Islam and America
The Last Two Ideas Left on Earth
On November 5, 2024, Donald Trump was re-elected to the American presidency in a clear victory. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Michigan. Nevada. All the swing states went for the Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda. It came just under four years after the events of January 6, when it was thought that Trump and his brand of American nationalism had been relegated to the dustbin of history.
On December 8, 2024, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) announced that they had taken control of Syria. Aleppo. Hama. Homs. All of the country’s major cities fell, one by one. As Abu Mohammed Jolani entered the hallowed doors of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, it was a triumph for Islam. It came just three years after the Taliban were victorious in Afghanistan, chasing foreign forces out of Kabul after a two-decade-long battle. These two moments ran counter to trends around the world where the notion of Islam was seemingly out of style.
A duo of diametric political projects is now on center stage in the modern arena. While the particular flavor may change, they are the last two political ideas left on Earth:
Islam and America.
Power, People, and Politics
The world is organized across 193 states in the global system, as recognized by the United Nations. These states, which act as governing structures for territory, have different ruling apparatuses but similar characteristics. While today we see states, in the future, we may see principalities, empires, and beyond.
A governing idea is not required for a territorial unit. The ultimate prerequisite for governance is a monopoly of force: power. Notions of substance, style, and even core principles can accompany power over time. For example, a monarchy may start with the veneration of the ruling family, its symbols, and its personage, but across generations of rule, it might also begin to encompass specific values.
The modern era has knitted a fabric that transcends the ruling power structure – the concept of the nation. This tie that binds mythicizes community-level links across a vast territory. The increased synchronicity of language and customs in the information age has enabled territorial ethno-homogeneity, which would have been improbable in past centuries. The national myth still requires ignoring or running roughshod over diverse identities in practice.
Before migration patterns of the last several decades, most European states were modeled as ethno-states. Much of East Asia still is, such as South Korea and Japan. This is nearly impossible on the African continent due to colonial constructs that hodgepodged states together with many tribes, cultures, and peoples.
The territorial tapestry of the American order, which has existed since World War II, has forced many countries to search for organizing ideas to complement power and ethno-homogeneity. Like individuals and institutions, modern countries often – although not always – require ideology as overall frames to guide actions and foster regenerative activity. North Korea, which venerates a family that rules through brute force, still pays homage to an ideological north star.
National myths, if strong enough, can serve this purpose at a state level, fostering ideological underpinnings for the state. However, they do not possess global ideological mobility. Religion, if universalist in application and followers, can travel as an organizing idea across countries. This is true for Islam, for example. Organized political Islam has also proven it can withstand a global order. It is hard to extinguish. Hindutva, on the other hand, as an example, is not an ideological force on the international stage due to its limiting ethnocentric and regional character.
During most of the 20th century, a rivalry played out between Islam and America, and a third construct, collectivism, for states looking for a governing idea beyond power projection and ethno-homogeneity. Overtly, many countries would eschew this framing and point to more organic and differentiated ideologies in their governing core. Yet, it is hard to ignore this underlying reality, and it is useful to explore each governing ideology.
America, Americanism and its Antecedents
Socrates. Plato. Aristotle. Many patriotic political pundits seek to anchor Americanism in the lore of the ancients. The idea of America, however, is much more modern and varied. Even the principles of Ancient Greece and Rome came through many filters, first through the Islamic Age and thinkers like Ibn Rushd and then through European philosophers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
By then—and just before America’s founding—Western Christian empires ruled the world: the British, Dutch, Belgians, French, and Spanish. The notion of Christendom faded in the (post-)Enlightenment era as European exploration of the nation and nationalism relegated Christianity and its institutions to the background. Christian principles survived but were subsumed into emerging governing philosophies centered on liberalism, democracy, universal rights, and human agency.
The emergence of America on the world scene in 1776 was a central event in its era. It presented for the first time a clear case for an idea driving territorial integrity rather than the rule of a family or other oligopoly. It was no surprise that France, through its close ties to American revolutionaries, including Benjamin Franklin, witnessed its own ‘idea’ eruption in 1789. That moment raised a critical question that survives today: can Americanism thrive outside of America and in territories without the tutelage of the American order?
