1946 Analysis of the Islamic Threat

Just discovered Steve Hayward's post on this, a Middle East Forum's publication of a US military intelligence's report of the long-term threats to global security in 1946. In that then classified report, we apparently get an unvarnished assessment of the factors foreseen to give rise to the Islamic threat from the Middle East to the rest of the world in the not too distant future. And, guess what, the presence of nation of Israel is not one of them.... Why? Israel was declared a state in 1948, 2 years after the report.

Here is Middle East Forum's summary of the report:

In 1946, U.S. power was on the ascent. A U.S. nuclear bomb had hastened the end of World War II and, while the Cold War was beginning, the United States remained the world's only nuclear power. As the international community rebuilt from the ashes of war and the United Nations sought to preserve peace, the military intelligence division of the U.S. War Department—the predecessor of today's Defense Intelligence Agency—charged its analysts to speculate on long-term threats to global security. One resulting essay, which appeared in the classified periodical Intelligence Review,[1] identified the Islamic world as a region of concern.

Written just over than six decades ago, the resulting analysis is prescient.[2] The report describes a region beset by "discontent and frustration" and handicapped by a collective inferiority complex, yet unable to overcome "intellectual inaction," a situation which would keep the region from advancing in the modern world. The analysts speculate correctly about the growing importance of the Arab media and the divisive force of nationalism.

Ironically, while many academics today would dismiss as culturally insensitive the authors' frankness and generalizations about peoples and religion, the assumption that culture matters holds true. Many of the report's observations mirror those made in recent years by the United Nations' own Arab Human Development Report, which, if anything, is more pessimistic. In 1946, observers of the Middle East still had hope that increasing literacy and ease of travel would lead the region to become more cosmopolitan. While they raised concerns about nascent Islamist movements, they did not foresee just how malignant such groups could become, nor did they envision that oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia would fund extremism rather than regional development.

As important as what the authors do say is what they do not. While it has become trendy in some academic and diplomatic circles to blame terrorism and regional instability on Israel's existence, the War Department's report suggests these problems—and anti-Semitism as well—predated the Jewish state. Many Arab states complained about Jewish immigration to Palestine, but the report's authors suggest local governments cynically promoted such concerns, and Muslims farther afield had different priorities. Well before Israel's independence and the 1967 war, Arab and Islamist groups embraced terrorism, using it for purposes unrelated to Zionism. Accordingly, while the scapegoating of Israel may be fashionable in the foreign ministries of Arab states, the European Union, and the diplomatic parlors of the United Nations, the 1946 report shows that responsibility for the political, economic, and social failings of the region are far more complex and deeply-rooted.

—The Editors

But, don't take my word for it, read it all here.