The rise of nationalism and the collapse of governance are much more powerful drivers of conflict in the Middle East than Islam
From Donald Trump’s alarmist speech in 2017 in Poland, where he declared “every last inch of Western civilization is worth defending with your life,” to his more recent fear-mongering about “Middle Easterners” hiding in the Latin American caravan and who were about to “invade” the United States, one thing is constant in the US president’s worldview: the specter of radical Islam on the march, ready to take over the West.
Trump, of course, is not alone in exploiting this paranoia. In Europe, populist anti-immigration parties constantly beat the drum of Islamization. Witness France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, where large Muslim minorities reside. But even Poland and Hungary, with hardly any Muslim immigration to speak of, appear deeply worried about a looming invasion.
It is easy to blame anti-immigration politics and racism for the rise of Islamophobia. Yet the problem cannot be reduced to populist politics. The Western intelligentsia is as much to blame. Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency to overstate Islam has become intellectually fashionable, thanks in great measure to Samuel Huntington, who warned about a rapidly approaching “clash of civilizations.”
Unfortunately, the late Harvard professor’s outlook proved prescient. His gloomy prediction turned into self-fulfilling prophecy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “Jihad” and “crusade” emerged in the popular lexicon as the US reacted to the attacks by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, in the eyes of large majorities in the West, Islam not only represents an existential security threat, but also an apparently insurmountable obstacle to freedom, democracy, secularism and gender equality – in short, to all progressive values associated with modernity.
From Donald Trump’s alarmist speech in 2017 in Poland, where he declared “every last inch of Western civilization is worth defending with your life,” to his more recent fear-mongering about “Middle Easterners” hiding in the Latin American caravan and who were about to “invade” the United States, one thing is constant in the US president’s worldview: the specter of radical Islam on the march, ready to take over the West.
Trump, of course, is not alone in exploiting this paranoia. In Europe, populist anti-immigration parties constantly beat the drum of Islamization. Witness France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, where large Muslim minorities reside. But even Poland and Hungary, with hardly any Muslim immigration to speak of, appear deeply worried about a looming invasion.
It is easy to blame anti-immigration politics and racism for the rise of Islamophobia. Yet the problem cannot be reduced to populist politics. The Western intelligentsia is as much to blame. Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency to overstate Islam has become intellectually fashionable, thanks in great measure to Samuel Huntington, who warned about a rapidly approaching “clash of civilizations.”
Unfortunately, the late Harvard professor’s outlook proved prescient. His gloomy prediction turned into self-fulfilling prophecy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “Jihad” and “crusade” emerged in the popular lexicon as the US reacted to the attacks by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, in the eyes of large majorities in the West, Islam not only represents an existential security threat, but also an apparently insurmountable obstacle to freedom, democracy, secularism and gender equality – in short, to all progressive values associated with modernity.
