The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

O ur national response to al- Qaida must reflect our aware- ness that to isolate our ene- mies, we also need to reach out to Muslims around the world. Regret- ably, that message is not always reflect- ed in the welcome we give to Muslims when they visit our country. The jihadists who attacked us five years ago on 9/11 caused the biggest loss of American lives in a single day since the Civil War. One of their aims was to spread fear. But their main goal was to provoke the West into a war with Islam. Terror is the tool of the weak. The Islamic miscreants responsible for the atrocity of 9/11 were weak and they were few. Without an over-reaction from us, they had practically no means to unite the world’s Muslims under the banner of their unpopular and dis- credited cause. In fact, ordinary Muslims — in Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Bosnia, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghan- istan, even in Iran — already had rejected the Islamic dictatorships those fanatics wanted to impose. For five years, like it or not, we have been engaged in a global ideo- logical struggle, with strong military and political overtones, similar to the ColdWar. That struggle— theWar on Terror — is being played out through argument, example and perception, as well as through economic aid and development. It is a war for globaliza- tion, for individual liberty and human and political rights. It is a war for hearts and minds. Security and politics are important parts of this fight, but the main struggle is ideological. The United States and the West have much at stake. Our enemies want to expel the West from Muslim lands, impose backward-looking Sala- fist regimes, like that of the Taliban, that yearn for an imaginary, seventh- century utopia, and impose a perma- nent state of “neither war nor peace” between Islam and the West. Such regimes naturally will be inimical to our interests. Our task in the global contest for ideological supremacy is to minimize the number of new recruits for the jihadist cause. Avoiding mis- steps in the war on terror is crucial, lest our mistakes become valuable recruiting tools for the enemy. Naturally, after 9/11 Americans became more concerned about their security. And as the attackers were all Arab Muslims, the idea that a “War of Civilizations” was at hand surfaced. But that is not what we are facing, and it is imperative that we avoid the per- ception that we are at war with Islam. Today confusion on this point is rampant. Just listen to the talk shows and you’ll hear average Americans say, “Since we’re at war with the Muslims...” Because the principal fight in the war on terror is in the realm of ideas, U.S. national strategy must not permit security concerns to overpower or undermine our chances for success in that realm. Ultimately, our security will depend on our success in the struggle for hearts and minds. The last thing we want to do is to turn the Muslim world against us. The United States was in a strong position to win a global ideological contest with Islamic extremism. The outpouring of global support and sym- pathy for the United States after the 9/11 attacks was instantaneous, gen- uine and deeply felt. I was in Seoul at the time. I still remember how hard it was to get to the front gate of the embassy through the mass of flower bouquets on the sidewalk. Horror Stories In Panama, where I was stationed for the past three years, there are around 10,000 Muslims, mostly sec- ond-generation Lebanese and Gujara- tis. Not long after I arrived, we start- ed getting increasingly dire reports from Muslim travelers. They told us chilling stories about their treatment at U.S. ports of entry. People who had been traveling to the United States on business for many years, some of them rather large investors, who had gone to school or who had children in school in the United States, were being stopped at our airports, forced to miss their onward flights and interrogated for hours. They told us that U.S. port-of- entry officials had accused them of being terrorists or terrorist supporters, 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 Reaching Out to Muslims B Y R ICHARD S. S ACKS S PEAKING O UT As the greatest nation in the world, the strongest weapon in our arsenal is the power to persuade.