What is Conflicts Forum?
Conflicts Forum began in 2004. It aims to open a new relationship between the West and the Muslim world.
Since the late 1980’s, Conflicts Forum’s directors, Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry, have been in dialogue with a wide range of leading Islamists. During this period, Islamism has emerged as the most significant indigenous political force in the region.
At the same time - and especially in the polarised climate following September 11, 2001 - U.S. foreign policy has failed to differentiate between the many strands of Islamic activism that we see across the world today. During deepening crises in the region, the U.S. refuses to talk to the Islamists who can influence events. We don’t talk to Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood. We shun Iran, Syria, and others. While facing increasingly intractable problems in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan and elsewhere, we immobilize ourselves by turning away from the homegrown political forces that have the power to resolve these crises.
Our unwillingness to engage in dialogue with those who don’t share our view of the world has brought us to an impasse. Conflicts Forum is breaking through the wall of silence.
Our reach goes well beyond the Middle East; we work with Islamist groups in North Africa and Pakistan, we consult with Islamic political movements in South and East Asia. Though our focus is on forging an understanding with political Islam, Conflicts Forum engages the entire spectrum of Islamist societies - in cultural and economic realms as well as the political.
Our encounters with political Islam - with both non-violent and armed resistance groups - leads us to conclude that Islamism is above all political. The overwhelming majority of Islamists are striving to create just societies and bring about political reform in a region entrenched with inequity, that has long suffered the overbearing influence of foreign powers.
At a time when it becomes increasingly clear that the West’s military intrusion into the Islamic world is not serving as an instrument of constructive political change, Conflicts Forum’s aim is to engage and listen to Islamists, while challenging Western misconceptions and misrepresentations of the region’s leading agents of change.