Fundamental Misconceptions: Islamic Foreign Policy: Difference between revisions

</ref>  No.  105 (Winter,  1996-1997),  pp.  76-90. The following is the article

For  all the  furor surrounding  Islamic fundamentalism, there  has  been  surprisingly  little attention given  tfundamentalist foreign  policy.  True,  Iranian foreign policy has been  analyzed and excoriated, and generalizations  have been  made on  the  basis of this one case. It is often assumed that  fundamentalists approach foreign affairs  with  the  same set  of goals  as chose  that  drive domestic policy:  namely,  rejection of the secular state  and the establishment of religious law as the  foundation  of society.  It  is  further  thought chat  lurking  behind  Islamic fundamentalist foreign  policy  is  a commitment tholy war (jihad) with the non-Muslim  world. And there seems  t be  a consensus among  Western powers  that fundamentalism poses a threat  tthe international system.

Finally, the United  States can afford  to pay less attention to lslamic fundamentalism.  If fundamentalist foreign policy is understood to be inherently circumscribed, then fundamentalism  in the worstcase scenario is confined  to one region. Policymakers have been able to normalize relations with communist China  because China  is not expansionist. So too could policy be normalized with fundamentalist governments. The United States can afford to accommodate fundamentalism, and it should. The  attempt to contain  it will almost certainly fail, and there is no better way to guarantee continued  tension between political Islam and the West.