America eventually became the frame through which all modern states formed. It also grew as a polity, subsuming much of the world in its order. Through its integration into ruling systems, America became the de facto monopoly of force in large swaths of the world. Most countries, particularly after 1991, adopted the American idea, or at least tried to, many without realizing it.
Americanism has many elements, but America as an idea is rooted in its founding ethos, both the founders and the founding documents they created: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and its Amendments. As imperfectly as it has played out, America has sustained itself, and as an idea intertwined with the people and land, it has had staying power. When distilling the American idea (in very simplified form), three elements appear at the core: individual freedom, balance of power (between aspects of the state and with the people), and movement of capital.
There is also the glitter and glam of America at any given moment. This is where America's culture enters the scene, whether through music and movies, brands and businesses, or celebrities and superstars. It leads to mimicry, but that misses the essence of Americanism. Much like any ideology, how and what America leads to in terms of culture, economy, and politics depends very much on its implementation in a time and place.
Ideas need to be actualized, and therein lies the challenge of American universalism and its proponents: you have to reconcile with the people being governed. This is true for America and countries abroad. Over time, for a modern state to thrive—and perhaps survive beyond simply being a territory under a ruler’s monopoly of force—it must engender a nation with a cohesive society.
Americanism today encompasses nearly every state that roots itself in the American order, even those on the periphery or that may be inimical to the order. Until recently, it did have a rival within the core of the West, one that had its first inklings in 1848 and the publication of The Communist Manifesto by German philosopher Karl Marx.
Das Discontents
The notion of empires was still a dominant global concept in the 19th century, and the modern state system did not yet define the territorial nature of governance. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna was held in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars that followed the aborted French Revolution. As this gathering marked territorial boundaries, it was apparent that empires still ruled the world.
A century later, in the nearing aftermath of World War I, these empires gave way to new, orderly territorial units or nations. The advent of the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and the Bolshevik Revolution, all within a three-year period, made it clear that the time was ripe for a debate of ideologies to govern the modern state.
By this time, America had moved past its most significant growth period, following the Gilded Age, reaching a more progressive era with the rise of labor unions. New countries were being formed around the world, and Wilson’s points had also set the groundwork for decolonization. That time lent itself to revolutionary feelings of a global proletariat.
In the 1920s, as Americanism coalesced and enveloped the post-European empire order, and other ideas like Islam floundered after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, what other governing currents would fill the void? This is where the melange of communism, socialism, Bolshevism, and Maoism came into play.
Of course, these are not all the same, yet the notions of collectivism and statism are at their core. Thus, in the mid-20th century, the modern state had two governing ideologies. The collectivist frame also included prophets, sacred texts, and saints, providing the depth required to propel an ideology.
Communism was a Western-derived ideology that fit congruently with the modern state. Thus, it provided a neat counterpart to Americanism, which had inherited the philosophical underpinnings of liberalism and the economic concepts propelled by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (which coincidentally was also published in 1776). At its height, one-third of the world’s population lived in the shadow of communism.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and Deng Xiaoping's ascension to China’s leadership in 1978 significantly weakened socialism, communism, and their variations. It is hard to see any ruler or ruling apparatus proactively choosing them. Of course, they reverberate, and hybrid forms (mixed with Americanism and Islamism) are present; however, they appear to be a spent force.
Ruling systems in Cuba and North Korea still use the ideology to disguise the actual basis for their governance: brute force and ethnocentrism, the classic mainstays throughout history. In Europe, successors to collectivism have largely integrated into a lighter form of Americanism, social democracy, with the same elements of rights, balance of power, and movement of capital.
Other ideas and political projects have existed beyond collectivism and Americanism, but none have had escape velocity. Think of them as cults versus religions. They appear similar, but without size and resonance, the difference is night and day.
What does all this mean for the rest of the world, especially those without uniform ethno-homogeneity? With communism eliminated as a global ideological force and everything else, as mentioned, insignificant, when the 1.4 billion Muslims look up, there are only two ideas to choose from:
Islam and America.
