Islamism and the American Freedom Agenda

In a lecture to the John Jay Institute, Thomas F. Farr argued that the U.S. government’s “unwillingness to address political Islam is crippling our freedom agenda in the Middle East. We cannot succeed if we do not engage the Islamists on their own ground. This means we must abandon the futile search for ‘moderate’ Muslims who are secular liberals. This is the very opposite of today’s ‘realism.’ We must develop the capacity to discern which Islamists are capable of embracing the threshold principles of stable democracy, such as religious freedom. Why must we engage Islamists? Because it is they who are going to determine the future of the Middle East, not the secular liberals who have been educated in the West, nor the despotic regimes of Mubarak or Assad. President Bush correctly understands that the movement of history is toward democratic political reform and that the United States must adjust its policies accordingly.”