Leon T. Hadar

With the end of the Cold War many at home and abroad are urging the United States to prepare for a new long struggle against radical Islam. But Islam is neither a threat to the United States nor a unified political phenomenon. Iran, the supposed center of Islamic fundamentalism, has pursued a foreign policy dominated by geopolitics, not religion. In the rest of the Middle East, Islam has become the language of political opposition to a thoroughly corrupt status quo. By blindly supporting autocratic Arab regimes against these popular movements, the United States will turn the threat of Islamic fundamentalism into a self-fulfilling prophecy.