Foreign Policy Debate: Propaganda, the Satans, and Other Misunderstandings

SAIS Review invited three prominent scholars to debate the merits of the United States' foreign policy toward the Muslim world. The participants, Robert Satloff, John L. Esposito, and Shibley Telhami, were sent three questions to answer. Each of the participants then had a chance to read the others' responses and to corroborate or refute one another's arguments. Note that the authors replied to one another's first answers; none saw the others' replies.

Robert Satloff, D.Phil., is the Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a public research and educational foundation that promotes informed debate on U.S. Policy in the Middle East. Satloff appears as a frequent commentator on the Middle East in major U.S. newspapers, television, and radio. His most recent publication is the monograph, U.S. Policy Toward Islamism (Council on Foreign Relations, 2000).

John L. Esposito, Ph.D., is University Professor and Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. Esposito is also Founding Director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is also a frequent commentator . His recent publications include The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, Makers of Contemporary Islam (with J. Voll), and The Oxford History of Islam.

Shibley Telhami, Ph.D., holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland's Department of Government and Politics and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Telhami's focus is on conflict and negotiations, Arab-Israeli relations, and U.S. foreign policy. His most recent book is Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. with Michael Burnett (forthcoming).

1. Can the United States have a policy toward "Islam?"

ROBERT SATLOFF: The United States does not nor should it have a policy toward any particular religion, Islam included. As a great power, the United States should have policies toward states and other international actors like the United Nations, and those policies should be designed so as to advance U.S. interests and values.

Within this context, the United States may wish to consider a policy toward religion ("We're for it"), but not toward individual religions. This would seem obvious in a discussion of other global religions. For example, few serious people would ever suggest that the United States ought to have a policy toward Hinduism or Buddhism, whatever role those religions play in animating politics and society in strategic corners of the globe. Surprisingly, with Islam, the idea that the United States ought to have a policy is quite fashionable. This is because Islam, a religion, is too often confused with Islamism, a profoundly radical political ideology that seeks to replace existing states and political structures, either through revolutionary or evolutionary means, with a shariah-based state whose basic goals are inimical to U.S. interests and values. (Some will point out the apparent anomaly that the United States has friendly relations with at least one shariah-based state, Saudi Arabia. The key here is that, despite whatever distaste may exist for certain aspects of Saudi policies, Saudi Arabia is hardly a "revolutionary" state intent on upsetting the regional status quo.)

To the world's billion Muslims, even to the pious among them, Islamism is a far cry from Islam. Toward Islamism, the United States should have a policy: we should oppose it with a combination of resolve, subtlety, and ingenuity. Toward Islam, the United States should have respect, tolerance, and understanding, but no policy.

JOHN ESPOSITO: The question would have been better worded by asking "should," rather than "can." The United States can and has had a policy toward Islam and Islamic movements, first articulated by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Edward Djerejian during the Bush administration and then by his successor, Robert Pelletreau, during Clinton's first term. However, the State Department changed this policy during...