The two faces of Fareed

In next week's issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria argues that the war on global jihad is over, and it was won by the overwhelming might of moderate Muslims.

But, in fact, the entire terrain of the war on terror has evolved dramatically. Put simply, the moderates are fighting back and the tide is turning. We no longer fear the possibility of a major country succumbing to jihadist ideology. In most Muslim nations, mainstream rulers have stabilized their regimes and their societies, and extremists have been isolated. This has not led to the flowering of Jeffersonian democracy or liberalism. But modern, somewhat secular forces are clearly in control and widely supported across the Muslim world. Polls, elections, and in-depth studies all confirm this trend.

Interesting.  In Indonesia, for example,

... JI [Jemaah Islamiah] has been marginalized and main-stream political parties have gained ground, all while a young democracy has flowered after the collapse of the Suharto dictatorship.

It's a veritable revolution.

Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest and most prestigious school of Islamic learning, now routinely condemns jihadism. The Darul Uloom Deoband movement in India, home to the original radicalism that influenced Al Qaeda, has inveighed against suicide bombing since 2008. None of these groups or people have become pro-American or liberal, but they have become anti-jihadist.

Don't believe it?  We have data!

The data on public opinion in the Muslim world are now overwhelming. London School of Economics professor Fawaz Gerges has analyzed polls from dozens of Muslim countries over the past few years. He notes that in a range of places--Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh--there have been substantial declines in the number of people who say suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets can be justified to defend Islam. Wide majorities say such attacks are, at most, rarely acceptable.

Gerges has indeed analyzed polls.  You can read his conclusions here, published in May of last year.  So it's settled, then.  Global jihad is no longer a threat and we have moderate, secular Muslims to thank for that. 

This is very far cry indeed from what Fareed Zakaria was arguing, just as strenuously in the same pages, last March.  Back then, he was assuring us that only by aligning our interests with non-violent Islamist leaders could we hope to make a dent in what he then saw as the inexorably growing popularity of Islamist extremism.

It is not just in the Swat valley that Islamists are on the rise. In Afghanistan the Taliban have been gaining ground for the past two years as well. In Somalia last week, Al-Shabab, a local group of Islamic militants, captured yet another town from government forces. Reports from Nigeria to Bosnia to Indonesia show that Islamic fundamentalists are finding support within their communities for their agenda, which usually involves the introduction of some form of Sharia--Islamic law--reflecting a puritanical interpretation of Islam. No music, no liquor, no smoking, no female emancipation.

How do we get in two short months from that to Gerges's "overwhelming" data on the rejection of jihad in the Islamic world?  Was it the magic of Obama's ascendancy to the White House?  Unlikely, especially since most if not all of Gerges's data was collected prior to that historic event.  Most telling, in contrast to his essay of next week, is Zakaria's approving citation, last March, of Reuel Marc Gerecht:

What you have to realize is that the objective is to defeat bin Ladenism, and you have to start the evolution. Moderate Muslims are not the answer. Shiite clerics and Sunni fundamentalists are our salvation from future 9/11s.

(Daniel Pipes has responded to this argument here, among other places.)  Well, it appears that an evolution has started in Fareed Zakaria's approach to the war on global jihad, but it's hard to figure.  Maybe it was all that overwhelming data that Fawaz Gerges dug up.  But then, Gerges was the fellow who just six months before 9/11 was suggesting:

Should not observers and academics keep skeptical about the U.S. government's assessment of the terrorist threat? To what extent do terrorist 'experts' indirectly perpetuate this irrational fear of terrorism by focusing too much on farfetched horrible scenarios? Does the terrorist industry, consciously or unconsciously, exaggerate the nature and degree of the terrorist threat to American citizens?

I particularly remember Gerges' dismissal of the terrorist threat in early 2001 (I seem to recall a TV interview on PBS) because it was the stimulus for a debate between me and a close friend at the time.  Meanwhile, in the most recent volume of the Middle East Quarterly, Michael Rubin and Matthew Levitt make two pretty strong and well-documented cases for the argument that Syria (for example) is becoming an ever more active supporter of that very same global jihad that has supposedly been crushed. 

And there's quite a bit of other data out there suggesting that the global jihad is thriving elsewhere, as well.  Unfortunately.  Except in the world of Newsweek and Fareed Zakaria, where reality appears to be ... pliable.

Good luck with that.