Clash of pragmatisms

It seems “the pragmatism of Islamists” has defeated “the Western pragmatism,” at the end of the day.

The western powers supported politics of the “conservatives” in Muslim countries against the so-called “threat of communism,” all along the Cold War years. The famous (or infamous) Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia summarizes this well-known strategy better than anybody else, as he states, “Saudi efforts to fight the Communists were not limited to oil and petrodollar contributions for CIA covert operations.” Bandar maintains, “We did not use East-West arguments or America’s anti-communism, we used religion. We said ‘the Communists are atheists, they don’t believe in religion and we are fighting them for religious reasons.’“(William Simpson, The Prince, New York: Harper Collins, 2006, 112)   

Indeed, it proved to be a working strategy and the western powers never thought their support of “Muslim politics” not only “saved” those countries from left wing politics or Soviet influence, but it also hindered the improvement of secular modern politics. At the end of the Cold War years, it turned to be supporting radical Islamism against the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and moderate Islamism elsewhere (and especially in Turkey) against the possible influence of revolutionary Iran. Finally, after the end of the Cold War, Muslim politics were still needed; this time not only for avoiding “a clash of civilizations,” but also to enable the integration of Muslim societies into the global free market.    

From the beginning, it was not only Western powers used conservatives against their (communist) enemies, but Muslim...