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1946 Analysis: Moslem States Represent a Potential Threat to World Peace
By Daniel PipesHow did the U.S. government perceive Islam as a political force in the old days? For an answer, I propose a look at a confidential 76-page study (declassified in 1979) published sixty years ago tomorrow by the Military Intelligence Service of the U.S. War Department. The 1946 report, which I have posted online in pdf format (warning: it is a large document that may be slow to load), is the inaugural issue of a series of weekly reports titled simply Intelligence Review. This series presents current intelligence reflecting the outstanding developments of military interest in the fields of politics, economics, sociology, the technical sciences, and, of course, military affairs. Chapter headings in this first issue include: Transition of Major Powers to Peacetime Military Systems, Manchuria: Soviet or Chinese Sphere? and Wheat: Key to the Worlds Food Supply. Of particular interest is an 11-page chapter that deals with Islam: A Threat to World Stability. It opens with some bleak observations: With few exceptions, the states [in the Muslim world] are marked by poverty, ignorance, and stagnation. It is full of discontent and frustration, yet alive with consciousness of its inferiority and with determination to achieve some kind of betterment. Two basic urges meet head-on in this area, and conflict is inherent in this collision of interests. These urges reveal themselves in the daily news accounts of killings and terrorism, of pressure groups in opposition, and of raw nationalism and naked expansionism masquerading as diplomatic maneuvers. The report then explains these two urges and rightly begins by focusing on the long shadow of the premodern period. Rest at link. Posted by: ed 2006-02-13 |
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