All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys, introducing Mustafa Akyol.
He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing writer and the author most recently of the Islamic Jesus.
And here he is at the New York Times, a new secularism is appearing in Islam.
Welcome to the show.
How's it going?
Thanks so much, Scott.
Good to be on the show.
Thank you.
Very happy to have you here.
So yeah, right at the dawn of the 2020s, it's a good time to reflect on some things.
Certainly the 21st century in foreign policy, the 21st century has been dominated by America's war on terrorism in the Middle East.
And a lot of that has to do with sectarian war and Islamist terrorist groups and all these kinds of things.
And I think probably everyone who's not actually in on it would agree that America, that America's policy has been very counterproductive in terms of, you know, its declared goals, say by George W. Bush, for example, of trying to bring the so-called Muslim world into Western democracy and modernity and Westphalian this and that, the way the Americans would have it.
But in your article here, it sounds like you're talking about the reaction to the negative reaction.
We're already 20 years into this now.
So we're not just dealing with the reaction from Bush, but we're dealing with the reaction of the people of the Middle East to the turn to fundamentalism that came with Iraq War II and so much of the rest of this intervention.
I don't mean to let Obama off the hook, but, you know, I mean the whole 20 years of war here.
So very interesting piece here.
Can you go ahead and I guess take us through a little bit?
Sure.
I mean, first of all, yes, you're right that American foreign policy has sometimes been counterproductive and Iraq War is a great example of that.
I mean, it just, you know, made fundamentalism more appealing to certain people when that's how we got ISIS and so on and so forth.
But I'm speaking of something else here.
I mean, people in the West, in the US, look about the news, you know, look in the news and see all the terrible things happening in the name of Islam today.
Those things exist.
And I'm a Muslim and I'm concerned, right?
I mean, there are theocratic regimes in Iran, in Saudi Arabia.
They have oppressive laws that, uh, punish people for quote unquote blasphemy or apostasy.
Women are forced to cover their heads.
So there are a lot of big problems and these problems attract attention and a lot of people think, oh, this is very bad and how, how Muslims can't get over with this.
But I'm saying, what I'm saying is that, well, actually those questions are now asked by a lot of Muslims themselves and ugly things that are being done in the name of Islam is actually making a lot of Muslims question these things.
Uh, and I, I look at, I looked into data from the Arab world in which you see a declining trust in religious leaders and religious parties.
Even some people are frequenting the mosque less and becoming more secular in their lives.
That was, you know, mapped by Arab barometer, a, a polling company based in the U S uh, there are certainly signs of that happening in Iran.
I mean, the regime is there still obviously, but a lot of people in Iran have become more secular because they're angry at the regime and the regime identifies itself with Islam.
So these people are becoming disillusioned with Islam itself as well.
Uh, and in my country, Turkey, I see that as well.
Uh, Turkey has become more, uh, religious or, or religion in Turkey has become more visible under president Ardogan and his growing authoritarian regime.
However, uh, that is that precisely because of that in Turkey, there is a disillusionment with religion.
There's a new fashion called deism among the youngsters in Turkey.
Deism is, you know, to believe in a God, but not any religion.
So that's become a social trend.
And that is happening because a lot of people are seeing Islam being used to justify corruption, to justify injustice and authoritarianism.
So, so basically Muslim societies are reacting to these things and it's not just that there's one monolithic, never changing Muslim world.
Quite the contrary.
There are very interesting trends within it.
Well, and now there's a kind of apples and oranges problem here too, right with um, fundamentalism on one hand and political organization and Islamism in terms of statism, right?
Because you could have somebody who's as fundamentalist and pious as could be, but who's completely a quietest and favor separation of church and state and, and things like that.
Whereas you could have others who are determined to force everyone else to do it their way.
Like say for example, the, you know, Baghdadi or somebody like that.
Exactly.
I mean, there is religious freedom in Iran, right?
To some extent.
Yes.
I mean, Christians can have their churches, there's even a Jewish community in Iran.
So there is some religious freedom, but, uh, for example, you can't convert from Islam to another religion that would be called apostasy, quote unquote, and that would be seen as criminal.
Or if you're a Baha'i, which is a, you know, faith that is not traditionally respected by Islam, you would not have any places of worship.
So, uh, I mean, traditional Islamic law had some notion of religious freedom and it was more than what Christianity gave to minorities back in a few centuries ago.
Uh, but you know, the idea of religious freedom expanded in the world today.
