Book Review - Who Speaks for Islam?

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think

By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup Press, 2007.

Reviewed by:

Drew L. Schumann

LTC, US Army Reserve

Counter-IED Curriculum Developer, Combined Arms Center for Training

Fort Leavenworth, KS

Since 9/11, terrorism and Islam have been synonymous to many in the West, especially in America. Efforts by individuals and groups to disprove this concept have ranged from ineffective at best, to giving the impression of advocating terror and obfuscatory at worst. For the majority of Americans, according to a recent Gallup Poll, "There is nothing to admire about Islam".

In 2001, the Gallup organization set off on a six-year, 35 country research project to determine what "Islam" thought about America, terror, as well as about their own society. The result is Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. In this book, the authors assert that they can demonstrate conclusively, that most Americans' opinions about Islam are misguided, and that the genesis of terrorism is not the actively religious in Islam.

For those who are reticent about reading a book about a series of polls, fear not, for the book is 204 pages, an introduction, five chapters and two tabs. Reading carefully, I would estimate a four hour read, uninterrupted. Plus, while the scope of the book is rather ambitious, and its execution is fairly sophisticated, it is written in understandable prose for all levels of readers with a minimum of jargon.

Who Speaks for Islam? deals with five central themes. It explores Islamic attitudes and opinions on identity, majority view on democracy and the role of Islam in a democracy, what, if anything contributes to the correlation of Islam and violence, what Islamic women want and what Islamic people worldwide think about the United States.

According to the Gallup Poll, less than 20 percent of Muslims are ethnically Arab, and most live outside of the Middle East. Muslims share belief structures and history with Jews and Christians. While these are fairly obvious facts, the Gallup research reveals that in the eyes of the majority of Muslims, terrorism is antithetical to Jihad. In fact, not only is it antithetical to jihad, but the majority of Muslims see Jihad as a metaphorical struggle, not military.

One of the persistent truisms among many Westerners is the incompatibility of Islam and democracy. The book explores the views of Muslims on democracy, and comes to the conclusions that the majority of Muslims desire democracy, and theorizes that the lack of democracy in the Islamic world is more a function of history than religion. On the subject of religion and democracy, the authors also point out that the majority of Muslims agree that the legal structure of their government law should be based in Sharia. While Western conventional wisdom appears to support the notion that Sharia is fundamentally undemocratic and anti-civil rights, the majority of Muslims polled think that Sharia and democracy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, these numbers agree almost exactly with similar polls in America, concerning the role of religion in the making of laws.

While anti-Islam thought is generally attributed to "neo-conservatives" or the religious right, Who Speaks for Islam? also takes traditional liberal conventional wisdom to task, in that the authors make some fairly convincing points that disassociates the traditional secular/liberal view that correlates religion and violence/wars.

According to the poll data, over 90 percent of Muslims disapprove of terrorism. Ironically, this number is much higher than those who disapprove of terrorism among Americans. In addition, the great majority of terrorists who self-identify by action or by opinion are not demonstrably religious. Both of the above points are particularly eye-opening, in that they appear to swim directly upstream from prevailing Western, secular, liberal traditions and thought.

Perhaps the most compelling point of the book is the examination of Muslim women and their opinions about Islam, and women's rights. In sum, Muslim women want liberty, but not libertinism. Contrary to the popular Western view that women are suppressed by men in Islamic society, Muslim women's opinions track Muslim men's opinions on nearly every issue. For instance, the majority of Muslim women support Sharia as a basis for law. In fact, a large percentage of Muslim women consider Sharia as "protective" of women and feel that those protections gives them an advantage over men, before the law. Perhaps disappointingly for many who oppose Muslim women's traditional dress, a large number of Muslim women see traditional dress as superior to Western dress. Muslim women also have a better self-image than Western women, perhaps not coincidentally.

This dissonance is probably a result of Muslim women not sharing the same "issue set" as western women's rights activists, and see western "women's rights" as a justification for neo-colonialism. Where some Western activists think that Muslim women should demand an end to female mutilation and traditional dress, and demand access to abortions and "equal rights" before the law, the majority of Muslim women really want better economics and peace, as well as medical care and infrastructure.

The authors close the book with data about whether the Muslim World hates the US for its freedom and prosperity, as espoused by many pundits. In fact, according to their polling data, the majority of Muslims admire American freedoms and technology. Perhaps surprisingly, self-identified terrorists admire American freedoms at a higher rate than the general population. The authors close by theorizing that perhaps disillusionment with the disconnect between American ideals and American actions has a role in the formation of terrorists in the Muslim world.

Contrary to many academic books, reading the research methodology was actually highly entertaining, especially since most writers describe their methodology in tedious, highly technical terms. The Gallup organization is rightfully proud of their product, and takes the time to make the two tabs on their methodology both educational and interesting.

Who Speaks For Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think is an important book, that should be on "required reading lists" that wish to examine The Long War, Islam, or terrorism. The authors' assertion that religious and fundamentalist does not mean "violent" will be sure to raise a fair amount of controversy among many quarters, because the Gallup Poll numbers used in the book contradict both neo-conservative and traditionally American "liberal" ideas about the Islamic world. Most of all, the book will provide "grist for the mill", especially for those of us who seek a better understanding of Islam, and the causes of non-state violence in the world.