February 14, 2006
"Moslem States Represent a Potential Threat to World
Peace"
By Daniel
Pipes
How did
the U.S. government perceive Islam as a political force in the
old days? For an answer, I propose a look at a "confidential"
76-page study (declassified in 1979) published sixty years ago
tomorrow by the Military Intelligence Service of the U.S. War
Department.
The 1946
report, which I
have posted online in pdf format (warning: it is a large document
that may be slow to load), is the inaugural issue of a series
of weekly reports titled simply Intelligence Review. This series
presents "current intelligence reflecting the outstanding
developments of military interest in the fields of politics, economics,
sociology, the technical sciences, and, of course, military affairs."
Chapter headings in this first issue include: "Transition
of Major Powers to Peacetime Military Systems," "Manchuria:
Soviet or Chinese Sphere?" and "Wheat: Key to the World's
Food Supply."
Of particular
interest is an 11-page chapter that deals with "Islam: A
Threat to World Stability." It opens with some bleak observations:
With
few exceptions, the states [in the Muslim world] are marked
by poverty, ignorance, and stagnation. It is full of discontent
and frustration, yet alive with consciousness of its inferiority
and with determination to achieve some kind of betterment.
Two
basic urges meet head-on in this area, and conflict is inherent
in this collision of interests. These urges reveal themselves
in the daily news accounts of killings and terrorism, of pressure
groups in opposition, and of raw nationalism and naked expansionism
masquerading as diplomatic maneuvers.
The report
then explains these two urges and rightly begins by focusing on
the long shadow of the premodern period.
The
first of these urges originates within the Moslems' own sphere.
The Moslems remember the power with which once they not only
ruled their own domains but also overpowered half of Europe,
yet they are painfully aware of their present economic, cultural
and military impoverishment. Thus a terrific internal pressure
is building up in their collective thinking. The Moslems intend,
by any means possible, to regain political independence and
to reap the profits of their own resources. … The area,
in short, has an inferiority complex, and its activities are
thus as unpredictable as those of any individual so motivated.
Looking at
Muslims in psychological terms is characteristic of that era,
when social scientists frequently viewed politics through the
prism of individual behavior. (For a famous example of such an
analysis, see Ruth Benedict's 1946 study, The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, which argued
that the Japanese national character is formed in part by stringent
toilet training techniques.)
The
other fundamental urge originates externally. The world's great
and near-great Powers cover the economic riches of the Moslem
area and are also mindful of the strategic locations of some
of the domains. Their actions are also difficult to predict,
because each of these powers sees itself in the position of
the customer who wants to do his shopping in a hurry because
he happens to know the store is going to be robbed.
In
an atmosphere so sated with the inflammable gases of distrust
and ambition, the slightest spark could lead to an explosion
which might implicate every country committed to the maintenance
of world peace.
The introduction
concludes with a justification for the present analysis: "An
understanding of the Moslem world and of the stresses and forces
operative within it is thus an essential part of the basic intelligence
framework."
The chapter
proceeds with a one-page sketch of Muslim history that includes
this observation: "At the present time there are no strong
Moslem states. The leadership of the Moslem world remains in the
Middle East, particularly in Arabia." Given the backwardness
of Arabia in 1946, this statement was either very ill-informed
or very prescient.
The bulk
of the chapter looks at forces that weaken or strengthen Muslim
unity. The former include a lack of a common language, religious
schisms, geographical separation, economic disparities, political
rivalries, and what the report indelicately calls a "prostitution
of leadership." This last is not so much an excoriation of
Muslim kings, presidents, and emirs, but a review of how several
non-Muslim powers, ending with the Soviet Union, have claimed
to be the Protectors of Islam. The analysis includes the notable
observation that "Moslems are properly suspicious of their
leaders."
Forces that
strengthen Muslim unity make up a second, shorter list: the pilgrimage
to Mecca, classical Arabic, modern communications, and the Arab
League. A mention of the hajj leads to one dramatically
wrong prediction: "The scarcity of shipping during the war
reduced the usual horde to about 20,000-30,000 per year. While
the numbers will probably increase now, they are not likely to
reach their former proportions." (In fact, the pilgrimage
breaks new attendance records practically every year and now numbers
three
million pilgrims, many times more than ever was the case before
1946.)
The chapter
on Islam concludes with an eye to the U.S. rivalry with the Soviet
Union. Far from viewing Islam as a "bulwark against Communism,"
as later was the case, the Military Intelligence Service sees
Muslims as easy prey for Moscow. It finds Muslim states "weak
and torn by internal stresses" and deems their peoples "insufficiently
educated to appraise propaganda or to understand the motives of
those who promise a new Heaven and a new Earth." The analysis
ends on a sober note:
Because
of the strategic position of the Moslem world and the restlessness
of its peoples, the Moslem states represent a potential threat
to world peace. There cannot be permanent world stability, when
one-seventh of the earth's population exists under the economic
and social conditions that are imposed upon the Moslems.
This voice
from the past prompts three observations. First, its blunt expression
is remote from today's carefully worded government analyses (even
classified ones) intended to offend no one. Second, the perception
that the Muslim world (then making up one-seventh of the world's
population, now about one-sixth) could impede world stability
is deep and remarkable. Third, many of the themes wracking today's
world could be discerned two generations ago – the frustration
of Muslims, the sense of longing for an earlier era, the political
volatility, the susceptibility to extremist ideologies, and the
threat to world peace. This confirms, again, that 9/11 and attendant
aggressions should not have been the shock they were.
Mr.
Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org)
is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures
(Transaction Publishers).
