Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Reform, so they tell us

		27 June - 3 July 2002 Issue No. 592 Opinion	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Reform, so they tell us
The West wants us to clean up our act. What if they were right? Osama El-Ghazali Harb* makes an argument for reform

In his recent article "With our own hands, not those of America" (Al-Ahram, 12 June), Salah El-Din Hafez addressed the question of "reform" in Arab and Islamic countries, and the urgency with which certain American and European politicians and writers have been pressing the point.
"We in the Arab world are averse to foreign interference in our internal affairs," wrote Hafiz. "We cannot let others tell us what to do. Yet, we know that we need reform in all aspects of our lives -- not because of recent events, not because foreigners demand it, but because of our real needs."
The issue of reform has been laid at our doorstep by the outside world. And, annoying as this is, we need to address it, urgently and objectively.
Following 11 September, American and European writers and politicians subjected the Islamic and Arab world to close scrutiny. They wanted to know why people from our region had carried out such acts against the United States. In general, they reached the conclusion that it was due to certain negative conditions which exist in our countries, and which are conducive to anti-Western and anti- American sentiments. They therefore want us to implement "reforms" so as to dry up the sources of this "terror", of which they feel themselves the principal target.
We have to respond to the call they make upon us. We have to state what we can do and what we cannot, or will not, do. In his article, Hafiz pointed out that "reform" is not a new concept. It is a long-standing domestic endeavour within the Arab and Muslim world. Nineteenth-century scholars -- Rifa'a Al-Tahtawi, Khaireddin Al-Tunisi, Gamaleddin Al-Afghani, Abdel-Rahman Al-Kawakibi, and Mohamed Abdou, to name but a few -- issued repeated appeals for the reform of the structures of both society and religion. Over the past century, Egyptian liberal and socialist intellectuals and activists have constantly engaged in skirmishes with the religious right. Even within Al-Azhar, one of Islam's leading seats of knowledge, reformers have never hesitated to take on the upholders of convention.
The question facing us, therefore, does not concern the merits of reform as such, but rather why our will to reform has failed to achieve its full potential, and what the role of the outside world (in particular, the Americans and the Europeans) has been in determining this outcome.
We cannot afford to reject reform just because outsiders demand it. This would be arrogant, impractical, and would defeat our own purposes. (It would also be somewhat ironic, considering how many Arab intellectuals still consider Western praise the definitive arbiter of our success and worthiness.)
One of the demands made by Westerners has been that the content of preachers' sermons should be "screened". It is perhaps unpalatable to concede the point to outsiders. But for years, our own religious scholars, including government ministers, have been trying to address this particular issue. Several conferences and seminars have been held on this subject, in which many preachers and scholars have participated. As we all know, at least part of the content of our sermons is habitually devoid of the good sense and tolerance we associate with true Islam. This is an important problem, and one we must address, regardless of what outsiders feel.
Of course, those forces which are opposed to reform will use the support of Western outsiders as an excuse to try and pull us back. They will argue, predictably, that reform is simply a foreign gimmick, intended to undermine our traditions and beliefs. This is something we should expect, and be ready to confront.
Meanwhile, the West, including the United States, needs to acknowledge the insidious role it has so consistently played in strengthening the hand of the traditionalists against the reformers for at least the past half century. In doing so, the Western powers ignored the long-term interests of the people of the region. The United States' Middle East policy, for example, has been entirely dictated by the fight against communism, the need to protect the production and supply of oil, and the defence of Israel's security. America has pursued these goals at all costs, and in the process has provided substantial support to a number of anti-democratic political regimes. Indeed, for decades the conventional wisdom among US political scientists has been that stability is more important than democracy in the developing world.
As a result, the United States forged close links with conservative regimes in the Gulf, under cover of deference to the "traditions and local traits" of traditional societies. Whenever a clash emerged between the reformers and traditionalists, the United States stood firmly behind the latter. This policy has been pursued with great consistency ever since the idea of an "Islamic Alliance" was first raised in the late fifties. What the United States wanted from these societies was not reform, but simply stability (that is, stagnation, ossification). For it was stability, not democracy, which could guarantee the US's continued access to Arab oil.
America's attitude to Arab-Israeli relations has been similarly blinkered. In its eagerness to preserve Israel's security, the US has consistently sought to ensure its ally's military supremacy over the combined Arab nations -- far more consistently than it has ever sought a lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In doing so, neither the Americans nor their European allies paid much serious attention to the long-term repercussions of this continued conflict on the domestic fabric of Arab and Islamic societies. As a result, for the past half century, struggle against Israel and Zionism has served as the buzzword for regimes seeking to justify domestic repression and delay indefinitely the process of democratic reform. Democracy is just one of the more obvious casualties of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This is true of Israel too, a nation founded on religious dogma. In pursuing its own truths, it has violated sacred Islamic principles and places, provoked an acute desperation among the younger generations of Arab and Muslims, and triggered a resistance-oriented religious revival, both inside and outside Palestine.
Thus, the kind of hatred that has generated violence against the United States and the West is simply the harvest of decades of selfish, unprincipled, and shortsighted policies prosecuted by those powers. It is against the backdrop of this history that American and European politicians and writers now speak to us of the need to "modernise" Arab and Islamic societies and cultures, of the need for democracy and transparency, even of a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state -- all of which are goals that we have been seeking to achieve for a long time. Could this be a sign that they, like us, are finally ready to make a fresh start?
* The writer is editor-in-chief of the quarterly Al-Siyassa Al- Dawliya (International Politics) issued by Al-Ahram, and a member of the Shura Council.

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