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What if Islam had never existed? To some, it’s a comforting thought: No clash

of civilizations, no holy wars, no terrorists. Would Christianity have taken

over the world? Would the Middle East be a peaceful beacon of democracy?

Would 9/11 have happened? In fact, remove Islam from the path of history,

and the world ends up exactly where it is today. | By Graham E. Fuller

Imagine, if you will, a world without Islam—admittedly an almost inconceivable state ofaffairs given its charged centrality in ourdaily news headlines. Islam seems to lie

behind a broad range of international disorders: sui-cide attacks, car bombings, military occupations,resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrillawarfare, threatening videos, and 9/11 itself. Why arethese things taking place? “Islam” seems to offer aninstant and uncomplicated analytical touchstone,enabling us to make sense of today’s convulsive world.Indeed, for some neoconservatives, “Islamofascism”is now our sworn foe in a looming “World War iii.”

But indulge me for a moment. What if therewere no such thing as Islam? What if there hadnever been a Prophet Mohammed, no saga of thespread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East,Asia, and Africa?

Given our intense current focus on terrorism,war, and rampant anti-Americanism—some of the

most emotional international issues of the day—it’svital to understand the true sources of these crises.Is Islam, in fact, the source of the problem, or doesit tend to lie with other less obvious and deeper fac-tors? For the sake of argument, in an act of his-torical imagination, picture a Middle East in whichIslam had never appeared. Would we then bespared many of the current challenges before us?Would the Middle East be more peaceful? How dif-ferent might the character of East-West relationsbe? Without Islam, surely the international orderwould present a very different picture than it doestoday. Or would it?

I F NOT I SLAM, THEN WHAT?

From the earliest days of a broader Middle East,Islam has seemingly shaped the cultural norms andeven political preferences of its followers. How canwe then separate Islam from the Middle East? As itturns out, it’s not so hard to imagine.

Let’s start with ethnicity. Without Islam, the faceof the region still remains complex and conflicted.The dominant ethnic groups of the Middle East—Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Jews, even Berbersand Pashtuns—would still dominate politics. Takethe Persians: Long before Islam, successive great

Graham E. Fuller is a former vice chairman of the National

Intelligence Council at the CIA in charge of long-range strate-

gic forecasting. He is currently adjunct professor of history at

Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is the author of

numerous books about theMiddle East, including The Futureof Political Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

ISLAMA World Without

46 Foreign Policy

[ C O V E R S T O R Y ]

48 Foreign Policy

And so it’s unlikely that Christian inhabitants ofthe Middle East would have welcomed the streamof European fleets and their merchants backed byWestern guns. Imperialism would have prospered inthe region’s complex ethnic mosaic—the raw mate-rials for the old game of divide and rule. And Euro-peans still would have installed the same pliablelocal rulers to accommodate their needs.

Move the clock forward to the age of oil in theMiddle East. Would Middle Eastern states, even ifChristian, have welcomed the establishment of Euro-pean protectorates over their region? Hardly. TheWest still would have built and controlled the samechoke points, such as the Suez Canal. It wasn’t Islam

that made Middle Eastern statespowerfully resist the colonial proj-ect, with its drastic redrawing ofborders in accordance with Euro-pean geopolitical preferences. Norwould Middle Eastern Christianshave welcomed imperial Westernoil companies, backed by theirEuropean viceregents, diplomats,intelligence agents, and armies, anymore than Muslims did. Look atthe long history of Latin American

reactions to American domination of their oil, eco-nomics, and politics. The Middle East would havebeen equally keen to create nationalist anticolonialmovements to wrest control over their own soil,markets, sovereignty, and destiny from foreigngrips—just like anticolonial struggles in Hindu India,Confucian China, Buddhist Vietnam, and a Chris-tian and animist Africa.

And surely the French would have just as read-ily expanded into a Christian Algeria to seize itsrich farmlands and establish a colony. The Italians,too, never let Ethiopia’s Christianity stop them fromturning that country into a harshly administeredcolony. In short, there is no reason to believe that aMiddle Eastern reaction to the European colonialordeal would have differed significantly from theway it actually reacted under Islam.

