122Islamists before a grassroots audience of Muslims.
The Islamist narrative that the “West” is at war with
“Islam” settles better among socie ties that have
been primed with de cades of Islamist proselytizing.
This is partly why it is so im por tant for regional
Muslim- led allies to fi ght the Islamic State them-
selves. The success of this Islamist narrative results
in a lose/lose scenario for international action. To
take Syria as an example, a failure to intervene in
its civil war was construed as the “West’s” indiffer-
ence to Muslim suffering, while intervening would
have been construed as “Western” imperialism.
Either scenario could be used to recruit more jihad-
ists. He who dictates the narrative sets the terms.
The only way, in the long run, to prevent this is
by facilitating a genuine grassroots movement to
pop u lar ize alternative narratives that can compete
with Islamist ones. This is why we set up Khudi in
Pakistan. But such initiatives must be encouraged
across the region. An au then tic and indigenous cul-
tural shift is needed, and this will require years of
work. Currently, the work to reform Muslim iden-
tity, scriptural interpretations, and cultural affi lia-
tions, and to discredit the Islamist ideology, is many
de cades behind.
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