But you know, if you stick back to medieval Islamic jurisprudence, uh, you will have a limited sense of religious freedom.
Now, uh, here is, I think what needs to be stressed, uh, there is a, there are extremists in the Muslim world, groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS.
Well, these are very marginal.
They are a big problem, but they're very marginal.
Uh, when you come to mainstream Islamic understanding, there's certainly nothing like that, no terrorism or anything like that, but there are some authoritarian interpretations of religion.
And when you combine that with their state power, as is the case in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, about a dozen states, well, you will have laws that are oppressive in the name of religion.
And what I'm saying is that, well, those laws, those oppressive interpretations of Islam are pushing some people away from the religion or at least making a lot of Muslims question this, this combination of Islam and politics.
And as you all said, someone can be a conservative believer.
Someone may want to live like the Amish even in the U.S., but unless if you don't impose it on other people, that in itself is not a problem.
But if you subscribe to an ideology, a religious ideology, which says, I live like this, but others should also live like this.
And I will use the state for that.
That is a problem.
And we have that in the Muslim world today.
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You mentioned in the article, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamic State, the Iranians, the Taliban you just mentioned here, essentially the Middle East is kind of in crisis in a lot of ways all over the place, but wherever it's self-described religious authorities in charge, they then, you know, it's part of the problem of being the king, right?
Is you and your name get blamed whenever everything goes wrong too.
There's plenty wrong in Iran, and under the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, certainly things were not as they wished they would be.
And of course, you look at the chance for the Sunni Islamists that they had in Syria, and they spent all their time executing people for blasphemy and, you know, acting like a bunch of crazed Bin Ladenites, and so lost out.
And so it certainly seems like there's a lot to reject if you're a Middle Eastern Muslim right now in terms of what happens when Islamists seize power and use it.
They sure don't seem to use it very well.
That is correct, Scott.
And let's not forget that Islamism, a political ideology, is a recent phenomenon in the Muslim world.
You look at its beginning in the 70s, in the 80s, the Iranian Revolution, although it's from the Shia tradition, you know, gave a big boost to the idea that you can capture the state back, you know, in the name of Islam.
Because before that, there were nationalist governments, secular-leaning governments in the Muslim world, not necessarily very liberal or democratic, but at least they were secular.
So Islamism came with this idea that Islam will solve our problems.
Islam is the solution.
That's been the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But what happened is that, well, in some places Islamists came to power, and the result is a disaster.
I mean, in Sudan, for example, is a disaster.
In Iraq and Syria, it just led to sectarian war.
In Pakistan, it just, you know, created this politics which oppresses people in the name of Islam.
A lot of people being killed for blasphemy, quote unquote.
And in Turkey, for example, my country, Erdogan is not maybe an openly Islamist, in the sense that he doesn't advocate introducing Sharia to the legal system.
But he is referring to religion all the time to justify his rule.
And a lot of people in Turkey don't like President Erdogan.
And when you have a government that uses so much religion, the opponents of that government become also unhappy with religion itself.
So that's why in my piece, I said, well, if Islamists keep on doing like this, they will have a bigger secular reaction in the Muslim world.
And I remind that, well, this is something similar to Europe.
I mean, today we see Europe as a very secular continent, but it was not like that until a few centuries ago.
Until a few centuries ago in Europe, Christianity was very strong, and also it was oppressive in certain cases.
European history has people being executed, burned at the stake for being a heretic.
There were violent wars between Protestants and Catholics in the 16th, 17th centuries.
And the U.S. was founded on the lesson taken from those bad episodes in European history.
So U.S. was lucky to never had that, at least in most of its history.
But in Europe, the oppressive interpretation of religion led to a secular reaction in France, for example.
So the Islamists have to choose for themselves.
If they keep their interpretations of Islam that are oppressive, that are intolerant, they will undermine their religion that they are trying to promote.
Well, you know, so we hear a lot about this ancient fight going back to the 1300s or 700s or whichever, between the Sunni and the Shia and this and that, and how that's why America ought to stay out, because they're just going to keep on fighting.
But I would hasten to point out the American responsibility here, since I'm an American and I was watching, that the U.S. invaded and smashed not just a secular Baathist government there, but stayed and fought a five-year civil war on behalf of Shiite religious parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution and the Dawah Party and their armed militias.
And then they helped drive the Sunni rebellion into the arms of the very worst Bin Ladenites, including all the foreigners from Saudi and Egypt and Syria and everyone else who came to fight in Iraq War II.