But maybe the Middle East would have beenmore democratic without Islam? The history of

Persian empires pushed to the doors of Athens andwere the perpetual rivals of whoever inhabited Ana-tolia. Contesting Semitic peoples, too, fought the Per-sians across the Fertile Crescent and into Iraq. Andthen there are the powerful forces of diverse Arabtribes and traders expanding and migrating intoother Semitic areas of the Middle East before Islam.Mongols would still have overrun and destroyedthe civilizations of Central Asia and much of theMiddle East in the 13th century. Turks still wouldhave conquered Anatolia, the Balkans up to Vienna,and most of the Middle East. These struggles—overpower, territory, influence, and trade—existed longbefore Islam arrived.

Still, it’s too arbitrary to exclude religion entire-ly from the equation. If, in fact, Islam had neveremerged, most of the Middle East would haveremained predominantly Christian, in its varioussects, just as it had been at the dawn of Islam. Apartfrom some Zoroastrians and small numbers of Jews,no other major religions were present.

But would harmony with the West really havereigned if the whole Middle East had remainedChristian? That is a far reach. We would have toassume that a restless and expansive medieval Euro-pean world would not have projected its powerand hegemony into the neighboring East in searchof economic and geopolitical footholds. After all,what were the Crusades if not a Western adventuredriven primarily by political, social, and economicneeds? The banner of Christianity was little morethan a potent symbol, a rallying cry to bless themore secular urges of powerful Europeans. In fact,the particular religion of the natives never figuredhighly in the West’s imperial push across the globe.Europe may have spoken upliftingly about bringing“Christian values to the natives,” but the patent goalwas to establish colonial outposts as sources ofwealth for the metropole and bases for Westernpower projection.

[ A World Without Islam ]

][Ask the AuthorSend questions for Graham Fuller [email protected] by January 25, and wewill post his answers on January 31 atForeignPolicy.com/extras/fuller.

Without Islam, the face of the Middle East still

remains complex and conflicted. Struggles over

power, territory, influence, and trade existed long

before Islam arrived.

dictatorship in Europe itself is not reassuring here.Spain and Portugal ended harsh dictatorships onlyin the mid-1970s. Greece only emerged fromchurch-linked dictatorship a few decades ago.Christian Russia is still not out of the woods.Until quite recently, Latin America was riddledwith dictators, who often reigned with U.S. bless-ing and in partnership with the Catholic Church.Most Christian African nations have not faredmuch better. Why would a Christian Middle Easthave looked any different?

And then there is Palestine. It was, of course,Christians who shamelessly persecuted Jews formore than a millennium, culminating in the Holo-caust. These horrific examples of anti-Semitism were

firmly rooted in WesternChristian lands and cul-ture. Jews would there-fore have still sought ahomeland outsideEurope; the Zionistmovement would stillhave emerged and soughta base in Palestine. Andthe new Jewish statewould still have dislodgedthe same 750,000 Arabnatives of Palestine fromtheir lands even if theyhad been Christian—andindeed some of themwere. Would not theseArab Palestinians havefought to protect orregain their land? TheIsraeli-Palestinian prob-lem remains at heart anational, ethnic, and ter-ritorial conflict, onlyrecently bolstered by reli-gious slogans. And let’snot forget that ArabChristians played a majorrole in the early emer-gence of the whole Arabnationalist movement inthe Middle East; indeed,the ideological founder ofthe first pan-Arab Ba’thparty, Michel Aflaq, wasa Sorbonne-educated Syr-ian Christian.

But surely Christians in the Middle East wouldhave at least been religiously predisposed toward theWest. Couldn’t we have avoided all that religiousstrife? In fact, the Christian world itself was torn byheresies from the early centuries of Christian power,heresies that became the very vehicle of politicalopposition to Roman or Byzantine power. Far fromuniting under religion, the West’s religious warsinvariably veiled deeper ethnic, strategic, political,economic, and cultural struggles for dominance.

Even the very references to a “Christian MiddleEast” conceal an ugly animosity. Without Islam,the peoples of the Middle East would have remainedas they were at the birth of Islam—mostly adherentsof Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But it’s easy to for-

January | February 2008 49

as the last major center of Eastern Orthodoxy. TheOrthodox world would have remained a key geopo-litical arena of East-West rivalry in the Cold War.Samuel Huntington, after all, included the OrthodoxChristian world among several civilizationsembroiled in a cultural clash with the West.

