Ralph Peters has an interesting new essay in Parameters, Rolling Back Radical Islam
He pretty much says that the Arab heartland is totally f--ked up, we should concentrate on influencing affairs in the non-Arab Muslim population centers, such as Malaysia and Indonesia:
We have been looking in the wrong direction, because that is where we have been conditioned to look. This great battle—this war for the future of one of the world’s great religions (and, certainly, its most restive and unfinished)—is not being fought in the Arab homelands, which insist upon our attention with the temper of spoiled children, distracting us from better prospects elsewhere. The contest between competing Muslim visions, between those who would turn back the clock and those who believe they must embrace the future, has already been lost in the sands of Arabia. Fortunately, the Arab homelands are far less critical than our policymakers and strategists unthinkingly believe.
Blinded by oil and riveted by the Arab-Israeli conflict, leaders and legislators alike have failed to reexamine their thinking for the past 40 years. Now we must change our beliefs and our behaviors. It is time to write off the Arab homelands of Islam as lost. They are as incapable of constructive change as they are un-
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willing even to consider liberal transformations. They have been left behind by history and their response has been to blame everyone but themselves—and to sponsor terror (sometimes casually, but often officially). Much of the Arab world has withdrawn into a fortress of intolerance and self-righteousness as psychologically comfortable as it is practically destructive. They are, through their own fault, as close to hopeless as any societies and cultures upon this earth.
Of course, we need not call back our ambassadors from the Middle East, nor could we cease dealing with the oil states entirely. But it is time to shift our focus and our energies, to recognize, belatedly, that Islam’s center of gravity lies far from Riyadh or Cairo, that it is in fact a complex series of centers of gravity, each more hopeful than the Arab homelands. On its frontiers, from Detroit to Jakarta, Islam is a vivid, dynamic, vibrant, effervescent religion of changing shape and gorgeous potential. But Islam’s local identities are far from decided in its struggling borderlands, and, in times of tumult, any religion can turn toward the darkness as easily as toward the light.
We should make no mistake: This struggle between religious forms, between prescriptive, repressive doctrine and the sublime adventure of faith, is one of the two great strategic issues of our time—along with the redefinition of the socio-economic roles of women, their transition from being the property of men to being equal partners with men (which is the most profound social development in human history).
The United States will never be the decisive factor in the struggle for the future of Islam. That role is reserved for Muslims themselves. But we can play a far more constructive role than we have yet done—usually on the margins, but sometimes from within unfinished societies. Until now, we have not even bothered to participate.
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