And then Obama outright took their side when the veterans of al-Qaeda in Iraq came home to Libya and Syria and overthrew another secular government in Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and then went on to try to overthrow the government in Syria, leading to a massive war fought where America was on the side, not just of the Sunni-based insurgency, but literally led by al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Syria, otherwise known as ISI, the Islamic State of Iraq, and then Nusra in Syria.
And then, of course, ISIS broke off and created their own caliphate for a while and all of that.
And so not just religious fundamentalism, but religious, the worst kind of Bin Ladenite crazy fundamentalism on one side, and Iranian-style revolutionaries on the other side in Baghdad, and the massive sectarian war between them, all Bush and Obama's fault, all the Republicans and the Democrats and the American military and CIA's fault and our allies for doing this to these people.
So you take all that away, and you have a 21st century with a Ron Paul in power in 2001, where none of it had to be like this at all, and we'd be dealing with an entire different place.
We wouldn't even necessarily have to deal with the reaction to the reaction, the secular reaction to all of this Islamism.
We could just be humanity moving together into the 21st century without any of this conflict at all.
And after all, the demographics completely argue in favor of, well, you're a Cato guy, our libertarian ideology.
You know, the people of the Muslim world are young.
The super majority of them are under 30 right now.
There's no reason in the world that they would all be a bunch of 7th century thinkers in the 21st century.
And none of this had to be this way at all.
It really is our responsibility to emphasize America's role in all of that.
Well, Scott, I mean, I do share a lot of your criticisms, yes, towards Western foreign policy, especially U.S. foreign policy.
In my view, this is what's happening.
The Muslim world is struggling to come up with ideas of liberty.
People don't discuss or discover liberty right away.
I mean, it took for Europe to go through some terrible experiences to agree that there should be something called free speech or freedom of religion.
And the Muslim world, a few centuries later, is going through the same struggles.
And in my article, I tried to say that, well, you know what?
What happened in Europe when people saw religious wars at the end of which they said, OK, maybe we needed secular, minimal, neutral state, that idea is now coming up in the Muslim world.
The difference is when Europe was having those struggles and trying to come with the Enlightenment ideas, which would ultimately include libertarianism, Europe was not invaded by some outside power.
So in the Muslim world, these struggles are taking place.
In the meantime, there are these interventions from outside powers.
And the interventions claim to do things better.
But generally, as you pointed out, they generally make things worse.
Because when people are occupied by a foreign power, when a foreign power comes and dictates a policy, even if it's a good thing, people react to that because it's from the outside.
So I agree with you that, I mean, if the U.S. wants to see a more peaceful, a more free Muslim world, it can help it by simply not using more military means.
I'm in favor of peaceful interactions between the Muslim world and the West, including the U.S.
Let's have more dialogue.
Let's have more trade.
Let's have more student exchanges.
So people learn more about the ideas of the West in the Muslim world.
People in the West learn more about the culture there.
But let's not have more wars, more conflicts.
Therefore I believe in de-escalating the tension between Iran and the U.S. right now.
And let the Muslim world figure out its own course.
And I'm saying in my recent article that there's a chance that some of the liberal solutions found in Europe to religious bigotry is now being built up in some Muslim countries.
So but here's a dilemma too, though, is does secularism just necessarily mean socialism?
Because if so, that comes with so many problems baked in that you just see the reaction back to the right.
Libertarians, as you mentioned, are left out of the discussion.
Hey, if we're left out of the discussion here, our point of view is certainly not part of the discussion over there.
And if it's just the religious right versus the socialist left, then there's not much room for progress either way, it doesn't seem like.
No, no.
I mean, of course, speaking of socialism here, there are some socialists in the Muslim world.
They had their heyday in the 60s and 70s, probably, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, I think.
That was back when America backed the Islamists against them.
Exactly, exactly.
That's true.
I mean, there are no big socialist forces right now in the Muslim world, but there are certainly forces who wants to keep the state big and corrupt and nepotistic.
So that is maybe the problem we have clearly.
But by the term secular, I don't imply any socialism.
I mean, basically the state being neutral towards religion and not imposing religion and not saying this sect of Islam is true and the other one is heretical.
So it goes against that.
Well, I'm not asking about what your opinion and what you're promoting is, because we agree about that.
But I mean, is that what this means in practice?
This move away from the religious right?
Does it necessary?