Today, the U.S. occupation of Iraq would be nomore welcome to Iraqis if they were Christian. TheUnited States did not overthrow Saddam Hussein,an intensely nationalist and secular leader, becausehe was Muslim. Other Arab peoples would stillhave supported the Iraqi Arabs in their trauma ofoccupation. Nowhere do people welcome foreignoccupation and the killing of their citizens at thehands of foreign troops. Indeed, groups threatened

50 Foreign Policy


get that one of histo-ry’s most enduring, vir-ulent, and bitter reli-gious controversies wasthat between theCatholic Church inRome and EasternOrthodox Christianityin Constantinople—arancor that persists stilltoday. Eastern Ortho-dox Christians neverforgot or forgave thesacking of ChristianConstantinople byWestern Crusaders in1204. Nearly 800 yearslater, in 1999, PopeJohn Paul ii sought totake a few small stepsto heal the breach inthe first visit of aCatholic pope to theOrthodox world in athousand years. It wasa start, but frictionbetween East and Westin a Christian MiddleEast would haveremained much as it istoday. Take Greece, forexample: The Ortho-dox cause has been apowerful driver behindnationalism and anti-Western feeling there,and anti-Western pas-sions in Greek politics as little as a decade agoechoed the same suspicions and virulent views of theWest that we hear from many Islamist leaders today.

The culture of the Orthodox Church differssharply from the Western post-Enlightenment ethos,which emphasizes secularism, capitalism, and the pri-macy of the individual. It still maintains residual fearsabout the West that parallel in many ways currentMuslim insecurities: fears of Western missionaryproselytism, a tendency to perceive religion as a keyvehicle for the protection and preservation of theirown communities and culture, and a suspicion of the“corrupted” and imperial character of the West.Indeed, in an Orthodox Christian Middle East,Moscow would enjoy special influence, even today,

Islamic civilization provided a common ideal towhich all Muslims could appeal in the name ofresistance against Western encroachment. Even ifthat appeal failed to stem the Western imperialtide, it created a cultural memory of a commonlyshared fate that did not go away. Europeans wereable to divide and conquer numerous African,Asian, and Latin American peoples who then fellsingly before Western power. A united, transna-

tional resistance among those peoples was hard toachieve in the absence of any common ethnic orcultural symbol of resistance.

In a world without Islam, Western imperialismwould have found the task of dividing, conquering,and dominating the Middle East and Asia much eas-ier. There would not have remained a shared cul-tural memory of humiliation and defeat across avast area. That is a key reason why the UnitedStates now finds itself breaking its teeth in the Mus-lim world. Today, global intercommunications andshared satellite images have created a strong self-consciousness among Muslims and a sense of abroader Western imperial siege against a commonIslamic culture. This siege is not about modernity;it is about the unceasing Western quest for domi-nation of the strategic space, resources, and evenculture of the Muslim world—the drive to create a“pro-American” Middle East. Unfortunately, theUnited States naïvely assumes that Islam is all thatstands between it and the prize.

But what of terrorism—the most urgent issuethe West most immediately associates with Islamtoday? In the bluntest of terms, would there havebeen a 9/11 without Islam? If the grievances ofthe Middle East, rooted in years of political andemotional anger at U.S. policies and actions, hadbeen wrapped up in a different banner, wouldthings have been vastly different? Again, it’s impor-tant to remember how easily religion can beinvoked even when other long-standing grievances

by such outside forces invariably cast about forappropriate ideologies to justify and glorify theirresistance struggle. Religion is one such ideology.

This, then, is the portrait of a putative “worldwithout Islam.” It is a Middle East dominated byEastern Orthodox Christianity—a church historicallyand psychologically suspicious of, even hostile to, theWest. Still riven by major ethnic and even sectariandifferences, it possesses a fierce sense of historicalconsciousness and grievance againstthe West. It has been invadedrepeatedly by Western imperialistarmies; its resources comman-deered; borders redrawn by West-ern fiat in conformity with its var-ious interests; and regimesestablished that are compliant withWestern dictates. Palestine wouldstill burn. Iran would still beintensely nationalistic. We wouldstill see Palestinians resist Jews,Chechens resist Russians, Iranians resist the Britishand Americans, Kashmiris resist Indians, Tamilsresist the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and Uighurs andTibetans resist the Chinese. The Middle East wouldstill have a glorious historical model—the greatByzantine Empire of more than 2,000 years’ stand-ing—with which to identify as a cultural and reli-gious symbol. It would, in many respects, perpetu-ate an East-West divide.

