Inside the Revolution

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  In Part 1, I referred to John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, who in 2007 wrote a book entitled Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. Based on Gallup surveys conducted in thirty-five countries with Muslim-majority populations or substantial Muslim minorities, the book was described by the authors as “the largest, most comprehensive study of contemporary Muslims ever done.”388 The study found that the overwhelming majority of Muslims—more than nine in ten—are traditional and quite moderate in their political views, meaning they are not inclined to violence and extremism, as are the Radicals. This does not necessarily make them all Reformers. But significant numbers of moderate Muslims are eager to embrace Jeffersonian notions of government.

  For example, the authors found that “substantial majorities in nearly all nations surveyed”—94 percent in Egypt, 93 percent in Iran, and 90 percent in Indonesia—said that if they had the opportunity to draft a constitution for a new country, “they would guarantee freedom of speech, defined as ‘allowing all citizens to express their opinion on the political, social, and economic issues of the days.’”389 The authors also found that large majorities in most Muslim countries support the right to vote not just for men but for women as well.

  These figures, which indicate such a large number of reform-minded people in the Muslim world, were reinforced by a massive survey conducted throughout the Middle East by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released in 2005. The Pew study found that 83 percent of Muslims in Kuwait believe democracy can work in their country, 68 percent of Muslims in Jordan, 68 percent in Lebanon, 64 percent in Morocco, and 58 percent in Pakistan, to name just a few.390 Likewise, 83 percent of Muslims in Turkey believe it is “very important to live in a country where people can openly criticize the government.” The same is true for 67 percent of the people of Lebanon, 63 percent of Pakistanis, and 56 percent of Indonesians.391

  Could we wish there was 100 percent support for Jeffersonian principles in these and other Muslim countries? Of course we could. But the point is that there are real and enormous numbers of Rank-and-File Muslims who describe themselves as ready, willing, and able to respond to the message of leaders who are perceived as bold and sincere Reformers. Indeed, some already have.

  Snapshots FROM THE REGION

  In this section of the book, I will take you inside the Muslim world to get an up-close-and-personal look at several of the most impressive Reformers. But first, we need to consider a few snapshots from the region to get the big picture.

  Snapshot: Iraq

  Iraq has been ground zero in the battle between the Radicals and the Reformers in the Arab world since 2003. It is still work in progress, but much progress has been made. And at the center of events has been Jalal Talabani, an intriguing warrior-turned-Reformer whom I will profile in the pages ahead.

  “Jalal who?” you ask.

  Don’t worry. You’re not alone. His face should be on the cover of Newsweek. His story should have made him Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” He should be a household name for Americans who have invested so much blood and treasure into the liberation of Iraq. Yet the media has largely ignored him. Thus, few Americans have any idea who he is or why he matters.

  In 2008, I had the privilege of making two trips inside the war-ravaged nation of Iraq to better understand who this man is and what makes him tick. His is an incredible story, and honestly, if I had not been there and heard it for myself, I might not have believed it.

  Once the leader of a violent Kurdish guerrilla faction in the 1960s and 1970s, Talabani put down his arms, ordered his followers to do the same, and helped create a peaceful and prosperous democratic province in northern Iraq in the 1990s after the first Gulf War.

  By 2005, after the fall of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of the entire country, Talabani emerged as the first democratically elected president of Iraq. He proceeded to wage a relentless and, I would say, heroic battle to defeat the Radicals and build a Jeffersonian democracy. In 2010, Talabani decisively won a second term, becoming the first democratically reelected president of Iraq, a testament to how widely trusted and admired he is throughout the country, in large part because of his reputation as an indefatigable Reformer.

  He is not alone, of course, and the fate of the democratic experiment in Iraq certainly does not rest entirely on his shoulders. But what Talabani believes will astound you. What he has accomplished with the help of the Iraqi and American people, along with our Coalition allies, will amaze you. And his vision for his country’s future will, I think, encourage you as it encouraged me and hopefully persuade you to pray daily for Iraq as you have never prayed before.

  Snapshot: Morocco

  Nearly unnoticed by the mainstream American media is King Mohammed VI of Morocco. He is almost never profiled, but he should be, for he has been one of the most intriguing and accomplished Reformers in the Muslim world.

  Upon assuming the throne in 1999, the impressive young North African monarch embarked on an initiative to turn Morocco into a model of moderation, cooperation with the West, and democratic reform. After the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and a series of suicide bombings that rocked his own country in 2003, the king cracked down on al Qaeda and other Radical groups. He strengthened Morocco’s political, economic, and military ties to the United States and the European Union. He allowed and encouraged dozens of political parties to compete in free and fair parliamentary elections, a relatively new experience for Moroccans. He expanded the role of the democratically elected government to run the day-to-day affairs of the country. He also dramatically expanded opportunities for women to serve in government.

  Meanwhile, His Majesty quietly strengthened ties to Israel and the Jewish community. He completely revamped the training methodology for new Muslim clerics in the kingdom, requiring them to be schooled in the virtues of Christianity and Judaism and the theology of the Reformers. What’s more, he dispatched top Muslim leaders to build bridges with evangelical Christians in the West and even invited well-known evangelicals to visit and speak in Morocco.

