In a July 9 article in the New York Times, Scott Shane reports that amid the chaos of the Arab Spring and the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood to Egypt’s presidency, the United States now finds itself contemplating new friendships in the region. What those friendships will now entail, according to Shane, are newly brokered relations between the U.S. and hard-line Islamist regimes in the area.
Shane makes the rather glib assertion that because the Obama administration, unlike the much-lamented Bush administration, is willing to negotiate diplomatically with not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also members of the terrorist organization Al Gama’a al-Islamiyya, it has ushered in what the State Department is calling “a new day in a lot of countries across the Middle East and North Africa.” In making this bold statement, Shane essentially cedes legitimacy to theocratic governance in a region not known for its sterling human rights record.
Shane states that in viewing Islamist groups, Americans are responsible for recognizing distinctions between levels of extremism. “American officials did not always carefully distinguish between Islamists, who advocate a leading role for Islam in government, and violent jihadists, who espouse the same goal but advocate terrorism to achieve it,” he said.
By this measure, whippings, beheading, amputations, sexual segregation, religious discrimination, death for apostates and international hostility, even if only concealed for the rest of the non-Islamic world — including the United States and its ally Israel — are merely par for the course and ought not to be mentioned among “friends”as long as it doesn’t spill over into our interests.
This is, in my opinion, the same type of willful ignorance of danger that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain displayed in the face of a rising German threat before World War II, telling the British people repeatedly that no one, not even Hitler, could behave so rashly as to break the peace. It took a lion-like Winston Churchill to untangle the mess that Chamberlain’s sheepish behavior created.
If there is one thing that can be said of Islamist groups, or any extremist group that claims a divine mandate, it is that they are sincere and acting in earnest. To put it another way, they mean business and should be respected and treated with caution.
Anyone who believes his or her God commands him or her to secure devotion by any means is not likely to participate in a lot of give-and-take or diplomatic aplomb. That would entail a weakening of the divine mandate under which they operate. A soldier of God will not concede this at any cost.
The Times can be counted upon to take its usual position: If it’s bad for America, they love it. This isn’t much of a surprise to those of us who read it. What surprises me is the brazenness with which it also throws the interests of the ordinary people of the region under the bus as well.
What was the No. 1 fear of those who didn’t support the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian elections? Religious oppression. Why is the Egyptian military counsel withholding power from the new government? The same reason.
How many people are being killed across the region due to our seeming inability to distinguish friend from foe? Go ask the Iranians we abandoned in 2009 or the Syrians being massacred today.
The Times was swift to laud this so-called Arab Spring as hope and change. I wonder who they’ll endorse for president.
Joshua Fonzi is a microbiology and cell science and entomology and nematology senior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays.
