Brexit, Religion and a Politics of Reconciliation in Foreign Policy

Statement

The Brexit vote was a victory for Islamist terrorists as well as for isolationists in libertarian democracies. Islamist terror precipitated the Muslim refugee crisis that caused widespread anxiety, fear and hostility to outsiders in Europe and the U.S. As expected, that fear and hostility was exploited by politicians in both the U.S. and abroad.

The Brexit vote has dimmed the hope for reconciling diverse cultures and religions in pluralistic nations around the world and has raised the specter of more divisiveness, hostility and violence. Such polarization reflects a human preference for walls rather than bridges. It is a step away from peaceful coexistence toward isolationism and violence in a pluralistic world.

It has happened before. It led to The U.S. Civil War, to Stalin's Soviet Union, and to the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. They all took place in Christian nations where people knew better, but succumbed to pervasive fears, anger and hostility toward others unlike themselves. Each was a perfect storm of the forces of evil over those of good, and misguided demagogues exploited that fear and anger to build their power and corrupt nations and even continents.

The religious dimension should be obvious. It is God's will to reconcile and redeem humanity and Satan's will to divide and conquer--and Satan does a convincing imitation of God in our churches and mosques. In the ebb and flow of good and evil in the world, Satan seems to have gained a political edge. In the U.S. that is exemplified in Donald Trump, whose life and teachings are the antithesis of those of Jesus, as well as those of Muhammad.

Brexit reflected the growing fear and hostility of the British toward Muslims. The Church of England has been in decline and Islam has been on the increase for some time, and Boris Johnson, a former mayor of London who resembles Donald Trump in body if not in mind, was able to exploit public fear and anger of the Muslim "other" in Great Britain and defeated the forces of reconciliation with the divisive power of nativism and isolationsism.

Donald Trump has done the same in the U.S. with the support of evangelical Christians who have corrupted the moral power of Christianity in politics. President Obama has complicated the issue by refusing to acknowledge the religious nature of Islamist terrorism and countered it with military force that has failed to eliminate the threat and even exacerbated it.

Radical Islamism is a fundamentalist form of Islam, and its power depends upon its legitimacy among Muslims. Today there is a battle of legitimacy being waged by fundamentalist Islamists and progressive Muslims for the hearts and minds of Muslims. It is a battle for God that cannot be won by U.S. military might. It can only be won by progressive Muslims who can undermine the legitimacy of radical Islamists by defining Islam as a religion of peace and justice.

Progressive Jews, Christians and Muslims all share a common word of faith in the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. It requires that believers consider those of other religions as their neighbors and share with them the freedoms that they love, beginning with the freedoms of religion and speech.

Islamic law (shari'a) denies the freedoms of religion and speech with apostasy and blasphemy laws, and autocratic rulers like Egypt's President Sissi have used such laws to silence their opponents. Too often the U.S. has supported such oppressive regimes, and it has been at the expense of human rights and enabled radical Islamist terrorists like ISIS to recruit followers.

The real allies of the U.S. against Islamist terrorism are progressive Muslims who are seeking to reform Islam into a religion compatible with peace, freedom and justice. Those reforms must begin with the elimination of apostasy and blasphemy laws, and the U.S. should be supporting those libertarian reforms rather than the oppressive leaders who oppose them;

The objective of U.S. foreign policy is to promote U.S. strategic political objectives overseas, and that requires cooperation with other nations that share a commitment to libertarian democracy, human rights and the secular rule of law. The isolationism and nativism that led to Brexit oppose a politics of reconciliation. For U.S. foreign policy to achieve its objectives in Islamic cultures it must shift from a policy of military intervention to a policy of containment.

The military component of a policy of containment in Islamic cultures would rely on military advisors and trainers who can keep a low profile in hostile cultural environments. That was the original mission of the U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam, but the deployment of U.S. combat forces in 1965 transformed a U.S. advisory mission into a U.S. war that was lost.

The U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq reversed that sequence, with U.S. advisors and trainers following the withdrawal of large deployments of U.S. combat forces. Perceived as infidels they unwittingly undermined the legitimacy of a U.S. military presence in Islamic cultures. That will make it difficult for U.S. military advisors and trainers to establish the legitimacy they need for mission success, and make them targets for Islamist terrorists.

A politics of reconciliation is essential to the legitimacy of U.S. foreign policy and military operations in Islamic cultures, and it will require conforming Islamic standards of legitimacy to those of libertarian democracy, human rights and the secular rule of law. To that end, U.S. foreign policy should be based on aiding and assisting progressive Muslims who support fundamental human rights that begin with the freedoms of religion and speech. The elimination of apostasy and blasphemy laws will be the first sign of progress.

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