We can distinguish four essential positions of Muslims:

.Fundamentalists reject democratic values and contemporary Western culture.

They want an authoritarian, puritanical state that will implement their

extreme view of Islamic law and morality. They are willing to use innovation

and modern technology to achieve that goal.

. Traditionalists want a conservative society. They are suspicious of

modernity, innovation, and change.

.Modernists want the Islamic world to become part of global modernity.

They want to modernize and reform Islam to bring it into line with the age.

. Secularists want the Islamic world to accept a division of church and state

in the manner of Western industrial democracies, with religion relegated to

the private sphere.

These groups hold distinctly different positions on essential issues that have

become contentious in the Islamic world today, including political and individual

freedom, education, the status of women, criminal justice, the legitimacy of

reform and change, and attitudes toward the West.

The fundamentalists are hostile to the West and to the United States in particular

and are intent, to varying degrees, on damaging and destroying democratic

modernity. Supporting them is not an option, except for transitory tactical

considerations. The traditionalists generally hold more moderate views, but

there are significant differences between different groups of traditionalists.

Some are close to the fundamentalists. None wholeheartedly embraces modern

democracy and the culture and values of modernity and, at best, can only make

an uneasy peace with them.

The modernists and secularists are closest to the West in terms of values and

policies. However, they are generally in a weaker position than the other

groups, lacking powerful backing, financial resources, an effective infrastructure,

and a public platform. The secularists, besides sometimes being unacceptable

as allies on the basis of their broader ideological affiliation, also have

trouble addressing the traditional sector of an Islamic audience.

Traditional orthodox Islam contains democratic elements that can be used to

counter the repressive, authoritarian Islam of the fundamentalists, but it is not

suited to be the primary vehicle of democratic Islam. That role falls to the

Islamic modernists, whose effectiveness, however, has been limited by a number

of constraints, which this report will explore.

To encourage positive change in the Islamic world toward greater democracy,

modernity, and compatibility with the contemporary international world order,

the United States and the West need to consider very carefully which elements,

trends, and forces within Islam they intend to strengthen; what the goals andvalues of their various potential allies and protégés really are; and what the

broader consequences of advancing their respective agendas are likely to be. A

mixed approach composed of the following elements is likely to be the most

effective:

.Support the modernists first:

.Publish and distribute their works at subsidized cost.

. Encourage them to write for mass audiences and for youth.

. Introduce their views into the curriculum of Islamic education.

. Give them a public platform.

.Make their opinions and judgments on fundamental questions of religious

interpretation available to a mass audience in competition with

those of the fundamentalists and traditionalists, who have Web sites,

publishing houses, schools, institutes, and many other vehicles for disseminating

their views.

. Position secularism and modernism as a “counterculture option for

disaffected Islamic youth.

. Facilitate and encourage an awareness of their pre- and non-Islamic

history and culture, in the media and the curricula of relevant countries.

. Assist in the development of independent civic organizations, to promote

civic culture and provide a space for ordinary citizens to educate

themselves about the political process and to articulate their views.

. Support the traditionalists against the fundamentalists:

. Publicize traditionalist criticism of fundamentalist violence and extremism;

encourage disagreements between traditionalists and fundamentalists.

. Discourage alliances between traditionalists and fundamentalists.

. Encourage cooperation between modernists and the traditionalists who

are closer to the modernist end of the spectrum.

. Where appropriate, educate the traditionalists to equip them better for

debates against fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are often rhetorically

superior, while traditionalists practice a politically inarticulate “folk

Islam. In such places as Central Asia, they may need to be educated

and trained in orthodox Islam to be able to stand their ground.

.Increase the presence and profile of modernists in traditionalist institutions.

xii Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies

. Discriminate between different sectors of traditionalism. Encourage

those with a greater affinity to modernism, such as the Hanafi law

school, versus others. Encourage them to issue religious opinions and

popularize these to weaken the authority of backward Wahhabi inspired

religious rulings. This relates to funding: Wahhabi money goes

to the support of the conservative Hanbali school. It also relates to

knowledge: More-backward parts of the Muslim world are not aware of

advances in the application and interpretation of Islamic law.

. Encourage the popularity and acceptance of Sufism.

. Confront and oppose the fundamentalists:

. Challenge their interpretation of Islam and expose inaccuracies.

. Reveal their linkages to illegal groups and activities.

. Publicize the consequences of their violent acts.

. Demonstrate their inability to rule, to achieve positive development of

their countries and communities.

. Address these messages especially to young people, to pious traditionalist

populations, to Muslim minorities in the West, and to women.

. Avoid showing respect or admiration for the violent feats of fundamentalist

extremists and terrorists. Cast them as disturbed and cowardly, not as evil heroes.

. Encourage journalists to investigate issues of corruption, hypocrisy, and immorality in fundamentalist and terrorist circles.

. Encourage divisions among fundamentalists.

. Selectively support secularists:

. Encourage recognition of fundamentalism as a shared enemy, discourage

secularist alliance with anti-U.S. forces on such grounds as

nationalism and leftist ideology.

. Support the idea that religion and the state can be separate in Islam too

and that this does not endanger the faith but, in fact, may strengthen it.

Whichever approach or mix of approaches is chosen, we recommend that it be

done with careful deliberation, in knowledge of the symbolic weight of certain

issues; the meaning likely to be assigned to the alignment of U.S. policymakers

with particular positions on these issues; the consequences of these alignments

for other Islamic actors, including the risk of endangering or discrediting the

very groups and people we are seeking to help; and the opportunity costs and

possible unintended consequences of affiliations and postures that may seem

appropriate in the short term.

The following outline summarizes the strategy:

. Support the modernists first, enhancing their vision of Islam over that of the traditionalists by providing them with a broad platform to articulate and

disseminate their views. They, not the traditionalists, should be cultivated

and publicly presented as the face of contemporary Islam.

. Support the secularists on a case-by-case basis.

. Encourage secular civic and cultural institutions and programs.

. Back the traditionalists enough to keep them viable against the fundamentalists

(if and wherever those are our choices) and to prevent a closer

alliance between these two groups. Within the traditionalists, we should

selectively encourage those who are the relatively better match for modern

civil society. For example, some Islamic law schools are far more amenable

to our view of justice and human rights than are others.

. Finally, oppose the fundamentalists energetically by striking at vulnerabilities

in their Islamic and ideological postures, exposing things that neither

48 Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies

the youthful idealists in their target audience nor the pious traditionalists

can approve of: their corruption, their brutality, their ignorance, the bias

and manifest errors in their application of Islam, and their inability to lead

and govern.

Some additional, more-direct activities will be necessary to support this overall approach, such as the following:

. Help break the fundamentalist and traditionalist monopoly on defining,

explaining, and interpreting Islam.

. Identify appropriate modernist scholars to manage a Web site that answers

questions related to daily conduct and offers modernist Islamic legal opinions.

. Encourage modernist scholars to write textbooks and develop curricula.

. Publish introductory books at subsidized rates to make them as available as

the tractates of fundamentalist authors.

. Use popular regional media, such as radio, to introduce the thoughts and

practices of modernist Muslims to broaden the international view of what

Islam means and can mean.