The 2003 Document

In 2003, RAND Corporation published "Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies." Seventy-two pages. Public document. Written by Cheryl Benard, a researcher specializing in Afghanistan and Middle East policy.

Her husband is Zalmay Khalilzad. Afghan-American diplomat who worked under Reagan during the Soviet-Afghan war, served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the UN, and later negotiated the US-Taliban agreement under Trump.

The report was funded by Smith Richardson Foundation, which specializes in foreign policy research. RAND Corporation is a $350 million organization that advises the Pentagon. Previous participants include Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld.

The document lays out how the West should engage with Islam. Not counterterrorism tactics. Something broader.

How They Categorize Muslims

The report divides Muslims into four groups:

Fundamentalists - Want strict Islamic law enforced. Hostile to the West. Use violence. Examples given: Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Salafi jihadists.

Traditionalists - Follow orthodox Islamic practice. Not violent. Want Sharia to govern society through classical jurisprudence. Respect traditional scholarly authority. The largest group by population.

Modernists - Believe Islam is compatible with democracy. Want to reinterpret religious texts for contemporary context. Support separation of religion from state structure. Small minority.

Secularists - Want religion entirely private. Reject Islamic law's role in governance. Examples: Westernized urban elites, Kemalist Turks.

Then come the recommendations.

What They Recommend

Page 42: "The United States and the West can promote transformation of Islam by strengthening the modernists against all other groups."

Page 47: "Fundamentalists receive massive financial backing from radical sponsors. The West should help level the playing field by making alternative views of Islam available to Muslim audiences."

Page 51: "Target the traditionalists. While they are not themselves promoters of violence, their rejection of modernity and their emphasis on unquestioning obedience to religious authority provides fertile ground for fundamentalism."

Page 43: "The West can help modernists by publishing and distributing their works. Provide them with platforms. Make their ideas available through media, particularly through Internet sites."

The strategy has steps. Support modernists first. Use traditionalists against fundamentalists when modernists are too weak. Then undermine traditionalist authority once fundamentalists are contained. Selectively support secularists where possible.

Page 58 discusses women and hijab: "This is a minefield that must be carefully navigated, but it represents a core symbol of traditionalist values that must ultimately be reformed."

Who Gets Defined as Traditionalist

Traditionalists aren't extremists. They're Muslims who follow classical Islamic jurisprudence, defer to scholarly consensus, want some role for Sharia in society, practice gender segregation in certain contexts, and maintain conservative dress codes.

They pray five times daily. Follow one of the four Sunni schools or Shia traditions. Respect classical scholars. Attend mosques led by traditionally trained imams. Send their children to Islamic schools.

Not plotting violence. Not joining terrorist groups. Just practicing Islam the way it's been practiced.

Page 41: "Traditionalists are not necessarily our enemy. But they are an obstacle to progress, to democracy, to development, and to women's equality."

The obstacle isn't violence. It's values that don't align with Western modernity.

The Implementation Mechanisms

Page 51: "Encourage disagreements between traditionalists. Create competition on their terrain. Publish traditionalist criticism of fundamentalist practices."

Page 61: "Work with women's groups. Women are a natural modernizing constituency. Support those who are willing to challenge traditionalist restrictions."

Page 64: "Identify modernists within existing institutions. Provide them resources and platforms. Create alternative institutions where modernists dominate."

The methods: educational funding, media platforms, publishing houses, NGO networks, training programs for imams, women's rights organizations, youth movements, think tanks, academic positions.

Target the next generation. Change curricula. Create alternative authority structures. Amplify certain voices while others lose funding.

The report uses business language: "market share," "distribution," "competition," "resources." Islam is treated as a market with competing products.

The Scale

Target population: 1.8 billion Muslims across dozens of countries, hundreds of ethnic groups, multiple languages.

Timeline: Multi-generational. The report acknowledges this takes decades.

Funding: Billions allocated through USAID, State Department programs, defense budgets, private foundations.

Geographic focus: Initially Middle East and Central Asia, but principles apply globally wherever Muslim populations exist.