I mean, I'm not trying to prejudice the question too much either.
It could be they're all becoming libertarians.
But I guess my worry is they're all just becoming socialists instead, which is not much better of an alternative.
You're right, but I don't see that happening.
I mean, the term libertarian may be a little less known in the Muslim world, but liberty, the idea of freedom, yeah, that's or is good.
I mean, that is there.
And how do you exactly, you know, articulate that is something we'll you know, Muslim societies will have to figure out, although I should say that in many Muslim majority societies, there are pockets of people who advocate classical liberalism or libertarianism.
I have colleagues in Turkey who have an organization for that.
There are organizations in the Arab world promoting the classical ideas of liberty.
So it is there and in Muslim societies should just have the right to in the medium to debate about these issues.
Yeah, well, it's certainly I like your example about, you know, the European history there were after all of the wars over the Protestant Reformation and all that.
They finally just decided, you know what?
What if we just pretended not to care that we don't like each other's church and we just do business anyway?
So we're simplifying it a bit.
That's really where all this separation of church and state came from anyway, right?
Was just so much bloodshed.
Somebody finally said they were sick of it.
Exactly.
I mean, people don't come to ideas merely by thinking about them.
I mean, intellectuals do that or people who are committed to an idea do that.
But society is learned by experience.
It took centuries for Europeans to agree that they should not kill each other on the basis of sect, religion and ultimately the nation.
Because let's not forget, after the religious wars, there came horrific national wars.
I mean, World War One, World War Two.
And only after all that, we saw a peaceful arrangement between the French and the Germans and the European Union and that in itself has a lot of problems right now.
So it is only normal that Muslim societies are also learning by experience, painful experience I must say.
But what has happened in Iraq and Syria in the past couple of decades between Sunnis and Shiites is very reminiscent of what happened between the Protestants and the Catholics during the 30 Years War and during some of the bloody episodes in the 17th century.
And thinkers like John Locke argued for religious freedom by saying that you see what this is what happens when you impose a certain religion or sect.
That's why we should accept liberty and toleration.
Yeah, it is fun for me to think about what could have been if only I said this in my last article, so I'm being a little redundant.
But never mind if a hero like Ron Paul or Harry Brown had won, or even the horrible Al Gore had won the recount and things have been different that way.
But if only Bush had not hired Cheney and Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives, but instead had relied on Colin Powell, if he had just had Brandeis, vanilla vice president, some Republican senator nobody cared about, you know, something like that, and had relied on Colin Powell, then there never would have been Iraq War Two.
And then therefore, there never would have been all of the consequences that have come from Iraq War Two.
And I'm sure they probably would have had some horrible war in Afghanistan anyway.
But you just think about how much undermining it has done, of our perspective and our movement to have George W. Bush launch that war in the name of liberty and self-government and kill so many people and cause, I mean, after all, again, Saddam Hussein's government was a total dictatorship.
There was no, you know, democracy there in any sense.
But you know, Bakuba was 50% Sunni, 50% Shiite, and they didn't care any more than, at least it's reported, they didn't care about that stuff much more than Americans care about who's a Protestant and who's a Catholic in our neighborhoods.
We just don't really care about that stuff so much.
And they weren't having a sectarian war until America came in there and kicked over everything.
That's not to say that America should support dictatorships, but to support Islamist revolutions against them is probably, yeah, also bad.
I totally agree.
And U.S. foreign interventions, especially the Iraq occupation, has been totally disastrous.
I mean, let's not forget, I mean, as you said, Saddam regime was terrible, but you sometimes contain a regime and just, you know, it collapses in itself.
I mean, let's not forget that the Soviet Union, the greatest threat to the U.S. and the Western world in the past century, I mean, it collapsed because, not because it was occupied and liberated, it collapsed because it was a tyranny and tyrannies collapse because, you know, they can't govern and ultimately they suffocate their society.
What the U.S. did was to just isolate it and just let it, show the example.
I think what the West should do for the Muslim world is to show the good example, show a society that people can be as religious as Muslim or Christian or atheist as they want, and they can live in peace.
And that's a good society.
And that's a society where nobody oppresses each other.
Just show that.
And then people will get the idea.
But if you go and claim to, quote, unquote, liberate them and launch wars, you will just open a can of worms that will turn out to be something that you don't want to be.
You don't want to see.
And yeah, we just had that in Iraq.
All right.
So let's talk about Turkey a little bit.
I guess we see the same effect in Iran.