  Since King Mohammed came to power, I have had the honor of traveling to Morocco four times and building friendships with close associates of His Majesty, including one of the country’s top Islamic scholars. Along the way, Lynn and I have fallen in love with Morocco and pray for that nation often. If Morocco can stay on track and build on its recent record of reforms, its story could become vitally important to the rest of the Muslim world in the years ahead.

  Snapshot: Jordan

  King Hussein of Jordan was an impressive if imperfect Reformer in the twentieth century.

  The king’s family—descendants of Muhammad—hailed originally from the Arabian Peninsula, and for decades His Majesty was a leader in the fight to destroy Israel. But to his enormous credit, King Hussein eventually turned against the Radicals and the violent Arab nationalists in a dramatic and almost miraculous way.

  In 1978, he married an American woman (Lisa Halaby, who became known as Queen Noor). He became an ally and close friend of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who in 1979 became the first Arab leader to forge a historic peace treaty with Israel. King Hussein also established a democratically elected parliamentary system responsible for the day-to-day governance of his tiny desert country. Then he himself agreed to a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1994. And he did all this despite living in the shadow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, his maniacal neighbor to the east, and in the shadow of the Assad regime controlling Syria, his despotic neighbor to the north, and despite the fact that Radicals tried to assassinate him numerous times.

  When King Hussein succumbed to cancer in 1999, it was a sad day for Reformers in the region. But fortunately, his son King Abdullah II continued in his father’s footsteps. He signed a free trade agreement with the U.S. in 2000. He became a critically important ally of the West in the battle against the Radicals after 9/11 and during the liberation of Iraq and its aftermath. In 2006 he became the first Muslim monarch to address the National Pr
ayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., speaking on the importance of Muslim-Christian relations before two thousand evangelicals from all over the world. And all the while, King Abdullah has tried to move Jordan step-by-step in a more moderate direction politically and socially, despite constant threats of assassinations, terrorist attacks, coups, and insurrections.

  It has not been an easy journey, and there have been setbacks along the way. To be sure, no one would describe the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as a full-blown Jeffersonian democracy at this point. But having visited the country three times in recent years, I must tell you that I have fallen in love with Jordan, its people, and its leaders. As both a Jew and a believer in Jesus, I have never felt in danger in Jordan. To the contrary, I have had the honor of meeting safely with Reformers from one end of the country to the other. I have interviewed Prime Minister Abdelsalam al-Majali, the man who actually signed the peace treaty with Israel. I have stayed in the homes of Jordanians who have welcomed me with open arms, taught me about their history, and told me how hopeful they are about their future. As a result, I am deeply impressed with the significant progress the country has made over the past three decades.

  Indeed, it is precisely because the Jordanians have made such progress that I am worried by the Radicals’ determination to launch a jihad there, seize the capital, and create a new anti-Israel, anti-Western base camp for Iran and al Qaeda. Therefore, I pray often for Jordan’s peace, prosperity, and continued progress. I pray for King Abdullah’s health and safety, and I pray that God will grant him the wisdom to know how best to move forward in such challenging times.

  Snapshot: Afghanistan

  Another key theater in the battle between Radicals and Reformers, of course, has been Afghanistan, and thus far its recent leaders have a mixed track record at best. Still, it deserves attention and much prayer.

  In October of 2008, I had the privilege of traveling to the Afghan capital of Kabul—a city on the front lines of the war between the Radicals and the Reformers—to meet tribal leaders, interview Rank-and-File Afghanis, and explore the story for myself. It is, I must say, an unforgettable saga.

  In the early stages of Afghanistan’s liberation from Taliban and al Qaeda tyranny, Hamid Karzai emerged as an intriguing, up-and-coming Reformer. Once a member of the mujahadeen against the Soviet occupation of his country in the 1980s, Karzai became a fierce critic of the Radicals and a powerful advocate for democracy in the 1990s. After the liberation of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, Karzai emerged as the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan in more than five thousand years of recorded history. Against all odds, and in the face of repeated assassination attempts, Karzai began governing a country once thought ungovernable, vowing to build a truly Jeffersonian democracy in a land that it seems could not be less suited for the experiment.

  After a compelling start, however, Karzai stumbled significantly. Can he get back on track? Will his successors be more committed to being Reformers, or will they take the country back towards the Radicals? Only time will tell. The Afghan story is far from finished, as we will see in the pages ahead.

  Snapshot: Turkey

  The Muslim world’s first big Reformer success story was led by a man named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

  After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the fall of the caliphate in Istanbul in the 1920s, Ataturk founded the modern state of Turkey as a Muslim-friendly but essentially secular representative democracy. Many never expected his experiment to survive, much less work. But it did both for nearly a century.

  After the sweeping reforms Ataturk put into motion—giving men and women the right to vote, separating the affairs of mosque and state, and establishing safeguards to prevent Radicals from gaining control of the military—Turkey became a trusted ally of the United States and a member of NATO. In fact, Turkey became so trusted that the U.S. actually placed ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads aimed at the Soviet Union on Turkish soil during some of the coldest years of the Cold War.

