Engagement in the Middle East

After reading a few articles on Yemen (New York Times, Washington Post), the home of the camps where the underwear bomber was apparently trained and equipped, and the President's speech in Cairo in June, I have a few thoughts on how best to engage the Middle East. In the summer, when Pres. Obama made the speech, it was hyped a little in the western world and downplayed, so far as I can tell, in the Middle East. Pres. Obama spoke a little bit like an Islamic scholar, scolding some of the countries of the Middle East for various policies, but maintaining a respectful attitude toward the religion and emphasizing the need for interfaith dialogue, as well as referring to some Islamic stories and the Koran. The President emphasized respect for Islam in the U.S. and freedom of religion as an example to the Muslim world. I don't know how much this solved any problems, but it at least gave anyone listening some facts to chew on as to whether the U.S. is the monolithic imperial power that some Islamic countries (Iran) like to make us out to be.

The stories on Yemen gave me some insight into how sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims can complicate the Middle Eastern picture. Just as the U.S. is not monolitihic, neither is the Muslim world, and while the Muslims may share a common enemy in Israel, they are very much divided among themselves. A Shia uprising in Yemen is distracting the government from being able to disrupt Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. If I remember right, Al Qaida is primarily a Sunni movement, but I could be wrong about that. The picture is further complicated by ties between Iran and terrorist organizations throughout the region. Iran's government is Shiite (I don't know how divided the country's population is, but I believe it is mostly Shiite). However, they have links to both Shiite (in Yemen) and Sunni (in Palestine) terrorist groups. Iran is flexing its muscle in the region and rattling sabers to try to galvanize its own people against foreign threats, while the protests in the street show that Iran's leadership does not even speak for all of its people.

It is important to remember, then, that engagement in the Middle East will require many people to come to understand that the people of all of these countries that are ideologically at odds are not one-size-fits-all kind of people. We need to understand each other and reach beyond ethnic and cultural divides if we are going to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East.

This quote from Thomas Friedman's recent column in the NYT adds a dimension to this problem -- how to get Muslim leaders to oppose violent extremism within their own countries -- while also providing an example of how Islamic scholars in the West are at least calling on people in the Middle East to recognize their own role in the problem:

“What Muslims were talking about last week were the minarets of Switzerland, not the killings of people in Iraq or Pakistan,” noted Mamoun Fandy, a Middle East expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. “People look for red herrings when they don’t want to look inward, when they don’t want to summon the moral courage to produce the counter-fatwa that would say: stabilizing Iraq is an Islamic duty and bringing peace to Afghanistan is part of the survival of the Islamic umma,” or community.