Islam, Islamism and its Insurgents
Islam arrived as an earthquake 1,400 years ago, quickly spawning diverse empires around the world. Before the 20th century, the governance of Islamic territory almost always fell under a caliphate, sultanate, or imamate. When the Ottoman Empire was in its last days, it was unclear what would become of Muslim countries in the modern state system.
At the turn of the 20th century, prominent figures like Muhammad Abdu and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani initially advocated hybridity. However, what Abdu, Afghani, and others also advocated—pan-Islamic consciousness—was incongruous with the modern state. Many Muslim theorists eventually gravitated fully towards pan-Islamism, anti-Westernism, and even Wahhabism.
Political debate flourished throughout the Muslim world in the 1940s and 1950s. Soon after, however, the global powers at the time, the United States and the Soviet Union, backed ruling systems they could align with, halting the evolution or growth of new governing ideologies. The ruling systems of states adopted symbolic mantras of either Americanism or communism, and others had even more limited ideological depth. Some other countries petered along, like Pakistan, but after 1971, they also became an extension of America’s global monopoly of force. By the end of the 1970s, the vast majority of Muslim states around the world were governed by brute force, augmented by the pageantry and pomp of power and the faintness of Islamic culturalism.
The march of neo-Islamism ushered in by the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 challenged the equation. The takeover of Islam’s holiest site the same year, which led to the Franco-Saudi siege on Mecca, further pushed a more Islamic orientation in Saudi Arabia. The 1980s witnessed the rise of global modern jihad in Afghanistan. That cadre of transborder-jihadists found succor in later battles in Chechnya and Bosnia. The spread of global militancy spawned a new outfit, Al Qaeda.
Even secular leaders, like Saddam Hussein, adjusted to the post-Arabist times, adding Allah Akbar to the Iraqi flag. Islamic politics and militancy were on the rise everywhere. The Taliban embodied the most austere form, emerging in 1995 to take power for the first time in Afghanistan. Hamas outgrew its origins to become the most potent force in the most central theater for Muslims: Palestine. Islam was the force in waiting across the Arab world. In Jordan. In Algeria. In Morocco. Permitted or otherwise, its specter loomed large.
When the Arab Spring pushed rulers aside in Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia, Islamic forces took their place. In Syria’s civil war, the most organized opposition was Al Qaeda-lite. Then, in the abyss of Iraq, a new entity emerged: the Islamic State. The extreme caliphate and its brutality shocked the Muslim world. It also extinguished temporarily the flames of organized Islam as a result. Very few people wanted that type of Islamic rule in their countries. With the elimination of ISIS leadership in 2018, global Islamic consciousness appeared on the back foot.
The poster child of Islamic democracy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice & Development Party, was overseeing a moribund economy in Turkey. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt became unpopular quickly and was overthrown. A few years later, the same thing happened to the Islamic Renaissance Party in Tunisia. By the late 2010s, TikTok, online streaming, and the Dubai effect had brought new, less Islamic trends to Muslim youth.
When the Taliban re-took Afghanistan in 2021, it was as an anachronism; the arc of Islamism that had begun in 1979 was in decline. The triumphant takeover by Islamists of Syria marks the beginning of a consolidated counter-narrative. And it is a powerful one. Despite the ebbs and flows of political Islam, Islam and Muslims have always been robustly present. Even in Dubai, on Friday, there are traffic jams midday around all the city's mosques.
Like many religions, Islam comes before and transcends the country in the eyes of its followers. It is an organizing set of principles. Islam is also inherently universalist and political. At its core, it has always been a global political project and idea. While this essence has weakened over the centuries, as the last few decades showed, it can reemerge with the right leaders, environments, and oxygen.
Islam has many components and religious dimensions, but as a political project, it has several key elements (again, a simplified view): a pan-Islamic consciousness, a system of social constraint, and the exercise of just power. Individual freedom is not always a prerequisite, and while capitalism is often integrated—after all, the Prophet Mohammed was a trader—it is not a given. Thus, a potential tension exists between Islam and an American-led order and Americanness.
