BEIJING - In a column in last weekend's New York Times titled "War of ideas", Thomas Friedman appealed to the United States to join forces with Islamic moderates in a war of ideas against those who use Islam to attack the West and impose conservative ideas in Islamic countries. The proposal is sensible, but moves into a territory that has been very tricky for the past 15 centuries - that of a war of ideas per se.
The civilizations that sprang from the Mediterranean region share a common denominator: a strong trend to universalism. The faiths of Islam and Christianity shared an overriding ambition, to save the world, if only at the point of the sword. The later faiths of communism and democratism were both the offspring of Christianity, and both claimed to have a better, more universal recipe to improve the fate of the human race. Certainly, the communist faith, as applied in the Soviet Union, was a disaster for its victims, but possibly not more so than many other kinds of dictatorship. The democratist crusades against communism helped to bring down the Soviet Union, and with it an ideological nightmare, but perhaps even more a geopolitical nightmare: the expansion of the Russian Empire as far as Lisbon. This second, geopolitical dimensions of the conflict is often forgotten.
While Soviet communism has been defeated, this has not closed the chapter on its ideological opponent, democratism. On the contrary, democratism is rampant - although while facing its newest challenge, that of radical Islam, democratism is proving quite weak.
Algeria in the 1990s held many democratic elections that were won by intolerant Muslims, and so the election results were scrapped with the active support of the democratic West. A similar predicament occurs in Egypt, where democratic elections are out of question because they would be won by fundamentalists. In Iran, elections yield results despised by the democratic West as they bring to power anti-Western clerics.
Westerners might object that there are systemic faults in these countries, and they might be right in the case of Iran, where a class of clerics holds sway over the state. Or the West could blame the educational system that brainwashes the kids in many Islamic countries, making them young fundamentalists. But here we are on shaky ground: how can we decide who brainwashes whom? Are the fundamentalists brainwashing Arab kids or does the West want to brainwash Arab kids with its own values?
In this war of religions (or ideologies, if you wish), the two religions are approximately the same except for the fact that one religion might be more tolerant than the other, and the other is more aggressive in its work of conversion. But tolerance and aggressiveness are hardly reliable yardsticks for believers in search of salvation. On the contrary, an aggressive faith could be more rewarding than a milder one.
Although democratism appears on its face to have the measure of tolerance, and it appears to us in the West less aggressive than militant Islamic fundamentalism, it appears quite different in countries that have no tradition of active proselytism, such as those of East Asia. In the East it is considered odd to judge or be judged by the standard of human rights or other Western values. These so-called "universal values" are in fact born out of the Mediterranean; moreover, they change in nature wherever they are applied. For example, while the United States, Germany and Japan are all allegedly democratic countries, their democracies are different.
Some claim that superior ideology gives a strategic advantage in military confrontation. In A History of Warfare (Random House 1993, pp 196-200), John Keegan explains that the Arabs in the 7th century managed to build an empire in a short time despite their backward army because their warriors were fighting for the faith, in this case Islam. A similar commitment for warriors was employed by Mao Zedong in his guerrilla war, Keegan remarks. Faith in a cause is a very strong motivation and, as the author notes, brought about a revolution in military affairs: people were fighting not for territory or kin, or personal gain with the booty of war, but for something that was transcendent. The inspiration of the Muslim Arabs was copied by the Christian West in the Crusades, and this spirit, providing such a military advantage as a strong motivation for the soldiers, was never abandoned.
The problem with universalism is now more than ever that it is not really universal. Everyone wants his own universalism to save the whole world. As Arab jihad produced as a copycat effect the Christian Crusades, the Western patriotic movements inspired nationalistic movements in the rest of the world. Mao's tactics were also conceived from the breast of Western culture. Communism was born in Germany and London but brought the greatest challenge to the Western world.
In a similar way a war of ideas against al-Qaeda must imply democratism - elections that fundamentalists would win. And what would our ideal, democracy, be without the stock and barrel of democracy, elections? How do we reconcile our ideal, democracy, with our practical ends: defense against an aggressive faith that wants to convert the world?
If we think that withholding democratic elections in Egypt or Algeria is a temporary measure to cleanse the minds of brainwashed kids, we could fall in another trap. The Western-sponsored crackdown on fundamentalist is our version of holy war, which in turn is a denial of our beliefs, democracy, tolerance, and liberty. But what is liberty without free elections?
The West is driven by the idea that there are values that apply to everybody, and that these human values, which are God's values, are beyond other considerations. But this issue tears apart the conscience of our people and creates a thousand knots: why blame China but not Egypt for its human-rights violations? And more important, the drive to convert everybody is by itself dangerous - sects and cults can be born out of the splinters of our faith, as communism grew out of London.
From the perspective of state power, it can be necessary to forfeit absolute values to achieve immediate ends. There are times when the West will have, in the interest of general global stability, to crack down on personal liberties and brainwash kids who believe that bombing America is right. These may be unpleasant measures, but they are necessary to minimize conflict.
But in the main, Western values are practical for the state. Liberty, for instance, is useful for economic development, as it has proved over the centuries to be the social basis for enterprise. Democracy, in some forms, has also proved to be the less evil political instrument to minimize social conflicts, adapt society to change and provide a degree of predictability and transparency necessary for both domestic and foreign investment in a country.
If we reconsider our values in this practical light they appear less grand, but more tenable while avoiding religious confrontations against this or that form of Islam or this or that form of communism.
In this light the overall values are development, stability and the interest of the state - the very values that have been governing China for millennia and that the West ought to study. A C Graham has pointed out in The Disputers of Tao (1989) that the failure of the Chinese empire was to stress stability over development too much, which weakened China in the face of aggressive Western powers keener on development over stability. However, now that the balance is tilted toward development, terrorist attacks press us back in the direction of stability, and in this field China has more than one contribution to make.
We need ideals to push forward - money is certainly not enough to motivate us. So if one idea is to be spread, perhaps it ought to be that of tolerance: the idea that many ideas must be allowed to live together under one roof. This can be helpful to states and moderate their impulses for autocracy. And the best example of this idea in practice is in Asia, the cradle of Buddhism and Taoism, two cultures that have helped millions of people to become more tolerant. (2002-06-06 Asia Times)
