Abstract
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Summer 2005, Routledge.
Intelligence officials are suffering a crisis of faith–or more specifically, a failure to understand the importance of religion in shaping peoples' worldviews and the way they form belief structures. According to John D. Stempel, a professor of international studies at the University of Kentucky, this blind spot, particularly acute among present decision makers who have a “great difficulty in getting beyond their own mindset,” has proven dangerous to U.S. interests.
The United States should not have been surprised by Al Qaeda, he argues in “The Impact of Religion on Intelligence,” published in the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, because the resurgence of religion as a political force has been hidden in plain sight throughout much of the twentieth century, including faith-based opposition to Apartheid, the Catholic Church's close ties to the Polish Solidarity movement, the Iranian revolution, sectarian conflict in the Balkans, and Islamic resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Americans have failed to fully grasp this phenomenon, he suggests, because they are accustomed to living in a pluralistic society where separation of church and state has long been the norm. More broadly, this experience has engendered the view that religion's importance diminishes as societies develop and modernize. Instead, the “truth should be accepted that development sometimes leads to social crises … that, absent countervailing pressures, bring people back to a version of religion that increases their hostility and gives them emotional and political support.”
Having served with the State Department in Iran during the 1970s, Stempel observed firsthand the inability of government officials to comprehend the nuances of theocratic discourse. Sadly, he notes, “the problem is still the paradigm” and points to conflicts where other fundamentalisms are playing–or have the potential to play–an influential role. In India, a mix of Hinduism in national politics can accentuate the “tendency to see the ‘other’ solely as an enemy.” The rise of fundamentalist Buddhism in Sri Lanka has had a similarly destabilizing effect in that country's civil war. And in the United States, Stempel notes the emerging concern among law enforcement officials that conservative Christian militias might be “developing a tendency to martyrdom.”
To accomplish a transformation in the U.S. approach would require a shift in conceptual thinking, Stempel says. In effect, he envisions intelligence officials as latter-day warrior monks who are as well versed in various “theological-political arguments” as they are adept at counterterrorism. He also believes that recruiting “qualified members of the Muslim faith for intelligence work,” though difficult, will be “necessary for carrying the day against extremist views” since “[as] a former intelligence officer put it succinctly, ‘You can't send white-bread Americans into these places and expect results.’”
More controversially, he calls for modifying “prohibitions against dealing with ‘bad people,’ those who offend many human rights activists,” in the hope of better knowing fringe religious elements. “To understand the world of the terrorists, a way into their world has to be found.” In other words, be the extremist.