Once I get through all of this week's grading and stuff, I've got some more stuff to put out there on the war on ideas (or, as others call it, the war of ideas). In the meantime, here are three brand new reports approaching the issue from various directions rather different than mine:
- Sharifa Zuhur, US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, Precision in the Global WAr on Terror: Inciting Muslims Through the War of Ideas. Argues that US attempts to combat radical Islamism fail in part because of imprecise messaging and conceptualization of the problem - specifically, that Muslims "are unable to identify with the proposed transformative countermeasures because they discern some of their core beliefs and institutions as targets in this endeavor."
- Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson, WINEP, Highlighting Al-Qaeda's Bankrupt Ideology. Argues that success against al-Qaeda lies in going negative and exposing its true radicalism: "one of al-Qaeda's goals is to "create a perception of a worldwide movement more powerful than it actually is." Consequently, the United States seems to be making a concerted effort to avoid contributing to this phenomenon."
One of the interesting points to note here is that both Zuhur and Levitt-Jacobson seem to be arguing against threat inflation and the conflation of different Islamist groups into a single undifferentiated threat: "splitters" instead of "lumpers." This seeming convergence is particularly interesting because Matt Levitt has been a key person in the campaign against Islamic charities and Hamas. While I suspect that Levitt and Jacobson would draw the line in a different place than would Zuhur (or me), this is refreshingly far away from the threat conflation approach of "Islamofascism".
... okay, that was only two. I was also going to link to a fascinating new Brookings paper by Hisham Hellyer on the lessons of British engagement with its Muslim community on counter-terrorism issues; it came in the mail yesterday, but I can't find an electronic version anywhere on its site. If anyone can find a link, pass it on! And now, back into undisclosed location filled with papers. UPDATE: here's a link to Hellyer's piece, which I see was published in December even though I only got it two days ago (mabrouk, ya post office!).
Marc -- you want this one:
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/12_counterterrorism_hellyer.aspx
To see the whole thing, click on the tiny PDF icon that says "Download"
Posted by: Tamara Wittes | May 07, 2008 at 08:49 PM