call themselves Islamic Fundamentalists and who consider the “extremists” to be religiously deviant.

To be sure there are some Muslims who describe themselves as “moderate,” “liberal,” or even “secular.” I know a few. They are a very small minority. I suspect that these terms are more commonly used by Muslims in the West to locate themselves within Western political discourse than they are by Muslims in Muslim societies.

Calls for an “Islamic Reformation” are entirely misguided. They are often understood as telling Muslims how to think about Islam. I do not know any Muslims who think that non-Muslims have the right to do this. The call is based in Protestant Christian triumphalism, rooted in the questionable assumption that the Protestant Reformation is responsible for democracy, concern for human rights and the other more positive elements of “Western” progressive thought. But those who so blithely call for an “Islamic Reformation” seem to forget or not to know that the 16th Century Northern European Protestant Reformation sparked nearly a century of devastating and extremely bloody religious warfare.

A few months ago I attended a seminar at which a German Professor told a group of young Muslim intellectuals from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore that they needed to find an “Islamic Martin Luther.” This did not go over well.  Most in the audience were familiar with the history of the Protestant Reformation and knew that Luther was virulently anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic and of course anti-Catholic. One friend remarked: “A Protestant Reformation is exactly what we don”t need, that kind of thinking is what produced bin Laden.” Proposing a de-confessionalized version of the principles of the Second Vatican Council would perhaps be more reasonable.

Inter-religious and intercultural dialog can only begin with the acceptance of difference and a commitment to building common understandings on issues of mutual concern. Attempts to conduct such a conversation predicated on the assumption that “you” must become more like “us” will fail. Calling for a Protestant Reformation in Islam dredges up the worst sort of colonial memories. This may not be obvious to Americans. It is painfully obvious to Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders.

Using “moderate,” to say nothing of “liberal,” in a political sense is equally misguided. It suggests that Daniel Pipes is correct that “Islam” and “Muslim” are synonyms for bigotry and violence. It also says that extremists are in control of Muslim religious and political discourse, as Thomas Friedman suggested in a recent New York Times Op-Ed.

These views are simply false. Here in Indonesia the word on the street and in the mosques is that people who plant bombs in the name of Islam are too “extreme” and that even in times of war deliberately targeting civilians is “un-Islamic.” Friedman, Pipes and others hear extremist voices because they want to. Yet, their voices are heard here, with a mixture of anger and sorrow. Anger that people would say such things about Islam and Muslims without distinguishing between the tiny minority that actual do hold extremist views, and the overwhelming majority who believe that the violence advocated by extremists is sinful. Sorrow that there are actually Muslims who do hold such views.

Many Muslim intellectuals here believe that Pipes, Friedman, and others like them think in the same exclusivist, bigoted ways that Muslim extremists do. I think they are correct. Portraying the “other” as an archetype of evil drives ethnic and religious violence.

How to Get it Right?

Finding the right language is not easy in a global information environment. It is necessary to search for terms that, at least, do not offend a larger portion of the intended or unintended audience. At the same time the terms used in local reportage and political discourse must be intelligible to local audiences.

The first step is to stop using terms like moderate, liberal and fundamentalist. Using the term “mainstream” to refer to the huge majority of Muslims who reject extremist violence is a good idea for two reasons: First, it accurately reflects the climate of Muslim opinion. Second, it resonates strongly with the notion of consensus, which is among the basic sources of Islamic Law.

“Progressive” is perhaps the best term to use for those Muslims who advocate democracy, human and women”s rights, religious and cultural pluralism. This term resonates strongly with ijtihad or individual, context sensitive interpretation of Islamic scripture and is also among the accepted sources of Muslim jurisprudence. Many of my Muslim friends, with whom I share these values, also like the term.

To be a “mainstream, fundamentalist, progressive Muslim” is a very good thing. The world could use more of them.

_______________________________
* 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

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I ran across an interesting research article in the most recent issue of the Journal of Communication entitled “‘Carrying online participation offline’–Mobilization by radical online groups and politically dissimilar offline ties.”*

The study looks at neo-Nazis and radical environmentalists (NN/RE) in the West, but because it potentially sheds some light on similar practices by online Muslim extremists, some of the findings deserve comment here.

One notable thing about the study is that it is based on a survey of actual participants in NN/RE Internet forums. The author sampled 517 e-mail and PM addresses form participants in 19 forums, and got usable responses from about 62% of them. That’s a surprising response rate. I don’t know about you, but if I were a neo-Nazi or radical environmentalist I wouldn’t be too keen to answer surveys about my participation in activities supporting my movement.

One question the study addresses is whether participation in the online groups has any effect on support and promotion of the movement in question. Results suggest that the answer is yes because the participation factor was “significant” (science-speak for “greater than expected by chance”). However the effects were very small, with level of participation in the group accounting for 4% of the variation in support for the movement, and 3.4% of the variation in promotion of the movement.

A flaw of the study, in my view, is that all the respondents were participants in a online group. Without a non-participant group for comparison the study can’t conclusively answer the question of how much participation increases mobilization.

More interesting are the study’s findings about the influence of offline relationships on the participants’ engagement. Specifically it asks whether family and friends influence political engagement and/or moderate the mobilizing influence of the online groups. The study classified a participant’s “core ties” (people they are very close to, such as family member) into three categories, those having high, moderate, and low similarity to their own political views. For participants with either the high- and low-similarity core ties, movement support, movement participation and online participation were attenuated.

The author repeated this analysis for “significant ties” (people, such as friends, to whom participants are close but not as close as with core ties). Here there were similar but smaller effects for movement support and online participation, but not movement promotion.  So what we might call “lesser” ties do not have as much of an effect as core ties.

These findings suggest that lots of interpersonal communication with close others reduces the tendency to put radical ideas into practice, if the close others are either radical or anti-radical. If they are more of a mixed bag then they tend not to have this effect. This is interesting because we would normally assume that a radical whose network of close relationships is also radical would perhaps be the most dangerous.  But this seems not to be the case, at least in this samlple.

If the study’s findings generalize, then radicals are perhaps most likely to mobilize as a result of online participation when they are in a social milieu that contains a lot of political diversity.  This would seem more likely if a radical is located in an urban environment. Could this help explain the tendency for radical Islamists to operate in large urban areas of Europe and the U.S.?

* by Magdalena Wojcieszak.  Journal of Communication, Vol. 59 (2009), pages 564-586.

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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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