Islamophobia and the Politics of
Empire. By Deepa Kumar. Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2012. 238 pp.
Since the
attacks of September 11, 2001, various analytical frameworks have been proposed
to understand the American relationship with the Middle East. In Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,
scholar Deepa Kumar offers a look at the role of Islamophobia in the West and
argues that it continues to inform U.S. foreign policy for both conservatives
and liberals. By echoing and updating Edward Said’s critique, which holds that
Orientalism continues to dominate much of Western academic study of the region,
Kumar argues that, just as the creation of an exotic, irrational Muslim “other”
facilitated European empires’ colonial subjugation of the Middle East, so too
has a reductive, essentialist view of Islam been deployed to justify America’s
military interventions since 9/11.
Kumar
makes the case well—it’s not hard to find evidence for this. After all,
following 9/11 Americans were fed a steady diet of images featuring Muslim
violence, interspersed with claims regarding the centrality of such violence to
the faith. In addition, half-baked treatises like Bernard Lewis’ What Went Wrong: The Clash between Islam and
Modernity in the Middle East—in which the vaunted historian pointed to
Middle Easterners’ failure to embrace European classical music as evidence of…
well, I’m still not sure—were hailed as very serious arguments by very serious
people. And the idea that American intervention was required to vault Muslims
into the future did eventually help put American troops in Iraq.
Somewhat
more provocative, and problematic, is the second half of Kumar’s argument: that
Islamophobia in the U.S. continues to be a joint project between American
conservatives and liberals. While the contours of conservative Islamophobia are
familiar (Islam is intrinsically hostile to modernity, freedom, and the
American way, etc.), its liberal variant is, in Kumar’s view, equally
pernicious.
“The key
characteristics of liberal Islamophobia,” Kumar writes, “are the rejection of
the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, the recognition that there are ‘good
Muslims’ with whom diplomatic relations can be forged and a concomitant
willingness to work with moderate Islamists.” While Kumar grants that “liberal
Islamophobia may be rhetorically gentler” than the conservative version, she
insists that it nonetheless “reserves the right of the U.S. to wage war against
‘Islamic terrorism’ around the world, with no respect for the right of
self-determination by people in the countries it targets.” It is, Kumar
concludes, “the ‘white man’s burden’ in sheep’s clothing.”
To be
fair, there is some evidence of liberals’ collaboration, or at least pandering
to, Islamophobia when it suits their political needs. The spectacle of
Democrats attacking the Bush administration over the 2006 Dubai Ports World
deal is one unfortunate example. To advance this argument further, however,
Kumar resorts to stealing a few bases. Claiming that liberals went along with
conservative efforts to spread fear about the Muslim background of candidate
Barack Obama, Kumar cites a May 2008 New
York Times Op-Ed by Edward Luttwak (identified as “a fellow at the
realist/liberal imperialist think tank” Center for Strategic and International
Studies) in which he wrote that, as Obama was born to a Muslim father, his
conversion to Christianity is a crime “under Muslim law.” But citing Luttwak
and CSIS as “liberals” is problematic. Luttwak is a conservative-realist, and
CSIS is a firmly centrist organization (full disclosure: I was a CSIS research
intern some years ago.) Kumar also neglects to mention that the piece was
savaged by many in the media, including within the New York Times itself—Public Editor Clark Hoyt essentially
apologized for the piece’s irresponsible assertions.
Viewing
the Obama administration’s surge strategy in Afghanistan through the darkest
possible lens, Kumar writes, “One might speculate that a White House eager to
prime public opinion for a troop surge of thirty thousand may have even
encouraged a pliant media to devote attention to ‘homegrown terrorism.’” Indeed
Kumar is left merely to speculate, in the absence of any proof of such a
scheme. The idea that the Obama administration so trafficked in Islamophobia is
somewhat outlandish given the criticism administration officials faced for
refusing to specifically cite the Islamic faith as a cause of terrorism
(memorably illustrated by Rep. Lamar Smith’s badgering of Attorney General Eric
Holder in May 2010).
The
problem with defining Islamophobia as broadly as Kumar does is that it
threatens to divest the term of meaning. It is possible to condemn terrorism
committed by Muslims in the name of religion, or to have serious concerns over
the development of pluralistic democracy under Islamist-controlled governments,
without being anti-Islam. What defines Islamophobia is the belief that
terrorist violence is somehow inherent to Islam, or that democracy is
incompatible with correct Islamic practice. In uncovering Islamophobia here,
there, and everywhere, Kumar unfortunately gives form to the straw man
arguments of actual Islamophobes, who often cry that they are being silenced
for voicing any criticism of Muslims.
It’s
quite true that American political discourse continues to be shot through with
ignorance of and hostility toward Islam, but it isn’t the full picture. Take,
for example, the recent controversy over Newsweek’s
“Muslim Rage” cover story. The cover line and accompanying essay by
controversial Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali generated more discussion about the
magazine’s Muslim baiting than about “Muslim rage” itself.
While her
promulgation of “liberal Islamophobia” is overwrought, Kumar valuably
catalogues many of the ways in which American Muslims have been negatively
affected by the “war on terror” discourse. She also takes aim at an important
problem, if only in glancing: the failure of progressives to press the Obama
administration on its civil liberties violations. Rather than locating the
cause in deep-seated Islamophobia, however, we’d be just as likely to find it
in political expediency.
Even with
its flaws though, this remains a valuable book. While Kumar’s framework doesn’t
adequately capture the various levels and angles of U.S. engagement with the Middle
East as a region, or with Islam as a faith, it does offer an important survey
of the mistaken assumptions that continue to power some seriously flawed
policies. As the U.S. develops better policies to engage with a transforming
Middle East, and hopefully confronts the ongoing degradation of rights at home,
the issues Kumar raises deserve to be taken seriously.
Matthew Duss is a policy analyst
at the Center for American Progress, where he focuses on the Middle East and
U.S. national security. He is co-author of Fear, Inc: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in
America published by the center in 2011.
On Twitter: @mattduss.