Over the past century, the Muslim world has entertained the leading political ideas: Islam, collectivism, and America. Communism with embedded secularism was unsustainable (and hybrid Islamic-socialist projects also failed). Americanism is what has taken root in countries such as Malaysia and Turkey, albeit with Islamic cultural elements. Political Islam continues to find oxygen in the contestation of the status quo.
Curing Huntington’s Disease
In the 1990s, political theorist Samuel Huntington advanced the notion of a Clash of Civilizations, an inevitable conflict between Islam (alongside China) and America. However, the intertwined nature of Western and Islamic civilization, as well as many shared values between Muslims and people in the West, call this thesis into question. At the same time, organized Islam is predisposed to contest external and non-Islamic rule.
This means that the last two ideas on Earth, Islam, and America, will invariably be oppositional at times. In many ways, Islam is the world’s last ideological resort against a global order. However, in the modern era, Islam, as a political construct, always hits a wall. In the battle of ideas, as it stands today, Islam will invariably lose.
This is because today, America, as an idea, encourages openness, while Islam fosters closed-mindedness. It was not always this way. Openness was the hallmark of Islamic intellectual inquiry during its golden age. It is what drove Ibn Rushd to the Greek classics and Al Biruni to the stars. The spread of Islam was rooted locally through syncretic practices in India, Indonesia, and across Africa. Saints and other figures of import in other faiths were venerated. Openness also found its way to political rule and culture. This allowed for societies full of integration and innovation rather than exclusion and stagnation.
What choice is a closed Islam for Muslims today? It may be better to be subsumed into America and Americanism! This also brings the benefits of a global system and its associated prosperity.
The only other path is for a two-fold reality that seems implausible but perhaps is inevitable. Firstly, an evolutionary Islamic political frame must re-emerge, imbued with a sense of openness to ideas, innovation, and differences in practice. This will enable true step changes in leadership and development. While people may point to existing modern Muslim countries, they are not genuinely open or pushing the bounds. As long as the pulpits are controlled, the taboos unchallenged, and evolution and syncretism discouraged, there will not be ideological robustness that could then honestly confront modern Islamism and Americanism authentically and present a distinct ideological alternative.
Secondly, America, as a power, must accede to a compromise lest it seeks to undertake direct control of every Muslim country for time immemorial, which it cannot. Thus, the future will require balance and compromise. Hizballah, Hamas, the Taliban, and HTS. These groups, as they stand, are not the future. They cannot achieve long-term gains for their populations and are not alternatives to America.
Without Islamic alternatives, however, they will always garner support. But successors may emerge. They would have modern systems that rival Western ones. They may evolve forms of governance that are differentiated from British parliamentary ones. They may construct sovereignty differently.
Perhaps shura councils can outperform parliaments in effectiveness. Are caliphates inherently bad, and isn’t the American order a caliphate in all but name (with the leader of the free world as the caliph)? Even new technological innovations have some Islamic characteristics; Bitcoin is a type of successor to hawala (a supposition to be explored further in other articles).
There is a desire for global sameness in some corners of the West. This is folly. 1,400 years of Muslim civilizational ethos and Islamic consciousness will not disappear. The Westernized – or Americanized - Muslim plays a critical role in bridging the duality, holding the keys to both of the last two ideas on earth.
To Infinity Plus One
The coming years will give way to geopolitical and ideological evolution around the world. As the global system of states changes, countries will need to re-imagine governance. This may lead to geopolitical contestation as a first order but will also give way to fierce re-imagination of the nation and its place in a territory. Some countries will simply revert to rely on ethno-homogeneity and state power, akin to the trajectory of China today.
Where Islam is absent, countries that seek to eschew Americanism and desire open political systems may face greater challenges. Beyond the monopoly of force and ethnocentrism, what other choice is there? Statism and collectivism? This will eventually lead to vibrant political debates and perhaps ideologies of another kind.
In the world of tomorrow, America will have its place, and Islam—an open one—will, too. Each will have territory, and people will choose where to reside. But universal sameness will not be the song of the day.
In the face of this reality, there may be only one thing left to say.
God bless America and Islam.