It's probably the same everywhere.
I don't know.
Same here.
There's a big split between town and country, right?
And so you'd have massive protests in Turkey or in Iran, where you have, I guess, the reformers, what you could very, very kind of loosely call the left, the secular type, modernist sort of forces.
But they're still outnumbered in the country.
I mean, in Iran, the right winger generally wins the presidential election, not always.
Erdogan certainly has a lot of support outside of the capital city, I guess, sort of like our president here, right?
The capital doesn't like him so much, but everybody else seems to.
So I wonder if you want to talk about those dynamics at all.
Yeah, there's a little bit of social political division in Turkey, a little bit reminiscent of red America versus blue America, I can say.
The more central areas of Turkey are a bit more sympathetic and supportive of Erdogan.
In the coastal regions and in big cities, Erdogan's support is declining.
There are nuances, of course, too.
But also in Turkey, Erdogan started nicely.
He started with economic reforms, market reforms, and he emphasized ideas of freedom, ideas of toleration.
He was not anti-Western at all.
He was trying to join the European Union.
But he changed course over time.
And that's why the Turkish economy started to go down, and cronyism and corruption and just irrational economic policies just led to a major decline in the economy, which is why Erdogan's votes are declining in Turkey.
Some people will still vote for him, no matter what, for cultural, ideological reasons.
Most religious conservatives in Turkey would still go for him.
But even among some of the religious conservatives who used to vote for Erdogan, there is disillusionment, and new parties are, that's why, now coming up against Erdogan.
I believe, I mean, Turkey, unfortunately, has lost its better days under Erdogan.
It has become really authoritarian in terms of free speech and rule of law.
However, still in Turkey, elections are real, and they matter.
And there's a chance that Erdogan might lose an election, and in that case, lose power.
So it is unlike some other countries in the region where a ruler rules for life no matter what, and elections are just a joke.
In Turkey, elections are more real.
So I still hope for Turkey for some recovery, and a post-Erdogan Turkey.
And ultimately, what Turkey needs is a consensus, big consensus in society that everyone in society, conservatives, seculars, Kurds, Alawis, religious minorities, will have rights, and they will not be marginalized, and they will not be the enemy within, quote unquote.
And the government will not be just a tool of whomever captures power, but it will be a small, limited, and principled government.
You know, Erdogan had that great quote where he said, democracy is like a streetcar.
You ride it, you know, until you win and get power, and then you get off.
It sounded like he was, you know, but you're telling me that didn't really take, he wanted it that way, but no, he really does have to stand for real elections.
He does have to.
I mean, he lost recently, local elections in Ankara and Istanbul, the two big cities of Turkey went to the opposition.
That was a major blow to his party.
His group, their power in parliament has waned and waxed back and forth to quite a bit, right?
To some extent, but his party still enjoys the majority in the parliament.
And there's another party that supports him as well.
He's very masterful in arranging these alliances.
And I think 90% of almost Turkish media is under Erdogan's control.
So it looks a little bit grim.
Yeah.
Well, and this is one of the ironies too, right, is, you know, if the majority rules in the democracy, then you get the Islamist.
If the minority gets their way, then you have a military coup d'etat.
That's the history of Turkey, you know, since the end of the first world war is it's the military dictators who are the keepers of secularism and the Democrats are much more likely to be right wing religious conservatives.
That is true.
And, you know, we have that dichotomy in India today as well.
I mean, democracy, if it just means majority rule, can turn into the turning of the majority.
And in Turkey, yes, Erdogan treats democracy as just getting the votes and then doing whatever he wills.
There is no constraints on the government, on the presidency.
We have a similar tendency in India right now.
Hindu nationalists are in power and they're passing laws that make the Muslims second class citizens.
So there is a crisis of democracy in the whole world.
And I think because that is partly because societies are divided and based on identity and so on and so forth.
But also democracy is just understood as majority rule.
And if majority rule, it doesn't mean anything.
It can easily turn into dictatorship.
What should really matter is rule of law and the idea that the government should be constrained in no matter who rules it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show.
It's really been great.
It's been great.
Yeah.
Nice talking to you.
Please send us a link or something when you do this, if you can.
Absolutely.
We'll do.
Thanks.
OK.
Thank you.
Nice to talk.
All right, you guys.
That's Mustafa Akyol.
And he is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
And he wrote the book The Islamic Jesus.
And you can find this article in The New York Times.
A new secularism is appearing in Islam.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
