Faith at War

At a forum sponsored by OSI's Middle East and North Africa Initiatives, Yaroslav Trofimov, a reporter who covers Islamic culture for the Wall Street Journal, discussed his new book, Faith at War: A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu (Henry Holt and Company).

Faith at War encapsulates Trofimov's experience covering two major wars as well as countless smaller conflicts in the Middle East. Drawing from his extensive travel and reporting experience, Trofimov engages ordinary Muslims, influential clerics, warlords, jihadis, intellectuals, and heads of state in conversations that reveal the Muslim world from a new perspective.

Event Summary

The West tends “to focus on what ‘they’—Muslims—have done to ‘us,’ but it’s equally if not more important to look at what the West has been doing in the Muslim world,” Trofimov said. His book, therefore, looks at the post–September 11 era from the perspective of the Muslim world.

Public opinion today in Muslim countries focuses much more on the death toll on the Muslim side, which is now much higher than that of the U.S. The “war on terror” is perceived “as a war on Islam itself,” Trofimov said, citing the recent riots in Afghanistan in reaction to a Newsweek story on abuse at Guantanamo Bay.

In Bosnia last year, Trofimov said, he heard the Imam of the main mosque in Sarajevo refer to the war in Iraq as “genocide”—this despite the fact that Bosnia itself experienced real genocide not long ago. Bosnia is often held up as an example of the benevolent manner in which the West ought to be seen by Muslims. Yet in light of the Abu Ghraib scandal and the assault on Najaf, he reported, many Bosnian Muslims have begun to see the conflict in Iraq as a religious war.

Trofimov noted that Muslim anger is also fueled by a gap between the reality of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the initial expectations that inhabitants of those countries had. For example, power outages are as frequent today in Baghdad as they were three years ago.

Trofimov said he is often asked, Why don’t people blame Iraqi insurgents for the violence—in particular, civilian bombings? Inhabitants argue that there was no terrorism before the U.S. came—which is a “sad testament” to developments in the region. Surprising numbers of Iraqis now say that life was better under Saddam Hussein, Trofimov said.

Need help downloading a file or playing a clip? Click here.