20 - 26 September 2001
Issue No.552
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 - 26 September 2001 Issue No.552 |
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By understanding alone
Jasper Thornton examines some of the letters received this week by Al-Ahram Weekly
After the tragedy of last Tuesday, Al-Ahram Weekly's e-mail inbox was deluged with letters. Many were thoughtful and insightful. Many told us of the splendid determination of ordinary Americans to pick up their lives. Almost all were unswerving in their compassion for the victims, and in their profound anguish at what had happened. Several were also angry; an anger no one has the right to gainsay. To suffer what America has should not be asked of any people, anywhere.
But many kindled anger with hate. Sadly, at a time when more obloquy seems the least appropriate response, some correspondents made us feel rather bleak. Anger, understandable in itself, was levelled without understanding at Islam and Arabs, or at America. Some felt that after the enormity in the US, "civilisations" should now turn their backs to one another. Others warned of the bombs soon to bloody our part of the world.
A minority responded with religious fundamentalism, of all stripes. Mohamed Borghasoun obscenely budgeted the murder of thousands of innocents like a football score - "11:1 in favour of the Palestinians!" he rejoiced, adding, that the killers "deserve the highest Islamic reward. Allahu Akbar." Just as loathsome was Jim Albrecht, who, without evidence, blamed Egypt for the attack, labelled it the "evil of Satan," and warned of the "Wrath of God," and "the bombs of America which can devastate entire nations." This preemptory judgement was a little odd: he earlier advised us, "pretending to be God and sitting in judgment...exposes you to His wrath."
Religion also dominated the thinking of others. R Flewelling, who read our "writers and [their] opinions," concluded: "I thought that the Koran was a book of peace, a book of love...what a shame that such a religion as yours could not be used for world peace instead of war. I now see Muslims in a different light...I no longer trust them, or respect their faith." In fact, very many writers at the Weekly are Christian.
As are Arabs from Palestine to Poughkeepsie. Muslims and Christians alike across the world have long pleaded that confronting power and its abuse has nothing to do with being Muslim, or Christian, or Arab. A wrong is a wrong is a wrong, whether in Palestine, in Israel or in America. To attribute all defiance to Muslim rage, all terror to the teachings of Islam, is a mirage. Could it not be, as John Pilger, a British journalist wrote this week, that Muslims disproportionately oppose US foreign policy because Muslims happen to live in a part of the world that disproportionately suffers? To blame all that is awry among us on a religion, and all its practitioners, rather than to think also of poverty, of oppression, of inequality, stops us from seeing the troubles of our world plain.
Perspective came from Palestinian Sami Aldeeb, himself a Christian. He beseeched the politicians who have "let rot the situation in the Middle East," that mindless vengeance will lead only to more despair and "an intensified cycle of violence." "All who take the sword die by the sword," he quoted Jesus, rebuking those who terrorise innocents, whether in the West Bank or Washington, reminding us that terrorists are made, not born; and we should all look to our consciences.
Muslims, most correspondents assumed, were behind the attacks. Perhaps they were. But many wrote to damn us for having the temerity even to consider other possibilities. But surely easy assumption should never be allowed to annul the highest task of a newspaper: to ask discomfiting questions, to ask whether what "everyone knows" is actually what most people happen to think. Ken Davis raged that Salah Montasser's hypothesis that Arabs were not involved was "sublimely ignorant." John Martin attacked Montasser's right even to his opinion, calling it "brainwashing" and "hate-filled." Davis did some investigative journalism, and produced AP's list of hijack suspects, who have Arab names. Perhaps he should also investigate such things as why none of those names appeared on the passenger manifests. The main point is: though our writers may ask awkward questions, that is the task of a newspaper. To ask the questions governments won't, to wonder if we know the whole truth and nothing but. We point to the advice of Mickey Weintraub, "a Jew, and a US citizen," to his countrymen: "read the press from central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East." Only then, he writes, can his fellow citizens know "the whole truth."
Michael Rizk was one of many who damned our right to ask, by reminding us of the assistance the US gives Egypt. He recalled for us that the "US GIVES Egypt $655 million annually"; others mentioned sales of Coke, computers and cruise missiles as other examples of US beneficence. This largesse is supposed to forbid us an editorial stance that differs from that of the Washington Post, or from suggesting interpretations of the evidence different to that offered by the FBI.
"Your people have a short-term memory," Rizk accused, at our apparent amnesia at the facts of US aid. Perhaps the amnesia is his: our six-page supplement on USAID appeared just two months ago. Egyptians are only too aware of US aid. Perhaps the cost to the US taxpayer is sometimes forgotten; perhaps many in the US forget the profit aid investment makes for America. But none of us should forget its purpose, as avowed by its proponents themselves: "To act as a tool of US foreign policy." We criticise it as such.
Much of the loathing in the letters was doubtless the rage of the moment. That is entirely forgivable. But some of the assumptions about Arabs and Muslims worried the Weekly deeply, as did the thirst for vengeance. We prefer to dwell on the encouragement of Mickey Weintraub. "More hate will offer no resolution to the pains and wrongs suffered by any one person, nation, ethnicity or group. The resolution can only lie in education, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, and the good-will of man."
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