The missing peace

Gilles Kepel explains how the west is alienating moderates in The War for Muslim Minds. It should be required reading for western policy makers, says William Dalrymple
The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West by Gilles Kepel
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The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West
by Gilles Kepel
256pp, Belknap Press, £15.95

On March 17, shortly after the Madrid bombings, al-Qaida made what is to date their only endorsement in an American presidential election. Throwing the weight of Osama bin Laden behind the Republican candidacy, the organisation declared that it hoped George Bush would win "because he acts with force rather than with wisdom or shrewdness," adding: "it is his religious fanaticism that will rouse our (Islamic) nation from its slumber".

Reading Gilles Kepel's important book, it is easy to see why al-Qaida should be so enthusiastic about Bush. Bin Laden has always been open about his aims: by unleashing a clash of civilisations between Islam and the "Zionist-Crusaders" of the west, he hopes to provoke an American backlash strong enough to radicalise the Muslim world, topple pro-western governments and so install a new Islamic caliphate.

Bush has fulfilled Bin Laden's every hope. Through the invasion of secular Ba'athist Iraq, the abuses in Abu Ghraib, the mass-murders in Faluja, America, with Britain's obedient assistance, has turned Iraq into a jihadist playground while alienating all moderate Muslim opinion. We may have failed to capture Bin Laden, but we have succeeded in liberating the extremists, radicalising the unaffiliated and making life more difficult than ever for our natural allies: ordinary, decent, moderate Muslims.

Kepel is the best possible guide through the frightening labyrinth of militant Islam. A fluent Arabic speaker who has spent many years in the Middle East, he has been writing about the subject for two decades, and has personally interviewed most of the principal players. Kepel writes with forensic clarity and an unrivalled grasp of detail; yet his deep knowledge of the subject over a long period allows him to present the wider picture. This concise, engaging and authoritative book should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand what is happening in the Islamic world and the terrifyingly counter-productive nature of our response to it.

Not least of the virtues of Kepel's book is that it provides in translation a huge amount of al-Qaida source material, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri's lengthy text Knights under the Prophet's Banner, which lays out in full al-Qaida's political programme. According to al-Zawahiri, he and Bin Laden agreed that the failure to mobilise the Muslim masses could only be reversed by an attack of the scale of 9/11, so convincing Muslims of the "irresistible power" of their movement.

The fact that much of this material has been relatively hard to come by in English highlights a central problem in the western response to al-Qaida. In the panic to denounce Bin Laden, we have forgotten to try to understand him: to read his statements properly and calmly analyse his aims and weaknesses. Three years after 9/11, non-specialists may still have difficulty in finding out first-hand why al-Qaida is engaged in terrorism and what it is attempting to achieve. All terrorist violence, Islamic or otherwise, is contemptible. But just because we condemn does not mean we should not strive to analyse the evidence accurately and respond judiciously.

Kepel argues that al-Qaida is not some structured multi-national. Instead it barely exists: "al-Qaida was less a military base of operations than a database that connected jihadists around the world via the internet." As Kepel shows, this failure to understand the nature of al-Qaida was the reason that the US attempted to counter it with such unsuitable policies - so inadvertently turning itself into al-Qaida's most effective recruiting agency.

Kepel emphasises the centrality of Palestine to this equation. From Bin Laden's first public statement, "A Declaration of War Against the Americans", issued in 1996, he announced he was fighting US foreign policy in the Middle East and in particular American support for the House of Saud and the state of Israel. In Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, al-Zawahiri emphasises that it was the failure of Oslo, the eruption of the second intifada in the autumn of 2000, and the repressive campaign waged by Ariel Sharon that provided the opportunity al-Qaida had been waiting for: here was the rallying cry that could unify the Muslim world. All that was needed was a massive strike, and the US system in the Middle East would begin to unravel.

If Bin Laden was obsessed with Israel, it was no less the central concern of the neocons to whom President Bush turned in the aftermath of 9/11. Kepel lays out very clearly the methods the neocons used to hijack Bush's "war on terror" to pursue their own pre-existing agenda. This consisted of abandoning the Oslo peace accords and instead seeking security for Israel by eliminating the Arab regimes which threatened it - ironically a goal which the neocons shared with al-Qaida.

Ideas originally produced in 1996 for a Likud thinktank by Douglas Feith and Richard Perle under the title "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", were later adapted in Washington for the neocon's "Project for the New American Century" (about which, alarmingly, Tony Blair recently professed ignorance: "What is it?" he asked James Naughtie). These ideas went on to become official US- and by default British - policies following 9/11.

Kepel also emphasises the central role that Saudi Arabia has played in the nurturing of violent political Islam - and the degree to which the Wahhabi kingdom took in Islamist leaders expelled by the region's secular regimes such as Syria, Egypt and Iraq. It was in Saudi Arabia, and among Saudis engaged in the Afghan jihad, that the fatal fusion took place between ultra-orthodox Salafism and the jihadi ideas of the Muslim Brothers. Yet while Saudi Arabia continues to be regarded as a US ally, it was the Ba'athist regimes that were mainly targeted by the neocons.

The battle is now on for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims - a battle the US is catastrophically losing. The Islamists have proved surprisingly adept at PR and have used the internet and the Arab satellite channels with great skill. In this battle, the way that Europe's million Muslims swing will prove crucial. If suspicion and Islamophobia drives them into the embrace of the militants, we are lost. Yet Kepel ends his book on a note of hope. Across Europe, a new generation of Muslims is becoming active in democratic politics. Kepel hopes that with a fair wind, these European Muslims could yet "present a new face of Islam - reconciled with modernity - to the larger world."

Given current British attitudes to Islam and the disastrous foreign policies embraced by both of our principal political parties, it seems a slight chance indeed - but it is probably the best hope we have.

· William Dalrymple's White Mughals is published by HarperCollins.