Alumni Association University of Michigan Winter 2010 : Page 36Engaging Comments In “Engaging the Muslim World” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Juan Cole analyzes issues in Middle Eastern countries, describes how the Western world is at a “standoff” with the Muslim world and identifies what happened between the two to bring us where we are today. Here are excerpts of what he has to say about some of the world’s most recognized hot spots and conflicts. In Congruence In 2009, Cole wrote his most accessible book to date: “Engaging the Muslim World.” In it, he presents his analysis of what went wrong in the past few decades regarding relations between the United States and Muslim world, how the problems can be fixed and why it’s important to fix them. Written for a wide audience, Cole hopes that policymakers also read the book, and he knows of at least one official in the Department of State who has. “One of the things that has pleased me enormously is that the book has been warmly received by the Muslim community,” says Cole. “It isn’t always the case that academic studies of the Middle East and community politics are in congruence.” Cole hopes Middle Eastern countries also will warmly receive his next endeavor, an Arabic translation of the writing of Thomas Jefferson that he commissioned for his Global Americana Institute. The foundation aims to support translations of cross-cultural understanding. “My own research indicates that no significant proportion of Jefferson’s work has ever been translated into Arabic,” says Cole. “I see that as tragic. There’s also not a good book on Martin Luther King Jr. or much access to books on the Civil War or the Supreme Court. What they tend to know about us comes from television.” Talk about tragic. Agree or disagree with his views, appreciating that Cole has a right to express them is a core democratic value. As someone who knows the complexities of the Middle East well enough to have testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq in 2004, Cole has a responsibility to share his knowledge. After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who said “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” —Alice Rhein, ’84, MS’86, is a freelance writer based in Huntington Woods, Michigan. Cole’s blog and books have led to many media appearances, including this segment on “The Colbert Report” in March 2009. 36 | Michigan Alumnus • Winter 2010 • umalumni.com Iran: The best hope for Iran is a gradual strengthening of its democratic elements and a weakening or moderating of its theocratic ones. A new generation of Iranians less hostile to the West could come to power in a decade or so. Whether outsiders can influence this process is doubtful, but we certainly cannot do so through wars and violent covert operations, and we will not do so if we view Iran only through the lens of Islam Anxiety. (Page 236) Afghanistan: Until the United States and NATO give up their counterproductive search-and-destroy tactics, and until they instead invest heavily in reconstruction, they will make no progress in winning Pushtun hearts and minds. There is even an increasing danger that the massive number of foreign troops in the country will make it a magnet for radical vigilantes; already, foreign volunteers are being found among the neo- Taliban, from places such as Chechnya and the Arab world. (Pages 190-191) Iraq: Some of the unwillingness of the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq to compromise with the Sunnis derives from an overconfidence born of the certainty of U.S. close air support should fighting break out between the two. An American withdrawal may well force the Shiite government into a fruitful compromise with the Sunni Arabs. (Pages 242-243) Pakistan: The dangerous policy of encouraging allies like Pakistan to spend billions in high-tech arms purchases from U.S. firms should be ended. Flooding the region with sophisticated weaponry will only provoke arms races among neighbors, and it may well encourage conflicts to break out. (Page 243) Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Resolving this conflict in a way acceptable to all the major parties involved should be the highest priority of [President Obama’s] administration. This step would resolve 90 percent of America’s problems with the Muslim world and would potentially lead to improved relations with states such as Syria and Iran, relations that would stand the United States in good stead in its competition for a favorable position in Muslim energy markets during the next two decades. (Page 245) This administration needs to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process immediately and to think boldly about what a final accord would look like in the region. Statehood for the Palestinians, peace with the new Palestinian state, and a peace accord between Israel and Syria would lead to a rapid drop in opportunities for intervention by Iranian hard-liners’ in the eastern Mediterranean. (Page 235) Excerpted from Engaging the Muslim World by Juan Cole. Copyright © 2009 by the author and reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. Courtesy of “The Colbert Report” Publication List |
