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Abstract
This article focuses on a seeming contradiction between ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘Islamophilic’ approaches in contemporary Western policies and discourses on the Middle East. While Islamophobia continues to shape some domestic policies of Western states and provide ideological justification for the wars they wage abroad, ‘Islamophilic’ tendencies in foreign policy have also emerged, especially in responses to the ‘Arab Spring’. Not clearly noted in Western public discourse, this represents a historical continuation of Western support for Islamism common during the Cold War, but is also a shift from the Islamophobic discourse of the post-cold war period, especially since 9/11. While Islamophobic and Islamophilic discourses may appear to be opposites, the paper argues that they represent two sides of the Orientalist logic, continuing to reduce understanding of Middle Eastern societies and politics to a culturalist dimension. Unlike traditional Orientalism, they treat Middle Eastern people as political subjects, but approach them as defined by their culture and religion. They define ‘moderate’ Islamism as the typical (and preferred) politics of the people of the region. Focusing on specific recent developments, the paper suggests that, rather than paving the way to more peaceful relations with the region or to internal peace and stability there, the Islamophilic shift in Western policy may rather lead to new waves of catastrophes by further destabilising and fragmenting the region, threatening to evoke new waves of Islamophobia in the West.
Notes
1. Mert, “Spring, Fall, What Next?,” para 5.
2. Al-Azmeh, “Postmodern Obscurantism and the ‘Muslim Question’,” 200–201.
3. See Kundnani, Muslims are Coming!; and some chapters in Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. Even though it is more than a decade since the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis was popularized and used specifically against Muslims, it seems that anti-Muslim sentiments, rather than diminishing, might be on the rise in different countries. See Bangstad, “The Weight of Words”; and Geddess, “Canadian Anti-Muslim Sentiment is Rising.”
4. In a different context, Bonnie Honig offers the insight that xenophobia and xenophilia are two sides of the same coin. In discussing the place of foreigners and immigrants in the American national imaginary, Honig argues that, rather than being contradictory, both operate in the service of American nationalism. One the one hand, immigrants are seen as the source of characteristics and values that make the USA better. At the same time, those same values (such as ‘family values’ or ‘true entrepreneurial spirit’) can also be the grounds on which they are othered and seen as ‘alien’ to the USA. Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner.
5. See Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game.
6. Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.
7. Ahmad, “Islam, Islamisms and the West,” 3.
8. Rabasa et.al., Building Moderate Muslim Networks.
9. Hersh, “The Redirection,” para 5.
10. Ibid., para 2.
11. Nakhleh, A Necessary Engagement.
12. Nasr, Forces of Fortune, 259–260.
13. Ibid., 24.
14. Solomon and Lee, “President to Renew Muslim Outreach.”
15. Escobar, 2012.
16. Gambill is the general editor of the Middle East Forum. He is an associate of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
17. Gambill, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists,” paras 3, 9, 10, emphasis in the original.
18. Shihade et al., “The Season of Revolution,” 1.
19. Massad, “Arab Revolts,” para 16.
20. Salaita, “Corporate American Media Coverage of Arab Revolutions,” 136.
21. Ibid., 132.
22. Ibid., 144.
23. Beinin, “Was there a January 25 Revolution?,” paras 1, 14.
24. For an alternative interpretation of the background to the uprising in Egypt, see Beinin, “Workers’ Protest in Egypt.”
25. See Abdelrahman, “A Hierarchy of Struggles?”
26. Tuğal, “Fight or Acquiesce?,” 40–41.
27. Feldman, After Jihad, 15.
28. Feldman, After Jihad.
29. Ibid., 20.
30. Mert, “Politics of ‘Post-Islamism’ and ‘Democracy Bon Pour L’Orient’.”
31. Al-Azmeh, “Postmodern Obscurantism and the ‘Muslim Question’,” 201.
32. Ibid., 200–201.
33. Kanna writes about how workers’ protests in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, by both Arab and Asian workers, has been invisible to any discussion of the Arab Spring. See Kanna, “A Politics of Non-recognition?”
34. Mert, “‘Democracy a la Turca’,” para 6.
35. Bernard Lewis, cited in Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, 81–82.
36. Shabi, “Tunisia no longer Revolutionary Poster Child,” para 3.
37. Escobar, “Arab Spring, Jihad Summer.”
38. Interestingly it has been a Republican politician – but one accused of being an ‘isolationist’ by fellow Republicans – who seems to accept the greater responsibility of the USA in recent developments. In response to the rise of isis, Senator Rand Paul said that the USA had created a ‘Jihadist wonderland’ in Iraq and explained the connection to policy in Syria: ‘We have been fighting alongside al Qaeda, fighting alongside isis…isis is now emboldened and in two countries. But here’s the anomaly. We’re with isis in Syria. We’re on the same side of the war. So, those who want to get involved to stop isis in Iraq are allied with isis in Syria. That is real contradiction to this whole policy.’ Shabad, “Paul”; and Bassett, “Rand Paul.”
39. See White House, “Statement by the President on Iraq.”