What This Means for Muslim Organizations

Any Muslim organization receiving Western funding now operates under a framework. Modernist voices get grants. Traditionalist institutions face scrutiny. NGOs promoting "Islamic feminism" find donors. Mosques with conservative imams have trouble getting permits.

Scholars who support secular democracy get invited to conferences, published in journals, given university positions. Scholars who maintain orthodox positions get less visibility, fewer platforms, limited access to mainstream media.

Women's rights activists using Western frameworks receive funding. Those working within Islamic legal traditions get questioned about their "real" agenda.

Youth programs teaching critical thinking (of Islamic authority) get supported. Programs teaching classical Islamic education face regulatory barriers.

The categorization determines resource allocation. Modernist equals partner. Traditionalist equals obstacle. Fundamentalist equals enemy.

The Institutional Web

RAND isn't alone. Similar frameworks appear in reports from Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment, Council on Foreign Relations, various European think tanks.

State Department programs. Pentagon's ideological warfare units. USAID's civil society initiatives. British government's Prevent program. French programs on laïcité.

The terminology varies. "Countering violent extremism." "Promoting moderate Islam." "Building civil society." "Women's empowerment." "Democratic values."

The structure is consistent: identify Muslims aligned with Western interests, provide resources and platforms, marginalize those who aren't.

Who Benefits

Western governments get Muslim populations less likely to resist foreign policy. Muslim allies who support drone strikes, side with Israel, don't protest interventions.

Think tanks get funding for ongoing research on "Islamic reform."

NGOs get grants for promoting Western values in Muslim countries.

Muslim modernists get platforms, funding, legitimacy from external validation.

Defense contractors get counterinsurgency contracts requiring "hearts and minds" components.

Academic institutions get research grants for studying Islam through security frameworks.

The incentive structure is clear. Money flows toward compliance.

The Benard-Khalilzad Dynamic

Cheryl Benard writes the blueprint in 2003. Her husband becomes Afghanistan ambassador in 2004, implementing nation-building that includes ideological components.

He moves to Iraq in 2005. Same framework applies—build democratic institutions, promote moderate voices, marginalize traditionalists.

Later, he negotiates with the Taliban—the group his wife's report called fundamentalists requiring defeat.

Now she writes that Afghan women's situation isn't as severe as reported. Afghan women's organizations call this whitewashing.

The timeline connects. The incentives are visible. Whether this represents consistency or contradiction depends on what the actual goals were.

What the Report Reveals

Not that there's a conspiracy. The report is public. The programs are documented. The funding is traceable.

What it reveals is the operating framework. How certain Western institutions view Islam. Not as a religion with internal diversity and organic evolution, but as an ideological challenge requiring external management.

The language is clinical. "Partners, resources, strategies." "Market share." "Competition." Muslims are data points. Islam is a problem set requiring optimization.

The report assumes authority to determine correct Islamic interpretation. To decide which Muslims are moderate and which aren't. To engineer religious transformation across civilizations.

No Muslim authority approved this framework. No Islamic institution requested Western intervention in theological debates. No vote was taken among the 1.8 billion practitioners.

But the framework exists. The programs run. The funding flows.

What Muslims Can Observe

When a Muslim scholar gets invited to Western conferences, there's a pattern. Scholars who say Sharia and democracy are incompatible don't get invited. Those who say Islam needs feminist reformation do.

When NGOs distribute grants, modernist groups receive funding. Traditionalist institutions don't.

When media covers Islam, modernist voices get airtime. Traditionalist scholars are presented as backwards or suspicious.

When governments design counter-extremism programs, they partner with modernists as "authentic voices." Traditionalists get surveillance.

The framework is operational. The categorization is active. The resource allocation follows the template.

The Question Not Asked

The report never asks: What if Muslims don't want external management of their religion?

What if 1.8 billion people can decide for themselves which interpretation to follow, which scholars to trust, which values to maintain?

What if the diversity within Islam—fundamentalist, traditionalist, modernist, secularist—is organic, and attempting to engineer toward one outcome violates something fundamental about religious autonomy?

These questions don't appear because asking them undermines the entire premise.

The document exists. The programs exist. The funding exists.

What people do with this information is their choice.