It is not an entirely peaceful and comforting picture.

UNDER THE PROPHET ’ S BANNER

It is, of course, absurd to argue that the existence ofIslam has had no independent impact on the MiddleEast or East-West relations. Islam has been a unify-ing force of a high order across a wide region. As aglobal universal faith, it has created a broad civiliza-tion that shares many common principles of philos-ophy, the arts, and society; a vision of the moral life;a sense of justice, jurisprudence, and good gover-nance—all in a deeply rooted high culture. As a cul-tural and moral force, Islam has helped bridge ethnicdifferences among diverse Muslim peoples, encour-aging them to feel part of a broader Muslim civiliza-tional project. That alone furnishes it with greatweight. Islam affected political geography as well: Ifthere had been no Islam, the Muslim countries ofSouth Asia and Southeast Asia today—particularlyPakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia—would be rooted instead in the Hindu world.


Is it so hard to imagine that Arabs would be so

angry at imperialism’s constant invasions, that

they would resort to terrorism? The question might

be instead, why didn’t it happen sooner?


are to blame. Sept. 11, 2001, was not the beginningof history. To the al Qaeda hijackers, Islam func-tioned as a magnifying glass in the sun, collectingthese widespread shared common grievances andfocusing them into an intense ray, a moment of clar-ity of action against the foreign invader.

In the West’s focus on terrorism in the name ofIslam, memories are short. Jewish guerrillas used

terrorism against the British in Palestine. Sri LankanHindu Tamil “Tigers” invented the art of the sui-cide vest and for more than a decade led the worldin the use of suicide bombings—including the assas-sination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.Greek terrorists carried out assassination operationsagainst U.S. officials in Athens. Organized Sikhterrorism killed Indira Gandhi, spread havoc inIndia, established an overseas base in Canada, andbrought down an Air India flight over the Atlantic.Macedonian terrorists were widely feared all acrossthe Balkans on the eve of World War i. Dozens ofmajor assassinations in the late 19th and early20th centuries were carried out by European andAmerican “anarchists,” sowing collective fear. TheIrish Republican Army employed brutally effec-tive terrorism against the British for decades, as didcommunist guerrillas and terrorists in Vietnamagainst Americans, communist Malayans againstBritish soldiers in the 1950s, Mau Mau terroristsagainst British officers in Kenya—the list goes on.It doesn’t take a Muslim to commit terrorism.

Even the recent history of terrorist activitydoesn’t look much different. According to Europol,498 terrorist attacks took place in the EuropeanUnion in 2006. Of these, 424 were perpetrated byseparatist groups, 55 by left-wing extremists, and18 by various other terrorists. Only 1 was carriedout by Islamists. To be sure, there were a numberof foiled attempts in a highly surveilled Muslimcommunity. But these figures reveal the broad ide-ological range of potential terrorists in the world.

52 Foreign Policy

Is it so hard to imagine then, Arabs—Christianor Muslim—angered at Israel or imperialism’sconstant invasions, overthrows, and interventions,employing similar acts of terrorism and guerrillawarfare? The question might be instead, why did-n’t it happen sooner? As radical groups articulategrievances in our globalized age, why should wenot expect them to carry their struggle into the

heart of the West?If Islam hates modernity, why

did it wait until 9/11 to launch itsassault? And why did key Islamicthinkers in the early 20th centuryspeak of the need to embracemodernity even while protectingIslamic culture? Osama binLaden’s cause in his early days wasnot modernity at all—he talked ofPalestine, American boots on theground in Saudi Arabia, Saudi

rulers under U.S. control, and modern “Cru-saders.” It is striking that it was not until as lateas 2001 that we saw the first major boiling overof Muslim anger onto U.S. soil itself, in reactionto historical as well as accumulated recent eventsand U.S. policies. If not 9/11, some similar eventlike it was destined to come.