  Decades later, Turkey pressed to become the first Muslim-majority country to join the European Union. Its leaders sent troops to Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban. They sent troops into northern Iraq to fight terrorist cells along the Turkey-Iraq border. They sent troops into Lebanon to participate in the U.N. peacekeeping force there. The country was long a haven and meeting place for Muslim moderates. For decades, Turkey was also so friendly to Israel that tens of thousands of Israeli Jews flocked there every year for gorgeous, low-cost Mediterranean vacations. It has been a country steadily modernizing its economy, its infrastructure, and its tourism industry.

  I have been blessed with the opportunity to visit Turkey no fewer than a half-dozen times in recent years, and I have been simply amazed that this country—once the epicenter of Islam—has for so long been a model of moderation and Jeffersonian democracy.

  That said, something is rapidly changing in Turkey, and not for the better. Turkey has all but officially been rejected from membership in the European Union. Its Islamist leaders have been deeply angered by the West’s snub. As a result, these leaders appear to have concluded that Turkey’s future lies in the East instead. In 2009 and 2010, the country’s leaders made a series of troubling moves away from the Western alliance and Israel and towards Iran, Syria, and Hamas.

  • On January 16, 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pronounced “air-do-wan”) called for Israel to be barred from the United Nations after Israel launched a military operation into the Gaza Strip to stop Hamas from launching thousands of rockets and mortars at innocent Israeli civilians.

  • On January 29, 2009, Erdogan stormed off the stage of a conference meeting in Davos, Switzerland, because Israeli President Shimon Peres was participating and defending Israel’s operation in Gaza. The Turkish PM shouted at Peres, “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.”

  • On April 27, 2009, Turkey and Syria held their first joint military exercises in modern history. What’s more, “trade between the countries doubled between 2007 and 2008, and doubled again in 2009, to an estimated $4 billion, according to the Aleppo Chamber of Commerce.”392

  • In October 2009, Erdogan visited Tehran and met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him “our friend” and saying relations between Turkey and Iran were “very good.” Trade between the two countries that year was about $12 billion, but the two leaders said they wanted that to grow to $20 billion over the next two years. That same month, Turkey canceled a NATO military exercise because Israel was invited to participate, later airing a drama on state-run TV that portrayed an Israeli soldier walking up to a Palestinian child and barbarically shooting her point-blank.

  • On November 11, 2009, Erdogan accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza worse than the genocide in Sudan, even though Hamas’s 12,000-plus rocket attacks against Israeli civilians are actually war crimes.

  • On May 12, 2010, inspired by Iran’s nuclear program and the West’s inability to stop it, Erdogan’s government agreed to pay Russia to build the first-ever nuclear reactor in Turkey.

  • In May 2010, Turkey sent a flotilla of armed pro-Hamas activists and terrorists into the waters off of Gaza, presumably to bring humanitarian relief to people in Gaza. The activists on one of the ships then attacked Israeli navy personnel who boarded the ship to make sure it wasn’t carrying weapons or other illegal goods. Erdogan harshly condemned Israel and said the Jewish state should be “punished” for a “bloody massacre.” He also withdrew Turkey’s ambassador to Israel and canceled three joint military drills with Israel.

  • On June 4, 2010, Erdogan said Hamas is not a terrorist group.

  • On June 8, 2010, Erdogan met in Istanbul with Ahmadinejad and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to discuss how to form a closer alliance.

  • By June 10, 2010, the London Telegraph editorialized: “Turkey’s alliance with Iran is a threat to world peace.”

  • In August 2010, United Pr
ess International reported that “a secret meeting of Iranian and Turkish intelligence officials has led to a new weapons supply route for Hezbollah. . . . Iranian and Turkish intelligence officials recently signed an agreement that establishes territorial continuity for Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, and guarantees a constant supply of weapons to Hezbollah, a report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said.”393

  These are not the moves of a Reformer country. So the big question now is: Where is Turkey headed? Does it want to be the world’s leading Reformer country, or has it chosen to abandon its close ties with the West and make common cause with the Radicals? If the latter, it would make sense that Turkey would need to try to establish credibility (“street cred”) with the Radicals (in Iran, for example) by turning most harshly against Israel. Does that mean Turkey will soon turn harshly against the U.S. and Western Europe, too? Could it become the base for hostile acts against Israel and the Western alliance? Will it withdraw from NATO membership, or be asked to leave? How could it remain as it becomes an ally of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah? We will soon see, but sadly—despite Turkey’s rich history of reform—the current trends do not bode well.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Theology of the Reformers

  What they believe, verse by verse

  Make no mistake: a ferocious battle is raging for the heart and soul of the Muslim world.

  On one side is the theology of the Radicals, which as we have seen teaches that true Islam requires violent men to wage violent jihad against apostates and infidels in the name of Allah.

  On the other side is the theology of the Reformers, which teaches that true Islam is a religion of peace, that the Qur’an is a book of peace, and that the Radicals are perverting Islam to their own fascist, power-hungry ends.