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How to Win Islam Over

[International Herald Tribune] Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse - Aides to Barack Obama have said he may give a speech from a Muslim capital in his first 100 days to "make clear that we are not at war with Islam." This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well-intentioned, but the premise is wrong. Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that "Islam" and "the West" are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between "civilizations" or "cultures" concede at least one crucial point to those who, like bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. The page Obama should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet. People routinely - but wrongly - single out Islam as the explanation for a host of conflicts, rather than nationalism or separatism, political ambitions or social ills. In addition, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. Olivier Roy is a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Justin Vaisse is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
2008-12-25 06:00:00
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