The Islam Dichotomy

Nicholas Kristof in today's NY Times makes a valiant attempt to address Western stereotypes of Muslims in an honest and direct manner. Kristof is one of my favorite columnists, and as he usually does, he presents a sympathetic and multifaceted argument.

But in the end, he leaves quite the white elephant sitting in the room. And it's a big one.

He makes the point that sure, many Muslim societies grab headlines with extremist political action or shocking personal retribution or reprehensible treatment of women.

But that's just the Arabs.

"Riverine or coastal" Muslims, like those in Indonesia, are a different sort. He says that while he finds stereotypes of Muslims profoundly warped, they are only so because, "Those stereotypes are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of Muslims who are Arabs, with Persians and Pashtuns thrown in as well. But the great majority of the world’s Muslims live not in the Middle East but here in Asia, where religion has mostly been milder."

So rather than debunk a stereotype, he localizes it, moving it offshore to the desert regions.

To be honest, I find it hard to fault this logic. Not that Indonesia is free of problems or extremism--think back to Bali in 05 or 02--but Kristof finds them to be more tolerant of other religions and of the women in their midst climbing the social and professional and societal ladders. And if we take a look at the direct interactions between America and Muslim societies, the problematic ones tend to follow Kristof's model.

In the end, Kristof offers us no easy way out of this dichotomy; indeed, no way out at all.

"There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam — the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia — and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge."

I have to admit, this troubles me. Because the point of debunking a stereotype is in the end to defeat it on exactly that basis--that it is a stereotype. It's an extreme relativist pose, but it's the only one possible if we are to avoid the descent into action defined by prejudice. Not that I'm suggesting that's where Kristof takes this column, not at all. But that idea rises out of the other ideas presented here, and there's no refutation to be found.

Like most of the problems we as Westerners face in the rising clash between Islam and the West--if indeed those very terms have meaning any more, which is a topic for another day--there is no easy answer to the problem, if even an easy definition of it.

So in avoiding the predictable end to his column, Kristof maintains the dichotomy, leaving us to wonder whether he does believe that desert Islam is the problem, but that in the end they will lose their edge, and coastal Islam will become dominant.

It's an interesting proposition. It's something to think about both in watching the relationship unfold to see if he's right, and in examining our own thoughts and beliefs about the intrinsic value of Islam--even of religion itself--in its many forms.