And even if Islam as a vehicle of resistance hadnever existed, Marxism did. It is an ideology thathas spawned countless terrorist, guerrilla, andnational liberation movements. It has informedthe Basque eta, the farc in Colombia, the Shin-ing Path in Peru, and the Red Army Faction inEurope, to name only a few in the West. GeorgeHabash, the founder of the deadly Popular Frontfor the Liberation of Palestine, was a GreekOrthodox Christian and Marxist who studied atthe American University of Beirut. In an era whenangry Arab nationalism flirted with violent Marx-ism, many Christian Palestinians lent Habashtheir support.

Peoples who resist foreign oppressors seek ban-ners to propagate and glorify the cause of theirstruggle. The international class struggle for jus-tice provides a good rallying point. Nationalism iseven better. But religion provides the best one ofall, appealing to the highest powers in prosecutingits cause. And religion everywhere can still serveto bolster ethnicity and nationalism even as ittranscends it—especially when the enemy is of adifferent religion. In such cases, religion ceases tobe primarily the source of clash and confrontation,

Peoples who resist foreign oppressors seek banners

to glorify their cause. Class struggle provides a

good rallying point. Nationalism is even better.

But religion provides the best one of all.


For more of Graham Fuller’s writings on the Islamic world and its political and cultural significance,see The Future of Political Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

For two classic works on the relationship between the West and the Middle East, see SamuelHuntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon &Schuster, 1996) and Bernard Lewis’s Islam and theWest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

For an alternative view of the nature of Islam and its compatibility with the other majormonotheistic religions, see Reza Aslan’s No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future ofIslam (New York: Random House, 2005). Five years after the September 11 attacks, William J.Dobson rethinks the popular notion that 9/11 ruptured East and West, in “The Day Nothing MuchChanged” (Foreign Policy, September/October 2006).

In “The True Clash of Civilizations” (Foreign Policy, March/April 2003), Ronald Inglehartand Pippa Norris argue that the real divide between East and West is not religion, but sex. Finally,Josef Joffe imagines how different the Middle East—and U.S. foreign policy—would look if Israelhad never existed, in “A World Without Israel” (Foreign Policy, January/February 2005).

»For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensive index of relatedForeign Policy articles, go to ForeignPolicy.com.

but rather its vehicle. The banner of the momentmay go away, but the grievances remain.

We live in an era when terrorism is often thechosen instrument of the weak. It already stymiesthe unprecedented might of U.S. armies in Iraq,Afghanistan, and elsewhere. And thus bin Laden inmany non-Muslim societies has been called the“next Che Guevara.” It’s nothing less than theappeal of successful resistance against dominantAmerican power, the weak striking back—an appealthat transcends Islam or Middle Eastern culture.

MORE OF THE SAME

But the question remains, if Islam didn’t exist,would the world be more peaceful? In the face ofthese tensions between East and West, Islamunquestionably adds yet one more emotive ele-ment, one more layer of complications to findingsolutions. Islam is not the cause of such prob-lems. It may seem sophisticated to seek out pas-sages in the Koran that seem to explain “why theyhate us.” But that blindly misses the nature of thephenomenon. How comfortable to identify Islamas the source of “the problem”; it’s certainly mucheasier than exploring the impact of the massiveglobal footprint of the world’s sole superpower.

[ Want to Know More? ]

A world without Islam would still see most of theenduring bloody rivalries whose wars and tribulationsdominate the geopolitical landscape. If it were not reli-gion, all of these groups would have found someother banner under which to express nationalismand a quest for independence. Sure, history would nothave followed the exact same path as it has. But, atrock bottom, conflict between East and West remainsall about the grand historical and geopolitical issuesof human history: ethnicity, nationalism, ambition,greed, resources, local leaders, turf, financial gain,power, interventions, and hatred of outsiders, invaders,and imperialists. Faced with timeless issues like these,how could the power of religion not be invoked?

Remember too, that virtually every one of theprinciple horrors of the 20th century came almostexclusively from strictly secular regimes: LeopoldII of Belgium in the Congo, Hitler, Mussolini,Lenin and Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. It was Euro-peans who visited their “world wars” twice uponthe rest of the world—two devastating global con-flicts with no remote parallels in Islamic history.

Some today might wish for a “world withoutIslam” in which these problems presumably hadnever come to be. But, in truth, the conflicts, rival-ries, and crises of such a world might not look sovastly different than the ones we know today.

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